Back to school with Isaac Newton

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / September 6, 2001

This time of year always brightens the education picture with the optimism of fresh starts. Classrooms are clean, teachers rested, children eager. There are new textbooks on the shelves, new hardware in the computer labs, perhaps a new menu in the cafeteria.

Some of this year's innovations are even more profound. Hundreds more "charter" schools will open their doors in coming weeks, bringing the total to nearly 2500. In some cities (e.g. Washington, D.C., Kansas City, and Dayton), the charter enrollment approaches 20 percent (though nationally it's still below one percent). Tens of thousands of youngsters are studying in private schools with the help of privately funded voucher programs. More children than ever aren't sitting in school at all; they're being educated at home and by a cluster of high-tech "virtual" schools. More schools than ever are being out-sourced to private management firms, one of which has just been engaged to devise a new master plan for the entire Philadelphia system. "Alternative" teacher certification is spreading as evidence mounts that able liberal arts graduates are at least as effective in the K-12 classroom as those who attended education schools.

In sum, there's lots of reform ferment. And yet we've been reforming U.S. education for at least 18 years-since 1983's "Nation at Risk" report-and have mighty little to show for it. Test scores remain flat at an unacceptably low level. Rich-poor and black-white gaps remain wide. Our international rankings remain stagnant,

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Back to school with Isaac Newton

Bridging the gap: a tale of two school systems

September 6, 2001

Montgomery County, Maryland is known for having public schools among the best in the nation, ranking high in test scores and college admissions. But that doesn't mean every school is effective. Especially as the county has become more economically and culturally diverse, its school system has struggled to deal with the challenge of low-performing schools. In six articles spread over two days under the headings "A Growing Divide: Economic Segregation in Montgomery Schools" and "Montgomery Schools Seek a Solution," Brigid Schulte and Dan Keating of The Washington Post explore the ways in which one district is evolving into two separate and unequal school systems, and examine efforts of Montgomery County School superintendent Jerry Weast to combat this tendency.

In a dozen years, the number of schools in the county with more than 40 percent of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch has increased from 6 to nearly 40. In these high-poverty schools, teacher turnover is high, fewer advanced courses are offered, principals find themselves becoming social workers, and test scores lag. Reminiscent of the celebrated Coleman Report of 1966, the Post reporters suggest that the real problem is poor children attending schools with heavy concentrations of other poor children. Analyzing student achievement data, the journalists find that low-income students perform at or above the county average when they attend schools with affluent student bodies (where fewer than 5% of students are poor), but that their scores drop far below

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Bridging the gap: a tale of two school systems

Another Skirmish in the Battle over Teacher Certifications

September 6, 2001

In 1999, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation published a study by Dan Goldhaber (of the Urban Institute) and Dominic Brewer (of RAND) that found that students of teachers with emergency credentials do no worse than students whose teachers have standard teaching credentials. The study was later published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. The Spring 2001 issue of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis contains a 20-page article by Linda Darling-Hammond, Barnett Barry, and Amy Thoreson that attacks the Goldhaber and Brewer study as well as some claims that have been made on the basis of that study, and reviews the literature on the impact of teacher certification on student achievement. In an 8-page reply appearing in the same issue, Goldhaber and Brewer respond to the charges. While the methodological debate may be too technical for lay readers, their brief review of the extremely weak research base often cited by proponents of teacher certification is very useful. Unfortunately these articles are not available online. Readers who would like to read them and don't have access to Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis at a university library will have to order a back issue (Spring 2001) for $16 plus $3 postage (payable by Visa/Mastercard/check) from AERA. Write to AERA, Attention: Publications/Sales, 1230 17th St NW, Washington DC 20036; phone: 202-223-9485; fax: 202-775-1824.

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Another Skirmish in the Battle over Teacher Certifications

Mobile students mess with accountability systems

September 6, 2001

As if House and Senate conferees didn't already face enough difficulties in creating a fair definition of "adequate yearly progress" for the new ESEA, an article in this month's Washington Monthly explains how high rates of student mobility can doom an otherwise solid accountability system. According to a GAO study, one out of every six U.S. third-graders has attended three or more schools since entering first grade, and a New York Times investigation found that 40 percent of the students in a typical New York City classroom changed schools over the course of the year. Unless an accountability system has some way of dealing with highly mobile students, schools may be sanctioned for failing to educate kids who have barely spent any time on their premises. For more, see "Student Movement: The Fatal Flaw in the Bush Education Plan," by Thad Hall, Washington Monthly, September 2001, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0109.hall.html

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Mobile students mess with accountability systems

