The Education Gadfly Weekly

One sign that the Brookings Institution’s second annual Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI) is better than the first is that New Orleans came out on top—boasting the ECCI’s only A grade. For this go-around, Russ Whitehurst and his team ranked 107 school districts (the 100 largest metro areas and seven others of interest), up from twenty-five in 2011, on thirteen choice-related categories of policy and practice (including accessibility of information on school quality and availability of virtual schooling options). Joining the Big Easy in the top five are New York (last year’s valedictorian), D.C., Minneapolis, and Houston. Rounding out the bottom of the rankings are Brownsville (TX), San Antonio, and Loudoun County (VA). (Ohio’s sole district on this list, Columbus, ranked eighty-ninth.) But what makes this year’s index particularly worthwhile is the way it explains the differences among even the best of the best. It’s easy to see what separates the Recovery School District in New Orleans from Brownsville. The contrast between the NOLA’s RSD and the District of Columbia is subtler, but still significant. As one example, D.C. scored well on its abundance of (and generous funding for) school alternatives, including charters and vouchers. But it fell short in matching families to the schools of their choice. The problem is that D.C. parents must separately apply to each school in which they are interested, since individual schools control their own lotteries to determine admissions. That’s not the case in NOLA, where a common application works for all traditional and charter public schools in the Recovery School District, and where families are more likely to gain entry into the schools that they rank highest. (This system was designed by two Nobel Prize-winning economists who specialize in match-making.) All this isn’t meant to slight the progress made in D.C. (and elsewhere) in supporting school choice. But the ECCI does show how policies affecting student assignment, funding, and transparency can be changed in small ways to the benefit of kids—even for states and districts that already are committed to choice. Use the ECCI’s interactive features to compare districts for yourself.

A version of this review originally appeared on Fordham’s Choice Words blog.

SOURCE:

Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst with Sarah Whitfield, The Education Choice and Competition Index: Background and Results 2012 (Washington, D.C.: Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, December 2012).

This wonky but important (and exceptionally timely) book by Michigan State’s Bill Schmidt and Curtis McKnight, an emeritus math professor at the University of Oklahoma, is a distinctive, deeply researched, and amply documented plea for full-scale implementation of the Common Core math standards.

The authors examine the extent to which young Americans in various states, districts, schools, and classrooms have equal opportunities to learn the same high-quality math content in grades K–8—and they find grievous gaps and injustices.

One might suppose that this most hierarchical and standardized of core subjects would yield the greatest uniformity from place to place within the United States. Critics of national curricula (and Common Core) periodically declare that NAEP, the textbook oligopoly, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and nationwide college-entrance exams have caused math curricula to be very similar across the land.

Schmidt and McKnight, however, show conclusively that this presumption is far from true. And they link that variation in content coverage and delivery to the country’s vexing achievement gaps, its deteriorating social mobility, and its generally weak educational performance. Here are a few excerpts from the book’s genuinely alarming—and stirring—final chapter:

The inequalities in content coverage begin with the state and local community in which a child is to attend school…and continue with the neighborhood school to which the child is assigned. Furthermore, two children, even from the same family and attending the same school but with different teachers for each of the first five grades, are not likely to have the same learning opportunities…A topic can be covered or not covered. Topics can be studied in different sequences, some of which may not make any sense from the point of view of the content itself. Students can receive more or less time for instruction, depending on the teacher’s decision. All of these differences in content coverage can be found in the varying experiences of children from different families who live in different regions of the state or country…

Further complicating the expression of clear and coherent intentions for classroom content coverage is that textbooks and tests instantiate their own sense of which topics should be learned…

For U.S. children, the nation is by no means indivisible. The data we presented…show the extent to which the nation’s children are divided by different content exposures in mathematics and science. These content learning opportunities define the core of schooling. Since there are so few guarantees for equivalent learning opportunities, public schooling has become more like a game of chance. It clearly does not embody “equality for all,” but instead “inequality for all.”

Uniform standards such as those in Common Core won’t solve this set of problems in and of themselves. But without such standards, these issues are not likely ever to be solved.

A version of this review originally appeared on Fordham’s Common Core Watch blog.

