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.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
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."
Debating Universal vs. Targeted Preschool: Part I
This week on the Education Sector website, researchers W. Steven Barnett and Bruce Fuller have been debating the merits of universal versus targeted approaches to publicly funded preschool. The question, essentially, is: "Does it make more sense for governments to spend money on publicly-funded preschool for all children, or just for those who are most needy?"
As someone who works on early-childhood policy issues, I find this question a particularly difficult one, so I'm excited that Education Sector is able to host this debate. Each of these gentlemen presents the case for his respective position more clearly and compellingly than anyone I've yet heard from. And, with voters in our nation's largest state poised to vote on a statewide universal preschool proposal less than a week from now, it's an important and timely question--one we're likely to see raised more places around the country in the near future. All good reasons you should check out the debate itself now.
Today, I'm going to offer a few quick reactions to Steven Barnett's case for universal preschool. Tomorrow, I'll talk about my response to Bruce Fuller's arguments.
I find Steven Barnett's case for universal preschool pretty compelling. The argument that "programs for the poor are too often poor programs," isn't easily dismissed--we see this play out in a lot of policy areas, and it is part of the reason some much-hyped early-childhood programs have delivered disappointing results. Richard Kahlenberg's work arguing for socioeconomic integration of K-12 schools can be helpful to understanding why this is the case in education, and it also offers another argument against targeting preschool programs so narrowly that they segregate low-income children from their more affluent peers. In addition, Barnett makes an important point that the kids with families at the median income level--those whose families aren't poor enough to qualify for public programs but aren't affluent enough to afford private preschool--are the least likely to be enrolled in preschool, even though many of these children, whose families are hardly rich, could probably benefit from it.
Still, there's a big hole for me in Barnett's arguments, and that's the issue of trade-offs. If we lived in a climate of infinite resources, it would certainly make a lot more sense to invest in universal rather than targeted preschool programs. But we don't. Policymakers have to decide between competing priorities and make trade-offs. So, where are the trade-offs worth making? For example, is it better to invest in universal preschool for all four-year-olds, or targeted preschool for poor four-year-olds, combined with greater funding for childcare for poor infants and toddlers? Would we be better off providing one year of preschool to all children or two years only to the most disadvantaged?
I also worry that the emphasis on universal preschool may create an incentive for policymakers and politicians to cut corners on quality in order to stretch limited resources so they can say they accomplished universal preschool. We saw this in Florida after voters there passed a referendum for universal preschool--Governor Bush and the state legislature implemented a program with quality standards much lower than Barnett or other experts say are necessary to have the kinds of positive impacts we want preschool to have on children's development and achievement down the road. If this happens, we eventually wind up in the same place--a poor program serving poor kids--that Barnett fears we'll wind up with a targeted approach.
As someone who works on early-childhood policy issues, I find this question a particularly difficult one, so I'm excited that Education Sector is able to host this debate. Each of these gentlemen presents the case for his respective position more clearly and compellingly than anyone I've yet heard from. And, with voters in our nation's largest state poised to vote on a statewide universal preschool proposal less than a week from now, it's an important and timely question--one we're likely to see raised more places around the country in the near future. All good reasons you should check out the debate itself now.
Today, I'm going to offer a few quick reactions to Steven Barnett's case for universal preschool. Tomorrow, I'll talk about my response to Bruce Fuller's arguments.
I find Steven Barnett's case for universal preschool pretty compelling. The argument that "programs for the poor are too often poor programs," isn't easily dismissed--we see this play out in a lot of policy areas, and it is part of the reason some much-hyped early-childhood programs have delivered disappointing results. Richard Kahlenberg's work arguing for socioeconomic integration of K-12 schools can be helpful to understanding why this is the case in education, and it also offers another argument against targeting preschool programs so narrowly that they segregate low-income children from their more affluent peers. In addition, Barnett makes an important point that the kids with families at the median income level--those whose families aren't poor enough to qualify for public programs but aren't affluent enough to afford private preschool--are the least likely to be enrolled in preschool, even though many of these children, whose families are hardly rich, could probably benefit from it.
Still, there's a big hole for me in Barnett's arguments, and that's the issue of trade-offs. If we lived in a climate of infinite resources, it would certainly make a lot more sense to invest in universal rather than targeted preschool programs. But we don't. Policymakers have to decide between competing priorities and make trade-offs. So, where are the trade-offs worth making? For example, is it better to invest in universal preschool for all four-year-olds, or targeted preschool for poor four-year-olds, combined with greater funding for childcare for poor infants and toddlers? Would we be better off providing one year of preschool to all children or two years only to the most disadvantaged?
I also worry that the emphasis on universal preschool may create an incentive for policymakers and politicians to cut corners on quality in order to stretch limited resources so they can say they accomplished universal preschool. We saw this in Florida after voters there passed a referendum for universal preschool--Governor Bush and the state legislature implemented a program with quality standards much lower than Barnett or other experts say are necessary to have the kinds of positive impacts we want preschool to have on children's development and achievement down the road. If this happens, we eventually wind up in the same place--a poor program serving poor kids--that Barnett fears we'll wind up with a targeted approach.
Engineering Better Content Standards
With the release of new NAEP science scores last week, there has been a flurry of commentary about what these scores mean for students and what we are doing- or should be doing- to improve science education in our schools. Many in the K-12 world are centering the discussion on improving science content standards, particularly as states and districts prepare for mandatory science testing under NCLB (beginning 2007). AAAS's Project 2061 provides a great history and some updates on national and state efforts to create science standards.
Part of the conversation is about revising content standards. Another part is about adding new content areas altogether, namely engineering. Engineering is somewhat of an unusual suspect in this K-12 science conversation. It’s a hot topic in higher education for many reasons, including that engineering enrollment has recently begun to climb but has still not reached its 1983 peak. Read NSF’s Science & Engineering Indicators 2006 report for more about the overall state of science and technology. The last section, as an aside, includes some interesting data about what Americans think about science and where we get our information (sadly, not from reading).
The idea to introduce and formally incorporate engineering into the K-12 curriculum has been gaining popularity. Several states have added “pre-engineering” components to their curricula and other states seem ready to follow. Massachusetts is the first state to have a pre-college engineering curriculum in place and to formally add it to its statewide framework.
The notion seems like a good one. Introduce engineering early in education and students will be more engaged, or at least familiar, with the subject before entering college. It makes sense that learning real-world engineering applications (imagine high school students learning how to build their own iPods, for instance) might increase student interest in and aptitude for science and engineering. But there are some important practical questions to consider first. How and where will “pre-engineering” fit into the curricula (or into state assessments)? Do we have teachers who are prepared to teach these courses? Will engineering courses be required, or will “enrichment" programs meet the requirements? (There are, by the way, many examples of excellent engineering programs and competitions for youth, and activities for teachers to incorporate into their current lesson plans). Finally, are we adding more content because more seems better? The seminal reports on the subject, Project 2061's Benchmarks for Science Literacy and the National Research Council's National Science Education Standards, recommend depth over breadth for student learning so this last point may be the most salient consideration.
There is no argument that basic engineering principles should be included in any science curriculum, and that students should be exposed to engineering concepts early in their education. But formally incorporating another content area into statewide frameworks might not be the most resourceful way to achieve this goal. As the front-runner, Massachusetts will be worth watching.
Part of the conversation is about revising content standards. Another part is about adding new content areas altogether, namely engineering. Engineering is somewhat of an unusual suspect in this K-12 science conversation. It’s a hot topic in higher education for many reasons, including that engineering enrollment has recently begun to climb but has still not reached its 1983 peak. Read NSF’s Science & Engineering Indicators 2006 report for more about the overall state of science and technology. The last section, as an aside, includes some interesting data about what Americans think about science and where we get our information (sadly, not from reading).
