If we are to establish high-quality charter schools at scale, it is not sufficient to simply knock down barriers and get out of the way. We must create new systems of support based on innovation and flexibility.As Richmond explains: "The prevailing 1990s philosophy was that the best role for government was to eliminate barriers and get out of the way," but that approach led to serious quality problems in states like Texas and Ohio. As charter school leaders and others who care about both improving outcomes for poor students and improving choice in education think about how to expand choice, we need to take seriously the lessons of the charter movement to date that removing barriers and increasing choice alone don't solve the problem: We need accountability and concerted effort, by a diverse coalition of private, public, and community organizations, to build and support quality schools at scale
Friday, April 20, 2007
Why Choice Alone is Not Enough
NACSA's Greg Richmond has a terrific Education Week op-ed about what the charter school movement must do to build quality at scale. You should read it. Conveniently for me, it's also directly applicable to the point I made in the previous post. Richmond's key graph:
More arguing with libertarians!
I'm pleased that Cato's Adam Schaeffer agrees with me that special education voucher programs, like Florida's McKay program, are a bad idea. Still he feels compelled to make a few feeble defenses of the program: there are already perverse incentives for overidentification in the current system (my response: yes, but programs like McKay exacerbate those incentives), and choice makes a lot of parents happier (Schaeffer seems to misunderstand my point that an uptick in the number of parent challenges to district special education decisions means McKay isn't providing recourse for parents unsatisfied with district special ed offerings--if it were we'd see a reduction in challenges as families opted for McKay rather than cumbersome due process).
More significantly, Schaeffer seems to misunderstand, or willingly mischaracterize, the nature of my concerns with vouchers and other pure free market reforms. He presents the issue as if the only choice we face were a choice between a pure market and the status quo. That's obviously bullshit. There are lots of ways to increase choice and customization and inject more market incentives into the system. Since I believe the goal should be to increased choice and competition in a way that has the best outcomes for kids and leaves the fewest behind, rather than simply to dismantle the existing system of government run schools, I don't think simply handing parents a check and saying "go find a school" is good enough.
Just think of it this way: If we created vouchers or tax credits today to the full extent Schaeffer wants, most of the kids who are in bad public schools today would still be in bad schools. That's because there's nowhere near the supply of quality schools--public, private, charter, what have you--to serve all the kids who need them. Increasing choice without a concerted effort by public, private, philanthropic and community groups to increase the supply of high quality schools serving poor kids is a marginal reform and little improvement over the status quo.
****
Briefly, on the sex-ed question, which I agree with Schaeffer is small bore: Schaeffer says that the seemingly contradictory support of conservative groups for both abstinence only requirements and school choice reflects the fact that, absent choice, the only way to get the sex ed you want for your own child is by forcing schools to provide that type to everyone. I'll give you that at the local level; it's one reason I'd rather the task of sex ed be eliminated from schools altogether and handed off to community-based groups that are really more equipped for this anyway. But when you are supporting federal policies that impose abstinence-only education on the wide diversity of states and communities across the country the only reasonable conclusion is that you really do believe it should be an important federal policy to force other people's children to receive the kind of sex education you prefer.
More significantly, Schaeffer seems to misunderstand, or willingly mischaracterize, the nature of my concerns with vouchers and other pure free market reforms. He presents the issue as if the only choice we face were a choice between a pure market and the status quo. That's obviously bullshit. There are lots of ways to increase choice and customization and inject more market incentives into the system. Since I believe the goal should be to increased choice and competition in a way that has the best outcomes for kids and leaves the fewest behind, rather than simply to dismantle the existing system of government run schools, I don't think simply handing parents a check and saying "go find a school" is good enough.
Just think of it this way: If we created vouchers or tax credits today to the full extent Schaeffer wants, most of the kids who are in bad public schools today would still be in bad schools. That's because there's nowhere near the supply of quality schools--public, private, charter, what have you--to serve all the kids who need them. Increasing choice without a concerted effort by public, private, philanthropic and community groups to increase the supply of high quality schools serving poor kids is a marginal reform and little improvement over the status quo.
