The Education Gadfly
A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
December 3, 2009, Volume 9, Number 42
This week on The Education Gadfly Show Podcast: Stafford’s Got Talent
Contents
From Mike's Desk
Recommended Reading
- No oaks needed
- Better brew in new stein
- When seniority doesn't rule the school
- Teaching about Islam
- Salvaging Catholic schools?
- Missing your connecting flight
Flypaper's Finest (The best from Flypaper, Fordham's blog)
The Education Gadfly Show Podcast
Short Reviews
- The Impact of No Child Left Behind on Student Achievement
- Performance Management Report
- The Tab: How Connecticut Can Fix its Dysfunctional Education Spending System to Reward Success, Incentivize Choice and Boost Student Achievement
Announcements
From Gadfly's Mailbox
From Mike's Desk
Is "separate but equal" the best we can do?
Try this education Rorschach. Imagine a public school that’s knocking the roof off of the state test. Its classes are led by energetic, passionate, thoughtful teachers who engage their students in rigorous study. The curriculum is rich and varied, with plenty of time for history and science, art and music, along with the 3 Rs. Its classrooms are orderly, its students respectful to one another and to adults. But it’s not dour; there’s a sense of joy, even wonder, at the school. It’s a lively, bright, warm place to be.
Now add this one wrinkle: all of its students are poor and black (or Hispanic). It is as “segregated” as Southern schools before Brown. Here’s the test: Do you think this school is unabashedly worth celebrating? Replicating? Viewing as a national model?
There’s no right or wrong answer, but the thought experiment illumines a divide within the education world. If you said “yes, this is a wonderful achievement that we’ve created these sorts of schools,” then count yourself within the (now-mainstream) education-reform community. You look at the typical KIPP school or Amistad Academy or any of the other “high flying” high-poverty, all-minority schools and say “see: it can be done.” You embrace the “no excuses” battle cry. Even schools full of poor and black/brown kids can achieve tremendous results--and we should have more of them.
If, on the other hand, you find this picture regrettable, somewhat sad, maybe even unsettling, your inclinations are more aligned with the traditional civil rights view. Sure, you acknowledge that great “black” schools are better than terrible ones, yet you don’t count this as a success, not really. After all, academic learning is just one part of schools’ missions; helping to create the next generation of citizens is another. And in our diverse, multicultural world, kids need to learn how to work and play with all kinds of people, not just those who look like them.
Moreover, poor minority kids in particular need to learn how to navigate the mores of middle class America. Yes, “paternalistic” schools like KIPP try to prepare their students for that but wouldn’t it be easier if they actually went to school with middle class kids in the first place? And with plenty of recent evidence (including from “conservative” scholars like Eric Hanushek and Caroline Hoxby) showing that “peer effects” really do matter--black students in particular do better when more of their classmates are white--aren’t we tying one hand behind our back when we try to make “separate but equal” work?
This precise debate is one that the Left is currently engaged in. As Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation reported a few weeks ago, a group of civil rights groups recently hosted a conference and invited Administration officials to attend--and to explain why President Obama and Secretary Duncan have focused on fixing high-poverty schools (and creating great high-poverty charter schools)--rather than making these schools more integrated in the first place. (The civil rights groups want more attention and funds for initiatives like magnet schools and “controlled choice” programs.) Kahlenberg told me that participants agreed that it need not be “either/or”: that we should try to create more high-quality high-poverty schools--while also taking forceful action to integrate schools.
Here’s a related suggestion: What about creating a lot more racially- and economically-integrated charter schools? To some, that might sound like an oxymoron: When we think of great charter schools, we tend to picture the KIPPs and Amistads and such, which tend to be all-minority and mostly poor. And public policy has created incentives for schools to focus on this demographic; many states only allow charters to serve “disadvantaged” youngsters or locate in “failing” districts. But philanthropy is guilty, too; several foundations have shunned integrated charter schools because they don’t serve “enough” poor kids or, taken as a whole, their pupil population isn’t “needy” enough.
