The Education Gadfly Weekly

National Center for Education Statistics
December 2004

Two important new charter-school studies came out this week, though each is in part the reprise of an earlier one. (Click below for our review of the second.) You will recall the brouhaha in August when the AFT accused NCES of withholding the results of the NAEP pilot charter school study? This week, at a lively seminar, NCES released its "official" report on these data and its analysis of what they show. From it, we learn once again that 4th grade charter-school achievement in 2003 was not quite as high as that of their traditional public school counterparts. When you disaggregate the data by characteristics such as race, however - NCES Associate Commissioner Peggy Carr advises that "fairer comparisons are between students who share a common characteristic" - there is no statistically significant difference. As before, this analysis is limited to what a single test "snapshot" can show, with no sense of trend lines, value added or gains (or losses) over time. There's not much here for charter advocates to celebrate, but neither is this report any cause for despair. Even the AFT's Howard Nelson says "It's a draw." To read the report and delve into the data, click here.

"Snapshot v. the big picture," CER Press Release, December 15, 2004

Caroline M. Hoxby, Harvard University
December 2004 

That was Wednesday. A day earlier, Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby released a thorough and sophisticated analysis of a different body of data comparing the performance of charter students with those in district-operated public schools. She looked for the percentage of a school's (4^thgrade) pupils that pass their state's proficiency test and compared it with the percentage at the nearest district school. Although also a "snapshot," and necessarily constrained by the idiosyncrasies of diverse state tests, timetables and reporting formats, Hoxby's work deals with a matter that is notably more consequential than NAEP results from the standpoint of parents and taxpayers: what are children's odds of meeting state standards in these two nearby-schools. She's also working from a far larger data set than the NAEP sample. Her findings are also very different - and important for policy makers, too.

Though it varies by state - in some there's no difference and in North Carolina the charter pupils do worse - for the U.S. as a whole, Hoxby finds, charter students pass state reading proficiency tests at a rate five percent higher than those in neighboring district schools; in math, the differential is three percent. More interesting still, the longer the charter school has been in operation, the wider its advantage. Hoxby also finds charter pupils doing (relatively) better in states with strong charter laws (those that confer greater autonomy on schools) and where the charter schools are not egregiously under-funded. The charter edge is also wider in poor and heavily Hispanic neighborhoods. To read the full report, click here.

"Two types of D.C. public school are not easy to compare," by Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, December 15, 2004

"New research brings good news about charter schools," by Jennifer A. Marshall and Kirk A. Johnson, Heritage Foundation, December 14, 2004

International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement
2003

Tuesday's TIMSS results are better than the dismal findings from last week's PISA study (click here for more), but still cause for concern. American students lag behind those from many European and Asian nations in math and science performance. Fourth grade scores in math and science remained unchanged from 1995 to 2003, but gains by other nations during that period actually lowered the relative ranking of U.S. students. (Among eighth graders from 45 countries, U.S. students ranked fifteenth in math and ninth in science; fourth graders were twelfth in math and sixth in science among 25 countries.) Meanwhile, only 7 percent of young Americans scored at the "advanced" level on either TIMSS test, versus 44 percent in Singapore and 38 percent in Taiwan. On the bright side, the black-white achievement gap narrowed a bit and eighth grade scores rose on both tests. So let's call it a gentleman's C, breathe a sigh of relief that matters aren't worse, and get to work to rectify the deep-seated, long-term problems that both TIMSS and PISA have laid bare. Check out the full results here.

"U.S. students lose stride in science, math," Associated Press, December 15, 2004

"Math and science tests find 4th and 8th graders in U.S. still lag many peers," by Karen Arenson, December 15, 2004, New York Times

America's C-," Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2004 (subscription required)

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported this week that local school choice leaders want to create an accountability system to serve "as a stronger system of checks and balances for schools in the voucher program." According to Bob Smith, the superstar president of Messmer Catholic Schools - a cornerstone of the Milwaukee voucher program - and a supporter of the plan, the group wants to create an independent body of educators that would evaluate schools based on a "very general set of standards" and then award a "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval." The goal is surely admirable - giving parents better tools to make informed choices and ensuring that school quality is transparent to one and all - but the devil will, as always, be in the details. According to the Journal Sentinel, the "standards" against which schools might be judged include a list of "best practices," including "having a principal with a degree in school administration, for instance, or a person on staff with financial training who can make sure the books are kept in order." Sounds reasonable, but instead of judging schools by outputs like financial viability and student achievement, standards such as those mentioned seem to rely on inputs. At day's end, a school's quality is best gauged by looking at its results, not its credentials or staffing roster. We've seen some staggeringly good schools that ignore educators' cherished notions of "best practices" - and vice versa.

