Reality Rears Its Ugly Head

Cato's Andrew Coulson, in the process of arguing that I'm wrong to assert that tax credits are a form of public funding, makes the critical mistake of conflating legal opinions on education tax credit programs with the realities of tax credits' practical impacts. I know libertarians sometimes have difficulties with "reality," so I'll explain: Yes, tax credits are appealing to many people because courts have ruled that giving parents or corporations a tax credit for money spent to send a child to a religious school can't be construed as public support for religion. But the critical distinction there is really more about accounting than reality. In terms of practical impact, giving individuals a tax credit for a specific behavior or expenditure is virtually indistinguishable from writing them a check to pay them for the same activity. It has the same impact on both government and individual budgets, and, as libertarians well know, tax credits for specific behaviors can have the same distorting impact on individual incentives. And it's impacts, more than accounting or legal details, that are critical to the public policy question here. If Coulson feels so strongly that I'm wrong about this, he should first trot down to his own organization's fiscal policy shop and explain to them why they're wrong to criticize ethanol tax credits as....a government subsidy.

Btw, I don't know if the Cato education men have a crush on me or think I'm a fool: This is the third time this week they've gone after something I've written. While I'm flattered by the attention, I'm sorry, guys, that I can't actually respond to everything you write about me. There are three of you but only one of me, and I've got actually, you know, work, to do.

The DC Plagiarism "Scandal," Day Two

And on the second day, the Post made the Fenty school reform plan plagiarism "scandal" front-page news again. The story basically consists of the requisite statements of regret from the administration, quotes from the mayor's political and ideological opponents taking easy--if nonsensical--shots at the mayor and the plan, and various others insightfully observing that it's never good to have your reform plan subject to scandal stories in the Post.

Which just goes to show how completely self-contained the news cycle is in cases like this. Once the first story runs, you have a problem, which then becomes the subject of the second story, and so on. Whether the original story was legit or not doesn't matter; the fallout from the story becomes the story itself. (A separate profile of the "whistleblower" is here.)

Here are some questions that haven't been asked or answered in two days and thousands of words of coverage: What, exactly, are the policies that were copied? Are they good policies? Would DCPS students be better off if they were adopted? The Post makes much of the fact that Charlotte-Mecklenburg, source of the copied ideas, is bigger and different in composition than DCPS, calling into question whether its ideas are readily transferrable. Good question -- but what's the answer? Here, from yesterday's story, are the only actual published details of the copied ideas:

In Fenty's document, with "DRAFT" stamped on each page, strategies to create reading and math classes for middle school students, recruit teachers and use "secret shoppers" to judge how parents are treated by school employees come directly from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg plan.

Intensive reading and math instruction in middle school, enhanced teacher recruitment, more focus on customer service to parents--while those wild, crazy notions might work in an urban / suburban district of 130,000 student in North Carolina, they obviously have no place whatsoever in an urban district of 57,000 students in DC. In fact, it's well-known within the research community that there's a point between 57,000 and 130,000--I believe the exact number is 94,583--where hiring better teachers and providing better math and reading instruction to at-risk students simply doesn't work anymore. You can look it up.

The Post has always been tough on DCPS, both in its news coverage and on the editorial page, and rightly so. But you can bet that all the problems the paper has covered and condemned--crumbling schools, high drop-out rates, sub-standard teaching, and more--aren't getting the full attention of the mayor and his staff today.

Best Practice?

The Post went above the fold this morning with a story detailing how Mayor Fenty's reform plan for DC Public Schools contains numerous passages copied verbatim from the strategic plan for Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system.

This is front-page news?

Seriously, as far as I'm concerned Mayor Fenty can rename the entire school district after Charlotte-Mecklenburg if that would help the kids in DC's many low-performing schools. Charlotte-Mecklenburg was a finalist for the 2004 Broad Prize for urban education. It also had the highest test scores among all the large urban districts surveyed in the 2005 National Assessement of Education Progress Trial Urban District Assessment. Do we want the mayor to sit around for a couple of years re-inventing various wheels, or do we want him to move quickly and adopt practices that have worked elsewhere? This story is so busy amalgamating the elements of two standard-issue news stories--the plagiarism scandal and the urban school scandal--that it manages to miss all the important issues at play.

The Cost of Being a Teacher

Neil McCluskey at the Cato Institute takes issue with a comment I made on Washington Journal over the weekend, to the effect that when we force more and more college students to borrow larger and larger sums of money, we're limiting the ability of recent graduates to enter socially beneficial but relatively low-paying professions, like teaching. That's why Education Sector recently proposed a program to tie loan repayments to a percentage of person's income.

McCluskey overstates and oversimplifies what I said, characterizing my comment as "there’s no way on his salary a new teacher could comfortably afford to make his monthly debt payments." He proceeds to "refute" this notion by showing that a new teacher with an average debt load living in Indianapolis could manage to get by without declaring bankruptcy or eating Ramen noodles three meals a day. I can attest to the truth of this, since I myself moved to Indianapolis directly after grad school, and took a public sector job that paid less than what new Indy teachers make today (it was probably about the same in inflation-adjusted terms).

I didn't starve or miss any loan payments. But that's not the point. There's no single bright-line dollar amount where a loan becomes affordable or not. Every person has a unique set of resources, priorities, and concerns that add up to a decision about what field to enter. But on a macro basis, it is entirely predictable that as debt burdens rise, a larger number of new college graduates will choose not to enter relatively low-paying professions. That just Econ 101, which someone from Cato of all places should understand.

So not only is the overall pool of potential teachers reduced, but if there's any relationship between price and quality in higher education (admittedly, this is a very debatable point), we're losing a disproportionate number of students graduating with unusually high debt loads from more expensive and thus "better" colleges.

AFTBlog's Ed makes some of the same points here, while expressing surprise that we agree. C'mon, Ed, we agree on lots of things -- tax policy, most labor issues writ large. We just don't blog about them, because what's fun about that?

Can New Teachers Afford Their Student Loans?

AFT's Ed Muir calls bullsh*t on the dopey back-of-the-envelope calculations Cato's Neal McCluskey offered Monday to try to show that starting teachers are rolling in cash. I'll add that neither McCluskey or Ed took into account of a big financial drain on many young-ish teachers: tuition payments for the masters degrees many states require them to get to maintain their certification.

I'm also not sure that starting teachers are the best place to focus in thinking about this issue. When my sister started her first teaching job out of college, she made more than I or most of our liberal-artsy friends did in our first jobs. But over time, those of us who didn't go into teaching have gotten promotions and increases in responsibilities that raised our salaries more rapidly than hers has grown. $34k to teach in Indianapolis may look good to a kid right out of school but the picture is a lot less appealing 10 years down the road when he wants to start a family and his salary has grown less than those of his classmates who pursued other career options.

Narrowing Curricula -- Or Not?

The Post ran an article over the weekend about how elementary schools have been cutting back on instructional time in science to meet NCLB demands in reading and math, and how this might, possibly, come back to bite them when NCLB starts holding them accountable for science. A logical enough starting point, but the story is mostly based on local anecdote and the obviously-not-neutral views of people like the executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. The only real hard data is this:

Between the 1999-2000 academic year and 2003-04, the most recent date available, the average time spent weekly on science instruction in elementary schools dipped from 2.6 hours to 2.3, according to the U.S. Education Department.

But of course, the majority of that time period was pre-NCLB, so that doesn't tell us much. Then, near the back of the piece, the author notes:

National science performance has not declined in the elementary grades under the No Child act, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the only ongoing national effort to test public school students. The percentage of students rated proficient or better in fourth-grade science increased from 24 percent to 27 percent in Maryland from 2000 to 2005, perhaps a reflection of more rigorous instruction across the curriculum. In Virginia, proficiency rose from 32 to 40 percent in the same span.

