Title I Accountability and School Improvement From 2001 to 2004
U.S. Department of EducationPolicy and Program Studies ServiceApril 2006
Title I Accountability and School Improvement From 2001 to 2004
U.S. Department of Education
Policy and Program Studies Service
April 2006
At first blush, this weighty publication appears to be much the same as the National Assessment of Title I Interim Report (reviewed here). To be sure, there's overlap. This report was included in the Congressionally mandated Interim Report-a compilation of federally funded Title I studies, several of which were not yet published. But there's plenty of new material here that provides fresh insight into the early years of implementing No Child Left Behind at the state, district, and school level. (The study provides data from 2001-02 through 2003-04.) Some highlights from the nationally representative survey:
- Schools identified as "in need of improvement" are increasingly concentrated in big urban districts. That's no surprise because states' various games and gimmicks (such as excluding subgroups from accountability unless they are large enough) most often let suburban schools off the hook.
- Among a menu of school improvement efforts (such as adopting new math and reading curricula or boosting teacher collaboration), only one strategy consistently helped schools get off the "needs improvement" list: aligning curriculum and professional development with state standards.
- The most common "corrective actions" taken by districts for schools that did not make "adequate yearly progress" four years in a row were those most supported by the failing schools' staffs, such as appointing an outside expert to advise the school or implementing a new curriculum. Only one-quarter of the districts held adults accountable by implementing tougher and less welcome reforms, such as replacing the principal or the teachers.
The report provides plenty more information to dig into on topics such as public school choice, supplemental services, and state systems of support for schools. The lack of state-by-state information keeps it from achieving blockbuster status, but wonks following NCLB implementation will want to check it out, here.
Politics of Charter Schools: Competing National Advocacy Coalitions Meet Local Politics
Occasional Paper 119
Michael Kirst
February 2006
In today's struggle to advance charter schools, who's wagging the dog? In this fascinating look at the complex world of local and state-level politicking over charter schools, Kirst argues that the war for charters will be won not by high-power Washington-types in suits, but by the rag-tag collection of leaders and organizations working to establish charters across the nation. "At the national level," Kirst writes, "charters are part of political competition between two competing advocacy networks that want to expand or constrain school choice." However, this struggle between the two superpowers "obscures the wide variety of charter school political action that takes place at the state and local level." He outlines the wide variety of local and state-level groups both for and against charters, and the multifarious ways in which they operate. Kirst provides insight into why, for example, a proposed conversion charter school in Sacramento generated a political firestorm, while a proposed start-up charter in the same city garnered barely a complaint. Or why Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown couldn't sell his idea for a National Guard military charter to local leaders, but had no trouble selling it to state officials. The legion of variables at the state and local level means that the charter war is not as simple as being on the choice side or the traditional public school side. "The winner between the two major competing advocacy coalitions," Kirst concludes, "will vary according to many diverse state and local contexts." Woof. Read the report here.
Education policy, up in smoke
This week, Mike and Rick light up California for its half-baked jurisprudence, smoke out why Tampa Bay-area teachers are so sullen, and have an enlightened conversation about whether students caught with drugs should lose their federal student aid. Tom Loveless talks arithmetic, and News of the Weird is a scream. Whoop there it is, all in 15 minutes!
Pass the roach, and pass on college?
As the law now stands, young adults convicted of a drug-related offense are ineligible for federal student aid. It sounds reasonable on the surface. But ultimately, the policy fails on both economic and moral grounds. And it actively works against the main goal of K-12 education: getting students to college and keeping them there (provided they do the work and meet standards).
Defenders of the policy, embedded in the Higher Education Act which is now up for review, make compelling arguments. Reasonable people agree that drug use is unhealthy (not to mention illegal). Withholding student aid dollars from drug abusers, the law's proponents say, establishes an added disincentive to dabble in illicit substances. Economic theory says that slapping an extra "tax" on drugs-in this case, the loss of federal student aid-will lower their appeal to youngsters. Such an action is good for both the government and for dissuaded potheads.
