Bill Gates, the Nation's Superintendent of Schools
His foundation has big clout in American education. How will it wield its power?
By Diane Ravitch, DIANE RAVITCH is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of education at New York University.
July 30, 2006
LATIMES.com
WARREN Buffett's gift of $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will double the foundation's assets, bringing it to more than $60 billion, and will increase its annual giving to nearly $3 billion.
Never before has an individual given such a large amount of money to someone else's foundation. Never before has a private foundation had assets of this dimension. Never before has any individual or foundation had so much power to direct the course of American education, which is one of the primary interests of the Gates Foundation. Educators are waiting with bated breath to see which direction this multibillion-dollar behemoth will take.
When judged by their influence on education, foundations have a decidedly mixed record. The most successful American philanthropists by far were Andrew Carnegie and Julius Rosenwald. Carnegie, the steel magnate, used his foundation to build 2,500 free public libraries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of which are in the United States, and his name became a blessing to readers across the nation.
Rosenwald, who headed Sears, Roebuck & Co. in the early 1900s, directed his foundation to underwrite the construction of more than 5,000 schools in poor, rural, mainly African American districts in 15 Southern states, as well as to endow Tuskegee, Howard, Fisk, Atlanta and Dillard universities, which were (and are) predominantly black. Rosenwald's munificence saved a generation of black students.
At the other extreme, the most spectacular blunder by a foundation was the intervention of the Ford Foundation in the politics of New York City's public schools in the late 1960s. In a struggle for control of the school system between minority activists and the teachers union, the foundation funded the activists. Ford-sponsored community groups ousted union teachers from their schools, and the union responded by striking and closing down the schools for two months in the fall of 1968.
The ugly confrontation, accompanied by charges and countercharges of racism and anti-Semitism, poisoned black-Jewish relations in New York City for three decades. The Legislature defused the crisis by decentralizing the 1-million-pupil school district into 32 community districts, an arrangement that satisfied few people but remained in place until 2002, when the Legislature gave control of the school system to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
How will the Gates Foundation do? Thus far, it has invested $1 billion to persuade school districts to break up large high schools into small schools of 500 or fewer students. About 1,500 small high schools have been created with the foundation's largesse. Last year, Bill Gates told the National Governors Assn. that "America's high schools are obsolete." Our high schools, he said, "cannot teach our kids what they need to know today," especially the advanced skills in math, science and technology required in the modern workplace.
It is certainly true that many American high schools are too large, especially in urban areas, where some enroll more than 2,000 adolescents and many students get lost in the crowd.
However, the Gates Foundation's plan to promote small high schools has also run into unexpected obstacles.
The foundation aims to promote higher standards and closer relationships between students and teachers, and indeed, according to the foundation's own evaluations, students in the new mini-schools have better relationships with teachers, do somewhat better in English and have better graduation rates than those in large schools.
However, the same evaluations also show that students in the small schools are learning significantly less math than their peers in the big schools.
Some districts that took Gates' money to downsize their schools are now backtracking. The Denver school district, a pioneer recipient of Gates funding, got $1 million to convert its 1,100-student Manual High School into three mini-schools in 2001. As a consequence, electives were cut back, as were advanced placement courses, foreign language courses, choir, debate and athletic teams. As college-bound students, athletes and other disgruntled pupils transferred out, enrollments at the Manual mini-schools plunged by nearly 50%, along with student achievement and the graduation rate. Denver closed the small schools this year, and Manual High School is being reconsolidated.
In light of its experiences, the Gates Foundation seems chastened and apparently has recognized that curriculum (what students are taught) and instruction (the quality of teachers) may be no less important than school size. Perhaps, with its deep expertise in technology, the foundation will think about investing in the development of innovative, interactive software to transform the teaching of mathematics and science in the nation's classrooms, from kindergarten through grade 12. And, by establishing an endowment fund, the foundation could safeguard the future of urban Catholic schools, which have been a gateway to the middle class for so many poor and working-class children.
With the ability to hand out more than $1 billion or more every year to U.S. educators without any external review, the Gates Foundation looms larger in the eyes of school leaders than even the U.S. Department of Education, which, by comparison, has only about $20 million in truly discretionary funds. The department may have sticks, but the foundation has almost all the carrots.
In light of the size of the foundation's endowment, Bill Gates is now the nation's superintendent of schools. He can support whatever he wants, based on any theory or philosophy that appeals to him. We must all watch for signs and portents to decipher what lies in store for American education.
State eases back a bit on formula for schools BY CYNTHIA HOWELL
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Saturday, July 29, 2006
With approval from the federal government, Arkansas is relaxing the formula that determines which public schools end up on the improvement list, making it possible that fewer schools will be penalized this year for their students’ low achievement on state tests.
The state Department of Education received word from the U. S. Department of Education that it has approved reductions in the percentages of students who must score at their grade level on the Arkansas Benchmark and Endof-Course exams each year if a school is to avoid penalties.
Under the old system, for example, 52. 12 percent of elementary school math test-takers would have had to score at grade level or better on the Benchmark Exam last April to keep a school off the state’s improvement list for this school year.
Now, with the revised plan, only 40 percent of elementary math students must score at grade level to keep the school in good standing.
In 2005, 255 of Arkansas ’ nearly 1, 100 schools were on the state improvement list for failing to meet the state’s performance levels. A new list based on test results from last spring and using the newly reconfigured minimum performance levels is expected to be announced in the next few weeks.
There is a trade-off, of sorts, with the new lower performance levels.
The schools will have to make greater achievement gains in each successive year — jumps of 7. 2 percentage points a year in elementary math, for example, and an annual jump of 8. 85 percentage point in high school math — if the schools are to meet the new minimum percentages.
Originally, the annual increases ranged from 5. 68 percentage points to 7. 47 percentage points a year in the different subjects.
“It’s making it a little easier along the way and harder at the very end,” Jack Jennings, president of the Washington, D. C.-based Center on Education Policy, observed about the Arkansas system. The center is a national, independent advocacy organization for public education that is funded by numerous charitable foundations.
“That’s what they call backloading,” Jennings said.
“Namely, put off until another day the hard part, because you hope the law will be changed by then,” he said and laughed.
Jennings said Arkansas is not alone in its approach to setting minimum achievement levels to make it easier on schools.
“Florida was notorious,” he said. “They set up baby steps and then gigantic steps, but the problem was that the law didn’t change, and that state is now facing the gigantic steps. So a number of states did backload, but this [in Arkansas ] sounds like a more subtle backloading.”
With the greater annual increases required under Arkansas’ newest plan, the minimum performance levels are lower than those required in the original plan for every school year until 2013-14.
That’s when 100 percent of students are supposed to score at their grade level if schools are to be in compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
In 2012-13, which is the year before 100 percent proficiency is required, 91. 90 percent of Arkansas middle-school literacy students must score at grade level or better.
That is lower than the 93. 23 percent proficient that was the target in the state’s original plan.
The No Child Left Behind Act is President Bush’s effort to improve public education. It requires states to test students in math and literacy in grades three through eight and in at least one high school grade with the goal that all students score at their grade level by 2013-14.
To that end, Arkansas and other states had to establish annual, minimum achievement levels for schools.
Not only does the overall student body have to meet the goals but so also does each subpopulation of students: white, black, Hispanic, poor, disabled and those who are not native English speakers.
Additionally, the U. S. Education Department has approved a request by state education leaders that will make some 2, 200 students who fled to Arkansas from hurricane-damaged Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, a separate subgroup this year.
A subgroup is defined as 40 or more test-takers in a school.
Schools in which students or even a subgroup of students fail to meet the state-set targets in each of two consecutive years are sanctioned.
The longer the school fails to meet the state targets — which are raised every year — the more severe the penalties. Initially, the schools must offer students the opportunity to transfer to higherachieving schools in the district.
Over time the schools must use their federal grant money to pay for private tutoring for their students, alter their curriculum, replace faculty members or even close.
Although the yearly performance levels have been reduced, any advantage to the state’s approximately 1, 000 public schools may be offset by the increased number of test-takers and more subgroups in schools, said Julie Johnson Thompson, a spokesman for the state Education Department.
This is the first year that the test results from third-, fifthand seventh-graders will be added to the results from other grades in calculating whether a school meets the state targets. As a result of the larger number of test-takers, schools will have more subgroups on which to report.
“I think it may balance out,” Thompson said about the potential number of new schools on the state’s school improvement list.
“Anytime a subgroup is added, it seems like the chances of a school missing adequate yearly progress goes up. But, test scores for every racial / ethnic group improved this year, so that bodes well.”
Joel Rush, director of research and evaluation for the Hot Springs School District, said he agreed with the state’s move to revise performance levels but wished the lower levels had gone into effect in 2005 when the requisite Benchmark Exam scores were raised.
“I don’t think it’s good or bad,” Rush said about the revision. “You are going to hear some people say we are reducing standards and some will say the changes are long overdue, but I think both sides are kind of blowing it out of proportion. I do think they needed to do it.
“ I think it should have been done last year.”
The U. S. Education Department announced June 27 that approval of Arkansas’ overall assessment program is being held up because the Benchmark and End-of-Course tests may not be not hard enough.
Also at issue were concerns about assessments the state uses for special-education students and students who have limited English speaking skills.
Arkansas education leaders staunchly defend the difficulty of the state tests and plan to submit documents to that effect to the federal agency within a few days.
The fact that approval of the testing program is pending makes the state eligible for some federal help on its testing program for English language learners.
That potential partnership between the states and the federal department was announced Thursday.
Besides being evaluated by the federal agency, the No Child Left Behind testing programs in Arkansas and the rest of the country are being scrutinized by multiple organizations, often with differing results.
An American Federation of Teachers study praised Arkansas’ academic standards as being strong for all grades in math and most grades in reading.
But the organization listed Arkansas as one of nine states that does not show on its Education Department Web site how the standards and state Benchmark and End of Course tests relate to the state education standards.
Tennessee is held out as a shining example of a state that spells out which standards will be tested.
On the other hand, Education Next, a scholarly journal published by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, recently gave Arkansas a B-minus grade because the student proficiency rates on state exams tend to mirror the state’s results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national test that is given to a sample of students in every state.
Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Carolina earned F’s.
“Our mission in Arkansas is to teach students so that they meet high academic standards, not to give easy tests so that they only appear to do so,” Ken James, Arkansas’ education commissioner said in response to the Hoover study.
“We... have confidence that our curriculum frameworks and our assessment tools work together to promote high levels of learning.
“ We have often said that proof of that happening is found in Arkansas’ improved NAEP scores.”
Beauprez Looks to the States to Move Beyond No Child Left Behind
By Dan Lips The Heritage FoundationJuly 27, 2006
It’s been said that everything old becomes new again. This is proving true in the federal education reform debate. A conservative congressman has introduced new legislation based on an old idea: local control over education.
On Thursday, Representative Bob Beauprez (R-CO) introduced the Partnership for Academic Success in the States Act, or PASS Act, to restore greater state and local control in education. With bipartisan frustration with No Child Left Behind growing, the PASS Act could garner support across the political spectrum.
