The Education Gadfly Weekly

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One of the most hotly debated issues in American education today revolves around low-performing schools and districts: how to define “low-performing,” what to do about them, and who gets to decide. That’s at the heart of the deliberations—and arguments—over the No Child Left Behind reauthorization now moving through Congress.

But there’s another species of “failing” schools and districts that doesn’t attract the same controversy, even though it should: institutions that are financially insolvent, or headed toward that status. For example, as of the 2014–15 school year, the School District of Philadelphia had massive deficits—to the tune of $320 million. In Michigan, nearly 7 percent of all traditional school districts and charter school districts (57 of 843) were operating at a deficit at the end of the 2013–14 fiscal year. Over 25 percent of New Mexico districts (23 of 89) required emergency state aid in 2013–14. And there are similar problems in Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, and elsewhere.

Districts go insolvent primarily because there are insufficient counter-pressures on their leaders to stay fiscally solvent. Existing leaders are often rewarded—through elections, appointments, or re-appointments—when they make promises that obligate monies down the road. Employees of the system often push for higher salaries, expanded benefits, retirement sweeteners, and other advantages that districts simply can’t afford, but that union-friendly boards agree to anyway. Such long-term obligations are largely what put districts in the hole.

Yet feckless leadership is not the sole culprit. Communities rarely embrace tough trade-offs and would rather play kick the can with education officials. These suggestions, then, should be seen in part as ways to lean on school boards and superintendents to take their fiduciary responsibilities seriously, and to counteract the pressures of unhelpful local politics.

So what’s the solution? Who should be in control? What supports and sanctions should be put into place? And under what circumstances should districts be subject to state takeover?

Most state policies for assisting school districts in financial trouble are uneven and complex. Interventions are often haphazard, occur arbitrarily, and routinely place politics over sound economics. States would be wise to consider instead a three-tiered sequence of interventions that minimize disruption for students and maximize financial (and intellectual) resources.

The first tier comprises collaborative supports. District leaders receive assistance from state officials or appointees in understanding their current and future financial situation and managing their finances. The goal is to work with leaders to recognize and rectify the causes of distress.

The second tier is financial management. At this stage, external experts are no longer advisory but oversee and manage a district’s financial matters. The goal is to improve district finances so as to avert costly bailouts down the line, while building the capacity of district leaders to manage once the external managers leave.

The third tier is administrative control—otherwise known as “state takeover.” A state-appointed administrator and/or governing commission replaces or supersedes the superintendent and board and operates, with enhanced powers, the entire district—not just its finances. The goal is to remove ineffective leaders and prevent district bankruptcy and closure.

As you can see, these recommendations are not rocket science, but common sense—which is all too seldom practiced within dysfunctional organizations.

Be aware, however, that this advice is for those districts that have a decent chance of turning themselves around for the benefit of their pupils, citizens, and taxpayers. It’s not for places that are already too far gone. Some districts aren’t worth saving. They are too bankrupt, financially and/or academically, to invest in further. For them, the time for more supports and more cash is over. They need real governance change in the form of state takeover, outsourcing of their schools (perhaps to a “recovery” district), and maybe even closing the district.

Yes, that’s blasphemy in most education circles. But it is entirely possible that state policies could be thoughtfully designed that would shut down a district’s central office and transfer leadership, operations, and funding in ways that could lessen the sting. It would be traumatic in the short run for families, students, and staff. And no, it doesn’t make sense everywhere. Closing an existing district would require the right conditions, including having new providers and top-flight teachers at the ready. It would take courageous state and local leaders with a break-the-mold mentality. In the long run, however, it could be better for kids in the same way that the recovery school district administered by the Louisiana Department of Education in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has been largely positive for the children of New Orleans.

Better, though, would be to not allow districts to get in this mess in the first place. As one of us has observed (Roza), the best state policies would prevent districts both from “deficit spending” (which occurs due to pensions and retirement health care) and from obligating out-year expenditures—such as when they sign a five-year labor contract although there’s ample uncertainty as to what revenues will look like in five years.

