The Education Gadfly Weekly

At his confirmation hearing in 2009, Senator Lamar Alexander famously told Arne Duncan that “President-elect Obama has made several distinguished cabinet appointments, but in my view of it all, I think you are the best.” Duncan had already made statements indicating a willingness to embrace charter schools and break with the unions over teacher evaluations—sentiments not typically expressed by Democratic secretaries of education. And on many issues, Secretary Duncan has not disappointed, regularly pushing a pro-education-reform line, especially via his bully pulpit.

Most intriguing about Secretary Duncan—from my perspective at least—was his early embrace of the theory of “tight-loose” federalism. As he put it in 2012,“ the federal government should be tight on goals,” but state and local leaders should decide how to attain them. “Local leaders, not us, know their children and communities best—to try to micromanage 100,000 schools from Washington would be the height of arrogance,” he said.

Indeed it would be. But trying to micromanage 100,000 schools from Washington is precisely what Duncan has been doing.

In fact, Duncan’s greatest failure—on par with politicizing the Common Core and trying to kill D.C.’s school voucher program—has been his unwillingness to follow through on the “loose” part of his “tight-loose” promise. It feels like there’s been no problem too big or too small for his Department of Education to tackle. This is particularly the case for his Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which has been a prime example of executive overreach and federal interference run amok for almost six years now.

Its actions haven’t just trampled all over federalism and the Tenth Amendment, though they have. They have also made it tougher for local educators and officials to do their jobs well.

THE WAR ON SCHOOL DISCIPLINE

This conflict started in earnest in 2010, when Duncan gave a big speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to mark the forty-fifth anniversary of Bloody Sunday. He and his assistant secretary for civil rights, Russlynn Ali, promised to use “disparate-impact theory” to investigate schools that were disproportionately disciplining minority children or weren’t ensuring equal access to advanced courses. Furthermore, Ali promised to “issue 17 guidance letters that will touch on issues such as how districts should address sexual violence in schools, how nurses should be trained to address students’ food allergies or work with students who have diabetes, and how schools should address the needs of ELLs who are gifted or have disabilities.” No micromanagement there!

These were not empty threats. In January 2014, OCR, along with the Justice Department, rolled out a “Dear Colleague” letter that is certain to have a chilling effect on the use of appropriate school-discipline measures.

The key part of the administration’s policy states,

The administration of student discipline can result in unlawful discrimination based on race in two ways: first, if a student is subjected to different treatment based on the student’s race, and second, if a policy is neutral on its face — meaning that the policy itself does not mention race — and is administered in an evenhanded manner but has a disparate impact, i.e., a disproportionate and unjustified effect on students of a particular race.

As eminent legal scholar Richard Epstein explains in a recent Education Next article,

Much of the analysis turns on the word “unjustified.” Disproportionate rates should not be regarded as unjustified merely because they reflect higher rates of improper behavior by minority students than by white students. But this point is never explicitly acknowledged in the ED and DOJ guidance.

This is the heart of the matter. What if African American and Latino students actually misbehave at higher rates than do white and Asian students? If that’s the case, then race-neutral discipline policies, fairly applied, will result in a greater proportion of minority students receiving punishments. Yet the administration is saying that educators whose legitimate, even necessary, actions produce that result can still be charged with discrimination. Epstein rightly asks,

Just what sanction should apply to a school where discipline is imposed on a color-blind standard yet has statistically imperfect outcomes? Should some white students be summarily suspended, expelled, or otherwise sanctioned to make the numbers come out correctly? Or should schools give a pass to black students who have committed serious offenses in order to achieve the same ends?

Lamentably, it cannot surprise us if minority students today misbehave at “disproportionate” rates. African American and Latino children in America are much more likely to face challenges that put them “at risk” for antisocial behavior. They are more likely to be poor (and much more likely to be extremely poor); more likely to grow up in a single-parent family (nearly always headed by a mother, which is especially problematic for boys growing up); much more likely to have a parent in prison; and much more likely to live in neighborhoods where poverty is concentrated. Civil-rights enforcers should, at minimum, consider these “background variables.” Yet the administration’s policy looks at race alone. 

A RIGHT TO ADVANCED PLACEMENT?

Another obsession of Duncan’s OCR has been getting more poor and minority students into advanced courses, such as the College Board’s AP classes. On its face this is a laudable goal, and reform-minded districts (and charter schools) have made much progress in preparing disadvantaged students for the rigors of challenging coursework. But is this an appropriate realm for civil-rights enforcement?

