The Education Gadfly Weekly

Richard Ingersoll
The Education Trust
November 2008

This study starts with an unassailable premise: "Teachers cannot teach what they do not know." Yet teachers are still being assigned to teach subjects they haven't mastered themselves, finds this valuable EdTrust report. Veteran teacher analyst Richard Ingersoll used the latest federal Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) to determine not only that too many teachers have neither an academic major nor a state certificate in the subjects they teach, but that this problem is particularly prevalent in middle schools, math classes, and high poverty/high minority schools. To wit, while only 17.2 percent of core academic subjects (i.e. English, math, social studies, and science) are assigned to out-of-field teachers in high schools, a whopping 42 percent were so assigned in middle schools. And high-poverty schools saw twice as many out-of-fielders than low-poverty schools (27.1 versus 13.9 percent). Even more troubling is how little has been done to ameliorate this problem. While No Child Left Behind tried to make some headway with its Highly Qualified Teachers provision, Ingersoll discovered that states have been severely under-reporting their out-of-field teachers. In conclusion, the study suggests a few sensible solutions. First, colleges and universities need to continue to improve their teacher preparation programs, perhaps following in the footsteps of UTeach at University of Texas at Austin, which is now being replicated as part of the National Math and Science Initiative. Second, districts can grow excellent teachers through their own "teacher residency programs," such as those in Boston or Chicago. (President-Elect Obama has promised to replicate these.) Third, districts could take a page from programs like Teach For America and The New Teacher Project, which have blazed new trails in recruiting good math and science teachers. Finally, districts can use incentives to attract quality teachers through differentiated compensation programs and specialty bonuses. You can find this comprehensive report here.

Robin J. Lake, Ed.,
National Charter School Research Project
Center on Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington at Bothell
December 2008

Now in its fourth year, this edition of Hopes, Fears, & Reality, a product of the National Charter School Research Project, addresses one fundamental question: "Should charter schools be more different than alike?" Recent debate has focused on the idea that "charter" as a category does not adequately describe the variegated models included within it. To illumine these different charter versions, the report examines how charters address five areas: academic performance, teaching and learning, college preparation, special education, and self-evaluation and implementation of reforms. Five findings follow: most of the charter achievement research to date has been sub-par, although some studies show gains versus traditional schools; charters are more likely than traditional schools to customize support for struggling students; more college-prep charters are emerging to prep students for the campus culture (much as David Whitman found in Sweating the Small Stuff); charters are a good fit for many special-needs students; and charters need to "unbundle" K-12 services--i.e. move away from "whole school" solutions to a "demand" based approach, which would better match services to needs of specific students. All of which is to say that yes, charter schools should be more different than alike. And in so doing, the charter movement can find stronger models while scrapping those that prove ineffective. You can find this report here.

As the Bush Administration rounds the bend, officials from the President on down are working overtime to cement their "legacy." Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings told Education Week that she wants to be remembered as a "practical implementer of the law." (The law being the No Child Left Behind act which, according to Spellings, "rightfully put before us the issues of the achievement gap.") But Gene Hickok, the deputy secretary of education under Rod Paige, disagrees with that rosy assessment, explaining that she only became "practical" once she moved from her White House perch to 400 Maryland Avenue. In his own Education Week commentary, Hickok writes that Paige "frequently sought to respond to [state] requests for relief, but was rebuffed at every turn by Spellings' White House domestic-policy staff." Even worse, Hickok argues, by making extra-legal changes to NCLB via regulation, Spellings has created a precedent that the Obama administration can use to defang the law's accountability provisions. Time will tell whether Hickok's scenario comes true, but Spellings surely won't roll over and take the blame. "I plan to continue to be a warrior in this battle," she told Ed Week, and that much you can bank on.

"Spellings' Worldview: There's No Going Back on K-12 Accountability," by Alyson Klein, Education Week, December 10, 2008

"Secretary Spellings' unintended legacy," by Eugene Hickok, Education Week, December 10, 2008

Like a comet, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study comes around every four years to offer insights about America's progress (or lack thereof) in these two critical domains. And, as others have noticed too, these exams serve not just as tests of children's skills and nation's self-images but also as Rorschach Tests of policy pundits' views. Hate No Child Left Behind? You can find data in TIMSS that "prove" this law is maligning the nation's schools. Love NCLB? No problem. Plenty of evidence supports your point of view, too. Think we're falling behind in the global competitiveness arena? There's something for you in there. How about we're doing OK in preparing for the world economy? Got it.

