The Education Gadfly Weekly

KIPP Foundation
2008

KIPP (a.k.a., the Knowledge is Power Program) hasn't lost any luster since last year's report card was released. On state exams in 2006-2007, 67 percent of KIPP fifth-grade classes outperformed their local districts in reading, and 63 percent exceeded district averages in math. One hundred percent of KIPP eighth-grade classes beat district averages on both math and reading exams. More than 90 percent of students in these classes are black or Hispanic, and more than 80 percent are eligible for free or reduced lunch. To get a better sense of how much students are actually learning from year to year, KIPP also administers national norm-referenced exams to all its students. The results here were no less stellar. The average KIPPster who attended from fifth through eighth grade picked up 28 points on his reading exam and 42 points on his math exam by the time he left for high school. What else is there to say? You can read this year's report card online here.

Michael Planty, William Hussar, Thomas Snyder, Stephen Provasnik
National Center for Education Statistics
June 2008

The National Center for Education Statistics released one of its major annual reports, "The Condition of Education 2008," last Thursday. It puts a cornucopia of key education indicators in one handy place. One of its most interesting tidbits: private school enrollment has dropped from 11 to 9 percent between 1989 and 2005. Within that category, Catholic schools took the biggest hit--the percentage of private-school students enrolled in them decreased from 55 to 44 percent. (To understand why, see our recent Catholic schools report.) Meanwhile, Conservative Christian and nonsectarian private schools both saw a 5 percent increase in their enrollments. All 100 indicators are located online here. For a more condensed version, check out the highlights.

Rachel Allemand, assistant superintendent of Louisiana's St. Charles Parish, said, "What we've done is each day, to assign a student an effort score." Thusly she explained a new parish policy, encouraged by the state, that permits any eighth grader who fails Louisiana's LEAP exam, enrolls in remedial summer school, and then does even worse on his subsequent testing attempt to be promoted to ninth grade nonetheless. Previously, the New Orleans Times Picayune reports, "students whose scores dropped... were not allowed to go to the ninth grade." That rule sought to ensure that pupils took summer school seriously. But this year, Allemand said, the state education board "realized that wasn't fair." Louisiana's state board possesses a unique definition of fairness. To expect pupils to be prepared for ninth grade before they enter it; to give them multiple chances to demonstrate such preparedness; and to hold them in middle school only if they demonstrate that, after remediation, their level of preparedness has decreased--well, that seems more than fair. Nevertheless, the state board's aversion to high standards has condemned St. Charles Parish eighth graders to be treated like babies and given credit for effort, not results. The real world, of course, works differently.

"Students get new chance on LEAP" by Sandra Barbier, New Orleans Times Picayune, May 31, 2008

Where are you, George Orwell, just when we need you? The Miami Herald reports that last month, "the United Teachers of Dade charged three of its members with anti-unionism and suspended them from their representative positions." The specifics of the charges ("maliciously publishing false reports and working in the interest of an inimical organization") remain unclear, as does the question of who, exactly, brought them. Clear as day, though, is that two of those accused for consorting with inimical agents in parking garages have previously run against UTD's current president, Karen Aronowitz, for leadership positions. One of them, Ronald Beasley, said of his former opponent's faction, "They've been telling us that we're anti-union. But the truth is, their actions have been anti-union." Another defendant, Shawn Beightol, said that his allies have "been fighting to improve the lives of the educators" while the Aronowitzists "are working on behalf of the district." Things are getting ugly. Beware--there are many unregistered ice picks floating around south Florida.

"Dade teachers bicker among themselves," by Kathleen McGrory, Miami Herald, June 3, 2008

Good news out of Seattle: It seems to have foresworn the social engineering of diversity in its public schools. In the 1970s, Seattle was leading the voluntary desegregation efforts of big cities. In 1978, the Seattle Times reports, the city "became the first large urban district in the nation to undertake a desegregation plan without a court order to do so." Fast forward 30 years (after the highest court in the land ordered Seattle to halt its last remnants of voluntary desegregation) and the school district's mindset has changed. Today, Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson says she values diversity but values high-quality schools more. That idea is echoed, more bluntly, by the chairman of the city's school board: "It's not my job to desegregate the city. We serve the kids that come to our doors." That makes sense. Housing patterns are what they are. Busing was tried and failed. And time and again, parents of all races and socioeconomic levels have expressed their preference for quality close-to-home education for their children. That Seattle seems to have accepted these facts, moved on from waging wars over diversity, and started zeroing in on the educational problems of its k-12 system, is surely promising. Let's hope that, as in 1978, Seattle's ideas catch on.

