The Education Gadfly Weekly

Frederick Hess, American Enterprise Institute
September 2004

At the invitation of San Diego superintendent Alan Bersin, the Council of the Great City Schools and the American Enterprise Institute teamed up to conduct an ambitious review of Bersin-era reforms in the San Diego City Schools. This has yielded 18 draft papers, a swell conference in late September, and an article in Education Week. Some of the papers are outstanding, especially those by Julian Betts (dealing with choice and accountability), Michael Usdan (school board), and Joe Williams (teachers union). San Diego is a lively and complex place, and a momentous school board election is just weeks away, on which may hinge the fate of Bersin and his dynamic, multi-faceted reform endeavors. The papers will be revised before publication, but you can access the drafts here, local coverage here, and Lynn Olsen's excellent article here.

Bryan Hassel and Lucy Steiner, Education Commission of the States
2004

The U.S. Education Department funded this short paper outlining ways that states can expand the supply of decent education options for kids who are theoretically given the right to exit their under-performing schools but today have nowhere to go. Among the ideas: expand charter schools by loosening caps; create (and fund) new authorizers; strengthen incentives (and freedoms) to launch new schools; replicate proven models and clone good schools; develop support systems (e.g. incubators, back-office service providers) for new schools; and assist with facilities. These seem like excellent if sometimes obvious ideas, but each brings its own cost in dollars and/or politics. Then again, how serious are we about choice? You can find the paper here.

Todd Ziebarth, Education Commission of the States
2004

This 12-page paper tackles the proposition, incorporated in NCLB, that one cure for a failing district school is to reconstitute it as a charter school. I've long harbored doubts about the feasibility of "involuntary" charter schools, since a successful charter school is likely to have been created and led by people who want to run a charter school, not people ordered to do so. If, however, a state is game to empty out a failing school and recycle its building as home to a brand-new charter school that's founded and run by people with the requisite zeal (and competence, a sound plan, etc.), and if the state's charter law and funding mechanisms are such that charter schools are really viable there - then by all means. At that point, it resembles "outsourcing" the school to a new operator while taking advantage of freedoms permitted under the charter law. Ziebarth's paper explores these and more issues; state leaders should surely read it and consider this option. You can find it here.

Sandraluz Lara-Cinisomo, Anne R. Pebley, Mary E. Vaiana, Elizabeth Maggio, RAND Labor and Population
2004

This detailed study addresses the "school readiness" of children in Los Angeles County. The authors focus on basic skills and behavior problems, the most important components of school readiness. Through detailed research, the authors conclude that two factors are especially significant predictors of school readiness: the mother's level of educational attainment and the poverty level of a child's neighborhood. No surprises there. More revealing is that the authors also show that other factors, such as ethnicity and immigrant status, are not significant predictors of L.A. kids' school readiness. The authors give no novel policy advice: one recommendation is to "focus . . . resources on the children who need them most," for example. If you care to browse, though, you can do so here.

In Alabama, a long and tortuous saga of teacher testing has gotten even more complicated. In 1981, the state began requiring new teachers to pass content tests in the subjects they teach. That law was challenged on grounds that it was racially discriminatory, and in 1985 the state dropped the test, though the lawsuit continued to wend its way through various courts for 15 years. In 2002, the state education department, Alabama State University, and the Alabama Education Association came to an agreement that requires college students who want to be teachers to pass a general knowledge test (though not a true subject-mastery test). That agreement was scheduled to be ratified by a state judge this week - until a group of Alabama State University education students filed their own petition to block the new test on discrimination grounds similar to the first complaint more than 20 years ago. Now, where would a group of education students get the money to file a lawsuit in state court? The students aren't saying, but their lawyer has represented the AEA in multiple suits before. Has AEA changed its mind on the agreement? Was the agreement a sham from the get-go? Unanswered questions and strange coincidences abound in this case, which is now scheduled to go to trial on December 20.