Hank Williams, Jr. sings a well-known ditty, “Family Tradition,” in which he blames his own bad behavior on his wayward ancestors. But that’s akin to saying that we spend money we don’t have because that’s how it’s always been done. This is no way to run American schools.

Marguerite Roza is Research Professor and Director of Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy. Amber M. Northern and Michael J. Petrilli are Senior VP for Research and President, respectively, of the Fordham Institute.

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Last week, Bellwether Education Partners analyst (and Obama administration alumnus) Chad Aldeman pointed out that I’ve changed my views on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act since 2011. He’s absolutely right. What’s perplexing is why he would find this surprising. I assume that many foreign policy analysts reexamined their positions after 9/11, and that housing policy experts did the same after the Great Recession. Does Chad not understand that the unprecedented, autocratic, and quite possibly illegal actions of the president’s Department of Education have changed things a bit?

Yes, four long years ago, Checker Finn and I were still wedded to the “tight-loose” formula of federalism in education: Uncle Sam should be tighter on the outcomes expected from our schools but much looser on how states and districts achieve those ends. What we meant by “tight” was that Washington should require states to adopt “college- and career-ready standards,” either developed with other states (i.e., the Common Core) or unique to themselves. This was in part a response to the perverse incentives of No Child Left Behind—namely the mandate for states to attain near-universal proficiency while getting to define “proficiency” as they saw fit.

Well, we know how that went over. The backlash to the Common Core (on the right at least) was driven overwhelmingly by the concern that Uncle Sam was wading into issues that he has no business in. We were naïve to think that we could thread the federalism needle—that because the standards had been developed by the governors and state superintendents, and because there was no federal mandate to adopt them, and because there was an escape valve (states could develop their own college- and career-ready standards), we would avoid the political problems that sunk previous attempts at “national standards.” We were wrong. Mea culpa. (Or is it “wea culpa”?)

So the “tight” part of our tight-loose formulation has run aground on the rocky shores of political reality. But what about the “loose” half of the equation? Here, Arne Duncan and company have made a mockery of an approach they once swore allegiance to. Of course I’m referring to their “waiver” policy, as well as the ill-considered decision to demand conditions from states in return from flexibility. As Senator Lamar Alexander said back then, Duncan had states “over a barrel.” Did the folks at 400 Maryland Avenue really not expect an uprising on Capitol Hill?

It’s not just that the Department of Education usurped power from Congress and the states; it’s that they used that power to push bad policy. Nobody today can creditably argue that mandating statewide teacher evaluations as a condition of ESEA flexibility was a good idea. Nobody can say that the teacher evaluation efforts are going well. This was an unforced error of enormous magnitude—one that has sparked a significant backlash to accountability policies writ large and also destroyed whatever credibility the feds may have had.

But that’s not all of it. Duncan’s assistant secretaries for civil rights have also been busy bossing states and districts around with a shocking degree of arrogance and an assumption of power—especially on school discipline and school funding. What exactly has been “loose” about the Duncan years?

So yes, both the Senate and House versions of ESEA reauthorization are “looser” than No Child Left Behind, or than the Fordham proposal from 2011. If this renewal processes gets across the finish line (and I think it will), the federal government will have much less power than it does today. Folks like Chad who don’t like that will only have Arne Duncan to blame.

