When we flagged this report some weeks back, we had seen only the executive summary. Now we have the full 240-page tome and are impressed enough to mention it again. Carefully prepared by the Council of the Great City Schools, this is a painstaking analysis of how the Council's 55 member districts (including most of the country's major cities) have done in recent years as gauged primarily by their states' tests. We've never seen anything so detailed and candid-including welcome honesty about the limits of these data and the difficulties of using them for comparisons. The good news is that many of the nation's urban districts are posting significant gains in math and reading and are reducing achievement gaps between white and minority students. Twenty-three urban districts have been making faster gains in math than the state average in at least half the grades tested, while seventeen posted reading gains that exceeded the state average. (Many, of course, still lag well behind their states' averages, and some are weakening vis-?-vis their states.) There is a raft of data here that you probably cannot get anywhere else, as well as a helpful statistical spotlight on the actual condition of urban education in America today. Kudos to the Council for making it available. It can be ordered from the Council for $20 plus $5 shipping by calling 202-393-2427, writing 1301 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 702, Washington, DC 20004 or surfing to www.cgcs.org.

Center on Education Policy
March 2005

Underscoring the findings of the report reviewed above, this third annual CEP report on NCLB implementation finds that the law has significantly raised student test scores, especially in lower-achieving populations. It's done this by bringing a "greater sense of urgency to state and local efforts to raise student achievement," which has forced needed attention on struggling students and improved 6,000 of the nation's worst schools. The report is based on a survey of education officials in 49 states and 314 school districts, plus detailed case studies in 36 districts - so a slight bias might be present from those feeling NCLB's hammer. But other CEP recommendations mirror oft-voiced state concerns, such as the call for more funding. The report also notes that while 15 percent of districts must now offer students the choice to transfer to another public school, only 1 percent of students have done so. This gives CEP a chance to ride one of its favorite policy hobbyhorses and assert that the choice option is irreparably broken. Instead, of course, it could and should be fixed via essential reforms in NCLB itself. Otherwise, this report offers a decent assessment of NCLB to date. You can read it on the web at http://www.ctredpol.org/pubs/nclby2/.

Clifford Adelman, Office of Vocational and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education
February 2005

In the last decade, the percentage of community college students under the age of 22 has risen from 32 percent to 42 percent, a reflection of the record number of high school graduates not ready for four-year colleges. A new study from the Department of Education seeks to profile this growing group and how they differ from older community college students. Those over 24 are likelier to think of themselves as employees instead of students, more apt to have children of their own (more than half do), and far less likely to transfer to a four-year institution. The study argues for greater cooperation between community colleges and secondary schools in preparing students for higher education. As a whole, 44 percent of those who start community colleges did not reach Algebra II in high school, whereas only 11 percent of those at four-year colleges did not. Latinos are actually underrepresented at community colleges, so Adelman urges community colleges to be "particularly innovative in outreach programs for this population." You can find it on the web at http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/comcollege/index.html.

Public Agenda
March 2005

In its latest survey, Public Agenda has taken a long look at what factors contribute to a student's decision to continue on to higher education. While the "overwhelming majority of young adults recognize the value of higher education," the reality is that one in three students don't continue their education after high school, and many who do never graduate. Not surprisingly, students cite the high cost of schooling as the major impediment. Nearly 60 percent of African-American and Hispanic students say they would have chosen a different institution had money not been an issue, and many students in these groups are far less confident that they can find the resources to attend college. Parent pressure also plays a significant role in the decision to pursue a college degree. You may not be surprised to learn that 86 percent of Asian-American students say "their parents strongly expect them to go to college," while other ethnic groups report lower percentages. For those who chose not to pursue higher education, most said they would prefer to "work and make money" immediately, and the report paints an interesting picture of the high school student who drifts into low-paying work after graduation not out of conscious choice, but because of a "let the chips fall where they may" attitude. It's an interesting survey, albeit one that highlights the limits of "values and attitudes" polling in constructing public policy. Namely: what if students are wrong, or only partially correct, when they cite money as the greatest impediment to college? All the loans and grants in the world won't make up for the failure of our K-12 system to prepare many students to succeed in college. Read it at http://www.publicagenda.org/research/pdfs/life_after_high_school_execsum.pdf.

Over the past half-century, the number of pupils in U.S. schools grew by about 50 percent while the number of teachers nearly tripled. Spending per student rose threefold, too. If the teaching force had simply kept pace with enrollments, school budgets had risen as they did, and nothing else changed, today's average teacher would earn nearly $100,000, plus generous benefits. We'd have a radically different view of the job and it would attract different sorts of people.

