The Education Gadfly Weekly

Education Week

Yesterday, the editors of Education Week released the latest in their annual series of statistical analyses dubbed "Quality Counts." This year's focus is "special education in an era of standards" - a timely topic, considering that Congress is still struggling to reauthorize IDEA and that the Education Department recently issued new regulations for how to handle severely disabled children within NCLB state testing programs. (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=126#1583.) We won't claim yet to have read all 150 outsized pages, but it's clear that they do a fine job of setting forth the major issues faced by those who yearn to reconcile special needs with uniform standards. The data reveal vast gaps in the academic achievement of special-ed students vis-??-vis other children (and nobody needs reminding that the other children mostly aren't doing so well themselves). Nor is NCLB the only source of this tension; should disabled youngsters, for instance, have to pass statewide high-school graduation tests? (Half the states allow them to receive diplomas without meeting regular graduation requirements.)

The final third of this report offers a wealth of data on other K-12 education issues, provided both in multi-state tables and state-specific profiles. It's organized under four major headings: standards/accountability, teacher quality, school climate, and resources. You'll find progress on a number of fronts but huge distances yet to travel on others. (For example: fewer than half the states require middle-school teachers to pass subject-matter tests to earn licenses. Fewer than one third of high-school students are taking "upper level" science courses. Despite all the fuss about big schools, just 30 percent of high schoolers are enrolled in schools smaller than 900.) By and large, you'll find less attention this year to irrelevant indicators beloved of the school establishment (e.g. accreditation of teacher training programs). But when you get to the section on "resources," you'll spot some familiar follies, such as Education Week's weird attachment to something called the "McLoone Index." To my knowledge, nobody else uses this odd calculation ("the ratio of the total amount spent on pupils below the median to the amount that would be needed to raise all students to the median per-pupil expenditure in the state") and any jurisdiction that tried to base school-finance policy on it would drown in Lake Wobegon alongside others who dream of everyone rising above the average.

You can find Quality Counts 2004 on line at http://www.edweek.org/sreports/qc04/, but, given its bulk and unwieldiness, you'll likely want your own hard copy, which you can obtain by ordering it at http://www.edweek.org/products/special-reports/.

Robert Holland, Lexington Institute
December 2003

This brief piece provides an overview of the growth of for-profit providers of higher education and contends that Congress should put these schools on equal footing with traditional universities in the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. In 1998, Congress made students in for-profit schools eligible for Title IV aid (such as Pell Grants, Perkins and Stafford Loans, Federal work study programs, and more), but has not yet made this allowance for non-Title-IV aid, (such as Title V, which supports Hispanic-serving institutions), "effectively banning" aid for a number of colleges serving minority students. Holland notes that for-profit institutions now run 46 percent of all post-secondary schools, accounting for about half a million students and a large number of minorities. He judges that it's time for them to have full access to every sort of federal aid and attempts to cement his point with a diatribe against the excesses in traditional public colleges and universities, mercilessly recounting extravagant outlays on whirlpools, climbing walls, and the like. The implication is that for-profit institutions may offer a more efficient investment for federal dollars. The argument is logical on its face, but unfortunately the paper doesn't provide more than a cursory explanation of the proposal, or of Federal aid programs in general, in order that the reader can make an informed decision. In the end, it's valuable mainly as an introduction to the for-profit sector of postsecondary education - and as a source of telling anecdotes about lavish spending in the non-profit sector. To find a copy on-line, visit http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/education/HigherEd2003.pdf.

Basmat Parsad, Laurie Lewis, and Bernard Greene, National Center for Education Statistics
November 2003

This report from the National Center for Education Statistics compares "the prevalence and characteristics" of remedial courses and enrollment in 2- and 4-year colleges and universities in 1995 and 2000. Overall, the percent of institutions offering remedial courses did not significantly change nor did the proportion of entering students who enrolled in such courses (28 percent in both 1995 and 2000). Not surprisingly, the study found that public 2- and 4-year institutions are much more likely than their private counterparts to offer remedial courses, and that students in public 2-year institutions (i.e. community colleges) are likelier to take such courses for longer than students in any other institution. A humdrum report but you may want the data. Surf to http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/2004010.pdf.