• The notion of character education is pretty well understood by now. If successfully imparted to disadvantaged children, advocates claim, personal qualities like grit, gratitude, and optimism can steer them to beneficial habits and help them catch up with their more well-to-do classmates. “No-excuses” charter networks like KIPP have energetically publicized their commitment to the philosophy, monitoring students’ progress in the development of such traits. But a piece in the New Republic takes a more dubious stance. The author, whose initial interest in KIPP’s approach cooled after taking part in program founder Dave Levin’s online class, writes that his newfound reservations about character education are threefold: Nobody actually knows how to teach character; it’s being taught in a morality-neutral way; and it narrows the scope of education. Some of the article’s assertions are downright goofy (“While it takes grit and self-control to be a successful heart surgeon, the same could be said about a suicide bomber.” Dude, what?), but he’s right that there’s still too little evidence of positive character maturation driven by initiatives like KIPP’s. And our obsession with “performance character” should be matched with equal concern for “moral character.” Clearly the subject is ripe for more investigation.
• According to the New York Times, big urban districts like Louisville, Oklahoma City, and Providence are rushing to fill hundreds of job openings before the new academic year starts. The dearth of qualified professionals (twenty-one thousand vacancies remain in California alone) is pinned on the 2008 recession and the end of President Obama’s stimulus program, which forced states and municipalities to carry out mass layoffs; the subsequent recovery, meanwhile, has reportedly fostered a job market attractive enough to draw prospective recruits out of the field.  Undermanned schools have responded by hiring trainees who are still finishing up their teaching degrees, which isn’t always helpful. As others have pointed out, though, the supposedly diminished talent pool has still vastly expanded over the course of the last decade. Whether our 2015 quantity actually represents a surfeit or a shortage, it’s clear that we need to focus on improving the quality of our educators—and getting more out of the best ones.
• You may already be following the tangled case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a lawsuit that was added to the Supreme Court docket several few months ago. In brief, Orange County public school teacher Rebecca Friedrichs, joined by several other teachers and the Christian Educators Association, filed suit against the powerful union in an effort to end the levying of “agency fees” for non-members. The fees are permitted under state law so long as they are earmarked for apolitical operations. The case against them, laid out eloquently by Friedrichs and a co-plaintiff in an interview with the Washington Post, is that unions’ revenues are fungible, and their organizing efforts can’t possibly be extricated from politics. “Collective bargaining is being used to push for things that I would never agree to,” Friedrichs says, such as generous pension plans, anti-voucher drives, and same-sex marriage. The case has the potential to transform the country into a right-to-work nation from coast to coast. Sounds good to us.

Insolvent districts, alleged teacher shortages, NOLA’s ed reforms, and the market’s effect on teacher effectiveness.

Mike Petrilli:               Hello, this is your host, Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, here at the Education Gadfly Show and online at edexcellence.net. Now, please join me in welcoming my co-host, the Megyn Kelly of education reform, Dara Zeehandelaarar.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    That was better than I thought it was going to be.

Mike Petrilli:               Megyn Kelly. This has been a fascinating week with the response to the debate, of course, and the ongoing debate between Donald Trump and Megyn Kelly. In the conservative movement, people do not like it when people mess with one of their favorite Fox news correspondents.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    I have to say I, in general, don't understand the mental process of, let's say some of the candidates, but don't go after one of the most beloved figures on the network that you really need to support you, who by the way, has shown in the past that she has absolutely no problem standing up for herself.

Mike Petrilli:               Yes, and that she asked a reasonable question. This, again, is like you, Dara, you are willing to ask tough questions. Like Megyn Kelly, he had to be asked these questions. He's called women these horrible names and he did it again with Megyn Kelly, providing her point. Why is it that we have so many Americans out there who are still attracted by that? I mean, this is not about political correctness. This is about just being polite.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    Misogyny.

Mike Petrilli:               Misogyny. Civic discord.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    Sexism.

Mike Petrilli:               Sexism, like don't be rude. When was it that conservatives suddenly loved New Yorkers? I mean, this is ridiculous.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    I don't know.

Mike Petrilli:               No offensive to the New Yorkers out there or Robert Pondiscio on our staff, a guy who would never say something like this.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    I have to give her props for not actually stooping to his level on this one because give the man a shovel and he'll dig the hole himself.

Mike Petrilli:               I would love it ... I wish he was participating on Campbell Brown's debate on education policy to see if he would do this to Campbell Brown. Would love to see what she would do. Would also love to see him and Eva Moskowitz at one point. He would get ...

                                    Okay. Enough with that. We have some fun stuff to cover. I am back from vacation. Rio, baby, Rio. It's got to be on your bucket list. It is an amazingly beautiful place.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    You guys can't see, but I'm standing here glaring at Mike because he was in Rio and we were in the humidity.

