The Education Gadfly Weekly

Center on Reinventing Public Education, School Finance Redesign Project
Paul T. Hill, Marguerite Roza, and James Harvey
December 2008

This handy little report represents the culmination of a six-year, $6 million effort--the School Finance Redesign Project--designed to address one simple, but crucial, question: "How can states and localities spend money more effectively to promote high achievement for all students?" That question spawned 30 studies from more than 40 scholars, the sum of whose work is summarized in this report, and which identifies a handful of pressing problems and suggests four recommendations. On the problem front, the offenders are well known. For example, despite huge increases in funding in recent decades, student achievement has improved only marginally (if at all). And there are tremendous inequities on various levels--between states, district, schools, and even classrooms. For instance, one study found that the actual per pupil spending of a typical "core" class (e.g. math or English) was 20 percent less than a "non-core," or elective, class--due to differences in class size, teacher salaries, and teacher workloads. In another study, Roza, Davis, and Guinn found that spending patterns of principals were determined at least in part by level of autonomy. With greater control, principals "would often make different choices," such as hiring more teachers but at lower salaries. And of course multiple studies showed the funding inequities across states and between low and high poverty schools--gaps that are (at the state level) unfortunately correlated with achievement. The four recommended solutions are sensible: fund schools based on student counts; link data on funding and results; encourage innovation; and hold schools and districts accountable for student learning. In fact, these are consistent with the principles of a weighted student funding system advocated by Fordham in Fund the Child; they would do much to right the many wrongs caused by today's antiquated, inequitable, and overly complex funding systems. Of course, actually implementing such changes is far from simple, but reformers interested in a quick outline of the problems and of the way forward should check out this work.

Jonah Rockoff, Brian Jacob, Thomas Kane, and Douglas Staiger
National Bureau of Economic Research
November 2008

Wouldn't it be swell if during the hiring process districts had better tools with which to identify the most promising teacher candidates? This technical study by a quartet of research heavy-hitters gets us one step closer to that administrator's dream. It examines whether various lesser studied teacher characteristics (versus the traditional ones like graduate education and certification) predict teacher effectiveness. Specifically, it examines content knowledge, cognitive ability, personality traits (like conscientiousness and agreeableness), feelings of self-efficacy, and scores on a teacher pre-screening evaluation, which measured level of organization and planning, among other areas. The study included a survey sample, which included roughly 400 new (in 2006-07) elementary and middle school math teachers in New York City, and a student achievement sample, which included most of the survey sample plus all students and teachers in grades 4-8 in New York City (approximately 13,000 classrooms in 988 schools). Besides survey and achievement data, researchers also collected administrative data like retention and teacher absences. Out of this, a handful of variables were found to have statistically significant relationships with student and teacher outcomes (for instance, teachers' math content knowledge was strongly related to students' math achievement--no surprise there). The bigger story, however, is that when all of these variables were combined into just two batches--cognitive skills (like SAT scores and math knowledge) and non-cognitive skills (like personal efficacy and extravert tendencies)--an increase in either of them was associated with statistically significant (though modest) increases in math achievement. Also, in a pleasant surprise, teachers with stronger cognitive skills were found to be more likely to return to teaching in New York City the next year. The takeaway here? Thanks to this sort of research, school districts can start to make smarter hiring decisions based on more nuanced predictors of teacher effectiveness. You can find the study (and its well-reasoned limitations) for a small fee here.

The party's over for members of New York City's teacher reserve pool. Chancellor Joel Klein and UFT President Randi Weingarten have reached a rather sensible accord that sounds likely to provide some long awaited answers to this question: Why are so many teachers in the reserve pool unable to land classroom jobs? Klein and Co. believe it's usually because nobody wants ‘em and most likely for good reason. Weingarten disagrees; nobody wants them, she insists, because the city now charges school budgets for teachers' salaries, and thus principals have incentives to skip over more experienced, expensive instructors for their younger, less expensive peers. It became apparent last spring, however, that teachers in the pool--who receive full pay and benefits--could remain in this cushy fully paid limbo indefinitely and the city was spending big bucks as a result. The solution gives some to both sides. Klein will encourage schools to hire reserve teachers via district policy and, more importantly, financial incentives. Score for the union. But Klein has also smartly maintained principal hiring autonomy; principals will not be forced to hire reserve teachers and those hired after November 1 will be on probation for the remainder of the year. An inferior performance can land them back in the pool come June. One thing's for sure: teachers who are still swimming in limbo come next year really do deserve the pink slip.

