The Education Gadfly Weekly

Congressional Republicans have promised to overhaul the No Child Left Behind act this year; the big debate so far has been whether to maintain the law’s annual testing requirements. At a hearing on the issue last week, Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), was clearly sympathetic to arguments by several witnesses that Congress should keep the testing mandate but dump the rules that prescribe how states must hold schools accountable for test results. As he summarized it for Time in an interview after the hearing, “You have to have the annual test. You have to disaggregate it. You have to report it, so we know how schools and children and school districts are doing. But after that, it’s up to the states, who spend the money and have the children and take care of them and it’s their responsibility to devise what’s success, what’s failure and [what the] consequences [should be].”

That Uncle Sam might back off of its demands that states intervene in failing schools has some reformers on the left on full alert. Chad Aldeman of Bellwether Education Partners—an alumnus of the Obama administration—considers it an abdication of responsibility, especially considering the $15 billion a year the feds spend on our schools via the Title I program. His colleague Anne Hyslop goes even further, saying it “eviscerates the federal role.”

I strongly suspect that these folks are going to lose the argument, mostly because Alexander is committed to getting the federal government out from under its current role as the “national school board,” as he often puts it. (So is House Education Committee Chairman John Kline.) Furthermore, he won’t be able to get enough Republican votes—in either the Senate or the House—if his rewrite maintains a heavy-handed federal role in education. If there’s a new law enacted this year, it will almost surely remove the federal accountability mandates.

Which is OK. We at Fordham have argued for many years that transparency for results is a better trade-off for federal funding than prescriptive accountability rules. I still believe that to be true. But I’m ready to go even further: Let’s admit that we’re not really sure how to “do accountability” at the state level, either. In fact, top-down accountability rarely works to turn around the worst schools. But there’s a silver lining, because there’s something else that is actually working better.

Before I get to that, let me pause to define some terms, because they are important. Transparency, as I see it, refers to measuring student performance regularly—annually is how we’ve been going about it, and should continue doing—and making the results available to the public, as well as to educators and policy leaders. Ideally that means slicing and dicing the data every which way (by race, class, performance level, growth, etc.). It also means boiling the data down into some sort of judgment of each individual school, like an A–F rating.

Accountability, on the other hand, implies some sort of intervention in low-performing schools. The original NCLB formulation included a “cascade of sanctions” that were supposed to get progressively tougher. The more recent requirements for the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program offer states and districts a menu of options for dealing with failing schools—from the tough (school closure) to the rather insignificant (retooling the school’s instructional approach).

What’s important to know about both generations of interventions is that they rarely worked. As we at Fordham put it in a 2010 report, bad schools appear to be immortal. That’s mostly because truly impactful interventions are almost never tried. In the early days of NCLB, most schools in “corrective action” chose the “other” option of school improvement (as in, doing something other than closing the school, chartering it, laying off staff, etc.). And under SIG, most schools opted for the so-called “transformation” model, which was the squishiest. That’s too bad, because at least a couple of studies demonstrated significant achievement gains for schools subjected to true turnarounds—where at least half the staff were replaced.

It might be tempting to make states embrace these harder-edged interventions. But that’s likely to disappoint—at least for our worst-case schools—for two reasons. First, states often lack the political will to take tough-love actions like laying off staff or closing a school. Second, and perhaps more importantly, states generally lack the capacity to oversee faithful implementation of the more aggressive sanctions. Nor can states simply delegate the job to districts, since the districts are often part of the problem.

The only state-led reform that shows real promise, in my view, is Louisiana’s Recovery School District and, possibly, its clone in Tennessee. By plucking dire schools out of their districts, they sever the link to the dysfunctional systems, contracts, practices, etc. that made these schools low-performing in the first place. And by pairing these schools with high-quality charter operators, they inject the capacity—better staff, better curriculum, new resources—that had been missing.

But the RSD is one promising example in a country with fifty million students; it’s hardly dispositive. Neither is it a sure thing, as Michigan’s effort at replicating an RSD has demonstrated.

So what, then, are we supposed to do about the very worst schools—those that are low-performing (in terms of proficiency rates) and whose students aren’t making significant gains over time, either? Look the other way? Give up on the children trapped inside them?

No. Thankfully, there is another strategy, and it’s working remarkably well: Allow students to escape the worst schools through the powerful mechanism of parental choice. All over the nation, in cities large and small, charter schools are growing steadily and serving a greater and greater share of public school students. Which means, conversely, that dysfunctional districts are losing more and more students to charters. Eventually, they are forced to shut down sorely under-enrolled schools—which tend to be the same low-performing schools that reformers want to address. In Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and on and on, many such schools have finally gone away. And not because of top-down accountability, but because of the escape hatch called charter schools and the enrollment hemorrhage that they have caused for the worst district schools.

Of course, that’s only a win for kids if the new charter schools themselves are high-performing—which is by no means a given, especially in states like Ohio. We have to get the details right on charter school policy too, especially sound funding and the mechanisms of charter school authorizing.

