The Education Gadfly Weekly

National Center for Education Statistics
May 2010

The much anticipated reading TUDA results for 2009 are out today—and the news is a bit surprising. Five cities saw statistically significant gains since 2002 in grade 4 (Atlanta, Chicago, D.C., L.A., and New York City) and two in grade eight (Atlanta and L.A.); Boston gained since 2007 in grade 4 but not grade 8 (it did not participate in 2002). Atlanta’s 2002-2009 gains were the biggest—fourteen points in both grades—while L.A., the other double hitter, saw gains about half that size in both grades. The only city to lose ground was Cleveland, whose scores went down in both grade 4 and grade 8. Unfortunately, the Forest City’s 2009 scores also clocked in below the national average for large cities in both grades, along with those of Baltimore, Detroit, D.C., Fresno, L.A., and Milwaukee. Atlanta, despite its gains, did not score significantly different from the national average, and neither did Houston or San Diego. Subgroup findings for our two big gainers are also worth noting. In grade 4 and grade 8, Atlanta’s white students scored higher than the national average for big cities, while black and free- or reduced-price lunch students tested about the same (there was not enough data for Hispanic students). On the other hand, L.A.’s black students were on par with big cities, while its other subgroups—white, Hispanic, and FRL students mostly clocked in below average. Check out the findings for yourself here.

C. Kirabo Jackson
National Bureau of Economic Research
May 2010

Would an effective teacher at school X be just as effective at school Y? Maybe not, says Cornell labor economist Kirabo Jackson. He examined linked student-teacher and school-level data from 1995 to 2006 in North Carolina to determine whether teacher effectiveness (as measured by student performance) changed depending on school environment. After controlling for a host of variables (including whether teachers simply moved to a school with better outcomes), he found that how well a teacher jives with the school environment (what he calls “match” quality) is as important in determining student achievement as teacher quality. In fact, about a quarter of what we now attribute to teacher quality should really be attributed to how well the teacher “matches” their school environment. A good “match” could mean that a teacher is more effective teaching low-income than affluent students, or using direct instruction than inquiry learning, or in a high-accountability than low-accountability school culture, for example. The effects in math are pronounced—namely that teachers tend to be more effective in that subject after they change schools (presumably to one that is a better match)—while there was no difference in reading. He also studied the types of schools and teachers with “high match quality.” Teachers with more experience have higher match quality in both math and reading, suggesting that it is the match not the experience that may produce higher student outcomes. With so much debate over teacher assignment between low and high poverty schools, we’re hoping for an answer to the next logical question: Which teacher-school pairings are the most conducive to raising student achievement? You can find the intriguing study here (for a small fee).

Richard Whitmire
AMACOM Publishing
2010

Most current commentary focuses on two disturbing achievement gaps in American education: between our socioeconomic classes, and between the United States and its international peers. This book makes a considerable case for a third: between the sexes. It’s a cause on which the author has focused intensely in recent years—especially through his blog, whyboysfail.com, now at Ed Week—and this book is a lively and important culmination of years of research. The statistics speak for themselves: Even in white, affluent suburbs, boys are far more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems, to do poorly in school, and to drop out of high school and college. But stats are more alarming for poor and minority communities. Only 48 percent of black boys ever get a high school diploma, compared to 59 percent of black girls. An astounding 60 percent of black male high school dropouts spend time in prison by their mid-thirties. And it’s nearly impossible to find a public high school where black male students perform equally as well as their female peers. Perhaps the most important exception is (surprise, surprise) KIPP, about which Whitmire writes, “when you refuse to let even a single student slide by, you end up helping boys the most because boys are the big sliders.” He also finds hope in Australia, where the federal government has declared the gender gap a major problem and is implementing a targeted program to counteract it. In the process, he hints that the U.S. Department of Education would be wise to do the same. Above all, he says, it’s the intense reading demands of the modern curriculum that hold boys back, and doing more to help boys learn to read early would go a long way to narrowing the gap. Purchase the book here.

Meredith Honig, Michael Copland, Lydia Rainey, Juli Anna Lorton, Morena Newton
Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, University of Washington
April 2010

Here’s a surprise: District central offices are often disjointed, bureaucratic entities that operate with limited connection to the schools they oversee. But it doesn’t need to be so, argue these University of Washington authors, especially because a central office that’s tapped into its schools can be a powerful driver of reform. “Central offices and the people who work in them are not simply part of the background noise in school improvement,” the authors explain. This report offers a blueprint of how to “tap in,” using the case studies of three districts that appear to have transformed themselves: Atlanta Public Schools, New York City/Empowerment Schools Organization and Oakland Unified School District. The two main takeaways seem common-sensical: “reculturing” every department of the central office to think and perform in the context of improving student achievement and forming better, deeper relationships with principals. Above all, the emphasis should be on people and relationships, say the authors. “While structural changes [in the central office] can be helpful, a transformational strategy is fundamentally about remaking what people in central offices do—their daily work and relationships with school.” We’d counter that it’d be pretty hard to remake what central offices do—and to have them do it well—without the structural changes to back it up. But this is an interesting new take on district governance to add to the field. Read it here.