If schools are forced by an OCR investigation to expand access to AP classes for poor and minority kids, what are the chances that they will also do all the complex work it takes (from kindergarten through eleventh grade) to make sure those students are ready? To implement solid curricula, hire stronger teachers, provide extra help for struggling children? Isn’t it much more likely that bureaucrats will simply flood AP courses with unprepared students? We can all guess what the impact will be on the students who are ready for AP coursework, whose classes will be inundated by peers who haven’t mastered the prerequisite material.

Yet that’s precisely the chain of events set in motion by OCR’s latest (and breathtakingly audacious) “Dear Colleague” letter, this one focused on “unequal access to educational resources.” While asserting a federal right to equal spending (something the left has sought ever since its defeat in San Antonio v. Rodriguez), OCR claims (emphasis added),

Equal educational opportunity requires that all students, regardless of race, color, or national origin, have comparable access to the diverse range of courses, programs, and extracurricular activities offered in our Nation’s schools. Students who have access to, and enroll in, rigorous courses are more likely to go on to complete postsecondary education. Further, completing college or other postsecondary education such as a technical certification is increasingly necessary for students to enter careers that will enable them to join the middle class.

Therefore, OCR assesses the types, quantity, and quality of programs available to students across a school district to determine whether students of all races have equal access to comparable programs both among schools and among students within the same school. OCR generally considers a range of specialized programs, such as early-childhood programs including preschool and Head Start, AP and International Baccalaureate courses, gifted and talented programs, career- and technical-education programs, language-immersion programs, online- and distance-learning opportunities, performing and visual arts, athletics, and extracurricular activities such as college preparatory programs, clubs, and honor societies.

So if a district has two high schools—one serving mostly affluent white students and another serving mostly poor and minority students—those schools had better offer a similar number of AP courses, lest the OCR come knocking on their doors. Never mind everything we know about low-income children coming into school with all manner of disadvantages, all of which make them much less likely to be ready for AP-level courses by the twelfth grade. Some will make it there, to be sure, thanks in part to great schools. But to expect equal numbers of rich and poor to be ready for advanced courses is to ignore reams of social science and to engage in wishful thinking.

Each of these examples has three things in common. First, they show a complete disregard for the notion that federal power is limited by our Constitution. Second, they illustrate an almost endless faith in federal bureaucrats’ ability to intervene effectively and positively in faraway places. And third, and most disturbingly, they consistently disadvantage the poor and minority children who deserve our greatest support: those who are already striving to be successful. Schools serving poor and minority students will respond to these dictates by turning a blind eye to discipline problems and by crowding advanced courses with unprepared students.

It’s a perversion of the notion of equal opportunity, and it’s wrong.

This post originally appeared on National Review Online

In the era of No Child Left Behind—and at a time of growing concern about income inequality—virtually every school system in the country claims to be working to narrow its student achievement gaps. But are they putting their money where their mouth is?

The data in our brand new D.C. Metro Area School Spending Explorer website allow us to answer this question for school districts inside the Beltway. Specifically, we can determine whether and to what degree they are spending additional dollars on their neediest schools.

To be sure, ever since the Coleman Report, it’s been hard to find a direct relationship between school spending and educational outcomes. Still, basic fairness requires that systems spend at least as much on educating poor students as affluent ones, and investments that might make a difference in narrowing achievement gaps (such as hiring more effective, experienced teachers and providing intensive tutoring to struggling students) do require big bucks.

There are lots of wonky ways to compute the fairness of education spending, but we’re going to use a measure that makes sense to us. Namely: How much extra does a district spend on each low-income student a school serves? Compared to what districts spend on behalf of non-poor students? Ten percent? Twenty percent? Fifty percent?

Read the methodology section below for details on how we got to these numbers (they are estimates, and apply only to elementary schools), but here are our conclusions.

For example, in Arlington County, the district spends close to $12,000 per student at its low-poverty schools (those with very few poor children). But it spends north of $21,000, or 81 percent more, for each student who is eligible for a free or reduced price lunch—significantly boosting the resources of its highest-poverty schools.

Let us be clear that school systems aren’t necessarily achieving these spending outcomes by design. As we explain in the “Drivers of School Spending” section of our D.C. Metro Area School Spending Explorer website, they may not even have been aware of these differences. That’s because individual schools in a given district don’t actually have “budgets” of their own; they are generally given a certain number of staff positions (driven by the number of students they serve) and might be eligible for extra programs or resources depending on need.

Nor is it likely that poverty rates are the only things driving these differences. Larger schools, for example, tend to spend less per-pupil than smaller schools (costs for staff like nurses can be spread over more students); districts might also be providing extra resources to schools with large numbers of special education students or English language learners. So we know that our analysis is oversimplifying what’s causing these patterns.

