The Education Gadfly Weekly

Nelson Smith, Progressive Policy Institute
July 9, 2003

California's decade-old public charter school program is one of the largest in the land. And, according to this summary of the evidence, the Golden State's 415 charter schools have nearly closed the achievement gap with the state's "century-old district system," while helping youngsters who need it most. Three recent studies utilizing schools' Academic Performance Index (API) show "striking progress" among students in California's charter schools and lead author Nelson Smith (now at New American Schools) to argue that charter schools "do a much better job than other public schools of improving academic performance of at-risk students." Yet California's charters face a wide range of obstacles. Smith criticizes California's 1992 charter school law for giving local districts too much control and providing too little oversight on how charter schools should be managed. Ending district monopolization of charter authorization (a major recommendation of the recent Fordham study on charter authorizers, available at http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/Full_report_no_embargo_notice.pdf), replicating effective charter schools and facilitating the creation of new ones, and establishing charter districts are among the reforms recommended here. For more information, see http://www.ppionline.org/documents/CA_Charters_0703.pdf.

Marvin Kosters and Brent Mast, American Enterprise Institute Press
2003

This 127-page American Enterprise Institute study drives multiple nails into the coffin of the Federal Title I program as it operated from 1965 to 2001 - and holds out only limited hope that NCLB-mandated changes will cause it work better. The authors refuse to view Title I as simply a resource-transfer program and insist that its stated purpose is to narrow the achievement gaps between poor and non-poor and minority and non-minority youngsters. After reviewing reams of data and many earlier studies, they conclude, "The weight of the evidence in our study points to (1) little or no positive effects of Title I on achievement and (2) no convincing indication of improvement over time." They know the program isn't going away, however, so they speculate as to what might make it work better. They hold out scant hope for policies that rely on "establishing goals, setting time schedules, monitoring performance, specifying remedies, and assessing penalties." That's the historic approach of Title I and it simply hasn't worked. They're moderately more bullish about a "testing and information strategy" that empowers parents and communities with additional data about school performance and gives kids more educational options. NCLB's limited provisions along the latter lines "provide the main reasons for optimism about improving the contribution of Title I." The authors suggest, however, that a far better idea would be a comprehensive experiment with full-fledged, fully financed school choice for disadvantaged youngsters. That idea, of course, was dropped from NCLB by Congress - too "controversial" - and is currently on shaky ground with respect to the District of Columbia. In any case, if you want a cogent, hard-nosed (but highly technical) review of 38 years of Title I evidence, this book is the answer to your prayers. The ISBN is 0844771651 and you can get additional information at http://www.aei.org/publications/bookID.409/book_detail.asp.

United States General Accounting Office
July 2003

The title of this short report tells you just about all you need to know, which is that many states and districts are clueless about how to ensure that all teachers of core subjects are "highly qualified," as NCLB requires by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. The GAO hoped to determine what preparations they were making, so it surveyed and visited a wide sample of district and state officials. The answers were uniformly woeful: the Department of Education's guidelines are confusing; we lack systems to compare the credentials of our teachers to their subject areas; we can't create these systems until the Department gives us clearer information; even if we knew where the shortages were, we can't pay good candidates enough; and there aren't enough good alternative certification programs. In the appendix, the Education Department responds that it has provided some information but, more importantly, insists that it does not intend to tell states what to do; NCLB is meant to give states flexibility, and the Department sees its role as merely an advisor (and, presumably, enforcer). It seems that the two sides are talking past each other: GAO wants more direction from Washington, while Secretary Paige and his team seek more initiative and innovation from the states. To see for yourself, visit www.gao.gov/new.items/d03631.pdf.

Jane K. Doty, Gregory N. Cameron, and Mary Lee Barton, Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL)
2003

This manual, published by McREL, one of the ten federally-funded regional education labs, is designed to help social studies teachers teach their students the reading skills required to understand social studies texts. Unfortunately, it's grounded in an extremely narrow - and, to our eye, erroneous - set of assumptions about the subject itself: "The study of social studies is much more than memorizing historical facts; geographical statistics; or government, civic, and economic terminology. It is really about problem solving, decision making, reflective inquiry, and critical thinking." The authors even assert that memorizing facts can impede comprehension, because rote memory "stores isolated facts and skills that are unrelated to actual experience" and "probably interferes with the development of understanding." Building on this foundation of conjecture and nonsense, the rest of the text encourages teachers to focus on critical thinking and reading skills that help the student relate everything they read to their everyday lives rather than to impart essential content knowledge that could lay the groundwork for future learning. The Gadfly hasn't enough space to itemize all the curricular and pedagogical folly in this woeful manual, but stay tuned: the Fordham Foundation will soon release a book, Where did Social Studies Go Wrong?, that penetrates to the core of the problems facing this troubled field. Meanwhile, if you want to see an example of those problems, track down the McREL report at http://www.mcrel.org/topics/productDetail.asp?productID=140#.

