The Education Gadfly Weekly

Lance T. Izumi, K. Lloyd Billingsley and Diallo Dphrepaulezz
Pacific Research Institute
November 2002

Those who have kept an eye on the California charter school landscape over the past few years are used to hearing stories of school mismanagement followed by cries to reform or even abolish charter schools in that state. Now the Pacific Research Institute has issued an analogous warning about public schools. This report describes a wide variety of horrendous financial abuses in California's public school system, such as the $600,000 in travel expenses incurred by one superintendent over a three-year period and the $200 million Los Angeles has spent building a high school on an unsafe site. The authors suggest that these troubles are symptomatic of a larger problem: lack of oversight throughout all levels of this bureaucracy. Audits are rarely performed, those that are performed are reviewed too slowly, bond revenues are misspent, and the red tape has grown thick. They conclude that the proper solution is to provide school choice - through vouchers - in order to induce reform through competition. The authors are critical of the system's ability to fix itself, noting that many efforts, such as smaller class sizes, have failed. For Californians, this report may provide some useful information on excesses in their public school system. For those outside the Golden State, it serves as further evidence that any large organization must have robust financial controls. Still, it's sensationalistic and so heavy-handed that one cannot help but wonder about the other sides of the stories they report. And its voucher remedy is argued too briefly to convince a skeptic. To find your own copy, visit http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/educat/grand_theft_education.pdf.

The National Education Association
January 2003

The National Education Association is nothing if not predictable in its hunger for education funding and its blindness to the sources of wealth that makes such funding possible. This 55-page "research working paper" on "property tax abatements, tax increment financing and funding for schools" argues that state and local tax breaks for businesses to locate, remain, or expand in their jurisdictions cost the public schools a lot of revenue that would come to them were such breaks not conferred, and that this is a bad thing. To wit, "This study suggests that today's development subsidies may be enriching corporations at the cost of the education of tomorrow's work force." Actual data are skimpy and dated in the five state case studies and the conclusions are elusive, since states typically try to compensate school budgets at least partially for revenues lost via such abatements and concessions. What's most striking, though, is how oblivious the NEA research team seems toward the fact that economic development in a community or state is a healthy thing that, provided it succeeds, will strengthen the economic base that sustains public education over the long haul. One supposes the NEA's perfect tax system would redirect 100 percent of the private sector's wealth into the public sector via taxation. How long could that last? You probably don't want to see this paper unless you collect NEA arcana, but you can find it at http://nea.org/presscenter/images/protectingpubliceducationfullreport.pdf.

Fall 2002

The fall 2002 issue of this journal contains three articles of potential interest to education policy makers, practitioners and propeller heads. In "The Promise and Pitfalls of Using Imprecise School Accountability Measures," Thomas J. Kane and Douglas O. Staiger discuss the difficulty and precariousness of basing education accountability systems on relatively small and evanescent shifts in high-stakes test scores. In "How Vouchers Could Change the Market for Education," Derek Neal contends that under-regulated vouchers could give rise to new private schools that, while satisfying parents, would be socially harmful (e.g., a "Klan Academy"). In "School Vouchers: A Critical View," Helen Ladd argues that school choice can do some good but that widespread use of vouchers is not apt to alleviate the urgent education problems of disadvantaged kids and may do some harm. On the whole, not a very upbeat collection! If you need a downer, surf to http://www.aeaweb.org/jep/contents/ and you can read these semi-technical essays for yourself (though only if you're a subscriber). For subscription information, see http://www.aeaweb.org/subscribe.html.

