The Education Gadfly Weekly

Center on Education Policy
August 2007

It would be quite odd, to say the least, if states and districts were surveyed about whether or not they believed their students were making academic progress, and the responses were compiled and turned into a report. The reaction would be thus: "Who cares what the states and districts think. Why don't we just look at the actual data." This, alas, is the reaction one has to CEP's latest report about NCLB's "highly-qualified" teacher requirements. "More than half (56%) of responding states and two-thirds (66%) of districts reported that the NCLB teacher requirements have improved student achievement minimally or not at all," the report tells us. We also learn that the "NCLB highly qualified teacher requirements have not had a major impact on teacher effectiveness in the view of state and district officials." These are fine tidbits, but really--what purpose do they serve? And quite frankly, duh. Very few people who are actually familiar with the ill-conceived "highly qualified" mandate would ever presuppose that the designation carries any real meaning, much less any value to the classroom. It's often useful to know what those implementing NCLB think about it, but in this particular case it simply isn't. Find the report here.

U.S. Department of Education
July 2007

In the land of education innovation, it helps to know what works. And the What Works Clearinghouse's summer smorgasbord of studies reveals promising practices and programs--those having "positive" or "potentially positive" effects--in areas including dropout prevention, elementary school math, and early childhood education. Some of the winners include Kaplan SpellRead (a literacy program for readers who've fallen behind) and Peer Tutoring and Response Groups (collaborative learning to aid English Language Learners). Other initiatives have proven less effective, such as the Quantum Opportunity Program (a dropout prevention program for high schoolers). Researchers also note which specific parts of a given program are successful and which are not. For example, a literacy program might aid students' comprehension but show no effect on their fluency. Still, contrary to earlier WWC studies, many of the projects actually received positive ratings. (Perhaps now people will stop calling it the "Nothing Works Clearinghouse.") It's worth checking out here.

What can we learn from the recent pronouncements by Jack O'Connell, California's state superintendent of public instruction, that race, not poverty, is the cause of the most distressing achievement gaps in his state and the nation? The most important lesson is that it's becoming acceptable for educators to say in public what they've long been saying to each other--that certain racial groups, regardless of their socioeconomic situation, are lagging behind others. Of course, now that NCLB is shining a bright light on those gaps, citizens want a solution, and the pundits will provide a bevy of ideas. Columnist Bill Maxwell, for example, writing in the St. Petersburg Times, chastises Florida lawmakers (black Democrats, especially) for trying to use vouchers to help black students. The solution, Maxwell believes, is that black communities need to take more responsibility for their children and their schools. But people have been saying that for decades, and little has changed. How about this: To improve education, focus not on communities, parents, socioeconomics, or culture. Focus on schools--on setting high standards, hiring good teachers, creating classrooms with an achievement focus, etc., for all kids. Can we at least give it a try?

"Schools chief seeks end to learning gap," by Mitchell Landsberg and Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times, August 19, 2007

"Vouchers can't help if black parents won't," by Bill Maxwell, St. Petersburg Times, August 16, 2007

One of the indisputable successes of NCLB is that it shines a bright light on the dimmest schools in the country. A decade ago, underperforming schools were free to languish in relative obscurity. Today, some 1,200 of them bear the scarlet letter of a chronically failing school.

Less successful, however, have been NCLB's provisions for turning these failing schools around. Under the law, schools that do not make "adequate yearly progress" for five straight years must 1) convert to a charter school, 2) replace staff, 3) hire an external manager, 4) submit to a state take-over, or 5) undertake "any other major restructuring of the school's governance that produces fundamental reform." Most schools choose the fifth option--NCLB's flagship loophole--and grope in the dark with little success.

Part of the problem is that the literature on successful turnaround models is quite limited, the phenomenon of sanctions for failing schools being but a few years old. But, as a recent paper points out, documented turnaround efforts from other sectors offer a number of valuable lessons for educators.

Public Impact scoured 59 documents, mostly business-journal style case studies, and highlighted some of the turnaround strategies that best served struggling organizations. They found, for instance, that "successful turnaround leaders use speedy, focused results as a major lever to change the organization's culture." Getting these early victories requires "a rapid process of trial and error in which unsuccessful tactics are dropped and new strategies are tried."

