Education's mirth dearth

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 31, 2002

You may laugh at the antics and costumes of the youthful spooks who beat a path to your door this evening in search of sweets, but when's the last time you had a really good giggle sitting at an education conference or reading one of this field's innumerable journals and newsletters? Why is there so little humor in educator-land? Why are people so solemn and straitlaced?

Maybe you don't agree. Maybe you find plenty of humor in the education field, ample opportunities for amusement, satire, irony and plain old belly laughs. Perhaps you're satisfied with the odd Kappan cartoon and the compilations of student "bloopers" that sometime substitute for jokes at the beginning of a speech about education. Perchance you don't mind the mirth dearth. Possibly you are pretty solemn, too.

I get dirty looks when I laugh at education gatherings, and my efforts at joke-telling or lightheartedness usually earn me rebukes. If I quote from a "blooper" collection, I'm apt to get a hostile comment from the audience about mocking kids or belittling teachers. At one recent gathering, my passing reference to "mom and pop" charter schools earned me a harangue from a self-important and politically correct fellow who seemed to think I was making fun of moms, pops, charters and the serious business of policy analysis.

So rare is education humor that efforts to engage in it can go unrecognized, sometimes by me. A few weeks back, the television show

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Education's mirth dearth

The autism boogeyman

Greg Forster / October 31, 2002

Recently, the New York Times showered attention on a new study from the M.I.N.D. Institute at U.C. Davis, giving it front-page news play and devoting an editorial to hand-wringing over its findings. Numerous other publications accorded it prominent attention, too, and just this week Senator Barbara Boxer cited it while arguing for new federal initiatives on autism. ["Report to the Legislature on the Principal Findings from The Epidemiology of Autism in California," M.I.N.D. Institute, University of California - Davis, October 17, 2002] The study purports to show that the recent explosion in autism among school-aged children is caused at least in part by a real increase in juvenile autism, not by improved reporting and diagnosis. Unfortunately, this study doesn't even come close to justifying its conclusion.

Over the past decade, the number of students labeled as autistic, while still very small as a portion of all U.S. schoolchildren, has been growing at an alarming speed. Even after we control for overall growth in the total pupil population, the rate of autism diagnoses almost quintupled between 1992 and 2000. Naturally, experts are urgently trying to find out whether this represents a real epidemic of autism or just a change in diagnostic patterns.

This question has implications beyond autism itself. Student enrollment in special education has grown wildly over the past decade. As federal I.D.E.A. legislation comes up for renewal, the $64,000 question is whether this growth is occurring because there really are

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The autism boogeyman

AFT celebrates "the subjects teachers teach"

October 31, 2002

The American Federation of Teachers' quarterly, American Educator, often contains excellent material. That's true of the entire fall 2002 issue, consisting of a perceptive interview with master teacher (and nonagenarian) Jacques Barzun; an evocative essay ("Why I Teach") by veteran high school English teacher Patrick Welsh; thoughtful pieces on history, science and math; some lovely artwork; and a masterly 1948 essay on Huckleberry Finn (this "subversive book") by the late Lionel Trilling. Most articles are available online at http://www.aft.org/american_educator/. (To request a hard copy of an article that's not online, send an e-mail to amered@aft.org.)

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AFT celebrates "the subjects teachers teach"

Cracking the education monopoly with vouchers

October 31, 2002

With the blessing of the Zelman decision, the last big civil rights battle - enabling poor minority children to attend good schools - can now begin in earnest, writes Sol Stern in the autumn issue of City Journal. It is tough to say whether teacher unions or staunch school choice advocates - backed by businessmen whose bottom line suffers when young hires prove functionally illiterate and innumerate - have deeper pockets for the post-Zelman state and local fights ahead. But what is clear, says Stern, is that the foundations of the education monopoly have cracked. Learn "What the Voucher Victory Means" and read about key players in the ongoing battle over school choice at http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_what_the_voucher.html.

