This report should be ( and I promise this phrase will be used with extreme judiciousness here at the Quick and the Ed) required reading for anyone interested in improving the quality of teachers in American classrooms.
Written by Robert Gordon, Thomas Kane, and Douglas Staiger, the premise is straightforward: school districts should pay less attention to teachers' paper credentials and more attention to actual success in the classroom, reconfiguring their tenure and compensation policies to be more aggressive about not retaining the teachers who are least successful in helping students learn and giving salary bonuses to those who are most successful, particularly with low-income students.
There is powerful logic at work here. For decades researchers have been struggling to tease out bits of evidence pointing to the small impact of various traditional methods of categorizing teachers--certified, uncertified, alt-route, has a Master's degree, licensure exam scores, this disposition, that disposition, etc. etc. Some of these things matter a little, or somewhat, some (like having a Masters' degree) appear not to matter at all. The lack of definitive results has left plenty of room for people of different camps to comfortably keep various ideological arguments going ad infinitum, with little danger of actually resolving the issue and thus having to find something else to do.
But at the same time, research has also consistently found huge variations in teacher effectiveness within any category of teacher you care to name--old or young, certified or not, black or white, short or tall. Some teachers are just much, much better than others, regardless of external labels or credentials.
The Gordon paper simply takes these finding to their logical conclusion: instead of shaping teacher policy around things we know don't matter very much, let's shape teacher policy around things we know matter a lot. Instead of fighting a losing up-front battle to filter and sort prospective teachers based on qualities that may have a tenuous connection to success in the classroom, let's filter and sort them based on actual success in the classroom.
This would be a seismic change in the way teachers are prepared, hired, and treated as professionals. Really, an earth-spins-backward-on-its-axis, time-reverses-direction, Margot-Kidder-flies-up-out-of-a-ditch magnitude of change. It would mean taking seriously a fact that most educators know intuitively yet is largely absent from teacher policy: teaching is an extraordinarily complicated endeavor, and people find different ways to be good at it. You can train and test prospective teachers, give them knowledge and skill, and those things are important, but once they get into the classroom some teachers bring additional talents, work ethic, intelligence, drive, etc. to bear, and others don't. Those differences matter a lot to student learning.
This report has the courage to take seriously plain facts that many people know but are unwilling to act upon, because doing so would be a huge challenge to the status quo. Read it today.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Not from the Onion
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
I know this is nothing to laugh about, but it seems like investigating the obvious to me.
Young people who adopt the "Goth" lifestyle of dark clothes and introspective music are more likely to commit self-harm or attempt suicide than other youngsters, a Scottish study has found.
I know this is nothing to laugh about, but it seems like investigating the obvious to me.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Fugly
DC Education Blog's Nathan critiques the design of DCPS's new facilities master plan website. Since I have the aesthetic sensibilities of a small wombat, I'll defer to others on this matter. But I do hope this isn't a premonition of things to come when the new facilities plan is released on May 28th.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
What I Don't Get (one of many things)
Joe Williams has been blogging at the Chalkboard about this school space smackdown between a NYC school district school, the elite New Explorations in Science, Technology and Math, and the Ross Global Academy Charter School, which the NYC Department of Education wants to co-locate in NEST's building. That this debate is getting ugly is nothing surprising.
But here's what I don't get: NEST is subject to possible co-location because it is underenrolled and has extra space. Yet there are thousands of kids in New York City, in the grades NEST serves, who are entitled under NCLB to transfer out of their low-performing schools but can't because there aren't enough spaces available in higher-performing ones. NEST doesn't have an AYP rating under NCLB because it doesn't receive Title I funds, but it is rated "in good standing" under New York's state accountability system, and has higher-test scores than the average NYC public school. So, if NEST's principal is really that opposed to charter co-location, why doesn't she offer to solve the excess space problem by opening up all the excess space in the school to students who want to transfer out of low-performing schools under NCLB? If NEST's parents and educators don't want to do that, then it's pretty obvious that the excess space would be better allocated to people who ARE trying to expand the number of high-performing school spaces for underserved kids in NYC.
But here's what I don't get: NEST is subject to possible co-location because it is underenrolled and has extra space. Yet there are thousands of kids in New York City, in the grades NEST serves, who are entitled under NCLB to transfer out of their low-performing schools but can't because there aren't enough spaces available in higher-performing ones. NEST doesn't have an AYP rating under NCLB because it doesn't receive Title I funds, but it is rated "in good standing" under New York's state accountability system, and has higher-test scores than the average NYC public school. So, if NEST's principal is really that opposed to charter co-location, why doesn't she offer to solve the excess space problem by opening up all the excess space in the school to students who want to transfer out of low-performing schools under NCLB? If NEST's parents and educators don't want to do that, then it's pretty obvious that the excess space would be better allocated to people who ARE trying to expand the number of high-performing school spaces for underserved kids in NYC.
Happy Birthday, Beverly Cleary!
Acclaimed children's book author Beverly Cleary is 90 today. The author of nearly 40 children's books spanning five decades--including Henry Huggins, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, and her best-known book, Ramona the Pest--Clearly has helped countless children--including me--learn to enjoy reading through her work, which is amusing, relatable, and fundamentally respectful of children. Happy Birthday, Mrs. Cleary.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
What Success in Higher Education Really Means
I spent last Thursday and Friday in my former home town of Indianapolis testifying at the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Some very interesting discussions focused on what higher education quality really means. Which made me look back to the article the Washington Post ran last week reporting that that Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, the President of George Washington University, will be stepping down after nearly 20 years on the job. It's worth giving their top-line summary of his accomplishments a careful read:
But it's telling to observe the terms under which the success for institutional leaders in higher education is defined. To summarize, Trachtenberg did a great job of increasing the institution's wealth, exclusivity, and reputation (as gauged by the academic credentials of its faculty), as well as expanding the physical plant.
Nowhere is there a mention of how much better a job GW did in educating its students under Trachtenberg or helping them earn degrees, how much more they learned or how increasingly successful they were as they moved on into further education, the workforce, and their lives.
I'm not saying none of those things happened. But they aren't mentioned, for the simple reason that nobody really knows if they happened or not. Colleges and universities gather and make available virtually no information about the learning outcomes of their students.
Thus, institutions aren't judged on student outcomes. They're judged on the aforementioned measures of wealth, exclusivity, and reputation, which (not coincidentally) are the primary drivers of the rankings published by the likes of U.S. News and World Report. The most succesful higher education leaders--and Trachtenberg seems to have been quite successful--understand these rules of the game and play them well.
Inevitably, this has the effect of marginalizing student success when it comes to institutional priorities and resources. Successful university presidents must raise a lot money, increase the applicant pool, and attract star faculty. They can take steps to improve the quality of teaching and learning. This distinction between mandatory and optional priorities makes a huge difference, generally not to the benefit of undergraduates.
First, I want to be clear that I have no reason to think that Stephen Trachtenberg is anything other than a very good president, nor that GW is anything other than a very good school."During his time as the 15th president of GWU, the school grew physically, financially and in academic reputation. The endowment is nearly $1 billion, almost $800 million more than when Trachtenberg arrived in 1988; undergraduate applications have jumped from 6,000 to more than 20,000 annually (moving it from the ranks of a "safe" school to one that many students now worry about gaining admission to); and a number of the school's programs have climbed in national rankings. In 2004, there were 10,556 undergraduates.
The city's largest private employer, GWU under Trachtenberg also opened the first new hospital in the District in 25 years, created five new schools and elevated athletics.
"He made the school much more national in scope and impression, upgraded the faculty and bettered the tone of the school for everyone," said Charles Manatt, a lawyer and board of trustees chairman."
But it's telling to observe the terms under which the success for institutional leaders in higher education is defined. To summarize, Trachtenberg did a great job of increasing the institution's wealth, exclusivity, and reputation (as gauged by the academic credentials of its faculty), as well as expanding the physical plant.
Nowhere is there a mention of how much better a job GW did in educating its students under Trachtenberg or helping them earn degrees, how much more they learned or how increasingly successful they were as they moved on into further education, the workforce, and their lives.
I'm not saying none of those things happened. But they aren't mentioned, for the simple reason that nobody really knows if they happened or not. Colleges and universities gather and make available virtually no information about the learning outcomes of their students.
Thus, institutions aren't judged on student outcomes. They're judged on the aforementioned measures of wealth, exclusivity, and reputation, which (not coincidentally) are the primary drivers of the rankings published by the likes of U.S. News and World Report. The most succesful higher education leaders--and Trachtenberg seems to have been quite successful--understand these rules of the game and play them well.
Inevitably, this has the effect of marginalizing student success when it comes to institutional priorities and resources. Successful university presidents must raise a lot money, increase the applicant pool, and attract star faculty. They can take steps to improve the quality of teaching and learning. This distinction between mandatory and optional priorities makes a huge difference, generally not to the benefit of undergraduates.
Anecdotes, Suspicion, Discrimination, and How Gender Sterotypes Hurt Early Learning
I think this Tampa Tribune article (hat tip to the EdWonks) about the suspicions unfairly cast on male kindergarten teachers is pretty silly. For starters, it's a prime example of the non-education education story, to steal a phrase coined by Kevin. In March, a local male kindergarten teacher was arrested on charges of "sexual performance with a child," and someone at the Tampa Trib apparently thought that might cause parents and the public to fear all male early childhood teachers--a tiny fraction of kindergarten teachers in the area--are pedophiles. The article offers no evidence that parents are worried about this possibility--even the anecdotes the reporter gathers sorta run against the theme.
But there's also a serious issue here, in the underlying assumption that seems to run through the piece that no normal, healthy young man would choose to work with small children unless he had an ulterior motive. Teacher quality is a huge challenge in early childhood education, particularly for preschool teachers, who are oftern very low-paid, than for kindergarten teachers, who are typically paid on part with other elementary school teachers.
I think a major reason that early childhood workers are so poorly paid is that working with young children has traditionally been seen as a woman's job, and therefore not something that's really worthwhile or should be well paid. (The insistence of some early childhood advocates on conflating educationally-focused and purely custodial care is also part of the problem here, IMHO). I don't think improving the quality of preschool and early childhood education requires having more male teachers, but I also don't think wages for preschool teachers--and therefore quality--are going to raise near as much as they need to until we stop viewing it solely as a "women's job."
But there's also a serious issue here, in the underlying assumption that seems to run through the piece that no normal, healthy young man would choose to work with small children unless he had an ulterior motive. Teacher quality is a huge challenge in early childhood education, particularly for preschool teachers, who are oftern very low-paid, than for kindergarten teachers, who are typically paid on part with other elementary school teachers.
I think a major reason that early childhood workers are so poorly paid is that working with young children has traditionally been seen as a woman's job, and therefore not something that's really worthwhile or should be well paid. (The insistence of some early childhood advocates on conflating educationally-focused and purely custodial care is also part of the problem here, IMHO). I don't think improving the quality of preschool and early childhood education requires having more male teachers, but I also don't think wages for preschool teachers--and therefore quality--are going to raise near as much as they need to until we stop viewing it solely as a "women's job."
Monday, April 10, 2006
What Education Policy Positions Say About Politicians
I'm stepping a bit on Andy's turf with this, but Matthew Yglesias has a great post at TPMcafe about how the issues a candidate for elected office chooses to talk about and how he or she talks about them define who the candidate is for the public.
This is particularly relevant to education. Most voters don't choose a candidate solely based on his or her positions on education topics, but how a candidate chooses to talk about education and the degree to which he or she chooses to emphasize it to send an important message to voters about the candidate's character and values: is he pro-reform?, will she stand up to special interests?, does he care about social justice, opportunity, and helping the weakest in society? etc.
Interestingly, the two examples Yglesias highlights of politicians using an issue to define themselves--John Edwards talking about child poverty in 2004, and George W. Bush's outreach to African Americans (including the emphasis on NCLB and the "soft bigotry of low expectations) in 2000--both focused heavily on children, including education.
In any case, if you're interested in the politics of education, particularly the Democratic side, read the post.
This is particularly relevant to education. Most voters don't choose a candidate solely based on his or her positions on education topics, but how a candidate chooses to talk about education and the degree to which he or she chooses to emphasize it to send an important message to voters about the candidate's character and values: is he pro-reform?, will she stand up to special interests?, does he care about social justice, opportunity, and helping the weakest in society? etc.
Interestingly, the two examples Yglesias highlights of politicians using an issue to define themselves--John Edwards talking about child poverty in 2004, and George W. Bush's outreach to African Americans (including the emphasis on NCLB and the "soft bigotry of low expectations) in 2000--both focused heavily on children, including education.
In any case, if you're interested in the politics of education, particularly the Democratic side, read the post.
What Does Immigration Mean for Public Education?
Unless you've been living under a rock the last few weeks, it's been pretty obvious that immigration remains a highly contentious issue in the United States. Today, up to 180,000 people are expected to participate in a pro-immigrant demonstration on the National Mall, just a few blocks from my office.
Regardless of what your stance is on the political questions about immigration now before Congress, it's clear that immigrants and children of immigrants have become a significant part of the U.S. population, and that, for both demographic and economic reasons, they're going to continue to be one.
