The Education Gadfly Weekly

As my Fordham colleague David Griffith wrote late last year in a post accompanying the release of The Best (and Worst) Cities for School Choice, resistance to the spread of parental choice in education is futile. The genie is out of the bottle, and there’s no going back. That’s not to say that political resistance from some quarters will simply die down, or that we’ll proceed without setbacks. Far from it. But as choice in general and charter schooling in particular continue to grow, they build formidable constituencies. Nobody is marching across the Brooklyn Bridge to defend Common Core or standardized testing. But parents whose children benefit from choice are not going to surrender it without a fight.

The most important questions about school choice are no longer “whether,” but “how” and “where” and “which kinds” and “how many.” And the most interesting debates are no longer waged between choice advocates and opponents, but within the school choice movement itself. Just like the raging family feuds within each of our political parties, the divisions are real. And they run deep. That’s because the movement’s “big tent” now has factions in its various folds and corners that agree on parental choice but little else. On the occasion of National School Choice Week, let me attempt to name and depict the three tribes of the school choice movement.

1. Choice Purists. These folks—mainly freedom-loving libertarians—strongly support two of the three principles that have long defined charter schooling: parental choice and school autonomy. They are all for “parent power.” But they reject results-based accountability because if conflicts with the will of parents and the right of schools to serve their customers as they think best. (It may also warp schools’ approaches to curriculum, coerced as they may be to teach to standardized tests.) Not surprisingly, they prefer the less regulated forms of school choice—Education Savings Accounts and tax credit scholarship programs especially—but are lukewarm on charters. While this clique is best represented in free-market think tanks (and on Jay Greene’s blog), it is increasingly influential in our politics, thanks to gains by the Tea Party.
    
2. Choice Nannies. This second group supports parental choice, and accountability for results, but is only half-heartedly committed to school autonomy. Some of these folks are simply bureaucrats—one-time district officials who now find themselves working in charter school authorizing shops or state policy offices. At the first sign of trouble, their inclinations turn to micromanagement (in the guise of “greater oversight”); when screening charter applicants, they look for the safe and trusted. But a subset of Nannies comes from within the choice movement itself: advocates who espouse “parent power” but also have strong opinions about practices that should or shouldn’t be allowed in schools of choice. (Tough-love approaches to school discipline, especially.)
    
3. Choice Realists. This final group buys into all three principles that have long defined charter schooling: parental choice, school-level autonomy, and results-based accountability. (Many are also eager to apply these principles to vouchers and other publicly funded private school choice programs.) They understand that there are tradeoffs at play. Closing fully enrolled charter schools due to low performance is a violation of parental preferences. But because education is a public good and not just a private one, they contend that such stern actions are not only justifiable, but necessary. They don’t just want happy customers, they want better outcomes for society—especially for its most vulnerable children. At the same time, they worry when regulators cloak their impulse to micromanage in the language of “accountability,” since they’re also concerned that schools maintain true operational freedom and the ability to innovate. They defend the right of schools to engage in practices with which they might disagree, so long as they are getting good results and attracting ample families.

It should be obvious by now that I belong to the tribe of Choice Realists. (I’m also a Reform Realist on federal policy. I love me some realism!) Not surprisingly, I find the arguments of both the other choice factions unconvincing and even dysfunctional. Here’s why.

Start with the Purists. I’m skeptical of all utopian visions, including theirs—one imagining that a full-fledged system of choice (perhaps through universal Education Savings Accounts) will yield greater innovation, productivity, and customer satisfaction—and produce better-educated young people to boot. But I’m also worried, in the here and now, about low-quality private and charter schools that prey on low-income families like payday lenders do. I’m happy to let schools stay open so long as they demonstrate solid outcomes for kids and basic financial responsibility with taxpayer dollars. But for the Purists, that’s a Brooklyn Bridge too far. It doesn’t help their case that some of the most unscrupulous providers in today’s marketplace hide behind the “parent power” language (and organizations) to keep their lights on and profits intact.

