The road paved with good intentions

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / January 6, 2011

The Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings has generally done good work since its founding in 1992. Under Russ Whitehurst’s leadership, it has recently stepped up its productivity and many of the resulting reports and symposia have been first-rate, notably including a series of concise task-force reports on such topics as school choice and the role of value-added analysis in teacher evaluation.

Would that this were also true of its latest task-force product: “Charter Schools: A Report on Rethinking the Federal Role in Education.”

On the upside, this report is surely well-timed. Charter schools and the charter movement need many a repair, the current programs of federal support for them have sundry archaic features, and the hoped-for upcoming reauthorization of ESEA/NCLB is the obvious place for a makeover.

Yet, despite themselves, this task force of eminent scholars, charter-friendly policy wonks, and thoughtful analysts fell into a familiar trap: the illusion that any number of seemingly worthy repairs, recalibrations, and reforms in a complex policy domain can (and should) be brought about via a slew of adjustments—all finely tuned, of course—in federal regulations, conditions, incentives, funding formulae, and reporting requirements.

This is wishful thinking—to put it kindly—and especially dismaying when it emanates from a group that includes smart economists, statisticians, and recent alumni of the very government that they now ask to jump through complicated hoops. Frankly, they should know better. These folks have seen up close what government can and cannot do. And yet they now drink the Kool-aid—and want you to sup it with them.

Surely, it’s tasty stuff. The Brown

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The road paved with good intentions

Republicans rediscover education

January 6, 2011

The GOP in Washington might not yet have its ducks in a row when it comes to education policy, but Republicans at the state level are a whole different story. These renegade reformers—Tony Bennett and Chris Christie immediately spring to mind—all have something in common: the man who serves as their education mentor. We refer, of course, to Jeb Bush—who has stepped into the fore of the national education-reform movement with his Foundation for Excellence in Education. While the governor of Florida, Bush brought a rigorous accountability system to the state, expanded charter schools and school-choice options, launched a far-reaching virtual-school program, and fostered early experiments with performance pay. Now, Bush has emerged as a thought leader on issues ranging from school choice to digital education, and has been acting as a sounding board for policymakers across the country, offering counsel on the nitty-gritty of policy and pointers on how to sell controversial proposals to elected officials and the public. And his soap-box audience is growing, as more and more state Republicans see education reform as a necessary means to a right-sized budget. From Maine to Minnesota, newly elected officials are taking to the podium to limit union power, rethink Cadillac benefits, and restructure teacher-tenure legislation. With their increased power and influence following the recent November elections—at least six states, Ohio among them, boast a Republican governor, Senate, and House—don’t be surprised to see major reforms pushed through on the coattails of the budget crisis. And don’t be surprised if many of those reforms look as if

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Republicans rediscover education

Donkeys stand for children

January 6, 2011

Still think the push-back against teachers unions is just a GOP thing? Think again. Illinois—a long-time blue state—is considering a bill that would link teacher tenure to student performance, allow districts to fire underperformers more readily, and dramatically curb teachers’ right to strike. And it is a handful of Democratic legislators who are leading the fight. Several of these lawmakers received campaign support from the reform group Stand for Children, which contributed $600,000 to nine candidates in Illinois last November. No longer do Democrats have to rely on the teachers union for campaign cash and organizational muscle—they now can advocate for change without facing political suicide. As the Wall Street Journal’s Stephanie Banchero writes, “the fight in Illinois is a microcosm of the shifting sands in national education policy” (remember Colorado?). Expect to see more like this as budget woes continue, the union line becomes increasingly tiresome, and Michelle Rhee gets her political machine up and running.

“Illinois Attempts to Link Teacher Tenure to Results,” By Stephanie Banchero, The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2010.

