The Education Gadfly Weekly

Tom Loveless, American Enterprise Institute
April 2005

Perhaps the most gripping contribution to this week's lively American Enterprise Institute conference on K-12 education philanthropy was a paper by Brookings's Tom Loveless examining the education beliefs and values of program officers at a cross-section of U.S. foundations. He mail-surveyed 240 such foundations, receiving a 53 percent response rate, so his data come from 128 education program officers. There was some debate at the conference about how representative they are of their species, but the data themselves are more than a little dismaying. Bottom line: those who make education grant decisions are even more "progressive" in their ideas about schools and schooling than professors in colleges of education! (Loveless used the same questions that Public Agenda had asked ed school faculty in 1997, which yielded the celebrated study Different Drummers, showing that the professoriate is markedly out of step with both the general public and with teachers themselves. See here.) For example, when asked if they felt kids' academic achievement could be improved by "emphasizing such work habits as being on time, dependable, and disciplined," just 44 percent of foundation program officers were positive, versus 60 percent of education professors. Asked if it would help to raise promotion standards between elementary and middle school and "only let . . . kids move ahead when they pass a test showing they have reached those standards," strong positives were registered by only a third of foundation staffers, compared with half the professors, 62 percent of practicing K-12 teachers, and 70 percent of the general public. There's plenty more here. The inescapable bottom line: if these folks are making funding decisions, expect private philanthropy in K-12 education to make matters worse, not better. Perhaps Loveless will revise his paper before it appears in the AEI collection (to be published by Harvard Education Press in the autumn, edited by Rick Hess) but you can find his fascinating draft on-line here.

Linda Darling-Hammond, Deborah J. Holtzman, Su Jin Gatlin and Julian Vasquez Heilig
Stanford University
2005

Linda Darling-Hammond has made no secret of her dislike for Teach for America (TFA), and her latest report attempts to prove the relative ineffectiveness of TFA teachers. These results are at odds with previous studies by CREDO (see here) and Mathematica (see here), which found that TFA teachers outperform traditionally-prepared teachers. Much of this is a spat about research methodologies, to which TFA and others have responded, (see here and here) casting serious doubt on Darling-Hammond's conclusions. But this is also a philosophical debate. To accept her results is to accept that the way to improve schools is within the current frameworks: give teachers greater autonomy and pay and ensure that they go through the right (and supposedly effective) certification programs. However, even if that would help, it is folly to hope that a new generation of Darling-Hammond-style career teachers can be found among today's college students; this generation has other ideas about its career paths (see here). And enticing talented youngsters into teaching may in fact be worth the high turnover rates Darling-Hammond laments. It's sad that some would prefer to tear down innovative programs that are making a difference in favor of an unrealistic vision for tinkering with the status quo. You can find this short and moderately technical report online here.

"Study sees positive effects of teacher certification," by Debra Viadero, Education Week, April 27, 2005

Michael H. Levine, Progressive Policy Institute
April 2005

In this six-page "policy brief," the education chief of the Asia Society argues that American students are learning far too little about the world beyond our borders and offers up four recommendations for rectifying that situation. No objections here. You can find it on line here.

The Texas state House has overwhelmingly approved a new bill that would dramatically alter its textbook landscape. HB 4 would replace the word "textbooks" in the state education code with "instructional materials," making it easier for schools to use state funds to purchase computer-based textbooks; provide a substantial increase in technology funding; and give additional flexibility to schools to update instructional materials by increasing the ease and frequency in which materials are updated. Currently, the State Board of Education selects textbooks once every six years, but could now approve new cyber-materials four times a year - allowing companies to simply update their materials, instead of forcing districts to buy brand new textbooks at hundreds of dollars per kid. "No longer do we have this delay to get good data to kids," said the bill's author, Rep. Kent Grusendorf. The bill would ultimately increase technology spending by $700 million over two years, but would also cut traditional textbook funding by $378 million. Right now, it is unclear how the bill would affect the never-ending battles over evolution and sex ed in Texas textbooks, or affect the state's onerous textbook guidelines. But it may encourage one of the outcomes Fordham advocated in The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption: breaking the stranglehold of a few multinational conglomerates over the $4+ billion textbook market in this country.

