The Education Gadfly Weekly

John Staud, ed.
Alliance for Catholic Education Press
August 2008

Catholic schools may be closing right and left but it's not for lack of recent attention to the situation. 2008 has already brought Fordham's report and a White House summit and report on the topic. Now joining the conversation are the University of Notre Dame and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which in 2007 led a group of academics, philanthropists, religious leaders, and scholars in discussing a renewed effort to sustain and build Catholic education. This product of their gathering showcases remarks from panel presentations and offers reaction from Catholic-school scholars and administrators. In his keynote address to the conference, Carnegie's Lee Shulman argued that Catholic education must "become a robust field of scholarship--including scholarship of teaching and learning, of discovery and invention, of integration, connectedness and meaning, and of application and translations." The volume translates this charge into four primary areas of said field-building: a sustained human capital pipeline, enhanced study of religious education, the role of philanthropy, and models for renewing Catholic schools. Authors discuss tactics, such as university-diocesan partnerships to cultivate teachers and school leaders; reformed leadership curricula that meld Catholic values with standard management and instructional tactics; creation of academic "special interest groups" and scholarly journals for idea exchange; and thoughtful direction and management of philanthropic dollars. Yes, it's pretty wonky, the sort of stuff that academics usually propose, but one theme runs throughout the volume: collecting and analyzing data on best practices in Catholic education. Surely not a bad thing to do. The volume is available for purchase here; to check out presentations from the actual conference, click here.

Frederick M. Hess, ed.
Harvard Education Press
September 2008

This collection explores how to cultivate more effective and quality-conscious educational entrepreneurship. Rick Hess, the volume's fecund and fervent editor, explains: "markets characterized by insufficient quality-control mechanisms, a lack of transparency, a scarcity of human or investment capital, and harmful regulatory and institutional barriers are more likely to produce mediocrity than effective solutions." Since innovation in education has great potential, it is imperative that we ensure that it rises beyond this mediocrity. Hess divides education innovators into two categories: capacity builders, who work on improving schools, and choice-based reformers, who use competition to weed out sub-par practices. The nine chapters discuss both kinds and offer a plethora of solutions: boosting human capital, attracting investment, increasing access to capital and funding, ensuring quality control, improving research and development, and removing barriers that hinder new providers. For example, Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek explore what the education sector can learn from other industries about recruiting, developing, and retaining talent. Larry Berger and David Stevenson of Wireless Generation discuss the barriers to entry for companies (such as their own) that provide learning tools for teachers. Fordham's Checker Finn discusses various forms of education quality control, suggesting that it may take experimentation in order to find the best methods for an entrepreneurial environment. And Hess' own chapter emphasizes that the development of education entrepreneurship requires dual attention to "tools"--products and services that can improve schools, teachers, etc.--and "rules"--the legal inhibitions to the advent and expansion of new ventures. (His recent article in The American provides a quick, helpful overview of this thesis.) The book itself is available to purchase here.

Anna Habash
Education Trust
Fall 2008

This report evaluates the current state of U.S. high school graduation rates and offers ideas for how to raise these historically unsatisfactory numbers. It notes that "the United States is the only industrialized country in the world in which today's young people are less likely than their parents to have completed high school." No doubt prepared to coincide with this week's release of new No Child Left Behind regulations (see above), the report intends to pressure states to aim high when setting their dropout-reduction goals. To that end, author Anna Habash calls out states that expect minimal progress on this front. In Maryland, for example, the 2006 graduation rate was 85.43 percent. But the Free State only requires schools to aim for improvements of 0.01 percent each year in order to stay out of trouble with NCLB. At that pace, Maryland won't reach its goal of a 90 percent graduation rate until 2463. For Maryland African American students, then graduating at 78.89 percent annually, that 90 percent target won't be reached until the year 3117. These are certainly compelling figures (a millennium?!) but raising graduation improvement rates is no panacea and could yield the same unintended consequences that plagued NCLB's "universal proficiency" mandate. Namely: if you require states to get all students or almost all students over any given bar, you create a temptation for them to lower said bar. The result could be diplomas that retain mere appellative vestiges of their former selves. With that cautionary note in mind, you can find the report here.

Dreading the pinch of a tight economy on your state's budget? You're not alone. According to the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, nearly every state experienced flat or declining revenues in the first half of 2008 compared to last year, and 39 states have developed "budget shortfalls"--gaps between expected revenue and planned expenditures. 

