The Education Gadfly Weekly

Ten months ago, through their Digital Learning Now! (DLN) initiative, Jeb Bush and Bob Wise set forth ten “elements of high quality digital learning” (things like student access, personalized learning, and quality content). Today, they make good on their promise to bring these priorities squarely and concretely into the policy fold through their “Roadmap for Reform” and “Digital Learning Report Cards.” The former builds off the DLN’s initial ten elements, articulating seventy-two “nuts and bolts” policy metrics for states. The latter scores all states’ digital-learning policies on these metrics (think: the Data Quality Campaign’s ten state actions—but on steroids), marking the measures as either achieved, partially achieved, or not there yet. For individual state policymakers, each report card offers a thorough appraisal of each state’s strengths and weaknesses on issues ranging from internet access to fractional funding to use of student evaluations in digital courses. (Note: D.C. and North Carolina data are not yet published.) Unfortunately, the folks at the DLN haven’t yet officially graded—or ranked—the states. But don’t fret: Gadfly did.

We tallied states’ scores—counting only the number of metrics the states achieved (not those partially achieved), took their score over seventy-two, and then graded them on an (understandably subjective) curve. Utah and Wyoming earn accolades for being, when it comes to policy, the friendliest states for digital-learning—though there is more work to be done: Both have met forty-nine of the DLN’s seventy-two metrics. Sharing their A-grade are Arizona, Idaho, Minnesota, Virginia, and Washington. (Florida’s forty-one achieved metrics earned it an A-minus and tied it for eighth with Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.) On the other end of the spectrum, California hits only fourteen metrics and ranks last—though it shares the “F” designation with eighteen other states, including RTTT-winning Delaware, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. Luckily, pushing promising digital-learning policies through state legislatures is priority number one for the DLN folks in the coming months—and they’ve recruited a smart cast of advisors and advocates to help this charge. Stay tuned for more.

Digital Learning Council “Nation’s Digital Learning Report Card” (Foundation for Excellence in Education, October 2011).

Digital Learning Council “Roadmap for Reform” (Foundation for Excellence in Education, October 2011).

The evaluation of school-choice programs has largely been relegated to the elementary and middle school levels, where student-test data are more readily available. How these programs affect students’ high school achievement—and their college-going and college-completion rates—has proven difficult to measure. This NBER paper begins to fill that research void, taking a first look at the outcomes of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) open-enrollment initiative, which began in 2001. Researchers linked student-level CMS administrative data for close to 20,000 high schoolers to data from the National Student Clearinghouse, which deals with college enrollment. Their findings tack a gold-star on the chest of intradistrict choice: Students who won the lottery to attend a better school outside their own neighborhood closed about 75 percent of the black-white high school-graduation gap—and about 23 percent of the college-completion gap. Within the lottery-winner population, GPA, attendance rates, and math-course completion rates also improved. Importantly, analysts found no evidence of “cream skimming” among the lottery winners, randomly selected from the near 50 percent of CMS students who applied for out-of-bounds placements. The takeaway? Given the right school environment, student achievement can improve, and high school is not too late. Too bad CMS put the brakes on this program in 2008-09.

David J. Deming, Justine S. Hastings, Thomas J. Kane, and Douglas O. Staiger, “School Choice, School Quality and Postsecondary Attainment,” (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2011).

On the coattails of our recent “high flyers” study, this Center on Education Policy report (part five in a series examining state-test data) raises concern about the achievement levels of our nation’s high-performing students—specifically our high schoolers. And, while the data aren’t scathing, they do merit some raised eyebrows: Examining state-test data from forty states and D.C. between 2002 and 2009, CEP finds that 38 percent of the states investigated saw declines in the number of high school students hitting their “advanced” achievement targets in reading, compared to just 14 and 12 percent of states seeing declines at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels, respectively. (For math, there’s a 30 percentage-point differential between the K-8 and secondary levels.) To be fair, 57 percent of states saw gains in their percentages of advanced high schoolers during these years. Breaking the data up by subgroup, the news is equally mixed: While 88 percent of states saw the mean ELA test score of African Americans rise between 2002 and 2009, only 55 percent of states saw that same bump at the advanced level. Thirty-nine percent of states marked a decline in the percentage of Latino students at the advanced level in ELA (with just over half of all states marking gains at the advanced level for this group). But note: the methods of CEP’s data analysis are a bit off point. Among other flaws, examining state averages and reporting the percentage of states that fit X or Y bill fails to account for state size, among other things. Though CEP is right to analyze and report the performance of high achievers, we need more rigorous analysis to ascertain how well we’re serving this population. (And our own study only nicks the tip of the iceberg.)

Smoking and attending a bad school
have a lot in common. Though one isn't addictive.
(Photo by Monik Markuso)

Here’s a conundrum for those of us who believe in empowering parents: Gobs of them continue to enroll John Jr. and little Stacey in failing neighborhood schools instead of seeking out the charter down the way or the magnet across town. Or they cling to their academically dismal charter schools, fighting “the Man” to keep them open even when all indicators point to the need for them to be shutdown or replaced. And reporting school-performance data has done little to loosen their embrace of these schools: Parents either aren’t aware of the data (which is often buried deep on the state education-department websites)—or they just don’t care much about them. To help pry these parents away from no-good schools, James Merriman (CEO of the NYC Charter School Center) offers a novel proposal: Require such schools’ enrollment materials to carry the equivalent of a cigarette-box warning label: “This school may be hazardous to your child’s educational health.” That’s a good start, but charter authorizers (and districts for that matter) should draw more directly from thetruth.com and other anti-smoking campaigns: Bombard parents with information. Send home flyers, put up banners in the schools, buy ad space on local buses. Show parents not only the performance of their children’s schools but that of those in close proximity. It’s time to move the news on bad schools from “available” and “accessible” to “acquired.”

