The Education Gadfly Weekly

Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Achieve, Inc.
February 2005

A survey of recent high school grads, employers and college instructors, released this week by Achieve, Inc., provides compelling statistics to back up the proposition that standards in U.S. public high schools are distressingly low and that they are inadequately preparing students for success in college and the workplace. According to the Achieve survey, "fewer than one-quarter of high school graduates feel that they were significantly challenged and faced high expectations in order to graduate from high school" and "an overwhelming majority of graduates say that they would have worked harder if their high school demanded more of them and set higher academic standards" - findings that take wind out of the sails of critics who believe students can't possibly rise to the expectation of higher standards and stricter accountability. Further, more than half of college students say that "high school left them unprepared for the work and study habits expected in college," and an astonishing 31 percent of students who think they were extremely well prepared for college level work nevertheless took at least one remedial course. Worse still, 41 percent of employers are "dissatisfied with graduates' ability to read and understand complicated materials," 42 percent are dissatisfied with graduates' ability to think analytically, 39 percent with their ability to apply what they learn to solve real-world problems, and 34 percent with their communications skills. A meager 18 percent of college professors "feel that most of their students come to college extremely or very well prepared." In fact, "even at colleges with competitive admissions policies that only let in high-performing students, only 30 percent of instructors say that most of their students come to college well prepared." In all, a severe indictment of the success of today's high schools in preparing students for what follows. You can find it at www.achieve.org.

Governor's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Financing Student Success in the State of Ohio
February 2005

No matter that "government by commission" hasn't served Ohio well in the past (though it's gotten plenty of issues off Governor Taft's desk). No matter that Ohio is now one of the highest-taxed states in the land, that its economy is a wreck, and that it's pauperizing itself via excessive public spending. Never mind that a Noah's Ark style panel of "stakeholders" can never agree on anything except more, more, more. No matter. In 2003, the Governor empanelled a "Blue Ribbon Task Force on Financing Student Success" and charged it with devising a new school finance system for the Buckeye State, which the Supreme Court had mandated but the executive branch and legislature have never been able to agree on. Now that group has reported and, with a couple of exceptions, its report is as awful as you might expect. Though the Task Force correctly diagnosed a host of ills in Ohio's current public education system, and though it uses fine rhetoric about boosting student success and pupil achievement, this report is not about the education system's effectiveness, efficiency, or productivity. It's about adding to the system's inputs, i.e. revenues, and doing so according to the Marxist principle that "state resources be distributed to the districts whose students are most in need." Indeed, the Task Force explicitly calls for school funding to be based on "inputs" - a calculus of what's supposedly needed to fund salaries, buildings, etc. - and rejects the view that the average spending of high-performing districts ought to be sufficient for all districts to succeed. Needless to say, it addresses only the finances of "school districts" and is stone silent on the state's severe underfunding of the charter schools that now enroll tens of thousands of the state's neediest kids precisely because many of those cherished districts are serving them so poorly. A dismal, dismal performance, but expect the Governor, in his budget message today, to embrace nearly all of the Task Force's ill-founded analyses and recommendations. (He is expected to distance himself from the most contentious of them, a complex provision to amend the state constitution to "entitle" school districts to increasing revenues as property values rise. As noted above, he's also expected to break some new ground with a voucher proposal.) It's hard to believe you will want to read this ill-conceived report, but you can find it at http://www.blueribbontaskforce.ohio.gov/.

Despite unions' knee-jerk opposition to any plan that takes teacher performance into account when setting salaries and determining raises and bonuses, teachers around the country are warming to the idea. For instance, the Washington Post's Jay Mathews writes about the increasing popularity of National Board Certification, which, according to some educators, is "the single most powerful merit pay system in public education today." Fred Lampazzi, a National Board certified teacher in Fairfax County, Virginia, said that he applied for this mark of distinction because he "felt that [he] was a very good teacher who takes pride in understanding the pedagogy of teaching, and [he] wanted affirmation of [his] abilities from a rigorous evaluation process." In La Crescent, Minnesota, where a pilot pay-for-performance plan has been in place for four years, teachers get an annual raise only if they fulfill performance goals. There, according to Brian Bakst of the Associated Press, "teachers are trying hard to prove they're worth the money, from more frequent student testing, to emailing parents, to trying out different styles for their students." Education Week reports that pay-for-performance plans have now been proposed in at least 5 states, including Minnesota, Texas, and California. And, while the NEA and most of its state affiliates maintain an anti-merit pay stance, arguing that such programs can be "too subjective," the union seems to be losing allies—including some affiliates and local branches. Bill Walsh, of the Minnesota Department of Education says, "When we talk to local unions about what [pay-for-performance] means for their teachers, we get more excitement." According to Bakst, even the Minnesota PTA "favors blending the traditional system with bonuses for superior teaching performance." As Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty remarked recently, most people are beginning to realize that performance pay is "not meant to be a punishment. I think we're all big enough to realize the system we have now is outdated."

