Unsolved problems—and signs of hope—as 2012 dawns

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / December 22, 2011

The central problem besetting K-12 education in the United States today is still—as for almost thirty years now—that far too few of our kids are learning nearly enough for their own or the nation’s good. And the gains we’ve made, though well worth making, have been meager (and largely confined to math), are trumped by gains in other countries, and evaporate by the end of high school.

From where I sit, the basic strategies aren’t ill-conceived. Rather, they’ve been stumped, stymied, and constrained by formidable barriers that are more or less built into the K-12 system as we know it.

This much everybody knows. But unless we want to live out the classic definition of insanity (“doing the same thing over again with the expectation that it will produce a different result”), we need to focus laser-like on the barriers that keep us from making major-league gains. If we don’t break through (or circumnavigate) these barriers, academic achievement will remain stagnant.

The barriers I’m talking about are not cultural issues, parenting issues, demographic issues, or other macro-influences on educational achievement. Those are all plenty real, but largely beyond the reach of public policy. No, here I refer to obstacles that competent leaders and bold policymakers could reduce or eradicate if they were serious.

How much difference would that really make? It’s possible, of course, that we’re pursuing the wrong core strategies. Maybe standards-based reform has exhausted its potential (as Mark Schneider suggests in The Accountability Plateau). Perhaps choice and competition really cannot lift all boats. Possibly technology is overrated, alternate

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Unsolved problems—and signs of hope—as 2012 dawns

Specious on special ed

December 22, 2011

One size does not fit all.
Photo by Neeta Lind

Tension has long been visible between charter-school proponents and some within the special-education community. The short version goes like this: Charter schools, which are typically mission-oriented, small, and underfunded, find it hard to service every sort of disability within their classrooms appropriately. So they counsel some youngsters to seek other service providers better attuned to their particular needs. This practice riles many SPED advocates. It angers districts, too, as they are most often obligated to educate these high-need—and often high-cost—students. We understand the complaints, but consider the practicalities: No individual school (regular or charter) can serve every type of disability. Large districts can create specialized programs at particular schools (say, for students with severe autism, or those with Down Syndrome); small districts team up with other LEAs or “Intermediate Units” to do the same. If a school cannot provide the necessary resources to ensure a student’s success, then that school might not be the best place for the child and other options need to be considered. That goes for all public schools—including charters.

“South Florida charter schools admit few special needs children,” by Kathleen McGrory and Scott Hiaasen, The Miami-Herald, December 17, 2011.

“Can Charter Schools Legally Turn Away Kids with Severe Disabilities?,” by Sarah Gonzalez, StateImpact, December 21, 2011.

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Specious on special ed

Africans vs. African Americans

December 22, 2011

Look a little bit closer.
Photo by Jen and a camera

Seattle’s recently released student-achievement results were “very, very alarming,” according to Michael Tolley, one of Seattle Public Schools’s leaders. He’s right, of course. For example, the city found that black youngsters who do not speak English in the home (mostly immigrants and refugees) tested higher than those blacks who do speak English at home (and are, presumably, U.S.-born)—by as much as 26 percentage points in math and 18 percentage points in reading. These results invite many questions, but here’s one tangible takeaway: Our data-reporting subgroups may be cut too crudely. Since 1990, blacks have ticked thirty-six points higher on NAEP’s fourth-grade math assessment (compared to whites’ twenty-nine point increase). This slow narrowing of the achievement gap is present across fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading. Yet Seattle’s data call into question how these gains are being made. Are descendants of slaves making the same progress as first-generation African immigrants? Maybe, maybe not. To better target services to our neediest children, we’ll need more of these higher resolution data. Kudos to Seattle for starting the trend. Other districts with large African and Caribbean immigrant populations, like Montgomery County, Maryland, would be wise to do some similar unpacking of their numbers and categories.