And then there's the emotional argument: the government should not be paying those who break its laws, especially because drugs cost money-money that could be going toward tuition and books (or food and job training).
But here's why those arguments fail.
Eighteen-year-olds are not noted for their rational thinking. It's naïve to assume that the high school senior, offered some marijuana at a party, will base his or her inhalation decision on calculations of opportunity cost and forthcoming Pell Grant dollars.
That lack of maturity doesn't excuse the 18-year-old's behavior. But it does challenge the economic justification behind withholding student aid from convicted drug users. If the fear of being arrested and temporarily jailed doesn't stop an impulsive young person from enjoying a little weed, are we to believe that concerns over future college loans will do the trick? That's just bad thinking.
So while the federal government has set up a dubious incentive for young people to shun drugs, it has inadvertently created a direct incentive-by withholding money-for young people to avoid college.
Not smart. The federal government ought to be funneling as many well-prepared students into college as it can. Even those who engaged in a few youthful follies. Instead, it's actively working against its own interests and against that laudable goal.
And the problem is compounded because those who are most likely to be hurt by this law are those for whom college is most important.
The upper middle class student caught with drugs won't even notice the lost federal student aid. That's because most affluent students aren't eligible for federal grant dollars in the first place. Pell Grants-the most generous federal student aid-are based on financial need. The students who stand to lose out are lower-income kids.
Federal officials should not proclaim their commitment to bringing more low-income and minority students into colleges while they enforce a punitive law that unfairly targets, and withholds student aid from, precisely those groups. It's enough of a stretch for the government to tie aid dollars solely to drug offenses (students convicted of drunken driving, for example, remain eligible for full federal aid), but it's completely indefensible when such a measure will significantly affect the college prospects of only lower-income students. That's simply self-defeating.
Our nation should be working to get young people into college. If a student is arrested with illegal substances, fine. Let him pay the price in time behind bars or in heavy fines. But putting barriers in front of the university gate is misguided. Such a policy can have no positive effects.
Spellings stiffens spine
This past week brought three signals that Secretary Spellings and her team are emerging from their "flexibility" phase and ready to rumble with the education establishment. First, Assistant Secretary Henry Johnson warned nine states that some of their federal funding is at risk unless they start taking NCLB's "highly qualified teachers" requirement more seriously. "At some point," Johnson told the Associated Press, "there was, I suspect, a little bit of notion that 'This too shall pass.' Well, the day of reckoning is here, and it's not going to pass." Boom. Then, Spellings announced the 17 members of the new National Mathematics Panel, many of whom are traditionalists who eschew the fuzzy math enamored by the profession. Veteran math warriors Tom Loveless, Hung-Hsi Wu, and Wilfried Schmid, one of the authors of the Fordham review of state mathematics standards, are among her bold selections. Finally, and most significantly, she announced that her growth-model pilot program will initially be limited to just two states (Tennessee and North Carolina), keeping it from becoming another loophole that states can drive a truck through. She maintained her tough but appropriate stance that only certain kinds of growth models can make the grade-specifically, those that expect schools to show significant progress with students who are far behind. That won't satisfy the anti-accountability crowd-North Carolina's new system provides reprieve to merely 40 schools out of 900-but it's the only defensible approach if we are to get all students to proficiency by the time they graduate. Madame Secretary: whatever you're eating for breakfast, keep at it.
"Flexibility Granted 2 States in No Child Left Behind," by Diana Jean Schemo, New York Times, May 18, 2006
Horror High
Michael Maxwell, a high school teacher in St. Joseph, Missouri, was suspended from work this week after asking his class to write an essay about the person they would most like to murder and how they would do it. The macabre nature of this project was exacerbated by the fact that Maxwell is an industrial technology teacher (the class formerly known as SHOP), and he gave the writing assignment to his drafting class. One wonders why drafting students are writing horror stories, especially when drafting class is such a swell place to construct a murder implement. Sadly, news reports didn't elaborate on how the students' essays turned out, though Gadfly can't get gory scenes from Child's Play 2 out of his mind. Our guess for most popular subject and method? Paris Hilton, with a candlestick, in the kitchen.