"Governors seek new teacher-pay methods," David J. Hoff, Education Week, February 2, 2005

"Teachers warm to idea of performance pay," Brian Bakst, Associated Press, February 8, 2005

"For elite U.S. teachers, cachet and more cash," Jay Mathews, Washington Post, February 8, 2005

The Washington Post's V. Dion Haynes reports on a "new" People for the American Way "study" of the D.C. voucher program. New only if you were on vacation in June 2004, when the Washington Post and the Washington Times (click here for our take) both pointed out that, in the program's first year, most voucher recipients were already enrolled in private schools, mainly due to a lack of applications from students in underperforming public schools, mainly due to the program's late start. This week's story reminds readers that "scholarship fund officials have said . . . more public schoolchildren would have applied if organizers had more time to publicize the program." Next year, WSF will an opportunity to prove it. A thought experiment: If 100 percent of D.C. voucher students came from public schools, would PFAW be happy? We somehow don't think so.

"Group opposed to vouchers cites shortcomings," V. Dion Haynes, Washington Post, February 7, 2005

As recently as two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education reconfirmed in writing the message it had conveyed to North Dakota educators in December: the state's plan for designating elementary teachers as "highly qualified" does not meet NCLB requirements (click here for more). The caterwauling from North Dakota's congressional members and state leaders was tremendous, but the feds seemed prepared to hold the state to the letter of the law. And North Dakota teachers sensibly began to accept the fact that they wouldn't be deemed highly qualified just because they'd spent years in the classroom. Many started to take steps to come into compliance. In other words, people's behavior was starting to change, exactly as NCLB intended. Unfortunately, just last week - a mere three days after Margaret Spellings was confirmed, and perhaps before she really focused on this episode - the Department reversed its earlier decision and told North Dakota that all elementary teachers currently practicing in the state with certification and an education major will be considered in compliance with NCLB's highly qualified teacher provision. At least for now and maybe longer. While Spellings "wouldn't characterize [the move] as a reversal by any stretch," because North Dakota supposedly has a "high, objective, uniform state standard for evaluation" - a.k.a. HOUSSE, the loophole that has been exploited by many states - we question whether this move sets the right tone for a leader who claims that "states shouldn't expect waivers from the law under her watch."

"Spellings to listen, but not retreat, on NCLB," by Erik K. Robelen and Lynn Olson, Education Week, February 4, 2005

"Feds say teachers qualified to teach after all," by Paulette Tobin, Grand Forks Herald, February 3, 2005

"State must comply with federal education ruling," by Sheena Dooley, Bismarck Tribune, January 25, 2005

In Duvall, Washington, parents are objecting to a "senior project" graduation requirement for high school seniors that requires a report, an oral presentation, and a "product" of some sort. Sounds reasonable enough to us, especially since everybody knows that big chunks of senior year are pretty much wasted. But a group of parents - perhaps the same parents who once "wore black armbands to graduation after three seniors were barred from the ceremonies for plagiarizing parts of their papers" - have sued the local district to have the requirement removed. Reports the Wall Street Journal, "Sally Coomer, a mother of seven, maintains that some teachers and administrators seemed more focused on maintaining their power to set and enforce standards than they were on inspiring students to excel. 'In my entire life, I have never seen such bizarre, power-trip behavior as I have with this whole senior-project thing,' she says." After parents picketed, the school board cravenly caved, reducing both the workload and the project's impact on final grades, with predictable results: "[S]tudents began to take the project less seriously: 43 percent of the graduating class of 2004 received Fs on their papers, up from 9 percent for the class of 2003, the year before the changes." But Coomer and others aren't satisfied. What's the lesson for the kids? If at first you don't succeed, hire a lawyer and sue! The parents of Duvall must be busting with pride. This sequence does not bode well, by the way, for administration efforts to expand NCLB testing requirements to high school.