Gadfly readers know that teacher certification is no guarantee of teacher effectiveness. So our interest was piqued by a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that spotlights a summer school program run largely by students with no formal education training. The program, Summerbridge, aims to get poor, urban kids to stop wasting their summers, provides them with an academically rigorous curriculum, and seeks to get them on track toward college. It appears that the energetic and committed young men and women that work as Summerbridge teachers (most of them undergraduates, even high schoolers) are able keep students motivated to take challenging academic courses and inspired to want to succeed in school and beyond. No, it's not a formal evaluation, but a heartening tale nonetheless.

"Who needs certification?," by Brendan Miniter, Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2003

Breakthrough Collaborative, http://www.summerbridge.org/

With states aflutter over how to meet NCLB's mandate that they must guarantee a "highly qualified teacher in every classroom," two recent reports are illuminating.

Last month, Education Secretary Rod Paige issued his second annual report on teacher quality ("Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge" or see Gadfly's review of this report at http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=29#1444). Though not the conceptual equal of its predecessor (http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/News/teacherprep/AnnualReport.pdf), these 88 pages include edifying reviews of nine promising programs, three involving innovations in "traditional" teacher preparation and six utilizing "alternative routes." Also valuable is Paige's restatement of NCLB's trinitarian provision that, "to be highly qualified, teachers must: hold at least a bachelor's degree from a four-year institution; hold full state certification; and demonstrate competence in their subject area."

Much ink - in statute and report alike - has been spilled on how the last of these requirements can be met, i.e. how subject competence can be demonstrated, based on, in Paige's words, NCLB's recognition of "research findings that teachers' content knowledge is important" and that extant state procedures for verifying that knowledge "were not rigorous enough."

The Secretary's report also devotes several paragraphs to the sleeper issue in NCLB, the leg of the teacher tripod that few states have so far paid attention to: what does it mean to "hold full state certification?" It does NOT mean that Washington wants states to persist in their traditional approaches, long on pedagogy and ed-school attendance. As Dr. Paige reminds his readers, "the law was markedly less explicit about what it means to have full state certification. In fact, both the statute and the Department's regulations are silent on the issue. States have flexibility, then, ...to consider major revisions to existing systems. If states want to, they can dramatically streamline their processes and create alternative routes to full state certification that target talented people who would be turned off by traditional preparation and certification programs. In other words, NCLB gives the green light to states that want to lower barriers to the teaching profession."

That's worth repeating: "NCLB gives the green light to states that want to lower barriers to the teaching profession."

That doesn't mean letting anybody enter. Teachers still need to hold a college degree and to demonstrate subject-area competence. But they don't necessarily need to spend a single day in an ed school or pedagogy class and they certainly don't need to endure a conventional four or five year pre-service preparation program. States could, in fact, move to a wholly test-based certification system rather than a time-and-transcript-and-practice-teaching approach. Paige makes this explicit: "States could [for example] decide that individuals who pass the relevant sections of the American Board assessment would be considered fully certified to teach, regardless of where they learned the important knowledge and skills that were tested. These teachers could thus be considered 'highly qualified' under the law."

Talk about a stake through the heart of the ed school cartel! But Secretary Paige - himself a onetime ed school dean - isn't the only one driving such stakes today. From Denver, the mainstream Education Commission of the States recently issued a major report entitled "Eight Questions on Teacher Preparation: What Does the Research Say?" This substantial volume reviews 92 empirical studies that passed muster with ECS analysts as basing conclusions on "systematic observation rather than from articles that are based on opinion and use other studies for support."

ECS has done so thorough and dispassionate a review of the available evidence that it's worth restating the first five questions and summarizing the analysts' answers. (There was insufficient decent research on the final three questions to draw any conclusions.)

Q. To what extent does subject knowledge contribute to the effectiveness of a teacher?
A. The research on this topic...provides moderate support for the importance of solid subject-matter knowledge.... As important as strong subject-matter knowledge seems to be, teacher preparation programs do not appear to be doing an adequate job of ensuring that their graduates have it.

