The Education Gadfly Weekly

Steve Farkas, Jean Johnson, and Ann Duffett, Public Agenda
November 2003

The non-partisan research organization, Public Agenda, has conducted many illuminating education surveys and studies. This latest report continues in that vein, though its policy implications are somewhat blurry. Supported by the Wallace Foundation, it's the second half of a two-part examination of principals' and superintendents' views of their role, their effectiveness, and the conditions of their work. (The first appeared as a 2001 report entitled Trying to Stay Ahead of the Game. See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=82#1257.) The main message here, as summarized by Wallace Foundation president Christine DeVita: "Even as leaders report that they are focusing as never before on curriculum, instruction, mentoring, and professional development . . . they are hamstrung by red tape, competing laws and regulations, and inadequate resources to meet increased requirements and mandates." Two-thirds of them feel, for example, that it's hard to discipline troublesome kids due to excessive emphasis on documentation and due process. Nearly everyone grumps about overweening federal, state, and local mandates. Special ed consumes more than its share of money and attention. And so on through a long litany of complaints. A more vivid summary of these administrators' view of their roles can be found in Public Agenda president Ruth Wooden's "afterword," where she writes, "The daily travails of their jobs sound like a description of a particularly noisy video game, with an enormous array of obstacles hurtling from all directions, requiring split-second decisions and no chance to reverse course. The superintendents and principals we interviewed . . . expressed a profound concern about the ongoing assault of politics, micro-management and bureaucracy that drives them crazy - and often drives the most talented among them out of the field." The crankiness is somewhat offset by the one-third (but only one-third) of principals and superintendents who believe that the system "helps me get things done the way I want them" but that in turn is offset by the larger number - nearly half - who say that they can usually get things "done the way you want but you must work around the system to get it." What sort of system have we constructed, one may well wonder, if a huge fraction of its key institutional leaders conclude that success is attainable only by end-running its rules and procedures? The full report is currently available on-line if you surf to http://www.publicagenda.org/research/research_reports_details.cfm?list=9. Or you can pay $10 for a hard copy by contacting Public Agenda at 6 East 39th Street, New York, NY 10016, 212-686-6610.

Paul E. Barton, Educational Testing Service
November 2003

The basic premise of this report is straightforward: efforts to close the achievement gaps between whites and minorities, rich and poor, will be for naught unless policy makers, educators, and parents recognize and address the multiplicity of factors - both in school and out - that cause them. This meta-synthesis of the most respected studies of student achievement includes a review of data from the National Center for Education Statistics, data from Child Trends, and the seminal work of researchers like James Coleman, Anthony Bryk, Terry Moe, and Eric Hanushek. The factors influencing academic achievement are "parsed" by the author into 14 "correlates of school achievement." The correlates fall under three general categories - early development, the school environment, and home learning environment - and range from weight at birth, to lead poisoning, to teacher quality, to class size, to the amount of television watched, to parent participation in a child's school. In all 14 correlates of achievement, there were gaps between the minority and majority student populations. The report concludes that identifying the range of factors that influence student achievement is the first step to doing something about the problems. True enough, we guess, though we do already know something about how to shrink the achievement gap--take for example the KIPP model and the systematic reforms well outlined in "No Excuses" (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=116#1461), a startling book that chronicles many of the same problems but goes the additional mile by providing concrete recommendations. This report would benefit from a similar practical look at how to combat persistent achievement gaps.  Still, it's worth checking out; go to http://www.ets.org/research/pic/parsing.pdf.

Sandra S. Ruppert, Education Commission of the States
October 2003

Using information from the 2000 census, this report provides discouraging data on both high school graduation and college participation rates. Paralleling the significant achievement gap in K-12 education, high school graduation and college participation rates vary greatly when the numbers are broken down by race/ethnicity. For example, while 33.6 percent of white American adults have a college degree, only 14.7 percent of Hispanic adults and 20 percent of African-American adults have a college degree. The report makes several recommendations, none earth-shattering, to state policy makers, including the importance of getting reliable data that will help "tell the story about performance conditions in their state." Based on this information, Ruppert feels policy makers can then focus on the specific students' needs by targeting the growing parts of the population without proper access to college. We suspect that the solution to the problem has more moving parts than that, but sunshine is still the best disinfectant. The detailed state-by-state information is available on the Center for Community College Policy website, http://www.communitycollegepolicy.org/html/top.asp?page=Issues/Access/Access_map.asp and the national summary can be found here.

