The Education Gadfly Weekly

In the pre-Common Core era, we had a big problem. Most state tests measured minimal competency in reading and math. But we failed to communicate that to parents, so they reasonably thought a passing grade meant their child was pretty much where they needed to be. Little did they know that their kid could earn a mark of “proficiency” and be reading or doing math at the twentieth or thirtieth percentile nationally. Frankly, we lied to the parents of too many children who were well below average and not at all on a trajectory for success in college or a well-paying career.

Playing games with proficiency cut scores provided much of the impetus behind Common Core. States raised standards and started building tests pitched at a much higher level. Most states are giving those tests for the first time right now, though New York and Kentucky made the transition two years ago. As of 2013, New York’s tests were the toughest in the country, according to a new analysis by Paul Peterson and Matthew Ackerman in Education Next, matching—if not exceeding—the performance standards of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.  

That may solve the “proficiency illusion” issue. But now we have a new problem. Some education reformers and media outlets are already using the results of the new, tougher tests to brand schools as “failing” if most of their students don’t meet the higher standards. Note, for instance, the Daily News’s special report, “Fight for their Future,” which leads with the provocative headline “New York City is rife with underperforming schools, including nearly two-thirds of students missing state standards.” This line of attack closely resembles the talking points of Eva Moskowitz and Jeremiah Kittredge of Families for Excellent Schools, who both promote the notion that in New York, “800,000 kids can’t read or do math at grade level” and “143,000 kids are trapped in persistently failing schools.”

These statements are out of bounds, and reformers should say so. They validate the concerns some educators voiced all along: that we would use the results of the tougher tests to unfairly label more schools as failures.

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Let me be clear: I don’t mind calling schools out as “persistently failing.” Such schools exist, and they should be subject to aggressive interventions, including closure. And I’d be thrilled if they were replaced by high-performing charters like Eva’s Success Academies. But as I’ve argued ad nauseam (and the Shanker Institute’s Matthew Di Carlo has patiently and persuasively explained for years), evaluating schools based on proficiency rates alone is bad math. (Moskowitz and Kittredge define a “persistently failing school” as one in which 10 percent or fewer of the students are proficient in reading and math—or, in the case of high schools, where the same percentage or lower is testing at college-ready levels.)

That’s because passing rates have as much to do with the performance level of students when they enter the school as the amount of learning that happens once they are there. Particularly in a high-standards scenario, it’s quite possible for schools to help students make lots of growth and still not attain “proficiency.” Looking only at annual passing rates, and not where students start, is terrible practice. This is especially true for middle schools and high schools, where students can enter four years or more behind. There’s a non-trivial risk of branding as failures some schools that, despite low scores, are actually doing right by kids.

All Families for Excellent Schools needs to do is look for low-proficiency, high-growth schools. There probably aren’t that many of them. But subtracting these from the “failing schools” equation would go a long way toward demonstrating to educators that we aren’t playing a game of gotcha.

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And what about the Daily News’s claim that “nearly two-thirds of students” are “missing state standards”? That’s true, but it’s also to be expected. New York set its cut score to align with its definition of “college and career readiness.” The result of this process was a cut score that defined proficiency at about the seventieth percentile. That might sound high, but it makes sense because we know from NAEP, ACT, SAT, and college remediation rates that only about 30 percent of high school graduates are truly college-ready—defined as being able to arrive on campus and succeed in credit-bearing courses from day one. (We have less information about how many are career-ready, though if we’re talking about careers that require any kind of technical skills or advanced training, it’s probably in the same range.) Ergo, most kids below the seventieth percentile in math or reading are probably not on track for college or a sustainable, well-paying career.

The hope is that, over time, more students will reach the standards as schools raise expectations and improve teaching and learning. (In other words, we’ll shift the bell curve to the right.) And as a result, more students will be college- and career-ready upon graduation from high school. But that’s not going to happen overnight.