The idea to introduce and formally incorporate engineering into the K-12 curriculum has been gaining popularity. Several states have added “pre-engineering” components to their curricula and other states seem ready to follow. Massachusetts is the first state to have a pre-college engineering curriculum in place and to formally add it to its statewide framework.
The notion seems like a good one. Introduce engineering early in education and students will be more engaged, or at least familiar, with the subject before entering college. It makes sense that learning real-world engineering applications (imagine high school students learning how to build their own iPods, for instance) might increase student interest in and aptitude for science and engineering. But there are some important practical questions to consider first. How and where will “pre-engineering” fit into the curricula (or into state assessments)? Do we have teachers who are prepared to teach these courses? Will engineering courses be required, or will “enrichment" programs meet the requirements? (There are, by the way, many examples of excellent engineering programs and competitions for youth, and activities for teachers to incorporate into their current lesson plans). Finally, are we adding more content because more seems better? The seminal reports on the subject, Project 2061's Benchmarks for Science Literacy and the National Research Council's National Science Education Standards, recommend depth over breadth for student learning so this last point may be the most salient consideration.
There is no argument that basic engineering principles should be included in any science curriculum, and that students should be exposed to engineering concepts early in their education. But formally incorporating another content area into statewide frameworks might not be the most resourceful way to achieve this goal. As the front-runner, Massachusetts will be worth watching.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Teacher Policy: Backwards, Forwards, Upside-Down
A few years ago there was a great magazine advertisement that showed a picture of a napkin. On the napkin was written:
1. Build Computer.
2. Sell Computer.
Except someone had crossed out the "1" and written in "2," and then crossed out the "2" and written in "1." In other words, the business plan for Dell Computer that allowed Michael Dell to make a hundred jillion gazillion dollars by age 40 by having all his customers order and pay for computers over the Internet before Dell built and shipped them, saving vast sums of money on warehousing, inventory, etc.
I thought of this ad during the last few weeks while I watched Eduboss Andy Rotherham cajole the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards into finally coughing up a largely critical evaluation from value-added guru Bill Sanders. Sanders' main finding was:
1. Build Computer.
2. Sell Computer.
Except someone had crossed out the "1" and written in "2," and then crossed out the "2" and written in "1." In other words, the business plan for Dell Computer that allowed Michael Dell to make a hundred jillion gazillion dollars by age 40 by having all his customers order and pay for computers over the Internet before Dell built and shipped them, saving vast sums of money on warehousing, inventory, etc.
I thought of this ad during the last few weeks while I watched Eduboss Andy Rotherham cajole the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards into finally coughing up a largely critical evaluation from value-added guru Bill Sanders. Sanders' main finding was:
The amount of variability among teachers with the same NBPTS Certification Status is considerably larger than the differences between teachers of different Status.
At first, the implications here seem limited to NBPTS. But they're actually much more significant and far-reaching, touching on the foundations of contemporary public policy as it relates to teachers.
The Sanders value-added system estimates teacher effectiveness by comparing the actual year-to-year growth in learning (as measured by standardized tests) of each teacher's students to amount of learning growth those student would be expected to gain given their previous academic history. The more actual growth exceeds expected growth, the higher the rating.
In essence, the Sanders study found that individual NBPTS-certified teachers differ more from one another than they collectively differ from non-NBPTS teachers. On the surface, the imlications of this finding seem straightforward: the NBPTS folks have some work to do to improve their process and states that have tied many millions of dollars in salary bonuses to NBPTS status should give those policies a second look.
But both of these ideas flow from the same premise: that this study is just another step forward in the ongoing search for the characteristics of the effective teacher. A definitive list of such characteristics is the holy grail of teacher policy. If we only had that list, so the thinking goes, we could do all kinds of important and useful things. We could reshape education schools to impart those characteristics. We could set up certification systems to filter out teachers who don't have those characteristics. We could design compensation systems that pay teachers with those characteristics more money.
In other words:
1. Identify effective teacher.
2. Hire effective teacher.
The problem is that this entire approach is flatly contradicted by the evidence. The essential findings of the Sanders study--more variation among teachers with or without NBPTS status than between teachers with our without NBPTS status--is also basically true for every other teacher characteristic that's ever been studied.
Experience, education level, certification status, training, content knowledge, selectivity of the undergraduate institution, verbal ability -- all of these things have been shown by some studies to influence teacher effectiveness (although some more than others--having a Master's generally seems to have no effect, which is , given the resources devoted to putting millions of teachers through graduate school, an enormous problem).
But even in combination, these factors explain only a minority--often a small minority--of the overall variation among indvidual teachers in helping students learn. There are great inexperienced teachers and terrible inexperienced teachers, effective certified teachers and ineffective certified teachers, etc. etc. etc. It's not that these things don't matter. But other, unknown things clearly matter more.
Yet a lot of teacher policy conversations are based on the idea that if we just keep looking--or created elaborate processes like the NBPTS--we will, someday, finally nail down the prototype of the elusive effective teacher, and then proceed to stamp out millions of copies of him or her.
Underlying this idea is a kind of commodified view of teachers -- that they all have pretty much the same job requiring pretty much the same characteristics to succeed. Obviously this varies somewhat by grade, subject, and type of student, but the essentials are supposed to be the same. This view is reinforced by most collective bargaining agreements, which enforce further uniformity on how teachers are hired, managed, and paid.
My strong suspicion is that this whole way of thinking will ultimately turn out to be profoundly wrong. That teaching is actually a much more complicated, difficult, and idiosyncratic process than our mainstream, characteristics-based teacher policy suggests. That knowing teacher characteristics like experience, training, etc., is useful, but only marginally so. That we could double, triple, or magnify tenfold our efforts to refine and expand things like the NBPTS and still never get close to identifying the effective teacher, for the simple reason that she doesn't exist.
In the long run, I think we'll eventually conclude that the best and only way to consistently and usefully identify teachers who are good at helping students learn is to assess how much teachers' students are learning. We can and should wonder why they're so successful, but we shouldn't let the inherent limitations of our ability to do so limit the plain logic of shaping public policy around the fact that they are successful, or are not, or are somewhere in between.
In other words, I think we'll utimately come to grips with the fact that the combination of knowledge, skill, motivation, work ethic, talent, focus, and myriad other factors that make for an effective teacher are 1) very different for different teachers who nonetheless produce similar results, and 2) far beyond our ability to identify and categorize for the purposes of crafting good public policy.
Or:
1. Hire effective teacher.
2. Identify effective teacher.
It worked for Michael Dell.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Poll Shows Americans Completely Misunderstand, But Are Nontheless Angry About, the Federal Education Budget
The National School Boards Association recently released the results of a new poll focused on federal education spending. I'm a big, big supporter of increased federal support for education. But--NSBA press release to the contrary--the poll results say very little that's useful or new. The release said:
The thing is, only two percent of the federal budget ($57 billion out of $2.7 trillion) is spent on K-12 and higher education combined. So all this poll really shows is that when it comes to the federal budget, the average American doesn't know their ear from their elbow.
The fact that people wish a third of the money went to education is meaningless. If you conducted a series of identical polls that substituted words like "national defense," "health care," "retirement security," "transportation," "scientific research," and "support for veterans" for "public education," do you think the sum of all the preferred percentages would add up to 100? Of course not. You can't ask questions like this in isolation; you have to give people a sense of the competing priorities, difficult tradeoffs, and limited resources that define the process of making a budget.
