The USDOE announced a couple days ago the six states approved for “differentiated accountability” plans (Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, and Ohio). The purpose of the program according to the Department is to “assist those states by targeting resources and interventions to those schools most in need of intensive interventions and significant reform.” Targeting resources to the neediest of needy schools clearly makes sense, but I share Mike’s concern relative to how this program might loosen the pressure on suburban schools in particular. One of the key flexibilities under the new program is that “the state clearly defines its process for categorizing  schools” and from the looks of it, each pilot state is absolutely elated to do so.

Recall that under the current NCLB system, if a school fails to meet AYP two years in a row, it is labeled “in need of improvement.” Since all subgroups of students must also meet AYP benchmarks, that’s meant that many “successful” suburban schools—previously judged to be so based on aggregate student performance—now find themselves “in need of improvement” when one or more of their ESL, special education, Latino, etc. populations don’t make adequate gains.

The Differentiated Accountability program essentially gives states permission to develop kinder, gentler labeling systems for these suburban schools and others. In Maryland, Indiana, and Illinois, for example, it’s out with the “in need of improvement” label and in with the “focused needs” and “comprehensive needs” labels. Schools that make AYP in the “all students” subgroup but not in one or more of the other subgroups are “focused needs” schools, while schools that do not meet AYP for their “all student” subgroup are comprehensive needs schools. Many suburban schools, then, rid themselves of that nasty in need of improvement label. The implication is that they just need to “focus” a little more. After all, according to USDOE, they are “just missing the mark.”

Read a couple of the state press releases from the pilot states and it’s easy to see that the states are just as eager to craft new labels for schools as they are to craft new policies for them to help students. In Maryland, for instance, schools in their first three years of improvement are now in the “developing stage.” In Florida, schools in their first four years of not making AYP are in “preventive” improvement.

To be fair, there are other (unsurprising) changes that states have proposed in this new program (like switching the order of when the tutoring and choice provisions are offered to struggling students). But the power in a name ceases to amaze me. The public attention (and yes, bad press) that suburban schools sometimes receive for not meeting the academic needs of their special student populations is a welcome spotlight. The in need of improvement label is the scarlet letter they understandably wish to banish. But there’s a difference between a label that provides a more precise school description intended to better funnel resources and one that attempts to sugarcoat matters when schools fail needy students. I want to give states the benefit of the doubt and say they are simply doing the former. But my cynical side says let’s not forget that “developing,” “focusing,” and “preventive” schools still need improvement too.

We are pretty good at generating buzz for upcoming reports at Fordham (doesn’t hurt that those reports are typically buzzworthy) but this article in Education Week yesterday fostered buzz without alerting me to the bite. It summarizes what I imagine to be fairly complex research findings on a topic that many folks are interested in, then doesn’t tell us exactly when the actually study is to be published or released (sometime “soon”). So I rely on the journalist’s take of the findings (risky but unavoidable).

Harvard researcher Tom Kane and colleagues apparently conducted a random assignment study analyzing whether students in classrooms with National Boards teachers (i.e., those that have received the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards-NBPTS-credential) learned more than students taught by comparison teachers. To my knowledge, this is the first random assignment study conducted on this contentious topic (see here, here, and here). We’re told that students with teachers with high ratings on the Boards gained more than students in classes with lower-scoring Board teachers. And though test score differences between students with Board teachers and with non-applicant teachers were positive, they were not statistically significant. Kane sums it up this way:

Ineffective teachers are just as likely as effective teachers to apply for national-board certification but the board process does seem to provide some information on teachers’ effectiveness, so people who are certified are a little better than the average non-applicant, and unsuccessful applicants are worse than non-applicants.

Okay, so some encouraging news for National Boards folks but not mind-blowing either. The value-added analysis, though, showed even stronger results, i.e., it better predicted which teachers were most likely to produce sizable student learning gains than did the National Board measures. Based on the study findings, researchers are calling on the NBPTS to take into account student learning gains as part of their credentialing process. Hmmm... sounds like a pretty good idea, but not one that will likely be embraced anytime soon. Mary Dilworth, NBPTS vice president, responds, “We need to spend a little more time looking actually at the assessment that we’re using to gauge student performance.” True, but this doesn’t rule out the possibility of piloting a value-added National Boards credential in states which have sound data infrastructure, strong standards, and highly-regarded, aligned assessments. It would be a welcome contribution to our understanding of teacher quality.

I was intrigued by the article and really look forward to reading the study. I’m just not sure when that’s going to happen...

