The Education Gadfly Weekly

Randy Elliott Bennett, Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment
June 2002

The Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment, which is based at Boston College and exists only on-line, has just published this 20-page article by Randy Elliott Bennett of Educational Testing Service, arguing that "the inexorable advance of technology will force fundamental changes in the format and content of assessment." It's essentially a think piece about the future of assessment in a high-tech era. The author contends that most uses that have so far been made of technology in assessment involve taking conventional testing formats and adapting them for computer-based administration. In the future, he says, assessments will have to match the cognitive and instructional processes by which learning itself occurs. In essence, that means that, as people do more of their learning via technology, assessment technologies will have to keep pace. This raises a host of issues involving costs, fairness, test security, and validity. He poses questions better than he answers them, but the piece includes an extensive bibliography and a 2-page chart showing how eight states are currently grappling in interesting ways with technology-based assessment. It won't blow you away but may lead you to ponder some new issues at the intersection of assessment, accountability and technology. You can find it at http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/jtla/journal/v1n1.shtml.

Sondra Cooney and Gene Bottoms, Southern Regional Education Board
2002

As a follow up to a 2000 survey of eighth graders, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) tracked those students through ninth grade to determine which experiences in the "middle grades" (6-8) are linked to success in higher-level ninth grade English and math courses. Penned by Gene Bottoms and Sondra Cooney, director of SREB's middle school reform initiative, this report finds-perhaps unsurprisingly-that three eighth grade experiences are most apt to translate into higher achievement for high school freshmen: 1) studying algebra; 2) reading lots of books; and 3) expecting to graduate from college. SREB's most important finding is that "ninth graders who are placed in higher-level courses have a lower failure rate that students with similar characteristics who are placed in lower-level courses." View this 12-pager at http://www.sreb.org/programs/hstw/publications/briefs/MiddleGradestoHS.asp or order a copy from SREB at 592 10th St., NW, Atlanta, GA 30318.

National Geographic Society and Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning
2002

The National Geographic Society commissioned Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL), formerly the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory, to determine whether 8th graders taught by teachers who took part in the Society's "Alliance" training programs do better on NAEP geography assessments than 8th graders in general. The conclusion is that they do. This looks like good news for anyone who thinks that young Americans need to learn lots more geography. It's good news for those seeking evidence that staff development programs for teachers can work when gauged by improved student achievement. And it represents a rare and imaginative use of NAEP test items and national NAEP results for purposes of program evaluation. That said, I have two reservations. First, the margin by which the pupils of Geographic trained teachers surpassed their peers, while statistically significant, isn't very wide. (Neither group knows much geography.) Second, despite painstaking efforts to match the school and students samples and to make the testing circumstances similar, one large difference remains. Whereas the national NAEP is a no-stakes test administered by someone other than the regular classroom teacher, the test given to 8th graders in the McRel sample was administered by their very own geography teacher, included stakes (at least for a program the teacher was invested in), and provided plenty of warning for teachers to pep and prep their students. A better study would have the test given by disinterested persons and the students (and teachers) would not know about it ahead of time, or would not know what was being tested until it happened. Still, this paper is worth a look if you care about geography or program evaluation or in-service training. You can obtain a copy by contacting McRel, 2550 South Parker Rd., Suite 500, Aurora, CO 80014. Phone (303) 337-0990, fax (303) 337-3005, e-mail [email protected] or surf to www.mcrel.org. The text itself will soon be available at www.mcrel.org.