Q. To what extent does pedagogical coursework contribute to a teacher's effectiveness?
A. The research provides limited support for the conclusion that preparation in pedagogy can contribute significantly to effective teaching.... It is not clear from the research..., however, whether such knowledge and skills are best acquired through coursework, field experience (especially student teaching) or on the job.... Moreover, the uncertainty about the ability of preservice preparation to ensure the solid acquisition of core pedagogical skills opens the door to the consideration of alternative preparation routes, which emphasize on-the-job training and have a limited preservice component.

Q. To what extent does high-quality field-based experience prior to certification contribute to a teacher's effectiveness?
A. There is relatively little disagreement that practical experience is extremely important in learning to teach.... It remains unclear, however, what constitutes effective field experience and what impact it has relative to other components of teacher preparation programs...The research...fails to support any confident conclusions about the effectiveness of different kinds of field experiences.

Q. Are there "alternative route" programs that graduate high percentages of effective new teachers with average or higher-than-average rates of teacher retention?
A. Overall, the research provides limited support for the conclusion that there are indeed alternative programs that produce cohorts of teachers who are ultimately as effective as traditionally trained teachers.

Q. Are there any teacher preparation strategies that are likely to increase the effectiveness of new teachers in hard-to-staff or low-performing schools?
A. The very few studies that met the criteria for this report provide limited support for the conclusion that deliberate efforts to prepare teachers to teach in urban, low-performing schools can be beneficial.

What does this add up to? Most obviously, to a need for wide-ranging experimentation and additional research in teacher preparation. Frightfully little is known with any certainty about what knowledge, skills and experience work for teachers and even less is known about how best to ensure that they acquire these things. This should lead states to cast off the shackles that chain them to ancient ways of preparing and certifying teachers and bring them instead to a fresh appreciation of Secretary Paige's point: that NCLB leaves them free to define "fully certified" however they like, not necessarily as they have habitually done. Though confusedly reported in the press, this excellent ECS study, as I read it, vindicates those who say "teachers need subject matter knowledge and they need practical experience and they MAY also need some pedagogical knowledge, but nothing we know today is compelling enough to restrict us to accustomed ways of trying to provide new teachers with these things."

Though the General Accounting Office deplores such flexibility and craves more guidance and uniformity emanating from Washington (see review below), this strikes me as a grand moment for innovation and experimentation in teacher preparation and certification. The executive branch is encouraging precisely that. But how many states will have the vision and the gumption? How many will instead let themselves be mau-maued into submission by vested interests that don't want them to change? Or sit on their hands, waiting for Uncle Sam to tell them what to do?

If you're planning some summer reading, allow us to suggest "An Impossible Job? The View from the Urban Superintendent's Chair." This superb report, funded by the Wallace Foundation and produced via the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education by a team led by former Milwaukee superintendent (and current Marquette professor and Black Alliance for Educational Options head) Howard Fuller, should be required reading for every urban school reformer in America. Based on data from focus groups and a survey of the superintendents of 100 major urban districts, it argues (in 90 pages) that the superintendent's job must be rethought from top to bottom; that the recruitment and training of superintendents needs a total overhaul; that the role of school boards has to change radically; and that huge alterations are called for in the structure and functioning of school systems. If, that is, we're serious about urban schools producing better results. You should read and ponder this report, at the core of which is the contention that today's superintendents do not have authority that even begins to equal their responsibility and the demands being placed upon their jobs. Here are some highlights:

• "Big-city superintendents require all the skills and talents that leaders elsewhere in government, business, and charitable organizations draw on. Of course, they need to know something specific about schooling. But they also need to be able to work comfortably with politics, finance, management, and setting directions in large, complex organizations. Nothing in the results reported here supports the idea that the people best able to learn the skills required of a superintendent are those who started out as teachers and worked their way up through the system. . . . [P]eople who start out in the classroom and administration may be put at a disadvantage when it comes time to manage the enterprise and learn these new skills. Leaders who start out in other fields need to learn about schooling. But they can learn what they need to know immediately before or after they take on a superintendent's position. It is equally true that traditionally trained superintendents need to learn politics, finance, management, and vision. But what they have to learn about these issues is so much more complex than what nontraditional superintendents have to learn about schooling, that it is possible they start their new jobs at a disadvantage. . . ."
• "The list of changes endorsed by overwhelming majorities of the respondents is daunting. They would limit board discretion, create more charter schools, enter into contracts to establish more schools, close buildings and reassign staff, deregulate budgets, and provide greater authority (along with accountability) at the building level. It is doubtful that such far-reaching and politically painful reforms would have commanded a majority among school superintendents a decade ago. Yet today, among urban superintendents, two-thirds or more agree with all these proposals."
• "[D]istrict reform cannot be carried out in a vacuum that ignores the state. Governance needs to be reshaped and doing so will require many different groups to take action. Governors, legislators, local elected officials, policy groups, and foundations interested in school reform all have a role to play."
• "If urban superintendents are to be expected to improve student achievement and close the achievement gap, a constellation of changes is required to empower superintendents: more authority over central office staff, hiring, and performance assessment; a greater say in defining district mission; explicit power to hire, assign, and fire school principals; authority to put the best teachers where they can do the most good; more authority over district funds. . . ."
• [S]uperintendents need more stable boards-and schools and communities deserve them. A sort of romance about school boards exists in the United States implying that their election is the embodiment of democratic ideals. . . . But . . . there is no a priori reason to think that elected boards are essential to this public service. . . . It may be time to consider board appointment as the best way to ensure public oversight of large districts, with senior local elected officials doing the appointing and being held accountable for board performance."