Performance-based pay (PBP) programs for teachers have been growing, especially since the advent of the federal Teacher Incentive Fund program a couple years ago. ProComp out of Denver is probably the best known PBP and rather unique since it’s being funded by a $25-million mill levy approved by taxpayers. Like many of these plans, ProComp is extremely complicated, which is part of the reason that management and union reached an impasse in contract negotiations over how to change and improve it for the next iteration.

ProComp is a voluntary program—indeed, this was one of the major reasons it was passed—and less than half of Denver teachers have now joined the plan. That means roughly $87 million in ProComp dollars will be left over at the end of the 2008-09 school year. Not surprising, DPS says it could find a place for those extra greenbacks, perhaps by directing it to younger teachers leaving the system at high rates. But Henry Roman, involved in the program from the get-go, says not so fast: “At this stage, I feel more information is needed before people make final recommendations.” Indeed. Before that money is redirected anywhere, stakeholders need to stop and ask themselves why so few teachers have signed on to the program.

Having evaluated one of these programs myself, it’s often teacher misunderstanding that’s a primary roadblock to progress. And from what I know, ProComp is as complicated as they come. And it does not, as some have proposed, reconstruct a teacher’s base salary from scratch. Instead, teachers layer the base with various cash amounts through fulfillment of or service in a variety of capacities. The laundry list of eligible cash categories covers both traditional ways of building earnings (e.g, masters degree) and more forward-thinking methods (e.g., student achievement, teaching in hard to staff schools). Many of these “layers,” though, become part of a teacher’s salary year in and year out—a factor which some say is currently being overlooked with all of this talk of milk-and-honey ProComp surplus.

Teachers either consider the program too risky to get involved or they simply don’t trust it. But really, how risky is a laundry list of salary add-ons? And why, after so much time, energy, and positive P.R. on this effort (up until now), do teachers still look at it with a suspicious eye? This well-publicized impasse doesn’t help. Let’s hope this initiative doesn’t get totally derailed. The Denver voters were sold a program that awarded teachers for raising student achievement, improving teaching skills,  and taking on more difficult assignments. That’s how the money should be spent. If we can’t get more teachers to volunteer for it, so be it. Go back to the drawing board or let the money sit. But don’t creatively redirect it so it no longer aligns with its original purpose.

As an aside, I’m wondering if volunteering is really the way to go with these PBP programs. We have another one starting up right here in our own backyard. It’s also voluntary, though on a much smaller scale (just 12 schools). With up to a $10,000 dollar bonus, might teachers suspicions disappear?

A group of charter school organizations including the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, issued a report this week that presents findings from a panel charged with developing a framework for judging the academic quality of charter schools. The report lays out four essential indicators of academic quality: student achievement, student progress over time, post-secondary readiness and success, and student engagement. Each indicator is accompanied by multiple measures, metrics, and benchmarks that define how each is to be operationalized. For example, student achievement measures include proficiency levels on state assessments, college entrance exam scores, and high school exit exams (as applicable). For the most part, the indicators and their corresponding data points are ones commonly used to measure quality (e.g., graduation rates, percentage of students passing high school exit exams).  The report has, in a sense, packaged prior disparate indicators all together in one piece.

The report also appears to be a response to those who

believe that the vast diversity in charter school missions, educational models, and student populations—as well as differences in state accountability requirements and individual authorizer expectations—makes it impossible to establish common standards and measures of quality that are applicable and meaningful to all kinds of charter schools.

Advocates hold that a more comprehensive framework like this one will deter “reliance on snapshot data” that “lead to ill-informed judgments about charter schools.”

In short, the report issues a resounding charge for charter school operators and authorizers to up the ante in terms of policing themselves and using standard data to foster accountability. Kudos to them. The charge is needed and noble.

The list, however, is fairly meaty—then there’s the caveat that all of this is just a starting point. The main problem in my opinion, in fact, is the authors’ admonishment that the framework (comprising 13 measures and 30 metrics total) must be used in its entirety, that choosing several indicators would “not be appropriate.” No doubt if the charter community was to measure quality by reporting on all 13 measures (with their 30 metrics), we’d have plenty of very useful comparative data for these schools. I don’t agree, however, that charter schools must report on the whole list, lest the framework be rendered null and void. I understand the concern with cherry picking data, but requiring charters to report on all of these data points may be more burdensome than necessary (a couple of the post-secondary readiness measures appear particularly hard to gather). I worry, like others, about the balance between flexibility, burden, and accountability in charter schools. And let us not forget that defining quality is a problem for all schools, not just charters—so the conversation about accountability and reporting norms, assuming they are to be strengthened, needs to be occurring in our non-charter schools as well.

