Ratings without substance

Raymond Domanico / November 14, 2001

Last month, much to my surprise, both the Education Gadfly and The Wall Street Journal touted the new Standard and Poor's School Evaluation Service. Such praise is premature. S&P has many strengths, but school evaluation has not yet proven to be one of them.

The S&P School Evaluation Service has posted online reports about each school district in Michigan and Pennsylvania, reports that include 1500 education and financial variables under broad headings like student results, learning environments, spending and demographics. The reports describe each district's strengths and weaknesses and compare them with state averages and "peer districts." Participating states reportedly pay $2-2.5 million per year for the service. (To see the reports for yourself, go to http://www.ses.standardandpoors.com.)

Since 1918, S&P has been a leader in providing no-nonsense information to the financial industry.  The firm's reputation for objective and hard-hitting analysis is such that many institutional investors, pension funds and the like are barred from investing in bonds that lack an "investment grade rating" from either S&P or one of its two main competitors.  The firm's recent foray into school assessment, on the other hand, is a bland and pricey re-hash of information already available from many states and school districts.  It is not clear to me what value S&P is adding at this point in their product's development.  Praise for the S&P service seems to be based more upon wishful thinking than objective analysis of its value. 

It would be a

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Ratings without substance

E.D. Hirsch: Where did he come from and what is he doing?

November 14, 2001

A warm and reasonably accurate profile of E.D. Hirsch appeared in last Sunday's Washington Post Magazine under the subtitle "How a U-Va. Professor, denounced as elitist and ethnocentric, became a prophet of the school standards movement." The article explains how the gentleman scholar of psycholinguistics and literature from Memphis came to write Cultural Literacy in 1987, suffer attacks from the "progressive" establishment, and then be embraced by the late Albert Shanker, president of the AFT from 1974 until 1997, helping make him a darling of the standards movement, including conservatives such as Kirk Schroder, president of the Virginia Board of Education. For more see "Up Against the Establishment," by Drew Lindsay, The Washington Post Magazine, November 11, 2001

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Edison overstates failings of Philadelphia's schools

November 14, 2001

The report submitted by Edison Schools on Philadelphia's public education system paints a somewhat misleading picture of the condition that city's schools are in, writes Mike Casserly of the Council of the Great City Schools in an op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer.  While agreeing that schools in the City of Brotherly Love need dramatic improvement, Casserly complains that the report presents incomplete data and makes unfair comparisons.  While Edison indicates that scores on the SAT-9 are below basic in middle and high schools, the report fails to mention that elementary schools, where the district has focused its Children Achieving reforms, are at or above national norms. Edison says that the system made "limited gains" during Philadelphia's reforms but, says Casserly, the percentage of fourth graders reading at or above basic levels rose from 43.7 percent to 59.7 percent in four years.  He also argues that Edison's comparison of Philadelphia with other urban districts is skewed by the choice of comparison districts (Clark County (Las Vegas), Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale) and Houston), which are very different from Philadelphia demographically, structurally, and regionally.  While noting that the Philadelphia community is ready for change, Casserly chides Edison for missing an opportunity to build public trust with a fair assessment of its schools. "Company's report doesn't inspire trust," by Michael Casserly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 11, 2001.

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Edison overstates failings of Philadelphia's schools

State of the art accountability system proposed in Florida

November 14, 2001

Under a new accountability system being proposed by the Florida Department of Education, the progress of individual students will be tracked from year to year and this information will be used to determine letter grades for schools.  An accountability system based on annual learning gains has been a major goal of Governor Jeb Bush. It became possible to implement one after the state test, the FCAT, was expanded last year to all grades between 3^rd and 10^th. In other accountability systems, the test scores of the best students can mask those of students who are struggling. In Florida's new system, every student must improve or maintain his score for the school to earn the maximum points, and the gains or losses made by the lowest-performing students will have additional weight in the school grading formula. In December, the state board of education (now made up of the governor and his Cabinet) will vote on the proposed system. See "State may tie schools' grades to individual students' work," by Steve Harrison and Holly Stepp, The Miami Herald, November 9, 2001.

