The Education Gadfly Weekly

For over a year, I’ve been encouraging Common Core advocates to stop endlessly re-litigating the standards and instead to focus on getting implementation right. Taking my own advice last week, I traveled to Reno to see first-hand the work of the Core Task Project, the initiative driving implementation of the standards in Washoe County, Nevada.

It was a refreshing and invigorating visit. Common Core is not without controversy anywhere. But Reno seems to have largely sidestepped some of the more heated battles. Washoe County’s implementation has become something of a national model—being one of four case studies highlighted in Fordham’s report Common Core in the Districts, published in February 2014.

Reno’s relative peace can be explained, I think, by several factors. First and foremost, under the leadership of curriculum and instruction specialist Aaron Grossman, implementation has focused on the right things—including building a coherent body of knowledge across and within grades (one of the broad “instructional shifts,” along with reading for evidence and a greater focus on complex and nonfiction text)—that are easy to rally around and hard to dismiss as unimportant.

But more importantly, Washoe County’s work simply gainsays many of the criticisms leveled at Common Core. Far from a top-down initiative, driven from afar by nationalizers, privatizers and moneyed interests, the Core Task Project is homegrown, teacher-led, and the product of a mid-sized and diverse public school system. Neither has implementation been a budget-buster—they’re finding free teaching materials online and doing the professional development in-house. Local autonomy on curriculum and instruction has not merely been honored, it’s been nearly fetishized.

From the start, Grossman and his colleagues have approached their work with deep humility and a clear-eyed understanding of the realities of teaching. “We’re not the experts,” Grossman tells teachers, “We’re going to put the experts in front of you.”

The focus on identifying classroom-ready materials means “we’re not asking teachers to do it themselves,” he notes. 

Participating schools are using a version of the Core Knowledge Language Arts program, developed for New York State and available for download on the EngageNY website. Other materials curated for teachers come from the Basal Alignment Project, textproject.org, and other online resources. Grossman and colleagues Torrey Palmer and Catherine Schmidt have done their homework, and it shows. Grossman’s nine-year-old son does a dead-bang impersonation of David Coleman—the product of Dad’s endless hours watching videos at home featuring the principal author of the ELA standards.

Those who see Common Core as a curricular monoculture, a boondoggle for publishers, or a violation of local control would do well to come to Reno. They’re doing it all without enriching an army of publishers or consultants—and with regional flair. Like children everywhere under Common Core, Reno kids will be expected to cite evidence in their reading and writing. But unlike anywhere else, they’ll be doing so by studying Nevada mining, conflict, and compromise among native tribes in Northern Nevada, and Nevada statehood and the state’s role in the Civil War—Common Core units developed by the Core Task Project. “We’re able to explain to the electorate that everything we’re doing is in-house, matched to our community values and to things we think are important,” Grossman observes.

Washoe County stands as a reminder that Common Core will succeed or fail not based on what happens in statehouse or talk radio debates, but in classrooms, often far away from power centers and the nattering of opinion leaders both for and against the standards. Indeed, what makes it easiest to be sanguine about Washoe County’s chances for success is that the face of Common Core in Reno is a teacher, not a politician. In conversations with community members, Grossman preaches patience—especially as students face their first round of Common Core tests at the end of the school year. I asked him if he was nervous about how Washoe kids will do when they sit for Common Core tests for the first time this school year. Grossman, a genial and soft-spoken man, says no. “If people say, ‘We knew this was going to happen, this is a benchmark year and our pledge is to move forward from here,’ people will be more apt to take that into account. If it’s just seen as another reminder of the failures of our system, or let’s punish teachers because of it…” He doesn’t finish the thought. He doesn’t need to. This doesn’t seem to be a topic of discussion in Reno.

Indeed, perhaps the greatest lesson of Washoe County is that any successful reform initiative must start with winning hearts and minds—especially of teachers, who exercise the ultimate veto power. If they’re not fully committed to changing their practice, change doesn’t happen. Even those committed, if they’re poorly prepared, can unintentionally subvert reform by adopting superficial aspects of reform but changing little else.

For all its success and attention, the Core Task Project works closely with only about one-third of Washoe County schools. Principals have enormous autonomy and are often focused elsewhere—on Next Generation Science Standards, writing, or STEM curriculum. Grossman is unfazed. “We promise good professional learning, materials that are well-vetted, and help to be successful in the classroom.”