Since virtually every state is constitutionally required to balance its books each year, large spending cuts in most states are a near-certainty--and with school spending making up such a large portion of most state budgets, reductions in k-12 education are almost inevitable. Six years ago, the last recession saw more than two-thirds of states cut funding for elementary and secondary schools.

What's an education reformer to do?

For starters, you can tuck away in the back of your drawer the innovative plan that requires billions in new spending. Recessions reward reformers prepared to cut--admittedly a rare breed.
 
Done right--and bravely--recession-induced budget cuts are an opportunity to leave a state's public education system stronger than before. Why? A recession can provide the political will to restructure education systems for the better.
 
Using facts and figures from Connecticut as an example, here are six ways that states and districts can save money by improving efficiency and effectiveness:
 
1. Let Money Follow the Child. Right now, many states are paying school districts to educate children no longer present in their schools. When children leave a district school to go to a charter or magnet school, much of the state funding for that child stays with the district--driving up per pupil costs and forcing the state to spend even more to support these schools of choice because they wind up paying for the same child twice. Those policies were born of political compromise but can die out of fiscal necessity.
 
2. Consolidate Small Districts. District boundaries are drawn for all sorts of reasons, but rarely for the purpose of boosting efficiency and improving performance. According the Boston Consulting Group, districts smaller than 1500 students result in significant inefficiencies that drive up costs without strengthening student outcomes. In Connecticut, 63 of 169 districts have fewer than 1500 students--the result of district boundaries based on town borders established more than two centuries ago. In many cases, basic district services are reinvented and replicated over and over again in a way that raises costs and potentially lowers quality. While not a short-term fix, consolidating large numbers of small districts could have a long-term impact on the bottom line.
 
3. Slash Overhead in Large Districts. While districts under 1500 students suffer from inefficient economies of scale, districts larger than 10000 students often suffer from too much overhead. Anyone who has spent time in a big school district could speedily identify ineffective contractors, poor purchasing decisions, and unnecessary staff. In times of economic health, it's often easier to work around these problems than tackle them head on. But when cuts have to be made, reformers are well positioned to make the case for eliminating positions with little impact on student achievement, canceling underperforming contracts, and devolving more responsibilities and control to the school level through site-based budgeting.
 
4. Right-Size Facilities and Staff for Declining Enrollment. As the first of the "Echo Boom" generation (the children of baby boomers) makes its way out of the school system, the growth in the number of public school students will slow nationally and enter the beginning of a two-decade long decline in more than a dozen states. Last year, the total number of Connecticut students enrolled in public schools declined for the first time in 20 years. Bridgeport saw the largest decline, a drop of 3 percent in one year. By 2020, the number of students in Connecticut public schools will be down 17 percent. Significant savings can be realized by accelerating the shedding of schools and staff no longer needed to serve this smaller student population. When done in conjunction with a results-based framework that makes performance the key driver in the decisions of who and what schools get cut, reductions can also help lift overall performance.
 
5. Upgrade Transportation. While staffing and facilities costs comprise the bulk of education spending, smaller items such as transportation can add considerable costs to the bottom line. Last year, for example, Connecticut spent $558 per pupil on transportation--about 5 percent of total education spending. One approach to reduce costs is simply to make effective bus-contract negotiation a higher priority by ensuring that every contract is put out for competitive bidding and facilitating multidistrict contracts to realize greater economies of scale. A higher-tech approach with the potential for even greater savings would take a page from FedEx and UPS--create highly sophisticated computerized busing routes to minimize fuel usage and maximize efficiency.
 
6. Remove Barriers to Teaching. Recessions are tough on budgets but great for recruitment. Those hard-to-find math and science teachers are about to get at least a little easier to attract as recent grads and mid-career professionals seek more reliable employers in a down market. Last year, Bridgeport made news with a new program to import math teachers from India to fill its recruiting shortfall. This year, it may find more takers just by walking the ivied corridors of Yale. You won't necessarily need special bonuses or a larger recruitment budget to take advantage of this counter-cyclical opportunity, but you will need to embrace alternative pathways to certification and nonprofit programs such as Teach For America and The New Teacher Project that make it easier for non-ed-school graduates to enter the classroom.
 
