The Education Gadfly Weekly

This new paper by edu-economist extraordinaire Eric Hanushek and colleagues adds empirical clout to the “conventional wisdom” that principal quality—and principal turnover—matters for student performance. (This paper debuted at a recent CALDER conference that was chockablock with important education research.) Using administrative data, analysts observed over 7,000 principals from 1995 to 2001 in Texas. They first estimate principals’ contributions by tracking student-learning gains during each leader’s tenure at a given school, controlling for other school-level factors. (They attempt to control for years of experience by limiting one of their analyses to principals with three years under their belts.) According to their most conservative estimates, having a principal in the top 16 percent of the distribution will lead the average student to learn 0.05 standard deviations more than he or she would in a school with an average principal. For comparison, studies suggest that teacher effects are about twice this size, though importantly, the learning effects due to a strong principal apply to all students in the school, not just an individual classroom. Meaning the aggregate impact of having an effective principal in a school can be very large. Further, variance in effectiveness among leaders increases with the school-poverty rate—meaning that the poorest schools are more likely to have either very effective or very ineffective principals. Principal turnover patterns also differ by principal quality and type of school. In other words, analysts find that both the least and most effective principals tend to switch schools more often; this phenomenon is also more pronounced in low-income schools. Unfortunately, the worst principals don’t appear to leave education altogether; they merely resurface as leaders at other schools. It seems that principals, and not just teachers, take part in the “dance of the lemons,” too.

Gregory F. Branch, Eric A. Hanushek, and Steven G. Rivkin, “Estimating the Effect of Leaders on Public Sector Productivity: The Case of School Principals” (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, January 2012).

This new book from libertarian scholar Charles Murray, which has already sent the chattering class into overdrive, frames—and decries—how our society has strayed from the traditional American values of religiosity, honesty, marriage, and industriousness. Part one of his analysis explains the formation of a new filtered upper class, an educated and wealthy elite, severely cut off from others in society, both geographically and culturally. Murray’s data-filled tables and graphs show that this new class is likelier to be married and regularly attend religious services, and is less apt to have children out of wedlock. Part two maps the “new lower class”—the growing American counterculture comprised of those who eschew the four cultural norms that Murray sees as defining the “American way of life”—which then perpetuates the income-linked achievement gap. (To ground this analysis in class, not race, he deals specifically in this book with the country’s white population and its cultural breakdown.) Part three explains why this rift matters: Murray’s main concern is that these two worlds lack an arena for interaction. His arguments—notably that graduates from elite schools tend to marry one another, make more money, live in “SuperZips” (zip codes saturated with elite residents), and afford their children better opportunities—have implicit ramifications for education. What’s unclear is whether Murray believes that better schools can help to heal the rift.

Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (New York, NY: Crown Forum, 2012).

As usual, the College Board’s latest annual report on enrollment and achievement in the prestigious Advanced Placement program paints an overall rosy picture. (The College Board, remember, has a major vested interest in both the reputation and expansion of the AP program and is famously resistant to external analyses of its data.) Since 2001, the national passing rate (a score of three or higher) has bumped almost 8 percentage points—and twenty-two states boast even larger gains. In fact, more graduates are passing AP tests today than took them a decade ago. (Note that this report doesn’t hit on whether the quality of the exams has remained steadfast.) Yet some problems persist—especially surrounding access to the AP for those in rural and urban areas, as well as for minorities writ large. Four out of five African American students who had at least a 70 percent chance of passing an AP exam (based on PSAT scores, according to a College Board algorithm, aptly dubbed “AP Potential”) either didn’t enroll in the relevant AP course or attended a school where the course was not offered. To counter this predicament, the Board offers tips for schools, districts, states, and universities, most of which are vapid and obvious (“provide funding incentives to subsidize fees for AP STEM exams” or “offer emotional and academic support to students through targeted peer mentoring”). Digital learning—and the potentials it brings to efficiently and effectively open AP access to those in traditionally hard-to-reach schools—is overlooked as an option. As are the growing pains inevitable with such a rapidly expanding program. According to our own survey of AP teachers, overall program quality remains strong—but storm clouds are amassing on the horizon: Over half of AP teachers believe that students overestimate their abilities and are in over their heads. Smart expansion and inclusion must surely be fought for. But let’s make sure this doesn’t come at the expense of those most ready for challenging coursework.

