The Education Gadfly Weekly

CBI
March 2005

From England's CBI, a lobbying organization that terms itself the "voice of business," comes this 40-page look at some UK efforts to turn around faltering local education agencies (LEAs) via private-sector interventions. From 1999-2001, Britain's labor government "outsourced" various functions in nine ultra-low-performing LEAs to private sector partners - and opted not to do so with eleven other such LEAs. This analysis compares the performance of the two groups of LEAs and finds that the privately-outsourced districts outperformed the others and improved more than the national average. Though the specific interventions varied (they are described in an appendix), their overall success is attributed to six factors, such as improved governance, the "discipline of contracting," and "new leadership and management." England has not, however, sustained this "market" of private sector intervenors, mostly because of political objections. The CBI, not surprisingly, recommends that government focus on ensuring a "greater diversity of supply in the provision of education support services and frontline schooling." Though international parallels have their limits, this one is interesting in light of NCLB's push for states to intervene in underperforming Title I districts. It may suggest some new (and doubtless contentious) ways of doing so. You can find the report online here and a press release here.

The Johnson Foundation
Education 2005

The new Wingspread Journal has a series of articles that focus on improving teacher quality. One interesting case study review, "What We Can Learn from the Chinese," compares American and Chinese fifth-grade classrooms. Compared to American teachers, the Chinese sample school's teachers were paid substantially less, had class sizes more than twice that of American classrooms, and were often only high school graduates - yet their students performed at much higher levels than American students. Why? The authors attribute it to teacher training and quality. Chinese teachers are experts in their core subject (often performing research or collaborating with university scholars) and spend only one to two hours a day teaching it. More time is then spent correcting homework and providing feedback. In contrast, American teachers often teach multiple subjects, which diminishes their subject knowledge and instructional effectiveness. The authors, however, insert a confusing complaint about Chinese national standards and national exams for university, which put "enormous pressures on students and teachers." Might it be that these tough standards create a culture where students are competing through their entire education and thus driven to learn? The study concludes, "American teachers are more prepared and have more resources to obtain high student achievement than Chinese teachers. We can stop complaining about the lack of resources or large class size. What we need is a fundamental rethinking and restructuring of the American classroom." You can read this study and the rest of the articles here.

Patricia J. Kannapel and Stephen K. Clements, Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence
February 2005

Kentucky's useful Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence is the source of this worthy 30-pager, the latest in America's endless effort to ascertain why some schools do better with poor kids than others. Decades of research on "effective schools," a couple of terrific books, multiple databases and number-crunchers, innumerable profiles of successful schools, and all sorts of articles and studies with titles like "against the odds," "despite the odds," and "no excuses," comprise a veritable cottage industry of analysis of this tantalizing topic. In this manifestation (paid for by the Ford Foundation), the Prichard Committee's researchers identified 26 Kentucky elementary schools that manifest key signs of strong performance despite lots of low-income students, then selected eight of them for close-up audit by visiting experts. These schools' characteristics were then compared with eight low-performing, high-poverty schools. Much of what they found in the good schools was typical of this genre: high expectations "communicated in concrete ways"; a "caring, nurturing atmosphere"; a strong academic focus combined with much use of assessment data at the individual student level; collaborative decision-making; a strong faculty work ethic; and close attention to who is teaching what in the school. What surprised the analysts is that school leadership (i.e., the principal) didn't seem to matter much from high to low-performing schools and the district's influence upon the school "was less direct than had been anticipated." No policy recommendations follow but you may want to dig around in these findings on your own. You can find the report here.

Ted Kolderie, Education Evolving
January 2005

Ted Kolderie, one of the foremost architects and sages of the charter-school concept, now affiliated with a stimulating Minnesota-based outfit named Education Evolving, has written another in his series of thoughtful status reports on education's "open sector." It recaps in lucid terms his important distinction between "chartering" as an idea and process that isn't sufficiently attended to, and the "charter schools" that result from it and that we tend to obsess about, and explains how the former can be doing very well even as the latter struggle. Just five pages long, it's well worth your time, and can be located here.

