When is a small high school a good one?

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / April 11, 2002

There's wide agreement that U.S. high schools urgently need reforming, due to their dismaying drop out rates, paltry test scores and the testimony of employers and college professors that their graduates are ill-prepared for adult challenges. There is also wide agreement that the sprawling "comprehensive" high school devised by James B. Conant almost half a century ago-and still the dominant model in America today-exacts too great a price in anonymity, anomie, drifting students and bureaucratic control. Adolescents will have brighter prospects for success in smaller institutions where people know their names, know whether they're attending, behaving and learning, know their families and can talk to them promptly. That is surely part of the reason why Catholic schools and charter schools do relatively well-and have more contented clients.

But high school reform is a bigger and more complex topic than simple size reduction. The U.S. Department of Education recently commissioned a set of papers on how best to renew the American high school, and last week it hosted a well-attended conference on the subject. The Brookings Institution has also invited a batch of papers on high school issues and will hold a major conference next month, chaired by Diane Ravitch. The Aspen Institute is hard at work on this under Michael Cohen's leadership. National commissions have been formed. The topic is gaining momentum. And a number of major private foundations have been investing in it, particularly the Bill and Melinda Gates

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When is a small high school a good one?

A good middle school is hard to find

April 11, 2002

Which are in worse shape, high schools or middle schools? Jay Mathews writes that one thing he has learned from talking to parents for the past 20 years is that "there are no good middle schools," even in the wealthiest neighborhoods. But a small group of schools being launched under the KIPP banner may be changing that. Like the original KIPP schools in Houston and the Bronx, these new affiliates look different from other middle schools that you may have seen. At the KEY Academy in the District of Columbia's Anacostia section, for example, classes run from 8 am until 5 pm and lessons move at a fast pace to keep kids focused. Discipline is swift and parents are called in if a student does not produce his homework. Somehow all of the carefully planned details of the school add up to a place where regular kids are motivated to meet very high standards. For more see "New School Paves Road to Success," by Jay Mathews, WashingtonPost.com, April 2, 2002.

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A good middle school is hard to find

Are AP classes losing their luster?

April 11, 2002

High school Advanced Placement (AP) classes have long been viewed as the gold standard for secondary education, something that more high schools should offer and more students, especially disadvantaged students, should avail themselves of. But this respected program has taken some hits in recent months, according to an article in Sunday's Los Angeles Times. As described in Checker's editorial (above), Harvard announced that it will only award credit to freshman who receive the highest score-a 5-on the test. Some private high schools (Fieldston, Exeter) are dropping AP classes in favor of in-depth courses designed by the school's own faculty. A 2001 study commissioned by the College Board, which runs the AP program-and in recent years has pushed hard to widen access to it-identified a growing shortage of qualified teachers and weak academic backgrounds of some AP students. Many believe that the quality of AP courses is being diluted as a consequence of the tremendous growth in participation in this program, growth also driven by intensifying competition for college slots among children of baby boomers. Still others sense that AP test standards are softening even as trendier and more politically-correct content infects course syllabi. The College Board says that it is attempting to deal with the shortage of AP-qualified teachers by expanding teacher training, establishing clearer guidelines for AP classes, and developing a program to better prepare middle and high school students for the rigors to follow. While many laud efforts

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Are AP classes losing their luster?

Japanese schools cut back to five-day week

April 11, 2002

Over the objections of parents and local officials, the Japanese government announced last week that the school week would be scaled back to five days, with the curriculum pared back as well. See "Public Schools Start 5-day Week," Yomiuri Shimbun, April 6, 2002. For more about content reduction in Japan, read "Education Reform in Japan" in the March 21, 2002 Gadfly.

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Japanese schools cut back to five-day week

The battle over testing and drill-based instruction, up close and personal

April 11, 2002

James Traub visits the front lines in the class war over standardized testing in a cover story in this week's New York Times Magazine. First he reports from a low-achieving school in Mount Vernon, New York, where he observes "test preparation with a vengeance," but, he notes, test prep that seems to work. The teachers talk about showing their eighth-graders how to restate a test question, to take coherent notes, and to distinguish between a detail and the general statement it supports. This kind of activity-drilling kids in the cognitive skills that better-educated children may have picked up on their own-isn't pretty, but seems to be effective. One Saturday morning, Traub attended a voluntary test prep session offered by the school and found that about a third of the eighth grade showed up and that the students even seemed to enjoy the activities. Traub reviews the research evidence showing that standards-cum-testing can cause improvements in student achievement, but he perceptively notes that the issue of testing is so ideological that it will not be settled by data. Next, Traub journeys to Scarsdale, a wealthy suburb where parents, teachers, and administrators are so confident that their schools are excellent that they have made a collective decision to pay as little attention to the tests as possible, and kids continue to enjoy long units on Shakespeare uninterrupted by test prep activities. These parents insist that, as bad as testing is for their

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The battle over testing and drill-based instruction, up close and personal

