The Education Gadfly Weekly

An oft-overlooked sector in American K-12 education has also been its most rapidly growing: homeschooling. There are currently more than two million home-school students in the U.S., marking a growth rate of between 7 and 12 percent per annum since the 1970s. This book-cum-literature review profiles this expanding sector, tracking its prevalence, demographics, history, rationale, instructional methods, and impact—drawing data and conclusions from an impressive seventeen pages of references. Many points are unsurprising, though the breadth of data provides a uniquely robust representation of this group: Homeschoolers tend to be white (93 percent), conservative (93 percent), and squarely in the middle class (with wealthier families opting for private schools and poorer families lacking the economic flexibility needed to keep a parent out of the workforce). The vast majority are Christian (92 percent)—the rise in homeschooling parallels the rise in Christian fundamentalism in the states—though Muslims mark the fastest growing sub-set of homeschoolers over the past few years. The average home-schooled family has two to three children; the parents are about 20 percent more likely to have a college degree than non-home-school parents; and the children score higher on standardized tests than their public school peers. Homeschooling matches geographic population dispersion in all regions save the Northeast, where it is underrepresented. The number of homeschoolers currently tops the number of charter-goers in the U.S., yet little attention is paid to the former. Kudos to author Joseph Murphy for compiling this work—and for spotlighting this shadowed sector in K-12 education.

SOURCE: Joseph Murphy, Homeschooling in America: Capturing and Assessing the Movement (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2012).

Current technological deficiencies and restrictions on data sharing limit teachers’ access to student data, leaving them inadequately prepared to build off individual students’ strengths and nurture their weaknesses. So argues this paper—the second in a useful series from Digital Learning Now!—which introduces the notion of “backpack data”: detailed, personalized digital records that follow a child between multiple districts, service providers, and even states. The ace team of John Bailey, Samuel Casey Carter, Carri Schneider, and Tom Vander Ark recommend a two-part expansion of student data: The Data Backpack would act as one common official transcript, tracking many more indicators (like prior years’ test scores, attendance, and behavior reports) than current transcripts. The Learning Profile, a customizable data tracker for more qualitative points like students’ goals and teachers’ comments, would supplement. Bold ideas but, as the authors admit, not yet actionable: Technical, legal, and definitional challenges remain (though this paper helps resolve the last issue). Before Data Backpacks and Learning Profiles can be used, policymakers must determine how the data will be stored, who the official steward of the data is, and what the actual collection and system will look like. Assurances of privacy will also need to be established. While this paper does not provide the fertilizer, hoe, or irrigation, it does plant the seed for a more robust data-education system.

SOURCE: John Bailey, Samuel Casey Carter, Carri Schneider, and Tom Vander Ark, Digital Learning Now, Data Backpacks: Portable Records and Learner Profiles (Tallahassee, FL: Foundation for Excellence in Education, October 2012).

Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) represent the surest way to bring vouchers into the twenty-first century (and help immunize choice programs from Blaine Amendment-based court challenges), argues author Matt Ladner in this informative Friedman Foundation paper. First piloted in Arizona (at a scale much smaller than what Ladner proposes here), ESAs give parents the option to withdraw their children from public or charter schools, deposit the majority of their allotted public dollars into a designated account, and apply that money directly to any number of other academic options—including private schools, online courses, early college options, or even a future college education. With such a funding structure, the study contends, parents will be free to choose K-12 options based on quality and cost, thereby spurring innovation, improving quality, and breaking America of its “education stagnation” and gross achievement gaps. Ladner also explains the legislative safeguards that must be in place for an ESA system to be effective (HSAs and food stamps offer helpful guidance). There is much merit for such a proposed finance system—especially as digital and blended learning models take form. But Ladner’s paper has one overt flaw: Though he trumpets increased equity as a major rationale for ESAs, these calls sound hollow until the paper’s final notes, when the author clarifies that policymakers “can and should vary aid according to individual circumstances and special needs”—that is, that states ought to employ weighted-student funding. The absence of this explanation throughout mutes the piece’s otherwise cogent message.

