The Education Gadfly Weekly

Perhaps you’ve been on vacation or caught up in the historic events of recent weeks, but over the past ten days, we at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute hosted our second annual Wonkathon. Last year’s was about charter school quality; this year’s focused on how to implement the brand-new (and groundbreaking) Nevada education savings account program. (Congratulations to Seth Rau of Nevada Succeeds, the winner of the Wonkathon, who both seized his home field advantage and proved that when it comes to using similes, you’d better go big or go home.)

Yet lurking behind the apparent consensus is an unspoken question: What’s this reform trying to accomplish? The law itself says it wants to increase student achievement and parental satisfaction. But go back and read the fourteen posts and you’ll find that the ones most enthusiastic about ESAs don’t say much about the achievement half of this equation—typically reformers’ touchstone. (Even reform apostate Diane Ravitch noticed as much when she questioned Rick Hess’s ESA enthusiasm: “Surely he doesn’t believe that Nevada will emerge at the top of NAEP in five years, ten years, or ever because of all this subsidization of nonpublic schools.”)

Instead, there’s a lot of talk about “customization” (from Matt Ladner), “flexibility” (Jonathan Butcher), “experimentation” (Jason Bedrick), “personalization” (Adam Peshek), and “innovation” (Travis Pillow). To be sure, for many of our wants—and for no small number of families in Nevada and elsewhere— increased choice, outcomes notwithstanding, is an intrinsic good in itself.

But if your primary goal is to significantly raise student achievement as it is traditionally defined (test scores, graduation rates, college attainment, etc.), especially for disadvantaged children, education savings accounts are probably not the way to go. Instead, you’d want to learn from last year’s Wonkathon and create the conditions for high-performing, “no-excuses” charter schools (or voucher schools) to thrive. You would want to put in place a strong authorizer, ample funding, and a charter-friendly law and work to build a great charter sector like those in place in cities like Boston, New Orleans, and the District of Columbia. (Thus Michael Goldstein’s admonition for Nevada to find a “Neerav Kingsland,” and Neerav Kingsland’s admonition that Nevada cough up more money per child.)

But raising the achievement of disadvantaged children need not be the only project reformers undertake. Customization, flexibility, experimentation, personalization, and innovation are all important too. And as Chester Finn and Bruno Manno point out in the current issue of National Affairs, charter schools have, by and large, disappointed on these fronts. “There's a certain sameness across much of the charter world,” they write, “and (save perhaps for virtual schools) not enough real innovation.”

It’s not hard to understand why. Again, if the goal is to raise test scores and other outcomes for disadvantaged students, educators will quickly settle on a “no-excuses” model—because it works. That’s not to say that these models are all exactly the same, or that they don’t include certain innovative aspects. Yet by and large, KIPP and its cousins are obsessively improving on traditional education; they aren’t making leaps into the unknown.

The value of education savings accounts, then, is to provide a space within the K–12 system for true breakthroughs and allow for “multi-provider customization” (in the words of Matt Ladner) or “unbundling” (in the words of Rick Hess). These experiments may not yield immediate benefits in terms of increased test scores, but they might serve the needs of individual children and help us find promising breakthroughs that could someday enjoy mass appeal and application.

And what about the “S” in ESAs?

What also went largely unnoticed was the “savings” element in education savings accounts. One goal of this market-based reform is to encourage parents to shop around and choose educational providers that are both effective and efficient. This is no small thing, since K–12 education suffers from the “third-party-payer problem”: People generally ignore costs when they aren’t paying out of their own pockets. That’s the case in health care, where generous insurance plans with low copays and deductibles can encourage individuals to use more health care then they really need or choose doctors and hospitals that are needlessly pricy. Health savings accounts—the inspiration for education savings accounts—are meant to correct for this problem by giving patients skin in the game. They provide incentives for individuals to find low-cost options—or skip the doctor’s appointment when they come down with the flu.

Education savings accounts can do the same thing by encouraging families to take their children out of the public school system and purchase a variety of educational services directly, for less cost. Because the value of the ESA is less than what taxpayers are spending, per-pupil, on the public schools, it’s a win-win. (Though Rabbi Motzen is correct that it’s unfair to penalize private school parents—who are already saving taxpayers a lot of money—by making them ineligible for the ESAs.)

So who will be enticed by ESAs? I suspect it will be public school parents who (1) were on the fence about choosing private schools and for whom the $5,000 subsidy will push them over the edge; or (2) have been contemplating home schooling and see the ESA as a way to supplement home education with a variety of a la carte services.