To which AFTie Beth wonders, after criticizing curriculum narrowing as "shockingly shortsighted,":

But what to make of the fact that NAEP science scores rose at exactly the same time that schools were supposedly decreasing time allotted for science instruction? Maybe the increased focus on language arts has increased students’ comprehension so much that they’re doing better on the comprehension-dependent science questions. Or maybe we can conclude that we don’t have to add science to AYP in order to see scores rise. Or maybe two years of test data is not enough from which to draw major conclusions?

Or maybe--just maybe--when the premise of an article is one thing, and the data suggest the opposite, the premise might be, you know, wrong. Maybe curriculum narrowing is happening, and maybe it's bad for science learning, I don't know for sure. But nobody else--at least, nobody involved in the Post article--seems to know either.

Really Bad Children's TV from Hamas

Matt pointed me to this clip (thanks also to Dave Weigel and Andrew Sullivan) from a Palestinian "children's" TV show that uses a Mickey-Mouse-like character to indoctrinate children in Islamist extremism. Creepy stuff. But what I couldn't get over watching the clip was how developmentally inappropriate and, frankly, boring the show is. I can't imagine any child I know sitting through this crap. (Based on the color scheme, Mickey-Mouse kock-off, and the age of the little girl co-host, I assume this is targeted at preschool age kids, the same age that Sesame Street is intended for.)

Sure, there's a Mickey Mouse-like figure and a little girl, but they're not doing anything to actually engage or interest the kids. The show's structured like a bad adult talk show (down to the call-ins, which I think would confuse a lot of preschoolers). And, if the English traslation is any guide, the vocabulary and syntax hasn't been adjusted to children's development and comprehension level. Even the songs are dirge-like and incredibly dull. Contrast to good children's programming. In short, this isn't just scary indoctrination, it's terrible children's TV and, as a result, probably not as effective as indoctrination as if it were more developmentally appropriate.

Seems like there's some work to be done on the "hearts and minds" front by offering more appropriate and engaging, non-indoctrinating children's entertainment content to parents in the Middle East. USAID has already funded an Arabic-language Sesame Street, Alam Simsim, in Egypt. More of that might be beneficial. Or perhaps President Bush, having endorsed Baby Einstein in the 2007 SOTU, could persuade the Walt Disney Company to ship a few tons of Baby Einstein CDs and DVDs to the Middle East. The company's developmental claims are wack, but damned if the kids don't eat that stuff up. If the young mothers I know are any judge, we'd at least have some mothers there grateful for something to entertain their children better than this garbage.

UPDATE: I missed the fact that there is a Palestinian Sesame Street, as well, Hikayat Simsim. You can see the full list of international Sesame Street programs, including programs in Israel and Jordan, here.

Marginalizing Education Research

Got a press release from the Great Lakes Center for Education for Education & Practice today that reads like the headline from some alternate-universe edition of the The Onion where all they write about is education policy:

May 7, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONFLICTING STUDIES ABOUT SCHOOL REFORM ARE INCONCLUSIVE

Policy makers urged not to use RAND and Harvard studies as basis for decision making about school restructuring

Researchers often complain about the disconnect between their findings and real-world policy. Some blame academese and the esoteric nature of university-based research. Others find fault with politicians and policy types who are uninterested / unwilling / unable to dig into complex findings and parse fine distinctions. There's plenty of truth in both arguments. But part of the problem is that researchers tend to assume that their standards for whether research is good enough to add to the canon of knowledge should also apply to whether research is good enough to be used to make policy. As a result, the author of the report concludes, in language that is basically pre-written into the last paragraphs of every study ever written, "Further analysis and research is needed before drawing any definitive conclusions."

It's important for researchers to be judicious and accurate in describing the limitations of their findings, and I'm not arguing that this should change. But education policymakers don't have the luxury of waiting until every possible data element has been gathered and argument addressed. The public schools will be open tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. They'll be governed by policies that exist, and will continue to exist until someone changes them. Not changing them is not a neutral or low-stakes act; it's the same as endorsing their continuation.

In that environment, policymakers have to make judgments--to change or not to change--based on incomplete information. The alternative is deciding based on no information at all and deferring what your spouse or barber or best friend or 3rd grade teacher or biggest campaign donor tells you. Of course, some studies are so bad that they should be roundly ignored, but I don't believe that's the case with the RAND and Harvard studies in question here.

So when representatives of academia (or non-profits closely associated with academia) come along and say "Don't listen to what we have to say," the response from policymakers is predictable: "Sure."

Choice and Accountability: Better Together Yet Again

Not surprisingly, Cato's Adam Schaeffer and I drew quite different lessons from Jay Mathews' article today about schools that push parents away. Adam says school choice is needed to even the power relationship and force schools to take parents seriously. That's true. But Jay's article also suggested to me the importance of a government role in ensuring school transparency and protecting parent rights. For example, the No Child Left Behind Act requires public schools inform parents about the qualifications of their children's teachers, and the testing it requires provides parents with information about how well the school is educating their child. These regulations help empower parents. Private schools, on the other hand, often aren't subject to public disclosure or accountability and can quash parent dissent by expelling kids whose parents demand information challenge school decisions. Choice and public accountability must go hand in hand to empower parents, rather than being at odds.

Arabic Schools and Social Conflict Over Education

Fascinating NYT article about NYC DoE's efforts to open an Arabic immersion school in Brooklyn and the opposition it's facing. I'm not sufficiently familiar with all the context to know whether or not there are legitimate issues here, but the level of racist venom some right wing opponents are spewing about the school is absolutely disgusting. And it's really rich when the same people pushing military adventurism in the Middle East also vehemently oppose efforts to equip kids with the language skills and knowledge our country needs to engage with the region.

There's another lesson here: People who support choice and diversity in delivery of publicly-funded education need to come to terms with the reality that real choice includes some schools that not everyone will like. The most radical and evangelistic school choice supporters like to argue that choice will reduce social conflict around education because people who want schools to serve different social purposes can send their kids to different schools. But this ignores the fact that the mere existence of certain types of schools is offensive to some people, all the more so if those schools get public funding (and, yes, vouchers or tax expenditures in the form of tax credits are public funding). To the extent that greater choice leads to a greater diversity of educational options, we're going to be seeing more controversy and conflict over these issues--at least in the near term--not less.

This story also put me in mind of Star International Academy, a Detroit-area charter school, founded by Lebanese-born Muslim Nawal Hamadeh. The curriculum includes Arabic and multi-cutural content. While the school serves many Muslim, Arab, and immigrant students, who are concentrated in its community, it's also diverse, with about 8 percent African-American or Hispanic students, and has strong academic performance considering that 90% of its students qualify for free and reduced price lunch. Hamadeh Educational Associates, which runs SIA and two sister schools, was identified in 2006 as a promising charter school network by the Charter School Growth Fund, and given advice and support to expand its model.

Educational Television

Still pretty tired my Schwarzenegger experience and subsequent red-eye flight back from LA Friday night, I walked over to C-SPAN headquarters Saturday morning to appear on Washington Journal and talk about Education Sector's recently-published slate of education policy ideas for presidential candidates. There's a link to the video here. One thing I learned when watching the program afterward: when you're staring into a television camera, you can't break eye contact for even a moment, or you look distracted and shifty. All in all it was fun; the host and call-in guests asked some good questions, and I got a free coffee mug to take home.

Then I hopped in the car with my lovely wife and drove up to Philadelphia to see Arcade Fire at Tower Theater, which is so vastly superior to D.A.R. Constitution Hall as a venue that even the three-hour drive and expense of staying in a hotel made missing their DC date seem like a wash, at worst. The concert was fantastic, and we spent this morning at the Barnes Foundation art school / museum. Edu-connection: the foundation's original program and charter, which has been subject to bitter court battles in recent years as the foundation has tried to break Barnes' will and move the museum to downtown Philadelphia, was heavily influenced by John Dewey.

Schwarzenegger Speaks

Along with billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, Governor Schwarzenegger spoke at the Education Writers Association annual meeting in Los Angeles today (I'm here as a panelist). As someone who's seen the The Terminator more times than I'd care to admit (okay, 30), I have to say it was kind of cool.

