Per the AFT blog, the Indianapolis Star reports that policymakers in Indiana are once again talking about funding full-day kindergarten for all Hoosier students. Considering that many states have done this for decades and are now concentrating on giving all students access to pre-kindergarten, this is welcome, if belated, news.
It also reminds me of one the formative "A-Ha!" lessons I've learned : education policy, and public policy generally, is often a lot more random than you'd ever want to believe.
In 1999, I worked as a fiscal analyst for the Democratic caucus of the Indiana Senate. I've had jobs with better titles and more responsibility, but never one that was as much fun--it was basically a front-row seat for politics and democracy in all their messy, fascinating glory.
Indiana was writing a new, two-year state budget in 1999. Tax revenues had swelled due the stock market run-up and long economic expansion, and the state had accumulated a huge budget surplus. Most of it would be gone within a few years as Indiana would be hit particularly hard by the 2001 recession. But we didn't know that then, so the session was dominated by one big question: "How the heck are we going to spend all this money?"
Republicans, being Republicans, wanted to cut taxes. But they only controlled the Senate; Democrats had the House of Representatives and the governor's office, which was occupied by the late Frank O'Bannon. He was a popular governor with a genuine committment to education, and his announced number one budget priority for 1999 was full-day kindergarten.
Officially, the Indiana budget process starts in the December prior to the budget year with the submission of the governor's proposed budget. The legislature convenes in January and over the next four or five months each chamber holds lengthy hearing and debates considering that proposal before passing their own versions of a budget bill.
In reality, that's all prelude to the start of the real budget-writing process, which begins about 48 hours before the session is scheduled to end, and continues for two straight sleepless days and nights of non-stop negotiating and wrangling. Sweaty lobbyists lurk behind the Indiana Statehouse's huge granite pillars trading gossip and looking for last-minute chances to put a word in for their clients while staff members run marked-up budget bills and spreadsheet printouts back and forth from one chamber to the other across the top, fourth floor of the building, as well as up and down to the governor's office two floors below. The whole thing runs on adrenaline, caffeine, and--when things start to get really tense--the occasional bottle of rejuvinating spirits strategically located in the bottom of legislative desk drawers.
The 1999 negotiations wore on into the second night, until eventually nearly everyone involved was crammed into a back room in the fourth floor office of the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He was an old-school Democrat from South Bend form a political family who would eventually go on to to become Speaker of the House. While it was late and the governor had already left for the night, his representatives were in the room and insisted on full-day kindergarten. But the price tag was high--at least $100 million in year one and upward from there--and despite projections of robust future revenues (which would turn out to be wildly incorrect) there were problems getting all the budget numbers to add up.
And then--and I've never quite been able to figure out exactly how this happened--some process of missed, botched, or willfully ignored communication led the chairman to leave the room for a final, one-on-one, no-staff-present deal-making session with his equally crusty, old-school Republican Senate counterpart, thinking that full-day kindergarten was off the table. A few hours later the deal was done.
The governor was woken and notified, at which time he came back to the building for an emergency 3AM staff meeting where he reportedly used language that to this day I can't fully believe given that he was, both in public and in person, one of the most decent, genial, down-to-earth people I've ever met in my life. But it was too late; 5-year old Hoosiers were stuck with substandard education policy for what turned out to be seven years and counting.
The point being that it all could just as easily gone the other way. Everyone was tired, emotional, frustrated, honestly not thinking particularly straight or well. The policymaking process in extremis is like an billiard ball with dozens of cues pushing on it from different directions all at once. It sits static under all that countervailing pressure until the slightest shift sends it flying off in a direction that not one of the cue-holders can completely predict or control.
That doesn't mean that organized efforts can't do a great deal to position the ball and increase the odds for students. But as in all things there are moments where circumstances shift unpredicatably for good or--unfortunately in this case--ill, and it can take a long time to get those moments back.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Margaret Spellings, World Traveler
Speaking of thinking about the problems facing children in other countries...CNN.com reports on the seven overseas trips Margaret Spellings has taken since becoming U.S. Secretary of Education a year and a half ago. Some conservatives are criticizing these trips as "junkets;" other commentators say the importance of education to America's global "competitiveness" requires education leaders to pay more attention to what's happening abroad. I'm in no position to judge the merits of Secretary Spellings' foreign travel, but I do think there are important lessons we can learn from other countries.
UPDATE: Alexander Russo and the Edwonks have a bit more to say about this.
UPDATE: Alexander Russo and the Edwonks have a bit more to say about this.
World Refugee Day
I spend most of my time thinking about problems with public education and other services for children here in the U.S. and how to solve them, so it's easy to forget sometimes how serious the problems are facing children and families in many other parts of the world. Every so often, though, I get jolted with a troubling reminder of how bad the circumstances are for many children around the world.
Today is one of those days. It's World Refugee Day--a day set up to draw attention to the plight of the over 20 million people around the world who are refugees. Nearly half--more than 9 million--are children. Many of these children are orphans or separated from their families, many have survived truly horrific experiences, and many are struggling to survive on a daily basis. And many face bleak futures, without any homes to return to or clear legal status and limited or no access to economic opportunities or education (this is particularly the case for girls).
As we work to improve education in this country, it's important not to forget these children. Click here, here, here, or here to learn about some of the many opportunities--through donations of money or good, volunteering, or advocacy--to support work on behalf of refugees. In addition, the UN Commission on Human Rights offers a variety of resources for educators to help the children they work with learn about these issues and how they can make a difference for other children.
Today is one of those days. It's World Refugee Day--a day set up to draw attention to the plight of the over 20 million people around the world who are refugees. Nearly half--more than 9 million--are children. Many of these children are orphans or separated from their families, many have survived truly horrific experiences, and many are struggling to survive on a daily basis. And many face bleak futures, without any homes to return to or clear legal status and limited or no access to economic opportunities or education (this is particularly the case for girls).
As we work to improve education in this country, it's important not to forget these children. Click here, here, here, or here to learn about some of the many opportunities--through donations of money or good, volunteering, or advocacy--to support work on behalf of refugees. In addition, the UN Commission on Human Rights offers a variety of resources for educators to help the children they work with learn about these issues and how they can make a difference for other children.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Another One Bites the Dust?
WaPo reports that the District of Columbia Board of Education is thinking of getting out of the charter authorizing business in D.C. My colleague Andrew Rotherham and Mark Lerner both think this is a good thing. I'm not so sure.
Don't get me wrong: Quality authorizing is critical to the success of charter schooling, bad authorizers do the movement no favors, the Board of Education has some significant problems as an authorizer, and if it has neither the will nor the capacity to become a top-notch authorizer, then it should get out of the business.
But I would be sorry to see that happen because I think that, if the Board of Education would get its act together, chartering could become a powerful part of an overall strategy to help reform DCPS.
Bear with me here: Fixing DCPS is a Herculean task, and I'm increasingly convinced that the system is just too dysfunctional in too many ways for any kind of top-down, one-fell-swoop reform to solve the underlying problems there. The best chance of achieving real, positive educational results for D.C. kids may be to hive off large parts of the system until what remains is a manageable, semi-functional core into which the Board of Education and DCPS leaders can pour reform energies. The ultimate result would look like the portfolio model Paul Hill has been talking about. And chartering--specifically converting traditional schools to charter status, or closing them down and opening new charters in their place--is the obvious tool for achieving this kind of radical paring down the system needs to thrive.
Moreover, there are a lot of gaps in D.C.'s current educational system--neighborhoods with no good schools, lots of kids who need alternative placements but have nowhere to go, and the like. High-quality chartering--in which the Board of Education would request proposals and recruit successful charter operators to open the kind of schools the city currently lacks--strikes me as an efficient way to address this problem.
It's important to note that both of these functions are ones that the Board of Education is uniquely situated to perform. The D.C. Public Charter School Board is a good (though not perfect) authorizer, and it has been critical to the growth of D.C.'s strong charter sector. But it can't help DCPS pare down or diagnose and fill gaps in the existing DCPS options. The Public Charter Schools Board's strength is its ability to independently create space for new schools in the District. The Board of Education's potential strength as an authorizer would be using chartering to complement and support DCPS reform efforts.
That's not to say it would be easy for the Board of Education to shift to this role. Even though it's become much more effective since the institution of the hybrid board in 2000, the Board of Education still behaves too often as if it were designed to be dysfunctional (and, in some ways, it is). Moreover, the Board still has an "us versus them" attitude towards charter schools, seeing them as competition rather a potential complement to DCPS reform, and its charter monitoring responsibilities as a distraction from running DCPS, rather than a potential tool to help the system work better.
While there are some very smart and talented board members who support high-quality charter schools, I'm not sure the Board of Education overall has the will to change its perspective on charter schools or the capacity to manage charter school oversight effectively. If this is the case, then it would be best for the Board to get out of the business entirely. But I'm still holding out hope they can find the will and ability to prove their critics wrong.
UPDATE: Andy Smarick at Charter Blog has some good comments on this. But I also think he's wrong about the KIPP deal. (Sorry, Andy!)
Don't get me wrong: Quality authorizing is critical to the success of charter schooling, bad authorizers do the movement no favors, the Board of Education has some significant problems as an authorizer, and if it has neither the will nor the capacity to become a top-notch authorizer, then it should get out of the business.