With those caveats in mind, what to make of these results? The outliers are fascinating. Arlington—with its sky-high tax base and gentrifying population—definitely goes the distance for its high-poverty schools. On the other hand, poverty-stricken Prince George’s County appears to be doing practically nothing to spend what little money it has on its toughest schools. (It makes us wonder how it meets federal “supplement, not supplant” requirements.)

And these findings are more than a little embarrassing for Montgomery County, which prides itself on its commitment to “social justice,” and has an explicit policy of sending extra resources to its highest poverty schools. Yet it is bested by Fairfax County (by a little) and Arlington (by a lot).

Per-pupil spending on high-poverty schools

Let’s look at this question through another lens: Specifically, the perspective of low-income students and parents in the Washington area. What they experience in school is not relative spending but real dollars: How much money does a particular school have to devote to teacher salaries, extra programs, etc.?

So: How much do high-poverty schools in the Washington area spend per pupil, and how does that vary by school system? (Again, we only used data for elementary schools.)

Here’s what we found:

* 75% or more Free or Reduced Price Lunch enrollment, primary schools only (i.e., no K-8 schools included)

Arlington again earns plaudits for its generosity towards its high-poverty schools, though by our count there are only two of them. High-poverty charter schools in Washington are well funded too, though it’s important to note that they tend to be extremely high-poverty; more than two-thirds of the eighteen charter schools in our analysis top the 85 percent poverty mark. To the extent that low-income students bring extra resources along with them (including federal Title I dollars), the results for Washington’s charter schools make sense. (And note: These numbers are for operational costs only; they don’t include facilities funding, which is where DC’s charters are at a huge funding disadvantage compared to DCPS.)

Note the numbers (again) for Fairfax and Montgomery County. If Superintendent Josh Starr is an “equity warrior,” what does that make the folks across the river?

The big story here, though, is Prince George’s County and its shockingly low spending for its fifty (!) high-poverty elementary schools. The averages are bad enough—spending that is almost 30 percent lower than for DCPS high-poverty schools and almost a quarter less than Montgomery County spends on similar schools. But looking at specific schools makes the picture even more devastating.

Consider District Heights Elementary, which spends just $7,981 per student, although 77 percent of its pupils qualify for subsidized lunches. Compare that to Moten Elementary in the District, which spends $14,723 for each of its students (76 percent eligible for a free or reduced price lunch)—or almost twice as much. The schools are less than seven miles apart.

Therefore, if a low-income mom moves from the District of Columbia to Prince George’s County, and her child attends high-poverty public schools in both locales, her child’s new school will have dramatically lower-paid (and/or less experienced) teachers, fewer special programs, fewer specialists, larger class sizes, or all of the above.

It’s hard not to conclude that Washington’s rapid gentrification—which is pushing many needy families from the District to Prince George’s County—is leading to a very inequitable outcome, at least in terms of school spending.

As Marguerite Roza has argued for years, school systems ought to live their values. If doubling-down on the education of poor children is something these systems (and their residents) support, they need at least to know whether their dollars are reaching the neediest children. Now we know that some of the Washington-area school districts could be doing a whole lot more for their low-income students. And the state of Maryland almost certainly could and should be doing more for Prince George’s County. Who will act to fix these problems?

Methodology

To find out how we estimated the per-pupil spending of each school in the Washington, D.C. area, see the methodology section of our D.C. Metro Area School Spending Explorer website; once we had those numbers, the next challenge was to understand the relationship between schools’ poverty rates and their spending. The first step was to estimate the “floor” of per-pupil expenditures (PPE) for each district, and then figure out how much extra they spend on low-income students. Elementary, middle, and high schools tend to have dissimilar spending patterns, so we only included elementary schools when calculating estimates. (There are lots more elementary schools than middle or high schools.)

To make our estimates for each district, we regressed school-level PPE against the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch (FRPL). The spending floor was derived from the result’s constant coefficient. The extra dollars allocated to low-income students were set equal to the FRPL coefficient. (More simply, we scatter-plotted FRPL (x-axis) and PPE (y-axis) for each district. We then calculated the lines of best fit: the y-intercept is the spending floor and the slope is extra spending.)

From there, it was a simple matter of dividing extra spending by the spending floor to find the extra spent on low-income students. It’s a rough estimate, of course, since we didn’t include any controls and we assume a linear relationship. But minus Prince George’s County, Alexandria, and D.C. Charters, FRPL confidence levels were greater than 99 percent. R-squared values were also large, with Montgomery County at the low end (.24) and Arlington at the high (.85). Because of this analysis’ descriptive nature, the lack of significance and the low R-squared values for the other three districts is not a problem. The numbers are low because none have a strong pattern of progressive expenditures, school-to-school. With a coefficient of 192.6 and an r-squared of -.008, Prince George’s County’s pattern isn’t just weak—it’s nearly non-existent. 

