The Education Gadfly Weekly

National Institute for Excellence in Teaching
July 2007

This report from the Working Group on Teacher Quality, whose participants include the National Council on Teacher Quality, the Center for American Progress, and the New Teacher Project, among others, is based on the assumption that it's easier to do merit pay wrong than right. (See Houston, for example.) Hence, it suggests design features and implementation tactics for pay-for-performance plans that will stand the test of time. The survey covers all the key questions, such as how to evaluate teachers (its advice: expand the criteria beyond student test scores) and how to ensure unbiased reporting (train teacher "raters" and sponsor multiple evaluations). The report's most useful portions are the appendices, which draw lessons from successful state and district initiatives such as Minnesota's Q-Comp plan and Denver's Pro-Comp (which effectively garnered teacher buy-in). The paper would benefit from enhanced study of these initiatives, but it's still a useful resource for states and districts now getting into merit pay for the first time. Check it out here.

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
January 2007

For the past three years, instead of publishing a run-of-the-mill annual report, the Kauffman Foundation has put out a "Thoughtbook," a collection of essays by staff, grantees, and friends on the foundation's adventures in philanthropy. About a third of the report deals with education--specifically, math and science education, urban school reform, and higher ed. In the first section, Kauffman Vice President Dennis Cheek's essay describes the foundation's ten-year plan to turn Kansas City into a "test bed for the thorough evaluation of educational interventions in mathematics, science, and technology." By facilitating and learning from experimentation in a demographically diverse, 32-district metropolitan area, Kauffman hopes to make Kansas City the center of the nation's STEM efforts over the next decade. (We hope, of course, that such advances don't come at the expense of equally important subjects.) Subsequent essays in this section, including one by "Zhia," a teacher from the "Homework Zone" help line, examine the challenges and successes that Kauffman has faced so far in Kansas City. The second section includes a rundown of the Kauffman Scholars program, which prepares inner-city middle-schoolers for college and beyond; an interview with "social entrepreneur" Bill Strickland, who started the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in Pittsburgh; and a roundup of innovative school models, including Cristo Rey and KIPP. A final education-related section is dedicated to getting the topic of entrepreneurship into higher-ed curricula. All in all, it's an exciting collection of ideas and initiatives that should interest lots of readers. Request a copy here.

The extremes to which public schools will go to keep faith outside their doors are well known--no nativity scenes or menorahs at Christmas or Hanukkah, no public prayer, and a reluctance to teach the Bible or Quran. But does this mean that schools are free of religion? What about the people who teach in public schools? Do they check their religious beliefs at the schoolhouse door?

Until now, no one has bothered to ask public school teachers about their spiritual beliefs and practices. Do they believe in God? Do they pray? How important is their faith to their personal image of themselves as public servants, and to sustaining their work as teachers?  Do they feel that teaching is a "calling"--a religious way of contributing to society?

We have some answers. In a confidential, anonymous survey of over 300 randomly selected teachers in Wisconsin, we asked about their religious faith, beliefs, and practices. Wisconsin--a state with rural and urban communities, and a healthy mix of liberal and conservative citizens--is representative of the general American population in many ways. And our results do not support the prominent view that public schools are religion-free environments.

First, most public school teachers in the sample (94%) believe in God or a higher power. Approximately half of the public school teachers surveyed consider religion to be "very important" to them, and an additional third feel that it is somewhat important. Thus public school teachers are only slightly less religious than the general national population, 60% of whom report religion to be very important. Over 91% of public school teachers we surveyed indicate that they pray, closely matching the national figure of 90%. Approximately 60% of the teachers in the sample claim to "pray regularly," with an additional 26% indicating doing so in times of need or at formal worship services. Thus, like the national population, the vast majority of public school teachers in this study are people of faith, and they take seriously their spiritual beliefs and practices.