The panelists were seated in a single row on the stage, with a big wooden podium on the side. About halfway through the session, after Broad had finished speaking, the governor suddenly sat up, walked over to the podium, grabbed it, and deliberately hauled it back about five feet. Then he says (turn on your mental Schwarzenegger accent now), "I wanted to be sure the podium wasn't blocking the view of the people over on the side there." (It was.) Then he continues, "Plus my chest is sticking out so people can't see Eli here." Everyone laughs.

So, in the space of about 15 seconds, the governor shows awareness, robust physicality, uncommon concern for the people relegated to the side of the room, spontaneity, unpredictability, light self-deprecation, and good humour. When the governor sees a problem, he doesn't wait for permission or ask for help--he fixes it, with his bare hands. How do you go from Conan the Destroyer to the California governor's office? Like that.

A lot of the discussion focused on ED in 08, the new $60 million initiative funded by the Gates and Broad Foundations (both of which have funded Education Sector) to put education reform in the center of the 2008 presidential election agenda. Broad said his goal is to raise the standard of discourse, to not let candidates get away with the "pablum" of simply saying "I'm in favor of better schools and better teachers." This strikes me as an important goal. Political candidates often free-ride on the public's broad support for education without ever putting any concrete proposals on the table and owning up to their monetary or political price tag.

One complication, however, is that ED in 08 (also known as Strong American Schools), isn't just pushing candidates to have some real education agenda; it also wants them to support a specific trio of policies: more learning time for students, common academic standards across states, and tying teacher pay to things like subject specialty, performance, and working in high-poverty schools.

The politically controversial aspects of some of these issues aside, I wonder how ED in 08 will react if a major political candidate puts forth an education agenda that meets the test of seriousness, but doesn't focus on these issues. Is a genuine commitment to education as a first-tier issue enough, or does the policy agenda have to fall in line too?

Strong American Schools is being led by former Los Angeles Unified Schools Superintendent and Colorado governor Roy Romer, who has a blog. Perhaps we'll find out on the postings there as the campaign heats up.

Education in the Campaign

Alexander Russo has an uncharacteristically long post about why he doesn't think much of Eli Broad's and Bill Gates' efforts to make education a core issue in the 2008 campaign. I don't think his general point is totally crazy, but a lot of his analysis is off-base. For example, Alexander says:

But education has a long track record for being discussed only intermittently, and for being influential only in the rarest of circumstances. Nearly every candidate has an education plan but few races are influenced by education issues (unless you count social issues like prayer in the classroom, creationism, support for private and parochial schools, etc.)

True, presidential campaigns, even the unprecedented 2000 campaign in which education was a central issue, aren't won or lost on education as an issue per se. Having a better teacher performance pay plan probably isn't going to give one campaign a huge leg up on another, for example. But, as Andy and I have written previously, the way candidates choose to talk about education, and the proposals they make, have a symbolic value in shaping voters' perceptions of them as candidates and people that can impact the core dynamics of the race. Bush didn't win in 2000 because people thought the specific proposals in his education plan were awesome. But Bush's education plan in 2000, and the rhetoric it allowed him to employ about closing achievement gaps and helping disadvantaged kids, was critical to supporting his claims of being a "compassionate conservative" and convincing middle-class white women it was ok to vote for the guy because he wasn't a mean, Gingrich-style conservative. (Funny how that all ended up, eh? Not to mention that Gingrich himself is now seen in some corners as a viable '08 candidate, but I digress.) Similarly, Democrats who are willing to take on some of their own interest groups and make hard decisions on education can show they've got cojones in a way that doesn't involve treatening to attack other countries. Wonks have a tendency to think of education policy disputes as being about technical issues and competing interests, but we have to remember that at heart debates about education are debates about our deepest-held values and how we transmit them to the next generation. They're about the thing many voters love most--their children--so they have tremendous emotional power if they're deployed effectively.

There's a pretty wierd paradox operating here, though: Just as candidates can use the education issue to help define perceptions of themselves and their values, they can also use their prominence to fundamentally reshape the parameters of public debate around education, challenging old assumptions and putting new ideas on the table (this goes for other issues, too). But the federal government, including the president, actually has precious little real say in most of the really gritty education policy decisions that directly impact kids' lives. Federal policy does make a difference, and the presidential campaigns have an impact beyond simply the policies they might enact in office, because they shape public opinion and perceptions on the issue, but it's an oddly indirect kind of impact.

btw, check out Education Sector's "8 for 2008" for 8 (who'da thunk it?) education policy ideas we think would be smart for candidates to adopt in the 2008 campaign, both for what they'd say about the candidates and because they're substantively good ideas for kids and the country.

I Love My Laptop, but.....

New York Times has a good look at the limitations of programs giving every student in a school or grade a laptop. Maine, Michigan and a number of school district have been among those experimenting with such programs. There are lots of problems: laptops break and need to be repaired; teachers often have limited technological savvy, and even those who are computer wizzes often have little idea how to use the computers effectively for instruction; kids are good at figuring out how to abuse the technology for non-educational purposes (or, at least, acquiring an education in matters adults might prefer they didn't). Moreover, equipping every kid with a laptop can be expensive, and those resources might be better spent on other activities. But the biggest reason I've been skeptical of these proposals when they've appeared in the states is that they always seem heavy on the "gee-whiz-technology-is-awesome" compenent and the "big-ideas" component, but light on any coherent theory of change about how technology is really going to improve instruction. Yes, there are a lot of cool things that teachers could potentially do with computers, but just being cool isn't enough: the activity has to produce real improvements in kids knowledge, understanding, or abilities; and those benefits have to be weighed against the benefits of alternative, possibly cheaper, investments.

Off-topic: Check out the t-shirt on the kid in the middle of the big picture at the top of this article (NYT says his name is Jeff Hendel). I think it's inappropriate for school, and am pretty sure that if one of my dad's students showed up in it, they'd be wearing their gym clothes (or at least the shirt inside out) for the rest of the day. But it kinda cracks me up.

A Clear Day in D.C.

Nelson Smith reports that the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation is contracting with the See Forever Foundation, the people who run D.C.'s nationally recognized Maya Angelou Public Charter School, to take over operation of the city's infamous Oak Hill Youth Center. The See Forever folks have their work cut out for them, but this is a promising sign. As Mayor Fenty takes control of the D.C. Public Schools, I hope he'll consider a similar approach and seek out charter and other school operators with a record of success, both in D.C. and elsewhere, to create and run schools in neighborhoods and for populations that have historically been ill-served by the city's schools.

If You're Healthy and You Know It

A new study from the Children's Health Fund finds that one in four children lacked health insurance at some point last year. It's crazy that a country as affluent as the United States doesn't guarantee health care for all its children. Children's health care is pretty cheap, and failure to identify and properly treat common childhood health problems, such as ear infections, can have serious and lasting negative consequences. This is a real issue for schools: Kids who have a lot of absences due to untreated asthma, or who can't concentrate because of an untreated toothache, are going to have a harder time learning.

The Children's Health Fund uses mobile medical units to deliver health care services to children who lack access to health care. Schools are also doing interesting things to try to help address this problem: Community Academy, a charter school in Washington, D.C., has a pediatrician on staff; Young Women's Leadership Academy, a charter school in Chicago, has an onsite clinic that provides health care, including reproductive health care, for its students. These are innovative responses to an important problem, but they're still stopgaps against a much bigger problem.

Longhorns' Lender Lists

Via New America Foundation, some pretty eye-opening documents (pdf) coming out of Texas. Apparently, The Daily Texan, the University of Texas--Austin student newspaper did some digging into their preferred lender lists and found that “number of lunches, breakfasts, and extracurricular activities for entire OSFS (that’s Office of Student Financial Services) staff” was one of the criteria used to select preferred lenders.

I mean, who wants interest rate reductions and zero fees when you can have “Hula Hut happy hour” or “TX Land and Cattle Dinner”?