This latest “Kids Count” report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation delivers some depressing news: Youth employment is at its lowest level since World War II. Tracking data from the 2011 Current Population Survey, as well as recent Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the foundation reports that only half of people ages sixteen to twenty-four held jobs in 2011; among the teens in that group, 13 percent of sixteen to nineteen year olds and 20 percent of twenty to twenty-four year olds are both out of school and out of work (what the authors call “disconnected” youth). And still more striking, within this group of disconnected young adults, over a fifth are parents themselves. According to analysts, this stark trend is caused by stronger competition for increasingly scarce entry-level jobs—and may cause these disconnected youth to eventually become a cost to taxpayers. The report then breaks employment data down by state: For twenty- to twenty-four-year-olds, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wisconsin have the highest employment rates. Mississippi and New York have the lowest. While the report’s message is bleak, it offers at least one redeeming data point: For young adults (ages twenty to twenty-four), college-enrollment rates rose from 31 percent in 2000 to 38 percent in 2011, with some who would have entered the workforce now seeking postsecondary education. (The quality of those programs is not discussed in the report.) The authors offer a host of recommendations, including that funding for youth programs be linked to outcomes such as degree or credential attainment, rather than inputs like enrollment, and that incentives be created (such as youth payroll tax credits) to encourage more businesses to hire young people. And, of course, multiple pathways through K–12 education into the workplace must be allowed—including savvy career and technical education.

SOURCE:

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Youth and Hard Work: Restoring Teen and Young Adult Connections to Opportunity (Baltimore, MD: The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012).

Mike and Dara discuss bringing MOOCs to K–12 education, tiptoeing up to the fiscal cliff, and angry unions in Michigan. Amber considers all the angles of the newly released international achievement scores.

Amber's Research Minute

International Achievement Test Results (TIMSS & PIRLS)

READ "How School Districts Can Stretch the School Dollar"

Despite some signs of economic recovery, school districts nationwide continue to struggle mightily. Nobody expects economic growth—or education spending—to rebound to 2008 levels over the next five years, and the long-term outlook isn't much brighter.

In short, the "new normal" of tougher budget times is here to stay for American K-12 education. So how can local officials cope?

In my new policy brief, I argue that the current crunch may actually present an opportunity to increase the efficiency and productivity of our education system if decision makers keep a few things in mind:

First and foremost, solving our budget crisis shouldn't come at the expense of children. Nor can if come from teachers' sacrifice alone. Depressing teachers' salaries forever isn't a recipe for recruiting bright young people into education—or retaining the excellent teachers we have. Finally, quick fixes aren't a good answer; we need fundamental changes that enhance productivity.

So how can school districts dramatically increase productivity and stretch the school dollar?

One, we should aim for a leaner, more productive, better paid workforce. Let's ask classroom teachers to take on additional responsibility in return for greater pay, eliminate some ancillary positions, and redesign our approach to special education.

Two, we should pay for productivity. A redesigned compensation system would include a more aggressive salary schedule, more pay for more work and better results, and prioritization of salaries over benefits.

Three, we must integrate technology thoughtfully. Online and "blended" school models are coming to K-12 education. They can be catalysts for greater pupil engagement, individualization, and achievement and, if organized right, they can also be opportunities for cost-cutting.

Many districts continue to face budget challenges of historic proportions. Rather than slashing budgets in ways that erode schooling, let's rethink who we hire, what they do, how we pay them, and how to incorporate technology—that's where the big payoff is.

The remarkable spread of free online courses through American higher education has prompted major soul-searching and some fast footwork among traditional universities and their national organizations.

The next step: K-12 MOOCs provided by topflight schools to students beyond their own campuses. Photo by poperotico via photopin cc

You can already find “MOOCs” (massive open online courses) on a host of websites, created and delivered by a wide array of institutions and individuals.

As I write, Coursera offers 207 courses, ranging from astronomy to public health, presented by professors at such upscale schools as CalTech, Duke, and Stanford (where, as best I can tell, all this originated—and just a few years ago). Udacity offers about twenty courses, EdX (founded by Harvard and MIT) around ten.

Providers such as these are proliferating and expanding via a hodgepodge of for- and non-profit organizations with offerings that range from free to pricey. And participation is soaring, too. Coursera claims two million course-takers worldwide—and since the courses are online, one can indeed take them anyplace, anytime.