Heinrich Mintrop, Education Policy Analysis Archives
January 15, 2003

In this report from the Education Policy Analysis Archive, UCLA's Heinrich Mintrop suggests that putting failing schools on probation as part of a state accountability system only helps some of them to improve, while causing new problems. He studied eleven low-performing (and mostly poor/minority) schools in Maryland and Kentucky - half of them elementary, half middle - that were put on probation under their states' accountability systems. The question was what effects did probationary status have on the schools. The problem is that Mintrop focused on what teachers and principals thought and did rather than on the performance of their pupils. Though it was weak student performance that led to probationary status in the first place, he doesn't seem very interested in whether that performance improved as a result of this kind of state intervention. In fact, he never gets around to saying whether it got better or worse in the Kentucky schools in his small sample. (In the Maryland schools, he notes that MSPAP scores stopped declining in the probationary schools and two of them made "notable strides" in reading and math, while the others more or less leveled off.) His data consist largely of principal and teacher interviews and classroom observations. Not too surprisingly, he finds that, while probation made school staffs aware that they had a problem, it didn't lead to much improvement in instruction and it fostered various kinds of negative behavior among teachers. Also not surprising, he found that much of the instruction in these schools simply wasn't very good. For example, "Only one third of all observed Maryland lessons were deemed highly coherent, i.e. beginning, middle, and end hung together; the majority lacked conceptual depth." You'll learn a bit more from this study than its abstract suggests, so you may want to have a look for yourself (see http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n3.html on the web for a copy), but please keep in mind that it's based on a tiny sample and that its focus is what teachers do (and feel) rather than how much their students learn.

Charlene K. Haar, The Education Policy Institute
January 2003

In this new book, Charlene Haar of the Education Policy Institute chronicles the history of the National Parent-Teacher Association, tracing its transformation from the National Congress of Mothers in the 1870s to an organization dominated by teacher unions and involved in issues that have little or no relevance to children and student learning. Much of the book shows how the PTA has abandoned its role as an independent analyst of education policy and criticizes the political entity that it has become. Haar details the policies that prohibit local and state affiliates from challenging union positions on issues of concern to parents and describes the organization's extensive lobbying efforts at the state and federal level - efforts that often lead to a reduction in the role of parents in their children's education. Haar concludes that the National PTA "can neither stand up to teacher union interests nor fairly represent parental interests in improving their local schools. On the most fundamental of its tasks, the PTA has proven itself irrelevant." She recommends that frustrated parents set up independent parent-teacher organizations (PTOs) that will more effectively represent their interests. The book is available in paperback for $24.95. For ordering information, please see http://www.educationpolicy.org.

Since last year, top Washington (D.C.) Teachers' Union officials have been under investigation for having embezzled more than $5 million and using those funds to purchase luxury goods for themselves. On January 22, the American Federation of Teachers, the parent organization of the WTU, assumed control over day-to-day operations of the union - the first time the AFT has taken over a local affiliate since the union's founding in 1917. This week, federal prosecutors filed the first criminal charges in the case against union chauffeur Leroy Holmes.

"Charges filed in union scandal," by Justin Blum and Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post, January 28, 2003

"D.C. Union Taken Over By Parent Federation," by Justin Blum and Craig Timberg, The Washington Post, January 23, 2003

"On Outrage and Double Standards," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Education Gadfly, January 16, 2003

Since New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced last week that the city will require all but its top elementary schools to use a reading curriculum called Month by Month Phonics [see "Letters From New York City: Bloomberg's Reforms" in last week's Gadfly], top reading experts have raised doubts about the track record of the curriculum. According to Reid Lyon, President Bush's top adviser on reading, there is no scientific evidence that Month by Month Phonics is effective, which means that New York City's adoption of the program could cost the city millions in federal dollars. (NCLB includes $900 million to boost reading instruction, but districts are only eligible for funds if they use a curriculum that is proven to boost reading skills.) A top aide to Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters that the city will stick with Month by Month Phonics, but the Mayor himself said "We'll see whether this is the right curriculum. If it isn't, [the chancellor will] change it."

"City tells W it's hooked on 'Phonics'," by Alison Gendar, New York Daily News, January 25, 2003

"Bush adviser casts doubt on the benefits of phonics program," by Abby Goodnough, The New York Times, January 24, 2003 (free registration required)

Groups in two states are using the No Child Left Behind Act as the basis for lawsuits aimed at forcing states and districts to provide better teachers and school choices. In California, an activist group has sued the state board of education for allowing districts to continue to hire unqualified teachers in the face of NCLB's requirement that Title I schools hire only "highly qualified" teachers beginning this year. Last year, you may recall, the board released a definition of highly qualified teachers that required no certification and only minimal college credits in the subject to be taught. California was notified by the U.S. Department of Education that this definition would not meet NCLB requirements, but by then the state had circulated its definition to school districts, and some of them hired teachers based on the no-longer-valid definition. The board of education says that it expects to create a new definition of highly qualified teachers by May.

