The House Committee on Education and Labor released the second part of its discussion draft amendments to the No Child Left Behind Act this morning. The first part, discussed on Q&E earlier this week (and at Eduwonk here), dealt with Title I of the law, which contains the high-profile and deeply controversial accountability provisions. But there are actually eight more titles to NCLB, page upon page dealing with a host of issues big and small, everything from multi-billion dollar programs to "exchanges with historic whaling and trading partners (really). The most important is Title II, which focuses on teachers.
And if there's one theme that runs through both parts of the draft, it's that this committee is really getting serious about improving the quality of teachers for low-income and minority students. Academic research shows that teacher quality has a huge impact on student learning--particularly for academically vulnerable students. It also shows that effectiveness in the classroom varies a lot among individual teachers. If a low-income student gets three to five unusually good (i.e. one standard deviation above the mean or more) teachers in a row, they can catch up to their more privileged peers. If, on the other hand, they get a bunch unusually bad teachers in a row, they're often left so far behind that it's all but impossible to catch up.
The tragedy is that the latter circumstance is far more common than the former. High-poverty schools often have tremendous difficulty attracting and retaining experienced, qualified staff. They have less money, the students are harder to teach, and they often fail to give teachers a safe, supportive working environment. Tthe values and ethos of the teaching profession, moreover, tend to associate the "best" students with the best teachers. Teaching AP students in a wealthy suburb is a high-status, often well-paid job; teaching remedial courses to recalcitrant students in a hollowed-out urban high school is not.
The discussion drafts attack this problem on multiple fronts. First, as discussed earlier, by improving the "comparability" provisions guaranteeing that schools receiving Title I funds must first receive an equal share of state and local funds. Right now there's a huge loophole in that provision which requires districts to count a first-year teacher being paid $30,000 as equal to a veteran teacher making $60,000 per year for the purposes of determining how much money schools receive. The draft would change that and require districts to use the actual dollar amount in question. That, in turn, would obligate districts to put more experienced, well-paid teachers in high-poverty schools (or lower student-teacher ratios).
The amendments to Title II eliminate the so-called High Objective Uniform State Standards of Evaluation (HOUSSE) exception to NCLB's requirement that all students be taught by a "highly-qualified" teacher. To be highly-qualified, you have to have a bachelor's degree, a teaching license, and demonstrated content knowledge in the subject you teach, either by majoring in that subject in college or passing a state certification test. The last requirement was included in part because of studies from people like Penn's Richard Ingersoll showing that a lot students--particularly low-income and minority students--are taught by teachers without enough content knowledge in their field, a particular problem in high school where subjects are more advanced. But a lot of states used the HOUSSE provision to essentially grandfather veteran teachers out of the requirement entirely. The draft would close that loophole.
The Title II amendments also put a big new requirement on the NCLB teacher quality grant program. This is the biggest federal education program you've never heard of, providing $3 billion a year. The draft says the feds "may not provide any assistance" (i.e. money) to states that don't comply with "section 1111(b)(11)(C)" of NCLB. What's that? A little-known section that's actually been on the books since NCLB was enacted five years ago, but has been virtually ignored by the states. It requires states to "determine whether poor and minority students are being taught disproportionately by teachers who are inexperienced, out-of-field, or not highly qualified." If they are (they are), states have to create and implement a plan to fix the problem. Under the proposed language, the Secretary of Education must withhold the state's share of the $3 billion if the state "fails to provide evidence...that the [State Department of Education] is implementing policies designed to eliminate disparities in teacher assignments and school staffing between and within school districts..."
(This last proposal is a perfect illustration of the "ask-then-tell" principle of federal-state policy formation. First you politely ask states to do some difficult but virtuous thing they don't want to do. Then you wait one reauthorization cycle (usually about seven years), carefully documenting their utter refusal to do so. Then you tell them to do the right thing, using the threat of withheld federal funds as the hammer.)
All of these provisions will be hotly debated, because teachers unions are likely to see them as infringing on the autonomy of teachers to decide where to work. To be sure, teachers aren't pawns or soldiers to be deployed at the whim of state or district bureaucrats. But equal access to quality teaching is a major civil rights issue that cries out for change. It's a long-accepted principle that all children deserve equal access to education funding. These proposed amendments simply extend that resource-equity principle to the single most valuable resource schools have: their teachers. States and districts need to do much more to build schools for low-incomes students that the best teachers will want to work at, and to pay teachers more money for the hardest and most important job in education: helping disadvantaged students learn.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Who's Saying What About NCLB Re-Auth
The Hidden Obstacle to Education Reform
(Note: These comments reflect a conversation Kevin and I had earlier this week that he offered me a chance to share with a broader audience through the blog. For more commentary by me, look here.)