The New York Sun reports that Saudi Arabia has given Columbia University's Middle East Institute annual grants of $15,000 since 2002 to support "outreach" programs, which allow Columbia faculty and graduate students to instruct many of New York's public school teachers about how to teach Middle East politics. Rashid Khalidi, head of the Middle East Institute, wrote government-owned Saudi Aramco (from which the money came) to thank them for enabling the Institute to be "more proactive and seek out wider outreach opportunities," activities that include, besides the teaching program, public lectures and a one-day teacher "sensitivity" training on how to teach issues related to Islam. In the past, Khalidi has attacked Israel's policies as "racist" and lauded the Palestinian "resistance." This case is just another example of well-funded special interests hijacking a curriculum, and not the first time Columbia has been implicated. Last year, Columbia was in trouble for failing to report a gift of over $250,000 from an unnamed Saudi individual. Also in 2004, the Fordham Foundation published The Stealth Curriculum, which, among other things, critiqued how Islamic history is taught and pointed to teacher training programs like the one at Columbia as culprits for their unbalanced appraisal of Islamic history. Author Sandra Stosky revealed that a Columbia faculty member supported the Arab World Studies Notebook, which is blatant Wahhabist propaganda.

"Saudis funded Columbia program at institute that trained teachers," by Jacob Gershman, New York Sun, March 10, 2005

"Supplementary text on Arab world elicits criticism," by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, Education Week, March 2, 2005 (subscription required)

In the New York Times, Diane Ravitch - as is her wont - yells "Stop!" to the tide of governors, policy wonks, and technology moguls who have recently fingered high schools as the weak link in American K-12 education. Not that she thinks high schools are doing their job: standards and achievement remain appallingly low, and the present-day comprehensive high school "tries and fails to be all things to all students." But, she notes, "you have to consider what high schools are dealing with. When American students arrive as freshmen, nearly 70 percent are reading below grade level. . . . It is hardly fair to blame high schools for the poor skills of their entering students." In fact, Ravitch notes, high schools are in some ways better than primary schools, since high school teachers are more likely to be teaching in their area of expertise. Instead of focusing solely on high schools, Ravitch concludes, we ought to be raising standards throughout the entire K-12 system, so that students enter high schools with the skills they need to succeed there, in higher education, and in the workplace. Ravitch also raises doubts about the Gates Foundation's small-schools initiative and endorses a high school reform plan from the National Association of Scholars (see here) that would create separate "college-prep" and "technical" tracks for high school students, bound together by a high-quality core curriculum in English, math, science, and history.

"Failing the wrong grades," by Diane Ravitch, New York Times, March 15, 2005

The old SAT is dead, but The Economist offers a proper eulogy, crediting it for "producing one of the great silent social revolutions in American history - the rise of the meritocracy." In the 1930s, Harvard president James Bryant Conant determined to break the WASP stranglehold  that populated America's top colleges and universities with the feckless children of wealth. The SAT brought lower and middle income students into elite universities in record numbers and created the modern American meritocracy that has been the engine of America's economic growth and social equalization for half a century. The SAT allowed more opportunities for all students to achieve to their full potential. The Economist worries that the new SAT, with its writing requirement and junking of the analogy section, might signal a return back to something like the old WASPocracy, since it will reward students who have been rigorously coached in essay-writing. Wealthy students, who already hire companies to write and polish their applications, might again flood the elite colleges, taking advantage of their connections and resources, and crowd out lower-income students.

"In praise of the SAT," The Economist, March 10, 2005 (subscription required)

Last month we reported that a Rhode Island school district had cancelled its annual spelling bee on the dubious grounds that it violated NCLB. Well, we're happy to report that the district bowed to public pressure and held the competition, but not without some changes. Still terrified about what the bee would do to students' self esteem (as the bee, of course, is about "some kids being winners, some kids being losers"), the district awarded every student a certificate of participation. Did Johnny spell apple with a Q? No problem - everyone is a winner! Sarah McGill correctly spelled "vegetarian" to advance to the state finals. No word yet on how traumatized her peers are after their defeat.

"Spelling bees gain popularity nationwide," by Brooke Donald, Associated Press, March 15, 2005

"The spirit of competition," by Elizabeth Gudrais, The Providence Journal, February 17, 2005

"Cancelled spelling bee reinstated," World Net Daily, February 2, 2005

Only Nixon, it is said, could go to China, and perhaps only Arthur Levine could go to our schools of education. (The analogy is flawed since Nixon, upon arrival, did not proceed to bash the Chinese government, but you get the point.) This week, Levine, president of Columbia University's Teachers College, released the first report in a planned series on education schools, the fruit of a four-year study that included national surveys of deans and faculty and a host of site visits and syllabus research. This one, called "Educating School Leaders," looks at leadership training programs for principals and superintendents. Future editions will include reports on teacher training and education research.

Though the early pages laud (at great length) the wondrous diversity of American ed schools, when he gets down to brass tacks Levine could hardly be more clear—or more damning. Assessed against nine criteria spanning curriculum, faculty, admission standards, and financial resources, the majority of education leadership programs, he says, "range from inadequate to appalling, even at some of the nation's leading universities." Ed school leadership programs fail collectively on every one of Levine's nine criteria. For example:

Their curricula are disconnected from the needs of leaders and their schools. Their admission standards are among the lowest in American graduate schools. Their professoriate is ill-equipped to educate school leaders. Their programs pay insufficient attention to clinical education and mentorship by successful practitioners. The degrees they award are inappropriate to the needs of today's schools and school leaders. Their research is detached from practice. And their programs receive insufficient resources.

