Mike and I can disagree all day, during normal business hours, about the level of transparency we should demand from voucher schools. But in the NOLA case, the issue is “contentious” and might stall the $10 million proposal (although the city’s Catholic schools will accept standardized testing—they’re desperate).

It’s entirely appropriate that the Louisiana Senate would require schools participating in a possible New Orleans voucher program to “administer state tests to voucher students.” That’s hardly out of line for other voucher programs. Milwaukee’s requires schools to test all students (not just those in the program); D.C.’s requires all voucher recipients to participate in an annual evaluation—i.e., testing. (Though, regrettably, the D.C. results aren’t broken out by school.)

These are public dollars. The more transparency, the better.

Worth keeping an eye on this, especially because “the Senate plan would require schools to administer state tests to voucher students.”

The problem here elicited is a problem—at least because it engenders a lot of boring writing—and I’m convinced that it’s getting worse. (No, I don’t have data to support that.) Today’s k-12 system generally ignores writing and today’s colleges demand lousy writing, so there you go.

John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, writes in National Review a solid, sweeping article about higher education. It’s currently available only to subscribers (they, and hackers, may read it here). Some good parts:

No one disputes that a four-year degree is a ticket to lucrative professions requiring advanced academic training, such as medicine, law, or academia itself. But most undergraduates are not training for these professions, and, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, more and more college graduates go into jobs that do not require diplomas. George Leef, vice president for research of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, notes that a quarter of travel agents and retail-sales supervisors, a third of flight attendants, and nearly half of aerobics instructors have bachelor’s degrees. That’s fine - if they wanted to study Goethe or geology for personal edification, and were willing to spend four years and a lot of money doing so. But it’s pointless if the idea was to boost their careers.

Using 2000 data on test scores and coursework, education researchers Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas and Greg Forster of the Friedman Foundation estimated that the number of high-school students prepared to study college-level material was about 40,000 lower than the number of students enrolling in college. The predictable result of this trend is that only a minority of American colleges and universities are truly selective anymore, with gut courses and grade inflation rampant on many campuses.

In a normal market, prices would take care of this: The high cost of education would discourage those who wouldn’t sufficiently profit from a diploma. But as with health care, third-party payment hides the actual price. About three-quarters of all college students attend public universities, where taxpayers shoulder a large percentage, often the majority, of the cost. Furthermore, government grants and subsidized loans significantly defray the tuition and fees at both public and private schools. Most families pay only a small fraction of the true cost of undergraduate education.

Update: Seems that the article is available to all. Brilliant!

Mike and Liam discuss Mike’s controversial Gadfly article on the burdensome health care costs associated with teacher obesity.

The pressure high school students face to get into top colleges has intensified to the point that it’s susceptible to some hilarious satirizing.

Boys are being left behind, the Economist tells us.

Or at least compassionate conservatism, of which NCLB is a cornerstone. So implieth Michael Gerson in this morning’s Washington Post.

Did you know the Flypaper bloggers do other stuff during the day, in addition to blogging? We do. Ed policy research, charter sponsorship in Ohio, the weekly Education Gadfly newsletter, and more. You can see it all at the Fordham Institute website, edexcellence.net, which has just received a handsome makeover.

TO: Roy.Romer@edin08.com
FROM: mpetrilli@edexcellence.net
SUBJECT: Asteroids!

Dear Roy,

Hey, how’s it going? I see you were in Colorado yesterday; I guess Ed in 08’s lawyers gave up trying to keep the initiative out of politics, eh?

But that’s not why I’m writing. Look, I’m a little upset that you haven’t taken my advice from a few weeks ago to heart. I see that your team is still using the “economics” argument to promote education reform. That’s all wrong. Like I told you, those pocketbook issues are too fickle. The economy goes down but it also goes up.

What’s not going away is the threat of an asteroid hitting the Earth and ending life as we know it. But here’s the good news: just as I predicted, some good ole American students hold the key to saving the world. Check this out: American Fork students on asteroid watch. Get a load of this:

The 34 students on science teacher Curtis Craig’s “Caveman team” of the Killer Astroid Project arrive to upload their star-measuring software and asteroid database long before school starts. Then begins the long, arduous process of observing telescopic images for asteroid activity. Taking three images shot 20 minutes apart, they sequence them in motion. A small change in the image may signal asteroid movement. Recording the coordinates of that movement on a grid, students extrapolate the trajectory then submit their reports to Harvard University’s Minor Planet Center, which cues up its telescope to students’ reported coordinates. If the center’s telescope finds an image to match those coordinates, a new asteroid discovery is born.

And:

If they’re really lucky, their discoveries might help predict the trajectories of asteroids with the potential to one day hit Earth. That hasn’t happened yet to any of the teams involved in the NASA project.
“But what an honor to serve humanity,” Craig notes.
And if the students are really, really lucky? They could discover an asteroid headed straight for Earth, perhaps the sort that may have rid our planet of dinosaurs millions of years ago. That almost happened in March 2004, when the asteroid Apophis came within 24,000 miles of striking distance.

But here’s the kicker, Roy:

The hope is that more students find themselves interested in space technology careers.

