Test prep firms such as Princeton Review and Kaplan have always been popular among students preparing for college entry exams, but these companies are now pitching their services to a younger crowd - elementary and junior high students - thanks to NCLB. Critics denounce the pricey tutoring as just one more edge that wealthy students have over poorer youngsters, even as advocates hope it will narrow the achievement gap by giving children who are lagging behind a chance to catch up on materials they should have learned in school. In a piece for The Washington Monthly, Siobhan Gorman takes a look at the burgeoning "kiddie test prep" industry and finds that - in contrast to the gimmicky test-taking skills taught to older students - its emphasis is on teaching and learning. Since NCLB offers money to pay for it, tutoring represents poor kids' best shot at a decent education, Gorman concludes. See "Tutor Restoration," The Washington Monthly, December 2002.

Brian Rowan, Richard Correnti, and Robert J. Miller, Consortium for Policy Research in Education
November 2002

A recent report from the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) analyzes the research on teacher effects - how much impact teachers have on student achievement - and what accounts for differences in teacher effectiveness across classrooms. The authors test a series of hypotheses about the size and stability of teacher effects and about which teachers are most effective. They use data from the Prospects study, a major evaluation of the Title I program that included test scores for students in a large sample of U.S. elementary schools. The report's most important contribution is its lengthy discussion of the conceptual and methodological problems of research on teacher effects. For example, the authors caution analysts against using simple survey measures or simple descriptors - like certification level or advanced degrees - as proxies for teacher characteristics or instructional technique. The report concludes that teacher effects on student achievement may appear small unless a sophisticated statistical model is used to control for other factors, including the teaching environment, student characteristics, and a student's previous achievement level. There is evidence that teacher experience, whole-class instruction (as opposed to working with individual students), and solid coverage of the curriculum are positively related to growth in student achievement; however, any given teacher will vary in effectiveness when teaching different subjects or working with students from different socio-economic backgrounds. This report is available at http://www.cpre.org/Publications/rr51.pdf.

edited by Marc S. Tucker and Judy B. Codding
2002

How would you respond if your boss approached you and said, "I have a job for you. You will be fully responsible for how your unit performs, but you will only have marginal authority over the people who work for you. You can't fire them, you can't give them bonus pay, and you can't put your best performers in the toughest situations. And, by the way, you will have to work longer hours for the same rate of pay." Most people would say, "fuggedaboutit." Yet this is the reality facing school principals across the United States. No wonder many are bailing out. Worse, according to The Principal Challenge, is that "the pool of candidates willing to replace them is drying up at an alarming rate," a school leadership crisis that worsens with time. This hefty book, edited by Marc Tucker and Judy Codding of the National Center on Education and the Economy, examines the problems surrounding recruitment, retention and remuneration of high quality school leaders, particularly those in urban and rural areas. It terms utterly dysfunctional the current system for preparing and developing school principals for the challenges of leading schools in the 21st century, which resembles education schools doing their own thing. Wasteful, too. For example, states often provide teachers with tuition support to get their principal certification (allowing them to move up the pay scale), yet most of these folks have no intention of actually becoming principals. Tucker and Codding see the solution to the leadership crisis in a new form of professional development similar to that of the National War College, which chooses whom to train, rather than allowing candidates to nominate themselves. There is much in this book to consider, including the experience of other countries, the experience of business and the military in developing leaders, and the importance of ethical leadership. But the volume is flawed, too. It neglects to examine the experience of charter school principals, who already have many of the freedoms that successful school leaders need. (For more on that topic, see Fordham's report, "Autonomy and Innovation: How do Massachusetts Charter School Principals Use Their Freedom?" by Bill Triant, December 2001, at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=18.) To learn more about The Principal Challenge, see http://www.josseybass.com/cda/product/0,,0787964476,00.html. Its ISBN is 0-7879-6447-6.

Innocenti Research Centre, UNICEF
November 2002

UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre is the source of this new international comparison of "educational disadvantage" in the world's most prosperous countries - up to two dozen of them, depending on the specific indicators and benchmarks. These are not new data. The report is drawn from familiar sources such as TIMSS and PISA. But the data are analyzed differently here, not according to national averages but, rather, the severity of the discrepancy within each country between middle-scoring and bottom-scoring students (and other "gap" measures). On the main table, a composite of five separate measures "of absolute educational disadvantage" (mostly at age 15), the United States is 7th "worst," followed by Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. Seventeen countries did better, led by Korea and Japan. The main policy point: wealthy countries have educationally disadvantaged kids, too, but a lot of them have done better than we have at gap-closing. You can download your own copy of this 36-page report at http://www.unicef-icdc.org/publications/pdf/repcard4e.pdf.

