The Education Gadfly Weekly

Kate Walsh & Emma Snyder, National Council on Teacher Quality
December 2004

This new report evaluates states' responses to NCLB's highly qualified teacher provisions. The authors begin by recalling the often-sorry state of states' content preparation regulations for teachers before NCLB, and reviews the sweeping changes brought on by that law. They also include some helpful caveats about both licensing tests and subject majors. The bulk of the report, though, focuses on NCLB's HOUSSE provision, under which states can grant highly qualified standing to experienced teachers without requiring them to pass a subject-area major or content test. All fifty state plans are reviewed, except for the 11 states that - thumbing their noses at the feds - claim that their certification processes obviate the need for HOUSSE plans. The flexibility of the HOUSSE guidelines has unfortunately allowed many states to construct weak systems that follow the letter, but not the spirit, of NCLB. The authors' remedy: Discard the current HOUSSE provision entirely and write a new one. They advocate moderate, pragmatic solutions such as allowing veteran high school teachers to continue teaching with only a subject-area minor (or equivalent) or a passing grade on a content test. This recommendation may not sound ambitious, but as the authors point out, moderate across-the-board reform might be better than the current HOUSSE blend of "high standards and abundant loopholes." That kind of practical advice is found throughout this report, which is well worth your time. You can find it here.

Philip Kaufman and Martha Naomi Alt, MPR Associates, Inc. Christopher D. Chapman, National Center for Education Statistics November 2004 Issue Brief: Educational Attainment of High School Dropouts 8 Years Later
National Center for Education Statistics
November 2004

NCES produced both of these reports, both examining dropouts. In the first, data from 2001 are compared to data dating as far back as 1972, over which time there has been very slight improvement, i.e. lessening of dropout rates. What's most interesting is that this report offers four distinct measures. The "event dropout rate" measures the percentage of students leaving high school each year without a diploma (5.0 percent in 2001, down from 6.1 percent in 1972), while the "status dropout rate" is the percentage of 16 to 24 year-olds not in school and without a diploma (10.7 percent, down from about 14.6 percent). The status completion rate computes the percentage of 18 to 24 year-olds who have a diploma (86.5 percent, up from 82.8 percent), while the 4-year completion rate measures the percentage of 9th graders who left school with a diploma four years later. (State data range from 65.0 to 90.1 percent.) Adding to the confusing is the fact that the first three of these gauges are based on the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) while the last is based on NCES's Common Core of Data (self-reported by states); thus the first three capture public and private school students, while the last captures public only. Readers must also beware that the CPS data counts GED recipients among those with diplomas. The authors warn that such GED data are unreliable, but even if they were robust, Jay Greene and Marcus Winters have demonstrated that equating a GED to a diploma is unwarranted. (Read this, which presents their own dropout calculus, based on a version of the "4 year completion" method.) Overall, there is a wealth of information here for dropout-junkies - which is both a strength and weakness - and it's clear that better data are needed. It's also clear that there has been modest but insufficient improvement over the past thirty years. The NCES Issues Brief is more straightforward, as it simply reports in three pages on the progress of the "21 percent of 1998 eighth-graders who had dropped out of high school at least once" between 1988 and 1994. By the latter date, 43 percent of them had earned a diploma or GED and, by 2000, 63 percent had done so. Unfortunately, most such students received GEDs with few earning actual diplomas. Still, 43 percent of those one-time dropouts eventually enrolled in a postsecondary school of some sort, meaning that dropping out does not necessarily end one's education progress. You can find these reports here and here.

Tim Waters & Sally Grubb, Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning
2004

The bottom line of this critical review of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards for licensing school principals - incorporated into the policies of forty states - is that the ISLLC standards omit a quarter of the leadership practices that research has shown to be effective. According to McREL, "twenty-one specific leadership responsibilities, and 66 associated practices, have statistically significant relationships with student achievement." Yet "the ISLLC standards . . . do not offer any indication about which knowledge, dispositions, or performances have a greater impact on student learning than others." And 17 "leadership practices" are absent entirely, including at least a few that strike me as important: "Uses hard work and results as the basis for reward and recognition"; "Uses performance vs. seniority as the primary criterion for reward and achievement"; and "Is involved with teachers to address assessment issues." The bottom line for policymakers: Don't suppose that building the ISLLC standards into your licensure expectations for principals adequately incorporates everything that's important for effective principals to know and do. ISLLC should make some repairs to its standards and/or states should recognize their limits and augment them. The ten states that haven't yet wrapped themselves around ISLLC may also want to pause before doing so. You can get it here.

