The long-anticipated conversion of seven inner-city District of Columbia Catholic schools to charter schools is finally official . No, it's not a perfect solution to the schools' financial ills, but kinda like democracy, it's the least worst option available. Kudos to the D.C. Charter School Board for granting its unanimous approval. Now let this fascinating social experiment begin.
Diane Ravitch, Fordham board member and peerless education commenter, writes:
I find myself getting really annoyed when people rage against the teachers' unions, because they are the organized voice of most of the people who work in schools. The same people who vilify the teachers' unions never complain about the influence of businesses or foundations, both of which try to steer the public schools by the power of the purse.
It all comes down to whether schools??should serve adults or children. Business??interests are aligned with producing schools that serve children--they want well-educated students who will eventually become well-educated workers. (It's true, though, that business-minded school reformers??sometimes forget about the importance of curriculum and instruction.) On the other hand, the interests of teachers' unions directly compete in oh-so-many obvious ways with the interests of students. Furthermore,??unions may technically be "the organized voices of most of the people who work in schools," but they hardly represent the interests of all teachers--especially disadvantaged by union policies are young teachers and good teachers.
What business mostly wants: results-based education,??standards, accountability, innovative management, choice, educational markets. What unions mostly want: more money, more teachers (smaller classes), less testing, less focus on educational outcomes. Oversimplification? Slightly (it is a blog post, after all). But mostly true.
I'm with the union on this one. Let my weekends go!
Check out this Education Week article for a preview of Charles Murray's latest book, Real Education. Want a glimpse? Referring to college-level textbooks, Murray argues that "We're talking about material that only about 10 percent of high school graduates can understand."
He calls that speaking "truth." We call it fatalism. Yes, Dr. Murray, asking schools to achieve universal proficiency in reading and math is stupid, but so is settling for the results our education system is currently attaining. As a wise philosopher once said, there must be a middle way.
The Florida Teachers Union and friends sued the state on Friday to remove pro-voucher proposals from the November ballot, including a provision designed to restore, you guessed it, the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which was ruled unconstitutional in 2006 (D.C.'s version of the program may face a similar fate). The conspiracy theorists hold that the amendments are "part of a well-organized, well-financed campaign to outsource public schools" (yawn). Others believe that the issue needs to be decided by the voters as opposed to the union (or the courts)--a novel idea indeed.
Speaking of the economics-related back and forth between my colleagues here, a new report out by RAND last week compiles a series of papers presented at a November 2006 conference on U.S. economic competitiveness (yes, that took awhile). It's a pretty meaty compilation with lots of interesting good-news, bad-news data and insights from leading economists, engineers, and other scientists.
What caught my attention, though, was this news article that picked up on a particular stat in the lengthy report. We're told that "overseas talent" is helping to augment our science and engineering workforce since "70 percent of [foreign born students] elect to remain in the U.S. after completing their degrees." Phoebe Leboy, President of the Association for Women in Science, is apparently concerned that most immigrants "do not serve as good role models for our students" since children better identify with those who appear to come from a similar background. It got me thinking about the research on the question of teacher-student race and its relationship to student achievement, which has fascinated many a scholar. In short, the findings are mixed (yes, I know, we get tired of hearing that). Still, I prefer to think that a scientist's or engineer's strong content knowledge and passion for the subject matter is far more important in inspiring and challenging would-be scientists and engineers than is his skin color, accent, and/or nationality.
Mike thinks I'm overzealous in questioning the zeal with which ed reformers tie America's sub-par schools to forecasts of economic doom. There is, he argues, compelling evidence that economic growth is influenced by educational achievement, an arena where the United States typically trails lots of other countries. For instance, a recent Education Next article and an accompanying graph suggest that "cognitive skills," as measured by norm-referenced test scores, correlate positively with economic growth; the authors claim that "a highly skilled work force can raise economic growth by about two-thirds of a percentage point every year."
They also acknowledge, however, that the United States "has had a higher growth rate [from 1960 to 2000] than would be expected given its test scores and levels of school attainment." We can thank a number of factors for this lucky bit of American exceptionalism:
...the United States has other advantages, some of which are entirely separate and apart from the quality of its schooling. The U.S. maintains generally freer labor and product markets than most countries in the world. There is less government regulation of firms, and trade unions are less powerful than in many other countries. Put more broadly, the U.S. has generally less intrusion of government in the operation of the economy, including lower tax rates and minimal government production through nationalized industries. Taken together, these characteristics of the U.S. economy encourage investment, permit the rapid development of new products and activities by firms, and allow U.S. workers to adjust to new opportunities.
