Rural school choice

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / December 12, 2002

Among the predictable questions that arise during just about every discussion of school choice is one along these lines: "We live in a rural community and there's no other school within forty miles. How could school choice possibly benefit our children? We have enough troubles making ends meet and keeping our school open."

Many towns with faltering Title I schools used a similar excuse this past autumn for NOT providing public-school choice to their students, despite the NCLB requirement that they do so. "We only have one junior high school," went the argument, "so it's not possible to offer intra-district school choice to those students."

How compelling is this claim? What can school choice mean in rural and thinly populated parts of the country, in communities with just one or two schools, and in places where a humongous "consolidated" school seems to suck all the oxygen from the education air?

I can think of at least five forms of school choice that can "work" under such circumstances. (Readers are invited to suggest more.) The contention that nothing is possible thus reveals either a failure of imagination or a mischievous attempt to drive a nail into the coffin in which some seek to entomb school choice.

First and most obvious, allow kids to choose public schools in nearby districts. At least a dozen states already give families the right to select any public school in the state. Even where that's not the

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Rural school choice

Church schools beat public in UK

December 12, 2002

Students in Anglican and Roman Catholic schools bested their public-school counterparts on this year's national English, math and science exams, new figures from the British Department of Education show. The data, known as "primary league tables," reveal the percentage of 11-year-olds in each school who achieve proficiency on the tests, as well as allow parents to compare schools' performance from year to year. "Church schools show the way to high standards for 11-year-olds," Daily Telegraph, December 5, 2002

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Church schools beat public in UK

Colleges searching for presidents beyond the ivory tower

December 12, 2002

Although still a minority at roughly twelve percent, college presidents hired from outside traditional academic circles have doubled in number in recent years according to a new study by the American Council on Education (ACE). College board members seem to be figuring out that many of the skills required of a president - including fundraising, politics, marketing, and financial management - can readily be gained outside higher education. Why doesn't the same logic apply to primary-secondary schooling? For a summary of the report, see "More Colleges Are Hiring Presidents from Outside Academe," by Julianne Basinger, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 9 (subscribers only). Copies of the full report, "The American College President: 2002 Edition," can be ordered for $25 each plus $6.95 shipping and handling by calling 301-632-6757.

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Colleges searching for presidents beyond the ivory tower

DC, New York tackle school transfers

December 12, 2002

In a move aimed at bringing the Big Apple into compliance with NCLB, Chancellor Joel Klein announced this week that students may transfer from continually failing schools to better ones anywhere in the city instead of being limited to choices within their local districts. The city will investigate ways to increase capacity at its best schools, including expanding class sizes and opening "more innovative schools in every neighborhood." (Klein yesterday announced another smart idea: the creation of a training institute for new principals that may recruit candidates from business and other non-traditional backgrounds. For details, see http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/11/education/11UNIO.html.) Meanwhile, the screws are tightening on school transfers in the nation's capital. According to a Washington Times editorial, a task force has recommended that the DC Board of Education toughen transfer requirements by "restricting the number of students in all public schools and establishing lotteries for transfer students instead of the first-come, first-accepted open policy" now in place. The task force also recommends allowing public - yes, public - school principals to reject would-be transfer students based on their academic achievement. "Policy Eases the Way Out of Bad Schools," by Abby Goodnough, The New York Times, December 9, 2002, and "Free D.C. schoolchildren," The Washington Times, December 8, 2002.

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The Department of Education this week offered draft non-regulatory guidance on the school-choice provisions of No Child Left Behind. Says the department's press release, "The guidance provides general

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DC, New York tackle school transfers

Does tutoring level the playing field?

December 12, 2002

Test prep firms such as Princeton Review and Kaplan have always been popular among students preparing for college entry exams, but these companies are now pitching their services to a younger crowd - elementary and junior high students - thanks to NCLB. Critics denounce the pricey tutoring as just one more edge that wealthy students have over poorer youngsters, even as advocates hope it will narrow the achievement gap by giving children who are lagging behind a chance to catch up on materials they should have learned in school. In a piece for The Washington Monthly, Siobhan Gorman takes a look at the burgeoning "kiddie test prep" industry and finds that - in contrast to the gimmicky test-taking skills taught to older students - its emphasis is on teaching and learning. Since NCLB offers money to pay for it, tutoring represents poor kids' best shot at a decent education, Gorman concludes. See "Tutor Restoration," The Washington Monthly, December 2002.

