U.S. history standards flunk

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / September 25, 2003

A state's academic standards are the recipes from which its education system cooks. A gifted chef may produce tasty dishes without great cookbooks, but most people's food isn't apt to be much better than its recipes. In K-12 education, state standards drive the curriculum, the assessment and accountability systems, the selection of textbooks, training and certification of teachers, and much more. That's why we at Fordham have kept harping on them over the years, periodically evaluating them and then, as states revise them, re-appraising them.

This week we released our first - to our knowledge, America's first - evaluation of state standards for U.S. history. In the post-9/11 world, it's more important than ever for young Americans to learn their nation's past, the principles on which it was founded, the workings of its government, the origins of our freedoms, and how we've responded to past threats from abroad.

Standards alone cannot assure that this will happen. A state may have superb standards yet its children end up learning little. Conversely, a child blessed with a gifted and knowledgeable teacher, or fortunate enough to be enrolled in a terrific school, may end up knowing lots of U.S. history even though his state has dreadful standards. Such is the complexity and

» Continued

U.S. history standards flunk

Broad bucks to Long Beach

September 25, 2003

The Long Beach (CA) Unified School District has received this year's $500,000 Broad Prize for Urban Education, the nation's largest education prize. This prize recognizes urban school systems that have made the greatest strides in shrinking the achievement gaps among ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Long Beach officials estimate that the award money will support college scholarships for 50 graduating seniors. At the announcement, philanthropist Eli Broad also announced a $4 million grant for New York City's Leadership Academy to recruit and train principals from non-traditional backgrounds. Broad, recently profiled in Forbes for his far-flung and imaginative education reform efforts, issued a challenge to New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein to become a finalist for the prize in coming years - and handed him an oversized $500,000 check dated September 200?. The Broad Prize, now in its second year, was first awarded to the Houston Independent School District, which has since come under fire for unreliable dropout data but which is effectively defended by prize panelists and other experts in a recent Education Week  article.

"L.B.'s a real winner!" by Jason Gewirtz, Long Beach Press Telegram, September 23, 2003

"Schools get $4 million to recruit principals," by Elissa Gootman, New York Times, September 23, 2003

"Educating Eli," by Neil Weinberg, Forbes, October 6, 2003

"Despite disputed data, Houston backers say

» Continued

Broad bucks to Long Beach

Flexing some union muscle. . .

September 25, 2003

There's nothing like a little old-fashioned blackmail. . . . The Wall Street Journal reports that education unions are increasingly turning to powerful allies in their fight against education privatization and outsourcing: public employee retirement funds and their billions of investment dollars. In one case, the Journal says, protests from government employee and teachers unions prompted the $145 billion Calpers system (the retirement fund for California public employees) to pressure a major backer of Chris Whittle's Edison Schools to stop investing in firms that take over troubled public schools. Calpers officials, after a pitch from state unions, told investor Jeffrey Leeds that they would not invest in a $500 million fund that his firm, Leeds Weld & Co., is launching, unless he promised to cease and desist from investing in firms like Edison. Leeds agreed. But the retirement funds aren't done with Whittle yet: now they're vowing to block the pending sale of Edison to Liberty Partners, Inc., which manages the $94 billion Florida state retirement system. It's amusing to watch unions act like persnickety capitalists, but of course what this is really about is hardball politics by another name.

"Calpers flexes muscle against privatizing jobs," by Charles Forelle and Daniel Golden, Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2003  (subscription required)

» Continued

Flexing some union muscle. . .

. . . .And keeping the unions honest

September 25, 2003

A fascinating Education Week profile features Mike Antonucci, author of the Education Intelligence Agency's invaluable weekly Communique on doings within the teacher unions (http://members.aol.com/educationintel/communique.htm). Antonucci has become the Matt Drudge of the education world the old-fashioned way, by getting scoops no one else has. (He was way ahead of the pack, for example, on the biggest union story in years, the embezzlement scandal at the Miami-Dade AFT affiliate). Some of the union members asked to comment on Antonucci's enterprise are predictably disdainful - but the rest of the education world relies on it for timely and (usually) accurate information about organizations that make up in self-interest what they lack in transparency.