The light touch is working. Washoe County’s implementation is no longer the well-kept secret it once was. In addition to the Fordham report, the Core Task Project has been written up in Education Week and elsewhere. Palmer has been recruited to work for TNTP, and Schmidt has just joined Student Achievement Partners, where both will continue their Common Core implementation work. “Four years ago, nobody knew who we were,” Grossman observes.

Many more should. 

photo credit: Jelle Drok via photopin cc

Over the last few years, there has been a growing awareness of the need to incorporate character development into school curricula, and various efforts to do so have received wide attention. Perhaps the best-known effort is the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, which has been implemented in close to 150 charter schools across the country.

KIPP is aimed at children and teenagers from low-income families. Its explicit goal is increasing college enrollment by combining an emphasis on factors proven to bolster academic success (high expectations, parental involvement, time spent on instruction) with a novel focus on developing seven character strengths—zest, grit, self-control, optimism, curiosity, gratitude, and social intelligence. These strengths are tracked on a “character growth card” and encouraged through classroom discussions and assignments that incorporate lessons about character into more conventional academic activities. Teachers also go out of their way to both model and praise displays of good character.

KIPP has a long record of impressive accomplishments that have garnered much media attention, including Paul Tough’s bestseller, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. Students attending KIPP schools have higher rates of high-school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion than students from similarly disadvantaged backgrounds who attend other types of schools. Numerous evaluations of KIPP schools have found that students show larger-than-expected gains on various measures of achievement.

However, because KIPP schools are charter schools, the students who attend them have parents who have chosen this option. Parents who go out of their way to enroll their children in academically rigorous programs are likely atypical. Most studies of KIPP schools therefore can’t rule out the possibility that their students’ success is due to selection bias rather than the program itself.

With this parental predisposition in mind, a recent evaluation of KIPP middle schools by an independent evaluator is particularly intriguing. This evaluation drew its comparison group from a sample of children whose families had entered, but didn’t win, a lottery to gain admission to the local KIPP school. Comparing children from this group with those who’d won the lottery controls for whatever unique factors may characterize families who choose to enroll their kids in KIPP—since both groups had tried to get their kids into KIPP.

The study assessed performance on standardized achievement tests as well as measures of various character strengths. Consistent with the prior studies, in this objective evaluation, KIPP students outperformed the comparison children on numerous measures of achievement, across a range of subject areas. KIPP students also spent more time on homework. The differences were not only statistically significant, but substantial. This is the stuff of headlines, and rightly so.

However, some of this study’s findings were not so widely broadcast. The KIPP children showed no advantage on any of the measures of character strengths. They weren’t more effortful or persistent. They didn’t have more favorable academic self-conceptions or stronger school engagement. They didn’t score higher than the comparison group in self-control. In fact, they were more likely to engage in “undesirable behavior,” including losing their temper, lying to and arguing with their parents, and giving teachers a hard time. They were more likely to get into trouble at school. Despite the program’s emphasis on character development, the KIPP students were no less likely to smoke, drink, get high, or break the law. Nor were their hopes for their educational futures any higher or their plans any more ambitious. A different study found that rates of college graduation among KIPP graduates, while three times as high as those of students from comparable disadvantaged backgrounds, were still disappointing: Nearly 90 percent of the KIPP students enrolled in college, but only a third graduated—less than half the proportion the program’s developers have hoped for. College-graduation rates have since improved a bit in several KIPP schools, according to KIPP’s founders, but they are still far behind KIPP’s expectations.

These findings don’t necessarily show that schools cannot play a role in strengthening self-regulation and other noncognitive skills. They may simply indicate that the approach taken by KIPP, while effective at boosting academic performance, doesn’t really have an impact on kids’ character. Informing kids about character traits in school will increase their knowledge of these subjects, but it won’t change their behavior.

I don’t mean to minimize the impressive impact that KIPP appears to have on academic success—and in all fairness, this is the developers’ primary objective. The KIPP schools have dramatically improved scholastic achievement in a demographic where any improvement in this area has historically been difficult to accomplish.

But developing teenagers’ self-regulation may require something other than parables, slogans, inspirational banners, and encouragement from compassionate teachers.

