Thomas B. Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children?

November 1, 2006

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children? appraises each state according to thirty indicators across three major categories: student achievement for low-income, African-American, and Hispanic students; achievement trends for these same groups over the last 10-15 years; and the state's track record in implementing bold education reforms. It finds that just eight states can claim even moderate success over the past 15 years at boosting the percentage of their poor or minority students who are at or above proficient in reading, math or science. In addition, most states making significant achievement gains--including California, Delaware, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas--are national leaders in education reform, indicating that solid standards, tough accountability, and greater school choice can yield better classroom results.

View the press release for this report

Contents

Iowa

 

 


 

Land of Corn and Complacency

For decades in agrarian Iowa, corn and local school boards were kings, and the public was satisfied with both.

"I think everyone has felt good about the work our schools have been doing," Lana Oppenheim Schlapkohl, a spokeswoman for the Iowa State Education Association, said this year. "There's nothing wrong with the quality of education we've been providing. We just have to provide more of it."

Not so fast. Fifty-four percent of Iowans now say that public education in the state is on the wrong track, according to a Des Moines Register poll in January 2006. Changing demographics, concerns over the lack of state standards and low high school graduation requirements, and a dust up with the federal Education Department over testing teachers has suddenly made education a hot political topic.

Though Iowa remains predominantly white, minority students now make up nearly one-third of the enrollment in the state's eight urban school districts. And they're not faring well academically.

Low-income, African-American, and Hispanic students in Iowa have made no progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) over the past decade--terrible news, considering that the percentage of these students scoring at or above the "proficient" level in reading and math is mostly in the teens or single digits on the most recent NAEP. Informed of these trends and data, Leland Tack of the state Department of Education protested. "This doesn't reflect the entire education system in our state," says Tack, who has been with the department for 35 years. "We think attention needs to be paid to the minority subgroups and to low-income students in terms of achievement and growth in achievement, but we're making progress." This is true for the state exam. But the state's requirements for scoring at the "proficient" level on its own reading and math tests are among the lowest in the nation.

"The ‘proficient' level is a pretty high level with NAEP," says Tack. "Unfortunately, the public thinks proficient is proficient. [They don't understand that] it's a definitional issue. This confuses people."

Such double-talk has worn thin both with government officials outside the Education Department and with nongovernment groups. "The old system has to go,'' says Marvin Pomerantz, a corporate CEO and co-chairman of the Institute for Tomorrow's Workforce, a nonprofit foundation created in 2005 by the Iowa legislature and led by respected Iowans in education and business. "[It] doesn't work anymore."

The institute issued a January 2006 report calling for significant changes in Iowa education. At the top of their list was a call for a rigorous statewide core curriculum.

"We're the only state in the country that doesn't have academic standards," Marc Ward, a Des Moines school board member, told the Des Moines Register earlier this year. "We're being arrogant in thinking we know something that the other 49 states don't know."

Iowa did have its Core Content Standards and Benchmarks, but they were vague, and the state didn't require districts to follow them. In some Iowa high schools, a student could graduate with only two years each of math and science, leaving them ill-prepared to compete in the increasingly high-tech global economy.

The institute's recommendations, combined with rising anxiety from Iowans and lessons learned from a gubernatorial trade mission trip to education-obsessed India, convinced Governor Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, that reform was needed immediately. He told lawmakers at the start of their 2006 legislative session that they shouldn't plan on going home until they approved a comprehensive education plan.

"One of the things I learned in India," says Vilsack, "is they have a goal to produce 2.5 million engineers, which would dwarf the number of engineers in this country. They are excited about getting their kids educated. We have stiff competition, and we have got to strengthen our system. This is our year to do it."

The state legislature responded by passing a trio of education bills in May, including one establishing statewide standards. Another requires high schools to implement course standards ensuring that students graduate having completed four years of English and language arts training and three years each of math, science, and social studies.

But the momentum for reform hit a wall over the issue of merit pay for teachers. Both the Institute for Tomorrow's Workforce and the legislature agreed that teachers in the state are paid too little. The legislature agreed to a pay increase, but it wanted to establish an independent commission linking teachers' pay to classroom performance. Vilsack, under pressure from the teachers union, vetoed that aspect of the bill.

Unfortunately, the union is also preventing other promising reforms from catching on. For example, the state has one of the weakest charter laws in the country, and thus only a handful of charter schools. Nor does Iowa have much to offer mid-career professionals or liberal arts graduates who want to enter teaching through alternate routes.

Still, the quality of the state's teachers has been a point of contention. Iowa was the only state to resist a No Child Left Behind Act requirement that new elementary school teachers pass a standardized test in math, reading, social studies, and science before entering the classroom. School officials argue that their state teacher certification requirements make such a test unnecessary.

Such intransigence rankled the U.S. Department of Education, which issued a stern warning in May 2006, threatening Iowa with loss of some federal funds if it didn't start giving prospective teachers the test. The state responded and will begin requiring the exam in 2007.

International competition, federal pressure, and a yawning achievement gap appear to be rousing the Hawkeye State from its education slumber. It's about time. Whether the state will marshal its energies to put education back on the right track is still an open question.

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