But I would be sorry to see that happen because I think that, if the Board of Education would get its act together, chartering could become a powerful part of an overall strategy to help reform DCPS.
Bear with me here: Fixing DCPS is a Herculean task, and I'm increasingly convinced that the system is just too dysfunctional in too many ways for any kind of top-down, one-fell-swoop reform to solve the underlying problems there. The best chance of achieving real, positive educational results for D.C. kids may be to hive off large parts of the system until what remains is a manageable, semi-functional core into which the Board of Education and DCPS leaders can pour reform energies. The ultimate result would look like the portfolio model Paul Hill has been talking about. And chartering--specifically converting traditional schools to charter status, or closing them down and opening new charters in their place--is the obvious tool for achieving this kind of radical paring down the system needs to thrive.
Moreover, there are a lot of gaps in D.C.'s current educational system--neighborhoods with no good schools, lots of kids who need alternative placements but have nowhere to go, and the like. High-quality chartering--in which the Board of Education would request proposals and recruit successful charter operators to open the kind of schools the city currently lacks--strikes me as an efficient way to address this problem.
It's important to note that both of these functions are ones that the Board of Education is uniquely situated to perform. The D.C. Public Charter School Board is a good (though not perfect) authorizer, and it has been critical to the growth of D.C.'s strong charter sector. But it can't help DCPS pare down or diagnose and fill gaps in the existing DCPS options. The Public Charter Schools Board's strength is its ability to independently create space for new schools in the District. The Board of Education's potential strength as an authorizer would be using chartering to complement and support DCPS reform efforts.
That's not to say it would be easy for the Board of Education to shift to this role. Even though it's become much more effective since the institution of the hybrid board in 2000, the Board of Education still behaves too often as if it were designed to be dysfunctional (and, in some ways, it is). Moreover, the Board still has an "us versus them" attitude towards charter schools, seeing them as competition rather a potential complement to DCPS reform, and its charter monitoring responsibilities as a distraction from running DCPS, rather than a potential tool to help the system work better.
While there are some very smart and talented board members who support high-quality charter schools, I'm not sure the Board of Education overall has the will to change its perspective on charter schools or the capacity to manage charter school oversight effectively. If this is the case, then it would be best for the Board to get out of the business entirely. But I'm still holding out hope they can find the will and ability to prove their critics wrong.
UPDATE: Andy Smarick at Charter Blog has some good comments on this. But I also think he's wrong about the KIPP deal. (Sorry, Andy!)
Saturday, June 17, 2006
House Budget Makes Value-Added Harder
The House Appropriations committee passed a version of the FY 2007 federal education budget earlier this week (details here). There weren't a lot of differences from the budget President Bush submitted earlier this year. But one small change is worth noting.
The administration's proposal to increase funding for state data systems from $24 million to $54 million was reduced to an increase to $35 million. This is one of those low-profile items that's not going to generate a lot of news coverage--there won't be legions of data system administrators marching on Washington to protest (too bad--that'd be pretty funny). But it actually has potentially far-reaching implications for some of the biggest K-12 issues of the day.
There's a great deal of talk right now about the potential for altering the core accountability provisions of NCLB to include "value added" measures, to shift attention from absolute performance levels to the change in performance from year to year. It's an important and complicated debate. But for many states it's also largely theoretical, and will remain so for some time. Why? Because they don't have the longitudinal data systems needed to calculate value-added measures accurately.
Those are precisely the systems this money is designed to develop and support. By failing to do all it can to build state data capacity today, Congress is potentially severely limiting its options to reform and improve NCLB in the future.
The administration's proposal to increase funding for state data systems from $24 million to $54 million was reduced to an increase to $35 million. This is one of those low-profile items that's not going to generate a lot of news coverage--there won't be legions of data system administrators marching on Washington to protest (too bad--that'd be pretty funny). But it actually has potentially far-reaching implications for some of the biggest K-12 issues of the day.
There's a great deal of talk right now about the potential for altering the core accountability provisions of NCLB to include "value added" measures, to shift attention from absolute performance levels to the change in performance from year to year. It's an important and complicated debate. But for many states it's also largely theoretical, and will remain so for some time. Why? Because they don't have the longitudinal data systems needed to calculate value-added measures accurately.
Those are precisely the systems this money is designed to develop and support. By failing to do all it can to build state data capacity today, Congress is potentially severely limiting its options to reform and improve NCLB in the future.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
The Democrat's Dilemma: Leftist Hooey in Higher Education
InsideHigherEd reported a few days ago on recent paper from a conservative advocacy group titled "How Many Ward Churchills?", referring to the University of Colorado professor who basically said that the thousands of innocent victims of 9/11 got what was coming to them. The report suggested that the halls of academia are rife with similar folk.
Now, I generally don't give much credence to conservatives moaning about liberal bias in higher education, not because I don't accept the basic premise that the academy leans left but because I don't think it matters nearly as much as they think it does.
That said, there's a big, big difference between garden-variety liberalism and extreme Churchillian leftist nonsense. The unwillingness of Democrats to confront this distinction is a problem.
For example, a few years ago I presented at a conference in Chicago tied to the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board. My subject was school funding, specifically how Illinois has among the largest funding gaps in the nation for school districts serving low-income and minority students, and how that was probably one of the reasons Illinois has the largest achievement gaps in the nation for the same kids. Lots of numbers and PowerPoint charts, followed by a few audience questions and polite applause.
Next up was a professor from DePaul. We had chatted briefly while waiting for our turn to go up on stage. I told her what I was going to say, she nodded and said she was going focus more on the "larger context." She was friendly but kind of reserved. Her speech went something like this:
"All those things the previous person said about funding inequities this and property tax rates that is all well and good, but it doesn't really matter, because as I tell my students, what we really need to address is capitalism and the racist, hegemonic patriarchy (which are, of course, the same thing), because none of this is going to change until the revolution comes. I want to be clear, just in case anyone working for Attorney General Ashcroft is in the room, that I'm not suggesting violence in the streets is needed to start that revolution, I'm not inciting anyone, but you know, that wouldn't be the worst thing." And so on and so forth in that vein for another half hour; I'm really not doing the sheer militant craziness of the speech justice.
I remember thinking "I didn't know people still said stuff like that," and then "man, her poor students."
To be sure, universities should be places of maximum diversity when it comes to different ways of seeing the world. They should support people with unpopular ideas, because the radical thinkers of today sometimes become the dominant paradigm-setters of tomorrow.
But what about the radical thinkers of yesterday, or decades ago, whose wacky ideas have been found wanting? Should college campuses be the last refuge of discredited Marxist thinking? Universities should be bastions of debate and thriving marketplaces of ideas, but at some point the market needs to be allowed to do what markets do--sort out ideas that exceed a certain threshold level of ridiculousness.
And Democrats and liberals have to admit that the population of college professors espousing such ideas is not evenly split between the right and the left. If they're not willing to say so, other people certainly will.
Now, I generally don't give much credence to conservatives moaning about liberal bias in higher education, not because I don't accept the basic premise that the academy leans left but because I don't think it matters nearly as much as they think it does.
That said, there's a big, big difference between garden-variety liberalism and extreme Churchillian leftist nonsense. The unwillingness of Democrats to confront this distinction is a problem.
For example, a few years ago I presented at a conference in Chicago tied to the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board. My subject was school funding, specifically how Illinois has among the largest funding gaps in the nation for school districts serving low-income and minority students, and how that was probably one of the reasons Illinois has the largest achievement gaps in the nation for the same kids. Lots of numbers and PowerPoint charts, followed by a few audience questions and polite applause.
Next up was a professor from DePaul. We had chatted briefly while waiting for our turn to go up on stage. I told her what I was going to say, she nodded and said she was going focus more on the "larger context." She was friendly but kind of reserved. Her speech went something like this:
"All those things the previous person said about funding inequities this and property tax rates that is all well and good, but it doesn't really matter, because as I tell my students, what we really need to address is capitalism and the racist, hegemonic patriarchy (which are, of course, the same thing), because none of this is going to change until the revolution comes. I want to be clear, just in case anyone working for Attorney General Ashcroft is in the room, that I'm not suggesting violence in the streets is needed to start that revolution, I'm not inciting anyone, but you know, that wouldn't be the worst thing." And so on and so forth in that vein for another half hour; I'm really not doing the sheer militant craziness of the speech justice.
I remember thinking "I didn't know people still said stuff like that," and then "man, her poor students."
To be sure, universities should be places of maximum diversity when it comes to different ways of seeing the world. They should support people with unpopular ideas, because the radical thinkers of today sometimes become the dominant paradigm-setters of tomorrow.
But what about the radical thinkers of yesterday, or decades ago, whose wacky ideas have been found wanting? Should college campuses be the last refuge of discredited Marxist thinking? Universities should be bastions of debate and thriving marketplaces of ideas, but at some point the market needs to be allowed to do what markets do--sort out ideas that exceed a certain threshold level of ridiculousness.
And Democrats and liberals have to admit that the population of college professors espousing such ideas is not evenly split between the right and the left. If they're not willing to say so, other people certainly will.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Curdled Cheese, Continued
Last Friday, the Commission on No Child Left Behind met in Madison, Wisconsin to discuss "how NCLB is impacting schools which are academically struggling (not making AYP)." The subject was worthy but the choice of venue strange, given that last year Wisconsin, through a series of statistical manipulations, identified fewer schools (on a percentage basis) as not making AYP than all but a handful of states, and identified only one out of 426 districts (Milwaukee).
