Wimping out on standards?

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / May 22, 2008

The connection between rhetoric and reality in discussions about reforming America's high schools wears thin.

That erosion was on display Saturday in Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times. Herbert talked to Bob Wise--former governor of West Virginia, knowledgeable president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, and author of the new and estimable book Raising the Grade--and emerged from the conversation rankled by what he heard about the nation's high schools.

"We can't even keep the kids in schools," a flustered Herbert wrote. "Half of those who remain go on to graduate without the skills for college or a decent job." He's right, of course, in suggesting that America has not one but two problems with its high schools: too many young people drop out of them sans diplomas--and too many of those who earn diplomas are ill-prepared for what follows. But can both problems be solved at the same time or does the solution to each exacerbate the other?  What happens when those tougher standards lead to real live kids actually being denied diplomas and threaten to discourage some kids from remaining in school?

Two weeks ago, Gadfly addressed the dilemma faced by Massachusetts in setting the "cut score" for its MCAS test. Today, Gadfly is perplexed by other states' ambivalence regarding their own graduation requirements--and by the backsliding we observe as the day arrives when young people expect to walk across that stage and be handed that

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Wimping out on standards?

Ten is the new five

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / May 22, 2008

Once upon a time, major federal education legislation was authorized for five years at a time and funds could only be appropriated for programs so long as the authorization remained valid. As a result, big fat laws such as E.S.E.A. and the Higher Education Act were, in fact, reauthorized every five years, always with amendments and additions, sometimes with improvements. That was the fundamental rhythm of federal education policymaking.

This rhythm began to slow in 1980, when the "General Education Provisions Act" was amended to provide for "automatic extensions" of program authorizations for up to two additional years. In other words, Congress gave itself two extra years to renew programs that were nominally on five-year cycles.

Subsequently, the Appropriations Committees figured out that they didn't really need programs to be reauthorized before they could be re-funded, i.e. that appropriations acts themselves could temporarily extend the programs funded therein. I can't quite make out when that first happened, but today it's rampant, and not just in education. (Appropriators also discovered that they could conjure programs out of whole cloth, with no prior action by authorizers, such as the much-debated Teacher Incentive Fund.)

The upshot is that authorizing committees in particular, and the Congress as a whole, can now take forever to renew expiring programs and the nominal deadlines built into those big fat education laws have become as elastic as Gummi Worms.  

As a result, the upcoming (maybe) reauthorization of the Higher Education

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Ten is the new five

Don't pass me the ball

May 22, 2008

Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso, taking a page from Fordham's playbook, is remaking the city's funding system to push dollars and decisions down to the school level. Several principals (and their union bosses) are displeased, however. Some protest their smaller budgets under the new system-the plight of just 21 of 192 Baltimore City schools. But Tisha Edwards, a special assistant to Alonso, believes cuts will cause more political pain than educational harm. "What I'm finding is that principals oftentimes shy away from what are obvious cuts they should make because of connections to people. In some cases, the staff we gave to schools [under the previous funding system] was not appropriate, but it was the district's money so nobody cared," she said. One school of 300 students, for instance, employed four assistant principals; the district recommends one assistant principal per 300 students. More than a few principals, it appears, would rather central office make the tough decisions. Is that school leadership?

"Schools complain of money shortage," by Sara Neufeld, Baltimore Sun, May 19, 2008

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Sorry, Goldilocks--it's hot or cold

May 22, 2008

Advanced Placement enrollment has exploded, and several schools in the Washington, D.C., area have gone so far as to eliminate conventional honors courses altogether because, they claim, AP provides students more academic rigor and holds them to higher expectations. But sixteen-year-old Lucie Blauvelt, a junior at Maryland's Rockville High School, remains unconvinced that throwing everyone into AP classes is such a great idea: "There's some students who are just honor students. They don't have the ability to push themselves into AP." The teenager speaks the truth. AP was designed for heavy-hitters, high school students who thirst for challenging, college-level material. Some honors pupils are doubtless capable of meeting AP's standards, but other students are either going to drag down the discourse in their AP classes or become frustrated with the rapid teaching pace and revert to less-challenging regular courses. Despite what our good friend Jay Mathews tells you, AP is not for everyone.

"Honors Courses Give Way to AP Rigor," by Daniel de Vise, Washington Post, May 19, 2008

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Sorry, Goldilocks--it's hot or cold

Say NOPE to NAEP

May 22, 2008

The ed reform crowd genuflects before the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the holy grail of testing. And in most cases, its deification is appropriate. But when comparing charter schools to traditional public schools, the holy grail becomes a Dixie Cup. The latest round of NAEP scores shows that charter students probably are performing at a slightly lower level than their non-charter peers, though, when one controls for race and income, the differences are negligible. More troublesome, NAEP only provides a snapshot in time, so it's impossible to know from these data whether charter schools students are gaining or lagging  their district school peers. (Most rigorous studies show that they are making gains.) Fordham President Checker Finn summed up yet another problem with NAEP charter-school data: "I'm not very interested in the average performance of charters.... The word 'charter' signals so little about them, and the diversity within that universe is at least as great as the diversity outside it." In short, it's incorrect to treat "charter schools" as a unique entity or homogeneous mass. It makes about as much sense as trying to form a single impression of pastry shops or pizza parlors.