Second, not only do many teachers personally believe and engage in spiritual practices, but many also implicitly connect their spirituality to their professional lives. Remarkably, over half of the public school teachers in the sample felt a deep knowing or mission to teach--or "‘called' by God," as the survey phrased it. Many public school teachers report praying about their professional lives, with over 60% indicating that prayer has benefited them professionally. Of the over 91% of public school teachers who pray, 93% believe that prayer has given them comfort during difficult times or professional crises, and more than three-quarters believe that praying has helped them foster better relationships with students.

Of the teachers who pray, 84% indicate that prayer has helped them to cope better with job-related stress; and approximately 70% believe that praying has enabled them to maintain enthusiasm for teaching and has reduced professional burnout. Thus, not only do teachers turn to their faith when faced with a professional problem, but most perceive that spiritual practices help them cope with job-related stress.

That teachers believe and pray is their business. But public schools and teacher education programs could be more sensitive in supporting devout teachers.

Just as some public hospitals and airports provide a quiet place for meditation, schools could also have a space where teachers could rest and pray. Spiritually inclined teachers might use a sacred space--e.g., meditation or prayer gardens, or just quiet rooms for contemplation--to connect with their spiritual center. Of course, teachers could decide for themselves what "sacred" means and would not be required to use these spaces. Teachers should have a place where they can connect with their spiritual lives.

The U.S. Armed Forces provides chaplains to support military personnel. Why don't public schools offer their staffs the opportunity to go on a spiritual retreat or a voluntary course in spiritual development? Such activities would be designed to help teachers draw on their inner lives to rekindle the passion for teaching and to manage the stress of their work. And because we found that many teachers felt "called" to their profession, teacher (and administrator) education programs might consider offering elective spirituality and education courses. These would acknowledge the importance of teachers' spiritual motivations and their commitment to the profession.

While many teachers draw strength from their religious beliefs and practices, others do not. We realize that some critics might resist these sacred spaces, voluntary retreats, and elective teacher education courses designed to address the spirituality of teachers. But none would be compelled to participate. Involvement would be based on the inner compass of individual teachers. Why not give such interested teachers support in using their personal spirituality to benefit themselves, their work, and ultimately their students?

Reformers face a Catch-22: they want to try new approaches, which by definition haven't yet been proven. But a skeptical public wants assurances that doing something differently will yield better results. Thus we empathize with Superintendent Larry Lewis of Lancaster, Texas, a suburb south of Dallas, who wants to move his schools from a typical five-day schedule to one with four extra-long days. But whatever the merits of the plan (he says it will save money and improve instruction; detractors worry about additional childcare costs and the risk of teenagers having "unprotected sex" on Fridays), Dr. Lewis certainly could have done a better sales job. Rather than admitting to a skeptical forum of parents that the approach was new and thus unproven, he pointed to a 1992 research article he found on...Google. Then he pulled out this choice bit of tortured logic: "If we shot down every idea in the Lancaster district and the city because we don't believe it will work, what will we have?" Gadfly will go out on a limb and predict that the children of Lancaster will be in school five days a week this fall, as normal.

"Lancaster parents blast 4-day school week plan," by Kathy A. Goolsby and Karen Ayres, Dallas Morning News, July 20, 2007

Once upon a time, Rick Hess and I argued that a Washington Consensus birthed the No Child Left Behind Act, and that this centrist coalition remained firmly entrenched, at least at the elite level of policymaking. Events of recent months have raised questions about this grand theory of ours, with key conservatives peeling off the NCLB bandwagon on federalist grounds, and Democratic presidential aspirants pummeling the law to appeal to their teacher union base (watch this discouraging clip from Monday night's CNN/YouTube debate, for example).

But for supporters of the law, all hope is not lost. A pair of recent proposals call for mending, not ending, the Act.

The first--which might be considered the center-right proposal--comes from Senators Richard Burr and Judd Gregg and, implicitly, the Bush Administration. (Secretary Spellings praised the package and surely had a role in its development. Burr is staffed by Celia Sims, who served the Bushies in the first term at the U.S. Department of Education; Spellings's counselor is now Townsend McNitt, formerly Gregg's chief aide.)

