The Education Gadfly Weekly

Learning First Alliance, November 2001

The Learning First Alliance - which consists of a dozen establishment education groups - has identified "essential" elements of safe and supportive schools. Most will not surprise you: more money, smaller classes, greater parent and community involvement, and efforts to foster "positive behavior" through anger management and conflict resolution. You will also find encouragement of challenging curricula for all students and standards to "monitor their progress and support continuous improvement."  The report offers more specific recommendations for school and districts, some (e.g. disaggregate and report student achievement data) more sensible than others (e.g. regulate teacher certification even more tightly).  If you care to learn more, surf to http://www.learningfirst.org/pdfs/safe-schools-report.pdf or purchase a copy of the report (Stock No. 300303) for $3 plus shipping from Alliance member ASCD by calling 800-933-2273, ext. 2.

Don Soifer, Lexington Institute, September 2001

Federal law stipulates that three-quarters of all funding under the Bilingual Education Act must be reserved for programs that teach students in their native language.  No more than one fourth may be spent on "alternative" programs such as English immersion despite the fact that these are nearly always more effective at imparting English-language competency to youngsters.  Don Soifer takes on the "75/25" rule - targeted for demise in President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" plan - in a recent Lexington Institute report.  Profiling 14 federally funded bilingual education programs in Massachusetts (which fall under the "75" category), Soifer shows that none achieved significant gains in student academic achievement or transition rates to mainstream classrooms, which are the two best gauges of a successful bilingual ed program.  With as few as 9% of students in some programs mainstreamed after several years of bilingual education, the data paint a bleak picture of kids languishing in bilingual ed, falling ever farther behind their English-speaking peers. Rife with examples of mismanaged class time, dubious budget priorities, and wrongheaded thinking, this 15-page report is available online at http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/education/fedbilingual.htm.  If you'd prefer a hard copy, contact the Lexington Institute, 1655 North Fort Myer Drive, Suite 325, Arlington, VA 22209; 703-522-5828; fax 703-522-5837; [email protected].

Heritage Foundation, October 2001

The Heritage Foundation recently released the sixth edition of its comprehensive annual look at school choice policies and trends across the nation.  This year's volume, edited by Robert E. Moffit, Jennifer J. Garrett and Janice A. Smith, features a brief chapter reviewing recent choice research and an interactive map of the U.S. that links to profiles of each state.  Included are all the usual statistics on K-12 enrollment, expenditures, student achievement and teacher salaries; charter schools; and publicly and privately funded scholarship programs.  The editors also include each state's ranking on the Manhattan Institute's Education Freedom Index, which measures the extent of choice in a state.  The report finds that school choice is flourishing: a record 37 states (and the District of Columbia) have charter school laws on the books, 31 states (compared with 18 last year) have "considered tax credits or deductions for educational expenses or contributions to scholarship programs for low-income students," and thousands of kids are attending private schools thanks to publicly and privately funded voucher programs. Check this resource out at http://www.heritage.org/schools.  Hard copies (ISBN 0-89195-100-8) can be had for $12.95 from the Heritage Publications Office, 214 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002-4999, 800-544-4843.  Discounted copies are available if you order online at http://www.heritage.org/bookstore/.