SOURCE: Matthew Ladner, The Way of the Future: Education Savings Accounts for Every American Family (Indianapolis, IN: The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, September 27, 2012).

Aaron Churchill drops by to explain Ohio’s attendance foibles and debate the merits of another kind of student tracking. Amber asks if super sub-groups are all that super.

Amber's Research Minute

Shining a Light or Fumbling in the Dark? The Effects of NCLB’s Subgroup-Specific Accountability on Student Achievement by Douglas Lee Lauen & S. Michael Gaddis for EEPA

Tonight’s debate will be an historic occasion, with two Roman Catholic candidates for national office squaring off against each other for the first time. The fact that this development has gone mostly unnoticed is a sign of just how far America—and Catholics—have come since John F. Kennedy broke the religion barrier fifty-two years ago.

Catholic schools' history of producing leaders will be on display at tonight's vice presidential debate. Photo by Marc Nozell.

But it’s not just Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan who have ascended to the heights of our political system. Six of our Supreme Court justices are Catholic (the other three are Jewish); both Speaker of the House John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are Catholic, too.

How to explain this sudden Catholic prominence in our political and legal systems? Consider one more fact: Almost all of these officials, including Biden and Ryan, attended Catholic schools for at least part of their youth.

As scholars of education have long known, Catholic schools are national treasures—highly effective at turning out academically prepared youngsters. But they clearly excel at producing effective leaders, too.

Uncovering the reasons isn’t rocket science: As the revered sociologist James Coleman found decades ago, these institutions possess high levels of social capital and boast strong school cultures. Expectations for students are uniformly high; character development isn’t treated as an afterthought; clear guidelines for good behavior and mutual respect are communicated and enforced.

But here’s the tragedy: The Catholic schools that produced so many members of our current leadership corps are rapidly going away. The number of Catholic schools reached its peak of 13,000 in 1960; since then, more than 5,000 of them have been closed. Over the same period, enrollment has plummeted by more than half, from 5.2 million to 2.3 million.

The causes for the decline are myriad. It started with rising staff costs as schools replaced nuns with lay teachers. Then many Catholics moved from urban centers to the suburbs, leaving diminished parishes (and parish schools) behind. The clergy sex-abuse scandal—and its financial fallout—served as the knockout blow. And yes, many Catholic students have migrated to (free) charter schools, as a recent Cato Institute study found.

Some archdioceses are starting to address the decline, occasionally with success. Philadelphia recently announced a plan to outsource the governance of many of its schools to an independent foundation run by business leaders. Chicago Catholic schools, aided by an aggressive fundraising push, are experiencing something of a resurgence. But in most communities, the disappearance of these vital institutions has been met with nothing but hand-wringing and nostalgia.

Stemming the decline is going to take leadership—and it’s clear that this is not going to come from the Obama administration. The president has opposed one of the few federal social programs that have shown evidence of effectiveness—the voucher initiative in Washington, D.C., which allows 2,000 desperately poor children to attend private schools, mostly Catholic. And Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, has done everything he can to block Catholic schools from applying for federal “innovation” grants.

Mitt Romney presents a clear alternative. As he said in last week’s debate, he would allow federal dollars to “follow the child and let the parent...decide where to send their student.” While this wouldn’t immediately help Catholic schools everywhere, in states that already have serious school-voucher programs in place (like Mitch Daniels’s Indiana, John Kasich’s Ohio, and Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana), it could go a long way.

Catholic schools have a proud history of producing leaders, such as the two men who will be debating tonight in Danville, Kentucky. But if Catholic education’s long decline continues, Biden and Ryan will be among the last Catholic-school alumni to achieve national prominence.

A version of this editorial was published by the National Review Online.

When charter schools first emerged twenty years ago, they represented a revolution, ushering in a new era that put educational choice, innovation, and autonomy front and center in the effort to improve our schools. While charters have always been very diverse in characteristics and outcomes, it wasn’t long before a particular kind of gap-closing, “No Excuses” charter grabbed the lion’s share of public attention. But in this rush to crown and invest in a few “winners,” have we turned our backs on the push for innovation that was meant to be at the core of the charter experiment?

