The Education Gadfly Weekly

William G. Ouchi
Simon & Schuster
2009

U.C.L.A. business professor Bill Ouchi has authored another valuable contribution to the education-reform literature. (We reviewed his last big book, here.) “TSL” stands for “total student load” and refers to the number of students that a teacher is responsible for and also to the number of students in a school. He contends, plausibly enough, that small schools are easier to lead and manage than big ones and that they’re more likely to be managed successfully by principals who are competent but not necessarily superstar executives. He also contends, again plausibly, that a teacher responsible over the course of a day or week for 80 or so students is far more effective with them than one who must contend with twice that number.. But this useful book isn’t ultimately about class or school size. Befitting a scholar of management, it’s really about effective school and district organization. He sets out five “pillars of school empowerment” and “four freedoms” that actually give principals the capacity to lead their schools. Along the way, he does an admirable job of explaining how districts should be decentralized and why they work better when they are. Taken seriously, Ouchi’s analysis would do important good for American K-12 education, particularly in big cities and large districts. It’s not the whole story, however. Important as it is, for example, for schools to control their curriculum, that doesn’t get us very far if it’s a loopy, flabby, trendy or ineffectual curriculum, or one taught by instructors who don’t know their stuff. Nor must one buy Ouchi’s assumption that districts are forever. Is it not possible that the geographically-based district itself is an obsolete management structure and that U.S. education would be better off with a direct relationship between states and a host of fully empowered charter-like schools, CMOs, EMOs, and other operators, some of them virtual, some of them national? Still, as long as we have the structure we have, wise policymakers and state and district leaders would do well to heed Bill Ouchi’s findings and sage advice. You can find the book here.

Ann Huff Stevens and Jessamyn Schaller
National Bureau of Economic Research
November 2009

If one or both parents are laid off, are their children more likely to be held back in school? That’s what this analysisprobes out using longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Initially finding a correlation between grade retention for children and rates of parental job loss, the authors wanted to make sure that this relationship was not caused by other factors. But after controlling for a host of variables, such as household income (before the layoff), parental education, previous grade retention (whether the student was held back before), sibling grade retention (whether a brother or sister was held back), race, and gender, the relationship still persisted. In fact, the authors concluded that having a parent lose his or her job increased by fifteen percent the probability that their child would be held back in school. Though the authors overlook social promotion, a widespread problem likely to affect any grade-retention-based dataset, their findings make intuitive sense: Financial stress at home will probably leak into the classroom. That does not, however, mean we should add parental job loss to the list of excuses for weak pupil performance; instead, the authors advise, we should be devoting more energy and resources to these children rather than assuming they are beyond our reach. You can purchase the report here.

Will Dobbie and Roland G. Fryer, Jr
National Bureau of Economic Research
November 2009

With President Obama’s determination to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in urban districts across the country, this NBER working paper is particularly timely. It addresses the age-old question of whether schools can overcome the myriad issues that socioeconomic disadvantaged students bring to the classroom and finds that they can--but maybe not without the help of health, parenting, and college counseling services. HCZ covers a 97-block area in central Harlem--offering services to those outside its bounds as well--and incorporates programs and services from birth to college, including charter schooling at one of HCZ’s Promise Academies. They divided HCZ offerings into two groups: 1. community programs available to anyone in the Zone; 2. school programs only available to Promise Academy students and their families and school programs only available to Promise Academy students. They used a couple of methodologies, the most robust of which was comparing students who were lottiered in or out of HCZ’s charter schools. They found that students enrolled in the sixth grade made enough progress by the eighth grade to close the black-white achievement gap in math and reduce it by half in English language arts. Elementary students saw the gap closed in both subjects. Notably, analysts also found that students of all ability levels were equally benefited by attending Zone charters (and receiving the services that go along with them). The study concluded that these gains could not be attributed to the community programs alone, but they could not untangle the effects of attending one of HCZ’s charter schools from the bells and whistles that come with doing so. These gains are surely promising, but with a price tag of almost $20,000 per student (HCZ tops off public per-pupil costs with its own money), we should be wary of replicating the system willy-nilly without considering whether a small program of very dedicated people can effectively be reproduced on a national scale. You can purchase the report here.

“Why you should hate this school.” That’s the sub-head for an article in September’s Washingtonian on what some say is America’s best high school: Thomas Jefferson in Northern Virginia. Started in 1985 to produce more and better math and science stars for the region’s high-tech economy, TJ has grown beyond that vision, and not because the school planned--or even wanted--to do so. It’s the ever-increasing talent of its student population, which boasts state-champion sports stars, award winning musicians, and more National Merit finalists than any other school in the country, and that’s not accounting for the scads of computer nerds, sciences whizzes, and mathletes. But now, says author Drew Lindsay, the school is wondering, “How much success is too much?” Should we worry that 15 year-olds are pulling all-nighters and are so motivated they’ve become professional students, working the system to angle every point on every test, tear down records, and be the next Nobel prize winner? Well, maybe not. We can’t quite bring ourselves to complain that a school is too good, or that its students work too hard. TJ is indeed lucky to be awash in super applicants. (It’s as hard to get into as Georgetown or Williams.) We shouldn’t begrudge this school its success. We should, on the other hand, create more schools like it.

