The Education Gadfly Weekly

Laurence A. Toenjes and A. Gary Dworkin, Education Policy Analysis Archives
March 21, 2002

In August 2000, Boston College ed school professor Walter Haney sought to dispel what he called "The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education" in a paper for the Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA). Indeed, he said that the tremendous improvement by Texas sophomores on the state's spring exit test was a sham. According to Haney-who has served as an expert witness in a lawsuit claiming that Texas testing program is unfair and discriminates against minority students- the rise in pass rates on the 10th grade Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) from 52 percent to 72 percent between 1994 and 1998 was the result not of higher standards and stronger achievement but of special ed exemptions and weak students dropping out prior to taking the test. Those assertions made a bit of a stir, considering that the 2000 election was then just a couple of months away and candidate George W. Bush was making much of his state's education track record. In this new paper, the University of Houston's Laurence Toenjes and Gary Dworkin say that Haney got it all wrong. Delving into the details of his data and methodology, they show that none of the score improvements can be attributed to dropouts or testing exemptions. Rather, they show, via close examination of "progression ratios" (calculations of Grade 11 enrollment divided by Grade 6 enrollment) that enrollments-including those of minorities-actually rose during the years in question, thereby disproving Haney's assertion that TAAS drives struggling and/or minority students to quit school altogether. Though the analysis is a bit complicated, this debunking of Haney's anti-testing tract is worth a read at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n17/. Haney's paper can be found at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41/.

Audrey Amrein and David Berliner, Education Policy Analysis Archives
March 28, 2002

Audrey Amrein and David Berliner of Arizona State University are the authors of this 70-page cyber-article that seeks to determine whether high-stakes testing has actually boosted student achievement in eighteen states that, say the authors, have attached "severe consequences" to their testing programs. They don't seek evidence from the states' own tests but, rather, from other national data sources. They conclude that high-stakes testing doesn't boost student achievement, that gains shown on state tests are the result of various manipulations (e.g. curricular narrowing, excluding students), and that undesirable consequences are rampant. The essay also serves as another opportunity for Berliner to restate his familiar view that the nation is not and never was "at risk." The piece, overall, is more hatchet job than careful social science. The information they use about many of the eighteen states in their sample is not entirely accurate. For example, they ascribe to a number of states "consequences" that haven't yet taken effect or have affected only a tiny number of students or schools. Their principal sources of external data are college-admissions tests (SAT, ACT, AP) that are not taken by all students and that are less apt to be affected by state-level accountability policies aimed at low-performing students and schools (those being students less apt to even apply to college); and NAEP results, which are not even available at the state level in 12th grade. What sort of social scientist would use NAEP 4th and 8th grade scores to (in the authors' words) "test the effects on learning from using high-stakes tests in states that have implemented high-stakes high school graduation exams"? In sum, I see no basis for accepting the authors' starting premise that "the ACT, SAT, NAEP and AP tests are reasonable measures of the domains that a state's high-stakes testing program is intended to affect." To my eye, they fail to make their case. If, nonetheless, you'd like to see for yourself, surf to http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n18/. If you'd like to see more systematic rebuttals of the claim that tests don't boost student achievement, by Cornell's John Bishop and colleagues, you can find two of them (in PDF format) at http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/depts/cahrs/PDFs/WorkingPapers/WP00-09.pdf and http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/depts/cahrs/PDFs/WorkingPapers/WP98-27.pdf. You may also want to check out the 2001 edition of Brookings Papers on Education Policy, edited by Diane Ravitch, about which you can learn more at http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/press/books/bpep2001.htm.

