An article I read awhile back seems relevant to the recent back and forth between/among Ed Sector's Kevin Carey, eduwonkette/skoolboy, and Sherman Dorn about what kind of education research should lead to policy changes.

I was flipping through the pages of the Journal of Economic Psychology -- okay, this isn't quite true.  I was actually reading The Atlantic, (about as intellectual a pursuit as I can manage,) and, right there, alongside a photo of a diving goalkeeper, was a very brief article* that summarized the findings of the journal article.

Anyway, the journal article, titled "Action Bias Among Elite Soccer Goalkeepers: The Case of Penalty Kicks," finds that soccer goalies trying to block penalty kicks "almost always jump right or left" even though "the optimal strategy...is to stay in the goal's center."  The authors theorize that "a goal scored yields worse feelings for the goalkeeper following inaction (staying in the center) than following action (jumping), leading to a bias for action."  (As is often the case, Sherman Dorn was ahead of the curve, blogging in February 2007 about a similar bias regarding school uniforms and single-sex education.)

A key to understanding the journal article is the authors' contention that, in soccer, unlike other endeavors, the norm is to take action. Goalies dive somewhere because standing and letting the ball go by makes them look foolish.  I'd argue that, given the decades-long war on the reputation of public schools, change -- any change -- is also the norm for many education reformers. 

So, go ahead and dive, Kevin.  It'll look good to the fans.

*You can get to The Atlantic article by clicking on "cache" after doing a Google search for "economists 1, goalies 0."

Posted by John at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve been thumbing through a number of studies of competiton in education. From EPI (and yes, AFT supports EPI), there’s Martin Carnoy et al’s latest study, "Vouchers and Public School Performance." It finds that you can’t make the case that school choice has caused public schools in Milwaukee to improve.  The conclusions dovetail those of Wisconsin’s conservative/anti tax think tank the Wisconsin Public Research Institute (and yes, AFT usually doesn’t have a kind word for WPRI).  WPRI estimates that just 10 percent of parents in Milwaukee are smart school shoppers who make decisions based on real indicators of school quality.  Their method is a kind of Jacob’s Ladder of assumptions that I’m still pondering, but the conclusion fits with other work on why and how parents choose.

In addition to these Milwaukee reports, Hank Levin’s Center for the Study of Privatization in Education has two new reports on charter schools and competition. One by Mathew Carr and Gary Ritter and finds that charter schools in Ohio have a small detrimental effect on nearby traditional public schools.  Yongmei Ni, examining charter competition in Michigan over time concludes: "The effect is small or negligible in the short run, but becomes more substantial in the long run."  Ni notes this is "consistent with the conception of choice triggering a downward spiral in the most heavily impacted public schools." 

There are kids in these schools. And competition not only doesn't seem to help them, but it is likely hurting them.

For those who said more charters couldn't make things worse in Detroit Public Schools, this is a pretty sound rebuttal.  One important note: Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan are similar cases. I don’t know that the same effect would be found in a high-growth state like Florida, or in a giant district like New York City to the extent that it retains mega economies of scale. But there are plenty of other cases like Ohio and Michigan. The results should trouble everyone involved in promoting charter schools.

A long time ago, Howard Nelson, Rachel Drown and I wrote a piece about charter schools and school districts that used the metaphor of an ecosystem. I still think that metaphor holds, and that we’re doing a pretty lousy job of managing the ecosystem.  Change is needed.  Which, mind you, is different from saying "get rid of charter schools" (although I’d get rid of vouchers where they exist in a heartbeat.) I would like a new deal as far as the relationship of charter schools and traditional public schools. Part of that is a better mutual understanding of school finance and the effects of how we fund charters on traditional schools and vice versa. Part of it is an understanding of the limits of competition and the possibilities of cooperation.  The idea that competition between districts and charters would just be about educational quality, particularly when the evidence suggests that this wasn’t quite what parents were shopping for, was always ridiculous.

As for cooperation,  I could go on about Kropotkin here, but suffice it to say I think we'll do a better job helping kids if we build structures to help us focus on doing that together. Underlying all of this is the understanding that, for a variety of reasons, parents send their kids to poor schools (traditional, charter and voucher alike), and that fact should reaffirm our commitment to creating both better schools and a more rational system of schools via collective action. 

My favorite quote from the Milwaukee news coverage, by the way, comes from Howard Fuller, who when asked about the right's use of the competition theme to drive marketization said: "I'm one of those people who believes that we may have oversold that point." He may get the award I wanted to give Checker Finn for saying that closing failing charter schools is hard.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just read this piece by Richard Elmore and Elizabeth City from the May/June 2007 Harvard Education Letter, which does a great job of describing how the school improvement process proceeds in fits and starts. Elmore's work is intriguing because, unlike other research centered on how schools are organized, his work is based on observed teaching practice.  The authors explain why, as schools improve, there are setbacks:

We see this last pattern frequently when teachers go from asking students questions to which there is a correct answer to asking questions for which there are multiple possible answers. At first, teachers aren't very good at asking the questions or setting up a classroom environment in which ambiguity and intellectual risk-taking are valued, and students aren't very good at providing answers that require sentences rather than two-word responses, or at offering rationales for their answers.

Changing teaching practice takes time, but most accountability systems are not designed to distinguish between schools that are working hard and making progress and those that, frankly, need a kick in the pants.  The Mississippi school profiled in this WaPo article seems to be the latter, but even in this discouraging case, the school has a committed principal who would like to turnaround the school. 

It's a messy business and, while Elmore and City are critical of our current accountability systems, they provide little guidance on how such systems might improve. When NCLB reauthorization really begins to move, we will need to hear more from those folks who, like AFT members, have been in the trenches, doing this difficult work.