"Teacher testing in trouble again as ASU students oppose it," by Phillip Rawls, Associated Press, October 15, 2004

"Teacher testing under fire again," Montgomery Advertiser, October 18, 2004

This week, former chief inspector of schools in England, Mike Tomlinson, released a report proposing sweeping changes to the nation's secondary-school accountability system, which currently requires students to pass achievement tests (A-levels) if they want to continue on to university. The changes would transform the A-levels into a new diploma system over the next decade. This new system would require all students to pass tests in three "core" skills areas—literacy, mathematics, and information and communication technology—that are needed not just for higher education, but for the workplace. According to Tomlinson, "this would be the first time that a qualification gives employers the guarantee that students have these skills." In fact, the suggested changes—and the rationale behind them—are similar to those put forth by the American Diploma Project (click here for more). If passed, there will be a four-year pilot test of the program, with changes to existing exams scheduled for 2007.

"Blair defends new exam proposals," BBC news, October 18, 2004

"Key points: the Tomlinson report," Guardian, October 18, 2004

In the midst of the ongoing debate over charter schools, this week's New Yorker includes a profile of one highly successful Boston charter school - the Pacific Rim Academy - that serves as a reminder that charters, while not a panacea, offer hope that the hardest-to-teach students don't have to be left behind. Like most charter success stories you read, this one includes vignettes about students who are going on to solid four-year colleges against all odds, of  dedicated teachers who believe that each and every student in the school can succeed and who devote themselves to teaching and counseling students who might otherwise slip through the cracks. What makes this profile especially memorable, though, is the honest portrayal of the students who buy into the school's promise of success, but somehow fall short of their goals. Yes, this year Pacific Rim saw 100 percent of its students graduate, but one missed graduation and his college freshman orientation because he had suffered two gunshot wounds, was arrested for assault with a dangerous weapon, and was sent to the Suffolk County jail. And, yes, the staff is dedicated, caring, and professional, but this year the principal will have to replace a third of the faculty, most of whom left to find jobs with bigger paychecks, fewer hours, and less emotional depletion. Yet, despite these challenges, Pacific Rim students show achievement gains that rival or surpass the best traditional public schools in Boston, demonstrating that sometimes innovation and perseverance can pave the way to success. As Pacific Rim director Spencer Blasdale notes, "Everybody's looking for the hundred-percent solution. And, when they find it call me, I'm there. But in the meantime, as one of my principal friends likes to say, I'll take a hundred one-percent solutions instead."

"The factory," by Katherine Boo, New Yorker, October 18, 2004

The Washington Post reported on October 19 that PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) membership nationwide has fallen from 12.1 million four decades ago to fewer than six million today. Not even one in four U.S. public schools now has a PTA chapter.

What a pity, you say. This benign, honorable, virtuous school-betterment organization of your youth is sputtering. How could that be?

Some would have you think it's due to today's hyper-busy lifestyles, family decay, and the disinclination and/or inability of parents to involve themselves with their children's schools.

Wrong. Parents opting out of the PTA are not abandoning their kids' schools. Instead, many of them are starting their own school-specific groups, commonly known as Parent-Teacher Organizations, or PTO's. All of the energy and dues of a PTO generally go into projects and activities at one's own child's school—be they supplies for the art room, band uniforms, lights for the night football games, after-school programs, or the ninth grade trip to Colonial Williamsburg. Parents typically pay dues but may also raise money through festivals, car washes, bake sales, magazine subscription sales, and so forth. If the PTO gets involved with school policy, it's usually directly with the principal and it's apt to address immediate issues facing the particular school.

But isn't the PTA just like that, too? Once, yes. But like so many other once-useful organizations (the League of Women Voters comes to mind, along with the American Civil Liberties Union), it's been politicized, ideologized, bureaucratized and, at least in the PTA's case, has become part of the public-education establishment, more interested in propping up institutional claims and employee interests than advancing the interests of parents and kids. "All T and no P" is how I've come to describe the National PTA and its state affiliates.

