Archaic architecture, creaky machinery

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / August 26, 2004

When Uncle Sam started poking into K-12 education in the 1950s and 60s, he adopted a delivery system that made sense at the time.

In our federalist structure, with rare exceptions, education is a state responsibility and, when it comes to public education, the states (but for Hawaii) have delegated its operation to local school systems. Thus long before there was a U.S. Department of Education, back when the Department of Health, Education and Welfare unit known as the U.S. Office of Education was predominantly concerned with statistics, civil rights, and research, there were already state education agencies (SEAs) and local education agencies (LEAs) that bore responsibility for running schools, hiring teachers, selecting curricula, raising and spending most of the money, etc.

Because most of the big new federal K-12 education programs of the day (e.g. National Defense Education Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Act) amounted to financial subsidies for districts and states, it made sense to administer them through that same hierarchy. Washington would give the money (and rules for spending it) to the SEAs, which would keep some of it and give the rest to the LEAs, which would keep some and pass along the rest (with more rules) to eligible schools, kids, etc.

As a money-distribution system, this was logical, even inevitable. It was how state and local dollars flowed. It would have been nuts to create another mechanism for federal dollars. And while SEAs and LEAs weren't always diligent

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Archaic architecture, creaky machinery

Believing impossible things about education

August 26, 2004

The Phi Delta Kappan and the pollsters at Gallup this week unveiled their 36th annual survey of public attitudes toward schooling. The yearly late-August release of this poll is treated as an event of some importance to education writers across the country, who are sure to get a few weeks of chin-stroking and editorializing out of its data. Fordham and others take this poll to task each year for the way it asks questions about vouchers (click here), which generally poll in the 40-45 percent approval range. Ask the question in other ways, though, and support for vouchers rises - a point made this year by a competing poll by the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation. We won't rehash our objections to question bias in the PDK/Gallup poll here, except to note that we are obliged to register them once again.

In general, though, the PDK/Gallup poll probably does a decent job of mirroring public attitudes toward education. That assertion may surprise some readers, since these survey responses are often blurry and even contradictory. For example:

•  Seventy-three percent of the public believes that it is "not possible to accurately judge a student's proficiency in English and math on the basis of a single test," but 51 percent supports high-stakes graduation tests and a strong plurality (40 percent) think there's just about

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  Believing impossible things about education

  Win with Winn!

  August 26, 2004

  The Florida Board of Education made a super choice in naming John Winn the new state commissioner. A former teacher and top aide to outgoing Commissioner Jim Horne, Winn was instrumental in crafting Florida's marquee school accountability measures, including the A+ Plan and the FCAT. Now he'll need all of his plentiful savvy and good humor to defend these reforms against critics and weed out the handful of hucksters who are exploiting Florida's voucher and charter systems for personal gain. He's up to it and we wish him well.

  "Schools chief named swiftly," by Ron Matus, St. Petersburg Times, August 18, 2004

  "Move forward," Orlando Sentinel, August 25, 2004 (registration required)

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  Win with Winn!

  Edison and KIPP get it right

  August 26, 2004

  In case you were swept up in last week's anti-charter uproar, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post help provide some balance to the debate by highlighting the achievements of two charter school success stories - Edison Schools and the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP). According to the Journal, since the state takeover of the Philadelphia School District two years ago, the district has posted "double-digit gains in reading and math proficiency, [and] a tripling of the number of schools meeting federal No Child Left Behind standards." And, within those results, the gains "posted by the newer models of schools - for-profits, nonprofits, university-run, and so on - are particularly impressive." Leading the pack of institutions running six or more schools, Edison schools boasted "the biggest increase in the percentage of students scoring proficient or above and the biggest decrease in the percentage scoring 'below basic.'" In the Post, education columnist Jay Mathews highlights the success that KIPP has had in boosting academic achievement for students in some of the nation's most beleaguered districts. According to Mathews' report, KIPP founders Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg have created charter schools that are a model "that all other attempts to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students must measure themselves against."

  "School of hard choices," by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, August 24, 2004

  "Edison discovery,"

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  Edison and KIPP get it right

  Slugging back on charters

  August 26, 2004

  Charter supporters rushed to the barricades after last week's AFT-coordinated blast in the New York Times. Yesterday, 31 policy types and number crunchers ran a full-page ad in the Times rebutting some of the claims made in Diana Jean Schemo's original article. Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency has also pointed out some potential silver linings for education reformers in the AFT report (see "No August break in charter-land" for more). According to Antonucci, "The AFT's single-minded effort to rid us of charter schools also serves to effectively undermine every argument teachers' unions have made - and are still making - for the poor performance of regular public schools." To wit, judging schools by a single standardized test is now OK; enrolling large numbers of minority students, having inexperienced teachers, high teacher turnover, poor teacher compensation, and low funding are all no excuse for poor performance. So saith the teachers' union itself. House Education and the Workforce Committee chair John Boehner (R-OH) points out in National Review Online that the real victims of the AFT-led and Times-supported attack on charter schools, if it is successful, "are likely to be our nation's most disadvantaged minority children." And Samuel Freedman, the superb pinch-hitting education columnist for the Times, points out that "it's risky to draw any conclusions too sweeping and too soon about a phenomenon that