There's much more, including many points (about superintendents and, especially, principals and where to find and how to empower them) that parallel the recent Fordham-Broad "manifesto," "Better Leaders for America's Schools." Other findings and recommendations go further, however, such as the Fuller report's observation that 70 percent of superintendents would bar corporate and union PAC funding from school board elections.

This exceptionally timely and important report says, in effect, that while we need superb leaders for urban (and other) school systems, it won't do simply to seek super-heroes to slot into current jobs. The jobs themselves must profoundly change. And that means a great deal more in public education must change, too. - Chester E. Finn, Jr.

"An impossible job? The view from the urban superintendent's chair," by Howard Fuller and others, Center for Reinventing Public Education, July 2003

"Study: school leaders feel left behind," Associated Press, July 29, 2003

Gadfly is pleased to note that Phoebe Cottingham has been named commissioner of the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance at the Department of Education (within the new Institute for Education Sciences that replaced the old Office of Educational Research and Improvement). Besides being smart, dynamic, and savvy, Cottingham has long been known to education reformers as an exceptionally foresighted program officer at the Smith Richardson Foundation, which - largely through her labors - has been at the forefront of efforts to bring serious research design (especially "randomized field trials") to K-12 education. Washington will benefit from her knowledge and experience. At the Department of Education, she'll head efforts to evaluate key federal programs, including Title I and Reading First. She'll also have the thankless job of trying to bring sense and rigor to the activities of the ten "regional education laboratories" that have been around forever and that are a deeply entrenched establishment themselves. (A recent report on reading in social studies, produced by one of these labs, is reviewed below. It gives you a good sense of what's wrong with these outfits.) Kudos to Drs. Paige and Whitehurst for having the courage to put a serious researcher in charge of the department's self-assessment.

"Cottingham named commissioner for education evaluation and regional assistance," U.S. Department of Education press release, July 24, 2003

First, there was the Bush administration's proposal to reform Head Start. [See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=10#350.] That proved too strong for the House, which watered the measure down. [For that sad tale, see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=2#58.] Even this weak brew barely passed the House 217-216 (thanks to opponent Richard Gephardt, who missed the vote while campaigning). Now Senate Democrats have decided that even the tepid House version is too hot to handle. They would drop the 8-state experiment (intended to enable states to coordinate Head Start with other pre-school programs), even as Connecticut's Chris Dodd calls for doubling the program's budget. Tennessee's Lamar Alexander has offered an interesting proposal to create 200 "Centers of Excellence" that would showcase successful Head Start programs. States would have a role in nominating these exemplary programs but would not themselves be put in charge of Head Start. Engaging states big-time in Head Start planning and management seems dead. What remains in question is whether Congress will have the gumption to mandate a stronger pre-literacy focus for this 38-year old program. What's the matter with that? The Head Start establishment doesn't want to change anything at all and Head Start workers don't want to go back to college to learn how to teach children to get ready to read. Shame on them.

