The Education Gadfly Weekly

Dan Goldhaber
Center for American Progress
December 2006

If teacher quality is the "most important schooling factor influencing student achievement," as this report claims, why aren't we putting better teachers in failing classrooms? The University of Washington's Dan Goldhaber argues that teacher pay is among the main answers. To begin with, he says, the "single" or "uniform" salary schedule keeps talented individuals from becoming teachers. This argument isn't new, but Goldhaber presents interesting data to back it up. He determined that the average salary gap between teachers and non-teachers ten years out of college is $18,904 for those who hold a non-technical degree; for math or engineering majors the gap is $27,890. Goldhaber then looks at ways to narrow these gaps. Although merit pay, knowledge- or skill-based pay, and so-called "combat pay" (see here) plans may never bridge this yawning gap, he thinks they do minimize the financial sacrifices that a teacher must make, thus attracting more high-quality candidates. (As evidence, he cites a RAND study which found that a $1,000 increase in beginning teacher salaries lowers teacher attrition by three to six percent.) The last section outlines the main hurdles to implementing these reforms. Goldhaber's approach here is balanced--he doesn't give the unions the shellacking they deserve on this issue--but he's fairly optimistic. The Department of Education has recently launched an initiative that will fund merit and combat pay pilot programs in various states and districts. And the A.F.T. is showing signs of acknowledging the need for pay reform. (Not the N.E.A., of course.) Those looking to join this campaign will find in this report a good map of the territory. Read it here.

Francisco O. Ramirez, Xiaowei Luo, Evan Schofer, and John W. Meyer
American Journal of Education 113
November 2006

This paper seeks to rebut Eric Hanushek and others who have argued that there is a link between the math and science achievement of nations and their economic growth. But its authors don't entirely disagree with Hanushek. They conclude "that countries with high science and mathematics achievement scores tend to grow somewhat more rapidly than other countries. This finding is consistent with the main inference reported in Hanushek and Kimko (2000) and very much in line with mainstream education policy discourse in the United States." So what's the issue? Well, these authors believe the picture is distorted by the Asian Tigers--Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan--whose strong growth in the 1980s skews the results (the data examined span 1970 through 2000). Yet even after dropping the tigers from the analysis, a correlation still exists (albeit a weaker one) between math and science achievement and growth. Perhaps this is why Hanushek told Education Week that "Their basic findings support the idea that test scores are important, even when you take out the Asian nations." The authors are right that the math-science rhetoric can become overheated at times. (Let's hear it for a broad, liberal education for all.) But at day's end this paper is little more than a debate over the strengths of the link between test scores and GDP. You can find it online here.

It's the time of year when columnists sharpen their pencils and launch the annual bashing of public schools and other governmental institutions for taking Christ out of Christmas.

Mostly, the uproar involves the fear that we're losing our national soul by excising the religious--i.e., Christian--heart from our culture. "In a society already known for its selfishness and consumerism," writes John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, "it seems that a religious holiday would be an opportunity to celebrate something more essential...something that would remind us of our nation's history--one that is dominated by a spiritual and religious heritage."

The tragedy, however, is not that we're taking religion out of schools. Instead, it's that five years post-9/11 we still confuse teaching religion with teaching about religion. Failure to do the latter deprives our children of a deeper understanding of Western culture. That's the rallying cry of the Bible Literacy Project, which is working to improve K-12 students' understanding of the Bible's place in Western literature, language, and philosophy.

Even more sorely needed, however, is a "Muslim Literacy Project." Our K-12 schools rarely teach Islam well--if at all. And we are harvesting the bitter fruits of that legacy today.

According to a recent article in Congressional Quarterly, just a half-dozen folks out of a thousand employees at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad--BAGHDAD!--are fluent in Arabic. Perhaps more people would have been moved to study Arabic, one of the world's great languages, had they as students had their imaginations fired by the richness of the Muslim culture.

The incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes, displayed his knowledge of the Muslim world by muddling basic questions about al Qaeda in the same CQ article. Asked whether al Qaeda was a Sunni or Shia organization, Reyes said, "Predominantly--probably Shiite." Wrote the reporter, Jeff Stein: "Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they'd slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball." Would that Reyes were the only one. Nor is the problem confined to Democrats. Stein notes that "Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., and Terry Everett, R-Ala., both back for another term, were flummoxed" by the same basic questions in an earlier interview, "as were several top counterterrorism officials at the FBI." (And then there were the confounding remarks by Trent Lott in September, who, when asking rhetorically, "Why do Sunnis kill Shiites?," concluded, "How can they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.") 

