The Education Gadfly Weekly

Florida Department of EducationAugust 2004

Are charter schools doing as well as their traditional district counterparts? The New York Times claimed to answer that question last week, in its gleeful promotion of a slipshod AFT study purporting to show low test scores at charters. But that was not the last word, as innumerable critics quickly noticed that the Times viewed only a snapshot of data (see "Slugging back on charters," above), which is no substitute for a value-added analysis measuring changes over time. Thankfully, the Florida Department of Education understands this key point and has just come out with a useful appraisal of its state's charters. These results are encouraging: charters posted greater gains in reading and math scores than regular district schools. The report breaks down the data into five subgroups (African American, Hispanic, poor, disabled and gifted students) and considers four tests. Across these twenty categories the district schools did not perform better than charters in a single one; in eleven, there was no difference, and in nine the charters did better. Charters also did a better job of achieving Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB, and 69 percent of Florida parents gave their charter school a grade of A+ or A (compared to 29 percent of public school parents nationwide; there's no comparable data for Florida public schools alone). But this report also recognizes that charters have considerably more work to do. Their absolute scores trail slightly behind those of district schools, "in large part, because parents often choose a charter school when their child's needs are not met in the traditional school." (This is consistent with the data indicating that students held back one year in school are three to four times more likely than other students to switch to a charter school.) They also point out that some charters have done a poor job of meeting their reporting obligations, and many operators "are inexperienced and ill equipped to handle the complexities of charter school operations." But it seems reasonably clear that, so far, the charter movement in Florida has had more success than failure, creating worthwhile choices for many parents. The full study is available online here.

Center on Education PolicyAugust 2004

This is the third annual report on high-school exit exams from the Center on Education Policy, Jack Jennings's Washington-based policy shop. (For Gadfly coverage of the two earlier editions, click here and here.) This reform strategy is spreading; 25 states will soon have such tests and 70 percent of U.S. high-school students will be affected by them. This 257-page report is a solid source of factual information, including profiles of individual states. It covers most of the relevant policy concerns and seems fair-minded in drawing conclusions where they can be drawn from extant data and available research - and saying where they're not. (E.g., "The evidence on the effects of exit exams is mixed and tentative. . . . The academic community is still divided on the issue of whether exit exams cause more students to drop out of high school.") It sets off no obvious alarm bells, which is probably why it didn't attract much attention. You can find it online here.

Southern Regional Education Board2004

This is another fine report from the SREB's "Challenge to Lead" series. (Click here for our evaluation of an earlier report on teacher quality.) It sets out two imperatives for middle school educators and policy makers - producing high achievement with no gaps, and giving students a rigorous curriculum that prepares them for high school - and then supplies recommendations on how to further these goals. There are many helpful charts illustrating Southern states' scores, both on their own standards assessments and on NAEP. The authors note that state standards vary wildly in quality and are not always aligned with NAEP. (In Georgia, for example, 81 percent of 8th graders ostensibly met or exceeded state standards in reading in 2003, but only 69 percent were at or above NAEP's "Basic" level.) States must have effective, rigorous standards upon which to base instruction and testing, or statewide assessment tests will give little indication of their actual progress. Admirable emphasis is also placed on reforming middle schools so they actually prepare students for high school. (The middle school years are often seen as a time when students are too caught up in hormonal and social change to learn much; as a result, many middle schoolers don't learn that much.) The authors provide guidance for setting matters right, including Algebra I for all 8th and 9th graders. A brief yet rewarding read; you can find it here.

The Florida Board of Education made a super choice in naming John Winn the new state commissioner. A former teacher and top aide to outgoing Commissioner Jim Horne, Winn was instrumental in crafting Florida's marquee school accountability measures, including the A+ Plan and the FCAT. Now he'll need all of his plentiful savvy and good humor to defend these reforms against critics and weed out the handful of hucksters who are exploiting Florida's voucher and charter systems for personal gain. He's up to it and we wish him well.

