The Education Gadfly Weekly

David E. Campbell, Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, September 2001

Harvard research fellow David E. Campbell wrote this paper for the Boston-based Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research. In 25 pages, he probes the "civic consequences of education reform - and charter schools in particular." This is particularly timely in light of the RAND school choice study's lament that little research has been done on the consequences of charters and vouchers for "civic integration." Though Massachusetts has no vouchers, it does have private and charter schools. By surveying 2700 students in 23 schools - including six charter and five private (3 Catholic and 2 secular) schools - Campbell is able to report some very interesting evidence touching on 8 components of civic education. He also reaches three important conclusions, all to be read in the context of a troubling, overall decline in civic participation by young Americans. First, students in secular private schools scored high on almost every measure. (Those in Catholic schools scored decently but more like those in public and charter schools.) Campbell cautions, though, that this was a small sample and his findings for this sector must be viewed as preliminary. Second, among public schools, the higher the school's academic achievement (as measured on the state's MCAS tests), the higher its students' scores on most of Campbell's civic measures. Third, on these eight indicators of civic education, charter schools present a mixed picture. On some, they rival high performing public schools; on others, they're more like mid-range public schools. It's a nice piece of work. If you'd like a copy, surf to http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/research/whitepapers/wp17cover.cfm or contact the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, 85 Devonshire Street, 8^th floor, Boston, MA 02109. Phone (617) 723-2277or fax (617) 723-1880.

Brian P. Gill, P. Michael Timpane, Karen E. Ross and Dominic J. Brewer, RAND, 2001

In ten years, the choice movement in American education has grown from infancy to early adolescence. After weighing what we know about charter schools and vouchers during this short life span, RAND analysts announced last week that the experiments in choice should continue. The authors of this 266-page report examined available evidence on the impact of vouchers and charter schools on five dimensions that, they say, represent the basic goals of American education: academic achievement, choice, access, integration and civic socialization. In terms of academic achievement, the study found that students in charter schools or using vouchers have not been harmed by the experience. In fact, their study suggests modest achievement gains for African-American students after one or two years in voucher schools (as compared with local public schools). The study also confirms what many other surveys have shown: that parents of charter and voucher students are highly satisfied with their children's schools.  In truth, the report notes, the experiment with choice in the United States has been conducted on such a relatively small and ill-funded scale (less than one percent of the fall 2000 enrollment was made up of children in charter schools) that it is impossible to provide definitive answers to some of the most important questions - notably those concerning total demand, supply responses by educational providers, and school characteristics and performance at scale. The available evidence, however, shows that voucher and charter programs are most academically effective when they include existing private schools, enforce requirements for student achievement testing, and actively inform parents about schools and their effectiveness. The basic policy point, according to the evidence accumulated by RAND, is that we should help the choice movement enter adulthood. To download the report in PDF or to order a hard copy for $15, visit http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1118.

James Tooley, 2001

British education expert James Tooley, who is based at the University of Newcastle and London's Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), is an industrious and inventive scholar with a special interest in private education in the Third World. First published in 1999, this 190-page book has been reissued with a thoughtful, new 16-page preface. In it, Tooley seeks to correct some misleading comments and impressions in the main text and to update his information on a few key points. He is particularly interesting on the topic of low-cost, low-overhead private schools serving very poor children in the slums of India and the emergence of private-school options - and privatization of some government schools - in China. Since I believe few American education watchers (or school-choice watchers) are up to speed on such developments - attention having been paid to choice issues in OECD-type countries but not in developing nations - there is much to be learned from Tooley's pioneering work. Surf to http://www.iea.org.uk/books/hp141.htm, where you can download the book in PDF form or order a hard copy. And if the topic interests you, you may also want to have a look at Professor Tooley's Reclaiming Education, also available via the Institute of Economic Affairs. (Start at http://www.iea.org.uk/books/tooley.htm).

