The Education Gadfly Weekly

Julian R. Betts and Tom Loveless, Editors
Brookings Institution Press
2005

This collection of academic essays starts with an appropriate premise: school choice is here to stay, so the focus of research should be on getting its details right. This book does an admirable job of raising important questions. How do parents make their school choice decisions? What happens to students who stay behind in non-choice schools? How does school choice impact racial integration or the development of civic values? Why do "choice" schools perform better than regular public schools? But it provides frustratingly few answers and little fresh data. For instance, in their chapter "How School Choice Affects Achievement," Loveless and Frederick M. Hess discuss the attraction of "looking inside the black box" of choice schools to understand why many of them outperform their rivals, but they admit that their essay "offered more questions than answers." Elements that make choice schools effective-such as high parental participation and strong student engagement-might be replicable within an expanded choice system, Loveless and Hess argue, but they also might not. This volume's greatest strength is building a stronger theoretical base for future research. For example, Betts argues that, while the education realm will never be a perfect market, there are many reasons to believe that more competition is almost always better than less. Another helpful piece, this one by Brian Gill, provides some context for policymakers concerned with using choice to promote racial and economic integration. Scattered throughout are many worthwhile policy notions, summarized concisely in this excellent Education Week article (subscription required). Researchers and analysts in the school choice field will find this book essential reading; others may make do with the article. You can order the Brookings volume here.

Center on Education Policy
February 28, 2006

Restructuring is the last resort of NCLB and of California's state accountability system. Schools that repeatedly fail to achieve adequate yearly progress are to be dramatically reshaped, and that reshaping process may take a variety of forms. The report illustrates that, when faced with a range of restructuring options, California schools and districts have almost always opted for the least disruptive. Seventy-six percent of California schools in restructuring took paths such as hiring academic coaches and appointing leadership teams to oversee schools. More-drastic restructuring routes such as replacing staff (an action that just 28 percent took), contracting with an outside organization (14 percent), or reopening as a charter school (2 percent) were far less popular. The paper's just-the-facts approach may frustrate readers who hope to draw conclusions about what works and what doesn't; it's simply too early to know. The "results" described in the case studies are not actually results; they're examples of school restructuring (e.g., offering professional development, altering the school day, or adding for students a program on study habits) intended to bring about better results. Nonetheless, it's clear that even seemingly small changes cause real anxiety among teachers. The report also notes that the state department of education "decided to land right in the middle" between a hands-on approach and leaving restructuring decisions to the districts (the level of state oversight varies from one state to the next). One hopes a future report can describe how student achievement is affected by these changes. In the meantime, this report has useful data and moderately interesting case studies. It's available online here; it follows two similar reports on restructuring in Michigan. A report on Maryland is expected later this year.

The prevailing wisdom is that TV is no friend of education. (They don't call it the "Idiot Box" for nothing, right?) But two economists from the University of Chicago conducted a study and found that TV-watching makes "very little difference and if anything, a slight positive advantage" in student test scores. The economists took advantage of a natural experiment, evaluating data from the 1940s and early 1950s, when television was introduced in different U.S. cities at different times. Unfortunately, the study did not control for what children watched, nor does it give precise information about how many hours children spent in front of their TV screens. These are awfully big limitations; the benefits of watching, say, the Texaco Star Theater in the 50s probably do not extend to children today spending their afternoons absorbing the latest MTV Real World marathon. When compulsive TV viewing takes the place of studying, pleasure reading, or active outdoor fun, it's not a good thing. And we've yet to see any study challenge that.

"Study Finds Test Scores Not Lowered by Television," by Elisabeth Jensen, New York Times, February 27, 2006

Last week, Illinois's education board lowered the score needed to pass its eighth-grade math test, an exam that almost half the state's students flunked last year. Board member David Fields cautioned that the decision to ease the cut score, coming on the heels of last year's relaxing of standards, might be viewed as "gaming the system." Might be? As the Illinois Business Roundtable put it, the state's latest move will result in "nearly 32,000 more students meeting Illinois's math standards on the basis of an administrative stroke of the pen." We'd note the obvious race to the bottom here-and underscore the points made by Ravitch and Finn above-but that phrase is wearing thin due to overuse. Sprint to the pits, anyone?   

