The social studies problem: Is there a federal solution?

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 23, 2002

The White House recently launched several ambitious initiatives to strengthen the teaching of history and civics in U.S. schools. Multiple federal agencies - including the Humanities Endowment, Education Department and Corporation for National and Community Service - are seeking to boost the civic understanding and historical knowledge of young Americans and to nudge schools and educators into doing a better job in this key area. A White House "summit" is slated for early 2003. Members of Congress, too, have been agonizing about how Washington can help foster civic education. [See "President Introduces History & Civic Education Initiatives," White House, September 17, 2002 and "President Announces New Guidebook to Help Bring Service Programs to Schools," Corporation for National and Community Service, September 17, 2002.]

Part of the impetus for all this attention arises from heightened concern about civics and patriotism in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Part comes from the Bush administration's desire to encourage young (and older) people to engage in service to others. Part comes from the impulse to strengthen individual and national character and the understanding that this is inextricably linked to one's understanding of one's country, its polity and its past. And part stems from several rounds of dismal NAEP results and other evidence that young Americans know perilously little about their world, their nation's past and their government.

All true, all troubling and all in need of urgent attention. But how much can

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The social studies problem: Is there a federal solution?

New York City's poorest students receive the least Title I money

October 23, 2002

An unintended consequence of a 1994 rule governing Title I - the largest federal education aid program - is that New York City's poorest boroughs receive far less money per disadvantaged student than other boroughs with lesser concentrations of poor kids. Designed to give each borough no more than it "deserved," the formula allots Title I money according to poverty statistics from the US Census. Because the money goes to boroughs and schools, not directly to students, however, kids living in areas of high poverty (like the Bronx) - where funds must be distributed among many troubled schools - are "worth" less (per child) than those who attend poor schools in wealthier areas (like Staten Island). See "Poorer Boroughs' Students Get Smaller Slice of Aid," by Greg Winter, The New York Times, October 19, 2002. For a more complete discussion of the complexities of Title I funding - and how it ought to be reformed - see "Title I: Making the Investment Matter" in "Education 2001: Getting the Job Done: A Memorandum to the President-Elect and the 107th Congress," Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, December 2000.

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New York City's poorest students receive the least Title I money

California's education awards cancelled for this year

October 23, 2002

California's budget crisis has dried up funds for the state's highly touted education awards program, which will not be distributed this academic year, Governor Gray Davis's administration announced last week. A fundamental piece of the state's accountability puzzle and a favorite program of the governor, decent-sized awards were to have gone to more than 2,300 high-performing schools and their teachers. Qualifying schools - which are fewer than last year, as test scores indicate Golden State schools have slowed their rate of improvement - will instead have to settle for certificates honoring their achievement. "Education Award Plans Suspended," by Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Times, October 18, 2002

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California's education awards cancelled for this year

Ed Department releases condensed guide to the No Child Left Behind Act

October 23, 2002

The Department of Education has released a helpful "desktop reference" manual to the No Child Left Behind Act. In 180 pages, it discusses NCLB's major reforms, program by program, explaining how each intersects with the law's guiding principles of accountability, flexibility and local control, parental choice, and "what works." For each section, the guide relays "the purpose of the program, what's new in the law, how the program works, key requirements, how to achieve quality, how performance is measured, and key activities and responsibilities for state education departments." See "No Child Left Behind: A Desktop Reference 2002," Department of Education, 2002. (Free hard copies can be ordered at 877-433-7827.)