Posted by Michele at 01:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ed Week reports that Rudy Crew may not keep the rhythm of the Miami Zone Schools going, and that's a shame. The Zone Schools, like the Chancellor's District before it, show what can be achieved when a district concentrates energy and resources on a limited number of schools.  In fact, one of the things I like in the Miller-McKeon draft is that it puts a cap on the number of schools that can be designated for redesign.  School districts have real capacity limitations, and forcing them to concentrate on the neediest schools may not sound like rocket science, but it's incredibly important. As one principal in the Ed Week article says:

"I can pick up the phone now and say, ‘Dr.Woodard, I need something.’ When you are in the zone, you make a phone call to any district office and they know it’s a priority.”

To shift focus now would be a mistake.  As United Teachers of Dade President Karen Aronowitz points out, it's unclear how many teachers would be willing to stay in a zone school if they no longer offered extended day and teachers were not eligible for additional compensation.  And, it's not just that teachers want the extra money--it's simply a harder job to improve student performance at schools that have chronically lagged, and you need the extra time to get there.

Update: Maisie at EdWize weighs in here.

Posted by Michele at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Public School Notebook have obtained a copy of yet another report finding that the district's experiment with privatization has failed.  The report, conducted by the district’s Office of Accountability, Assessment, and Intervention, recommends cancelling all contracts with the for-profits, not-for-profits and universities contracted to manage public schools. 

Despite the findings and recommendations, some state and local politicians, whose faith in privatizing can't be shaken by mere facts, are supporting the privateers' efforts to continue mismanaging schools.  One of them even fessed up to having received more than $15,000 in campaign contributions from two of the providers but says he was for privatizing long before he was bought off.

The school district's governing body, the School Reform Commission, is set to meet today to consider whether to renew the contracts.

Full report is here.

Posted by John at 02:08 PM | Permalink

Writing in today's Washington Post, Gerald Bracey argues that NAEP proficiency levels are set too high and that the resulting high failure rate paves the way for people "to do to your public schools things you would otherwise never allow."

He's right.  We've made the point about NAEP proficiency levels before. And plenty of politicians and ideologues are using the "failing schools" rhetoric to push for things that won't help teaching and learning.

But doesn't similar hype drive lots of good policies?  "Failing schools" might  generate the political will to bring about universal early childhood education.  It's hard to get there if you say, "The kids are all right.  We could do better, though, if we spent extra money to improve early childhood education."

And which strategy gets the millage passed?  "Our school buildings are in decent shape, but they need a lot of maintenance and we should probably do something now rather than in a few years."  Or "The roof is falling!  The roof is falling!"

Getting people to change or getting them to crack open their wallets sometimes requires that cold, hard facts be stirred up with a little hyperbole.  That may be unfortunate, but it's a fact of life.

Posted by John at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One* of the criticisms of NCLB's supplemental education services (SES) provisions is that there is not a good way to separate the impact of SES from the impact of regular classroom instruction on student achievement. In other words, the law purports to be all about accountability, but gives a pass to SES providers.

Now, Tennessee has a study that attempts to show the effects of SES on student achievement.  Although NCLB requires states to monitor the quality and effectiveness of SES, I haven't come across another state that has really done so.

Here are the report's findings:

• Student achievement results for 2004-2005 yielded no statistically reliable effects for any of the SES providers.
• Two providers had “below standards” outcomes for student achievement for the 2005-2006 school year, with the rest having “insufficient information” to determine outcomes.

Not good news for those complaining to the feds that money for SES and providers’ access to students and schools needs to be expanded in NCLB reauthorization.  The AFT and other organizations have argued that NCLB’s current sanctions are punitive, ineffective and not research-based and should be replaced with interventions that can actually help struggling schools.

*Other criticisms include that SES takes public dollars out of public schools and into private hands, SES providers don’t have to employ highly qualified teachers, they don’t have to serve students with disabilities or ELLs, there is often a disconnect between school-based curriculum and instruction and the instruction during the SES tutoring, etc.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that we learned of this study from Steve Sawchuk's article in today's Ed Daily ($). 

Posted by Beth at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m late getting to it, but Sara Mead writes about the Independent Women’s Forum and vouchers. Yes, she makes some good points and yes you should read it. I think the critique fits with voucherdom’s approach to special ed, being the child of a military veteran and whatever other boutique privatization program is being contemplated this year. And she’s right about brain science too.

But, as a blogging narcissist, this gives me the opportunity to write about something that’s been on MY mind: Anna Nicole Smith.  I’m interested in IWF in part because it is funded by the Koch brothers, who have deep ties to the TABOR movement.   They also provide a lot of money to George Mason University. How does this lead to Anna Nicole Smith?  

Ms. Smith’s late husband served on the board of Koch industries, and as part of the battle over his estate she ended up suing Koch Industries “for allegedly conspiring with her stepson to defraud her of $474 million in Koch Industries stock.”  Marrying a septuagenarian isn’t how I’d go about it, but I admired her resolve in standing up to these folks. The Koch funded IWF, on the other hand, did not.  After her death, their blog approvingly quoted a George Mason journalism professor who said in an interview:

Anna Nicole Smith’s story really is the old morality tale of a girl who strays, becomes a stripper and a gold-digger, falls in with even more unsavory people, and finally comes to an appropriately bad, sad end.

Classy. And they are wrong on vouchers to boot.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In this decade-old program, this is the first I’ve heard of any CA district getting in trouble for falsifying class size documents in order to get state class size money. I will say that it happened all of the time, both in the school where I taught and in colleagues’ schools.

Here’s how: school starts in September and teachers get their class rosters with 19 or 20 students. In the first couple of weeks of school, six or seven of those students don’t show up, but seven or eight others do.  Students get shifted between classrooms to even out the class sizes.  Sometimes teachers have to shift grades and sometimes additional teachers—usually substitutes—are hired.  If a school is lucky, it has an extra classroom or space for a portable and a class of twenty students is cobbled together.