College Admission, Continued

Jay Mathews' weekly Class Struggle column focuses on college admissions, referencing the piece on the same topic I wrote for the American Prospect Online a couple of weeks ago. In short: the declining college admissions rates you read about in the newspaper every year aren't an accurate measure of whether it's actually getting harder to get into an elite college. Matt Yglesias weighs in here.

Jay raises a legitimate question in wondering whether the increase in the number of college admissions might actually be a function of colleges adjusting their policies in the face of declining yield (the ratio of enrollments to admissions). In the context of this analysis, the answer is no. During the same time period that Ivy League admissions rose by 10.6%, as noted in the Prospect article, Ivy League enrollments increased by 10.8%. (All the data comes from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, nces.ed.gov/ipeds) In retrospect, I probably should have found a way to work that number into the original piece.

I can't help but note that on the same day Jay's thoughtful column runs, the Post print edition features a brand-new article about...drumroll...how colleges are rejecting more applicants than ever before. It concludes thusly:

And in the end? Even after all those rejection letters, things have a way of working out. Every fall, UCLA does a national survey of freshmen.

Most of them say they're at their first choice college.

Such a contradiction. Why might that be....

Truth on Teacher Quality

Nicholas Kristoff gets everything right in his Times column($) about teacher policy, which basically re-summarizes the findings and conclusions of Gordon, Kane, and Stager's widely-discussed Hamilton Project paper. Long-time Quick and ED readers know all about the report, of course, since we blogged about it on April 14th...of 2006. But better late than never, I say. To quote our post from last year:

"For decades researchers have been struggling to tease out bits of evidence pointing to the small impact of various traditional methods of categorizing teachers--certified, uncertified, alt-route, has a Master's degree, licensure exam scores, this disposition, that disposition, etc. etc. Some of these things matter a little, or somewhat; some (like having a Masters' degree) appear not to matter at all. The lack of definitive results has left plenty of room for people of different camps to comfortably keep various ideological arguments going ad infinitum, with little danger of actually resolving the issue and thus having to find something else to do.

But at the same time, research has also consistently found huge variations in teacher effectiveness within any category of teacher you care to name--old or young, certified or not, black or white, short or tall. Some teachers are just much, much better than others, regardless of external labels or credentials.

The Gordon paper simply takes these finding to their logical conclusion: instead of shaping teacher policy around things we know don't matter very much, let's shape teacher policy around things we know matter a lot. Instead of fighting a losing up-front battle to filter and sort prospective teachers based on qualities that may have a tenuous connection to success in the classroom, let's filter and sort them based on actual success in the classroom.

This would be a seismic change in the way teachers are prepared, hired, and treated as professionals. Really, an earth-spins-backward-on-its-axis, time-reverses-direction, Margot-Kidder-flies-up-out-of-a-ditch magnitude of change. It would mean taking seriously a fact that most educators know intuitively yet is largely absent from teacher policy: teaching is an extraordinarily complicated endeavor, and people find different ways to be good at it. You can train and test prospective teachers, give them knowledge and skill, and those things are important, but once they get into the classroom some teachers bring additional talents, work ethic, intelligence, drive, etc. to bear, and others don't. Those differences matter a lot to student learning.

This report has the courage to take seriously plain facts that many people know but are unwilling to act upon, because doing so would be a huge challenge to the status quo."

Also, along the same lines, see this Chart You Can Trust up on the EdSector home page today, focusing on how states have largely failed to hold teacher preparation programs accountable for preparing teachers to succeed in the classroom.

Creeping Big Brotherishness

Objectively speaking, I'm sure that new tools like Edline, which gives parents up-to-the-minute information about their children's academic progress--class attendance, quiz grades, the whole megillah--are probably a good thing. Identify problems early, keep families engaged with the school community, etc.

But I can't help but think that if such a tool existed when I was a senior in high school, my 17th year would have been a whole lot less fun. Once I got accepted into college, I basically stopped going to class and instead spent all my time with my buddies and girlfriend, playing ultimate frisbee and applying all of my analytic skills to calculating the precise combination of date, time of day, convenience store location, and apathetic/bribeable clerk that would most likely result in my being able to buy beer. My parents didn't discover this until my report card accidentally got mailed home six months later. Of course, being parents, they immediately panicked and assumed that the abundance of Cs, Ds, and Fs were evidence of a debilitating addiction to LSD and/or crack cocaine, which in retrospect I feel kind of bad about. That aside, I don't regret my decision for a moment; those were good times. Whence the next generation's "Dazed and Confused" if this trend is left unchecked?

Speaking of scary Internet monitoring and beer (and really, you can't do this often enough), can it really be true that Millersville University of Pennsylvania denied a 25-year old student a teaching certificate on the grounds that her MySpace page has a picture of her drinking a presumably alcoholic beverage at a party, along with the caption "Drunken Pirate"? (Hat tip: This Week in Education)

The Kids Are All Right

Peggy Noonan's "We're Scaring Our Children to Death" op-ed in Friday's WSJ is both nauseating and totally nonsensical. The latter, because Noonan fluctuates between suggesting that the world is actually a more dangerous place for kids these days, and suggesting the "culture" is exposing kids to too much scary (and vulgar!) stuff to early. But there's a huge difference between these two potential problems, and without clarity around that, Noonan's views on the subject are meaningless.

Then there's this: "But another reason is that, for all our protestations about how sensitive we are, how interested in justice, how interested in the children, we are not. We are interested in politics. We are interested in money. We are interested in ourselves." I'm sorry, but modern Americans are living at a time of a-historical protection of children and preoccupation with children and their needs. I'm not saying we shouldn't protect kids, but for most of human history, close quarters and lack of privacy meant children were exposed early and regularly to the realities of sex, violence and death. Today's parents are spending more time with their kids than anytime since researchers started keeping track, and fathers in particular are spending more time with their kids than they did in the fabled 1950s 1960s. Educational toys and services for kids from birth on are rapidly-growing, multi-billion dollar industries. Child and youth indicators have been improving, not getting worse (although in recent years they've hit a troubling plateau). Kids are inherently vulnerable, growing up is really hard, and I believe strongly that society needs to do more to support parents and kids--but we shouldn't be nostalgic about some mythical past golden age of innocent childhood.

There is a real problem with media overhyping of threats to children, many of which are relatively rare or not as deadly as they're made out to be. Everyone from the producers of Dateline's seemingly constant airings of "To Catch a Predator," to NYT editors who feel the need to daily proclaim the difficulty of getting into Ivy League schools knows that scaring the beejezus out of parents is one of the best ways to gain readership and make a buck. But this kind of overhyping has bad consequences for parents, kids, and sometimes public policy.

But the most offensive thing is the class spin Noonan tries to employ here:

I am not sure the makers of our culture fully notice what they are doing, what impact their work is having, because the makers of our culture are affluent. Affluence buys protection. You can afford to make your children safe. You can afford the constant vigilance needed to protect your children from the culture you produce, from the magazine and the TV and the CD and the radio. You can afford the doctors and tutors and nannies and mannies and therapists, the people who put off the TV and the Internet and offer conversation.

Apparently Noonan doesn't understand that TV sets don't come with a meter that requires you to pay in order to turn off the set or change the channel. More to the point, this faux concern with inequality is downright nauseating coming from someone who thinks that cutting taxes for the rich is more important than providing health care for poor kids or decent childcare for low-income working folks. Noonan's unwillingness to raise a finger or voice concern about child wellbeing other than when it's a convenient excuse to chastise (presumably, liberal) "makers of our culture" demonstrates that she is the one who really cares more about politics and money than children.

Who I'll Be Rooting for May 5

This month's ESPN The Magazine may have Floyd Mayweather on the cover, but I was more interested in the article profiling Oscar De La Hoya, who'll be fighting Mayweather on PPV May 5.