In New York, a group of parents with children who attend failing schools is suing two school systems-New York City and Albany-for denying their children the right to transfer to better schools and to receive free tutoring, as required by NCLB. The parents allege that the school systems rejected transfer requests by parents, have a faulty process for handling transfers, and failed to provide parents with timely information about their rights to change schools and obtain tutoring services. This past year, 3,670 New York City parents applied for transfers and 1,507 were granted, and only 20,000 students (out of an eligible 300,000) are currently receiving tutoring services. Federal officials note that, while no state or district has announced an intention to defy the law, they are seeing "less than energetic implementation of the law" in many places.

"State faces lawsuit over teachers' qualifications," by Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle, January 24, 2003

"Tutor Tempest," by Stefan Friedman and Carl Campanile, New York Post, January 28, 2003

"N.Y. Suit Claims Denial of Rights in School Law," by Michael Fletcher, Washington Post, January 28, 2003

Last week, the British government's Department for Education and Skills (DfES) released its annual "league tables," which rate schools in England based on student performance on national tests. For the first time, DfES also issued a value-added analysis of school performance. The analysis was based on an examination of gains made by individual pupils from either age 11 to 14 or from age 14 to 16. Value-added scores were calculated by determining how much each student improved compared to other students who had similar scores on the first test, with results then averaged to the school level. Results from these value-added assessments showed that specialty grammar schools (public schools with selective admissions policies) tended to produce larger gains than comprehensives (regular public schools). These results are fueling controversy in England over the long-term role of grammar schools, which had been dismissed as an "anachronism" a few days earlier by Education Secretary Charles Clarke. For more details, including charts showing value-added results, go to http://www.dfes.gov.uk/statistics/DB/SFR/s0377/v4sfr01-2003.pdf.

"What the tables mean," The Guardian, January 23, 2002

"Grammar schools top for 'added value,'" by John Clare, The Daily Telegraph, January 23, 2003 (free registration required)

While a survey of college freshmen reveals a continuing decline in the time they spend studying or doing homework during their senior year of high school, their high school grade point averages continue to climb. The survey, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, found that a record low percentage of today's freshmen - 33.4 percent - spent six or more hours per week studying or doing homework in the year prior to entering college. Still, 45.7 percent of freshmen report earning an A average in high school, topping last year's record high of 44.1 percent.

"How did poor study habits net stellar grades?" Cnn.com, January 27, 2003

"College freshmen spend less time studying and more time surfing the net, UCLA survey reveals," press release, January 27, 2003

Clever as always, Miss Manners this week chides parents who neglect their "homework" of teaching children the ability to sit still for short periods of time, to listen to what other people say, and to refrain from hitting. She notes that, while many of these parents offer familiar excuses for not having done their homework - they had too much else to do, they had personal troubles, they didn't understand the assignment - many of these same parents are busy doing other people's homework: their children's!

"For parents, a demanding school assignment," by Judith Martin, The Washington Post, January 26, 2003

Last week, the Fraser Institute in British Columbia announced the launch of Children First: School Choice Trust, Canada's first privately-funded voucher program, which is aimed at helping poor families send their children to private schools. The program will provide grants paying 50 percent of tuition, up to a maximum of $3,500 per year, for up to 150 students in Ontario.

"New Children First Program Gives Ontario Families More Education Choice," press release, January 23, 2003

You know how a balloon mortgage works: you pay a low interest rate at the beginning, but a few years out the rate soars. So you hope to refinance on more favorable terms - or offload the real estate onto someone else - before that painful day arrives.

As tomorrow's deadline hits for states to file their No Child Left Behind (NCLB) accountability plans with the U.S. Education Department, some of them seem to be applying the principle of balloon mortgages to expected student achievement gains: we'll deliver a little in the next few years, and quite a lot down the road - but with any luck somebody else will be on duty when the "quite a lot" time hits.

Worse, based on early evidence, the Education Department is inexplicably assenting to this questionable approach. Bear with me.

