For many of you, July means vacation time. There’s nothing better to do during those long flights, layovers, hours in the sand, or just “stay-cations” in the backyard hammock than catch up on reading. If you’re tired of hearing about the status of Lindsay Lohan’s jail sentence, or weary of pining over Travel & Leisure’s suggestions for future vacations, Ohio Education Gadfly has just the thing. Check out our latest summer reading edition, which pulls together the latest education policy papers and reports, and summarizes and analyzes them for you in digestible short reviews. Summer reading doesn’t have to lack substance, and for education enthusiasts – sometimes vacation can feel too long to be away from education commentary.

There’s plenty on tap for everyone. The reviews cover a range of issues, from evaluations of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program and Denver’s ProComp system, essays on urban Catholic schools in 12 American cities, to a nuanced look at whether full-day kindergarten is necessary, and an interesting take by school finance gurus on productivity in K-12 schooling.

Be sure to peruse it, or print it to have on hand in case Anthony Bourdain’s latest book is making you too hungry or you don’t want to be away from ed news for too long.  

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

We confess. Mike and I were partly wrong last week: More than half a dozen conservatives have misgivings about the “Common Core” standards and the tests to follow. The number is up to at least eight and, since conservatives tend to get excited by the sight of red (red meat, red blood, red states, etc.), every time we wave this scarlet flag in front of them we can expect more of them to charge us. Perhaps including the piece you’re now reading.

So far, though, we’ve been nicked but not gored by their horns—and we cheerfully concede that critics have several legitimate concerns. Yes, it would have been better if the voluntary move by states to develop and consider adopting common standards hadn’t been entangled in a competition for federal money. Yes, it would be better if more of that same federal money weren’t paying for development of new assessment systems to accompany the standards. Yes, it would have been lots better if President Obama had never hinted at harnessing national standards to future Title I funding. Yes, the long-term governance of the standards and tests remains to be worked out.

But good grief, folks, do you really want to preserve the meager academic expectations, crummy tests, and weak-kneed accountability arrangements that currently drive—or fail to drive—K-12 education across most of this broad land? Are you so risk averse and change resistant as to see no merit in trying to do this differently in the future?

It’s true, as multiple bloggers have noted, that I spent part of 1997 itemizing the flaws in Bill Clinton’s plan for the federal government to create and administer a national testing system. And like practically everybody else (save for the progressive educators who drafted them), I didn’t like much about the federally-induced “national standards” that had emerged during the Bush I administration earlier that decade.

But many things have changed in thirteen years. Four deserve to be noted.

First, and most important, U.S. education has made only the slimmest achievement gains—none of these at the high-school level—and graduation rates have stayed limp, as more and more countries surpass us on more and more measures on this fast-flattening and ever-more-competitive planet. Read the rest of this post >>>

The New York Times article, “The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers” by David Leonhardt, was the most-emailed article in the Times yesterday, and Education Week’s Elanna S. Yalow wants “Kindergarten-Ready” to replace “Career and College-Ready” in Arne Duncan’s lexicon. However, despite the splash that early childhood education is making in the headlines these past few days, the fade-out effects of even high quality programs like Head Start have traditionally served to caution us against the belief that early childhood education is the silver bullet needed to close the achievement gap.

Here’s what’s interesting about the study informing Leonhardt’s article: it tells us that fade-out occurs only when considering test scores, which overlook other “life-metrics” that quality early education programs increase, such as college attendance, income, or even softer qualities including patience and manners.

Check out our report, “Half Empty or Half Full?: Florida’s Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten Standards,” on proceeding effectively with Pre-Kindergarten programs in the past:

[A]chieving greater growth for the low-income children who enter the [voluntary Pre-Kindergarten] program already behind their peers will most likely require more intensive services, perhaps even a different mix of services, and possibly a longer school day. Thus, programs serving these students would need more resources than the programs that serve other students. If the hope is to get all children to the Kindergarten starting line adequately prepared for the challenges of K-12, “universal” must not be equated with “uniform.” Low-income children need a richer mix of more intensive services than those provided to more affluent children.