The debate over education reform has become so polarized that people are painted neatly into boxes and told that they are either "in" or they are "out." Photo by Jan Tik.

Of course, the top charter-management organizations (CMOs) got this level of attention the old fashioned way: They earned it. The best CMOs—like KIPP, Uncommon Schools, and Achievement First—have done amazing work. The teachers put in long hours and do whatever it takes to give students the kinds of opportunities they’ve had.

But, while charters have made important strides, it’s become increasingly obvious that they’ve also hit a wall in their quest to put their students on the path to college. The best among them have been able to get more and more students to hit proficiency targets, but there are no charter schools—to my knowledge—that have figured out how, at scale, to prepare all students for the rigors of college and careers. Yet, as statewide assessment and accountability systems align to the Common Core over the next few years, charters are going to be held accountable not for catching kids up, but for adequately preparing them for what comes next.

The challenge is that charters may have reached a point where, in order to break through the wall they’ve hit and take their performance to the next level, they need to enlist the help of a greater number of outsiders. They need to earnestly listen to more critics (friendly and unfriendly) who can do for charters what charters did for traditional districts over the past two decades—highlight what’s not working and propose new, often very different solutions to common problems.

Yet, when you are on top, you have every incentive to listen only to those who have bought into your success. Why give air time to those who might want to see you fail? As a result, some of the biggest CMOs—intentionally or unintentionally—have surrounded themselves with likeminded educators who are more likely to tinker around the margins of their beliefs and models than to suggest the kinds of bold changes they need to take their games to the next level. These organizations—or groups—have their own conferences, journals, professional development, teacher-preparation programs, research institutes, lobbyists, and all the other trappings of a well-resourced industry. They can now succeed as organizations whether or not they succeed in their missions.

Enter Carol Burris.

Burris is a public school principal, author, and, by all accounts, a vocal critic of education reform in general and of the instructional and curricular practices of No Excuses charter schools in particular. She seems an unlikely person to turn for advice on how No Excuses charters can improve their craft, but that may be exactly what makes her right for the job.

Earlier this year, in a post on The Answer Sheet, Burris published a damning critique of a “model” lesson-plan video that was posted on the Relay Graduate School of Education website. It was a post that far too many charter supporters probably ignored or tuned out, assuming it was no more than the idle ranting a charter foe looking to undermine the work of these hard-working, gap-closing leaders.

The truth, however, is that her critique was exactly right. The lesson, which was pitched as a model of “rigorous classroom discussion,” included low-level questions and inadequate wait time, and was generally rushed and superficial. (After Burris’s post, Relay changed the name of the video, acknowledging that it was not a rigorous discussion, but leaving it up as a model of a “culture of support.” They would have done better to really listen to Burris’s critique and to take it down entirely.)

Her most recent book (coauthored by Delia T. Garrity), Opening the Common Core: How to Bring ALL Students to College and Career Readiness, is equally thoughtful and worth reading. While I certainly don’t agree with all of it (I am generally skeptical of constructivist pedagogy, and I might push on the details and direction of some of the model lessons, for instance), Burris’s thoughts on accelerated instruction and planning for “critical thinking” are spot on. I was surprised at how closely her work resembles the goals of the major CMOs. For starters, at its core, the book promotes the idea that exposing all students to a rigorous, content-rich curriculum is the backbone to any effective reform strategy. And while Burris and Garrity acknowledge the importance of helping students master critical thinking and other skills, they recognize that skills mastery can only be accomplished in the context of learning rich content.

More than that, the authors’ description of “accelerated instruction” is thoughtful—and more closely resembles what schools like KIPP are trying to achieve than most would think. It is grounded in three key principles:

• Maximal use of instructional time;


• spiraling curriculum to reduce redundancies;


• and exposing all students to the kind of content-rich, rigorous curriculum that has traditionally been reserved for “gifted and talented” students.

