The Education Gadfly Weekly

In 2010, when the final Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were unveiled, our content experts found them worthy of praise, awarding the math standards an A-minus and the English language arts standards a B-plus. That meant that CCSS was “clearly superior” to the standards in the vast majority of states—and that the vast majority of American children would be better off if their schools taught them the content and skills they set forth.

Since then, we’ve remained steadfast in our belief that the standards, if adequately implemented and supported, could improve the educational trajectories and life prospects of all students. Yet our earnest, unequivocal support of the CCSS does not mean that we’re wearing rose-colored glasses. In fact, we’ve not been shy at all about exposing implementation warts over the last six years.

Our latest study, Common Core Math in the K-8 Classroom: Results from a National Teacher Survey, also doesn’t pull any punches. It seeks to offer relevant, honest, and—we hope—practical findings on CCSS implementation. We examined whether teachers responsible for elementary and middle school math instruction in Common Core states have changed what and how they teach—and whether they’re seeing improvements in students’ math understanding as a result. (This is the math parallel to our English language arts study released in 2013.) It joins a growing body of research showing that teacher familiarity with the Common Core standards is growing, as is their acceptance of them. But there’s plenty of concern about implementation as well.

Successfully undertaking survey research that speaks to K–8 math teachers requires analysts who know the subject, who know teachers, and who also know survey design and analysis. Our trio of authors fits that bill: Jennifer Bay-Williams is a professor and department chair of middle and secondary education at the University of Louisville; Ann Duffett is a twenty-year veteran in the field of public opinion research; and David Griffith is a former teacher and a research and policy associate at Fordham.

This able group produced a fine report that you’ll want to read in its entirety. But here are our key takeaways:

• Most teachers are partial to the Common Core math standards, but they don’t think all of their students and their parents are. Teachers believe the standards will both improve their own content knowledge and enhance students’ math skills, prepare them to succeed in college, and bolster their ability to compete in a global economy. Yet they also say that pupils are “frustrated” by having to learn multiple methods of solving a problem, and they worry that some have “math anxiety” (especially in grades 6–8). And a whopping 85 percent say that “reinforcement of math learning at home is declining because parents don’t understand the way that math is being taught.” We know that teachers are the primary vehicle through which parents learn about the CCSS, so this raises a key question: How can they better help parents support their children’s success in math?
• Middle school teachers tend to have a more negative assessment of their students’ math abilities and the broader impact of the standards than their elementary school counterparts. We can’t know why. Perhaps it’s the obvious reason: Middle school standards are simply tougher than elementary standards. Perhaps it’s because more teachers in middle school have math degrees (versus elementary education degrees) and have a better handle on the math skills needed in the upper grades. Or maybe it’s because today’s middle school students did not “grow up” with these standards in earlier grades, and the transition has been difficult.
• We were surprised to find that elementary teachers tend to have more positive views of the potential benefits of CCSS-M and their impact on students. After all, we’ve heard many anecdotal reports of elementary teachers who feel that these standards are “developmentally inappropriate,” and it’s no secret that many primary teachers haven’t themselves studied a great deal of math. Yet 61 percent of K–2 teachers say they have fewer or about the same number of “students who have math anxiety” than before the CCSS-M, and 68 percent agree that “students are developing a stronger capacity to persevere in math and come up with solutions on their own.” It’s the middle school teachers who report more distress.
• Teaching multiple methods can yield multiple woes. The CCSS-M’s Standards for Mathematical Practice require that students “check their answers to problems using a different method.” And sure enough, 65 percent of K–5 teachers are teaching multiple methods more now than before the CCSS-M were implemented. But this change has had ramifications for both students and their parents, perhaps because parents simply don’t know “multiple methods” themselves—only what they were taught two or three decades ago. Our authors recommend that students practice traditional methods at home (moms and dads, bring back those flash cards!), but surely there are other ways to teach kids conceptual understanding without flummoxing them or their parents.
• Finally, the good news: Teachers are teaching Common Core math content at the grade levels that the CCSS-M specify. Though that may seem unsurprising, it is notable that teachers are able to identify from a list of topics (some of which are decoys) those that reflect the standards—and that they report teaching those topics at the grade levels in which they’re supposed to be taught. This finding echoes a study from earlier this year by Thomas Kane and colleagues in which 85 percent of teachers reported having good or excellent knowledge of the standards for the grades and subjects that they teach. Once upon a time, teachers shut their doors and did their own thing. Now we have many instructors teaching to the same high standards nationwide. This is something to celebrate.