State Council of Higher Education for Virginia
2002

Virginia is tiptoeing into the fractious world of higher education assessment and institutional comparisons. No, they're not doing what a grown-up state should, which is pushing for measures of academic value-added that can be compared from one college to another, much as K-12 education is now doing. That remains hugely controversial in higher ed and few institutions will countenance it. (I, for one, have long felt that we would learn an immense amount by simply re-administering the 12th grade NAEP tests to people in the middle, or the end, of their undergraduate years.) But Virginia's State Council of Higher Education now requires individual (public-sector) campuses to devise their own ways of measuring student learning in certain core skills (e.g. critical thinking, writing, math) as well as well as 14 system-wide "performance measures" having to do with things like retention rates, average time-to-degree, and various spending and resource utilization rates. Thus we see, for example, that the flagship University of Virginia spends 72 percent of its core budget on instruction (and "academic support") while Virginia Tech checks in at 61 percent. Virginia Tech also reports that 48% of the research papers done in first-year writing courses demonstrated "full competence" while UVA reports that 29% of its students display "strong competence." It's impossible to make meaningful comparisons so long as each institution sets its own standards and uses its own measures. But hats should be doffed to the Old Dominion for even pushing into this sensitive field. You can find a quick summary of the most recent of these annual reports-this is the second edition-and leads to individual campus reports by surfing to http://roie.schev.edu/. And you can read a helpful overview article by Amy Argetsinger of The Washington Post ("Show What Students Know, Colleges Told," July 17, 2002) at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15879-2002Jul16.html.

James E. Bruno, Education Policy Analysis Archives
July 26, 2002

This paper by UCLA professor James Bruno examines the frequency with which teachers call in sick and leave substitutes in charge of their classrooms in large urban schools. Bruno finds that in areas of "negative" (low income) geographical space, teachers are more likely to think of their sick days as entitlements and more apt to use them. More teacher absenteeism increases costs for the district, decreases the return on additional spending, and reduces the quality of education. It's not a problem for which there are any quick fixes, though Bruno does have one creative idea to help mitigate its effects: a school with a high rate of teacher absenteeism could develop a corps of regular substitutes who are better trained and more integrated into the school, so that learning doesn't come to a standstill when the teacher is away. The paper can be downloaded at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n32/.

As the editor of Teachers As Owners, I couldn't be happier with the conclusion in the recent Gadfly review, namely that "one can't put the book down without noting the chasm between these ideas and the reality of most American schools." (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=51#770.) Notwithstanding my agreement with the conclusion, however, there are some aspects of the review that I feel compelled to comment on.

The thesis of the book is that, like doctors, lawyers and other professionals, teachers should have the same opportunity to work for themselves. In a professional partnership, the teachers are the leaders and decision makers. They control their own work, including determining the curriculum, setting the budget, choosing levels of technology available to students, determining their own salaries, selecting their colleagues, monitoring performance and hiring administrators to work for them.

Ownership, however, is not the same as "democratic employment" as suggested by the reviewer. Without going into the detail of the book, it asserts that leadership is needed, not that everyone is in charge. The book does not propose a leaderless organization. It does propose an organization where the leader is accountable to the teachers themselves. There are many examples in law, medicine, consulting and accounting of firms where the professionals govern themselves and select leaders from their own ranks

As the reviewer points out, the book suggests that success requires an uncommon culture and uncommon leadership. To say that it is uncommon, however, should not be interpreted to mean that it is impossible. The processes required of ownership include developing a common vision, mission and set of values, choosing colleagues, establishing quality and performance standards and choosing leaders help to build the uncommon culture that is required.

As the reviewer points out, teachers who have experience in teacher ownership suggest that it usually works best when the group of teachers and students is relatively small. That is when there are 100 to 250 students. The key is the ability to create a community of learning characterized by mutual interdependence, good communication, as well as a common culture and a true sense of personal responsibility and accountability. The book points out that there is no magic size. And it discusses the pros and cons of large and small professional groups.

Teacher ownership is not for all teachers or settings. It is a powerful means for some teachers to create a professional life that has great potential to improve student performance and to improve the teacher's own professional satisfaction.

Finally, history is replete with examples of people thinking and saying it can't be done because it is a change from the past or difficult to accomplish. Teacher ownership has been proven to work. We ask that it be considered with an open mind and that, instead of developing reasons why it can't be done, to think of what it would be like if it were done.