The only prescription is more cowbell
(Photo by JD Hancock)

Education-policy wonks have been known to “talk shop” while sipping Manhattans at a Friday happy hour. The conversation sometimes drifts to teacher evaluations, other times to common standards and assessments. But rarely—outside of Fordham circles, at least—does it flirt with education-governance reform: The topic just isn’t sexy enough. Thankfully, this may yet be changing; our base of allies, disillusioned by America’s current brand of local control, growing. In the latest Wilson Quarterly, Ed Sector co-founder Tom Toch explains our current governance predicament and how we got to this place—all while framing an important question: While “the record of the past three decades does not inspire great confidence in the capacity of school boards to lead public education,” as Toch writes, who should take the helm? We’ve been noodling this ourselves of late and we welcome you to the table, Tom. Shall we fix you a drink? Others, you’re welcome to join our merry band of those malcontent with our dysfunctional governance arrangements.

Ten months ago, through their Digital Learning Now! (DLN) initiative, Jeb Bush and Bob Wise set forth ten “elements of high quality digital learning” (things like student access, personalized learning, and quality content). Today, they make good on their promise to bring these priorities squarely and concretely into the policy fold through their “Roadmap for Reform” and “Digital Learning Report Cards.” The former builds off the DLN’s initial ten elements, articulating seventy-two “nuts and bolts” policy metrics for states. The latter scores all states’ digital-learning policies on these metrics (think: the Data Quality Campaign’s ten state actions—but on steroids), marking the measures as either achieved, partially achieved, or not there yet. For individual state policymakers, each report card offers a thorough appraisal of each state’s strengths and weaknesses on issues ranging from internet access to fractional funding to use of student evaluations in digital courses. (Note: D.C. and North Carolina data are not yet published.) Unfortunately, the folks at the DLN haven’t yet officially graded—or ranked—the states. But don’t fret: Gadfly did.

We tallied states’ scores—counting only the number of metrics the states achieved (not those partially achieved), took their score over seventy-two, and then graded them on an (understandably subjective) curve. Utah and Wyoming earn accolades for being, when it comes to policy, the friendliest states for digital-learning—though there is more work to be done: Both have met forty-nine of the DLN’s seventy-two metrics. Sharing their A-grade are Arizona, Idaho, Minnesota, Virginia, and Washington. (Florida’s forty-one achieved metrics earned it an A-minus and tied it for eighth with Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.) On the other end of the spectrum, California hits only fourteen metrics and ranks last—though it shares the “F” designation with eighteen other states, including RTTT-winning Delaware, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. Luckily, pushing promising digital-learning policies through state legislatures is priority number one for the DLN folks in the coming months—and they’ve recruited a smart cast of advisors and advocates to help this charge. Stay tuned for more.

Digital Learning Council “Nation’s Digital Learning Report Card” (Foundation for Excellence in Education, October 2011).

Digital Learning Council “Roadmap for Reform” (Foundation for Excellence in Education, October 2011).

The evaluation of school-choice programs has largely been relegated to the elementary and middle school levels, where student-test data are more readily available. How these programs affect students’ high school achievement—and their college-going and college-completion rates—has proven difficult to measure. This NBER paper begins to fill that research void, taking a first look at the outcomes of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) open-enrollment initiative, which began in 2001. Researchers linked student-level CMS administrative data for close to 20,000 high schoolers to data from the National Student Clearinghouse, which deals with college enrollment. Their findings tack a gold-star on the chest of intradistrict choice: Students who won the lottery to attend a better school outside their own neighborhood closed about 75 percent of the black-white high school-graduation gap—and about 23 percent of the college-completion gap. Within the lottery-winner population, GPA, attendance rates, and math-course completion rates also improved. Importantly, analysts found no evidence of “cream skimming” among the lottery winners, randomly selected from the near 50 percent of CMS students who applied for out-of-bounds placements. The takeaway? Given the right school environment, student achievement can improve, and high school is not too late. Too bad CMS put the brakes on this program in 2008-09.

David J. Deming, Justine S. Hastings, Thomas J. Kane, and Douglas O. Staiger, “School Choice, School Quality and Postsecondary Attainment,” (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2011).

On the coattails of our recent “high flyers” study, this Center on Education Policy report (part five in a series examining state-test data) raises concern about the achievement levels of our nation’s high-performing students—specifically our high schoolers. And, while the data aren’t scathing, they do merit some raised eyebrows: Examining state-test data from forty states and D.C. between 2002 and 2009, CEP finds that 38 percent of the states investigated saw declines in the number of high school students hitting their “advanced” achievement targets in reading, compared to just 14 and 12 percent of states seeing declines at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels, respectively. (For math, there’s a 30 percentage-point differential between the K-8 and secondary levels.) To be fair, 57 percent of states saw gains in their percentages of advanced high schoolers during these years. Breaking the data up by subgroup, the news is equally mixed: While 88 percent of states saw the mean ELA test score of African Americans rise between 2002 and 2009, only 55 percent of states saw that same bump at the advanced level. Thirty-nine percent of states marked a decline in the percentage of Latino students at the advanced level in ELA (with just over half of all states marking gains at the advanced level for this group). But note: the methods of CEP’s data analysis are a bit off point. Among other flaws, examining state averages and reporting the percentage of states that fit X or Y bill fails to account for state size, among other things. Though CEP is right to analyze and report the performance of high achievers, we need more rigorous analysis to ascertain how well we’re serving this population. (And our own study only nicks the tip of the iceberg.)