Most of the Fordham office was over at the AEI-Fordham event yesterday for Diane Ravitch’s new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. (If you missed our live tweeting, you can watch the event video here.) The event’s moderator, Rick Hess, has (as promised) now posted his response to Ravitch’s book. The headline? Ravitch and Duncan are making the same mistake about choice and accountability.

Choice and accountability, explains Hess, are not supposed to improve teaching and learning, curriculum, or achievement. They are supposed to create an environment where we can improve teaching and learning, curriculum, and achievement. And posing it–or condemning it–as the former will only create more disappointment when we all see, yet again, our favorite choice and accountability techniques not fulfilling their promises. Read the rest of this very thoughtful piece here.

–Stafford Palmieri

“If a school continues to fail its students year after year, if it doesn’t show signs of improvement, then there’s got to be a sense of accountability.”
—President Barack Obama

“Obama Backs Rewarding Districts the Police Failing Schools,” New York Times

$170 million
The proposed spending on principal leadership programs in the FY 2011 budget.

“More Funding for Principal Training Deemed Vital,” Education Week (subscription required)

This story is worth keeping an eye on.

We’ve been able to hold off a major and messy policy debate about the intersection of vouchers, charters, private schools, accountability, and choice. Court cases like this though can force the conversation.

Bottom line: if public money can constitutionally reach religious schools via vouchers without many public accountability measures why can’t highly accountable, publicly funded charters constitutionally have some religious component?

Tricky stuff.

–Andy Smarick

“If the American Dream includes sending your kids to college, what is America saying to these parents?”
— James T. Meeks, Baptist Minister, and voucher advocate

“Preaching Choice in Obama’s Hometown,” Wall Street Journal

3
Number of tenured teachers in New York City, out of 55,000, that the Department of Education has been able to fire for incompetence over the past 2 years.

“Progress Slow in City Goal to Fire Bad Teachers,” New York Times

“If we are seeing a decline in literacy standards among young children, it is in spite of text messaging, not because of it.” — Dr. Clare Wood, Reader in Development Psychology, University of Coventry

“Phone Texting ‘Helps Pupils to Spell’,” BBC News

$115 trillion:
Economic benefit of a 25 point average increase in PISA scores by 2090.

“Study Links Rise in Test Scores to Nations’ Output,” Education Week (subscription needed)

Conventional wisdom around Washington says that the No Child Left Behind act (oops, I mean the Elementary and Secondary Education act) won’t be reauthorized again next year. (Its update has been overdue since 2007.) That’s for several reasons. First, the political parties are at each other’s necks, thanks to contentious (and partisan) debates around health care, energy policy, and the stimulus. That doesn’t set the table for bipartisan work on education. Second, there’s no clear path through the policy thicket that is NCLB/ESEA. With educators, conservatives on Capitol Hill, and a majority of the public now opposed to the law, how do you renew it in this environment without throwing the baby out with the bathwater? And third, overcoming these first two issues will take lots of political capital on behalf of President Obama-capital that is quickly diminishing.

But as a friend pointed out to me, why do we think 2011 (the Year of the Rabbit) will be any more auspicious for reauthorization? Maybe if Democrats get pummeled in the mid-terms, the President will do a midcourse correction and look for issues (like education) where he can work with Republicans in a centrist manner. But it’s just as likely that the political environment will be as poisoned as ever, after a bruising campaign. And the policy challenges don’t look any easier twelve months from now.

I see one way to reauthorize NCLB in 2010 and it’s precisely to throw the baby out with the bathwater. That’s what many reformers fear most, but they’re wrong. The next phase of education reform doesn’t need a federal law that’s even more prescriptive, more punitive, and more far-reaching than the current one. It needs three things instead. First, some humility that Washington isn’t great at making change happen, especially via sticks. Second, it needs transparency–data about school performance that we can trust. And third, it needs incentives (i.e., competitive grants) for schools/districts/innovators to continue experimenting and to scale up successes.

If the effort to create common national standards and tests succeeds, and is adopted by a majority of the states, within a few years we could have credible, transparent information about how most schools in the country are truly performing. That would enable us to switch the federal role to a “tight-loose” approach that Secretary Duncan (and yes, those of us at Fordham) advocate, by rolling back NCLB’s mandates around AYP, “highly qualified teachers,” and all the rest. (We’d have some agreement at the national level about what kids should learn (the tight part) and could allow greater leeway over how to get them to learn it (the loose part).)