"State may ease test norms," by Diane Rado, Chicago Tribune, February 23, 2006

"Board lowers passing score on tough state math test," by Rosalind Rossi, Chicago Sun-Times, February 24, 2006

Readers learn from a Los Angeles Times op-ed that all is not well with the kindergarten set. Meet Ricky, whose Mommy is worried because her son is being forced to write his name, not only in capital letters, but with a mixture of the upper and lower cases. It gets worse. Ricky’s mom is alarmed that kindergarten is becoming “a 30-hour-a-week job. There’s nightly homework; finger painting is a rare treat; and as for naps, there just isn’t time.” And what’s to blame for this fascistic regime of rationed coloring contests? Standardized testing, of course. “Higher test scores mean more cash,” Mommy tells us, though it’s not quite clear whose pockets she has in mind. So kindergarten teachers—Sesame Street Gordon Gekkos, perhaps, twisted with merit pay greed—work their classes to the bone. (P.S.: Merit pay in LA? That’s news to us.) “If school is drudgery from the start, it’s no wonder that the Los Angeles Unified School District has a high dropout rate.” Mommy, we know you mean well, but teenagers in South Central aren’t leaving school because of extended handwriting practice as 5-year-olds. They’re more apt to drop out because they never learned to write (or read). If you want little Ricky to become a bon vivant, you might take him to France—where they start teaching real academic skills at age three (Quelle horreur!) and still manage to imbue learning with joy.

“My kid, a burnout at 5,” by L.J. Williamson, Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2006

U.S. students lag behind their peers in other modern nations-and the gap widens dramatically as their grade levels rise. Our high school pupils (and graduates) are miles from where they need to be to assure them and our country a secure future in the highly competitive global economy. Hence, any serious effort at education reform hinges on our setting world-class standards, then candidly tracking performance in relation to those standards. Even when gains are slender and results disappointing, we need the plain truth. Which is why recent attempts by federal and state governments to sugarcoat the performance of students is so alarming.

Our most rigorous standards are those of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a federally funded testing program that began in 1969. At a time when many states, responding to the accountability prods of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, are embracing low performance norms for their students-and pumping out misleading information about how many youngsters are "proficient" and how many schools are making "adequate yearly progress"-NAEP functions as an indispensable external benchmark. It unblinkingly reported that only 29 percent of eighth grade public school pupils were "proficient" in math and reading in 2005. It also showed starkly that the results reported by many states are far too rosy. Observe here the contrasts between what states claimed and what NAEP found.

Not surprisingly, NAEP's role as honest auditor makes state officials squirm. Since NCLB expects each state to set its own academic norms and choose its own tests, the temptation to dumb them down is irresistible; NAEP is the main antidote. Congress knew that in 2001 when, as part of No Child Left Behind, it required all states to take part in NAEP reading and math tests in grades four and eight. (Previously, state participation was voluntary.) Since 1988, NAEP's standards and policies have been set by the independent, bipartisan National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB). In 1990, that body promulgated three achievement levels for reporting NAEP results. These it labeled "basic," "proficient" and "advanced."

"Basic" denoted "partial mastery of knowledge and skills." "Advanced" signified "superior performance beyond grade-level mastery." "Proficient," though, was the key. NAGB termed it "the central level," representing "solid academic performance for each grade tested" and "a consensus that students reaching this level have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter and are well prepared for the next level of schooling." NAGB intended that "proficient" would represent the skills that every student ought to possess-even if many were not there yet. On NAEP tests since 1990, this level of performance has usually been reached by about three kids in 10. Everyone knows that's unsatisfactory. But it's also reality, an accurate gauge of the gap between U.S. pupils' prowess and what they need to match world standards.

From the outset, some educators protested that NAGB's "proficient" was too ambitious, but the board stuck to its guns. For the past 15 years, both NAGB and the Department of Education, which manages NAEP, have resisted pressure from politicians and educators to back away from, or dumb down, the "proficient" standard. With NCLB, however, that's begun to change. More voices are demanding that NAEP focus attention on the much-lower "basic" standard. Explains a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Education: "NAEP's basic is comparable to our proficient." Federal officials should push back, insisting on NAGB's "proficient" as the gold standard. They should continue to highlight-and deplore-any gaps between it and state test results. But the White House and Education Department now crave proof that NCLB is succeeding and seek to accommodate state pleas for "flexibility" and pacify governors threatening to withdraw from NCLB.

Hence they, too, are subtly substituting "basic" for "proficient" when they report NAEP results-and downplaying standards altogether in favor of simple up-and-down trend lines. In releasing the 2005 scores, the Education Department for the first time published comparison tables showing state-specific progress only in relation to "basic." And even NAGB members now highlight "basic" rather than "proficient." In October, chairman Darvin M. Winick, a long-time Texas associate of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and President Bush, spoke only of gains at the basic level. His "reporting and dissemination" committee acknowledged that "We're trying to draw attention to basic as an achievement level with some value."