Kevin made some good points Tuesday about what he calls "the 'empirical agenda' of the Harper's set on education." But I think Kevin, and other ed reform types, make a mistake when they automatically conclude this agenda is incoherent and contradictory. In fact, if you realize that many of the people who hold these views are looking at education primarily through a social service, rather than an education, lens these views actually make a lot of sense.
If education is just another social service, like public housing, or subsidized nursing home care, or food stamps, it's about consumption rather than investment, and the primary goal is to provide the safest, healthiest, most pleasant set of experiences for kids right now. If that's the measure you're using, rather than student achievement, then schools are doing a pretty good job: They're keeping the kids off the street, most schools are pretty safe, particularly compared to many kids' homes and communities; most teachers are nurturing, and so forth. At the same time, schools, particularly those serving poor kids, are much less pleasant places than they could be. Buildings are the classic example here, but also things like lack of art and music classes. Unlike achievement gaps, these disparities often come down entirely to and could easily be fixed by more money. When you look at schools simply as a service, money actually becomes more important and financial inequities even more troublesome than if you focus on achievement. Most significantly, the idea that schools should be accountable for standards and improving student achievement doesn't make much sense at all in the social service framework--It's like arguing that Medicaid payments to nursing homes should be making the terminally ill better citizens. That's not the point.
This social service view of education is closely connected with progressivist pedagogy. If you disdain content knowledge and believe real education is simply the natural flowering of children's development, then it makes sense that the best way to support education to create as hospitable an atmosphere as possible for children to develop in, and get out of the way. More troubling is the mutually-reinforcing relationship between the social service perspective on education and certain types of progressive economics. If you believe that fundamental inequalities mean that there will always be have-nots who need public assistance to lead decent lives, then it makes sense to focus your energies on redistribution and provision of social services rather than trying to make some people marginally better fit to compete in a fundamentally unfair economy. But then it also becomes a very bad thing to suggest that education or changes in behavior can help the have-nots do better in any way, because it distracts from the larger goals of redistribution and redressing systemic injustice.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that Kevin's "Harper's set" have had far better luck selling progressivist education views than they have had selling more progressive economic policies. This creates the worst possible scenario for poor kids--or, more accurately, the adults they eventually become: Schools that merely deliver services, rather than educating, don't prepare kids to succeed in the workforce, AND there's no social service system for them to fall back on when their lack of preparation means they can't earn a decent living.
Like many liberals, I believe that better health care, public housing, etc., are all important social justice measures. But while public education is also a social service, it is fundamentally different from these services, because it aims not only to give something good to today's have-nots, but also to equip them with the skills to, in the future, get good things for themselves and, more importantly, to contribute to our society and economy. When we lose sight of this, or when we lose the ability to embrace both help for the poor today and help for their children so they won't be poor tomorrow, we all become poorer.
Kevin made some good points Tuesday about what he calls "the 'empirical agenda' of the Harper's set on education." But I think Kevin, and other ed reform types, make a mistake when they automatically conclude this agenda is incoherent and contradictory. In fact, if you realize that many of the people who hold these views are looking at education primarily through a social service, rather than an education, lens these views actually make a lot of sense.
If education is just another social service, like public housing, or subsidized nursing home care, or food stamps, it's about consumption rather than investment, and the primary goal is to provide the safest, healthiest, most pleasant set of experiences for kids right now. If that's the measure you're using, rather than student achievement, then schools are doing a pretty good job: They're keeping the kids off the street, most schools are pretty safe, particularly compared to many kids' homes and communities; most teachers are nurturing, and so forth. At the same time, schools, particularly those serving poor kids, are much less pleasant places than they could be. Buildings are the classic example here, but also things like lack of art and music classes. Unlike achievement gaps, these disparities often come down entirely to and could easily be fixed by more money. When you look at schools simply as a service, money actually becomes more important and financial inequities even more troublesome than if you focus on achievement. Most significantly, the idea that schools should be accountable for standards and improving student achievement doesn't make much sense at all in the social service framework--It's like arguing that Medicaid payments to nursing homes should be making the terminally ill better citizens. That's not the point.
This social service view of education is closely connected with progressivist pedagogy. If you disdain content knowledge and believe real education is simply the natural flowering of children's development, then it makes sense that the best way to support education to create as hospitable an atmosphere as possible for children to develop in, and get out of the way. More troubling is the mutually-reinforcing relationship between the social service perspective on education and certain types of progressive economics. If you believe that fundamental inequalities mean that there will always be have-nots who need public assistance to lead decent lives, then it makes sense to focus your energies on redistribution and provision of social services rather than trying to make some people marginally better fit to compete in a fundamentally unfair economy. But then it also becomes a very bad thing to suggest that education or changes in behavior can help the have-nots do better in any way, because it distracts from the larger goals of redistribution and redressing systemic injustice.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that Kevin's "Harper's set" have had far better luck selling progressivist education views than they have had selling more progressive economic policies. This creates the worst possible scenario for poor kids--or, more accurately, the adults they eventually become: Schools that merely deliver services, rather than educating, don't prepare kids to succeed in the workforce, AND there's no social service system for them to fall back on when their lack of preparation means they can't earn a decent living.
