Strickland, Legislature Face Decisions on Education

An editorial from NE Ohio captures it perfectly. Strickland doesn't have time to bask in the glow of Clinton's win in Tuesday's primary. He has other things to attend to: like the overdue and promised plan to overhaul school funding. As levies on Tuesday across the state proved, voters are impatient and unwilling to approve new property taxes. They want the state to act:

Strickland and his fellow leaders in Columbus should take notice.
Voters throughout the state are angry that it's already been a full year since the governor took office after pledging during his campaign that he'd fix school funding. Sadly, he said it will be another year before he releases his plan to solve the crisis. You're making us wait, Gov. Strickland.
We hope you're paying attention to the disappointment your inaction has fueled.
As you sit by and watch more districts fall into financial trouble, you should be hopeful our disappointment doesn't turn into resolve to make some fixes ourselves.

There's another decision pending. With Democrats in Washington insisting they'll wait for a new president rather than go along with Bush's voucher proposals built into his education budget.

Will Ohio continue to go along with NCLB? The states are becoming increasingly outspoken in their opposition to it, and Virginia is the most recent, sending messages that would indicate it might pull out of the federal compact all together and tell Margaret Spellings to take her money and stick it.

What about Ohio? Our arcane "accountability" system is getting almost as hard to understand as the funding formula for Ohio schools. A lot of it could go away if NCLB were not reauthorized, of if Ohio decided the federal money weren't worth the hassle. The governor and legislature need to decide where they stand on NCLB and school funding. It's been long enough.

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Someone stole my thesis

My thesis for the book I want to write, someday, but probably never will, is that the GOP's goal is to destroy public education through its "reforms", not boost education. That their goal is to create a two tiered system, of publicly funded private schools for the upper middle class, and a separate underfunded public system for everyone else.

Well, someone else thought of it first. It's Lowell Rose. I'm glad to see this point getting out there. See what he has to say below.

Lowell C. Rose, executive director emeritus of Phi Delta Kappa International, called the No Child Left Behind Act a "Trojan Horse" - on the outside a disarming gift intended to improve public education, but, inside, a calculated means of destroying it (Phi Delta Kappan, September 2007).

How so? Schools that fail to close the achievement gap between poor or minority vs. wealthy or white students will lose their funds to privatized education. The NCLB Act misdiagnoses the reasons for the achievement gap; its simplistic mandates will not help poor or minority children, but only will result in the closing of their publicly funded neighborhood schools.

Here's the money quote about the acheivement gap, and how to address it:

...how is the achievement gap best reduced? Address the root causes that undermine children's development before they even get to school. We must begin in infancy and the preschool years to promote brain development in children from poverty backgrounds, especially those with multiple risks, if they are to arrive at the first day of kindergarten ready to learn.

Last, what tenets of the NCLB Act work against the possibility of closing the achievement gap? The NCLB Act misdiagnoses the causes of poor educational achievement in school and blames schools, teachers and students for problems beyond their control. One of the main problems of the NCLB Act is that it uses no pre-test at the start of school so that each child's progress over the year can be charted.

Sounds like he's getting to value-added at the end. The whole article is worth a read.

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Response to Bush's Education Proposals

Bush's signature domestic legislation in NCLB, so it's not surprising that he discussed it and praised is success in last night's State of the Union address, even if the gains are illusory, debateable, and underfunded. Still, with his legacy on the line, Bush wants to make one final push for the law's reauthorization.

He also talked about "Pell Grants for Kids," a cynical attempt to re-brand vouchers for private religious education, the kind of proposal so unpopular it even fails in Utah. And he discussed funding for scientific research, and its effects on higher education.

How does the president argue for the standards of NCLB while also proposing that students be sent to private schools not required to meet the same benchmarks? Educationally schizophrenic if you ask me. Republicans never seem to notice how hypocritical and shallow this pair of policy positions really is.

Here are some responses from around the web to Bush's education-related proposals.
First, Michele at Campaign k-12 pointed me to this interesting piece from George Wood of the Forum for Education and Democracy, which praises the Democrats' silence on education in their responses to the SOTU.

I have yet to see an ‘education president’ (or governor for that matter) that tackled the really hard issues when it comes to our schools. Issues like ensuring that every student is taught by a well-prepared and supported teacher; equalizing funding so that the education you receive is not determined by your zip code; going after higher order thinking skills in our standards and assessments; and supporting parents and communities in being involved in educational decision-making through insisting on both genuine decisions being made at the local level and real time provided for such decision making to occur. These do not fit in a sound bite, but they are the things that matter when it comes to an education.