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The move to higher standards means that we need to recalibrate our rhetoric and, more importantly, our approach to school accountability. In the low-standards days, it was perfectly legitimate to call out schools that couldn’t get all or most of their students to minimal levels of literacy and numeracy. It simply doesn’t work to similarly defame schools that don’t get all of their students “on track for college and career.” It’s a much higher bar and a much longer road.

It’s utopian to think that most American children will master the Common Core standards immediately. It’s defeatist to think that schools can’t do anything to help their students make progress toward that lofty objective. And it’s disingenuous to take either of these extreme positions in this debate.

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in a slightly different form at Tim Shanahan's blog, Shanahan on Literacy.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're quickly sinking into the quicksand of yet another presidential campaign. I'm writing to help with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) issue. I don't want any of you tripped up by a feeble or foolish argument, and there are lots of ways of doing that. I'm sure you all know not to rely on your thirteen-year-old kids for policy advice—and not to sigh audibly and roll your eyes, since it will look like you sent your thirteen-year-old to debate in your place. If you can't stare down a callow opponent successfully, how will you ever convince voters that you can handle Putin or ISIS?

I won't be so bold as to suggest what your position should be on Common Core, but I do have advice as to which arguments to avoid.  

1. Previous educational standards were better.

Don't make this claim. It can only embarrass you (it's as bad as not being able to spell "potato"). Past standards were so low, they were the educational equivalent of everyone getting a tee-ball trophy. Many U.S. students met those standards and still needed basic reading, writing, and math instruction in the workplace or university—expensive places to obtain an elementary or secondary education. Anyone who argues against the CCSS should be able to explain why they want lower educational standards or else embrace a viable alternative. (Note to campaign managers: Parents who are paying for remedial college classes or employers who are struggling to hire high school graduates with basic skills may become particularly testy over this argument). 

2. Teachers didn’t write them.

Yeah, and I’ve long been opposed to the Declaration of Independence because it was written by a slaveholder and the Gettysburg Address because its author was in the pocket of big business before assuming the presidency. This argument elevates the ad hominem over the ad verbum. All that should matter is whether the standards are sound; if they are, a House committee could have written them and they’d be a good idea. And if they are not sound, how many years of teaching experience would the authors require for you to campaign on them? Many teachers worked on these standards, but who cares? The standards could still be useful even if that weren’t the case.

3. They promote the theories of evolution and global warming.

Yikes. This is an interesting argument because everyone hates being tricked into supporting what they morally oppose. Unfortunately, it doesn't hold any water: The Common Core only deals with reading, writing, and math—and not with science, history, or any other school content or social issue. You may get away with this one, but there is always the risk that someone in the audience has actually read the standards.

4. The Common Core isn’t research-based.

That sounds like a good argument too—pin the standards on the science deniers. But what if someone wonders what a research-based goal would look like? I know I want my marriage to be happy, my kids to be productive, and my country to be secure. I don’t know why I’d need a study to tell me that I wanted those things. In medicine, they use research to figure out the best treatments—not whether we want everyone to be healthy. Standards aren't teaching methods; they aren’t approaches to instruction. When the critics say that some states should have tried these out first to find out if they're any good, it's like saying that some states should aim for 4 percent unemployment and others for 8 percent—so that we can know whether we want people to find jobs.

5. They require too much testing.

Common Core requires no more (or less) testing than any other educational standards. Since the early 1990s, federal law has required states to adopt their own educational goals and evaluate student progress against them. However, there’s nothing special about Common Core in that regard. If CCSS disappeared, states would still have standards, and they’d still have to monitor student progress—just as they have for the past twenty years. If you do choose to make this argument despite the facts, be careful in Alaska, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. None of them have Common Core, but they all have educational standards and are testing their students against those standards.

6. They are the reason for all of the test prep.

This is a great argument, and yet I doubt whether many of you have the thespian skills to pull it off. Test prep, though unsavory, has nothing to do with Common Core. Educators have long devoted unconscionable amounts of time and resources to test prep, with barely a peep from any of you. Now, getting all worked up about kids being engaged in test prep instead of education will require all the faux sincerity of Captain Renault (“Gambling in Casablanca? I’m shocked!”). What would happen to test prep if there were no Common Core? Look to Texas or Virginia for your answer, rather than to the airy pronouncements of your supposedly shocked and offended advisors.

