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.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, April 16, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Moral Education
From the AFTBlog: "Yes, deliberately falsifying documents is wrong, but...."
Rule of thumb in sentence construction: the word "but" does not belong after the words "falsifying documents is wrong." Whatever you're writing is sure to go downhill from there.
In this case, AFTie Beth is excusing a California school district that appears to have engaged in some paperwork shenanigans in order to get more class-size reduction money out of the state. Beth's excuse--and the district's--seems to begin and end with "we needed the money."
Back when I was assistant state budget director in Indiana, one of my jobs was to look after the giant pot of money the state set aside to support K-12 education. Every two years, the legislature would appropriate that money based on a projection of how many students would be enrolled in each school district. If the actual enrollment was higher than the projection, the legislature would either have to appropriate extra money (which it didn't like) or pro-rate funding distributions to districts (which they liked even less).
One year the actual enrollments came in unusually high, and when we looked to see where we'd gone wrong, we found a district where, despite the fact that enrollment had been declining steadily for years, over 1,000 new students had suddenly been added to the rolls.
Expect they hadn't, really. It turns out the district had discovered a loophole in the state funding law that was designed to foster cooperation between public and private schools. Some small private schools--particularly low-revenue parochial schools--don't have the resources to hire teachers for, say, AP Physics. So the state allowed districts to adjust their enrollment counts upward if they helped out and enrolled private school students in public courses.
This district had cut a deal with a local private school whereby it would provide mini-courses lasting two weeks to 1,000 students, putting the state on the hook for something like $10 million in extra funding.
Another district tried to count a 16-year old girl who had dropped out of school after having a baby as a student, on the grounds that she was engaged in "self-directed study" at home. The subject she was allegedly studying? Child care.
In each case, their excuse was, "we needed the money." Which was true, but not an excuse, any more than it would have been if the superintendant had knocked over a bank on the way into work. For some things, right is right and wrong is wrong. Isn't that what we teach in school?
Rule of thumb in sentence construction: the word "but" does not belong after the words "falsifying documents is wrong." Whatever you're writing is sure to go downhill from there.
In this case, AFTie Beth is excusing a California school district that appears to have engaged in some paperwork shenanigans in order to get more class-size reduction money out of the state. Beth's excuse--and the district's--seems to begin and end with "we needed the money."
Back when I was assistant state budget director in Indiana, one of my jobs was to look after the giant pot of money the state set aside to support K-12 education. Every two years, the legislature would appropriate that money based on a projection of how many students would be enrolled in each school district. If the actual enrollment was higher than the projection, the legislature would either have to appropriate extra money (which it didn't like) or pro-rate funding distributions to districts (which they liked even less).
One year the actual enrollments came in unusually high, and when we looked to see where we'd gone wrong, we found a district where, despite the fact that enrollment had been declining steadily for years, over 1,000 new students had suddenly been added to the rolls.
Expect they hadn't, really. It turns out the district had discovered a loophole in the state funding law that was designed to foster cooperation between public and private schools. Some small private schools--particularly low-revenue parochial schools--don't have the resources to hire teachers for, say, AP Physics. So the state allowed districts to adjust their enrollment counts upward if they helped out and enrolled private school students in public courses.
This district had cut a deal with a local private school whereby it would provide mini-courses lasting two weeks to 1,000 students, putting the state on the hook for something like $10 million in extra funding.
Another district tried to count a 16-year old girl who had dropped out of school after having a baby as a student, on the grounds that she was engaged in "self-directed study" at home. The subject she was allegedly studying? Child care.
In each case, their excuse was, "we needed the money." Which was true, but not an excuse, any more than it would have been if the superintendant had knocked over a bank on the way into work. For some things, right is right and wrong is wrong. Isn't that what we teach in school?
An AERA Newbie
I just finished my first trip to AERA and, while shocked by the sheer number of people there, I was generally impressed with the research, presentations, and thoughtful comments. Consistently, people expressed a desire to make research a critical part of both ground-level action and the policy decision-making process.
While the discussion at AERA about relevance and getting research into the hands of decision makers was encouraging, it doesn’t change the fact that much of the research coming out of the education research community is inaccessible. It is inaccessible because of the overly-complicated, technical language used, and also is literally inaccessible—locked away in journals too costly for anyone but universities to access on a large scale. Researchers who shake their head in wonder when policies are enacted that directly contradict what is currently known about say, student learning or assessment, need to remember that they are, in essence, selling their research to policymakers and practitioners. And if you’re trying to sell something, you take the product to your customer and you sell it in their language, not expect your customer to start speaking yours.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Communications Mastermind Needed
My brief excursion to AERA went well (Standing room only in my session! Okay, it was a small room...), but is ending on a bad note as I am currently stranded in Hell on Earth the American Airlines terminal at O'Hare, waiting for a flight that may or may not be leaving for National Airport this month, if ever.