Like many liberals, I believe that better health care, public housing, etc., are all important social justice measures. But while public education is also a social service, it is fundamentally different from these services, because it aims not only to give something good to today's have-nots, but also to equip them with the skills to, in the future, get good things for themselves and, more importantly, to contribute to our society and economy. When we lose sight of this, or when we lose the ability to embrace both help for the poor today and help for their children so they won't be poor tomorrow, we all become poorer.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Schrag Weighs In
In the latest issue of Harpers', Education Sector non-resident senior fellow Peter Schrag takes a shot at the Big Education Question of the Day: how much can we expect from the public schools?
The article$ is titled "Schoolhouse Crock: Fifty years of blaming America's education system for our stupidity," which (A) reminds me of why I let my Harper's subscription lapse a few years back: everything has become focused on appeals to cheap liberal cynicism; and (B) isn't really fair to the article itself, which a lot more measured than the title suggests.
That said, I think the piece falls short. This is familiar ground by now--Paul Tough tackled essentially the same question in the Times last year. All the requisite names and events are mentioned: Schrag walks the reader through the Sputnik-A Nation At Risk-NCLB three-step as well as can be expected (I will personally mail a check for $20 to the first person who manages to publish a version of this article in a reputable outlet without using the phrase "rising tide of mediocrity"), and the standard actors are quoted--Finn, Ravitch, Bracey, etc.
The real challenge isn't presenting this material but making sense of it--what can we expect from the public schools? And given that, what should we do? While Schrag does a good job laying out the competing arguments, he never really adjudicates them or ties them toghether into a coherent whole. The result is something like what one could call the "empirical agenda" of the Harper's set on education, i.e. what you get if you try to put their most commonly-voiced criticisms and positions together into a logical sequence. It goes something like this:
1) The public schools are doing a pretty good job; many critiques are over-blown.
But
2) They need a lot more money.
But
3) We can't expect they can do much better than they're doing now (which, to be clear, is pretty good), and so we shouldn't subject them to accountability regimes like NCLB.
This is neither logically coherent nor particularly compelling, which is why the left has been marginalized in a lot of contemporary education debates and decisions.
To be clear, Schrag's article is not this simplistic, containing the requisite caveats about the funding and the potential of good teachers in good public schools to help students learn. But that's the argument lying beneath it all, one ultimately based on the inefficacy of education. It's not a crock to believe that schools matter greatly or that they can be much better than they are.
The article$ is titled "Schoolhouse Crock: Fifty years of blaming America's education system for our stupidity," which (A) reminds me of why I let my Harper's subscription lapse a few years back: everything has become focused on appeals to cheap liberal cynicism; and (B) isn't really fair to the article itself, which a lot more measured than the title suggests.
That said, I think the piece falls short. This is familiar ground by now--Paul Tough tackled essentially the same question in the Times last year. All the requisite names and events are mentioned: Schrag walks the reader through the Sputnik-A Nation At Risk-NCLB three-step as well as can be expected (I will personally mail a check for $20 to the first person who manages to publish a version of this article in a reputable outlet without using the phrase "rising tide of mediocrity"), and the standard actors are quoted--Finn, Ravitch, Bracey, etc.
The real challenge isn't presenting this material but making sense of it--what can we expect from the public schools? And given that, what should we do? While Schrag does a good job laying out the competing arguments, he never really adjudicates them or ties them toghether into a coherent whole. The result is something like what one could call the "empirical agenda" of the Harper's set on education, i.e. what you get if you try to put their most commonly-voiced criticisms and positions together into a logical sequence. It goes something like this:
1) The public schools are doing a pretty good job; many critiques are over-blown.
But
2) They need a lot more money.
But
3) We can't expect they can do much better than they're doing now (which, to be clear, is pretty good), and so we shouldn't subject them to accountability regimes like NCLB.
This is neither logically coherent nor particularly compelling, which is why the left has been marginalized in a lot of contemporary education debates and decisions.
To be clear, Schrag's article is not this simplistic, containing the requisite caveats about the funding and the potential of good teachers in good public schools to help students learn. But that's the argument lying beneath it all, one ultimately based on the inefficacy of education. It's not a crock to believe that schools matter greatly or that they can be much better than they are.
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