Santa Ana is a city with high poverty and high mobility, and is a first stop for many immigrants.  In such school systems, students enter and leave school all of the time. Sometimes they return; sometimes they don’t. When class sizes tip over 20 students, a principal has to decide whether and how long to wait before hiring some adult to teach a newly formed class.

What’s a teacher to do? We could have complained, but it did seem like the schools were trying their best to keep class sizes under 20.  Plus, it was pretty obvious that the school needed money for everything—textbooks, a social worker, bilingual paraprofessionals, soap for the bathrooms, etc.

The benefits of small class sizes, especially for students in poverty, are indisputable. But, there is not a good way to manage a class size reduction program in a school or district with exactly the students most likely to benefit from small class sizes—one with very high mobility rates, overcrowded schools, and an inability to attract enough certified teachers.  There is also the issue of whether it a good idea to take a couple of students out of a classroom with a certified teacher and place them in a room presided over by a substitute so that the schools gets desperately needed funds.

Yes, deliberately falsifying documents is wrong, but, based on the reports so far, I believe that the district was doing its best to provide some semblance of a sound and stable education while securing needed funds.

Posted by Beth at 05:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Nearly half the schools in Indiana, my home state, missed AYP last year, according to the Indianapolis Star.  And, 340 schools, nearly 40 percent of those that missed AYP, failed only in special education.

The article describes one of the least rational provisions of NCLB as it plays out at Franklin Township's Arlington Elementary School, which, for two years, "missed its targets only in its special education math scores." Parents, including those whose children are not in special education, "will be given the chance to transfer their children" to a different school.  It's hard to believe allowing other students to transfer is the best way to help special education students.  And, in this light, it's easy to see why NCLB's transfer provision is viewed by some as a sanction rather than a solution. 

The Indy Star article finds some positives resulting from NCLB, echoing those cited on our "What's Right about NCLB" page.  An assistant superintendent and a teacher like having data, apparently from benchmark tests, that help improve instruction.  One school raised scores (and presumably improved teaching and learning) for special ed students after missing AYP the previous year.

But an advocate for children with disabilities called NCLB's data reporting a blessing and a curse for children with disabilities. "We do have to have a way to have schools accountable," she told the Star. "But in many cases it's a really unfair evaluation of how the school is doing....

Whether you think NCLB is a net positive or negative, it's clear that the law's handling of special education, to use an NCLB phrase, "needs improvement."  Two of the AFT's recommendations for reathorization address this issue. 

First, individualized education programs should determine how students participate in state academic assessments, including alternate assessments, modified assessments or assessments with accommodations.  Students participating in modified or alternate assessments should not be limited by an arbitrary federal percentage.

Second, interventions for schools that have not made AYP should be targeted to those students in the school who are not proficient. 

It's not clear to me which changes Congress will make to the law, and there has been some talk that the promise of more funding will diminish pressure to fix the law's flaws.  But it's hard to imagine that the next iteration of NCLB won't have major changes for students with disabilities.

Posted by John at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Using software doesn't raise student test scores.  That's the key finding in a report from the U.S. Department of Education (ED).  And these programs were cherry-picked by manufacturers and ED as most likely to be effective.  The report notes that "ED recognized that selecting ostensibly more effective products could tilt the study toward finding higher levels of effectiveness."  So, with these results biased in favor of "higher levels of effectiveness,"  does the typical education software program actually harm student achievement?

Posted by John at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I missed last week's LA Times editorial on NCLB. If you did too you should go back and give it a look.  I'm not sure I agree with everything in it - for example if teacher effectiveness is to be measured by test scores alone I think they are barking up the wrong tree. Or, to really mangle a metaphor, writing checks their econometric techniques can't cash.  

Even so,  I agree with a lot of it.

Still, the law has not yet achieved its key goals: improvement in student scores and a narrowing of the achievement gap between white, middle-class children and their poor, minority counterparts. Flaws in the law have held back real educational progress and unfairly placed blame on public-school teachers for everything but the weather. The law has labeled many good schools as failures, which has led to a bipartisan uprising against legislation that once had true bipartisan support. While its basic tenets should remain intact, and even be strengthened, the law needs an overhaul to deserve reauthorization this year.

They also take a shot at states with low standards, argue that the incentives and disincentives in the law warp the instructional process and make a case for measuring individual student achievement based on growth. That's a lot of territory for one editorial.

Among the bloggers who didn't miss it are Alexander Russo and Julia Rosen.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The AFT has joined forces with the Washington Teachers' Union and the AFL-CIO's Building & Construction Trades Department to launch a media campaign focused on the renovation of D.C. public school buildings. The ads, which will run in the Washington Post and Washington City Paper, are part of the AFT's Building Minds, Minding Buildings campaign.

For a readable (and big) pdf of this ad, click here.

Posted by John at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Education matters!  That's what politicians say to parents and children and anyone who will listen to their stump speeches. 

Education doesn't matter!  That's what students hear, just as emphatically, when adults do nothing about the terrible conditions of school buildings, depicted in our Building Minds, Minding Buildings report (source of the image below) and described in a recent op-ed by Colby King of the Washington Post.

King writes about seeking a restroom after a candidates' forum at DC's Sheperd Elementary:

"Pieces of tile were missing from the floor at the bathroom's entrance. A much larger section of floor tiling, roughly four feet by two feet, was missing in front of the sinks. A plug of floor tile near the urinals was gone, too. Only one of the three sinks worked, and it lacked a soap dispenser."

