The Education Gadfly Weekly

Gregg Vanourek, Charter School Leadership Council
May 2005

The CSLC and charter school expert Gregg Vanourek have produced a terrific guide to the charter movement that should find a home on the bookshelf of any education reformer. Its purpose isn't to provide new research or data but rather to offer one-stop-shopping for those seeking the best available information about the charter school world. To offer just a sampling, it provides data on the number of charters (3,400), their enrollment (300,000), waiting lists (39 percent have them, averaging 135 students each), and locations (more than half are in three states, California, Arizona, and Florida). One learns that 10 percent of these schools are managed by EMOs, perhaps as many as 14 percent use the Core Knowledge method, and 16 percent were converted from existing public schools. Twenty-seven states have caps on charters; about half of traditional schools have started new programs in response to charter competition; and half of all authorizers work with just a single charter school. Of paramount interest to some charter followers, it summarizes the research on academic achievement (leaning heavily on Bryan Hassel's meta-analysis), noting the mixed but "encouraging" results. There's much more and you'd be well served by downloading a copy. Though it doesn't offer a fancy layout, the brief explanations interspersed with useful charts and graphs make it an easy read. It also lays bare the gaps in current research by suggesting issues for future study. Perhaps most notably, it stands in stark contrast to the inane debates persisting in such places as The American Prospect (click here, for example). Point being: charters are here, get used to them, and let's understand what they are and do. It's a big PDF, but definitely worth the download time. You can find it here.

Bible Literacy Project
May 2005

What do Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, William Blake, John Winthrop, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King have in common? The works of all these writers are deeply imbued with the phrases and rhythms of the Bible. Not to know the Bible is to be unable to grapple successfully with a sizable chunk of Western literature and philosophy. But schools are understandably confused about legal issues surrounding the Bible's presence in the classroom and teachers worry about giving offense or being sued. That's a tremendous loss to students who are being denied access to an important cultural artifact - a loss for cultural literacy that the Bible Literacy Project is attempting to rectify. This month, the Templeton-funded project (which has the support of both major Christian churches and the ACLU) released this survey of students and teachers to test their knowledge of important stories, phrases, and concepts from the Bible. Results are decidedly mixed. Almost three-quarters of students know that Moses "led the Israelites out of bondage," while more than 90 percent know who Adam and Eve are. (Unfortunately, 8 percent "believe that Moses is one of the twelve Apostles.") But get beyond a few key concepts, as David Gelernter notes in the Weekly Standard, and knowledge falls off dramatically - two-thirds of teens couldn't identify the phrase "Blessed are the poor in spirit" from the Sermon on the Mount, while similar numbers were ignorant of phrases such as "the road to Damascus" or such stories as David and Saul. This fall, BLP will be releasing a textbook, The Bible and American Civilization, which we're eager to review. You can get this survey here.

"Bible illiteracy in America," by David Gelernter, Weekly Standard, May 23, 2005

Bruce O. Boston, America Youth Policy Forum and Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
2005

This semi-sensible manifesto calls for a focus on civic engagement in our schools. It argues that training students to be engaged citizens should be given the same importance as "core subjects" such as reading and math. Importantly, it distinguishes civic education from civic engagement and focuses on the latter. Thus it lauds service learning, providing evidence of its academic benefits and highlighting some programs worth emulating. To us, the key is to not let such "applied" civic learning supplant the important work of teaching content, and in this the report strikes a decent balance, paying reasonable attention to knowledge and content. And though they want to teach "the whole child," they are not so foolish as to believe that this is solely the job of schools. You can find it online here.

The Teaching Commission
April 2005

The latest Teaching Commission poll takes the temperature of both the general public and teachers with regard to its primary concerns: boosting and changing teacher compensation, raising standards and increasing accountability, and improving professional development and training. Overall, the poll finds broad public support for such initiatives, including a compensation system that provides "larger increases for teachers who improve student achievement, raise teaching standards, and increase accountability for teachers." However, only 16 percent of adults identify teacher quality as a main problem facing public schools, and in their own schools, 64 percent rate the quality of teachers as "excellent or good," a figure at odds with well-known data on out-of-field teaching and related matters. The survey captures the great challenge facing education reformers: many folks agree that those schools need improvement while insisting that my school is doing just fine. To read the complete findings, click here.

