The Education Gadfly Weekly

KIPP Foundation
April 2007

In case you need more reasons to clamber upon the KIPP bandwagon, this report should do the trick. Every year KIPP (aka, the "Knowledge is Power Program") presents demographic profiles and student achievement results for each of its schools that have been around long enough to release reliable data (this year 44 of 52 schools). The 2006 results are quite commendable. At the state level, 59 percent of KIPP fifth-graders outperformed their local districts in reading, and 74 percent did so in math. (Keep in mind: KIPP starts in the fifth grade, typically with students several grade levels behind.) In eighth grade, 100 percent of KIPP students outperformed their district counterparts in both subjects. KIPP also administers nationally norm-referenced exams (usually the Stanford Achievement Test) to measure student growth over time. Because most KIPP schools are still quite young, long-term longitudinal data are available for just 27 of them, but students in those institutions have on average gained 24 percentile points in reading and 39 percentile points in math over three years. If you look carefully, though, you'll also see the rare KIPP school that fails to live up to its billing. Data for KIPP Sankofa Charter School, in Buffalo, New York, for instance, show that its students have made limited gains and have in some cases lost ground. (KIPP recently revoked Sankofa's affiliation with the program; see here.) Fortunately, such bad apples are rare in the pages of this report. Order a copy here.

With so many topics vying for attention, no one entrée will do for this meal. Instead, herewith, a series of what the fancy chefs call "small plates."

Peer Review

The "Reading First" ruckus has resurfaced an old problem: misplaced Congressional faith in "peer review." If it actually worked the way that chairman George Miller and a bunch of his colleagues say it should (i.e., an objective bunch of incredibly well credentialed know-nothings make decisions devoid of human judgment), then (a) no program funded by the federal government would ever change, whether it was highly effective or a waste of billions and (b) the executive branch could be radically downsized and much of its work replaced by formula-driven or pork-barrel programs. In reading, for example, we'd revert to the model of the all-but-useless Reading Excellence Act for dispensing federal dollars.

What these Capitol Hill denizens seem not to understand is that, without close oversight and energetic intervention, peer review of federal grant programs invites log-rolling and rewards status-quoism. Each hand washes the other; no risks get taken; nothing novel gets tried. The only folks "qualified" to participate earned that credential by working in and with the present system and sharing its beliefs; the only panels "representative" of a field are a hologram of the ways things are done today in that field; and the surest outcome of such panels' deliberations is to spread the money across the field's established interests. In primary reading, for example, a pure peer review panel would be exquisitely balanced between whole-language types and phonics proponents; would consist entirely of producers and pay no heed to consumers, and would dole out the dough accordingly. "Reading science" would have little to do with it.

When I was an assistant education secretary back in the late medieval period, I spent perhaps a third of my time selecting peer reviewers and panels that had a fighting chance of doing things differently, doing things right--and doing things the way I thought they should be done. Staying out of the legal rough, sure, but absolutely not hitting down the middle of the fairway. That's why I was there. Else a computer could have done the job--or Congress could have earmarked every dollar for its friends and constituents.       

In a 1982 Education Week commentary (see here), I noted that "the outside-review process evolves, at least in part, into an extension of Administration policymaking and priority setting. And the reviewers become, at least in part, extensions of the presidential appointee who heads the agency. It is altogether reasonable for him to select reviewers who share his values, his instincts, his convictions, and his hunches. In this sense, the peer-review process is necessarily and properly ‘political.'"

Twenty years later, I wrote that "The hardest thing I did when I held Russ Whitehurst's job...was try to make the OERI's peer-review process work in ways that yielded useful input for decisions without being captured by each field's old boys'/girls' networks, people who could be counted upon to ensure that nothing significantly different would ever be tried. I also had to second-guess some of the career staff's own preferences and friendships, which usually overlapped the old-boy networks. No doubt some will say I abused the peer process; I would say that I strove to protect the OERI's work from the most common forms of abuse." 
           
So far as I can tell, that's exactly what the much-abused Reading First team did, too. Hoorah for them. As a result, kids are reading better and NCLB can boast at least one effective program.

Private Schools & Public Educators

Toledo named its new school-system superintendent on May 5 after giving up on its preferred choice, William Harner. A West Point graduate, Army veteran, and currently a regional superintendent within Philadelphia, Harner took himself out of the running because the Toledo school board wouldn't agree to let him live in a fancy suburb or to pay his teen-age daughter's tuition to a well-regarded private school.

Think about this for a moment. This public-education leader was seeking to exercise school choice for his own child, choice that took him to private schooling--and he wanted his compensation package to cover the cost. Some will say shame on him. If he believes in public education, he should commit his own family to it. Others will appreciate the fact that sophisticated educators know what works in K-12 schooling, that the same things don't work equally well for every child, and that the right to tailor one's kids' schooling to their needs and priorities is a right that every parent should have--and not just those who have bargaining power.

So instead of a leader who is discerning about what works in schools or what a properly reformed education regimen consists of, Toledo settles for a thirty-year veteran of that city's public schools, John Foley. You can bet that he'll toe the party line and put up with the conditions, but at the expense of children who will continue to wither academically. Toledo got its man, but what a cost to pay.

