The Education Gadfly Weekly

Education Week, January 10, 2002

Few in the world of education would argue with the notion that many skills and attitudes required for a life of successful learning have their roots in the nursery, yet providing an appropriate environment for early years' learning for all children is no easy matter. The sixth annual Quality Counts report, published by Education Week this week, examines what all 50 states and the District of Columbia are doing in their efforts to provide quality early-learning experiences for children under the age of five. During a typical week, 11.9 million children younger than 5 in the United States spend part of their waking hours in the care of someone other than their parents. The report notes that 39 states and the District of Columbia provide state-financed pre-kindergarten for at least some of their 3-to 5-year olds, up from about 10 in 1980. Annual state spending for such programs now exceeds $1.9 billion. Despite this increased spending, however, there is a huge discrepancy across states, and even within communities, in the quality of learning experiences afforded young children. One of the primary reasons for this variation is that less than a third of the states have specified what under-fives should know or be able to do. Also working against the goal of high-quality early learning experiences for all children is the abysmal pay of preschool teachers, who had an average annual salary of $19,610 in 1999, less than half of the salary of the average elementary school teacher.  As always, Quality Counts also rates the 50 states on many aspects of K-12 education, organized under the headings of student achievement, standards and accountability, improving teacher quality, school climate, and resources. To view Quality Counts 2002 or to order a hard copy, go to http://www.edweek.org/qc.

Andrew J. Wayne and Peter Youngs, Review of Educational Research 
Spring 2003, Vol. 73, No. 1, pp. 89-122

This short but important paper reviews the existing research on teacher characteristics to determine what we know about which teachers are most effective. One finding, unfortunately, consistent with the recent ECS report [for Gadfly's review of the ECS report, go to http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=110#1383], is that there isn't a lot of reliable research on this topic. Among the relatively few studies that meet the authors' criteria--primarily, the use of value added analysis and proper controls--they do find some worthwhile insights. Correlates of teacher effectiveness include the quality of the teacher's undergraduate school and the teacher's performance on standardized tests (such as verbal skills or teacher licensure tests). Perhaps more interesting is their examination of degrees, coursework, and certification. With respect to the first two, only in mathematics has a reliable connection been found: Teachers with master's degrees in math do make better math teachers. (In other subjects, the connection has not been demonstrated.) With respect to certification, the lesson is that it's beneficial "only when teachers have certification for the subject taught." Notably absent from existing research is any solid evidence that race, years of experience, or holding an education degree do anybody any good. The implications seem clear: certification processes and hiring decisions need to incorporate what teachers know, and still more research is needed about which teacher characteristics actually help students learn. This paper provides a useful review of familiar ground. Sadly, it's not available online; to order a copy, call 800-521-0600.

Richard M. Ingersoll, American Educational Research Journal, Fall 2001

In this review published in the American Educational Research Journal, Penn education sociologist Richard M. Ingersoll pokes imaginatively into the question of whether high teacher turnover rates arise from immutable demographic shifts, fundamental supply shortages, individual teacher characteristics, or organizational characteristics of the schools themselves. Mind you, he went in search of the latter. And he found some interesting evidence that various school characteristics cause lots of teachers to leave (about 15% per year of late). He concludes that "School staffing problems are primarily due to excess demand resulting from a 'revolving door' - where large numbers of qualified teachers depart their jobs for reasons other than retirement." He thus partakes of the field's common assumption that teaching ought to be a lifetime career, not something that one simply does for a while before or after doing something else. But if you share his assumption, you must be alarmed by his conclusion that no supply-enhancing efforts in K-12 teaching can possibly succeed until and unless steps are taken to curb the "excess demand" that he identified. (Incidentally, the highest turnover rates he found are not in public schools at all but in small private schools.) What is going on? Ingersoll says that "Retirement accounts for a relatively small number of departures, a moderate number of departures are reported due to school staffing actions, a larger proportion of teachers indicate they depart for personal reasons [e.g. health, family], and an even larger proportion report that they depart either because they are dissatisfied with their jobs or in order to seek better jobs or other career opportunities." Policy makers should ponder these findings, which suggest that many sources of teacher turnover are, or could be, amenable to policy intervention. You can get a copy by emailing [email protected] or by calling 202-223-9485.