These changes are not only a necessary response to a downturn in state revenue, but sound reforms in their own right that will help ratchet up the return on our public education dollars. When applied with rigor, they may also save enough money to keep new investments alive and growing in an economic downturn, whether it's the new KIPP or Achievement First school you're trying to woo to town, an upgraded state data system to better track student performance, or the support programs needed to turn around failing schools. And when the economy recovers and tax revenues follow suit, you will be well positioned to build upon this new, leaner, more efficient education system that you helped create when times were tough.

Marc Porter Magee, Ph.D. is the director of communications and research at the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN). He can be reached at [email protected].

There's plenty of evidence that state and municipal budgets are strapped these days, due to shrinking tax revenues from a faltering economy, declining property values, etc. It's also clear that a number of school systems are feeling the pinch. (See here and here, for example.)

In some places, particularly in the northeast and midwest, the revenue shortfall is exacerbated by eroding enrollments resulting from large-scale demographics and from people moving to more salubrious, prosperous (and, often, less heavily taxed) locales.

The question du jour is how, besides complaining and asking for more levies and such, are U.S. school systems responding to the fiscal crush.

Not well, it appears--and not surprisingly, because we've known for ages that they, like other public sector entities, are really great at growing and adding but really bad at shrinking and cutting. That's because the conventional wisdom in educator-land is that any reductions are bound to damage the quality of schooling, maybe even the level of student performance.

Yet the conventional wisdom sometimes harbors fallacies and illusions, too. Half a dozen such sophisms may be at work here.

First, the long-term trajectory of public school spending in the United States (like that of the stock market) is up, up, up, and more up, despite temporary bear markets. Spending per pupil on public education, expressed in constant 2005-06 dollars, was $4328 in 1970-71, $5438 a decade later, $7472 in 1990-91, and $9266 in 2004-05.

Second, despite the passage of more than four decades, our public education system has not yet internalized the central lesson of James Coleman's celebrated 1966 report and a million subsequent studies: there's no reliable link between the resources going into schools and the learning that comes out. Here and abroad, some superbly effective schools operate on cramped budgets in shabby facilities, sometimes with enormous classes, even as too many generously funded schools in fancy digs are places where children learn very little.

Third, observe the tendency to seize upon budgetary stringency as a rationalization for achievement gains that may not materialize. Especially worrisome is the habit that many state and local officials (and most current Democratic office-seekers) have slipped into: proclaiming that No Child Left Behind is toast unless Uncle Sam antes up billions more to pay for implementing it. Because they will always find the billions too few, they seem to be stockpiling an excuse for later education failure. How much easier to blame skinflints in Washington than to undertake the heavy lifting needed to change one's school system into a high-performance enterprise.

Fourth, in too many town meetings and legislative hearings, the budget pinch is also becoming a sneaky, self-serving way for the public-school monopoly to strike out at charter schools and other unwanted rivals. This takes the form of scapegoating the competitors as thieves who pilfer scarce dollars from the "real" public schools--and as a luxury that perhaps the state or community might experiment with in flush times but cannot afford when money is tight.

Fifth, we see signs of the "Washington Monument gambit," i.e., the threat by the National Park Service that, if it doesn't get more money, it won't be able to keep one of the Capital's foremost tourist attractions open for visitors. Its counterpart in public education is to say that, if we have to cut our budget, we'll have to (take your pick) eliminate sports, increase class size, abbreviate the school year, scrap gifted education, end after-school programs, curb college counseling, close the school library, etc., etc. That's how school systems think about budgets: in terms of "programs" and "services," not efficiencies, productivity, or such tradeoffs as personnel versus technology.

Sixth, that's because public schools have a terrible time coping with budgetary adversity. They put nearly all their money into salaries and benefits--about four-fifths of their operating budgets, says the Census Bureau--and they keep hiring more people and giving them across-the-board raises. Then they confer tenure and enter into contracts such that it's nearly impossible to let anyone go, much less cut their wages.

Columbus, Ohio offers a current case in point. On October 1, the Dispatch reported that enrollments this year are down 1500 kids and that this has led to pink slips for nine educators. Look at those numbers again: 1500 fewer pupils and 9 fewer teachers. If you assume an average class size of 20, 1500 kids are taught by 75 teachers, not nine. If the Columbus Public Schools were a business, or even a rationally-budgeted enterprise, a drop in "sales" of 1500 customers would lead to the riffing of 75 employees, or thereabouts. Certainly more than nine.