Hewing closely as it does to the Administration's NCLB proposal (which we earlier called a "pretty decent repair attempt"), the bill includes several worthy reform ideas. It allows "differentiated consequences," which means it reserves the toughest sanctions for the worst schools. It expands eligibility for growth models to all 50 states. It brings some rationality to the law's accountability measures for English language learners and students with disabilities. It offers free tutoring ("supplemental services") to students a year earlier than the current law does, and makes it harder for districts to divert tutoring money to other uses. And, most imaginatively, it creates a new "money follows the child" program so that federal Title I dollars can flow to the public school of a family's choosing.

Still, the proposal clings to plenty of dumb ideas too, like the "100% of students proficient by 2014" requirement (a.k.a. the "lower standards initiative"), the highly qualified teachers mandate (a.k.a. the "useless paperwork and teacher infuriation act"), and almost all of the current law's myriad wasteful pet programs (though the senators do, courageously, propose scrapping Senator Ted Kennedy's "historic whaling" program, lest you thought these fiscal conservatives were going soft). And, as far as we can tell, it drops the Administration's boldest proposal: offering federal dollars to urban communities that want to establish private school voucher programs.

The second reauthorization bill--which might be considered the centrist proposal--comes from Senators Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, and Norm Coleman and, implicitly, the Aspen NCLB Commission. (Commission chairman and former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes praised the package, which incorporates plenty of his panel's ideas, including some of the dopey ones we explained would lead to a "national education ministry.")

However, the Lieberman bill vastly improves upon the NCLB Commission's work in important ways. For example, while it embraces its recommendation to require states to measure teachers' impact on student learning--a good idea in principle but an impossibly complex one for Uncle Sam to handle well--it offers an exemption from all "highly qualified teachers" mandates for schools that make adequate yearly progress.* In other words, make AYP, skip HQT. It adopts other versions of "earned autonomy" too, such as granting schools more flexibility over funding, and making life easier for charter schools. Hooray!

On the flip side of flexibility, it offers improvements to accountability by embracing voluntary national standards and tests. The National Assessment Governing Board would be expanded and charged with developing a student-level test that states could choose to use in lieu of their own NCLB assessments--taking Senator Dodd's national standards proposal one step further. Hooray!

Perhaps just as significantly, Lieberman et alia support many of the same changes that Burr and company forwarded: differentiated accountability, growth models, small tweaks to supplemental services, solutions for measuring progress of English language learners and students with disabilities, and on and on.

So the Washington Consensus appears to be alive and well, at least among the Senate education committee, at least from the center to the center-right. The next move belongs to Kennedy and Representative George Miller, chairmen of their respective education committees. If they release center-left (rather than hard-left) proposals, a bipartisan compromise might not be far away.

Still, that doesn't mean that the odds of reauthorizing NCLB this year are high. Timing is a problem--the August recess is looming. But more important, organized and vocal opponents on the right and left are prepared to take their arguments to rank and file members of Congress. Be prepared for a replay of the immigration debate, wherein a weakened President Bush teams up with key allies in both parties, only to be defeated by grass roots opposition. Just as the president's guest worker program will have to wait for 2009 to be reconsidered, so too, most likely, will NCLB.

*Michael J. Petrilli inaccurately characterized the reauthorization bill put forward by Senators Lieberman, Landrieu, and Coleman. It does not, alas, allow schools that make Adequate Yearly Progress to escape from the law's Highly Qualified Teachers (HQT) mandate. It does, however, allow entire states to opt out of the HQT requirements if they implement a peer-reviewed system to evaluate teacher and principal effectiveness. We regret the mistake-and regret even more that the bill excludes the more powerful "make AYP, avoid HQT" idea.

