The Education Gadfly Weekly

Meridith Maran

Journalist Meredith Maran spent one year immersing herself in the school community at California's Berkeley High School.  That experience led to Class Dismissed, an engaging chronicle of her year that reveals the highs and lows of high-school life through the eyes of three seniors.  Maran frames their personal stories in the larger context of the most diverse high school in California, where students often choose to self-segregate during lunch breaks but also laud the diversity of the student body.  Maran incorporates candid interviews with teachers, parents, administrators and other students, lending credibility to her recommendations for change in the education system.  Copies of Class Dismissed: A Year in the Life of an American High School, A Glimpse into the Heart of a Nation are available from online booksellers in paperback for $11.96 and in hardcover for $16.76.

Douglas B. Reeves

As the ESEA reauthorization continues its crawl through Congress, some parents have begun to wonder what it might mean for them and their kids.  They've heard Washington technocrats debating "adequate yearly progress"; they've heard the lofty anthems of President Bush vowing to "leave no child behind"; and they've heard the cries of some teachers (and parents) protesting the evils of "drill and kill."  What is the reality?  In Crusade in the Classroom, published amazingly fast this summer by Simon and Schuster and the Stanley Kaplan test-prep company, Douglas Reeves offers an explanation.  This useful primer on George W. Bush's education reforms explains in plain language the key themes that have begun to take hold in American K-12 education - accountability, standards, testing, and choice.  The guide is mostly supportive of these ideas, though Reeves also raises (and responds to) the objections of critics. Though not even the speediest publisher can keep up with the continuing mischief Congress is doing to the original Bush plan, Crusade in the Classroom may nonetheless be informative to curious or concerned parents. In addition to explaining broad education reform concepts, it offers discussions of special education and homeschooling, a sample letter of inquiry to school officials about school choice, and useful lists of online resources.  You can order it from your favorite purveyor of books, or find out more (and order directly from Kaplan) at www.kaptest.com/crusadeintheclassroom.

Texas Military Initiative

Where to find more high-quality teachers for U.S. schools? While some districts have been looking overseas, others are tapping the ranks of America's own military veterans.  The federally funded "Troops to Teachers" program offers retiring servicemen and women one last (optional) tour of duty - this time, in the classroom.  While some people doubt the program's effectiveness - based largely on the concern that these new teachers lack conventional training and certification - others see great promise.  What's the reality?  This new study, released by the Texas Military Initiative in conjunction with Southwest Texas State University, surveys over 500 veterans and administrators to assess the program in Texas.  While it does not address the effects these teachers have on student achievement, Troops as Teachers in Texas does provide useful data.  Among its findings: almost 60% of administrators rated their "veteran" teachers "above average" or "outstanding," 83% of veterans said they were satisfied with their decision to become teachers, and 54% of these new teachers have been recognized for excellence (teacher of the year awards, etc.). Belying the concern that alternative routes to the classroom may make new teachers more likely to burn out and quit, only 13% of the ex-military teachers reported leaving the profession. To learn more, request a copy of the report from the Texas Military Initiative/Troops for Teachers at 1-800-810-5484.

SRI International

SRI International conducted a study on standards-based reform finding that: 1) High-stakes accountability systems do motivate educators, but only when the assessments require written work and application of skills do researchers find evidence of better teaching; 2) Standards and tests alone do not change what teachers do in the classroom.  Teachers need models of effective instruction as well as professional development; 3) Though most of the districts developed rigorous standards with aligned assessments, those that produced student achievement gains also had specific instructional expectations, supported by extensive professional development over several years.  These findings suggest an important lesson for standards-based reform: "...clear expectations for instruction are as critical as clear expectations for student learning."  To read a summary of the findings, go to http://www.sri.com/policy/cehs/edpolicy/reform/pew.html. For a copy of the complete report, contact SRI at 650-859-2000.

For the past hundred or so years, the training and certification of public school teachers has been largely in the hands of colleges of education, but this monopoly is now being challenged by private sector entrants into the teacher training business, explains Robert Holland in "The Rise of Private Teacher Training," an issue brief published by the Lexington Institute on August 10.  Sylvan Leaning Centers contracts with school districts to provide training to bring uncertified teachers up to standards and also partners with Columbia University's Teachers College to prepare teachers for National Board certification; Edison Schools intends to open its own teacher colleges in 20 different cities over the next seven years; and the University of Phoenix, which trains teachers online, was recently admitted into the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, which has changed its bylaws to allow for-profit members. To read more about these developments, surf to http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/education/pvtteacher.htm.