A recent study by the Manhattan Institute's Jay Greene (High School Graduation Rates in the United States) shone a spotlight on the enormous number of students who disappear from school attendance rolls between 8^th grade and 12^th grade but aren't counted in any official dropout statistics. In a recent op-ed in The Houston Chronicle, Elena Vergara explains what happens to some of the thousands of eighth-graders in Houston who disappear before diplomas are awarded four years later. According to Vergara, there is a dramatic yearly enrollment surge between eight and ninth grade that can be traced back to a Texas law that prohibits students from failing more than one year each in elementary and middle school.  Struggling students arrive in ninth grade by virtue of social promotion, not because they're ready to handle high school material.  After failing their ninth-grade classes, an alarming percentage of these students drop out as soon as they turn 16 rather than repeat ninth grade. On the bright side, Vergara notes, social promotions are being phased out in Texas, and thanks to a new state law, school districts will begin reporting more accurate graduation and dropout statistics this school year.  "HISD's 'ninth-grade bubble' deserves to burst," by Elena R. Vergara, The Houston Chronicle, December 7, 2001.

In last week's Gadfly, we reported on efforts by the government of Pakistan to rein in some state-funded Islamic schools that breed extremism and violence and provide incentives for teaching modern subjects like science, math, computers, and English.  Hopefully these efforts to promote liberal education in Pakistan will be more sincere than they have been in the schools run by the Palestinian Authority. A recent article in the Financial Times by Amity Shlaes describes the highlights (or more accurately, lowlights) of a report analyzing the Palestinian textbooks for 6- and 11-year-olds that have been developed since the Oslo Accord, which required both Israel and the PLO to promote mutual understanding and tolerance and refrain from issuing hostile propaganda. According to the report, by Goetz Nordburch of the Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI), the new Palestinian textbooks (which were purchased with financial aid from 21 countries and four international organizations) are an improvement over their predecessors, and do not contain much "outright incitement," but they do teach discredited racial theories, incessantly slander the Jewish character, and foster a desire for martyrdom among children.  Textbook maps also fail to acknowledge the existence of Israel as a state; its territory is instead labeled Palestine and Israeli cities like Tel Aviv are not depicted.  For more, see "Schooled as Martyrs," by Amity Shlaes, Financial Times, December 5, 2001, and Narrating Palestinian Nationalism: An Inquiry into the new Palestinian Textbooks, by Goetz Nordbruch, The Middle East Research Institute, 2001.

Why are school finance litigators jumping for joy over the imminent passage of President Bush's education plan?  In the December Washington Monthly, Siobhan Gorman explains that the detailed test scores that will eventually emerge from the plan - which requires that states annually test students in grades 3 through 8 in reading and math - will be a "potential bonanza" for lawyers hoping to prove that poor schools offer inadequate education to underprivileged kids.  For almost thirty years, school finance activists have argued in court that unequal school financing arrangements violate state constitutions, but many plaintiffs have been unable to prove that low-income students were getting a substandard education in their cash-strapped schools.  Once all states begin to measure students' progress toward meeting defined standards of performance, lawyers will have the evidence they need - in the form of gaping achievement gaps - to prove that children are being harmed, Gorman writes.  Lawyers have already used test scores to convince a New York judge that funding disparities there are unconstitutional.  This kind of litigation may reap more money for poor schools in the long run, but using courts to obtain that money has downsides: it's inefficient, it angers voters, and it interferes with real education reform, among other things. It also isn't guaranteed to make schools any better. For details see  "Can't Beat 'em? Sue 'em!" by Siobhan Gorman, The Washington Monthly, December 2001.

