The Education Gadfly Weekly

In its fourth annual report, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers offers a snapshot of the nation’s charter sponsors, capturing their size, their shape, and how many schools they open and shutter. For example, the majority of the nation’s authorizers are local education agencies (52 percent), and an even greater percentage are small (86 percent authorized fewer than six schools). More interestingly, charter-closure rates are on the decline. Just 6.2 percent of the nation’s charter schools up for renewal were shuttered (or non-renewed) in 2010-11, down from 8.8 percent the year before and 12.6 percent in 2008-09. Unfortunately, NACSA doesn’t link these stats to performance data, meaning that we can’t know if this trend indicates increased quality of charters, leniency of authorizers, or political pressures to keep them open. Digging further, NACSA reports that nonprofit authorizers (like Fordham) represent the smallest percentage of those that oversee charter schools but employ the most of NACSA’s own dozen “essential practices.” They’ve also closed more schools, on average, than other types of authorizers (including districts, institutions of higher ed, and independent chartering boards). Likewise, authorizers with a larger portfolio of schools were more likely to implement NACSA’s guidelines. Back in the fall, Andy Rotherham argued that we need to embrace risk-taking and consider that establishing a vibrant charter sector means occasionally allowing the creation of schools that turn out to falter. NACSA’s rather different view is not that the charter approval process should avoid all risk but, rather, that authorizers at least ask the right questions before okaying a school’s launch. Rotherham is right that the price of innovation includes some failures. But until we adopt the right benchmarks at the beginning, we should be less patient about living with them.

National Association of Charter School Authorizers, The State of Charter School Authorizing 2011 (Chicago, IL: National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 2012).

Through the din of cheering, back-patting, and high-fiving from school-choice advocates over their legislative successes in 2011, it’s been hard to hear about states’ recent improvements to teacher policy. This fifth edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality’s report on state teacher-quality policies lends a megaphone to this cause. (And at more than 8,000 pages—150 pages or more per state—it’s quite the hefty and detailed megaphone.) It finds that twenty-eight jurisdictions have improved (on NCTQ’s criteria) over the past two years. Indiana clocked the greatest gains, followed by Minnesota and Michigan. Of the states that improved, twenty-four now consider student achievement as part of teacher evals (up from fifteen in 2009). Thirteen states can now dismiss teachers because of classroom ineffectiveness and twelve states weigh teacher effectiveness—not just seniority—in rewarding tenure. In 2009, the highest grade issued was a middling C (to Florida). This report sees NCTQ’s first B-level grades ever issued: Top-ranking Florida earned a straight B, while Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Tennessee each garnered B-minuses. Mostly good news, but there is yet more to be done. Even now, just thirteen states allow teachers to be dismissed because of classroom ineffectiveness. And only twelve weigh teacher effectiveness when conferring tenure. There’s much more data to parse in each of the states’ individual reports—and the yearbook’s practical policy recommendations should be read by all.

2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Teacher Quality, January 2012.)

After years spent rebutting skepticism and criticism, proponents of the small-schools movement have reason to rejoice (at least in the Big Apple). This MDRC policy brief—an update of its larger 2010 report on small high schools of choice (SSCs) in New York City—finds continued evidence that attending an SSC boosts one’s odds of graduating. Some background: Between 2002 and 2008, New York City replaced twenty-three large, failing district schools (graduation rates under 45 percent) with 216 new smaller schools—including 123 academically non-selective “small schools of choice.” These are brand-new schools with hand-picked staff, close student/faculty relationships, and strong community partnerships. Starting them entailed a stringent application process (which needed specifically to address how the schools would serve disadvantaged youth) before opening. The brief adds to the original report with an additional year of data (tracking over 21,000 Gotham students) and finds that the average four-year graduation rate was 8.6 percentage points higher for students enrolled at oversubscribed SSCs than for students in traditional public schools who had applied—but not gotten into—their small high school of choice. What’s more, these findings hold true across all achievement, income, and racial subgroups. While this brief (and its precursor) offer great fodder for aficionados of small-schools of choice, it is important to remember: In New York City, at least, SSCs are not just mini-versions of traditional public high schools, but instead new models of schooling. How much of these schools’ success is due to size and how much to design is still unclear. Expect some insights from MDRC on this front over the next couple years. The organization promises a series of reports designed to identify exactly why and how these schools have succeeded and how their success can—perhaps—be replicated

Howard S. Bloom and Rebecca Unterman, “Sustained Positive Effects on Graduation Rates Produced by New York City’s Small Public High Schools of Choice” (New York, NY: MDRC, January 2012).