We may not be paying our Kindergarten teachers 320K any time soon, but let’s take lessons from these past and present findings on the value of quality early elementary education.

–Kyle Kennedy, Fordham intern

Washingtonians share their opinion on the latest round of D.C. teacher firings. Want to travel to Japan to teach English? Do it soon because it looks like the JET program is facing the guillotine. Speaking of travel, Salem, MA is filling a much needed hole in hospitality education.

Saul Spady, Fordham Intern

“We are facing the hard truth that the [proficiency] gains in the past were simply not as advertised.’’

— Merryl Tisch, Chancellor of the New York state Board of Regents

” ‘Hard Truth’ on Education,” The Wall Street Journal

6.2

Billion dollars, race to the top finalists are requesting. Double the amount the DOE has available.

“Ohio Race to the Top application builds on existing initiatives,” Catalyst Ohio

The Columbus Dispatch has had great coverage of the struggles of– and now the proposed fix for – the city’s troubled middle schools.

Of Columbus’s 18 middle schools, 13 are rated “D” or “F” by the Ohio Department of Education. Only one school scored well enough to garner a “B.” Proficiency results have been well below the state requirements, and seventh and eighth-grade test results have been particularly worrisome, as they’ve declined overall since 2007.

Now, after some time examining the issue, the district has an explanation for this low performance. In a recent Dispatch article, the district admitted that it has been treating its middle-school students more like “miniature high-schoolers.” Students in grades 6-8 had been going to eight 52-minute classes a day. While this kind of schedule isn’t unusual, it seems that Columbus middle schools were lacking proper supports in the transition from the elementary grades to high school. Santo Pino of the National Middle School Association told the Dispatch that this schedule isn’t best for early adolescents, who need stronger relationships with adults with more support and opportunities to explore new subjects before they get to high school.

In order to provide this, the district is proposing that students instead be assigned to smaller communities of “houses” in each grade level that share common teachers. Each house would have two to four teachers each, with block periods of 260 minutes. The house teachers would have flexibility to divide the time of this block among core academic subjects. Incoming sixth graders would be paired with an older student mentor, and opportunities for electives would be expanded.

The irony here is that thirty years ago, CCS was the first urban district in the state to switch from junior highs to middle schools and enact the very changes they are proposing today.  These changes eventually faded over time and the schools began to resemble junior highs again.

Regardless, this is definitely a step in the right direction. Policies that allow close-knit teacher collaboration with an emphasis on closer student-teacher relationships should be commonplace in the middle grades, particularly for at-risk students at such a critical age.

 - Eric Ulas

Bridging the divide between education research and education policy can be difficult, but we came one step closer this week when we co-hosted the first Emerging Education Policy Scholars program with the American Enterprise Institute. The program aims to cultivate emerging talent in the education policy sector. As Rick Hess wrote today of the program:

…it was gratifying to see the degree to which important questions around merit pay, collective bargaining, school choice, accountability, and cost-cutting have moved into the mainstream of ed research. Just a decade ago, my interest in such questions marked me as a bizarre outlier in the world of ed schools. Such questions were the province of a limited circle of scholars, many of them dead-set on proving that reforms like school choice or merit pay were bad ideas.

You can read the full blog post on Rick’s blog.

Almost three years ago, Fordham and the Northwest Evaluation Association published a landmark study, The Proficiency Illusion, which found that state “proficiency cut scores” varied tremendously, not just from state to state but also within states. Cut scores for elementary school kids were lower than for middle school kids; cut scores for math were higher than for reading; cut scores tended to drift downward over time. 

What does this mean for educational policy and practice? What does it mean for standards-based reform in general and NCLB in particular? It means big trouble—and those who care about strengthening U.S. k-12 education should be furious. There’s all this testing—too much, surely—yet the testing enterprise is unbelievably slipshod. It’s not just that results vary, but that they vary almost randomly, erratically, from place to place and grade to grade and year to year in ways that have little or nothing to do with true differences in pupil achievement. America is awash in achievement “data,” yet the truth about our educational performance is far from transparent and trustworthy. It may be smoke and mirrors. Gains (and slippages) may be illusory. Comparisons may be misleading. Apparent problems may be nonexistent or, at least, misstated. The testing infrastructure on which so many school reform efforts rest, and in which so much confidence has been vested, is unreliable—at best.

