Separate by Sex

Well it looks like Michigan will soon be set to try out single-sex public education. There are some important caveats, that entrance to classes be voluntary and that a school that offers single-sex classes must provide "substantially equal" co-ed classes.

In its best light, it seems that parents and students will have choices. Who's against choice? If you think your kid will do better in an all-boy environment, you ought to have that as a publicly-funded choice. And if you think your kid will do better in an all white environment, well you ought to have that as a choice too….Well, wait a minute. Starting to get uncomfortable now.

My problem with publicly funded single-sex schools is two-fold. First, there's no real evidence that it's better and second, we are racing forward with no attention to the past.

Regarding evidence, I thought we were focused on rigor and empiricism. The U.S. Department of Education research on single-sex education calls its own results "equivocal" and concludes that:

"There is some support for the premise that single-sex schooling can be helpful, especially for certain outcomes related to academic achievement and more positive academic aspirations. For many outcomes, there is no evidence of either benefit or harm. There is limited support for the view that single-sex schooling may be harmful or that coeducational schooling is more beneficial for students."

Translated, we don't know much, and taken with a grain of salt, we do not expect that any children will be harmed by single-sex education and we think that maybe they might like it. But then again maybe not. Hard to say.

A recent study in the UK revealed similar findings- no discernable educational benefit from single-sex schooling. Important to note that the UK is experiencing a reverse trend in single-sex schooling (30 years ago the UK had 2,500 single-sex schools and now has only about 400 remaining).

In sum, there are no major rigorous research studies that find single-sex works better. Still, we're plowing ahead and a lot of people are pushing hard for this, including parents who understandably are desperate for better education for their children. My concern about our attention to history is quite simple: "separate but equal" means something in this country for a reason. If single-sex public schools feel uncomfortably familiar maybe it's because we're recalling that we used to segregate by sex and race and decided against that path for very good reasons. I'm not against alternatives to traditional public schools. I'm against quick fixes that ignore what we do know and rely on what we don't.

Voucher Madness

The most important thing to know about the new $100 million voucher proposal trotted out by Republicans in the House and Senate earlier this week is that it fails the accountability litmus test.

If you're willing to propose a voucher plan that requires private schools accepting voucher students to be held accountable for their success in educating those students, using the same tests and same proficiency standards used to judge public schools, then as far as I'm concerned you deserve a seat at the table for a serious conversation about funding, choice, and how to help students trapped in chronically under-performing schools. I might not agree with all of the specifics of your approach, but we can talk--particularly if you might be so bold as to make part of that funding contingent on performance.

If you're not willing to tie funding to accountability, then you're just grandstanding, trotting out the education equivalent of constitutional amendments to ban flag-burning or discriminate against gay people. That's all this recent proposal really is.

Tortured Logic from Teachers Unions, Cont'd.

The National Education Association has been circulating some talking points trying to refute findings in the paper Education Sector released last week describing how the NEA has been giving money to a wide range of organizations, not always in a transparent manner, in its fight against NCLB. (See the comments section here). Some are absurd on their face ("Myth 1: The NEA opposes the No Child Left Behind Act), others adhere to the time-honored strategy of "refuting" allegations the report doesn't actually make.

But one point is worth discussing at more length, because it sheds some light on the logic and psychology governing the way teachers unions engage with those who disagree with them. It says:

MYTH 7: Education Sector is an independent think tank.

FACT: Contrary to its claims, it is not an independent think tank. One of Education Sector’s founders and a co-director is Andrew Rotherham. Formerly with the Progressive Policy Institute at the Democratic Leadership Council, Rotherham regularly wrote pieces highly critical of NEA. The other cofounder and co-director, Thomas Toch, has also written many pieces critical of NEA and teachers unions. Education Sector’s board of directors also lacks the representation of teachers or other public school employees.

Last week the AFT blog made the unfortunately familiar assertion that people who disagree with teachers union positions on public policy issues are, by definition, anti-union.

This goes a step further down the rabbit hole. It seems to say that an organization staffed by people who have been critical of teachers unions are, by definition, not independent. Since the NEA's positions are apparently infallible, any disagreement with them is, ipso facto, a sign of being compromised or unduly influenced.

What accounts for this mind-bending logic? I think the culprit is what I'll call "moral altitude sickness."

Teachers unions, by their nature, have extremely strong moral standing. First, by being a labor union, and thus being on the right side of history when it comes to the struggle for worker's rights. Second, by being supporters of public education, and thus strong advocates for one of society's most important and egalitarian institutions.

To be clear, I don't dispute that status. But the rarified air on that moral high ground appears to be pretty oxygen-poor, leading to bizzare flights of logic like the one shown above. The downside of being above everyone else is that there's nobody else to talk to, nobody to let you know that you're steadily cutting yourself out of the mainstream discourse. Everyone else starts to seem smaller, lower, and far away. Eventually you stop listening, and nobody can hear what you have to say.

Ritalin Madness

Sunday's much-discussed NYT front-page story on kids taking their ADHD/depression drugs to summer camp really bothered me, in particular the graphic accompanying the story. The graphic appears to indicate that 40 percent of kids at camp this summer are taking prescription drugs and, given the article's almost exclusive focus on drugs for ADHD, depression, and psychiatric disorders, this understandably freaks people out.