The New York Times has lowered the boom on the "Texas Miracle," claiming that its own analysis of SAT-9 test scores of Houston ISD students from 1999-2002 shows that the district made at best modest gains in reading and math, despite claims (based on the now-defunct TAAS assessment) that Houston schools had dramatically increased scores and closed the minority achievement gap. As far as statistics go, the Times' analysis seems persuasive. After all, there is no doubt that some of the claims made on behalf of Houston schools were overstated when compared against national tests. The district has made some gains (unusual for a district of its size and beset with the challenges it faces, we'd note) but hardly the kind that could be called a "miracle." It's the Times' rather disingenuous reading of the political situation and implications that we take issue with. For example, the No Child Left Behind act does not require states and districts to "match Houston's success and bring virtually all children to academic proficiency," as the Times tendentiously remarks. And, Houston's record has little bearing on whether the federal government, through its Title I funding, ought to require schools to close the achievement gap and bring all students up to proficiency. The Times concludes that Houston's achievement gains were the result of a too-easy test, which Texas has already begun to correct on its own by scrapping the TAAS in favor of the more-rigorous TAKS. We would also note that this supposed scandal - by the Times' own admission, Houston showed achievement gains on the SAT-9 "large enough to be considered significant," the horror! - wouldn't have even been discoverable without the kind of large-scale, objective, equatable assessment system that the New York Times has spilled quite a bit of ink decrying over the past decade. On the strength of this article, we assume that the Times is now in favor of more such testing to round out the data set, which gratifies us immensely.
 
"A miracle revisited," by Diana Jean Schemo and Ford Fessenden, New York Times, December 3, 2003 (registration required)

Yesterday, the Maryland state board of education voted 9-2 to make the state's high school assessment tests a requirement for graduation beginning with the class of 2009. The move makes Maryland one of 19 states that have mandated graduation exit exams. According to the proposal, by 2009 all students would be required to pass at minimum the state's "functional tests" in reading, math, and writing to earn a local diploma, but to earn a full-fledge state diploma, they must also pass tests in algebra, English, government and biology. Severely disabled students, who will be exempted from the state's regular tests, will be awarded a certificate of completion. While some board members fear that the new testing requirement will dramatically increase the number of drop-outs in the state, Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, notes that "although states normally see a slight increase in their dropout rates the first year that exit exams are in place, there is no long-term link to the number of students who leave school."

"Md. to give class of '09 exit exams," by Ylan Q. Mui, Washington Post, December 4, 2003

Too often for our taste, articles in the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's magazine Educational Leadership reflect the status quo. But sense shone through in a recent issue on "The Challenges of Accountability," especially in articles by Craig Jerald and Frederick Hess. Jerald, in "Beyond the Rock and the Hard Place," calls on teachers and administrators to quit complaining about the requirements of accountability and get the job done, and to stop excusing problems like push-outs or teachers cheating on standardized tests as inevitable consequences of holding people accountable. Hess, in "The Case for Being Mean," makes, well, the case for being mean - or better put, the case for accountability systems that have incentives and sanctions ("mean") as well as provide increased resources in the way of professional development, training, and support ("nice"). Both articles are worth reading, though only Jerald's is online. 
 

"The Challenges of Accountability," Educational Leadership, November 2003, vol. 61, no. 3

According to Dahlia Lithwick of Slate, the First Amendment's Establishment and Free Exercise clauses are the "constitutional equivalent of Ernie's relationship to Bert - in that no one really wants to say out loud that they hate each other." Last year, in Zelman v. Harris, the Court dealt with the first clause, and found that providing public money to religious schools in the form of school vouchers does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This week, the Court heard arguments in Locke v. Davey, a case that challenges the constitutionality of Washington state's Blaine Amendment under the second clause. (Blaine Amendments, named after 19th century Republican Representative James G. Blaine, were added to 37 state constitutions after Blaine's failed 1875 attempt to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution barring governments from providing any public money to "sectarian" - read, Catholic - schools.)

