Special ed from the parents' perspective

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / June 20, 2002

American parents are famously content with their own children's schools even while deploring the state of schools in general. Many have speculated on why this is so. The likeliest explanation, I believe, is that parents have an emotional need to believe that they're providing well for their kids and have made suitable educational arrangements for them. I surmise that we'd see a similar pattern if parents were surveyed as to children's nutrition, health, physical fitness or character development: my kid is doing pretty well, though kids in general are in dismal shape.

Such seeming satisfaction may be just a veneer, however, a thin layer under which lies a deeper discontent. The estimable research organization, Public Agenda, has on several occasions pushed parents harder to appraise their children's schools and educational experiences by asking, for example, whether they would be inclined to move their daughters and sons from public to private schools if they could afford to do so. Many would.

This week, Public Agenda released an interesting report indicating that a kindred pattern may obtain among the parents of children with disabilities. (The report, "When It's Your Own Child," is based on research that was supported in part by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and can be found in full on the web at http://www.publicagenda.com/specials/specialed/specialed.htm.)

This study draws upon a carefully structured survey of more than 500 parents of special-needs children, the first such that, to our knowledge, has ever

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Special ed from the parents' perspective

Overhaul of teacher certification systems needed, says Secretary Paige

June 20, 2002

Releasing a new report on teacher quality, Education Secretary Rod Paige last week called upon states to radically transform their teacher certification systems by raising standards while lowering the barriers that deter many qualified candidates from entering the public-school classroom. States and universities need to focus on bringing "smart teachers with solid content knowledge" into U.S. schools, he urged. Paige recommended that states require teachers to pass rigorous tests in the subjects they will teach and create alternate routes into the classroom for professionals who have strong knowledge of the subjects they will teach but lack coursework in pedagogy.

The occasion was the Department's first report to Congress on state teacher certification programs. Concerned about the quality of the nation's teaching force, Congress in 1998 added a requirement to the Higher Education Act: states would have to hold their higher ed institutions to account for the quality of the teachers they produce. Beginning in 2001, states had to provide detailed information to the Department of Education on their teacher preparation programs. This information is summarized in the new report, "Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge" (available at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/News/teacherprep/index.html).

The report suggests that states have a long way to go in meeting the federal deadline for having a highly qualified teacher in every high-poverty classroom, which is this September. (Under "No Child Left Behind," states must have a highly qualified teacher in every classroom by 2005.) One problem is that state

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Overhaul of teacher certification systems needed, says Secretary Paige

More students eligible for vouchers in Florida after 10 schools fail

June 20, 2002

The Florida "exit voucher" program that allows students in failing public schools to transfer to private schools at public expense will expand this year. Last week, 10 Sunshine State schools received their second F rating in four years, which makes their pupils-roughly 8,900 in all-eligible for the voucher program. Before this year's results were announced, students from just two Florida schools were eligible for the program. In those two schools, about 10 percent of students applied for vouchers to private schools (though not all found private schools to take them) and 10 percent transferred to other public schools (which is also allowed under the state's accountability system). The big increase in voucher-eligible schools is expected to fuel debate over the policy as Gov. Jeb Bush, a voucher advocate, campaigns for re-election this year. For details see "More schools earn failing grade," by Stephen Hegarty, St. Petersburg Times, June 13, 2002.

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More students eligible for vouchers in Florida after 10 schools fail

Report card on state testing programs shows North Carolina as number one

June 20, 2002

North Carolina, Texas, New York, Massachusetts, and Arizona have America's best testing programs, according to Testing the Testers 2002, a new report from the Princeton Review. These ratings are based on 25 indicators in four key areas: alignment of a state's test to its curriculum standards, quality of the test, openness of the testing program to public scrutiny, and the extent to which the accountability system supports school improvement. The aim of the report is to spotlight behavior that supports or undermines good teaching and learning as the fifty states race to comply with the testing requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Princeton Review says this is the first of an annual series and that the criteria and methodology will be refined in subsequent editions. To download a copy, surf to www.review.com/stateStudymsg.cfm.

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Report card on state testing programs shows North Carolina as number one

States have spotty track record of intervening in troubled school districts

June 20, 2002

States may find it tempting to take over failing school systems, but their track record in turning those districts around is mixed. According to the Education Commission of the States, 10 states have intervened in 49 school districts since the late 1980s. The latest examples are Pennsylvania, which took over Philadelphia's public schools in December, New York, which abolished the school board in Roosevelt School District in May, and Maryland, which seized control of Prince George's County schools in June. While states have had some success in straightening out financial and management problems in the districts, producing improvements in the classroom has proven a bigger challenge, and some states continue to run the troubled school districts many years later, reports Robert Frahm in The Hartford Courant. One recent study suggests that mayoral takeovers of school districts may be more effective than state takeovers at improving academic achievement, perhaps because state intervention is seen as a hostile act while city hall is perceived as more accountable to taxpayers and parents and city officials can enlist the help of civic leaders, according to Vanderbilt professor Kenneth Wong. For more, see "Across nation, mixed results," by Robert Frahm, The Hartford Courant, June 3, 2002. (available for a fee at www.ctnow.com).

