In November, the NAACP challenged all fifty states to produce five-year plans to dramatically reduce the academic achievement gap between white and minority students. By last Sunday, when the NAACP opened its national convention, all but eleven states had submitted action plans. NAACP officials say they are preparing to file federal civil rights complaints against three states that have large minority populations and did not file action plans (Florida, Louisiana, and Ohio). For details see "NAACP's focus shifts to education disparities," by Kim Cobb, Houston Chronicle, July 6, 2002.

Now that the Supreme Court has shifted the school choice debate back to the political arena, policymakers should abandon their tired assumptions about choice and create a new model of schools based on the principle of "accountable choice," argues the Progressive Policy Institute's Andy Rotherham. Under such a model, a public school would be defined not by who runs it, but by universal access and accountability to the public for results-a strategy Rotherham says could unleash a renaissance in American education. See "Putting Vouchers in Perspective: Thinking About School Choice After Zelman v. Simmons-Harris," by Andrew J. Rotherham, Progressive Policy Institute, July 2, 2002.

Convinced that the leadership battles between board and superintendent were creating a crisis for the Pittsburgh school district, three major local foundations announced that they were indefinitely suspending all funding to the district. Citing a decline of leadership, governance, and fiscal discipline, the three foundations, which together have awarded the district $11.7 million in the last five years, said they hoped their decision would catalyze community leaders to push for changes in how the school district is managed. "Foundations yank city school grants," by Carmen Lee and Jane Elizabeth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 10, 2002.

The summer 2002 issue of American Educator, the A.F.T.'s flagship publication, now edited by Ruth Wattenberg, continues this quarterly's fine record of serious, thoughtful, constructive and nicely presented work. "A Common, Coherent Curriculum" is the theme of this 48-page magazine, featuring (along with much else) a fine essay by William Schmidt and colleagues regarding math (in the U.S. and overseas) as Exhibit A of the case for curricular coherence. See http://www.aft.org/american_educator/index.html.

It's not often that a study published in the journal Sociology of Education makes the front page of The Washington Post, but that's what happens when the study's findings suggest that sending junior to Andover may not have been such a good idea after all. A study by Paul Attewell in the October issue of the journal (called "The Winner-Take-All High School: Organizational Adaptations to Educational Stratification") finds that attending a competitive high school can hurt most students' chances of getting into very selective colleges.  Jay Mathews reflected on what this means in a November 6 piece online at WashingtonPost.com ("Competitive High School May Limit College Choices," and on page A1 of the Post on November 12 ("In College Admissions, Magnets are Negative").

Block scheduling caused the test scores of high school students in Iowa to drop, according to a new study by Iowa State University. The popular reform, which ordinarily divides the school day into four 80-to-90 minute classes instead of the traditional schedule of eight classes of 45-to-50 minutes each, led to "markedly lower" ACT scores. Schools often favor the reform because they believe it allows in-depth exploration of content and more hands-on activities, and because it may enhance school climate and reduce discipline problems. "Scores dip at 'blocked' schools," by Clark Kauffman and Staci Hupp, Des Moines Register, July 3, 2002. A press release from Iowa State is available at http://www.iastate.edu/~nscentral/releases/2002/jul/act.shtml.

David Brennan with Malcolm Baroway
2002

Toledo entrepreneur David Brennan (with help from Malcolm Baroway) has written this short, lively, opinionated book on the Cleveland voucher program, how it came to be, how it works and why it's controversial. Brennan has long been a major player in the Ohio school-choice saga, first chairing the Commission on Educational Choice named by Governor George Voinovich in 1992, then pressing for the voucher (and charter) legislation, then opening a pair of private schools in Cleveland (subsequently converted to charters) and remaining, throughout, a staunch advocate of more education options for kids-and for the role of the private sector in making such options available. Though this book tells interesting political and policy tales, it's chiefly an autobiographical account of David Brennan's embrace of this cause, as well as a bit of his life story. (You can also read a recent Education Week profile of him: "Millionaire Industrialist Touts 'White Hat' Firm to Build Charter Model," by Karla Scoon Reid, Education Week, May 22, 2002, http://www.edweek.org/ew/newstory.cfm?slug=37whitehat.h21&keywords=Brennan.) This 122-page book contains a useful prologue by David Zanotti of the Ohio Roundtable. It's published by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. The ISBN is 097-548528 and you can get more information at http://www.adti.net/brennan/index.html.

