The Education Gadfly Weekly

Paul E. Barton, Educational Testing Service
July 2001

The Educational Testing Service has a new unit called the Educational Policy Research Institute, led by Sharon Robinson, former NEA official and (in the early Clinton administration) assistant secretary of education for research and improvement. She summoned up this brief report by the perceptive Paul Barton, which contends that standards-based reform, while necessary, cannot do the entire job. He worries that today's emphasis on testing is overwrought and not enough is being done to deal with classroom order, peer pressures, parental attitudes, low college-admission standards and inattentive employers. He also contends that incentives and motivations need more attention and that technology is underutilized. It may not be worth the $10.50 that ETS asks for hard copies (which can be ordered by calling 609-734-5694) but you can download a PDF version by surfing to http://www.ets.org/research/.

The National Commission on Service-Learning
January 2002

In his recent State of the Union address, President Bush called on Americans to embrace a "new culture of responsibility" and to commit at least two years, or 4,000 hours, of their lives to serve their neighbors and country. To help meet this goal, supporters of service-learning want young people to participate in more hands-on activities that connect academics with the real world. In a report issued late last month by the National Commission on Service Learning, an august collection of supporters has urged the expansion of service learning as an effective teaching strategy for enhancing students' academic and civic experience. This report covers six key areas: the potential of service learning for improved academic and civic engagement; the basics of service learning projects; the breadth of support for service learning; the impact of service learning; implementing quality service learning programs; and recommendations for the future. Although the authors argue that service learning helps motivate children to learn and is associated with increased attendance and reduced drop-out rates, it will be some time before there is hard evidence to show that it leads to academic improvement. This important point aside, service learning is already playing an important role in getting young people involved in their communities and their nation-a worthy goal in itself. View the report online at http://www.servicelearningcommission.org/learningindeed.pdf. For a hard copy, contact the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, one of the report's sponsors, at 800-819-9997 or [email protected].

David K. Cohen and Heather C. Hill
2001

Based on a long-term research project in California, this book by David K. Cohen and Heather C. Hill of the University of Michigan shows (says the jacket flap) that "[S]tate policy had a constructive influence on education when there was consistency among the tests and other policy instruments; when there was consistency among the curricula and other instruments of classroom practice; and when teachers had substantial opportunities to learn the practices proposed by the policy." But this didn't all come together in many California schools. A series of factors conspired to block these necessary conditions in most places. Among the key inferences the authors draw from this rather gloomy study (which echo those drawn by Dick Elmore above): "For instruction to improve, teachers must have the will to make it improve. Changing professional norms will be essential to reform.... Most California districts and schools dealt with the problem...by offering teachers lists of professional development from which to choose.... That made a certain sense in the professional and political contexts of U.S. schools, but it did not advance improvement in most classrooms....A few policymakers and reformers have tried to remedy this problem, but most administrators know little about teaching and learning, and teachers' norms are especially difficult to change when the profession makes change a matter of individual preference. If the evidence we have presented is at all typical, efforts to improve teaching and learning on a large scale still have a long way to go." To get your own copy of this thoughtful 220-page book, you could contact the Yale University Press by surfing to www.yale.edu/yup/books/089473.htm or you could consult a cooperative bookstore. The ISBN is 0300089473.

General Accounting Office
February 1, 2002

The General Accounting Office (GAO) is at it again, this time with a report on dropout prevention efforts. I should declare my view that the only sure form of dropout prevention is for schools to be high performing and effective places that students are not tempted to abandon. As GAO notes, "[D]ropping out of school is a long-term process of disengagement that occurs over time and begins in the earliest grades." But they didn't get very far in saying what to do about this. GAO admits that "the total federal funding used for dropout prevention activities or [sic] their impact on reducing dropouts is not known." This leads to the unhelpful recommendation that the Department of Education should do a better job of distilling the research, evaluating its programs and disseminating its findings more broadly. Yawn. Should you wish to bother anyway, you can find it at http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/summary.php?recflag=&accno=A02619&rptno=GAO-02-240.

Michael Cohen, Jobs for the Future and The Aspen Institute
December 2001

Many believe that U.S. high schools urgently need reform and have not gotten enough attention. It's good that the thoughtful Michael Cohen, former assistant secretary of education (for elementary/secondary education), has turned to this sizable challenge. His new 22-page report, jointly published by Jobs for the Future and The Aspen Institute, begins the process by sketching three sets of strategies. One involves fine-tuning and expanding some current reforms. The second entails changes in high-school graduation requirements. The third, called "laying the groundwork for transformation," though skeletal in this version, heads toward tougher territory such as new governance structures, performance contracts for new high schools, and collateral changes in certification, finance, etc. All in all, a worthy start. You can find a PDF version at http://www.aspeninstitute.org/ecs/pdfs/highschools.pdf.