In our rush to reinvigorate science and math in our nation’s schools, have we left the humanities in the dust? Peter Berkowitz thinks so. “No doubt science and math are vital,” he writes. “But all of the attention being paid to these disciplines obscures a more serious problem: the urgent need to reform liberal education.” According to UNESCO, he explains, America’s K-12 system spends more time—and money—on math and science than almost any other country surveyed, yet has little to show for it in terms of achievement. Berkowitz again: “[S]cience and math education reform begins with the reform of liberal education, of which it is a part.” Translation: We can’t just overhaul one or two subjects; we have to overhaul the entire system. It’s a system that ties together the rich content of reading, writing, history, and philosophy, alongside math and science, into a package that teaches, amongst other things, how “to think independently about what kind of life to live,” “to pass reasoned judgment on public policy,” and “[to] properly evaluate America’s place in the international order.” In other words, to make critically thinking global citizens, we need to teach them rich and varied content of all the disciplines. Well said.

“Opinion: Why Liberal Education Matters,” by Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2010

Conventional wisdom says that a college degree equals a better job, higher lifetime earnings, and a happier life. But is college the only way to live the American Dream? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only seven of the thirty fastest-growing jobs in the next decade will require a bachelor’s degree; and among the top ten, only two will. Postal carriers, nurses’ aides, and store clerks could make a much better investment of the time and money spent on a bachelor’s (or associate’s) by, say, taking vocational courses in their chosen profession. And that’s the argument of a few top economists, who allege our obsession with getting more kids into college is really just shoving a one-size-fits-all solution on a problem that merits a diversity of answers. We’re certainly open to that argument—and concerned about the rhetoric that “college is for everyone.” But at a time when only about 30 percent of Americans have a college degree (of either variety), is this really our most pressing education “problem”?  

“Plan B: Skip College,” by Jacques Steinberg, New York Times, May 14, 2010

“College for All? Experts Say Not Necessarily,” by Alan Scher Zagier (AP), Boston Globe, May 13, 2010

“A Lament for the Class of 2010,” by Joe Queenan, Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2010

No Child Left Behind can be summed up in four words: good ideas gone awry. Unfortunately, one key part of the Obama Administration’s “blueprint” for overhauling the landmark federal law might perpetuate that legacy for another ten years. In particular, the President wants to intervene in schools with large achievement gaps—a well-intentioned instinct that, if implemented sloppily, could punish racially integrated schools for teaching white students too well.

Let’s start with a little context. The most consequential part of the Administration’s NCLB plan isn’t about school turnarounds, or merit pay, or even teacher effectiveness. It’s the call to focus federal accountability efforts on the very worst-performing schools in the country—and to leave the rest alone (or to the mercy of the states). This would be an enormous change, and would take pressure off the vast majority of the nation’s schools.

The proposal makes eminent sense, for, as Secretary Arne Duncan said when releasing his boss’s plan, ED can't micromanage 95,000 schools from Washington and instead needs to focus on a smarter, more targeted federal role. Obama and Duncan would still publish achievement results for all schools—disaggregated by race, income, special education status, etc.—but the typical American school would be more or less off the hook from federally-mandated sanctions.

But there’s an obvious downside to this approach: It pulls back from the notion that all schools should be held accountable for the performance of all of their students. It would allow schools with decent average test scores to skate by even if they post terrible results for their African-American or Hispanic or low-income kids. (This has not gone unnoticed by NCLB stalwarts like former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.)

To address this concern, the Administration added one more wrinkle in its blueprint: Along with the lowest-performing schools in the country, it would also sanction those with large, persistent achievement gaps, which would “be required to implement data-driven interventions to support those students who are farthest behind”; they would also get the dreaded label of a “challenge school.”

But what if some of those schools have large gaps not because their minority students are performing poorly, but because their white students are doing really well? Wouldn’t this needlessly demoralize the staff and students of schools that are actually quite good?

To find out if we were worried about nothing, we dug into the California test score data for math in 2007-2008. (Our data comes from the Academic Development Institute’s Achievement Profile Analytic Tool; we chose California because of its rigorous test and high bar for “proficiency.”) We identified all of the elementary schools with more than a handful of black and white students (there were 720). Then we pondered: Depending on how we define a “large” black-white achievement gap, how many schools would unfairly get the “challenge school” label because of high white student performance rather than low black performance?

