The Education Gadfly Weekly

Gadfly’s voice is hoarse from proclamations that history education is being tossed aside in the NCLB-fueled fervor over reading and math. But this week brings no relief for his vocal cords. Instead, it brought release of the 2010 Nation’s Report Card for U.S. history, and the statistics are scream-worthy, if unsurprising. Proficiency rates in history come in at 20 percent or less in fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades—far lower than for any other subject NAEP assesses. While a few positive data points can be gleaned (since 1994, blacks and Hispanics have significantly narrowed the achievement gap, for example), the overall results still remind us of the serious shortcomings in how we approach history education in this land. In the vast majority of states, history standards are pitiable and incentives to take this subject seriously are nonexistent. (While all states are federally mandated to test ELA and math, only eight assess history or social studies at both the elementary and secondary levels.) But please don’t shoot or even pooh-pooh the messenger, for the NAEP history assessment is a fair gauge based on an excellent framework that is serious about real historical content and reasoning. (That’s what our reviewers found recently.)

Although NCLB says that students in failing Title I schools are supposed to be able to transfer to better options within their districts, few families have opted to make the switch, often because of a dearth of quality alternatives within those districts. In response, the Obama administration’s blueprint for overhauling ESEA proposes an inter-district transfer option for eligible students, fueled by competitive grants to participating school systems. This new modeling study from the Century Foundation tries to determine whether such a policy would increase student access to high-quality schooling. Its methodology is complex and more than a little confusing, but its findings are clear: Based on data from forty-five states, analysts estimate that interdistrict-choice programs could potentially expand access to better schools for 80 percent of students in eligible low performers nationwide. (In the current system, only 5.5 percent of students stuck in failing schools have access to adequate alternatives.) Further, they report that students in the Northeast and Midwest would benefit the most, likely due to, in part, the higher levels of district fragmentation in these regions. Unfortunately, this is mostly a pie-in-the-sky thought experiment, because it’s unlikely that suburban school districts are going to open their doors to underperforming city kids anytime soon—or that Uncle Sam can persuade or tempt or browbeat them into doing so.

Meredith P. Richards, Kori J. Stoub, and Jennifer Jellison Holme, “Can NCLB Choice Work? Modeling the Effects of Interdistrict Choice on Student Access to Higher Performing Schools” (Washington, D.C.: The Century Foundation, 2011).

Written at the request of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, this National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) report details LAUSD’s teacher policies and offers a passel of advice for improving them. Focusing on five teacher-quality standards (teacher assignment, evaluations, tenure, compensation, and work schedules), NCTQ organizes its reform recommendations into three categories: those that the district central office can undertake itself, those that require changes to the collective-bargaining agreement, and those that depend on changes in state policy. There’s a lot here. When looking at teacher assignment, and the related teacher hiring, for example, NCTQ calls out the district’s lack of selectivity (only one third of its faculty graduated from a either a “most” or “more” selective school, per the U.S. News and World Report rankings). In response, the authors urge the district to establish an earlier resignation-notification date to allow principals more flexibility in filling vacancies. At the state level, it urges the expansion of California’s “lemon law” to give principals the right of refusal to teacher transfers they don’t want. Consider this report not just a roadmap but an atlas to guide both LAUSD and other districts (in California and beyond) as they look to revamp the quality of their instructional workforce.

Emily Cohen and Priya Varghese, “Teacher Quality Roadmap: Improving Policies and Practices in LAUSD,” (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Teacher Quality, June 2011).

This CATO Institute report comes to a frank and disheartening conclusion: “Philanthropy has not proven itself to be a reliable systematic mechanism” for identifying and promoting the best educational models—at least when it comes to charter schools. We learn how little correlation there is between grant funding and charter-network performance. Looking specifically at California, analyst Andrew Coulson shows that most of the roughly $250 million that have flowed from philanthropists to Golden State charter networks over the past eight years have not been directed toward the most academically successful schools, whether gauged by California state test data or AP results. The top three charter networks (according to CA state test scores), rank twenty-first, twenty-seventh, and thirty-ninth in grant funding (out of sixty-eight networks analyzed), for example. Coulson’s paper offers an interesting analysis, and one that should spur discussions on the most effective ways to target education philanthropy. Should donors, for example, concentrate monies on proven charter schools or those with potential? Note, though, that this analysis is not without fault. The report doesn’t break down spending by pupil (only reporting aggregate grant-giving), nor does it account for student growth over time or for how long the charter networks have been operational. In the end, Coulson asks an important question: Why is it so hard to scale up successful educational models? But his own answer has a lot to do with his underlying ideology. Instead of relying on philanthropists to save education, he argues, we must seriously work to push education provision to the “free enterprise system.” Why, though, must it be one or the other?