Mike and Rick channel the shock jock king as they discuss the implications of Fordham’s science standards report (which made an appearance on the Stern show) and the latest NCLB waiver craziness. Amber looks at the recent MDRC study and Chris learns never to call a teacher cute.

Amber's Research Minute

MDRC - Sustained Positive Effects on Graduation Rates Produced by New York City’s Small Public High Schools of Choice

Amber's Weekly Poll

How many states had science standards that were rated worse in 2012 than in 2005, the last time the Fordham Institute rated science standards?

Tune in next week to find out the answer!

What's Up With That?

9-year old boy is suspended for sexual harrassment of his 4th grade teacher.

Federal legislation rarely gets the desired result in education. Photo by Justin Baeder.

Jack Jennings started working on federal education policy in December 1967, about eighteen months before I did. He's never stopped—and few have wielded greater influence. For the past seventeen years (a history that roughly parallels Fordham's), he's led a small but influential Washington-based ed-policy think tank called the Center on Education Policy (CEP). He's now retiring from that role and, as he exits, the Center has brought out two publications. One is a nicely crafted (and very flattering) profile of CEP itself, as well as Jack and his work there, written by veteran ed-writer Anne Lewis. The other is Jack's own ten-page reflection on recent education reforms, what has and hasn't worked, and what, in his view, the future ought to hold, particularly at the federal level.

It's vintage Jennings, perceptive about both what has happened and why and how it has (and hasn’t) worked, then incurably and relentlessly over-ambitious—in a classic, big-government, big-spending, liberal sort of way—about what federal policy should do tomorrow.

As to the past, and oversimplifying some points that he makes more subtly,

• Equity-based reform didn't get very far because it amounted to add-on programs, suffered from limited funding, and failed to "generally improve the broader educational system."
• School choice pleases parents but doesn't raise achievement much, "an interesting case of convictions trumping evidence."
• Standards-based reform has had more traction but has "gone astray": too much testing, too much labeling, not enough real alteration in the quality of what's taught and learned.

None of that is wrong. But his prescription for the future comes across as wishful thinking even if you’re disposed to agree with it. (I’m not.) Jennings favors a federal law declaring that "no child in the United States will be denied equal educational opportunity in elementary and secondary education through the lack of a challenging curriculum, well-prepared and effective teachers, and the funding to pay for that education."

This would, of course, have the effect of transferring the responsibility for educating (and financing the education of) 55 million kids to Washington. I guess one might term this a "governance reform" but I don't think it's going to happen or that it would work well if it did. (Jack has done just about everything during the course of his long career EXCEPT work in the executive branch. If he had, he might harbor fewer illusions about its capacity in the realm of education.)

It's notable, too, that he continues after all these years to put his faith in Uncle Sam to fix what ails American education. There's no mention here of changes in the delivery system (e.g. technology), the system’s efficiency/productivity, or its structures and governance (except as noted above). He also downplays the value of "outsiders" (e.g. governors, mayors) as agents of change in K-12 education.

It is said that if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Much as I respect and admire Jack Jennings, in spite of all his experience in this field his main tool remains federal legislation, which I've come to believe is almost always wielded clumsily in pursuit of nails that either won’t budge at all or end up bent.

The entire school reform movement is predicated on a hypothesis: Boosting student achievement, as measured by standardized tests, will enable greater prosperity, both for individuals and for the country as a whole. More specifically, improving students’ skills and knowledge in reading, math, and science will help poor children climb out of poverty, and will assist all children to prepare for the rigors of college and the workplace. By building the “human capital” of the American workforce, rising achievement will also spur economic growth, which will lift all boats.

Call this the Test Score Hypothesis.

Is stronger academic performance related to better life outcomes for kids and better economic outcomes for nations?

It explains reformers’ enthusiasm for test-based accountability; for “college- and career-ready standards”; for teacher evaluations based, in significant part, on student outcomes; for “data-based instruction”; and for much of the rest of the modern-day reform agenda. After all, if reading, math, and science knowledge and skills are so directly linked to the life chances of individual kids, and of the livelihood of the country as a whole, why not get the education system focused like a laser on them?