Edward J. Dirkswager
Center for Policy Studies
St. Paul, MN

edited by George W. Bohrnstedt and Brian M. Stecher, CSR Research Consortium
August 2002

George Bohrnstedt and Brian Stecher have released their fourth and final report analyzing California's class size reduction (CSR) initiative. It provides an excellent introduction to the research in support of CSR and the mechanisms by which California implemented it. CSR's short-term effect was to increase achievement inequality among rich and poor students; some have speculated that the primary reason for this was a migration of experienced inner-city teachers into newly created suburban jobs (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=52#783 for more information). But Bohrnstedt and Stecher view the teacher flight as a relatively minor problem. They blame the achievement inequality on the way CSR was implemented as an incentive program. (Schools were given a grant for each class of less than 20 students. Those that already had low class sizes were rewarded, and overcrowded schools struggled to attract teachers and make the grant stretch far enough to cover the program's cost.) Even after controlling for factors such as poverty, the authors say, CSR's effects are disappointing. The report contains numerous interesting policy recommendations, the most sweeping of which is that CSR and California's other stand-alone education reforms should be consolidated into a single strategy centered on state's recent push towards standards and accountability. For a copy of the report, go to http://www.classize.org/techreport/CSR_Capstone_prepub.pdf.

A host of opposing forces-not a failure of will, goals or effort-is what's retarding urban schools, writes ace journalist Richard Whitmire in the Democratic Leadership Council's Blueprint Magazine. Time is running out for urban schools, which must battle budget cuts, revolving door leadership, concentrated poverty, and successful suburban districts' resistance to standards and accountability. But substantial gains in districts like Charlotte, Sacramento, and Houston prove that, with innovation and visionary leadership, demographics are not destiny. "Time Is Running Out on Urban Schools," by Richard Whitmire, Blueprint Magazine, July 29, 2002

A new report from the National Research Council proposes that math and science Ph.D.s, who face fewer job openings in academia, should instead try teaching in K-12 schools, which are in dire need of math and science teachers. The NRC panel proposed creating a prestigious two-year fellowship to place recent Ph.D.s in primary/secondary classrooms, an idea that resonated with graduate students and post-docs they surveyed. For more see "Wanted: Math and Science Teachers," CNN.com, July 31, 2002, and "NRC Seeks Program to Put Ph.D.s in K-12 Classrooms," by Hannah Gladfeldter Rubin, Education Daily, July 31, 2002 (subscribers only).

Last week, the Camden city council unanimously approved a resolution asking the New Jersey legislature to award hefty $6,000 vouchers to students in the city's notoriously low-performing schools. The measure-which faces steep opposition from the governor and teachers union-marks the first time a Northeastern municipality has endorsed a publicly funded voucher program. "School vouchers sought for Camden," by Melanie Burney, The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 26, 2002.

On Monday, July 29th, New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg named Joel I. Klein, the chairman and chief executive of Bertelsmann Inc., and a former assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration-where he led the antitrust prosecution of Microsoft-as chancellor of the city's public school system. Klein is a fighter who, while leading the Justice Department's antitrust division, went after corporations accused of monopolistic and market-spoiling practices. Klein's history as a monopoly basher could come in handy as he works to shake up the near-monopoly that is New York City's public school system. As The New York Times observed, "What bigger monopoly than the public school system? It is a government-regulated system. It controls everything from bus contracts to teachers." The Times went on to note that Mayor Bloomberg's choice to lead the city's school system "seems calculated to convey one thing: a deep distrust of professional educators, or at least professional education as practiced in New York City over the last 33 years."

It is, therefore, ironic that Klein's appointment will not be final until the state education commissioner in Albany grants a waiver from the state law requiring the chancellor to have formal credentials in education. Despite the fact that Joel Klein is following in the wake of a small but highly visible crew of non-educators who have taken the helm of major urban school districts-Seattle turned to a general, Chicago selected a budget chief, Los Angeles opted for a former governor, and San Diego pegged a former federal prosecutor-the path into a position of leadership in public education is still fraught with barriers. The Times notes, "As a manager, Mr. Klein is a provocative choice. He has the common-sense experience that Mr. Bloomberg wants, though the mayor stressed-perhaps with the need for the state waiver in mind-that he is a 'scholar' as well." These barriers to entry for non-educators increasingly seem outmoded when one considers the deepening shortage of strong superintendents and principals in public education, especially in urban and rural areas.