The PASS Act would give up to ten states greater freedom and flexibility to control federal education spending without being tied down by the typical web of federal regulations. In exchange, the states would have to demonstrate improved academic achievement. And if a state reduces the achievement gap, it would receive a performance bonus from the federal government.
This makes sense. The federal government’s role would be reduced to a level commensurate with the 8.5 percent of education funding it supplies. States would be responsible for improving student outcomes while having the flexibility to choose the most appropriate policies for their needs.
For education reformers, Rep. Beauprez’s proposal should look familiar. It’s based on the Academic Achievement for All Act, known as the “Straight A’s” initiative, that gained widespread conservative support in the pre-No Child Left Behind era. Straight A’s would have given states the freedom to consolidate certain federal education programs and try out different reforms to boost academic achievement.
In the late 1990s, Straight A’s was popular on Capitol Hill and with state policymakers across the country. The House of Representatives passed a pilot-project version of Straight A’s for ten states (similar to the PASS Act) in late 1999. Prominent supporters included House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Unfortunately, the Straight A’s initiative never gained sufficient traction in the Senate. After the congressional debate over No Child Left Behind, proposals based on Straight A’s were all but forgotten.
But four years after the passage of No Child Left Behind, the time is right to return to the idea of greater state and local control in education. Rep. Beauprez’s PASS Act will appeal to those who are dissatisfied with No Child Left Behind-conservatives and liberals alike. For conservatives, the PASS Act represents a welcome exit strategy from today's unprecedented federal authority in local education. For liberals, the PASS Act could end the federal government’s heavy-handed approach to enforcing public school accountability.
Thankfully, the PASS Act isn’t just good politics. It’s good policy. The PASS Act recognizes federal bureaucrats’ limited ability to implement changes that will actually improve learning for the fifty million children in public schools across the nation. The PASS Act would begin to transfer power from distant bureaucrats to local authorities, such as state policymakers, local school leaders, and parents--those best positioned to identify students’ needs.
Education reformers across the political spectrum should welcome the opportunity that the PASS Act would give them. State and local policymakers would have to innovate and implement new reforms. No two states would have the same strategy. For example, a more conservative state could implement school choice reforms to create new options for parents and introduce competition into the public education system. A more liberal state might decide to reduce class sizes and boost spending on traditional public schools.
The important thing is that local communities could tailor policy solutions to meet the specific needs of their children. As this happens, parents, teachers, and lawmakers will be able to look to neighboring states to study promising reform strategies that might work locally.
As Congress begins work on reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, education reformers on both sides of the aisle should think creatively about how to move beyond No Child Left Behind to let the most promising local solutions flourish. Restoring federalism in American education is a good place to start.
Dan Lips is Education Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, www.Heritage.org.
National Center for Policy AnalysisJuly 27, 2006
A CULTURE OF COMPLAINT
Unions and collective bargaining hurt schools with cumbersome contracts by introducing practices into the education system that are counterproductive and create conflict between teachers and administrators, say Howard Fuller, a former superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools, and George Mitchell, a Milwaukee-based researcher.
The Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) entered the collective bargaining era in 1964. An 18-page school-board resolution defined the initial relationship between the MPS and the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association. And following a pattern seen in most urban districts, this has evolved during subsequent decades into a 232-page contract with more than 2,000 additional supporting documents, including grievance-arbitration rulings, memoranda of understanding and state declaratory rulings
The result? An endless debate about what is and is not allowed in the daily governance of the school system and the creation of an environment where the interests of students are routinely subordinated to those of adult teachers.
Fuller and Mitchell recommend:
Introducing choice in schools. This is patterned on America's system of higher education, where colleges and universities provide a wide array of choices that help students determine which college or university they may attend.
Promoting greater awareness of collective bargaining. Bargaining sessions should be public. The specifics of union contracts are one of the least reported, yet most important, aspects of American education. With the general public largely shut out, the result is an uneven playing field.
Increased public awareness could change the situation dramatically. The news media need to push aggressively for greater public access to the bargaining process. This would go hand-in-hand with expanding education options for parents. In the final analysis, more parental freedom to choose and a more open collective bargaining process surely would produce better results. Without such change, the unacceptable education outcomes that characterize the era of collective bargaining will continue, especially in urban districts, say Fuller and Mitchell.
Source: Howard Fuller and George A. Mitchell, "A Culture of Complaint," Education Next, Hoover Institution, p. 18-22, summer 06.
So That’s Why They’re LeavingDavid EpsteinInsideHigherEd.comJuly 26, 2006
In the past half year, Congress has held hearing after hearing to discuss the so-called American “science pipeline,” which some legislators say is leakier than warped rubber tubing.
The senators and representatives and the witnesses they’ve brought before them have offered a rainbow of possible reasons why a smaller proportion of American undergraduates are majoring in physical sciences and engineering than in the past. Some have suggested that biology is the hot science and has lured many top students away from other fields. Others have suggested everything from poor undergraduate instruction to nerd stigma. “Bright girls play dumb and guys can’t get dates,” said Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Maryland Republican on the House Science Committee.
But, in all those hearings, Congress folk may have missed some of the low-hanging fruit, according to interviews with a range of scientists and experts on science education.
Greener Grade Pastures: Science students get worse grades than non-science students. No comprehensive data for the distribution of grades around the nation by discipline exists, but in 1998 the College Board surveyed a representative sample of 21 selective institutions to find out how students who took Advanced Placement courses in high school were performing in college. The data show that, when students who got AP credit and were taking second-level college courses (as opposed to intro classes) were compared, non-science students got much better grades.
In English courses surveyed, 85 percent of those high-achieving students that were surveyed received A’s or B’s. That’s compared to 54 percent of those students in math courses.
Paul Romer, an economics professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, who has studied the issue, wrote in an article for Stanford Business that “the grades assigned in science courses are systematically lower than grades in other disciplines, and students rely heavily on grades as signals about the fields for which they are best suited.” Thus, he concluded, students usher themselves out of the science track.
Data from the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles show that, in 2004, about 9 percent of freshman students nationally planned to major in engineering, and 2 percent planned to major in physical sciences. Those numbers are pretty typical for the last two decades, and what is also typical, according to National Science Foundation data, is that it is not uncommon for fewer than half of those intended majors to stay the course.
It seems that the attrition rate in the physical sciences and engineering is chronically higher than in social and behavioral sciences. According to the NSF, only about 4.5 percent of bachelor’s degrees were awarded in engineering in 2004, and only about 1 percent in the physical sciences. Conversely, depending on the demographic, generally between 8 and 15 percent of freshmen intend to major in social and behavioral sciences, for which degrees made up 16 percent of the 2004 total.
Romer isn’t the only one that thinks unequal grading practices drive students from science. Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of Cornell University’s Higher Education Research Institute and an economics professor there, recalled a student who got an 85 on a test, which was above the mean, coming up to him and saying, “I’m dropping your class, because the best I can do is an A-, and I’m going to Stanford Law School.” Part of the problem Ehrenberg said, is that students who want to keep law school as an option will tend away from quantitative courses because it’s clear to them that disproportionate grade inflation in the humanities and less quantitative social sciences will give them a boost.
With Web sites like ratemyprofessors.com, students can instantly find out how “easy” other students think a certain professor is. A 2002 Cornell Higher Education Research Institute study showed that grades in Cornell’s science courses are generally several tenths lower than other courses, and a 2005 institute study found that, presented with information on the grading, students will flock to the easier courses, driving grade inflation even more.
In 1996, worried that they were giving lower grades than professors at competitor institutions, faculty members decided that Cornell should publish the median course grades for every course, every semester, so that faculty members could see the distribution of grades, and, presumably, adjust if a particular course’s median grade is too low. Not surprisingly, students started turning to the list, and according to the 2005 institute study, the list started looking different in a hurry, as students migrated en masse to easier courses. By spring 2005, the list shows that, of over 1,300 courses, fewer than 20 had median grades of B- or lower.
Weeding Out: Several experts suggested that the culture of scientists has kept science grades down, while science students at many institutions have watched longingly as humanities grades have drifted up and away like a helium balloon.
“There’s a difficult culture here,” said Daryl Chubin, director of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences’ Center for Advancing Science & Engineering Capacity. “The culture of science says, ‘not everybody is good enough to cut it, and we’re going to make it hard for them, and the cream will rise to the top.’ ”
Ehrenberg said that some scientists are starting to drop the “weed out” mentality, but Chubin still sees decade old themes. “I took a Ph.D. in 1973,” Chubin said, “and people were saying the same thing then. ‘Look to your left, look to your right, some of you will be gone.’ There’s a joy of attrition; demonstrating your manliness, back then it was all manliness, by failing students.”
Beyond tough guy science education, though, the 2002 Cornell study also pointed out that class size affected grades.
Large and Impersonal: The study showed that, controlling for the effects of discipline, large courses at Cornell had lower median grades than small courses.
The study suggested that large courses might have lower grades because the grading tends to be more coldly quantitative, so students who perform poorly on a major exam may have little recourse to bring their grades up. Whereas, in a smaller course, with more personal interaction, a student might be more likely to get advice on how he or she can improve directly from a professor, and might be rewarded for things like contributing to class discussions. Unfortunately for the science pipeline, many intro science and math courses tend to be large, while English courses, for example, tend to be small enough for a productive discussion.
But grading isn’t the only thing that shoos students from disciplines with large introductory courses.
Math and Science Goes Vertical: Math and science are taught “vertically,” meaning students are often made to slog through two years of large, formulaic introductory courses that teach fundamentals before they get any taste of the hands-on work that makes a career in science attractive to most scientists. In the process, students seldom form any bond with the scientists teaching the course.
Science departments are “daring students to persevere and earn a degree,” Chubin said. He added, though, that there are faculty members swimming upstream.
Richard Losick, a biology professor at Harvard University, said that students can come to think that those impersonal intro courses represent a career in science. Losick goes out of his way to get freshmen and sophomores into the lab. “If a student’s in a lab,” Losick said, “they’re going to get to know a professor and grad students and post docs … instead of a sea of hundreds of students taking chemistry.”
Signs of Hope
Some institutions are attacking disproportionate grade inflation head on. Princeton University has told all departments that they should work toward having 35 percent of grades be A’s. Only the natural sciences were around that before the 2004-05 academic year, the first with the new policy. “One of the results we hope for,” said Nancy Malkiel, dean of the college at Princeton, “will be that if the grades in the natural sciences are comparable to the grades in other fields, students won’t be deterred from entering the natural sciences because of grades.” In the first year under the policy, other disciplines made major headway toward reaching the natural sciences.
Losick added that he sees a national trend of scientists, problem solvers that they are, trying to teach intro courses in a more engaging, interdisciplinary way, so, for example, a biology student can learn chemistry while getting some of the bio that he or she is interested in. “We launched a new course last year,” Losick said, “that integrates chemistry and molecular biology.… It has themes in which some biological problem is tackled from multiple points of view.”
If the science pipeline is to be shored up, Chubin said, it’s clear that Congress can only do so much. “The faculty has to own this,” he said.
A Lifeline for Students in Persistently Failing Public Schools By Dan LipsThe Heritage Foundation19 July 2006
Millions of students are trapped in persistently failing public schools. On Tuesday, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings joined congressional Republicans to unveil the America’s Opportunity Scholarships initiative-a plan to give thousands of these at-risk children a chance to receive a quality education.