"When high schools try getting tough, parents fight back," by Robert Tomsho, Wall Street Journal, February 8, 2005 (subscription required)

Ohio's generally risk-averse Governor Bob Taft is expected to astound the Buckeye State today with a budget-message proposal to expand the Cleveland voucher program such that kids trapped in some 70 chronically low-performing public schools elsewhere in Ohio could exit with $3,500 state vouchers in hand, redeemable in participating private schools. This resembles Florida's "opportunity scholarship" plan and would be a swell thing for Ohio's neediest kids - and a wake-up call for their current schools that nothing in the state's present accountability system can rival. With a GOP-majority legislature in Columbus and a serious school choice supporter in the House speaker's office, it even stands a decent chance of being enacted. Team it up with President Bush's proposed $50 million federal voucher fund and Ohio's kids might begin to see light at the end of their very long dark tunnel.

"Taft pushes vouchers for schools," Catherine Candisky and Mark Niquette, The Columbus Dispatch, February 10, 2005 (subscription required)

"Taft plans to expand school vouchers," Sandy Theis, Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 10, 2005

"Taft program would widen school choice," James Drew and Jim Provance, Toledo Blade, February 10, 2005

Choice Incentive Fund, Fiscal Year 2006 Budget Summary, February 7, 2005

Any long-term strategy for peace in the Middle East has to include dealing with the pernicious influence of radical madrassas, the Islamic schools used to spread a venomous version of Islam and to grow new extremists and terrorists. A Washington Post review of a new book, The Idea of Pakistan, by Brookings South Asia expert Stephen Cohen, identifies one reason madrassas are so popular in that country: parents have no alternative in a land where the state school system has all but collapsed. "On recent trips to Pakistan," reviewer Owen Bennett Jones writes, "I visited two village schools without warning. Both times, the children were sitting in serried ranks, ready and keen to learn. But no teachers were present." Pakistan is one of 12 countries that spends less than 2 percent of GDP on education. Confronting the madrassas would be an enormous political challenge, but Pakistan not only ignores them, it doesn't attempt to provide a decent alternative, despite promises by Pakistani leader Musharraf to improve the schools. Concludes Jones, "Musharraf's failure to make good on his education pledges is his gravest sin. After all, what is the point of a military government if it can't implement policies that have widespread support and require only a modicum of political will?"

"With friends like these," by Owen Bennett Jones, Washington Post, February 6, 2005

Every few years comes some event that is supposed to herald a new era of bipartisan togetherness on education. Five years ago, it was the news that former labor secretary Robert Reich supported school vouchers (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/102900-02.htm). Before that, there was John Kerry's 1998 speech on ending teacher tenure (http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=110&subid=135&contentid=1533). And of course, Ted Kennedy's co-sponsorship of No Child Left Behind - and muzzling of National Education Association opposition during that law's negotiations - was supposed to be a seminal moment during which a new "accountability consensus" emerged.

Well, like Charlie Brown and the football, you can't blame people for trying, no matter how many times the ball gets pulled away at the last minute. And while there are estimable Democrats who've made valiant efforts on behalf of school choice, rigorous accountability, charter schools, and the like - think of Dianne Feinstein, Tony Williams, and Howard Fuller - the list also includes any number of Democrats who paid a high price for their journeys off the education policy reservation. (Recall Floyd Flake, drummed out of the Congressional Black Caucus for his support of vouchers, as just one example.)

The latest such episode is the rumblings of a "New Unionism," one that's allegedly open to various verboten education reforms, maybe even vouchers. Two Sundays ago, the New York Times Magazine had a long profile of Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, who has thrown down the gauntlet to the AFL-CIO: change or die. Specifically, he wants to merge scads of smaller unions into 20 or so big ones, end cross-industry poaching that has the machinists' union representing flight attendants, and open up the labor movement to new thinking on previously taboo issues. The economic policy of Democrats, Stern told the Times, "is basically being opposed to Republicans and protecting the New Deal. It makes me realize how vibrant the Republicans are in creating 21st century ideas, and how sad it is that we're defending 60-year-old ideas." Among those old ideas, he intimates, is opposition to school vouchers.

No one has been more vocal about the possibilities (and imperatives) of a New Union shift on education reform than the blogger Eduwonk, a.k.a. Andrew Rotherham of the Progressive Policy Institute. (I should mention that Eduwonk has always made clear his personal opposition to vouchers.) He noted an earlier Stern comment that suggested an openness to vouchers a few weeks ago (http://www.eduwonk.com/archives/2005_01_02_archive.html#110485379824854811) and followed up after the Times piece appeared (http://www.eduwonk.com/archives/2005_01_30_archive.html#110710613154470041). Eduwonk has scolded education reformers for viewing "the unions" as a monolith. "Instead of, rightly, criticizing teachers' unions that fight tooth and nail against charter schools, they paint the opposition with the broad brush of 'unions,'" he writes.