But there are some problems here. For starters, the graphic NYT used to show that 40 percent of campers take prescription drugs came not from a rigorous research study but from data supplied by a company called CampMeds that distributes prepakaged medication to summer camps. Leave aside for a second the obvious interest CampMeds has in overhyping the number of kids taking drugs. Its data is based on the limited sample of 100 camps it serves (the American Camp Association has over 6,700 members and accredits some 2,300 summer camps nationwide), and it's quite likely the camps that find it worth their $$ to hire CampMeds have a disproportionate number of kids taking prescription medication.

Further, the data provided by CampMeds and the NYT graphic don't match with public data available from other, more rigorous sources. For example, NYT's graph has 8 percent of kids at camp taking ADHD meds. But a study from the Centers for Disease Control found just under 8 percent of kids ages 4-17 had ever had ADHD diagnosed, and only 4.3 percent of kids were currently taking meds for it.

And then there's the fact that the chart itself doesn't match with the angle of the article, which starts with this humdinger:

The breakfast buffet at Camp Echo starts at a picnic table covered in gingham-patterned oil cloth. Here, children jostle for their morning medications: Zoloft for depression, Abilify for bipolar disorder, Guanfacine for twitchy eyes and a host of medications for attention deficit disorder.

Funny how not a single asthma or allergy drug is mentioned, despite it being far more common for kids to take drugs for these conditions than for depression or ADHD. But I've given up expecting problems that disproportionately affect poor and minority kids to make the front page of the NYT. That just doesn't sell papers like the "they're drugging the [white, affluent] kids" hysteria does.

It's not that I think we should be handing out meds like candy. When the numbers of kids taking psychiatric drugs have increased dramatically and we now have more kids diagnosed with ADHD than asthma (despite rapid growth of both), I think we should wonder what the heck is going on. I'm particularly concerned if, as the NYT article suggests (I'm taking the whole thing with a grain of salt), a lot of kids are getting prescribed these meds from their family doctor or general pediatrician, rather than a psychiatrist. Some of these drugs can have serious side-effects and/or haven't been tested in children. People taking them need good medical supervision by a psychiatrist who can adjust dosages, address side-effects, monitor for signs of trouble, etc. Of course, psychiatrists are damn expensive, and most insurance companies (if you've even got health insurance) are very reluctant to pay for mental health care, to say the least--all factors that work against kids or adults getting good care for these conditions. I'm also a bit concerned the "overmedication" hype may make some parents hesitant to get their kids treatment they need--with potentially tragic results in some cases.

It also bothers me that media, policymakers, and educators are paying so much more attention to the "overmedication" issue than the at least as, if not more, serious problem of kids who aren't getting enough maintenance medication and other treatment for their asthma. Asthma is the third leading cause of hospitalization for kids under 15, it accounts for 14 million days of missed school annually, and the number of kids dying from asthma has trippled since 1979. Many of these negative consequences could be avoided with proper preventative health care and maintenance education and medication for kids with asthma, but since poor and minority kids are both disproportionately diagnosed with asthma and less likely to have access to good health care, a lot of them don't get the preventative treatment they need. There are some interesting things going on around the country to build awareness and help address this problem, but it's still a big one, both for schools and for health care policy. It's also the kind of issue I'd love to see a front page Times story about--but I'm not holding my breath.

The Boys and Girls Debate Rages On

You may have read Christina Hoff Sommers' Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing my paper questioning the "boy crisis" in America's schools. A letter-to-the-editor I wrote ($-sorry) responding to some misinformation in Sommers' piece ran in last Thursday's WSJ.

A number of people who don't like my take on the boy crisis issue have made arguments something along the lines of "So if you don't think the boy-girl achievement gap matters because both genders are increasing but girls are increasing faster, does that mean you don't think the male-female wage gap matters?"

I think this is a silly argument for multiple reasons, most significantly that it's completely divorced from what's really happening with male-female wage gaps, which have been declining recently, but because of falling average male wages, rather than increasing wages for women. Women's groups have, rightly, not been celebrating this kind of gap narrowing, which is a win neither for men nor women. Gaps are important--but this situation illustrates the problems with looking at them alone, rather than looking at how the achievement of both groups between whom a gap exists have changed over time, too.

This argument also seems to undercut itself--if men still earn more than women, why should we be that upset about gender achievement gaps? Remember, gaps favoring girls in reading are longstanding. Men currently in the workforce did worse than the women they currently outearn on school reading tests by pretty close to the same margin as today's boys do worse than today's girls in reading. And even the supposedly aimless young men right out of college are earning more, controlling for field, than their female peers. Until we have much clearer evidence that these gaps produce negative results for men and society (which we do for specific subgroups, such as low-income and African-American men, but not for men overall), I'm just not going to panic.

Change in D.C.?

Because of D.C.'s unique situation--it's neither a state nor part of any other state--many D.C. agencies carry out both state and local functions. The D.C. Board of Education, for example, fills the role of local school district for Washington, D.C., residents, but it is also responsible for functions carried out by state departments of education in most states (such as designing and managing the accountability system and administering certain federal grants). This is problematic for two reasons: First, there are instances when the responsibilities of local school district and state department of ed conflict, such as dealing with charter schools or sanctions for low-performing DCPS schools. Moreover, the D.C. Board of Ed. hasn't exactly proven itself competent at carrying out either set of its responsibilities.

