Two-thirds of schoolchildren in America attend class in states with mediocre (or worse) expectations for what their students should learn. That's just one of the findings of Fordham's The State of State Standards 2006, which evaluates state academic standards. The average state grade is a "C-minus"--the same as six years earlier, even though most states revised their standards since 2000.
Education policy leaders from across the political spectrum flesh out and evaluate several forms that national standards and testing could take.
Textbook publisher Pearson Scott Foresman is now offering an interactive software program in history and social studies aligned to state standards, i.e. programs whose content will differ from place to place. Not the worst idea, provided the state's standards are worthy and that students can trust the images on their computer screens. But many states have lousy history standards (see here and here) and textbook publishers bend over so far to be politically correct--and get their wares adopted--that they sometimes fall down. At McGraw-Hill, for example, photographic images of people in textbooks must be distributed as follows: 40 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic, 20 percent African-American, etc. On top of that, 5 percent of these shots must be of people with disabilities, and 5 percent of persons who hold an AARP card. These same requirements don't apply to the models in the photos, though; most of the "disabled" students pictured are able-bodied kids sitting in wheelchairs. We've complained for years about the crazy textbook adoption process, but fair is fair. We say that at least two percent of the photo space should be allocated to right-of-center education policy professionals. (We have a few suggestions.)
"Aiming for Diversity, Textbooks Overshoot," by Daniel Golden, Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2006
"Calif. Schools adopt digital history program," by Laura Ascione, eSchool News, August 17, 2006
Last month, University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein penned a provocative Wall Street Journal op-ed showing how both the conservative and liberal blocs on the Roberts Supreme Court inconsistently apply basic Constitutional principles in support of their own policy preferences.
Specifically, he examined when the justices find it appropriate to defer to the judgment of executive branch officials in reading the meaning of vague statutes. In one high-profile case (about special military tribunals), conservatives deferred to the president's discretion over foreign affairs, while the liberals weighed in with their own interpretation of the relevant statute. On another high-profile case (about protection of the wetlands), liberals deferred to the expertise of the Army Corps of Engineers, while the conservatives weighed in with their own interpretation of the relevant statute.
How did the two sides determine when it was appropriate to defer to the executive branch's judgment? Epstein argues it wasn't a matter of high principle, but of ideology. Both cases, he suggested, show that conservatives trust the president and military while liberals trust bureaucrats and regulatory agencies.
This interest-driven inconsistency with respect to core principles is also readily apparent in today's education policy debates. Here the challenge is not so much vague statutes as vague research--with people embracing quite different standards depending on the issue.
Take charter schools, the topic du jour thanks to a controversial new analysis of NAEP data from the National Center for Education Statistics (read the report here). What research evidence is required in order to justify charters' continuation and expansion? There are several possibilities:
They do no harm. This minimal standard was offered up by NCES Commissioner Mark Schneider, who said of charter schools, "We know they are not doing harm, so they pass a fundamental test of policy analysis."
Some do significant good. What if charters on the whole don't prove much better than traditional public schools yet a handful of them are among the best urban public schools in the country? As Washington Post reporters Lori Montgomery and Jay Mathews explain in a recent article about the District of Columbia, "Hidden behind the averages are individual charters that range from excellent to incompetent." Are a few excellent schools enough to justify the rest?
Through competition, they improve the whole system. The same Post article raises the question of whether the D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) will respond to charter-driven market forces by getting better. One charter parent summarizes the tough-love approach well: "Don't punish the charter schools because our children have an option. If you don't like to see thousands of students leaving DCPS, then do something."
Rigorous studies show them to succeed at scale. This is the toughest standard, requiring charters on the whole to "prove" themselves worthy. (Of course, charter supporters point out that this week's NCES study doesn't count as "rigorous," given that it relied on old data; only looked at one snapshot in time; used faulty "free lunch" data as a proxy for poverty; etc.)
Which of these principles should be applied? Not surprisingly, charter opponents would pick the last and most stringent. AFT president Edward McElroy said, for example, that the NCES report "provides further evidence against unchecked expansion of the charter school experiment."
Most charter-friendly reformers, on the other hand, are content with some mix of the first three: as long as the charter system is doing no harm (while satisfying parents), pushing the traditional public schools to improve, and giving rise to some exceptional schools, it deserves support.
But flip the issue and watch what happens. Take universal preschool--which the AFT and most of the education establishment adore. Do they base their support on rigorous studies showing preschool succeeding at scale? Heavens no. Those studies (mostly of Head Start) show that typical pre-K programs confer scant benefit on poor children over the long term.