The story of the 18 pregnant girls who made a pact to become pregnant at Gloucester High School in Gloucester, Massachusetts, has been all over the news in the last several days. Everyone hearing the story has been understandably dismayed. My mother even called me to say, “Did you know they are providing in-school day care for those girls?” Sure enough, she’s right. Apparently, the day care center is located in a “converted classroom” at the school. We’re told that none of the pregnant teens plans to drop out and there’s now a waiting list for the free daycare program. Some are now questioning whether having daycare at the school might be encouraging students to have babies. Superintendent Chris Farmer responds, “I think that is hard to believe. Clearly if we can keep them in school, it gives them a better chance in the future.”

I would imagine that is true, and the limited research on the topic appears to supports this claim. (Of the few studies I found, however, none utilized rigorous methods and they were generally conducted on isolated programs.) The head of the organization running the daycare responded, “Once this happens they are happy we are there and the data supports this.” Yes, I imagine they are happy to receive free child care—who wouldn’t be? I will resist using this opportunity to pontificate about the message that I think having daycares in high school sends to students. But I am reminded of this recommendation in the bigger, bolder statement released recently by many in the education elite:

One particularly promising policy is to locate full-service health clinics in schools. Such clinics offer a way to overcome the absence of primary care physicians in low-income areas. They also address the fact that poor parents are often unable to take time from work for preventive and other health care services.

Hmmm... wonder if they also had in mind free daycare for poor teenagers who choose to become pregnant? Perverse incentives are tricky things, to be sure. And while it’s true that these clinics and the rise in teen pregnancies do not share a “causal relationship,” common sense tells us that it sure makes the after-prospects of having a child a lot easier when teenage mothers know there is someone waiting to take care of their newborn 5 days a week for free. So, then, the question remains: Is this a legitimate function of schooling? If you ask me, by all means, help disadvantaged children who come into the world have a better life—perhaps even through discounted day care at off-site facilities. Just don’t use the physical space of our schools to legitimize teenagers’ bad decisions.

Over a year ago, when Secretary Spellings invited all states to apply for a new pilot program to use growth models in their accountability systems, she included  several requirements, one of which was “A growth model proposal must... ensure that all students are proficient by 2014.” This week’s Education Week commentary on growth models spells out some of the repercussions of that fateful requirement. In it, Michael Weiss clarifies the difference between status models, value-added models, and projection models (the latter used by most states participating in pilot).

I’ll pause now for the vocabulary portion of our lesson...

Status model: holds that schools must bring, say, a low-performing 3rd grader up to proficiency by the end of the year for the school to receive credit for her performance, regardless of initial achievement (i.e, the NCLB model).

Projection model: holds that schools receive credit if  learning gains are sufficiently large enough that a student appears to be on track to become proficient by say, 6th grade, regardless of initial achievement.

Value-added model: measures schools’ relative effectiveness by accounting for students’ initial achievement levels using multiple years of  test score data.

All three of these models are problematic. Folks don’t like the status model since it doesn’t take initial achievement into consideration. Essentially the same problem exists for projection models with the added challenge of having to estimate growth. Regarding the latter, Weiss cites the Florida example. That state assumed a linear trend for student growth (meaning students will continue gaining at the same rate of growth); when in fact, students’ development was curvilinear (meaning students made significantly smaller learning gains as they progressed through the grades, which is not unusual). Consequently, we’re told that Florida’s projection model identifies many students as on track to become proficient when they will actually not make it. Finally, there are problems with value-added models as well, like not adequately addressing missing data, among myriad other problems (see here and here).

Weiss explains that value-added models “are not allowed under the growth-model pilot program because they don’t adhere to the core principle of NCLB—to bring all students up to proficiency.” (Clearly this 2014 deadline is problematic for a number of reasons that scads of people have pointed out, so I won’t go there.) I was under the impression that this was the flexibility granted to the pilot states, but no, it’s flexibility with a big, fat string attached. Apparently I’m not the only to have made that assumption—we’re told most folks equate value-added models with growth in accountability systems. Not the case with NCLB.

The author hypothesizes that the reason that we haven’t seen big differences between the status models used in most states and the projection models used in the pilot states is because they both operate under the fixed-proficiency-target notion.