Last month, when releasing 2005 NAEP results for 11 big cities, Mr. Winick's statement focused entirely on trend lines, not standards. (He and his colleagues also suggested that students should be compared with others of the same race rather than in relation to standards.) Staffers guiding journalists and other statistical amateurs through these complex data cited "studies" asserting that NAEP's "basic" is closer to states' "proficient" norms-which is certainly true but should be interpreted as proof that NAEP must maintain its high standards, not succumb to states' lesser aspirations.

Is No Child Left Behind corrupting NAEP? It's too soon to be sure. But it's clear that, for those in the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill whose own reputations hinge on the perceived success of NCLB, NAEP results now carry consequences, just as they do for states.

Just how demanding is "proficient" anyway? Here's how NAGB defined it for fourth grade math: "Fourth graders performing at the proficient level should be able to use whole numbers to estimate, compute, and determine whether results are reasonable. They should have a conceptual understanding of fractions and decimals; be able to solve real-world problems in all NAEP content areas; and use four-function calculators, rulers and geometric shapes appropriately." Is this too much to expect? Hardly. America's great education problem is that for years we settled for "basic skills" rather than true proficiency. The Bush administration does a disservice to the nation if it tells educators and state officials that "basic" is acceptable. You can be sure that our competitors aren't doing any such thing.

This article originally appeared on the op-ed pages of the February 27th Wall Street Journal.

Editor' Note: Last month the Fordham Foundation announced the winners of its two annual prizes: Distinguished Scholarship, and Valor. This week, we profile the winners for Valor—Michael Feinberg and David Levin, founders of KIPP Academy. Last week, we profiled the Distinguished Scholarship winner—Caroline Minter Hoxby of Harvard University.

Their story has reached near-mythic proportions in education circles. Two young Ivy League grads who joined Teach for America and initially floundered as teachers mixed rigor with ritual to produce a model for learning that became the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP)-arguably the most successful, and surely the most famous, charter school brand in the country.

And while careful study played an important role in launching the duo from Penn and Yale into the rarified air of celebrity educators, so, too, did their relative innocence. "Knowledge is power," Feinberg says, "but ignorance is bliss."

Their odyssey began in Houston in 1993, where Feinberg and Levin took elementary school teaching positions as members of Teach for America. When they realized they could barely control their classrooms, much less teach students a great deal, they began looking for solutions. They turned to Harriet Ball, a teacher in Levin's school who used chants, rhymes, and games to keep order and impart knowledge, and whose success was plain to the eye. The two novice teachers spent hours with Ball, dissecting her approach and bringing it into their classrooms. They saw immediate results-and got immediate push-back from the administration.

Despite being named teacher of the year by his colleagues, Levin's principal fired him for refusing to exempt kids in his classroom from standardized tests, a common practice in schools looking to boost their achievement on paper. Never mind that Levin's pupils did well. The principal was unmoved. "Even though the kids passed the test, it was viewed as insubordination," Levin says. Lesser people might have said the heck with it and gone on to other lines of work. Not Levin. He was sure he could fight through it to create something better. "Being naïve helped," he said. "Not knowing how difficult it was going to be helped, too."

Feinberg didn't fare much better. He wanted to start a small Knowledge Is Power Program in his school, but he couldn't get the Houston Independent School District to grant him classroom space. In fact, he couldn't even get the district to hear his case. Feinberg repeatedly sought an appointment with then-superintendent Rod Paige, only to be re-buffed by gatekeepers. So he sat on the hood of Paige's car one afternoon until Paige left the office to drive home. He granted Feinberg a meeting-and the space he needed.

"I was too young, too naïve, and too mission driven not to think that sitting on Paige's car was anything but the right thing to do," says Feinberg. 

When all else failed, "mission" kept the two pioneers going. They were figuring out how to get poor, inner-city kids to achieve at high levels. Their mission was to ensure that this emerging solution wasn't snuffed out by bureaucrats who refused to alter standard operating procedures to accommodate models that, though unorthodox, worked.

Despite innumerable frustrating run-ins, today the two don't expend much energy slamming their early adversaries. "We are in a struggle against mediocrity, apathy, low expectations," says Levin, "but we're not in a struggle with the public school system." The basketball-loving teachers use a sports analogy to explain, and endure, the education establishment's opposition to their ideas. Policymakers and administrators, they say, are to teachers what sports writers are to athletes. They "can understand education as well [as teachers]," says Feinberg, much as sports writers can be knowledgeable about the contests they cover. But to understand "the day-to-day experience of doing teaching well, day in and day out, in a difficult environment," he continues, talk to the person in front of the kids. That's who is going to execute the ideas.