But is this hypothesis correct? Is stronger academic performance related to better life outcomes for kids and better economic outcomes for nations?

In a word: yes. As Kevin Carey noted recently, the big Chetty et al study didn’t just demonstrate the importance of teacher effectiveness. It also offered strong support for the Test Score Hypothesis.

If you believe standardized tests are worthless or highly flawed or deeply inadequate or even troublingly limited in accuracy and scope–and many reasonable people believe these things–then you could dismiss or downplay value-added measures of teacher effectiveness, by definition….But now the CFR study says that teachers who are unusually good at helping students score high on standardized tests today aren’t just unusually good at helping students score high on standardized tests tomorrow. They also have an unusual effect on the likelihood of students going to college, going to a good college, earning a good living, living in a nice place, and saving for retirement. In other words, whatever the limitations of standardized tests may be, test-based value-added scores do, in fact, provide valuable information about the things most people care most about.

Then there’s the international evidence. As Eric Hanushek and colleagues have been arguing (and documenting) for years, there’s a direct link between academic achievement (as measured by math and science tests) and a country’s economic growth.

The level of cognitive skills of a nation’s students has a large effect on its subsequent economic growth rate. Increasing the average number of years of schooling attained by the labor force boosts the economy only when increased levels of school attainment also boost cognitive skills. In other words, it is not enough simply to spend more time in school; something has to be learned there.

Hanushek further contends that the only way to solve our country’s long-term fiscal challenge is to grow our way out of it. If we could indeed boost the cognitive skills of our students, even by a little, our structural deficit would go away.

So student achievement matters a lot. But does it matter the most?

It’s hard to make the case anymore that test scores are irrelevant. But what remains unknown is whether reading, math, and science are the most important things that schools could and should teach.

As Dana Goldstein noted back in December,

I've been struck again and again by the newness of the idea that schooling is primarily a matter of academic achievement…. It is only really since "A Nation at Risk" that we've had a national dialogue about academic excellence for every child. This is a much-needed development in American culture, but its discontents are numerous: A lack of attention paid to the civic, social, and artistic benefits of schooling, and the ways in which children are (ideally) shaped as moral, cultured, socially-responsible people by their teachers and school communities. 

We might all want schools to walk and chew gum at the same time—to boost “academic achievement” while also developing “moral, cultured, socially-responsible people.” But our policies—especially school-level accountability and test-based teacher evaluations—focus on academic achievement alone.

The nagging question then—the “known unknown”—is whether other stuff may matter more—both to kids’ life chances and to the country’s economic success. What if, for instance, “social and emotional intelligence”—knowing how to relate to others—is more important than many reformers have been willing to acknowledge? What if these interpersonal skills are what help lift poor kids out of poverty and enable economies to succeed? Or other “soft skills” and attributes like grit, perseverance, industriousness, the ability to delay gratification, and so forth?

In that case, is it smart to push Head Start centers to focus overwhelmingly on pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills (as many of us have)? Is it wise to cut time for recess, to trim extra-curriculars, or to push for ever-more homework, to be completed by solitary scholars? Does it make sense to ask teachers to obsess about student achievement over all else?

The private-school sector, which many reformers admire, is not so conflicted. Every high-end school boasts about its commitment to the “whole child,” to kids’ intellectual, emotional, social, and physical development. These schools would never consider their graduates to be well educated without an appreciation for the arts, participation in sports, a commitment to community service, and the development of strong character. And judging by the admissions policies of the nation’s great universities, our elite higher education institutions hold this holistic view, too. Are these non-academic attributes just “extras”—luxuries that schools serving poor or working-class kids simply cannot afford? Or are they as essential as academics, for everyone? And, if so, how to instill them?

Reading, math, and science matter a lot, but they are almost certainly not enough. That is why we must tread gingerly when designing next-generation school-accountability and teacher-evaluation systems. If we accidentally create incentives for schools and teachers to focus solely on academic achievement and ignore the rest, we could be making our children and our nation less competitive, not more so.

Since Sputnik shot into orbit in 1957, Americans have considered science and science education to be vital to our national security and economic competitiveness. That imperative has continued in the half century since the Soviet satellite launch. Indeed, a 2011 survey reports that 74 percent of Americans think STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education is “very important,” while only two percent say it’s “not too important.”