In this case, Joshua Davey claimed that his First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion was violated when Washington State rescinded its state-funded Promise Scholarship only after he declared that he would double major in pastoral ministry and business. (The state's scholarships are awarded to students on the basis of academic merit and financial need, and can be given to students who attend accredited colleges in the state, including schools with religious affiliations.) In 1999, Davey's freshman year, Washington's Higher Education Coordinating Board decided that students majoring in theology were ineligible for the scholarship because providing funding to students majoring in theology violated the state's Blaine Amendment. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the state agency's decision on the grounds that it "facially discriminates on the basis of religion. . . . The state may not offer a benefit to all but exclude some on the basis of religion." In his appeal, Washington Governor Gary Locke (D) argues that states should be free to "erect a higher wall between church and state than the federal Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, does."

According to news reports, the court appeared "deeply divided" at the hearing, and experts predict that the court may split 5-4, with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor casting the tie-breaking vote (as she did in last year's landmark Zelman case). While many have argued that the Blaine Amendments should be struck down because of their blatantly anti-Catholic and discriminatory intentions, the Justices seemed to be more concerned with whether, as Justice Ginsberg put it, there was "any space between what a state is permitted to fund under the Establishment Clause and what it must fund under the Free Exercise Clause" - in other words, whether the fact that states can provide public money to both religious and secular forms of education and instruction under the U.S. Constitution necessarily means that they must do so equally.

The Court is expected to hand down its ruling this summer, the outcome of which will have far-reaching consequences on voucher programs throughout the country, particularly in states whose constitutions also have Blaine Amendments, like Colorado (for more information on the court battles there, see the News and Analysis piece below) or Connecticut (where Jay Greene recently proposed enacting voucher programs to combat persistent school segregation).

"Court weighs religious studies," by George Archibald, Washington Times, December 3, 2003

"US high court mulls religious student state scholarship ban," Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2003  (subscription required)

"The Blaine game," editorial, Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2003  (subscription required)

"Justices weigh case on state spending and religion," New York Times, December 2, 2003 (registration required)

"Rock of ages and a hard place," by Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, December 2, 2003

"Justices resist religious study using subsidies," by Linda Greenhouse, New York Times, December 3, 2003 (registration required)

"Vouchers for integration," by Jay Greene, Hartford Courant, November 30, 2003 (registration required)

"The neutrality principle," by James E. Ryan, Education Next, Fall 2003

This year, Colorado became the first state to pass a statewide voucher program after last year's landmark Zelman ruling. A legal challenge to the program was inevitable, but we were truly astonished to hear that a district judge has barred the Colorado school voucher program on the grounds that it violates "local control" of schools. (Article IX, Section 15 of the Colorado constitution provides that the local boards of education "shall have control of instruction in the public schools of their respective districts.")  In his ruling, Judge Joseph E. Meyer determined that the voucher law, which allows parents to use tax dollars to attend private schools that are outside of the jurisdiction of the local school board, violates this "local control."
 
Of course, control of instruction in the public schools is a very different thing from controlling the funding of schools generally - a power that is clearly vested in the Colorado General Assembly and in locally elected officials who have the power to tax and spend. And as Chip Mellor, President of the Institute for Justice - the group representing the state in the case - pointed out, "the state's role in setting the agenda for education has expanded so much in recent years that there's been all kinds of intrusion on the old idea of local control. . . . Local districts don't exercise anywhere near the autonomy they did. It's been the practice for the state to set education policy and for local districts to implement that policy."

A good point, and we would add another - that school districts and school boards are administrative conveniences; they have no rights or prerogatives per se, but exercise only those powers given to them by the Colorado constitution, enacted by people of the state. Judge Meyer's ruling would seem to suggest that local school districts have "rights" that are in tension with the rights of the people to control the modes and methods of public education. This is simply nonsense. Finally, we cannot shake ourselves of the suspicion that this ruling has more to do with politics - with throwing up new hurdles to educational choice as soon as (or just before) the old, longstanding ones are cleared.

