The Dedication of Teachers

Sometimes we here at the Quick and the Ed get accused of not giving teachers enough credit for their dedication to their students, hard work, and the excellent results many accomplish. I don't think that's true--it's knowing how hard so many talented teachers work that makes us all the more angry when the system doesn't support them. This is also a personal matter for me: with a dad who's a high school principal and sister and brother-in-law both teachers, I see the incredible sacrifices educators make on a day-to-day basis.

Take my sister, Rachel Kurtz. She teaches high school English in Washington County, Maryland. This year she also volunteered to advise her school's student government. Last week was homecoming week at Rachel's school. Like many American high schools, homecoming week is also "Spirit Week"--there are different themes for each day and students can earn points for their class by dressing up for the themes. Rachel was disappointed by how few students were dressing up for the themes and how little school spirit they showed, so on Thursday she promised the student body that, if they doubled the number of students in each class who dressed up the next day, she would dye her hair blue. The kids did, and so did she. Here, for your viewing pleasure, are the results.

I know some readers may be skeptical of the educational value of Spirit Week. But this is just the most visible reminder I have of the dedication my sister and countless other teachers show their kids in so many ways that contribute to student learning and better life outcomes for those kids.

I am proud of you, Rachel.

The Wire Episode 4 - Reckless with Rookies

Last night we witnessed an obvious outrage—Top brass assigning a rookie homicide detective to a tough case because they want it stalled until after the municipal elections. “We’re pulling a veteran off a pending case and giving it to a rookie so as NOT to make timely progress on said case?” Normally, we learn, the division simply would never think of doing such a thing. “You won’t catch anything as a primary for the first few months,” Kima is told when she shows up to her new job. “Give you time to learn the basics.” The message is clear: Assigning a rookie to do a tough job before she is ready to handle it is a practice so stupid as to be generally unthinkable.

Clearly, the writers are using this plotline to comment on what's happening way over in the education subplot: Where is the same sense of surprise and outrage when rookie educator Prez gets assigned to teach children in West Baltimore—some of the most educationally needy youngsters in our society? In fact, after seeing so many awful “white knight urban teacher” movies, I applaud The Wire’s writers for being relatively honest that, however well-intentioned and hard-working Prez might be, he’s just terrible at his new job. I don’t have the space here, but I would love to see someone list every major teaching blunder Prez has committed in just the past two episodes.

And make no mistake: His students will pay the price in lost learning. Over the past ten years, “value-added research” has revealed that, in general, students assigned to rookie teachers make considerably less academic progress during the course of a full year than do their peers assigned to more experienced educators. Most novice teachers then experience a steep climb in effectiveness over the next 3-5 years. In a few speeches and some writing, I’ve referred to this phenomenon as a “learning tax,” one that pays for a long-term social good—helping new teachers get better—at the cost of lost learning for some kids.

By the way, I’m not attacking Teach for America—research shows that all of this is as true of credentialed teachers with degrees from an education school as for new teachers who enter, like Prez, through alternative routes. As long as most teachers learn on the job, some kids are going to have to be the guinea pigs.

But if we’re really having an honest national conversation about what it will take to close achievement gaps, why is no one asking an obvious question: If it’s unthinkable to assign a rookie homicide detective to a tough case, why is it okay to assign a novice teacher to educate kids who are behind academically and who face significant educational (and social) obstacles to begin with? In fact, some federal data suggest that poor and minority kids get more than their fair share of novice teachers! (Call that a “regressive learning tax,” since those kids can least afford to pay it.) No Child Left Behind (NCLB) required states to measure such inequities and come up with plans to fix them, but most states have all but ignored the requirement. That's a shame, and one reason I cringe when people say the education system already is doing all it possibly can to close the achievement gap; in reality, beyond some tougher pushing and prodding via NCLB's accountability system, we're not even really trying very hard yet!

Sure, it might not be politically feasible to simply outlaw the practice of assigning rookie teachers to low-income and minority kids. But can’t we at least try to do that for our most disadvantaged kids living in very tough neighborhoods like West Baltimore? Or, if that’s not politically feasible, why not at least insist that disadvantaged kids who do get rookie teachers NEVER end up with a novice or weak teacher the following year, since research shows that getting several ineffective teachers in a row deals a crushing blow to long-term academic growth from which very few kids ever recover? But a dirty secret is that urban schools often do the just the opposite, practicing a kind of triage whereby academically stronger students get assigned to stronger teachers as they climb the educational ladder. So the system compounds disadvantage rather than confronting it.

p.s. Episode 4 also provided the solution to the “soft eyes” mystery from Episode 2, and it also turns out to be related to the rookie theme. Bunk tells Kima that soft eyes are the most important thing to have at a murder scene: “You have soft eyes, you can see the whole thing. You have hard eyes, you’re staring at the same tree, missing the forest.” So the “soft eyes” comment the experienced teacher made to Prez in Episode 2 was actually a kind of foreshadowing (or, since the term wasn’t explained until two episodes later, a kind of “retroactive foreshadowing”—who said The Wire is easy?). If Prez had had the soft eyes that seasoned teachers develop, he’d have seen what was happening between the girls in his class, and he could have intervened before the antagonism escalated into physical violence. As any good teacher can tell you, effective classroom management depends on seeing everything happening in the classroom, whether it’s related to your lesson plan or not. “Soft eyes, grasshopper.”

--- Guest blogger Craig Jerald

The Wire Week Four: Social Promotion

Week Four of The Wire brings the issue of social promotion front and center, as Bubbles enrolls his nephew Sherrod in middle school. Having been absent for the previous three years, and having grown up in family conditions that we can only guess at, but currently include living in an abandoned basement with his heroin addict uncle, Sherrod is understandably far behind academically, particularly in math.

But when Bubbles suggests that Sherrod should be put in a class with students at the same level of learning, assistant principal Donnelly basically says no, it's way too disruptive to put older students in a younger class, and we don't have the resources to do anything else for him. He looks like an eighth grader, he's as as old as an eighth grader, so he's an eighth grader, on the way to high school.

Social promotion has been a hot-button political issue in places like New York City, where Mayor Bloomberg and Chancelor Klein implemented policies that prevent students who don't score at a certain level on standardized reading and language tests from being promoted to the 4th grade. They subsequently added another requirement for promotion to the 6th grade, and just today announced that henceforth there will be no more social promotion to the 8th grade.

So would Sherrod be better off in New York than in Baltimore?

Probably. But it depends on more than just what grade level he's assigned. The debate over social promotion often gets framed as "Should we hold underperforming students back a grade, or not?" Opponents of Bloomberg-like policies note that holding students back screws up their self-esteem as well as the dynamics of classrooms full of younger children. Proponents argue that students who already can't handle the work in one grade will be even less likely to succeed in the next. Research is published supporting both camps; you can find one recent study based on Florida data supporting Bloomberg-like policies here.

But the real issue is this: A student who can't read at grade level is like a ball rolling downhill. The longer you let it roll, the faster downhill it goes. The paramount issue is to stop the ball from rolling.

If you can do that by holding students back a grade and giving them the extra help they need to catch up, that's a good idea. If you can do that by promoting them but then giving them the extra help they need to catch up, that's a good idea too. The important thing is giving them the extra help they need, whatever it might cost and whatever it might be. And the even more important thing is doing everything you can to prevent them from getting to that crisis point in the first place.

Socially promoting someone like Sherrod and then simply sticking him in a class taught by an ineffective, poorly-trained rookie teacher like Prez is clearly a terrible thing to do. Putting him in a class full of 5th graders probably wouldn't work much better. He needs a school system that recognizes him as the high-probability educational and social disaster that he is, and takes immediate steps to change his trajectory.