In fact, according to a recent report from the Urban Institute (which I highly recommend reading), nearly one in five school-aged children in the U.S. is either an immigrant or the child of immigrants. The majority of these children were born in the United States, and are proficient English speakers, but such changing demographics do raise new questions for public schools. In particular, many schools lack the resources or expertise to effectively educate the 6 million children who do not now speak English proficiently, and the increasing geographic dispersion of immigrants--who are now settling in non-border states and places not traditionally seen as destinations for immigration--means more schools that lack experience teaching children of immigrants or English language learners must now face these challenges. There's also the question of what role public schools play in equipping immigrants, children of immigrants, and, indeed, all the children they serve, to be good citizens.
Unfortunately, because the conversation about immigration is so polarized (as are questions about public education), there's not a lot of honest public conversation about these issues that isn't laden with political baggage.
Regardless of what your stance is on the political questions about immigration now before Congress, it's clear that immigrants and children of immigrants have become a significant part of the U.S. population, and that, for both demographic and economic reasons, they're going to continue to be one.
In fact, according to a recent report from the Urban Institute (which I highly recommend reading), nearly one in five school-aged children in the U.S. is either an immigrant or the child of immigrants. The majority of these children were born in the United States, and are proficient English speakers, but such changing demographics do raise new questions for public schools. In particular, many schools lack the resources or expertise to effectively educate the 6 million children who do not now speak English proficiently, and the increasing geographic dispersion of immigrants--who are now settling in non-border states and places not traditionally seen as destinations for immigration--means more schools that lack experience teaching children of immigrants or English language learners must now face these challenges. There's also the question of what role public schools play in equipping immigrants, children of immigrants, and, indeed, all the children they serve, to be good citizens.
Unfortunately, because the conversation about immigration is so polarized (as are questions about public education), there's not a lot of honest public conversation about these issues that isn't laden with political baggage.
Saturday, April 08, 2006
The Allegedly Ever-Crazier College Admissions Rat Race, Continued Ad Infinitum
The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post ran near-identical articles last week focusing on the declining percentage of applicants being accepted by elite colleges and universities. Both focused on single-digit acceptance rates at Ivy League institutions, along with various quotes from admissions officers and anxious parents emphasizing that getting into the Ivies these days is tougher than getting a straight answer from the Bush White House about the war in Iraq. The Post summarized the phenomenon as follows:
This quote--and the article generally--seems to miss the distinction between perception and reality. The declining admit rate at elite schools is, as the article notes, being driven entirely by the denominator in the equation. It's not that the elite schools are admitting fewer students--in fact, they're admitting more. It's that the number of applications is rising even faster, driving the percentage down.
If the increasing number of applications reflected a corresponding increase in the number of qualified applicants, then it would be fair to say that it's harder to get into an elite college. But this article, and others like it, says that a big factor here is the same pool of applicants simply submitting more applications.
That would make it seem harder to get in, because students would be rejected more often. But the net result, in terms of the total number of qualified students getting spots, wouldn't change. From 2004 to 2005, the Top 50 four-year institutions in terms of SAT scores saw a 6.5% incease in applications, and accepted 2.2% more students, driving their aggregate admit rate down by one percentage point. So unless the number of qualified applicants increased by more than 2.2%, this whole "it's harder to get into college" phenomenon is mostly a mirage.
About 3 million students are expected to graduate from high school this year, and about two-thirds of them are looking for college spaces. The number of rejections is further inflated by the increased number of applications sent out by each student, reacting to the uncertainty of admission and the ease of online and common applications. This produces a self-perpetuating cycle: It is harder to get in, so seniors apply to more schools, which makes it even harder to get in, at least for the most sought-after schools."
This quote--and the article generally--seems to miss the distinction between perception and reality. The declining admit rate at elite schools is, as the article notes, being driven entirely by the denominator in the equation. It's not that the elite schools are admitting fewer students--in fact, they're admitting more. It's that the number of applications is rising even faster, driving the percentage down.
If the increasing number of applications reflected a corresponding increase in the number of qualified applicants, then it would be fair to say that it's harder to get into an elite college. But this article, and others like it, says that a big factor here is the same pool of applicants simply submitting more applications.
That would make it seem harder to get in, because students would be rejected more often. But the net result, in terms of the total number of qualified students getting spots, wouldn't change. From 2004 to 2005, the Top 50 four-year institutions in terms of SAT scores saw a 6.5% incease in applications, and accepted 2.2% more students, driving their aggregate admit rate down by one percentage point. So unless the number of qualified applicants increased by more than 2.2%, this whole "it's harder to get into college" phenomenon is mostly a mirage.
Friday, April 07, 2006
History is not Math
Not to "rehash" Andy's already extensive coverage of the "narrowing the curriculum" hysteria, but Mike Petrilli's bite at the apple in the latest Education Gadfly recommended a predictable--but I think dead wrong--response to the issue that I need to rant a bit about.
Petrilli--like a lot of folks in the edworld--argues that history, science, and other subjects are getting pushed out of the curriculum because NCLB holds school accountable for math and reading only, and not for other subjects (although the law doesn't preclude states from including other subjects in AYP). Petrilli's response, then, is to say the feds should require states to test students in science (which they're already must do in three grade levels come 2007, as Petrilli notes) and history, AND incorporate the results of those tests in determining whether or not schools are making adequate yearly progress under the law.
I think this is a terrible idea, for three reasons.
The first is a technical issue: There's a trade-off, in designing accountability systems, between complexity and transparency--the more stuff (different subjects, different grades, disaggregated subgroups, etc.) you try to incorporate into coercive accountability system, the more unwieldy they become, and the harder for folks who don't crunch policy for a living to understand. (Jay Mathews, for example, already claims that AYP is too confusing--I don't agree with him, but I do think adding many more variables would make the system too confusing). Adding two additional subjects to the AYP determination would make the system much more complex, and harder to explain or defend to parents and the public. I don't think that's a good idea. (Apologies to Kevin, from whom I'm cribbing a bit here, although less eloquently than him.)
Second, while I generally hate this type of argument, I AM concerned about a slippery slope here. I think that art and music are just as important for children to be well-educated as science or history--should we add standards and testing and make those subjects part of AYP, too?
My third concern is more fundamental. I think subjects like history and science are fundamentally different from reading and math. Although there are still some folks--primarily in ed schools--who haven't bought into it yet, there's actually a pretty clear, well-defined research consensus about how children learn to read, and what educators need to do when for kids to become proficient readers. There's not the same level of research and consensus in math as in reading, but there is a body of research here, and math, like reading, is an area in which kids need to learn specific skills in a particular sequence in order to become proficient and move to the next level. In both reading and math, we can study what and how kids need to learn in order to become proficient because--calculator debates aside--there's some general agreement about what, ultimately, kids need to know. Everyone agrees that kids need to learn how to read, and there's not a lot of debate about what that means. And, while we might disagree about how far kids need to develop their mathematical knowledge and skills, we can generally agree on what algebra is and what computation is.
That's not true in history or science. What children need to learn in these fields is fundamentally a values issue. Should kids study the history of the state in which they live, or the history and cultures of Africa? Even if we can all agree that kids need to know something about U.S. history, what should the focus be, and whose history should they learn? Why the heck do kids have to learn what a stamen and pistil are (does anyone reading even remember learning this in middle school)? Is there really any reason they need to know the names of the planets in the solar system? These aren't questions that research can answer. And, even if we could all agree on what kids should know in history or science* how would anyone justify one sequence for when kids need to know which ideas over a different order?
Because these questions are values issues, without a clear cut "right" answer, the process of standards-setting in these fields has been incredibly politically charged, culture-war issues, in the states that have undertaken it. (See, for instance, Kansas and evolution, or the debate over Virginia's history SOLs when they were initiated.) I think such debates are really a distraction from real educational questions. Since these questions are less clear cut, I think the standards for them are best set by local communities (loosely defined), combined with parental choice.
This doesn't mean that I don't think history and science are important--I do. But I don't think the nature of these subjects is well-suited to state standards accountability systems. And I think that's ok. There's this tremendous temptation to hang everything on the single accountability system, to act as if that's the only way of indicating to schools what's important or getting them to do it.
I think shows a tremendous lack of imagination. Schools and people who work in them are driven by tons of different competing incentives, not just the state accountability system, and there are lots of ways to get them to do things that we want them to do without tying it to the accountabilty system. There is, of course, the time-tested federal approach--that dominated federal policy before NCLB--of giving schools money, in the form of federal grants, for doing something we want them to do. Programs like the Teaching American History grant program, which was part of Petrilli's portfolio at the Department of Ed, take that approach. (In general, I'm not a fan of these types of small programs, a topic for another day, but this is one alternative.) One could also use an accreditation model: For example, a variety of scientific organizations (NSF, AAAS, professional associations in the various fields, etc.) could establish criteria for identifying schools that are doing a good job teaching science, and schools could seek these accreditations. States could even require that schools receive one of a variety of possible accreditations. These are just a few ideas.
*I think we might ultimately be able to reach some minimal consensus on scientific concepts--such as the scientific method, human biology, and some basic principles of physics--that kids need to know to function in an increasingly science-driven culture.
Petrilli--like a lot of folks in the edworld--argues that history, science, and other subjects are getting pushed out of the curriculum because NCLB holds school accountable for math and reading only, and not for other subjects (although the law doesn't preclude states from including other subjects in AYP). Petrilli's response, then, is to say the feds should require states to test students in science (which they're already must do in three grade levels come 2007, as Petrilli notes) and history, AND incorporate the results of those tests in determining whether or not schools are making adequate yearly progress under the law.
I think this is a terrible idea, for three reasons.
The first is a technical issue: There's a trade-off, in designing accountability systems, between complexity and transparency--the more stuff (different subjects, different grades, disaggregated subgroups, etc.) you try to incorporate into coercive accountability system, the more unwieldy they become, and the harder for folks who don't crunch policy for a living to understand. (Jay Mathews, for example, already claims that AYP is too confusing--I don't agree with him, but I do think adding many more variables would make the system too confusing). Adding two additional subjects to the AYP determination would make the system much more complex, and harder to explain or defend to parents and the public. I don't think that's a good idea. (Apologies to Kevin, from whom I'm cribbing a bit here, although less eloquently than him.)
Second, while I generally hate this type of argument, I AM concerned about a slippery slope here. I think that art and music are just as important for children to be well-educated as science or history--should we add standards and testing and make those subjects part of AYP, too?
My third concern is more fundamental. I think subjects like history and science are fundamentally different from reading and math. Although there are still some folks--primarily in ed schools--who haven't bought into it yet, there's actually a pretty clear, well-defined research consensus about how children learn to read, and what educators need to do when for kids to become proficient readers. There's not the same level of research and consensus in math as in reading, but there is a body of research here, and math, like reading, is an area in which kids need to learn specific skills in a particular sequence in order to become proficient and move to the next level. In both reading and math, we can study what and how kids need to learn in order to become proficient because--calculator debates aside--there's some general agreement about what, ultimately, kids need to know. Everyone agrees that kids need to learn how to read, and there's not a lot of debate about what that means. And, while we might disagree about how far kids need to develop their mathematical knowledge and skills, we can generally agree on what algebra is and what computation is.
That's not true in history or science. What children need to learn in these fields is fundamentally a values issue. Should kids study the history of the state in which they live, or the history and cultures of Africa? Even if we can all agree that kids need to know something about U.S. history, what should the focus be, and whose history should they learn? Why the heck do kids have to learn what a stamen and pistil are (does anyone reading even remember learning this in middle school)? Is there really any reason they need to know the names of the planets in the solar system? These aren't questions that research can answer. And, even if we could all agree on what kids should know in history or science* how would anyone justify one sequence for when kids need to know which ideas over a different order?
Because these questions are values issues, without a clear cut "right" answer, the process of standards-setting in these fields has been incredibly politically charged, culture-war issues, in the states that have undertaken it. (See, for instance, Kansas and evolution, or the debate over Virginia's history SOLs when they were initiated.) I think such debates are really a distraction from real educational questions. Since these questions are less clear cut, I think the standards for them are best set by local communities (loosely defined), combined with parental choice.
This doesn't mean that I don't think history and science are important--I do. But I don't think the nature of these subjects is well-suited to state standards accountability systems. And I think that's ok. There's this tremendous temptation to hang everything on the single accountability system, to act as if that's the only way of indicating to schools what's important or getting them to do it.
I think shows a tremendous lack of imagination. Schools and people who work in them are driven by tons of different competing incentives, not just the state accountability system, and there are lots of ways to get them to do things that we want them to do without tying it to the accountabilty system. There is, of course, the time-tested federal approach--that dominated federal policy before NCLB--of giving schools money, in the form of federal grants, for doing something we want them to do. Programs like the Teaching American History grant program, which was part of Petrilli's portfolio at the Department of Ed, take that approach. (In general, I'm not a fan of these types of small programs, a topic for another day, but this is one alternative.) One could also use an accreditation model: For example, a variety of scientific organizations (NSF, AAAS, professional associations in the various fields, etc.) could establish criteria for identifying schools that are doing a good job teaching science, and schools could seek these accreditations. States could even require that schools receive one of a variety of possible accreditations. These are just a few ideas.
*I think we might ultimately be able to reach some minimal consensus on scientific concepts--such as the scientific method, human biology, and some basic principles of physics--that kids need to know to function in an increasingly science-driven culture.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Politics-free Accountability is like Calorie-free Chocolate
Thanks to the good leaders of Maryland and Baltimore for providing a case study in how messy the interaction of politics with public school accountability can be.