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Ed Department releases condensed guide to the No Child Left Behind Act

Massachusetts approves controversial history guidelines

October 23, 2002

This week, the Massachusetts' Board of Education unanimously approved new K-12 history standards despite criticism that the guidelines were rushed and weighted more heavily toward facts than concepts. The state maintains that the public had ample time to offer input, as the standards' two-year development included numerous meetings with teachers and community groups. The standards - which take effect immediately, although the MCAS history exam won't be administered until 2005-2006 - include a mandatory unit on Africa but place greater emphasis on Western civilization. "History standards for schools OK'd," by Michele Kurtz, The Boston Globe, October 23, 2002

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Massachusetts approves controversial history guidelines

PTA fights for relevance, membership

October 23, 2002

A long article in Sunday's Los Angeles Times describes the Parent-Teacher Association's struggle to survive declining membership and increasing demands on parents' time and energy. Eclipsed at wealthier schools by fund-raising booster clubs, the PTA is described as battling its Leave-it-to-Beaver image as a "coffee-and-cookies" club for middle-class white women, as well as a disconnect between school-based chapters and the PTA's federal, state and regional hierarchy. Undiscussed in this article is the possibility that parents are abandoning the PTA because it has evolved in a fully fledged member of the public-school establishment and is far more attentive to "T" than "P" concerns.
"Can the PTA get a passing grade?", by Molly Selvin and Gail Zellman, Los Angeles Times, October 20, 2002

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PTA fights for relevance, membership

Rookie superintendents share their battle stories

October 23, 2002

During the 2001-2001 school year, nearly one-fifth of the nation's superintendents were newcomers to this demanding role. The American Association of School Administrators contacted six of these rookies with diverse backgrounds and asked each to keep a journal of his or her experiences as a first-year superintendent. Read their month-by-month accounts of the trials and triumphs of this demanding job. "Superintendent Rookies," by Donna Harrington-Lueker, The School Administrator, October 2002

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Rookie superintendents share their battle stories

Textbook companies to issue Virginia-specific supplements to match state history standards

October 23, 2002

The Commonwealth of Virginia has joined Texas and California - which adopt textbooks on a statewide basis - in persuading major publishing companies to issue textbooks aligned with state history and social studies standards, a trend that may continue as other states seek texts aligned to their standards. In a move welcomed by teachers, Harcourt School Publishers and Scott Foresman will issue supplements aligning their national K-3 history texts to Virginia's standards - some of the most specific in the nation for these early grades. Publishers have already adapted to the history standards for grades 4-12, say Virginia education officials. "Virginia becoming textbook power," by Jason Wermers, Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 17, 2002

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Textbook companies to issue Virginia-specific supplements to match state history standards

The MCAS appeals process: deliberately difficult?

October 23, 2002

Some 12,000 students - or 19 percent - of the Bay State's high school class of 2003 may be denied diplomas after repeatedly failing the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams. The state has established an appeals process for students who come close to passing after three attempts, but district officials are discouraged by the "overwhelming" amount of work involved, with some urban officials complaining that the state purposefully made the process cumbersome to discourage appeals. While hopeful students prepare themselves for a December retest, superintendents are busy preparing the appeals by collecting attendance records, teacher recommendations, work samples, and calculations on how each student's grades stack up against his or her classmates. See "Some Schools find MCAS process daunting," by Michael Kurtz, The Boston Globe, October 21, 2002. By contrast, in Pennsylvania, where test results have no bearing on graduation, the state is urging - but not requiring - tens of thousands of high school seniors to retake the math, reading and writing assessment exams they failed. "Pa. students urged to retake state tests," by Connie Langland, The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 18, 2002

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The MCAS appeals process: deliberately difficult?

A "Noble Bet" in Early Care and Education: Lessons from One Community's Experience

