The Education Gadfly Weekly

Center on Reinventing Public Education
Marguerite Roza, Mary Beth Celio, James Harvey and Susan Wishon
January 2003

This new report on principal shortages from the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington describes a paradox: "There are plenty of 'certified' applicants, but there seems to be a dearth of candidates with high-level leadership skills." This finding, one of many interesting insights into the current pool of school-administrator candidates and who actually gets selected to lead schools, is based on a survey of district human resource directors, superintendents and other staff. The vast majority of school districts in the United States - most of the exceptions are urban schools, especially high schools - have enough candidates to fill their school leadership needs. In fact, there is a surfeit of certified educators who have absolutely no intention of ever actually leading a school-people who get certified, often using a state tuition subsidy, so as to move up their district's pay-scale. Despite this overcapacity in terms of certified leaders, there's a shortage of QUALITY leaders, the more so in the era of No Child Left Behind. Another fascinating finding in this report is that "human resource departments march to a different drummer.... While asserting they want people with leadership skills, human resource departments default to traditional qualifications, relying primarily on substantial years of teaching experience to cull their candidates." (In contrast, only a third of superintendents view teaching experience as highly significant qualities for principals.) What this means in practice is that school-system bureaucracies rarely consider non-traditional candidates - regardless of leadership prowess - to lead their schools. In reading this report, it is clear that, if we are serious about creating excellent schools for all American children, business as usual won't cut it in terms of principal recruitment and selection. To check this timely report out for yourself, surf to http://www.crpe.org/pubs/introMatterOfDefinition.shtml.

Alan B. Krueger and Pei Zhu
Princeton University
April 2003

This paper closely examines - and reanalyzes - the data from the private voucher experiment in New York City, which were originally analyzed in a 2002 study by David Mayer, Paul Peterson, David Myers, Christina Tuttle and William Howell. The original work generated headlines based on the finding that black students using vouchers made significant academic gains. Here, Krueger and Zhu contest these claims and state that "the safest conclusion is probably that the provision of vouchers did not lower the scores of African American students." The controversy is rooted partly in the differing statistical methods of the two groups. For example, Krueger and Zhu argue that Peterson et al. chose an unnecessarily complicated design (which led to minor errors) and improperly excluded scores of those students for whom baseline data (initial test scores) were not available. Non-statisticians may have difficulty following the intricacies of these arguments, but a response to the Krueger and Zhu paper by Mayer and Myers (available at http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/PDFs/anotherlook.pdf) seems to accept the legitimacy of the methods suggested by Krueger and Zhu. Another matter of dispute is the definition of "black." The original research determined the race of the student by that of the mother alone; Krueger and Zhu broaden this to define as black any student for whom either parent is black. The new definition expands the black population and has the effect of reducing the test-score gains in this group to the point that they're so small as to be statistically insignificant. This certainly is interesting, but in the end it's unfortunate that this study has generated headlines as exaggerated as those generated by the original study (for example, see Education Week's "Study: No Academic Gains From Vouchers for Black Students"). Such headlines obscure the fact that it's far too soon to generalize about the impact of vouchers on test scores, given that all we now have are a few isolated trials of this potentially important reform. And, as Mayer and Myers point out, the original study had "cautioned readers about placing too much emphasis on the average impact for African American students." The original report is available online at http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/PDFs/nycfull.pdf, and Krueger and Zhu's piece is available at http://www.ers.princeton.edu/workingpapers/1_9.pdf. Peterson also plans to issue a response to Krueger and Zhu.

National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy
January 2003

A group of people who don't much like testing and are affiliated with Boston College's famously anti-testing testing center, have grandiosely dubbed themselves the "National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy" (NBETPP), raised some money, hired a staff, and are now issuing research reports. This one is based on interviews (conducted in 2000-01) with teachers and school administrators in three states: low-stakes Kansas, medium-stakes Michigan and high-stakes Massachusetts. The big question was whether the "stakes" have a big impact on teaching and learning. Turns out there's no clear relationship. The authors (Marguerite Clarke and 5 colleagues) offer the utterly banal conclusion that "stakes are a powerful lever for effecting change, but one whose effects are uncertain; and that a one-size-fits-all model of standards, tests and accountability is unlikely to bring about the greatest motivation and learning for all students." They go on to make eight predictable recommendations. It's a yawner, but you can find it at http://www.bc.edu/research/nbetpp/statements/nbr1.pdf.