The Bloomberg proposal includes extra time on weekends and during the summer for students, as well as extra money for literacy specialists, guidance counselors, etc., in middle schools. Whether that's enough to help academically at-risk 7th graders I don't know. But it's clear that without an intense focus of attention and resources on students like Sherrod, the results will be grim.

George Will, Wrong Once Again

George Will, to his credit, has a mild interest in education policy, which is more than most nationally prominent columnists can say. The problem is that his columns are nearly always based on a few tired, outdated, and/or foolish ideas about finance and schools. To wit, yesterday's column in the Post, focused on the "65 Percent Solution."

The "solution" is to mandate that all 15,000 school districts nationwide spend at least 65% of their money in a series of federally-mandated accounting categories labelled collectively as "instruction." I won't go into all the many reasons why this is a remarkably bad idea, you can see previous posts and op-eds here, here, and here. Or if you don't believe me, see Jay Greene in the National Review call the idea "horribly wrongheaded" here, or Gerry Bracey's lengthy takedown here.

For those of you who aren't full-time education policy wonks, Jay Greene and Gerry Bracey are about as likely to agree on education policy as Donald Rumsfeld and Cindy Sheehan are to agree on troop deployment in Iraq.

In addition to rehashing previous wrongheaded arguments, Will also casually maligns a federal agency with a well-deserved reputation for objectivity, neutrality, and fairness: the National Center for Education Statistics:

But in July the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the U.S. Education Department, undermined this national effort. A report on expenditures for public elementary and secondary education for the 2003-04 school year contained this finding: "The percentage of current expenditures spent on instruction and instruction-related activities was 66.1 percent in 2003-04 for the nation as a whole" (emphasis added). Seasoned students of government verbiage noted the suspiciously vague phrase "instruction-related activities."

Opacity is a sign of insincerity: Government language becomes opaque as the government's conscience becomes uneasy. When no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were found, the U.S. government began speaking foggily of finding "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."

In other words, because the administration whose election he supported made up a bunch of stuff about WMDs, any other federal agency that releases information contradicting his poorly-conceived ideas is similarly suspect.

His complaint also highlights one of the (several) glaring flaws in the "65 percent solution" -- it's an entirely made-up standard. The number has no meaning or relationship to anything, it's just a multiple of five that was somewhat higher than another number with no relationship to anything. That's why it was no suprise when Standard & Poors found no link between the percent of money spent in the categories in question and actual student learning in the classroom.

Will does make one important point, albeit inadvertantly, when he notes that the "65 percent solution" initiative has actually been very successful, with a signficant number of states adopting it and more on the way. Despite the fact that absolutely everyone--left, right, and center--with a shred of knowledge about education hates this idea, politicians are happily adopting it just the same. There's no better evidence of the marginalized state of education policy than this.

Humorless Feminism Alert

Writing for National Review online, Judith Kleinfeld quotes selectively from the transcript of a recent Education Sector debate on the boy crisis to criticize my arguments against the "boy crisis" hype. Here's a quote from Kleinfeld's piece:

The moderator, Ruth Wattenberg, editor of the American Educator, opened the discussion with a statement from a time warp, “I promise no matter how aggressive or disruptive [the two male panelists] get, I will not neglect Sara [the author of a report dismissing the problems of boys].”

Sara Mead testily replied, “I hope I’m not being called on first because you don’t think I can hold my own!”

There you have it. It’s still all about women. It’s still about men oppressing women. They just don’t get it. “Change blindness” — that’s what psychologists call this dangerous cognitive error.

Wow! The NRO crowd must take that "humorless feminist" stereotype seriously. Cuz, even allowing my brilliant comic timing may not be so clear in transcript, it boggles the mind how anyone could see this exchange as anything other than a joke--maybe a relatively lame one, but a joke nonetheless.

Kleinfeld has to seize on this silly exchange because the actual reasons that I argue we should be cautious embracing "boy crisis" hype have nothing to do with "men oppressing women." Rather than falling, boys' achievement has actually increased over time on a host of measures. There are some places where that's not the case, and even where it's rising, boys' achievement isn't rising fast enough or as fast as that of girls. But that doesn't discount the fact that boys are doing better than in the past in many ways.

More significantly, I'm concerned that generalized fears about a boy crisis distract attention from the groups--students with disabilities, poor and minority youngsters of both genders (although the problems facing boys in these groups are more pronounced)--who suffer from much more significant educational gaps. And I'm concerned that a lot of explanations and solutions being peddled for the boy crisis are based on ideological agendas, misinformation, and little hard research--exactly the recipes for goofy educational practices and bad curricula that have been undermining our education system for years. There are perfectly good reasons to be concerned about the impacts of the boy crisis hype and some of its practitioners' recommendations for boys, leave girls out of it for a moment.

Its been fascinating--and disappointing--to me to see how conservatives, who are generally skeptical of conferring victim status, and critical of untested new educational ideas, seem to embrace both so uncritically when the "victims" are boys and the education "innovations" include single sex schools and implementing gender stereotypes in the classroom.

Refunds for a "college" degree?

The New York Times reported today on the closing of Taylor Business Institute, a commercial 2-year business college in New York City. The New York State Education Department ordered the closing of Taylor following a panel report in August who found, among other things, that “In the bulk of its educational activities, the institute operates more as a high school equivalency preparation enterprise than as a college.”

The NY Board of Regents is in the midst of re-writing its regulations for accrediting commercial colleges, a process other states will have to revisit as these institutions continue to grow. This means having to face the difficult task of determining what it means to operate as a “college” in an increasingly diverse arena of institutions, students, and degrees. This is no small matter. Considering the cost (in Taylor’s case, $80,000 - $90,000 per student), it is important that state oversight be able to determine in a timely manner whether an education is sub-par.

State accreditation and monitoring is likely the best method of preventing colleges from selling students a bag of goods, but on a more adventurous note: if the students attending Taylor find that they aren’t qualified to attend another 2-year institution in New York City, should they get a refund?

Kid Lit and thinking about Education

So, when I was trying to think about what books influenced my thinking about education, I had a strange thought. I realized that a substantial share of the books I loved and cherished as a child were about characters who were teachers. My hands-down favorite books as a child were the Anne of Green Gables books by L.M. Montgomery. Anne teaches one-room school in Anne of the Island and a high school principal in Anne of Windy Poplars. Laura in the Little House books also grows up to be a teacher, as does Mable in the Grandma's Attic books, and while Jo Marsh is a writer she and Professor Bhaer run a school for boys in Little Men and Jo's Boys. This isn't surprising: many classic children's books were written at a time when teaching was virtually the only career option available for middle-class women, so as these female characters (two of whom are based on real people) grow up (they all started their series as children), it's natural that they become teachers. Another thing that strikes me is how young these women are when they take on their teaching responsibilities. Laura Ingalls is 15 when she gets her teaching certificate. Anne Shirley and Mabel O'Dell are similarly still teenagers, with the equivalent of a high school diploma (Anne later goes to college and earns a bachelor's degree that allows her to become a principal). And while the schools these women work in aren't today's inner city schools, they do have to deal with some pretty difficult things.

That got me to thinking about whether any similar contemporary books are being written for children and young women now. These books are somewhere between young adult literature and chick lit--they were intended as entertainment for adolescent and early/mid teen girls, the characters are flawed but are also supposed to offer something of a role model, and romantic interests come into play once the characters get to be an age where that makes sense (which in most of these stories is about the same time they start teaching). I don't read a lot of contemporary young adult or chick lit, so I don't know if there's anything comparable. The sense I get of chick lit, at least, is that everybody seems to be a publicist or work for a fashion magazine. So where's our modern Anne Shirley or Laura Ingalls? I'm thinking Alice in Eduland would make a great heroine.

