Education in Singapore: Part II

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / February 14, 2002

In last week's Gadfly, I described a bit about modern Singapore and how its world-beating education system is structured. Today I offer ten observations based on what struck me most during a brief visit.

First, ethnicity is indeed powerful, but a country's education culture and standards can trump ethnic differences. Not unlike the U.S., Singapore has a majority population (about 77% Chinese) and two large minorities-Malays and Indians. We know from Harold Stevenson, from TIMSS scores and other sources that Chinese populations (whether on Taiwan, the Chinese mainland or in Hong Kong) tend to take education seriously and to do well in school. In Singapore, however, the Malay and Indian kids do almost as well in education and in life. (To the extent that they don't, those data are downplayed-I couldn't find any-rather than highlighted.) There's no fussing over double standards and little talk of affirmative action, although there's much self-conscious integration of housing and schooling. Separatism is palpably discouraged. Rather, there's a national curriculum, national exams, national standards, and a lot of attention to one-nation-building via curricular emphases on civics, Singapore's history, moral education, etc. Though Singapore has had ethnic discord in the past, the government is bent on avoiding it in the future. (Nearby countries keep illustrating what not to do!) Everyone's cultural traditions are respected-we watched Chinese and Malay policemen guarding Indian "believers" as they walked down busy streets with various blades stuck into their own flesh

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Education in Singapore: Part II

Good news: Teachers College prexy endorses canon

Diane Ravitch / February 14, 2002

Until now, most of us believed that ed school professors were in principle opposed to the concept of a "canon" of great books. It turns out that this is not so, at least not if we consider the recent statements of Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College, Columbia University. Shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Levine told The Washington Post (October 1, 2001) that American students spend too much time studying Western works like Middlemarch, and that the Koran should be added to the canon. Now, he has told The New York Times (February 12, 2002) that "What Sept. 11 should have been is a signal that the canon ought to be expanded to include books like the Koran. Other than the Constitution, no work has had a larger impact on the United States."

Although one might question his assertion that the Koran is second only to the Constitution as a work that has influenced the United States, it is nonetheless worth observing that President Levine implicitly (and one might even say explicitly) endorses the very idea of a canon of important works that everyone should read. We know from his October remarks that he believes that the canon includes Middlemarch and now we know that it also includes the Constitution and should include the Koran.

One hopes that President Levine in future writings will fill in the blanks and let the rest of

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Good news: Teachers College prexy endorses canon

Kudos to New York Times reporter

Diane Ravitch / February 14, 2002

In a recent editorial in the Gadfly, I criticized New York Times reporter Diana Jean Schemo for her hostile coverage of reading instruction. In two articles, she managed to convey her misunderstanding of the phonics/whole language issue and to cite researchers with an axe to grind against any kind of phonetic instruction. However, I am happy to say that Schemo has mended her ways. In an article on February 9, 2002, about California reading instruction, Schemo showed that she can be a first-rate reporter, not by taking sides but by accurately explaining what is happening in that state. Unlike her earlier articles, this time Schemo did not create an unbridgeable gulf between phonics and whole language, and she did not selectively quote researchers associated with the anti-phonics position. It appears that she may have even read the report from the National Research Council, "Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children," which has been so important in persuading states like California to abandon its devotion to whole language and its new-found enthusiasm for phonetics as a prelude to imaginative reading of good children's literature.

"California Leads Chorus of Sounded-Out Syllables," by Diana Jean Schemo, The New York Times, February 9, 2002

Diane Ravitch is a Research Professor at the New York University School of Education and a trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

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Kudos to New York Times reporter

President Bush makes friends and enemies with his education budget

February 14, 2002

The White House budget released last week contained good news for school choice supporters. It includes a tax credit that would pay up to $2,500 a year in private school tuition for parents of children whose public schools are failing. The credit would cover 50 percent of the first $5,000 per child that's spent on books, computers, transportation, supplies and tuition at a school of the parents choice. It would be refundable, so even low-income workers who pay no taxes would benefit. The White House education budget also includes a new $50 million Choice Demonstration Fund, which would support local school choice experiments and $100 million to help charter schools buy, lease, or renovate buildings. Congressional Democrats have attacked the budget request for education, both for its choice elements and because, they say, it provides less money than the President agreed to when he signed the No Child Left Behind Act last month. Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Representative George Miller, who worked with the President to enact that law, argued that the funds for the tax credits would be better spent on Title I, the main federal education program to help poor children, and other programs under the No Child Left Behind Act. A White House spokesman noted that the President's budget also includes billion dollar increases for Title I and special education. School choice supporters, meanwhile, are watching for evidence that the administration is not only going to