Mike Petrilli:               Yes, it was actually a beautiful time to go. Okay, let's get started. Clara, let's play Pardon the Gadfly.

Clara:                          All right. First question: A new Fordham report offered solutions for insolvent school districts. What's the best way to get them out of the red?

Mike Petrilli:               So, Dara, you were the lead author of this report. Tell us: What is this all about?

Dara Zeehandelaar:    Well, to answer the question by not answering the question, the best way to help districts who are in the red is to very, very strongly prevent them from getting that far in the first place. There are an incredible amount of ways that districts can get into trouble. Some of them are just pretty mind-boggling, like districts allowed to operate with a deficit and deficit spend for several years in a row and nobody steps in until they are already in debt. That doesn't make any sense. Districts being allowed to enter into long-term contracts based on future revenue that they have, not only no guarantee off, but probably aren't going to get because of declining enrollment. Yet, nobody is monitoring them to say, maybe it's not a good idea for you to enter into a 10-year vendor contract with money we're pretty sure you're not going to have.

Mike Petrilli:               Let's be clear about this. We're talking about districts out there, right. They go broke. This is not ... sometimes it may be a matter of not having somebody on the team that really knows finances. Sometimes, very rarely, it could be something about fraud or somebody stealing money. Most of the time, it's just the normal way that we do business in education, which is that, particularly with these contracts, and your teacher union contracts, other labor agreements, they go for these 3 or 5 year contracts. In many cases, the districts don't know what their enrollment's going to be. They don't know what the revenue is. You look at, for example, after the great recession, all of a sudden the birth rate plummeting in America. Now, we are finding in lots of places around the country, we have fewer kids coming in in Kindergarten and first grade. This was not foreseen. Well, guess what. Fewer kids mean less money, means you don't necessarily to pay those higher salaries that you promised 3 or 4 years ago, or that the previous superintendent promised.

                                    Here in this brief, we try to give states some ideas about what they can do to try to be, as you say, pro-active in keeping districts from completely crashing and burning.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    Well, yes. Also, now to answer the question that was actually asked. What happens when they're actually in trouble. We can't districts to take ... states to take ... high quality preventative measures. In this brief, we outline a series of 3 tiers of interventions. The first one is collaborative supports, which I realize is dissatisfying for people who want to just sweep the problem clear and take over a district, or something like that. Collaborative supports for existing leaders to identify problems and even give them political cover to make decisions. They know they need to raise class sizes or operate closer to class size maximums and they just need someone to come in and be like, well it's out of my hands. Now, I can make the hard choice and then, towards financial management, and then full-district administrative control we call state takeover.

                                    The fact is, states are not good at running districts. Let's not jump to that step right away and, instead, have a tiered system, a prescriptive tiered system, with very clear triggers for moving from one stage to the next.

Mike Petrilli:               Check it out on our website. Share it with your friends and family. Okay, topic number 2.

Clara:                          Alleged teacher shortages have been getting a lot of press lately. Is this something something parents and policymakers should be concerned about?

Mike Petrilli:               Well, in some places, right. This has really dominated the news this week, in part because, there's nothing else going on. The big New York Times story over the weekend about teacher shortages nationwide. As Alexander Ruso pointed out, rightly I think, this stuff varies dramatically. It's not nationwide. It is localized in some places. There are districts that are scrambling to find teachers but other places don't have the same. Then, you dig deeper and you probably would find that there are certain areas, like math and science, who were struggling more than other places. This is, Dara, this is partly, this is about demographics. We say, we fired a lot of teachers a few years ago. Now we need more teachers again.

                                    Part of it is just getting schools to be smarter about the ways they recruit and identify teachers. You can't just sit around twiddling your thumbs, waiting for people to apply. You've got to be pro-active out there and go out and find great people and bring them to you.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    I agree, but the problem is that: Who's problem is this really? It's not the parents. It's not the policy makers. It's the principals, but the principals, who are scrambling to find teachers. Especially I know in Los Angeles, charter school principals are scrambling to find teachers, even at the elementary level, which are supposedly easy to find. The principals, that's whose problem it is, but the principals are not in charge of recruiting and teacher training writ large. This really needs to be an opportunity for collaboration between the principal saying here's what we need and then the policymakers or even district officials, being more strategic about recruiting teachers.