No doubt some school level chapters of the PTA still do some good. But now there's a vast hierarchy in which the needs of Elementary School X or High School Y are subordinated to policy and politics at the district, state, and national levels. Accordingly, in a near perfect facsimile of the teacher unions, the PTA has built a multi-story organization with paid staff at every level, with "issues" it agitates on behalf of at every level of government, and with non-trivial fractions of parents' dues money siphoned off to support activities remote from their children's schools.

The National PTA gets $1.75 from every member's dues. (Multiply by 6 million and you have a tidy little budget with which to lobby Congress and pay executives.) The state PTA keeps between 50 cents and 5 dollars of each member's dues. This adds up fast. Parents at a Phoenix elementary school found that more than half of their PTA's dues money was vanishing into state and national PTA coffers. At the District of Columbia's Coolidge High School, $3 of every $10 went to support district-wide and national budgets. "We just don't see the benefit" of doing that, says the vice president of Coolidge's new PTO, which replaced the PTA last spring. "It killed me," said a parent leader at the Phoenix school, which also converted from PTA to PTO. "We were sending them money and not getting anything in return."

What do the state and national dues pay for?  Again like the teacher unions—the national PTA for years had its Washington office in the NEA's grand headquarters building at 16th and M—these millions pay for professional staff and lobbyists, as well as newsletters, conventions, websites, and assorted other paraphernalia of a politically active organization in the modern era.

What sort of lobbying? Exactly the same as the teacher unions. I can't name a single policy issue of consequence at the state or national level where the PTA's testimony doesn't mirror that of the NEA and/or AFT. This is true on No Child Left Behind. On school finance lawsuits and appropriations. And especially, and most reprehensibly, on issues of school choice of every sort. One might think an organization purporting to look after the parents of school children would do all it could to maximize their education options, to close down bad schools, to assure families the right and the means to leave for better schools, be they district schools, inter-district schools, charter schools, private schools, home schools, virtual schools, or whatever.

But one would be wrong. The PTA is at the state legislature or Congress, along with the unions (and the rest of what Bill Bennett terms "the blob"), lobbying against the rights of parents and children and in favor of the interests of institutions and their adult employees.

All T and no P indeed.

And by being an echo of the public-school establishment rather than a voice for parents and children, the PTA has marginalized itself. "The PTA is not a major player on the major education issues," says the Urban Institute's Jane Hannaway. "People look at what impacts them most immediately," says the Progressive Policy Institute's Andrew Rotherham. "Some of these big issues that the PTA [is] talking about don't speak to [parents] on a day-to-day level."

No wonder chapters are closing and member rolls plummeting. What's more, it's getting easier to create a PTO instead. The Post reports that change-minded parents are "aided by Web sites and Internet message boards that give detailed instructions on how to dissolve their chapter, write bylaws for a new PTO and register as a nonprofit group with the Internal Revenue Service."

For a long time now, America has needed a bona fide organization of parents to serve as counterweight to the public-school establishment, an organization of education consumers to offset the producers' relentless self-seeking. The PTA has never been that, but its existence has made it harder for anyone else to fill the void. If the PTA shrinks to insignificance, others will find it easier to demonstrate the need and create the necessary organizational arrangements. But the education establishment knows that, too—and can therefore be counted upon to prop up the PTA, empty shell though it may be, lest it be replaced by an entity that truly looks after the interests of parents and kids.

"PTOs lure Parents sick of split PTA dues," by Amit R. Paley, Washington Post, October 19, 2004

The charter movement has long needed a national voice, a gap the new Charter School Leadership Council is looking to fill. And now the new voice has an old hand to lead it: Nelson Smith. We can't think of a better choice. Nelson has worked with New American Schools for several years, has experience as a federal, state, and local policy maker, is a crack researcher, and a helluva nice guy. New president Smith and CSLC board chair Howard Fuller will need all their wits about them in the next few months as they seek to counter the continuing charter backlash being led by the unions and some quarters of the media. We wish them well.