WaPo reports that the Senate Appropriations Committee is trying to address these issues with a provision in the D.C. Approps bill that would require the D.C. Board of Education to shift some of its state-level functions to another (new or existing) agency. (Full text here, about 2/5 of the way down.)

Normally, this is the kind of thing that would set off a home rule controversy, but at least some Board and Council members quoted by the Post appear amenable to the idea. Clearly, the Board of Education and its governance and oversight of D.C. schools have their problems. Shifting state-level functions to another entity may help a little (although there are also potential problems), but it doesn't address the fundamental issues in D.C. schools.

I'm interested to see what implications this might have for the Board of Education's future as a charter authorizer in the District (Could the entity that takes over state functions also assume the Board of Ed's chartering authority?). And, while I doubt this issue would have much impact on the mayor's race, it's interesting that the Post floats the mayor-controlled State Education Office (run by the excellent Deborah Gist) as a candidate to take over the state-level role. I'm also linking to Nathan at DC edblog, even though he hasn't posted on this yet, because I assume he will at some point and his opinions and analysis on D.C.-related education issues are valuable.

Also of note in the Senate committee version of D.C. approps: The bill would fund the D.C. resident tuition support program (which allows kids graduating from D.C. schools to attend universities in other states at in-state tuition rates) at current funding, maintain the current cap on attorneys' fees for special ed, and allow students currently receiving vouchers under the federally-funded D.C. voucher program to continue to receive vouchers if their family incomes rise to up to 300% of poverty (currently students are out once their parents earn more than 200% of poverty).

If They Can't Get Into College...

This morning NPR ran a story about military recruitment of high school students. According to the story, the National Guard landed a Black Hawk helicopter on the football field of Audubon High School in Audubon, N.J., and then transported a group of teachers to Fort Dix where they were told all about the benefits and risks of serving in the Guard. I don't know how many of these stories I've heard over the past year or so, but it's been a lot. A lot of talk about declining numbers of military recruits and a lot of debate over military recruitment in schools, particularly those launched on school and college campuses (and apparently football fields).

Some of the concern has been focused on the NCLB provision, Section 9528, that requires school districts to provide military recruiters with personal student information. Other concern, more recently, has been over the Supreme Court's unanimous decision affirming the military's right to recruit on college campuses.

With regard to NCLB, there is an "opt out" provision through FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), which allows parents and students to request that personal information not be released (students, even under 18, can make requests too).

But still, the Defense Department has managed to develop a database of millions of 16-25 year old students to help identify potential recruits. As part of DoD's Joint Advertising, Marketing Research and Studies (JAMRS), the project collects personal information on high school and college students. According to a DoD Federal Register notice, they are collecting everything but your kid's blood type. Also good to know that the DoD is paying a nice dime to Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU), a market-research firm aimed exclusively at understanding the teen market. So they know your kid, even if you do remember to fill out that "opt out" form and turn it in to the school.

So one might argue that military enrollment is down, market research is a legit business practice, we're at war, young people should serve their country, etc. But let's be clear. The military is in direct competition with other options that young people are now more likely to choose. High school graduates are headed to college in record numbers. College students are graduating, finding jobs, or joining AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps. They are not joining the military.

The DoD knows this (see this and the many other research studies conducted by the National Academies, funded by the U.S. Marine Corps). One of the main conclusions of the 2004 study was that "The dramatic increase in college enrollment is arguably the single most significant factor affecting the environment in which military recruiting takes place." In other words, we need to do something about all those kids running off to college if we want to run an army.

Apparently, another recruitment strategy is to get mothers on board. The National Academies' research identifies mothers as "an extraordinarily important influencer in the aspirations of youth, especially for higher education" and recommends that military recruitment would be improved by increasing and targeting recruitment for parents "with particular attention to mothers". Basically, now that we're better educated (more mothers have college degrees than ever before), our kids are going to try to do the same thing (free fodder for some- if those women would just quit it with the whole "higher ed attainment" thing, we'd have all the military recruits we need).

So what's a DoD to do?

Enter new radio and TV ads aimed mostly at young men (add some rock songs too), add a few targeted campaigns to convince mom that her kid should "accelerate [his/her] life" and sprinkle in the occasional Black Hawk helicopter-on-football field stunt to get the principals and teachers engaged, and you may win the battle (if not the war).

Bogus Allegations of Anti-Unionism

Normally I leave disagreeing with "AFTie John" in the capable hands of Eduwonk. But today's post criticizing our new report, "Echo Chamber: The National Education Association's Campaign Against NCLB" deserves comment.

John calls the report part of Education Sector's "stealth anti-union campaign." First, what's "stealth" about the report? It's an Education Sector report. It says so right on the cover. "Stealth" is when you give other people money to say what you want said, but don't bother to make that relationship plain. That's what the NEA has done, as the report documents clearly.

