A week or so ago InsideHigherEd.com posed the question: Football is everything?
The Nike ad of the same name (sin question mark) doesn't just assure us that yes, football is everything but also reminds us of some of our finest stereotypes about student athletes and high schools. Classrooms filled with young strong men garbed in game-day uniforms (it's not clear that there are students in the class who are not football players) who sit disrespectfully with their feet up in class and who know to expect special treatment since it is, after all, game day. These are mostly young black men who are waltzing down the hall, giving high fives and flirting with a come-hither Hollywood hot blond girl. All distractions cast aside for the big game, of course, before which this team of young men gather to pause for prayer. They are then victorious in a stadium that looks more like FedEx field than a high school field and is packed with cheering fans with signs and face make-up.
All of this under those Friday Night Lights. Yes, NBC has managed to make a longer version of this ad with its "The OC meets Odessa,Texas" teen drama where the coach doesn't teach any classes at the school ("football coaching is more than a full time job" quips the wife)and the girls bake cookies for their assigned star players. The show, by the way, does not air on Friday night (maybe because it would take us away from making the big game?).
Also, read Sara's earlier post on single sex. Because it's important and worth reading, not because it relates to football. Although if we DO go single sex, this may change the cookie-baking rules.
Friday, October 27, 2006
International Perspective
A new UNESCO report looks at educational issues internationally and finds progress but lots of room for growth. About 86 percent of primary-school aged children are enrolled in school, and Sub-saharan Africa, which has the lowest rate of youngsters attending primary school, increased primary school enrollments 27 percent between 1999 and 2004. Progress is also being made in gender equity, with 94 girls now enrolled in school internationally per 100 boys, up from 92 in 1999. But too many children still lack access to school or fail to complete their schooling, and one-in-five adults internationally lacks basic literacy skills--two thirds of those lacking these skills are female. The report also pays particular attention to early childhood care and education, and offers examples from many countries.
Single Sex/Multiple Facets
I think Andy and Brad Plumer are both right in this scuffle over new Department of Ed regs that give schools and districts more leeway to experiment with single-sex education. I'm predisposed to agree with Andy on this, because I believe in giving children and their families more educational choices, and I think the bar for excluding an entire category of choices (such as single-sex schools) ought to be quite high, and that critics of single-sex education haven't met it yet. Andy's also right that there are some single-sex schools (particularly for women) that, far from reaffirming gender stereotypes have an explicit goal of empowering young women, helping them transcend those sterotypes and succeed economically and academically.
But Brad is also right that some single-sex education advocates also call for gender-based educational approaches that rest on deeply flawed arguments. Americans in general, and particularly educators, have been awestruck by recent research advances that allow us to see the structure and functioning of human brains more clearly than ever before. A cottage industry of education writers and professional development consultants has grown up around helping educators apply brain research to their educational practice. Since we're all obsessed with sex, any research findings about gender differences in the brain are guaranteed to garner national headlines and spark debate. And some of these practitioners, such as Leonard Sax and Michael Gurian, specifically focus on issues of gender differences in the brain in relation to education. The examples Brad offers from Louisiana are based on the kind of notions these guys are peddling about gender differences and their impact on learning.
The problem is, a lot of what they are peddling is crap. They are not neuroscientists and often get the research wrong. It's not that there aren't differences between men's and women's brains. But, as this great American Educator article notes, a lot of "brain research" is really still in its infancy and a long way from being able to provide useful applications for educators. This is true of much of the research on gender differences in the brain. Knowing that a certain structure is larger or smaller in the male or female brain doesn't actually tell you that you should teach boys one way and girls another way. Practitioners like Gurian and Sax draw causal connections between identified differences in male and female brains and stereotypical male and female behaviors, even though many of the links in their causal chain are purely conjecture. And they gloss over the fact that variations among males and females are often much greater than average differences between the sexes. Gender-based educational interventions have never been subject to rigorous, scientifically valid evaluations to determine their effectiveness. The problem isn't that "brain-based" approaches to educate males and females differently are sexist (although they may well strike people that way). It's that they're based on misunderstandings, misapplication and gross overreading of research.