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Does tutoring level the playing field?

Rallying the troops for choice in DC

December 12, 2002

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Sol Stern recently called upon President Bush, come January, to seize his "unprecedented opportunity" to create a pilot voucher program for poor kids trapped in the District of Columbia's dismal schools. Doing so, contends Stern, would produce a domino effect, encouraging the creation of voucher programs and quickening the pace of reform in other metropolises. In a Cato Institute Policy Analysis, Casey Lartigue fleshes out the need for choice in the nation's capital, which he dubs "the worst of the worst" for its bottom-dwelling test scores. Given that per-pupil expenditures are already among the highest in the country, he argues, only a heavy dose of competition and parental empowerment can turn the city's schools around. See "S.O.S. - Save Our Schools," by Sol Stern, The Wall Street Journal, December 10, 2002 (subscribers only), and "The Need for Educational Freedom in the Nation's Capital," by Casey J. Lartigue Jr., Cato Institute, December 10, 2002.

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Rallying the troops for choice in DC

States struggling to comply with NCLB, survey shows

December 12, 2002

States are edging closer to compliance with No Child Left Behind but are a long way off in some areas, according to an Education Week survey conducted for the paper's forthcoming (January '03) Quality Counts 2003 report. In the absence of timely guidance from the Department of Education, states "appear to have taken a wait-and-see attitude about changing their accountability systems or their requirements for teacher licensures." More rapid progress has been made in instituting annual testing in reading and math in grades 3-8; 19 states and the District Columbia have such a regimen in place in advance of the 2005-06 deadline. For more survey results, see "States Strive Toward ESEA Compliance," by Lynn Olson, Education Week, December 11, 2002.

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States struggling to comply with NCLB, survey shows

A League Table of Educational Disadvantage in Rich Nations

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / December 12, 2002

Innocenti Research Centre, UNICEF
November 2002

UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre is the source of this new international comparison of "educational disadvantage" in the world's most prosperous countries - up to two dozen of them, depending on the specific indicators and benchmarks. These are not new data. The report is drawn from familiar sources such as TIMSS and PISA. But the data are analyzed differently here, not according to national averages but, rather, the severity of the discrepancy within each country between middle-scoring and bottom-scoring students (and other "gap" measures). On the main table, a composite of five separate measures "of absolute educational disadvantage" (mostly at age 15), the United States is 7th "worst," followed by Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. Seventeen countries did better, led by Korea and Japan. The main policy point: wealthy countries have educationally disadvantaged kids, too, but a lot of them have done better than we have at gap-closing. You can download your own copy of this 36-page report at http://www.unicef-icdc.org/publications/pdf/repcard4e.pdf.

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A League Table of Educational Disadvantage in Rich Nations

Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / December 12, 2002

J. Martin Rochester
November 2002

University of Missouri (at St. Louis) political scientist J. Martin Rochester authored this fine new book on America's education woes. It's semi-autobiographical, recounting his own efforts - as a "battle-scarred parent" - to get his children a good education in the public schools of University City and Clayton, Missouri. He also chronicles his growing disillusionment with educational progressivism. A political liberal, he nonetheless found that "The more I have seen of progressive pedagogy at work, the more disenchanted I have become. The utter failure of our schools under progressive rule has provoked a backlash, as the public has called for increased standards and accountability. This in turn has produced a backlash against the backlash, mounted by educators on the defensive." In 315 well-wrought pages, he closely examines the ideas undergirding progressive education and finds them flawed and unproven. This, then, is a book about ideas as much as about Rochester's adventures in education-land. It winds up with some imaginative suggestions, including the use of education options as a way to let several different philosophies coexist and to enable people to pick the one they favor. Highly recommended. The ISBN is 1893554538 and the publisher is Encounter Books. You can get more information at http://www.encounterbooks.com/clwa/clwa.html.