The skills necessary to run a school system, even an individual school, have changed dramatically in recent years. As the philanthropist Eli Broad told the Times, school leaders "have to know or be trained in management, problem solving, finance, labor relations, systems operations and so on." Despite the new environment, most public-school leaders are still prepared in ways that would be familiar to their predecessors a half-century ago. The fundamental assumption is still that the proper route to leadership is via years of public-school teaching experience followed by an administrative training program within a college of education. Yet nothing could be more remote from the actual needs of many contemporary schools-and the actual life experiences of those who might lead them best. Sure, traditional educators are naturally wary of such changes, but increasingly political leaders are starting to look for the very best possible candidate they can find rather than the most credentialed. - Terry Ryan

"Hoping an Outsider Plus a Bottom-Line Approach Equals Reform," by Anemona Hartocollis, The New York Times, July 30, 2002

"Noneducator as Chancellor Seems a Growing Trend," by Karen W. Arenson, The New York Times, July 30, 2002

Seven months after President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, and one month after the U.S. Department of Education announced that children at 8,652 low-performing schools are now eligible to transfer to higher-performing schools, some states and school districts are giving the new law's approach to failing schools a chilly embrace. In Michigan, where high state standards for adequate yearly progress have resulted in half of the state's elementary and middle schools being declared failing, a coalition of groups is pushing the state board of education to ease the standard by which a school is declared failing. A district official in Cleveland complains that the law "is systematically taking the rug out from under these [failing] schools" and warns that choice and supplemental services requirements could drain struggling schools of money and motivated students, before conceding that "the high profile of this accountability system should get us focused."

Some school districts seem bent on thwarting the new law. In South Carolina, a handful of districts with failing schools say they won't offer parents the choice of transferring their children out of low-performing schools. "We feel we've made adequately yearly progress," said a representative of one district that has an underperforming school on the state list. Another district claims that a court-mandated desegregation order spares it from having to offer students a choice of schools, though a letter from Secretary of Education Rod Paige says that school districts under desegregation orders are not exempt. Districts with failing schools that have no other school offering the same grade can, but are not required to, make transfer arrangements with neighboring districts, and several South Carolina districts have chosen not to make these arrangements.

In Chicago, where 179 schools with 125,000 students have been identified as failing, students at just 50 of these institutions will be allowed to transfer to better schools this fall-and they may only transfer to a school within about three miles of their home school, cutting off access to some of the city's better-performing schools. Parents at the "lucky" 50 schools have been given approximately two weeks to submit a transfer application.

Districts like Chicago that are rationing choice may be way off in their estimates of the number of parents who will use this option. In Howard County, Maryland, only 63 of 2,300 eligible children applied for transfers out of failing schools, and only 49 of these accepted their new assignments. Could the low numbers be due to the fact that parents could not pick a school for their children? Instead they were assigned by the county to schools with higher test scores as close to their homes as possible. - Marci Kanstoroom

"Group wants to cut list of failing schools by changing standards," by Judy Putnam, Booth Newspapers (Michigan), July 31, 2002

"District sees setbacks under No Child Left Behind Act," by Alexander Russo, Catalyst Cleveland, June/July 2002 (This article includes a nifty chart showing the changes required by the No Child Left Behind Act and what Ohio must do or is already doing to comply.)

"Some targeted schools deny choice," by Gina Smith, Myrtle Beach Sun-News, July 28, 2002

"50 schools can send students to better ones," by Kate Grossman, Chicago Sun-Times, July 30, 2002

"Few parents accept school transfer option," by Tanika White, The Baltimore Sun, July 31, 2002

Some weeks back, I used this space to describe ways that a state's academic standards may be lowered, including several that occur out of public view. (See "A field guide to low standards," May 16, 2002.) I explained how a state might simply set low standards, focus its tests on the easier skills covered by the standards, create deliberately easy test questions and generous rubrics, or establish low cut scores for passing the tests. That editorial prompted a number of reader comments. These revealed additional holes in existing state systems of standards-based accountability and further illumined why it is so hard to do right by this education reform strategy, notwithstanding the new oomph supplied by the No Child Left Behind Act.

In some states, there's simply no strong commitment to the idea of clear standards that spell out what children should know or to accurate measures of what they DO know. As one writer put it, "I believe my home state of Vermont uses several of your suggested methods to defeat standards. In English, Vermont's 'portfolio' system makes almost any kind of scoring completely subjective. Even when considering a student's portfolio work in other subjects, the student actually polishes each portfolio submission, running it past his teacher several times before a highly unrepresentative sample of his or her work gets placed into the holy folder.