It's not only in the world of education research that ideology sometimes trumps scientific evidence; the folks who study drug-prevention programs for children can be hostile to research-based practices as well. Case in point is the treatment that American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers received last month at a conference on a drug treatment program called "Boy Talk," which is the counterpart of a program called "Girl Power."  Girl Power encourages girls to shoot, hunt, and play drums, among other things, on the assumption that making girls less traditionally feminine will make them less likely to take drugs. Sommers, author of the well-received book The War Against Boys, had been invited by HHS's Center for Substance Abuse and Prevention to speak at the conference, but when she tried to suggest that scientific studies ought to be used to evaluate Girl Power's effectiveness in preventing drug use, she was interrupted by an HHS official, commanded to end her talk, and then insulted by another panelist using language that we can't repeat in this family-friendly publication. Not long after Stanley Kurtz broke this ugly story in National Review Online, the new (Bush-appointed) head of the division of HHS that oversees the Center for Substance Abuse and Prevention personally apologized to Sommers and promised to take corrective action.  See "Silencing Sommers," by Stanley Kurtz, National Review Online, December 5, 2001, and  "Abolish CSAP!" by Stanley Kurtz, National Review Online, December 11, 2001.  For a copy of a statement Sommers has issued, further detailing what transpired at the conference, email [email protected].

The teachers who have worked their way to the top of today's education system were hired at a time when fewer professional opportunities were open to all and when choosing a lifelong career was the norm. By contrast, today's new teaching candidates have many attractive career options and very different expectations about career mobility and job security. The archetype of the entrepreneur and free agent has replaced that of the company man (or woman). But teaching appears to be one of the few lines of work with a static understanding of career. So write Harvard ed school professor Susan Moore Johnson and four colleagues in "The Next Generation of Teachers: Changing Conceptions of a Career in Teaching," an article analyzing the results of interviews with 50 first- and second-year teachers in Massachusetts that appears in the December 2001 issue of Phi Delta Kappan.

The main question motivating the study was how the next generation of teachers differs from the generation that is about to retire in their conceptions of a career. In an attempt to capture the views of a wide range of teachers, the researchers interviewed 36 teachers who had followed the traditional route into teaching (passing through an ed school) and 14 who had followed alternate routes, either teaching in a charter school or participating in Massachusetts' fast-track certification program for outstanding teaching candidates. The researchers set out to explore what motivates this new generation of teachers, with an eye toward using this information to improve recruitment and retention policies.

The researchers were able to identify several different species of new teachers. About one third of the teachers interviewed were classified as long-termers who anticipated making teaching their primary career; the other two thirds were classified as short-termers. Among the long-termers, only a small fraction of these expected to remain full-time classroom teachers; most anticipated wanting new challenges and different roles in education as their careers progressed. The short-termers were divided into two categories, "explorers" who were testing out the career to see if it was a good fit for the long-term and "contributors" hoping to make a difference for children and society either at the beginning or end of careers in other fields. Researchers found that the short-termers were not casual about their commitment to their work but were very sensitive to the costs of preservice training and licensure; they concluded that policymakers should create alternate pathways for these individuals into teaching that are less costly (in terms of time and money) than traditional routes.

Policymakers also need to think more systematically about retaining the new generation of teachers, the authors write. To retain long-termers, it is essential that the career of teaching become more differentiated so that accomplished teachers can take on roles as inductors, mentors, peer reviewers, professional developers, team leaders, and curriculum writers. While improving work conditions may induce some short-termers to become long-termers, it is important to recognize that there may be a substantial group of teachers whose contribution to education will be short but nonetheless valuable, and policymakers should focus on making their time in teaching as productive as possible rather than trying to convince every teacher to stay for the long term.

"If public education is to tap the talents and interests of this entire pool and schools are to recruit the best possible candidates into the classroom, policies must not require that all candidates conform to a single career pattern," Johnson and her co-authors conclude. They proposed a mixed model for the teaching career with both a large core of dedicated teachers providing continuity in schools and also some well-defined alternative pathways by which shorter term teachers (who are still understood to have a serious commitment to teaching) can enter the classroom more easily.