The College Board, AP Report to the Nation (Washington, D.C.: The College Board, February 2012.)

Mike sat down with Fordham’s new school choice czar, Adam Emerson, to question just how flexible ESEA flexibility turned out to be and to ponder Obama’s abandonment of the D.C. voucher program. Amber looks at a new study on how much value principals add while Chris learns that they sometimes need to bob and weave when handing out teacher evaluations.

Amber's Research Minute

Estimating the Effect of Leaders on Public Sector Productivity: The Case of School Principals

Amber's Weekly Poll

What percentage of all public school students attend a charter school? (data from 2008-09)

Tune in next week to find out the answer!

What's Up With That?

Springfield, MA teacher punches vice principal during evaluation

Among the speakers at Embracing the Common Core on February 15, 2012, was State Superintendent Stan Heffner who stressed that the system Ohio currently has is letting kids down and not preparing them for the future. He went on to emphasize that the Common Core gives us the opportunity and chance to do better for our kids and we must capitalize on that.

The potential of K-12 online learning can't be realized unless we change how we govern education. .

If policymakers want to see more rapid technological innovation in K-12 education—innovation that works to the clear benefit of students—they will need to take a hard look at how the public education system has managed to forestall innovation for so many years. They will need to consider how that system is structured, governed, and controlled.

It seems inevitable that technology and online learning will play a sizable role in public schools. But without the driving force of competition, this could be a long time coming. At present, online education plays a tiny role in K-12 education. In 2010-11, roughly 250,000 public school students were involved in full-time online education, nearly all through virtual charter schools, not through the regular public school systems.[1] That is 0.45 percent of public school enrollments. Millions more have “computers in their classrooms,” of course, but true “blended” schnoools can be counted on one’s fingers.

Why so slow? Resistance to technological innovation is abetted by one feature of the current public education system, above all others. That is the almost exclusive authority (charter schools being a crucial exception) granted to local school districts to determine how students are educated. School districts have the monopolistic right to determine which schools students attend, what curricula they receive, and how much access they are provided to online education. School districts are disciplined by the political process—school-board elections and decision-making—but those politics are notoriously vulnerable to pressures from vested interests, in favor of the status quo.

States need to reclaim that authority. My new paper, “Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning,” provides a detailed analysis of why this is necessary and how to make it a reality. The following ten steps, drawn from that work, offer state policymakers a brief overview of a politically viable and educationally transformative program to govern and finance a vibrant public market in online education.

Step 1: Set K-12 Online-Learning Policy at the State Level

States should take primary responsibility for creating the system that will govern and finance online public education. Districts simply cannot handle this role. Politics makes the role even less tenable. Districts will naturally object to the loss of control. But they should be able competitors in a system where students and families can choose among various online providers. The state is not taking students and resources away from school districts; rather, the state is creating a system that asks districts to earn the allegiance of students rather than being guaranteed it.

Step 2: Create a Public Market for K-12 Online Learning

Notwithstanding the political forces that will surely push back, states should set policies for online learning that promote the development of a competitive market. Policies should encourage widespread student participation in online programs, attract multiple providers of online content and instruction, and provide ample funding to reward private investment in better products and services. Crucially, policies should not discriminate between for-profit and non-profit providers. Online education offers policymakers an opportunity to channel the beneficial forces of the marketplace into education in a practical and powerful way—more than is possible in brick-and-mortar education.

Step 3: Provide Students the Right to Choose Online Learning Full Time

States should give students the right to choose online instruction as a full-time source of their public education. Families should be guaranteed specifically the right to choose any full-time virtual school in the state, whether operated as a charter or run directly by a state agency. States should not limit the choice of full-time schools to those based in one’s home district (as Massachusetts has effectively done) or contiguous counties (as California has done). These restrictions on choice serve no educational value and limit the development of vigorous markets.

