The Education Gadfly Weekly

Seesawing between sobering and encouraging, this eighth edition of Education Week’s Diplomas Count annual report illuminates the educational attainment of America’s Latino population—a sometimes neglected group with the fastest growing share of our nation’s classroom seats. And it comes none too soon. If public education is to improve over the next ten years, more attention must be paid to the 12.1 million Latino pupils (among 54 million total students) currently in the U.S. schools. (By 2020, Latinos are slated to comprise a quarter of the nation’s school children.) We learn that this group has made noteworthy strides in graduation rates—up 1.7 percentage points from 2008 to 2009 (the most recent year for which data are available) and 5.5 percentage points over the prior decade. Still, despite these big bumps, Latinos’ graduation rate is 10 percentage points lower than the national average meaning that we have a daunting hike ahead. And, as Ed Week’s authors explain, doing ELL education right will offer a big boost up this mountain.

SOURCE: Education Week, Diplomas Count 2012: Trailing Behind, Moving Forward (Bethesda, MD: Editorial Projects in Education, June 2012).

We know anecdotally that our current collection of private-school-choice programs has done little to encourage new and innovative models of private education to flourish. This report from the Friedman Foundation, which tracks private-school enrollment in eight choice-heavy locales over the lifespan of their tax-credit or voucher programs, offers evidence to back up those impressions: In Milwaukee, for example, the number of private schools has grown since choice legislation was enacted, but these schools have become larger and “presumably more stable and even insular” (and thus, less likely to be innovative). For authors Greg Forster and James L. Woodworth, this justifies a move toward universal school choice—making all children, regardless of income level, eligible for vouchers or tax credits—which, they argue, will allow for a shift in institutional culture, where entrepreneurs can “innovate beyond the confines of the ‘default’ public school model.” Or, to draw on Rick Hess’s terminology, universal choice will allow for the “greenfield schools model,” or a “rethink [of] how schools are designed from the ground up,” to take root. But why default to universal choice as the best way to reach greenfield schooling (apart from fact that promoting choice-for-all is the mission of the Friedman Foundation)? Following Forster’s and Woodworth’s own logic, upping the dollar value of vouchers (or tax credits) is more likely to prime the pump of supply-side innovation than simply opening the door to vouchers for more kids.

SOURCE: Greg Forster and James Woodworth, The Greenfield School Revolution and School Choice (Indianapolis, IN: The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, June 2012).

Teacher evaluations and Common Core implementation can wait. According to this valuable National Affairs compendium, our education system suffers from more basic ailments. In fact, all policies that have been pushed over the last few decades—from those that relate to the tax code to healthcare, social security to monetary policy—are unsustainable. In his introductory chapter, National Affairs editor Yuval Levin argues that, for decades, America has been slowly (and seemingly inevitably) marching toward becoming a “technocratic welfare state.” Yet, thanks to current social and financial circumstances, that social-democratic ideal is no longer viable. According to Levin, we have “perhaps a decade” to fix things before economic catastrophe strikes. Luckily, the nineteen luminaries who contributed to the volume provide an impressive if occasionally contradictory package of solutions to many of these problems, solutions that, properly implemented, would fundamentally overhaul the shape of American policy and save us from fiscal collapse and public dependence on the “welfare” state. While only two chapters (by Fordham’s Chester Finn and AEI’s Rick Hess) explicitly address schools, all approach systemic flaws with a refreshing aversion to bureaucracy that would serve our education system well. In particular, Josh Barro’s playbook for overhauling public-sector pensions—don’t just target new hires, ditch the defined-benefit model, and consider buying out existing benefits—represents an ambitious and transformative plan (one the education system would be wise to follow). The volume is unapologetically radical: Its recommended reforms are more fundamental than even the GOP is ready to embrace. But they might just be what is necessary to make America’s institutions, schools among them, more democratic, efficient, and effective.

SOURCE: Yuval Levin and Meghan Clyne, eds., A Time for Governing: Policy Solutions from the Pages of National Affairs (New York: Encounter Books, 2012).

Much has been written in recent years on the crisis in American civics education—of students’ low achievement, of the deprioritization of civics in classrooms. This book by Harvard ed-school professor (and famous left-winger) Meira Levinson covers many of the same points. Part teaching memoir, part policy analysis, it laments our nation’s “civics empowerment gap” and explains how teaching civics can reengage low-income youth in the education system. Much of the book makes familiar arguments. But one section stands out. In it, Levinson explains how the three-legged stool of standards, assessment, and accountability (what she calls SAA) can help promote democratic values. Though not a direct discussion of civics literacy and classroom-based civics teaching, this section of the book does offer an interesting perspective. As Levinson explains, rigorous standards model democratic principles of equity by helping to ensure that all students are afforded the same access to quality education (of course, there’s more to it than just standards). Their linked assessments and accountability structures promote the democratic ideals of efficiency and transparency—and help empower parents and others to engage in democratic dialogue and deliberation about the quality of American schooling. And these common goals allow for diversity in other areas (allowing for more individualized teaching and disparate educational philosophies). Critics of SAA, take note.