These results should inspire several mid-course adjustments. The report offers various suggestions on this front, such as the need to clarify a role for memorization of math facts in the early grades. We hope that local and state officials, teachers, and teachers of teachers seize that opportunity.

The data here are mostly encouraging, even as they offer plenty of ideas for how to do better. If most teachers are implementing the standards, as they claim, we should expect to see improvements in student achievement going forward. Teachers are weary of the pendulum swings in schools; we must show more patience with the Common Core than we’ve demonstrated in the past. Let’s actually see this thing through.

June 4 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the enactment of Minnesota’s charter school law, the nation’s first. In broad terms, the authors’ vision allowed for the creation of new schools that would be exempt from many of K–12’s overbearing regulations in return for these schools being held accountable for results.

As charter pioneer Ted Kolderie wrote, this horse trade would “…introduce the dynamics of choice, competition, and innovation into American’s public school system, while at the same time ensuring that new schools serve broad public purposes.”

The visionaries who developed the concept of chartering as a way to disrupt the century-old public education monopoly of geographically defined school districts held many different expectations for the kinds of schools that this would bring into being: schools for poor kids, for sure, but also teacher-led schools, STEM schools, classical schools, language-intensive schools, art and music schools, schools for children with disabilities, for children with special gifts, for mobile families, and so much more.

It was, in fact, meant to serve as a kind of engine of innovation and experimentation for the entire K–12 enterprise, and not just with regard to curriculum and pedagogy. Chartering also held—and holds—the capacity to develop new structures for delivering and governing public education.

It was an expansive vision, and it’s been partly fulfilled with the rapid spread of chartering. California passed the second law in 1992, and thirty-four more states did so by 1998. Today, forty-three states and the District of Columbia have such laws, and some 6,800 charter schools educate almost three million children—about 6 percent of all U.S. public school pupils. Remarkably, the entire enrollment growth in American public education since 2006 has been accounted for by charter schools. (District schools actually lost students during this time.) The demand to attend them still exceeds the supply of charter seats in many places, and the impulse to start and replicate them sometimes bumps up against limits that charter foes have written into state laws.

Much good has been accomplished by chartering over these twenty-five years, and the ranks of charter schools today include a fair diversity of educational models. But this sector’s most significant accomplishment has been extricating disadvantaged children from bleak prospects in dire inner-city schools and placing them on the path to college and upward mobility. The so-called “no-excuses” model—and sundry variations on that theme—have helped hundreds of thousands of children in poverty, many of them African American and Hispanic (and many English language learners), to gain a fresh lease on education.

That laudable accomplishment has brought its own downside: a narrowing of the original vision of chartering. In the eyes of many educators, policy makers, and philanthropists (and probably the broader public as well) chartering has come to be viewed as principally a mechanism for liberating poor kids from bad schools and relocating them into better schools. Some state laws allow charters to operate only in disadvantaged or low-performing areas. The No Child Left Behind Act—and similar reforms at national, state, and local levels—equated success with boosting reading and math test scores for low-achieving youngsters. Philanthropy has also contributed to this narrowing as it directed most of its K–12 dollars toward strategies and schools that promised to boost achievement for the neediest kids.

What might the future hold?

First, we can’t imagine a future for chartering that spurns the no-excuses model and its variation. Nor should it. Millions of poor and minority youngsters still need better school options, and this should remain a sturdy pillar of the charter sector. Making existing schools in the sector better—too many of them cannot yet claim to deliver a high-quality education—and replicating the best of them to serve more kids are important priorities. Infusing what they’ve demonstrated into district schools is important as well.

The question is whether American education would be better off if the charter sector had more pillars. We’re convinced that it would.

Second, restoring the broader vision of what chartering can do, without either forfeiting or complacently settling for its impressive accomplishments to date, requires resourcefulness on the part of policy makers, funders, and the leaders of the charter movement. It’s a no-brainer to suppose that the future will simply extend the present, but it takes intelligence and a measure of courage (not to mention considerable dollops of money) to conjure a future that’s more than that.

It should include more (and better) specialized charters created in systematic ways: schools that focus on STEM, career and technical education, high-ability learners, special education, socioeconomic integration, and other realms within the K–12 universe that cry out for better options than what’s there today.

