In 2010, Katharine Birbalsingh gave a speech at Britain’s Conservative Party conference, after which the school where she was employed asked her not to return. She eventually established her own school, which now regularly boasts the highest growth scores of any K–12 educational institution in England. Buck recently spoke with her about her school's success.
Katharine Birbalsingh has many monikers: the founder and headmistress at Michaela Community School; chair of the Social Mobility Commission, an advisory body in England’s Department for Education; Commander of the Order of the British Empire; honorary fellow at New College, Oxford; Britain’s strictest headmistress; and of course, Miss Snuffy.
In 2010, she was tapped to give a speech at Britain’s Conservative Party conference, after which she was asked not to return to the school where she was employed. She eventually resigned and established her own school in 2014. A decade later, The Michaela Community School, a British free school comparable to an American charter school, which serves roughly 800 students ranging from eleven to eighteen, regularly boasts the highest growth scores of any K–12 educational institution in England.
Even with all those demands on her time, I had the opportunity to sit down with her recently for a conversation to figure out what exactly her school does to achieve such success.
I want to start at the beginning of your career with Michaela. You’ve resigned from your previous job. You’ve decided to found a school. Talk us through what that was like for you.
Well, in 2010 when we started, we had protestors outside and infiltrating our parent information events. They would shout to drown us out when we were trying to explain the new school to the potential parents who were interested. And it was really shocking, actually, because the parents were all Black moms from the inner city and the detractors were all White middle-class people, often from outside London, who had been bused in to destroy the hopes of these poor Black moms who were just looking for another option.
They would campaign outside with signs. They had picket lines with signs calling me names. We had to hire bouncers to protect us. When we finally opened, they stood outside and gave flyers to the children telling them their lives were in danger because health and safety standards had not been met in the building. So I went to the photocopier and copied the flyer 120 times and gave it to all the kids and then I said, “when you leave this evening, wave it in their faces and say, my headmistress has already given me a copy.”
That was the fun and games of 2014. We have been fighting with people ever since to stay alive.
Critics suggest that you’re imposing the strict discipline for which you have become known on students because they’re poor or Black or minorities, that teaching children to work hard and be nice is only teaching them to comply and be subservient. How do you respond?
Well, we are an inner-city school. Gangs are a problem. Alcoholism is a problem. Drugs are a problem. But you wouldn’t believe that if you came inside. The students are so well behaved, and they know so much—more than the children at the private schools.
Children like to be safe and looked after. When children feel safe, they’re more likely to push the boat out when it comes to their learning, like putting their hands up in lessons to trying out an interesting answer. If they feel that the bullies are in control, however, then the child will not expand their learning or take risks to try out new types of thinking.
Similarly, people don’t like the fact that our corridors are silent. They imagine that children normally skip through the corridors chatting about Aristotle. But I can tell you that, in the inner city, that is not what’s happening. Normally they’re pummeling each other, sending each other to hospital, screaming, shoving, and bullying. If children are safe in the corridor, they are much happier.
I think the people who make that criticism have never spent any time in the inner city or simply don’t know what it’s like to be in a school. If they were to spend any time there, then they would realize that what we do is what works.
Perhaps the polar opposite, at least rhetorically, to the discipline proponents is the “it’s all about relationships” crowd. Are relationships important?
Absolutely. It’s the number one thing we talk about at Michaela. When new staff come, we inundate them with training around relationships. If a child does not feel loved, and if the child does not love his teacher, he will not work for that teacher.
But we need to ask what enables a teacher to have strong relationships with their children. You need behavior systems that are applied equally and fairly to every child at all times. You will always have some teachers who are really great with kids, and they just have a way about them. And then there are other teachers who don’t have that skill. The consistency of the behavior systems enables all of your teachers to be able to build those relationships and to have an atmosphere of love.
It’s all well and good talking about relationships, but if you then deny schools consistent high-standard behavior systems, then you will never be able to connect with all of your children in a loving way.
Michaela is known for its discipline, but that’s not the only thing that sets it apart. What makes your instruction unique?
People think that in order for a child to be creative and think for himself, you must just let him go, that he’ll just figure it out and discover his love for French or science. That isn’t actually how children learn. They learn and get inspired when a passionate teacher gives them lots of knowledge, so our desks are in rows facing the teacher. The teacher is at the front of the classroom facing the children, leading the learning.
A more progressive classroom has the desks in groups where the children are looking at each other, not at the teacher, and it’s the children who are leading the learning. But when the teacher is leading the learning, they are able to teach the children so much because of course they know a lot more than the children. They have been doing this for many years, they have degrees, and the children are able to feel successful and happy.
Schools that spend their time with self-esteem lessons are wasting their time. All they need to do is teach the children properly. When children learn, it boosts their self-esteem. They feel really clever and successful. If you do it progressively, however, the child often thinks, “why am I so stupid?” And the ones who don’t have the same cultural capital coming from home sit in the classroom feeling very inadequate, eventually misbehave, get sent out of the lesson, and then that’s it for them. When they fail, we say it was because they were poor or Black. It is not because of those things. It was because we never taught them properly in the first place.
What does art look like at Michaela?
