Teaching to the Test

February 29, 2004 The phrase "Teach to the Test" comes up often in connection with standardized testing and education reform. It's usually a derogatory term employed to slam the use of standardized tests, as in: "With this new mandated testing, teachers are going to be forced to stop teaching the curriculum, and just teach to the test."

On the flip side, supporters of standardized tests have also used the phrase. President Bush has said that if it's a reading standardized test, there's nothing wrong with teaching to the test, because you'll be teaching kids to read.

The reality is somewhere in the middle, which isn't good.

There are two broad problems: using high-stakes tests aligned to state standards (which may or may not be well-written), and using the same version of the test, year in and year out.

In the first case, the high-stakes nature of today's educational climate has caused states to write new standards documents, and to write (or find) tests specifically aligned to these standards. This is all well and good if the standards are well-written, but often they are not.

Kimberly Swygert wrote about this in "From Bad Standards to a Worse Test," which includes the classic line that Maryland's new math standards "take the algebra out of algebra." In that story, teachers at a very good school were torn between teaching algebra, or "teaching to the test" based on an entirely different set of skills.

The darker side of "teaching to the test" arises when a school system uses the same exact edition of a test, year after year.

One standardized test (which shall remain unnamed) was given every year in one district, and it was no secret it was the same edition with all the same questions. Not only that, but it was a poorly written test which had apparently undergone no field testing whatsoever. (Yet it was supposed to gauge our students' learning?)

In this particular standardized test there's a line drawing of an elephant with a grid superimposed. Next to this is a larger grid, without any picture. The student is to redraw the picture of the elephant, larger this time, using the grid as a guide. (Don't get us started on what the heck this activity is doing in a high-stakes test . . . )

Well, in one school where we've taught, one week before the test, the entire teaching staff received dittos of this exact same activity, only with a picture of some other animal instead of the elephant. Ostensibly, this was a "test prep activity" but we know it by its more common name:

Teaching to the test.

Removing Hurdles for Prospective New Teachers in Texas

February 28, 2004 We learn from Tim Stahmer over at Assorted Stuff that Texas has recently approved a plan to let recent college grads (depending on one's major) essentially pass a test to earn a two-year teaching certificate, without ever setting foot in a College of Education. He writes:

I can already hear the cheers of the "reformers" who will say how wonderful this kind of plan is.

Why the scare quotes around reformers? For the record, we do think this plan is wonderful.

Now they say, many classrooms in Texas can be led by eager young teachers with "real world" experience and none of that nasty teacher college indoctrination to get in the way.

Say what you will about teacher indoctrination, but we can tell you that it really messed with our heads.

After all, the only thing a teacher really needs is lots of knowledge in their subject matter and a love of kids. Plus lots of good test prep materials, of course. And keep them away from those evil union reps.

He took the words right out our mouths. Except the part of the evil union reps. Without exception, the union reps in all of the schools in which we've taught have been the nicest, most professional people with which you'd want to work. (Now, about union leaders . . . )

Tim's major complaint on this proposal to generate new teachers is centered on the issue of teacher mentoring once the candidate is hired by a school. He writes:

Texas, like other states considering such instant teacher plans, abandons responsibility for this kind of support, leaving it entirely up to the local school systems.

Which, we might add, is precisely where such responsibility belongs.

Without the on-the-job support, some of these new teachers will still do well and become good educators, maybe great. Experience has shown, however, that most will leave the profession within five years and many will be asked to leave by the end of two.

This is kind of like saying that you don't like skim milk because it's mostly water--using a factually true statement designed to give the impression of a valid argument. While it is true that many teachers leave in the first five years, there is no evidence that we're aware of tying this with a lack of mentoring.

From our personal experience, we have an idea why so many new teachers leave the profession: It's a hard job! We say that with a smile, not a frown, for we relish the challenging nature of educating children, and it's why we get up in the morning.

In a summary of "It’s a Hard Job: A Study of Novice Teachers’ Perspectives on Why Teachers Leave the Profession" the author identifies 6 key areas contributing to attrition: "societal attitude toward teachers, financial issues, time scarcity, workload, working conditions, and relationships with students and parents."

A school mentoring program wouldn't affect the first five of these areas, and with regards to the sixth ("relationships with students and parents"), the concern was one of discipline and motivation.

Being that teaching is difficult, not a profession for everyone, it is not surprising that new teachers suffer such attrition. But we certainly don't feel yet another state-mandated program would be the solution.

After eliminating the whole College of Education requirement, here's our plan for teacher training:

1. Be sure the candidate knows the subject matter cold, and genuinely wants to work with kids (as opposed to seeing teaching as a fallback position).

2. Hand the teacher copies of The First Days of School by Harry Wong, and Setting Limits in the Classroom: How to Move Beyond the Dance of Discipline in Today's Classrooms by Robert MacKenzie. Both of these books are extremely practical, the first focuses on general classroom procedures, and the second on discipline.

3. Finally, let the individual schools deal with new teachers their own way. Sure, not everyone's cut out to be a teacher. But let the individual school decide that, not the State.

How do you think they do it in private schools?

Black Alliance for Educational Options

February 27, 2004 Last night we attended an membership reception hosted by the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) in Philadelphia (at right is Dawn Chavous, chair of the Membership Committee). While we've been a member for about two years, this is the first event we've attended. These folks are passionate about increasing educational options for children--our kind of people!

And what is BAEO? From their homepage:

The Black Alliance for Educational Options, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a national, non-profit membership organization, whose mission is to actively support parental choice to empower families and increase quality educational options for black children.

And how exactly do they propose to increase these options?

BAEO supports a mix of educational options, including Supplementary Education Programs, Innovations in Traditional Public Schools, Home-Schooling, Public-Private Partnerships, Tuition Tax Credits, Privately Financed Scholarships, Vouchers and Charter Schools.

This is significant, for traditionally black leadership has shied away from any options other than public schooling. The NAACP is either silent on--or critical of--any efforts to increase choice in education, especially vouchers, mirroring the position of the national Democratic Party. It is very unfortunate that pure politics gets the upper hand, while tens of thousands of children of color languish in schools that are definitely underserving them.

While it is important to work actively to fix our public schools, it is even more important to give parents a choice. In a conversation with local BAEO board member Sheila Royal-Moses, she summed up a parent's outrage: "How dare you tell me to wait for the system to get better!"

BAEO's motto says it all: Give parents a choice. Give children a chance.

The point to vouchers: Helping parents pay for private school

February 26, 2004 One of the favorite arguments against vouchers is the "all or nothing" attack. Specifically, if the vouchers can't pay for all kids to go to any private schools, then the whole voucher program must be rejected.

Here's a simple little graph illustrating how silly this argument really is.

Assuming a $5,000 voucher, we've graphed whether private school is "affordable" at various levels of tuition and parental contribution. Obviously the wealthiest parents (top row) can afford just about any private school, voucher or no voucher. We aren't concerned with these folks.

The poorest parents are the ones who really need the boost. As you can see in the bottom rows of the graph, none of these parents can afford private school, while a small range of schools becomes affordable with the voucher.

But here's the kicker: A large group of parents might be able to contribute a little to their child's private school tuition, even if they can't afford the whole thing. If they can contribute even a few thousand dollars a year (less than $40 a week!) a much-expanded range of private schools becomes available.

To get "the big picture" for the benefit of vouchers, just look at how many squares are red in the upper left, and green in the dotted lower right. This red-green combination illustrates a situation where private school moves from not affordable to affordable, all because of a voucher.

Voucher opponents have their sights firmly set on the lower right portion of the graph--the situations where parents can't afford expensive private schooling with or without the voucher. Naysayers would be willing to sacrifice all the students for whom private schools are newly affordable, all because of the worst-case scenarios.

Wake up, folks, this glass is not half-empty.

Teaching Homosexuality in the Public Schools

February 26, 2004 Found via a new edu-blog called "MyShortPencil" is this take on some new additions to the public school curriculum. Titled "Reading, Writing and... Homosexuality?" Doug Giles writes:

Gone are the Norman Rockwell days of sending Scooter Jr. off to school with his satchel slung over his shoulder… PBJ sandwich tucked into his Superman lunch kit… with a wide-eyed expectancy of learning that which makes people and nations great.

In regards to the safe and trusted haven that was the public school…The fat lady has officially finished singing.  Not only has Big Mama sung… but she’s been in the grave decomposing for a solid 40 years.

I hate to sound like a freaked out parent… but I am a freaked parent—and I’m seriously concerned about what is going on inside a lot of our public school systems.

I send my girls off to school Monday through Friday to become alpha females in reading, writing and arithmetic.  I want my kids to get a classic quality education based on the tenets that make us the greatest nation on the planet and for them to get a stranglehold on the essential sciences.

That being said… I also expect the teachers to not undercut the moral authority that I have… I said… that I HAVE, as a parent, over my children, in regards to right and wrong.  Especially, as it relates to sexual intercourse and homosexuality.

For the record, Giles feels homosexuality is wrong.

And now, I’m an officially ticked off father, as just the other day . . . without warning . . . without notice . . . both my daughters were exposed to “It’s Okay to Be Gay” propaganda presented by high school students, with the approval of high school and middle school teachers, to my middle school children.