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President Bush makes friends and enemies with his education budget

Jerry Brown's military charter school moves to double time

February 14, 2002

The Oakland Military Institute, the charter school opened by Mayor Jerry Brown last August, is having a tough first year. The seventh-grade curriculum chosen by the school has turned out to be too difficult for the students; nearly one-third of them scored D averages and wound up on academic probation. Despite the strict discipline provided by the National Guard, a small group of students routinely disrupts class. And the school day was cut back from 7:30 a.m.- 6 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and from six to five days a week due to burnout among staff sergeants who act as classroom mentors all day. But the leaders of the school are rolling with the punches, according to an article by reporter Meredith May. Classes in basic skills have been added. Students on academic probation attend Saturday school, evening tutoring sessions four times a week, and classes during holiday breaks. Students with behavior problems are separated into a separate platoon until their attitude improves. While many students are struggling, only a small number have quit or been kicked out. Daily attendance, which includes lining up in formation at 7:45 a.m. with shoes tied, is 96 percent, and parents and students seem willing to do what it takes to catch up. For more see "After 6 months, Oakland military charter school finds students must do double time to catch up," by Meredith May, San Francisco Chronicle, February 10, 2002.

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Jerry Brown's military charter school moves to double time

Surge in career-changers entering teaching

February 14, 2002

A front-page story in The New York Times this week described a big increase in the number of people seeking jobs as teachers nationwide, prompted by the sinking economy and a wave of soul-searching after the Sept. 11 attacks. The most striking increase, notes reporter Abby Goodnough, is in applications to programs that recruit people from other careers, provide brief training, and send the new teachers into short-staffed schools, typically in poor, urban neighborhoods. One such program in Washington, D.C. has received 45 percent more applications than it had this time last year. The increased interest is also reflected in applications to Teach for America, which places recent college graduates in troubled urban schools after a summer of training. TFA has had its sharpest increase in applicants ever this year, receiving 3,000 by its earliest deadline, October 31, compared with 1,100 the previous year. For details see "More Applicants Answer the Call for Teaching Jobs," by Abby Goodnough, The New York Times, February 11, 2002.

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Surge in career-changers entering teaching

Undoing bilingual education reform in California

February 14, 2002

The California State Board of Education has proposed new regulations that would undo the reform of bilingual education enacted by the state in 1998 after voters passed Proposition 227. That ballot measure limited native language instruction in public schools to a single year, unless parents requested a waiver. It had previously been routine in California to keep children in Spanish language instruction for years and years, and as a result the English language skills of many Latino students suffered greatly. Since Prop 227 ended this practice, Latino test scores have shot upward in California. But, as Michael Barone writes in USNews.com, these gains are now jeopardized by regulations proposed by the state board that would 1) give teachers rather than parents the right to apply for waivers to place students in bilingual programs and 2) eliminate the requirement that all limited-English students under the age of 10 spend the first 30 days of every school year in an English-language program before a waiver allowing them into Spanish-language instruction could be obtained. Combined, these two changes would undermine the whole reform, Barone notes, as many teachers and administrators will try to keep children in Spanish-language instruction for ideological reasons or to keep more money coming into the building, since Spanish-language teachers are paid a premium. Will California Governor Gray Davis keep his pledge to carry out the letter and intent of Prop 227, or will he allow his own appointees on

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Undoing bilingual education reform in California