The Opportunity Scholarships initiative would provide $100 million in grants to local organizations that would grant scholarships to low-income public school students to attend private school or to receive intensive after-school tutoring. To be eligible, a child must be enrolled in a public school that has missed state benchmarks for six or more years under No Child Left Behind. According to the Department of Education, more than a thousand schools qualified in 2005, and another thousand could join this list in the fall.
Hundreds of thousands of children are trapped in low-performing public schools, including many in our nation’s largest school districts. In New York, 125,000 students are enrolled in public schools that have failed for six or more years. In Los Angeles, 170,000 students attend persistently failing schools. In cities like Chicago (121,000), Philadelphia (63,000), Detroit (26,000), and Baltimore (22,000), tens of thousands of children are enrolled in persistently failing public schools and are missing the chance to receive a quality education.
The America’s Opportunity Scholarships for Kids initiative would help rescue about 28,000 students from bad schools. The legislation would enable the Department of Education to award grants to create scholarship programs-like those in Milwaukee and Washington, D.C.-in ten cities. Research on existing tuition scholarship programs has found that school choice boosts parents’ satisfaction and improves participating students’ test scores.
In a speech on Capitol Hill, Secretary Spellings explained that the Opportunity Scholarship initiative was designed to hold public schools accountable to parents for performance. “Accountability is hollow without real options for parents,” she said. “President Bush and I believe that families in communities where schools fall short deserve choices when it comes to their children’s education.”
Republican lawmakers in Congress back the plan. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and John Ensign (R-NV) are sponsoring the bill in the Senate. Education Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) and Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) offered legislation in the House.
Whether the proposal will draw bipartisan support is an open question. In 2003, prominent Democrats on Capitol Hill, including Senators Robert Byrd (D-WV), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), and Joseph Lieberman (D-CA) and Rep. Harold Ford (D-TN) backed a school choice program for children in Washington, D.C. This year, state-level school choice programs have been created or expanded in Arizona, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin with support from Democrats.
Even the fiercest partisans may have trouble opposing the new Opportunity Scholarship initiative. After all, what politicians would want to deny a student from a low-income family trapped in a school that has failed for six or more years the opportunity to attend a quality school? Democrats will have to answer to their own constituents, many of whom live in these large urban school districts and want new options for their children.
The downside is that the proposal would help only 28,000 of the millions of students in low-performing schools. But it would be another critical step toward demonstrating how school choice programs can benefit families, paving the way for future student-centered reforms at the local, state, and federal levels to give all families the opportunity to choose their children’s school.
But for the parents of children trapped in America’s worst public schools, the broader policy implications aren’t the top concern. They just want their children to have the opportunity to learn in a quality classroom. The Opportunity Scholarship initiative would provide just that opportunity.
Dan Lips is Education Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, www.Heritage.org.
Alexander Backs Bill To Help Children Trapped In Under-Performing Schools July 18, 2006Chattanoogan.com
U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and John Ensign (R-NV) and U.S. Representatives Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) and Sam Johnson (R-TX) today introduced bicameral legislation "to implement the Bush administration’s America’s Opportunity Scholarships program to give children who are trapped in under-performing schools more choices and opportunities to improve their educational experience."
“America’s Opportunity Scholarships give meaning to the promise of No Child Left Behind,” said Sen. Alexander, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Education and Early Childhood Development. “This is about giving low-income families whose children are stuck in low-performing schools the same opportunities as other families.
"A recent poll found that 62 percent of public school parents have transferred a child out of one school into a better school or have decided where to live based on the schools in that district. This offers a way out for students whose families don't have the money for tuition or the luxury of moving.”
“Educating America’s youth must be a priority for the people of our nation, and our government,” said Sen. Ensign. “America’s Opportunity Scholarships program opens greater avenues to make certain that all children in our nation are given a chance to succeed. This legislation will help to ensure that our most disadvantaged children can receive a better education and will ensure that our nation’s next generations have the skills they need to succeed in the future.”
“Not only does the America’s Opportunity Scholarship for Kids Act expand upon the great success of No Child Left Behind by increasing parental choice, but it also shines a brighter light than ever on the need for more educational opportunities and – ultimately – higher achievement in our classrooms,” said Rep. McKeon, Chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
“Children may be a fraction of today's society but they are 100% of our future. It's time we empower students - and their parents. I want to give these children a choice and a chance,” said Rep. Johnson.
The America's Opportunity Scholarships for Kids Act would authorize the Department of Education to provide $100 million in fiscal year 2007 for competitive grants to states, school districts, and non-profit organizations to provide scholarships of up to $4,000 to low-income children in persistently under-performing schools to attend the private school of their choice.
States, school districts, and non-profit organizations would also be authorized to provide up to $3,000 to low-income students for intensive, sustained supplemental educational services if students don’t want to attend a different school. This would include high-quality tutoring, after-school or summer school programs designed to help improve the student’s academic achievement.
Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools are identified for restructuring after failing to meet their Adequate Yearly Progress goals for six years. The U.S. Department of Education reports that in the 2004-05 school year, 1,065 schools were identified for restructuring. Preliminary estimates suggest that an additional 1,000 schools will be identified for restructuring in the 2005-06 school year.
“You shouldn't need to win the lottery to send your child to a high-performing school,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who joined the bill sponsors at a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce the legislation. “President Bush believes we must give parents options, and the America’s Opportunity Scholarships program will empower parents to demand more from our schools and enable them to make choices for their kid’s education and future.”
The bill’s sponsors noted a pair of studies that they said illustrate the effectiveness of school choice:
a Harvard-Georgetown-University of Wisconsin study published in 2000 found that African-American students receiving private scholarships in three regions – Ohio, New York, and Washington, D.C. – scored significantly better than their public school peers; and according to the 2002 book, “The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools” by William Howell and Paul Peterson, African-American students using vouchers in New York cut their achievement gap in half over three years.
The Center For Education Reform NewswireVol. 8, No. 35July 18, 2006
MAYBE WE'RE USING THE WRONG FONT. Last year more than 700 students left failing conventional public schools in Mesa, Arizona and found new, innovative education in charter schools. Now the Mesa Public School District is panicking. How can they prevent all of these children from fleeing their schools? The logical response - and the response that would benefit parents, children, and our future workforce - would be to improve the public schools to compete with the innovative charter schools. That is the competitive market the education reform community has seen in some places and hopes for in all districts. But instead of improving education for children, Mesa Public Schools is viewing the problem as a public relations issue. They have hired the Phoenix public relations firm E.B. Lane for $50,000. The firm will be reviewing issues such as the district's website and its fonts, newsletters, back-to-school information and student handbooks.
STANDARDS AND ACCOUNTABILITY
OF MODEST UTILITY. A report by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released last Friday that attempted to assess public school performance versus private school performance represents the latest skirmish in the ongoing research wars. Despite the warnings of reviewers - "an overall comparison of the two types of schools is of modest utility" - both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, egged on by the union poohbahs who conveniently ignore research warnings, printed headlines that sought to tear down education reform and depict public schools as equal to private schools. Both stories also made reference to the January study by Lubienski and Lubienski, which has since been discredited by CER and others. The Wall Street Journal article took aim at vouchers, stating that the new study "casts doubt on the value of voucher programs that give students public money to attend private schools." While the report found that private school's achievement advantage disappeared after race and socioeconomic factors were considered, it was seen by most reviewers as only a snapshot, and flawed because it looked at nearly 7,000 public schools but only 530 private schools. Other differences involved how public and private schools label students, how they report on poverty, and other factors. With a study of charter schools soon to be released by the NCES, the New York Times still needs to clarify what a charter PUBLIC school is, and move away from saying that they are "given public money but are run by private groups." Reformers continue to push the media to accurately identify charters as independently managed public schools and to dig deeper into the research wars. Stay tuned.
EDUCATIONAL APARTHEID. California has been at the forefront of the education reform movement for nearly 15 years. Los Angeles Unified School District will have 100 charter schools this year, conventional public schools are adapting to compete, and members of both parties are embracing reform. In a new sign of bipartisan support for reform, former governors Pete Wilson and Gray Davis sent an open letter last week to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers urging them not to back down on education curriculum standards and testing. "Standards provide a measure of excellence regardless of one's skin color, family income or zip code," the governors wrote in the letter. "We believe that if we set expectations high, students will respond. Not every child will fully meet the challenge, but all will benefit from the effort." Davis and Wilson view testing and curriculum standards as a vital reform that will help pull the country out of its current education crisis. With the United States struggling to compete in a competitive global market, both believe that a more competitive and rigorous curriculum will prepare all students for the workforce. "Sacramento is awash in misinformation about the recent history and intentions of California's school reform strategy," the two wrote. "As the governors who led this work, we believe it is time to remind the public of the facts." While they face opposition from Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg and others, Davis and Wilson say the issue is of the utmost importance and that lowering standards would create "education apartheid."
TEXTBOOK DÉJÀ VU. For years CER and other education reformers have been pleading for better textbooks in our schools. The current mass market, dominated by a few huge publishers, creates hundreds of bland textbooks with little variation. Now the media is finally taking notice, with an article in the New York Times noting that several different textbooks are showing up with identical language. Teachers wouldn't let their students hand in a paper that had language identical to the work of another student - that's plagiarism. Should they be accepting it in the textbooks they use? Judging by the response to the article, parents and the general public don't think so. It is common practice in today's $4 billion a year textbook publishing world for many uncredited writers to write portions of the textbook and make revisions, while one more notable author's name is put on the front cover. This process leads to rushed texts with little thought or variation. One of the unnamed writers noted in a Times letter to the editor, "the problem with school textbooks is less about who writes them and more about the constraints of high-stakes publishing…The industry is hampered by the task of harmonizing dozens of sets of state standards into inoffensive textbooks acceptable to the greatest number of education officials, teachers and interest groups." The textbook industry needs to stop trying to appease the unions and the interest groups, invite some competition into the market, and give the students what they deserve - real textbooks.
CHOICE
GARDEN STATE LAWSUIT. "Quality education is a civil right, and we can't wait any longer." Those were the words of Reverend Reginald Jackson, a leading black pastor in New Jersey who is just one of a large group of voucher supporters backing a new lawsuit filed in Newark Superior Court. The lawsuit against the state and at least two dozen school districts is demanding that the state and districts provide the families of 60,000 students in nearly 100 failing New Jersey schools the money to attend the private or public school of their choice. "This is about forcing through the judicial branch what is not being provided through the public schools of the state," said Jackson. Other court decisions on the issue in New York, Texas, and California have ruled that more money should be spent on the failing public schools, rather than giving the most underserved students - black and Hispanic kids - the opportunity to attend a school that will give them a future. As Clint Bolick, the president of the Alliance for School Choice, pointed out in a Wall Street Journal editorial, the previous court's ruling was anything but logical. "Suppose you purchased a car whose warranty promised 'thorough and efficient' transportation, and it turned out to be a lemon. If you sued to enforce the warranty, would the court order a multibillion dollar payment to the auto maker in the hope that someday it would produce a better product? Of course not: It would order the company to give your money back so you could buy a different car."