But reformers are inconsistent, too. After all, a handful of preschool programs (Perry Preschool and the Chicago Child-Parent Center are most famous) have been shown to be successful at boosting the academic performance and life chances of their students. (You might consider them the "KIPP" and "Amistad Academy" of the pre-K world.) Yet for many reformers (at least on the right), these exceptions are not enough to justify an expansion of publicly-funded preschool--though high-flying charters are enough to justify the expansion of the charter movement.
There are plenty of other examples. Ed schools pick on Teach for America because no one has ever proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that alternative certification is more effective; conservatives decry "small schools" for much the same reason, though they are popular with parents.
Perhaps consistency is too much to expect. (How did Emerson put it? A "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.") If Supreme Court justices don't hew to constant principles, how can we expect policy advocates to do so? How about agreeing that ideology is not a dirty word? Instead of dressing up arguments with talk about what "the research says," advocates could just be honest about their preferences and gripes. The AFT could simply admit, "We want more money and more classrooms and we don't like non-union schools--they are bad for our members." Conservatives could simply declare, "We don't like turning over little kids to union members--and universalizing high-quality preschool programs would cost the earth." Then, possibly, researchers could go back to searching for knowledge and truth rather than supplying ammunition in the war of ideas.
"Trust Busters on the Supreme Court," by Richard Epstein, Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2006 (subscription required)
"Study of Test Scores Finds Charter Schools Lagging," by Diane Jean Schemo, New York Times, August 23, 2006
"The Future of D.C. Public Schools: Traditional or Charter Education?" by Lori Montgomery and Jay Mathews, Washington Post, August 22, 2006
See Jane. See Jane study. See Jane's mom insist she take five AP courses, study six hours each night, perform 20 hours a week of community service, and earn a black belt in karate, all to impress Stanford's admissions officers. See Jane have a nervous breakdown. The Washington Post's Jay Mathews doesn't doubt Jane's story, but he doesn't think it typical. Hence his assault on The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, part of a growing number of hand-wringing books and pitying studies of how we work our children too hard. In a handful of overwrought and upscale communities such as Winnetka, Scarsdale, and San Marino, "Jane's" story may be the norm, says Mathews. But across the length and breadth of the land, most students aren't working anywhere near that hard--a fact made clear by NAEP scores, studies of college freshmen, and AP data. "Our real national problem," says Matthews, "is not that we ask most teens to do too much, but too little." In other words, it's not just Jane's addiction to overworking we need to worry about, but all the "plain" Janes, too.
"Too Few Overachievers: Academically Stressed Students Aren't the Country's Norm," by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, August 21, 2006
Beth Waldron complains about the money that parents spend on back-to-school supplies. She longs for the days when her parents bought her paper, pen, and pencils and sent her on her way. Today, she carps, it costs an average of $86 to outfit a child for school. Surely you jest, Beth. How are modern kids to make it through the year on a paltry 86 clams? Do you want your elementary kid using a cheap cell phone that distracts them from learning? Of course not! You have to get the LG Migo VX1000. For 50 bucks and a two-year contract, they get a kid-friendly phone with only five buttons that dials pre-programmed numbers. And you'll need the GPS software (Price: $10; Feeling of security: Priceless) that comes with it so you can track your child's whereabouts during the day. And what about all those heavy computer files children have to lug around? An assistant principal in Maryland says "it would be helpful if they all had a mass storage device to transport files between home and school." Cost $30. Gadfly figures you're at 90 dollars (not counting the two-year contract), and we're not even talking calculators yet. Nor fashionable backpacks. Get serious, Beth, a quality education costs. Now, will that be cash, check, or charge?
"Back to School, with cellphone and laptop," by Jeffrey Selingo, New York Times, August 17, 2006
"Making Public School Affordable for Public," by Beth Waldron, Christian Science Monitor, August 22, 2006
Katrina brought a lot of devastation, but also a chance to convert New Orleans into America's shining example of school reform. Of course, the city schools were already well down the road to collapse before the hurricane arrived last year (New Orleans had 55 of the 78 worst schools in Louisiana); the devastation simply accelerated the timetable for reform. A forthcoming Education Next article describes how charter supporters have worked to make the Crescent City America's first majority-charter city. But not all has gone according to plan. The Times reports that, with more students returning than expected, charters are turning away children (as are the few traditional public schools that have opened, and which were late in hiring new teachers). This leaves parents none too happy with either brand. With due respect to Pottery Barn, charter advocates didn't break the New Orleans school system but now they own it. These back-to-school struggles indicate just how hard rebuilding it is going to be.
"Rough Start for Effort to Remake Faltering New Orleans Schools," by Susan Saulny, New York Times, August 21, 2006
"After Katrina, School Reforms Make New Orleans Most Chartered City in U.S.," BusinessWire, August 23, 2006
Polls are focused measures of public opinion and policymakers and--especially--politicians tend to take them seriously. But a poll is like a piece of plastic sheeting: if transparent and free of bias, public opinion shines through; if colored by a particular agenda, certain wavelengths of public opinion are filtered out.