This remarkably rapid development carries huge potential for universalizing and customizing higher education and for enormous cost savings. But it collides with age-old traditions and deeply entrenched practices regarding how one earns a college degree—and it also carries enormous risks. Who determines which students “pass” these on-line courses and what’s the evidence that they met a suitable standard of accomplishment? By what process will “credit” be assessed and assigned and how will degrees be awarded, by whom and for an accumulation of what?

A host of lesser questions arises, too, such as what’s the meaning of an online course in science that affords students no access to or experience in laboratory settings, or in art, music, and myriad “applied” subjects that cannot be fully mastered on a computer screen?

To sort some of this out, the Gates Foundation, Coursera and the American Council on Education (ACE) recently teamed up to evaluate what students deserve what sorts of “credit” for which kinds of coursework done via Coursera. The ACE already operates a “College Credit Recommendation Service” that analyzes “workplace learning” and other courses taken outside traditional postsecondary institutions and recommends to colleges which of these should count for how much of what sort of degree credit. It’s now headed toward something of the sort for MOOCs.

Which got me thinking: Why not MOOCs in K–12 education, too—for the kids, not just their teachers? Why is this not another form of on-line or blended learning with huge potential to foster equity, acceleration, individualization, choice, and much else that we prize in the elementary-secondary sector?

We already have virtual charter schools in many places and several state-provided counterparts such as the Florida Virtual School. We have online providers of specific courses (see Apex Learning, for example). Home-schoolers can access multiple options. And we have more and more schools seeking to blend on-line offerings into their brick-and-mortar classrooms.

What we don’t yet have, as far as I know, are K–12 MOOCs provided by topflight schools to students beyond their own campuses. Imagine “History at Andover,” “Pre-calculus at Dalton,” “English literature at New Trier,” “Physics at Bronx Science.” Imagine middle school health courses provided by public-health professors at Johns Hopkins or experts at the Centers for Disease Control, art classes from the Metropolitan Museum, virtual field trips to the Galapagos with the National Geographic. There’s really no limit.

I’m sure that advanced high school students around the U.S. are already availing themselves of postsecondary MOOCs. That’s really just another form of dual enrollment. But will their high schools give them credit? And if Lawrenceville Academy were to offer a nifty high-school level MOOC in, say, world geography, by what means would Bill or Belinda, students at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, get credit for taking it? Yes, this could easily be managed if their school brings it “in-house,” much like an APEX course. But what if they take it outside school and then want credit toward their diploma from Montgomery County? And why shouldn’t this be possible? Ditto for the drop-out who now has a day job (or a baby) but wants to resume the accumulation of high-school credit.

Think about the reverse, too. What if a kid enrolled at pricey Sidwell Friends takes an advanced-algebra “MOOC” over the summer? It doesn’t much matter whether the course originates at MIT, Stuyvesant High School, or Singapore’s Raffles Institution. The question is whether Sidwell will give that student credit—and then give her parents a tuition reduction or shorten the time she must spend there en route to a diploma?

All of this is much easier to visualize at the high school level, of course, and undeniably more complicated with eight-year-olds. But the concept isn’t really very different. Even in the primary and middle grades, MOOCs offer potential for gifted/talented pupils, for some kids with disabilities (particularly the physical and social kind), and for specialized or hard-to-teach subjects (e.g., learning Japanese with the help of a native speaker of that language). Youngsters in rural communities might especially benefit from access via technology to courses that their schools can’t offer. So would kids living in remote places or accompanying their parents to other parts of the planet.

But must the school remain in charge of all this, or can individual pupils and families access MOOCs for which they then get credit, whether that means credit to pass from fourth to fifth grade or to graduate from high school with an honors diploma? For the latter to work, someone must “validate” that the credit is duly earned and deserves to “count.” School systems or states might do this on their own, of course, but that would lead to uneven expectations and a lot of duplicative work. What about something akin to the ACE-Gates-Coursera initiative for K–12 education? Where are you, funders and visionaries, when we need you?

It’s been just a month since Michigan voters defeated Proposal 1, which (if passed) would have amended the state constitution to permanently protect unions’ rights. And the legislature and governor wasted no time at all, approving legislation on Tuesday that officially makes Michigan the 24th right-to-work state in the nation—an astounding turn of events in this former bastion of collective bargaining. So what does this mean for teacher unions?