The survey also asked this question:
As does asking if Congress should "restore...back" funding to authorized levels. The clear implication is that funding was actually at those levels at some point, only to be taken away, creating a need for restoration. This simply isn't true. While federal education funding is down slightly from last year and has been stagnant for the last several years (again, much to my dismay), overall funding levels are significantly higher than they were five years ago, or at any other time in the past.
Budgeting is a serious, difficult business. Even in the best of times--and I've seen them, having been an assistant state budget director during the go-go late 1990s--the demand for needed, worthwhile public spending far exceeds available resources. Setting priorities isn't easy, and it's not made easier by meaningless polls like these.
As members of Congress prepare to head home for the Memorial Day Holiday, a national poll from the National School Boards Association finds a majority of likely voters believe that Congress is out of touch with the public’s expectations when it comes to funding federal education programs and want Congress to fulfill its funding commitment to schoolchildren. Seven in 10 likely voters (70 percent) say that Congress should restore funding for No Child Left Behind and special education programs in next year’s budget to the authorized levels.As is always the case with polls, it's absolutely crucial to read the specific questions asked. Let's start with the contention that Congress is "out of touch with the public's expectations when it comes to funding federal education programs." Here are the actual questions and results:
In other words, the average person thinks that one-fifth of the federal budget is spent on K-12 education, and that more than one-third of the federal budget should be spent on education.If you had to guess, what PERCENTAGE of the FEDERAL budget would you say is spent on education programs for PUBLIC elementary, middle and high schools? [MEAN=20.06% ]
Regardless of what PERCENTAGE of the FEDERAL budget you THINK is spent on education programs for PUBLIC elementary, middle and high schools, please tell me what PERCENTAGE in your opinion should be spent? [MEAN=36.64%]
The thing is, only two percent of the federal budget ($57 billion out of $2.7 trillion) is spent on K-12 and higher education combined. So all this poll really shows is that when it comes to the federal budget, the average American doesn't know their ear from their elbow.
The fact that people wish a third of the money went to education is meaningless. If you conducted a series of identical polls that substituted words like "national defense," "health care," "retirement security," "transportation," "scientific research," and "support for veterans" for "public education," do you think the sum of all the preferred percentages would add up to 100? Of course not. You can't ask questions like this in isolation; you have to give people a sense of the competing priorities, difficult tradeoffs, and limited resources that define the process of making a budget.
The survey also asked this question:
Congress authorized spending $42 billion dollars NEXT YEAR to fund TWO of the largest federal education programs that aid public schools across the country – the No Child Left Behind Act and Special Education. However in the current budget proposal, Congress is providing only $23 billion for these two programs—a little more than HALF of the $42 billion they originally authorized and promised. Hearing that, what, in your opinion should Congress do?Again, I bow to no one in my unhappiness with Congress' insistence on passing huge yearly tax cuts for extremely rich people while refusing to give NCLB more money. But an authorization level is not the same thing as a "promise." It's a ceiling, a limit on the most Congress can spend on a program, not an iron-clad guarantee of how much it will spend. To conflate the two gives the game away.
Restore the funding for these education programs back to their authorized and promised levels for next year. [70%]
OR
Keep the proposed spending cuts for these education programs in place for next year regardless of what was originally authorized and promised [19%]
DK/Refused [11%]
As does asking if Congress should "restore...back" funding to authorized levels. The clear implication is that funding was actually at those levels at some point, only to be taken away, creating a need for restoration. This simply isn't true. While federal education funding is down slightly from last year and has been stagnant for the last several years (again, much to my dismay), overall funding levels are significantly higher than they were five years ago, or at any other time in the past.
Budgeting is a serious, difficult business. Even in the best of times--and I've seen them, having been an assistant state budget director during the go-go late 1990s--the demand for needed, worthwhile public spending far exceeds available resources. Setting priorities isn't easy, and it's not made easier by meaningless polls like these.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Next They'll Say That Nigerian Guy Isn't Sending Me a Million Dollars...
Truth be told, I don't normally read the mass e-mail announcements I get from the U.S. Department of Education, which tend to deal with grant competitions, statements on Secretary Spellings' visit to Egypt, and the like. But yesterday one headline--Statement by Deputy Press Secretary Chad Colby Regarding "Certificate of Completion" Hoax EMail--caught my attention. When, I wondered, did the U.S. Department of Education get into the business of debunking chain letters? I was curious to see for myself what exactly this e-mail said that had so offended the Department as to require a formal press release. Thanks to the magic of Google, I was able to quickly find the hoax e-mail online. Its text is posted below, courtesy of About.com's urban legends site, which also offers a thorough debunking of the e-mail's claims as well as responses to it from the U.S. and Indiana Departments of Education (the e-mail appears to have originated in Indiana, and the tests to which it refers are part of Indiana's assessment system).
It's good that the Department's correcting rampant misinformation about the law. But, as my colleagues Kevin and Andy have noted elsewhere, misinformation about NCLB is also rampant in mainstream media coverage of the law, which is read by a lot more people and commands more respect than your typical chain e-mail.
I'm also curious to see if anyone out there knows more about the actual origins of the e-mail itself. It appears to have started in Indiana, and the "paper plantation" reference is also suggestive, but please send me info if you know anything more.
Subject: Certificate of Completion or Attendance
The "Certificate of Completion or Attendance" that is being offered in lieu of high school diplomas, is a part of Bush's "No Child Left Behind". This is how it works:
It is for students who are unable to pass both the Language Arts and Math portions of the 10th grade ISTEP. Students must take the same 10th grade test over in the 11th and 12th grades until they pass both portions. If they are unable to pass the 10th grade test by the 12th grade then they have two options:
1. Drop out and go to a GED program or,
2. accept a "Certificate of Completion" - it is NOT a diploma. Once a student accepts it, they cannot ever get a diploma or a GED. A certificate of completion means that a student can never (as long as they live):
1. go to the armed services
2. go to college
3. go to trade school
4. go to journeyman's school
5. go to beauty school
6. go to culinary arts school
7. get a federal loan in their lifetimeThis is the portion of NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND (2001) that Bush slipped in during the 2004 revision of the NCLB bill. It has not been publicized. At a high school in Indiana, in 2005, there were 87 seniors in the graduation class. Five got diplomas and 82 got "Certificates of Completion".
This is being referred to as the "Paper Plantation". It is better for students to drop out and get into a GED program so they may seek other forms of education, later in life, if they desire to do so. All 50 states have "Certificates of Completion or Attendance".
Please pass this information along to EVERYONE you know who has school age children. Clergy, please preach it from the pulpits. Our people MUST know this information. Thank you & stay blessed.
Anyone who knows much about NCLB can see the serious factual flaws here, but it's just as easy to see how most people, who have no reason to know much about the law's details, might be deceived. (I won't get into pointing out the flaws or debunking here, since the folks at About.com and the Department of Education have already done a qutie thorough job of this. It's also fascinating to learn that NCLB has reached the level of cultural currency where it has its own chain hoax e-mail, or that anti-NCLB propaganda (and anti-Bush paranoia in some communities) has taken such hold that people would believe such sensational claims.
It's good that the Department's correcting rampant misinformation about the law. But, as my colleagues Kevin and Andy have noted elsewhere, misinformation about NCLB is also rampant in mainstream media coverage of the law, which is read by a lot more people and commands more respect than your typical chain e-mail.
I'm also curious to see if anyone out there knows more about the actual origins of the e-mail itself. It appears to have started in Indiana, and the "paper plantation" reference is also suggestive, but please send me info if you know anything more.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Scientific Method?