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Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence

Effects of Funding Incentives on Special Education Enrollment

Kelly Scott / December 12, 2002

Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster, Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute
December 2002

Reformers who want the upcoming reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to focus on results rather than funding have a new piece of ammunition. The Manhattan Institute's prolific Jay Greene and Greg Forster have released a report arguing that the rapid rise in special education enrollments nationwide is largely due to perverse financial incentives created by the "bounty system" - whereby most states pay school districts more money for each student diagnosed with a disability. Greene and Forster reach their conclusion by examining the rates of special ed enrollment growth in states with and without the bounty system. Overall, they find that financial incentives account for 62 percent of the increase in special ed enrollments in bounty states during the 1990s. Interestingly, although nearly thirteen percent of all students are in special ed, enrollments for the most objectively diagnosed and expensive-to-treat disabilities have declined or remained flat over the past quarter century. The skyrocketing growth in special ed has been confined to the learning disability subcategory, which is least expensive to treat and most subjective to diagnose. The authors maintain that this is no coincidence. Their solutions? Dump the bounty system, have the federal government audit special ed placements (in districts with especially high or low enrollments of disabled kids) and provide vouchers to disabled students - a la Florida's McKay Scholarship Program

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Effects of Funding Incentives on Special Education Enrollment

The Principal Challenge: Leading and Managing Schools in an Era of Accountability

Terry Ryan / December 12, 2002

edited by Marc S. Tucker and Judy B. Codding
2002

How would you respond if your boss approached you and said, "I have a job for you. You will be fully responsible for how your unit performs, but you will only have marginal authority over the people who work for you. You can't fire them, you can't give them bonus pay, and you can't put your best performers in the toughest situations. And, by the way, you will have to work longer hours for the same rate of pay." Most people would say, "fuggedaboutit." Yet this is the reality facing school principals across the United States. No wonder many are bailing out. Worse, according to The Principal Challenge, is that "the pool of candidates willing to replace them is drying up at an alarming rate," a school leadership crisis that worsens with time. This hefty book, edited by Marc Tucker and Judy Codding of the National Center on Education and the Economy, examines the problems surrounding recruitment, retention and remuneration of high quality school leaders, particularly those in urban and rural areas. It terms utterly dysfunctional the current system for preparing and developing school principals for the challenges of leading schools in the 21st century, which resembles education schools doing their own thing. Wasteful, too. For example, states often provide teachers with tuition support to get their principal certification (allowing them to move up the pay scale), yet most of these folks

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The Principal Challenge: Leading and Managing Schools in an Era of Accountability

What Large-Scale, Survey Research Tells Us About Teacher Effects on Student Achievement: Insights From the Prospects Study of Elementary Schools

Allison Cole / December 12, 2002

Brian Rowan, Richard Correnti, and Robert J. Miller, Consortium for Policy Research in Education
November 2002

A recent report from the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) analyzes the research on teacher effects - how much impact teachers have on student achievement - and what accounts for differences in teacher effectiveness across classrooms. The authors test a series of hypotheses about the size and stability of teacher effects and about which teachers are most effective. They use data from the Prospects study, a major evaluation of the Title I program that included test scores for students in a large sample of U.S. elementary schools. The report's most important contribution is its lengthy discussion of the conceptual and methodological problems of research on teacher effects. For example, the authors caution analysts against using simple survey measures or simple descriptors - like certification level or advanced degrees - as proxies for teacher characteristics or instructional technique. The report concludes that teacher effects on student achievement may appear small unless a sophisticated statistical model is used to control for other factors, including the teaching environment, student characteristics, and a student's previous achievement level. There is evidence that teacher experience, whole-class instruction (as opposed to working with individual students), and solid coverage of the curriculum are positively related to growth in student achievement; however, any given teacher will vary in effectiveness when teaching different subjects or working with students from different socio-economic backgrounds. This

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What Large-Scale, Survey Research Tells Us About Teacher Effects on Student Achievement: Insights From the Prospects Study of Elementary Schools