Most of these families, I suspect, will be relatively affluent and well-educated—either capable of paying the difference between private school tuition and the value of the ESA or able to afford for one parent to stay home with the kids and play teacher. Their kids are unlikely to have extraordinary (and extraordinarily expensive) needs.

I’m perfectly fine with that. Returning to the health savings account analogy, these are people who are relatively healthy from the standpoint of education. HSAs don’t hold much appeal to people with chronic illnesses or life-threatening conditions; they would blow through their HSAs in a matter of days or weeks. Likewise, ESAs aren’t going to hold much appeal to families who face the chronic condition of poverty and for whom an extraordinary education is a matter of life and death for their children (unless they can find an excellent private school willing to charge not much more than $5,000 a year).

Yet it will be very hard for anyone in Nevada to say honestly that an a la carte education probably isn’t a great fit for families struggling with poverty. And regulators won’t be allowed to keep such families out of the program.

Therein lies the problem, and my biggest fear: What if a significant number of low-income Nevada families sign up for the initiative anyway? We’ve seen this movie before in the virtual charter school world. At the outset, companies like K12.com expected to serve mostly affluent home schoolers. (I know—I was there at the beginning.) But over time they decided to target low-income students too. The academic results have generally been catastrophic.

Regulators should pay special attention to providers that are obviously recruiting disadvantaged families—especially via “incentives” like free iPads, computers, and such. And local reform groups should be ready—and willing—to counsel Nevada’s needy families to consider other options. Thankfully, the state is embarking on a wide variety of promising reforms, from charter schools to turnarounds to tax credit scholarships. Who will have the courage to say that ESAs aren’t for everyone?

Nevada is a state of constant experimentation. From its founding in the days before the 1864 presidential race to ensure an additional three electoral votes for President Lincoln’s reelection to letting the state be turned into a nuclear site in the 1950s to the so-far dormant Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, many forces have used Nevada for their experiments. Knowing its history as a testing ground, Nevada should regulate its new, nearly universal education savings accounts, or ESAs, (current private school students are excluded to avoid a large cost to the state) in a fashion similar to another uniquely legal phenomenon in the state: prostitution. You may chuckle, but there are real similarities here.

Prostitution in Nevada has a few non-negotiables. First, the employees (most are actually non-unionized independent contractors, but that’s another analogy) participating in the work must be tested and examined regularly to ensure the customers’ safety and satisfaction. On the user end, the client must use protection in order to protect the employee’s safety per the state’s regulations. Once these details are in place, however, everything else is open to negotiation. The employee and the client can take part in both imaginable and unthinkable acts within the regulatory framework. This type of regulation lays the groundwork for innovation.     

Nevada’s ESA program has two goals: It aims to increase student achievement and improve parents’ satisfaction with their children’s schooling. These are both admirable goals, and both are sorely lacking in Nevada’s current educational ecosystem. On the first goal, there needs to be a measure to confirm that a student is progressing each year with his or her education (full disclosure: My organization, Nevada Succeeds, advocated for this amendment to the law). Ideally, the student would still take the same assessments as students enrolled in public schools (currently Smarter Balanced in Nevada), but that is likely impossible due to test security issues. Therefore, as long as a student takes a nationally normed assessment approved by the Nevada Department of Education (this list is currently being created for the state’s new tax credit scholarship program), his progress can be adequately measured to determine student growth. 

Meanwhile, the state treasurer’s office (which will administer the program) must ensure that the process is easy for parents to use. There should be a straightforward online portal that makes receiving the ESA funds relatively simple. Parents will be given a restricted debit card for using the funds (Nevada should follow Arizona’s example on restricting the MCC codes), and the state should conduct annual audits (the law requires random ones) to check that the funds are being spent on kids’ education and not something that does not benefit student learning.

Many families will choose a traditional option with their savings accounts—their local private schools. Nevada does not currently offer many available private school seats, but I expect the supply to rise dramatically in the next five years, especially near overcrowded schools in suburban Las Vegas and Reno. (It’s also important to remember that 90 percent of Nevada’s kids are in these two metropolitan areas, each having only one school district and a small but growing number of charters.) However, some parents will surely get more creative. I am most excited to see what types of educational options emerge for all students. With the creation of the tax credit scholarship and the ESA, some students whose family incomes are below three times the poverty line can receive funds from both programs totaling over $13,000.

By combining both sources of funding, some poor students could have access to true school choice in Nevada. As of now, the Opportunity Scholarship is capped at $5 million, so the dual-funding options will only be available to hundreds of students instead of the thousands likely seeking out that choice. With the income-restricted Opportunity Scholarship, the state can invest the most in students who truly need the additional support, while also investing in every child through ESAs.