"Charter School Leadership Council selects veteran policy expert Nelson Smith to lead organization," CSLC press release, October 13, 2004

"Policy expert hired for charter council," Education Week, October 13, 2004 (registration required)

Out in Idaho, which came late to the charter school party (the state's charter school law was only passed in 1998), the public is being invited to comment on proposed new regulations that will significantly alter the charter scene there. They're a mixed bag. We like the creation of a public charter commission to serve as an authorizer and court of appeal for charters denied by the local district - something that has happened far too often there. (Still, we would have been happier with a more diverse set of authorizers that included nonprofits and universities.) And while a six-per-year cap on the creation of new charters won't be a problem immediately in a small state like Idaho, it may become one as charters expand under the more friendly state charter board. Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of these new rules is that they don't correct the serious per-pupil shortfall in state funding for charters - Idaho charters get 60 to 70 percent of what district schools get on a per-pupil basis, with no facilities assistance. So, the new rules are a start, but let's hope not the end, of a needed loosening of the Idaho charter environment.

"Locals suggest charter rules," by Jessica Adams, Idaho Press-Tribune, October 16, 2004

"Rules governing public charter schools," Idaho Board of Education

Bryan Hassel and Lucy Steiner, Education Commission of the States
2004

The U.S. Education Department funded this short paper outlining ways that states can expand the supply of decent education options for kids who are theoretically given the right to exit their under-performing schools but today have nowhere to go. Among the ideas: expand charter schools by loosening caps; create (and fund) new authorizers; strengthen incentives (and freedoms) to launch new schools; replicate proven models and clone good schools; develop support systems (e.g. incubators, back-office service providers) for new schools; and assist with facilities. These seem like excellent if sometimes obvious ideas, but each brings its own cost in dollars and/or politics. Then again, how serious are we about choice? You can find the paper here.

Frederick Hess, American Enterprise Institute
September 2004

At the invitation of San Diego superintendent Alan Bersin, the Council of the Great City Schools and the American Enterprise Institute teamed up to conduct an ambitious review of Bersin-era reforms in the San Diego City Schools. This has yielded 18 draft papers, a swell conference in late September, and an article in Education Week. Some of the papers are outstanding, especially those by Julian Betts (dealing with choice and accountability), Michael Usdan (school board), and Joe Williams (teachers union). San Diego is a lively and complex place, and a momentous school board election is just weeks away, on which may hinge the fate of Bersin and his dynamic, multi-faceted reform endeavors. The papers will be revised before publication, but you can access the drafts here, local coverage here, and Lynn Olsen's excellent article here.

Sandraluz Lara-Cinisomo, Anne R. Pebley, Mary E. Vaiana, Elizabeth Maggio, RAND Labor and Population
2004

This detailed study addresses the "school readiness" of children in Los Angeles County. The authors focus on basic skills and behavior problems, the most important components of school readiness. Through detailed research, the authors conclude that two factors are especially significant predictors of school readiness: the mother's level of educational attainment and the poverty level of a child's neighborhood. No surprises there. More revealing is that the authors also show that other factors, such as ethnicity and immigrant status, are not significant predictors of L.A. kids' school readiness. The authors give no novel policy advice: one recommendation is to "focus . . . resources on the children who need them most," for example. If you care to browse, though, you can do so here.

Todd Ziebarth, Education Commission of the States
2004

This 12-page paper tackles the proposition, incorporated in NCLB, that one cure for a failing district school is to reconstitute it as a charter school. I've long harbored doubts about the feasibility of "involuntary" charter schools, since a successful charter school is likely to have been created and led by people who want to run a charter school, not people ordered to do so. If, however, a state is game to empty out a failing school and recycle its building as home to a brand-new charter school that's founded and run by people with the requisite zeal (and competence, a sound plan, etc.), and if the state's charter law and funding mechanisms are such that charter schools are really viable there - then by all means. At that point, it resembles "outsourcing" the school to a new operator while taking advantage of freedoms permitted under the charter law. Ziebarth's paper explores these and more issues; state leaders should surely read it and consider this option. You can find it here.