New 2005 NAEP science scores came out today. A familiar pattern -- elementary school scores up since the last test in 2000, middle and high school scores steady. But the high school scores are down from 1996, which is obviously cause for much concern. That said, this--per today's NYTimes--really doesn't make any sense at all:
2005 12th graders, by contrast, entered high school in 2001, which means they took their one and only NCLB test just as the law's provisions were coming into effect, and long before they might have been subject to the allegedly disinteresting effects of curricular narrowing in elementary school.
If anything, these numbers support exactly the opposite conclusion: that focusing on getting all students up to speed in reading and math results in higher science scores, but current 12th graders suffered from the lack of that focus in the early grades.
Shouldn't these anti-NCLB criticisms be a little more, I don't know--scientific?
So, NCLB has supposedly forced elementary schools to focus on reading and math and "abandon" science, so much so that elementary school science scores have gone--up? The fourth graders who took the NAEP science exam in 2005 have been living under NCLB for most of their academic careers, and their scores were the only ones that increased, at a statistically significant level to boot.Some teachers blamed the decreasing amount of time devoted to science in schools, in part because of the No Child Left Behind Law, whose requirements for annual testing in reading and math during the elementary grades have led many schools to decrease the time spent on science or to abandon its teaching altogether.
"Overall interest in science is down," said P. John Whitsett, a physics teacher at Fond du Lac High School in Wisconsin, who has taught physics and chemistry for 36 years. "When kids are given the opportunity to do science in elementary school, it excites them. But when the elementary and middle schools neglect science because of their focus on math and reading, it turns them off, and that disinterest carries on into high school."
2005 12th graders, by contrast, entered high school in 2001, which means they took their one and only NCLB test just as the law's provisions were coming into effect, and long before they might have been subject to the allegedly disinteresting effects of curricular narrowing in elementary school.
If anything, these numbers support exactly the opposite conclusion: that focusing on getting all students up to speed in reading and math results in higher science scores, but current 12th graders suffered from the lack of that focus in the early grades.
Shouldn't these anti-NCLB criticisms be a little more, I don't know--scientific?
Pre-KPalooza
Lots of action on the Pre-K front this week:
A new report from Pre-K Now summarizes state governors' preschool proposals for the 2007 fiscal year. Additional analysis from Stateline here, along with some coverage of the debate over Proposition 82, the California ballot initiative that would establish voluntary universal preschool in that state. Californians are scheduled to vote on Prop. 82 on June 6, and both proponents and opponents of the initiative are going into overdrive. On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times editorial page came out opposing Prop. 82, largely because of design flaws (I happen to share some of these concerns--particularly about bureacracy and requirements that preschool teachers obtain a special credential). And today the paper ran an op-ed by preschool researcher Art Reynolds arguing that Prop. 82 would be a wise public investment. Reynolds is not only the primary investigator for the Chicago Longitudinal Study, one of the most impressive studies finding positive impacts from large-scale preschool investments, but he's also an expert in cost-benefit analysis who has studied the returns to a variety of public investments in child health, education, and well-being, so his views on the subject are well-worth consideration.
If you really want to get a grip on this issue, though, I suggest you check out this website, created as part of the follow-up to a national conference on univeral preschool held at Berkeley earlier this spring. I was fortunate to be able to attend this conference, which featured as speakers many of the nation's leading thinkers on early childhood education and offered some of the most thoughtful discussion I've heard on this issue. You can watch streaming video of the presentations and discussions, or read research by participants at the website.
And stay tuned for an Education Sector online debate on the merits of universal preschool later this month.
A new report from Pre-K Now summarizes state governors' preschool proposals for the 2007 fiscal year. Additional analysis from Stateline here, along with some coverage of the debate over Proposition 82, the California ballot initiative that would establish voluntary universal preschool in that state. Californians are scheduled to vote on Prop. 82 on June 6, and both proponents and opponents of the initiative are going into overdrive. On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times editorial page came out opposing Prop. 82, largely because of design flaws (I happen to share some of these concerns--particularly about bureacracy and requirements that preschool teachers obtain a special credential). And today the paper ran an op-ed by preschool researcher Art Reynolds arguing that Prop. 82 would be a wise public investment. Reynolds is not only the primary investigator for the Chicago Longitudinal Study, one of the most impressive studies finding positive impacts from large-scale preschool investments, but he's also an expert in cost-benefit analysis who has studied the returns to a variety of public investments in child health, education, and well-being, so his views on the subject are well-worth consideration.
If you really want to get a grip on this issue, though, I suggest you check out this website, created as part of the follow-up to a national conference on univeral preschool held at Berkeley earlier this spring. I was fortunate to be able to attend this conference, which featured as speakers many of the nation's leading thinkers on early childhood education and offered some of the most thoughtful discussion I've heard on this issue. You can watch streaming video of the presentations and discussions, or read research by participants at the website.
And stay tuned for an Education Sector online debate on the merits of universal preschool later this month.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Even-Handed to a Fault
As a rule, it doesn't make sense to criticize newspapers that publicize reports you write. There's a lot going on in the world, some of which is arguably more interesting than how states inflate their performance under NCLB. One appreciates all the ink one can get.
But I'm going to make an exception in the case of this editorial from today's Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, which said:
I was basically with them until the last graf. "It will be found"? That's a pretty strong statement, given that at no point has the Indiana State Department of Education said why it disagrees with the report's findings. It just disagrees on principle, because the people there are smart enough to realize that this is usually all it takes to trigger the lamentable journalistic tendecy to fall back on nominally objective, judgement-free "he said she said" presentations of public policy debates.
Then comes the final pox-on-both-their-houses flourish, "what does any of it, really...." Maybe there are people out there who really don't think that reporting accurate public information about the success of the school system has anything to do with the success of the school system. I just didn't expect to find newspapers among their number.
But I'm going to make an exception in the case of this editorial from today's Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, which said:
Here’s what happens when the federal government, through the No Child Left Behind act, takes over so much control of local education. Indiana, says a new national analysis by the nonprofit Education Sector research group in Washington, ranks eighth in the nation “in the degree to which education leaders exaggerate statistics to make schools look better under federal accountability laws.” The state, says the report released by Kevin Carey of the organization, uses data that “defy reality and common sense,” falsely claiming that every teacher receives top-notch training, that student test scores are well above average and that nine of 10 students graduate from high school.
Not so, say state education officials. The federal government ensures states such as Indiana stick to reporting guidelines, said Mary Jane Michalak, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. But, Carey counters, Washington lets states define their own terms of success, which fuels embellishment.
This will all get sorted out, and it will be found that Carey is partly right and the state is partly right. But what does any of it, really, have to do with teaching children?
I was basically with them until the last graf. "It will be found"? That's a pretty strong statement, given that at no point has the Indiana State Department of Education said why it disagrees with the report's findings. It just disagrees on principle, because the people there are smart enough to realize that this is usually all it takes to trigger the lamentable journalistic tendecy to fall back on nominally objective, judgement-free "he said she said" presentations of public policy debates.
Then comes the final pox-on-both-their-houses flourish, "what does any of it, really...." Maybe there are people out there who really don't think that reporting accurate public information about the success of the school system has anything to do with the success of the school system. I just didn't expect to find newspapers among their number.
Principals: The Next Generation
Last year I spent a Saturday morning participating in a mock interview process designed to help New Leaders for New Schools participants prepare to get their first jobs as school principals. I left with two strong impressions: (1) being a principal is an even harder job than I'd thought, and (2) the candidates, many of whom were 30 or younger, seemed exceptionally bright, focused, and up to the challenge.
So I was glad to see the article in today's NYTimes focusing on the rapidly growing number of young principals in the New York City school system. This is an important issue--the long-awaited demographic turnover driven by retiring baby boomers has arrived, with potentially seismic consequences for education.