You remember where "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) came from: in NCLB, Congress gave states a dozen years (until 2013-14, using 2001-2 as baseline) to boost every last one of their public school pupils to "proficiency" in reading and math. AYP is the gauge by which everyone will know which districts, schools and groups of children are truly making satisfactory gains. If they're not, a variety of interventions are supposed to be imposed. (Today, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation released a penetrating new study of such interventions, Ron Brady's excellent report, Can Failing Schools be Fixed? which shows that often they don't work as well as one would wish. You can find it on our website at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=2.)

NCLB, as you know, is a unique amalgam of uniformities and flexibilities. In many parts, states must all do the same thing. In others, they have a measure of freedom to innovate. The twelve-year timeline is fixed, for example, but each state sets its own standards of proficiency. States also choose their own tests (though all must participate in NAEP).

Perhaps the stickiest - and surely the most complex - NCLB wicket is specification of how much progress comprises adequacy during the twelve-year period. As recently as July, the Education Department insisted that states must figure out ways to boost achievement at a steady pace across that entire time span. Secretary Paige issued a "Dear Colleague" letter on July 24 that said:

"A State's definition of AYP is based on expectations for growth in student achievement that is continuous and substantial.... Accountability systems must establish proficiency goals statewide...that progressively increase to reflect 100 percent proficiency for all students by 2013-14. These goals must increase at steady and consistent increments during the 12-year timeline, although not necessarily annually throughout the 12 years (i.e. States cannot establish goals that will require the most substantial progress toward the end of the 12-year timeline.)"

Please review that last sentence and decide whether, in your opinion, it is a clear warning to states NOT to back-load their student gain expectations like a balloon mortgage, making it relatively easier to post those gains in the early years (hence easier on incumbent officials and educators) but far more challenging for those who become responsible down the road.

That's how I read it. But at least two of the five states that already had their AYP plans okayed by the feds have opted for the balloon-mortgage approach. Both Ohio and Indiana claim that they will squeeze half of the necessary achievement growth into the final quarter of the twelve-year period. Inexplicably, the feds said OK. (The Education Department also approved plans from Colorado, Massachusetts, and New York, which appear to contain the equivalent of fixed-rate mortgages.)

How did Ohio and Indiana manage to pull this off? I've no idea why Uncle Sam approved a maneuver that plainly violates the spirit of NCLB and Secretary Paige's guidance. One hopes it was a mistake that won't be repeated, perhaps the reason the then-cognizant assistant secretary no longer holds that job. But it's easy to find the NCLB technicality that these two states exploited. It lies in the concept of "intermediate goals." NCLB allows states to set such goals during the 12-year period, like stair steps along the upward path to proficiency. Those intermediate goals come with just three constraints: the first one cannot arrive later than 2004-5, each intermediate goal must encompass the same amount of academic growth as the others, and no more than three years can elapse between any two intermediate goals. But nobody said how FEW years could elapse or that the periods between them had to be uniform.

So Ohio and Indiana each opted to set 5 intermediate goals, which effectively creates six achievement targets (since 100% proficiency comes in the period between goal #5 and 2014.) And guess what? The first three of those targets each spans a three-year period (i.e. they're to be attained in 2005, 2008 and 2011). But the final three are just a single year apart. In other words, these states are promising to make as much academic growth in the one year from 2011 to 2012 as in the three-year period 2002-5; they say they expect as sizable achievement gains between 2012 and 2013 as between 2005 and 2008; and they claim that their students will make as much progress from 2013 to 2014 as from 2008 to 2011.

Let me say it again: half the total gain to be made by Ohio and Indiana students will - if you believe it - be made in the last three years of the NCLB timetable, from 2011 to 2014.

To believe that this approach is plausible, you have to believe that academic gains will be made in U.S. schools at an accelerating pace, indeed that as the going gets hardest - moving those last, toughest kids over the hump to proficiency - the rate of improvement will speed up. Does that sound right to you?