7. Publishers are making money from them.

Publishers do make money from these standards. And if history is a guide, when we move on to the next big thing in education, they’ll make money off that, too. Government policies do help companies make money. But if that's an issue, then we ought to shut down the Defense Department, Medicare, Social Security, the oil depletion allowance, and pretty much everything else that government does—since all those nasty programs encourage the buying of goods and services from American companies. (Note to Jeb Bush: Perhaps your opponents' arguments against Common Core are really just a ruse to get schools to change their curricula more quickly and make even more money for the publishers.)

8. The U.S. Constitution bans national curricula.

This one is a particularly tempting argument, especially if you are a lawyer. The Constitution does relegate authority for education to the states, after all. The problem is that the federal government has always incented states in the area of education. Even a conservative Supreme Court has recently indicated that it will not even hear cases aimed at determining whether states must comply with federal law when they accept federal funding; they see it as settled law. Going before this Supreme Court to argue that Hamilton, Madison, and Jay knew nothing about the Constitution would likely be a tough slog (Justices Roberts and Alito can be sticklers about that kind of thing). The federal government has the right to require funded states to have standards—whatever standards they may choose to adopt—and there is nothing in Common Core that curtails that right in any way. You'll end up in the weeds. Avoid this one.

9. Common Core violates states’ rights.

This would be kind of a funny argument coming from people who are running not for governor, but for president. "If elected, I’ll not allow states to adopt Common Core." That makes it sound like under your presidency, educational goals would be under your authority. That won't be palatable even from such staunch conservatives as a President Cruz or a President Paul. The states, being sovereign entities, have the authority to coordinate with each other as much as they choose. This is true in transportation, criminal justice, economics, natural resources, etc. This argument snatches that authority from the states, and doing so in the name of states’ rights would be too tricky a game by half. Where is George Orwell when we need him?

10. These are President Obama’s standards.

Let's face it: It's always a good idea to run against an incumbent whose popularity is on the decline. And getting voters to believe that these standards represent “Obamacore” should be easy. When they were being written, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan promised funding to develop new tests for the new standards (a “shovel-ready project,” in the parlance of the times), and when running for president, Senator Obama campaigned on the idea that we needed higher standards and a lot more testing. Making voters believe that the Common Core belongs to the administration should be easy; if you can create enough of a haze of suspicion, voters might never figure out that these standards were written with no federal funding and no federal involvement. Of course, this will be an easier argument for some than for others. (Note to Bobby Jindal: You seem sincere in making this argument, but you'll probably need to explain why President Obama was able to operate you like a sock puppet on this issue for three years without you ever being aware of where his hand was. I would avoid using the term “brainwashing”—see George Romney, 1968. Perhaps you could get away with claiming that President Obama just gave yours a light rinse.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all luck and hope this advice is useful to each of you. 

Tim Shanahan is a distinguished professor emeritus of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