****
Briefly, on the sex-ed question, which I agree with Schaeffer is small bore: Schaeffer says that the seemingly contradictory support of conservative groups for both abstinence only requirements and school choice reflects the fact that, absent choice, the only way to get the sex ed you want for your own child is by forcing schools to provide that type to everyone. I'll give you that at the local level; it's one reason I'd rather the task of sex ed be eliminated from schools altogether and handed off to community-based groups that are really more equipped for this anyway. But when you are supporting federal policies that impose abstinence-only education on the wide diversity of states and communities across the country the only reasonable conclusion is that you really do believe it should be an important federal policy to force other people's children to receive the kind of sex education you prefer.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Gadgetry
Fellow blogger Erin Dillon and I are at SAS headquarters in North Carolina today, visiting with value-added guru Bill Sanders. Why is this worth noting? Because it's an excuse to blog from my new Blackberry. As someone who preceded the cell-phones-and-flip-flops generation, I find this to be inordinately cool.
The Great Child Care Cost Shift
Special all-libertarian day here at quick and ed!--No, not really.
Kerry Howley makes the case in the recent issue of Reason that illegal immigration is particularly benefical to women because the supply of cheap, undocumented domestic labor makes child care more affordable, helping women balance work and family. It's an interesting argument, but I think overstated, considering that only 4% of children under 5 with working mothers are cared for by domestic workers in their homes, and fully 45% are cared for by relatives.
This ties into something I've been thinking about lately. The opening of employment opportunities to women and resulting shift of women from home to market labor over the past few decades has also shifted traditionally female labor into the market. Rather than being unaccounted for economically and therefore appearing "free" (despite the enormous cost it carried for women), that work is now visible, quantifiable, and has a clear cost attached to it--a seemingly new cost that families and society must bear. This is particularly the case for childcare. When we talk about childcare quality, cost, and "work-family" balance, what we're really talking about is who--society, families, women only, children themselves--should cover the costs that emerged when society could no longer assume that women, having few other options, would bear that entire cost themselves. As Howley shows, illegal immigration helps postpone reckoning on this question, because it imports another class of women who have few other options and will therefore provide childcare at an artificially low cost. But this stopgap clearly has its own limitations. The reckoning is still coming, and no one seems ready for it.
Kerry Howley makes the case in the recent issue of Reason that illegal immigration is particularly benefical to women because the supply of cheap, undocumented domestic labor makes child care more affordable, helping women balance work and family. It's an interesting argument, but I think overstated, considering that only 4% of children under 5 with working mothers are cared for by domestic workers in their homes, and fully 45% are cared for by relatives.
This ties into something I've been thinking about lately. The opening of employment opportunities to women and resulting shift of women from home to market labor over the past few decades has also shifted traditionally female labor into the market. Rather than being unaccounted for economically and therefore appearing "free" (despite the enormous cost it carried for women), that work is now visible, quantifiable, and has a clear cost attached to it--a seemingly new cost that families and society must bear. This is particularly the case for childcare. When we talk about childcare quality, cost, and "work-family" balance, what we're really talking about is who--society, families, women only, children themselves--should cover the costs that emerged when society could no longer assume that women, having few other options, would bear that entire cost themselves. As Howley shows, illegal immigration helps postpone reckoning on this question, because it imports another class of women who have few other options and will therefore provide childcare at an artificially low cost. But this stopgap clearly has its own limitations. The reckoning is still coming, and no one seems ready for it.
More On Why Having a Hammer Doesn't Make Everything a Nail
Cato's Adam Schaeffer takes issue with my post earlier this week about the incredible tediousness of pro-voucher groups' assertion that choice is the solution to every imaginable educational problem.
He actually has a somewhat reasonable point. To the extent that increased choice and customization in education can make the entire educational system more effective and efficient, then yes, we should expect that "rising tide" to "lift all ships" (to offend Adam with yet another cliche), with positive impacts for groups of students we're concerned about. But this is different from some voucher supporters' recent tendency to recommend choice as a targeted solution to specific educational problems that are gaining national attention.
