The Education Gadfly Weekly

Mark Berends, Joan Chun, Gina Schuyler, Sue Stockly and R. J. Briggs, RAND Corporation
2002

The RAND Corporation recently published this report by Mark Berends and four colleagues, examining in depth (160 pages) the experience of San Antonio, Texas with New American Schools (NAS). This is part of RAND's ongoing NAS research and evaluation project. The data are from 1997-9, during which time San Antonio schools implemented four of the NAS school designs. The RAND analysts sought to determine whether those designs actually altered what happened in classrooms (as opposed to affecting "school organization and governance"), whether they boosted student achievement, and what factors at the district, schools and classroom level bear on the effectiveness of the implementation and the changes that result. The bottom line: the NAS schools and classrooms weren't very different from others in San Antonio, nor were their students' scores very different. The main explanation, according to the authors, is not anything inherently flawed in the NAS designs but, rather, the fact that San Antonio (and Texas) was then in the throes of numerous concurrent (and conflicting) reforms within a high-stakes atmosphere. In other words, so much else was going on that it's impossible to isolate NAS effects. ("However, we did find significant effects of principal leadership on the TAAS reading and mathematics scores...in both NAS and non-NAS schools.") The authors go on to caution policymakers against trying too many different things at once. They note, in particular, that "high-stakes tests may be a two-edged sword," motivating schools to boost performance and seek out more powerful instructional strategies while, at the same time, discouraging them from adopting "richer, more in-depth curricula." If you'd like to download a PDF version or order a hard copy for $20, surf to http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1483/. For another take on New American Schools-which concludes that NAS has failed to make good on its promise to transform K-12 education-see our recent report by Jeffrey Mirel, "Evolution of the New American Schools: From Revolution to Mainstream" at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=44.

Should teacher unions be given a bigger say on academic issues? This is the question that the California Assembly is grappling with as they debate Assembly Bill 2160. The 300,000 member California Teachers Association and its allies are pushing hard for passage of the bill, while policymakers and administrators argue that the proposal is a power grab that, if passed, would block needed reforms. The Pacific Research Institute's (PRI) Center for School Reform jumped directly into the debate with the release of this report, which argues that California's public schools are near the bottom in student achievement despite record spending levels because unions perversely influence classroom instruction through the collective bargaining process. Although the report's evidence is skimpy in terms of showing a direct correlation between collective bargaining and deteriorating academic achievement, it does show that collective bargaining in California has resulted in education costing taxpayers far more than it would without unions and the bargaining process. For example, in an average California school district, 85 percent of the district's operating budget is tied to teacher and employee salaries. Such huge labor costs obviously constraint school system leaders from using resources to try innovative projects or technologies. Collective bargaining agreements-which reward experience over expertise-also make it harder to fire ineffective teachers and reward good ones. The report contends that teacher unions in California have been a major obstacle to urban school reform. It is for this reason that even those with a history of supporting teacher unions are troubled by a bill that would strengthen their grip on things like curriculum and instruction. Los Angeles superintendent (and former Democratic Colorado governor) Roy Romer recently told Education Week that if Assembly Bill 2160 had been in effect when he took over the running of L.A.'s troubled schools, "much of the recent reform in L.A. would not have occurred." In summary, collective bargaining may or may not have played a role in precipitating the decline of California's once vaunted public education system, but there is little doubt that union power and influence have made it far more difficult to resuscitate the state's sickest schools. The report is available at http://www.pacificresearch.org.

