The Education Gadfly Weekly

At times, local school districts may feel like marionettes, with state and federal mandates contorting them to fit one policy priority after another. According to this fascinating new book by Wake Forest professor Bryan Shelly, higher levels of government can indeed manipulate local education agencies with remarkably few dollars—as little as 5 percent of their budgets. Shelly uses NCLB to illustrate this effect, showing that even state and local politicians with serious reservations about the law implemented it anyway, unwilling to cut ties to federal cash—or brave the political backlash that would ensue. While some states (like Colorado and New Mexico) have passed laws formally opposing various NCLB provisions, every state has at least partially implemented 95 percent of NCLB’s provisions. The same is true at the district level: Only seven of the nation’s 14,383 school districts have formally opted out of NCLB. With these facts in hand, Shelly draws a simple but important conclusion: A better way for higher levels of government to leverage reform would be to ease up on onerous mandates, leaving to locals the heavy lifting in areas like teacher quality and curriculum. State and federal money need not be accompanied by the demolition of local control. Do that and local school districts might start to whistle Pinocchio’s favorite tune, “I’ve got no strings.”

This paper examines the state of IDEA services in the five years after the law’s most recent reauthorization in 2004. Findings are drawn from a 2009 survey of state special-education offices as well as 1,200 school districts. Though there is much throat-clearing in the report, it is chockablock with relevant data. Perhaps the most interesting tidbits relate to implementation of intervening services for students who are not yet identified as special-needs but who require additional supports to succeed academically: Eleven percent of districts have voluntarily opted to direct allotted IDEA funds toward services like Response to Intervention (RTI), something they’ve only been allowed to do since 2004. (RTI is an instructional technique that provides students with tiered and increasingly intensive instruction to address problems in their early stages.) Still many more districts provide such services without tapping into their IDEA funds: When it comes to RTI specifically, fully 71 percent of districts—encompassing 61 percent of elementary schools, 45 percent of middle schools, and 29 percent of high schools—use RTI. Unfortunately, the report stops short of analyzing why districts are opting to spend their own cash on RTI initiatives, rather than directing federal dollars to the cause, circling us back to an issue with special-education writ large: Where, how, and why money gets spent remains a black box.

For all the disaggregation of test scores that has taken place since the implementation of NCLB, little attention has been placed on the Title I student population itself (those in schools with high percentages of low-income pupils). This Center on Education Policy report—the fourth in a series on student achievement—spotlights these kids. It assesses trends in Title I and non-Title I student-achievement data (for grades four, eight, and either ten or eleven) between 2002 and 2009, and the findings initially appear promising. Of the nineteen states that disaggregate achievement data by Title I status, fifteen saw improvement among Title I participants. Additionally, gaps between Title I and non-Title I students have narrowed more frequently than they have widened since 2002. Unfortunately, while CEP offers a needed peek at Title I student success, the report’s basic methodology limits the reach of its findings. Not only does it not correct for shifting levels of Title I funding, it also cannot disaggregate student achievement (or school funding) by students enrolled in school-wide or targeted-assistance programs (albeit that these targeted-assistance programs are quickly becoming things of the past). So kudos to CEP for shining light on the effectiveness of Title I efforts, but many more bulbs will have to be illuminated to truly understand the efficacy of Title I’s $14 billion.

For better or worse, testing—formative, evaluative, and diagnostic—is entrenched in our K-12 education system. But policies around assessment haven’t all been evidence-based. In this book, Howard Wainer, a long-time research scientist at ETS and statistics professor at Wharton, illustrates this point through a series of rebuttals to opinions he sees as ubiquitous in today’s conversations around testing. In one chapter, he explains why the SAT should not be made optional. In another, he gauges the practicality of using value-added models (VAM) as components of teacher evaluations—concluding that available data render VAM implementation premature. While many of Wainer’s arguments dive far into the weeds of testing, his overall message rings clear and true for much more than assessment: Policy that is formed without full analysis of the breadth of data available on a topic is policy that will fail.