Wisconsin Superintendant of Public Instruction Elizabeth Burmaster was on the agenda to speak at the meeting, so I was looking forward to hearing her elaborate on Wisconsin's super-efficient approach to tackling the difficult, contentious issue of what do with under-performing schools and districts: pretend that virtually none of your schools and districts are under-performing.
Instead, she offered a "spirited defense" of the state's policies, insisting that "We have in no way tried to game the system." She also promised that the new list of schools missing AYP, due out this week, would be longer.
She was right, the new list is longer, upping the number of schools identified from 49 to 92. But before any congratulations are offered, it's important to keep in mind that this mostly just represents an extension of the state's general attitude/approach to public education, which is "Everything here is just fine, in fact fact better than fine, except for Milwaukee, which doesn't really count, in that Milwaukee is (A) A city, and (B) Populated with people who aren't...like the rest of us."
Of the 92 schools identified, the majority (58) are in Milwaukee. And the number of districts identified statewide changed from 1 out 426 to...(drum roll)...1 out 426. Still just Milwaukee.
Wisconsin Superintendant of Public Instruction Elizabeth Burmaster was on the agenda to speak at the meeting, so I was looking forward to hearing her elaborate on Wisconsin's super-efficient approach to tackling the difficult, contentious issue of what do with under-performing schools and districts: pretend that virtually none of your schools and districts are under-performing.
Instead, she offered a "spirited defense" of the state's policies, insisting that "We have in no way tried to game the system." She also promised that the new list of schools missing AYP, due out this week, would be longer.
She was right, the new list is longer, upping the number of schools identified from 49 to 92. But before any congratulations are offered, it's important to keep in mind that this mostly just represents an extension of the state's general attitude/approach to public education, which is "Everything here is just fine, in fact fact better than fine, except for Milwaukee, which doesn't really count, in that Milwaukee is (A) A city, and (B) Populated with people who aren't...like the rest of us."
Of the 92 schools identified, the majority (58) are in Milwaukee. And the number of districts identified statewide changed from 1 out 426 to...(drum roll)...1 out 426. Still just Milwaukee.
Monday, June 12, 2006
David Brooks on Gender=Fourth Stomach in Cow
Yesterday's David Brooks column on "The Gender Gap at School" ($-sorry) manages to combine three elements that are guaranteed to make me want to bang my head against a wall in frustration: sweeping generalizations about gender; gross oversimplification (and abuse) of brain research; and sweeping, non-empirically correct generalizations about public education. Goody!
To paraphrase Brooks: "Golly, isn't it interesting that men's and women's favorite books are different? Completely ignoring any social or cultural reasons why this might be the case [like, I don't know, most guys I know would be subjected to serious abuse if their friends caught them reading Jane Eyre], I'm going to blame their brains. You see, modern science has shown us that men and women are not identical!!! Unfortunately, schools are still stuck in the mindset of the seventies--the dark ages before we realized that men and women are different--and insist on subjecting boys to a girly, "sensitive" curriculum that forces them to read books about girls and their feelings. What red-blooded young American male would put up with that? Clearly our schools are forcing boys to HATE READING."
I'm not kidding. (Seriously, if you have access to Times Select, read it yourself.)
Leave aside the dubious wisdom of taking educational advice from someone who thinks that "Hemingway, Tolstoy, Homer, and Twain," are the kind of books we should be using to turn boys on to reading (Tolstoy?!? Really, Dave? Have you read Tolstoy? Do you know any teenage boys?). A quick look at recommended and required summer reading lists for schools in Montgomery County, Md., where Brooks lives, reveals that Twain, Hemmingway and other "boy-friendly" authors like Jon Krakauer or Stephen Crane have hardly been excluded from public schools. By a similar token, recent research from the Department of Education finds that, contrary to Brooks' assertions and everyone's common knowledge, recess hasn't been eliminated from public schools--nearly 90 percent of elementary schools have recess and most do so daily.
But these are quibbles. The real irritant about this piece, for me, is the way Brooks lightly tosses out some pop culture factoids about brain research and the proceeds to make sweeping recommendations for the education system based on them. Never mind that the full body of research is a lot more complicated than Brooks makes it out to be (check out this excellent book by Diane Halpern if you want an honest picture here), that the practical implications of many findings are far from clear (what would the practical implications of differences between little girls' and little boys' crayon color preferences be, anyway?), or that variations within each gender are typically much greater than the difference between the averages for each gender. David Brooks has read the pop literature on gender differences, and he is now going to pass this information (which has already been redigested from the original research more times than if it had passed through a cow's digestive system--with about the same result) on to the rest of us.
And it's not just Brooks--the basic flavor of Brook's article is the same one that permeates the current spate of articles about why boys are falling behind in school. Contrary to Brooks' assertions, plenty of people--including educators--seem plenty willing to talk about how boys and girls are different and boys are in crisis. They're just not talking about it all that thoughtfully.
UPDATE: It's come to my attention that David Brooks has a teenage son, suggesting Brooks does, in fact, know at least one teenage boy. Guess the kid must love him some Anna Karenina...
To paraphrase Brooks: "Golly, isn't it interesting that men's and women's favorite books are different? Completely ignoring any social or cultural reasons why this might be the case [like, I don't know, most guys I know would be subjected to serious abuse if their friends caught them reading Jane Eyre], I'm going to blame their brains. You see, modern science has shown us that men and women are not identical!!! Unfortunately, schools are still stuck in the mindset of the seventies--the dark ages before we realized that men and women are different--and insist on subjecting boys to a girly, "sensitive" curriculum that forces them to read books about girls and their feelings. What red-blooded young American male would put up with that? Clearly our schools are forcing boys to HATE READING."
I'm not kidding. (Seriously, if you have access to Times Select, read it yourself.)
Leave aside the dubious wisdom of taking educational advice from someone who thinks that "Hemingway, Tolstoy, Homer, and Twain," are the kind of books we should be using to turn boys on to reading (Tolstoy?!? Really, Dave? Have you read Tolstoy? Do you know any teenage boys?). A quick look at recommended and required summer reading lists for schools in Montgomery County, Md., where Brooks lives, reveals that Twain, Hemmingway and other "boy-friendly" authors like Jon Krakauer or Stephen Crane have hardly been excluded from public schools. By a similar token, recent research from the Department of Education finds that, contrary to Brooks' assertions and everyone's common knowledge, recess hasn't been eliminated from public schools--nearly 90 percent of elementary schools have recess and most do so daily.
But these are quibbles. The real irritant about this piece, for me, is the way Brooks lightly tosses out some pop culture factoids about brain research and the proceeds to make sweeping recommendations for the education system based on them. Never mind that the full body of research is a lot more complicated than Brooks makes it out to be (check out this excellent book by Diane Halpern if you want an honest picture here), that the practical implications of many findings are far from clear (what would the practical implications of differences between little girls' and little boys' crayon color preferences be, anyway?), or that variations within each gender are typically much greater than the difference between the averages for each gender. David Brooks has read the pop literature on gender differences, and he is now going to pass this information (which has already been redigested from the original research more times than if it had passed through a cow's digestive system--with about the same result) on to the rest of us.
And it's not just Brooks--the basic flavor of Brook's article is the same one that permeates the current spate of articles about why boys are falling behind in school. Contrary to Brooks' assertions, plenty of people--including educators--seem plenty willing to talk about how boys and girls are different and boys are in crisis. They're just not talking about it all that thoughtfully.
UPDATE: It's come to my attention that David Brooks has a teenage son, suggesting Brooks does, in fact, know at least one teenage boy. Guess the kid must love him some Anna Karenina...
Friday, June 09, 2006
The Summer Escape
Most teachers are as excited as their students about the end of the school year. After 36 weeks of school and an average of 53 hours per week , teachers are ready for a break. But I can’t help but think that the escape that summer vacation provides might be working against schools, and the students and teachers who might otherwise rally for what needs to be changed.
Jay Mathews makes this point by describing a decade-old example of an unconventional approach to change. Basically, the story is a teacher training students to call en masse (albeit politely) to complain to an adminstrator and ultimately affect change. Mathews seems convinced that sometimes teachers and students just need to let their anger show.
Normally, I would focus on the outcome of this effort, both in terms of the administration's response and on the civil disobediance lesson imparted to the students. But right now this strategy resonates with me, mostly because of an email I received earlier in the week from a friend who teaches 3rd grade in Detroit. She’s “elated” that the year is almost done and she can “escape” from her school and the district’s “insane policies”. I understand her need for a break. She teaches in one of those schools that no one really wants to teach in, and she’s been there longer than most (just finishing up her 5th year). She loves teaching, she reminds me, but “by the end of March, I just surrender because I know I can hang on for ten more weeks…Then I can start fresh in the fall.”