From a political point of view, it's understandable why voucher supporters would propose small, targeted voucher programs that purport to solve very specific or narrow needs, in response to public attention focused on those needs. But from a policy perspective such programs are often much more problematic than wider voucher programs. Take, for example, Florida's McKay Scholarships for children with disabilities and the programs like them that are springing up around the country. They're appealing because no one wants to be seen opposing increased choice and customization for kids with disabilities, and they seem to be working ok as school choice (despite an abundance of shady operators, at least in Florida, that are taking advantage of vulnerable kids and stealing taxpayer and parent $$). But they kind of suck as special education reform. As Andrew Rotherham and I have shown, they don't seem to be solving the problem they ostensibly were intended to solve--parent difficulties getting needed services or out-of-district placements for their children--as evidenced by the fact that parent appeals of district special education decisions have increased rather than decreasing since the program was created. Further, they create perverse incentives for parents and schools that could exacerbate one of the biggest problems in special education: overidentification of students with disabilities.
Voucher supporters promote these targeted programs because they know that there's not political support in most places for the larger universal programs they'd prefer. But it's disingenuous to pretend that these targeted programs solve the problems they purport to when they're really just a strategy to get a foot in the door for larger voucher programs. If they're going to be forced to traffic in incrementalism anyway, why don't libertarians like Schaeffer spend a little bit more time talking about other ways--such as elimination of teacher certification or of building codes that make it expensive to build schools--where libertarian views might have bearing on educational debates? I'm not saying I'm on board with those ideas, but it would be more interesting.
There's a larger difference of opinion here, of course, and that regards the adequacy of school choice as education reform. There's a compelling case that building an education system more premised on choice will have significant benefits, in terms of efficiency but more so in terms of customization and parent and student satisfaction and engagement. But, just as economic policies that improve economic growth overall leave some workers behind, it's also likely that educational policies that improve student achievement on average will end up leaving some children behind. Libertarians like the folks at Cato tend to think this is ok: it's the price of a well-functioning market that ultimately benefits everyone, and the people who are most deserving will eventually get ahead anyway. Like most progressives and centrists, I don't accept that argument, but believe society has a collective obligation to prevent or redress the harms that accrue to specific individuals as a result of collectively beneficial policies: Particularly when those individuals are children. That's why I think increased choice needs to be accompanied by both some form of public accountability to set a floor for school performance and an ambitious set of public, private, charitable and community-based initiatives to build the supply of high-quality schools in underserved neighborhoods.
Btw, at the top of his post Schaeffer makes an odd comment about my noting that some pro-voucher groups think choice is awesome except when it comes to sex ed. Counter Schaeffer's assertion, I'm not remotely confused about what choice means. He, on the other hand, seems to be unaware that there are a lot of non-libertarian conservative organizations--The National Review, Heritage Foundation, and IWF, the organization my original post was about--that do endorse educational "choice" in the form of vouchers while also arguing that schools should be required to restrict sex ed to "abstinence only," which, as he suggests, is a somewhat inconsistent position.
He actually has a somewhat reasonable point. To the extent that increased choice and customization in education can make the entire educational system more effective and efficient, then yes, we should expect that "rising tide" to "lift all ships" (to offend Adam with yet another cliche), with positive impacts for groups of students we're concerned about. But this is different from some voucher supporters' recent tendency to recommend choice as a targeted solution to specific educational problems that are gaining national attention.
From a political point of view, it's understandable why voucher supporters would propose small, targeted voucher programs that purport to solve very specific or narrow needs, in response to public attention focused on those needs. But from a policy perspective such programs are often much more problematic than wider voucher programs. Take, for example, Florida's McKay Scholarships for children with disabilities and the programs like them that are springing up around the country. They're appealing because no one wants to be seen opposing increased choice and customization for kids with disabilities, and they seem to be working ok as school choice (despite an abundance of shady operators, at least in Florida, that are taking advantage of vulnerable kids and stealing taxpayer and parent $$). But they kind of suck as special education reform. As Andrew Rotherham and I have shown, they don't seem to be solving the problem they ostensibly were intended to solve--parent difficulties getting needed services or out-of-district placements for their children--as evidenced by the fact that parent appeals of district special education decisions have increased rather than decreasing since the program was created. Further, they create perverse incentives for parents and schools that could exacerbate one of the biggest problems in special education: overidentification of students with disabilities.