Parents try to remake a reluctant public school

September 6, 2001

Most children who live in the Hollywood Hills go to private schools, but a small group of parents from that affluent Los Angeles neighborhood decided two years ago that they might like to send their kids to the local public school. First, though, they wanted to make sure that it would be suitable for their sons and daughters, so they began meeting with the principal and teachers at this school, which then served mostly youngsters from the other side of the tracks, including the children of recent immigrants who work as gardeners, nannies, and housekeepers for families in the Hills. The wealthy parents hoped to launch a series of projects to improve the school, but found that its staff and some parents of kids attending it thought it was already doing a pretty good job, even though the school had received a ranking of just 2 (out of 10) on the latest state performance index. In a 6,000 word story that appeared on page 1 of The Wall Street Journal, Lisa Bannon described the culture clash that ensued. Read "What Happened When Well-to-Do Parents Tried to Prep a Public School for Their Kids," August 23, 2001, http://interactive.wsj.com/fr/emailthis/retrieve.cgi?id=SB998511295703108758.djm (may only be available to subscribers at this point).

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Parents try to remake a reluctant public school

Pay-for-Performance: Key Questions and Lessons from Five Current Models

Kelly Scott / September 6, 2001

Education Commission of the States
June 2001

Although it's accepted with little question in many other lines of work, in education there's much resistance to compensating people based on their job performance. As bullets whiz overhead, however, some states and districts are implementing performance-pay plans in an effort to jumpstart pupil achievement and halt the stream of top-notch teachers exiting the classroom for greener employment pastures. Earlier this year, the Education Commission of the States assembled representatives from five leading pay-for-performance locales-Cincinnati; Denver; Douglas County, CO; Iowa; and the Milken Family Foundation's Teacher Advancement Program (in Arizona)-to pool their insights and determine what lessons their experiences could yield for other states and districts. A recent ECS Issue Paper offers an overview of the meeting's findings, including an explanation of key issues involved in implementing performance-based pay in schools, a summary of questions policymakers ought to consider, a brief discussion of lessons learned (even though some programs have yet to become operational), a chart comparing the five programs, a summary of each program's structure, and a reference guide. The paper doesn't hold any surprises, but it does present a sound, if cursory, treatment of a nettlesome issue. It's available at http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/28/30/2830.htm or by contacting ECS at 707 17th Street, Suite 2700, Denver, CO 80202-3427; 303-299-3600; fax 303-296-8332.

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Pay-for-Performance: Key Questions and Lessons from Five Current Models

Recent Studies from Education Privatization Center

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / September 6, 2001

Henry Levin's National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, based at Teachers College, Columbia University, hasn't always done important and well-balanced work, but it's certainly been prolific. What's more, several of the recent "occasional papers" now available on its burgeoning website strike us as worth knowing about, maybe even reading.

• Can Public Policy Affect Private School Cream-Skimming? Despite its "have you stopped beating your wife" title, this is an interesting analysis (I can't tell you how long because the pages aren't numbered but it feels like about 40) by economists David Figlio (University of Florida) and Joe Stone (University of Oregon). Using what they describe as a "unique" data set-from the National Education Longitudinal Survey-they conclude that a wide array of public policies influences who ends up going to private (and, for that matter, public) schools in a given community. This naturally leads to wide-ranging policy implications. For example, say the authors, "fighting crime successfully and lowering the violent crime rate will likely improve the ability of public schools to retain higher socio-economic status and ability students and lessen the disparity in peer groups between the public and private sectors." Some of us might think this obvious. But it's good to have empirical analysis to buttress a normal human impulse: the instinct of parents to weigh a variety of environmental, economic, contextual and educational factors in choosing a school for their child. To the extent that policy makers

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  Recent Studies from Education Privatization Center

Results of a School Voucher Experiment: The Case of Washington, D.C. after Two Years

Kelly Amis / September 6, 2001

Patrick J. Wolf, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West
August 2001

One of the many questionable arguments made against school vouchers is that public schools produce better and more open-minded citizens than private schools. A new study by Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance and Georgetown's Public Policy Institute reveals that low-income District of Columbia students attending private schools with the help of vouchers are more politically tolerant than their peers in public schools. According to lead author Patrick Wolf, this remarkable finding cannot be attributed to students' backgrounds, which were similar for all who were surveyed. (The comparison groups were assigned by lottery.) Students were asked, for example, if they would allow members of groups they found objectionable to live in their neighborhood, give a speech, or run for president. In all instances, more private than public school students said yes. The study also examined parent satisfaction with their children's schools. Here, too, private schools are doing a better job: 81% percent of parents gave their child's private school an "A" or a "B," compared to 60% of public school parents. Other subjects covered in the survey include school discipline, homework and satisfaction with teachers. Add these results to earlier research showing that D.C.'s African-American voucher students achieve at higher academic levels than their public school peers, and it would seem that the arguments against school choice grow ever shakier. To read the new study, surf to

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Results of a School Voucher Experiment: The Case of Washington, D.C. after Two Years