EduMeme

There are three sets of blogs I attempt to read on a regular basis. The biggest group are the ed blogs that I read for work, which you can see in the blogroll to the right. I also read a few select political blogs. Finally, there are a couple of individual blogs I read for my own amusement.

One phenomenon I enjoy on individual blogs are blog memes--basically a set of questions that people answer on their blogs and then pass onto other bloggers they read/admire/like/what have you. For an example, see this post on Matthew Yglesias' blog.

In my time blogging about education and reading education blogs, I've never come across an edublog meme. So I'm going to try to start one, taking a page from the book meme that's popped up lately on some individual blogs I read. Questions below, with my answers.

1. What book has most influenced your thinking about education?

This is a hard one. Virtually all the books listed below (except Robbins) have had some impact on my thinking, particularly Hirsch, Ravitch, and the cursed Emile. It's not so much that any of them caused me to have a particular policy position, but they've impacted what I bring with me when I think about issues in education, the questions I ask and the things I prioritize. My religious beliefs about the need for social justice, which are particularly shaped by the Gospels and the book of Isaiah, also play a role here. There's no earth-shattering moment or revelation for me that changed my thinking, so much as a slow process of building up ideas over time from reading and experience. (I know this is a lame start)

2. What education-related book do you think is way over-hyped?

The Overachievers, by Alexandra Robbins. I'm just tired of books about the terrible, terrible stress and pressure we put on those poor, poor, affluent kids facing the dire(!) possibility they may not get into the Ivy League school of their (parents') dreams. Why do we waste so much time and energy on such a tiny segment of the population?

3. What education-related book do you think a lot more people should pay attention to/read?

Unequal Childhoods, by Annette Lareau. This book is based on sociological research about the different approaches to childrearing and experiences of children in low-income/working class versus affluent/middle-class homes. It's centered around a series of fascinating in-depth case studies of individual children and their families

4. What is an important issue in education that you would like to see a good book written about?

I'd like to see a really good book that explores historical trends in how we think about children and childhood; the legal and social history of thought around the respective rights and responsibilities of parents, the state and kids themselves with regard to making decisions about children's lives; and what that means for how we think about public education and other social services that impact children.

5. What is a book related to education that you wish hadn't been written?

Emile, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It's not an original choice, but I do think Rousseau's ideas are at the root of a line of thought that has had horrible educational results for a lot of youngsters.

6. What are five books you'd recommend to an aspiring educator, education researcher, or education policy person? (Not necessarily the five most important books, just five that are worth reading)

Left Back and/or The Troubled Crusade, by Diane Ravitch. The historical story is very interesting. I don't think you can really know or question current educational systems and practices effectively without first knowing how we got here.
A Hope in the Unseen, by Ron Suskind. Suskind followed Cedric Jennings, a very smart African-American teenager from southeast DC who was determined to go to an elite university. The story tracks both the education Cedric received at DC's Ballou High School and his experiences at Brown. There are a number of good books in this vein, but I recommend this one because it's about DC and Suskind is an excellent journalist and writer.
Emile, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It's been hugely influential, so people should be familiar with it.
The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them, by E.D. Hirsch. The argument for content and coherent curriculum, with lots of evidence to back that up. Particularly worth reading if you think you disagree with Hirsch.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. If you're going to write about or do analysis on the law, it's a smart thing to know what it actually says. A shocking number of people opining in this area don't.

I'm passing this along to my co-bloggers Kevin, Elena, and Erin; Joe Williams; Leo Casey; and Jenny D.

Sexy Tees!!!!!

Frontpage WaPo article today on the dilemmas posed for educators when teenagers show up on campus in tee shirts bearing suggestive slogans.

The article put me in mind of a visit I made a while back with a group of female state legislators to Young Women's Leadership Charter School in Chicago. As we were walking down the hall, a young woman passed us wearing a shirt with the slogan: "Men are Like Chocolate--the Richer, the Better." Every single female state legislator in the group did a double take. We all agreed the shirt was cute--if not necessarily completely in synch with the school's female empowerment goals.

I must admit, I'm a fan of the cheeky tee and have been known to sport one myself on occassion. But I do frequently see young girls in my neighborhood sporting shirts that can only make me think: "Your momma let you out of the house wearing that?!?!?!?" (A twelve year old wearing a t-shirt that says "Jail Bait" is just plain creepy.) I certainly don't envy the school administrator who has to confront this on a day to day basis.

The lines here for educators can certainly be tough. Cracking down on inappropriate tee shirt slogans is among my dad's myriad responsibilities as a principal. From my school days I mostly remember him cracking down on profanity and shirts promoting guns, tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs--not today's cheeky tees. The most suggestive tee shirts I remember from high school were the old "co-ed naked" which were tame, albeit dopey. A particularly controversial incident arose when the women's cross country team made shirts sporting the slogan "I may be just a pile of dookey, but dookey gets tougher in time." They were not happy when my dad asked them to cover the word "dookey" with duct tape. And I am not making this up.

Spellings Speech Reax

Fairly high-profile coverage today of Sec. Spellings' recent speech on higher education, most prominently the lead above-the-fold piece in USA Today, along with articles in the WaPost, NYTimes, Chronicle, and InsiderHigherEd.

Most of the coverage noted the lack of outrage from the higher education community; after months of rumblings and complaints about the Secretary's reform commission, the various higher ed lobbyists and trade organizations generally struck a conciliatory tone, promising lots of future consideration, dialogue, etc.

Many of the articles zeroed in on the Secretary's endoresment of a federal privacy-protected student-record data system, which has been highly controversial and subject to strident attacks from the private college associations, particularly the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. In fairness to NAICU, they signed onto a statement released by a consortium of major higher ed associations last week that at least promised to consider the issue, rather than simply rejecting it out of hand. That's actually a big step from where they've been. However, they're not exactly leading the way here:

In her speech, Ms. Spellings sought to reassure critics of the proposal, stressing that the system would be "privacy protected" and "would not identify individual students, nor be tied to personal information."

"It wouldn't enable you to go online and find out how Margaret Spellings did in her political-science class," she said.

Critics of the plan, however, remain unconvinced. In an interview following the secretary's speech, one private-college lobbyist said that even if the system could be made secure, privacy would remain a concern.

"This isn't about protecting Social Security numbers," said Sarah Flanagan, vice president for government relations at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "It isn't an identity-theft issue; it's a privacy issue. It's about whether or not, in this country, we want to cross that bridge and create registries of students' academic info."

That actually represents a noteworthy rhetorical shift. Just a few months ago, NAICU was using much stronger language:

"It is ironic that we are considering such an assault on Americans’ privacy and security in the shadow of the Fourth of July, when we celebrate the American values of freedom and choice," said David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

"This is not a partisan issue," said Rolf Wegenke, president of the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "It is a matter of student privacy and the security of personal information."

So while the "security" threat appears to be off the table, the "privacy" problem apparently remains.

I'd be the first to say that privacy is an issue of growing concern in this country, both because of the explosion of personal data stored on computers and the unfortunate attitude of some of our national leaders towards issues like individual rights and the Constitution.

But to say that this system crosses some kind of important line in that respect is simply wrong. Electronic records about individual students are already being maintained by colleges and universities themselves. Many state governments are also gathering the information. And the federal government itself already gathers data about individual students for the purposes of tracking things like financial aid and tax credits.

Most tellingly, a great many private colleges and universities--NAICU's constituents--already send detailed individual student records containing Social Security numbers and other private information to huge centralized databased located in the Washington, DC area. That database, maintained by the National Student Clearinghouse, was created by the student loan industry over a decade ago. Most colleges, including private colleges, participate because it saves them time and money in sharing information with lenders, who use the database to keep track of when students leave college so they can start the loan repayment process.