"House: Tech-savvy kids need high-tech teaching," by Jason Embry, Austin American-Statesman, April 21, 2005 (registration required)

"Bill alters textbook funding," by R.A. Dyer, Star-Telegram, April 21, 2005

Science magazine reports that researchers worry that the Department of Education's focus on medical-style randomized controlled trials in education research is premature, since the groundwork hasn't yet been laid for applying those techniques to education. "Rushing to do RCTs is wrongheaded and bad science," Alan Schoenfeld, a math education professor at Berkeley, told the magazine. "There's a whole body of research that must be done before that." Just three months ago in Gadfly, Rick Hess editorialized that randomized studies in education should be confined to issues for which they are suited - pedagogical and curricular interventions - and not applied to structural changes such as regulatory reforms or school board overhauls (see here). We definitely agree. Still, we tend to believe that those who bemoan the inappropriateness of randomized studies in education are blowing smoke. No, the science isn't perfect, the prerequisites aren't completely in place, and we lack a broad body of knowledge upon which to build carefully controlled studies. So let's start perfecting and building these things as we work to increase the education sector's capacity to evaluate itself in a manner that passes the laugh test.

"Can randomized trials answer the question of what works?" by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, Science, March 25, 2005

In 1998, San Diego City Schools launched one of the nation's most ambitious efforts at urban school reform. Superintendent Alan Bersin, former U.S. District Attorney for Southern California and President Clinton's "border czar," sought to reinvent the teaching and organization of the nation's eighth largest school district. In June, Bersin's stormy tenure will draw to a close. He departs as the longest-serving of the nation's big-city superintendents.

When first hired, Bersin named Tony Alvarado, former superintendent of District #2 in New York City, to serve as head of San Diego's instructional and curricular program. They moved aggressively to promote a strategy of coherent, uniform instruction drawn from Alvarado's work in Gotham. That agenda sparked sharp conflict with the San Diego Education Association, reflected in a persistent 3-2 split on the school board.

Bersin's administration enjoyed some visible successes. Between 1999 and 2004, the percentage of San Diego elementary schools scoring at the top rung of the statewide Academic Performance Index increased by more than a third, the number of schools in the bottom category fell from 13 to one, and the racial achievement gap narrowed. However, more disappointingly, middle school and high school achievement stubbornly failed to improve and some observers questioned the rigor of the district's curriculum, Alvarado's approach to teaching, and Bersin's handling of the union.

Bersin's departure provides an opportunity to ask what we have learned from his highly visible and often contentious tenure. To explore that question, and with the district's full cooperation, last year I assembled a team of analysts to examine the San Diego reform push. For me, five key lessons emerged from their appraisal.

First, the centralized, "managed instruction" model of improvement depends critically on the presence of a personnel and managerial infrastructure and on quality curricula. Alvarado gave unstinting attention to his centerpiece "Institute for Learning" training program for principals and faculty, and to building a corps of "peer coaches" to assist teachers. But his single-minded focus on these activities resulted in a lack of attention to infrastructure and curricula. As a result, the coaches, the Institute, and attempts to assign faculty where needed most ran afoul of the collective bargaining agreement's provisions on professional development, staffing, and teacher transfers. A balky human resources operation reliant on outdated technology inhibited district efforts to speed up hiring or promote more flexible staffing.

As for curriculum, despite seven years of diligent work developing a carefully calibrated professional development model for literacy, by 2004 the district still had not promulgated a coherent curriculum for reading and English. Consequently, while teachers were using the prescribed methods, there was too little attention to the quality of content. Some critics believe that the absence of a rigorous, clear curriculum helps to explain the district's apparent successes in elementary reading and accompanying failure to produce similar results in the more content-centered middle school and high school grades.