This week, Phi Delta Kappa (an "honorary fraternity" of professional educators) and Gallup released their 33^rd annual poll of the public's attitudes toward the public schools. Normally polls bring good news or bad news, depending on which side you are on. This poll brings a combination of no news and confusing news.

One way to insure that a poll does not provide much useful information is to frame questions so they force respondents to choose between alternatives that aren't really alternatives - to create a false dichotomy. This year's Kappan/Gallup poll asks people which they'd prefer, reforming the existing public school system OR finding an alternative to the existing public school system. If you like the idea of creating alternatives to the existing system because you think this is the best way to cause improvement in the system, you're out of luck.

What's especially puzzling is what the reader is supposed to think about the broadest question of all - whether today's public schools are any good.  The heading of the lead figure in the "policy implications" section of the poll proclaims "Public Support for Local Public Schools Is at an All-Time High."  That may be true, but only 51% of the population surveyed (and 62% of public school parents) would give their local public schools a grade of A or B.  A thoughtful consumer of polls could be either dismayed that so many parents are sending their children to schools that they think are worth no better than a C, or alarmed that so many parents erroneously think their kids' schools are fine when so many hard indicators (e.g. NAEP and TIMSS results) show that they aren't.

If one thing is clear from the Kappan/Gallup poll, it's that Americans believe that President Bush's education plan is on the right track.  By a margin of 49 to 33 (and 51 to 44 among public school parents), people also think Bush "will do a better job of school improvement than President Clinton." If only Congress had seen these numbers before it started dismembering Bush's proposal.

To download or view a copy of the 33^rd Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll, go to http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0109gal.htm or call Terri Hampton for a copy at 812-339-1156.

To read a more detailed analysis of the poll from the Center for Education Reform, go to http://www.edreform.com/press/2001/pdkpoll.htm

Two articles in the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly take a sausage-factory-like look at the college application and admissions process. In "The Early Decision Racket," James Fallows explores how early-decision programs have distorted the admissions process and added an insane level of intensity to middle-class obsessions about getting into college. In "Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor," Caitlan Flanagan deconstructs the perverse prejudices that fuel the elite college admissions frenzy. Unfortunately neither article is available online; you'll have to buy a copy of the magazine.

A fundamental issue and long-running debate in U.S. teacher policy - with profound implications for both the supply and the quality of our K-12 instructional force - is whether all public-school teachers must be "certified" by their states and, if so, whether they must spend a prolonged period of time in an "approved teacher preparation program" on a university campus before they can qualify for certification. Simply put, must people attend an ed school before they are permitted to teach?

The usual answer, of course, is yes: if they want to teach in public school they must get certified and in order to do that they must graduate from a state-approved preparation program, either as part of, or in addition to, getting their bachelor's degree. This isn't true for private school teachers or, in many states, for charter school teachers. And they seem to do okay without it. (See the new Podgursky-Ballou report described above for information about how their schools handle personnel issues.) Yet it remains the usual rule for public school teachers.

In recent years, many states have developed "alternative certification" programs or "alternate routes." That terminology is unfortunate, smacking of alternative lifestyles and off-beat behavior. (In post-modern parlance, calling one option "alternative" has the effect of "privileging" the other option.) Still, these can be excellent pathways into public school classrooms for mid-career folk with considerable knowledge of a subject and the passion to teach it but who lack traditional teaching credentials - and can't afford to waste the time and money, or to endure the mickey-mouse and ignominy, of enrolling in a lengthy teacher-training program before entering the classroom.

Unfortunately, some "alternative certification" programs are fakes or semi-fakes, amounting to little more than temporary permission to start teaching without yet having endured the mickey-mouse but nonetheless requiring the new teacher to go through those pedagogy, psychology and "foundations of education" courses at night, on the weekend or in the summer before obtaining a permanent certificate. These might better be termed "deferred mickey-mouse programs."

Other constraints often shackle "alternative" programs, such as not letting a district use them to hire teachers except in shortage fields where no conventionally-certified person can be found.  Not accepting recent graduates, only mid-career folks. Or simply keeping the programs so obscure and bureaucratic that neither the would-be teacher nor the school seeking staff finds them practical to use.

What's been conspicuously lacking in the policy debate is solid research showing whether or not the mickey-mouse makes an actual difference in K-12 classrooms. Absent such data, people make these policy judgments based on beliefs, habits and self-interest rather than evidence.