Finally, I wonder when someone claiming to be an education ‘whatever’ will own up to the fact that schools are not simply tools to fix the economy or prepare children for college. Actually, our schools have a much more important role. We entrust our young to our schools because we believe that in a democratic nation all of the nation’s children must develop the tools to be self-governing. When we graduate young people from my high school there is no telling if they will be doctors, lawyers, poets, mechanics or postal workers. But rest assured; every one of them will be citizens. And they will be called upon to make decisions about the health of our nation that we cannot even begin to imagine. The public school system our democracy demands and deserves rests upon engendering in our children the habits of heart and mind that make democratic life possible. The candidates that talk about these central educational values will be the ones worth listening to—when they again turn their attention to our schools.

The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development had this to say:

We also agree we must do more to help children when their schools do not measure up. But diverting limited public resources toward private school vouchers is not the answer. We need real resources targeted toward the schools and students that need them most. Vouchers as public policy are a failure, no matter what the name.

The Alliance for Excellent Education took this approach to the voucher proposal:

Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia said, “The president, in last night’s State of the Union address, stated the problem straightforwardly; too many students are failing in our current education system. The dramatic case he makes calls for more than a limited action.”

“A new voucher program that merely allows a few students to transfer from failing schools to private ones leaves the bulk of America’s children behind in the same educational mediocrity. By focusing precious resources on systemic reform that improves entire schools, America can deliver a quality education to all its students. Instead of funding limited vouchers and renewing the funding each year at the whim of Congress, the president’s proposal for additional investment could be the start of real education reform that benefits ten times as many students annually and provides lasting economic benefits for generations.”

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Edweek: Cincinnati Public Schools' Big Gains Show What Works

A glowing article in Education Week by Joe Nathan appeared this week touting Cincinnati's turnaround in dropout rates as a model for urban schools across the nation.

I've posted the entire piece below because Ed Week requires a subscription. But one of the highlights is the involvement of the Gates Foundation and the initiative to create smaller schools within the larger schools that already exist. These are some of the reforms to which Nathan attributes a 51% to 79% graduation rate improvement over the last six years.

I've posted about NCLB earlier today... it would be nice if the architects of NCLB could find a way to foster some of these innovations in the nation's largest districts. Education reformers at the national level need to begin to look at policy that has been proven effective, rather than just tweaking a system of rewards and punishments for student performance on standardized tests.

Nathan was involved in the reform efforts, as he discloses in the article. Read the whole thing after the jump.

Despite being plagued by the problems that beset most urban school systems, the Cincinnati public schools have managed to increase the four-year high school graduation rate from 51 percent in 2000, to 79 percent in 2007. Perhaps more important, they have, as of 2007, eliminated the gap between African-American and white students in graduation rates. This feat was accomplished, moreover, as the state of Ohio was raising academic standards and requiring students to pass more-challenging assessments to receive their diplomas.

No one in Cincinnati is satisfied, of course, with a 79 percent graduation rate. But the city’s progress in boosting student achievement is historic, and well worth examining for lessons that may be applicable to other school systems nationwide. Cincinnati is, if not the first, among the first urban districts to eliminate long-standing disparities between students of different races in achieving one of the most meaningful educational markers of all: completing high school.

How did this happen? Over the past seven years, Cincinnati has had a number of partners supporting its school reforms, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. At the foundation’s suggestion, I began working with the district and its partners in 2000, and my experiences have been eye-opening. This improvement effort is one of the most significant and successful I’ve seen since entering the profession in 1970. Those tackling their own systemwide problems would do well to study what Cincinnati has done. Here, from my perspective, are 10 ideas that worked:

• Visiting highly successful urban schools. Cincinnati reformers not only found this exercise valuable, but they also considered it to be the first step toward change. Educators, parents, students, and community leaders took a firsthand look at public high schools, in New York state and Kansas, that were known to have achieved excellent results with students from low-income families, those with limited English proficiency, and others with special needs. Seeing these schools’ successful programs in action made it clear to the people from Cincinnati what could be accomplished. The conversation then shifted from whether progress was possible, to how it would be achieved.

• Setting a few clear and ambitious goals. In 2000, the Cincinnati schools superintendent and the Gates Foundation agreed that over the next five years, the district would try to increase its graduation rate to 75 percent and cut the racial “graduation gap” in half. Both goals seemed impossibly ambitious then, but both have been met and exceeded. Having high goals, and maintaining an intense focus on them, gave the city’s reform efforts coherency and direction. Each high school developed its own yearly work plan reflecting these goals, along with one or two goals it developed for itself.

