The Education Gadfly Weekly

Edited by Eric A. Hanushek
Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on Education
2006

This volume tears away both the legal and logical rationales for America's ubiquitous education "adequacy" lawsuits. Sol Stern's chapter alone is worth the price of admission. He chronicles the thirteen-year saga of Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) v. New York, in which plaintiffs successfully argued that New York City schools are annually shortchanged $5.6 billion (not million) by the state (for operating expenses alone; capital outlays add another $9.2 billion). A general lesson from these cases is that judges have assumed the role of legislators--and aren't very good at it. The legal merits of these assessments are questionable to start with and whether they make for sound policy is even more doubtful. Editor Hanushek's chapter shows how contrived are the dollar figures that judges agree to mandate in these cases. Consultants produce ostensibly "scientific" analyses that entail little more than tallying up the cost of educators' dream schools. (And they tend to inflate the cost of everything.) Not that the money is then used to actually help needy kids, though. For example: after Kansas City, Missouri, recieved $2 billion to improve its schools, portions of the funds were spent on an arboretum, a wildlife refuge, and a model United Nations chamber. As Marguerite Roza and Paul Hill explain in their essay, school systems rarely allocate even their current funding for the students who need it most--the bulk of resources usually end up in well-off schools--so more money from adequacy lawsuits is unlikely to be spent any better. Other chapters put forth similar views and show that more money won't help most school systems. Williamson Evers and Paul Clopton provide useful case studies of some of America's most wasteful districts; Herbert Walberg argues that the existence of successful high-poverty, low-spending schools shows that many schools could succeed on their current budgets if they changed their educational tactics; and Paul Peterson details how private schools engage their students and parents, thus making use of a free resource in ways thrifty public schools ought to mimic. It's an interesting collection of chapters, devastating for both the law and logic behind "adequacy" lawsuits.

Tom Loveless
Brown Center on Education Policy
The Brookings Institution
October 2006

This report is divided into three separate sections. One analyzes whether student "happiness" affects their test scores, another whether a "race to the bottom" exists, and the last how well American students are actually doing in math and reading. The findings, in a nutshell: 1) Happy kids aren't better at math than are other children. In countries where teachers attempt to make math more "relevant" to their students, test scores are lower than for those countries in which math is simply taught with no effort to make the material relevant to students' lives. 2) There is no NCLB-inspired "race to the bottom," because although states now report higher percentages of proficient students than NAEP, they were doing the same before NCLB's enactment (so there's more of a "dwell at the bottom" trend). 3) American students are making progress in math (reading gains are meager), but the main NAEP and the long-term trend NAEP disagree over how much math progress is actually being made. What conclusions can we draw from the report? That educators who focus on making their classes "fun" and "relevant" are not doing anything for their students' learning (see here). They should focus instead on teaching basic skills--even if such is the "un-fun" approach. Also, while it's fine to say that NCLB isn't driving a race to the bottom (though we would quibble), it's pretty disheartening to see that states were actually racing there on their own. What's worse, many states, having arrived at the bottom, have set up camp, and no longer do any racing of any sort, be it to bottoms, tops, or places in between. This report is worth your perusal. It's informative, but probably its conclusions won't stun you; most of this was already common knowledge. Read it here.

Paul E. Barton
American Federation of Teachers
September 2006

In this short paper, Paul Barton complains that No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) current system of testing does not achieve the law's overriding purpose--evaluating school performance. According to Barton, "evaluating school performance with standardized tests requires measuring what students learned in the school during the year of instruction--a quite different matter from measuring the sum total of what students know and can do at a point in time." He urges tests that accurately capture what students learn over time; are aligned to content standards and instruction; and generate results that are transparent and easily understood by students and teachers, among others. Ideally, such tests would be administered at the beginning and end of the school year, and the results would be used to set growth targets for subsequent years. A good idea, though Barton may be too harsh on NCLB's current "cut-point" approach, which establishes a level of proficiency that all students should meet and identifies those who are not yet at that level. Identifying progress is good, but one must also know how far below grade level individual students are--and thanks to NCLB's disaggregated data, America's achievement gaps have been illumined. An optimal system would combine growth models with NCLB's focus on hitting identifiable marks of academic proficiency. (Barton acknowledges that the pilot growth model projects in Tennessee and North Carolina do this.) The report is a valuable contribution to the debate over NCLB's reauthorization. Read it here.

