The Education Gadfly Weekly

Center on Education Policy
October 2007

On the one hand, this new study by Jack Jennings's Center on Education Policy (conducted for them by Harold Wenglinsky) can be termed part of the vast left-wing conspiracy to delegitimize private schooling and public policies that might lead to more of it. On the other hand, they had to work awfully hard in this analysis to obtain the desired conclusion--and even then they couldn't erase the advantage conferred on (poor) kids by some private schools, specifically Catholic "religious order" schools such as those run by the Jesuits. These came up strong on almost every gauge. To efface any possible advantage on the part of other private schools, however, the analysts had to:

• Look only at twelfth graders, such that the public-school "control group" consisted entirely of survivors and contained no future dropouts (as studies of earlier grades would inevitably do).
• Confine the study further to urban kids in the lowest SES quartile, among whom public-school dropout rates are sky-high. Hence looking only at twelfth graders further constricted the control group and skewed the comparison.
• Control for every imaginable sort of family influence and "cultural capital," including "parental discussion of school work," "parental expectations of their child's educational attainment," and "level of parental involvement in school activities." In other words, they sought to eradicate the effects of the very things that might cause kids to be found in private schools in the first place: concerned parents and schools that attract such families. What does it mean to look for "school effects" if one discounts a non-trivial part of what makes the school successful, namely engaged parents? Is that not a bit like evaluating the effectiveness of different sorts of hospitals after "controlling" for what led patients to select one hospital over another?

Though there's some self-conscious back pedaling on this point near the study's end ("it is possible in this study that private schools promote greater
parental involvement"), perhaps its most sobering feature is its determinism. Like (among others) Messrs. Richard Rothstein and Charles Murray, it ends up saying that most of what shapes educational outcomes has nothing to do with schools. Should poor kids just roll over and die? Or should they and their (engaged) parents seek out the best schools they can find and gain access to, mindful that, if they make astute choices, they might, in fact, be less likely to drop out and more likely to learn? Even to learn more? If you'd like to see for yourself, you can find it here.

In recent few days, two vital armies in the idea wars announced plans to change generals. First, Chris DeMuth will leave the command of the American Enterprise Institute by the end of 2008, after 22 remarkable years at the helm of this crucial Washington-based think tank and research organization. A search committee (including DeMuth, Jim Wilson, and former Fordham trustee Bruce Kovner, who chairs the AEI board) will seek to identify a fit successor. It won't be easy. Chris and I first got acquainted when both of us, still in our 20s, worked for Pat Moynihan in the Nixon White House, where a thin divider separated our work-spaces in the grand Old Executive Office Building. At AEI, he's been an extraordinary institution builder and leader, as well as a scholar in his own right. We surely haven't heard the last of him. His "think-tank confidential" valedictory in the Wall Street Journal on October 12th is an inspired essay--you can find it here--that underscores both the quality of his mind and prose and the central role that such institutions have come to play in contemporary America, due in no small part to Chris. Second, Commentary Magazine just announced that John Podhoretz will succeed Neal Kozodoy as that distinguished journal's editor in January 2009. Kozodoy has been on Commentary's editorial team for a remarkable 41 years and its editor since 1995. As all who have worked with him know well, he's a formidable, visionary, strong-willed and self-assured editor--as was his predecessor, as will be his successor. John Podhoretz (son of Norman) is a gifted editor, critic, columnist, and general all-around savant, who can be counted on to lead this seminal "neo-con" magazine to new successes on its chosen beats, which include domestic and foreign policy, literature and the arts, and Jewish matters.

