The Education Gadfly Weekly

Paul Peterson and Martin West, editors, The Brookings Institution 2003

Paul Peterson and Martin West edited this 338-page Brookings collection of essays, based on a June 2002 Harvard conference. It's not an appraisal of NCLB but an examination of the issues that NCLB deals with under the headings of school and student accountability, plus several solid chapters on the politics of enacting NCLB in 2001. It introduces the concept of "soft accountability" (low standards and few penalties), suggests that this is apt to be the dominant form in the United States in years to come--NCLB has harder features with respect to schools but practically none that bear on individual students or educators--yet the editors judge that "even partial measures . . . may have a positive effect on American education." The authors of these 13 chapters include many celebrated scholars and analysts. The essays themselves are a blend of case studies and big-picture analyses. Especially worth the price of admission are Frederick M. Hess on state-level high-stakes accountability, Andrew Rudalevige on the politics of NCLB, and Ludger Woessmann on international evidence regarding the effects of exit exams on student achievement. A nice addition to the scholarly literature on accountability. The ISBN is 0815770294 and you can get additional information at http://bookstore.brookings.edu/book_details.asp?product percent5Fid=11938.

The Education Trust December 2003

The prolific and data-driven Education Trust recently issued this 8-page analysis of state graduation data that raises many questions about the accuracy of those data and the veracity of the agencies that issue them. The reason for focusing attention on this problem now--and EdTrust is not the first to do so--is that No Child Left Behind requires schools, districts, and states to report publicly on their high-school graduation rates as part of the law's monitoring of academic progress. The first round of state-level (but disaggregated) graduation data was due at the Department of Education on September 1, intended (says EdTrust) "to provide an honest accounting of students' progress through the educational system and baseline information for establishing future graduation rate targets." Some states did a good job of this but many did not. Using Jay Greene's widely-respected method for calculating graduation rates (essentially following the 9th grade student "cohort" to see how many of them receive diplomas four years later), EdTrust found (besides three states that reported NO data to the Department) a great many states with big discrepancies--and in all but half a dozen cases those discrepancies made the state's graduation rate look rosier. In about half the states, the discrepancies are ten percent or greater. For example, Virginia reported a graduation rate of 84.7 percent while the Greene methodology yields a rate of 74 percent; in Connecticut it's 87.3 percent versus 70 percent; and in worst-offending North Carolina (which uses what EdTrust calls a "definition for the graduation rate that defies reason") it's 92.4 percent versus 63 percent. When the data are disaggregated by race, additional discrepancies turn up. For example, Indiana reports Latino and black graduation rates of 85 percent and 88 percent respectively, while the Greene (and EdTrust) methodology shows the truth to be 59 percent and 53 percent. Bottom line: there are two problems. One is woeful graduation rates, especially for minority kids. The other is the dearth of honest comparable reporting of accurate information. EdTrust tasks the federal Education Department with compelling states to solve the latter problem, correctly noting that "the foundation of any successful long-term improvement strategy is good information." Solving the underlying problem--not enough young people completing high school--is the obligation of states and districts. This is an important analysis that you can find on line at http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/4DE8F2E0-4D08-4640-B3B0-013F6DC3865D/0/tellingthetruthgradrates.pdf.

The Education TrustDecember 2003

Also new from the Education Trust is this biting 12-page analysis of state-reported data on how many teachers are "highly qualified" under the terms of NCLB. On September 1, states were required to provide baseline data to the federal Education Department. This is, admittedly, a complex topic, considering that NCLB's teacher requirements are three and that the third of them ("demonstrated content knowledge in the subject they're teaching") can be met in a number of different ways. But EdTrust's analysis of state-reported data reveals many problems. The simplest is that seven states reported no data at all. The most vivid is the HUGE disparity among states in terms of the proportions of classes now allegedly being taught by "highly-qualified" teachers: from 98.6 percent in Wisconsin to 16 percent in Alaska, with twenty states above 90 percent and four below 50 percent. Says EdTrust: "It's reasonable to think that states vary in terms of teacher quality. . . . But not this much. Clearly, something else is going on." The authors accuse a number of states of having "abused the flexibility they have to decide how to address the content-knowledge requirements for veteran teachers by claiming simply that all certified teachers have met them." With less than 3 years remaining to get every teacher up to the "highly-qualified" bar, two big problems loom. One is real: in EdTrust's words, "there are a significant number of practicing teachers out there who need help in strengthening their subject matter knowledge and teaching skills." The other is the data problem: this information is not readily available (EdTrust had to use a Freedom of Information request to get it from the Department), much of it is cockeyed, and the Department isn't doing much of anything with or about it. "Adding an insult to injury, in October, the Department took credit for exposing the 'dirty little secrets' of teacher quality. Since the data remains [sic] unavailable via publication or web release to the general public, the Department itself hasn't 'exposed' anything. And even if it did, so much of the data misleads and obfuscates, one wonders exactly what dirty little secrets the Department thinks are revealed." Bravo for EdTrust--and let's be grateful that they're on the case. You can find this illuminating and upsetting expose at http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/C638111D-04E3-4C0D-9F68-20E7009498A6/0/tellingthetruthteachers.pdf.