"My wife and I have attempted to receive documentation of ANY curriculum for our children's schooling at several grade levels beginning with first grade and have only had success in getting any details from the system after our son reached high school. Four times we were given the generalized state standards document that you say can
usually be found on the web. This is so incredibly generalized in Vermont that the
best one can say of it is that it mentions various fields of learning."

To this disgruntled dad, I say that Vermont is famous for not subscribing to the view that education standards should be concrete, assessments should be straightforward, and information about school expectations and student performance should be transparent. Indeed, Governor Howard Dean openly flirted with the possibility of rejecting all federal Title I funding rather than making the Green Mountain state alter its own standards-and-assessment system to comply with NCLB requirements. (He has since backed away from that threat and indicated that Vermont will accept at least the first year of No Child Left Behind moneys, then re-evaluate to see how much difficulty this causes it. He's also now openly running for President!)

Secrets of a test-scorer

In some states, tests are unreliable because those in charge of assessment don't really trust the more straightforward kinds and instead insist on using the formats that are hardest to score consistently and fairly. As one writer, put it:

"Here's some inside information on the scoring of statewide exams. For the past several years, I have worked for one of the firms which has responsibility for writing and scoring statewide exams in such subjects as math, reading, writing, and social studies. The questions are 'essay' type. We don't score multiple-choice questions-presumably because scanners and computers handle them. Sometimes the scoring is done by hand (i.e., you are given the student's exam and you grade it on one of those SAT type fill in sheets); sometimes it's done by computer (you sit at a computer and see an image of the students' answers and grade the answer on the exam). Most of the individuals doing the scoring are college graduates, including people with graduate degrees; a few are college students and, rarely, some have no college education.

"The scorers seem to be dedicated. The scoring can be at times monotonous.
(How would you like to have to grade, say, 17,000 answers to a question such as: describe your favorite character in a novel?) Sometimes, as you might expect, the answers are hilarious (though not intentionally). Sometimes the kids say things like: 'we never studied this' or 'we studied this last year.'

"The main problem I see is that the states set standards which are, at times, not consistent. For instance, on a Social Studies exam: some questions are easy to get a good grade and some questions are very hard. In the latter case, it is often because the state will require a student to use an exact word or phrase but not indicate in the question that some exact word or phrase is required. Sometimes the state will require the student to give, say, three reasons for something in order to get a high score but on the question only indicates that he must give "reasons." This obviously penalizes a student who gives two reasons and assumes that that is sufficient, though he might be completely capable of giving three or more reasons if that were called for. By the way, the questions on which it is hard to get a good score are not necessarily the 'hardest' questions on the exam. That is, they are not necessarily the questions that an outside observer would select as the most difficult to answer.

"Although I understand the argument that multiple choice questions can't probe a student's complete understanding, after grading essay questions I am not certain that a student is fairly judged by using the latter type, either. I have discovered that in some states where the results have been terrible, somebody (either at the state, district or school level) has clamped down and the students have done better in the next year. This doesn't occur all the time or most of the time or even as often as I would like, but I have seen instances of it. Sometimes the essay questions ask facts about very specific events which probably take up no more than half a page in a 500 page reader."

This test-scorer opened a grimy window and gave us a peek inside the process. It isn't pretty. Though he seems to remain bullish (as do I) about the potential gains to result from expecting high scores from students, his examples of the uneven and tricky (or maybe just inept) nature of state test items are troubling. Certainly, his experience gives us further reason to argue with those who insist that multiple-choice items are useless and that only the human-scored "extended response" items-famously difficult to judge reliably-deserve respect.

Vermont was once notorious for the unreliability (in the eyes of such testing experts as Daniel Koretz) of its portfolio and "open response" assessments. More recently, North Carolina has had to junk the results of its fourth-grade writing test because last year's results were so uneven and inexplicable. Maryland was so daunted by the technical and political difficulties of its much-praised MSPAP assessment that it is now jettisoning that format entirely in favor of more "objective" tests.