Second, Bersin strengthened his hand in pursuing reform by embracing statewide accountability (and later NCLB) metrics. He welcomed the "imposition" of the California Academic Performance Index, using it to identify troubled schools and target professional development and resources. However, Bersin's reforms on this front never reached their full potential. Moves to transfer or remove staff were stifled by work rules, while a 2002 fiscal crisis sapped funding intended for low-performing schools. The San Diego effort on this front is less a "success" than an example of what it will take to develop a focused strategy for improving chronically troubled schools.

Third, San Diego shows how dramatic efforts to improve high schools may conflict with other popular reform strategies. In 2004, when the district adopted a high-school reform model that featured a "portfolio" of smaller, more personal schools, it created tensions with the district's six-year-old emphasis on centralized, managed instruction. Allowing faculty to modify curricula to fit the mission of "specialized" high schools and giving them a voice in curricular choices, and the resulting inability to standardize content, means that mentor-coaches encounter math, English, or science teachers in a dozen small schools who may teach a dozen different curricula in a dozen ways. Coaches could mentor all of these teachers on pedagogical technique yet encounter great difficulty applying uniform, consistent guidance on instruction or content.

Fourth, relentless political leadership is part and parcel of being an effective district leader. Some thoughtful observers have asked if Bersin's style was unduly confrontational. What such critiques tend to downplay is that an effort to reimagine radically the way a district does business is bound to spark conflict. One could argue that Bersin would have been more apt to forge a cooperative relationship with the local teachers' union had he proceeded more slowly. But even in his unusually extended seven-year term, Bersin didn't accomplish all he had hoped. Moreover, his approach threw a spotlight on board votes and helped him hold together his 3-2 bloc for nearly seven years. So, we should be skeptical of suggestions that he could have fared much better merely by being kinder and gentler.

Finally, perhaps the most important lesson from San Diego is how limited the prospects are for radical improvement in urban public education absent structural change to personnel systems, technology, accountability, leadership, and compensation. For all their sweat and struggle, Bersin & Co. found their efforts to build the workforce they wanted stymied by statute and contract language. An outdated information system meant the district had to try to build on the fly the tools it needed to enable serious improvements to school accountability, human resource management, and budgeting. Bersin began his tenure with multiple advantages, including dazzling local and national contacts, personal charisma, a facile mind, polished negotiating skills, impeccable public service credentials, and a deft fundraising touch. If the legacy of his seven-year run is in doubt, the San Diego experience illustrates, above all, that even the boldest attempts to overhaul urban schooling are today undermined by the same institutional and organizational failings that they are intended to address.

Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the editor of Urban School Reform: Lessons from San Diego, published in April by Harvard Education Press.

Earlier this week, at an event marking the release of the new Koret Task Force volume, Within Our Reach: How America Can Educate Every Child, a key House Education Committee staff member made it clear - let us say, made it sharply clear - that No Child Left Behind would not, repeat not, be opened up to legislative tinkering before its regular reauthorization date in 2007. (Memo to the administration and its allies on the Hill: You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and denigrating your longtime friends and supporters in public is not as smart or effective as you think.) We certainly understand the administration's fear: Rewriting portions of the law runs the risk of having it gutted on Capitol Hill as unions, states, and assorted malcontents put pressure upon elected officials. But with states in open rebellion, departments being fined for non-compliance, and major editorial pages all over the map about the future of NCLB, we have to wonder if that risk might be preferable to the chaos of the past several weeks. We have no truck with states' whining about NCLB. But states do have one justifiable complaint: that the new "flexibility" scheme is arbitrary and cumbersome. Will someone please explain why this approach is preferable to an open, transparent, and definitive floor fight over what we mean by, and how we get to, leaving no child behind?