To be clear, I don't have anything against the Clearinghouse--it's a reasonable, limited use of privacy-protected personal data with a spotless track record of keeping information secure. The point is that standing on principle against the simple transfer of individual records to a central location is like trying to close a barn door that was opened about 30 years ago. We're way beyond that, and not going back. The only reasonable approach is to ensure that individual data is strongly protected and sensibly used.

The Wire Weeks Two and Three: "You Gotta Start Somewhere"

Travelling all last week and thus only now catching up on episodes two and three of The Wire.

All three episodes have begun with comedy, which is great, although I kind of hope the "beginning with full frontal male nudity" theme of the last two episodes isn't extended too much longer.

Per Craig's post last week, they're taking their time setting up the stories, characters, and themes, which is to be expected--one of the unique strengths of The Wire is the way it takes advantage of having 12 hours of time over a whole season to tell one long intersecting set of stories in far more depth than a series of single episodes could ever manage.

But even after three episodes the central theme is clear--the consequences of allowing children to grow up and be educated in a profoundly warped and dysfunctional environment like West Baltimore. The drug trade hasn't just damaged the culture there—for many children it is the culture, replacing normal social institutions and roles with horrible bizarro versions: Marlo the community leader, Bodie the small businessman, Wee-Bey scolding his son Namond for his laziness and unwillingness to get to work in the family business down on the Corner.

"You gotta start somewhere," he says, and of course that's the point of the entire series this year–everyone starts somewhere, and that starting point matters. Even the refuge of Dennis' boxing gym is overseen by the image of "platinum founder" Avon Barksdale, the jailed drug kingpin shown in a neat establishing shot using the Golden Gloves poster that played a key role in the original investigation all the way back in Season One.

I think Sara is correct that the "these kids are so screwed by their environment that trying to give them a high-quality education is a waste of time and money" attitude is far too prevalent and deeply damaging to public schools. But I'm not sure it's the responsibility of The Wire's creators to be mindful of that; their job is to tell stories about what they believe is true.

And what they show is that a society drenched in drugs, poverty, and violence transforms normal adolescent problems and conflicts into the terrifying scene of a razor attack in a middle school classroom that finished off episode three, Lex executing his romantic rival in episode one, and much more.

Episode two shows another consequence of West Baltimore's devastated family structures by introducing Bubbles' nephew, a student who has simply dropped out of the school system, unnoticed, for years at time, and has thus fallen almost irretrievably behind academically–illiterate, innumerate, and fast running out of chances to achieve a decent education and in all likelihood a decent life.

As it happens, Michael Lewis wrote about just such a student in Sunday's New York Times magazine, documenting the huge effort that went into bringing him back from brink of the educational abyss. The good news: it can be done. The bad news: Bubbles' nephew, unlike the boy Lewis profiles, doesn't have the advantage of being a prospective All-Pro left tackle in the NFL. Educating students in this predicament--and preventing them from ever getting there in the first place--is one of the central challenges facing education policymakers today.

Spellings' Higher Education Agenda

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings gave a televised speech at the National Press Club today outlining her agenda for higher education. The impetus was the released of the final recommendations of the "Commission on the Future of Higher Education," which she convened last year. All in all she did a good job; while the speech was lacking in some needed specifics, it hit the right notes and pointed the way toward a future of real higher education reform.

Two big themes. First: our higher education system has a lot to offer, but it falls short to a degree and in ways that many people don't realize. Second, the best way to fix that problem is to create far more public information about quality for students and parents choosing colleges.

That's why the Secretary endorsed the creation of the privacy-protected "unit record" data system that has been the source of much controversy and which has been repeatedly attacked by representatives of the private college sector. It's also why she proposed new matching grants to colleges and universities willing to evaluate how much their students are learning and make the results public.

It's too bad the Secretary wasn't able to put a dollar figure on the amount of additional need-based financial aid the administration is going to support, or provide more specifics about how this year's push to increase high school preparation will succeed where previous attempts by the administration have fallen short.

And of course she didn't endorse any brand-new, envelope-pushing proposals, such as (to take a completely non-random example) the proposal Education Sector published last week to fundamentally re-order the existing status hierarchy in higher education by replacing the curent U.S. New & World Report rankings sytem with an entirely new rankings regime based on how well colleges teach students and help them learn, graduate, and succeed in life.

But given the political challenges inherent in taking on the often sclerotic higher education establishment, this speech was a good step in exactly the right direction. Now the question is what the Department of Education will do in the coming months and years to turn these recommendations and those of the commission from good ideas into real change.

Another Reason to be Worried About Iran

"The U.S. stopped enriching its students decades ago, and we call upon Iran to do the same," Bush said. "If the Iranians do not put an end to this program by the middle of December, and impose final examinations, they could face further isolation from the international community."

Don't say we didn't warn you!

Hat Tip: Abdul Kargbo.

Say It Ain't So

In the latest Gadfly, Rick Hess describes how the latest PDK/Gallup poll shows a large share of the public knows jacksquat about charter schools. In fact, majorities of those polled think charters are non-public schools that are free to charge tuition, teach religion, and select students based on performance. I'm not exaclty surprised. Even in states, like Michigan, with relatively strong charter penetration, the vast majority of school districts don't have charter schools located within their boundaries, so there are a lot of parents and educators--not to mention the bigger number of people who have no kids and no connection to education--who have very little reason to know anything about charters. Rick also thinks it's surprising that Gallup shows a majority of those polled still think charters are a good thing "despite" the misconceptions they hold about them. I'm glad to learn Gallup respondents were positive on charters, but I have to question Rick's suggestion that people would be more bullish on charters if they had the facts. In particular, I'm guessing that, given the rates of religiousity among the American people, a lot of people probably perceive it as a good thing if they think charters can teach religion. That doesn't mean the charter movement shouldn't try to better educate the public about charter schools, but I don't think we should assume all the exisiting misconceptions undermine public support.

Cheaters!

Today's Washington Post ran an article about a group of students in McLean who are protesting teachers' use of Turnitin.com, a company that provides "plagiarism prevention tools".

John Barrie, the developer of Turnitin.com, thinks today's students are faced with more pressure to achieve and more temptation to cheat. The internet, he says, "provides a 1.5 billion-page searchable, cut-and-pasteable encyclopedia". And he's not alone. In June, the 2nd International Plagiarism conference was held in the U.K. You can download all sorts of papers about academic integrity and "stopping the cheats".

For the record, I think companies like Turnitin can be useful. I used a similar service while teaching college students and it helped me to distinguish between the students who didn't understand what they were doing (copied straight lines without quotes or cites) and the students who straight up downloaded papers from the web. Although it certainly didn't feel like plagiarism "prevention" since I was catching them in the act and had to discipline them accordingly. And it hurts to fail a term paper.

So I wonder if it's different in high schools. Do they know what it means to plagiarize? I've asked my sources in PG and Montgomery schools to conduct a straw poll of their high school students to see if they a) know what plagiarism is and b) if they think it's any different to copy lines rather than whole papers and c) if they think it's fair for teachers to submit their papers to the site to check for plagiarism.

I'll let you know what they say.

Wire Preview: Sara's Take (No Spoilers)

Last night Erin and I went to an advance screening of the upcoming Wire episode, which was hosted by Campus Progress and followed by a Q&A with Wire producers David Simon and Ed Burns. Obviously, I'm not going to say anything about the content of the episode, but I will say two things about the show generally: First, I now get Kevin, Craig and other folks' fascination with it. I'd only seen part of a Wire episode before at the gym, so I knew bupkus about it, but I was totally entralled to the point that it was like a shock when the episode ended. Good stuff. Second, the kids and the performances they're getting from them are pretty amazing--in particular the work three of the kids were doing in the last several minutes. I'm seriously bummed I don't have access to watch the show continue to unfold, although I guess that means I have plenty of time to catch up the last three seasons on DVD.