People may or may not agree with Mr. Giles' moral views but his key point is valid: Why are public schools teaching homosexuality, or for that matter, any sexuality?

Isn't the job of public schools to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, supported by key subjects such as history, science, and geography, with a little music, art, and physical education thrown in for good measure?

It is often said that Progressive educators have as one of their publicly-stated goals to remake society. We feel the best way to remake society is to simply teach the children well, in the major subjects listed above. Progressives, on the other hand, are trying to remake society by indoctrinating legions of school children to become as like-minded as they are.

Where's the diversity now?

Myth: Transient students bring down test scores

February 24, 2004 Kimberly Swygert over at Number 2 Pencil has an interesting post on the threatened closure of a Harlem charter school. She took them pretty well to task, poking holes in all their arguments and excuses except one: The school had claimed that it did poorly on the standardized test because of a new crop of 8th grade students.

Kimberly writes, "the argument that some kids had been at the school only five months before being tested isn't ridiculous."

Ah, they slipped that one past her quantitative eye, so we gotta give them some credit.

In the world of statistics, the most useless adjective (or useful, if you like to use statistics to mislead people) is the quantifier "some," as it covers anywhere from 1% to 99% of a population.

Some kids? Exactly how many? What percentage of the test-taking population? More importantly, what was the average number of months that children attended that school before taking this damning test?

It's quite possible a good portion of the 8th grade class in question had been at that school for years, as we shall explain.

We've had a fair bit of experience with charter schools, and a common way for a charter school to get on its feet is for it to start small, then "vertically" expand, adding one grade level per year for one or more years. While it's possible for a school to expand toward the younger grades, by far the most common method of vertical expansion is to grow with the students.

For example, if a school's highest grade is 6th grade, when the current 6th graders graduate, the school can expand to 7th, hiring more staff as necessary.

Reisenbach's parents and staff tried a number of arguments to explain away their failing scores, including the fact that "2002 was the first year the school had an eighth-grade class."

It would logically seem that the school only had higher grades, and expanded downward to 8th grade. Thus, when these students were tested for the first time, they got slammed unfairly.

The facts are the precise opposite. The school has served younger students all along, and has expanded vertically as their children graduate each grade. (A quick Google search revealed a pdf report showing the school with 75 seventh graders in 2001. If this school is so universally well-loved by parents, you can bet that a huge chunk of that 75 became the very eighth grade class that tanked in reading and math.)

The "transient students are pulling our scores down" appeal is largely a myth, but makes for a handy excuse.

On a side note, one parent claimed in defense of Reisenbach, "All schools in Harlem are failing." (So why should they pick on Reisenbach?) Apparently this parent isn't aware of the huge number of private and parochial schools in Harlem, which, by the very nature of the tuition-based educational free market, cannot all be failing.

Our recommendation for Reisenbach? Throw them a bone, and grant them a conditional renewal. Hand all the reading teachers a copy of Why Johnny Can't Read, and tell the math teachers they can earn professional development credits if they read fifty articles (any fifty!) at MathematicallyCorrect. Finally, to build synergy, all staff members should be required to study the high-performing high-poverty schools profiled in No Excuses (125-page pdf).

Then, in three years, see where their scores are. If they don't have at least half their kids passing the reading and math tests, then they don't deserve to stay open, not with taxpayer money they don't. Tell them to reincorporate as a private school and see just how many parents would pay out-of-pocket tuition for that kind of failure!

Let's keep those #2 pencils sharpened!

Are Progressive Educators All Bad?

February 24, 2004 The best history of the entire twentieth century's worth of school reform efforts is Left Back, by Diane Ravitch. It is one meaty tome: 467 pages set in 10-point serif, followed by 830 footnotes stretching across almost 60 pages. Crack it open to just about any page and you'll find a choice quotable.

We're fond of poking fun of Progressives, and on page 57 Ravitch speaks of revered father figure John Dewey's take on the movement:

Progressive education did not begin with the intention of creating different educational programs for children from different social classes. Its primary purpose, as defined by its leading spokesman, John Dewey, was to make the schools an instrument of social reform.

Ravitch relates Dewey's themes of progressive education, as recorded in 1897:

The school, he said, "must represent present life--life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground." The best way to correlate school subjects was to focus not on science, literature, history, or geography, but on "the child's own social activities."

We suspect Suzie's unlikely to encounter much algebra on the playground, and probably won't pick up much history of the Renaissance in her various "social activities." But you never know.

Being that Ravitch has on her historian's hat for the entire voyage, it is valuable to hear what prominent Progressives have said over the years in support of their noble cause. The connections between Progressives and Marxism and collectivism (heck, Dewey was a Socialist) is decidedly creepy.

The Progressive Education Association delivered a report in 1933, which

proposed that teachers adopt a philosophy, "take up boldly the challenge of the present . . . and transfer the democratic tradition from individualistic to collectivist economic foundations."
[ . . . ]
It called on teachers to "unite in a powerful organization, militantly devoted to the building of a better social order" and financially supported by the Progressive Education Association.

See any similarities with the National Education Association (NEA)? They and the other big teacher union, the AFT, regularly disparage capitalism and champion socialist-like causes. In Let's Put Parents Back In Charge, comrade Myron Lieberman (a longtime union leader) is quoted:

The NEA and AFT conventions regularly feature attacks on "profits" and "corporate greed" that could easily pass for a series of speeches at a Communist Party convention.

But we're getting off the topic, which was Ravitch and her investigation of reform including the Progressive education movement.

We were eager to find out what kind of school to which she'd send her own kids:

My own children grew up in New York City, where they attended a private progressive school that was academically rigorous and pedagogically venturesome.

Progressive? We must admit that threw us for a spell, but after a little contemplation, we realized it made perfect sense. For starters, the school was a private school. No parent is compelled to send Johnny there. Secondly, she notes it was "academically rigorous."

This reminds us of the work of bloggers Ms. Frizzle and the author of A School Yard Blog (who has a great post On Rigor). Both are academically rigorous progressive educators, and we mean that as a compliment.

See, Progressivism and high academic standards aren't mutually exclusive!

Unfortunately, some of the more execrable tenets of Progressive education have taken root in many of our public schools, and rigor is too often left back.

Language Immersion

February 22, 2004 The year was 1962. Dennis Cullinan enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent to study language in California. After a battery of tests, Cullinan was asked which languages he'd prefer, and was assigned Korean (one of his least-preferred choices). He writes:

At the Presidio of Monterey I was one of six GI students in a small classroom. Our faculty were three well-educated Korean emigres, who came at us one by one, an hour at a time. For four weeks we had no printed course materials. Instead, the teacher chattered away in Korean for an hour. Then a different teacher came in and chattered away in Korean for another hour. Same for the third hour, after which we had a two hour lunch break. Afternoons brought three more hours of teachers chattering in Korean. Eventually we got textbooks, but they were written in Korean only.

But after forty-seven weeks, six hours a day, five days a week, we learned the Korean language.

(Hat tip: Amritas) While class-size mavens might drool at the ratio presented in the story, we'd add that the presentation was, at least in the beginning, in lecture mode, making class size irrelevent for a time.

No, the point for us is that these guys didn't learn Korean by speaking English in class, or by using English-language materials. They were immersed.

Contrast this with the way bilingual education proponents recommend we teach English Language Learners: in Spanish.

In fact, up until the passage of 1998's Proposition 227 in California, if a child in a public school had sub-par English skills and happened to be Hispanic or a new immigrant, it was against the law to instruct that child only in English. In many schools, "Bilingual Education" meant that all subjects were taught in Spanish, even if the child's first language wasn't.

It would seem Bilingual Education boosters could learn something from the U.S. Army.

Special-Ed Vouchers?

February 22, 2004 There are many arguments against vouchers (all of which we're willing to knock down, by the way), but one favorite is that all the "good" kids will get the vouchers, while the neediest or most difficult students will be abandoned to the ever-worsening public schools.

Specifically, voucher opponents question where special-education children will end up, because surely no private schools will take learning-disabled kids, right? This is implied because we're often reminded by critics that private schools can pick and choose their students--thus there must be rampant front-door discrimination.

No evidence is ever given for any of these charges.

This week the Rocky Mountain News had a story on parents and educators debating Special Education Vouchers in Colorado.

The plan (supported by Republicans, opposed by Democrats) would target the neediest children from the poorest families, and would simply have the state's per-pupil funding follow the child to a private school. Currently, if a parent pulls a child out of public school the school district gets to keep the funding as if they were still educating Johnny.

Parents fell on both sides of the issue. One parent credited a private school with the "phenomenal" progress of her daughter, a child who supposedly wasn't ever going to walk or talk or have any sort of comprehension. Another parent was disappointed by one private school, and credits the Littleton public schools with the blossoming of his disabled daughter. This second parent opposed special-ed vouchers.

See if this argument sounds familiar:

Some parents spoke out against the bill, saying children with the mildest needs would make use of the vouchers and leave the most severely impacted behind in public schools with less money.

That petard has hoisted many a voucher opponent, for no evidence is given for this charge.

It would seem that there currently are special education students being served by both public schools and private schools. Since some parents are satisfied with private schools, and others are happy with the public system, who could argue against having the state per-pupil funding follow the child wherever the parent chooses?

The argument is one of choice.