But the article's focus--whether youthful principals are up to the considerable challenge of running an urban school--is too narrow. The most important question is not whether new principals are better than retiring principals in the short term. The real issue is the long-term impact of a new generation of leaders who may have very different ideas about how to lead public schools.
Harvard's Susan Moore Johnson has done some great work focusing on inter-generational difference between teachers, and the same questions apply at the leadership level. While public education is often characterized as a huge, immobile blob, impervious to reform, this may turn out to be the long-sought-for unstoppable force to change things--not new laws or policies but the steady accumulation of new people implementing new ideas, one by one.
So I was glad to see the article in today's NYTimes focusing on the rapidly growing number of young principals in the New York City school system. This is an important issue--the long-awaited demographic turnover driven by retiring baby boomers has arrived, with potentially seismic consequences for education.
But the article's focus--whether youthful principals are up to the considerable challenge of running an urban school--is too narrow. The most important question is not whether new principals are better than retiring principals in the short term. The real issue is the long-term impact of a new generation of leaders who may have very different ideas about how to lead public schools.
Harvard's Susan Moore Johnson has done some great work focusing on inter-generational difference between teachers, and the same questions apply at the leadership level. While public education is often characterized as a huge, immobile blob, impervious to reform, this may turn out to be the long-sought-for unstoppable force to change things--not new laws or policies but the steady accumulation of new people implementing new ideas, one by one.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Secretary Spelllings Adds Value
There was a landmark event in the history of American education yesterday. Secretary Spellings announced that she is going let North Carolina and Tennessee change the way they rate their schools under NCLB. With that seemingly unremarkable bureaucratic declaration, Spellings set in motion a fundamental shift in education policy that stands, in time, to dramatically improve the nation's public education system.
In their desire to encourage schools to improve by linking sanctions to school performance, NCLB's drafters embraced a crude system of measuring school performance because it was the only system available that could be put in place in every state at the time. It tested students once a year and held schools accountable for having a sufficient percentage of students in various subgroups pass the tests. Unfortunately (and ironically), that snapshot system didn't measure how much schools were teaching students over the course of a school year. It was (and is) a school-performance system that didn't (doesn't) measure school performance. To actually measure how much school were teaching students, schools would need to compare individual students' scores at the beginning and then again at the end of a school year.
That, in effect, is what Spellings has permitted Tennessee and North Carolina to do. The result is that parents, educators, and policymakers alike in those two states stand to get school-rating systems that they can trust and that will give educators stonger incentives to improve the education of all students.
Skeptics of the so-called growth, or value-added, rating systems that Spellings approved yesterday worry that such systems could result in schools getting credit for educating low-achieving students to lower standards. Schools, they reason, could improve test scores but students entering school performing at very low levels could still not meet state standards. Spelling required that students eventually meet state standards uner the newly approved value-added plans. That provision helped win over value-added skeptics and liberal activists like Kati Haycock of the Education Trust and William Taylor of the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights, who sat on the review panel that Spellings created to vet the states' plans. The panel, and Spellings, rejected over a dozen other applications from states that lacked the infrastructure they needed, or that sought to use very different types of growth models to weaken rather than strengthen NCLB's accountability provisions.
North Carolina and Tennessee are among the few states that currently have the sophisticated student-tracking systems needed to create value-added school-rating systems. But many other states are building the same capacity and the prospect of every state using the promising new rating systems that North Carolina and Tennessee are pioneering is increasingly real. Spellings could speed the process by giving states financial incentives to catch up to their Southern brethern.
In their desire to encourage schools to improve by linking sanctions to school performance, NCLB's drafters embraced a crude system of measuring school performance because it was the only system available that could be put in place in every state at the time. It tested students once a year and held schools accountable for having a sufficient percentage of students in various subgroups pass the tests. Unfortunately (and ironically), that snapshot system didn't measure how much schools were teaching students over the course of a school year. It was (and is) a school-performance system that didn't (doesn't) measure school performance. To actually measure how much school were teaching students, schools would need to compare individual students' scores at the beginning and then again at the end of a school year.
That, in effect, is what Spellings has permitted Tennessee and North Carolina to do. The result is that parents, educators, and policymakers alike in those two states stand to get school-rating systems that they can trust and that will give educators stonger incentives to improve the education of all students.
Skeptics of the so-called growth, or value-added, rating systems that Spellings approved yesterday worry that such systems could result in schools getting credit for educating low-achieving students to lower standards. Schools, they reason, could improve test scores but students entering school performing at very low levels could still not meet state standards. Spelling required that students eventually meet state standards uner the newly approved value-added plans. That provision helped win over value-added skeptics and liberal activists like Kati Haycock of the Education Trust and William Taylor of the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights, who sat on the review panel that Spellings created to vet the states' plans. The panel, and Spellings, rejected over a dozen other applications from states that lacked the infrastructure they needed, or that sought to use very different types of growth models to weaken rather than strengthen NCLB's accountability provisions.
North Carolina and Tennessee are among the few states that currently have the sophisticated student-tracking systems needed to create value-added school-rating systems. But many other states are building the same capacity and the prospect of every state using the promising new rating systems that North Carolina and Tennessee are pioneering is increasingly real. Spellings could speed the process by giving states financial incentives to catch up to their Southern brethern.
ABCTE Teachers Performing Well, Aside From the ABCs....
Some interesting new findings were released last week about the effectiveness of teachers certified by the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE).
ABCTE provides an alternate, test-based certification for mid-career professionals who want to enter teaching but don't want to endure the cost and the pain of taking countless hours of education courses. Such“fast track” alternate certification programs are hotly contested by critics who fear that unqualified teachers may be placed in our country’s classrooms. Despite the documented success of alternate programs like Teach for America, traditional ed school folks continue to defend teacher education programs as the only acceptable form of teacher training. (Disclosure: I taught for two years in Colorado with an alternate license and helped develop the social studies component of the ABCTE test).
Last week ABCTE released findings from a study* of elementary school teachers in Tennessee who passed the ABCTE tests. But while the overall findings look positive for ABCTE (despite the small sample of 55 teachers analyzed) student reading scores are a potential source of concern.
To conduct the study, researchers gave the two ABCTE tests (one for subject matter knowledge, one for knowledge of teaching skills) to a group of classroom teachers and compared the performance of students taught by teachers who passed both exams to that of students taught by teachers who failed at least one. On average, students of passing teachers had a B+ grade point average (3.36 on a 4.0 scale) compared to a C or 2.0 average earned by students of teachers who didn't pass.
This may underestimate the value of the ABCTE process, since the teachers in the study were given far less time to prepare for the exam than those who normally take the tests. It wasn’t too long ago that I was pouring over my teacher’s manuals and old AP study guides in preparation for my own licensure exam, grateful for the time I spent reviewing the British Civil Wars prior to its unveiling as the essay topic.
Yet while these preliminary results suggest ABCTE may be helpful in identifying good new math, science, and social studies teachers, the results for reading were far less encouraging. Math, science, and social studies results for students taught by passing teachers were two letter grades higher than for failing teachers. Reading results were not; students of passing and non-passing teachers alike had the same low average of 2.0.
This is disconcerting considering that the majority of teachers in the study hold a teaching license and over half hold masters degrees. All elementary teachers should know how to teach reading, but this suggests many don't. However, given that only the results for math were statistically significant, further analysis with a larger sample size is necessary to see if the low reading scores for ABCTE certified teachers are anything to raise a stink about.
Interestingly, ABCTE also offers a reading endorsement for certified elementary teachers, yet no information has been provided on the correlation between passing rates on the reading endorsement exam and student outcomes. Until such results are made available to contradict the ABCTE study, it seems ABCTE reading standards and candidate performance may require a second look.