Ideally, the goal of the Nevada ESA experiment would be to succeed and be replicated all over the country. For that to happen, the regulations must first be successful. Second, the program must withstand an expected lawsuit. While Democratic leaders in the state (the bill passed with no Democratic votes) are certain that a suit will be filed, the usual suspects for filing the case will likely refrain. The teachers’ union had an excellent legislative session during which Republicans dramatically increased the state’s education budget; Clark County School District, the state’s largest (and nation’s fifth-largest), is preoccupied with a bill that may lead to its dissolution; and the ACLU has not expressed willingness so far. Due to the national interest, another party may file suit, and it will be a fascinating case to follow.  

My biggest question is whether $5,000 is enough to create educational value for students who aren’t languishing in poverty. Are parents willing to pair some of their own funds with the ESA to remove their kids from the public school system? I do not know the answer at scale, but it will be an important experiment for the future of American education.

The state treasurer’s office must set its non-negotiables in order to safeguard the ease of parental choice, the tracking of student outcomes, and the financial accountability of the program. If they can keep these non-negotiables tight, then innovations in education should prosper over time. I’ll be following this process closely to ensure that the forthcoming evolution brings Nevada pride—instead of the shame that the current system has wrought in the Silver State.

Seth Rau is the policy director at Nevada Succeeds.

Over the past two weeks, we received fourteen responses to Fordham’s second annual Wonkathon prompt:

As Nevada implements its groundbreaking education savings account program, what must it get right in order to provide positive outcomes for kids and taxpayers? Should state authorities stay out of the way? Or are there certain areas that demand oversight and regulation?

This year’s posts offered a wide-range of oversight models from some of the wonkiest wonks in education reform. But there can only be one Wisest Wonk.

Without further ado, the winner of Fordham’s 2015 Wonkathon is Seth Rau, whose “Nevada should regulate ESAs like brothels” came in with 39 percent of the vote.

Tracey Weinstein’s “Does Nevada’s new ESA law hold promise for kids?” came in second with 17 percent.

And Rabbi A.D. Motzen’s “Why almost universal is not good enough” came in third with 15 percent.

Thanks to all the participants for another great Wonkathon, and congratulations to this year’s Wisest Wonk, Seth Rau! You can re-read the individual responses below or get the short and sweet version from Jason Bedrick’s recap.

 “Nevada needs Neerav” by Michael Goldstein

“Nevada should regulate ESAs like brothels” by Seth Rau

“New tools for new challenges: Updating accountability for ESAs” by Matthew Ladner

“Take a lesson from the cane toads” by Jonathan Butcher

“Does Nevada's new ESA law hold promise for kids?” By Tracey Weinstein, Ph.D.

“Private choice and the public interest” by Andy Smarick

“The price is not right (yet)” by Neerav Kingsland

“Overregulation in the name of accountability serves no one well” by Lindsey M. Burke

“Let the market work” by Jason Bedrick

“A new approach for a new era of education” by Adam Peshek

“Wanted: A new breed of bureaucrat in Nevada” by Robin J. Lake

“ESAs let parents drive the quality discussion” by Travis Pillow

“State agencies can’t do it alone” by Robert Tagorda

“Why almost universal is not good enough” by Rabbi A.D. Motzen

• Defined benefit pension packages: Love ‘em if they’re sending you a check each month, hate ‘em if you have to think too hard about their consequences. That’s probably the reason we just don’t give them much consideration (well, part of the reason; they’re also slightly less gripping than you may have been led to believe). Good thing the National Council on Teacher Quality put together an informative, concise fact sheet on the realities of our teacher retirement processes. The short version isn’t pretty—backloaded plans with lengthy vesting periods typically penalize teachers who leave the profession early, enter it late, or move to a different state mid-profession. Their escalating costs are also threatening to overwhelm cash-strapped districts. Painful though it may be, we may have to start dedicating more thought to the subject.
• The Foundation for Excellence in Education has released a fantastic tool that accomplishes two purposes: explaining what we actually mean when we talk about student “proficiency” and clarifying which jurisdictions actually measure anything close to it. Users can see how students are performing in their states, and whether those states’ reporting practices give a picture that resembles reality—or just an illusion.
• It wasn't cool to be a "no-excuses," tough-love teacher for poor minority kids in the 1970s. Academic standards (to the extent that there were any) were dumbed down, and lots of folks just took for granted the idea that demographics equaled destiny. Marva Collins, who died last week, thought otherwise. She believed—and said—that "kids don’t fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures—they are the problem.” Then she put her own money and reputation on the line to prove that it didn't have to be that way. Along with a handful of other education renegades of the era, she demonstrated that poor minority kids from the inner city could succeed just fine if given the right kinds of expectations, encouragement, and instruction. Today, we have plenty of these "proof points" in programs like KIPP, Achievement First, Success Academy, and many more. But Marva Collins paved the way.