Montana's retroactive revolution
(Photo by Brian Swan)

On Sunday, 158 Montana public schools were slated to join the state’s other “failing” schools—per federal AYP designations. On Monday, that number plummeted to three. Yet this change in labeling had nothing to do with student achievement. Instead, the feds allowed education officials in big-sky country to simply redraw the state’s schedule of testing targets—retroactively back to 2005. Why? The Treasure State had revamped its own state assessment that year, yet hadn’t reset its proficiency standards (something the NCLB accountability workbook allows). Duncan’s crew found this loophole and let Montana rewrite its proficiency targets from 2005 on. For this year, that means that Montana’s required proficiency rates will be slightly above the state’s original 2007 levels. A possible contributing factor to ED’s willingness to find a work-around: a desire on Duncan’s part to save face after Montana's flagrant and continued refusal to raise its proficiency standards—even after the Secretary’s threat to withhold Title I funding. Yet Duncan’s clumsy wielding of the NCLB stick, as well as this back-bending for states, may have serious negative consequences. So, Mr. Secretary, take heed of Jeb Bush’s good advice: Be a leader. A thought-out plan on how to pass responsibility to the states is more pragmatic than defusing potentially embarrassing situations.

Hopeless optimists in the ed-reform ranks have noted—and exhalted—recent cracks in teacher-union armor, some of which seem to be brought about by teachers themselves. The latest United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) elections saw a reform-minded slate of teachers (self-dubbed NewTLA) take ninety of the 350 seats in the union’s governing body. New York City’s Educators for Excellence, a group of teachers working to reform arcane and detrimental policies like last-in, first-out, now boasts 3,500 members. While it’s easy to become smitten with these examples of change, however, Terry Moe reminds us that they won’t bring about large-scale “reform unionism.” Why? Because unions are inherently designed to quell reform efforts. Further, while younger teachers are more reform-minded than their elder peers (look to NCEI’s recent survey for more), they also exit the profession at higher rates—leaving union leadership unscathed. While any chinks in the armor are likely good for kids and taxpayers alike, imagine the damage to the status quo these reform-minded teachers could inflict if they started working against the steadfast unions and not through them.

“Quiet Riot: Insurgents Take on Teachers’ Unions,” by Andrew J. Rotherham, Time, Aug ust 11, 2011.

“Will Young People Reform Teachers Unions? Dream On.,” by Terry Moe, PublicSector, Inc., August 12, 2011.

Geoffrey Canada has become a bit of an ed-reform rock star since he began the Harlem Children’s Zone in the 1990s. That initiative provides wraparound services—including schooling, healthcare, healthy meals, and after-school activities—for children and their families in a sixty-block square of central Harlem. And the idea has grown legs across the country (look to the “promise neighborhoods” initiative for proof). Yet, in Columbus, a similar effort led by Columbus Collegiate Academy (one of the top-performing urban schools in the Buckeye State) and the Boys and Girls Club risks having its legs swept out from under it. (Full disclosure: CCA is a Fordham-authorized school.) The partners hope to open a new school in a vacant building near the Boys and Girls Club on the city’s near west side, where existing middle-school options are paltry. Planning was going smoothly, with grants and donors lined up to support the CCA-BGCC joint program, until the state’s biennial budget bill was finalized in late June. Under the new law, districts no longer have discretion about whom they rent space to. That decision must now be done by lottery. (Ironically, the change in law is meant to ensure that charter schools have greater access to vacant district buildings, as districts have been remiss to rent space to them.) Yet now, CCA might miss out on this prime school-system real estate, putting the entire children’s zone partnership—and a much-needed network of services for needy kids—at risk. And that would be a sad day for Columbus and for its children.

“Project would go beyond school,” by Jennifer Smith Richards, Columbus Dispatch, August 14, 2011.