• Creating new small schools within larger buildings. This was a central element of the Cincinnati effort. We built on extensive research showing the value of small, focused schools. Several high schools with four-year graduation rates of less than 40 percent in 2000 were subdivided into small schools of choice, open to all, having no admissions tests, and with their own principals. Another low-performing, somewhat smaller high school was divided into small learning communities in which students participated for several hours each day.

• Providing professional development targeted at reading, math, and working effectively with urban youths. Grant money from Gates and other funding sources was used to help pay for these workshops for teachers. They were not one-shot, late-afternoon sessions offered when faculty members were tired or distracted. They often were held in the summer, at pleasant retreat centers. Workshops were sequential and in-depth, with teachers asked to try the techniques explored and modeled at one session to be able to discuss them at the next.

• Respecting teachers. Both the superintendent and the school board agreed that teachers at the lowest-performing schools would be allowed to select the curriculum and professional development they thought would best help them reach their goals. Maintaining this kind of autonomy was not always easy—for the teachers or for those who advised them.

At one point, a national organization with its own curriculum convinced a senior district official that there should be a districtwide adoption of that curriculum. When some of the faculty members and I questioned this proposal, an officer of the organization bluntly told a Gates Foundation representative, “We want Joe Nathan out of Cincinnati.” The foundation looked into the situation, then promised to stay in Cincinnati so long as the district agreed to continue building-level decisionmaking. Senior district administrators and the school board chair decided to honor the original commitment. And both the foundation and the district asked me to stay, which I did.

Cincinnati teachers were treated like professionals are in other fields. In addition to special off-site workshops, there was recognition for schools showing exceptional progress, along with praise—to the news media and face to face—for educators in buildings with significant signs of growth. Veteran and younger educators alike responded with genuine openness, willingness to learn, and a growing belief that major advances were possible.

• Having leadership and teacher encouragement from union officials. The last two presidents of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers had been high school teachers, and they strongly endorsed the change efforts. This made them effective advocates, offering encouragement, support, and advice for teachers. Any urban district trying similar reform strategies should consider inviting such individuals to meet with people in their district as they try to enlist their own local unions’ help in leading change.

• Fostering partnerships. Partners important to the Cincinnati reform efforts ranged from foundations and universities to corporations, nonprofits, and advocacy groups. They included, in addition to the Gates Foundation, Cincinnati Bell, Xavier University, the local service agency Families Forward, and the KnowledgeWorks Foundation.

Cincinnati Bell employees provided thousands of tutoring hours at one high school, and gave cellphones to students who excelled. Xavier offered summer classroom space and other services to 9th graders from Withrow University High School, helping the young people feel that they belonged in college classrooms. Families Forward shared some of its space with another high school, and its staff members helped families and counseled students facing personal and socioeconomic challenges. KnowledgeWorks provided grants and technical assistance to several Cincinnati high schools, and did advocacy work for both the district and the community.

• Welcoming competition from charter public schools. The Cincinnati school board, district administrators, and city teachers were well aware of the growing competition for students, and this informed their decisions and increased their determination to succeed.

• Making accountability more than a catchphrase. District administrators didn’t just talk about accountability for results. Superintendents Steven J. Adamowski and Rosa E. Blackwell, both dedicated, talented leaders, gave authority to principals and held them responsible. They encouraged effective principals, and removed several others whose schools showed little progress. Out of this, a cadre of excellent principals began to emerge.

• Creating or expanding service-learning programs. These types of opportunities helped the city’s young people see themselves as capable of accomplishing important undertakings and making valuable contributions now. And this new, more positive self-image was certainly a factor in achieving their academic goals. Service-learning programs also helped students see connections between the school curriculum and their own community.

Looking Ahead
The Cincinnati school system still faces challenges. Enrollment has declined (especially at the elementary school level), and the district has significant financial problems. The current superintendent is leaving after having worked more than 30 years in the district, and, beginning in the 2008-09 school year, the city will have its fourth superintendent in eight years.

But with Gates Foundation support, the district is launching a new strategic plan. It includes, among other proposed next steps, the development of a higher education, district, and community partnership to further increase the high school graduation rate, as well as to expand the number of students entering and graduating from some form of postsecondary education.

Yet the teachers, families, students, and community members of Cincinnati already have made historic progress. Over the past seven years, they have recognized that no one approach will produce the gains they seek, and they have used the best available research—plus their openness, courage, and persistence—to produce truly remarkable results.

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"Drop out factories"

Drop out factories: this is the disgusting new term that has been devised for schools which graduate fewer than 60% of students.

Nationally, we only graduate about 70% on time.

As you might expect, I have a lot to say about this after the jump.

UPDATE: Here's where you can find the list of "drop out factories" in a user-friendly fomula.


