The case against "comparability"

Kate Walsh / September 13, 2007

Two items in the Miller-McKeon NCLB reauthorization bill seem to be shoe-ins for making their way into federal law. The impetus behind both is to ensure that districts spend as much on schools serving poor students as they do on schools serving more affluent children.

A no brainer, right? The New York Times thinks so; it endorsed these both provisions in a September 7th editorial.

The first one would tighten NCLB's "comparability" requirements--rules that demand that school districts provide the same resources to poor, Title I schools as they do to their more affluent schools. Under a loophole in the current law, districts may pretend that resources are "comparable" so long as similarly-sized schools have the same number of teachers--regardless of those teachers' actual salaries. The draft proposal would instead require that districts spend the same amount of money on poor schools, and account for differences in payroll from school to school.

This get-tough move stems from evidence showing that, because more-senior (hence pricier) teachers tend to gravitate to schools with middle-class children, schools serving poor children wind up with more inexperienced teachers with lower salaries-and therefore get less money.

Congress is right to believe that poor kids should get the same quality teachers as more affluent kids. In fact, I would argue, poorer students need the very best teachers.

But assuming that higher payrolls buy a better quality of teacher is flat out wrong. Experience is not just a

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The case against "comparability"

Grand cru thinking

September 13, 2007

Fifteen years ago, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, then mayor of Neuilly, walked into a nursery school where a bomb-strapped man was holding students hostage and strolled out 30 minutes later with all the children. (New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik tells the story here.) Now he's invested in another explosive confrontation: he's trying to remake France's entrenched education system. In a letter to teachers, Sarkozy writes that France needs to "rebuild the foundations" of the system. Students should learn "that everything is not of equal worth...that the pupil is not the equal of the teacher," he writes. The president believes that in today's French schools "there is perhaps too much nature and not enough nurture." He calls for more respect (students should "stand when a teacher enters the room"), a broader liberal-arts curriculum (less focus on specialization), an end to social promotion, new forms of alternative certification of teachers, fewer teachers, and greater principal autonomy. Whew. Such an ambitious agenda would garner fierce union backlash in America--we can only imagine how the French unions will respond. Time to defuse more bombs.

"Bac to school," The Economist, September 6, 2007

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Grand cru thinking

An inspired trend

September 13, 2007

Gadfly has been called a lot of things, but never a prophet--until now. It was a mere four years ago that we asked, "Why not religious charter schools?" The world's three great monotheistic religions heard us. Today, there's the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in suburban Minneapolis, where the curriculum emphasizes "Muslim culture and the Arabic language." There's the Ben Gamla Charter School in Hollywood, Florida, with "kosher food in the cafeteria and Hebrew posters in the classrooms." And now there's the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., which is considering converting eight of its inner-city Catholic schools to charter schools. Of course, none of these providers is constructing explicitly religious institutions. The not-exactly-Catholic charter schools, for example, would "still have strong values, but the schools' names would change and specific religious references would be stripped from the curriculum," according to the Washington Post. This might help the schools avoid unwanted entanglements with the First Amendment. Maybe it would be better still if they could remain religious--and still go charter--so long as their students pass tests of reading, math, history, and science--and so long, of course, as parents are free to choose or not choose them.

"8 D.C. Catholic Schools Eyed for Charters," by Theola Labbe and Jacqueline L. Salmon, Washington Post, September 8, 2007

"Chartering a New Course," by Nathaniel Popper, Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2007

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An inspired trend

Suburbia blues

September 13, 2007

Do you think of the achievement gap as an inner-city phenomenon? Think again. The Baltimore Sun reports that an alarming number of middle-class African-American students in suburban schools are having a difficult time passing the state's high school exit exams in algebra, English, biology, and government. Suburban Baltimore County released school-by-school results recently that show nearly a third of that system's high schools had pass rates of 60 percent or less last year. Predominantly African-American schools had pass rates of less than 50 percent. Faced with those worrisome facts, what does Maryland School Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick propose? Students who repeatedly fail the tests should be allowed to do a "senior project" instead. "Now you can see the motivation" for such tests, Jack Jennings explained to the Sun: appeasing middle-class parents. The answer to poor student performance is not special projects or other gimmicks that avoid accountability and reward failure, but redoubled efforts to help students achieve success. Somebody should mention this to Maryland's education leadership.