Yet even in the face of these challenges, at least a handful of fantastic, integrated charter schools have gotten off the ground. Consider Capital City Charter School in Washington--the first public school the Obamas visited as President and First Lady--which serves equal numbers of white, black, and Hispanic children and roughly equal proportions of poor and middle class kids--and which has gotten strong results over its ten-year history. There’s the famous High Tech High (HTH), founded with an explicit mission to serve a diverse group of students in the San Diego area. And there’s the Denver School of Science and Technology (DSST)--the best school in Denver, which is just about perfectly integrated along racial and class lines. Such schools should offer inspiration to the school reform, pro-charter crowd, as well as civil rights types--indeed, to just about everyone except neo-separatists who would prefer that, say, African-American youngsters learn from African-American teachers in Afro-centric schools.
But schools like these need help. Both HTH and DSST must forego federal charter start-up funds because they refuse to use a standard lottery. (Federal law mandates that charter schools not use admissions requirements--if a school is oversubscribed, it must use a random lottery to decide who gets in.) It’s not that they want to keep low-income kids out; rather, they want to make sure that enough low-income children can get in. Because these schools are so popular, including among savvy, middle class parents, the applicant pool naturally skews toward better-educated, wealthier families. To counteract this, High Tech High, for example, employs a zip-code based lottery, enabling it to override San Diego’s stark residential segregation. (Each zip code gets so many slots.) And DSST holds two lotteries--one for low-income students, and one for everyone else--allowing it to be sure that at least 40 percent of its students are poor. A change in federal law would allow more charter schools to adopt these strategies--without giving up their start-up funds for replication efforts.
What KIPP and other high-poverty, high performing charter schools have achieved is remarkable and praiseworthy and, in the foreseeable future--because most urban areas have so few white and middle class families with school-age children--making high-poverty schools work has to be a big part of the education-reform agenda. But school segregation is just as harmful today as in 1950--and integrated charter schools could be one way toward a brighter future.
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Recommended Reading
No oaks needed
We have schools that teach Ebonics, schools that don’t assign grades or tests, schools that promote Afro-centric or Mexican curricula, and schools run by students. Add to this whacky list schools in the Big Apple run by none other than ACORN. Yes, infamous ACORN of voter-fraud- and prostitution-fame. Though the two NYC schools bearing the organization’s name claim that they’re no longer affiliated, parents and teachers say they do indeed follow ACORN’s philosophy of “reform and change.” And even if ACORN itself has been evicted from the city’s schools, it left many “social justice” relatives in its wake. Take the Bushwick Community High School in Brooklyn whose mission “is for students to become empowered for positive social transformation and liberation.” Then there’s the Vanguard High School in Manhattan that recently hosted a “radical math” conference--not to be confused, mind you, with “Social Justice Math.” That no-doubt enthralling confab included a session on “how to use the history of the Black Panther Party to fuel an algebraic curriculum.” Next, we find students at Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx who practice “restorative justice”--misbehaving students are asked to “acknowledge their feelings” as opposed to, perhaps, sitting in detention doing schoolwork. Geez, enough is enough. Clearly the let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom approach is not working in American schools--and the social-justice bloom has turned into a real stinker in New York. It’s not clear how many ACORN-inspired schools there are in other cities, but since the organization has offices in most every major metropolis, we’d bet there are quite a few. We’re all for choice and charters, which most of these schools are. But we’re also for rigorous, honest curricula and schools that impart solid American values, not revolutionary zeal.