Michigan teachers will still have the right to organize, unionize and bargain collectively. Contrary to popular misconception, collective-bargaining rights are not directly affected by right-to-work laws. What such laws do is give individual employees the freedom to join or not join the union—and bar the union from collecting involuntary dues from those who opt not to join.

In Fordham’s recent study, How Strong are U.S. Teacher Unions: A State-by-State Comparison, we identify and distinguish several different sources of union strength—and three main ways that one could limit said strength if one were so inclined.

1. Collective bargaining rights dictate whether employers must, may, or cannot recognize an employee organization as a union. In Michigan—as in thirty other states—if employees want to negotiate a binding contract (a.k.a., a collective-bargaining agreement, or CBA) with their employer, the employer must recognize them as a union and enter into a CBA. (Fourteen states leave the decision up to the district, and five states prohibit collective bargaining in education.) Michigan’s new law won’t change its status as a collective-bargaining state.

2. Laws that determine the scope of bargaining control what must, may, or cannot be part of any binding contract. That scope, as it applies to Michigan’s teachers, was drastically limited in July 2011 when the legislature passed Public Act 103, stipulating that base wages, hours of employment, and terms and conditions of employment (things like teacher leave, class size, and extracurricular duties) must be bargained. But it also explicitly prohibited a number of other items and topics: Unions cannot negotiate over teacher evaluations, discipline procedures, dismissals, layoffs, performance pay, and transfers and reassignments, nor can they bargain over the length of the school year. The scope of bargaining in Michigan is now narrower than in all but two other states. In short, Michigan’s school districts must negotiate with their local union, but what they can negotiate over is already narrow.

3. Right-to-work laws stipulate that no union can require membership as a condition of employment. A state that requires collective bargaining can also be right-to-work—like Michigan, as of yesterday (or Florida). These laws also stipulate that the union cannot charge involuntary agency fees in lieu of membership dues to individual employees who opt not to join it. Unions argue that such fees are important because they cover union operating costs and that, even if Mr. Smith chooses not to be a union member, he still benefits from the services that the union provides (for example, the union negotiates salaries and benefits for all teachers in a unionized district, not just its members). But reformers counter that unions take a very liberal interpretation of “operating costs,” using them not only for operations but for political purposes like advocacy and lobbying, too. (This is a gray area that has seen a lot of attention lately in states like California and Alabama.)

What will this mean for Michigan? Say Mr. Smith teaches in Ann Arbor. With the new law, if he decides that he doesn’t want to join the Ann Arbor Education Association, the AAEA can’t make him pay fees to it anyway. It also means that the state-level Michigan Education Association won’t see any of Mr. Smith’s money.

Between 2011’s Public Act 103 and this week’s measure, Michigan’s teacher unions have been hit with a one-two punch. The former gives administrators and boards greater latitude by limiting the scope of bargaining; the latter is likely to weaken the unions politically, financially, and organizationally.

But don’t think for a minute that they’ve been knocked out of the game. Take fellow rust-belt state Indiana, which recently passed right-to-work legislation and drastically narrowed unions’ scope of bargaining…changes that were followed by last month’s union-spearheaded defeat of State Superintendent Tony Bennett. But it is a start to ensuring that unions confine their work to teachers in the schoolhouse, not big-money politics at the statehouse.

A version of this article originally appeared in Fordham’s Flypaper blog.

In December 2010, the latest results from PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) revealed that—compared to our OECD peers—American fifteen-year olds are (at best) in the middle of the pack. Among the thirty-four participating nations, we ranked fourteenth in reading, seventeenth in science, and twenty-fifth in math. This news, coupled with Shanghai’s epic success on the exam (the first time any part of mainland China had taken it), rocked the education-policy community. For those still smarting, the latest results from two other international assessments offer some liniment. TIMSS and PIRLS  (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) are given in more countries—including many that are poorer and less developed than those in the OECD—and are actual appraisals of student learning at two grade levels. (PISA purports to assess skills in a country’s overall fifteen-year-old population and does not claim to be curriculum-based or school-aligned.)