Like Matthew Yglesias, I was not all that impressed with the Q&A that followed the showing. Simon and Burns are trying to show that the deeply troubling behavior of some of their characters is actually a rational response to the dysfunction and limited opportunities in the world around them. That's worth pointing out. But the "rational response to circumstances" bit can be taken beyond the point of usefulness--to a place where it lets people off the hook for things they could do something about. The lead story Matthew relates is one example of this. And it occurs all the time in education: We say that kids' decisions to drop out or put in little effort are a rational response to diminished economic opportunities they see awaiting them, so there's little schools can do to improve achievement or graduation rates until we improve urban economies. But for too many kids, these choices also look reasonable because they know they aren't going to learn anything in the lousy schools they're offered. The quality of schools and how they treat kids does impact their perceptions of the options available and their relative attractiveness.

Go Nats!

So, today's Post features an op-ed by former Ed. Secretaries Bill Bennett and Rod Paige arguing for--wait for it--voluntary national testing. Funny how I seem to have heard that idea somewhere before... Of course, there's no mention of Clinton or Dick Riley, who advocated voluntary national tests long before these two and when he actually was Education Secretary. Instead, Bennett and Paige reference the Fordhamites, who've been pushing the issue hard lately on on whose board Paige serves. They might also want to acknowledge AEI's Michael Greve. Here's Bennett and Paige's core policy recommendation:

Washington should set sound national academic standards and administer a high-quality national test. Publicize everybody's results, right down to the school level. Then Washington should butt out.

Greve said basically the exact same thing at Ed Sector's National Standards debate last spring, which also featured Fordham's Mike Petrilli along with Lauren Resnick, a very feisty Deb Meier, New America's Michael Dannenberg, and our own trendsetter Kevin Carey.

On the substance here: There are a lot of decent arguments for national testing. The huge variation in rigor of state standards (and often utter lack thereof) is the big attention-getter, but equally troublesome, IMHO, is that it's terribly inefficient to have 50 different state systems of standards and testing, and this inefficiency, combined with the high costs of remotely decent tests, leads to a lot of state using really crappy tests that don't actually assess their standards and contribute to the kind of "teaching to the test" accountability foes and parents complain about. It's also just dopey to think that how kids learn to read or calculate or do algebra and what they need to know when in these areas varies much from state to state--particularly in an increasingly global economy. Plus, having national tests would dramatically enhance our ability to do good research on all kinds of questions linked to student achievement, particularly if they were properly aligned grade-to-grade and accompanied by longitudinal student-linked data systems.

Regardless of increasingly rosy thinking about national standards from some small corners of both the left and the right (some of which, IMHO, is more PR than real), however, the politics of the issue are still nearly as killer as they were when Clinton came to grief over them in the 1990s, and the memory of that still makes a lot of folks incredibly wary. Even if National tests could be legislated politically, negotiating the content and standards for the tests would be a massive political nightmare people don't seem to be taking into account. Even such ostensibly straightforward things as reading and math are fraught with ideological baggage--remember the reading wars, or the controversy over the Clinton administration's proposed voluntary national math standards? And that's likely to come out in efforts to create such assessements. (And don't get me started on what happens when you try to do test-based accountability in history or science....)

Welcome Additions

With Craig and Zachary augmenting Kevin's Wire coverage, you may have noticed that we have more folks blogging lately. Further expanding our roster (and proving TAP isn't the only place in town to have a "super-intern") is Education Sector fall intern Alex Redfield, a student at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada, whose previous experiences include working at Sacramento High School in California and on his dad's farm. And he may even be almost cooler than Kevin (if that's possible) leaving me still the least hip person on the ES blog team.

Rubbing Elbows with the Stars!

This morning I sat in on Business Roundtable's "Fourth Annual NCLB Forum: Assessing Progress, Addressing Problems, Advancing Performance." The panel discussion featured Acting Education Department Under Secretary and Chief of Staff David Dunn, House Education and the Workforce Committee Chair and Ranking member, respectively, Howard "Buck" McKeon and George Miller, and NEA President Reg Weaver, with USA Today's Richard Whitmire moderating.

Considering the venue and mix of speakers, it was probably too much to hope for significant revelations or in-depth discussion, and the panelists performed to expectations. Everyone was utterly predictable and on their best behavior. Rep. McKeon and Mr. Dunn suggested that NCLB is well on its way to solving all our educational woes. Rep. Miller talked seriously about implementation problems and drew a line in the sand regarding under-qualified teachers, saying that the "most important problem is hiring done on the cheap. No longer." But when it came to solutions, he seemed mostly to be saying that if we could just throw a little more money around, we'd be in much better shape. Mr. Weaver also focused on money. He argued that while NCLB's emphasis on outcomes is admirable, it is a distraction from the necessary improvements to incomes in the education system—and then called for the usual litany of smaller classes, multiple measures, growth models, and teacher incentives to move to difficult districts. The panelists seemed to be talking past each other, and no one mentioned the critical educational challenge NCLB aimed to address—racial inequities in education.

Overall, the event just didn't live up to its big-name panel. With actual movers and shakers on the schedule, I was hoping for some moving and shaking. I don't think political posturing and sidestepping count.

--Guestblogger Alex Redfield

You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)

While Kevin and Andy are merrily debating with Matthew Yglesias about the possibility and meaning of "closing achievement gaps," another post on young Mr. Yglesias' site today --about indie rock bands and record lables, of all things--put me in mind of an issue I've been thinking about a good bit recently--the role of Educational Management Organizations in the charter school movement. Bear with me here.

Educational Management Organizations, (mostly) for-profit (though often in name only) companies that contract with school districts and charter school boards to operate schools, run about 25% of charter schools nationwide. EMOs offer a lot of benefits but also drawbacks, and they are politically contentious, both within the charter community and without. A lot of tradeofs connected to EMOs--opportunity to reach an audience on a significant scale, access to capital, support services and expertise vs. reduced tolerance for innovation, surrendering some autonomy and a substantial chunk of one's revenues, and potential tradeofs between corporate bottom lines and other goals--sound parallel with the risks vs. rewards of record labels Ygelsias mentions, although obviously this comparison oughtn't be taken to far.

What interests me, though, is the area in the middle--ideas to help stand-alone charter schools tap some of the benefits EMOs can bring without sacrificing local leadership or room for innovation. Some good examples have already sprung up in the charter school community: "Back-office" service providers that offer services like payroll or purchasing but don't actually run schools, organizations that provide technical assistance and support to help stand-alone charter schools (DC's FOCUS, which helps prospective charter applicants put together a quality application, is one example), and networks that replicate high-performing schools that started as stand-alones (KIPP and Achievement First are classic models*) are some of the promising ideas here. Venture philanthropists like the New Schools Venture Fund have played a big role in both thinking about how to marry scale with diversity and innovation, and in funding promising initiatives in this area. Maybe the music world--at least the hip music world Kevin and Matthew Yglesias are all into (I only aspire to be even a fraction as cool)--could benefit from some Venture artists?

*btw, a look at the work these schools are doing is quite relevant to the Yglesias/Carey/Norris/Rotherham/AFT/Rothstein.....debate--a topic on which I have some additional thoughts that I still want to let ferment a while before sharing.

btw II: Being a bit of a masochist (I was on the Gadfly show twice), I took a quick glimpse at the comment thread of Yglesias' latest post, where his positive comments about NCLB appear to have provoked the predictable liberal blog commenter NCLB-bashing. Interesting to me that, while NCLB is in no way comparable to the Iraq debacle, criticism of the law from the left tends to break down similarly: Some folks think it was inherently a bad idea because it came from the Bush administration and/or testing is just plain bad. Others think the idea was good but results have not met expectations because of mistakes the administration made in implementation--such as allowing states to use crappy tests and not "fully-funding" the law. I tend to think the latter camp is onto something, but also that the inherent complexity in an endeavor like NCLB accountability guarantees that not everything will work perfectly from the get-go.

