The Education Gadfly Weekly

Achieve, Inc.
June 10, 2004

Achieve has again set off a chorus of wailing with its latest publication, this time on the defects of graduation exams in six states. This new study finds that the tests aren't all that difficult - the subject matter is mostly 9th and 10th grade stuff, and the cut scores are low. (Or as the report puts it, the math tests "cover material students in most other countries study in the 7th or 8th grade.") And while many states - Ohio and Maryland among them - have made strides in strengthening their tests, they have quite a distance yet to travel before these tests are a serious measure of appropriate 12th grade skills, the sort recommended by the American Diploma Project and expected by the real world of college and the job market. Considering that students have multiple opportunities to pass these tests, we're not sure they're quite as "high-stakes" as everyone likes to pretend. Still, Achieve has done an estimable job of laying out the facts in business-like fashion.  Check it out here.

"Report: Graduation tests have 'modest expectations,'" Associated Press, June 10, 2004

National Center for Education StatisticsJune 2004

The National Center for Education Statistics publishes several annual compilations that belong on the shelves of all card-carrying education policy wonks. The most interesting of them is the Condition of Education report, which changes every year because the NCES team selects different indicators and analyzes and interprets them rather than settling for "just-the-facts." This 325-pager is the latest such, and the first under the expert leadership of NCES Commissioner Robert Lerner. It's worth your time (at least if you're a policy wonk) because some of the special analyses are uncommonly illuminating and because Lerner avoids the traps that some of his predecessors slipped into, such as "spinning" the data a bit too hard on behalf of the administration they served. (A couple of Clinton-era COE's were egregious in this regard).  You'll find all sorts of fascinating stuff here, such as :

• Seventy-one percent of all U.S. college students received financial aid in 2000, up from 54 percent in 1990, but the growth in grant aid didn't offset the rise in tuitions. Which helps account for the fact that 45 percent of college students took out Stafford loans in 2000 (up from 30 percent a decade earlier).
• "Schools in the Southeast were more likely to have pre-kindergarten programs and full-day programs than schools in other regions of the country."
• In 2003, 13 percent "of all persons ages 16-24 were neither enrolled in school nor working," down from 16 percent in 1986.
• By 2001, the U.S. had fallen below the OECD average in its rate of first-time entry of young people into colleges at the bachelor's degree (or higher) level. Considering that, as NCES laconically puts it, such rates "provide an indication of the degree to which a country's population is acquiring higher-level skills and knowledge," this is an alarming development. (The calculation is complicated, but the OECD average in 2001 was 47 [up from 40 in 1998], the U.S. rate was 42 [down from 44], England's was 45, Norway's 62, Spain's 48, Italy's 44.)
• There is modest but real growth in the proportion of students enrolled in "public schools of choice"; 15.4 percent in 2003 vs. 11 a decade earlier. During that same period, private school enrollments rose from 9.1 percent of the total to 10.8.

There's plenty more here so poke around on your own. This can be done on-line (start here with a helpful website that integrates the COE reports from 2000 through 2004) but, because of the document's bulk, you may prefer to obtain a hard copy, which you can do by calling 1-877-4ED-PUBS.

Robin Jacobowitz, Institute for Education and Social Policy, New York University, Jonathan S. Gyurko, Office of New Schools Development, New York City Department of EducationMarch 2004

This report provides a useful counter to those who claim that charter schools steal money from traditional public schools. The New York City data show that charters receive less money per pupil than district schools. The overall disparity is not huge: $8,400 for charter school students compared to $9,000 for district students. But the gap ranges from $500 per student (for regular middle and high school students) to as much as $7,600 per student (for elementary special education students). And that's without counting capital dollars and facilities. This analysis is thorough and straightforward. Perhaps it will help thwart proposed legislation in Albany which would "reduce funding to charter schools on the assumption that charter school resources . . . is [sic] inflated."  Given that Public Impact's recent study of charter funding in Dayton, Ohio found the same pattern-charters receive less per-pupil than district schools-we suspect this is a national trend. Perhaps some day the facts will overwhelm the anti-charter rhetoric. This report is available online.

The Christian Science Monitor is a somewhat unlikely source for this story, but it recently ran a fascinating account of the continuing debate over medication of hyperactive children, and whether schools are driving the exploding diagnoses of ADHD. In a few cases, one recounted by the Monitor, a parent was told that unless her child - in this, as in most cases, a boy - was put on Ritalin, he would be sent packing to special ed. (The U.S. House has passed a bill outlawing such demands, but it is stalled in the Senate.) But after two years on the medication and some alarming symptoms, including social withdrawal, she took him off his meds. The school promptly reported her to child protective services as a potential abuser. This episode may be extreme, but there is no doubt that ADHD diagnoses have ballooned (13 percent of children are now diagnosed with the ailment) and pressure to medicate from teachers and school administrators is a major cause. This is disconcerting, to put it mildly. There are doubtless children who benefit from medication. And just as sure, there are lots of jumpy, distracted kids who need a firmer hand, not pills. With new studies showing some unfortunate, long-term side effects of medication, including retarded growth, is it not time for schools to reevaluate whether they have the expertise to dabble in this kind of diagnosis?