-Posted by Margaret Price
*This post originally stated that Mathematica had conducted this study. In fact, they are doing the longitudinal evaluation; this study was done by Josh Boots at ABCTE. Sorry for anyconfusion.
ABCTE provides an alternate, test-based certification for mid-career professionals who want to enter teaching but don't want to endure the cost and the pain of taking countless hours of education courses. Such“fast track” alternate certification programs are hotly contested by critics who fear that unqualified teachers may be placed in our country’s classrooms. Despite the documented success of alternate programs like Teach for America, traditional ed school folks continue to defend teacher education programs as the only acceptable form of teacher training. (Disclosure: I taught for two years in Colorado with an alternate license and helped develop the social studies component of the ABCTE test).
Last week ABCTE released findings from a study* of elementary school teachers in Tennessee who passed the ABCTE tests. But while the overall findings look positive for ABCTE (despite the small sample of 55 teachers analyzed) student reading scores are a potential source of concern.
To conduct the study, researchers gave the two ABCTE tests (one for subject matter knowledge, one for knowledge of teaching skills) to a group of classroom teachers and compared the performance of students taught by teachers who passed both exams to that of students taught by teachers who failed at least one. On average, students of passing teachers had a B+ grade point average (3.36 on a 4.0 scale) compared to a C or 2.0 average earned by students of teachers who didn't pass.
This may underestimate the value of the ABCTE process, since the teachers in the study were given far less time to prepare for the exam than those who normally take the tests. It wasn’t too long ago that I was pouring over my teacher’s manuals and old AP study guides in preparation for my own licensure exam, grateful for the time I spent reviewing the British Civil Wars prior to its unveiling as the essay topic.
Yet while these preliminary results suggest ABCTE may be helpful in identifying good new math, science, and social studies teachers, the results for reading were far less encouraging. Math, science, and social studies results for students taught by passing teachers were two letter grades higher than for failing teachers. Reading results were not; students of passing and non-passing teachers alike had the same low average of 2.0.
This is disconcerting considering that the majority of teachers in the study hold a teaching license and over half hold masters degrees. All elementary teachers should know how to teach reading, but this suggests many don't. However, given that only the results for math were statistically significant, further analysis with a larger sample size is necessary to see if the low reading scores for ABCTE certified teachers are anything to raise a stink about.
Interestingly, ABCTE also offers a reading endorsement for certified elementary teachers, yet no information has been provided on the correlation between passing rates on the reading endorsement exam and student outcomes. Until such results are made available to contradict the ABCTE study, it seems ABCTE reading standards and candidate performance may require a second look.
-Posted by Margaret Price
*This post originally stated that Mathematica had conducted this study. In fact, they are doing the longitudinal evaluation; this study was done by Josh Boots at ABCTE. Sorry for anyconfusion.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Quick and the Ed Roster Expands
The post below marks the first entry from a new member of Education Sector's policy team, Elena Silva. Elena has a Ph.D in education from UC-Berkeley and previously worked as the director of research for the American Association of University Women, where she directed a number of national research projects on gender equity in education and the workplace. Much more from Elena to come.
Dreaming About College
Kevin Carey's Crying Wolf About Immigration clarifies some key points about immigrant youth, including the fact that most children of immigrants are not undocumented. Yet as the debate on immigration reform rages on, there are gnawing questions about how we will educate the nearly 5 million children of undocumented immigrants who are currently living in the United States.
According to a recent Pew Hispanic Center report, an estimated two-thirds of children of undocumented immigrants are U.S. citizens by birth (leading to a large number of "mixed status" families). That leaves more than 1.5 million children who are themselves undocumented, although many of these youth have been in the U.S. for as long as they can remember and have attended U.S. public schools since kindergarten. This is possible, of course, because the United States provides free public elementary and secondary education to all children, regardless of immigrant status.
College, however, is another matter.
Under federal law, undocumented students are not eligible for in-state tuition rates (unless all other U.S. citizens are also made eligible for the same rate). The added fact that undocumented students cannot qualify for financial aid is the dealbreaker for many of these students. States are now grappling with the issue, and many have introduced legislation to change residency requirements (California already offers resident tuition). Meanwhile, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act would provide qualified undocumented students conditional legal status to attend college and would also give states the power to determine residency policies for tuition purposes. Read the full text of the Dream Act as introduced in 2005 (type "S.2075" into search).
The legislation is now sitting in committee as the nation debates the broader issue of immigration reform. Meanwhile, barely half of undocumented students are attending or have attended college, compared to nearly three-quarters of documented immigrant and native-born students. As it is likely that these students will remain in the United States, we must consider if the cost of making college more accessible and affordable to them is more or less than doing nothing.
According to a recent Pew Hispanic Center report, an estimated two-thirds of children of undocumented immigrants are U.S. citizens by birth (leading to a large number of "mixed status" families). That leaves more than 1.5 million children who are themselves undocumented, although many of these youth have been in the U.S. for as long as they can remember and have attended U.S. public schools since kindergarten. This is possible, of course, because the United States provides free public elementary and secondary education to all children, regardless of immigrant status.
College, however, is another matter.
Under federal law, undocumented students are not eligible for in-state tuition rates (unless all other U.S. citizens are also made eligible for the same rate). The added fact that undocumented students cannot qualify for financial aid is the dealbreaker for many of these students. States are now grappling with the issue, and many have introduced legislation to change residency requirements (California already offers resident tuition). Meanwhile, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act would provide qualified undocumented students conditional legal status to attend college and would also give states the power to determine residency policies for tuition purposes. Read the full text of the Dream Act as introduced in 2005 (type "S.2075" into search).
The legislation is now sitting in committee as the nation debates the broader issue of immigration reform. Meanwhile, barely half of undocumented students are attending or have attended college, compared to nearly three-quarters of documented immigrant and native-born students. As it is likely that these students will remain in the United States, we must consider if the cost of making college more accessible and affordable to them is more or less than doing nothing.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Why Club-Hoppers Should be Interested in DC Schools "Rightsizing"
Several folks have e-mailed me links to or questions about Washington, D.C., Superintendent Clifford Janey's announcement yesterday of six D.C. schools that will be closed as part of DCPS's plan to eliminate 3 million square feet of vacant space by August 2006. Parts of nine other D.C. campuses will be opened for co-location with city agencies or charter schools.
Analysis from DC Education Blog tells me that three of the 6 schools slated for closure are in Ward 7, and one is in each of Wards 2, 6, and 8. The predictable carping that 75 percent of the closures are east of the Anacostia River has already begun. I don't know as much as I probably ought to about the schools in Ward 7, so I'll refrain from saying anything much about the specific choices.
I will offer two random bits of trivia, however. One of the schools, Van Ness elementary in Ward 6, is only a few blocks down M street from my home. With only 90 students, it's been severely under-enrolled, although I continue to hope the new Hope V I development in near southeast will mean more kids in that neighborhood's public schools soon. In addition, one of the schools slated for merger--Adams Elementary in Ward 1, slated to merge with Oyster Bilingual--is the source of half of the name of D.C.'s Adams-Morgan neighborhood, known to D.C.-area 20-somethings for its bar and club scene.
More substantively, I will say that I respect Janey for having the guts to move with this.
Excess space has been a tremendous financial drain on the district and a foolish and unecessary one when the district's growing population of charter schools are scrambling for space. Closing schools is something that has to happen, but it's an incredibly difficult thing to do politically--no one will thank you for it, and a lot of people will be pissed off. Janey deserves credit for facing these tough facts and moving forward.
