After watching the interview with Michelle "The Hammer" Rhee (so named by her detractors for "hammering" away at the calcified system and "nailing" incompetent teachers), you may need a break. Why not play a board game from the Washington City Paper poking fun at how hard it really is to fire a DCPS teacher? Fun abounds, but don't get stuck on the "Teacher Files a Grievance" square!

"N.J. raises bar for pupil test scores":

New Jersey made it harder yesterday for public school students to prove their proficiency on state exams--a change that could cause more schools to run afoul of the federal No Child Left Behind Act....

... with the changes, passing rates are likely to drop in a majority of tests, markedly in some cases, [Education Commissioner Lucille Davy] said.

In sixth grade, for example, state estimates show the language arts passing rate would have risen from 76 percent to 80 percent this year using the old cut scores, but instead will drop to 54 percent.

In an age when most states are wimping out on standards, one wonders how on earth the Board of Education mustered the will to do this. On the other hand, one wonders what, exactly, this means:

To provide districts some short-term protection against the predicted drop in passage rates, state officials plan to reduce the proficiency requirements considered by No Child--but set by the state.

Pure speculation or not, I find compelling Mike's lead editorial in this week's Gadfly, which argues that extra-curricular activities in U.S. K-12 education foster "creativity, leadership, and the other '21st Century skills' that employers crave."

But his closing line, light-hearted as it is, really disappoints, because it exemplifies the wrong-headed thinking that permeates ed policy and engenders so many ridiculous ideas for revamping K-12 to make us "more competitive." He says:

So the next time that foreigners come to investigate what accounts for America's economic success, don't show them the extra-curriculars. They're our secret weapons; we might want to keep it that way!

To all you K-12 ambassadors out there, please don't listen to Mike. If China dispatches a special envoy to come study our schools, show them everything we've got. Contrary to what Mike and many much more irrational fear-mongerers out there suggest, we want foreign economies to thrive, because trade is not a zero-sum game; improving circumstances in one country benefit us all.

The Economist reports this week on Randi Weingarten's election to the AFT presidency.

Candidates Obama and McCain have both spoken about their support??for merit pay for teachers. NPR's Morning Edition wondered if such pay plans actually work, so??reporter Larry Abramson went to Colorado to find out.??

After interviewing a teacher who has benefited financially from??merit pay, but who doesn't believe the bonuses have actually improved her teaching ability, Abramson asks:

This raises another question: Is performance pay working if it just rewards teachers who are already doing a good job?

Wow. Can we imagine such a question being applied to another professional field? Is performance pay working if it just rewards LeBron James when he's already doing a good job? If NPR's reporters??have handy??a dictionary, and they must, they might want to check out the definitional passage below the word??incentive.??

Judging from several of the comments on my last post, the ideas that undergird merit pay for teachers are not lost only on NPR reporters. Corey, for example, writes:

Does LeBron play better when he's paid $20 million than if he, and everybody else, were paid $1 million? That's a legitimate question. And different from asking if it's fair to pay LeBron the same as everybody else when he's clearly better.

It's also a different question than asking whether the players currently earning $1 million will work harder to try and earn as much as LeBron than they would if they had no potential for salary increases.

What is missing here is an understanding of, inter alia, the job market. Merit pay is engineered not only to develop better teachers by encouraging those already in the field to work harder, but it's also--and maybe more so--designed to attract talented people to classrooms and keep the best teachers from leaving and pursuing other careers. So, yes, it is incredibly foolish to ask, as Larry Abramson did, "Is performance pay working if it just rewards teachers who are already doing a good job?"

The new issue is out. Where to begin? Mike tells us why the U.S. educational system is so successful (yup, successful), Checker tells us why Randi Weingarten is no Al Shanker, and Amber tells us why there are problems with the latest study from Jay Greene et al. This week's edition tested positive for EPO, and we're not ashamed to admit it.

It occurs to me that we may need to start on this blog a "Quick and the Ed Watch" category. It's not that we want to, you see; it's that somebody needs to.

The reason is exemplified by Kevin Carey's latest post about John McCain, in which the blogger is upset by the following sentence, from McCain's speech to the NAACP, that laments that talented people without proper certification are barred from teaching in public schools: "They don't have all the proper credits in educational ???theory' or ???methodology'--all they have is learning and the desire and ability to share it."

Carey is exercised by the inclusion within quotation marks ("contemptuous quotes," he calls them) of theory and methodology. Such punctuative liberty is "ridiculous," Carey writes. Furthermore, he continues, it "is garden variety anti-intellectualism and doesn't speak well of Senator McCain's approach to policy or other matters."

But are we so sure that knowing about educational theory and methodology, be they quoted contemptuously or not, is a necessary condition for effectively running a classroom? Is it not true that much of this theory and methodology is a relatively modern invention, one that did not exist a half-century ago, when fine teachers surely did? And knowing what we know about the education school curriculum, knowing what we know about the impenetrable, jargon-ish, gobbledygook that goes by the names theory and methodology, is it so ridiculous that McCain would choose to surround those terms with quotation marks, as if to say, "This is what they call it. But who knows what it is in actuality."?