There are a lot of teachers and students organizing for change, but I'm curious to know if these efforts diminish as we near June each year. Or if some cries for change just flicker out as teachers and students realize that school's out in just 10, 5, or 2 weeks. I don't believe it is the teachers' responsibility to change schools, but I know they play an undeniably important role and may make the difference. What would change if the school year were restructured, continuing year-round with smaller breaks along the way, avoiding the “surrender” that seems to occur toward the end of the year? Of course, it's possible that teachers might burn out and quit altogether, but perhaps they might be motivated to keep up a consistent stream of teaching and learning, and to push the leadership to make fundamentally important changes.
Right now, there are more than 3 million teachers who are finishing up and preparing for summer school and for some much-needed time off. Come fall, they will be rested and ready for a new year. Unfortunately, they will face many of the same problems.
Jay Mathews makes this point by describing a decade-old example of an unconventional approach to change. Basically, the story is a teacher training students to call en masse (albeit politely) to complain to an adminstrator and ultimately affect change. Mathews seems convinced that sometimes teachers and students just need to let their anger show.
Normally, I would focus on the outcome of this effort, both in terms of the administration's response and on the civil disobediance lesson imparted to the students. But right now this strategy resonates with me, mostly because of an email I received earlier in the week from a friend who teaches 3rd grade in Detroit. She’s “elated” that the year is almost done and she can “escape” from her school and the district’s “insane policies”. I understand her need for a break. She teaches in one of those schools that no one really wants to teach in, and she’s been there longer than most (just finishing up her 5th year). She loves teaching, she reminds me, but “by the end of March, I just surrender because I know I can hang on for ten more weeks…Then I can start fresh in the fall.”
There are a lot of teachers and students organizing for change, but I'm curious to know if these efforts diminish as we near June each year. Or if some cries for change just flicker out as teachers and students realize that school's out in just 10, 5, or 2 weeks. I don't believe it is the teachers' responsibility to change schools, but I know they play an undeniably important role and may make the difference. What would change if the school year were restructured, continuing year-round with smaller breaks along the way, avoiding the “surrender” that seems to occur toward the end of the year? Of course, it's possible that teachers might burn out and quit altogether, but perhaps they might be motivated to keep up a consistent stream of teaching and learning, and to push the leadership to make fundamentally important changes.
Right now, there are more than 3 million teachers who are finishing up and preparing for summer school and for some much-needed time off. Come fall, they will be rested and ready for a new year. Unfortunately, they will face many of the same problems.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Teaching Inequality
Since the early 1970s, many states have been convulsed with high-profile crises and lawsuits focused on school funding. School districts and advocates have gone to the barricades on behalf of low-income students, fighting for their fair share of society's educational resources.
But no one every learned anything (or at least, anything worth knowing) from a stack of money. Dollars are a means to an end in education; good teachers are the end. Without them, disadvantaged students face long odds of catching up with their peers and succeeding in a world where the penalty for a poor education grows by the day.
That's why the distribution of good teachers to disadvantaged students is one of the most important education policy and civil rights challenges of our time. And why a new report from the Education Trust, titled: Teaching Inequality How Poor and Minority Students are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality and written by Heather Peske, is so welcome. (Disclosure: I helped with some of the research that led to this report while employed at the Education Trust).
Filled with a wealth of brand-new data from Wisconsin, Illinois, and Ohio, the report shows how schools with the highest numbers of low-income, minority, and low-performing students consistently employ the fewest number of teachers with characteristics associated with classroom effectiveness, such as experience, certification, and knowledge of the subject being taught.
It's true that these are only proxy measures which don't always correspond with the best classroom instruction. But as the report notes:
Illinois, for example, rolled a range of teacher characteristics into a single composite index, and compared those figures to school poverty levels. It found that 84 percent of the highest-poverty schools in the state—the top 10 percent—fell in the bottom quartile of teacher quality. That's compared to 5 percent of the lowest-poverty schools. As Illinois Senator Barack Obama said about the report:
It's also why teacher maldistribution could be--and should be--the next frontier in the struggle for fairness on behalf of disadvantaged schoolchildren. There are millions of schoolchildren out there who are just a few good teachers away from the life they need and deserve. Changing these numbers on their behalf is an obligation we all share.
But no one every learned anything (or at least, anything worth knowing) from a stack of money. Dollars are a means to an end in education; good teachers are the end. Without them, disadvantaged students face long odds of catching up with their peers and succeeding in a world where the penalty for a poor education grows by the day.
That's why the distribution of good teachers to disadvantaged students is one of the most important education policy and civil rights challenges of our time. And why a new report from the Education Trust, titled: Teaching Inequality How Poor and Minority Students are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality and written by Heather Peske, is so welcome. (Disclosure: I helped with some of the research that led to this report while employed at the Education Trust).
Filled with a wealth of brand-new data from Wisconsin, Illinois, and Ohio, the report shows how schools with the highest numbers of low-income, minority, and low-performing students consistently employ the fewest number of teachers with characteristics associated with classroom effectiveness, such as experience, certification, and knowledge of the subject being taught.
It's true that these are only proxy measures which don't always correspond with the best classroom instruction. But as the report notes:
"When all of the proxies tilt one way—away from low-income and minority students—what we have is a system of distributing teachers that produces exactly the opposite of what fairness would dictate and what we need to close
achievement gaps."
Illinois, for example, rolled a range of teacher characteristics into a single composite index, and compared those figures to school poverty levels. It found that 84 percent of the highest-poverty schools in the state—the top 10 percent—fell in the bottom quartile of teacher quality. That's compared to 5 percent of the lowest-poverty schools. As Illinois Senator Barack Obama said about the report:
"..if we do nothing about this problem, we will face a future that is both morally unacceptable for our children, and economically untenable as we face a globalized world."
It's also why teacher maldistribution could be--and should be--the next frontier in the struggle for fairness on behalf of disadvantaged schoolchildren. There are millions of schoolchildren out there who are just a few good teachers away from the life they need and deserve. Changing these numbers on their behalf is an obligation we all share.
Proposition 82 Failed
On Tuesday, Californians voted against Proposition 82, the "Preschool for All" Act that would have established publicly-funded, universal preschool for all four-year-olds in the state. This is a major blow to universal preschool advocates, both in California and nationally, who had been putting a great deal of stock in the proposal.
Most observers blame Prop 82's loss on the controversies around Rob Reiner and the state's First 5 Commission, from which Reiner was forced to step down earlier this year due to conflicts of interest between his leadership of both the state-funded Commission and the campaign to promote Prop 82. That's certainly part of it.
But Prop 82's opponents were incredibly effective at seizing on (and driving into the ground) weak spots in the proposal that caused voters to have concerns about it. Some of the opponents' points were, of course, misinformation or deliberate misrepresentation of the policy here. But the opponents were able to seize ground, at least in part, because there were real policy shortcomings in how Prop. 82 would have implemented universal preschool that didn't sit well with voters.
Ironically, I think this may actually have been the best possible outcome for preschool advocates. Proposition 82's passage would have focused national attention on the implementation and impacts of universal preschool in California. If the program had failed to deliver the results preschool advocates promised--or if implementation had been a fiasco--that would have had a strong chilling effect on the preschool movement nationally. And there was a real risk of this, because some of the flaws Prop 82 opponents kept harping on really would have undermined the program's chances of success and popularity.
There's a broader lesson here for the preschool movement--over the past decade, preschool supporters (including major national foundation)--have focused there efforts primarily in three areas: building public support for universal preschool, building the research base on preschool quality, and cost-benefit analysis showing that preschool investments pay off for the public. These have all been important contributions. But if we've learned anything from the past 40 years of K-12 school reform, it's that regulating inputs and processes isn't enough to guarantee good educational results. Structures and systems--things like governance, incentives, culture--are also critical.
But the preschool movement has spent shockingly little time thinking about how publicly-funded preschool systems should be structured, in terms of governance, monitoring, oversight, parent choices, and how preschool providers should be selected (and who should be allowed to be one), among other factors. In fact, the preschool movement has been deliberately agnostic on such questions. There's a good case to be made that the structure of universal preschool will need to be different in different states to match unique local conditions. The two states that currently have universal Pre-K--Oklahoma and Georgia--demonstrate that very different structures can both be effective. But some structural characteristics are more likely to produce and support high-quality preschool than others. And without more clarity about what these conditions are from the preschool movement, state policymakers are likely to simply adopt the most politically expedient program design. That's basically what happened with Prop 82, and as a result there were clear flaws that undermined public support for it politically and would have undermined its chances of success if enacted. It's time for the preschool movement to start thinking about these questions.
Most observers blame Prop 82's loss on the controversies around Rob Reiner and the state's First 5 Commission, from which Reiner was forced to step down earlier this year due to conflicts of interest between his leadership of both the state-funded Commission and the campaign to promote Prop 82. That's certainly part of it.
But Prop 82's opponents were incredibly effective at seizing on (and driving into the ground) weak spots in the proposal that caused voters to have concerns about it. Some of the opponents' points were, of course, misinformation or deliberate misrepresentation of the policy here. But the opponents were able to seize ground, at least in part, because there were real policy shortcomings in how Prop. 82 would have implemented universal preschool that didn't sit well with voters.
Ironically, I think this may actually have been the best possible outcome for preschool advocates. Proposition 82's passage would have focused national attention on the implementation and impacts of universal preschool in California. If the program had failed to deliver the results preschool advocates promised--or if implementation had been a fiasco--that would have had a strong chilling effect on the preschool movement nationally. And there was a real risk of this, because some of the flaws Prop 82 opponents kept harping on really would have undermined the program's chances of success and popularity.