The SEED school (Schools for Educational Evolution and Development) in Washington, D.C. - America's only urban charter boarding school - is the focus of this article in Time, which calls it "one of the most innovative and expensive experiments in educating low-income students." SEED is an excellent example of how the charter movement encourages innovation and experimentation - and of the need to monitor those innovations to determine how well they're succeeding. Three-hundred and ten 7th-12th graders live on campus from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon, and almost every waking minute is scheduled for them, from rising at 5:45 a.m. to lights out, with only a half-hour of "quiet time" before bed. Dorms are divided into "houses" of 10-14 students named after colleges, reflecting a focus on college preparation, and there are lots of extras like sports, clubs, and overseas trips in the summer. Students grouse about the stringent rules, but parents laud the safe and structured environment, and last year there were 213 applicants for 140 spots. But the school is extremely expensive - per-student costs are twice the District's annual expenditure of $12,000 per student - and is still struggling with achievement. SAT scores are only 34 points above the District's low average and retention is a problem - no doubt because the regimen is a lot tougher than most American teen-agers are willing to endure.

"Urban preppies," by Perry Bacon, Jr., Time, January 12, 2004

At the second anniversary of NCLB, it is useful to think about the historical evolution of the law that NCLB is meant to reform - Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Media coverage of all the unresolved problems of NCLB's design and implementation may engender a shortsightedness. An historical comparison with ESEA Title I circa 1965 makes me believe that a long-run evolutionary view of NCLB is needed.

I was the second program person hired by the U.S. Office of Education Title I Director in 1965. Also, in 1980, Dick Jung and I conducted a 13-year longitudinal evaluation of that program's implementation. (EEPA, Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980) To be sure, NCLB is pupil-outcomes oriented, while Title I focused on inputs, yet the analogy has promise.

In 1965-68, there was evidence of several major operational failures in Title I implementation, but these were mostly fixed over time, through several federal legislative reauthorization cycles and with increased enforcement by state and local Title I coordinators. For example, in the early years not enough Title I money was spent by local districts in the most poverty-stricken schools, or on special Title I interventions. Massive sums were diverted to regular programs or wasted on frivolous extras. In Louisiana, Title I funds built segregated high school swimming pools; Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin rented tuxedos for students to attend the senior prom. Several states did not even send Title I federal or state regulations and guidelines to local school districts to utilize. And the program as a whole included too many pupils to mount a serious intervention program at the classroom level.

In fact, Jung and I found that it took more than a decade to target funds to disadvantaged pupils and create school site intervention programs that met the legal intent of Title I. We concluded that:

1. Given the wide variety of groups responsible for setting and implementing policies concerning Title I - and the decentralized, politically charged bureaucratic setting in which those policies took shape - changes to local Title I administrative procedures were incremental, not immediate.

2. Over time, however, these incremental changes eventually yielded significant structural and substantive changes in Title I implementation policies and practices.

3. The direction of these changes over the long haul was toward a more aggressive federal rule-setting, monitoring, and enforcement role in implementing some of the program's crucial categorical requirements, and increased compliance with key provisions in the law.

4. Multiple factors affected the pace and directions of these changes, including:

a. a political atmosphere dominated by professional education lobbies shifted to one in which interest groups - including categorical program personnel, beneficiaries of Title I services, and lobby groups championing the recipients' causes - were more oriented toward compliance with federal mandates;
b. the emergence of a vertical network of administrative, evaluative, and teaching specialists with careers that depended upon the program;
c. broad-based social movements that reinforced the philosophy behind Title I.

The lesson of Title I from the 1960s and 1970s is that we should give NCLB a long time before making final judgments about its effectiveness. Growing pains and problems are to be expected with such an ambitious and complex law, and as we gather feedback from local and state education officials and solid information about its classroom implementation and pupil impact, Congress will likely move to adjust the law. This was the case with Title I, which was passed by the Johnson administration, but in 1969 the Nixon administration vowed to clean up the administrative mess, and did so in a bipartisan effort that included Democratic Senator Walter Mondale.

One factor that may complicate the effort to smooth out the bumps of implementing NCLB is the lack of state and local support that gradually helped Title I meet its legislative intent. Title I had parent site councils and a cadre of federal, state, and local administrators on the federal payroll who worked to ensure fidelity to the federal intent. These Title I coordinators were more loyal to the federal law than to local politics.