A progressive view of art instruction would be, “look at the fruit bowl and draw it.” Now, I remember being in art lessons at school where I would sit and think, “I don’t know how to draw a banana.” The fact is, I was never taught, for instance, that there are several different positions and places where you can hold a pencil, which allow a far lighter or darker shade on the paper. We start with those basics and build up from those basics so that the children actually learn how to draw.
It’s the same mentality that we have when teaching history. We will teach them the basics—some dates and general information. And over time, chronologically, we are building up their historical knowledge. That is what I think teaching should be. You break it down to its smallest component and then you build it back up again.
There seems to be this broad, progressive movement that’s just taking over education, be it instructionally progressive—let the kids do whatever they want—or very politically progressive—everything’s racist, we need to dismantle every system, deconstruct all of western society. Are we fighting a losing battle?
Well, you should never go down without a fight. I do think we are losing, but it doesn’t matter. You only have a hundred years if you’re lucky on this planet. You want to reach that age of 85 or 95 and look back on your life and think, I contributed. I made the world into a better place. That’s all you can do. It doesn’t matter if we lose. What’s important is that we contributed to the fight.
What’s next for Michaela?
Well, we have tried many times to expand. We tried to open a primary school. We were blocked. We tried to open a secondary school. That was stopped. We tried to set up a leadership program for other school leaders in the country, and that was blocked. So right now, we just want to survive.
I’m particularly concerned because the Labor Party will soon be coming into power. We were blocked at all those stages under a Conservative government, so you can imagine my worries with a Labor government. I’m hoping that they’ll just ignore us, given that we are very successful and we also hold values that tend to be the opposite to what they think. But you never know. Maybe they’ll come and see the school and be convinced and change some of their ideas. I do hope so.
Editor’s note: This was first published on the author’s Substack, “citizen stewart,” which covers race, education, and democracy.
Every year, without fail, someone sounds the alarm about the “resegregation of American public schools.” It’s a problem with deep roots and nasty downstream consequences for students in communities with less social capital.
Some of the discussion is grounded in solid, authoritative research. But then you get the terrifically ditzy takes, like a recent Vox article blaming charter schools—serving just 7 percent of U.S. students—for the complex systemic issue of racial segregation. That’s like blaming a storm shelter for the hurricane.
People who genuinely want to solve “the problem we all live with” often resort to shallow, careless analysis. Researchers agree that segregation has escalated to alarming levels over the past three decades. Despite the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, schools today are more racially and economically isolated than ever. However, simple explanations that indict charter schools as the culprit are unserious.
Let’s start with a little historical context
The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision marked a significant victory in the fight against racial segregation in public schools. Chief Justice Earl Warren’s unanimous ruling declared that state-sanctioned segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and catalyzed the Civil Rights Movement. However, despite the Court’s clear mandate, there was considerable resistance to desegregation, and implementation was slow and fraught with challenges.
As time passed, the complexities of achieving integration became more evident. Dr. Kenneth Clark, whose research influenced the Brown decision, later acknowledged the underestimated resistance to integration. James Coleman’s studies in the late 1970s revealed mixed results regarding the effects of desegregation, with positive impacts in the South but more destructive effects in the North. These historical perspectives suggest that the integration imperative may not be the sole solution to educational inequality.
Shifting perspectives on integration
In 1969, most Black Americans supported integration across various aspects of life, including schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods. However, over the decades, skepticism about integration has grown within the Black community. Contemporary Black thought increasingly questions whether integration is the best path to achieving educational and social equity. Black families challenge the sentiment that Black children need to attend school with white children to succeed. Many Black parents and educators now advocate for quality education in predominantly Black schools, emphasizing the importance of culturally affirming environments and community control over schooling.
Brown should have never suggested that Black schools with Black teachers were inherently inferior due to the absence of whiteness. It’s one thing to say that excluding Black people from attending integrated public schools is racist and wrong, but it’s another to say that only schools with whites can be successful. Many district and charter schools prove that wrong every day.
The current narrative around segregation is all wrong. It’s obsessed with shuffling students of color into predominantly white spaces instead of empowering marginalized communities. This viewpoint misses the mark on addressing the real roots of educational inequality and ignores the potential for building self-determination and choice within these communities. The idea that poor Black kids can’t succeed without white students around is not only flawed but downright harmful. It perpetuates the myth that Black excellence needs whiteness to thrive, undermining the value and potential of predominantly Black schools.
Positive all-Black spaces are important for the healing and development of African American students and adults. Look at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Black churches, and Black fraternities and sororities. These institutions show the immense power of culturally affirming environments. They provide role models, community support, and a sense of identity vital for Black children’s development and success. They also produce the lion’s share of our desperately needed doctors, lawyers, and teachers.
Creating empowering Black educational environments is an option we can’t overlook. The focus must shift towards improving school leadership, quality teaching, and culturally affirming classrooms. Every student deserves the chance to succeed; these environments can help make that happen.
Segregation is a problem with no easy answers
I concede that segregation in public schools is rising. There is a research basis for seeing that trend and worrying about the implications. And, yes, integration is a noble long-term goal. But what does that mean for the average Black and Latino student currently in predominantly nonwhite schools, scraping by with less compared to their peers in whiter schools? What do we do for them now?
The 2020 census tells us the U.S. is more diverse and urbanized than ever, but our schools do not reflect that reality. The chance that two random people are from different racial or ethnic backgrounds has hit 61.1 percent, but you wouldn’t know it walking through most public schools. The urban-rural divide is growing, and the non-Hispanic white population is on the decline, complicating any real push for educational equity.