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  Slugging back on charters

  A for effort, regardless of performance

  August 26, 2004

  The South Carolina State reported last week that Milwood Motley and Larry Williams, two professors at Benedict College, were fired in June for not adhering to the university's mandatory grade inflation policy. That policy requires professors to calculate "freshman grades based on a 60-40 formula, with effort counting for 60 percent and academics counting for 40 percent. By sophomore year, the formula would be 50-50; [and] by junior year, students would be judged strictly on academic performance." Motley was apparently uncomfortable with the policy from the day he started teaching at Benedict five years ago, but reached a breaking point when he would have been forced to award a C to "a student whose highest exam score was less than 40 percent." At that point, Motley decided to award grades for the semester based on academic performance, and when told to go back and recalculate the grades, "just refused to do it." A faculty grievance committee voted 4-3 to reinstate him but was overruled by college president David Swinton. Defending the policy, Swinton argued that students "have to get an A in effort to guarantee that if they fail the subject matter, they can get the minimum passing grade. . . . I don't think that's a bad thing."

  
  

  "2 Benedict professors fired over grade policy," by Carolyn Click, The State, August 20, 2004

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  A for effort, regardless of performance

  Florida Charter Schools: 2002-2003 Annual Accountability Report

  Eric Osberg / August 26, 2004

  Florida Department of EducationAugust 2004

  Are charter schools doing as well as their traditional district counterparts? The New York Times claimed to answer that question last week, in its gleeful promotion of a slipshod AFT study purporting to show low test scores at charters. But that was not the last word, as innumerable critics quickly noticed that the Times viewed only a snapshot of data (see "Slugging back on charters," above), which is no substitute for a value-added analysis measuring changes over time. Thankfully, the Florida Department of Education understands this key point and has just come out with a useful appraisal of its state's charters. These results are encouraging: charters posted greater gains in reading and math scores than regular district schools. The report breaks down the data into five subgroups (African American, Hispanic, poor, disabled and gifted students) and considers four tests. Across these twenty categories the district schools did not perform better than charters in a single one; in eleven, there was no difference, and in nine the charters did better. Charters also did a better job of achieving Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB, and 69 percent of Florida parents gave their charter school a grade of A+ or A (compared to 29 percent of public school parents nationwide; there's no comparable data for Florida public schools alone). But this report also recognizes that charters have considerably more work to do. Their absolute

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  Florida Charter Schools: 2002-2003 Annual Accountability Report

  State High School Exit Exams: A Maturing Reform

  Chester E. Finn, Jr. / August 26, 2004

  Center on Education PolicyAugust 2004

  This is the third annual report on high-school exit exams from the Center on Education Policy, Jack Jennings's Washington-based policy shop. (For Gadfly coverage of the two earlier editions, click here and here.) This reform strategy is spreading; 25 states will soon have such tests and 70 percent of U.S. high-school students will be affected by them. This 257-page report is a solid source of factual information, including profiles of individual states. It covers most of the relevant policy concerns and seems fair-minded in drawing conclusions where they can be drawn from extant data and available research - and saying where they're not. (E.g., "The evidence on the effects of exit exams is mixed and tentative. . . . The academic community is still divided on the issue of whether exit exams cause more students to drop out of high school.") It sets off no obvious alarm bells, which is probably why it didn't attract much attention. You can find it online here.

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  State High School Exit Exams: A Maturing Reform

  Getting the Mission Right in the Middle Grades

  August 26, 2004

  Southern Regional Education Board2004

  This is another fine report from the SREB's "Challenge to Lead" series. (Click here for our evaluation of an earlier report on teacher quality.) It sets out two imperatives for middle school educators and policy makers - producing high achievement with no gaps, and giving students a rigorous curriculum that prepares them for high school - and then supplies recommendations on how to further these goals. There are many helpful charts illustrating Southern states' scores, both on their own standards assessments and on NAEP. The authors note that state standards vary wildly in quality and are not always aligned with NAEP. (In Georgia, for example, 81 percent of 8th graders ostensibly met or exceeded state standards in reading in 2003, but only 69 percent were at or above NAEP's "Basic" level.) States must have effective, rigorous standards upon which to base instruction and testing, or statewide assessment tests will give little indication of their actual progress. Admirable emphasis is also placed on reforming middle schools so they actually prepare students for high school. (The middle school years are often seen as a time when students are too caught up in hormonal and social change to learn much; as a result, many middle schoolers don't learn that much.) The authors provide guidance for setting matters right, including Algebra I for all 8th and 9th graders. A brief yet rewarding read; you can find it

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  Getting the Mission Right in the Middle Grades