Voucher supporters promote these targeted programs because they know that there's not political support in most places for the larger universal programs they'd prefer. But it's disingenuous to pretend that these targeted programs solve the problems they purport to when they're really just a strategy to get a foot in the door for larger voucher programs. If they're going to be forced to traffic in incrementalism anyway, why don't libertarians like Schaeffer spend a little bit more time talking about other ways--such as elimination of teacher certification or of building codes that make it expensive to build schools--where libertarian views might have bearing on educational debates? I'm not saying I'm on board with those ideas, but it would be more interesting.
There's a larger difference of opinion here, of course, and that regards the adequacy of school choice as education reform. There's a compelling case that building an education system more premised on choice will have significant benefits, in terms of efficiency but more so in terms of customization and parent and student satisfaction and engagement. But, just as economic policies that improve economic growth overall leave some workers behind, it's also likely that educational policies that improve student achievement on average will end up leaving some children behind. Libertarians like the folks at Cato tend to think this is ok: it's the price of a well-functioning market that ultimately benefits everyone, and the people who are most deserving will eventually get ahead anyway. Like most progressives and centrists, I don't accept that argument, but believe society has a collective obligation to prevent or redress the harms that accrue to specific individuals as a result of collectively beneficial policies: Particularly when those individuals are children. That's why I think increased choice needs to be accompanied by both some form of public accountability to set a floor for school performance and an ambitious set of public, private, charitable and community-based initiatives to build the supply of high-quality schools in underserved neighborhoods.
Btw, at the top of his post Schaeffer makes an odd comment about my noting that some pro-voucher groups think choice is awesome except when it comes to sex ed. Counter Schaeffer's assertion, I'm not remotely confused about what choice means. He, on the other hand, seems to be unaware that there are a lot of non-libertarian conservative organizations--The National Review, Heritage Foundation, and IWF, the organization my original post was about--that do endorse educational "choice" in the form of vouchers while also arguing that schools should be required to restrict sex ed to "abstinence only," which, as he suggests, is a somewhat inconsistent position.
Fairfax Gives In To Testing ELLS
As the Post reports today, Fairfax County Virginia has backed down in its battle with the Dept of Ed and will administer grade level reading tests to all of its ELL students (minus those who've been in the country for less than a year). This struggle was hard-fought and district officials in Fairfax and elsewhere still say it isn't fair to give a reading test in English to kids who don't know the language. But $17 million in federal funds is a lot to let go of so it's not surprising that the county finally gave in. Still, no real winner in this one- both sides still have to figure out how to fairly and accurately measure the performance of language learners or the fights are sure to continue in VA and elsewhere.
*Disc on VA: ES's Rotherham is a member of the State Board of Ed.
*Disc on VA: ES's Rotherham is a member of the State Board of Ed.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Closing the Expectations Gap?
Are state efforts to raise standards and accountability making a difference? That question came to the fore at this morning's Achieve forum on the progress the group's American Diploma Project has made in its efforts to advance high school reform at the state level.
The American Diploma Project seeks to improve alignment of state high school standards, graduation requirements, assessments, and accountability with one another and with what students need to know to succeed in college and the workplace. Achieve president Michael Cohen and CCSSO executive director Gene Wilhoit argued that ADP has had success in convincing states to change or consider changing curriculum and standards along lines suggested by ADP to better ensure that students are college/work ready. For example, 13 states now require students to complete the roster of courses that ADP calls a "college- and work-ready" curriculum in order to graduate high school.
Respondent Check Finn is less optimistic about the project's impacts, however, arguing that the entire approach of aligning standards and getting students to take more rigorous sounding courses aren't adequate in themselves to boost what students are actually learning. Finn's criticism seems particularly salient in light of recent NAEP evidence that high school seniors are taking harder classes but learning less. As a relatively recent graduate of a high school that ranks in the top 15 on Jay Mathews' challenge index, I can vouch that, in my experience, curriculum and standards that look good on paper do not necessarily translate into preparation for the real world.
That's not to discount the hard work being done by folks at ADP: Aligning standards, curriculum and assessment is difficult and sometimes tedious work that's essential to improving education. But it's not enough in itself, and it's important for the education community not to get too wrapped up in giving a big pat on the back to progress that may look good, but absent evidence that students are actually learning more, may reflect intent more than real improvement.
