California Dreaming?

Since Kevin seems to have launched us on a TV theme, I'll pick up the thread by sharing that one of the fun (read: infuriating) things about working on preschool issues recently has been watching the ongoing telenovela that is Rob Reiner's advocacy for universal Pre-K in California. (And for those of you who are expecting a Meathead joke at about this point, I'm sorry. I was less than a year old when All in the Family went off the air, so you ain't gettin' none of that here, kids.)

For those of you that have been living under a rock--or just aren't as much of a pre-K geek as I am--Reiner is the lead backer of Proposition 82, a California ballot initiative that would raise the marginal state tax on income over $400,000 ($800,000 for couples) from 9.3 to 11 percent--and use the proceeds to fund universal Pre-K for all four-year-olds in the state whose families want it. It's not exactly a secret that I think universal pre-k is a good idea, which is what makes the soap operatic turn the Prop. 82 debate has taken--it's becoming, essentially, a debate about Reiner--very frustrating.

As a high-profile Democratic activist and donor, Reiner was guaranteed to be a lightning rod on this issue. But the apparently dumb choices he's made: allowing taxpayer funds from the state "First 5" Commission that he chairs to be spent for what appears to be pro-Prop. 82 advertising, paying the Prop. 82 campaign manager as a First 5 commission consultant--one might even question the wisdom of not stepping down from the Commission when Prop. 82 first launched and even Michael Stivic could see the potential for conflicts and controversy--don't help the situation.

Polling suggests the three-ring circus around Reiner hasn't harmed Prop. 82's prospects, although it may be too early to tell, and there are reasons to believe such polls aren't always the best predictor of how people will actually vote. Whatever the case may be, the soap operatic attention to Reiner isn't helping to raise the level of debate around pre-k or focus it on the substantive issues here.

And there are substantive issues here. Universal Pre-k is good, but Prop. 82 isn't perfect. For example, Berkeley's Bruce Fuller has gotten a lot of ink arguing that a narrowly targeted preschool program for poor and working class families would be a better investment. I think he's wrong about that, for reasons I'll explain some other time, but it's a valid concern that deserves more serious discussion. I admire the initiative's emphasis on teacher quality, but I'm not sure adding a whole new type of teacher certification to California's already convoluted K-12 teacher credentialling system is the best way to move forward here. Kevin doesn't think dedicated revenues (as opposed to general revenues), such as the tax Prop. 82 would establish, are a good way to fund social programs.

And it would be great to have a richer debate about what mix of providers ought to be included in a state-funded preschool system. The initiative leaves space for a variety of types of providers (although it appears to preclude the type of preschool only charters that are having a positive impact in Washington, D.C.), but it's going to be up to county education offices to determine who really gets to take part. While there's been some reporting about the concerns of private preschool and child care providers that they'll be left out of the program (and some of them should be, because of poor quality!), no one's launching the broader debate that needs to happen about what range of choices state-funded preschool programs should offer parents, the trade-offs between parent choice and quality control, and how to integrate private and faith-based providers into government-funded educational programs. That's too bad because these are important debates that could also help inform other education debates in California and elsewhere, such as the charter school debate.

Which leads me to the big question: What happens if Prop. 82 passes? Right now, I think the pre-k advocacy community is looking to Prop. 82 with high hopes that it will open up a new wave of pre-k expansion and investment nationally. But there's also a darker possibility. What happens if Prop. 82's implementation is chaotic, or if the program has lousy results? Advocates, including Reiner, are promising a lot here, and there's a danger, as both Head Start and the charter movement could warn them, that overpromising can turn out to come back and haunt you. More significantly, delivering good results is going to require that preschool programs be high-quality, and while the initiative includes a lot of good language and provisions designed to ensure that, making sure that all participating centers are high-quality--particularly in a state the size of and with the political complexity of California, and when control of who gets funding is decentralized to county education offices--will be a huge challenge. That doesn't mean that I think Prop. 82 is a bad idea. But I do think that , for pre-k supporters, its passage, should it occur, is just the start of the real work, not the end. And, unfortunately, the mess Reiner & co. have made of what should have been relatively straightforward politics here don't inspire confidence about the Prop. 82 supporters' ability to navigate the complexities of getting to quality here.