Eric Osberg / October 23, 2002

Brian P. Gill, Jake Dembosky, and Jonathan P. Caulkins, RAND
2002

This report from RAND studies the effectiveness of the Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), a United Way-funded effort to provide "high quality early care and education" to at-risk children from birth through age five in the Pittsburgh area. It does not evaluate the program's impact on the kids themselves. (It notes that a separate study, prepared by S. J. Bagnato of Scaling Progress in Early Childhood Settings (SPECS), reports "favorable outcomes" for participating children.) Rather, it evaluates the implementation of ECI using data from 1996 and 2000, and extensive interviews with program stakeholders. That implementation, RAND found, was rife with problems including low enrollment, bureaucracy, and out-of-control costs. Demonstrating the inherent conflict between community control and central control and the danger of overly ambitious goals, ECI failed in part because its complex structure (designed to accommodate both the communities and the United Way) slowed planning and created power struggles. To avoid the disappointing fate of ECI, RAND suggests some lessons for future large-scale reform initiatives, including focusing on clear goals, tailoring the services, having a clear administrative structure, carefully considering supply, demand and incentives, and engaging in ongoing, independent review. This 32-page executive summary is available at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1544.1/, where it may also be ordered in hard copy for $15. A PDF version of the 146-page report on which it is based can be found at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1544/, and ordered in

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A "Noble Bet" in Early Care and Education: Lessons from One Community's Experience

Attracting Principals to the Superintendency: Conditions that Make a Difference to Principals

Terry Ryan / October 23, 2002

Aimee Howley, Edwina Pendarvis and Thomas Gibbs, Education Policy Analysis Archives
October 16, 2002

Based on responses from 508 Ohio principals, this short report seeks to determine "what conditions tend to attract and what conditions tend to deter principals from considering the superintendency." The authors seem untroubled that, "Despite the efforts of some districts to look for talented leaders from outside the ranks of the educator workforce, the traditional career path for educational administrators involves the move from teaching to the principalship to the superintendency." Why, one wonders, should this linear progression be taken as a given? One does not have to look far across the landscape of American education (outside Ohio) to find leaders from business, the military, law, and higher education running a variety of school districts. There are now "alternative" school leaders at the helm of districts ranging from New York City to Seattle to Okaloosa County, Florida to Benton Harbor, Michigan. The fact is, as the authors note, the modern superintendency has become a highly complex mix of the educational, managerial and political, and no one person can be an expert in all of these domains. Successful superintendents know how to lead a team of individuals that bring an array of talents to the table. The authors argue for creating incentives that focus on drawing the best and the brightest school principals into the highest levels of school administration, though their suggestions strike us as obvious and humdrum.

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Attracting Principals to the Superintendency: Conditions that Make a Difference to Principals

Charter School Closures: The Opportunity for Accountability

Kelly Scott / October 23, 2002

edited by Melanie Looney, Center for Education Reform
October 2002

Despite well-publicized failures, most charter schools are thriving, according to the Center for Education Reform (CER). In a new report, CER maintains that charter school closures - which total just 194, a scant 6.7 percent of the 2,874 schools ever chartered - are less about specific schools' shortcomings and more about obstacles placed in their paths by a jealous education establishment. CER analyzed the reasons for closure of 154 of those schools, breaking them down by type: financial, mismanagement, academic, district, facility, and "other." In some cases, schools were thwarted by lack of facilities, inadequate enrollment, or disputes between chartering organization and school personnel - woes that could have been largely avoided were it not for districts' hostility toward charters. In other cases, the schools were simply consolidated or counted as closed even though they never opened. No matter the reason for closure, the details are often more complicated than charter opponents would have you believe. Have a look at this interesting report - which is short on text but laden with data on each school - at http://www.edreform.com/charter_schools/closures.pdf. Hard copies are available for $19.95 each by calling 800-521-2118.

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Charter School Closures: The Opportunity for Accountability

Legislating Equity: The Distribution of Emergency Permit Teachers in California

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 23, 2002

Laura Goe, Education Policy Analysis Archives
October 14, 2002

Another California-specific study, this one by Berkeley doctoral candidate Laura Goe is a slightly more refined version of the point that "emergency" permit teachers are more apt to be found in lower achieving schools. There's an implication that they cause that low achievement, but the data show nothing of the sort. Causation isn't provable, at least not without an experimental study, which this isn't. The larger point, not made here, is that, because conventionally credentialed teachers are (rightly or not) more attractive to schools and thus more apt to be able to land more attractive jobs, when demand for teachers exceeds the supply of conventional candidates (which is the case in California due to overall enrollment growth as well as purposeful class size reduction), less appealing (and lower achieving) schools are more apt to wind up with unconventional teachers. Though this problem could be eased by reducing the demand for teachers, that's not what Ms. Goe recommends. Rather, she suggests more of the hair of the dog that bit us. You can view it at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n42/.

