Enron's collapse and school accountability

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / December 13, 2001

As Enron, the giant energy company, plummeted toward bankruptcy from its one-time market value of $80 billion, business and finance experts bestirred themselves to try to explain what had gone wrong and what lessons could be drawn from this corporate calamity.

One such account appeared in the December 4 Wall Street Journal in the form of a perceptive op ed by Joe Berardino, managing partner and CEO of Andersen, which was Enron's auditing firm and understandably sheepish about this turn of events. Berardino's column was no doubt meant partly to exonerate Andersen from the mounting evidence of malfeasance by Enron's leaders. But that's not what struck me. What struck me was the extent to which the education-reform community in general, and the charter-school movement in particular, should heed the four big lessons that Berardino drew from the Enron debacle.

First, "Rethinking some of our accounting standards. Like the tax code, our accounting rules and literature have grown in volume and complexity as we have attempted to turn an art into a science. In the process, we have fostered a technical, legalistic mindset that is sometimes more concerned with the form rather than the substance of what is reported."

Think of yourself as a school accountability monitor in a district or state education agency. Or as a charter authorizer. Ask whether the information you're getting from schools is meant to satisfy formulaic (and possibly antiquated) reporting requirements or is evocative of what is

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Enron's collapse and school accountability

Generation gap among teachers argues for flexibility in the profession

December 13, 2001

The teachers who have worked their way to the top of today's education system were hired at a time when fewer professional opportunities were open to all and when choosing a lifelong career was the norm. By contrast, today's new teaching candidates have many attractive career options and very different expectations about career mobility and job security. The archetype of the entrepreneur and free agent has replaced that of the company man (or woman). But teaching appears to be one of the few lines of work with a static understanding of career. So write Harvard ed school professor Susan Moore Johnson and four colleagues in "The Next Generation of Teachers: Changing Conceptions of a Career in Teaching," an article analyzing the results of interviews with 50 first- and second-year teachers in Massachusetts that appears in the December 2001 issue of Phi Delta Kappan.

The main question motivating the study was how the next generation of teachers differs from the generation that is about to retire in their conceptions of a career. In an attempt to capture the views of a wide range of teachers, the researchers interviewed 36 teachers who had followed the traditional route into teaching (passing through an ed school) and 14 who had followed alternate routes, either teaching in a charter school or participating in Massachusetts' fast-track certification program for outstanding teaching candidates. The researchers set out to explore what motivates this new generation of teachers, with an

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Generation gap among teachers argues for flexibility in the profession

Research-based practices less popular than social engineering in some fields

December 13, 2001

It's not only in the world of education research that ideology sometimes trumps scientific evidence; the folks who study drug-prevention programs for children can be hostile to research-based practices as well. Case in point is the treatment that American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers received last month at a conference on a drug treatment program called "Boy Talk," which is the counterpart of a program called "Girl Power."  Girl Power encourages girls to shoot, hunt, and play drums, among other things, on the assumption that making girls less traditionally feminine will make them less likely to take drugs. Sommers, author of the well-received book The War Against Boys, had been invited by HHS's Center for Substance Abuse and Prevention to speak at the conference, but when she tried to suggest that scientific studies ought to be used to evaluate Girl Power's effectiveness in preventing drug use, she was interrupted by an HHS official, commanded to end her talk, and then insulted by another panelist using language that we can't repeat in this family-friendly publication. Not long after Stanley Kurtz broke this ugly story in National Review Online, the new (Bush-appointed) head of the division of HHS that oversees the Center for Substance Abuse and Prevention personally apologized to Sommers and promised to take corrective action.  See "Silencing Sommers," by Stanley Kurtz, National Review Online, December 5, 2001, and  "Abolish CSAP!" by Stanley Kurtz, National Review Online, December

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Research-based practices less popular than social engineering in some fields

The story behind puzzling dropout figures

December 13, 2001

A recent study by the Manhattan Institute's Jay Greene (High School Graduation Rates in the United States) shone a spotlight on the enormous number of students who disappear from school attendance rolls between 8^th grade and 12^th grade but aren't counted in any official dropout statistics. In a recent op-ed in The Houston Chronicle, Elena Vergara explains what happens to some of the thousands of eighth-graders in Houston who disappear before diplomas are awarded four years later. According to Vergara, there is a dramatic yearly enrollment surge between eight and ninth grade that can be traced back to a Texas law that prohibits students from failing more than one year each in elementary and middle school.  Struggling students arrive in ninth grade by virtue of social promotion, not because they're ready to handle high school material.  After failing their ninth-grade classes, an alarming percentage of these students drop out as soon as they turn 16 rather than repeat ninth grade. On the bright side, Vergara notes, social promotions are being phased out in Texas, and thanks to a new state law, school districts will begin reporting more accurate graduation and dropout statistics this school year.  "HISD's 'ninth-grade bubble' deserves to burst," by Elena R. Vergara, The Houston Chronicle, December 7, 2001.