The AP article includes the following graphs:

The current law requires testing in reading and math once in high school, and those tests take on added importance because of serious consequences for a school that fails. Critics say that creates a perverse incentive for schools to encourage kids to drop out before they bring down a school's scores.

"The vast majority of educators do not want to push out kids, but the pressures to raise test scores above all else are intense," said Bethany Little, vice president for policy at the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group focused on high schools. "To know if a high school is doing its job, we need to consider test scores and graduation rates equally."

Well, I can only speak for Ohio, but high schools here, since they are testing in the tenth grade, can't really push kids out before the test. Students have to be 18 to drop out. (Yes, a superintendent can approve 16 year olds to drop out in certain situations... but districts aren't dropping kids out to keep them from taking the tenth grade test. Trust me, high schools are focused on the test.) No students may be pushed--nudged?--into charters, virtual schools, or privately run programs like Life Skills. But struggling students often find these options on their own. Kids who don't like school gravitate to these kinds of programs, especially those with relaxed attendance requirements like virtual or on-line schools.

Here are the proposals being considered in Congress, taken from the article, one at a time:

• Make sure schools report their graduation rates by racial, ethnic and other subgroups and are judged on those. That's to ensure schools aren't just graduating white students in high numbers, but also are working to ensure minority students get diplomas.

Brilliant. Requiring schools to report graduation rates will make kids want to stay in school? Can someone explain this to me? Most states already publicize school dropout rates anyway. It's one of the ratings on the report card in Ohio.

• Get states to build data systems to keep track of students throughout their school years and more accurately measure graduation and dropout rates.

This is one proposal in the article that I actually applaud. One problem we have at the high school level is transience. Kids move around and get lost. Having a more aggressive tracking system to keep up with them would help a lot. I'm not smart enough to know what that would look like, but strict attendance laws and data would be a step towards keeping kids in school.

• Ensure states count graduation rates in a uniform way. States have used a variety of formulas, including counting the percentage of entering seniors who get a diploma. That measurement ignores the fact that kids who drop out typically do so before their senior year.

Well, this is a complex issue. It's kind of simplistic to suggest that there be a uniform standard nationally. I'm not sure that's possible or necessary. But I DO support counting kids who graduate in five years. It's all about keeping them in school, right? Some kids wake up a little late. Better late than never?

• Create strong progress goals for graduation rates and impose sanctions on schools that miss them. Most states currently lack meaningful goals, according to The Education Trust, a nonprofit that advocates for poor and minority children.

Ah yes. We always have to be punishing schools for something that's out of their control, don't we? So will schools have the authority now to handcuff kids to their desks to keep them in school? No? Then how can they be "sanctioned" (read: cut off funds) if kids don't show up? What the hell kind of sense is that? And we always have to set 'goals'. How does a goal that more kids will graduate accomplish anything? I'd rather have a plan than a goal. Give me a plan, then we'll set a goal based on the plan, ok? But the plan may cost some money. If you're going to set the goal, then let me devise the plan, you better give me some funds to make it happen.

Here's the money quote from the article:

"We're at the end of the process," says Mel Riddile, principal of T.C. Williams High School, a large public school in Alexandria, Va., which is not on the dropout factory list. "People don't walk into 9th grade and suddenly have a reading problem."

Thank you, Mr. Riddile.

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Diane Ravitch: NCLB is ridiculous

I've not always agreed with Diane Ravitch in the past, but her piece in today's Times (thank God they've gotten rid of that "select" nonsense) is right on the money. Ravitch is no ideologue, certainly not a liberal, and she has worked in the first Bush administration and has aligned herself with right wing think tanks like Fordham and the Hoover Institute. So it would be pretty difficult to dismiss her as partisan or in the pocket of teachers' unions. She's a widely respected historian and researcher, so her opinion carries weight.

And her point is simply that the goals NCLB sets are unrealistic and more importantly that NCLB has created a fetish of standardized testing.

The main goal of the law — that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 — is simply unattainable. The primary strategy — to test all children in those subjects in grades three through eight every year — has unleashed an unhealthy obsession with standardized testing that has reduced the time available for teaching other important subjects. Furthermore, the law completely fractures the traditional limits on federal interference in the operation of local schools.

She also makes the important point, as I've argued here (but not as effectively) in regard to merit pay that the role of the federal government is not to dictate reforms, but to support local efforts. Ravitch argues:

No Child Left Behind can, however, be salvaged if policymakers recognize that they need to reverse the roles of the federal government and the states. In our federal system, each level of government should do what it does best. The federal government is good at collecting and disseminating information. The states and school districts, being closer to the schools, teachers and parents than the federal government, are more likely to be flexible and pragmatic about designing reforms to meet the needs of particular schools.