On March 29, the Maryland state board of education voted to transfer management of 11 chronically low-performing Baltimore middle and high schools away from the Baltimore City School Board to third-party groups. State-imposed management takeovers and private management of public schools are always contentious, but Baltimore is particularly contentious because Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley is running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, and the current governor, Bob Ehrlich, is a Republican.
O'Malley accused Ehrlich, State Superintendent Nancy Grasmick, and the Maryland state board of education of playing election year politics with the school takeovers; O'Malley's opponent for the Democratic nomination, Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan, seized on the issue as evidence that he is better on education than O'Malley; Democrats in the state legislature passed a last-minute bill to block the takeover (Ehrlich says he will veto the bill; it's not clear whether Democrats have the votes to override him.); and Ehrlich fired back at the Democrats opposing the takeover. Expect more fireworks around this issue ahead.
Messes like these drive education policywonks and more pragmatic reformers to curse politics and wish it out of education altogether...
Some policy wonks seem to devote a lot of energy to trying to protect public education accountability systems from politics. In some ways, that was a major force driving the authors of No Child Left Behind, who had seen the way states flouted or deliberately watered down accountability requirements in the 1994 Improving America's Schools Act and were determined to write the law so as to narrow states' leeway and force them to do the right thing. As we lurch towards the coming debate on NCLB reauthorization, I sense a similar yearning in some conversations about what NCLB 2.0 should look like--this sense that, if we just get the policy details, if we just get the legislative language right, if we can just come up with the ideal way to identify schools, we can create an accountability system that works on its own, unsullied by and without dependence upon politics.
But trying to make accountability work without politics is like trying to make calorie-free chocolate. Accountability--real accountability--is inherently political. For accountability systems to have substance, there have to be consequences. Having consequences requires some person or entity to make a decision, to flip the switch that sets those consequences into action. We can't create an automated accountability machine that swings into action without a second thought whenever a school crosses x-defined accountability threshold--these decisions are important enough that they require human judgement.
For this decision-maker to have legitimate authority, there must be evidence that the public has placed its trust in this entity, either through election or because the entity is accountable to an elected official. Even when elected leaders choose to vest authority for school accountability in an ostensibly independent entity, that entity still operates in a politicized climate, subject to the will of the elected officials who created it and the public. But this means that accountability decision-makers are also subject to political pressure from organized interests that stand to benefit or lose from the consequences they have the power to impose, and this makes accountability decisions highly politicized.
The only way I know of to really isolate accountability from politics is by abdicating public responsibility for public education altogether--devolving all educational decision-making, through vouchers, to parents, with no public oversight of the schools to which they choose to send their children. Some voucher supporters think the evils of politics in education are sufficient to justify this trade-off, but it's one that I, ultimately, cannot accept. To paraphrase Churchill, educational accountability is the worst option, except for all the others we've tried.
Rather than railing about the influences of politics on education policy and accountability, the only real solution is to change the politics itself, to create a new politics that gives policymakers the right incentives to hold schools accountable in ways that are good for children. The most obvious way I see to do this is by organizing and empowering parents and children whose voices often go unheard in political power struggles over education. Steve Barr is doing this with the Jefferson High School movement in Los Angeles. At a more macro, much less grass-roots level, I think Education Sector's goal of "making the debate about public education public" is a part of this, too. But there are a lot of other ways to change the politics here, too, and I'd welcome any suggestions or comments for ones I'm not thinking of now.
On March 29, the Maryland state board of education voted to transfer management of 11 chronically low-performing Baltimore middle and high schools away from the Baltimore City School Board to third-party groups. State-imposed management takeovers and private management of public schools are always contentious, but Baltimore is particularly contentious because Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley is running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, and the current governor, Bob Ehrlich, is a Republican.
O'Malley accused Ehrlich, State Superintendent Nancy Grasmick, and the Maryland state board of education of playing election year politics with the school takeovers; O'Malley's opponent for the Democratic nomination, Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan, seized on the issue as evidence that he is better on education than O'Malley; Democrats in the state legislature passed a last-minute bill to block the takeover (Ehrlich says he will veto the bill; it's not clear whether Democrats have the votes to override him.); and Ehrlich fired back at the Democrats opposing the takeover. Expect more fireworks around this issue ahead.
Messes like these drive education policywonks and more pragmatic reformers to curse politics and wish it out of education altogether...
Some policy wonks seem to devote a lot of energy to trying to protect public education accountability systems from politics. In some ways, that was a major force driving the authors of No Child Left Behind, who had seen the way states flouted or deliberately watered down accountability requirements in the 1994 Improving America's Schools Act and were determined to write the law so as to narrow states' leeway and force them to do the right thing. As we lurch towards the coming debate on NCLB reauthorization, I sense a similar yearning in some conversations about what NCLB 2.0 should look like--this sense that, if we just get the policy details, if we just get the legislative language right, if we can just come up with the ideal way to identify schools, we can create an accountability system that works on its own, unsullied by and without dependence upon politics.
But trying to make accountability work without politics is like trying to make calorie-free chocolate. Accountability--real accountability--is inherently political. For accountability systems to have substance, there have to be consequences. Having consequences requires some person or entity to make a decision, to flip the switch that sets those consequences into action. We can't create an automated accountability machine that swings into action without a second thought whenever a school crosses x-defined accountability threshold--these decisions are important enough that they require human judgement.
For this decision-maker to have legitimate authority, there must be evidence that the public has placed its trust in this entity, either through election or because the entity is accountable to an elected official. Even when elected leaders choose to vest authority for school accountability in an ostensibly independent entity, that entity still operates in a politicized climate, subject to the will of the elected officials who created it and the public. But this means that accountability decision-makers are also subject to political pressure from organized interests that stand to benefit or lose from the consequences they have the power to impose, and this makes accountability decisions highly politicized.
The only way I know of to really isolate accountability from politics is by abdicating public responsibility for public education altogether--devolving all educational decision-making, through vouchers, to parents, with no public oversight of the schools to which they choose to send their children. Some voucher supporters think the evils of politics in education are sufficient to justify this trade-off, but it's one that I, ultimately, cannot accept. To paraphrase Churchill, educational accountability is the worst option, except for all the others we've tried.
Rather than railing about the influences of politics on education policy and accountability, the only real solution is to change the politics itself, to create a new politics that gives policymakers the right incentives to hold schools accountable in ways that are good for children. The most obvious way I see to do this is by organizing and empowering parents and children whose voices often go unheard in political power struggles over education. Steve Barr is doing this with the Jefferson High School movement in Los Angeles. At a more macro, much less grass-roots level, I think Education Sector's goal of "making the debate about public education public" is a part of this, too. But there are a lot of other ways to change the politics here, too, and I'd welcome any suggestions or comments for ones I'm not thinking of now.
Sensationalism 101
Cnn.com, one of the most widely-read news sites in the world, features at the top of its home page a list of "Top Stories." There are usually about 13 stories there. As of 11:47 AM EDT this morning, there are two education-related stories among the top 13. They are:
"Teacher charged with raping student 28 times"
and
"Teacher, crushing bug with gun shell, blows up hand"
There are millions of teachers in the United States. People being people, on any given Wednesday a few of them are going to do something illegal or monumentally stupid. The same is undoubtedly true for lawyers, truck drivers, certified public accountants, and every other profession of considerable size. But their foibles and sins don't generate coverage like this, because those stories don't play into the simplistic "even in our public schools!!!" narrative at work here. Instead of substantive education journalism, we get stories making it seem like the nation's classrooms are chock-full of morons and sexual predators.
So, we at the Quick and the Ed are hereby establishing the "Cnn.com award for egregious sensationalism in education journalism." Readers who email examples will win lasting fame.
"Teacher charged with raping student 28 times"
and
"Teacher, crushing bug with gun shell, blows up hand"
There are millions of teachers in the United States. People being people, on any given Wednesday a few of them are going to do something illegal or monumentally stupid. The same is undoubtedly true for lawyers, truck drivers, certified public accountants, and every other profession of considerable size. But their foibles and sins don't generate coverage like this, because those stories don't play into the simplistic "even in our public schools!!!" narrative at work here. Instead of substantive education journalism, we get stories making it seem like the nation's classrooms are chock-full of morons and sexual predators.
So, we at the Quick and the Ed are hereby establishing the "Cnn.com award for egregious sensationalism in education journalism." Readers who email examples will win lasting fame.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Education Majors Less Literate
AIR released an important new study in January detailing the literacy levels of students about to graduate from college. While most of the press coverage focused on the headache-inducing, depressingly-low overall scores (e.g. only 4 in 10 students finishing 4-year degrees scored as "proficient" in prose and document literacy; quantitative scores were even worse), there's a lot of additional good information to be found deeper in the report, particularly in the tables that break down the numbers by various student characteristics.
Some of the most telling data relate to the gaps between white and black students; there's a new Chart You Can Trust detailing those numbers on the main Web site today, along with the transcript of our recent national standards debate, new ideas on preschool implementation, and an interesting story from a community college professor in New York.
The college student literacy report also calculated average literacy scores by students' college major. The results:
*Significantly different from students majoring in math, science, or engineering
This is an unfortunately familiar taxonomy of which majors attract and graduate the highest-caliber students, and which don't. For all the recent focus on attracting more talent into science and mathematics, it's arguably the future teachers of America who need the most attention. As the chart shows, education majors have significantly lower levels of document and quantitative literacy than students who major in math, science, and engineering (prose literacy scores were also lower, but not at a statistically significant level).
While future science and math types beat out all other majors at various levels of significance in all three categories (not only, it should be noted, in quantitative skills but also in the ability to comprehend and use information from texts and documents), education and health majors appear to have the overall lowest levels of literacy. There's a deeply-rooted dynamic at work here in terms of who is drawn into the profession. Changing that is a major challenge for everyone working to boost talent in the classroom.
Some of the most telling data relate to the gaps between white and black students; there's a new Chart You Can Trust detailing those numbers on the main Web site today, along with the transcript of our recent national standards debate, new ideas on preschool implementation, and an interesting story from a community college professor in New York.
The college student literacy report also calculated average literacy scores by students' college major. The results:
*Significantly different from students majoring in math, science, or engineering
This is an unfortunately familiar taxonomy of which majors attract and graduate the highest-caliber students, and which don't. For all the recent focus on attracting more talent into science and mathematics, it's arguably the future teachers of America who need the most attention. As the chart shows, education majors have significantly lower levels of document and quantitative literacy than students who major in math, science, and engineering (prose literacy scores were also lower, but not at a statistically significant level).
While future science and math types beat out all other majors at various levels of significance in all three categories (not only, it should be noted, in quantitative skills but also in the ability to comprehend and use information from texts and documents), education and health majors appear to have the overall lowest levels of literacy. There's a deeply-rooted dynamic at work here in terms of who is drawn into the profession. Changing that is a major challenge for everyone working to boost talent in the classroom.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Schools, relative poverty, and social mobility
Interesting New Yorker article by John Cassidy looks at where the method by which the poverty rate is measured comes from (if you haven't heard this before, it's rather interesting), some concerns folks on both left and right have with the way we currently calculate poverty, and whether other measures--including measures of relative poverty--might be better. All relevant to education, particularly since poverty plays a role in some funding formulas.
But this is what got me:
But this is what got me:
Research by Tom Hertz, an economist at American University, shows that a child whose parents are in the bottom fifth of the income distribution has only a six-per-cent chance of attaining an average yearly income in the top fifth. Most people who start out relatively poor stay relatively poor.Now, there are a lot of factors that contribute to this--health care, housing policy, differences in parental support, lack of access to social networks, just to name a few--but the fact remains that the quality of education our public school systems provide to low-income students is often dramatically lower than that provided to more affluent students, and these disparities in educational opportunity seriously undermine social mobility.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Crimson Financial Tide Lifts More Boats
This story, detailing Harvard's announcement of increased financial aid for low- and middle-income families, is nothing but good news. As the NYTimes' Karen Arenson correctly notes, "The quest by prestigious colleges to attract more low- and middle-income students is turning into a financial aid arms race." Two important takeaways:
1) Other elite colleges and universities can do more to promote access for students who aren't rich enough to afford a $30,000 tuition bill. Administrators should be prepared to answer the question: Harvard, Stanford, and other institutions are doing this--why aren't you?
2) While the nation's higher education institutions are fiercely independent, often to the point of obstinancy, they're also very sensitive to public perception. That's the dynamic here, as institutions realize that doing well and doing good go hand and hand. The challenge for reformers is to redefine the terms of that perception, shifting the values that inform institutional reputations away from the measures of fame, wealth, and exclusivity that dominate the U.S. News rankings and moving them toward more important things, like institutional success in serving economically disadvantaged students.
1) Other elite colleges and universities can do more to promote access for students who aren't rich enough to afford a $30,000 tuition bill. Administrators should be prepared to answer the question: Harvard, Stanford, and other institutions are doing this--why aren't you?