What I think is going on, cynic though you may call me, is that clever folks in at least two states figured out that, by the time 2011 rolls around, none of them will be responsible any longer. They'll all have moved on to new jobs, retired to their ranchettes, taken high-level posts in Washington, whatever. Nor will anybody from the Bush Administration still be in office after January 20, 2009. Hence the immense achievement gains being promised for those last three years of the NCLB timetable will be somebody else's problem to deliver. The incumbents will, in effect, have sold the property before the balloon part of the mortgage hits.

No wonder the Ohio and Indiana AYP plans became the talk of other state officials after they got approved. We can safely predict that at least a few of the AYP plans being submitted tomorrow will follow in their footsteps. One wonders whether the feds will approve them, too.

Does this not make a travesty of AYP and, perhaps, of NCLB itself?

PS: To see this part of Indiana's plan for yourself, surf to http://ed.gov/offices/OESE/CFP/csas/incsa.doc and make your way to page 22. To see Ohio's, surf to http://ed.gov/offices/OESE/CFP/csas/ohcsa.doc and turn to page 26.

* * *

A report released yesterday by the Education Commission of the States (ECS) shows the steps that all 50 states have taken to comply with No Child Left Behind, and reveals how far many states still have to go. ECS found that just twelve states are on track to comply with even half of the major requirements of the law. North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas are farthest along while Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Oregon bring up the rear. Only 25 states are ready to offer students the opportunity to transfer out of failing schools, and 20 states are offering students in persistently failing schools the free tutoring services that the law requires.

"Most states lag far behind 'No Child Left Behind' law," by Greg Toppo, USA Today, January 29, 2003, http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2003-01-28-education-cover-usat_x.htm

The interactive ECS study can be found at www.ecs.org.

Fingering localized school funding as the cause of the persistent incompetence of many schools (as well as the source of great inequalities in per pupil spending), writer (and former White House aide) James Pinkerton proposes what he calls a grand compromise to address both these problems and please both Republicans and Democrats to boot: a Pell grant program for K-12 education. Every American K-12 student (regardless of family income) would be given $7,000 in federal dollars to spend at the school of his or her choice, guaranteeing more equal funding and more choice. While the idea is appealing, the price tag - $350 billion a year in new federal spending (or 3 percent of GDP) - probably makes the proposal more of a thought experiment than anything else.

"A Grand Compromise," by James Pinkerton, The Atlantic Monthly, January/February 2003

Charlene K. Haar, The Education Policy Institute
January 2003

In this new book, Charlene Haar of the Education Policy Institute chronicles the history of the National Parent-Teacher Association, tracing its transformation from the National Congress of Mothers in the 1870s to an organization dominated by teacher unions and involved in issues that have little or no relevance to children and student learning. Much of the book shows how the PTA has abandoned its role as an independent analyst of education policy and criticizes the political entity that it has become. Haar details the policies that prohibit local and state affiliates from challenging union positions on issues of concern to parents and describes the organization's extensive lobbying efforts at the state and federal level - efforts that often lead to a reduction in the role of parents in their children's education. Haar concludes that the National PTA "can neither stand up to teacher union interests nor fairly represent parental interests in improving their local schools. On the most fundamental of its tasks, the PTA has proven itself irrelevant." She recommends that frustrated parents set up independent parent-teacher organizations (PTOs) that will more effectively represent their interests. The book is available in paperback for $24.95. For ordering information, please see http://www.educationpolicy.org.

Fall 2002

The fall 2002 issue of this journal contains three articles of potential interest to education policy makers, practitioners and propeller heads. In "The Promise and Pitfalls of Using Imprecise School Accountability Measures," Thomas J. Kane and Douglas O. Staiger discuss the difficulty and precariousness of basing education accountability systems on relatively small and evanescent shifts in high-stakes test scores. In "How Vouchers Could Change the Market for Education," Derek Neal contends that under-regulated vouchers could give rise to new private schools that, while satisfying parents, would be socially harmful (e.g., a "Klan Academy"). In "School Vouchers: A Critical View," Helen Ladd argues that school choice can do some good but that widespread use of vouchers is not apt to alleviate the urgent education problems of disadvantaged kids and may do some harm. On the whole, not a very upbeat collection! If you need a downer, surf to http://www.aeaweb.org/jep/contents/ and you can read these semi-technical essays for yourself (though only if you're a subscriber). For subscription information, see http://www.aeaweb.org/subscribe.html.