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State of the art accountability system proposed in Florida

At the Core of the Problem - Reforming Teacher Preparation in Oklahoma

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / November 14, 2001

Mark Y. Herring, Oklahoma Association of Scholars, October 2001

This report examines existing teacher-preparation programs in Oklahoma's universities and finds them sorely wanting. The gist is that these programs have minimal "quality control" and their courses "lack academic content and poorly prepare students for the academic rigors of classroom teaching. Indeed, the discipline-specific degree requirements for education majors are weaker than those for students who do not train to teach the discipline." A number of sensible recommendations are made. You can obtain a (PDF) copy online at http://www.nas.org/affiliates/oklahoma/okla_edschools.pdf or a hard copy by phoning (609) 683-7878, by emailing nas@nas.org, or by writing the National Association of Scholars, 221 Witherspoon Street, Princeton, NJ 08542.

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At the Core of the Problem - Reforming Teacher Preparation in Oklahoma

Educational Performance and Charter School Authorizers: The Accountability Bind

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / November 14, 2001

Katrina Bulkley, Education Policy Analysis Archives, 9(37), October 1, 2001

Katrina Bulkley of the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education has written a perceptive, troubling paper on charter school accountability, now available online. She argues that the theory may be out of whack with the reality. The theory holds that a charter authorizer will terminate a school that doesn't deliver its promised academic (and other) results. Bulkley suggests, admittedly on the basis of preliminary and fragmentary evidence, that this rarely happens; that when charters are terminated it's for other reasons (e.g. fiscal shenanigans); and that "there are very few examples of charter schools that have been closed primarily because of failure to demonstrate educational performance or improvement." She examines several possible explanations. One of them is the scary nature of the "all or nothing" decision about charter renewal at a time when a number of schools are demonstrating partial success. Another is that "a number of authorizers are themselves politically invested in the success of the charter school 'movement'." There's more, including some perceptive, if rather general, suggestions about what might be done differently. You can find this paper at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v9n37.html.

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Handbook of Research on Catholic Education

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / November 14, 2001

edited by Thomas C. Hunt, Ellis A. Joseph and Ronald J. Nuzzi, September 2001

Anyone interested in private schools generally and Catholic schools particularly will want to know of this research volume, edited by Thomas C. Hunt, Ellis A. Joseph and Ronald J. Nuzzi.  Weighing in at 320 pages, it contains 13 essays on a wide variety of education issues related to Catholic schools. These range from history to guidance counseling, from governance to parenting, from curriculum to administration, from finance to effectiveness (this last being written by our colleague Bruno V. Manno). Lots of data, lots of citations and lots of interesting facts and conclusions, much of it distilled from other research over the years. Though not an exciting book, it's a very useful one, the more so as the U.S. Supreme Court ponders the constitutionality of the Cleveland voucher program. The ISBN is 0313313415. The publisher is Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881. You can find ordering information on-line at http://www.greenwood.com/books/BookDetail.asp?dept_id=1&sku=GR1341.

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High School Graduation Rates in the United States

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / November 14, 2001

Jay Greene, Black Alliance for Educational Options and the Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute, November 2001

This week, the Black Alliance for Educational Options and the Manhattan Institute's Center for Civic Innovation released a new study by Jay P. Greene that examines the surprisingly complex issue of high school graduation rates. Surprising and sobering, too. Greene disputes the federal estimate of an overall 86% graduation rate (as it includes GEDs and relies on dubious analytic methods) and concludes from his own analysis that the U.S. high school graduation rate in 1998 was just 74%, including 78% of whites and a deeply troubling 56% and 54% among black and Latino youngsters respectively. These rates turn out to vary hugely by state (consider 93% in Iowa, 57% in Georgia) and by city (87% in Fairfax County, Virginia, 43% in Milwaukee, 28% in Cleveland). Though state and municipal differences are clearly influenced by the racial composition of their student bodies, that doesn't tell the whole story. For example, 85% of Boston's African-American students graduate, compared with 34% in Louisville. Other factors must also be at work. While graduation rates alone are not a satisfactory gauge of educational performance - it's possible to pump them up by making it easier to graduate - from a young person's standpoint it matters hugely throughout life whether he/she has a high-school diploma.  As Greene says, "The graduation rates reported in this study...convey strongly that far