Disparate impact, Obamacare and ESEA, union agency fees, and how academic instruction affects students’ brains.

Amber's Research Minute

SOURCE: Yuliya N. Yonchevaa, Jessica Wiseb, and Bruce McCandlissc,"Hemispheric specialization for visual words is shaped by attention to sublexical units during initial learning," Brain and Language, Volumes 145–146, (July 2015).

Mike:               Hello this is your host Mike Petrilli at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute here at the Education Gadfly show in online at edexcellence.net. Now, please join me welcoming my co-host, the Carli Lloyd of education reform, Brandon Wright!

Brandon:         Yeah, so they just beat the Germans, right. They're going to the finals?

Mike:               Yes. You sound so tentative about this Brendan. You did not watch this amazing game?

Brandon:         I didn't see it.

Mike:               Yes, and Carli Lloyd has turned into the star three goals in three games. This one was a penalty kick and she also had the assist on this amazing second goal that they scored. I have to say the Petrilli boys, young Niko and Leandro were watching. They were very excited. You can look on Facebook, a little video of them waving the American flag and doing a little victory dance.

Brandon:         Patriotism, I like it.

Mike:               We're going to the finals and yes, we beat Germany. Is it okay that I love it when we beat Germany in anything?

Brandon:         Sure. Yeah.

Mike:               I mean, that's still ... I know sometimes I'm a little late on what's politically correct these days. The fact that Germany was our enemy in World War 1, World War 2, and let's face it, did all kinds of horrendous things, I just find a special joy any time we beat Germany.

Brandon:         I'm fine with it.

Mike:               They're also an economic rival. They are our friends as well. They are an important ally. But man I like it.

Brandon:         Sure they do somethings well. Education they're pretty good at.

Mike:               We're recording this on Wednesday. I know when people are listening necessarily, the Japan England game hasn't happened yet and I'm kind of hoping England, again so we can re-fight the revolutionary war. Plus we have played Japan before in a world cup final so this would be kind of fun to play England. The Japanese will probably win then. All right. That's enough on world cup soccer. This is a podcast about educational reform, not about sports Brandon.

Brandon:         Yeah, that's right about that. Yeah.

Mike:               I'm very excited because today we have a special Supreme Court addition of the Education Gadfly Show, though I don't want to disappoint people. We're not going to tackle every Supreme Court decision, including the one that's probably gotten the most attention. This last week right, the gay marriage case. That's not on the docket.

Brandon:         No, it's not.

Mike:               We have three other case we're going to talk about. Dominique, help us start. Let's play Pardon the Gadfly.

Dominque:      All right. As you mentioned, Mike will be focusing on the Supreme Court and it's recent and forth coming decisions. Question one: last Thursday the court held that the Fair Housing Act includes [disparate 00:02:41] impact liability. How will this affect education?

Mike:               All right, so disparate impact Brandon. I have to admit that I was hoping the Supreme Court might find that disparate impact analysis was not constitutional because the only way you can enforce this is by paying a whole lot attention to racial categories, classifications, and that would violate the fourteenth amendment. In this decision, this was a housing decision, did not explicitly mention education but they did leave the door open to that constitutional question.

Brandon:         Sure.

Mike:               Really all they said was that the Fair Housing Act, it is quite clear that Congress intended to allow the regulatory agencies, the civil rights agencies to consider these disparate impact findings. Brandonwhat disparate impact is is basically saying that an agency can look at statistics. They can look at outcomes in terms of, in this case it was housing. In education it might be how many kids are getting suspended or disciplined, and look at racial differences along those lines. They can look at those statistics and infer that there may be discrimination happening even if they can't prove that there was an intent to discriminate directly.

Brandon:         Right.

Mike:               What do you think, what's your take on this case? Does this mean that the office of civil rights, the department of education is going to be able to continue using disparate impact analysis to go after school districts or colleges, universities?

Brandon:         Sure. I mean, the disparate impact that OCR uses in education falls under title six of the Civil Rights Act. It's a bit of a different issue. Currently there is a regulation that says that they can do it but obviously that regulation is an agency interpretation of the title six. Somebody could challenge it. If the Supreme Court heard that challenge, it would be a question whether disparate impact is actually covered by title six. This decision signals that the court would probably be okay with that. It's kind of an open question. It definitely doesn't mean that OCR's going to stop. It definitely will continue for sure.

Mike:               Certainly green lights it for now. Okay. Topic number two, or shall we say case number two.

Dominque:      On the same day as the aforementioned decision, the court upheld an embattled Obamacare provision. How will this affect education?