"Schools chief named swiftly," by Ron Matus, St. Petersburg Times, August 18, 2004

"Move forward," Orlando Sentinel, August 25, 2004 (registration required)

Charter supporters rushed to the barricades after last week's AFT-coordinated blast in the New York Times. Yesterday, 31 policy types and number crunchers ran a full-page ad in the Times rebutting some of the claims made in Diana Jean Schemo's original article. Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency has also pointed out some potential silver linings for education reformers in the AFT report (see "No August break in charter-land" for more). According to Antonucci, "The AFT's single-minded effort to rid us of charter schools also serves to effectively undermine every argument teachers' unions have made - and are still making - for the poor performance of regular public schools." To wit, judging schools by a single standardized test is now OK; enrolling large numbers of minority students, having inexperienced teachers, high teacher turnover, poor teacher compensation, and low funding are all no excuse for poor performance. So saith the teachers' union itself. House Education and the Workforce Committee chair John Boehner (R-OH) points out in National Review Online that the real victims of the AFT-led and Times-supported attack on charter schools, if it is successful, "are likely to be our nation's most disadvantaged minority children." And Samuel Freedman, the superb pinch-hitting education columnist for the Times, points out that "it's risky to draw any conclusions too sweeping and too soon about a phenomenon that lumps together [Theodore Sizer prot??g??] Dennis Littky and Kristen Kearns Jordan." Littky himself notes that "Charter school legislation is set up to give some freedom and some choice. So that's what's being criticized - a new way of doing things."

"Report offers no clear victory for charter opponents," by Samuel G. Freedman, New York Times, August 25, 2004

"AFT report is the best news ever for education reform," by Mike Antonucci, EIA Communiqu??, August 23, 2004

"The charter difference," by John Boehner, National Review Online, August 23, 2004

In case you were swept up in last week's anti-charter uproar, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post help provide some balance to the debate by highlighting the achievements of two charter school success stories - Edison Schools and the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP). According to the Journal, since the state takeover of the Philadelphia School District two years ago, the district has posted "double-digit gains in reading and math proficiency, [and] a tripling of the number of schools meeting federal No Child Left Behind standards." And, within those results, the gains "posted by the newer models of schools - for-profits, nonprofits, university-run, and so on - are particularly impressive." Leading the pack of institutions running six or more schools, Edison schools boasted "the biggest increase in the percentage of students scoring proficient or above and the biggest decrease in the percentage scoring 'below basic.'" In the Post, education columnist Jay Mathews highlights the success that KIPP has had in boosting academic achievement for students in some of the nation's most beleaguered districts. According to Mathews' report, KIPP founders Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg have created charter schools that are a model "that all other attempts to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students must measure themselves against."

"School of hard choices," by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, August 24, 2004

"Edison discovery," Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2004

The South Carolina State reported last week that Milwood Motley and Larry Williams, two professors at Benedict College, were fired in June for not adhering to the university's mandatory grade inflation policy. That policy requires professors to calculate "freshman grades based on a 60-40 formula, with effort counting for 60 percent and academics counting for 40 percent. By sophomore year, the formula would be 50-50; [and] by junior year, students would be judged strictly on academic performance." Motley was apparently uncomfortable with the policy from the day he started teaching at Benedict five years ago, but reached a breaking point when he would have been forced to award a C to "a student whose highest exam score was less than 40 percent." At that point, Motley decided to award grades for the semester based on academic performance, and when told to go back and recalculate the grades, "just refused to do it." A faculty grievance committee voted 4-3 to reinstate him but was overruled by college president David Swinton. Defending the policy, Swinton argued that students "have to get an A in effort to guarantee that if they fail the subject matter, they can get the minimum passing grade. . . . I don't think that's a bad thing."

"2 Benedict professors fired over grade policy," by Carolyn Click, The State, August 20, 2004

When Uncle Sam started poking into K-12 education in the 1950s and 60s, he adopted a delivery system that made sense at the time.

In our federalist structure, with rare exceptions, education is a state responsibility and, when it comes to public education, the states (but for Hawaii) have delegated its operation to local school systems. Thus long before there was a U.S. Department of Education, back when the Department of Health, Education and Welfare unit known as the U.S. Office of Education was predominantly concerned with statistics, civil rights, and research, there were already state education agencies (SEAs) and local education agencies (LEAs) that bore responsibility for running schools, hiring teachers, selecting curricula, raising and spending most of the money, etc.

