Noting that it's better to raise standards than to back down from a higher benchmark, Texas's board of education approved a motion to set a moderate but rising standard for passing the rigorous new TAKS exam. This replaces the celebrated TAAS test, on which many Lone Star students and schools had bumped against the ceiling. The passing standards on TAKS, which are said to roughly match the current expectations of TAAS, are being phased in over several years. Texas's practice with TAAS was to ratchet the passing scores upward and it appears this is the plan for TAKS. (Even so, 15% of 3rd graders are expected to fail the reading test at the outset.) By contrast, Michigan - which led the country in number of failing schools partly as a result of its lofty standards - has, in effect, lowered those standards, "temporarily" changing its definition of a failing school to a "more realistic standard" to avoid federal sanctions. "Students will get two years to master state TAKS exam," by Terrence Stutz, The Dallas Morning News, November 16, 2002, and "Measure of failing schools altered," by Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki, Detroit Free Press, November 15, 2002
Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 earned a "D" average on a recent National Geographic survey of geography and current events. Only 13 percent could identify Iraq on a map of the Middle East, and an astonishing 11 percent failed to locate the U.S. on a global map! The findings echo students' poor performance on the 2001 NAEP geography test [see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=50#1380]. "Americans flunk geography, survey finds," Associated Press, Star Tribune, November 20, 2002
Unless you've been wholly absorbed trussing your turkey, you have read of the recent flap concerning Sanford Weill's assistance to Jack Grubman in gaining admission of the latter's twin tykes to the 92nd Street Y's pre-school program in 2000. This ultra-exclusive Upper East Side pre-school program enrolls 175 youngsters and accepts just 65 annually. Zillions of New York City's movers and shakers want to send their daughters and sons there, however, as it is seen as a stepping stone to the city's elite primary and secondary schools and, these, in turn, are seen as paths to the Ivy League and success in life. So there is much jockeying, angling, finagling and influence peddling as wealthy, powerful parents who are accustomed to getting what they want work all their levers to maximize the prospects of their two, three and four year olds during the annual admissions frenzy.
Nearly all the coverage of this episode has focused on the business ethics of Messrs. Grubman and Weill and Citigroup, which Weill heads and which made a million-dollar gift to the Y, evidently in connection with the Grubman children's applications. For his part, Grubman, then a prominent analyst of telecommunications companies for Salomon Smith Barney, seems to have upgraded his rating of AT & T's stock. (Weill allegedly wanted this for an array of complex and questionable reasons.)
New York State's eager-beaver attorney general is all over this case, as is the Securities and Exchange Commission. Well and good. At a time of heightened sensitivity to business ethics - and concern about favoritism and corruption among securities analysts - that seems like the right thing to do. But everybody has ignored the education policy issues that this tawdry "bonfire of the vanities" episode reveals. Two of them struck me.
First, why is it that in New York City, as in Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and many other cities, there is such intense competition to get into a handful of swanky private schools? Partly, no doubt, for reasons of snobbery. But much of it has to do with the simple fact that the public schools of those cities hold no allure. In fact, they're downright unacceptable to many families. The evidence need not be rehearsed here. Suffice it to note that people of means who care about their children will do practically anything to gain entry for their youngsters into different (safer, better) schools than those supported by their tax dollars. They could move to the suburbs, yes, and many do. Or they can stay in town and pull out all the stops to get their toddlers into those independent schools. (In principle, they could also patronize lesser private schools, where the admissions crush isn't quite so intense - they might even check out the local charter schools - but they're mostly too proud for that.)
They are, in fact, exercising school choice, and much of the reason they're so intent on it is because their cities' public schools don't cut the mustard. Now recall those same cities' tens of thousands of poor families whose kids are just as promising and who care just as much for them but who don't have influential friends and lots of money. What's their alternative? Think of Grubman's grubby saga as a high profile instance of the lengths people will go to to find acceptable alternatives to their neighborhood public school. Should we fix those neighborhood schools? Sure. The sooner the better. In the meantime, however, what about this year's crop of children? Next year's?