Note, too, that the nine people let go were six gym teachers, one health teacher, and two librarians. Decide for yourself whether phys ed, health classes, and libraries are frills. But please also ask yourself what sort of management structure leads to such a tiny total reduction in force.

The regular world isn't like this. Airlines facing bankruptcy have been renegotiating contracts, cutting unprofitable routes and flights, slashing salaries (from mechanics and cabin attendants up to top executives) and laying off thousands of employees. They've also been merging. Banks are merging. General Motors and Chrysler may merge. Admittedly, they're also seeking fat federal bailouts lest they close altogether. But they're truly downsizing, closing plants, firing scads of people, and ending unprofitable product lines.

When's the last time you heard of school systems merging to save money? When did you last hear a school board talk about pay cuts or contract renegotiations? Of laying off less productive and higher-priced workers? What about introducing distance learning and teacher aides in lieu of more full-fledged teachers with ever-smaller classes?

Yes, of course, airlines can scrap flights and hot meals while schools cannot eliminate students needing to be served or stop feeding them at lunchtime. But airlines also opt for smaller planes and lower-salaried pilots when they must. Technology replaces baggage handlers and check-in people. The Internet substitutes for reservation offices and staff. Why can't public education think that way? Put some of its creativity into devising cheaper ways of doing things? It could, of course, but so far it seems to prefer whining, scapegoating, slamming rivals, threatening to shut down its most popular offerings, and explaining that any shortfalls on the student-achievement front are nobody's fault but the taxpayers'.

A version of this article first appeared in 2003, the last time our schools wrestled with a downturn in revenue.

Chi-town, home of deep dish pizza, The Band, and an education reform powerhouse? That's John Simmon's take. To his mind, "Chicago leads the nation in the investment it has made in research that shows what works in education reform." In fact, if Simmons had his way, "any city--or president-elect--looking for research-based ways to improve education should turn to Chicago for lessons in how to do it right." Why? The Consortium on Chicago School Research, which Simmons finds to be the bee's knees of education policy shops-"a body of research on urban school reform that is without equal." CCSR has surely published some great research (see here and here, for example), but with all due respect, let's cut the hyperbole. After all, this is a city whose students perform at roughly the same level as those in Slovenia. What's next? Simmons trying to convince us the Cubs are the best baseball team in history?

"Next president can find ideas to fix schools in Chicago," by John Simmons, The Chicago Sun-Times, October 25, 2008

Remember those halcyon days of the late 1990s? Back when Americans enjoyed peace and prosperity, our political system could frivolously obsess about the meaning of "is," and charter schools were freed from bureaucratic red tape? Then along came the No Child Left Behind Act and its mandate that all teachers--including those at charter schools--be "highly qualified." Enter the International Community (charter) School in Atlanta, where a host of international teachers have found their jobs at risk because of this very provision. Even though these teachers, from such varied places as Rwanda and Bangladesh, are doing a bang-up job helping immigrant children who themselves just arrived in the U.S., the school's authorizer, DeKalb County, is now pushing for all staff to receive full teaching credentials in order to comply with the federal law. That's easier said than done. One teacher, herself a refugee, is struggling to get the local college to recognize her Burmese bachelor's degree. About her beloved charter school, the teacher says, "It's like my home. That's why I don't want to hear 'quit,' 'fire.'" DeKalb County: leave this school alone.

"'No Child' leaving charter school behind?," by Mary Wiltenburg, Christian Science Monitor, October 23, 2008

It's hard to miss the media firestorm over Chicago's latest educational innovation, the School for Social Justice Pride Campus. The school would cater to gay students who are teased and bullied at their current schools. If the school board approves the plan--it has delayed a vote until November 19--both straight and gay students will be eligible to attend Social Justice High when it opens in 2010. The would-be-principal, Chad Weiden, claims that the goal is "to really push back to make sure all schools are safe, supporting and affirming for all LGBT students and all students in the city of Chicago." Au contraire--promoting a culture of tolerance and respect in all schools would do that. Creating a school so that gays can feel safe just sends the message that it's okay to make them feel unsafe at other schools. As Rick Garcia, political director for Equality Illinois, explains, "There's no doubt there's violence and bullying of gay kids and something has to be done, but segregating them is not the answer. It doesn't stop bullying at other schools." Fact. Perhaps Garcia is right when he suggests, "maybe we need a school for the bullies."

