With overwhelming votes in its House and Senate, South Carolina is racing to revamp its state assessment system and, apparently, lower its standards dramatically. The Spartansburg Herald Journal says:

The change could drastically increase the number of schools meeting NCLB requirements. Currently, only students who score proficient or advanced attain the proficient level required under NCLB. Under the new system, those who score “met” or “exemplary” would qualify.

It’s a shame, but perhaps not surprising, as South Carolina currently boasts some of the toughest proficiency standards in the country. Its legislators are only reacting to No Child Left Behind’s perverse incentives. Secretary Spellings: are you willing to let go of the “100 percent proficient by 2014″ madness yet?

To see but one example of why we can’t trust local school boards to lead meaningful reform efforts, see this post from the National School Boards Association (NSBA). Regarding this recent Wall Street Journal article on No Child Left Behind’s lack of “bite”* for failing schools, NSBA says:

If the system that judges school performance is innately flawed, should we be rushing to sanction these “failing” schools or should we be rushing to fix the system? Until NCLB gets its diagnosis right, schools should not be forced to make radical changes that are disruptive to students and their learning environment.

Well, yes, NCLB surely labels some schools as “needing improvement” that are pretty decent, such as those that are succeeding for most of their students but not for kids with learning disabilities, or those that are not up to standards yet but are making big gains over time. But all evidence indicates that the vast majority of “failing” schools are just that, and we shouldn’t waste any more time (or come up with any more excuses) before we intervene aggressively in them. NSBA’s proposal is a prescription for paralysis. Which is fitting, because most local school boards have resisted real reform forever.

Update: *As Liam notes below, Washington, D.C.’s, school system is instituting real reform. And guess what? It reports to the mayor, not the school board. Hardly a coincidence.

Plenty of bad ideas make their way from the business world to education, but here’s a good one: replicate successful school models via franchising. That’s the argument made by business writer Julie Bennett in an essay in the new Education Next. 

In the business world, when the owners of restaurants or retail stores want to expand, they choose between two models: corporate-style growth with central management or franchising. Chains like Starbucks scale up corporately; each of its 7,087 U.S. stores is owned by and managed from its Seattle headquarters. Others, like McDonald’s, follow a franchise model. Though they look and feel much the same, the vast majority of the 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the United States are operated by a founding franchisee. The advantage of franchising is that it allows an organization to grow rapidly without putting its own intellectual and financial capital at risk. While franchisees are building individual units, the central organization can spend its resources on promoting the brand and developing new products and services.

Bennett goes on to explain that KIPP, the Big Picture Company, and EdVisions Schools belong in the franchise bucket, while Lighthouse Academies, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools are closer to the corporate model. (All of these are non-profit organizations with chains of high-quality charter schools.) Both approaches have their advantages and drawbacks, but KIPP, the Mac Daddy of education franchises, has grown the fastest.

No, schools aren’t businesses and kids aren’t burgers, but neither is education the first field to grapple with replicating success. Which means that our k-12 system shouldn’t be so insular as to ignore lessons from outside its realm. In this instance, a little McHumility might go a long way.

It’s not quite as bad as Marion Barry embracing vouchers, but is it necessarily a positive development that the United Way has selected dropout prevention as one of its three key initiatives? As the Washington Post reports,

The United Way of America, alarmed at the nation’s fraying safety net, will announce today that it will direct its giving toward ambitious 10-year goals that would cut in half the high school dropout rate and the number of working families struggling financially.

Curbing the dropout rate certainly deserves attention from the nation’s charitable donors, but the chances don’t appear high that a mainstream, let’s-all-get-along group like the United Way will tackle the underlying problems that lead to massive educational failure. Will the charity push for rigorous state standards or even national standards? Will it work to put pressure on failing school districts by supporting charter schools and other forms of parental choice? Will it tangle with recalcitrant teachers’ unions? Such actions are hard to imagine, which is why savvy observers should get ready to watch a whole lot more private money go down the tubes.

Nice to see that at least one state is trying to exorcise its anti-Catholic demons. If the country cares about saving its Catholic schools, it should hope Florida’s efforts are elsewhere replicated.

Back when the controversy over unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers exploded (no pun intended) in the middle of the 2008 Democratic primary, Senator Barack Obama used an unfortunate analogy to defend his association with the bomb-thrower:

The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George. The fact is, is that I’m also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who during his campaign once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions. Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn’s statements? Because I certainly don’t agree with those either.

Umm, as about a million commentators said at the time, this is hardly moral equivalency. Ayers tried to blow stuff up and then refused to apologize for it. Coburn is making a public policy proposal. (One I’m not crazy about, by the way.)

