Moral Education

From the AFTBlog: "Yes, deliberately falsifying documents is wrong, but...."

Rule of thumb in sentence construction: the word "but" does not belong after the words "falsifying documents is wrong." Whatever you're writing is sure to go downhill from there.

In this case, AFTie Beth is excusing a California school district that appears to have engaged in some paperwork shenanigans in order to get more class-size reduction money out of the state. Beth's excuse--and the district's--seems to begin and end with "we needed the money."

Back when I was assistant state budget director in Indiana, one of my jobs was to look after the giant pot of money the state set aside to support K-12 education. Every two years, the legislature would appropriate that money based on a projection of how many students would be enrolled in each school district. If the actual enrollment was higher than the projection, the legislature would either have to appropriate extra money (which it didn't like) or pro-rate funding distributions to districts (which they liked even less).

One year the actual enrollments came in unusually high, and when we looked to see where we'd gone wrong, we found a district where, despite the fact that enrollment had been declining steadily for years, over 1,000 new students had suddenly been added to the rolls.

Expect they hadn't, really. It turns out the district had discovered a loophole in the state funding law that was designed to foster cooperation between public and private schools. Some small private schools--particularly low-revenue parochial schools--don't have the resources to hire teachers for, say, AP Physics. So the state allowed districts to adjust their enrollment counts upward if they helped out and enrolled private school students in public courses.

This district had cut a deal with a local private school whereby it would provide mini-courses lasting two weeks to 1,000 students, putting the state on the hook for something like $10 million in extra funding.

Another district tried to count a 16-year old girl who had dropped out of school after having a baby as a student, on the grounds that she was engaged in "self-directed study" at home. The subject she was allegedly studying? Child care.

In each case, their excuse was, "we needed the money." Which was true, but not an excuse, any more than it would have been if the superintendant had knocked over a bank on the way into work. For some things, right is right and wrong is wrong. Isn't that what we teach in school?

An AERA Newbie

I just finished my first trip to AERA and, while shocked by the sheer number of people there, I was generally impressed with the research, presentations, and thoughtful comments. Consistently, people expressed a desire to make research a critical part of both ground-level action and the policy decision-making process.

Appropriately enough, USA Today published an article on Wednesday questioning the relevance of education research—no doubt it crossed their mind that most of the 14,000 attendees would be receiving that very paper on their hotel doorstep. Citing some examples of less than relevant research from last year’s conference, the article stated that “the science produced is often inconclusive, politically charged or less than useful for classroom teachers. And when it is useful, it often is misused or ignored altogether.” That’s a tough challenge to AERA.

While the discussion at AERA about relevance and getting research into the hands of decision makers was encouraging, it doesn’t change the fact that much of the research coming out of the education research community is inaccessible. It is inaccessible because of the overly-complicated, technical language used, and also is literally inaccessible—locked away in journals too costly for anyone but universities to access on a large scale. Researchers who shake their head in wonder when policies are enacted that directly contradict what is currently known about say, student learning or assessment, need to remember that they are, in essence, selling their research to policymakers and practitioners. And if you’re trying to sell something, you take the product to your customer and you sell it in their language, not expect your customer to start speaking yours.

Communications Mastermind Needed

My brief excursion to AERA went well (Standing room only in my session! Okay, it was a small room...), but is ending on a bad note as I am currently stranded in Hell on Earth the American Airlines terminal at O'Hare, waiting for a flight that may or may not be leaving for National Airport this month, if ever.

However, it does give me a chance to let our fearless readers know that Education Sector is in the market for a communications manager. If you want to change the education world (in a good way) at a place where communications is an integral part of the organization, not an afterthought (I promise you will never, ever be handed a finished paper that you've never seen or even heard of before along with vague instructions along the lines of "we're releasing this in 20 minutes, see if you can get people to, you know, read it or something..."), then give us a look.

New Dealing

Andy and I propose a New Deal for Urban Public Schools, as part of a Harvard Law and Policy Review online symposium that also features work by Joel Klein, Stefanie Sanford and Steven Seleznow, and Charles Ogletree, Jr. and Susan Eaton.