Margaret E. Raymond and Eric Hanushek, Education Next
Summer 2003

In an editorial a couple of weeks ago (http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=16#242), I mentioned a forthcoming work by Eric Hanushek and Margaret Raymond that definitively rebuts "studies" by Audrey Amrein and David Berliner purporting to show that high-stakes accountability systems retard student achievement. That work is now available in two forms, and it's powerfully persuasive indeed. The Amrein-Berliner analyses, despite the vast publicity they attracted, are termed "fatally flawed both in design and in execution, rendering the conclusions irrelevant." Indeed, conclude Hanushek and Raymond based on their own analyses and their review of others, "[E]xisting evidence...suggests that accountability is associated with more rapid learning across grades." You can access two versions, a longish paper at http://www.educationnext.org/unabridged/20033/hanushek.pdf and a somewhat shorter article from the forthcoming issue of Education Next at http://www.educationnext.org/20033/pdf/48.pdf.

The Council of Chief State Schools Officers
March 2003

This 40-pager from the Council of Chief State School Officers profiles the efforts of five states (IL, LA, MD, NY, TX) to "support" low-performing schools and districts. But it's really a look at state-initiated efforts to intervene in such situations and turn them around. Since the ability of a state to repair low-performing districts - and the capacity of districts to turn around low-performing schools - is key to NCLB's prospects, this is a timely and important topic. The report, however, is descriptive, not analytic or judgmental. Perhaps because it was prepared by an organization that these states belong and pay dues to, it doesn't try to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of the (very different) approaches being taken by the five case-study states. You end it with the sense that "This is all very interesting but how well does any of it actually work in practice?" You may, however, want to see for yourself. You can find it at http://www.ccsso.org/pdfs/statesupport.pdf.

The Philanthropy Roundtable
John J. Miller
2003

This short but terrific publication from the Philanthropy Roundtable tells the stories of two prominent foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, that have been critically important in shaping the landscape of conservative thought, policy and social change over the past two decades. The book supplies brief histories of these organizations, highlighting their philosophies, strategies and contributions. Included therein is their huge significance to education reform. Olin has been a mainstay of Heritage, the Manhattan Institute, AEI and the Hoover Institution; it jumpstarted the Federalist Society, and helped found the field of law and economics. Bradley helped launch Milwaukee's voucher experiment and funded the subsequent legal battles to protect it from well-funded opponents. (Bradley was also instrumental in leading Wisconsin's welfare reform efforts, which helped inspire the national welfare reform movement in 1996.) And much else. At just sixty pages, this book is a quick read that even provides a bit of advice - culled from the Olin and Bradley experiences - for leading a foundation. You can get your own copy ($25 each, $15 for Philanthropy Roundtable members) by calling (202) 822-8333.

While eliminating elected school boards and replacing them with appointed boards or mayoral control is all the rage, AEI resident scholar Rick Hess argues in the April issue of the American School Board Journal that there is no reason to expect improvements to follow from such changed forms of governance. Appointees tend to get quietly captured over time by interest groups, Hess contends, and, given deep disagreements over the objectives that schools are to pursue and how they should pursue them, what we really need is more democratic school governance, not less. In another article in the same issue, Harold McGraw III describes the qualities and practices of a good board, whether it be a corporate board or a school board.