TV Once Again Adds to National Education Dialogue

On Tuesday, March 28th, NBC will be debuting a new mid-season replacement sitcom called Teachers. Here's a plot summary of the pilot:

"In an attempt to make Alice (Sarah Alexander) jealous, Jeff (Justin Bartha) hits on the new substitute teacher, Tina (Sarah Shahi). Meanwhile, Calvin (Deon Richmond) and Dick (Phil Hendrie) try to thwart Alice's attempt to run for faculty chair. Kali Rocha and Matt Winston also star. TV-14"

Fantastic. At last, the honest, interesting portrayal of the working lives of American educators for which we have all been waiting.

The only upside here is that one of the teachers is played by Kali Rocha, who also played Halfrek the vengeance demon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You know, the one who was burned alive by D'Hoffryn at the end of that great Season Seven episode, Selfless, where we see Anya's origin back in 15th Century Poland or something where she's married to Olaf, who was first seen playing a troll in the Season Five episode Triangle, and who was played by the guy who played the nurse on E.R., back when E.R. was good? No? What's that? Oh, okay. I'll stop now.

Income Inequality in Higher Education -- New Data, A Long Way to Go

Stanford Univeristy is rolling out a new policy whereby students with family incomes of less than $45,000 will pay no tuition. Announcements like this have become a mini-trend in recent years, as some high-profile institutions have reacted to critics who note that students at the nation's most selective colleges and universities are 25 times more likely to be from the top income quartile than from the bottom. For all that higher education claims to value diversity, the lack of economic diversity among elite insitutions is startling.

Equally disturbing is the lack of good information that would allow policymakers and the general public to understand these problems and do more to fix them. There's simply not a lot of good institution-level data out there detailing the economic profile of college students. That's why the new www.economicdiversity.org Web site is most welcome: users can log on and compare institutions on a range of financial aid and income-related measures.

For example, according to the site only 9 percent of students at the University of Virginia receive Pell grants. 58 percent of dependent students at UVA don't even apply for federal financial aid, and of those who do, two-thirds come from households with a family income of greater than $60,000 per year. Only 14 percent of dependent UVA students applied for federal aid from a household making less than $60,000, even though 50 percent all households in Virginia make less than $54,000 per year.

But we still have no sense of the overall income profile at UVA, since that data is only available for students who apply for financial aid. This lack of economic information is pretty typical--federal graduation rate statistics, for example, are calculated based on major sports category, but not income category. Thus, we can calculate the percentage of American Indian / Alaskan Native cross country runners who graduate in six years from a given institution, but not the percentage of students from low-income households.

It's clear from the data, however, that the status hierarchy within higher education and the economic pyramid in society at large are closely aligned. Students with lots of money go to highly-selective universities with lots of money; low-income students go to open-access institutions that are often in similar financial straits. There are exceptions, and policies like Stanford's will move the bar, a little. But overall higher education tends to mirror society's inequalities as much as it works to overcome them.

Testing Opportunity

This Week in Education's Alexander Russo comments on the recent news of scoring errors on the SAT:

"You think anyone's going to go for national testing with all this going on? It'd be like saying you wanted to give more money to FEMA while Mike Brown was still there. Opponents would have a field day."

Isn't this exactly backwards? The current testing regime is a hodgepodge of 51 states and multiple for-profit testing providers whose collective success in providing timely, high-quality, error-free assessments has been variable at best. It seems to me that national standards proponents could plausibly point to these and other recent testing snafus and say "There's got to be a better way." Like a system that concentrates currently-duplicative resources on getting it right the first time, in a way that's more transparent and accountable to the public.

Pull Quote, Un-Quote

The Washington Post "Outlook" section this morning includes a major piece on schools "in need of improvement" under NCLB. Taking up two-thirds of the section front page and two full pages inside, the article is entirely devoted to the voices of nine area school principals answering the question: "Why is your school on this list?"

The Post deserves a lot credit for doing this. In all the debate over NCLB, the voices of the educators and school leaders actually responsible for helping students meet performance goals aren't heard often enough. There is a lot of nuance in these responses, which are well worth reading in full; you sense resolve, committment, professionalism, some frustration, a dose of confusion, and a deep committment to the lives of children.