Weary from reading the bushel of cherry-picked translations, we were perked up by a simple and straightforward statement from Brookings Institution scholar (and TIMSS advisor) Tom Loveless. Referring to TIMSS, NAEP, etc., he told the Associated Press, "Now all of our major tests are telling us the same things." That's right--and significant--because replicated findings on multiple assessments are the ones that should hold the most sway. So what do we know, not just from TIMSS but also from NAEP?

Math performance is up since the mid-1990s. Progress was particularly strong around the turn of the century, but has continued (at a slower pace) through the NCLB years. Achievement gaps are narrowing, as the lowest-performing students make big gains and the top students make smaller gains or stagnate (though the picture changes somewhat by subject). But we're not seeing much progress in science; in fact, on TIMSS, average science achievement in fourth grade dipped during the past decade. (TIMSS doesn't address reading; for that you must await its cousin PIRLS, the next round of which is coming in 2011.)

Yes, it's true that these findings line up with some policy points that we at Fordham have been making. (We like to think that it's because we follow the data wherever they go, not because we like Maraschinos or Bings just as much as the other guys). But there it is: a subject that gets counted under No Child Left Behind (math) sees progress while a subject that doesn't (science) falls behind. And yes, we suspect that's because elementary schools are spending more time on math and less time on science, depressing learning in the latter. (You can read more about that here and here, keeping in mind that these decreases are associated with recent moves toward accountability in general, not just NCLB.)

But hear this: The United States is not alone in skimping on instructional time in science. TIMSS survey data show that countries spend, on average, 18 percent of their total instructional time teaching math in grade 4; that number is cut in half--to 9 percent--when it comes to teaching science.

Then there's the matter of differential gains among low- and high-achieving students in these subjects. The new results show that our lowest math performers are gaining ground with each successive TIMSS administration (especially in 4th grade). This time we also see growth in top-performing 4th graders in math, though less than their low-performing peers. Another striking data point shows significant gains by in both groups at grade 4 since just four years ago, when NCLB was firmly in place (8th grade, however, hasn't seen much movement since 2003). Now read this recent Loveless/Fordham study on high- and low- achievers' performance on NAEP and you'll see some of these same patterns.

Turning to science, the picture is gloomier. Neither our low nor high performers in grades 4 or 8 posted significant gains since the last TIMSS administration. Even worse, there's a decline in science by high achievers in both grades since the 1990s. And again, though low achievers in 8th grade science saw good gains in the 1990s, it's leveled off of late. So, while we see many of our low and high achievers doing better in math, neither group is up for a gold star in science.

Perhaps the most interesting lessons from TIMSS (or NAEP) can be gleaned from countries and states that are making particularly impressive gains. This study offers several. Massachusetts and Minnesota each participated as "nations," and each received news worth crowing about. The Bay State's eighth graders tied for the highest score with four top Asian countries (Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Japan, and Korea) in science; its fourth graders had the second highest scores (outperformed only by Singapore). We already knew that Massachusetts was the highest-performing U.S. state; this latest news should give pause to anyone thinking about tinkering with its decades-old standards and education reform strategy.

Equally impressive were the gains posted by Minnesota. Governors: take note. These 4th grade math students made nearly three times the progress of the country as a whole after the state adopted a rigorous curriculum designed by Michigan State scholar Bill Schmidt and benchmarked against the best countries in the world (and under the direction of former Minnesota State Education Secretary Cheri Yecke).

And then there's England. The Queen's fourth graders made a 57-point jump from 1995 to 2007--five times the gains of American students. And you wonder why Sir Michael Barber, a leading architect of the UK's reforms, is in such high demand?

This information is incredibly valuable--and validates many of the reform efforts underway. Let's hope that it inspires policymakers to ask good questions, such as: When and how are we going to give science its due? How can we accelerate our students' progress in mathematics? How can we maintain the gains among low-achievers while kick-starting gains among high-achievers? What can we learn from high-flying Massachusetts and Minnesota? And how can we make sure that all subjects in the core curriculum get the attention that they deserve?