U.S. fourth graders are definitely looking better. From 2006 to 2011, their math performance on TIMSS bumped up twelve points and now trails that of their counterparts in just seven other lands (in East Asia and Northern Ireland). Even more remarkable results come from PIRLS: Of the fifty-three systems participating, only four from abroad bested the U.S.’s score (Hong Kong, Russia, Finland, and Singapore). Further, Singapore is the only foreign system to surpass us at the “advanced” level, where an impressive 17 percent of American fourth graders can be found.

It’s not all great news. U.S. eighth graders, for example, remained stagnant in math achievement, as they (and fourth graders, too) did in science. Still, let’s take good news where we can. As noted above, and as others have observed, TIMSS and PIRLS are stronger indicators of student achievement (and much more closely aligned to NAEP) than PISA. While PISA takes a “skills-based approach,” which heralds students’ abilities to manage the process of knowledge-acquisition more than the actual knowledge itself, TIMSS and PIRLS—along with NAEP—ask students to understand content and utilize that knowledge.

The new PIRLS results also hint at the efficacy of strong, scientifically based reading policies in the early grades—including the much-missed Reading First program. (NAEP’s 2011 results drop the same hint.) Recall that Reading First (a $1 billion-a-year program initiated under No Child Left Behind and foolishly defunded in 2008) provided intensive support to high-poverty schools seeking to teach reading to K-2 students in a scientifically based manner. The first Kindergarten cohorts taught via Reading First programs would have hit fourth grade around 2007 and eighth grade around 2011—just when we see PIRLS scores begin to jump. Consider, too, Florida’s results. (It and eight other states participated in this round of PIRLS and TIMSS testing as if they were countries.) The Sunshine State has emerged as a bastion of smart, scientifically based reading instruction—and has required a “third-grade reading guarantee” for over a decade. It outstripped the U.S. average on PIRLS by thirteen points! It also ranked second, behind Singapore, in the percentage of “advanced” students. And there may well be more policy implications for analysts to investigate. Although Florida was a first-time participant (as were Alabama and Colorado) in TIMSS and PIRLS in 2011, six other states—Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and North Carolina—have partaken in one or more previous iterations of the assessment, allowing for comparisons over time.

RELATED ARTICLE:

“U.S. Math, Science Achievement Exceeds World Average,” Education Week, December 11, 2012.

Everyone and their mothers are talking about the so-called “fiscal cliff”—the automatic budget cuts and tax increases that will affect all federal discretionary spending programs, cut you off in traffic, steal an old lady’s handbag, and wreak general havoc if lawmakers don’t come to a deal on the national debt soon. Will it destroy Head Start and special education? Will it disproportionately harm poor schools? But as Dara Zeehandelaar reminds us, federal contributions to education are peanuts compared to the amount the feds contribute to Medicare, Medicaid, transportation, and the like—cuts to which will leave big holes for states to patch, perhaps by raiding K–12 funding. And it’s these possible indirect cuts to education that will hurt on the way down.

After channeling Jeb Bush during his job interview, Ed Reform Idol Tony Bennett was chosen to be Florida’s new state superintendent. We extend hearty congratulations. Florida’s teacher unions are none too happy with his appointment; but they’re not exactly winning the war in Florida, so Bennett may not need to sweat it.

Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, says he intends to overhaul that country’s flagging school system. First stop? Take down the juggernaut teacher union—led by Elba Esther Gordillo, referred to as La Maestra for her political prowess and shady dealings. We’ll be watching.

The Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education has identified the five education issues that were most covered by the media during 2012 (“hits”) and the five most important stories that were underreported (“misses”). (If there are any journalists out there looking to make up for lost time and compensate for previous oversights, we have fantastic publications on topics from both lists.)

The National Association for Gifted Children takes a special look at low-income, high-ability learners in its new report, “Unlocking Emergent Talent.” Authors Paula Olszewski-Kubilius and Jane Clarenbach identify, among other things, a number of strategies that will identify gifted students—and programs that will work for them.

READ "How School Districts Can Stretch the School Dollar"

Despite some signs of economic recovery, school districts nationwide continue to struggle mightily. Nobody expects economic growth—or education spending—to rebound to 2008 levels over the next five years, and the long-term outlook isn't much brighter.

In short, the "new normal" of tougher budget times is here to stay for American K-12 education. So how can local officials cope?

