After California Governor Gray Davis threatened to veto AB 2160 (discussed in the accompanying editorial by Michael Podgursky) if it included a provision expanding collective bargaining to cover curriculum and textbook decisions, the bill was amended by a legislative committee yesterday to prohibit any expansion of collective bargaining, but substituting a new process by which teachers and district representatives could negotiate academic matters. While Podgursky nicely lays out the reasons that expanding collective bargaining would be bad public policy, the Governor's veto threat seemed to be as much about politics as policy-the latest episode in the ongoing soap opera of a relationship between Davis and the 330,000 member California Teachers Association. Frustrated by Davis's education policy, the union has pushed its own ambitious policy agenda this year-including a bill to revamp the state's testing and school accountability programs-that has been backed by a $3 million ad campaign. The CTA gave $1.3 million to Davis' last campaign, but so far has only given $60,000 for his re-election bid, according to reporter John Simerman. In recent weeks, CTA President Wayne Johnson has bashed the governor for soliciting a $1 million donation from the union. "We're upset with people who come to us and say 'We want your support and we support union issues,' and then, when they don't support us, we're supposed to be ok with that?" Johnson said to a reporter. "We're not." Tim Hodson, the executive director of the Center for California Studies at Sacramento State University, commented, "When the histories are written for this, it will be a wonderful example of an organization becoming so infatuated with its own clout that it thought it could do anything at any cost." For more see "Governor's threat scuttles teacher textbook bargaining," by John Simerman, Contra Costa Times, May 22, 2002 and "Teachers' proposal amended," by Jim Sanders, Sacramento Bee, May 23, 2002.

Abell Foundation
March 2002

The ever-useful Abell Foundation has just issued this blunt, alarming report on the education disaster at the intersection of Baltimore's moribund school system and the troubled community college that receives a large fraction of that system's graduates. Anybody concerned about the reform of urban education at either the K-12 level or the postsecondary level and, especially, at the difficulties where they're supposed to mesh, will do well to read this bleak, hard-hitting account. You can find both a short version and a long version on the Foundation's website at www.abell.org. (Both are in PDF format.)

Council of Chief State School Officers
April 2002 (draft)

The Council of Chief State School Officers recently produced this 45-page draft paper on states' responsibilities under the new NCLB legislation. Addressing Titles I, II and III of the Act, it sets forth in a clear, factual and detailed way what states must do by when to comply with these multitudinous and complex requirements. You'll find a PDF version at http://www.ccsso.org/pdfs/NCLB2002.pdf.

Katrina Bulkley and Jennifer Fisler, Consortium for Policy Research in Education
April 2002

This useful ten-page review of charter-school research literature was published by the University of Pennsylvania-based Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) and written by Katrina Bulkley and Jennifer Fisler of Rutgers University. It's straightforward and fair-minded, useful to anyone seeking a fast overview of what's been learned to date by umpteen studies of charter schools. Be warned, though, that, on just about all the important issues, the evidence they've gathered is ambiguous, inconclusive or simply mixed. You can find it on the web at http://www.cpre.org/Publications/rb35.pdf. A longer version (which I've not had the opportunity to review) will be available next week at http://www.cpre.org.

Noelle C. Griffin and Priscilla Wohlstetter, Teachers College Record
April 2001

Through a series of focus groups-including charter school founders/directors, administrators and teachers-the authors investigated 17 charter schools and the key instructional and organizational practices that they established in their start-up phase. Specifically, the authors looked at the experiences of these schools-six schools each in Boston and Los Angeles; and five schools in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area-in developing an instructional/curricular program, an accountability system, and school management/leadership processes. According to the authors (scholars at the University of Southern California), the charter school personnel interviewed found it difficult to develop coherent instructional programs. Many struggled with the "make versus buy" dilemma-should the school create its own instructional program from scratch or buy a pre-existing package that could be implemented quickly? The schools in the study tended to have a "pioneer" ethos that led them to create their own. This was time-consuming of course, and often collided with the realities of running a charter school: budget issues, relevant district, state, and federal policies, insurance, meals, security, custodians, substitutes, special education issues, and bus companies. As one school administrator lamented, "The logistics can kill you. The smallest part of my time goes to teaching and learning issues." As a result, many of these schools lacked a well-developed structure. "We limped through the first year in our approach to math-we had no textbook, no formal curriculum, and no one in charge of making those decisions," observed one school administrator. As for developing an accountability system, the authors discovered that there were strong feelings of informal accountability to the local school community, especially parents and to students. Yet teachers in many of the schools felt outright hostility and derision towards external accountability. One school leader stated bluntly, "We buck the accountability plan. I simply say I don't know state regulations." When it came to developing school management/leadership processes, many of the school leaders exhibited an "outlaw mentality." They saw themselves as fighting what they perceived as the ills of American public education, and this attitude appeared to generate and sustain commitment to the charter school. An elementary school administrator summed it up this way: "We're all here for a purpose...we're all here together because we chose to be." Although this article is more than a year old, it is worth reading if you want to appreciate the challenges facing those entrepreneurs struggling to make charter schools work. To see the report for yourself, go to www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentID=10722.