Coming of Age in the 1990s: The Eighth Grade Class of 1988 12 Years Later

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / April 11, 2002

National Center for Education Statistics
March 2002

The most valuable function of the federal government in the field of education is the provision of data, and the third most valuable form of education data (after NAEP and basic "facts and figures" about schools and universities) comes from longitudinal studies that track the same people over time. Because such studies are expensive and complicated, they don't get done very often. But the "National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988," which began in my days at the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, has just yielded its fourth batch of follow-up data. In the year 2000, these young people were about 26 years old. By this point, 83 percent of them had earned high-school diplomas and 29 percent had a bachelor's degree (or more)-in contrast with the 66 percent who, at age 14, had said they intended to complete college. (Another 47 percent had, however, gathered some postsecondary credits. Only one in four had never stepped foot in a postsecondary institution.) But that's just the tip of a huge data iceberg. There's plenty here on careers, incomes, marriage and family, job satisfaction, etc. And lots of "crosstabs" that link aspects of their backgrounds and education experiences (through 8th grade) to what came later. Nor does this report examine the entire iceberg. It's just the "initial results" from a trove of data that analysts will mine for years to come. You can download it at

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Coming of Age in the 1990s: The Eighth Grade Class of 1988 12 Years Later

Designing School Accountability Systems: Towards a framework and process

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / April 11, 2002

Brian Gong, Council of Chief State School Officers
January 2002

This report from the Council of Chief State School Officers is meant to help states develop viable school accountability arrangements, in part to comply with the requirements of the new federal No Child Left Behind law. In thirty pages, it (a) sets forth a ten step sequence by which states can grapple with key questions of accountability-system design; (b) poses three big "alignment questions" by which states can determine whether their accountability systems are internally consistent; and (c) briefly sketches a few case studies meant to illustrate four different accountability-system models. Overall, a helpful piece of work. You can find it at http://publications.ccsso.org/ccsso/publication_detail.cfm?PID=351.

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Designing School Accountability Systems: Towards a framework and process

Scientific Research in Education

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / April 11, 2002

edited by Richard J. Shavelson and Lisa Towne, National Research Council Committee on Scientific Principles for Education Research, National Academy of Science
2002

The National Academy of Science's Committee on Scientific Principles for Education Research, chaired by Stanford education professor Richard Shavelson (and including the newly named dean of the Harvard school of education, Ellen Lagemann), has published this 200-page volume, paid for (naturally) by the U.S. Department of Education. It's surely timely, thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act's emphasis on the use of (only) scientifically based education strategies and programs and the pending reauthorization of the Education Department's own research unit as a new (and presumably more scientific) National Academy of Education Science. It's not bad as statements of principles go but it reveals its roots in a committee dominated by education researchers. It's defensive and unjustifiably prideful regarding the track record of education research to date, and it's Dewey-esque in its basic philosophy of what should constitute research in the future. Which is to say, it's as fond of what educationists like to call "qualitative" research as of what real scientists view as scientific research. While there's no rejection of the latter, the committee's basic view seems to be "you do real experimental work when it's convenient; when it's not, you do what you've always done: crouch in the classroom, interview the teachers, whatever." Its advice for the federal government is mostly sound, too, but familiar, even banal.

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Scientific Research in Education

Taking Charge: Urban High School Students Speak Out About MCAS, Academics and Extra-Help Programs

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / April 11, 2002

Mass Insight Education
March 2002

The energetic and productive team at Mass Insight Education recently released this 24-page report, arising from interviews with 140 Bay-State urban high school students "who failed either the math or English portion of the MCAS [Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System] in Spring 2001." Far from despairing, nearly all of these young people believe that, with more hard work and better attendance, they can pass the test at a subsequent administration. Most also believe that the skills tested by MCAS are important skills to have. Two-thirds say they are working harder as a result of pressure arising from this high-stakes testing regime. What would help them the most to do better on the test itself? According to these young people (as refracted through the Mass Insight analysts), "encouragement from a respected adult and having extra-help sessions taught by their favorite teachers." (Of course that only works if they show up for the help sessions which, the report finds, 54% are not doing.) You can download a PDF copy at http://www.massinsight.com/meri/pdf_files/Taking%20Charge%20Report%20PDF.pdf.

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Taking Charge: Urban High School Students Speak Out About MCAS, Academics and Extra-Help Programs

Title I: Education Needs to Monitor States' Scoring of Assessments

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / April 11, 2002

General Accounting Office
April 2002

Is the E.S.E.A. "state compliance" glass one third full or two thirds empty? The General Accounting Office recently issued a report saying that, as of March 2002, just 17 states "were in compliance with the 1994 assessment requirements" and 35 were not. Eight years after enactment, that's a miserable record that bodes ill for the implementation of No Child Left Behind (the newly enacted E.S.E.A. amendments). It led the GAO to observe that "many states may not be well-positioned to meet the requirements added in 2001," indeed that "the majority of states will still be working on meeting the 1994 requirements as they begin work toward meeting the new requirements." Many states, moreover, "still appear to be struggling with ensuring that assessment data are complete and correct"-another troubling sign, considering the centrality of testing in the 2001 amendments. Two-thirds empty, one might fairly conclude. But on April 8, the Education Department issued a cheery press release onto which some eager spinmeister in the public affairs office affixed the headline "All states now in compliance with 1994 ESEA." How could that be? Read the fine print. What the Department was really announcing what that 18 states "have fully approved assessments systems under the 1994 law" (New Hampshire having lately been added to the GAO tally) while the other 34 now all have waivers, extensions or formal "compliance agreements." In other words, two-thirds of the states have entered into

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Title I: Education Needs to Monitor States' Scoring of Assessments