"The Voice of the People," by Frederick M. Hess; "Creating the Culture," by Harold McGraw III, American School Board Journal, April 2003 (not available online)

States and districts have much more flexibility to meet the "highly qualified teacher" requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act than most people acknowledge; in fact, states have an historic opportunity to revamp their teacher preparation and certification systems, according to Michael Petrilli, Associate Deputy Under Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education. In a speech given last week at a regional teacher quality summit in Austin, Texas, Petrilli challenged state and district leaders to imagine a new preparation and certification system for teachers that doesn't erect unnecessary barriers to talented people who want to teach, but instead seeks out talented people and brings them into schools. "If they want to, [states] can dramatically streamline their processes, and create alternate routes to full state certification that target talented people who would be turned off by traditional preparation and certification programs," Petrilli noted. "For example, states could adopt the new system created by the American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence, an organization supported by a Department of Education grant that has created an extremely rigorous assessment system for new teachers, in both content areas and professional teaching knowledge," he continued. "States could decide that individuals who pass the relevant sections of the American Board assessment would be considered fully certified to teach, regardless of where they learned the important knowledge and skills that were tested. While good schools would certainly give those teachers strong mentoring, induction and professional development opportunities, from the state regulators' perspective the teacher would have met all necessary requirements to teach." "Be bold," Petrilli urged. "Consider whether you can create a route to full certification for highly talented people, people with strong academic skills, perhaps with specific experiences working with children, but routes that will make it more likely for these people to say yes to teaching."

Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Joseph Olchefske announced his resignation earlier this week, saying that a $34 million financial crisis that has unfolded in the district on his watch has made it impossible for him to lead effectively. Last October, Olchefske announced that the district had overspent this year's and last year's budgets by a total of $34 million, a problem blamed on poor accounting practices and communication breakdowns. While the superintendent still had the support of a majority of school board members, the financial crisis had turned Olchefske into a lightning rod for a broad range of complaints about his leadership style and policy goals, which included firing incompetent principals and shifting budget authority to schools. The Seattle teachers union had also made plain that it didn't care for his reforms at all. Former superintendent John Stanford had hired Olchefske from a private sector job (investment banking) to become the district's CFO, and Olchefske's determination to push ahead on tough issues despite criticism, not to mention his lack of an education background, troubled many principals and teachers.

The Los Angeles Unified School Board voted unanimously last week to oppose the state's high school exit exam. The board, which has a new union-backed majority (at least for now - one union-backed incumbent still faces a run-off in May), hopes to influence the state board to postpone or drop the requirement that students pass an exit exam before being allowed to graduate from high school. Members of the state board say they will decide over the next few months whether to delay or change the graduation requirement.

"L.A. school board votes to oppose state exit exam," by Solomon Moore and Erika Hayasaki, Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2003

College instructors value grammar more than high school teachers do

While college instructors rank "grammar and usage" as a student's most important writing skill, high-school teachers rank it as least important, and only 69 percent of high-school English teachers say they teach their students grammar and usage skills, according to a new survey by ACT. The grammar and usage section of the ACT exam produces the lowest scores of any ACT subtest, with the average score just below "borderline college-ready," which is surely one reason for the high enrollment in remedial writing courses among college freshmen.

"Grammar valued more in college than high school," by Rosalind Rossi, Chicago Sun-Times, April 9, 2003

"Survey finds split between what college instructors and high-school teachers value in student writing," by Megan Rooney, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 9, 2003 (subscription required)

Iraq is blessedly free today, but it's also a mess in need of reconstruction. Not least among the many challenges facing those now tackling this massive project is creation of a new education system.

Once upon a time, Iraq had a well-functioning, if less than universal, 1920's-style British-style education system, consisting of primary and secondary schools and eight tertiary institutions, including a well-regarded medical school in Baghdad and one of the oldest Islamic universities on earth. After becoming a republic in 1958, Iraq strove to expand education access and boost literacy levels. The Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein, however, like all totalitarian governments, reshaped the system in its own image and, while technical training remained solid and contributed to Iraq's development (including its prowess with nasty weapons), the rest suffered mightily, including the notion that education should teach children to think and reason for themselves and to possess accurate information about their country and their world. All teachers had to join the Ba'ath party. And the curriculum was devoted to what a Washington Post correspondent termed "martyr building," with hyper-nationalistic and militaristic lessons that glorified Saddam while demonizing the west in general, the U.S. in particular, Israel, etc. An Iraqi ??migr?? recalls her teacher giving a lesson on Hitler's greatness "because he put the Jews in a room and burned them."