What’s the urgent solution for students stuck in schools with low expectations, inadequate teaching, sub-prime curricula, ineffective leadership, and a low-key defeatist attitude that swaps academic achievement for the morphine of mediocrity? I mean the schools with fewer resources, teacher shortages, higher student-to-counselor ratios, less access to Algebra, fewer AP class options, and teacher strikes every other year that steal learning time from academically behind students?
Can we fix the ill effects of racist urban planning and social engineering at the root of segregation?
Can we change the hearts and minds of middle-class homebuyers who see life as a foot race between their kids and ours?
Is there a massive change in political will to restructure society so that children of different backgrounds are evenly distributed among schools?
I’m skeptical.
Charter schools: Controversial but effective
Love or hate them, charter schools have proven to be a lifeline for many Black and Latino kids. Nestled in marginalized communities, these schools often provide culturally affirming, safe, and supportive environments where students can thrive. Their success flies in the face of the idea that integration is the only path to educational equity. Sadly, charter schools have to constantly battle ideological wars and accusations from opponents and journalists about perpetuating segregation (and worse).
The Brookings Institute report bluntly states, “High-poverty, high-minority [charter] schools produce achievement gains substantially greater than traditional public schools in the same areas.” This isn’t just a fluke; it highlights the crucial role of school quality over racial or economic makeup. Charter schools offer a tangible solution for improving educational outcomes long before the pipe dream of perfect integration becomes reality.
Taking the charter school option away from families who choose them would barely nudge segregation figures—by a measly 5 percent—but it would rip away a world of opportunity for their students.
Blaming charter schools, school choice, and civil rights groups for stepping back from failed desegregation efforts is not just a misdiagnosis; it’s a dead end. It does nothing for a public school system that’s increasingly nonwhite and poorer.
Empirical evidence on schools and segregation
A comprehensive study looking at school enrollment by race from 1998 to 2015 found that more kids going to charter schools leads to a slight bump in segregation among Black and Hispanic students within districts.
Specifically, a 1 percentage point increase in charter school enrollment raises segregation by 0.11 percentage points.
Statistically significant? Yes. Game-changing? Not really.
The study found some interesting variations based on geography. Charter schools slightly increase segregation in towns or counties, but the effect is negligible in metropolitan areas. This means charter schools might bump segregation within districts but help decrease it between districts in the same metro area.
The debate over charter schools and segregation should weigh these potential drawbacks against their successes in serving vulnerable populations.
As America gets more diverse and urbanized, achieving true educational equity remains a beguiling riddle. Integration is a noble goal, but we also need to empower marginalized communities and ensure quality education where students are.
We must champion self-determination and community empowerment to create educational environments that meet the needs of all students, regardless of race or background.
Editor’s note: This was first published by EdChoice.
The end of the school year is rapidly approaching, and teachers are more pessimistic than ever about the state of education in the United States. This downward slide of teacher morale may be a canary in the coal mine—and, at the very least, points us towards important classroom issues that have presented serious challenges for teachers over the course of the school year.
To better understand the current perspectives and opinions of teachers, EdChoice, in partnership with Morning Consult, surveyed a nationally representative sample of K–12 educators (N = 1,031) from March 28–April 3, 2024.
In this wave of our teacher survey, we asked teachers to share their opinions on a range of topics including attitudes toward the teaching profession; daily experiences in the classroom; student use of cell phones and social media; and school choice. Additionally, we asked new questions to find out how teachers are being impacted by recent state and local regulations on curriculum content.
Read the full report, and here are some of our major findings :
Teacher morale has hit a record low
Teacher optimism about the overall direction of K–12 education has hit the lowest point in four years of our polling, sharply plummeting since May of 2023. Only 19 percent of teachers think education is going in the right direction nationally, and 39 percent of teachers feel positively about the state of education in their own local school district.
This corresponds with a general drop in public mood towards education. Our February poll of American adults indicated a four-year low 22 percent of Americans feel positively about the direction of education across the country. This time last year, 35 percent and 53 percent of teachers felt positively about K–12 education at the national and local levels, respectively. Teacher outlooks have turned more grim during the course of this school year. Back in the fall, a less overwhelming 53 percent of teachers expected the state of K–12 education to get worse in the future according to an October survey of K–12 American public school teachers by the Pew Research Center.
(All images of figures and their corresponding text come from the full report.)
Unsurprisingly, these feelings correspond with how teachers view their jobs and how likely they are to recommend the teaching profession to others. This spring, only 15 percent of teachers say that they would recommend teaching to a friend or family member—once again marking the lowest point we have recorded in four years of our teacher surveys. In our polling last spring, 36 percent of teachers were likely to recommend the teaching profession. This parallels the sharp drop in teachers’ feelings about education as a whole.
This morale crisis may reflect the challenge teachers face in keeping their students on track. Teacher views of student progress are similarly gloomy. Twenty percent of teachers report that their students are progressing very well academically, with only 17 percent and 14 percent saying the same about social and emotional development respectively. Across these metrics, teacher confidence has fallen by approximately 10 percentage points since last spring. When asked about the current school year, three-fourths (74 percent) of teachers say they are doing a substantial amount of catch-up work to bring students up to speed academically. In short, the vast majority of teachers believe that their students are falling behind in the classroom.
