The Education Gadfly Weekly

Joe Williams
Education Sector
July 2006

The National Education Association has spent millions on public relations campaigns attacking NCLB ever since enactment. What the public doesn't know until now is that the NEA has also given millions of dollars in backchannel support to advocacy organizations, researchers, civil rights groups, and state political operatives to erode the federal law's legitimacy. In this report, Joe Williams details the support these groups and individuals received from the NEA to "echo" and amplify the union's own criticisms of the law. A professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, who wished to remain anonymous because of his relationship with the union, said, "The [NEA] has a lot of money for research, but it wants the conclusions to match its agenda." For example, the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice, a nonprofit outfit, has supported many studies critical of NCLB and high-stakes testing. According to Williams, "All [of those studies] have been funded entirely with money from the NEA and several state affiliates." While the center's director denies that his organization's research also winds up supporting NEA policy positions, so far as we can tell Great Lakes has never produced a study supportive of testing or NCLB. Other, similar situations are detailed in the report. Williams does not accuse the NEA of anything illegal (the union has disclosed all financial dealings that the law requires). But citizens should know that, when they read that some non-profit group has condemned NCLB or some analyst has found another flaw in NCLB, NEA money is probably behind it. To learn more about the union's tactics, read the Williams report here.

National Center for Education Accountability
July 2006

The National Center for Educational Accountability has relentlessly asked why some schools help more students reach higher standards than other schools. And it has persistently tried to answer that key query. In this new series of reports--which investigates over 200 schools in 20 states, and then compares the results nationally--research teams examined performance data from top- and average-performing schools, then examined the education practices at work in both kinds via extensive interviews and observation. The results show that high-achieving schools share certain facets not present in their lower-performing institutional peers. For example, they boast rigorous course content across a broad range of subjects and demand excellence from students of varying academic abilities. Average schools are more likely to allow lower-performing youngsters a lot of leeway. Analysts also observed that high performing schools don't separate students based on ability but educate all students in classes containing a spectrum of academic performers. This means, in practice, that less savvy students are not segregated and then ignored (a common practice in lower-performing schools). Top schools also make their decisions about curricula and instruction based on student performance data, not emotions. And their teachers and administrators are more likely to collaborate, and to share experiences about what works for students and what doesn't. Many of these findings aren't new (see here) but it's no bad thing to repeat and reinforce them. The state reports are available here.

Center on Education Policy
2006

This practical guide is true to its title: basic. CEP has compiled data, mostly from the National Center for Education Statistics, and presented it in an easy-to-read-and-follow primer. No real commentary here, nor any earth-shattering conclusions from the statistics presented herein. Rather, CEP wrote the primer to give "sufficient background information about public education," encourage "interest in education issues," and stimulate involvement in local schools. For education neophytes, it's a useful starter. And for those already mired in education policy, the primer still contains some intriguing factoids. For example, almost 20 percent of U.S. students are children of immigrants, though some three quarters of them were born on these shores. Also: just 2 percent of school districts enroll over 25,000 students, but they account for 34 percent of the country's public school population. And another: Though college entrance exams are now being taken by more students than ever--including rising percentages of low-income and minority students--SAT scores (mostly math scores) have increased modestly since 1990 (after taking into account the SAT score recentering) and ACT scores have held steady. Pick up a copy here and skim it. You might stumble across a statistic that will surprise you. At the least, you'll acquire a handy reference guide for your bookshelf.

Gadfly still favors radically deregulating entry into teaching, but if states are determined to stick with teacher "credentialing" there is every reason to hope that the new American College of Education is getting it right. This for-profit and partially on-line venture of Texas entrepreneur Randy Best--who lined up a blue-ribbon team that included Rod Paige, Reid Lyon, and Mike Moses--enrolled 25 Chicago teachers in master's degree programs during 2005-2006, its first year. The school hopes for 225 students or so in the coming year, and then, the team says, the sky is the limit, as more urban school systems arrange for their teachers to pursue degrees and coursework--advanced training seems to be the main offering today--from this interesting venture. Whether the college survives as a business proposition will eventually depend upon how many customers it can land, both districts and students (i.e., teachers). One supposes that its mid-year tuition slash was meant to attract more of them. Whether it prospers as an education reform will hinge upon ACE-trained teachers producing the requisite classroom results with their own pupils. On that crucial metric, nothing is yet known.    

"The Big Asset in This Deal Was a College's Accreditation," by Elyse Ashburn, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 21, 2006 (subscription required)

Predictably, Diana Jean Schemo and the New York Times found front-page, above-the-fold space to cover a new National Center for Education Statistics report, drawn from 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress data, that finds private schools only slightly more effective than public when analysts control for income, race, parent education, and such. (The exception is eighth-grade reading where the private-school advantage is marked.)