I think not. Nor do I think that Carey puts forth anything close to a convincing or logical or evidence-based argument to support his umbrage. Nor do I understand his last two paragraphs:

This is garden variety anti-intellectualism and doesn't speak well of Senator McCain's approach to policy or other matters. One could imagine, for example, that having a lot of knowledge about war and a desire to conduct wars but lacking a larger theoretical understanding of geo-politics and the methods of statecraft might lead one to actively support a ruinous foreign war and then continue to support it even after its ruinousness has become obvious for all to see.

In theory.

Alas, what are we to make of these meaningless lines, which unfortunately drip with a sort of un-clever, too-righteous, too-self-serious sarcasm that calls to mind the rantings of those sign-waving folks that one must occasionally dodge when attempting to execute a relaxing jog on the National Mall? We wonder: Can this impugnation of Senator McCain's war plans be somehow related to attracting to classrooms qualified teachers, or to education in any way? Are Carey's observations by any objective standard humorous or informative? Sadly, we cannot help but also wonder: Does this blogger even have a damn clue about the substance behind the words he so casually flips on to the screen?

This is all a??real bummer for me, too, you see. I'd be ever so willing to take more vacation time??this summer, but I'm??concerned that were certain bloggers to discover my imminent virtual absence, they would??hastily prepare bucketfuls of posts like the one noted above and then would, once I had boarded my overpriced flight to Tonga, let fly with a barrage of blog blather like none yet seen, safe in their assumption that their ill-founded fulminations would go unopposed.??Alas, I believe in accountability, and??for that??reason I remain firmly ensconsed behind my desk.

Even if education isn't at the top of the list for Senators Obama or McCain during this election season, it remains a major concern for governors and CEOs. That's because they see a direct link between educational achievement and economic growth. And this spring, Education Next published research by Hoover Institution scholar Eric Hanushek and colleagues that illustrated this link. The analysts found that, in general, the higher a country scored on international tests of math and science, the faster its economy grew from 1960 to 2000.

Of course, there was one whopping exception: our very own U.S. of A. Hanushek et al write, "The United States has never done well on international assessments of student achievement. Instead, its level of cognitive skills is only about average among the developed countries. Yet the country's GDP growth rate has been higher than average over the past century. If cognitive skills are so important to economic growth, how can we explain the puzzling case of the U.S.?"

They answer their own question by pointing to factors in the larger economy: our relatively free labor markets, minimal regulation of industry, lower tax rates, etc. They also suspect that our historical lead in achieving universal public education, and our excellent system of higher education, might deserve some of the credit.

But there's one obvious entity they don't mention: today's K-12 schools. Isn't it possible that the American primary-secondary education system might be doing something right? While it's lousy at producing academic achievement, as measured by math and science tests, perhaps it's great at producing individuals with the skills, attitudes, and habits that drive the economy toward higher levels of growth.

That seems to be why so many countries send teams of educators to the U.S. to study our education system: they want to know how to produce the next Bill Gates or Sergey Brin, the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. But here's where most such visitors err: they tend to look inside our classrooms. They might be wiser to look at what's happening outside of them, for it might be our extra-curricular activities that represent the true genius of today's American education system, at least when it comes to fostering creativity, leadership, and the other "21st Century skills" that employers crave.

That's right: our athletic programs, student councils, debate clubs, school newspapers, orchestras, theater troupes, FFAs, and the rest of the panoply of after-school activities might be boosting America's economic output. While Asian kids are cramming at "exam cram schools" and European youngsters are smoking Gitanes in sidewalk cafés, our students are engaged in activities that give them the confidence to achieve in myriad ways--a taste of achievement they then carry into the world of work.

No, I can't prove it; our able research assistant searched and searched and couldn't find any studies examining this potential link. And not everybody buys it, not even among my Fordham colleagues. (See, for example, Checker Finn's piece below.) But the literature is full of evidence that students who participate in extra-curriculars tend to have stronger "social self-concept," more "cultural capital," loftier educational aspirations, diminished absenteeism, and greater college attendance. This is no secret; it's why elite colleges want to see extra-curricular activities on applicants' resumes--fueling an extra-curricular arms race in some elite high schools. (The research also indicates diminishing returns once students overload on activities, so a good rule is "everything in moderation.")

Absent conclusive research proof, let's rely on a little common sense. Try this thought experiment yourself. Think of the skills you use on a daily basis in your job. These may include setting goals and working toward them, collaborating with colleagues, speaking publicly, organizing your time effectively, designing and leading projects and project teams, listening to the concerns of others, competing against other organizations, and juggling multiple duties. Now ponder: back in high school, did you get to practice these skills more often during class time or during extra-curricular activities? I strongly suspect it was the latter.