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States have spotty track record of intervening in troubled school districts

Why the black-white test score gap persists

June 20, 2002

Berkeley linguist John McWhorter has made his name in policy circles by arguing, among other things, that black students do poorly in school due to a strain of anti-intellectualism in African American culture that is a by-product of racism. The argument, which he made in a book called Losing the Race, is delineated in an essay in the most recent issue of the American Experiment Quarterly. McWhorter suggests that the reason African American students don't do as well in school as students from other groups is that students are told by their black peers that to do well in school is to "act white." The author considers and rejects some alternative explanations for the test score gap. He argues that the main reason for the gap is not that schools are underfunded. It's simply not true that students can only succeed when schools are well-funded; the kids of Southeast Asian immigrants go to schools with peeling paint, bad textbooks, and lousy teachers but don't have problems in school, despite those factors. Nor is the test score gap a class issue, since the children of working-class Asian immigrants do well in school, as did children from Jewish working-class families a generation ago. Are teachers biased against black students? In surveys, Latino and Asian students report the same amount of what they interpret as bias from teachers as black students do, but these groups don't have the same test score gap. Children

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Why the black-white test score gap persists

Another Look at How Members of Congress Exercise School Choice

Janet Heffner / June 20, 2002

A new Heritage Foundation Backgrounder contains the findings of a 2001 survey that looked at how members of Congress practice school choice. (A similar survey was conducted in 2000.) It turns out that forty-seven percent of House members and fifty-one percent of senators have children who attend or have attended private schools-percentages far higher than those of the general populace. Similar data are available on members of important committees and caucuses, including the House and Senate education committees. The report notes that it's hard to see how opponents of school choice-such as Senators Clinton, Kennedy and Rockefeller-justify voting against allowing poor parents a choice in their children's education while availing their own families of such choices. This short report can be found at: www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/bg1553.html

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Another Look at How Members of Congress Exercise School Choice

Better Pay for Better Teaching: Making Teacher Compensation Pay Off in the Age of Accountability

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / June 20, 2002

Bryan C. Hassel, Progressive Policy Institute
May 29, 2002

The Progressive Policy Institute recently published this 30-page paper by Bryan C. Hassel. It contends that American education would benefit from a "grand bargain": a sizable boost in teacher salaries combined with a modernization of the teacher compensation system. It's time, Hassel says, both to invest more in teacher pay and to "move beyond a pay method designed early in the last century." He does not promote a specific compensation system here but, rather, sets forth key design principles. He also provides brief glimpses of several extant alternative pay systems at the school, district and state level. Hassel's strongest recommendations entail widespread and deliberate experimentation "with alternatives to the traditional experience-and-degree-based pay system" and the building into such experiments of "significant flexibility in pay-setting" at the building level. This paper makes worthwhile reading for anyone seeking to understand the issues at the heart of teacher compensation policy. You can find it on the web at http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=110&subsecid=134&contentid=250543.

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Better Pay for Better Teaching: Making Teacher Compensation Pay Off in the Age of Accountability

The Condition of Education 2002

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / June 20, 2002

National Center for Education Statistics
June 2002

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has just published this year's edition of one of its most valuable (and bulkiest!) reports, the annual "Condition of Education" volume. "Mixed results" is how the Education Department characterizes its major findings regarding education performance in the U.S. Much other ground is covered in the 335-page report's 44 indicators, six major sections and two special analyses. One of the latter is especially interesting: a statistical portrait of private schools. Though limited by the fact that it only subdivides the complex private-school universe into Catholic, "other religious" and nonsectarian, some of the data are revealing, particularly the differences in public-private school teachers' sense of their influence over key school policies and practices. There's also a bit of data (for the first time, to my knowledge) on charter schools. This is a volume that wants to sit on the desk of every serious education analyst. You can order a hard copy by calling (877)-4ED-PUBS but it's faster to download one from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/.

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The Condition of Education 2002

What Really Happened? Minnesota's experience with statewide public school choice programs

Terry Ryan / June 20, 2002

William Lowe Boyd, Debra Hare and Joe Nathan, Center for School Change, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, University of Minnesota
May 2002

Choice in education is good for students, parents and school districts. That's the conclusion of a new study from the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs entitled "What Really Happened? Minnesota's experience with statewide public school choice programs." The report looks at the impact of four statewide public school choice laws upon Minnesota education since 1985. These choices include open enrollment, post-secondary enrollment options, second chance options, and charter schools. Key findings include:

• In the period 1988-89 through 2000-01, the proportion of students participating in a public choice program increased from about 1% to 17%. In 2000-01, 30% of secondary students participated in a choice option.
  
• Choice programs have caused some schools and districts to change the way they educate children.
  
• The vast majority of participating students and parents express a high degree of satisfaction with their education.
  
• Available evidence on academic performance-admittedly limited-suggests that students are making good progress in choice programs.
  
• Those who argued that choice in education would result in negative consequences for children and schools were off the mark.

The authors write that the vast majority of parents, educators and policy makers in Minnesota now support the idea of choice in education when it comes to open enrollment, post-secondary enrollment options and second chance options, but not charter schools.

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What Really Happened? Minnesota's experience with statewide public school choice programs