Who Says It's a Good School?

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / January 30, 2002

Important education insights sometimes arise from developments in other fields.

This happened to me twice in recent weeks. Both episodes bear on results-based accountability, how it works, what can go awry-and what's wrong with the usual substitutes.

First, a new study of hospital accreditation looked into whether it makes any difference for the quality of patient care. Note that 95% of U.S. hospital beds are in health care institutions accredited by the Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health looked to see whether such accreditation is a good predictor of the safety and quality of health care, according to a January 14 Wall Street Journal article. (The study itself-a technically sophisticated bit of data analysis-appears in the winter 2001 issue of the journal Quality Management in Health Care.) After studying 700 hospitals, they found "that even hospitals with higher-than-average rates of deaths and complications receive favorable scores" from the Joint Commission. No doubt that's related to the fact that the "commission almost exclusively relies on surveying a hospital's structure and processes to determine whether to accredit a hospital, and doesn't give any weight to performance measures such as the number of deaths or unexpected complications or the ability to adapt to the latest treatments." In other words, the accreditors look at inputs, programs and activities, not results.

Predictably, the Joint Commission fought back, insisting-watch the nuanced words-"that accreditation assures patients that

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Who Says It's a Good School?

Is the GED equivalent to a high school diploma?

January 30, 2002

In an earlier report and Gadfly editorial-available at http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=75#1062-the Manhattan Institute's Jay Greene explained that official high school graduation rates published by the federal government understate the problem of dropouts because they treat the General Education Development (GED) credential as the equivalent of a standard high school diploma. But is the GED a good substitute for the real thing? In an article in City Journal, Greene notes that earning a GED brings few of the benefits of earning a high school diploma-economists have found the life outcomes of GED-holders to be no better than those of high school dropouts-and proceeds to explore why that might be. One reason is that passing the GED requires very little academic knowledge; the average GED recipient passes the test after just 30 hours of class time and study. Preparing for the GED also requires none of the social discipline that sticking it out in high school demands. Greene argues that treating the GED as the equivalent of a high school diploma not only distorts our dropout statistics, it may even contribute to the problem; the existence of an easier route to a credential may actually encourage students to drop out. Greene cites a study by the Urban Institute's Duncan Chaplin that found that the easier a state makes it to get a GED, the higher the dropout rate. To eliminate this problem, Greene suggests that we make the GED harder and raise the

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Is the GED equivalent to a high school diploma?

Preschool as the next frontier for Bush and Kennedy

January 30, 2002

As they flew back to Washington earlier this month after celebrating their joint education bill, the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush and Senator Edward M. Kennedy held an extended conversation about the need to boost early childhood education, and that conversation may soon lead to legislation, according to reporter Anne Kornblut of The Boston Globe. Last week, First Lady Laura Bush appeared as a star witness on early childhood education at a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which Kennedy chairs. Though many Democrats may not be thrilled about giving Bush another chance to claim bipartisanship, the President is expected to announce the details of a new proposal for early learning in the coming weeks. Improving early childhood education is expected to have payoffs for both regular education and special education; a report released by the National Research Council earlier this month urges the government to increase its emphasis on early childhood education as a way of reducing the number of minorities in special education, among other things. The report, "Minority Students In Special and Gifted Education," recommends that states adopt a screening and intervention strategy for children at risk of developing reading problems and that the federal government support this. The mixed quality of preschool experienced by children today was brought home by a study published by the Massachusetts Department of Education last week which found that 65 percent of preschools and day-care

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Preschool as the next frontier for Bush and Kennedy

2001 Education Freedom Index

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / January 30, 2002

Jay P. Greene, Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute
January 2002

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Jay P. Greene has just released the second edition of his state-by-state "freedom index." It ranks the states according to their levels of "education freedom" as measured by the availability of four kinds of education choices for families: charter schools, subsidized private schools, home-schooling and public-school choice. He then relates the extent of a state's educational freedom to its student achievement (as measured on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, using states' 8th grade math scores in 2000). While Greene does not prove (or claim to prove) that more educational freedom boosts academic achievement, he shows a "strong observable relationship" between them. He also examines the strength of a state's accountability system (using publicly available data) and relates it to academic achievement in a way that controls for prior test scores. As for education freedom itself, Greene finds that Arizona has the most (2.94 on his index), followed by New Jersey, Delaware, Florida and Minnesota. Hawaii has the least (0.88), with Utah, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Maryland just ahead of it. Vermont and Ohio are smack in the middle. You can obtain this 14-page report from the Manhattan Institute's Center for Civic Innovation at http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_24.htm.

