The Education Gadfly Weekly

Caroline M. Hoxby, editor, National Bureau of Economic Research
2003

In this new volume, Harvard economist Hoxby presents a compilation of papers that take a close look at various aspects of school choice from the perspective of economic research. As she notes in her introduction, economists are particularly well suited to evaluate programs like vouchers, charter schools, and public school choice. They employ robust analytic models and understand market forces, efficiencies and inefficiencies, productivity gains and other factors essential to drawing conclusions about choice. In short, economists know how to simplify complex problems and arrive at useful answers, and this book does just that. For instance, Hanushek and Rivkin find that competition among schools (in Texas) does in fact boost teacher quality. Nechyba shows that choice can help break the link between housing and schooling. Fernandez and Rogerson show that vouchers can not only make markets more efficient, they can also redistribute resources (helping those who most need it). And Peterson et al. recount their studies showing the potential achievement gains from vouchers. The book also explains why public schools have incentives to resist accepting students from other schools and suggests that one reason so many parents seek special ed status for their kids is simply to get personal attention in an otherwise inattentive public system. The book's basic arguments favor choice, but the papers are not one-sided. They carefully explain the tradeoffs, caveats, and details that matter so much in complex public policy decisions. Though lay readers will find the chapters' conclusions more interesting than the methodologies used to reach them, this book could find a place on any serious education reformer's bookshelf. Unfortunately, a copy will cost you $75. The ISBN is 0226355330 and you can find it at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15642.ctl.

Peter Schrag, The New Press
2003

Peter Schrag is one of the wisest, most erudite and education-savvy journalists in America. The author of nine earlier books, he's also a thoughtful, old-fashioned liberal who believes in such time-honored liberal values as fairness, adequacy, and equality. This well-wrought 300-page volume does a fine job of making the case for "adequacy" in education funding and services without papering over the need for such resources to be well-crafted, effectively executed, and carried out within a framework of standards, assessments, and results-based accountability. Indeed, Schrag expertly fuses the "we need more resources to do right by poor kids" strand of contemporary education thought with standards-based reform. Inspired by various state-specific lawsuits that in recent years have shifted their emphasis from simple spending equity to the concept of resource "adequacy," Schrag comes to this stirring conclusion: "For all the questions it raises, the adequacy argument is also a sophisticated and passionate declaration of faith in the great promises of American society. . . . A lot of fateful questions hang on how well we succeed--questions about social will, about the extent to which schools can do the enormous tasks assigned to them, about human potential and the capability of all children to succeed regardless of . . . background, about the sincerity of all those professions that children are our most valuable resource, and about democracy itself." No mere polemic, this closely reasoned book is respectful toward some of the prominent analysts (e.g. Coleman, Hanushek) whose work has made it nearly impossible for mere polemics about school resources to gain traction in the modern era. The ISBN is 1565848217 and you can get more information at http://www.thenewpress.com/newbooks/finaltest.htm.

Daria Hall, Ross Wiener, and Kevin Carey, Education Trust
2003

This short report is the second from the Education Trust that seeks to explain the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The first, The ABCs of AYP, explained what the provision meant and how they were meant to work. [For more on the first report, go to http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=24#109] This new one illustrates the effects that AYP is having on schools. According to the new report, AYP is successfully identifying schools as "in need of improvement" that had previously been considered highly successful. A case in point: one successful school boasted that 60 percent of its students were at or above proficient in reading/language arts. When broken down by subgroups, however, it turned out that 96 percent of white students were proficient, but only 39 percent of Latino students and 53 percent of African American students were. According to the authors, such results show that NCLB is already "having positive effects by focusing attention on the goal of holding all schools within a state to the same standards of student achievement and bringing urgent attention to achievement gaps between different groups of students Of course, the authors recognize that the success or failure of this NCLB provision depends on whether or not schools, administrators, and policymakers can look past the short-term angst of labeling schools "failing" or "needing improvement" and stay the course over the next 12 years. You can find it at http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/4B9BF8DE-987A-4063-B750-6D67607E7205/0/NewAYP.pdf.