“Crackpot schools,” by Jacob Gershman, New York Post, December 1, 2009
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Better brew in new stein
Gadfly’s high hopes and expectations for New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner were sustained by his first major policy move. In a presentation to the Regents, Steiner made an impassioned case for reform of teacher preparation. His plan has five parts: a rigorous new certification test that factors in student performance; an overhaul of education school curricula; new accountability measures for ed schools, including tracking graduates’ effects on their students’ achievement; alternative paths to certification for new teachers; and bonuses for teachers teaching in high-needs schools and subjects. Most attention has centered on the possibility that New York might (finally) open up some alternative pathways into public-school teaching. This would, inter alia, make life a lot simpler for programs like Teach for America and The New Teacher Project, whose Empire State participants are currently forced to take traditional ed-school courses at night--and it would let providers other than those same ed schools offer preparation programs. Also important, however, are Steiner’s plans to reform the certification test and ed schools themselves, both of which were recently advocated by Education Secretary Arne Duncan (in a New York speech), and which could go a long way toward improving teacher quality. The details still need to be worked out—and that’s always risky, including pushback from Steiner’s own stodgy bureaucracy, but the Regents have the power to enact most of them without legislative intervention. Let’s hope they do.
“Finally getting real on training teachers,” by Thomas W. Carroll, New York Post, November 18, 2009
“Programs to Certify Teachers May Grow,” by Jennifer Medina, New York Times, November 15, 2009
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When seniority doesn't rule the school
On November 24, Arizonas H.B. 2011, originally passed in September, went into effect. That means that districts are now barred from using tenure and seniority when making hiring and firing decisions, and granted new flexibility when it comes to notifying current teachers whether theyll be retained and on what criteria theyll make salary decisions (specifically, that they need not be based on seniority). Though in large part this bill was less about contracts and more about local control, we cant help but note the irony that districts had their union-contract shackles replaced by another set of restraints: districts who do want to make hiring and firing decisions based on seniority are no longer allowed to do so. That enables the Arizona chapter of the NEA to assert that these changes have now made the Grand Canyon State one of the most restrictive on teacher hiring, firing, and salaries. Thats probably true, if youre talking about restricting the unions; as for districts and schools that will be finally be able to make hiring, firing, and salary decisions based on something other than seniority, however, we think of this as freedom.
Law changes way teachers contract with districts, by Alex Bloom,?The Arizona Republic, November 23, 2009
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Teaching about Islam
What to think when a self-proclaimed Jewish-American ex-Trotskyist Muslim-convert neoconservative comments on the treatment of Islam in state history standards in a post-9/11 world? Stephen Schwartz’s Weekly Standard evaluation of current standards in Florida, California, and Texas, three big states that dominate the textbook industry, is worth the read. His own outfit, the Center for Islamic Pluralism, seeks to “Educate the broader American public about the reality of moderate Islam and the threat to moderate Muslims and non-Muslim Americans represented by militant, political, radical, and adversarial tendencies”--and he finds the Florida and Texas standards in much closer alignment with this worthy mission than California’s. FL and TX standards, he says, do an exemplary job of addressing extremism, “dhimmitude,” and other unsavory elements of contemporary and historical Islam, including distinguishing among the different sects and studying its sometimes violent history. CA’s standards, on the other hand, express a more unified, Arab-centric, and benign history of Islam, all of which Schwartz finds to be misleading. Given that Fordham gave California an “A” on world history in 2006, with specific kudos for rigorous coverage of Islam, and gave Florida an “F” for vagueness, these revelations may portend other big changes in state standards in the past three years. As for nuanced coverage of non-Texans in Texas--will the wonders never cease?
“What Johnny Needs to Learn about Islam,” by Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, December 7, 2009
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Salvaging Catholic schools?