However, it does give me a chance to let our fearless readers know that Education Sector is in the market for a communications manager. If you want to change the education world (in a good way) at a place where communications is an integral part of the organization, not an afterthought (I promise you will never, ever be handed a finished paper that you've never seen or even heard of before along with vague instructions along the lines of "we're releasing this in 20 minutes, see if you can get people to, you know, read it or something..."), then give us a look.
However, it does give me a chance to let our fearless readers know that Education Sector is in the market for a communications manager. If you want to change the education world (in a good way) at a place where communications is an integral part of the organization, not an afterthought (I promise you will never, ever be handed a finished paper that you've never seen or even heard of before along with vague instructions along the lines of "we're releasing this in 20 minutes, see if you can get people to, you know, read it or something..."), then give us a look.
New Dealing
Andy and I propose a New Deal for Urban Public Schools, as part of a Harvard Law and Policy Review online symposium that also features work by Joel Klein, Stefanie Sanford and Steven Seleznow, and Charles Ogletree, Jr. and Susan Eaton.
More About That Smart Baby
Earlier this week, on the Guardian's website, I explained why educational baby toys won't make your infant smarter in England, either.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Drawing the line
The Wall Street Journal reports today($) that in 2004 the National Association for Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), the trade organization for financial aid officers, “considered setting clear rules to curb gifts from lenders—and decided against it”. While NASFAA may have had that choice in 2004, it no longer does—either NASFAA takes action or Congress will.
Currently, the ethical line for financial aid officers is more like a fuzzy bar, with a lot of wiggle room. In the news coverage, I have heard quotes ranging from aid officers who aren’t willing to accept pens or paper from lenders, to aid officers who feel that it’s okay to accept Broadway tickets, a nice dinner, or a fully paid conference trip. I don’t doubt that the majority of aid officers are conscientious about keeping lenders at an arms length. For these aid officers, however, there are no national guidelines to help guide their behavior, or to provide a basis for reporting the unethical behavior of colleagues.
After missing the opportunity in 2004, NASFAA now has a second chance to be proactive about setting industry standards for ethical behavior. But this window is closing quickly.
Senator Kennedy has proposed legislation to regulate relationships between lenders and colleges, and Attorney General Cuomo is leading the charge by compelling schools and lenders to adopt a code of conduct in return for dropping lawsuits against them. Multiple colleges have already signed on to Cuomo’s code of conduct, along with Citibank, and—as of today—Sallie Mae (both banks also agreed to pay $2 million into a fund to educate students about the financial aid industry). I doubt there will be a third opportunity for NASFAA. As the organization responsible for representing financial aid officers, they need to be willing to draw the ethical line on what is, and is not, acceptable behavior in relationships between lenders and colleges.
My Very Smart Baby
Have you read Sara Mead's report, Million Dollar Babies? You should. It will tell you all about how we, as parents, future parents, educators and policymakers, shouldn't get caught up in the mass marketing hype around baby products that claim to make our babies smarter. Disclaimer: if you search my home you will find evidence that I have used some of these products, namely Baby Einstein videos and CDs. I admit that I may have even purchased them-- in the sleep-deprived haze of those first few months I bought a lot of things that I thought might make it all easier. And yes, they did make things easier and might have been worth the $29.99 or whatever I paid.
Now, on a trial basis (not having plunked down the $149 for my very own) I have the distinct pleasure of using the Baby Plus "Prenatal Education System", which promises on its website to make my soon-to-be born baby more alert, interactive, and just all around smarter upon birth. If you can picture it, I'm wearing a fanny pack-type belt around my stomach that has 16 settings ("lessons"), each providing a slightly different rhythmic beat. Sounds like a drum beat or, I imagine to the baby, like I'm working in a factory or at a construction site. I'm supposed to wear this thing twice a day for an hour to "stimulate brain growth". The science of it, explained under a section of the website called "The Science", is complete with a timeline beginning with Confucius and carrying on through the Quing dynasty all the way to the "fetal enrichment technology" introduced somewhere around the 1970s and 80s.
I'll let you know the results when my baby comes out smarter than yours.
Now, on a trial basis (not having plunked down the $149 for my very own) I have the distinct pleasure of using the Baby Plus "Prenatal Education System", which promises on its website to make my soon-to-be born baby more alert, interactive, and just all around smarter upon birth. If you can picture it, I'm wearing a fanny pack-type belt around my stomach that has 16 settings ("lessons"), each providing a slightly different rhythmic beat. Sounds like a drum beat or, I imagine to the baby, like I'm working in a factory or at a construction site. I'm supposed to wear this thing twice a day for an hour to "stimulate brain growth". The science of it, explained under a section of the website called "The Science", is complete with a timeline beginning with Confucius and carrying on through the Quing dynasty all the way to the "fetal enrichment technology" introduced somewhere around the 1970s and 80s.