I’m sure charter leaders reading these goals would find themselves nodding in agreement more often than not. After all, maximizing every moment is precisely what charter teachers are trying to do with their relentless focus on systems, routines, expectations setting, and so on. While Burris and Garrity may take a different tack, they share the same goal. Their thoughts on how to use assessment (formally and informally) to spiral curriculum, eliminate redundancies, and accelerate learning are strong, and their push to eliminate ability grouping and tracking as ways to put all students on the path to college is thought provoking. Given how intentionally Burris and her fellow educators are trying to achieve the same goals as many No Excuses charters, the fact that they approach the problem from a very different perspective could undoubtedly contribute to the conversation among charter leaders about how to better help students “climb the mountain to college.”

Of course, Burris and Garrity’s book is not the kind of “how to” guide that educators can take and implement tomorrow. But it offers some thoughtful guidance about how a school could rethink how curriculum, assessment, instruction, planning, and support intersect to help all students meet the rigors of the CCSS.

Unfortunately, the debate over school change and education reform has become so polarized that people are painted neatly into boxes and told that they are either “in” or they are “out.” And because Burris is ideologically aligned with some of the harshest and most vocal critics of ed reform, her book is unlikely to be read by those of us who believe in the power of (thoughtfully developed) accountability and choice. But for those eager to figure out how to help all students meet the content and rigor demands of the Common Core, Burris’s latest book makes it clear that we may be painting the lines in exactly the wrong places, and closing ourselves off to precisely the kind of pushback that could help us all do better.

A version of this editorial appeared on the Common Core Watch blog.

One of the central tenets of the charter-school idea is that these institutions should be open to all comers, regardless of an applicant’s home address. Ending “zip-code education,” after all, is a major motivation behind the school-choice movement. It’s a big deal, then, that a District of Columbia task force is looking into allowing charter schools to offer preferential treatment to applicants from their immediate neighborhoods. To be sure, a handful of other cities have already allowed such preferences—Denver, New York, New Orleans, and Chicago. In those cases, the neighborhood preferences were either sought by the schools—so that they could serve a needy local population—or school districts, as conditions of handing over public school buildings. That approach makes us a bit squeamish, but can be justified if the goal is to ensure that disadvantaged kids in a given locale have access to a great education. What’s impossible to justify, however, are preferences (or outright boundaries) that might keep poor kids out of charter schools. That’s precisely what could happen in D.C. if charters in certain gentrifying parts of the city, like Capitol Hill’s Ward Six, are allowed to use these preferences. The charter movement shouldn’t be doctrinaire. But it shouldn’t fall back into the exclusionary traps of the old public system, either.

RELATED ARTICLE: “D.C. considers neighborhood admissions preferences for charter schools,” by Emma Brown, The Washington Post, October 3, 2012.

There have been some truly creative (although not necessarily wise) ideas for how to boost student achievement and attendance kicking around this week, from Adderall for all to LoJacking students. Education sorely needs innovation, but let’s focus it on a more important question: How do we attract and retain great educators?

The El Paso superintendent who pushed students out of school to game the state accountability system will serve more than three years in prison following fraud convictions. Jail time for juking school stats (among other misdeeds) may sound extreme but so is the damage cheating by adults does to students. Gadfly applauds the federal judge who reflected the gravity of such school-data scandals in the disgraced supe’s sentence.

Perhaps we don’t need to hire “millions and millions of teachers” after all: Jay Greene concisely explained in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal why the teacher shortage is a figment of America’s imagination. The problem, for the next month at least, is that truth just doesn’t poll as well.

More than 100 Roman Catholic dioceses around the country have adopted the Common Core standards, part of a growing embrace by private schools. It appears that the standards’ merits, not federal strong-arming, best explain their appeal after all—or maybe the conspiracy is even deeper than critics originally thought…

Last weekend, the New York Times rightly rightly highlighted the vocabulary gap that low-income students face entering Kindergarten face relative to their wealthier peers last weekend. Let’s hope the article sparks a wider conversation about other gaps in cultural literacy and how to close them.

