A New York Times article last week described how a young teacher in Brooklyn helped her students achieve test score improvements large enough to help get the school off the state's "registration review" list of failing schools. What's special about the teacher, Melanie Brown, is that she is a history and economics major who made her way into teaching through
Allan Odden, Carolyn Kelley, Herbert Heneman, and Anthony Milanowski, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, November 2001
Allan Odden and several associates at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education recently published this review of the theory and practice of financially rewarding teachers "for acquiring and demonstrating specific knowledge and skills needed to meet educational goals." Note that this isn't what's commonly referred to as "merit pay" as it's not keyed to teachers' effectiveness in boosting their students' achievement. Rather, it's based on attributes of the teachers themselves, what they know and are able to show that they can do. The authors also take pains to distinguish it from "career ladders" which, at least as they characterize them, tend to pull the best teachers out of the classroom into administrative roles. They found seven programs in K-12 education that satisfy their criteria. Based on what they learned from those programs, they identify a set of key design issues; draw eleven lessons (most of them pretty obvious) from "the pioneers"; and briefly discuss policy implications for states. It's fairly general, but perhaps that's all that can be expected from a twelve-page "policy brief." If you'd like to see it, call 215-573-0700 or find a PDF version on the web at http://www.cpre.org/Publications/rb34.pdf.
Chris Patterson, Texas Public Policy Foundation, January 2002
It's no secret that the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) has long had big differences with the main thrust of education reform in the Lone Star State. This 64-page report, written by TPPF education research director Chris Patterson, continues in that vein. It seeks to predict whether Texas's new statewide assessments (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS), which are to be pilot-tested in the next few months, are "on course to meet requirements and expectations." In TPPF's view, they probably aren't because, charges Ms. Patterson, they aren't all that different from the TAAS tests that they're to replace. She says "There is little evidence that TAKS tests will be sufficiently different from previous state assessments...to measure more meaningful academic expectations, set high standards for proficiency, increase test accuracy, and produce more useful information about student performance." She urges various steps to correct the problem. At their core is the highly charged political recommendation that the State Board of Education be placed in charge of the assessment system. Today the lead responsibility rests with the state commissioner of education and the Texas Education Agency that he heads - and that TPPF has had problems with for as long as I can remember. Politics aside, this report raises some non-trivial questions about the tests themselves, questions that state policymakers will surely want to consider as they move forward. You can find a PDF version of the report online at TPPF's website: www.tppf.org.
Clarence Stone, Jeffrey Henig, Bryan Jones and Carol Pierannunzi, 2001
In this book from the University Press of Kansas, a quartet of political scientists develops the concept of "civic capacity" as a way - the best way - to bring about true education reform. It's not just an education policy book, however. Though its guts are based on the authors' NSF-funded study of education change in eleven cities (including some 500 interviews), the book's real purpose is to develop a new theory of political change, one that centers on the creation and use of civic capacity in a community. It partakes of Coleman's and Putnam's work on "social capital" but faults that work for being too taken with private relationships and organizations and insufficiently attentive to the role of government. It also draws on, and praises, Paul Hill's work ("It Takes a City....") but suggests that Hill and colleagues also exaggerate the roles of non-governmental entities and forces. These authors harbor no doubt that "Government is not simply one among many equal social entities. It is the unit best suited to generate a collective sense of purpose when one is missing, to coordinate or coerce action when interests remain disparate, and to provide a vehicle for democratic control." They emphasize that it's the general-purpose government (i.e. mayor, city council, etc.) that they place this confidence in, not the separate governance system that characterizes public education in most American communities. So they tend to favor mayoral leadership of education reform. But they save their real enthusiasm for the nebulous idea of building a "substantial civic coalition." And they're dismayingly agnostic about what sorts of education reforms are worth making. Though they say "attention must center on academic performance," they don't really seem to care what changes or interventions occur in attempting to boost that performance, so long as everybody is on board. And this, to me, is the key weakness in their thinking: they've persuaded themselves that productive education change is most apt to occur in a consensual manner with all the stakeholders aboard. I have yet to see a place where any serious education reforms get made that way, i.e. without major friction, conflict and old-fashioned politics whereby some interests are involuntarily subordinated to others. To me, requiring stakeholder assent ordinarily leads to the perpetuation of the status quo, not to fundamental reform designed to benefit children. Still, this is a thoughtful and perceptive book that many people will want to read for themselves. Be warned that it's 200 pages long and a mite dry. The ISBN is 0700611185, and you can find it on the web at http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/stobui.html.