• Critics of charter schools, often in the face of thorough and convincing evidence of the benefits of school choice, too often fall back on an unsourced allegation. If charters teach rings around their district counterparts, they claim, it’s only because they scheme to weed out needy and underperforming students. It’s become such a common trope that New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña blithely passed it along just last fall. But a new Manhattan Institute study has found that low-performing New York City students, who generally facing a higher risk of leaving their school than other kids, are no more likely to depart from a charter than a traditional public school. What’s more, special needs students and English-language learners are actually more likely to stay enrolled at a charter. Unfortunately, this new data is unlikely to make an impression on Fariña because…well, it’s data.
• We at Fordham find ourselves defending Common Core because we believe that it’s good for kids all around the country to be held to high standards. But it’s one thing for education reformers to line up in support of a policy; it’s quite another for career professionals to give it the same endorsement. A newly released report from Teach Plus strongly suggests that many teachers feel as favorably about Common Core-aligned assessments as we do. Nearly 80 percent of participants said they considered the PARCC tests to be of higher quality than the state tests that preceded them. They also indicated that the tests were closely aligned to what they were actually teaching in classrooms. Not every claim has to come from the horse’s mouth to be taken seriously—but it’s sure nice when they do.
• Clashes between governors and state education bureaucracies are nothing new. In fact, most of the air around that narrative has recently been taken up by Indiana Governor Mike Pence’s grappling with an elected superintendent. But Pence’s neighbor, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, has now become the latest executive to attempt a dramatic schools shakeup, making a move to arrogate the state’s School Reform and Redesign Office. The department administers Michigan’s troubled Education Achievement Authority, a Frankenstein district cobbled together from fifteen of Detroit’s worst-performing schools (for more background, check out Fordham’s review of its history and major players from last fall). The EAA could almost certainly use better oversight; we’ll see if Snyder’s power play actually helps provide it.
• You’re probably bored to tears by now with the same old stories about the intersection between education reform and indie music. Still, you should take a moment and look through NPR’s great dispatch from the South By Southwest Edu Conference. The event gathered together a panoply of fresh voices for sessions on technology, higher education, and student privacy. More importantly, it gave education reformers a rare opportunity to rub elbows with rock stars (other than you, Checker).

This new study by the Center for American Progress (CAP) examines the ESEA comparability requirement, which mandates that school districts provide “comparable” educational services in both high- and low-poverty schools as a condition of receiving Title I dollars. CAP’s concern is that, although this requirement is intended to level the playing field for schools, it actually allows districts to use teacher-to-student ratios or average teacher salaries as a proxy for comparable services, instead of using actual teacher salary expenditures. And because poor schools typically have newer teachers who tend to struggle their first few years and cost less to employ, these schools are getting both less qualified teachers and less money than more advantaged ones.

The analysts examine Office of Civil Rights district spending data for the 2011–12 school year from roughly ninety-five thousand public schools. Adjusting for cost-of-living differences across districts, they compare how districts fund schools that are eligible to receive federal Title I dollars with other schools in their grade span and find “vast disparities” in the allocation of state and local dollars.

Here are the three key findings: one, due to the “loophole” in federal law, more than 4.5 million low-income students attend inequitably funded Title I schools; two, those schools receive around $1,200 less per student than comparison schools in their districts; and three, if the federal loophole were closed, high-poverty schools would receive around $8.5 billion in additional funds each year.

There is, however, a large and insurmountable problem: The data are likely untrustworthy. OCR data are self-reported by districts and aren’t systematically verified. CAP itself admits in a footnote that “it is probable that districts may have filled out these forms using slightly different analytic approaches,” and adds that it was not able to “cross-reference the Civil Rights Data Collection with other school finance datasets.” This means that districts could be all over the map in how they report these data, especially because we know that they tend to budget not using real dollars, but by allocating people and services. A better method would be to use audited expenditures at the school level, use actual rather than average salaries, and file FOIA requests for each employee's title and salary if necessary. This is what we at Fordham did for our Metro D.C. School Spending Explorer, which found most districts (at least in the Washington, D.C. area) to be surprisingly equitable—and even progressive—in their spending.

All of that to say that, yes, in order to sort this out, we need reliable accounting of all expenditures by school level for sundry reasons—not only for comparability purposes. But it is highly doubtful that that’s what we’re getting from OCR.

SOURCE: Robert Hanna, Max Marchitello, and Catherine Brown, “Comparable but Unequal: School Funding Disparities,” Center for American Progress (March 2015).

Teach For America, its coffers fattened with $50 million in federal i3 scale-up grant money, embarked upon a major expansion effort in 2010. It aimed to place 13,500 first- and second-year teachers in fifty-two regions across the country by the 2014–2015 school year—an ambitious 80 percent expansion of its teaching corps in just four years. As part of the deal, TFA contracted with Mathematica Policy Research to evaluate the expansion.