Timothy A. Hacsi
March 2002

This new book by Harvard ed school researcher Timothy A. Hacsi tours the reader through five contentious education policy questions (does Headstart work, does bilingual education work, does class size matter, is social promotion a good or bad thing, will spending more on schools make them better) and comes to the earth-shattering conclusion that politicians wrestling with these matters have not always based their decisions on what Hacsi would judge to be the best social science evidence. In fairness, he acknowledges that much of that evidence isn't really very good, that many education program evaluations are flawed, and that in many cases the best available answer isn't yes or no but, rather, "depends on how it's done." For the most part, however, he places greater faith in experts than in public opinion or the priority judgments of elected officials, and on several of these contentious issues he comes down firmly on the higher-spending side of the debate. While he doesn't quite finger a "great right wing conspiracy" for manipulating the other side, he comes close. I doubt that this book will put an end to any of these arguments, but by reading it you can at least get a sense of what's being argued about. Published by the Harvard University Press, the ISBN is 0674007441, it's 260 pages long, and you can get it through a bookseller or obtain additional information from http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/HACCHI.html.

Last week, the Department of Education released the most recent batch of scores on the NAEP history exam, and the results for 12th graders were abysmal. Once you learn a little about the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS), the 26,000 member organization of teachers of history, geography, political science, economics, sociology, and psychology, you may not be surprised that history scores are so bad. In the May 6 issue of The Weekly Standard, Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute takes a look at what the NCSS and its members-the professionals who are in charge of turning the nation's young into effective citizens-have had to say about citizenship since September 11 and over the past decade. After the attacks, the NCSS magazine warned that they would provide the excuse Americans wanted to indulge their reflexive racism and revenge-oriented ideology. But the deep cynicism of the NCSS about America is nothing new. For the most part, the NCSS aims to "de-exceptionalize" both America and the Western world as a whole ("We're just another country and another group of people") and to help students think of themselves not as Americans but as members of the global community. The curriculum standards that NCSS promulgated for social studies in 1994 include a list of performance expectations that cover culture, economics, technology, "continuity and change," and personal identity, but no American history, no major documents, and only a smattering of references to government at all, writes Hymowitz. Many states have embraced the NCSS idea that you don't need to know any American history to be an effective citizen, and use the NCSS curricular guidelines as the model for their state social studies standards. NCSS theoreticians reject the notion of America's Founders that self-governing citizens must learn their country's Constitution and political history well, for only those who understand their country would love it, and only those who love it would be willing to undertake the work and sacrifice to sustain it, Hymowitz writes. "Anti-Social Studies," by Kay Hymowitz, The Weekly Standard, May 6, 2002 (subscribers only)

According to an article in Sunday's Washington Post, advisers to President Bush are developing a package of policies to boost civics education in the United States in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. The ideas they're considering include federal incentives to states to adopt civics education classes in public schools, expansion of "service learning" classes that give credit for community volunteer work, drafting of a civics curriculum, and the use of the presidential bully pulpit. From the 1920s to the 1960s, at least half of American high school students took civics classes, but by 1994, that number had fallen to 10 percent as civics education was replaced by government classes that do not deal with citizens' involvement. "Revival in Civics Education is Explored," by Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, May 12, 2002

Anyone looking for resources that can be used to teach history and geography in grades K-6 should take a look at a fine new series of books developed by the Core Knowledge Foundation to supplement or supplant ordinary textbooks. At the first grade level, teachers (or parents) can choose from slim, colorful books on Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Three World Religions, Mexico Today, Early Civilizations of the Americas, Early Explorers and Settlers, From Colonies to Independence, and Exploring the West; at the fourth grade level, the offerings, which are equally engaging but even more packed with content, include Using Maps, World Mountains, Europe in the Middle Ages, The Spread of Islam, African Kingdoms, Dynasties of China, The American Revolution, The United States Constitution, Early Presidents: Washington through Jackson, and American Reformers. There are other selections for all grades from K-6. For more information, contact E.D. Hirsch at [email protected], Pearson learning at 1-800-321-3106, or surf to http://www.pearsonlearning.com/plearn/html/cat_progseries.cfm?sub_id=S7&grade=-1,12&prog_id=88362005&area_id=A228.

