School Funding’s Tragic Flaw, a new paper from Education Sector’s Kevin Carey and Marguerite Roza of the Center on Reinventing Public Education is a nice, quick introduction to the reasons that school funding is often inequitable and unfair and under-funds the neediest schools. Carey and Roza contrast two schools (one in Virginia and the other in North Carolina) that serve similar kids but have drastically different budgets to show why inequity persists.

They point to a number of problems. Federal Title I funding is skewed toward the wealthiest states, and at the district level, its sneaky “comparability” provision effectively erases differences in teacher salaries between schools, giving schools with more experienced teachers more than their fair share of dollars. (District budgeting practices are to blame for that, too.) And some states are far better than others at making up for local property wealth differences.

Carey and Roza call for some sensible solutions, including changes to Title I and for districts to let money follow the child—that is, to “allocate a standard amount of money per student to each school.” These ideas may not be new to Flypaper regulars, but this paper is worth checking out because it plainly explains some complicated problems.

I was especially disappointed Saturday morning when my two-year-old daughter’s “sports class” was canceled because I had just read in The American (the piece doesn’t seem to be online yet)* that kids who play sports fare better in life along a number of dimensions—they stay in school longer, they earn higher wages, and they are “15 percent more likely to be registered to vote, 14 percent more likely to watch the news, and 8 percent more likely to feel comfortable speaking in public.”

I’m sure many athletes could attest to what they’ve gained from sports, which require commitment, leadership, responsibility, etc. But is it really sports that make the difference, or is it merely that the kids who gravitate toward athletics are already more likely to be successful? Interestingly, these authors report, the civic engagement results above came after researchers had controlled for “age, educational attainment, and income,” and the researchers who have controlled for intelligence still find gaps in wages and educational attainment.

Why is this? The article speculates that in sports, kids experience “the positive feedback between effort and results,” which “can then lead to snowballing commitments to excellence.” Unfortunately, the authors then wander onto thinner ice and suggest that perhaps these market-like lessons learned in Little League are why the U.S. has less of a welfare state than Europe, where kids spend less time playing sports. But if we stay in education, I wonder if they’re on to something. And if so, why aren’t our young student-athletes using the lessons learned on the field to beat the rest of the world in the classroom?

Photo by Flickr user partsnpieces.

*Update: The link is now available here.

The Center for Education Reform released an analysis of 2006 charter school funding, claiming that charters receive 39 percent less funding than district schools, on average. That’s a huge, unfair difference, if it’s true.

But is it? Fordham’s own such analysis three years ago found gaps that were very troubling, but only about half that size—22 percent on average. True, we only reviewed some of the states, and CER hits them all, but even state-by-state there are big variances. So who’s right? If you were hoping for a nerdy data discussion this Friday, you’ve now found it, as I have a few major concerns about their work.

First, it’s worrisome that they rely on a 2006 “Charter School Survey” for some of their data. Did they literally ask schools how much money they received? Three years ago, Fordham’s team found that the only way to get reliable charter information in many states was to unearth school-level audits and add them up. Any good analysis needs to involve something equally rigorous.

Second, it’s a huge red flag that they cite the U.S. Census Bureau for district-level data. Our team found its district funding data often included some charter school funding, overstating the actual district-only budgets. These funds couldn’t be separated out, making the data worthless.

Third, even accurate district data needs to be purged of certain revenues, like those for adult education, pre-K, or other programs outside of normal K-12 education, in order to have an apples-to-apples comparison. CER may have done so, but it’s not mentioned.

So it’s not surprising that some of CER’s results are, shall we say, surprising. In Florida, we found an 11 percent gap, and CER finds 31 percent; in Michigan, it’s 13 percent versus 35 percent; the list goes on. Of course we looked at different years, but huge changes over three years would be odd—school funding changes slowly, not radically.

We commend CER for tackling this problem, and we agree that charters deserve their fair share. But to be worth doing, the analysis has to be done well. Fortunately, my fellow data nerds can look forward to 2009, when I hear there will be a reunion of the team behind Fordham’s Charter School Funding report. I’m anxiously counting down the days.

Wouldn’t it be great if the candidates were to duke it out over education reform? I’ve said so, and I’m not alone, but Mike says “not so fast”:

In contrast, some conservative groups of education reformers are not bothered by the fact that the topic of education has been sidelined during this campaign season. “It’s not the worst thing in the world. We have a history of creating unintended consequences, as with No Child Left Behind,” says Mike Petrilli, vice president for national programs and policy at the Fordham Institute. “So I don’t mind if the federal government takes a breather.”

The feds, banned from school reform for one tiny, little mistake.

As with any program, implementation in AP really matters, so it’s disappointing that Tom Stanley-Becker doesn’t say more about how history is taught at his school. Was the AP class his only recent exposure to American history? I have fond memories of my own AP history experience, years ago, because it was precisely what he says he’s missing—we read only essays, and the classes featured roundtable discussions of big and interesting issues. But this was possible because we had all taken the basic American history class the year prior, consuming dates, people, and events in order to free us to talk more about ideas in the second year. I could easily see it being impossible to do both well in a single year, and if that’s happening it’s the fault of the school, not the program.