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Cracking the education monopoly with vouchers

Paige warns states not to lower standards to foil NCLB

October 31, 2002

Last week, Education Secretary Rod Paige warned state officials not to attempt to skirt the intent of "No Child Left Behind" by lowering standards or redefining proficiency to ease the impact of the law's accountability provisions. In a forceful letter designed to shame readers into putting forth their best efforts to improve, Paige labeled educators who fiddle with statistics and semantics to hide schools' poor performance "enemies of equal justice and equal opportunity." But the note wasn't all brickbats. The Education Secretary also lauded educators' courage as they "confront the evidence and do something about" underperformance, noting that NCLB labels troubled schools places "in need of improvement," not failures. Paige's letter can be found at http://www.ed.gov/PressReleases/10-2002/10232002a.html. Also see "States Get Federal Warning on School Standards," by Diana Jean Schemo, The New York Times, October 24, 2002, and "Schools may lower standards to stay off federal watch list," by Adam Emerson, Lansing State Journal, October 24, 2002.

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Paige warns states not to lower standards to foil NCLB

Testing backlash in key gubernatorial races

October 31, 2002

Democratic gubernatorial candidates in at least five key races - including Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Texas - are pledging to curtail their states' use of standardized tests to evaluate student and school performance and as accountability instruments. Most adamant is Florida's Bill McBride, who vows to eliminate Jeb Bush's test-based accountability system - known as the "A+ plan" - if elected. The candidates' hostility to high-stakes testing suggests that, if any of them is elected, some direct challenges to the No Child Left Behind Act may follow. See "Campaigns take aim at schools' high-stakes tests," by Ronald Brownstein, Los Angeles Times, October 27, 2002. For a closer look at Bush's record, see "Under 'A+ plan,' scores up, but salaries still low," by Beth Reinhard, The Miami Herald, October 29, 2002

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Testing backlash in key gubernatorial races

What's wrong with education research?

October 31, 2002

This incisive essay by E.D. Hirsch appears in the October-November 2002 issue of the Hoover Institution's Policy Review. In 18 short pages (10 via the web), he elucidates why so much education research doesn't qualify as decent science, depicts the "fundamental shortcoming" in what educators call "qualitative research," and suggests that education policy and practice should pay more heed to general findings of lab-style cognitive science, of which he identifies half a dozen key principles. Along the way, Hirsch also takes a swipe at the contemporary push for "random assignment" experimentation in education. It may yield confidence that a particular intervention caused an observed change, he says, but "we cannot necessarily be confident that the observed effect size will be repeated in new circumstances." "Classroom Research and Cargo Cults," by E.D. Hirsch, Policy Review, October-November 2002

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What's wrong with education research?

Dollars and Sense: The Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools

Terry Ryan / October 31, 2002

Barbara Kent Lawrence, Steve Bingler, et. al.
2002

Written by nine scholars and sponsored by Concordia LLC, the Rural School and Community Trust and the Gates-supported KnowledgeWorks Foundation, this report recites the familiar arguments in favor of small schools: children attending them are less likely to cause trouble and to drop out. They're more apt to participate in extra-curricular activities, to join in class discussions, to have parents involved in the school, to go on to college, etc. What's new here is the authors' assertion that building small schools is not cost-prohibitive, indeed that it's "fiscally responsible" to spend tax dollars on small school facilities. That may be true. But what's missing here, as in most odes to smallness in schooling, is a cogent discussion of what else is needed for schools to succeed: high standards, a terrific curriculum, quality leadership, knowledgeable teachers, strong assessment and accountability, and data-driven decision-making. Unfortunately, the education world has its share of schools that are small but bad. They be found in the traditional public sector and also among charter and private schools. Hence serious reformers must consider a whole range of factors, not just school size. This report fails that test. But you can find it at http://www.ruraledu.org/keep_learning.cfm?record_no=614.

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Dollars and Sense: The Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools

Education Reform 2002: A Voter's Guide

Katherine Somerville / October 31, 2002

Center for Education Reform
October 2002

The Center for Education Reform (CER) has issued a timely guide to next week's gubernatorial and state education chief races, intended to assist voters in deciphering the candidates' claims and accusations on the subject of education. Concise and reader-friendly, it's based on a recent CER survey that queried candidates about charter schools, school choice, testing, and to a lesser degree, teacher quality, curriculum, and class size. Party affiliation turns out to be a fairly good predictor of their survey responses; just three Republican gubernatorial candidates openly oppose school choice, while only a single Democrat favors charter schools. CER found the results "less than encouraging." Too many platforms stress popular measures like increased expenditures and smaller classes while ignoring reform strategies like charter schools and testing. Though astute education watchers won't find much new information about races in their own backyard, the report provides a handy pre-election overview of the national scene. See http://www.edreform.org/pubs/votersguide.pdf. Education Week has also published a helpful candidate comparison; see "Gubernatorial Candidates and Their Education Platforms for 2002," October 23, 2002, http://www.edweek.org/ew/vol-22/08govsbox.htm.