So, why don't the adults deliver the right message about education by solving this specific problem and the broader problems with school facilities?  The issue is complicated, but we'll see one of the reasons soon if rumors of an upcoming disingenuous, union-bashing ad campaign are true. This one purportedly will claim that the big obstacle to school construction in Washington, D.C., is...funding?  No.  Adults with messed-up priorities?  No. 

The real culprit, according to the ad campaign, is the requirement that school construction workers earn a decent wage.  It's clear that the ad campaign will be more about truthiness than truth.  Prevailing wage laws didn't prevent DC from building a new baseball stadium and convention center. When union-bashers set out to do their thing rather than actually address a problem, they ignore such troublesome facts.

Shepherd Elementary is doing relatively well academically, but it is virtually impossible to sustain high academic achievement with building conditions like those described by King.  Kids are smart.  If you send them to schools with buckets to catch the rainwater coming through the roof, with mold on the walls, with bathrooms that no adult would tolerate, eventually they'll get the message:  Education doesn't matter.

Posted by John at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Renee Foose, a middle school principal in Rockville, Maryland, is coming under fire for changes she is making in her school to meet NCLB's adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals, according to the Washington Post.  She's being accused of ignoring students who are far behind their peers in order to focus resources on students who, though struggling, have a better chance of passing NCLB-mandated tests.

The Post quotes an anonymous staffer who describes meetings in which English and math teachers were given list of "subgroup" students:

"We were told to cross off the kids who would never pass.... we were told to cross the kids who, if we handed them the test tomorrow, they would pass.  And then the kids who were left over, those were the kids we were supposed to focus on."

If true, this school's policy doesn't give much weight to the literal interpretation of "No Child Left Behind." The school's principal told the Post that all students ereceived extra support, "some more than others."

This triage-like response to NCLB isn't exactly a surprise.  One of the beliefs that shaped NCLB's school accountability system was that educators, left to do what they believed was best for children, weren't paying enough attention to disadvantaged students and those who were far behind their peers.  Schools were writing off, the logic went, certain students and certain populations. The solution was to require states to set proficiency targets -- for subgroups of students which would increase in regular increments to 100% by 2014. 

An anonymous principal quoted in the article suggests that such some principals fear they will lose their jobs if they miss AYP.  And, since current proficiency targets are well below 100%, those principals have to choose between directing resources to the students who need them most or directing resources to the students who are most likely to help the school pass AYP. 

Rock, hard place.  Keeping your job, helping students who are way behind.

Posted by John at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Despite the fact that many portray us as just self-serving union hacks who don’t care about kids, every once in a while, we seem to know what we are talking about.  Here is a finding from a recent Center for Education Policy report on school restructuring in California:

Officials at schools that improved student achievement attributed their success to tailoring interventions to the needs of the particular school.

Hmm. Seems to align with this excerpt from the AFT’s recommendations for NCLB reauthorization:

The first response to a struggling school should be supportive interventions tailored to the needs of the school and its community. Struggling schools need a broad range of complementary interventions.

Here is another finding from the report:

California schools that replaced staff were no more likely to increase the percentages of proficient students on state tests than restructuring schools in general.

Contrast it with this U.S. Department of Education recommendation for NCLB reauthorization:

The menu of actions authorized under restructuring will commit these schools either to make substantial changes in staff or to reconstitute the school’s governance structure.

So, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) found that what the AFT is recommending--tailoring reform efforts to the needs of the school--works, while what the U.S. Department of Education is recommending--getting rid of the staff at a stuggling school--doesn't work.  Maybe, just maybe, that means the AFT does care about improving schools, especially struggling ones, and is interested in implementing reforms that help, rather than hurt schools.

*I spent 5.5 hours on a plane today reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, which has nothing to do with NCLB or restructuring in California, but takes its title from a Haitian proverb, “Beyond mountains, there are mountains.” The CEP report opens with this proverb. I wonder if the report’s author is secretly joining my book club.

Posted by Beth at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Paul Peterson questions a RAND study of Philadelphia's schools that concluded, "In sum, with four years of experience, we find no evidence of differential academic benefits that would support the additional expenditures on private managers."

Peterson concedes that RAND is "respected" and then attempts to pick apart the RAND study. His critique boils down to this:  RAND didn't do the report the way Peterson would have done the report.  Well, thank goodness. 

Peterson is identified at the end of the op-ed as "director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution."  With that  identifier, Peterson's research and opinion pieces may benefit from the "Harvard Halo," a sort of Good Housekeeping Stamp of Approval.  But as Matthew Yglesias has written, Peterson isn't your typical Harvard professor.  While Yglesias focuses on Peterson's school voucher research, it seems logical to raise similar questions about Peterson's work on other school privatization issues, such as those in Philadelphia.  Yglesias writes:

"No man alone is responsible for the state of misinformation on the subject, but if you had to pick one, Paul Peterson would be a good choice. A professor of government at Harvard, Peterson heads that university's Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) from which vantage point he and his colleagues put out paper after paper cheerleading for the school-choice movement. While Peterson's title and appointment give him the appearance of being just another social scientist, the center's most recent annual report tells a rather different story, with Peterson hailing the U.S. Supreme Court's Zelman v. Simmons-Harris decision, giving the go-ahead to public funding of religious schools, and the No Child Left Behind Act as "giant steps forward," noting that the "PEPG has contributed to this forward march" and stating clearly its intention "[t]o help the forward movement."

This is not the typical rhetoric of a sober researcher, and, indeed, a look at the PEPG's finances reveals that much of its money comes from organizations like the Olin, Bradley, Friedman and Walton foundations, which largely fund the right's network of political think tanks and advocacy groups. Harvard is, therefore, in essence acting as a credibility launderer, taking ideological money in exchange for lending its famous name to advocates for conservative causes."