2) While the nation's higher education institutions are fiercely independent, often to the point of obstinancy, they're also very sensitive to public perception. That's the dynamic here, as institutions realize that doing well and doing good go hand and hand. The challenge for reformers is to redefine the terms of that perception, shifting the values that inform institutional reputations away from the measures of fame, wealth, and exclusivity that dominate the U.S. News rankings and moving them toward more important things, like institutional success in serving economically disadvantaged students.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Welcome to the Dark Age
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a new version of the federal Higher Education Act yesterday. The floor debate included a lot of back-and-forth about student loans, spiraling tuition costs, affirmative action, and other hot-button issues. Little attention was given to the following provision, which was added last year by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce:
SEC. 132. DATABASES OF STUDENT INFORMATION PROHIBITED.
(a) PROHIBITION. Except as described in (b), nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the design, development, creation, implementation, or maintenance of a nationwide database of personally identifiable information on individuals receiving assistance, attending institutions receiving assistance, or otherwise involved in any studies or other collections of data under this Act, including a student unit record system, an education bar code system, or any other system that tracks individual students over time. (b) EXCEPTION. The provisions of subsection (a) shall not affect the loan obligation enforcement activities described in section 485B of this Act.
But of all the provisions in the law, this is possibly the most shortsighted, damaging, and indicative of the relentless efforts of the private higher education establishment to shield itself from any kind of scrutiny from the outside world.
This is the back-story: The National Center for Education Statistics, an independent arm of the U.S. Department of Education, gathers information about the nation's colleges and universities through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Every year, each institution is required to fill out and submit a series of surveys about themselves and their students, focused on topics such as enrollment, funding, staffing, degrees awarded, financial aid, and graduation rates. This process is the backbone of higher-education data-gathering; it's the only way to consistently know anything about the institutions that compromise a vital segment of the economy.
It's also a time-consuming, labor-intensive, and somewhat antiquated process, with institutions filling in thousands of data points across the various surveys. Each survey is separate, greatly reducing the ability to cross-reference information in a useful way. For example, because the graduation rate and financial aid surveys are separate, we know the percent of students at a given institution who graduate within six years, and the percent who receive financial aid, but not the percent of financial aid recipients who graduate within six years.
To modernize this system, IPEDS proposed a new way of submitting information: instead of each institution aggregating it's internal student-level data into a bunch of separate, disconnected surveys, they would instead simply submit that student-level, or "unit record," information to IPEDS directly. In addition to being more efficient from the institutional perspective (after investing in some new data infrastructure), it would also allow for much more accurate calculation of key institutional measures like graduation rates and net student prices.
Institutions have long complained that current federal graduation rate measures are inaccurate because they don't give institutions credit for students who transfer to another institution and graduate there. The unit-record system would fix that problem, because IPEDS would be able to connect enrollment information from one institution to graduation information from another. Institutions have also complained that current measures of the cost of going to college are overstated because they don't show the average "net price" to students after subtracting out financial aid, tuition discounts, etc. The unit record system would have fixed that problem too.
Faced with a system that would have made their graduation rates look higher and prices look lower, what did the private higher education establishment do? It crushed the unit record system like a bug.
While associations of public universities such as the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) were supportive of the unit record system, the private colleges, represented most prominently by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) attacked the idea from the very beginning. Aligning themselves with far-right privacy nuts like the Eagle Forum, they characterized the idea as the first step toward an Orwellian nightmare dystopia where every student is monitored from cradle to grave by the faceless bureaucrats of some presumably totalitarian regime. The president of Gettysburg College wrote breathlessly in the Washington Post that:
What accounts for this over-the-top reaction? Simple: colleges and universities--particularly private colleges and univerisites--are resolutely opposed to any form of increased public scrutiny. As far as they're concerned, the quality of education they provide to their students and the benefits they give to society in exchange for the substantial public financial support they receive through student financial aid and their tax-exempt status is nobody's business but their own.
They know that any attempt to increase the amount or quality of information about them could be used as a means to form judgments about how well they're doing their job. That could lead to increased competitive pressures, uncomfortable questions, and other various forms of that dreaded word accountability.
And so they embarked on a disingenuous campaign to conflate institutional privacy with student privacy. By pretending to stand up for the latter, they very effectively preserved the former.
This is not to say that privacy is not a real and abiding concern in the modern age of information. It seems like not a week goes by that you don't read some new and horrifying account of security breaches at private database companies, resulting in the release of your social security number, mother's maiden name, cholesterol level, and AMEX card to gangsters located in one or more former Soviet republics.
But the unit record proposal contained every security protocol imaginable, including strict limits on the use and release of the data and harsh legal penalties for any privacy violation. It would be a federal felony punishable by prison time to release the information, at a level actually stricter than releasing data from the IRS. Which, as it happens, is a good example of a government agency that's been gathering "unit record" data far more sensitive than someone's college major for a long time while by and large successfully balancing citizen privacy rights and the government's interest in information. The government is actually quite good at keeping information secret; in fact that's usually the problem.
We live in an era where all large organizations strategically gather data about themselves to understand how they work and improve the services they provide to consumers. Any private company will tell you that such analysis is an essential component of continued improvement and long-term viability. We also live in a country where many colleges and universities routinely fail to graduate 50 percent of their students, where less than half of all college graduates are proficient in tests of literacy, where students and parents are forced to choose colleges with virtually no solid information about which institutions will actually give them a high-quality education, where globalization competition for knowlege-based jobs is growing by the day.
In other words, we live in a world with a crying need for more information about our higher education system. And yet Congress appears poised to, with little discussion or fanfare, usher in a higher education information dark age by prohibiting the creation of a system that would gather that information. Such an action would be a victory for the narrow self-interest of private institutions, and a sound defeat for students, parents, and everyone else.
SEC. 132. DATABASES OF STUDENT INFORMATION PROHIBITED.
(a) PROHIBITION. Except as described in (b), nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the design, development, creation, implementation, or maintenance of a nationwide database of personally identifiable information on individuals receiving assistance, attending institutions receiving assistance, or otherwise involved in any studies or other collections of data under this Act, including a student unit record system, an education bar code system, or any other system that tracks individual students over time. (b) EXCEPTION. The provisions of subsection (a) shall not affect the loan obligation enforcement activities described in section 485B of this Act.
But of all the provisions in the law, this is possibly the most shortsighted, damaging, and indicative of the relentless efforts of the private higher education establishment to shield itself from any kind of scrutiny from the outside world.
This is the back-story: The National Center for Education Statistics, an independent arm of the U.S. Department of Education, gathers information about the nation's colleges and universities through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Every year, each institution is required to fill out and submit a series of surveys about themselves and their students, focused on topics such as enrollment, funding, staffing, degrees awarded, financial aid, and graduation rates. This process is the backbone of higher-education data-gathering; it's the only way to consistently know anything about the institutions that compromise a vital segment of the economy.
It's also a time-consuming, labor-intensive, and somewhat antiquated process, with institutions filling in thousands of data points across the various surveys. Each survey is separate, greatly reducing the ability to cross-reference information in a useful way. For example, because the graduation rate and financial aid surveys are separate, we know the percent of students at a given institution who graduate within six years, and the percent who receive financial aid, but not the percent of financial aid recipients who graduate within six years.
To modernize this system, IPEDS proposed a new way of submitting information: instead of each institution aggregating it's internal student-level data into a bunch of separate, disconnected surveys, they would instead simply submit that student-level, or "unit record," information to IPEDS directly. In addition to being more efficient from the institutional perspective (after investing in some new data infrastructure), it would also allow for much more accurate calculation of key institutional measures like graduation rates and net student prices.
Institutions have long complained that current federal graduation rate measures are inaccurate because they don't give institutions credit for students who transfer to another institution and graduate there. The unit-record system would fix that problem, because IPEDS would be able to connect enrollment information from one institution to graduation information from another. Institutions have also complained that current measures of the cost of going to college are overstated because they don't show the average "net price" to students after subtracting out financial aid, tuition discounts, etc. The unit record system would have fixed that problem too.
Faced with a system that would have made their graduation rates look higher and prices look lower, what did the private higher education establishment do? It crushed the unit record system like a bug.
While associations of public universities such as the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) were supportive of the unit record system, the private colleges, represented most prominently by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) attacked the idea from the very beginning. Aligning themselves with far-right privacy nuts like the Eagle Forum, they characterized the idea as the first step toward an Orwellian nightmare dystopia where every student is monitored from cradle to grave by the faceless bureaucrats of some presumably totalitarian regime. The president of Gettysburg College wrote breathlessly in the Washington Post that:
"The threat to our students' privacy is of grave concern," wondering "at what cost to individual privacy," asserting that such a "mammoth" and "gigantic" project would be a "costly and troubling assault on privacy," and so on. Because "the potential for abuse of power and violation of civil liberties is immense," she said, Congress "must reject this measure."And so Congress did exactly that, inserting the HEA language seen above.
What accounts for this over-the-top reaction? Simple: colleges and universities--particularly private colleges and univerisites--are resolutely opposed to any form of increased public scrutiny. As far as they're concerned, the quality of education they provide to their students and the benefits they give to society in exchange for the substantial public financial support they receive through student financial aid and their tax-exempt status is nobody's business but their own.
They know that any attempt to increase the amount or quality of information about them could be used as a means to form judgments about how well they're doing their job. That could lead to increased competitive pressures, uncomfortable questions, and other various forms of that dreaded word accountability.
And so they embarked on a disingenuous campaign to conflate institutional privacy with student privacy. By pretending to stand up for the latter, they very effectively preserved the former.
This is not to say that privacy is not a real and abiding concern in the modern age of information. It seems like not a week goes by that you don't read some new and horrifying account of security breaches at private database companies, resulting in the release of your social security number, mother's maiden name, cholesterol level, and AMEX card to gangsters located in one or more former Soviet republics.
But the unit record proposal contained every security protocol imaginable, including strict limits on the use and release of the data and harsh legal penalties for any privacy violation. It would be a federal felony punishable by prison time to release the information, at a level actually stricter than releasing data from the IRS. Which, as it happens, is a good example of a government agency that's been gathering "unit record" data far more sensitive than someone's college major for a long time while by and large successfully balancing citizen privacy rights and the government's interest in information. The government is actually quite good at keeping information secret; in fact that's usually the problem.
We live in an era where all large organizations strategically gather data about themselves to understand how they work and improve the services they provide to consumers. Any private company will tell you that such analysis is an essential component of continued improvement and long-term viability. We also live in a country where many colleges and universities routinely fail to graduate 50 percent of their students, where less than half of all college graduates are proficient in tests of literacy, where students and parents are forced to choose colleges with virtually no solid information about which institutions will actually give them a high-quality education, where globalization competition for knowlege-based jobs is growing by the day.
In other words, we live in a world with a crying need for more information about our higher education system. And yet Congress appears poised to, with little discussion or fanfare, usher in a higher education information dark age by prohibiting the creation of a system that would gather that information. Such an action would be a victory for the narrow self-interest of private institutions, and a sound defeat for students, parents, and everyone else.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Fat, Drunk, and Stupid is No Way to Go Through Life
On March 28th, the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution released the newest version of its Child Well-Being Index (CWI), "an evidence based measure of trends in the social conditions encountered by American children and youth since 1975." Written by Duke Prof. Kenneth Land, the report shows evidence that youth smoking, drinking, drug use, crime, suicide, and pregnancy rates are all down. Unfortunately, though, children's health is getting worse, and their educational performance as measured by the national NAEP—which was the predetermined focus of the panel discussion Brookings held to announce the CWI this year—is frustratingly flat considering the number of reform efforts enacted over the past thirty years.
Coinciding with the CWI event was the release of a publication called "The Education Flatline: Causes and Solutions," which offers perspectives from Diane Ravitch, Kate Walsh, Ron Haskins, Isabel Sawhill, David Gordon, Gene Maeroff, and Education Sector board member Bruno Manno. This diverse group of thinkers put forward a number of suggestions for how to raise student achievement, including national standards, an increase in the number of charter schools, improving teacher quality, and reforming Pre-K-3 policies and practices.
Land used the CWI to make a noteworthy connection between the rise in Pre-K enrollment in the 1990's and the rise in NAEP scores for nine-year-olds in the early 2000's. While Land argues that Pre-K enrollment "may be a leading indicator" of later NAEP score improvements, to draw such a correlation requires a methodological evaluation of state—not national—NAEP reports, so that one can take stock of the widely differing state Pre-K programs. The CWI uses the national NAEP.
On a broad scale though, it seems that everyone loves Pre-K these days. It's gotten a lot of buzz, including support from our nation's governors. But any large scale reform effort should be spurred by empirical evidence and will have to make sense of the immensity of the implementation challenges. Watch for
PS – Ironic reaction to the CWI report from U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings: "This year's Child Well-Being Index highlights the tremendous gains our students are making, thanks in large part to the landmark No Child Left Behind Act." Really? Thanks "in large part" to NCLB? Minority students have made tremendous gains if you look back as far as fifteen years ago. But they only made marginal gains from 2003 to 2005, which is the time in which NCLB would have had an impact. Given that the CWI event was organized for the express purpose of drawing attention to 30 years of mostly flat NAEP scores, Spellings big ol' NCLB slap on the back seems a bit out of place. It may make for a good quote but it's rooted in a flawed analysis of how the CWI relates to federal policy successes or failures.