Let the states take the wheel again when it comes to deciding when interventions in failing schools are necessary and how to do them. Let schools take the wheel again when it comes to deciding how they should be staffed, what instructional practices to use, etc. And let Uncle Sam stay focused on offering incentive grants for promising innovations–and for producing and disseminating solid research and evaluation reports.

Editorial boards and sundry reformers will scream that this amounts to a “rollback” of NCLB’s tough-love approach. Let them scream, Mr. President–and use some of your remaining capital to explain why this more measured approach is actually the one more likely to succeed in getting our schools to the next level. Plus, it’s also the one approach that could pass Congress in a bipartisan fashion, uniting educators on the Left with conservatives on the Right.

Go ahead, Mr. President–be a tiger.

-Mike Petrilli

Photograph by Brimac_the_2nd from Flickr

Quotable:

“The profession for 150 years was grounded in management, organization, government, politics, and finance. Those things are important, but they are secondary to learning and teaching.”
- Joseph F. Murphy, developer of the VAL-ED system for evaluating principals

“Review Backs New Tool for Principal Evaluation,” Education Week (subscription required)

Notable:

$350,000:
Maximum projected cost of a new New York City program to offer free online SAT prep to all high school juniors. The program is expected to serve as many as 50,000 students.

“SAT help for all,” New York Post

Quotable:

“Most of the federal grants are organized around concentrations of poverty, we don’t really have concentrations.”
-Rae Ann Knopf, Vermont Deparment of Education

“Is Race to the Top an Urban Game?” Politics K-12 (EdWeek)

Notable:

31:
Percent of San Diego teachers transferring between 2004 and 2008 who moved to a school with lower test scores, while 48% moved to schools with higher scores. A similar (but less stark) trend held for schools’ poverty levels.

“Slowing the Revolving Door of Poor Schools,” Voice of San Diego

Quotable:

“They could have took this test in French and done just as bad…No other city in the history of [NAEP] has done this bad.”
-Tonya Allen, Founding Member of the Detroit Parent Network

“Detroit parents want DPS teachers, officials jailed over low test scores,” The Detroit News

Notable:

$400 Million:
Amount that would be allocated, under a proposal currently moving through Congress, to merit pay programs in U.S. public schools. This figure would represent a quadrupling of the current federal funding for such programs.

“Performance pay funding for teachers may increase,” Washington Post

Quotable:

“You don’t want to get into a situation where a teacher is going to argue or parse words, or get defensive about a rating, if you’re interested in teacher performance improving.  I think it’s easy to create unanticipated consequences inadvertently.”
-Charlotte Danielson, educational consultant

Education Week (subscription required): New Teacher-Evaluation Systems Face Obstacles

Notable:

8.5%:
High school dropout rate for second-generation Hispanics born in the U.S.  By comparison, the dropout rate among all Hispanic youths ages 16-24 is 17 percent, roughly three times higher than white youths and close to double the rate for black youths.

Associated Press: U.S.-Born Hispanics See Gains in Education, Income

Quotable:

“After all, we wouldn’t ask air traffic controllers to land planes with radars that shut down at 10,000 feet. We wouldn’t let surgeons operate if they could only guess at how previous patients had done…And yet at the moment we are asking high schools to deliver students who can perform in college without giving schools the tools to know whether or how their current efforts are paying off.”
-The Promise of Proficiency, a new report from Center for American Progress

“High Schools Flying Blind Without College Data, Report Says,” High School Connections (EdWeek Blog)

Notable:

9:
Hours Denver’s school board and superintendent spent in a group session with a psychologist on Thursday.  The board had become increasingly at odds over several new reform proposals passed earlier in the week.  The Denver Post reports that “The word ‘Kumbaya’ was, indeed, uttered” at the session.