American Federation of Teachers, October 2001

The American Federation of Teachers has been a busy place in recent weeks. On October 25, they released an in-house study of the salaries of urban teachers. There's some useful data here - including startling city-by-city differences - but the analysis is heavily spun to favor AFT policy positions. Three problems warrant mention: (1) Only cash salaries (based on posted salary schedules) are reported here; no account is taken of the value of the generous benefits packages that most public-school teachers enjoy, nor of various opportunities to supplement their incomes (either by doing extra work at school or by moonlighting and summer employment). (2) No attempt is made to "annualize" salaries, so we find the salaries of teachers who are attached to a typical 180-day work year compared with salaries in other fields where 240 workdays per year are commonly expected. Thus, for example, a statement meant to alarm readers - that new college graduates received average salary offers of almost $40,000 while the average "BA-minimum" salary for beginning public school teachers was $30,700 in large cities - when re-examined on an "annualized" basis, suggests that new teachers are paid at almost precisely the same rate as other recent college graduates. That's not to say they shouldn't be paid more, only that there's no great discrepancy here. (3) There's also a possible problem in what's otherwise a compelling point: the AFT analysts report that "net total spending growth" per pupil in public education over the past decade averaged 4.6 percent annually, while teacher salary growth averaged 3.2 percent per year. "Thus," concludes the AFT, "much of the increase in education funding during the 1990s went to something other than teacher salaries." Well, maybe. First, however, one would have to know how many more teachers were employed during this period. During a period of keen interest in class-size reduction, it's likely that public education put a lot of its additional dollars into hiring more teachers rather than into higher salaries for existing teachers. At the very least, that possibility must be ruled out before one can be alarmed by this discrepancy in the way the authors intend. You can see for yourself (PDF format) by surfing to www.aft.org/press/2001/102501.html.

Gerald Bracey, 2001

Gerald Bracey is at it again. Wrong as he is about everything, one must give the guy points for productivity. If you don't get enough of him from his website, his op-eds, his proprietary monthly column in the Kappan, and his annual "Bracey Report," here's a book for you. 212 pages long, the ISBN is 0321080734. The publisher is Allyn and Bacon, part of the Pearson empire - which of course owns a nontrivial chunk of the "education industry" that Bracey savages in these pages. But don't look for irony here; hypocrisy, dudgeon and spleen will have to suffice. The publisher's website is www.ablongman.com. Alternatively, you might save your money for a soothing beverage or two.

Saul Geiser and Roger Studley, University of California, October 29, 2001

Analysts at the University of California have prepared a study showing, they claim, that "The SAT II achievement tests predict freshman academic success at the University of California better than the SAT I reasoning test." They say that the SAT II "can be used to predict 16% of first-year grades" while the SAT I "by itself predicts only 13.3 percent of freshman grades." That difference strikes us as less than stunning. Bear in mind, too, that U.C. President Richard Atkinson - whose office issued this study - has already made waves with his controversial proposal that the university stop using the SAT I for admissions purposes. Bear in mind, too, that these findings only relate to those students who, for various reasons, have managed to wind up as U.C. freshmen, which is affected by sundry other admissions factors as well as California's demographics. (A sizable fraction of U.C. students are of Asian or Hispanic origin and there is reason to believe that they benefit from the SAT II because they can take one of its three component tests in their native language.) If you'd like a look, you can get a PDF version by surfing to http://www.ucop.edu/sas/research/researchandplanning/pdf/sat_study.pdf.

A program aiming to place talented leaders from government, business, non-profits, higher ed, and the military as superintendents in urban school districts has been launched by the Broad Center for Superintendents, an organization established by the Broad Foundation and Michigan Governor John Engler. The Broad Urban Superintendents Academy is currently recruiting fellows for its first class, which will be launched in 2002. For details, see www.broadcenter.org.

With Pennsylvania Governor Mark Schweiker on the verge of transferring control of the Philadelphia's school system from local officials to his own appointees, who would then put its management in the hands of Edison Schools, a pair of articles in The Philadelphia Inquirer examines two questions: Do state takeovers of school systems work? And can Edison fix failing schools?  Governors and legislatures in 18 states have taken full or partial control of 40 districts, reports Dale Mezzacappa, and while such takeovers have been effective in rooting out mismanagement, balancing budgets, and filling supply-room shelves, rarely has a takeover yielded much success in boosting student achievement. That's been the story in New Jersey, where the state took over three urban districts, including Newark. In Maryland, where the state took control of three failing schools and entrusted them to Edison in 2000, results have been mixed. To be sure, very little time has passed yet. So far, however, in one school, scores have soared, in another, there was modest improvement, and in a third, they fell. Parents and teachers in the three schools are now among Edison's strongest supporters, but district officials complain that Edison's contract allows it to play by rules that give it unfair advantages. (Among other things, the company has lured veteran teachers away from other Baltimore schools by offering better work conditions, higher pay (in return for longer work hours), and performance bonuses.) See "Lessons from School Takeovers," by Dale Mezzacappa, The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 4, 2001, and "In Baltimore, Edison fixes schools while facing critics," by Dale Mezzacappa, The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 5, 2001.

