The Education Gadfly Weekly

What’s taught to American children is often controversial nowadays, and our schools will forever be buffeted by the cultural waves that roil our universities. But in that storm, the College Board deserves a cheer for trying to stabilize the vessel known as Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH).

This particular tempest blew up when a new “framework” for high school instructors who teach the subject turned out to be biased in its treatment of the nation’s past.

History has been part of the AP program since the mid-1950s. Among the thirty-eight subjects now spanned by that program, it’s the second-most-popular with high school pupils seeking the possibility of college credit.

The end-of-course APUSH exam was always plenty rigorous, lasting three hours and scored during the summer by veteran instructors assembled by the College Board. The problem was that those actually teaching the course to tens of thousands of kids had no useful guidance to prepare students for it. They could consult a vague “topic outline” and look at old exams, but teachers complained that racing through so vast a subject in a single year, combined with the dearth of primary and secondary sources that surfaced on the tests themselves, led to neglect of the nation’s founding documents. More generally, it necessitated the sacrifice of deep student understanding in favor of scads of near-random facts.

The College Board set out around 2005 to improve matters by revamping the exam and developing an APUSH framework that clarified what content might appear on the test. The framework would require many more questions to focus on analysis of primary sources, and would also emphasize thought-provoking essays over multiple-choice items.

When the redesign first surfaced, teachers generally cheered its delineation of historical periods, outline of specific concepts and learning objectives, enumeration of key themes, and focus on analytic thinking and close reading of key documents.

As others scrutinized the new course framework, however, its acute case of left-wing bias stood out, particularly in such key realms as national identity (missing), the contributions of capitalism (mostly pernicious), the nature of intergroup relations (fraught, to put it mildly), and the overall value of the American experiment. A seventeen-year-old student dutifully learning her country’s history according to this framework would likely end up viewing the United States as a place of conflict and inequality, with minimal understanding of the dreams it has fulfilled, the problems it has striven to solve, the world catastrophes it has averted, and the example it has set. Why, after all, do so many people still yearn to come here?

How had this happened? Recall that the AP mission is to certify high school students who do well on its exams as having learned the equivalent of an introductory college class. To frame those exams and the courses that prep kids for them, the College Board appoints committees of professors from the relevant discipline, as well as some high school teachers (most of whom had studied with such professors).

What went wrong here—and could yet go wrong in other AP subjects as they get updated—is that by the time a committee was formed to update APUSH, the academy had lurched leftward. Aand in no field did it lurch further than in history. Professors commonly teach intro courses today that focus on race, class, gender, and oppression, and many of them view the country’s past through the lens of what’s now politically correct and academically fashionable. Unsurprisingly, the 2012 APUSH framework channeled that view and incorporated its biases—and likely did so without its authors even noticing. Fish, after all, don’t notice the water they’re swimming in.

College courses, however, are optional. High school is a different matter. At least forty-four states require students to pass a U.S. history course before graduating, and those taking the AP version are unlikely to have taken any other (at least not since middle school). So what’s in the APUSH framework is as much about shaping future citizens as about garnering college credit.

When David Coleman took the helm of the College Board in 2012, the framework was done. He and his team focused elsewhere and were caught by surprise when the outcry over bias arose, initially from non-professors who take seriously what future Americans are taught in school. The backlash led a number of distinguished historians to read the framework closely—and led the Board’s new leaders to do the same.

Pretty much everyone who studied it came to the same conclusion: The framework was biased. Key figures were omitted. Industrialization was mostly evil. Westward expansion was hegemonic. Almost every imaginable group had been oppressed and abused (ditto the environment). Ronald Reagan was “bellicose.” And identity politics had displaced American identity.

The problem was real and the outcry loud and intense. The College Board had little choice but to respond. Led by AP chief Trevor Packer, they encouraged further public comment, convened mostly new committees, and enlisted veteran history teachers and serious scholars to pore over the framework and suggest ways to root out the biases without introducing new ones.

Last week, the revamp was unveiled. To my eye and those of many who reviewed it in advance, the bias appears to be gone. America again has a national identity. The failings and blemishes of our past are still there, as they should be, but they’re no longer the main story. Teenagers competently taught by teachers versed in the revised framework will be a lot closer to readiness for responsible citizenship.

What they may not be ready for is what awaits them in college! Indeed, they might be wise to avoid the history department when they get there. (Maybe it’s just as well that few colleges still require their students to study history while on campus.)