Voucher School Gone Bad: An edu-Enron?

February 21, 2004 One of the criticisms of voucher programs (or other ways of privatizing schooling which is currently done by the government) is the invitation to corruption.

Here, in a series of articles by Sarah Carr in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, it would seem the critics are right.

January 20, 2004:

Officials at Mandella School of Science and Math inappropriately cashed almost $330,000 worth of state voucher checks made out to families, many of whose children never attended the school.

Moreover, eight families said that they did not understand that the school would be applying for vouchers on their behalves.

The school cashed voucher checks for about 234 students who didn't attend Mandella, worth about $1500 each.

January 28, 2004:

A Milwaukee County circuit judge denied Mandella School of Science and Math access to hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funds Wednesday - at least for now - saying he smelled "skulduggery."

Mandella's lawyer said the action could force the school to close soon.

Mandella administrators were suing the state for their current round of voucher payments, even though they admit they improperly cashed about $330,000 in earlier voucher checks.

February 12, 2004:

Last week at Mandella School of Science and Math, strewn papers covered the floor, desks were overturned and paint splattered the hallway.

Administrators said students had run through the building causing the mess and shouting "Mandella's gonna close! Mandella's gonna close!" And although some former employees of the school say they doubt this account, the incident speaks to the chaos at Mandella.

Ms. Carr reports on the educational atmosphere at the school, writing that students were "hanging out" and that the principal came in to teach an impromptu "combined math and civics lesson," in which he made an algebra mistake.

February 13, 2004:

Former staff members and parents rallied outside Mandella School of Science and Math Friday, pleading with families to pull their students out of the troubled school.

The group chanted, "Free Mandella students!" and carried signs reading "The students deserve better," and "Slavery ended in 1862, pay your employees!"

Ahh, slavery, that old standby. Cute--but misguided--reference to South Africa's "Free Mandela" (the principal is a native of Sierra Leone).

Three days later we learn just what became of some of that ill-begotten voucher money.

February 16, 2004:

The principal of the troubled Mandella School of Science and Math used proceeds from state voucher payments last October to buy two Mercedes-Benz cars for about $65,000.

David A. Seppeh, who started the school two years ago, bought two used Mercedes less than two weeks after Mandella officials picked up a stack of checks in Madison totaling about $642,000, state documents show.

Amazingly, Principal Seppeh defends his two Mercedes purchases. We don't think he's fooling anyone. The YWCA, which owns the building in which the school is located, has placed locks on the doors.

Again, opponents of vouchers may well point out to the Mandella debacle and say, "See?"

We draw a different conclusion: Even though the school's been open for two years, it just took four short months from the moment of impropriety for the school to be shuttered. In other words, sure, the school may have illegally cashed those checks, but they didn't get away with it, and now they're closed.

We'd say the system is working pretty well.

Contrast this with the public school system. We've worked at schools where the twin concepts of educational malpractice and intellectual bankruptcy orbit a building where all kinds of financial skulduggery abounds, and little, if anything is done. The school stays open year after year, jeopardizing legions of children's futures.

Try to shut down one of these public schools and you'll have a firestorm on your hands.

Via Joanne Jacobs, we learn The Gantelope has made this point a bit more eloquently, saying "markets force failing schools to either improve or go out of existence, whereas government school monopolies keep their failing schools in operation for year after year" with little hope of change (emphasis in original).

In our title we made reference to Enron. Some people criticize capitalism because of corporate misdeeds, when instead the net effect is a positive one.

In their slim volume Put Parents Back in Charge! in support of school vouchers, Joseph Bast and Herbert Walberg write about the lessons of Enron and Worldcom:

By engaging in corporate fraud, these corporate executives violated the laws that make capitalism possible. The stock market moved quickly to reduce the value of their companies' stock, pushing them into bankruptcy in a matter of months following disclosures of wrongdoing.

Just as with the Mandella School.

Exemption for English Language Learners: Not good

February 21, 2004 Several edubloggers have mentioned the latest news from D.C. and the No Child Left Behind regulations. Seems the Feds have taken pity on school districts with large immigrant populations, and have exempted English Language Learners from standardized testing, at least for a time.

Number 2 Pencil covers the story, complete with responses from a bevy of folks, and Daryl Cobranchi writes, "Did anyone really think that giving a kid a test in English before he even learned to speak the language was fair, let alone a good idea?"

We may not win any popularity contests for this one, but we heartily disagree.

A valid issue is the whole matter of federal regulations in education, and whether they are "fair" to schools, and this can be discussed elsewhere.

But we feel very strongly that it is a mistake to separate children into classes, and then to treat those classes differently. Although it may seem that it is making the system more fair, really the kids may end up on the short end.

One reason why so many immigrant children have trouble learning English is for the very simple reason that schools don't take the task very seriously. We have a host of ideologically-driven programs which are designed to either embrace the child's home culture or language (or Spanish, even if the kid's Vietnamese!)

These programs are euphemistically titled "bilingual education" and most do little to help a kid learn English.

Teaching English isn't rocket science, all you have to do is talk to the folks that are already successful in teaching immigrant children (you'll find they're quite satisfied with an immersive program, coupled with intensive English instruction, including teaching the rules of grammar, heaven forbid).

Exempting these English Language Learners won't speed up this process any.

From the New York Times story on the new changes to No Child Left Behind (free registration required):

A second change to the law is extremely technical, but important to schools. Schools may now continue counting foreign students in the subgroup of students learning English for two years after they have learned the language. The change comes in response to schools' concern that the subgroup of English learners would, by definition, always ensure a school's failure if students moved out of the subgroup once the school succeeded in teaching them English.

Emphasis ours. This supports our criticism of how education experts treat English Language Learners: as a separate class of students.

We don't think this is right, especially now that schools won the right to keep calling a student an "English Language Learner" two years after they learned the language! Doesn't this seem a little counter-productive, just to play games with the statistics?

Keeping the ELL designation for two years after the kid learns English not only skews the data, making it less meaningful, but it also doesn't solve the problem of the "blip" when the kid switches categories from ELL to join the rest of the student body. The average score in the ELL group will still go down, regardless.

What we propose may not seem "fair," but is best for kids: Treat all students equally. If a kid is a new immigrant, then do everything in your power to teach him English, straightaway. It's a win-win situation: the quicker the kid learns English, the better your standardized scores, and the better he'll do in school.

But as long as we classify English Language Learners as a separate class, schools have little motivation to actually teach them English.

Joe Nathan on Charter Schools

February 19, 2004 We like to describe Charter Schools as schools that are essentially publicly funded but privately run. (Full disclosure: We've worked for no fewer than five inner-city charter schools.) An excellent book on the subject is Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education, by Joe Nathan.

He shares an interesting annecdote about a conference that was held in Boise, Idaho. The organizers gathered several hundred school administrators to hear the pros and cons of charter schools, and Mr. Nathan--as a national expert in the charter school movement--was to represent one side.

For the opposing side they had Kent Matheson, superintendent of the Flagstaff, Arizona public schools, a school district that had seen the opening of several charter schools in competition with the existing public schools. Mr. Matheson admitted he was "bristled and angry" when the charter school law was passed in Arizona.

Here's how the "debate" went:

Superintendent Matheson: "I'm a convert to the charter movement."

Wh-wh-what? Nathan must have paid him off backstage, right? No way could a public school superintendent support charter schools, that would be, like, a conflict of interest or something! Right?

In theory, yes, he shouldn't support charter schools (and in fact didn't support charter schools when they first appeared). But reality has a way of changing one's mind, and Superintendent Matheson saw with his own eyes what happened in his district once charter schools began sprouting.

Several changes in the Flagstaff public school system were spurred in part by the charter schools, such as starting new specialty magnet schools, inviting business leaders to help judge senior projects, and "becoming more active in explaining to community groups what is happening in the schools."

Nathan reports that the Flagstaff schools "became more welcoming to parents, in part because families have more options." (Emphasis ours.)

This is all well and good, but sharp-eyed readers may note that none of this has anything to do with charter schools. This is absolutely correct, and this very issue was raised at the Boise conference. Writes Nathan:

Another superintendent said, "Wouldn't the district have done these things without the charter law?" Matheson replied, "I don't think we would have responded as much without a strong charter law. The law was a very strong motivating force making us want to compete."

Yes, Virginia, competition is a force for good.

Notice that Superintendent Matheson speaks of a strong charter law. This is because not all charter school laws are created equal. Some states have weak laws (more regulations and restrictions, less competition permitted, extremely difficult to start a school) while states with strong laws have a more robust charter school community.

The stronger the law, the greater the positive impact on the local public school system. That's not just our opinion, the Center for Education Reform has a report concluding that strong laws give better results (pdf).

Nathan quotes from a study done by Eric Rofes, who also notes this correlation. The dynamic is interesting when charter schools can be started without asking permission of the local school district (which helps make for a strong charter school law):

District personnel on at least five occasions in this study acknowledged--sometimes begrudgingly--that charters had served to jump-start their efforts at reform. While they initially opposed charters and the chartering had been accomplished outside their authority, they felt that district schools ultimately had benefited from the dynamics introduced by the charter school.

The Center for Education Reform also has a report (pdf) comparing the strengths of the 41 charter school laws in the U.S., which should be a handy guide for supporters wanting to get similar laws passed, and for legislators wanting to debate the wording of a newly proposed bill.