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The story behind puzzling dropout figures

Troubling lessons in Palestinian textbooks

December 13, 2001

In last week's Gadfly, we reported on efforts by the government of Pakistan to rein in some state-funded Islamic schools that breed extremism and violence and provide incentives for teaching modern subjects like science, math, computers, and English.  Hopefully these efforts to promote liberal education in Pakistan will be more sincere than they have been in the schools run by the Palestinian Authority. A recent article in the Financial Times by Amity Shlaes describes the highlights (or more accurately, lowlights) of a report analyzing the Palestinian textbooks for 6- and 11-year-olds that have been developed since the Oslo Accord, which required both Israel and the PLO to promote mutual understanding and tolerance and refrain from issuing hostile propaganda. According to the report, by Goetz Nordburch of the Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI), the new Palestinian textbooks (which were purchased with financial aid from 21 countries and four international organizations) are an improvement over their predecessors, and do not contain much "outright incitement," but they do teach discredited racial theories, incessantly slander the Jewish character, and foster a desire for martyrdom among children.  Textbook maps also fail to acknowledge the existence of Israel as a state; its territory is instead labeled Palestine and Israeli cities like Tel Aviv are not depicted.  For more, see "Schooled as Martyrs," by Amity Shlaes, Financial Times, December 5, 2001, and Narrating Palestinian Nationalism: An Inquiry into the new Palestinian Textbooks, by Goetz Nordbruch,

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Troubling lessons in Palestinian textbooks

Why the new ESEA testing requirement will fuel school finance litigation

December 13, 2001

Why are school finance litigators jumping for joy over the imminent passage of President Bush's education plan?  In the December Washington Monthly, Siobhan Gorman explains that the detailed test scores that will eventually emerge from the plan - which requires that states annually test students in grades 3 through 8 in reading and math - will be a "potential bonanza" for lawyers hoping to prove that poor schools offer inadequate education to underprivileged kids.  For almost thirty years, school finance activists have argued in court that unequal school financing arrangements violate state constitutions, but many plaintiffs have been unable to prove that low-income students were getting a substandard education in their cash-strapped schools.  Once all states begin to measure students' progress toward meeting defined standards of performance, lawyers will have the evidence they need - in the form of gaping achievement gaps - to prove that children are being harmed, Gorman writes.  Lawyers have already used test scores to convince a New York judge that funding disparities there are unconstitutional.  This kind of litigation may reap more money for poor schools in the long run, but using courts to obtain that money has downsides: it's inefficient, it angers voters, and it interferes with real education reform, among other things. It also isn't guaranteed to make schools any better. For details see  "Can't Beat 'em? Sue 'em!" by Siobhan Gorman, The Washington Monthly, December 2001.

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Why the new ESEA testing requirement will fuel school finance litigation

Civic Education: Readying Massachusetts' Next Generation of Citizens

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / December 13, 2001

David E. Campbell, Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, September 2001

Harvard research fellow David E. Campbell wrote this paper for the Boston-based Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research. In 25 pages, he probes the "civic consequences of education reform - and charter schools in particular." This is particularly timely in light of the RAND school choice study's lament that little research has been done on the consequences of charters and vouchers for "civic integration." Though Massachusetts has no vouchers, it does have private and charter schools. By surveying 2700 students in 23 schools - including six charter and five private (3 Catholic and 2 secular) schools - Campbell is able to report some very interesting evidence touching on 8 components of civic education. He also reaches three important conclusions, all to be read in the context of a troubling, overall decline in civic participation by young Americans. First, students in secular private schools scored high on almost every measure. (Those in Catholic schools scored decently but more like those in public and charter schools.) Campbell cautions, though, that this was a small sample and his findings for this sector must be viewed as preliminary. Second, among public schools, the higher the school's academic achievement (as measured on the state's MCAS tests), the higher its students' scores on most of Campbell's civic measures. Third, on these eight indicators of civic education, charter schools present a mixed picture. On some, they rival

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Civic Education: Readying Massachusetts' Next Generation of Citizens

Rhetoric versus Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know About Vouchers and Charter Schools

Terry Ryan / December 13, 2001

Brian P. Gill, P. Michael Timpane, Karen E. Ross and Dominic J. Brewer, RAND, 2001

In ten years, the choice movement in American education has grown from infancy to early adolescence. After weighing what we know about charter schools and vouchers during this short life span, RAND analysts announced last week that the experiments in choice should continue. The authors of this 266-page report examined available evidence on the impact of vouchers and charter schools on five dimensions that, they say, represent the basic goals of American education: academic achievement, choice, access, integration and civic socialization. In terms of academic achievement, the study found that students in charter schools or using vouchers have not been harmed by the experience. In fact, their study suggests modest achievement gains for African-American students after one or two years in voucher schools (as compared with local public schools). The study also confirms what many other surveys have shown: that parents of charter and voucher students are highly satisfied with their children's schools.  In truth, the report notes, the experiment with choice in the United States has been conducted on such a relatively small and ill-funded scale (less than one percent of the fall 2000 enrollment was made up of children in charter schools) that it is impossible to provide definitive answers to some of the most important questions - notably those concerning total demand, supply responses by educational providers, and school characteristics and performance at

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Rhetoric versus Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know About Vouchers and Charter Schools

The Global Education Industry: Lessons from Private Education in Developing Countries

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / December 13, 2001

James Tooley, 2001

British education expert James Tooley, who is based at the University of Newcastle and London's Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), is an industrious and inventive scholar with a special interest in private education in the Third World. First published in 1999, this 190-page book has been reissued with a thoughtful, new 16-page preface. In it, Tooley seeks to correct some misleading comments and impressions in the main text and to update his information on a few key points. He is particularly interesting on the topic of low-cost, low-overhead private schools serving very poor children in the slums of India and the emergence of private-school options - and privatization of some government schools - in China. Since I believe few American education watchers (or school-choice watchers) are up to speed on such developments - attention having been paid to choice issues in OECD-type countries but not in developing nations - there is much to be learned from Tooley's pioneering work. Surf to http://www.iea.org.uk/books/hp141.htm, where you can download the book in PDF form or order a hard copy. And if the topic interests you, you may also want to have a look at Professor Tooley's Reclaiming Education, also available via the Institute of Economic Affairs. (Start at http://www.iea.org.uk/books/tooley.htm).

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The Global Education Industry: Lessons from Private Education in Developing Countries