"The resegregation of Seattle's schools," by Linda Shaw, Seattle Times, June 1, 2008

"Integration is no longer Seattle school district's top priority," by Linda Shaw, Seattle Times, June 3, 2008

June has come, the school year is ending, and it's time for a word in appreciation of teachers. Observing a focus group the other evening that pulled together a dozen AP teachers from a strong suburban school system, I was struck anew by their intelligence, their selflessness, their energy, their patience, the depth of their commitment to their work and their genuine concern for the wellbeing and advancement of their youthful charges. Bravo for them and the many thousands of others like them without whom our schools could not function and would not produce even today's mixed results.

They came across as fairly satisfied, too. I didn't detect much self-pitying. Indeed, individual teachers, speaking for themselves, seldom spend a lot of time bemoaning their fate. They go about their work, reposing in tolerable comfort in a bed they made for themselves and taking well-deserved pride in their successes. Indeed, surveys by the National Opinion Research center indicate that teachers are relatively happy with their work, up there with painters and authors-and not far below clergy and firefighters. (See here.)

Their "leaders," however, and innumerable policy wonks, think tankers, interest groups, and assorted experts and politicians who claim to be looking after teachers' interests--these folks spend a lot of time lamenting the raw deal they want you to think American society is giving its schoolteachers. Their complaints generally center on tight-fisted legislators, mindless administrators, mean-spirited federal programs, incompetent, uncooperative parents, and unmotivated pupils.

Does this sound familiar? These critics suggest that we're supposed to feel teachers' pain, dig deeper into our pocketbooks to compensate them, and chuck out the evil bureaucrats, guileful politicians and misbegotten programs that hassle and oppress them.

Which got me thinking. Do teachers truly deserve sympathy as well as gratitude? And I concluded that yes they do--great teachers and those who go above and beyond deserve more than others--but not primarily for the plagues that union leaders and sundry propeller heads, vote-seekers, and pundits like to recite. Sure, there's a basis for some of those. But what teachers genuinely deserve sympathy for are six afflictions all of which could have been averted (and/or could still be corrected) via smart policy shifts:

1. An absurd and antiquated compensation system that pays bad teachers as much as good ones and phys. ed. teachers as much as physics teachers. (A recent survey reminds us that math and science teachers are the most apt to leave due to meager pay--compared to what they can earn elsewhere.) That system is controlled by large bureaucracies instead of individual schools; is skewed to favor time-servers at the expense of newcomers; and is coupled to archaic, non-portable pension plans.
   
2. A personnel system designed for the 1930's that ignores the tenets of modern management and the need to empower individuals--both principals and teachers--to reach agreement on their job assignments, placements, retention and such. Instead it entrusts such matters to rulebooks, rigid seniority systems and (again) large bureaucracies. The same HR system is blind to modern career trajectories and weeps whenever anyone exits the classroom even though the typical pattern of today's young college graduates is to try one thing for a few years, then another and then another.
   
3. A dysfunctional training-and-licensure regimen that, on the one hand, makes it slow, expensive and arduous for eager would-be teachers to enter the public school classroom and, on the other hand, burdens them with useless courses while failing to impart core knowledge of their subjects and the most effective methods of conveying those subjects to children. Superimposed on this is so-called "professional development" that much of the time isn't worth the paper it's printed on, much less the money that's spent on it.
   
4. Schools that, despite much blather about "professional" educators, give teachers surprisingly little control over fundamental decisions about their work. Yes, it's still partly true that once the classroom door is closed, the teacher is queen of her domain. Yet that teacher often has little or no say about who is in her class; what textbooks will be used; the curricular scope and sequence; the quantity of homework (if any); the grading scale; how to communicate with parents and much more. At the same time, that "professional" may not even have her own classroom and desk and almost surely lacks her own work phone number and email address. (Okay, she has summers off, but not working isn't a mark of professionalism either.)
   
5. A host of forces (including, let's face it, teachers' own desire for smaller classes) have conspired to swell America's teaching workforce to three times its 1955 size even as student enrollments have risen by just 50 percent. Hence even though we're spending tons more money per pupil, teachers' pay has barely kept pace with inflation. We've rashly opted for more teachers rather than better-or better-compensated-teachers. Then we wonder why we're not getting platoons of the best and brightest to work in our public-school classrooms. Teachers--great ones, especially--should earn more, but that's destined not to happen, at least not to any appreciable degree, so long as most "new money" goes into hiring more people. 
   
6. Finally, we've devised such narrow "accountability" systems for schools, and built those atop such shoddy standards and simple minded tests, that teachers may legitimately be forgiven for not wanting to "teach to" those tests and for feeling shackled and blocked from teaching things they love and yearn for their pupils to love, too. Mindless accountability arrangements foster mindless instruction and, in time, mindless, robotic instructors.

Yes, sympathize with teachers even as you applaud them. But please identify the real problems rather than the fashionable ones.

If, like most Americans, you haven't the faintest idea what ESRA is, don't feel bad. The Education Sciences Reform Act is a classic inside-the-beltway statute best known by the smallish number of people and institutions directly affected by it.