As for the Nannies: These folks underestimate the importance of cutting the Gordian Knot that inspired charter schooling in the first place. They seem to believe that the only reason district schools struggle is because of onerous union contracts, or a political atmosphere in which parents have too little power. Solve for those problems, they assume, and the rest takes care of itself. They don’t seem to understand that the web of conflicting mandates that advocates have placed on the schools over the years—usually under the “equity” banner—are what make it next to impossible for schools to truly run themselves, much less innovate: “Do this on special education. Don’t do that with English language learners. Here’s what’s allowed on discipline. Here’s what’s not. Don’t let any of your impacts be disparate. Here’s what you can spend your dollars on. Here’s where you can’t.”

Great schools of choice aren’t government schools with a smidgen of autonomy and some freedom for parents to opt in. They’re truly independent nonprofit organizations that are entrusted to use their judgment about how best to deal with difficult questions of practice.

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Is there anything to be done about these schisms in the school choice movement? Probably not. We’re better off with a big tent than a pup-tent, and that invariably means pulling in people with different ideologies and interests. As with any dysfunctional family, we have to live with one another, whether we want to or not. But if we can understand each other better, perhaps we can more effectively work together on common cause.

National School Choice Week (NSCW) may fall in January (rather than December), but it seems to herald a season of hope this year. Signs of progress can be seen in the week’s sudden prominence (the first NSCW featured 150 events, while 2016’s features over sixteen thousand) and in the long list of mayors and governors officially recognizing it. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. Over the last few years, political will seems to have coalesced around the issue. Families and educators are taking to the streets to defend their schools, and local leaders are responding to that pressure with action. As more voters come to value their educational options, it’s starting to feel like every week is School Choice Week.

Still, we should be wary of spiking the football prematurely, given how much work remains to be done in some parts of the country. At the end of last year, Fordham published one of the biggest studies in its history, and certainly the most detailed and wide-ranging survey of urban school choice ever conducted: America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for School Choice. Using an array of indicators touching on everything from funding disparities to the tone of local media coverage, the authors scored and ranked thirty prominent cities on their “choice friendliness.” (Profiles of each city can be accessed at the report page.)

As you might expect, the results suggest that “choice friendliness” varies dramatically between cities. A few reform favorites received mostly high marks, while others struggled to get on the scoreboard. But they also reveal some common challenges—issues the school choice movement would do well to prioritize in the coming year.

Here are three crucial areas of growth for choice in 2016:

1.) Making life easier for parents

Too often, the most daunting barriers to choice are depressingly mundane: lack of information, paperwork, and physical distance. The good news is that, with a bit of effort, these barriers can be reduced.

Take the problem of information access. Every city in the study has some sort of information about schools of choice on both district and state websites; but the quality and accessibility of that information varies widely (something that should be an easy fix). Similarly, in fifteen cities, organizers reach out personally to families to familiarize them with their options. That’s a practice that should be universal.

Reducing paperwork is a bit tougher. In particular, although twenty-seven cities have some sort of common application, only six have managed to incorporate charters—meaning we’re not doing enough to simplify life for parents whose children are applying to multiple schools. Getting that many different institutions to coordinate is obviously challenging, but it is doable (as places like Denver and Washington, D.C demonstrate).

Perhaps the toughest barrier is physical distance. Just nine of our thirty cities provide the same transportation to charter schools that they offer to neighborhood schools (and in two, New York City and Washington, D.C., that “transportation assistance” basically amounts to a metro card). That’s a nightmare for parents, many of whom can’t drop everything to haul across town with three kids during the morning rush. Still, there are signs of progress in places like Boston, which saved taxpayers millions of dollars by synchronizing travel schedules among charters and district schools.

2.) Getting open enrollment right

Charters and vouchers get most of the press from choice advocates. But the most important education decision for millions of American families is actually choosing which school to apply to within a district—either through individual attendance waivers or through a lottery that encourages families to rank their choices. The policies that circumscribe those choices are commensurably important.