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Donkeys stand for children

Connecting the Dots: School Spending and Student Progress Financial Allocation Study for Texas 2010 (FAST)

Amber M. Winkler, Ph.D. / January 6, 2011

This timely and useful study provides precisely the type of information that financially-strapped school districts need to trim their bottom lines—without sacrificing student learning. Written by Susan Combs, The Lone Star State’s fearless comptroller, at the behest of her state legislature, the report identifies Texas school districts that achieve strong student performance while keeping spending growth at bay. Quite an assignment in a state that increased its per-pupil spending by 63 percent in the last decade (and that’s after taking enrollment growth into account). To determine which districts could deliver this formidable one-two punch, Combs employed two metrics. First, she and her team used a value-added model (controlling for various student, district, and campus characteristics) to measure academic progress over three years in reading and math. Then, they devised a spending index for each district and campus by comparing them to their “fiscal peers” (sites that serve comparable numbers and types of students and operate in similar cost environments). Based on a combination of these two metrics, value-added and spending data, each district or campus received a rating of one to five stars, indicating the extent to which it produced strong academic growth at a lower cost compared to peers. Five-star ratings, meaning fantastic student progress and low spending compared to fiscal peers, are rare. Only forty-three of the 1,235 school districts and charter schools analyzed received a five-star rating (eleven of which were charters). To bump up that number, the report offers cost-cutting solutions for districts—like relaxing class-size limits and sharing facilities and services. Though it stops short of recommending cutting teacher

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Connecting the Dots: School Spending and Student Progress Financial Allocation Study for Texas 2010 (FAST)

States??? Progress and Challenges in Implementing Common Core Standards

Daniela Fairchild / January 6, 2011

If adoption of the Common Core state standards in ELA and math marks a state’s first baby step, then the implementation of these standards will be its first marathon. To ascertain how well states are moving through this multi-faceted implementation process, the Center on Education Policy surveyed state deputy secretaries of education in forty-three states: Thirty-six of those respondent states have at least provisionally adopted the Common Core standards, and eleven were Race to the Top (RTTT) winners. The major findings: On key implementation issues, like curriculum and assessment alignment, states still have miles to travel. The vast majority of states don’t expect full implementation of the standards until 2013 or later. And one truly interesting nugget: Only twelve of the states surveyed plan to supplement the Common Core standards with their own state-specific content. Another eleven will adopt the Common Core standards as are, and still eleven more are undecided as to their course of action. In fact, if there’s one message that comes from the study, it’s that many states still don’t know what they plan to do in terms of implementation. They may have started the race, but the question of “now what?” still looms large.

Nancy Kober and Diana Stark Rentner, “States’ Progress and Challenges in Implementing Common Core State Standards,” (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education Policy, January 2011).

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States??? Progress and Challenges in Implementing Common Core Standards

Shut Out of the Military: Today???s High School Education Doesn???t Mean You???re Ready for Today???s Army

Chris Irvine / January 6, 2011

Americans felt the earthquake of a “Sputnik moment” back in December with the announcement of the 2009 PISA results. This report from Education Trust delivers a non-trivial aftershock. More than one in five American youth who take the Armed Forces Qualification Exam (AFQT) fail to meet the minimum competency standards for enlistment. Note: this group is drawn from the slim 25 percent of youngsters in the U.S. who are even eligible to take the test in the first place (a high school diploma and certain level of physical fitness being among the prerequisites). Further, African American and Hispanic students score significantly worse than whites; about 40 percent and 30 percent of the two groups, respectively, fail to meet the Army’s standards. Truth be told, the study has many limitations—the most notable of which are the self-selected sample (including only individuals who voluntarily chose to take the test) and lack of socio-economic-status data. Still, the message is clear: The United States isn’t only under-educating future college-goers, as PISA results attest, it’s under-educating would-be service men and women as well. Though these individuals possess high-school diplomas, they lack the reading, math, science, and problem-solving skills needed to serve our nation. As Ed Trust states, “The loss is theirs—and ours.”

The Education Trust, "Shut Out of the Military: Today’s High School Education Doesn’t Mean You’re Ready for Today’s Army," (Washington, D.C.: The Education Trust, December 2010).

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Shut Out of the Military: Today???s High School Education Doesn???t Mean You???re Ready for Today???s Army