The problem is now well established. The question is whether any solutions are in sight.

To recap the challenge: Millions of young Muslims are receiving a bad education from the public and private schools of such lands as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, one that bears scant resemblance to a modern, liberal arts curriculum in science, geography and civics, much less "critical thinking." It doesn't teach youngsters about Newton, Einstein or Jefferson, the voyages of Captain Cook, the backdrop and aftermath of the French revolution, the glories of Aztec civilization or the literature of Dickens. Rather, it's an education in religious fundamentalism and little more, except for hatred of Christians, Jews and the United States.

Much of this occurs in Islamic religious schools that have an essentially medieval curriculum, leavened by doses of modern-style "jihad" against infidels. Because public education has more-or-less collapsed in some countries, and because the "madrasas" are inexpensive or free, this is the only kind of schooling to which millions of impoverished Muslim boys (and a few girls) have access.

In other lands, the curriculum of hatred is imparted directly by government schools. The royal family of Saudi Arabia, for example, seems to have given over that country's public education system to fundamentalist religious leaders.

So long as this situation persists, the western world must expect a ceaseless flood of young recruits for terrorism in the name of Islam.

The challenge, therefore, is clear: can the western world do anything to alter the kind of education being received by these millions of young people?

It surely won't be easy. The very idea will strike some as arrogant and imperialistic. (Fancy Indonesia seeking to influence what's taught in American or Belgian schools.) The tools and resources available to us are few and weak compared with the challenge of altering the educational arrangements of other countries.

But the threat is so great that we must surely begin to think purposefully about ways to nip it in the bud. I can think of seven possible strategies. None is ideal, none is cheap, none is certain to succeed. In combination, however, they might make a difference.

First, sizable chunks of conventional foreign aid to other countries could be focused on the creation and operation of different kinds of public schools, on training or retraining their teachers, on developing curricula for them, and so forth. Foreign aid is typically inter-governmental, whether the money originates in the U.S. federal budget or in joint ventures by various donor countries. It may also come from multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, etc. The U.S. government has considerable influence over much of this, and could have more if it were clever and persistent. But recipient governments must be willing to cooperate, for such aid normally passes through them or is expended with their oversight.

Second, the United States and other western lands could apply a "tough-love" approach to their other (non-education) foreign aid to Islamic countries, as well as to such international goodies as lower tariff barriers, acceptance into trade organizations, supportive votes at the U.N., technology transfers, etc., conditioning all such beneficent acts on recipient nations' commitment to do something about their children's education.

Third, there are many ways of encouraging non-government schools in other countries via private philanthropy, international groups, and commercial opportunism. What a terrific moment for major private donors (e.g. the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations) to foster the creation of "modern" schools that would operate for free or at minimal cost to their students. Economist James Tooley has found low-budget private schools that function successfully in third-world countries for just a few dollars per child per month. There is no reason that thousands more of these could not come into being. Moreover, the western world boasts privately operated schools (e.g. Edison's) that could be exported, albeit at greater per-pupil cost. (Maybe Chris Whittle would like to establish some model schools in Islamabad, Riyadh and Kuala Lumpur.) Many Islamic countries already have international-class private schools-often founded in colonial times-for their elites. With some financial assistance, perhaps these schools might be prevailed upon to expand or clone themselves for the education of non-elites.

Fourth, the western world could develop and export low-cost textbooks, teacher manuals and other instructional materials for schools in Islamic lands, written in Arabic or other vernacular languages but containing modern content. Whether commercial or philanthropic, these could meet one of the foremost needs of any struggling education system: for high-quality content suitable for teachers and students to use. The content is crucial: we read that Palestinian youngsters, for example, are routinely taught from anti-Semitic textbooks.

Fifth, schools are not the only means of transmitting education to children today. Let's also consider the "virtual" opportunities. Though necessarily limited by access to technology, lessons could be transmitted by radio through the Voice of America (or brand-new ventures created for this purpose) or over the Internet. Today's many makers of web-based learning for American children might-especially if paid to do this by government or philanthropy-turn their attention to the adaptation and translation of such lessons for youngsters in the Muslim world.

Sixth, even as we guard our borders, we might bring more students and teachers to study in our schools and universities. (Better to learn civics and algebra than how to fly large planes!) Developing different attitudes toward the west is not, after all, just a matter of cognition. It also involves attitudes and experiences.

