The Education Gadfly Weekly

Eric A. Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann
The World Bank
2007

In this important study for the World Bank, Hanushek and Woessmann argue that a nation's average level of "cognitive skills," as determined by student performance on math and science tests, is a more accurate measure of its human capital than the measures used in previous studies. The authors muster data from international tests dating back to 1964 to compare several nations' levels of cognitive skills to their GDP growth over the same period. (Because different international tests were administered over the years, they tied all the scores to NAEP, thus enabling them to establish a baseline for comparison.) They found, in short, that "countries with higher test scores experienced far higher growth rates." Furthermore, this correlation was significantly stronger than that between a country's growth rate and the years of schooling its students receive, which was a previously favored measure of human capital. Even after controlling for variables like geography, initial economic development, fertility, property rights, openness to international trade, and freedom of domestic markets, the authors found that "a highly skilled work force can raise economic growth by about two-thirds of a percentage point every year." Of course, they didn't account for such intangibles as creativity and innovativeness. Painful experience shows that, put in the wrong hands (those of a Senate committee, say) the researcher's scholarly chisel becomes a policy bludgeon. So read the report here (a summary is here) and if you are moved to send it to your congressman, at least include a copy of Fordham's Beyond the Basics and Common Core's latest report for good measure.

As the GOP worries whether John McCain, now anointed as the party's leader-in-waiting and November standard-bearer, is sufficiently Reaganesque to do right in the Oval Office, here's a point in the senator's favor: Like the Gipper, he doesn't consider education a top presidential priority. Indeed, McCain has said very little about the subject on the campaign trail, and his website barely touches it.

That's in vivid contrast to our last three presidents. Bush père campaigned to be the "education president" and swiftly convened the nation's first education summit. Clinton demonstrated his "third way" bona fides by pushing charter schools and school uniforms. And the incumbent Bush staked his claim to compassionate conservatism partly on his beloved No Child Left Behind act (NCLB) and its dramatic expansion of the federal role in education.

Such Oval Office advocacy and activism helped give life to some promising ideas--school choice and standards-testing-accountability in particular--but also created a myth and a monster.

The myth: The president can make our schools better. It's a myth that most citizens seem to believe. So do some candidates. Observe Senator Obama stating, during a recent debate, with a straight face and trademarked sincere look, that "we should not accept a school in South Carolina that was built in the 1800s, where kids are having to learn in trailers, and every time the railroad goes by the tracks, the building shakes and the teacher has to stop teaching." Excuse us, Senator, but what exactly can you do for this school from the White House?

The monster: We now have a federal Department of Education meddling in schools across the land. Washington bureaucrats don't improve them but do monitor everything from teacher qualifications to reading curricula to discipline. Yet when it comes to what matters most--expectations for student learning--NCLB allows every state to grade itself, enabling most to set low standards and play games with test results.

Yes, Reagan also called for bold changes in k-12 schooling--and empowered his able education secretary, Bill Bennett, to do the same. His administration pushed for higher expectations, tougher standards, more parental choice, and a focus on character as well as sound curriculum. Yet this was mostly bully pulpit stuff; Reagan and Bennett knew that the real work of reform had to happen in states and communities, not in Washington.

McCain's instincts appear similar. It's hard to picture him spending much time visiting schools and reading to children. But he, too, could appoint an energetic education secretary (Mike Huckabee, perhaps?) and charge him/her with making some waves.

Meanwhile, with the primaries essentially behind him, the media will begin to press McCain to state specific positions on innumerable issues, surely including education, particularly on NCLB, whose reauthorization will be overdue by Inauguration Day. Other than indicating vague support for that law, for school choice, and for rewarding excellent teachers, it appears the Arizonan hasn't thought much about this (though he has a couple of astute advisers). So here's a suggestion.

Start by playing to your strengths, Senator, fitting education policy within three broad themes of your candidacy and worldview: keeping America confident in the face of Islamic terrorism, strengthening our ability to compete in a globalizing world economy, and fighting wasteful spending.

At the recent CPAC convention, McCain said he would defeat radical Islamists "by defending the values, virtues, and security of free people against those who despise all that is good about us." Yet how many young Americans truly understand and appreciate their country's "values" and "virtues"? McCain should argue that to fight and win a long-term war against extremism we must ensure that our children possess deep knowledge of U.S. history and America's role as freedom's champion. That means not letting history and civics get squeezed out of the curriculum by NCLB's obsession with reading and math scores. Students should be tested in history and civics, too, and schools with strong track records in these subjects should be cited as models.

