The Education Gadfly Weekly

National Center on Education Outcomes
July 2002

This thorough if dry report by the National Center on Education Outcomes (NCEO) details the various participation options and accommodations available to students with disabilities when taking state tests. According to both the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1997, all students, including those with disabilities, should be included in state- and district-wide testing with "reasonable" or "appropriate" (the language depends on the document) accommodations. The NCEO report describes state policies in this area as of 2001 and compares them to state policies reported earlier. Numerous charts show state participation policies, testing options, accommodation policies, groups eligible for accommodations, criteria for making accommodation decisions, and alternate assessments for all fifty states. Noted in the report are the addition of partial participation (when a student takes some but not all of the test) and out-of-level testing (when a student takes the test designed for students at a lower grade level) options, the increased specificity of the 2001 policies, the implications of accommodations for test scoring, and a list of controversial accommodations (such as allowing a proctor or scribe to record a student's responses). Interestingly, "emotional anxiety" was included by six states as a reason for students not to participate in assessments. Accommodations for assessments continue to be based largely on the recommendation of the student's IEP (Individual Education Plan) team, although parents are gaining an increased role in the process. If you'd prefer a brief overview of state policies rather than an exhaustive state-by-state breakdown, the report does a good job of highlighting these in its executive summary and concluding summary. You can find the full report online at http://education.umn.edu/NCEO/OnlinePubs/Synthesis46.html.

Hugh B. Price
September 2002

Hugh B. Price, president of the National Urban League, recently authored this thoughtful 256-page book, written especially for parents and subtitled "Getting Your Child The Best Possible Education." In its opening sentence, Price notes that this is his "first real book," earlier volumes having been collections of speeches, articles and suchlike. Full of anecdotes, personal vignettes and shrewd counsel for parents, it's an accessible, urgent yet optimistic book. It's no policy tome, though Price makes plain his own view on some of today's education policy issues. (He's for charter schools, for example, and against vouchers.) He's been a plucky warrior in the education reform wars, wise but impatient, and his book is a welcome addition to one's library. The ISBN is 0758201192, Kensington is the publisher and more information can be found at http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/kensington/finditem.cfm?itemid=6252.

Tom Loveless, Brown Center on Education Policy, Brookings Institution
September 2002

Tom Loveless, director of the Brookings Institution's Brown Center, has taken to issuing annual reports on American education, each examining several topics in interesting and provocative ways. This year is no exception. The new Brookings report takes up three issues. The one that got scant press attention-doubtless because it revealed no alarming problem-is whether high schools that are "sports powerhouses" are weaker academically than schools less adept at athletics. The answer is no, no "zero sum" game is at work, and there's "no evidence that schools suffer academically when they excel at athletics." In fact, the two forms of success may even be "mutually reinforcing." The other two issues in this report are getting big-time media notice, however. One deals with arithmetic. Loveless asserts that, despite some evidence that U.S. students and schools have made modest gains in math achievement in recent years, they have "stagnated or even declined" when it comes to computation in general and arithmetic in particular. His great concern is that America is turning its back on arithmetic, not paying nearly enough attention to it in an era when schools and school systems (and state standards) are more attentive to the "problem-solving skills" emphasized by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (The NCTM, it's fair to say, is not Loveless's favorite group.) His particular beef in this report is that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is overly enamored of NCTM-style math and doesn't even report a separate sub-score on computation or arithmetic whereby that particular form of achievement could be accurately tracked. He charges that the "main NAEP" exam pays too little attention to computation. But he broke some individual test items out of the NAEP "trend exam" (a different test, used for longitudinal tracking) that he believes are primarily about arithmetic, and on those items he finds declining prowess, particularly for older (17 year old students). NAEP staff reply that Loveless did not select all the pertinent test questions and that, if he had included those dealing with percentages, he would have found a stronger level of performance. They also say that other branches of math wouldn't be showing even (modest) achievement gains if the kids couldn't do basic arithmetic. (Loveless replies that the "main NAEP" exam lets them use calculators.) We can't resolve this one but we agree with Loveless that arithmetic and computation skills are fundamental to success in math and that it would be good for NAEP to track them in a clear and consistent way-along with the rest of this key subject. The Brown Center's biggest headlines this year were attached to the report's third section, which says that charter-school students aren't doing as well on state tests as their peers in regular public schools. This issue is fraught with data complexity and analytic difficulty, and in fact Loveless's conclusions are tentative and circumscribed. The press, however, didn't pay much attention to the qualifiers and limitations, and, as a result, charter-school protagonists are mightily irked at Loveless and Brookings. Some of the irk is warranted: Brookings's own news release had an alarmist headline and its publicists doubtless craved exactly the kind of attention that the report has gotten. If one actually reads it, however, one learns essentially what we have learned from sundry other studies of academic achievement in charter schools-most of which have not been around long enough for any definitive conclusions to be reached: in some states, their test scores are lower than those of public schools serving demographically similar youngsters. That's not true everywhere, however. Indeed, in just four of the ten states examined by Brookings were the differences statistically significant. In one of the other six (Colorado), charter students actually did better. Loveless acknowledges how little any of this really proves and how varied the explanations may be: "One possible explanation is that charter schools are not doing a very good job. But an equally plausible explanation is that charters attract large numbers of students who are struggling academically in public schools before ever setting foot on a charter school campus. The charters, in fact, may be doing an excellent job, bringing these low achievers up to a level that, although still below average, is not as low as when the students attended public schools." Too bad this part didn't make it into the press coverage. We know from plenty of charter-school studies that many of their pupils were indeed far behind the educational 8-ball to start with. (We also know that many charter schools are new and still getting their acts together.) If there was ever a case for "value-added" analysis rather than simple comparisons of average test scores, it's here. But an inconclusive report along those lines wouldn't garner much attention and thus, in the world of contemporary think tanks, would scarcely be worth issuing. You can obtain a copy of the Loveless/Brown report at http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/gs/brown/brown_hp.htm.

