The Education Gadfly Weekly

This timely and useful study provides precisely the type of information that financially-strapped school districts need to trim their bottom lines—without sacrificing student learning. Written by Susan Combs, The Lone Star State’s fearless comptroller, at the behest of her state legislature, the report identifies Texas school districts that achieve strong student performance while keeping spending growth at bay. Quite an assignment in a state that increased its per-pupil spending by 63 percent in the last decade (and that’s after taking enrollment growth into account). To determine which districts could deliver this formidable one-two punch, Combs employed two metrics. First, she and her team used a value-added model (controlling for various student, district, and campus characteristics) to measure academic progress over three years in reading and math. Then, they devised a spending index for each district and campus by comparing them to their “fiscal peers” (sites that serve comparable numbers and types of students and operate in similar cost environments). Based on a combination of these two metrics, value-added and spending data, each district or campus received a rating of one to five stars, indicating the extent to which it produced strong academic growth at a lower cost compared to peers. Five-star ratings, meaning fantastic student progress and low spending compared to fiscal peers, are rare. Only forty-three of the 1,235 school districts and charter schools analyzed received a five-star rating (eleven of which were charters). To bump up that number, the report offers cost-cutting solutions for districts—like relaxing class-size limits and sharing facilities and services. Though it stops short of recommending cutting teacher positions, the report takes a hard line on the ballooning administrative posts in Texas. Eliminate 1,500 positions, and bring the state back down to its 1998-99 levels, recommends Combs. It’ll save roughly $115 million annually in salaries alone. Along with the written report, FAST includes a nifty website that allows districts to compare their achievement, expenditures, and resource allocations to other districts. “The FAST system is a national innovation that should be copied by other states,” says Eric Hanushek. We couldn’t agree more: If we are going to do more with less, we need to know what the more or less gets us.

Susan Combs, “Connecting the Dots: School Spending and Student Progress,” Financial Allocation Study for Texas 2010 (Austin, TX: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, 2010).

If adoption of the Common Core state standards in ELA and math marks a state’s first baby step, then the implementation of these standards will be its first marathon. To ascertain how well states are moving through this multi-faceted implementation process, the Center on Education Policy surveyed state deputy secretaries of education in forty-three states: Thirty-six of those respondent states have at least provisionally adopted the Common Core standards, and eleven were Race to the Top (RTTT) winners. The major findings: On key implementation issues, like curriculum and assessment alignment, states still have miles to travel. The vast majority of states don’t expect full implementation of the standards until 2013 or later. And one truly interesting nugget: Only twelve of the states surveyed plan to supplement the Common Core standards with their own state-specific content. Another eleven will adopt the Common Core standards as are, and still eleven more are undecided as to their course of action. In fact, if there’s one message that comes from the study, it’s that many states still don’t know what they plan to do in terms of implementation. They may have started the race, but the question of “now what?” still looms large.

Nancy Kober and Diana Stark Rentner, “States’ Progress and Challenges in Implementing Common Core State Standards,” (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education Policy, January 2011).

Americans felt the earthquake of a “Sputnik moment” back in December with the announcement of the 2009 PISA results. This report from Education Trust delivers a non-trivial aftershock. More than one in five American youth who take the Armed Forces Qualification Exam (AFQT) fail to meet the minimum competency standards for enlistment. Note: this group is drawn from the slim 25 percent of youngsters in the U.S. who are even eligible to take the test in the first place (a high school diploma and certain level of physical fitness being among the prerequisites). Further, African American and Hispanic students score significantly worse than whites; about 40 percent and 30 percent of the two groups, respectively, fail to meet the Army’s standards. Truth be told, the study has many limitations—the most notable of which are the self-selected sample (including only individuals who voluntarily chose to take the test) and lack of socio-economic-status data. Still, the message is clear: The United States isn’t only under-educating future college-goers, as PISA results attest, it’s under-educating would-be service men and women as well. Though these individuals possess high-school diplomas, they lack the reading, math, science, and problem-solving skills needed to serve our nation. As Ed Trust states, “The loss is theirs—and ours.”