Mike Petrilli:               I'm confused now. It's interesting on charters because I would ... My impression is that in a lot of places, at least the high performing charters that have a long track record, they continue to get tons of applications because teachers want to teach in effective schools. They want to teach in places that are working well, where they can be successful, so the Kips of the world end up having a lot of people apply. Now they are very selective. In a place like L.A., is it because in California they need to be certified? What is causing the shortage or what's blocking up the system?

Dara Zeehandelaar:    What's blocking up the system at this point is job security and salary. Now that the big districts are hiring, teachers, especially younger teachers, would rather work for a district with a guaranteed job, where they're not going to get a pink slip and where their salary is secure and is set to raise every year, versus the unknown of a charter school.

Mike Petrilli:               Now, that's interesting.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    It's going to be different in other places with other job markets, but in large urban centers where the district is a secure source of employment and the district is hiring, the charters are having to hold.

Mike Petrilli:               This is fascinating, Dara, because it was not that long enough. It was just before the great recession, when all the talk was about how young people today, they don't want to be in one job for their whole life. They're going to have lots of different jobs. They want to be in a place that's entrepreneurial. Well, suddenly, the great recession happens, right. We just talked about the birth rate. This also has an impact on people's outlook on work, on psychology. The same thing happened with the Great Depression. It really freaked a lot of people out. Suddenly, a secured job and job security and all the rest start to look like something that's much more attractive, even to young people, even to millennials.

                                    That is interesting. It is true that in Ohio, for example, a few years ago, there was a push to try to buy-out veteran teachers, in part because of expenses, because of pension stuff, other reforms. You've had a wave of veteran teachers leave. As you say, these big urban districts now are hiring lots of people. When they can pay more than the charters, that is a challenge for the charter schools. Hey, you know what causes that is funding and equity.

                                    Okay, topic number 3.

Clara:                          A set of articles out of Two Lane concluded that New Orleans ed reforms are working. How applicable is this success to other locals?

Mike Petrilli:               Dara, what's your take on this? You're the researcher, so tell us. It looks like pretty compelling evidence. It's hard. We can't randomly assign hurricanes to city, thank God. Well, maybe actually Mother Nature does sort of ...

Dara Zeehandelaar:    No.

Mike Petrilli:               .. no, no. Okay, as you can see the wheels turning in my head there. It is hard to figure out some of the methodology of how do you ... There's so many factors going on in New Orleans, lots of different reforms. Are the kids the same? Are they not the same? Who came back after the storm? Still, you've got some very smart people in New Orleans trying to untangle all of this. What they conclude is, hey, as far as we can tell, the schools today are dramatically better than they used to be.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    I won't be able to answer that question specifically, but I'll tell you who can, which is, if say, Chicago or New York City or Los Angeles or Houston is trying to learn from New Orleans, then what they will be able to take from those reforms is really up to them. It's really kind of the job of the researchers here to present their results in a way that people from other districts can decide: Is this applicable to my context?

Mike Petrilli:               All right, well that's fine. That's a little bit of a non-answer.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    A non-answer to the the answer. I know.

Mike Petrilli:               Look, and you say what were the New Orleans reforms. I mean, the city is now mostly charter schools, but a charter school system that had a very strong focus on quality. They have been closing bad charter schools. They have been working very hard at all kinds of the nitty-gritty problems that we know about, funding. What's an appropriate discipline policy? How do we make sure special ed kids have access to these schools? Uniform enrollment system, more outreach to parents. I guess one interesting thing that kind of met a narrative here in New Orleans. It does appear that the schools are getting better. Achievement is better. Still not where we want it to be. There are still plenty of parents, in particularly African American parents who are not happy with how it all went down. There's still a sense that this was done to them rather than done with them.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    It's up to the school leaders in Louisiana and in other places to figure out how much do they really care about that. Right?