Andrew Coulson, “The Other Lottery: Are Philanthropists Backing the Best Charter Schools?,” (Washington, D.C.: CATO Institute, June 2011)

Photo in the public domain

Much like Commodus of ancient Rome (portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator), Arne Duncan is letting out his frustrations with Congress’s inaction over ESEA reauthorization (currently known as NCLB)—and nobody seems to like it. His warning to Congress that he will take matters into his own hands via waivers has drawn large-scale ire.

Here’s my take. First, the Secretary deserves credit for doing something to encourage ESEA reauthorization (beyond issuing groveling press releases and pleading statements). Congress is dithering and to date no amount of pressure—Presidential or otherwise—has made a difference. The Republicans in the House at least have some reasonable excuses—with all those new members still getting up to speed, and the tricky politics of the Tea Party. But Senator Harkin should be ashamed (though he doesn’t appear to be); Easter is long past and still we have no bill from his committee. It would be great to think that Duncan’s threat will finally be the jumpstart he needs to get his act together.

Second, as Rick Hess has pointed out, Duncan’s plans to tie regulatory relief to new requirements indicates an incredible amount of hubris, not to mention Constitutional ignorance. Yes, under NCLB’s waiver authority, the Secretary has a lot of room to maneuver in terms of letting states and districts escape from onerous parts of the law. But not a single provision or authority gives his Department the power to make its supplicants agree to a specific reform package in return. As a spokeswoman for the top Republican on the House education committee told Education Week: “Chairman Kline remains concerned about any initiative that would allow the secretary to pick winners and losers in the nation’s education system.”

So what was Team Duncan thinking? For an idea, we turn to NCLB-uber-advocate Kati Haycock:

While we believe targeted waivers in exchange for real movement on those issues is a good thing, regulatory relief would fit squarely in the ‘cop-out’ category.

Put in a different way, if all you do is try to fix the most onerous parts of NCLB, but don’t “move the ball down the field” in terms of reform, you are copping out.

I prefer another line of reasoning: If we reformers want to save the larger project of school reform, we need to fix NCLB now before the backlash gets even worse.

So here’s my advice to Duncan and the gang on Maryland Avenue: Go ahead with a package of regulations that would provide blanket waivers of the worst parts of the law. Make sure parameters are in place (states would still have to have accountability systems, for example). But don’t try to tie this stuff to new mandates. That will only get NCLB implementation embroiled in a lawsuit (which you’ll lose) and to acrimonious charges of imperialism (which will be well-founded).

This piece originally appeared (in a slightly different format) on Fordham’s Flypaper blog. To subscribe to Flypaper, click here.

Several lessons can be distilled from the nearly unanimous passage of Illinois’s widely noticed education-reform legislation, SB7. Notably: Money matters, and reform is in the eye of the beholder. To clear the lane for SB7—lauded by many (including Arne Duncan) as a slam dunk for both reformers and the notion of “collaboration”—Stand for Children went straight to the wealthy in the Land of Lincoln, and leaned on them hard. In just over three months, the organization pulled in about $3.5 million in political contributions—money they used to finance key campaigns and to hire over a dozen lobbyists. Money matters (and so do the political connections that go with it); the unions saw the writing on the wall and decided to play ball. While Stand celebrates the passage of SB7 (which Governor Pat Quinn signed into law on Monday), some other reformers remain skeptical. Most notably, Ron Tupa of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) worries about loopholes in the measure that might nullify its most significant provisions. The teacher-evaluation provisions in SB7 “are not required to be enacted if funding is not forthcoming,” for example. Still, from our perspective, SB7 really does move the ball forward, and Stand deserves our respect (as does Advance Illinois, the other key player in all of this). The education-reform movement is quickly moving past the days when it fought brute political strength only with white papers and op-eds. Three cheers for this new brand of advocacy.

“New force in Illinois quickly pushes state toward school reform,” by Ray Long, Chicago Tribune, June 11, 2011.

“State Legislation: ‘Don’t Believe Everything You DON’T Read,” by Ron Tupa, Democrats for Education Reform Blog, June 7, 2011.

“Illinois’ New Teacher Law: Model for Other States, or Outlier?,” by Sean Cavanagh, Education Week, June 13, 2011.