Through it all, they say, it's the Joy Factor ("J-Factor") that makes things work. The kids love what they're doing in school, so KIPP's long days (up to nine and a half hours) don't seem too burdensome. And the teachers are dedicated beyond belief. The kids ask much of them: teachers are essentially "on-call" day and night and students don't hesitate to call their cell phones when struggling with homework assignments or personal issues. But they also give much back, particularly respect. Feinberg says their goal is to have "18 year olds showing up on campus seeing teaching as being as sexy a profession as stockbroker or doctor." Says Levin of the KIPP faculty: "Our work is a testament to the countless number of teachers and the quality of their work."

And what a testament it is. Seventy-nine percent of KIPP graduates are in higher education. In San Antonio, KIPP Aspire Academy's seventh graders lead the district in reading and math scores. In rural Gaston, North Carolina, 100 percent of eighth graders achieved above grade level scores in all their tests. KIPP KEY Academy in Washington, D.C. and KIPP Academy New York in the Bronx are the highest achieving middle schools in their respective districts.

Such results are not anomalous. They represent the high achievement levels reached in almost every KIPP school (now 52, including those slated to open in 2006) across the nation.

Levin is still a practicing principal at his KIPP school in the Bronx, while Feinberg is working to develop additional school models (high school, pre-school, etc.) from his base in Houston. "Levin," says Feinberg, "is still the most talented teacher that I know." KIPP's main offices are in San Francisco. Jokes Feinberg, "We divide up the country (Dave gets Manhattan and the Bronx, and I get the rest)."

Despite their success, the two haven't quit striving. KIPP hopes to have 100 schools in operation within the next five years. This will happen in large part because of strong support from Don and Doris Fisher, co-founders of The Gap and philanthropists dedicated to expanding high-quality education opportunities for inner-city children. Through their foundation, the Fishers have been supporting KIPP schools almost from the beginning. Moreover, Levin is working to launch an organization that will credential KIPP teachers. "Getting permission to credential your own teachers is important," he says. Important, but not easy. But that hasn't stopped Feinberg and Levin yet.

There's a lot of joy in these men's lives. Still in their thirties, they retain the passion that launched them and made KIPP the best-known school model in America. Here's hoping they never lose their youthful, and helpful, naïveté.

Center on Education Policy
February 28, 2006

Restructuring is the last resort of NCLB and of California's state accountability system. Schools that repeatedly fail to achieve adequate yearly progress are to be dramatically reshaped, and that reshaping process may take a variety of forms. The report illustrates that, when faced with a range of restructuring options, California schools and districts have almost always opted for the least disruptive. Seventy-six percent of California schools in restructuring took paths such as hiring academic coaches and appointing leadership teams to oversee schools. More-drastic restructuring routes such as replacing staff (an action that just 28 percent took), contracting with an outside organization (14 percent), or reopening as a charter school (2 percent) were far less popular. The paper's just-the-facts approach may frustrate readers who hope to draw conclusions about what works and what doesn't; it's simply too early to know. The "results" described in the case studies are not actually results; they're examples of school restructuring (e.g., offering professional development, altering the school day, or adding for students a program on study habits) intended to bring about better results. Nonetheless, it's clear that even seemingly small changes cause real anxiety among teachers. The report also notes that the state department of education "decided to land right in the middle" between a hands-on approach and leaving restructuring decisions to the districts (the level of state oversight varies from one state to the next). One hopes a future report can describe how student achievement is affected by these changes. In the meantime, this report has useful data and moderately interesting case studies. It's available online here; it follows two similar reports on restructuring in Michigan. A report on Maryland is expected later this year.

Julian R. Betts and Tom Loveless, Editors
Brookings Institution Press
2005

This collection of academic essays starts with an appropriate premise: school choice is here to stay, so the focus of research should be on getting its details right. This book does an admirable job of raising important questions. How do parents make their school choice decisions? What happens to students who stay behind in non-choice schools? How does school choice impact racial integration or the development of civic values? Why do "choice" schools perform better than regular public schools? But it provides frustratingly few answers and little fresh data. For instance, in their chapter "How School Choice Affects Achievement," Loveless and Frederick M. Hess discuss the attraction of "looking inside the black box" of choice schools to understand why many of them outperform their rivals, but they admit that their essay "offered more questions than answers." Elements that make choice schools effective-such as high parental participation and strong student engagement-might be replicable within an expanded choice system, Loveless and Hess argue, but they also might not. This volume's greatest strength is building a stronger theoretical base for future research. For example, Betts argues that, while the education realm will never be a perfect market, there are many reasons to believe that more competition is almost always better than less. Another helpful piece, this one by Brian Gill, provides some context for policymakers concerned with using choice to promote racial and economic integration. Scattered throughout are many worthwhile policy notions, summarized concisely in this excellent Education Week article (subscription required). Researchers and analysts in the school choice field will find this book essential reading; others may make do with the article. You can order the Brookings volume here.