This probably won't be the last we'll hear from Peterson about Philadelphia schools.  He timed his op-ed so that it would come out the same day (last Friday) as another organization echoed the RAND study's findings.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week:

The Accountability Review Council, an independent body monitoring school improvement in Philadelphia, yesterday agreed there was "little evidence" that the academic gains made by the six companies running 41 city schools warranted the continuation of additional funding being paid to the managers.

The article includes the usual protestations from the pro-privatization crowd (Peterson is not among them), as well as this news about an upcoming report: "The district's staff is expected to release early next month a more detailed review of the managers, looking at areas such as safety, attendance and parental satisfaction."

If that report comes out positive for the privately operated schools, expect Paul Peterson to be a cheerleader.  If its findings about the privately operated schools are negative, expect Paul Peterson to attack.  That his analysis of others' research always finds a bias against privatization says a lot more about the quality of Paul Peterson's scholarship than his Harvard Halo does.

Bonus bit.  When former Pennsylvania Education Secretary Charles Zogby is in over-the-top pro-privatization spin mode, he apparently slips, like, totally into valley-speak: 

"This is, like, bizarre. Have people just totally lost their senses in the context of which we were operating?

In a guest-blogfest at Eduwonk a few weeks ago, there was a back-and-forth (and back again) on Philadelphia privatization, with Zogby sounding less like Moon Unit Zappa but not as authoritative as RAND's Brian Gill.  Eduwonk made a surge vs. pull-out comparison, getting the politics just about right in the short run.  But Edison and other privatizers tend to have an "I shall return" mentality.

Posted by John at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I lived in South Beach for a short while in the mid 1990's, not far from Lincoln Road.  Great restaurants, crazy club scene and lots of hard bodies.  I definitely experienced some culture shock after living in NYC for several years, and now living someplace where people drank wheatgrass shots and talked about struggling to give up caffeine. (All I could think was, why struggle?)  These days, Miami is making a name for itself by turning around low-performing schools.  With Rudy Crew at the helm and solid labor management relations, the district has become a showcase for superintendents and others across the country. Tania DeLuzuriaga of the Miami Herald covers the phenom here.  Perhaps the Broad Prize is next?

Posted by Michele at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sherman Dorn hits the nail on the head with his explanation of the rationale behind many bad or trivial proposals to improve schools:  "Something must be done; this is something; therefore, we must do it."

I'll take it a step further than Sherman.  The proposer's next line inevitably is, "If you don't agree to do this particular something, you're a defender of the status quo who cares about the adults in the schools rather than the kids." 

Bonus:  A commenter on Sherman's site misses Sherman's broader point and argues for the "something" -- school uniforms, in this case -- partly because uniforms will help keep rap music out of schools.

Posted by John at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Five years after NCLB was signed into law, Michigan has finally decided to hold supplemental educational service (SES) providers responsible for demonstrating their effectiveness.  Of course the law required them to do so from the beginning, but the state is just now sitting up and taking notice, welcome news to parents who have been trying to judge programs based on little to no information. I wish I could say that Michigan is alone in failing to monitor SES, but it's a chronic problem across the country. 

Posted by Michele at 08:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Beth at AFT

This week's Gadfly has it all figured out.  The lead piece by Checker Finn includes this bit (bolds are mine):    

"High-performance schools have been studied for at least twenty years and we know, more or less, what sets them apart. They have a clear mission, team spirit, a coherent curriculum and pedagogy (though these take many forms), talented teachers, and values that embrace success."

Further down, here’s what the Gadfly has to say about Houston's latest merit pay debacle:

"But if you really want to engulf the teacher lounges in acrimony, make the list of individual bonus winners (and losers) public for all the world to see."

The Gadfly solution to that pesky acrimony:

"Of course, there's another way to reward great teachers without all the combustion: give principals the discretion to quietly award bonuses to their top performers, based mostly on student test-score gains, as most managers in America can do. Same result, less drama."

So, high performing schools work as a team, transparent bonuses break apart the team, but secret bonuses keep the team intact.  Uh-huh, let's all take a moment to picture how this would play out in our own workplaces.

Posted by Guest at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Edison, Inc. is channeling Admiral Farragut: Damn the Research, Full Speed Ahead.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

One day after a research report panned the test-score performance of outside managers in Philadelphia's public schools, Edison Schools Inc. -- one of those managers -- said it would seek even more business from the school district.

In related news, Michael Brown's new company, Heckuva Rapid Response, is seeking FEMA contracts; former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling is jockeying for a job at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation; and former Rep. Duke Cunningham is hoping to replace Melanie Sloan as executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Posted by John at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Those eager to turn over the reins of New Orleans' schools to private managers should take a look at the lead from this article in today's Philadelphia Inquirer:

"The Philadelphia School District's privately run schools - the largest experiment of its kind in the country - have failed to deliver higher test scores than the district despite costing an extra $90 million, a [Rand] study released today says."

There was better news for a group of struggling schools that stayed under District managment school and made changes (that echo the AFT's recommendations for NCLB reauthorization:

"...21 "restructured" schools that got additional math and reading time, teacher coaches, and other special attention while remaining under district management emerged as the best performers...."

Asked about the results, privatization supporters accepted the research, acknowledged that student achievement was an important measure of school performance, praised the public schools for their successes, and announced they would study and seek to emulate public schools' practices. 

Just kidding.

James Nevels, chairman of the commission that ordered the study.

"I don't think that's fair, because these were the worst schools...."
"That study does not dictate what we're going to do."

Jeffery Smith, president of the Home and School Association at Duckrey School.

"I don't believe the report."

John Chubb, chief education officer of Edison, a for-profit school management firm:

"This should be viewed as a win-win."