In seventeen of the thirty cities we examined, the largest district uses some sort of lottery system; but every city’s lottery is different. For example, Washington, D.C. gives priority to students in a school’s attendance zone, whereas Boston assures them only of a place in one of several schools. Similarly, San Francisco favors students whose local schools have low test scores, while Chicago earmarks seats for students from particular economic backgrounds. These differences have important (but poorly understood) consequences for how students are distributed and which ones can access the best schools, so districts should be less cagey with their data.

Districts without lotteries can also be more or less amenable to in-district transfers. For example, Dallas ISD requires families to reapply for their attendance waivers every year. Such unnecessary restrictions impose a needless burden on families. They should be abolished and (ideally) replaced with a policy of open enrollment.

3.) Expanding vouchers

This one’s pretty simple: You can’t attend the school of your dreams if you can’t afford tuition. Just over one-third of the cities featured in our study are located in states that offer some form of voucher (or tax credit scholarship) for kids to attend private schools. But these programs are rife with limitations: Virtually all are subject to enrollment limits, almost none cover the cost of attending a private academy, and many are subject to strict eligibility requirements.

Of course, vouchers are politically explosive, so any attempt to expand them will be a battle. Still, it’s one that’s worth fighting. It’s terrible to think that working- and middle-class children are priced out of some of the best schools in their areas. Yet in most places, that remains the reality.

Obviously, these aren’t the only sticky issues that need to be resolved. But if we could make some headway in these areas, many more students could find their way to the education they deserve. Here’s hoping 2016 is the year we tackle the tough stuff.

• Career and technical education is one of the best weapons in the reformer’s arsenal. It’s a proven gateway to post-secondary credentials and skilled jobs, which can’t be taken for granted when so many of our high school graduates find themselves unprepared for college and career. The Gadfly was apoplectic when Arizona Governor Doug Ducey green-lit $30 million in cuts to the state’s CTE programs last year, reducing their funding by nearly 50 percent. These classes obviously benefit the ninety thousand students they serve annually, but they’re also a boon to the local and regional economies, which profit immensely from a domestic source of coveted technicians and tradesmen. It’s great news for all, therefore, that veto-proof majorities in both houses of Arizona’s state legislature are ready to pass legislation repealing the cuts. If ever there was a case of government electing to be pennywise and pound-foolish, it was this.
• Republicans and teachers’ unions have always been like peas in a pod. We’re not sure where the love affair started, but it was probably when they spent all those decades impugning and seeking to destroy one another. Okay, kidding aside, we’re all aware of the historic tensions existing between unionized teachers and the GOP. That’s why it’s borderline gobstobbing that the National Education Association, America’s single largest labor union, has issued shiny new grades for federal lawmakers—and some of the best grades have gone to Republicans. Fifty-nine congressional elephants earned grades of either A, B, or C, compared to just eighteen in 2009–10. The upward revision is doubtless a product of Republican initiative in writing and helping pass the Every Student Succeeds Act. In reverting so much authority from the federal government back to the states, the bill allows districts, schools, and individual educators (including unionized ones) greater flexibility in the classroom. Now that the two former rivals are best pals, we can’t wait to see them reach concurrence on issues like charter schools, voucher programs, and labor relations.
• Next time you’re looking to enliven your discussion at a dinner party, forget all about religion, politics, and sex and instead bring up the subject of classroom suspensions. Every aspect of school discipline, from its occasionally glaring racial disparities to the growing (but still tiny) number of toddlers getting tossed from kindergarten, is red-hot right now. Thankfully, we have a universally beloved and uncontroversial public figure to elucidate the subject: Eva Moskowitz! At a speech at New York Law School, the Success Academies honcho gave a robust defense of her charters’ unyielding approach to disruptive and unsafe behavior, which has attracted condemnation from more than her usual cast of critics. “The truth of the matter is safety is the number-one reason parents want out of the district schools, and we believe that our first obligation is for the safety of the children,” she said. “There’s no learning that can occur if we aren’t able to guarantee that.” Well, I guess she put that issue to bed.
• Chicago Public Schools is one of the most battered major school districts in the country. Its gaping budgetary hole led policy makers to shutter dozens of schools a few years ago, and continuing cost overruns are now necessitating layoffs as well. Facing a shortfall in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the district has let go of some 227 people. None of the terminated staff were classroom teachers, but losing critical administrative and special education staff is enormously harmful. Meanwhile, with the schools looking to Illinois’s state government to bail it out, Republican state legislators are proposing a wholesale takeover. (Unless they can win over a truly improbable number of Democrats, the plan won’t come close to passage.) Watching families endure this uncertainty is desperately sad, but it’s worth using the terrible scenario as an object lesson: Districts have to take specific steps to secure their own economic viability, or they risk the same future.