J. Carl Setzer, Laurie Lewis, and Bernard Greene, National Center for Education Statistics
March 2005

NCES has released the first report that gives a nationally representative study of technology-based distance education and its availability, course offerings, and enrollment patterns. The study also examines the technologies used to deliver distance education, the reasons such classes are developed, and hindrances that districts face in expanding distance education. Specifically, in school year 2002-3, 36 percent of districts and 9 percent of schools had students enrolled in distance education, disproportionately (but logically) in rural areas. Unfortunately, technology moves faster than NCES, so one can only wonder how much more distance learning has spread in the ensuing two years. But have a look, if you like, by clicking here.

A new report from the Yale University Child Study Center (see here) finds that pre-Kindergarten students are being expelled from their programs at rates much higher than students in K-12 are expelled from school. "For every 1,000 preschoolers enrolled in state pre-K programs, 6.67 are being tossed out of school, compared with 2.09 per 1,000 students in elementary, middle, and high schools, according to the research," reports Education Week. Four-year-olds were 50 percent more likely to be ousted than two- or three-year-olds, and African-American children were twice as likely to be expelled as whites or Hispanics. But the real losers are boys, who are expelled at a rate four-and-a-half times greater than that for girls. Pre-K educators blame undisciplined and badly parented kids who are fed a steady diet of TV and video games, while the report's authors suggest that untrained pre-K teachers are ill-equipped to deal with aggressive behavior. Wherever this "blame" is properly assigned - and we surmise that it belongs in many places - the situation bodes ill for the elementary schools that will shortly be required to deal with students who've been expelled before they made it to Kindergarten, and for efforts to expand pre-K access as a tool to close achievement gaps.

"Preschoolers expelled from school at rates exceeding that of K-12," by Linda Jacobson, Education Week, May 18, 2005

"Study finds higher expulsion rates for pre-Kindergarteners," National Public Radio, May 17, 2005 (audio link)

"Pint size terrors," by Kathleen Lucadamo, New York Daily News, May 7, 2005

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is bent on ending teacher tenure as we know it. If legislators won't budge, he's gathered signatures to put it on the ballot and let voters decide. "If they don't do their job," quoth the Gubernator, "then we go to special election without any doubt."

It's enough to make one ask: What is tenure and why do teachers have it? Where did this peculiar custom come from and what exactly is the matter with it?

Tenure, of course, means you have a guaranteed job and salary, year after year, pretty much unrelated to your performance. Sure, the job itself may be eliminated if a school is closed or the system shrinks. And if you do something horrendous—a criminal or moral offense, say—you might be terminated despite your tenure. But such things are rare and painful. The norm for tenured employees is that their job and paycheck are assured from one year to the next and while their performance might be evaluated, it has little bearing on their employment or salary.

Tenure in modern America is found, with minor exceptions, in four places: the civil service, the judiciary, universities, and schools. Everybody else has a contract or is some sort of at-will employee.

The history of tenure for university professors is bound up in the long saga of academic freedom and its protection. Traces can be found in battles over governance of the earliest European universities, but it's mainly a 20th century development, famously enshrined in a 1940 "statement of principles" by the American Association of University Professors, which held that "After the expiration of a probationary period, teachers or investigators should have permanent or continuous tenure, and their service should be terminated only for adequate cause, except in the case of retirement for age, or under extraordinary circumstances because of financial exigencies." This principle was tested during the McCarthy era and today is generally adhered to on college campuses, at least for those in "tenure track" positions.

One can wonder whether a principle that made sense where learning was rare and learned people were vulnerable still applies to a land that employs over a million faculty members for its 16 million university students. One can question whether such a principle was more important back when nearly every professor was an active contributor to the store of human knowledge than today when campuses abound in nine-hour-a-week instructors whose "scholarly" contributions could fit into (and be less valuable than) a Kleenex box.

Moreover, tenure sometimes shields professors who do outrageous things. Recent squalid examples include an alleged terrorist on the faculty of the University of South Florida and that contemptible fellow at the University of Colorado who described the 9/11 victims as "little Eichmanns." The former malefactor was eventually dismissed; the latter's case is in the hands of a faculty committee charged with looking into "research misconduct." But for tenure, I doubt he'd be handled so gently.