John Wenders, Idahoans for Tax Reform
August 2002

Florida's Council for Education Policy, Research and Improvement (CEPRI, a state agency within the Office of Legislative Services) has been tracking Florida's high-school class of 1994. This report follows them through their seventh post-high school year. Lots of revealing data are offered here, including the fact that three-quarters of them had earned no college (or community college) degree. Of those who had, the strongest predictor was their high school academic record. Thus this report is both data source and partial analysis for one big state-and a model of the kind of longitudinal tracking of high school graduates that every state ought to be engaged in. It's also a glum reminder that, for all our pride in an open-access higher education system in America, a huge number of young people don't get college degrees. Indeed, as we recall from recent OECD reports, this is another education measure on which the U.S. long led the pack but is beginning to be outpaced by other countries. You can download the full Florida report in PDF format from http://www.cepri.state.fl.us/pdf/2002%20Cohort%20Report.pdf. You can also find an analytic tool for your own use at http://www.cepri.state.fl.us/bacompletion/index.cfm.

Texas Public Policy Foundation
July 2002

The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is a conservative statewide think tank that, among other things, keeps watch over textbooks being considered for adoption by the Texas public schools. As the second largest of the states that must okay textbooks before they are used in the schools, Texas has considerable influence over the national textbook market-and its State Board of Education, through this mechanism, has considerable influence over what's taught in the state's public schools. Because it was time for the state's periodic review of secondary-schools social-studies textbooks, TPPF empanelled its own reviewers from K-12 and higher education to examine some 26 books. The reviewers were asked to appraise both their "academic content" and "how well the textbooks meet the state requirements for textbook content." In general, the reviewers found very weak history content in these books-and numerous factual errors (96 pages worth!), as well as some evidence of bias and political correctness. In each of 7 categories, however, they found some textbooks to be more satisfactory than others-and TPPF presented that information to the State Board in July. If you're reviewing secondary school social studies textbooks, you may pick up pointers here, although non-Texas readers may be more interested in TPPF's general critique of the historical weakness of most of the volumes they reviewed. You can find the entire review on the web at www.tppf.org.

Jacques Steinberg
2002

Jacques Steinberg, a New York Times reporter specializing in education, spent eight months observing almost every aspect of the college admissions process at Wesleyan University, and his account of what he saw and heard during that time is the basis for a new book, The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College. According to a review of the book by Dan Seligman, the admissions process at Wesleyan includes "elaborate procedures for reinterpreting grades and test scores in order to guarantee high admission rates for minorities," procedures that Seligman, a contributing editor of Forbes, calls "patently unfair." Seligman, who describes the book as "enormously readable" and "revelatory," is struck by the personal investment of some admissions officers in particular applicants, especially minority or disadvantaged applicants. To read the book review, which appears in the September 2002 issue of Commentary Magazine, surf to http://www.educationnews.org/getting_in.htm. Or dive into the book itself, which is published by Viking (see http://www.penguinputnam.com/Book/BookFrame/0,1007,,00.html?0CS^0670031356).