In the Weekly Standard, Liam reviews Anthony Kronman’s Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, which, he reports, picks up where William Buckley left off in God and Man at Yale—lamenting what has gone wrong in higher education, in Kronman’s case that academic specialization in the humanities has brushed aside “the meaning-of-life questions that are so basic and important.”

Universities today may avoid the existential questions, but never let that be said about Flypaper, where the solemn search for truth (in education policy) is alive and well.

In the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn picks up where Kathryn Jean Lopez left off, arguing that McCain could win African American votes from Obama (or Clinton) if he would take “this (school choice) campaign into the heart of our cities—and gave a little straight talk about the scandal that their public-school systems represent in this great land of opportunity.”

He’s surely correct that McCain doesn’t share Obama’s problem, that he “cannot offend the teachers unions that are arguably the most powerful constituents” in the Democratic party. If he were to take this opening, the question is whether it would be seen as a sincere effort to help the inner cities and their children—as the efforts of mayors Cory Booker and Adrian Fenty are seen—or rather as an attack on public schools. Given that editorial boards are rarely this supportive of school choice, one wonders.

P.S. McGurn also mentions Fordham’s Catholic schools report, which we may or may not have mentioned on this blog before.

Here in D.C., the politics of education reform seem tame compared to what our Fordham team in Ohio faces, a point made clear in this Columbus Education Association interview with Governor Ted Strickland. In outlining his “6 point plan” on education, Strickland continues the attack on charter schools that began during his campaign, calling them “destructive to our students and wasteful of our tax dollars,”* repeating his previous calls for “a moratorium on the creation of new charter schools,” and strongly hinting that if only he had a Democratic legislature he could truly kill the state’s charter (and voucher) program.

He’d also like to turn back the clock on accountability, arguing that “testing and assessment ought to be diagnostic,” and “teachers must have the freedom to teach without the fear of standardized test results communicating that you’re a bad teacher.”

Of course he’s genuflecting before the unions, so much so that this quote—which apparently addressed how teachers have influenced his life—seems like a comic Freudian slip about their role in his administration: “Teachers have incredible power and monumental influence. What’s most important... is that (teachers) need to be respected by the government.”

And what about the students, Governor?

We hope Democrats outside Ohio (e.g., Eduwonk) notice that he’s giving the party a bad name in education.

*Correction: The CEA wrote to tell us that their interview had erroneously attributed the Governor’s “destructive and wasteful” quote to charters rather than to vouchers. They have since corrected the interview.

At The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez writes that we can help save our inner cities by saving faith-based schools. She rightly praises President Bush for using the “bully pulpit” at last week’s White House summit to call education “one of the greatest civil-rights challenges,” and to urge Congress to help inner-city Catholic schools.

Lopez then urges John McCain to follow the President’s lead and take this issue to the campaign trail, to offer “real solutions that could lift poor Americans out of a cycle of dependency.” I’d love to see the candidates wrestle over Who Will Save America’s Urban Catholic Schools, but I have a feeling there will be other issues on voters’ minds this November. Unless Ed in ‘08 pulls off a miracle, that is.

Left unspoken* at yesterday’s White House summit on faith-based schools was whether the idea of religious charter schools has any merit. Of course, this is no surprise. There are enough opponents of charter schools, of vouchers, and of any co-mingling of church and state, that direct funding for overtly religious schools would be a combustible mix. It’s controversial enough that D.C. is converting seven Catholic schools to charter status, stripping them of their “Catholicity,” and besides, yesterday’s conference had plenty else on the agenda. Yet given the success Catholic schools have shown in educating poor and minority students, and the likelihood that that’s because of their Catholicity, it’s an idea that warrants more of an airing. (Two prior Gadfly op-eds provide a bit, at least, here and here.)

I was reminded of this yesterday when I met Lawrence Weinberg, author of Religious Charter Schools: Legalities and Practicalities (2007), a book I’m now curious to read. Checker and Mike have argued that the Zelman decision paved the way for religious charters, at least insofar as the U.S. Constitution is concerned, but (at the risk of mischaracterizing his work) Weinberg replies that the legal landscape is a little more complicated than that (both because of state-level issues, like Blaine amendments prohibiting state funding of religious schools, and because Zelman is not the only relevant Supreme Court case). Of course, practically speaking, charter schools have to be approved by authorizers, most of which are districts or universities who would surely be unwilling to test these waters. Still, I can’t help but think that it’s a matter of when, not if, someone is bold enough to really advance this idea.

*Update: Sportswriters shouldn’t submit their articles before the final buzzer sounds, and apparently bloggers shouldn’t critique a summit without staying for the whole event. An astute reader immediately pointed out that I missed Lawrence Weinberg presenting on this very topic in the day’s final panel. So much for leaving this idea unspoken! Kudos to the summit and those who organized it for raising this interesting idea. I’m sorry for the error, but I’m especially sorry I missed the discussion. I’d be curious to hear from any attendees how the audience reacted.