Education Cities is a nonprofit network of thirty-one city-based organizations in twenty-four cities that works to “dramatically increase the number of great public schools across the country.” As a practical matter, that means they champion, convene, and court high-quality charter schools to open or come to their respective burgs. They call the local folks who do the courting “harbormasters.” Like their nautical namesakes, these figures “facilitate safe and cooperative navigation in a challenging space.” Thus, this report functions as advice. It seeks to answer a few questions: “What do operators want? What roles and activities of local harbormasters are most, and least, helpful to those running great schools?” The answers, although not particularly surprising, are worthwhile. Good charter operators want to go where there’s a need, where they are wanted (e.g., a pro-charter political climate), and where they can reliably attract talent in the form of both teachers and leaders. Funding support, either directly or through opened doors, doesn’t hurt either.

So what does an education harbormaster do, exactly? One or more of the following: They invest in high-quality school growth, strengthen talent pipelines, advocate for choice-friendly policies, and/or rally community support. The report is based on interviews with eighteen charter operators in eight member cities who discuss these strategies and evaluate how they help or hinder high-quality charters to launch, grow, and persist.

The report’s greatest added value is in the brief sections that enumerate the challenges these groups face (or inflict upon themselves) in their roles as supporters, funders, and advocates. Harbormasters tend to be well-heeled and well-connected, or at least have such folks on speed dial. Charter operators are naturally reluctant to speak truth to powerbrokers, whose support and political cover they depend on. But that doesn't mean they're above reproach. “In the planning year, they forgot about us,” gripes one. Another frets that their harbormaster’s relationship to the broader community is polarized. “It has inhibited our success. Our brands are super-blurred. By and large, people know [us], like our schools, they like me and our school leaders, and so they don’t hate us, but there is hate for [unnamed harbormaster], and that carries over.” And another: “Once we launched, I never heard from them again...there’s so much more work we could have done together.” These are the kinds of constructive criticisms that charter advocates need to hear more often.

The authors’ recommendations are valid and widely applicable: Harbormasters should “build a strong brand” to strengthen their advocacy for excellent schools and “avoid making empty promises at all costs,” particularly on nonexistent funding or “ecosystem gaps.” They are also encouraged to “empathize with operators’ point of view” and “have a citywide plan.”

“According to operators, harbormasters serve multiple roles that are essential to their ability to launch, grow, and be successful,” the authors conclude. “There are also cautionary tales of overstepping boundaries, inconsistent communication, and disjointed support.” Yes, indeed. More of the former, and less of the latter, is what the sector needs in its next twenty-five years.

SOURCE: “What Schools Want: How City Leaders Can Help or Hinder Great School Growth,” Education Cities (December 2015).

A new CALDER study examines whether student-teaching experience affects both later teaching effectiveness and the likelihood of leaving the profession.