Myles Mayfield, Allen Schirm, and Ruria Rodriguez-Planas, Mathematica Policy Research August 2003

Myles Maxfield and two colleagues at Mathematica Policy Research (MPR) authored this 24-page evaluation of a six-year, seven site, after-school demonstration program for 600 high-risk high-school age youth, underwritten by the Labor Department and Ford Foundation. Surveys of participating youths and a matched control group sought to determine the program's effects on high school performance and graduation, postsecondary ed, and "risky behaviors." Evaluators also looked at how well the various sites implemented the program model. The findings are mixed. Implementation (particularly of education components such as tutoring) was spotty. Participation rates were low. Per-participant costs were high. Impacts varied hugely from site to site. "Risky behaviors" may have worsened for participants in several sites. Grades and achievement test scores did not improve. On the other hand, high-school graduation prospects brightened a bit (7 percent), as did the likelihood of engaging in post-high school education or training. Longer-term impacts have yet to be evaluated. What is to be concluded at this stage? It's mighty hard to mount successful interventions at the high school level for young people whose lives have already gone off-track. If you'd like to see for yourself, surf to http://wdr.doleta.gov/owsdrr/papers/QOP_synthesis.pdf.

Paul T. Hill, Center on Reinventing Public Education September 2003

This informative report is written not to praise or criticize voucher programs but to analyze the various administrative hurdles to their successful implementation and evaluation. Using Cleveland and Milwaukee as examples, Hill discusses pitfalls of voucher program administration, including: poor data collection systems that make it difficulty to accurately assess student eligibility and track progress; the lack of a suitable control group that would make it possible to evaluate the impact of the program; the inclusion of parents who will only send their child to one specific private school, and then resort to their local public school if they don't get their top choice; and so on.  Though this report breaks no new ground, it provides a worth summary of information for anybody seriously interested in the challenges of mounting an effective voucher program. You can view it at http://www.crpe.org/pubs/pdf/AdminCostsVouchers_web.pdf

A few weeks ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks penned an editorial in which he talked about academe's not-so-subtle bias against center-right or conservative viewpoints [see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=117#1474]. This week, in a similar vein, National Review Online's Stanley Kurtz urges Congress to pass H.R. 3077--the International Studies in Higher Education Act. This bill would reform Title VI by setting up an advisory board to oversee the distribution of grants to "area studies" programs in institutions of higher education. Under Title VI, federal subsidies are given to universities for programs that specialize in specific regions--including the Middle East--because they "contribute to national security" by creating experts who can staff embassies and State Department regional desks. Kurtz and other critics claim that many of these programs are overtly hostile to American foreign policy and deliberately shut out opposing (i.e. pro-American) viewpoints. While universities have the right to create departments with any viewpoint they wish, Kurtz questions whether the federal government should be in the business of supporting academic anti-Americanism. To ensure that government-subsidized university departments have faculty that represent a variety of viewpoints, H.R. 3077 would create an "advisory panel" to oversee grant distribution to universities and deny federal subsidies for programs that are blatantly unbalanced.

"Reforming the campus," by Stanley Kurtz, National Review Online, October 14, 2003

"Foreign-studies classes could face more scrutiny," by Sean Cavanagh, Education Week, October 15, 2003

H.R. 3077

Education Minnesota, the state teachers' union, filed suit on Thursday to shut down the Minnesota Virtual Academy, an online school that is a partnership between a small Minnesota school district and K12, the online curriculum provider founded by former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett. The school, which sends parents instructional materials through the mail and online, allows parents and other "responsible adults" to guide their children through the daily lesson plans, but requires all students to take state tests and employs licensed teachers to help the "responsible adults." The union claims the school is ineligible for state funding because parents, not licensed teachers, are the primary instructors. State officials disagree, maintaining that state law mandates only that a licensed teacher must "assemble and deliver" the online learning product, which the Virtual Academy does.

"Suit seeks to stop online program," by John Welsh, Pioneer Press, October 10, 2003

The latest in Jay Mathews's Washington Post series on innovative teachers features Rafe Esquith, a middle school teacher in Los Angeles who has created an oasis of excellence inside his educationally arid public school. There are many reasons that Esquith's students are learning more and working harder, including his ebullient personality, passion, and stringent requirements that include a fake-money system of economic incentives and extended instructional day. The heart of the matter, though, seems to be his jettisoning of the facile notion that learning, to be effective, needs to be "fun." In fact, learning is hard work, and as Esquith constantly tells his students, "There are no shortcuts." His class was among the examples of "no excuses" classrooms profiled in the recently published No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom. That book has been drawing a positive response, including two recent columns by William Raspberry, who has (generally) echoed the Thernstroms' findings and called for African-American parents to think hard about why the achievement gap has proved so intractable.

"Pursuing happiness, through hard work," by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, October 14, 2003

"An attitude gap," by William Raspberry, Washington Post, October 13, 2003

"A gap that won't go away on its own," by William Raspberry, Washington Post, October 6, 2003

The European Union, in what Gadfly can only call a retrograde move, recently awarded a grant to a school in Italy that teaches young Italian women the skills they need to become game show hosts and showgirls. According to the terms of the EU grant, "students must be at least 18, unemployed, and come from the Campania region--renowned throughout Italy for the beauty of its women." According to one of the school's founders, its purpose is to equip students "for a wider career than that pursued by mere bimbos. 'They are being thrown in at the deep end, but it will give them a head start in show business.'" Among other things, students will be taught "diction, show presenting, makeup, singing, dancing, acting, and the history of cinema and theater."