Read the rest here. Good to see a respected figure like Ravitch wade into the debate in such as constructive and eloquent way. It'll be interesting to compare her take with Chester Finn, who is speaking in an online chat tomorrow with Ed Week.

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Stan Karp on Education and the Presidential Campaign

A couple of weeks ago I read and highlighted on this site Stan Karp's excellent essay from the summer issue of Rethinking Schools. The essay is called "Exit Strategies" and argues that we need a way out of NCLB just as we need a way out of Iraq. After I read it I contacted Stan to get his thoughts on the current presidential debate and how education is being discussed within it.

Now I had intended for this to be part of my "Five Questions" series but after Stan's lengthy response to my first question I felt guilty asking four more. So I'm including this in my series of interviews even though it's only one question. It's my blog.

So enjoy Stan's thoughts on the current race, below.


A few months ago, I wrote an article for Rethinking Schools magazine about the Presidential campaign. I saw parallels between campaign debates over education policy, including NCLB, and the war in Iraq, and wrote that Democrats were "failing to break with the premises of these policies in too many ways and limiting their ability to offer real alternatives."

Last week, thanks to the first internet "Candidate Mashup," I was able to watch all eight Democratic nominees present their ideas on education at one time. It reminded me that when it comes to public education any of the Democrats would be better than any of the Republicans. But it also confirmed my belief that a Democratic administration, especially one led by the "front-runners" Hillary and Obama, can’t be counted on to reverse the fundamental shift in federal education policy that has taken place under Bush.

In 1996, the Republicans ran on a platform of eliminating the federal Department of Education. By 2001, Bush, with overwhelming bipartisan support, was dramatically expanding the federal role in education, but in a way that has transformed it. Historically, federal education policy—in an area that has always been primarily a state and local responsibility—was designed to promote access and equity, for example, through school integration, Title I aid for poor schools, programs for special needs students, etc. Under Bush and No Child Left Behind, access and equity have been replaced by a punitive, test-driven campaign to promote top-down “standards and accountability” on every school and district in the country. For Bush & Co. this is a thinly veiled plan to systematically discredit and privatize public education. But most Democrats, themselves nourished on years of business roundtables and Governor’s education summits, have drunk the standards and testing kool aid, despite their primary-inspired bashing of NCLB.

Defining educational standards and “accountability” is a totally inappropriate role for federal education policy. Curriculum standards and school accountability measures can play an important role in defining and promoting educational quality, but only when they are part of process that directly engages teachers, parents, and communities close to schools and classrooms. Imposed from afar, they tend to move school power away from teachers, classrooms, schools and local districts, and put it in the hands of state and national politicians and bureaucracies. Mandating standards and tests is often a cheap substitute for the much more difficult and costly process of real school improvement.

This goes not only for NCLB’s rigged “adequate yearly progress” system, but also for the national curriculum standards and national testing proposals favored by most of the Democratic candidates. (Here again, Dennis Kucinich is an exception.)

Federal education policy should provide incentives to eliminate funding inequities and reduce reliance on local property taxes to fund schools. It should address the $100 billion-plus in unmet school facilities needs. It should support the recruitment and preparation of new generations of teachers. It should resurrect legal and programmatic supports for school integration that have been systematically dismantled and replaced as a goal of national education policy by the push for standardization. It could even reasonably promote innovation and research to develop better assessment tools and supportive interventions for struggling schools. But the federal government should not be defining curriculum or designing systems to evaluate local school capacity and performance, and the Democratic candidates for President should say so.

Just as many antiwar activists would like to see Democrats reject the “war on terror” instead of pledging to “wage it more effectively,” education advocates are anxious to see federal education policy return to the goals of promoting equity and access instead of following Bush’s bad example.

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George Miller has his panties in a wad because the two major teachers' unions won't support his merit pay proposals in the NCLB reauthorization draft.

“You’re both aware that the language in the legislation is the language that NEA and AFT negotiated and accepted and has promoted and asked members of Congress to support over the last couple of years,” Rep. Miller said, after having asked few questions of the other 43 people to appear before the panel. “It’s identical to that language.”

You know why they don't support it?

Because they heard from their members: Paying teachers based on test scores is a horrible idea. Teachers won't have control over their own destinies, and that isn't fair.

Take it out of the NCLB bill, George.

I'll have more to say about this important Edweek piece later.

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Margaret Spellings' Dishonest and Dishonorable Letter on NCLB

Last week Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings issued a smarmy and dishonest letter to George Miller, criticizing him for having the unmitigated gall to tamper with NCLB. Miller's proposal is to soften some of the requirements of NCLB, making accountability systems more comprehensive and flexible. But we know the Bush administration can't handle nuance, and Spellings' letter betrays an insistance on black and white, good and evil, with us or against us, simplistic thinking that has been the hallmark of her boss.