Christopher B. Swanson
Editorial Projects in Education Research Center
October 2006

With the Manhattan Institute-Economic Policy Institute debates (see here and here) as its backdrop, this report offers a fresh look at Texas's 2002-2003 graduation rates. Its method of calculation (the Cumulative Promotion Index) has certain advantages: it shows the graduation rate for a specific year rather than for a specific class (which gives a better overall picture), and it can show where in the high school pipeline problems arise. In Texas, we learn, the largest percentage of dropouts leave school after ninth grade. This report calculates Lone Star State graduation rates differently than the Texas Education Agency (TEA), and it illustrates how drastically the state inflates them by as much as 35 percentage points. That's worth knowing, particularly because inflation is most acute in the numbers for minority youngsters who make up 61 percent of Texas's enrollment. The report also shows that the degree of school segregation between racial and socioeconomic groups in Texas is large and growing--a problem not least because of the strong correlation between segregation and high school graduation rates. Though limited  to Texas, the report provides an interesting case study of one state's graduation rates, the demographic implications of the data, and the methods used to calculate published rates. See it here.

The first rule of combat is to avoid cross-fire. But the newly appointed Los Angeles superintendent, retired Navy Vice Admiral David L. Brewer III, already finds himself squarely in the middle of it. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who recently gained partial control of the city's schools, wasted no time in expressing his displeasure at not being consulted before the school board hired Brewer (nor called by the candidate before he took the job). The admiral is another in a lengthening line of ex-military personnel with no experience in education hired to run school districts. To date, their record is mixed. (Colonel John O'Sullivan resigned earlier this year as leader of a suburban Minneapolis school district. It's reported he alienated people because he insisted on being called "colonel.") But the LA Times reminds its readers that "the same could be said of any number of traditional educators who rose to the top and crashed. And some of the nontraditional superintendents have won high praise." True enough, though the successful ones also demonstrated political acumen; Brewer isn't off to a great start on that count. It's not too late, though. Hire some good deputies, admiral, and stick with "Superintendent Brewer."

"Wanted: Schools Chief With Zero Experience," by Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2006

"Ex-Admiral Is Named New Schools Chief," by Joel Rubin and Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2006

"It's a sordid business, this divvying us up by race," quoth Chief Justice John Roberts last year. The Department of Education is finally implementing a 1997 OMB mandate that students should be allowed to identify themselves as multiracial. That move could muddy NCLB's race-based classifications, however, and make it harder to identify achievement gaps. Sixty Democratic members of Congress--including the head of the Black Caucus and the ranking member of the House education committee--expressed their concerns in a strongly worded letter: "Disaggregated racial and ethnic data, as you well know, is one of the cornerstones of the No Child Left Behind Act, and we urge the department to refrain from any changes that could undermine this principle in any way." The danger is real, but if NCLB moves to a growth-based accountability system and tracks the gains of individual students over time, instead of group averages at the building level, racial classifications will no longer matter--we'll just worry about whether kids who are far behind are making significant progress and catching up. And then we'll be able to get out of this "sordid business" for good.

"Worries Surface in Racial-Identity Comments," by Sean Cavanagh, Education Week, October 18, 2006 (subscription required)

After five months of negotiations, the Buffalo Board of Education voted 5-4 last week to base 10 percent of students' report-card grades on attendance. Thus, kids with five or more unexcused absences will receive zeros, meaning the highest grade they can then receive in any subject is a 90. The policy, first proposed in May, allows for "excused" absences including illness, impassable roads, college visits, and required court appearances or incarceration--a major relief, no doubt, to juvenile delinquents with their sights set on the Ivy League. The real question is will this policy, set to be reviewed after a year, help increase Buffalo's lagging attendance rates (last year, over 80 percent of the city's students were absent six times or more), or will it merely lead to grade inflation for students capable of putting their behinds in seats? Plus, the grades of compulsive truants should already be suffering because of their absences. If they're not, maybe it's Buffalo's curriculum and not its attendance policy that needs tweaking.

"Attendance to make up 10 percent of grade," by Peter Simon, Buffalo News, October 12, 2006

The twenty-third permutation of the MetLife teacher survey series, which annually compiles data on teacher attitudes across a range of topics, recently emerged and was mostly ignored.

The dearth of coverage is surprising because the survey counter-intuitively shows (claims of test-driven drudgery notwithstanding) that public school teachers are more satisfied with their jobs today than at any point in the past twenty years. But despite that heartening statistic, lots of educators are less than thrilled with their jobs. Twenty-seven percent of those surveyed plan to leave the field within five years.

That's a lot of turnover. Or maybe it's quite normal. Certainly the modern job market is not the one of fifty, twenty, or even ten years ago. Today's professional is mobile, always on the lookout for better opportunities, and is more willing to jump ship the moment a more-promising position becomes available. Today's college graduates typically explore multiple career paths before--maybe--picking one.

A recent survey from the American Business Collaboration (ABC) found that 41 percent of workers in mid-size to large corporations would seriously consider leaving their current job for another that offered better opportunities for advancement, while only 20 percent would do so for better job security. Peace of mind is less motivating, it appears, than climbing the corporate ladder. And while the ABC survey looked only at corporate workers, it's likely that many of the teachers who plan to exit the classroom within five years are also adapting to the job market's mutability and expanding possibilities. 