Still, if reformers want the federal government to do something about failing schools, they should team up with the good folks at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and push for dramatically higher federal funding for charter schools, as well as smart policies to encourage the rapid replication of quality schools. Put the charter school engine on overdrive.

I’m not saying that we should give up on all efforts at top-down accountability. States should continue to experiment with various interventions in low-performing schools. That’s particularly important for rural and suburban communities where charters are unlikely to gain much of a foothold and in districts that aren’t totally dysfunctional or bereft of capacity. They just might need a bit of a nudge to overcome inertia or local political challenges; state actions can be constructive.

But let’s admit that we don’t know precisely what that should look like, and thus we definitely shouldn’t prescribe a particular approach from Washington. What Uncle Sam can do is demand transparency around results, plus put some major new investments into high-quality charter schools. That sounds like a federal role that both sides of the aisle could support and that might actually do some good. How about we give it a try?

Last week, Mike Petrilli issued a “stump speech challenge” asking his fellow education wonks to come up with talking points that members of Congress might use to bolster the case for annual testing.

Be careful what you wish for, Mike. Challenge accepted. Here’s my bid:

When you and I think back on our school days, we remember football games and school dances, the high school musical, and—if we’re lucky—that unforgettable teacher who put just the right book in our hands at just the right time. One who inspired us or opened our eyes to our own potential—and what was waiting for us in the world right outside the classroom window.

What will our children remember when they think back on their school days? I fear too many will just remember taking tests.  

And that’s not right.

At the same time, I hear an awful lot of cynicism about the efforts we’ve been making in the last few years to make our schools better. Some people say that all this testing is just a big game to label our schools a failure, privatize education, demonize teachers, and line the pockets of testing companies and textbook publishers. 

And that’s not right either.

So it’s time to have an honest, no-nonsense conversation about our schools, teaching, and, yes, testing. But let me warn you in advance: If you’re involved in education—whether you’re a teacher, parent, policymaker, or union leader—you might not like some of what I’m going to say. But it’s time to tell the truth about our testing and schools—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Parents tell me their children take too many tests. Teachers complain that testing has taken the joy out of learning and made their jobs miserable. And I agree. It’s time we started listening to parents and teachers.

At the same time, I don’t know how any of us can look at our education system and think we don’t have a problem. A big problem. We’re seventeenth in the world in reading, twenty-seventh in math. The nation that put men on the moon and an iPhone in our pocket ranks twentieth in science. 

And that’s not just embarrassing, it’s dangerous.

Education made America great. But we’re not going to be a great nation very much longer with a third-rate education system. Why do you think we ended up with all those tests in the first place? We got lazy and complacent. Too many of us thought “Well, America’s schools may be lousy, but MY kid’s school is great and MY kid’s doing fine.” 

Well a lot of schools are not great and a lot of kids are not doing fine. How do we know? 

Testing.

Those tests we all love to hate were aimed at getting schools back on track, safeguarding our prosperity, and making sure our children are prepared to find good-paying jobs in a safe and stable country. 

But we pushed it too far and too hard. There’s an old saying that to a hammer, everything is a nail. And in education reform, everything is a test. That’s taking a terrible toll on our schools, our teachers, and our children. 

Education reform has brought energy and dynamism to education. Today, we have some terrific new charter schools and real choice for millions of parents. Some of our best, brightest, and most idealistic young people are committing years—and often their entire careers—to helping our most disadvantaged children. These are good things. They must continue.

America needs education reform. What we do not need is to turn urgency and energy into recklessness. When good teachers leave the classroom, when children come home in tears and parents get anxious—when testing becomes the reason we send children to school—something has gone very, very, wrong.

Testing gives all of us, and especially parents, important information about how our kids are doing and what’s working in schools. The trouble is that we’re using those tests to make snap judgments about schools and teachers. And that’s not what they’re for. We’re trying to make vast decisions with half-vast data. 

So let’s make a deal.

Let’s keep testing every child every year. But let’s use tests for the purpose they were intended: to tell us how our children—all of our children—are doing. But we’ve got to get out of the business of using tests of children to judge teachers, because it’s starting to damage our schools.

Let’s keep the federal government from acting like the national school board. The best thing testing gives us is information. It should be up to parents and local community members, not Washington, to look at that information and decide what to do with it. If we use tests to decide which teachers to keep and which to fire, is it any surprise that teachers spend all their time teaching to the test? What would YOU do if your mortgage, car payments, and groceries for your family were riding on your students’ test scores?

Let’s end the blame game. Let’s stop using tests as a blunt instrument to punish schools and shame bad teachers. If teachers view tests as information about how students are doing—not how THEY are doing—they can get back to the business of teaching, not teaching to the test.

But in return, we need to ask more—much more—of our schools and teachers.

Teachers, you’re used to asking tough, challenging questions. But I have some tough, challenging questions for you.

If we get Washington to stop using tests to judge your performance, will you not just accept but actually embrace higher standards for yourself, your school, and the students you teach?   

Will you, your leaders, and unions help insure that the best teachers go to the neediest schools and students?