Third, we look to the next quarter-century of chartering to pilot new delivery systems, structures, and governance arrangements (which have begun to emerge via networks like KIPP and Aspire in cities like Washington, D.C., Denver, and New Orleans) and to continue innovating at the system level with respect to staffing, technology, governance, and curriculum.

Enabling this future demands imagination and flexibility on many fronts, akin to the early visions of those who invented chartering in the first place. It calls for creativity and change on the statutory and regulatory front, as well as new sources of human capital and careful attention to sensitive issues of community engagement and race.

It’s a tall order, but one that could benefit millions of American youngsters. As we observe the present anniversary, let us celebrate chartering’s past but not be confined by it.

This essay, which was originally published in a slightly different form by the 74, is informed and inspired by our forthcoming book, “Charter Schools at the Crossroads: Predicaments, Paradoxes, Possibilities,” to be published this fall by Harvard Education Press.

On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli and Robert Pondiscio discuss Fordham’s new Common Core math study, NPR’s questionable coverage of Rocketship charter schools, and the summertime widening of the achievement gap. During the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines efforts to reform disciplinary practices in D.C. and New Orleans charter schools.

Amber's Research Minute

If you still think the education beat is where cub reporters cut their teeth, writing up summaries of tedious school board meetings and biding their time until something opens up on the metro desk, think again. This illuminating study by the Education Writers Association (EWA) and the Education Week Research Center suggests the beat is now more likely to be viewed as “a capstone, not a stepping stone” for journalists. Moreover, four out of five ink-stained wretches (a notoriously cranky lot) report that they are “very satisfied” or “fairly satisfied” with their jobs covering education. They even believe their reporting is “making a difference in their communities.”

The standard narrative holds that the typical education reporter is twenty-two years old with twenty-two minutes on the job. Not so. The four hundred respondents in the survey average thirty-six years of age with eleven years of experience. And if teaching is a “pink” profession, so is covering it: “Seventy-one percent of education journalists are female, compared with 38 percent of journalists as a whole,” the report finds. Also, one in five education journalists are non-white, “compared with 9 percent for the profession at large.” And—popular complaints notwithstanding—they actually talk to teachers. Asked to identify sources they turned to in the last month as part of their coverage of education, nearly nine out of ten answered “teachers and faculty members.”

Not every indicator is pointing up, however. Television coverage of education is singled out in the report as particularly weak, which is not entirely surprising. There’s not much of substance that can be conveyed in a short local TV package. Ed journos in our clickbait-driven media environment also say they want “more time for in-depth coverage and colleagues with more education expertise.” The top stories for the 2016–17 school year are testing and school finance; but asked to name the most under-covered issue in education, about 26 percent of respondents mentioned “inequality,” including segregation, achievement gaps, and poverty. Alas, fewer than 10 percent said curriculum, pedagogy, and instruction, which would be my response. In an increasingly choice-driven school marketplace, differentiation between various instructional models—not just school types (traditional, charter, parochial, etc.) is essential for parents (and reporters as their proxies) to understand. Also alarming, most reporters admit to getting their story ideas from news releases, news conferences, and PR people.

Finally, a note to school, district, and even state officials who complain about uninformed or biased coverage: One-third of education journalists say that it’s difficult to get in-person access to schools and campuses. That’s not merely odd; if accurate, it’s inexcusable. Public schools, including public charters, have an obligation to open their doors to legitimate, credentialed reporters to report on how the public’s money is being spent to educate children. It’s also an opportunity for schools and districts to enhance the sophistication and nuance of education reporting in their communities.

The bottom line is that education coverage, though far from perfect, appears to be trending smartly in the right direction. The enhanced status of the education beat can only help.

SOURCE: “The state of the education beat 2016: A field with a future,” Education Writers Association (May 2016).

School choice advocates have long agreed on the importance of understanding what parents value when selecting a school for their children. A new study from Mathematica seeks to add to that conversation and generally echoes the results of prior research. What makes this study somewhat unusual, however, is that its analysis is based on parents’ rank-ordered preferences on a centralized school application rather than self-reported surveys.

To analyze preferences, researchers utilized data from Washington, D.C.’s common enrollment system, which includes traditional district schools and nearly all charters. D.C. families that want to send their children to a school other than the one they currently attend (or are zoned to attend) must submit a common application on which they rank their twelve most preferred schools. Students are then matched to available spaces using a random assignment algorithm.