Her initial praise of Miller should give us pause--we ought to be suspicious of anything Spellings praises:

At the outset, I am pleased that two of the bright-line principles of NCLB would remain in place: every child performing at or above grade level in reading and math by 2014...

As a "bright line principle," this isn't very bright--to insist as a matter of policy that every child be at or above grade level by 2014 is a ridiculous as suggesting that we can make every child healthy, happy, and good looking. There will always be learning disabilities, and there will always be variations in how children grow intellectually. Sure, it's an admirable philosophy, and any good teacher believes all children can learn. But this isn't philosophy, it's policy, and to impose penalties on schools and states that fail to achieve an impossible goal is not only a recipe for failure, but it's also insulting and masochistic. Not to mention dishonest: Spellings doesn't believe for one second that all children will be at grade level by 2014, and if she does believe it she's more of an idiot than even I give her credit for.

But the praise doesn't last long: she goes on to criticize Miller's bill for--that bugaboo of the simple-minded--complexity. She complains that

The overall approach to holding schools and school districts accountable for improved academic achievement is far more complex than current law, which will make it more difficult for parents to clearly understand if their children are learning and if their schools are doing a good job.

The increased complexity would make it far more difficult to provide a clear picture of progress. As the person who oversees and works with States on their data and accountability systems, I have grave reservations about the capacity and capability of States and districts to administer the complex level of accountability that is proposed in the discussion draft. We could easily lose simple transparency about whether schools are teaching students to read and do math on grade level, and obscure what's actually going on in schools under this new approach. Ultimately, we run the risk of creating a very confusing and burdensome process for all who play a part in educating our children, including parents, teachers, principals, superintendents, school board members, and other public officials. I am also concerned that some of the bill's provisions would be burdensome and costly for States and districts to implement, such as required school district audits of student mobility and additional reporting requirements.

Spellings' dishonesty here is really too much to take. Schools already track attendance, and other data, and many states require tests in other areas in addition to the reading and math scores in grades 3-8 already mandated by NCLB. Allowing this additional data--which is already available in many cases--to be used in reporting doesn't "complicate" the system; rather, it gives, as Rep. Miller suggests, a fuller picture of a schools' performance than the simplistic approach advocated by Spellings. What is truly burdensome and costly is the full range of testing required by NCLB and for which states and districts receive no federal funding. What's worse, this testing data in isolation gives the public damaging misconceptions about schools and perfomance, judging schools with vastly different student populations and ability levels on exactly the same scale.

Furthermore, if Spellings is so concerned about "transparency", I wonder why she has approved alternative systems to a dozen states for measuring Annual Yearly Progress (AYP). These states are using variations of a complex statistical analysis, valued added, developed by Ted Saunders and first used widely in Tennessee. The statistical models used to calculate progress under value-added systems is hardly transparent, and it becomes virtually impossible for local schools and districts to determine. Ohio's Performance Index, by comparison, relies on a relatively simple calculations that anyone can understand. Not true, however, of value-added. No school could possibly calculate their own value-added score.

Spellings also insists that NCLB is working to improve student performance. Here's what Professor Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford had to say about that in testimony before Miller's committee (recommend reading all of her testimony) this week, when she compared US performance on PISA assessments to other countries:

It is worth noting that PISA assessments focus explicitly on 21st century skills, going beyond the question posed by most U.S. standardized tests, “Did students learn what we taught them?” to ask, “What can students do with what they have learned?” PISA defines literacy in mathematics, science, and reading as students’ abilities to apply what they know to new problems and situations. This is the kind of higher-order learning that is increasingly emphasized in other nations’ assessment systems, but often discouraged by the multiple-choice tests most states have adopted under the first authorization of No Child Left Behind. Underneath the United States’ poor standing is an outcome of both enormous inequality in school inputs and outcomes and a lack of sufficient focus for all students on higher-order thinking and problem-solving, the areas where all groups in the U.S. do least well on international tests. (h/t Schools Matter)

What do high performing systems do? Well let's see...

Most high-achieving countries not only provide high-quality universal preschool and health care for children, they also fund their schools centrally and equally, with additional funds to the neediest schools. By contrast, in the U.S., the wealthiest school districts spend nearly ten times more than the poorest, and spending ratios of 3 to 1 are common within states. These disparities reinforce the wide inequalities in income among families, with the most resources being spent on children from the wealthiest communities and the fewest on the children of the poor, especially in high-minority communities.

Revolutionary.

But we know where Spelling wants money to go: to private schools where her wealthy friends send their kids and private corporations that run charter schools and software companies like Neil Bush's Ignite!