edited by Joy A. Palmer, 2001
Ideas matter and nowhere is this truer than in education. Since at least the time of the ancient Greeks, people have argued over how children learn and how education should be structured to facilitate their learning. In Plato's view, the disciplined study of formal knowledge is central to the development of a strong and rational mind. Children need to learn what society values and cares deeply about, and it is the job of the teacher to get those ideas across. This was the dominant view of education until the 18th century, when Jean Jacques Rousseau argued in Emile that education is largely an internal process that should be driven by the individual interests of children. For Rousseau, a good teacher allows the natural inclinations of the human individual to unfold and endure through personal discovery and experience. Today, when educators argue about a content-driven model of education versus a student-centered model of education, they are reviving a debate from centuries long ago. Unfortunately for readers of Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education, this volume only presents half of the debate. Fifty Modern Thinkers is the second volume of a two-part collection (by the British publishing firm Routledge) that purports to cover the works of those educational thinkers who have influenced educational thought and practice from the earliest times to the present day. (The first volume covered thinkers from Confucius to Dewey.) The book is a collection of essays written by educators from countries around the world who believe, with Rousseau, that the ultimate purpose of education is more about liberating children's innate wisdom and intelligence than it is about teaching children about the world around them. It does not, however, offer the reader insight into the writings of those who have been critical of this progressive strand of educational theory. The book, for example, describes the works of the little known Nel Noddings and Pierre Bourdieu, but does not mention well-known scholars who have criticized progressive education such as Diane Ravitch or E.D. Hirsch. The fact that Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education takes a one-sided slant on the war-of-ideas in the world of education limits its value for those who are truly interested in understanding how the education world has gotten to where it is. The ISBN is 0-415-22409-8; the publisher is Routledge. Order copies by calling 212-216-7800 or visiting http://www.routledge.com.
Lisa Graham Keegan, National Center for Policy Analysis, December 18, 2001
In a brief for the National Center for Policy Analysis, Lisa Graham Keegan, CEO of the Education Leaders Council and former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, makes the case for tuition tax credits, which were found constitutional by the Arizona Supreme Court in 1999. She explains the logistics of the credits, which have since been adopted in Florida and Pennsylvania and are gaining in popularity. In Arizona, taxpayers make a voluntary donation to a school tuition organization (STO) of their choice and in turn, their tax payment is reduced by the amount of the donation. The STO, working as a nonprofit organization, turns the money into tuition scholarships for students to attend private schools. Since its inception in 1998, the Arizona program has grown enormously. Donations have jumped from $2 million in 1998 to $17.2 million in 2000, with 70 to 80 percent of its scholarships going to low-income families. The Pennsylvania model is similar to that of Arizona, but differs in that it authorizes tax credits to businesses instead of individual taxpayers, and that it is 75 cents on the dollar rather than dollar-for-dollar. Keegan attributes the success of tuition tax credit programs both to their simplicity and to the incentive they provide for taxpayers and businesses to support educational opportunities. Her concise analysis can be accessed on the web at http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba384/ or by contacting Joan Kirby at 202-628-6671 in the NCPA Washington office: 655 15th St. NW, Suite 375, Washington DC 20005.
Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, December 2001
Accelerated Schools is a well-known schoolwide reform model developed by Henry Levin and now used in some 700 elementary and middle schools. But does it work? Until now, there hasn't been any persuasive outside evidence. Now the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), funded by the Ford Foundation, has closely examined the implementation and impact of Accelerated Schools in eight elementary schools over 8 years. The bottom line, says this study, is that when the program is faithfully executed over several years, third grade test scores begin to rise and, by the fifth year, exceed "predicted" levels in reading and math by a "statistically significant amount." How significant? About as much as is claimed for the celebrated Tennessee class-size reduction program. Program supporters assert that these Accelerated School findings may understate the program's impact because the scores that were compared include all children found in third grade when the tests were given, not just those who were in the schools long enough to be affected by the program's impact. They also say that program improvements during the 90's mean that Accelerated Schools works better and faster today than in the years studied by MDRC. But the study also has some serious limitations. It involves just 8 schools. There's no control group, which means score gains are compared with predicted test scores based on what third graders in those schools were scoring before the program arrived. It's not a longitudinal look at the same kids, but consecutive looks at successive cohorts of third graders. Though the researchers sought to control for changes in student demographics during that time, it's a little hard to accept their bland statement that these eight schools "experienced no or few major changes...or implementation of other reforms during the study period." In other words, we are asked to swallow their assertion that any changes in student performance must have been caused by the Accelerated Schools program, not by such other developments (widespread in the 1990's) as state standards and tests, teacher turnover, internet access in children's homes, etc. There's simply no way to know for sure whether the gains reported here are due to the program or to sunspots. But MDRC generally does high quality work and you will probably want to see for yourself, particularly if you're interested in the efficacy of schoolwide reform in K-12 education. You can obtain a PDF version on the web at http://www.mdrc.org/Reports2001/AcceleratedSchools/AccSchools-Overview.htm.