Single-sex and gender-based education are actually two very different things that could potentially be connected but need not be. They should be discussed and debated accordingly, not conflated.
But Brad is also right that some single-sex education advocates also call for gender-based educational approaches that rest on deeply flawed arguments. Americans in general, and particularly educators, have been awestruck by recent research advances that allow us to see the structure and functioning of human brains more clearly than ever before. A cottage industry of education writers and professional development consultants has grown up around helping educators apply brain research to their educational practice. Since we're all obsessed with sex, any research findings about gender differences in the brain are guaranteed to garner national headlines and spark debate. And some of these practitioners, such as Leonard Sax and Michael Gurian, specifically focus on issues of gender differences in the brain in relation to education. The examples Brad offers from Louisiana are based on the kind of notions these guys are peddling about gender differences and their impact on learning.
The problem is, a lot of what they are peddling is crap. They are not neuroscientists and often get the research wrong. It's not that there aren't differences between men's and women's brains. But, as this great American Educator article notes, a lot of "brain research" is really still in its infancy and a long way from being able to provide useful applications for educators. This is true of much of the research on gender differences in the brain. Knowing that a certain structure is larger or smaller in the male or female brain doesn't actually tell you that you should teach boys one way and girls another way. Practitioners like Gurian and Sax draw causal connections between identified differences in male and female brains and stereotypical male and female behaviors, even though many of the links in their causal chain are purely conjecture. And they gloss over the fact that variations among males and females are often much greater than average differences between the sexes. Gender-based educational interventions have never been subject to rigorous, scientifically valid evaluations to determine their effectiveness. The problem isn't that "brain-based" approaches to educate males and females differently are sexist (although they may well strike people that way). It's that they're based on misunderstandings, misapplication and gross overreading of research.
Single-sex and gender-based education are actually two very different things that could potentially be connected but need not be. They should be discussed and debated accordingly, not conflated.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Paradise Lost
EduCap announced that its controversial all-expense paid conference in the Caribbean for financial aid officers is cancelled. My guess, though, is that this is not the last we’ll hear about this issue. While lending companies vigorously deny using inducements to gain that coveted status of ‘preferred lender’, economics tells us that thinly veiled efforts like EduCap’s to get on the preferred lender list are likely to increase.
Inside Higher Ed provides a great overview of this issue – the rising tuition, declining grant aid, and increases in loans, especially private loans (the types of loans EduCap gives), which don’t have the protections for borrowers that federal loans do.
Halloween Tartlets
Via Alexander Russo, this Boulder Weekly columnist bemoans the marketing of "sexy" Halloween costumes to pre-pubescent girls. I admit, I was Cleopatra for Halloween when I was eight or nine, but since this was October in Michigan (which is often accompanied by snow), I wasn't exactly showing any skin. At the risk of sounding like a crotchety old person, I do sometimes get the sense that little girls' clothes are more sexualized today than they were in my fabled youth. It's not just Halloween costumes--Have you seen the "regular" duds in the 4-6x section of your local Target recently? On the other hand, if this guy thinks the picture accompanying his article online portrays an excessively sexual costume, he really does need to get a life.
More Michigan
Over at NCLBlog, AFT Michigan president David Hecker weighs in ony my report on Michigan's charter schools. I'm excited to see this, because there's a real need for more civil and serious dialogue between the charter school community and teachers unions and other more established education groups that often oppose charters. As this report from PPI and the National Charter Schools Research Project points out, there's a lot of misconceptions on both sides, and a lot of talking past each other. Only a commitment to honest dialogue can help address that.
Hecker thinks my report is mostly on the mark, but disagrees with my assertion that Michigan's charter schools overall are outperforming the state's urban districts in which they are located.