Much more serious is the characterization of Eduation Sector's work on collective bargaining issues as "anti-union." I won't speak for Joe Williams, who wrote the report, or anyone else at Education Sector, but my personal politics are very pro-union. I think people have an inherent right to organize and bargain collectively, including teachers. I think the creation and protection of labor rights stands as one of the great social and political achievements of the 20th century. I think teachers unions do a lot of good, advocating on behalf of public education in the face of those who would rather use much of the money that currently goes to public schools to finance tax cuts for big corporations and rich people. Teachers unions' political influence--in addition to being their inherent right in a democratic system--also does a lot of good. I used to work in state politics and I personally know a number of great candidates and public servants whose political viability absolutely depended on the organizational and financial support of teachers unions.

But supporting unions generally doesn't preclude me or anyone else from disagreeing with specific choices that unions make. And I don't think all the decisions unions have made in recent years are wise, politically or as a matter of policy. That doesn't make me or an organization that voices similar ideas anti-union, just anti-bad decisions. It's like saying the NEA is "anti-Congress" because they've criticized NCLB, or that a local chapter is "anti-school boards" because of disputes at the bargaining table. To characterize every criticism as existential--to imply that you're either with unions in all things or against them in principle--is dishonest. If you're going to stand up and make your voice heard, you have to expect that people won't always agree with what you have to say, even if they support both you and your right to say it.

State Budget Heyday Getting Closer

The New York Times reported today that an unexpectedly steep rise in federal tax revenues is driving down projected future budget deficits. If this trend continues, it will have real implications for education funding, because the same economic phenonmena will drive up state tax revenues, particularly in states with federal-style progressive income taxes. States don't update their revenue forecasts as often as the federal government, so you won't be reading about this in the newspaper for a while. But as federal revenues go, state revenues will follow.

Some foresightful commentators predicted many months ago that this would happen, and urged education advocates to re-orient their thinking away from the scarcity mentality that has dominated state budgets for the last five years and prepare for the coming abundance of new money. It's not too late to take that advice--2007 will be the year when states are suddenly flush with unanticipated cash and politicians will be looking to use that money to buy voter approval. By 2008 and 2009, most of that money will be spent, and if history is any guide the end of the decade will put us closer to the end of the business cycle and revenues will drop once again. So make your plans and get ready; opportunities to to spearhead new, expensive education programs don't come along that often.

Limited English (and Spanish) Proficiency

The National Council of La Raza's Annual Conference starts tomorrow at the Los Angeles Convention Center. It kicks off with a morning speech from Bill Clinton and since it's in L.A., it's only fitting that conference-goers will also hear from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (for the Gadfly, that's veeya-RAI-gosa and c'mon, take a class).

The workshops are free and open to the public so they usually attract a pretty interesting crowd of people. If you're in L.A., drop in and check out the workshop on Sunday morning on ELL students in public schools. It should be a good one since the issue of how to educate ELL students (inaccurately perceived to be an entirely immigrant population) is only getting bigger. The ELL population is rising in nearly every state and most schools still don't know what to do to meet the NCLB requirements for these students. Even with added “flexibility” provisions, states are hard-pressed to develop decent assessments and to demonstrate improvement. With a serious shortage of teachers qualified to teach ELL students, pressure is mounting and there is a high demand for teacher training programs across the country.

What Private Colleges Don't Want You to Know

Let's say you're a long-established industry that enjoys enviable immunity from the rigors of the free market. Demand for your product is rock-solid, you don't pay corporate taxes, government subsidies pad your finances, you raise prices every year with relative impunity, and while your members compete with one another, barriers to entry are so high that no new competitors ever enter the market. The general public thinks highly of you, and you keep a tight lid on public information about your performance to make sure it stays that way.

Then someone comes along with a proposal that could potentially change some or even all of that, by creating new public information about how well you're actually serving your customers. How do you respond? Do you:

(A) Live up to your professed committment to the public interest by supporting the proposal, understanding that in the long run both your industry and its customers are best served by more honest information.

or

(B) Pay for a misleading public opinion poll in an attempt to kill the proposal before it ever sees the light of day.

If you're the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the answer is definitely (B).

For the past year or so, NAICU has been leading the charge against the creation of a new federal higher education data system. For many years, all colleges and universities have been required to submit annual data reports to the U.S. Department of Education, detailing information about enrollment, financial aid, degrees awarded, graduation rates, and other factors. The process is the higher education equivalent of requirements that publicly-traded companies file quarterly financial results with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Unfortunately, the current data reporting system, called IPEDS (Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System) is outdated and inefficient. Colleges and universities have to internally add up data about individual students into a series of separate, unconnected data reports. This greatly reduces the amount of information the reports can provide to the public. For example, while one survey shows the percent of students who graduate in six years, and another shows the percent of students who receive Pell grants, the two can't be linked to show the percent of Pell grant recipients who graduate in six years.

IPEDS recently proposed modernizing the system by consolidating the various reports into a single, streamlined process, whereby institutions would simply submit one report with all the neccessary information tied to data about individual students, called "unit records." That would allow for both new and more accurate measures (like the previously mentioned graduation rates for lower-income students, or giving institutions credit for students who start at one institution and transfer to graduate elsewhere). While the data would be transmitted and stored as unit records, public information about individual students would never be disclosed, protected by long-established federal privacy laws and secure data systems.

