The Education Gadfly Weekly

Consortium on Chicago School Research
February 2004

This fine report closely examines the effect of Chicago's decision to end social promotion on that city's students and teachers. The basic policy required pupils to achieve specific scores in reading and math on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills before advancing beyond the third, sixth, and eight grades. This is a timely topic that deserves scrutiny, especially in New York City, where controversy is raging over Mayor Bloomberg's hotly contested and hastily implemented social promotion plan (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=140#1730 for more details). The analysts conducted extensive interviews and surveys and used data from both before and after the policy was implemented (1996-1997) in order to make their comparisons. In brief, they found that the advent of high-stakes testing led to low-performing students receiving more support from teachers and parents and to teachers focusing their instruction more on reading and math. However, they also found that a key concern of testing opponents has merit: teachers spent more time teaching test prep skills - simply explaining techniques for successfully taking a test. (One teacher claimed to have devoted 240 hours to such tasks in 1999.) In addition, the researchers worry that added training may be needed for teachers to actually improve their instruction (rather than just refocusing it), and they note that the long-term effects of grade retention are unclear. Still, most teachers supported the policy - they felt it reinforced their work rather than compromised it - and we judge that there are more positives than negatives to setting higher expectations and accompanying them with real consequences, especially for youngsters who most need the extra push. Unfortunately, despite the positive results shown in this study, Chicago school officials this week scaled back the social promotion plan and will now retain only those students who fail the reading test, while promoting those who pass reading but fail math. Nonetheless, this is a thoughtful report that provides a balanced view of an important and contentious topic; find it at http://www.consortium-chicago.org/publications/p68.html. You can also learn about the Consortium's evaluation of the summer school program required of those Chicago students who are held back by visiting an earlier Gadfly at http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=16#252.

"Windy city schools let up," by Carl Campanile, New York Post, March 25, 2004

"In reversal, Chicago eases promotions," by David S. Herszenhorn, New York Times, March 25, 2004 (registration required)

Mark Harrison, Education Forum
2004

This fine new book by Australian economist Mark Harrison may supply more information about education in New Zealand than some readers feel is absolutely essential, but it's a solid piece of work that, among other things, demolishes familiar critiques of that country's 1990-era reforms by the likes of Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske. Whereas the latters' 2000 Brookings book, When Schools Compete, attempted to use New Zealand's reform experience to "caution" Americans against school choice, Harrison shows that a close examination of the evidence leads to the opposite conclusion: New Zealand's reforms, limited though they were (and partly rolled back since their original implementation), did children (especially poor and minority children) more good than harm while not going nearly far enough to establish a true competition-based system. Harrison contends that far more reform is needed in New Zealand education, that it's past time to replace a heavily centralized and top-down national primary-secondary system with a true market-based system, joined to related reforms in teacher deployment, pay, etc. The ISBN is 0958213364 and you can learn more by surfing to http://www.educationforum.org.nz/documents/features/education_matters.htm. If 400 pages on this topic is more than you want, check out the excellent recent report from New Zealand's Education Forum, A New Deal: Making Education Work for All New Zealanders, which explains why that land would benefit from market-style reforms, from major changes in teaching, and from introducing an effective assessment and accountability system. American readers will find themselves nodding in recognition of familiar ideas, debates, and research evidence applied to a very different country. You can find it at http://www.educationforum.org.nz/documents/other/a_new_deal.htm.

Michael Casserly, Council of the Great City Schools
March 2004

This is the fourth report by the Council for the Great City Schools on student achievement in urban schools, and the first to include comparison data from two years of NCLB implementation. According to Casserly, executive director of the CGCS and the study's primary author, though the U.S. doesn't have an assessment system that allows us to answer some of the most pressing urban education reform questions - e.g., are city schools improving academically and closing the achievement gap? - "the data from this report indicate that answers are emerging and that urban education may be establishing a beachhead on the rocky shoals of school reform." Specifically, the data suggest that, between 2002 and 2003, the percentage of urban 4th graders reading at or above "proficient" levels on state tests rose almost five points to 47.8 percent. In math over half (51 percent) scored at or above "proficient," a 6.8 percent increase. In other good news, nearly three quarters (73 percent) of 4th grade classes in urban districts narrowed the reading gap between black and white 4th graders and over half (53 percent) of 8th grade classes and 38.9 percent of 10th grade classes narrowed the gap. Still, Casserly warns that the findings in this study "are preliminary and leavened with caution. Some data look better than others. Progress in math is different from that in reading. Trend lines are not the same from one city to another. Not all grades have improved at the same rates. Not all gaps are closing. But the data indicate progress." This report is chock full of interesting data; find it at http://www.cgcs.org/reports/beat_the_oddsIV.html.