The United States has some subtler quirks, too, that are perhaps no less important to its economic strength and stamina. It has, for instance, K-12 schools and universities that are less beholden to a central agency than those of other countries, which may contribute to their ability to cultivate eccentric, creative types who revolutionize or spawn entire industries, even if they fail to churn out bevies of exam-acing engineers. It has high levels of productivity that may or may not be culturally rooted in something like the "Protestant work ethic" or the romantic inspiration of the "American Dream." It has a uniquely diverse population thanks to high levels of immigration, both historically and presently. It has a voracious appetite for consumables and lots of enterprising folks to provide them. It has Wall Street. It has Silicon Valley. It has Hollywood.
Economists try hard to classify and organize the material transactions and social interactions that create growth, and they're amazingly good at it. But even the most illuminating studies pierce but a little of the darkness that obscures the complex workings of our economy. It is because of our inadequacy as humans of limited intelligence to fully comprehend this mind-boggling complexity, more than anything else, that we should be wary of forecasts of economic catastrophe. For the common result of such alarm-ringing, usually framed in rhetoric much stronger than the prognosticator's confidence in his actual claims, is an eventual unpleasant confrontation with the beast of unintended consequences. (George Will's column yesterday on proposed changes to baseball--another exquisite example of American exceptionalism, by the way--offered some eloquent thoughts on this age-old but still neglected phenomenon.)
Mike and the authors of the Education Next piece are surely right that if American students, all things being equal, performed better on tests, the U.S. economy would see added growth. But knee-jerking lawmakers (at whom most of the economic competitiveness laments are aimed) are clumsy and in their attempts to "fix" math and science education won't leave all things equal. They're likely to improve scores by a small amount at best and wreak further havoc on the schools, and even the economy, at worst.
Last week the Wall Street Journal editors defended D.C.'s voucher program after the Washington Post reported that its days could be numbered. They made the decent point that "The $7,500 voucher is a bargain for taxpayers because it costs the public schools about 50% more, or $13,000 a year, to educate a child in the public schools." It would have been an excellent point, though, had they known and let it be known that in reality the district spends closer to $24,000 per pupil.
Education poobahs from everywhere will??go this week to??Orlando for a k-12 summit hosted by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and friends. In yesterday's Orlando Sentinel, I wrote about the need for summit participants (and legislators and bureaucrats generally) to forget the hype and avoid focusing overmuch on dropout rates--that is, on the numbers themselves, which are essentially meaningless because states can render receipt of a diploma as difficult or facile as they wish. Lots of states have already succumbed to "lower the dropout rate" pressure by defanging their exit exams.
Two readers thought my piece worth commenting on on the Sentinel's online site, and both had the same gripe: that my??article didn't even mention student accountability. This is a complaint that I frequently stumble upon, especially in comments sections where readers post opinions about the op-eds they've just ingested. In this??particular ed-related observation??(anong sundry others),??the thinking public is far ahead of 1) the education thinktankerati and 2) government officials. One surmises that not a few thoughtful individuals have surmised that not a few high school students are screw-ups who don't want to be in school, don't want to learn, and don't want to behave. Many of them will probably drop out, and many people seem to think that's generally okay because at some point in time a 17-year-old has to take some responsibility for his own education and life. (Al Shanker, longtime AFT president,??believed in student accountability, too.)
To utter such thoughts today is generally??not acceptable in polite, ed-policy company, the membership of which concocts dreamy goals such as 100 percent proficiency by 2014. (Soon enough, we'll have national 100 percent high school graduation targets.) Such student accountability observations are termed "unhelpful" and "unprodcutive." Of course, they're also true. But??frankness is frowned upon, and so we watch chutzpah-less state legislators backtracking on exit exams and standards because they can't bear to see anyone fail. Chapel Hill considers making 61 percent the lowest grade a pupil can garner--i.e., "You refuse to do your homework, Johnny? Okay, then. I'm afraid I'll have to give you a 61 percent."
Certainly, it's important to offer second chances to kids who have screwed up but genuinely wish to work hard and compensate for their previous mistakes. Some students, however, simply have no such wish. It's worth realizing that.
Fordham has previously come out in favor of religious charter schools. Here's Checker in 2003, here's Mike in 2007. And here's the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in 2008 ; the Wall Street Journal 's op-ed, which describes an Islamic school funded with taxpayer dollars,??is disquieting. We've previously covered in Gadfly Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, but we've done so, in my mind, in an unsatisfactory manner. (See our first mention here and our next mention, the following week, from Checker, here .)
To allow religious charter schools would set into action a wholly unsavory series of events, and we'd be confronted with all sorts of questions that don't have easy answers, such as, what is a religion? and what are acceptable religious beliefs? And after reducing our stock of questions, we'll eventually be left with these bits: Either we allow any and all religions to set up schools to teach any and all of their proclaimed beliefs, or we allow none. The latter seems healthier, so why not save ourselves all the trouble and put the kibosh on talk about religious charter schools?
Update: Via Eduwonk: Looks like the question phase has begun .
Photo by Flickr user corydalus .