The problem of education governance in twenty-first century America

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / April 28, 2011

Click to watch a video of this commentary, as part of Fordham's
recent event, "Are School Boards Vital in the 21st Century?"

The shortcomings of elected local school boards are only the most obvious of the many problems of education governance in the United States in 2011.  To be sure, those boards are a fundamental part, maybe the largest part, of our customary governance arrangements, but my discontent with them is just part of my larger dissatisfaction with all traditional governance and structural arrangements for K-12 education on these shores.

These arrangements, though they differ some from place to place, generally display four characteristics that make them obsolete at best and dysfunctional at their all-too-common worst:

First, while formal constitutional responsibility for educating kids belongs to the states, the actual delivery of that education falls squarely on local education agencies, typically called districts, which are geographically defined, most often by the boundaries of a city, town, county, or other municipality. Kids are generally educated in public schools operated by these districts.

Second, though states have shouldered some responsibility for financing public education, usually by decreeing a minimum or “foundation” level of per-pupil spending, sizable portions of education revenue are locally generated through property taxes, bond levies, and such. Those amounts differ enormously from place to place within the same state and are uncommonly vulnerable

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The problem of education governance in twenty-first century America

A Kohn-headed argument

Kathleen Porter-Magee / April 28, 2011

Kohn constructs a pedagogical strawman
Photo by srqpix

In his most recent missive, Alfie Kohn decries “the pedagogy of poverty”—i.e.: the “drill and kill” method of rote instruction that he sees being thrust upon many low-income students in public district and charter schools around the nation. And on that front, we couldn’t agree more. No students, low-income or otherwise, should be forced to choke down lackluster coursework through lazy pedagogy. But then he kept on writing, as he so often does, falling into emotion and false dichotomies, his logic becoming increasingly murky. He implies, for instance, that having tight classroom management and routines is antithetical to students being able to think deeply about issues. Nonsense. Oftentimes, that is exactly what’s needed to create conditions in which students can learn. Going further, Kohn insinuates that high-performing charters (we assume he means models like KIPP, Achievement First, et al.) are not high-performing at all; the students have been taught to succeed on tests and all traces of intellectualism have been stripped from their schools. Wrong. Done well, many of these schools help push students far beyond low-level test questions. What’s more, plenty of their teaching techniques are effectively used in suburban and private schools around the country as well. (Catholic schools are, for example, known for their tight culture and strict rules—and their long history of success at educating poor children.) There are plenty of thoughtful criticisms to be leveled

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A Kohn-headed argument

Calling all edu-funders!

April 28, 2011

In New York City and elsewhere, when it comes to student enrollment, St. Joe's parochial school may be losing out to the charter school down the block. Catholic schools have educated urban youths ably for decades—many of them poor, non-Catholic youngsters in desperate need of quality educational alternatives to wretched district schools. Yet urban parochial schools are closing or consolidating in droves, suffering from enrollment declines as potential pupils opt instead for tuition-free charters and from the parallel loss of philanthropic support as donors conclude that these parochial schools are a shaky investment or simply that the charter sector is where the education action is. In response, diocesan school systems in some areas are trimming management costs and trying to spread the fiscal burden across all their parishes, including those without schools. Some dioceses are even considering admitting wealthy students from abroad to subsidize local pupils’ educations. The stakes for American education are high: Continued losses of parochial schools will send more kids back to poorer-quality neighborhood schools, upping the cost to the taxpayer dramatically—and will mean that we’ll have to find ways to create even more quality new schools from scratch. Education philanthropists and voucher proponents: Look alive. You’ve got a chance to do some real good. And never have you been more needed.

“Audacity and Hope at Harlem’s St. Aloysius,” by Sol Stern, City Journal, Spring 2011: Vol. 21, No. 2.

“Making Urban Catholic Schools Viable: Here’s How,” by Patrick J. McCloskey, City Journal, Spring 2011: Vol. 21, No. 2.

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Calling all edu-funders!

AP for all or success for none?

April 28, 2011

Babies excited to take their first steps first try out their legs by crawling. Painters looking to become modern-day Michelangelos start honing their craft by mixing colors. And high school students desirous of taking college-level English courses, like those offered by the Advanced Placement program, first learn basic grammar and writing. Yet this fundamental concept of sequential progress is too often lost in the “AP fervor” that currently grips American high schools. This week’s case in point is Boston English High, a struggling school (among the nation’s worst) with big-time AP enrollment (within Beantown, it’s second only to Boston Latin). The story of how its AP enrollment surged is instructive. Rather than carefully preparing pupils for the rigor of challenging twelfth-grade classes (starting in middle school or before), English’s teachers and administrators instead force-enrolled students with “potential” in AP courses. This meant an infusion of under-prepared pupils into what should be the most rigorous English course offered at the school—and not surprisingly, many of them floundered. Of course there are benefits to introducing lower-achieving students to motivated peers, quality AP teachers, and rigorous, stimulating content. But when “AP for All” is implemented in a hurry, without attention to preparing students over the long haul to succeed in it, the costs far outweigh the benefits.

“A lesson in Advanced mis-Placement,” by Junia Yearwood, Boston Globe, April 25, 2011.

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AP for all or success for none?

Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to the Highest-Performing Teachers?

Chris Irvine / April 28, 2011

Conducted by Mathematica, this Institute of Education Sciences (IES) brief sheds needed light on a controversial education-policy topic: The teacher-quality gap. While it is well known that disadvantaged youngsters have teachers with less experience and fewer credentials, there is precious little evidence showing that these easy-to-measure attributes correlate with teacher effectiveness. So IES decided to look at effectiveness itself. Through an analysis of value-added data for over 11,000 teachers in ten large districts, analysts found that, compared with their well-off peers, low-income middle schoolers had dramatically less access to the highest-performing teachers (defined as the top 20 percent of faculties, based on average student performance across multiple years, within each subject or grade level). But here’s a head scratcher: There was no significant difference in access at the elementary level. Parsing data out by district, researchers unearthed still more interesting findings. For example, one district saw an abundance of the highest-quality teachers in their low-income elementary schools (35 percent in the poorest quintile compared to 12 percent in the wealthiest). Unfortunately, the brief stops short of diving into the policies and practices that might have helped districts like this one close (or reverse) the teacher-effectiveness gap. One hopes a part II is on the horizon.

Steven Glazerman and Jeffrey Max, “Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to the Highest-Performing Teachers?,”