When the Washington D.C. Archdiocese agreed to convert seven of its schools to charters in 2007, the education world was taken aback. But the transition went smoothly and, by all accounts, the schools are thriving. So why now, when faced with a possible closing of fourteen more Catholic schools (seven in Maryland and seven in the District), is the Archdiocese apparently considering every possible solution except that one? Instead, it seems, the Archdiocese is mobilizing parents to lobby for the resuscitation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, which was more-or-less halted by Congress a few months back (though current enrollees will be allowed to finish). At least one in five youngsters in the seven financially-problematic D.C. Catholic schools is a voucher-recipient; at one of the seven, voucher recipients are one in two. But what about Maryland’s seven, clustered mostly in working class areas with significant Hispanic and black populations, like Silver Spring, Hyattsville, and Greenbelt, where there is no voucher program? There is another way. Research on Catholic-charter conversions, courtesy of yours truly and Seton Partners, as well as the Archdiocese’s own experiences two years ago, means it might even be smoother going this time around. There’s definitely something lost when a Catholic school goes secular, but that’s a far cry better than closing them down all together.
"Catholic schools look at closing," by Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post, November 24, 2009
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Missing your connecting flight
The “helicopter parent” may be coming back to earth, or so this longish TIME piece hypothesizes. As readers may know, helicopter parents hover over their children pretty much 24/7. Such a parent might hire tutors to correct a 5-year-old’s “pencil-holding deficiency,” throw out the swing set so Johnny doesn’t hurt himself, demand that nursery schools teach Mandarin to give little Sarah a leg up, or, in the worst case scenario, ghostwrite the kids’ homework assignments. But as with so many things in education that get carried too far, the pendulum may be swinging back. We now learn of “free-range” parenting, obviously meant to make us think of chickens allowed to peck for worms and bugs rather than being confined in airless coops. Yes, kids need some freedom to be kids and yes, too many parents have been way too “involved.” But children also need structure, discipline and protection. Extremes in child-rearing are never a good thing.
“The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting,” by Nancy Gibbs, TIME Magazine, November 20, 2009
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Flypaper's Finest (The best from Flypaper, Fordham's blog)
A "Race to the Top" flip-flop
Mike Petrilli
The Wall Street Journal editorial page has already taken the Administration to task for backing away from some of its tougher “Race to the Top” provisions around teacher evaluations and charter schools in the program’s final application. But check out this morsel…Read it here.
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Duncan-Bloomberg event
Andy Smarick
Despite the rainy weather, early morning start, and day-before-Thanksgiving scheduling, the CAP event with Secretary Duncan and NYC Mayor Bloomberg was standing room only. Going in it wasn’t at all clear what the actual purpose of the event was (Ed Trust’s Kati Haycock was on the panel as well). As it turned out, it was a stage for Bloomberg to make some important announcements....Read it here.
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The Education Gadfly Show Podcast
Stafford's Got Talent
This week, Mike and Stafford discuss ACORN-affiliated schools, Texas’s stand against the common core standards, and the rise and fall of helicopter parents. Then Amber tells us about the affects of NCLB accountability on student achievement and Rate that Reform grades grades. 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).
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Short Reviews
The Impact of No Child Left Behind on Student Achievement
Thomas Dee and Brian Jacob
NBER Working Paper
November 2009
Researchers have produced a slew of studies in the last several years that purport to address No Child Left Behind’s impact (or lack thereof) on student achievement. This latest from well-regarded economists Thomas Dee and Brian Jacob uses state-level (and low-stakes) NAEP data from 1992-93 to 2006-07 to trace the influence of the landmark legislation. They analyze changes in NAEP scores for two groups: states that already had school-accountability policies in place prior to the year when NCLB was fully implemented (the control group) and those that did not (the treatment group). The idea is that NCLB would represent less of a “treatment” in states that already had NCLB-like accountability policies in place; hence, they can serve as foils to states that lacked such practices prior to NCLB’s full implementation in 2002-03. They conclude that NCLB produced statistically significant increases in the average math performance of 4th graders, and in the highest and lowest achievement percentiles. They also witnessed improvements in 8th grade math, especially among low-achievers. But there was no evidence of a similar effect on reading achievement in either grade. Since more than half the states had introduced school accountability policies within the four years prior to NCLB’s implementation, they also conducted a separate analysis that omitted these “late adopters” (since newly-birthed state policies and NCLB policies could easily intermingle and understate the latter’s effect). As expected, the gains attributed to NCLB rose. Of course the integrity of the study rests on whether the pre- and post-NCLB groups make a valid comparison. Dee and Jacob use a prior framework (developed by Eric Hanushek and Margaret Raymond) to identify states that had NCLB-esque systems pre-NCLB. But they also added some states and re-coded a handful of others based on new information and data that they assembled. Though they appear to approach the coding of states carefully, there’s an element of subjectivity to virtually any coding effort, which means the impact of NCLB on achievement might be more or less robust than Dee and Jacob contend. You can purchase their study for a small fee here.