By contrast, a recent national survey published in Education Week (12/19/03) indicates that half of school principals "expressed the view that [NCLB] was either politically motivated or aimed at undermining schools." Many local superintendents feel the same way. Title I never had this kind of grass-roots resistance to its basic provisions, so some new tactics seem warranted for NCLB. Perhaps NCLB needs to create the bottom-up parental constituency that was so effective for Title I. Moreover, Title I implementation was supported by an amalgam of interest groups from the legal, educational, religious, and social sectors. Some of the lobbying, technical assistance, and other advocacy processes by these special-focused pressure groups was underwritten and encouraged by such organizations as the Ford Foundation and the Harvard Center for Law and Education.

Will NCLB engender this kind of interest group base outside of Washington D.C.? It is unlikely that traditional professional education interest groups such as National Education Association, American Association of School Administrators, or National School Boards Association will lobby to preserve NCLB or press for its effective implementation. (These groups wanted to turn Title I into a general aid program.) But the hopeful lesson from Title I's past is that, if one takes the long view, NCLB implementation will likely improve.

NCLB analysts need to follow the law for at least a decade, and resolve major methodological questions:

1. What NCLB explanatory and dependent factors should be traced across time? How is variation in these variables described?
2. What kinds of evidence should be used?
3. How is such evidence best analyzed?
4. What political and administrative coalitions support and resist the law's basic principles, and how does this change over time?

Michael W. Kirst is professor of education at Stanford University.

Happy birthday, NCLB! Bells are ringing today at the White House, the Education Department, and the Capitol as the drafters, enactors, implementers, and enforcers of No Child Left Behind observe the second anniversary of its enactment.

Just about everyone has by now acknowledged that this is a major, major piece of federal education legislation, surely the most important since the original ESEA was enacted almost four decades ago. It's also the most controversial development in memory for American K-12 education. What's more, it has occasioned a vast amount of commentary, analysis, and bloviating, and any number of NCLB-focused studies and research projects are now underway. (We at Fordham are co-sponsoring one with the American Enterprise Institute that's examining NCLB's public-school choice and supplemental services provisions. A very interesting set of draft papers and comments will be aired at AEI on January 15-16. To learn more, go to http://www.aei.org/events/type.upcoming,eventID.684,filter./event_detail.asp.)

In the two years since President Bush signed NCLB, the Education Gadfly has run more than 100 pieces examining or commenting on it. A partial bibliography appears below. And it's a fact that, if you read them from beginning to end, you'll observe the Gadfly changing his mind more than once about this law. Because he's not normally plagued by indecision, you will correctly infer that it's absurd to be "for" or "against" NCLB. It's too big and complex to elicit a simple pro-con opinion, at least from a thinking person (or fly). Moreover, with every passing week, experience reveals more about this law and its implementation. Two years has barely been long enough to play the overture.

On this anniversary, therefore, let us offer just three more observations:

First, do not suppose that anything with so many moving parts could be perfectly engineered from the beginning. Every major federal program has needed amending, fine-tuning, reworking. As Michael Kirst points out above, it took more than a decade of experience and at least two reauthorizations before the 1965 Title I law's comparatively modest purposes were carried out as intended across this vast and diverse land. NCLB is infinitely more ambitious. OF COURSE it will need revising - and its authors are foolish to stonewall about that fact. They should, instead, be saying, "Send your suggestions here and after the 2004 election we'll pay attention to them. In the meantime, please do what you're supposed to."

Second, besides lots of folks who really want NCLB to succeed (albeit revised in ways that don't negate its mission), plenty of people and organizations hate it - and it's increasingly clear that this is because it would oblige them to make changes that they don't care to make. On balance, we like the booster-revisers a lot better than the opponent-detractors and find much wisdom in Henry Kissinger's famous crack that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Third, states and districts that really don't want to comply with NCLB's demands should remember that they don't have to - provided they're willing to forego the Title I money. The New York Times reported the other day that several Connecticut and Pennsylvania school systems are going to eschew the cash rather than make the changes that NCLB demands. Let them go. So long as they remain part of their state testing programs, everyone will be able to see how they do academically. Maybe they'll do fine sans Title I funding and NCLB rules, maybe they won't. If their schools stink, people will move away, vote down the bond issues, or throw out the school board. That's democracy in action. Uncle Sam's money comes with strings and those that can't abide the strings should shun the dollars.