The Washington Charter Public Schools website is closely following developments in Washington State, which is contemplating making charter schools legal there. We hope they've learned from other states where it's been done, and pass the legislation soon.

If you live in Washington State and would like to see charter schools become a reality, please get involved!

A Discussion of Vouchers

February 19, 2004 Some recent commentary by fellow edublogger (and good guy) Jeff Hellman over at So You Want To Be A Science Teacher centers on criticism of Bush's education policy ideas.

We'll be the first to tell you we're not big fans of federal education policy, but we'd like to correct some misunderstandings about the whole concept of vouchers. Jeff writes:

I'm also curious about this $7,500 voucher plan. Yes, there are many private schools in DC that cost less than $7,500.

Our understanding is that most private schools in D.C. are less expensive than $7,500.

But, they're not Title I schools- they don't have the same mix of kids that a public school does.

What exactly does "mix" mean? Racial mix? Socioeconomic mix? Sure, the poorest parents in D.C. probably don't have their kids in private schools, but what does being poor have to do with anything? Isn't a scholarship the only thing keeping many poor kids out of private schools?

It is illustrative to see what happens when poor parents are given scholarships for their kids to attend private schools: it's an overwhelming success! Privately-funded vouchers (aka K-12 scholarships aimed at poor parents in inner-city schools) are not a new thing. When people bother to ask how the kids are doing, the answer we've seen is, "Pretty darn well!"

What's going to happen when these private schools enroll Title I students and then realize it costs more to educate them?

Whoa. Stop right there. First off, from the context, it looks like "Title I" refers to handicapped kids, with special needs and special teachers, and probably special mobility-assistance needs. So we looked up a definition of Title I and found this: "Title I refers to programs aimed at America's most disadvantaged students." It futher defined the program to "improve the teaching and learning of children in high-poverty schools."

That's it? Children from high poverty neighborhoods? Why on earth would it cost more to educate kids who just happen to be poor? Title I funds were government's attempt to throw money at the problem of failing public schools in high-poverty areas.

But correlation does not prove causation. Just because the government has spent more money (in the form of Title I programs) doesn't mean high-poverty kids are more expensive to educate.

Private schools are already very expensive, and by their selective nature they often don't enroll the costliest students.

Who's defining "very expensive"? Sure some private schools are very aristocratic, but by and large, most private schools bend over backwards to keep costs low and make tuition affordable. This is why most private schools charge less in tuition than the per-pupil expenditure of the neighboring public schools. (In some cases a lot less.) In fact, most Catholic schools are financed, in part, by their local parrish, so the tuition is actually less expensive that what it actually costs to educate the child.

But this "selective nature" concept is a straw man. The only thing keeping poor kids out of private schools is tuition (and even so, most private schools offer scholarships to a few poor kids a year), because they'd go out of business if they worked for free. Like we've said before, private schools which admit children on scholarships (funded by whomever) do just fine with these kids--after all, they're just poor, it's not like they've got leprosy or something.

And now we're paying for the private school infrastructure (often religious) as well the public school infrastructure required to educate everyone.

We're not sure why religion is mentioned, but the "required to educate everyone" phrase is an appeal to sentiment, nothing more. When public schools fail to do their job, it is most emphatically not because they're required to educate everyone. Their failure is due squarely to a failure of leadership and of mission.

We've worked in a wide variety of inner-city public schools to see the difference leadership makes.

We've seen failing public schools who can't teach kids with their $8,500 per child stipend, and other open-enrollment public schools in the same neighborhood doing great things with the same population at a level of funding of $6,500. And we've noted in the past that the highly successful KIPP schools specifically target under-served populations, and do a great job with them, and they're open-enrollment public schools.

Maybe the Bush Administration is counting on the fact that not all public school students are going to take up the voucher offer. They must be hoping that the best students will flee to private schools so that the private schools can remain successful at a low cost.

A stunning example of crass cynicism combined with a conspiracy theory. (Notice the coupling of "voucher offer" and "best students" when there's no such connection in real life.)

But "private schools . . . remain successful at low cost" precisely because of the free market for private schools. The free market cannot stand failure (for long), it truly is Darwinian in that only the hearty survive. In terms of schools, only private schools successful in teaching kids survive.

But what about the public schools? For many reasons (that I wrote about when Rod Paige discussed 'educational emancipation'), vouchers themselves are self-selective (parents need to make a major committment, for example). If the best students leave the public schools, what's left?

We see here why "best students" and "vouchers" are coupled. The assumption is that parents who sign up for a voucher (which in reality doesn't have to involve a "major committment," sometimes it is as simple as filling out a request form) are the parents of the "best students."

You know what they say about assumptions. In areas with mature voucher programs such as Milwaukee, the facts don't support any such correlation.

Probably a system that's even worse, continues to fail its students and is completely unable to attract good teachers. And if this downward spiral continues, public schools become the ghetto of the school system holding the vast numbers of students who can't get out. Wouldn't it make more sense to fix the public schools?

This dystopia would be reality only if a certain number of assumptions were true (which they aren't):

• First there's the perceived correlation between "voucher students" and "best students," which doesn't exist.
• Second is the perception that public schools faced with competition (exhibited by students transferring out) will get worse. In studies of public schools in the same neighborhoods as charter schools (a form of free-choice public school), the public schools got better. (Complacency doesn't have to be sclerotic.)
• Third, the description of a "ghetto of a school system holding vast numbers of students who can't get out" doesn't describe public schools after voucher programs. It describes some inner-city public school systems today!

Let's get rid of the assumptions, and instead work with facts. School choice (including vouchers) helps not only the student who's the beneficiary, it stimulates improvement in public schools.

"Wouldn't it make more sense to fix the public schools?" Yes. Let's expose them to competition, and history shows us they will improve.

---

Update: Jeff Hellman responds to our criticism.

Argument against Choice: Mass Confusion!

February 18, 2004 The good people from the Green Mountain State are debating school choice. From the Center for Education Reform's Newswire today (not yet available online):

Two-thirds of those who testified before the Vermont House Education Committee spoke in favor of school choice. The few who testified against the proposal offered dire predictions of balkanization and mass confusion on the part of parents, who would find the added choices “overwhelming.”

Libby Sternberg, founder of Vermonters for Better Education, offered that added school choice would introduce competition, cause schools to rethink their mission and ultimately serve students more effectively. The House Committee will soon be debating the issue that Governor James Douglas has identified as one of his top priorities.

Emphasis ours. We just love Chicken Little predictions of the mass confusion caused not by the sky actually falling, but by being confronted with choice where there currently is little to none.

Well, the critics of choice actually have a valid point.

Let's say you're used to food shopping at the Mom and Pop bodega on the corner, then you step for the first time into a grocery superstore such as Acme or SuperFresh. Overwhelming, right?

Or let's say you come from a small town with a single-screen, second-run movie theatre. Walk into a 24-screen multiplex, complete with digital signboards, and a concession stand the size of most restaurants, and you'd be blown away.

Or imagine your favorite "recreational outing" is going to the local miniature golf course. If you were to then board a people-mover to Disney World and EPCOT Center, why, you'd practically faint from the cornucopia of rides and attractions! So much from which to choose!

Critics of choice say parents might make the wrong choice, which is absolutely correct. But what happens next is all but ignored.

In the real world, people learn from bad choices, and word spreads fast.

Say a new charter school opens in Texas, with a really exciting plan, and lots of parents sign up. If it then turns out to be "all hat and no cattle" that school will not survive the exodus. What about the children, you ask? They'll be fine. If parents use their newfound powers of choice, they'll quickly learn which school is right for them.

Yes, things might be a little exciting and unsettling at first, and yes, there are no guarantees that parents will have all the information to make the right choices. But that quickly becomes a non-issue, as the act of choice becomes the norm, and not the exception.

Just like shopping at Acme.

Iraqi Schools and the U.S. Military

February 16, 2004 Two reports from CENTCOM in the past few weeks highlight just one part of the U.S. military's role in the rebuilding of Iraq.

Staff Sergeant Nate Orme writes of one artillery officer, and his mission to help Iraqi schoolchildren. When First Lietenant Kyle Barden's unit was put in charge of the Kurdish town of Laylan in Northern Iraq, he noticed a problem:

Barden said one of the biggest problems was that the town’s eight functioning schools did not have any supplies for the students.

“I emailed my older brother, who is a stockbroker in Charlotte, N.C., and asked him to send some school supplies,” Barden explained. “He started by writing a letter to extended family, friends and church. Before you knew it, it was huge.

By "huge" he means that the first shipment of school supplies was twenty metric tons, donated by businesses like Office Depot and private citizens.

“The intent was to square my schools away. In Laylan there are approximately 2,000 kids. We’re going to saturate Laylan then start going to other towns,” Barden said.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, Specialist Chad D. Wilkerson writes of the rebuilding of the Kalid Al-Walid School by a Civil Affairs Battalion and an Artillery Battalion, both from the Army's First Armored Division.

It all started when Lt. Colonel Richard Bowyer had a visitor from the States:

Bowyer met with Earl Rawlings, a representative from the Rawlings Foundation, a charitable organization in the [United States]. Rawlings had been looking for a project to assist in the reconstruction of Iraq. Bowyer recommended the school.