This perversion of an education system was further degraded after the Gulf War as economic sanctions, brain drains, inter-group conflict and the grim state of Iraqi domestic affairs caused schools to crumble, teachers to quit (or go unpaid), attendance to plummet, tuition charges to be instituted and everything to be in short supply. U.N. statistics indicate that the average Iraqi boy over 15 has less than 5 years of schooling and nearly half of Iraqi girls have none. Recent weeks of bombing, looting and burning (including the education ministry headquarters) have administered the coup de grace to the old system - and created a golden opportunity to build a new one.

Who will do the building, however, remains in dispute (along with much else about Iraq's postwar reconstruction) as sundry U.S. agencies, Iraqi exile groups and international organizations vie for leadership roles, even while asserting that important decisions ought to be made by the people of Iraq. The State Department has hosted at least one meeting of an Education Working Group, comprised of Iraqi-born scholars and educators. The Pentagon has been calling around in search of suitable U.S. experts to advise the new education ministry. And the Agency for International Development has just let a $62 million contract to a private Chevy Chase firm called Creative Associates International (CAI) to help rebuild Iraq's education system. (For a description of CAI, see http://www.caii.net/Corporate%20Profile/corporate%20profile%20description.htm). Sundry U.N. agencies are also stirring on the education front, along with a host of non-governmental outfits.

Besides working through the leadership confusion and finding means to begin meeting Iraq's urgent infrastructure needs - food, water, law and order must precede even education - some immense issues will need to be resolved as Iraq's postwar education system takes shape. Six seem especially vexing.

First, will that system be modeled on another country's or shaped indigenously? There's no point in needlessly reinventing wheels - and Iraq could do a lot worse than to emulate one of the world's successful education systems. Yet many people are skittish about outsiders - especially the U.S. - "imposing" an outside model, as we more-or-less did in Japan and Germany after World War II. (People who tend toward such skittishness conveniently overlook the fact that both of those conquered lands went on to prosperity, democracy and functioning civil societies.)

Second, how will it deal with Iraq's many factions and ethnicities? Modern Iraq was a nervous mix of Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Turks, "marsh Arabs" and other subpopulations even before Saddam pitted them against one another. This will lead some to favor a pluralistic, perhaps federal-style education system with a lot of local control, rather than a single, centralized "ministry" approach. Others, no doubt, will argue that "nation building" demands a common curriculum and shared institutions.

Third, how will it balance Islam against secular, modern "scientific" education? Those who recoil from the madrasas of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim lands, with their emphasis on religious fundamentalism and anti-Americanism and their inattention to math and science, will push for secularism and probably for government-run schools, but the appetite of many Iraqis for a strong religious influence will be keen and, especially until there are robust secular institutions to counteract that influence, it may prove insatiable.

Fourth, how will the new education system deal with the legacy of the old one - the hyper-politicized textbooks, the Ba'athist teaching staff, the Saddamized bureaucracy? It's so laborious, costly and slow to start afresh that there will be a mighty temptation to recycle what's left of the old system's assets, such as they are.

Fifth, will the world's loopier educationists be turned loose to substitute Dewey, Freire, multiple intelligences, expanding environments and whole language for Ba'athist militarism? More benign, yes, but not necessarily a wise course of action if one cares about children actually learning! CAI may do fine work - they're already an A.I.D. contractor in Afghanistan and other lands - but their education team is less than overwhelming and they have relied on the ed school at George Washington University for policy wisdom. (The Iraq project will reportedly use education specialists from American University - another scary prospect - and Research Triangle Institute.) Moreover, the federal RFP to which they responded asked for bidders to "promote child-centered, inquiry-based, participatory teaching methods". In other words, for constructivism-on-the-Tigris. Not only does this version of schooling run afoul of many Mid-eastern cultural patterns and education traditions - it's not even very effective in the West, popular as it is amongst educationists. If dubious ideas and their purveyors end up shaping Iraq's post-war education system, it could easily turn out to be a disappointment - and the U.S. taxpayer's money won't be well spent.

