The Education Gadfly Weekly

Katrina Bulkley and Priscilla Wohlstetter, editors, Teachers College Press
November 2003

Katrina Bulkley and Priscilla Wohlstetter edited this Teachers College Press collection of nine papers examining various aspects of the ten-year old charter-school scene. Some are solid pieces that repay attention. But it's a very limited review. The editors say their focus was on "the value-added [sic] by charter schools," in particular how such schools "contribute to the landscape of public education and, especially, how they compare to district-run schools." So you know from the outset that this is not a book about educational freedom or choice, but about whether charter schools deserve a niche within the public-education enterprise. The evidence adduced here is mixed. In a concluding chapter, David Plank and Gary Sykes acknowledge that charter schools are here to stay - if only because parents like them - but say it's "increasingly unlikely that early hopes that charter schools will transform or revivify public education will be realized." The main reason for that glum conclusion, say the authors, is that charters aren't very different from conventional public schools. Left unresolved and largely unexplored is whether that's because the proliferating constraints on charter schools KEEP them from being very different, i.e., whether the immune system of a change-averse public education system is succeeding in suppressing this intruder such that no widespread innovation-infection could possibly occur. The book's ISBN is 0807743933 and you can obtain additional information at http://store.tcpress.com/0807743933.shtml.

United States General Accounting Office
October 2003

Do privately managed public schools do a better job than conventional public schools in raising student achievement? Chairman John Boehner of the House education committee asked GAO to investigate this question, and the report is now available, based on a look at six cities where fourteen schools have been managed by six firms since 1998-99. Analysts looked at two years of data (2000-2002) for those schools and compared them with regular public schools in the same cities that were attended by similar youngsters. The results: mixed and inconclusive. In Denver and San Francisco, pupils in privately managed public schools did better. In Cleveland and St. Paul, they did worse, in Detroit and Phoenix about the same. Why is this not too surprising? Because private management per se is no silver bullet. To succeed, the manager must be competent, possessed of a sound education plan and able to implement it well. The terms of engagement also have to be such that the manager has enough running room to make the needed changes. Yes, one could also say that of principals of traditional public schools: pick the right leader and give him/her enough autonomy for successful implementation of a sound education overhaul plan. Such a school's results are apt to improve. The same with out-sourcing. Don't think of private management as a panacea, therefore, but, rather, as another strategy whereby a reform-minded system might be able to effect change in some of its schools by changing their leadership and direction. But please select the right managers - and give them the leeway they need. Perhaps the most interesting factoid in this study is that, for all the furor about private management of public schools (and the dread "profit motive" sneaking into public education), the agency could locate just 400 such schools in 2002-3, "considerably less than 1 percent of all public schools." Judge for yourself whether this innovation has yet had a fair test! You can find the report at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0462.pdf.

Kevin Carey, The Education Trust
October 2003

The crux of this report, as in previous Funding Gap reports by the Education Trust (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=46#688), is straightforward: when it comes to funding K-12 education, schools that serve poor and minority students get substantially less state and local money per student than districts with the fewest low-income and minority students.  Determining how wide the gaps are between a state's wealthiest districts and its poorest depends on the "cost adjustment" used. This report uses the traditional 20 percent standard: if wealthy districts spend $10,000 per student, then "equality" (which is actually a form of intentional inequality) would call for poor districts to spend $12,000. By that method, the funding gap comes to just more than $1,100 per student - down from 1997. This seemingly small figure can translate into big numbers over schools and districts: "In Arizona, for example, the cost-adjusted funding gap translates into a [gap] of $36,225 in a typical high-poverty classroom, and more than half a million dollars in a high-poverty school." There is, however, some good news: The long-term trend remains positive, and most states have reduced the size of their funding gaps over the last four years or eliminated them entirely. Still, the report leaves the reader unsatisfied, since there's no discussion of whether funding gaps necessarily lead to achievement gaps. Is focusing on the funding gap a legitimate reform tool - or do changes in personnel, curriculum, training, and administration count for more? And doesn't it matter at least a little how well the money is spent? To see this report, surf to http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/EE004C0A-D7B8-40A6-8A03-1F26B8228502/0/funding2003.pdf.