The article focuses on De Lay Hoya's efforts to become not just a fighter but also a major boxing promoter and in the process to transform the business to make it a respectable part of mainstream American sports. I couldn't help but see a resemblance between De La Hoya's efforts to take on powerful promoters and change some of the seedier--and unfair to boxers--aspects of the industry, and his support for public charter schools that challenge the status quo and powerful interests in education to try to deliver a more equitable education for disadvantaged kids.

In ads for the fight

De La Hoya narrates street scenes from his hometown of East Los Angeles: "Life was a struggle -- for myself, for my family, for those who need someone to believe in, like I did. I can give back. I'm living the American dream. Estoy viviendo el sueño Americano."

One of the ways that De La Hoya has given back is by putting up bank to support the founding of the Oscar De La Hoya Animo Leadership Public Charter School, an East LA charter high school (mascot: The Boxers) operated by Green Dot Public Schools. ESPN The Magazine describes him as "a natural-born politician," and his promoting efforts as "his most ambitious campaign yet," but if De La Hoya's looking for a real challenge, I'd love to see him put more of that political talent to work on behalf of charters and other promising education reforms. In any case, I know who I'll be rooting for this Cinco do Mayo.

The Be-All End-All College Credential

M.I.T. Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones was fired after revelations that she lied about having a college degree 28 years ago when she first applied for an entry level job that didn't require a college degree. Everyone at M.I.T. seems to think she was doing a fantastic job and will be sorely missed.

If that's the case, why fire her?

Misrepresenting credentials is dishonest and obviously a serious offense. But people do a lot of stupid things when they're younger and trying to make their way in the world. One could say she should have come clean before, but she probably knew that if she did, M.I.T. would demonstrate the same degree of forgiveness they're demonstrating now--namely, none.

This shows how rigid the credentialing mentality has become in higher education, trumping three decades of undisputed good work. It wasn't always that way. When Ludwig Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929, they simply accepted his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a doctoral thesis. The knew that forcing him to go through a formal course of study to earn a credential would be absurd. They were acting in their role as certifiers of learning, which is (see yesterday's post) not necessarily the same thing as being a provider of learning.

At the modern university, that distinction doesn't exist--you have to be certified by the institution that taught you. Indeed, since degrees aren't based on any objective, verifiable evidence of learning, that's all they're certifying--that you've been taught. So I wonder if in addition to deterring future resume-fudgers, M.I.T. wasn't exactly comfortable with the idea of employing someone who is living proof that you don't need a university degree to be really good at a complex, challenging, difficult job--particularly one at a university.

How Much is That Degree Really Worth?

An interesting debate about the value of a college education starts here, on the Becker-Posner blog, Richard Posner's response here, and then follow-up from Richard Vedder here. In summary: Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker says that all the evidence points to the fact that a college education is worth more today than ever before. Posner and Vedder are skeptical, wondering if colleges are merely selecting and certifying smart people, and that smartness is actually what's more valuable than ever before.

It's a legitimate question, but Posner and Vedder don't offer any evidence to support their skepticism. I hear this point made fairly often, and in every single case it's made by an older white guy with multiple college degrees. That doesn't automatically make them wrong, but there's an unavoidable elitism to people who benefit from a hugely valuable privilege like higher education questioning whether other, less fortunate people would benefit from the same thing.

Moreover, higher education isn't just for the Top 10 percent anymore. Most college students are somewhere in the middle of the smartness distribution, and all the statistics pointing to a high return on education apply to them too.

The reason this debate even exists, of course, is that there's very little good data out there about how much colleges actually increase student learning between students arrive as freshman and leave at seniors. That data void is what keeps debates like this in the realm of informed speculation, rather than something that can be resolved empirically.

The debate also highlights an under-appreciated fact about contemporary higher education--universities have effectively merged two functions that are conceptually and historically distinct: education and certification. There's no particular reason that the institution that provides you with a curriculum and teachers has to be the same institution that grants you a degree certifying that you've mastered a certain body of knowledge and skills. In other higher education sectors--like IT certification--they're handled separately.

Because there's no hard data about how much students at a given institution actually learn, the job market values the degree in ways that are logical given that lack of information. If you get a degree from a selective college, the degree's primary value is a signal that you were smart enough to get admitted. If you (like most students) went to a non-selective school, the degree says that you had the work ethic and discipline necessary to accumulate 120 or so credits. Those qualities have value, which is why employers care about degrees. But the lack of data about learning creates distortions in the labor market that work to the detriment of the students who learn the most, particuarly at non-selective colleges.

Charters and Fenty's Mission

A front page Washington Post story yesterday looked at the large and growing share of District of Columbia students served by public charter schools. One-in-four D.C. students currently attends a charter, and slots for thousands more charter students are expected to come online in the next few years--even as the number of students in District of Columbia Public School (DCPS) system continues to decline.

The growth of D.C.'s charter schools reflects the very real dissatisfaction of parents and many city leaders with years of poor performance by DCPS--the same dissatisfaction that led the council to vote last week to give Mayor Adrian Fenty control over DCPS. Not all of the charter schools are an improvement: several have been closed due to poor performance, and several others are struggling or mediocre. But research shows that parents in general are happier with their charter school choices, and the fact that bad charter schools are being closed stands in sharp contrast to DCPS, which continues to operate schools that are unsafe, underperforming or dying a slow death of attrition. And D.C. is also home to a handful of really wonderful charter schools. As Mayor Fenty faces the daunting challenge of figuring out how to fix education in the District of Columbia, he should learn from the city's best charter schools and use charter schooling as a tool to address the desperate educational needs in many of our city's neighborhoods. "Fixing DCPS" is an important goal, but it's NOT how Fenty should define his mission. His real mission should be ensuring that all of D.C.'s kids can attend, free of charge, a high-quality school--DCPS, charter, or private--that prepares them to become a contributing citizen of the District of Columbia.

Blame the English Department

Over at the National Review Online's higher education blog, Phi Beta Con, Carol Iannone speculates that the Virginia Tech English department is to blame, on the grounds that (A) Cho Seung-hui was was an English major; (B) English departments are awash in postmodernism; and (C) postmodernism teaches students that there is no absolute truth, and thus no right or wrong.

This idea is so transparently foolish that even the other Phi Beta Con bloggers quickly knocked it down. The larger question is why someone smart enough to string words together into coherent sentences would say such things in the first place. The answer, I think, lies with the intersection of hard-line conservatism and Internet-age intellectual combat.

The type of conservatism espoused at NRO Online is founded on a small number of foundational, easily-understood truths, such as:

1) "Liberalism is bad."
2) "Moral relativism is bad."
3) "People need to know their place."

The upside to this approach is that it gives you a handy, wallet-sized set of intellectual principles that can be applied to any situation. The downside is that you quickly run out of new things to say. One solution to that problem is to locate new arenas in which to fight your ideological battles--thus, Phi Beta Con, which is really not a higher education blog at all. It's just an excuse to give principles 1,2, and 3 above a new spin--for #1, railing against the professoriate; for #2, mocking postmodernism; and for #3, nodding with approval at Charles Murrayesque arguments that we're sending too many kids to college who really don't have the intellectual chops for it and should, for their sake and ours, resign themselves to domestic servitude instead.

But even this strategy runs its course after a while--there are (thankfully) only so many Ward Churchills out there to be made of fun of. The only thing left is the popular news cycle. Once Virginia Tech was beset by tragedy, it was just a matter of time before someone at Phi Beta Con connected the familiar dots. The narcissism of the truth-teller also comes into play here--I imagine Carol Iannone believes she's the only one brave enough to speak what others only dare to think.

In reality, the logic of ideological warfare and the constant need to say old things in new ways simply drove her to espouse ideas that are not just facile, but indecent. This is real moral relativism, a kind much more damaging than anything taught in the English Department at Virginia Tech or anywhere else.

Update: In another example of tasteless, tenditious hobbyhorse-riding, a different Phi Beta Con poster offers an alternate culprit : the fake boys crisis that Sara Mead debunked last year.

If you're not the lead dog...