Barnett Berry, Laura Turchi, and Dylan Johnson, Southeast Center for Teaching Quality, Inc.; Dwight Hare and Deborah Duncan Owens, Mississippi State University; and Steve Clements, Kentucky Professional Standards BoardNovember 2003

This report provides a series of case studies around the South to illuminate the influence of state accountability systems on teachers and their professional development. The authors' hope was that accountability might "promote effective professional development," but instead they find that there is so much confusion and frustration that even well-meaning teachers have little clue how to seek or use any training that might help them be better teachers (and help their students perform better). Yet there are glimmers of hope. Teachers generally support the theory of accountability (though it's hard to pin down how stringent an accountability system they'd like), and the case studies reveal a few teachers who actually met regularly to discuss students' progress. But these positive accounts are rare. The fundamental problem: teachers don't know how to interpret standardized test results, so they can't change their teaching. Nor do they know which professional development courses might aid in this challenge. One might conclude that the problem lies with the accountability system itself, but the finding that "across the six states and various low to high-performing schools visited, we found little evidence of teachers receiving high quality professional development" points to another answer. The report is tough going but if you'd care to know more about these teachers and the mess that is professional development, visit http://www.teachingquality.org/resources/pdfs/Spencer_FinalReport.pdf.

This coming year, I have resolved to quit smoking, lose weight, and spend more time with my children. I strongly suspect that, by late January, my waistline will continue to expand like a special-ed budget, my lungs will still be in hock to Phillip Morris, and my children will still weep for their absentee father and curse the day he met the slave driver who employs him. But I am, at the least, realistic in my attempts at self-improvement.

For a real New Year's fantasy, check out the resolutions passed by the National Education Association at its summer meeting back around the 4th of July and recently compiled and released. This 95-page lulu came our way courtesy of Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency, who must have a rear end of iron to have sat through the meeting that drafted this behemoth.

Some of them are standard fare. The NEA believes (every resolution starts with this formula, which gives the document a creepy, disembodied tone, like the computer HAL from 2001) that vouchers are bad. So is for-profit education. The NEA can deal with standardized tests so long as they are used only to "improve the quality of education and instruction"--that is, so long as they have no consequences for anybody. Holding its nose, the NEA believes that charter schools can be "agents for positive change" in reforming education IF they have attached to them 22 different strings concerning their governance, financing, and regulation. Of course, the NEA further believes that charter schools should only road-test ideas to be used in regular district schools and should under no circumstances become "an avenue for parental choice." Home schooling is also out, but "when home schooling occurs"--which sounds like the unexpected onset of a terminal illness--the NEA believes that parents attempting to instruct their little ones around the kitchen table should be forced to get state teaching licenses and their curricula should be approved by the state education agency.

Not that the NEA is anti-parent, mind you. Indeed, it believes that parents are "crucial" to kids' education (thanks for that!), should volunteer in schools, set high expectations for their kids, and work hand-in-hand with teachers, the school board, and the NEA itself in doing what's best for the community. God bless us, every one. But the tone of these resolutions leaves the ineradicable impression that parents are welcome so long as they know their place. And their place is distinctly not to have high-falutin' notions about how schools should be run or which schools their cherubs will attend.

It's the section entitled "Promote and Protect Human and Civil Rights" that makes you wonder if the resolution-writing committee did its work in a hotel bar or incense-filled dorm room. The NEA has innumerable opinions on matters rather far afield of education; strongly worded beliefs on everything from genocide (against) to gender-inclusive medical studies (for) to covert espionage operations (generally against) to extremist groups (definitely against, though the population of this category remains ill-defined) to the advisability of a new constitutional convention (the NEA prefers the amendment process--and by the way, wouldn't it be nice if the NEA believed in schools where most kids learned what a constitutional amendment is and how the Constitution can be amended?). The NEA wants statehood for D.C.--no word on whether it would accept a constitutional convention to accomplish this--and a nuclear freeze, since, as the NEA solemnly informs us, it is quite sure "that nuclear war is not survivable." Finally, the NEA believes that "all visual representations using maps of the United States should depict all fifty states and Puerto Rico in their correct geographic location and relative size." This raises a host of pressing questions: What about other countries--can those maps be inaccurate? Did somebody at the meeting come out in favor of inaccurate U.S. maps? If Puerto Rico, why not also Guam, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa? Is this just a sop to Alaskans who are tired of maps that shrink their state's true magnitude relative to others? And won't it irk the Hawaiians, whose state usually gets enlarged on maps? On such critical matters the NEA maintains a dignified silence.

