Will vs. Will

In a profile of Newark mayor Cory Booker, George Will says:

Fifty years ago Newark's population was 460,000. Now it is 284,000 -- up about 10,000 in five years -- of which 54 percent are black and 33 percent are Latino. In 1995 the state took over the school system, in which principalships were being sold and so much of schools' budgets went for the salaries of unionized teachers that some classrooms lacked even chalk.

I assume this means that Will has renounced his previous support for the "65 Cent Solution," a half-baked education policy "reform" proposal that would require local school districts to spend a minimum of money on instruction--that is, "salaries of unionized teachers"--and thus reduce spending on things like chalk.

Must have missed that column when it ran.

Sample problems

Gannett has an in-depth piece today comparing each state’s scores on NAEP versus their own tests. They also let you try to solve some sample NAEP fourth and eighth grade math problems, separated by level. Problem is, they got one wrong. Go to the “proficient” question on 8^th grade math. Gannett says the correct answer is D, but the actual answer is (-3, -2). Even ignoring the negative sign, the correct answer isn’t even offered. You’d think a story highlighting how horrible the nation’s students are performing on standardized tests would get their own sample right.

UPDATE, 6:30 PM: Gannett has fixed the error, the correct answer is now displayed.

Bee Finished

Andrew Coulson has some more details about Scripps Spelling Bee winner Evan O'Dorney and the public school-connected program through which he receives home-based instruction. I think the whole thing is pretty interesting, as is the growth of home-based charter and, in this case, public schools that appeal to parents who want to educate their children themselves but need or simply appreciate the additional (publicly-funded) support and resources these programs offer them. It just goes to show that the lines between different types of education are blurring, and, to the extent that means more choices for parents and kids, greater equity for parents who want non-traditional options, greater accountability to both parents and the public, and good outcomes for kids, I think it's terrific.

But one thing Coulson says really bothers me:

Though Evan O’Dorney is registered through a public school, a great many homeschoolers are not. And yet, somehow, they manage to get by pretty well. Why, it’s almost as if this “public accountability” thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!

That's pure speculation on his part. Neither he nor anyone else knows anything about how these kids, on the whole, are doing, because there's no uniform information available on them, no data on their performance, and in some places no one even knows who these kids are. Many homeschooling parents are doing laudable work in an incredibly difficult job. I've known several of them. But, in rare cases, homeschooling can also provide a hiding place for abusive and neglectful parents, with tragic results. That doesn't mean anyone can or should take away parents' right to homeschool, but it does mean we all have an interest in minimal oversight and basic, transparent information about how these kids are doing--and it's not just because of the public interest, but also for good homeschool parents themselves, who deserve not to be tarred by bad people who pretend to be homeschoolers, and who could use the results of transparent public information to make the case for what they're doing. That's what public accountability means: Knowing how kids are doing. And knowing is a good thing.

Oh, and one more thing: Since the Cato folks and I go back and forth a lot, and since they asked nicely, I've added them to our blog roll. And as an added bonus, the link will take you to a blog of only their education and child-related posts, so you won't have to wade through 9 bazillion Daniel J. Mitchell posts on how the flat tax--and not the fact that they're recovering from Communism--is responsible for the rapid growth of Eastern European economies. Groovy!

Is this news?

I’m a little frightened that it is considered newsworthy when a student gets into college without the help of SAT coaches, essay-writing experts, and hyper-vigilant parents. Isn’t that how most students get into college?

The really interesting story (hinted at in a couple of paragraphs toward the end) is whether the money spent on college coaching among upper-income families puts lower-income students at a significant disadvantage when it comes to getting into selective colleges. Basically, does all that high-priced college coaching really help students get into the top schools?

Daley wants more time

Chicago mayor Richard Daley argued again Tuesday for a longer school day as the city prepares to renegotiate its contract with teachers. He packed all the red-meat essentials into the appeal: he plead international competitiveness with kids in India and China, poked fun at the antiquated school calendar dictated by farming seasons, used city pride and compared Chicago to New York, and played emotional with an appeal for children’s safety.

What he didn’t do was talk directly about what the additional time means in schools. The research is actually quite mixed on the subject, mainly because adding more time often doesn’t address issues of quality. A 1998 study by the Consortium of Chicago School Research found that planned events like Halloween parades; standardized testing; assemblies; and dental, vision, and hearing screening cut a significant portion of time available for actual instruction. When added to teacher inefficiencies, almost half of a child’s time in school is wasted by poor time management. Daley’s plan of adding more quantity of time does nothing to alleviate issues of quality. And his efforts at year-round scheduling for urban schools make sense policy-wise, but it appears he’s pursuing those changes for financial reasons (and to great parental furor).