Now the College Board is plunging into this swamp with its revised SAT, which boasts a universal writing requirement. This will pose a whole new level of scoring challenge, both because of the huge numbers taking the SAT and because of the stakes associated (perhaps especially for middle and upper-middle class families) with those scores. Picture a system that tries to assign reliable numerical scores to millions of hand-written essays, year in and year out. I'm all for making kids show that they can write-and the SAT's proctored test setting will make it harder to submit someone else's composition and call it one's own-so the underlying impulse here is sound. But the test-scoring burden will be truly immense. (Watch for litigation. And watch SAT fees soar.)

Perspective of a high school principal

My previous column focused on the problem of setting up 50 state accountability systems without a common yardstick to measure them. One writer, a high school principal, had an idea for fixing this, an idea that, as it happens, relies on the SAT and its major competitor:

"This account of the potential pitfalls in accountability is the most cogent set of arguments I have read about the ways politicians and educrats manipulate testing to serve their own ends. Probably the best way to establish checks and balances is by comparing a school's or state's own data to SAT or ACT scores, which fairly reliably predict success or failure in further learning. This means testing the entire high school population, rather than just the consciously college-bound, and it would involve some expense, but nobody ever said accountability would come cheap. At least we would know whether our schools are doing as well as they claim if we got feedback from testing organizations that have higher ed, rather than K-12, as their primary constituency."

I agree that it would be interesting to see what we could learn by comparing state (or school-level) test results with those from a universal administration of the SAT or ACT. Congress followed similar reasoning when it opted, in No Child Left Behind, to require state participation in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The idea is that a state's NAEP result will serve as an external audit of its own standards and test results. I believe that can work so long as NAEP retains its integrity, but state-level NAEP only covers grades 4 and 8 and therefore cannot function as an audit for a state's high school standards or exit tests. Perhaps something should!

Other readers with views on this matter, pertinent experiences, or whistles to blow, should please get in touch. This is a conversation worth continuing.

A recent issue of Duke Magazine featured a profile of the Media and Technology Charter High School, started by a Duke alumnus to serve students from the worst neighborhoods in Boston. Although the school lacks flat-screen LCD monitors, PDAs and functioning DSL lines-hallmarks of high-tech-it is succeeding in educating and inspiring its young charges through a combination of altruism, perseverance and common sense. "A Charter for Achievement," by Jonas Blank, Duke Magazine, May/June 2002

Fueled by an active business community, frustrated parents, reform-minded local legislators, dedicated entrepreneurs (and some assistance from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation), charter schools have flourished in Dayton, Ohio, which some term "ground zero" of the national charter movement. But the next few years are critical to the evolution of the city's (and nation's) education landscape, as many of the city's 19 charter schools-which have proven popular with parents but have not yet produced higher test scores-undergo a state-mandated five-year review. For details see "Charter schools' first checkup pivotal point," by Scott Elliott, Dayton Daily News, July 29, 2002

The Department of Education has given the Blue Ribbon School award since 1982, but attention has recently been drawn to the fact that not all honored schools can actually claim stellar records of student achievement. Accordingly, the DOE recently announced that test scores and test score improvements will become a major component of the selection process. See "Changes afoot for Blue Ribbon Schools," by Jane Elizabeth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 30, 2002. For an account of what was wrong with the old Blue Ribbon Schools program, see "In Praise of Mediocrity," by Tom Loveless and Paul DiPerna, Education Next, Summer 2001.

As the editor of Teachers As Owners, I couldn't be happier with the conclusion in the recent Gadfly review, namely that "one can't put the book down without noting the chasm between these ideas and the reality of most American schools." (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=51#770.) Notwithstanding my agreement with the conclusion, however, there are some aspects of the review that I feel compelled to comment on.

The thesis of the book is that, like doctors, lawyers and other professionals, teachers should have the same opportunity to work for themselves. In a professional partnership, the teachers are the leaders and decision makers. They control their own work, including determining the curriculum, setting the budget, choosing levels of technology available to students, determining their own salaries, selecting their colleagues, monitoring performance and hiring administrators to work for them.