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports($) this morning that the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), the trade organization for financial aid officers, will ban lenders from sponsoring events at their national conference. This news comes only two weeks after a Wall Street Journal report($) on close financial ties between lenders and NASFAA.

This is good news, and hopefully just a start to NASFAA taking a leadership role in establishing guidelines for school-lender relationships.

Admission Impossible?

Over at The American Prospect Online, here's my take on why it's not actually getting harder and harder for high school students to get into a good college, despite what you read in the newspaper every year.

Making Nice with Newsweek

Over the past year or so, you could sort of say that a significant share of my work has focused on criticizing Newsweek: Andy and I wrote a paper questioning their ranking of "America's Top High Schools," a Newsweek cover story on the "boy crisis" got me to look into the issue and eventually write a paper that challenged that article's take on the issue, and the zero-to-three hype I criticize in a recent paper grew in part from a late-1990s Newsweek article. It's not something I planned, but I do seem to have created an odd little subgenre for myself here. But I'm pleased to report that my latest paper on the overhyping of the first three years got a positive mention in a recent Newsweek story on the same topic. Since Newsweek played a role in sparking this hype, I'm glad to see them play a role in correcting some of the misinformation parents and the public have received about the first three years. You can also hear me discuss the topic further for Newsweek on Air.

An Important Day for D.C. Schools?

Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty will sign legislation today adding him to the ranks of mayors who have taken control over their cities' public education systems. The D.C. Council passed the legislation last Thursday. Congress must also approve the law before it takes effect, but is expected to do so with no problems.

I want very much to believe Fenty and his team can bring meaningful improvement to my city's public schools, which so desperately need it. And there are reasons to be hopeful: The team Fenty has assembled to work on this is good. And the hearings that led up to this legislation gave voice to public and political leader frustration with the city's schools that I hope can translate into political will for reforms.

But public education in the District of Columbia faces serious challenges, and the city has a history of failed reform initiatives and governance changes that failed to deliver promised improvement. And the hard work only begins when Fenty takes the reigns. I have two main causes for concern right now.

The first is with the "let's all get along" attitude Fenty's projected throughout this process: offering the City Council increased control over the school budget, the press conference he had Friday with school board chair Robert Bobb and current superintendent Janey, at which they all expressed a desire to hold hands and work together. Now, obviously this approach makes sense if you're trying to pass legislation giving you the right to take over the schools. And there are ways in which Fenty's willingness to play well with others on this is admirable. Too often efforts to improve urban schools get killed by personal and political feuding among individual elected officials trying to advance their own agendas. Fenty's efforts to make nice with the council, the current board and Janey suggest he's rejecting the dictatorial and polarizing approach NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has taken in running that city's schools. BUT, one of the major challenges to improving education in D.C. has been that too many entities and individuals--the superintendent, the school board, the council, the chief financial officer, the mayor, Congress--have both an agenda and a say in how the schools are run, and that mess of competing forces has made it virtually impossible for the school system to get sustained focus on a coherent reform agenda. One of the major benefits of mayoral control would be to give the system a single ultimate point of authority and accountability, but that benefit disappears if Fenty lets himself get pulled in a bunch of directions trying to keep all those groups on board with his reforms. So far, the only people who've really had a lot at stake here have been the school board, Janey and a handful of home rule activists. But what happens when the Mayor needs to do something that's controversial and counter to the interests of significant groups within the school system, and they get their councilmembers involved? Improving the city's schools will require the political will to do difficult things even in the face of serious political opposition. What Fenty's encountered in the takeover ain't got nothing on what he could face when it comes time to actually take action: Does he have the will to stand up to that?

But that's nothing compared to my second concern: What is Fenty's team going to do? I don't believe there's anyone on this earth who can honestly say that they know how to fix the mess that is DCPS today. I've got some thoughts on things that might be beneficial; so do a lot of other people. But no one's ever fixed an entire system like D.C. to the point where we can honestly say we're happy with the outcomes it's delivering for most kids. There are no guarantees any of these things people might propose will actually work. When I think about what this all means forthe futures of kids in this city--which is what really matters here--that's what really worries me.

Two things worth reading this week if you're interested in this issue:
Rick Hess on Mayoral Control
Andy Smarick on Urban Superintendents

Why Choice Alone is Not Enough

NACSA's Greg Richmond has a terrific Education Week op-ed about what the charter school movement must do to build quality at scale. You should read it. Conveniently for me, it's also directly applicable to the point I made in the previous post. Richmond's key graph:

If we are to establish high-quality charter schools at scale, it is not sufficient to simply knock down barriers and get out of the way. We must create new systems of support based on innovation and flexibility.

As Richmond explains: "The prevailing 1990s philosophy was that the best role for government was to eliminate barriers and get out of the way," but that approach led to serious quality problems in states like Texas and Ohio. As charter school leaders and others who care about both improving outcomes for poor students and improving choice in education think about how to expand choice, we need to take seriously the lessons of the charter movement to date that removing barriers and increasing choice alone don't solve the problem: We need accountability and concerted effort, by a diverse coalition of private, public, and community organizations, to build and support quality schools at scale

More arguing with libertarians!

I'm pleased that Cato's Adam Schaeffer agrees with me that special education voucher programs, like Florida's McKay program, are a bad idea. Still he feels compelled to make a few feeble defenses of the program: there are already perverse incentives for overidentification in the current system (my response: yes, but programs like McKay exacerbate those incentives), and choice makes a lot of parents happier (Schaeffer seems to misunderstand my point that an uptick in the number of parent challenges to district special education decisions means McKay isn't providing recourse for parents unsatisfied with district special ed offerings--if it were we'd see a reduction in challenges as families opted for McKay rather than cumbersome due process).

More significantly, Schaeffer seems to misunderstand, or willingly mischaracterize, the nature of my concerns with vouchers and other pure free market reforms. He presents the issue as if the only choice we face were a choice between a pure market and the status quo. That's obviously bullshit. There are lots of ways to increase choice and customization and inject more market incentives into the system. Since I believe the goal should be to increased choice and competition in a way that has the best outcomes for kids and leaves the fewest behind, rather than simply to dismantle the existing system of government run schools, I don't think simply handing parents a check and saying "go find a school" is good enough.

Just think of it this way: If we created vouchers or tax credits today to the full extent Schaeffer wants, most of the kids who are in bad public schools today would still be in bad schools. That's because there's nowhere near the supply of quality schools--public, private, charter, what have you--to serve all the kids who need them. Increasing choice without a concerted effort by public, private, philanthropic and community groups to increase the supply of high quality schools serving poor kids is a marginal reform and little improvement over the status quo.
****
Briefly, on the sex-ed question, which I agree with Schaeffer is small bore: Schaeffer says that the seemingly contradictory support of conservative groups for both abstinence only requirements and school choice reflects the fact that, absent choice, the only way to get the sex ed you want for your own child is by forcing schools to provide that type to everyone. I'll give you that at the local level; it's one reason I'd rather the task of sex ed be eliminated from schools altogether and handed off to community-based groups that are really more equipped for this anyway. But when you are supporting federal policies that impose abstinence-only education on the wide diversity of states and communities across the country the only reasonable conclusion is that you really do believe it should be an important federal policy to force other people's children to receive the kind of sex education you prefer.

Gadgetry

Fellow blogger Erin Dillon and I are at SAS headquarters in North Carolina today, visiting with value-added guru Bill Sanders. Why is this worth noting? Because it's an excuse to blog from my new Blackberry. As someone who preceded the cell-phones-and-flip-flops generation, I find this to be inordinately cool.

The Great Child Care Cost Shift

Special all-libertarian day here at quick and ed!--No, not really.

Kerry Howley makes the case in the recent issue of Reason that illegal immigration is particularly benefical to women because the supply of cheap, undocumented domestic labor makes child care more affordable, helping women balance work and family. It's an interesting argument, but I think overstated, considering that only 4% of children under 5 with working mothers are cared for by domestic workers in their homes, and fully 45% are cared for by relatives.