The American Diploma Project seeks to improve alignment of state high school standards, graduation requirements, assessments, and accountability with one another and with what students need to know to succeed in college and the workplace. Achieve president Michael Cohen and CCSSO executive director Gene Wilhoit argued that ADP has had success in convincing states to change or consider changing curriculum and standards along lines suggested by ADP to better ensure that students are college/work ready. For example, 13 states now require students to complete the roster of courses that ADP calls a "college- and work-ready" curriculum in order to graduate high school.
Respondent Check Finn is less optimistic about the project's impacts, however, arguing that the entire approach of aligning standards and getting students to take more rigorous sounding courses aren't adequate in themselves to boost what students are actually learning. Finn's criticism seems particularly salient in light of recent NAEP evidence that high school seniors are taking harder classes but learning less. As a relatively recent graduate of a high school that ranks in the top 15 on Jay Mathews' challenge index, I can vouch that, in my experience, curriculum and standards that look good on paper do not necessarily translate into preparation for the real world.
That's not to discount the hard work being done by folks at ADP: Aligning standards, curriculum and assessment is difficult and sometimes tedious work that's essential to improving education. But it's not enough in itself, and it's important for the education community not to get too wrapped up in giving a big pat on the back to progress that may look good, but absent evidence that students are actually learning more, may reflect intent more than real improvement.
Identifying Mental Health Problems in Schools
As details about the Virginia Tech shooter's history of mental health problems and disturbing behaviour begin to surface, it's worth a reminder that teachers are often positioned to be among the first to note signs that a student has some sort of mental health problems. Many educators have saved lives by alerting parents or authority figures to signs of trouble and getting young people referred to professionals for help they need. Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake offers a list of red flags of which to be aware. Some school districts, community-based organizations, and partnerships--like this program in Montgomery county, Maryland--are also doing innovative things to make sure kids at risk have access to mental health treatment at or through their schools.
Too Soon to Call Victory for Charters
Jay Mathews has a great post over on edspresso about why he thinks charters are a more promising long-term strategy than vouchers to expand meaningful, quality school choice for low-income children and parents. The basic point is that, while vouchers can help some kids move into better public schools, what we really need is to create a lot more, better schools in the communities where poor families live--and charter schools, which are already doing this, are a more effective mechanism here.
The one complaint I have is with Jay's comment, towards the end, that "Charters are no fun for the parties. They make too much sense to both Republicans and Democrats, and cannot be used to spark big fights." It's easy to get the impression, working in D.C., where charters are growing rapidly and benefit from strong support by predominantly-Democratic city leaders as well as bipartisan Congressional backing, that everyone's on board with charters. But if you take a look around the country it's clear that in many states charter schools remain politically polarizing and face a constant battle to fend off legislative attacks from education interests and ideological opponents. To wit, edspresso featured a link to news reports of the latest political wars over charter schooling in Ohio on their front page with Jay's post. Or what about this lovely incident two weeks back when the Chairman of the Colorado House Education Committe said charter supporters belonged in hell? Some of the blame here can be laid at the feet of quality problems within the charter school community itself, but even if I could wave my magic wand and suddenly make all charter schools high-performing, that wouldn't change the views or fury of die-hard opponents. In too many places the ability of charter schools to achieve the promise both Jay and I see in them remains hobbled by knee-jerk and narrow-minded political opposition.
The one complaint I have is with Jay's comment, towards the end, that "Charters are no fun for the parties. They make too much sense to both Republicans and Democrats, and cannot be used to spark big fights." It's easy to get the impression, working in D.C., where charters are growing rapidly and benefit from strong support by predominantly-Democratic city leaders as well as bipartisan Congressional backing, that everyone's on board with charters. But if you take a look around the country it's clear that in many states charter schools remain politically polarizing and face a constant battle to fend off legislative attacks from education interests and ideological opponents. To wit, edspresso featured a link to news reports of the latest political wars over charter schooling in Ohio on their front page with Jay's post. Or what about this lovely incident two weeks back when the Chairman of the Colorado House Education Committe said charter supporters belonged in hell? Some of the blame here can be laid at the feet of quality problems within the charter school community itself, but even if I could wave my magic wand and suddenly make all charter schools high-performing, that wouldn't change the views or fury of die-hard opponents. In too many places the ability of charter schools to achieve the promise both Jay and I see in them remains hobbled by knee-jerk and narrow-minded political opposition.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
When You Have A Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail
That pretty much describes the pro-voucher conservative insistence that choice will solve any and all educational problem one can imagine*, and a new Independent Women's Forum publication on the "boy crisis" is the latest example of this. Leave aside that the piece cherry-picks data points that support the notion of a boy crisis,** ignores the historical context for some gaps (but not others), and glosses over subgroup differences and racial and ethnic gaps much larger than gender gaps.*** Even ignore the scant page devoted to uncritically accepting flawed "brain science" arguments about how differences in male and female brains**** require schools to use different teaching methods for the different sexes, and schools today discriminate against boys. What really takes the cake after all that brilliant analysis is the recommendations. How do we solve this terrible boy crisis? School choice, of course!