The No Child Left Behind Act requires school districts to allow children in persistently failing schools to transfer to better (public) schools and to pay the transportation costs for those students to reach their new schools. For thousands of schools, that provision takes effect in September. Well-run districts are already developing plans for complying with this provision but in the process they're encountering two issues they've thus far managed to avoid: integration and competition. Both issues are being played out in Montgomery County, Maryland, an enormous school district in the suburbs of Washington, DC which includes some of the nation's most exclusive zip codes as well as more diverse urban areas, a district that has lately been struggling with its own widening achievement gap.

The Montgomery County school system has developed a plan that gives parents in 10 faltering schools the ability to transfer their children to affluent, high-achieving schools that are nearby and have room for more students. The reactions to this plan have been telling. Some parents whose children attend the high-achieving schools are bristling at the news that students from other neighborhoods might be bused in, according to Washington Post reporter Brigid Schulte. The vice president of the school board commented that "I hate to think people are socioeconomically biased, but I think there is some prejudice in this county." School staff seem more optimistic. One principal whose school has been designated to take about 45 transfers said that teachers were concerned about how it might affect their test scores, although generally upbeat and feeling up to the challenge of the new students. Meanwhile, Superintendent Jerry Weast, who has been pumping millions of dollars into the failing schools in an attempt to turn them around, is doing his best to convince parents to keep their kids in those schools. But not everyone in the district seems convinced that giving parents the ability to send their children to the best possible school should be the goal, whatever the federal law says. One board member complained "With the amount of money we're putting into those schools, we shouldn't have to be moving kids around." Whether parents will prefer to keep their children in the low-achieving schools, some of which have such bells and whistles as health clinics, after-school programs, and adult literacy classes, or send their kids to the higher-achieving school up the road, is yet to be seen.

"Educators Prepare, Worry over Effect of Transfer Law," by Brigid Schulte, The Washington Post, May 13, 2002

"For Pupils, A Chance to Transfer Up," by Brigid Schulte, The Washington Post, May 10, 2002

Superb analysis. I had never considered that full funding of special education costs by the federal government would dramatically increase public schools' incentive to classify challenging children. The recommendation to "voucherize" classified children would certainly reduce the incentive for misidentification.

As to the causes for high numbers of "learning disability" classifications, all the possibilities you mention probably play a role. My best guess--after 28 years as a learning disabilities teacher (retired two years)--as to the major culprit, however, is weak reading instruction (whole language philosophy) for at-risk children in the first two grades.

I can't say with certainty, however, that early reading instruction is worse today that 30 years ago. Only in the past decade did I begin teaching children as young 3rd graders. I can say that K-2 reading instruction, as I witnessed it, is weak today for at-risk children because of the lack of systematic, sequential phonics in the early grades. But I doubt if it was ever strong in the past half century.

Tom Shuford
Special Education Teacher, 3rd and 4th grades, 28 years, Retired
Ventura, CA

The miserable failure of most states to implement the requirements of the 1994 federal education amendments in timely fashion had already cast a veil of doubt over the prospects for No Child Left Behind: the stark fact that states don't necessarily make the changes that Washington expects of them-and then get away with it.

But what happens when states do comply with the formal requirements of federal legislation, yet do so in such a way that they defeat its main purpose?

No Child Left Behind allows for that possibility, via one of its central "federalism" features: the expectation that every state will set its own standards and (with Washington's approval) select and score and report the results of its own tests. The only uniform requirement is that every state has the same twelve years to get all its pupils up to the level that it designates as "proficient."

Many have noted that this arrangement could easily encourage low standards, i.e. that a state with lower standards has a better chance of making "adequate yearly progress" toward, and getting everybody up to, those standards within the prescribed dozen years than a state with loftier standards. It's obvious: if you set the bar lower, more people will successfully jump over it without having to struggle very hard.

But what, exactly, does "low standards" mean and by what mechanisms could a state, intentionally or inadvertently, end up with them? Who would know that this was occurring? How could one tell?