It should be interesting to watch the mayor’s pursuit of extended school days as he negotiates a new union contract for the city’s teachers. The current contract, signed in 2003 and set to expire at the end of the month, gave teachers four percent annual raises in exchange for 15 minutes more per school day. Daley seems to be pushing for something similar this time around. Next time he shoots from the hip, it’d be nice to see him aim at a pay scale rewarding teachers for boosting student achievement, serving as mentors, or volunteering to work at struggling schools, as they’re already implementing on a small scale.

Dispelling the Myth

Most of the conversation about findings from the new report from the Center on Education Policy--state test scores are up--will focus on the implications for No Child Left Behind. But the best way to interpret the findings, particularly as they relate to elementary math scores, is to see them as adding to the growing body of evidence refuting the unreformability myth that plagues public education.

Many people think the public schools can't be fixed. This widespread notion legitimizes agendas across the ideological spectrum. Anti-government conservatives use the idea to argue against spending more money on schools, or fixing funding disparities--sure, many poor kids go to schools that get less money than the suburbs, but no amount of money can help them, so what's the difference? Free market advocates use the allegedly unfixable nature of the current system to argue for vouchers, while human services-oriented people on the left will tell you that we've got address problems of income inequality, nutrition, and housing before we expect any more from the education system. The result is a strong--if inadvertant--left/right coalition that sucks a lot of the energy out of efforts to make schools better.

But trends in elementary math scores show that the unreformability idea simply isn't true.

The CEP report found the strongest gains on state test scores in this area, with improvement in 37 out 41 states studied. No one should be surprised--this is perfectly consistent with trends on the National Assessment of Education Progress. Most long-term educational achievement trends are depressingly slight, lending credence to the idea of an unreformable system. Not so with elementary math. The percent of 4th graders scoring as "Proficient" on NAEP almost tripled from 1990 to 2005, from 13% to 36%. The percent at or above the lower "Basic" level went from 50% to 80%.

The numbers for minority students, while lower overall, improved at an even faster rate. In 1990, 1% of black 4th graders were Proficient in math, and 18% were at Basic or above. By 2005, those percentages had jumped to 18% and 60%, respectively.

Why did improvement happen in this area? Because that's the area the schools were trying to improve. If you're going to boost achievement, it makes sense to start with the basic skills in the early grades, and build from there. That's what the first state accountability systems--and later, NCLB--tried to do, and lo and behold it appears to be working. Trends for reading aren't as good, but I think the reasons for that are also pretty clear: teaching and learning reading is in many ways more difficult and complicated for students and teachers alike, plus reading instruction remains hamstrung by bitter ideological divisions that are getting in the way of best practices being implemented in the classroom.

So we've still got work to do in math, and then we've got to turn to the other subjects, and then then middle school, high school, and beyond. Nobody said it would be easy. But nobody should be saying it can't be done.

A TFA for College Counseling?

I spent a few hours today at the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance hearings, and overall was encouraged by some of the ideas, and the bipartisan support for simplifying the financial aid process. But, the second session I sat in on, which focused on the University of Virginia College Guide program, was especially interesting.

UVA’s College Guide program places recent UVA graduates in low-income Virginia communities, where they act as college counselors at a local high school. Prior to their placement, the ‘guides’ receive intense training in financial aid, and visit colleges across the state. The program, which is showing signs of success, is in its second year and is now expanding to ten other college sites.

Of course, the big question—which was asked by one of the advisory committee members—is whether the program can be scaled up. Sure, this program can help students in the handful of high schools it reaches, but what about the hundreds of high schools that remain in need of good, intense college counseling?

UVA’s program does a lot to address the quality side of the problem. Much like Teach for America, it relies on getting smart, motivated young people into these schools, where they can make an immediate impact on students. In fact, there was talk of ramping up the UVA program under a TFA-like model. But, even if it reached the scale of TFA, it still wouldn’t be able to address the quantity side of the problem, and reach all of the students who need it.