He makes a worthwhile point, so let's clarify this a little: On average, Michigan's charter school students perform better on the state's MEAP assessments than do students who attend traditional district schools in the 18 Michigan school districts (mostly, but not all, urban) that have 3 or more charters within their boundaries. But, this average masks enormous variation within both sectors: there are some excellent schools, both charter and traditional district schools, in Michigan's urban districts. But there are also a lot of mediocre and truly abysmal ones, in both sectors, which no child should have to attend. It's been said ad nauseum, but I'll repeat it again: charters are not a type of school, but a governance innovation. Asking whether that governance innovation generates schools that are, on average, better-performing than what was there before is a legitimate question (but not the only question) to ask in evaluating the impacts of this governance innovation as policy. But that question mainly matters to wonky folks like me. What really matters is reducing the number of crappy schools in both sectors--either by improving or closing them--and increasing the number of good ones. The fact that nearly 10 percent of the charters opened in Michigan to date have been closed suggests that, in the charter sector, closing crappy schools sometimes happens. Are there more schools--both charter and traditional district schools--that should be closed? Probably. Should we be doing more to replicate high-performing schools in both sectors? Hell, yes. Hecker and other union leaders could support this process by praising authorizers when they close down low-performing charters, rather than seizing on closures as evidence the charter model is flawed. Closures are a feature, not a bug.
Speaking of authorizers, Hecker is critical of the fact that Michigan's university authorizers receive 3 percent of the per-pupil funding for schools they oversee. But if there's one important lesson we've learned in the charter movement so far, it's that quality authorizing is difficult, requires staff time and resources, and someone's got to pay for it. Funding authorizer operations adequately is a critical state policy step to supporting charter school quality and accountability. Have some authorizers in Michigan and nationally taken advantage of authorizer funding streams to support unrelated operations while doing a crappy job (or basically no job) overseeing schools they charter? Yeah (and a lot of those authorizers have been school districts). But the solution to this is to strengthen the mechanisms through which authorizers are held accountable for the performance of the schools they charter, not to stop financially supporting authorizer operations. Overall, nationally, research shows that universities have done a better job of authorizing than many other authorizers. There's a reason the UFT went to SUNY to get charters for their schools in New York, and not to the NYC schools.
Finally, Hecker's final comment hits on an issue that I've been thinking about a lot lately:
Yes, fostering innovation is one initial intent of charter schools that appears in many state laws, but it wasn't the only goal. In Michigan, the rationale for chartering had a lot to do with wanting to expand parent choice. I also tend to beleive that having a diversity of educational models available to parents in different schools is a positive social good--whether or not those schools are "innovative"--because there's tremendous diversity among children, and not every kid is going to thrive under the same educational model. As I note in the report, there is a lot of innovation going on in Michigan's charter school sector--but much of it is management and organizational innovation (such as the role of EMOs in the state), which is much more difficult to translate to the public sector than curricular and pedagogical innovations.
And there are clearly some very innovative charters in Michigan. I encourage Hecker to visit Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse of Detroit, or Walden Green Montessori in Spring Lake, or the Chatfield School, in Lapeer. There's no hypothetical reason district schools couldn't do some of the things these excellent schools do. But the reality is that doing what these schools do in the district system can be risky.
The more I learn about chartering, the more I come to appreciate the legal protection a charter contract offers to visionary educators. It's worth remembering that Michigan's charter school movement has its roots in the "empowerment schools" initiative in Detroit in the late 1980s. A reform-minded school board initiated charter-like contracts with schools that gave them greater autonomy and control over their funding in return for accountability. But when an election swept out members of that school board, the agreement fell apart and the empowered schools lost the freedoms they had gained and went back to being normal schools. Autonomy and innovation that depend on the good will of elected school boards and the educational administrators they appoint are inherently precarious. In a place like the District of Columbia, where school boards come and go and there have been seven superintendents in the past 10 years, the legal protections of a charter school contract actually mean some of these schools have more stability than schools within the district system. Charters can offer opportunities for a lot of things teachers want--stability, autonomy, opportunities for innovation. That's part of why the UFT opened its own charter school, and it's why I remain hopeful in the potential for productive dialogue between charter and teachers union leaders.