There's a broader lesson here for the preschool movement--over the past decade, preschool supporters (including major national foundation)--have focused there efforts primarily in three areas: building public support for universal preschool, building the research base on preschool quality, and cost-benefit analysis showing that preschool investments pay off for the public. These have all been important contributions. But if we've learned anything from the past 40 years of K-12 school reform, it's that regulating inputs and processes isn't enough to guarantee good educational results. Structures and systems--things like governance, incentives, culture--are also critical.
But the preschool movement has spent shockingly little time thinking about how publicly-funded preschool systems should be structured, in terms of governance, monitoring, oversight, parent choices, and how preschool providers should be selected (and who should be allowed to be one), among other factors. In fact, the preschool movement has been deliberately agnostic on such questions. There's a good case to be made that the structure of universal preschool will need to be different in different states to match unique local conditions. The two states that currently have universal Pre-K--Oklahoma and Georgia--demonstrate that very different structures can both be effective. But some structural characteristics are more likely to produce and support high-quality preschool than others. And without more clarity about what these conditions are from the preschool movement, state policymakers are likely to simply adopt the most politically expedient program design. That's basically what happened with Prop 82, and as a result there were clear flaws that undermined public support for it politically and would have undermined its chances of success if enacted. It's time for the preschool movement to start thinking about these questions.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Shooting the Wounded
Before he began writing his influental On Education column for the New York Times, Fred Hechinger was an editorial writer at the paper. He used a military metaphor to describe his work, and he did so only partly tongue-in-cheek. While the battle between opposing intellectual forces waged in the valley below, he would say, he took in the scene from the safety of the hillsides above. Only when the firing had ended and the smoke had cleared did he come down and fire away at the wounded.
I can't help but think that Hechinger, who died in 1995, would have done exactly that in the wake of the latest fight between education researchers over the nation's high school graduation rates.
As happens again and again in the education policy world, researchers identified with the two great galaxies in the education universe--those who support public education and those who attack it--have published competing findings, this time about the the nation's graduation rates or, more to the point, the percentages of students who fail to graduate.
On one side is political scientist Jay Greene, who argued recently that public school dropout ratese are higher than widely believed, 30 percent of the entire high school population.
Not so, says Larry Michel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, DC, think tank. The national dropout rate is about 20 percent, Michel and colleagues contend.
The ensuring fight between the two researchers and their enemies and allies is a perfect illustration of why many policymakers can't comprehend much of the conversation about education research, and why, when they can understand it, they don't trust it.
Like so many others in education, the Greene-Michel debate quickly devolved into a jargon-filled intellectual food fight.
Michel's organization takes money from teacher unions with a vested interest in casting public schools in a positive light, Greene's supporters charged. Greene is a voucher advocate with an anti-public education ax to grind, countered Michel's defenders. Greene runs a new, $20-million research center at the University of Arkansas-Fayettesville funded by the private school voucher-advocating Walton Family Foundation and another Arkansas foundation endowed largely by Wal Mart stock, they pointed out.
In truth, who's right in the Greene-Michel debate is largely irrelevant. Both Michel and Greene report that very high percentages of African American and Hispanic students fail to earn regular high school diplomas (Greene pegs the numbers at 50 percent for Hispanic and black students in high poverty urban school systems; Michel says the average dropout rate for blacks is 25 percent and 26 percent for Hispanics). Regardless of whether one buys Greene's numbers or Michel's, the nation has a serious problem that needs to be addressed.
But rather than focusing on this larger picture, the national conversation is mired in an unproductive, highly politicized debate over methodology. Where's Fred Hechinger when we need him.
I can't help but think that Hechinger, who died in 1995, would have done exactly that in the wake of the latest fight between education researchers over the nation's high school graduation rates.
As happens again and again in the education policy world, researchers identified with the two great galaxies in the education universe--those who support public education and those who attack it--have published competing findings, this time about the the nation's graduation rates or, more to the point, the percentages of students who fail to graduate.
On one side is political scientist Jay Greene, who argued recently that public school dropout ratese are higher than widely believed, 30 percent of the entire high school population.
Not so, says Larry Michel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, DC, think tank. The national dropout rate is about 20 percent, Michel and colleagues contend.
The ensuring fight between the two researchers and their enemies and allies is a perfect illustration of why many policymakers can't comprehend much of the conversation about education research, and why, when they can understand it, they don't trust it.
Like so many others in education, the Greene-Michel debate quickly devolved into a jargon-filled intellectual food fight.
Michel's organization takes money from teacher unions with a vested interest in casting public schools in a positive light, Greene's supporters charged. Greene is a voucher advocate with an anti-public education ax to grind, countered Michel's defenders. Greene runs a new, $20-million research center at the University of Arkansas-Fayettesville funded by the private school voucher-advocating Walton Family Foundation and another Arkansas foundation endowed largely by Wal Mart stock, they pointed out.
In truth, who's right in the Greene-Michel debate is largely irrelevant. Both Michel and Greene report that very high percentages of African American and Hispanic students fail to earn regular high school diplomas (Greene pegs the numbers at 50 percent for Hispanic and black students in high poverty urban school systems; Michel says the average dropout rate for blacks is 25 percent and 26 percent for Hispanics). Regardless of whether one buys Greene's numbers or Michel's, the nation has a serious problem that needs to be addressed.
But rather than focusing on this larger picture, the national conversation is mired in an unproductive, highly politicized debate over methodology. Where's Fred Hechinger when we need him.
62 percent
In addition to being the day of the Devil, today's also (some would say fittingly) the California primary, with voters choosing Democratic and Republican nominees for a variety of state offices, a replacement for disgraced Rep. Duke Cunningham, and also voting on Prop 82, the "Preschool for All Act." Since I've been writing a lot about this issue lately, I'm a little excited today (or possibly tomorrow) is the last time I'm going to be writing on it.
But before the door closes on Prop. 82 commentary, there's one thing I have to get off my chest. A lot of articles about the initaitive say something like this: "The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office calculates that about 62 percent of the state's 4-year-olds already attend some kind of preschool or day care, and reports from other states indicate a free program would attract about 70 percent of 4-year-olds." A lot of people are then saying "Gee, the $2.4 billion annually Prop. 82 is projected to cost is a lot to raise the share of kids in preschool just eight percentage points*." Seems reasonable enough to me.
Except the whole analysis is based on a faulty notion. The number from the Legislative Analyst's Office is four-year-olds in preschool OR center-based child-care. Repeat after me: Child care is not preschool, child care is not preschool, child care is not preschool. It constantly amazes me that these two things continue to be conflated in public and policy debates. For those who don't understand the difference: Childcare is any setting in which a child is cared for by someone other than a parent, typically while parents are at work. Preschool programs specifically focus on preparing children for school. To do this, preschool programs use curricula focused on developing children’s early reading, math, social, and emotional skills and are taught by qualified teachers. Center-based childcare is simply childcare that takes place in a child-care center, rather than the home of the child or the care-giver. To be sure, some child care providers do provide high-quality, stimulating care that does support children's cognitive and emotional growth and prepare them for school. But there is tremendous variation among childcare providers, and many providers are of very low quality--essentially warehousing children. It's simply inaccurate to include children in these settings in a count of children in "preschool" just because they're not being cared for in a home.** A lot of those 62 percent of kids aren't in anything remotely like preschool, let alone high-quality preschool.
Unfortunately, a lot of analysis tends to take the stats on kids in "center-based care" (which does include preschool) as a proxy for the number in preschools, because "center-based care" happens to be what the government collects data on. As an analyst working on early childhood education, this is a huge frustration to me. But as until we stop conflating the two and define a minimum benchmark for preschool, good data here is going to be hard to come by.
*Actually, most of these people are saying, "Gee, the $2.4 billion annually Prop. 82 is projected to cost is a lot to raise the number of kids in preschool just eight percent," which is WRONG, since and increase from 62 percent to 70 percent is actually a 13 percent increase, but I don't have time to get into the difference between percent increases and percentage point increases here.
**It's also troubling, to me, that all home-based care is generally lumped together in policy discussions as being of low quality. On average, center-based care is higher quality than other types of childcare, but some family-care providers probably are very good, and many families prefer them.
But before the door closes on Prop. 82 commentary, there's one thing I have to get off my chest. A lot of articles about the initaitive say something like this: "The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office calculates that about 62 percent of the state's 4-year-olds already attend some kind of preschool or day care, and reports from other states indicate a free program would attract about 70 percent of 4-year-olds." A lot of people are then saying "Gee, the $2.4 billion annually Prop. 82 is projected to cost is a lot to raise the share of kids in preschool just eight percentage points*." Seems reasonable enough to me.