"Test scores in large urban school districts make big strides," by Greg Toppo, USA Today, March 21, 2004

"Students progress credited to reform," by George Archibald, Washington Times, March 24, 2004

Frederick M. Hess, Palgrave-MacMillan
2004

Palgrave-MacMillan will soon publish this fine book by Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. It argues that "there is a simple, sensible course that can help provide all of our children with the schools they deserve." Hess says the world is divided between "status quo reformers" and "common sense reformers" and declares that it's time for the latter to prevail. "Common sense reform," he contends, "is straightforward. It focuses on two precepts: accountability and flexibility. Accountability rewards excellence and penalizes failure. . . . Flexibility provides the tools to manage effectively, build teams, govern schools and classrooms, and reward those who take on oversized challenges or put forth exceptional efforts." There's plenty more, a whole book more, organized into substantive chapters on accountability, competition, teachers, school leaders, "reinvention" (major changes in the structures and governance of K-12 education), and what Hess terms "a common sense challenge," which recaps seven principles of reform, urges people to put them into practice, and assigns responsibility to various sectors. Overall, a grand summation of what I judge to be the essential elements of school reform circa 2004, presented lucidly and convincingly. The ISBN is 1-4039-6353-3, and you can learn more at http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1403963533.

Just about everyone - principals, parents, students, the general public - knows that many U.S. schools have a discipline problem, that kids are often out of control, not to mention rude, inattentive, and sometimes violent. Nearly every survey of problems facing U.S. schools puts discipline near the top of the list. The No Child Left Behind act even has a provision (badly implemented, to be sure) that gives families the right to opt out of "persistently dangerous" schools, suggesting that this problem has even reached the corridors of Congress.

Yet a few weeks back, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer, "at Cramp Elementary School in West Kensington, . . . disciplinarian Fred Creel was removed from his post in part because he required children to write sentences 100 times as a form of punishment. School officials told Creel . . . that they considered such assignments a form of corporal punishment and detrimental to the education process."

Superintendent Paul Vallas does not agree. He thinks requiring disruptive students to write sentences repeatedly is an acceptable method of disciplining them. In fact, he rather likes it, noting that it was effective when he was a kid: "If you counted the lengths of the blackboards in miles, then I did about 10 miles of repetitive writing in my lifetime. It used to have an effect on me. It also improved my handwriting."

Mr. Creel did not get his job back, however. It seems he had other "issues," as we say nowadays, so Vallas did not reverse the principal's decision. Creel "has been moved to a teaching assignment," which is apparently how school systems now discipline their disciplinarians. Curious.

Still, this was but one of a spate of recent accounts of discord and creativity on the school discipline front. A Mississippi high school trains cameras on teachers so that suspended students, sitting in detention hall elsewhere on campus, can keep up with their classwork via computer. The Des Moines Register reports that "Southeast Polk High School will spend up to $80,000 this year to rent office space and hire private employees to work with students who otherwise would take five days off for out-of-school suspensions."

What's going on in the world of school discipline?

First and most important, schools are having to devise new (or reinstate ancient) discipline strategies because of severe limits on the most obvious methods. Corporal punishment is out. "Staying after school" is often impractical, due to bus schedules, tutoring programs, and teacher contracts. Parents cannot be counted upon either to discipline their own kids or to support educators who try to. And "suspension" is out of favor because it reduces learning opportunities and rewards youngsters who cause trouble precisely because they don't like being in school. Observes Kathy Christie of the Education Commission of the States, "I think there's been an increasing understanding that suspending kids from school is a bit like giving them what they want."

Looming over the entire topic are a spate of court orders and consent decrees, due process rights, and concerns about fairness in meting out punishments to minority students.

In other words, discipline has grown complicated and political, and today's teachers and principals have limited options. So they're trying to create new ones. The KIPP academies follow a sports model and send unruly youngsters to "the bench," which is in the classroom but apart from other students and where they are permitted to speak only to the teacher. Federal grants are trickling into other Iowa high schools to put students who need discipline to work on community service projects "from walking dogs at the local animal shelter to fetching parts at auto repair shops." Philadelphia has special "disciplinary schools," and its high schools all have metal detectors that students must pass through.

A lot of these arrangements are pricey. The firm selling web-based teacher-filming systems to Mississippi high schools charges about a quarter million dollars per school. (Uncle Sam seems to be covering much of that.) Metal detectors cost money, as do the people who supervise them. Community service projects carry a price tag, too, if only for the staff members who supervise them. At a time of tight school budgets, one must ask how much money should be spent on discipline.