"Some parents just say 'whoa' to school-required medications," by Kelly Hearn, Christian Science Monitor, June 14, 2004

Is the new D.C. voucher program half full or half empty? Depends on where one turns for information. According to the Washington Post, "the D.C. voucher program did not receive enough applicants from public schools to fill all the slots available," which meant 500 slots went unfilled - even as eligible private school students who applied were turned away. But according to USA Today, "Demand for access to the nation's first federally funded school voucher program has proved overwhelming in the nation's capital, due in large part to parental frustration with its troubled public education system." The Washington Times adds that the Washington Scholarship Fund, the private outfit that runs the new voucher program, didn't work hard enough to fill the available slots "and should have been able to recruit more voucher applicants." All somewhat confusing. It's clear, though, that upwards of a thousand needy D.C. kids are going to get a better shot at a decent education. Had Congress moved earlier in the year, there would have been more school slots, more applicants, and a better chance of a large enough "control group" for a proper evaluation. Now we must probably view this as a pilot year and expect a full-size program in 2005-6. (Meanwhile, the District continues to founder in its quest for someone to lead its public-school system.)

"School voucher slots halved," by George Archibald, Washington Times, June 16, 2004

"D.C. school voucher slots outnumber applicants," by Justin Blum, Washington Post, June 10, 2004

"Mixed response to D.C. vouchers," Letters page, Washington Post, June 15, 2004

"Huge demand for vouchers in capital city," Associated Press, June 11, 2004

This week, the SEED school (Schools for Educational Evolution and Development) in Washington, D.C. - America's only urban charter boarding school (click here for more) - is celebrating the success stories of its first graduating class. Demographically, the school is typical for inner-city Washington: 90 percent of the students are poor, 98 percent are black, two percent Hispanic, and 88 percent from single- or no-parent households. The success of its students, however, is decidedly atypical. Not only are all its graduating students going on to four-year colleges (including such heavy-hitters as Princeton, Duke, and Georgetown), the school has also been able to achieve exceptional results in non-academic areas. For example, only 5 percent of SEED students were in fights last year, compared with 35.7 percent of DCPS students. Similarly, just 12 percent of SEED students reported trying drugs, compared with almost half of their public school counterparts. That doesn't silence the critics, though. Upon hearing of SEED's success, senior NEA policy analyst Susan Nogan complained that "considering how difficult it's been to get increased funding for the public schools, and taking into account that there is a limited pot of public money, as well as a limit seemingly to philanthropy . . . I would prefer to see an alternative found within the public school, instead of a small model like this which only helps a few." There's a certain kind of person - and organization - that can find the dark lining in every silver cloud. Yes, SEED is expensive. But what's a young life worth?

"The little class that could," by Danna Harman, Christian Science Monitor, June 15, 2004

During a recent visit, I was, frankly, wowed by the comprehensiveness and courage of Florida's education reforms, and depressed by the crummy coverage they're getting in both state and national press, not least the heat they are now taking for holding their schools to high standards under NCLB and accepting the sanctions meted out to schools for not meeting adequate yearly progress. I suppose it has to do with the press's disdain for NCLB, the public's reluctance to accept that their school is not doing well, Florida's pivotal role in the upcoming election, and Governor Jeb Bush's relationship to the incumbent president. (He is, by the way, one of the half dozen smartest, savviest, gutsiest "education governors" I've met in the past quarter century.)

What one may term Florida's purposeful education reforms - those that policy makers have intentionally put in place - can best be described under six headings.

(1) Integration across levels. Florida has reorganized the structure and governance of its education system so that the phrase "K-16" means something. The same state agency runs the whole shebang, with three "chancellors" (K-12, community college, higher ed) working under a single commissioner. The postsecondary sector has been enlisted in worthy teacher-preparation initiatives, dual enrollment for high school students, and one of the country's best-engineered transfer arrangements between 2- and 4-year institutions. At the other end, Florida is embarking on an ambitious universal (but voluntary) pre-K program meant to help prepare young children to succeed in school.