Except the whole analysis is based on a faulty notion. The number from the Legislative Analyst's Office is four-year-olds in preschool OR center-based child-care. Repeat after me: Child care is not preschool, child care is not preschool, child care is not preschool. It constantly amazes me that these two things continue to be conflated in public and policy debates. For those who don't understand the difference: Childcare is any setting in which a child is cared for by someone other than a parent, typically while parents are at work. Preschool programs specifically focus on preparing children for school. To do this, preschool programs use curricula focused on developing children’s early reading, math, social, and emotional skills and are taught by qualified teachers. Center-based childcare is simply childcare that takes place in a child-care center, rather than the home of the child or the care-giver. To be sure, some child care providers do provide high-quality, stimulating care that does support children's cognitive and emotional growth and prepare them for school. But there is tremendous variation among childcare providers, and many providers are of very low quality--essentially warehousing children. It's simply inaccurate to include children in these settings in a count of children in "preschool" just because they're not being cared for in a home.** A lot of those 62 percent of kids aren't in anything remotely like preschool, let alone high-quality preschool.
Unfortunately, a lot of analysis tends to take the stats on kids in "center-based care" (which does include preschool) as a proxy for the number in preschools, because "center-based care" happens to be what the government collects data on. As an analyst working on early childhood education, this is a huge frustration to me. But as until we stop conflating the two and define a minimum benchmark for preschool, good data here is going to be hard to come by.
*Actually, most of these people are saying, "Gee, the $2.4 billion annually Prop. 82 is projected to cost is a lot to raise the number of kids in preschool just eight percent," which is WRONG, since and increase from 62 percent to 70 percent is actually a 13 percent increase, but I don't have time to get into the difference between percent increases and percentage point increases here.
**It's also troubling, to me, that all home-based care is generally lumped together in policy discussions as being of low quality. On average, center-based care is higher quality than other types of childcare, but some family-care providers probably are very good, and many families prefer them.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Quotes versus Facts
NCLBlog's John praises AJC blogger Patti Ghezzi, but I'm not sure the post he links to backs up his case. Ghezzi describes her conversation with Andrea Spreter, a young high school science teacher in New Orleans who works at "Math and Science High," which Ghezzi reports was a selective magnet program prior to Katrina (this gets a little confusing--at times Ghezzi makes it sound as if the school is still selective, and John clearly read it that way, but, as is almost always the case for charters, the school is not selective). And here's where I start getting irritated: It's a tiny quibble, but the name of the school isn't actually Math and Science High; it's New Orleans Charter Science and Math High School--like I said, tiny quibble, but if she's going to write a post on it, you'd think she could at least bother to get the name right. Further, even before Katrina, the school wasn't "selective" in the typical sense of the word. A quick glance on its website turns up the following:
I'm not trying to pick on Ghezzi here. Several of the posts on her blog provide interesting perspectives and/or thoughtful analysis. And I think it's important to bring the voices and experiences of individual educators into the public debate--as what they are. But this post illustrates a common and, to me, very troubling, phenomenon in education coverage.
It's simply incredibly common to read a news article about charter schools, or NCLB, or a host of other educational topics, in which someone quoted--either directly or indirectly--says something that is inaccurate, misleading, just plain wrong, or something that their personal experiences and knowledge really don't give them the authority to say. But no information is offered to prevent the reader from thinking it's the absolute truth. The attitude seems to be "if someone said it, and it's attributed to them, then it's ok to write it, and it's not the reporter's job to figure out or explain what the reality actually is." To be fair, this isn't a trend restricted to education coverage; it's an approach that's come to dominate coverage of political and policy debates to, I think the detriment of both. (If you're interested, this Jonathan Chait piece is well worth reading.)
In a related note, John and Patti are both upset that Ms. Spreter doesn't have health or retirement benefits. I'll be the first to acknowledge that, in our screwed up healthcare and social insurance system, that's an incredibly crappy position to be in. But it's important to note that Ms. Spreter is NOT in this position simply because she works in a charter school. In fact, Louisiana law requires charter schools to participate in the state retirement system. But, as Ghezzi notes, Ms. Spreter is not a full-time employee of the school. It's possible the school deliberately avoided making Spreter's job a full-time position because it didn't want to pay benefits--something a lot of private businesses do all the time--and I would also find that wrong. But it's equally possible current enrollment didn't justify a full-time physical science teacher. The point is it's impossible to judge based on the information Ghezzi presents.
For over 12 years, the New Orleans Center for Science & Math has operated as a district school providing an open door to any New Orleans high school student with an interest in pursuing the study of science, mathematics and technology. There were no barriers in the form of test, grade point requirements, or student fees for admission. This positioned the school as one of only two specialty science and math schools in the country with an open admissions policy and with a majority of African American students.Sure, an ostensibly non-selective school can manipulate the system to choose its students, but this suggests Ghezzi didn't check out what her source told her at all. Again, I'm being pretty nitpicky, but I'm pointing these things out because Ghezzi then goes on to draw broad conclusions about the problems with charter schools--which make up most of the public schools open in New Orleans since Katrina:
So she [Spreter] is leaving Math and Science and speaking out about problems she sees with charter schools, such as lack of consistent policies, lack of oversight, absence of veteran teachers. She also craves the kind of professional development a school district can offer.These things may very well be true--in fact, given the larger context in New Orleans and the problems any school has getting off the ground in its first year, I'd be shocked if they aren't. But to draw all this from the comments of one individual--who can really only speak for her experience and the individual school in which she works--is irresponsible.
I'm not trying to pick on Ghezzi here. Several of the posts on her blog provide interesting perspectives and/or thoughtful analysis. And I think it's important to bring the voices and experiences of individual educators into the public debate--as what they are. But this post illustrates a common and, to me, very troubling, phenomenon in education coverage.
It's simply incredibly common to read a news article about charter schools, or NCLB, or a host of other educational topics, in which someone quoted--either directly or indirectly--says something that is inaccurate, misleading, just plain wrong, or something that their personal experiences and knowledge really don't give them the authority to say. But no information is offered to prevent the reader from thinking it's the absolute truth. The attitude seems to be "if someone said it, and it's attributed to them, then it's ok to write it, and it's not the reporter's job to figure out or explain what the reality actually is." To be fair, this isn't a trend restricted to education coverage; it's an approach that's come to dominate coverage of political and policy debates to, I think the detriment of both. (If you're interested, this Jonathan Chait piece is well worth reading.)
In a related note, John and Patti are both upset that Ms. Spreter doesn't have health or retirement benefits. I'll be the first to acknowledge that, in our screwed up healthcare and social insurance system, that's an incredibly crappy position to be in. But it's important to note that Ms. Spreter is NOT in this position simply because she works in a charter school. In fact, Louisiana law requires charter schools to participate in the state retirement system. But, as Ghezzi notes, Ms. Spreter is not a full-time employee of the school. It's possible the school deliberately avoided making Spreter's job a full-time position because it didn't want to pay benefits--something a lot of private businesses do all the time--and I would also find that wrong. But it's equally possible current enrollment didn't justify a full-time physical science teacher. The point is it's impossible to judge based on the information Ghezzi presents.
Curdled Cheese
Last week the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ran an article about our recent report, Hot Air, which analyzed state performance reporting under NCLB and suggests that a lot of states are gaming the system by using their standard-setting flexibility to inflate the performance of their students, schools, and districts, with Wisconsin one of the worst offenders. The state Deputy Superintendant of schools objected, saying:
Technically he's right; the intent of NCLB wasn't to rank states on gaming NCLB. That was the intent of our report. It's great that he thinks every district in the state has made a good faith effort, but that's also beside the point--the report didn't address district compliance, it said that the state department of education, where he works, wasn't acting in good faith.
And while the department may believe it did "everything it could" to help close the achievement gap, let me add one thing it may have forgotten: identifying school districts with achievement gaps. Last year Wisconsin identified one (1) district out of 426 as not making adequate yearly progress under NCLB.
I also received this email from an irate Wisconsin librarian:
I've spent some time working on education issues in Wisconsin over the last couple of years and this is rock-solid conventional wisdom up there--everything's great, we're the best, leave us alone. But ACT scores are a bad measure because the percent of students taking them varies hugely from state to state. Here's where Wisconsin ranks on the most recent NAEP tests (based on the average scale score):
Reading 2005:
4th Grade: 20th (tied with four other states)
8th Grade: 17th (tied with one other state)
Math 2005:
4th Grade: 15th (tied with four other states)
8th Grade: 7th (tied with two other states)
In other words, Wisconsin is above average, but it by no means has the best test scores in the country. Moreover, when we turn to low-income students, it looks worse. Here are the rankings for students who are eligible for free and reduced price lunch:
Reading 2005:
4th Grade: 30th (tied with one other state)
8th Grade: 26th
Math 2005:
4th Grade: 27th (tied with five other states)
8th Grade: 26th (tied with one other states
Mediocre at best.
"The intent of the law wasn't to rank states on gaming the system. The intent of the law was to have no child left behind, and I believe absolutely it has brought a significant focus on that issue." He said the DPI[Department of Public Instruction] was committed to doing everything it could to close the gap in achievement between high performing and low performing schools and groups of students. He said everything Wisconsin has done has been approved by federal officials and "every district in the state has made a good faith effort to implement No Child Left Behind."
Technically he's right; the intent of NCLB wasn't to rank states on gaming NCLB. That was the intent of our report. It's great that he thinks every district in the state has made a good faith effort, but that's also beside the point--the report didn't address district compliance, it said that the state department of education, where he works, wasn't acting in good faith.
And while the department may believe it did "everything it could" to help close the achievement gap, let me add one thing it may have forgotten: identifying school districts with achievement gaps. Last year Wisconsin identified one (1) district out of 426 as not making adequate yearly progress under NCLB.