Also relating to young, bespectacled, male bloggers: EdWahoo appears to be, at least temporarily, and welcomely, back with a new post on his TFA experience (and more achievement gap insights), and has been restored to the blogroll. (Via Joanne Jacobs)

Yglesias on the Achievement Gap

Matt Yglesias responds to Zachary Norris' post about closing the achievement gap in Baltimore:

But what would it mean -- what could it mean -- to close the achievement gap between high- and low-SES students in American schools? For a whole variety of reasons, this just doesn't seem like it's going to be possible. At the outer limit, more prosperous parents are always going to be able to re-open the gap by investing even more resources in their kids' education. An education and child development arms race to the top might not be a bad thing, but it wouldn't close any socioeconomic gaps. To do that, you actually need to tackle inequality itself.

This is essentially the same question we recently discussed here and here with respect to the various arguments about school inequality promoted by Richard Rothstein, but it bears repeating: It's all a matter of how you define "close the achievement gap."

If you mean "erase all academic differences between students of different economic backgrounds," then it's indeed an impossible dream. Economic factors external to schools matter. As long as deep inequalities persist, educational outcomes will vary by class.

If, however, you mean "bring all students, including low-income students, up to defined minimum levels of proficiency," then we're talking about much different and more realistic challenges. I'm pretty sure Zachary didn't walk into the classroom with the goal of bringing all of his students up to the exact level achieved by the wealthiest, most priviliged private school students. I'm guessing he was simply working to make sure his students had sufficient knowledge and skill to eventually move ahead into college and/or the workforce, to be able to lead decent, fulfilling, productive lives.

That's all anyone is asking of these school systems, including those who drafted No Child Left Behind. Not erase class differences, just help all students learn at least what they need to know.

Nobody thinks this a remotely easy job. But there are many schools doing it successfully, right now. As New York City public schools chancellor Joel Klein said yesterday at the annual Broad Prize event, "If you want to know what's possible, look at what's actual."

Likes Lambs to the Slaughter...

Editor's Note: As part of The Quick and the Ed's ongoing discussion of "The Wire," we'll be featuring periodic posts from Zachary Norris, who recently spent 4 years as a biology teacher and basketball/debate coach at a public high school in Southeastern Baltimore. Zachary can attest to the program's accuracy first-hand, as the producers and writers visited his classroom frequently as part of their research. Here's his take on the first episode, with more to follow. - KC

So The Wire is taking on education in Baltimore City? I tried to do that once; I was bright-eyed and optimistic with visions of systemic reform dancing in my head. "Like lambs to the slaughter," I had no formal teaching experience and no real qualifications other than a college degree and a strong desire to “close the achievement gap.” I joined the Teach For America program and ended up teaching in Baltimore for three years. The experience was humbling.

Like the teacher on the show, I was greeted by a dysfunctional buzzer upon arrival at my school. A fitting symbol of the system's disarray, they were desperately in need of teachers and couldn't let me in once I got there. Many of my peers in the program were “surplussed,” bouncing around from school to school until the district administrators decided where our services could be put to best use. Upon arrival at my school, I was placed in a classroom that had not been cleaned by the previous year's teacher, who I later learned was a first-year teacher that had quit in February. It is common in Baltimore for rookie teachers to quit during the school year. In fact, in my first year in Baltimore, only two out of the six first-years who started the year at my school actually finished. The result of this trend was a staff crunch, and my classroom role swelled at times to above forty students (ranging in age form 3rd to 6th grade, with up to 16 IEP students). It is criminal.

Speaking of criminal, how much of the City’s budget is spent on pointless professional development programs like the one shown on The Wire’s season premiere? Educational consultants with six-figure salaries rattle off clever acronyms like IALAC (I Am Loved And Competent) in steamy August auditoriums and cafeterias. I mean really, how many teachers actually use that stuff? I know I never did. As the frustration of the teachers builds to a crescendo, the professional development meeting devolves into a gripe session about the student population and the hopelessness of their situation. This in itself is destructive, perpetuating negative stereotypes of students and lending to the apathy of teachers. So in the end, the good intentions of administrative policies turn into a completely destructive activity. Welcome to education in Baltimore.

So how did the writers of The Wire get it so right where so many others have gone wrong? They actually spent time in the schools. In my last year in Baltimore a few of the writers of The Wire asked if they could interview my students and me and sit in on my classes for a couple of weeks. Bill Zorzi, one of the writers, and I became quick friends. Bill is a genuine guy who really cares about the children of Baltimore. In fact, he came to be a regular face at my school, taking several students under his wing, teaching a journalism class and helping out with our school newspaper and yearbook.

Based on my conversations with Bill and the other staff at The Wire, I am confident that we are in for a deeper social commentary than your typical shoot-em-up drug dealer drama. The Wire is concerned with the social context of the drug scene: the economic injustice that created it, the political corruption that perpetuates it, and the criminal education system that gives the children of Baltimore, and so many other cities like it, no other option but to be a part of it.

-Posted by Zachary Norris

How to get to Sesame Street

This weekend I saw a noteworthy documentary – The World According to Sesame Street. For something I spent a lot of time watching when I was young (Bert and Ernie were my favorites), it’s not a show I’ve spent much time thinking about as an adult. This documentary gives a new perspective on what Sesame Street is - beyond being educational television for children; it can also be an ambassador of certain values – tolerance, equality, and general friendliness – to the rest of the world.

The documentary’s primary focus is the year-long effort to create Sesame Street in Bangladesh, or Sisimpur (QuickTime clip) as they call it. You watch as they create Sisimpur, from thinking about what their ‘street’ will look like, to creating puppets, and dealing with the politics necessary to get it on the air. This process of creating Sesame Street in other countries also serves as a lens for the challenges children face around the world – as they create Sesame Street in Kosovo, they struggle with how to build understanding between Serbians and Albanians, even as violence between the ethnic groups continues. In South Africa, they create Kami, a puppet with HIV, in order to educate children about AIDS.

This film raises, but doesn’t necessarily answer, some interesting questions – is faith in a television show misplaced? Is big bird a global archetype or a form of cultural imperialism? And what will be the ultimate impact of these international Sesame Streets? Throughout the film, you see plenty of earnest, and at times inspiring, people who truly believe in the ability of Sesame Street to provide quality education to children in a wide range of cultures and living conditions.

Tune in to PBS on October 24^th to catch this film, if for no other reason than to hear Ernie sing rubber ducky in multiple languages (who knew he was multilingual?!). Check out the other Sesame Streets in the world in here.

The Wire Week Two: Craig's Take

“You told me to watch this show, and so far in two episodes, nothing’s happened,” a friend complains. The most frequent objection to the THE WIRE, and one of the biggest ways it diverges from traditional television drama, is its pacing. By the end of each episode, nothing is neatly wrapped up, and, if you are not paying careful attention, you might think nothing much happened at all. (I nearly gave up on the first season more than a few times before I became hooked.)

But THE WIRE isn’t just trying to tell the stories of particular characters. It’s using those characters—what they do, what they experience, and what they learn over the course of a season—to tell the story of an entire city. From scene to scene, it might seem like nothing much is happening, but look closer, and you’ll see a larger, more complex tale unfolding.