NOT JUST IN JERSEY. The demand for more choice and opportunity for young black students is not unique to New Jersey. Across the country, members of the education community are trying to tackle what they call the "most pressing issue facing African Americans in the post-civil rights era: the plight of the black male." In Philadelphia, David Hardy, a prominent black education reformer, will be opening Southwest Philadelphia Academy for Boys Charter School this fall. And in New York, a panel of high-profile academics convened at the "Winning Strategies for Young Black Men" forum to discuss ways to close the gap among black boys and white students. Among the scholars was former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who is now the dean of Howard University's Law School. He and the other panelists pointed to the direct correlation between incarceration and school dropout rates. There are answers to these problems and New Jersey, the nation's top scholars, and David Hardy are offering them for anyone who will listen.
UNIONS
BUYING FRIENDS. At the National Education Association's (NEA) annual meeting in early July, they declared that one of their main goals this year would be to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Act. According to a new report by Education Sector, the NEA is enlisting some help in their effort to change the law. The NEA has given more than $8 million to various groups that have criticized or opposed the No Child Left Behind Act. Education Sector senior fellow Joe Williams analyzed the federal tax forms filed by the NEA and found that the union gave at least $8.1 million to education, civil rights and public policy groups such as the National Conference of Black Mayors, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Harvard Civil Rights Project. The bulk of the money, $7.65 million, went to a lobbying group called Communities for Quality Education, who like the other groups, has been critical of NCLB.
Bush Administration, Congressional Republicans Introduce School Choice PlanOpportunity Scholarships for Kids would help children in failing public schools Dan LipsThe Heritage FoundationJuly 18, 2006
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings joined Congressional Republicans on Capitol Hill today to introduce the America’s Opportunity Scholarship for Kids initiative.
The plan would provide scholarships for private school tuition or intensive after-school tutoring for about 28,000 children who now attend persistently failing public schools. The measure will be introduced by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and John Ensign (R-NV) in the Senate and Reps. Buck McKeon (R-CA) and Sam Johnson in the House.
The Opportunity Scholarships for Kids initiative is designed to help students in the lowest-performing public schools in the nation. To be eligible, a student must be from a low-income family and attend a public school that has missed state benchmarks for six or more years under No Child Left Behind. According to the Department of Education, as many as 2,000 public schools may soon qualify.
The $100 million plan would provide grants to ten school districts where there are many low-performing public schools. For example, in New York City and Los Angeles alone, nearly 300,000 students are enrolled in persistently failing public schools. While the Opportunity Scholarship initiative would help only 28,000 students in selected cities, it would demonstrate how school choice can benefit students and families across the country.
Put to the Test Debate about the state of U.S. public schools heated up with the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001, better known as No Child Left Behind. The measure assesses every school’s performance through standardized testing of pupils in grades 3 through 8, and requires that alternatives be provided for students in schools judged inadequate. Terry Moe, chair of political science and a Hoover Institution senior fellow, is a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. Terry Moe
Thriving on FailureStanford MagazineJuly 18, 2006
America needs to improve its public schools. There are a few dissenters who want us to believe that the schools are doing just fine, and that calls for reform are part of a right-wing conspiracy. But the conspiracy, it turns out, includes virtually everyone in a position of knowledge or public responsibility. The broad consensus among our policy makers—Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, from all corners of the country—is that the public schools are not delivering the goods.
This consensus is not new. It emerged in the wake of the most influential report ever issued on the quality of American education, A Nation At Risk, which argued in 1983 that the United States was facing “a rising tide of mediocrity” in its schools. The response at the time was remarkable: a frenzied push for reform that, within just a few years, left no state untouched. Even more remarkably, this frenzy has continued unabated, to the point that education reform has become the new status quo. Every president aspires to be the education president, every governor the education governor.
There is something admirable about all this dedication and effort. But there is also something pathetic about it. For the fact is, the reform process has never ended because the reforms have typically led to disappointment—and to constant demands for still more reforms. This is a movement that thrives on its own failures. So here we are, after two decades of perpetual reform, and the state of public education remains troubling.
Many urban school districts are in crisis, often failing to graduate even half of their students. In Detroit the graduation rate is just 42 percent. In Cleveland it is 45 percent. In Sacramento it is 48 percent.
Minority children consistently score much lower on tests of student achievement than white children do, and the differences are huge. On the 2004 National Assessment of Educational Progress, for example, black 17-year-olds scored at about the same level as white 13-year-olds in both math and reading.
For the nation’s students generally, NAEP scores indicate that achievement growth during the past 30 years—a very long time—has been modest, and that most of our children simply do not know what they need to know.
Compared to students in other developed (OECD) countries, American students score well above average in the early grades, but they lose ground by the middle school years, and by high school they are near the bottom of the rankings. Why are our public schools so difficult to improve? The answer rests with two fundamental problems that stand in the way of progress. The first is a problem of incentives. The second is a problem of power.
The education system can only be reformed through politics, and political power is stacked in favor of employee groups that staunchly defend traditional arrangements.
The incentive problem is readily apparent in the traditional organization of American schooling. Teachers have jobs with lifetime security, and their pay is based on a salary schedule that has nothing to do with how much their students actually learn. Good teachers are not rewarded for their talent, effort or success in the classroom, and they know their productivity will be rewarded only if they leave teaching for another career, which many of them do. Mediocre teachers have the same lifetime security and pay as good teachers, and they have every reason to stick around, because almost nowhere else (outside government) would their poor performance be tolerated. The same incentive problems apply to most administrators, who, like teachers, are traditionally compensated and secure regardless of whether students learn anything.
For any organization, public or private, the key to effective performance lies in getting the incentives right, and thus in motivating employees to pursue the organization’s objectives as productively as possible. This is Management 101. Yet traditionally, public education has failed to follow this simple principle. And for that it has paid a heavy price, not just in lackluster performance, but in reforms that disappoint.
Huge amounts of money have been pumped into the schools, with spending up more than 75 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars per student since 1980. Yet the recipients have had little incentive to spend it efficiently, and they haven’t put it to productive use. Similar problems apply to virtually all other mainstream reforms. The push for smaller classes, for example, is extraordinarily expensive, has only modest effects on student learning—and does nothing to change anyone’s incentives. A mediocre teacher in a smaller class is still a mediocre teacher.
If we want significant improvement, we need to target the incentives at the heart of the system. Fortunately, there are potent reforms capable of doing that: school accountability and school choice. Accountability shapes incentives from above through effective management. Under a well-designed system, the states develop rigorous academic standards, measure whether the standards are being met, and attach rewards and sanctions to the outcomes—thus putting a laser-like focus on achievement, and giving educators and students strong incentives to promote it.
School choice, by contrast, shapes incentives from below through grassroots action. When parents are able to vote with their feet, and when they are given alternatives—charter schools or private schools—to the regular public schools, the latter are put on notice that they stand to lose kids and money if they don’t perform. And their incentives are enhanced accordingly.
Neither accountability nor choice can be an immediate fix, because institutional reform is a complex and imperfect process. Each of these reforms can be designed and implemented in countless ways, and some may prove much better than others. Success turns on well-intentioned efforts to move—over time, with experience—toward frameworks that adjust for the inevitable early problems and promote school improvement most effectively over the long run. There is nothing ideological about this and nothing conspiratorial. It simply calls for a practical, much-needed search for an appropriate mix of accountability, choice, and traditional schooling—a mix that gets the incentives right and really boosts student learning.
From a technical standpoint, such institutional innovation is well within the capabilities of our policy makers. But this is where the problem of power comes into play. Reform is unavoidably a political process, not just a technical one, and the employees who run the public schools—and have a vested interest in keeping the incentive system as it is—are extremely powerful in politics. The teachers unions are the de facto political leaders of these insiders, and indeed of the entire public school system. They have more than 3 million members; they have tons of money for campaign contributions and lobbying; they have activists in virtually every electoral district in the country; and they are far and away the most powerful force in the politics of American education.
The teachers unions are opposed to school choice, even for disadvantaged children trapped in the nation’s worst schools, because they don’t want one child or one dollar to leave the schools in which their members work. They have used their political power with a vengeance to drastically limit the spread of choice programs. Today there are a handful of small voucher programs: in the districts of Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., and in the states of Florida and Utah. There are also roughly 3,600 charter schools attended by some 1 million students nationwide. While choice options are slowly increasing, all of this is currently a mere drop in a 50-million-student bucket, and provides little competition—and few new incentives—for the regular public schools.
The unions are also opposed to accountability. They say they support it, because they can hardly say otherwise given its broad popularity. But what they really support are standards—which in themselves are not threatening—without any real consequences for failing to meet them. They do not want teacher pay to depend on how much students learn. Indeed, they do not even want teacher performance to be measured. And above all else, they do not want anyone to lose a job merely because they are no good at teaching.
The unions could not stop the enactment of No Child Left Behind, the landmark federal accountability law, but they did succeed in weakening some of its key provisions. And since its passage they have done everything possible to impede its implementation, undermine its popularity, and pressure for key changes that would render it impotent.
There can be little surprise, then, that success is so elusive in American school reform. The education system is literally not organized to be effective, yet it can only be reformed through politics, and political power is stacked in favor of employee groups that staunchly defend traditional arrangements. As they see it, reform is fine as long as it doesn’t really change anything, and it is especially fine if it promises more money and more jobs.
So this is mainly the kind of reform we get. The fact that it has little or no impact on student learning is beside the point. Those rare, especially promising innovations that bring children and their academic achievement to the motivational center of the system, on the other hand, are regarded by employee groups as mortal threats. They do everything they can to defeat these efforts, and (failing that) to put roadblocks in the way of progress.
The problem of incentives, then, cannot be dealt with until the problem of political power is somehow resolved. Until this happens, real reform will be a constant uphill battle, and the public schools will continue to disappoint.
Private Performance
The New York Times gets excited.By Chester E. Finn Jr.National Review OnlineJuly 17, 2006
Predictably, Diana Jean Schemo and the New York Times found front-page, above-the-fold space on Saturday to cover on a new National Center for Education Statistics report, drawn from 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress data, that finds private schools only slightly more effective than public when analysts control for income, race, parent education, and such. (The exception is eighth-grade reading where the private-school advantage is marked.)
You can be sure that if the government study had found a wide margin favoring private schools, it would have been covered alongside the shipping news, if at all. But that says more about Schemo and her editors than about American education.
I’ve long gotten into trouble with private-school audiences by noting that a good portion of their test-score edge is caused by their choice of students, and students’ choice of schools, rather than by the superior educational effectiveness of private schools. Private schools, in my experience, are prey to the same daffy constructivist ideas, the same curricular correctness, many of the same mediocre textbooks and much of the same educationist zeitgeist as their public-school counterparts. They are free to be different but they aren’t really that different — except that they’re all schools of choice and they nearly all charge tuitions, which means their students tend to be relatively more prosperous and from homes where parents care enough both to make a purposeful choice and to shell out money for it. Erase the “selection effect” and private schools may not be academic high flyers. That’s more or less what the NCES study shows. (Note, though, that it also has some methodological problems, as Harvard’s Paul Peterson explained in the Wall Street Journal on the same day.