Don't get me wrong; I like school choice more than just about anybody. And I think that choice should include single-sex as well as coed options if that's what parents want for their kids. D.C.'s Septima Clark Charter School, created to help close achievement gaps for black boys--a group that really is in crisis--is a great example here. But specific problems often require solutions that are matched to them. And choice supporters who persist in claiming that choice is some kind of magical panacea for every educational problem imaginable demonstrate their unseriousness and raise false expectations for choice initiatives in a way that ultimately undermines their case.
Btw, for a more thorough explanation of why the "boy crisis" hype gets it wrong, and a more sound take on this issue that IWF's, check out this paper I wrote last year.
*Except when it comes to sex ed, of course, where abstinence-only must be mandated, despite virutally no evidence of its effectiveness.
**Why else would you devote an entire section of the relatively short paper to afterschool activities and less than a sentence to the significant gains for elementary boys that are catching them up to girls in reading?
***I'm eagerly awaiting an IWF report on how we must do more to help close achievement gaps for poor and minority kids.
****Brain science is another hammer that never lacks for a nail here, even when its used in ways that seem contradictory. For IWF and likeminded groups, somehow whenever women get the short end of a stick, that's because of brain differences, and since it's because of brain differences that means it's ok and society shouldn't do anything to help them. But when men get the short end of the stick on something, that's also because of brain differences but in this case requires that we automatically declare a crisis and take action to address the problem.
Don't get me wrong; I like school choice more than just about anybody. And I think that choice should include single-sex as well as coed options if that's what parents want for their kids. D.C.'s Septima Clark Charter School, created to help close achievement gaps for black boys--a group that really is in crisis--is a great example here. But specific problems often require solutions that are matched to them. And choice supporters who persist in claiming that choice is some kind of magical panacea for every educational problem imaginable demonstrate their unseriousness and raise false expectations for choice initiatives in a way that ultimately undermines their case.
Btw, for a more thorough explanation of why the "boy crisis" hype gets it wrong, and a more sound take on this issue that IWF's, check out this paper I wrote last year.
*Except when it comes to sex ed, of course, where abstinence-only must be mandated, despite virutally no evidence of its effectiveness.
**Why else would you devote an entire section of the relatively short paper to afterschool activities and less than a sentence to the significant gains for elementary boys that are catching them up to girls in reading?
***I'm eagerly awaiting an IWF report on how we must do more to help close achievement gaps for poor and minority kids.
****Brain science is another hammer that never lacks for a nail here, even when its used in ways that seem contradictory. For IWF and likeminded groups, somehow whenever women get the short end of a stick, that's because of brain differences, and since it's because of brain differences that means it's ok and society shouldn't do anything to help them. But when men get the short end of the stick on something, that's also because of brain differences but in this case requires that we automatically declare a crisis and take action to address the problem.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Shootings at Virginia Tech
This is terrible. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Virgina Tech community, students and their families.
Debating NCLB with Progressives
I'm late in getting to this interesting conversation that Ganesh Sitamaran and Jason Spitalnick have been having over at TPM Cafe about NCLB and the future of education reform thinking. I don't know whether to think that AFTie Ed's and many of their commenters' conclusions that the posts are somehow teacher or union-bashing is a reflection of narcicism ("it's about me and my issues, damnit") or a reflexive defensive posture that so many teachers have taken on--sometimes with good reason--in response to the growth of NCLB, accountability, and to some extent choice.