"Blacks in suburbs failing Md. exams," by Gina Davis and Liz Bowie, Baltimore Sun, September 6, 2007

"Area Schools' Success Obscures Lingering Racial SAT Gap," by Daniel de Vise, Washington Post, September 10, 2007

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Suburbia blues

Slimy

September 13, 2007

People with clear, strong views usually attract critics as well as admirers, and Bill Evers is no exception. Seven months after his nomination by the President to succeed Tom Luce as the Education Department's assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development-a post of considerable significance, the more so as the NCLB reauthorization cycle intensifies--the Senate education committee owes him a proper hearing. There, critics and admirers alike, as well as the articulate and forthright Evers, can present their views and, if called for, respond to one another. Then the Senate can "advise and consent" on his nomination. Gadfly has known Bill for years; he's an inspired choice to fill a challenging role (one that many folks would eschew in the administration's waning days). But courage is among Bill's many virtues. If he could handle Baghdad (he helped develop new curricula for Iraqi schools), he can handle Washington. What's inexcusable isn't the existence of opponents. It's the Senate's procedural dithering and the critics who, via innuendo, whisper and back-stab and seek to "Bork" Evers without ever looking him--or Chairman Kennedy--in the eye.

"Educator Tapped for Planning Post Finds That Old Foes Have Surfaced," by Paul Lewis, Washington Post, September 11, 2007

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Slimy

Mahatma Kozol

September 13, 2007

Pray for Jonathan Kozol, who today enters the 70th day of his "partial fast" in protest over NCLB and, one assumes, to promote his new book. What is a "partial fast"? Kozol has been "taking only small amounts of mostly liquid foods each day." When his stomach hurts, though, the partial fast allows him to have "other forms of nourishment" (steak frites?) so he won't damage his aging heart. A good move--Kozol's heart is already burdened enough, of course, by the legions of teachers who telephone him nightly. "Some call me in the evenings," he writes, "on the verge of tears, to tell me of the maddening frustration that they feel at being forced to teach in ways that make them hate themselves." Tonight, Kozol sits by the fireplace, carefully pressing cans of V-8 to his parched lips and weeping softly, his phone ringing off the hook. But lo, here enters his assistant: "Mahatma Kozol, Mahatma Kozol--Ted Kennedy just called. The Republicans have put down their torches; the fighting in Washington has stopped!"

"Why I am Fasting: An Explanation to My Friends," by Jonathan Kozol, The Huffington Post, September 10, 2007

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Mahatma Kozol

The Effects of NBPTS-Certified Teachers on Student Achievement

September 13, 2007

Douglas N. Harris and Tim R. Sass
National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research
March 2007

In the No Child Left Behind era, teachers who achieve certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards are supposed to be the most qualified of "highly qualified" teachers. It ain't necessarily so, says this appraisal of the effectiveness of NBPTS-certified teachers in reading and math. The study finds that, while many teachers who obtain NBPTS certification are superior to their peers who do not, they lose some of their edge after receiving certification. In particular, math teachers who become NBPTS certified end up being more effective with high-achieving students yet retain no margin of difference from their non-certified peers when working with students of low socio-economic status. This raises the question: Is NBPTS certification worth the time and money teachers and states and Uncle Sam and umpteen foundations have put into it if the benefits don't accrue to students who have been "left behind"? The study also suggests diminished returns over time. Specifically, teachers who received certification in NBPTS's early years (before 2001) remain more productive post-certification than their non-certified peers. By contrast, teachers in the 2002 and 2003 cohorts are no more productive post-certification than their non-certified peers. Could that be because there are so many more of them? In so many more fields? Has quantity sapped quality as NBPTS has grown?  Board-certified teachers now get almost $1 billion

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The Effects of NBPTS-Certified Teachers on Student Achievement

Choosing More Time for Students: the What, Why, and How of Expanded Learning

September 13, 2007

Elena Rocha
Center for American Progress
August 2007

To assume that extended learning time (ELT) is a panacea for class divides and achievement gaps is attractive. As this report's author notes, wealthier kids have access to learning opportunities outside school, such as private lessons and online courses, which could just as easily benefit poor kids if included in the school day. ELT could even benefit teachers, as longer school days may include time for professional development. These thoughts are inspiring, until Rocha considers current models of ELT and what it takes to implement them. The Achievable Dream Academy in Newport News, Virginia, closed its achievement gaps after implementing ELT. But the school had extra money from local businesses, fundraisers, and the U.S. Department of Education. Rocha also determines that parental support and involvement is important for ELT to work well. The author never adequately answers this question, though: Would quantity equal quality? Rocha notes that strong data are required to evaluate which parts of ELT do and don't work. But she doesn't further discuss the lack of appropriate data tracking and accountability systems. Overall, the paper touts the more-obvious benefits of ELT, but it offers little substantive advice about how to garner high quality results from extra school time. Only at the end of the paper does Rocha note the drawbacks of ELT--it must be "well-implemented," she writes, which is a tall order for schools that can barely keep it together from

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Choosing More Time for Students: the What, Why, and How of Expanded Learning