Mike:               So our friend Rick Hess had a post the other day arguing that Obamacare was going to slash the chances that the elementary and secondary education act is going to reauthorized because conservatives and Congress are going to see what the court did on Obamacare. They're going to be very nervous that if there's any kind of opening in yes, yay, to allow the department of education to muck around in things they shouldn't muck around in, a Supreme Court would not reign them in. Is that, you think, a fair reading of what happened with Obamacare as it applies to ESCA Brandon?

Brandon:         No I think his fears are pretty overblown. It's a different law, right? The reason why the court interpreted this Obamacare statute as it did was essentially because they thought it made sense in the context of the entire statute. If it was decided the other way, it would have had these calamitous effects which they felt that Congress couldn't have possibly intended. It was an ambiguous part of Obamacare. If you look at ESCA, the only way this would actually happen is if they write a completely ambiguous law or parts of it are ambiguous, don't assign it to an agency.

Mike:               let's play this out. There's been this question for example, about whether Arnie Duncan had the authority under his wavier authority to require states to do things like create teacher evaluation systems if they wanted flexibility from ESCA. I think we have both written that we think there is no way that you can find that in this statute. Although some people would point to the language in the waiver authority about how he is able to set the parameters for, that maybe some of that language is ambiguous enough. If a state sued the Department of Education, like the state of Washington because they lost their wavier because of that, and that case went to the Supreme Court, the question would then be whether the Supreme Court would itself try to interpret the statute like it did with this Obamacare case and make a decision on whether that was allowable or not, or whether they would say well it's ambiguous so therefore we will defer to the agency. It's a close enough call that we don't think what the Department of Education did was unreasonable.

Brandon:         Right. That's a pretty open question in light of the Obamacare case and the Fair Housing case. If anything, the court has actually signaled that they're becoming increasingly uncomfortable with agencies interpreting statutory ambiguities.

Mike:               Right. That they basically are saying, and John Roberts said this, the Obamacare decision, it's the court's job to interpret these statues. We are going to do so. To Rick we'd say, look. You don't know how the court would necessarily rule depending on how this law is, but it certainly is not saying that we are going to defer to agencies more so than we have in the past.

Brandon:         Yeah, it seems to be the opposite. It's important to note that in both the Fair Housing case and the Obamacare one, there wasn't a single justice who had a problem with not deferring to the agency. They were all okay with the court interpreting, the descending ones just didn't like the interpretation. It's definitely kind of going against agencies going forward. Or it seems to be.

Mike:               All right. Rick Hess, sorry. You're going to lose on this one.

Brandon:         Yeah.

Mike:               Denied. Okay, topic number three.

Dominque:      The court also took up a case for the October 2015 term that concerns teacher's union agencies. What does this mean for unions?

Mike:               Oh this means that the unions are in trouble. Let me say, I'm having a hard time not showing my happiness and enthusiasm. I do a little happy dance every time I think about this. It's a big deal, this Friedrich's case. It is basically saying that in California, as in many of these states that have, what do you call it. It's the opposite of right to work.

Brandon:         Agency fees.

Mike:               Agency fees. Basically in these states where teachers have to either be in part of the union, or if they opt out, and they are allowed to opt of out the union-

Brandon:         It's kind of hard to do.

Mike:               They still have to pay agency fees, which are basically saying, Hey. It's not fair for people who are part of a union to benefit from the unions, collective bargaining and other activities, and not pay for it. That would be a free-rider problem if people were allowed to do that. Nobody would pay to be in the union. That wouldn't work. Therefore the courts in the past have allowed the unions to charge these agency fees to nonmembers. The case is saying, hey. As the teachers that are in this case are saying, hey you are violating our first amendment rights because some of this money we're spending on free agency fees is going to promote political activity with which we disagree, including the fundamental activity of collectively bargaining with elected school boards. What's your take on this Brandon? Is this, do you think the court is likely to rule in favor of the teachers and against unions? What is this going to mean for the future teacher unions?

Brandon:         The question is whether what they're talking about is protected speech. Whether it's speech of a public concern. In the past the court has essentially implied that it could differentiate between the collective bargaining that a union does and the political speech that unions do and that these agency fees only apply to the bargaining. In a recent case, they plainly said that the bargaining process includes protected speech, period. It wasn't for teacher unions, it was for home health care employees.

Mike:               To be clear, it's collective bargaining for public sector unions, right because if you're collectively bargaining in the private sector then you're not bargaining with a public entity. In the public sector, the other side of the table is the public. It is some political body in there. Not to mention there's all kinds of other things agency fees can pay for like communications between the unions and their members, a variety of things that may not be explicitly politically. They can't use this for contributing to campaigns or for paying for political advertising but it could, some of that speech could certainly have political ramifications. They lines are not super clear here. Right now the current law allows the unions to decide where to draw that line.