Harvard Civil Rights Project
August 23, 2002

With reauthorization time nearing in Washington for the Higher Education Act, expect renewed discussion of whether the federal government should add a "merit" component to its billions of dollars in need-based aid for college students. In my view, this idea warrants serious consideration as a way of creating incentives for young people to study harder and learn more in high school, an effect that would likely trickle down into the middle and elementary schools. We have a far better chance of "leaving no child behind" if young people see a tangible reward attached to academic achievement-the more so if they come from low income families. But this idea faces stiff opposition from a cadre of purists who contend that financial neediness alone should determine one's eligibility for (and the amount of) aid to attend college. That point of view is argued in a new report from the Harvard Civil Rights Project, which examines the merit-based scholarship programs that have been spreading from state to state (and are now operational in at least a dozen of them). Predictably, given the "social engineering" orientation of that Project, this report concludes that giving non-poor people financial assistance as incentive and reward for doing well in high school is a socially dysfunctional thing to do, that it increases stratification, doesn't boost "access," etc. You can find it on the web at http://www.law.harvard.edu/groups/civilrights/publications/meritaid/synopsis.html. You may also want to read about the testy response it evoked from several higher education experts at a recent conference of the National Governors Association. Their basic contentions: popular programs such as Georgia's HOPE Scholarships, merit-based though they are, have drawn lots more resources into student financial aid and much of that money has gone to assist students who are far from wealthy but don't qualify for federal assistance. You can read an article about this debate at http://chronicle.com/daily/2002/08/2002082902n.htm (subscribers only) ("Speakers Rebut Criticism of State-Based Merit Aid, Saying Plans Help Needy Students," by Jeffrey Selingo, The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 29, 2002). Among the comments is this bit of silliness from the usually sensible David Breneman, dean of education at the University of Virginia: "I can't remember a time when the instincts of politicians have been so at odds with what most economists seem to think is sensible policy." Please raise your hand if you would like our public policies henceforth to be shaped by economists instead of elected officials.

Why haven't charter schools taken greater hold in suburban areas in most states? In a new Fordham Foundation report, Pushpam Jain of the University of Maine takes a close look at three states with relatively high proportions of charter schools in the suburbs to see how they managed to introduce charter schools, and then compares them to one state (Illinois) with only a few suburban charters to see what is blocking the spread of charters there. His conclusion: if a state sets up a system for authorizing charter schools where the only authorizing body doesn't want charter schools, there won't be many charter schools! But when state policymakers want charter schools, and when the state retains a role in the charter approval process-either as primary authorizer or as appellate authority-there are likely to be more charter schools in suburbs. The report, The Approval Barrier to Suburban Charter Schools, was released today by the Fordham Foundation and is available at www.edexcellence.net.

This week's New York Times Magazine contained a fascinating profile of the quirky Goldstein family of West Hempstead, NY-the von Trapps of the spelling bee world. A Goldstein has placed in the top 20 at the National Spelling Bee for four of the last five years, writes Bruce Grierson, and this unusual family's life revolves around obsessively memorizing obscure words that might turn up in competitions. For more, see "Spellbound," by Bruce Grierson, The New York Times Magazine, September 1, 2002.

One year after pass rates on the MCAS exam rose significantly-a gain which was dismissed as a fluke by opponents of Massachusetts' high-stakes testing program-scores on the test have risen yet again, though this round of gains is smaller than last year's. In spring 2002, 86 percent of sophomores passed the Bay State's English exam, up from 82 percent in 2001, and 75 percent passed the math exam, the same as last year. Forty percent of black 10th graders passed both portions of the test, up from 37 percent in 2001; 33 percent of Hispanic students passed both parts, up from 29 percent the year before; and 78 percent of white students passed both parts, up from 77 percent the year before. Of the roughly 21,700 sophomores who did not pass the test, 60 percent came within four points of doing so. These students will have four more chances to pass the test before they are scheduled to graduate in 2004. "MCAS scores improve as minorities narrow gap," by Ed Hayward, Boston Herald, August 30, 2002; "Slight improvements seen on Massachusetts high-stakes test," by Neal Learner, Education Daily, September 3, 2002 (subscribers only). A summary of the test scores is available at www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/2002/results/summary.pdf

Contrary to many people's glum assumption, urban school systems are not all education disaster zones. Nor are they all alike. Some, in fact, are far more effective than others at educating children-and we're beginning to understand why that is and what might enable other urban school systems to turn themselves around. A smashing new study being released today by the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) provides a major boost to that understanding. At a time when the U.S. is seeking to "leave no child behind," the study is very welcome indeed.