"Schools are states' domain," by Margaret Dayton and Paul Harrington, USA Today, April 18, 2005

"Buckle down on No Child Left Behind," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Hartford Courant, April 22, 2005

"Stand firm for educational fairness," New York Times, April 22, 2005

"Spellings test," Washington Post, April 23, 2005

"Some students left behind," Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2005 (subscription required)

"Why we'll mend it, not end it," by Diane Ravitch, Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2005 (subscription required)

"Late test results prompt TEA fine," by Justin Gest, Houston Chronicle, April 26, 2005

The New York Times travels to State U and finds mega-sized classes, disengaged and anonymous students floating through their four (or increasingly four-and-a-half, or five, years of college), and an environment where books and studying have been replaced with beer bongs and "power hours" (a shot of beer every minute for an hour). The Times profiles five students and their experiences at the University of Arizona (one describes passing out on the floor of a vacant fraternity house - although he drinks four nights a week and never attends class, he has still made the dean's list). Professors and students exist in a kind of mutual non-aggression pact: professors offer light material and grade easily, and students don't kick up a fuss. Universities blame a culture of apathy, limited state funding, and poor secondary preparation by high schools. A few states want to stem the astonishingly high dropout rate at big public universities by tying funding to such measures as retention, but this could perversely incentivize colleges to lower standards even further. In the end, the spiraling cost of tuition - even at state schools - might be the only thing that sparks reform. Eventually, parents are going to wonder why a college that costs tens of thousands of dollars per year nets the proud graduate little but overstuffed lecture halls, a degree of questionable value, and a cirrhotic liver.

"Survival of the fittest," by John Merrow, New York Times Education Supplement, April 24, 2005

The selection of the New York City Department of Education as a finalist for the Broad award surprised many seasoned observers in our fair city, especially because of score declines in 2004 in some of the poorest neighborhoods.

Over the past two years, the city school system has gone through a radical change - politically and pedagogically - as a result of the State Legislature's decision in spring 2001 to grant control to the newly elected mayor, Michael Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg hired prosecutor and trust-buster Joel Klein to be his chancellor; Klein in turn hired Diana Lam as his instructional deputy (she has since departed), and she selected the key programs and personnel. Klein unveiled his program in the spring of 2002; the program was installed in September 2002.

Integral to the reorganization was 1) a complete centralization of all authority; 2) the elimination of the policy making powers of lay central and local boards, which were replaced by toothless boards; 3) imposition of a mandated citywide curriculum for all but a select number of exempt schools; 4) creation of a Leadership Academy to recruit and train principals. (The Leadership Academy spent $25 million in its first year and produced about 65 principals.)

The reading portion of the mandated curriculum consists of "balanced literacy," which relies heavily on professional development by Teachers College and groups known for their adherence to the precepts of whole language. The math portion in the elementary grades consists of Everyday Math, which has brought protests from many mathematicians at New York University (and elsewhere), who consider it lacking in the teaching of basic skills.

It would be more accurate to say that New York has a mandated citywide pedagogy rather than a mandated curriculum, since teachers' daily (and in many cases, even their hour-to-hour and minute-to-minute) activities in the classroom are heavily scripted. What most people think of as "curriculum" (what students should know) is absent.

This mandated pedagogy is a curious blend of attributes: It is highly progressive in its philosophy but lockstep in application, and it is accompanied by intensive test prep, to make sure that students get good scores on the crucial state tests in reading and math.

In selecting New York as a finalist for the Broad award, the Foundation hailed the city for reducing the achievement gap. This was ironic, because the achievement gap actually grew in the past year.

Before the introduction of Klein and Lam's mandated pedagogy, the city schools had seen steady, sometimes dramatic gains in reading and math since 1999. In 2003, some of the poorest districts experienced major gains on the state tests of reading and math. So it was quite a challenge to the new regime to maintain the momentum of the previous years.

When the state test results were released in June 2004, fourth grade scores had declined across the city by 3 percent. The proportion of students who scored at the highest level on the state test (level 4) dropped by an astonishing 40 percent.

But the declines were even larger in fourth grade in key inner-city neighborhoods, where many schools experienced double-digit declines in the proportion of students able to meet state standards.

In District 4 - Harlem - the proportion of students in fourth grade who met standards fell from 41 percent to 31 percent; not a single school showed a gain.