These guys must have their hands full, with multiple projects competing for time and resources, and here this guy wants to rebuild a school.

But apparently, it's all in a day's (actually two months') work, for these soldiers routinely work on schools in Iraq, according to Staff Sergeant Steven Ayers:

“With as many schools as our teams have worked on, we were able to assist (4-1 FA) with project,” Ayers said. “We monitored the contractors’ work and made sure the sponsor got what they paid for. We are quality control.”

The Kalid Al-Walid elementary school is one of 55 schools located within the 4-1 FA area of operations. Nearly every school in the area has an ongoing project or is scheduled to be renovated by the artillerymen and civil affairs personnel in the near future.

Emphasis ours. (Quick! Someone remind them "it's all about the oil!")

Ayers said the task of rebuilding Iraq is going to be most effective by starting at the ground up with the children.

“Fixing these schools is a big part of our responsibility because these children will eventually become the future of Iraq,” said Ayers. “In the past they were taught ‘Saddam Hussein is victory,’ but with the correct instruction, the right tools and good facilities, we can help these children grow and turn Iraq into a great country.”

We're proud of our troops.

School Dictatorships and Setting Limits

February 15, 2004 Brian Micklethwait writes today on "school phobia" in some French pupils, as observed by Cécile Philippe:

Cécile, if memory serves correctly, said that this was probably because of [French] teachers becoming more fierce and authoritarian.

The equivalent stories here [in Britain], if there are any, are of pupils inflicting a reign of terror on a school, and terrorising both the teachers and the other pupils.

We don't support "fierce and authoritarian" teachers and schools, and we certainly don't support pupils terrorizing schools. There has to be a middle ground, but what it the cause of it all?

Yet, thinking about it a little, these different stories sound to me to be closely related. Both have their roots in a breakdown in the traditional authority of teaches, caused, I believe, by such things as television, rock and roll, and the Internet. Teachers can't compete with all that the way they merely competed with everyday life outside of their schools in former times.

This is a very interesting phenomena indeed, but we wouldn't place blame on TV, Rock and Roll (or is it Hip-Hop and Crap music?), and the Internet. They make for handy scapegoats, but the blame lies elsewhere.

The failure, in our view, lies squarely with schools. It is possible for the staff of a school to care very deeply about children, and always have their best interests in mind, and be in full control of the school. We call it a "benevolent dictatorship."

The phenomena Mr. Micklethwait points to seems to be because some French schools are run like Military Dictatorships, while some British schools are run more with Social Anarchism in mind.

And excellent (and practical) approach is that of setting firm limits. Robert MacKenzie has written three books for parents and teachers: Setting Limits, Setting Limits in the Classroom, and Setting Limits with your Strong-Willed Child.

He points out that many teachers, schools, and parents fall into the trap of being too authoritarian or too permissive, with both approaches leading to frustration and wild swings back toward the opposite approach. The authoritarian teacher may get frustrated that rules aren't followed and become permissive, while the permissive teacher may feel he's not taken seriously and become authoritarian.

The solution? Set firm and appropriate limits (with fair and reasonable consequences) and no matter what, stick to them. Children are like anyone else: they like to know where their limits are. Permissive parenting (and schooling) only leads children to conduct action research to find out exactly where these limits are (they've got to be around here somewhere)!

The flip side, authoritarianism, also leads to a breakdown of discipline in that the adults in the picture simply cannot be respected (such as with our inane "zero tolerance" policies spreading like fungus all over the U.S.).

It may sound like we're quoting more marvelous theories, which have little application in the real world, but the truth is, setting limits works. Robert MacKenzie's Setting Limits program was developed after long experience with schools, teachers, and disruptive children, and also in connection with his own children, one of whom is "strong willed."

And while there are many failing schools which fall under the description of permissive (with authoritarian zero-tolerance policies), there are legions of successful schools which are making wonderful things happen by simply setting firm limits and sticking to them. This includes our inner cities, home to most of the KIPP academies, which serve traditionally underserved youngsters.

At these schools, there is not only a high academic standard (their motto is "There are no shortcuts"), but also a high personal standard. KIPP schools traditionally have mirrors at each entrance, and students are expected to "check themselves" before entering. The schools cultivate pride in their students with not only attention to personal appearance, but behavior as well.

School disruptions are simply not tolerated, enforced not by overbearing administrators, but by the entire student body. Students who disrupt school are typically shunned, because that nonsense hurts the students trying to get an education.

Sounds like some snooty, exclusive private school? No, KIPP schools are open-enrollment public schools.

Yes, folks, it is possible to have decent standards of academics and behavior.

As we are wont to say, it isn't rocket science.

The whole point of charter schools: Choice

February 14, 2004 A battle was waged recently in California, where supporters of charter schools won a court ruling to be able to use closed public schools in which to open theirs. Which makes perfect sense to us: if a school is not being used, why not permit a charter school to utilize the space? Fortunately, the California Supreme Court upheld the ruling, after an appeal by opponents of charter schools.

It is illustrative to see who joined together to file this appeal: the Sequoia Union High School District, the California Teachers Union and the California School Board Association.

In a Washington Times column this week, Deborah Simmons writes:

That parents are still fighting the usual suspects more than a decade after the first charter school law was established in Minnesota is noteworthy. Many school officials, teachers unions and school boards remain quite hostile to school choice. They do not want the competition. They want schools mired in their red tape. They do not want charter schools because charter schools are usually free of union control. School boards do not support choice because it gives parents, teachers and community leaders the freedom to operate outside of their political regimes.

Emphasis ours. There are several levels to school reform in this country. At one level, we have the battle for educational standards within our schools, and at a much higher level, we have the battle for certification standards for teachers.

But both of these arguments become less important when we hand parents the baton. When they have the power to choose schools, then the best ways of teaching kids or certifying teachers naturally bubbles to the surface.

But what happens when public school systems are accountable to no one, such as when parents have no choice but to send their children to the government monopoly schools?

In the state of Washington, teachers and others for years have tried and failed to establish charter schools. One of 10 states that has no law favoring the establishment of charter schools, Washington superintendents are as likely to turn a deaf ear as to ignore your telephone calls. "You are simply thwarted at every turn," a Seattle parent, Robin J. Lake, recently wrote in the Seattle Times.

Public schools are simply immune from the needs of their constituents, when they're the only game in town.

The bottom line is this:

Charter schools and vouchers offer choice to parents and academic hope to students — especially parents in urban school districts whose children often have no choice but to attend failing neighborhood schools.

Any questions?

Ode to plugging a Public School budget deficit

February 13, 2004 Daryl Cobranchi shares his exposition:
Chicago Public Schools are in the hole, and must reposition.

"The district's over budget," says the mathematician.
"People are expensive," says the statistician.
"Thin the ranks," says the tactician.

Careful with that match! (We need no ignition)
Talk of this sort can cause nuclear fission!

This is no fishing expedition, we're on a diplomatic mission,
(Barring an unforseen weather condition).
It's a delicate question, this supposition,
Asking who shall be put out of commission?

Folks with an unsightly skin condition?
Activists who stand at an odd angular position?
Underfed staffers with malnutrition?
Math teachers who don't know minus from addition?

"None of the above," is our disposition.
Money's tight, so what's our volition?
We'd prefer a magician to slow decomposition.
So let the ranks winnow by natural attrition!

With no pink slip in sight (call off the mortician!)
The cancerous budget will be in remission.
Old teachers retire, to attend art exhibitions,
No one's fired, so there's no imposition.

But no! Our bubble suffers demolition.
Popped by union leaders in polar opposition,
Pompous windbags with little inhibition.

Myopia's not a healthy eye condition.
Yet they call their lawyers when they need an optician!

Attrition is a sound proposition,
Yet they're suing to keep their position:
"Swollen membership rolls are a fine tradition!"

We say: Summon a politician to fund an inquisition,
You can even petition the education commission.

Play a jazz musician's melancholy composition,
Write us a book and call it a limited edition.

But please, don't belch or expel any other secondary emission.
(Not a wise use of ammunition.)

No sympathy from us you'll get for your sedition.
This play's not out, it's only intermission.

The Ultimate Child-Centered School

February 12, 2004 Regular readers of ReformK12 know that we spare no effort in criticizing Progressive educators and the whole child-centered mindset. A few months ago we posted a comparison of what would happen if you took the Progressive model and the Traditional model to their respective extremes. At the time, we felt that Summerhill exemplified the Progressive approach.

Today we learn that Summerhill's been trumped.

By way of Joanne Jacobs we find a story both shocking and sobering, of one truly child-centered school. Published at Strike The Root, a market anarchist site, Bernard Chapin writes of his life at a school run by a marvelous caricature called Princess Sparkle.

It is my role to academically assess, on an annual basis, all of the children at our alternative school.  This is due to our kids being exempted from district wide testing based on what I call “The Spicoli Effect.”  This refers to their habit of drawing rocket ships on evaluation protocols if left unsupervised in auditoriums.

Rocket ships? Where's a psychometrician when you need one? Oh, and The Spicoli Effect is named for Jeff Spicoli of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, who talks like this.

One day Mr. Chapin was administering a timed math test to a student when there was an announcement for everyone to go to the gym for a tug-of-war. Mid-problem the kid stops, because naturally the event is more important.