“DPS board, superintendent get coaching on making up,” Denver Post

I had the soggy pleasure yesterday of trudging, in the pouring rain, over to 101 Constitution Ave. for the latest update on the Common Core Standards Initiative from NGA and CCSSO. Apparently attendees didn’t mind getting wet because it was a packed house. I weaseled my way into the back just in time to hear Dane Linn and Gene Wilhoit go through their PowerPoint slides. Here’s the lowdown (some new news, mostly not):

1. The K-12 back-mapped standards in reading and in math will be released for public comment on January 4^th.
2. “Early” February is still the timeline for the final draft of both the end-of-high-school standards and the back-mapped ones in both subjects.
3. The Validation Committee is planning on issuing a report (not sure when) detailing the degree to which the standards are evidence-based, as well as the areas they can’t decide or agree are evidence based (promises to be a fun read).
4. Wilhoit gave a long-awaited definition for what it means to “adopt” the standards. Necks craned to read it; it is:•100% of the common core K-12 standards in ELA and mathematics to be adopted within 3 years;
   •States adopt the common core in its entirety or in its entirety with up to an additional 15% of content added (the “85% rule”);
   •A state will have adopted the common core when the standards authorizing body within the state has taken formal action to adopt and implement the Common Core.
   •The state is responsible for demonstrating that they have adhered to this definition of adoption.
   Regarding that first bullet, does that mean that states have three years to adopt? Or that they can adopt pieces of it gradually for three years?? And regarding that last bullet, it does not appear that NGA, CCSSO, or anyone else will be checking up on states’ “adoption adherence.” That’s to be expected-NGA and the other partners can’t be expected to both develop and monitor this effort-and we certainly don’t want the feds getting their fingers in this pie. (All the more reason , btw, that we need to start discussing what the long-term structural and governance arrangements for common standards and tests should look like. Stay tuned.)
5. NAGB has apparently expressed interest in maintaining its “auditing” role. Wilhoit said they’ve commissioned a couple of studies to examine the overlap/divergence between what NAEP is measuring and what the Common Core will measure. Sounds like a good idea and would love to know more, especially since Wilhoit’s quick explanation left much unanswered.

In the end, one of the big takeaways for me is that people are running forward really quickly to catch this train. The AFT, NEA, NASBE (National Association of State Boards of Education), and the Higher Education community each got about one minute to give the Common Core Standards Initiative their blessing and highlight their “contribution.” The AFT and Council of Great City Schools are planning on working with 10 districts who are “ready to move with implementation to find out what they need to have to make it work.”( My guess? More money.) NASBE is planning four regional “adoption sessions” to prime their members for what standards adoption means to them. The big topic of NGA’s winter conference is adoption of the Common Core. And the Higher Education Presidents (forgot which organization that one was but not this one) are meeting to discuss how they might “use the Common Core to gain traction to change teacher education programs across a number of institutions at scale.” Tall order there.

Yep, everyone seems to be a movin’ and a shakin.’ Fordham’s no different. Buckle up and enjoy the ride because, if we stay on track, we may just do our nation’s children a great service.

-Amber Winkler

Andy Rotherham’s latest* U.S. News column argues that transparency is not enough in most policy spheres, including education. Accountability is needed, too.

The Bush administration assumed the federal No Child Left Behind law would produce a tidal wave of student and school performance data that would swamp opposition to school improvement efforts. Seven years later the political resistance to education reform is as potent as ever and former Bush aides now acknowledge placing too much faith in the power of information.

Hmm. Don’t you think that “political resistance” might have resulted from NCLB’s heavy-handed, clumsy attempt at top-down accountability? Every fierce opponent of NCLB prefaces his or her statement with, “Now, I think it’s great that the law requires student test scores to be disaggregated…”

But more importantly, Andy is learning the wrong lesson. He’s right that accountability is needed in education–in other words, outcomes must lead to consequences for adults–but it’s not at all clear that this sort of accountability is workable when coming from Washington. The feds are simply too many steps removed from the action.

Andy later laments that “it’s ridiculous that today a parent can find more information about choosing a new washing machine or automobile than about choosing a school.” Which tells me that we still don’t have a transparent education system, despite the “tidal wave” of NCLB data. Making solid, believable information available to parents and the public–via common national standards and tests, for example–is a worthwhile goal for a national agenda. But as for “holding schools and educators accountable” for said results, that’s a task better left to the states.