Yet social science is not the real world and the real world never erases the selection effect. Private schools do have higher test scores and that is one reason picky parents who can swing it choose them for their kids — and zillions more tell survey researchers they would do likewise if they could afford it. (It’s those zillions more who would take advantage of vouchers if available.)
But test scores and other signs of academic prowess are just part of why parents make such choices. Private schools have other advantages, too. They are generally smaller, more intimate — and nearly always safe and well disciplined. Many of them attend to character development, values and moral formation as well as cognitive skills and knowledge. Many add religious instruction and prayer to the mix. What’s more, private schools are typically welcoming and responsive places from the parent’s standpoint, keenly aware that they must please as well as educate their clients. Some of them confer social status and a readymade peer group that suits the parents’ sense of who their children are (or wish they were). In part because they’re free to hire the best teachers available, certified or not, their instructional staff is often knowledgeable as well as caring. Sometimes they offer small classes, plenty of college counseling and nifty extracurricular activities.
All of those and more factors go into the durable appeal of private schools. An appeal that will surely trump any number of government studies.
To repeat, that doesn’t mean they’re more effective than public schools in a “value added” sense when measured on external tests of academic achievement. (We actually know little about this. Few private schools administer state tests or release their results on the normed tests that many use; and private-school participation in NAEP is spotty.) For this they should be ashamed — as they should of their lack of interest in growing, adding more campuses, serving more kids, and pressing for the public dollars that would make that more possible. Thirty years ago, private schools in general and Catholic schools in particular were in the forefront of the quest for federal tuition tax credits and other aid schemes. Today they’re far more reticent, sometimes even declining to participate in a voucher program after others enact it. (That’s occurring in Ohio today, for example.)
In sum, I have lots of beefs with private schools, their organizations, and their leaders. But they’re going to remain popular among those who are able to attend them and the basis of that popularity is legitimate, even if not always visible in NAEP results. That more Americans don’t have this option is a national disgrace. The heck with the New York Times.
—Chester E. Finn Jr. is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
Spending without achievement
Bill Evers and Paul Clopton
Marin Independent Journal July 12, 2006
THE SAUSALITO Marin City School District spends more than $22,000 per pupil and pays teachers an average of $71,000 a year. Based on 2004-05 figures, per-pupil spending is three times the state average, and teachers are the highest paid in Marin. Sausalito is the top-funded urban school district in the state.
But according to 2004-2005 California test scores, only 25 percent of Sausalito sixth-grade students are proficient or advanced in English and 13 percent are proficient or advanced in mathematics. Out of 1,025 districts in California, Sausalito is ranked 724th, which is at the 29.4th percentile. Why aren't students succeeding academically in a school district whose wealth makes almost every other district in California green with envy?
Decades of a different curriculum in every classroom, ineffective and unevaluated teaching practices and teacher training, overemphasis on student self-esteem and low academic expectations created an academic deficit that has been hard to repair.
Teachers who were in Sausalito in the 1980s said money was lavished on fancy cars and exotic trips. An audit in the 1990s found conflicting payroll lists that could not be reconciled.
The 1997 Marin civil grand jury report depicted a district in which large numbers of its elementary and middle-school students were out of control. The grand jury said that teachers were afraid to turn their backs in the classroom. Auditors said teachers and administrators were unwilling to hold students accountable for misbehavior. These problems made the school system a high-dollar heaven that has been at the same time a dysfunctional-district hell.
A 1998 recall campaign changed the makeup of the school board and the administration. While some academic improvement has been made since then, Sausalito remains a chronically low-performing district.
District leaders have recently improved the coherence of the curriculum and adopted a high-performance reading program that emphasizes phonics first, rather than the district's previous whole-language instruction. District leaders also reduced the proportion of children designated as learning disabled. Much of the students' learning problems had been the result of the district's poor teaching of reading, and over-designation of students as disabled had contributed to the alienation of parents from the district. These recent changes have led to some gains in student test scores - principally in the lower grades whose students have benefited from recent changes.
Despite these improvements, the district is still being held back by a legacy of Progressive Education and a reliance on inadequate and misleading districtwide tests. Sausalito has a long history of using Progressive methods of project-based learning and student self-discovery in mathematics and other subjects. Teaching in the district's regular schools and, in particular, in its charter school is heavily influenced by ineffective Progressive methods.
In another guise, these Progressive Education attitudes are found today in the Southern Marin educational establishment: the Education Task Force, the Buck Trust and the Marin Community Foundation. This establishment belittles Sausalito's phonics-based reading program and fails to support training of Sausalito teachers in effective use of that program.
As one of its functions, the task force produces tests used for diagnostic purposes, to guide instruction and to stimulate the creation of Progressive Education teaching strategies. However, after having looked at the publicly released test questions in reading and mathematics, the authors of this article have found that the reading test questions neglect word-attack skills and word recognition and the mathematics test questions are below grade-level and poorly written.
If the Sausalito Marin City schools are to succeed, the district needs to abandon these misleading tests, and it needs to discard the fads of Progressive Education in favor of effective teacher-led classrooms.
The recipe for Sausalito Marin City's success is: High-quality teachers teaching a solid, coherent curriculum in well-disciplined classrooms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Evers is a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and member of the institution's Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. Paul Clopton is a research statistician at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Diego. This column is drawn from their research that will appear this year in a book edited by Eric Hanushek and published by Education Next.
Center for Educaton ReformVol. 8, No. 34July 11, 2006
THE BOY WARS. For months now, the media has tossed about the latest educational hot potato: the academic failure of boys. Amidst rising dropout rates and falling test scores, reformers have held out new curriculum and different school structures to help struggling male students. Meanwhile, new reports from both Education Sector and the American Council on Education's Center for Policy Analysis suggest that socio-economic demographics play a bigger role than gender in school success and academic achievement. Still, says Education Sector's Sara Mead, "There's no doubt that some groups of boys - particularly Hispanic and black boys and boys from low-income homes - are in real trouble." And boys, regardless of background, can have vastly different learning styles from girls. Enter education reformer David Hardy, who has just gained approval for Southwest Philadelphia Academy for Boys Charter School. One answer to the issue of male learning styles and academic achievement (or lack thereof) has been the single-sex school, and Hardy's will serve inner-city boys in grades 9 to 12. The school has faced legal opposition from the Women's Law Project, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia and the American Civil Liberties Union, but the school is set to open with grade 9 in the fall of 2007 with the blessing of the district. Single sex charters are already flourishing in states including Ohio, New York, South Carolina, Texas and Illinois.
G'NITE, CORRECT SPELLING? A push for "simplified spelling" received national media attention last week in the Associated Press, with advocates claiming it will help literacy rates. They say the process of simplification is already taking place with the shortened language used in cell-phone text messages and instant messages. "The kinds of progress we're seeing are that someone will spell night 'nite' and someone will spell through 'thru,'" said Alan Mole, president of the American Literacy Council. "We try to show where these spellings are used and to show dictionary makers that they are used so they will include them as alternate spellings." But is this really progress? Is adopting the slang and shorthand of the youngest generation really the way we want to evolve the English language? Perhaps trying E.D. Hirsch's "Core Knowledge" method of reading comprehension would make a little more sense than dumbing down and truncating our language to achieve a new lowest comment denominator in literacy. Simplified spelling: it's not 4 me, whut bout U?
CHOICE
RUDY, RUDY, RUDY! Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani hasn't announced a bid for the presidency in 2008 yet, but he is already fielding questions about what he would do for education if he becomes president. His answers should have the unions and the educational bureaucracy trembling and underprivileged children everywhere applauding. Giuliani said he sees school choice as a "civil-rights issue" and would make vouchers and choice programs a key part of his education platform. New York Post columnist Ryan Sager noted Giuliani's political courage in a recent column saying, "he thought he could do for the schools what he did for the police department and other city agencies. But he learned he was wrong. The education bureaucracy and the teachers unions were too deeply entrenched. What's needed, [Giuliani] said, is to go to a choice system and break up the monopoly." Nothing is more politically courageous than taking on the nation's most powerful union in the name of the largest civil rights issue facing our country today. The former mayor hasn't officially thrown his hat in the ring yet, but he's already showing the character our nation wants in a president.
NEW HEAD OF REFORM. Last week, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings named reformer Morgan Brown as Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Innovation and Improvement. Formerly with the Minnesota Department of Education, Brown has a long history as a reform advocate and will be in charge of the implementation of school choice programs and No Child Left Behind supplemental services provisions. "Morgan brings invaluable experience in innovation and school choice and a tireless pursuit of excellence to our team," Secretary Spellings said in a release. "His years in Minnesota will bring fresh ideas to bear on bringing every child in America to achieve at grade level by 2014." Chris Doherty, who was the acting Assistant Deputy Secretary, will remain Chief of Staff to Deputy Secretary Ray Simon, and Director of Reading First when Morgan Brown starts as the head of the Office of Innovation and Improvement.
School choice offers way to improve Arizona schools
Guest Opinion: Matthew LadnerArizona Daily StarJuly 7, 2006
This year, the Tucson Unified School District received more funding per student than ever before, about $8,400. Even with inflation, spending per pupil in Arizona public schools has tripled since the 1960s.
I've yet to meet the person who believes our schools are three times better than they used to be.
Current per-student funding is enough to pay one-and-a-half tuitions at Pusch Ridge Christian Academy. Still, this is not enough for some. Arizona teacher union President John Wright wrote in a letter that "districts are left wondering how to possibly balance increased needs with insufficient funds."
The crisis facing Arizona public schools is not one of resources. Rather, it is a collapse in the productivity of education spending. Arizona public schools have come to resemble a broken-down jalopy. You can pump in all the gas that money can buy, but they still won't run.
Despite this gush of spending, Arizona faces a literacy crisis. The U.S. Department of Education reading exam shows a stunning 63 percent of Arizona Hispanic fourth-graders scored "below basic." That is a polite term to describe illiteracy.
Children who do not master basic literacy by fourth grade are set up for future academic failure. Many will fall further and further behind with each passing year. Unable to read their own textbooks and with no hope for attending college, many of these children begin to drop out in middle school.
Arizona's public education crisis is not limited to a particular student subset, such as Hispanic children.
That same exam found 67 percent of Arizona African-American fourth-grade students cannot read; 30 percent of Arizona Anglo fourth-graders can't read. No demographic group has scores to write home about.
By the time students reach fourth grade in Arizona, more than $35,000 has been spent on their education and almost half of them cannot read.
School choice is a promising avenue to improve schools. Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby studied Arizona public elementary schools and found that schools facing high levels of competition from nearby charter schools made gains in fourth-grade reading four times greater than other public schools. In Pima County, three of the top four performing middle schools and three of the top 10 performing high schools are charters. We need more of them. Unfortunately, charter schools cannot keep up with demand.
We need to take advantage of existing capacity and give all parents the opportunity to send their children to independent schools. This will be good for our kids and healthy for our public schools, which respond positively to competition.
We also urgently need to revamp the human resource management and development in public schools.
Currently, we pay our high-performing teachers that stay late into the evening the same as low-performers who leave when the bell rings. We cannot continue to compensate failure at the same rate as success.