"Voucher-school leaders consider evaluations," by Sarah Carr, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 11, 2004 (registration required)

Parents need to grow up - so their children can do the same. Hara Estroff Marano reported recently in Psychology Today about the negative effects of parental hyper vigilance on children's lives. Marano rightly points out a strange paradox in contemporary parenting: parents are more determined than ever to turn out high-achieving children, yet they're also determined to shelter their kids from adversity, competition, and other parts of life that tend to bruise (but not shatter) one's self-esteem. The result: kids are confused, anxious, and hypersensitive. We've also sanitized and made mundane the rough-and-tumble world of real childhood. Gadfly's concern, of course, is with the widespread trend of discouraging competition in schools and colleges, perhaps most clearly evidenced by grade inflation, a trend that Marano rightly decries. Marano casts her net a little wide, however, implicating parental anxiety for everything from bulimia to stalking. Overall, though, she makes a strong case about the deep dangers of over-coddling our children. (You can find a parallel critique of the schools in Michael Barone's fine recent book about "soft" and "hard" America.)

"A nation of wimps," by Hara Estroff Marano, Psychology Today, November/December 2004

"Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future," by Michael Barone, Crown Forum Books

Thanks to exploding population and a voter mandate to reduce class size, Florida will need nearly 200,000 new teachers over the next 10 years. That's bad news for the Sunshine State, according to a Sarasota Herald Tribune series that documents the alarming number of Florida teachers who have repeatedly failed portions of the state's three certification exams. The paper reports that "more than half a million Florida students sat in classrooms last year in front of teachers who failed the state's basic skills test for teachers" - a finding that raises "questions about Florida's education reforms, which require students to pass standardized tests to advance, yet allow teachers to fail exams dozens of times." What's worse, according to teachers interviewed by the Tribune, the material on the tests "is easy enough that no teacher should fail." According to Elizabeth Amos, a middle school teacher, the test included only the most basic questions, the sort of thing "you expect the average high school graduate to know." Yet, many teachers don't pass, despite multiple opportunities. "The two worst performers," the Tribune reports, "failed 59 times each." And "nearly 1,400 teachers failed 10 times or more." Not surprisingly, schools that serve the highest proportions of poor and minority students have the most failing teachers - a trend that will likely worsen as higher performing schools expand and cream the best teachers from harder-to-staff schools. Of course, many are taking this opportunity to complain that we need to increase teacher salaries across the board to attract the best and brightest to the profession. The problem, alas, is not that simple. Research suggests that it's not just pay but also the bureaucratic sclerosis that turns young people off to careers in public schools. (See "Tapping the next 'greatest generation' in education" for more.) Given the success that programs like Teach for America have had putting high-flyers in tough classrooms - and given the success those teachers have had there - it's high time we rethink the way we recruit, train, and pay public school teachers.

"Trouble at the source," by Chris Davis and Matthew Doig, Sarasota Herald Tribune, December 12, 2004

"Measuring a teacher's knowledge," by Chris Davis and Matthew Doig, Sarasota Herald Tribune, December 14, 2004

"Teacher facts the state didn't want to know are admitted at last," by Tom Lyons, Sarasota Herald Tribune, December 14, 2004

"Minority teachers struggle on certification exams," by Chris Davis and Matthew Doig, Sarasota Herald Tribune, December 14, 2004

Much ado in New York these days, as ever. The school system created "pandemonium" among graduating seniors by retroactively increasing the grades of students who took advanced and AP classes. We're not necessarily opposed to giving extra credit to students who succeed in tough classes. But making the change after grades have been posted, in the middle of the college application season, and without telling anyone what was going on - the changes were applied to school computer files from the central office without notice - is a well-meaning but typically chaos-inducing move from the Bloomberg-Klein administration. They reversed course two days later, after an outcry from the New York Sun. The New York Times also chronicles the back-and-forth between Chancellor Joel Klein and distinguished education historian (and Fordham trustee) Diane Ravitch, who has grown increasingly critical of the incumbent management of the school system. The Ravitch we know is more than capable of holding her own with the mayor and chancellor, so we won't add to her comments on the performance of mayoral control of the schools in New York (other than to refer readers once again to Sol Stern's recent Fwd: on that very topic). We do, however, note a jaw-dropping comment from Arthur Levine, whom we once described as "often a sensible fellow, despite being president of Teachers College." Levine calls Ravitch "an ideologue" but adds that "her credentials make her more thoughtful than many other conservatives," a pretty backhanded compliment. We doubt that Dr. Ravitch's "credentials" have anything to do with her thoughtfulness. There are, after all, many highly credentialed people who spout nonsense. Some of them graduated from, or serve on the faculty of, Teachers College. Isn't the very definition of "ideologue" someone who dismisses out-of-hand the observations of whole groups of people (say, "conservatives") simply because of who they are? Not nice at all.