Holly Holland and Kelly Mazzoli, 2001

This 306-page book offers an insider's account of an urban school reform initiative in an unnamed, mid-sized Midwestern city.  Authors Holly Holland and Kelly Mazzoli describe how one of the largest private donations ever made to a single high school is giving a troubled urban school a new lease on life.  To help students overcome such obstacles as high poverty, low expectations, inadequate teacher training, bureaucracy, and astonishing parental neglect, school officials created a comprehensive freshman academy where faculty members pledged to become so involved in kids' lives - through targeted and aggressive academic and emotional support - that no one would fall through the cracks.  End-of-year surveys suggest that the academy is having an impact; school leaders have set many - but not all - failing students on a more promising path to higher academic achievement, better manners, and more constructive personal habits.  To order a copy of the book, contact the publisher at Heinemann, 88 Post Road West, P.O. Box 5007, Westport, CT 06881; phone 800-225-5800; fax 203-750-9790.  Holland and Mazzoli published an article describing the reform initiative in the December 2001 issue of Phi Delta Kappan (not yet available online).

Gripe number one:

When Congress decided to federalize the nation's airport security personnel, there was a briefly heated debate about whether "federalizing" was synonymous with improving, or whether it would mean nothing more than adding 28,000 people to the federal workforce with additional job protections for the workers but no additional security for passengers. During the debate, we were assured by our elected representatives that those who worked in sensitive positions in the airports would have to meet higher standards than are currently in place.

Surprise: the nation's airport security personnel will be, apparently, exactly the same as those who were on the job (or not on the job) on September 11. To make matters worse, the Department of Transportation is rapidly dropping or diluting or forgetting about the "standards" that the public thought had been adopted in the legislation. After an outcry from places like California, it turns out that security personnel will NOT have to be American citizens. It seems that a large number of these workers are not American citizens, even though they have lived in the United States (in some cases) for years (certainly enough years to apply for and receive their citizenship papers).

Worse yet: those people who are our nation's first line of defense, screening air passengers and their possessions, will not need to be high school graduates. At a time when nearly 90% of all young people are getting high school diplomas, this move is outrageous. It suggests that screeners will be drawn from the pool of the poorest educated and least motivated individuals, those who lacked the minimal persistence needed to complete a high school diploma. Instead of a high school degree, screeners need have only "one year of work experience," which is about as minimal as one could get, save for no work experience at all. This is the kind of policy that sends a very negative message to students and teachers about the importance of having a high school education.

This dumbing down of qualifications suggest that our nation is still not serious about air security. The message that we are all getting through these decisions is that worker job security counts for a lot more than passengers' lives and safety.

My friend Checker is currently en route to Mexico, but I suggest that the rest of us stay home or drive until there is some clear signal that our government intends to put our safety first.

Gripe number two:

Recently the President of Yale University revealed that he was reconsidering the practice of early decisions for students applying for admission. Immediately came an outcry from a variety of admissions officers in defense of early decisions. It was good, they said, for high school seniors to make their choice of college in the fall of their last high school year and to get an answer in December. I forget all the reasons they set forth about the importance of early decisions. Not one of them mentioned, however, that early decisions have a devastating impact on the senior year in high school. When students know that they have already been admitted to the college of their choice, they have no reason to work hard. When they know that their hard work has no bearing on their future, it is devalued. Teachers have been complaining for years that senior year has become a joke. Are our students so well educated that we can be content with only three years of high school instead of four? Why throw away the senior year? The truth is that the only good case for early admission is the convenience of college administrators, who like to know well in advance that they have lined up their top choices. From the point of view of students and high schools, early admissions is a disaster. Yale is right, and I hope the university sticks to its guns on this one.

Members of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) who attend the organization's annual meeting in 2002 are invited to attend a professional development course (for only $70!) that will train them to engage "with poetic representation of data as a way of focusing, interpreting, clarifying, and communicating the results of qualitative research," according to a note in the December 2001 issue of Educational Researcher, the association's journal. The complete description, which appears on pp. 38-39, is as follows:

 "Constructing Data Poems

This workshop engages participants with poetic representation of data as a way of focusing, interpreting, clarifying, and communicating the results of qualitative research.  It further addresses the question of poetic representation as an avenue for culturally relevant research.  Its purpose is to give participants a hands-on experience with poetic representation of data and an exposure to a range of forms and purposes.  Participants may work with data that they will be guided to generate during the workshop or
with data they bring.  Presenters will offer models of data poems; specific strategies for constructing and revising data poems; examples of poet-researcher collaborations; trans-national/trans-cultural collaborations, and ways of thinking about assessment.  In this highly interactive session, issues for discussion will include a) the potential for poetic representation of research and the limitations of that potential, b)the potential roles of data poems in teaching and learning, and c) the potential of poetic representation for culturally relevant research."