"Europe funds school for Italy's TV babes," by Bruce Johnston, Washington Times, October 13, 2003

Life is getting harder for charter schools and those seeking to start them. In Massachusetts, word comes this week that new charter applications are down more than 50 percent--just 14, compared to 35 last year. And charter opponents in the Bay State are gearing up in support of a bill [see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=25#75] that would slap a three-year moratorium on new charter schools. (The bill passed the state Senate earlier this year.) In California, lame duck Governor Gray Davis signed A.B. 1137, which sets new academic and financial reporting standards for California charter schools, which may or may not be good for California charters. Gary Larson of the California Network of Education Charters, says the new law "will allow charter schools to . . . focus even more on student achievement," while Brad Huff, a Fresno charter principal, complains that it will set Sacramento regulators breathing down his neck. What is definitely bad for California charters is the Assembly's continued failure to act on A.B. 1464, which would open up charter school authorizing to bodies beyond the local school board [see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=114#1435], a major recommendation of the recent Fordham study Charter School Authorizing: Are States Making the Grade?. And Mike Antonucci, author of the invaluable Communique, notes that the California Teachers Association is gearing up for a major push to unionize the state's charter schools. First step is a series of articles in California Educator recounting horror stories of failed schools and tyrannical charter school directors. "I went from having union representation to having no representation and no sense of security. Around here we say, 'Don't sneeze too loudly; you might get fired,'" wails one former union member now teaching at a charter school, in an Educator article with the leading title, "Without union protection, teachers are vulnerable." And in Arizona, the state board for charter schools has put in place new checks on the academic and financial operations of charter schools that will also make it tougher for new schools to get approved.

"Charter school applicants drop by more than half," by Kevin Rothstein, Boston Herald, October 14, 2003

"Davis signs charter-school bill," by Jennifer M. Fitzenberger, Fresno Bee, October 14, 2003

"California Teachers Association to target charters," by Mike Antonucci, Communique, October 14, 2003

California Educator, October 2003

"Charter board toughens systems," by Pat Kossan, Arizona Republic, October 15, 2003

Earlier this year, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a somewhat unusual addition to its K-12 portfolio: nearly $19 million over five years to expand the "Cristo Rey" schools nationwide.

On the surface, this announcement appeared to be no more than a new element in the $450 million Gates Foundation effort to promote smaller schools. Over the past few years, Gates has supported the conversion of existing high schools into smaller units and, more recently, the creation of small high schools new from the ground up.

The five Cristo Rey schools that currently exist are small, urban high schools that feature a college prep curriculum and have reported much better educational outcomes than other schools with roughly the same student demographics--positive signs that have generated lots of visits from interested educators and glowing coverage in the media.

What makes this Gates announcement notable, however, is that Cristo Rey schools are Catholic, specifically Jesuit. The Gates Foundation, like many philanthropies, has usually limited its K-12 funding to public school-only reforms (including charter schools). With this decision, Gates becomes the first large education philanthropy to support Catholic education at the national level, say Catholic school officials. And, by throwing its reputation and considerable weight behind a parochial school model, the Gates Foundation is making a small but fundamental shift in the types of solutions that mainstream education donors are willing to pursue.

Yet winning Gates funding for a parochial school model is not the only thing that makes Cristo Rey schools interesting. In fact, it is only icing on the cake.

For starters, it's noteworthy that new Cristo Rey schools are opening at all, countering a decades-long trend in which urban Catholic schools have closed in droves due to decreasing enrollments and shrinking church subsidies. Last year alone, their number declined by about 100 schools.

Even before the Gates Foundation announcement, new Cristo Rey schools were popping up at a rate of one or two per year. The original Cristo Rey high school that opened in 1996 was said to be the first new Catholic high school in Chicago in 30 years. Since then, four more Cristo Rey schools have appeared in Austin, Los Angeles, Portland, and, most recently, Denver. Eight more are in the works in places as diverse as New York City, Boston, New Brunswick, New Bern (N.C.), Cleveland, Lawrence (Mass.), Tucson, and Waukegan (Ill.).

The secret to this success is the Cristo Rey work-study model. Each Cristo Rey pupil shares a full-time entry-level office job with three other students, and goes to work on average one day a week throughout the year. These are real jobs, not internships or job shadowing. The school screens, trains, and transports roughly a quarter of its population to work every day, and provides supervision for these entry-level jobs at one of the law firms, insurance companies, and nonprofits that take them on.