Mike Petrilli:               That is. I mean, is that inevitable. Is there always going to be that tension? That if you want to move quickly, if you want to do really hard stuff and stuff that's transformative, you're not going to get at least 100% community support for that. Is there other things that the folks in New Orleans could have done better to bring the community along? I guess the next couple of years, as they work more and more on those community issues may tell.

                                    Okay, that's all the time we've got for Pardon the Gadfly. Now it is time for everyone's favorite: Amber's Research Minute. David Griffith, welcome back to the show.

David Griffith:             Thanks for having me.

Mike Petrilli:               David is pinch-hitting for Amber this week. She is busy with our big evaluation with the Common Core Assessments that's going on right now, so David's going to be pinch-hitting. David, we were talking earlier about Donald Trump versus Megyn Kelly. Has this turned you into a Megyn Kelly, Fox News fan? I'm curious.

David Griffith:             The phrase that comes to mind is that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Mike Petrilli:               Okay, well played.

David Griffith:             I'm not sure who that makes my friend, but ...

Mike Petrilli:               Well played. Well played. All right, hey, so what have you got for us, David? This is your second time on the show. This is a big opportunity here but big shoes to fill because everybody makes it very clear whenever I talk to them, whenever I talk to podcast listeners, that most people listen for Amber. This is the meat of it here. No pressure, but you've really got to nail this one.

David Griffith:             Well, today I have a study entitled, "Weak Markets, Strong Teachers, Recession at Career-Start and Teacher Effectiveness."

Mike Petrilli:               Ooo, wow.

David Griffith:             Yep.

Mike Petrilli:               Very relevant to what we're talking about today about the teacher shortage.

David Griffith:             For sure. The study is conducted by Martin West of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Markus Nagler of the University of Munich, and Mark Peunich of the Ethos Institute of Economical Research. In the study, they essentially assess the impact of the business cycle on teacher quality. They use recessions to see if there's any impact on either the demand or supply for teachers on their quality. For the study, they essentially rely on data from Florida. It comes from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. That's reading and math scores for every 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade student who was tested in Florida between 2000 - 2001 and 2008 - 2009. In addition to sort of the beginning of the major recession that we're all familiar with, it also captures the earlier, sort of smaller recession from the Bush years. They use those scores to construct test-based value-added scores for 33,000 4th and 5th grade teachers in Florida Public Schools. They use value-added as their measure of teacher quality.

                                    The main finding of the study is that teachers who enter the profession during a recession are roughly .1 standard deviations more effective in teaching math and .05 standard deviations more effective in teacher English/Language Arts than non-recession teachers. There are a number of factors that could explain this, but the results of the study basically suggest that it's driven by increases in the supply of very effective teachers during recessions, rather than decreases in the demands for teachers because the government is hiring fewer of them, or some differences in the rates of attrition as between recession and non-recession teachers after the end of their profession. Essentially, they suggest that stronger teachers are entering the profession or trying to enter the profession during recessions, most likely because they have relatively few alternatives.

                                    There's some interesting nuances. For example, the effect seems to be stronger for male teachers than female teachers. It seems to be stronger for minority teachers. It seems to be stronger for teachers who are entering the profession later in life, suggesting perhaps that those groups are a little bit more motivated by the economic returns to teaching than other groups. I think the really interesting part for me was trying to actually estimate how much better the teachers who entered the recessions were than the teachers who would have entered otherwise because if all the teachers who start teaching during recessions become teachers only because of the recession, then the effectiveness difference between these groups would essentially be equal to the measured effect, the .1 standard deviations. However, if only 10% of the recession teachers went into teaching due to the recession, then the difference in effectiveness could actually be much much larger, as much as 10 times larger or a whole standard deviation.

                                    The study has a couple of pretty clear policy implications. First, and most obviously, recessions may be a really great time for the government to hire effective teachers. Because ...

Mike Petrilli:               I thought you were going to say, have a pro-recession government policy.

David Griffith:             Yeah, right. Obviously, we need to create more recessions so our kids can learn. Second of all, regardless of where we are on the business cycle, the study provides pretty strong evidence that we will be able to attract better teachers to the professions if we pay new teachers more, although that's very different from say that increasing the salary of the current teaching workforce would lead to higher achievement. Those are the big takeaways. It was an interesting study.

