Patriotism revisited

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 4, 2001

Leo Casey must be beside himself. Just a few miles from his office at the United Federation of Teachers on lower Park Avenue, The New York Times was publishing an article about surges of patriotism in American classrooms (Kevin Sack, "School Colors Become Red, White and Blue," 9/28/01).

Kids are pledging allegiance in Pennsylvania, singing "God Bless the U.S.A." in Arkansas, wearing red, white and blue to school (for a "Patriotism Day" assembly) in Maryland. And much more. There's even a move afoot to orchestrate a nationwide flag pledge at 2 p.m. (EDT) on October 12.

Why would Casey be distressed? Because he believes that sort of thing smacks of chauvinism and of inattention to multicultural concerns.

Why he thinks this, I cannot say. Many of the most ardent American patriots I know are immigrants who brought their cultures and languages with them. (Including my wife, now almost three decades on these shores, during which time this Indian-born physician wore the uniform of the U.S. Army for half a dozen years. I wonder if it was ever on Mr. Casey's back?)

Why bother with an obscure teachers union desk jockey like Leo Casey in the first place? Because some teachers might take him seriously. And because, after my September 21 Gadfly column on teaching patriotism, Casey issued a nasty broadside. He tried to link me with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who had proffered the disgraceful view that America got what was coming

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Patriotism revisited

Teaching history in a time of terrorism

Diane Ravitch / October 4, 2001

Some educators have reacted to the mass murders in New York City and Washington, D.C. by calling for changes in the curriculum. Their immediate response to September 11 was that "we have to change the curriculum to make our students more tolerant," as if our students were the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. But it was not Americans who piloted the four hijacked airplanes, and it was not American bigotry that targeted innocent people for death and destruction.

In an article in The Washington Post on October 1, 2001 ("September 11 Prompts Lesson Review," by Valerie Strauss), several educators stated that the attacks showed that we must become even more focused on multiculturalism than we have been in the recent past, suggesting that our indifference to other cultures somehow made us culpable. That response is usually known as "blaming the victim."

The president of Teachers College, Arthur Levine, who is customarily level-headed, said in the same article that "Our notion of great books can't be Western anymore or wholly Western anymore. Is 'Middlemarch' [a 19th-century English novel by George Eliot] more important than the Koran in terms of the curriculum?" Levine did not explain why the Koran should become a major component of the American curriculum, nor whether he would insist that teachers also introduce studies in the Old Testament and the New Testament along with the Koran, and how this new curriculum would affect the public schools' customary efforts to

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Teaching history in a time of terrorism

A liberal case for vouchers

October 4, 2001

 A long essay in this week's New Republic reviewing Terry Moe's new book, Schools, Vouchers and the American Public, Diane Ravitch explains why liberals should be pro-choice. She traces the history of the modern voucher movement and summarizes survey research analyzed by Moe that shows that the public is deeply ambivalent about vouchers, liking public education but also believing that the current system is inequitable for many children.  According to Ravitch, the voucher movement survives because Americans are accustomed to having many choices in their lives. While the public schools are, and will continue to be, a central institution of American life, Ravitch notes that the American tradition of education has always been decidedly pluralistic and included a range of religious options until these were challenged by two different movements in the mid-nineteenth century: the common school movement and the nativist movement. Today's debate over vouchers is merely the continuation of a long-running battle in American history about the role of non-public schools. See "The Right Thing," by Diane Ravitch, The New Republic, October 8, 2001. (Not available online.)

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A liberal case for vouchers

Impostor teacher gains National Board certification

October 4, 2001

A Mississippi fourth-grade teacher used a series of phony identities to gain a teaching license, buy a car, and attain national board certification, according to authorities in Mississippi. She was charged with forgery and fraudulent misuse of a social security number and has been sentenced to nine years in jail.  For details see "Impostor teacher learning a lesson," by Sherri Williams, The Mississippi Clarion-Ledger, September 26, 2001, http://www.clarionledger.com/news/0109/26/m02.html. Thanks to Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency for spotting this story.

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Impostor teacher gains National Board certification

National credential for teachers who master their subjects and help students learn

October 4, 2001

The National Council on Teacher Quality and the Education Leaders Council have teamed up to launch a new project which will offer credentials to expert teachers and able would-be teachers.  The American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence will award a beginning teacher credential to highly skilled individuals just entering teaching who have mastered an academic subject and can demonstrate an understanding of classroom management techniques. A second, master-level credential will be awarded to experienced teachers who can demonstrate mastery of the subjects they teach and who also contribute to improved student learning.  The new certification board, armed with a $5 million federal grant, was announced at the annual conference of the Education Leaders Council in Atlanta last week. For more see "Teacher Quality Board Formed," Gannett News Service, The Arizona Republic, September 29, 2001, http://www.arizonarepublic.com/news/articles/0929teachers29.html

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National credential for teachers who master their subjects and help students learn

New research on merit pay

October 4, 2001

The London-based Centre for the Economics of Education held a conference on teacher pay and incentives last week and several new research papers are available from the conference website.  "Paying Teachers for Performance: Incentives and Selection," by Edward Lazear of Stanford University explores arguments about the effect of incentives on teacher behavior, discusses different ways of defining performance, and examines the relationship between teachers' desires for smaller classes and teacher salaries.  "Evaluating the Effect of Teachers' Performance Incentives on Pupil Achievement," by Victor Lavy of Hebrew University, looks at empirical evidence from a program in Israel that offered monetary incentives to teachers as a function of student achievement. You can find the papers at http://cee.lse.ac.uk/new%20site/pages/PRPconference.htm

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New research on merit pay

What management research teaches about mentoring and promotions

October 4, 2001

The key to an effective mentoring program is matching up mentors and prot??g??s well and providing structure, rather than just putting a mentor and prot??g?? together and saying "go mentor," according to research conducted by the Gallup Organization.  An article in the Fall 2001 Gallup Management Journal explores how the United States Air Force created a successful mentoring program to address problems retaining its best people.  Another article in the same issue explains why it often makes sense to pay talented employees more without promoting them. (58% of employed adults say they would remain in their job if they could earn more by doing it better, rather than be promoted.)  For more see "Buddy System" and "Don't Promote Your Stars" at http://www.gallupjournal.com.