Christine H. Rossell, Public Policy Institute of California
February 20, 2002

Boston University political scientist Christine Rossell wrote this hundred-page (plus appendices) paper for the Public Policy Institute of California. It addresses the subject of bilingual education in California (and presumably beyond) more perceptively and informatively than anything I've previously read. The basic story is well known: California voters passed Proposition 227 in 1998, requiring that "English learners" be immersed in English rather than in traditional "bilingual" education classes. There's early evidence that this has boosted test scores for some youngsters. But the State Board of Education is fiddling with the rules and procedures in ways that seem calculated to mitigate the impact of Prop 227. Yet Rossell shows us that that's just the tip of the iceberg. Her paper dives way under the surface to present numerous surprising facts and arresting insights. For example, even at its peak, just 29% of California's "English learners" were enrolled in "bilingual" classes. Nor, according to Rossell (who has followed this subject for many years), is there any "unequivocal research demonstrating that bilingual education is the educational disaster that some of its critics claim." She also notes that, while rarely acknowledged, only Hispanic youngsters end up in "bilingual" classes. Speakers of other languages do not land in classes that instruct them in their native languages. "The import of the fact that bilingual education was not widespread and affected only Spanish speakers is that whatever replaces it will not produce miracles. The low achievement of English learners is due primarily to their immigrant status, their social class, and the way in which English Learner is defined." (One must score poorly on an English-language test to be so classified, leading Rossell to make the obvious but important point that "these students are low scorers.") There's much more here, both good analysis and abundant data. She also offers four thoughtful recommendations for amending Prop 227. You can download a (213-page long!) PDF version at http://www.bu.edu/polisci/CROSSELL/Rossell,%20Calif.%202002%20(collated),%202.pdf.

Alex Molnar, Glen Wilson, Melissa Restori and John Hutchison, Education Policy Studies Laboratory, Arizona State University
January 17, 2002

This is another report on the same subject: a directory of EMOs and the schools they operate. Published by Arizona State University's Education Policy Studies Laboratory, it profiles 36 companies that manage 368 schools. (CER reports on 19 companies and claims "about 350" schools. Much of the difference is due to CER focusing on national firms while the Arizona team includes a bunch of tiny one- and two-school companies, mainly in Arizona, where for-profit firms can hold charters directly.) The team leader and chief assembler is Alex Molnar, a longtime critic of the profit motive in K-12 education, but this lengthy document confines its critical comments to the opening pages. Thereafter it's "just the facts." It tells us considerably less than the CER report concerning the companies' characteristics but somewhat more about the individual schools that they operate. This one is free for the downloading (in both HTML and PDF formats) at http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/Archives/CERU%20Archives/ceru-rw.htm.

Carol Innerst, The Center for Education Reform
March 2002

The Center for Education Reform recently released this useful compilation of information on the "education industry," listing and describing many of the for-profit companies currently active in K-12 education, notably the "education management organizations" (EMOs) that run entire schools, along with a list of the schools that each is currently running. This field is constantly in flux, of course, with mergers, bankruptcies and start-ups every time you turn around. So no such compilation will have a long shelf life. This publication (compiled by veteran education journalist Carol Innerst) is meant to inform potential consumers of such services about the firms presently found in the marketplace. There's no attempt to judge or evaluate them. The consumer will find only information supplied by the companies themselves. Still, it's a helpful document for those browsing among firms and a valuable one for those tracking the evolution of this new "industry." The press release and executive summary are available at http://www.edreform.com/press/2002/partnership.htm, where you can also order a hard copy for $29.95 plus shipping. Alternatively, hard copies can be ordered by dialing 202-822-9000.

The state of Pennsylvania has recently taken control of Philadelphia's schools, Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants control of New York's schools and the Maryland legislature will probably replace Prince George's County's dysfunctional elected school board with an appointed one. There's a big debate in Cleveland about whether mayoral control should continue. Other American communities are weighing the merits of elected versus appointed boards.

Citizens and journalists call to ask which model works better and what does the research show. The short answer seems to be that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and there's no solid evidence favoring either elected or appointed boards.

But that begs the truly interesting question, which is why do we need school boards at all? Why not entrust local education to the mayor (and to an education director or commissioner appointed by him/her) and state-level education to the governor (and his/her "secretary of education" or "commissioner")? Why complicate it with a separate board?

The classic answer is that local boards assure local control, express the community's priorities and assure that its values are honored and its needs met.