Gadfly’s voice is hoarse from proclamations that history education is being tossed aside in the NCLB-fueled fervor over reading and math. But this week brings no relief for his vocal cords. Instead, it brought release of the 2010 Nation’s Report Card for U.S. history, and the statistics are scream-worthy, if unsurprising. Proficiency rates in history come in at 20 percent or less in fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades—far lower than for any other subject NAEP assesses. While a few positive data points can be gleaned (since 1994, blacks and Hispanics have significantly narrowed the achievement gap, for example), the overall results still remind us of the serious shortcomings in how we approach history education in this land. In the vast majority of states, history standards are pitiable and incentives to take this subject seriously are nonexistent. (While all states are federally mandated to test ELA and math, only eight assess history or social studies at both the elementary and secondary levels.) But please don’t shoot or even pooh-pooh the messenger, for the NAEP history assessment is a fair gauge based on an excellent framework that is serious about real historical content and reasoning. (That’s what our reviewers found recently.)

Although NCLB says that students in failing Title I schools are supposed to be able to transfer to better options within their districts, few families have opted to make the switch, often because of a dearth of quality alternatives within those districts. In response, the Obama administration’s blueprint for overhauling ESEA proposes an inter-district transfer option for eligible students, fueled by competitive grants to participating school systems. This new modeling study from the Century Foundation tries to determine whether such a policy would increase student access to high-quality schooling. Its methodology is complex and more than a little confusing, but its findings are clear: Based on data from forty-five states, analysts estimate that interdistrict-choice programs could potentially expand access to better schools for 80 percent of students in eligible low performers nationwide. (In the current system, only 5.5 percent of students stuck in failing schools have access to adequate alternatives.) Further, they report that students in the Northeast and Midwest would benefit the most, likely due to, in part, the higher levels of district fragmentation in these regions. Unfortunately, this is mostly a pie-in-the-sky thought experiment, because it’s unlikely that suburban school districts are going to open their doors to underperforming city kids anytime soon—or that Uncle Sam can persuade or tempt or browbeat them into doing so.

Meredith P. Richards, Kori J. Stoub, and Jennifer Jellison Holme, “Can NCLB Choice Work? Modeling the Effects of Interdistrict Choice on Student Access to Higher Performing Schools” (Washington, D.C.: The Century Foundation, 2011).

Written at the request of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, this National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) report details LAUSD’s teacher policies and offers a passel of advice for improving them. Focusing on five teacher-quality standards (teacher assignment, evaluations, tenure, compensation, and work schedules), NCTQ organizes its reform recommendations into three categories: those that the district central office can undertake itself, those that require changes to the collective-bargaining agreement, and those that depend on changes in state policy. There’s a lot here. When looking at teacher assignment, and the related teacher hiring, for example, NCTQ calls out the district’s lack of selectivity (only one third of its faculty graduated from a either a “most” or “more” selective school, per the U.S. News and World Report rankings). In response, the authors urge the district to establish an earlier resignation-notification date to allow principals more flexibility in filling vacancies. At the state level, it urges the expansion of California’s “lemon law” to give principals the right of refusal to teacher transfers they don’t want. Consider this report not just a roadmap but an atlas to guide both LAUSD and other districts (in California and beyond) as they look to revamp the quality of their instructional workforce.

Emily Cohen and Priya Varghese, “Teacher Quality Roadmap: Improving Policies and Practices in LAUSD,” (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Teacher Quality, June 2011).

This CATO Institute report comes to a frank and disheartening conclusion: “Philanthropy has not proven itself to be a reliable systematic mechanism” for identifying and promoting the best educational models—at least when it comes to charter schools. We learn how little correlation there is between grant funding and charter-network performance. Looking specifically at California, analyst Andrew Coulson shows that most of the roughly $250 million that have flowed from philanthropists to Golden State charter networks over the past eight years have not been directed toward the most academically successful schools, whether gauged by California state test data or AP results. The top three charter networks (according to CA state test scores), rank twenty-first, twenty-seventh, and thirty-ninth in grant funding (out of sixty-eight networks analyzed), for example. Coulson’s paper offers an interesting analysis, and one that should spur discussions on the most effective ways to target education philanthropy. Should donors, for example, concentrate monies on proven charter schools or those with potential? Note, though, that this analysis is not without fault. The report doesn’t break down spending by pupil (only reporting aggregate grant-giving), nor does it account for student growth over time or for how long the charter networks have been operational. In the end, Coulson asks an important question: Why is it so hard to scale up successful educational models? But his own answer has a lot to do with his underlying ideology. Instead of relying on philanthropists to save education, he argues, we must seriously work to push education provision to the “free enterprise system.” Why, though, must it be one or the other?

Andrew Coulson, “The Other Lottery: Are Philanthropists Backing the Best Charter Schools?,” (Washington, D.C.: CATO Institute, June 2011)