Vallas was onto something when he endorsed "repetitive writing," a time-honored, low-cost method of making a disruptive kid sorry that he misbehaved. No, it's not powerful enough to counter major-league violence like teen-age gangs and guns in school. But like the "broken windows" theory of law enforcement, i.e. creating a culture of decent behavior in which minor infractions do not go unpunished, such profoundly boring punishments seem like a fine place to begin with younger pupils and lesser infractions.

As for serious miscreants, sooner or later society must ask at what point does a young person forfeit the right to a public education by disrupting the education of others, terrorizing teachers, and wrecking the learning climate of a school? We want to leave no child behind, but what do we do with youngsters who refuse to be educated?

"School rethinks discipline plan," by Staci Hupp, Des Moines Register, March 2, 2004

"Repetitive rewriting is fine as discipline, Vallas says," by Susan Snyder, Philadelphia Inquirer, February 24, 2004 (registration required)

"Suspended kids log on to web class," by Fredreka Schouten, Gannet News Service, March 1, 2004

Evidence that D.C. Public Schools are in crisis is not hard to come by. This school year alone, the troubled system has lost another superintendent to exasperation and frustration, several students to tragic and preventable violence, and no doubt countless more to apathy and the "soft bigotry of low expectations." In November, Paul Vance, whose three-and-a-half year tenure is the "modern record" for any D.C. schools chief, tendered his resignation saying "To be very candid with you, I just don't want to be bothered with it." Vance's resignation came a few days after a student at Anacostia High School in Southeast D.C. was shot and killed outside of the school and just before a rash of violence swept through Ballou High School. In addition to reports of violence - the Metropolitan Police Department received as many as 192 summons to Ballou between January 2003 and February 2004 - the school has also been plagued by administrative failures that have no doubt contributed to its chaotic climate. Among them, a computer virus that left about 100 kids to pass several months' time sitting idly in school in the cafeteria without any academic instruction, while waiting for their class schedule, and an investigation that began after officials found no financial records for the school and over $12,000 in previously unaccounted-for cash, uncashed checks, and money orders in its safe. Although Ballou has been in the spotlight more than any other D.C. school, we suspect its problems are not unique and should serve as a reminder that D.C. schools are in urgent need of a complete makeover. This seems farther away than ever, however, since the system's governance remains Byzantine, its teacher union has had corrupt leadership, the effort to find a successor for Vance has stumbled several times (including an extremely able prospect who withdrew when it became clear he wouldn't actually have much authority to change things), and endless debate about the proper roles of various D.C. power centers vis-??-vis the school system. From the kids' standpoint, it's good that that there are lots of charter schools (some, though not enough, of them excellent) and that the District's long-awaited voucher experiment is launching. Yesterday, we learned that it's to be run by the seasoned Washington Scholarship Fund. The District's much-abused residents should at least be able to look forward to something working in the education sphere.

"Incident No. 1113," by Jason Cherkis, Sarah Godfrey, John Metcalfe, Annys Shin, and Chris Shott, Washington City Paper, March 5, 2004

"A school in chaos," Washington Times, March 23, 2004

"Student's death left D.C. school with questions," by Justin Blum, Washington Post, March 21, 2004

"Administrator for D.C. school choice incentive plan selected," U.S. Department of Education press release, March 24, 2004

In any reform of anything, the devil is always in the details. And the Old Deceiver lurks still in the fine print of the pay-for-performance plan approved last week by Denver teachers. How realistic is a plan that won't fully take effect for another eight years? How will the inevitable tension between teachers on the old tenure-based system and teachers on the new plan be resolved? How to hammer out knotty issues like retirement pay and accurate assessment of student achievement? Yet let us not allow the best to become the enemy of the good. This appears to have been a truly momentous vote by a local teachers' union, agreeing to allow student achievement to be at least one of the factors to be considered in determining the compensation of new (and willing veteran) teachers. That it can be done in one place indicates that it can be done anywhere. And we relish the comment of the Denver teachers' union head Becky Wissink, who told the Denver Post in response to questions about opposition to the plan from national headquarters, "I don't open my NEA book every morning to see what I can and cannot do."