To be sure, we’ve all been bombarded with news about the magic and allure of growth models. Countless conferences have been convened on the topic. Yet, we’re still on a steep learning curve when it comes to understanding and using them wisely and appropriately. Weiss succinctly describes the tension among the models this way:

The dilemma over which measure of school performance to use highlights an inherent tension when designing an accountability system for schools, one between the desire to compare their relative effectiveness (value-added models) while simultaneously holding them accountable for bringing all students up to high achievement levels (status or projection models). Some people thought that the pilot program’s projection models were a happy middle ground. Unfortunately, projection models don’t address the essential tension between status and growth. They are just the same old status-model wine in a new bottle.

I appreciated how Weiss laid out the issue here. The assumptions behind the models and the methodological questions he raises are the right ones for us to be wrestling with. It boils down to the primary purpose of the model and how results will be used. He ends up saying value-added is the way to go, despite its flaws. I can’t say at this point whether I agree with him or not. I need to go to a few more conferences on it first...

Mike opened the door for my response to the Washington Opportunity Scholarship Program external evaluation, and I’ve just completed a fairly quick read of it. First, in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll note that my former employer, Westat, was the prime contractor for the evaluation. Though I never personally worked with the Westat staff who conducted the evaluation, I do know their reputations for quality work. This is not the only reason, of course, that I found the evaluation to be of high-quality, but it’s worth mentioning. Disclosure aside, I have a couple takeaways from the evaluation.

First, the impact findings for the program are simply not that compelling (sorry Mike), and even the subgroup analyses—which do provide a ray of hope—are presented with important caveats. The design comprised a randomized controlled trial where eligible applicants were randomly assigned to receive or not receive the scholarship. By all accounts, the sample was drawn appropriately and is of sufficient size (n=2,308 which is, we’re told, larger than impact samples in previous, similar evaluations); furthermore, the analyses appear thoughtfully and meticulously conducted.

So, while I have few qualms with the evaluation design itself, I do think something that occurred naturally within the impact sample—namely, lots of student mobility—is worth keeping in mind. Over the course of two years in the treatment group, only 4 percent remained in the same school they were in when they applied to the program; 71 percent switched schools once, and 25 percent switched schools twice. Among the control group, 22 percent remained in the same school they were in when they applied to the program; 57 percent switched schools once; and 21 percent switched schools twice. That’s a majority of kids (even more so in the treatment group) not attending any one participating school for very long. The authors report that “both groups experienced higher rates of school mobility than the typical annual rate for urban students (22 to 28 percent).” It’s not surprising, then, to see unimpressive findings in an evaluation that covers such a short duration (2 years) and examines achievement data from students who are extremely transient (not to mention that students were tested on Saturdays!).

Second, I’m struck by the number of times that the phrase “adjustments for multiple comparisons suggest that this finding may be a false discovery” (or similar nomenclature) appears in the report. Researchers concern themselves with multiple comparisons because they are in a position of simultaneously evaluating multiple questions and hypotheses. Simply put, when you consider the results of multiple, separate statistical tests together, there is more room for error. The issue has gotten more attention of late, in part because of this recent report from IES which presents methods for dealing with the multiple comparisons problem. Like most people involved with education, I’m interested in the best research possible given the time and resources available to conduct it. Many statisticians believe that ignoring the multiplicity problem leads to misinterpretation of findings, so these researchers covered their bases.

But with all of those “false discovery” caveats in the report, I found myself harkening back to Judith Gueron’s comments in this book. Ms. Gueron (of Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation or MDRC) writes:

Finally, rigor has its drawbacks. Peter Rossi once formulated several laws about policy research, one of which was: the better the study, the smaller the likely impact. High quality policy research must continuously compete with the claims of greater success based on weaker evidence.

Ahh, so true. Sooner or later, we must come to terms with the fact that the bar we set for rigor may unintentionally and preemptively knock out of the running a program that may, in fact, make some improvement in American education.  Mind you, I’m not calling for a return to the age of education anecdote equals research. Here’s Gueron again on a lesson she learned about running successful social experiments:

You do not need dramatic results to have an impact on policy. Many people have said that the 1988 welfare reform law, the Family Support Act, was based and passed on the strength of research—and the research was about modest changes. When we have reliable results, it usually suggests that social programs (at least the relatively modest ones tested in this country) are not panaceas but that they nonetheless can make improvements. One of the lessons I draw from our experience is that modest changes have often been enough to make a program cost-effective and can also be enough to persuade policymakers to act. However, while this was true in the mid 1980’s, it was certainly not true in the mid 1990’s. In the last round of federal welfare reform, modest improvements were often cast as failures.