While I support increased accountability in the provision of supplemental educational services, I am extremely concerned that the draft bill would significantly restrict the opportunities for children in schools that fail to make AYP to obtain free tutoring to help increase their academic proficiency, whether by limiting the situations in which those students would have the right to tutoring or by reducing the amount of funds available to pay for tutoring. The opportunity to obtain this aid should be expanded, as proposed by the Administration, not curtailed, in order to meet the goal of having all students on grade level by 2014. I am likewise concerned that the bill restricts public school choice options and does not include additional private school options for low-income students as proposed by the Administration.

I'm all for private tutoring. But the tutoring provisions have turned out to be a boon for private industry bigwig contributors to the Bush-Cheney machine.

George Miller's bill isn't perfect, especially not this part. But Spellings' criticisms should have no bearing on his work. As a lame duck education secretary with no teaching experience and no credibility, her opinion really couldn't be less important.

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Exit strategies

I've been out of town for the weekend, hence the light posting.

Read an interesting piece this weekend. Stanley Karp of Rethinking Schools has an excellent editorial on NCLB which is worth reading in its entirety.

But he makes the provocative comparison between NCLB and Iraq, suggesting we need an exit strategy for each. Here's a sample:

Like the original authorization for the Iraq war, NCLB was endorsed in Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. Bush built the NCLB coalition by merging the mainstream consensus around standards and tests with the conservative agenda of privatization and market reform, much as he was able to line up Democrats anxious to prove their national security credentials behind the neocon crusade to remake the world after 9/11.

"Leave no child behind" was a rhetorical counterpart to "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Though both policies have led to disasters of different dimensions and generated widespread popular opposition, Bush demands that we "stay the course" on both fronts. Unfortunately his would-be successors are failing to break with the premises of these policies in too many ways and limiting their ability to offer real alternatives.

For instance, speaking to an audience of teachers in New Hampshire last March, Clinton passionately bashed NCLB. "While the children are getting good at filling in all those little bubbles, what exactly are they really learning?" she asked. "How much creativity are we losing? How much of our children's passion is being killed?" She also denounced NCLB's supplemental tutoring sanctions which funnel federal funds to largely unregulated private providers, declaring, "This is Halliburton all over again ...We have these contracts going to these cronies who are chosen largely on a political basis, and we have nothing to show for it."

Tough words. But Clinton voted for the law in 2001. In fact she helped lay the groundwork for it by supporting two decades of summits and business roundtables that enshrined top-down standards and tests as the keys to school improvement. Clinton has blamed all NCLB's failures on mismanagement and underfunding from the Bush Administration, but when not on the stump, she admits she'll vote for reauthorizing it with vague allusion to unspecified "improvements." Maybe Clinton still thinks it "takes a village to raise a child," but so far she's mainly voted for giving them tests.

Similarly, Obama tells his audiences, "No Child Left Behind left the money behind." But he also talks about "the things that were good about No Child Left Behind," like high standards "because U.S. children will have to compete for jobs with students from countries with more rigorous schools." Obama has flirted with vouchers ("I am not close-minded on this issue.") and merit pay, declaring teachers have "got to get more pay, but there's also going to be more accountability...the accountability can't just be based on standardized test performance only, but that has to be part of the mix..."

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Getting around "highly qualified"

Thanks to GottaLaff at Cliff's place I found this article in the Guardian about how states are using alternative licensure to get around the highly qualified requirements of NCLB:

When Maribel Heredia's son told her that his first-grade teacher was ``going to college'' and that there would be a substitute in the classroom two days a week, she started asking questions.

Only then did she learn that the teacher the Hayward Unified School District labeled ``highly qualified'' was still a student herself.

Calling the teacher highly qualified allows the district to meet the provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind education law, which requires that all students be taught by skilled teachers in core subjects such as English and math. The district's classification is legal.

Heredia said she believes such classifications are misleading and allow districts to place unqualified teachers in classrooms. On Tuesday, she was among a group of parents and education advocates who sued the U.S. Department of Education over its interpretation of what makes a highly qualified teacher.

``I didn't know that they let the teachers right from college, let them take a class all by themselves,'' Heredia said. ``So the fact that she was considered highly qualified, that was a shocker to me.''

What they're talking about is alternative licensure, which allows someone with a bachelor's degree (say, in English) but no training in teaching to obtain credentials until they have completed further training including pedagogy, etc. It clearly defeats the purpose of the "highly qualified" teacher provisions of NCLB, as it clearly wasn't the intention of the lawmakers to allow temporarily credentialed teachers to be labeled as "highly qualified". And so Heredia is suing the state of California over the practice.