Ever wish you could be paid to do nothing? That's right, the Teacher Reserve Pool saga continues. It's too bad, too, since we were pleased to learn last week of the reasonable reforms concerning New York City's notorious excessed teachers. But alas, what to do with excessed principals? Why, send them to supervise the excessed teachers, of course. A half-dozen ineffective or troubled principals are now serving as room monitors in the notorious "rubber rooms"--and raking in a hefty collective $715,000 to do so. Sound nonsensical? Try this on for size: "We think this is a productive use for these folks because we have to pay them anyway," explained district spokeswoman Ann Forte. So what do all these teachers and principals do all day? Knit, read books, take naps, stare out the window--you know, all in a day's work on the city's payroll. As one teacher commented, "I wish I had that job." New York, let these ineffective administrators do their sock-darning on their own time--and their own dime.

"Principals' 715G," by Yoav Gonen, New York Post, December 8, 2008

It's not that I didn't believe James Tooley's books and articles asserting that an astonishing number of poor children in developing countries are being decently (and sometimes superbly) educated by a little-noticed army of low-budget private schools that receive no government support and, indeed, are paid for by those kids' own parents.

But it hadn't really sunk into my consciousness, perhaps because others scoffed at these claims. Big "foreign aid" and education funders generally ignored this entire education sector, journalists and analysts paid it scant heed and governments, perhaps embarrassed by their own failure to do right by these youngsters, acted as if it weren't really happening.

Now, however, I've seen examples of this phenomenon with my own eyes in the slums of Hyderabad, India, where Tooley (a British education scholar on leave from the University of Newcastle) is both learning even more about it and trying to strengthen it via the "Aristotle" project he leads with backing from a New Zealand-born, Singapore-based, tycoon.

I confess: I was impressed--and slightly sheepish, too, considering I've lived and traveled in India and other "third world" countries over many years and worked in the education field forever. Yet, until now I had allowed my gaze to pass over signs of the presence of hundreds of these schools without really noticing them, much less seeking to understand how they work.

In America my efforts to widen education options and promote school choice for poor kids, like the efforts of most U.S. reformers, have always assumed that, at day's end, the government must pay for this. Perhaps that's true in the Western world, perhaps it's not. But elsewhere on the planet, I can now attest, poor families are paying for it themselves and education entrepreneurs are responding to their demand (and their governments' failure) by starting, managing, and growing such schools.

Most of them occupy sketchy facilities, sans playgrounds, labs, libraries, and fancy technology. Many teachers are themselves just high school graduates. The kids bring their own lunches. Parents provide transportation and go to the bazaar for textbooks and uniforms. Sports and extracurricular activities are scarce to nonexistent. Neither schools nor families have any money to spare.

But teaching and learning are occurring in those cramped and sometimes ill-lit classrooms. Eager youngsters, prodded by determined parents, are drinking in whatever knowledge and skills their books and teachers can provide. And while besting nearby government schools on state tests is no high accolade in places like Andhra Pradesh, most of these private schools are doing that at astonishingly low costs.

Tuitions in the Hyderabad schools I visited last week range from $2 to $6 per child per month (i.e. about $25 to $75 annually)--and historically that's been the schools' sole source of revenue. (Those joining the Aristotle project are now getting some help with teacher training, English-language curriculum, and computer labs.)

On some blocks, once Tooley trained my eyes to see them, I spotted two or three such schools, maybe half a dozen in a single small, slum neighborhood, each serving 200-1500 youngsters. His research team counted a thousand of these schools in just one section of Hyderabad, and he guesstimates that India's villages and cities contain easily 300,000. Nor is India alone. Tooley has found the same phenomenon in China, the Philippines, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and many other lands.

What accounts for it? Four elements are key. First, a vacuum created by government's failure to deliver acceptable free schooling to millions of poor children. Second, entrepreneurs willing to take the risk of launching such schools and navigating the shoals that could sink them (red tape, competition, etc.). Third, parents who care enough about their sons' and daughters' futures to dig into their meager pocketbooks to find those few rupees every month. And fourth, instructors in need of the work and willing to teach these kids for monthly wages that range from $35 to maybe twice that.