Step 4: Provide Students the Right to Choose Online Learning Part Time

While the full-time online schooling model has generated massive political resistance and heated controversy, its revolutionary potential pales when compared with a part-time model. To date, however, states have been more willing to give students the right to choose alternative education full time—brick-and-mortar and virtual charter schools—than part time. But without the part-time option, most students will not have access, and the traditional system will not face sufficient pressure to innovate.

Step 5: Encourage Statewide Online Charter Schools, Overseen by Statewide Charter Authorizers

A proven vehicle for making available multiple alternative providers of public education is the public charter school. Online charters should be authorized according to the best practices that have emerged through practical experience with brick-and-mortar charter schools. State policies are also needed to strengthen charter laws—especially helping them generate more effective competition. The market should determine the number of schools in a state and their most effective size: No limits should be placed on student enrollment or the number of full-time online charters. At the same time, such schools must assume full responsibility for students who declare them their base school, or school of record. States should also provide for multiple authorizers of online charter schools.

Step 6: License Supplementary Online Providers

States should expand the responsibility of charter authorizers to include oversight of part-time online providers. Such authorizers would be charged with approving, supervising, and renewing the operating permits of all part-time providers not otherwise approved by the state. They would not, however, have to approve online courses offered across district lines by school districts or colleges and universities otherwise eligible to provide courses to public school students for credit.

Step 7: Fund All Learning Opportunities Equally Per Pupil

In designing a funding system to accommodate online learning, states should aim to allow all dollars (local, state, and federal) to follow the student. Funding should be neutral with respect to where and how the student receives equivalent education value, which in turn should be measured by education outcomes and not in education inputs. If a student passes a class taught fully online, the provider should be paid the same as if the student earned the credit in a traditional classroom.

Step 8: Exempt Online and Blended Teaching from Traditional Teacher Requirements Including Certification and Class Size

If flexibility is not built in from the outset, teacher HR practices and collective-bargaining agreements could easily stifle innovation in online learning. States can ensure flexibility by lifting class-size restrictions on online courses. Policymakers should also avoid needless restrictions on teacher credentials. Teachers working fully online should not be required to hold traditional state certifications.

Step 9: Establish Student Learning as the Foundation of Accountability for Online Schools and Providers

At this point, neither experts nor policymakers are in a position to say just how future schooling should be organized to best deploy teachers and technology. So, policymakers ought to encourage a market-based system that will promote experimentation and innovation—in pursuit of student learning. To ensure that the market makes learning its top priority, states should carefully specify their goals for student achievement and measure how well students, schools, and other education providers are achieving them.

Step 10: Address Market Imperfections by Providing Abundant Information to Students, Families, Schools, and Districts

No market is perfect and policymakers must therefore stand ready to correct market imperfections that may arise. The most powerful tool that regulators have to help the market do its work is information. The better informed parents and students are about their choices in online learning, the more likely they are to choose quality providers and online schools. As part of their online policies, states should have transparency requirements and should expand state report cards to include licensed online providers as well as online charter schools.

Taking Resistance Seriously

Technological innovation, new approaches to teaching and learning, and higher levels of achievement will not come to public education—at least not any time soon—without reforms that break down the system’s inherent resistance to disruptive change. The surest way to do this is to shift control of K-12 online learning away from political powers that oppose a market-based system of control and instead allow the most effective solutions to emerge via competition. The market is no panacea. It will require close government oversight. But it will also provide incentives for innovation and improvement that the current system of governance never will.

John E. Chubb is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, as well as a founder and chief executive officer of Leeds Global Partners.

Related articles

Big changes to edugovernance could translate to big progress for Indianapolis. Photo by Rob Annis.

We started The Mind Trust in 2006 with an ambitious goal: to create an ecosystem in Indianapolis where bold ideas to transform K-12 education could thrive. Six years later, that vision is coming to fruition.