Such was the approach New York City police chief William Bratton took starting in 1994 to reduce crime, most notably by targeting the squeegee-wielding window washers that pestered motorists. Though sometimes "one-dimensional and peripheral" to bigger objectives, such early successes "serve as a powerful symbol for stakeholders that something has changed."

Public Impact also found that "successful turnarounds are typically marked by vigorous analysis of data," as exemplified by the NYPD's use of Compstat. Bratton implemented regular meetings at which commanders were presented crime data on their precincts and then grilled by their superiors about how to improve. Such diagnostic uses of data are not completely foreign to the education sector--groups have already sprung up to promote more and better data usage in schools--but no school or district has come close to replicating the success of Compstat.

These and other strategies explored in the report are handy models for school leaders and administrators to adopt. But the report also examines the environmental factors that influence school turnaround efforts--and meeting some of these conditions may require deeper changes. For instance, the report notes that "performance monitoring is built into the market dynamics" for most for-profit firms (revenue levels) and nonprofit organizations (grant funding levels). For schools, however, they find that current "external performance expectations... are insufficient to spur substantial school improvement in many schools." In other words, accountability provisions aren't tough enough, and the money keeps flowing no matter what.

Furthermore, most organizations that succeed in restructuring give leaders "sufficient latitude to implement... substantial changes." Often that's not the case in public schools, where, according to a recent Fordham study, principals' hands are tied by collective bargaining agreements and other district regulations. Most school leaders aren't free to embark on the "rapid process of trial and error" described above, and those who try risk squandering the good will of the local teachers union.

Which is not to say that schools should be run exactly like businesses--or police departments, for that matter. Continental Airlines, IBM, and the NYPD (all studied in this report) have needs far different from those faced by public schools. But rescuing a chronically failing organization requires immense creative efforts regardless of the sector, and many public schools are quashing that creativity by ignoring the incentives that fuel it.

Unfortunately, getting them to embrace the conditions required for successful turnarounds is no easy task. We've seen some promising experiments with principal empowerment, but they're few and far between. And the bugaboo of external pressure (i.e., accountability) still remains. NCLB's sanctions have proved toothless, and school choice efforts are still far too subdued to provide meaningful market pressures.

Our best hope is that the illustrative experiences of other sectors will continue to be brought to light and will start sinking in with policymakers and educators. As researchers Joseph F. Murphy and Coby V. Meyers argue in their forthcoming book, Turning Around Failing Schools: Lessons from the Organizational Sciences, "there is an insularity and parochialism in the [education] turnaround literature that is as arrogant as it is ill-advised." Arrogant maybe, but ill-advised surely.

Schools are under increasing pressure to boost the test scores of their special education students. And according to the Wall Street Journal (which is running a series about mainstreaming), many schools have responded to that pressure not by working harder, but by exploiting loopholes. NCLB allows states to make "reasonable accommodations" for disabled students, which for Mardys Leeper, a teacher at West Philadelphia High School, meant allowing them to "copy paragraphs she wrote onto a word processor rather than composing their own." But parents of special education students are unhappy that their sons and daughters are simply being passed from grade-to-grade without learning anything, and they're fighting back. Many have refused to accept grades and diplomas that are, they say, largely worthless. Some have even sued to prolong their children's education: New York City now pays $400,000 a year to educate Alba Somoza, a 23-year-old with cerebral palsy, after his parents filed a complaint. Sadly, though, such tales of social promotion and worthless diplomas aren't relegated to special education students (see here). Nonetheless, these parents are fighting worthy battles which may yield benefits for all students.  

"When Special Education Goes Too Easy on Students," by John Hechinger and Daniel Golden, Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2007

The debate about "mainstreaming"--whether students are best served in "regular" settings instead of segregated, specialized ones--is typically reserved for discussions of special education (see below). But this week's Time magazine considers mainstreaming (and its opposite) in the context of America's most gifted children. In the middle of the debate is the year-old Davidson Academy, a privately endowed public school in Reno catering to high-IQ kids (generally over 160). It teaches forty-five 11- to 16-year-old prodigies, who moved to Nevada from all over the country and even overseas to be educated with other kids who are just as smart as they are. Their previous school experiences were frustrating, socially isolating, and of course boring. Now at Davidson, these students can form social networks, and they push each other to excel. But is running off to Reno really the only solution for highly gifted students? The article's author, John Cloud, isn't so sure. "The best way to treat [highly gifted students] is to let them grow up in their own communities--by allowing them to skip ahead at their own pace." Perhaps he's right, but that would require a sea change in the attitude of the public education system, which views grade-skipping skeptically. Of course, it once viewed the mainstreaming of special education kids skeptically, too.