You can be sure that if the government study had found a wide margin favoring private schools, it would have been covered alongside the shipping news, if at all. But that says more about Schemo and her editors (see here) than about American education.

I've long gotten into trouble with private-school audiences by noting that much of their test-score edge is caused by their choice of students, and students' choice of schools, rather than by their superior educational effectiveness. Private schools, in my experience, are prey to the same daffy constructivist ideas, the same curricular correctness, many of the same mediocre textbooks and much of the same educationist zeitgeist as their public-school counterparts. They are free to be different but in reality they aren't so very different-except that they're all schools of choice and they nearly all charge tuitions, which means their students tend to be relatively more prosperous and from homes where parents care enough both to make a purposeful choice and to shell out money for it. Erase the "selection effect" and private schools may not be academic high flyers. That's more or less what the NCES study shows. (Note, though, that it also has some methodological problems, as Harvard's Paul Peterson explained in the Wall Street Journal on the same day.)

Yet social science is not the real world and the real world never erases the selection effect. Private schools do have higher test scores and that is one reason picky parents who can swing it choose them for their kids-and zillions more tell survey researchers they would do likewise if they could afford it. (It's those zillions more who would take advantage of vouchers if available.)

But test scores and other signs of academic prowess are just part of why parents favor private schools. Indeed, they may be the lesser reason. Private schools have multiple pluses. They are generally smaller, more intimate-and nearly always safe and well disciplined. Many of them attend to character development, values and moral formation as well as cognitive skills and knowledge. Many add religious instruction and prayer to the mix. What's more, private schools are typically welcoming and responsive places from the parent's standpoint, keenly aware that they must please as well as educate their clients. Some of them confer social status and a readymade peer group that suits the parents' sense of who their children are (or wish they were). In part because they're free to hire the best teachers available, certified or not, their instructional staff is often knowledgeable as well as caring. They offer more counseling and individualized attention in areas like college admissions.

All these and more factors go into the durable appeal of private schools. An appeal that will continue to trump any number of government studies.

To repeat, that doesn't mean they're more effective than public schools in a "value added" sense when measured on external tests of academic achievement. Alas, we actually know little about this. Few private schools administer state tests or release their results on the normed tests that many use; and private-school participation in NAEP is spotty. For this they should be ashamed-as they should of their lack of interest in growing, adding more campuses, serving more kids, and pressing for the public dollars that would make that more possible. Thirty years ago, private schools in general and Catholic schools in particular were in the forefront of the quest for federal tuition tax credits and other aid schemes. Today they're far more reticent, sometimes even declining to participate in a voucher program after others enact it. (Some of that is occurring in Ohio today, for example.)

In sum, I have lots of beefs with private schools, their organizations, and their leaders. But they're going to remain popular among those who are able to attend them and the basis of that popularity is legitimate, even if not always visible in NAEP results. That more Americans don't have this option is a national disgrace. The heck with the New York Times.                         

"Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study," by Diana Jean Schemo, New York Times, July 15, 2006

"Long-Delayed Education Study Casts Doubt on the value of Vouchers," by Zachary M. Seward, Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2006 (subscription required)

The substance of this commentary appeared in the July 17 National Review Online.

On Tuesday, four GOP lawmakers--two from the Senate (Lamar Alexander and John Ensign) and two from the House (Howard McKeon and Sam Johnson)--proposed legislation to spend $100 million on vouchers for low-income students in chronically failing schools across the nation. The idea, called America's Opportunity Scholarships for Kids, is modeled on the Washington, D.C. voucher pilot program. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings offered support for the proposal and pointedly defended it against critics who cited a recent DOE report showing student achievement in public and private schools to be similar (see here). NCLB promised "choice" to students in failing schools, but because big urban districts often have little space in their high-performing public schools, that promise has gone unmet. National vouchers that include private school choice are a fine idea. This proposal is severely limited, though--states and districts must apply for dollars, so parental choice remains at the mercy of state/distict. Nonetheless, it's a good start. We'll be watching what happens.

"Back to School," New York Sun, July 20, 2006

"GOP Unveils School Voucher Plan," by Lois Romano, Washington Post, July 19, 2006 

Superman has flown into Pittsburgh's public schools--and this time his name isn't Ben Roethlisberger. It's Kaplan, Inc, the $1.4 billion (with a "b") education company hired to produce curriculum for the Steel City's middle- and high-school students. Frustrated by the city's persistently pitiful performance on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), the superintendent is paying Kaplan $8.4 million (with an "m") to create a curriculum keyed to the Commonwealth's English, math, science, and social studies standards. Once in place, every student will cover the same material at the same time, and every six weeks take a PSSA-style test on it. Fine, but the state's standards are no models of excellence (see here, here, here, and here). We wish Pittsburgh and Kaplan the best, but we wonder how sturdy can be a curriculum constructed upon such shoddy foundations.