Levine blasts ed schools for engaging in a "race to the bottom" to shovel degrees out the door, the better to satisfy school districts that award raises and bonuses for graduate credit, no matter the quality of the program or its applicability to what a principal or superintendent actually does. Curricula are often disconnected from the actual needs of school leaders, as these schools seek to ape the arts/sciences model of graduate education without resting upon the body of scholarly research and evidence that sustains other graduate programs. In short, they're a mess, with only a few bright spots (Vanderbilt's Peabody and Wisconsin-Madison among them) in their dim universe.

Levine's report is a self-conscious attempt to emulate the celebrated 1910 "Flexner Report," funded by the Carnegie Corporation. Flexner famously excoriated the quacks, phrenologists, and snake-oil salesmen that populated medical education at the time. (See here for an account.) His report is credited for sparking wide-ranging reforms that made America's physician training programs the most rigorous and respected in the world. Let's hope Levine's project has the same effect on education schools.

One important difference, however, is that Flexner named the names of flawed institutions as well as good ones. Levine doubtless wants to be gentlemanly, as well as to retain his invitation to the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, but if the nation's ed leadership programs are as awful as he suggests, he ought to identify (and excoriate) specific programs. Yet he plays coy, for example, in describing Eminent University Graduate School of Education, on the palm-tree-lined campus of a newer but prestigious research university, where one administrator admitted that some students have GRE scores "just above what you get for filling out the form" and the dean referred to off-campus satellite facilities as "a festering sore." Well, if Berkeley—there, I've said it—is wasting taxpayer money admitting morons and foisting them off on California school districts as highly trained professionals, then maybe the time has come to be candid about it.

This is the central flaw in Levine's otherwise compelling study: circumspection and an occasional unwillingness to go where the evidence leads. He does call for leadership programs to be evaluated rigorously and the weak members of the herd to be culled, a good start. And one of his recommendations—states and districts should stop handing out raises for graduate credits—gets to the heart of the rotten bargain many of these schools have cut: full-tuition-paying students (or increased state subsidies) in exchange for open admission and low standards. But Levine studiously avoids mentioning the possibility of a value-added component to determining raises and bonuses for administrators, and in the end, remains focused on process, not outcomes.

He urges that the Ph.D. in education be reserved for future scholars and professors, while the Ed.D. should be eliminated as a monstrous waste of time and energy (and he's certainly right there), while a new M.B.A.-like master's degree should be instituted to impart real-life school administration skills. Not bad. But the new "master's in ed administration" that he proposes begs the question: why not get an M.B.A. in the first place? Why not create "education" tracks within M.B.A. programs, much as happened with M.B.A.'s in "non-profit management" or "health care systems"?

Alternatively, let's drop the ed leadership programs altogether and allow states and school districts to seek the skills they need, whether for a principalship or the central office, from whoever possesses them—lawyers or accountants or retired colonels or wherever the needed skills lie. That was the suggestion of the joint Fordham-Broad manifesto, Better Leaders for America's Schools, now almost two years old but highly relevant to this debate. (And which, we're gratified to see, Levine notes and even offers qualified praise.)

Let us not be too negative. Arthur Levine has done a tremendous service to the education leadership debate by telling the truth—however qualified, masked, or edited his statements sometimes are. Our schools of education are a disaster. They aren't doing their job. Where we disagree with Dr. Levine is the question of whether they will ever be capable of doing the job that needs doing.

Meanwhile, we await with some eagerness his next installment, due this fall.

Justin Torres is research director of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

"Educating School Leaders," by Arthur Levine, Teachers College, March 2005

"Study blasts leadership preparation," by Jeff Archer, Education Week, March 16

"Principals pass, then fail," USA Today, March 14, 2005

"Study: School leaders poorly educated," by Ben Feller, Associated Press, March 15, 2005

"Principals who can lead," Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, March 15, 2005

The Palm Beach Post reports that Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Education Commissioner John Winn are changing their tune on NCLB requirements. Despite promises to the contrary, the state recently met "informally" with U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to discuss lowering their adequate yearly progress benchmarks. Winn noted that changes are needed because Florida "has such a high number of schools (77 percent) not making adequate yearly progress." Their struggles are mainly a result of bravely bucking national trends and setting high interim goals. Most other states set miniscule benchmarks now, delaying major achievement gains until closer to 2014 (see "Adequate Yearly Progress or Balloon Mortgage?" for more). Watching so many other states handily meet their own weak benchmarks, the Sunshine State is, reasonably, beginning to see merit in the path of least resistance. We can't blame them for the temptation, but we hope they'll reconsider and stay the course. If they do, when the going gets tough for the states with "balloon payments" of progress to make, Florida will be laughing last.