No doubt America still has some places where school boards do those things well. But there are way too many, particularly in big cities and poor communities, where this is a fraud or illusion. Far too many of today's school boards are dysfunctional creatures that micro-manage, promote patronage (and featherbedding), and deflect authority and responsibility from the mayor, while making it harder for him to coordinate this huge and costly enterprise with other municipal programs that should mesh with it, such as health, welfare, job training and law enforcement.

Too many school boards are scenes of bickering, log-rolling and vanity, comprised of aspiring politicians (for whom this is the first rung on a ladder that goes on to city council or state legislature), aggrieved former employees of the school system (often with a grudge to settle) and fanatical boosters of single-issue causes who are bent on imposing their peculiar enthusiasm upon every child in town.

When elected, they often wind up being pawns of the teachers union. When appointed-particularly when appointed by multiple power brokers, as in New York City today-they mainly work to secure the interests of their patrons. Besides, if a school system's governors are appointed, why bother with a board? Why not just appoint someone to run the schools?

Better still, let's face contemporary reality and redefine "local control" of education. Matching it to municipal boundaries may have made sense in the 19th century but it doesn't today, when vast school systems have enrollments the size of entire states or even countries. With more of public education's financing shifting to the state capital and with more basic policy decisions also getting made there, who needs municipal education agencies anyway? In an era of charter schools and smart corporate restructuring, we should re-allocate decisions away from these "middle managers." We should kick some decisions (having to do with standards and accountability) to the state and others-essentially everything concerning school operations and educational delivery-to individual buildings. We might simply eliminate school districts and their attendant boards and bureaucracies. Tomorrow's boards, if any, should be school-specific, not district wide. And at the building level, we should experiment with every sort of governance-including elected and appointed boards-and carefully evaluate them to see which works best under what circumstances.

* * * * *

Earlier this month, The Detroit News featured a debate between Michigan Governor John Engler and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Watkins over who should be in charge of state education policy and whether the state board of education should be appointed by the governor, elected by the public or even abolished. See "Yes: Create accountability by letting governor choose superintendent," by John Engler and "No: Framers didn't want governor to dictate state education policy," by Tom Watkins.

Concerned about nine city schools on Tennessee's watch list for poor academic performance, Mayor Bob Corker of Chattanooga was determined to come up with a way to bring in a critical mass of high performing teachers to transform the culture of low expectations and low achievement in these schools-and keep them there. An advisory group appointed by the mayor, the Community Education Alliance, worked with two local foundations to develop a pay incentive program that will reward teachers and principals in those schools who raise academic achievement, as measured by the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System. Since the mayor does not run the school system, he took the innovative plan to the City Council, which quickly embraced it and voted unanimously to fund the program for three years. Teachers currently at the nine schools who have a record of high performance-teachers whose students have gained 115% of a grade level (i.e., 115% of a full year's progress) for each of the past three years-will receive an annual bonus of $5,000 for three years, as will teachers with a record of high performance at other schools who agree to teach in one of the nine schools. If any of the nine high-priority schools demonstrates a gain of 115% of a grade level schoolwide, the principal of that school will receive a $10,000 bonus and every teacher in that school will receive $1,000. If the gain is 120% of a grade level, every teacher will receive a bonus of $2,000. According to an article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, state and local teacher union officials are criticizing the plan, which they say will create divisiveness among teachers, and insisting that nothing related to salary can be implemented unless it is negotiated at the bargaining table.

"Teachers at at-risk schools may get bonuses," by Duane Gang, Chattanooga Times Free Press, March 13, 2002 (requires free registration)

"Teacher incentives a first step," by Wes Hasden, Chattanooga Times Free Press, March 14, 2002 (requires free registration)

"Teachers' unions see plan flaws," by Beverly Carroll and Duane Gang, Chattanooga Times Free Press, March 14, 2002 (requires free registration)

"Teachers want city to spend on programs, not salaries," by Beverly Carroll, Chattanooga Times Free Press, March 15, 2002 (requires free registration)

"Community Education Alliance Proposal Fact Sheet," March 12, 2002

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In another philanthropic effort to reward effective urban schools, a foundation created by billionaire Eli Broad announced this week that it will award $500,000 in college scholarships to an urban school district that significantly raises test scores while reducing the achievement gap between whites and minorities. For details, see "Mogul offers reward for urban school improvement," by Tamara Henry, USA Today, March 15, 2002.