• The Columbus Dispatch recently reported that Imagine Schools, a large charter-management company, has a number of schools in the Columbus area that are spending what appear to be excessive amounts of their state aid on real-estate dealings. In the most jaw-dropping case, Imagine Columbus Primary Academy spent $700,000 on lease payments but only $614,000 on salary and benefits. Here’s how it works: A subsidiary of Imagine buys buildings, refurbishes them, sells them to a new owner, leases them back from the new owners, and then rents them out at high prices, often to their own schools. Whether Imagine is financially benefitting from this arrangement is not certain, as significant investment goes into purchasing and renovating school facilities. Here's what is certain: The optics of the real-estate machinations are bad, too much money is taken out of the classroom and away from students, and the situation is exacerbated by Ohio's failure to provide meaningful facility funding to charter schools.
• Attending college but dropping out short of a degree can be worse than not going to college at all, reports The Wall Street Journal. College dropouts can’t compete with degree-wielding peers—but they’re also behind (in pay, skills, etc.) those who jumped right into work after earning a high school diploma. Worse, more than half of these folks have student loans, with average annual borrowings around $10,000. When you’re making $15,640 annually, that kind of debt can drag you down for years. All of this is just another way of saying that college isn’t for everyone—and we ought to promote technical training as a viable, sometimes better option.

Civil rights, Christopher Columbus, D.C. school spending, and teacher prep.

Amber's Research Minute

"Teacher Preparation Policies and Their Effects on Student Achievement," by Gary T. Henry, et al., The Association for Education Finance and Policy (2014).

Transcript

Michelle:       Hello, this is your host, Michelle Gininger of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute here at The Education Gadfly Show and online at edexcellence.net. Now, please join me in welcoming my cohost, the Alicia Florrick of education reform, Alyssa Schwenk.

Alyssa:           Oh wow. That was such an honor.

Michelle:       I knew you'd love that. I knew it.

Alyssa:           I mean it is kind of our topic of conversation every Monday or Tuesday whenever we get around to watching The Good Wife which airs on Sunday …

Michelle:       Let's be honest, it's never Monday morning because I can't stay up till 10 o'clock at night on Sunday so it's Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday.

Alyssa:           Yeah. Usually, not on football season, I can watch it on Sunday. But on football season, forget about it.

Michelle:       Yeah. Football just ruins The Good Wife for me. I think we should move football to another day and this is the big policy I'm going to be pushing this year.

Alyssa:           Oh good to know but I mean if they were up to, I think, the two of us, television would end by 9 PM every night. We would have to stay up till 11.

Michelle:       That would be fantastic. I think we should promote that but in the meantime let's get back to Ed reform. Ellen, what do you have for us?

Ellen:              Fordham’s own Mike Petrelli recently argued that over the last six years, the Department of Education has been too involved in civil rights. Do you agree?

Michelle:       This is based on a special Op Ed that Mike had in NRO’s education week that they just had this weekend. Robert Pendisi on our team also had one on common core but basically, Mike takes another aim at the Secretary of Education. Alyssa, what's your take?

Alyssa:           Mike gave two examples in the piece of areas in which he believes that Arne Duncan has used the Office of Civil Rights to overreach over local control on several issues and the first, I agree with and the second, I do not.

Michelle:       Oh, I think we might be opposite here.

Alyssa:           Ooh, okay which one do you agree with Mike on?

Michelle:       I agree on the AP testing.

Alyssa:           So do I.

Michelle:       Oh see, I thought that was second in the article.

Alyssa:           I guess it was okay. Well one of the points I agree with and one that I do not.

Michelle:       Here's how we should solve the AP problem. Basically Mike is calling out the department because they are pushing for more minority students to be in AP classes which obviously is a good thing but the on the ground reality is that we're just going to be pushing more students into AP courses who aren't ready for AP course week. The goal should be putting more minority kids in AP courses and having the pass rate of AP courses staying the same. That way, we’re not incentivizing schools to just put kids in the classes they're not prepared for but we are incentivizing schools to get more students prepared and putting them in these AP courses.

Alyssa:           Yeah. I do worry very much about the unintended consequences of pushing unprepared kids into AP whether or not that's colleges deciding AP no longer accounts for college credit which is really important when you're a student who tuition is a big barrier for entry. I also think it's an opportunity for schools to do things like maybe course share or take online courses so kids who are in schools were not … There’s not 30 kids who are ready for AP but there's maybe 5 can still take those classes and have those opportunities. I think there's an opportunity there but the way that the office is being used, I'm a little concerned about.