Yet outside of teachers' unions, there is no reason why union members should be any more naturally predisposed to support or oppose charter schools (or any other education reform) than the general public. So antagonizing them from the get-go isn't very politically smart. In fact, on the contrary, a lot of union members make likely allies in various educational improvement efforts because it's their kids bearing the brunt of some of these problems, too.

As we've often noted, Eduwonk is generally perspicacious, sometimes even wise, and Rotherham has made his own appearances in Gadfly. We like and respect him. All the more, we must warn him and his fans and readers that the New Unionism football is not going to be there when he finishes his approach.

To start, the hook Eduwonk hangs his argument on - that we should stop talking about "the unions" and qualify that with "teacher," lest we alienate potential allies - is pure straw man. Everybody knows that we're not talking about the musicians local. More substantively, we doubt that Andy Stern, no matter how much New Agey corporate jargon he channels, is quite the free-thinker that Eduwonk and others make him out to be. He is, after all, a former government employee himself - he started as a welfare caseworker - and there is nothing in his biography that inclines one to suppose that he thinks differently about vouchers (or other issues such as charter schools, tenure, performance pay, etc.) than your average public-sector unionist.

That said, conversion and redemption are possible. So let's give Stern the benefit of the doubt. Say he is truly open-minded on vouchers and willing to challenge liberal orthodoxy on that and other issues. What can he do about it? And why would he want to?

This is where think-tank chin-tugging runs into political reality. The labor movement is both in serious decline and being taken over by government employee unions such as the NEA and AFT (and allied unions such as the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees). Read the 1/31/05 Communiqu?? from the Education Intelligence Agency (http://www.eiaonline.com/) for details. Union membership is at its lowest level in a century, but public-school teaching is the single most unionized sector in the entire workforce. In fact, government workers as a whole are more than four times more likely than private sector employees to be unionized. Meanwhile, the institutions that have experienced the greatest decline in membership and influence are precisely the private-sector industrial unions - now comprising less than 10 percent of the total labor force - that Eduwonk identifies as potential allies in the education reform fight.

Simply put, it is inconceivable that even the savvy Andrew Stern could move the NEA, the AFT, and AFSCME to countenance "new union" thinking on vouchers. To do so would imperil the very existence of the first two institutions, while the third would doubtless stand with fellow government unionists for fear of a slippery slope toward full-scale privatization. It is equally inconceivable that Stern would allow vouchers (or a similar education issue) to become a stumbling block to his plans to remake the AFL-CIO. Support for vouchers could literally sunder the labor movement, shearing off industrial era unions from their government-employee counterparts. Unionism can ill-afford a breach of that magnitude - which Stern knows well. And while vouchers are an issue to die over, charters, tenure, and performance pay are only slightly less central to the teacher union agenda.

I suggest that industrial-era unionism is a spent force in a service-industry economy. For better or worse (in my view, mostly worse), government-sector unionism is the future of the labor movement - which means that its interests will shape the labor agenda. (And even that future is tenuous; the recent Bush administration proposal to reform the civil-service system, http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=624410, is self-consciously the opening gambit in an effort to break the back of government unionism.)

As Terry Moe (http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006192) has recently reminded us, unions are not policy shops given to noodling about innovative reforms in any sector. They exist to advocate for the pocketbook interests of their members. And a labor movement whose money, power, and organizing muscle increasingly depend on its public-sector members is not going to move forward with "new thinking" that could endanger the sinecures in which millions of union members perch.

Simply put, government-sector unions like the NEA and AFSCME will bend the industrial unions to their will on the education issues that are their bread and butter, not the other way around. As a result, it seems more likely that the labor movement's opposition to vouchers is going to harden, not soften. And once more, the political football will be snatched from education reformers at the very moment we get ready to make contact.