A handful of previous studies have found that TFA teachers have been more effective than conventionally trained and hired teachers in math and about the same in reading. The big question was whether putting its growth on steroids would compromise TFA’s recruitment and selection standards or overall effectiveness.

Mathematica found little reason to be concerned about TFA losing a step. The elementary school teachers recruited in the first and second years of the i3 scale-up were “as effective as other teachers in the same high-poverty schools in teaching both reading and math.” Corps members in lower elementary grades “had a positive, statistically significant effect on student reading achievement,” but no measurable impacts for other subgroups of TFA teachers were found. Of interest (mostly to TFA itself), the study found “some evidence that corps members’ satisfaction with the program declined”—perhaps a hint of growing pains.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Teach For America remains the closest thing education reform has to a household brand. Matt DiCarlo of the Shanker Institute summarized reaction to the findings well, calling it “one of those half disturbing, half amusing instances in which the results seemed to confirm the pre-existing beliefs of the beholder.” Just so. If you’re one of TFA’s legion of detractors—who already accuse the organization of being full of smartypantses with fancy degrees from prestigious colleges and a few weeks of training—you can say that the TFAers offered no improvement over comparison teachers with an average of fourteen years experience. If you’re a fan of TFA, your response is to ask where the value lies in education school, traditional certification, and all that experience if it can be matched by smartypants TFAers with fancy degrees from prestigious colleges and a few weeks of training. Another possibility, beyond the scope of Mathematica’s work and too depressing to consider, is that the outcomes in high-poverty schools are so poor that it doesn’t take that much to get up to speed and produce the same sad, desultory results.

Mathematica’s researchers came neither to bury nor praise TFA. The study "provides a snapshot of TFA’s effectiveness at the elementary school level in the second year of the i3 scale- up,” they conclude. TFA’s effectiveness “could either increase or decrease as the program expands further and adapts to its new, larger scale.” Opinions about the program, meanwhile, are unlikely to change.

SOURCE: Melissa A. Clark et al., “Impacts of the Teach For America Investing in Innovation Scale-Up,” Mathematica Policy Research (March 2015).

This clever volume offers a collection of essays about how to improve teacher education. Each of the authors write about the findings of the Choosing to Teach longitudinal study, which involved thirty randomly chosen teachers, ten each from three non-traditional teacher-prep programs: the Urban Teacher Education Program (UTEP) at the University of Chicago, the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) at the University of Notre Dame, and the (Jewish) Day School Leadership through Teaching (DeLeT) program at Brandeis University. Following enrollees from the time they entered their respective programs through four years in the classroom, it focuses on how teacher prep programs tailored to participants’ backgrounds and aspirations can improve classroom practices and keep teachers in the classroom longer. For example, teaching in an inner-city Catholic school has a different set of challenges than teaching at an affluent suburban school, and a given teacher’s interests and effectiveness will differ in each.

With this in mind, all three programs provide immersive and contextualized learning opportunities through what the authors call “nested contexts of teaching.” Training looks beyond the classroom to provide a more comprehensive view of the role future teachers will play. ACE, for example, focuses not just on the classroom, but on the larger school, its community, and the Catholic Church. This multi-layered approach ostensibly provides teachers with tools unique to their local environments. That, in turn, “increased their sense of agency as teachers and reinforced the rightness of their career choice.” By the end of their first year of teaching, twenty-two of the thirty participants (nine from UTEP, nine from DeLeT, and four from ACE) reported that they intended to teach for five or more years, despite unsupportive school conditions in some cases.

Too many preparation programs follow a one-size-fits-all model. Inspiring Teaching offers an alternative paradigm—teacher education that prepares educators to serve particular groups of students or specific kinds of schools. Without them, “we risk losing the gifts of bright, socially committed teachers from teaching in areas of great need or from teaching completely.”

SOURCE: Inspiring Teaching: Preparing Teachers to Succeed in Mission-Driven Schools, ed. Sharon Feiman-Nemser, Eran Tamir, and Karen Hammerness (Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2014).