But that hasn’t deterred Eduwonkette, the anonymous blogger and proud member of the American Educational Research Association. I wondered if she might want the governing council of that group to strip Ayers’s membership, before he takes office as one of its vice presidents. (See my post about that here.) Her response:

Mike believes that Ayers’ presence reflects badly on the whole association, but guilt by association is a shaky principle. I don’t judge Mike Petrilli, whose colleagues at the Hoover Institution include upstanding guys like Ed Meese and Donald Rumsfeld, based on his association with them, nor do I believe that AERA is tainted by having Ayers among its leadership. Mike might argue that Meese and Rumsfeld have records of accomplishment that justify their affiliation with Hoover. The same is true regarding Ayers and AERA.

The loony left’s “war criminals” charge against Rumsfeld aside, this is hardly moral equivalency, either. If Hoover puts a former terrorist on its board, I promise you, I won’t stand by idly and cheer.

Ohio AG Marc Dann isn’t the only one coming in for a beating. Take a look at this analysis of the recent Reading First interim evaluation study from Dr. James Salzman, the co-director of the Ohio Reading First Center.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: There are lies, damned lies, and the latest Reading First report. The report is methodologically flawed, statistically glamorous, and ultimately meaningless in terms of its conclusions. It’s caused the usual sharks to roil the waters as if chum were being served. And in the end, it says nothing about the positive impact of Reading First in Ohio.

Makes Fordham’s critique of the evaluation and defense of the program seem dispassionate and reserved. The key Ohio points:

- Students in Ohio have gained more than a year’s reading achievement for each year that they are in the program....If students stay within the program, they are able to catch up to benchmark scores in fluency, even though they start significantly behind.
- Students have closed the gap on state performance on the third grade Ohio Achievement Test (OAT) over the past four years.
- Teachers have helped students close the achievement gap for students of color.
- Equally importantly, Westat’s (2008) independent evaluation of Reading First Ohio has documented that the more time that students spend in Reading First schools the more they outperformed their peers in comparison schools across the state.

A message to my friend Russ Whitehurst (Institute for Educational Sciences director): Whenever you’d like to post a response to these critiques, this blog’s all yours.

“The Less the Education, the Higher the Risk of Dying Early”

Liam, maybe universal college education has its plusses, no?

Lisa Graham Keegan, school reform trailblazer and former state superintendent of Arizona, has quit her day job to spend most of her time working on behalf of Senator John McCain’s campaign, reports the Arizona Republic:

“Having Senator McCain be in a position to get ready to start talking about education a little bit more fully in his campaign, it’s just a great opportunity to be a part of,” said Keegan, 48, of Peoria. “It just didn’t make sense to do both at the same time.”

Keegan is an extremely effective advocate of school choice, meaningful accountability, and the smart use of data and technology. This is another sign that McCain isn’t planning to cede the education issue to his opponent.

Reid Lyon, former Reading Czar and one of the creators of Reading First, posted a comment about Shep Barbash’s Education Next article that’s so crucial to the current debate that it’s worth excerpting at length:

The recent Reading First Impact Study interim report did some thing s correctly (employed a strong design for the questions they asked), but appeared to miss some very important confounds, leading me to have difficulties interpreting the results. First, the evaluation did not address all of the evaluation targets established in the law, thus narrowing the scope and comprehensiveness of the evaluation Congress intended. Second, and most importantly, the sample of states selected for inclusion in the study was not sufficient to test a number of variables that are critical to interpreting the data. As hard as I try, I cannot see how the sample would be considered representative. Third, the evaluation examined the effect of resources (Reading First funding) on a single measure of reading comprehension. As Steve Raudenbush has argued convincingly, an evaluation study comparing a group that received the resources versus another group that did not answers very little about the programs actual effectiveness or the ability of a study to inform improvements in the program or guide policy.

There are many factors at the implementation and instructional level that have to be examined and studied to refine any interpretation of the main effect of no significant difference. As Mr. Stearns probably knows, many school districts that implemented Reading First in some schools implemented the same programs in non-Reading First schools. Professional development activities funded through Reading First were available to all schools in a district, not just Reading First schools. Most of the states that Mr. Barbash highlighted in his article where not included in the sample drawn for the impact study. Approximately 60 percent of Reading First and non-Reading First schools were implementing the same programs by the third year of implementation according to Tim Shanahan. There was a significant degree of contamination from the “bleeding” of programs and resources across Reading First and non-Reading First schools. Believe me, if the final impact study report clarifies all of these issues, that would be very helpful.