James E. Ryan, New York University Law Review, Volume 79, Number 3
June 2004

Ryan here airs a number of grievances with NCLB, "the most intrusive federal education legislation in our nation's history," including its reliance on widely varying state standards, its potential to worsen teacher shortages (by identifying the worst schools), the way it might encourage schools to rid themselves of low-performing students, and the way it confuses parents and the public. These are valid concerns, but the alarmist tone makes it tough to keep in mind that Ryan believes "the Act's goals are noble." His dominant suggestion is that the feds "get off the federalism fence" and stop trying to balance their powers with local flexibility. "Should it be determined that states cannot be trusted (to uphold rigorous standards)," he writes, "there is no good substitute for federal control of standards and tests." Of course, he rightly points out the public opposition to such a proposition, though it has merit. His other noteworthy suggestion is the use of value-added testing, which would mitigate the problem of measuring vastly different schools based on average performance rather than yearly gains. On the other hand, it is disappointing that the paper does not acknowledge that these problems might be outweighed by NCLB's benefits (which Ed Trust has begun, since this paper's publication, to document; see here). He complains much about states gaming the system to avoid NCLB sanctions, while encouraging them to do exactly that: Because "the odds are quite good that the NCLBA is another fad," he suggests "states might consider operating on the assumption that NCLBA, too, shall pass." He adds, "To the extent that the Department of Education is willing to approve [AYP] plans that suppose very large gains will occur in the last few years of the twelve-year period, states ought to use that flexibility wisely." Such suggestions (which we've railed against before: look here and here) might just fulfill Ryan's prophecy that the education world will eventually forget NCLB. In the end, readers will likely suspect that his suggestions to improve NCLB mask a desire that it be scrapped altogether. You can find it online here.

North Dakota state legislators and school board members are shocked! shocked! to discover that the U.S. Department of Education has rejected the state's plan for designating elementary teachers as "highly qualified" pursuant to NCLB requirements. (North Dakota deems teachers highly qualified if they have a state license; NCLB requires a license and some evidence of subject-content mastery.) The state's lone Congressman, Democrat Earl Pomeroy, is encouraging school boards to sue the Department if the 3,800 teachers affected by the ruling aren't deemed highly qualified. "This is an absolute insult," railed Pomeroy in his best Mr. Smith impression. "More than half of these teachers have been teaching for 20 years." State board members cried foul that the Department was changing the rules mid-way through the game: "Everything was looking good, and now they come and ding us," said board member Dan Vainonen. The only problem with this chorus of woe is that the state's own Department of Public Instruction told lawmakers last year that North Dakota's system did not meet NCLB requirements and would have to be changed. "We believe the wording was specific and clear," said a state department official. Kudos to both education departments for standing firm.

"Congressman Pomeroy: Consider suing DOE," by Paulette Tobin, Grand Forks Herald, December 18, 2004

"North Dakota: Federal rules leave teachers behind," Associated Press, December 11, 2004

The Denver Post reports that "Colorado's charter-school students have outperformed their traditional public-school peers on the state assessment test," with 46 percent of charters rated "excellent" or "high" on the state's accountability reports, compared to just 39.6 percent of traditional public schools. Charter critics maintain that the reason charter schools in the Golden State have fared so well is that they serve a disproportionately low number of poor children - statistics show that just 13 percent of charter students are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, compared with 24 percent of traditional public school students. Colorado charter advocates insist that those numbers do not paint an accurate picture because "some charter schools don't provide hot lunch at all, meaning they report no students receiving a free or reduced-price lunch [which skews] the most-often used measure of poverty." Regardless, such a strong showing is good news for the charter movement, especially since many of the Colorado charter schools have been around long enough to iron out some of the "start-up" kinks that plague fledgling charters elsewhere.

"State's charter schools buck trend," by Karen Rouse, Denver Post, December 22, 2004

Is an armistice looming in the "math wars"? Perhaps so. Executives at Texas Instruments recently gathered a number of math experts together for a meeting of both sides, and participants surprised themselves by agreeing on a number of basic principles for math education, including avoiding heavy calculator use in the elementary grades, requiring students to memorize the basic number facts, and mastering the basic algorithms for subtraction, addition, and other fundamental operations. Let's hope somebody tells the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. We're especially thrilled to hear of this agreement, since these principles track the conclusions of the forthcoming Fordham evaluation of state math standards, which will be released just after New Year's. (In fact, two of the participants in the meeting, Wilfried Schmid of Harvard and W. Stephen Wilson of Johns Hopkins, served as reviewers for the Fordham study, which will draw some tough conclusions about the state of K-12 standards in math.) In the end, all the participants agreed that knowledgeable teachers are everything in K-12 math education. "All the [curriculum] can do in the best case is be correct, efficient, and accessible," said Schmid. "Then it is up to the teacher."