UPDATE: Leo Casey joins the conversation. I couldn't agree with him more that charter school advocates need to be more outspoken than anyone about supporting good authorizers and getting bad ones out of the business. That's been a major ongoing theme of the series of state and urban charter school reports I helped edit first at PPI and now at Education Sector, and I'm proud to say that some of our work has contributed marginally to helping improve authorizing in some of these states.
Hecker thinks my report is mostly on the mark, but disagrees with my assertion that Michigan's charter schools overall are outperforming the state's urban districts in which they are located.
He makes a worthwhile point, so let's clarify this a little: On average, Michigan's charter school students perform better on the state's MEAP assessments than do students who attend traditional district schools in the 18 Michigan school districts (mostly, but not all, urban) that have 3 or more charters within their boundaries. But, this average masks enormous variation within both sectors: there are some excellent schools, both charter and traditional district schools, in Michigan's urban districts. But there are also a lot of mediocre and truly abysmal ones, in both sectors, which no child should have to attend. It's been said ad nauseum, but I'll repeat it again: charters are not a type of school, but a governance innovation. Asking whether that governance innovation generates schools that are, on average, better-performing than what was there before is a legitimate question (but not the only question) to ask in evaluating the impacts of this governance innovation as policy. But that question mainly matters to wonky folks like me. What really matters is reducing the number of crappy schools in both sectors--either by improving or closing them--and increasing the number of good ones. The fact that nearly 10 percent of the charters opened in Michigan to date have been closed suggests that, in the charter sector, closing crappy schools sometimes happens. Are there more schools--both charter and traditional district schools--that should be closed? Probably. Should we be doing more to replicate high-performing schools in both sectors? Hell, yes. Hecker and other union leaders could support this process by praising authorizers when they close down low-performing charters, rather than seizing on closures as evidence the charter model is flawed. Closures are a feature, not a bug.
Speaking of authorizers, Hecker is critical of the fact that Michigan's university authorizers receive 3 percent of the per-pupil funding for schools they oversee. But if there's one important lesson we've learned in the charter movement so far, it's that quality authorizing is difficult, requires staff time and resources, and someone's got to pay for it. Funding authorizer operations adequately is a critical state policy step to supporting charter school quality and accountability. Have some authorizers in Michigan and nationally taken advantage of authorizer funding streams to support unrelated operations while doing a crappy job (or basically no job) overseeing schools they charter? Yeah (and a lot of those authorizers have been school districts). But the solution to this is to strengthen the mechanisms through which authorizers are held accountable for the performance of the schools they charter, not to stop financially supporting authorizer operations. Overall, nationally, research shows that universities have done a better job of authorizing than many other authorizers. There's a reason the UFT went to SUNY to get charters for their schools in New York, and not to the NYC schools.
Finally, Hecker's final comment hits on an issue that I've been thinking about a lot lately:
The main point that the report does not make is that the original intent of charters was for them to serve as an incubator of new ideas and approaches, with the successful strategies being incorporated into traditional public schools. The point was not to develop an entirely separate system of public education--one with very limited accountability and that siphons money away from traditional districts. Another important point is that I do not know of anything going on in a Michigan charter that has not been--or can not be done--by a traditional public school.
Yes, fostering innovation is one initial intent of charter schools that appears in many state laws, but it wasn't the only goal. In Michigan, the rationale for chartering had a lot to do with wanting to expand parent choice. I also tend to beleive that having a diversity of educational models available to parents in different schools is a positive social good--whether or not those schools are "innovative"--because there's tremendous diversity among children, and not every kid is going to thrive under the same educational model. As I note in the report, there is a lot of innovation going on in Michigan's charter school sector--but much of it is management and organizational innovation (such as the role of EMOs in the state), which is much more difficult to translate to the public sector than curricular and pedagogical innovations.