The study didn’t examine New York, but now we know that the “proficiency illusion” infected the Empire State, too. What’s notable is that Commissioner David Steiner is willing to admit the problem and take action to fix it. According to the Times, he told his board last week: “The word ‘proficient’ should tell you something, and right now that is not the case on our state tests.”

So he boosted the state’s cut scores in order to ensure that a student who is deemed “proficient” is actually on track to pass the Regents’ exams in high school–and succeed in college and career. Though common sense, this move is hugely courageous, as it immediately illustrated just how far many kids and schools have to go to reach that real-world standard.

Sure enough, if you raise the bar, lots more kids will fail to meet it. So demonstrated the results released yesterday. Again, according to the Times:

This year, 61 percent of state students were deemed passing, or at grade level, in math, compared with 86 percent last year. Students also performed dismally on the English tests, with 53 percent passing, down from 77 percent.

As I told the Times, these revelations complicate the Bloomberg Administration message. That’s not Mayor Bloomberg’s or Chancellor Joel Klein’s fault, of course. They don’t control the state test, and they deserve no blame for it becoming such an unreliable indicator of achievement. Still, the sky-high proficiency rates that they’ve crowed about in recent years have turned out to be, well, illusory.

But that doesn’t mean that Big Apple schools aren’t making progress. Gotham Schools quoted Merryl Tisch, the chair of the state Board of Regents, thusly: “If you haven’t noticed that the city school system is improving, then you’re walking around with blinders.” True. And the city makes a good case that, regardless of where the proficiency bar is set, its kids are making strong progress. Its average “scale scores” in math and reading have risen significantly over the past five years, both on average and for individual ethnic groups, plus the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show significant gains from 2007 to 2009 in fourth-grade reading.

As in most states, there was an achievement bubble in New York. Now there’s been a correction, and we can start fresh from a more honest and accurate position. This is good news, and another illustration of how badly the country needs standards and assessments it can believe in.

-Mike Petrilli

It has been a month since the death of the longest tenured Senator in US history, Robert Byrd, and today I’d like to honor Byrd by talking about one of his favorite subjects: history. Over his lifetime Senator Byrd was a staunch champion for history and civics education. He realized the importance of history and the current sad state of civics in the US.  There is no easy solution, but our 2003 report, “The Best of Both Worlds” proposes a novel idea. Why not teach history in tandem with geography to help students grasp the information?

We learn… that American students’ knowledge of history and geography is lamentably thin, that their understanding of their nation’s past is weak, and that their comprehension of the world

American students’ knowledge of history and geography is lamentably thin...Yet there has never been a time when such knowledge mattered more.

outside the United States is skimpy indeed. Yet there has never been a time when such knowledge mattered more…The present contribution is both useful in its own right—a fine curricular guide for educators and policymakers that imaginatively blends the two core disciplines of social studies—and a needed reminder that this field needs urgent attention.

You’ve probably heard the numbers, but it might not hurt to see them again. Half of seventeen-year-olds don’t know what the Renaissance was, a majority of eighth graders can’t explain the purpose of the Declaration of Independence, only five percent of high school seniors can describe federal checks and balances, and only 36% of students aged 18-24 can identify the UK on a blank map. The state of civics knowledge is in a dire state. With the death of Senator Byrd who will take up the fight?

-Saul Spady, Fordham Intern

The Administration’s number-one pitchman thinks I’m being overly critical about the Race to the Top, but what does he have to say about this bit of pandering to the civil rights community?

“We will ensure that all schools—public, private and charter—serve the kids most in need,” Duncan said. “That is also something you told us was important. We heard you loud and clear, we are responding and these schools will be held accountable.”