It's not as if school leaders haven't had fair warning that Islam is a force to be reckoned with. In 1979 Iranian students eager to install a theocratic government kidnapped and held 52 American hostages for 444 days following the fall of the Shah. Government officials were no smarter about the role religion plays in foreign affairs then than now. In a 2001 National Journal article I quoted a government official who, in the wake of the 1979 kidnapping, despaired, "Who ever took religion seriously?"

The prospects of tomorrow's leaders having any better understanding aren't good (see here). For the institutions charged with training our middle- and high-school history teachers about Islam--our universities--have repeatedly failed to appreciate the role that Islamic extremism plays in Middle Eastern political life. Even after the events of 1979, America's Islamic scholars were dismissing jihadism as little more than a "theological experiment and spiritual phenomenon" that wasn't worthy of their time or attention, writes Walid Phares in the November issue of Homeland Security Today (see here).

"More jihadist terror is to be expected--not less--if only because the doctrinal factory is still working, with greater technological resources at its command," he continues. "Hence, the essence of homeland security resides in its ability to mobilize the public and its talents and isolate the would-be terrorists before they become actual terrorists and strike."  

This requires understanding the subtleties of Islam. But many of the programs and organizations that are leading the charge to improve instruction about Islam in American schools, such as Charles Haynes at the First Amendment Center who overly worries about offending people's faith sensitivities, and the Muslim activist groups Council on Islamic American Relations and Middle Eastern Policy Committee, continue to soft-pedal the ugly underbelly of Islam (as well as Christianity and Judaism).

Our failure to teach about religion seriously will prove far more damaging to America in coming years than our stumbling over the right words to use in school around holiday time.

This holiday season, P.C. comes to holiday gifting. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, school administrators around the country are cracking down on gift-giving from students and parents to teachers. Some think such gifts "create an inherent conflict of interest and temptation to compromise integrity that we really don't want to be part of." Others worry that teachers who don't receive gifts, and students who can't afford to give them, will feel left out. But not everyone's playing Scrooge. In the presumably lavish-gift-getting Beverly Hills Unified School District, the superintendent says she wants "staff and teachers to feel that students and their families can show gratitude." Some curmudgeonly districts, however, have taken gratitude out of the equation by setting up a Teacher's Holiday Fund to which parents contribute and from which teachers receive equal payouts. A less sincere and festive holiday gesture the Gadfly cannot imagine. School administrators, if your conscience is keeping you up at night, consider following L.A.'s quite reasonable policy: cap the gifts at $100 and let the kids spread some joy. (P.S. Gadfly has no policy prohibiting lavish gifts from readers.)

"A Pandora's box for teachers," by Carla Rivera, Los Angeles Times, December 19, 2006

When Fordham released Fund the Child, a manifesto proposing weighted student funding (WSF), we knew the concept was attracting unaccustomed sleeping companions. After all, WSF's supporters include those seeking better resources for poor and minority students, those wishing to foster innovations such as charter schools, and those aiming to empower school leaders. The manifesto's list of signatories attests to that diversity.

Big though the WSF umbrella is, it doesn't shelter everyone who simply wants more funding for needy schools. Consider the so-called "adequacy" proponents who have, with some success, taken to the courts to impose increased public-school spending on their states. Most vocal among this crowd is Michael Rebell, now at Teachers College and coauthor (with Bruce Baker) of a recent Education Week commentary that denounced WSF as a "silver bullet" idea and dismissed its potential to empower principals.

Not only do these charges misrepresent WSF, but those hurling them do few favors for the cause of equitable school funding. Even if courts force greater spending on schools in certain states, cities, or districts, today's dispersal mechanisms will continue to channel the dollars to the best-funded and least-needy schools. Worse, many of those dollars will be used in ways that have little to do with student achievement. (Kansas City famously spent its $2 billion windfall on such amenities as an arboretum, a planetarium, and a wildlife refuge [see here].)