Yet this strong conviction has not translated into strong science achievement. The 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress found barely one-third of U.S. fourth graders “proficient” in science, slipping to 30 percent in eighth grade, and a woeful 21 percent in twelfth. International comparisons are even more disheartening. The most recent PISA assessment, for example, showed American fifteen-year-olds ranking a mediocre twenty-third out of sixty-five countries. 

Meanwhile, U.S. companies continue to send jobs overseas in no small part because they cannot find enough Americans with the requisite STEM skills and knowledge.

Add it up and you should be alarmed, very alarmed. Seems the United States does a great job of talking the talk about getting science education right but we’re a long way from walking the walk.

Why? How can it be that Americans have voiced so much concern about science education for such a long time yet made so little progress in delivering it? There are multiple explanations, starting with the blunt fact that few states and communities have taken concrete action to build world-class science programs into their K-12 schools. Without such programs in place to deliver the goods, our Sputnik-induced anxieties remain fully justified today and again tomorrow.

What does a world-class science-ed program consist of? Many elements, of course, but it begins by clearly establishing what well-educated youngsters need to learn about this multi-faceted domain of human knowledge. Which means the first crucial step is setting clear and rigorous academic standards for the schools—standards that not only articulate the critical content that students need to learn, but that also properly sequence and prioritize that content. In the light of such standards, teachers at every grade can clearly see where they should focus their time and attention to ensure that their pupils are on track toward college- and career-readiness. So can curriculum directors, textbook authors, and test developers.

Hence the urgency and timeliness of Fordham’s latest study: The State of State Science Standards 2012. It carefully analyzes the K-12 science standards currently in place in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, as well as the framework that undergirds NAEP’s science assessment.

The results of that analysis paint a fresh—but still bleak—picture. The standards in science were mediocre to awful in 2005 and—though most of them have been revised in the intervening years—today a majority of the states’ standards are still mediocre to awful. Indeed, the average grade across all states is—once again—an undistinguished C. (In fact, it’s a low C.) In twenty-seven jurisdictions, the science standards earn Ds or Fs.

Bad news, to be sure. But there could be a silver lining. For there are good examples, too. California and the District of Columbia have science standards robust enough to earn straight As from our expert reviewers. Four others—Indiana, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Virginia—earn A-minuses, as does the NAEP framework. Seven more states earn grades in the B range. In other words, thirteen jurisdictions—barely 25 percent, fewer than in 2005—earn honors grades for setting clear, rigorous, and specific standards.

That means states with weak standards don’t have to start from scratch. They could, for example, copy California’s. They could model their standards on the NAEP framework. Or they could team up with other states to develop a new and rigorous set of content-rich 21st century science standards. (And then implement them in their classrooms!)

As everyone knows, in 2009, the Council of Chief State Schools Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA) came together to build rigorous common standards for English language arts (ELA) and mathematics. The result of this effort was 2010’s “Common Core” standards for those two subjects. Fingers were crossed, but they turned out well: These standards are clearer and more rigorous than those in use in most states. And the assessment-development process needed to give traction to the Common Core is already underway.

Today, a similar push toward quality common standards for science is also underway. Twenty-six states have teamed up with Achieve to craft “Next Generation Science Standards” (NGSS). This group intends to do for science what the CCSSO and NGA did for ELA and math: create a coherent set of clear, rigorous, and specific expectations that states will have the option to adopt as their own.

We don’t know how they’ll turn out. (Rumor has it that a draft will be available for review within a few months—and we at Fordham are keen to review it.) But if they’re done well, they will provide a swell option for states that, left to their own devices, have repeatedly stumbled when it comes to science standards.

As we’ve repeatedly cautioned, even the finest of standards alone cannot yield outstanding academic achievement. Serious, orderly, relentless implementation is crucial. But without a destination worth reaching, the arduous journey is scarcely worth making. Ensuring that all 50 states have—and are really using—strong standards in science, as in other key subjects, is the essential place to start.