Sixth and finally, will anyone think creatively about what a brand-new education system might be - and how it might differ from our primordial assumptions? What about "virtual" schooling, for example, instead of endless bricks and mortar? What about the choices that might be built in from the start for families and communities that don't all see the world identically? What about educating parents as well as children? What about outsourcing instead of bureaucrat-run schools and colleges? Education in Iraq is indeed a massive challenge, but in its present collapse can be glimpsed the outlines of something very different. That isn't likely to happen, however, if the usual suspects end up in charge and the usual ideas end up in their usual places.

"For One Small Education Company, Iraqi Schools Are a Huge Challenge," by Neil King, Jr., The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2003

"2 rebuilding pacts awarded: N.C., D.C. firms to get $10 million total for working in Iraq," by Jackie Spinner, The Washington Post, April 12, 2003

"U.S. to remake school system in postwar Iraq," by Mary Ann Zehr, Education Week, April 16, 2003

Alan B. Krueger and Pei Zhu
Princeton University
April 2003

This paper closely examines - and reanalyzes - the data from the private voucher experiment in New York City, which were originally analyzed in a 2002 study by David Mayer, Paul Peterson, David Myers, Christina Tuttle and William Howell. The original work generated headlines based on the finding that black students using vouchers made significant academic gains. Here, Krueger and Zhu contest these claims and state that "the safest conclusion is probably that the provision of vouchers did not lower the scores of African American students." The controversy is rooted partly in the differing statistical methods of the two groups. For example, Krueger and Zhu argue that Peterson et al. chose an unnecessarily complicated design (which led to minor errors) and improperly excluded scores of those students for whom baseline data (initial test scores) were not available. Non-statisticians may have difficulty following the intricacies of these arguments, but a response to the Krueger and Zhu paper by Mayer and Myers (available at http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/PDFs/anotherlook.pdf) seems to accept the legitimacy of the methods suggested by Krueger and Zhu. Another matter of dispute is the definition of "black." The original research determined the race of the student by that of the mother alone; Krueger and Zhu broaden this to define as black any student for whom either parent is black. The new definition expands the black population and has the effect of reducing the test-score gains in this group to the point that they're so small as to be statistically insignificant. This certainly is interesting, but in the end it's unfortunate that this study has generated headlines as exaggerated as those generated by the original study (for example, see Education Week's "Study: No Academic Gains From Vouchers for Black Students"). Such headlines obscure the fact that it's far too soon to generalize about the impact of vouchers on test scores, given that all we now have are a few isolated trials of this potentially important reform. And, as Mayer and Myers point out, the original study had "cautioned readers about placing too much emphasis on the average impact for African American students." The original report is available online at http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/PDFs/nycfull.pdf, and Krueger and Zhu's piece is available at http://www.ers.princeton.edu/workingpapers/1_9.pdf. Peterson also plans to issue a response to Krueger and Zhu.

Center on Reinventing Public Education
Marguerite Roza, Mary Beth Celio, James Harvey and Susan Wishon
January 2003

This new report on principal shortages from the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington describes a paradox: "There are plenty of 'certified' applicants, but there seems to be a dearth of candidates with high-level leadership skills." This finding, one of many interesting insights into the current pool of school-administrator candidates and who actually gets selected to lead schools, is based on a survey of district human resource directors, superintendents and other staff. The vast majority of school districts in the United States - most of the exceptions are urban schools, especially high schools - have enough candidates to fill their school leadership needs. In fact, there is a surfeit of certified educators who have absolutely no intention of ever actually leading a school-people who get certified, often using a state tuition subsidy, so as to move up their district's pay-scale. Despite this overcapacity in terms of certified leaders, there's a shortage of QUALITY leaders, the more so in the era of No Child Left Behind. Another fascinating finding in this report is that "human resource departments march to a different drummer.... While asserting they want people with leadership skills, human resource departments default to traditional qualifications, relying primarily on substantial years of teaching experience to cull their candidates." (In contrast, only a third of superintendents view teaching experience as highly significant qualities for principals.) What this means in practice is that school-system bureaucracies rarely consider non-traditional candidates - regardless of leadership prowess - to lead their schools. In reading this report, it is clear that, if we are serious about creating excellent schools for all American children, business as usual won't cut it in terms of principal recruitment and selection. To check this timely report out for yourself, surf to http://www.crpe.org/pubs/introMatterOfDefinition.shtml.