The truth is that absent fundamental reform in how we distribute and deploy education dollars, additional funding will do little good. WSF provides sunlight to education budgets, as layers of categorical funds and complicated formulas are replaced by a straight forward methodology--a base funding amount per pupil with additional weights for certain types of needy students. All, or almost all, of that money is portable, i.e. accompanies that particular student to the school of his/her choice. (Some manifesto signers would extend that range to include private schools.) This helps ensure that funds are actually directed toward students in the ways policy makers intend.

Without such reform, savvy principals can lobby their district office for greater resources, and their schools will receive newer buildings, more special programs, and better service from central-office helpers and consultants. The heck with the kids in other schools, however needy or ill-served they may be.

Without such reform, school-level budgets could continue to ignore big differences in teacher salaries. Because schools in most places now receive their human-resource "dollars" in the form of numbers of teachers, and because districts typically use an average salary to calculate how many "dollars" each teacher is worth (without taking into account how much individual instructors are actually paid), schools with the same number of teachers are assumed to be receiving the same "dollar" resources.

Almost never does that turn out to be true. If school A has 20 young teachers with $30,000 salaries and school B has 20 veteran teachers with $70,000 salaries, the schools' "dollar" resources are certainly not the same. In fact, the funding gap in that example would be $800,000. (And even if veteran teachers aren't necessarily any better than new teachers [see below], poor schools shouldn't have to come up short in terms of funding.) Without changes in how teachers and dollars are allocated, pouring more money into teacher pay will benefit adults, but not necessarily students. WSF can ensure that all schools receive the dollars they deserve.

And without such reform, huge inequities in funding will remain between high-poverty or high-minority schools and their wealthy, white counterparts--even within the same district. Marguerite Rosa and Paul Hill showed in a 2002 analysis of Baltimore City that teachers at a high-poverty school received almost $20,000 less than those at another district school.  A variety of reforms might help ensure that these shortfalls are corrected, but until dollars are allocated to schools based on the needs of individual children, we have little hope of ensuring truly fair funding of schools, where extra resources reach the students who need extra help.

Adequacy proponents are smart enough to pay lip service to the truth that money alone is no panacea; Rebell lists "strategic planning, professional development, parental involvement, curriculum development, alignment with state standards, and other educational actions" as steps that struggling districts should take. In reality, however, adequacy lawsuits and their proponents--and the judges who sometimes concur with them--have no means for ensuring these steps are taken. They offer only the promise that more money will be spent.

By arguing for ever more money, adequacy advocates risk numbing the public to the basic changes that are needed in how we fund and run our schools. Which can include getting far greater bang for the current bucks. The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, convened by the National Center on Education and the Economy, eloquently makes this case in Tough Choices for Tough Times, released last week (see here): "The core problem is that our education and training systems were built for another era, an era in which most workers needed only a rudimentary education. It is not possible to get where we have to go by patching that system. There is not enough money available at any level of our intergovernmental system to fix this problem by spending more on the system we have. We can get where we must go only by fixing the system itself."

Among this commission's many sound proposals: adopting WSF.

Taxpayers will eventually grow weary of funding a broken system. WSF presents an opportunity for fundamental repair. Anyone who believes that America's neediest students deserve better should support this idea.

Schools used to have problems with students spinning bottles. Now the youngsters pee in them. That's what happened at Salisbury Middle School in Salisbury, Maryland, which recently enacted regulations requiring every student be escorted to and from restrooms by a staff member. But when no one was available to escort three male students from Jeff Coalter's class, they urinated in an empty Pepsi bottle (with their teacher's consent). The Delmarva Daily Times reports that "some of the urine had splattered on the back wall" and that "the boys were given hand sanitizers and paper towels for them to clean up the area." Assistant Superintendent Allen Brown would not comment on how, if at all, the teacher was disciplined, but he took care to assure parents that the situation was an "isolated incident." You mean there's no epidemic of classroom urination in Salisbury? Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job.