I also received this email from an irate Wisconsin librarian:
Regarding your opinion that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction manipulates the "No Child Left Behind" mandates to side-step the law -- ludicrous. Wisconsin is a modern-day Utopia with high academic standards and success. Wisconsin high school students have had the highest ACT scores in the nation for years. Do you really think our education system is that flawed if our students are that successful? Wisconsin and Minnesota have the best educational systems and teachers in the nation. The students that they serve are hindered by the "No Child Left Behind" mandates. If you were that concerned about the students in this nation, you would make sure that the students in the private schools were meeting educational standards - oops, there are none!
I've spent some time working on education issues in Wisconsin over the last couple of years and this is rock-solid conventional wisdom up there--everything's great, we're the best, leave us alone. But ACT scores are a bad measure because the percent of students taking them varies hugely from state to state. Here's where Wisconsin ranks on the most recent NAEP tests (based on the average scale score):
Reading 2005:
4th Grade: 20th (tied with four other states)
8th Grade: 17th (tied with one other state)
Math 2005:
4th Grade: 15th (tied with four other states)
8th Grade: 7th (tied with two other states)
In other words, Wisconsin is above average, but it by no means has the best test scores in the country. Moreover, when we turn to low-income students, it looks worse. Here are the rankings for students who are eligible for free and reduced price lunch:
Reading 2005:
4th Grade: 30th (tied with one other state)
8th Grade: 26th
Math 2005:
4th Grade: 27th (tied with five other states)
8th Grade: 26th (tied with one other states
Mediocre at best.
Are White Students Dragging Down Our International Standing?
Last week the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the 2006 Condition of Education, a congressionally mandated annual report of trends in American education. This year’s special analysis compared U.S. student performance to our global counterparts on a series of recent international assessments in reading, mathematics, and science. The study shows that while 4th and 8th graders perform relatively well, American high schoolers fail to keep up with their international peers. Though the international comparisons rely primarily on assessments administered to 15-year-olds, national assessments administered to 12th graders (17-18 year-olds) reveal a similar pattern of poor performance on average.
Interestingly, the demographics of America’s high school population who are failing to achieve might not be what one would expect.
As the immigration debate rages on, many are quick to cite the growing number of Hispanic immigrants as contributing to our nation’s poor academic performance. Yet Hispanics are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States to drop out of high school, with a dropout rate of 25%* compared to slightly over 10% of Blacks and less than 10% of Whites. Furthermore, the dropout rate for Hispanics born outside the United States is 38%, more than double the drop out rate of 15% for second-generation Hispanics. If Hispanics and Blacks are more likely to drop out of high school than Whites, one would expect that high schools are “more white” than are elementary or middle schools.
While scholars debate whether or not these dropout statistics are accurate, most agree that the gap in dropout rates for whites versus minority students is real, and some argue that dropout rates may be even higher than the census data suggest.
According to a recent Charts You Can Trust posting by my colleague, Kevin Carey, Hispanics make up 54% of immigrants coming to the United States (as of 2000). Thus given their high dropout rate, foreign-born Hispanic high school youth seem to be disproportionately missing from this NCES report of high school student performance. The implication is that more diverse elementary and middle schools are performing better on national and international assessments than are our more homogenous high schools.
NCES projects that public school enrollment will increase by 2.5 million students over the next 10 years, largely due to immigration and an increase in the number of children born to immigrants. Yet if our public high schools are struggling to educate an unrepresentative, whiter-than-average student body, how will they cope with these changing demographics?
-Posted by Margaret Price
* The status dropout rate indicates the percentage of 16-through 24-year-olds who are not enrolled in high school and who lack a high school credential relative to all 16-through 24-year-olds. High school credential includes a high school diploma or equivalent credential such as a General Educational Development (GED) certificate.
Interestingly, the demographics of America’s high school population who are failing to achieve might not be what one would expect.
As the immigration debate rages on, many are quick to cite the growing number of Hispanic immigrants as contributing to our nation’s poor academic performance. Yet Hispanics are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States to drop out of high school, with a dropout rate of 25%* compared to slightly over 10% of Blacks and less than 10% of Whites. Furthermore, the dropout rate for Hispanics born outside the United States is 38%, more than double the drop out rate of 15% for second-generation Hispanics. If Hispanics and Blacks are more likely to drop out of high school than Whites, one would expect that high schools are “more white” than are elementary or middle schools.
While scholars debate whether or not these dropout statistics are accurate, most agree that the gap in dropout rates for whites versus minority students is real, and some argue that dropout rates may be even higher than the census data suggest.
According to a recent Charts You Can Trust posting by my colleague, Kevin Carey, Hispanics make up 54% of immigrants coming to the United States (as of 2000). Thus given their high dropout rate, foreign-born Hispanic high school youth seem to be disproportionately missing from this NCES report of high school student performance. The implication is that more diverse elementary and middle schools are performing better on national and international assessments than are our more homogenous high schools.
NCES projects that public school enrollment will increase by 2.5 million students over the next 10 years, largely due to immigration and an increase in the number of children born to immigrants. Yet if our public high schools are struggling to educate an unrepresentative, whiter-than-average student body, how will they cope with these changing demographics?
-Posted by Margaret Price
* The status dropout rate indicates the percentage of 16-through 24-year-olds who are not enrolled in high school and who lack a high school credential relative to all 16-through 24-year-olds. High school credential includes a high school diploma or equivalent credential such as a General Educational Development (GED) certificate.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Prop 82 in Trouble?
With the California primary this coming Tuesday, a new Field poll has 46 percent of likely voters saying "no" on the proposed "Preschool for All" referrendum, with 41 percent saying "yes." Thirteen percent say they remain undecided. This is down from over 50 percent support in the last Field poll in April, and the first time Prop 82 has trailed in the polls.
Friday, June 02, 2006
Debating Universal vs. Targeted Preschool: Part II
This week, researchers Steven Barnett and Bruce Fuller have been debating the merits of universal versus targeted preschool on the Education Sector website. Yesterday, I explained why I find Steven Barnett's case for universal preschool compelling--but also why I still have some questions. Today I'll explain my reaction to Fuller's arguments for targeting investments.
I should start out by noting that I'm inclined to be sympathetic to Fuller's arguments here. In general, I tend to believe new public spending on education should be targeted to the most needy youngsters. But I'm perplexed by Fuller's assertion that advocates for universal preschool believe "that pre-K should become just another grade level in the public schools" or that "early development is about getting three and four year-olds ready for standardized testing." Fuller seems to think universal preschool advocates want to create a standardized, one-size-fits-all program of school-like environments for preschoolers that ignore critical aspects of children's social and emotional development in favor of test prep.
I'm at a loss to understand where Fuller gets this idea. I've spent a decent amount of time around universal preschool people and read a lot of what they produce, and I've never gotten the sense these were their beliefs or objectives. Preschool people tend to emphasize that preschools should not look like elementary schools or even kindergartens. The work and resources produced by advocacy organizations such as Pre-K Now and Barnett's own research group NIEER emphasize the importance of children's social and emotional development in preschool. Many states have made community-based and other non-school providers a key part of their preschool systems.
If I thought universal preschool was part of some plot to standardize early childhood and eliminate diverse, comunity-based providers, I'd probably oppose it, too. I do have concerns about how Prop. 82 would govern preschool in California, and whether or not it would be equitable to community-based and private providers (and the families that prefer them). But these are policy and program design questions--not issues inherent in the idea of universal preschool.
One of the reasons I do find the idea of universal preschool appealing is the opportunity it would provide to build a new kind of educational system outside of the existing one. I certainly don't think that publicly-funded preschool should look like just another, earlier, year of the existing public schools. But I think that practical realities and the desires of parents will ensure that it can't in most places. What's exciting to me about the preschool movement is the opportunity it creates to build a new early education system in many places: A system that incorporates diverse providers, a system that uses new governance and accountability models to oversee these providers and hold them accountable in ways that are more holistic and developmentally appropriate than plain old pencil-and-paper-standardized tests (because you CAN'T use those with kids this little). I think a system like this would look a lot like the kind of educational system I'd like to see available to older kids, as well, and making such a system parents' first encounter with publicly-funded education would help put pressure on the existing K-12 system to change. Now, creating a system like that is hard, and a lot of places aren't going to do it with the limited resources and ad hoc nature of their preschool programs, but I still think it's an interesting prospect.
Fuller makes a lot of other worthwhile points in his piece: Some of the evidence on preschool has been overhyped; just like in K-12 teaching, we don't know as much as we'd like to think about the characteristics that make preschool teachers effective; and community providers are a critical piece of the early childhood infrastructure that need to be maintained and integrated into any publicly-funded system. His piece is well worth reading.
So, where did I come down after this debate? I'm positive but still ambivalent about the idea of universal preschool, because I think it needs to be weighed against alternative, more-targeted investments. I also wonder if there's not a smart design way to achieve some of the benefits Barnett argues come from universal preschool while keeping some of the cost burden on more affluent parents, rather than the public. And I do think the design and policy details of specific programs and proposals matter a lot.
