The Education Gadfly Weekly

Susan Sclafani
Education and Society Program, The Aspen Institute
2008

Arising from a multi-year effort by the Aspen Institute to examine the development of human capital in education, this paper offers an in-depth analysis of Singapore's teacher preparation and development system. It uses both the findings of a multi-country Aspen study and the firsthand knowledge of its author, former ED superstar Susan Sclafani, to lay out the ways in which that small Asian land could serve as an example for the U.S. system, despite the vast differences between the two countries. Above all, notes Sclafani, the Singapore system is coherent, manifested literally in its centralized teaching preparation school, the National Institute of Education (NIE), and figuratively in the careful evaluation and choice of specific strategies that make up the nation's education policy. The NIE's rigor and selectivity translate into respect for the teaching profession. Sclafani argues that Teach For America may have captured the same caché that attracts Singapore's top students to NIE; that there are 25,000 eager, smart, and well-educated America college students vying annually for coveted TFA slots, she says, signals kindred readiness and willingness. But being accepted into NIE is just the beginning. During the teacher candidate's practicum ("student teaching" in the U.S.) and the first few years of full time teaching, a Singapore teacher is meticulously evaluated and deeply supported in myriad ways. These are just a few of the strategies that Singapore employs to maintain its top-tier education system and the U.S. would be wise at least to consider. You can read Sclafani's full report here.

Editorial Projects in Education
January 8, 2009

The 13th edition (!) of Education Week's annual report combines the expected state report cards with a special focus on a previously under-studied population: English-language learners (ELLs). The former don't differ much from states' grades in earlier years and we find the nation as whole receiving a less-than-stellar C+ on students' chances-for-success index (we remain doubtful on its validity). On the other hand, its findings on the nation's 4.5 million ELL students are new and interesting. For example, fewer than ten percent of 4th and 8th grade ELLs scored "proficient" or higher on NAEP's math test in 2007--compared to 34 percent of students as a whole. Since ELL enrollments in twenty states more than doubled from 1995 to 2005 and more than one-quarter of ELLs nationally failed to make progress toward English-language proficiency, the report indicates that increased attention is needed in order to understand who ELLs are and what programs and policies are actually working for them. Furthermore, ELLs speak more than 100 native languages and there is a significant shortage of teachers who are fluent in many of those tongues. This report offers a welcome in-depth look at both the challenges and opportunities facing a previously under-studied population. Education Week provides all of it free online to subscribers; printed copies can be obtained for a small fee. All can be accessed here.

National Governors Association, Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve
December 2008

This report recommends five steps that the U.S. should take toward international benchmarking, a move necessitated by an increasingly global economy and job market and America's mediocre performance on tests measuring the skills our students will need to succeed in said global economy. Unlike many similar reports based on international performance, this one (and the initiative behind it) is primarily driven by state leaders. The ideas, as Mike and Checker have already noted, are fundamentally sound. Briefly, the report suggests that we push for common, internationally benchmarked standards among states; ensure that textbooks and other instructional materials are aligned with those standards; model our human capital practices on those of high-performing countries; hold schools and states accountable; and evaluate performance by comparing student achievement and growth internationally. In all cases, we should "draw on lessons from high-performing countries" (see above). For example, most top-performing countries not only carefully align curricula and standards in the same way but also teach similar content in the same order and at the same grade levels. Finally, a review of this report would be remiss without mentioning its emphasis on addressing inequity. Only focusing on "the next generation of elite 'rocket scientists'" isn't sufficient; on the contrary, the authors claim, "closing achievement gaps is not only compatible with a global competitiveness agenda, it is essential for realizing that agenda." You can read the whole manifesto here.

As President-Elect Barack Obama and his Congressional allies shape--and debate--their big economic-stimulus package, governors are pleading with them to include hundreds of billions for state governments that face whopping deficits. Most analysts of the stimulus measure will ask whether such spending will truly goose the economy, whether Obama kept his campaign promises, or how much of the bill is just pork. But those who worry about k-12 education should be asking: will it be good for education reform? And to date there's ample reason to suspect that the answer will be "no."

We cannot yet be certain what will be in the package, although several pieces have already leaked from Team Obama, including investments in school construction and broadband access. But those little amuse bouches will likely be dwarfed by the big entrée: state budget bailouts. Since most states spend one-third to one-half of their funds on education, any federal "revenue sharing" will amount to a huge infusion of cash into public-school classrooms. With Obama advisors hinting that the state portion of the bailout could reach $200 billion, that probably means upwards of $70 billion, maybe $100 billion, for primary-secondary education. Considering that Uncle Sam currently contributes about $40 billion per annum to the public schools, that's a plate-and-tummy filler indeed.