It turns out that education bars can be set low via more mechanisms than you might suppose-and that it's not always easy to know when this is happening. I can think of four ways that state standards might end up being low in practice, yet only one of these will be readily apparent to outsiders unless the state discloses complete information about its tests, what's on them, what the actual test questions are, how they're scored and how a student's or school's performance is calculated. (And, of course, unless someone closely analyzes the information that the state makes available.) Note that three of these four paths to low standards involve tests as well as academic standards, and be aware that tests (and their scoring) are usually far more elusive than the standards themselves in the eyes of outside analysts and whistle blowers. Many states simply don't release them, or release only portions of them, or release the tests but not the scoring information.

Here are the four ways:

First and most obvious, the published academic standards are themselves undemanding. Their content is easy. They expect little by way of skills and knowledge from students at various grade levels. Third grade math standards, for example, are limited to addition and subtraction, not multiplication and division. When multiplication is reached, only one or two digit numbers must be multiplied. Fractions are never complex, numbers never irrational. On the English standards, sentences are never compound, adjectives and adverbs never need to be distinguished, reading passages are simple, words are short. Precisely because this version of low standards is so apparent to anyone who looks-the standards, typically, are posted on the Internet-and because various organizations (e.g. the American Federation of Teachers, from time to time the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation) know how to find and appraise them, states may be too shrewd to follow this path.

Second, though the standards cover the full spectrum of skills and knowledge that well-educated students should possess, the tests focus on the easy end of that spectrum. In other words, they're poorly aligned with the standards, and the mis-match leads to an over-concentration on the more basic skills and rudimentary knowledge. Thus, for example, the posted math standards for 8th grade include algebra yet most of the test questions deal with arithmetic. This means one could do well on the test without knowing algebra. The English standards may expect students to explain the plot of a work of fiction, but the reading passages on the test are pegged at the level of Harry Potter rather than Lord of the Flies. Nor would anyone know this unless they could inspect the actual test items-all of them, or at least a representative sampling, not just a handful that the state selects for release.

Third, the test is nicely aligned with the standards and the questions thus "cover" the right skills and content, but the individual test items are easy to answer correctly. If they're multiple-choice questions, the "distractors" are ridiculous, making even a weak student more likely to select the correct response. If they're "open response" items, the "scoring rubric" is simplistic, such that a student can receive full credit for a superficial answer. (For example, he explains that the Constitution establishes our framework for government but says nothing about its key principles and provisions.) If a state (or its testing contractor) used this ploy, it would be hard for outsiders to detect unless they had access both to the test questions (and possible answers) AND the scoring rubrics.

Fourth, the state's standards are solid, the tests are properly aligned with them and the questions are suitably challenging-but the "cut score" is set low. A student might, for example, have to answer only half the questions correctly to be said to have "passed" the test-and those could be the easier half of the questions dealing with the easier half of the standards. (A variant: the "proficiency" score for individuals is appropriate, but only a smallish fraction of the kids in a school-or demographic subgroup-needs to attain that score for the larger unit to be deemed to meet the standards.) This gambit would only be visible if one had access to information about passing scores and how they're calculated for individuals, schools and groups, and that information would be truly helpful only if one also could inspect the test items and scoring guides (and could "map" them onto the state's academic standards).

How to guard against such eventualities leading to a cheapening of standards and evasion of the point of NCLB? One might trust the state and its testing contractors to do the right thing, although in a high-stakes era, when political reputations (and future contracts) hinge on these results, that would seem risky. One could replace state-determined standards and tests with a single national set-but in the present political context that seems entirely unthinkable and many believe it's undesirable. One can wait for NAEP, in its new role as external auditor of state academic performance, to reveal discrepancies and then poke around for explanations in individual states-but that'll take quite a while, and NAEP has its own vulnerabilities, which may be compounded by the pending NAEP-OERI reauthorization. Or one can rely on sunlight and external scrutiny of state standards and tests, but that is realistic only if the state accountability system is highly transparent, if tests are fully released (which is costly), if scoring guides and rubrics are in the public domain, and if outside groups know how to monitor all these moving parts and make sense of how they fit together.

Not a reassuring picture, eh?

Please suggest additional solutions-and help us alert Gadfly readers to other ways of manipulating the system, frustrating the honorable goal of leaving no child behind and, thereby, continuing to leave millions of young Americans at risk. We will consider for publication in this space any cogent and well-written submissions.