- Posted by Ethan Gray
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Push Me, Pull Me
In reporting on new data about the number of schools identified by NCLB as not making adequate yearly progress, Bloomberg News writes:
NCLB was enacted more than four years ago. How long must we wait for the press to report its provisions accurately? First, NCLB does not label schools as "failing." They're labeled as "not making adequate progress" or "in need of improvement." These are not semantic distinctions; the words actually mean what they mean. Second, while the "penalties" can include replacing administrators and teachers, they certainly don't have to. These might seem like fine points, but they actually go right to the heart of what the law does and doesn't do.
The story also goes on to say the following:
Nobody from the National Education Association is quoted here, but one assumes that their take on these numbers hasn't changed since January, when head NEA honcho Reg Weaver said:
To summarize: The Fordham Foundation thinks that a small increase in the number of schools not making AYP shows that NCLB isn't working, because if it were working the actual number would be a lot higher. The NEA thinks that a small increase in the number of schools not making AYP shows that NCLB isn't working, because if it were working the actual number would be a lot lower.
If you ever wondered why the various warring factions in the NCLB debate seem to be talking past, over, through, and behind one another, this is a good place to start.
"The percentage of failing schools rose by one point from the previous school year. Under the 2002 law, schools that do not make sufficient academic progress face penalties including the eventual replacement of their administrators and teachers."
NCLB was enacted more than four years ago. How long must we wait for the press to report its provisions accurately? First, NCLB does not label schools as "failing." They're labeled as "not making adequate progress" or "in need of improvement." These are not semantic distinctions; the words actually mean what they mean. Second, while the "penalties" can include replacing administrators and teachers, they certainly don't have to. These might seem like fine points, but they actually go right to the heart of what the law does and doesn't do.
The story also goes on to say the following:
"The results raise doubts about whether the law is working and its results are fairly calculated, said Michael Petrilli, vice president for policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a Washington-based research group. 'Most people thought that at this point in the law, we'd be seeing these numbers go way, way up' as standards toughen, said Petrilli."
Nobody from the National Education Association is quoted here, but one assumes that their take on these numbers hasn't changed since January, when head NEA honcho Reg Weaver said:
"Four years of President Bush's signature education policy is sufficient to weigh facts, examine data and understand this so-called 'No Child Left Behind' (NCLB) Act through the experiences of millions of education professionals across America. If we distill these into one observation, it is that the anniversary marks four years of winning rhetoric and failing substance. From its inception, NCLB has been overemphasized, under funded and sugarcoated at the expense of public school children. New data illustrates our conclusion. It shows that more schools failed to achieve 'adequate yearly progress' (AYP) under NCLB in 2005-06 than ever before."
To summarize: The Fordham Foundation thinks that a small increase in the number of schools not making AYP shows that NCLB isn't working, because if it were working the actual number would be a lot higher. The NEA thinks that a small increase in the number of schools not making AYP shows that NCLB isn't working, because if it were working the actual number would be a lot lower.
If you ever wondered why the various warring factions in the NCLB debate seem to be talking past, over, through, and behind one another, this is a good place to start.
Hairy Armpits and Everything
Kevin's already given his take on the French union and student protests over proposed labor law changes that would make it easier for companies to fire or lay off workers under 26 in their first two years of employment. But it occurred to me that these protests also reflect some of the same problems that make progressive policy change difficult in American public education.
Bear with me: French politicos didn't just wake up one morning and decide, "hey, let's make it easier to fire young workers." France has a very high unemployment rate among younger workers--about 25 percent--and it's even higher for disadvantaged groups, such as those of North African and Muslim descent, as last November's riots highlighted. French policymakers hope that making it easier to fire or lay off young workers will help lower unemployment rates for them.
I'm not an economist, so I have no opinion about whether or not the proposed changes would lower unemployment, but if they did, they would have an enormous benefit for individuals who got jobs as a result, as well as a broader positive economic impact. But for the 3/4 of young French workers who are employed, the unions who represent them, and students who expect soon to join their ranks, these social benefits come at a cost of increased risk. So these groups seek to block change.
This strikes me as terribly similar to something that often happens here in public education. A lot of reforms seek to improve educational results for poor and minority students. Improving educational results--and, by extension, other outcomes--for these youngsters would also have broader social benefits. But many reforms--such as those that target resources to high-need schools, increase choice, or seek to enhance racial and socioeconomic integration--also threaten a status quo that works well for many people: not just established education interests, but also middle-class and affluent parents who've used their economic power to get their children into "good" neighborhoods and public schools. As Ted and Nancy Sizer comment in a recent Education Sector interview, affluent parents who've already made--and paid for--their choice of schools when purchasing a home tend to resist charter schools, vouchers, and other forms of school choice.
Part of the problem, both here and in France, is that those who are well-served by the status-quo tend to have more political and social capital and ability to block change than those who aren't. In addition, since those who would benefit from a potential change are often a somewhat hypothetical or unclearly defined group, they have less incentive to organize than those might lose something from the change. That can make education policy frustrating sometimes, but it's also part of what makes it worth doing.
Totally Gratutitous Marginally Related Note: Speaking of France, this week Pearls Before Swine, one of the few comics that regularly makes me laugh out loud, features a storyline involving French women with hairy armpits.
Bear with me: French politicos didn't just wake up one morning and decide, "hey, let's make it easier to fire young workers." France has a very high unemployment rate among younger workers--about 25 percent--and it's even higher for disadvantaged groups, such as those of North African and Muslim descent, as last November's riots highlighted. French policymakers hope that making it easier to fire or lay off young workers will help lower unemployment rates for them.
I'm not an economist, so I have no opinion about whether or not the proposed changes would lower unemployment, but if they did, they would have an enormous benefit for individuals who got jobs as a result, as well as a broader positive economic impact. But for the 3/4 of young French workers who are employed, the unions who represent them, and students who expect soon to join their ranks, these social benefits come at a cost of increased risk. So these groups seek to block change.
This strikes me as terribly similar to something that often happens here in public education. A lot of reforms seek to improve educational results for poor and minority students. Improving educational results--and, by extension, other outcomes--for these youngsters would also have broader social benefits. But many reforms--such as those that target resources to high-need schools, increase choice, or seek to enhance racial and socioeconomic integration--also threaten a status quo that works well for many people: not just established education interests, but also middle-class and affluent parents who've used their economic power to get their children into "good" neighborhoods and public schools. As Ted and Nancy Sizer comment in a recent Education Sector interview, affluent parents who've already made--and paid for--their choice of schools when purchasing a home tend to resist charter schools, vouchers, and other forms of school choice.
Part of the problem, both here and in France, is that those who are well-served by the status-quo tend to have more political and social capital and ability to block change than those who aren't. In addition, since those who would benefit from a potential change are often a somewhat hypothetical or unclearly defined group, they have less incentive to organize than those might lose something from the change. That can make education policy frustrating sometimes, but it's also part of what makes it worth doing.
Totally Gratutitous Marginally Related Note: Speaking of France, this week Pearls Before Swine, one of the few comics that regularly makes me laugh out loud, features a storyline involving French women with hairy armpits.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Mess With Texas
State school finance systems can be horrifically complicated. My first job out of grad school was to be the guy holed up in a back office in the corner of the Indiana Statehouse at 3AM during the legislative session writing long computer programs designed to simulate every tiny nuance and detail of the state's byzantine system for distributing money to and getting taxes from local school districts. It was actually kind of a cool job in an uber-geeky policy wonk way; one thing you figure out is that when you're one of only five people in the entire world who understand how a complex system works, you have a disproportionate--even inappropriate--influence over how that system is shaped.
Big state-level fights over school funding systems can be similarly complex and difficult to unwind. On the surface, Texas seems like a perfect example; the state has been mired in a protracted struggle to reform a funding system that's been ruled unconstitutional and is growing more inequitable by the year--the funding gap between high- and low-poverty districts there has nearly tripled in recent years. There's not enough money in the system, and people are already mad about property tax levels as they stand. Thus, a large injection of state revenues is the only viable option.
But while this article details the range of complicated tax proposals being bandied about in Texas as possible new state revenue sources--mucking around with business franchise and commercial receipts tax structures, going to the cigarette tax well once again--the political contortions and bitter arguments with various undertaxed constituencies are all really unecessary. Texas just needs to do what more than 40 other states already do--enact an income tax.
Everyone in Texas knows this. But income taxes are seen as kind of socialist and inherently un-Texan. So state policymakers are forced to beat their heads against the wall trying in vain to wring money out of the existing regressive and inadequeate tax structure while local schools suffer the consequences. Some things aren't as complicated as they seem.
Big state-level fights over school funding systems can be similarly complex and difficult to unwind. On the surface, Texas seems like a perfect example; the state has been mired in a protracted struggle to reform a funding system that's been ruled unconstitutional and is growing more inequitable by the year--the funding gap between high- and low-poverty districts there has nearly tripled in recent years. There's not enough money in the system, and people are already mad about property tax levels as they stand. Thus, a large injection of state revenues is the only viable option.
But while this article details the range of complicated tax proposals being bandied about in Texas as possible new state revenue sources--mucking around with business franchise and commercial receipts tax structures, going to the cigarette tax well once again--the political contortions and bitter arguments with various undertaxed constituencies are all really unecessary. Texas just needs to do what more than 40 other states already do--enact an income tax.
Everyone in Texas knows this. But income taxes are seen as kind of socialist and inherently un-Texan. So state policymakers are forced to beat their heads against the wall trying in vain to wring money out of the existing regressive and inadequeate tax structure while local schools suffer the consequences. Some things aren't as complicated as they seem.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Rigor, Relevance Reconciled?
In article about a legislative proposal in Florida to require high school students to declare a major, Governor Jeb Bush says:
Anyone looking for a thorough but readable summary of the newest ideas and latest research findings on high school reform should check it out.
"We don't want them to drop out of school or be unprepared to take on the challenges of the 21st century. It's a really smart way to make high school more relevant and prepare young people for what college will hold."I'm not sure if the major-declaration thing itself is a good idea or not. But in framing the issue this way, Bush touches on an extremely important dimension of the latest round of high-profile high school reforms: after more than a hundred years of back-and-forth, the once-competing goals of making high schools relevant enough to keep kids from dropping out and rigorous enough to prepare them for college are being fused into a unified whole. As Craig Jerald writes in a new Education Sector report:
"the most significant improvements in high schools come from combining strategies and solutions long thought to be ideologically disparate or even mutually exclusive. Research suggests that more rigorous curricula and tougher graduation standards might not hurt graduation rates, and might even help improve them. Rigor and relevance are not zero sum tradeoffs, but actually work best in combination."
Anyone looking for a thorough but readable summary of the newest ideas and latest research findings on high school reform should check it out.
Less Is Not More
Lots of buzz about yesterday's page-one NY Times piece on how NCLB's focus on math and reading is leading schools to cut back on art, science, history, and other subjects. This is a troubling trend that Education Sector reported back in January. But today's commentary on the Times report has mis-framed the issue is a couple of big ways.
The Times piece points out that the bulk of the curriculum cuts have come in schools serving underperforming students in disadvantaged schools. But the paper, and many of NCLB's critics, then suggest that many of the schools cutting back non-tested subjects "once offered rich curriculums" in the subjects being cut. In truth, art, music, and science courses in many schools serving the nation's neediest students are next to non-existant. Art is rolled into classrooms on a cart once a week for 30 minutes. Music is 40 kids in a room trying to clap their hands in 4-4 time. A lot of kids never had what the Times says they lost.
NCLB's advocates, meanwhile, defend the focusing of struggling students' time on the core subjects of math and reading. What good is studying history if you can't read, they ask, fairly? Prime Minister Tony Blair's aides in the UK, which implemented test-based accountability in the late 1990s, say quite candidly that they sought to narrow the UK curriculum for exactly this reason.
But learning specialists--and good teachers--will tell you it's not an either-or proposition; it's not reading or history. Rather, they say, it should be reading history. That is, kids should be listening to stories about historical characters and events even before they can read, and once they can decode they should read books, even very simple ones, about science, history, art, and music. The research is very clear on this: the best reading instruction weaves content into skill-building from day one. Unfortunately, far too much of what passes for reading instruction under NCLB is sterile skill-based exercises focused on helping kids pass state tests that focus on low-level skills.
Struggling students need extra help catching up in the building-block subjects of math and reading and NCLB is giving educators strong incentives to provide that help. But that's only half the solution.
The Times piece points out that the bulk of the curriculum cuts have come in schools serving underperforming students in disadvantaged schools. But the paper, and many of NCLB's critics, then suggest that many of the schools cutting back non-tested subjects "once offered rich curriculums" in the subjects being cut. In truth, art, music, and science courses in many schools serving the nation's neediest students are next to non-existant. Art is rolled into classrooms on a cart once a week for 30 minutes. Music is 40 kids in a room trying to clap their hands in 4-4 time. A lot of kids never had what the Times says they lost.
NCLB's advocates, meanwhile, defend the focusing of struggling students' time on the core subjects of math and reading. What good is studying history if you can't read, they ask, fairly? Prime Minister Tony Blair's aides in the UK, which implemented test-based accountability in the late 1990s, say quite candidly that they sought to narrow the UK curriculum for exactly this reason.
But learning specialists--and good teachers--will tell you it's not an either-or proposition; it's not reading or history. Rather, they say, it should be reading history. That is, kids should be listening to stories about historical characters and events even before they can read, and once they can decode they should read books, even very simple ones, about science, history, art, and music. The research is very clear on this: the best reading instruction weaves content into skill-building from day one. Unfortunately, far too much of what passes for reading instruction under NCLB is sterile skill-based exercises focused on helping kids pass state tests that focus on low-level skills.