Brandon:         Yeah. It doesn't look good. The example that they gave in the recent case was that their bargaining for income, for paychecks. That includes public funds. That is inherently a public concern. If it is protected speech, which it seems to be, the court seems to apply a bar that the state probably couldn't leap. In which case, these agency fees would be unconstitutional under the first amendment.

Mike:               If that happens, basically every state becomes a right to work state in the public sector. What do we know about that? Well it doesn't mean the unions will go away. We see unions where sometimes it's just called associations in those other states. They still do have political influence, some power. They still can raise money from their members to fight different political fights. However, we do know that the membership in those unions or associations tends to be dramatically lower. A bunch of teachers will opt out and say great. I don't have to pay for this anymore. I don't want to pay for it. I'm no longer a member. We know from our own studies of teacher union influence that those states do tend to have unions that have less interest, influence. There are a few counter examples like Alabama, but by and large this is likely to significantly weaken the unions. Certainly that's what happened in Wisconsin recently with the reforms there under Scott Walker is that the union has shrunk. It's got less money. It's got less members. It's got less political influence, all of which is good for education reform in my opinion.

Brandon:         Yeah. Plus I mean you, the case shouldn't come down to whether it's going to expand the unions or contract them, right. It should come down to what the constitution says. If it's protected speech, then it seems to be unconstitutional.

Mike:               There it is. That's what I like Brandon. Brandon, a lawyer by training. Sticking to the law and to the constitution. All right. Thank you very much Brandon. Thank you Dominique for our Special Supreme Court Edition of Pardon the Gadfly!

Brandon:         Thanks Mike.

Mike:               Boy now that we have more people listening to the podcast, I get a little nervous sometimes. I'm like, I don't know. Who are these people out there? Who are you listening? We're trying to serve you good stuff. Now, it is time for everyone's favorite: Amber's research minute. Amber, welcome back to the show.

Amber:            Thank you Mike.

Mike:               You've been watching the world cup women?

Amber:            I watched the highlights this morning. Missed it last night but I watched the highlights this morning and just fantastic. Right? Just gives you all that little patriotic feeling inside.

Mike:               It does. We were talking about that. Especially because it's Germany. I love beating Germany.

Amber:            That's right.

Mike:               I've been doing happy dances a lot this week.

Brandon:         It's been a good week.

Mike:               We beat Germany. The unions are going to have stake in their hearts thanks to Friedrichs. I mean, so much good stuff.

Amber:            Indeed.

Mike:               Okay Amber, what you got for us this week?

Amber:            Hopefully some more good stuff. We have a new study out in a scientific journal called Brain and Language. It examines how the brain responds when presented with two different methods of reading instruction. Yeah, it's kind of cool. It's a small sample, got to say that. Sixteen adults average age of twenty-two. They're native English speakers without reading disabilities, okay. They did some recruiting here. Participants are trained over two days where by they learn an artificial script or inventive language based on hieroglyphics. Each participant was taught two ways to associate a set of words read aloud to a corresponding set of visual characters of glyphs. The first method was a phonics based approach which focused on letter sound relationships. The second was a whole word approach that relied on memorization. They basically taught them a new language, right, that looked like these Chinese characters or something. Okay?

Mike:               Okay.

Amber:            After the training the participants were instructed at the beginning of the testing sessions to approach their reading relative to one strategy or the other. As they were tested they were hooked up to an EEG machine which reads your brainwaves so they had some output on how their brainwaves were reacting to how they were being told to process these glyphs. Okay. Scientists found, bottom line. Scientists found that when participants used the phonics approach to read their inventive words, the left side of the brain was activated, which is where the visual and language regions of our brain lie. It's been shown in prior studies to support later word recognition. Thus activating this part of the brain helps to spur on beginning readers. This approach also enabled participants to decode words they had previously not been exposed to in the training. Yet the whole word approach did not activate the left brain hemisphere but rather the right hemisphere, which is obviously completely different circuitry. It's typically not associated with firing in the brains of skilled early readers. I mean, in the end I just think it adds more solid evidence that phonics instruction is effective instructional practice. The national reading panel told us this many years ago. Now we can say, hey, by the way it also stimulates the brain which might help explain why it's effective.

Mike:               You know, little know is the fact of the reading words go back to ancient Egypt and the hieroglyphics. No, just kidding.

Amber:            I'm like, okay?

Mike:               All right. Amber, here's what I'm so curious about. Why couldn't they do this with five year olds actually learning to read English? Why did they feel like they had to do this with adults?