While there are increasing calls for principals to be held accountable for producing results, in few places are principals given much power over staffing their schools or spending school budgets. In Houston, under a new funding system, dollars are allocated to schools on a per-pupil basis (with adjustments made for children with special needs) and principals are given substantial autonomy over budgeting and staffing.  The district provides ongoing training to principals, who have been released from central office rules that used to dictate staffing ratios and spell out how nearly every dollar must be spent. Schools with declining enrollments face shrinking budgets, but some schools are finding creative ways to boost enrollment, such as opening a career academy for kids interested in business, health science, and technology. For more see "HISD moves closer to funding equity," by Melanie Markley, Houston Chronicle, October 30, 2001.

The Los Angeles Unified School District's ambitious plan to reform secondary education and boost literacy in the upper grades has been derailed at least temporarily by the objections of teacher and administrator unions. LA Superintendent (and former Colorado governor) Roy Romer had hoped to launch a study to determine whether classroom assignments were rigorous and consistent across the school district. Teachers were to be asked to submit sample writing assignments along with examples of student work and explanations of their grading criteria.  Last week, however, United Teachers-Los Angeles told its members not to participate in the study, saying that it created too much paperwork for teachers. The administrators union told principals not to order teachers to participate, arguing that the study was a sneaky way of evaluating teachers and principals.

United Teachers-Los Angeles has also refused to cooperate with the implementation of California's reward program for teachers in low-performing schools that make big gains. The state has identified schools at which staff members are eligible to receive rewards, but the state program leaves to local districts and teachers unions all decisions about how the money should be divided within the schools. In most school districts, administrators and union officials have agreed to split the money evenly among teachers in the winning schools. The LA teachers union refused to negotiate a plan for distributing the bonus, citing a policy of not bargaining on any pay tied to test scores. As a result, the bonuses in LA had to be distributed according to a state default formula that ties reward amounts to teacher seniority.  The awards are substantial - in districts where the bonuses were split evenly among teachers in the school, they amounted to $25,000, $10,000, or $5,000 per teacher, depending on the size of the school's academic gains - and many LA teachers are furious that their checks are much smaller than those of fellow teachers with greater seniority. One teacher told a reporter that he was particularly angry because his students showed some of his school's largest gains, but because he was only a fourth-year teacher, his bonus check was on the small side.

When it came to the study of classroom assignments, the union resisted the idea of any research that could find differences across teachers or principals. When it came to performance-based pay, the union signaled not that all differences are bad, only those based on performance.  "Reform unionists" say that their goal is to use collective bargaining to promote changes that will lead to higher student achievement, but it is hard to be hopeful about the prospect of unions advancing reform goals when they resist efforts to treat teachers differently based on their effectiveness in the classroom.

"Romer backs down on instructional assessment," by Sonia Giordani, Los Angeles Times, November 1, 2001. (available for a fee at http://www.latimes.com)

"Teachers jeer bonuses decided by seniority," by Martha Groves and Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Times, October 30, 2001. (available for a fee at http://www.latimes.com)

On November 2, the American Federation of Teachers released a hefty (235-page) report entitled Making Standards Matter 2001. It's an ambitious effort to appraise academic standards, curriculum, assessments and accountability arrangements in each of the fifty states and for the country as a whole. With House Education Committee chairman John Boehner predicting that congressional conferees will complete work within a couple of weeks on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization, thus triggering further changes in state standards, tests and accountability systems, this review of where states are today is timely. (If you'd like to see it for yourself, surf to http://www.aft.org/edissues/standards/msm2001. Most of it is available in PDF format only.)