Because most of the big new federal K-12 education programs of the day (e.g. National Defense Education Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Act) amounted to financial subsidies for districts and states, it made sense to administer them through that same hierarchy. Washington would give the money (and rules for spending it) to the SEAs, which would keep some of it and give the rest to the LEAs, which would keep some and pass along the rest (with more rules) to eligible schools, kids, etc.

As a money-distribution system, this was logical, even inevitable. It was how state and local dollars flowed. It would have been nuts to create another mechanism for federal dollars. And while SEAs and LEAs weren't always diligent in following Washington's rules, it was in their interest to do so, if only because they and their schools got the money and because, for the most part, that money was provided so they could do more of what they were already doing and possibly do it better, fairer, smarter, etc.

Thus arose the now-entrenched pattern of "state plans" for spending federal dollars, whereby the SEA says what it will do, receives a check, keeps track of the money, and periodically reports back to Washington on its success. Much the same happens between LEAs and SEAs.

Rare exceptions could be found in a few realms where there was a direct federal role, such as combating discrimination or reporting how many teachers had master's degrees. But when it came to the major funding programs, the traditional hierarchy was intact.

Then came A Nation at Risk and the dawning realization that Washington's new role in K-12 education was not just sending money into the existing system but actually transforming that system.

And thus arose today's great paradox for federal education policy: Washington still relies primarily on SEAs and LEAs to do its bidding, yet now the point of those programs is not to "help" the SEAs and LEAs do more of what they always did, or do what they want, but, rather, to reform what they do, often in ways they don't much want to be reformed. Often in ways they judge contrary to their own interests. Ways that include admitting failure. And ways they may not be competent to handle.

Keep in mind that today's highest-priority reforms - closing the learning gap, converting low-performing schools into good ones, intervening with rewards and sanctions, public reporting of both success and failure, freeing children and families to opt into other schools, insisting on knowledgeable and effective teachers - wouldn't be necessary if the SEAs and LEAs had done their jobs right in the first place.

So why do we suppose they'll do it right this time? Why do federal policy makers assume that those that caused the system's problems (or, at least, those on whose watch the problems grew) now have the will, desire, and capacity to solve them?

Consider, for example, the balky, messy implementation of NCLB's public-school choice and supplemental services provisions, which expect LEAs to, in effect, compete with their own schools and services, somehow serving simultaneously as operator of existing schools and broker of alternatives to them. How could that possibly succeed?

If all that SEAs and LEAs needed was more money and encouragement to solve their schools' problems, the traditional hierarchy might work. But I don't think anyone who's looked closely at the woes of low-performing schools believes that to be the case. That's why NCLB includes a cascade of interventions: it assumes that without them the desired changes won't occur.

You know the drill: If a federally aided school fails to "make AYP" for two consecutive years, the district is to arrange for its students to be offered "public school choice." If it falters for a third straight year, the district is to provide pupils with access to "supplemental services" from diverse providers. If it fails for a fourth year running, it must write a school improvement plan and, after the fifth year, the school is to be "reconstituted." By whom? By its LEA. And if the LEA itself "needs improvement," it is to be intervened in - NCLB sets out a similar progression of steps - by its SEA.

On paper, this all proceeds in the familiar top-down sequence, with Washington telling states what to do, states telling districts, and LEAs doing most of the work. That hierarchy remains the basic architecture of federal education policy today as in LBJ's time. But its original designers never pictured it supporting a results-based accountability system, making repairs to faltering schools, or functioning in an education environment peppered with such outside-the-hierarchy creations as charter schooling, home schooling, and distance learning.

Can the old architecture support a new, expanded, and more interventionist federal role? Or is there a basic mismatch between NCLB's modern ambitions and its antique machinery?

Is an alternative thinkable? Perhaps a model is to be found in civil rights, where Washington has played a direct role that did not depend on SEAs and LEAs and where, indeed, they were sometimes the "culprits" needing to be set right (if, for example, they discriminated against children on grounds of race or handicap).

Yet short of hiring tens of thousands of federal agents to, in effect, run America's troubled schools - picture federal marshals escorting highly qualified teachers into 5th grade classrooms in Cincinnati and national guardsmen transporting youngsters to more effective schools in St. Louis - any such endeavor needs to rely on intermediaries of some kind. Maybe Uncle Sam could contract with private firms or nonprofits to "intervene" in failing schools and school systems. (There's precedent in the providing of federally-funded services via such "bypass" entities to private-school children in states such as Virginia and Missouri.) Or Washington might rely on governors and mayors, i.e., the general-purpose governments of states and municipalities, rather than the SEAs and LEAs themselves, to make the latter shape up. That would be consistent with education governance changes already occurring in some places.