SOURCE: Meira Levinson, No Citizen Left Behind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).

Mike and Rick ponder the future of teacher unions and the College Board while Amber provides the key points from a recent CDC study and wonders if the kids are alright after all.

Amber's Research Minute

Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance—United States, 2011 by The U.S. Department of Health and Human Service Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

I don’t love standards. I doubt any teacher does.

I love literature. History. Science. I love grappling with ideas. I’m excited to know how things work and to share what I have learned with others, especially eager-to-learn children. Standards, by contrast, are unlovely, unlovable things. No teacher has ever summoned his or her class wide-eyed to the rug with the promise that “today is the day we will learn to listen and read to analyze and evaluate experiences, ideas, information, and issues from a variety of perspectives."

No teacher has ever summoned his or her class to the rug with the promise that "today is the day we will learn to listen and read to analyze and evaluate experiences, ideas, information, and issues from a variety of perspectives. Won't that be fun boys and girls?!" Photo by Fort Rucker.

“Won’t that be fun, boys and girls?!”

Well, no, it won’t. Standards are a joyless way to reverse engineer the things we love to teach and do with kids. Thus I understand and sympathize if beleaguered teachers view Common Core State Standards (CCSS) as just one more damn thing imposed on them from on high, interposed between them and their students. But if they do, that’s a shame. Because far from being just another compliance item on the accountability checklist, the Common Core State Standards, implemented well and thoughtfully, promise to both improve literacy and make teaching a lot more fun and significantly more rewarding.

In the essential primary grades, where most of our educational battles are won or lost, CCSS promise to return sanity to the work of turning children into readers, writers, speakers, and thinkers. David Coleman, the principal architect of the English language arts standards, recently said CCSS “restores elementary teachers to their rightful place as guides to the world.” He’s exactly right, and here’s why:

Content is back

“A student never thanked me for teaching the main idea,” a teacher wrote to me recently. “But many thanked me for teaching them about animal migrations.” CCSS remind us to engage children not just with rote literacy skills work and process writing, but also, and especially, with real content—rich, deep, broad knowledge about the world in which they live. The conventional wisdom has become that CCSS “add nonfiction to the curriculum,” but that’s not right. Common Core restores art, music, history, and literature to the curriculum.

Why did they ever leave? Reading is “domain specific.” You already have to know at least a little bit about the subject—and sometimes a lot about the subject—to understand a text. The same thing is also true about creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving. Indeed, nearly all of our most cherished and ambitious goals for schooling are knowledge-dependent. Yet how many times have we heard it said that we need to de-emphasize teaching “mere facts” and focus on skills like critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving? CCSS rescue knowledge from those who would trivialize it, or who simply don’t understand its fundamental role in human cognition.

Coherence matters

Common Core asks not just for more nonfiction, but for a coherent, knowledge-rich curriculum in English language arts. Yes, there’s a difference. Perhaps the gravest disservice done to schoolchildren in recent memory is the misguided attempt to teach and test reading comprehension not just as a skill, but as a transferable skill—a set of tips and “reading strategies” that can be applied to virtually any text, regardless of subject matter.

Putting history and science at the center of ELA instruction doesn't exclude literature. Photo by Amanda Munoz.

Make no mistake: Building the foundations of early reading—teaching young children to decode written text—is indeed skill-based. The CCSS recognize this crucial truth by calling for the systematic teaching of explicit phonics skills. However, "the mistaken idea that reading [comprehension] is a skill,” University of Virginia cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham has written, “may be the single biggest factor holding back reading achievement in the country. Students will not meet standards that way. The knowledge-base problem must be solved." CCSS aim to solve it by requiring a curriculum “intentionally and coherently structured to develop rich content knowledge within and across grades.” Let’s be clear: The standards are not a curriculum and do not pretend to be. But they have plenty to say about the importance of “building knowledge systematically” and choosing texts “around topics or themes that systematically develop the knowledge base of students.”

Sandra Stotsky recently expressed her dismay “that one badly informed person [lead Common Core author David Coleman] could single-handedly alter and weaken the entire public school curriculum in this country.”  But how do you weaken something that does not exist? But at least at the K-5 level there is no curriculum. The fruitless focus on teaching reading as a content-neutral skill—find the main idea, identify the author’s purpose, compare and contrast—created conditions where what kids read doesn’t matter; in that regime, “text” becomes a vehicle for practicing non-existent comprehension “skills.” Big mistake. Putting history and science at the center of ELA instruction doesn’t exclude literature. It repudiates the imperialism of trivial fiction that has debased ELA and deprived students of the knowledge they need to understand serious fiction—and just about everything else.