In my new policy brief, I argue that the current crunch may actually present an opportunity to increase the efficiency and productivity of our education system if decision makers keep a few things in mind:

First and foremost, solving our budget crisis shouldn't come at the expense of children. Nor can if come from teachers' sacrifice alone. Depressing teachers' salaries forever isn't a recipe for recruiting bright young people into education—or retaining the excellent teachers we have. Finally, quick fixes aren't a good answer; we need fundamental changes that enhance productivity.

So how can school districts dramatically increase productivity and stretch the school dollar?

One, we should aim for a leaner, more productive, better paid workforce. Let's ask classroom teachers to take on additional responsibility in return for greater pay, eliminate some ancillary positions, and redesign our approach to special education.

Two, we should pay for productivity. A redesigned compensation system would include a more aggressive salary schedule, more pay for more work and better results, and prioritization of salaries over benefits.

Three, we must integrate technology thoughtfully. Online and "blended" school models are coming to K-12 education. They can be catalysts for greater pupil engagement, individualization, and achievement and, if organized right, they can also be opportunities for cost-cutting.

Many districts continue to face budget challenges of historic proportions. Rather than slashing budgets in ways that erode schooling, let's rethink who we hire, what they do, how we pay them, and how to incorporate technology—that's where the big payoff is.

READ "How School Districts Can Stretch the School Dollar"

Despite some signs of economic recovery, school districts nationwide continue to struggle mightily. Nobody expects economic growth—or education spending—to rebound to 2008 levels over the next five years, and the long-term outlook isn't much brighter.

In short, the "new normal" of tougher budget times is here to stay for American K-12 education. So how can local officials cope?

In my new policy brief, I argue that the current crunch may actually present an opportunity to increase the efficiency and productivity of our education system if decision makers keep a few things in mind:

First and foremost, solving our budget crisis shouldn't come at the expense of children. Nor can if come from teachers' sacrifice alone. Depressing teachers' salaries forever isn't a recipe for recruiting bright young people into education—or retaining the excellent teachers we have. Finally, quick fixes aren't a good answer; we need fundamental changes that enhance productivity.

So how can school districts dramatically increase productivity and stretch the school dollar?

One, we should aim for a leaner, more productive, better paid workforce. Let's ask classroom teachers to take on additional responsibility in return for greater pay, eliminate some ancillary positions, and redesign our approach to special education.

Two, we should pay for productivity. A redesigned compensation system would include a more aggressive salary schedule, more pay for more work and better results, and prioritization of salaries over benefits.

Three, we must integrate technology thoughtfully. Online and "blended" school models are coming to K-12 education. They can be catalysts for greater pupil engagement, individualization, and achievement and, if organized right, they can also be opportunities for cost-cutting.

Many districts continue to face budget challenges of historic proportions. Rather than slashing budgets in ways that erode schooling, let's rethink who we hire, what they do, how we pay them, and how to incorporate technology—that's where the big payoff is.

One sign that the Brookings Institution’s second annual Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI) is better than the first is that New Orleans came out on top—boasting the ECCI’s only A grade. For this go-around, Russ Whitehurst and his team ranked 107 school districts (the 100 largest metro areas and seven others of interest), up from twenty-five in 2011, on thirteen choice-related categories of policy and practice (including accessibility of information on school quality and availability of virtual schooling options). Joining the Big Easy in the top five are New York (last year’s valedictorian), D.C., Minneapolis, and Houston. Rounding out the bottom of the rankings are Brownsville (TX), San Antonio, and Loudoun County (VA). (Ohio’s sole district on this list, Columbus, ranked eighty-ninth.) But what makes this year’s index particularly worthwhile is the way it explains the differences among even the best of the best. It’s easy to see what separates the Recovery School District in New Orleans from Brownsville. The contrast between the NOLA’s RSD and the District of Columbia is subtler, but still significant. As one example, D.C. scored well on its abundance of (and generous funding for) school alternatives, including charters and vouchers. But it fell short in matching families to the schools of their choice. The problem is that D.C. parents must separately apply to each school in which they are interested, since individual schools control their own lotteries to determine admissions. That’s not the case in NOLA, where a common application works for all traditional and charter public schools in the Recovery School District, and where families are more likely to gain entry into the schools that they rank highest. (This system was designed by two Nobel Prize-winning economists who specialize in match-making.) All this isn’t meant to slight the progress made in D.C. (and elsewhere) in supporting school choice. But the ECCI does show how policies affecting student assignment, funding, and transparency can be changed in small ways to the benefit of kids—even for states and districts that already are committed to choice. Use the ECCI’s interactive features to compare districts for yourself.