"Mo. Teacher Suspended Over Assignment," Associated Press, May 15, 2006
California judge fails his exam
Last week, an Oakland superior court judge struck down the Golden State's mandate that all high school students pass the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) to graduate. The class of 2006 is the first to face the requirement. Consequently, the more than 46,000 students who repeatedly failed the state's reading-and-math exam (which tests prospective high school graduates on middle school level knowledge) will now receive a meaningless diploma. Judge Robert Freedman defended the decision this way: "There is evidence...that shows that students in economically challenged communities have not had an equal opportunity to learn the materials tested." He's correct-no one can defend the shoddy education that many public school districts provide-but the solution is not for the state to lower its exit expectations. State Superintendent Jack O'Connell, who authored the graduation requirement during his tenure as a legislator, said California will appeal the decision in an effort to "maintain the integrity" of the test, but this matter will likely linger in the courts for a long time to come. Students have multiple opportunities to pass-and this year, the state provided an additional $65 million to tutor struggling seniors. Russlynn Ali, director of Education Trust-West, points out that without the exit exam, "We have even less leverage to...ensure that all students master the basic skills they will need to succeed in college and in the workforce. If we lose the CAHSEE and the accountability attached to it, we fear that we also lose the attention, focus, and resources it brings to bear on the students and schools who need the most help." Here's hoping that someone in the state's vast judicial system has the sense to listen to Ms. Ali.
"Calif. Judge Throws Out Exit-Exam Requirement," by Linda Jacobson, Education Week, May 15, 2006, (subscription required)
"Judge says California exit exam is unfair," Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle, May 9, 2006
Far-flung tutors
A lot of American students are firing up their computers to get the tutoring help they need. A typical session goes something like this:
An instant messaging-type window opens, and the conversation-often an audio one--begins. "Hello, Brian. This is Ralph. Let's continue last week's review of algebra."
Only Ralph isn't Ralph-he's Raj. And he isn't sitting in a call center in Chicago, but a call center in Calcutta. He also has a Ph.D. in economics and several years experience teaching at the high school and college levels.
But Raj doesn't carry a teaching credential from any American state. Moreover, because Brian's school has been on the failing list for three consecutive years, the U.S. company that hired Raj is paying him with Title I funds.
And that's the rub, Rob Weil of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) tells the Washington Post. (See the story here.) "Quality control doesn't end at 3 o'clock when the school bell rings," he said. "If you need a highly qualified teacher in school at 2:59, you should have a qualified teacher as a tutor after school at 3:01."
On one level, his position is fair. There are lots of tutors out there, and those who provide Supplemental Educational Services (SES)-an NCLB provision that provides tutoring for students in failing schools (see here and here)-and are paid with government funds ought to be monitored for quality. Indeed, federal law requires this. If providers can't prove that they're accelerating student learning, they're supposed to be removed from states' lists of approved tutors.
But if these online tutors-whether they are trained at Ivy League schools or Presidency College, Calcutta or Moscow State University-can deliver the goods, what difference does having, or not having, a teaching credential matter? It doesn't. So if StudyLoft, Growing Stars, and Homeworkexpert can get the job done, let them. (None of these are currently approved SES providers, but they are working to become qualified. Brainfuse, however, is approved.)
At bottom, though, quality control isn't what riles Weil and the AFT (and the NEA). Consider this line that Weil offered up: "We don't believe that education should become a business of outsourcing. When you start talking about overseas people teaching children, it just doesn't seem right to me."
Just what "doesn't seem right" isn't clear. But here's a good guess: Weil, like a lot of Americans, is realizing that there are many capable people outside our borders. And they're not just making the shirts we wear and the cars we drive. They're competing with educated Americans. And for those with a stake in keeping control over the teaching profession (and by this I mean the unions, not the teachers they represent), that's a frightening proposition. When it comes to free trade and globalization, all unions stand stalwartly opposed.
But for those interested in seeing that children get every opportunity they need to excel in the classroom, there's nothing more exciting.