Should education schools lose their monopoly on teacher certification? Rick Hess, Mary Diez, and James Fraser debate the proposition in the Spring 2002 issue of Education Next (www.educationnext.org). Other articles in the same issue describe how alternative certification programs for teachers are sometimes just as burdensome as traditional ones, summarize the scant evidence in support of teacher certification, and analyze the effectiveness of Teach for America teachers. On another topic in the same issue, Stanford political scientist Terry Moe shows how the annual Phi Delta Kappa survey of attitudes toward education has "cooked the questions" on support for school vouchers in order to generate an anti-voucher result. Moe explains that the organization dropped a neutrally worded question about vouchers in 1991 and added a question that was worded in a way that was more apt to elicit a negative response. As online pundit Mickey Kaus noted on his website (www.kausfiles.com), a smart special interest group would have used a biased poll question from the start, avoiding the need for embarrassing alterations.

"Vouchers: Was a Poll Question 'Cooked'?" by Richard Morin and Claudia Deane, The Washington Post, March 11, 2002

I had the good fortune to take part last week in an international symposium hosted by Japan's National Institute for Educational Policy Research (NIER). The topic was "New Schools for the 21st Century." I was asked to talk about charter schools. Also present, besides several hundred Japanese educationists and policy types, were education analysts or officials from New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore.

Japan is in the throes of a major education reform effort called the Rainbow Plan. (See my earlier comment in the June 14, 2001 Gadfly) It was well explained to the Tokyo audience by education Vice Minister Ono Motoyuki and Ken Terawaki, who is deputy director-general of the Education Ministry and one of the principal architects of this set of changes, changes that commence next month, at the beginning of Japan's new school year.

Why is this happening? Mainly because the stagnation of Japan's economy has persuaded government and business leaders that they need to develop a different kind of human capital, people who are more creative, flexible and concerned about others.

The Rainbow Plan rests on seven pillars. Several make obvious sense, such as training teachers as "real professionals," creating "universities of international standard," dealing with disruptive students, and "making schools that can be trusted by parents and communities." (Under the latter heading comes "introducing new types of public schools, such as community schools," hence the interest in charters.)

There are also plans for a national assessment in core subjects at the elementary and junior high school levels-for the first time in forty years. The tests that Japan administered in the early 1960's were scrapped, reports The Daily Yomiuri, "after teachers unions and others filed a suit against the government, claiming such tests led to competition in classrooms and uniform ranking-based grading."

Other parts of the Rainbow Plan, however, suggest that Japanese policymakers have been spending too much time at the American Education Research Association, reading Dewey's daffier acolytes, and continuing to heed the teachers union. School classes are to be reduced to twenty students (from about 40) in core subjects, with many more teachers hired. There's to be new emphasis on community service and parent involvement. There's a call to make "the learning environment...enjoyable and free of worries." "Integrated studies" will foster "zest for living" via "hands-on activities."

Above all, there's been a vigorous round of "content reduction" and Japan's famously long school week has been shortened. Saturday classes are vanishing and the school curriculum is said to be lighter by 30 percent. This has caused a furor. Some parents aren't sure what to do with their little ones on Saturdays. Others note that the wealthy can afford "juku" (privately operated tutoring and enrichment programs) for their kids on weekends but the poor will suffer. More important, many people are concerned that Japanese children will simply end up learning less.

To me that seems likely. It was made especially vivid as I watched a brief film prepared by the government to explain the Rainbow Plan. (Because the film was in English, I also wondered about its domestic audience.) It contains many scenes of children and teachers cooking in home economics classes, playing volleyball, doing calligraphy, volunteering in a nursing home and suchlike. But the viewer got almost no hint that math, science, geography or literature will retain a place in the reformed education system. Content, it's pretty clear, will get shorter shrift in Japanese schools in the future than in the past.