Fordham has argued that principals need to function more like CEOs, handling not just a school’s academic mission but also the many complexities of running a small organization. Yet when we asked principals how they view themselves and their responsibilities, we concluded that “they see their role as ‘middle manager’—not CEO.”

Now the National Association of Elementary School Principals weighs in. NAESP’s “Vision 2021″ predicts that by the year 2021—the hundredth anniversary of NAESP—principals will be CLOs, or Chief Learning Officers. As reported in Education Week, “In those schools of the future, principals will shift away from a managerial role,” using new technologies, focusing on data, and developing “learning communities.” But who will run the school as an organization? Here the NAESP gets timid:

Some experts argue that no one person can do the job of principal and new structures are required, like a team of leaders including a business manager or chief of operations and a chief academic officer. Whatever the future configuration, principals will practice learner-centered leadership and seek leadership contributions from multiple sources to balance management and leadership roles.

“Leadership contributions”? Someone needs to be in charge of the school as a whole, to make sure that the school’s finances, staffing, facilities, and instructional model are in synch. So who’s the boss? If the NAESP is any indication, it seems we were right—today’s principals aren’t exactly clamoring for this responsibility.

Mike has a fair point that schools can’t do everything. He might have added that it’s hard to picture most high school teachers being able to confidently explain variable interest rates or balloon payments, or any students bothering to listen. But Liam reaches from that to imply that Bernanke is suggesting teaching financial literacy to 12 year olds—that wasn’t what he said (he was talking about high school).

But more to the point, it’s just wrong, and contradicts the Gadfly piece Liam refers to, to flatly dismiss the idea that financial literacy wouldn’t have prevented the current financial crisis. It might very well have. If more people had basic financial knowledge, they would be far smarter about buying homes they could actually afford, about taking loans they could pay back, and about accepting terms that were not “predatory” or overly dependent on variable interest rates. How to help people get that education is the key policy problem. Mike is probably right (as is Liam) that it’s not in high schools—so where, and how?

The New York Times reports today on the admissions crunch at Ivy League schools. Due to record numbers of applicants, Harvard’s acceptance rate this year is down to a new low of 7.1 percent, and other schools are setting their own records as well. Why? The Times speculates, but focuses on demographics:

Many factors contributed to the tightening of the competition at the most selective colleges, admissions deans and high school counselors said, among them demographics. The number of high school graduates in the nation has grown each year over the last decade and a half, though demographers project that the figure will peak this year or next, which might reduce the competition a little.

Other factors were the ease of online applications, expanded financial aid packages, aggressive recruiting of a broader range of young people, and ambitious students’ applying to ever more colleges.

I’d bet on that last point—students applying to more and more colleges. Anecdotally speaking, when I applied to colleges 16 years ago, submitting a handful of applications was the norm. Now that seems lazy.

As the International Herald Tribune reported in January, “‘There was a time when kids applied to three or four schools, then to six or seven schools, and now, 10 or more is not uncommon,’ said John Maguire, a higher education consultant.” We’re in a vicious cycle, where students need to apply to more schools simply because everyone else is applying to more schools. This effect—if indeed there is a doubling or tripling of applications per student—would surely dwarf the relatively gradual increase in graduates each year. I’m just not sure where it ends.

Ed Week reports on an interesting new study showing the impact of teacher absences on students: “taking into account the effects on student achievement that might be produced by various characteristics of the teachers, students, and schools—including teachers’ levels of skill and effort—the researchers found a small but significant negative impact on student math scores attributable to teacher absences alone,” such that 10 days off were akin to “the difference for a student of having a first-year teacher as opposed to a second-year teacher.” In their sample, teachers averaged 5.3 sick or personal days each per year.

None of this is terribly shocking, but did the unions miss a PR opportunity here? Instead of saying “see, an inexperienced substitute is no substitute for a true professional; teachers really matter,” Rob Weil of the AFT urges us to “be careful about overemphasizing these results,” in case the authors “are implying something that may not be true: that teachers are taking more days off than they are allowed.” And why on earth would anyone get that impression? Perhaps because “teacher sick days occurred on a day adjacent to a weekend or a holiday 52.3 percent of the time, compared with 45.7 percent of the time on the other days, which usually fell midweek,” and “conversations with school principals revealed that many teachers viewed such absences as an entitlement that they could use to fit their preferences.”

There was no mention of whether teachers’ golf handicaps improved after their absences.

Mike, I agree that holding superintendents accountable for the performance of their schools is entirely appropriate, but as with any new law, the devil will prove to be in the details. The Commercial Dispatch reports that school performance will be based on the state’s accountability system; that’s not terribly encouraging in a state that earned a D+ from Fordham for its state standards. And what about a superintendent whose district shows great improvement for two straight years, yet still rates “underperforming”? The proposed law appears to be a blunt instrument applied to a complicated problem, especially considering that two years is barely time to implement changes, much less see the results show up in testing. Finally, we can’t forget that superintendent turnover is already a problem, with the average tenure lasting just a handful of years, and that should give us education reformers pause: change is hard to sustain without consistent leadership. Let’s hope this law works as intended, weeding out those superintendents who do little to help kids, and that it doesn’t exacerbate the leadership shortage found in too many school systems today.