"Parents, students speak out on classroom potty incident," by Candice Evans, Delmarva Daily Times, December 14, 2006

"At school, a potty break gone wrong," by Candice Evans, Delmarva Daily Times, December 13, 2006

Cheating has traditionally been the domain of desperate students. Now, desperate districts are joining the deceitful ranks. For years, pockets of teachers and administrators in Camden, New Jersey, have cultivated an "informal culture of cheating" as a means to boost test scores. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that many Camden teachers have received the same message from their superiors: "Raise scores by any means necessary...and many interpreted that to mean cheat." The Inquirer launched a ten-month investigation, combing through test results and school board investigations, to uncover hard evidence that corroborated rumors of cheating. And a state grand jury is now looking into the district's suspiciously high test scores from 2005. Who's the culprit? No Child Left Behind? Unlikely, considering that the Inquirer found that Camden's culture of cheating dates back to the 1980s. Talk about a need for restructuring.

"Cheating's roots deep in Camden," by Melanie Burney and Frank Kummer, Philadelphia Inquirer, December 17, 2006

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do." So spake Emerson. Let us hope that District of Columbia mayor-elect Adrian Fenty possesses a great soul, for he certainly lacks consistency. In April 2004, then-council member Fenty strongly opposed Mayor Anthony Williams's school takeover proposal and said, "There's no evidence that a superintendent cannot run the school system well reporting to a community elected board." When running for mayor, however, Fenty suddenly reversed his outlook. Now he likes mayoral control of schools. Regardless, we're glad he's keen to reform the District's woeful schools, and his education consultants are set to release a detailed plan in coming days. It's heartening to watch the new mayor put his much-remarked youthful vigor into improving D.C.'s classrooms. It would behoove him, however, to remember his earlier insight, that mayoral control is no silver bullet but one small projectile in a larger battle.

"Fenty Takes Council Members on a Field Trip," by David Nakamura, Washington Post, December 9, 2006

Dan Goldhaber
Center for American Progress
December 2006

If teacher quality is the "most important schooling factor influencing student achievement," as this report claims, why aren't we putting better teachers in failing classrooms? The University of Washington's Dan Goldhaber argues that teacher pay is among the main answers. To begin with, he says, the "single" or "uniform" salary schedule keeps talented individuals from becoming teachers. This argument isn't new, but Goldhaber presents interesting data to back it up. He determined that the average salary gap between teachers and non-teachers ten years out of college is $18,904 for those who hold a non-technical degree; for math or engineering majors the gap is $27,890. Goldhaber then looks at ways to narrow these gaps. Although merit pay, knowledge- or skill-based pay, and so-called "combat pay" (see here) plans may never bridge this yawning gap, he thinks they do minimize the financial sacrifices that a teacher must make, thus attracting more high-quality candidates. (As evidence, he cites a RAND study which found that a $1,000 increase in beginning teacher salaries lowers teacher attrition by three to six percent.) The last section outlines the main hurdles to implementing these reforms. Goldhaber's approach here is balanced--he doesn't give the unions the shellacking they deserve on this issue--but he's fairly optimistic. The Department of Education has recently launched an initiative that will fund merit and combat pay pilot programs in various states and districts. And the A.F.T. is showing signs of acknowledging the need for pay reform. (Not the N.E.A., of course.) Those looking to join this campaign will find in this report a good map of the territory. Read it here.

Francisco O. Ramirez, Xiaowei Luo, Evan Schofer, and John W. Meyer
American Journal of Education 113
November 2006

This paper seeks to rebut Eric Hanushek and others who have argued that there is a link between the math and science achievement of nations and their economic growth. But its authors don't entirely disagree with Hanushek. They conclude "that countries with high science and mathematics achievement scores tend to grow somewhat more rapidly than other countries. This finding is consistent with the main inference reported in Hanushek and Kimko (2000) and very much in line with mainstream education policy discourse in the United States." So what's the issue? Well, these authors believe the picture is distorted by the Asian Tigers--Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan--whose strong growth in the 1980s skews the results (the data examined span 1970 through 2000). Yet even after dropping the tigers from the analysis, a correlation still exists (albeit a weaker one) between math and science achievement and growth. Perhaps this is why Hanushek told Education Week that "Their basic findings support the idea that test scores are important, even when you take out the Asian nations." The authors are right that the math-science rhetoric can become overheated at times. (Let's hear it for a broad, liberal education for all.) But at day's end this paper is little more than a debate over the strengths of the link between test scores and GDP. You can find it online here.