Ministry officials said all the right emollient things: that they've eliminated curricular redundancy and obsolete knowledge, that classes will go deep rather than broad, and that added emphasis will be placed on higher-order skills, creativity and self-expression. No wonder the film offered many shots of U.S. educationists praising the Rainbow Plan. It's exactly the sort of thing they lap up.

From the buzz in the conference room and corridors, however, and the questions that the media asked, it appears that at least some Japanese sense that there's no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, that they may, in fact, be headed for a new storm.

So, too, may some of their fellow Asians. Singapore has also been downsizing its curriculum. Hong Kong, reports The Economist, "is aiming to get away from its old system of learning by rote....The emphasis now is on encouraging pupils to think for themselves and to develop flexible learning skills."

Good luck to them all. Meanwhile, maybe the U.S. now has a chance of boosting its standing on the next international assessment of math and science!

Should teacher unions be given a bigger say on academic issues? This is the question that the California Assembly is grappling with as they debate Assembly Bill 2160. The 300,000 member California Teachers Association and its allies are pushing hard for passage of the bill, while policymakers and administrators argue that the proposal is a power grab that, if passed, would block needed reforms. The Pacific Research Institute's (PRI) Center for School Reform jumped directly into the debate with the release of this report, which argues that California's public schools are near the bottom in student achievement despite record spending levels because unions perversely influence classroom instruction through the collective bargaining process. Although the report's evidence is skimpy in terms of showing a direct correlation between collective bargaining and deteriorating academic achievement, it does show that collective bargaining in California has resulted in education costing taxpayers far more than it would without unions and the bargaining process. For example, in an average California school district, 85 percent of the district's operating budget is tied to teacher and employee salaries. Such huge labor costs obviously constraint school system leaders from using resources to try innovative projects or technologies. Collective bargaining agreements-which reward experience over expertise-also make it harder to fire ineffective teachers and reward good ones. The report contends that teacher unions in California have been a major obstacle to urban school reform. It is for this reason that even those with a history of supporting teacher unions are troubled by a bill that would strengthen their grip on things like curriculum and instruction. Los Angeles superintendent (and former Democratic Colorado governor) Roy Romer recently told Education Week that if Assembly Bill 2160 had been in effect when he took over the running of L.A.'s troubled schools, "much of the recent reform in L.A. would not have occurred." In summary, collective bargaining may or may not have played a role in precipitating the decline of California's once vaunted public education system, but there is little doubt that union power and influence have made it far more difficult to resuscitate the state's sickest schools. The report is available at http://www.pacificresearch.org.

Alex Molnar, Glen Wilson, Melissa Restori and John Hutchison, Education Policy Studies Laboratory, Arizona State University
January 17, 2002

This is another report on the same subject: a directory of EMOs and the schools they operate. Published by Arizona State University's Education Policy Studies Laboratory, it profiles 36 companies that manage 368 schools. (CER reports on 19 companies and claims "about 350" schools. Much of the difference is due to CER focusing on national firms while the Arizona team includes a bunch of tiny one- and two-school companies, mainly in Arizona, where for-profit firms can hold charters directly.) The team leader and chief assembler is Alex Molnar, a longtime critic of the profit motive in K-12 education, but this lengthy document confines its critical comments to the opening pages. Thereafter it's "just the facts." It tells us considerably less than the CER report concerning the companies' characteristics but somewhat more about the individual schools that they operate. This one is free for the downloading (in both HTML and PDF formats) at http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/Archives/CERU%20Archives/ceru-rw.htm.