Struggling students need extra help catching up in the building-block subjects of math and reading and NCLB is giving educators strong incentives to provide that help. But that's only half the solution.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
The Hopefully Short-Lived Affirmative Action Theory of Male / Female Graduation Rate Gaps
John Tierney has a column($) in the NYTimes today focused in part on the under-representation of men in higher education. This is a real issue, and one where gender imbalance appears to be increasing. (Although after centuries of patriarchy and oppression, it's amazing how quick people are to hit the panic button when any trend starts to run women's way. Last I checked men still, you know, ran the world.)
However, Tierney's take on this issue is strangely peripheral, focused on a recent op-ed from Kenyon College detailing their attempt to rectify the imbalance through gender-specific admissions policies, i.e. affirmative action for men. Tierney says:
"Probably"? Really?
Fortunately, this is a testable hypothesis. Using data from The Education Trust's College Results Online data tool, we can calculate the graduation rate gap between men and women at every 4-year institution in the nation. We can then group them by admissions selectivity using the popular Barron's Guide ratings. Here's the median male/female graduation rate gap (measured as the female graduation rate minus the male graduation rate) for each selectivity category, in descending order:
Most Competitive: 2.8%
Highly Competitive: 3.9%
Very Competitive: 6.0%
Competitive: 8.5%
Less Competitive: 9.7%
Non-Competitive: 7.2%
Among the "Most Competitive" institutions, for example, female students at the institution with the median gap had a graduation rate 2.8 percentage points higher than male students. The gap favors women in every other category as well. But if affirmative action was really a cause of increased disparities in male/female graduation rates, you would expect to find the largest gaps at the most competitive schools--that is, the relatively small number of schools that have selective admissions and are thus in the position to have an affirmative action policy, gender-focused or otherwise.
In reality, the data show almost exactly the opposite. With the exception of the relatively small number of institutions in the "Non-Competitive" category, tighter admission policies--and thus, opportunities to favor men--are associated with smaller male/female graduation rate disparities. The greater the selectivity, the smaller the gap.
In fact, a perfect example of a highly competitive institution with a below-average male/female graduation rate gap is...Kenyon College, the very institution Tierney cites. Less than three percentage points separate men from women there, which is less than half the norm.
Any gender-based disparity is problematic. But theories as to why should be based on actual data, particularly when it's right there for the asking.
However, Tierney's take on this issue is strangely peripheral, focused on a recent op-ed from Kenyon College detailing their attempt to rectify the imbalance through gender-specific admissions policies, i.e. affirmative action for men. Tierney says:
"It's not fair to the girls who are rejected despite having higher grades and test scores than the boys who get fat envelopes. It's not fair to the boys, either, if they're not ready to keep up with their classmates. Affirmative action just makes them prone to fail, and is probably one of the reasons that men are more likely than women to drop out of college."
"Probably"? Really?
Fortunately, this is a testable hypothesis. Using data from The Education Trust's College Results Online data tool, we can calculate the graduation rate gap between men and women at every 4-year institution in the nation. We can then group them by admissions selectivity using the popular Barron's Guide ratings. Here's the median male/female graduation rate gap (measured as the female graduation rate minus the male graduation rate) for each selectivity category, in descending order:
Most Competitive: 2.8%
Highly Competitive: 3.9%
Very Competitive: 6.0%
Competitive: 8.5%
Less Competitive: 9.7%
Non-Competitive: 7.2%
Among the "Most Competitive" institutions, for example, female students at the institution with the median gap had a graduation rate 2.8 percentage points higher than male students. The gap favors women in every other category as well. But if affirmative action was really a cause of increased disparities in male/female graduation rates, you would expect to find the largest gaps at the most competitive schools--that is, the relatively small number of schools that have selective admissions and are thus in the position to have an affirmative action policy, gender-focused or otherwise.
In reality, the data show almost exactly the opposite. With the exception of the relatively small number of institutions in the "Non-Competitive" category, tighter admission policies--and thus, opportunities to favor men--are associated with smaller male/female graduation rate disparities. The greater the selectivity, the smaller the gap.
In fact, a perfect example of a highly competitive institution with a below-average male/female graduation rate gap is...Kenyon College, the very institution Tierney cites. Less than three percentage points separate men from women there, which is less than half the norm.
Any gender-based disparity is problematic. But theories as to why should be based on actual data, particularly when it's right there for the asking.
Friday, March 24, 2006
French Connections?
We at Education Sector strongly believe in learning from other countries. In France, for example, you can walk into a crowded museum in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday and see 
numerous groups of attentive young students grouped in front of great masterworks, being taught with animation and verve. Most of my museum-going here in DC doesn't occur during school hours, but I wonder if we can say the same.
Recent weeks have provided another French lesson, with massive student protests over proposed changes in French labor law. Of course, these being the French, the student outrage seems equally arrogant, utopian, and foolish--they're angry about the idea of raising the age at which they can't be fired for incompetence to 26. Because employers are reluctant to create jobs if they can't fire people who under-perform, they haven't been creating many jobs and youth unemployment is enedemic. Presumably that will be the subject of some future round of marches and burnings of cars. One French high school student said, "They're offering us nothing but slavery." Uh, no--slavery is when your boss won't let you leave your job, not when he won't let you keep it.
But the focus of student anxiety in France does point toward some of the profound differences between our countries in the relationship between education and employment. In France (I'm cribbing from Tony Carnevale here), most of the risk of a bad education falls on society. If you're poorly educated and can't afford to provide an income, health care, etc. for yourself, the government provides it for you. If you're bad at your job, you get to keep it. In America, by contrast, the risk of a bad education falls mostly on students, who are left poor, uninsured, and unemployed if they don't get the education they need.
Which is why it makes sense that French students would focus on labor policy instead of education, however misguided those ideas may be. And it's why one wishes American students had similar political power, and were able to marshall it in demanding far better schooling than many now receive.
numerous groups of attentive young students grouped in front of great masterworks, being taught with animation and verve. Most of my museum-going here in DC doesn't occur during school hours, but I wonder if we can say the same.
Recent weeks have provided another French lesson, with massive student protests over proposed changes in French labor law. Of course, these being the French, the student outrage seems equally arrogant, utopian, and foolish--they're angry about the idea of raising the age at which they can't be fired for incompetence to 26. Because employers are reluctant to create jobs if they can't fire people who under-perform, they haven't been creating many jobs and youth unemployment is enedemic. Presumably that will be the subject of some future round of marches and burnings of cars. One French high school student said, "They're offering us nothing but slavery." Uh, no--slavery is when your boss won't let you leave your job, not when he won't let you keep it.
But the focus of student anxiety in France does point toward some of the profound differences between our countries in the relationship between education and employment. In France (I'm cribbing from Tony Carnevale here), most of the risk of a bad education falls on society. If you're poorly educated and can't afford to provide an income, health care, etc. for yourself, the government provides it for you. If you're bad at your job, you get to keep it. In America, by contrast, the risk of a bad education falls mostly on students, who are left poor, uninsured, and unemployed if they don't get the education they need.
Which is why it makes sense that French students would focus on labor policy instead of education, however misguided those ideas may be. And it's why one wishes American students had similar political power, and were able to marshall it in demanding far better schooling than many now receive.
Three Things You Should Read
I'm going to strongly recommend two new reports out this week.
One is the final report of the Teaching Commission, an independent commission established by former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner to identify and promote reforms that modernize the way American public school teachers are prepared and hired, the conditions in which they work, and how they are paid, in order to improve results and equity for kids. To advance this end, the Teaching Commission's first report, published in 2004, called for a variety of policy reforms, including more competitive, performance-based, and market-based teacher pay; career ladders; revamping teacher education programs; raising the performance bar for becoming a teacher while streamlining red tape; and giving school leaders more authority to hire, fire, and develop staff, and holding them responsible for doing so wisely.
The new report grades the progress being made nationally towards these goals and highlights reform steps being taken by states, school districts, and organizations around the country. A companion report from the National Conference of State Legislators delves into much greater detail about the various pieces of legislation around progressive teacher reform passed in various states--a pretty long and impressive list.
In the six years I've been working in education policy, reforms to the teaching profession--particularly around competitive or performance-based pay and alternate routes--have often seemed to me to be the area in which the greatest and fastest changes are occurring. This report is well worth reading for anyone working on these issues.
(The Teaching Commission's final report is dedicated to former Teaching Commission Executive Director Gaynor McCown and former AFT President Sandra Feldman, two amazing women who I deeply respect, and who, in their different ways, worked dilligently and intelligently to modernize the teaching profession and improve education for children in the United States. Both, sadly and far too soon, died of cancer in 2005.)
****
A second report worth reading this week is the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER)'s 2005 State Preschool Yearbook. The state preschool yearbook is a valuable reference for anyone working with early childhood education issues. It chronicles national trends in publicly-funded preschool access and quality, and grades the states on access and quality measures. For 2005, the picture is mixed, with some progress and bright spots, but stagnation in many places. Despite dramatically increased attention to the importance of early childhood, states still spend barely one percent as much money for preschool as they do for K-12 education, access is poor in many states, and quality is often low, too. To learn how your state is doing, read the report.
***
Finally, I want to make a plug for the Spring 2006 issue of AFT's magazine, American Educator. I think it's one of the best magazines related to education that not anywhere near enough people know about or read. It has interesting articles on a wide variety of education-related topics that don't conform to any single pre-set ideology or position. And, they get excellent writers to contribute. (I'm particularly partial to an article by Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, that they published in 2004 about why women's rights aren't just for westerners.) This quarter's issue, now available on the AFT website, features an essay by E.D. Hirsch, excerpted from his new book, The Knowledge Deficit, about why a knowledge-rich core curriculum is important for all children.
One is the final report of the Teaching Commission, an independent commission established by former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner to identify and promote reforms that modernize the way American public school teachers are prepared and hired, the conditions in which they work, and how they are paid, in order to improve results and equity for kids. To advance this end, the Teaching Commission's first report, published in 2004, called for a variety of policy reforms, including more competitive, performance-based, and market-based teacher pay; career ladders; revamping teacher education programs; raising the performance bar for becoming a teacher while streamlining red tape; and giving school leaders more authority to hire, fire, and develop staff, and holding them responsible for doing so wisely.
The new report grades the progress being made nationally towards these goals and highlights reform steps being taken by states, school districts, and organizations around the country. A companion report from the National Conference of State Legislators delves into much greater detail about the various pieces of legislation around progressive teacher reform passed in various states--a pretty long and impressive list.
In the six years I've been working in education policy, reforms to the teaching profession--particularly around competitive or performance-based pay and alternate routes--have often seemed to me to be the area in which the greatest and fastest changes are occurring. This report is well worth reading for anyone working on these issues.
(The Teaching Commission's final report is dedicated to former Teaching Commission Executive Director Gaynor McCown and former AFT President Sandra Feldman, two amazing women who I deeply respect, and who, in their different ways, worked dilligently and intelligently to modernize the teaching profession and improve education for children in the United States. Both, sadly and far too soon, died of cancer in 2005.)
****
A second report worth reading this week is the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER)'s 2005 State Preschool Yearbook. The state preschool yearbook is a valuable reference for anyone working with early childhood education issues. It chronicles national trends in publicly-funded preschool access and quality, and grades the states on access and quality measures. For 2005, the picture is mixed, with some progress and bright spots, but stagnation in many places. Despite dramatically increased attention to the importance of early childhood, states still spend barely one percent as much money for preschool as they do for K-12 education, access is poor in many states, and quality is often low, too. To learn how your state is doing, read the report.
***
Finally, I want to make a plug for the Spring 2006 issue of AFT's magazine, American Educator. I think it's one of the best magazines related to education that not anywhere near enough people know about or read. It has interesting articles on a wide variety of education-related topics that don't conform to any single pre-set ideology or position. And, they get excellent writers to contribute. (I'm particularly partial to an article by Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, that they published in 2004 about why women's rights aren't just for westerners.) This quarter's issue, now available on the AFT website, features an essay by E.D. Hirsch, excerpted from his new book, The Knowledge Deficit, about why a knowledge-rich core curriculum is important for all children.
And some blogs to check out, too...
Yesterday I was in Orlando, Florida, to accept a "2006 Best of the Education Blogs" award from eSchool News on behalf of my colleague Andrew Rotherham (whose wife was delivering twins at the time) for his blog Eduwonk, which I played a small role in helping launch.
In addition to a nice framed plaque I got to meet and chat with some of the other recognized bloggers: Frank LaBanca, whose blog Applied Science Research was recognized for best classroom instruction blog for students (LaBanca actually uses it as an instructional tool to facilitate students' thinking and writing about the topics they study in class and allow them to see each others' work.), Bill MacKenty, who was recognized for his blog MacKenty.org, and Wesley Fryer, whose blog Moving at the Speed of Creativity was recognized for best education theory blog. Also recognized were Tim Stahmer, whose blog Assorted Stuff was recognized as best classroom instruction blog for teachers, Darren Cannell, who writes Teaching and Developing Online, and David Warlick for his blog 2 Cents Worth.
