There was much to praise in Judge Sharon Gleason's late June decision rejecting claims that Alaska's schools are underfunded, and noting that traditional concepts of "local control" must be abandoned when schools repeatedly fail to educate kids. But there was much to criticize, too. In her ruling in Moore v. State of Alaska, Judge Gleason wrote that, despite being adequately funded, some schools were not giving students "a meaningful opportunity to acquire proficiency." Thus, she continued, high schoolers shouldn't be required to pass the state's exit exam to get their diplomas. Poor logic, that. If high-school diplomas in Alaska are to be worth anything, they must be tied to an objective external assessment of some kind. Some students in The Last Frontier are undoubtedly receiving flawed educations, but dropping the exit-exam requirement--i.e., lowering expectations for schools, teachers, and students--is a surefire way to make the situation even worse (note Indiana's experience, above). Bad schools exist in Alaska as well as other jurisdictions. But if states allow them to continue to churn out uneducated graduates year after year, they make positive change unlikely.
"In Alaska, school equality elusive," by Yereth Rosen, Christian Science Monitor, August 3, 2007
"Exit exam unfair," by Katie Pesznecker, Anchorage Daily News, June 22, 2007
In a globalizing economy, America's competitive edge depends in large measure on how well our schools prepare tomorrow's workforce.
And notwithstanding the fact that Congress and the White House are now controlled by opposing parties, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are bent on devising new programs and boosting education spending.
Consider the measure--the America Competes Act--that recently passed Congress and is on its way to the president's desk. The bill will substantially increase government funding for science, technology, engineering, and math ("STEM" subjects). President Bush, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid support this initiative. Nearly all of the 2008 presidential candidates endorse its goals. And 38 state legislatures have also recently enacted STEM bills. The buzz is as constant as summer cicadas.
Indeed, STEM has swiftly emerged as the hottest education topic since No Child Left Behind. They're related, too. NCLB puts a premium on reading and math skills and also pays some attention to science. Marry it with STEM and you get heavy emphasis on a particular suite of skills.
But there is a problem here. Worthy though these skills are, they ignore at least half of what has long been regarded as a "well rounded" education in Western civilization: literature, art, music, history, civics, and geography. Indeed, a new study from the Center on Education Policy says that, since NCLB's enactment, nearly half of U.S. school districts have reduced the time their students spend on subjects such as art and music.
This is a mistake that will ill-serve our children while misconstruing the true nature of American competitiveness and the challenges we face in the 21st century.
As with all education reforms, the STEM-winders mean well. They reason that India and China will eat America's lunch unless we boost our young people's prowess in the STEM fields. But these enthusiasts don't understand that what makes Americans competitive on a shrinking, globalizing planet isn't out-gunning Asians at technical skills. Rather, it's our people's creativity, versatility, imagination, restlessness, energy, ambition, and problem-solving prowess.
True success over the long haul--economic success, civic success, cultural success, domestic success, national defense success--depends on a broadly educated populace with flowers and leaves as well as stems. That's what equips us to invent and imagine and grow one business line into another. It's also how we acquire qualities and abilities that aren't easily "outsourced" to Guangzhou or Hyderabad.
Students who garner high-tech skills may still get undercut by people halfway around the world who are willing to do the same work for one-fifth of the salary. The surest way to compete is to offer something the Chinese and Indians (and Vietnamese, Singaporeans, etc.) cannot--technical skills are not enough.
Apple's iPod was not just an engineering improvement on Sony's Walkman. It emerged from Steve Jobs's American-style understanding of people's lifestyles, needs, tastes and capacities. (Yes, Mr. Jobs dropped out of college--but went on to study philosophy and foreign cultures.)
Pragmatic folks naturally seek direct links from skill to result, such as engineers using their technical knowledge to keep planes aloft and bridges from buckling. But what about Abraham Lincoln educating himself via Shakespeare, the Bible and other great literary works? Alan Greenspan's degrees are in economics but he plays a mean jazz saxophone. Indeed, many of today's foremost (and wealthiest) entrepreneurs, people like Warren Buffett, studied economics--not a STEM subject--in college. Adam Smith studied moral philosophy.
The liberal arts make us "competitive" in the ways that matter most. They make us wise, thoughtful and appropriately humble. They help our human potential to bloom. And they are the foundation for a democratic civic polity, where each of us bears equal rights and responsibilities.
History and literature also impart to their students healthy skepticism and doubt, the ability to question, to ask both "why?" and "why not?" and, perhaps most important, readiness to challenge authority, push back against conventional wisdom, and make one's own way despite pressure to conform. (How will that be viewed in China?)
