The credit-recovery scam

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / July 26, 2012

The flap over quality control, academic fraud, false claims, and shortcuts in the world of credit recovery will not die down until American education (and the elected officials who set its key policies) face up to two realities.

• Universal “college and career readiness,” unless far more carefully defined and monitored than anyone has done so far, is just as fraud-inducing a K-12 goal as “universal proficiency by 2014” was for No Child Left Behind. A noble objective indeed, but so hard to attain—in a land where high school diplomas signify scant “readiness” and more than a quarter of young people drop out before getting them—that today’s push for both universality and readiness impels a lot of folks to cut corners.



Arne Duncan visits an example of the original credit-recovery program: summer school.  Photo by U.S. Department of Education.

• At day’s end, there are just three ways of awarding “credit” for work done in (or out) of school (and conferring diplomas or equivalency certificates based on that credit): “seat time” as traditionally measured

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  Curriculum & Instruction

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  The credit-recovery scam

Louisiana gets voucher accountability right

Adam Emerson / July 26, 2012

Louisiana broke new ground this week with a sensible plan for holding “voucher schools” accountable. State Superintendent John White will put into practice a “sliding scale” of accountability (an idea we first floated three years ago): Private schools enrolling large numbers of publicly funded students will be held to greater public transparency and results-linked accountability than schools enrolling just a handful. Specifically, private schools that enroll an average of ten voucher students per grade or more than forty in grades that are tested will be assessed points under a scoring system similar to one administered to public schools. A lower score could keep a school from enrolling students in the program, and it could, over time, trigger a quality review by the state Department of Education. Transparency around student-achievement results can be found in the voucher programs of other states (including Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio), but only Louisiana will have the authority to banish from the program schools that show consistently poor performance. This is a common-sense policy that can make vouchers more politically sustainable—and work better for kids, to boot.

A version of this analysis appeared on the Choice Words blog.

RELATED ARTICLE: “Plan for holding private schools accountable in voucher program wins board approval,” by Andrew Vanacore, The Times Picayune, July 24, 2012

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Louisiana gets voucher accountability right

Will Common Core revive content-driven instruction?

Kathleen Porter-Magee / July 26, 2012

The introduction to the Common Core English language arts standards explains that the standards cannot possibly “enumerate all or even most of the content that students should learn,” and need to be “complemented by a well-developed, content-rich curriculum.” That last bit recently caused the City Journal’s Sol Stern to applaud the return of content-based curriculum to American education, from whence it has been AWOL for most of the past half century. And where it firmly belongs: Results from a three-year pilot study in New York City indicate that shifting from process- and skills-driven reading programs to E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge content-based curriculum did wonders for student learning. Reading-achievement gains at schools that implemented Core Knowledge were five times greater than in “demographically similar” schools that continued to employ a more conventional literacy program. Still, proponents of content-driven curricula would do well to keep the champagne on ice because, while the standards hint at this important restoration, they alone can’t deliver on it. Instead, it will be up to state and district leaders and teachers to wade through the morass of new and updated curriculum materials and select those that put the focus squarely on content over process. Only time will tell whether the few phrases in the new multistate standards that link to a content-rich curriculum will be enough to drive the instructional changes our students so desperately need.

A version of this analysis appeared on the Common

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Will Common Core revive content-driven instruction?

Pulling parent triggers: easier said than done

The Education Gadfly / July 26, 2012

The good guys won the latest round of the interminable saga of the Adelanto parent-trigger case when a California judge endorsed the validity of signatures gathered in support of converting the school to a charter. The battle is far from over, of course, but we may yet see a parent trigger work before the movie glamorizing it opens.

Even Ohio Governor John Kasich, as vocal an opponent of taxation as Gadfly’s ever met, recently expressed support for a school levy that will (with luck) fund Cleveland’s promising school-reform plan. There’s plenty of reason for skepticism over never-ending calls for more education spending in America, but in Cleveland’s case the governor is right to join the mayor in asking voters to pony up.

A Whiteboard Advisors survey finds that nearly half of education “insiders” doubt that Common Core-aligned assessments will be ready to roll out on time in 2014-2015. Here’s hoping the consortia tasked with producing those tests prove the experts wrong.

Jay Mathews writes that it's a "perilous time" for D.C. schools, due to the  scandal surrounding Mayor Vincent Gray. The situation in Washington should remind advocates for mayoral control just how much damage can be done to reforms (and the credibility of that alternative education-governance model) when a lousy leader takes (or steals!) the reins.

The Newark Star-Ledger’s editorial board endorsed dropping the “acting” from New

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Pulling parent triggers: easier said than done

Achievement Growth: International and U.S. State Trends in Student Performance

Daniela Fairchild / July 26, 2012

Despite lackluster achievement on the latest rounds of PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS exams—and despite Fordham’s own premonitions of a new “Sputnik moment” for U.S. education—much complacency still surrounds American pupils’ academic prowess. One oft-cited source of false comfort is the gradual uptick in NAEP math and science scores over the past few years. This latest report from the international-education trifecta of Eric Hanushek, Paul Peterson, and Ludgar Woessmann argues for renewed sobriety. It tracks student-achievement growth in forty-nine countries (1995-2009) and forty-one states (1992-2011). Overall, increases in U.S. student achievement are middling, with twenty-four countries making greater gains. Over the fourteen years analyzed, U.S. students advanced about one year of learning, which is less than half of the achievement gains registered in more than twenty nations (including Hong Kong, Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, and top-improvers Latvia, Chile, and Brazil). What’s most interesting about the report, though, is the analysis of state improvement over time. Maryland made the most progress, with Florida, Delaware, and Massachusetts following closely behind. Iowa, Maine, and Oklahoma, meanwhile, found themselves at the bottom of the pile. If the U.S. as a whole had equaled the progress made by its top-improving states, we would be on par with Germany and the U.K.—and would find ourselves among the top advancers worldwide. There’s much thought-provoking data to

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Achievement Growth: International and U.S. State Trends in Student Performance

The Sheepskin Effect and Student Achievement: Deemphasizing the Role of Master’s Degrees in Teacher Compensation

Kai Filipczak / July 26, 2012

Here’s a jarring statistic from analysts Raegen Miller and Marguerite Roza: In 2007-08, states spent $14.8 billion on pay bumps for teachers with master’s degrees, which—time and again—have proven to be entirely unrelated to instructional effectiveness. In perspective, this equates to $217 per pupil—and marks a 72 percent increase since 2003-04, the last time Miller and Roza crunched these numbers. This “master’s bump” affects states differently: Six states (all with powerful teacher unions, including Illinois, New York, and Ohio) allocate $400-plus per-pupil as a reward for this additional credential (in cost-adjusted dollars). Eight (predominantly right-to-work states like Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah) spend under $100. Interestingly, the size of a master’s bump had no statistical relationship with the percentage of teachers acquiring such degrees. Miller and Roza recommend a two-pronged approach to developing a sleeker, more productive teacher-salary structure. First, scrap policies that automatically confer extra pay for master’s degrees (or that require advanced degrees for full licensure). Second, push master’s programs to compete on merit: Use teacher-assessment data to rate their effectiveness and encourage graduate programs centered on performance assessments (like the Relay Graduate School of Education and the Urban Teacher Center) rather than seat-time requirements. Good ideas both—and even more so when budgets are tight.

SOURCE: Raegan Miller and Marguerite Roza, The Sheepskin Effect and Student Achievement: Deemphasizing the Role of Master’s Degrees in