Will you accept that the job is hard, the hours long, and that the answer cannot always be, “Trust the teachers and send more money?”

Will you do what it takes to become a true profession—not merely a labor force—and demand the highest level of performance from yourselves and your peers?

Will you be honest with your brothers and sisters who simply don’t have what it takes to be effective in the classroom?  

Will you accept that charters and school choice are an important part of the education system and—when done right—can be engines of excellence and innovation that make all of us better?

One of the biggest complaints I hear about standards and testing is that one size does not fit all and that children are all different. I agree. But if one size doesn’t fit all, why should one kind of school fit all? Let’s get teachers out from under the burden of testing, but let’s allow every parent everywhere to choose the school that’s best for their children. Let’s let teachers teach and parents choose—public, private, charter, and, yes, even religious schools. If a religious school can prove that it can get kids to meet higher standards in reading and math, why should it concern us that they also instruct kids in their respective faiths? Let parents choose.    

Americans have always trusted teachers. But now we need to trust them to raise their game and be the true professionals we need to build a strong and secure America.

At the same time, education reform needs to be more than just test-and-punish. The energy and dynamism needs to go toward making education a truly research-driven profession. Choice and charters empower parents, but if we’re asking teachers to take the lead in improving their performance and policing themselves, then we also need reformers to hold bad charter schools’ feet to the fire and get rid of those who take the public’s money and do nothing for kids. We also need to make charter schools places of sustained and sustainable excellence, true laboratories of education innovation.

Education reform has turned our schools into battlegrounds. We fight over test scores and standards, what our children learn, and whether we have the right people teaching our children. I don’t know how to fix our schools. But I know this: It’s not going to happen by making teachers the enemy.

I simply do not believe our schools are filled with lazy teachers punching the clock and doing nothing more than what their union contracts demand. Neither do I believe that choice and charters and testing is about the 1 percent trying to privatize education and enrich themselves on the public’s dime.

The story of American education is the story of good people trying and too often failing. It’s the story of people seeing injustice and trying like hell to fix it. These two groups need each other more than they know. And America needs them both. If we want to have the best education system on earth, then we need to accept that education reform is something we must do with teachers, not TO teachers. 

What I am proposing, then, is a New Deal for teachers. Keep the tests, but use them to help children and inform parents—not hurt schools and terrorize teachers. 

If it weren’t for tests, too many of our kids would still be stuck in lousy schools—yes, there are too many lousy schools—and we’d be hearing the same old tired excuses about poverty, about parents, and about how “those kids” are just hard to teach. 

We can’t go back to the bad old days when we thought our schools were great, but the reality was that they were only great for some children. But we must go back to the days when school meant more than testing.

• National school choice week is upon us—a time to push for high-quality choices, march across the country, and wear yellow scarves. It’s also a week when stories about choice, charters, and the like get much deserved attention. Such is the case in New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo recently bucked teachers’ unions and announced a grand education-reform agenda. Proposed changes include more charter schools, tougher teacher evaluations, and, most impressively, a tax-credit scholarship program designed to allow low- and middle-income New Yorkers to attend private schools. As our very own Checker Finn observed, Cuomo may very well be the first Democratic governor to propose a private school choice program. A bruising political battle is sure to come, but for now, choice advocates have ample cause to celebrate.
• The U.S. Department of Education is out to prove yet again how tone-deaf it is. Maine is the most recent state in danger of suffering from the department’s unlawful practice of revoking NCLB waivers over teacher evaluations—an issue not mentioned once in ESEA. Arne Duncan wants student tests scores to be a more significant factor in the state’s teacher evaluations. Is that so? The Nation’s Superintendent might want to watch the video from Tuesday’s Senate hearing on ESEA reauthorization, where lawmakers across the political spectrum expressed their distaste for mandating such evaluations from Washington. Duncan should take the hint and get out of the teacher-evaluation oversight business. Now.

Student achievement in single-parent homes, Denver’s rising public school enrollment, top-down accountability problems, and private schools of choice.

Amber's Research Minute

SOURCE: Brian Kisida, Patrick J. Wolf, and Evan Rhinesmith, "Views from Private Schools: Attitudes about School Choice Programs in Three States," American Enterprise Institute (January 2015).

Mike:               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 Bill Belichick of education reform, Michelle Learner.

Michelle:         Aren't they cheaters?

Mike:               I wasn't going to bring that part up. You knew! You kept saying you don't know anything about sports, and you knew Bill Belichick, the coach of the Patriots. On one hand, he is charged with cheating. There's this question that the Patriots may have been deflating footballs as a way to somehow have an advantage. But there's also some people who see him as a master tactician. Michelle, this is the question. When people look up at the big score that you put up on the board for Fordham. All the press hits. The huge Twitter followers of the education reform -

Michelle:         Those are earned through hard work, not by deflating clout scores or something of our opponents.

Mike:               This is the question. Are you sure you're doing it the honest way and you're not cheating?

Michelle:         I don't cheat. I lived in Boston for a few years, and let me tell you, their sports fans are crazy. They're crazy.