The Education Trust, "Shut Out of the Military: Today’s High School Education Doesn’t Mean You’re Ready for Today’s Army," (Washington, D.C.: The Education Trust, December 2010).

The Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings has generally done good work since its founding in 1992. Under Russ Whitehurst’s leadership, it has recently stepped up its productivity and many of the resulting reports and symposia have been first-rate, notably including a series of concise task-force reports on such topics as school choice and the role of value-added analysis in teacher evaluation.

Would that this were also true of its latest task-force product: “Charter Schools: A Report on Rethinking the Federal Role in Education.”

On the upside, this report is surely well-timed. Charter schools and the charter movement need many a repair, the current programs of federal support for them have sundry archaic features, and the hoped-for upcoming reauthorization of ESEA/NCLB is the obvious place for a makeover.

Yet, despite themselves, this task force of eminent scholars, charter-friendly policy wonks, and thoughtful analysts fell into a familiar trap: the illusion that any number of seemingly worthy repairs, recalibrations, and reforms in a complex policy domain can (and should) be brought about via a slew of adjustments—all finely tuned, of course—in federal regulations, conditions, incentives, funding formulae, and reporting requirements.

This is wishful thinking—to put it kindly—and especially dismaying when it emanates from a group that includes smart economists, statisticians, and recent alumni of the very government that they now ask to jump through complicated hoops. Frankly, they should know better. These folks have seen up close what government can and cannot do. And yet they now drink the Kool-aid—and want you to sup it with them.

Surely, it’s tasty stuff. The Brown Center Task Force sets forth twenty recommendations for changes in federal charter-school policy and, while some of them are a bit wonky (designed more to benefit researchers in the long run than needy kids in the short term), all are sound and would contribute to a stronger and more effective charter-school enterprise in the United States.

If, that is, they were not just enacted and funded but also faithfully and accurately implemented—without glitches, political pushback, bureaucratic resistance, or unintended consequences—by every level of government and every institution that is involved with this enterprise.

Here are a few specimens:

• Under “data collection and use,” the task force asks Uncle Sam to make federal charter-school aid “contingent upon charter schools being subject to lottery rules that require the design and implementation of lotteries by entities that are qualified to carry out the task, operate with clearly documented procedures, and are independent of the charter schools in which the lotteries are being conducted.” Surely a worthy thought, but now try to picture the federal regulations that spell out qualifications for lottery-conducting entities and a system by which to police compliance with those regulations. (Another worthy-in-concept-but-impossible-to-orchestrate-from-Washington proposal calls for “stratified” lotteries designed to foster pupil diversity and geographic balance.)
• Under “information to support choice,” the task force wants districts publicly to report school-specific data on such matters as truancy rates, availability of “enrichment programs” and “success of students at the next level of education.” Parents, analysts, and policymakers would indeed benefit from such information but to get it—and make sure that it’s accurate, timely and comparable—somebody would have to make (and monitor and enforce) rules and protocols for “truancy” (what if a kid cuts out of school at noon?), for “enrichment programs” (does cheerleading qualify?), and for longitudinal tracking of youngsters after they leave their schools.
• Under “facilities,” the task force urges Washington to “provide incentives to districts to allow charters to take advantage of surplus district facilities, for example, by giving districts that do so priority preference points in federal discretionary grant competitions….” Another appealing idea, but putting it into practice would alter the decision-making processes of a bunch of non-charter programs—and doing this fairly would mean making rules for what exactly constitutes a “surplus” facility and precisely what it means to “allow charters to take advantage” of such facilities. (Does charging one dollar below market rate qualify?)

And so the report takes us through seventeen more good ideas, every one of them burdened with enormous implications for regulation, compliance, and monitoring.

A few weeks back, we adults assured doubting children that Santa Claus is “real.” But we also reminded them that, if they ask for too many gifts, they may well end up with coal in their stockings—or nothing at all. That advice applies to public policy, too. The Brown Center wish list is directed to the selfsame federal government, let us recall, that cannot assure freedom from salmonella in your supermarket eggs, the same government that is clumsily patting you down at airports, the same government that has enormous difficulty keeping its diplomatic cables secret and its incoming parcels bomb-free.