The study tests for five domains of school choice factors: convenience (measured by commute distance from home to school), school demographics (the percentage of students in a school who are the same race or ethnicity as the chooser), academic indicators (including a school’s proficiency rate from the previous year), school neighborhood characteristics (crime rates and measures of residents’ socioeconomic status), and other school offerings (including average class size, uniform policies, and the availability of before- and after-school care). Findings suggest that, of the five factors, convenience, school academic performance, and student body composition are the most predictive of how parents rank school alternatives. (The analysis focuses on only entry grade levels—pre-K and kindergarten for elementary schools, grades five and six for middle school, and grade nine for high school—since these are the most common levels for which families submit applications.)

In terms of subgroup breakdowns, the economic status of choosers influenced preferences for elementary and middle school applicants, but not high school applicants. For example, in elementary school, higher-income applicants preferred schools with high percentages of students of the same race and lower percentages of low-income students; low-income applicants didn’t share the same preferences. In middle school, both low- and higher-income applicants were influenced by school academic performance; but low-income choosers focused on school proficiency rates, which were observable on the application website, while higher-income choosers were more influenced by accountability ratings (which were not immediately available on the site). Breakdowns for the three largest race/ethnicity groups (white, Hispanic, and African American) in elementary school showed that while white choosers preferred schools with larger percentages of students from the same racial group, African American choosers “essentially showed indifference for own-group racial composition.” In middle school, however, all but the Hispanic group of applicants had a “pronounced own-group preference and a slight preference for diversity.”

To round out their analysis, the researchers use their model to predict how parents would rank schools under alternative scenarios. For example, if capacity constraints were eased so that more applicants were able to attend their most preferred schools, enrollment in high-performing schools would increase and segregation by race and income would decrease. Closing the lowest-performing schools would also increase enrollment in high-performing schools and decrease segregation.

Overall, while there are limitations to this particular study and others like it, it’s a valuable analysis of what parents look for in schools—and the importance of expanding their options.

SOURCE: Steven Glazerman and Dallas Dotter, “Market Signals: Evidence on the Determinants and Consequences of School Choice from a Citywide Lottery,” Mathematica Policy Research, (June 2016).

Paul Tough’s 2012 book How Children Succeed helped popularize the notion that non-cognitive skills like resilience, perseverance, and conscientiousness could be as important to student success as performance on math and reading exams. Tough viewed character strengths as a tool that low-income and minority children can use to overcome enormous adversity.

His sequel, Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why, expands on these ideas by asking: “Now that we know this, what do we do?” The book’s central tenet is that educators must compensate for the shortcomings in a student’s home environment in order to foster his character strengths. Tough argues that character can’t be taught in the same way as math: “There’s no evidence that any particular curriculum or textbook or app can effectively teach kids grit or self-control.” Rather, such qualities are presented as psychological attributes that are products of a child’s home, daycare, and school.

Tough draws on new research from the fields of neuroscience, education, early childhood development, and psychology to highlight the effects of “toxic stress” caused by unstable home and family settings. These problems manifest in school through cycles of anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behavior.

The book’s strength is its effective and succinct depiction of what successful environmental changes should look like. In his chapters on the home, Tough highlights simple day-to-day interventions (such as positive parent-child interactions and home visiting programs) that can leave a lasting, positive impact on children. Additionally, some models (such as the Chicago School Readiness Project) have been successful in raising preschoolers’ achievement in English and math by building positive student-teacher relationships.

It’s this interaction between the “relationship” and “pedagogical” spheres that is needed in the K–12 environment, says Tough. The best teachers tap into a student’s intrinsic motivators, such as positive relationships, autonomy, and sense of belonging; but they also exploit extrinsic motivators like grades and future college success. The evidence (like the Expeditionary Learning Education Network’s focus on project-based and cooperative learning) indicates that there are plenty of academic benefits to be derived from encouraging students to develop strong bonds with teachers and peers.

Tough seeks to empower schools and teachers to make the kind of “disruptive innovations”—bottom-up reforms—that my colleague Mike Petrilli has recently championed. Using a rich variation in case studies, he shows that there are many ways of shaping a child’s environment at the classroom level.

Tough warns against efforts to scale successful models prematurely (or link them to school accountability frameworks too hastily) while the research base is still fresh. Nevertheless, this book serves well as a pocket-sized toolkit that teachers can begin using immediately to affect positive change in their students’ lives. It’s easy to imagine a dog-eared copy sitting on a teacher’s desk.

SOURCE: Paul Tough, Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 2016).