Two Cheers for H.R. 3801

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / March 28, 2002

In this space two weeks ago (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=66#983), I reported that Congressman Michael Castle's (R-Delaware) bill to remake the federal education research enterprise had much merit but also posed some problems, especially regarding the future of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and its governing board (NAGB).

In two rounds of mark-ups, it's nice to be able to note, the House Education Committee resolved most of those problems (and made other worthy improvements in the bill), thanks mainly to the direct engagement and savvy of Representatives Castle and Dale Kildee (D-Michigan) and their sleepless staffers. Castle and Kildee understand the importance of the "nation's report card" and the care that must go into any alteration of its constitutional arrangements. So does Representative Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia), who offered the key amendments to the Committee. Hurrah for them!

Their efforts reflect a bipartisan consensus that was signaled at a spring 2000 Congressional hearing where one of the (few) things Republicans and Democrats agreed upon was that the National Assessment must be kept as independent as Congress can manage. That was true then. It's even truer today, considering the many new mandates that the No Child Left Behind act laid upon NAEP.

But the H.R. 3801 repair squad has been laboring under two constraints: some House colleagues who are mistrustful of NAEP ("the camel's nose of national testing") and some Education Department officials who don't want NAGB truly to be in charge of NAEP

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Two Cheers for H.R. 3801

Summer school in New York City, revisited

Diane Ravitch / March 28, 2002

Last August in The Gadfly (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=93#1209), I reviewed the results of the New York City summer school program for 2001, the second time that the giant school system had attempted to corral more than 300,000 kids to return during the hot months for remediation or enrichment or Regents test preparation.

Of that large number, some 72,000 children in grades 3-8 had been ordered to go to summer school because of their academic deficiencies. Of that group, 8,000 did not show up. The summer remedial program was part of the Board of Education's attempt to end social promotion by directing help to those children who had fallen behind in math and reading. The results, as reported by the Board of Education at summer's end, were discouraging. Most who attended summer school failed their end-of-course exams in reading and math, but were promoted anyway. Two-thirds showed little or no improvement in math, and nearly 60 percent failed to improve in reading.

Average reading scores actually dropped for eighth graders, both in 2000 and again in 2001. Further, nearly three-quarters of the eighth graders scored in the lowest level of performance in reading and math after their summer of remediation.

After reviewing these dismal statistics, I recommended that the Board of Education try to learn something from the summer program about "what works" and what doesn't. It seemed to me that the school system ought to be able to use upcoming

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Summer school in New York City, revisited

Dueling reports on tax credits

March 28, 2002

On Monday, opponents of school choice from Arizona State University released a report attacking the state's 1997 education tax credit law, which grants taxpayers a dollar-for-dollar credit against their state tax obligation for donations they make either to public schools or to "school tuition organizations" that award scholarships for use at private schools. Author Glen Wilson calculates that 81% of donations to the school tuition organizations went to help parents pay tuition for children already attending private schools, leaving only 19% to help students switch from public to private schools. He concludes that the tax credit is draining a lot of money from public coffers without achieving its stated aim of giving low-income students the opportunity to attend private schools. The Goldwater Institute quickly responded with a press release noting that, while many scholarships are granted to children who are already enrolled in private schools, an estimated 80 percent of the scholarships are awarded on the basis of financial need, so they are supporting low-income families who may be struggling to make tuition payments at their child's private school. In addition, Goldwater points out that Wilson's estimation of the fiscal impact of tax credits does not take into account the savings accrued by the state when a pupil leaves a public school for a private school. The next day, the Goldwater Institute released its own report by executive director Darcy Olsen, arguing for an expansion of Arizona's tax credit to

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Dueling reports on tax credits

Reinventing teacher induction and professional development

March 28, 2002

No matter how much pre-service training they have been armed with, new teachers begin their first assignments with a range of urgent, school-specific questions about curriculum, instruction, and classroom management. Yet few schools offer induction programs that give new teachers the kind or level of support they require. This serious mismatch between what new teachers need and what they get is described vividly in an article in Educational Leadership that is based on a study of new teachers in Massachusetts by Harvard's Susan Moore Johnson and her team at the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers. Many new teachers find themselves in schools staffed by veteran teachers with well-established, independent patterns of work who do little to acquaint the neophytes with expert practice. New teachers in these schools are driven to eavesdrop on lunchroom conversations and peek through classroom doors for some clue about what should be going on in their own classroom. Other new teachers end up in schools in urban settings that are staffed primarily by other new teachers who have plenty of energy and commitment but can offer little professional guidance about how to teach effectively. A lucky few novices end up in schools where they receive real support from veteran teachers who have time to observe, offer advice, and help on short notice when things go awry. (Veterans get something out of the relationship too, Johnson notes; new teachers are often able to help older