In District 16 - Bedford-Stuyvesant - the proportion of fourth-graders who met the state standard fell from 52 percent to 36 percent after the introduction of "balanced literacy." In several schools in District 16, the proportion dropped by more than 20 percent.

Despite these worrisome developments, the city Department of Education hailed the 2004 results as positive.

State math scores were slightly better for fourth grade. The city saw a gain of 1.4 percent. But again the proportion of high-scoring (level 4) students fell by nearly 50 percent, and there were more losses than gains in poor neighborhoods.

Perhaps the city school system will register big increases in 2005. I rather expect that the scores will go up significantly, in light of the huge investment of time and resources in test preparation. But the Broad Foundation did not have the 2005 scores when the list of finalists was released - in fact, those scores won't be available until later in the summer or early fall. So those of us who are concerned about the direction of reform in New York City are left to wonder whether the Broad Foundation is giving the newcomers credit for the gains registered under previous chancellors and whether there was a rush to judgment.

Diane Ravitch is a trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and author of Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform.

Linda Darling-Hammond, Deborah J. Holtzman, Su Jin Gatlin and Julian Vasquez Heilig
Stanford University
2005

Linda Darling-Hammond has made no secret of her dislike for Teach for America (TFA), and her latest report attempts to prove the relative ineffectiveness of TFA teachers. These results are at odds with previous studies by CREDO (see here) and Mathematica (see here), which found that TFA teachers outperform traditionally-prepared teachers. Much of this is a spat about research methodologies, to which TFA and others have responded, (see here and here) casting serious doubt on Darling-Hammond's conclusions. But this is also a philosophical debate. To accept her results is to accept that the way to improve schools is within the current frameworks: give teachers greater autonomy and pay and ensure that they go through the right (and supposedly effective) certification programs. However, even if that would help, it is folly to hope that a new generation of Darling-Hammond-style career teachers can be found among today's college students; this generation has other ideas about its career paths (see here). And enticing talented youngsters into teaching may in fact be worth the high turnover rates Darling-Hammond laments. It's sad that some would prefer to tear down innovative programs that are making a difference in favor of an unrealistic vision for tinkering with the status quo. You can find this short and moderately technical report online here.

"Study sees positive effects of teacher certification," by Debra Viadero, Education Week, April 27, 2005

Michael H. Levine, Progressive Policy Institute
April 2005

In this six-page "policy brief," the education chief of the Asia Society argues that American students are learning far too little about the world beyond our borders and offers up four recommendations for rectifying that situation. No objections here. You can find it on line here.

Tom Loveless, American Enterprise Institute
April 2005

Perhaps the most gripping contribution to this week's lively American Enterprise Institute conference on K-12 education philanthropy was a paper by Brookings's Tom Loveless examining the education beliefs and values of program officers at a cross-section of U.S. foundations. He mail-surveyed 240 such foundations, receiving a 53 percent response rate, so his data come from 128 education program officers. There was some debate at the conference about how representative they are of their species, but the data themselves are more than a little dismaying. Bottom line: those who make education grant decisions are even more "progressive" in their ideas about schools and schooling than professors in colleges of education! (Loveless used the same questions that Public Agenda had asked ed school faculty in 1997, which yielded the celebrated study Different Drummers, showing that the professoriate is markedly out of step with both the general public and with teachers themselves. See here.) For example, when asked if they felt kids' academic achievement could be improved by "emphasizing such work habits as being on time, dependable, and disciplined," just 44 percent of foundation program officers were positive, versus 60 percent of education professors. Asked if it would help to raise promotion standards between elementary and middle school and "only let . . . kids move ahead when they pass a test showing they have reached those standards," strong positives were registered by only a third of foundation staffers, compared with half the professors, 62 percent of practicing K-12 teachers, and 70 percent of the general public. There's plenty more here. The inescapable bottom line: if these folks are making funding decisions, expect private philanthropy in K-12 education to make matters worse, not better. Perhaps Loveless will revise his paper before it appears in the AEI collection (to be published by Harvard Education Press in the autumn, edited by Rick Hess) but you can find his fascinating draft on-line here.