More About That Smart Baby

Earlier this week, on the Guardian's website, I explained why educational baby toys won't make your infant smarter in England, either.

Drawing the line

The Wall Street Journal reports today($) that in 2004 the National Association for Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), the trade organization for financial aid officers, “considered setting clear rules to curb gifts from lenders—and decided against it”. While NASFAA may have had that choice in 2004, it no longer does—either NASFAA takes action or Congress will.

Currently, the ethical line for financial aid officers is more like a fuzzy bar, with a lot of wiggle room. In the news coverage, I have heard quotes ranging from aid officers who aren’t willing to accept pens or paper from lenders, to aid officers who feel that it’s okay to accept Broadway tickets, a nice dinner, or a fully paid conference trip. I don’t doubt that the majority of aid officers are conscientious about keeping lenders at an arms length. For these aid officers, however, there are no national guidelines to help guide their behavior, or to provide a basis for reporting the unethical behavior of colleagues.

After missing the opportunity in 2004, NASFAA now has a second chance to be proactive about setting industry standards for ethical behavior. But this window is closing quickly.

Senator Kennedy has proposed legislation to regulate relationships between lenders and colleges, and Attorney General Cuomo is leading the charge by compelling schools and lenders to adopt a code of conduct in return for dropping lawsuits against them. Multiple colleges have already signed on to Cuomo’s code of conduct, along with Citibank, and—as of today—Sallie Mae (both banks also agreed to pay $2 million into a fund to educate students about the financial aid industry). I doubt there will be a third opportunity for NASFAA. As the organization responsible for representing financial aid officers, they need to be willing to draw the ethical line on what is, and is not, acceptable behavior in relationships between lenders and colleges.

My Very Smart Baby

Have you read Sara Mead's report, Million Dollar Babies? You should. It will tell you all about how we, as parents, future parents, educators and policymakers, shouldn't get caught up in the mass marketing hype around baby products that claim to make our babies smarter. Disclaimer: if you search my home you will find evidence that I have used some of these products, namely Baby Einstein videos and CDs. I admit that I may have even purchased them-- in the sleep-deprived haze of those first few months I bought a lot of things that I thought might make it all easier. And yes, they did make things easier and might have been worth the $29.99 or whatever I paid.

Now, on a trial basis (not having plunked down the $149 for my very own) I have the distinct pleasure of using the Baby Plus "Prenatal Education System", which promises on its website to make my soon-to-be born baby more alert, interactive, and just all around smarter upon birth. If you can picture it, I'm wearing a fanny pack-type belt around my stomach that has 16 settings ("lessons"), each providing a slightly different rhythmic beat. Sounds like a drum beat or, I imagine to the baby, like I'm working in a factory or at a construction site. I'm supposed to wear this thing twice a day for an hour to "stimulate brain growth". The science of it, explained under a section of the website called "The Science", is complete with a timeline beginning with Confucius and carrying on through the Quing dynasty all the way to the "fetal enrichment technology" introduced somewhere around the 1970s and 80s.

I'll let you know the results when my baby comes out smarter than yours.

Off to AERA

I'm heading to Chicago tonight to attend the annual American Education Research Association conference, where I'll be participating in a symposium titled Implications of the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education: The Challenges of Assessing Quality in Postsecondary Education -- Thursday at 10:35 in the Marriot, Huron room, 10th floor. If you saw the op-ed Tom Toch and I wrote for the Post last week, you'll have a pretty good sense of what I'll be saying.

After the symposium wraps up at noon, you can grab lunch and head to the Marriot ballroom at 2:15 for "Bitch Barbies Love Bully Boys": Transgressive Femininities and Gender Hierarchies in Schools.

I know, I know -- too easy.

Intended Consequences

There's an old saying: "Beware of unintended consequences." It's good advice for long-term planning. It's also an important principle for identifying facile policy arguments, like those in this WaPost op-ed, in which a local second-grade teacher claims that the No Child Left Behind Act, written to help low-income and minority students, actually harms them.

