The Education Gadfly Weekly

Edited by J. Wesley Null and Diane Ravitch
Information Age Publishing, 2006;
Henry T. Edmondson III
ISI Books, 2006

Diane Ravitch, American education's foremost historian and voice of reason, and Wesley Null, a young, reform-minded education professor, are the perfect pair to re-introduce the world to eight educators who long ago foresaw the dangers of "progressive" education. Those men-Bagley, DeGarmo, Felmley, Harris, Kandel, McMurry, Ruediger, and Sheldon-are all but unknown today, Ravitch says, "because in the great pedagogical battles of the twentieth century, they lost." They believed "in the importance of preparing excellent teachers for our schools" and "should not have been forgotten." The rueful tone of Ravitch's foreword is balanced by Null's fire-breathing introduction. "The profession of teaching will continue to decline unless its leaders-especially the profession's younger leaders-read and learn from the authors who produced the essays that are found in this volume." That's because these leaders understood that education is a moral problem, not an intellectual one. Intellectual problems exist so that others can think about more intellectual problems, Null says. Moral problems require decisions that lead people to act. The great framer of many of education's intellectual problems (and contemporary of many of those profiled in Forgotten Heroes) is, of course, John Dewey. The education world still worships at his shrine, but Henry Edmondson doesn't think it should. In John Dewey & the Decline of American Education, he writes that "Dewey is not most interested in the good of students but rather the successful promotion of a political program." That program favored abandoning religion, traditional education, and moral absolutes for scientific experimentation. But Dewey's writings aren't so easily classified-mainly because Dewey's writings are, well, pretty much indecipherable. Edmondson argues that he owes his success to ambiguity: "The obscurity of his writing has conferred upon Dewey a kind of mystique," while enabling just about everyone, Rorschach like, to see in his paragraphs almost whatever they wish." But in his efforts to pin down Dewey's thought, Edmondson draws too many neat connections between our current woes and Dewey's thought. At times he himself was critical of progressive education. Most have long since forgotten Dewey's misgivings with progressivism, which is why Null and Ravitch added these rarely cited essays to the end of their book. Turns out, Dewey himself saw the limits of theory in the classroom. The soul of teaching, Null argues, has been shattered. "The time has long passed," he says, "for us to work together to make it whole again." Forgotten Heroes, not Edmondson's book, is best equipped to make this happen.

Jens Henrik Haahr, et al.
Danish Technological Institute
November 2005

The European Union commissioned this thick report-which crunches data from the PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS surveys-to uncover ways for European schools to improve basic-skills education. Among its findings: countries should focus education resources on their lowest-performing students. When this is done, the authors write, "A high degree of equality in achievement scores within countries (i.e., a low variance around the mean) can be achieved without compromising the overall level of achievement scores in reading, mathematics, and science." But the report goes on to claim that, when students are "divided into separate groups according to their academic performance," the gaps widen between high- and low-achievers. This, it speculates, could be because schools that separate students based on academic ability generally provide less attention to struggling youngsters than to their savvier peers. Although the researchers claim it is possible to cultivate equality without sacrificing quality (they cite Finland as an example), more often than not schools' formulae entail holding bright students back while waiting for others to catch up. Just as struggling kids deserve extra instruction, high-flying achievers deserve to have their singular needs met, too. Of course, NCLB has come under criticism for lavishing attention on the bottom tier of test-takers to the detriment of academically gifted youngsters, who are often ignored. This report's recommendations-Edusocialism, really-would lead to a far worse situation.