Jennifer O. Aguirre and Matthew Ladner, Children's Educational Opportunity Foundation
November 4, 2003

The focus of this new report is the HORIZON school choice program in San Antonio. The program offered privately financed school vouchers to every child living in the Edgewood Independent School District, a district where more than 97 percent of the student population is Hispanic. The program began in 1998-9, and since then just 7 percent of students have accepted the vouchers. The result of this minimal intervention? Students remaining in the Edgewood system "have made substantial progress in closing the gap with the rest of the state, and hundreds of children have made substantial academic progress in private schools of their parents' choice." In addition, both the district budget and teacher salaries have risen. Were these increases due to the HORIZON Program? As always, it is difficult to determine causality and at least one skeptic believes it's "more likely that the increase was related to changes in teaching practices in response to state pressure to raise test scores" (http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/pepg/pdf/Edgewood-Final,%206.7.01.pdf). But such positive results certainly pique one's interest. Check it out for yourself at http://www.childrenfirstamerica.org/research/choice/CEOReportRevised10-28-03.pdf.

Though Congress will not complete (nor the Senate even commence) reauthorization of the Higher Education Act until next year, the debate is in full swing. This week's New York Times education supplement had a gaggle of articles dealing with the price of college, need- and merit-based financial aid, and tuition discounting (offering the most qualified or appealing students lower tuition). The implicit message: tuition is high (though not as high as most people think) and is rising at twice the rate of inflation in many schools (in part, some argue, because of federal student aid programs); elite private universities get more than their fair share of government aid for students despite having far larger endowments; and financial aid is not always being directed to the neediest students, in part because colleges discount tuition to serve their own needs, e.g., "to lure students who raise their stature in U.S. News & World Report rankings, to round out a basketball team or orchestra, or simply to even out an imbalance between men and women." There is some movement on Capitol Hill to reform federal student aid programs, including one proposal to withhold aid from schools that raise their tuition by more than twice the rate of inflation, and to introduce accountability into the higher ed system - think NCLB for higher ed. However, it remains to be seen whether any meaningful proposal can make it past the higher ed lobby, which over the years has killed off many cost containment plans. According to David Longanecker, who headed the Education Department's higher education office under President Clinton, it's a good bet that "'not much will happen' when Congress finally passes a bill."

"Five truths about tuition," by Christopher Shea, New York Times, November 9, 2003

"Rich colleges receiving richest share of U.S. aid," by Greg Winter, New York Times, November 9, 2003

"What a deal!," by Kate Zernike, New York Times, November 9, 2003

"I'm NOT going to pay a lot for this education," by James Schembari, New York Times, November 9, 2003

"Where does it go?," by Greg Winter, New York Times, November 9, 2003,

"Colleges face veritable SAT of challenges," by June Kronholz, Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2003 (subscription required)

Jay Mathews weighs in with an even-handed column debunking ten myths about NCLB. He gets it pretty much right, managing in the process to tweak both the law's critics and supporters. The one thing we'd take issue with is his expectation that lawmakers will "adjust" the "goal of 100 percent student proficiency in reading and math by 2014." The supposedly pie-in-the-sky proficiency targets of NCLB are the one thing that seems to have forced states and districts to face up to their shortcomings.
 
"No Child Left Behind Act: Facts and fiction," by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, November 11, 2003

At first glance, the move by Barnstable, Massachusetts to transform all of its traditional district schools to charter schools is a bold and worthwhile reform experiment. The fine print, however, shows that plan to be a bit more, well, complex. In fact, the schools would not become "Commonwealth" charter schools, which are freed from most bargaining, personnel, and contract rules and answer to the state board (a major recommendation of the recent Fordham report Charter School Authorizing: Are States Making the Grade?, at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=67). Instead, they would become "Horace Mann" charters, which require the approval of the local school board and teachers' union before they can even file an application for a charter, much less get approved, which is rather like forcing the chickens to ask the fox for permission to flee the henhouse. Still, this article in Commonwealth magazine gives a good view of how even half-hearted reforms like Horace Mann charters can yield results. We hope that Barnstable, having sipped at the freedom-cum-accountability arrangement, will come back for a full swig.