Which brings us to the 38th Annual Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. Prevalent bias has been a problem with this organization's past surveys. This year is no exception.
It begins by presenting respondents with this choice--Would they prefer reforming the existing public school system or finding an alternative to it? Not mentioned is the possibility for competition or synergy between and within systems. As framed, the question suggests to poll-takers that public education is a zero-sum game. And not surprisingly, most respondents said they strongly prefer sticking with the existing system.
It's the first of many examples of how the Kappan frames questions to ensure that the educational status quo looks good.
Here's another. The report crows that people's ratings of their local public schools "are near the top of their 38-year range.... Approval ratings remain high and remarkably stable." True, but that doesn't mean the public is particularly thrilled with the performance of public schools overall. Two-thirds of respondents gave the nation's public schools a grade of C or lower. Local schools fared only slightly better, receiving As and Bs from fewer than half of all respondents. And fully one-third of parents surveyed are displeased with the performance of their oldest child's school.
Granted, two-thirds of parents give their children's schools with As and Bs (mostly Bs). But the Kappan ignores the possibility that parents inflate their grades so as not to appear delinquent in knowingly sending their children to unsatisfactory schools.
The pro-establishment spin does not end here. "Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?" the poll continues, replacing the politically charged "vouchers" (so as not to distort the results, the authors explain) with "at public expense." But that's hardly better: Ask people to pony up more money, and many will oppose the idea, regardless of what it is. So it's not surprising that respondents shot down this idea.
Past polls included a more neutrally worded question describing vouchers as government--allotted money that parents may use to send their children to the school of their choice. This question, which consistently demonstrated greater public support for vouchers, has been discarded entirely. Yet nearly two out of five respondents continue to support voucher programs despite Gallup's anti-voucher framing.
It is long past time for policymakers to stop taking cues from poorly formed public opinion polls. To construe this one as anything but an ill-disguised attempt to make a poor-performing system of schools look good is irresponsible. And those who would read it as such are either self-deluded or blissfully ignorant of how they're being deceived.
Tal Kerem was a 2006 summer research intern at the Fordham Foundation.
Center for Education Policy
August 2006
In this, its fifth annual report on state high-school exit exams, the Center for Education Policy delivers no big news but lots of interesting snippets. CEP reached four broad conclusions in this year's study:
But the more interesting information is buried deeper. For example: Of the 25 states requiring or phasing in exit exams, 20 use the tests to fulfill the high school testing requirements of NCLB. But eight of these 20 set even lower scores for awarding diplomas than for determining proficiency under NCLB. (The "Race to the Bottom of the Bottom"?) The study also finds that "having to pass an exit exam to graduate is just one of many factors that influence a student's decision to drop out, and does not seem to be one of the most significant factors." There are many more such tidbits. A most useful part of the report is the section profiling state exit exam systems. This synopsis provides a good baseline for knowing what the current pass rates are for each state's exam, the types of test being given (standards-based, competency, end-of-course), the years first administered, subjects tested, alternate paths to graduation offered, to name but a few categories. For those who follow the exit-exam debate, it's required reading. For others interested in education, it's an essential reference tool. Find it here.
Steven Glazerman, Christina Tuttle, and Gail Baxter
Mathematica Policy Research
June 2006
The American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) devised its Passport to Teaching program to streamline the notoriously convoluted state certification process. The Passport program simply seeks, through rigorous examinations in subject content and professional teaching knowledge, to identify individuals competent to move into the classroom no matter how they were prepped for the role. This program removes barriers that currently keep skilled professionals from entering the classroom and can be especially beneficial to career changers (an engineer, say, who wants to teach high school math). This paper is the first of a series of studies examining whether Passport teachers, once in charge of instructing 20-odd students, actually do a good job. Only five states (Idaho, Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Utah) currently recognize the Passport program, and the total number of Passport-certified teachers in those states is miniscule. (The 2005-2006 school year was the first in which Passport teachers were placed in the classroom.) The program's small size allowed this paper's authors to interview 75 percent of the principals who oversee Passport teachers and asked them to rate Passport teachers against conventionally certified teachers-including those who had been teaching for decades. Overall, the Passport teachers received a positive assessment. "Principals rated Passport holders to be ‘as effective' as or ‘somewhat more effective' than ‘all other teachers [they had] observed in their career,'" according to the report. Understandably, because principals had limited experience with the Passport program (usually just a single Passport teacher in the school for a single year), they were reluctant to generalize about its effectiveness. But it's the first in a series, and if nothing else, it will whet readers' appetites for more. In the meantime, you can read the report here.