We're already at risk of turning U.S. schools into test-prepping skill factories where nothing matters except exam scores on basic subjects. That's not what America needs nor is it a sufficient conception of educational accountability. We need schools that prepare our children to excel and compete not only in the global workforce but also as full participants in our society, our culture, our polity, and our economy.
Addressing a recent Fordham Foundation education conference, Arts Endowment chairman Dana Gioia said "We need a system that grounds all students in pleasure, beauty, and wonder. It is the best way to create citizens who are awakened not only to their humanity, but to the human enterprise that they inherit and will--for good or ill--perpetuate."
Creating such a system calls not for a host of specialized new institutions and government programs, but for closely examining the curriculum in all our schools. It also calls for recalibrating academic standards and graduation requirements, as well as amending our testing-and-accountability schemes--most certainly including NCLB--by widening the definition of "proficient" to include reasoning, creativity, and knowledge across a dozen subjects as well as basic cognitive skills. We need to start reconceptualizing "highly qualified" teachers as people who are themselves broadly educated rather than narrowly specialized.
Abandoning the liberal arts in the name of STEM alone also risks widening social divides and deepening domestic inequities. The well-to-do who understand the value of liberal learning may be the only ones able to purchase it for their children. Top private schools and a few suburban systems will stick with education broadly defined, as will elite colleges. Rich kids will study philosophy and art, music and history, while their poor peers fill in bubbles on test sheets. The lucky few will spawn the next generation of tycoons, political leaders, inventors, authors, artists, and entrepreneurs. The less lucky masses will see narrower opportunities. Some will find no opportunities at all, which frustration will tempt them to prey upon the fortunate, who in turn will retreat into gated communities, exclusive clubs, and private this-and-that's, thereby widening domestic rifts and worsening our prospects for social cohesion and civility.
Not a pretty picture. Adding leaves and flowers to STEM and NCLB won't necessarily avert it--but hewing to basic skills at the expense of a complete education will surely worsen it.
This article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal on August 8th. Its origins can be found in Beyond the Basics: Achieving a Liberal Education for All Children, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2007.
Who knows schools better, outside consultants or internal operatives (principals and teachers)? The British government is betting on the latter. It's experimenting with a program that pairs principals ("head teachers") of successful schools with their counterparts in less-successful ones. Schools involved in these partnerships usually have similar demographics, grade levels, and sizes. The pairs of head teachers collaborate on, for example, how to balance school budgets and meet academic standards. Teachers and staff are involved, too: successful educators are paired with those who need extra assistance, and they may help with curriculum planning, classroom management, etc. The best head teachers in the program aren't just seeking to clone their success, though. They are less like drill sergeants than advisors and mentors. Challenges exist, most significant among them the question of how an individual head teacher can attend to two schools at once. But early results are promising. Savvy American reformers would do well to keep an eye on how this program develops. Perchance it will prove itself worth adopting in the colonies.
"In England, Top ‘Heads' Oversee Two Schools at Once," by Lynn Olson, Education Week, August 1, 2007
The editors at the Indianapolis Star have written many a perceptive piece about the shortcomings of Indiana's schools (see here and here, for example). Their latest pair of education-related editorials is similarly spot-on. The first attacks the use of exit-exam waivers, which allow students who repeatedly fail the state-mandated Graduation Qualifying Exam to collect their diplomas despite their apparent inability to read and do math at a ninth-grade level. According to the editors, "at 52 high schools [in Indiana], 10 percent or more of graduating seniors receive diplomas despite failing the GQE," and at some schools as many as 35 percent of graduates failed their GQEs. The editors rightly note that waivers are "degrading the value of diplomas." The second editorial illumines state and school districts' inability to accurately track high-school seniors--to know who's dropping out, and who's graduating. In one egregious example, Indianapolis Public Schools handed out 1,300 diplomas when it started the year with only 969 seniors. Eh? Kudos to the Indy Star for not letting all this shoddiness go unnoticed.