That’s also the government that has already tried multiple times to move the mountain of American public education by applying leverage and incentives in Washington. Remember NCLB? Not only did it not produce more than a soupcon of the desired result, it also fed a big bad backlash. Why do smart folks persist in believing that it will work better with their ideas? How much can we realistically and reasonably expect Uncle Sam to do and do well?

Not, alas, as much as the Brown Center task force wants it to do. These recommendations won’t be enacted (surely not in their current form) and, if they were, they wouldn’t be implemented and, even if they were implemented, they wouldn’t be done well or consistently. Instead of Santa Claus and sugar plums, this initiative would yield a mantle hung with coal-filled stockings, and all sorts of other undesirable and unintended consequences. It would end up being deemed another failure of government—and maybe of the charter-school concept, too.

Carry this line of thinking into more politically sensitive domains and the fallout could be truly damaging. Imagine, for example, a parallel Brookings Task Force taking up the question of how federal policy might further the implementation of the new Common Core academic standards, leading to twenty recommendations in that vein for the next round of ESEA. Then picture the Tea Party response. It’s hard to imagine a faster formula for strangling the standards in their cradle.

And so a plea to Brookings and others: Please rein in your expectations for what Uncle Sam can do, which is but a few of the twenty items on the Brown Center list and others like it. Most of the rest would be properly directed to states, to charter-school authorizers, to philanthropists, to school districts—but not to Washington. Remember what misdirected policy guidance will bring to your stocking: coal—or nothing at all.

The GOP in Washington might not yet have its ducks in a row when it comes to education policy, but Republicans at the state level are a whole different story. These renegade reformers—Tony Bennett and Chris Christie immediately spring to mind—all have something in common: the man who serves as their education mentor. We refer, of course, to Jeb Bush—who has stepped into the fore of the national education-reform movement with his Foundation for Excellence in Education. While the governor of Florida, Bush brought a rigorous accountability system to the state, expanded charter schools and school-choice options, launched a far-reaching virtual-school program, and fostered early experiments with performance pay. Now, Bush has emerged as a thought leader on issues ranging from school choice to digital education, and has been acting as a sounding board for policymakers across the country, offering counsel on the nitty-gritty of policy and pointers on how to sell controversial proposals to elected officials and the public. And his soap-box audience is growing, as more and more state Republicans see education reform as a necessary means to a right-sized budget. From Maine to Minnesota, newly elected officials are taking to the podium to limit union power, rethink Cadillac benefits, and restructure teacher-tenure legislation. With their increased power and influence following the recent November elections—at least six states, Ohio among them, boast a Republican governor, Senate, and House—don’t be surprised to see major reforms pushed through on the coattails of the budget crisis. And don’t be surprised if many of those reforms look as if they were born in Florida.

“Strained States Turning to Laws to Curb Labor Unions,” by Steven Greenhouse, New York Times, January 3, 2011.

Still think the push-back against teachers unions is just a GOP thing? Think again. Illinois—a long-time blue state—is considering a bill that would link teacher tenure to student performance, allow districts to fire underperformers more readily, and dramatically curb teachers’ right to strike. And it is a handful of Democratic legislators who are leading the fight. Several of these lawmakers received campaign support from the reform group Stand for Children, which contributed $600,000 to nine candidates in Illinois last November. No longer do Democrats have to rely on the teachers union for campaign cash and organizational muscle—they now can advocate for change without facing political suicide. As the Wall Street Journal’s Stephanie Banchero writes, “the fight in Illinois is a microcosm of the shifting sands in national education policy” (remember Colorado?). Expect to see more like this as budget woes continue, the union line becomes increasingly tiresome, and Michelle Rhee gets her political machine up and running.

“Illinois Attempts to Link Teacher Tenure to Results,” By Stephanie Banchero, The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2010.