Amber:            It's a really good question, right? I have no idea actually why they did it with adults. Yeah. When you look at on the page, they have an example of these made up stuff, and I'm like oh my gosh. I would never be able to do that. You know what I mean? They actually interviewed people on when they were given the memorization. Can you imagine trying to study something say okay when the line goes to at an angle and to the right and know when it's situated, ninety degrees or whatever, that means cat. You know? I don't know whether it would have been just too difficult for a child at that age? It's a great question.

Mike:               It raises all kinds of questions, right. First of all, is the brain different at five then twenty two?

Amber:            That's right.

Mike:               Does it matter that five year olds, they might not know how to read but they've heard these words a gazillion times. Real words. Or they have meaning. I don't know if they talked about sort of how sure are we that this is-

Amber:            Applicable.

Mike:               Yeah that it tells us something about teaching reading to little kids.

Amber:            It's a great question. You know, they do not deal with that at all in this study. This is, by the way, if you think an NBR study is difficult to get through, try a scientific journal. Try brain and language. I mean, oh my god. I sent Brandon the title of the article. I'm like, I don't even know what this title means.

Brandon:         I don't either.

Amber:            All these references to the brain.

Mike:               Next time we should hook you up to an EKG machine and we can see what parts of your brain are being activated by reading this stuff.

Amber:            Thank goodness, I think it was Stanford news that originally covered it and you sent it along. No way would we have ever picked this up with the title.

Mike:               No, but it's fascinating. Well good, well look. It is yet more evidence. It's not like this is, it just seems to reconfirm. Hey, here's a big success story in American education. As far as I can tell, we are not fighting the reading words anymore, that this one is pretty much settled and that we've dramatically improved reading instruction in this country. I think it demonstrates that it is possible to turn the ship around when it comes to something like important, instructional like early reading. Now we'll see if we can do the same on other subjects as well.

Amber:            Yeah. You raise a great question. You know, we should follow up. I think that this research is really encouraging the way that it's come out in the press. I would imagine that it's not the last study we're going to see on this topic.

Mike:               All right. Thank you Amber. Thank you Brandon. Thanks again for joining us for this Special Supreme Court Edition of the Education Gadfly Show. Until next week.

Brandon:         I'm Brandon Wright.

Mike:               And I'm Mike Petrilli at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute signing off. 

So-called “turnaround school districts,” inspired by Louisiana’s Recovery School District and its near-clone in Tennessee, have been gathering steam, with policymakers calling for them in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and other states scattered from coast to coast. But just how promising are these state-run districts as a strategy to bring about governance reform and school renewal? What lessons can we take away from those districts with the most experience? Can their most effective features be replicated in other states? Should they be? What are ideal conditions for success? And why has Michigan’s version of this reform struggled so?

A new report by researchers at the University of Arkansas examines non-public revenue in public charters and traditional public schools (TPS). This is the same group of researchers that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute commissioned to do our first charter-district finance study—and thankfully, they’re at it again, dispelling the myth that charters get all the philanthropic dollars they need to make up the existing funding deficit. Not so.

Analysts engage in an in-depth examination of non-public funds for Fiscal Year 2011 in public charter and TPS sectors in the fifteen states where they possess sufficient data (which means this isn’t a representative sample). Non-public funds include revenues from areas such as food service (that yummy cafeteria food), investment revenue, program revenue, rental revenue, philanthropic funds, and others.

Key findings: TPS received $6.4 billion and charters $379 million of non-public revenue in 2011. For TPS, this amounts to an average of $353 per pupil; for charters, an average of $579 per pupil. Yet these numbers vary by state. For instance, in Michigan charters receive 50 percent less in per-pupil revenue from non-public sources than do the TPS. The types of non-public revenue coming in also change by sector. In TPS, one-third of non-public revenue comes from food service and “miscellaneous,” but in the charter sector, philanthropy makes up almost half of non-public revenue. Charters receive $264 per pupil in philanthropy and TPS $18, but this difference is driven by large student enrollments in TPS, which receive almost double the amount of philanthropy in absolute dollars. Philanthropic funds also vary greatly among charter schools (one-third of them receive no philanthropic funds of any kind).

The report's last takeaway says it all: “Although charitable funds from philanthropies make up almost half of the non-public revenue in the charter sector, they account for only 2.5% of total charter revenues nationally and therefore cannot be expected to close the 21.7% total funding gap between charters and TPS in these 15 states.” Another charter school myth bites the dust.

SOURCE: Meagan Batdorf et al., "Buckets of Water into the Ocean: Non-Public Revenue in Public Charter and Traditional Public Schools," Department of Education Reform, University of Arkansas (June 2015). 