Take last night’s episode and what it said about “urban education.” Yes, school hasn’t even started yet. But that doesn’t mean no one is teaching—or trying to teach—our young protagonists. Visiting his father in prison, Namon gets advice about surviving and advancing in his part-time job—dealing drugs. Bubbles the drug addict tries to teach his business—selling small items out of a cart—to an adolescent “intern” he has taken under his wing. Cutty, the ex-con who juggles landscaping with mentoring boys in a boxing program, sizes up Michael as a potential protégé. Assistant principal Marcia Donnelly sends Dukie, who has neglectful and/or impoverished parents, a box of clothes to encourage him to show up.

Meanwhile, a group of middle school teachers meet to plan a common classroom discipline strategy that, they hope, will capture their students’ attention when they arrive in a few days. Marlo, the brilliant and ruthless young drug kingpin, takes a more direct approach to getting their attention—having a minion hand each boy $200 to buy new clothes for school.

As producer Ed Burns says in an interview here, “the idea we're trying to bring across is that kids are going to get educated. […] They will learn. It's just a question of where.” And from whom.

p.s. I didn’t understand the reference to “soft eyes” either. If anyone does, e-mail me at cjerald@speakeasy.net. Thanks!

Redistricting--It's not just for Texas anymore

Don't freak out, I'm not talking about Congressional redistricting. But redrawing school attendance areas--as many rapidly growing (or shrinking) school districts need to do regularly--can be just as political and contentious, as an article in this week's Washington Post real estate section illustrates. Short version: A big new development in Urbana (a community in Frederick County, Maryland, a DC exurb) required construction of a new elementary school. But, contrary to homebuying parents' expectations, not all the kids in the development got assigned to the new school. Controversy ensured. But now some previously disappointed parents have decided the old school is ok after all.

Call me naive, or maybe one-note, but I have to wonder if these situations wouldn't be a bit easier if schools let parents choose their schools and differentiated the educational programs to balance demand. Of course, I realize this approach would have complications of its own.

Unrelated note: In addition to a new elementary school Urbana also got a brand new middle school opened this year, and my brother-in-law teaches there. So, Urbana parents, regardless of what elementary school you were assigned, your kids can look forward to a stellar drama and band teacher in a few years:)

College Graduation Rate Catastrophe

The NYTimes goes above the fold this morning with an article about catastrophically low graduation rates at urban universities in Chicago. At Northeastern Illinois, 16 percent of students who start as first-time, full-time, degree-seeking freshmen earn a bachelor's degree within six years. At Chicago State, it's 17 percent. For certain student groups, it's even lower. The 2004 graduation for black men at Northeastern Illinois was 3.5 percent.

In other words, for some students, the odds of success are within the margin of error of absolute zero. This is an education system that is statistically indistinguishable from a system designed to prevent students from graduating from college.

The article does an excellent job of systematically working through the two major excuses about why we can't do better.

Excuse #1: We're an open-access urban campus serving a lot of under-prepared, non-traditional students. We're giving them a chance, but of course not all are going to make it.

True enough. Nobody expects Chicago State to have the same graduation rate as the University of Chicago. But there's a difference between many students not graduating and hardly any students graduating. And the article shows that most other urban campuses that have similar students and similar admissions policies do a signficantly better job, graduating up to 50 percent of their students.

Excuse #2: Our students do graduate, but it takes them longer than six years.

This is a common refrain, the idea that the six-year timeframe (for getting a four-year degree) has become archaic, and if only it were extended the numbers would look much more rosy. But here's what the two univerisities have to say on that subject:

The graduation rate at Chicago State after seven years is nearly 35 percent, compared with the six-year rate of 16 percent, Dr. Daniel said. At Northeastern Illinois, where the six-year rate is 17 percent, the 10-year rate is 23 percent, university officials said.

I'm skeptical about that first number. I've never seen a research study about college graduations suggesting anything like a doubling of graduation rates between years six and seven. It's much more likely to see numbers like those at Northeastern Illinois, which basically say that if you extend the timeframe all the way out to a full decade, the numbers go from terrible to...slightly less terrible.

Helping students graduate who arrive on campus with many risk factors, who don't have strong momentum toward completion, is a very difficult job. But that can't be a reason to accept success rates that are almsot as low as they could be--particularly when other institutions with the same challenges do much better.

Fenty-astic?

I feel like I should have something smart to say about Tuesday's election and Adrian Fenty as the next Mayor of D.C., but I don't. (Nathan at DCedublog, where are you when I need you?) People in D.C.'s charter movement who know more than I do about this and whose opinions I respect seem to think Fenty will be more supportive of charter schools than the other major candidates would have been, but there's still a lot of uncertainty about what a Fenty administration will mean for both DCPS and the city's charter schools.

Education was a big issue in the election. (Both Cropp and Fenty seemed to spend a lot of money sending me glossy folders proclaiming how much they cared about the schools.) But it's an open question whether that attention will translate into real school improvements. (I'm not holding my breath.) In November, D.C. voters will elect a new school board president, and voters in Wards 5, 6, 7 & 8 also choose school board district reps, so stay tuned.

Andy has related non-D.C. election news, too.

A World of Worries

In return for getting to the Capitol Hill Club by 9am on Tuesday, I got an excellent breakfast (there was salmon) and a snappy mini-disk that held OECD’s 421-page 2006 Education at “Glance”. While this tome of international education information might not have gotten a ton of press in the United States, (perhaps because there’s not much new in it – we’re still treading water while other countries move up in the charts), it has gotten some interesting international coverage, showing that we’re not the only country with worries.

Britain and Canada’s concerns sounds familiar, while the talk in Ireland is about class size. The Czech Republic is concerned about low college spending, and, on the other hemisphere, Australia and Korea are talking about their high college fees (though they are still lower than the U.S.). Finally, Germany and Israel are looking for all-around change.

Evidence that around the world, the OECD data will be used (wisely, and probably also unwisely) to pursue a variety of education reform agendas.

The Wire Week One: "The Boys of Summer"

The fourth season of The Wire kicked off last night, and I'm happy to report that the show hasn't lost a step, despite the third season's conclusion of host of major dramatic arcs. It begins with the funniest Home Depot scene ever, and concludes with the realization that the rowhouses that have seen the steady death of the city's families, aspirations, and future have literally been turned into a graveyard. In between, it follows the huge cast of police, drug dealers, addicts, politicians, and teachers, all with unsparing honesty. Depending on the person, it's no more or less than they deserve.

The Wire also follows four new characters, all black middle-school boys from the west side of Baltimore. The central question is whether a school system where, to quote one character, "not a goddamn thing works like it should" can overcome the inescapable influence of the economically depressed, drug-ravaged world around the boys. As other scenes make clear, the time and distance between their lives and total ruin is surpassingly small.

Another major plotline involves the ongoing mayoral election and the candicacy of a white councilman looking to upset a black incumbent mayor. More than any show or movie I've seen, this episode really got across what a hugely difficult, exhausting, unpleasant process running for office can be. The depiction of life in the classroom struck me as similarly realistic, although having never taught I'll take Craig Jerald's word for it (see his post below). Craig, I think you forgot to mention the recent Antonio Banderas vehicle "Take the Lead" in your inventory of terrible, terrible teacher-based movies.

I always come to the end of an episode of "The Wire" wondering how they manage to fit so much into an hour. Partly it's because almost all of the words and scenes have larger or multiple meanings, which lets the writers say a huge amount in relatively little time. It's also because most television shows spend a phenomenal amount of energy assuming that the viewers are stupid and/or not paying attention. Characters in "The Wire" don't waste time explaining to one another what you, the viewer just heard or saw. They don't refer back to previous plot developments, or translate urban slang in plain English. They act like people, not characters, because the writers trust that honest stories about actual people are all you need.

Update: Matt Yglesias draws a parallel between The Wire and Watchmen. Kinda wish I'd thought of that (although I can't imagine anyone seriously criticizing the inclusion of Dr. Manhattan, he's the mainspring of the entire story....).

