The Education Gadfly Weekly

The late Don Meredith, beloved color commentator from the glory days of Monday Night Football, liked to break into song when a game hit garbage time, or a big play put the game out of reach. “Turn out the lights!” he would sing in his folksy Texas twang, channeling Willie Nelson. “The party’s over!” Dandy Don’s voice was ringing in my ears as I read a new report from the Educational Testing Service (ETS), America’s Skills Challenge: Millennials and the Future. The publication dares to ask out loud how much longer we can thrive as a nation when a vast segment of our society—Americans between sixteen and thirty-four who will be in the workforce for up to fifty more years—“lack the skills required for higher-level employment and meaningful engagement in our democracy.” Seldom have I read a more depressing report.

“Despite having the highest levels of educational attainment of any previous American generation,” writes ETS’s Center for Global Assessment Director Irwin S. Kirch in the report’s preface, “these young adults on average demonstrate relatively weak skills in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology rich environments compared to their international peers.”

In literacy, U.S. millennials outscore only their peers in Italy and Spain among the twenty-two countries in the report. In numeracy, they rank last. Our best-educated millennials—those with a master’s or research degree—are outperformed by the same cohort in every nation other than Ireland, Poland, and Spain. And it’s true no matter how you slice it: Our best-performing compared to their best-performing; our wealthiest vs. their wealthiest; our native-born next to their native-born; our immigrants against theirs. The gap between our own best and worst educated, just for bad measure, is the widest it’s ever been and among the most imbalanced of the countries surveyed.

Most troubling is that our faith in more years of schooling, degrees, credentials, and certificates to produce better outcomes is vividly shown to be misplaced. More time in school is not producing Americans with more or better skills. The people who will work, earn, support families, create jobs, make policy, take leadership positions, and be entrusted generally with protecting, defending, and continuing our democracy are less prepared to do so than any generation in American history.

One of the comforting lies we have told ourselves in recent years is that, while we might have problems, our top performers are still the equal of the best in the world. Alas, the score for U.S. millennials at our ninetieth percentile was statistically higher than the best in just a single country: Spain.

So much for that.

“The comparatively low skill level of U.S. millennials,” write report authors Madeline J. Goodman, Anita M. Sands, and Richard J. Coley, “is likely to test our international competitiveness over the coming decades. If our future rests in part on the skills of this cohort—as these individuals represent the workforce, parents, educators, and our political bedrock—then that future looks bleak.” Uh huh.

I was sitting in a coffee shop as I read and reviewed this report on a snowy New York City afternoon. Overwhelmed, dispirited, eager for distraction, I allowed myself to be dragged briefly into a Twitter “debate” about education reform that instantly devolved into familiar rants about who is or is not qualified to set standards or policy, who’s funding whom, and who stands to make a buck. It was impotent rage: tired, bitter, and utterly pointless. A little like players pushing and shoving during garbage time in a meaningless late-season game. Meanwhile the ETS report at my elbow pitilessly reported what looks more and more like it might stand as the final score.

Somewhere, Dandy Don shakes his head and clears his throat.

photo credit: Merlijn Hoek via Flickr

The Club for Growth is right about a bunch of issues, but they’re wrong about the pending House bill to replace No Child Left Behind with something far better. H.R. 5 (the “Student Success Act”), slated for floor action a few days hence, would, if enacted, be the most conservative federal education move in a quarter century. It has the potential to undo nearly all of the mischievous, dysfunctional, intrusive, big-government features of NCLB and return most education responsibility and authority to states, just as the Tenth Amendment prescribes. Which is, of course, precisely why the bill has come under sustained attack from the left! If right and left team up to kill it, we’ll be left with No Child Left Behind circa 2002, as modified (and made even more mischievous) by the Education Department’s unilateral “waivers.” 

Moreover, states have always had the option—urged yesterday by the Club for Growth as if it were a fresh idea—to “opt completely out of the program.” Any state willing to forego its share of federal education dollars is free to do so—and to exempt itself from all the rules and constraints that accompany those dollars.