We've known for ages that good schools occasionally flourish within even the most decrepit school systems. The "effective schools" research of the 1970's and 1980's contributed much to that knowledge. It helped us describe the usual characteristics of effective schools. It helped us to spot them hither and yon. The great frustration was that nobody knew quite how to replicate them. They were more like wild flowers, turning up on their own, than a crop to be cultivated.

We've also known for some time that, while many efforts at systemic urban school reform get nowhere-see Frederick Hess's Spinning Wheels for one perceptive analysis-others lead to real change and measurable gains. (See Don McAdams's Fighting to Save Our Urban Schools&and Winning! for an account of Houston's successful effort to turn itself around.) But, like the "effective schools" research, those explanations have been situation-specific and hard to generalize.

CGCS set out to find more easily generalized-and replicable-explanations for why some urban systems make greater progress than others. Assisted by the Manpower Development Research Corporation with funding from the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education, CGCS sought districts that, in executive director Mike Casserly's words, "had improved in both reading and math in over half of their grades, had done so at rates faster than their respective states, and had simultaneously narrowed their racially-identifiable achievement gaps."

They settled on four such systems- Charlotte-Mecklenberg, Houston, Sacramento and the "Chancellor's District" within New York City-and studied them to determine "what districts can do to boost performance citywide rather than waiting for the turn-around of individual schools." They also examined some (unnamed) "comparison districts" of similar size and demographics.

What distinguished the higher-performing school systems? The analysts identified a half-dozen "preconditions for reform," and nine "strategies for success"-and stressed that all of these things must happen together. This is no menu from which to pick and choose one or two favorite or politically convenient items.

The preconditions for reform turn out to be these:

• A new school board not attached to the status quo that pursues reform with a singular focus on raising student achievement.
  
• A shared vision of reform-and a superintendent willing to be held accountable for results.
  
• An ability to identify instructional problems that could be solved system-wide.
  
• The capacity to sell the school system's reform vision to the larger community.
  
• A central office imbued with a sense of customer service and able to operate effectively and scandal-free.
  
• A willingness to use new funds to improve instruction rather than for other programs, across-the-board raises, etc.

With those conditions in place, the higher-performing school systems deployed these strategies:

• Develop instructional cohesion by aligning the system's curriculum with state standards.
  
• Create accountability systems that exceed state requirements and hold district personnel and school-level leaders personally responsible for producing results.
  
• Focus attention on the lowest performing schools.
  
• Centralize and standardize curricula and instruction across the system, especially in reading and math.
  
• Centralize professional development and focus it on helping teachers meet state standards.
  
• Drive reforms into the classroom by concentrating on building-level implementation and classroom-level instructional improvement.
  
• Base decisions on data, not hopes or hunches. Use data to analyze problems, monitor progress and refine strategies.
  
• Target initial reforms at the elementary level to stop the flow of students into higher grades who lack basic skills.
  
• Provide struggling middle and high school students with intensive instruction in basic reading and math.

It's not a complete formula for urban school reform, to be sure. Casserly notes, for example, that even these relatively successful districts have so far accomplished little by way of reforming their high schools. And he's well aware of all the things that can go wrong, beginning with the turmoil produced by revolving doors in the superintendent's office and abrupt shifts on the school board. Doing all these things well demands time, sustained focus and stable leadership.

It's also about hard work. In the higher-performing systems, administrators and teachers reported that their jobs became much more demanding and stressful than in the past. They worried that the strain would take the joy out of being educators and working with children. District leaders dealt with this anxiety by improving facilities and materials while providing professional development that emphasized the importance of the mission of educating young people. Teachers, principals and school administrators were also given the opportunity to celebrate successes along the way-and those who were not committed to seeing the mission through were asked to leave.

Not everyone will welcome this approach, with its emphasis on centralization, uniformity and command-and-control. It's not the only approach to education reform that America should be trying. But it's exceedingly hopeful, nonetheless. The case studies reported in Foundations for Success suggest that effective reform can be initiated, managed, and driven from the top in an urban school system-so long as the conditions are right, the full set of reform strategies is pursued simultaneously, and leaders stay the course. This is a significant message of hope for those struggling across the land to improve urban education. It also suggests that the systemic cures assumed by No Child Left Behind are not pipe dreams.