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What management research teaches about mentoring and promotions

Assessing the Best: NAEP's 1996 Assessment of Twelfth-Graders Taking Advanced Science Courses

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 4, 2001

National Center for Education Statistics, August 2001

This new report from the National Center for Education Statistics grows out of a special 1996 NAEP study of high school seniors enrolled in advanced biology, chemistry or physics, a population comprising almost one-quarter of U.S. twelfth graders in 1995-96. There is, of course, a ubiquitous problem with 12^th grade NAEP results, namely that a lot of students don't take these low-stakes tests too seriously. Still, this is an interesting study, particularly for a country that has learned from TIMSS that even our advanced students don't perform very well by world standards. Some of what we find here is predictable: that boys still do better than girls in chemistry and physics, for example, though not significantly so in biology; and that white and Asian students score higher than black and Hispanic youngsters even within this advanced-course-taking population. Other results are less predictable, such as the absence of any significant public-private school differences. This 83-page report, written by Christine O'Sullivan and Wendy Grigg, does not report student performance in relation to the National Assessment Governing Board's "achievement levels" so it's hard to get beyond relativistic statements about students' actual attainments. But (in the mode of NAEP reports of yesteryear) it supplies a number of interesting sample items and tells you how well students did on each of them, as well as on NCES's pet "scale scores." If you want a hard copy, ask for NCES

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Assessing the Best: NAEP's 1996 Assessment of Twelfth-Graders Taking Advanced Science Courses

Survey of Charter Schools (2000-2001)

October 4, 2001

The Center for Education Reform, 2001

The Center for Education Reform also recently released the executive summary of a report based on a charter-school survey it conducted during school year 2000-01. 346 schools responded (though no data are supplied by which to know how representative these are of the 2000 charter schools then operating). No author is named. Nor are there page numbers. But it's interesting, nonetheless. We learn, for example, that the schools' average size was 250 students and that two-thirds of them have waiting lists averaging 112 youngsters. We learn that 80% of them are start-up schools (the rest divide almost equally between public and private school conversions) and that they have a stunning array of curricular foci. (I was struck that nearly half claim to be using Direct Instruction and/or Core Knowledge.) Two-fifths of these schools got their charters from local school boards, the rest from other authorities. Have a look on the web at http://www.edreform.com/charter_schools/report/exesumm.pdf. And while you're there you can get CER's helpful new compilation of charter data for the present (2001-2002) school year by going to http://www.edreform.com/press/2001/010917.html.

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Survey of Charter Schools (2000-2001)

The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 4, 2001

William J. Bennett, 2001

In this new book, former education secretary and best-selling author William J. Bennett addresses himself to the decline of the American family and its implications for our society. He is, of course, talking about what some might term the "traditional" nuclear family (adult male and adult female, married to each other and raising their own children) but that he would simply term "the family." Unlike most of Bennett's earlier works, this volume is not primarily about education, but it intersects in many ways - for example, the devastating effects of divorce upon many children whom the schools are trying to teach - and will be of interest to most people who care about the condition of our young. It will inspire some readers, infuriate others and inform many with its wealth of information and its steady tone of moral seriousness and intellectual rigor. 200 pages long, its ISBN is 0385499159 and its publisher is Doubleday. 

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The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family

Understanding Dropouts: Statistics, Strategies, and High-Stakes Testing

Kelly Scott / October 4, 2001

Committee on Educational Excellence and Testing Equity, National Research Council, 2001

Although the dropout rate has declined in recent decades, large numbers of kids - most of them Hispanic or black and nearly all of them poor - are still being left behind.  The National Research Council's Committee on Educational Excellence and Testing Equity (CEETE) set out to determine what effect the standards movement has had on dropouts and would-be dropouts.  Given the large variation among tests, policies and implementation practices among states and districts, CEETE concludes that "the precise relationship between graduation testing and dropping out of school is still in dispute," though they note that "it is clear that retention in grade is a strong predictor of dropping out." CEETE makes a strong case for disaggregating data on student progress leading up to and including exit tests so that at-risk populations can better be monitored. And, of course, they throw their support behind early intervention as the single most effective antidote to dropping out, which, they argue is "a process of gradual disengagement" rather than an "isolated event."  Copies of the report, which are $18 each ($14.40 when ordered at http://www.nap.edu), are available from the National Academy Press at 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Lockbox 285, Washington, DC 20055; 800-624-6242.  The report can also be read for free at http://books.nap.edu/books/0309076021/html/index.html

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Understanding Dropouts: Statistics, Strategies, and High-Stakes Testing

What the Research Reveals About Charter Schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 4, 2001

The Center for Education Reform has issued a listing of 65 studies of charter schools, together with brief summaries of each. It's not comprehensive. (For example, it makes no mention of Charter Schools in Action, the book by Bruno Manno, Gregg Vanourek and myself, or of Bruce Fuller's recent book on charter schools.)  Mostly, it reports on state-specific studies of charter school effectiveness. A few paragraphs are also spent trying to "meta-analyze" these studies, but that part's pretty casual. You'll find it useful primarily as a bibliography. No author is named. The fastest path is via the Internet at http://www.edreform.com/charter_schools/res01.pdf

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What the Research Reveals About Charter Schools