Instead, more fundamental problems of training and on-the-job expectations need to be addressed. A successful program like UVA’s will probably see the largest, national-level impacts by showing what can happen when students receive individual, high-quality counseling, and by focusing national attention on the need to improve the training of guidance counselors. The college counselor can be an important link in the high school-to-college pipeline, and hopefully the success of UVA’s program will shine the light on the need for both more quantity and more quality in college counseling.

Praxis II growth

Lost amid the news recently that Iowa’s growth model had been accepted by the Department of Education was the apparent mandate that all new teachers pass the Praxis II test in order to meet “highly qualified” status under No Child Left Behind.

I find it ironic that Iowa’s application for implementing a growth model was initially denied for two reasons: that the state did not have two years worth of data for analysis, and that it did not mandate a test for teachers. The news of the testing requirement came out last summer, but the application makes it clear the Department of Education used the chance at a growth model as leverage. It was right in front of everyone, in the second paragraph of the application (download it here).

Now Iowa will be one of 45 states using the Praxis II as a measure for teacher preparedness. Yet, I’m not convinced the evidence fully supports it as an adequate proxy for teacher quality. Dan Goldhaber, a University of Washington and Urban Institute researcher, recently published a report analyzing what exactly teacher testing tells us about teacher effectiveness. He finds some positive associations, but the policy implications are mild or mixed.

Read the article for his regression results, or click on his chart, at left, comparing Praxis II curriculum tests and teacher effectiveness in math. Goldhaber defines a minimum level of teacher quality as two standard deviations below the mean for teacher effectiveness. First, notice how much of the sample is centered pretty tightly around the mean. Next, look at area IX. These are the false positives: teachers who pass the Praxis II but who perform relatively poorly in the classroom. Compare that to areas I and IV. Those are false negatives: teachers who scored too low to qualify under today’s cut-off scores but are actually fairly effective teachers.

Last, look at the vertical lines. The left line represents North Carolina’s cut-off score from 1997-2000. The right line is Connecticut’s current one. Think of a state trying to determine an appropriate cut-off point deciding between these two lines. The teachers scoring in sections II, V, and VIII would no longer be eligible for certification with the higher level. Of this 7.4% reduction in teacher workforce, 7.2% were effective teachers under Goldhaber’s minimum standard. Neither of the cut scores is screening out large numbers of applications--even the higher Connecticut standard still passes almost 90% of test-takers

The point is that there are there are serious trade-offs for implementing teacher testing. The false positives and false negatives are troubling, as is the seeming arbitrariness of determining a cut score. I wish the Department of Education didn’t strong-arm states into implementing a policy with such questions.

Bee Careful...

Cato's Andrew Coulson says that the success of homeschooled students in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee shows market-based education is superior to public schooling. There are several obvious problems with this conclusion. Most obviously, making systemic arguments based on the examples of a few outliers is a fool's game. Spelling bee success, while laudable, tells us little about how children are faring on other indicators relevant to future life outcomes. Coulson also oversells the extent to which even a completely free market can customize learning to students' individual interests, competitive drives, and abilities. One of the reasons I support greater educational choice is the potential for greater diversity and customization, but market pressures will still exert some of the same homogenizing force on schools that school boards and regulation currently do. Obviously, homeschooling allows even greater customization, but homeschool families, when we account for the opportunity costs of parent time and other hidden costs, often invest much more in their children's education than even high-cost public and private schools.

But here's an interesting thing: Evan O'Dorney, the Bee's top finisher, who Coulson refers to as a "home schooler," is actually a student of Venture School, a public alternative school run by the San Ramon Valley Unified School District. While most of students' learning is independent and/or home-based, they attend the school in person and meet with the public school's teachers weekly, and also take state accountability assessments like other California public school students.

The point here isn't to play gotcha with Coulson: It's that innovative public schools, including both district-run and charter schools, can and are expanding choice and diversity within public education, and they're doing it with transparency and public accountability for their performance (something that remains shockingly lacking in both private education and too many public school systems). It's not enough, because of state policies that continue to restrict the supply of charter schools; a culture in too many school district and state education bureaucracies that's averse to choice; and the sheer fact that creating new, high-quality schools of choice, particularly for disadvantaged youngsters, is back-breaking work (and it's also something that has to happen to make meaningful, high-quality choice a reality for most students regardless of whether it's offered by public/charter or private schools). But there's tremendous untapped potential for increasing choice and diversity within public education, a strategy that I believe ultimately has far more promise than tax credits or vouchers.