We have recruited well-established programs such as Teach For America, College Summit and The New Teacher Project to Indianapolis. We also have invested millions in fellowships for social entrepreneurs who have come up with bold, outside-the-box initiatives for improving student outcomes. Both efforts have helped to build a network of talented leaders in Indianapolis who are working to address some of the most pressing problems in K-12 education.

We also launched a Charter School Incubator last fall to provide organizational support for leaders to start networks of best-in-class charter schools. Over the next few years, that effort will spawn dozens of top-notch schools and provide families in Indiana’s capital city with more high-quality education options. And we’re sharing lessons learned and collaborating with cities around the country through a network of 19 peer organizations called the Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust).

Meanwhile, state-level leaders such as Governor Mitch Daniels and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett have successfully pushed reforms that make it easier to open charter schools, tie teacher pay to performance, and rein in teachers unions’ collective bargaining authority. Those changes have helped to create a climate conducive to reform in the city and state.

All of those elements are critical building blocks to help our city become a place where all students, regardless of background, have access to an excellent education. But more dramatic steps are needed to drive long-term change and fully unleash the power of the entrepreneurial culture we’ve established around education reform in Indianapolis.

That is why the Mind Trust recently proposed a dramatic overhaul in how Indianapolis’s largest school district operates. Our report, “Creating Opportunity Schools: A Bold Plan to Transform Indianapolis Public Schools,” proposes changes that would be among the most revolutionary of any urban district in the U.S. Our plan has sparked significant conversations in Indianapolis and other cities. Most recently, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson offered a bold plan for revamping his city’s K-12 system that cited our report and set forth similar prescriptions.

Under our Opportunity Schools plan, $188 million would shift from the district’s highly centralized bureaucracy to individual schools. That would virtually double the amount of per-pupil funding available at the school level—from $6,600 per student to $12,000 a—and would empower school leaders to spend strategically in ways that advance student achievement. They could increase pay for great teachers, for example, provide wraparound services for students, or extend the school day or year. Along with funding, school leaders would have autonomy over all the key functions in their schools, including staffing, curriculum, calendar, services, and programs.

$188 million would shift from the district’s highly centralized bureaucracy to individual schools.

Our report also calls for transforming the central administration from a compliance-driven bureaucracy to a lean, accountability-focused office that makes strategic investments in a few high-impact initiatives. For example, we think the central office should invest $14 million annually to provide universal pre-school, giving all 4-year-olds the opportunity to thrive once they get to kindergarten. We also think the district should invest $2.5 million per year to recruit talented teachers and school leaders. And the central office should spend $7.5 million each year to help launch new schools so that qualified educators, nonprofits and entrepreneurial citizens would have the support they need to build the next generation of excellent schools and replace those that are not meeting high standards. Because all of these funds would be reallocated from what is currently spent by a bloated central office, this more strategic way of investing public dollars would be budget-neutral and wouldn’t require any new taxes.

Importantly, the Opportunity Schools plan calls for providing teachers and leaders at excelling schools the autonomy to make decisions about what and how students are taught. In order to earn and keep such freedom, they would be required to meet high benchmarks and maintain top-notch performance. Our plan would allocate decision-making authority to those who are best poised to determine things such as curriculum and calendar.

To accomplish and sustain the initiatives in our plan, we propose eliminating the current school board—and its diffuse power structure—and putting the Indianapolis mayor in charge of the district. Under our model, the mayor would appoint the majority of a five-member school board, with the city’s legislative body appointing the remainder. That board would be responsible for appointing a superintendent to lead the district.

A yearlong review of alternative governance models led us to the conclusion that providing accountability from a highly visible elected official is the only way to execute a plan this bold and have it succeed. Urban school boards nationwide have failed to govern well, in part because their members’ narrow voting constituency makes them more susceptible than mayors to influence by special interests. And past efforts have also shown how difficult it is to achieve reform without a governance overhaul. For example, in 1995, the legislature empowered IPS to make great changes by limiting IPS teachers' collective bargaining rights to wages and benefits. But the elected school board continued to act in the same way, making no use of its new freedom. The missing ingredient was a change in governance.