Mike:               Because people do cheat on Twitter, you know?

Michelle:         Do you do that?

Mike:               There were some -

Michelle:         Are you suggesting that Andy Smarick or Robert Pondiscio?

Mike:               There's some site you can go to and figure out how many of somebody's Twitter followers are real people versus robots, right?

Michelle:         Yes, but -

Mike:               Wasn't there a time when people were buying lists of people to get their numbers up?

Michelle:         We don't do that.

Mike:               I know we don't, but I think there are groups out there that do.

Michelle:         Are you saying there are ed reform groups out there, because you shouldn't make an accusation unless you're willing -

Mike:               There have been accusations that some ed reform groups, when they first got their Twitter handles, bought lists.

Michelle:         Are you ready to name names?

Mike:               I'm saying people should go check it out on their own.

Michelle:         On that note.

Mike:               I just remembered that there were accusations. I haven't checked it out in a while, but you just see. You can see how many people are real, how many of those followers are real people.

Michelle:         Can we go to the next segment?

Mike:               We can. We can. Okay, Michelle. Yes, it is time to play Pardon the Gadfly. Communications assistant, Ellen, get us started.

Ellen:               Education Next recently reported that the U.S. has alarmingly high rates of children living in single parent homes, kids whose achievement lags behind those living with two parents. Why is this happening, and what can be done?

Mike:               So here's the thing to know, Michelle. In the U.S., about a quarter of all kids live with a single parent. A lot of people will say, "Oh well, isn't that the same in Europe. A lot of people in Europe don't get married anymore." The thing is those couples in Europe that don't get married, they still tend to stay together. The rates of single parenthood are much lower, usually more in the neighborhood of 10% or 15%.

                        This has an impact. I mean, this is of course, co-related with poverty and a lot of other things, but these kids tend to do worse. What do you make of it?

Michelle:         Well, I think the evidence has been pretty strong for a very long time that being raised by two parents is a good outcome no matter what. This study, I mean, it's not causal. When you read it, it goes through, while they control it for other things. Really the number of books in a child home seem to be a stronger indication of the gap than how many parents are in the house.

                        What I found interesting was how far Finland, or how close Finland was to the U.S. When Finland is always held up as the example. They actually have a fairly large number of households with one parent.

Mike:               Yeah. No, that's interesting. I mean, look, this is one of these things that's so hard to figure out. I mean, what do we do as a country to try to promote marriage and healthier marriages and keep couples together or help them get together in the first place.

                        I mean a huge amount of this is simply that a lot more women are having babies without getting married. It is now a majority of women in their 20's are having children out of wedlock. Why that's happening, tons of books written about this.

                        I'm pretty convinced that you look at the data and you say, "These tend to be women who have relatively poor education and not great job prospects." They don't have the same incentives to wait until marriage as say somebody who is college-educated, wants to live the fun life of the 20's. Get done with their education before having a family.

Michelle:         There's also the male component of this which is a lot of the men that are options for a partner aren't necessarily able to provide either.

Mike:               That's right. That's right. The marriage-able problem. That a lot of these men are not working or they're not making a whole lot of money like they used to.

                        I've got an article coming out in Education Next shortly. Maybe we'll talk about that when it hits in a week or two. Talking about what schools might do about all of this stuff.

                        Just to say that when people talk about poverty as being one of the reasons that America's schools don't do as well. We have to talk about what does that literally mean? Is it that kids don't have enough money, because in America, actually, most poor families - I mean, again, they're poor, so they don't have a lot of money, but compared to countries overseas, it's not that they have necessarily less money than the poor families overseas do. What we do see is that those poor kids are more likely to be in these single parent homes. That is a serious hardship.

Michelle:         Agreed.

Mike:               Okay, topic number two.

Ellen:               In Denver, poverty is down, along with the under-eighteen population. But public school enrollment is up, meaning more families are choosing the Denver school district. Thoughts?

Mike:               Why is this happening, Michelle?

Michelle:         Well, I'll say, you know, I think Denver might be the next D.C. For a long time, perhaps, people were not wanting to send their kids to the public schools, but now, with all this choice, public school choice, parents are saying, "Hey, I actually get a say in which school is right for my kid, and which school I can send my kid to." There's a few other things like the recession for a while probably led to the fact that parents who would have sent their kids to private school maybe couldn't have afforded.

                        I think it's a positive thing. I think it's public school choice. I think it's the fact that Denver has turned around its reputation. I think its good news.

Mike:               Yeah, look, no, this is good news, because for many years, those of us in education reform have been hoping that this would happen. That if we could improve public schools in cities, including through school choice, that that would keep the middle class, bring back the middle class, and that's just helpful for a city for all kinds of reasons.

                        For one thing, it makes it easier to promote integrated public schools. It also, frankly, if there's middle class people, upper middle class people stay, those are tax dollars that can be used in the city instead of going to the suburbs.

                        In Denver, I suspect that a huge proportion of what's going on is because of one network of charter schools. That Denver School of Science and Technology now has something like five or six different high school campuses. I think they may do middle schools too.

