The Education Gadfly Weekly

Krista Kafer
Goldwater Institute Policy Report #212
October 17, 2006

This report out of Arizona expresses some of the discontent that's brewing in many states over No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Kafer argues that the federal law frequently conflicts with Arizona's own accountability system, AZ Learns. Because of differences in the way the two systems measure progress (AZ Learns uses a growth model, while NCLB relies on annual snapshots), a number of schools that Arizona designates as "performing" (or better) are deemed not to have made AYP under NCLB.  But opting out of the federal program would "jeopardize some $582 million in federal funding"--about 7 percent of Arizona's K-12 budget. Kafer makes two recommendations. First, the state's education department should study "whether the cost of compliance is greater than the federal funds received." Second, Congress should enact the "charter state" (or "Straight A's) provision that was promoted by conservatives in the late 1990s but dropped from the final version of NCLB. This provision "would enable states to have discretion over their federal funding in exchange for results-based accountability." The idea has appeal--states and their schools could very well benefit from increased flexibility in day-to-day operations. But the trade-off should be greater accountability for results--a national test anyone?--not more leeway to evaluate schools any which way. All and all, this report offers a good picture of how states might go about addressing their NCLB complaints (a little more thoughtfulness, a little less screeching). Read it here.

Paul Hill, Ed.
Education Next Books
2006

Probably charter schools are the most innovative education reform going today. And for that very reason, they have become targets of status-quo mongers across the land. This collection of essays by Koret Task Force members illustrates how charter schools have managed to flourish (and flourish they have--less than fifteen years after their inception, charters educate over a million students) in hostile environs. In Chapter 2, Fordham's Eric Osberg writes that charter schools often receive far less money that their district school counterparts, evaluates how some have surmounted this burden, and makes a convincing case for why charter schools deserve the same dollars as district-run institutions. Chapter 4 holds advice from Checker Finn and Paul Hill about the importance of top notch charter authorizing, and John Chubb writes in Chapter 5 about how the best management organizations have been able to expand the reach of charter schools without compromising the autonomy that gives such schools their character and uniqueness. Other authors--Caroline Hoxby, Paul Peterson, Brad Smith, and Nathan Torinus--all dispense their particular brands of expertise. This solid compilation touches on the varied facets of charter schooling. It gives a good picture of the rocky terrain in which charter schools take root and the dusty and arid environments in which they attempt to thrive. It puts forth worthwhile suggestions, based on past experiences, for how charter schools may best brave the elements and become sturdy and successful institutions. Read it here.

As far as legislative loopholes go, few are more preposterous than NCLB's provision that districts, rather than submit to serious reform prescriptions for their chronically failing schools, may undertake "any other major restructuring of the school's governance that produces fundamental reform." But while this invitation to tread the path of least resistance usually results in token gestures, some schools have actually rejected the district waffling and taken the law's intent to heart. Baltimore's Morrell Park Elementary/Middle School, where parents rejected previously used restructuring methods, is one. Like charter schools, it now gives teachers more freedom in the classroom. It also created a nine-member governing board to provide oversight and feedback (with the help of an Ed School, no less!). In Randolph, Massachusetts, Randolph Middle School has overhauled its operations, too. It abolished remedial classes, for example, and pushed students onto either the regular or advanced track. And while it's still too early to tell if such reforms will produce higher test scores, schools that take seriously the restructuring mandate deserve praise. That loophole, however, still deserves scorn.

"The challenge is being met at Morrell Park," by Sara Neufeld, Baltimore Sun, November 23, 2006

"A school's comeback formula: Expel cynicism, stress reform," by Peter Schworm, Boston Globe, November 26, 2006

Linda Seebach takes Gadfly to task in her recent Rocky Mountain News column for dumb demographic data and for leaving key questions unanswered. She's right that our generalizations about Middle America--made in last issue's "Heartland blues"--don't hold up very well in Colorado. Its economy is booming, not struggling, and unlike its neighbors to the East it's benefiting from an influx of highly educated workers. So how to explain its status as one of 13 states (most in the nation's mid-section) where poor and minority students haven't made any progress on NAEP over the past decade or so? Seebach doesn't tackle that one, so we will. Perhaps the state's newly arrived Hispanic students are masking gains made by Colorado's long-time Hispanic residents. Or--more likely--its mix of standards-based reform and choice-based reform is not high-enough octane to yield results for its neediest children. Either way, those are among the education issues deserving attention on the state's editorial pages. 