Serious education reform requires a complete overhaul of the education delivery system — not just tinkering. Arizona lawmakers recently took positive steps to expand school choice for low-income students, children with disabilities and, for the first time in the nation, children in foster care. A growing consensus holds that all parents should have the right to choose the school that best fits the needs of their child. Our schools will radically improve once we have fully embraced putting students first.
Matthew Ladner is vice president of research for the Goldwater Institute. His e-mail address is mladner@goldwaterinstitute.org.
School Choice Spreads with State Tax Credits
By Dan Lips and Evan FeinbergThe Heritage FoundationJuly 7, 2006
In 2001, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge battled with Democratic state legislators to create a corporate scholarship tax credit program to bring the state’s families school choice. Five years later, Ridge’s tax credit has strong bipartisan support and is a model for other states. And just this week, Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, signed legislation expanding the program.
The 2001 school choice law offers corporations tax incentives to fund private school scholarships and “school improvement” projects at public schools. Under the law, corporations can claim a tax credit of up to 75 cents per dollar for a one-year contribution and 90 cents for a two-year contribution.
Initially, the tax credit was capped at $20 million for private school scholarship donations and $10 million for public school donations. Since 2001, it has been has expanded, reaching an annual cap of $44 million in 2005.
Businesses have been eager to participate. Last year, contributions hit the cap for private school scholarships just days after tax credits became available, raising $44 million to help 27,000 students attend private schools.
But many more children could receive scholarships if more tax credits were available. In 2005, more than 500 companies were unable to participate because of the cap. Responding to this strong demand, this week Gov. Rendell agreed to support legislation that expands the tax credit program-with a new annual cap of $54 million, the expanded tax credit will pay for thousands of additional scholarships.
Gov. Rendell’s support demonstrates growing bipartisan support for tax credit-based scholarships. Last month, Republican gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann proposed doubling the cap for corporate contributions to Pennsylvania’s scholarship program. Gov. Rendell’s office responded by pointing to the governor’s record of raising the cap in 2003 and 2005.
Across the country, corporate scholarship tax credits have become a popular way to expand school choice. The pioneer for this model was of Florida, which in 2001 was the first state to create a corporate tax credit for private school scholarship donations. Last year, the program helped 13,000 low-income students attend private schools. Following the success of Florida’s and Pennsylvania’s programs, states across the country are rushing to enact corporate scholarship tax credits.
This year, Arizona became the third state to create a corporate tax credit for scholarship donations. The Arizona law will allow $10 million in corporate scholarship tax credits this year and $21 million by 2010. And just last week, Rhode Island enacted a corporate scholarship tax credit, which, capped at $1 million annually, will offer businesses the same partial tax credits that are available in Pennsylvania. The Rhode Island legislation passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
In the guise of tax credits, school choice is now gaining support among Democratic legislators, despite their party’s resistance to most school choice measures. In New Jersey, Assemblywoman Nilsa Cruz-Perez, a Democrat from Camden, joined four other Democrat legislators to sponsor a corporate scholarship tax credit that would create private school scholarships for 4,000 low-income children in Camden, Newark, Orange, and Trenton. In Maryland, Sen. James E. DeGrange, a Democrat, joined with 19 bipartisan cosponsors to propose a corporate tax credit modeled after Pennsylvania’s.
Next year, corporate scholarship tax credits will give nearly 50,000 children school choice scholarships. But millions more American children could benefit from the chance to attend better schools. In Philadelphia alone, an estimated 63,000 students attend persistently failing public schools.
When Gov. Ridge first proposed school choice for Pennsylvania, he envisioned school vouchers to help lower-income students attend private schools. While corporate tax credits have proven to be a successful path for expanding school choice, additional reforms-including vouchers, tuition tax credits, and education savings accounts-are needed to give all families the freedom to choose the best schools for their children. And as bipartisan support for corporate tax credits grows, these more ambitious school choice proposals may become possible. After all, all children deserve the opportunity to attend a high quality school that best meets their needs.
Dan Lips is an Education Analyst and Evan Feinberg is a Research Assistant at the Heritage Foundation, www.Heritage.org.
Center for Education Reform Newswire Vol. 8, No. 33
July 5, 2006
CHARTER SCHOOLS
CUTTING BOARD. On July 18, a school board hearing is scheduled to let the mayor, D.C. City Council members, and the public voice their opinions on the D.C. Board of Education’s plan to give up its authority over charter schools. It’s likely charter advocates will be in attendance telling the board to stick with what it knows—conventional public schools—and leave the charter oversight to the DC Public Charter School Board. For years, the Board of Education has complained that it didn’t have the time or the knowledge to oversee the 17 charter schools under its authority. With 23 percent of DC students in charter schools, the largest percentage nationwide, it is vital that they have knowledgeable and capable oversight. Five of the nine DC board members agree that the DC Public Charter School Board is best suited to provide that capable oversight. “There has long been division among Board of Education members on charter oversight,” wrote the Washington Post. “Some have wanted to relinquish that role, agreeing with many education advocates and the U.S. Government Accountability Office that the board lacks the resources and expertise to properly monitor the schools.” A parent would never trust a teacher who had minimal interest in helping their child and limited knowledge to do it. Why should they accept it in their charter school authority?
SHOWING THEIR RESPECT. Most history lessons don’t require a student to sweat under the hot sun. But few school lessons could be as rewarding as the one being undertaken by Emerson Park Charter School Tomorrow’s Builders YouthBuild Program. For the second straight year, the students at this construction-based charter school have worked to clean up the more than 100-year-old Booker T. Washington Cemetery in their Illinois neighborhood. For one student, Bryant Scott, the project hit particularly close to home—three of his uncles were buried in the neglected cemetery. “We have to take care of our community, so this is what we do,” Scott told the Bellville News-Democrat. “I didn’t think I’d find family here, but there they are, back up there in that corner.” Thanks to the work of the students, the rest of the community is able to see the gravestones and landscape that has long been overrun by weeds and vines. The school has even rallied community members and gotten help from the public with cleanup. But in order to keep the cemetery from being forgotten again, the school is asking for donations of gloves, safety glasses, lawnmowers, and other equipment.
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE [NEA] FORUM
YEARLY LACK OF PROGRESS. At the annual NEA meeting this Independence Day weekend, the union set its sights on No Child Left Behind, vowing to fight the program which holds schools accountable for whether they help students succeed (a novel concept to the NEA apparently). In NBI (New Business Item) 35, the NEA voted to instruct its members “in the necessary steps to impede its reauthorization.” In its official press release, the NEA puts it differently, saying it’s creating a grassroots campaign to “fundamentally change… NCLB when it comes up for reauthorization in 2007.” The NEA claims its agenda “calls for a sound accountability system that relies on multiple measures of success, not just a couple of test scores” (even though those test scores assess what it is students actually have learned). But to do that, they have to expand their political base…
PIZZA & POLITICS. Anyone who pays attention to education knows that the nation’s largest labor union wields enormous power through its political activism. Unfortunately for them, that power can’t extend to non-members. Many have wondered why the NEA would institute a new $25 associate membership if they couldn’t claim them as members. But thanks to the Education Intelligence Agency (EIA) director Mike Antonucci, it’s clear that this wing of the BLOB has found a way around the law. As he puts it, “the purpose of the associate membership isn’t just to send those enthralling NEA publications and pizza coupons to members of the general public who couldn’t join the NEA before; it’s to send candidate and issue endorsements and solicitations for PAC contributions to them.”
May the talent force be with youOpinionBrian J. Caldwell
July 3, 2006The Age.com
WHAT will education be like 40 years from now? I can't tell you. Nobody can. But I can tell you that it must be a totally different because if it is the same education as it is today, we're dead. We will be irrelevant, marginalised, the world will be different. You may want to be the same, but you can't be the same.
These words are from Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, but instead of the word "education", he referred to "Singapore". However, his conclusion referred explicitly to education when he asserted the need to "remake Singapore - our economy, our education system, our mindsets, our city". Lee was speaking at a national day rally on August 21, 2005.
Many would ask why Singapore needed to embark on a mission to remake its education system. After all, Singapore ranked first in grade 4 and grade 8 for mathematics and science in the 2003 tests in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.
Singapore's chief, if not sole, resource is its people. It realises there is a need to "remake the nation" if it is to succeed in a global economy. It accepts that it must "remake the school" if it is to achieve that.
Why is there not the same sense of urgency among our state and national leaders, who continue to assert that education is their top priority?
Our education system is essentially the same system, and there is no vision - let alone commitment - to remake the system as part of an effort to remake the nation, a goal that is as relevant to Australia as it is to Singapore.
We continue to offer education in schools that are still built on factory lines according to a 19th-century model, with a system of teacher education and a teacher workforce set in the 20th century, providing for students who use on a daily basis the technologies of the 21st century, and who will be required to remake the nation by 2050.
All those with an interest in the future of the nation and its education system should insist on our leaders articulating such a vision in the forthcoming series of state and federal elections.
We should reject simplistic promises to spend more money, build this kind of school or that, or reduce class sizes still further when they are already smaller than those in higher-performing nations.
We should be wary in particular of promises to spend more money in the absence of a vision and a strategy for targeting money on things that will make a difference.
The Hoover Institution's Eric Hanushek has shown that except for impact in programs that meet special education needs and in the early years, the massive increases in funding for schools in recent decades have had little impact on outcomes.
The reason: "same operations with greater intensity". We persist with an outdated model of schooling, and trying harder and spending more money has had minimal effect.
To Hanushek, the most important factor is quality of teaching. Financial capital is just one form of capital if high levels of achievement are to be secured for all students in all settings. Other forms of capital include intellectual capital, social capital and spiritual capital.
The importance of intellectual capital is illustrated by the remarkable accomplishments of Bellfield Primary School in the Melbourne suburb of West Heidelberg. In 1998, only 34.6 per cent of students in year 1 could read with 100 per cent accuracy at level 15 of the literacy standards. In 2004, with essentially the same demographics, 100 per cent of students could read at this level. Noteworthy is that the statewide figure in 2004 was 35.9 per cent and in "like schools" it was just 26.3 per cent. This last comparison means that in schools with basically the same demographics, receiving about the same amount of funds in the school resource package, or global budget as it was formally known, only about a quarter of students could read with 100 per cent accuracy at level 15 whereas all of the students at Bellfield could do so.
Former principal John Fleming explained how this was achieved in a master class on school leadership delivered to young leaders at the University of Melbourne.
The main factors were raising the expectations of staff that all students could succeed, and then ensuring that all teachers were at the leading edge of knowledge and skill. It was about raising the level of intellectual capital and considering staff as a "talent force", not simply a "work force".
This shift from "work force" to "talent force" must be central to the vision of the education system, and schools need to be empowered to search out the talent that is needed to support the mix of learning needs that is unique to a school. This is why a new vision for teacher education is needed. This is why government schools around the nation should have more autonomy in staffing and an enhanced capacity for knowledge management to ensure that all are at the forefront of professional practice and remain there.
It is ironic that John Fleming and several of his senior staff have been lost to the government system because an independent school with such a capacity went on a search for such talent and secured it.