"Judge strikes down Colorado's school voucher law," by Tamar Lewin, New York Times, December 3, 2003

"Save the school choice program," editorial, Denver Post, December 4, 2003

"Judge stops Colorado's new school vouchers," by Steven K. Paulson,
Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 4, 2003

"School vouchers overturned by court," Associated Press, December 3, 2003

A remarkable two-part story in the Post-Gazette questions the need for and usefulness of school boards, those dinosaurs of progressive politics. Some researchers are coming to believe (as Gadfly has for some time; see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=120#1505) that school boards are often "composed of unskilled, unprepared people elected by a tiny turnout of voters, and that they handicap the students they're supposed to help." The articles add lots of color to the position that school boards are frequently unruly, incompetent, and almost completely in the pocket of unions: stories of school board members banging their shoes on tables to make their points, Kruschev-like; school board members who want to micromanage decisions like what color shoes the football team should wear; and even school board members who have turned violent, including one Pennsylvania board member who ran over the school police chief with her car. The fixes suggested by many proponents of school boards - including paying school board members to attract higher-quality candidates, more professional development, and rigging elections to assure that all parts of the community are represented - strike us as less efficient than the obvious answer: get rid of them. They're too often a waste, a hindrance, and an entrenched enemy of reform.
 
"School boards' worth in doubt," by Jane Elizabeth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 30, 2003
 
"School board reform elusive," by Jane Elizabeth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 1, 2003

Observations from the NCSS annual conference

For an organization that claims to value diversity and debate as much as the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), precious little of either was to be found at its very own annual conference, held in Chicago in mid-November and attended by some 5,000 social studies teachers, professors, and itinerant experts. In fact, after scouring the program in search of sessions where the goals of social studies itself would be examined and, perish the thought, debated, I came up nearly empty. So I attended some other sessions.

The first was a series of presentations organized by the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA), an NCSS affiliate. I was interested because these papers were textbook evaluations and, since we at Fordham are nearing publication of our own review of history textbooks, I hoped these university professors' findings might be instructive. And they were, albeit not quite in the fashion intended by their authors.

One analyzed the portrayal of the United States in Canadian textbooks. The author traced her findings from textbooks published from the late 1800s through 1970 - a peripheral topic and an analysis that stopped just when it might have gotten interesting.

The other claimed to examine "commonly used middle level social studies books" with an eye toward how they "depict American culture, society and lifestyle in comparison with the rest of the world." In reality, the analysis focused mainly on how the textbooks failed to demonstrate that wealth distribution across and within countries is a zero sum game (a theory that most economists discredit) and that, because America consumes a disproportionate share of resources, it contributes to poverty elsewhere on the planet.

This presenter also focused on how "the colonial history of exploitation" was not discussed as a source of contemporary third-world poverty, and implied that this failure to produce a more "balanced" view of economic history is due to the fact that textbook publishers are owned by multi-national corporations, who apparently have an interest in glossing over such facts. To correct for this textbook failing, she urged her listeners to check out some nonprofit organizations for supplemental materials. Her preferred online source is "Rethinking Schools," which presents perhaps the most horrendously biased curriculum supplements I've encountered. (See for yourself at http://www.rethinkingschools.org.)

At CUFA's closing session, keynote speaker Linda McNeil (Rice University) wowed the crowd with a passionate denunciation of No Child Left Behind's accountability provisions as "demons of the law." McNeil has long opposed standards and testing because, she believes, they cause the disappearance from classrooms of "rich and wonderful and complicated teaching and learning." Her chief example in this particular speech: a student who had come to her to complain that he wasn't going to see much artwork in his art class this year because the art teacher was busy helping students prepare for the upcoming math proficiency test. Of course, the students would be able to do basic math because of the extra attention they were getting, but this didn't make it into her analysis of the "tragedy."

McNeil went on to allege that some principals are pushing out the lowest performing kids so that their school's test scores don't suffer because of them. Rather than voicing outrage at principals who cheat both kids and accountability in this way, however, she and her audience vented their spleens at the accountability system itself. Their call to action for teachers and ed school professors: encourage parents to revolt against NCLB and craft more studies that would "prove" that standards and tests don't improve student achievement.