The good news is that, in the typical university, "getting tenure" is a big deal. Ordinarily, an instructor or assistant professor must strive for five to seven years to demonstrate his/her scholarly prowess and productivity, as well as (often but not always) classroom skills. An elaborate review and judgment process is followed before tenure is conferred, and every year thousands of youngish academics learn that they are not going to get it and must therefore seek work elsewhere.

Tenure in public schools is vastly easier to get. In most of the U.S. today, under state law, it comes more or less automatically after two to four years of employment by a school system. In many cases, the third or fourth year's teaching contract lasts forever. Which means, in hundreds of thousands of cases, the person getting tenure is in his/her mid-twenties, has accomplished little other than to survive a few years in the classroom, and has not been judged by anyone other than a supervisor or principal. Whereupon one has a job indefinitely in that school system, assuming one wants to stay.

Some states now deny that they tenure schoolteachers, but in fact nearly all of them use other terms for essentially the same thing: "continuing contracts" or "due process procedures" under which a teacher is presumed to have ongoing employment unless the school system goes through a costly, burdensome and time consuming dismissal process. (You can find a compilation of state-specific information here.)

Teacher tenure weakens the quest for quality K-12 education in five ways:

First, it removes a powerful incentive for teachers to strive throughout their careers to "leave no child behind." By eradicating risk to the teacher's own job security, tenure means, in practice, that the student is far more apt to be held accountable for learning than are those who teach him—and that real school-based accountability (including the restructurings and interventions built into NCLB) carry scant real-world significance for teachers.

Second, though it's probably true that few experienced teachers are lemons, the very existence of tenure gives the entire occupation the reputation of protecting its incompetents rather than self-policing and quality-controlling.

Third, the fact that tenure arrives with the fourth or fifth year's contract gives school systems an undesirable incentive to keep restocking their classrooms with beginning teachers so as to avoid overburdening their ranks (and budgets) with people who then have the right to stick around forever.

Fourth, because teacher tenure is given so rapidly, so automatically, and at such a young age, winning it is no great accomplishment and signifies no particular prowess or ability as a teacher.

Fifth, because tenure is specific to individual school systems, it discourages teacher mobility. In a highly mobile society, that deters able people from entering and staying in the teaching field if, for example, they imagine one day relocating from Trenton to Tucson. It also makes personnel management harder for school systems, particularly in shrinking communities where virtually every teacher may now be tenured—and where it's unrealistic for the superintendent to suggest that someone consider moving from, say, a declining inner city system to a booming exurban opportunity.

Schwarzenegger's right. Tenure and its equivalent may make sense for federal judges but not for public school teachers.

"Reform plans head to ballot," by Harrison Sheppard, Los Angeles Daily News, May 11, 2005

"Don't count out 'Governator Schwarzenegger,'" by Chuck DeVore, Human Events, May 16, 2005

"Eight state initiatives await final approval," by Jeff Katz, California Aggie, May 16, 2005

The Kansas State Board of Education has just wrapped up its evolution trial. Proponents of "intelligent design" have pushed the state to present a "more critical" view of evolution in Kansas classrooms and to move away from the definition of science in the state standards as a search for "natural explanations," which they say represents an endorsement of naturalism and atheism. It is this last part that should have scientists especially worried. If not natural explanations, will science be based on supernatural explanations? Biblical? The majority of scientists on the state's curriculum review committee opposes efforts to revise the state's standards, but largely refused to testify on grounds that the hearings were a set-up. The confession of state board member Kathy Martin that she has never actually read the report from Kansas' curriculum committee on science standards, lends credibility to the charge that the fix is in. She explains, "I'm not a word-for-word reader in this kind of technical information." Well, Fordham is a word-for-word reader and we'll be releasing an evaluation of state science standards later this year, so perhaps we'll take that task on for Ms. Martin. Expect a final decision from the Kansas state board during the summer.