"Denver teachers approve pay-for-performance plan," by Bess Keller, Education Week, March 23, 2004

"DPS teachers approve performance for pay plan," by Allison Sherry, Denver Post, March 19, 2004

"Denver teachers take the plunge," Rocky Mountain News, March 20, 2004

"Teachers vote on pay-for-performance plan," Associated Press, March 19, 2004

Homeschooling - once considered the education option of choice for gun-toting religious fanatics or a haven for social misfits - is coming of age as home-schooled students begin to find themselves welcomed at prestigious colleges and universities. It's hardly surprising that many homeschooled students, who get personalized attention in a nurturing educational environment, are doing well. As they do, they have become a beckoning market for reputable campuses that want mature self-starters among their freshman class. However, the growth of home-schooling (and the rise of other non-traditional options such as charter schools), is rattling an education establishment that can no longer dismiss these as the aberrant behaviors of the radical fringe. Boston Globe columnist Alan Lupo, for example, is concerned that the number of students leaving Massachusetts public schools for charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling threatens the health of Horace Mann's "common school" vision. Mostly, he's concerned that parents whose kids take advantage of non-public educational options won't vote for tax increases to support public schools, which is hardly the best measure of a system's health. And there's a chicken-egg problem: do parents weaken public schools by sending their kids elsewhere? Or are they going elsewhere in reaction to a troubled system?

"Schoolhouse rocked," by Michelle Bates, Boston Globe Magazine, March 21, 2004

"'Common schools' and common duty," by Alan Lupo, Boston Globe, March 21, 2004

Two months ago, Georgia's Professional Standards Commission (PSC) - the committee that is responsible for "certification, preparation, and conduct of certified, licensed, or permitted personnel employed in the public schools of the State of Georgia" - quietly launched an investigation into "diploma mill" teachers. Evidently, at least 10 teachers in the Peach State "have bought bogus advanced degrees from an online university based in Liberia." St. Regis, the Liberian "university" from which the teachers "earned" their degrees, allegedly sells degrees without requiring any coursework.  This is particularly troubling given that, in Georgia, the PSC awards increasing levels of certification based solely on the level of education of its teachers.  (A teacher with a Bachelor's degree, for example, is certified at level three, those earning a master's at level five, those who have completed everything but a doctoral dissertation at level six, and those with a Ph.D. or Ed.D. at level seven.)  These levels are then used by school districts to determine their teachers' salary levels, generally rewarding those teachers who have earned a higher certificate level with a higher salary.  Upon learning of the scam, "the PSC has advised these teachers that their upgraded certification has been recalled and they also face sanctions if a PSC ethics board finds they bought a degree they knew they didn't earn."

"Bogus degrees land teachers in woodshed," D. Aileen Dodd, Atlanta Journal Constitution, March 19, 2004

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg took control of the board of education, with decidedly mixed results so far (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=140#1730). In Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams's similar proposal has met with stiff resistance (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=121#1523). And we are not sanguine about the prospects for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's proposal to take control of the education bureaucracy from the state board in the Land of Lincoln. The central issue in any restructuring, one that the governor has not yet adequately addressed, is not who controls what but what the person in charge plans to do. To sway opponents of the plan - and there are many - Blagojevich has proposed a four-year, $2.2 billion school construction and maintenance plan. Sounds to us like a pork-laden bricks-and-mortar program in return for bureaucratic reforms of dubious value and an indeterminate package of education changes. Bad deal, we think.

"Schools could get $2.2 billion," by Diane Rado and Ray Long, Chicago Tribune, March 23, 2004

"Blagojevich unveils new educational funding during Silvis stop," by Ed Tibbetts, Quad City Times, March 22, 2004

Consortium on Chicago School Research
February 2004

This fine report closely examines the effect of Chicago's decision to end social promotion on that city's students and teachers. The basic policy required pupils to achieve specific scores in reading and math on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills before advancing beyond the third, sixth, and eight grades. This is a timely topic that deserves scrutiny, especially in New York City, where controversy is raging over Mayor Bloomberg's hotly contested and hastily implemented social promotion plan (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=140#1730 for more details). The analysts conducted extensive interviews and surveys and used data from both before and after the policy was implemented (1996-1997) in order to make their comparisons. In brief, they found that the advent of high-stakes testing led to low-performing students receiving more support from teachers and parents and to teachers focusing their instruction more on reading and math. However, they also found that a key concern of testing opponents has merit: teachers spent more time teaching test prep skills - simply explaining techniques for successfully taking a test. (One teacher claimed to have devoted 240 hours to such tasks in 1999.) In addition, the researchers worry that added training may be needed for teachers to actually improve their instruction (rather than just refocusing it), and they note that the long-term effects of grade retention are unclear. Still, most teachers supported the policy - they felt it reinforced their work rather than compromised it - and we judge that there are more positives than negatives to setting higher expectations and accompanying them with real consequences, especially for youngsters who most need the extra push. Unfortunately, despite the positive results shown in this study, Chicago school officials this week scaled back the social promotion plan and will now retain only those students who fail the reading test, while promoting those who pass reading but fail math. Nonetheless, this is a thoughtful report that provides a balanced view of an important and contentious topic; find it at http://www.consortium-chicago.org/publications/p68.html. You can also learn about the Consortium's evaluation of the summer school program required of those Chicago students who are held back by visiting an earlier Gadfly at http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=16#252.