But it's also home to the Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) so it's not unimportant to American education.

On May 22, I wrote a few paragraphs on ESRA's reauthorization status and said then that the country might benefit if this process took a goodly while and included plenty of participants.

Now I'm sure of it.

For since that writing, the IES policy board (National Board for Education Sciences, or NBES) met again and "marked up" ESRA into the form that it (and, one must assume, IES director Russ Whitehurst) would like to see embraced by Congress during the reauthorization cycle.

Unfortunately, they made a hash of it.

This is a pity, not just because some of my favorite people are members of NBES but also because the changes they want made pose a threat to the future integrity of U.S. education data and to NAEP.

No, that wasn't the goal. Everyone pledges allegiance to integrity. But as with the checks and balances built into the U.S. Constitution, sometimes the machinery of government must be carefully calibrated so that nobody has too much power, too much opportunity to mess things up, or excessive risk that (especially if the wrong people end up in key roles) things will go badly awry.

ESRA today embodies a carefully delineated division of responsibility, authority, and independence among the IES director, the NBES, the Commissioner of Education Statistics, and the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), which oversees NAEP. It's a tad clumsy, yes, but as with the Constitution it sacrifices a bit of tidiness and efficiency in the name of long-term integrity, stability, and balance.

In subtle but important ways, the Whitehurst/NBES amendments would mess this up. Here are some important examples:

• While giving itself more power (to hire its own staff, for example; raise private funds; bar non-board members from its subcommittees), the NBES would reduce NAGB's authority in key ways, particularly when it comes to reporting NAEP results, putting the IES director squarely in command of this and erasing some exemptions that Congress intentionally conferred on NAEP and NAGB in order to maintain their independence.
  
• By converting the NCES commissioner from a Presidential appointee with a term of his/her own and subject to Senate confirmation, and placing this position directly under Whitehurst and his successors, the amendments would erase a crucial source of integrity and authority from the federal statistics operation. (The day that a certain Stanford professor who advises Senator Obama on education policy becomes IES director, she could begin cooking the ed-stats books in ways that benefit the administration or advance her own eccentric notions.)
  
• The amendments would also subordinate NCES's peer review processes to Whitehurst (and the NBES), which means that the reports of a statistics agency would be controlled by a researcher who is known not to have much interest in statistics per se-even though just about everyone else in the country lives by those statistics. This is like subjecting beef cookbooks to review (and potential revision or veto) by a vegetarian.
  
• The new language actually alters the mission of IES in a way that diminishes its role in generating knowledge about education and instead accents its role in encouraging the "use" of "evidence." It also reworks the statutory language about "scientifically based research" and codifies Whitehurst's adoration of "random assignment experiments."

There's more, too much more. This statute runs to 68 pages and proposed amendments appear on at least one third of these. I believe the NBES and Whitehurst were acting in good faith, or at least in time-honored Washington fashion, tidying up chains of command to put themselves more clearly in charge, demurking some intentionally messy or ambiguous features of the law, and adding to their own turf. That may not be reprehensible but in this case it's surely regrettable. In the event, it underscores my earlier point: the ESRA reauthorization process needs plenty of sunlight and transparency and lots of viewpoints expressed. It would be a catastrophe for it to be worked out by small groups in obscure meeting rooms.

And it should take plenty of time. Time, even, for the current board and director and, perchance, their successors, to consider another ESRA mark-up.

KIPP Foundation
2008

KIPP (a.k.a., the Knowledge is Power Program) hasn't lost any luster since last year's report card was released. On state exams in 2006-2007, 67 percent of KIPP fifth-grade classes outperformed their local districts in reading, and 63 percent exceeded district averages in math. One hundred percent of KIPP eighth-grade classes beat district averages on both math and reading exams. More than 90 percent of students in these classes are black or Hispanic, and more than 80 percent are eligible for free or reduced lunch. To get a better sense of how much students are actually learning from year to year, KIPP also administers national norm-referenced exams to all its students. The results here were no less stellar. The average KIPPster who attended from fifth through eighth grade picked up 28 points on his reading exam and 42 points on his math exam by the time he left for high school. What else is there to say? You can read this year's report card online here.

Michael Planty, William Hussar, Thomas Snyder, Stephen Provasnik
National Center for Education Statistics
June 2008

The National Center for Education Statistics released one of its major annual reports, "The Condition of Education 2008," last Thursday. It puts a cornucopia of key education indicators in one handy place. One of its most interesting tidbits: private school enrollment has dropped from 11 to 9 percent between 1989 and 2005. Within that category, Catholic schools took the biggest hit--the percentage of private-school students enrolled in them decreased from 55 to 44 percent. (To understand why, see our recent Catholic schools report.) Meanwhile, Conservative Christian and nonsectarian private schools both saw a 5 percent increase in their enrollments. All 100 indicators are located online here. For a more condensed version, check out the highlights.