"Foundations for Success: Case Studies of How Urban School Systems Improve Student Achievement," Council of the Great City Schools, September 2002, http://www.cgcs.org/reports/Foundations.html

Terry Ryan is program director at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

Cardinal Edward Egan and other New York bishops have charged state politicians with violating poor parents' "fundamental rights" by condemning kids to failing public schools and denying them the option to attend parochial schools. In a harsh pastoral letter, the clergymen recommend that private and religious education be made more accessible to all families through publicly funded vouchers or tax credits. "Cardinal in Holy War Over Schools," by Carl Campanile, New York Post, September 2, 2002.

While the National Educational Goals Panel and others have reported high school graduation rates remaining essentially stable (around 86 percent) over the last decade, the graduation rate has actually fallen if students receiving GEDs are not included in those numbers, according to an article by Duncan Chaplin of the Urban Institute that appears in the new issue of Education Next. The falling graduation rate would have been a national scandal by now, Chaplin argues, had it not been disguised by a faulty measuring stick that does not distinguish between regular high school diplomas and GED certificates. Other articles in the same issue-available at www.educationnext.org-examine why teacher pay is so low, whether the ills of our education system endanger the U.S. economy, and how standards and accountability are being used as weapons in school finance lawsuits. "Tassels on the Cheap," by Duncan Chaplin, Education Next, Fall 2002.

Aspiring teachers in the Bay State did not do as well on their tests. More than half of the applicants who were accepted into the state's fast-track teacher certification program contingent upon their passing the Massachusetts Test for Educator Licensure failed the test, according to an analysis by a critic of the fast-track program. "Half of applicants fail test for teacher program," by Michele Kurtz, The Boston Globe, August 29, 2002.

As he ends his tenure as president of Children First America, a private scholarship program, school choice icon Fritz Steiger offers some closing remarks and thanks to his allies. His final "Voice for Choice" statement reads like a mini-history and who's who of the school choice movement. "A Voice for Choice," Fritz S. Steiger, Children First America, August 29, 2002

Harvard Civil Rights Project
August 23, 2002

With reauthorization time nearing in Washington for the Higher Education Act, expect renewed discussion of whether the federal government should add a "merit" component to its billions of dollars in need-based aid for college students. In my view, this idea warrants serious consideration as a way of creating incentives for young people to study harder and learn more in high school, an effect that would likely trickle down into the middle and elementary schools. We have a far better chance of "leaving no child behind" if young people see a tangible reward attached to academic achievement-the more so if they come from low income families. But this idea faces stiff opposition from a cadre of purists who contend that financial neediness alone should determine one's eligibility for (and the amount of) aid to attend college. That point of view is argued in a new report from the Harvard Civil Rights Project, which examines the merit-based scholarship programs that have been spreading from state to state (and are now operational in at least a dozen of them). Predictably, given the "social engineering" orientation of that Project, this report concludes that giving non-poor people financial assistance as incentive and reward for doing well in high school is a socially dysfunctional thing to do, that it increases stratification, doesn't boost "access," etc. You can find it on the web at http://www.law.harvard.edu/groups/civilrights/publications/meritaid/synopsis.html. You may also want to read about the testy response it evoked from several higher education experts at a recent conference of the National Governors Association. Their basic contentions: popular programs such as Georgia's HOPE Scholarships, merit-based though they are, have drawn lots more resources into student financial aid and much of that money has gone to assist students who are far from wealthy but don't qualify for federal assistance. You can read an article about this debate at http://chronicle.com/daily/2002/08/2002082902n.htm (subscribers only) ("Speakers Rebut Criticism of State-Based Merit Aid, Saying Plans Help Needy Students," by Jeffrey Selingo, The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 29, 2002). Among the comments is this bit of silliness from the usually sensible David Breneman, dean of education at the University of Virginia: "I can't remember a time when the instincts of politicians have been so at odds with what most economists seem to think is sensible policy." Please raise your hand if you would like our public policies henceforth to be shaped by economists instead of elected officials.