Patricia Gándara
Policy Information Center, Educational Testing Service
December 2005

The achievement gap usually refers to the chasm between low- and higher-performing students. But, as this study makes clear, disparities are just as pronounced among separate groups of high-achieving students. For example, in 2002 the top fifth of Latino test-takers scored means of 598 and 646 on the SAT verbal and math sections, respectively. Their white peers’ mean scores were 65 points higher on the verbal section and 74 points higher in math. Yet of the hundreds of studies reviewed for this report, hardly any “acknowledge… that high-achieving students might need support and that this support might differ from what is needed by their lower-achieving peers.” It’s tempting to think that smart youngsters, regardless of socio-economic situations or ethnic backgrounds, will turn out just fine. But as these data show, that’s not always true. Bright Latino students, who often come from low-income families and have parents with little education, are particularly susceptible to becoming frustrated or discouraged with schoolwork and the school environment. These kids require just as much encouragement, support, and instruction as their lower-performing peers, albeit in different ways. They, too, need goals, and information on where academic achievement can lead (college). But too often, they don’t receive it. Even when Latino students earn good grades in high school, register for the SAT (not an insignificant step), and do well on the exam, many still make poor college decisions. We cannot address achievement gaps by continuing to ignore these bright youngsters.

"What? Me Worry?" Alfred E. Newman, Mad Magazine's mascot since the late 1950s, delivered this signature line whenever the world around him was going, well, mad. So, too, it seems, those working in the field of educational research.  

That's the upshot of an important study by Peggy Hsieh and Joel R. Levin, which ran in the Journal of Educational Psychology and chronicles ed researchers' continued retreat from accepted research methodology. In this case, randomized experiments. 

Randomized experiments, aka field trials, whereby an experimental group that receives an intervention (say, Whole Language) is compared with a control group that receives no intervention, have been standard operating procedure since rats were first run through mazes. But who needs control groups in the age of feelings-based research? Never mind that it's the theme song of Russ Whitehurst and the federal Institute of Education Sciences.

Hsieh and Levin report that "The percentage of total articles in these four journals [Cognition & Instruction, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Experimental Education, American Educational Research Journal] based on randomized experiments decreased over the 21-year period in both the educational psychology journals (from 40 percent in 1983 to 34 percent in 1995 to 26 percent in 2004) and the American Educational Research Journal (from 33 percent to 17 percent to 4 percent)."

To be sure, education is not the only field to succumb to the allure of fact-free debate.  Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton report in the January 2006 Harvard Business Review that "thousands of studies are conducted on medical practices and products every year. Unfortunately, physicians don't use much of it. Recent studies show that only about 15 percent of their decisions are evidence based." Pfeffer and Sutton add, "The same behavior holds true for managers looking to cure their organizational ills. Indeed, we would argue, managers are actually much more ignorant than doctors about which prescriptions are reliable-and they're less eager to find out."

There is, of course, abundant research available for those genuinely interested in effective practices.  But the prescriptions arising from that research-eat less, exercise more, learn phonics, know your math facts, devote more time to literacy instruction, have people who know science teach science, etc.-are so much less appealing than the Ouija board hints that emanate from ersatz research from a variety of fields. Perhaps this explains why the doctors of medicine and business who write about education are frequently no more helpful than the doctors of education. 

Why are randomized experiments being dropped faster than a tainted control group? Hsieh put that question to a number of folks. One "speculated that with the increasing popularity of qualitative methods (i.e., not relying on quantitative data), some researchers may have rejected the underlying assumptions of experimental research in favor of a post-modern, relativist view." A more cynical interpretation holds that because empirical research is difficult to conduct and yields unpopular results, many authors simply take their studies down an easier path. Why risk tenure by studying the effectiveness of phonics, for example, if a university promotion committee member worships at the altar of whole language? Why bother with multivariate analysis when a feminist critique of patriarchal statistical methods will do?

Universities and their faculty members are not the only culprits here. A bevy of publishers and other vendors benefit financially from research that is short-term, isolated, unscientific and devoid of context. Thus we often find assertions that "research proves" this or that program is associated with increased student achievement, even though other analyses show that the same program is associated with no such gains. Education policy makers and school system consumers are more likely to be in hot pursuit of the latest magic bullet than they are to make fundamental changes in course content, assessment rigor, daily schedules, and professional requirements for administrators and teachers.

In fact, no educational program exists in isolation. Thus, careless and isolated studies of those programs will yield misleading results. Does Success For All or Open Court or Read 180 or, for that matter, McGuffey's Reader really work? Typical research that considers only the presence or absence of these programs is unlikely to provide answers. The programs are effective when partnered with effective teaching, accurate feedback, and meaningful leadership support. When these contextual variables are absent, the programs usually accomplish little.    