Good deal, right? Well, the teacher unions and school establishment certainly think so. To them, the argument for sparing schools from painful budget cuts is self-evident. One influential Washington-based lobbyist recently explained that education spending is smart because "it actually has the strongest possibility of being able to pay back" the government--when today's students go on to become tax-generating neurosurgeons and white-shoe attorneys rather than welfare chiselers.

Call us skeptics. In concept, of course, well-delivered education eventually yields higher economic output and fewer social ills. But there's scant evidence that an extra dollar invested in today's schools delivers an extra dollar in value--and ample evidence that this kind of bail-out will spare school administrators from hard but overdue choices about how to make their enterprise more effective.

Naturally, the leaders of any organization would rather sidestep problems than confront them. In good times, budgets expand, payrolls grow, new people come on board, and managers defer difficult decisions. Tough times thus serve as a healthful (if bitter) tonic, forcing boards and executives to identify priorities and giving them political cover to trim the fat.

What's unique about public education is that--unlike their private-sector counterparts--few schools districts ever face this day of reckoning. Superintendents squawk when they are told to hold budget growth to "just" one or two percent next year.

Per-pupil spending today is roughly double (in inflation-adjusted terms) what it was in 1983, when the U.S. was declared "a nation at risk." That huge increase in public outlays has funded all manner of questionable practices, including ever-shrinking class sizes (popular with parents and teachers, to be sure, but mostly unrelated to student achievement); an ever-growing number of teachers and other school employees; a uniform salary schedule that treats incompetents and super-stars identically; an unsustainable pension-and-benefits system; and a tenure scheme that protects instructional dysfunction. In other words, taxpayers have already spent decades funding an enormous, inefficient jobs program.

As the President-elect talks about his desire to create or preserve three million jobs, he should take a careful look at schools to see the perils of uninterrupted job creation. Thanks to instructor ranks having grown twice as fast as student enrollment over the past five decades, we today employ 3.3 million teachers. The result is indeed an "army of teachers," as Obama has promised--but an army with too many mediocrities and where the press of numbers has helped to protect poor performers while making it hard to attract and reward excellent ones.

Education, then, cries out for a good belt-tightening. A truly tough budget situation would force--and enable--administrators to take important steps that they find impossible in sunnier times. They could rethink staffing, reconsider class sizes, trim ineffective personnel, shrink payrolls, consolidate tiny districts, replace some workers with technology, weigh cost-effective alternatives to popular but pricey practices, re-examine laws governing pensions and tenure, and demand concessions from their myriad unions.

A big federal bail-out of school-system budgets will void that opportunity and again defer the day of reckoning. We'll miss a rare chance to make our schools leaner and more effective, and we'll saddle tomorrow's administrators with the same headaches and baggage as today's face. Oh, and of course we'll do all this "for the kids."

Is there a way to make the impending bailout actually do something positive for those kids as well as the nation's economy? Team Obama and its Congressional allies could take a page out of the TARP playbook and require the various education interest groups to "take a haircut," much as auto workers, investors, and shareholders have had to do. Just as the GM-Ford bailout required the U.A.W. to forfeit its beloved "job bank," states taking federal dollars could be required to overhaul their tenure laws, ban "last hired, first fired" rules, experiment with pay-for-performance, make life easier for charter schools, and curb unrealistic pension promises.

Even more promising would be for Team Obama to craft initiatives that meet three criteria: provide targeted aid to taxpayers and families in the short term; make a tangible difference in student learning; and avoid imposing long-term cost burdens that will tie reformers' hands tomorrow.

What might fit that triple bill? For starters, make the summers of 2009 and 2010 into "Summers of Learning." Invest billions to keep schools open from June to August across the land. Offer remedial classes, enrichment programs, sports camps, the works. (Struggling parents will appreciate having a safe, and free, place to send their kids during hard times.) Direct the money to schools but also to non-profit groups like the YMCA and for-profit companies like Sylvan--and encourage schools to team up with such partners. Incorporate a service-learning program whereby teenagers can travel to national parks and landmarks, do valuable public works while there, and get paid a little. Such an effort would get dollars into the economy immediately (via teacher salaries, student stipends, plane tickets, etc.) and address the well-known lag in summer learning for at-risk students. Attach a massive research effort to that initiative, requiring providers to engage in high-quality random-assignment studies and cooperate fully with evaluators, yielding a once-in-a-generation chance to generate knowledge about what works and what doesn't. And as a one-time expenditure, unlike dollars spent simply to preserve teaching slots and class size, this approach won't tie up more dollars downstream.