"Windy city schools let up," by Carl Campanile, New York Post, March 25, 2004

"In reversal, Chicago eases promotions," by David S. Herszenhorn, New York Times, March 25, 2004 (registration required)

Frederick M. Hess, Palgrave-MacMillan
2004

Palgrave-MacMillan will soon publish this fine book by Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. It argues that "there is a simple, sensible course that can help provide all of our children with the schools they deserve." Hess says the world is divided between "status quo reformers" and "common sense reformers" and declares that it's time for the latter to prevail. "Common sense reform," he contends, "is straightforward. It focuses on two precepts: accountability and flexibility. Accountability rewards excellence and penalizes failure. . . . Flexibility provides the tools to manage effectively, build teams, govern schools and classrooms, and reward those who take on oversized challenges or put forth exceptional efforts." There's plenty more, a whole book more, organized into substantive chapters on accountability, competition, teachers, school leaders, "reinvention" (major changes in the structures and governance of K-12 education), and what Hess terms "a common sense challenge," which recaps seven principles of reform, urges people to put them into practice, and assigns responsibility to various sectors. Overall, a grand summation of what I judge to be the essential elements of school reform circa 2004, presented lucidly and convincingly. The ISBN is 1-4039-6353-3, and you can learn more at http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1403963533.

Mark Harrison, Education Forum
2004

This fine new book by Australian economist Mark Harrison may supply more information about education in New Zealand than some readers feel is absolutely essential, but it's a solid piece of work that, among other things, demolishes familiar critiques of that country's 1990-era reforms by the likes of Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske. Whereas the latters' 2000 Brookings book, When Schools Compete, attempted to use New Zealand's reform experience to "caution" Americans against school choice, Harrison shows that a close examination of the evidence leads to the opposite conclusion: New Zealand's reforms, limited though they were (and partly rolled back since their original implementation), did children (especially poor and minority children) more good than harm while not going nearly far enough to establish a true competition-based system. Harrison contends that far more reform is needed in New Zealand education, that it's past time to replace a heavily centralized and top-down national primary-secondary system with a true market-based system, joined to related reforms in teacher deployment, pay, etc. The ISBN is 0958213364 and you can learn more by surfing to http://www.educationforum.org.nz/documents/features/education_matters.htm. If 400 pages on this topic is more than you want, check out the excellent recent report from New Zealand's Education Forum, A New Deal: Making Education Work for All New Zealanders, which explains why that land would benefit from market-style reforms, from major changes in teaching, and from introducing an effective assessment and accountability system. American readers will find themselves nodding in recognition of familiar ideas, debates, and research evidence applied to a very different country. You can find it at http://www.educationforum.org.nz/documents/other/a_new_deal.htm.

Michael Casserly, Council of the Great City Schools
March 2004

This is the fourth report by the Council for the Great City Schools on student achievement in urban schools, and the first to include comparison data from two years of NCLB implementation. According to Casserly, executive director of the CGCS and the study's primary author, though the U.S. doesn't have an assessment system that allows us to answer some of the most pressing urban education reform questions - e.g., are city schools improving academically and closing the achievement gap? - "the data from this report indicate that answers are emerging and that urban education may be establishing a beachhead on the rocky shoals of school reform." Specifically, the data suggest that, between 2002 and 2003, the percentage of urban 4th graders reading at or above "proficient" levels on state tests rose almost five points to 47.8 percent. In math over half (51 percent) scored at or above "proficient," a 6.8 percent increase. In other good news, nearly three quarters (73 percent) of 4th grade classes in urban districts narrowed the reading gap between black and white 4th graders and over half (53 percent) of 8th grade classes and 38.9 percent of 10th grade classes narrowed the gap. Still, Casserly warns that the findings in this study "are preliminary and leavened with caution. Some data look better than others. Progress in math is different from that in reading. Trend lines are not the same from one city to another. Not all grades have improved at the same rates. Not all gaps are closing. But the data indicate progress." This report is chock full of interesting data; find it at http://www.cgcs.org/reports/beat_the_oddsIV.html.

"Test scores in large urban school districts make big strides," by Greg Toppo, USA Today, March 21, 2004

"Students progress credited to reform," by George Archibald, Washington Times, March 24, 2004