When engineer Nicholas Aggor's sons Samuel (14) and Joshua (13) brought home bad grades in math, he didn't just help them with their homework or call their teachers for a conference. No, he decided to rewrite their textbooks. Now, the two boys are in advanced math classes and Dad's textbooks--14 of them--have caught the eye of several school districts and publishing companies. At Seitz Middle School in Riverview, Michigan, where Aggor lives, his books are the only texts used in the geometry class. Math teacher Shelley Zulewski loves them. "There's step-by-step instruction," she said. "If the kids don't get the concept from the teacher, they can just about teach themselves." Aggor's wife was a principal in their native Ghana, so he is acutely aware of k-12 education's importance. According to the engineer, his "hope is to have students stay in school, so they don't drop out, and then they'll be able to be somebody some day." Thanks to his innovation, it seems, a sizable number of youngsters may now have a better shot.

"Dad's math book makes the grade," by Karen Bouffard, Detroit News, July 20, 2007

Was it a furtive trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a secret love affair with the way Cézanne depicts apples and pears, that caused New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to hold principals accountable for the quality of their arts programs? Perhaps not. But whatever their motivation (Fordham's latest report, perhaps?), Bloomberg and Klein have decided to include arts standards in the Big Apple's new school report card program, which begins this fall. The plan received only tepid praise from skeptical arts advocates; just a few months ago, the NYC Department of Education eliminated a multi-million dollar program for arts education. (Principals will now be able to use that money as they see fit.)  Mayor Bloomberg supported that decision, and pointed out that "money alone will not improve student outcomes in the arts or any other subject. Money doesn't make the difference, accountability does." He may be right; it certainly seems true that accountability for math and reading alone leads schools to ignore other subjects, including the arts (more evidence on that front came out just this week). Let the renaissance begin!

"Bloomberg Announces Plan to Shore Up Arts in Schools," by Jennifer Medina, New York Times, July 24, 2007

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
January 2007

For the past three years, instead of publishing a run-of-the-mill annual report, the Kauffman Foundation has put out a "Thoughtbook," a collection of essays by staff, grantees, and friends on the foundation's adventures in philanthropy. About a third of the report deals with education--specifically, math and science education, urban school reform, and higher ed. In the first section, Kauffman Vice President Dennis Cheek's essay describes the foundation's ten-year plan to turn Kansas City into a "test bed for the thorough evaluation of educational interventions in mathematics, science, and technology." By facilitating and learning from experimentation in a demographically diverse, 32-district metropolitan area, Kauffman hopes to make Kansas City the center of the nation's STEM efforts over the next decade. (We hope, of course, that such advances don't come at the expense of equally important subjects.) Subsequent essays in this section, including one by "Zhia," a teacher from the "Homework Zone" help line, examine the challenges and successes that Kauffman has faced so far in Kansas City. The second section includes a rundown of the Kauffman Scholars program, which prepares inner-city middle-schoolers for college and beyond; an interview with "social entrepreneur" Bill Strickland, who started the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in Pittsburgh; and a roundup of innovative school models, including Cristo Rey and KIPP. A final education-related section is dedicated to getting the topic of entrepreneurship into higher-ed curricula. All in all, it's an exciting collection of ideas and initiatives that should interest lots of readers. Request a copy here.

National Institute for Excellence in Teaching
July 2007

This report from the Working Group on Teacher Quality, whose participants include the National Council on Teacher Quality, the Center for American Progress, and the New Teacher Project, among others, is based on the assumption that it's easier to do merit pay wrong than right. (See Houston, for example.) Hence, it suggests design features and implementation tactics for pay-for-performance plans that will stand the test of time. The survey covers all the key questions, such as how to evaluate teachers (its advice: expand the criteria beyond student test scores) and how to ensure unbiased reporting (train teacher "raters" and sponsor multiple evaluations). The report's most useful portions are the appendices, which draw lessons from successful state and district initiatives such as Minnesota's Q-Comp plan and Denver's Pro-Comp (which effectively garnered teacher buy-in). The paper would benefit from enhanced study of these initiatives, but it's still a useful resource for states and districts now getting into merit pay for the first time. Check it out here.