"Florida may lower student achievement standards," by Nirvi Shah and Cynthia Kopkowski, Palm Beach Post, March 16, 2005

"Florida: Getting it all together?" by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Education Gadfly, June 17, 2004

CBI
March 2005

From England's CBI, a lobbying organization that terms itself the "voice of business," comes this 40-page look at some UK efforts to turn around faltering local education agencies (LEAs) via private-sector interventions. From 1999-2001, Britain's labor government "outsourced" various functions in nine ultra-low-performing LEAs to private sector partners - and opted not to do so with eleven other such LEAs. This analysis compares the performance of the two groups of LEAs and finds that the privately-outsourced districts outperformed the others and improved more than the national average. Though the specific interventions varied (they are described in an appendix), their overall success is attributed to six factors, such as improved governance, the "discipline of contracting," and "new leadership and management." England has not, however, sustained this "market" of private sector intervenors, mostly because of political objections. The CBI, not surprisingly, recommends that government focus on ensuring a "greater diversity of supply in the provision of education support services and frontline schooling." Though international parallels have their limits, this one is interesting in light of NCLB's push for states to intervene in underperforming Title I districts. It may suggest some new (and doubtless contentious) ways of doing so. You can find the report online here and a press release here.

Patricia J. Kannapel and Stephen K. Clements, Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence
February 2005

Kentucky's useful Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence is the source of this worthy 30-pager, the latest in America's endless effort to ascertain why some schools do better with poor kids than others. Decades of research on "effective schools," a couple of terrific books, multiple databases and number-crunchers, innumerable profiles of successful schools, and all sorts of articles and studies with titles like "against the odds," "despite the odds," and "no excuses," comprise a veritable cottage industry of analysis of this tantalizing topic. In this manifestation (paid for by the Ford Foundation), the Prichard Committee's researchers identified 26 Kentucky elementary schools that manifest key signs of strong performance despite lots of low-income students, then selected eight of them for close-up audit by visiting experts. These schools' characteristics were then compared with eight low-performing, high-poverty schools. Much of what they found in the good schools was typical of this genre: high expectations "communicated in concrete ways"; a "caring, nurturing atmosphere"; a strong academic focus combined with much use of assessment data at the individual student level; collaborative decision-making; a strong faculty work ethic; and close attention to who is teaching what in the school. What surprised the analysts is that school leadership (i.e., the principal) didn't seem to matter much from high to low-performing schools and the district's influence upon the school "was less direct than had been anticipated." No policy recommendations follow but you may want to dig around in these findings on your own. You can find the report here.

The Johnson Foundation
Education 2005

The new Wingspread Journal has a series of articles that focus on improving teacher quality. One interesting case study review, "What We Can Learn from the Chinese," compares American and Chinese fifth-grade classrooms. Compared to American teachers, the Chinese sample school's teachers were paid substantially less, had class sizes more than twice that of American classrooms, and were often only high school graduates - yet their students performed at much higher levels than American students. Why? The authors attribute it to teacher training and quality. Chinese teachers are experts in their core subject (often performing research or collaborating with university scholars) and spend only one to two hours a day teaching it. More time is then spent correcting homework and providing feedback. In contrast, American teachers often teach multiple subjects, which diminishes their subject knowledge and instructional effectiveness. The authors, however, insert a confusing complaint about Chinese national standards and national exams for university, which put "enormous pressures on students and teachers." Might it be that these tough standards create a culture where students are competing through their entire education and thus driven to learn? The study concludes, "American teachers are more prepared and have more resources to obtain high student achievement than Chinese teachers. We can stop complaining about the lack of resources or large class size. What we need is a fundamental rethinking and restructuring of the American classroom." You can read this study and the rest of the articles here.

Ted Kolderie, Education Evolving
January 2005

Ted Kolderie, one of the foremost architects and sages of the charter-school concept, now affiliated with a stimulating Minnesota-based outfit named Education Evolving, has written another in his series of thoughtful status reports on education's "open sector." It recaps in lucid terms his important distinction between "chartering" as an idea and process that isn't sufficiently attended to, and the "charter schools" that result from it and that we tend to obsess about, and explains how the former can be doing very well even as the latter struggle. Just five pages long, it's well worth your time, and can be located here.