What occasion were we celebrating on that day in October? The fall harvest?  No, it was yet another in a long line of contrived events, and this one happened to be titled “Wacky Wednesdays.”  Bizarre holidays from curriculum have become the rule rather than the exception since our school hired a new principal in 2001.

That would be Princess Sparkle.

It is a most appropriate nickname for our leader as it surgically captures her vapidity, lust for attention, lack of seriousness, and ever-present sense of entitlement.

The child's abandonment of his math assessment was the straw that broke Mr. Chapin's back, and he requested a meeting with the principal and her supervisor.

I began slowly and pointed out that our students are schooled only from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day, and that those six hours already included breaks, lunch, gym, and movies on Friday afternoons [in fact, one teacher I know refers to another’s classroom as “the Cineplex” because his VHS player is rarely off].

This sounds familiar.

I stressed that there was altogether too much “play” and not enough “work” at our facility.  I reasoned that these children had more play in their lives than any of those present had ever experienced (other than Sparkle) over the course of the last 30 years.

Progressive educators criticize Traditionalists for "taking the joy out of childhood" (as if school were the only place for joy), and this school takes that message to heart (and to foot, and hand, and earlobe . . . ).

Mr. Chapin criticizes the permissive nature of the students' homelives, concluding:

Home is one big MTV video.  Their schooling should not be a continuation of the party.  That is why I concluded my argumentation with the statement, “School should be a sober place, but ours is not.”

So, how did Princess Sparkle's supervisor react to these charges?

Every point I made he responded to with complete denial.  He even informed me that Sparkle was doing an excellent job following his “community model” and that our children needed positive interactions more than they needed books or lectures.

That's the Progressive vision in a nutshell. All children need are positive interactions and all will be well in the world.    The supervisor then said, in effect that "our students never tested well and that assessing their education was useless because they never improved." (Emphasis ours.)

When children are being sold up the river, they call that slavery. When children's futures are being sold down the river, we call that Progressive Education.

We challenge anyone to explain to us how this isn't a racist or classist way of running a school.

If we abandoned the pretense of imparting knowledge, then there would be no way to evaluate the entire venture (analyzing future incarceration rates would not help our cause).  Accountability was no longer possible, which may have been their goal in the first place.

So here we have a school, which for some reason has a special exemption from standardized testing, and accountability seems to be the scarlet letter A, which no one wants to wear.

What will follow will be more of the same, as the public invests millions in a school that has been deliberately engineered to fail.

"No, he gets it all wrong," Progressives protest, "that school was deliberately engineered to be child-centered." Enough said.

Fisking Mitch Coleman

February 11, 2004 Here's a lovely bit from Shot In The Dark, in which Mitch Berg delivers a healthy fisking to the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Nick Coleman, whose column today pleads "Friends of Public Education Must Fight Back Now." Mr. Berg writes:

Nick Coleman knows what we need to do for public education; keep all existing, failing schools open, no matter what!

I'm going to start with a bit at the end of today's column: "Many thousands of children -- including three of mine -- have been served well by the Minneapolis public schools."

Mr. Berg ignores the really obvious question (Is it legal for Coleman to have fathered three thousand children?) and strikes the Achilles' heel of his argument:

Every morning in the Southwest, shamans of the Zuni tribe rise before the sun, and begin to pray. The Zuni believe that if they don't pray for the sun to rise in the morning, it won't. Since the sun rises in the morning, the prayers obviously work.

Correlation isn't necessarily causation.

We discovered this piece via the SCSU Scholars, who note, "If journalists would take even one statistics course and pass it, the quality of reporting and opining would go up greatly."

Bias and the SAT

February 11, 2004 One little paragraph in a Cornell Daily Sun article on the SAT quoted in a post by Kimberly Swygert really got us thinking.

A common complaint about the SAT is that it is biased against minorities and the poor.

This might be, oh, because minorities and the poor do worse, on average, than other test-takers. An open-and-shut case for bias, no?

Remember, correlation does not prove causation. The SAT could really be biased against minorities and the poor, sure. Or, it is simply accurately measuring skills in which, on average, students in low-income or minority areas (such as our inner cities) tend to be less well versed.

Since it is uncomfortable to think that schools are underserving many students, especially students that need our help the most, then many folks chalk it up to that "mean ole biased SAT."

This condemnation is often heard on college campuses, where ironically, research has consistently shown that the test accurately predicts college students' grades.

Now here's a correlation we can stand behind: Do well on the SAT, and also get good grades in college. Do poorly on the SAT, and do poorly in college.

Again, there could be a conspiracy afoot, such as when a professor is assigning grades. He could look up the students' SAT scores and assign grades that way, or he could grade students on how well they've done in class. So just maybe the SAT is accurately measuring academic skills.

In the case of minorities, the SAT actually overpredicts college grades slightly, on average. Were it biased against them, their SAT scores would be significantly lower than actual school performance.

We have one possible explanation: Affirmative Action.

The article indicates that the SAT is an accurate predictor of college grades, then says that it overpredicts minorities' grades. One possible explanation is rampant racism all across the country, where minority students doing the same level of scholarship get graded down because of their race.

A far more likely explanation is that many minority students have been accepted into colleges and universities where they aren't academically well matched.

This is no ding on minority students, believe us. We can say, without pride, that we were not cut out for Harvard or MIT (although we were happy when a classmate was accepted into the engineering program at MIT). We ended up going to a state school.

Under Affirmative Action, we are very confident that both of those elite schools would have accepted us, based upon GPA and SAT scores.

Where we would have flunked out, in all likelihood.

We think very highly of the SAT (except for the fact that they permit calculators even though the computations are not difficult). The fact that it overpredicts the college grades of minorities is one more reason for colleges to use race-neutral admissions policies.

For more qualified minority applicants, let's fix our K-12 schools.

Taking Criticism . . . and improving the profession.

February 10, 2004 A few days ago we pointed out how the dregs of college-bound high school students are attracted to entering the Education field, and over at Joanne Jacobs' place, it ignited a very lively debate.

Unfortunately, some teachers in the audience internalized the negative things some folks were saying about the profession. One such heartfelt response to this perceived "teacher bashing" can be found at A School Yard Blog.

We agree that teaching can be a very difficult profession, which is made all the more so by incompetent administrators (and we've had our fair share) and antagonistic union practices.

But the point isn't that we're interested in attacking teachers (for we're currently teaching now!) but rather that there are a number of aspects of the teaching profession which deserve criticism, and sunlight.

The whole point to this site is to help reform K-12 education, so that it moves in the positive direction. That can't happen if we don't face reality.

In the comments section to Joanne's post "Cousin Dave" had this to say, which bears repeating:

It's been discouraging seeing the teachers here react defensively to the criticism of their profession. One thing a professional needs to learn is to not take all criticism of the profession personally. When the first and only reaction of a profession's practicioners to any criticism is to get their backs up, that profession is in trouble, because it means that it has lost the ability to measure itself against reality. Again, distinctions need to be made. As in any field, a fair amount of the criticism is crap, and it should be possible to reject that out of hand without compromising the ability to react meaningfully to valid criticism.

Let's move forward.

Myth: We need smaller class sizes

February 09, 2004 Many people think we need smaller class sizes to improve education.

It seems to be a no-brainer, and what teacher wouldn't want fewer papers to grade?

Spokespeople point to high-performing (private) schools with smaller class sizes, as if to say, "See?" Yes, there will always be overpriced private schools on the Main Line where they boast of a class size of 10 or 15. So what? That's what parents get for their $20,000 yearly tuition.

The sad reality is that public school class sizes have historically never been lower.

We were at a party where we ran into a friend who attended Philadelphia public schools in the 1950s. The discussion turned to class size, and he laughed, "We had 48 kids in our classes, six by eight!" His point was that class size was no big deal, but we were intrigued at how quickly he rolled off the dimensions of the seating plan.

Putting on our deerstalker's hat and cloak, clenching a large Meerschaum pipe in our teeth, we investigated a Philadelphia middle school built in the 1930s, one that was considered overcrowded by 21st century standards.

Picking a classroom at random, we counted the black marks in the hardwood floor, showing where the desks used to be bolted down. We counted six rows of eight.

We wondered, how come this school today (with a maximum class size of 33) could be considered overcrowded with a current population of around 1,300 students, if the classrooms used to support 48 fifty years ago? If the class size were increased to 48, the school population would be around 1,900 students.

For example, where would they put all their stuff? Surely this school couldn't have enough lockers. A quick stroll around the hallways revealed 2,100 lockers, enough for each class of 48 to have five extra.

So why all the drama about overcrowding?

One other detail we noticed gave us a hint: down the middle of all the hallways was a faded yellow line.

It struck us between the eyes. In our classroom teaching experience, there's one quality that can make a class of 33 seem small or a class of 15 seem crowded. Student behavior! A building with 1,900 relatively well-behaved kids may well have felt smaller than 1,300 rambunctious ones, hence 1,300 is "overcrowded."

If "calmly walking on the left" would reduce psychological overcrowding in the hallways, what about the classroom? There's no way you could fit 48 desks if 33 desks barely fit today!

Well, they did fit 48, and that was by bolting them to the floor.