Second education issue: why won't the private schools grow? The 92nd Street Y, we read, won't even consider a child for admissions unless its parent is one of the first 300 to phone after the annual entrance sweepstakes opens (at 9 a.m. sharp on the Monday after Labor Day). Imagine all the speed dialers programmed to the school's number that morning, as it is widely believed that thousands of children would apply if the Y let them.
So why doesn't the Y expand? It charges as much as $14,400 a year in pre-school tuition and seems to find plenty of people willing to pay those prices. Why not serve more kids? Maybe even more kids whose families have the interest but lack the means? Don't be ridiculous, goes the response. Exclusive private schools would rather take one applicant in ten than educate more children. Part of their allure is their very exclusiveness, the hordes of youngsters they decline to educate rather than the relative handful that they choose to serve. They also lack the entrepreneurial spark. They are, in fact, complacent. So, in a way, are their clients.
Consider these two paragraphs from Jane Gross's November 15 account in The New York Times of the pre-school admissions sweepstakes in Gotham:
"The pressure to make exceptions can be intense for a nursery director," said Cynthia Bing, who heads the school advisory service at the Parents League of New York, an East Side institution that guides families through the independent school application process.
" 'All over town, are there cases of people calling the head of schools and saying "Pay attention"?,' she asked. 'Sure. And I'm not saying it never helps. But, if they allowed themselves to be pressured by everyone, they'd have to expand the schools to 10 times their size.' "
Ms. Bing takes for granted that expansion is a ridiculous idea, unthinkable, maybe even dreadful. But why? At ten times its size, the 92nd Street Y pre-school would enroll 1750 children. Properly organized and deftly administered, perhaps spread across several locations, that would be a perfectly manageable institution. It would give a top-notch early education to ten times as many youngsters as it does today.
Private schools don't think that way, however, and ought to be ashamed. As should the people responsible for public schools that so many families are desperate to escape. Nobody is exonerating Jack Grubman. But, like tens of thousands of other parents, when it came to his kids' schooling, he found himself caught between a rock and a hard place. Why do we persist with that sort of education system?
"Favoritism in Nursery School Entrance? No Comment," by Jane Gross, The New York Times, November 15, 2002
"The Pre-Kindergarten Connection," editorial, The New York Times, November 16, 2002
"Private Preschool Admissions: Grease and the City," by Stephanie Strom, The New York Times, November 16, 2002
Eliminating a major barrier to classroom entry for recent college graduates and career-switchers, the Keystone State's board of education last week voted to deem "qualified" those teachers who receive training from Teach for America and other national alternative programs. The board also decreed that elementary-certified teachers who instruct seventh- and eighth-graders must pass tests in their subjects in order to be considered highly qualified. "Pa. moves to raise teacher standard," by Dale Mezzacappa, The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 15, 2002
If ever there were a case to be made for allowing principals to hire and fire their staff, Portland's Whittaker Middle School is it. Principal Tom Pickett told The Oregonian that, until a quarter of his current teachers are replaced, pupils in his failing school won't stand much chance of being adequately educated. "School puts out SOS for teachers," by Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian, November 17, 2002
Chicago's public schools reaped little reward for their nearly $200 million investment in professional development last year because the money was spent "without any 'overarching strategy' for improving instruction," and without a demand for proof of improvement. So concludes an outside audit. Surprisingly, the city's teacher union doesn't dispute the findings, though it sought to place part of the blame for the training's "vague results" on the fact that it "was done to [the teachers], rather than with them or for them." The audit nonetheless suggests that more resources poured into professional development is no sure path to improved teacher effectiveness. "Schools get millions; results 'unclear'," by Rosalind Rossi, Chicago Sun-Times, November 15, 2002
Checker Finn asked why there is so little humor among educators in America. [See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=35#1480.] Three reasons come to mind. But, before discussing them, let me say that the lack of humor is probably concentrated among that peculiarly American species - the professional education reformer. Most teachers probably do laugh a lot in private, or did so until they were buried by regulations produced by the nation's evergreen school "reform" movement.
Why are reformers such an unfunny lot? The first reason is a good one: Far too many youngsters in the United States are not doing well academically, especially those from minority groups. Since many education reform meetings focus on this grave problem, it is unsurprising that there is little joking at these gatherings.