Finally, we can send Americans abroad to teach, run schools, advise ministries of education and suchlike, through the Peace Corps expansion that President Bush has proposed and through other governmental and private volunteer programs.

Do you have additional ideas? Please send them to the Gadfly. The problem is clear. It's time to get serious about finding some solutions.

Just because the D.C. public schools are failing to provide special education services for many children doesn't mean the school district isn't spending pots of money on special ed. A pair of articles in this week's Washington Post shed unhappy light on where some of that money is going. In a column in Tuesday's paper, Marc Fisher paints a series of heartbreaking portraits of poor kids with disabilities who sit in classes they can't understand (if they attend school at all) while an incompetent bureaucracy loses their files or cannot find services for them (sign language instructors, for instance, who can be found in the Yellow Pages, it turns out). A special ed lawyer who represents children failed by the school system points out that hiring specialists to provide the services that these children need would be a lot cheaper than paying lawyers to appear at court hearings on private school placements. Because the District is unable to provide appropriate programs or services, it pays private school tuition for over 2000 children with disabilities (on top of the legal fees for placement hearings).

As an expose on the front page of Monday's Post reveals, the District's failure to meet the needs of disabled children is making some of the school system's former employees quite rich. Reporter Justin Blum managed to untangle the connections between three former employees (two of them disbarred lawyers who worked for years at school headquarters) and the assessment company, private schools, and law firm they help run. These companies charged the school district a total of $9.6 million for legal fees, diagnostic testing, and tuition connected with children who were not receiving adequate services in the public school system. Blum describes some outrageous bills submitted by the companies to the school district, bills that no doubt contributed to the cost overruns in special ed that led to a $62.5 million deficit for the D.C. public schools last year.

"D.C. Schools Failing Everyone but the Lawyers," by Marc Fisher, The Washington Post, February 19, 2002

"Lawyers Capitalize on D.C. School Gaps," by Justin Blum, The Washington Post, February 18, 2002

The big problem with the usual approaches to improving schools is that we fiddle with all kinds of things except the one thing that really matters, which is instructional practice, according to Harvard's Dick Elmore. Putting pressure on schools to improve won't work unless teachers know what to do at the level of practice, and Elmore says they don't. Schools are not organized in a way that teachers can learn this, either, in part because teachers resist any intrusion into their classrooms. "The ethic of atomized teaching-teachers practicing as individuals with individual styles-is very strong in schools. We subscribe to an extremely peculiar view of professionalism: that professionalism equals autonomy in practice," he writes. In real professions, people get sued for doing things the way they like if they don't work, he points out. For more see "The Limits of 'Change," by Richard Elmore, Harvard Education Letter, January/February 2002.

For years, the advocates of standards-based reform have held up Advanced Placement tests and the International Baccalaureate as models: a clearly defined syllabus; a teacher who is prepared to teach that syllabus; a course based on the syllabus; an end-of-course examination. Those students who enroll know what is expected of them and have a fair chance to learn it and to demonstrate their learning.

Now comes a bizarre report from the National Academy of Sciences (which can be counted on always to make the perfect the enemy of the good) telling the world that AP and IB curricula are no good; that they rely too much on "factual" knowledge rather than understanding; that some of their teachers are teaching out-of-field; and that these courses need "urgent improvement." To those who have followed the battles in mathematics and science between "hands-on" reformers and reformers who believe in the value of knowing some facts and skills, these debates will appear familiar.

What is truly odd, however, is that after blasting the AP and IB, the NAS panel complains that more minority youth and rural youth should be taking these courses. Go figure.

This panel, according to The New York Times of February 15, was created in 1998 to explain why American students performed so poorly on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. Here is the best part of the committee's findings: The students who had taken Advanced Placement courses performed better on TIMSS than students who had not taken them.

In other words, the committee is recommending that American education dump one of the preparation programs that is demonstrably effective in addressing the problem of low achievement. As the syndicated columnist Cindy Adams says, "Only in America, kids, only in America."