This whole section of the document has the musty smell of '70s bell-bottoms and go-go boots dragged out from the back of the closet. In fact, the NEA even comes out in favor of the Metric System, which fairly screams "JimmyCarter." One is surprised it isn't foursquare for Esperanto. Still, the end-world-hunger stuff (and yes, the NEA does believe that world hunger is a bad, bad thing; it says so in Resolution I-3) is passed over rather quickly, as if the NEA were just trying to pacify its annoying hippy aunt. Instead, it saves its real efforts for the long section infelicitously titled, "Protect the Rights of Education Employees and Advance Their Interests and Welfare."

Protect and advance, indeed; this section is a virtuoso paean to naked greed and unbridled avarice. As just one example, here are the benefits that the NEA believes should be the MINIMUM guaranteed to education employees: Health, dental, vision, hearing, life, and legal insurance; workers' comp; long-term disability insurance (physical and mental); sick leave (with unlimited accumulation); personal leave (ditto); bereavement leave; parental leave; dependent care leave; sabbatical leave; professional leave; association leave (presumably to attend NEA meetings); religious leave; severance pay; tuition reimbursement; retirement compensation; unemployment compensation; benefit extension for laid-off employees; personal assault protection with leave that doesn't count as sick or personal leave; employee assistance programs; on-site child care; and "an opportunity to participate in a cafeteria-type plan." (One wonders if this is about lunchrooms. By the way, if you've never lunched at the NEA cafeteria on 16th Street NW, you're in for a treat.) Spouses, domestic partners, and dependents should get equal benefits; retirees should get unlimited insurance benefits at no cost; and nobody should ever lose these benefits because schools get closed or districts separate or consolidate. Nice work if you can get it.

In spending time debating and compiling this burgeoning manifesto, we suspect the NEA has probably already broken Resolution A-28, which calls for the elimination of needless bureaucracy. But joking aside, this document does have an effect: driving the agenda of local affiliates, coloring collective bargaining with districts, and shaping the union's political activities at every level of government. So let's hope more than a few of these New Year's resolutions go unfulfilled in 2004.

To get the entire set of resolutions (be careful, it's a 450-kilobyte, 95-page PDF), email your request to [email protected].

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

From our neighbor to the north, a heart-warming story of the nerd striking back. Andrew Ironside, an unpopular, bookish, unathletic high school senior in Ontario, was elected valedictorian by his classmates, who thought it would be funny to put him in the spotlight. A classmate introduced him at the ceremony by saying cruelly, "I'm pretty happy to say I've spent time with almost all of you. Sadly to say, Andrew is not really included in this group of people. The truth is, I really barely know him." To the laughter of classmates, he mouthed the right platitudes ("we came as strangers, we leave as friends") for a few minutes, then crumpled up his remarks, tossed them aside, and announced, "You know, a lot of you were jerks." Well said. We suspect that Mr. Ironside will be just fine.

"Truth about high school," by Siri Agrell, National Post, December 27, 2003

Faced with budget shortfalls and No Child Left Behind requirements, many states are looking to cut funding for gifted and talented classes to free up extra cash for programs aimed at struggling students. Illinois, for example, "eliminated its $19 million in state funding for gifted-student programs this year" and California "reduced funding for such initiatives by $10 million, or 18 percent, a deeper cut than the cash-strapped state imposed in most other education programs." Unfortunately, this "robbing Peter to pay Paul" strategy is mostly hurting children who are both disadvantaged and gifted. It's those students who are most likely to slip under the radar and not be identified as gifted and talented, and whose parents cannot afford to pay for tutors or send them to private schools where their talents might be better cultivated. Perhaps most troubling is the impact such cuts will likely have on the largest and most persistent achievement gap--the gap among the highest achieving students. According to a 2000 federal survey, though blacks make up 17 percent of public school students, they only account for 8.2 percent of all gifted and talented students. For Hispanics the figures were 16 percent of all students and 9.6 percent of those in programs for the gifted. By contrast, whites make up 62 percent of public school students and 74 percent of gifted-education pupils, and Asians, while just 4.1 percent of all students, made up 7.1 percent of those enrolled in programs for the gifted.