There are other approaches to the development of self-regulation that are likely to prove more effecting than those pursued by KIPP and other schools emphasizing character development, but these are unconventional, at least by current education standards. They include: mindfulness training, through exercises like meditation or disciplined physical exercise, such as yoga; aerobic exercise, which has been shown to strengthen brain function; and cognitive behavioral programs, such as those used to help children learn impulse control, a type of intervention that falls into the broader category of “social emotional learning” (SEL). There are some schools across the country that have incorporated one or more of these activities into their daily routines. Whether schools on a broader scale can be persuaded to introduce things like meditation, exercise, and SEL is not yet known.

Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D., is the Distinguished University Professor and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University. A version of this essay appears in his most recent book, Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence.

photo credit: www.audio-luci-store.it via photopin cc

Common Core just had its best week in recent memory. The Intelligence Squared U.S. CCSS debate showcased strong arguments in favor of the standards, including from our own Mike Petrilli. William J. Bennett, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of education, made a conservative case for the standards in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.  And an ECS report showed that, despite all the fuss, forty-plus states are moving ahead with implementation (and critics have barely made a dent).

Harold Levy, former chancellor of the New York City public schools and the brand-new executive director of Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed over the weekend lamenting school officials’ misuse—or non-use—of school and student data. For example, we know that high-performing, low-income students are less likely to attend college than their wealthier peers. And small numbers of truant pupils miss about a month of school each year even in schools with high overall attendance rates. These data are imminently actionable—we could provide opportunities for acceleration or gifted classes for high-potential poor kids, for example—but only if educators choose to use them.

A group of New York State charter school supporters is suing the state over what they describe as a chronic, unconstitutional funding gap between charters and traditional public schools. Plaintiffs say that charter students in Buffalo and Rochester receive between $6,600 and $9,800 less per year, per student. A similar lawsuit was filed in D.C. back in July. With funding gaps abounding elsewhere, charter schools in other states might need to follow suit.

CCSS myths, noncognitive skills, Dana Goldstein, and gifted ed.

Amber's Research Minute

Does Gifted Education Work? For Which Students?, by David Card and Laura Giuliano, National Bureau of Economic Research (September 2014).

On September 9th, the Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli participated in an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate on the Common Core, along with Carmel Martin, Carol Burris, and Rick Hess. These are his opening comments, as prepared for delivery. Or watch the video, embedded below, starting at minute 07:15.

Let me tell you a bit about the game plan that Carmel and I have sketched out.

First, I’m going to talk about the motion. What does it mean to “embrace the Common Core”?

Then I’m going to discuss the problems that the Common Core is designed to address—the problems with our education system and, frankly, with some of our previous education reform efforts.

Carmel will take up the potential of the Common Core to help narrow the achievement gaps in this country; the role that evidence and educators played in the development of the standards; and the issue of implementation—how it’s going and how we can help it go better.

Let’s be clear: we’re not going to argue that the Common Core standards are perfect. They aren’t. They weren’t handed down from Mt. Sinai.

We’re not going to argue that the Common Core is going to solve all of our educational problems. It won’t. No one reform can address all of the challenges we face.

Nor will we say that it’s going perfectly. It’s not. In a big country, with 50 million students and 100,000 schools, any reform is going to be a work in progress.

Still, by the end, I have no doubt that you in the audience here, and you at home, will vote to embrace the Common Core.

So what does that mean, “to embrace the Common Core”?

First, it means embracing the idea that there should be standards that guide our education system, and that these standards should be pegged to what comes next for our students—college or a good paying career. This is a fundamental departure from how we used to run our education system in America, from either having no standards—letting each school or district figure it out on their own, which often led to great inequities in expectations—or having standards that were set much too low.

Embracing the Common Core also means embracing the idea of moving to higher quality, more challenging assessments. We need to measure whether students and schools are meeting the standards laid out for them, but we also need tests that encourage students to write, to think critically, to express what they know in meaningful ways—not these terrible fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, low-level tests. Embracing the Common Core means embracing a new vision for assessment, one that is much closer to what we see with Advanced Placement exams or International Baccalaureate exams, like the ones Carol uses in her high school.

So why are these higher standards and stronger assessments needed? What’s all this effort about?