(2) Standards, testing, and accountability. Florida's "Sunshine State" standards are eight years old and the state test, known as FCAT, has been in place since 2001. It now covers grades 3-10, and passing it is a condition of high-school graduation. It is a high-stakes system for students at that point and, more recently, in 3rd grade - part of a multi-faceted plan to ensure that everyone is reading by 4th grade. Though the graduation requirement has occasioned protests and evasions, it's beginning to yield results. Mostly, though, the "A+" accountability plan bears down on schools, which get rated in reading, math, and writing according both to how many students meet the state's standards and how many are making gains. The result is a school grade that brings real consequences, of which the best known is the students' right to exit low-performing schools for better ones, including private schools. Though few have actually done this, there is evidence that the mere prospect of students departing with "Opportunity Scholarships" in hand has concentrated educators' minds and boosted the results of weak schools. Whereas 28 percent of Florida public schools were graded "D" or "F" in 1999, four years later this was down to 6 percent. As best I can tell, that's with no grade inflation.

(3) School choices. Besides the A+ vouchers, Florida has two other kinds. The nation's largest publicly-funded voucher program (almost 14,000 in the just-ended school year) is the "McKay Scholarship" plan for disabled youngsters, now beginning to be emulated by other states. Florida also boasts a sizable privately funded scholarship program "incentivized" by corporate tax credits. (11,500 kids benefited this past year.) Additionally, the state has several hundred charter schools (serving 68,000 children) and recently liberalized its program so local school boards won't have the last word on whether charters can exist. Plus, there's a nifty array of on-line options, including the much-praised Florida Virtual School.

(4) Instructional improvement. Florida has embarked on an ambitious early-reading program that includes parent workshops, retraining teachers, platoons of reading coaches and specialists, and summer "reading camps" for low-scoring third graders. Despite some educator guff, it's also serious about the statewide use of "scientifically based" primary reading programs.

(5) The education workforce. Fewer than a third of Florida's entering teachers today come straight from the state's own colleges of education. Many arrive from other states, from ambitious alternative-certification programs and from the "reserve pool." A fascinating innovation has authorized community colleges to offer competency-based teacher certification programs - and to award bachelor's degrees. (St. Petersburg College just graduated the first fifty products of its new education program.) Florida has also developed a statewide teacher career path akin to the Milken approach, giving extra pay to high-performing teachers and rewards to those with advanced certification (today from the National Board, tomorrow from multiple sources). The other day it also joined the ranks of states ready to certify teachers who pass the entry-level tests of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (and participate in a "mentoring" program").

(6) Smart, analytic decision making. Plenty of states have tons of education data, but Florida is beginning to use it for interesting analyses of school efficiency and a host of revealing disaggregations and comparisons. (For example, they can now set school grades alongside the same students' FCAT performance.) I can't tell how much use of such information is made by district and school leaders, but the folks in Tallahassee no longer operate an education system based on hunch or hope; today it's centered on imaginative uses of hard data.

Let me not gush. In 2004, Florida still has a long way to go, even as its highly prescriptive class-size reduction initiative, passed by referendum in 2002, threatens to sop up all available education dollars for the foreseeable future, leaving little for reforms that might do kids more good. The state's academic standards in some subjects leave much to be desired. The choice programs have been plagued by a few high-profile scandals brought on by ill-behaving private schools - and a silly deadlock (more personality clash than policy disagreement) in the final days of this year's session kept legislators from enacting needed repairs. The charter school program is still cramped. It's no rose garden, not yet. But it might be the most impressively integrated and comprehensive set of education reforms I've seen in any big state.

And there's evidence that it's starting to have a salubrious effect on student achievement, especially for poor and minority youngsters, at least in the early grades. Florida was, for example, the only state to post significant gains on the NAEP 4th grade reading test in 2003, gains that spanned the ethnic spectrum. (Math wasn't so great.)

The FCAT results are brightening, too, both in reading and math and, again, mainly in the early grades and among minorities. But some high-school indicators are inching up too, including graduation rates for African-American and Hispanic students.

Nobody in Florida suggests that all is well, only that progress is being made, that it's measurable results-style progress, and that it antedates No Child Left Behind. Indeed, Florida suffers more than most from the layering of NCLB requirements atop its own accountability system. The state's school grades give much weight to improvement, not just absolute standards, and therefore Florida has witnessed big-time confusion as schools getting high marks under A+ are deemed to be "in need of improvement" under NCLB. Because of the Governor's unique situation this year, Florida cannot openly fuss that NCLB might have some problems. There is reason to expect, however, that after Election Day, Florida officials will embark on a vigorous effort either to get that law (and/or its regulations) revised or to win some of the "flexibility" that other jurisdictions have obtained in recent months.

Based on what I've been able to learn, education reform in the Sunshine State deserves a lot more admiration than it's been getting.