"The new boss," by Matt Bai, New York Times Magazine, January 30, 2005 (subscription required, plus small fee for archive retrieval)

"Future of civil service," by Tim Kauffman and Eileen Sullivan, Federal Times, January 31, 2005

"No teacher left behind," by Terry Moe, Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2005

Much caterwauling has accompanied the president's new budget. Senator Kennedy thundered that the proposal, which reduces Department of Education funding about 1 percent, to $56 billion, is "the most anti-student, anti-education budget since the Republicans tried to abolish the Department of Education." Suffice to say he is exaggerating. The budget actually increases Pell Grant funding by 45 percent (to $18 billion), and gives new money to math and science partnerships, charter school grant programs, high school reading initiatives, and Title I. Taking a hit are Safe and Drug-Free Schools programs (famously ineffectual), a whole bunch of tiny special-interest-group favorites, and outmoded voc ed programs. Given that Congress larded up the present year's education funding bill with hundreds and hundreds AND HUNDREDS of useless pork-barrel earmarks (see http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050109-120809-9076r.htm), we suspect that 1 percent will not cause undue hardship to the children.

"A cut for schools, a first for Bush," by Anne E. Kornblut, New York Times, February 8, 2005 (subscription required)

"President's FY 2006 budget focuses resources on students who need them most," Department of Education, February 7, 2005

President's FY 2006 Budget Request for the U.S. Department of Education, February 2005

"Charter school programs level-funded," Charter School Leadership Council, February 8, 2005

Governor's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Financing Student Success in the State of Ohio
February 2005

No matter that "government by commission" hasn't served Ohio well in the past (though it's gotten plenty of issues off Governor Taft's desk). No matter that Ohio is now one of the highest-taxed states in the land, that its economy is a wreck, and that it's pauperizing itself via excessive public spending. Never mind that a Noah's Ark style panel of "stakeholders" can never agree on anything except more, more, more. No matter. In 2003, the Governor empanelled a "Blue Ribbon Task Force on Financing Student Success" and charged it with devising a new school finance system for the Buckeye State, which the Supreme Court had mandated but the executive branch and legislature have never been able to agree on. Now that group has reported and, with a couple of exceptions, its report is as awful as you might expect. Though the Task Force correctly diagnosed a host of ills in Ohio's current public education system, and though it uses fine rhetoric about boosting student success and pupil achievement, this report is not about the education system's effectiveness, efficiency, or productivity. It's about adding to the system's inputs, i.e. revenues, and doing so according to the Marxist principle that "state resources be distributed to the districts whose students are most in need." Indeed, the Task Force explicitly calls for school funding to be based on "inputs" - a calculus of what's supposedly needed to fund salaries, buildings, etc. - and rejects the view that the average spending of high-performing districts ought to be sufficient for all districts to succeed. Needless to say, it addresses only the finances of "school districts" and is stone silent on the state's severe underfunding of the charter schools that now enroll tens of thousands of the state's neediest kids precisely because many of those cherished districts are serving them so poorly. A dismal, dismal performance, but expect the Governor, in his budget message today, to embrace nearly all of the Task Force's ill-founded analyses and recommendations. (He is expected to distance himself from the most contentious of them, a complex provision to amend the state constitution to "entitle" school districts to increasing revenues as property values rise. As noted above, he's also expected to break some new ground with a voucher proposal.) It's hard to believe you will want to read this ill-conceived report, but you can find it at http://www.blueribbontaskforce.ohio.gov/.

Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Achieve, Inc.
February 2005

A survey of recent high school grads, employers and college instructors, released this week by Achieve, Inc., provides compelling statistics to back up the proposition that standards in U.S. public high schools are distressingly low and that they are inadequately preparing students for success in college and the workplace. According to the Achieve survey, "fewer than one-quarter of high school graduates feel that they were significantly challenged and faced high expectations in order to graduate from high school" and "an overwhelming majority of graduates say that they would have worked harder if their high school demanded more of them and set higher academic standards" - findings that take wind out of the sails of critics who believe students can't possibly rise to the expectation of higher standards and stricter accountability. Further, more than half of college students say that "high school left them unprepared for the work and study habits expected in college," and an astonishing 31 percent of students who think they were extremely well prepared for college level work nevertheless took at least one remedial course. Worse still, 41 percent of employers are "dissatisfied with graduates' ability to read and understand complicated materials," 42 percent are dissatisfied with graduates' ability to think analytically, 39 percent with their ability to apply what they learn to solve real-world problems, and 34 percent with their communications skills. A meager 18 percent of college professors "feel that most of their students come to college extremely or very well prepared." In fact, "even at colleges with competitive admissions policies that only let in high-performing students, only 30 percent of instructors say that most of their students come to college well prepared." In all, a severe indictment of the success of today's high schools in preparing students for what follows. You can find it at www.achieve.org.