Inside the classroom in 2024
To understand the context of this rampant pessimism, we need to take a closer look at what’s going on inside the classroom day to day from the perspective of teachers.
Curriculum laws have become an elephant in the classroom for teachers. Forty percent of teachers say they’ve modified their curriculum or classroom discussions because of state laws, and 35 percent of teachers said the same about district policies. About a third (30 percent) of teachers say that new regulations have limited the books/educational content they can use in class. Teachers are also making adjustments to classroom content of their own accord. Nearly half (49 percent) of teachers limited classroom discussions about political and social issues in class over the past year. Curriculum restrictions, both mandatory and self-imposed, appear to have taken root in today’s classrooms.
Teachers are also grappling with absenteeism and student behavior, and they report that matters are only getting worse. When asked about student absences compared to this time last year, 40 percent of teachers say absences are more frequent now—12 points higher than in the fall.
Nearly half (47 percent) of teachers say that student misbehaviors are more frequent now than this time last year, up 8 points from last fall. In comparison, private school teachers have a rosier point of view, with only 27 percent saying they feel student misbehaviors have increased since last year, an improvement from last September (36 percent).
Finally, we asked teachers about the daily classroom environment, revealing key differences in the perspectives of teachers and their students according to our recent survey of American teenagers. Compared to teens, teachers tend to underestimate how many of their students are bored (19 percent versus 70 percent) and use their phones in class (25 percent versus 55 percent). Teachers also overestimate how many of their students want to be in school (48 percent versus 19 percent). Whether teen students are overly pessimistic about their fellow students or teachers have a sunnier outlook than perhaps is warranted, there is a clear disconnect between how teachers and students view the classroom.
Silver linings
While news from the classroom seems discouraging, teachers remain positive. Two-thirds of teachers feel a sense of purpose (69 percent) and hopeful (64 percent) when thinking about the future, and the majority of teachers are happy (56 percent). It is encouraging news that most teachers feel happy in their personal lives, despite their concerns about the current direction of education.
Teachers are also open to new ways of approaching education. Sixty-two percent of all teachers express interest in tutoring students outside of school hours. Hybrid schooling also appeals to teachers. Half of teachers (50 percent) would prefer to teach outside of the traditional in-person classroom for at least part of the week. Furthermore, about 70 percent of teachers support education savings accounts (ESAs), a type of school choice policy that gives families greater flexibility in their educational spending. From this positive reception, perhaps we can take away that teachers are optimistic about finding ways to reimagine what education can look like.
With these challenging classroom conditions in mind, it is no wonder that teachers are feeling concern about their students’ progress and the direction of education. Nonetheless, teachers remain open towards new approaches to schooling. These valuable perspectives can point us towards what to look out for as we move into next school year. To explore more of what teachers had to say this spring, read the full report.
The use of technology in education—in place before the pandemic but increased in magnitude and ubiquity since 2020—is drawing increasing scrutiny from many sides. The villagers are lighting up their torches and coming en masse for cellphones, online learning platforms, Chromebook-based assignments, Smartboards, and more. A trio of researchers from the University of Michigan suggest another log to stack on the pyre: electronic grade books. Their new research shows, among other things, how even the bedrock of the English alphabet can be weaponized when brought in contact with the white heat of technology.
Specifically, the researchers look at more than 31 million grading records submitted to a learning management system called Canvas by graders from an anonymous large public university in the United States between 2014 and 2022. Canvas is the most popular system of its type, in use at 32 percent of all higher education institutions in the United States and Canada in 2020. To avoid biasing the analysis, the researchers include only human-graded assignments, removing assignments and courses that have either massive numbers of grades or an extremely small number of grades, as well as assignments graded offline and only submitted electronically. The final data set still contains a whopping 31,048,479 electronic grades covering 851,582 assignments, 139,425 students, and 21,119 graders. Data include both numerical values and textual values (comments from the grader). Timestamps allow the researchers to determine both the order in which assignments are submitted and in which they are graded. Additionally, the Canvas platform includes any comments entered by students in response to the grades after they are made available.
The bedrock finding is that electronic grading of student work appears to be a slog for most humans cursed with the task, and that using a system like Canvas—designed to ease the burden—only compounds the problems. This analysis indicates that negative impacts of electronic grading can accrue to specific individuals as a matter of course. Students whose assignments were graded later in the process—however that process was sequenced—received lower marks and more negative comments than their peers. Surname alphabetical order grading, the default setting for Canvas and comprising over 40 percent of the submissions analyzed, tells the tale clearly. Students whose surnames started with A, B, C, D, or E received a 0.3-point higher grade (out of 100) than did students with surnames later in the alphabet. Likewise, students with surnames W through Z received a 0.3-point lower grade than their earlier-in-the-alphabet peers—creating a 0.6-point gap between the Abdullahis and the Zimmermans of the world. Robustness checks among different graders, including a small group (about 5 percent) who happened to have graded in reverse alphabetical order and exhibited the same gap, confirmed this pattern. That might seem a small difference, but if it happens to the same students on every assignment in multiple classes over multiple years, the small gap could grow into a much larger one.