Frederick M. Hess
2002

Brookings has just published this important book by Frederick M. Hess, a young but insightful political scientist at the University of Virginia. Based on case studies of Cleveland, Milwaukee and Edgewood, Texas (the San Antonio district with the most ambitious privately-funded voucher program), this volume tries, in the author's words, to provide "a more nuanced consideration of the way education competition works in practice," to "shed light on the ways in which urban system structure and practice hamper efforts to improve urban schooling," and to advance understanding of "the promise that market-driven reform holds for the provision of public services." He concludes that competition is a useful but limited strategy for the reform of urban education, in itself not powerful enough to transform dysfunctional school systems. He outlines a number of other strategies for change. It's a perceptive book, though I'm ultimately unpersuaded by his explanation of why a "hybrid" combining market forces with top-down, results-based accountability won't work better than either strategy taken alone. Serious followers of contemporary education policy debates will want their own copies. The ISBN is 0815702094. You can learn more at http://www.brookings.edu/savingsforthepoor/revolution%5Fmargins.htm.

Amy M. Hightower, Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy
January 2002

This report describes the efforts of the nation's eighth largest school district to use the coercive power of bureaucracy to create an education system grounded in effective principles of teaching and learning. The author, Stanford's Amy Hightower, notes up front that she is trying to meld two characterizations-districts as bureaucratic and districts as learning-centric-that have traditionally been seen as polar opposites. For the better part of two decades the bureaucracies of large, urban school districts have been vilified by education reformers as "dysfunctional dinosaurs," "intransigent," and "beyond reform." Hightower claims that a small set of divergent examples now challenges the image of school districts as irrelevant, hopelessly disjointed, and bureaucratically hamstrung. One such example is San Diego. In March 1998, Alan D. Bersin, a former U.S. Attorney, was named as the city's new superintendent and charged with pulling the school system out of its "organizational rut." One of Bersin's first acts was to recruit educator Anthony Alvarado to serve as his Chancellor of Instruction and co-leader of reform. This dynamic duo declared that the "status quo was no longer acceptable." They made clear that they would use their bureaucratic power to refocus the system on instructional issues. They set about to "jolt the system." They opposed those who advocated incremental reforms and used every available mechanism of coercion to transform a system entrenched in standard operating procedures to one where administrators, principals, and teachers worked together to improve instruction across the city. Bersin's chief of staff succinctly expressed the bottom line: "There are two types of people in this [district] community. There are the teachers and those who support teaching....And if you can't fit into one of those two categories, if you can't accept your role in one of those two categories, then you need to leave." Their strategy has its critics. A top-ranking administrator argued (upon exiting the system) that an "era of intimidation" had begun. Teacher unionists asserted that reforms were being forced on them. Despite the dissent, Hightower writes, the San Diego City Schools show how a district can employ bureaucratic methods to destroy a dysfunctional culture and create something grounded in effective learning and teaching. But, she adds, despite initial success-SAT-9 scores increased three years in a row-it is too early to know whether these changes will prove durable. This report is available at http://www.ctpweb.org.

For charter schools in Chicago, accountability is simple: you don't perform, you don't survive. Last week, the city's charter czar shut down Nuestra America Charter School, where test scores had plummeted, as had attendance. But an editorial in The Chicago Tribune argues that the school's involuntary closure demonstrates how well the charter model works. As the editorial notes, regular public schools that fail ask for more time to get their acts together. They also seek more money-and they usually get both. Charter schools are far more accountable. While Nuestra America failed, all but two of the city's charter schools are surpassing their neighborhood public schools, several of them by large margins, according to a study released by the Chicago Public Schools. "Charters are moving beyond experiments," the editorial concludes. "Now it's time for neighborhood schools to explore why 12 of Chicago's 14 charters are outperforming them." "When failure means success," editorial, The Chicago Tribune, April 1, 2002.

Americans tend to feel warm, proud, and a mite smug when they hear the phrase "Head Start." Aside from Social Security, it's the most beloved of all federal domestic programs. But no complacency is warranted. Head Start is one of those swell ideas from the 1960's that urgently needs reforming for the 21st Century. One study after another has shown that it's good at hugging little children, keeping them safe, giving them healthy snacks, even getting them to the dentist, but does nothing of lasting value to prepare them to read, write and do arithmetic.