"Too many waivers means too many kids leave unprepared," Indianapolis Star, June 28, 2007
"Let's get real about Indiana school data," Indianapolis Star, August 1, 2007
National Assessment of Educational Progress
August 2007
The Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress has added an economic twist. A new NAEP report details the results of an economics assessment administered to 11,500 high school seniors across 590 public and private schools. It finds that even though many American kids remain, for the most part, economically illiterate, the dismal science has gained a curricular foothold in recent decades: 65 percent of students say they've taken a formal economics course in high school. On the test, 60 percent of students were able to identify what contributes to an increase in the national debt, and 46 percent were able to read a supply-and-demand graph to explain the consequence of price controls. Only 11 percent, however, were able to explain how a change in the unemployment rate affects spending, production, and income, and more than a third of students thought money deposited in a checking account sits in a vault until withdrawn. These are telling data, and most of the report is stuffed with similarly interesting observations. Generally, though, the big picture in economics resembles that in other subjects examined by NAEP. For example, "higher levels of parental education are associated with higher scores" and "students in large city schools score lower than students elsewhere." Still and all, this first-of-its-kind study serves an indispensable service: getting economic education on the national radar and appraising the current state of student knowledge of this subject. Learn more here.
National Center for Education Statistics
July 2007
This study uses nationally-representative survey data to examine factors responsible for movement in and out of the k-12 teaching profession (in public and private schools). The survey tracked for a decade a random sample of individuals (with various majors) who received their bachelor's degrees in 1992-93. Of that graduating class, 11 percent were teaching ten years later and 9 percent had taught at some point but had left the profession by 2003. Almost 20 percent of those who left did so to raise their families. Eighteen percent left for jobs outside of education, and 15 percent exited for other jobs in education. Approximately 13 percent exited because of low pay. The report also breaks these data down by demographics. Some of the data are revealing and important. For example, 45 percent of teachers with degrees in science, math, or engineering left for jobs outside of education while those with degrees in the arts and humanities or social studies were less than half as likely to exit the field. Or this: among the 11 percent of 1992-93 degree recipients still teaching in 2003, 93 percent said they were satisfied with their jobs, and 67 percent expected to finish their careers as teachers. Students scoring in the bottom quartile on college entrance exams were more likely to become teachers than those in the highest quartile. But students with higher GPAs were also more likely to become teachers than those with low GPAs. Seems paradoxical, no? Might education degree programs, which produced a larger share of teachers than any other major, be inflating their students' grades? Read this report here.
U.S. Government Accountability Office
July 2007
This report concludes that not all Asian American and Pacific Islanders become high-performing college students (who knew?). The authors note that while this demographic category does receive a percentage of American college degrees disproportionate to its size (eight percent of degrees for five percent of the nation), various ethnic groups within the category remain disadvantaged, particularly Cambodians, Laotians, and Hmong. The GAO believes the "Asian-achiever" stereotype is actually hurting less-privileged Asian students and recommends that postsecondary institutions share information about recruiting and retaining Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who lag academically. What's more, they think the Secretary of Education should facilitate this sort of collaboration. Missing is any meaningful discussion of the root cause of post-secondary difficulties: poor performance in k-12 classrooms. The report's mission is admirable, but its conclusions are obvious. The country's focus should be on providing high-quality education for all who truly need it, be they Hispanic, Hungarian, Hmong, or Dutch-Irish. Find the study here.
Gadfly has heretofore expressed no opinion about the District of Columbia's lack of representation in Congress. But the latest crusade of Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives, makes one think that perhaps D.C. shouldn't have a vote. Norton is trying to kill the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, which turns federal dollars into private school scholarships for 2,000 of the District's neediest students. Her stance is, at minimum, odd, because parents whose children have received scholarships like the program (see here and here). So who is Norton representing? Evidently not her D.C. constituents. She recently said that the program "was experimental, it was never meant to be permanent." But Deborah Green, whose daughter Tanisha is thriving in her new private school, disagrees. Green said, "We're going to have a battle. I'm ready to do that because they need to keep the program going. Without it, the students don't have a choice, and I don't think that's fair." It's not fair. Whether or not you think Norton should win a vote in Congress, here's hoping she loses this particular fight and that the parents prevail.
"Future of D.C. school vouchers worries parents," by Kristen Chick, Washington Times, July 29, 2007
Two weeks ago, I escaped from Washington's oppressive humidity and headed with my wife's family to New Hampshire's Lake Sunapee. Like any Granite State vacationer I hoped for sunny days, cool, relaxing nights, and, of course, a visit from a major presidential candidate.
New Hampshire did not disappoint. A few days into our trip we spotted a flyer at the Sunapee Harbor announcing that none other than Senator Barack Obama would be speaking there two days hence; all were invited. Ice cream would follow. Say no more; we RSVP'd. (They needed to know how much ice cream to order.)