In the midst of debates about whether school is the best place to combat the effects of poverty, several educational institutions have taken it upon themselves to integrate non-academic poverty-relief supports into their academic programs. According to a new report from the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, these schools offer unique on-the-ground efforts to support high-need students above and beyond the traditional academic model. They include KIPP, SEED schools, the Harlem Children's Zone, and community-based schools like those found in Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS).

Each organization offers its own take on anti-poverty programming. KIPP focuses on extended school days and longer school years, character education, and initiatives like KIPP Through College, which includes step-by-step assistance in the college admission process as well as after-school tutoring and counseling. These are services that other high-poverty schools struggle to offer. KIPP is also extending its services in specific locations; KIPP Houston, for instance, features a school-based health clinic called KIPP Care. The SEED schools, meanwhile, take efforts even further with a one-of-a-kind public boarding school model: Those enrolled live on campus five days a week, then head home for the weekend. Students, many of whom come from disadvantaged communities, benefit from a character education program, mental health and counseling services, off-campus and summer enrichment opportunities, and college transition advising. Both SEED and KIPP boast impressive academic achievement numbers. (For a look at a potential SEED school in Ohio, see here).

The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), meanwhile, is a nonprofit serving a ninety-seven block area of its namesake neighborhood of New York City. Its umbrella of assistance includes parenting workshops, preschool programs, charter schools, after-school programs, a college success office supporting HCZ college students, and free legal and financial services for families.

The report also looks at community schools, which centralize a range of services inside one building by partnering with local service providers. (To be clear, this term doesn’t refer specifically to charter schools, which Ohio law dubs “community schools.”) Cincinnati Public Schools is currently transitioning fifty-five schools into Community Learning Centers (CLCs), which join with a variety of outside organizations to offer recreational, educational, social, health-related, civic, and cultural opportunities to students, families, and the broader community. Its ethos mirrors that of Communities in Schools (CIS), the nation’s largest wrap-around services organization. Both organizations operate through the use of on-site coordinators, who assess student needs and recommend services.

The report’s authors are careful to note that there are concerns around non-academic poverty supports, mainly as they relate to cost and scalability. Outsourcing services the way CLCs do (an approach they call “modular”) may seem more efficient and less expensive, but it is actually impractical in the long run because outsourcing leads to a loss of control for schools. This loss of control means that educators on the ground—those who are most knowledgeable about what services are needed—can’t oversee the balance of services offered to each student. On the other hand, the interdependent, integrated models offered by SEED, KIPP, and HCZ allow educators to determine the exact mix of supports that students require, make them available, and then permit researchers to measure success. Only once this mix is identified can schools transition to the affordable, scalable model necessary to ensure that all students receive suitable assistance.

SOURCE: Michael B. Horn and Julia Freeland, “The Educator's Dilemma: When and how schools should embrace poverty relief,” Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation (June 2015).

In the last four years, thirty states have transformed their teacher evaluation systems to improve student outcomes—and fourteen more are expected to follow suit by 2017. Too often, however, states focus more on the design of the systems than on how schools will and should implement them. This report from Education First argues that this is a mistake. We ought to also provide teachers the feedback and support they need to succeed. The report identifies five districts (Aldine, Texas; Greene County, Tennessee; Salem-Keizer, Oregon; Fulton County, Georgia; and St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana) that seem to be doing this right—a collection that’s diverse enough in location, racial makeup, and student body size to be applicable to myriad locales across the country.

The authors pinpoint a handful of essential teacher evaluation practices that hold the promise to improve student outcomes. First, schools need to make feedback and support a top priority and treat it as an ongoing process, including regular conversations centered on teachers’ professional development goals. Educators must be an integral part of the process, which creates an environment in which feedback is an expected and positive aspect of the job rather than a punitive one. For example, teachers and evaluators (such as principals or other administrators) should work together to create a “personalized learning plan” based on specific strengths and weaknesses. This lets teachers know what they need to work on, guides their ongoing professional development, and can be used for future evaluations.

This all sounds great, but how will financially troubled districts find the necessary time and money to ensure effective implementation? To its credit, the report acknowledges this problem and gives a helpful—if not entirely complete—solution. It explains how all of the five districts reallocated Title I and Title II funds to cover the cost of hiring more teacher leaders, implementing improved training programs, and providing more and better professional development opportunities.

Overall, the report paints an optimistic picture of what school districts can do when it comes to teacher evaluations. The suggested practices should improve student outcomes if districts make them a priority.

SOURCE: “Giving Teachers the Feedback and Support They Deserve: Five Essential Practices,” Education First (May 2015).