Earlier this week, President Bush proposed a Head Start makeover. He wants it to incorporate a true preschool curriculum, centering on the skills a child needs when entering kindergarten so as to have the best chance of learning there, especially learning to read there. These skills include knowing sounds, shapes, words and colors, even letters and numbers. He would retrain Head Start staff members-many of whom never completed college-so that they would be better able to impart such skills to their 900,000 young charges. And (following the mandate of a 1999 law supported by Bill Clinton) he would evaluate the nation's thousands of Head Start centers to see how well they're fulfilling this mission.

It's a timely and needed rethinking of a familiar and popular program, meant to get more educational bang from the $6.5 billion already being spent on it-some $7000 per young participant, equal to what's spent on schooling their older siblings.

But the preschool establishment wants no part of this reform. Head Start has been around for nearly four decades-it began as part of LBJ's "War on Poverty"-and over the years it has become stubbornly set in its ways and acquired its own army of adult interest groups that resist change.

At the head of this army is the National Head Start Association, which swiftly attacked the Bush reform plan. It makes "little sense," intoned Association president Sarah Greene. It "subjects our youngest children to standardized testing" and "wastes a great deal of money."

No "standardized testing" is involved in Mr. Bush's plan and the "wasted" money would be spent on staff training and program evaluations. But Ms. Greene and her associates don't want those things. Like many in the early childhood field, they view Head Start's mission as fostering "child development" or, worse, providing day-care, not running true preschools. They're content with hugs, snowsuits, blocks, swings, gerbils, carrot sticks, and dentist visits. They shun responsibility for advancing a child's cognitive development.

Yet that's precisely what Mr. Bush wants them to do. And what they ought to do. He accurately notes that tens of thousands of young Americans enter kindergarten each year without having developed the skills they need to succeed there. Many of the least-prepared children are poor and minority. If, as the President says, "reading is the new civil right," it's imperative to get disadvantaged youngsters ready for it.

When Bill Bennett, John Cribb, and I wrote The Educated Child a couple of years back, we decided to list essential "kindergarten readiness" skills. To our surprise, it filled four pages. Some items are things that Head Start programs have long done. But most have serious cognitive components, such as "knows what an alphabet letter is," "places a short series of events in correct order," "recognizes common sounds," "counts aloud to ten" and "recalls basic facts about stories." Expertly parented children get most of these at home. But disadvantaged girls and boys usually need other adults to help them learn such things. That's the proper mandate of Head Start and other preschool programs.

The National Head Start Association is not the only naysayer. Its views of childhood are shared by many other groups that partake in what E. D. Hirsch terms the "naturalistic fallacy of developmentalism": the view that children ought not have their minds stretched by systematic adult efforts to fill them with skills and knowledge. This remains the dominant philosophy of early childhood educators in America. But it's contradicted by research, common sense, and the experience of other countries. It's also one of the biggest reasons that too many of our children enter school unprepared to learn and exit without having learned nearly enough. As the clamor mounts to create "universal" preschool opportunities, George W. Bush is right to insist that we stop wasting those we already have, especially those designed for the neediest children in our midst.

For more guidance on the issue of early childhood education, see pages 79-91 of The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them, by E.D. Hirsch, Doubleday, 1996. (Available through major book retailers.)

See also pages 37-40 of The Educated Child: A Parent's Guide from Preschool through Eighth Grade, by William J. Bennett, Chester E. Finn, Jr., and John T. E. Cribb, Jr., The Free Press, 1999. (Available through major book retailers.)

Two education experts squared off on the issue of early childhood education in the summer 2001 edition of Education Next. See "Do Preschoolers Need Academic Content?" by Grover Whitehurst (now assistant secretary of education for research and improvement) and "Early Childhood Education: Developmental or Academic" by Tufts University professor David Elkind.