We assumed that the Administration is focused on the “proficiency gap”—the difference between the percentage of white students who reach the proficiency bar on the state test and the percentage of minority kids who do. (Ideally, we’d look at white and black average test scores rather than proficiency rates because these are more precise indicators of achievement; unfortunately, states are not required to report these data, and any federal policy would most likely center around proficiency rates.) And then we defined a “large gap” as one that is bigger than average. (In California, that means a black-white gap larger than 23 percentage points.) That gave us 310 schools with above-average black-white gaps.

We crunched some numbers and here’s what we found: More than a third of those schools serve black students who are scoring above-average compared to other black students in the state. These schools aren’t “failing” their black students; if anything, they are doing relatively well by them. But their white students do even better. We ran the numbers for the Hispanic-white gap and got similar results; more than a third of the schools with above-average gaps serve Hispanic students with above-average achievement—but white students who score even higher.

This strikes us a serious defect. It’s particularly worrying for the cause of integration, because the very schools that are likely to get caught in this net are those where affluent (and generally high-achieving) whites attend school with less affluent black and Hispanic students—schools like Malcolm X Arts and Academics Magnet Elementary in Berkeley, California. Malcolm X has an almost equal mix of white and black students—which is not an accident, as the school is part of Berkeley’s “controlled choice” integration program—but posts a huge black-white achievement gap of 44 percentage points. That sounds terrible, but dig into the data and you’ll find that black students at Malcolm X are performing 14 percentage points above the state average for all black students. The reason the gap is so wide is that an impressive 98 percent of white students score at the proficient level (versus 54 percent for blacks). Certainly Malcolm X has room for improvement, but it is far from a “challenge school.” It might even be a model.

This doesn’t mean that the Administration’s proposal should be abandoned completely. But if Congress wants to move ahead with the idea, it should be careful with how it sets the parameters. One way is to define “large gaps” as large enough so you don’t inadvertently capture good schools like Malcolm X. For instance, intervening in the five percent of schools with the biggest black-white achievement gaps would, in California, pinpoint thirty-six schools, only two of which have above-average black achievement. (For the Hispanic-white achievement gap, you’d identify 137 schools, eight of which have above-average Hispanic achievement.) That’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better. You could also decide that only schools with large achievement gaps and low black or Hispanic performance would be identified as “challenge schools.” Surely there are other ways to address this issue too.

The “achievement gap” rhetoric has always been problematic because, if taken seriously, it assumes that high white performance is something to be avoided; nobody believes that to be the case. We’d be much better off talking about raising the achievement of all students—and putting in place policies that encourage exactly that. But if we must legislate gap-closing, let’s make sure we do it the right way: by encouraging higher performance among black and Hispanic students, not by applauding lackluster achievement among whites.

Steven Brill thinks that Race to the Top era will be the teachers’ unions’ undoing. It’s a combination of forces, he explains—five to be exact: a cadre of hard-hitting reformers; a new crop of ed-reform friendly Democratic pols; high-powered foundations giving billions to ed reform initiatives; a charter-school movement providing a stark backdrop to the incompetency of many traditional schools (sometimes in the same building); and RTT itself, which, Brill explains, “before Duncan had dispensed a nickel” had set off “more school reform than [the country] had seen in decades.” But the battle certainly is not over. In perhaps the most piquant theme of Brill’s NYT Mag exposé is the structural and procedural problems with RTT—game-playing if you will. For example, not a trivial number of states checked all the boxes for “stakeholder support,” only to include the final language of their memoranda of understanding in their application appendix with this gem: “Nothing in this M.O.U. shall be construed to override any applicable state or local collective-bargaining requirements.” Then there’s the huge variation in the grading standards of the so-called neutral and well-trained competition judges (explained more fully in Brill’s recent Ed Week piece). So while movement in state capitals has been encouraging, we can’t help but wonder if most of the promised—or even legislated—reforms are like NYC Chancellor Joel Klein says: “telling a woman you’ll marry her in the morning.”