A quick review of some of the larger online tutoring providers shows that they offer services predominantly in the hard sciences-math, chemistry, physics, and biology. Cultural relativism is irrelevant in these subjects. You either understand calculus or you don't. Math is a universal language.
Americans do not now have, nor have we ever had, a monopoly on these subjects. We've always drawn on international brainpower in these fields. Neil Armstrong would never have walked on the moon, for example, had it not been for German engineer Warner Von Braun who designed the rocket that flew him there. The greatest advances in math over the past century were made by a poor boy from India, Srinivasa Ramanujan.
Programs such as SES-not to mention the private-pay tutoring market-are opening the door to the wider educational world. This is an accomplishment to celebrate, not a threat to be feared.
Having foreigners train Americans may not "seem" right to U.S. unions. But if they can do so well, our children will benefit. And so will we all. America is an exceptional nation. Not because we have the market cornered on knowledge, or because we have superior intellectual abilities, but because we as a people adapt to innovation and profit from it as few others in history have. The Industrial Revolution, the Tech Revolution, the transition from a service economy to an information-based economy-all these came with predictions of gloom and doom. And in the wake of each upheaval, America experienced unprecedented growth.
Raj, I'm pleased to know you. Do I have to call you Ralph?
Politics of Charter Schools: Competing National Advocacy Coalitions Meet Local Politics
Occasional Paper 119
Michael Kirst
February 2006
In today's struggle to advance charter schools, who's wagging the dog? In this fascinating look at the complex world of local and state-level politicking over charter schools, Kirst argues that the war for charters will be won not by high-power Washington-types in suits, but by the rag-tag collection of leaders and organizations working to establish charters across the nation. "At the national level," Kirst writes, "charters are part of political competition between two competing advocacy networks that want to expand or constrain school choice." However, this struggle between the two superpowers "obscures the wide variety of charter school political action that takes place at the state and local level." He outlines the wide variety of local and state-level groups both for and against charters, and the multifarious ways in which they operate. Kirst provides insight into why, for example, a proposed conversion charter school in Sacramento generated a political firestorm, while a proposed start-up charter in the same city garnered barely a complaint. Or why Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown couldn't sell his idea for a National Guard military charter to local leaders, but had no trouble selling it to state officials. The legion of variables at the state and local level means that the charter war is not as simple as being on the choice side or the traditional public school side. "The winner between the two major competing advocacy coalitions," Kirst concludes, "will vary according to many diverse state and local contexts." Woof. Read the report here.
Title I Accountability and School Improvement From 2001 to 2004
U.S. Department of Education
Policy and Program Studies Service
April 2006
At first blush, this weighty publication appears to be much the same as the National Assessment of Title I Interim Report (reviewed here). To be sure, there's overlap. This report was included in the Congressionally mandated Interim Report-a compilation of federally funded Title I studies, several of which were not yet published. But there's plenty of new material here that provides fresh insight into the early years of implementing No Child Left Behind at the state, district, and school level. (The study provides data from 2001-02 through 2003-04.) Some highlights from the nationally representative survey:
- Schools identified as "in need of improvement" are increasingly concentrated in big urban districts. That's no surprise because states' various games and gimmicks (such as excluding subgroups from accountability unless they are large enough) most often let suburban schools off the hook.
- Among a menu of school improvement efforts (such as adopting new math and reading curricula or boosting teacher collaboration), only one strategy consistently helped schools get off the "needs improvement" list: aligning curriculum and professional development with state standards.
- The most common "corrective actions" taken by districts for schools that did not make "adequate yearly progress" four years in a row were those most supported by the failing schools' staffs, such as appointing an outside expert to advise the school or implementing a new curriculum. Only one-quarter of the districts held adults accountable by implementing tougher and less welcome reforms, such as replacing the principal or the teachers.
The report provides plenty more information to dig into on topics such as public school choice, supplemental services, and state systems of support for schools. The lack of state-by-state information keeps it from achieving blockbuster status, but wonks following NCLB implementation will want to check it out, here.