First let’s acknowledge that our education system could be performing—needs to be performing—at a much higher level than it is today. To be sure, there are some excellent schools out there. Carol runs one of them. But, unfortunately, they are the exception, not the rule. The rule in American education is not failure. The problem is mediocrity.

Every study and every comparison of American schools with those around the world comes to the same conclusion: Compared to other advanced nations, our schools are in the middle of the pack. And that’s not because of demographics—it’s not because we have so much child poverty or a lot of immigration. At every socioeconomic level, at every academic level, we are in the middle of the pack compared to our peers overseas. Our rich students. Our poor students. Our high-achieving kids. Our low-achieving kids. Middle of the pack. Mediocre. Across the board.

We’ve known this for a long time—for at least thirty years. And we’ve done a lot of work since then to reform and improve our schools. And we’ve made some great progress in some respects, for which our public schools deserve great credit. Our low-income, minority, and low-achieving students are reading and doing math at dramatically higher levels than they were two decades ago—two to three grade levels better, at least in fourth and eighth grades. And our high school graduation rates are up significantly.

And almost surely that progress came, in large part, because of the reforms introduced in the 1990s and 2000s to set standards, test students regularly, and hold schools accountable for the results. But as all of us know, this focus on testing and accountability has come with some serious, unfortunate consequences. Teaching to the test. Narrowing of the curriculum. Driving out the fun and joy from our schools. And for all of the progress, about five years ago, the gains seemed to hit a wall.

And there was another big perverse consequence: Because the standards were set so low, and because the tests were so easy, our system sent false signals to students, families, and educators that all was well, that kids were on track—when, in fact, many kids weren’t even at grade level, much less on a trajectory to be ready for college or a career.

So this is the problem the Common Core set out to address: A system that’s got all of this testing, that supposedly is built on standards, but because the standards are so low and the tests are so easy, it gives a false sense of security to students, parents, teachers, and everyone else, while encouraging poor teaching and learning. To embrace the Common Core is to embrace the idea that we need to fix that.

Rick and Carol don’t want you to embrace the Common Core. What do they want? No standards at all? The standards we had before the Common Core, which weren’t linked to student success in college and career and gave everyone a false impression that everything was fine? Rinky dink standardized tests? The complete chaos that is happening in states like Oklahoma that have decided to pull back from the Common Core? Is that what Rick and Carol are for?

The Common Core standards aren’t perfect. But they are pretty darn good. Perhaps most importantly, after four years of hard work from our educators nationwide, they have momentum. They are raising expectations in our schools and raising the quality of teaching and learning. I ask you to embrace the Common Core. I ask for you to vote yes for this motion.

Here’s a rare bit of good news from K–12 education: Every state—all fifty of ‘em plus the District of Columbia—have improved academically since the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation (USCCF) released its initial “Leaders & Laggards” report in 2007. But let’s not get giddy. For too many states, improvement is tantamount to winning the “most improved player” award in summer camp. It's great that Hawaii and D.C. have figured out which end of the bat to hold and where to stand in the outfield. But put them in right field and hope no one hits to them. Massachusetts is still batting cleanup. Minnesota and New Hampshire make a nice double-play combination, but let's not kid ourselves: This team is nowhere near ready for international competition. “Leaders & Laggards” is all about competition. The report takes an unapologetically business-oriented view of the nation’s K–12 performance, evaluating each state on eleven criteria, including international competitiveness, workforce readiness, technology, and return on investment. (Utah and Colorado get the most bang for their education buck; D.C., Louisiana, and West Virginia the least.) Some of the data is original and clever, such as which states have the most STEM-ready workforce. One in six Massachusetts students passed a science or math AP exam; only one in eighty Mississippi students managed to do so. You might not be surprised to see states like Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota post top marks for academic achievement among low-income and minority students; what’s more impressive is that polyglot Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Florida are right alongside them. Much of the report repackages data that’s available elsewhere—the teacher quality section, for example, reprises NCTQ’s dispiriting data—but each category gets a breezy write-up and a clearly coded map. The individual state report cards are a model of clarity. In all, it’s as accessible (and sobering) as education data get.

SOURCE: “Leaders & Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on K–12 Educational Effectiveness,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation (September 2014).