Mike Petrilli:               Very well timed, David, as we were just talking about the teacher shortage problem that we're hearing about this week. It's kind of crazy, right. Recessions, but for education, at least for this respect, a tighter labor market, which we're now finally so many years after the great recession we were experiencing is bad for hiring teachers. There's not as many of them. It makes me wonder if you charted Teach for America in their sort of good years and bad years, I bet that this would be very counter-cyclical, as well. You think about TFA getting started back in the early 90s after a recession. I remember in the mid-90s when the economy's booming, things were tough for Teach for America. This is just one of these facts of life.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    Teach for America applications are down now, too.

Mike Petrilli:               Absolutely.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    Which speaks to, exactly what David was saying about making the entry-level salaries more lucrative. I think it, unfortunately, also speaks to the fact that teaching is still perceived as a back-up plan or a second-tier profession. I can't do what I really want to do, so I'll teach for a couple of years.

Mike Petrilli:               Right, right right, right. The question is, so their takeaway is what? Take advantage of this during the recession, but of course, during recession, schools also tend to have a bit hit on their funding and, so it's perhaps hard to do those things. This is one of those dynamics that it is helpful to understand but it's not quite clear we can do much about.

David Griffith:             Yeah, I think there are a couple of things we could do, but there's political barriers to them. Right? For example, we spend a lot of money on pensions. Right? We could shift that investment to the front-end and try to attract better people to the profession. That's easier said than done.

Mike Petrilli:               I would like to point out as a former member of the Bush Administration, that to the extent that you blame the Bush Administration for the great recession. Well, it looks like this was one of our great accomplishments in education.

Dara Zeehandelaar:    Keep telling yourself that.

Mike Petrilli:               All right. That is all the time we've got for this week. Thank you, David. Until next week ...

Dara Zeehandelaar:    I'm Dara Zeehandelaarar.

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

READ "How School Districts Can Stretch the School Dollar"

Despite some signs of economic recovery, school districts nationwide continue to struggle mightily. Nobody expects economic growth—or education spending—to rebound to 2008 levels over the next five years, and the long-term outlook isn't much brighter.

In short, the "new normal" of tougher budget times is here to stay for American K-12 education. So how can local officials cope?

In my new policy brief, I argue that the current crunch may actually present an opportunity to increase the efficiency and productivity of our education system if decision makers keep a few things in mind:

First and foremost, solving our budget crisis shouldn't come at the expense of children. Nor can if come from teachers' sacrifice alone. Depressing teachers' salaries forever isn't a recipe for recruiting bright young people into education—or retaining the excellent teachers we have. Finally, quick fixes aren't a good answer; we need fundamental changes that enhance productivity.

So how can school districts dramatically increase productivity and stretch the school dollar?

One, we should aim for a leaner, more productive, better paid workforce. Let's ask classroom teachers to take on additional responsibility in return for greater pay, eliminate some ancillary positions, and redesign our approach to special education.

Two, we should pay for productivity. A redesigned compensation system would include a more aggressive salary schedule, more pay for more work and better results, and prioritization of salaries over benefits.

Three, we must integrate technology thoughtfully. Online and "blended" school models are coming to K-12 education. They can be catalysts for greater pupil engagement, individualization, and achievement and, if organized right, they can also be opportunities for cost-cutting.

Many districts continue to face budget challenges of historic proportions. Rather than slashing budgets in ways that erode schooling, let's rethink who we hire, what they do, how we pay them, and how to incorporate technology—that's where the big payoff is.

There are two basic arguments for charter schools’ existence, note Michael McShane and Jenn Hatfield: First, by taking advantage of flexibility not afforded traditional public schools, they can raise student achievement. Second, they can use that freedom and deregulation to create a more diverse set of schools than might otherwise come into being. There is an increasingly robust body of evidence on charter schools’ academic performance. Far less is known about the second aspect. So how diverse is the nation’s charter sector?