"Education ‘report' reveals a tale of two Colorados," by Linda Seebach, Rocky Mountain News, November 25, 2006

Common sense says principals should be able to hire the teachers they want and need. But in the realm of public education, where common sense is scant, school leaders, entangled in webs of collective bargaining and union-created staffing rules, are often forced to hire teachers that other schools reject. California is the first state to do something about it. This fall, under the leadership of Democrat Jack Scott, it passed SB1655 (despite predictable union opposition), which mandates that principals at low-performing schools cannot be forced to accept teacher transfers they don't want and gives them more leeway to hire the best teachers. The bill cleared the state Senate 33-1, and the legislature's lower house 59-12. Evidence collected by The New Teacher Project (see here) proved instrumental in this overwhelming, bipartisan victory. If such a thing can happen in Sacramento, perhaps it can happen anywhere. Every other industry knows that success is a product of finding, hiring, and retaining the best human capital available. It's time that public education embraced such common sense notions, too.

"Common Sense in Teacher Hiring," by Jack Scott and Michelle Rhee, Education Week, November 15, 2006 (subscription required)

The No Child Left Behind Act has 7 more years to meet its incredibly ambitious goal of educating 100 percent of U.S. school children to no less than "proficient" in reading and math. The odds are good we won't hit that target, at least not in an honest way. Even as too many states lower the bar for proficiency and artificially inflate the number of students hitting the mark, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress lay bare a stark reality: among the poor, less than 20 percent of students (and often far less) are reaching that goal in either subject.

It's not that we don't know how to bring such children to proficient, at least one school at a time. In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Paul Tough took a close look at a handful of schools (run by KIPP, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools) that are, in fact, educating large percentages of their poor students to proficient and beyond (see here). So why aren't more schools having the same success?

According to Tough, it's all a matter of determination, resolve and, perhaps, money. "We could," he writes, "...decide to create a different system, one that educates most...poor and minority students to high levels of achievement. It is not yet entirely clear what that system might look like...but what is clear is that it is within reach." In other words, we need to "just do it."

Tough has seen what is possible, and, like one marveling at a harvest moon on an autumn night, believes he can grab it. But is it really within reach?

The equation for getting low-income kids to learn isn't all that complicated, as Tough points out. The formula used at KIPP, Amistad, and kindred schools boils down to three practices, executed well:

1. Students are required to be in school longer-much longer-than their peers in traditional public schools.
   

2. Pupils are tested, and re-tested, to measure achievement. Lesson plans, teaching strategies, even whole curricula are adjusted based on how well, or poorly, students are learning what they should. Moreover, teachers are closely monitored and constantly working to improve their skills.
   

3. Students' behavior and values are aggressively shaped by school leaders and instructors.

What is complicated, however, is implementing these changes within today's rule-bound, bureaucratic system, with its collective bargaining constraints, bureaucratic regulations, and the inertia of 100-plus years of public education. It's no coincidence that all of Tough's profiled schools are charters, and as such have the freedom to do things differently and take control of their own destinies. In turn, this greater autonomy allows them to attract many top-notch, talented, and energetic teachers who are willing to work long hours for mediocre pay because they yearn for a results-oriented, break-the-rules environment. Replicating this atmosphere in the traditional system would be hard-maybe even impossible. But expanding charter schools--and getting more good ones-is no easy feat, either.

In the latest issue of Education Next (see here), Joe Williams records some of the barriers (many of them illegal) that districts erect to prevent innovative schools from entering or expanding in their districts. In New Hampshire, for example, the Franklin school district got rid of Franklin Career Academy by simply refusing to pay it the meager per student funding owed to the school ($3,340 required under the New Hampshire charter law). The sleight of hand was made possible because the state gives the money to the district to pass on to the school. The district said the funds were needed elsewhere, and simply refused to pay.

In Albany, New York, the local zoning board played the role of charter spoiler. Albany Preparatory Charter requested a variance on a piece of property it wanted to house its school, but charter opponents turned out en masse at public hearings and urged the zoning board to say no. Their arguments, Williams notes, were not only against Albany Prep, but against charters in general.

On the back of their flimsy arguments-alleging that the property was unsuitable for a school--the variance was denied. Funny, considering that for 70 years that exact property had served as Albany's Public School 3. (A state superior court intervened, ordering that the variance be granted.)

Were such stories anomalies, Tough might have reason to be confident that creating a system of schools to reach all poor children is "within reach." But they are not.

For the resistance to charter schools is not simply one district impeding the growth of one school; it's more often the combined forces of hostility toward charters by those in the education establishment and state charter laws that reflect this animosity.

Connecticut's Amistad Academy, for example, did what the professional educators said was impossible. Led by Dacia Toll and Doug McCurry, Amistad opened as a New Haven middle school with a class of students, many of whom were two or more years below grade level. By grade 8, these students were earning some of the best scores on the Connecticut Mastery Test.

Toll and McCurry wanted to replicate Amistad across the state, but laws limiting the number of charter schools and charter students have made it next to impossible to ramp up significantly in Connecticut. So they launched the Achievement First management organization and began opening new schools in New York City, which was more welcoming (though the state's cap on charters is an issue). "It's very frustrating," Toll told the Associated Press. "We would love to grow in Connecticut, but we can't be suicidal."