The question is: Will the OSP ultimately pass the “modest improvement” test? At two years—a time period that’s too short to capture impacts that may evolve over time—we don’t know. What I do know is that parents believe the OSP is making improvements, that improvement for certain groups of students may exist, and that school choice in and of itself may prove a laudable goal even without raise-the-roof achievement gains. Also, as an educational community, we’d be wise to continue the dialogue around the financial, political, methodological, and common-sensical (I think that’s a word) tradeoffs involved in rigorous research.

Speaking of the economics-related back and forth between my colleagues here, a new report out by RAND last week compiles a series of papers presented at a November 2006 conference on U.S. economic competitiveness (yes, that took awhile). It’s a pretty meaty compilation with lots of interesting good-news, bad-news data and insights from leading economists, engineers, and other scientists.

What caught my attention, though, was this news article that picked up on a particular stat in the lengthy report. We’re told that “overseas talent” is helping to augment our science and engineering workforce since “70 percent of [foreign born students] elect to remain in the U.S. after completing their degrees.” Phoebe Leboy, President of the Association for Women in Science, is apparently concerned that most immigrants “do not serve as good role models for our students” since children better identify with those who appear to come from a similar background. It got me thinking about the research on the question of teacher-student race and its relationship to student achievement, which has fascinated many a scholar. In short, the findings are mixed (yes, I know, we get tired of hearing that). Still, I prefer to think that a scientist’s or engineer’s strong content knowledge and passion for the subject matter is far more important in inspiring and challenging would-be scientists and engineers than is his skin color, accent, and/or nationality.

The Florida Teachers Union and friends sued the state on Friday to remove pro-voucher proposals from the November ballot, including a provision designed to restore, you guessed it, the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which was ruled unconstitutional in 2006 (D.C.’s version of the program may face a similar fate). The conspiracy theorists hold that the amendments are “part of a well-organized, well-financed campaign to outsource public schools” (yawn). Others believe that the issue needs to be decided by the voters as opposed to the union (or the courts)—a novel idea indeed.

Students and teachers are up in arms that Karen Salazar was fired from a Los Angeles high school for “encouraging political activism among her students,” namely by accusing the LAUSD of denying students “basic human rights” and “doing it on purpose in order to keep them subservient [and] to subjugate them in society.” Pretty bold comment there from Ms. Salazar, who calls her student supporters “warrior scholars.” Administrators termed her teaching too “Afro-centric” and apparently thought her “advocacy crossed the line.”

I’m all for creatively engaging high school students in the subject matter (I used to have to do it myself once upon a time), but it appears that the subject matter was less important here than the politics. Frankly, teachers aren’t given the same degree of intellectual freedom as, say, Flypaper bloggers are.... Besides, does political activism appear in her English Language curriculum standards?

Education Week reports today that data collected from the states by the U.S. Department of Education show the percentage of core classes in the nation taught by highly-qualified teachers is around 94 percent for 2006-2007. The numbers for high-poverty schools are slightly lower, but still pretty high—illustrating once again that the gaping loophole in the teacher quality provision known as HOUSEE invites states to game the system. North Dakota, for instance, boasts a full 100 percent of its core-subject classes taught by highly-qualified teachers. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s 100 percent in high-poverty schools, low-poverty schools, elementary schools, and secondary schools—every single core class taught by a highly-qualified teacher who demonstrates content knowledge expertise.

Others have already spoken about this problem quite eloquently. And though we admit to spotting a silver lining in here for charter schools, the fact remains that these latest overinflated data are just downright silly. Barnett Berry at the Center for Teaching Quality says as much:

The way states define highly-qualified teachers and what counts and doesn’t count varies, ... rendering cross-state comparisons useless.

True, and the same adjective applies to the data themselves.

Oddly enough, on the same day that the Economic Policy Institute and friends release this manifesto recommending that we “pay more attention to the time students spend out of school” (see Mike’s post for more), IES releases a report evaluating two after-school programs. One of these programs was an adaptation of Success for All’s existing school-day reading program which was modified for an after-school setting (called Adventure Island). The primary research question addressed in the random assignment study was “Does the enhanced after-school instruction improve math or reading proficiency over what students would achieve in regular after-school programs, as measured by test scores?”

Success for All’s after school program provided students with 20 percent more hours of reading instruction over the school year, compared with students in the regular after-school program—yet students in the “enhanced” program did not experience statistically significant impacts on their performance on the SAT 10 reading tests, nor on other measures such as student engagement, behavior, or homework completion. Although there were a couple implementation blips (e.g., pacing), the report finds that overall Adventure Island was implemented as intended.