According to our own Checker Finn, just yesterday the Institute for Educational Sciences director Russ Whitehurst admitted in front of 200 people that the “bleeding” of Reading First methods to schools in the control group is a probable explanation for the findings of his evaluation. In other words, non Reading First schools were using Reading First’s (proven and effective) methods too. That would have been a nice point to get across to the press before they wrote stories declaring the initiative a failure.

Let it be clear: even the government’s chief education researcher is saying that the findings of his evaluation don’t mean that Reading First is “ineffective” and should be scrapped. Congress, are you listening?

The Ed in ‘08 chairman told ABC News:

My reasons are that the party needs to get on right now with a lot of business, including figuring out what to do with Michigan and Florida. It’s important to make known right now not only my vote but as many superdelegates as possible.

Asked if this endorsement was a problem for Ed in ‘08, he said:

My partner here, Marc Lampkin is a Bush Republican, a McCain Republican, so we are still one Democrat and one Republican who will be working even handedly.

ABC News implied that his motives might not have been entirely pure:

By making his announcement, Romer may have enhanced his clout in an Obama White House. Plouffe said the Obama campaign will seek the counsel and advice of Romer on education issues.

“Secretary Romer” doesn’t have a bad ring to it—though he’ll be disappointed to discover that the U.S. Department of Education’s discretionary budget is much, much smaller than Ed in ’08’s $60-million bank account.

Parental choice advocates might think that Sol Stern’s critique of school vouchers has harmed the cause, but surely Marion Barry’s embrace of the DC school choice program in today’s Washington Post is much, much worse for the movement. (Though they don’t seem to know it.)

“No Child Left Behind Lacks Bite.”

This is not exactly news to Flypaper readers, but it’s great that the Wall Street Journal is spreading the word:

Critics of the federal No Child Left Behind law, including Democratic presidential candidates vowing to overhaul or end it, have often accused it of being too harsh. It punishes weak schools instead of supporting them, as Sen. Barack Obama puts it. But when it comes to the worst-performing schools, the 2001 law hasn’t shown much bite. The more-radical restructuring remedies put forth by the law have rarely been adopted by these schools, many of which aren’t doing much to address their problems, according to a federal study last year.

To solve a problem first you have to diagnose it correctly. And calling NCLB “too harsh” is surely not the right diagnosis.

While Americans feel no particular love for the U.S. Department of Education (see this graphic from Sunday’s New York Times Magazine), I have found that, in education circles at least, particular scorn is heaped upon state departments of education and their civil service employees. Colonized (in Paul Hill’s term) from federal programs above, and distant from the real action of schools and districts below, they are the consummate middle-men (and women) of America’s education system. Conventional wisdom says they are capable of little more than pushing paper: performing audits, writing regulations, and filing reports.

What sweet relief it is, then, to read Shepard Barbash’s Education Next piece about the implementation of the Reading First program, and the heroic role played by state departments of education.

The most enduring achievement of Reading First may be that it has nurtured a group of state leaders who have developed deep expertise in the science of reading instruction and have been able to get steadily better at helping the districts teach more children how to read. In states where Reading First is working, districts look not to their long-standing networks of consultants and colleges for expertise, but to their state administrators. This is a bureaucratic revolution.

Imagine that: state bureaucrats turned instructional leaders. Regardless of what you read about the program’s effectiveness (and if you must read something about that, read this or this), its implementation marks a milestone in the annals of federal-state relations. It’s a prescriptive, top-down, micro-managy program that states and districts love. Wonders never cease.

As lickety-split Liam just mentioned, the latest Education Next just got posted online and includes a short piece of mine examining the editorial board positions of the nation’s largest-circulation newspapers on two key policy issues: No Child Left Behind and charter schools. (Click on the thumbnail at right for a bigger chart of the results.) The latter fared much better than the former:

The charter school advantage is clear: 19 papers are somewhat or strongly supportive, versus only 3 that are somewhat opposed. (One is neutral and 2 did not write any editorials about the subject.) Meanwhile, the papers are split on NCLB, with 15 somewhat or strongly supportive, 9 somewhat or strongly opposed, and 1 neutral.

Still, at a time when national audiences erupt with applause when presidential candidates bash NCLB, it’s worth noting that a majority of newspapers are remaining steadfast in defending the law. And who knew that charter schools enjoyed such strong support from local papers? Here’s hoping they don’t all go out of business.

Rick Hess and Paul Peterson’s annual look at state proficiency standards is out in the latest issue of Education Next, and the news resembles what Fordham’s Proficiency Illusion report found last fall: a “walk to the middle.” Standards are slipping, particularly in eighth grade.