Such losses might not be a bad thing. Some analysts contend that schools could actually manage with a lot fewer teachers than they currently have. When viewed from that angle, and with the knowledge that large-scale employers of every sort face increasing job turnover, the percentage of teachers who may jump ship doesn't look so alarming.

But there is cause for worry. The teachers predisposed to leave are also apt to have the greatest potential (see here). And while programs such as Teach for America (TFA), which annually brings thousands of graduates from the nation's top colleges into underperforming schools, offer good models of how to guide talent toward the K-12 classroom, their alumni, too, are likely to move on to other pursuits.

To be sure, troubled schools don't need Ivy Leaguers to teach their students. Any enterprise that employs three million people must be organized in such a way that ordinary mortals can succeed at it. A well-run education system, complete with rigorous standards and accountability and implemented by average teachers committed to its goals, will likely effect more learning than a cadre of the brightest minds banging their heads against the wall in a hostile school environment.

But uncommonly able people are valuable to large enterprises, too. The Economist recently focused a special section on "The battle for brainpower," the crux of which is that talent (young, driven, skilled, educated, and innovative workers) is far and away the primary competitive tool driving corporate and national success. The best companies, especially in today's economy, know that stagnation is a death sentence, and they also know that the innovation required to remain competitive is driven by the best minds (often the youngest, best minds). School systems, however, have not been very good at attracting and keeping such individuals.

Charter schools are beginning to change that. Smart and talented young folks such as Mike Feinberg and David Levin of KIPP, Eric Adler and Rajiv Vinnakota of SEED, and Dacia Toll of Amistad, are living proof of what talent, energy, and drive can do in public education. But for the sprawling public school system to undergo the type of reform it truly needs, district schools must also attract such talent.

What does that require? Talented individuals are drawn to places where their skills and abilities won't be wasted. They typically want to work in dynamic environments without excessive bureaucracy; they want to be held accountable for their actions and given the freedom to meet expectations in their own ways; they want mentors and leaders whom they respect (leaders who set goals and demand that their workers meet them); they want to be decently compensated; and they want to feel that they have the opportunity to excel in their chosen field. More than a few of them also hope to improve their society if not the world.

Lots of school systems fail to create that sort of environment. Of the 27 percent of MetLife survey respondents planning to leave teaching, almost half were dissatisfied with the professional prestige of teaching, 40 percent were dissatisfied with the salary and benefits, and 29 percent said their principal never asked for their suggestions. (Similar complaints are voiced by many teachers who are not planning to leave.)

Yes, the salary system needs reforming--physical education teachers are still paid the same as chemistry teachers in most places. But school leaders (especially principals with the ability to select and deploy their own staffs) can focus on other, perhaps less controversial and politically charged aspects of the teaching environment.  

Just as talent clusters geographically, it also tends to cluster institutionally. Talent feeds off itself; great ideas are created when smart and ambitious people get together and start working. There's no reason why such communities cannot flourish in K-12 schools. The Corporate Executive Board believes that, in order to attract talent, companies must focus on their employment value proposition (EVP): what employees get out of working for a specific organization. And the most important thing a company can do to boost its EVP doesn't relate to salary, benefits or job security, but to increasing workers' skills and long-term employability. Many school systems (see here and here) are beginning to get that--and some school leaders have started to change the culture of stasis in the districts they control.

But good ideas need to be replicated on larger scales, and new ideas should have the chance to play out. How about adopting the approach, favored by Ernst & Young and much of the corporate world, of using young, vibrant employees to recruit others like them? Or how about soliciting suggestions from the most promising teachers, and giving them the opportunity to work intimately with their superiors on management issues?

The more talent we can bring into the teaching ranks, the more vibrant and dynamic our schools will become. It's tough to besiege institutions that have spent years erecting walls of defense; it's somewhat easier to infiltrate them with savvy reformers and let the walls crumble from the inside out.

Christopher B. Swanson
Editorial Projects in Education Research Center
October 2006

With the Manhattan Institute-Economic Policy Institute debates (see here and here) as its backdrop, this report offers a fresh look at Texas's 2002-2003 graduation rates. Its method of calculation (the Cumulative Promotion Index) has certain advantages: it shows the graduation rate for a specific year rather than for a specific class (which gives a better overall picture), and it can show where in the high school pipeline problems arise. In Texas, we learn, the largest percentage of dropouts leave school after ninth grade. This report calculates Lone Star State graduation rates differently than the Texas Education Agency (TEA), and it illustrates how drastically the state inflates them by as much as 35 percentage points. That's worth knowing, particularly because inflation is most acute in the numbers for minority youngsters who make up 61 percent of Texas's enrollment. The report also shows that the degree of school segregation between racial and socioeconomic groups in Texas is large and growing--a problem not least because of the strong correlation between segregation and high school graduation rates. Though limited  to Texas, the report provides an interesting case study of one state's graduation rates, the demographic implications of the data, and the methods used to calculate published rates. See it here.