This workshop is promoted in the same journal that in the last few years has published articles such as "The Awful Reputation of Education Research," by Carl F. Kaestle ( v22 n1 pp. 23, 26-31) and "Improving the 'Awful Reputation' of Education Research" by Gerald E. Sroufe ( v26 n7 pp. 26-28).

While the testing and reading provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act have been monopolizing the spotlight, the requirement that all teachers in core academic subjects be fully qualified within four years is starting to attract its share of unfriendly attention. In an article in last week's Sacramento Bee, Wayne Johnson, the president of the California Teachers Association called it "fantasy legislation" and said, "It's not going to happen." But Rep. George Miller (D-California), one of the key backers of the legislation, is dead serious about the goal. "How long do they suggest we should have unqualified teachers in the classroom?" he asked. "How long would they accept unqualified firemen, policemen, doctors? The answer is, they wouldn't. People are running around yelling 'We can't do this, we can't do this.' Well, you haven't even tried yet. ... Not only is this an attainable goal, but it is absolutely essential if you're going to improve the quality of education in the poorer-performing schools. For too long, states and school districts have looked the other way as they've hired people who are unqualified." Perhaps what makes the goal of a qualified teacher in every classroom seem impossible to some people is their unwillingness to imagine changing any of the ground rules and procedures that today determine who can teach and who cannot, rules and procedures that discourage and demoralize many talented teachers and prospective teachers. Redefining what is meant by qualified teachers to focus on effectiveness in the classroom rather than paper credentials, and reorienting our systems for training, hiring, inducting, and deploying teachers around this new definition could dramatically increase our chances of finding a qualified teacher for every classroom. See "Federal teacher goal is blasted," by Erika Chavez, The Sacramento Bee, January 4, 2002.

Scientific American reports that data on the effects of class size reduction are inconclusive. According to Education Week, the same is true of data on the "whole school" reform effort. While education data exist in oversupply, they are of little use for policymaking, writes E.D. Hirsch in a column for the Hoover Institution. What turns data into usable information is interpretation, which teases out the separate factors that affect outcomes and assigns relative causality to them. The best recent attempt to interpret education data and draw policy conclusions from it was offered by the late Jeanne Chall in The Academic Achievement Challenge, the fruit of a lifetime of engagement with education research, Hirsch writes, but this book has had a negligible effect on policies and schools because it has not been widely disseminated. To the bookstore... "Education Policy and Information," by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Hoover Institution weekly essay, January 7, 2002

While the debate over special education tends to focus on its cost - and how much money it takes away from regular education - Congress will get nowhere on this topic until lawmakers begin to view special and regular education as part of a single system, one that is hampered by an all too pervasive problem: that schools are teaching reading in a way that fails to effectively reach millions of children. So argues Brent Staples in a column in the January 5 New York Times. Half of children who are placed in special ed are there for reading difficulties, he writes. Studies from NIH show that 95 percent of learning impaired children can become effective readers if taught by scientifically proven methods, but less than a quarter of American teachers know how to teach reading to children who do not get it automatically.

The education bill that was signed into law this week attempts to do something about this problem. The Bush administration has pledged at least $900 million a year over six years to the effort to teach reading using "scientifically based" approaches, and an additional $75 million for pre-kindergarten reading initiatives. The administration is sending 328,000 booklets summarizing the findings of the National Reading Panel, which highlighted the importance of phonics instruction, to educators across the country, and later this year the Department of Education will send education officials around the country a guide that analyzes the content of core reading programs frequently used by school districts to see if they are scientifically based, according to an article in the January 9 New York Times by Diana Jean Schemo. Critics of the National Reading Panel report argue that most studies of phonics only examine isolated reading skills like word recognition rather than comprehension, but the research in the report is defended by Susan Neuman, the assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education and a reading researcher herself.

"How the Clip 'N Snip's Owner Changed Special Education," by Brent Staples, The New York Times, January 5, 2002

 "Education Bill Urges New Emphasis on Phonics as Method for Teaching Reading," by Diana Jean Schemo, The New York Times, January 9, 2002

Now that George W. Bush has signed the "No Child Left Behind" act, the flashbulbs have just about stopped popping, and the policy (and media) focus shifts back to terrorism and the economy, the education world will turn to the low profile but crucial matter of translating this thousand-page bill's dozens of programs and hundreds of provisions into schoolhouse practice. That sounds like a bureaucratic yawner but in truth it matters quite a lot. To avoid deadlock, Senate-House conferees punted some sticky issues to the Education Department to resolve: determining what constitutes acceptable state tests, by what criteria to approve a state's school accountability plan, what are "qualified" teachers, and how broadly to interpret a clause that lets schools avoid sanctions if their various pupil populations are making lesser gains than are required under the "adequate yearly progress" provision at the heart of the bill. With such sizable matters come reams of lesser issues whose handling will determine how much traction this legislation actually gains in millions of separate classrooms.