BUT -- you wouldn't know that by glancing at the page where these ideas are published. It contains three large-type "pull quotes," the snippets of text newspapers and magazines often display in little stand-alone boxes to give readers a quick sense of the most compelling aspects of article. Pull quotes are a tool for breaking up text visually and quickly signaling to readers what an article is about and why they should read it. The three pull quotes are:

"There is nothing positive I can say about No Child Left Behind." -- Reginald Ballard, Cardozo High School, Northwest Washington

"There is a big disparity between the haves and have-nots of education." -- Rodney Henderson, Kenmoor Elementary School, Landover, Md.

"We're doing the best we can, but if someone can do it better, let them show us how. Because we're all ears." -- Sue Dsiedzic, Oxon Hill Elementary School, Oxon Hill, Md.

In other words, NCLB is bad, unfunded, and unreasonable. By contrast, here are some quotes from the article that were not used:

"There's no question that NCLB has benefitted schools in many areas." -- Rodney Henderson, Kenmoor Elementary School, Landover, Md.

"I think what No Child Left Behind does about accountability is great. It really forces us to reassess how we are operating." -- Miriam Hughey-Guy, Barcroft Elementary School, Arlingon, VA.

"I think NCLB is basically a good law, because no school should leave any child behind. You want everybody to learn, you want everybody to make progress, you want to make good citizens, because that's good for everybody." -- Rhonda Pitts, Bladensburg Elementary School, Bladensburg."

Using these three quotes instead of the three that were actually used wouldn't have been any more fair; in nearly every case the principals display a pretty complex take on the issue. To see this, look at the quote from Principal Dsiedzic in more context:

"No Child Left Behind is not a bad law. Special ed is a long way from the days when we taught these kids to make cane chairs and brooms because we thought they couldn't learn. The law has lofty goals. It's a noble effort, but it does need to be modified. I get my satisfaction from the fact that we are growing and my teachers are working hard. There's frustration, but there's also improvement on the part of our kids. The states say that if you don't meet the standards, we can come in and take you over. But you just can't take over that many schools. We're doing the best we can, but if someone can do it better, let them show us how. Because we're all ears."

It's a shame that the Post undermined the nuance, balance, and value of its own article by falling back on the simplistic educators-as-victims take on NCLB that drives too much of the rhetoric around the law. These educators, and Post readers, deserve better.

There's also one take on NCLB that's confusing; Reem Labib of SAIL public charter school in DC says:

"Last summer, we were notified by the charter board that we had not achieved AYP because we had only 32 students in our third and fifth grades, which is fewer than the 40 required for a subgroup to be reported."

To be clear, you can't miss AYP simply because you don't have enough students to form a subgroup. As the DC Public Charter School Board Web site clearly shows, SAIL didn't miss AYP in 2004-2005; it's listed as a school for which AYP isn't applicable, because of the small number of students. SAIL was identified as underperforming in previous years, and because they didn't have enough students to test last year, couldn't come off the list.

Jay Mathews also misses the mark somewhat in his companion piece explaining how the law works, which begins:

"Even award-winning principal Marjorie L. Myers was misled about the public school labeling game launched by the No Child Left Behind Act. She thought Arlington County's Key Elementary School, which she has led for 11 years, was on the "needs improvement" list, but it turns out it isn't. She missed only one reading target for one year, which a close examination of the detailed Virginia Department of Education Web site shows is not enough to land her on the dreaded watch list. If one of the most experienced, successful educators in the Washington area can't figure out the complex law's labels, what hope is there for the rest of us?"

Later on the article he follows up:

"Remember Myers's mistaken belief that her school was on the needs improvement list? She had been told that missing AYP just one year was enough to get the label. In fact, a school must miss AYP two years in a row for that to happen, and they must miss it both years in the same subject area."

Is this really rocket science, two years in a row instead of one? The theme of the article is very much in the vein of "holy smokes this is complicated, I will help you sort through as best I can." But this lead example is really just a case of inexcusable communication, not daunting complexity.