Set aside the Secretary’s assumption that charter schools aren’t serving “the kids most in need.”  What on earth is he planning to do to “ensure” that private schools serve needy kids? How is he going to hold them “accountable”? Accountable to whom? Most don’t get public funds. Many are more diverse than traditional public schools. What the heck is he talking about?

The Administration’s thinking around Race to the Top has been downright brilliant compared to its muddle-headed nonsense on “equity.” (And I’m saying that as someone who’s even willing to support busing!)

-Mike Petrilli

Teacher layoffs are a hot topic nowadays, as are the dire warnings about what will happen if teachers are let go.  When Cleveland’s board voted to lay off 545 teachers to balance that district’s budget, the union warned of class sizes topping 45 students per teacher (don’t worry, many will get their jobs back if the new contract passes muster).  Certainly that number was an exaggeration.  Current state law in Ohio calls for class sizes no bigger than 25 students per teacher (though the governor’s education reform plan, passed last summer, will lower the ratio in K-3 to 15:1 over the next several years).  Average student-teacher ratios don’t fall anywhere close to 25:1 – just a handful of Ohio districts report a ratio higher than 25:1 and more than half report one below 18:1. (Cleveland’s current student-teacher ratio is just under 22:1.) 

But with the state, which invests about 40 percent of its revenue in K-12 education, looking for ways to plug an $8 billion budget hole, we wondered what the financial impact of increasing student-teacher ratios would be – especially if ratios were increased by just a few students (not the dozens that proponents of small class sizes try to claim). How much money could really be saved?  How big would class sizes have to get in order for the state to see a real difference in its bottom line? 

Here’s a quick rundown of what we found:

- If every district in the Buckeye State raised its average student-teacher ratio by one student (e.g., from 16:1 to 17:1), there is  a  potential statewide savings of $276 million in teacher salaries alone.

- If the districts with ratios lower than 20:1 raised theirs to that level, the state could save $458 million in teacher salaries.

- If the districts with ratios lower than 22:1 raised theirs to that level, the state could save $848 million in teacher salaries.

- If every district in the state operated at an average 25:1 student-teacher ratio, the state could save $1.38 billion in teacher salaries alone.

Just making a small increase in the number of students per teacher would give the state, and local districts, real fiscal relief.  When you consider the benefits, professional development, and retirement costs that go along with each teacher, the potential savings would be even greater. 

At the district level, the savings become even starker.  Take Bexley, an affluent suburban district near Columbus which is asking voters for an additional $3 million per year on November 2 – a rarity for the district, which hasn’t been had a levy on the ballot in six years.  Bexley’s reported student-teacher ratio is a hair over 16:1 (for the most recent year data are available).  Increasing it to 20:1 would realize up to $1.8 million per year in savings in teacher salaries alone.  Boosting it to 22:1 would save $2.4 million – just $600,000 shy of what voters are being asked to pony up. 

There are surely similar examples across the state – districts that are essentially sitting (unknowingly) on a pot of money that could ameliorate their pain with little to no actual impact on student learning.  It’s worth stating the obvious that there are clear losers in this scenario (increasing class sizes means lost jobs), and there are staunch defenders of existing small class sizes. But when the state is facing an unprecedented budget deficit and is trimming off tiny shavings at every corner, isn’t it worth considering larger potential savings?

-Emmy Partin

Checker recently appeared on the Bill Bennett Show to talk about our latest report, “The State of State Standards – and the Common Core – in 2010.” Checker reminds the audience:

Standards don’t signify achievement. So California has had good standards for a decade and a miserable track record of implementing them.

Listen to the full interview below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[10 minutes, 45 seconds]

“To suggest that a charter school started by community members who want to help kids in their community cannot serve 100 percent Hispanic kids in a community that’s 100 percent Hispanic — that they should be penalized for that or they shouldn’t be allowed to open up — that doesn’t make sense.’’

— Raul Gonzalez, Legislative Director of the National Council of La Raza

“Ed Dept, civil rights leaders discuss reform,” The Associated Press

320,000

The amount of additional money a class of kindergartners could earn because of having a  “standout kindergarten teacher.”