Analysis from DC Education Blog tells me that three of the 6 schools slated for closure are in Ward 7, and one is in each of Wards 2, 6, and 8. The predictable carping that 75 percent of the closures are east of the Anacostia River has already begun. I don't know as much as I probably ought to about the schools in Ward 7, so I'll refrain from saying anything much about the specific choices.
I will offer two random bits of trivia, however. One of the schools, Van Ness elementary in Ward 6, is only a few blocks down M street from my home. With only 90 students, it's been severely under-enrolled, although I continue to hope the new Hope V I development in near southeast will mean more kids in that neighborhood's public schools soon. In addition, one of the schools slated for merger--Adams Elementary in Ward 1, slated to merge with Oyster Bilingual--is the source of half of the name of D.C.'s Adams-Morgan neighborhood, known to D.C.-area 20-somethings for its bar and club scene.
More substantively, I will say that I respect Janey for having the guts to move with this.
Excess space has been a tremendous financial drain on the district and a foolish and unecessary one when the district's growing population of charter schools are scrambling for space. Closing schools is something that has to happen, but it's an incredibly difficult thing to do politically--no one will thank you for it, and a lot of people will be pissed off. Janey deserves credit for facing these tough facts and moving forward.
Monday, May 15, 2006
That Doesn't Sound Like Curricular Narrowing to Me
So, this weekend was the last one for the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in which I appeared (I'm the one in pink). Lots of terrific things about the experience, not related to education, that I won't go into here. One very interesting and educationally-relevant thing I learned about, though, was some of the great work the Washington, D.C., area theaters are doing with local public and private schools to expose youngsters to theater--including kids who otherwise wouldn't get this kind of experience.
Our phenomenal Puck, Niki Jacobsen (below, in red), works professionally with several local theater companies teaching acting and other classes to children in a variety of schools throughout the area. Another member of the cast, Joe Angel Babb, manages community outreach programs with the Shakespeare Theatre, which operates some of the most extensive educational and community outreach programs in the country. Most of the area's other theaters provide educational and outreach programs in a variety of ways too numerous to mention here.
These partnerships between local theaters and schools are broadening kids' cultural and educational opportunities. At their best, they also give lie to the myth that standards means narrowing the curriculum and eliminating "fun" activities, like theater, that get students engaged in school. For example, Young Playwrights' Theater--a unique program that brings playwrighting into the schools--designed its curriculum in alignment with D.C.'s English Language Arts Standards, so that students are building literacy skills and learning towards the standards even while they're learning to express themselves creatively.
If you're interested in learning more about how to bring these programs into your school, or your child's school, click on the links above.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Free Market Uber Alles
My wife and I moved into our house on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC almost five years ago. At first we got a lot of mail addressed to the previous owners, but that quickly slowed to a trickle and then stopped altogether, with two exceptions: a seed catalogue based in the Midwest (tithonias, only $2.45 for 50), and regular propaganda from the Cato Institute. Apparently, the wondrous efficiencies of an unfettered free market don't extend to updating your mailing list.
The Spring 2006 "Cato's Letter" arrived this morning, feauturing some kind of manifesto from Tucker Carlson--ack--and an interview with Andrew Coulson, director of Cato's "Center for Educational Freedom." In addition to the usual monomaniacal focus on vouchers he adds:
This is a nice summary of where logic takes you when you embrace one and only one principal--"markets, good; government, bad"--to the exclusion of all else, such as the obvious best interests of students and children.
The free market does a pretty decent job of providing Pre-K services to children of people who can afford them. It does a lousy job of providing them to low-income children, just as it does a lousy job of providing nearly everything to low-income people: witness the shady pawn shops, grungy grocery stores, check cashing outlets, and payday lenders common to low-income neighborhoods.
That's why a lot of people are pushing for universal preschool. There are legitimate arguments about how to get there, whether to expand rapidly or focus on the most vulnerable populations. But to reject helping all children get a decent education in the critical early years on principle--well, you'd have to be some kind of extremist organization that simply doesn't believe in public education at all. As Education Sector's Sara Mead recently wrote, there are ways to expand Pre-K funding while preserving the diversity and dynamism of the market. One doubts Cato would have interest, there are larger anti-government principles at stake.
Ditto the concern about higher education--again, it's abundantly clear that higher education does a bad job of serving many students, particularly low-income and minority students, less than half of whom graduate on time and who appear to be learning much less than their more affluent, white peers. The smart solution is for the government to bring more information about student success into the higher education market through mandatory transparency and reporting--like the SEC does for publicly-traded companies--but again, that's just not as hard-core as rejecting government involvement out of hand.
Markets, competition, choice--these are all good things, of which public education needs more, not less. But bringing the benefits of choice into the education arena while staying true to bedrock public values of access, community, and fairness is difficult and complicated. It's possible, but it means opening your mind to multiple--even competing--principles. But if you're pure of heart like Cato, that kind of thinking just marks irresolution and weakness. Free market today, free market tomorrow, free market (and, apparently, quarterly publications I don't want) forever.
The Spring 2006 "Cato's Letter" arrived this morning, feauturing some kind of manifesto from Tucker Carlson--ack--and an interview with Andrew Coulson, director of Cato's "Center for Educational Freedom." In addition to the usual monomaniacal focus on vouchers he adds:
"We have to fight for market reforms at the K-12 level and also against state and federal government encroachment at the preschool and university levels."
This is a nice summary of where logic takes you when you embrace one and only one principal--"markets, good; government, bad"--to the exclusion of all else, such as the obvious best interests of students and children.
The free market does a pretty decent job of providing Pre-K services to children of people who can afford them. It does a lousy job of providing them to low-income children, just as it does a lousy job of providing nearly everything to low-income people: witness the shady pawn shops, grungy grocery stores, check cashing outlets, and payday lenders common to low-income neighborhoods.
That's why a lot of people are pushing for universal preschool. There are legitimate arguments about how to get there, whether to expand rapidly or focus on the most vulnerable populations. But to reject helping all children get a decent education in the critical early years on principle--well, you'd have to be some kind of extremist organization that simply doesn't believe in public education at all. As Education Sector's Sara Mead recently wrote, there are ways to expand Pre-K funding while preserving the diversity and dynamism of the market. One doubts Cato would have interest, there are larger anti-government principles at stake.
Ditto the concern about higher education--again, it's abundantly clear that higher education does a bad job of serving many students, particularly low-income and minority students, less than half of whom graduate on time and who appear to be learning much less than their more affluent, white peers. The smart solution is for the government to bring more information about student success into the higher education market through mandatory transparency and reporting--like the SEC does for publicly-traded companies--but again, that's just not as hard-core as rejecting government involvement out of hand.
Markets, competition, choice--these are all good things, of which public education needs more, not less. But bringing the benefits of choice into the education arena while staying true to bedrock public values of access, community, and fairness is difficult and complicated. It's possible, but it means opening your mind to multiple--even competing--principles. But if you're pure of heart like Cato, that kind of thinking just marks irresolution and weakness. Free market today, free market tomorrow, free market (and, apparently, quarterly publications I don't want) forever.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
CNN.com Award for Egregious Sensationalism
Today's award goes to ABC.com's third leading story (in their continuously updating stream of five) running under the banner "Sexy Video Sends Teacher Back to Jail." Clicking on the link brings you to the less egregiously titled story "Ex-Teacher Back in Jail," but rest assured it's filled with the requisite voyeurism, sexploitation, and parental outrage.
Posted by Ethan Gray
Monday, May 08, 2006
Is Wendy Kopp Today's Jane Addams?
After reading Christine Stansell's New Republic review of it, I'm really eager to read Louise W. Knight's Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. While I certainly don't agree with everything they did, I feel a particular debt to the early 20th century Progressive women reformers such as Addams, both for the positive social changes to which they contributed and the doors they opened for me asa woman.