The STEM Mania

Congress is tumbling all over itself to foster "competitiveness" by authorizing new dollars for "STEM" (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) schools and education programs. The reasoning seems to be that India and China will eat America's lunch unless we boost our young people's skills in these fields.

It's not partisan, either. The big competitiveness bill passed the House by a remarkable 389-22 on April 24; its Senate counterpart soared to an 88-8 victory the next day. Several states--Texas, Ohio, and more--are hastening to develop STEM programs of their own.

The Administration is grumbling (in timeworn OMB fashion) that such measures worsen the proliferation of programs and the duplication of agency responsibilities. (They would draw the National Science Foundation deeper than ever into the education field.)

Grumbling is indeed called for, but for different reasons. It's fine to foster science and math achievement among the young, but the STEM-winders misunderstand the true roots of American competitiveness: the creativity, versatility, restlessness, energy, ambition and trouble-shooting/problem-solving prowess of our people. "STEM" skills alone won't get the job done. True success over the long haul--economic success, civic success, cultural success, domestic success, national defense success--calls for a broadly educated populace with flowers and leaves as well as stems. We need to develop problem-solvers, innovators, and entrepreneurs, not just "technologically literate" workers. That calls for liberal arts education, not just engineering and technology but also literature, art, history, and civics.

Mile-High Aspirations

The sound you hear emanating from Denver may be the sound of glaciers cracking. If so, hurrah for this form of atmospheric warming and let's hope it goes global. In a truly extraordinary and long "open letter" published on April 25th in the Rocky Mountain News, Denver superintendent Michael Bennet and every single member of the Denver school board called for a radical overhaul of their district, most of it triggered by the effects of school choice, the hemorrhage of pupils out of the district, and the realization that Colorado's schools of choice--charters, mainly--have freedoms to be different that district-operated schools (due mainly to state regulations and collective bargaining) lack. "[W]e have forced the district," they wrote, "to compete with two arms tied behind its back. In this era defined by choice, we have been reluctant to allow our school district to depart from the old way of doing business and embrace new approaches. As a result, the district has been slow to respond while other schools have been able to market richer academic environments for our kids like extended day, different uses of time, smaller class sizes, and focused and thematic academic programs."
     
To address this problem, they set forth seven principles that, taken together, would yield a very different sort of school system: decentralized management, empowered principals, career paths for teachers, higher expectations, better monitoring of performance, and greater transparency. 
   
Still somewhat abstract, yes, and of course the devil resides in the details. But Bennet and his colleagues deserve accolades for taking a pickaxe to the glacier.

Cyber charters in the Hoosier State have been lost in a broken legislative server. Seems that senate Republicans had put together a budget to allow two virtual charter schools to open with $21 million in public funds. But the deal collapsed at the witching hour when Democrats struck out the bucks for virtual learning establishments. Rhonda Eby, head of one of the spurned schools, said "things just fell apart over the weekend, and we really don't know what happened." The "what" may be a mystery, but the "who" certainly isn't. Besides the Dems, the Indiana State Teachers Association led a campaign to deny public funds to the cybers. The defeated educators aren't easily deterred, however. They're seeking private dollars to open this fall and serve the 2,200 students already signed up. And Eby plans to be back in two years for the next budget battle. "We'll come back fighting," she said. Let's hope the legislature's a bit more user-friendly then.

"Virtual charter schools unplugged," by Gail Koch, Star Press, May 3, 2007

"State yanks plug on virtual schools," eSchool News Online, May 8, 2007

In a battle of celebrity versus substance, substance almost always loses. Such was the case this past week in D.C. and Virginia, where the Queen set hearts a-flutter. Wherever she went, people clamored for tickets to see her, fretted about protocol should they actually meet her, and gleefully endured traffic snarls and cool weather to greet her.

The principal reason for her visit, however, isn't generating the same buzz. Four hundred years ago this weekend, the Jamestown settlement was founded. It was the site of our first representative government, the cradle of tobacco (a noxious weed today, but a cash cow back then and the reason the slave trade exploded), and possibly the entry point of earthworms (slimy, but a big, big deal). Yet many, it seems, could care less.

To be sure, scholars and the well-read are debating recent discoveries. (The fort was unearthed just 13 years ago, while Werowocomoco--home of Chief Powhatan--was found in 2003.)

But the masses seem more enamored of Her Majesty's graceful handling of the botched Red Carpet rollout at the airport, and the president's bumbling over the date of the Queen's last visit.

Why, we should ask, does celebrity trump substance? Why fall all over the charming Queen when we can crawl (personally or virtually) all over the first permanent English settlement in the New World? In large measure, because too few of us have much "substance" with which to work. It's hard to know what to do with Jamestown if your only exposure to its role in American history was the 1995 Disney movie Pocahontas.

Yes, fortunate young people receive an education that values history. But too many students must make do with whatever information they can glean from cut-and-paste textbooks, frequently untrained instructors, or, if they're lucky, their parents.