History offers no grounds for optimism that this will be done quickly or well. Congress habitually builds such long timelines into these measures that the most important changes need not even be made until someone else's term in office. (States have five years, for example, to comply with the new testing requirement.) The last time around, Bill Clinton's Education Department dawdled so long in implementing the 1994 education amendments that today - seven years later - most states still don't comply with some of its core provisions.

Such matters are traditionally entrusted to change-averse civil servants overseen by inexperienced political appointees who are watched closely by their masters lest they offend key governors or Congressmen or make it harder for the President's party in upcoming elections. (As the 2000 race gained momentum, the Clinton White House made the Education Department stop pressing California on education compliance issues.) Implementation thus becomes the stuff of interminable meetings, countless forms, endless delays, and multiple extensions and waivers, as very little changes in the classroom. 

That fate could befall "No Child Left Behind." But Education Secretary Rod Paige and his team are gearing up for a very different approach. Indeed, they see this as their real debut - the White House staff having tightly controlled the legislative phase. Though quiet and self-effacing, Paige is a steely and astute leader whose strong will and administrative acumen made a big difference in Houston's sprawling school system. There he showed himself especially good at distinguishing areas where schools should be free to innovate from those requiring close central monitoring. If he and his able lieutenants at the Education Department approach states in a similar vein, they could reverse the ingrained, dysfunctional pattern of federal education officials, which is to meddle in all the small stuff while paying scant attention to the big issues, such as whether children are learning and rich-poor gaps are narrowing.

All this, however, is just the first act of a three-act education drama. After a brief intermission, the Bush administration and Congress must turn to "special" education - the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) - which, after twenty five years, is in urgent need of top-to-bottom rethinking. The White House has appointed a blue-ribbon commission, chaired by former Iowa governor Terry Branstad, to sort through all this and make recommendations, and recruited a reform-minded New Mexican named Bob Pasternack to head this section of the Education Department. There's no dearth of ideas for bold changes, such as "voucherizing" special ed, as Florida has already done.  But politics presses against any serious reform of this domain. Elected officials are wary of its swarming lobbyists, all claiming to be tending to America's neediest children even as they advance the interests of sundry "experts."

Act three of this drama involves higher education, whose massive federal subsidy programs come up for renewal two years hence. As with special ed, the policy challenge is to bring the "No Child Left Behind" mindset, with its emphasis on academic achievement and institutional accountability for student learning, to bear on America's sprawling higher education system. The federal role here, too, should shift from an obsession with inputs and services to a clear focus on results. But the politics of higher education also work against fundamental reform - and the status quo is buttressed by the widespread and carefully nurtured illusion that U.S. colleges are doing fine just as they are.

Plenty of other education challenges will punctuate the play's intermissions, including such low profile but consequential topics as Washington's handling of education research and statistics. As with special ed and higher ed, these would benefit from the impatient, results-minded focus that George W. Bush urged a year ago when he launched the education bill just signed. In the best of all possible worlds, that would turn out to be Bush's true education legacy: institutionalization in Washington of the view that what matters in a federal program is not what rules are followed, what services are provided or what's spent where, but whether young people are actually learning what they should from institutions that are accountable for such learning within their walls. This may be too much to expect. But what's a new year if not a time for optimistic resolutions.

This editorial is a condensed version of an article that appears in the most recent issue of The Weekly Standard. For the full version, see "Leaving Education Reform Behind," by Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Weekly Standard, January 14, 2002. (available to subscribers only)

Education Week, January 10, 2002

Few in the world of education would argue with the notion that many skills and attitudes required for a life of successful learning have their roots in the nursery, yet providing an appropriate environment for early years' learning for all children is no easy matter. The sixth annual Quality Counts report, published by Education Week this week, examines what all 50 states and the District of Columbia are doing in their efforts to provide quality early-learning experiences for children under the age of five. During a typical week, 11.9 million children younger than 5 in the United States spend part of their waking hours in the care of someone other than their parents. The report notes that 39 states and the District of Columbia provide state-financed pre-kindergarten for at least some of their 3-to 5-year olds, up from about 10 in 1980. Annual state spending for such programs now exceeds $1.9 billion. Despite this increased spending, however, there is a huge discrepancy across states, and even within communities, in the quality of learning experiences afforded young children. One of the primary reasons for this variation is that less than a third of the states have specified what under-fives should know or be able to do. Also working against the goal of high-quality early learning experiences for all children is the abysmal pay of preschool teachers, who had an average annual salary of $19,610 in 1999, less than half of the salary of the average elementary school teacher.  As always, Quality Counts also rates the 50 states on many aspects of K-12 education, organized under the headings of student achievement, standards and accountability, improving teacher quality, school climate, and resources. To view Quality Counts 2002 or to order a hard copy, go to http://www.edweek.org/qc.