"A plan to hire the best teachers," Editorial, New York Times, November 27, 2008

"Finding Jobs for Teachers Already on City's Payroll," by Jennifer Medina, New York Times, November 18, 2008

Disturbing news from our nation's classrooms: cheating is running rampant. A recent study from the Josephson Institute found that in the past year a whopping 64 percent of high school students have cheated on a test--and 38 percent had done it more than once. The news gets worse. Thirty-six percent admitted to using the internet to plagiarize an assignment while 30 percent had stolen from a store. A renaissance of the Artful Dodger? But while the adults may be squirming, students themselves are losing no sleep over their perfidious ways. Ninety-three percent reported they were "satisfied with their personal ethics and character" and 77 percent claimed they were "better than most people [they knew]" at doing "what is right." Sounds like we need to solve this dishonesty, and fast. Institute president Michael Josephson weighs in: "What we need to learn from these survey results is that our moral infrastructure is unsound and in serious need of repair. This is not a time to lament and whine but to take thoughtful, positive actions." Perhaps a hefty dose of the paternalism David Whitman found in six "No Excuses" schools is the cure for this malady.

"Survey Finds Growing Deceit Among Teens," by David Crary, Associated Press, December 1, 2008

Last spring, Paul Reville, who was then chair of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and is now the Commonwealth's Secretary of Education, created the 21st Century Skills Task Force. Its charge seemed reasonable at first glance--to review state curriculum frameworks and the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), the high-stakes tests students are required to pass to earn a high school diploma, and update them to include additional skills needed to succeed in a rapidly changing world. According to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, these futuristic skills include creativity, media savvy, cultural competence, problem solving, and improved teamwork.

But now that the task force has released its recommendations, it's clear that its real goal is to compromise the Bay State's nationally lauded standards and tests. That would be an enormous mistake.

Accolades for Massachusetts's current standards-and-testing program have come from all directions. Its curriculum frameworks have been praised by both the American Federation of Teachers and the Fordham Foundation; Fordham and the U.S. Department of Education have recognized its proficiency standards as being among the nation's most rigorous. Washington, D.C. recently adopted MCAS and the Commonwealth's curriculum frameworks as models.

Noted educator E.D. Hirsch lauded the Massachusetts model earlier this year in a Washington Post op-ed. "Consider the eighth grade NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] results from Massachusetts, which are a stunning exception to the nationwide pattern of stagnation and decline," he wrote. "That is because Massachusetts decided...students (and teachers) should learn explicit, substantive things about history, science and literature, and that students should be tested on such knowledge."

Unfortunately, the 21st Century Skills Task Force's recommendations would move Massachusetts away from the sensible reforms Hirsch touted. While Hirsch celebrates clearly articulated goals and objective assessments to promote excellence and accountability, the task force, for example, wants to use the U.S. History test to try out project-based assessments that require students to demonstrate skills like "global awareness." This would crowd out more central topics like the founding documents or causes of the Civil War.

The track record of these so-called complementary assessments is poor, because they are costly and cumbersome, and their grading is inherently subjective. Introducing such subjectivity would have a corrosive effect on the Commonwealth's efforts to ensure that all students, regardless of where they live, have access to academic content that is the foundation for economic success and exercising the rights of citizenship.

Subjectivity is also expensive. A 2003 General Accounting Office study found that it cost 60 cents per test to score North Carolina's multiple-choice assessment, while scoring multi-faceted college work and readiness assessments would run about $40 each.

Scoring MCAS cost $7 per test, suggesting that Massachusetts has achieved an appropriate balance that includes written answers that measure reading, writing, and problem solving. The correlation between MCAS scores and college performance is further proof of the assessments' quality.

But the task force report disagrees. It claims that, "Massachusetts can learn from the experience of West Virginia" when it comes to integrating 21st century skills into the curriculum. In 2005, Massachusetts became the only state to place first in every category on the NAEP test, known as the nation's report card. The next time the test was administered, the Commonwealth's students did it again. West Virginia's NAEP scores are all below the national average.

The report also calls on MassPartners--a group made up of the teachers unions, school committees, and superintendents that have fought education reform for 15 years--to define how to integrate 21st century skills in our schools. The task force report declares, "Doing this right will require a shift in our curricular priorities." They're right. It would require a shift--from raising student achievement to a focus on soft skills that are difficult to measure. 

We've been down this road before. Immediately following the 1993 enactment of the landmark state education reform bill that created MCAS, progress on implementation was slow. In 1995, initial drafts of the state's English language arts curriculum frameworks included Ebonics and derogatory language about "so-called standard English."

By 1996, such silliness led a Republican governor and Democratic legislature to clean house, removing state board of education members who valued unending process and political correctness over student achievement. It was only then that the Commonwealth started on its path to becoming a national model.

We are again at a crossroads in the Bay State. We can't ask students to exhibit hard-to-measure 21st century skills if they haven't mastered the English, math, science, and history upon which the skills are based. We hope policymakers will make the right choice and resist the temptation to substitute vague, short-term skills for enduring academic content. Choosing the other path would effectively close the book on education reform in Massachusetts.