By asking teachers to focus their efforts on building knowledge coherently—and making it clear that doing so is fundamental to literacy—CCSS represent an essential breakthrough for reading comprehension and vocabulary growth. The intellectual DNA of Common Core ELA Standards belongs to E.D. Hirsch, Jr., whose fundamental proposition has long held that a knowledge-rich classroom is a language-rich classroom.

CCSS invite elementary-school teachers to rethink the tedious regimen of content-free “mini-lessons” and empty skills practice on whatever reading materials happen to be at hand. "There is no such thing as doing the nuts and bolts of reading in Kindergarten through fifth grade without coherently developing knowledge in science, and history, and the arts. Period,” Coleman said recently at an event run by Common Core (the non-profit organization). “It is the deep foundation in rich knowledge and vocabulary depth that allows you to access more complex text," he said.

Show what you know

Perhaps the most controversial new thrust of CCSS is their “reliance on text and evidence-based reading” for fiction as well as non-fiction. Too many people have tried to characterize this as diminishing the importance of fiction and literature. That is not the case—and close reading of text is necessary for both. The very worst that can be said about a reliance on text- and evidence-based reading and writing is that it’s an overdue market correction.

As any teacher can tell you, it’s quite easy to glom on to an inconsequential moment in a text and produce reams of empty “text-to-self” meandering using the text as nothing more than a jumping off point for a personal narrative. (“How do you feel about the character’s decision to hit her friend?”) The skill, common to most existing state standards, of “producing a personal response to literature” does little to demonstrate—or to build—a student’s ability to read with clarity, depth, and comprehension. I understand the criticism of those who find the focus on texts and evidence as too narrow, but I don’t agree. Indeed, it has always struck me as inherently condescending to assume that children cannot be engaged or successful unless they are reflecting upon personal experience nearly to the exclusion of other subjects.

In sum, Common Core strikes me as, at long last, the re-emergence of common sense in our classrooms. We’re no longer ignoring what we know about reading comprehension and language development. And we’re making elementary-school teachers the most important people in America. I still don’t love standards. I never will. But the big ideas enshrined within CCSS were long overdue to be restored, renewed, or otherwise placed at the heart of ELA instruction from the first days of class in every American school.

Even Common Core opponents should be pleased.

Robert Pondiscio is the vice-president of the Core Knowledge Foundation and a former fifth-grade teacher.

Updated 6/15/12

Times are tough for the nation’s largest union: Fresh off Scott Walker’s recall victory and a narrowly avoided strike by its own employees, the NEA is bracing for the reality that its 2013-2014 membership may be 15 percent lower than its 2009-2010 peak. What remains to be seen is whether it and the AFT will respond to dwindling memberships by doubling down on  current dogmas or opening up to change.

Kudos, meanwhile, to Buckeye State lawmakers for approving key elements of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson’s school reforms on Tuesday. Now it’s up to the city and district to make the promise of merit-based layoffs and greater equity in charter funding a reality.

President Obama used his latest weekly address to call for more federal dollars to bridge budget shortfalls, keeping teachers in classrooms and class sizes from creeping upwards. Someone would do well to remind him that it might be better to push for greater cost-effectiveness in U.S. education policies and practices. Someone like, maybe, Secretary Duncan?

The Chicago Teacher Union raised the likelihood of a Windy City showdown when 90 percent of its members voted to authorize a strike if negotiations with the district break down next fall—although Gadfly’s not betting against Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

A California judge sided with a group of parents this week and ruled that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) must obey state law and use student academic progress in teacher evaluations. Of course, the fact that parents needed to sue to have a longstanding statute enforced is a pretty good distillation of how far we have to go to fix teacher policy.

At the risk of piling on, the Los Angeles Board of Education’s Tuesday decision to slice five days from next year’s calendar needs attention. Yes, the district’s budget is in tatters and everyone is feeling the pinch—1,300 teachers will lose their jobs and those remaining will receive a 5 percent pay cut—but this solution only hurts students.

On Monday, Mike posted a list of the twenty-five zip codes that saw the greatest increase in the white shares of their population between 2000 and 2010. The neighborhoods were located in some predictable places when it comes to gentrification (Brooklyn and D.C), but also included a few surprises (Chattanooga? Oklahoma City?). Clearly, cities nationwide are experiencing major demographic shifts; the Gadfly hopes education leaders are prepared to take advantage of a once-in-a-generation chance at school integration in once-predominantly minority communities where the proportion of white residents is rising.