"SNOOP!" by Bess Keller, Education Week, September 24, 2003

» Continued

. . . .And keeping the unions honest

Bad news for LA

September 25, 2003

In May, Gadfly reported that the Los Angeles teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, had managed to unseat several reform-minded members to win back the majority of the Los Angeles Unified School District School Board [see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=24#103]. As we anticipated, this reversal of fortune has been bad news for education reformers, in particular for local charter school operators. The current board, with its union-backed majority, has expressed "misgivings about the long-term impacts of the charter movement on the nation's second largest school district" and has yet to approve a single additional charter application, though at least 17 are in its pipeline. Worse, the system keeps skimming off the charters' budgets to help make up for its own fiscal shortfall. Remarks board member Jon Lauritzen, "When the state was wealthy, you could afford to cut a charter loose and let them do their thing. Now when everybody is cutting their budget, it's hard to tell charters they have full right." In fact, charters generally get less per-pupil funding than traditional public schools, have far lower administrative and operating costs, and in LA actually give back to the district 37 percent of their special education budget to cover things like student transportation. Case in point: LAUSD asked the Granada Hills charter school to contract for information technology support with the district at a price tag north of $100,000. Granada Hills, however, was able to find a private group to provide the

» Continued

Bad news for LA

No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning

September 25, 2003

Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, Simon and Schuster
October 2003

This important new book by the Thernstroms, who also wrote America in Black and White, will be widely noted and much discussed in education circles in the months ahead. The authors judge the achievement gap to be not only "an American tragedy and national emergency," but also "the central civil rights issue of our time." According to NAEP data, there now exists a four-year gap between whites/Asians and blacks/Hispanics. It is already visible when children first enter school and widens as they progress through K-12 education. It is apparent even in more affluent communities, such as Shaker Heights outside of Cleveland, where black academic achievement is good - but still lags behind. These gaps depress the future earnings potential of minority students, limit their ability to matriculate to college and succeed there, contribute to high rates of social dysfunction and help to create a persistent underclass.

A number of factors are at work, including the lingering effects of racism, poor childhood nutrition and prenatal care, single parenthood, crime, etc. Ill-conceived and ineffective government programs, some of them designed to shrink the gap, are also to blame. But the primary factor holding back black and Hispanic academic achievement - and here we approach

» Continued

No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning

Education for Democracy

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / September 25, 2003

Elizabeth McPike et al., Albert Shanker Institute
September 2003

The Albert Shanker Institute is the source of this astute and forceful manifesto on how and why to prepare young Americans (and others) to be effective, committed citizens of a democracy. It updates the 1987 "Education for Democracy: A Statement of Principles," which was jointly developed by the American Federation of Teachers, Freedom House, and our own organizational ancestor, the Educational Excellence Network. Lots of prominent folks have signed the new manifesto, which effectively decimates moral relativism and feel-good history and calls for a strong, democracy-centered curriculum in history, civics, and other key fields. Educators, we hope, will have difficulty ignoring it. And we welcome the kinship between this eloquent statement - characteristic of the Shanker Institute's work in this field and the AFT's long record of good sense in matters curricular - and our own recent efforts to reclaim the social studies. (See http://www.edexcellence.net/template/page.cfm?id=252.) You can find the report at http://www.shankerinstitute.org/Downloads/EfD-draft.pdf.

» Continued

Education for Democracy

Segregation in Neighborhoods and Schools: Impacts on Minority Children in the Boston Region

Eric Osberg / September 25, 2003

John R. Logan, Deirdre Oakley and Jacob Stowell, Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research, Harvard University
September 1, 2003

This short, uninspired, and wholly predictable paper presents a variety of data on the demographics of Boston and its surrounding suburbs, all of which show that Boston is segregated: blacks live in the city and whites live in the suburbs. As a result, Boston-area public schools are segregated and (the paper presumes) are much worse in the city than in the suburbs. Of course, Boston mirrors many other metropolitan areas in this respect, though its segregation is sharper than most. This is a familiar problem and one with no easy solutions (as the tragic history of Boston busing and backlash readily attests). However, the complexity of the issue is no excuse for this paper's embarrassingly weak "conclusions and policy implications," which simply restate the problem and suggest that "the only way that desegregation plans could substantially reduce the separate and unequal character of public education is if they were applied region-wide." This has long been the single note sung by the Harvard Civil Rights Project but it starts and ends with the false premise that state-controlled desegregation plans are the solution. A better idea is to make district boundaries permeable and allow families to choose among all public schools. Minnesota tried this and found that, in the worst districts, housing prices rose (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=14#298); in other words, choice

» Continued

Segregation in Neighborhoods and Schools: Impacts on Minority Children in the Boston Region

The Political Dynamics of School Choice

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / September 25, 2003

Lance D. Fusarelli, Palgrave Macmillan Inc. 2003

The author is a young professor of education policy at Fordham University (no connection). Though this short, heavily footnoted book reads like a doctoral dissertation, it's a useful review of the politics of school choice (both vouchers and charters), viewed through multiple lenses and with no particularly axe to grind. His conclusion: "If we are witnessing a revolution, it is a slow-moving, uneven revolution whose outcome is very much in doubt." The ISBN is 140396047X. If interested, you can learn more by surfing to http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalogue/index.asp?isbn=0312237537.

» Continued

The Political Dynamics of School Choice