This almost sounds Draconian by today's standards. In fact, in Colleges of Education, the phrase "bolted-down desks" is supposed to conjure up the same cold, industrial imagery as "factory model school."

But, heaven forbid, it worked. It allowed the desks to stay in neat rows, and allowed the room to fit more students. (Today, there is some mysterious repulsive force inside desks that prevent them from staying in "quads" or rows for very long.)

A few other points to note. Back then, we had teacher-directed classrooms, today we have student-centered ones. Back then the teacher was the source of all instruction, today we have "cooperative learning" where the students are supposed to learn from and collaborate with each other.

Today we have "overcrowded" classrooms of 33, back then we had economy of scale with 48.

In Barbarians Inside the Gates, Thomas Sowell pointed out that at PS 161 in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn, students were doing amazingly well. "Professor [Diane] Ravitch found that four-fifths of the third-graders there met state reading standards for their grade. In fact more than one-third of these third-graders met the state reading standards for the sixth grade." (emphasis ours)

He then focuses on the squabbling over class sizes:

At P.S. 161, for example, class sizes range up to 35 children per class. In some of the high-quality black schools I studied 20 years ago, class sizes were even larger.

But smaller class size is a political symbol, as well as a means of creating more jobs for teachers, so it is promoted to the public as a sacred goal and to the union's membership as a trophy of victory.

If all this cynical politicking over education did nothing worse than waste some more money, it would hardly be worth getting upset about. But, for many of the poorest children, education is their one ticket out of poverty. If they miss that train, they miss everything: They are history before they are teenagers.

Yet for decades the same tired actors read their lines from their script, proclaiming that what we really need to solve our educational crisis is smaller class sizes.

Clipping the wings of our youngsters

February 08, 2004 Scholar and fellow Marine Jesse Brown shares this apropos quote from Atlas Shrugged:

He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly - yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child's education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think . . .

Men would shudder, he thought, if they saw a mother bird plucking the feathers from the wings of her young, then pushing him out of the nest to struggle for survival - yet that was what they did to their children.

Yes, mother bird is supposed to kick baby bird out of the nest, but not without the very things he'll need for survival, namely the ability to read and do math, plus a grounding in science and history.

The savage irony is that Progressive educators propose doing just that, for the good of baby bird. Who needs dry, boring feathers? We're going to teach you how to fly!

Yes, their hearts are in the right place, but with an entirely confused sense of history, lacking in the basics of cause-and-effect. It is absolutely impossible to celebrate process without content.

We fully agree with Progressive educators that we need to teach our children problem-solving skills, and that process is very important. We diverge both in remembering how it used to be done, and in knowledge in how it best can be done.

Say "remember" in the presence of Progressive educators and you'll be greeted with accusations of nostalgia. How hopelessly old-fashioned we Traditionalists are, longing for the good old days, days gone by which can never be reclaimed. Thus with a few glib words, Progressives seek to end the discussion.

They say that we live in a different world. We now have computers, cell phones, and spell-check. The Internet has brought a galaxy of knowledge to within a few mouse clicks. And what is their point? That we focus less on textbooks with their dry, boring facts, and focus more on process and problem-solving.

But who exactly has the faulty memory here?

In math, dry concepts such as times tables and long division and least common denominators are assailed as what's choking the creativity out of our young, and they say what we need is problem solving. Yet we've never seen a textbook that teaches any of these concepts without a healthy dose of problem solving.

What Progressives fail to realize is that problem solving is only one point to learning "dry" things like long division. The second point is that learning seemingly pointless mathematical procedures opens the door to ever more mathematical concepts.

Ultimately, the attempt to teach problem solving without a solid grounding in the "dry" foundations is doomed to fail. We have generations of students who will never reach Calculus by graduation, slamming doors on entire fields of study in higher education. (Pluck pluck.)

Similar missteps happen in Progressive approaches to the other academic subjects.

The Whole Language or Balanced Literacy approach to learning to read essentially says, yeah, phonics might be nice, but what is really great is Literature. Unfortunately, by giving short shrift to "dry" phonics, one hobbles the future reader of said great literature.

Some baby birds pick up phonics on their own, but many don't. Why pluck their wings of these valuable feathers?

With their faulty memories Progressives completely forget how early readers were taught to read using phonics, and nourished on a steady diet of literature, hand-in-hand beginning from the earliest grades! But any time Progressives hear references to McGuffey's Readers (which are still available), all they can muster is outrage at the offensive stereotypes and pervasive religious themes.

Yet they claim to have pioneered the use of literature in the early grades.

In mistakenly claiming open ended problem solving and the embracing of literature as being solely within the Progressive domain, they eliminate any need to study from history. The thinking goes, "Why bother paying attention to the way it used to be done, when we know it was wrong?" Thus they make a classic error, one that has been revisited for centuries:

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Good luck, baby bird.

Test Prep as a High School course?

February 07, 2004 An article by Susan Snyder in today's Philadelphia Inquirer reminds us of a number of problems with our current state of education and testing.

There's a new curriculum requirement in Philadelphia's public high schools this winter. Call it Test Prep 101, à la Kaplan Inc.

The school district told its 11th-grade English and math teachers that they must spend 20 minutes a day for the next 10 weeks using a test-preparation program developed by the New York City-based Kaplan - an educational-services company perhaps best known for its test-preparation programs.

One of the direct side-effects of high stakes testing is that the act of testing is becoming so important, it's starting to cause folks to forget that that teaching and learning are what schools are for, not test-prepping.

But schools are just taking natural steps to defend themselves. Inflict them with high-stakes testing, and they will react in ways which may not always be seen as best for kids. Thus in Philly we have the new "test-prep" curriculum.

This is not a simple issue. On the one hand we have a big-city school district which knows that one way to do better on standardized tests is to have students go though test-prep programs such as those by Kaplan. So is it wrong for them to do just that?

But dig beneath the surface and the issue is much more serious.

One needs to ask what has happened in the previous 10 or 11 years of schooling that these students would go through the system and emerge as high school juniors, only to need test prep courses to do better on a standardized test? Isn't it just possible that if the school district did its job properly, there would be no such need for test prepping?

In our view, standardized tests are intended to measure learning, not test-prepping. Thus the Philly program, while it may well boost scores, will simply serve to mask the real problem.

It's possible that schools could take a page from Kaplan's book:

Ed Chango, assistant principal at Frankford High School, praised the program: "I like that it's prescriptive. Students can take a pre-test, and teachers can find out where they are and can hammer away at their area of weakness."

Hello? The best schools know this is what you're supposed to do in the first place!

A school can never make an assumption that students are on-level with all skills and all subjects, and informal, school-based diagnostic testing can work wonders. The purpose of such testing is to diagnose a student's problem, such that the teacher can respond, and boost the kid up to where he should be.

What's a school to do when it receives under-prepared students? (This can be at any level from K-12, although is inexcusable at the college level, for they should not admit unprepared students in the first place).

There are two responses. One is to roll up one's sleeves and redouble one's efforts to getting the students on track (the most successful open-enrollment schools have known this--and done this--for years). This is where diagnostic testing and remediation come in.

The second possible response is to simply bemoan student's lack of preparation.

It's been our experience that many mediocre schools, especially in our cities, fall for the second response. Thus when these schools--full of unprepared students (always the fault of their former teachers)--are faced with high-stakes testing, the easiest response is to teach to the test with a test-prep curriculum:

"The old adage of not teaching to the test is no longer valid," said Chango, a former math department head. "It's a high-stakes test. The federal government has accountability. The state has accountability, and we have to respond."

While we're all for accountability, we're not enamored with the Frankenstein's-monster-response to forced accountability to federal and state authorities with their high-stakes testing.

We much prefer accountability to parents. (Vouchers, anyone?)

Future Teachers and SAT scores

February 06, 2004 Each year, over a million college-bound high school students take the SAT test. And each year, The College Board publishes reports which are gold mines of information for statistics junkies like us.

We decided to have some fun with the 2003 report (pdf), looking specifically at the average scores for groups of students headed towards different college majors.

As you may well know, the SAT test is divided into two halves: Math and Verbal, with the scores reported separately for each. For some unfair comparisions, it is interesting to see how math and science fields do on the Verbal, and how language and humanities fields do on the Math.

The Math SAT: As would be expected, Mathematics majors scored highest of all the majors on the Math portion, with a 626 point average. They soundly trounced the Language and Literature majors, who were 76 points behind. But here's the kicker: Language and Literature scored 67 points higher in Math than Education majors!

Not to put too fine a point on it, but well over half of future teachers will end up either teaching math or a math-heavy field such as science. Meanwhile future linguists, authors, and literature critics might not ever see another equation in their life.

And yet with Euclidian aplomb they fairly kicked Education majors' butts (by 1.75 standard deviations, no less).

Ok, we hear your protests. Not every teacher will teach math, granted. So let's look at the Verbal scores.

The Verbal SAT: Here, Language and Literature majors got their reciprocity, outperforming all other majors with a score of 603. Mathematics majors were forced to lick their wounds 58 points back. But (and you knew this was coming) the Math majors came off as quite cultured in comparison to our soon-to-be public school teachers, beating Education majors by 63 Verbal points!

This is embarrassing.

