The Education Gadfly
A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
May 22, 2008, Volume 8, Number 20
New from Fordham: Would you like fries with that? Supersize your Education Gadfly experience! Sign up to receive daily bulletins of postings from our new blog, Flypaper.
This week on The Education Gadfly Show Podcast: Whither yearbooks?
Contents
From Checker's and Liam's Desks
News and Analysis
Recommended Reading
Flypaper's Finest (The best from Flypaper, Fordham's blog)
The Education Gadfly Show Podcast
Short Reviews
Announcements
From Checker's and Liam's Desks
Wimping out on standards?
The connection between rhetoric and reality in discussions about reforming America's high schools wears thin.
That erosion was on display Saturday in Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times. Herbert talked to Bob Wise--former governor of West Virginia, knowledgeable president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, and author of the new and estimable book Raising the Grade--and emerged from the conversation rankled by what he heard about the nation's high schools.
"We can't even keep the kids in schools," a flustered Herbert wrote. "Half of those who remain go on to graduate without the skills for college or a decent job." He's right, of course, in suggesting that America has not one but two problems with its high schools: too many young people drop out of them sans diplomas--and too many of those who earn diplomas are ill-prepared for what follows. But can both problems be solved at the same time or does the solution to each exacerbate the other? What happens when those tougher standards lead to real live kids actually being denied diplomas and threaten to discourage some kids from remaining in school?
Two weeks ago, Gadfly addressed the dilemma faced by Massachusetts in setting the "cut score" for its MCAS test. Today, Gadfly is perplexed by other states' ambivalence regarding their own graduation requirements--and by the backsliding we observe as the day arrives when young people expect to walk across that stage and be handed that diploma.
Our attention was seized by Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, who days ago signed into law a bill that weakens her state's exit exam requirement by allowing high school students who don't pass the AIMS test (thousands don't) to supplement their meager scores with good grades. The legislation's justification resides in the statements of students such as Maria Cami, an 18-year-old who maintains a 3.2 GPA but does not, by her own admission, understand math. "I feel like I'm being penalized for something I'm not good at," said Cami.
Cami believes a high school diploma is an entitlement. Arizona's governor and legislature are abetting that belief (Arizona has also repeatedly delayed implementation of its exit exam).
So, too, the Alabama legislature. Several weeks ago, that body passed an emergency measure allowing the class of 2008 to graduate without passing all five sections of the state exit exam. To its credit, though, Alabama also reformed its graduation regulations such that, in the future, students who can pass only three of five exit exam sections--two of which must be reading and math--may receive a "credit-based" diploma, which is not the same as a conventional diploma. Alabama, in other words, is heading toward a two-tiered diploma system.
As these states ease their exit exam requirements, others simply refuse to enact any. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has been pushing to establish graduation tests but is opposed by Keystone State school boards, almost a third of which have condemned his proposal. Timothy Allwein, spokesman for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, said, "Graduation has always been a matter of local control." Also, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, "many school boards...are fearful that the tests will lead discouraged students to drop out."
There's plenty of precedent for this sort of thing. Washington State watered down its exit exam requirements in 2006, as did Maryland. That year, a Center for Education Policy report found that exit exam growth had leveled off, especially after California faced repeated and acrimonious legal challenges to its test policies. And as greater and greater attention (some of it leveraged by NCLB) focuses on graduating more kids and cutting the dropout rate, it's fair to predict that many jurisdictions will find themselves asking: can we truly have higher standards and higher completion rates at the same time?
Here are some possible resolutions:
- Forget the "college or bust" mindset. Being prepared for some form of postsecondary education as well as gainful employment is a valid--perhaps the most valid--outcome of a sound high school education. But it's nuts to picture everybody attending Swarthmore. Kids bored beyond belief by the prospect of years and years and years of Macbeth, Lord of the Flies, and equations with two unknowns may well drop out, especially if they would rather be working and making money. A productive remedy is to offer career and technical education classes that provide a definite, practical pay-off. Students have an opportunity to engage their interests and talents, and they can feel satisfied that they are spending their time productively. They also stay in school. Some districts are expending significant effort to expand such programs. Some high schools are teaming up with community colleges to deliver high-quality "tech prep" programs and the like.
- Create alternative routes to graduation. By high school, it's apparent that different students possess different levels of academic ability and interest. Why not offer choices among diplomas as well as choices among schools, much as colleges themselves do when they assist students to choose between, for example, associate's and bachelor's degrees?
- Co-op and distance-learning schools. Allow high school kids to work during the day and learn at night or weekends. Or work at a paying job one day a week and go to school on other days. Let them take courses and earn credits without sitting in buildings called schools. There are plenty of examples, from the Florida Virtual School to the Cristo Rey schools.