This ties into something I've been thinking about lately. The opening of employment opportunities to women and resulting shift of women from home to market labor over the past few decades has also shifted traditionally female labor into the market. Rather than being unaccounted for economically and therefore appearing "free" (despite the enormous cost it carried for women), that work is now visible, quantifiable, and has a clear cost attached to it--a seemingly new cost that families and society must bear. This is particularly the case for childcare. When we talk about childcare quality, cost, and "work-family" balance, what we're really talking about is who--society, families, women only, children themselves--should cover the costs that emerged when society could no longer assume that women, having few other options, would bear that entire cost themselves. As Howley shows, illegal immigration helps postpone reckoning on this question, because it imports another class of women who have few other options and will therefore provide childcare at an artificially low cost. But this stopgap clearly has its own limitations. The reckoning is still coming, and no one seems ready for it.

More On Why Having a Hammer Doesn't Make Everything a Nail

Cato's Adam Schaeffer takes issue with my post earlier this week about the incredible tediousness of pro-voucher groups' assertion that choice is the solution to every imaginable educational problem.

He actually has a somewhat reasonable point. To the extent that increased choice and customization in education can make the entire educational system more effective and efficient, then yes, we should expect that "rising tide" to "lift all ships" (to offend Adam with yet another cliche), with positive impacts for groups of students we're concerned about. But this is different from some voucher supporters' recent tendency to recommend choice as a targeted solution to specific educational problems that are gaining national attention.

From a political point of view, it's understandable why voucher supporters would propose small, targeted voucher programs that purport to solve very specific or narrow needs, in response to public attention focused on those needs. But from a policy perspective such programs are often much more problematic than wider voucher programs. Take, for example, Florida's McKay Scholarships for children with disabilities and the programs like them that are springing up around the country. They're appealing because no one wants to be seen opposing increased choice and customization for kids with disabilities, and they seem to be working ok as school choice (despite an abundance of shady operators, at least in Florida, that are taking advantage of vulnerable kids and stealing taxpayer and parent $$). But they kind of suck as special education reform. As Andrew Rotherham and I have shown, they don't seem to be solving the problem they ostensibly were intended to solve--parent difficulties getting needed services or out-of-district placements for their children--as evidenced by the fact that parent appeals of district special education decisions have increased rather than decreasing since the program was created. Further, they create perverse incentives for parents and schools that could exacerbate one of the biggest problems in special education: overidentification of students with disabilities.

Voucher supporters promote these targeted programs because they know that there's not political support in most places for the larger universal programs they'd prefer. But it's disingenuous to pretend that these targeted programs solve the problems they purport to when they're really just a strategy to get a foot in the door for larger voucher programs. If they're going to be forced to traffic in incrementalism anyway, why don't libertarians like Schaeffer spend a little bit more time talking about other ways--such as elimination of teacher certification or of building codes that make it expensive to build schools--where libertarian views might have bearing on educational debates? I'm not saying I'm on board with those ideas, but it would be more interesting.

There's a larger difference of opinion here, of course, and that regards the adequacy of school choice as education reform. There's a compelling case that building an education system more premised on choice will have significant benefits, in terms of efficiency but more so in terms of customization and parent and student satisfaction and engagement. But, just as economic policies that improve economic growth overall leave some workers behind, it's also likely that educational policies that improve student achievement on average will end up leaving some children behind. Libertarians like the folks at Cato tend to think this is ok: it's the price of a well-functioning market that ultimately benefits everyone, and the people who are most deserving will eventually get ahead anyway. Like most progressives and centrists, I don't accept that argument, but believe society has a collective obligation to prevent or redress the harms that accrue to specific individuals as a result of collectively beneficial policies: Particularly when those individuals are children. That's why I think increased choice needs to be accompanied by both some form of public accountability to set a floor for school performance and an ambitious set of public, private, charitable and community-based initiatives to build the supply of high-quality schools in underserved neighborhoods.

Btw, at the top of his post Schaeffer makes an odd comment about my noting that some pro-voucher groups think choice is awesome except when it comes to sex ed. Counter Schaeffer's assertion, I'm not remotely confused about what choice means. He, on the other hand, seems to be unaware that there are a lot of non-libertarian conservative organizations--The National Review, Heritage Foundation, and IWF, the organization my original post was about--that do endorse educational "choice" in the form of vouchers while also arguing that schools should be required to restrict sex ed to "abstinence only," which, as he suggests, is a somewhat inconsistent position.

Fairfax Gives In To Testing ELLS

As the Post reports today, Fairfax County Virginia has backed down in its battle with the Dept of Ed and will administer grade level reading tests to all of its ELL students (minus those who've been in the country for less than a year). This struggle was hard-fought and district officials in Fairfax and elsewhere still say it isn't fair to give a reading test in English to kids who don't know the language. But $17 million in federal funds is a lot to let go of so it's not surprising that the county finally gave in. Still, no real winner in this one- both sides still have to figure out how to fairly and accurately measure the performance of language learners or the fights are sure to continue in VA and elsewhere.

*Disc on VA: ES's Rotherham is a member of the State Board of Ed.

Closing the Expectations Gap?

Are state efforts to raise standards and accountability making a difference? That question came to the fore at this morning's Achieve forum on the progress the group's American Diploma Project has made in its efforts to advance high school reform at the state level.

The American Diploma Project seeks to improve alignment of state high school standards, graduation requirements, assessments, and accountability with one another and with what students need to know to succeed in college and the workplace. Achieve president Michael Cohen and CCSSO executive director Gene Wilhoit argued that ADP has had success in convincing states to change or consider changing curriculum and standards along lines suggested by ADP to better ensure that students are college/work ready. For example, 13 states now require students to complete the roster of courses that ADP calls a "college- and work-ready" curriculum in order to graduate high school.

Respondent Check Finn is less optimistic about the project's impacts, however, arguing that the entire approach of aligning standards and getting students to take more rigorous sounding courses aren't adequate in themselves to boost what students are actually learning. Finn's criticism seems particularly salient in light of recent NAEP evidence that high school seniors are taking harder classes but learning less. As a relatively recent graduate of a high school that ranks in the top 15 on Jay Mathews' challenge index, I can vouch that, in my experience, curriculum and standards that look good on paper do not necessarily translate into preparation for the real world.

That's not to discount the hard work being done by folks at ADP: Aligning standards, curriculum and assessment is difficult and sometimes tedious work that's essential to improving education. But it's not enough in itself, and it's important for the education community not to get too wrapped up in giving a big pat on the back to progress that may look good, but absent evidence that students are actually learning more, may reflect intent more than real improvement.

Identifying Mental Health Problems in Schools

As details about the Virginia Tech shooter's history of mental health problems and disturbing behaviour begin to surface, it's worth a reminder that teachers are often positioned to be among the first to note signs that a student has some sort of mental health problems. Many educators have saved lives by alerting parents or authority figures to signs of trouble and getting young people referred to professionals for help they need. Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake offers a list of red flags of which to be aware. Some school districts, community-based organizations, and partnerships--like this program in Montgomery county, Maryland--are also doing innovative things to make sure kids at risk have access to mental health treatment at or through their schools.

Too Soon to Call Victory for Charters

Jay Mathews has a great post over on edspresso about why he thinks charters are a more promising long-term strategy than vouchers to expand meaningful, quality school choice for low-income children and parents. The basic point is that, while vouchers can help some kids move into better public schools, what we really need is to create a lot more, better schools in the communities where poor families live--and charter schools, which are already doing this, are a more effective mechanism here.