“Success Factory: Inside America’s Best High School,” by Drew Lindsay, The Washingtonian, September 21, 2009

Rewarding teachers based on their skill and performance may be a contentious issue in the United States, but in Afghanistan it’s seen as a recruiting tool. This week, 42,000 teachers sat for a nationwide exam intended to inform pay raises based on competency. Currently, teacher salaries are so low that most teachers are forced to work a second job, and that means the job isn’t attractive to educated professionals. Hence only one in four current Afghani teachers went beyond high school. But tying pay to intellectual prowess and accomplishment is more than just a carrot for talent. The government also hopes to attract international aid. One reason today’s salaries are so low is because the government is out of cash to pay them and international aid groups are wary of putting up funds without knowing anything about the skill of the country’s educators. Officials hope greater transparency about those skills will help to attract dollars, Euros, yen, etc. The importance of education in worn-torn countries has been a reoccurring theme. Greg Mortenson’s school-building work in Pakistan (chronicled in Three Cups of Tea) hopes to offer an alternative to politicized madrassas. Afghanistan, too, needs better education than it can presently deliver. Let’s hope the current move succeeds on all fronts.

“Big test for Afghanistan education,” by Ben Arnoldy, The Christian Science Monitor, November 13, 2009

I, too, will be celebrating and giving thanks for America next week. The backward look is pretty darn impressive. But I worry when I look ahead. Chinese leaders beating up on President Obama during his first visit to their country--and his making nice because we owe them so much money, this after he stiffed the Dalai Lama during a recent visit to D.C.--is but the latest symptom of an enormous problem that I am certainly not alone in identifying: The country is in gradual decline. Not only did the “American century” end almost a decade ago but our national prospects continue to dim. It’s not night, but it feels like twilight.

Many people seem oblivious, going about their own affairs without reference to ominous but very gradual trends, rather like the frog that didn’t know it would be boiled because the water in that pot was warming so slowly.

Yet there’s underlying disquiet. On the classic pollster question, “Do you think things in the nation are generally headed in the right direction, or do you feel that things are off on the wrong track?," NBC and the Wall Street Journal reported in late October that just 36 percent of Americans specified “right direction” compared with 52 percent that opted for “wrong track.” Yes, these are fickle numbers that have been much farther up and farther down in recent years. “Wrong track” was a lot higher in the late Bush years--but it hasn’t gone below 43 percent since Obama’s election and I cannot find in such data a huge amount of confidence in the country’s basic course.

Still, my anxiety isn’t grounded in survey results. It arises from seven independent observations that add up, I think, to worrisome signs of national decay.

First are America’s flat education results and sagging international performance. Nearly all our major test-score trend lines have been horizontal for decades--the small upward and downward blips tend to balance out--and comparisons with other lands show us mediocre to woeful. We could once respond that the U.S. makes up in education “quantity” (e.g., graduation and matriculation rates) what we may lack in quality but that’s not true any longer. Half a dozen countries now best us on those measures, too.

Second, I do a fair amount of international travel and it’s clearer every time I go abroad that people in other nations don’t much want dollars any more. Our currency used to be the one that everybody craved, the international medium of exchange, the world’s reserve currency, the trusty greenback. Now, vendors, shopkeepers and taxi drivers say to me, the dollar will be worth less tomorrow than it is today so please pay us instead in Euros, rubles, yen, yuan, even Thai baht.

Third, our national government can no longer make big decisions. Whether the challenge at hand is immigration, excessive litigation, discrepant academic standards, swine flu, financial regulation, hurricane Katrina, mass transit, climate change, Afghanistan--pick your topic--Congress either avoids the problem altogether or kicks the can down the road for someone to worry about later. Or, as in stimulus spending and the current health-care debacle, it concocts a baffling, bulky assemblage of lobbyist demands, interest group enthusiasms, exemptions and porky projects that avoids hard-edged reforms. Once upon a time, lawmakers could figure out a reasonable facsimile of the public interest and make decisions based on it, sometimes even tough decisions. Today that almost never happens.