That's not to say that the formal curriculum holds no value. Of course it does. If your job requires you to write well, thank your English teacher. And of course our schools aim to do more than produce economic powerhouses; we study history and civics because we want to enrich our democracy, not because it will help us out-compete the EU and the Asian tigers.

But it does suggest that our culture of extra-curricular activities--a culture that transcends schools (think Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, church youth groups, etc.)--might be a precious resource deserving of support. Yet this particular resource is increasingly under attack from several directions.

First, in times of budget crunch, school boards are tempted to consider extra-curriculars as, well, extras, frills even. Such activities are often the first to go. And with the baby-boomers about to retire and put a huge squeeze on public resources, and with the proportion of American households with school-age children down to 25 percent, any rational forecaster would say that tougher financial times are ahead for our schools, at least in the long term. That could spell disaster for extra-curriculars.

But they are also under attack from some reformers. Consider the "small schools" movement, which might have its virtues but which results in tiny schools that can't support many, if any, extra-curriculars. (Granted, some find ways to make it work, like the KIPP charter school in the Bronx that boasts a world-class orchestra program in which every pupil participates.) Or contemplate the "dual enrollment" movement, which encourages high school kids to spend time on college campuses. Again, there are good reasons to support this, but it likely draws teenagers away from sports, theater, orchestra, etc. We should consider whether the trade-offs are worth it.

Perhaps the greatest threat comes from online learning. Clay Christensen predicts that half of all high school courses will soon be taken virtually. He's probably right, because it's much more efficient and less frustrating to impart knowledge individually to students via the Web than via a traditional classroom. But what if more and more teenagers stay home all day and learn via computer, and skip the sports and clubs and all the rest? Academic achievement might go up while the proportion of students with "people skills" goes down. (Here's a suggestion: architects designing high schools of the future should skip the classrooms but keep the gym, the auditorium, and other common spaces. In other words, forget the "school" and build a "community center" instead. Kids could learn academics at home and come to the center for all the rest.)

So the next time that foreigners come to investigate what accounts for America's economic success, don't show them the extra-curriculars. They're our secret weapons; we might want to keep it that way!

A quarter century after A Nation at Risk, a growing number of America's education leaders appear to be abandoning hope for schools that significantly boost student achievement and are instead coming to view schools as multi-service community centers that do everything but teach. Which circumnavigates the vexing fact that bona fide achievement gains have proven difficult to bring about--and that a lot of educators don't want to be held to account for their pupils learning more.

The timing of this shift of focus couldn't be worse, however, as more states are beginning to report stronger test scores, at least in math and reading, thanks in no small part to the past two decades' fixation on standards, assessments, and accountability (see here and here). Meanwhile, America's standing on international comparisons continues to sag and employers despair over their inability to find adequately skilled and knowledgeable workers for our faltering economy.

Yet read closely the inaugural address of Randi Weingarten as president of the American Federation of Teachers, in which she promises to obliterate NCLB and the culture of testing (all the while professing allegiance to "standards" that have no meaning or traction if performance in relation to them isn't measured). Instead, she seeks a massive new program of federal aid to "community schools...that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need." (Dental care, legal assistance, you name it, just about everything except high-level teaching and learning of important skills and content. She actually sounds a wee bit like my colleague Mike Petrilli! See his commentary above.)

Weingarten's speech echoed the recent manifesto of the "broader, bolder" crowd, which downplays "basic academic skills and cognitive growth" and "learning that occurs in formal school settings during the years from kindergarten through high school" and instead urges reorienting U.S. education policy toward "high-quality early childhood and pre-school programs, after-school and summer programs, and programs that develop parents' capacity to support their children's education...[as well as] working relationships between schools and surrounding community institutions...[and] development of the whole person, including physical health, character, social development, and non-academic skills."

Signers of that one include such luminaries as Tom Payzant, James Comer, Rudy Crew, Linda Darling-Hammond, Arne Duncan, John Goodlad, Arthur Levine, Richard Rothstein, Marshall Smith, Ted Sizer, and our own Diane Ravitch.

Nor is this impulse confined to educators. Even the U.S. Congress is showing similar proclivities of late. While making no discernible progress on renewing and repairing NCLB, the House Education and Labor Committee has been churning out new federal programs that seem to address everything except kids actually learning the 3 Rs, let alone literature, history, art, civics, and science. Recent committee initiatives bear on pre-school, "early childhood home visits," field trips to nature reserves (dubbed the "No Child Left Inside" act), school building modernization, and much more. It's unknowable today whether these measures will make it through the legislative meat grinder to the president's desk, much less get funded via the appropriations process. What's significant is that this is how the education committee is now spending its time.

Historically, American K-12 education has cycled between a focus on "academic excellence" and broader, more diffuse, "whole child" sorts of concerns. There are signs that such a shift is happening now. And it's a darn shame. Yesterday's push for achievement hasn't yet produced the learning gains we need. But it may be starting to do so. The surest way to curb tomorrow's gains is to change the policy focus and ease the pressure. As for the AFT's future direction, all I can say is that President Weingarten's early signals do no credit to Al Shanker's legacy.