It could be worse: In a comparison of 21 college categories (we're eliminating the non-college categories of "Home Economics" and "Technical and Vocational") Education majors come in third-to-last place on the Math portion. Only "Agriculture or Natural Resources" and "Public Affairs and Services" majors scored worse.

In the Verbal portion--which should be a teacher's strong point, or so we thought--Education majors took the silver medal in the race for last place. "Public Affairs and Services" again occupied the basement.

All we can say is, Thank God for government majors.

Now isn't it about time we dismantle "Schools of Education" nationwide, and actually permit college students who major in something else (anything else but government) to become teachers? Please?

"No Child Left Behind" backlash in Utah?

February 05, 2004 An article in today's Salt Lake Tribune reports that "opposition to President Bush's No Child Left Behind education law is gaining traction, and Republicans--even in GOP strongholds such as Utah--are among those digging in deepest."

How can a state refuse the will of the Federal Government?

It's easy. Being that the feds have no business telling states how to run their schools (and they certainly lack the authority under the U.S. Constitution), all the state has to do is say "no thank you" to the millions of dollars in federal education programs.

A Utah House committee last week unanimously advanced a bill sponsored by Rep. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, to opt out of the law and forfeit at least $103 million it provides for programs and services that target disadvantaged students. House Bill 43 probably won't be debated on the floor until after a meeting Friday between lawmakers and officials from the U.S. Department of Education.

The U.S. DoE folks will try to convince the Utah cadre that it's in their best interest to take the money, and comply with the regulations. We hope they politely decline.

Utah isn't alone. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Republican lawmakers in Arizona, Indiana, Virginia, Wisconsin and Vermont have joined Democratic counterparts in a handful of other states in launching measures that oppose provisions of the 2-year-old law.

With good reason.

While the federal "No Child Left Behind" legislation has some good points--such as the insistence that federal dollars for reading programs only go towards ones that have passed muster with scientific-method-based studies--it is still an unwelcome intrusion of the federal government into an area that clearly belongs to states' rights.

What is mildly ironic is that Utah would seem to need the money the most.

Using data from the 1999-2000 school year, rounded to the nearest hundred, schools across the U.S. spent an average of $6,900 per pupil with some areas spending far more (New Jersey: $10,000, New York: $9,800, Connecticut: $9,800, District of Columbia: $10,100). But Utah spent the least of any of the fifty states plus D.C., spending less than $4,400 per pupil!

This doesn't sit well with the feds at all.

Increased regulations, bureaucracy, and federal funding are not the solution to our educational problems. Utah--despite spending less than any other state, still matches national norms on standardized tests--may already realize this.

It's a shame that the attitude of "Let our experts tell you what to do" trumps "Show us how you do so well."

Resentful Rubber Room Resident Remains

February 05, 2004 The New York Post calls chemistry teacher Elihu McMahon the 'Teflon Teacher.'

McMahon is currently being paid his $77,000 salary for sitting in a "rubber room" in a Bronx district office following the latest allegations - students at the prestigious Bronx HS of Science have accused him of sexual harassment and making insensitive remarks.

By his own admission, McMahon has spent about 12 of the last 15 years - with full salary - in offices awaiting disposition of his various cases. The city has paid him an estimated $600,000 over those years for doing absolutely nothing.

We first wrote about rubber rooms a few weeks ago, where teachers who can't be fired languish on full salary. (With all that time on his hands, we hope the guy put it to good use, such as polishing off the entire Great Books series.)

In the case of Mr. McMahon, we can't say if the guy's an average teacher who's getting railroaded, or if he really is the lout the school district says he is. To be honest, some of the accusations leveled against him don't sound terribly unprofessional, and a few even show evidence of administrative spin--such as the fantasy charge of "verbal corporal punishment."

From our reading of the Post article, the three worst charges against the guy are these:

1. After he says a black girl cursed at him, McMahon, who is black, lectured her that some black men marry outside of their race because of disrespectful treatment by some black women. Racially insensitive? Or just speaking the truth? And since when can people of the same race, speaking about people of the same race, be accused of being "racially insensitive?"

2. He once said to a heavyset student, "Get your big body down here." Heavens to Betsy, that must have been a shock for the poor young man, having never before known about his size.

3. At Bronx Science, he once gave an exam to students to see what they'd learned under a previous teacher, and learned that there was rampant grade inflation. That stunt earned him the charge of "improper grading." Pass the smelling salts!

Our recommendation? Let the guy go.

While we do have our doubts as to the administrators' case against him, it's possible that they're in the right. But he can't be that terrible of a teacher, for he won two teaching awards in the 1980s. We're firm believers that quality people are always scarce, so even if this guy is unjustly terminated, hey, life ain't fair. But if he is who he says he is, he'll land on his feet.

The Board of Education isn't the only employer in the Big Apple.

Parents who move to areas with good public schools are hypocrites?

February 04, 2004 The headmaster "who is writing Tony Blair's biography" has some truly bizarre things to say about education in the UK Independent today.

According to the article, Dr. Anthony Seldon, who is a headmaster of a private school, feels that "middle class parents who move homes to get their children into better state schools are the 'real moral hypocrites' of the education system."

This is the time-honored custom of "voting with your feet" and serves as one of the many checks and balances in today's society. If you don't like it in one area, you can always move! (Which is why the only way some countries survive is by surrounding their population with barbed wire and armed guards.) One of the most powerful ways of effecting change in society is for people to vote with their feet.

But it seems Dr. Seldon feels--since he can't force parents into staying put and putting up with low-quality public schools--that he can shame parents by name-calling. Shameful.

Wouldn't it be worthwhile to find out exactly why some schools are better than others?

He also said this about folks who pay for private schools, "Parents who struggle hard to find the fees to give their children better opportunities at independent schools, while paying taxes for others to use the state sector, merit the moral high ground."

Ah, yes, the moral high ground, reserved for parents who pay for private school.

The article continues:

He will propose a new style of "public-private partnership" school, for which wealthier parents would have to pay. Parents who pay fees are more likely to take an active interest in their child's education, he argues.

Under Dr Seldon's plans, 75 per cent of schools would be "partnership schools", run by the private sector but with the state offering subsidies to parents on a means-tested basis to send their children there. A further 20 per cent would be entirely state funded and the remaining 5 per cent would be for the sons and daughters of the rich who were looking for a socially exclusive school for their children.

While this proposal has glints of a voucher system for poor parents (which we fully support here in the U.S.), the plan smacks of central-planning socialism. Would the government select which schools would be partnership schools versus state schools versus lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous schools? This plan seems a bit much.

Instead of shaming parents who vote with their feet, why not have parents vote with their children? In other words, free parents to choose from any of a number of educational options for their children. This would include homeschooling, public school choice (in urban areas with a large number of schools in an easily accessible geographic area), and vouchers for poor parents so they could choose private schools.

In our view, if only one education reform were enacted, that would be the freeing of the educational market. Free markets free people to choose, and freedom of choice is truly the rising tide that lifts all boats.

Spare the rod, spare the child

February 03, 2004 A story (free registration required) in yesterday's Dallas Morning News surprised us, for we'd long thought that official policies condoning corporal punishment in the form of paddling had gone the way of the dodo bird.

But the official policy in the Dallas School District is that students may be paddled if parents sign a permission slip, and almost 3,300 parents have done so. We'd think this would separate the kids into beatables and unbeatables. But the school district feels its policy is humane:

"Paddling is a part of a principal's tool box," said Dallas school district trustee Ron Price. "It's not the first tool they use, but it's one of the tools." Mr. Price lobbied to preserve paddling in some form last year when most trustees wanted to ban it completely.

The paddlings only are used "as a last resort" after an entire checklist of measures have been tried first, and are administered in private. Interestingly enough, the school district isn't keen on suspension, for it forces kids to lose valuable instructional time.

We're well aware that many folks feel that when you "spare the rod," you "spoil the child." We beg to differ.

We are flatly opposed to corporal punishment in the form of hitting a student, for two reasons. First, it teaches children that hitting is an acceptable solution to a problem, and secondly, it is not an effective punishment.

The Wrong Lesson: What adults fail to remember time and time again is that children learn from what they see and feel just as much as (if not more than) by what they hear. And if schools say "hitting is wrong, don't solve your problems with violence" and then excuse themselves to do exactly that, which lesson will the student learn?

We often tell kids (especially ones who are having trouble getting along with others without hitting) to use creative problem solving. Why can't schools do the same? There are a lot of great ways to "punish" kids with techniques a lot more effective than paddling, as explained next.

An Ineffective Measure: The reason why paddling doesn't work is because it's a form of positive reinforcement, which may change behavior in the short term, but is far less effective in changing long-term behavior than negative reinforcement.

Yes, you heard us correctly.

Ask most folks what they think the difference is between positive and negative reinforcement, and they'll tell you the first is a reward and the second is a punishment. But ask a psychologist, and the answer is very different, with an important clue as to how schools and parents can discipline their children more effectively.

While common usage has distorted the meaning, in actuality, a positive reinforcement is "something added to the system" while a negative one is "something taken away."

This means that a reward could be something like a treat or money (something added: positive) or the removal of something unwanted, such as a weekend without chores or homework (negative).

Punishments can go the same way. A punishment could take the form of paddling or spanking (pain added: positive), or the remova