That history is taught so poorly is no accident of history, so to speak, as Diane Ravitch points out in her recent OAH Magazine of History article. By the early 20^th Century, an array of forces had managed to limit in-depth history instruction to a select few. Surprisingly, it was the "professional historians" who led the charge. Scholars such as medievalist A.C. Krey deemed their discipline's rigor beyond the "competence of the average student," explains Ravitch. The subject, wrote Krey in 1929, also wasn't critical to students' "effective participation in society."

That damage has lasted. It's most visible in the woeful performance of U.S. youngsters on history assessments such as NAEP. But the real damage is harder to measure--it's the tens of thousands of Americans who will never find a place in the perpetual debate about the direction of the nation because they lack the fundamental knowledge to engage the discussion and shape their own futures.

The end result is citizens who celebrate a queen, while misunderstanding--or ignoring altogether--a crown jewel in their own backyard.

Charter schools are hot in urban districts, but parents in the hinterlands are warming to them, too. Take Sterling, Colorado, population 12,589, where a group of parents has spent two years trying to open one. But the school board thrice rejected their petitions to launch Sterling Charter Academy, saying the parents' applications were too vague about operational details. That's what they say. The real hang-up seems to be the district's financial woes. Sterling has lost 400 students over the past four years, and the district has been forced to consolidate its schools. Losing still more money and pupils to a charter school isn't something they favor. School board president Carol Brom defends the rejections this way: "I'd love to have an Applebee's or a Chili's... but they won't come to Sterling because we don't have an adequate population base." Presumably she means that the demand for a charter school isn't high enough to justify its expense. But a group of parents has been willing to apply three times over two years to open such a school in Sterling. If that's not demand, what is? For whose benefit are public schools run, anyway?

"Charters vs. small communities," by Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News, May 7, 2007

Elizabeth Logan is 41 years old, makes $69,000 annually, and has been teaching elementary school for 20 of those years. But none of those facts was enough to stop her from (allegedly) stealing a third-grader's winter coat and attempting to sell it on eBay. Logan was busted when the girl's mother, thinking the coat forever lost, began searching the auction site for a replacement and stumbled upon the errant garment. The police got involved, and Logan was arrested. But the first-grade teacher denies stealing the coat. She told investigators that she merely discovered it in the lost and found and decided to auction it on eBay. Then, in an ironic "dog ate my homework" twist, Logan claimed her pet canine tore the coat to pieces. Meanwhile, she continues to enjoy a 99.9 percent seller rating on eBay. Gadfly says caveat emptor, and shame on Logan for stealing clothes from 8-year-olds!

"Teacher Accused of Stealing Coat from 3rd-Grader," by Holly Danks and Melissa Navas, The Oregonian, May 3, 2007

Many of us had high hopes that New Orleans's school makeover would offer a silver lining to the Katrina tragedy. But when schools opened last autumn, many didn't have enough classroom space, books, or even food for their students. Some were also rife with fights and gangs. Things have since improved, but New Orleans's Recovery District still faces monumental hurdles. And who better to address them than Paul Vallas? Philadelphia's outgoing superintendent will take the reins of New Orleans schools starting July 1, where he'll operate just 22 district schools and oversee (as of now) 17 charter schools. That's a light load compared with Philly's hundreds of thousands of students. Vallas isn't fooled by the numbers, however. He knows his work in the Big Easy won't be easy. Yet he's excited: "For me," he says, "the opportunity to come down here and build a school district from the ground up is too good an opportunity to turn down." Optimists at heart, we're hoping for the best.

"His challenge: Rebuild New Orleans' schools," by Greg Toppo, USA Today, May 7, 2007

"Vallas takes reins at N.O. schools," by Steve Ritea, New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 5, 2007

"Welcome, Mr. Vallas," New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 6, 2007

KIPP Foundation
April 2007

In case you need more reasons to clamber upon the KIPP bandwagon, this report should do the trick. Every year KIPP (aka, the "Knowledge is Power Program") presents demographic profiles and student achievement results for each of its schools that have been around long enough to release reliable data (this year 44 of 52 schools). The 2006 results are quite commendable. At the state level, 59 percent of KIPP fifth-graders outperformed their local districts in reading, and 74 percent did so in math. (Keep in mind: KIPP starts in the fifth grade, typically with students several grade levels behind.) In eighth grade, 100 percent of KIPP students outperformed their district counterparts in both subjects. KIPP also administers nationally norm-referenced exams (usually the Stanford Achievement Test) to measure student growth over time. Because most KIPP schools are still quite young, long-term longitudinal data are available for just 27 of them, but students in those institutions have on average gained 24 percentile points in reading and 39 percentile points in math over three years. If you look carefully, though, you'll also see the rare KIPP school that fails to live up to its billing. Data for KIPP Sankofa Charter School, in Buffalo, New York, for instance, show that its students have made limited gains and have in some cases lost ground. (KIPP recently revoked Sankofa's affiliation with the program; see here.) Fortunately, such bad apples are rare in the pages of this report. Order a copy here.