Fourth, because we’re particularly bad--not just in Washington (check out Sacramento, Albany, Columbus, etc.)--at making tough decisions that result in less of anything for anyone, even when they don’t need it; because everyone lives for what they can grab today rather than a better tomorrow; because nothing ever really goes away, even if it isn’t working; because “reform” therefore means adding something more atop what we already have; and because nobody likes to pay taxes, the debt burden we are passing onward to our kids and grandkids is staggering. It will be almost impossible for them to enjoy good lives in a prosperous land. This turns out to be true even in states and municipalities with constitutions that purport to require balanced budgets. It’s remarkable how clever their budget directors, bankers, and bond attorneys have gotten at finding ways to defer paying.

Fifth, the failures of government are due in large measure to the prevalence in our culture and our politics of polarization, selfishness, and bad manners. Everybody is out for number one; nobody wants to compromise; people wallow in their ideologies; a lot of folks would rather scream than listen; and we seem to take pride in highlighting our differences rather than finding common ground.

Sixth, we don’t fix things that are broken. (That’s true in our private lives, too. Try to get a shaver, toaster, or TV repaired nowadays, or a torn coat mended. People throw them away instead and buy new ones.) We don’t replace the tracks under our trains, the pipes under our cities, the bridges across our rivers, the safety systems on our subways. We don’t fire incompetent people, abolish obsolete institutions, or get rid of failed programs. We don’t “reform” messed-up public services and policies so much as create complex new ones. We don’t renew the dying cities of the old industrial heartland, overhaul the failed practices of Wall Street, or replace our obsolete “emergency alert” system.

Seventh, and finally, we’re giving up on too many of the great challenges and opportunities that we face, including realms where America was once terrific. NASA has pretty much abandoned space exploration, at least the manned kind. We don’t seem even to be trying very hard to extirpate nuclear weapons from Iran. China is turning into the next hegemon. My wife the doctor says that European and Asian countries are more adept and adventurous today in medical research than we are. Airbus is getting a lot more new planes into the air than Boeing. Our domestic auto industry is all but defunct.

Yes, it’s depressing, reminiscent of the slow decline of earlier “empires” (Roman, Ottoman, Mughal, Spanish, British, etc). And I’m not sure it’s reversible. Charles Krauthammer, one of the smartest, sagest folks around, recently declared in The Weekly Standard that “decline is a choice,” not an inevitability, and attributed our present ennui to Washington’s regnant “left-liberalism.” In many policy spheres, he’s probably correct, but the cultural, behavioral, and attitudinal manifestations of declinism seem to me to go deeper than politics.

Hence doing something about it--if anything is to be done--will call for an infusion of moral and spiritual leadership, not just the political kind. Barack Obama was elected in no small part because people saw in him the possibility of a brighter future for themselves, their kids, and their country. It’s possible that he will yet deliver. But we probably expect too much and in many realms his team is making matters worse, not better. Krauthammer sees him channeling Jimmy Carter--and steering us into, rather than out of, malaise. But there’s nobody in sight--not in my field of vision, anyway--who has the moxie, character, and vision to tug us back uphill toward that shining city.

The education bill that made it through the Massachusetts state senate, replete with a whopping 95 amendments, late Tuesday is being lauded as the biggest reform bill since the 1993-wonder that brought charters and much else to the Bay State. And it does have some fine features: The rule limiting charter attendance to 4 percent of Massachusetts students was scrapped, and the 9 percent cap on local spending on charters was raised to 18 percent in low-performing districts. Also attached to this Christmas tree, however, are yet another faux-charter "innovation school" model (as if the Bay State didn't have enough of these already) as well as a stipulation that the first two charter applications considered by the state each year come from low-scoring districts. Since the state only approves 2-3 applications a year anyway, that rule effectively maintains the cap for the other 90 or so percent of districts. The lesson here isn't in these details, though; it's that this bill, which moves to the House for consideration in January--a rushed session right before Race to the Top applications are due--is a prime example of 11th hour RTT covetousness creating policy fixes that may do more harm than good--or at least look better than they probably are. It was high time for Mass. to raise its charter cap, but let's make sure the stimulus dollar cha-ching ringing in our ears doesn't deafen us to faulty last-minute concessions.

"Editorial: Education reform is in for a big test," by Scott Lehigh, Boston Globe, November 13, 2009

"Opposition grows to education reform bill," by James Vaznis, Metro Desk a blog of the Boston Globe, November 16, 2009

"Amendments bog down charter school bill in Senate," by James Vaznis, Boston Globe, November 17, 2009

"Senate passes education reform bill," by Statehouse News Service Staff, GateHouse News Service, November 17, 2009

"Senate Passes Education Reform Legislation," iBerkshires.com, November 18, 2009

In a story that would make Detective Bookman proud, Arizona’s Camelback High School received a package this month containing two half-century-overdue library books. Though neither was by Seinfeld’s favorite Henry Miller, the school was glad if a bit baffled to retrieve its aged copies of Community of Living Things: Forests and Woodlands and Field and Meadows. In an accompanying letter, the tardy bookworm described himself as “almost a graduate” of the school who, in 1958, was suddenly whisked away to Colorado by his parents without the chance to return his library property. He further explains that 51 years of late fees calculated at 2 cents a day would add up to $750, but he sent $1000 just in case the fees had risen. The school district, in fact, no longer charges late fees but was glad to have this generous donation for “book funds.” School librarian Georgette Bordine will put the books and letter on temporary display in the library. Gadfly finds his little entomological heart warmed by such dedication to the printed word.