Building state and local education data systems is another worthwhile one-time investment that even fits under "infrastructure." Such systems can provide teachers and administrators real-time information with which to better serve their students. But developing them takes up-front cash and plenty of staff--though it just so happens that thousands of programmers and analysts are currently seeking work. Done right, this could foster key reforms in the future, such as paying teachers for the value they add to student learning. And unlike building new schools or wiring up old ones, that kind of investment can support all kinds of schools and web-based learning without locking us into brick-and-mortar commitments that we may regret in five or ten years.

Uncle Sam could also invest in creation of world-class national standards, tests, and even curricular materials. (Yes, this will require some statutory rewriting and will give some conservatives conniptions.) Spend serious money for curriculum developers to create fantastic lesson plans, lecture notes, digital materials, and videos of master teachers delivering it all. Make it available online for free, in an open-source manner. Make it market-based by giving bonuses to developers that create the most-used or highest-payoff material.

You get the idea. But will the Obama team?

A version of this piece also appeared on National Review Online.

Gadfly has previously noted the flaws and weaknesses inherent in "21st Century Skills" (here, here and here, for example) and others have done the same but few have been as eloquent and perceptive on this topic as veteran Washington Post journalist Jay Mathews, whose multi-part commentary this week deserves close attention by anyone the least bit tantalized (or mystified) by this juggernaut.

"The Rush for 21st Century Skills," by Jay Mathews, The Washington Post, January 5, 2009

"The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad: 21st Century Skills, The Washington Post, January 5, 2009

If it weren't enough that the "21st century skills" crowd is bent on distracting American educators, they've made a splash on the other side of the pond, too. Faced with complaints that the British primary school curriculum is too traditional (20th century if you will), the government has decided to give it a facelift. Unfortunately, explains The Economist, it seems that "as well as losing fat, education will see a lot of meat go too." Implemented in 1988, the national primary curriculum brought rigor and uniformity to a previously haphazard elementary system. But incorporating cross-disciplinary and social issue classes have come back into fashion and the newly (as of July 2007) formed Department for Children, Schools and Families is battling with how to balance teen pregnancy, child health, juvenile crime, foreign languages and more with English, history, math and the like. Leading the effort is Sir Jim Rose, a former chief inspector of primary schools, who proposed in a December report replacing fourteen subject areas with six woefully mushy and politically correct "learning areas"; history and geography, for example, will become "human, social and environmental understanding." Too bad one in five British students leaves primary school unable to read and write. News flash: classes on eating more fruits and veggies are unlikely to teach them to do so. In sum, The Economist hits the nail on the head when it opines, "You cannot teach children everything. But that is no excuse for teaching them nothing much at all."

"Primary school subjects overhaul," BBC News, December 8, 2008 

"In praise of facts," The Economist, December 11, 2008 

"Please, sir, what's history?," The Economist, December 11, 2008

Education, welcome to the party; Wall Street is over by the bar and Detroit is shaking it on the dance floor. Indeed, with Uncle Sam handing out money like education professors hand out As, it was only a matter of time before schools got in line for a piece of the pie. We've already explained what's wrong with bailing out state education budgets (see above), but the stimulus package's support for school construction deserves attention, too. According to the AFT, schools could do with $255 billion in "maintenance, new construction, renovation and retrofitting for computer technology." The NEA places those costs at $360 billion. It's true that some schools are in dire need of repairs but let's get something straight. These construction projects will not improve student achievement, despite wishful thinking. Spiffy new buildings and shiny new desks do not translate into higher levels of learning. Many a fabulous charter school makes do in cramped quarters, for instance; a series of Taj Mahal-esque school buildings in Kansas City failed to boost either learning or integration in that city; and tiny Third World private schools, operating in spaces we'd barely call a room, let alone a classroom, prove that teaching and learning do not depend on surroundings. The point? If Congress wants to spend stimulus dollars on rebuilding schools instead of bridges, that's fine, but let's call this what it is: a public works project, not an education reform initiative.