And there are clearly some very innovative charters in Michigan. I encourage Hecker to visit Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse of Detroit, or Walden Green Montessori in Spring Lake, or the Chatfield School, in Lapeer. There's no hypothetical reason district schools couldn't do some of the things these excellent schools do. But the reality is that doing what these schools do in the district system can be risky.
The more I learn about chartering, the more I come to appreciate the legal protection a charter contract offers to visionary educators. It's worth remembering that Michigan's charter school movement has its roots in the "empowerment schools" initiative in Detroit in the late 1980s. A reform-minded school board initiated charter-like contracts with schools that gave them greater autonomy and control over their funding in return for accountability. But when an election swept out members of that school board, the agreement fell apart and the empowered schools lost the freedoms they had gained and went back to being normal schools. Autonomy and innovation that depend on the good will of elected school boards and the educational administrators they appoint are inherently precarious. In a place like the District of Columbia, where school boards come and go and there have been seven superintendents in the past 10 years, the legal protections of a charter school contract actually mean some of these schools have more stability than schools within the district system. Charters can offer opportunities for a lot of things teachers want--stability, autonomy, opportunities for innovation. That's part of why the UFT opened its own charter school, and it's why I remain hopeful in the potential for productive dialogue between charter and teachers union leaders.
UPDATE: Leo Casey joins the conversation. I couldn't agree with him more that charter school advocates need to be more outspoken than anyone about supporting good authorizers and getting bad ones out of the business. That's been a major ongoing theme of the series of state and urban charter school reports I helped edit first at PPI and now at Education Sector, and I'm proud to say that some of our work has contributed marginally to helping improve authorizing in some of these states.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
How Does Your State Stack Up on Pre-K?
Find out in this new report from Pre-K Now. National picture: 31 states increased their preschool funding by $450 million for FY2007. And don't forget quality.
Wherein Prudery Trumps Cultural Literacy
It's old news, but, if I were an advocate for teacher unionism, I'd be highlighting this incident till the cows come home as an example of why teachers need protection against capricious firings. Is it any wonder our children don't know anything about Ancient Greece, Rome and the roots of Western culture? I mean, what better than the profusion of nekkid statues to get kids interested in these subjects?
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
More Flex For Single Sex
Spellings announces amended regulations for single-sex education. More flexibility for single sex classes and schools.
My earlier rant on single-sex.
And a recent report out of the UK-based Centre for Education and Employment Research on single-sex. Looks at the issue cross-nationally and worth reading.
My earlier rant on single-sex.
And a recent report out of the UK-based Centre for Education and Employment Research on single-sex. Looks at the issue cross-nationally and worth reading.
Charter Schooling in the Wolverine State
This is the picture that I wanted to have on the cover of Education Sector's new report on charter schooling in Michigan (see, I don't hate boys). Sadly, I was vetoed by people who claim to have taste and didn't want to pay big licensing fees for the image.So, without Hugh Jackman's mug on the cover, why should you read this report on charter schooling in Michigan? Let me tell you:
For starters, Michigan is a leading charter state. It was one of the earliest states to pass a law and has more students in charter schools than any state except for California and Florida.
Second, Michigan's charter school movement has some unique features that make it particularly interesting. Nearly three-quarters of Michigan's charter schools are run by private, for-profit Educational Management Organizations (EMOs), more than any other state in the country. There are both good and bad sides to this. In addition, most of Michigan's charter schools have been authorized not by the local school districts and state agencies that oversee charters in most states, but by the state's public universities, many of which have been eager to authorize charter schools. Although the public universities had quality problems in their charter oversight early on, they have improved and these independent authorizers are, on average, higher-quality authorizers than many of the authorizers that operate elsewhere in the country.