Negotiations between Hawaii and the state teacher union have stalled out yet again, raising the possibility of a statewide strike. Gadfly can only assume the press would pounce on the story (how many reporters would insist on covering the story on location?) and Democrats would shudder at reliving Chicago's internecine conflict between labor and reform advocates. Keep all eyes on Honolulu…

An oft-overlooked sector in American K-12 education has also been its most rapidly growing: homeschooling. There are currently more than two million home-school students in the U.S., marking a growth rate of between 7 and 12 percent per annum since the 1970s. This book-cum-literature review profiles this expanding sector, tracking its prevalence, demographics, history, rationale, instructional methods, and impact—drawing data and conclusions from an impressive seventeen pages of references. Many points are unsurprising, though the breadth of data provides a uniquely robust representation of this group: Homeschoolers tend to be white (93 percent), conservative (93 percent), and squarely in the middle class (with wealthier families opting for private schools and poorer families lacking the economic flexibility needed to keep a parent out of the workforce). The vast majority are Christian (92 percent)—the rise in homeschooling parallels the rise in Christian fundamentalism in the states—though Muslims mark the fastest growing sub-set of homeschoolers over the past few years. The average home-schooled family has two to three children; the parents are about 20 percent more likely to have a college degree than non-home-school parents; and the children score higher on standardized tests than their public school peers. Homeschooling matches geographic population dispersion in all regions save the Northeast, where it is underrepresented. The number of homeschoolers currently tops the number of charter-goers in the U.S., yet little attention is paid to the former. Kudos to author Joseph Murphy for compiling this work—and for spotlighting this shadowed sector in K-12 education.

SOURCE: Joseph Murphy, Homeschooling in America: Capturing and Assessing the Movement (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2012).

Current technological deficiencies and restrictions on data sharing limit teachers’ access to student data, leaving them inadequately prepared to build off individual students’ strengths and nurture their weaknesses. So argues this paper—the second in a useful series from Digital Learning Now!—which introduces the notion of “backpack data”: detailed, personalized digital records that follow a child between multiple districts, service providers, and even states. The ace team of John Bailey, Samuel Casey Carter, Carri Schneider, and Tom Vander Ark recommend a two-part expansion of student data: The Data Backpack would act as one common official transcript, tracking many more indicators (like prior years’ test scores, attendance, and behavior reports) than current transcripts. The Learning Profile, a customizable data tracker for more qualitative points like students’ goals and teachers’ comments, would supplement. Bold ideas but, as the authors admit, not yet actionable: Technical, legal, and definitional challenges remain (though this paper helps resolve the last issue). Before Data Backpacks and Learning Profiles can be used, policymakers must determine how the data will be stored, who the official steward of the data is, and what the actual collection and system will look like. Assurances of privacy will also need to be established. While this paper does not provide the fertilizer, hoe, or irrigation, it does plant the seed for a more robust data-education system.

SOURCE: John Bailey, Samuel Casey Carter, Carri Schneider, and Tom Vander Ark, Digital Learning Now, Data Backpacks: Portable Records and Learner Profiles (Tallahassee, FL: Foundation for Excellence in Education, October 2012).

Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) represent the surest way to bring vouchers into the twenty-first century (and help immunize choice programs from Blaine Amendment-based court challenges), argues author Matt Ladner in this informative Friedman Foundation paper. First piloted in Arizona (at a scale much smaller than what Ladner proposes here), ESAs give parents the option to withdraw their children from public or charter schools, deposit the majority of their allotted public dollars into a designated account, and apply that money directly to any number of other academic options—including private schools, online courses, early college options, or even a future college education. With such a funding structure, the study contends, parents will be free to choose K-12 options based on quality and cost, thereby spurring innovation, improving quality, and breaking America of its “education stagnation” and gross achievement gaps. Ladner also explains the legislative safeguards that must be in place for an ESA system to be effective (HSAs and food stamps offer helpful guidance). There is much merit for such a proposed finance system—especially as digital and blended learning models take form. But Ladner’s paper has one overt flaw: Though he trumpets increased equity as a major rationale for ESAs, these calls sound hollow until the paper’s final notes, when the author clarifies that policymakers “can and should vary aid according to individual circumstances and special needs”—that is, that states ought to employ weighted-student funding. The absence of this explanation throughout mutes the piece’s otherwise cogent message.

SOURCE: Matthew Ladner, The Way of the Future: Education Savings Accounts for Every American Family (Indianapolis, IN: The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, September 27, 2012).