States have flirted with this option, and perhaps one will someday actually make such a move, but so far—that means for the last fifty years, inasmuch as NCLB was only the most recent iteration of a 1965 program—none has wanted to decline the money.

Because it’s unlikely that many states ever will, and even less likely that the money will vanish entirely (though H.R. 5 caps and redirects it in ways that the Obama administration is railing against), conservatives should cheer the flexibility and empowerment given back to state leaders by this bill. Then they should focus on the Senate, where Senators Alexander and Murray are trying to craft a bipartisan measure to take to markup in the weeks ahead.

• In case there was any doubt that you can fool some of the people all of the time: A new Fairleigh Dickinson poll reveals that a great many Americans have no earthly idea what’s actually in the Common Core State Standards—but they hate ‘em anyway. Over half the respondents believed global warming, evolution, and sexual education are included in the standards (they’re not). Almost comically, those who say they are most informed about Common Core are precisely those most likely to be wrong about what the standards actually contain. Thankfully, about four in ten have the honesty to tell pollsters they know nothing about Common Core.
• Of course, standards are just part of the solution to a big national problem: Way too many high school seniors are graduating without being fully prepared for college or career. Tennessee State Senator Todd Gardenhire has proposed a novel response: legislation that would require the state’s school districts to reimburse recent high school graduates who need remedial classes at the college level. Innovative, but terrible. It’s unrealistic to expect every graduating senior to be ready for college. Students would be better served by college entrance requirements—even for community colleges.
• What do small rural universities, big Catholic orphanages, and sylvan nature sanctuaries have in common? According to a new ProPublica report, they all somehow authorize charter schools—and not all of them do so competently. The disparate institutions charged with regulating charters are bound by varying rules in different states, and some are riven with abuses and conflicts of interest. Particularly troubled is Fordham’s home state of Ohio, deemed the “Wild West” of authorization for its lax rules. That’s why we recommended a significant rewrite of Ohio's charter school law last year. Thankfully, our call for urgency seems to be resonating.
• In other school-choice news, Education Next has posted a great debate on whether New Orleans or the District of Columbia should be seen as the model for education reform. New Orleans has gone 100 percent charter—a thrilling development for NOLA’s Neerav Kingsland. But that comes with some downsides, including pressure for charters to surrender their autonomy and act more like neighborhood schools. So argues D.C’s Scott Pearson, who makes the case for the District’s fifty-fifty approach (half charter, half district) instead. 

As Common Core gathers speed in forty-three states and DC, what does it mean for high-ability students and gifted-and-talented education?  Some contend that higher standards for all mean gifted education is no longer necessary for some. Others insist that increasing the rigor of classes will automatically serve high achievers well. Some claim that differentiated instruction does the trick, while others worry that the country’s ablest students will lose what little claim they presently have on curriculum and instruction suited to their needs.

Who’s right?

Watch this discussion on what the Common Core portends for gifted students and their teachers, moderated by Fordham’s own Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Report Release: Common Core and Gifted Education: Myths, Opportunities, and Strategies for Success By Jonathan Plucker

PANELISTS
	Tricia Ebner Gifted Intervention Specialist and ELA teacher, Lake Middle School NBCT, PARCC ELC  @TebnerEbner
	Jonathan Plucker Raymond Neag Endowed Professor of Education, University of Connecticut   @JonathanPlucker
	Rena Subotnik Director, Center for Psychology in Schools and Education, American Psychological Association

MODERATOR
	Chester E. Finn, Jr. Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus, Fordham Institute

A new study published in the latest issue of Gifted Education Quarterly examines the long-term impact on young students of skipping a grade (also known as acceleration) on subsequent academic outcomes. Analysts used the National Education Longitudinal Study database (NELS) to begin tracking a representative cohort of eighth-grade students in 1988, then follow them through high school and again two and eight years post-high school (i.e., through 2000). A variety of outcome data were collected, including PSAT, SAT, and ACT scores, students’ GPAs, and college aspirations—as well as college measures, such as the selectivity of the institution, GPA for each college year, and degree attainment. All students who had ever skipped at least one grade prior to eighth grade comprised the acceleration group. Thus, the sample included kids who ranged from age nine to age thirteen while in eighth grade (the mean age was 12.7). Those students were then matched with a set of older, non-accelerated, same-grade peers from NELS based on gender, race, SES, and eighth-grade achievement. The accelerated and non-accelerated groups were nearly identical on these variables.