All in all, not terribly good news for this after-school offspring, whose in-school parent was found by the What Works Clearinghouse to have “potentially positive effects on alphabetics and general reading achievement.” One wonders what happened in the after-school translation.

I’m not one to beat up on teachers unions just for the sake of it, but this little news story out of Australia illustrates precisely how the interests of unions and students do not always intersect. Apparently the State School Teachers Union decided that one of the best ways to obtain their 20 percent raise was to “move to withhold report cards,” essentially forcing parents to contact teachers directly for information about the child’s academic progress. Union officials, however, maintain that “parents and students will not unfairly suffer because of the action” since teachers hold report card meetings with parents anyway. Now, that’s some justification and especially little solace when we are told that this strategy is “just one of a broad range of tactics” to catalyze pay negotiations. Hate to see what the next tactic brings—withholding instruction altogether, or lunch time perhaps?

As you can see, we’re not exactly doing cartwheels over here upon hearing what Eleanor Holmes Norton had to say about the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. She’s apparently concerned about “protecting the children.” There was not one mention in the Washington Post article, however, about basing future funding decisions on the evidence regarding impacts of the program. Choice supporters (like ourselves) would surely like it if the rigorous external evaluation of the program pointed to significant and large positive impacts for children participating in the program, but alas, it’s simply not that cut and dry.

The first year impact evaluation (released last June), in fact, measures differences occurring just 7 months after the start of the students’ first year in the program. Not surprisingly, researchers found no statistically significant impacts, positive or negative, on student reading or math achievement for year one. They did, however, find that the program had substantial positive impact on parents’ views of school safety (i.e., parents in the treatment group perceived their child’s school to be less dangerous than parents in the control group) and on parents’ overall satisfaction with their child’s school. These findings echo what we have learned in other studies; that is, that parents want choices for their children and that they care about a wider variety of outcomes (e.g., school safety) than the outcomes preferred by other education stakeholders (e.g, student achievement). The executive summary of the evaluation closes with this:

The findings here are based on information collected only a year after students applied to the program and may not reflect the consistent impacts of the OSP [Opportunity Scholarship Program] over a longer period of time.... The first year, results, therefore provide an early look at student experiences in what was a transitional year for most of them. Future reports will examine impacts 2 and 3 years after application to the program, when any short-term effects of students’ transition to new schools may have dissipated.

Unfortunately, the political shenanigans surrounding this program may draw the curtain on it before the program has time to gain traction and potentially demonstrate results for longer than a 7 measly months—an admittedly in-flux time period for transitioning students.

With all the talk about Reading First and scientifically-based reading research of late, this unusual reading strategy caught my eye. It claims reading to fido has its advantages:

Without a scientific study, Pluchino [reading teacher] said, it is difficult to determine whether reading to Amelia has directly improved the students’ reading ability. But every student in the class has moved up a reading level since last fall, she said, and they are now reading faster and with more fluency.

Yes, dog is man’s best friend, but it remains to be seen whether he’s a reading teacher’s too—at least until someone coughs up some biscuits for an evaluation.

Mike thinks he has all of the Friday fun today. But the following headline just popped up in my Google Alerts: Teachers union meeting turns into “Springer Show.” Alas, and against my better judgment, I had to open it up.

Yesterday I attended an informal event at Education Sector where Marc Tucker from NCEE spoke about international education. Tucker has spent a lot of time studying educational assessment and practices in various other countries and said a few blog-worthy things. First, that some of the biggest differences between many other high-performing nations and the US is that other nations hold students more accountable than the teachers and utilize “instructional systems” that integrate curricular exams, as opposed to the more isolated tests that we use. He spent quite a bit of time talking up the merits of various other high-performing nations, leaving a couple of us asking what political and economic hurdles the US faces in trying to adopt some of these reforms.

Tucker pointed out, as have others, that the US is much larger than other high-achieving countries and has a bigger disparity in income, though he has some ideas about how to address the latter. Pressed about cultural differences, he said if a solution is found to work both in Asia and Europe, then there should be no “cultural problem” with it in the US. He mentioned the strategy of teachers following students from grade to grade, which he believes builds in teacher accountability for student progress. It seems to me, as a nation, we have historically had the attitude that we can’t learn from other nations because we are more democratic, capitalist, individually-oriented, etc.-more unique in some way that makes us immune to learning from other nations. International comparisons have again and again shown our lackluster performance. I’m wondering if our American pride has slowly given way to our American ignorance.

My recent post on special education (SPED) had one education scholar emailing me to point out that a perverse financial incentive exists to place students in special education. I agree with that, though it doesn’t discredit the influence that special education advocacy and parental groups have exerted on the issue (which others like Wade Horn and Douglas Tynan have also acknowledged).