In its fourth annual report, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers offers a snapshot of the nation’s charter sponsors, capturing their size, their shape, and how many schools they open and shutter. For example, the majority of the nation’s authorizers are local education agencies (52 percent), and an even greater percentage are small (86 percent authorized fewer than six schools). More interestingly, charter-closure rates are on the decline. Just 6.2 percent of the nation’s charter schools up for renewal were shuttered (or non-renewed) in 2010-11, down from 8.8 percent the year before and 12.6 percent in 2008-09. Unfortunately, NACSA doesn’t link these stats to performance data, meaning that we can’t know if this trend indicates increased quality of charters, leniency of authorizers, or political pressures to keep them open. Digging further, NACSA reports that nonprofit authorizers (like Fordham) represent the smallest percentage of those that oversee charter schools but employ the most of NACSA’s own dozen “essential practices.” They’ve also closed more schools, on average, than other types of authorizers (including districts, institutions of higher ed, and independent chartering boards). Likewise, authorizers with a larger portfolio of schools were more likely to implement NACSA’s guidelines. Back in the fall, Andy Rotherham argued that we need to embrace risk-taking and consider that establishing a vibrant charter sector means occasionally allowing the creation of schools that turn out to falter. NACSA’s rather different view is not that the charter approval process should avoid all risk but, rather, that authorizers at least ask the right questions before okaying a school’s launch. Rotherham is right that the price of innovation includes some failures. But until we adopt the right benchmarks at the beginning, we should be less patient about living with them.

National Association of Charter School Authorizers, The State of Charter School Authorizing 2011 (Chicago, IL: National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 2012).

Through the din of cheering, back-patting, and high-fiving from school-choice advocates over their legislative successes in 2011, it’s been hard to hear about states’ recent improvements to teacher policy. This fifth edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality’s report on state teacher-quality policies lends a megaphone to this cause. (And at more than 8,000 pages—150 pages or more per state—it’s quite the hefty and detailed megaphone.) It finds that twenty-eight jurisdictions have improved (on NCTQ’s criteria) over the past two years. Indiana clocked the greatest gains, followed by Minnesota and Michigan. Of the states that improved, twenty-four now consider student achievement as part of teacher evals (up from fifteen in 2009). Thirteen states can now dismiss teachers because of classroom ineffectiveness and twelve states weigh teacher effectiveness—not just seniority—in rewarding tenure. In 2009, the highest grade issued was a middling C (to Florida). This report sees NCTQ’s first B-level grades ever issued: Top-ranking Florida earned a straight B, while Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Tennessee each garnered B-minuses. Mostly good news, but there is yet more to be done. Even now, just thirteen states allow teachers to be dismissed because of classroom ineffectiveness. And only twelve weigh teacher effectiveness when conferring tenure. There’s much more data to parse in each of the states’ individual reports—and the yearbook’s practical policy recommendations should be read by all.

2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Teacher Quality, January 2012.)

After years spent rebutting skepticism and criticism, proponents of the small-schools movement have reason to rejoice (at least in the Big Apple). This MDRC policy brief—an update of its larger 2010 report on small high schools of choice (SSCs) in New York City—finds continued evidence that attending an SSC boosts one’s odds of graduating. Some background: Between 2002 and 2008, New York City replaced twenty-three large, failing district schools (graduation rates under 45 percent) with 216 new smaller schools—including 123 academically non-selective “small schools of choice.” These are brand-new schools with hand-picked staff, close student/faculty relationships, and strong community partnerships. Starting them entailed a stringent application process (which needed specifically to address how the schools would serve disadvantaged youth) before opening. The brief adds to the original report with an additional year of data (tracking over 21,000 Gotham students) and finds that the average four-year graduation rate was 8.6 percentage points higher for students enrolled at oversubscribed SSCs than for students in traditional public schools who had applied—but not gotten into—their small high school of choice. What’s more, these findings hold true across all achievement, income, and racial subgroups. While this brief (and its precursor) offer great fodder for aficionados of small-schools of choice, it is important to remember: In New York City, at least, SSCs are not just mini-versions of traditional public high schools, but instead new models of schooling. How much of these schools’ success is due to size and how much to design is still unclear. Expect some insights from MDRC on this front over the next couple years. The organization promises a series of reports designed to identify exactly why and how these schools have succeeded and how their success can—perhaps—be replicated

Howard S. Bloom and Rebecca Unterman, “Sustained Positive Effects on Graduation Rates Produced by New York City’s Small Public High Schools of Choice” (New York, NY: MDRC, January 2012).