Similar tales emerge in many states. So even if you're Amistad, breaking a monopoly mindset takes years. (Ask Southwest Airlines, Sprint, or any of a number of once-upstart automakers.) In part because monopolies are so effective in limiting challengers. This is especially true in education. In addition to the examples above, there are caps on the number of charters that most states will allow (and these tend to be low--100 in all of New York, 60 in Illinois, and 50 in Tennessee); ten states don't even permit charters; and many charter laws are so poorly constructed that actually starting charters is near impossible (Virginia, for example, which has just 5 charters for a million-plus school-age children).

Tough finishes his essay with this challenge: We know what it takes to get poor children to succeed in school, so it's not too late for us to meet No Child Left Behind's lofty goal. "If in 2014," however, "only 20 or 30 or 40 percent of the country's poor and minority students are proficient, then we will need to accept that its failure was not an accident and was not inevitable, but was the outcome we chose."

What Tough doesn't fully acknowledge is that choosing a different outcome will require us to wrestle power from the education establishment, giving room to the KIPPs and Achievement Firsts and other stellar models to grow. On that front, the key resource needed is not money, but political will.

What are the odds of being able to grade 45 million standardized reading and math exams without error? If you said less than 1 percent, you're right. In just one recent example of a testing snafu, an Alabama school had a dozen students leave for greener pastures after state tests wrongly labeled it a failing institution. Such gaffes are often due to human error of the hard-to-prevent-all-of-it sort. But others seem to be more preventable. For example, McGraw-Hill hired a grader who wrote on his application that he majored in "Phylosophy/Humanity." Another grader wrote that she received a phys. ed. degree from "Methidist College." Still, such embarrassing anecdotes aside, much of the testing backlash is overstated. Inexcusable errors happen, and we should certainly feel sympathy for kids such as Shane Fulton, who "suffered anxiety and sleepless nights after a 390-point error dropped his SAT score." But while testing companies have a responsibility to correct their flaws, we needn't throw the entire testing baby out with bathwater. Evaluating students is not the problem. Poor performance by the testing companies is.

"How Test Companies Fail Your Kids," by David Glovin and David Evans, Bloomberg Markets, December 2006

Krista Kafer
Goldwater Institute Policy Report #212
October 17, 2006

This report out of Arizona expresses some of the discontent that's brewing in many states over No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Kafer argues that the federal law frequently conflicts with Arizona's own accountability system, AZ Learns. Because of differences in the way the two systems measure progress (AZ Learns uses a growth model, while NCLB relies on annual snapshots), a number of schools that Arizona designates as "performing" (or better) are deemed not to have made AYP under NCLB.  But opting out of the federal program would "jeopardize some $582 million in federal funding"--about 7 percent of Arizona's K-12 budget. Kafer makes two recommendations. First, the state's education department should study "whether the cost of compliance is greater than the federal funds received." Second, Congress should enact the "charter state" (or "Straight A's) provision that was promoted by conservatives in the late 1990s but dropped from the final version of NCLB. This provision "would enable states to have discretion over their federal funding in exchange for results-based accountability." The idea has appeal--states and their schools could very well benefit from increased flexibility in day-to-day operations. But the trade-off should be greater accountability for results--a national test anyone?--not more leeway to evaluate schools any which way. All and all, this report offers a good picture of how states might go about addressing their NCLB complaints (a little more thoughtfulness, a little less screeching). Read it here.

Paul Hill, Ed.
Education Next Books
2006

Probably charter schools are the most innovative education reform going today. And for that very reason, they have become targets of status-quo mongers across the land. This collection of essays by Koret Task Force members illustrates how charter schools have managed to flourish (and flourish they have--less than fifteen years after their inception, charters educate over a million students) in hostile environs. In Chapter 2, Fordham's Eric Osberg writes that charter schools often receive far less money that their district school counterparts, evaluates how some have surmounted this burden, and makes a convincing case for why charter schools deserve the same dollars as district-run institutions. Chapter 4 holds advice from Checker Finn and Paul Hill about the importance of top notch charter authorizing, and John Chubb writes in Chapter 5 about how the best management organizations have been able to expand the reach of charter schools without compromising the autonomy that gives such schools their character and uniqueness. Other authors--Caroline Hoxby, Paul Peterson, Brad Smith, and Nathan Torinus--all dispense their particular brands of expertise. This solid compilation touches on the varied facets of charter schooling. It gives a good picture of the rocky terrain in which charter schools take root and the dusty and arid environments in which they attempt to thrive. It puts forth worthwhile suggestions, based on past experiences, for how charter schools may best brave the elements and become sturdy and successful institutions. Read it here.