“The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers,” The New York Times

Teaching to the test becoming a problem? Check out two schools where passing the test goes hand-in-hand with good teaching, no matter the student’s background. In any case, if you find you are less than prepared to pass, in New Jersey you may find Ds don’t cut it anymore. But have no fear – there’s an alternative route to success: road-schooling; it may get you into Harvard Law.

-Kyle Kennedy, Fordham Intern

For the better part of a week, Washington has been consumed by the Shirley Sherrod pseudo-scandal, leading many pundits to ponder race relations in America circa 2010. A better indicator, however, might be the goings-on in Wake County, North Carolina, where civil rights advocates are angrily protesting the decision of a newly elected school board to end the education system’s long-running busing program.

This story has it all: civil disobedience, allegations of “carpet-bagging” Yankees, super-charged emotions, and the highest of stakes: our children. Unlike the Sherrod dispute, which is mostly a symbolic proxy war, this one is fundamental to our self-definition as a country. Do we believe in raising our children together, with kids of other races, cultures, and economic backgrounds, or not?

Yet, as an ABC reporter said to me last week, it also sounds like a throwback to the 1970s. Isn’t busing something that came and went? We tried it, and it didn’t work, right? Wake County was one of the last hold-outs; perhaps now we’re finally looking at the end of an era.

Perhaps. But is that a good thing or a bad thing? Should we be glad that we’re “moving on,” focusing instead on improving our schools regardless of their demographics? A new Education Next forum titled “Is Desegregation Dead?” sheds light on this question. Susan Eaton of Harvard Law squares off against Steven Rivkin of Amherst College. Though they differ in their interpretation of the “success” (or not) of desegregation, they agree on the fundamentals: Integration helps to raise minority student achievement, but it’s not nearly a strong enough intervention by itself to close achievement gaps. As Rivkin explains:

Research, includ­ing 2008 and 2009 studies by Eric Hanushek, John Kain, and me, and a 2000 study by Car­oline Hoxby that account for both observed and unobserved factors that could affect outcomes and contaminate the results, sug­gests that African Americans, particularly higher achievers, do benefit from attending schools with a higher proportion of white students. It is likely, though, that the ben­efit depends on how school integration was achieved. The relationship between achieve­ment and the demographic composition of the classroom is not well understood. What drives higher achievement? Is it peer influ­ences? Better teachers? Teacher behavior? Clearly, both the student population and the quality of instruction affect student out­comes, and policies should take both factors into consideration.

Conventional wisdom says that integration is impossible now that our neighborhoods are so racially and economically isolated. But there are pockets where that’s changing: in suburbs and exurbs experiencing an influx of minority families, especially immigrants; and cities experiencing rapid gentrification as white families return, and stay for the long-haul. Today’s generation has another shot at integrating our schools—a shot that the research indicates is worth taking.

NB: Marty West of Education Next interviews Steve Rivkin (“What Has Desegregation Accomplished?”) and Susan Eaton (“Desegregation: Down but Not Out”) in videos now posted on the Ed Next website.

(This post also appears on the Education Next blog)

–Mike Petrilli

Well, as you’ve probably seen/heard by now, there are 19 finalists for the federal Race to the Top Phase 2 competition (35 states and the District of Columbia had applied.) Education Secretary Arne Duncan made the announcement during a speech at the National Press Club earlier today. Phase 2 finalists are:

Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

Looks like the group includes all of the finalists from Phase 1 who didn’t win, plus a handful of extras. Winners will be announced in September.

Here’s just a smattering of coverage so far: Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Ed Week and the Associated Press. A few interesting blogs too, here and here.

Mike Petrilli will probably have more thoughts on this issue tomorrow. And, if you’re looking for Fordham’s take on Ohio’s “finalist” status, please read Jamie Davies O’Leary’s blog post.

–Amy Fagan

An interesting article in the July 10^th edition of Newsweek illustrates a growing “Creativity Crisis” facing US students. Creativity has always been considered a key to continued US strength, but general creativity scores for US students have been falling consistently since 1990.  In education we tend to grade successful schools based upon graduation rates, but how do we account for creativity? A good place to start, according to our 2007 report Beyond the Basics, would be a basic liberal arts education for all children.