"Study Faults Advanced-Placement Courses," by Karen W. Arenson, The New York Times, February 15, 2002

Diane Ravitch is a Research Professor at the New York University School
of Education and a trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

David K. Cohen and Heather C. Hill
2001

Based on a long-term research project in California, this book by David K. Cohen and Heather C. Hill of the University of Michigan shows (says the jacket flap) that "[S]tate policy had a constructive influence on education when there was consistency among the tests and other policy instruments; when there was consistency among the curricula and other instruments of classroom practice; and when teachers had substantial opportunities to learn the practices proposed by the policy." But this didn't all come together in many California schools. A series of factors conspired to block these necessary conditions in most places. Among the key inferences the authors draw from this rather gloomy study (which echo those drawn by Dick Elmore above): "For instruction to improve, teachers must have the will to make it improve. Changing professional norms will be essential to reform.... Most California districts and schools dealt with the problem...by offering teachers lists of professional development from which to choose.... That made a certain sense in the professional and political contexts of U.S. schools, but it did not advance improvement in most classrooms....A few policymakers and reformers have tried to remedy this problem, but most administrators know little about teaching and learning, and teachers' norms are especially difficult to change when the profession makes change a matter of individual preference. If the evidence we have presented is at all typical, efforts to improve teaching and learning on a large scale still have a long way to go." To get your own copy of this thoughtful 220-page book, you could contact the Yale University Press by surfing to www.yale.edu/yup/books/089473.htm or you could consult a cooperative bookstore. The ISBN is 0300089473.

General Accounting Office
February 1, 2002

The General Accounting Office (GAO) is at it again, this time with a report on dropout prevention efforts. I should declare my view that the only sure form of dropout prevention is for schools to be high performing and effective places that students are not tempted to abandon. As GAO notes, "[D]ropping out of school is a long-term process of disengagement that occurs over time and begins in the earliest grades." But they didn't get very far in saying what to do about this. GAO admits that "the total federal funding used for dropout prevention activities or [sic] their impact on reducing dropouts is not known." This leads to the unhelpful recommendation that the Department of Education should do a better job of distilling the research, evaluating its programs and disseminating its findings more broadly. Yawn. Should you wish to bother anyway, you can find it at http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/summary.php?recflag=&accno=A02619&rptno=GAO-02-240.

Michael Cohen, Jobs for the Future and The Aspen Institute
December 2001

Many believe that U.S. high schools urgently need reform and have not gotten enough attention. It's good that the thoughtful Michael Cohen, former assistant secretary of education (for elementary/secondary education), has turned to this sizable challenge. His new 22-page report, jointly published by Jobs for the Future and The Aspen Institute, begins the process by sketching three sets of strategies. One involves fine-tuning and expanding some current reforms. The second entails changes in high-school graduation requirements. The third, called "laying the groundwork for transformation," though skeletal in this version, heads toward tougher territory such as new governance structures, performance contracts for new high schools, and collateral changes in certification, finance, etc. All in all, a worthy start. You can find a PDF version at http://www.aspeninstitute.org/ecs/pdfs/highschools.pdf.

Paul E. Barton, Educational Testing Service
July 2001

The Educational Testing Service has a new unit called the Educational Policy Research Institute, led by Sharon Robinson, former NEA official and (in the early Clinton administration) assistant secretary of education for research and improvement. She summoned up this brief report by the perceptive Paul Barton, which contends that standards-based reform, while necessary, cannot do the entire job. He worries that today's emphasis on testing is overwrought and not enough is being done to deal with classroom order, peer pressures, parental attitudes, low college-admission standards and inattentive employers. He also contends that incentives and motivations need more attention and that technology is underutilized. It may not be worth the $10.50 that ETS asks for hard copies (which can be ordered by calling 609-734-5694) but you can download a PDF version by surfing to http://www.ets.org/research/.

The National Commission on Service-Learning
January 2002

In his recent State of the Union address, President Bush called on Americans to embrace a "new culture of responsibility" and to commit at least two years, or 4,000 hours, of their lives to serve their neighbors and country. To help meet this goal, supporters of service-learning want young people to participate in more hands-on activities that connect academics with the real world. In a report issued late last month by the National Commission on Service Learning, an august collection of supporters has urged the expansion of service learning as an effective teaching strategy for enhancing students' academic and civic experience. This report covers six key areas: the potential of service learning for improved academic and civic engagement; the basics of service learning projects; the breadth of support for service learning; the impact of service learning; implementing quality service learning programs; and recommendations for the future. Although the authors argue that service learning helps motivate children to learn and is associated with increased attendance and reduced drop-out rates, it will be some time before there is hard evidence to show that it leads to academic improvement. This important point aside, service learning is already playing an important role in getting young people involved in their communities and their nation-a worthy goal in itself. View the report online at http://www.servicelearningcommission.org/learningindeed.pdf. For a hard copy, contact the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, one of the report's sponsors, at 800-819-9997 or [email protected].