Unfortunately, it is the rare research study that provides long-term observation of student performance, teaching practices, and leadership support, and also provides a systematic measurement of other contextual variables. McGuffey's Reader will be a terrific program when implemented with the necessary time, diligence, and supervision. But the most elegantly conceived 21^st Century reading program will fail without these essential elements. Consider one of the most basic contextual variables: time. One superintendent swore to me that he had effected "system-wide" implementation of a "proven" reading program. Yet a cursory review of the schedules of his 67 elementary schools revealed that teachers devoted from 45 to 180 minutes each day to the program. What really caused that district's success? The program or the time and attention provided by teachers and school leaders?

Karen Harris of Vanderbilt University, editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology, deserves credit, along with Hsieh and colleagues, for publishing an important study. They prove what many have long suspected: that the quality of research in education has deteriorated. This does not mean sound empirical research is unavailable. It just means that we have to dig deep, and plow through a lot of fluff in order to find the analysis we should expect.

Douglas Reeves is CEO and founder of the Center for Performance Assessment.

Conventional wisdom posits that the President’s 2007 Budget is nothing but a collection of recycled education policies (and cuts). The same old private-school choice proposal that never goes anywhere. The same high school reform plan that crashed and burned in 2005. The same 40-odd programs proposed for elimination that Congress always spares in the end. Even the same funding levels for most major programs.

But what if we view the budget plan as a forward-looking document, rather than a hit parade from the past? What if we consider it masterful foreshadowing, providing hints of the Administration’s intentions for next year’s reauthorization of No Child Left Behind?

One thing becomes clear: the Administration is finally grappling with what to do about truly bad schools—those that have been “in need of improvement” for five or six years and now face “restructuring.” The number of those schools is about to rise dramatically, and the Texas crowd seems to be acknowledging that the sunlight and shame of test-score data won’t be enough in and of themselves to lift such failed institutions out of their funk.

The President offers two reasonable ideas. The first is a thoughtful (if awkwardly named) choice program, America’s Opportunity Scholarships for Kids. A retooled version of previous Administration proposals, this would target children in “restructured” schools with tuition grants of up to $4,000 or expand the allotment for supplemental services (free tutoring) to $3,000. Linking choice to the worst-of-the-worst schools is smart policy and politics. These institutions are not on the “bad schools” list by accident, and it’s unconscionable to keep children chained inside them any longer. In fact, the President’s idea is so good that one may fairly wonder: Why didn’t he even mention it in his State of the Union Address? That he didn’t is not a good sign of his willingness to expend political capital on the program—which is the only way it’s conceivably going to pass Congress.

The second, related idea is to spend $200 million on School Improvement Grants. These funds are for state departments of education to develop “school support teams” and other interventions for failing schools. Though there is reason to be skeptical that such teams will be effective, at least Washington is recognizing that states are the linchpin when it comes to NCLB’s accountability-and-intervention system, and that today few of them are equipped for the job. The law is not going to implement itself.

Just remember: when the Administration reveals its reauthorization plan next year, you heard it here first.

Introducing another bad idea in contemporary K-12 education. The New York Times reports that many schools, plagued by truancy (and attendant problems both with test scores and state funding formulae), now bribe kids to come to class. At Chelsea High School, located in an impoverished community outside Boston, students earn $25 for each quarter of perfect attendance. But that's chump change. Krystal Brooks won a canary yellow Ford Mustang from her school, and Fernando Vasquez pocketed $10,000 from his. Because so few education ideas yield results, Brookings Institution senior fellow Tom Loveless said, "If something works, the ideological burden not to do it has to be huge." Loveless's point is well-taken: why not provide students with incentives that mean something to them in the present tense? But, cars?