"Bush Offers Plan to Improve Head Start's Teacher Training," by David E. Sanger, The New York Times, April 3, 2002

The California Teachers' Union is receiving a lot of press lately-most of it bad-for its forceful effort to expand the scope of collective bargaining in the state to include matters of curriculum and instruction. There is much pushback, including hostile editorials in every major newspaper in the state. A continent away, however, the Maryland legislature is quietly poised to hand over many of the same powers to the Maryland State Teachers Association. A bill passed last week by the state Senate would add curriculum selection, classroom assignments, teacher evaluations, and other topics to the list of issues that teachers' unions can bargain. The legislation, which is being pushed by Governor Parris Glendening (and termed by some his parting gift to the teachers' union) is expected to pass the House of Delegates easily. (That chamber overwhelmingly supported an even broader version of the legislation last year. It was the Senate that resisted then.) Local school boards and superintendents have ardently lobbied against the measure, arguing that education decisions should not be decided at the bargaining table. For details see "Senate passes bill to expand teacher bargaining power," by Howard Libit, Baltimore Sun, March 26, 2002

In Chicago, the teachers' union is creating a graduate program in teacher leadership aimed at making teachers "agents of change." Teachers who earn the two-year degree will be eligible for a $6,000 pay hike. For more see "Teachers union launches unique graduate school," by Rosalind Rossi, Chicago Sun-Times, March 29, 2002.

Amy M. Hightower, Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy
January 2002

This report describes the efforts of the nation's eighth largest school district to use the coercive power of bureaucracy to create an education system grounded in effective principles of teaching and learning. The author, Stanford's Amy Hightower, notes up front that she is trying to meld two characterizations-districts as bureaucratic and districts as learning-centric-that have traditionally been seen as polar opposites. For the better part of two decades the bureaucracies of large, urban school districts have been vilified by education reformers as "dysfunctional dinosaurs," "intransigent," and "beyond reform." Hightower claims that a small set of divergent examples now challenges the image of school districts as irrelevant, hopelessly disjointed, and bureaucratically hamstrung. One such example is San Diego. In March 1998, Alan D. Bersin, a former U.S. Attorney, was named as the city's new superintendent and charged with pulling the school system out of its "organizational rut." One of Bersin's first acts was to recruit educator Anthony Alvarado to serve as his Chancellor of Instruction and co-leader of reform. This dynamic duo declared that the "status quo was no longer acceptable." They made clear that they would use their bureaucratic power to refocus the system on instructional issues. They set about to "jolt the system." They opposed those who advocated incremental reforms and used every available mechanism of coercion to transform a system entrenched in standard operating procedures to one where administrators, principals, and teachers worked together to improve instruction across the city. Bersin's chief of staff succinctly expressed the bottom line: "There are two types of people in this [district] community. There are the teachers and those who support teaching....And if you can't fit into one of those two categories, if you can't accept your role in one of those two categories, then you need to leave." Their strategy has its critics. A top-ranking administrator argued (upon exiting the system) that an "era of intimidation" had begun. Teacher unionists asserted that reforms were being forced on them. Despite the dissent, Hightower writes, the San Diego City Schools show how a district can employ bureaucratic methods to destroy a dysfunctional culture and create something grounded in effective learning and teaching. But, she adds, despite initial success-SAT-9 scores increased three years in a row-it is too early to know whether these changes will prove durable. This report is available at http://www.ctpweb.org.

Audrey Amrein and David Berliner, Education Policy Analysis Archives
March 28, 2002