Enter Margaret (Macke) Raymond and her colleagues at CREDO, a research group based at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who recently published the first-ever evaluation of the Teach for America program. (Our Foundation helped support this study.)

Teach for America (TFA) is the well-known venture founded in 1990 by Wendy Kopp to attract young liberal-arts graduates into public-school teaching, initially for two-year stints, most often in urban schools. It has placed upwards of 7000 "corps members" in challenging classroom settings.  It does this after providing them with a relatively brief summer training program but no traditional teacher education, certainly not a full-blown program of the kind nearly universally required for conventional certification.  TFA isn't an alternative certification program per se - those belong to states and school districts - but it's a swell example (along with the "Troops to Teachers" program for retiring servicemen and women) of a recruitment-and-placement system that makes use of "alternative certification" options as a way to get its participants okayed to teach.

Initially, Kopp and her team were nervous about a formal evaluation, particularly the proper kind with a control group of non-TFA teachers for comparison purposes, and with student learning gains used as the measuring stick.  The question to be answered by such a study is how much academic value does a TFA teacher add to his/her pupils versus other teachers who passed through traditional preparation and training paths?

Absent such an evaluation, TFA was vulnerable to the sorts of attacks that have been leveled against it by purveyors of the conventional wisdom about teacher policy.  Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, in particular, has been perfectly dreadful on this subject, making such remarks as: "What TFA says is that society should not try to make good on its promise to African-American and Latino students that they deserve teachers who are as qualified as those that teach elsewhere."

Knowing that this sort of allegation is completely unfounded, Kopp and the TFA leadership agreed to submit to a true evaluation; Macke Raymond and associates agreed to conduct it; and Houston turned out to be a fine place for it. The Houston Independent School District (HISD) deploys some 200 TFA corps members and the Texas testing system (TAAS) lends itself to value-added analysis.

Using TAAS data from 1996 through 2000 for HISD students in grades 3 through 8, Raymond and her team performed a number of analyses that are carefully explained in their report (available on the web at http://credo.stanford.edu).  The bottom line: TFA teachers are at least as effective as the conventionally-trained kind. In fact, the data generally favor the TFA corps members in terms of student value-added, though often the differences are not statistically significant.

Nobody is suggesting that TFA teachers are all classroom superstars or that no other teachers are effective. Hardly. The CREDO study merely finds that, on average, the TFA folks are at least as effective. Why is that a big deal?

Because it implies that ed school isn't necessary, that a well-educated liberal arts graduate with minimal formal training does as well in the classroom as the graduate of a multi-year teacher preparation program. Because it implies that alternative certification programs oughtn't require all the mickey-mouse. And because it signals that the population of potential teachers in America is vast. That's all. But that's a very big deal indeed.

For more, see:

Margaret Raymond, Stephen H. Fletcher, and Javier Luque, Teach for America: An Evaluation of Teacher Differences and Student Outcomes in Houston, Texas, CREDO, August 2001, http://credo.stanford.edu/working_papers.htm

The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future sent a special cautionary bulletin to readers of their electronic newsletter about CREDO's evaluation of Teach For America (TFA).  CREDO has issued a response, which can also be found at the website listed above.

"Should it Be This Easy to Become a Teacher?" by Andrew Goldstein on Time.com examines the TFA study and the debate over teacher certification. http://www.time.com/time/columnist/goldstein/article/0,9565,171654,00.html

States and school districts struggling to hire teachers in the final days before school opens are offering all kinds of creative incentives to attract applicants. Among them: redesigning teachers' lounges to resemble quaint New England inns, replacing degree requirements with height requirements, offering free tickets to school plays, and promising unlimited bathroom passes. For details, see the infographic in this week's issue of The Onion, America's finest humor magazine, at http://www.theonion.com/onion3729/infograph_3729.html

"Doesn't it make sense to link teacher evaluation and measures of student learning?" ask Pamela Tucker and James Strong in an article in the September 2001 issue of the American School Board Journal. Hardly a radical idea, though the NEA is officially opposed. In "Measure for Measure: Using Student Test Results in Teacher Evaluations," the authors describe how measures of student learning are used in teacher evaluations in four places: Tennessee, Texas (Dallas), Oregon, and Colorado (Thompson). In the first two places, sophisticated statistical analysis is used to determine how much value individual teachers are adding to student learning; in Oregon, portfolios are used; and in Thompson, Colorado, simple student gain scores on tests are examined.  The authors present a series of recommendations for districts that would like to implement a teacher evaluation program that includes some measure of student learning. This article is not yet available online at http://www.asbj.com/.