"They call it the social studies"

CUFA's sessions turned out to be a pallid preview of what I would face at the bona fide NCSS sessions. One of my favorites was entitled "they call it the social studies." Its purpose was to help attendees understand that the field is not called history, civics, geography, and economics but social studies, and that this means students ought to study "social things with the goal of creating good citizens." During this session we were asked to write down what we thought the five goals of social studies education should be, and to share our thoughts with our neighbors. My list included such heresies as "explain the foundations of our democracy" and "explain how the framers' vision of liberty and equality paved the way for the eventual end of slavery, the Civil Rights movement, and the feminist movement." When I turned to share these goals with my neighbor - na??vely supposing that we'd be able to come to find some middle ground - I soon realized that we weren't even playing the same game, let alone in the same ballpark. His goals were the ever-popular "encourage critical thinking and community and civic engagement." Nary a word about what students will think critically about or whether they'll know enough to engage in a thoughtful debate in the first place.

As the group reassembled and people shared their goals more widely, I realized that mine were shared by nobody while my neighbor's were shared by all. They spoke of empowering students to participate in the community, teaching them to make informed decisions, and teaching them integrity, conflict resolution and communications skills. Yet the teachers never mentioned how they would achieve these noble goals without providing historical context within which students can understand past, present, and future events. Indeed, not one soul suggested that youngsters should learn about the origins of democracy, the founding of America, the conflict and change that has occurred throughout our history, or people who have played key roles in shaping that history. I got the sense that either the teachers take for granted that their students already know a lot about American history - heaven knows where they would have learned it if not in social studies class - or that they believed it doesn't matter so long as they know "where to find the information." The teachers also agreed that their job was to make social studies relevant and interesting, apparently by any means other than teaching actual historical content.

Conspiracy theory

Throughout the conference, in plenary and small-group sessions alike, conspiracy theories abounded. To NCSS members, at least, the vast right-wing conspiracy is alive and thriving. Apparently their definition of "radical right wing" now includes anyone who advocates school choice, standards and accountability, alternative teacher certification, or other such reforms. Moreover, such "reformers" and policy makers are all part of a political conspiracy to undermine public education. I encountered precisely one person who could actually articulate what he thought the conspiracy was; everyone else settled for the simplistic assertion that "politics" is driving these unwelcome reforms.

The conspiracy, insisted one NCSS member whose name I didn't catch, is driven by right-wing ideologues who use testing, standards, and accountability to set public schools up for failure. Then they'll be able to divert public funding to private schools. The notion that these "ideologues" might just want what's best for kids was rejected on its face as preposterous.

Were I a conspiracy theorist, however, I now have enough information to conclude the opposite: that the education establishment in general, and the NCSS in particular, are working energetically to shut down the kind of dissent and debate that makes effective reforms possible. Consider, for example, that while NCSS leaders discussed and denounced Fordham's recent publication Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong? at more than one session, they didn't invite a single author, editor, Fordham staffer, or really anyone who disagrees with the status quo to engage in debate.

But it gets worse. The self-styled "Contrarians," a tiny band of teachers and ed school professors within NCSS who believe that social studies urgently needs an overhaul, have tried for two years to get a session at the NCSS annual wingding. In 2002, though ostensibly granted a session, it was conveniently left off the program and thus couldn't meet. This year, though their session was listed on the program, NCSS conveniently double-booked the room. So the Contrarians scrambled to find an empty room with no help from NCSS (and minimal help from the hotel). After two tries, they finally found a spot and were able to proceed on their own, no thanks to the NCSS.

A small group attended, including a hostile NCSS past president and a current board member. A few of the authors of Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong? presented their arguments, then opened the floor for discussion - a real one that included debate of hotly contested issues, something that I had not seen in any other NCSS session. During this debate, however, I was amazed by the mean, ad hominem, and insulting nature of the comments from the social studies establishment. Though the NCSS board member said that a more "productive" way to air these matters would be for the Contrarians to hold a general session where they presented their ideas and brought in opponents who could debate the pros and cons, in fact NCSS for years now has refused to give the Contrarians any room at their conference, let alone a large room to hold a general session and debate.

The theme of this year's conference was: "The power of one: How to make a difference in a changing world." Based on the efforts of the NCSS elite to promote a one-sided look at social studies education while stifling all attempts to question the status quo, I can only conclude that they truly believe in the power of one - and fear that permitting even a single voice of dissent might put at risk the enormous influence they have over the field of social studies.