- Like Massachusetts, develop separate requirements for college-bound young people on top of passing the state exit exam that yields a simple diploma. Yes, that means admitting that the high school diploma per se is not equivalent to readiness for "college-level" academic work (see here). But it may cause more young people to stick around for diplomas that would still mean something.
- Don't make promises or threats that you don't intend to keep. It's really squalid to see states set "tough" requirements and then back off, defer, or punch holes in them. Our kids deserve to grow up in a country where policy makers do what they say. That's what Bob Herbert should write next.
Email to a friend | Comments (3)
News and Analysis
Ten is the new five
Once upon a time, major federal education legislation was authorized for five years at a time and funds could only be appropriated for programs so long as the authorization remained valid. As a result, big fat laws such as E.S.E.A. and the Higher Education Act were, in fact, reauthorized every five years, always with amendments and additions, sometimes with improvements. That was the fundamental rhythm of federal education policymaking.
This rhythm began to slow in 1980, when the "General Education Provisions Act" was amended to provide for "automatic extensions" of program authorizations for up to two additional years. In other words, Congress gave itself two extra years to renew programs that were nominally on five-year cycles.
Subsequently, the Appropriations Committees figured out that they didn't really need programs to be reauthorized before they could be re-funded, i.e. that appropriations acts themselves could temporarily extend the programs funded therein. I can't quite make out when that first happened, but today it's rampant, and not just in education. (Appropriators also discovered that they could conjure programs out of whole cloth, with no prior action by authorizers, such as the much-debated Teacher Incentive Fund.)
The upshot is that authorizing committees in particular, and the Congress as a whole, can now take forever to renew expiring programs and the nominal deadlines built into those big fat education laws have become as elastic as Gummi Worms.
As a result, the upcoming (maybe) reauthorization of the Higher Education Act is occurring five years after the supposed expiry of the previous version. And when the Head Start renewal was finally signed into law a few months back, at least four extra years had elapsed since that was supposed to happen.
The basic rhythm, in other words, has changed. Like everything else on Capitol Hill, it's slowed way down. A decade is becoming the regular timeline for program reauthorizations.
We already see signs that NCLB's renewal and revision has slipped from 2007, when it was "supposed" to happen, to 2009 and very likely 2010 and maybe later. And I'm coming to hope that a similar fate awaits the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA, source of the Institute for Education Sciences and its various component parts, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP]). That measure first drew breath in 2002, authorizing appropriations for fiscal year 2003 and five subsequent years, of which the last is fiscal year 2008, which we're currently in.
There's a big difference, however, between NCLB and ESRA. While lots of people and organizations and policymakers have framed NCLB revisions, and some leading members of Congress have even floated drafts, just about nobody except Russ Whitehurst and his IES team and a handful of interested outside parties is even aware of the need for Congress to focus on ESRA, too. Certainly nobody in Congress has focused. Hence very little has even been proposed--except by those interested parties.
Much as I deplore the general aura of delay, deferral, and dithering that has overtaken education lawmaking, it would be a good thing if action on ESRA drags on and on and on. That's because people who are not interested parties also need to focus on it--since, as we've also come to expect in Washington, the interested parties are focused only on, well, their own interests. The various entities and organizations that live off the IES programs (e.g., the regional educational laboratories and national research centers) are brimming with ideas for what should happen to them. So, too, are the folks who run the agency and its programs, especially Whitehurst and his policy board, the National Board for Education Sciences.
Earlier this year, that body "marked up" ESRA to show the changes that members would like to see made in it. Some are harmless and some technical, but one set of recommended changes could prove disastrous for the future of education statistics and NAEP: they would eradicate most of the "protections" carefully written into the 2002 legislation to keep the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and its commissioner, and NAEP and its own governing board (the National Assessment Governing Board, a.k.a. NAGB) semi-autonomous and at least partially free from the whims of IES.
The reasoning back then was that statistics and NAEP need to maintain their integrity and credibility and not be subject to second-guessing and review by whoever may occupy Whitehurst's office in the future. Whitehurst himself, it may be noted, is strong on experimental research in education but seems oblivious to the fundamental difference between such research and the gathering, analysis, and dissemination of accurate, timely, and trustworthy statistics and assessment results. It's not clear that he assigns much value to such things, either.
Many people worked hard at the beginning of this decade to explain to Congress why such protections and separations are important. They're every bit as important today. But so far nobody seems to have focused on this issue except those who would like to undo them.
Not a good situation. Leading me to conclude that Congress should take forever to renew this statute. IES is faring pretty well under current law. So are NCES and NAEP. (All three have been deemed "effective" by the Office of Management and Budget--a real accomplishment.) Since it would be more than a pity to upset this applecart, maybe it shouldn't be touched. Certainly not until a lot more points of view and interpretations of the public interest are brought to bear on the matter.