When it comes to global competition, President McCain would rally U.S. workers to compete worldwide without yielding to the siren song of protectionism. But here, too, NCLB is weakening our human-capital development with its low (and uneven) standards and its neglect of high-achieving students. McCain could change this by calling on governors to develop a set of common, rigorous expectations and assessments for all young Americans from Okeechobee to Walla Walla. And he could push Congress to rewrite NCLB so it focuses not just on academic stragglers but also on our savviest youngsters, too.

As for wasteful spending, President McCain could have a field day with a k-12 education budget that's ballooned by more than 40 percent since Bush 43 took office. He could give states and communities the authority to merge all their federal funds into one flexible stream (while being held to tougher, more consistent standards for student learning). Even better, he might pick a fight over the scores of Education Department programs that don't qualify as "effective" on the Office of Management and Budget tally.

Those are the girders under a strong education platform for the Republican nominee: a U.S. history "surge"; rigorous common expectations for all students; a renewed focus on helping able kids fulfill their potential; and the unmasking of wasteful, Washington-knows-best programs. There are plenty of other ideas worth supporting--targeted vouchers, aid for charter schools, incentives for districts to rid themselves of restrictive union contracts, and more. McCain is wading into a new issue area, however, and he needs to wet his feet before plunging all the way in. Happily for him, Obama's mushy education plan and flip-flopping on merit pay and vouchers give the Arizonan plenty of room to maneuver.

Like Reagan, McCain may never make education his top priority. But by picking a few key issues and using his power effectively, he just might be an education president anyhow.

A slightly different version of this essay first appeared in the March 10th issue of The Weekly Standard.

Ethically-challenged political appointee overrides the "merit" process and steers millions of federal dollars to preferred firms, including one that employs his wife, all the while foiling those who would favor a different outcome. The program's intended beneficiaries--poor, illiterate children--lose out. Then a courageous federal watchdog investigates, producing an exposé-style report that brings down the arrogant official, who resigns in disgrace and engages an attorney. The opposition party and media exploit the opportunity, score many points, and hold the incumbent administration accountable.

The Reading First tale you have read and think you know, the one above, is almost entirely fiction. As City Journal contributing editor Sol Stern reveals in our new report, Too Good to Last: The True Story of Reading First, the real Reading First story is far less salacious--and vastly less formulaic--yet much more interesting. Certainly it's more important. There were scandals all right, just not the ones that grabbed national headlines.

 ***

Four decades of rigorous scientific studies demonstrate that most young children need explicit instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness in order to learn how to read. The Reading First program was designed to support these findings, giving the force of law to mountains of evidence on effective reading instruction; it asked recipients of federal dollars to choose reading programs that work. It didn't say they had to do that--unless they wanted to share in this particular bucket of money.

At the program's outset, we were hopeful but guarded enthusiasts. And for several years it appeared that our optimism was well founded. One by one, state education departments embraced Reading First. Thousands of poor schools signed on enthusiastically.

Alas, it was too good to last and too much to hope. We watched in horror as Reading First was attacked, defanged, and eventually brought to its knees. The program went from a top White House priority to victim of one of the biggest budget cuts ever, all in seven years. We protested and editorialized (see here and here), but such pleas fell on deaf ears. Few wanted to know the truth about a much-maligned federal program that was once so full of potential.

So we sought out one of the most effective truth-tellers we know, Sol Stern, to put this tragic tale into plain English. His story may leave you angry or despairing--perhaps both. Almost nothing you've heard about the Reading First "scandal" turns out to be true. Stern painstakingly reconstructs what really happened. His findings, it's safe to say, will shock you.

Let us summarize:

• President Bush, his domestic policy advisor Margaret Spellings (then LaMontagne), and his reading czar Reid Lyon originally conceived Reading First as a strict federal program whose funds would only flow to states and districts using reading curricula whose effectiveness had been validated by scientific studies. Plenty of earlier federal reading initiatives had been too lax, had allowed unproven reading schemes to qualify for funding, and had wound up making no difference. Insisting on validation was the way to change that. But there was a problem: just two existing primary reading programs (Direct Instruction and Success for All) would initially qualify. So under pressure from commercial textbook publishers, whole language advocates, and others, Congress made the fateful decision to ease the eligibility criteria so that reading programs "based" on scientific research could qualify too. That opened the door to the possibility that all manner of nonsense might get funded--as it had under the Clinton-era Reading Excellence Act--unless executive branch officials held the line and hewed to the program's intentions.
  