                        These are schools that are purposely diverse. They make sure that it's about half and half between economically disadvantaged kids and middle class kids. Doing an amazing job doing a stem program.

                        There's just a ton of parents that are like, "Wow, this is better than what I'd get in private schools." But if you want to attend those schools, you got to live in Denver.

Michelle:         Now Chalbeat Colorado did a great story on this very issue. What they talk about is that this is a trend throughout Colorado, and that there could be a gentrification thing going on, obviously. There's also, they talk about a contraception program that was, I guess is law in Colorado, and that now there are fewer people having babies. Four, five, six years down the road, this is what we're seeing.

Mike:               Wow, that's fascinating. You know, this links to what we were talking about before.

Michelle:         Exactly.

Mike:               This is encouraging young women to wait to have a baby until they're in a place where they can better take care of those babies. What they've done in Denver is make these long-acting reversible contraceptives or larks more widely available. Including that when women come in, they have their first baby to offer them these contraceptives, which has sharply reduced them having a second, or third, or fourth baby often by different men. Again, all of these very good in terms of poverty reduction, in terms of helping young people have a better shot growing up.

Michelle:         You know what I learned? This is a little off topic, but people call Denver ‘Manver’. There's so many available men.

Mike:               Interesting. I'm not surprised. I did remember seeing that on the ...

Michelle:         I've never heard of that.

Mike:               So what do they call Washington, then, because there's so many available women?

Michelle:         I don't know. I'll let you come up with that.

Mike:               Washington women? I've got to work on that. All right, topic number three.

Ellen:               Mike, this week you're calling for a reduction in top down accountability at both state and federal levels, arguing that choice is a more effective way of closing failing schools. Will governments listen?

Mike:               Hey, that reminds me. Happy National School Choice Week, everybody! Michelle has the yellow scarf on as we speak. She's got it around her head like a turban.

Michelle:         That's actually not true, but I was wearing yellow yesterday, and we have a few scarves, you know -

Mike:               But that was not yellow. That was mustard.

Michelle:         Which falls into what color category?

Mike:               I don't know. I don't know about that. It has a very different color, but yes, I would support those scarves, but let's face it. They are scratchy, people. They are scratchy, you know?

Michelle:         That fabric actually makes me cringe. It's like this felt fake thing.

Mike:               Yes, it's tough. It's tough. This is the context of the elementary and secondary education act or No Child Left Behind, up for re-authorization. We have gone through the big debate over annual testing. It looks like, in my view, that in the end, that's going to stay in the bill. That Lamar Alexander has gotten comfortable with the notion of keeping annual testing, partly because of Marty West. Way to go, Marty, friend of Fordham, Harvard professor, who spent a year working for Lamar, and then was the witness at the hearing last week.

Michelle:         Talk about good impact.

Mike:               Big impact. Love it! He should shoot right to the top of Rick Hess' scholar rankings on influence. Now the debate is, well, what about accountability, in terms of both the school ratings, how do you determine the A to F schools, that kind of stuff, and what do you do if anything about schools that are failing.

                        What I try to argue in this piece is that it is okay for us to turn the page at the federal level on accountability. Accountability should be a rule for the states, but even at the state level, let's face it. The top down stuff doesn't seem to be having much of an impact on the lowest performing schools with a few exceptions.

                        There are a few studies and a few examples of places that have had some ability, but it's usually if they do things like fire half the staff, close the schoos, these really draconian things. Most states aren't willing to do it. But you know what is working to get rid of the worst public schools out there?

Michelle:         School choice.

Mike:               School choice. Right? I mean in city after city you see more and more kids going to charter schools, and when that happens, eventually, these school districts have to shut down some of their own schools, because they're under enrolled and those tend to be the worst schools.

Michelle:         So putting the school choice component aside on which we both agree, I'm going to push back a little. You talk about the difference between accountability and transparency in your blog post. My push back is, what's the difference between a school that's not performing, and a school that we know isn't performing because it's now transparent? Doesn't there have to be -

Mike:               Boy, I feel like I saw Andy Smarick say that on Twitter earlier today.

Michelle:         [inaudible 00:11:27] I don't know what's on Twitter.

Mike:               All right.

Michelle:         But what is the difference? I mean, fine, I will give you that the federal role hasn't done a good job in doing the right kind of accountability. Maybe we don't know what the right accountability is. Maybe we are fatigued from waiver overreach over the last eight years or six years. Are you really ready just to give up?

Mike:               So what I would say is that transparency is important so that, first and foremost, parents understand how their schools are performing. Especially now, in most cities, we do have a real school choice environment. Parents get to choose. We want to give them good information.

                        There are starting to be some evidence that if you give parents that information in a pretty easy to understand format, make it say if there's an application process where they go on to a uniform application, and the scores are right there, that they will gravitate towards the higher ranked scores.

                        It's not all that matters. They care about proximity. They care about extracurriculars, which is quite reasonable. It will nudge them towards these higher performing schools. The transparency is important, the testing, and boiling it down to some kind of a grade or rating for the school. All important.