Brian J. Caldwell is managing director of Educational Transformations and professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, where he was dean of education from 1998 to 2004. This article draws on themes in his book, Re-imagining Educational Leadership, published by ACER Press and launched in Melbourne last week. The book is the focus of a nation-wide series of workshops in July and August organised by the Australian College of Educators.
Teachers Unions and Public Schools: Who Needs 'Em?
Bob Sipchen
School MeJuly 3, 2006LATimes.com
It's healthy at moments such as this, when powerful forces clamor for quick and sweeping reform, to reconsider tenacious ideas, even those that the collective wisdom has deemed insane if not satanic.
So how about we Southern Californians pause for a moment in our frantic efforts to once again revolutionize the Los Angeles Unified School District (while also searching for a new superintendent and negotiating a new teachers union contract) and instead ponder this: Are public schools worth the effort?
It's that taboo question that leads me to the study of a sprawling 19th-floor San Francisco apartment.
Big windows take in a rain-soaked landscape stretching from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate and beyond. I think of all the public schools out there, brimming with poor kids, minority kids, and listen as a tiny man of 93 explains why Americans should relinquish all such schools to the free market.
Milton Friedman, one of America's most respected and reviled educational reform advocates, attended public schools himself. You'd think the fact that he went on to win the Nobel Prize in economics would mellow him on the subject. It hasn't.
"The schooling system was in much better shape 50 years ago than it is now," says Friedman, his voice as confident as reinforced concrete.
A big fan of freedom, Friedman objects to public schools on principle, arguing — as he says most classic liberals once did — that government involvement by nature decreases individual liberty. But it's the decline of schooling at the practical level, especially for the poor, that seems to exasperate him.
Friedman puts much of the blame on centralization.
"When I went to elementary school, a long, long time ago in the 1920s, there were about 150,000 school districts in the United States," he says. "Today there are fewer than 15,000, and the population is more than twice as large."
Centralization was caused by urbanization and in turn caused bureaucratization. For that, and much more, he blames teachers unions.
Throughout our talk, Friedman uses the phrase "your friends in the teachers union." This amuses me because, while I do have many friends who belong to teachers unions, my conversations with A.J. Duffy, the cocky president of United Teachers Los Angeles, usually end with him screaming.
Months ago, when I told Duffy I was going to visit Friedman, he smirked. "I don't think public education can work on the profit paradigm," he said. "It's ludicrous."
Friedman takes the opposite view. At heart, he remains a pure capitalist. He would like to see government get out of schooling entirely. As a pragmatist, he figures that if the government must spend money on education, it should give it to parents to spend, on private schools if they wish.
This approach is usually called a voucher system, and armies of think-tank scholars have cranked out tons of studies supporting all sides of the issue since Friedman injected it into the debate in his 1955 article "The Role of Government in Education."
None of that has clouded Friedman's clarity.
"The fundamental thing that's wrong with our present setup of elementary and secondary schooling is that it's a case in which the government is subsidizing a product," he says. "If you subsidize the producers, as we do in schooling, they have every incentive to have a status quo, and a non-progressive system, because they are a monopoly."
Friedman finds it unfair that a mother who sends her child to private school should also have to pay to educate children whose parents send them to public school — an injustice made more egregious in his view by the fact that the private school mom probably has more money and so has already paid more in taxes. But he is just as ticked off by what he sees as the great unfairness to poor kids.
"It's very clear that the people who suffer most in our present system are people in the slums — blacks, Hispanics, the poor, the underclass."
When I ask him about the "achievement gap" separating low-scoring black and Latino students from better-scoring whites and Asians, he blames my "friends in the union."
"They are running a system that maximizes the gap in performance…. Tell me, where is the gap between the poor and rich wider than it is in schooling? A more sensible education system, one that is based on the market, would stave off the division of this country into haves and have-nots; it would make for a more egalitarian society because you'd have more equal opportunities for education."
But how would overburdened minimum-wage workers be expected to find the time to research a slew of school options, I ask — hearing the patronizing tone of my question as it crosses my lips.
"Who's in a better position?" Friedman asks.
As a fairly well-informed parent, I can't bring myself to say "the experts," so I move on to money.
Jonathan Kozol, author of "Savage Inequalities" and other books of education journalism, has noted that the parents who whine that "throwing money at education" doesn't solve the problem are usually those spending $15,000 or $30,000 a year to send their kids to private schools. I ask Friedman about the obvious implications of that.
"In the last 10 years, the amount spent per child on schooling has more than doubled after allowing for inflation. There's been absolutely no improvement as far as I can see in the quality of education…. The system you have is like a sponge. It will absorb the extra money. Because the incentives are wrong.
"Would you really rather have your automobile produced by a government agency? Do you really prefer the post office to FedEx? Why do people have this irrational attachment to a socialist system?"
Friedman says that Americans have benefited enormously from free market competition in virtually every other part of their lives. He thinks it's a matter of time before consumers demand the same right to choose how their children's minds will be nourished as they do in deciding what food to feed them.
Charter schools allow a measure of choice, he says, in part because they are largely unencumbered by unreasonable union requirements, but he already sees organized labor stalking teachers at those schools.
"Vouchers," he says, "should have been a Democratic proposal. I don't think the unions can continue to succeed in making it an act of faith that if you're a Democrat you're against vouchers. That's resting on a pile of straw.
"It's not going to last. It's impossible, really, literally impossible for me to conceive that you can keep on sticking to this failing system, this terrible system that does so much injustice."
Friedman's a brilliant guy, and he left me with a lot to consider about how we educate our children.
But then my friend Duffy's a bright guy too, as the deal he helped strike last month to help Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (and the teachers union) gain more control of the L.A. Unified School District makes clear.
In retrospect, I wish I'd invited Duffy to leave his posh union office and join me in my visit to Friedman's posh apartment.
I'm not sure who would have won the moral battle. But I'd love to have seen the economist and the union boss crashing about among the bookcases, trying to wrestle each other into intellectual headlocks.
The Achiever: July/August 2006 • Vol. 5, No. 6 U.S. Department of Education
Science Score Gains Made on Nation's Report Card
Younger Students Show Highest Achievement Over Last Decade
Science Score Gains Made on Nation's Report CardYounger Students Show Highest Achievement Over Last Decade
The latest results on the Nation's Report Card show that students at the elementary school level have made remarkable progress in science compared to those in the upper grades.
The 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tested the science skills of a representative sample of more than 300,000 students in grades 4, 8 and 12. Released in May of this year by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, national findings since the previous assessments in 1996 and 2000 revealed:
Fourth-grade students scored higher than in either previous year, and lower-performing students made the largest gains since 2000.
Eighth-graders' overall performance remained unchanged from either previous year; gains by lower-income students narrowed the achievement gap since 2000.
Scores for 12th-graders remained unchanged since the last assessment, but are lower than in 1996. However, the gap in achievement between black and white students has widened since 2000.
"These NAEP results provide further evidence that accountability and assessments are working to raise achievement levels, even in subjects not directly tested under the No Child Left Behind Act," said U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. Furthermore, she added that the results prove the need to expand those accountability provisions more in the nation's high schools.
The report also presents state results for grades 4 and 8. Although most states showed no improvement in these grades, five of the 37 participating states—California, Hawaii, Kentucky, South Carolina and Virginia—did improve between 2000 and 2005 in both grades.
In addition, in grades 4 and 8, minority students showed improvement, with the average score for black students increasing by seven points, and for Hispanic students by 11 points since 2000. At grade 8, blacks were the only racial-ethnic group to show progress since 1996, and no racial-ethnic group showed improvement since 2000.
For the full results of the 2005 science report, visit http://nces.ed.gov and scroll down the menu to "Nation's Report Card."
Top
Plugging Into the World
Technology School Introduces World Studies Program to Help Prepare Florida Students for New Global Era
Lee Academy of World Studies
Grade Span: K-5
Locale: Large central city
Total Students: 373
Race/Ethnicity Enrollment: 36% black, 31% Hispanic, 24% white, 7% multiracial, 2% Asian
Free or Reduced-Price Lunch Eligible: 73%
English Language Learners: 36%
Special Education Students: 3%
Percentage Proficient: In math, 71%; in reading, 70% (based on third- through fifth-graders assessed on the 2005 state exams)
Interesting Fact: Built in 1906, Lee was retrofitted with a new wiring system in 1993 when it was converted to a technology magnet school.
Lee Academy of World Studies has taken its students on a trip around the world—without them ever having to leave their desks. With the help of the Internet and an array of high-tech gadgets, its children have discovered over the past year that the world is far bigger than their Tampa, Fla., neighborhood.
The 2005-06 school year was the first for the world studies curriculum. After more than a decade of serving as a technology magnet school, Lee broadened its K-5 program by globalizing the social studies curriculum and adding foreign language studies. "Downloading information about countries and studying them is so much easier than saying, 'Okay, let's talk about technology,'" explained Principal Mamie Buzzetti. "Now we have something to link it to."
In 1993, Lee became the first elementary magnet school in Hillsborough County to be a part of the district's diversity plan. At the time, remembers superintendent MaryEllen Elia, the idea of a technology school received a skeptical welcome. "Now when you look back, it's almost amazing to see how far we've come," she said.
After a while, however, many of the students who were making the nearly two-hour bus ride to Lee because of its technology were finding that they could receive computer instruction right in their neighborhood schools. That's when the staff realized they needed another draw for their magnet school population. Just as Lee's leadership thought a technology program would help to prepare students for a digital world, they also believed a world studies focus in an evolving global era would further strengthen students' academic preparation.
Such a program promises a more prosperous future for the children, especially at a school where approximately three-fourths of the students qualify for federally subsidized meals. "Parents want to find what's best for their children, and when they see all of our accomplishments and that every child can learn, they are convinced of the school's potential," said Buzzetti, who came to Lee in 1974 as a teacher.
For the past four years, Lee has achieved Florida's adequate yearly progress goals, with about 70 percent of its students meeting high standards in both reading and math last year. During this time span, the school has earned nothing short of a "B" grade based on the state's accountability system.
Buzzetti is also proud of the school's small class sizes of 20 students per teacher and of its diversity: roughly one-third are black; another one-third are Hispanic; and the remaining one-third are white, multiracial and Asian. Furthermore, considering the fact that Lee is an inner-city school (located one mile from downtown Tampa) whose population is made up of children from all over the district, these accomplishments are no small feat. Acclaims Elia, "Lee has a dedicated staff, from the custodian to the principal, who have done some incredibly innovative things with students."
It is this innovation that in 2005 earned Lee one of 20 Schools of Distinction awards from Intel Corporation and Scholastic out of a national pool of more than 3,000 participating schools. Within the same year, it also received a Blue Ribbon Lighthouse School Award from Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence, Inc., in partnership with NASA. And this year, Lee won a Magnet School of Distinction Award from Magnet Schools of America. Buzzetti believes the stream of recognition is a credit to their hard work over the years to fine-tune the program: "We knew exactly where we were going and just basically reached where we needed to be."
In another pioneering project, Lee was the first in the district to set up the Spectrum Lab, which offers a hands-on approach to problem-solving by encouraging students to use scientific reasoning in various experiments that examine electricity, hydraulics, insects and the weather.