Ownership, however, is not the same as "democratic employment" as suggested by the reviewer. Without going into the detail of the book, it asserts that leadership is needed, not that everyone is in charge. The book does not propose a leaderless organization. It does propose an organization where the leader is accountable to the teachers themselves. There are many examples in law, medicine, consulting and accounting of firms where the professionals govern themselves and select leaders from their own ranks

As the reviewer points out, the book suggests that success requires an uncommon culture and uncommon leadership. To say that it is uncommon, however, should not be interpreted to mean that it is impossible. The processes required of ownership include developing a common vision, mission and set of values, choosing colleagues, establishing quality and performance standards and choosing leaders help to build the uncommon culture that is required.

As the reviewer points out, teachers who have experience in teacher ownership suggest that it usually works best when the group of teachers and students is relatively small. That is when there are 100 to 250 students. The key is the ability to create a community of learning characterized by mutual interdependence, good communication, as well as a common culture and a true sense of personal responsibility and accountability. The book points out that there is no magic size. And it discusses the pros and cons of large and small professional groups.

Teacher ownership is not for all teachers or settings. It is a powerful means for some teachers to create a professional life that has great potential to improve student performance and to improve the teacher's own professional satisfaction.

Finally, history is replete with examples of people thinking and saying it can't be done because it is a change from the past or difficult to accomplish. Teacher ownership has been proven to work. We ask that it be considered with an open mind and that, instead of developing reasons why it can't be done, to think of what it would be like if it were done.

Edward J. Dirkswager
Center for Policy Studies
St. Paul, MN

edited by George W. Bohrnstedt and Brian M. Stecher, CSR Research Consortium
August 2002

George Bohrnstedt and Brian Stecher have released their fourth and final report analyzing California's class size reduction (CSR) initiative. It provides an excellent introduction to the research in support of CSR and the mechanisms by which California implemented it. CSR's short-term effect was to increase achievement inequality among rich and poor students; some have speculated that the primary reason for this was a migration of experienced inner-city teachers into newly created suburban jobs (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=52#783 for more information). But Bohrnstedt and Stecher view the teacher flight as a relatively minor problem. They blame the achievement inequality on the way CSR was implemented as an incentive program. (Schools were given a grant for each class of less than 20 students. Those that already had low class sizes were rewarded, and overcrowded schools struggled to attract teachers and make the grant stretch far enough to cover the program's cost.) Even after controlling for factors such as poverty, the authors say, CSR's effects are disappointing. The report contains numerous interesting policy recommendations, the most sweeping of which is that CSR and California's other stand-alone education reforms should be consolidated into a single strategy centered on state's recent push towards standards and accountability. For a copy of the report, go to http://www.classize.org/techreport/CSR_Capstone_prepub.pdf.

James E. Bruno, Education Policy Analysis Archives
July 26, 2002

This paper by UCLA professor James Bruno examines the frequency with which teachers call in sick and leave substitutes in charge of their classrooms in large urban schools. Bruno finds that in areas of "negative" (low income) geographical space, teachers are more likely to think of their sick days as entitlements and more apt to use them. More teacher absenteeism increases costs for the district, decreases the return on additional spending, and reduces the quality of education. It's not a problem for which there are any quick fixes, though Bruno does have one creative idea to help mitigate its effects: a school with a high rate of teacher absenteeism could develop a corps of regular substitutes who are better trained and more integrated into the school, so that learning doesn't come to a standstill when the teacher is away. The paper can be downloaded at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n32/.

National Geographic Society and Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning
2002