The AFT has previously evaluated state standards in the four subjects they regard as "core" (English, math, science, social studies). This is the first time they've also looked at state curricula, tests and accountability strategies. Having done so, the reviewers find many holes, gaps and inadequacies. "The bad news," says AFT president Sandra Feldman, "is that no state is coordinating standards, curriculum, tests and accountability measures. Very few states have developed at least basic curriculum, and most state tests are based on weak standards or don't match what is taught. The system needs a mid-course correction."

This is in many respects a needed and useful study that contains some sobering lessons. Perhaps the two most important are these:

• Twenty-one states don't yet have academic standards in place that meet even the AFT's relatively simple criteria (about which more below).
• "While every state asserts that its tests are linked to its standards, only eight states can actually document that they have aligned tests in the four core subjects at all three grade levels [elementary, middle, high school]. Thirty-one states and D.C. are administering one or more tests that do not meet AFT criteria for alignment."

This attempt at external appraisal of test alignment is new ground that's long needed to be broken, and for undertaking so complex and ambitious a task we salute the report's authors. (They are not named, unfortunately. Since Al Shanker's death and Ms. Feldman's ascension to the leadership, the AFT has become more of a personality cult, where able staff work now gets little public recognition.)

But there are problems here, too, best glimpsed by looking more closely at some of the AFT's criteria.

First, in appraising a state's academic standards, the teachers union reviewers looked for important formal elements, such as whether the standards are "detailed, explicit, and firmly rooted in the content of the subject area." Yet the reviewers then eschewed most of the tough content judgments. In a footnote, they admit that "In this report, we do not attempt to judge the overall quality or rigor of the content covered in each state's subject-matter standards. We do not try to determine, for example, whether the ninth-grade algebra standards in a given state contain the most salient content for ninth-graders. But the content must be specified." This is disconcerting, to say the least. It's akin to a concert reviewer saying "I looked to make sure the conductor and orchestra members each have a score in front of them, and an instrument in their hands, and each must visibly be playing his/her instrument, but I don't actually care whether they're playing Brahms or the Beatles, and I don't bother determining whether they're playing in the right key. Whatever they want to play is fine, so long as they have all the essential elements in place for the program they've selected." For an organization that has lauded E.D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum, this is astonishingly agnostic with respect to the particular skills and knowledge that children should learn in school.

Second, despite its agnosticism on content standards, the AFT wants every state to have a uniform curriculum in the four key subjects. "To be complete," says the new report, "a curriculum must be grade by grade and contain the following five components: a learning continuum; instructional resources; instructional strategies; performance indicators; and lesson plans." This is a huge leap - from standards to curriculum. Whereas academic standards typically spell out the knowledge and skills that children should have learned by the end of, say, 4^th grade, a curriculum tells teachers what materials to use, what sequence to follow, even what lessons to employ each day (and, in the AFT's version, what classroom methods to use). This kind of thing many thoughtful reformers believe should be left to individual districts, schools and teachers to determine for themselves - and should be encouraged to differ in how they do it so long as all produce the intended results.

The AFT, however, apparently wants states to force schools and teachers into curricular straitjackets - and will mark them down unless they do this. This would pose huge problems for charter schools, magnet schools, specialty schools, alternative schools, "gifted and talented" programs, honors programs and just about every other form of school diversity and choice. (It also poses huge problems for great teachers with idiosyncratic classroom strategies and unconventional materials.) I have no problem with states publishing exemplary curricula that match their standards and illustrating student work that corresponds to a "proficient" score on the state assessment. Possibly that's all the AFT intends. But that isn't what the report says. To force instructional strategies, scopes-and-sequences, even lesson plans upon all of a state's schools and teachers is to strengthen the bureaucratic-compliance mindset and weaken efforts at school pluralism and choice. That is likely part of the AFT's game plan. Ironically, though, this approach also undermines teacher professionalism, which, one supposes, is not Ms. Feldman's intent.