Obviously, the College Board should not have allowed this problem to arise in the first place. It should have better supervised its own process and insisted on a balanced product. But its leaders deserve credit for addressing the problem, and they’ve mostly solved it. How many outfits today—especially those associated with the academy—have the guts to acknowledge error, organize to set matters right, and actually produce an acceptable repair job? 

Some arguments in education are endlessly recycled. Battles over homework, the best ways to teach math, school discipline, and other hot-button issues wax and wane, but they never go away or get resolved. One of these hardy perennials is in full flower again: the myth of the overstressed child.

The New York Times's normally sober columnist Frank Bruni last week pronounced himself filled with sadness over the plight of "today's exhausted superkids" and their childhoods, which he described as "bereft of spontaneity, stripped of real play and haunted by the 'pressure of perfection.'" He lauded the arrival of a shelf of new and recent books—an "urgently needed body of literature," in Bruni's words—collectively arguing that "enough is enough."

There's already a fairly rich body of literature on the subject, and it paints a very different picture. In 2006, a trio of researchers—Joseph L. Mahoney, Angel L. Harris, and Jacquelynne S. Eccles—published an extensive study based on a nationally representative longitudinal database of five thousand families and their children. The researchers concluded there was "very limited empirical support for the over-scheduling hypothesis." In fact, the opposite seemed to be true: Participation in organized extracurricular activities is closely related (even when controlled for socioeconomic status) to a broad range of positive outcomes, including children's physical safety and psychological well-being, supportive relationships with peers and adults, higher self-esteem, reduced alcohol and drug use, and higher high school graduation rates.

If American childhood has become a hothouse of overscheduling and stress, it's not showing up in the data. Mahoney and his colleagues calculated just how much time kids spend at sports competitions and practices, faith-based activities, volunteer work, afterschool programs, and other obligations. The average was about five hours per week. Many teens—about 40 percent—spent no time at all in organized activities during the school week.

Where are all the exhausted superkids? A mere 6 percent of U.S. teens participate in twenty hours or more of organized activities in a week, and even those who overdo it end up better off than the completely disengaged. “At a national level, over-scheduling in organized activities seems to be overstated," says Mahoney, a professor of psychology at Elizabethtown College. "Relatively few youth participate excessively in organized activities and even their adjustment is reliably more positive across broad array of outcomes, from childhood to young adulthood, than youth who are uninvolved," he observes. When they revisited the data in 2012, Mahoney and his colleagues found the benefits of participation in organized activities had persisted into young adulthood "in terms of lower psychological distress, and higher educational attainment and civic engagement."

Academically, a similar tale seems to be true: Privileged outliers drive the narrative. In his column, Bruni decried our "insanely programmed, status-obsessed and sometimes spirit-sapping race. Take one more Advanced Placement class. Add another extracurricular. Apply to all eight Ivies."

Once again, look at the available data and a different picture emerges. One more AP class? Two-thirds of American high school graduates take exactly none. Now factor in the 19 percent of Americans who don't even graduate. For diligent and ambitious college-bound students, five AP courses over a high school career is a rigorous course load, but not an excessive one. From 2011 to 2014, despite enormous growth in the program, fewer than 8 percent of high school students took more than five AP classes before graduation. Raise that to seven or more APs in high school—presumably the sweet spot of superkid status—and the number drops to less than 5 percent of the three million 2014 high school graduates. Meanwhile the College Board estimates there are at least twice as many, some 300,000 academically prepared students, who either did not take an AP course they could have or attended a school that did not offer an AP course in that subject.

In sum, there is yawning gap between the media meme of the overstressed American teen and the reality. To his credit, Bruni acknowledges that overscheduling may indeed be a problem among "an ambitious, privileged subset of Americans." The mischief inevitably comes when the concerns of the worried well-off influence parenting and educational practice for the less well-off. Most children, particularly those from low-income families, are non-participants in the academic and extracurricular arms race.

I have no doubt that for some families, the pressure on kids to achieve and perform are a legitimate source of anxiety. But the far greater concern is almost certainly the undertaxed American child who lacks access to rigorous academic coursework, the incentive and opportunities to participate in organized activities, or both. It would be a shame if the concerns of the privileged few—however valid—became the new conventional wisdom. The data speak clearly: Most kids need more enrichment and challenge, not less.

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared in a slightly different form at U.S. News & World Report.