But I’m also intrigued by some other factors that may be influencing the rise in SPED costs. I’m referring to research in Massachusetts a few years ago which found that cost increases in that state were less a factor of district policy or practice (e.g., inaccurate over identification of SPED students) and more a case of increasing numbers of students with significant special needs requiring more costly service. Specifically, researchers found several major underlying causes of rising SPED costs. One was changes in medical practice that now enable increasing survival rates for premature babies (many, unfortunately, with lifelong developmental and neurological problems); deinstitutionalization (more SPED children once served by state facilities are now served by school systems); and social/economic factors (more children exposed to child abuse, neglect, drug use, and dysfunctional family environments). So it’s not just perverse financial incentives or influential SPED advocacy groups that are contributing to rising costs. Given these findings, it may be both our good intentions and our bad ones.

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?

Anecdotal gripes that gifted children are not getting their needs met abound. Take this post from a gifted-education advocate that states: “Schools in America are not being evaluated equitably, and the gifted children are among the ones who are suffering” and “NCLB does not even talk about gifted and talented children—our country’s greatest natural resource.”

Flypaper readers will be happy to learn that we have an upcoming study titled “High-Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB” written by esteemed Brookings Institution scholar Tom Loveless due to be released in the next month. As its title suggests, it will examine empirically how gifted students have fared during the NCLB era. Stay tuned to find out whether anecdotes and opinions about meeting gifted children’s needs have any relationship to their academic progress.

So, after posting this, Mike drops me an email asking if I’ve got his back... I, of course, ask if he is insinuating that my blond highlights are not completely au naturelle.  Alas, he merely fears a backlash from the female constituency (not unusual in a campaign year). While I agree with him that hair color rights are a must in the workplace (not that I need them, mind you), I’m not sure I would take it much farther. I happen to like, for example, things like dress codes. And I’m reminded of the dress code section of the Fordham personnel manual (yes, I actually read it after being hired recently). It states, “Business casual attire is required. Managers reserve the right to require business attire for special situations (board meetings, important visitors, for example).” Hmmm... I’m not so sure that the Bowling Green administrators and workplace administrators are all that different, and that’s a good thing. I, for one, (a former high school teacher who chaperoned many a school dance) have had my fill of prom-dress bikinis.  Back to work....

Update: This post was originally and erroneously attributed to Liam Julian, who does not have blond highlights.

I’m encouraged this morning reading this article about Idaho’s work in crafting standardized performance evaluations for teachers. Apparently, some are hoping it paves the way for pay-for-performance plans for teachers (another good thing).

To be sure, recent reports indicate that teacher evaluations are pretty poor on the whole. I’ve had the opportunity over the years to take a look at some of these evaluations, particularly those in urban school districts, and concur that they can be pretty embarrassing, often treating “personal hygiene” on the same plane as “teacher knowledge of subject”—that is, if the latter is even included.

To be fair, there are some fantastic evaluation instruments out there for assessing teachers’ skills and knowledge. The Teacher Advancement Program, for instance, has one they use as part of their professional development and performance-based pay program. It’s a research-based rubric that includes nearly 20 indicators (such as teacher content knowledge, teacher knowledge of students, academic feedback, and use of problem solving skills)—each one with corresponding benchmarks that operationalize what it means to be exemplary, proficient, or needing improvement. Let’s hope the potato state can be a model for other states/districts interested in overhauling their teacher evaluations so that they actually serve to help teachers serve students.

I was reviewing a federal evaluation report that came out last week on small schools (also known as schools within schools or small learning communities). The idea is that large high schools are made impersonal, in part, by sheer magnitude; thus, efforts should be made to cut down on class sizes as to render a more individualized and personal education to students. As most folks who follow ed policy know, the Gates Foundation has done the most in recent years to bring attention (and money) to this issue. So I was interested in what the researchers at Abt Associates had found.

Turns out that reading about the key study finding (i.e., most schools are creating freshmen academies and career academies) wasn’t as interesting as another thing I noticed. And that is that most teachers received little more than three days of professional development per year related to teaching in small learning communities—these would be things like tailoring instruction to individual student needs. Talk to most any teacher and she will tell you that differentiating instruction based on student ability is one of the hardest things to do in a classroom; my former professor in graduate school, Dr. Carol Tomlinson, has written much about how to do this well. So I was struck that teachers participating in SLCs had received such paltry training in how to do what their school had presumably received a nice chunk of change to do.