The associations of public universities largely supported the proposal because--well, because it's obviously a good idea, a modernized data submission process and more abundant, accurate information for the public.

NAICU, on the other hand, fought the proposal from day one. For them, increased transparency and greater public information apparently warrants opposition on general principle. Higher education lobbyists successfully convinced the House of Representatives to pass legislation banning the unit-record system earlier this year. But the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education recently released a draft report endorsing the unit-record system. Thus, the poll results released today.

The poll seems to indicate strong opposition to the system. But as is always the case when interpreting polls commissioned by parties with a vested interest in the results, it's crucial to examine the wording of the questions. The first question was:

The federal government has proposed a system where colleges and universities would be required to report individual student’s academic, financial aid, and enrollment information. This data would be linked to individual students through a unique identifier, and potentially to information from the student’s high school and elementary records. Would you support or oppose requiring colleges and universities to report individual student information to the federal government?

This question makes the intent of the survey clear, by (1) failing to mention that the information would be kept strictly confidential, and (2) asserting, appropos of nothing, that the information could "potentially" be linked to K-12 records, even though nothing in the proposal itself suggests anything of the sort.

The second question was:

Statement A: (Some/Other) people say that having more detailed information about college students would promote greater accountability for colleges and universities.

Statement B: (Some/Other) people say that enough data is already collected at the college and university level, and that reporting individual data is a breach of privacy that could result in abuses of people’s personal information.

Which statement do you agree with more?

Like question #1, question #2 is two is designed to elicit negative reactions to an unsupported, hypothetical problem. Release of almost any personal information of any kind "could" result in a breach of privacy and "could" result in some kind of abuse, the question is whether such an outcome is intended or likely in any way.

The third question was:

Statement A: (Some/other) people say that collecting data on individual students makes colleges and universities more transparent, so people can see if these institutions are being well-managed.

Statement B: (Some/other) people say that collecting individual student data is just costly and intrusive and does not address or solve any pressing public policy issue.

Which of these positions comes closest to your own position?

This question goes directly to the rhetorical bait-and-switch driving NAICU's opposition to the unit-record system. The proposed system was not designed as a way to monitor and study individual students. It's designed to monitor and study individual institutions. NAICU has cleverly conflated student privacy with institutional privacy.

Moreover, the idea that there are no "pressing public policy issues" addressed by the new information the system would provide is simply incorrect. There are many, most of which are documented convincingly in the Commission's draft report. They deal with the failure of many higher education institutions, including the members of NAICU, to provide students with the high-quality education they need. It is the unwillingness of those institutions to be held accountable for those failures that lies at the heart of their opposition to the unit record system.

In a press release accompanying the poll results, NAICU President David Warren said:

“It is ironic that we are considering such an assault on Americans’ privacy and security in the shadow of the Fourth of July, when we celebrate the American values of freedom and choice.”

The fact that NAICU would go so far as to frame this as a security issue, in this day and age, shows just how entrenched their opposition to transparency and accountability really is. If anyone on the the Commission needed convincing that they must take a strong stand on behalf of more transparency and public information for students and taxpayers, this misleading, self-serving poll surely provides all the evidence they need.

Weighted Student Funding: A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing?

Last week, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation released a lengthy new manifesto promoting the idea of “weighted student funding.” Endorsed by an ideologically diverse collection of education policy bigwigs (including my current and former employers), the report essentially combines some very important ideas about correcting resource inequities within school districts with a plan to pave the way for vouchers.

But left-leaning education advocates should nonetheless consider holding their fire. In endorsing the proposal, conservatives may inadvertently provide the most potent ammunition yet to those want to use lawsuits as a lever to raise taxes and increase funding for education.

In a nutshell, the report proposes that every student should be assigned a certain amount of money, which would vary--or be "weighted"--depending on their educational needs. That money should go to the school in which they choose to enroll.

This idea isn’t quite as novel as it’s made out to be, in that this is basically the way states fund their school finance systems today. Parents decide where to send their children to school by deciding where to live, and school districts receive money from the state based on how many students they enroll. Virtually all states weight those allocations already according to the same factors—disability status, economic disadvantage, etc.--mentioned in the report.

So the “weighting” is not the innovation here. The new twists are: (1) The money follows the students to the school, not the school district, and, (2) The school might not be a traditional public school.

The first piece, school-based funding, is a great idea. The papers catalogues a range of little-known and pernicious ways that certain schools in larger districts—usually disproportionately full of low-income, low-performing, and minority children—get the short end of the funding stick. Guaranteeing those schools a fair share of the funding designated for their students, and providing more money for harder-to-educate students, is an important and necessary challenge, and all the signees deserve credit for taking it on.

But it’s also not hard to see how well this fits into the voucher agenda. While the proposal takes care to limit the conversation to public schools, it also expands the definition of “public” as far as it can, referring to public schools as including “schools of choice.”

This definitional stretching is not an accident. Voucher proposals founder rhetorically on the distinction between the public and private spheres. People believe, rightly, that public dollars should be used for public purposes. So when a proposal is framed as diverting those resources to private entities like private schools, people recoil.