This kind of sudden logical inversion has a long and ignoble history, outlined well in Albert O. Hirschman's The Rhetoric of Reaction, which anyone who makes or cares about policy debates should read. For centuries people have been saying things like "welfare makes people poor" or "suffrage will hurt women," and for just as long people have nodded their heads with enthusiasm. The evidenciary bar should be incredibly high for saying things like this, but somehow it never is. I think people assume that nobody would say something so obviously silly with a straight face if it weren't somehow true. Editors also have a fatal weakness for this stuff, which is a lot punchier than carefuly parsing the actual truth.

The op-ed is garden-variety: Rich white kids get things from their home environment that poor and minority kids don't; thus, achievement gaps are unavoidable. But that doesn't mean that poor and minority kids bring nothing to school, they "speak foreign langauges, make music, tell vivid stories, and have other skills not typical of their peers."

Minority students "make music" and "tell vivid stories"? Seriously? I thought people stopped saying things like that in public a while ago.

Because poor and minority students come to school behind, schools have created a "caste system" where disadvantaged children are relegated to classes that are low-level, test-prep, drill-and-kill, and presumably many other bad hyphenated things.

Now, there was a time, not so long ago, when there was no No Child Left Behind Act, when there were no consequences for schools where low-income and minority students did poorly. Presumably, the caste system in question didn't exist back in that halcyon era of authentic education. You know, those palmy days when schools gave a rich, high-quality education to all their students, black or white, rich or poor.

If you believe that, I've got an op-ed to sell you.

More Blame For Title IX

The College Sports Council, self-defined as a "national coalition of coaches, athletes, parents, and fans" that is trying to "reform Title IX regs that have led to the widespread elimination of opportunities for male athletes" has put out a report that says the NCAA's stats undercount the number of men's teams that have been cut over the past 15 years. The Independent Women's Forum thinks this is great and re-posts a host of charts and graphs (with subtitles like "Football's Not the Problem") that tells a basic story that no one really disagrees with, although we might squabble over the numbers a little. In short, CSC says the average number of male teams offered by an NCAA Division I institution fell from 10.2 in 1981-82 to 8.9 in 2004-2005 while the average number of women’s teams rose from 7.3 to 10.2. The NCAA will give you slightly different numbers but agrees that men's teams are down and women's are up. And so?

So the story goes that men's teams, namely wrestling and gymnastics and other "small interest" sports, are going extinct because of Title IX, "sacrificed" to make room for female athletes. Yes, these sports are in jeopardy. And yes, Title IX's proportionality standard (that women's sports opportunities correspond with the percentage of women on campus) does have a role in this- it's pushing institutions to make hard choices about how to invest their resources (and with more women on campus every year, it does get harder).

But scapegoating Title IX and letting the universities off the hook is inaccurate and certainly isn't going to help male or female "student athletes". The real problem? Faced with hard decisions about how to invest equitably in men's and women's athletics, institutions are simply not willing to touch the glory sports: football and men's basketball. These budgets, including coaches salaries, are higher than they've ever been, and rising. Lay that over the framework of having to spend equally (yes, that is where Title IX comes in since men's hoop and football support male athletes) and something's gotta give. Should we cut the 6-figure video play-back machine for the football team (we really need it if we want to be good) or should we cut some other sports? Hmmm...

JMU is the most recent best example- they cut 10 teams (7 men's, 3 women's) last fall and started a big debate over how and why Title IX was at fault. The fact is that JMU tiered all of its sports (tiers 1, 2, and 3 depending on funding, alumni support, and other factors) and then chose to cut spending by cutting all tier 3 sports. This included men's teams (7) and women's teams (3) and was a decision made for pretty obvious reasons: they had to cut and they weren't willing to cut into the big teams. Even JMU, which initially named "compliance problems" as the reason for the cuts later admitted it was a financial decision. Message to those blaming Title IX for all athletic cuts: it's almost always about economics and rarely about compliance.

So if institutions aren't willing to cut into (not cut out, just cut into) football and men's basketball, don't blame Title IX. And the argument that these sports are the financial backbone of college athletics doesn't wash either. Most football teams- even the big D I-A schools- don't even pay for themselves. They run deficit programs while their budgets keep rising. No one's trying to cut men in favor of women (male collegiate athletes still outnumber female athletes)- they're cutting what doesn't matter to them in exchange for what does.