Yes, classes would be larger - about what they were when I was in school. True, there'd be fewer specialists and supervisors. And we wouldn't have as many instructors for youngsters with "special needs." But teachers would earn twice what they do today (less than $50,000, on average) and talented college graduates would vie for the relatively few openings in those ranks.

What America has done, these past 50 years, is invest in more teachers rather than better ones, even as countless appealing and lucrative options have opened up for the able women who once poured into public schooling. No wonder teaching salaries have just kept pace with inflation, despite huge increases in education budgets. No wonder the teaching occupation, with blessed exceptions, draws people from the lower ranks of our lesser universities. No wonder there are shortages in key branches of this sprawling profession. When you employ three million people and you don't pay very well, it's hard to keep a field fully staffed, especially in locales (rural communities, tough urban schools) that aren't too enticing and in subjects such as math and science where well-qualified individuals can earn big bucks doing something else.

Why did we triple the size of the teaching work force instead of paying more to a smaller number of stronger people? Three reasons.

First, the seductiveness of smaller classes. Teachers want fewer kids in their classrooms and parents think their children will be better off, despite scant evidence that students learn more in smaller classes, particularly from less able instructors. Second, the institutional interests that benefit from a larger teaching force, above all dues-collecting (and influence-seeking) unions, and colleges of education whose revenues (tuition, state subsidies) and size (all those faculty slots) depend on their enrollments. Third, the social forces pushing schools to treat children differently from one another, creating one set of classes for the gifted, others for children with handicaps, those who want to learn Japanese, who seek full-day kindergarten or who crave more community-service opportunities.

Nobody has resisted. It was not in anyone's interest to keep the teaching ranks sparse, while many interests were served by helping them to swell. Today, we pay the price: lots of money spent on schooling, nearly all of it for salaries, but schooling that, at the end of the day, depends on the knowledge, skills and commitment of teachers who don't earn much and cannot see that they ever will.

Compounding that problem, we make multiple policy blunders. We restrict entry to people "certified" by state bureaucracies, normally after passing through quasi-monopolistic training programs that add little value. Thus an ill-paid vocation also has daunting, yet pointless, barriers to entry. We pay mediocre instructors the same as super-teachers. Though tiny cracks are appearing in the "uniform salary schedule," in general an energized and highly effective classroom practitioner earns no more than a feckless time-server. We pay no more to high-school physics or math teachers than middle-school gym teachers, though the latter are easy to find while people capable of the former posts are scarce and have plentiful options. We pay no more to those who take on daunting assignments in tough schools than to those who work with easy kids in leafy suburbs. In fact, we often pay them less.

Instead of recognizing that today's 20-somethings commonly try multiple occupations before settling down (if they ever do), then making imaginative use of those who are game to teach for a few years, we still assume that teaching is a lifelong vocation and lament anyone who exits the classroom for other pursuits. Instead of deploying technology so that gifted teachers reach hundreds of kids while others function more like tutors or aides, we assume that every classroom needs its own Socrates.

Despite all that, and to their great credit, most teachers are decent folks who care about kids and want to help them learn. But turning around U.S. schools and "leaving no child behind" calls for more. It also requires passion, brains, knowledge and technique. Federal law now demands subject-matter mastery. Such qualities are hard to find in vast numbers, however, especially when the job doesn't pay very well. Yet fat across-the-board raises for three million people are a pipe dream. (Adding $10,000 plus benefits to their pay would add some $40 billion to school budgets.)

Maybe we can't turn back the clock on the numbers, but surely we can reverse the policy errors. With hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs now turning over each year, at minimum we should insist that new entrants play by different rules that reward effectiveness, deploy smart incentives and suitable technology, compensate them sensibly, and make skillful use of short-termers instead of just wishing they'd stay longer. And this time let's watch what we're doing.

This article originally appeared in the March 11, 2005 edition of the Wall Street Journal. The March 22, 2005 edition published several letters in response, available here (subscription required).

Recent discussions about inadequate high schools have focused on improving math and English. But topics like geography remain in desperate need of attention as well. Several years ago, a poll reported that only 13 percent of Americans ages 18-24 could find Iraq on a map, and scores on the 2001 geography NAEP were dismayingly low for high school students. One college professor in this week's Washington Times reports that a mere 20 percent of her students could find Thailand on a map following the devastating tsunami. Parents, educators, and geography-oriented organizations are making some progress at giving the subject greater priority in schools across America. In 2004, 10,471 students took the AP Geography course, compared to only 3,000 in 2001. The Geographic Education National Implementation Project (GENIP), which offers a voluntary geography standards framework for states, reports that forty-nine states (all but Iowa) have adopted standards based on GENIP's guidelines. According to Sarah Bednarz, a professor of geography at Texas A&M (and coordinator of GENIP), students should know more than simply the obvious names, spellings, and locations on a map but should also know context and connections between people and places. Not doing so, she says, "would be like saying mathematics is all arithmetic."