Margaret E. Raymond and Eric Hanushek, Education Next
Summer 2003

In an editorial a couple of weeks ago (http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=16#242), I mentioned a forthcoming work by Eric Hanushek and Margaret Raymond that definitively rebuts "studies" by Audrey Amrein and David Berliner purporting to show that high-stakes accountability systems retard student achievement. That work is now available in two forms, and it's powerfully persuasive indeed. The Amrein-Berliner analyses, despite the vast publicity they attracted, are termed "fatally flawed both in design and in execution, rendering the conclusions irrelevant." Indeed, conclude Hanushek and Raymond based on their own analyses and their review of others, "[E]xisting evidence...suggests that accountability is associated with more rapid learning across grades." You can access two versions, a longish paper at http://www.educationnext.org/unabridged/20033/hanushek.pdf and a somewhat shorter article from the forthcoming issue of Education Next at http://www.educationnext.org/20033/pdf/48.pdf.

National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy
January 2003

A group of people who don't much like testing and are affiliated with Boston College's famously anti-testing testing center, have grandiosely dubbed themselves the "National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy" (NBETPP), raised some money, hired a staff, and are now issuing research reports. This one is based on interviews (conducted in 2000-01) with teachers and school administrators in three states: low-stakes Kansas, medium-stakes Michigan and high-stakes Massachusetts. The big question was whether the "stakes" have a big impact on teaching and learning. Turns out there's no clear relationship. The authors (Marguerite Clarke and 5 colleagues) offer the utterly banal conclusion that "stakes are a powerful lever for effecting change, but one whose effects are uncertain; and that a one-size-fits-all model of standards, tests and accountability is unlikely to bring about the greatest motivation and learning for all students." They go on to make eight predictable recommendations. It's a yawner, but you can find it at http://www.bc.edu/research/nbetpp/statements/nbr1.pdf.

The Council of Chief State Schools Officers
March 2003

This 40-pager from the Council of Chief State School Officers profiles the efforts of five states (IL, LA, MD, NY, TX) to "support" low-performing schools and districts. But it's really a look at state-initiated efforts to intervene in such situations and turn them around. Since the ability of a state to repair low-performing districts - and the capacity of districts to turn around low-performing schools - is key to NCLB's prospects, this is a timely and important topic. The report, however, is descriptive, not analytic or judgmental. Perhaps because it was prepared by an organization that these states belong and pay dues to, it doesn't try to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of the (very different) approaches being taken by the five case-study states. You end it with the sense that "This is all very interesting but how well does any of it actually work in practice?" You may, however, want to see for yourself. You can find it at http://www.ccsso.org/pdfs/statesupport.pdf.

The Philanthropy Roundtable
John J. Miller
2003

This short but terrific publication from the Philanthropy Roundtable tells the stories of two prominent foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, that have been critically important in shaping the landscape of conservative thought, policy and social change over the past two decades. The book supplies brief histories of these organizations, highlighting their philosophies, strategies and contributions. Included therein is their huge significance to education reform. Olin has been a mainstay of Heritage, the Manhattan Institute, AEI and the Hoover Institution; it jumpstarted the Federalist Society, and helped found the field of law and economics. Bradley helped launch Milwaukee's voucher experiment and funded the subsequent legal battles to protect it from well-funded opponents. (Bradley was also instrumental in leading Wisconsin's welfare reform efforts, which helped inspire the national welfare reform movement in 1996.) And much else. At just sixty pages, this book is a quick read that even provides a bit of advice - culled from the Olin and Bradley experiences - for leading a foundation. You can get your own copy ($25 each, $15 for Philanthropy Roundtable members) by calling (202) 822-8333.