The National Geographic Society commissioned Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL), formerly the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory, to determine whether 8th graders taught by teachers who took part in the Society's "Alliance" training programs do better on NAEP geography assessments than 8th graders in general. The conclusion is that they do. This looks like good news for anyone who thinks that young Americans need to learn lots more geography. It's good news for those seeking evidence that staff development programs for teachers can work when gauged by improved student achievement. And it represents a rare and imaginative use of NAEP test items and national NAEP results for purposes of program evaluation. That said, I have two reservations. First, the margin by which the pupils of Geographic trained teachers surpassed their peers, while statistically significant, isn't very wide. (Neither group knows much geography.) Second, despite painstaking efforts to match the school and students samples and to make the testing circumstances similar, one large difference remains. Whereas the national NAEP is a no-stakes test administered by someone other than the regular classroom teacher, the test given to 8th graders in the McRel sample was administered by their very own geography teacher, included stakes (at least for a program the teacher was invested in), and provided plenty of warning for teachers to pep and prep their students. A better study would have the test given by disinterested persons and the students (and teachers) would not know about it ahead of time, or would not know what was being tested until it happened. Still, this paper is worth a look if you care about geography or program evaluation or in-service training. You can obtain a copy by contacting McRel, 2550 South Parker Rd., Suite 500, Aurora, CO 80014. Phone (303) 337-0990, fax (303) 337-3005, e-mail [email protected] or surf to www.mcrel.org. The text itself will soon be available at www.mcrel.org.

Randy Elliott Bennett, Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment
June 2002

The Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment, which is based at Boston College and exists only on-line, has just published this 20-page article by Randy Elliott Bennett of Educational Testing Service, arguing that "the inexorable advance of technology will force fundamental changes in the format and content of assessment." It's essentially a think piece about the future of assessment in a high-tech era. The author contends that most uses that have so far been made of technology in assessment involve taking conventional testing formats and adapting them for computer-based administration. In the future, he says, assessments will have to match the cognitive and instructional processes by which learning itself occurs. In essence, that means that, as people do more of their learning via technology, assessment technologies will have to keep pace. This raises a host of issues involving costs, fairness, test security, and validity. He poses questions better than he answers them, but the piece includes an extensive bibliography and a 2-page chart showing how eight states are currently grappling in interesting ways with technology-based assessment. It won't blow you away but may lead you to ponder some new issues at the intersection of assessment, accountability and technology. You can find it at http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/jtla/journal/v1n1.shtml.

Sondra Cooney and Gene Bottoms, Southern Regional Education Board
2002

As a follow up to a 2000 survey of eighth graders, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) tracked those students through ninth grade to determine which experiences in the "middle grades" (6-8) are linked to success in higher-level ninth grade English and math courses. Penned by Gene Bottoms and Sondra Cooney, director of SREB's middle school reform initiative, this report finds-perhaps unsurprisingly-that three eighth grade experiences are most apt to translate into higher achievement for high school freshmen: 1) studying algebra; 2) reading lots of books; and 3) expecting to graduate from college. SREB's most important finding is that "ninth graders who are placed in higher-level courses have a lower failure rate that students with similar characteristics who are placed in lower-level courses." View this 12-pager at http://www.sreb.org/programs/hstw/publications/briefs/MiddleGradestoHS.asp or order a copy from SREB at 592 10th St., NW, Atlanta, GA 30318.

State Council of Higher Education for Virginia
2002

Virginia is tiptoeing into the fractious world of higher education assessment and institutional comparisons. No, they're not doing what a grown-up state should, which is pushing for measures of academic value-added that can be compared from one college to another, much as K-12 education is now doing. That remains hugely controversial in higher ed and few institutions will countenance it. (I, for one, have long felt that we would learn an immense amount by simply re-administering the 12th grade NAEP tests to people in the middle, or the end, of their undergraduate years.) But Virginia's State Council of Higher Education now requires individual (public-sector) campuses to devise their own ways of measuring student learning in certain core skills (e.g. critical thinking, writing, math) as well as well as 14 system-wide "performance measures" having to do with things like retention rates, average time-to-degree, and various spending and resource utilization rates. Thus we see, for example, that the flagship University of Virginia spends 72 percent of its core budget on instruction (and "academic support") while Virginia Tech checks in at 61 percent. Virginia Tech also reports that 48% of the research papers done in first-year writing courses demonstrated "full competence" while UVA reports that 29% of its students display "strong competence." It's impossible to make meaningful comparisons so long as each institution sets its own standards and uses its own measures. But hats should be doffed to the Old Dominion for even pushing into this sensitive field. You can find a quick summary of the most recent of these annual reports-this is the second edition-and leads to individual campus reports by surfing to http://roie.schev.edu/. And you can read a helpful overview article by Amy Argetsinger of The Washington Post ("Show What Students Know, Colleges Told," July 17, 2002) at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15879-2002Jul16.html.