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Performance Management Report
Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
November 2009
This report urges the adoption of sensible Performance Management Systems in schools, which is not altogether surprising, that being an area in which the Dell Foundation has invested considerable money. Whereas previous research on “portfolio districts” (see here and here) focused on how management systems can be useful at the district level, this report is more concerned with how they can be useful to individual teachers and pupils. In case you were wondering, Performance Management Systems are software programs that contain key data like grades, standardized test scores, and class-by-class attendance records for each student. Such information can help teachers gain greater understanding of their students, but at most schools it’s tucked away in administrative files with limited access. But Performance Management Systems are more than databases and do more than make information more accessible. The best of them can monitor trends, analyze progress toward goals, make statistics-based projections regarding the future, and present key findings in a user-friendly interface. Thus, teachers can easily see, for example, that a particular student is missing so many classes that it puts him at a high risk of dropping out, or that his math grades have fallen since he switched to the honors class. The idea is to use real-time data to spot latent problems--and intervene before they become serious ones. The report offers brief case studies of such systems at work in Austin, New York, and Chicago. Still, though data-driven decision-making has much potential to improve learning, schools and districts ought not to concentrate exclusively on problem areas, and thereby ignore high-achievers who pass all the system’s metrics and fly under the radar. The report is available for download here.
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The Tab: How Connecticut Can Fix its Dysfunctional Education Spending System to Reward Success, Incentivize Choice and Boost Student Achievement
Bryan C. Hassel and Daniela Doyle, Public Impact
Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN)
November 2009
Connecticut’s current school funding system is inequitable, inefficient, and ineffective. So says the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN). The Nutmeg state’s murky and misguided budget channels fail to produce student gains. Though its per-pupil spending levels rank among the highest in the land, it is home to one of the widest socioeconomic achievement gaps. In this report, ConnCAN explains specific problems with Connecticut’s education funding structure, analyzes why these issues are so troublesome, and then proposes a three-part solution: portable and variable student-based funding; an accessible and intelligible database to increase fiscal transparency; and dramatically increased budgetary flexibility for districts and schools. Tying dollars to students, and varying the amounts to align with student needs, as Fordham has previously noted, would yield multiple benefits, such as incentivizing schools to keep students, particularly those who are more challenging to educate. ConnCAN asserts, we think plausibly, that these three steps will enable the state to respond to demographic shifts, educate disadvantaged students, incentivize great school operators to serve high-needs locales, and allocate funds more fairly. You can find the report here.
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Announcements
AEI's entrepreneurial spirit
This coming Monday, December 7, AEI’s Wohlstetter Conference Center will host a titillating and heavy-hitting all-day event entitled, “More Than Just Schools: Rethinking the Demand for Educational Entrepreneurship.” Panels feature a star-studded line up, including Fordham’s own Eric Osberg. Others include Kim Smith (NewSchools Venture Fund), Joe Williams (Democrats for Education Reform), and Eva Moskowitz (Success Charter Network), amongst many and equally fascinating others. Find more information and register here.
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A Rheel opportunity
District of Columbia Public Schools are currently looking for spring interns for their Urban Education Leaders Internship Program (UELIP). This internship is fast-paced, elbow-deep in research and policy, and focused on turning around local government and local schools. There are openings in all departments, such as Human Capital, Teaching and Learning, Special Education, and Operations and Technology. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until January 15, 2010. (Applications for summer internships are also being accepted.) Find more information and apply here.