Paul Vallas, the district's chief executive officer:

"You can't look at this monolithically. There are some that are clearly struggling, and there are some that are doing better."

Jeanne Allen, a proponent of charter schools and school choice:

"It was the introduction of change that caused all schools to rise."

The report warns that a district using a different form of privatization might have results better than Philadelphia's.  But the privatizers' excessive spinning on this report must be making them dizzy.  Their new message is apparently this:  Please, parents, choose these privately run schools so the kids who remain in public schools will learn better than your kids do.

(Edwize's Leo Casey contrasts Philadelphia's privatization experiment with NYC's successful Chancellor's District.)

Posted by John at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Update: More unexpected synergy-- Elena at The Quick and the Ed also blogged on the Annapolis case, encouraging the district to look at what Chattanooga has done.  She writes:

So take note, Annapolis. TN's was an expensive and comprehensive approach to reconstituting schools (and it still wasn't easy). Yours better be too if you want to see real change.

Sounds like what I have said about the Chancellor's District in New York City.  Hey, before you know it, the AFT, the Fordham Foundation and Ed Sector will be joining hands and singing Kumbaya as we walk into Miller's office.

First, Fordham Foundation President Mike Petrilli wrote in The Education Gadfly that NCLB was "fundamentally flawed".  Now, in commenting on Anne Arundel County's recent move to reconstitute Annapolis High School and have all staff reapply for their jobs, Petrilli told the Washington Post:

With the school's publicized plight and its troubles reaching low-income and minority students, the school might not be able to attract experienced teachers, Petrilli said, and more inexperienced teachers might not have the skill to turn it around.

Now that sounds like something I would say. In fact, I did say this, in the form of a question to Kati Haycock at the U.S. Department of Education's first teacher quality forum five years ago.  Haycock's response?  The best teachers should want to teach in the toughest schools.  OK, but aside from those teachers who are more altruistic by nature, how do you get an entire faculty to want to teach in a school that hasn't made AYP four years in a row and where the current staff face an uncertain future?  This is a question that needs to be addressed in the next reauthorization of NCLB and, dare I say, the AFT and the Fordham Foundation might find common ground on strategies that are likely to work?  Perish the thought!

Posted by Michele at 07:49 AM | Permalink

The New York Daily News picks up a theme that never seems to grow stale: Hard-working, charismatic principal turns around low-performing school in the Bronx.

It's easy to become jaded about these stories.  They seem a little too good to be true, and it's not clear whether there's any clue about how to replicate the success, unless it's this:  Step one, hire a super-hero to be principal.  Step two, get out of his/her way.

All jadedness aside, the story told here is pretty good.  Principal Paul Cannon has introduced some innovation, and the school appears to be making genuine progress: more parent involvement, better attendance, more students performing at grade level.  Also, the school's turnaround is based in part on basketball -- appealing to my Hoosier roots.

The story's only sour note missed layup is a gratuitous insult to teachers. 

An assistant principal at Community School 6 for three years, Cannon feared resistance when he started making changes, such as introducing "looping," a practice in which teachers stay with the same class of students for three years. Reading became incorporated into every subject, even physical education, and teachers were encouraged to pore over test scores and academic articles in a "data center" set up to resemble a cozy front porch.

But instead of bristling at the new ideas, about 85% of the staff stayed on, Cannon said.

Even though he had worked with teachers for several years, Cannon "feared resistance"?  And he, or the reporter, expected teachers to be "bristling at the new ideas"?

You can imagine a scene from the movie version. 

Charismatic Principal: "I have some ideas about how we could improve our school."

Stereotypical Teacher: "Ah, no thanks.   I know things are bad, but I really don't like change.  I'm still getting over the last principal's decision to replace the mimeograph machine with one of those new-fangled Xeroxes.  I quit."

(School door hits ST on the backside as she leaves the building.  ST drives off in her car, a Ford Pinto held together with Bondo.)

Charismatic Principal:  (Shrugs shoulders.)  Well, we'll just have to find someone else -- someone who's willing to make a change. 

The turnaround at this school seems legit, and we need to hear more success stories in education.  But just a few minutes of thought suggest that the story has more than one hero.  The article mentions an assistant principal, a Fordham professor, NCLB, an academic intervention specialist and Marvin Gaye.  Don't you think maybe a teacher or two might have had something to do with the school's success? 

Posted by John at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you had a chance to ask a political leader about education policy, what would you ask about? Class size reduction? Early childhood education? Teacher salaries? Professional development?  Effective reading instruction? 

Political insider Dan Gerstein has a really important question he wants to ask Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.):

"In the past you have been willing to embrace controversial education reforms that the teachers unions have opposed. Can you name two or three policies today that would fall into that category? Will you make the same commitment your husband did to support the growth of high-performing public charter schools as one tool to help close the achievement gap, no matter how strongly the unions oppose them?"

Instead of focusing on the effectiveness of education policies favored by Sen. Clinton, wants to know whether she has the guts to name two or three "controversial" policies.  Ugh. The question boils down to this:  Can you please prove to me that you are independent and authentic by doing two or three things that I believe -- or pretend to believe -- will irritate your supporters?  Apparently, all that matters is that elected officials are controversial and gutsy.  Oh, and not that it matters much that the premise of such a silly question is wrong, but, as we noted in a recent post, the American Federation of Teachers proudly represents charter school employees in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Florida.

(Hat Tip: Joe Williams.  Margaret Paynich, writing at Ed Week/This Week in Education, took up the subject here.)

Posted by John at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Beth

It's almost too easy to blog on this one: the state of Georgia shuts down an SES tutoring company because, among other things, the company is paying students to forge their parents’ signatures on attendance and application forms, their tutors fabricate tests and evaluations to submit as proof that tutoring is taking place, and kids snack and play outside during entire “tutoring” sessions. The name of this company: Get Smart!