Third and, alas, predictably, the union's ideas about "accountability" are limited to those that bear down on students. The report invokes two criteria here: whether "the state require(s) and fund(s) extra help for students having difficulty meeting the standards" and whether the state "has developed policies to encourage students to take learning more seriously by providing rewards and consequences based, in part, on state assessment results." So far, so good. But note what's missing: any "rewards and consequences" whatsoever for teachers and schools. In my view, it's unjust, even immoral, for a state to crack down on the kids while leaving their instructors and schools untouched. Yet that, too, is part of the AFT's policy game plan.

In sum, we have here a timely, informative, and in many respects valuable study that is deeply flawed by its sponsoring organization's agnosticism on academic content, hostility to school diversity and choice, and refusal to hold the grown-ups in the K-12 education system even the least bit accountable for its performance.

Thanks to a black minister and a retired marine, roughly 450 students in St. Louis are attending private schools financed by public dollars this fall - without vouchers.  Determined to do something about the number of kids they encountered who couldn't read or write, Bishop Laurence Wooten and Marine Lt. Col. Tim Daniels set out to create charter schools that would give kids a tuition-free alternative to their dismal public schools.  Unable to secure charters from a sponsoring organization, the two hit upon the idea of financing their schools by cobbling together money from before- and after-school programs, federal day-care money, Medicaid and school lunch programs. Today, two of the four planned St. Louis Academies - which feature values-based, but not religious, instruction in a back-to-basics curriculum - are up and running.  A relentless determination to succeed - epitomized by the school motto "There is no excuse for failure" - supplements the schools' shoestring budget.  For more about these schools, see "Tuition-free, back-to-basics, inner-city private schools," by King Kaufman, Salon.com, October 29, 2001.

American Federation of Teachers, October 2001

The American Federation of Teachers has been a busy place in recent weeks. On October 25, they released an in-house study of the salaries of urban teachers. There's some useful data here - including startling city-by-city differences - but the analysis is heavily spun to favor AFT policy positions. Three problems warrant mention: (1) Only cash salaries (based on posted salary schedules) are reported here; no account is taken of the value of the generous benefits packages that most public-school teachers enjoy, nor of various opportunities to supplement their incomes (either by doing extra work at school or by moonlighting and summer employment). (2) No attempt is made to "annualize" salaries, so we find the salaries of teachers who are attached to a typical 180-day work year compared with salaries in other fields where 240 workdays per year are commonly expected. Thus, for example, a statement meant to alarm readers - that new college graduates received average salary offers of almost $40,000 while the average "BA-minimum" salary for beginning public school teachers was $30,700 in large cities - when re-examined on an "annualized" basis, suggests that new teachers are paid at almost precisely the same rate as other recent college graduates. That's not to say they shouldn't be paid more, only that there's no great discrepancy here. (3) There's also a possible problem in what's otherwise a compelling point: the AFT analysts report that "net total spending growth" per pupil in public education over the past decade averaged 4.6 percent annually, while teacher salary growth averaged 3.2 percent per year. "Thus," concludes the AFT, "much of the increase in education funding during the 1990s went to something other than teacher salaries." Well, maybe. First, however, one would have to know how many more teachers were employed during this period. During a period of keen interest in class-size reduction, it's likely that public education put a lot of its additional dollars into hiring more teachers rather than into higher salaries for existing teachers. At the very least, that possibility must be ruled out before one can be alarmed by this discrepancy in the way the authors intend. You can see for yourself (PDF format) by surfing to www.aft.org/press/2001/102501.html.

Don Soifer, Lexington Institute, September 2001

Federal law stipulates that three-quarters of all funding under the Bilingual Education Act must be reserved for programs that teach students in their native language.  No more than one fourth may be spent on "alternative" programs such as English immersion despite the fact that these are nearly always more effective at imparting English-language competency to youngsters.  Don Soifer takes on the "75/25" rule - targeted for demise in President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" plan - in a recent Lexington Institute report.  Profiling 14 federally funded bilingual education programs in Massachusetts (which fall under the "75" category), Soifer shows that none achieved significant gains in student academic achievement or transition rates to mainstream classrooms, which are the two best gauges of a successful bilingual ed program.  With as few as 9% of students in some programs mainstreamed after several years of bilingual education, the data paint a bleak picture of kids languishing in bilingual ed, falling ever farther behind their English-speaking peers. Rife with examples of mismanaged class time, dubious budget priorities, and wrongheaded thinking, this 15-page report is available online at http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/education/fedbilingual.htm.  If you'd prefer a hard copy, contact the Lexington Institute, 1655 North Fort Myer Drive, Suite 325, Arlington, VA 22209; 703-522-5828; fax 703-522-5837; [email protected].