Michelle:       Now, one thing that I did in … or that happened in my high school once upon a time when I was a young, young high school student was they just offered courses and then at the end of the course, you could opt in to taking the AP exam. There was an AP US history on top of US history. It was just history class and if at the end of the year, you felt prepared to take the AP exam, you could opt in to taking it which was an interesting model. I don't know how if that's necessarily possible in public schools. I did go to a private school and it was pretty small so it was easy. There wasn’t the scale issue that's one interesting thing that might be a good policy recommendation.

Alyssa:           Yeah, that would definitely I think be a solution.

Michelle:       We're not even going to talk about school discipline, sorry Mike. We're just going to go question number 2.

Ellen:              Monday was Columbus Day, a celebration of a controversial often misunderstood figure. Should schools give students a more accurate picture of who Christopher Columbus really was?

Michelle:       I know, Alyssa and I disagree on this one so that's a good thing. I am for Christopher Columbus Day it might just be because I am part Italian. What can I say? But I'm for it. Alyssa?

Alyssa:           I think that there's a better use of students’ time than … I think on American history, we have a tendency to kind of lionize a lot of historical figures who have kind of unsavory pasts. Christopher Columbus, obviously chief among them. I don't think a great use of students’ time is to be out of school. I think they should be in school learning about these figures, learning about different aspects of American history and really debating and discussing these things.

There's definitely a lot of weak history curriculum out there and I think now is the time to push that and have a chance for students to learn about these figures instead of just playing or doing God knows what that day.

Michelle:       First, don't take away any of my federal holidays even though Fordham does work on Columbus Day.

Alyssa:           I was going to say we were the office bright and early yesterday.

Michelle:       So I'm all for that. Would I want to create a Columbus Day if it didn't exist? Probably not but I have 2 strong feelings on this. One, we can't judge yesterday’s historical figures based on today's morals. Now, obviously Christopher Columbus did some horrendous things, but by those standards, it wasn't that bad. I'm not saying what he did is okay, I'm just saying, when we teach this stuff in school and when we do have a good history curriculum which we should, we should say here's what Christopher Columbus did and yet all these drawbacks and horrible things that he did.

I think that it's just turned into a political fight as opposed to a constructive conversation of how we should actually deal with historical figures that don't live up to today standards and morals. Obviously, you already mentioned Thomas Jefferson owned slaves but pretty much everyone historically did not respect women as equal people, which we do today hopefully. That is a more important conversation than one day off at school and should it be Christopher Columbus Day or another day, I think that conversation’s a little [mute 00:06:17].

Alyssa:           Yeah. All right, Ellen question number three.

Ellen:              With Fordham's new Metro DC school spending explorer, Mike Petrelli and Matt Richmond note that Arlington and Fairfax counties are spending much more on their high poverty schools than Montgomery County which prides itself on its strong commitment to social justice and Prince George's County with high levels of students in poverty. What's going on here?

Michelle:       Before I get on my high horse that Virginia is totally more awesome than Maryland.

Alyssa:           I knew you were going to be saying that.

Michelle:       I know, I know. I'm a lifelong Virginian. Let me explain what this awesome project this. Basically, we had the3 question of how much do DC area schools spend per people at the school level. Obviously, we know that there's going to be spending differences between districts. What's interesting in that portion was that PG County in Maryland spends so much less than the other districts that we studied. But also perhaps more interesting is that within districts, the funding levels are different even if you look at schools that should be on par with one another.

You're can have 2 public elementary schools in the same district that receive vastly different funding levels or spending levels, excuse me, Dara would [chide 00:07:27] me for seeing funding instead of spending. That's what the project is. It's really awesome. I encourage folks to look at our interactive map, but to the question at hand, Mike and Matt took a look at how districts spend for their highest needs students, the highest poverty schools. What they found is that for extra spending for low income students, Arlington hit it up out of the park with 81% followed by Fairfax County with 34 while Montgomery County which prides itself as Ellen noted on being social mobility friendly, not so much in MPG County was with 2%. A few caveats there, school don’t necessarily have a lot of control on the spending. Most of it is teacher salaries. Arlington only actually had 2 high poverty schools while PG County had 50 high poverty schools. That's a lot of nuance here but it's certainly really interesting.