Exactly! Again, here’s the pitch: If we don’t do something, asteroids are going to kill us all. Making sure some smart American kid gets a good math and science education is the key to saving the world. So tell it straight to the campaigns and to the electorate: no more bellyaching about health care or housing or global warming. We gotta improve k-12 education!

Cheers,

Mike

From Newsweek, this article provides a well-argued and sorely-needed counterpoint to Mark Bauerlein’s recent youth-bashing book, The Dumbest Generation. Some choice bits:

IQ scores in every country that measures them, including the United States, have been rising since the 1930s. Since the tests measure not knowledge but pure thinking capacity-what cognitive scientists call fluid intelligence, in that it can be applied to problems in any domain-then Gen Y’s ignorance of facts (or of facts that older people think are important) reflects not dumbness but choice. And who’s to say they are dumb because fewer of them than of their grandparents’ generation care who wrote the oratorio “Messiah” (which 35 percent of college seniors knew in 2002, compared with 56 percent in 1955)?

... we suspect that the decline in the percentage of college freshmen who say it’s important to keep up with political affairs, from 60 percent in 1966 to 36 percent in 2005, reflects at least in part the fact that in 1966 politics determined whether you were going to get drafted and shipped to Vietnam. The apathy of 2005 is more a reflection of the world outside Gen-Yers’ heads than inside, and one that we bet has changed tack with the historic candidacy of Barack Obama. Alienation is not dumbness....

Bauerlein is not the first scholar to pin the blame for a younger generation’s intellectual shortcomings on new technology (television, anyone?), in this case indicting “the digital age.” But there is no empirical evidence that being immersed in instant messaging, texting, iPods, videogames and all things online impairs thinking ability....

It’s a relief to see a sober examination of this issue, but more counterweight is still needed. I’d supply it, but as a twenty-something I fear I’m just too dumb.

It’s on. And with ESPN360, you don’t have to miss a moment. A moment like this.

Update: Or this!

We’ve documented how Wake County (Raleigh) is making a real mess of its public schools. (See here, here, here, and there’s more where that came from, too.) Just a few weeks ago we noted that the district’s school board—by taking to court parents who don’t want their children to attend year-round schools—was acting in a way that will only alienate and offend its customers.

Now, we learn, the board has been forced to reverse its decision:

The board took this action in response to a state Supreme Court action last week that blocked a Court of Appeals ruling that eliminated the need for parental consent to send children to year-round and modified-calendar schools.

Books like this are fine, but it’s incorrect (title of book in question notwithstanding) to see them as diagnosing a “national problem.” The temptation exists, of course, to find in their stories reflections of a country in which high school students don’t eat lunch (no time!), in which parents will not remove themselves from their children’s sides, in which kids are coddled and pampered and showered with gold stars for the straight-A’s they receive. But what really ail U.S. youth are not the products of too much parental involvement, but the products of not enough parental involvement—more specifically, not enough solid guidance from adults (teachers, coaches, mentors, etc.).

The reviewer makes another smart point:

...even as parents obsessively strap bike helmets on their kids’ heads and squirt antiseptic gels on their hands, the adults themselves cavalierly break up families with divorce and tolerate the rampant sexualization of prepubescent girls. In short, we’re focusing on the wrong risks.

True. What most worries me, though: Did they really wrap up that kid in yellow caution tape?

I’m not a special education (SPED) expert nor will I ever claim to be one. But I do know that it happens to have one of the most mobilized and vocal constituencies in education. And that’s no surprise—understandably, parents of special needs children want their kids to receive the services that they need. But this article brought up a couple issues in special education that continue to be a problem.

I’m assuming the fact we continue to see our SPED numbers grow (and their associated costs) is one of the reasons that Virginia lawmakers have proposed that parents be notified—as opposed to approve—when a district wants to terminate services. I’m guessing some parents look at these services as given. But aren’t most kids (not talking about the ones diagnosed with severe and profound disabilities) supposed to be benefiting from this assistance and eventually testing out of services? We’re told that over a third of special education students in Virginia are deemed learning disabled (LD). Now, I’m not saying that these kids are not learning disabled—just that there’s some pretty solid research that says that early identification and prevention programs (esp. in reading) are better for kids who later end up getting labeled LD than are years and years of SPED services.

One of the other proposed changes places limitations around how often schools are required to update parents on their children’s progress. It’s no secret that special education as a field is particularly rife with compliance-oriented stuff; the amount of paperwork that schools must complete (including the Individualized Education Plans) can be entirely unreasonable (it’s an area the feds have tried to remedy).  Again, folks more knowledgeable than I about this area have set out parameters for what does and doesn’t make sense in terms of compliance features.

Overall, these proposed changes seem to imply that special education is not just about parents and their very strong advocacy groups. Parents like Ms. Harrison recognized as much when she accused state lawmakers of  “taking away parental rights.” So here we go playing the “rights” card (it’s just as effective as the “equity” card, mind you). And no, I’m not against rights or equity; it’s just that it’s an amazingly effective tool in terms of framing a position. I’m just left asking whose “rights” are we advocating for here? Those of parents, teachers, or students?