In some places - where the governor is already the "chief's" boss or the mayor is in charge of the school system - there'd be no revolution. In much of America, however, there'd be a sea change, were federal education programs to begin working through the general-purpose government rather than SEA and LEA.

Would it work better? I'm not sure. But let us at least acknowledge the risks in assuming that yesterday's structures can support today's very different missions.

The Phi Delta Kappan and the pollsters at Gallup this week unveiled their 36th annual survey of public attitudes toward schooling. The yearly late-August release of this poll is treated as an event of some importance to education writers across the country, who are sure to get a few weeks of chin-stroking and editorializing out of its data. Fordham and others take this poll to task each year for the way it asks questions about vouchers (click here), which generally poll in the 40-45 percent approval range. Ask the question in other ways, though, and support for vouchers rises - a point made this year by a competing poll by the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation. We won't rehash our objections to question bias in the PDK/Gallup poll here, except to note that we are obliged to register them once again.

In general, though, the PDK/Gallup poll probably does a decent job of mirroring public attitudes toward education. That assertion may surprise some readers, since these survey responses are often blurry and even contradictory. For example:

•  Seventy-three percent of the public believes that it is "not possible to accurately judge a student's proficiency in English and math on the basis of a single test," but 51 percent supports high-stakes graduation tests and a strong plurality (40 percent) think there's just about the right emphasis on achievement testing, while 22 percent think there's not enough. (And a whopping 83 percent want testing in other subjects besides English and math!)
• Twenty-four percent of the public has a generally favorable view of NCLB, 20 percent generally unfavorable, and 55 percent are clueless. But 51 percent believe the law will improve education "a great deal" or "a fair amount."
• Eighty-eight percent of the public thinks it is important to close the racial achievement gap - but only 42 percent support disaggregating achievement data by race and other characteristics.
• Only 42 percent of the public favors "allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense" while 54 percent oppose. But 43 percent of the public would be more likely to support a pro-voucher candidate, only 37 percent less likely.
• And of course, the perennial head-scratcher of public education: 70 percent of respondents with children in school give the school their oldest child attends an A or B, but only 47 percent would give schools in their community the same grades, and a mere 26 percent would give schools nationwide top marks.

In their rather terse conclusion, the pollsters insist that "The public does . . . have a way of getting it right with issues that are both complex and puzzling," an oddly defensive posture. Its tone may reflect the fact that Gallup doesn't know what in blazes to do with this mess of data, either - and that Phi Delta Kappa is a "stakeholder" group with deep roots in the education status quo.

But again, the PDK/Gallup poll is probably a reasonable representation reflection of public attitudes toward education, insofar as Americans want to have their cake and eat it too. (It's not a uniquely American failing; Europeans, after all, want huge welfare states, low birth rates, productive economies, and six weeks of vacation per year.) We want high test scores and high standards, but gosh, isn't all this testing a bit much? We want consequences for failure for everybody but my kid. Yes, public schools are a mess - those public schools, not this public school that my kids attend. And yes, let's close the racial achievement gap, it's the moral thing to do - but let's not report test scores by race, which is the only way to know if the achievement gap is closing or widening.

Like the White Queen, Americans can believe six or more incompatible things about public education before breakfast, because nothing has ever forced them to choose between competing goods. What might be bringing us to the point of decision is No Child Left Behind, in its lumbering and occasionally goofy way. This month and next, as states report their initial testing data and provisional AYP results are released for 2003-4, we are getting closer to widespread enactment of some of the more draconian NCLB interventions, including school restructurings and conversions. And the list of schools not making AYP is likely to lengthen this year (in North Carolina, for example, it just jumped from 18 to 156 schools). As more schools are labeled in need of improvement and as restructuring becomes more common, it grows harder for the public to sustain the illusion that all the pain of an accountability system can be for thee and not me, for your school and not mine. Will the public decide that the potential achievement gains that can result from NCLB's interventions and services (or a like alternative) are worth the disruption of testing and accountability? Or will we stick our heads in the sand about the problems that NCLB's assessment regimen lay bare?