"Obama pledges schools upgrade in stimulus plan," by Libby Quaid, Associated Press, December 31, 2008

While we're all in a lather over 21st century skills, the elegant, practical skill known as cursive handwriting appears to be going the way of the horse-and-buggy. The problem is two-fold. First, the advent of technology and its requirements--typing and text messaging--means students are using pen and paper much less than in days of old (you know, the 1980s). But compounding the problem is that schools have stopped teaching cursive to youngsters. Teachers report that when students handwrite assignments, their manuscription is strictly in print, literally; reading cursive is like tackling another language. "It's a bit like going for a root canal for them," explains Mark Bradley, a teacher at Rio Tierra Junior High in Sacramento. On a recent timed writing exercise, just one of Bradley's 65 students wrote in cursive. But does it even matter? Well, if you want to sign your name, enjoy a letter from your grandmother, or read the "secret" cursive notes of an older sibling it is. Furthermore, studies have shown that cursive is important for cognitive development because it requires "fluid movement, eye-hand coordination, and fine motor skill development," explains Frances van Tassell, an associate professor at University of North Texas. Seems flowing penmanship is more than just flowery embellishments; it'll be a sad day when Gadfly's grandchildren can't read his Christmas cards. 

"Some schools refuse to write off cursive," by Melissa Nix, Sacramento Bee, December 30, 2008

"The dying art of cursive," by Megan Downs, Florida Today, December 29, 2008

Editorial Projects in Education
January 8, 2009

The 13th edition (!) of Education Week's annual report combines the expected state report cards with a special focus on a previously under-studied population: English-language learners (ELLs). The former don't differ much from states' grades in earlier years and we find the nation as whole receiving a less-than-stellar C+ on students' chances-for-success index (we remain doubtful on its validity). On the other hand, its findings on the nation's 4.5 million ELL students are new and interesting. For example, fewer than ten percent of 4th and 8th grade ELLs scored "proficient" or higher on NAEP's math test in 2007--compared to 34 percent of students as a whole. Since ELL enrollments in twenty states more than doubled from 1995 to 2005 and more than one-quarter of ELLs nationally failed to make progress toward English-language proficiency, the report indicates that increased attention is needed in order to understand who ELLs are and what programs and policies are actually working for them. Furthermore, ELLs speak more than 100 native languages and there is a significant shortage of teachers who are fluent in many of those tongues. This report offers a welcome in-depth look at both the challenges and opportunities facing a previously under-studied population. Education Week provides all of it free online to subscribers; printed copies can be obtained for a small fee. All can be accessed here.

National Governors Association, Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve
December 2008

This report recommends five steps that the U.S. should take toward international benchmarking, a move necessitated by an increasingly global economy and job market and America's mediocre performance on tests measuring the skills our students will need to succeed in said global economy. Unlike many similar reports based on international performance, this one (and the initiative behind it) is primarily driven by state leaders. The ideas, as Mike and Checker have already noted, are fundamentally sound. Briefly, the report suggests that we push for common, internationally benchmarked standards among states; ensure that textbooks and other instructional materials are aligned with those standards; model our human capital practices on those of high-performing countries; hold schools and states accountable; and evaluate performance by comparing student achievement and growth internationally. In all cases, we should "draw on lessons from high-performing countries" (see above). For example, most top-performing countries not only carefully align curricula and standards in the same way but also teach similar content in the same order and at the same grade levels. Finally, a review of this report would be remiss without mentioning its emphasis on addressing inequity. Only focusing on "the next generation of elite 'rocket scientists'" isn't sufficient; on the contrary, the authors claim, "closing achievement gaps is not only compatible with a global competitiveness agenda, it is essential for realizing that agenda." You can read the whole manifesto here.

Susan Sclafani
Education and Society Program, The Aspen Institute
2008

Arising from a multi-year effort by the Aspen Institute to examine the development of human capital in education, this paper offers an in-depth analysis of Singapore's teacher preparation and development system. It uses both the findings of a multi-country Aspen study and the firsthand knowledge of its author, former ED superstar Susan Sclafani, to lay out the ways in which that small Asian land could serve as an example for the U.S. system, despite the vast differences between the two countries. Above all, notes Sclafani, the Singapore system is coherent, manifested literally in its centralized teaching preparation school, the National Institute of Education (NIE), and figuratively in the careful evaluation and choice of specific strategies that make up the nation's education policy. The NIE's rigor and selectivity translate into respect for the teaching profession. Sclafani argues that Teach For America may have captured the same caché that attracts Singapore's top students to NIE; that there are 25,000 eager, smart, and well-educated America college students vying annually for coveted TFA slots, she says, signals kindred readiness and willingness. But being accepted into NIE is just the beginning. During the teacher candidate's practicum ("student teaching" in the U.S.) and the first few years of full time teaching, a Singapore teacher is meticulously evaluated and deeply supported in myriad ways. These are just a few of the strategies that Singapore employs to maintain its top-tier education system and the U.S. would be wise at least to consider. You can read Sclafani's full report here.