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2001 Education Freedom Index

Beyond Brick and Mortar: Cyber Charters Revolutionizing Education

Terry Ryan / January 30, 2002

Neal McCluskey, Center for Education Reform
January 2002

For historians of education, 1991 will stand out as the year the world of education was turned upside down. As is often the case with revolutions, it is only through the perspective of time that we can really appreciate just how dramatic these happenings really were. In 1991, computer programmers at the University of Minnesota came up with the Internet protocol "gopher," and thus were born the ubiquitous Internet and World Wide Web that are now part of our daily lives. That same year, the Minnesota State Legislature passed the country's first charter school law. A decade later, we can see that these seemingly disconnected events have spawned an educational movement that has the power to deliver high quality instructional services to all learners regardless of time, place, and personal background. Education is no longer synonymous with the neighborhood school. In his short report "Beyond Brick and Mortar," Neal McCluskey, a policy analyst for the Center for Education Reform, tracks this history and what it means for today's students, parents, and the education establishment. He notes that there are now 30 "cyber charter schools" operating in 12 states. Those who have benefited most from these on-line schools are home-schoolers and children unable to attend traditional schools because of physical or emotional disabilities. Those who feel most threatened by them are the people who run school districts made up of buildings, buses, teachers and administrators.

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Beyond Brick and Mortar: Cyber Charters Revolutionizing Education

Student Academic Achievement in Charter Schools: What We Know and Why We Know So Little

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / January 30, 2002

Gary Miron and Christopher Nelson, National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
December 2001

The National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, continues to churn out "occasional papers" of varying quality and significance. This one is #41 in the series and was prepared by Gary Miron and Christopher Nelson of Western Michigan University's Evaluation Center. It seeks to compile extant data on student achievement in charter schools-a worthy project if an inconclusive paper, due largely to the spottiness of available data. In 33 pages, they do a decent job of identifying "independent" studies of student achievement in charter schools in those states where such studies have been conducted in methodologically defensible ways (just 8 states and a total of 18 studies). The meta-analysis of those studies leads them to conclude that charters currently present a "mixed or very slightly positive picture" with respect to pupil achievement. Mostly, though, they lament the paucity of decent data and sound studies. They provide some interesting theories about why so little is known and end up with a strong-and nearly irrefutable-plea for more research to be done. This is a good paper to know about, if only to answer the many people who innocently ask "Well, are charter schools working?" Judged by the single criterion of student achievement gains, the answer seems to be "The news is slightly positive but basically inconclusive for

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Student Academic Achievement in Charter Schools: What We Know and Why We Know So Little

Transforming Public Schools: The Houston Annenberg Challenge Research and Evaluation Study, Year Two Summary Report

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / January 30, 2002

Pedro Reyes and Joy C. Phillips, University of Texas at Austin
August 2001

A lot is going on in Houston by way of school reform and there's plenty of interest in whether various initiatives are succeeding. A number of reform efforts are loosely clustered in the Houston Annenberg Challenge, which has been underway since 1997 with substantial ($60 million) five-year funding from Annenberg and local matchers. 88 schools are being directly supported in Houston and five smaller nearby districts. A number of other ventures (e.g. professional development, institutes for teachers) are also being underwritten by the Annenberg Challenge, and some of these have already grown into larger initiatives with support from elsewhere. To its credit, the Houston Annenberg program invited a research team led by the University of Texas's Pedro Reyes to conduct a "formative" evaluation. This report-dated August 2001, issued in December-is called the "year two summary report" but in fact it reviews the Houston Annenberg program through its 4th year (2000-2001). The researchers claim to have found laudable progress, both the soft kind (e.g. teacher satisfaction and parent involvement) and measurable test-score growth by Annenberg-funded schools. The press release says "Our Year Two research finds that Annenberg-funded schools have made progress-in the case of Beacon schools quite considerable progress-raising achievement levels for their students" and "Minority student are making even bigger gains." ("Beacon" schools are one of three subsets of participating schools.) The problem is this: the Annenberg schools were

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Transforming Public Schools: The Houston Annenberg Challenge Research and Evaluation Study, Year Two Summary Report

Voting on Vouchers: A Socio-Political Analysis of California Proposition 38, Fall 2000

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / January 30, 2002

James Catterall and Richard Chapleau, National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
December 2001

In yet another "occasional paper" (#42) from the Teachers College center on education privatization, UCLA professor James Catterall and Richard Chapleau of Chapman University analyze voting patterns in the celebrated California voucher referendum of November 2000. Everybody knows that the measure was thrashed. The authors here try to examine who voted for and against it and why. Note, though, that their analysis is limited to Los Angeles County (about 28 percent of the state population), where Proposition 38 had even less support than statewide (26.9 percent of those voting versus 29.4 percent). Los Angeles also has distinctive demographics and its own raft of education problems (and reform initiatives). The authors do not try to make it representative of California as a whole. Neither should readers of this paper. The (highly technical) analysis also suffers from a number of data limitations and analytic problems. The findings, therefore, should probably just be seen as suggestive. Still, some of them are interesting, if rather predictable. It appears that relatively wealthier voters were more apt to favor vouchers and lower income voters were likelier to oppose them. Republicans were also more pro-voucher than Democrats. Those with children already in private schools were more pro-voucher than those with kids in public schools. Nobody, it seems, had much information about what vouchers are. So people were voting-as no

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Voting on Vouchers: A Socio-Political Analysis of California Proposition 38, Fall 2000