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From Gadfly's Mailbox
Who says America is in decline?
To the editor:
I read with dismay Checker Finn’s pre-Thanksgiving, glass-is-mostly-empty meditation on the decline of the good ‘ole U.S. of A. (“Dusk,” November 19, 2009). While Finn is surely right that our political leaders are failing to address big challenges in America today--from reforming immigration to fixing crumbling infrastructure to tackling the national debt--he is much too melancholy about the American character itself. (“Everyone is out for number one,” he writes.) We may be losing our hegemonic position in the world, but by many measures we are stronger domestically than ever before.
Two years ago, Pete Wehner and Yuval Levin argued persuasively in Commentary that the country’s social health is in much better shape now than just fifteen years ago, when Bill Bennett released his first “Index of Leading Cultural Indicators.” Since then the crime rate has plummeted. Teenage drug and alcohol use is way down, and volunteerism among young people is way up. There are fewer abortions, divorces, and teenage pregnancies. “Improvements are visible in the vast majority of social indicators,” Wehner and Levin wrote. “In some areas, like crime and welfare, the progress has the dimensions of a sea-change.” In fact, things have improved dramatically in almost every area except for education.
The Baby Boomers (a.k.a., “the me generation”) have long been charged with “looking out for number one.” And maybe that was true back in the 1980s. But since then, they’ve done a swell job raising their kids--the teenagers and twenty-somethings of today, who are exhibiting such healthy and wholesome behaviors. And these young people give us hope that America’s best days are still ahead of us.
Michael J. Petrilli
Vice President of National Programs & Policy
Thomas B. Fordham Institute
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Dusk, indeed
To the editor:
It's great to have Mike back in the saddle. The old horse was moving slower and slower without his spurs.
But goodness, gracious, what a short-sighted and self-absorbed response he has offered (“Who says America is in decline?” December 3, 2009). No, HE's not self-absorbed, but he's far too willing to let a few encouraging domestic "social" indicators persuade him that things are more-or-less fine with America. He really does remind me of that frog--oblivious to the gradual (and in time fatal) heating of the water around him just because someone passes him a chilled facecloth from time to time.
Of course it's swell that crime rates are down, etc. Nobody is complaining about better deck chairs--but what if the ship is slowly taking on water and losing momentum?
As it happens, this week brought yet another example of that. President Obama is, on the one hand, doing something bold and important--directing a major enhancement of our capacity to try to bring a semblance of order to Afghanistan. On the other hand, by telegraphing his intention of withdrawing ASAP from that tormented land, he has, in effect, let the bad guys know that if they bide their time we'll soon be out of their way.
Can you picture FDR or Churchill or Eisenhower signaling to Hitler in advance of D-Day that, after landing the expeditionary force on the Continent, we don't actually plan to stick around very long?
Dusk indeed. Mike can take comfort, if he likes, from things like volunteerism. I just don't see them carrying us very far.
Chester E. Finn, Jr.
President
Thomas B. Fordham Institute
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About Us
The Education Gadfly is published weekly (ordinarily on Thursdays), with occasional breaks, by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Regular contributors include Amy Fagan, Chester E. Finn, Jr., Kyle Kennedy, Mickey Muldoon, Jamie Davies O’Leary, Eric Osberg, Stafford Palmieri, Emmy Partin, Michael J. Petrilli, Laura Elizabeth Pohl, Terry Ryan, Janie Scull, Saul Spady, and Amber Winkler. Have something to say? Email us at thegadfly@edexcellence.net. Would you like to be spared from the Gadfly? Email thegadfly@edexcellence.net with “unsubscribe gadfly” in the text of your message. You are welcome to forward Gadfly to others, and from our website you can also email individual articles. If you have been forwarded a copy of Gadfly and 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 and 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.