"In reversal, city alters AP policy," by Julia Levy, New York Sun, December 15, 2004

"Decentralization foe now assails mayor's role," by David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times, December 15, 2004

"Opportunities Lost: How New York City got derailed on the way to school reform," by Sol Stern, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, December 3, 2004

Caroline M. Hoxby, Harvard University
December 2004 

That was Wednesday. A day earlier, Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby released a thorough and sophisticated analysis of a different body of data comparing the performance of charter students with those in district-operated public schools. She looked for the percentage of a school's (4^thgrade) pupils that pass their state's proficiency test and compared it with the percentage at the nearest district school. Although also a "snapshot," and necessarily constrained by the idiosyncrasies of diverse state tests, timetables and reporting formats, Hoxby's work deals with a matter that is notably more consequential than NAEP results from the standpoint of parents and taxpayers: what are children's odds of meeting state standards in these two nearby-schools. She's also working from a far larger data set than the NAEP sample. Her findings are also very different - and important for policy makers, too.

Though it varies by state - in some there's no difference and in North Carolina the charter pupils do worse - for the U.S. as a whole, Hoxby finds, charter students pass state reading proficiency tests at a rate five percent higher than those in neighboring district schools; in math, the differential is three percent. More interesting still, the longer the charter school has been in operation, the wider its advantage. Hoxby also finds charter pupils doing (relatively) better in states with strong charter laws (those that confer greater autonomy on schools) and where the charter schools are not egregiously under-funded. The charter edge is also wider in poor and heavily Hispanic neighborhoods. To read the full report, click here.

"Two types of D.C. public school are not easy to compare," by Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, December 15, 2004

"New research brings good news about charter schools," by Jennifer A. Marshall and Kirk A. Johnson, Heritage Foundation, December 14, 2004

International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement
2003

Tuesday's TIMSS results are better than the dismal findings from last week's PISA study (click here for more), but still cause for concern. American students lag behind those from many European and Asian nations in math and science performance. Fourth grade scores in math and science remained unchanged from 1995 to 2003, but gains by other nations during that period actually lowered the relative ranking of U.S. students. (Among eighth graders from 45 countries, U.S. students ranked fifteenth in math and ninth in science; fourth graders were twelfth in math and sixth in science among 25 countries.) Meanwhile, only 7 percent of young Americans scored at the "advanced" level on either TIMSS test, versus 44 percent in Singapore and 38 percent in Taiwan. On the bright side, the black-white achievement gap narrowed a bit and eighth grade scores rose on both tests. So let's call it a gentleman's C, breathe a sigh of relief that matters aren't worse, and get to work to rectify the deep-seated, long-term problems that both TIMSS and PISA have laid bare. Check out the full results here.

"U.S. students lose stride in science, math," Associated Press, December 15, 2004

"Math and science tests find 4th and 8th graders in U.S. still lag many peers," by Karen Arenson, December 15, 2004, New York Times

America's C-," Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2004 (subscription required)

National Center for Education Statistics
December 2004

Two important new charter-school studies came out this week, though each is in part the reprise of an earlier one. (Click below for our review of the second.) You will recall the brouhaha in August when the AFT accused NCES of withholding the results of the NAEP pilot charter school study? This week, at a lively seminar, NCES released its "official" report on these data and its analysis of what they show. From it, we learn once again that 4th grade charter-school achievement in 2003 was not quite as high as that of their traditional public school counterparts. When you disaggregate the data by characteristics such as race, however - NCES Associate Commissioner Peggy Carr advises that "fairer comparisons are between students who share a common characteristic" - there is no statistically significant difference. As before, this analysis is limited to what a single test "snapshot" can show, with no sense of trend lines, value added or gains (or losses) over time. There's not much here for charter advocates to celebrate, but neither is this report any cause for despair. Even the AFT's Howard Nelson says "It's a draw." To read the report and delve into the data, click here.

"Snapshot v. the big picture," CER Press Release, December 15, 2004