Third, the political history of charter schooling in Michigan is very interesting, and involves a compelling cast of characters, including former Governor John Engler, a Republican; current Governor Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat; Detroit's Mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick; asphalt magnate-turned-philanthropist Bob Thompson; former Piston Hall of Famer Dave Bing; former Dem gubernatorial candidate-turned charter school founder Doug Ross, and 3,200 protesting Detroit teachers. Who needs the Wire when you've got this bunch?
Finally, and I think this is the most important point, Michigan's experience is a clear example of why the charter school movement must focus on quality. In the mid-1990s Michigan's charter schools grew rapidly and somewhat wildly. While some excellent schools emerged, there were also lots of quality problems, demonstrating that the "if you build it they will come" approach to chartering isn't enough itself to produce a strong supply of quality schools. Since then, the state's charter community and university authorizers have improved quality, but Michigan's charter schools still underperform statewide averages (they are doing better than the urban districts in which most are located, however) and the fallout from early quality problems undermines political support for them.
There's lots more, so read the report!
Via Mike Antonucci, another reason the Michigan report is relevant today.
Big Bird Trumps Baseball
Yes, it is Game 3 of the World Series, but they’re tied 1-1, so no one’s winning tonight anyway. Instead, tune in to Independent Lens on PBS for “The World According to Sesame Street
Monday, October 23, 2006
Suffer the Children
UNICEF is trying to improve early childhood development in Iraq. This is obviously very, very difficult.
I don't mean to dismiss UNICEF's work, but, under the circumstances, it's kind of hard to get excited about universal salt iodization (which helps prevent iodine deficiencies), fortified wheat flour, or professional development for 25 early childhood educators. Regardless of where events in Iraq are headed in the short to mid-term, long-term the nation will have to cope with the fallout from a generation of children traumatized by growing up in a war zone.
“Whether it is education, nutrition levels or access to basic services, the continued conflict taking place in Iraq is affecting all aspects of the lives of children,” says UNICEF Iraq Senior Programme Officer Geeta Verma.
I don't mean to dismiss UNICEF's work, but, under the circumstances, it's kind of hard to get excited about universal salt iodization (which helps prevent iodine deficiencies), fortified wheat flour, or professional development for 25 early childhood educators. Regardless of where events in Iraq are headed in the short to mid-term, long-term the nation will have to cope with the fallout from a generation of children traumatized by growing up in a war zone.
Back to Basics?
First it was penmanship. Now it's grammar. Or so sayeth the Post, anyway. I'm holding out for long division, myself.
UPDATE: KDerosa has more on why penmanship matters.
UPDATE: KDerosa has more on why penmanship matters.
College Rankings Throw-Down
On Wednesday morning from 9:30 to 11:30, you'll be coming to Education Sector's panel discussion on college rankings and higher education accountability, to be held at the Capital Hilton, just two blocks north of the White House. Register here.
What's that you say? Staff meeting that morning? Big project due? No, no, you're not fooling anyone. You and I both know you're coming. It's an all-star cast of movers and shakers. The Secretary of Education's Chief of Staff. The Executive Editor of U.S. News & World Report. The President of Trinity College. Yours truly, and more! All debating which colleges really are the best in the nation and how exactly that determination should be made.
If you're really not going to be there (and between you and me, if you can't wangle your way out of work to get to an event as cool as this, it's time to updating your resume and trolling for job announcement on line. Life is short, friend. Think about it.) the audio will be live Webcast. But seriously, be there.
What's that you say? Staff meeting that morning? Big project due? No, no, you're not fooling anyone. You and I both know you're coming. It's an all-star cast of movers and shakers. The Secretary of Education's Chief of Staff. The Executive Editor of U.S. News & World Report. The President of Trinity College. Yours truly, and more! All debating which colleges really are the best in the nation and how exactly that determination should be made.
If you're really not going to be there (and between you and me, if you can't wangle your way out of work to get to an event as cool as this, it's time to updating your resume and trolling for job announcement on line. Life is short, friend. Think about it.) the audio will be live Webcast. But seriously, be there.
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