edited by Edward J. Dirkswager
2002

In the world of management theory, the 1990s featured much talk of a workplace shift from "command and control" hierarchies to empowered high-performance teams. This ethos permeates Teachers as Owners. In the second paragraph we read, "The typical organizational structure of our school systems contains a rigid hierarchy of roles and decision-making power, with teachers firmly positioned at the bottom of this hierarchy. Very simply, teachers are employees, and like most employees in rigid hierarchical organizations, they have a limited range of decision-making powers." The book's thesis is that, by empowering teachers as owners of their own means of production, communities will see a rise in student achievement. Few would deny that teachers prefer to work in schools that trust them, empower them to make decisions, value their input, and invites innovation. Yet empowerment only seems to succeed when those being empowered are fully committed to the enterprise, highly skilled at its work, and able to be trusted at all times. Democratic models of employment quickly collapse when they encounter slackers or inept members. Once trust is lost, rules and regulations are created to prevent cheating by the minority that would wreak havoc if left to their own devices. This fact collides with the theory of creating leaderless systems run by equal partners. The editor of this book notes that teachers who work in teacher-owned schools "believe that 100 to 250 students is a desirable size. They believe that schools of this size are better able to create a learning community." If a school gets much larger, teachers cannot effectively regulate themselves and the slackers can successfully hide. One must therefore ask whether teacher empowerment is a sound reform strategy for many U.S. schools, particularly in urban districts where the average elementary school enrolls 500 students, and the average high school more than 750. The ideas in Teachers as Owners are definitely worth considering-and may be applicable in charter schools and some regular public schools-but one can't put the book down without noting the chasm between these ideas and the realities of most American schools. For more information, see http://www.scarecrowpress.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0810843722.

edited by Kenneth K. Wong and Margaret C. Wang
2002

Vanderbilt's Kenneth K. Wong and the late Margaret C. Wang of Temple University co-edited this book, which is the 2nd volume in an educational productivity series whose general editor is Herbert J. Walberg. This 316-page, twelve-chapter volume is organized into sections on "efficiency," "accountability," and "equity." Its policy backdrop is 1994's Improving America's Schools Act, which significantly widened the "schoolwide" approach to Title I. The book, however, deals with numerous issues that bear on this big federal compensatory program, its effectiveness and its possible reform. It likely would have had more policy traction had it appeared before No Child Left Behind was wrapped up. But a number of essays remain germane, such as the thoughtful piece by Tyce Palmaffy and the Gadfly's own Marci Kanstoroom concerning the use of "market forces" to make Title I more effective. The ISBN is 1931576106 and the book can be ordered at http://www.infoagepub.com/oi.htm. Information on the hardback edition (ISBN 1931576114) also appears at Efficiency, Accountability, and Equity Issues in Title I Schoolwide Program Implementation.

John W. Oswald and Theodor Rebarber, AccountabilityWorks and the Education Leaders Council
June 2002

In this oddly titled report, AccountabilityWorks and the Education Leaders Council (ELC) describe 25 "innovations" in state testing programs that they found in the eleven states participating in the ELC. Authors John W. Oswald and Theodor Rebarber spend 17 pages outlining these under two main headings (immediate innovations and longer-term changes) and according to their significance. Some of it is a bit obvious (e.g. computer scoring, reliable links between test records and student records) though it all seems worthwhile. Unfortunately, this brief report only sketches these individual innovations (and their "benefits" and "challenges"); it does not delve deeply into an explanation of how they work. You can find a PDF version at State Innovation Priorities for State Testing Programs.