The short answer is: more diverse than you might expect, but less than we might hope. McShane and Hatfield ran the numbers on 1,151 schools, which combine to educate nearly half a million students in seventeen different cities. Based on each school’s description of its own mission or model, they were divided into “general” or “specialized” schools. Within the latter category, schools were further divided in thirteen sub-types, including “no-excuses,” STEM schools, progressive, single-sex, etc. There’s an even split between generalized and specialized schools, with the most common types being no-excuses and progressive.

The pair also found significant variation between cities. They contend that these distinctions are driven by demographics, the age and market share of each city’s charter sector, and (most interestingly) the number and type of authorizers. The higher the percentage of black residents living in a city, they found, the more students are enrolled in no-excuses schools. More poor residents tend to correlate with more specialized schools. McShane and Hatfield posit a “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Charter Schools” to explain their findings. “Academic achievement is often the primary concern for low-income communities; thus more no-excuses and STEM schools in poorer communities,” they write. “But in wealthier communities, families have the luxury of looking for specialized options such as international and foreign language schools.” Authorizers also “might be inclined to support established models” over programs that are more innovative but harder to implement (hence more KIPP). Or market diversity could simply be a function of maturity: The older a city’s charter sector—and the greater the number of authorizers—the more diverse the menu of options. “There is no ideal mix of schools for a given community,” McShane and Hatfield conclude, “or at least there is no ideal mix that can be determined by people outside of the community.” It’s not unreasonable, they observe, to make the diversity of charter offerings a “second-order concern behind school quality.” Yet as the authors note (nicely citing Fordham’s What Parents Want report), not every parent is a test score hawk. “If we require all schools to perform well across one set of metrics before we think about allowing for diversity,” McShane and Hatfield conclude, “we will most likely limit the amount of diversity that we will see.”

SOURCE: Michael Q. McShane and Jenn Hatfield, “Measuring diversity in charter school offerings,” American Enterprise Institute (July 2015). 

Recently, ACT disaggregated its 2014 test results and college retention rates in order to get a closer look at the college aspirations and preparation levels of ACT-takers who reported a family income of less than $36,000 (the poorest 24 percent of test-takers). An astonishing 96 percent of these students reported plans to enroll in college. Despite their aspirations, however, only 11 percent met all four of ACT’s college readiness benchmarks, which include English, reading, math, and science. Even more troubling, a whopping 50 percent of low-income students failed to meet a single benchmark.

When broken down by subject, low-income students performed best in English (45 percent met the benchmark, compared to 64 percent of all students). In the three remaining subjects, however, they posted far lower numbers. Twenty-six percent met the reading benchmark (compared to 44 percent of all students), 23 percent were deemed college-ready in math (compared to 43 percent of all students), and only 18 percent were proficient in science (compared to 37 percent of all students). Unsurprisingly, the number of benchmarks attained rose along with family income. Students from families with incomes over $100,000 were twice as likely to meet the benchmark in nearly every subject.

The report also draws attention to two interesting findings. First, low-income students who take a “core or more” high school curriculum (four years of English and three years each of math, science, and social studies) are more likely to meet each of the four benchmarks—and be college- and career-ready—than their low-income peers who opt for a different course pattern. For example, 47 percent of low-income students who took “core or more” met the English benchmark, compared to 24 percent of low-income students who took less than the core but still met the benchmark. In math, 25 percent of “core-or-more” students met the benchmark, while a dismal 4 percent of students who took less than the core were successful. Second, across all benchmark attainment levels, students with higher ACT Engage College scores in areas like academic discipline, commitment to college, and social connection are more likely to remain enrolled in college after their first year than students with lower scores in those areas. This could point to the importance of non-cognitive skills—though education stakeholders have a long way to go before they agree on the best way to teach these skills to students. Overall, though, the implications of the report are clear: If we’re going to get more low-income kids ready for success in college, our K–12 system has to greatly improve at helping students complete a rigorous curriculum and develop non-cognitive skills.

SOURCE: “The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2014: Students from Low-Income Families,” ACT (July 2015).