"Unchartered waters," by Michelle Bates Deakin, Commonwealth, Fall 2003 (registration required)

In 1999, the then head of the Colorado Springs NAACP, Willie Breazell, Sr. was fired for writing a pro-school choice column - an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the leadership of many African-American pressure groups. But Breazell bounced back to join the Black Alliance for Educational Options and become "a voice for the many minority parents who want change but have instead met resistance from their own national leaders." According to the Wall Street Journal, "vindication came last week when Breazell and three fellow pro-voucher candidates trounced union-supported competitors to win a majority of seats on the Colorado Springs School District 11 board, the largest district of the city." That's good news for choice supporters in the city, since the board's first order of business is to "determine whether to approve three new charter schools" and later to "decide if more private schools should be eligible to accept vouchers." We only hope that this new reform-minded board is able to maintain its majority in the face of what is bound  to be a fierce union battle in the next election cycle.

"Free Willie - II," editorial, Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2003 (subscription required)

Call it the last frontier of accountability: a former Louisiana school board member is pushing an initiative to withhold the $800-per-month salaries of school board members who oversee parishes with failing schools. "The accountability system is looking hard at everybody - the children, the teachers. Let's put the school board members in that category," said John Crose, recently of the St. John the Baptist Parish School Board. Crose has his work cut out for him, as the state school boards association has already come out against his proposal. In 2002, there were 282 failing Louisiana schools in 68 school districts, which rather suggests that there is ample blame to go around. Even if school boards are obsolete [see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=120#1505], so long as we're stuck with them how about a little accountability for their members?
 
"Plan would make tests high-stakes for boards," by Matthew Brown, New Orleans Times-Picayune, November 10, 2003

"Behaviorism," says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "purports to explain human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements. . . . To illustrate, consider a food-deprived rat in an experimental chamber. If a particular movement, such as pressing a lever when a light is on, is followed by the presentation of food, then the likelihood of the rat's pressing the lever when hungry, again, and the light is on, is increased. Such presentations are reinforcements, such lights are (discriminative) stimuli, such lever pressings are responses, and such trials or associations are learning histories."

Many educators dislike this view of teaching and learning. Children, they angrily observe, are not lab rats. They insist that love of learning should motivate youngsters and that love of children - and professionalism - should animate teachers and principals.

Indeed, the tenets of behaviorism are broadly opposed to the progressive ideas that rule the education profession. That's one reason why behaviorist pedagogies (such as direct instruction) are unpopular despite their effectiveness. Though most classrooms have elements meant to discourage bad behavior and reward good behavior - a "time out" corner for naughty kids, gold stars for those who do well, etc. - the basic doctrines of the field are quite different.

Yet standards-based reform is notably behaviorist in its view of education and human nature. It rewards children for attaining standards, doing well on tests, etc. (They get good grades and praise, they get promoted to the next grade, receive their diplomas, and so forth.) It sanctions them when they fail to meet standards: holding them back, making them come in on Saturdays or during summer, denying their diplomas, etc. Where politics doesn't block it, standards-based reform also rewards and punishes teachers, principals and other adults according to whether their pupils learn what they should, as prescribed in pre-determined standards and as measured by external assessments.

Like it or not, these are straightforward applications of behaviorist theory to the stimulation of learning by K-12 pupils and of effective instruction by their teachers. But does behaviorism work on institutions as well as people? Can it alter the practices of schools, school systems, entire states? Standards-based reform says it can and must, and No Child Left Behind rests squarely on this premise. It presupposes that Uncle Sam can construct incentives, rewards, interventions, and sanctions that will change the behavior of states that, left to their own devices, were not satisfactorily educating all their children. That states can do the same with faltering school systems. And that school systems can and will alter the practices of unsuccessful schools.

Thus, on the up side, schools (and systems and states) that change as they're supposed to and produce the desired results will (a) get (or keep) federal money, (b) reap praise and favorable comparisons, (c) attract more pupils (and thus bigger budgets), and (d) keep their jobs or get raises, promotions, re-election, etc.

On the down side, those institutions that fail to produce results may (a) lose money (either through its being withheld by higher authority or its erosion as students leave), (b) be subject to embarrassing disclosures and invidious comparisons, (c) be intervened in, reconstituted, or taken over, (d) lose enrollments, and (e) lose their jobs.

But how sure can we be that institutions respond to such stimuli in the intended ways? Obviously, that only occurs when the people who run, work in, or are responsible for them alter how they operate. A school's principal reorganizes the curriculum. A superintendent tells his principals that their jobs depend on their schools making adequate yearly progress. Board members insist on after-school tutoring to get more of their schools off the state hit list. A state "chief" deploys turnaround experts to help troubled LEA's devise reform plans. A governor is moved by his state's weak NAEP showing to persuade the legislature to re-cast the school finance system to reward strong performance or rewrite the teacher-certification rules.