Grader comments on assignments evaluated later in the sequence were found to be more negative and less polite (the handful of examples included in the report would be truly disheartening for their unfortunate recipients) than those given earlier in the sequence. Grading quality seemed to deteriorate down the sequence, as well. Students with assignments graded later were significantly more likely to log questions and challenges about their marks in Canvas. Specifically, students graded between fiftieth and sixtieth in order are five times more likely to submit a regrade request compared with the first ten students graded, no matter in what order the grading is done.
While the surname alphabetical grading order illustrates sequential bias most clearly and sensationally, the same pattern was also observed across assignments graded in quasi-random order. The more assignments that must be graded, the more likely students at the end of the sequence are to be impacted. And in the case of learning management technology, that largely means students whose surnames are late in the alphabet. As noted, Canvas (and its three closest competitors) defaults to alphabetical order and must be manually changed by graders or institutions to avoid this. Together, these four systems accounted for over 90 percent of the U.S. and Canadian market at the end of 2020, so the potential negative impact to the Whites, the Williamses, and the Youngs is huge.
The researchers end with three commonsense recommendations. First, creators of learning management systems should switch their products’ default from alphabetical to random order (with educational institutions doing so manually until that time), although that would only diffuse the sequential bias effect across more students. Second, graders should be trained on the nature of sequential bias and strategies to avoid it in their work, which still leaves the problem of the slog. Finally, to address the problem fully, institutions should limit the number of assignments evaluated by any one grader. Eliminating electronic submission and grading entirely—bound to be popular with many stakeholders looking to limit technology in education—may be the most obvious option not suggested here.
SOURCE: Zhihan (Helen) Wang, Jiaxin Pei, and Jun Li, “30 Million Canvas Grading Records Reveal Widespread Sequential Bias and System-Induced Surname Initial Disparity,” Management Science (March 2024).
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Daniel Buck, Fordham’s policy and editorial associate, joins Mike and David to discuss whether and how elementary schools should teach reading comprehension. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber examines a new study investigating the short- and long-term impacts of school closures in the 1990s.
Recommended content:
Feedback Welcome: Have ideas for improving our podcast? Send them to Daniel Buck at [email protected].
Michael Petrilli:
Welcome to the Education Gadfly Show. I'm your host Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Today, Daniel Buck, Fordham's policy and editorial associate, joins us to discuss whether and how elementary schools should teach reading comprehension. Then on the research minute, Amber reports on a new study investigating the short and long-term impacts of school closures due to low enrollment or poor performance. All this on the Education Gadfly Show.
Hello. This is your host, Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute here at the Education Gadfly Show and online at fordhaminstitute.org. And now please welcome our special guest for this week, our very own Daniel Buck. Dan, welcome to the show.
Daniel Buck:
Thanks for having me on, Mike.
Michael Petrilli:
Yeah, Dan is Fordham's policy and editorial associate and the producer of the Education Gadfly Show, making the magic happen, usually offset, but now behind the microphone. Very exciting. Also joining us as always, my co-host, David Griffith. Hey Mike,
David Griffith:
Hey Mike, always a pleasure?
Michael Petrilli:
Well, we are here to talk about reading comprehension. Let's do that on ed reform update. Alright, Dan, when we have a Fordham person on as our guest, that only means one thing. Shameless self-promotion, and in fact, that's what's happening here. You have a new policy brief out part of our Think Again series, this one titled, should Elementary Schools Teach Reading Comprehension? Question Mark. So let's start right there. Sounds like kind of a no brainer. I mean people would say, of course elementary schools should teach reading comprehension, right?
Daniel Buck:
We at Fordham like overcomplicating all seemingly simple issues. And in this case, I mean, yes, obviously elementary schools should teach reading comprehension, but it gets a little more complex when we ask, well, what does that actually mean? We're going to be teaching reading comprehension skills as kind of the popular approach. Maybe we actually shouldn't be. There was the national reading panel 24 years ago now, I think it was, that did a lot of great work talking about phonics and fluency, but there's a big section on reading comprehension skills. So doing things like finding the main idea, making inferences, asking questions, monitoring your own comprehension. And so these had a firm grounding in the research, but what often goes on asked when we're talking about reading comprehension skills is, well, how much do we actually need to teach them? How long do lessons need to be before students get all that they can from them? And research has found that kids get these reading comprehension skills down after six to 10 lessons. It's kind of like in math classes, check your work. There's not really a lot of training or practice that goes into it. It's just kind of a habit that students instill. And what's way more important, and I'm sure we'll get into it later in this podcast and conversation, is background knowledge, factual knowledge, knowledge about the world, social studies, science history, art, music, all that kind of stuff.
Michael Petrilli:
And our listeners now are going to say, oh, okay, you're talking about the Edie Hirsch argument, which we are, right? And you said the national reading panel was what, 24 years ago? Edie Hirsch's argument probably goes back something like 34 years
Daniel Buck:
Ago, 1987 English teacher, not a math teacher. So I can't do that in my head quickly.