Carol Innerst, The Center for Education Reform
March 2002

The Center for Education Reform recently released this useful compilation of information on the "education industry," listing and describing many of the for-profit companies currently active in K-12 education, notably the "education management organizations" (EMOs) that run entire schools, along with a list of the schools that each is currently running. This field is constantly in flux, of course, with mergers, bankruptcies and start-ups every time you turn around. So no such compilation will have a long shelf life. This publication (compiled by veteran education journalist Carol Innerst) is meant to inform potential consumers of such services about the firms presently found in the marketplace. There's no attempt to judge or evaluate them. The consumer will find only information supplied by the companies themselves. Still, it's a helpful document for those browsing among firms and a valuable one for those tracking the evolution of this new "industry." The press release and executive summary are available at http://www.edreform.com/press/2002/partnership.htm, where you can also order a hard copy for $29.95 plus shipping. Alternatively, hard copies can be ordered by dialing 202-822-9000.

Christine H. Rossell, Public Policy Institute of California
February 20, 2002

Boston University political scientist Christine Rossell wrote this hundred-page (plus appendices) paper for the Public Policy Institute of California. It addresses the subject of bilingual education in California (and presumably beyond) more perceptively and informatively than anything I've previously read. The basic story is well known: California voters passed Proposition 227 in 1998, requiring that "English learners" be immersed in English rather than in traditional "bilingual" education classes. There's early evidence that this has boosted test scores for some youngsters. But the State Board of Education is fiddling with the rules and procedures in ways that seem calculated to mitigate the impact of Prop 227. Yet Rossell shows us that that's just the tip of the iceberg. Her paper dives way under the surface to present numerous surprising facts and arresting insights. For example, even at its peak, just 29% of California's "English learners" were enrolled in "bilingual" classes. Nor, according to Rossell (who has followed this subject for many years), is there any "unequivocal research demonstrating that bilingual education is the educational disaster that some of its critics claim." She also notes that, while rarely acknowledged, only Hispanic youngsters end up in "bilingual" classes. Speakers of other languages do not land in classes that instruct them in their native languages. "The import of the fact that bilingual education was not widespread and affected only Spanish speakers is that whatever replaces it will not produce miracles. The low achievement of English learners is due primarily to their immigrant status, their social class, and the way in which English Learner is defined." (One must score poorly on an English-language test to be so classified, leading Rossell to make the obvious but important point that "these students are low scorers.") There's much more here, both good analysis and abundant data. She also offers four thoughtful recommendations for amending Prop 227. You can download a (213-page long!) PDF version at http://www.bu.edu/polisci/CROSSELL/Rossell,%20Calif.%202002%20(collated),%202.pdf.

Mark Berends, Joan Chun, Gina Schuyler, Sue Stockly and R. J. Briggs, RAND Corporation
2002

The RAND Corporation recently published this report by Mark Berends and four colleagues, examining in depth (160 pages) the experience of San Antonio, Texas with New American Schools (NAS). This is part of RAND's ongoing NAS research and evaluation project. The data are from 1997-9, during which time San Antonio schools implemented four of the NAS school designs. The RAND analysts sought to determine whether those designs actually altered what happened in classrooms (as opposed to affecting "school organization and governance"), whether they boosted student achievement, and what factors at the district, schools and classroom level bear on the effectiveness of the implementation and the changes that result. The bottom line: the NAS schools and classrooms weren't very different from others in San Antonio, nor were their students' scores very different. The main explanation, according to the authors, is not anything inherently flawed in the NAS designs but, rather, the fact that San Antonio (and Texas) was then in the throes of numerous concurrent (and conflicting) reforms within a high-stakes atmosphere. In other words, so much else was going on that it's impossible to isolate NAS effects. ("However, we did find significant effects of principal leadership on the TAAS reading and mathematics scores...in both NAS and non-NAS schools.") The authors go on to caution policymakers against trying too many different things at once. They note, in particular, that "high-stakes tests may be a two-edged sword," motivating schools to boost performance and seek out more powerful instructional strategies while, at the same time, discouraging them from adopting "richer, more in-depth curricula." If you'd like to download a PDF version or order a hard copy for $20, surf to http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1483/. For another take on New American Schools-which concludes that NAS has failed to make good on its promise to transform K-12 education-see our recent report by Jeffrey Mirel, "Evolution of the New American Schools: From Revolution to Mainstream" at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=44.