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Education Reform 2002: A Voter's Guide

Evaluating Success: KIPP Educational Program Evaluation

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 31, 2002

Harold Doran and Darrel Drury, Education Performance Network, New American Schools
October 2002

Harold Doran and Darrel Drury of New American Schools' Education Performance Network conducted this evaluation of three new KIPP ("Knowledge Is Power Program") charter schools during their first year of operation (2001-2). The question was whether they were replicating the strong student achievement gains of the two flagship KIPP schools in New York City and Houston. Though we know from other research that many new charters flail during their maiden year and don't produce big gains in pupil learning, this study concludes that "students' test scores improved at impressive rates after their enrollment in the KIPP schools. Of critical importance, these gains were reflected across demographic subgroups and exceeded those achieved by these same students in the year prior to their enrollment." All three schools began (in D.C., North Carolina and Texas) with 5th grades only. The Washington, D.C. school yielded math and reading test score gains exceeding those of any other public school in town; the North Carolina school found 93% of its students passing the state end-of-year reading test, compared with 57% of those youngsters the previous year; and the new Houston KIPP school had a higher proportion of its pupils pass the 5th grade TAAS math and reading tests than did the Houston school system as a whole. While we oughtn't overstate the significance of one-year, one-grade gains in 3 schools, this report surely tends to

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Evaluating Success: KIPP Educational Program Evaluation

From Sanctions to Solutions: Meeting the Needs of Low-Performing Schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 31, 2002

National Association of State Boards of Education
October 2002

The enactment of No Child Left Behind has heightened everybody's interest in what to do about failing schools, of which the Department of Education said in July there were 8652. But this report by a study group of the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) is less helpful than one hoped for. It turns out be very much "inside the box," doing a decent job of describing important elements of high-performing schools (and the ingredients of a "state policy environment" that's apt to foster more such), but charting no bold course for transforming those schools that do a lousy job. Sure, there is guidance by inference: if a state or district were to "reconstitute" a faltering school, the new education institution that rises from the ashes of the old one might benefit from this 64-page report. But similar guidance has been available for two decades under the heading of "effective schools" research. The issue remains not describing what seems to make some schools effective; it is how - in this lifetime - to do something about the thousands that aren't. You can get a copy for $14.00 plus $4.50 shipping by calling 703-684-4000. (The report is not available online.)

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From Sanctions to Solutions: Meeting the Needs of Low-Performing Schools

Greater Expectations

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 31, 2002

Association of American Colleges and Universities
October 2002

Subtitled "a new vision for learning as a nation goes to college," this report from the Association of American Colleges and Universities contains a generous portion of bad advice for American higher education. Though aimed at an important, worrisome target - why do so many matriculants not make it through college? - it offers a misguided agenda for postsecondary reform that would do considerable damage to traditional standards and concepts of liberal learning. It pushes way too hard for colleges to emphasize relevance, group-work, diversity as an end in itself, globalism, premature "practicality" (e.g. "orienteering" instead of geography), a weird mix of non-judgmentalism and moralizing, and "respect for&intuition and feeling, as well as thinking." Ugh. The blue ribbon panel that produced this dog's breakfast (chaired by National Science Foundation education chief Judith Ramaley) does, however, have two good ideas: greater alignment of high school exit and college entrance expectations, and more emphasis on assessment of student learning while in college. Forget the rest. Should you want one, you can get a copy at http://www.greaterexpectations.org/pdf/GEX.FINAL.pdf.

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Greater Expectations

Rising to the Challenge: The Effect of School Choice on Public Schools in Milwaukee and San Antonio

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / October 31, 2002

Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster, Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute
October 2002

The Manhattan Institute recently published this short "civic bulletin" by Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster. Based on data from two cities, it finds that "public schools exposed to competition showed more improvement in student test scores than other public schools." In Milwaukee, where public elementary schools faced competition from both charter schools and vouchers, "only private competition was found to cause improvements." You can obtain a copy at: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cb_27.htm. To read the op-ed version, also by Greene and Forster, see "Choice proves beneficial for public schools, too," Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, October 17, 2002, http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_mjs-choice_proves.htm.

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Rising to the Challenge: The Effect of School Choice on Public Schools in Milwaukee and San Antonio