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
Recommended Reading
Don't pass me the ball
Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso, taking a page from Fordham's playbook, is remaking the city's funding system to push dollars and decisions down to the school level. Several principals (and their union bosses) are displeased, however. Some protest their smaller budgets under the new system-the plight of just 21 of 192 Baltimore City schools. But Tisha Edwards, a special assistant to Alonso, believes cuts will cause more political pain than educational harm. "What I'm finding is that principals oftentimes shy away from what are obvious cuts they should make because of connections to people. In some cases, the staff we gave to schools [under the previous funding system] was not appropriate, but it was the district's money so nobody cared," she said. One school of 300 students, for instance, employed four assistant principals; the district recommends one assistant principal per 300 students. More than a few principals, it appears, would rather central office make the tough decisions. Is that school leadership?
"Schools complain of money shortage," by Sara Neufeld, Baltimore Sun, May 19, 2008
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
Sorry, Goldilocks--it's hot or cold
Advanced Placement enrollment has exploded, and several schools in the Washington, D.C., area have gone so far as to eliminate conventional honors courses altogether because, they claim, AP provides students more academic rigor and holds them to higher expectations. But sixteen-year-old Lucie Blauvelt, a junior at Maryland's Rockville High School, remains unconvinced that throwing everyone into AP classes is such a great idea: "There's some students who are just honor students. They don't have the ability to push themselves into AP." The teenager speaks the truth. AP was designed for heavy-hitters, high school students who thirst for challenging, college-level material. Some honors pupils are doubtless capable of meeting AP's standards, but other students are either going to drag down the discourse in their AP classes or become frustrated with the rapid teaching pace and revert to less-challenging regular courses. Despite what our good friend Jay Mathews tells you, AP is not for everyone.
"Honors Courses Give Way to AP Rigor," by Daniel de Vise, Washington Post, May 19, 2008
Email to a friend | Comments (2)
Say NOPE to NAEP
The ed reform crowd genuflects before the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the holy grail of testing. And in most cases, its deification is appropriate. But when comparing charter schools to traditional public schools, the holy grail becomes a Dixie Cup. The latest round of NAEP scores shows that charter students probably are performing at a slightly lower level than their non-charter peers, though, when one controls for race and income, the differences are negligible. More troublesome, NAEP only provides a snapshot in time, so it's impossible to know from these data whether charter schools students are gaining or lagging their district school peers. (Most rigorous studies show that they are making gains.) Fordham President Checker Finn summed up yet another problem with NAEP charter-school data: "I'm not very interested in the average performance of charters.... The word 'charter' signals so little about them, and the diversity within that universe is at least as great as the diversity outside it." In short, it's incorrect to treat "charter schools" as a unique entity or homogeneous mass. It makes about as much sense as trying to form a single impression of pastry shops or pizza parlors.
"NAEP Gap Continues for Charters," by Erik W. Robelen, Education Week, May 19, 2008
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
Fizzy Fruit forever
The genesis of Fizzy Fruit's success arguably comes from Genesis, in which we learn that fruit is one temptation from which mankind simply cannot abstain. For kids, however, fruit holds less allure--but soda is a Godsend. Thus, the makers of Fizzy Fruit, which is on school lunch menus in 20 Connecticut school districts, have combined the fizziness of soda with the fruitiness of fruit and students cannot get enough of the stuff. Fizzy Fruit is created when carbonation is pumped, via mechanisms called "Fruit Fizzolators," into apples, grapes, etc., all of which retain their original nutritional content. (Bananas, however, lack sufficient water content, and therefore cannot be fizzolated.) Kids and district leaders love the new, healthy snack, but others see Fizzy Fruit as a pernicious gateway drug for youngsters. Parent Holly Fydenkevez said, "They'll try a piece of the orange and think, 'Oh, now I know how orange soda tastes.' And then you've turned a kid on to soda when he never knew soda before." She might be right. After seven-year-old Axel Ortiz was refused by a cafeteria worker his fourth serving of Fizzy Fruit, he said he needed it because "it tastes like soda." Oritz told the worker, "I'll pay you. How much?"
"Carbonated Fruit a Hit in School," by Lynn Doan, The Hartford Courant, May 19, 2008
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
Flypaper's Finest (The best from Flypaper, Fordham's blog)
Sol Stern's latest target: Russ Whitehurst
Mike Petrilli
"Now that Sol Stern has completely ruffled the feathers of the 'whatever works' crowd, he's turned his sights to one of the most visible leaders of the 'what works' movement, Institute for Educational Sciences director Russ Whitehurst...." Read it here.
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
More on Ayers
Jeff Kuhner
"Nothing is more emblematic of the rampant intellectual incoherence and moral equivalence of our age than the current debate about whether Bill Ayers is a ‘terrorist....'" Read it here.