If the PDK/Gallup poll shows anything, it's that Americans haven't yet fully digested what high standards, rigorous assessment, and serious accountability for results might mean, much less what a choice among schools might mean. That is, I think, the real lesson of the poll: that our opinions about education are no more contradictory than the goods we desire.

Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, by Lowell C. Rose and Alec M. Gallup, Phi Delta Kappan and Gallup, Inc, August 23, 2004

"National study raises questions of bias in Phi Delta Kappan poll," Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation, August 20, 2004 

"From schools to security, a reluctance to fix blame," by Gail Russell Chaddock, Christian Science Monitor, August 25, 2004

"Public's views on schools a moving target, poll finds," by Ben Feller, Associated Press, August 24, 2004

Center on Education PolicyAugust 2004

This is the third annual report on high-school exit exams from the Center on Education Policy, Jack Jennings's Washington-based policy shop. (For Gadfly coverage of the two earlier editions, click here and here.) This reform strategy is spreading; 25 states will soon have such tests and 70 percent of U.S. high-school students will be affected by them. This 257-page report is a solid source of factual information, including profiles of individual states. It covers most of the relevant policy concerns and seems fair-minded in drawing conclusions where they can be drawn from extant data and available research - and saying where they're not. (E.g., "The evidence on the effects of exit exams is mixed and tentative. . . . The academic community is still divided on the issue of whether exit exams cause more students to drop out of high school.") It sets off no obvious alarm bells, which is probably why it didn't attract much attention. You can find it online here.

Florida Department of EducationAugust 2004

Are charter schools doing as well as their traditional district counterparts? The New York Times claimed to answer that question last week, in its gleeful promotion of a slipshod AFT study purporting to show low test scores at charters. But that was not the last word, as innumerable critics quickly noticed that the Times viewed only a snapshot of data (see "Slugging back on charters," above), which is no substitute for a value-added analysis measuring changes over time. Thankfully, the Florida Department of Education understands this key point and has just come out with a useful appraisal of its state's charters. These results are encouraging: charters posted greater gains in reading and math scores than regular district schools. The report breaks down the data into five subgroups (African American, Hispanic, poor, disabled and gifted students) and considers four tests. Across these twenty categories the district schools did not perform better than charters in a single one; in eleven, there was no difference, and in nine the charters did better. Charters also did a better job of achieving Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB, and 69 percent of Florida parents gave their charter school a grade of A+ or A (compared to 29 percent of public school parents nationwide; there's no comparable data for Florida public schools alone). But this report also recognizes that charters have considerably more work to do. Their absolute scores trail slightly behind those of district schools, "in large part, because parents often choose a charter school when their child's needs are not met in the traditional school." (This is consistent with the data indicating that students held back one year in school are three to four times more likely than other students to switch to a charter school.) They also point out that some charters have done a poor job of meeting their reporting obligations, and many operators "are inexperienced and ill equipped to handle the complexities of charter school operations." But it seems reasonably clear that, so far, the charter movement in Florida has had more success than failure, creating worthwhile choices for many parents. The full study is available online here.

Southern Regional Education Board2004

This is another fine report from the SREB's "Challenge to Lead" series. (Click here for our evaluation of an earlier report on teacher quality.) It sets out two imperatives for middle school educators and policy makers - producing high achievement with no gaps, and giving students a rigorous curriculum that prepares them for high school - and then supplies recommendations on how to further these goals. There are many helpful charts illustrating Southern states' scores, both on their own standards assessments and on NAEP. The authors note that state standards vary wildly in quality and are not always aligned with NAEP. (In Georgia, for example, 81 percent of 8th graders ostensibly met or exceeded state standards in reading in 2003, but only 69 percent were at or above NAEP's "Basic" level.) States must have effective, rigorous standards upon which to base instruction and testing, or statewide assessment tests will give little indication of their actual progress. Admirable emphasis is also placed on reforming middle schools so they actually prepare students for high school. (The middle school years are often seen as a time when students are too caught up in hormonal and social change to learn much; as a result, many middle schoolers don't learn that much.) The authors provide guidance for setting matters right, including Algebra I for all 8th and 9th graders. A brief yet rewarding read; you can find it here.