This timely and useful study provides precisely the type of information that financially-strapped school districts need to trim their bottom lines—without sacrificing student learning. Written by Susan Combs, The Lone Star State’s fearless comptroller, at the behest of her state legislature, the report identifies Texas school districts that achieve strong student performance while keeping spending growth at bay. Quite an assignment in a state that increased its per-pupil spending by 63 percent in the last decade (and that’s after taking enrollment growth into account). To determine which districts could deliver this formidable one-two punch, Combs employed two metrics. First, she and her team used a value-added model (controlling for various student, district, and campus characteristics) to measure academic progress over three years in reading and math. Then, they devised a spending index for each district and campus by comparing them to their “fiscal peers” (sites that serve comparable numbers and types of students and operate in similar cost environments). Based on a combination of these two metrics, value-added and spending data, each district or campus received a rating of one to five stars, indicating the extent to which it produced strong academic growth at a lower cost compared to peers. Five-star ratings, meaning fantastic student progress and low spending compared to fiscal peers, are rare. Only forty-three of the 1,235 school districts and charter schools analyzed received a five-star rating (eleven of which were charters). To bump up that number, the report offers cost-cutting solutions for districts—like relaxing class-size limits and sharing facilities and services. Though it stops short of recommending cutting teacher positions, the report takes a hard line on the ballooning administrative posts in Texas. Eliminate 1,500 positions, and bring the state back down to its 1998-99 levels, recommends Combs. It’ll save roughly $115 million annually in salaries alone. Along with the written report, FAST includes a nifty website that allows districts to compare their achievement, expenditures, and resource allocations to other districts. “The FAST system is a national innovation that should be copied by other states,” says Eric Hanushek. We couldn’t agree more: If we are going to do more with less, we need to know what the more or less gets us.

Susan Combs, “Connecting the Dots: School Spending and Student Progress,” Financial Allocation Study for Texas 2010 (Austin, TX: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, 2010).

If adoption of the Common Core state standards in ELA and math marks a state’s first baby step, then the implementation of these standards will be its first marathon. To ascertain how well states are moving through this multi-faceted implementation process, the Center on Education Policy surveyed state deputy secretaries of education in forty-three states: Thirty-six of those respondent states have at least provisionally adopted the Common Core standards, and eleven were Race to the Top (RTTT) winners. The major findings: On key implementation issues, like curriculum and assessment alignment, states still have miles to travel. The vast majority of states don’t expect full implementation of the standards until 2013 or later. And one truly interesting nugget: Only twelve of the states surveyed plan to supplement the Common Core standards with their own state-specific content. Another eleven will adopt the Common Core standards as are, and still eleven more are undecided as to their course of action. In fact, if there’s one message that comes from the study, it’s that many states still don’t know what they plan to do in terms of implementation. They may have started the race, but the question of “now what?” still looms large.

Nancy Kober and Diana Stark Rentner, “States’ Progress and Challenges in Implementing Common Core State Standards,” (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education Policy, January 2011).

Americans felt the earthquake of a “Sputnik moment” back in December with the announcement of the 2009 PISA results. This report from Education Trust delivers a non-trivial aftershock. More than one in five American youth who take the Armed Forces Qualification Exam (AFQT) fail to meet the minimum competency standards for enlistment. Note: this group is drawn from the slim 25 percent of youngsters in the U.S. who are even eligible to take the test in the first place (a high school diploma and certain level of physical fitness being among the prerequisites). Further, African American and Hispanic students score significantly worse than whites; about 40 percent and 30 percent of the two groups, respectively, fail to meet the Army’s standards. Truth be told, the study has many limitations—the most notable of which are the self-selected sample (including only individuals who voluntarily chose to take the test) and lack of socio-economic-status data. Still, the message is clear: The United States isn’t only under-educating future college-goers, as PISA results attest, it’s under-educating would-be service men and women as well. Though these individuals possess high-school diplomas, they lack the reading, math, science, and problem-solving skills needed to serve our nation. As Ed Trust states, “The loss is theirs—and ours.”

The Education Trust, "Shut Out of the Military: Today’s High School Education Doesn’t Mean You’re Ready for Today’s Army," (Washington, D.C.: The Education Trust, December 2010).