“‘Alarming’ new test-score gap discovered in Seattle schools,” by Brian M. Rosenthal, Seattle Times, December 18,

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Africans vs. African Americans

Creating Opportunity Schools: A Bold Plan to Transform Indianapolis Public Schools

Terry Ryan / December 22, 2011

Through this report (prepared by Public Impact), The Mind Trust proposes a dramatic transformation of public education in Indianapolis, akin to the structural changes that have taken place in New Orleans and New York City. It observes that great schools across the country share a set of core conditions that enable them to help all students achieve. Among these core conditions are the freedom to build and manage their own teams, refocus resources to meet actual student needs, hold schools accountable for their results(and close those that don’t perform), and create a system of school choice that empowers parents to find schools that they want their children to attend. To create success in the public schools of Indianapolis (IPS), the Mind Trust proposes these bold moves: shift funding from the central office to schools; give high-performing schools autonomy over staffing, budgets, and curriculum; provide parents with more good choices; unite all public schools under a new banner of quality called Opportunity Schools; and allow the mayor and the City-County Council to appoint the IPS school board,. We at Fordham are cheering for the Mind Trust and its reform-minded allies. Not only will their success or failure resonate in Indiana but also across the Midwest and probably beyond.

This piece originally appeared (in a slightly different form) on Fordham’s Flypaper blog. To subscribe to Flypaper, click here.

Public Impact, Creating Opportunity Schools: A Bold Plan to Transform Indianapolis Public Schools (Indianapolis, IN: The

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Creating Opportunity Schools: A Bold Plan to Transform Indianapolis Public Schools

Does Practice-Based Teacher Preparation Increase Student Achievement? Early Evidence from the Boston Teacher Residency

Laura Johnson / December 22, 2011

Teacher-residency programs, which couple graduate-education coursework with K-12 classroom-teaching experience, have a certain cachet these days. But do they work? While such programs have for many years demonstrated higher retention rates among their graduates, this paper digs into the details of the Boston Teacher Residency (BTR) to see whether quality is there, too. The upshot: yes, but it takes a while. Using fourth- and eighth-grade state achievement data, the researchers determined that BTR graduates are significantly less effective in math during their first couple of years than are other new teachers (both alternatively certified and traditionally trained). This pattern held for each of BTR’s seven cohorts. On the ELA front, BTR teachers performed comparably to other new teachers in their first couple years. By the fourth and fifth years, however, BTR teachers surpassed other veteran teachers (of similar or greater experience levels) in both subjects. What’s more, BTR teachers were more likely to stay with the profession: The five-year retention rate for program alumni was 24 percentage points higher than the district average for those hired in 2004-05 and 2006-07. Looking at input measures (increasing the population of minority teachers and filling hard-to-staff positions), the residency program fares well, too. Still, the research came with many caveats, beginning with a very small sample size. As a preliminary investigation, this paper offered many interesting insights and raises even more questions—specifically around residency programs’ individual components, system effects, and costs. So, researchers, have at it!

John P. Papay, Martin R. West, Jon B. Fullerton, and Thomas J. Kane, Does Practice-Based Teacher Preparation Increase

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Does Practice-Based Teacher Preparation Increase Student Achievement? Early Evidence from the Boston Teacher Residency

Striving for Student Success: A Model of Shared Accountability

December 22, 2011

Coordinated social-service programs are gaining steam—after Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, think Obama’s new Promise Neighborhoods and the AFT’s proposed initiative in rural West Virginia. These “cradle-to-career” partnerships link myriad groups and programs in order to provide wraparound services (from prenatal care run by a neighborhood clinic to mentoring coordinated through the local United Way chapter). But questions of accountability loom large. (As the saying goes, when everyone is accountable, no one is.) This brief from Ed Sector profiles the Strive Partnership of Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky, a program that does a pretty good job of managing this shared accountability, and distills recommendations for others looking to initiate similar wraparound-service partnerships. To ensure quality, the brief states, programs of this kind must have metrics and performance targets in place (for each program partner as well as the whole) and a system for collecting and reporting data. (Other things, like strong and sustained leadership, are also helpful.) Most importantly, there must be a ringleader—an “intermediary organization” charged with overseeing the whole program, tracking the efficacy of each of the program’s components, and defunding those that don’t work. In the case of the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky initiative, the Strive Partnership (itself a professionally staffed organization) serves that purpose. As more and more cities implement their own versions of “strive partnerships” and “promise neighborhoods,” these questions of accountability will mushroom. Ed Sector deserves credit for starting the discussion.

Kelly Bathgate, Richard Lee Colvin, and Elena Silva, Striving for Student Success: A Model of Shared Accountability (Washington, D.C.: Education Sector, 2011).

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Striving for Student Success: A Model of Shared Accountability