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Legislating Equity: The Distribution of Emergency Permit Teachers in California

The Private Sector Serving the Educational Needs of the Poor: A Case Study from the Philippines

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 23, 2002

Charisse Gulosino and James Tooley, E.G. West Centre, School of Education, University of Newcastle
August 2002

This fascinating new report from the imaginative British education researcher James Tooley, here joined by Charisse Gulosino, examines low-cost, low-priced private schools that educate poor children in the Philippines. You may previously have read Tooley on private schooling for the poor in other third-world countries, such as India. This is his first report on the phenomenon in the Philippines, based on a study of 81 such schools in some of the most disadvantaged parts of that land. Most are religious schools. Most charge very low tuitions, offer scholarships, get little government aid, yet manage to make ends meet and, in some cases, to make surpluses or profits. They appear to be doing a good job. Parents are satisfied. The schools have greater curricular flexibility (to teach English, especially) than their government counterparts. Yet various government policies impede their work and curb their expansion. For more information, surf to http://www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest/research/philippines.html.

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The Private Sector Serving the Educational Needs of the Poor: A Case Study from the Philippines

Who Is Teaching California's Children?

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 23, 2002

Camille Esch and Patrick Shields, Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning
2002

This short report from California's Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning would be more credible if its source weren't so thick with the ed schools and the NCTAF crowd. Written by Camille Esch and Patrick Shields and based on research by SRI International, it purports to be dismayed that 12 percent of California's 40,000 "uncredentialed" teachers possess advanced degrees. (Of course, it says nothing about the quality of their bachelor's degrees - nor how many of the masters degrees that adorn the resumes of conventionally certified teachers were earned in education.) It shows that these younger, less experienced teachers tend to be concentrated in the state's lower performing schools, a phenomenon that has previously been documented by others (and widely attributed to the statewide push for smaller class sizes, which tends to suck veteran teachers out of tough schools, replacing them with beginners). What's problematic about this study is its subtle deprecating of career changers and other unconventional teachers as unqualified by virtue of their lack of postgraduate degrees and its suggestion - this is what the press has seized on - that people from such backgrounds don't offer much of a solution to the problem of teacher shortages. You can see for yourself at http://www.cftl.org/documents/WhoisTeachingCAChildren.pdf.

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Who Is Teaching California's Children?

Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 23, 2002

Jonathan Zimmerman
September 2002

Jonathan Zimmerman, an education historian at New York University, authored this account of 20th century struggles over the U.S. K-12 history curriculum as well as the teaching of religion and morality in the public schools. Historians I respect, such as Jeffrey Mirel and Diane Ravitch, praise it as a balanced treatment, but I find it an exasperating book. The author seems hostile to positive views of America making their way into textbooks and curricula (he terms that approach "mawkish and triumphal"). He objects to schools teaching morality and is condescending to those who, for example, don't think sex education is the school's business. He's nervous about religion - and people who take it seriously. And the grand bargain that he favors is deeply relativistic, refraining from judgments about, say, the difference between heroes and villains. The book is provocative, yes, and contains interesting passages on how various groups got themselves incorporated into textbooks and curricula (leading to today's riot of inclusivity and the twenty pound tomes that typically result). In the end, though, Zimmerman belongs in the camp of multiculturalists, moral relativists and those who fret when patriotism lifts its head in the classroom. The ISBN is 0674009185. The length is 307 pages. Harvard University Press is the publisher. More information can be found at http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/ZIMWHO.html.

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Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools