The Education Gadfly Weekly

United States Government Accountability Office
August 2006

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) enjoys a reputation for fairness and integrity and its new report on No Child Left Behind's free-tutoring provision is of that ilk. GAO analysts find plenty of fault with all the major players: the U.S. Department of Education, which could do more to disseminate promising tutoring practices; the states, which have been negligent in their monitoring and evaluation duties; the districts, which often act as if they want to keep free tutoring a state secret; and, yes, the tutoring providers, who could do more to communicate with teachers and parents. (Of course, the one player not targeted was the GAO's boss, Congress itself, which could be faulted for the program's clumsy legislative language and blurry lines of responsibility.) Still, silver linings exist: free tutoring is gaining traction. Enrollment almost quadrupled from 116,626 students in 2002-2003 to 430,044 in 2004-2005. Yet that growth is uneven. While 16 percent of districts maxed out their tutoring money, on average districts spent just 5 percent of their Title I funds for this purpose (the law provides for spending up to 20 percent). Faulty parental notification is surely part of the problem. More than half of all districts informed parents about supplemental services (and, one must surmise, their school transfer options, too) after the start of the school year. Another good development: accountability is improving. Nearly three-fourths of states have plans in place to begin monitoring by year's end whether tutored students are actually learning more (currently, just a handful does). The program's design still has plenty of problems--especially allowing districts to play the central role in a reform that means less power and money for them--but improvements in implementation are surely welcome. You can find the report, required reading for anyone involved in supplemental services, here.

United States Government Accountability Office
July 2006

This short GAO report summarizes and explains "growth models," which are methods for evaluating the change in performance of students or schools over time and are often referred to as "academic value added." The report's growth model definition is broad (some methods included here don't necessarily gauge whether particular students are improving but rather evaluate whether a school has higher-achieving third-graders this year than last), so it's not surprising that 26 states were found to be using some sort of growth model at the time of publication and 22 more were developing such. And NCLB is making use of growth models, too. For example, schools that miss proficiency targets but still reduce their numbers of "not proficient" students by at least 10 percent are sheltered under NCLB's safe harbor provision--a growth model according to the GAO's definition. And California uses its Academic Performance Index, another growth model, as the "additional indicator" its schools must meet in order to make adequate yearly progress. Still, North Carolina and Tennessee are the only two states whose robust growth models met all criteria for approval under a Department of Education pilot program--thus, those states' growth models can be used to calculate adequate yearly progress. But growth models are good for more than NCLB reporting. In North Carolina, for example, the state uses its to determine teacher bonuses. This is a fairly useful report which includes a timeline of when states began using their particular models and brief explanations of how the various models work. It won't begin to help one understand the nuances of something as complex as Tennessee's value-added model, but it does provide a useful overview of the landscape. You can find it online here.

U.S. Department of Education: National Center for Education Statistics
August 2006

This NCES "issue brief" examines the qualifications of those who taught secondary school history during 1999-2000.  While earlier studies looked at the percentages of teachers "in-field" (those with a postsecondary major and state certification in the subject they were teaching) and "out-of-field" (those without), the extent to which out-of-field teachers have other training or skills related to their subject has gone mostly unexamined. This paper sifts through the data and presents some interesting findings. For example, only 45 percent of secondary school history students were taught by a teacher with a college major or minor in history. Of the 55 percent of students whose teachers lacked such degrees, 73 percent were taught by an instructor who had a major or minor in another social science. Eighty-six percent of secondary school history students had history teachers with state social studies certification (of course that figure is ten points lower in schools serving poor kids). Six percent of students had teachers with no certification at all. Overall, some 9 percent of secondary-level history students are taught by instructors with neither a certification in social studies nor a major or minor in history; that number climbs to 13 percent for high poverty schools. This short paper provides many more fascinating tidbits; for example, did you know that almost 12 percent of secondary school history teachers majored in phys ed? (If you've ever met a high school football coach, perhaps you did.) It remains to be seen whether NCLB's highly-qualified teacher provisions will change this situation--but we're not holding our breath). To check out this issue brief, click here.

Winding down his tenure as governor, Florida's Jeb Bush received, courtesy of the Miami Herald, a lengthy and mostly fair assessment of his education policies' successes and failures. Bush's "crusade to reinvent Florida's public education system," writes Matthew Pinzur, "was built around numbers." And by that measure, things are generally looking up. In 1999, just over half of Sunshine State fourth-graders were reading at the proficient level on the FCAT exam; today, 66 percent do. Importantly, these gains are matched by similar progress among Florida fourth-graders on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Tenth-graders, however, haven't fared as well--the number reading at the proficient level on state tests is down one percentage point, from 33 to 32, since Bush was elected. But the outgoing governor argues that, as thousands of newly proficient fourth-grade readers make their way through the middle and secondary school ranks, achievement levels will rise there, too. Let's give credit where credit is due: Despite recent setbacks at the hands of the state's Supreme Court and legislature, the educational foundations that Bush built have a good chance of benefiting Floridians for years to come.

"Jeb's last semester," by Matthew I. Pinzur, Miami Herald, August 6, 2006 

Let's say you're training to teach in a tough inner-city school. Where do you go for advice to help you succeed? Veteran Washington Post reporter Jay Mathews, who for years has written about high-quality high-poverty schools, turned to top-notch teachers such as Jason Kamras, Rafe Esquith, Mike Feinberg, and Dave Levin, who showed themselves to be a wellspring of practical ideas: Teachers should make themselves readily available to students before and after class, reward students tangibly for good work, and streamline homework grading to save time for teacher-student-parent interaction. Our favorite, from KIPP and from Kamras: teachers should make unannounced visits to students' homes to update parents on their progress. But here's the real question: why do teacher candidates have to read the Washington Post Magazine to find these common sense ideas, instead of encountering them in ed school? One professor's reaction to these ideas illustrates why. "No one wants someone just showing up at their home unannounced," he told Mathews. "Teachers must treat parents with respect." And, Mr. Ed School Professor, how exactly do you know that families don't want their child's teacher coming to their home to talk about their precious? Maybe the AERA should do a study. In the meantime, future teachers of America: we recommend skipping ed school and just reading Mathews.

"Learning from the Masters," by Jay Mathews, Washington Post Magazine, August 6, 2006

They may not vacation in St. Barts, but teachers in Southeastern Virginia's booming Norfolk/Hampton Roads region are hardly at the bottom of the salary chain. Besides receiving across-the-board raises this year of between 4 percent (Norfolk) and 8 percent (Portsmouth), the Virginian-Pilot finds that their salaries have outstripped inflation and risen faster than those of other area professionals. Moreover, teachers have the vast majority of their health insurance paid for, a generous pension plan, and work an average of 45 fewer days per year than other professionals. Not enough! screams the union. "A teacher molds a [sic] life of a child," says a Virginia NEA representative. "I don't know of any other profession in which that happens." How about ministers, nurses, and the heads of groups such as Boys' and Girls' Clubs to start? All are paid less than teachers, on average, without the time off. So how much is enough? The union says it best. "I don't think there would ever be a point where we'd say we have enough." 'Nuf said.

"Higher earning? Teachers fare better than many other professionals," by Amy Jeter and Deirdre Fernandes, Virginian-Pilot, August 7, 2006

When President Bush addressed the NAACP recently, his praise for charter schools and other forms of education choice was met with a mixed chorus of boos and applause.

That mixed reaction is indicative of an increasingly pitched debate in the black community, between those who want to save the traditional public school system and those who stress giving low income and working class black families other options. I have no doubt that the people who booed the president have as much concern as I do about the tragic and unacceptable non-education of thousands of our children. But I stand with those who are making an urgent priority of educating children from low income and working class families--those whom the current system has so often failed.

Our poorest children are being denied a quality education in so many places in this country. While their futures are being snuffed out, too many of us who are able to access quality options for our own children are questioning the idea of empowering poor families by making these very same options available to them.

There's no question that parents who gain the power to choose take advantage of those opportunities. According to the latest federal data, 57 percent of students in public charter schools are minority, compared to 39 percent in the general public-ed population. In big urban centers the numbers are much higher: 99 percent of charter-school students in the District of Columbia are children of color, as are 91 percent of Chicago charter school students and 96 percent of charter attendees in New York City. Choice initiatives in DC, Milwaukee, and other cities overwhelmingly serve African American students.

It's not hard to understand why many organizations and individuals in our community are either hostile or indifferent to charter schools and other forms of parental choice. Big-city school systems have historically employed large numbers of African-Americans, and for most of us the traditional public school has been our only hope for receiving an education. The traditional system has served many of us well. But that was then and this is now. Today's public school systems are still employing us, but too few are effectively educating our children.

To their credit, two of our main line civil right organizations have taken some steps toward recognizing the reality of parental choice. There's an approving reference to charter schools, for example, in the NAACP's "Brown 50 Years and Beyond" report, proposing them as one means of advancing desegregation goals. And while the National Urban League's education agenda promotes achievement through mentoring and other means, Urban League affiliates in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and other cities are more attuned to parent choice and have even founded charter schools of their own.

Some local and state leaders have gone farther. Colorado State Representative Terrance Carroll, and New York State Senators David Patterson and Malcolm Smith have fought courageously for charter schools. Rep. Dwight Evans and Senator Tony Williams in Pennsylvania have taken up the cause of charters, tax credits and the state takeover of Philadelphia's Public Schools. Newark Mayor Cory Booker has stood strong for various forms of parental choice. State Representatives Ted Haskins and Rodney Hubbard in Missouri, State Representative Jason Fields in Wisconsin and State Senator Al Lawson in Florida have supported parental choice initiatives in their respective states. All of these courageous elected officials have endured the wrath of the teachers unions and members of their own party because they dare to support empowering low income and working class parents to choose the best educational environment for their children.

Some argue that choice serves only a portion of the population, and that we should expend all our resources on a system that--presumably--serves all. I think we should take a lesson from Harriet Tubman's fight against slavery. She fought everyday to end it, but as she waged that battle, she set out to free as many slaves as possible. I believe we must work hard to improve the traditional public education system in this country, but in the meantime, we have a moral responsibility to rescue as many of our children as we can "by any means necessary."

Muzzling Alfie Kohn is noble work for education reformers, and it's a pity that a misguided Massachusetts judge doesn't get it. Five long years ago, the Bay State's Department of Education threatened to withdraw its funding from an education conference if Kohn were allowed to address it on the topic of standardized testing, which he hates. In the event, Kohn was paid his nontrivial honorarium but not permitted to speak. The ACLU filed suit on "freedom of speech" grounds, and Superior Court Judge Hiller Zobel found the other day that indeed Kohn's civil rights had been violated.

The question this poses is whether a government agency that is implementing a particular policy is obliged to pay for critics of that policy to decry it. A decision not to subsidize them is not the same as silencing the critics, who have ample outlets and forums and can easily get paid by the Ford Foundation, FairTest, or the NEA.

Is NIH obliged to pay for vendors of herbal remedies to address cancer conferences? Is the Department of the Interior obliged to pay for advocates of strip-mining Yellowstone to speak at conservation conferences? Is the Marine Corps obliged to pay for pacifists to talk at seminars on weaponry?

A wag of the finger to Judge Zobel. Hurrah for the Massachusetts Department of Education. 

"A victory for education," by Adrian Walker, Boston Globe, August 7, 2006

Teaching science, not theology, is the proper work of public school science classes, and it's gratifying to see that Kansas voters are again denying the "intelligent design" crowd a majority on the state Board of Education. But it's a close call. Ideological control of that policy body keeps shifting back and forth, mirroring the electorate's split on evolution and a handful of other hot-button issues. Kansas is not the only place in America where Darwin remains the subject of intense controversy. (Ohio is another.) Ordinarily I would say that giving people choices among schools is the surest way to handle such strongly held divisions, but so long as all (public) schools are subject to statewide academic standards and tests, the issue cannot so easily be sidestepped. On balance, the best way to handle it is to teach real science in science class, and to argue contemporary controversies in civics and current affairs classes. In other words, all kids--even in Kansas--should learn about evolution as the keystone of biology; then in another classroom they can examine why some people don't agree with that. Alternatively, as one battle-scarred veteran of the Kansas curriculum wars put it, "Can we just agree [that] God invented Darwin?"

"Moderates recapture Kansas state school board," by David Klepper and Melodee Hall Blobaum, Kansas City Star, August 2, 2006

Universal pre-school is a good idea that's easy to ruin. A costly, school system-dominated version was recently turned down by California voters and an overreaching, high-priced version was just vetoed by Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, Florida has completed the successful, first-year implementation of a more modest "voluntary pre-K" program for four-year-olds across the state.

This is territory where one must take with several grains of salt any statement that begins with the words "Research shows" or "Research proves." The truth is that remarkably little is known for sure about what sorts of pre-school experiences provide the greatest benefit to which sorts of kids--and much controversy surrounds even the definition and measurement of "benefit."

My own take is this: disadvantaged kids are better prepared to succeed in kindergarten and first grade if they have richer cognitive pre-K experiences than many of them are apt to receive at home, and society ought to provide opportunities for such experiences. But to be worthy of public funding, pre-K programs need to satisfy four requirements: First, They have to be voluntary; it's not the state's job to take 3 or 4 year olds away from parents who would rather keep them home or entrust them to Grandma or a neighbor. Second, they must provide parents with multiple options to choose among, including private and faith-based providers, lest we recreate all the problems associated with public-sector monopolies. Third, they must concentrate on the skills that little kids truly need for school readiness--above all cognitive skills--not just provide child care. Finally, every provider must be rigorously evaluated on the basis of its results--namely, how well its "graduates" do when they reach kindergarten.

Florida's program meets those criteria. As best I can tell, the California and Massachusetts versions did not.

"Romney vetoes universal prekindergarten in state," Boston Globe, August 5, 2006

Teaching "social justice" in school sounds like a dandy idea until you examine what it really means. Sol Stern's superb essay in the summer issue of City Journal does precisely that--and does so with Stern's customary fearless clarity. Besides skewering Bill Ayers, the former violent revolutionary turned ed school professor, Stern shows how the dubious "social justice" idea is spreading through U.S. colleges of education with the enthusiastic backing of the American Education Research Association and NCATE. What, exactly, is the problem with it? Join Stern as he visits some of the 15-plus New York City "new small high schools that either are explicitly named as social justice schools or whose mission statements declare that their curricula center on social justice concerns." There you will find kids learning to protest and make revolution rather than to read and write and cipher. "Social justice teaching," Stern shows, "is a frivolous waste of precious school hours, grievously harmful to poor children, who start out with a disadvantage. School is the only place where they are likely to obtain the academic knowledge that could make up for the educational deprivation they suffer in their homes. The last thing they need is a wild-eyed experiment in education through social action."

"The Ed Schools' Latest-and Worst-Humbug," by Sol Stern, City Journal, Summer 2006

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter Sarah Carr is asking all the right questions about charter schools. How much autonomy should they be allowed, and, if they're not performing up to standards, are authorizers willing (and should they be willing) to close them down? Consider the Truth Institute for Leadership and Service, a Milwaukee charter school with "abysmal" test scores but strong relationships with contented parents. When the city's school board moved to close it, one parent complained that "now the relationship is being broken by someone who is not even in the family." Or, as Kati Haycock of the Education Trust put it, "There's a war for the soul of the charter movement under way." Perhaps so, but it's asymmetric. Sure, on one side there are plenty of lousy schools that want to stay open, and more than a few charter authorizers unwilling to shut them down. But, on the other side, virtually every leader in the charter movement believes that schools should get results or vanish. School Board member Ken Johnson says it best: "If we are talking about a school that's not achieving, we are talking about children who are not achieving. We don't get a chance to do this right the second time."

"Educators spar over goal of charter schools," by Sarah Carr, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, August 2, 2006

U.S. Department of Education: National Center for Education Statistics
August 2006

This NCES "issue brief" examines the qualifications of those who taught secondary school history during 1999-2000.  While earlier studies looked at the percentages of teachers "in-field" (those with a postsecondary major and state certification in the subject they were teaching) and "out-of-field" (those without), the extent to which out-of-field teachers have other training or skills related to their subject has gone mostly unexamined. This paper sifts through the data and presents some interesting findings. For example, only 45 percent of secondary school history students were taught by a teacher with a college major or minor in history. Of the 55 percent of students whose teachers lacked such degrees, 73 percent were taught by an instructor who had a major or minor in another social science. Eighty-six percent of secondary school history students had history teachers with state social studies certification (of course that figure is ten points lower in schools serving poor kids). Six percent of students had teachers with no certification at all. Overall, some 9 percent of secondary-level history students are taught by instructors with neither a certification in social studies nor a major or minor in history; that number climbs to 13 percent for high poverty schools. This short paper provides many more fascinating tidbits; for example, did you know that almost 12 percent of secondary school history teachers majored in phys ed? (If you've ever met a high school football coach, perhaps you did.) It remains to be seen whether NCLB's highly-qualified teacher provisions will change this situation--but we're not holding our breath). To check out this issue brief, click here.

United States Government Accountability Office
August 2006

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) enjoys a reputation for fairness and integrity and its new report on No Child Left Behind's free-tutoring provision is of that ilk. GAO analysts find plenty of fault with all the major players: the U.S. Department of Education, which could do more to disseminate promising tutoring practices; the states, which have been negligent in their monitoring and evaluation duties; the districts, which often act as if they want to keep free tutoring a state secret; and, yes, the tutoring providers, who could do more to communicate with teachers and parents. (Of course, the one player not targeted was the GAO's boss, Congress itself, which could be faulted for the program's clumsy legislative language and blurry lines of responsibility.) Still, silver linings exist: free tutoring is gaining traction. Enrollment almost quadrupled from 116,626 students in 2002-2003 to 430,044 in 2004-2005. Yet that growth is uneven. While 16 percent of districts maxed out their tutoring money, on average districts spent just 5 percent of their Title I funds for this purpose (the law provides for spending up to 20 percent). Faulty parental notification is surely part of the problem. More than half of all districts informed parents about supplemental services (and, one must surmise, their school transfer options, too) after the start of the school year. Another good development: accountability is improving. Nearly three-fourths of states have plans in place to begin monitoring by year's end whether tutored students are actually learning more (currently, just a handful does). The program's design still has plenty of problems--especially allowing districts to play the central role in a reform that means less power and money for them--but improvements in implementation are surely welcome. You can find the report, required reading for anyone involved in supplemental services, here.

United States Government Accountability Office
July 2006

This short GAO report summarizes and explains "growth models," which are methods for evaluating the change in performance of students or schools over time and are often referred to as "academic value added." The report's growth model definition is broad (some methods included here don't necessarily gauge whether particular students are improving but rather evaluate whether a school has higher-achieving third-graders this year than last), so it's not surprising that 26 states were found to be using some sort of growth model at the time of publication and 22 more were developing such. And NCLB is making use of growth models, too. For example, schools that miss proficiency targets but still reduce their numbers of "not proficient" students by at least 10 percent are sheltered under NCLB's safe harbor provision--a growth model according to the GAO's definition. And California uses its Academic Performance Index, another growth model, as the "additional indicator" its schools must meet in order to make adequate yearly progress. Still, North Carolina and Tennessee are the only two states whose robust growth models met all criteria for approval under a Department of Education pilot program--thus, those states' growth models can be used to calculate adequate yearly progress. But growth models are good for more than NCLB reporting. In North Carolina, for example, the state uses its to determine teacher bonuses. This is a fairly useful report which includes a timeline of when states began using their particular models and brief explanations of how the various models work. It won't begin to help one understand the nuances of something as complex as Tennessee's value-added model, but it does provide a useful overview of the landscape. You can find it online here.