A radically different proposal for adapting the teaching profession is proposed by Peter Temes of the Great Books Foundation in a commentary in last week's Education Week. Frustrated that we do not screen new teachers for excellence before granting them tenure, but merely for competence, Temes urges that new teachers face an early-career, merit-based threshold similar to what doctors and lawyers face in their first years of professional work. Most who begin their career as teachers won't make the grade, but by keeping only the very best of the new teacher recruits, we'll turn teaching into an elite profession. The author contends that this will attract large numbers of talented people from other professions who don't think teaching is respected today.  It won't be necessary to pay teachers more money because people will work for less in order to be part of an elite profession.  While the ambition of stocking our nation's schools with nothing but the elite as teachers has some appeal, the first step is to create ways of identifying and recognizing those teachers who today meet this standard of excellence. This is the goal of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, launched earlier this year by the National Council on Teacher Quality and the Education Leaders Council. (For more, see "New Organization Aims to Develop Tests for Teachers," by Julie Blair, Education Week, October 17, 2001.)

In the meantime, it is worth noting some pockets of activity already aimed at revolutionizing the teaching profession.  Last week's Education Week reports that four to six Catholic schools in Indianapolis will take part next year in the Teacher Advancement Program, an initiative by the Milken Family Foundation to modernize teaching through opportunities for career advancement and performance-related pay.  The Archdiocese of Indianapolis hopes eventually to put this program in place throughout the system. In Denver, where teachers in 16 schools are participating in a pilot program in which teacher pay is linked to student achievement, there are early indications that students in these experimental schools are progressing faster than youngsters in other schools. Finally, in Georgia, 15 state universities are creating fast-track training programs to help professionals who have lost jobs in the current economic slowdown enter teaching. All are reasons, albeit modest-sized reasons, not to be too discouraged.

"The Next Generation of Teachers: Changing Conceptions of a Career in Teaching," by Heather G. Peske, Edward Liu, Susan Moore Johnson, David Kauffman, and Susan M. Kardos, Phi Delta Kappan, December 2001. (Not yet available online, but copies of the article can be ordered at http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/karticle.htm)

"Can Teaching Become an Elite Profession?" by Peter Temes, Education Week, December 5, 2001

"Teaching and Learning: Catholic Schools TAP In," by Jeff Archer, David J. Hoff, and Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, Education Week, December 5, 2001

"DPS Pay Test Passing," by Eric Hubler, Denver Post, December 7, 2001

"Layoff Victims Sought as Future Teachers," by James Salzer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 10, 2001

As Enron, the giant energy company, plummeted toward bankruptcy from its one-time market value of $80 billion, business and finance experts bestirred themselves to try to explain what had gone wrong and what lessons could be drawn from this corporate calamity.

One such account appeared in the December 4 Wall Street Journal in the form of a perceptive op ed by Joe Berardino, managing partner and CEO of Andersen, which was Enron's auditing firm and understandably sheepish about this turn of events. Berardino's column was no doubt meant partly to exonerate Andersen from the mounting evidence of malfeasance by Enron's leaders. But that's not what struck me. What struck me was the extent to which the education-reform community in general, and the charter-school movement in particular, should heed the four big lessons that Berardino drew from the Enron debacle.

First, "Rethinking some of our accounting standards. Like the tax code, our accounting rules and literature have grown in volume and complexity as we have attempted to turn an art into a science. In the process, we have fostered a technical, legalistic mindset that is sometimes more concerned with the form rather than the substance of what is reported."

Think of yourself as a school accountability monitor in a district or state education agency. Or as a charter authorizer. Ask whether the information you're getting from schools is meant to satisfy formulaic (and possibly antiquated) reporting requirements or is evocative of what is actually happening in those schools. Berardino says the accounting field's standard procedures are archaic; they allow companies to keep certain liabilities and assets off their financial statements, thus presenting investors and securities regulators with a misleading picture of their true condition. Now think about test scores; dropout statistics; data on where school dollars go (and how many of them there are). Think how easy it is for a clever (or careless) administrator to report his version of the facts while withholding or masking key information. Education's reporting rules typically focus on providing the exact information that some higher authority has opted to require rather than information that gives a full picture of how schools are doing. As a friend recently remarked after reviewing the operations of a major urban school system, "They're awash in data but they have no information." When, for example, schools report their average test scores from one year to the next, nobody has any way of knowing whether they're adding academic value to their pupils.