Dan Goldhaber and colleagues analyzed data from six university-based teacher education programs in Washington State that, together, graduate roughly one-third of the state’s teachers. They assembled an impressive data set that included information on teacher candidates’ cooperating or supervising teachers and where their internships or student-teaching occurred; administrative data on race, gender, experience, educational background, and teaching endorsements; and data on the schools in which they were trained and the schools in which they were hired. The sample included individuals who had completed their student-teaching between 1998 and 2010, comprising approximately 8,300 trainees.

Note that (as Goldhaber et al. repeatedly stress) these are descriptive findings, not causal ones, because the analytic models can’t account for the non-random sorting of teachers to schools and teaching positions.

There are three key findings: First, teachers who student-taught in schools with low levels of teacher turnover are less likely to leave teaching.

Second, teachers appear to be more effective when the student demographics at their schools reflect those of the schools in which they student-taught. For example, students in high-poverty schools are predicted to score about 0.15 standard deviations higher if their teachers student-taught in schools with the same percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL).

Third, and of particular interest, teachers are more likely to have student-taught in more advantaged schools than their current schools. Sixty percent of interns land their first teaching gigs in schools with a higher percentage of FRPL students than their internship schools. This means that students in disadvantaged schools are less likely than those in advantaged schools to have a teacher whose internship “matched” their school setting. If “matching” is indeed beneficial, as the second finding suggests, then analysts have this advice: If “TEPs [teacher education programs] are committed to educating teachers who will be successful in disadvantaged schools, [they] need to be placing more student-teachers in these settings.”

Schools, take heed. And, researchers, given the dearth of empirical research on teacher preparation programs, including student-teaching experiences, let’s wade further into these waters.

SOURCE: Dan Goldhaber, John M. Krieg, and Roddy Theobald, "Does the Match Matter? Exploring Whether Student Teaching Experiences Affect Teacher Effectiveness and Attrition," CALDER (January 2016).

The standard argument holds that improving education will improve the nation’s economy. A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research not only affirms this argument but also demonstrates just how big the economic effects of school improvement could be.

From the start, it’s clear that this paper differs from its predecessors. Previous studies examined human capital and its effect on states’ economic development by measuring school attainment (high school graduation). This study points out that attainment is an imperfect yardstick—it incorrectly assumes that increased levels of schooling automatically suggest increased levels of knowledge and skills. A better way to determine the relationship between education and economic value is to measure a different outcome: achievement. Since “no direct measures of cognitive skills for the labor force” exist, the authors craft their own. They start by constructing an average test score for each state using NAEP, then adjust the test scores for different types of migration (interstate and international among them) in order to offset the high mobility of our population.

Hanushek, who has published multiple studies linking economic activity with enhanced educational output, offers several scenarios in his latest report. If every state improved to the level of Minnesota, the top-performing state from the past two decades, the U.S. economy would grow by $76 trillion by 2095 (the end of the projection period). Current low-performers would see gains of more than seven times their current GDP. Needless to say, this level of growth is incredibly ambitious—and perhaps not as feasible as other possibilities.

A second scenario calculates that bringing all of the lowest-performing students up to the basic level of achievement (as defined by NAEP) “would have a noticeable impact on the distribution of earnings, and ultimately income, in the U.S.” That impact would total $32 trillion in economic growth by 2095. The drawback of this scenario, though, is that it assumes no “spillovers in quality” (score improvements) for students already scoring at basic or above.  

The study also examines the effect of states improving to match the best state in their respective regions, the improvement of all states’ scores by one-quarter of a standard deviation, and the improvement of all states to the levels of neighboring Canada or high-achieving Finland. Overall, the projected economic benefits of educational improvement are stunning. The authors predict that these estimated gains would, on average, pay for all K–12 education in the states and yield extra returns. That sounds like one more reason why improving student achievement is so important (as if we needed another one).

SOURCE: Eric A. Hanushek, Jens Ruhose, and Ludger Woessmann, “Economic Gains for U.S. States from Educational Reform,” National Bureau of Economic Research (December 2015).