If your child's teacher was previously disciplined for inappropriate behavior, you would insist, as a parent, that you had the right to this information. The Ohio Department of Education, however, might disagree. The Columbus Dispatch is running a series of exposés showing that the department has sealed from public disclosure 80 cases of educators who were disciplined. At least 48 of those cases involve a child, and ten of the teachers involved are still eligible to run classrooms. Yes, there's a partial explanation for the secrecy: the investigations stemmed from tips from child protection agencies. We understand the need to protect the identity of people who are under investigation and there are, alas, altogether too many of these. (Since 2000, the department has reviewed and cleared over 15,000 allegations of misconduct.) Innocent until proven guilty. But what about situations where the investigation yields damning evidence? Potentially predatory teachers are being recycled throughout Ohio's school system, with parents and principals none the wiser. The agency needs to establish a centralized database, through which the backgrounds of teachers and school administrators are made accessible to the public. If pedophiles are lurking in Ohio's classrooms, even just ten of them, they need to be identifiable--or, better, weeded out.  

"Secrecy shrouds disciplined teachers," by Jill Riepenhoff and Jennifer Smith Richards, Columbus Dispatch, Oct. 16, 2007

Most 24-year-olds struggle to pull themselves out of bed in the morning. When Bobby Jindal was 24, he was struggling to reform Louisiana's healthcare system.

If you haven't heard of Bobby Jindal, you will soon. Polls have the 36-year-old U.S. Congressman from Kenner, Louisiana, way out in front of his rivals in the Bayou State's gubernatorial race. If he receives over 50 percent of the vote in Saturday's primary (Louisiana has a non-partisan primary), which he well might, he will win the top job outright, without a general election.

Jindal grew up in Baton Rouge, attended Brown University, spent time in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and went to work for McKinsey & Co. doing healthcare consulting. A 1996 article in the Washington Post about Louisiana's healthcare system spurred the then 24-year-old to write a report with recommendations for the state. That report found its way to the governor, Mike Foster, who met with Jindal and was so impressed that he hired him as secretary of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals.

Jindal went on to eliminate the department's $400 million budget deficit, then take a job as president of the University of Louisiana system, then serve as an assistant U.S. secretary of health and human services, and then run for governor in 2003. He barely lost to Kathleen Blanco. (In 2004, he ran for, and won, an open House seat, to which he was re-elected last year.)

Now he's poised to win the governorship and confront the issue that arguably holds the key to Louisiana's future: education.

Louisiana's big education story these past two years has of course been New Orleans. How to revitalize a system that, even before it was underwater, was one of the nation's worst? But the rest of the state has education problems of its own, outside the Big Easy.

Louisiana ranked last among the 50 states in fourth-grade reading on the 2007 NAEP. It came in 44th in eighth-grade reading. It was 46th in fourth-grade math. And according to Jay Greene's calculations, only 63 percent of Louisiana's high-schoolers graduated in 2003.

Jindal has made raising that graduation rate one of his main education concerns. He told the New Orleans Time-Picayune that "not every high school student plans to attend a four-year university," which is undoubtedly correct. "However," Jindal continued, "every high school senior should graduate able to meet either college or technical school requirements." To keep students from leaving school, he proposes career-oriented counseling after eighth grade and expanding dual-enrollment programs that increase the interaction between high-schools and postsecondary education. He's also in favor of expanding "dual-track" options that offer students course credit with career training.

One hopes that, if elected, Jindal will bring some of his McKinsey-honed, pro-market forces and red-tape slashing instincts into the education realm. He seems likely to do just that. In a 2003 interview with National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, Jindal said, "The Fordham Foundation gave our charter-school process a D. It's too politicized." (Clearly he's well-read.) Jindal also introduced federal legislation in 2005 that provided vouchers for students displaced by Katrina.

Louisiana's future depends on its ability to attract business and human capital. A recent Forbes report that ranked the state the second-worst in the country in which to do business doesn't provide a lot of fodder for optimism under present arrangements.

So the potential of the Bayou State to attract business may well rest on its ability to revitalize its schools and thereby produce some homegrown talent.

Bobby Jindal, conceived in India but born and raised in Louisiana, knows something about homegrown talent. It remains to be seen, though, if voters will place their trust in him (education is only one issue, after all, and his opponents have education platforms of their own)--and, if they do, whether Jindal can and will deliver.

