All the cool kids are doing it&

March 17, 2005

The Palm Beach Post reports that Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Education Commissioner John Winn are changing their tune on NCLB requirements. Despite promises to the contrary, the state recently met "informally" with U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to discuss lowering their adequate yearly progress benchmarks. Winn noted that changes are needed because Florida "has such a high number of schools (77 percent) not making adequate yearly progress." Their struggles are mainly a result of bravely bucking national trends and setting high interim goals. Most other states set miniscule benchmarks now, delaying major achievement gains until closer to 2014 (see "Adequate Yearly Progress or Balloon Mortgage?" for more). Watching so many other states handily meet their own weak benchmarks, the Sunshine State is, reasonably, beginning to see merit in the path of least resistance. We can't blame them for the temptation, but we hope they'll reconsider and stay the course. If they do, when the going gets tough for the states with "balloon payments" of progress to make, Florida will be laughing last.

"Florida may lower student achievement standards," by Nirvi Shah and Cynthia Kopkowski, Palm Beach Post, March 16, 2005

"Florida: Getting it all together?" by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Education Gadfly, June 17, 2004

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All the cool kids are doing it&

Spelling bee returns!

March 17, 2005

Last month we reported that a Rhode Island school district had cancelled its annual spelling bee on the dubious grounds that it violated NCLB. Well, we're happy to report that the district bowed to public pressure and held the competition, but not without some changes. Still terrified about what the bee would do to students' self esteem (as the bee, of course, is about "some kids being winners, some kids being losers"), the district awarded every student a certificate of participation. Did Johnny spell apple with a Q? No problem - everyone is a winner! Sarah McGill correctly spelled "vegetarian" to advance to the state finals. No word yet on how traumatized her peers are after their defeat.

"Spelling bees gain popularity nationwide," by Brooke Donald, Associated Press, March 15, 2005

"The spirit of competition," by Elizabeth Gudrais, The Providence Journal, February 17, 2005

"Cancelled spelling bee reinstated," World Net Daily, February 2, 2005

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Spelling bee returns!

The Business of Education Improvement: Raising LEA Performance Through Competition

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / March 17, 2005

CBI
March 2005

From England's CBI, a lobbying organization that terms itself the "voice of business," comes this 40-page look at some UK efforts to turn around faltering local education agencies (LEAs) via private-sector interventions. From 1999-2001, Britain's labor government "outsourced" various functions in nine ultra-low-performing LEAs to private sector partners - and opted not to do so with eleven other such LEAs. This analysis compares the performance of the two groups of LEAs and finds that the privately-outsourced districts outperformed the others and improved more than the national average. Though the specific interventions varied (they are described in an appendix), their overall success is attributed to six factors, such as improved governance, the "discipline of contracting," and "new leadership and management." England has not, however, sustained this "market" of private sector intervenors, mostly because of political objections. The CBI, not surprisingly, recommends that government focus on ensuring a "greater diversity of supply in the provision of education support services and frontline schooling." Though international parallels have their limits, this one is interesting in light of NCLB's push for states to intervene in underperforming Title I districts. It may suggest some new (and doubtless contentious) ways of doing so. You can find the report online here and a press release here.

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The Business of Education Improvement: Raising LEA Performance Through Competition

Wingspread Journal: The Isolated Teacher

March 17, 2005

The Johnson Foundation
Education 2005

The new Wingspread Journal has a series of articles that focus on improving teacher quality. One interesting case study review, "What We Can Learn from the Chinese," compares American and Chinese fifth-grade classrooms. Compared to American teachers, the Chinese sample school's teachers were paid substantially less, had class sizes more than twice that of American classrooms, and were often only high school graduates - yet their students performed at much higher levels than American students. Why? The authors attribute it to teacher training and quality. Chinese teachers are experts in their core subject (often performing research or collaborating with university scholars) and spend only one to two hours a day teaching it. More time is then spent correcting homework and providing feedback. In contrast, American teachers often teach multiple subjects, which diminishes their subject knowledge and instructional effectiveness. The authors, however, insert a confusing complaint about Chinese national standards and national exams for university, which put "enormous pressures on students and teachers." Might it be that these tough standards create a culture where students are competing through their entire education and thus driven to learn? The study concludes, "American teachers are more prepared and have more resources to obtain high student achievement than Chinese teachers. We can stop complaining about the lack of resources or large class size. What we need is a fundamental rethinking and restructuring of the American classroom." You can read this study and

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Wingspread Journal: The Isolated Teacher

Inside the Black Box of High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / March 17, 2005

Patricia J. Kannapel and Stephen K. Clements, Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence
February 2005

Kentucky's useful Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence is the source of this worthy 30-pager, the latest in America's endless effort to ascertain why some schools do better with poor kids than others. Decades of research on "effective schools," a couple of terrific books, multiple databases and number-crunchers, innumerable profiles of successful schools, and all sorts of articles and studies with titles like "against the odds," "despite the odds," and "no excuses," comprise a veritable cottage industry of analysis of this tantalizing topic. In this manifestation (paid for by the Ford Foundation), the Prichard Committee's researchers identified 26 Kentucky elementary schools that manifest key signs of strong performance despite lots of low-income students, then selected eight of them for close-up audit by visiting experts. These schools' characteristics were then compared with eight low-performing, high-poverty schools. Much of what they found in the good schools was typical of this genre: high expectations "communicated in concrete ways"; a "caring, nurturing atmosphere"; a strong academic focus combined with much use of assessment data at the individual student level; collaborative decision-making; a strong faculty work ethic; and close attention to who is teaching what in the school. What surprised the analysts is that school leadership (i.e., the principal) didn't seem to matter much from high to low-performing schools and the district's influence upon the school "was less direct than had been anticipated." No

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Inside the Black Box of High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools

Chartering is Succeeding, Even as Some Chartered Schools Fail

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / March 17, 2005

Ted Kolderie, Education Evolving
January 2005

Ted Kolderie, one of the foremost architects and sages of the charter-school concept, now affiliated with a stimulating Minnesota-based outfit named Education Evolving, has written another in his series of thoughtful status reports on education's "open sector." It recaps in lucid terms his important distinction between "chartering" as an idea and process that isn't sufficiently attended to, and the "charter schools" that result from it and that we tend to obsess about, and explains how the former can be doing very well even as the latter struggle. Just five pages long, it's well worth your time, and can be located here.

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Chartering is Succeeding, Even as Some Chartered Schools Fail