Class Size Reduction in California

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / February 14, 2002

Brian Stecher and George Bohrnstedt, CSR Research Consortium
February 4, 2002

You have probably read in the media that, due to recent budget cuts, a number of California school districts are abandoning the legislatively mandated (in 1996) class size reduction (CSR) program in grades K-3. This report from the CSR Research Consortium, prepared by Brian Stecher of RAND and George Bohrnstedt of American Institutes of Research, carries an ongoing evaluation of this ambitious and expensive effort through the 2000-2001 school year. By then, the analysts found, the program was almost fully implemented (which means class sizes in the early grades were brought down to about 20) although a cost to other activities of schools and school systems. This report takes an interesting look at the distribution of qualified teachers between high-income and low-income schools-which had sharply worsened in the early years of the program-and finds that this problem has been eased but not eliminated. (California still has many teachers without full certification in its public schools.) The most troubling findings concern student achievement. Though California has seen some test-score gains in recent years, "the statewide pattern of score increases in the elementary grades does not match the statewide pattern of exposure to CSR, so no strong relationship can be inferred between achievement and CSR." Strikes me as a mighty pricey way to produce no clear gains! Should we be surprised that cash-strapped districts (many of which had cut maintenance, music, art and

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Class Size Reduction in California

Milwaukee's Public Schools: The Untold Story of America's Newest Democratic Revolution

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / February 14, 2002

John Gardner, American Education Reform Council
January 2002

John Gardner, a lively and reform-minded member of the Milwaukee school board, has written this interesting report for the American Education Reform Council. It contends that all manner of promising reforms have gotten under way in Milwaukee's public schools, and that recent improvement in education results is visible, as a result of competition arising from that city's well-known choice programs (both vouchers and charters). Though there's no definitive way to prove causation-this is hardly a "controlled experiment"-Gardner (a self-described "left-wing organizer" and "radical Democrat" turned ardent reformer) makes a convincing argument that the choice movement is responsible. Nobody claims that Milwaukee's public schools are yet doing a good job but this 26-page report is a worthwhile contribution to the discussion of whether competition produces change in the public school system as well as affording options to the children most directly affected. You can find it online at http://www.schoolchoiceinfo.org/hot_topics/?ID=11.

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Milwaukee's Public Schools: The Untold Story of America's Newest Democratic Revolution

Title I Funding: Poor Children Benefit Though Funding Per Poor Child Differs

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / February 14, 2002

General Accounting Office
January 31, 2002

A recent report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) examines the flow of Title I dollars to schools attended by low-income children. It responds to a Congressional mandate for GAO to review Title I allocations in terms of how precisely these dollars reach the schools with the most poor kids. This is strictly an examination of the flow of funds, not the benefit produced by or effectiveness of Title I-funded interventions. The GAO found (using 1999-2000 data) that Title I's "complex allocation process resulted in differences in actual funding per poor child among states, school districts, and schools." Indeed, analysts encountered "many instances of states, districts, and schools with either similar numbers or similar percentages of poor children receiving widely differing amounts of funding per poor child." There are many reasons for these variations, including arcane, multi-factor formulas, the persistence of local discretion in allocating Title I funds among individual schools, and "factors other than numbers of poor children [that] are included in Education's formula calculation, for example, the amount a state spends on education." The GAO also notes that "The allocation of Title I funds does not encourage states to target their own funds to children from low-income families. [There are] no monetary, statutory, or regulatory incentive[s] for them to do so." GAO suggests various ways by which Congress could change this but, of course, any of them would also have the effect of taking

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Title I Funding: Poor Children Benefit Though Funding Per Poor Child Differs

Twenty-Five Years of Educating Children with Disabilities: The Good News and the Work Ahead

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / February 14, 2002

American Youth Policy Forum and the Center on Education Policy
2002

The American Youth Policy Forum has teamed up with the Center on Education Policy to produce this review of the nation's experience with "special" education in the quarter century since the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was enacted. (It had a different name then.) In 64 pages, it applauds IDEA for many gains (e.g. effecting access to public education for disabled youngsters and putting into place "a solid infrastructure" for educating those kids). It also says the program now needs considerable reform. Some of its observations parallel those in last year's Fordham-Progressive Policy Institute volume on IDEA (which you can find at www.edexcellence.net), notably the conclusion that special ed policy should now "look beyond ensuring access...and focus on improving educational quality and results" for disabled youngsters. As Washington begins to shift its attention from E.S.E.A. to I.D.E.A.-the President's commission on special education recently held its first meeting-this is a timely contribution to what is apt to be a very important, possibly even historic, policy sequence. You can find it on the web at http://www.ctredpol.org/specialeducation/.

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Twenty-Five Years of Educating Children with Disabilities: The Good News and the Work Ahead