The big day arrived and with it a downpour. No matter. Hundreds squeezed under a small tent set up for summer concerts. We were among the last to arrive, so we settled for a spot under an improvised tarp. Occasional leaks sent rainwater flopping down onto my wide-rimmed hat (hastily purchased moments before at the Wild Goose Country Store; I don't bring an umbrella on my vacations).
The candidate was late, of course, allowing the excitement and anticipation to build. We talked about what questions we'd ask him if we had a chance. My (liberal) sister-in-law wanted to know how he would address the nation's preeminent national security threat: global warming. My (liberal and angry) brother-in-law wanted to know whether Obama would shoot or hang Vice President Cheney after trying him for war crimes. I got the impression that their sentiments were reflective of the larger group, too.
About half an hour after the alleged starting time, the crowd began to buzz as we spotted a large bus heading our way. Alas, it was merely transporting a group of seniors to join us at the rally. But after twenty more soggy minutes, our patience was rewarded: the Senator's motorcade came over a hill and into the harbor area. Obama stepped out, waved, smiled, and shook hands as he made his way to the platform.
He opened with a quip--"Isn't this a beautiful day in Sunapee?"--then launched into his 10-minute stump speech. It was eloquent but not overly inspirational, with standard talking points meant to appeal (i.e., pander) to his liberal base. "No matter what the slogans say, millions of children are being left behind," he shouted. "Don't tell me that a test score is all that matters." Our schools need more resources, he proclaimed to much applause, which drowned out (by design?) his next utterance: "and reform." He talked health care, Iraq, social security, all the basics, took a few questions from the audience, and started shaking hands.
My wife and I waited patiently in line, slowly snaking forward, snapping pictures of Obama and listening to him answer questions from the crowd. And then we found ourselves toward the front, and our moment of opportunity arrived. "Senator," I yelped, "how would you improve No Child Left Behind?"
A serious look crossed his face as he looked down at me from the platform. He paused ever so slightly, as if to size me up, figure out what I might want to hear, what my story might be. (I suspect he mistook me for a teacher.) And then he said confidently, "I would not reauthorize No Child Left Behind until I got the teachers' buy-in."
After spotting my quizzical look, he kept talking, filling in details. But it was all a blur--a meandering discussion of "multiple measures" and "growth models" and the unfairness of labeling schools as "needing improvement" even when they are making great progress. I thanked him and waited for a chance to shake his hand, my thoughts staying focused on his first utterance. What would it mean to get teachers' buy-in? Is that a good standard for education policy in general? And could a president actually get teachers to support NCLB without neutering it?
I've pondered, and I've concluded: Requiring teacher buy-in is not an appropriate standard for education policymaking, especially at the presidential level.
Sure, having workers' buy-in (getting input, making appropriate adjustments, and listening seriously to concerns) is desirable in any human endeavor. But when it comes to education, great principals already do this. That doesn't mean that they forge ahead only when their staff is on board, though.
At first glance, for example, many primary teachers instinctively hate "scientifically-based reading instruction" that spells out what they should do step-by-step. But excellent principals convince them to keep an open mind, give it a chance. And many teachers who initially opposed programs such as Open Court have turned to converts--even phonics fanatics--when they see their students making solid progress under the new regime. "Buy-in," then, can be seen as the end result of strong leadership, not a pre-condition for negotiations.
But Obama is running for president, not elementary-school principal. How could he possibly get the "buy-in" of the nation's 3 million-plus teachers when he'll never even meet more than a handful? The most obvious solution is to equate teacher buy-in with the support of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. But that, of course, would put the kibosh on pretty much every promising reform in the book, including much that is already underway.
What about consulting teachers directly, through polls? Here, too, the terrain is treacherous, as teachers are far from monolithic. Newer teachers, for example, are far more supportive of merit pay than veterans and are far less reliant on teachers unions (see here). Do all of them have to "buy-in" to a proposal, or just those who will be sticking around for a while? And what do you make of the fact that, according to the most recent Public Agenda survey, only 10 percent of teachers say that low academic standards and expectations are a "very serious" problem in their school (compared to 54 percent who raise such concerns about not having enough money). If raising standards is the cornerstone of any serious reform effort (and it is), then few teachers appear to be "on board."
Maybe what Obama meant to say is that he will work to change the opinion of teachers and earn their buy-in for promising reforms. Maybe, like excellent principals, he'll ask teachers to be open-minded about change and give it a try.
If that's the Senator's intent, he should have answered my query by saying, "I'm going to work to get teachers to buy into important reforms, because only by raising expectations, holding schools accountable, and giving kids decent education choices will we close the gaps in our society and compete with the rest of the world." He should have told me that, even if I do look like a teacher.