"And for Perfect Attendance, Johnny Gets... a Car," by Pam Belluck, New York Times, February 5, 2006 (free registration required)

Jay Mathews tells a touching story of struggle and triumph, chronicling a low-income Alexandria (VA) school’s battle to meet NCLB’s adequate yearly progress (AYP) definition. Since it found itself on the “needs improvement” list in 2004, and losing students to other, better-performing schools, Maury Elementary School embraced wide-reaching internal reforms. Mathews highlights those efforts, which range from community involvement (volunteer tutors for additional after-school lessons) to conducting intricate statistical analyses (assessing the school’s writing test scores with a Data Disaggregator). And installation of a dynamite principal. After all the hard work, Maury made AYP for 2004-5. Parent Mary Jo Smet, who has a third-grader enrolled there,, said the school’s recent success was “a confluence of energy and effort” from parents, teachers, and students. The hard work doesn’t stop, though, and Maury must continue its academic gains in order to stay off the “needs improvement” list. But the school’s story offers hope—and quantitative data to back it up—that determination and a little elbow grease can turn the tide.

“A Study in Pride, Progress,” by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, February 2, 2006

Ed policy gurus are buzzing this week about Rep. John Boehner’s unexpected ascent to House Majority Leader. Boehner (R-Ohio) is the former House Education Committee chairman, and his departure has many wondering how this move will affect NCLB and its impending reauthorization, as well as scads of other programs. So far, the news is good. NCLB proponent Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-California) is poised to take over Boehner’s former post. And Ed Week’s Michelle Davis predicts “Rep. Boehner is sure to keep an eye on the law’s [NCLB’s] progress.” If nothing else, Boehner’s win proves that the rumored Republican/conservative rebellion against NCLB hasn’t reached calamitous levels in the halls of Congress (though it’s pretty clear there is some backlash in statehouses and at the grassroots level). If Republicans were truly sore about NCLB, it’s unlikely they would have elevated Boehner to Majority Leader. So for now, dear readers, rest a bit easier—the “Washington Consensus” on NCLB remains intact.

“Boehner Goes From Education Panel to Majority Leader,” by Michelle R. Davis, Education Week, February 8, 2006

“McKeon may chair key House panel,” by Lisa Friedman, Los Angeles Daily News, February 9, 2006 

In addition to ensuring that all kids succeed academically, No Child Left Behind aims to make schools safer. But when crafting this part of the law, the feds overlooked a major hazard: cheerleading. According to the Columbus Research Institute, cheerleading participation between 1990 and 2002 increased by a mere 18 percent. The number of cheerleading injuries over that same period, however, more than doubled. Senior cheerleader Allysa Voborny thinks the statistics illustrate a definite problem. Comparing cheerleading to karate, Voborny said, "It's much more dangerous up in the air; you can fall to the ground." Quite true. Why, then, are sports such as karate, kendo, and skeet shooting-terra firma activities, all-usually judged too dangerous for schools, while cheerleading squads are allowed to toss their members willy-nilly into the air with the full complicity of teachers and administrators? "We need to have accountability," said Rhonda Blanford-Green, an assistant commissioner with the Colorado High School Activities Association, "not only for our cheerleaders that perform, but for our coaches." One suggestion: classify cheerleading accidents under NCLB's "persistently dangerous" schools provision. With standards and sunshine, cheerleading may finally be able to clean up its act and shed its rough, daredevil image once and for all. 

"The rising risk of cheerleading," by Heather Simonsen, Salt Lake Tribune, February 8, 2006

"Forget the pom poms," by Connie Steiert, Vail Daily, January 31, 2006 (free registration required)

Edited by J. Wesley Null and Diane Ravitch
Information Age Publishing, 2006;
Henry T. Edmondson III
ISI Books, 2006