But whatever it is it's a little goofy because Ganesh and Jason actually seem to share many of teachers' typical concerns with NCLB: it's too complex, it's overly simplistic, it doesn't address the underlying social problems that really account for achievement gaps, etc, etc. In their broader critiques of the law, Ganesh and Jason are both onto something and missing an important points here.
They fail to give NCLB adequate credit because they lack a historical sense about what a radical shift NCLB, and even the 1994 IASA, really represented in thinking about education reform generally and the federal role in education in particular. The standards and accountability movement's shift in policy focus from dictating inputs and processes to accountability for student results is a big deal, as is the idea that we actually should expect most students to reach high standards. That Sitamaran and Spitalnick don't fully get that is actually a reflection of how dramatic the seac change in thinking has been. And this change is an absolutely essential precondition for both the thinking in their posts and the policy shifts that would move education reform to the next level.
The truth is that NCLB hasn't been able to actually deliver on its eponymous promise. Sure, the technical aspects of testing problems, measuring student achievement and AYP that dominate current debates are a part of that. More significant is the fact that NCLB never delivered fully on either the increased resources or--and this was a much larger-scale failure--flexibility that were supposed to accompany greater accountability to get the job done. It's also true that the consequences in the law and the incentives they provide probably aren't as powerful as needed to be effective. But the core issue beyond all these--and I think this is where Sitamaran in particular is onto something--is that NCLB shows pretty devastatingly the limitations of a pure accountability and incentives strategy for student achievement. Don't get me wrong: NCLB's success in getting schools to focus resources and attention on struggling and previously ignored student groups shows incentives make a difference. But all the incentives in the world don't do a hill of beans of good if you don't know how to get where you want to go. The horror movie victim getting chased by the lunatic with a chainsaw has a hell of an incentive, but it can't save her if she doesn't know how to get out of the funhouse. And unfortunately that's the situation a lot of low-performing systems feel like they're in. (FWIW, this limitation is also the fundamental problem with pure market-based education reform proposals like vouchers and tax credits.)
Of course, schools were never supposed to be left on their own to figure out how to improve student achievement, but the reality is that a lot of school districts and states that were supposed to help them don't have any more capacity than they do. It's pretty safe to say that no one really knows right now how to build large-scale, effective urban school systems that serve all kids at the level they deserve and society requires. That should scare the bejeezus out of all of us. But it should also get us hopping to invest in R&D and capacity building so schools, districts and states can start doing what we do know works.
More fundamentally, we need to rethink how we structure and deliver public education so that we can replace existing failed institutions with better ones designed to be able to meet the educational comitments we've made in NCLB and other standards documents. I don't know what this looks like, but there's plenty of interesting thinking going on here, though none of it is ready quite yet for national policy prescriptions (an idea that itself might not be all that useful here, I don't know). My biggest disappointment with Sitamaran and Spitalnick is that they don't engage with these issues at all; they just offer vague statements about universal health care and addressing underlying social conditions. These issues are tremendously important and, as this week's Washington Post magazine noted, some school districts and community groups are doing really powerful and innovative things to address them. But just talking about social issues doesn't kick the can further down the road. In fact, it doesn't even remain stagnant in today's debate but regresses to the pre-NCLB liberal position in a way that's ultimately not helpful to education reform, kids, or progressives.
But whatever it is it's a little goofy because Ganesh and Jason actually seem to share many of teachers' typical concerns with NCLB: it's too complex, it's overly simplistic, it doesn't address the underlying social problems that really account for achievement gaps, etc, etc. In their broader critiques of the law, Ganesh and Jason are both onto something and missing an important points here.
They fail to give NCLB adequate credit because they lack a historical sense about what a radical shift NCLB, and even the 1994 IASA, really represented in thinking about education reform generally and the federal role in education in particular. The standards and accountability movement's shift in policy focus from dictating inputs and processes to accountability for student results is a big deal, as is the idea that we actually should expect most students to reach high standards. That Sitamaran and Spitalnick don't fully get that is actually a reflection of how dramatic the seac change in thinking has been. And this change is an absolutely essential precondition for both the thinking in their posts and the policy shifts that would move education reform to the next level.