"Dodd seeks to beef up Head Start," by Joseph Straw, New Haven Register, July 30, 2003

"Senators offer alternatives to House idea on Head Start," by Diana Jean Schemo, New York Times, July 29, 2003

Jane K. Doty, Gregory N. Cameron, and Mary Lee Barton, Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL)
2003

This manual, published by McREL, one of the ten federally-funded regional education labs, is designed to help social studies teachers teach their students the reading skills required to understand social studies texts. Unfortunately, it's grounded in an extremely narrow - and, to our eye, erroneous - set of assumptions about the subject itself: "The study of social studies is much more than memorizing historical facts; geographical statistics; or government, civic, and economic terminology. It is really about problem solving, decision making, reflective inquiry, and critical thinking." The authors even assert that memorizing facts can impede comprehension, because rote memory "stores isolated facts and skills that are unrelated to actual experience" and "probably interferes with the development of understanding." Building on this foundation of conjecture and nonsense, the rest of the text encourages teachers to focus on critical thinking and reading skills that help the student relate everything they read to their everyday lives rather than to impart essential content knowledge that could lay the groundwork for future learning. The Gadfly hasn't enough space to itemize all the curricular and pedagogical folly in this woeful manual, but stay tuned: the Fordham Foundation will soon release a book, Where did Social Studies Go Wrong?, that penetrates to the core of the problems facing this troubled field. Meanwhile, if you want to see an example of those problems, track down the McREL report at http://www.mcrel.org/topics/productDetail.asp?productID=140#.

Marvin Kosters and Brent Mast, American Enterprise Institute Press
2003

This 127-page American Enterprise Institute study drives multiple nails into the coffin of the Federal Title I program as it operated from 1965 to 2001 - and holds out only limited hope that NCLB-mandated changes will cause it work better. The authors refuse to view Title I as simply a resource-transfer program and insist that its stated purpose is to narrow the achievement gaps between poor and non-poor and minority and non-minority youngsters. After reviewing reams of data and many earlier studies, they conclude, "The weight of the evidence in our study points to (1) little or no positive effects of Title I on achievement and (2) no convincing indication of improvement over time." They know the program isn't going away, however, so they speculate as to what might make it work better. They hold out scant hope for policies that rely on "establishing goals, setting time schedules, monitoring performance, specifying remedies, and assessing penalties." That's the historic approach of Title I and it simply hasn't worked. They're moderately more bullish about a "testing and information strategy" that empowers parents and communities with additional data about school performance and gives kids more educational options. NCLB's limited provisions along the latter lines "provide the main reasons for optimism about improving the contribution of Title I." The authors suggest, however, that a far better idea would be a comprehensive experiment with full-fledged, fully financed school choice for disadvantaged youngsters. That idea, of course, was dropped from NCLB by Congress - too "controversial" - and is currently on shaky ground with respect to the District of Columbia. In any case, if you want a cogent, hard-nosed (but highly technical) review of 38 years of Title I evidence, this book is the answer to your prayers. The ISBN is 0844771651 and you can get additional information at http://www.aei.org/publications/bookID.409/book_detail.asp.

Nelson Smith, Progressive Policy Institute
July 9, 2003

California's decade-old public charter school program is one of the largest in the land. And, according to this summary of the evidence, the Golden State's 415 charter schools have nearly closed the achievement gap with the state's "century-old district system," while helping youngsters who need it most. Three recent studies utilizing schools' Academic Performance Index (API) show "striking progress" among students in California's charter schools and lead author Nelson Smith (now at New American Schools) to argue that charter schools "do a much better job than other public schools of improving academic performance of at-risk students." Yet California's charters face a wide range of obstacles. Smith criticizes California's 1992 charter school law for giving local districts too much control and providing too little oversight on how charter schools should be managed. Ending district monopolization of charter authorization (a major recommendation of the recent Fordham study on charter authorizers, available at http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/Full_report_no_embargo_notice.pdf), replicating effective charter schools and facilitating the creation of new ones, and establishing charter districts are among the reforms recommended here. For more information, see http://www.ppionline.org/documents/CA_Charters_0703.pdf.

United States General Accounting Office
July 2003

The title of this short report tells you just about all you need to know, which is that many states and districts are clueless about how to ensure that all teachers of core subjects are "highly qualified," as NCLB requires by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. The GAO hoped to determine what preparations they were making, so it surveyed and visited a wide sample of district and state officials. The answers were uniformly woeful: the Department of Education's guidelines are confusing; we lack systems to compare the credentials of our teachers to their subject areas; we can't create these systems until the Department gives us clearer information; even if we knew where the shortages were, we can't pay good candidates enough; and there aren't enough good alternative certification programs. In the appendix, the Education Department responds that it has provided some information but, more importantly, insists that it does not intend to tell states what to do; NCLB is meant to give states flexibility, and the Department sees its role as merely an advisor (and, presumably, enforcer). It seems that the two sides are talking past each other: GAO wants more direction from Washington, while Secretary Paige and his team seek more initiative and innovation from the states. To see for yourself, visit www.gao.gov/new.items/d03631.pdf.