• This heavy responsibility fell to young Christopher Doherty, the Reading First program's new director. Chosen because of his success in using Direct Instruction to turn around failing schools in inner-city Baltimore, Doherty went to work to ensure that states and districts lived up to the principles of scientifically-based reading research. His charge--from President Bush, Spellings, Lyon, and then-Secretary of Education (now Fordham trustee) Rod Paige--was to ensure that Reading First schools used only programs proven to work and shunned those that weren't.
  

• The inevitable backlash swiftly followed. Aggrieved vendors of whole-language programs complained bitterly that their wares couldn't be purchased with Reading First dollars. They found a receptive ear in the Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), a bastion of green eyeshade and Dragnet types who weren't the least bit knowledgeable about the ins-and-outs of reading instruction or the intent of the Reading First program.
  

• Meanwhile, Bob Slavin, developer of the phonics-based reading program, Success for All, thought he saw a federal conspiracy because few Reading First dollars flowed his way. The Inspector General failed to find any evidence that the Department of Education acted against Slavin's Success for All, though it did allege that Doherty worked to promote Direct Instruction (a dubious charge considering how few Reading First schools adopted that program). Importantly, the OIG did not charge Doherty with any financial conflicts of interest. There was none. The inspector general had invested several years and thousands of man-hours in his investigation, however, and seemed determined to issue a harsh report--and to feed a media frenzy by implying that there was "more to come."
  

• And that he did produce. With little to go on besides a potential appearance of conflict of interest (not the financial kind, mind you, but "professional ties"), he published several titillating emails from Doherty that OIG investigators unearthed after combing through voluminous archives. Yes, the emails are unflattering and ill-considered. No, Doherty shouldn't have sent them. But all they really show is an impassioned official doggedly trying to ensure that the federal dollars for which he was responsible were spent on reading programs that worked--and not on whole-language programs that he knew would keep millions of poor children illiterate. For this, Doherty, a loyal lieutenant in the Bush army if there ever was one, was forced to resign. As for the rest of the OIG's case, it fizzled into thin air over the course of his next five reports. But the damage had been done.
  

• By her actions (or inaction), Secretary Margaret Spellings may have hoped that throwing Doherty under the bus would resolve the matter and save the program. More likely, she thought that in sacrificing her soldier she would protect herself. After the "scandal" broke, her advocacy (and the president's) on behalf of Reading First all but disappeared.
  

• Meanwhile, Slavin was still aggrieved that nothing had altered the facts on the ground. One surmises that he pushed his old friend David Obey, chairman of the House appropriations committee, to slash the program's budget. Whether that was Slavin's doing or not, it was definitely Obey's doing. And as a result Reading First is but a mere shadow of its former self--a tragedy denounced only yesterday by House minority leader John Boehner, who chaired the Education Committee at the time of the program's creation.

After reading the OIG report in September 2006, many editorial writers expressed "outrage" at what had happened. After reading our report, we hope they do the same.

David Gelernter turns in a brisk essay in the March 3rd Weekly Standard, contending that English, a beautiful language, has been hijacked by feminists who are ruining writing and depleting the supply of those in America who write well. They do this by inserting odd, abrasive phrases like "he or she" and "chairperson" into the vernacular. Gelernter is certainly correct that the first rule of writing ("keep it simple, concrete, concise") is regularly flouted today, but this is not entirely, or even mostly, the work of feminists. Much of the blame must be placed on our schools, which require their students neither to write nor to read great writing and, yet, are seemingly flummoxed when students cannot write. Universities are little better; the writing championed in campus classrooms is akin to Linear A in inscrutability. Learning to express ideas clearly is a basic part of any decent education--for boys and girls alike, if not for inanimate objects such as chairs.

"Feminism and the English Language," by David Gelernter, The Weekly Standard, March 3, 2008

From the Department of Bad Ideas: Creating federal certification for "highly qualified" principals. We would delight in eviscerating proposals like this, but Sheryl Boris-Schacter has already done a fine job of it. In a recent Education Week piece, Boris-Schacter--a living, breathing school principal--rejects the idea that education leadership can be improved or managed from Washington. "Legislated, standardized, and prescribed requirements leading to a new ‘highly qualified' principal status would stress professional educators already weary from endless accountability measures, wasted resources, and the inevitable paperwork that cuts into time for instructional leadership," she writes. Indeed. Boris-Schacter also notes that more mandates are likely to impede the recruitment of genuinely highly qualified individuals to lead schools. From the Department of Better Ideas: Allowing principals more autonomy but holding them accountable for the academic achievement of their schools' students. Dispense, please, with the arbitrary and muddled regulations. They haven't gotten us anywhere.