Sara Mead Hates Boys!*

Tomorrow afternoon Richard Whitmire, Harry Holzer and I will be discussing boys' and girls' academic achievement and whether or not Americans need to be concerned about boys falling behind academically. Richard's currently writing a book about why he's worried about boys (and thinks you should be to), I wrote a paper that looked at trends in male and female achievement and came to (mostly) more sanguine conclusions, and Dr. Holzer does research on the situation of African-American men and boys. AFT's Ruth Wattenberg will moderate. Conversation commences at the National Press Club at 1:00 PM. For more info or to register, click here. And don't be afraid: Both Richard and I have promised not to throw any food.

*No, I don't, silly! In fact, I like them quite a bit.

College Admissions for Sale

Anyone with even a passing interest in the undergraduate admissions process should track down this new article$ by Daniel Golden in the Wall Street Journal. Based on his new book, The Price of Admission, the article details how elite colleges like Duke and Brown systematically lowered and subverted their admission standards to recruit the students of parents who were either rich, famous, or both. Here's how things worked at Duke:

Texas entrepreneur Milledge "Mitch" Hart III, co-founder of Electronic Data Systems Corp., didn't know anyone at Duke in 1981. But after his daughter told him it was one of her top two choices, Mr. Hart called a former Duke dean he knew who promised to introduce him to the right person: Joel Fleishman.

Mr. Fleishman wrote a wine column for eight years for Vanity Fair magazine and cultivated Duke donors with vintage selections. "Joel used to give very expensive bottles of wine and put them on his university expense account," recalls former president Keith Brodie, who succeeded Mr. Sanford in 1986 and sought to restrict the practice of development admits. "Because they were millionaires, you had to buy an expensive bottle." Mr. Fleishman, now a professor of law and public policy at Duke, declines to comment.

Mr. Fleishman met the Hart family at the airport and escorted them to the house of the Duke president, where the family stayed for three nights, Mr. Hart recalls. His daughter enrolled at Duke -- followed by three more of his children. In 1986, after Mr. Hart pledged $1 million to a fund-raising campaign led by Mr. Fleishman, Duke established the Hart Leadership Program, which teaches students leadership skills.

I don't know about you, but my recollection of the college admissions process is a little different than that.

Now, one could say that this kind of thing has been going on forever, and one would be correct. The difference is that in the past universities felt no need to apologize for it, because they were perfectly comfortable serving promoting and sustained the privileges of class. Todays' world is very different, and higher education institutions--particularly elite institutions--like to think of themselves as the virtuous apex of the American meritocracy.

But like most truly worthwhile things, that status comes at price--in this case, not selling yourself to the highest bidder. Colleges have been deft at having it both ways for some time now. One wonders how long it can last.

Motown Madness

So, Detroit teachers are still striking, despite a judge's order to return to class. This means the start of a second week Detroit youngsters won't be in school. Detroit's teachers are striking because Detroit Public Schools, which has lost a ton of money in recent years and faces an $100+ million budget shortfall, wants to cut teacher salaries and require them to pay an increased share of their health insurance premiums. The Detroit Federation of Teachers is, instead, asking for a 5% pay increase.

I have to wonder if they're cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Part of Detroit's financial problem is that, like all school districts in the state, it's suffering from state budget cuts due to the state's weak economy. But Detroit's problem is much worse because it's losing a lot of students who choose to enroll in charter schools or suburban districts (Michigan has an interdistrict school choice program), taking their state per pupil funds with them. Last year the district lost 11,000 students! The strike-induced delay in the start of the school year is only accelerating this student loss, as parents--who have no idea when the schools will reopen--scramble for alternative educational options for their children. And the strikers are hardly bolstering public support for or confidence in Detroit public schools. Looking at the press coverage of some of the strikings teachers' behavior and some of the quotes from them, I can't blame parents for deciding they don't want to entrust their kids to these people. I still have acquaintences who live in Michigan (where I grew up), who marvel that, "these people just come across as fools."

I also find it hard to believe the Detroit teachers are gonna get that much sympathy from their local labor bretheren in the UAW, who've been forced to make significant concessions in recent years as Detroit's automakers struggle with global competition, high gas prices and ballooning retirement and health costs. But confronted with similar competition and health pressures, DFT somehow thinks it can strike its way out of facing fiscal realities. In doing so, they cast a negative reflection on the labor movement more generally at a time when the nation needs it more than ever.

I'm not blaming Detroit's teachers for all the problems there. Working conditions and school facilities there are abysmal, kids come into the schools there with all sorts of challenges, communities in which they are located are broken, central DPS and political leadership have failed kids and teachers in many ways, and the state's fiscal situation certainly doesn't help. But DFT's current choices aren't helping and may make the situation worse.

Update: DFT response on the AFT blog. Ms. Price makes a good point about the culpability of Detroit Public Schools' management and leadership. I have friends who taught in Detroit, and some of the things I heard from them would curl your hair. That said, I'm not sure she actually corrects my facts. Public opinion data on these issues is notoriously tricky--people tell pollsters they like teachers like most Americans say they like their Congressman. What matters is that Detroit parents are voting with their feet: 11,500 left DPS last year, and that ain't all people moving away. I'm surprised to hear Ms. Price dismissing the loss of students to charters, considerng how DFT argues that raising Michigan's cap on university-authorized charters would hurt Detroit public schools because more students would be lost to charters. I'm also surprised to hear her arguing that "[The funding Detroit Public Schools] receives now is enough to do a good job of educating our students and getting the classrooms right." I wouldn't want to see that statement trotted out during the next state appropriations debate.

This Week on the Wire: Craig's Take

An assistant principal walks a new teacher down an empty hallway and into a tired looking classroom. The new guy surveys the clutter of desks and debris. “So this is me?” The administrator eyes the former cop turned rookie educator. “This is you.” And I’m one happy viewer. As the second biggest WIRE fan around (no one tops Kevin), I’m pretty euphoric that the best television series in history is spending a full year taking a close look at urban education.

Let’s face it, Hollywood sucks at school. Remember the sappy Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle DANGEROUS MINDS? How about the sudsy BOSTON PUBLIC? No wonder my friends groan whenever I try to get them to watch a classroom-themed drama. But as a former Teach for America recruit (one of the earliest--I’m an old guy), I can’t seem to resist. Like Charlie Brown with that darn football (now I’ve really dated myself), I’m a glutton for punishment.

But after watching the first episode with Kevin last Thursday (pssst, HBO On Demand!), I can report that so far THE WIRE has it right. Of course, with its depiction of a condescending and completely irrelevant “pre-season” professional development session, viewers who haven’t worked in an urban school district might think the show’s writers have finally flubbed up and gone the way of hyperbole. But I recall having to sit through far, far worse. (At least the lady telling these teachers the pencil sharpener is a “hot spot” has a decent delivery.)

Let's be honest. As bad as the school system looks in the first few glimpses we got in the season opener, the show’s depiction isn’t nearly as grim as it could have been. Consider that Pryzbylewski (the cop-turned-teacher) gets hired before the kids have shown up. One out of every four high-poverty, urban school districts reports waiting until the beginning of the school year before making most job offers to teachers. (Factoid from here and great analysis of this truly awful practice here. Oh, only seven percent of better-off suburban districts wait that long.) Unlike many of his new professional peers, Prez gets to set up his classroom before it’s full of twelve-year-olds!

Thanks to Kevin for inviting me to guest blog about this season of THE WIRE. I'm looking forward to seeing how Prez handles his new job when the kids do finally fill up that classroom next week. Once the show's "school year" kicks into gear, it should provide an interesting opportunity for thinking hard about how policy affects real teachers and kids ... or, perhaps, how it doesn't. Stay tuned.