The job-sharing program has turned out to have tremendous social and academic side benefits, say Cristo Rey officials. In Chicago, for example, many of the students had never even been downtown, much less had direct experience with a "professional," white-collar, work environment.

But the main function of the work-study program is to cover roughly 75 percent of the operating costs of the school and lower tuition dramatically. At an average of just $2,200, Cristo Rey schools charge roughly half of what many other parochial schools charge, and much less than the most prestigious Jesuit or nonsectarian independent schools. They're the cheapest private schools you've probably ever heard of.

But that's not all. Their low tuition also happens to address one of many long-standing objections to private school vouchers: the concern that voucher amounts wouldn't be big enough to cover the cost of a private school education. At $2,200, Cristo Rey schools all but bridge that gap.

To be sure, this model does not address many other obstacles and concerns about vouchers. There are only a handful of schools up and running--not nearly enough to make a dent in the public system. Nor are Cristo Rey schools the right education environment for everyone. (The Chicago school takes only Spanish-speaking immigrant students, for example.) Parents and students choosing Cristo Rey have to work much harder than many other families. And Cristo Rey schools do not present themselves as a voucher demonstration project.

Yet it's intriguing to see a fledging school model in which a public voucher could cover most of the direct expense of a private, college prep education.

In the end, private school options may make no more concrete or large-scale difference to improving student achievement than charter schools, privately run schools, or any of the many other configurations that have been devised. That debate may never be settled. But for the students and parents who are empowered by the presence of choices, the difference will be immense. And for at least some of those parents who can't afford even a traditional parochial school tuition, Cristo Rey schools might be just right. 

Alexander Russo is a Chicago-based education writer.

Observing Congressional vote-counting for the beleaguered D.C. voucher bill, one of America's sagest observers of the school choice scene asked the other day if I had noticed that the tireless and costly grass-roots efforts of innumerable pro-choice organizations seem to be having absolutely no effect on the willingness of individual Senators and Representatives to vote for the measure? Well, maybe one. Perhaps the grassroots convinced Mayor Williams, who convinced Senator Feinstein, to support the DC bill. Otherwise, said this observer, votes are being cast along party lines, based on long-held beliefs or in accord with heavy-duty union lobbying. "We've won the battle for public opinion on school choice," said my comrade. "But it isn't winning us any more votes. PACs are what we need. All the millions now pouring into grassroots advocacy efforts might better be re-directed into electing candidates who are pledged from the get-go to support school choice. Once elected, we almost never change anybody's mind." The choice movement's deep thinkers and deep pockets should at least ponder: forget the ads and advocates, the grassroots organizations and P.R. campaigns. Instead take all that money and use it to elect legislators and Congressmen who, when the chips are down, will vote aye. "That's what the 'other side' is doing," my friend noted. "Why is our team still acting as if it were a 'war of ideas' or for 'hearts and minds' instead of a straightforward battle for control of the statehouse and the Congress?"

Correspondence invited: can you cite examples (other than maybe Feinstein) where a legislator's or Congressman's (or governor's or president's) opposition to school choice was reversed by grassroots activity AFTER he/she was elected to office? 

Caroline M. Hoxby, editor, National Bureau of Economic Research
2003

In this new volume, Harvard economist Hoxby presents a compilation of papers that take a close look at various aspects of school choice from the perspective of economic research. As she notes in her introduction, economists are particularly well suited to evaluate programs like vouchers, charter schools, and public school choice. They employ robust analytic models and understand market forces, efficiencies and inefficiencies, productivity gains and other factors essential to drawing conclusions about choice. In short, economists know how to simplify complex problems and arrive at useful answers, and this book does just that. For instance, Hanushek and Rivkin find that competition among schools (in Texas) does in fact boost teacher quality. Nechyba shows that choice can help break the link between housing and schooling. Fernandez and Rogerson show that vouchers can not only make markets more efficient, they can also redistribute resources (helping those who most need it). And Peterson et al. recount their studies showing the potential achievement gains from vouchers. The book also explains why public schools have incentives to resist accepting students from other schools and suggests that one reason so many parents seek special ed status for their kids is simply to get personal attention in an otherwise inattentive public system. The book's basic arguments favor choice, but the papers are not one-sided. They carefully explain the tradeoffs, caveats, and details that matter so much in complex public policy decisions. Though lay readers will find the chapters' conclusions more interesting than the methodologies used to reach them, this book could find a place on any serious education reformer's bookshelf. Unfortunately, a copy will cost you $75. The ISBN is 0226355330 and you can find it at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15642.ctl.