"Are We Failing Our Geniuses?" by John Cloud, Time, August 16, 2007

True or false: NCLB considers teachers going through alternate routes to certification (like those employed by Teach For America) to be "highly qualified." False, charges a new lawsuit filed by "a coalition of parents, students, community groups, and legal advocates" (with some encouragement, we're sure, from the education school establishment). It alleges that a five-year-old Department of Education regulation creates a loophole for alternate route programs that "defies the will of Congress" and "harms children." Really? The law itself is ambiguous on the question, at once allowing for alternate routes, while simultaneously banning any waivers of certification on an "emergency, temporary, or provisional basis." The problem is that alternate routes, by their very nature, don't confer certification on teachers until they complete a one or two year program--meaning they have to "waive" certification on a provisional basis. So what did Congress intend? Who knows, which is why the executive branch has regulatory authority to clarify such matters. This is far from an arcane issue, of course; if the Department were to lose this lawsuit, say goodbye to TFA, whose 5,000 corps members would be banned from teaching in the very high-need Title I schools they are trained to serve. (Could that really have been Congress's intent?) True or false: This lawsuit is really about preserving the education schools' monopoly.

"U.S. sued over teacher credentials," by Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2007

Someone call Jay Greene--officials are now naming schools after nonexistent historical figures! Our fourth president officially has a middle initial in Ogden, Utah, though it would be news to him. Seems someone submitted the name "James A. Madison" to the school board as a possible moniker for the district's new elementary school. How he or she came up with the wayward A is anyone's guess; perhaps it just felt right. After all, lots of big-name presidents have had middle initials: FDR, Dwight D. Eisenhower, JFK, Richard M. Nixon, William Jefferson Clinton. Even Harry S. Truman had a middle initial (though the "S" wasn't short for anything. Apparently, he just liked the way it sounded.). Surely, the well-intentioned folks of Ogden may have reasoned, the man who wrote the Bill of Rights and helped draft the Declaration of Religious Freedom was important enough to carry a middle name. A local history teacher caught the error after School Board President Don Belnap missed it, despite majoring in history in college. "It's not that critical of an issue," he said. "We'll just take the A out." That happens this week, when the board votes to officially rescind Madison's ill-gotten middle initial.

"School asks, ‘Who is James A. Madison?', United Press International, August 18, 2007

Center on Education Policy
August 2007

It would be quite odd, to say the least, if states and districts were surveyed about whether or not they believed their students were making academic progress, and the responses were compiled and turned into a report. The reaction would be thus: "Who cares what the states and districts think. Why don't we just look at the actual data." This, alas, is the reaction one has to CEP's latest report about NCLB's "highly-qualified" teacher requirements. "More than half (56%) of responding states and two-thirds (66%) of districts reported that the NCLB teacher requirements have improved student achievement minimally or not at all," the report tells us. We also learn that the "NCLB highly qualified teacher requirements have not had a major impact on teacher effectiveness in the view of state and district officials." These are fine tidbits, but really--what purpose do they serve? And quite frankly, duh. Very few people who are actually familiar with the ill-conceived "highly qualified" mandate would ever presuppose that the designation carries any real meaning, much less any value to the classroom. It's often useful to know what those implementing NCLB think about it, but in this particular case it simply isn't. Find the report here.

U.S. Department of Education
July 2007

In the land of education innovation, it helps to know what works. And the What Works Clearinghouse's summer smorgasbord of studies reveals promising practices and programs--those having "positive" or "potentially positive" effects--in areas including dropout prevention, elementary school math, and early childhood education. Some of the winners include Kaplan SpellRead (a literacy program for readers who've fallen behind) and Peer Tutoring and Response Groups (collaborative learning to aid English Language Learners). Other initiatives have proven less effective, such as the Quantum Opportunity Program (a dropout prevention program for high schoolers). Researchers also note which specific parts of a given program are successful and which are not. For example, a literacy program might aid students' comprehension but show no effect on their fluency. Still, contrary to earlier WWC studies, many of the projects actually received positive ratings. (Perhaps now people will stop calling it the "Nothing Works Clearinghouse.") It's worth checking out here.