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Reinventing teacher induction and professional development

A Timely IDEA: Rethinking Federal Education Programs for Children with Disabilities

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / March 28, 2002

Center on Education Policy
January 2002

This 44-pager from Jack Jennings's Center on Education Policy contains three papers examining the federal special ed program and recommending that Congress make changes in it. While the three authors (Thomas Hehir, Lawrence Gloeckler, Margaret McLaughlin) don't entirely agree on how extensive these changes should be, they all point in the same direction: more focus on academic results, less burdensome paperwork, a more rational (and generous) funding system. We immodestly note that this is awfully similar to the policy territory covered-and conclusions reached-nine months ago in the joint Fordham-Progressive Policy Institute special ed volume, which you can find at http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/special_ed_final.pdf. To get this one, surf to http://www.cep-dc.org/specialeducation/timelyidea2002.htm.

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A Timely IDEA: Rethinking Federal Education Programs for Children with Disabilities

Alternative Teacher Certification: A State-by-State Analysis 2002

Kelly Scott / March 28, 2002

C. Emily Feistritzer and David T. Chester, National Center for Education Information
2002

Since 1983, Emily Feistritzer and the National Center for Education Information (NCEI) have tracked state efforts to create alternative certification programs for people interested in becoming teachers without having to go back to ed school. Since 1990, this tracking effort has included a periodic state-by-state guide to these programs. In all, 45 states now have some type of alternative certification program for teachers. The most striking bit of news in this year's volume is the degree to which they're converging on what an alternative teacher certification program looks like. In the past three years, 20 states have created some 34 new alternative teacher certification programs that share these features: 1) they are designed for candidates who already possess a bachelor's degree; 2) they include a rigorous screening process comprised of tests, interviews and content mastery; 3) they are field-based; 4) they include professional education training before and during teaching; 5) they provide mentors for all new teachers; and 6) they have high performance standards. Compared with the graduates of traditional programs, the "alternative" recruits are more likely to be minority group members or men. They also tend to teach high-demand subjects (like math and science) and to have higher retention rates despite being concentrated in more challenging locales like the inner cities or isolated rural areas. For prospective teachers, this guide includes contacts for and profiles of all alternative

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Alternative Teacher Certification: A State-by-State Analysis 2002

California Charter Schools Serving Low-SES Students: An Analysis of the Academic Performance Index

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / March 28, 2002

Simeon Slovacek, Antony Kunnan and Hae-Jin Kim, Program Evaluation and Research Collaborative, Charter College of Education, California State University at Los Angeles
March 11, 2002

In case you didn't know, California State University at Los Angeles has a "charter college of education," two of whose faculty members (Simeon Slovacek and Antony Kunnan), together with doctoral student Hae-Jin Kim, recently issued this brief but bullish appraisal of the performance of 42 California charter schools in boosting the achievement levels of disadvantaged children over a two-year period, compared with non-charter schools serving similar kids. The bottom line: charters are producing greater learning gains for these children, though their average scores remain slightly lower than those of the non-charters. Two additional points bear mentioning: (1) The poorer the students, the greater the charter-school edge in achievement gains; and (2) the smaller the charter school, the wider the edge. The statistical analyses are complex and you may want to see for yourself. You can download a PDF copy at http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/ccoe/c_perc/rpt1.pdf.