Alyssa:           Yeah. I feel like that kind of undercuts your Virginia is for everyone and Virginia is the best argument but as a DC person, I was particularly interested in the spending differences between DC charter schools and DC public schools and noted that DC charter schools spent a bit more per pupil and this is obviously taking out the discrepancies in building and construction funding which is a huge issue inside DC but DC charter schools are spending more per high poverty pupil than the DC public schools are even though DC charter schools have incredibly high student poverty in most of them.

In terms of Prince George's, I was not super surprised having been around DC for a while. I think there, it's just such a tax-based issue and it's so hard to build up the tax base whereas Arlington and Fairfax have kind of a more affluent population that they're working with in general. I think that PG County stories of concern to the local area because as more and more poor families are being kicked out of DC because of gentrification, they're going from perhaps … They're going from one school in DC that's pretty well-funded to a school that isn't as well-funded. That's of concern.

Of course, there's no direct correlation between funding and student performance so there's a lot of nuance here but I think it's important to look at this and one of the things that I find most interesting about the project in total is that state average, that district average that is touted doesn’t tell the story and this map I think will be an eye-opener for certainly the parent advocacy contingent in the area.

Michelle:       I'm sure Mike's going to just love that. But yeah no I think the map is super cool. I spend, when I was looking at the beta version, almost an hour I'd say just clicking in, clicking out seeing all of the different categories. It's a very cool project to check out.

Alyssa:           Being a local, I got to look at what my district in public high school would have been back when I was a young teenager. That's all the time we have for Pardon the Gadfly. Thank you Ellen. Up next is everyone’s favorite, Amber's Research Minute.

                        Welcome to the show Dara.

Dara:              Thank you.

Alyssa:           Bravo on your DC Spending Explorer Map out today.

Dara:              We'll call that a labor of love.

Female:         We’ll call it a labor of something.

Dara:              Labor of something. We are super excited that we're able to share this with everyone. It's been literally months and months and months of work doing the analyses, getting the website out the door so we're super excited.

Female:         What is your favorite take away from this project? On the data, not on the process.

Dara:              Besides the fact that the way that schools account for the way that … The way that districts account for dollars spent is absolutely insane. I don't know if anyone has tried to actually read a school district expenditure report.

Female:         No.

Dara:              It's a bit nuts. That's why we did this project so you don't have to.

Michelle:       That's why we have researchers do this sort of thing.

Dara:              The biggest take-away I think is that there is predictable variation between districts. We know that districts spend the money that comes in so Montgomery County, lots of local funds, spends more per pupil than Prince George's County even though they're in the same state. They're receiving the same state revenue. That was predictable. What is really interesting is the variation between schools in the same district and that really is the result of district leaders making choices about what dollar goes to what school and so you can poke around on the website, click on each schools, see all their demographics and special education students and free and reduced lunch students and see how each schools spends its dollars.

Michelle:       Great. We won't have you research minute our own projects so what do you have for us today?

Dara:              Something completely different from that. Today, it's a study from this month's Association for Education Finance and Policy Journal from a team of researchers led by Gary Henry at Vanderbilt University. It asks a question that has already received a lot of attention in the past which is how does teacher preparation affect student achievement but this study is way more robust than any of the other research out there that examines similar questions.

One of the reasons is because of the way that it divided up teachers. Instead of lumping teachers into two groups, traditional versus alternative certification, instead it made many more nuanced comparisons which I’ll talk about in a second. The data consisted of over 22,000 North Carolina teachers in their first, second or third year of teaching and 1.18 million students.

To get the data, the authors use administrative data to get teacher characteristics, how long a teacher was teaching, how a teacher was prepared, characteristics of the school where they taught. They combined this with 5 years of student test score data. This is an incredible data set. The analysis used a value added model with school fixed effects. To answer the question how does teacher preparation affects student value added on state tests for eight combinations of grade levels and subjects. We've got Elementary Math, Elementary Reading, Middle School Math, Middle School Reading and High School Math, Science, English and Social Studies.

That was a big buildup. Here are the results. First, comparing teachers who were traditionally prepared to those who received alternative certification but not TFA. This is why this study is unique. First of all, it separated out alternative certification as in the day you step foot in the classroom, you don't have your full license. It separated those out from TFA. Traditionally prepared with non-TFA alternative certification, alternative entry teachers are significantly less effective than traditionally prepared teachers in Middle School Math and High School Math and Science but no different in any of the other subjects.

                        Second, traditionally prepared teachers compared to TFA teachers. TFA teachers are more effective in six of the eight categories, Elementary Math, Elementary Reading, Middle School Math, High School Math, Science and English. Third, comparing teachers prepared out of state versus those prepared in-state. Out-of-state teachers are less effective in Elementary Math and Reading and in High School Math.