This story still doesn’t top my favorite SES scandal: Neil Bush selling COWs (curriculum on wheels) to Texas school districts, supplemented by a donation from his mother to Katrina Relief efforts.  

Seriously, I do believe that there are after school tutoring programs that can be done well and effectively.  It is unfortunate that there are so many stories of for-profit companies behaving badly.  The folks who are providing quality supplemental educational services are going to have to work harder on both the services they provide and their public image to compensate for the scam operations. Oh, and it would be extremely helpful if these companies were able to prove that they were providing an educational benefit in exchange for the public dollars they’re profiting. So far, that’s not happening and even the apparently quality companies resist objective evaluations of their offerings.

Posted by Guest at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Beth at AFT

It seems to me that what gets lost in the debate about class size reduction initiatives is the size of the class before and after the reduction.

When I was a teacher in California, thanks to that state’s (in)famous class size reduction initiative, my third-grade class went from 32 students one year to 20 the next. It was wonderful, but would I have been happy and productive with a reduction to, say, 22 or 24 students? I think so. Was 32 too many to start with? Definitely.

Tennessee’s big success in class size reduction happened in classes with fewer than 17 students.  How much better could my students have done in a classroom with only 16 peers? Who knows, California had run out of money before my school had the opportunity to fill its parking lot with more portables.

But I certainly can’t complain. This article indicates that some New York City schools have well over 45 students per class. A reduction to 20 or even 25 students is probably not going to happen anytime soon (a class doesn’t get to 45 students without serious physical space and teacher supply issues). But would a reduction to, say, 35 students be an improvement? Probably….unless you were a teacher or student just transplanted from CA or TN.

Posted by Guest at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently read the case study of school reform in Baltimore by Sam Stringfield and Mary Yakimowski-Srebnick from the Spring 2005 American Educational Research Journal($). The authors provide a thoughtful look at how school reform has proceeded in the district over the last 15-20 years, dividing this period into three phases: introduction of the standards movement, Senate Bill 795 and district reform, and initiation of federally-legislated NCLB reform.  The first phase required accountability, but did not provide the resources to make improvements.  The second phase provided an infusion of funds for interventions such as:

• professional development to improve teacher's skills;
• the adoption of comprehensive school reform models at the elementary school level;
• prekindergarten and full-day kindergarten in most schools; and
• expanded before/afterschool programs and summer school.

The third phase is not fully written, but the authors are fearful that the NCLB accountability system may lead to "hyperrationalized analyses of small differences in moderately reliable measures over time."

The authors also make a stong case that the Baltimore schools are improving as a result of the Phase 2 interventions:

The shared accountability of Phase 2, beginning with new legislation, new governance structures, new partnerships, and a substantial infusion of new funds, produced positive, sometimes dramatic results from first grade through high school graduation.  The state-city partnership has produced measured gains worthy of being replicated and study elsewhere.

School reform in Baltimore may not be proceeding fast enough for many of us, but the authors point out that measures like the graduation rate are "stubborn" and hard to move.  The fact that Baltimore has seen improvement in its graduation rate is therefore significant.  And, the types of interventions utilized in Baltimore would benefit most urban school districts, which is why the AFT is calling for non-punitive, research-based interventions, instead of sanctions, to be a part of the reauthorized NCLB.

Posted by Michele at 07:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To me, the most interesting Q&A from Alexander Russo's interview with KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg was this one: 

Do KIPP teachers make any more money for all this work?

Since we are very lean on administrative costs, we typically can afford to pay our teachers 15-20% higher salaries than the neighboring public school. However our schools are staffed, though, we at KIPP remain steadfastly convinced that having the children come to school from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm for 180 days a year is not enough time We firmly believe what Rafe Esquith taught us: that there are no shortcuts on any path towards success.

The 15-20 percent salary premium for teachers at KIPP schools, who teach a longer school day and year, is consistent with that offered to teachers at extended time schools in the former Chancellor's district in New York City.  And, as anyone who has perused a school budget knows, increasing teacher salaries by this much--even at just a handful of schools--is an expensive proposition.  Congressional leaders should be mindful of these costs as we approach reauthorization of NCLB and folks begin to consider alternative school restrutcturing options.

Posted by Michele at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

NCLBlog welcomes Joan at AFT to our blog. 

The staff at the John F. Kennedy school in Boston suffered buyer's remorse when they learned the details of the proposed plan to convert the school to Pilot School status. When the principal first presented the staff with the plan to convert, she assured them that everything would be essentially the same, but the school would have greater freedom from the Court Street bureaucracy of the Boston Public Schools.

When the staff asked the union to confirm their status, however, they learned that they would not be paid for working extended hours until they had reached 95 hours, as specified in the union’s contract with the district. Many staff members hadn’t had the chance to read the principal’s plan for the converted pilot school and were surprised to learn that the plan included extra time during the day and plans for Saturday sessions. So the staff took a second vote and turned down the plan to convert to a Pilot School.

Acting superintendent Mike Contampasis tried to persuade the staff to convert, but knowledge of the proposal changed a lot minds. Now, anti-union bloggers are crying that the union strong-armed the faculty, while the faculty wants to know why they didn’t see the plan before the vote.

Posted by Guest at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mocking a commenter is probably one of the surest ways to reduce blog readership, but I just have to, er,  highlight this comment on Ed's post about AFT's recent report Building Minds, Minding Buildings. 

The commenter begins by noting:

Schools were effective when there was no air conditioning or indoor plumbing. Schools were [effective] because there was Effective Discipline.