"Attempting a Turnaround: All-new $8.4 million city school curriculum," by Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 16, 2006

To compete with more lucrative private sector job options and address critical shortages, the Los Angeles Unified School District dangled a new (smallish) carrot in hopes of attracting and retaining math and science teachers. The City of Angels will bestow one-time $5,000 "incentives" on certified math and science teachers who opt for classroom over corporate positions. The city will also reimburse its current math and science teachers up to $5,000 for any future subject-matter courses they take. LAUSD's Dan Isaacs said, "We're doing our best to get the very best and brightest in these fields to consider education as a career." It's no small feat to push teacher unions to agree to any form of incentive-based pay, and the city deserves congratulations for making progress on that front. Five thousand dollars, though, is hardly enough to entice America's best young scientists and mathematicians to reject the private sector in favor of urban public schools, and we assume someone within LAUSD knows that. But convincing the unions that physics teachers deserve much higher base salaries than phys-ed teachers will take a lot more work.

"A Costly Lesson in Supply and Demand," by Michelle Keller, Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2006

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Harvard may forfeit nearly $400 million in alumni gifts this year as a consequence of ex-president Lawrence H. Summers' abrupt exit. Even for mega-bucks Harvard, that begins to qualify as real money, a palpable hit in the pocketbook--a "significant setback" in Journalese.

The four major donors involved, including such high-profile folks as David Rockefeller, Larry Ellison, and Mortimer Zuckerman, are fairly circumspect in explaining their actions, but the Journal depicts them as "supportive of Mr. Summers and elements of his vision for Harvard."

Several other big donors have also signaled a reduction or withholding of their regular gifts to Harvard. Said Byron Wien of Pequot Capital, who declined to make his (sizable) annual contribution, "It was my little wake-up call saying, look, there are multiple constituencies there. The students are a constituency, and they were very supportive of Summers. And the alumni are a constituency, and they were very supportive of Summers."

Lots of people have Summers-related gripes--my own is that toward the end he wimped out and apologized rather than sticking to his convictions--but everyone agrees that he was an energetic agent of change who sought, during his five years in the nice corner office in Massachusetts Hall, to redirect the university on a number of fronts. These include the nature of undergraduate education; the uses of technology; Harvard's place on the international stage; a major physical relocation of portions of the university across the Charles River; and some rollback of political correctness, including at least limited efforts to resurrect ROTC.

He moved quickly and decisively on many of these fronts. He was often outspoken, even provocative, in many of his comments. He was, I'm told, abrasive, unkempt, and hard to work with. He did not operate via the university norm of "consensus"--which norm usually guarantees that nothing changes. And a couple of his most visible altercations--especially with an African-American professor and some prickly women scientists--got him in Dutch with a noisy and politicized fraction of the faculty of Arts and Sciences. Most of the rest of the university liked him well enough. Some thought he was just what the place needed. In the end, however, the Harvard Corporation--the university's principal governing body--eased him out the door and brought back (on an interim basis) the genial, clubbable Derek Bok.

I admired most of the Summers agenda and rather fancied his "gadfly" approach to higher education. His main shortcoming, in my view (prior to the eventual wimp-out), was his party affiliation, but that can be forgiven.

My own alumni gifts to Harvard have never amounted to much, but I've been a faithful annual donor. Now I'm rethinking that habit. It's not that the university would notice the loss of my few dollars. It's that private universities are almost entirely unaccountable to anyone but their own faculty. (I'm referring to selective institutions that have plenty of applicants. Other sorts of campus must be attentive to the student marketplace.)

One way to get their attention is via alumni contributions and the absence thereof. American colleges and universities are profoundly greedy--always wanting more of just about everything from academic accolades to climbing walls and, because they're allergic to productivity gains and efficiency considerations, their only way of doing more is to bring in more bucks. On private campuses, that boils down to hiking tuition levels, which causes its own woes, or landing more grants and gifts. These can come from innumerable places, of course, including federal agencies and private foundations as well as individual donors. Alumni, however, are a favorite source, because they are presumed to be biased in favor of a particular institution and generally steadfast, even eager to repay what they regard as their enduring debt to their alma mater.