Call Patrick Fitzgerald. We've got a mole in the Government Accountability Office, an anti-voucher mole at that. The Washington Post this week reported on a leaked draft GAO evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, which is spending $12.9 million annually to send 1,900 low-income students to private schools. The draft report charges that some of these private schools lack occupancy permits, are not fully certified, or have falsely reported having a gymnasium or an auditorium. Such findings seem flimsy and one-sided, especially considering that parents are satisfied (see here and here) with the program. Worse, however, is the fact that an early, unvetted draft has found its way to the Post's pages. A spokeswoman from the Department of Education, which oversees the program, says the draft "presents an incomplete picture," and that the final version will contain a number of revisions. Unfortunately for the District's scholarship recipients, a lot of damage has already been done.

"Voucher Program Puts D.C. Kids at Risk, Study Says," by Theola Labbé, Washington Post, October 11, 2007

It was Al Gore who said seven years ago, in a nationally televised debate with George W. Bush, "if a school is failing, we work with the states to give them the authority and the resources to close down that school and reopen it right away with a new principal, a new faculty, a turn-around team of specialists who know what they're doing." That moment may have been the high-water mark for the idea of closing and reopening failed schools. Diana Jean Schemo reports this week in the New York Times that states are having a tough time implementing this reform in practice and at scale. In California alone, 1,000 schools are eligible for "restructuring" under No Child Left Behind, a number which, according to Berkeley ed school professor Heinrich Mintrop, "taxes the capacity of the whole school change industry." Looking at student growth over time might help; according to California officials, 700 of those 1,000 schools are making "substantial progress" and thus might not truly be "failing" after all. But that still leaves 300 Golden State schools in need of closing, reopening, or, better yet, replacing. Which is one more argument for California policymakers and their peers nationwide to aggressively support the speedy development of high-quality alternatives. KIPP, Green Dot, and Aspire: grow, grow, grow!

"Failing Schools Strain to Meet U.S. Standard," by Diana Jean Schemo, New York Times, October 16, 2007

Center on Education Policy
October 2007

On the one hand, this new study by Jack Jennings's Center on Education Policy (conducted for them by Harold Wenglinsky) can be termed part of the vast left-wing conspiracy to delegitimize private schooling and public policies that might lead to more of it. On the other hand, they had to work awfully hard in this analysis to obtain the desired conclusion--and even then they couldn't erase the advantage conferred on (poor) kids by some private schools, specifically Catholic "religious order" schools such as those run by the Jesuits. These came up strong on almost every gauge. To efface any possible advantage on the part of other private schools, however, the analysts had to:

• Look only at twelfth graders, such that the public-school "control group" consisted entirely of survivors and contained no future dropouts (as studies of earlier grades would inevitably do).
• Confine the study further to urban kids in the lowest SES quartile, among whom public-school dropout rates are sky-high. Hence looking only at twelfth graders further constricted the control group and skewed the comparison.
• Control for every imaginable sort of family influence and "cultural capital," including "parental discussion of school work," "parental expectations of their child's educational attainment," and "level of parental involvement in school activities." In other words, they sought to eradicate the effects of the very things that might cause kids to be found in private schools in the first place: concerned parents and schools that attract such families. What does it mean to look for "school effects" if one discounts a non-trivial part of what makes the school successful, namely engaged parents? Is that not a bit like evaluating the effectiveness of different sorts of hospitals after "controlling" for what led patients to select one hospital over another?

Though there's some self-conscious back pedaling on this point near the study's end ("it is possible in this study that private schools promote greater
parental involvement"), perhaps its most sobering feature is its determinism. Like (among others) Messrs. Richard Rothstein and Charles Murray, it ends up saying that most of what shapes educational outcomes has nothing to do with schools. Should poor kids just roll over and die? Or should they and their (engaged) parents seek out the best schools they can find and gain access to, mindful that, if they make astute choices, they might, in fact, be less likely to drop out and more likely to learn? Even to learn more? If you'd like to see for yourself, you can find it here.