Michael Petrilli:
Boom. So even further. So look, Don Hirsch has been making this case for a long time. Maybe at first it was theoretical and over the years there's more and more evidence piling up. We hear people like Dan Willingham providing the evidence and others that yes, I mean if you want kids to actually be able to comprehend something, sure they need to know how to make inferences and find the main idea, but they need to be able to make sense of what the heck they're reading. And that's not just about sounding words out with the science of reading stuff and phonics, that's actually recognizing the words that they're reading because they know something about the content knowledge. You can sound out tyrannosaurus wreckx though, that's kind of a hard one. But do the bells go off in your head or not? When you sound that off to say, oh, that's a dinosaur and I know that because I've learned about the dinosaurs and so on and so forth.
So Dan, the problem then is one of emphasis, and you write in this brief a lot about the workshop model as well. Can you tell us, I mean, take us inside a typical elementary school classroom because it's probably some people who would assume, well, I mean surely this is what elementary schools do. I mean first they teach kids how to sound out the words and the early grades they're doing math. But when you're talking about English language arts, they then must be reading great books. They're probably teaching them about history, they're teaching about the world, we're learning about the presidents, we're learning about science. But you're saying that's not actually what's happening in a lot of classrooms.
Daniel Buck:
I think most of our listeners and readers, a lot of them have sort of drunk the knowledge. Kool-Aid have bought the Edie Hirsch argument about the importance of knowledge. And if they haven't bought into that argument, they at least know about it. So in the brief, I tried to then extend out, well, what does this fundamental misconception actually mean for classroom practice and the skills-based approach? If you think that reading comprehension depends largely on generalized reading skills, well then it makes sense that you're just going to model a skill and then you're going to send kids off to go practice it by themselves and independent reading in leveled books. So I try to broaden out in the second half of the brief and discuss what's called the workshop more generally, which is, like I said, a teacher might model a skill for no more than five to 10 minutes, demonstrate how to notice details in their book imagery, things like that.
And then the kids go off, they pick a book, often leveled. So it's supposed to be just not too hard, not too easy, just at the right level. And then they practice that skill for 30 minutes when they're reading that day, they're supposed to be thinking about identifying imagery and details and so many aspects of that workshop model leveled reading, picking your own books, extended reading time. Intuitively they make sense if you think that reading comprehension is a skill, but they just don't work and the research into them is functionally, and if you have a knowledge centric understanding of reading comprehension, well then they just don't make sense,
Michael Petrilli:
Right? Because you're not actually building the knowledge base that's going to allow kids to read more and more difficult stuff. I mean, the level thing is a whole other craziness. I mean for sure if there's a time in the day when the kids are supposed to be reading for fun and you say, okay, you can yes, go ahead and read Dog Man a great series. If I ever said one myself, then fine, but you haven't gone to the Dog Man series yet, David?
David Griffith:
I have not heard of Dog Man yet. Sorry,
Michael Petrilli:
It's actually a spinoff from. Captain Underpants, I think.
David Griffith:
Oh, okay. That one I've heard of. Yeah.
Michael Petrilli:
Oh, you can look forward to this. I mean, look, you want to spend a little bit of time just getting some confidence, but that kid's not going to get any better if all they're doing is reading dogman. They need to be pushed to read some stuff that's challenging for them with some help. And most importantly, if they're going to be able to read increasingly challenging stuff, including academic stuff, they're going to need to have content knowledge. And that means picking the same book. And this is where conservatives and liberals, I mean this is not an argument for drudgery. I mean pick great books of literature, children's literature from over the years, but read it together. Also though at some point in the day, whether it's within the English language block or other parts of the elementary school day, make sure you're also reading about history and civics and geography and all the rest and science again in a way that's about building that content knowledge. So a little bit of the skill building fine, but much greater emphasis on the content knowledge. David, why this been so hard? This seems like common sense to a lot of us, and yet it's man, it's like civil war out there.
David Griffith:
Yeah, I think there are a couple of reasons. First of all, I'm the wrong person to ask, but two things come to mind. One is that I think many of us actually we're not, and by us, I mean let's say the policy of lead did not get this in school. When I have this model described to me, I have an out of buy experience. Same with when it comes to the phonics, like I got phonics. Most people who can read got phonics. That's why they can read. That's how they got to the place that they are. And so I think for some people it just maybe takes a little convincing or a little bit of explanation to understand, no, actually this nonsense is kind of widespread and maybe you didn't get it at your school, which where all the teachers knew what they were doing, but actually there's some really weak construction out there and it's sort of emanating from these sources of power that we might assume would have their act together and would know better.
I'm talking about the ED schools of course, among other places at curriculum developers. So I think that's one thing, right? It's just that I think there is a certain level of education that has to go on with people who know better once they understand the problem. And then I also think that there's a certain amount of just professional embarrassment that's associated with this. It is embarrassing to be told this doesn't make any sense. And what you're doing is complete nonsense and it's inane to teach a kid to look for details and then send them off with a book and expect them to look for, I mean, that's inane, right? It's manifestly inane when you think about it, but nobody, people don't like to be criticized on that front. And so it takes a certain amount of humility and willingness and openness to change to sort of turn the direction of the ship. And I think maybe in some ways it's easier done when it's you who's figured it out. And so anyway, I think there's some challenge just to change the institutional culture at some of these places.