“The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand,” by Steven Brill, New York Times Magazine, May 17, 2010

“Scoring Race to the Top: A Look Behind the Curtain,” by Steven Brill, Education Week, May 18, 2010

C. Kirabo Jackson
National Bureau of Economic Research
May 2010

Would an effective teacher at school X be just as effective at school Y? Maybe not, says Cornell labor economist Kirabo Jackson. He examined linked student-teacher and school-level data from 1995 to 2006 in North Carolina to determine whether teacher effectiveness (as measured by student performance) changed depending on school environment. After controlling for a host of variables (including whether teachers simply moved to a school with better outcomes), he found that how well a teacher jives with the school environment (what he calls “match” quality) is as important in determining student achievement as teacher quality. In fact, about a quarter of what we now attribute to teacher quality should really be attributed to how well the teacher “matches” their school environment. A good “match” could mean that a teacher is more effective teaching low-income than affluent students, or using direct instruction than inquiry learning, or in a high-accountability than low-accountability school culture, for example. The effects in math are pronounced—namely that teachers tend to be more effective in that subject after they change schools (presumably to one that is a better match)—while there was no difference in reading. He also studied the types of schools and teachers with “high match quality.” Teachers with more experience have higher match quality in both math and reading, suggesting that it is the match not the experience that may produce higher student outcomes. With so much debate over teacher assignment between low and high poverty schools, we’re hoping for an answer to the next logical question: Which teacher-school pairings are the most conducive to raising student achievement? You can find the intriguing study here (for a small fee).

Meredith Honig, Michael Copland, Lydia Rainey, Juli Anna Lorton, Morena Newton
Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, University of Washington
April 2010

Here’s a surprise: District central offices are often disjointed, bureaucratic entities that operate with limited connection to the schools they oversee. But it doesn’t need to be so, argue these University of Washington authors, especially because a central office that’s tapped into its schools can be a powerful driver of reform. “Central offices and the people who work in them are not simply part of the background noise in school improvement,” the authors explain. This report offers a blueprint of how to “tap in,” using the case studies of three districts that appear to have transformed themselves: Atlanta Public Schools, New York City/Empowerment Schools Organization and Oakland Unified School District. The two main takeaways seem common-sensical: “reculturing” every department of the central office to think and perform in the context of improving student achievement and forming better, deeper relationships with principals. Above all, the emphasis should be on people and relationships, say the authors. “While structural changes [in the central office] can be helpful, a transformational strategy is fundamentally about remaking what people in central offices do—their daily work and relationships with school.” We’d counter that it’d be pretty hard to remake what central offices do—and to have them do it well—without the structural changes to back it up. But this is an interesting new take on district governance to add to the field. Read it here.

National Center for Education Statistics
May 2010

The much anticipated reading TUDA results for 2009 are out today—and the news is a bit surprising. Five cities saw statistically significant gains since 2002 in grade 4 (Atlanta, Chicago, D.C., L.A., and New York City) and two in grade eight (Atlanta and L.A.); Boston gained since 2007 in grade 4 but not grade 8 (it did not participate in 2002). Atlanta’s 2002-2009 gains were the biggest—fourteen points in both grades—while L.A., the other double hitter, saw gains about half that size in both grades. The only city to lose ground was Cleveland, whose scores went down in both grade 4 and grade 8. Unfortunately, the Forest City’s 2009 scores also clocked in below the national average for large cities in both grades, along with those of Baltimore, Detroit, D.C., Fresno, L.A., and Milwaukee. Atlanta, despite its gains, did not score significantly different from the national average, and neither did Houston or San Diego. Subgroup findings for our two big gainers are also worth noting. In grade 4 and grade 8, Atlanta’s white students scored higher than the national average for big cities, while black and free- or reduced-price lunch students tested about the same (there was not enough data for Hispanic students). On the other hand, L.A.’s black students were on par with big cities, while its other subgroups—white, Hispanic, and FRL students mostly clocked in below average. Check out the findings for yourself here.

Richard Whitmire
AMACOM Publishing
2010

Most current commentary focuses on two disturbing achievement gaps in American education: between our socioeconomic classes, and between the United States and its international peers. This book makes a considerable case for a third: between the sexes. It’s a cause on which the author has focused intensely in recent years—especially through his blog, whyboysfail.com, now at Ed Week—and this book is a lively and important culmination of years of research. The statistics speak for themselves: Even in white, affluent suburbs, boys are far more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems, to do poorly in school, and to drop out of high school and college. But stats are more alarming for poor and minority communities. Only 48 percent of black boys ever get a high school diploma, compared to 59 percent of black girls. An astounding 60 percent of black male high school dropouts spend time in prison by their mid-thirties. And it’s nearly impossible to find a public high school where black male students perform equally as well as their female peers. Perhaps the most important exception is (surprise, surprise) KIPP, about which Whitmire writes, “when you refuse to let even a single student slide by, you end up helping boys the most because boys are the big sliders.” He also finds hope in Australia, where the federal government has declared the gender gap a major problem and is implementing a targeted program to counteract it. In the process, he hints that the U.S. Department of Education would be wise to do the same. Above all, he says, it’s the intense reading demands of the modern curriculum that hold boys back, and doing more to help boys learn to read early would go a long way to narrowing the gap. Purchase the book here.