Let me not romanticize the schools that result. Besides scant resources and cramped facilities, they labor under multiple handicaps. While some are led by awesome education builders, at the helm of others are uninspiring folks for whom the school is basically just a small business.

In India, at least, the government curriculum--which one must master to have a shot at passing the exams that control access to further education and decent jobs--is dreary beyond belief, so devoted to rote, recitation, and formula as to turn even this traditionalist into a visiting constructivist.

At those pay levels, the schools can't hire many teachers with the training and gifts to transform a wan syllabus into exciting lessons. Classes are sometimes large. The absence of labs makes it hard to teach science. And the dearth of libraries, technology, and connectivity makes it difficult to link these youngsters to the planet's boundless knowledge.

Still, lots of needy kids are getting a decent education at an astoundingly low cost in spite of their governments' failure to provide anything of the sort. And there is mounting interest among philanthropists and investors in trying to turn this indigenous phenomenon into something bigger and better.

In Hyderabad alone at least three other projects besides Tooley's are seeking to develop these schools, sometimes as a charitable endeavor, sometimes as a potential business opportunity leading to large "chains" of schools--equipped with more resources and educational capacities than today's schools--and sometimes building a "franchise" model, not unlike U.S. "education management organizations."

Among the backers of such ventures we find the globe-girdling William Jefferson Clinton. Yes, him--the 42nd president, husband of the secretary of state designate and founder of Clinton Global Initiative, which has almost 200 "commitments" in the education field scattered about the planet, including a joint venture with Deutsche Bank (and Grey Ghost Ventures and New Globe Schools) to develop low-cost private schools in Kenya and India, beginning with Hyderabad.

I'm struck by how all this is happening almost without reference to public policy. These education entrepreneurs, both small- and large-scale, mainly want government to continue ignoring them. At the primary level, so far as I can tell, at least in Andhra Pradesh (of which Hyderabad is the capital), it isn't even necessary to get a government license to open a private school, nor does one's school receive any kind of aid.

It's different at the secondary level, where getting one's school "recognized" by the state is advantageous to graduates and expected by many parents. The approval process entails jumping through multiple regulatory hoops. But, as always in the developing world, there are ways around that, too.

Even as the "international competitiveness" literature and U.S. political and economic debates abound with talk of how countries like India are eating our lunches and endangering our future prosperity due to the stellar performance of their education systems, the fact is that these lands (like ours) actually have several education systems operating at once.

At the high end, the fancy private schools attended by upper-class kids and the intensely competitive top-of-the-line postsecondary institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology are indeed first-rate. (IIT admissions make getting into Harvard look easy.) For the poor, however, educational opportunities are dismal and government schooling, though free, is often dreadful--even when the teachers bother to turn up.

But rather than abandon hope for their kids, millions of poor parents are turning to the private sector, which is responding in at least two ways. The first, unveiled to incredulous Western eyes by Tooley a decade or so ago, is indigenous and small-scale, albeit widespread. The second, just getting started and fascinating to behold, is sophisticated, multinational and could turn out to be very large indeed.

This article also appeared today on Forbes.com.

Good news for the harried education researcher: the Department of Education has released new regulations on the notoriously punctilious Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The law, which was enacted in 1974 to protect student data, came under fire after the April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech; the incident, a panel concluded, was largely due to confusion over privacy laws that prevented the records of the gunman, who was a mentally-ill VT student, from being shared with authorities and the student's parents. While many of the changes are understandably geared towards higher education, there are a few relevant ones for the K-12 arena. Most notably, the new regulations permit state educational agencies to create and implement K-16 accountability systems that will facilitate the transfer of student records as well as the use of "de-indentified" aggregated data by researchers. And since many of these records are now stored electronically, the regulations also provide additional guidance on how these technological advancements affect privacy rules. Many of these issues were brought up in our chapter on FERPA in A Byte at the Apple. As chapter author Chrys Dougherty explains, "While working to protect students' privacy rights, policymakers must keep in mind the value of appropriately used data to answer important questions about student progress, teacher quality, and school effectiveness--to help students and schools get better." Sounds like these new regs are on the right track. 