My initial exposure to blogs was through the world of political blogs as the "netroots" emerged on the scene, and I still tend to think about blogging primarily in terms of journalism, politics, and punditry. So it was interesting to me to realize that these other bloggers I met don't view blogging that way: They're actual classroom practitioners and see blogging in large part as a tool to share what they're doing with others, collaborate, get feedback, and grow professionally. LaBanca, as noted above, actually uses it as an instructional tool. And there are a growing number of teachers, through various channels, who are using blogging this way. (Steve Dembo, who manages one of those channels for Discovery Education, which sponsored the event, also has a pretty interesting blog.)
Because of the type of organization Education Sector is, Quick and Ed and Eduwonk look and will continue to look, much more like political or media blogs than the blogs I learned about yesterday, but it's interesting to learn about how other people are using this tool.
In addition to a nice framed plaque I got to meet and chat with some of the other recognized bloggers: Frank LaBanca, whose blog Applied Science Research was recognized for best classroom instruction blog for students (LaBanca actually uses it as an instructional tool to facilitate students' thinking and writing about the topics they study in class and allow them to see each others' work.), Bill MacKenty, who was recognized for his blog MacKenty.org, and Wesley Fryer, whose blog Moving at the Speed of Creativity was recognized for best education theory blog. Also recognized were Tim Stahmer, whose blog Assorted Stuff was recognized as best classroom instruction blog for teachers, Darren Cannell, who writes Teaching and Developing Online, and David Warlick for his blog 2 Cents Worth.
My initial exposure to blogs was through the world of political blogs as the "netroots" emerged on the scene, and I still tend to think about blogging primarily in terms of journalism, politics, and punditry. So it was interesting to me to realize that these other bloggers I met don't view blogging that way: They're actual classroom practitioners and see blogging in large part as a tool to share what they're doing with others, collaborate, get feedback, and grow professionally. LaBanca, as noted above, actually uses it as an instructional tool. And there are a growing number of teachers, through various channels, who are using blogging this way. (Steve Dembo, who manages one of those channels for Discovery Education, which sponsored the event, also has a pretty interesting blog.)
Because of the type of organization Education Sector is, Quick and Ed and Eduwonk look and will continue to look, much more like political or media blogs than the blogs I learned about yesterday, but it's interesting to learn about how other people are using this tool.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Downsizing in D.C.
DC Education Blog's Nathan comments that the D.C. Board of Education's guidelines for superintendent Janey's efforts to close or consolidate underutilized DCPS buildings sound "byzantine."
Yup. But that's to be expected here. There's no question that D.C. really needs to get rid of some of the millions of un- and underutilized space in the system. The District's been shedding enrollment for decades, DCPS' enrollment losses have been sped up by the growth of charter schools here, and the excess space is an enormous financial drain on the system (not to mention a major thorn in the side of growing charter schools struggling to find adequate space to operate in). The Board's committed to lose one million square feet of excess space by the end of this August, en route to three million by 2008.
But school closures, even in the best of situations, are always an incredible political minefield, and that's particularly the case in a place like D.C., where issues of geography, and which parts of the city get what public services are incredibly charged along racial and economic lines. Hence, a byzantine process is created to seek to balance all these competing interests and concerns.
As the debate appears to be shaping up, parents with children in small but high performing schools are understandably nervous about Janey's minimum enrollment goals for schools, which led some to believe he's simply going to close down small schools. On the other hand, activists in predominantly black and low-income neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River are concerned their communities will again face the brunt of the cuts.
This is an extremely delicate situation, one well worth watching as things continue to develop, and I'd be loath to make any sweeping suggestions here. But I do have a few observations:
1. This is an opportunity to DCPS to address quality issues: Closing low-performing schools is something that rarely happens in the public education sector, because of the obvious political and practical difficulties. But if enrollment declines and financial concerns are forcing DCPS to close schools, Janey should use this as an opportunity to close down or completely overhaul chronically low-performing schools.
2. DCPS should incorporate the alternative use value of buildings into closure decisions: News reports have named a variety of factors, including academic performance, neighborhood demographic trends, geographic equity/balance, and school size, to be considered in closure decisions. Because the drive for closures here is largely financial, though, DCPS ought also to take into account the economic value of alternative uses for school buildings or sites. All else equal, if DCPS can get more money by renting out or selling a school in one neighborhood versus another, that should be taken into consideration. This can also help balance the concerns of residents in some of the city's more disadvantaged neighborhoods that they will unfairly bear the brunt of closures.
3. Why won't the Board allow buildings to be sold? According to the Post, the Board's guidelines would not allow any closed school buildings to be surrendered to the city to be sold, but buildings would instead be leased to charter schools or city agencies. DCPS's refusal to turn buildings over to the city for sale has long been a major irritation to charter school advocates who would like to purchase the buildings, and I confess, I don't see the logic of such a limitation. There's no expectation that DCPS will need or be able to use all these buildings again in the near future, and refusing to make them available for purchase limits the range of potentially beneficial economic activities and developments that could be undertaken in closed school sites.
4. Charter schools can help here: Freeing up millions of underused DCPS space could potentially be a boon to charter schools, many of which have been struggling to obtain acceptable facilities in the city. But the charter community has learned from hard experience not to get its hopes up too high about new opportunities to access DCPS space. And the fact that the Board appears not to intend to sell the buildings is a major disappointment. That's too bad, because charter schools can also really help with some of the political challenges of school closures that the Board and Janey are facing right now. After all, recruiting a well-regarded charter school to locate in or expand to fill the site of a closed school could alleviate parents' and community members resistance to the loss of the existing neighborhood school. In addition, chartering also offers an option for parents in high-performing small schools slated for closure: at least in theory, these schools could perpetuate their existence by converting to charter status. Right now, D.C. has only one charter school, Paul Public Charter School in Northwest, and the political battle over Paul's conversion years ago has dissuaded other schools from attempting to convert. But potential closure could spark more conversions.
Yup. But that's to be expected here. There's no question that D.C. really needs to get rid of some of the millions of un- and underutilized space in the system. The District's been shedding enrollment for decades, DCPS' enrollment losses have been sped up by the growth of charter schools here, and the excess space is an enormous financial drain on the system (not to mention a major thorn in the side of growing charter schools struggling to find adequate space to operate in). The Board's committed to lose one million square feet of excess space by the end of this August, en route to three million by 2008.
But school closures, even in the best of situations, are always an incredible political minefield, and that's particularly the case in a place like D.C., where issues of geography, and which parts of the city get what public services are incredibly charged along racial and economic lines. Hence, a byzantine process is created to seek to balance all these competing interests and concerns.
As the debate appears to be shaping up, parents with children in small but high performing schools are understandably nervous about Janey's minimum enrollment goals for schools, which led some to believe he's simply going to close down small schools. On the other hand, activists in predominantly black and low-income neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River are concerned their communities will again face the brunt of the cuts.
This is an extremely delicate situation, one well worth watching as things continue to develop, and I'd be loath to make any sweeping suggestions here. But I do have a few observations:
1. This is an opportunity to DCPS to address quality issues: Closing low-performing schools is something that rarely happens in the public education sector, because of the obvious political and practical difficulties. But if enrollment declines and financial concerns are forcing DCPS to close schools, Janey should use this as an opportunity to close down or completely overhaul chronically low-performing schools.
2. DCPS should incorporate the alternative use value of buildings into closure decisions: News reports have named a variety of factors, including academic performance, neighborhood demographic trends, geographic equity/balance, and school size, to be considered in closure decisions. Because the drive for closures here is largely financial, though, DCPS ought also to take into account the economic value of alternative uses for school buildings or sites. All else equal, if DCPS can get more money by renting out or selling a school in one neighborhood versus another, that should be taken into consideration. This can also help balance the concerns of residents in some of the city's more disadvantaged neighborhoods that they will unfairly bear the brunt of closures.
3. Why won't the Board allow buildings to be sold? According to the Post, the Board's guidelines would not allow any closed school buildings to be surrendered to the city to be sold, but buildings would instead be leased to charter schools or city agencies. DCPS's refusal to turn buildings over to the city for sale has long been a major irritation to charter school advocates who would like to purchase the buildings, and I confess, I don't see the logic of such a limitation. There's no expectation that DCPS will need or be able to use all these buildings again in the near future, and refusing to make them available for purchase limits the range of potentially beneficial economic activities and developments that could be undertaken in closed school sites.
4. Charter schools can help here: Freeing up millions of underused DCPS space could potentially be a boon to charter schools, many of which have been struggling to obtain acceptable facilities in the city. But the charter community has learned from hard experience not to get its hopes up too high about new opportunities to access DCPS space. And the fact that the Board appears not to intend to sell the buildings is a major disappointment. That's too bad, because charter schools can also really help with some of the political challenges of school closures that the Board and Janey are facing right now. After all, recruiting a well-regarded charter school to locate in or expand to fill the site of a closed school could alleviate parents' and community members resistance to the loss of the existing neighborhood school. In addition, chartering also offers an option for parents in high-performing small schools slated for closure: at least in theory, these schools could perpetuate their existence by converting to charter status. Right now, D.C. has only one charter school, Paul Public Charter School in Northwest, and the political battle over Paul's conversion years ago has dissuaded other schools from attempting to convert. But potential closure could spark more conversions.
A New Twist on Summers
The Chronicle of Higher Education has published juicy sections of the conclusion to former Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis' forthcoming book Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education. Lewis, the Dean from 1995 until he was forced out by Larry Summers because of "organizational restructuring" in 2003 (though still a computer science Prof.), sheds important new light on the recent Summers fiasco. Lewis' insider/outsider perspective comes across as both reliable and sharply critical, especially in passages where he excoriates Summers for what most people think of as his saving grace: his intellect. In Lewis' opinion:
Ouch.
But seriously, this is an angle that has gone totally unreported because most pundits think his downfall was due either to the fact that he was an un-pc politician or the notion that he was a brilliant guy done in by the power-hungry leftist faculty ($).
As a member of Harvard class of 2005, the first class to have Summers as president for all four years, I have to admit that Lewis' points feel surprisingly true. Like most other folks, I don't really know what went on between Summers and the faculty, but there was never a time when I thought, gee, that Larry cat's one inspirational leader. As Lewis points out, most of the big ideas attributed to Summers (expansion into Alston, curricular review, raising financial aid support for poor students) were conceived before he came and often suffered from chronic and debilitating mismanagement in how they were brought to life.
So why does this matter to the vast, vast, vast majority of people who don't go to Harvard? Harry Lewis would be glad that you asked. After all, his book is not about Larry Summers; it is about the way that higher education is becoming less interested in the business of educating and more interested in the business of business. Harvard is a brand, and Larry Summers was its rock star icon: the product of this culture, not the cause of it.
Lewis' says, "Universities did not create the consumer culture, but they have been overtaken by it. What universities have not done is to resist societal forces where resistance would be right and proper." Lewis' note to university leaders across the country: Don't forget that all the fundraising, glad-handing, politicking, and sound bite manufacturing is for a larger purpose, and that larger purpose has a lot to do with good ideas – something Larry Summers apparently didn't have that many of. What institutions need "more than anything" Lewis argues, "are ideas and idealism, and those have to be articulated from the top."
- Posted by Ethan Gray
"Summers presented no imaginative program, envisioned no educational ideal, carried no flaming torch that students or faculty members wanted to follow. Because whatever agenda he had was advanced so ineffectively and unconvincingly, Summers will be remembered as a weak president, not a strong one."
"The reality is that the ideas summers offered did not meet the Harvard standards. He expressed his "controversial" ideas as one-liners in brief talks, not in essays in which ideas struggled against contrary ideas. There was in his presidency a striking absence of the balanced, thoughtful, and informed analysis that characterizes the academy at its best."
"Lawrence Summers's principal failing was not that he was too strong or too uncongenial, but that the wisdom, knowledge, and judgment he lent to faculty affairs were too feeble…his intellectual contributions as president failed to meet Harvard's high standards and to bring honor to the institution."
Ouch.
But seriously, this is an angle that has gone totally unreported because most pundits think his downfall was due either to the fact that he was an un-pc politician or the notion that he was a brilliant guy done in by the power-hungry leftist faculty ($).
As a member of Harvard class of 2005, the first class to have Summers as president for all four years, I have to admit that Lewis' points feel surprisingly true. Like most other folks, I don't really know what went on between Summers and the faculty, but there was never a time when I thought, gee, that Larry cat's one inspirational leader. As Lewis points out, most of the big ideas attributed to Summers (expansion into Alston, curricular review, raising financial aid support for poor students) were conceived before he came and often suffered from chronic and debilitating mismanagement in how they were brought to life.
So why does this matter to the vast, vast, vast majority of people who don't go to Harvard? Harry Lewis would be glad that you asked. After all, his book is not about Larry Summers; it is about the way that higher education is becoming less interested in the business of educating and more interested in the business of business. Harvard is a brand, and Larry Summers was its rock star icon: the product of this culture, not the cause of it.
Lewis' says, "Universities did not create the consumer culture, but they have been overtaken by it. What universities have not done is to resist societal forces where resistance would be right and proper." Lewis' note to university leaders across the country: Don't forget that all the fundraising, glad-handing, politicking, and sound bite manufacturing is for a larger purpose, and that larger purpose has a lot to do with good ideas – something Larry Summers apparently didn't have that many of. What institutions need "more than anything" Lewis argues, "are ideas and idealism, and those have to be articulated from the top."