Charles Chieppo is a senior fellow at, and Jamie Gass directs, the Center for School Reform at Pioneer Institute, a Massachusetts public policy think tank.

Seems wishful thinking is Miami-Dade schools' chief Alberto Carvalho's forte. His latest? Bailout the public school system. With myriad companies going hat-in-hand to the feds, Carvalho thinks schools should be given a slice of the bailout pie, too. Florida is facing a potential $1.4 billion tax shortfall, which Carvalho believes could translate into a $65 million cut for the Miami-Dade school system. The district has already trimmed $289 million from its $5.5 billion budget. Times are certainly arduous; both public and private institutions--including those in the Sunshine State--are feeling the pinch. Unfortunately, it's Carvalho who needs to be pinched--to wake him out of this quixotic (and incorrect) grasp of economics. We'll let University of Miami economics professor Michael Connelly clarify: public schools have "already been bailed out because they are public. They don't need...another bailout. They aren't private." Well put, Mr. Connelly. But he's not stopping there. "If the Florida school system goes down the drain, it will make no difference to the U.S. economy," Connelly explains. "If we have AIG or Citicorp fail, they we have a systemic failure in our financial system." Yikes. We're not sure we'd go that far, but Carvalho: Take note. These cockamamie schemes are just not cutting it.

"Miami-Dade schools chief Alberto Carvalho: Schools deserve bailout, too," by Kathleen McGrory, Miami Dade Herald, November 25, 2008

Jonah Rockoff, Brian Jacob, Thomas Kane, and Douglas Staiger
National Bureau of Economic Research
November 2008

Wouldn't it be swell if during the hiring process districts had better tools with which to identify the most promising teacher candidates? This technical study by a quartet of research heavy-hitters gets us one step closer to that administrator's dream. It examines whether various lesser studied teacher characteristics (versus the traditional ones like graduate education and certification) predict teacher effectiveness. Specifically, it examines content knowledge, cognitive ability, personality traits (like conscientiousness and agreeableness), feelings of self-efficacy, and scores on a teacher pre-screening evaluation, which measured level of organization and planning, among other areas. The study included a survey sample, which included roughly 400 new (in 2006-07) elementary and middle school math teachers in New York City, and a student achievement sample, which included most of the survey sample plus all students and teachers in grades 4-8 in New York City (approximately 13,000 classrooms in 988 schools). Besides survey and achievement data, researchers also collected administrative data like retention and teacher absences. Out of this, a handful of variables were found to have statistically significant relationships with student and teacher outcomes (for instance, teachers' math content knowledge was strongly related to students' math achievement--no surprise there). The bigger story, however, is that when all of these variables were combined into just two batches--cognitive skills (like SAT scores and math knowledge) and non-cognitive skills (like personal efficacy and extravert tendencies)--an increase in either of them was associated with statistically significant (though modest) increases in math achievement. Also, in a pleasant surprise, teachers with stronger cognitive skills were found to be more likely to return to teaching in New York City the next year. The takeaway here? Thanks to this sort of research, school districts can start to make smarter hiring decisions based on more nuanced predictors of teacher effectiveness. You can find the study (and its well-reasoned limitations) for a small fee here.

Center on Reinventing Public Education, School Finance Redesign Project
Paul T. Hill, Marguerite Roza, and James Harvey
December 2008

This handy little report represents the culmination of a six-year, $6 million effort--the School Finance Redesign Project--designed to address one simple, but crucial, question: "How can states and localities spend money more effectively to promote high achievement for all students?" That question spawned 30 studies from more than 40 scholars, the sum of whose work is summarized in this report, and which identifies a handful of pressing problems and suggests four recommendations. On the problem front, the offenders are well known. For example, despite huge increases in funding in recent decades, student achievement has improved only marginally (if at all). And there are tremendous inequities on various levels--between states, district, schools, and even classrooms. For instance, one study found that the actual per pupil spending of a typical "core" class (e.g. math or English) was 20 percent less than a "non-core," or elective, class--due to differences in class size, teacher salaries, and teacher workloads. In another study, Roza, Davis, and Guinn found that spending patterns of principals were determined at least in part by level of autonomy. With greater control, principals "would often make different choices," such as hiring more teachers but at lower salaries. And of course multiple studies showed the funding inequities across states and between low and high poverty schools--gaps that are (at the state level) unfortunately correlated with achievement. The four recommended solutions are sensible: fund schools based on student counts; link data on funding and results; encourage innovation; and hold schools and districts accountable for student learning. In fact, these are consistent with the principles of a weighted student funding system advocated by Fordham in Fund the Child; they would do much to right the many wrongs caused by today's antiquated, inequitable, and overly complex funding systems. Of course, actually implementing such changes is far from simple, but reformers interested in a quick outline of the problems and of the way forward should check out this work.