J. Martin Rochester
November 2002

University of Missouri (at St. Louis) political scientist J. Martin Rochester authored this fine new book on America's education woes. It's semi-autobiographical, recounting his own efforts - as a "battle-scarred parent" - to get his children a good education in the public schools of University City and Clayton, Missouri. He also chronicles his growing disillusionment with educational progressivism. A political liberal, he nonetheless found that "The more I have seen of progressive pedagogy at work, the more disenchanted I have become. The utter failure of our schools under progressive rule has provoked a backlash, as the public has called for increased standards and accountability. This in turn has produced a backlash against the backlash, mounted by educators on the defensive." In 315 well-wrought pages, he closely examines the ideas undergirding progressive education and finds them flawed and unproven. This, then, is a book about ideas as much as about Rochester's adventures in education-land. It winds up with some imaginative suggestions, including the use of education options as a way to let several different philosophies coexist and to enable people to pick the one they favor. Highly recommended. The ISBN is 1893554538 and the publisher is Encounter Books. You can get more information at http://www.encounterbooks.com/clwa/clwa.html.

Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster, Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute
December 2002

Reformers who want the upcoming reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to focus on results rather than funding have a new piece of ammunition. The Manhattan Institute's prolific Jay Greene and Greg Forster have released a report arguing that the rapid rise in special education enrollments nationwide is largely due to perverse financial incentives created by the "bounty system" - whereby most states pay school districts more money for each student diagnosed with a disability. Greene and Forster reach their conclusion by examining the rates of special ed enrollment growth in states with and without the bounty system. Overall, they find that financial incentives account for 62 percent of the increase in special ed enrollments in bounty states during the 1990s. Interestingly, although nearly thirteen percent of all students are in special ed, enrollments for the most objectively diagnosed and expensive-to-treat disabilities have declined or remained flat over the past quarter century. The skyrocketing growth in special ed has been confined to the learning disability subcategory, which is least expensive to treat and most subjective to diagnose. The authors maintain that this is no coincidence. Their solutions? Dump the bounty system, have the federal government audit special ed placements (in districts with especially high or low enrollments of disabled kids) and provide vouchers to disabled students - a la Florida's McKay Scholarship Program - so that labeling a student "disabled" does not automatically translate to more money in school coffers. Just thirteen pages short, this report packs a powerful policy punch. You'll find it at http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_32.htm.

In last month's Governing, Alan Ehrenhalt argued that politicians' grandiose promises to turn around failing schools - which reveal a lopsided emphasis on the condition of education at the expense of other pressing issues - are harmful and misleading. In addition to inflating hopes, the school reform crusade perpetuates the dangerous notion that cities can't be healthy until their schools are "fixed," he wrote. Judging by the revival of such metropolises as Boston and Chicago (but not those cities' schools), Ehrenhalt contends that better schools are one of the last stages of urban renewal, following safe streets, bustling commerce and efficient transportation. "The School-Renewal Fallacy," by Alan Ehrenhalt, Governing, November 2002

Regarding the issue raised in Chester Finn's editorial about the 92nd Street Y (Nov. 21) [see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=32#453]: "Why don't private schools act like businesses and expand when demand exceeds supply?" The answer is, "There's no incentive to do so, since independent schools lose money on each child." (Tuition at independent day schools covers only 75-85% of the cost to educate each child: the remaining expense must be covered largely by charitable contributions and endowment income). In addition, it is precisely the intimacy and "smallness" that makes for great schools in the first place, so there is a programmatic and philosophical disincentive to grow the size of an independent school.

The real question is why don't entrepreneurs enter the marketplace to fill the gap? The answer (charters being a prime example) is that they are almost always undercapitalized. Edison provides an exception to the capitalization issue, but it found that the private school market wasn't profitable and that managing public schools was more than a challenge. It is extremely difficult and expensive to start a new school, especially at the secondary level, so the risk-return ratio is problematic at best.

So what's the alternative answer? Milton Friedman suggested decades ago privatizing the whole system, giving full-cost education credits to the public and thereby allowing all public and private schools to compete for students. In his "marketplace model," families (consumers) from all socio-economic levels would dictate the survival of the fittest schools, voting with their feet and their pocketbooks, and would have the choice of education that now only the affluent enjoy. The "GI Bill" made quality colleges financially accessible to an entire generation of adults: why wouldn't we consider the same option for education at the pre-collegiate level?

Current voucher experiments understand the principle (family choice) but fail to comprehend the means, both underfunding the true cost and, in many cases, putting in place gratuitous regulations that would undermine the independence and freedom of the very schools that might best serve the underserved.

Patrick Bassett
President, National Association of Independent Schools

In a ringing endorsement of charter schools, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter recently explained why "mindless boards of education and reactionary teachers unions" are trying to smear them. He claims charters are a "workable and often inspiring form of public school choice" halfway between vouchers and the status quo - and, as such, they threaten the establishment's power. "Attack of the Blob," by Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, November 27, 2002

The Peach State's public university system will retrain graduates of its fifteen teacher ed programs if they prove ineffective within their first two years on the job. The extra training - possibly the country's first large-scale attempt to guarantee teacher quality - will be provided at no cost to the teacher or school district. "Georgia teachers now guaranteed," by Rebecca McCarthy, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 4, 2002