“Overdue books returned 51 years later,” by Betty Reid, The Arizona Republic, November 14, 2009

Ann Huff Stevens and Jessamyn Schaller
National Bureau of Economic Research
November 2009

If one or both parents are laid off, are their children more likely to be held back in school? That’s what this analysisprobes out using longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Initially finding a correlation between grade retention for children and rates of parental job loss, the authors wanted to make sure that this relationship was not caused by other factors. But after controlling for a host of variables, such as household income (before the layoff), parental education, previous grade retention (whether the student was held back before), sibling grade retention (whether a brother or sister was held back), race, and gender, the relationship still persisted. In fact, the authors concluded that having a parent lose his or her job increased by fifteen percent the probability that their child would be held back in school. Though the authors overlook social promotion, a widespread problem likely to affect any grade-retention-based dataset, their findings make intuitive sense: Financial stress at home will probably leak into the classroom. That does not, however, mean we should add parental job loss to the list of excuses for weak pupil performance; instead, the authors advise, we should be devoting more energy and resources to these children rather than assuming they are beyond our reach. You can purchase the report here.

Will Dobbie and Roland G. Fryer, Jr
National Bureau of Economic Research
November 2009

With President Obama’s determination to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in urban districts across the country, this NBER working paper is particularly timely. It addresses the age-old question of whether schools can overcome the myriad issues that socioeconomic disadvantaged students bring to the classroom and finds that they can--but maybe not without the help of health, parenting, and college counseling services. HCZ covers a 97-block area in central Harlem--offering services to those outside its bounds as well--and incorporates programs and services from birth to college, including charter schooling at one of HCZ’s Promise Academies. They divided HCZ offerings into two groups: 1. community programs available to anyone in the Zone; 2. school programs only available to Promise Academy students and their families and school programs only available to Promise Academy students. They used a couple of methodologies, the most robust of which was comparing students who were lottiered in or out of HCZ’s charter schools. They found that students enrolled in the sixth grade made enough progress by the eighth grade to close the black-white achievement gap in math and reduce it by half in English language arts. Elementary students saw the gap closed in both subjects. Notably, analysts also found that students of all ability levels were equally benefited by attending Zone charters (and receiving the services that go along with them). The study concluded that these gains could not be attributed to the community programs alone, but they could not untangle the effects of attending one of HCZ’s charter schools from the bells and whistles that come with doing so. These gains are surely promising, but with a price tag of almost $20,000 per student (HCZ tops off public per-pupil costs with its own money), we should be wary of replicating the system willy-nilly without considering whether a small program of very dedicated people can effectively be reproduced on a national scale. You can purchase the report here.

William G. Ouchi
Simon & Schuster
2009

U.C.L.A. business professor Bill Ouchi has authored another valuable contribution to the education-reform literature. (We reviewed his last big book, here.) “TSL” stands for “total student load” and refers to the number of students that a teacher is responsible for and also to the number of students in a school. He contends, plausibly enough, that small schools are easier to lead and manage than big ones and that they’re more likely to be managed successfully by principals who are competent but not necessarily superstar executives. He also contends, again plausibly, that a teacher responsible over the course of a day or week for 80 or so students is far more effective with them than one who must contend with twice that number.. But this useful book isn’t ultimately about class or school size. Befitting a scholar of management, it’s really about effective school and district organization. He sets out five “pillars of school empowerment” and “four freedoms” that actually give principals the capacity to lead their schools. Along the way, he does an admirable job of explaining how districts should be decentralized and why they work better when they are. Taken seriously, Ouchi’s analysis would do important good for American K-12 education, particularly in big cities and large districts. It’s not the whole story, however. Important as it is, for example, for schools to control their curriculum, that doesn’t get us very far if it’s a loopy, flabby, trendy or ineffectual curriculum, or one taught by instructors who don’t know their stuff. Nor must one buy Ouchi’s assumption that districts are forever. Is it not possible that the geographically-based district itself is an obsolete management structure and that U.S. education would be better off with a direct relationship between states and a host of fully empowered charter-like schools, CMOs, EMOs, and other operators, some of them virtual, some of them national? Still, as long as we have the structure we have, wise policymakers and state and district leaders would do well to heed Bill Ouchi’s findings and sage advice. You can find the book here.