Kathleen Porter, a former social studies teacher, is associate research director of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

Paul E. Barton, Educational Testing Service
November 2003

The basic premise of this report is straightforward: efforts to close the achievement gaps between whites and minorities, rich and poor, will be for naught unless policy makers, educators, and parents recognize and address the multiplicity of factors - both in school and out - that cause them. This meta-synthesis of the most respected studies of student achievement includes a review of data from the National Center for Education Statistics, data from Child Trends, and the seminal work of researchers like James Coleman, Anthony Bryk, Terry Moe, and Eric Hanushek. The factors influencing academic achievement are "parsed" by the author into 14 "correlates of school achievement." The correlates fall under three general categories - early development, the school environment, and home learning environment - and range from weight at birth, to lead poisoning, to teacher quality, to class size, to the amount of television watched, to parent participation in a child's school. In all 14 correlates of achievement, there were gaps between the minority and majority student populations. The report concludes that identifying the range of factors that influence student achievement is the first step to doing something about the problems. True enough, we guess, though we do already know something about how to shrink the achievement gap--take for example the KIPP model and the systematic reforms well outlined in "No Excuses" (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=116#1461), a startling book that chronicles many of the same problems but goes the additional mile by providing concrete recommendations. This report would benefit from a similar practical look at how to combat persistent achievement gaps.  Still, it's worth checking out; go to http://www.ets.org/research/pic/parsing.pdf.

Sandra S. Ruppert, Education Commission of the States
October 2003

Using information from the 2000 census, this report provides discouraging data on both high school graduation and college participation rates. Paralleling the significant achievement gap in K-12 education, high school graduation and college participation rates vary greatly when the numbers are broken down by race/ethnicity. For example, while 33.6 percent of white American adults have a college degree, only 14.7 percent of Hispanic adults and 20 percent of African-American adults have a college degree. The report makes several recommendations, none earth-shattering, to state policy makers, including the importance of getting reliable data that will help "tell the story about performance conditions in their state." Based on this information, Ruppert feels policy makers can then focus on the specific students' needs by targeting the growing parts of the population without proper access to college. We suspect that the solution to the problem has more moving parts than that, but sunshine is still the best disinfectant. The detailed state-by-state information is available on the Center for Community College Policy website, http://www.communitycollegepolicy.org/html/top.asp?page=Issues/Access/Access_map.asp and the national summary can be found here.

Steve Farkas, Jean Johnson, and Ann Duffett, Public Agenda
November 2003

The non-partisan research organization, Public Agenda, has conducted many illuminating education surveys and studies. This latest report continues in that vein, though its policy implications are somewhat blurry. Supported by the Wallace Foundation, it's the second half of a two-part examination of principals' and superintendents' views of their role, their effectiveness, and the conditions of their work. (The first appeared as a 2001 report entitled Trying to Stay Ahead of the Game. See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=82#1257.) The main message here, as summarized by Wallace Foundation president Christine DeVita: "Even as leaders report that they are focusing as never before on curriculum, instruction, mentoring, and professional development . . . they are hamstrung by red tape, competing laws and regulations, and inadequate resources to meet increased requirements and mandates." Two-thirds of them feel, for example, that it's hard to discipline troublesome kids due to excessive emphasis on documentation and due process. Nearly everyone grumps about overweening federal, state, and local mandates. Special ed consumes more than its share of money and attention. And so on through a long litany of complaints. A more vivid summary of these administrators' view of their roles can be found in Public Agenda president Ruth Wooden's "afterword," where she writes, "The daily travails of their jobs sound like a description of a particularly noisy video game, with an enormous array of obstacles hurtling from all directions, requiring split-second decisions and no chance to reverse course. The superintendents and principals we interviewed . . . expressed a profound concern about the ongoing assault of politics, micro-management and bureaucracy that drives them crazy - and often drives the most talented among them out of the field." The crankiness is somewhat offset by the one-third (but only one-third) of principals and superintendents who believe that the system "helps me get things done the way I want them" but that in turn is offset by the larger number - nearly half - who say that they can usually get things "done the way you want but you must work around the system to get it." What sort of system have we constructed, one may well wonder, if a huge fraction of its key institutional leaders conclude that success is attainable only by end-running its rules and procedures? The full report is currently available on-line if you surf to http://www.publicagenda.org/research/research_reports_details.cfm?list=9. Or you can pay $10 for a hard copy by contacting Public Agenda at 6 East 39th Street, New York, NY 10016, 212-686-6610.