From the outside, few would guess this century-old, redbrick school building crowned with a monumental dome is the home of a multimedia enterprise. When Lee was converted to a technology school, the building constructed in 1906 by a grassroots team of laborers underwent an intensive retrofitting process, in which the ceiling, walls and hardwood floors were almost completely peeled back to accommodate new wiring and prepare for nearly 100 boxes of computer equipment.
Recently, thanks to the Intel and Scholastic award winnings worth $10,000 in cash and $500,000 in equipment, Lee expanded its electronic stock to include: laptop computers; digital projectors that beam classroom lessons in high definition; document cameras that magnify three-dimensional objects; interactive whiteboards that allow teachers to colorfully inscribe their notes on the projected images; and handheld instructional devices that allow students to learn at their own pace through multiple-choice interaction. In addition, an order of flat screen televisions is expected to arrive by the fall to help support Lee's video broadcasts.
"The grant was the best thing that could ever have happened because I've been dying for a projector, and I wanted my own laptop," said Devin Qureshi, who is in her fourth year of teaching. "It's made my job easier."
By integrating this technology into the curriculum, teachers are engaging students of all learning styles, from the visual to the auditory to the kinesthetic learners. "It's almost like the technology has become a pen or pencil," said Elia. "It's fascinating."
For example, in these digitally controlled classrooms, teachers can take their students on a virtual tour of Africa at the touch of a button. Students can watch exotic animals drinking from a watering hole in the desert via a live camera feed through National Geographic's Web site.
Also, in establishing a globally conscious learning environment, last year Lee implemented foreign language classes as a complement to its world studies program. Twice a week, students in every grade attend the foreign language lab to learn Spanish.
Although the community is predominantly Hispanic, Lee teaches the language with an emphasis on Latin and assigns native Spanish speakers more challenging activities.
For Angela Bowling, the language studies help children not only to better communicate with their Latino classmates but provide a practical link to higher learning. "I've used it to teach them math skills when we're talking about a quadrilateral," she said. "We talk about the Latin roots of the word—quadri, meaning 'four,' and later, meaning 'sides.' I show them how the language can help them in math, reading and writing—and in what they're doing right now and in what they'll do in the future."
— By Nicole Ashby
Spellings Gives Texas Tech Commencement Speech
In May, Secretary Spellings delivered the commencement address to the Texas Tech University class of 2006. Following is an excerpt of her remarks.
The XX Factor
On May 15, Secretary Spellings and Deputy Director of the National Science Foundation Kathie Olsen welcomed to Washington, D.C., more than 100 female entrepreneurs, explorers and scientists for the first-ever National Summit on the Advancement of Girls in Math and Science. Spellings spoke about female underrepresentation in critical fields related to math and science. For instance, in high school Advanced Placement classes, girls account for only one-third of physics students and only 15 percent of computer science students; at the college level, less than 20 percent of engineering majors are women, and the number of women with computer science degrees has dropped 25 percent since 1985. "Our country cannot afford to lose half of our potential innovators, especially in this ever-flattening, iPod-loving, TiVo-watching world," she said. To address this issue, the secretary announced that the U.S. Department of Education will be conducting a comprehensive review of research on why girls are turning away from these fields of the future. She also announced the Department's new partnership with the Girls Scouts of the USA and the Ad Council.
... Today, something very precious is coming to an end. You're saying goodbye to friends, thanking teachers who inspired you, thinking back on many fond memories and leaving a place that's been your home for four years—maybe a little longer for some of you.
But today, you're also starting out on a new beginning, an incredible journey, one that stretches further and wider than anything you've ever known. ... You're embarking on life, and it's very simply what you make it. ...
... To succeed you've got to have focus: the ability to see the big picture, the courage to dig in and persevere so that when life throws you a curve you don't get derailed. ...
Sometimes the road stretches straight ahead. Sometimes you're stuck in 5 o'clock traffic. Sometimes you're just trying to find the nearest exit.
And one thing you'll discover is that more often than not what at first appear to be roadblocks and setbacks are the very things that'll get you where you were meant to be.
So, as best you can, have fun, put on some good music ... and don't let anything or anyone narrow your dreams for the future. ...
Because the greatest obstacle in life isn't failure, it's fear. Fear keeps you on the sidelines playing it safe, convincing you risks are for daredevils and greatness is reserved for others. Yet, the reality is when you play it safe the only guarantee you get is that you'll live with regret. ...
Our fellow Texan, Lance Armstrong, has a saying inspired by his mom: "Pain is temporary, but quitting is forever." Anything worth anything takes some doing; it takes sacrifice. To seize life and live fully invites the potential for pain and disappointment. But that's the risk you take so that you can stand proud knowing you've lived and you've played, while countless others never got off the bench. ...
As I tell my [daughters], "If all you ever do is all you've ever done, then all you'll ever get is all you've ever got." ...
Take time to pause and make sure that you're living life and life isn't living you. Have a plan, but don't be afraid to improvise. Get off the beaten path. Explore the detours and back roads. Don't be in such a hurry to get where you're going that you miss some amazing scenery along the way. ...
... [But] no matter what you do in life, I want to encourage all of you to find some way to give back. The impact of that choice will not only improve the lives of others, it will enlarge and enrich yours as well. ...
Live your life so that when you look back on this day it will stand out not as an ending, but as the beginning of a wild ride, a great adventure, a life lived well and with purpose. ...
New York — The New York City Department of Education is hoping its new housing support program will attract at least 100 newly hired math, science and special education teachers to some of its high-need middle and high schools by September. The program was negotiated with Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration and the city's teachers union to address teacher shortages in these subject areas. Candidates must have a minimum of two years of classroom experience and pass a rigorous selection process. Eligible teachers will receive an initial payment of up to $5,000 for housing-related expenses along with a $400 monthly stipend for two years in exchange for a three-year commitment of service.
North Carolina — This fall, a group of Mecklenburg County parents will begin a two-year training program to learn how to become activists for improving public education for all children. Through its Parent Leadership Network, the nonprofit organization Charlotte Advocates for Education trains parents to partner with schools to improve student achievement. Participants engage other parents in a variety of school initiatives, from helping Hispanic students learn to read to helping school leadership teams incorporate writing as a core subject. The program is supported by the Public Education Network and is modeled after a project by the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, a Kentucky-based advocacy group for school reform.
Calendar
July 25
White House Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Conference, Austin, Texas, sponsored by a consortium of federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Education. This regional meeting for grassroots leaders will provide information about federal grant opportunities. Registration deadline is July 19. For more information, visit www.fbci.gov or call 202-456-6718.
September
Library Card Sign-Up Month, sponsored by the American Library Association. Launched in 1987, this observance brings national attention to using the local library as a source of lifetime learning. Visit www.ala.org and click on "Events and Conferences," or call toll-free 1-800-545-2433.
September 8
International Literacy Day, sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. With nearly 775 million people over the age of 15 who are illiterate, of whom two-thirds are women, this observance highlights the importance of literacy worldwide. Visit http://portal.unesco.org and click on "Education."
Q & A Glossary
pell grant:
a federal grant that provides funds to undergraduate students based on financial need.
What federal grants are available for college students?
To meet the growing need for improved math and science instruction, President George W. Bush recently signed into law two new grant programs for college students: the Academic Competitiveness Grant and the Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) Grant. The president has budgeted $790 million for the 2006-07 academic year, and $4.5 billion over five years, to provide financial aid to college students who are: 1) eligible for federal Pell grants; 2) United States citizens; and 3) enrolled full-time.
Academic Competitiveness grants will be awarded to first- and second-year college students who have completed a rigorous secondary school program. Qualifying students would receive up to $750 for the first year of study and up to $1,300 for the second year. First-year students must not have been previously enrolled in a program of undergraduate education; second-year students must have had at least a cumulative 3.0 grade point average (GPA) during their first year of college. Based on information provided on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, potentially eligible students will be contacted by July 1.
For upper-level students, SMART grants of up to $4,000 will be awarded to third- and fourth-year college students who major in mathematics, science, technology, engineering or critical foreign languages at a four-year degree-granting institution. Students must have at least a cumulative 3.0 GPA in college.
Education News Parents Can Use, the U.S. Department of Education's monthly television program, wrapped up the spring season with its June edition, "Child Health and Nutrition," which highlighted national and local programs that encourage children to eat right and exercise. The show also discussed nutrition guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's new food pyramid and featured a pilot program in Wisconsin that is spreading throughout the Appleton Area School District with the help of a physical education program grant from the Education Department.
Other editions of the monthly news show were: "Helping America's Youth: Engaging At-Risk Students," "Inspiring Excellence: Great Teachers, Great Principals," and "New Tools for Parents: Getting Informed and Getting Involved."
The March edition focused on a youth development initiative led by first lady Laura Bush and similar programs nationwide that are providing at-risk youths with the tools, community support and role models necessary for them to grow into healthy, productive adults.
In April, the focus shifted to another topic of particular interest to America's families. The show examined how excellence in teaching is at the core of the nation's long-term competitiveness, with a videotaped story of IBM's Transition to Teaching program and conversations with the 2006 National Association of Secondary School Principals of the Year.
May's show highlighted best practices of school choice in California and Florida and a compelling story of a grandmother-activist from Washington, D.C., whose nephew is benefiting from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
Each month, Education News Parents Can Use showcases: schools and school districts from across the country; conversations with school officials, parents and education experts; and advice and free resources for parents and educators.
In striving to help all students achieve to high standards, the U.S. Department of Education recently released a new tool kit to assist school leaders in fully implementing the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act for students with disabilities as well as those of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act.
The Tool Kit on Teaching and Assessing Students With Disabilities provides up-to-date guidance on assessing the achievement and progress of special education students. It also includes a series of technical assistance products that offer practical, research-based approaches to the challenges schools are facing in instruction, assessment, accommodations and behavioral interventions. This colorful publication—replete with charts, tables and illustrations—includes:
Testimonials by educators who have successfully used alternate assessments;
Sound practices for systematically monitoring student progress;
Tips for parents on developing children's reading skills;
Tangible symbols for communicating with severely disabled individuals;
A schoolwide model for promoting positive behavior; and
A manual on appropriate accommodations for instructing and assessing students with disabilities in regular classes.
The Tool Kit on Teaching and Assessing Students With Disabilities is a joint effort of the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. Free copies may be downloaded at www.osepideasthatwork.org and ordered on CD-ROM by calling 1-877-4ED-PUBS with identification number EHE0110C, while supplies last.
Credits
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Ave., S.W.
Washington, DC 20202
The Achiever is a monthly publication for parents and community leaders from the Office of Communications and Outreach, U.S. Department of Education (ED). Margaret Spellings, secretary.
Comments? Contact Nicole Ashby, editor, at 202-205-0676 (fax), or education@custhelp.com
Address changes and subscriptions? Contact 1-877-4ED-PUBS, or edpubs@inet.ed.gov.
Information on ED programs, resources and events? Contact 1-800-USA-LEARN, or education@custhelp.com.
The Achiever contains news and information about and from public and private organizations for the reader's information. Inclusion does not constitute an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any products or services offered or views expressed. This publication also contains hyperlinks and URLs created and maintained by outside organizations and provided for the reader's convenience. The Department is not responsible for the accuracy of this information.