                        In terms of doing something about the worst schools, again, I'm happy to have states continue to try to experiment there. I really don't think we know what to do. Recovery school districts look promising. It worked in New Orleans, but it was a disaster in Michigan.

                        A handful of studies have shown that some of these state intervention teams, I think in North Carolina and California have had some impact, but only if they push for the toughest reforms, and only in a few places. At the federal level, let's be careful not to mandate a particular approach when we really don't know what works. This is not just a political problem. We just need political courage to shut down those failing schools. We don't know what the right option is.

                        Again, the good news is, there is this other mechanism out there that's actually doing it. That mechanism is school choice. I say, hey, let's keep cranking up the charter school engine. Let's focus on the high quality charters. That's important. You got to get those details right. Those worst schools will be taken care of almost automatically if we can get that engine cranking up right.

Michelle:         But it has to be the right engine, right? Obviously, the 40 something different charter school laws. We're in Ohio, where, obviously, things haven't been so great. In other states, there are. It's not just, "Oh, school choice." It's easy.

Mike:               It's not easy, but I think it has more potential to solve this particular problem of what to do with he worst failing public schools than some kind of top down approach does.

Michelle:         All right, I'm not -

Mike:               Oh, but this is good. We disagree. I like it. I like it.

Michelle:         I just feel like it's a pendulum switch. Kind of like, you know, the whole thing is testing has been great. Now, it's awful. Let's get rid of it. Okay, let's keep it. Maybe it's somewhere in the middle. I mean, I think we swing too much.

Mike:               Right. Just testing, that's a whole another issue for another day.

Michelle:         Next week.

Mike:               Next week. Okay, thank you, Ellen. All the time we've got for this week on Pardon the Gadfly. Now it's time for everyone's favorite, Amber's Research Minute! Amber, welcome back to the show.

Amber:            Thank you, Mike.

Mike:               You're going to be watching the big game on Sunday?

Amber:            Of course.

Mike:               And are you rooting for that team that likes to deflate their footballs?

Amber:            No. I got to go with Seattle on this one.

Mike:               Really?

Amber:            Yeah, I am. I don't know. I just think Wilson's just a nice guy.

Mike:               He is.

Michelle:         Seattle is also nicer than people in Boston. There, I'll say it.

Mike:               Oh, well that's true. It's interesting. I mean Seattle's football team is not known to be nice, per se.

Amber:            Yeah, that one guy. I forget the one guy who's such a show man. He drives me nuts. The one with the dreads, but, eh, whatever.

Mike:               Right. I'm not going to say his name, because earlier this year, I said his name and I got it wrong. Remember that?

Michelle:         I couldn't correct you. I don't even know who you're talking about.

Mike:               And Tom Brady at that time's a bit of a bad boy, I guess.

Amber:            He's eye candy.

Mike:               I wasn't going to say it.

Amber:            Let's not say that he's not, but you know, eye candy only goes so far with me. I like nice guys. I mean, I just - It's silly, but I do. Do men do this? You like the team based on the quarterback or not? Or you guys aren't that much that way, I guess.

Michelle:         I thought you liked football teams based on the color of their uniforms?

Mike:               That's definitely where my boys are, yes. Oh, no, no. Okay, what you got for us, Amber?

Amber:            All right, we've got views from private schools which is the new EAI study that examines how private schools in Louisiana, Florida, and Indiana perceive school choice programs. They administered an online survey to principals in private schools and the states with a response rate, incidentally, of 29%.

                        The study very closely mirrors our own report in 2013 called school choice regulations red tape or red herring. Their finding mimicked ours in many ways. That the highest rated response for participating in those programs was that they wanted to expand their mission, thus serving disadvantaged kids. These are nice people wanting to do the right thing, which is what we found too.

                        Their other key finding is that private school leaders are very concerned about regulation, and it was their top factor influencing the decision of non-participating schools in all three states. Yet, we don't know what that really means, because the question, the way it's worded, doesn't get into the nature of the regulations. It's kind of vague. That's a problem.

                        The authors point out that their findings differ from ours, relative to the requirement that requiring voucher schools to take the state test is a major deterrent to participation. Yet, their own study is not definitive on that.

                        I started digging a little bit. In fact, 25% of school leaders in Florida in their study say that concerns about administering the state accountability test is a major concern. It's just 25%. 14% say the same in Indiana, and 29% in Louisiana.

                        What's kind of confusing is that they lump in whether it's a major concern with whether it's a minor concern. They're right beside each other. The percentages looking concerned are bigger than they would or otherwise. They don't have the whole Likert scale, only to like get two in the weeds, but you don't really see if minor and major are two ends of the same Likert scale or whether they're right beside each other.

                        Anyway, to my mind, a major concern or minor concern, does minor mean like not that important at all, or, you know what I'm saying. When you just look at the major concern, their numbers are actually lower than what's reported in the press release is what I'm saying. Our own report found that a quarter of respondents listed the requirement to participate in state testing as very or extremely important. We had a quarter that said that.