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
The Education Gadfly Show Podcast
Whither yearbooks?
This week, Mike and guest host Kevin Carey, of Education Sector, chat about girls and boys, colleges, and AP. Jeff Kuhner is outraged about Bill Ayers, and Education News of the Weird doesn't look quite right. Click here to listen through our website and peruse past editions. To download the show as an mp3 to your computer, click here (no iPod required--this link will play through any music software on your computer, including Windows Media Player or RealPlayer). To subscribe to this podcast, or to get more information about how podcasts work, click here.
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
Short Reviews
Schools That Work
David Jason Fischer
Center for an Urban Future
May 2008
David Jason Fischer
Center for an Urban Future
May 2008
Like Paul Tough's New York Times Magazine article on the success of KIPP and its ilk, "Schools That Work" gives wonks, parents, and educators alike an accessible and hopeful picture of the schools that innovative educators can build when given enough flexibility. The focus is New York City's career and technical education (CTE) schools, of which twenty-one currently exist, teaching vocations like nursing and automotive maintenance. Although CTE students are poorer, older, less academically accomplished, and more likely to be black or Hispanic than their traditional high school counterparts, they attend class more often and are four times less likely to drop out. That's because, the author hypothesizes, the classes are actually interesting and practical. The schools are also more responsive to the city's labor market, giving students concrete paths to stable careers. Graduates from Automotive High School, one of the city's top CTE schools, for instance, leave with an industry-recognized certification that gives them easy entrée to potential employers. Some schools have struggled, however, to forge similar ties with leaders in their respective industries, in large part because of barriers imposed by the district bureaucracy. Companies that want to award scholarships, for example, have had to set up special pathways to comply with archaic regulations. The schools also have great difficulty recruiting qualified teaching candidates, many of whom are turned off by certification requirements that are completely irrelevant to what and how they're teaching. There's a golden egg waiting to hatch if the fat mother bird would just give it a bit of room. Read more here.
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
Islam in the Classroom: What the Textbooks Tell Us
Gilbert T. Sewall
The American Textbook Council
May 2008
This new study appraises the ten widely used world history textbooks for U.S. middle and high school students. It concludes that they offer an idealized, often glamorized (and inaccurate) depiction of Islam; they are also brimming with misinformation and biases that misrepresent Islam's theological principles. The author emphasizes that Islamic activists and lobby groups are using American educators' multiculturalism fetish to manipulate the curriculum. Their goal is to extirpate any critical assessments of Islam, especially how the religion has been warped by extremists, from U.S. textbooks. Publishers are taken to task for bowing to pressure from groups like the Council on Islamic Education. Anyone interested in how Islam is treated in major textbooks will find this report useful. Read it here.
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
Sizing Up State Standards 2008
American Federation of Teachers
2008
The AFT is well known and much praised for its firm insistence on "coherent content standards" and since 1995 has periodically appraised state standards for clarity, specificity, classroom utility, etc. This year's review of state standards--spanning elementary, middle, and high school standards in English, math, science and social studies--found that only Virginia "meets the AFT criteria for strong standards in all levels and subjects." Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin had no strong standards. Other states were, of course, somewhere in between. The report offers recommendations, useful if sometimes obvious, such as the need for states to "bring specific United States and world history into their early elementary standards" and to "describe what high school students should know and be able to do by course." The full document is available here.
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
Announcements
Way to go, Terry!
Congratulations to Terry Ryan, Fordham's VP for Ohio programs and policy, who is part of the NewSchools-Aspen Institute Fellows Class of 2008 (he passed his entrance exam with flying colors). Learn more here about all the 2008 Fellows.
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
Innovate! Improve! Work for the federal government!
The Office of Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education is looking to fill a civil service position that oversees its school choice and charter school programs. It's an important job. Get all the relevant details here.
Email to a friend | Comments (0)
About Us
The Education Gadfly is published weekly (ordinarily on Thursdays), with occasional breaks, by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Regular contributors include Jack Byers, Amy Fagan, Daniela Fairchild, Chester E. Finn, Jr., Mickey Muldoon, Jamie Davies O'Leary, Eric Osberg, Stafford Palmieri, Emmy Partin, Michael J. Petrilli, Laura Elizabeth Pohl, Terry Ryan, Janie Scull, and Amber Winkler. Have something to say? Email us at thegadfly@edexcellence.net. If you would like to subscribe, you may either email thegadfly@edexcellence.net with "subscribe gadfly" in the text of the message or sign up online here.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is a nonprofit organization that conducts research, issues publications, and directs action projects in elementary/secondary education reform at the national level and in Ohio, with a special emphasis on our hometown of Dayton. (For Ohio news, check out our Ohio Education Gadfly, published bi-weekly, ordinarily on Wednesdays.) The Institute is neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.