Data warehousing, data-driven decision making, or business intelligence - whatever its name, it's the latest thing for managing school systems, according to a short article in this Sunday's Education Life supplement to The New York Times. Mimicking businesses, accountability-minded administrators are gathering up the reams of data they collect each year and storing them on centralized computer systems so they can be linked and analyzed for patterns. Such data include test scores, grades, attendance records, and information about teacher certification, student demographics, immigration patterns, medical problems, disciplinary actions, and student transfers, among other things. Once analyzed, administrators hope the data can be used to improve teaching, raise test scores, and deter dropouts (and to justify new programs to the state legislature). Concerns have been raised that such data may be used to take punitive measures against teachers whose students are performing poorly, the author notes, but school systems say that this is not their intent. See "Business Intelligence: Insights from the Data Pile," by Leslie Berger, The New York Times, January 13, 2002.
"Phonics and testing, we're meant to believe, are an intensive therapy set to turn around laggard schools," writes Stephen Metcalf in The Nation, "But administrators, teachers, parents and children know better." The real story behind President Bush's education plan, says Metcalf, is that "The big players now at the education table, some with a considerable financial stake in the new regime, believe that money is best spent on testing and textbooks, rather than on introducing equity into the system over the long term." Readers may be entertained by the pages he devotes to exposing an alleged plot behind the spread of scientifically based reading instruction, and by the fingers he points (at textbook publisher McGraw-Hill, among others). But they shouldn't be surprised; after all, "to teach phonics you need a textbook," as well as worksheets and tests, all items sold by McGraw Hill, Metcalf points out. "The amount of cross-pollination and mutual admiration between the Administration and that [McGraw-Hill] empire is striking," Metcalf writes, with the McGraw Foundation awarding Bush Education Secretary Rod Paige its highest educator's award and Paige later serving as keynote speaker at a company conference. As for reading, Metcalf is alarmed by the Bush administration's emphasis on phonics and its use of the findings of the National Reading Panel, which he alleges was wrongly presented to the public as an end to the Reading Wars. Not so, accordingly to this screed. Rather, the powerful Washington public relations firm hired by the government to promote the report has close ties to McGraw-Hill's flagship literacy product, Open Court. If you savor leftist paranoia and aren't much concerned about facts, have a peek at "Reading Between the Lines," by Stephen Metcalf, The Nation, January 28, 2002.
Education giving is also taking a hit as philanthropists' bank accounts shrink and some redirect their resources toward fighting terrorism and supporting domestic relief efforts in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In a commentary in Education Week, the Fordham Foundation's Checker Finn and Kelly Amis express the hope that recession will prompt education donors to focus on high-yield strategies and high-impact projects with the potential to transform the K-12 system instead of just adding resources to it. Many philanthropists place their bets on strategies that Finn and Amis judge futile in most cases - strategies that assume the existing public education system wants to change but lacks the wherewithal to pull it off. Philanthropic gifts based on such assumptions only work when the circumstances are exactly right, they argue. More promising, in their view, are philanthropic efforts that seek to alter how the education system operates by pressing upon it from outside - and force it to change out of necessity - through reforms based on standards-based accountability or competition. The authors identify two philanthropists who have pursued wise reform strategies: Tom Luce, a Texas attorney who used his own time and money to launch Just for the Kids, a nonprofit organization that tracks schools' academic progress and makes it easy for parents to investigate and compare schools over the internet, and John Walton, the Wal-Mart heir who has helped launch charter schools and supported scholarship programs to help low-income students attend private schools. The authors end by reflecting on the experiences of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in Dayton. See "Making More of Less," by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Kelly Amis, Education Week, January 9, 2002. This commentary is a highly condensed version of a book released by the Foundation late last year. Making It Count: A Guide to High-Impact Education Philanthropy can be downloaded at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=39, where you will also find instructions for ordering a free copy.