All right, we get it.  When you went to school, you had to walk barefoot in the snow, and it was uphilll both ways.  And, in case you're wondering what Effective Discipline is, here's a hint:

A modern student will disrupt a class because it's fun.  But he won't put his finger in a "live" light socket or smash his hand with a hammer, because the penalty is very effective and very immediate.

Yikes!  Apparently, if we want to improve learning, we shouldn't be building better schools -- we should be building electric chairs and hand-smashers.

Posted by John at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Update: Masie at Edwize gives us the skinny on Region 5. 

Today's New York Times profiles the success of Kathleen Cashin, a Superintendent for Region 5 in New York City, which includes some tough Brooklyn neighborhoods like East New York and Brownsville.  According to the article, some believe that Ms. Cashin is a rare bird in improving her schools through the city's regionalized school system.  What I think is rare is an article that highlights the achievements of an educator who came up through the system as opposed to an outside expert.  It was also nice to see this commentary on the success of her approach, "And while Mr. Klein has dealt with the teachers’ union on a war footing, Dr. Cashin has made the union a partner, hiring it to train teachers instead of using outside vendors."  Collaboration between labor and management leading to student success? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Posted by Michele at 07:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Update: Joe Williams gives us the inside dope--he apparently is a former Deadhead, as am I. In fact, I was just reminiscing this past weekend about the 1983 show in Springfield, MA where Jerry . . .

Ever have one of those days?  I'm having one today. So, a bit delayed, here is my take on the rest of the AEI conference.

I had to feel for Joe Williams being on the fourth panel focusing on whether NCLB interventions are working when the first three already made it clear they are not.  But he managed to get some laughs by saying his report on whether districts have made AYP was, like Seinfeld, a "report about nothing."  I would have to agree--no one is really paying attention to whether districts make AYP, the focus is all on school performance.

The final panel--featuring Diane Ravitch from the Brookings Institution, Kati Haycock from Ed Trust and Mike Smith fron the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation--was about "something."  As Ravitch put it, NCLB sends the message to districts and schools, "do something," and so they do.  The problem is what they do--that is, implement the sanctions--is unrelated to improving classroom instruction.  Haycock had a different take, saying that the sanctions are "what you do when you haven't done what you were supposed to do." Interesting, not sure I buy it.  If you weren't doing what should be done, namely improve instruction, how is implementing public school choice going to fix that?

I have to say, the overall tone of the conference was pretty melancholy.  Most folks, including those from the Fordham Foundation, sounded not only disappointed in NCLB implementation, but pretty pessimistic that this major piece of federal legislation can achieve its stated goals.  Cindy Brown from the Center on American Progress threw out the idea of shifting the law's focus from sticks to carrots by providing incentives to states and districts.  I happen to think she is right--maybe others do too.

Posted by Michele at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

(Note This Is A Post From Michele)  

I am attending an all-day event at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Fixing Failing Schools: Is the NCLB Toolkit Working?, so I thought I might try some live blogging. The first "all white male" panel is titled The Big Picture--National Implementation and Capacity, but it seems to have focused mostly on the public school choice and supplemental services (surprise, this is AEI). It's been a bit of a snoozer--other than the Fordham Foundation's Mike Petrilli, the panelists are talking way too fast. That said, a few things are noteworthy:

Mike Casserly of the Council of Great City Schools on NCLB's sanctions:

There is still limited use of tougher punishments. It is still too early to tell what the impact of these varied activities will be, but experience outside of NCLB with many stiffer sanctions suggests that districts should either be given clearer authority to override collective bargaining agreements in order to restructure schools or engage in a more convincing partnerships with the unions to get the job done.

As you might guess, I think that districts will see more success if they pursue the latter strategy--much more on this issue in the next American Educator.

Petrilli and Checker Finn also seem to be arguing for a more limited role for the feds in education because the U.S. Department of Education doesn't have the ability to get states and districts to implement the law well. Unless I am missing something, this seems to be a shift in position for the Fordham Foundation, which has been a major supporter of NCLB (Petrilli worked for former U.S. Secretary of Ed Rod Paige, right?) Petrilli also has a line in his paper that you don't hear often in DC, that there is a "need for greater humility when Congress reauthorizes NCLB."

Apparently all the papers presented today can be found at aei.org. Also, wait for a crashing sound when the blog world collides with the real world--Joe Williams at The Chalkboard is on a later panel and I plan on saying hello.

Posted by Michele at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Update 2: Ed Sector's Kevin Carey quibbles with several aspects of the Tough article. Joe Williams at The Chalkboard muses on the effects of parents flocking to successful schools. Matthew Yglesias writes that "New School" parenting demands a lot of parent time and resources (agreed) and makes kids and parents less happy (not so sure about this).

Update 1: Alexander Russo says I'm a PovRacer instead of a Schoolref.  Who knew? And, Eduwonk guest blogger Jal Mehta reappears at TPM Cafe.

Paul Tough asks the right questions (see how I avoided writing the "tough" questions?) in his New York Times Magazine piece on whether NCLB can close the achievement gap:

But the evidence is becoming difficult to ignore: when educators do succeed at educating poor minority students up to national standards of proficiency, they invariably use methods that are radically different and more intensive than those employed in most American public schools. So as the No Child Left Behind law comes up for reauthorization next year, Americans are facing an increasingly stark choice: is the nation really committed to guaranteeing that all of the country’s students will succeed to the same high level? And if so, how hard are we willing to work, and what resources are we willing to commit, to achieve that goal?

Also check out what CitySue at Edwize has to say about the article. To read about the "word gap" research--between lower and higher income children--that is mentioned in the Tough piece, revisit this 2003 American Educator article by Hart and Risley.  And, if you haven't done so already, take a look at this summary of new research by David Card and Jesse Rothstein, which reminds us that if we really want to narrow the achievement gap, we need to address neighborhood segregation.

Posted by Michele at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)