"School reform breaks 'segregation'," by George Archibald, The Washington Times, January 8, 2004

"Some school districts challenge Bush's signature education law," by Sam Dillon, New York Times, January 2, 2004 (subscription required)

"Bush defends education act," Associated Press, January 6, 2004

"Statement by U.S. Rep. John Boehner on second anniversary of President Bush's No Child Left Behind education reform law," January 7, 2004

Selected Bibliography of NCLB-related commentary

"On leaving no child behind," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Education Gadfly, February 28, 2002

 "Implementing No Child Left Behind: eagerness, regulation, capacity," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Education Gadfly, August 8, 2002

"Debating NCLB: Part one," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Education Gadfly, May 8, 2003

"Debating NCLB: Part two," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Education Gadfly, May 15, 2003

"Confidence game in the Hoosier State," by Derek Redelman, The Education Gadfly, August 7, 2003

"Blaming NCLB," by Diane Ravitch, The Education Gadfly, August 21, 2003

"The trials of NCLB," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Education Gadfly, September 4, 2003

The fate of the nation's second statewide voucher program - the first since the landmark Zelman decision was handed down - was called into question again this week, when Denver judge Joseph E. Meyer upheld his own decision to slap a temporary injunction on the state's fledgling voucher program. (In December, the judge ruled that the voucher program violated the "local control over education" clause of the state constitution. For more details see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=125#1566.) Voucher advocates had hoped to have the injunction removed so that they could move forward with the program while the state supreme court considers the matter.

"Judge deals another blow to the voucher plan," by Robert Sanchez, Rocky Mountain News, January 7, 2004

One never ceases to be amazed by the inanity of many so-called "experts" in testing and instruction. In Illinois (which recently adopted a cracker-jack set of assessment benchmarks; see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=120#1514 for more detail), the experts are bemoaning a new testing program that they say will dumb down math by focusing overmuch on basic computational skills. Twenty percent of the new test items will be what snippy math educators disparage as "naked math," i.e. number problems that emphasize computation rather than application to "real world" situations. Such an approach, of course, used to be called "math" before the experts got hold of it. So far, the state testing division is standing firm. Look for the impending Fordham publication, The Citizen's Guide to State Standards, Tests, and Accountability Systems, for a discussion of problems that many states have in developing high-quality, rigorous tests that truly cover what their standards say their kids should know. And keep watching Illinois for this latest skirmish in the math wars that have pitted reformers and concerned parents against the "experts."

"Critics: tests dumb down math," by Tracy Dell'Angela, Chicago Tribune, January 4, 2004

This week, after closed-door negotiations with union leaders, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger convinced the California Teachers Association to support a $2 billion cut in education spending to help resolve the state's massive budget deficit. The move is part of Schwarzenegger's plan to curb the "spending crisis" that he says caused this huge hole in the budget. Predictably, however, union acceptance came at a steep cost. First, the governor had to agree not to touch Proposition 98 - a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that K-12 schools and community colleges annually receive an increasing stream of money from the state's general fund. (Schwarzenegger had initially threatened to suspend Proposition 98 to rein in "out of control spending.") Second, officials have said the education cuts will be restored next year, whether the economy improves or not. This deal resembles a band-aid affixed to a tumor.

"Teachers support Gov.'s plan to cut schools by $2 billion," by Evan Halper, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2004

"Schwarzenegger plans fee hikes, education cuts," by Vincent J. Schodolski, Chicago Tribune, January 7, 2004

Last January, Gadfly warned that New York City stood to lose millions in federal dollars if Mayor Bloomberg and schools chancellor Joel Klein insisted on mandating the unproven and academically dubious "Month by Month Phonics" as the citywide reading curriculum. (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=9#383and http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=8#368for more details.) They did it anyway. Now, a year later - and a week before the federal Reading First grant applications are due - Klein has finally announced that the city will scrap Month by Month Phonics in some of its worst-afflicted schools in order to avoid losing up to $34 million in Reading First grants. Keep in mind that, despite warnings from researchers and educators that his preferred reading program would not qualify, the city spent millions training teachers to use Month by Month Phonics and wasted half a year of their - and their students' - time. Rather than admitting error, however, the chancellor is still praising the "balanced literacy" approach and criticizing federal education officials for being dogmatic. "There ought to be some flexibility in deciding what the best way is to get the results," Klein pronounced. Of course, there was some flexibility, just not the flexibility to choose a reading program that has no record of teaching kids to read.