                        Anyway, it's a lot of similarities there. We found, and Mike knows this already, that really, the leaders cared most about their admissions process and their religious identity that kind of rose to the top of the heap for us. So then we got in this little bit of email discussion, why might the findings be different.

                        I think one of the things that Pat Wolf and Mike and I agreed was our study was relative to urban areas. You got to think that maybe they're used to sort of having to deal with some of these regulations, because they're accepting these kids at a higher rate than private schools in some of these suburban areas. That's one difference.

                        We can talk a little bit about their findings with Louisiana. One of which was that those leaders are concerned about the voucher, scholarship amounts, rather, because in that state, they have to take the amount. Period. They can't supplement it.

                        Anyway, bottom line, we need to be careful. I think all of us would agree. We need to be careful about how we structure these private school programs, and we don't want to undercut the pupil amounts, and we don't want to bog them down with regulations.

Mike:               Yeah.

Michelle:         I think our study paperwork, and the amount of paperwork, was a concern.

Amber:            That was one of them.

Mike:               Yup. No, absolutely. The good news is that they have largely confirmed our findings. This doesn't happen enough in education where you do similar studies due to a couple of different times and make sure that the finding is robust. It seems robust, right?

                        It's to say that there are some things these private school leaders worry about and other things they don't. It does matter, because let's face it. The private schools get to decide whether to participate or not. If you believe in vouchers or tax credit programs, you think that's good for kids, it doesn't work if none of the private schools agree to participate.

                        You can't overdue it with the regulations. On the other hand, you know, you can also say that look, if they're going to take public money, here's the deal. There should be some public accountability. If they're not willing to take that deal, then so be it.

                        We at Fordham had initially said in some of our policy statements, we thought that they should have to take the state test, including the common core test. We backed off that position after some push back, and said, "All right, fine." Look, a reasonable compromise is for these schools to take a nationally normed test. As long as again, the results are transparent to the public. That is a reasonable compromise. Not essentially my ideal, but it still works.

Amber:            It's my ideal.

Mike:               It is your ideal, and for good reason, right? It is Amber's idea.

Amber:            Yeah.

Mike:               Right, because you don't want to control curriculum in these schools.

Amber:            That's right.

Mike:               Fine. Again, folks, we have an agreement, right? Let's keep regulations low. Let's allow them to use these other tests. Let's make the results transparent. Let's get on with it, people. Let's put those yellow scarves on and celebrate National School Choice Week. Kumbaya, Amber!

Amber:            Yes, kumbaya. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think, you know, initially, when I saw the report, I was like, okay, this is like almost identically what we did -

Mike:               And what we found.

Amber:            And what we found, and it's a different sample. It seemed like there were some effort to kind of make some hay out of the differences, but when you dig in there, they're not that compelling, the differences between the two.

                        Yeah, I think what everybody learned doing these things is how you word the survey question is critical to how people respond. Obviously, market researchers know this. They bias these questions all the time. It's an art as much of a science in terms of getting the questions right.

                        You can lead people to respond certain ways. It's important not to do that. When regulations popped up for them as their top thing, that could mean a million different things.

Mike:               Right. That could mean around admissions. That could mean around religion.

Amber:            Financial.

Mike:               Right. Exactly. All right, good. Well, thank you very much, Amber. Thank you, Michelle. That's all the time we've got for this week. Until next week.

Michelle:         I'm Michelle Learner.

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

Speaker 1:       The Education Gadfly Show is a production of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute located in Washington DC. For more information, visit us online at edexcellence.net. 

The debate over annual testing has taken center stage as Congress considers reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Assessments provide critical information for parents and legislators on student progress, but when does annual testing become overtesting? And will it survive reauthorization? Watch Fordham's Mike Petrilli and AEI's Mike McShane discuss testing and accountability in the wake of the Senate hearing on the new ESEA.

A testing renaissance is looming. So say experts Sir Michael Barber and Peter Hill in this comprehensive and timely essay. The latest in a series on what works in education, this paper argues for the need to dramatically alter the way we approach educational assessment. Barber and Hill begin by addressing the purpose of testing broadly, then lay out a compelling case for change, contending that the current K–12 system is broken and that the availability of new technologies provides a unique opportunity for dramatically changing how we think about assessments. Potential benefits of the impending transition to computerized tests include the ability to better assess students’ higher-order thinking; obtain faster, more accurate student results; assess a wider range of student performance; and more effectively use test data to inform classroom instruction and improve student learning. The essay concludes with a “framework for action” offering suggestions for how policymakers and educators can best prepare for the transition. Recommendations include building teacher capacity for next-generation assessments, allowing for local customization of implementation, and establishing clear and consistent communication throughout the assessment transition. While it comes as no surprise to hear testing-giant Pearson singing assessments’ praises, amidst rampant claims of inefficiency and over-testing, a change in thinking in America is long overdue. This spring, millions of students across the country will take next-generation assessments aligned to more rigorous academic standards for the first time. As the authors emphasize, these new computer-based and adaptive tests are designed to measure knowledge and skills required for real-world success and represent a “significant milestone” in the assessment field. Yet while next-generation tests have the potential to better prepare students for the demands of college and career, quality is critical. A true “assessment renaissance” will only be realized if the new tests are of high quality and closely aligned to academic standards and curriculum. To that end, Fordham is currently conducting a study exploring the issue of test quality and content alignment. Stay tuned this summer for the skinny.