Hugh B. Price
September 2002

Hugh B. Price, president of the National Urban League, recently authored this thoughtful 256-page book, written especially for parents and subtitled "Getting Your Child The Best Possible Education." In its opening sentence, Price notes that this is his "first real book," earlier volumes having been collections of speeches, articles and suchlike. Full of anecdotes, personal vignettes and shrewd counsel for parents, it's an accessible, urgent yet optimistic book. It's no policy tome, though Price makes plain his own view on some of today's education policy issues. (He's for charter schools, for example, and against vouchers.) He's been a plucky warrior in the education reform wars, wise but impatient, and his book is a welcome addition to one's library. The ISBN is 0758201192, Kensington is the publisher and more information can be found at http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/kensington/finditem.cfm?itemid=6252.

Jacques Steinberg
2002

Jacques Steinberg, a New York Times reporter specializing in education, spent eight months observing almost every aspect of the college admissions process at Wesleyan University, and his account of what he saw and heard during that time is the basis for a new book, The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College. According to a review of the book by Dan Seligman, the admissions process at Wesleyan includes "elaborate procedures for reinterpreting grades and test scores in order to guarantee high admission rates for minorities," procedures that Seligman, a contributing editor of Forbes, calls "patently unfair." Seligman, who describes the book as "enormously readable" and "revelatory," is struck by the personal investment of some admissions officers in particular applicants, especially minority or disadvantaged applicants. To read the book review, which appears in the September 2002 issue of Commentary Magazine, surf to http://www.educationnews.org/getting_in.htm. Or dive into the book itself, which is published by Viking (see http://www.penguinputnam.com/Book/BookFrame/0,1007,,00.html?0CS^0670031356).

John Wenders, Idahoans for Tax Reform
August 2002

Florida's Council for Education Policy, Research and Improvement (CEPRI, a state agency within the Office of Legislative Services) has been tracking Florida's high-school class of 1994. This report follows them through their seventh post-high school year. Lots of revealing data are offered here, including the fact that three-quarters of them had earned no college (or community college) degree. Of those who had, the strongest predictor was their high school academic record. Thus this report is both data source and partial analysis for one big state-and a model of the kind of longitudinal tracking of high school graduates that every state ought to be engaged in. It's also a glum reminder that, for all our pride in an open-access higher education system in America, a huge number of young people don't get college degrees. Indeed, as we recall from recent OECD reports, this is another education measure on which the U.S. long led the pack but is beginning to be outpaced by other countries. You can download the full Florida report in PDF format from http://www.cepri.state.fl.us/pdf/2002%20Cohort%20Report.pdf. You can also find an analytic tool for your own use at http://www.cepri.state.fl.us/bacompletion/index.cfm.

National Center on Education Outcomes
July 2002

This thorough if dry report by the National Center on Education Outcomes (NCEO) details the various participation options and accommodations available to students with disabilities when taking state tests. According to both the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1997, all students, including those with disabilities, should be included in state- and district-wide testing with "reasonable" or "appropriate" (the language depends on the document) accommodations. The NCEO report describes state policies in this area as of 2001 and compares them to state policies reported earlier. Numerous charts show state participation policies, testing options, accommodation policies, groups eligible for accommodations, criteria for making accommodation decisions, and alternate assessments for all fifty states. Noted in the report are the addition of partial participation (when a student takes some but not all of the test) and out-of-level testing (when a student takes the test designed for students at a lower grade level) options, the increased specificity of the 2001 policies, the implications of accommodations for test scoring, and a list of controversial accommodations (such as allowing a proctor or scribe to record a student's responses). Interestingly, "emotional anxiety" was included by six states as a reason for students not to participate in assessments. Accommodations for assessments continue to be based largely on the recommendation of the student's IEP (Individual Education Plan) team, although parents are gaining an increased role in the process. If you'd prefer a brief overview of state policies rather than an exhaustive state-by-state breakdown, the report does a good job of highlighting these in its executive summary and concluding summary. You can find the full report online at http://education.umn.edu/NCEO/OnlinePubs/Synthesis46.html.