Gerald Bracey, 2001

Gerald Bracey is at it again. Wrong as he is about everything, one must give the guy points for productivity. If you don't get enough of him from his website, his op-eds, his proprietary monthly column in the Kappan, and his annual "Bracey Report," here's a book for you. 212 pages long, the ISBN is 0321080734. The publisher is Allyn and Bacon, part of the Pearson empire - which of course owns a nontrivial chunk of the "education industry" that Bracey savages in these pages. But don't look for irony here; hypocrisy, dudgeon and spleen will have to suffice. The publisher's website is www.ablongman.com. Alternatively, you might save your money for a soothing beverage or two.

Heritage Foundation, October 2001

The Heritage Foundation recently released the sixth edition of its comprehensive annual look at school choice policies and trends across the nation.  This year's volume, edited by Robert E. Moffit, Jennifer J. Garrett and Janice A. Smith, features a brief chapter reviewing recent choice research and an interactive map of the U.S. that links to profiles of each state.  Included are all the usual statistics on K-12 enrollment, expenditures, student achievement and teacher salaries; charter schools; and publicly and privately funded scholarship programs.  The editors also include each state's ranking on the Manhattan Institute's Education Freedom Index, which measures the extent of choice in a state.  The report finds that school choice is flourishing: a record 37 states (and the District of Columbia) have charter school laws on the books, 31 states (compared with 18 last year) have "considered tax credits or deductions for educational expenses or contributions to scholarship programs for low-income students," and thousands of kids are attending private schools thanks to publicly and privately funded voucher programs. Check this resource out at http://www.heritage.org/schools.  Hard copies (ISBN 0-89195-100-8) can be had for $12.95 from the Heritage Publications Office, 214 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002-4999, 800-544-4843.  Discounted copies are available if you order online at http://www.heritage.org/bookstore/.

Learning First Alliance, November 2001

The Learning First Alliance - which consists of a dozen establishment education groups - has identified "essential" elements of safe and supportive schools. Most will not surprise you: more money, smaller classes, greater parent and community involvement, and efforts to foster "positive behavior" through anger management and conflict resolution. You will also find encouragement of challenging curricula for all students and standards to "monitor their progress and support continuous improvement."  The report offers more specific recommendations for school and districts, some (e.g. disaggregate and report student achievement data) more sensible than others (e.g. regulate teacher certification even more tightly).  If you care to learn more, surf to http://www.learningfirst.org/pdfs/safe-schools-report.pdf or purchase a copy of the report (Stock No. 300303) for $3 plus shipping from Alliance member ASCD by calling 800-933-2273, ext. 2.

Saul Geiser and Roger Studley, University of California, October 29, 2001

Analysts at the University of California have prepared a study showing, they claim, that "The SAT II achievement tests predict freshman academic success at the University of California better than the SAT I reasoning test." They say that the SAT II "can be used to predict 16% of first-year grades" while the SAT I "by itself predicts only 13.3 percent of freshman grades." That difference strikes us as less than stunning. Bear in mind, too, that U.C. President Richard Atkinson - whose office issued this study - has already made waves with his controversial proposal that the university stop using the SAT I for admissions purposes. Bear in mind, too, that these findings only relate to those students who, for various reasons, have managed to wind up as U.C. freshmen, which is affected by sundry other admissions factors as well as California's demographics. (A sizable fraction of U.C. students are of Asian or Hispanic origin and there is reason to believe that they benefit from the SAT II because they can take one of its three component tests in their native language.) If you'd like a look, you can get a PDF version by surfing to http://www.ucop.edu/sas/research/researchandplanning/pdf/sat_study.pdf.