The United States is not going to compete with the rest of the world in terms of cheap labor or cheap raw materials. If we are going to compete productively with the rest of the world, it’s going to be in terms of creativity and innovation. America has always had a capacity for hard work and stamina, but those qualities of creativity and ingenuity are not being nurtured and fostered by our current educational system.

-Saul Spady, Fordham Intern

Arne Duncan just announced 19 finalists for Race to the Top round two, including Ohio, saying that these applications represented the boldest reforms (and by “bold,” that means those in the top 51 percent of the 36 states plus DC to submit). From his speech to the National Press Club, one remark in particular stands out to me:

This minor provision [Race to the Top] in the Recovery Act  has unleashed an avalanche of pent-up education reform activity at the state and local level.

I’d agree that RttT has spurred several avalanches – a dizzying amount of media coverage, a near-irritating amount of speculation and theorizing and arguing over its capacity to spur meaningful change (of which Fordham has added its fair share), or the hundreds and hundreds of states’ application pages.

But an avalanche of reform? Not really, not here in Ohio at least. Our education reform climate hasn’t seen an inundation of much of anything, other than misinformation and folks complaining about the four pillars of RttT (especially changes to teacher evaluation or pay, which Ohio’s state superintendent has promised repeatedly won’t happen via RttT without local support and contract negotations). In fact, Race to the Top hasn’t changed much about the way we do business at all and won’t, even if we win the money.

First off, large percentages of students in Ohio’s lowest performing schools (as measured in various ways in this Ohio Gadfly analysis) won’t see a dime of funding. As many as a third of students in the worst rated schools won’t be funded, nor will a third of students in high schools with the state’s lowest graduation rates. For many of the students in Ohio’s neediest schools, Race to the Top is about as relevant as their old LeBron jerseys.

Second, when districts are looking at their balance sheets, the buzz is really over peanuts. Take Cincinnati and Dayton Schools, for example. Cincinnati stands to win $12.9 million (over four years) from Race to the Top, which is less than one percent (0.7%) of district spending over that same time period. Dayton Public Schools stands to win $6.4 million (over four years), less than one percent (0.8%) of district spending over the four years.

Finally, Ohio’s application didn’t change much at all from round one, and hasn’t incorporated any earth-shaking or jaw-dropping reforms. Other states – like winners Tennessee and Delaware and I’d guess states like Florida and Louisiana again this round – might be experiencing an avalanche of sorts. But here in Ohio, it’s sunny with clear skies and no avalanche in sight.

With the common core standards seemingly on their way to mass adoption it’s time for us to turn our eyes to the next step of the Common Core: national assessments, which should be in place for the 2014/2015 school year. Similar to state standards, state assessments vary in difficulty. According to our 2007 report The Proficiency Illusion many states sacrifice standards for inflated proficiency rates.

The findings of this inquiry are sobering, indeed alarming. We see, with more precision than previous studies, that

Only a handful of states peg proficiency expectations consistently across the grades, with the vast majority setting thousands of little Susies up to fail by middle school.

“proficiency” varies wildly from state to state, with “passing scores” ranging from the 6th percentile to the 77th. We show that, over the past few years, twice as many states have seen their tests become easier in at least two grades as have seen their tests become more difficult. And we learn that only a handful of states peg proficiency expectations consistently across the grades, with the vast majority setting thousands of little Susies up to fail by middle school by aiming precipitously low in elementary school.

-Saul Spady, Fordham Intern

Arne Duncan is going to announce the finalists in the second round of the Race to the Top tomorrow, the significance of which is…nothing. The Secretary is free to name as many states as he wishes, which is precisely what I suspect he’ll do. Getting labeled a finalist is good for a state’s governor (especially one in a tight re-election race*); the Administration also wants to make the case that the president’s efforts have led lots and lots of states to embrace reform.

The actual number of winners will be limited by available funds. (Though not too limited.) But when it comes to the number of finalists, the sky’s the limit.

-Mike Petrilli

* Say, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts or Ted Strickland of Ohio