UPDATE: Actually, not his latest; this one’s from May! Oops, saw it on Eduwonk today. Still, some debates are timeless…

-Mike Petrilli

Quotable:

“The underlying problem for all of this is: We don’t measure this stuff. Think of Major League Baseball where nobody tracked batting averages: ‘Well, I don’t know if this guy hits .350 or .150, but he looks pretty good up at the plate.’ That’s where we’re at (with teachers).”
-Daniel Weisberg, vice president for policy, the New Teacher Project

Cincinnati Enquirer: Rewrite teachers’ contract, CPS told

Notable:

$630 million:
Revenue taken in by the non-profit College Board, owner of the SAT, in the latest fiscal year. $57 million of this total was produced in “excess.”

Fortune Magazine: The standardized-test smackdown

Quotable:

“The bottom line is teachers need to be retained based on their achievement, not on how long they’ve been at a job…This is where the United States is going and we’re just with the early leaders.”
- Rep. Rich Crandall, chairman of the Arizona House Education Committee, Title

“Law changes way teachers contract with districts,” Arizona Republic

Notable:

75:
Percentage of Minnesota charter schools that, according to a recent study, had at least one flagged, substantive financial management irregularity on their 2007-8 school year audit.

“Charter school accountability starts here,” Bemidji Pioneer (MN) (registration may be required)

Fordham’s annual charter school accountability report, “Seeking Quality in the Face of Adversity,” is now out! As many of you know, Fordham authorizes (called “sponsoring” in Ohio) six charter schools in Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Springfield. Each year we release a report outlining how Fordham-sponsored schools are doing, and contrasting them with charter schools statewide and schools within their home districts. The report also weighs in on timely political and legislative developments impacting charter schools in the Buckeye State. Highlights include:

• - A recap on why Ohio charters faced such a tough year in 2008-09 (politically, legislatively, financially, you name it)
• - A look at charter school growth since caps were placed on sponsors (unsurprisingly, fewer charter schools opened during 2007-09 than during 2005-07 period, and the sector as a whole is growing at a slower rate)
• - A summary of the financial predicaments faced by charters in Ohio, including dwindling state and federal start-up dollars, and funding inequities between districts and charter schools that amount to charters receiving roughly $2000 less per pupil (see graph below)
• - A brief narrative on Fordham’s youngest charter schools, KIPP: Journey Academy and Columbus Collegiate Academy (a Building Excellent Schools affiliate)
• - An academic snapshot of Fordham-sponsored schools, including the good (almost 70 percent of students in Fordham-sponsored schools achieved “above expected growth” on Ohio’s value-added measure) and the bad (students in Fordham-sponsored schools still don’t make the state proficiency goal of 75 percent in reading and math, similar to their district counterparts).

To learn more, read the PDF here.

Average Per Pupil Spending, Ohio Districts and Charters Over Time
(In Constant 2009 Dollars)

Sources: Ohio Department of Education Interactive Local Report Card
             Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator

Standards-based reform in education is imperfect. The ways that states and districts assess kids, design tests, and attempt to hold teachers and schools accountable are bound to be flawed, lead to unintended consequences, and create many enemies along the way. But I wish the opponents of standards-based reform in Ohio would at least get a little more creative.

You may recall from a few months ago that Karl Wheatley, Cleveland State University ed professor, said the best way to improve education would be to "stop focusing on student achievement ." I outlined why I thought that was a bad idea here . The gist of his argument, believe it or not, was that because standardized testing creates "collateral damage," perverse incentives, etc. the best thing to do is to stop trying to raise student achievement.

Yesterday’s op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch from another education professor, Thomas Stephens of Ohio State, comes from the same predictable script (aka "we don’t like the focus on standards/testing/accountability so let’s call for its demise-or at least replace it with a nebulous emphasis on problem solving and innovative thinking"). In "Standards obstruct education," Stephens argues that Ohio’s decision to revise academic standards is a waste of time and money because, among other things, it "doesn’t consider the needs of… children." This commentary uses the same creepy factory language intended to pit "standards-teach-and-test fanatics" against reasonable, warm-hearted education professors – e.g. "assembly-line-atmospheres" and the metaphor of children as widgets. (The other op-ed argued that politicians and CEOs pursue higher test scores just so America can be no. 1. Right .)

To reiterate, standards-based reforms are bound to have problems (just like any other endeavor whose outcomes we attempt to measure and reward). But Stephens’ analysis of Ohio’s "obsession with learning standards" overlooks some obvious reasons that the Ohio Department of Education is right to spend so much time revising standards, such as the fact that the National Center for Education Statistics’ recent report finds that states are watering down their standards and student proficiency is flat. Or that Ohio will be more competitive to win federal Race to the Top money if it aligns to internationally benchmarked standards.