Heinrich Mintrop, Education Policy Analysis Archives
January 15, 2003

In this report from the Education Policy Analysis Archive, UCLA's Heinrich Mintrop suggests that putting failing schools on probation as part of a state accountability system only helps some of them to improve, while causing new problems. He studied eleven low-performing (and mostly poor/minority) schools in Maryland and Kentucky - half of them elementary, half middle - that were put on probation under their states' accountability systems. The question was what effects did probationary status have on the schools. The problem is that Mintrop focused on what teachers and principals thought and did rather than on the performance of their pupils. Though it was weak student performance that led to probationary status in the first place, he doesn't seem very interested in whether that performance improved as a result of this kind of state intervention. In fact, he never gets around to saying whether it got better or worse in the Kentucky schools in his small sample. (In the Maryland schools, he notes that MSPAP scores stopped declining in the probationary schools and two of them made "notable strides" in reading and math, while the others more or less leveled off.) His data consist largely of principal and teacher interviews and classroom observations. Not too surprisingly, he finds that, while probation made school staffs aware that they had a problem, it didn't lead to much improvement in instruction and it fostered various kinds of negative behavior among teachers. Also not surprising, he found that much of the instruction in these schools simply wasn't very good. For example, "Only one third of all observed Maryland lessons were deemed highly coherent, i.e. beginning, middle, and end hung together; the majority lacked conceptual depth." You'll learn a bit more from this study than its abstract suggests, so you may want to have a look for yourself (see http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n3.html on the web for a copy), but please keep in mind that it's based on a tiny sample and that its focus is what teachers do (and feel) rather than how much their students learn.

Lance T. Izumi, K. Lloyd Billingsley and Diallo Dphrepaulezz
Pacific Research Institute
November 2002

Those who have kept an eye on the California charter school landscape over the past few years are used to hearing stories of school mismanagement followed by cries to reform or even abolish charter schools in that state. Now the Pacific Research Institute has issued an analogous warning about public schools. This report describes a wide variety of horrendous financial abuses in California's public school system, such as the $600,000 in travel expenses incurred by one superintendent over a three-year period and the $200 million Los Angeles has spent building a high school on an unsafe site. The authors suggest that these troubles are symptomatic of a larger problem: lack of oversight throughout all levels of this bureaucracy. Audits are rarely performed, those that are performed are reviewed too slowly, bond revenues are misspent, and the red tape has grown thick. They conclude that the proper solution is to provide school choice - through vouchers - in order to induce reform through competition. The authors are critical of the system's ability to fix itself, noting that many efforts, such as smaller class sizes, have failed. For Californians, this report may provide some useful information on excesses in their public school system. For those outside the Golden State, it serves as further evidence that any large organization must have robust financial controls. Still, it's sensationalistic and so heavy-handed that one cannot help but wonder about the other sides of the stories they report. And its voucher remedy is argued too briefly to convince a skeptic. To find your own copy, visit http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/educat/grand_theft_education.pdf.

The National Education Association
January 2003

The National Education Association is nothing if not predictable in its hunger for education funding and its blindness to the sources of wealth that makes such funding possible. This 55-page "research working paper" on "property tax abatements, tax increment financing and funding for schools" argues that state and local tax breaks for businesses to locate, remain, or expand in their jurisdictions cost the public schools a lot of revenue that would come to them were such breaks not conferred, and that this is a bad thing. To wit, "This study suggests that today's development subsidies may be enriching corporations at the cost of the education of tomorrow's work force." Actual data are skimpy and dated in the five state case studies and the conclusions are elusive, since states typically try to compensate school budgets at least partially for revenues lost via such abatements and concessions. What's most striking, though, is how oblivious the NEA research team seems toward the fact that economic development in a community or state is a healthy thing that, provided it succeeds, will strengthen the economic base that sustains public education over the long haul. One supposes the NEA's perfect tax system would redirect 100 percent of the private sector's wealth into the public sector via taxation. How long could that last? You probably don't want to see this paper unless you collect NEA arcana, but you can find it at http://nea.org/presscenter/images/protectingpubliceducationfullreport.pdf.