"Lost in geography," Ann Geracimos, Washington Times, March 21, 2005

The Department of Health and Human Services is under fire for not doing enough to ferret out financial mismanagement, fraud, and abuse in Head Start programs. A GAO report found that three-quarters of the Head Start programs the agency reviewed in 2000 showed financial and administrative irregularities, many with multiple infractions, and about half of the programs had irregularities for three or more years - even after being notified that they needed to get their act in order. Republicans have seized upon the report to revive the effort to restructure Head Start into a state-run block grant program; Head Start supporters say most of the violations are minor, "parking ticket" offenses and the whole thing is a precursor to a campaign to close the program. Lost in the debate is serious consideration of precisely what kind of pre-schooling at-risk kids most need. We know for a fact that Head Start isn't providing it. (See here for more.) As Congress considers overhauling Head Start's administrative and financial management protocols, we hope that someone will spare a thought to overhauling the curriculum. 

"Government is criticized on oversight of Head Start," by Greg Winter, New York Times, March 18, 2005 (subscription required)

"Report finds weak federal oversight of Head Start program," by Ben Feller, Associated Press, March 18, 2005 (subscription required)

If only every school had this problem. School officials at the affluent New Trier High School in northern Chicago, a high-performing public school that sends 95 percent of its graduates to four-year colleges, are discussing plans that they hope will decrease student intensity. Officials say extreme parental pressure to win admission to elite colleges causes students to overburden themselves by taking the toughest classes and packing multiple extracurricular activities into their days. At New Trier, almost 150 students skip lunch, while many others arrive to school early (around 7:00 a.m.) to take more classes - up to an astonishing nine classes per day. Officials want to make lunch mandatory and require students who show up early to take a free period later in the day. But this has drawn criticism from students like Melissa Birkhold, who skips lunch for chamber orchestra (her third music class) and hopes to be a musician some day: "They're trying to cut out some of the arts classes, and they don't understand that that's what makes life fun...I don't think they should tell me I have to take both lunch and a free period." Certainly, some perspective is required. But school officials should be careful about regulations that curtail ambition and useful activity (think of France's mandatory 35-hour work week, designed to impose leisure, which has crippled the French economy). Should "Do Less" really be the message school leaders send to students?

"Hard-charging high schools urge students to do less," by Amanda Paulson, Christian Science Monitor, March 21, 2005

"Lunch - or Harvard?," by Jodi S. Cohen, Chicago Tribune, March 3, 2005

It's a no-rules steel cage match to the death in California, pitting the California Teachers Association against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Union members are expected to approve a proposal to increase member dues by $180 over three years, a levy that will add a staggering $54 million to the $11 million war chest the union has assembled to fight the Governor's education proposals. CTA plans to postpone every project that is not "absolutely necessary" and is warning teachers that Schwarzenegger's plans put careers and retirements in jeopardy. The union opposes his support for teacher merit pay, even in light of strong public approval. It opposes his legislation to reform the calcified tenure system. And it opposes what it calls massive cuts in education, even though education spending is actually increasing. But don't expect the Governator to roll over. He is fighting back with a series of new ads touting his reforms. Should be an exciting summer.

"Governor rolls out TV ads that tout reforms for education," by David M. Drucker, Inside Bay Area, March 18, 2005

"Putting students first," by Margaret Fortune, Voice of San Diego, March 10, 2005

"Teachers union wants dues raised," by Alexa H. Bluth, Sacramento Bee, March 19, 2005

"Rewards, not tenure," Los Angeles Times, March 21, 2005 (subscription required)

A Bronx teacher at notoriously bad Middle School 142 was charged this week with coercion, falsifying business records and other crimes following the discovery that he paid a former homeless man two dollars to take his state certification exam. The teacher, Wayne Brightly, was "tired of flunking" and was scared of losing his $59,000 salary if he failed again. Brightly is a 38-year-old tall black man; Rubin Leitner, his exam "fill-in," is a 58-year-old overweight white man with Asperger's Syndrome. "No one would ever know," Brightly promised. And apparently on exam day, no one was the wiser. It wasn't until Leitner passed the exam, scoring much, much higher than Brightly ever had in the past, that state officials realized something was awry. Read the full story: it's too good to miss.

"Schoolhouse crock," by Lisa Munoz, Jonathan Lemire, and Joe Williams, New York Daily News, March 23, 2005

"Klein furious over 'dunce' teacher," by Kathleen Lucadamo and Joe Williams, New York Daily News, March 24, 2005