"Chicago proposes Pride high school for gay students," by Susan Dosemagen, Medill Reports, October 9, 2008

"Daley voices concerns about gay high school," by Fran Spielman, Chicago Sun-Times, October 24, 2008

Anna Habash
Education Trust
Fall 2008

This report evaluates the current state of U.S. high school graduation rates and offers ideas for how to raise these historically unsatisfactory numbers. It notes that "the United States is the only industrialized country in the world in which today's young people are less likely than their parents to have completed high school." No doubt prepared to coincide with this week's release of new No Child Left Behind regulations (see above), the report intends to pressure states to aim high when setting their dropout-reduction goals. To that end, author Anna Habash calls out states that expect minimal progress on this front. In Maryland, for example, the 2006 graduation rate was 85.43 percent. But the Free State only requires schools to aim for improvements of 0.01 percent each year in order to stay out of trouble with NCLB. At that pace, Maryland won't reach its goal of a 90 percent graduation rate until 2463. For Maryland African American students, then graduating at 78.89 percent annually, that 90 percent target won't be reached until the year 3117. These are certainly compelling figures (a millennium?!) but raising graduation improvement rates is no panacea and could yield the same unintended consequences that plagued NCLB's "universal proficiency" mandate. Namely: if you require states to get all students or almost all students over any given bar, you create a temptation for them to lower said bar. The result could be diplomas that retain mere appellative vestiges of their former selves. With that cautionary note in mind, you can find the report here.

Frederick M. Hess, ed.
Harvard Education Press
September 2008

This collection explores how to cultivate more effective and quality-conscious educational entrepreneurship. Rick Hess, the volume's fecund and fervent editor, explains: "markets characterized by insufficient quality-control mechanisms, a lack of transparency, a scarcity of human or investment capital, and harmful regulatory and institutional barriers are more likely to produce mediocrity than effective solutions." Since innovation in education has great potential, it is imperative that we ensure that it rises beyond this mediocrity. Hess divides education innovators into two categories: capacity builders, who work on improving schools, and choice-based reformers, who use competition to weed out sub-par practices. The nine chapters discuss both kinds and offer a plethora of solutions: boosting human capital, attracting investment, increasing access to capital and funding, ensuring quality control, improving research and development, and removing barriers that hinder new providers. For example, Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek explore what the education sector can learn from other industries about recruiting, developing, and retaining talent. Larry Berger and David Stevenson of Wireless Generation discuss the barriers to entry for companies (such as their own) that provide learning tools for teachers. Fordham's Checker Finn discusses various forms of education quality control, suggesting that it may take experimentation in order to find the best methods for an entrepreneurial environment. And Hess' own chapter emphasizes that the development of education entrepreneurship requires dual attention to "tools"--products and services that can improve schools, teachers, etc.--and "rules"--the legal inhibitions to the advent and expansion of new ventures. (His recent article in The American provides a quick, helpful overview of this thesis.) The book itself is available to purchase here.

John Staud, ed.
Alliance for Catholic Education Press
August 2008

Catholic schools may be closing right and left but it's not for lack of recent attention to the situation. 2008 has already brought Fordham's report and a White House summit and report on the topic. Now joining the conversation are the University of Notre Dame and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which in 2007 led a group of academics, philanthropists, religious leaders, and scholars in discussing a renewed effort to sustain and build Catholic education. This product of their gathering showcases remarks from panel presentations and offers reaction from Catholic-school scholars and administrators. In his keynote address to the conference, Carnegie's Lee Shulman argued that Catholic education must "become a robust field of scholarship--including scholarship of teaching and learning, of discovery and invention, of integration, connectedness and meaning, and of application and translations." The volume translates this charge into four primary areas of said field-building: a sustained human capital pipeline, enhanced study of religious education, the role of philanthropy, and models for renewing Catholic schools. Authors discuss tactics, such as university-diocesan partnerships to cultivate teachers and school leaders; reformed leadership curricula that meld Catholic values with standard management and instructional tactics; creation of academic "special interest groups" and scholarly journals for idea exchange; and thoughtful direction and management of philanthropic dollars. Yes, it's pretty wonky, the sort of stuff that academics usually propose, but one theme runs throughout the volume: collecting and analyzing data on best practices in Catholic education. Surely not a bad thing to do. The volume is available for purchase here; to check out presentations from the actual conference, click here.