Reports the BBC: “A university has asked students to refrain from throwing their mortar board hats in the air to celebrate graduation in case someone gets hurt.”

Smart. Hat-related injuries can and do occur.

Wondering why all that extra federal money for “teacher quality” just seems to get absorbed by the system? Maybe this is why.

That’s right, it does. This week’s issue is out. Don’t miss Mike’s feature article, which argues that we need fewer chunky teachers in our public schools. Also, Eric takes to task D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who recently proposed some lousy ideas about education funding.

Not happy that the McCain campaign is using an Ed Week article he wrote last year to demonstrate Obama’s thin record on education in the U.S. Senate, David Hoff pens this disclaimer on Campaign K-12:

In response to Sen. Barack Obama’s education speech yesterday, the McCain campaign is circulating the following sentence I wrote in 2007:

In his eight years in the state Senate and two years in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama hasn’t made a significant mark on education policy.

I’d like to remind the campaign that earlier this year I quoted an Arizona superintendent saying this about McCain:

I don’t think he has a strong track record of putting education at the top of his priorities.

Read the Obama story and the McCain story and you can decide who has a better track record on K-12 issues.

Smack!

Folks like Mark Bauerlein, and probably Checker, won’t like this.

One of Senator John McCain’s most attractive virtues is his willingness to stand on principle even in the face of adversity. He promoted comprehensive immigration reform even though his own party’s base hated it. He continues to support the Iraq War even though the public wants the troops out. Now, with his strong, almost-no-caveats embrace of No Child Left Behind, he’s got a twofer: he’s found a policy position opposed by his party’s base and the general public.

Such a position gives Senator Barack Obama all kinds of room to run. He can support the tenets of NCLB while criticizing its specifics, placate his teacher union base while offering reforms that paint him as a different kind of Democrat. And yesterday, in a major policy speech at the Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts (MESA), that’s exactly what he did. (Full text here, Washington Post Online coverage here; AP coverage here.) Here’s the beef:

I believe it’s time to lead a new era of mutual responsibility in education, one where we all come together for the sake of our children’s success. An era where each of us does our part to make that success a reality: parents and teachers, leaders in Washington and citizens all across America.

This starts with fixing the broken promises of No Child Left Behind. Now, I believe that the goals of this law were the right ones. Making a promise to educate every child with an excellent teacher is right. Closing the achievement gap that exists in too many cities and rural areas is right. More accountability is right. Higher standards are right.

But I’ll tell you what’s wrong with No Child Left Behind. Forcing our teachers, our principals and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong. Promising high-quality teachers in every classroom and then leaving the support and the pay for those teachers behind is wrong. Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next is wrong.

We must fix the failures of No Child Left Behind. We must provide the funding we were promised, give our states the resources they need and finally meet our commitment to special education. We also need to realize that we can meet high standards without forcing teachers and students to spend most of the year preparing for a single, high-stakes test. Recently, 87 percent of Colorado teachers said that testing was crowding out subjects like music and art. But we need to look no further than MESA to see that accountability does not need to come at the expense of a well-rounded education. It can help complete it - and it should.

And what was the McCain campaign’s response? His spokesman said:

While in the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama has never spearheaded education reforms, which despite his lofty rhetoric, demonstrates his weak leadership on an issue that is critical to the economic strength of our country. It’s no coincidence that a leading education magazine [Education Week] noted that Senator Obama has made no significant mark on education policy.

That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?

Conventional wisdom (true in this case, I believe) says that Republicans that don’t talk about education don’t win elections. Senator McCain is going to have to offer a clear vision of his own on the issue, and if it has any chance of energizing his base or the general public, it needs to start with an admission that NCLB is far from perfect. Then he can strike back at his opponent. If you think “mutual responsibility” and parental involvement are such good ideas, Mr. Obama, why won’t you allow parents to choose a full range of options for their children, including excellent inner-city Catholic schools? In particular, why won’t you let low-income Hispanic families make these choices? What exactly would you do, from Washington, to a school once you declare it a failure? And just how many “resources” are enough to fix our schools? $550 billion a year isn’t enough?

Team McCain: Amateur hour is over. Get it together, or get ready for a sad November.

As part of its effort to trim $200 million from its budget, the New York City Department of Ed will take down a notch its plan to expand screening programs for gifted and talented pupils.

(Look for more on high-achieving students in an upcoming Fordham report.)

The Economist recently ran an article about Mexico’s attempts to fix its education system. But the country must first deal with this.

A post from guest blogger and Fordham Vice President for Ohio Programs & Policy Terry Ryan.

Ohio’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Susan Zelman, announced to her staff today that she will be stepping down as state superintendent. She is leaving after several months of public, and sometimes nasty, tussling with Governor Strickland and his emerging agenda for Ohio’s K-12 education. Dr. Zelman will be missed, and now speculation turns to her possible successor. Scott Elliott of the Dayton Daily News has listed on his blog four possible candidates (including the Governor’s wife). He is seeking suggestions on other names to consider; if you have any insights here please share with Scott and his readers.