Weighted student funding is arguably a three-step strategy for blurring that distinction. First, get people used to the idea that education funding is first and foremost connected to real live students, not bureaucratic legal entities like school districts. Second, give students more school choices, first within the public school system and then expanding outward to include less traditional options like charter schools, building the sense that choice is an ordinary and necessary component of public education.

Third and finally—this isn’t an official recommendation, but some of the signatories make their intentions about it explicit in the footnotes—expand the sphere of eligible schools even further to include what are now thought of as private schools. At this point, the whole distinction between “public” and “private” schools starts to lose meaning, because all a “public” school means is a school that enrolls “public” students. And since all students receive vouchers, all students—and thus, all schools—are public.

This is sure to draw the ire of voucher opponents. But before they attack weighted school funding, they might want to reconsider. In supporting the plan, some conservative education advocates may be inadvertently weakening their position in another key area: opposition to new, court-mandated funding for public education.

School funding in the United States has been and in many states continues to be deeply inequitable, to the detriment of disadvantaged students, resulting in lawsuits in nearly every state. But some state courts have historically been reluctant to force legislatures to spend specific amounts of money on education, for two reasons. First, there was no consensus as to what, exactly, schools are supposed to accomplish. Second, there was no consensus as to how much money meeting those goals—whatever they are—should reasonably cost.

The standards movement has pretty much taken care of the first problem. Legislatures have defined exactly what students are supposed to know and be able to do. But the second issue—reasonable cost—remains tricky. Conservatives constantly argue that the education system gets plenty of money already to meet established goals; it just needs to spend what it has more efficiently.

Weighted school funding would put that contention to the test. As the report says:

“Under weighted school funding, if weights are implemented properly, schools will have powerful incentives to serve more disadvantaged kids. Schools may begin to vie for these populations to gain increased funding, rather than shun them as is often the case today.”

This makes the setting the weights properly crucial. While there are a number of ways to set weights, in the long run the best way is probably to let the market decide. As the report says:

“Just as the free market sets prices for goods and services, the market for hard-to-educate children can determine their weighting. Principals and schools should seek to educate hard-to-educate children because they know that with the money accompanying the child they can show improvement trends and reach performance levels. If this doesn’t happen, the district or state should adjust weights until it does.”

This market approach for setting weights would be particularly effective if there was an element of hard accountability to the system—if, for example, a school received a standard amount of money per student enrolled up front, but only received the additional, “weighted” amount once students actually met academic standards. In other words, incentives for schools to not just enroll hard-to-educate students but actually educate them successfully.

Here’s a guess—under such a system, the market-determined weight for disadvantaged students would be a whole lot higher than people realize. So high, in fact, that it would put a lot of the counter-arguments to "adequacy"-based lawsuits to rest.

In other words, weighted student funding could give school finance litigants the final, missing piece of the puzzle: solid, market-based evidence for exactly how much it costs to educate disadvantaged students up to established academic standards. How could conservatives disagree, once the market, in all its wisdom, has spoken?

So voucher opponents should be cautious about criticizing weighted student funding. The report contains a lot of valuable ideas and perhaps even the seeds of grand bargain between liberal and conservative factions in the fight over school finance—choice in exchange for adequate funding. For a system that currently has too little of both, this would be a welcome step indeed.

Movin' On Up!

Expect light or no posting from us here the next few days, as Education Sector moves to our new office. We'll be back posting after the 4th of July holiday. New address and phone number:

1201 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite 850
Washington, DC 20036
(202/552-2840)

(It's actually west--not east--of our old location, but I like the song anyway...)

Snakes, and Snails, and Puppy Dog tails

Who knew this would spark so much sound and fury? Certainly not me.

Of course, not everyone likes my arguments about why we shouldn't be panicking about a so-called "boy crisis." This John Leo blog post provides a pretty good example of some of the less positive feedback I've been getting. I have to admit, I was at a loss when I first read it because, aside from calling my report "basically an op-ed piece," Leo doesn't say word one about the actual substance of the report: he doesn't challenge the data I cite or explain why he thinks we should ignore it or interpret it differently than I did.

His biggest complaint seems to be that...I'm a feminist who doesn't want people to talk about the boys crisis because it distracts attention from girls? I'm still not really sure.

I know I shouldn't be surprised that some people think I'm writing that the boy crisis is overhyped because of some gender politics agenda, or that I want people to focus on girls' problems, or that I hate boys--or something. But it still seems strange to me.

I started looking the this issue because the some of the articles I was reading about the boy crisis earlier this year seemed to rely heavily on individual anecdotes, "expert" quotes that didn't seem to be backed up with evidence, and a few provocative pieces of evidence about how boys were doing relative to girls--most notably the now near-universally known fact that girls make up 56 percent of undergraduate college enrollment. After all, if boys are in trouble, we should be using data--not anecdote--to figure out how to deal with the problem. I was particularly perplexed because the arguments these articles and experts put forward for why boys weren't doing well in school seemed to be all over the place, too, and even contradicting each other.