The journal formerly known as Education Matters is now Education Next, and the fall issue is now available.  Among the highlights: Diane Ravitch, Nathan Glazer, and David Steiner debate whether school choice will destroy our common culture; Jane Hannaway, Paul Hill and Marci Kanstoroom look at what makes Houston the toast of urban school reformers; and Lauren Resnick examines five popular books about standards and tests, and considers whether high-stakes tests deserve a backlash. To read the articles online, go to www.edmatters.org. You can order a free trial copy at http://www.hoover.org/Main/form/edmatters-free.html. If you're on the Fordham mailing list, you'll be receiving a free copy in the mail soon.

Douglas B. Reeves

As the ESEA reauthorization continues its crawl through Congress, some parents have begun to wonder what it might mean for them and their kids.  They've heard Washington technocrats debating "adequate yearly progress"; they've heard the lofty anthems of President Bush vowing to "leave no child behind"; and they've heard the cries of some teachers (and parents) protesting the evils of "drill and kill."  What is the reality?  In Crusade in the Classroom, published amazingly fast this summer by Simon and Schuster and the Stanley Kaplan test-prep company, Douglas Reeves offers an explanation.  This useful primer on George W. Bush's education reforms explains in plain language the key themes that have begun to take hold in American K-12 education - accountability, standards, testing, and choice.  The guide is mostly supportive of these ideas, though Reeves also raises (and responds to) the objections of critics. Though not even the speediest publisher can keep up with the continuing mischief Congress is doing to the original Bush plan, Crusade in the Classroom may nonetheless be informative to curious or concerned parents. In addition to explaining broad education reform concepts, it offers discussions of special education and homeschooling, a sample letter of inquiry to school officials about school choice, and useful lists of online resources.  You can order it from your favorite purveyor of books, or find out more (and order directly from Kaplan) at www.kaptest.com/crusadeintheclassroom.

Meridith Maran

Journalist Meredith Maran spent one year immersing herself in the school community at California's Berkeley High School.  That experience led to Class Dismissed, an engaging chronicle of her year that reveals the highs and lows of high-school life through the eyes of three seniors.  Maran frames their personal stories in the larger context of the most diverse high school in California, where students often choose to self-segregate during lunch breaks but also laud the diversity of the student body.  Maran incorporates candid interviews with teachers, parents, administrators and other students, lending credibility to her recommendations for change in the education system.  Copies of Class Dismissed: A Year in the Life of an American High School, A Glimpse into the Heart of a Nation are available from online booksellers in paperback for $11.96 and in hardcover for $16.76.

SRI International

SRI International conducted a study on standards-based reform finding that: 1) High-stakes accountability systems do motivate educators, but only when the assessments require written work and application of skills do researchers find evidence of better teaching; 2) Standards and tests alone do not change what teachers do in the classroom.  Teachers need models of effective instruction as well as professional development; 3) Though most of the districts developed rigorous standards with aligned assessments, those that produced student achievement gains also had specific instructional expectations, supported by extensive professional development over several years.  These findings suggest an important lesson for standards-based reform: "...clear expectations for instruction are as critical as clear expectations for student learning."  To read a summary of the findings, go to http://www.sri.com/policy/cehs/edpolicy/reform/pew.html. For a copy of the complete report, contact SRI at 650-859-2000.

Texas Military Initiative

Where to find more high-quality teachers for U.S. schools? While some districts have been looking overseas, others are tapping the ranks of America's own military veterans.  The federally funded "Troops to Teachers" program offers retiring servicemen and women one last (optional) tour of duty - this time, in the classroom.  While some people doubt the program's effectiveness - based largely on the concern that these new teachers lack conventional training and certification - others see great promise.  What's the reality?  This new study, released by the Texas Military Initiative in conjunction with Southwest Texas State University, surveys over 500 veterans and administrators to assess the program in Texas.  While it does not address the effects these teachers have on student achievement, Troops as Teachers in Texas does provide useful data.  Among its findings: almost 60% of administrators rated their "veteran" teachers "above average" or "outstanding," 83% of veterans said they were satisfied with their decision to become teachers, and 54% of these new teachers have been recognized for excellence (teacher of the year awards, etc.). Belying the concern that alternative routes to the classroom may make new teachers more likely to burn out and quit, only 13% of the ex-military teachers reported leaving the profession. To learn more, request a copy of the report from the Texas Military Initiative/Troops for Teachers at 1-800-810-5484.