I'll let you know the results when my baby comes out smarter than yours.
Off to AERA
I'm heading to Chicago tonight to attend the annual American Education Research Association conference, where I'll be participating in a symposium titled Implications of the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education: The Challenges of Assessing Quality in Postsecondary Education -- Thursday at 10:35 in the Marriot, Huron room, 10th floor. If you saw the op-ed Tom Toch and I wrote for the Post last week, you'll have a pretty good sense of what I'll be saying.
After the symposium wraps up at noon, you can grab lunch and head to the Marriot ballroom at 2:15 for "Bitch Barbies Love Bully Boys": Transgressive Femininities and Gender Hierarchies in Schools.
I know, I know -- too easy.
After the symposium wraps up at noon, you can grab lunch and head to the Marriot ballroom at 2:15 for "Bitch Barbies Love Bully Boys": Transgressive Femininities and Gender Hierarchies in Schools.
I know, I know -- too easy.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Intended Consequences
There's an old saying: "Beware of unintended consequences." It's good advice for long-term planning. It's also an important principle for identifying facile policy arguments, like those in this WaPost op-ed, in which a local second-grade teacher claims that the No Child Left Behind Act, written to help low-income and minority students, actually harms them.
This kind of sudden logical inversion has a long and ignoble history, outlined well in Albert O. Hirschman's The Rhetoric of Reaction, which anyone who makes or cares about policy debates should read. For centuries people have been saying things like "welfare makes people poor" or "suffrage will hurt women," and for just as long people have nodded their heads with enthusiasm. The evidenciary bar should be incredibly high for saying things like this, but somehow it never is. I think people assume that nobody would say something so obviously silly with a straight face if it weren't somehow true. Editors also have a fatal weakness for this stuff, which is a lot punchier than carefuly parsing the actual truth.
The op-ed is garden-variety: Rich white kids get things from their home environment that poor and minority kids don't; thus, achievement gaps are unavoidable. But that doesn't mean that poor and minority kids bring nothing to school, they "speak foreign langauges, make music, tell vivid stories, and have other skills not typical of their peers."
Minority students "make music" and "tell vivid stories"? Seriously? I thought people stopped saying things like that in public a while ago.
Because poor and minority students come to school behind, schools have created a "caste system" where disadvantaged children are relegated to classes that are low-level, test-prep, drill-and-kill, and presumably many other bad hyphenated things.
Now, there was a time, not so long ago, when there was no No Child Left Behind Act, when there were no consequences for schools where low-income and minority students did poorly. Presumably, the caste system in question didn't exist back in that halcyon era of authentic education. You know, those palmy days when schools gave a rich, high-quality education to all their students, black or white, rich or poor.
If you believe that, I've got an op-ed to sell you.
This kind of sudden logical inversion has a long and ignoble history, outlined well in Albert O. Hirschman's The Rhetoric of Reaction, which anyone who makes or cares about policy debates should read. For centuries people have been saying things like "welfare makes people poor" or "suffrage will hurt women," and for just as long people have nodded their heads with enthusiasm. The evidenciary bar should be incredibly high for saying things like this, but somehow it never is. I think people assume that nobody would say something so obviously silly with a straight face if it weren't somehow true. Editors also have a fatal weakness for this stuff, which is a lot punchier than carefuly parsing the actual truth.
The op-ed is garden-variety: Rich white kids get things from their home environment that poor and minority kids don't; thus, achievement gaps are unavoidable. But that doesn't mean that poor and minority kids bring nothing to school, they "speak foreign langauges, make music, tell vivid stories, and have other skills not typical of their peers."
Minority students "make music" and "tell vivid stories"? Seriously? I thought people stopped saying things like that in public a while ago.
Because poor and minority students come to school behind, schools have created a "caste system" where disadvantaged children are relegated to classes that are low-level, test-prep, drill-and-kill, and presumably many other bad hyphenated things.
Now, there was a time, not so long ago, when there was no No Child Left Behind Act, when there were no consequences for schools where low-income and minority students did poorly. Presumably, the caste system in question didn't exist back in that halcyon era of authentic education. You know, those palmy days when schools gave a rich, high-quality education to all their students, black or white, rich or poor.
If you believe that, I've got an op-ed to sell you.