"Initiative to leave no child behind leaves out gifted," by Daniel Golden, December 29, 2003, Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

In November, we reported on a Brookings conference, "Is law undermining public education?" (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=122#1533 for more details), where education reformers and researchers gathered to discuss ways that excessive litigation has tied school districts in knots. Following up on his presentation that day, Richard Arum argued in yesterday's Washington Post that the extension of some civil liberties to school-age children has served to handcuff teachers and administrators, preventing them from disciplining unruly students and creating effective learning environments. Specifically, Arum argues, after 1975, "rudimentary due process rights" were extended to students "facing even minor discipline" and students and parents "began to assert newfound legal rights when they were being disciplined for matters having little or nothing to do with free expression or protest." As a result, teachers and administrators are now wary of making even minimal efforts at punishment, "such as after-school 'double detention,' in class 'time outs,' lowered grades, and exclusion from weekend basketball or football games." Arum maintains that these restrictions ultimately hurt disadvantaged students because "minority students are often concentrated in urban public schools where poverty and behavioral problems are rife" and where strict discipline is necessary to maintain a decent learning environment.

"For their own good: limit students' rights," by Richard Arum, Washington Post, December 29, 2003

There are many ways that states, schools, and districts can work to "beat" No Child Left Behind. Some states back-end their adequate yearly progress benchmarks so that the greatest increases in achievement will be required in the last few years of implementation (see "Adequate yearly progress or balloon mortgage?" for more details). Others fudge their numbers so that, on paper, it appears that they have the requisite number of highly qualified teachers (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=120#1506). Now, it seems that Illinois schools have found two new ways to beat the system. Several of them have barred large numbers of their lowest-performing juniors from taking the state-mandated 11th grade test. To be sure, state law requires all juniors to take the Prairie State Achievement Exam, but the state also allows individual high schools to define what it means to be a "junior." Consequently, some suburban schools have replaced the old definition (third year of high school) with a new one: a third-year student who has earned enough credits to be on track to graduate in four years. The effect? Three suburban schools in Cook County "disqualified nearly 20 percent of the junior class from testing this year." Lo and behold, many of them are low-performing students who might have hampered the schools' adequate yearly progress calculations. What's more, the state itself discarded the tests of nearly 80,000 students who weren't registered for school as of September 30, 2003--a move that one analyst suggests may have inflated the scores of 1,400 schools. Both practices recall the old Mayor Daley trick of registering dead voters, only in reverse.

"Underachievers barred from tests," by Tracy Dell'Angela, Chicago Tribune, December 20, 2003 (registration required)

"Thousands of exams tossed out by state," by Diane Rado, Stephanie Banchero, and Darnell Little, Chicago Tribune, December 28, 2003  (registration required)

Barnett Berry, Laura Turchi, and Dylan Johnson, Southeast Center for Teaching Quality, Inc.; Dwight Hare and Deborah Duncan Owens, Mississippi State University; and Steve Clements, Kentucky Professional Standards BoardNovember 2003

This report provides a series of case studies around the South to illuminate the influence of state accountability systems on teachers and their professional development. The authors' hope was that accountability might "promote effective professional development," but instead they find that there is so much confusion and frustration that even well-meaning teachers have little clue how to seek or use any training that might help them be better teachers (and help their students perform better). Yet there are glimmers of hope. Teachers generally support the theory of accountability (though it's hard to pin down how stringent an accountability system they'd like), and the case studies reveal a few teachers who actually met regularly to discuss students' progress. But these positive accounts are rare. The fundamental problem: teachers don't know how to interpret standardized test results, so they can't change their teaching. Nor do they know which professional development courses might aid in this challenge. One might conclude that the problem lies with the accountability system itself, but the finding that "across the six states and various low to high-performing schools visited, we found little evidence of teachers receiving high quality professional development" points to another answer. The report is tough going but if you'd care to know more about these teachers and the mess that is professional development, visit http://www.teachingquality.org/resources/pdfs/Spencer_FinalReport.pdf.