We at The Mind Trust are pleased with Indianapolis’s evolution into a community ripe for a major education transformation. Our efforts have built a robust network of change-agents and a culture of bold thinking—both necessary ingredients for driving system-wide reform. We’re seeing the impact every day; organizations affiliated with The Mind Trust are helping shift district policy to end seniority-based teacher layoffs, closing the summer-learning gap for disadvantaged students, and improving college access for youngsters across the city.

But we’re not satisfied. Key community leaders are now considering how best to engage the community in an in-depth conversation about ideas proposed in our Opportunity Schools plan and how IPS can be restructured to better serve its students.

To create the kind of big-picture transformation that our community desperately needs, we must look critically at the broken system that continues to produce results far below the high expectations we should hold for all students. Only 45 percent of students in Indianapolis Public Schools meet state standards on the English language arts and math portions of state tests, and only about 60 percent graduate on time.

Changing that paradigm requires the ambitious ideas and innovative thinking proposed in our Opportunity Schools plan. It calls for a system in which results for children are put above the entrenched adult interests and bureaucratic routine, and families are provided with myriad desirable options for where to send their children to school.

In a recent editorial, The Indianapolis Star wrote, “The Mind Trust has done this city a tremendous favor with today's release of its dramatic plan to overhaul Indianapolis Public Schools.”

We hope that sentiment will help drive an important discussion about the urgent need for change —and the bold thinking needed to make it happen.

David Harris is founder and CEO of The Mind Trust, an education reform organization based in Indianapolis.

• President Obama's education budget proposal would boost federal spending, double down on Race to the Top, and create the RESPECT Project (seriously), a new $5 billion competitive grant program aimed at spurring states to reform teacher policies. The new competition has some appealing goals—tenure reform, pay-for-performance—but in the current budget crunch it’s politically DOA. Does all this posturing hint that the President gearing up to run on education?

• NCLB waivers may yet backfire. Maine and New Hampshire have already decided that the feds' hoops aren't worth the hassle and abandoned their application plans; how many others will follow suit?

• A Chicago charter network is taking heat for collecting almost $400 grand over the last couple years by fining students for behavioral infractions. To which we say: So what? Everyone in the school is there voluntarily, it’s got a great reputation for a strong culture, it’s under-funded by the state and city, and its academic results are stellar. Go find some other problem to solve. 

• Lawmakers in several states are seriously considering holding back third-graders who can't pass state tests. More than a decade after Florida demonstrated the positive impact of such a policy, it’s about time.

• Brookings Institution’s Brown Center released its annual report on American education this morning; it was chockfull of provocative findings, including challenging the likely efficacy of the Common Core. If its author, Tom Loveless, wants to argue that standards alone won’t lead to increased student achievement, we’ll join right along with him. (Duh!) But as we’ll explain in more detail next week, rigorous standards are an essential building block for a comprehensive system of reform.

• Utah’s legislature is considering a bill that would tie secondary education funding to the student, not the school. This is exactly the kind of forward-thinking school finance structure needed to meet 21st-century student needs. Dilly-dallying with pilot programs would be a disappointment; here’s hoping the Beehive State goes big and creates a national model for school finance reform.

Among the speakers at Embracing the Common Core on February 15, 2012, was State Superintendent Stan Heffner who stressed that the system Ohio currently has is letting kids down and not preparing them for the future. He went on to emphasize that the Common Core gives us the opportunity and chance to do better for our kids and we must capitalize on that.

Among the speakers at Embracing the Common Core on February 15, 2012, was State Superintendent Stan Heffner who stressed that the system Ohio currently has is letting kids down and not preparing them for the future. He went on to emphasize that the Common Core gives us the opportunity and chance to do better for our kids and we must capitalize on that.