Diane Ravitch, American education's foremost historian and voice of reason, and Wesley Null, a young, reform-minded education professor, are the perfect pair to re-introduce the world to eight educators who long ago foresaw the dangers of "progressive" education. Those men-Bagley, DeGarmo, Felmley, Harris, Kandel, McMurry, Ruediger, and Sheldon-are all but unknown today, Ravitch says, "because in the great pedagogical battles of the twentieth century, they lost." They believed "in the importance of preparing excellent teachers for our schools" and "should not have been forgotten." The rueful tone of Ravitch's foreword is balanced by Null's fire-breathing introduction. "The profession of teaching will continue to decline unless its leaders-especially the profession's younger leaders-read and learn from the authors who produced the essays that are found in this volume." That's because these leaders understood that education is a moral problem, not an intellectual one. Intellectual problems exist so that others can think about more intellectual problems, Null says. Moral problems require decisions that lead people to act. The great framer of many of education's intellectual problems (and contemporary of many of those profiled in Forgotten Heroes) is, of course, John Dewey. The education world still worships at his shrine, but Henry Edmondson doesn't think it should. In John Dewey & the Decline of American Education, he writes that "Dewey is not most interested in the good of students but rather the successful promotion of a political program." That program favored abandoning religion, traditional education, and moral absolutes for scientific experimentation. But Dewey's writings aren't so easily classified-mainly because Dewey's writings are, well, pretty much indecipherable. Edmondson argues that he owes his success to ambiguity: "The obscurity of his writing has conferred upon Dewey a kind of mystique," while enabling just about everyone, Rorschach like, to see in his paragraphs almost whatever they wish." But in his efforts to pin down Dewey's thought, Edmondson draws too many neat connections between our current woes and Dewey's thought. At times he himself was critical of progressive education. Most have long since forgotten Dewey's misgivings with progressivism, which is why Null and Ravitch added these rarely cited essays to the end of their book. Turns out, Dewey himself saw the limits of theory in the classroom. The soul of teaching, Null argues, has been shattered. "The time has long passed," he says, "for us to work together to make it whole again." Forgotten Heroes, not Edmondson's book, is best equipped to make this happen.

Jens Henrik Haahr, et al.
Danish Technological Institute
November 2005

The European Union commissioned this thick report-which crunches data from the PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS surveys-to uncover ways for European schools to improve basic-skills education. Among its findings: countries should focus education resources on their lowest-performing students. When this is done, the authors write, "A high degree of equality in achievement scores within countries (i.e., a low variance around the mean) can be achieved without compromising the overall level of achievement scores in reading, mathematics, and science." But the report goes on to claim that, when students are "divided into separate groups according to their academic performance," the gaps widen between high- and low-achievers. This, it speculates, could be because schools that separate students based on academic ability generally provide less attention to struggling youngsters than to their savvier peers. Although the researchers claim it is possible to cultivate equality without sacrificing quality (they cite Finland as an example), more often than not schools' formulae entail holding bright students back while waiting for others to catch up. Just as struggling kids deserve extra instruction, high-flying achievers deserve to have their singular needs met, too. Of course, NCLB has come under criticism for lavishing attention on the bottom tier of test-takers to the detriment of academically gifted youngsters, who are often ignored. This report's recommendations-Edusocialism, really-would lead to a far worse situation.

Patricia Gándara
Policy Information Center, Educational Testing Service
December 2005

The achievement gap usually refers to the chasm between low- and higher-performing students. But, as this study makes clear, disparities are just as pronounced among separate groups of high-achieving students. For example, in 2002 the top fifth of Latino test-takers scored means of 598 and 646 on the SAT verbal and math sections, respectively. Their white peers’ mean scores were 65 points higher on the verbal section and 74 points higher in math. Yet of the hundreds of studies reviewed for this report, hardly any “acknowledge… that high-achieving students might need support and that this support might differ from what is needed by their lower-achieving peers.” It’s tempting to think that smart youngsters, regardless of socio-economic situations or ethnic backgrounds, will turn out just fine. But as these data show, that’s not always true. Bright Latino students, who often come from low-income families and have parents with little education, are particularly susceptible to becoming frustrated or discouraged with schoolwork and the school environment. These kids require just as much encouragement, support, and instruction as their lower-performing peers, albeit in different ways. They, too, need goals, and information on where academic achievement can lead (college). But too often, they don’t receive it. Even when Latino students earn good grades in high school, register for the SAT (not an insignificant step), and do well on the exam, many still make poor college decisions. We cannot address achievement gaps by continuing to ignore these bright youngsters.