That leads to the second reason: Americans have gradually placed far too much hope in formal schooling as a solution to major societal problems. In the process, tribus educationist reformist has emerged, with a set of hyper-inflated aspirations and expectations, which qualify as an ideology that both liberal and conservative members of the tribe can share. Ideologues, of course, rarely brook much joking in the spheres of life where their ideologies operate.
The third reason is related to the second: Since real circumstances almost never live up to the expectations of ideologues (who often are also utopians in the area in which their ideology operates), many education reformers are constantly disappointed by results of efforts to improve academic outcomes. That is no laughing matter for them.
Unfortunately, this situation is increasingly no laughing matter for the rest of us, because the ideological/utopian pathology of American education reformers has resulted in a proliferation of claims for particular reform strategies that go far beyond what research evidence (and common sense) can support. The public has no protection from this, owing to a lack of education fraud and liability laws.
Think, for example, of how frequently education reformers put forward unproven schemes for getting all children to reach a very high level of proficiency in all academic subjects. Paging George Orwell, or, better yet, George Allwell. (Picture a billboard with "Big School Reformer Is Watching All of You" on it.) One could chuckle at most of this silliness, but only until one contemplates the many counterproductive laws and regulations that have resulted, and the lack of action in many other areas that might actually help more than quite a few youngsters do better in school. Orwell might have given us a billboard with "No Child Left Behind" on it had he been writing in our time. No joke.
Scott Miller
University of California, Berkeley
Four exemplary charter schools in Arizona and North Carolina have been granted national accreditation as part of a pilot program by the American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE). Widely respected as an accreditor of liberal arts colleges, the Washington, DC-based AALE sought K-12 charter schools that demonstrate educational and administrative excellence, including a content-rich curriculum, effective use of assessments, innovative teacher recruitment and promotion practices, strong leadership and financial stability. For more information, see http://www.aale.org/charters/4_new_schools.htm. For a broader look at a related issue - the importance of a rigorous, but not excessively bureaucratic, system of charter school authorization - see "New scrutiny for sponsors of charters," by Caroline Hendrie, Education Week, November 20, 2002
The Jacksonville Times offers a depressing look inside Andrew Jackson High School, one of 64 failing Florida schools, revealing a "battle zone of academic frustration" and blame that's unlikely to change anytime soon. A lengthy article explains how teachers, many of them resentful or wary of the FCAT exam and of legislators' relentless demands for change, cope with passive, preoccupied and troubled students and reticent or combative parents. On the left coast, by contrast, a high school once written off as hopeless has undergone a remarkable transformation under the no-nonsense leadership of a new principal. To the disbelief of state auditors, in less than a year a formerly chaotic and unruly campus has evolved into an educational institution with orderly halls, effective teaching techniques, and weekend sessions for teachers to develop new curricula aligned with state standards. "Inside an F school: frustration, angst," by Laura Diamond, Jacksonville Times, November 17, 2002, and "State praises turnaround at school," by Doug Smith, Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2002
Achieve, Inc.
November 2002
Achieve, Inc., the CEO-and-governor led standards-based reform organization, recently issued this 25-page account of reform progress by three of its favorite states (all of which had invited Achieve to review their work in this area.) The conclusion: after a decade or more of effort, standards-based reform is showing good results in all three but they're going about it very differently. "While the states used the same three-part strategy [standards, testing, accountability], the tactics they chose varied a great deal. Each state faced a unique set of circumstances and made different choices along the way. The different paths&suggest that there is more than one way to achieve high standards." For example, Massachusetts has focused entirely on "student stakes" while Maryland laid the accountability burden on schools, and Texas did both. Other differences are interesting, too, as is the ubiquity in all three states of "consistency, consensus and comprehensiveness." This report is a little on the boosterish side, perhaps not giving quite enough ink to stumbles and obstacles that these states encountered along the path, but, then, it was meant to encourage other states. One can only hope that NCLB's valiant effort to standardize many aspects of states' approach to standards-based reform will still permit this kind of constructive variation in more places. See for yourself at http://www.achieve.org/dstore.nsf/Lookup/reportthree-statefinal/$file/reportthree-statefinal.pdf.