More Blame For Title IX
The College Sports Council, self-defined as a "national coalition of coaches, athletes, parents, and fans" that is trying to "reform Title IX regs that have led to the widespread elimination of opportunities for male athletes" has put out a report that says the NCAA's stats undercount the number of men's teams that have been cut over the past 15 years. The Independent Women's Forum thinks this is great and re-posts a host of charts and graphs (with subtitles like "Football's Not the Problem") that tells a basic story that no one really disagrees with, although we might squabble over the numbers a little. In short, CSC says the average number of male teams offered by an NCAA Division I institution fell from 10.2 in 1981-82 to 8.9 in 2004-2005 while the average number of women’s teams rose from 7.3 to 10.2. The NCAA will give you slightly different numbers but agrees that men's teams are down and women's are up. And so?
So the story goes that men's teams, namely wrestling and gymnastics and other "small interest" sports, are going extinct because of Title IX, "sacrificed" to make room for female athletes. Yes, these sports are in jeopardy. And yes, Title IX's proportionality standard (that women's sports opportunities correspond with the percentage of women on campus) does have a role in this- it's pushing institutions to make hard choices about how to invest their resources (and with more women on campus every year, it does get harder).
But scapegoating Title IX and letting the universities off the hook is inaccurate and certainly isn't going to help male or female "student athletes". The real problem? Faced with hard decisions about how to invest equitably in men's and women's athletics, institutions are simply not willing to touch the glory sports: football and men's basketball. These budgets, including coaches salaries, are higher than they've ever been, and rising. Lay that over the framework of having to spend equally (yes, that is where Title IX comes in since men's hoop and football support male athletes) and something's gotta give. Should we cut the 6-figure video play-back machine for the football team (we really need it if we want to be good) or should we cut some other sports? Hmmm...
JMU is the most recent best example- they cut 10 teams (7 men's, 3 women's) last fall and started a big debate over how and why Title IX was at fault. The fact is that JMU tiered all of its sports (tiers 1, 2, and 3 depending on funding, alumni support, and other factors) and then chose to cut spending by cutting all tier 3 sports. This included men's teams (7) and women's teams (3) and was a decision made for pretty obvious reasons: they had to cut and they weren't willing to cut into the big teams. Even JMU, which initially named "compliance problems" as the reason for the cuts later admitted it was a financial decision. Message to those blaming Title IX for all athletic cuts: it's almost always about economics and rarely about compliance.
So if institutions aren't willing to cut into (not cut out, just cut into) football and men's basketball, don't blame Title IX. And the argument that these sports are the financial backbone of college athletics doesn't wash either. Most football teams- even the big D I-A schools- don't even pay for themselves. They run deficit programs while their budgets keep rising. No one's trying to cut men in favor of women (male collegiate athletes still outnumber female athletes)- they're cutting what doesn't matter to them in exchange for what does.
So the story goes that men's teams, namely wrestling and gymnastics and other "small interest" sports, are going extinct because of Title IX, "sacrificed" to make room for female athletes. Yes, these sports are in jeopardy. And yes, Title IX's proportionality standard (that women's sports opportunities correspond with the percentage of women on campus) does have a role in this- it's pushing institutions to make hard choices about how to invest their resources (and with more women on campus every year, it does get harder).
But scapegoating Title IX and letting the universities off the hook is inaccurate and certainly isn't going to help male or female "student athletes". The real problem? Faced with hard decisions about how to invest equitably in men's and women's athletics, institutions are simply not willing to touch the glory sports: football and men's basketball. These budgets, including coaches salaries, are higher than they've ever been, and rising. Lay that over the framework of having to spend equally (yes, that is where Title IX comes in since men's hoop and football support male athletes) and something's gotta give. Should we cut the 6-figure video play-back machine for the football team (we really need it if we want to be good) or should we cut some other sports? Hmmm...
JMU is the most recent best example- they cut 10 teams (7 men's, 3 women's) last fall and started a big debate over how and why Title IX was at fault. The fact is that JMU tiered all of its sports (tiers 1, 2, and 3 depending on funding, alumni support, and other factors) and then chose to cut spending by cutting all tier 3 sports. This included men's teams (7) and women's teams (3) and was a decision made for pretty obvious reasons: they had to cut and they weren't willing to cut into the big teams. Even JMU, which initially named "compliance problems" as the reason for the cuts later admitted it was a financial decision. Message to those blaming Title IX for all athletic cuts: it's almost always about economics and rarely about compliance.
So if institutions aren't willing to cut into (not cut out, just cut into) football and men's basketball, don't blame Title IX. And the argument that these sports are the financial backbone of college athletics doesn't wash either. Most football teams- even the big D I-A schools- don't even pay for themselves. They run deficit programs while their budgets keep rising. No one's trying to cut men in favor of women (male collegiate athletes still outnumber female athletes)- they're cutting what doesn't matter to them in exchange for what does.
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