An important, first-of-its kind Brookings Institution study asks whether school superintendents improve outcomes for students. The answer, according to authors, is no. They find that student achievement in particular districts doesn’t improve as superintendents stay longer, nor is there a bump when districts hire new ones. Supes account for a paltry 0.3 percent of the differences in student achievement among fourth and fifth graders in North Carolina (as compared to student demographics, which account for 38.8 percent, and teachers and schools, which account for 4 and 3 percent, respectively). On first read, these findings seem bleak. But the authors make two assumptions in their analyses, one out of necessity and one out of convention. First, because they rely on state administrative data and its limited variables, years-of-service in a single district is their primary observable superintendent characteristic. The assumption is that the longer one stays, the greater impact he or she should have. Yet, despite research in other fields suggesting that manager longevity is a predictor of organizational success, it is far from the only one. Effective district leadership requires knowledge of education policy and practice, communication and relationship-building skills, leadership capability, strategic thinking, conflict mediation, and innumerable other important-yet-unmeasurable characteristics. Second, adhering to conventional wisdom, the authors assume that a superintendent’s primary role is to improve student achievement as measured by standardized test scores—and that they’re capable of doing so directly within the district’s current structure. This isn’t necessarily true. Superintendents’ impacts are often secondary. For example, they hire teachers and principals, who then affect student achievement. Or their impact may be hamstrung by restrictive collective bargaining agreements or state laws—which effectively reduce school chiefs to implementers of local, state, and federal policies. In other words, although this study found that superintendent longevity and turnover have no direct impact on student achievement, leaders might not be truly irrelevant; it may be that these are the wrong measures—or superintendents’ hands could simply be tied. So, although the findings are compelling, reformers and advocates should be wary of ignoring superintendents all together.

SOURCE: Matthew M. Chingos, Grover J. Whitehurst, and Katharine M. Lindquist, “School Superintendents: Vital or Irrelevant?,” The Brookings Institution (September 2014).

In The Teacher Wars, reporter Dana Goldstein offers a stirring account of the 175-year history of the public school teaching profession. The book, which ought to be required reading for education reformers and status-quo defenders alike, notes some obvious but oft-overlooked realities. Namely, we need a lot of teachers, and men and women of ordinary abilities will have to fill these jobs. Goldstein points out that even if every graduate of Ivy League institutions went into teaching, there would still be a significant staffing shortfall. Most striking are the familiar themes that recur throughout the history of teaching. (Indeed the conversations in 2014 aren’t that different from the ones in 1924.) First, the demands and goals placed on teachers and education have always been nearly impossible to meet—such as the mandates to integrate races or to end poverty. Second, teacher prep has always been mediocre. Third, political and social tensions in the rest of the country, not surprisingly, infiltrate the teaching profession. Goldstein calls teaching “the most controversial profession in America.” And she endorses both misguided and useful reforms: Dramatically reduce the stakes attached to standardized tests (misguided) and end outdated union protections (useful). In all, Goldstein, with a self-described left-leaning bias, concludes that a bottom-up approach is right for education reform.

SOURCE: Dana Goldstein, The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession. New York: Doubleday, 2014.

In many school districts, classroom observations make up as much as 75 percent of teachers’ evaluation scores, according to a new study published in Education Next. And these scores predict a teacher’s ability to raise student test scores the following year, as measured by value-added models. With that in mind, analysts did a deep dive into the observation practices of four school districts. They found that score stability and the quality of the information gathered improved as the number of individual observations increased, and that evaluations by trained, independent, outside evaluators (instead of principals) were more predictive of the following year’s value-added gains. The report recommends that districts observe teachers at least two or three times annually, using an outsider at least once. Moreover, the study draws attention to the latent bias against teachers with lower-achieving students or who teach in struggling schools. Although value-added models are careful to control for students’ backgrounds and achievement levels, there’s often no such adjustment for classroom observations. (Simply put, it can be much harder to teach a great lesson when the kids are below grade level or unruly.) Unchecked, this can push teachers to avoid these roles, widening the achievement gap. The authors suggest that states conduct statistical analyses to control for these variables. If districts hope to retain and improve their teaching force, making the most of their teacher observations is a good place to start.

SOURCE: Grover J. Whitehurst, Matthew M. Chingos, and Katharine M. Lindquist, “Getting Classroom Observations Right,” Education Next (Winter 2015).