A version of this review originally appeared on Fordham’s Choice Words blog.

SOURCE:

Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst with Sarah Whitfield, The Education Choice and Competition Index: Background and Results 2012 (Washington, D.C.: Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, December 2012).

This wonky but important (and exceptionally timely) book by Michigan State’s Bill Schmidt and Curtis McKnight, an emeritus math professor at the University of Oklahoma, is a distinctive, deeply researched, and amply documented plea for full-scale implementation of the Common Core math standards.

The authors examine the extent to which young Americans in various states, districts, schools, and classrooms have equal opportunities to learn the same high-quality math content in grades K–8—and they find grievous gaps and injustices.

One might suppose that this most hierarchical and standardized of core subjects would yield the greatest uniformity from place to place within the United States. Critics of national curricula (and Common Core) periodically declare that NAEP, the textbook oligopoly, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and nationwide college-entrance exams have caused math curricula to be very similar across the land.

Schmidt and McKnight, however, show conclusively that this presumption is far from true. And they link that variation in content coverage and delivery to the country’s vexing achievement gaps, its deteriorating social mobility, and its generally weak educational performance. Here are a few excerpts from the book’s genuinely alarming—and stirring—final chapter:

The inequalities in content coverage begin with the state and local community in which a child is to attend school…and continue with the neighborhood school to which the child is assigned. Furthermore, two children, even from the same family and attending the same school but with different teachers for each of the first five grades, are not likely to have the same learning opportunities…A topic can be covered or not covered. Topics can be studied in different sequences, some of which may not make any sense from the point of view of the content itself. Students can receive more or less time for instruction, depending on the teacher’s decision. All of these differences in content coverage can be found in the varying experiences of children from different families who live in different regions of the state or country…

Further complicating the expression of clear and coherent intentions for classroom content coverage is that textbooks and tests instantiate their own sense of which topics should be learned…

For U.S. children, the nation is by no means indivisible. The data we presented…show the extent to which the nation’s children are divided by different content exposures in mathematics and science. These content learning opportunities define the core of schooling. Since there are so few guarantees for equivalent learning opportunities, public schooling has become more like a game of chance. It clearly does not embody “equality for all,” but instead “inequality for all.”

Uniform standards such as those in Common Core won’t solve this set of problems in and of themselves. But without such standards, these issues are not likely ever to be solved.

A version of this review originally appeared on Fordham’s Common Core Watch blog.

This latest “Kids Count” report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation delivers some depressing news: Youth employment is at its lowest level since World War II. Tracking data from the 2011 Current Population Survey, as well as recent Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the foundation reports that only half of people ages sixteen to twenty-four held jobs in 2011; among the teens in that group, 13 percent of sixteen to nineteen year olds and 20 percent of twenty to twenty-four year olds are both out of school and out of work (what the authors call “disconnected” youth). And still more striking, within this group of disconnected young adults, over a fifth are parents themselves. According to analysts, this stark trend is caused by stronger competition for increasingly scarce entry-level jobs—and may cause these disconnected youth to eventually become a cost to taxpayers. The report then breaks employment data down by state: For twenty- to twenty-four-year-olds, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wisconsin have the highest employment rates. Mississippi and New York have the lowest. While the report’s message is bleak, it offers at least one redeeming data point: For young adults (ages twenty to twenty-four), college-enrollment rates rose from 31 percent in 2000 to 38 percent in 2011, with some who would have entered the workforce now seeking postsecondary education. (The quality of those programs is not discussed in the report.) The authors offer a host of recommendations, including that funding for youth programs be linked to outcomes such as degree or credential attainment, rather than inputs like enrollment, and that incentives be created (such as youth payroll tax credits) to encourage more businesses to hire young people. And, of course, multiple pathways through K–12 education into the workplace must be allowed—including savvy career and technical education.

SOURCE:

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Youth and Hard Work: Restoring Teen and Young Adult Connections to Opportunity (Baltimore, MD: The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012).