"Resisting the tyranny of the exception," by Phil Handy, Education Gadfly, February 5, 2004

"U.S.: Forty percent can switch from failing Dade schools," by Matthew I. Pinzur, Miami Herald, June 16, 2004 (registration required)

"Failing schools may face takeover," by Matthew I. Pinzur, Miami Herald, June 15, 2004 (registration required)

"Education report expected to fuel debate," by Christina Denardo, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 15, 2004

"A test in Florida," by Terry M. Neal and John Poole, Washington Post, June 15, 2004

The Malaysian government has recently undertaken a voucher experiment aimed at leveling the education playing field between wealthy and underprivileged students. According to the New Straits Times, the plan's goal is creation of a "social market" in which "parents will be empowered by choice . . . and schools will be freed to compete on quality when they would otherwise rest easy on assured government largesse." Unlike most U.S. voucher plans, but somewhat akin to NCLB's "supplemental services" provision, Malaysia's program is designed to be used by needy parents of primary school students to send their children to "tuition classes" (similar to private after-school tutoring programs). The program is currently in a pilot phase, but supporters of this limited free market approach to education are already calling for the program's expansion to include secondary students.

"Vouchering for education," New Straits Times, June 14, 2004

Achieve, Inc.
June 10, 2004

Achieve has again set off a chorus of wailing with its latest publication, this time on the defects of graduation exams in six states. This new study finds that the tests aren't all that difficult - the subject matter is mostly 9th and 10th grade stuff, and the cut scores are low. (Or as the report puts it, the math tests "cover material students in most other countries study in the 7th or 8th grade.") And while many states - Ohio and Maryland among them - have made strides in strengthening their tests, they have quite a distance yet to travel before these tests are a serious measure of appropriate 12th grade skills, the sort recommended by the American Diploma Project and expected by the real world of college and the job market. Considering that students have multiple opportunities to pass these tests, we're not sure they're quite as "high-stakes" as everyone likes to pretend. Still, Achieve has done an estimable job of laying out the facts in business-like fashion.  Check it out here.

"Report: Graduation tests have 'modest expectations,'" Associated Press, June 10, 2004

National Center for Education StatisticsJune 2004

The National Center for Education Statistics publishes several annual compilations that belong on the shelves of all card-carrying education policy wonks. The most interesting of them is the Condition of Education report, which changes every year because the NCES team selects different indicators and analyzes and interprets them rather than settling for "just-the-facts." This 325-pager is the latest such, and the first under the expert leadership of NCES Commissioner Robert Lerner. It's worth your time (at least if you're a policy wonk) because some of the special analyses are uncommonly illuminating and because Lerner avoids the traps that some of his predecessors slipped into, such as "spinning" the data a bit too hard on behalf of the administration they served. (A couple of Clinton-era COE's were egregious in this regard).  You'll find all sorts of fascinating stuff here, such as :

• Seventy-one percent of all U.S. college students received financial aid in 2000, up from 54 percent in 1990, but the growth in grant aid didn't offset the rise in tuitions. Which helps account for the fact that 45 percent of college students took out Stafford loans in 2000 (up from 30 percent a decade earlier).
• "Schools in the Southeast were more likely to have pre-kindergarten programs and full-day programs than schools in other regions of the country."
• In 2003, 13 percent "of all persons ages 16-24 were neither enrolled in school nor working," down from 16 percent in 1986.
• By 2001, the U.S. had fallen below the OECD average in its rate of first-time entry of young people into colleges at the bachelor's degree (or higher) level. Considering that, as NCES laconically puts it, such rates "provide an indication of the degree to which a country's population is acquiring higher-level skills and knowledge," this is an alarming development. (The calculation is complicated, but the OECD average in 2001 was 47 [up from 40 in 1998], the U.S. rate was 42 [down from 44], England's was 45, Norway's 62, Spain's 48, Italy's 44.)
• There is modest but real growth in the proportion of students enrolled in "public schools of choice"; 15.4 percent in 2003 vs. 11 a decade earlier. During that same period, private school enrollments rose from 9.1 percent of the total to 10.8.

There's plenty more here so poke around on your own. This can be done on-line (start here with a helpful website that integrates the COE reports from 2000 through 2004) but, because of the document's bulk, you may prefer to obtain a hard copy, which you can do by calling 1-877-4ED-PUBS.

Robin Jacobowitz, Institute for Education and Social Policy, New York University, Jonathan S. Gyurko, Office of New Schools Development, New York City Department of EducationMarch 2004

This report provides a useful counter to those who claim that charter schools steal money from traditional public schools. The New York City data show that charters receive less money per pupil than district schools. The overall disparity is not huge: $8,400 for charter school students compared to $9,000 for district students. But the gap ranges from $500 per student (for regular middle and high school students) to as much as $7,600 per student (for elementary special education students). And that's without counting capital dollars and facilities. This analysis is thorough and straightforward. Perhaps it will help thwart proposed legislation in Albany which would "reduce funding to charter schools on the assumption that charter school resources . . . is [sic] inflated."  Given that Public Impact's recent study of charter funding in Dayton, Ohio found the same pattern-charters receive less per-pupil than district schools-we suspect this is a national trend. Perhaps some day the facts will overwhelm the anti-charter rhetoric. This report is available online.