I did have to question one line in Stansell's review, though:
But, with tens of thousands of our nation's brightest college graduates applying to teach in some of our nations most disadvantaged urban and rural communities through Teach for America, I wonder if Stansell isn't missing a piece of the picture here. While we know that many of these young people remain in the classroom, it's also clear that Teach for America alums are emerging as a key source of leaders in both education and other social and public service and policy realms. Certainly, Teach for America is very different from the settlement movement in its methods, aims, and focus. But is it serving a similar function in developing connections between bright, priviledged, driven young people and disadvantaged communities, and in fostering a crop of future leaders for social and political justice?
I did have to question one line in Stansell's review, though:
By 1900, a stay in a settlement house was de rigueur for new college graduates who wanted to make the world better. Now, few things could seem less appealing to the best of my college students; what Addams called "the subjective necessity of the settlement"--the need to be in contact with others different from oneself--is more likely to propel young idealists to go live with the poor in the barrios of Mexico City or the shantytowns of Johannesburg rather than Chicago, Boston, or New York.
But, with tens of thousands of our nation's brightest college graduates applying to teach in some of our nations most disadvantaged urban and rural communities through Teach for America, I wonder if Stansell isn't missing a piece of the picture here. While we know that many of these young people remain in the classroom, it's also clear that Teach for America alums are emerging as a key source of leaders in both education and other social and public service and policy realms. Certainly, Teach for America is very different from the settlement movement in its methods, aims, and focus. But is it serving a similar function in developing connections between bright, priviledged, driven young people and disadvantaged communities, and in fostering a crop of future leaders for social and political justice?
Terrorist U?
Don't look now, but there's a terrorist at Yale, or so many folks would have you believe. Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former "roving ambassador and spokesman" for the Taliban has been enrolled in a special, non-degree program at Yale University and is now—after securing a 3.33 GPA with little more than a 4th grade education, lots of self motivated study, and a keen interest—attempting to enroll in a full-fledged, four-year undergraduate program. Some, including my colleague
Posted by Ethan Gray
Meaning from Marshmallows
In yesterday's NYT, columnist David Brooks argued* that "structural" education reforms--such as accountability, school choice and teacher pay reforms--have a lousy track record of success because they fail to address "core questions, such as how do we get people to master the sort of self-control that leads to success." According to Brooks,
Brooks is basing his arguments on the famous "Marshmallow Test" performed by psychologist Walter Mischel in the 1960's: Small children (about age 4) were given a marshmallow and told that they could have a second marshmallow if they waited until a researcher returned to eat the marshmallow they had; longitudinal follow-up found children who were able to wait had better life outcomes down the road. Brooks is joining a litany of researchers and commentators who have seized on this result to argue that "emotional intelligence" or psychological traits, such as the ability to delay gratification, may be more important to children's longterm success than academic skills. I doubt that many reasonable people disagree with that conclusion, but what kind of pragmatic guidance that's supposed to offer policymakers is far less clear than Brooks seems to think it is.
After all, it's not as if schools have never tried to impact children's emotional and psychological development or personal habits. In fact, the history of the Progressive education movement is littered with efforts to inculcate specific habits and values--from personal hygiene, to how to make friends, to good work habits, to self-esteem--in youngsters, often at the expense of academic content. Far from a lack of interest in intervening in what Brooks labels "the murky world of psychology and human nature," politicians and educators have evidenced a seemingly insatiable desire to do so, but one which history shows us has often been poorly implemented or focused on misguided ends. And fights between different schools of educators and idealouges over precisely what aspects of children's psychology and nature our public schools ought to seek to alter, and in what ways, have consumed an extraordinary amount of energy and produced a great deal of unproductive division within our nation's education system.
Contemporary education reformers focus on structural and organizational concerns not because they are myopic but because these tools are the most effective levers policymakers have to drive broad change. For example, high-quality preschool programs--the very type of structural reform Brooks derides--have shown positive long-term impacts in children's lives in large part because they focus on supporting children's social and emotional development--including the type of self-regulatory skills the Marshmallow Test measures--at least as much as academics. More broadly, when policymakers set clear expectations, hold educators accountable, and give them the freedom to run schools effectively, teachers and school leaders--who realize the importance of fostering children's moral, social and emotional as well as their cognitive development--choose to run schools in ways that foster the very skills Brooks wishes to see inculcated. Parents who are given choices also tend to choose such schools.
Throughout the country we find examples of high-performing public, private, and charter schools that seek to educate children to high standards in both academics and such virtues as responsibility, self-control, integrity, and respect. But numerous structural policy barriers conspire to prevent the creation or expansion of more such schools. Eliminating these barriers will do far more to generate the type of results Brooks seeks--and would do so with more respect for basic conservative values of family privacy and autonomy--than would legislating another indifferently implemented and controversial "values" program at the state or federal level.
*Sorry for Times Select link. Normally I try not to highlight anything many people can't access.
If you're a policy maker and you are not talking about core psychological traits like delayed gratification skills, then you're just dancing around with proxy issues. You're not getting to the crux of the problem.
Brooks is basing his arguments on the famous "Marshmallow Test" performed by psychologist Walter Mischel in the 1960's: Small children (about age 4) were given a marshmallow and told that they could have a second marshmallow if they waited until a researcher returned to eat the marshmallow they had; longitudinal follow-up found children who were able to wait had better life outcomes down the road. Brooks is joining a litany of researchers and commentators who have seized on this result to argue that "emotional intelligence" or psychological traits, such as the ability to delay gratification, may be more important to children's longterm success than academic skills. I doubt that many reasonable people disagree with that conclusion, but what kind of pragmatic guidance that's supposed to offer policymakers is far less clear than Brooks seems to think it is.
After all, it's not as if schools have never tried to impact children's emotional and psychological development or personal habits. In fact, the history of the Progressive education movement is littered with efforts to inculcate specific habits and values--from personal hygiene, to how to make friends, to good work habits, to self-esteem--in youngsters, often at the expense of academic content. Far from a lack of interest in intervening in what Brooks labels "the murky world of psychology and human nature," politicians and educators have evidenced a seemingly insatiable desire to do so, but one which history shows us has often been poorly implemented or focused on misguided ends. And fights between different schools of educators and idealouges over precisely what aspects of children's psychology and nature our public schools ought to seek to alter, and in what ways, have consumed an extraordinary amount of energy and produced a great deal of unproductive division within our nation's education system.
Contemporary education reformers focus on structural and organizational concerns not because they are myopic but because these tools are the most effective levers policymakers have to drive broad change. For example, high-quality preschool programs--the very type of structural reform Brooks derides--have shown positive long-term impacts in children's lives in large part because they focus on supporting children's social and emotional development--including the type of self-regulatory skills the Marshmallow Test measures--at least as much as academics. More broadly, when policymakers set clear expectations, hold educators accountable, and give them the freedom to run schools effectively, teachers and school leaders--who realize the importance of fostering children's moral, social and emotional as well as their cognitive development--choose to run schools in ways that foster the very skills Brooks wishes to see inculcated. Parents who are given choices also tend to choose such schools.
Throughout the country we find examples of high-performing public, private, and charter schools that seek to educate children to high standards in both academics and such virtues as responsibility, self-control, integrity, and respect. But numerous structural policy barriers conspire to prevent the creation or expansion of more such schools. Eliminating these barriers will do far more to generate the type of results Brooks seeks--and would do so with more respect for basic conservative values of family privacy and autonomy--than would legislating another indifferently implemented and controversial "values" program at the state or federal level.
*Sorry for Times Select link. Normally I try not to highlight anything many people can't access.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)