Michael Petrilli:
Let me ask you, Dan, or you too, David, but do you think it's sometimes that people get confused between what makes sense for say, high school kids versus elementary school kids? I mean, so forever now for decades, we've heard people say, well, why do you need to have this knowledge? You can just Google. It used to be, you can just look it up in the encyclopedia right now. We are going to have ai, right? So knowledge is expanding at such a rapid pace. Why do we need this knowledge? Well, I could understand if I hear a high school student say, why do I need to know about the mitochondria? Or pick whatever random topic you're learning and you say, well, maybe you do, maybe you don't. We just think everybody in America should have to learn these things at one point in time. Very different though than saying for elementary schools, why do you need to learn history and science and literature and the arts in the early grades here?
It's not only for the sake of learning those things that it's important to know those things, and it's fun to learn those things, but it will actually help you read that you're not going to be a good reader if you don't have at least some knowledge base about all those different fields. And so maybe a more progressive approach where at some point you're like, alright, does everybody need to know every little aspect of these different domains in high school? Maybe not, right? But you need to have a pretty good general knowledge when you're 8, 9, 10, 11 if you're going to be a good reader. I mean, does that make sense? Is that what we've got to maybe better explain is it's about a stage where kids need this information.
Daniel Buck:
I mean, I think there's a lot of information that most of us take for granted. In any newspaper column. You're going to come across hundreds and hundreds of words and references thrown out that don't get explained. Berlin Wall 1776, the content of our character. We say these things and any writer then assumes that their reader kind of knows what these are. You don't need to know the ins and outs of the Berlin Wall to necessarily understand the point that whatever New York Times op-ed writer is trying to make. But if we want our writing to be sensible, we can't have the Berlin wall which existed in this era in between these countries. For these, our writing and our communication would become incomprehensible if we had to include that many subordinate clauses and that many of positive phrases explaining every single word in every single reference that we made. And there's just a whole lot of knowledge that we need to impart to the next generation to even be able to communicate and read clearly, let alone think critically, write beautifully, build a civilization, and all of these kinds of grander ideas beyond basic reading and writing.
Michael Petrilli:
Okay, we will need to leave it there. Very well said Again, our own Dan Buck, you should check out his great think again brief again. It is called Should Elementary Schools Teach reading comprehension. Dan, I always say people should come back soon, but hey, you're the producer. You can actually make that happen.
Daniel Buck:
I do. People hate listening to themselves on the recording, but now editing this, I get to listen to myself for 15 minutes, three or four times. It should really be a Greek tragedy.
Michael Petrilli:
Thanks again, Dan. Buck. Now it's time for everyone's favorite Amber's Research Minute. Amber, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Mike. Special Greetings from Lovely store Connecticut.
Amber Northern:
Wow, I don't know where store is.
Michael Petrilli:
It's in Connecticut, right? I should look right now. I think it's Northeastern Connecticut is what I would say, I think. Okay.
Amber Northern:
All right.
Michael Petrilli:
It is. So basically east of Hartford, sort of between Hartford and Boston. Anyways, I flew into Hartford. How's that? No idea where you're right now. That
Amber Northern:
Didn't mean to trip you up on that, but
Michael Petrilli:
No, it's lovely. It is the home of the University of Connecticut Go Huskies, and it's looked really pretty. I am excited to get to be at another college campus, but man, it is spread out. I don't know how they do it. They must use those scooters these days is how the youngins must survive on these enormous campuses.
Amber Northern:
Hey, they exercise Mike. We want them exercising.
Michael Petrilli:
Yeah, that's true. Maybe Do you think they walk? I hope so. I'm going to try to find one of those scooters. I think I have to go all the way across town for this conference that I'm going to.
Amber Northern:
Okay. Good luck with that. It is a beautiful 80 degree day, Mike. I don't
Michael Petrilli:
Know. Yes, it is nice. It is nice. Alright, well what do you have for us today?
Amber Northern:
I have a new study out on the short and long-term impacts on students of school district closures. So not charters, we're just looking at district school closures and Texas, they're looking at closures in the 94 through 97 school years. So a while back, but they tracked the students from 1998 through 2015, sample restricted to schools observed again in these last, they had to have data for the last three years before and two years after the closure. So they're looking at five surrounding years. They identified 470 closures during that time span. They have student level data on absences, numbers of disciplinary action, standardized math and reading scores, high school graduation. Then they have post-secondary outcomes on Texas four year college attendance, whether you earned a bachelor's degree and employment industry and earnings data. So it's Texas big in terms of the data sources and variety of data.
They use two difference and differences models, both of which passed the test of parallel pret trends, which covers many pages. They're comparing the changes and outcomes among students affected by school closures. So those who are not, then we got to figure out, okay, how are we going to identify these control schools? So the control schools share similar observable characteristics on 12 NCES variables with the closed school at the time of closure. And then after they do that, then they match 'em within groups using a nearest neighbor matching method. And their nearest neighbor has to match the schools on their share of black, Hispanic free and reduced lunch and disadvantaged students. Then they exclude schools in the same district because of concerns about spillover effects. And then the short run analysis includes individual fixed effects and a full set of matched group by year fixed effects. And in the long run analysis utilizes variation across cohorts within school. So with the long run, they have to compare the cohorts who enrolled in the school at the same time of closure with the cohorts who graduated within the last three years relative to those at those match control schools. Hope you got all that
Michael Petrilli:
Right. So the cohorts, for example, these are people who graduated earlier and therefore weren't affected by the closure versus the kids that were affected got caught up in the closure.
