Do teachers believe in standards-based reform?

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 10, 2002

Standards-based reform has become America's main strategy for boosting student achievement, strengthening school effectiveness and renewing our education system. It undergirds President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" Act as well as the reform efforts of nearly every state and community.

As everybody knows, standards-based reform rests on a tripod of academic standards, testing and accountability. It is an elaborate behaviorist scheme for altering the actions and priorities of students and educators in order that children end up learning more and schools end up producing stronger results.

But standards-based reform works only upon the outside of education's "black box," not on what happens inside the classroom. Its eventual success, therefore, is determined not by lawmakers but by teachers and pupils whose everyday decisions and priorities actually shape what is taught and learned. Once that classroom door is shut, the teacher is in charge. What she deems important, what she cares about, how she spends her time - all these have immense impact on what her students end up learning.

One way to find out what teachers judge to be important is to ask them. Though plenty of surveys have been conducted over the years, few have probed teachers' views of key elements of standards-based education reform. So the Manhattan Institute, with the help of the University of Connecticut's highly regarded survey research center, decided to investigate. Its report came out last week. ("What Do Teachers Teach? A Survey of America's Fourth and

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Do teachers believe in standards-based reform?

Edison's year has rocky start

Allison Cole / October 10, 2002

When Edison Schools filed its 2002 annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 30, the world learned two things: that the firm's financial situation was unsteady and that there have been changes to its board of directors. The report revealed that Edison could have some financial problems if the company does not meet certain "financial ratios" specified by Merrill Lynch and School Services, which currently provide Edison with a $55 million credit line. If Edison fails to meet the requirements, it will no longer have access to the credit and would have to pay back any borrowed money immediately. The report also disclosed the resignations of three members of the board of directors, William Weld, Jeffrey Leeds, and Jonathan Newcomb. Leeds, Weld, and Co., a company in which all three men are partners, participated in the $40 million financing that Edison announced in August.

As of earlier this week, Edison was having troubled collecting $3 million from the Philadelphia School District because the company has not yet submitted to the district certain financial documents and a legal agreement allowing Philadelphia to keep all supplies purchased by the company should Edison quit or go out of business. In lieu of this agreement, the district has filed papers in Delaware (where Edison is incorporated) to ensure ownership of supplies in case of an Edison collapse. Edison says it will provide the necessary documents to Philadelphia as soon as it

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Edison's year has rocky start

Chicago teachers caught helping students cheat on state tests

October 10, 2002

In the most elaborate cheating scandal in the history of Chicago's public schools, teachers were caught giving tips, erasing incorrect answers, pointing to correct answers, and filling in the answers to questions left blank on students' Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, which were administered in May to students in grades 3 through 8. The teachers - who face possible dismissal - were nabbed with the help of a method for detecting unusual answer patterns developed by a University of Chicago economics professor. See "Teachers face firing in cheating scandal," by Rosalind Rossi and Annie Sweeney, Chicago Sun Times, October 2, 2002

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Chicago teachers caught helping students cheat on state tests

Education entrepreneurship: the new career path for young professionals

October 10, 2002

Disillusioned with the corporate world, discouraged by the dot-com bust and idealistic about making a difference in the world, some of today's most motivated and ambitious young professionals are joining the battle to better our nation's education system, often by creating companies and organizations that aim to help schools improve. Many of these rising stars got their start as Teach for America volunteers in the early nineties, explains Jay Mathews in "Entrepreneurs Grab the Chance to Build Careers, Help Schools," The Washington Post, Tuesday, October 8, 2002

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Giving parents vouchers could revitalize poor neighborhoods

October 10, 2002

The strongest argument for vouchers is moral, Jonathan Rauch writes in the October Atlantic Monthly. It's wrong for rich, white liberals to insist that poor children attend dysfunctional schools that they'd never allow their own children to set foot in. The next best argument is pragmatic, says Rauch: competition would improve the performance of public schools, though the author notes that there's not yet enough evidence to settle this point. However, a new study suggests that vouchers might have an unanticipated benefit: they might have a strong revitalizing effect on poor neighborhoods. Citing the work of Duke economist Thomas Nechyba, Rauch explains that parents who are currently stretching themselves to afford more expensive houses in better school districts would, if vouchers were made available, choose to live in cheaper housing and use vouchers to send their children to private schools. For more see "Reversing White Flight," by Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic Monthly, October 2002. (For our earlier review of Nechyba's report, see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=49#743.)