- Posted by Ethan Gray
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Wake Up Call
Educators are finally waking up to the reality that high schoolers need to sleep later. High schools have traditionally started their days in the wee hours of the morning in deference to football coaches, band leaders, and others who run the after-school schedule. But the school systems in Milwaukee, Tulsa, Minneapolis and several other cities have pushed back their high-school start times from as early as 7:15 to as late as 8:45. The reason? Reseach revealing that students are routinely "substantially sleep deprived" when they show up to school much before 8:15. A big study in Minneapolis, which made the move several years ago, found that the city's later start time (8:40 vs 7:15) improved attendance, reduced the amount of napping students did in classes, and lowered the reported incidences of student depression. Why don't all high schools read and heed such research? Football coaches and band directors are powerful people in the school world, and tradition rules in public education. I know, I know, if only educators did what's best for kids.
The Higher Education Finance Squeeze
The association of State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) has a new report showing how per-student state and local financial support for higher education declined in real dollar terms from $7,121 in 2001 to $5,833 in 2005.
This is an important issue to keep track of. In the realm of public fiscal priorities, higher education is getting squeezed from all sides by the competing demands of national security, Medicaid, public safety, K-12 education, and much more. Unlike those areas, higher education has an independent revenue source (tuition). So when fiscal downturns come along, as they did during the last recession, universities tend to take a harder hit because policymakers reason that tuition can make up the difference.
The result is greater stress on lower-income students and a kind of creeping privatization of higher education. Some of the big-name public universities are becoming quasi-private on the financial side, with public support making up only a small minority of their funding base. That can have real consequences for the attitudes and values that drive those institutions, not all which serve the public interest.
It is, however, also important to interpret these numbers in the context of the economic cycles that drive public finance. SHEEO chose 2001 as the base year of their comparison for a reason: that was the high-water mark for state budgets at the end of the last economic expansion. I worked in a state capitol during the late 1990s, helping write budgets for higher education. Those were giddy fiscal times, with states literally awash in new revenues generated by the long economic expansion and the income taxes on capital gains realized during the stock market boom. Higher education got a big chunk of that money, which is reflected in the peak-year 2001 per-student amount.
So while the decline in real dollar per-student expenditures partly reflects some troubling long-term trends, it's also a natural result of inevitable economic up-ands-downs. And there's some reason to think that in the immediate future, more ups are on the way.
Anyone interested in this issue should also take some time to read this report. Published in 1999 by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and written by the late Hal Hovey, it predicted with Nostradamus-like accuracy almost exactly what would happen between then and now, with higher education getting squeezed financially by a combination of poor state budget policy, rising Medicaid costs, structural budget deficits, and the aforementioned tendency to shift the burden to students in tough times. It came out a time when nobody but nobody was thinking that way, what with Dow 36,000 and the end of the business cycle etc. etc.. A great example of a brilliant mind carefully examining all the evidence and making predictions that all came true.
This is an important issue to keep track of. In the realm of public fiscal priorities, higher education is getting squeezed from all sides by the competing demands of national security, Medicaid, public safety, K-12 education, and much more. Unlike those areas, higher education has an independent revenue source (tuition). So when fiscal downturns come along, as they did during the last recession, universities tend to take a harder hit because policymakers reason that tuition can make up the difference.
The result is greater stress on lower-income students and a kind of creeping privatization of higher education. Some of the big-name public universities are becoming quasi-private on the financial side, with public support making up only a small minority of their funding base. That can have real consequences for the attitudes and values that drive those institutions, not all which serve the public interest.
It is, however, also important to interpret these numbers in the context of the economic cycles that drive public finance. SHEEO chose 2001 as the base year of their comparison for a reason: that was the high-water mark for state budgets at the end of the last economic expansion. I worked in a state capitol during the late 1990s, helping write budgets for higher education. Those were giddy fiscal times, with states literally awash in new revenues generated by the long economic expansion and the income taxes on capital gains realized during the stock market boom. Higher education got a big chunk of that money, which is reflected in the peak-year 2001 per-student amount.
So while the decline in real dollar per-student expenditures partly reflects some troubling long-term trends, it's also a natural result of inevitable economic up-ands-downs. And there's some reason to think that in the immediate future, more ups are on the way.
Anyone interested in this issue should also take some time to read this report. Published in 1999 by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and written by the late Hal Hovey, it predicted with Nostradamus-like accuracy almost exactly what would happen between then and now, with higher education getting squeezed financially by a combination of poor state budget policy, rising Medicaid costs, structural budget deficits, and the aforementioned tendency to shift the burden to students in tough times. It came out a time when nobody but nobody was thinking that way, what with Dow 36,000 and the end of the business cycle etc. etc.. A great example of a brilliant mind carefully examining all the evidence and making predictions that all came true.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Schools Channeling Goldilocks?
Given the frequency with which "more parental involvement" is cited as a panacea in education debates, I was shocked--shocked!--to read in today's Washington Post that some schools are now facing a problem with too much parent involvement. So-called "millennial parents," the Post tells us (apparently this is jargon for the parents of anyone born after 1982), are just too wrapped up in their kids' lives. They feel a need to monitor every aspect of their children's lives, they are obsessed with ensuring Junior miss no educational opportunity that might improve his chances as landing a slot in the Ivy league, and, once he's there, they might have trouble letting go. They are pesky and sometimes downright abusive to teachers, sometimes so much so that some D.C.-area private schools are implementing policies to keep such parents out of schools and classrooms.
Coming from a family of educators, I've heard plenty of anecdotes about overinvolved parents and how they can be a pain in the neck. But in general, accounts of widespread parental overinvolvement and the enormous stress it's putting on parents, children, and schools strike me as falling into the same category as those stories about the competitive elite preschool admissions race* or the allegedly ever-tightening college admissions race: It may reflect reality for the elite, well-educated, upper middle class folks to whom education coverage seems mostly to be targeted, but it's not the reality for most parents and children in this country.
Take a look, for instance, at the American Time Use Survey, which the government conducts to measure the amount of time people spend doing various things, such as working for pay, participating in leisure activities, and, yes, caring for their children. There's not a category in the American Time Use Survey for time spent pestering child's teachers, but we can look at the amount of time adults report under the "education-related activities" subcategory under "time spent caring for children as a primary activity" (time spent supervising children while focusing on something else, such as preparing dinner, is counted separately).
According to the September 2005 Survey, the average adult in a household that included children under 18 spent 1.34 hours caring for children as a primary activity, of which 0.1 hours was education related activity, and 0.07 hours time attending children's events. Even women in households with children between the ages of 6 and 17, who averaged the most time spent on education-related childcare activities, spent only .16 hours of education-related activities, and 0.08 hours attending child's events. Does this really suggest an epidemic of parental overinvolvement in children's education?
*I'm sorry to hear that some well-off parents are having trouble getting their kids into Ethical Culture. But as long as wealthy children are more likely that poor children to attend preschool, less than half of poor children attend preschool, and the quality of preschool and childcare options available for many low-income and working families remains abysmal, I'm going to focus my attentions on these issues.
Coming from a family of educators, I've heard plenty of anecdotes about overinvolved parents and how they can be a pain in the neck. But in general, accounts of widespread parental overinvolvement and the enormous stress it's putting on parents, children, and schools strike me as falling into the same category as those stories about the competitive elite preschool admissions race* or the allegedly ever-tightening college admissions race: It may reflect reality for the elite, well-educated, upper middle class folks to whom education coverage seems mostly to be targeted, but it's not the reality for most parents and children in this country.
Take a look, for instance, at the American Time Use Survey, which the government conducts to measure the amount of time people spend doing various things, such as working for pay, participating in leisure activities, and, yes, caring for their children. There's not a category in the American Time Use Survey for time spent pestering child's teachers, but we can look at the amount of time adults report under the "education-related activities" subcategory under "time spent caring for children as a primary activity" (time spent supervising children while focusing on something else, such as preparing dinner, is counted separately).
According to the September 2005 Survey, the average adult in a household that included children under 18 spent 1.34 hours caring for children as a primary activity, of which 0.1 hours was education related activity, and 0.07 hours time attending children's events. Even women in households with children between the ages of 6 and 17, who averaged the most time spent on education-related childcare activities, spent only .16 hours of education-related activities, and 0.08 hours attending child's events. Does this really suggest an epidemic of parental overinvolvement in children's education?
*I'm sorry to hear that some well-off parents are having trouble getting their kids into Ethical Culture. But as long as wealthy children are more likely that poor children to attend preschool, less than half of poor children attend preschool, and the quality of preschool and childcare options available for many low-income and working families remains abysmal, I'm going to focus my attentions on these issues.
The Allegedly Ever-Tightening College Admissions Rat Race, Part MCMDLXVII
The New York Times has an article today with a pile of anecdotes and a small amount of data suggesting that many high school students are now applying to as many 20 elite colleges, in some cases just for fun. Predictably, it's already up on their list of most emailed articles. Why? Because this is a bread-and-butter education piece that neatly feeds the status anxieties of upper middle class parents (that is, Times readers) convinced that getting their daughters and sons into a good college is getting tougher by the day.
But the fact of the matter is that the admissions rat race covered so extensively here and elsewhere in the media is largely irrelevant to the experiences of the vast majority of college students. Consider: Of this year's class of college-bound high school seniors, only one out nine will enroll at a college or university with an acceptance rate of less than 50 percent. Of the remaining eight, three will enroll at an open admissions institution. Two more will go to a school with an acceptance rate of 80 percent or higher. Joe College goes to Local State University, not Stanford or MIT.
Moreover, the statistics used to back up this trend analysis are pretty shaky. Consider this graf:
If this is such an up-and-coming trend, why go all the way back to 1967 to examine it? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to tell the reader how the percent of freshmen applying to seven or more colleges changed from 2001 to 2005, since CIRP has that data too?
The graf also conspicuously omits the single most important piece of data in the entire piece--the actual percent of students who filed 12 or more applications. Instead, it just says "that proportion increased by 50 percent"? What proportion? Did it go from 10 to 15 percent? 4 to 6? 2 to 3? 0.1 to 0.15? I wasn't able to find it after a quick look through the CIRP Web site. Worldwide recognition to the first Quick+ED reader who tracks down the answer.
UPDATE: Ace Education Sector researcher Ethan Gray wins the prize by looking up the CIRP phone number and asking. The answer: the percent of freshmen who applied to 12 or more institutions increased from 1.4 percent in 2001 to 2.1 percent in 2005.
In other words, five years ago a tiny fraction of high school students applied to a large number of colleges. Four years later, a slightly larger but still tiny fraction of students applied to a large number of colleges. Hopefully, future articles on the other 98 percent of the student body are forthcoming.
But the fact of the matter is that the admissions rat race covered so extensively here and elsewhere in the media is largely irrelevant to the experiences of the vast majority of college students. Consider: Of this year's class of college-bound high school seniors, only one out nine will enroll at a college or university with an acceptance rate of less than 50 percent. Of the remaining eight, three will enroll at an open admissions institution. Two more will go to a school with an acceptance rate of 80 percent or higher. Joe College goes to Local State University, not Stanford or MIT.
Moreover, the statistics used to back up this trend analysis are pretty shaky. Consider this graf:
"An annual survey of college freshmen indicates that students bound for all kinds of institutions are filing more applications these days. In 1967, only 1.8 percent of freshman surveyed had applied to seven or more colleges, while in 2005, 17.4 percent had done so, according to the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at U.C.L.A., which conducts the survey. The survey began asking recently
if the students had applied to 12 or more colleges; that proportion increased by 50 percent from 2001 to 2005"
If this is such an up-and-coming trend, why go all the way back to 1967 to examine it? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to tell the reader how the percent of freshmen applying to seven or more colleges changed from 2001 to 2005, since CIRP has that data too?
The graf also conspicuously omits the single most important piece of data in the entire piece--the actual percent of students who filed 12 or more applications. Instead, it just says "that proportion increased by 50 percent"? What proportion? Did it go from 10 to 15 percent? 4 to 6? 2 to 3? 0.1 to 0.15? I wasn't able to find it after a quick look through the CIRP Web site. Worldwide recognition to the first Quick+ED reader who tracks down the answer.
UPDATE: Ace Education Sector researcher Ethan Gray wins the prize by looking up the CIRP phone number and asking. The answer: the percent of freshmen who applied to 12 or more institutions increased from 1.4 percent in 2001 to 2.1 percent in 2005.
In other words, five years ago a tiny fraction of high school students applied to a large number of colleges. Four years later, a slightly larger but still tiny fraction of students applied to a large number of colleges. Hopefully, future articles on the other 98 percent of the student body are forthcoming.
Welcome!
Welcome to the Quick and the ED, a new blog from Education Sector. Over the coming weeks and months, you can expect to see this space filled with what we hope is smart, provocative, and witty commentary about a wide range of issues in American education, from preschool through graduate school, and including both today's hot topics and more off-the-beaten-path stories. You may not always agree with our perspectives on these issues (heck, we don't always agree amongst ourselves), but you'll certainly find us willing to grapple with the complexities of tough education questions, and committed to being clear, transparent, and evenhanded in our analysis.
For more about who we are and why we're doing this, look here.
For more about who we are and why we're doing this, look here.
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