Texas Public Policy Foundation
July 2002

The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is a conservative statewide think tank that, among other things, keeps watch over textbooks being considered for adoption by the Texas public schools. As the second largest of the states that must okay textbooks before they are used in the schools, Texas has considerable influence over the national textbook market-and its State Board of Education, through this mechanism, has considerable influence over what's taught in the state's public schools. Because it was time for the state's periodic review of secondary-schools social-studies textbooks, TPPF empanelled its own reviewers from K-12 and higher education to examine some 26 books. The reviewers were asked to appraise both their "academic content" and "how well the textbooks meet the state requirements for textbook content." In general, the reviewers found very weak history content in these books-and numerous factual errors (96 pages worth!), as well as some evidence of bias and political correctness. In each of 7 categories, however, they found some textbooks to be more satisfactory than others-and TPPF presented that information to the State Board in July. If you're reviewing secondary school social studies textbooks, you may pick up pointers here, although non-Texas readers may be more interested in TPPF's general critique of the historical weakness of most of the volumes they reviewed. You can find the entire review on the web at www.tppf.org.

Tom Loveless, Brown Center on Education Policy, Brookings Institution
September 2002

Tom Loveless, director of the Brookings Institution's Brown Center, has taken to issuing annual reports on American education, each examining several topics in interesting and provocative ways. This year is no exception. The new Brookings report takes up three issues. The one that got scant press attention-doubtless because it revealed no alarming problem-is whether high schools that are "sports powerhouses" are weaker academically than schools less adept at athletics. The answer is no, no "zero sum" game is at work, and there's "no evidence that schools suffer academically when they excel at athletics." In fact, the two forms of success may even be "mutually reinforcing." The other two issues in this report are getting big-time media notice, however. One deals with arithmetic. Loveless asserts that, despite some evidence that U.S. students and schools have made modest gains in math achievement in recent years, they have "stagnated or even declined" when it comes to computation in general and arithmetic in particular. His great concern is that America is turning its back on arithmetic, not paying nearly enough attention to it in an era when schools and school systems (and state standards) are more attentive to the "problem-solving skills" emphasized by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (The NCTM, it's fair to say, is not Loveless's favorite group.) His particular beef in this report is that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is overly enamored of NCTM-style math and doesn't even report a separate sub-score on computation or arithmetic whereby that particular form of achievement could be accurately tracked. He charges that the "main NAEP" exam pays too little attention to computation. But he broke some individual test items out of the NAEP "trend exam" (a different test, used for longitudinal tracking) that he believes are primarily about arithmetic, and on those items he finds declining prowess, particularly for older (17 year old students). NAEP staff reply that Loveless did not select all the pertinent test questions and that, if he had included those dealing with percentages, he would have found a stronger level of performance. They also say that other branches of math wouldn't be showing even (modest) achievement gains if the kids couldn't do basic arithmetic. (Loveless replies that the "main NAEP" exam lets them use calculators.) We can't resolve this one but we agree with Loveless that arithmetic and computation skills are fundamental to success in math and that it would be good for NAEP to track them in a clear and consistent way-along with the rest of this key subject. The Brown Center's biggest headlines this year were attached to the report's third section, which says that charter-school students aren't doing as well on state tests as their peers in regular public schools. This issue is fraught with data complexity and analytic difficulty, and in fact Loveless's conclusions are tentative and circumscribed. The press, however, didn't pay much attention to the qualifiers and limitations, and, as a result, charter-school protagonists are mightily irked at Loveless and Brookings. Some of the irk is warranted: Brookings's own news release had an alarmist headline and its publicists doubtless craved exactly the kind of attention that the report has gotten. If one actually reads it, however, one learns essentially what we have learned from sundry other studies of academic achievement in charter schools-most of which have not been around long enough for any definitive conclusions to be reached: in some states, their test scores are lower than those of public schools serving demographically similar youngsters. That's not true everywhere, however. Indeed, in just four of the ten states examined by Brookings were the differences statistically significant. In one of the other six (Colorado), charter students actually did better. Loveless acknowledges how little any of this really proves and how varied the explanations may be: "One possible explanation is that charter schools are not doing a very good job. But an equally plausible explanation is that charters attract large numbers of students who are struggling academically in public schools before ever setting foot on a charter school campus. The charters, in fact, may be doing an excellent job, bringing these low achievers up to a level that, although still below average, is not as low as when the students attended public schools." Too bad this part didn't make it into the press coverage. We know from plenty of charter-school studies that many of their pupils were indeed far behind the educational 8-ball to start with. (We also know that many charter schools are new and still getting their acts together.) If there was ever a case for "value-added" analysis rather than simple comparisons of average test scores, it's here. But an inconclusive report along those lines wouldn't garner much attention and thus, in the world of contemporary think tanks, would scarcely be worth issuing. You can obtain a copy of the Loveless/Brown report at http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/gs/brown/brown_hp.htm.