The study found that accelerated students scored significantly higher on the math sections of the PSAT, SAT, and most of the ACT and earned higher grades in high school. They also took more advanced courses and more often participated in additional educational opportunities. Once in college, they earned higher grades during their second year and overall. (Among the few similarities was that both groups were admitted to similarly selective colleges, and both had similar rates of graduate degree completion, although accelerated kids were slightly more likely to attain a bachelor’s degree.) More advanced students, of course, are also likelier to be more self-motivated in general, which may explain their better performance on most measures. Nevertheless, accelerated kids keep doing things to help them accelerate. We should applaud and encourage that.

SOURCE: Katie Larsen McClarty, "Life in the Fast Lane: Effects of Early Grade Acceleration on High School and College Outcomes," Gifted Child Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 1 (January 2015).

Faced with enormous budgetary shortfalls, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) opted in May 2013 to close forty-seven schools, one of the largest instances of school closures in U.S. history. CPS then set about relocating more than ten thousand displaced students into higher-performing schools for the 2013–14 year. The district called the schools that absorbed the transplanted pupils “welcoming schools.” The policy was supported by research showing that students affected by closure benefit academically if they land in a better school. The welcoming schools were all higher-performing on CPS’s internal measures of performance; they also received additional resources to ease the influx of new students (e.g., pupil safety and instructional supports). So how did the policy play out? According to University of Chicago analysts, 66 percent of displaced students enrolled in their designated “welcoming school” in fall 2013, while 25 percent attended other neighborhood-based CPS schools, 4 percent enrolled in charters and a similar number in magnets. An analysis of student records indicates that distance from home, building safety concerns, and residential mobility were all significant reasons why one-third of the total went somewhere other than their welcoming school. Interesting, to be sure, but the study does not report anything about the academic results for CPS students in their new schools. (Stay tuned for a new Fordham study of how Ohio students fare after closure.) Overall, CPS crafted a reasonable though not perfectly implemented policy for reassigning students to better schools. While few places are apt to shutter schools on the scale of CPS, they could learn from Chicago’s experience—and perhaps improve upon it.

SOURCE: Marisa de la Torre, et al., “School Closings in Chicago: Understanding Families’ Choices and Constraints for New School Enrollment,” University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (January 2015).

According to this Education Resource Strategies report, State Education Agencies (SEAs) possess “a gold mine of untapped material”—vast amounts of school and district data collected annually. This information is currently used for accountability purposes or to inform research and policy, but the report calls for what may be an even more important data deployment to inform local decisions that could potentially help schools make the most of limited resources. For example, Maryville Middle School in Tennessee used value-added performance data on teacher effectiveness to match educator strengths with student needs. The result? Maryville has repeatedly outperformed all other schools in the state on student growth measures

A good example, yet it’s also a fact that raw data alone are not too useful. Helpfully, the report offers several ways in which SEAs can make this information more actionable for local education agencies. They can, for example, create their own analyses providing feedback on allocations of people, time, and money. Such analyses should examine the connection between resources and student achievement so schools and districts can deploy the most effective or relevant resources to the students who need them most.

Besides such sensible (if obvious) recommendations, this report serves to highlight what well-designed data systems can do. If we want to make the most of the resources within our current K–12 systems, data may be the most powerful tool we have.

SOURCE: Stephen Frank and Joseph Trawick-Smith, “Spinning Straw into Gold: How state education agencies can transform their data to improve critical school resource decisions,” Education Resource Strategies (December 2014).