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Giving parents vouchers could revitalize poor neighborhoods

Houston takes home $500,000 Broad Prize for Urban Education

October 10, 2002

To hardly anyone's surprise, the Houston Independent School District won the first $500,000 Broad Prize for Urban Education. Funded by Los Angeles billionaire education reformer Eli Broad, the prize recognized Houston for improving student achievement and narrowing its achievement gaps, gains achieved largely through the leadership of then-superintendent Rod Paige. The money will be distributed to graduates of the class of 2003 in the form of scholarships based on scholastic achievement and financial need. "Houston hailed as nation's best urban school district," by Joshua Benton, The Dallas Morning News, October 3, 2002

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Houston takes home $500,000 Broad Prize for Urban Education

National Merit scholarship program lowers the bar in low-achieving states

October 10, 2002

States with high academic standards have protested that the No Child Left Behind Act punishes them for setting high expectations for their students. But NCLB is not the only program that allows standards to vary for students in different states. A report by an educational consultant in the DC area complains that National Merit semifinalist awards are conferred upon a set percentage of students in each state, which means that students in Mississippi need only score 200 on the PSAT exam to qualify for the awards, while students in Virginia must score 218, students in Maryland must score 220, and students in Washington, DC must score 221. For details see "National Merit Scale Hurts Area, Study Finds," by Jay Mathews, The Washington Post, October 2, 2002

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National Merit scholarship program lowers the bar in low-achieving states

Schools try out report cards based on state academic standards

October 10, 2002

While the Manhattan Institute survey described above presents discouraging evidence that many teachers have not bought into standards-based reform, there are some points of light out there. In Illinois, two elementary schools are testing new report cards that replace A's, B's, and C's with indications of whether the student exceeds, meets, or has not met certain state academic standards. Parents seem to support the new report cards, which will let them know where their children need to improve. "Schools take new approach to grades," by Mary Alice Benoit, Chicago Tribune, October 2, 2002

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Schools try out report cards based on state academic standards

The hazards of local control: one New York school's experience

October 10, 2002

Effectively reversing its 1969 decision to grant control over elementary and middle schools to local school boards, the New York legislature earlier this year gave Mayor Michael Bloomberg control of those schools by granting him power over a citywide Board of Education. New York Times Magazine contributor James Traub describes the mostly ill effects of the twenty-two intervening years of "decentralization," or local control, on Brooklyn's Junior High School 271, now I.S. 271. Initially demanded by black community activists who wanted to take control of their neighborhood schools away from white bureaucrats, local control engendered a system better known for patronage and corruption than sound educational ideas or even giving parents a voice. "A Lesson in Unintended Consequences," by James Traub, The New York Times Magazine, October 6, 2002

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The hazards of local control: one New York school's experience

Can College Accreditation Live Up to Its Promise?

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 10, 2002

George C. Leaf and Roxana Burris, American Council of Trustees and Alumni
October 2002

George C. Leaf and Roxana Burris wrote this 55-page report for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. It does a good job of setting forth key failings of the current system of institutional accreditation. (One may worry, though, about its historical accuracy. It refers twice to a 1952 "higher education act" that I don't believe existed.) A number of its recommendations are sound. One big one, however, is at best na??ve: the suggestion that Washington stop requiring accreditation as a precondition for eligibility for federal student aid dollars and instead trust the market, assuming that students won't enroll in bad schools. Would that it were so. All sorts of private and peer rating services (such as the famous U.S. News guides) help, but people are still easily duped by false claims made by colleges and their "proprietary" counterparts. At least until Americans have decent comparative information as to the academic value added by individual institutions - which would require a sophisticated testing and/or tracking system that the higher education "community" staunchly opposes - I don't see that the consumer marketplace is an adequate replacement for accreditation, despite the latter system's myriad flaws. Have a look at http://www.goacta.org/Reports/accrediting.pdf.

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Can College Accreditation Live Up to Its Promise?