So I started looking at the data: NAEP data; college enrollment figures; statistics on disabilities, drug use, disciplinary problems--wherever I could find national sample data or statistics from reputable sources. But I found evidence that, contrary to the articles I'd been reading, boys and young men were actually improving on a lot of measures. Sure, there are areas where there are problems--particularly high school--and areas where girls are doing better than boys. But the evidence doesn't suggest that boys--certainly not all boys--are on some kind of train that's speeding rapidly over down* a cliff. And ignoring this fact doesn't help us to think or talk reasonably about how to improve education--for boys or girls.

*My colleague Kevin Carey points out that, while speeding over a cliff is a common phrase, speeding down one really doesn't make much sense. On a purely anecdotal note, one guy who certainly has better verbal skills than this gal.

More Munchkin Love

A new CED report makes the economic case for greater public investment in universal preschool, looks at how much different policy alternatives here would cost, and also discusses some interesting alternative funding mechanisms. Some of this will not be new to early childhood geeks, but the analysis around policy and funding alternatives is worth checking out.

Charter Operators Pulling a Wal-Mart?

If true, this is troubling. NYC charter school teacher Nichole Byrne Lau says she was fired for trying to organize teachers at her school. The school's chief executive says she was fired for making racist comments to students. It's not clear yet--and may never be--who's telling the truth here, but either way this situation is FUGLY. Charter schools that behave in illegal and wrong ways to quash employee efforts to unionize deserve to be dealt with harshly by their authorizers and the state. After all, charter teachers have a right to unionize if they want to, there are some highly successful unionized charter schools, and when charter operators act like Wal-Mart towards employee efforts to unionize, it only gives amunition to charter foes.

Joe Williams has more here.

UPDATE I: Edwize and NCLBlog also have more, and it's pretty fiery. I couldn't agree with them more that if the school fired Lau just for trying to organize, it should be dealt with seriously. Joe suggests it should be closed. I think firing the individuals who thought this was acceptable (including eliminating board members) and continuing to monitor labor rights in the school might be adequate. But first the school's authorizer needs to make a serious effort to ferret out what actually went on here. Not having been in the school I'm not going to judge based solely on media coverage. And the fact that some schools are or may be acting badly here is not a case for requiring all charter schools in the state to unionize as Ed and Leo seem to think**.

UPDATE II: This Steve Gilliard post on the subject, to which Lindsay linked, is atrocious. To whit:

Charter schools sound like a great idea, until you hear about the games the schools play. Nest+m finally didn't have to share their school with the minority kids, but it cost them their principal. Which is the new deal many of these schools cut: you get your way, but you lose the principal.

What the devil does Gilliard mean there? NEST+m is not a charter school, but an elite NYC traditional public school that wanted to keep Ross Global Academy Charter School (aka the "minority kids" to which Gilliard refers) out of excess space in NEST+m's underutilized facility. So is Gilliard accidentally aiming his anti-charter barbs at a "good" traditional public school? Or does he think NEST+m's students should have been protected from those pesky minority students--which would indeed be a novel position for a so-called progressive.

More significantly: Yes, some charter schools play games. And that's bad. But that's what authorizers and public accountability are for, to catch when charter schools are playing games and make them stop or shut them down. And that's why the authorizer should crack down--hard--on Williamsburg Charter High School if they did fire Lau for trying to organize.

UPDATE III: From an NYC-based reader who's worked with Williamsburg Charter School High School students (but is an independent observer as far as the school is concerned):

From what I have seen and heard from students, it seems like a good school that is providing students with a unique, positive experience, especially considering that their high school options are limited in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn community. It would be a loss for the students and their parents if the school were closed because of bad actions by the CEO. I just hope that as this unfolds people remember that there is more at stake than just the interests of the adults involved and the political implications for charter schools, that there are students and parents whose lives will be greatly impacted by any decisions. If the school is closed, parents will be scrambling to find good alternative high schools for these students.

This gets back to one of the knottiest issues in charter schooling, and school accountability more generally: What do you do with a school that has problems but is still the best alternative available for some of the students it serves? Obviously, long term the solution is to build LOTS MORE HIGH QUALITY ALTERNATIVES (hint to NY state legislators: that would be one reason it's GOOD to raise the charter school cap--then the threat to close down schools that don't respect labor laws will be a much more real one). In the short term, these balances are a little difficult--but it's not an excuse for not holding charter schools accountable for both student performance and following the rules.

**UPDATE IV (Really, this would be getting ridiculous if it weren't such an important subject): Ed at NCLBlog elaborates further on his position towards charters and unions, which I appreciate because I did misunderstand him the first time I read his post, and I probably read Leo's comments at the end of his post as a policy prescription they weren't intended to be. Thanks for straightening me out on that. In general I would be in favor of making it easier for charter school teachers to unionize, although I do think it's important that individual charter schools remain separate bargaining units.

Fluff wins!

Yesterday marked the end of the Fluffergate saga, a heated battle over whether to serve Fluffernutters in Massachusetts schools.