"Education Department Reworks Privacy Regulations," by Elizabeth Bernstein, Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2008

It's no new news that Scarsdale, NY has long disdained tests and suffered from an inflated ego on this topic as well. Its latest ploy to distinguish itself from the pack? Drop the plebian Advanced Placement curriculum in favor of a more patrician alternative, "Advanced Topics." The actual switch happened about a year ago, but Scarsdale is only just now getting into the swing of these new classes. The district claims that they will give teachers and students greater freedom to dig deep into subject matter (string theory! larger art canvases!) without the pesky prescriptions of an AP course and upcoming exam. "If the people called [AP] a gold curriculum in the past, I refer to this version as the platinum curriculum," brags Scarsdale High principal John Klemme. But what's shiny in Scarsdale looks awfully dull to College Board Vice President Trevor Packer: "[t]o us, their courses don't look any different from high-quality A.P. courses. Simply changing the letters on the course from A.P. to A.T. looks very cosmetic." To top it off, Scarsdale is still sending its "AT" syllabi to the College Board for review under AP standards. But while Scarsdale may think itself too good for the likes of AP, let's not get carried away. The AP standard is a high one--and not to be scoffed at by the likes of a snooty New York suburb to the detriment of other districts looking for high quality content. Scarsdale, you can call it Advanced Topics, we call it Advanced Obnoxious.

"Scarsdale Adjusts to Life Without Advanced Placement Courses," by Winnie Hu, New York Times, December 7, 2008

Robin J. Lake, Ed.,
National Charter School Research Project
Center on Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington at Bothell
December 2008

Now in its fourth year, this edition of Hopes, Fears, & Reality, a product of the National Charter School Research Project, addresses one fundamental question: "Should charter schools be more different than alike?" Recent debate has focused on the idea that "charter" as a category does not adequately describe the variegated models included within it. To illumine these different charter versions, the report examines how charters address five areas: academic performance, teaching and learning, college preparation, special education, and self-evaluation and implementation of reforms. Five findings follow: most of the charter achievement research to date has been sub-par, although some studies show gains versus traditional schools; charters are more likely than traditional schools to customize support for struggling students; more college-prep charters are emerging to prep students for the campus culture (much as David Whitman found in Sweating the Small Stuff); charters are a good fit for many special-needs students; and charters need to "unbundle" K-12 services--i.e. move away from "whole school" solutions to a "demand" based approach, which would better match services to needs of specific students. All of which is to say that yes, charter schools should be more different than alike. And in so doing, the charter movement can find stronger models while scrapping those that prove ineffective. You can find this report here.

Richard Ingersoll
The Education Trust
November 2008

This study starts with an unassailable premise: "Teachers cannot teach what they do not know." Yet teachers are still being assigned to teach subjects they haven't mastered themselves, finds this valuable EdTrust report. Veteran teacher analyst Richard Ingersoll used the latest federal Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) to determine not only that too many teachers have neither an academic major nor a state certificate in the subjects they teach, but that this problem is particularly prevalent in middle schools, math classes, and high poverty/high minority schools. To wit, while only 17.2 percent of core academic subjects (i.e. English, math, social studies, and science) are assigned to out-of-field teachers in high schools, a whopping 42 percent were so assigned in middle schools. And high-poverty schools saw twice as many out-of-fielders than low-poverty schools (27.1 versus 13.9 percent). Even more troubling is how little has been done to ameliorate this problem. While No Child Left Behind tried to make some headway with its Highly Qualified Teachers provision, Ingersoll discovered that states have been severely under-reporting their out-of-field teachers. In conclusion, the study suggests a few sensible solutions. First, colleges and universities need to continue to improve their teacher preparation programs, perhaps following in the footsteps of UTeach at University of Texas at Austin, which is now being replicated as part of the National Math and Science Initiative. Second, districts can grow excellent teachers through their own "teacher residency programs," such as those in Boston or Chicago. (President-Elect Obama has promised to replicate these.) Third, districts could take a page from programs like Teach For America and The New Teacher Project, which have blazed new trails in recruiting good math and science teachers. Finally, districts can use incentives to attract quality teachers through differentiated compensation programs and specialty bonuses. You can find this comprehensive report here.