This new paper by edu-economist extraordinaire Eric Hanushek and colleagues adds empirical clout to the “conventional wisdom” that principal quality—and principal turnover—matters for student performance. (This paper debuted at a recent CALDER conference that was chockablock with important education research.) Using administrative data, analysts observed over 7,000 principals from 1995 to 2001 in Texas. They first estimate principals’ contributions by tracking student-learning gains during each leader’s tenure at a given school, controlling for other school-level factors. (They attempt to control for years of experience by limiting one of their analyses to principals with three years under their belts.) According to their most conservative estimates, having a principal in the top 16 percent of the distribution will lead the average student to learn 0.05 standard deviations more than he or she would in a school with an average principal. For comparison, studies suggest that teacher effects are about twice this size, though importantly, the learning effects due to a strong principal apply to all students in the school, not just an individual classroom. Meaning the aggregate impact of having an effective principal in a school can be very large. Further, variance in effectiveness among leaders increases with the school-poverty rate—meaning that the poorest schools are more likely to have either very effective or very ineffective principals. Principal turnover patterns also differ by principal quality and type of school. In other words, analysts find that both the least and most effective principals tend to switch schools more often; this phenomenon is also more pronounced in low-income schools. Unfortunately, the worst principals don’t appear to leave education altogether; they merely resurface as leaders at other schools. It seems that principals, and not just teachers, take part in the “dance of the lemons,” too.

Gregory F. Branch, Eric A. Hanushek, and Steven G. Rivkin, “Estimating the Effect of Leaders on Public Sector Productivity: The Case of School Principals” (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, January 2012).

This new book from libertarian scholar Charles Murray, which has already sent the chattering class into overdrive, frames—and decries—how our society has strayed from the traditional American values of religiosity, honesty, marriage, and industriousness. Part one of his analysis explains the formation of a new filtered upper class, an educated and wealthy elite, severely cut off from others in society, both geographically and culturally. Murray’s data-filled tables and graphs show that this new class is likelier to be married and regularly attend religious services, and is less apt to have children out of wedlock. Part two maps the “new lower class”—the growing American counterculture comprised of those who eschew the four cultural norms that Murray sees as defining the “American way of life”—which then perpetuates the income-linked achievement gap. (To ground this analysis in class, not race, he deals specifically in this book with the country’s white population and its cultural breakdown.) Part three explains why this rift matters: Murray’s main concern is that these two worlds lack an arena for interaction. His arguments—notably that graduates from elite schools tend to marry one another, make more money, live in “SuperZips” (zip codes saturated with elite residents), and afford their children better opportunities—have implicit ramifications for education. What’s unclear is whether Murray believes that better schools can help to heal the rift.

Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (New York, NY: Crown Forum, 2012).

As usual, the College Board’s latest annual report on enrollment and achievement in the prestigious Advanced Placement program paints an overall rosy picture. (The College Board, remember, has a major vested interest in both the reputation and expansion of the AP program and is famously resistant to external analyses of its data.) Since 2001, the national passing rate (a score of three or higher) has bumped almost 8 percentage points—and twenty-two states boast even larger gains. In fact, more graduates are passing AP tests today than took them a decade ago. (Note that this report doesn’t hit on whether the quality of the exams has remained steadfast.) Yet some problems persist—especially surrounding access to the AP for those in rural and urban areas, as well as for minorities writ large. Four out of five African American students who had at least a 70 percent chance of passing an AP exam (based on PSAT scores, according to a College Board algorithm, aptly dubbed “AP Potential”) either didn’t enroll in the relevant AP course or attended a school where the course was not offered. To counter this predicament, the Board offers tips for schools, districts, states, and universities, most of which are vapid and obvious (“provide funding incentives to subsidize fees for AP STEM exams” or “offer emotional and academic support to students through targeted peer mentoring”). Digital learning—and the potentials it brings to efficiently and effectively open AP access to those in traditionally hard-to-reach schools—is overlooked as an option. As are the growing pains inevitable with such a rapidly expanding program. According to our own survey of AP teachers, overall program quality remains strong—but storm clouds are amassing on the horizon: Over half of AP teachers believe that students overestimate their abilities and are in over their heads. Smart expansion and inclusion must surely be fought for. But let’s make sure this doesn’t come at the expense of those most ready for challenging coursework.

The College Board, AP Report to the Nation (Washington, D.C.: The College Board, February 2012.)