Daria Hall, Ross Wiener, and Kevin Carey, Education Trust
2003

This short report is the second from the Education Trust that seeks to explain the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The first, The ABCs of AYP, explained what the provision meant and how they were meant to work. [For more on the first report, go to http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=24#109] This new one illustrates the effects that AYP is having on schools. According to the new report, AYP is successfully identifying schools as "in need of improvement" that had previously been considered highly successful. A case in point: one successful school boasted that 60 percent of its students were at or above proficient in reading/language arts. When broken down by subgroups, however, it turned out that 96 percent of white students were proficient, but only 39 percent of Latino students and 53 percent of African American students were. According to the authors, such results show that NCLB is already "having positive effects by focusing attention on the goal of holding all schools within a state to the same standards of student achievement and bringing urgent attention to achievement gaps between different groups of students Of course, the authors recognize that the success or failure of this NCLB provision depends on whether or not schools, administrators, and policymakers can look past the short-term angst of labeling schools "failing" or "needing improvement" and stay the course over the next 12 years. You can find it at http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/4B9BF8DE-987A-4063-B750-6D67607E7205/0/NewAYP.pdf.

Myles Mayfield, Allen Schirm, and Ruria Rodriguez-Planas, Mathematica Policy Research August 2003

Myles Maxfield and two colleagues at Mathematica Policy Research (MPR) authored this 24-page evaluation of a six-year, seven site, after-school demonstration program for 600 high-risk high-school age youth, underwritten by the Labor Department and Ford Foundation. Surveys of participating youths and a matched control group sought to determine the program's effects on high school performance and graduation, postsecondary ed, and "risky behaviors." Evaluators also looked at how well the various sites implemented the program model. The findings are mixed. Implementation (particularly of education components such as tutoring) was spotty. Participation rates were low. Per-participant costs were high. Impacts varied hugely from site to site. "Risky behaviors" may have worsened for participants in several sites. Grades and achievement test scores did not improve. On the other hand, high-school graduation prospects brightened a bit (7 percent), as did the likelihood of engaging in post-high school education or training. Longer-term impacts have yet to be evaluated. What is to be concluded at this stage? It's mighty hard to mount successful interventions at the high school level for young people whose lives have already gone off-track. If you'd like to see for yourself, surf to http://wdr.doleta.gov/owsdrr/papers/QOP_synthesis.pdf.

Paul T. Hill, Center on Reinventing Public Education September 2003

This informative report is written not to praise or criticize voucher programs but to analyze the various administrative hurdles to their successful implementation and evaluation. Using Cleveland and Milwaukee as examples, Hill discusses pitfalls of voucher program administration, including: poor data collection systems that make it difficulty to accurately assess student eligibility and track progress; the lack of a suitable control group that would make it possible to evaluate the impact of the program; the inclusion of parents who will only send their child to one specific private school, and then resort to their local public school if they don't get their top choice; and so on.  Though this report breaks no new ground, it provides a worth summary of information for anybody seriously interested in the challenges of mounting an effective voucher program. You can view it at http://www.crpe.org/pubs/pdf/AdminCostsVouchers_web.pdf

Peter Schrag, The New Press
2003

Peter Schrag is one of the wisest, most erudite and education-savvy journalists in America. The author of nine earlier books, he's also a thoughtful, old-fashioned liberal who believes in such time-honored liberal values as fairness, adequacy, and equality. This well-wrought 300-page volume does a fine job of making the case for "adequacy" in education funding and services without papering over the need for such resources to be well-crafted, effectively executed, and carried out within a framework of standards, assessments, and results-based accountability. Indeed, Schrag expertly fuses the "we need more resources to do right by poor kids" strand of contemporary education thought with standards-based reform. Inspired by various state-specific lawsuits that in recent years have shifted their emphasis from simple spending equity to the concept of resource "adequacy," Schrag comes to this stirring conclusion: "For all the questions it raises, the adequacy argument is also a sophisticated and passionate declaration of faith in the great promises of American society. . . . A lot of fateful questions hang on how well we succeed--questions about social will, about the extent to which schools can do the enormous tasks assigned to them, about human potential and the capability of all children to succeed regardless of . . . background, about the sincerity of all those professions that children are our most valuable resource, and about democracy itself." No mere polemic, this closely reasoned book is respectful toward some of the prominent analysts (e.g. Coleman, Hanushek) whose work has made it nearly impossible for mere polemics about school resources to gain traction in the modern era. The ISBN is 1565848217 and you can get more information at http://www.thenewpress.com/newbooks/finaltest.htm.