At times, local school districts may feel like marionettes, with state and federal mandates contorting them to fit one policy priority after another. According to this fascinating new book by Wake Forest professor Bryan Shelly, higher levels of government can indeed manipulate local education agencies with remarkably few dollars—as little as 5 percent of their budgets. Shelly uses NCLB to illustrate this effect, showing that even state and local politicians with serious reservations about the law implemented it anyway, unwilling to cut ties to federal cash—or brave the political backlash that would ensue. While some states (like Colorado and New Mexico) have passed laws formally opposing various NCLB provisions, every state has at least partially implemented 95 percent of NCLB’s provisions. The same is true at the district level: Only seven of the nation’s 14,383 school districts have formally opted out of NCLB. With these facts in hand, Shelly draws a simple but important conclusion: A better way for higher levels of government to leverage reform would be to ease up on onerous mandates, leaving to locals the heavy lifting in areas like teacher quality and curriculum. State and federal money need not be accompanied by the demolition of local control. Do that and local school districts might start to whistle Pinocchio’s favorite tune, “I’ve got no strings.”

This paper examines the state of IDEA services in the five years after the law’s most recent reauthorization in 2004. Findings are drawn from a 2009 survey of state special-education offices as well as 1,200 school districts. Though there is much throat-clearing in the report, it is chockablock with relevant data. Perhaps the most interesting tidbits relate to implementation of intervening services for students who are not yet identified as special-needs but who require additional supports to succeed academically: Eleven percent of districts have voluntarily opted to direct allotted IDEA funds toward services like Response to Intervention (RTI), something they’ve only been allowed to do since 2004. (RTI is an instructional technique that provides students with tiered and increasingly intensive instruction to address problems in their early stages.) Still many more districts provide such services without tapping into their IDEA funds: When it comes to RTI specifically, fully 71 percent of districts—encompassing 61 percent of elementary schools, 45 percent of middle schools, and 29 percent of high schools—use RTI. Unfortunately, the report stops short of analyzing why districts are opting to spend their own cash on RTI initiatives, rather than directing federal dollars to the cause, circling us back to an issue with special-education writ large: Where, how, and why money gets spent remains a black box.

For all the disaggregation of test scores that has taken place since the implementation of NCLB, little attention has been placed on the Title I student population itself (those in schools with high percentages of low-income pupils). This Center on Education Policy report—the fourth in a series on student achievement—spotlights these kids. It assesses trends in Title I and non-Title I student-achievement data (for grades four, eight, and either ten or eleven) between 2002 and 2009, and the findings initially appear promising. Of the nineteen states that disaggregate achievement data by Title I status, fifteen saw improvement among Title I participants. Additionally, gaps between Title I and non-Title I students have narrowed more frequently than they have widened since 2002. Unfortunately, while CEP offers a needed peek at Title I student success, the report’s basic methodology limits the reach of its findings. Not only does it not correct for shifting levels of Title I funding, it also cannot disaggregate student achievement (or school funding) by students enrolled in school-wide or targeted-assistance programs (albeit that these targeted-assistance programs are quickly becoming things of the past). So kudos to CEP for shining light on the effectiveness of Title I efforts, but many more bulbs will have to be illuminated to truly understand the efficacy of Title I’s $14 billion.

For better or worse, testing—formative, evaluative, and diagnostic—is entrenched in our K-12 education system. But policies around assessment haven’t all been evidence-based. In this book, Howard Wainer, a long-time research scientist at ETS and statistics professor at Wharton, illustrates this point through a series of rebuttals to opinions he sees as ubiquitous in today’s conversations around testing. In one chapter, he explains why the SAT should not be made optional. In another, he gauges the practicality of using value-added models (VAM) as components of teacher evaluations—concluding that available data render VAM implementation premature. While many of Wainer’s arguments dive far into the weeds of testing, his overall message rings clear and true for much more than assessment: Policy that is formed without full analysis of the breadth of data available on a topic is policy that will fail.