"No quick vote foreseen in evolution teaching," by Diane Carroll, Kansas City Star, May 11, 2005

"What matters in Kansas," by William Saletan, Slate, May 11, 2005

"A real monkey trial," by Peter Dizikes, Salon.com, May 13, 2005

"The evolution of creationism," New York Times, May 17, 2005

Given Gadfly's many doubts about Mayor Michael Bloomberg's education efforts (see "A rush to judgment?"), we pondered how to present the news that proficiency scores for Big Apple fourth graders have jumped 10 percent this year (accompanied by a slight dip among eighth graders). We considered quoting the late Senator Russell Long's apothegm that even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while. We pondered voicing widespread doubts about inordinate numbers of ELL students who were exempted from the test. We contemplated cautioning that it's comparatively easy to effect gains in fourth grade but unless they're sustained in eighth grade (and beyond) they're just a candle in a cave. In the end, however, let us simply note that we're pleased to see these gains in New York, as we are everywhere they actually occur.

"Literacy test scores rise for urban students in N.Y.," by David Herszenhorn, New York Times, May 18, 2005

Much has been said about the specious nature of official high school graduation rates promulgated by states, districts, and the feds (see here for Jay Greene's February 2005 report on the subject). The message is beginning to take hold. This week, the Indianapolis Star is running a great 7-part series about Indiana's graduation rates that reveals that a mere 34 percent of Indianapolis Public School students graduate, as opposed to the "official" IPS figure of 90 percent. In California, Mike Piscal (of the Inner City Education Foundation and View Park Prep Charter Schools in California) lists some dismaying statistics for South Los Angeles on the new blog, The Huffington Post. He writes plaintively, "There are 3,950 students in the ninth grade at four major area high schools. . . . Only around 1,600 graduate. . . . Over 2,300 drop out. . . . How or why are our public schools in South Los Angeles so utterly broken?" The Rocky Mountain News puts a human face on Denver's woeful graduation rates in a series that looks at a specific group of eighth graders. Of these students, only one in three earned a diploma on time. More and more people are discovering that (as the Star editors put it), "Inflated graduation numbers have lulled the public into believing dropping out is rare. It's not. And thousands of young people are suffering the consequences."

"Missing in action," Indianapolis Star, May 15, 2005

"Dropout factories," Indianapolis Star, May 16, 2005

"Suburban epidemic," Indianapolis Star, May 17, 2005 

"'Educational genocide,'" Indianapolis Star, May 18, 2005

"Early warning signs," Indianapolis Star, May 19, 2005

"A class divided," by Burt Hubbard, Rocky Mountain News, May 16, 2005

"I will name names," by Mike Piscal, The Huffington Post, May 12, 2005

The Christian Science Monitor reports a resurgence of interest in spelling in American classrooms, a subject which, according to author and spelling zealot Richard Gentry, was dealt a setback by whole-language instruction in the 1980s. Recent emphasis on basic skills has prompted "more teachers to return to explicit spelling instruction - instead of simply assuming that it's a skill that kids will pick up as they go along." According to Gentry, "Spelling . . . is proving much more important than we've ever thought it to be." Welcome, folks - reality is where Gadfly has lived for years (though we only learned to spell it recently). Unfortunately, as matters alphabetic improve here, they're deteriorating across the pond. The London Telegraph reports that 600,000 English 14-year-olds won't be penalized for incorrect spelling on their major writing exam, mainly because "ministers are particularly concerned about exam results this year." English teacher Andrew Cunningham noted, "All teachers are having to spend time going over these basics, which should have been sorted out at an earlier age." So, although the Brits beat us in math (see "This PISA is falling"), we'll put our money on the U.S. in the event of a trans-Atlantic spelling bee.

"Spelling makes a comeback," by Stacy A. Teicher, Christian Science Monitor, May 17, 2005

"Incorrect spelling will not be penalised in English tests," by Julie Henry, London Telegraph, May 17, 2005