"NAEP Gap Continues for Charters," by Erik W. Robelen, Education Week, May 19, 2008

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Say NOPE to NAEP

Fizzy Fruit forever

May 22, 2008

The genesis of Fizzy Fruit's success arguably comes from Genesis, in which we learn that fruit is one temptation from which mankind simply cannot abstain. For kids, however, fruit holds less allure--but soda is a Godsend. Thus, the makers of Fizzy Fruit, which is on school lunch menus in 20 Connecticut school districts, have combined the fizziness of soda with the fruitiness of fruit and students cannot get enough of the stuff. Fizzy Fruit is created when carbonation is pumped, via mechanisms called "Fruit Fizzolators," into apples, grapes, etc., all of which retain their original nutritional content. (Bananas, however, lack sufficient water content, and therefore cannot be fizzolated.) Kids and district leaders love the new, healthy snack, but others see Fizzy Fruit as a pernicious gateway drug for youngsters. Parent Holly Fydenkevez said, "They'll try a piece of the orange and think, 'Oh, now I know how orange soda tastes.' And then you've turned a kid on to soda when he never knew soda before." She might be right. After seven-year-old Axel Ortiz was refused by a cafeteria worker his fourth serving of Fizzy Fruit, he said he needed it because "it tastes like soda." Oritz told the worker, "I'll pay you. How much?"

"Carbonated Fruit a Hit in School," by Lynn Doan, The Hartford Courant, May 19, 2008

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Fizzy Fruit forever

Schools That Work

Coby Loup / May 22, 2008

David Jason Fischer
Center for an Urban Future
May 2008

David Jason Fischer
Center for an Urban Future
May 2008

Like Paul Tough's New York Times Magazine article on the success of KIPP and its ilk, "Schools That Work" gives wonks, parents, and educators alike an accessible and hopeful picture of the schools that innovative educators can build when given enough flexibility. The focus is New York City's career and technical education (CTE) schools, of which twenty-one currently exist, teaching vocations like nursing and automotive maintenance. Although CTE students are poorer, older, less academically accomplished, and more likely to be black or Hispanic than their traditional high school counterparts, they attend class more often and are four times less likely to drop out. That's because, the author hypothesizes, the classes are actually interesting and practical. The schools are also more responsive to the city's labor market, giving students concrete paths to stable careers. Graduates from Automotive High School, one of the city's top CTE schools, for instance, leave with an industry-recognized certification that gives them easy entrée to potential employers. Some schools have struggled, however, to forge similar ties with leaders in their respective industries, in large part because of barriers imposed by the district bureaucracy. Companies that want to award scholarships, for example, have had to set up special pathways to comply with archaic regulations. The schools also have great difficulty recruiting qualified teaching candidates, many of whom are

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Schools That Work

Islam in the Classroom: What the Textbooks Tell Us

Jeffrey Kuhner / May 22, 2008

Gilbert T. Sewall
The American Textbook Council
May 2008

This new study appraises the ten widely used world history textbooks for U.S. middle and high school students. It concludes that they offer an idealized, often glamorized (and inaccurate) depiction of Islam; they are also brimming with misinformation and biases that misrepresent Islam's theological principles. The author emphasizes that Islamic activists and lobby groups are using American educators' multiculturalism fetish to manipulate the curriculum. Their goal is to extirpate any critical assessments of Islam, especially how the religion has been warped by extremists, from U.S. textbooks. Publishers are taken to task for bowing to pressure from groups like the Council on Islamic Education. Anyone interested in how Islam is treated in major textbooks will find this report useful. Read it here.

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Islam in the Classroom: What the Textbooks Tell Us

Sizing Up State Standards 2008

May 22, 2008

American Federation of Teachers
2008

The AFT is well known and much praised for its firm insistence on "coherent content standards" and since 1995 has periodically appraised state standards for clarity, specificity, classroom utility, etc. This year's review of state standards--spanning elementary, middle, and high school standards in English, math, science and social studies--found that only Virginia "meets the AFT criteria for strong standards in all levels and subjects." Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin had no strong standards. Other states were, of course, somewhere in between.  The report offers recommendations, useful if sometimes obvious, such as the need for states to "bring specific United States and world history into their early elementary standards" and to "describe what high school students should know and be able to do by course." The full document is available here.

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Sizing Up State Standards 2008