I should start out by noting that I'm inclined to be sympathetic to Fuller's arguments here. In general, I tend to believe new public spending on education should be targeted to the most needy youngsters. But I'm perplexed by Fuller's assertion that advocates for universal preschool believe "that pre-K should become just another grade level in the public schools" or that "early development is about getting three and four year-olds ready for standardized testing." Fuller seems to think universal preschool advocates want to create a standardized, one-size-fits-all program of school-like environments for preschoolers that ignore critical aspects of children's social and emotional development in favor of test prep.
I'm at a loss to understand where Fuller gets this idea. I've spent a decent amount of time around universal preschool people and read a lot of what they produce, and I've never gotten the sense these were their beliefs or objectives. Preschool people tend to emphasize that preschools should not look like elementary schools or even kindergartens. The work and resources produced by advocacy organizations such as Pre-K Now and Barnett's own research group NIEER emphasize the importance of children's social and emotional development in preschool. Many states have made community-based and other non-school providers a key part of their preschool systems.
If I thought universal preschool was part of some plot to standardize early childhood and eliminate diverse, comunity-based providers, I'd probably oppose it, too. I do have concerns about how Prop. 82 would govern preschool in California, and whether or not it would be equitable to community-based and private providers (and the families that prefer them). But these are policy and program design questions--not issues inherent in the idea of universal preschool.
One of the reasons I do find the idea of universal preschool appealing is the opportunity it would provide to build a new kind of educational system outside of the existing one. I certainly don't think that publicly-funded preschool should look like just another, earlier, year of the existing public schools. But I think that practical realities and the desires of parents will ensure that it can't in most places. What's exciting to me about the preschool movement is the opportunity it creates to build a new early education system in many places: A system that incorporates diverse providers, a system that uses new governance and accountability models to oversee these providers and hold them accountable in ways that are more holistic and developmentally appropriate than plain old pencil-and-paper-standardized tests (because you CAN'T use those with kids this little). I think a system like this would look a lot like the kind of educational system I'd like to see available to older kids, as well, and making such a system parents' first encounter with publicly-funded education would help put pressure on the existing K-12 system to change. Now, creating a system like that is hard, and a lot of places aren't going to do it with the limited resources and ad hoc nature of their preschool programs, but I still think it's an interesting prospect.
Fuller makes a lot of other worthwhile points in his piece: Some of the evidence on preschool has been overhyped; just like in K-12 teaching, we don't know as much as we'd like to think about the characteristics that make preschool teachers effective; and community providers are a critical piece of the early childhood infrastructure that need to be maintained and integrated into any publicly-funded system. His piece is well worth reading.
So, where did I come down after this debate? I'm positive but still ambivalent about the idea of universal preschool, because I think it needs to be weighed against alternative, more-targeted investments. I also wonder if there's not a smart design way to achieve some of the benefits Barnett argues come from universal preschool while keeping some of the cost burden on more affluent parents, rather than the public. And I do think the design and policy details of specific programs and proposals matter a lot.
The Costs of Cost-Benefit Analysis
Reason Foundation takes on RAND Corporation over cost-benefit calculations for California's Prop. 82 universal preschool proposal. RAND found Californians would reap benefits of about $2.62 for every $1 spent on universal preschool; Reason critiques their analysis and says the state would actually lose money on its investment. I'm not an expert on cost-benefit analysis, so I'll leave that to others to sort out.
The Reason report is worth a look, if only for the hilarious graphic (on page 18) of a sweating little boy pouring buckets of greenbacks down the gullet of a big purple monster label "Prop 82." I do think, though, that the Reason authors misunderstand aspects of Prop. 82. For example, they keep referring to publicly-funded preschool under Prop. 82 as "government-run" preschools. But the referrendum is written to allow non-government providers--such as community-based providers and charter schools--to become part of the publicly-funded preschool system if they meet quality standards. Understanding this idea could clear up some of their mystification at certain assumptions in the RAND report.
More seriously, I do wonder sometimes if the preschool movement doesn't put entirely too much stock in cost-benefit analyses. Sober assessments of costs and benefits do have an important role in policymaking, and they can be useful advocacy tools, but, contrary to what we learned in school (apologies, Professor Walter), they aren't the only, or even necessarily the main, factor driving policy decisions. The RAND report's looking at returns to preschool investments throughout children's lives--60 years down the road! That's a much longer timeline than it's easy for most elected officials to think in terms of. And, because the set of assumptions analysts choose can have dramatic effects on the costs and benefits they arrive at, these estimates can seem wierdly fragile and subject to challenge by those who employ alternative assumptions.
Further, just because society eventually reaps returns on preschool investments doesn't make it any easier to find the funds governments need to spend to establish preschool programs NOW. Many of the benefits prominent cost-benefit analyses of preschool capture accrue to private citizens or other parts of government (such as the criminal justice system), so it's not really accurate to say these investments will pay for themselves down the road--that's just not how budgets work.
That's not to deny the significance of the preschool cost-benefit analyses or the value of the work done by researchers in this field. But I do think it would behoove the preschool movement to make sure its case doesn't rest too heavily on these cost-benefit calculations. Other aspects of the case for preschool must also be fully developed.
The Reason report is worth a look, if only for the hilarious graphic (on page 18) of a sweating little boy pouring buckets of greenbacks down the gullet of a big purple monster label "Prop 82." I do think, though, that the Reason authors misunderstand aspects of Prop. 82. For example, they keep referring to publicly-funded preschool under Prop. 82 as "government-run" preschools. But the referrendum is written to allow non-government providers--such as community-based providers and charter schools--to become part of the publicly-funded preschool system if they meet quality standards. Understanding this idea could clear up some of their mystification at certain assumptions in the RAND report.
More seriously, I do wonder sometimes if the preschool movement doesn't put entirely too much stock in cost-benefit analyses. Sober assessments of costs and benefits do have an important role in policymaking, and they can be useful advocacy tools, but, contrary to what we learned in school (apologies, Professor Walter), they aren't the only, or even necessarily the main, factor driving policy decisions. The RAND report's looking at returns to preschool investments throughout children's lives--60 years down the road! That's a much longer timeline than it's easy for most elected officials to think in terms of. And, because the set of assumptions analysts choose can have dramatic effects on the costs and benefits they arrive at, these estimates can seem wierdly fragile and subject to challenge by those who employ alternative assumptions.
Further, just because society eventually reaps returns on preschool investments doesn't make it any easier to find the funds governments need to spend to establish preschool programs NOW. Many of the benefits prominent cost-benefit analyses of preschool capture accrue to private citizens or other parts of government (such as the criminal justice system), so it's not really accurate to say these investments will pay for themselves down the road--that's just not how budgets work.
That's not to deny the significance of the preschool cost-benefit analyses or the value of the work done by researchers in this field. But I do think it would behoove the preschool movement to make sure its case doesn't rest too heavily on these cost-benefit calculations. Other aspects of the case for preschool must also be fully developed.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
NCLB Causes Head Lice
I'm not even kidding. The article($) is in today's Wall Street Journal:
This is the first NCLB critique I've seen that's both nit-picking and about nit-picking at the same time.
Seriously, there's a certain not-grown-up quality to stories like this. The Washington Post ran basically the same article this morning, except the focus there was how NCLB is causing schools to get rid of recess. It's only a matter of time before the New York Times goes above the fold with an expose of how schools are supposedly abolishing restrooms, school lunches, and the Pledge of Allegiance to free up class time for test prep.
NCLB holds schools accountable for the most important things--reading, math, coming to school. Inevitably, that means conflicts and tradeoffs with other important things--social studies, recess, personal hygiene. That's worth noting, and worrying about. But that's also life--conflicting priorities, difficult tradeoffs, limited resources.
Too much of the reaction to these conflicts is along the lines of "Therefore, NCLB is bad idea." As opposed to "Let's work hard to reconcile these competing but important priorities and come to the best solution for students."
Education-reform mandates like the No Child Left Behind law are putting a contentious new spin on a classroom issue that makes parents' skin crawl: head lice. Schools used to take a hard line on the sesame-seed-sized parasites, which suck human blood and glue their eggs to individual hairs. At the first sign of an outbreak, pupils got scalp checks. Those with lice were immediately banished from the classroom until all lice and eggs -- known as nits -- were gone.
But to the dismay of many parents, these "no nits" policies are disappearing as school districts face state and federal pressure to reduce absenteeism and boost academic achievement. No Child requires that 95% of students be present for mandatory achievement tests. It also allows states to use attendance to help determine whether school districts are making adequate educational progress under the federal law. Those that don't do so face sanctions that could include state takeovers of their schools.
This is the first NCLB critique I've seen that's both nit-picking and about nit-picking at the same time.
Seriously, there's a certain not-grown-up quality to stories like this. The Washington Post ran basically the same article this morning, except the focus there was how NCLB is causing schools to get rid of recess. It's only a matter of time before the New York Times goes above the fold with an expose of how schools are supposedly abolishing restrooms, school lunches, and the Pledge of Allegiance to free up class time for test prep.
NCLB holds schools accountable for the most important things--reading, math, coming to school. Inevitably, that means conflicts and tradeoffs with other important things--social studies, recess, personal hygiene. That's worth noting, and worrying about. But that's also life--conflicting priorities, difficult tradeoffs, limited resources.
Too much of the reaction to these conflicts is along the lines of "Therefore, NCLB is bad idea." As opposed to "Let's work hard to reconcile these competing but important priorities and come to the best solution for students."
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