Seesawing between sobering and encouraging, this eighth edition of Education Week’s Diplomas Count annual report illuminates the educational attainment of America’s Latino population—a sometimes neglected group with the fastest growing share of our nation’s classroom seats. And it comes none too soon. If public education is to improve over the next ten years, more attention must be paid to the 12.1 million Latino pupils (among 54 million total students) currently in the U.S. schools. (By 2020, Latinos are slated to comprise a quarter of the nation’s school children.) We learn that this group has made noteworthy strides in graduation rates—up 1.7 percentage points from 2008 to 2009 (the most recent year for which data are available) and 5.5 percentage points over the prior decade. Still, despite these big bumps, Latinos’ graduation rate is 10 percentage points lower than the national average meaning that we have a daunting hike ahead. And, as Ed Week’s authors explain, doing ELL education right will offer a big boost up this mountain.

SOURCE: Education Week, Diplomas Count 2012: Trailing Behind, Moving Forward (Bethesda, MD: Editorial Projects in Education, June 2012).

We know anecdotally that our current collection of private-school-choice programs has done little to encourage new and innovative models of private education to flourish. This report from the Friedman Foundation, which tracks private-school enrollment in eight choice-heavy locales over the lifespan of their tax-credit or voucher programs, offers evidence to back up those impressions: In Milwaukee, for example, the number of private schools has grown since choice legislation was enacted, but these schools have become larger and “presumably more stable and even insular” (and thus, less likely to be innovative). For authors Greg Forster and James L. Woodworth, this justifies a move toward universal school choice—making all children, regardless of income level, eligible for vouchers or tax credits—which, they argue, will allow for a shift in institutional culture, where entrepreneurs can “innovate beyond the confines of the ‘default’ public school model.” Or, to draw on Rick Hess’s terminology, universal choice will allow for the “greenfield schools model,” or a “rethink [of] how schools are designed from the ground up,” to take root. But why default to universal choice as the best way to reach greenfield schooling (apart from fact that promoting choice-for-all is the mission of the Friedman Foundation)? Following Forster’s and Woodworth’s own logic, upping the dollar value of vouchers (or tax credits) is more likely to prime the pump of supply-side innovation than simply opening the door to vouchers for more kids.

SOURCE: Greg Forster and James Woodworth, The Greenfield School Revolution and School Choice (Indianapolis, IN: The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, June 2012).

Teacher evaluations and Common Core implementation can wait. According to this valuable National Affairs compendium, our education system suffers from more basic ailments. In fact, all policies that have been pushed over the last few decades—from those that relate to the tax code to healthcare, social security to monetary policy—are unsustainable. In his introductory chapter, National Affairs editor Yuval Levin argues that, for decades, America has been slowly (and seemingly inevitably) marching toward becoming a “technocratic welfare state.” Yet, thanks to current social and financial circumstances, that social-democratic ideal is no longer viable. According to Levin, we have “perhaps a decade” to fix things before economic catastrophe strikes. Luckily, the nineteen luminaries who contributed to the volume provide an impressive if occasionally contradictory package of solutions to many of these problems, solutions that, properly implemented, would fundamentally overhaul the shape of American policy and save us from fiscal collapse and public dependence on the “welfare” state. While only two chapters (by Fordham’s Chester Finn and AEI’s Rick Hess) explicitly address schools, all approach systemic flaws with a refreshing aversion to bureaucracy that would serve our education system well. In particular, Josh Barro’s playbook for overhauling public-sector pensions—don’t just target new hires, ditch the defined-benefit model, and consider buying out existing benefits—represents an ambitious and transformative plan (one the education system would be wise to follow). The volume is unapologetically radical: Its recommended reforms are more fundamental than even the GOP is ready to embrace. But they might just be what is necessary to make America’s institutions, schools among them, more democratic, efficient, and effective.

SOURCE: Yuval Levin and Meghan Clyne, eds., A Time for Governing: Policy Solutions from the Pages of National Affairs (New York: Encounter Books, 2012).

Much has been written in recent years on the crisis in American civics education—of students’ low achievement, of the deprioritization of civics in classrooms. This book by Harvard ed-school professor (and famous left-winger) Meira Levinson covers many of the same points. Part teaching memoir, part policy analysis, it laments our nation’s “civics empowerment gap” and explains how teaching civics can reengage low-income youth in the education system. Much of the book makes familiar arguments. But one section stands out. In it, Levinson explains how the three-legged stool of standards, assessment, and accountability (what she calls SAA) can help promote democratic values. Though not a direct discussion of civics literacy and classroom-based civics teaching, this section of the book does offer an interesting perspective. As Levinson explains, rigorous standards model democratic principles of equity by helping to ensure that all students are afforded the same access to quality education (of course, there’s more to it than just standards). Their linked assessments and accountability structures promote the democratic ideals of efficiency and transparency—and help empower parents and others to engage in democratic dialogue and deliberation about the quality of American schooling. And these common goals allow for diversity in other areas (allowing for more individualized teaching and disparate educational philosophies). Critics of SAA, take note.

SOURCE: Meira Levinson, No Citizen Left Behind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).