Their analysis considers the percentage of students passing state tests and compares that to the percentage of a state’s students passing the National Assessment of Educational Progress. From the press release:

Only three states—South Carolina, Massachusetts and Missouri—established world-class standards in math and reading for their students, earning each an “A”. Every other state set a lower proficiency standard—some far short of the NAEP standard. Georgia, for instance, declared 88 percent of 8th graders proficient in reading, even though just 26 percent scored at or above the proficiency level on the NAEP. Georgia joined Oklahoma and Tennessee at the bottom of the class, each earning an “F” for their state standards.

You know where this is going... is it so wrong to dream about national standards?

You might not agree with this column’s political bent, but Stanley Crouch is right to blast away at anti-intellectualism in American life:

We should be ever suspicious of anyone or any group that scorns education, that pretends to believe that only the simple and the uncomplicated can express the national ethos.

In other words, being well-educated isn’t a crime, even if you’re running for president.

Anyone who’s been following politics lately knows that Senator Barack Obama’s relationship with unrepentant bomber and former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers has become a matter of debate in the 2008 campaign.

What’s beyond debate, however, is Ayers’s connection to Arnetha F. Ball of Stanford University; Nancy Beadie of the University of Washington; Mark Berends of Vanderbilt University; Linda L. Cook of Educational Testing Service; David J. Flinders of Indiana University; Steve A. Henry of Topeka Public Schools; Joan L. Herman of the University of California-Los Angeles; Cynthia A. Hudley of the University of California, Santa Barbara; Carol D. Lee of Northwestern University; Richard E. Mayer of the University of California - Santa Barbara; Patricia S. O’Sullivan of the University of California, San Francisco; Robert J. Stahl of Arizona State University; William G. Tierney of the University of Southern California; Linda C. Tillman of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Susan B. Twombly of Kansas University.

That’s because these are the members of the Association Council of the American Educational Research Association—a group that Ayers will join next year after his election in March as AERA’s Vice President-Elect of Curriculum Studies. (Hat tip to Sol Stern.)

The Council might consider whether it’s prudent to allow a former terrorist to join its ranks—particularly a man who said as late as 2001 that “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Here’s the good news: the Council has the authority to keep this development from happening. While AERA’s bylaws don’t mention any provision for removing elected officials from their positions, they do grant the Council the right to strip anyone’s association membership, which would have the same effect. The bylaws read: “If continued membership of any person is believed to be contrary to the interests or purposes of the Association, Council may terminate membership based on procedures established by the Council.”

Is there any doubt that the election of a former terrorist to the organization’s governance body is “contrary to the interests” of the Association?

Out of political necessity, Obama is already distancing himself from Ayers, and most likely will do more of that in coming months. When the AERA’s Association Council meets next month, it should do the same.

John Merrow, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, explains that “public education lives in an upside-down universe where student outcomes are not allowed to be connected to teaching.” That’s certainly the case in New York, where the state legislature recently passed a bill making it illegal for school districts to consider the performance of teachers’ students when making tenure decisions. Merrow concludes:

Denying any connection between teaching and learning is a dangerous course for teacher unions to chart. It contradicts what experience teaches us. And it flies in the face of common sense. If unions are telling us that there’s no connection between teaching and learning, why should we then support teachers, or public education?

Thankfully, the Empire State appears to be far outside the mainstream on this issue. Our recent Rick Hess/Coby Loup study of teachers union contracts found that most of the fifty largest districts in the country either had the explicit right to consider student performance in tenure decisions (that’s the case for eight of them) or faced no specific restrictions against that course of action, either in their contracts or in state law and regulation. Here’s hoping that when Randi Weingarten becomes AFT president, she doesn’t try to export this ridiculous piece of policy to the rest of the country.

TO: Roy.Romer@edin08.com
FROM: mpetrilli@edexcellence.net
SUBJECT: The Big One

Roy! Guv-nor! How’s it going? Eli driving you crazy yet?

Listen, I know it’s been tough-sledding at Ed in ‘08 making education a top-tier issue in the election. Maybe the general will bring you better luck. But it’s hard, what with the sinking economy, war in Iraq, worries about health care, $4/gallon gas, etc. I see you’re making lemonade out of lemons, though, trying to link the education issue to the economy. That’s smart. Plays on people’s fears. It worked back in the 80s (The Japanese are coming! The Japanese are coming!) and it could work today (The Chinese are coming! The Indians are coming!). That just might spark enough interest to get you through November.