Bible Literacy Project
May 2005

What do Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, William Blake, John Winthrop, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King have in common? The works of all these writers are deeply imbued with the phrases and rhythms of the Bible. Not to know the Bible is to be unable to grapple successfully with a sizable chunk of Western literature and philosophy. But schools are understandably confused about legal issues surrounding the Bible's presence in the classroom and teachers worry about giving offense or being sued. That's a tremendous loss to students who are being denied access to an important cultural artifact - a loss for cultural literacy that the Bible Literacy Project is attempting to rectify. This month, the Templeton-funded project (which has the support of both major Christian churches and the ACLU) released this survey of students and teachers to test their knowledge of important stories, phrases, and concepts from the Bible. Results are decidedly mixed. Almost three-quarters of students know that Moses "led the Israelites out of bondage," while more than 90 percent know who Adam and Eve are. (Unfortunately, 8 percent "believe that Moses is one of the twelve Apostles.") But get beyond a few key concepts, as David Gelernter notes in the Weekly Standard, and knowledge falls off dramatically - two-thirds of teens couldn't identify the phrase "Blessed are the poor in spirit" from the Sermon on the Mount, while similar numbers were ignorant of phrases such as "the road to Damascus" or such stories as David and Saul. This fall, BLP will be releasing a textbook, The Bible and American Civilization, which we're eager to review. You can get this survey here.

"Bible illiteracy in America," by David Gelernter, Weekly Standard, May 23, 2005

Bruce O. Boston, America Youth Policy Forum and Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
2005

This semi-sensible manifesto calls for a focus on civic engagement in our schools. It argues that training students to be engaged citizens should be given the same importance as "core subjects" such as reading and math. Importantly, it distinguishes civic education from civic engagement and focuses on the latter. Thus it lauds service learning, providing evidence of its academic benefits and highlighting some programs worth emulating. To us, the key is to not let such "applied" civic learning supplant the important work of teaching content, and in this the report strikes a decent balance, paying reasonable attention to knowledge and content. And though they want to teach "the whole child," they are not so foolish as to believe that this is solely the job of schools. You can find it online here.

Gregg Vanourek, Charter School Leadership Council
May 2005

The CSLC and charter school expert Gregg Vanourek have produced a terrific guide to the charter movement that should find a home on the bookshelf of any education reformer. Its purpose isn't to provide new research or data but rather to offer one-stop-shopping for those seeking the best available information about the charter school world. To offer just a sampling, it provides data on the number of charters (3,400), their enrollment (300,000), waiting lists (39 percent have them, averaging 135 students each), and locations (more than half are in three states, California, Arizona, and Florida). One learns that 10 percent of these schools are managed by EMOs, perhaps as many as 14 percent use the Core Knowledge method, and 16 percent were converted from existing public schools. Twenty-seven states have caps on charters; about half of traditional schools have started new programs in response to charter competition; and half of all authorizers work with just a single charter school. Of paramount interest to some charter followers, it summarizes the research on academic achievement (leaning heavily on Bryan Hassel's meta-analysis), noting the mixed but "encouraging" results. There's much more and you'd be well served by downloading a copy. Though it doesn't offer a fancy layout, the brief explanations interspersed with useful charts and graphs make it an easy read. It also lays bare the gaps in current research by suggesting issues for future study. Perhaps most notably, it stands in stark contrast to the inane debates persisting in such places as The American Prospect (click here, for example). Point being: charters are here, get used to them, and let's understand what they are and do. It's a big PDF, but definitely worth the download time. You can find it here.

J. Carl Setzer, Laurie Lewis, and Bernard Greene, National Center for Education Statistics
March 2005

NCES has released the first report that gives a nationally representative study of technology-based distance education and its availability, course offerings, and enrollment patterns. The study also examines the technologies used to deliver distance education, the reasons such classes are developed, and hindrances that districts face in expanding distance education. Specifically, in school year 2002-3, 36 percent of districts and 9 percent of schools had students enrolled in distance education, disproportionately (but logically) in rural areas. Unfortunately, technology moves faster than NCES, so one can only wonder how much more distance learning has spread in the ensuing two years. But have a look, if you like, by clicking here.

The Teaching Commission
April 2005

The latest Teaching Commission poll takes the temperature of both the general public and teachers with regard to its primary concerns: boosting and changing teacher compensation, raising standards and increasing accountability, and improving professional development and training. Overall, the poll finds broad public support for such initiatives, including a compensation system that provides "larger increases for teachers who improve student achievement, raise teaching standards, and increase accountability for teachers." However, only 16 percent of adults identify teacher quality as a main problem facing public schools, and in their own schools, 64 percent rate the quality of teachers as "excellent or good," a figure at odds with well-known data on out-of-field teaching and related matters. The survey captures the great challenge facing education reformers: many folks agree that those schools need improvement while insisting that my school is doing just fine. To read the complete findings, click here.