The ultimate reason to spend "untold hours and millions of dollars" on getting academic standards right, however, is that the poorest and neediest kids suffer the most from inadequate standards. Poor children from places like Dayton, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus who don’t perform well on standardized tests are less likely to graduate from high school and far more apt to end up unemployed or incarcerated as adults. Standards-based tests do measure something important, albeit imperfectly. And it is only because of this emphasis on testing and accountability that we are aware of Ohio’s inexcusable achievement gaps, and can begin to address them.

Quotable:

“I don’t see any other state that has thrown the brunt of its budget shortfall onto the laps of our students.”
- Celia Molina, Hawaii parent

“Hawaii Looks to Reopen Schools,” Teacher Magazine

Notable:

24:
Number of Columbus, OH middle schools that failed to make AYP last year.  There are only 24 in the district.

“City’s middle schools face up to ugly truths,” The Columbus Dispatch

As Amy indicates, the latest findings from the just-released National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) report contain few surprises, especially since we’re well-versed in the differences between states’ definitions of proficiency and proficiency as mapped onto a common scale (see here and here).

This NCES report maps state proficiency standards onto NAEP scales and concludes that:

All NAEP scale equivalents of states’ reading standards were below NAEP’s Proficient range; and in mathematics, only two states’ NAEP scale equivalents were in the NAEP Proficient range (Massachusetts in grades 4 and 8, and South Carolina in grade 8). In many cases, the NAEP scale equivalent for a state’s standards, especially in grade 4 reading, mapped below the NAEP achievement level for Basic performance.

Yikes. Dig into the report and you’ll find several tables that show which states have lowered and raised their proficiency standards between 2005 and 2007. The data are rightly separated into those states that have results that can be compared (e.g., because they have the same tests in place) and those that cannot (e.g., they changed their standards/tests/testing policies). Of those states with comparable data, we see that New Jersey’s NAEP scale equivalent in grade 4 reading has increased roughly 11 points over the last two years, while South Carolina’s has dipped roughly 6 points. Interestingly, South Carolina has some of the highest proficiency standards in the nation in both reading and math–why hit the brakes now? Did they decide that their rigorous standards aren’t worth the AYP price? On the other hand, New Jersey’s proficiency standards fell in the middle of the pack compared to other states–and their grade 3 reading cut scores were at the 15^th percentile (!) when NWEA did their report for us over 2 years ago. So, clearly the Garden State had room to grow.

In grade 8 math, Arkansas and Georgia win the booby prize. Arkansas’ NAEP scale equivalent dipped 11 points over the last two years and Georgia’s almost twelve. Besides Tennessee, Georgia has the lowest Grade 8 math equivalent scores in the 48 states studied. Indeed, our Accountability Illusion report had this to say about Georgia: “Several sample schools made AYP in Georgia that failed to make AYP in most other states. This is likely due to the fact that Georgia’s proficiency standards are relatively easy, compared to other states.”

So, add this latest round of results to the expanding literature we now have on this so-called proficiency illusion (Fordham’s work of course, but also Porter’s work and this 2005 report from IES, similar to the one just released). Frankly, all of this is starting to sound like a broken record (broken iPod for our younger listeners).

Here’s hoping the common standards movement strikes an appealing new tune.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is out with a new report today that looks at state achievement levels using the common yardstick of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Not great news. According to the AP story:

It found that many states deemed children to be proficient or on grade level when they would rate below basic or lacking even partial mastery of reading and math under the NAEP standards.

From the Ed Week story:

Their results suggest that 26 states, between 2005 and 2007, made their standards less rigorous in one or more grade levels or subjects.

Our Amber Winkler shared her thoughts on the matter with both Education Week and the Christian Science Monitor.

Might I just point out that the Fordham Institute actually did a very similar report back in 2007 – the Proficiency Illusion. That report used a Northwest Evaluation Association test as a common yardstick. It too found that “proficiency” varied wildly from state to state, with “passing scores” ranging from the 6^th percentile to the 77^th.

Fordham went even further earlier this year, in the Accountability Illusion. That report examined how state accountability (AYP) rules under the No Child Left Behind Act varied from state to state as well.

Check them both out!