The one complaint I have is with Jay's comment, towards the end, that "Charters are no fun for the parties. They make too much sense to both Republicans and Democrats, and cannot be used to spark big fights." It's easy to get the impression, working in D.C., where charters are growing rapidly and benefit from strong support by predominantly-Democratic city leaders as well as bipartisan Congressional backing, that everyone's on board with charters. But if you take a look around the country it's clear that in many states charter schools remain politically polarizing and face a constant battle to fend off legislative attacks from education interests and ideological opponents. To wit, edspresso featured a link to news reports of the latest political wars over charter schooling in Ohio on their front page with Jay's post. Or what about this lovely incident two weeks back when the Chairman of the Colorado House Education Committe said charter supporters belonged in hell? Some of the blame here can be laid at the feet of quality problems within the charter school community itself, but even if I could wave my magic wand and suddenly make all charter schools high-performing, that wouldn't change the views or fury of die-hard opponents. In too many places the ability of charter schools to achieve the promise both Jay and I see in them remains hobbled by knee-jerk and narrow-minded political opposition.

When You Have A Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail

That pretty much describes the pro-voucher conservative insistence that choice will solve any and all educational problem one can imagine*, and a new Independent Women's Forum publication on the "boy crisis" is the latest example of this. Leave aside that the piece cherry-picks data points that support the notion of a boy crisis,** ignores the historical context for some gaps (but not others), and glosses over subgroup differences and racial and ethnic gaps much larger than gender gaps.*** Even ignore the scant page devoted to uncritically accepting flawed "brain science" arguments about how differences in male and female brains**** require schools to use different teaching methods for the different sexes, and schools today discriminate against boys. What really takes the cake after all that brilliant analysis is the recommendations. How do we solve this terrible boy crisis? School choice, of course!

Don't get me wrong; I like school choice more than just about anybody. And I think that choice should include single-sex as well as coed options if that's what parents want for their kids. D.C.'s Septima Clark Charter School, created to help close achievement gaps for black boys--a group that really is in crisis--is a great example here. But specific problems often require solutions that are matched to them. And choice supporters who persist in claiming that choice is some kind of magical panacea for every educational problem imaginable demonstrate their unseriousness and raise false expectations for choice initiatives in a way that ultimately undermines their case.

Btw, for a more thorough explanation of why the "boy crisis" hype gets it wrong, and a more sound take on this issue that IWF's, check out this paper I wrote last year.

*Except when it comes to sex ed, of course, where abstinence-only must be mandated, despite virutally no evidence of its effectiveness.
**Why else would you devote an entire section of the relatively short paper to afterschool activities and less than a sentence to the significant gains for elementary boys that are catching them up to girls in reading?
***I'm eagerly awaiting an IWF report on how we must do more to help close achievement gaps for poor and minority kids.
****Brain science is another hammer that never lacks for a nail here, even when its used in ways that seem contradictory. For IWF and likeminded groups, somehow whenever women get the short end of a stick, that's because of brain differences, and since it's because of brain differences that means it's ok and society shouldn't do anything to help them. But when men get the short end of the stick on something, that's also because of brain differences but in this case requires that we automatically declare a crisis and take action to address the problem.

Shootings at Virginia Tech

This is terrible. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Virgina Tech community, students and their families.

Debating NCLB with Progressives

I'm late in getting to this interesting conversation that Ganesh Sitamaran and Jason Spitalnick have been having over at TPM Cafe about NCLB and the future of education reform thinking. I don't know whether to think that AFTie Ed's and many of their commenters' conclusions that the posts are somehow teacher or union-bashing is a reflection of narcicism ("it's about me and my issues, damnit") or a reflexive defensive posture that so many teachers have taken on--sometimes with good reason--in response to the growth of NCLB, accountability, and to some extent choice.

But whatever it is it's a little goofy because Ganesh and Jason actually seem to share many of teachers' typical concerns with NCLB: it's too complex, it's overly simplistic, it doesn't address the underlying social problems that really account for achievement gaps, etc, etc. In their broader critiques of the law, Ganesh and Jason are both onto something and missing an important points here.

They fail to give NCLB adequate credit because they lack a historical sense about what a radical shift NCLB, and even the 1994 IASA, really represented in thinking about education reform generally and the federal role in education in particular. The standards and accountability movement's shift in policy focus from dictating inputs and processes to accountability for student results is a big deal, as is the idea that we actually should expect most students to reach high standards. That Sitamaran and Spitalnick don't fully get that is actually a reflection of how dramatic the seac change in thinking has been. And this change is an absolutely essential precondition for both the thinking in their posts and the policy shifts that would move education reform to the next level.

The truth is that NCLB hasn't been able to actually deliver on its eponymous promise. Sure, the technical aspects of testing problems, measuring student achievement and AYP that dominate current debates are a part of that. More significant is the fact that NCLB never delivered fully on either the increased resources or--and this was a much larger-scale failure--flexibility that were supposed to accompany greater accountability to get the job done. It's also true that the consequences in the law and the incentives they provide probably aren't as powerful as needed to be effective. But the core issue beyond all these--and I think this is where Sitamaran in particular is onto something--is that NCLB shows pretty devastatingly the limitations of a pure accountability and incentives strategy for student achievement. Don't get me wrong: NCLB's success in getting schools to focus resources and attention on struggling and previously ignored student groups shows incentives make a difference. But all the incentives in the world don't do a hill of beans of good if you don't know how to get where you want to go. The horror movie victim getting chased by the lunatic with a chainsaw has a hell of an incentive, but it can't save her if she doesn't know how to get out of the funhouse. And unfortunately that's the situation a lot of low-performing systems feel like they're in. (FWIW, this limitation is also the fundamental problem with pure market-based education reform proposals like vouchers and tax credits.)

Of course, schools were never supposed to be left on their own to figure out how to improve student achievement, but the reality is that a lot of school districts and states that were supposed to help them don't have any more capacity than they do. It's pretty safe to say that no one really knows right now how to build large-scale, effective urban school systems that serve all kids at the level they deserve and society requires. That should scare the bejeezus out of all of us. But it should also get us hopping to invest in R&D and capacity building so schools, districts and states can start doing what we do know works.

More fundamentally, we need to rethink how we structure and deliver public education so that we can replace existing failed institutions with better ones designed to be able to meet the educational comitments we've made in NCLB and other standards documents. I don't know what this looks like, but there's plenty of interesting thinking going on here, though none of it is ready quite yet for national policy prescriptions (an idea that itself might not be all that useful here, I don't know). My biggest disappointment with Sitamaran and Spitalnick is that they don't engage with these issues at all; they just offer vague statements about universal health care and addressing underlying social conditions. These issues are tremendously important and, as this week's Washington Post magazine noted, some school districts and community groups are doing really powerful and innovative things to address them. But just talking about social issues doesn't kick the can further down the road. In fact, it doesn't even remain stagnant in today's debate but regresses to the pre-NCLB liberal position in a way that's ultimately not helpful to education reform, kids, or progressives.

Categorical Imperatives

Per Friday's back and forth between Beth, Kevin and John, isn't the real culprit here the class size reduction policy itself and, more broadly, categorical programs that condition schools' receipt of funding on undertaking specific activities that may not actually be the best use of funds for that particular school? Just because conservatives have tried to capture the rhetoric of flexibility and putting decision-making in the hands of people closest to the child doesn't actually mean it's a bad idea or that progressives should surrender that ground.

Movement on Urban High School Chartering in Detroit

Good to see, particularly following this. For backstory, see this paper I wrote last fall about charter schooling in Michigan.

Money Matters

As someone who came to education policy through the financial side of things, Eric Hanushek has always loomed as outsized figure on the policy landscape. From the perspective of those--like myself--who are left-leaning politically and who favor aggressive measures to correct education funding disparities, Hanushek has always been Bad Guy #1, the person who laid the intellectual foundation for the arguments, widely repeated by conservatives and states defending their school funding systems in court, that "money doesn't matter" in education.

I didn't buy a lot of those arguments then, and still don't, as you can see in the review I've written of Hanushek's recent edited volume on education lawsuits, Courting Failure. But I've come to appreciate the value of Hanushek's perspective on things--somebody needs to ask hard questions and tell uncomfortable truths about the way school districts spend money. As I found when I interviewed Hanushek last year, he's a smart, thoughtful person whose arguments are richer and more complicated than they're sometimes made out to be.