It’s unfortunately typical of ed reform programs. Schools receive funding to do Reform X but little in the way of training to do it well, or in helping get teachers on board to ensure that the reform is implemented with fidelity and good faith.

To further illustrate the point that contamination may have occurred among Reading First and presumably “non” Reading First schools, a point I made in my piece in today’s Gadfly, Connie Choate, the director of Arkansas Reading First, writes:

I believe the design of the Impact Study is flawed.  The study compared funded Reading First schools with non-funded RF schools within the same district.  However in their RF proposals districts were required to include a plan for spreading the RF methodology to non-funded schools.  States were also required to do the same.  For example, all teachers across the state were invited to participate in ELLA, Effective Literacy, Summer Reading Camp, and several other professional development opportunities that are part of Reading First.  We aligned all of this professional development to SBRR.  So, even non-funded schools have benefited from RF.  One example is the revision of the State English Language Arts Frameworks. The knowledge gained from the National Reading Panel Report and Reading First enabled the state to revise the English Language Arts Framework to align with SBRR.  All professional development offered by the state is now aligned to SBRR.  This should align curriculum and instruction in all schools to SBRR, not just our RF funded schools.  We have created many materials in Reading First and have made them available to all schools. 

Ms. Choate got me thinking that it would be a good idea to take a look at the feds’ application for state RF grants. And sure enough, what she says rings true. Consider this from page 1:

Each SEA may reserve up to 20 percent of the Reading First funds it receives for State use. These funds will assist States in building and maintaining statewide capacity to effectively teach all children to read by third grade. States may expend up to 65 percent of these reserved funds for activities related to professional development... This unprecedented and significant funding will provide States with the resources and opportunity to extend this reading initiative and to improve reading instruction beyond the specific schools and districts that receive Reading First subgrants (emphasis added).

And should there be any confusion, page five includes the selection criteria for awarding grants. Potential state grantees, in a section called the State Professional Development Plan, are to answer this question: “How will teachers statewide receive professional development in the essential components of reading instruction, using scientifically based instructional strategies, programs and materials, and using screening, diagnostic, and classroom based instructional assessments?”

Again, it’s a great idea to spread the instructional reading wealth among state schools, but it sure makes it all the more difficult to assess what is really happening in this evaluation, which sought to draw a line in the sand between treatment and comparison schools.

I started my career teaching British, American, and world literature to high school kids. So I’m not thrilled to see the steady decline in the number of books read by middle and high school students. We’re told that last year, on average, 2nd graders read roughly 46.2 books compared to 4.5 books for 12th graders. That has me depressed. But before I cry in my beer (read: Starbucks Chai Latte Nonfat Extra Hot), I decided to download the study.

Yes, as a former program evaluator (another post-teaching vocation), I actually like to review the methodology of studies as opposed to relying upon the “bottom line” message often reported in the news media. As alluded in the Toledo news report, the study’s data are collected from a database at Renaissance Learning, a company that markets Accelerated Reader (AR)—a popular reading program in schools. Turns out, though, that the number of books students read is calculated by the number of quizzes that any particular student completes (each AR book title has an accompanying quiz). A caveat explaining such is included in the introduction to the report, which reads:

Please note: Renaissance Learning recognizes, of course, that not all book reading that happens in or outside of the classroom is captured through the Accelerated Reader software. However, it is reasonable to assume that for users of Accelerated Reader much book reading is captured in this way. AR quizzes number more than 115,000, which allows students a wide range of book selection; nearly every book found in a school, classroom, or local library has a quiz available.

They go on to explain that the study sample is one of convenience (duh), not a representative one. They say that they have records for more than 3 million students at more than 9,800 schools. That is all well and good. But let’s not make the mistake of concluding that the data in this report speak for school-age children in general. I’m left wondering about the conditions under which students completed these quizzes. Were they graded? Were there incentives tied to completing the quiz—a book-of-the-month gold star perhaps? These are critical data left out that would help us understand how we should interpret the findings.

So, then, what we should keep in mind about the study is this: The dismal number of books students are reported to have read pertain only to a large bunch of kids enrolled in schools that pay to use Accelerated Reading and then are asked (more likely required) by their teachers to complete a quiz on what they read.

Sure, I agree, kids are probably reading fewer hard copy books these days, but we need to know more about how and how much students read online. Emerging technologies are changing how academic reading is handled in schools, and innovative thinkers are reinventing teaching in exciting ways. So for now, I choose to remain optimistic about kids and reading—and especially what we’ll be doing in the future to enhance how they read.

Photo by Flickr user judybaxter.