Second, "Modernizing our broken financial-reporting model." Berardino argues that today's corporate financial reports are based on a 1930's industrial model and focus "on historical information and a single earnings-per-share number" rather than revealing what multiple markets and constituencies most need to know about firms operating in a complex modern economy. Enron pumped out reams of information but in such a way that "sophisticated analysts...were confused. ... We need to move quickly but carefully to a more dynamic and richer reporting model. Disclosures need to be continuous, not periodic....We need to provide several streams of relevant information....We need to expand the number of key performance indicators...."

The parallel is clear: our schools are grudging and opaque with the information they put out - or else they drown you in data that makes no obvious sense. Most school overseers and clients find themselves dependent on occasional, after-the-fact reports, easily contoured and spun by those inside the school. These are more apt to focus on what goes into the school and what services are provided there than on the school's performance. Results are likely to consist mainly of test scores - which are easily manipulated depending on which kids took the test, how they were doing before they enrolled, and how the scores are reported. Schools' financial reporting must also be rethought: Does the budget account for building depreciation and, thus, future capital needs? Are teacher benefits reported as part of the cost (and value) of their salaries? When a charter school hires a for-profit manager, do its dollars pass behind an opaque screen where the public cannot see what they're actually being spent on?

The overall solution, I believe, is to be found in the principle of transparency, by which practically everything a school does is put out - at least onto the website - for public inspection. (For one version of what how this could work, have a look at chapter 6 of Charter Schools in Action by Bruno Manno, Gregg Vanourek and yours truly.)

Third, "reforming our patchwork regulatory environment." Berardino is not urging MORE regulation. He is pointing out that the current arrangements are a confused mess - "an alphabet soup of institutions" - that "is not keeping up with the issues raised by today's complex financial issues. Standard-setting is too slow. Responsibility for administering discipline is too diffuse and punishment is not sufficiently certain to promote confidence in the profession." Those criticisms, it seems to me, are precisely true of the education profession, too, and it's a problem that grows graver as pressure mounts for performance accountability. Look at how different are the accountability mechanisms - and expectations - to be found from one school system to the next, even from one charter-school authorizer to the next. The new federal E.S.E.A. requirements seek to impose greater uniformity across states, but it's far from clear just how well this is going to work. Already a lot of states are balking.

Fourth and finally, "improving accountability across our capital system." It isn't just the accounting field that needs to clean up its act, Berardino contends. Misinformation, hype, slackness, concealment and bad judgment are widespread, from investment bankers to stock analysts, from fund managers to credit agencies, leading to unhappy investment experiences for millions of people. Those people, he reminds us, "depend in large measure on the integrity and stability of our capital markets for personal wealth and security....For our system to work in today's complex economy, these checks and balances must function properly."

How much more true that is of primary-secondary education! Schools aren't the only actors on that vast stage. State education agencies, local districts, teacher training programs, accreditation bodies, external school-rating and parent-informing systems, certification agencies for teachers, textbook adoption boards - the list goes on. Far from meaningful "checks and balances," it's a field close to paralysis as a result of the proliferation of, and lack of synchronization across, these many entities. If we are to view K-12 education in any terms other than a rigid government bureaucracy where neither employees nor customers have any choices or freedoms, we must view it as a complex, regulated marketplace whose "integrity and stability" need to be able to counted upon by its customers, who number in the tens of millions. For them, the key to a properly functioning market is getting all the information they need, when they need it, in modes they can understand and compare, from sources that they can trust. I look forward to the day when we can say that about American education. I wonder whether Mr. Berardino and his accounting colleagues will get there first.