"Math educators find common denominators," by Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, December 21, 2004

Newspapers across the country were abuzz this week with reports of teachers cheating on behalf of their students. The Dallas Morning News conducted a review of student TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) test score data that "uncovered strong evidence of organized, educator-led cheating on the TAKS test in dozens of Texas schools - and suspicions in scores of others." According to the review, more than 200 schools had large, unexplained score gaps between grades or between the TAKS and other standardized tests. At one school - Sanderson Elementary - the Dallas News found that "fourth-graders scored extremely poorly on the math TAKS test," but fifth graders "had astonishing success on the math test. They had the highest scale scores of any school in Texas, beating every magnet school, every wealthy suburban school, and every high-performing school in the state." Of course, some testing critics are taking the opportunity to make excuses for these teachers' unethical behavior. "Teachers are the most respected, most admired profession," Tom Haladyn, Professor at Arizona State University explained. "But we badger them to get high test scores. And some feel pressure to get test scores at any expense." The Texas Education Agency seems to agree, having done little over the last few years to police teacher manipulation of test scores. In fact, while the TEA has access to results from an "erasure analysis" - a system that uses specialized equipment to identify student answer sheets that have unusually large numbers of answers erased and replaced - they have yet to do anything with those results. What's worse, there does not seem to be an urgency at TEA to reestablish confidence in a system that appears to be badly broken.

"Exclusive: Poor schools' TAKS surges raise cheating questions," by Joshua Benton and Holly K. Hacker, Dallas Morning News, December 19, 2004 (registration required)

"Tools may stem cheating on test," by Joshua Benton, Dallas Morning News, December 19, 2004 (registration required)

"Report: Texas schools cheat on tests," Chicago Sun-Times, December 20, 2004

(To the tune of "Walking in a Winter Wonderland")

Two-thousand-four starts as No Child

Left Behind debates get wild

The unions yell, "Pay!"

But Paige says, "No way!"

And adds, "You terrorists are out of hand!"

Bloomberg-Klein hold back the kiddies

Who can't spell in New York City

The feds won't give cash

To that Month-by-Month trash

Diana and her spouse are on the Lam.

(Chorus)

The New York Times decides to look at charters

Now how did she develop such a plan?

The AFT provides her with the data

And charter schools take hits throughout the land.

Eduwonk is now perspiring

As Kerry-Edwards are expiring.

The polling looks great

For 2008

In Yiddish, Lieberman means "promised land."

Paige is out, and Spellings in.

Overlooking Dr. Finn.

Margaret, please call

We've advice for you all

The second term agenda's mighty thin.

Gadfly's brought you all this news

Now he's leaving for a cruise

He's taking a break

To rest and vacate

We're walking in our Speedos on the sand. (reprise)

Happy Holidays to friends across the land!

James E. Ryan, New York University Law Review, Volume 79, Number 3
June 2004

Ryan here airs a number of grievances with NCLB, "the most intrusive federal education legislation in our nation's history," including its reliance on widely varying state standards, its potential to worsen teacher shortages (by identifying the worst schools), the way it might encourage schools to rid themselves of low-performing students, and the way it confuses parents and the public. These are valid concerns, but the alarmist tone makes it tough to keep in mind that Ryan believes "the Act's goals are noble." His dominant suggestion is that the feds "get off the federalism fence" and stop trying to balance their powers with local flexibility. "Should it be determined that states cannot be trusted (to uphold rigorous standards)," he writes, "there is no good substitute for federal control of standards and tests." Of course, he rightly points out the public opposition to such a proposition, though it has merit. His other noteworthy suggestion is the use of value-added testing, which would mitigate the problem of measuring vastly different schools based on average performance rather than yearly gains. On the other hand, it is disappointing that the paper does not acknowledge that these problems might be outweighed by NCLB's benefits (which Ed Trust has begun, since this paper's publication, to document; see here). He complains much about states gaming the system to avoid NCLB sanctions, while encouraging them to do exactly that: Because "the odds are quite good that the NCLBA is another fad," he suggests "states might consider operating on the assumption that NCLBA, too, shall pass." He adds, "To the extent that the Department of Education is willing to approve [AYP] plans that suppose very large gains will occur in the last few years of the twelve-year period, states ought to use that flexibility wisely." Such suggestions (which we've railed against before: look here and here) might just fulfill Ryan's prophecy that the education world will eventually forget NCLB. In the end, readers will likely suspect that his suggestions to improve NCLB mask a desire that it be scrapped altogether. You can find it online here.