The truth is that NCLB hasn't been able to actually deliver on its eponymous promise. Sure, the technical aspects of testing problems, measuring student achievement and AYP that dominate current debates are a part of that. More significant is the fact that NCLB never delivered fully on either the increased resources or--and this was a much larger-scale failure--flexibility that were supposed to accompany greater accountability to get the job done. It's also true that the consequences in the law and the incentives they provide probably aren't as powerful as needed to be effective. But the core issue beyond all these--and I think this is where Sitamaran in particular is onto something--is that NCLB shows pretty devastatingly the limitations of a pure accountability and incentives strategy for student achievement. Don't get me wrong: NCLB's success in getting schools to focus resources and attention on struggling and previously ignored student groups shows incentives make a difference. But all the incentives in the world don't do a hill of beans of good if you don't know how to get where you want to go. The horror movie victim getting chased by the lunatic with a chainsaw has a hell of an incentive, but it can't save her if she doesn't know how to get out of the funhouse. And unfortunately that's the situation a lot of low-performing systems feel like they're in. (FWIW, this limitation is also the fundamental problem with pure market-based education reform proposals like vouchers and tax credits.)
Of course, schools were never supposed to be left on their own to figure out how to improve student achievement, but the reality is that a lot of school districts and states that were supposed to help them don't have any more capacity than they do. It's pretty safe to say that no one really knows right now how to build large-scale, effective urban school systems that serve all kids at the level they deserve and society requires. That should scare the bejeezus out of all of us. But it should also get us hopping to invest in R&D and capacity building so schools, districts and states can start doing what we do know works.
More fundamentally, we need to rethink how we structure and deliver public education so that we can replace existing failed institutions with better ones designed to be able to meet the educational comitments we've made in NCLB and other standards documents. I don't know what this looks like, but there's plenty of interesting thinking going on here, though none of it is ready quite yet for national policy prescriptions (an idea that itself might not be all that useful here, I don't know). My biggest disappointment with Sitamaran and Spitalnick is that they don't engage with these issues at all; they just offer vague statements about universal health care and addressing underlying social conditions. These issues are tremendously important and, as this week's Washington Post magazine noted, some school districts and community groups are doing really powerful and innovative things to address them. But just talking about social issues doesn't kick the can further down the road. In fact, it doesn't even remain stagnant in today's debate but regresses to the pre-NCLB liberal position in a way that's ultimately not helpful to education reform, kids, or progressives.
Categorical Imperatives
Per Friday's back and forth between Beth, Kevin and John, isn't the real culprit here the class size reduction policy itself and, more broadly, categorical programs that condition schools' receipt of funding on undertaking specific activities that may not actually be the best use of funds for that particular school? Just because conservatives have tried to capture the rhetoric of flexibility and putting decision-making in the hands of people closest to the child doesn't actually mean it's a bad idea or that progressives should surrender that ground.
Movement on Urban High School Chartering in Detroit
Good to see, particularly following this. For backstory, see this paper I wrote last fall about charter schooling in Michigan.
Money Matters
As someone who came to education policy through the financial side of things, Eric Hanushek has always loomed as outsized figure on the policy landscape. From the perspective of those--like myself--who are left-leaning politically and who favor aggressive measures to correct education funding disparities, Hanushek has always been Bad Guy #1, the person who laid the intellectual foundation for the arguments, widely repeated by conservatives and states defending their school funding systems in court, that "money doesn't matter" in education.
I didn't buy a lot of those arguments then, and still don't, as you can see in the review I've written of Hanushek's recent edited volume on education lawsuits, Courting Failure. But I've come to appreciate the value of Hanushek's perspective on things--somebody needs to ask hard questions and tell uncomfortable truths about the way school districts spend money. As I found when I interviewed Hanushek last year, he's a smart, thoughtful person whose arguments are richer and more complicated than they're sometimes made out to be.
I didn't buy a lot of those arguments then, and still don't, as you can see in the review I've written of Hanushek's recent edited volume on education lawsuits, Courting Failure. But I've come to appreciate the value of Hanushek's perspective on things--somebody needs to ask hard questions and tell uncomfortable truths about the way school districts spend money. As I found when I interviewed Hanushek last year, he's a smart, thoughtful person whose arguments are richer and more complicated than they're sometimes made out to be.
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