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High School Graduation Rates in the United States

Improving Teacher Quality in Oklahoma: A Closer Look

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / November 14, 2001

John E. Stone, George K. Cunningham and Donald B. Crawford, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, October 2001

A pair of studies recently crossed our desks that address the quality and preparation of schoolteachers in Oklahoma. This one (see below for a review of the other), prepared on behalf of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, contains an essay by John E. Stone on whether the state's current efforts to improve teacher quality are "paying off." (Answer: No, they're faddish, unproven and out of sync with what parents and policymakers want.) It also contains an essay by George K. Cunningham and Donald B. Crawford that explores whether "national standards" will improve Oklahoma's teacher quality. (Answer: No. "Under the guise of vaguely stated pedagogical reforms, NCTAF, NCATE, NBPTS, and INTASC are promoting the adoption of an approach to teaching that is at odds with the educational aims of the public. In effect, new teachers are being taught beliefs, methods and attitudes which will undermine Oklahoma's efforts to improve student achievement.") You can obtain this study from Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Inc., 100 W. Wilshire, Suite C-3, Oklahoma City, OK 73116. E-mail ocpa@ocpathink.org. Phone (405) 843-9212. Or surf to http://www.ocpathink.org/Pages/PolicyPaper01-7.html.

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Improving Teacher Quality in Oklahoma: A Closer Look

Just Doing It 5: Surveying America's privately funded school choice grants programs for growth, impact, and progress

Kelly Scott / November 14, 2001

Matthew Ladner, Children First America, July 2001

In partnership with the Children's Scholarship Fund, school choice giant Children First America (CFA) has issued the fifth edition of a report surveying the growth and status of America's privately funded voucher programs (PVPs).  What began as a single program serving fewer than 750 kids in Indianapolis in 1991, has grown to more than 100 PVPs today that reach over 100,000 students - the overwhelming majority of them urban, low-income minorities.  The report summarizes the results of CFA's survey of PVPs, which found that the average dollar amounts awarded are up and applications are way up, with the ratio of applicants to voucher recipients at approximately 5 to 1.  Also provided are a brief description of how scholarship-supporting Student Tuition Organizations (STOs) have flourished in Arizona as a result of the state's education tax credit, an overview of the body of rigorous research that supports school choice, and an analysis of the impact of the CEO Horizon Program - the nation's largest PVP, and the only one devoted to an entire school district - on San Antonio's Edgewood School District.  For more, including an extensive state-by-state appendix of PVP contact information, see http://childrenfirstamerica.org/JDI5.pdf.  Or order a hard copy from Children First America, P.O. Box 330, Bentonville, AR 72712; phone 501-273-6957; fax 501-273-9362.

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Just Doing It 5: Surveying America's privately funded school choice grants programs for growth, impact, and progress

Trying to Stay Ahead of the Game: Superintendents and Principals Talk about School Leadership

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / November 14, 2001

Public Agenda, November 14, 2001

The ever-valuable research organization named Public Agenda has just opened another fascinating window onto contemporary education policy debates. At a time when school reformers are rightly concerned about school leadership, Public Agenda (this time underwritten by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds) surveyed 1800 public school principals and superintendents. The data are fascinating and sobering, many of them tantamount to a strong endorsement of policies akin to charter schools. Here (in Public Agenda's words) are some of the main conclusions: "Superintendents and principals...voice confidence that they can improve public education, but say their effectiveness is hampered by politics and bureaucracy....What superintendents and principals need most, they say, is more freedom to do their jobs as they see fit - especially the freedom to reward and fire teachers....School leaders are far less worried about standards and accountability than about politics and bureaucracy....." You will almost surely want to see for yourself. You can download a summary (and, until November 30, the entire report) from Public Agenda's website, http://www.publicagenda.org. You can also buy a hard copy for $12.50 from Public Agenda, 6 East 39^th Street, New York, NY 10016. E-mail info@publicagenda.org or phone (212) 686-6610.

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Trying to Stay Ahead of the Game: Superintendents and Principals Talk about School Leadership