"Good Principals by Fiat?," by Sheryl Boris-Schacter, Education Week, February 27, 2008

The final report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel will be released next week, and indications are it will contain several solid proposals while also avoiding many of the contentious "math wars" issues. According to the Wall Street Journal, the panel's big recommendation for fixing the country's "‘broken' system of mathematics education" is a "laserlike focus on the essentials." Essentialists ourselves, we think that's a fine idea. And the benchmarks the panel puts forth "mirror closely a September 2006 report by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics," which is cause for optimism because the 2006 document (unlike sundry earlier NCTM products) was well done (see here). Math panel chairman Larry Faulkner believes "it's time to cool the passions" that divide those who prefer traditional arithmetic instruction from advocates of "fuzzy math." Therefore, next week's report does not specify which instructional method is superior, nor does it take a position on whether students should use calculators in early grades. But a "laserlike focus" is fundamentally at war with fuzziness, so the panel's findings are certainly a positive development, maybe as important to math education as the National Reading Panel's were to reading.

"Education Panel Lays Out Truce In Math Wars," by John Hechinger, Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2008

Call it education's version of the French paradox. Students in Finland "have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells, and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7." Yet Finnish pupils outscore nearly all their international peers on tests in reading, math, and science. How to explain Finland's bubble-filling superiority? For one, according to the Wall Street Journal, the country's teaching profession is "highly competitive," and teachers "generally have more freedom" (other reports disagree, though). Finns also "love reading," so much so that the government sends to parents of every newborn a gift pack that includes a picture book. And Finnish students aren't plagued by anxieties about getting into elite colleges because Finland doesn't have any. But perhaps the best way of explaining the Finnish paradox is this: Educators there teach the same types of students, nearly all of whom speak Finnish and grow up in comfortable households. This doesn't come close to describing the U.S. situation. American educators eager to learn from our Scandinavian friends should remember that what works for the Finns (walking around class without shoes, for example) won't necessarily work for us. We have too many tacks on the floor.

"What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?" by Ellen Gamerman, Wall Street Journal, February 29, 2008

St. Anthony School in Milwaukee exists today only because of the city's voucher program. In 1998, before the state supreme court allowed public money to fund religious schools, St. Anthony enrolled under 300 students. Now it has over 1,000 pupils (all but about a dozen attend on vouchers) and is thriving. The school has a back-to-basics view of learning, one that prizes phonics, for example, and Core Knowledge instruction. The students, almost all of whom are from Spanish-speaking homes, are occupied with work the entire day. "They're so busy," said teacher Jenni Madden about her fifth-graders. "There's no time for discipline issues." The kids aren't the only ones who have to adjust to St. Anthony's rigid atmosphere, though. The teachers do, too. Madden, like most of her colleagues, attended an education school that taught constructivist instruction, which allows students to do their own, self-guided learning. Such flim-flam doesn't cut it in Madden's real classroom, she says, or in St. Anthony School at large. Three cheers for the Milwaukee voucher program that allows hundreds of students to attend this fine institution, and three cheers for the teachers who, with the help of spot-on instructional methods, make a real education possible for their charges.

"Changes at St. Anthony Make It a School to Watch," by Alan Borsuk, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 8, 2008

Eric A. Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann
The World Bank
2007

In this important study for the World Bank, Hanushek and Woessmann argue that a nation's average level of "cognitive skills," as determined by student performance on math and science tests, is a more accurate measure of its human capital than the measures used in previous studies. The authors muster data from international tests dating back to 1964 to compare several nations' levels of cognitive skills to their GDP growth over the same period. (Because different international tests were administered over the years, they tied all the scores to NAEP, thus enabling them to establish a baseline for comparison.) They found, in short, that "countries with higher test scores experienced far higher growth rates." Furthermore, this correlation was significantly stronger than that between a country's growth rate and the years of schooling its students receive, which was a previously favored measure of human capital. Even after controlling for variables like geography, initial economic development, fertility, property rights, openness to international trade, and freedom of domestic markets, the authors found that "a highly skilled work force can raise economic growth by about two-thirds of a percentage point every year." Of course, they didn't account for such intangibles as creativity and innovativeness. Painful experience shows that, put in the wrong hands (those of a Senate committee, say) the researcher's scholarly chisel becomes a policy bludgeon. So read the report here (a summary is here) and if you are moved to send it to your congressman, at least include a copy of Fordham's Beyond the Basics and Common Core's latest report for good measure.