Alumni who seek to influence their college or university, as opposed simply to "helping" it, have to be strategic. Institutions of higher education don't like to be influenced and are notoriously resistant to hectoring, pleading, and pressuring. Nothing brings a professor greater pleasure than mounting a soapbox to declare that some nefarious external force is trying to curb his academic freedom. But such institutions tend to respond to money. The single best way to get a college to do something is to give it dollars for that specific purpose. They almost always react positively.

I'm not under any illusion that haughty places with lots of money--Harvard is surely at the top of that list--will be equally responsive to the absence or withdrawal of money. The development office will undoubtedly take note, as will a couple of administrators, but it's far from clear that the faculty will notice or care. Indeed, it's a fair bet that the selfsame Arts and Science professors who ousted Summers will take smug satisfaction from the fact that Harvard will no longer have resources specifically earmarked for his unloved reforms.

Still, money is just about the only two-by-four this particular mule has any chance of noticing. It'll be good for the alumni/ae to express themselves. Maybe they'll turn it into a habit, perhaps even join the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Summers will surely notice. Other alumni (like me) might be emboldened and empowered. And possibly, just possibly, this high-status but oft-misguided university will alter its future course a tiny, tiny bit.

"Summers' Supporters Withhold $390 Million from Harvard," by Zachary Seward, Wall Street Journal, July 13, 2006 (subscription required)

Center on Education Policy
2006

This practical guide is true to its title: basic. CEP has compiled data, mostly from the National Center for Education Statistics, and presented it in an easy-to-read-and-follow primer. No real commentary here, nor any earth-shattering conclusions from the statistics presented herein. Rather, CEP wrote the primer to give "sufficient background information about public education," encourage "interest in education issues," and stimulate involvement in local schools. For education neophytes, it's a useful starter. And for those already mired in education policy, the primer still contains some intriguing factoids. For example, almost 20 percent of U.S. students are children of immigrants, though some three quarters of them were born on these shores. Also: just 2 percent of school districts enroll over 25,000 students, but they account for 34 percent of the country's public school population. And another: Though college entrance exams are now being taken by more students than ever--including rising percentages of low-income and minority students--SAT scores (mostly math scores) have increased modestly since 1990 (after taking into account the SAT score recentering) and ACT scores have held steady. Pick up a copy here and skim it. You might stumble across a statistic that will surprise you. At the least, you'll acquire a handy reference guide for your bookshelf.

National Center for Education Accountability
July 2006

The National Center for Educational Accountability has relentlessly asked why some schools help more students reach higher standards than other schools. And it has persistently tried to answer that key query. In this new series of reports--which investigates over 200 schools in 20 states, and then compares the results nationally--research teams examined performance data from top- and average-performing schools, then examined the education practices at work in both kinds via extensive interviews and observation. The results show that high-achieving schools share certain facets not present in their lower-performing institutional peers. For example, they boast rigorous course content across a broad range of subjects and demand excellence from students of varying academic abilities. Average schools are more likely to allow lower-performing youngsters a lot of leeway. Analysts also observed that high performing schools don't separate students based on ability but educate all students in classes containing a spectrum of academic performers. This means, in practice, that less savvy students are not segregated and then ignored (a common practice in lower-performing schools). Top schools also make their decisions about curricula and instruction based on student performance data, not emotions. And their teachers and administrators are more likely to collaborate, and to share experiences about what works for students and what doesn't. Many of these findings aren't new (see here) but it's no bad thing to repeat and reinforce them. The state reports are available here.

Joe Williams
Education Sector
July 2006

The National Education Association has spent millions on public relations campaigns attacking NCLB ever since enactment. What the public doesn't know until now is that the NEA has also given millions of dollars in backchannel support to advocacy organizations, researchers, civil rights groups, and state political operatives to erode the federal law's legitimacy. In this report, Joe Williams details the support these groups and individuals received from the NEA to "echo" and amplify the union's own criticisms of the law. A professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, who wished to remain anonymous because of his relationship with the union, said, "The [NEA] has a lot of money for research, but it wants the conclusions to match its agenda." For example, the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice, a nonprofit outfit, has supported many studies critical of NCLB and high-stakes testing. According to Williams, "All [of those studies] have been funded entirely with money from the NEA and several state affiliates." While the center's director denies that his organization's research also winds up supporting NEA policy positions, so far as we can tell Great Lakes has never produced a study supportive of testing or NCLB. Other, similar situations are detailed in the report. Williams does not accuse the NEA of anything illegal (the union has disclosed all financial dealings that the law requires). But citizens should know that, when they read that some non-profit group has condemned NCLB or some analyst has found another flaw in NCLB, NEA money is probably behind it. To learn more about the union's tactics, read the Williams report here.