Edited by Eric A. Hanushek
Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on Education
2006

This volume tears away both the legal and logical rationales for America's ubiquitous education "adequacy" lawsuits. Sol Stern's chapter alone is worth the price of admission. He chronicles the thirteen-year saga of Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) v. New York, in which plaintiffs successfully argued that New York City schools are annually shortchanged $5.6 billion (not million) by the state (for operating expenses alone; capital outlays add another $9.2 billion). A general lesson from these cases is that judges have assumed the role of legislators--and aren't very good at it. The legal merits of these assessments are questionable to start with and whether they make for sound policy is even more doubtful. Editor Hanushek's chapter shows how contrived are the dollar figures that judges agree to mandate in these cases. Consultants produce ostensibly "scientific" analyses that entail little more than tallying up the cost of educators' dream schools. (And they tend to inflate the cost of everything.) Not that the money is then used to actually help needy kids, though. For example: after Kansas City, Missouri, recieved $2 billion to improve its schools, portions of the funds were spent on an arboretum, a wildlife refuge, and a model United Nations chamber. As Marguerite Roza and Paul Hill explain in their essay, school systems rarely allocate even their current funding for the students who need it most--the bulk of resources usually end up in well-off schools--so more money from adequacy lawsuits is unlikely to be spent any better. Other chapters put forth similar views and show that more money won't help most school systems. Williamson Evers and Paul Clopton provide useful case studies of some of America's most wasteful districts; Herbert Walberg argues that the existence of successful high-poverty, low-spending schools shows that many schools could succeed on their current budgets if they changed their educational tactics; and Paul Peterson details how private schools engage their students and parents, thus making use of a free resource in ways thrifty public schools ought to mimic. It's an interesting collection of chapters, devastating for both the law and logic behind "adequacy" lawsuits.

Paul E. Barton
American Federation of Teachers
September 2006

In this short paper, Paul Barton complains that No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) current system of testing does not achieve the law's overriding purpose--evaluating school performance. According to Barton, "evaluating school performance with standardized tests requires measuring what students learned in the school during the year of instruction--a quite different matter from measuring the sum total of what students know and can do at a point in time." He urges tests that accurately capture what students learn over time; are aligned to content standards and instruction; and generate results that are transparent and easily understood by students and teachers, among others. Ideally, such tests would be administered at the beginning and end of the school year, and the results would be used to set growth targets for subsequent years. A good idea, though Barton may be too harsh on NCLB's current "cut-point" approach, which establishes a level of proficiency that all students should meet and identifies those who are not yet at that level. Identifying progress is good, but one must also know how far below grade level individual students are--and thanks to NCLB's disaggregated data, America's achievement gaps have been illumined. An optimal system would combine growth models with NCLB's focus on hitting identifiable marks of academic proficiency. (Barton acknowledges that the pilot growth model projects in Tennessee and North Carolina do this.) The report is a valuable contribution to the debate over NCLB's reauthorization. Read it here.

Tom Loveless
Brown Center on Education Policy
The Brookings Institution
October 2006

This report is divided into three separate sections. One analyzes whether student "happiness" affects their test scores, another whether a "race to the bottom" exists, and the last how well American students are actually doing in math and reading. The findings, in a nutshell: 1) Happy kids aren't better at math than are other children. In countries where teachers attempt to make math more "relevant" to their students, test scores are lower than for those countries in which math is simply taught with no effort to make the material relevant to students' lives. 2) There is no NCLB-inspired "race to the bottom," because although states now report higher percentages of proficient students than NAEP, they were doing the same before NCLB's enactment (so there's more of a "dwell at the bottom" trend). 3) American students are making progress in math (reading gains are meager), but the main NAEP and the long-term trend NAEP disagree over how much math progress is actually being made. What conclusions can we draw from the report? That educators who focus on making their classes "fun" and "relevant" are not doing anything for their students' learning (see here). They should focus instead on teaching basic skills--even if such is the "un-fun" approach. Also, while it's fine to say that NCLB isn't driving a race to the bottom (though we would quibble), it's pretty disheartening to see that states were actually racing there on their own. What's worse, many states, having arrived at the bottom, have set up camp, and no longer do any racing of any sort, be it to bottoms, tops, or places in between. This report is worth your perusal. It's informative, but probably its conclusions won't stun you; most of this was already common knowledge. Read it here.