But I understand that you have ambitions to keep up the advocacy long past this election cycle. And that’s where you’ve got a problem. For better or worse, eventually, the economy is going to turn around. The housing crisis will end, jobs will come back, and the American people will lose focus. Rather than fretting about competing with the rest of the world, their education concerns will turn to stupid worries about the “crisis of energy drinks” and such. (Remember the big education issue of the mid-90s? School uniforms, for Pete’s sake!)

What you need, Roy, is something that scares the heck out of people and isn’t going away anytime soon. A real existential threat. I’ve got it.

ASTEROIDS.

No kidding. Look, my Atlantic arrived yesterday (it’s not online yet) and right there on the cover it says: “It’s Inevitable: Asteroids with the power to annihilate us will come this way. Can NASA divert them before it’s too late?”

And let me tell you, as scary as that cover was, reading the article didn’t make me feel any better. We’re in trouble, Roy—big trouble!

But here’s the rub: some ten-year-old sitting in a classroom in Peoria might be the key to figuring out how to save the world. But only if she gets a great math and science education. Catch my drift? That’s only going to happen if her schools are held accountable to high, common standards; if there’s extra time for learning (about rockets and astronomy especially!); if her teachers get rewarded for their performance. In other words:

IF WE DON’T REFORM OUR SCHOOLS, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

So that’s my advice, Roy. Start talking up the asteroid threat. Test it out. I bet it plays well. Cut a couple of commercials and you’ll see education rocket right to the top of the priority list.

Cheers,

Mike

P.S. I think our invitation to the Ed in ‘08 Bloggers Summit must have gotten lost. (You don’t still use snail mail, do you?)

Photo by Flickr user snakeyes-man.

While childlike Liam takes Checker to task for questioning the incalculable contributions of twenty-somethings, in Boston they’re rehiring retirees in the wake of laying-off young teachers. And in this case, the local teachers union head gets it right:

Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union, said that by relying heavily upon retirees to return to their old jobs, the school system risks never training a new generation of workers.... “Institutionally, it’s a weak way to replace your skilled employees,” Stutman said.

Hmm, teachers unions standing up for younger teachers over older ones? This is new.

No, I’m not referring to this survey from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, though there are some promising tidbits. (Six in ten parents express interest in enrolling their children in charter schools once they are described as “independent public schools that are free to be more innovative and are held accountable for improved student achievement.”)

I am referring to the fantastic news (hat tip to Alexander Russo) that reporter Diana Jean Schemo is leaving the New York Times. Schemo wrote the infamous 2004 front-page story, “Nation’s Charter Schools Lagging Behind, U.S. Test Scores Reveal,” which was an AFT-aided hit job on the charter movement. (Read all about it in Jeff Henig’s newish book on the topic.) She also completely politicized the paper’s coverage of the Reading First program (see here and pages 28 to 31 here) and, in a 2006 column, finally admitted her own skepticism that schools can do much good for kids in poverty:

A growing body of research suggests that while schools can make a difference for individual students, the fabric of children’s lives outside of school can either nurture, or choke, what progress poor children do make academically.

Russo reports that Schemo is now working on a book about the Naval Academy. That’s too bad for the Academy—but good for K-12 schools.

It’s one thing if you unwittingly do this, but you can’t do this and keep teaching. (Or can you?)

Cleveland can be a tough place, what with its harsh winters and difficult economic times. Its education politics aren’t especially welcoming, either; Cleveland is home to one of the most restrictive teachers union contracts in the country, for example. So it’s doubly heartening to see the district reach out to some of the city’s highest performing charter schools in an effort to bury hatchets and benefit children. According to this Plain Dealer article:

Instead of slipping on boxing gloves, leaders of traditional public education and upstart charter schools treated one another with kid gloves on Wednesday, agreeing to work together to provide opportunities for all Cleveland children. “We’re in this together,” said Eric Gordon, chief academic officer for the Cleveland public schools. “We either go down together, or we reinforce things that work.”

What a great way to celebrate National Charter Schools Week. If it can happen in Cleveland, it can happen anywhere.

Photo by Flickr user spatulated.

Birthday-boy Coby beat me to the punch, but here you go.

Regarding the Absent Teacher Reserve controversy, Randi rants:

“The chancellor should stop his grandstanding. The chancellor’s ideology of simply wanting to fire people at whim-regardless of fairness, reasons for displacement or statutory/contractual obligations-have gotten him into this mess. To pretend the union hasn’t tried to offer solutions is just wrong.”

How fitting that Randi admits in her own statement that “statutory/contractual obligations” might be related to something other than fairness (otherwise, why mention them both?). And speaking of fairness, what’s not fair is that taxpayers have to keep paying the salaries of people who don’t work and probably can’t teach. Maybe those taxpayers should get some “contractual” protections of their own.

* Last week’s here.