The Fluffernutter, a popular New England sandwich made of peanut butter and Fluff marshmallow creme, became a topic of contention earlier this month, when Massachusetts state Senator Jarrett Barrios learned that his third-grade son was being served Fluffernutter sandwiches at school and proposed legislation to limit the serving of Fluffernutters statewide. State Representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein vowed to "fight to the death for Fluff" and began a campaign to designate the Fluffernutter, which originated in Massachusetts, the "official sandwich of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Impassioned Fluff fans called anti-Fluff politicians "anti-Massachusetts" and "almost anti-American," and the head of Fluff's parent company argued that obesity could not be legislated and begged to be allowed to make Fluff in peace. Yesterday Barrios, who admitted that he "loves Fluff as much as the next legislator," announced he would abandon the proposed amendment, saying that it had gotten to the point where his original goal, which was "to have a discussion about what is a healthy and nutritious meal for kids in school," was overshadowed.

Fluff is produced by family-owned Durkee-Mower Inc., which churns out 30,000 pounds of Fluff a day and 1.7 million pounds a year. Evidently, the company's motto—"First you spread, spread, spread your bread with peanut butter; add Marshmallow Fluff and have a Fluffernutter"—has been effective; Fluff is now distributed across North America and Europe and rivals Skippy's most popular peanut butter product as the best-selling item in the sandwich-spread sections of New England supermarkets. October 8th has even been designated as National Fluffernutter Day. "There are many who say you haven't really lived until you've taken a bite out of one of these distinctly American treats!" said Durkee-Mower Inc. president Don Durkee.

From a dietary standpoint, it seems clear that Fluff has no nutritional value whatsoever. However, it's also unclear whether it deserves to be singled out from other junk foods. The creme, made of only four ingredients—corn syrup, sugar syrup, vanilla flavoring and egg whites—is 50 percent sugar, prompting Barrios to state, "I'm not sure we should be even calling it a food." On the other hand, Fluff has no preservatives, stabilizers, emulsifiers, or colorings and is gluten-free and kosher.One school food service director pointed out that the Fluffernutter appeases finicky eaters, boosts students' daily calorie intake, and encourages them to eat peanut butter, a good source of protein and vitamin E. A Fluffernutter sandwich on wheat bread packs about 328 calories, about the same as PB&J, and some lawmakers argued that jelly was no better than Fluff on sandwiches.

In seriousness, the Fluffernutter debate is entertaining but silly—a bunch of Fluff, if you will. An informal poll by Barrios' staff found that only one in 14 Massachusetts schools even serve Fluffernutters, so PB&J is probably a greater threat to Massachusetts children's health. Barrios can take solace in the fact that the school district in Cambridge, his home district, has decided to remove Fluff from its menu this September. The failed amendment, however, does bring up a few important questions for education policymakers: What role should schools play in the fight against skyrocketing rates of childhood obesity and diabetes? Can nutrition in schools be legislated? And is the Fluffernutter ultimately a force for good or for evil in American society?

--By Laura Boyce

More Sad News

Eric Rofes passed away on Monday. Rofes, 51, is best known as an activist for gay and lesbian rights, HIV/AIDS awareness, and gay men's health. He played a critical role in building organizations that responded to the HIV/AIDS crisis in San Francisco and elsewhere in the 1980s, and has written influential books on the AIDS epidemic, gay culture, and the effect of the former on the latter.

Rofes was also a lifelong educator. In the 1970s he was fired from public school teaching for being an "out" gay man, his activism continued his work as an educator in a different context, and in the 1990s he earned a Ph.D. and became a professor of education. His in addition to work on race, gender, sexuality and social justice in education, he also researched and wrote extensively on charter schools. His 2004 book, The Emancipatory Promise of Charter Schools, co-edited with Lisa Stulberg, presents a Progressive argument for supporting increased public school choice and charter schools. I was fortunate to meet Dr. Rofes when he and Dr. Stulberg spoke about their book at the Progressive Policy Institute last year, and was very sad to learn of his death. Charter schools--and Progressive supporters of bold, outside the box thinking about how to realize social justice in public education--have lost an important ally. His family and friends will be in my prayers.

Spellings Commission Pulls no Punches

A draft report from Sec. Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education was released yesterday. Most of what I have to say about it is here, at the always timely and informative InsideHigherEd.com. One point to add: over the course of the months in which the commission has been meeting, the chairman, Charles Miller, has leveled a number of sharp critiques at the American higher education system. While the report runs to 27 pages, it's actually quite succinct in laying out all of those criticisms along with evidence to support them.

Yet while both Miller and the report have been heavily criticized by various members of the higher education establishment, virtually none of the criticisms actually address, or refute, the charges he's made. Instead, everyone has complained about issues of "tone," calling the report "mean-spirited," "hostile," "confrontational," etc. etc. Despite the fact that the stakes of this debate are enormously high, both for the millions of students attending college and society at large, people seem most concerned that a frank discussion of the issues is somehow...impolite.

As they say in law, if you've got the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you've got the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither the facts nor the law on your side, pound the table. The chorus of table-pounding from the defenders of the higher education status quo is very telling.

Terrible Sleater-Kinney Breakup News

Sleater-Kinney, arguably the greatest rock and roll band in the entire world, announced that they're breaking up. They'll be playing the 9:30 club here in DC in August and then a final show at Lollapalooza in Chicago. On the off chance that there's any significant crossover between Quick+ED readership and S-K fandom, I'll be at both shows.

No education angle here, just bad news.