Civic Engagement and Urban School Improvement: Hard-to-Learn Lessons from Philadelphia

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 10, 2002

Jolley Bruce Christman and Amy Rhodes, Consortium for Policy Research in Education and Research for Action
June 2002

We join in mourning the recent death of Ambassador Walter Annenberg, whose belief in public education led him to make extraordinarily generous gifts to organizations and communities that thought they knew how to reform it. Even as he is laid to rest, some of those groups persist in trying to prove that they accomplished more than they did or to rationalize their failure. Nowhere has that endeavor been more dogged than in Annenberg's own Philadelphia, where the effort to evaluate and justify the city's "Children Achieving" program continues unabated at the hands of the Penn-based Consortium for Policy Research in Education and an outfit called Research for Action. This latest report was written by Jolley Bruce Christman and Amy Rhodes, both affiliated with the latter organization. It seeks to appraise the "civic infrastructure" undergirding the city's Annenberg program (which was also former superintendent David Hornbeck's signature reform program) and, as I read it, to lay upon Philadelphia's civic leaders (business, academic, philanthropic, grassroots, etc.) a sizable share of the blame for the demise of Children Achieving and the school system's subsequent takeover by the state. Perhaps most interesting here - reminiscent of Moynihan's "Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding," the seminal analysis of the War on Poverty's community action program - is the authors' exegesis of how various factions within Philadelphia's civic leadership held differing "theories of

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Civic Engagement and Urban School Improvement: Hard-to-Learn Lessons from Philadelphia

Planning an Arts-Centered School

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 10, 2002

Dana Foundation
2002

If you care about educating children in the arts, you may benefit from this 157-page handbook published by the Dana Foundation and based on a symposium that Dana sponsored a year ago. It contains thousands of tips, conceptual and practical advice for anyone interested in creating an "arts-centered" school, charter or otherwise, and fascinating glimpses of a number of such schools that are operating today. It defines the arts broadly, its examples range widely and its essays span a wide array of school issues and perspectives. Surf to http://www.dana.org/books/press/artshandbook/artsbook.pdf.

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Planning an Arts-Centered School

Racial Inequity in Special Education

Terry Ryan / October 10, 2002

edited by Daniel J. Losen and Gary Orfield
2002

As the debate heats up over the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the issue of black children being overindentified as "children with special needs" is receiving increased attention. According to Losen and Orfield, "black students are nearly three times as likely as white students to be labeled mentally retarded." It is widely known that public schools place a disproportionate number of minority students into special education programs and classes, and for far too many of these youngsters, special ed turns out to be a treadmill from which it is almost impossible to disembark. The system helps to block these children from the mainstream of American society. What to do? The authors of this book (from Harvard's Civil Rights Project) offer a number of solutions, some a lot more appealing than others:

• Improving the quality of education children receive in the earliest grades so they are not burdened with deficits that lead to the "special ed" label in the first place.
  
• Supporting the No Child Left Behind Act's demand to end the "soft bigotry of low expectations" by insisting that all children achieve to a high standard.
  
• Using the courts to ensure that children are educated in the least restrictive environment as required by law.
  
• Strengthening Washington's hand in enforcing IDEA and monitoring state compliance.
  
• A moratorium on the use of high stakes tests for determining who receives a high school diploma

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Thy Voice in My Behalf: Teacher Union Political Spending

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 10, 2002

Mike Antonucci
October 2002

Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency has produced a short but fact-filled report on the political expenditures of the teacher unions, compiled from innumerable sources. It's really only the tip of an immense iceberg. It does not, for example, include spending for lobbying by union employees and members, nor can it quantify the costs of "issue ads" or internal political communications between union leadership and the rank-and-file. And it doesn't have as many subtotals and totals as one would wish. Still, it's the most informative report of its kind we've ever seen, especially with regard to election year spending by political action committees (PACs) allied with the national unions and their state affiliates. And it's especially timely as the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law goes into effect, a law that will, for example, force the unions to redirect some $3 million of PAC money that they've been accustomed to giving directly to the national political parties (mainly the Democrats). You can download this report from http://home.earthlink.net/~mantonucci/voice/voice.pdf.

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Thy Voice in My Behalf: Teacher Union Political Spending

Visions 2020: Transforming Education and Training Through Advanced Technologies, Technology Administration

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 10, 2002

U.S. Department of Commerce
September 2002

This peculiar report, which exists only in cyberspace, is a compilation of fourteen loosely linked essays that purport to present "visions" of education in a high tech future. Published by the Commerce Department's Technology Administration, it has neither introduction (save for twin letters from Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and Education Secretary Rod Paige) nor any conclusions. It doesn't even have consecutive page numbering. Several of the "visions" are pretty interesting, however, as they explore the role of teachers in a technology rich education system and caution against the things that can go wrong if we go overboard in this direction. Authors range from visionary techies to the executive director of the NEA. Have a look if you crave help in picturing the possible impact of technology on education at various levels. You can find it on the web at http://www.ta.doc.gov/reports/TechPolicy/2020Visions.pdf.

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Visions 2020: Transforming Education and Training Through Advanced Technologies, Technology Administration