• You know how the old ditty goes: Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Chris Christie gotta churlishly analogize all political conflict to a bar fight. In an interview this week, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked the New Jersey governor which political adversary he’d most like to “punch in the face”; without reframing the question, he launched into one of his trademark diatribes against teachers’ unions. Everyone knows that Christie’s a combative politician who has struggled mightily to get his state’s public employee pension system under control. And Fordham yields to no one in our antipathy for union excess and overreach. But viable leaders can’t allow themselves to be baited into silly threats against political constituencies that aren’t going away. Teachers’ unions are to be curbed, cajoled, prodded, persuaded, and challenged. Not cold-cocked.
• We’re not sure if it has anything to do with those infamous cooling towers, but something strange must be behind a wave of uncomfortable honesty overtaking New York City. First, a recent graduate of Queens’s William Cullen Bryant High School wrote a letter to the New York Post claiming that she hadn’t actually earned the credits counting toward her diploma. The eighteen-year-old skipped class, neglected her homework, and missed a final exam, but somehow ended up graduating anyway. Her teacher later claimed that she’d passed the student due to the “tremendous amount of pressure” to boost graduation rates, believing that it was in “the school’s best interest” to make a mockery of academic standards. The sudden outbreak of candor is startling, and it looks like this incident isn’t the only trouble brewing at Bryant High. One thing’s clear: The school’s namesake, one of America’s great learned men and a former Post editor himself, isn’t resting too peacefully these days.
• The Progressive Policy Institute’s Diane Carew has a terrific take on the skyrocketing cost of higher education. Citing new research on the plight of frustrated job-seekers with some or no college, she deftly counters the push among Democratic presidential candidates for “debt-free college,” achieved either through total debt forgiveness or tuition regulation. As Carew puts it, “we need better workforce preparedness options for those without a college degree, not simply debt-free college.” Fordham wholeheartedly agrees. That’s why we’ve stumped for options like career and technical education, workplace apprenticeships, and alternative industry credentials, all of which can help kids make their way to the middle class without taking on coursework they don’t want and debt they can’t handle. PPI has been issuing the same call recently, and we’re always happy to find an ally in the fight for social mobility.

For two decades, The New Teacher Project, now known simply as TNTP, has been providing excellent teachers to the students who need them most. Its work has ranged from partnering with school districts to supporting teacher-evaluation policies. With new CEO Daniel Weisberg now at the helm, what is the future of TNTP? What role will teacher evaluations play in education reform in the coming years?

A new study by Bellwether Education Partners examines the changes to teacher pension systems over the last thirty years. The report uses an historical data set from the Wisconsin Retirement Research Committee (RRC) and the state legislature that includes data from public employee pension plans in eighty-seven retirement systems across all fifty states. The data span from 1982 to 2012 and are based on annual reports, employee handbooks, statutes, and actuarial reports. Analysts examine defined benefit plans only—and, to facilitate comparisons, only the plans offered to hypothetical newly hired, twenty-five-year-old teachers who remain in those plans in each state. Analysts note several trends that have developed over the last thirty years, including:

1. The median state offers a much lower vesting period compared to several decades ago, dropping from ten years to five years.
2. States began lowering the normal retirement age in the 1990s and continued into the 2000s. But in recent years, states have increased the retirement age, which decreases retirement benefits and results in fewer years collecting a pension. In 2012 alone, nineteen plans increased their normal retirement age for new teachers, pushing the average retirement from age fifty-five to fifty-eight.
3. Average employee contribution rates remained relatively constant throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, but increased after the recession, thereby lowering teachers’ net retirement compensation.

Further, when states reduce pension benefits, those cuts fall disproportionately on new and future teachers. While benefit increases tend to apply to all workers, benefit decreases typically only affect new workers. And because pension benefits are severely back-loaded, teachers inherently accrue very little wealth at the beginning of their careers.

For example: Although pension benefits for career teachers fell only 1 percent from 1982 to 2012, teachers who were hired in 2012 and stayed ten years would qualify for an inflation-adjusted pension benefit worth 25 percent less than their peers who began in 1982. Worse, in Illinois (a.k.a. the Abuse-the-New-Teachers state), a new teacher would not see a positive return on her contributions unless she served more than two decades in the system. The report closes with this depressing factoid: For every $100 that states and districts contribute to teacher pension plans, an average of $70 goes toward paying down pension debt, rather than toward actual retirement benefits. Not much good news to share here—or ever on this topic!

SOURCE: Leslie Kan and Chad Alderman, "Eating Their Young: How Cuts to State Pension Plans Fall on New Workers," Bellwether Education Partners (July 2015).