Holly Holland and Kelly Mazzoli, 2001

This 306-page book offers an insider's account of an urban school reform initiative in an unnamed, mid-sized Midwestern city.  Authors Holly Holland and Kelly Mazzoli describe how one of the largest private donations ever made to a single high school is giving a troubled urban school a new lease on life.  To help students overcome such obstacles as high poverty, low expectations, inadequate teacher training, bureaucracy, and astonishing parental neglect, school officials created a comprehensive freshman academy where faculty members pledged to become so involved in kids' lives - through targeted and aggressive academic and emotional support - that no one would fall through the cracks.  End-of-year surveys suggest that the academy is having an impact; school leaders have set many - but not all - failing students on a more promising path to higher academic achievement, better manners, and more constructive personal habits.  To order a copy of the book, contact the publisher at Heinemann, 88 Post Road West, P.O. Box 5007, Westport, CT 06881; phone 800-225-5800; fax 203-750-9790.  Holland and Mazzoli published an article describing the reform initiative in the December 2001 issue of Phi Delta Kappan (not yet available online).

Richard M. Ingersoll, American Educational Research Journal, Fall 2001

In this review published in the American Educational Research Journal, Penn education sociologist Richard M. Ingersoll pokes imaginatively into the question of whether high teacher turnover rates arise from immutable demographic shifts, fundamental supply shortages, individual teacher characteristics, or organizational characteristics of the schools themselves. Mind you, he went in search of the latter. And he found some interesting evidence that various school characteristics cause lots of teachers to leave (about 15% per year of late). He concludes that "School staffing problems are primarily due to excess demand resulting from a 'revolving door' - where large numbers of qualified teachers depart their jobs for reasons other than retirement." He thus partakes of the field's common assumption that teaching ought to be a lifetime career, not something that one simply does for a while before or after doing something else. But if you share his assumption, you must be alarmed by his conclusion that no supply-enhancing efforts in K-12 teaching can possibly succeed until and unless steps are taken to curb the "excess demand" that he identified. (Incidentally, the highest turnover rates he found are not in public schools at all but in small private schools.) What is going on? Ingersoll says that "Retirement accounts for a relatively small number of departures, a moderate number of departures are reported due to school staffing actions, a larger proportion of teachers indicate they depart for personal reasons [e.g. health, family], and an even larger proportion report that they depart either because they are dissatisfied with their jobs or in order to seek better jobs or other career opportunities." Policy makers should ponder these findings, which suggest that many sources of teacher turnover are, or could be, amenable to policy intervention. You can get a copy by emailing [email protected] or by calling 202-223-9485.

Andrew J. Wayne and Peter Youngs, Review of Educational Research 
Spring 2003, Vol. 73, No. 1, pp. 89-122

This short but important paper reviews the existing research on teacher characteristics to determine what we know about which teachers are most effective. One finding, unfortunately, consistent with the recent ECS report [for Gadfly's review of the ECS report, go to http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=110#1383], is that there isn't a lot of reliable research on this topic. Among the relatively few studies that meet the authors' criteria--primarily, the use of value added analysis and proper controls--they do find some worthwhile insights. Correlates of teacher effectiveness include the quality of the teacher's undergraduate school and the teacher's performance on standardized tests (such as verbal skills or teacher licensure tests). Perhaps more interesting is their examination of degrees, coursework, and certification. With respect to the first two, only in mathematics has a reliable connection been found: Teachers with master's degrees in math do make better math teachers. (In other subjects, the connection has not been demonstrated.) With respect to certification, the lesson is that it's beneficial "only when teachers have certification for the subject taught." Notably absent from existing research is any solid evidence that race, years of experience, or holding an education degree do anybody any good. The implications seem clear: certification processes and hiring decisions need to incorporate what teachers know, and still more research is needed about which teacher characteristics actually help students learn. This paper provides a useful review of familiar ground. Sadly, it's not available online; to order a copy, call 800-521-0600.