Amber Northern:
That's right. Okay. Within the school. So they're still matching those kids. Alright. Finding short run, there is a small decline in standardized math and reading scores following the school closure that subsequently recovers to initial levels within three years. However, the story's a little different on the discipline front. There's a 0.2 day increase in the days of absences immediately after closure, the absences persist for four years post closure. And they also find closure results in a 0.3 day increase in the days of disciplinary action. So kids kind of getting in trouble here right after the closure. And that escalates keeps going up to 0.9 days after four years of the closure. So you've got the test scores rebounding, but the absences persisting four years after where you're still seeing them hanging in there in terms of that impact. Then they look to see how school quality might play a role in all this, and it gets even more complicated.
So they start looking at, okay, what's the difference in quality between a closed school and the nearest school? That's how they measure it. And they find that students displaced to worse performing schools experience a larger drop in test scores. Not surprising. While students displaced to better performing schools experience a larger increase in the days of disciplinary incidents, which is interesting, they dig deeper into school quality. They exclude the displaced students after the school closure and they find that the peer test scores decreased by about one eight standard deviation right after the closure. So the peers are going down. But then they also saw broadly that kids tended to move to schools historically served better performing peers. They're trying to figure out what's going on here with the peer patterns. They dig into it, they find that the kids who are moving in the schools, the move-in students have substantially lower test scores.
And the original students with suggests that the change in school quality in the year of closure is driven by these changes in student composition. Finally, then they look at the long run stuff and they find that the cohorts that experienced closure had an overall experienced overall negative effect. Almost all of those post-secondary education and labor market outcomes, they're negative, but they're small. For instance, experiencing school closure decreases the likelihood of graduating from high school by one percentage point enrolling a four year college by 1.2 percentage point and appears to lead to about $800 lower annual earnings by the age of 25 to 27. But these adverse effects were less pronounced for kids who were in the highest grade at the school because it looked like they were in the terminal grade and they would've moved anyway. So those kids had less impact. Anyway, that's a lot. But they closed with an important point, which is maybe we should be thinking about phasing out gradually instead of abruptly closing schools. They're just not sure whether that would help. We get that schools got to close sometimes, but maybe there's a better way to do it.
Michael Petrilli:
Well, that's not good. That's not good. And I guess there's different versions of bad and worse. The worst thing is to close the school and to send the kid to an even worse school than they were attending before. But I don't know mean. So all this matching stuff, I mean, does this get at, do we think, are we convinced it feels like at the end of the day somebody's making a decision about a school needing to close or not. And if it's because of enrollment, then there's some reason that school that looks similar but is under-enrolled, is under-enrolled. Or if it's because of performance. Again, same thing. I mean, I don't
Amber Northern:
Know. Well, and they actually did dig into the reasons for why the schools were closing and it was completely unsatisfactory because their main reason was 90% closed because of enrollment issues. And I'm like, well, yeah, but that mask a bunch of other stuff that's potentially leading to that enrollment loss. So yeah, it's not that helpful in terms of the reasoning.
Michael Petrilli:
David, what do you think? Are you convinced?
David Griffith:
Well, it's a little hard to be convinced in real time here, but I think it's always important to remember when you're talking about closure, the thing that I always keep in the back of my mind is that it's not just about the kids who are displaced, it's also about future cohorts. In my personal opinion, nobody really closes schools because they think it's an awesome thing for the kids who are going to be displaced. You do it because you feel like it has to happen. And what you really have in mind are the kids who haven't been enrolled in the schools yet, and as you're trying to prevent them from ever being enrolled in the schools. And so in that sense, I always feel like closure studies that focus on displaced students aren't really, I mean it's not that they're missing the point, it's an important question, but there are other important questions as well.
And I also feel like, I mean it is, I'm sure there are multiple things that contribute to any decision, but none of these studies really answer the question, which is really like, when should you close the school? Right? Because the answer can't be never, right? The answer can't be, well, this school could hold a thousand kids, but we're down to 50 and we don't want to close it. I mean, that's not the answer. So what we really need to know is that at what point should we pull the plug, right? At what point does it get so bad that it's time to bite the bullet? And I don't know. I would love to see a study that tried to assess sort of the break even point of closure. I don't know how else to put it, right? But the point beyond which it actually does sort of make sense in a larger sense. And what do you need a 50% enrollment decline, a 25% enrollment decline? My sense is it's somewhere in between those things. But that's just my opinion. So I'm not sure quite how to get at those things, but I think just talking about it as this general phenomenon doesn't really answer the question that we want to answer.
Amber Northern:
I think we've seen some phase out studies in Chicago. I was having a vague memory of covering a study that did some phase out before in Chicago, and it seemed like one of the things that they found just qualitatively was just demoralizing because your school's getting smaller and smaller and smaller every year and you are used to kind of being part of this big school and now you're looking around at a lot of empty seats. And so what is the impact of that on kids as they're left behind as the school is slowly phasing the closure?
Michael Petrilli:
Yep. Well, we got to figure these things out quick because we have a massive wave of school closures almost certainly coming thanks to our very sharp decline in student enrollment. So here we go again. Alright, that is all the time. We've got Ford this week. So until next week,
David Griffith:
I'm David Griffith.
Michael Petrilli:
And I'm Mike Petrolia of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute signing off.
Cheers
Jeers
