Five thoughts about NCLB on its tenth anniversary

Michael J. Petrilli / January 5, 2012

The federal law that everybody loves to hate turns ten on Sunday. Here’s what to think about it:

1. It worked! As Mark Schneider shows in his recent paper for Fordham—and as Eric Hanushek and others demonstrated before him—poor, minority, and low-achieving students made huge progress in math, and sizable progress in reading, during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Their most recent scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate all-time highs for most grades and subjects. These students are typically performing two grade levels ahead of where their peers were fifteen years ago in math, and are reading at least one grade-level higher. So how to explain these historic gains? While we can’t draw causal conclusions from NAEP, we can make educated guesses. What’s clear is that states that adopted “consequential accountability” in the nineties saw big test-score jumps, and the late-adopter states saw similar progress once No Child Left Behind kicked into action. So, while other factors could have been in play, too (such as efforts to reduce class size or the cessation of the crack-cocaine epidemic), there’s a pretty good case that testing and accountability succeeded in spurring higher student achievement, at least at the bottom of the performance spectrum.


2. But it couldn’t work forever. As Schneider argues, the test-score gains sparked by NCLB-style accountability appear to have hit a plateau. We’re back to anemic progress in most grades and subjects, particularly in the states (like Texas) that embraced testing and accountability first. That

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   Five thoughts about NCLB on its tenth anniversary

Choice changes everything

January 5, 2012

These feet were made for votin', and that's just what they'll do.
Photo by Josiah Lau Photography

Close on two years after Gary Orfield’s Civil Rights Project released its influential—and controversial—Choice Without Equality report, another of the Orfield clan is chastising charters for their level of racial segregation. According to Brother Myron, charter schools in his home state of Minnesota resemble “the Deep South in the days of Jim Crow segregation,” as these schools cater to niche student markets—often of the same race. At Dugsi Academy, for example, the school’s all-black student population studies Arabic and Somali: The school has a mission of educating East African children in the Twin Cities. A few miles down the road, students at the Twin Cities German Immersion School, who are 90 percent white, are immersed in German language and cultural studies. Myron is right that these “boutique” charters are racially homogeneous. But Orfield is missing a few structural beams in his tower of rhetoric. The most crucial: This type of “segregation” is both self-selected and voluntary. “Some people call it segregation. This is the parent’s choice. They can go anywhere they want. We are offering families something unique,” explains Dugsi’s director. Instead of lamenting the lack of diversity in these unique school models, Orfield should respond the all-American way: via competition. Open up some racially diverse charter schools, Myron, and let

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Choice changes everything

Learning to say “No”

January 5, 2012

Couldn't swear off chocolate--but maybe
this implementation thing will stick.
Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt

Forget swearing off sweets or hitting the gym; the New Year’s resolution trending among education policymakers seems to be “getting tough on implementation.” First, Arne Duncan ruined Hawaii’s holidays with a stern Christmas card: The state is now on “high-risk status,” with access to its remaining Race to the Top grant money severely limited until it stops dawdling and starts implementing promised reforms. This from a federal education department that has so far accommodated slow-moving states and approved dozens of RTTT-application amendments. Perhaps energized (or concerned) by Duncan’s newfound nerve, New York’s state commissioner of education, John King, is also hopping on the “hard on implementation” wagon. This week, the Empire State’s commish announced that he’s withholding $60 million from Gotham’s SIG funding after negotiations broke down between the district and the union over—what else?—teacher evaluations. (He’s cutting off the SIG spigot for nine other districts around the state, too.) While the Big Apple edu-leaders seem unconcerned (what’s $60 million to a district with a $24 billion operating budget?), Gadfly is still enthusiastic that officials are holding people’s feet to the fire for promises they’ve made. Here’s hoping this is one resolution that sticks.

“Ed. Dept. Takes Action Against Hawaii for Race to the Top Stumbles,” by Michele McNeil, Education Week, December 22, 2011.

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Learning to say “No”

Making an IMPACT

January 5, 2012

Like clown fish and anemone, teacher evals
and merit pay need each other.
Photo by Rob

Teacher evaluations are particularly contentious of late, as educators in New York and Hawaii can testify, which is why it’s worth remembering what can happen when they’re done right. Sam Dillon provided a heartening reminder in his New York Times feature on merit pay last weekend, highlighting D.C.’s pioneering IMPACTplus system. Critics of these initiatives point to studies finding that padding star teachers’ paychecks doesn’t boost student achievement; the best educators were working hard to begin with, and a few extra dollars won’t squeeze more from them. Dillon’s interviews with DCPS teachers who received bonuses, however—which can be as high as $25,000—reveal the potential of meaningful performance-based pay to bring about systemic change. In a profession with brutal turnover, getting talented young professionals into classrooms may be less important than keeping them there. D.C. is creating a competitive marketplace for top teachers in the region, and making a strong case to keep them in the capital. But no merit-pay system is possible without a credible (and rigorous) approach to teacher evaluation, which is why getting that right is of such paramount importance right now.