People are the direct objects of behaviorist policies even when the policy goal is to change institutional practices. But this theory is open to challenge on three grounds:
First, it assumes that the affected people have sufficient leverage over their institutions to combat the forces of inertia, i.e., that the rat is strong enough to press the lever that dispenses the food. In many cases, that's so. Even with limited resources and minimal administrative support, a teacher can change the climate of his/her classroom. Principals can exert leverage on teachers, superintendents on principals, and so on up the chain. This works more often than you might think. (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=118#1483 for a recent example.) But the chain grows long - the relationship between state chief and local district is very different from that between principal and teacher - and pressures to change are resisted not just by human nature and bureaucratic distance but also by tenure laws, seniority, pay scales, due practice and much else.

Second, the theory assumes that the people whose behavior is meant to change possess sufficient know-how to take the actions that will yield better results, i.e., they have the savvy to replace a broken lever with one that is known to work. Well, some do, some don't. If the principal knew how to make her teachers more effective, perhaps he or she would already have done so. If the superintendent knew how to intervene in struggling schools, fewer would be in that condition.

Third, those being pressed to change are also pushed in the opposite direction by, for example, the perverse tendency of Title I and other funding formulas to "punish" successful schools by withdrawing dollars from them; the pressure from parents not to lengthen the school day or year; the money dangled by legislators for schools that take time to celebrate Wisconsin cheese or Maine lobsters; the dollars to be raised by pausing in reading and math to make room for the school carnival or magazine sale; the status problems that follow when a basketball team loses because its players are cramming for state proficiency tests - and on and on and on.

Over the years, I've gradually embraced a behaviorist view of educating children. Charming as I find the image of girls and boys as wild flowers that bloom when ready, we'll get farther by seeing education as systematic agriculture that requires regular plowing, planting, fertilizing, and weeding. Some people learn some things because they want to - but more people learn more things because tangible rewards accrue when they do and unpleasantness follows when they don't.

But does this work with institutions, too? That's the big unanswered question for standards-based reformers. And, come to think of it, for choice-based reformers, too.

Good news on teacher quality: the Idaho state board of education has voted to accept the new Passport to Teaching test as a route to certification. Developed by the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, the test makes mastery of content knowledge the central factor in determining whether a teacher is qualified. Idaho joins Pennsylvania in accepting the test; we hope other states follow suit.

"Idaho board votes to accept new teacher test for licensure," by Julie Blair, Education Week, November 12, 2003 (registration required)

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), better known as the Nation's Report Card, has been used for 34 years to test representative samples of students in math, reading, writing, geography, U.S. history, and other subjects. Whereas previous NAEP tests were given to samples of students in states that volunteered, NCLB requires that ALL 50 states must take the test every two years in reading and math (in grades 4 and 8). The results from the first round of NCLB-driven NAEP testing will be released this afternoon and should provide a fascinating state-by-state comparison of student achievement. According to some, "NAEP now becomes a sort of 'truth serum' for states," offering a "telling comparison" between state and federal tests. We hope so. Watch this space next week for details on the results and their implications.

"The Nation's Report Card"

"First Nationwide Test to Compare Students" by Greg Toppo, USA Today, November 11, 2003

Jennifer O. Aguirre and Matthew Ladner, Children's Educational Opportunity Foundation
November 4, 2003

The focus of this new report is the HORIZON school choice program in San Antonio. The program offered privately financed school vouchers to every child living in the Edgewood Independent School District, a district where more than 97 percent of the student population is Hispanic. The program began in 1998-9, and since then just 7 percent of students have accepted the vouchers. The result of this minimal intervention? Students remaining in the Edgewood system "have made substantial progress in closing the gap with the rest of the state, and hundreds of children have made substantial academic progress in private schools of their parents' choice." In addition, both the district budget and teacher salaries have risen. Were these increases due to the HORIZON Program? As always, it is difficult to determine causality and at least one skeptic believes it's "more likely that the increase was related to changes in teaching practices in response to state pressure to raise test scores" (http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/pepg/pdf/Edgewood-Final,%206.7.01.pdf). But such positive results certainly pique one's interest. Check it out for yourself at http://www.childrenfirstamerica.org/research/choice/CEOReportRevised10-28-03.pdf.