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California Charter Schools Serving Low-SES Students: An Analysis of the Academic Performance Index

Powerful Ideas, Modest Gains: Five Years of Systemic Reform in Philadelphia Middle Schools

Terry Ryan / March 28, 2002

Jolley Bruce Christman, Consortium for Policy Research in Education
December 2001

n early 1995, the School Board of Philadelphia adopted a systemic reform plan called Children Achieving to improve the city's troubled public schools. "Powerful Ideas, Modest Gains" is one of several reports issued by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania that evaluates the successes and failures of the city's reform effort. The core beliefs driving the reform program were: 1) results matter, 2) all students can achieve at high levels, and 3) low expectations of students breed persistent underachievement. Children Achieving sought change through content standards (the knowledge and skills all students were to know); an accountability system based on annual student assessments; and decentralization (smaller schools and classes). Philadelphia's school board and then-Superintendent David Hornbeck, backed by a five-year $50 million Annenberg Challenge grant (matched by $100 million in city funds), aimed to demonstrate through a comprehensive one-size-fits-all reform that every student could achieve proficiency in mathematics, reading, and science by 2008. "Powerful Ideas, Modest Gains" provides a mid-term review of the impact of those reforms on the city's middle schools. As the title suggests, powerful ideas and political forces have driven the reform effort, but the results have thus far fallen short: "Reforms produced modest gains for middle grades students in reading and science and made limited headway in addressing the abysmally low achievement of students in mathematics." As things currently stand,

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Powerful Ideas, Modest Gains: Five Years of Systemic Reform in Philadelphia Middle Schools

School District Performance Under The MCAS

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / March 28, 2002

Jie Chen and Thomas Ferguson, University of Massachusetts
February 20, 2002

Speaking of intricate analyses, University of Massachusetts political scientist Thomas Ferguson and statistician Jie Chen recently unveiled this hundred-page look at the performance of Bay State school districts on the state's much-discussed Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). It's caused something of a stir because of its assertion that some of the state's wealthier and more prominent school districts haven't lived up to expectations on MCAS, and its claim that "disadvantaged districts are progressing at rates which are not systematically different from those of richer districts." We're skeptical. Setting aside the senior author's association with such publications as The Nation and Mother Jones, this analysis seems to come from the kitchen-sink school of social science. Using various econometric techniques to try to isolate the effects of a bunch of different variables on districts' MCAS scores, it makes such odd assertions as that "athletic budgets have substantial impacts on district test scores" and "districts with competitive Senate races...have higher MCAS scores." We found ourselves wondering why they hadn't looked to see if the superintendent is left-handed or if the dogcatcher election also bears on MCAS scores. Do sunspots affect them? Ambient air quality? The incidence of tattoos on the school nurse? It looks as if the authors assembled whatever they could get their hands on by way of district-level data and played around to see what might show a relationship to test scores.

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School District Performance Under The MCAS

Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Special Education

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / March 28, 2002

edited by MaryAnn Byrnes
2002

This compilation volume boasting 18 "debates" on special education issues is worth knowing about for those who find it easiest to get their minds around complex topics by reading opposing views on those topics. Editor MaryAnn Byrnes of UMass/Boston did a nice job of selecting issues (under three broad headings: "special education and society," "inclusion" and "issues about disabilities") and for the most part she did well at picking cogent expositors of rival views on those issues. Also worthwhile is her ten-page introduction sketching how U.S. special-ed policy came to be the way it is. But you'll find no general conclusions or recommendations. This is a pro-con "issues" reader, most likely meant to be assigned in classes preparing future special educators. Almost 400 pages long, it's published by McGraw-Hill/Dushkin. The ISBN is 0072480564. You can also find it on the web at http://www.dushkin.com/text-data/catalog/0072480564.mhtml.

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Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Special Education

The supply of special education professors: two studies from Vanderbilt University

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / March 28, 2002

A year ago, a Vanderbilt-based research team submitted to the federal Education Department a study titled "The Study of Special Education Leadership Personnel With Particular Attention to the Professoriate." (You can request a copy by emailing lead author Deborah Deutsch Smith at d.smith@vanderbilt.edu.) In 50 pages (plus appendices), it concluded that there are not enough people training for university posts in special education and that this is bad for disabled kids and prospective special educators. Though it listed some fairly predictable solutions, it mainly identified problems. More recently, Vanderbilt published a dozen-page glossy report, drawing on the aforementioned study and others, entitled "The Shortage of Special Education Faculty: Why It is Happening, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do About It." We are always slightly wary of reports that misspell the word "acknowledgments" but, if you are interested, this one briefly reviews the main reasons that (in the authors' view) there aren't enough future special ed faculty in the pipeline (time, ability to relocate, money, career plans) and some strategies to boost this supply. These add up to: make it faster, easier and more appealing to become a special-ed professor. The report itself doesn't appear in cyberspace but you can find a summary at http://hecse.uky.edu/articles/shortage.html.

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The supply of special education professors: two studies from Vanderbilt University