Fourth, teachers who began teaching with a graduate degree or less effective in Middle School Math and Reading and more effective in High School Science than teachers who did not have a grad degree. Fifth and finally, no difference in any grade level or subject between in-state teachers who receive their certification at a private school versus a public school. One additional finding if that wasn't enough, the study confirmed previous research that showed that there is significant variation within different preparation categories. TFA teachers as a group first, second and third year TFA teachers more effective in 6 out of those 8 categories but within TFA teachers, there is significant variation.

Female:         That's fascinating. I'm excited about this. This is a cool study.

Dara:              I think so. Like I said, this is a question that has been asked a lot but because the researchers had such a enormous data set, they were able to make these much more nuanced categories for example not lumping together all alternatively certified teachers into one category.

Alyssa:           A few things based on what you said. Out-of-state prepared teachers performed worse … Or students performed worse than in-state? Does that go away with dare I say it, common core?

Michelle:       That was my question as well actually.

Dara:              I can only speculate because the student data, the five years of student data stopped with the 2009, 2010 school year. It's possible that if you have more … Teachers who are more familiar with the state standards and if the standards are common, that should theoretically be the case, then it is very possible that that variation could go away.

Michelle:       We'll see. Here's another question that I picked up. Exciting news on TFA or first up exciting news on TFA even though there are some variation when you look within TFA. It sounds like only in TFA were we seeing improvement in Reading and English which traditionally is so hard to get those scores up. What do we think could be the cause of that? I know again speculation.

Dara:              Right. I mean one of the things that's important to note is North Carolina is one of the original TFA focus areas. They have spent a very long time developing the infrastructure to train their teachers there. It's the same theoretical structure that the five or six week boot camp summer institute as you have with TFA everywhere else but because it is so well established in North Carolina, it's very possible that it's not just the way that TFA is recruiting its teacher but also because it's very well established, they know what they're doing.

One thing that the study didn't do is it didn't look beyond the third year of teaching. They would've had to go too far back in the data but the idea is that it's likely that preparation affects sort of fuss over once you get past the first couple of years, so take that as you will.

Michelle:       Alyssa, as a former TFAer, thoughts?

Alyssa:           I was very happy to hear that. I think I was doing a little bit of a happy dance right there. What was most interesting to me was that alternative certification teachers who were not TFA did not do so hot with Middle School Math and High School Math and Science which we know that those are traditionally hard subjects and those are areas where it's compelling to say this person is maybe a career changer or this person has a background in [STEM 00:18:55] subject. Let’s put them in front of the classroom. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that Dara.

Dara:              It's a constant tension between lowering the barriers to entry into the teaching profession because you have this hard staff grade levels and subjects so you lower the barriers to entry, how do you maintain quality control. This article, this study seems to speak to the fact that lowering barriers to entry via alternative certification and via allowing out-of-state teachers reciprocity with their credential is not a good thing because those teachers don't do as well.

However, it doesn't mean that you have to keep those barriers high, it just means that you need to have quality control either with entry or evaluation systems that allow for the removal of an ineffective teacher as soon as they prove themselves ineffective especially if the barriers to entry are low.

Michelle:       All right fascinating stuff. Thanks so much Dara.

Dara:              My pleasure.

Michelle:       That's all the time we have for this week's Gadfly Show. Till next week.

Alyssa:           I'm Alyssa Schwenk.

Michelle:       I'm Michelle Gininger for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute signing off.

Hosted by the Nord Family Foundation, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and Ohio Grantmakers Forum with additional support from the Edward A. Lozick Foundation, Martha Holden Jennings Foundation, Nordson Corporation Foundation, and Stocker Foundation.

The Buckeye State has been hit hard by the national recession and faces an estimated $8 billion biennial budget shortfall. This fiscal crisis will have a serious impact on K-12 education as 40 percent of state revenue goes toward public schools. While most Ohio district superintendents and local school boards have accepted the new reality of doing more with less, the fact remains that they have little experience when it comes to handling the level of funding reductions expected this year, and will need to be equipped to handle them in a way that will not decimate existing education reform initiatives or harm student achievement. For these reasons, we are assembling free public events to help local education, business, and community leaders identify ways to think smart about cuts to school spending while staying focused on student achievement.