SOURCE: Peter Hill and Michael Barber, “Preparing for a Renaissance in Assessment,” Pearson (December 2014).

Retirement plans, much like recurring dreams and fantasy football rosters, are a captivating topic to those directly involved, but pretty much deadening to the rest of us. That’s unfortunate, because the state of our public pensions is a mess that we’re eventually going to have to reckon with. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, the total budgetary shortfall facing this country’s public-sector retirement systems exceeded $900 billion in FY2012, and teacher-related costs may be the largest single contributor to that figure. The authors of this stark NCTQ report estimate that teacher pensions now account for a half-trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities. A price tag that colossal can be tough to contextualize, but don’t miss the trees for the forest here—this debt is no mere abstraction to the hundreds of districts feeling its squeeze. Metropolises like Chicago and Philadelphia have undergone cataclysmic waves of layoffs, while some smaller districts have been so awash in red ink that they’ve simply been dismantled, leaving both jobless employees and dislocated students in crisis. With the stakes that high, it’s crucial that state officials begin to take steps toward retrenchment, and NCTQ has been issuing calls for responsibility for years. Doing the Math follows close on the heels of prior research, and its remedies are unchanged from earlier iterations: Switch over from defined benefits packages to 401(k)s, allow employees a greater measure of fairness and flexibility in exchange for diminished security, and face up to a realistic appraisal of investment returns. No, it won’t be easy persuading teachers to forego the seemingly unbeatable guarantee of defined benefits, but look a bit closer and you’ll discover that those parachutes are often made of fool’s gold. Less than one-fifth of teachers actually stay in the job long enough to gain eligibility for full benefits; those who leave early are denied access to employer contributions and, in some states, can’t even collect the entire amount they’ve paid in. The system is rigged against its employees, who chase after absurdly long vesting periods in pursuit of a backloaded reward. Rectifying these practices will be a heavy lift—the report identifies a whopping total of seven states (out of fifty, plus the District of Columbia) that offer their teachers a fully portable plan, to go along with just nine whose pension systems are adequately funded—but it’s the only way to give this less-than-riveting story a happy ending.

SOURCE: Kathryn M. Doherty, Sandi Jacobs, and Martin F. Lueken, “Doing the Math on Teacher Pensions: How to Protect Teachers and Taxpayers,” National Council on Teacher Quality (January 2015).

A new study in Educational Researcher explores changes in New York’s teacher workforce since the Empire State implemented a number of policies to improve the quality of its new teachers. Beginning in 1998, the state increased the general and content-specific coursework requirements needed for certification and raised the number of hours of required field experience. It also eliminated ad hoc alternative certification pathways like “transcript review” in favor of programs with formal requirements and discontinued emergency and temporary licenses. The authors examine whether these policy changes had an impact on who entered the teaching workforce. Their dataset, comprising SAT scores, administrative data, and licensure and personnel files, looked at two groups between 1985 and 2010: 220,332 individuals who received their entry-level certification; and from within that group, a subset of 151,747 who received certification and were hired in their first teaching positions. They found that, prior to 1999 and the new policies, the average academic abilities of new teachers were low and consistently falling. Once the new policies were adopted, the SAT scores of both the certified group and those who were hired improved substantially, with the latter enjoying the largest gains. For example, between 1999 and 2010, the share of certified teachers drawn from the bottom third of SAT test-takers decreased by 7 percent, while the share from the top third increased by 13 percent. These gains occurred across the state, in all subjects, at both rich and poor schools, and for teachers of all ethnicities. But the improvements were driven by particularly large increases in SAT scores in certain areas and for certain teachers. New York City’s gains were larger, and occurred earlier, than those of the rest of the state. In 1999, 43 percent of new teachers in the nation’s largest school district came from the bottom third of the SAT distribution; by 2010, that number dropped to 24 percent. Improvements were also more pronounced in hard-to-staff subjects (math, science, special education, and bilingual education) than in elementary and other secondary subjects. Schools that enroll more poor students also showed more prominent effects, as did minority teachers compared to white and Asian teachers. The authors rule out hypotheses that the trends are the result of changes in the labor market, concluding that they really are most likely due to the collection of state policies enacted in the late ‘90s to improve the new teaching workforce. While researchers are still determining just how strongly SAT scores are related to student achievement, as a proxy for the changing qualifications of the workforce, they show a very marked improvement in the past fifteen years.

SOURCE: Hamilton Lankford, et al., "Who Enters Teaching? Encouraging Evidence That the Status of Teaching Is Improving," Educational Researcher, Vol. 43 No. 9 (December 2014).