“In Washington, Large Rewards in Teacher Pay,” by Sam Dillon, New York Times, December 31, 2011.

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Making an IMPACT

Briefly Noted: Everything you missed this holiday season

January 5, 2012

• Tucson’s controversial ethnic-studies program—does it promote the success of Latino students or promote victimhood?—may be axed, in the end. This week a judge ruled that the program was teaching Latino history and culture “in a biased, political, and emotionally charged manner.”
• In a biting State of the State address yesterday, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that the Empire State’s 2010 teacher-evaluation legislation “didn’t work.” Where he plans to go from here is unclear.
• Here’s a novel way to save America’s urban Catholic schools (and they do need saving, as the Philly archdiocese may close a “staggering” number this spring): Turn them into football powerhouses, as one New Jersey school has done.
• The D.C. Council may need a refresher on what “college-readiness” actually means, as they consider requiring that all Washington students apply to college in order to receive a high school diploma.
• You devoured Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion, but implementing his techniques in

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Briefly Noted: Everything you missed this holiday season

Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit: Lessons from a Half-Century of Federal Efforts to Improve America's Schools

Laura Johnson / January 5, 2012

Building off their May 2011 conference of the same name, this volume, edited by American Enterprise Institute scholars Rick Hess and Andrew Kelly, offers a one-stop-shop for expert views on the federal role in education over the past fifty years. The book (which includes a chapter from our own Chester Finn) tackles topics ranging from federal efforts at promoting equity to the courts’ role in education. While the tome doesn't much aim to resolve the debate about the federal role, it does inject this timely issue with a healthy dose of perspective, offering a nuanced picture of the feds' capabilities. Particularly relevant, the chapter on the feds’ role in research (which has emerged as a hot topic in recent months)—written by Jane Hannaway and Mark Schneider—offers a keen take on how the feds have tried to balance rigor, relevance, and politics as they pursue education research. Similarly compelling is the chapter on Uncle Sam’s investment in innovation, where discussions of RTTT and i3 feature prominently. Despite the book’s historic grounding, the content is in no way stale. Quite the contrary, the writing is fresh and informed—and marks an essential read for any eduwonk wishing to engage more productively in this timely conversation.

Frederick M. Hess and Andrew P. Kelly, ed. Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit: Lessons from a Half-Century of Federal Efforts to Improve America's Schools (Harvard Education Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011).

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Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit: Lessons from a Half-Century of Federal Efforts to Improve America's Schools

The State of Charter Schools: What We Know—and What We Do Not—About Performance and Accountability

Tyson Eberhardt / January 5, 2012

Charter schools just can’t catch a break: Assailed for over two decades by defenders of the status quo, charters now face unfounded criticism over their quality and accountability from the very groups set up to advance the reform movement. At least that’s the story Alison Consoletti tells in this latest Center for Education Reform report. Consoletti challenges claims that too many poor-performing charters continue to operate with impunity. How? By identifying every charter-school closure since the model’s inception twenty years ago—all 1,036 of them, or about 15 percent of the 6,700 charters ever in operation. She finds money problems to be the number one cause of charter closures (41 percent), with mismanagement contributing another 24 percent, and unacceptable academic performance causing 19 percent—though we know, anecdotally, that the three are often cozy bedfellows. These numbers illustrate an important aspect of how the charter sector works, but say nothing about how it should function. If 85 percent of charters were high performing, a 15 percent closure rate would be great news—unfortunately, that’s just not the case. When Consoletti notes that charters at least boast a shutter rate “dramatically higher” than the rate for conventional public schools, she holds charter schools to an embarrassingly low standard; accepting it as proof of success compromises the very dynamism that charter advocates—like Fordham—have lauded in the model from the start.

Alison Consoletti, TheState of Charter Schools: What We Know—and What We Do Not—About Performance andAccountability (Washington, D.C.: Center for Education Reform, December 2011).

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The State of Charter Schools: What We Know—and What We Do Not—About Performance and Accountability