Paul Peterson and Martin West, editors, The Brookings Institution 2003

Paul Peterson and Martin West edited this 338-page Brookings collection of essays, based on a June 2002 Harvard conference. It's not an appraisal of NCLB but an examination of the issues that NCLB deals with under the headings of school and student accountability, plus several solid chapters on the politics of enacting NCLB in 2001. It introduces the concept of "soft accountability" (low standards and few penalties), suggests that this is apt to be the dominant form in the United States in years to come--NCLB has harder features with respect to schools but practically none that bear on individual students or educators--yet the editors judge that "even partial measures . . . may have a positive effect on American education." The authors of these 13 chapters include many celebrated scholars and analysts. The essays themselves are a blend of case studies and big-picture analyses. Especially worth the price of admission are Frederick M. Hess on state-level high-stakes accountability, Andrew Rudalevige on the politics of NCLB, and Ludger Woessmann on international evidence regarding the effects of exit exams on student achievement. A nice addition to the scholarly literature on accountability. The ISBN is 0815770294 and you can get additional information at http://bookstore.brookings.edu/book_details.asp?product percent5Fid=11938.

The Education Trust December 2003

The prolific and data-driven Education Trust recently issued this 8-page analysis of state graduation data that raises many questions about the accuracy of those data and the veracity of the agencies that issue them. The reason for focusing attention on this problem now--and EdTrust is not the first to do so--is that No Child Left Behind requires schools, districts, and states to report publicly on their high-school graduation rates as part of the law's monitoring of academic progress. The first round of state-level (but disaggregated) graduation data was due at the Department of Education on September 1, intended (says EdTrust) "to provide an honest accounting of students' progress through the educational system and baseline information for establishing future graduation rate targets." Some states did a good job of this but many did not. Using Jay Greene's widely-respected method for calculating graduation rates (essentially following the 9th grade student "cohort" to see how many of them receive diplomas four years later), EdTrust found (besides three states that reported NO data to the Department) a great many states with big discrepancies--and in all but half a dozen cases those discrepancies made the state's graduation rate look rosier. In about half the states, the discrepancies are ten percent or greater. For example, Virginia reported a graduation rate of 84.7 percent while the Greene methodology yields a rate of 74 percent; in Connecticut it's 87.3 percent versus 70 percent; and in worst-offending North Carolina (which uses what EdTrust calls a "definition for the graduation rate that defies reason") it's 92.4 percent versus 63 percent. When the data are disaggregated by race, additional discrepancies turn up. For example, Indiana reports Latino and black graduation rates of 85 percent and 88 percent respectively, while the Greene (and EdTrust) methodology shows the truth to be 59 percent and 53 percent. Bottom line: there are two problems. One is woeful graduation rates, especially for minority kids. The other is the dearth of honest comparable reporting of accurate information. EdTrust tasks the federal Education Department with compelling states to solve the latter problem, correctly noting that "the foundation of any successful long-term improvement strategy is good information." Solving the underlying problem--not enough young people completing high school--is the obligation of states and districts. This is an important analysis that you can find on line at http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/4DE8F2E0-4D08-4640-B3B0-013F6DC3865D/0/tellingthetruthgradrates.pdf.

The Education TrustDecember 2003

Also new from the Education Trust is this biting 12-page analysis of state-reported data on how many teachers are "highly qualified" under the terms of NCLB. On September 1, states were required to provide baseline data to the federal Education Department. This is, admittedly, a complex topic, considering that NCLB's teacher requirements are three and that the third of them ("demonstrated content knowledge in the subject they're teaching") can be met in a number of different ways. But EdTrust's analysis of state-reported data reveals many problems. The simplest is that seven states reported no data at all. The most vivid is the HUGE disparity among states in terms of the proportions of classes now allegedly being taught by "highly-qualified" teachers: from 98.6 percent in Wisconsin to 16 percent in Alaska, with twenty states above 90 percent and four below 50 percent. Says EdTrust: "It's reasonable to think that states vary in terms of teacher quality. . . . But not this much. Clearly, something else is going on." The authors accuse a number of states of having "abused the flexibility they have to decide how to address the content-knowledge requirements for veteran teachers by claiming simply that all certified teachers have met them." With less than 3 years remaining to get every teacher up to the "highly-qualified" bar, two big problems loom. One is real: in EdTrust's words, "there are a significant number of practicing teachers out there who need help in strengthening their subject matter knowledge and teaching skills." The other is the data problem: this information is not readily available (EdTrust had to use a Freedom of Information request to get it from the Department), much of it is cockeyed, and the Department isn't doing much of anything with or about it. "Adding an insult to injury, in October, the Department took credit for exposing the 'dirty little secrets' of teacher quality. Since the data remains [sic] unavailable via publication or web release to the general public, the Department itself hasn't 'exposed' anything. And even if it did, so much of the data misleads and obfuscates, one wonders exactly what dirty little secrets the Department thinks are revealed." Bravo for EdTrust--and let's be grateful that they're on the case. You can find this illuminating and upsetting expose at http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/C638111D-04E3-4C0D-9F68-20E7009498A6/0/tellingthetruthteachers.pdf.