Audrey Amrein and David Berliner of Arizona State University are the authors of this 70-page cyber-article that seeks to determine whether high-stakes testing has actually boosted student achievement in eighteen states that, say the authors, have attached "severe consequences" to their testing programs. They don't seek evidence from the states' own tests but, rather, from other national data sources. They conclude that high-stakes testing doesn't boost student achievement, that gains shown on state tests are the result of various manipulations (e.g. curricular narrowing, excluding students), and that undesirable consequences are rampant. The essay also serves as another opportunity for Berliner to restate his familiar view that the nation is not and never was "at risk." The piece, overall, is more hatchet job than careful social science. The information they use about many of the eighteen states in their sample is not entirely accurate. For example, they ascribe to a number of states "consequences" that haven't yet taken effect or have affected only a tiny number of students or schools. Their principal sources of external data are college-admissions tests (SAT, ACT, AP) that are not taken by all students and that are less apt to be affected by state-level accountability policies aimed at low-performing students and schools (those being students less apt to even apply to college); and NAEP results, which are not even available at the state level in 12th grade. What sort of social scientist would use NAEP 4th and 8th grade scores to (in the authors' words) "test the effects on learning from using high-stakes tests in states that have implemented high-stakes high school graduation exams"? In sum, I see no basis for accepting the authors' starting premise that "the ACT, SAT, NAEP and AP tests are reasonable measures of the domains that a state's high-stakes testing program is intended to affect." To my eye, they fail to make their case. If, nonetheless, you'd like to see for yourself, surf to http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n18/. If you'd like to see more systematic rebuttals of the claim that tests don't boost student achievement, by Cornell's John Bishop and colleagues, you can find two of them (in PDF format) at http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/depts/cahrs/PDFs/WorkingPapers/WP00-09.pdf and http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/depts/cahrs/PDFs/WorkingPapers/WP98-27.pdf. You may also want to check out the 2001 edition of Brookings Papers on Education Policy, edited by Diane Ravitch, about which you can learn more at http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/press/books/bpep2001.htm.

Frederick M. Hess
2002

Brookings has just published this important book by Frederick M. Hess, a young but insightful political scientist at the University of Virginia. Based on case studies of Cleveland, Milwaukee and Edgewood, Texas (the San Antonio district with the most ambitious privately-funded voucher program), this volume tries, in the author's words, to provide "a more nuanced consideration of the way education competition works in practice," to "shed light on the ways in which urban system structure and practice hamper efforts to improve urban schooling," and to advance understanding of "the promise that market-driven reform holds for the provision of public services." He concludes that competition is a useful but limited strategy for the reform of urban education, in itself not powerful enough to transform dysfunctional school systems. He outlines a number of other strategies for change. It's a perceptive book, though I'm ultimately unpersuaded by his explanation of why a "hybrid" combining market forces with top-down, results-based accountability won't work better than either strategy taken alone. Serious followers of contemporary education policy debates will want their own copies. The ISBN is 0815702094. You can learn more at http://www.brookings.edu/savingsforthepoor/revolution%5Fmargins.htm.

Laurence A. Toenjes and A. Gary Dworkin, Education Policy Analysis Archives
March 21, 2002

In August 2000, Boston College ed school professor Walter Haney sought to dispel what he called "The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education" in a paper for the Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA). Indeed, he said that the tremendous improvement by Texas sophomores on the state's spring exit test was a sham. According to Haney-who has served as an expert witness in a lawsuit claiming that Texas testing program is unfair and discriminates against minority students- the rise in pass rates on the 10th grade Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) from 52 percent to 72 percent between 1994 and 1998 was the result not of higher standards and stronger achievement but of special ed exemptions and weak students dropping out prior to taking the test. Those assertions made a bit of a stir, considering that the 2000 election was then just a couple of months away and candidate George W. Bush was making much of his state's education track record. In this new paper, the University of Houston's Laurence Toenjes and Gary Dworkin say that Haney got it all wrong. Delving into the details of his data and methodology, they show that none of the score improvements can be attributed to dropouts or testing exemptions. Rather, they show, via close examination of "progression ratios" (calculations of Grade 11 enrollment divided by Grade 6 enrollment) that enrollments-including those of minorities-actually rose during the years in question, thereby disproving Haney's assertion that TAAS drives struggling and/or minority students to quit school altogether. Though the analysis is a bit complicated, this debunking of Haney's anti-testing tract is worth a read at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n17/. Haney's paper can be found at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41/.