"Enron: A Wake-Up Call," by Joe Berardino, The Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2001 (available only to subscribers)

Charter Schools in Action, by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Bruno V. Manno and Gregg Vanourek, 2001

Brian P. Gill, P. Michael Timpane, Karen E. Ross and Dominic J. Brewer, RAND, 2001

In ten years, the choice movement in American education has grown from infancy to early adolescence. After weighing what we know about charter schools and vouchers during this short life span, RAND analysts announced last week that the experiments in choice should continue. The authors of this 266-page report examined available evidence on the impact of vouchers and charter schools on five dimensions that, they say, represent the basic goals of American education: academic achievement, choice, access, integration and civic socialization. In terms of academic achievement, the study found that students in charter schools or using vouchers have not been harmed by the experience. In fact, their study suggests modest achievement gains for African-American students after one or two years in voucher schools (as compared with local public schools). The study also confirms what many other surveys have shown: that parents of charter and voucher students are highly satisfied with their children's schools.  In truth, the report notes, the experiment with choice in the United States has been conducted on such a relatively small and ill-funded scale (less than one percent of the fall 2000 enrollment was made up of children in charter schools) that it is impossible to provide definitive answers to some of the most important questions - notably those concerning total demand, supply responses by educational providers, and school characteristics and performance at scale. The available evidence, however, shows that voucher and charter programs are most academically effective when they include existing private schools, enforce requirements for student achievement testing, and actively inform parents about schools and their effectiveness. The basic policy point, according to the evidence accumulated by RAND, is that we should help the choice movement enter adulthood. To download the report in PDF or to order a hard copy for $15, visit http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1118.

David E. Campbell, Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, September 2001

Harvard research fellow David E. Campbell wrote this paper for the Boston-based Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research. In 25 pages, he probes the "civic consequences of education reform - and charter schools in particular." This is particularly timely in light of the RAND school choice study's lament that little research has been done on the consequences of charters and vouchers for "civic integration." Though Massachusetts has no vouchers, it does have private and charter schools. By surveying 2700 students in 23 schools - including six charter and five private (3 Catholic and 2 secular) schools - Campbell is able to report some very interesting evidence touching on 8 components of civic education. He also reaches three important conclusions, all to be read in the context of a troubling, overall decline in civic participation by young Americans. First, students in secular private schools scored high on almost every measure. (Those in Catholic schools scored decently but more like those in public and charter schools.) Campbell cautions, though, that this was a small sample and his findings for this sector must be viewed as preliminary. Second, among public schools, the higher the school's academic achievement (as measured on the state's MCAS tests), the higher its students' scores on most of Campbell's civic measures. Third, on these eight indicators of civic education, charter schools present a mixed picture. On some, they rival high performing public schools; on others, they're more like mid-range public schools. It's a nice piece of work. If you'd like a copy, surf to http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/research/whitepapers/wp17cover.cfm or contact the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, 85 Devonshire Street, 8^th floor, Boston, MA 02109. Phone (617) 723-2277or fax (617) 723-1880.

James Tooley, 2001

British education expert James Tooley, who is based at the University of Newcastle and London's Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), is an industrious and inventive scholar with a special interest in private education in the Third World. First published in 1999, this 190-page book has been reissued with a thoughtful, new 16-page preface. In it, Tooley seeks to correct some misleading comments and impressions in the main text and to update his information on a few key points. He is particularly interesting on the topic of low-cost, low-overhead private schools serving very poor children in the slums of India and the emergence of private-school options - and privatization of some government schools - in China. Since I believe few American education watchers (or school-choice watchers) are up to speed on such developments - attention having been paid to choice issues in OECD-type countries but not in developing nations - there is much to be learned from Tooley's pioneering work. Surf to http://www.iea.org.uk/books/hp141.htm, where you can download the book in PDF form or order a hard copy. And if the topic interests you, you may also want to have a look at Professor Tooley's Reclaiming Education, also available via the Institute of Economic Affairs. (Start at http://www.iea.org.uk/books/tooley.htm).