As a teacher, I measured professional development on a spectrum from “vaguely aligned” (we played math games!) to “I’d rather be teaching phonics right now” (any session that involved someone reading, verbatim, from a packet I had in hand). The midpoint was “at least it’s free grading time,” which was how I, an early childhood teacher, viewed any session on standardized test reading passages. But while I was frequently frustrated, I thought it was a problem specific to me; somewhere out there, I reasoned, there was PD that could help a teacher improve. And anyway, it was only a couple of days a year—not too significant.

Not exactly, says this new report from TNTP, which dug deep into the efficacy and size of three districts’ (and one charter network’s) investments in teacher professional development; it found the efforts outsized and the payoffs lacking. Researchers looked at three districts and provided low, medium, and high estimates of the annual cost of PD, which were based on which line items one included in the final price tag. On the low end—comprising only teacher time and baseline expenditures to host the PD—districts spent at least $50 million each year. On the high end—when other things like salary incentives, data-analysis, and coaches’ salaries are included—districts shelled out up to $196 million. All told, teachers spent about 10 percent of their time in PD, and it averaged out to $18,000 per teacher, per year—between 6 and 9 percent of a district’s budget. That’s much higher than anticipated, but not necessarily problematic if it’s working.

Unfortunately, TNTP was unable to find a clear link between money spent and teacher improvement. After rapid early gains, teachers plateaued; two years of observation data showed that for every ten teachers, three improved, five stayed the same, and two declined. To be sure, plenty of teachers made great strides, but no unifying factors contributed to that improvement. And teachers also reported dissatisfaction and a lack of faith in their districts’ abilities to create and implement good PD.

The picture at the charter network was slightly different. On the one hand, a highly coherent approach that incorporated a tight loop of observation, feedback, and implementation led to substantial improvement in 70 percent of teachers. On the other hand, the network was spending an average of $33,000 per teacher—nearly double the price traditional districts paid—and operated on a much smaller scale.

TNTP takes the right approach by recommending that districts tweak, not cut, professional development. They make a familiar call for more actionable data, clearer metrics, and strategic reinvestment of funds. More boldly, they suggest reimagining early-teaching careers to focus on one specific aspect of instruction, administration, or engagement, which would create a smoother path to growth. All would likely lead to teacher improvement. But given the size, scope, and entrenched interests in PD, I’ll wager that very little changes in the near future.

SOURCE: “The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth About Our Quest for Teacher Development,” TNTP (August 2015).

Recently, the idea of “school-based hubs” has been gaining momentum as a potential solution to the problem of improving upward mobility. These hubs are created when schools partner with doctors’ offices and various other community organizations to offer their clients (students and parents) a wide variety of integrated services. The efficacy of these programs, however, is still in question, as the idea progresses through its infancy; only a small number of them actually exist.

This report offers insight into the successes and challenges of a D.C. school-based hub, the Briya/Mary’s Center. It came together a few years ago, when Briya Public Charter School partnered with Mary’s Center, an “integrative medical center.” Mary’s Center’s mission is to provide families with medical, educational, and social services to improve their overall well-being.

Briya Public Charter School is no stranger to integrated services. In addition to an education, the school provides its students (up to five years old) and their relatives a family literacy program, parenting classes, and two adult credentialing programs. These programs allow Briya parents to become registered medical assistants or early child care professionals, thus setting them up for future success. Briya also encourages parents to be active participants in their children’s education. This entails asking them to spend at least two and a half hours per day in their children’s school (either during school hours or in the evening) participating in various aspects of the four-part program, which includes adult education, early childhood education, parenting, and parent-and-child together time. These are all meant to complement and reinforce one another and lead to an integrated education system for the whole family.

On the other side of the partnership, Mary’s Center offers medical care for the whole family (including pediatric and senior), disease prevention, nutrition counseling, mental health care, and dental care. On top of that, the hub is affiliated with other organizations in the community, including a public elementary school, a summer job program for teens, and a mental health clinic.

At first glance, the Briya/Mary’s Center partnership sounds great. But there are also aspects of this program that should give people pause. For example, Briya had far lower attendance rates than other charter schools in the area, in part because parents who are unable to spend time at the school each day keep their children home, lest they feel embarrassed. More importantly, all school-based hubs suffer from a lack of data collection and analysis, with few longitudinal and empirical studies examining whether the positive results they think will occur ever actually manifest themselves. Briya/Mary’s Center and its brethren ought to pair their admirable aspirations with research that, if positive, will solidify their place in the community and encourage others to follow suit.

SOURCE: Stuart M. Butler, “Using schools and clinics as hubs to create healthy communities: The example of Briya/Mary’s Center,” Brookings (July 2015).