"For U.S. aid, city switches reading plan," by David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times, January 7, 2004 (subscription required)

Basmat Parsad, Laurie Lewis, and Bernard Greene, National Center for Education Statistics
November 2003

This report from the National Center for Education Statistics compares "the prevalence and characteristics" of remedial courses and enrollment in 2- and 4-year colleges and universities in 1995 and 2000. Overall, the percent of institutions offering remedial courses did not significantly change nor did the proportion of entering students who enrolled in such courses (28 percent in both 1995 and 2000). Not surprisingly, the study found that public 2- and 4-year institutions are much more likely than their private counterparts to offer remedial courses, and that students in public 2-year institutions (i.e. community colleges) are likelier to take such courses for longer than students in any other institution. A humdrum report but you may want the data. Surf to http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/2004010.pdf.

Education Week

Yesterday, the editors of Education Week released the latest in their annual series of statistical analyses dubbed "Quality Counts." This year's focus is "special education in an era of standards" - a timely topic, considering that Congress is still struggling to reauthorize IDEA and that the Education Department recently issued new regulations for how to handle severely disabled children within NCLB state testing programs. (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=126#1583.) We won't claim yet to have read all 150 outsized pages, but it's clear that they do a fine job of setting forth the major issues faced by those who yearn to reconcile special needs with uniform standards. The data reveal vast gaps in the academic achievement of special-ed students vis-??-vis other children (and nobody needs reminding that the other children mostly aren't doing so well themselves). Nor is NCLB the only source of this tension; should disabled youngsters, for instance, have to pass statewide high-school graduation tests? (Half the states allow them to receive diplomas without meeting regular graduation requirements.)

The final third of this report offers a wealth of data on other K-12 education issues, provided both in multi-state tables and state-specific profiles. It's organized under four major headings: standards/accountability, teacher quality, school climate, and resources. You'll find progress on a number of fronts but huge distances yet to travel on others. (For example: fewer than half the states require middle-school teachers to pass subject-matter tests to earn licenses. Fewer than one third of high-school students are taking "upper level" science courses. Despite all the fuss about big schools, just 30 percent of high schoolers are enrolled in schools smaller than 900.) By and large, you'll find less attention this year to irrelevant indicators beloved of the school establishment (e.g. accreditation of teacher training programs). But when you get to the section on "resources," you'll spot some familiar follies, such as Education Week's weird attachment to something called the "McLoone Index." To my knowledge, nobody else uses this odd calculation ("the ratio of the total amount spent on pupils below the median to the amount that would be needed to raise all students to the median per-pupil expenditure in the state") and any jurisdiction that tried to base school-finance policy on it would drown in Lake Wobegon alongside others who dream of everyone rising above the average.

You can find Quality Counts 2004 on line at http://www.edweek.org/sreports/qc04/, but, given its bulk and unwieldiness, you'll likely want your own hard copy, which you can obtain by ordering it at http://www.edweek.org/products/special-reports/.

Robert Holland, Lexington Institute
December 2003

This brief piece provides an overview of the growth of for-profit providers of higher education and contends that Congress should put these schools on equal footing with traditional universities in the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. In 1998, Congress made students in for-profit schools eligible for Title IV aid (such as Pell Grants, Perkins and Stafford Loans, Federal work study programs, and more), but has not yet made this allowance for non-Title-IV aid, (such as Title V, which supports Hispanic-serving institutions), "effectively banning" aid for a number of colleges serving minority students. Holland notes that for-profit institutions now run 46 percent of all post-secondary schools, accounting for about half a million students and a large number of minorities. He judges that it's time for them to have full access to every sort of federal aid and attempts to cement his point with a diatribe against the excesses in traditional public colleges and universities, mercilessly recounting extravagant outlays on whirlpools, climbing walls, and the like. The implication is that for-profit institutions may offer a more efficient investment for federal dollars. The argument is logical on its face, but unfortunately the paper doesn't provide more than a cursory explanation of the proposal, or of Federal aid programs in general, in order that the reader can make an informed decision. In the end, it's valuable mainly as an introduction to the for-profit sector of postsecondary education - and as a source of telling anecdotes about lavish spending in the non-profit sector. To find a copy on-line, visit http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/education/HigherEd2003.pdf.