Katrina Bulkley and Priscilla Wohlstetter, editors, Teachers College Press
November 2003

Katrina Bulkley and Priscilla Wohlstetter edited this Teachers College Press collection of nine papers examining various aspects of the ten-year old charter-school scene. Some are solid pieces that repay attention. But it's a very limited review. The editors say their focus was on "the value-added [sic] by charter schools," in particular how such schools "contribute to the landscape of public education and, especially, how they compare to district-run schools." So you know from the outset that this is not a book about educational freedom or choice, but about whether charter schools deserve a niche within the public-education enterprise. The evidence adduced here is mixed. In a concluding chapter, David Plank and Gary Sykes acknowledge that charter schools are here to stay - if only because parents like them - but say it's "increasingly unlikely that early hopes that charter schools will transform or revivify public education will be realized." The main reason for that glum conclusion, say the authors, is that charters aren't very different from conventional public schools. Left unresolved and largely unexplored is whether that's because the proliferating constraints on charter schools KEEP them from being very different, i.e., whether the immune system of a change-averse public education system is succeeding in suppressing this intruder such that no widespread innovation-infection could possibly occur. The book's ISBN is 0807743933 and you can obtain additional information at http://store.tcpress.com/0807743933.shtml.

Kevin Carey, The Education Trust
October 2003

The crux of this report, as in previous Funding Gap reports by the Education Trust (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=46#688), is straightforward: when it comes to funding K-12 education, schools that serve poor and minority students get substantially less state and local money per student than districts with the fewest low-income and minority students.  Determining how wide the gaps are between a state's wealthiest districts and its poorest depends on the "cost adjustment" used. This report uses the traditional 20 percent standard: if wealthy districts spend $10,000 per student, then "equality" (which is actually a form of intentional inequality) would call for poor districts to spend $12,000. By that method, the funding gap comes to just more than $1,100 per student - down from 1997. This seemingly small figure can translate into big numbers over schools and districts: "In Arizona, for example, the cost-adjusted funding gap translates into a [gap] of $36,225 in a typical high-poverty classroom, and more than half a million dollars in a high-poverty school." There is, however, some good news: The long-term trend remains positive, and most states have reduced the size of their funding gaps over the last four years or eliminated them entirely. Still, the report leaves the reader unsatisfied, since there's no discussion of whether funding gaps necessarily lead to achievement gaps. Is focusing on the funding gap a legitimate reform tool - or do changes in personnel, curriculum, training, and administration count for more? And doesn't it matter at least a little how well the money is spent? To see this report, surf to http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/EE004C0A-D7B8-40A6-8A03-1F26B8228502/0/funding2003.pdf.

United States General Accounting Office
October 2003

Do privately managed public schools do a better job than conventional public schools in raising student achievement? Chairman John Boehner of the House education committee asked GAO to investigate this question, and the report is now available, based on a look at six cities where fourteen schools have been managed by six firms since 1998-99. Analysts looked at two years of data (2000-2002) for those schools and compared them with regular public schools in the same cities that were attended by similar youngsters. The results: mixed and inconclusive. In Denver and San Francisco, pupils in privately managed public schools did better. In Cleveland and St. Paul, they did worse, in Detroit and Phoenix about the same. Why is this not too surprising? Because private management per se is no silver bullet. To succeed, the manager must be competent, possessed of a sound education plan and able to implement it well. The terms of engagement also have to be such that the manager has enough running room to make the needed changes. Yes, one could also say that of principals of traditional public schools: pick the right leader and give him/her enough autonomy for successful implementation of a sound education overhaul plan. Such a school's results are apt to improve. The same with out-sourcing. Don't think of private management as a panacea, therefore, but, rather, as another strategy whereby a reform-minded system might be able to effect change in some of its schools by changing their leadership and direction. But please select the right managers - and give them the leeway they need. Perhaps the most interesting factoid in this study is that, for all the furor about private management of public schools (and the dread "profit motive" sneaking into public education), the agency could locate just 400 such schools in 2002-3, "considerably less than 1 percent of all public schools." Judge for yourself whether this innovation has yet had a fair test! You can find the report at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0462.pdf.