Kate Walsh & Emma Snyder, National Council on Teacher Quality
December 2004

This new report evaluates states' responses to NCLB's highly qualified teacher provisions. The authors begin by recalling the often-sorry state of states' content preparation regulations for teachers before NCLB, and reviews the sweeping changes brought on by that law. They also include some helpful caveats about both licensing tests and subject majors. The bulk of the report, though, focuses on NCLB's HOUSSE provision, under which states can grant highly qualified standing to experienced teachers without requiring them to pass a subject-area major or content test. All fifty state plans are reviewed, except for the 11 states that - thumbing their noses at the feds - claim that their certification processes obviate the need for HOUSSE plans. The flexibility of the HOUSSE guidelines has unfortunately allowed many states to construct weak systems that follow the letter, but not the spirit, of NCLB. The authors' remedy: Discard the current HOUSSE provision entirely and write a new one. They advocate moderate, pragmatic solutions such as allowing veteran high school teachers to continue teaching with only a subject-area minor (or equivalent) or a passing grade on a content test. This recommendation may not sound ambitious, but as the authors point out, moderate across-the-board reform might be better than the current HOUSSE blend of "high standards and abundant loopholes." That kind of practical advice is found throughout this report, which is well worth your time. You can find it here.

Philip Kaufman and Martha Naomi Alt, MPR Associates, Inc. Christopher D. Chapman, National Center for Education Statistics November 2004 Issue Brief: Educational Attainment of High School Dropouts 8 Years Later
National Center for Education Statistics
November 2004

NCES produced both of these reports, both examining dropouts. In the first, data from 2001 are compared to data dating as far back as 1972, over which time there has been very slight improvement, i.e. lessening of dropout rates. What's most interesting is that this report offers four distinct measures. The "event dropout rate" measures the percentage of students leaving high school each year without a diploma (5.0 percent in 2001, down from 6.1 percent in 1972), while the "status dropout rate" is the percentage of 16 to 24 year-olds not in school and without a diploma (10.7 percent, down from about 14.6 percent). The status completion rate computes the percentage of 18 to 24 year-olds who have a diploma (86.5 percent, up from 82.8 percent), while the 4-year completion rate measures the percentage of 9th graders who left school with a diploma four years later. (State data range from 65.0 to 90.1 percent.) Adding to the confusing is the fact that the first three of these gauges are based on the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) while the last is based on NCES's Common Core of Data (self-reported by states); thus the first three capture public and private school students, while the last captures public only. Readers must also beware that the CPS data counts GED recipients among those with diplomas. The authors warn that such GED data are unreliable, but even if they were robust, Jay Greene and Marcus Winters have demonstrated that equating a GED to a diploma is unwarranted. (Read this, which presents their own dropout calculus, based on a version of the "4 year completion" method.) Overall, there is a wealth of information here for dropout-junkies - which is both a strength and weakness - and it's clear that better data are needed. It's also clear that there has been modest but insufficient improvement over the past thirty years. The NCES Issues Brief is more straightforward, as it simply reports in three pages on the progress of the "21 percent of 1998 eighth-graders who had dropped out of high school at least once" between 1988 and 1994. By the latter date, 43 percent of them had earned a diploma or GED and, by 2000, 63 percent had done so. Unfortunately, most such students received GEDs with few earning actual diplomas. Still, 43 percent of those one-time dropouts eventually enrolled in a postsecondary school of some sort, meaning that dropping out does not necessarily end one's education progress. You can find these reports here and here.

Tim Waters & Sally Grubb, Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning
2004

The bottom line of this critical review of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards for licensing school principals - incorporated into the policies of forty states - is that the ISLLC standards omit a quarter of the leadership practices that research has shown to be effective. According to McREL, "twenty-one specific leadership responsibilities, and 66 associated practices, have statistically significant relationships with student achievement." Yet "the ISLLC standards . . . do not offer any indication about which knowledge, dispositions, or performances have a greater impact on student learning than others." And 17 "leadership practices" are absent entirely, including at least a few that strike me as important: "Uses hard work and results as the basis for reward and recognition"; "Uses performance vs. seniority as the primary criterion for reward and achievement"; and "Is involved with teachers to address assessment issues." The bottom line for policymakers: Don't suppose that building the ISLLC standards into your licensure expectations for principals adequately incorporates everything that's important for effective principals to know and do. ISLLC should make some repairs to its standards and/or states should recognize their limits and augment them. The ten states that haven't yet wrapped themselves around ISLLC may also want to pause before doing so. You can get it here.