This CALDER paper examines a range of postsecondary education outcomes for disadvantaged students—like enrolling and completing an associate or bachelor’s degree or gaining a vocational certificate—and respective salary data for these students during high school and for five years after their last educational institution. Analysts use Florida administrative data for two cohorts of students—over 210,000 in total—who graduated between 2000 and 2002, which enabled the researchers to observe between ten and twelve years of postsecondary and labor-market outcomes. They merge secondary school, postsecondary school, and earnings data, including courses taken in high schools, grades in those courses, overall GPA, and various college data, such as credits earned, major, and degree attainment. Controlling for demographics and prior achievement in high school, they unearth two findings: first, gaps in secondary school achievement likely account for a large portion of the differences in postsecondary attainment and labor-market outcomes between disadvantaged and other students; and second, earnings for disadvantaged kids are hampered by low completion rates in postsecondary programs, poor college performance, and their selection of low-earning fields. Yet they find that vocational certificates and associate degrees in health, transportation, construction, manufacturing, and security lead to relatively high pay for disadvantaged students and low-scoring high-schoolers. Specifically, those with vocational certificates earn 30 percent more than high school grads, and those with associate degrees pocket roughly 35–40 percent more. Analysts recommend, among other things, that public institutions do a better job partnering with industry associations and promoting high-potential career pathways—and that more high-quality apprenticeships be made available for the disadvantaged.

SOURCE: Benjamin Backes, Harry J. Holzer, and Erin Dunlop Velez, “Is It Worth It? Postsecondary Education and Labor Market Outcomes for the Disadvantaged,” CALDER (September 2014).

If time-squeezed teachers fret that the demands of testing have narrowed curriculum to little more than English language arts (ELA) and math, Daniel T. Willingham and Gail Lovette have a suggestion: Free up time by cutting back—way back—on instruction in reading comprehension strategies (RCS). This type of instruction dominates many—probably most—of our elementary schools’ reading curriculum. The basic idea is to arm emerging readers with a collection of tips and tricks—visualize the story in your mind, make predictions as you read, and so on—that mature readers tend to do reflexively, which encourages readers to monitor their comprehension as they read. But reading comprehension is not a “skill” like riding a bike or making free throws in basketball. It’s heavily dependent on the background knowledge readers bring to a text. Thus your ability to make a correct inference when reading about baseball, for example, does not mean you can make correct inferences when reading about a Japanese tea ceremony. There’s no abstract skill called “inferencing” that you can practice, master, and apply with equal effect on whatever you read. This places strict limits on reading strategies. That said, test score gains have long been associated with RCS. “The funny thing about reading comprehension strategy instruction is that it really shouldn’t work, but it does,” the pair note. But once kids get the big idea behind RCS—that a piece of text is trying to tell us something—there’s zero evidence that repeated practice has any beneficial effect. Ten lessons are as good as fifty. “The implication seems obvious,” they conclude. “RCS instruction should be explicit and brief.” Bad news for reading teachers? On the contrary. “To the extent that educators have been devoting time to RCS instruction, they can now focus on other, more fruitful activities, such as generative vocabulary instruction, deep content exploration, and opportunities for reading across genres and content areas.” The bottom line: Reading strategies have limited benefit, but the sky’s the limit for knowledge and vocabulary. “The more students know, the broader the range of texts they can comprehend,” they note. Teachers can’t add hours to the day, but they can enhance the value of instructional time by curtailing the ELA activities that offer the smallest payoff. “Reading comprehension strategy instruction appears to be a particularly good candidate,” they conclude.

SOURCE: Daniel T. Willingham and Gail Lovette, “Can Reading Comprehension Be Taught?,” Teachers College Record (September 2014).

A new study examines whether NCLB’s proficiency-based accountability system—which penalizes schools for not meeting state-established student achievement benchmarks—has any impact on student performance. Using student and school-level data from North Carolina, researchers compared student outcomes for schools that barely met or missed NCLB performance benchmarks and analyzed whether NCLB’s focus on proficiency negatively impacts schools’ high-performing students. Interestingly, the authors find evidence of slight gains in student performance in schools facing sanctions for the first time; the largest gains were in schools making management and leadership changes as a result of underperformance. The authors find no evidence that the threat of sanctions for low-performance negatively impacts higher-performing students; in fact, when schools are forced to make administrative changes due to chronically low performance, all students, including high performers, benefit. While this may appear to be great news for proponents of accountability systems that mirror NCLB, the authors highlight that North Carolina also has a state-specific accountability system in place that focuses on student growth rather than proficiency. Therefore, they caution that changes in student outcomes cannot be solely attributed to NCLB sanctions. Despite this limitation, however, the authors conclude that “school management or leadership problems constitute the single greatest obstacle to improved student performance.”

SOURCE: Thomas Ahn and Jacob Vigdor, “The Impact of No Child Left Behind’s Accountability Sanctions on School Performance: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from North Carolina,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 20511 (September 2014).