What is "highly qualified"? It's "certified." That's all it means. The term "highly qualified" is really just a bit of PR language, just like the name of the law that created the phrase. And the intent of the law, clearly, was to make sure there were certified teachers in classrooms. Now every state prior to NCLB had certification rules. But they can't always get teachers to take assignments in certain schools. Bush's solution? Pass a law requiring states to do what they're already doing without giving them any tools to fix the problem. Brilliant.

Many states, including Ohio, are using alternative licensure to meet gaps in various fields, and that means someone with a bachelor's degree can get a license that's good for 1-2 years while they take education courses to get their permanent certificate.

HQ doesn't mean you have experience: first year teachers can be HQ. It just means they are certified in their field. And the article is right, states who grant "alternative licensure" albeit temporary aren't meeting the intent of the law.

But the law is a bad law. Let's not get too angry at the states for trying to get around it. And before we criticize the Haywood district let's remember one thing: they're using this person becasue they can't find a qualified teacher who will take the job. It's not Haywood's fault there's a shortage of people willing to teach in urban schools. They're doing what they can to fill their vacancies.

It should be obvious to everyone that the 100% HQ goal that NCLB creates is, like everything else in NCLB, designed to label urban districts as "failures" so they can be broken up and corporatized by people like White Hat management.

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Kozol on Privatization of Schools

Jonathan Kozol has an essay in the current edition of Harper's, which, unfortunately requires a subscription for on line access. The gist of his argument is that we need to be aware of what's going on with the charter school movement and NCLB, that the ultimate goal is to corporatize public education to the benefit of private school management companies like White Hat, for example. (Threw that in there so the folks at White Hat would find me when doing their oppo research. Thanks Scott. Hi guys!)

I managed to locate the essay on line at Mahablog, but even that site won't allow me to cut and paste. Kozol argues that we are seeing the increasing corporatization of American schools through vouchers and charter schools, and that those who care about public schools should not be naive about the ultimate goal of some policy makers and management groups, and that goal is to fully privatize public education in the U. S. He even shows how investment companies have measured the untapped profit potential from public schools. So go read it, but first, I have a few more thoughts about how testing ties in to the corporatization of education. You see, standardized testing mandated by NCLB (but which most states were already doing anyway) is absolutely integral to corporatization of schools, because it provides the justification. Without the low test scores in many (primarily urban or poor or both) schools, why would anyone consider something so radical as privatizing a public school.

But Kozol doesn't talk about how passage rates lend to this definition of failure in public schools. Think about this: in your local school, or your child's classroom, how is a passing standard set? Well, usually there is an established grading scale, right? 60% score on a test or assignment is considered passing, or something like that. In some schools it's higher, but whatever the number is, everyone knows ahead of time that they have to earn 60% in the class to pass it.

How is a passing standards arrived at on, say, the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT)? It isn't a standard pecentage like 60. It's one of the least transparent aspects of the testing program itself. In fact, on the first administration of the OGT, the cut scores--the score that would determine whether a student had achieved "proficiency" and thus passed a section of the OGT--wasn't even determined until after the administration of the OGT itself! Was there much of a chance, you think, that the cut score was going to cause widespread failure among wealthy suburban districts? Why is the cut rate set where it is? It has to do with setting it where a certain number will pass--in other words, it isn't standards based at all . You can't call it a "standard-based" test if it's designed so that 90% of the students will pass.

My point is that this testing mechanism, which ensures that poor and urban schools will have high rates of failure, essentially provides the justification for corporatizing schemes like the ones that allow White Hat to take over schools and make a profit on them.

So go see a little of what Kozol has to say about it.

UPDATE: After reading some of the comments I want to clarify one point. I'm not suggesting that the ODE intentionally sets passing rates so that poor schools are labelled as failures. I'm just suggesting that the effect of the bar-setting is to allow the majority of suburban districts to be successful. And the act of establishing cut scores is not something that's out in the open. Granted, it's not very exciting, so it's not going to get news coverage, but it sure has a profound effect on students and teachers.

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Starting a conversation on NCLB

Jill asked for some comments over at Progress Ohio regarding stories about NCLB to forward to Senator Brown. And I'm thinking about how I want to do that. Stories from my work experience in public schools probably don't belong in a public forum, but I can speak in general terms about the frustration I see in the teaching profession among teachers who have gone from having a strong personal investment in their subject matter to feeling as though all they do is focus on testing. I don't think that's good for the teachers or for the kids.

Just as important as the examples and stories, though, we need to have a discussion about what works and doesn't work in NCLB. I hope you'll read this whole post, as I throw out some ideas, just to begin a conversation. I certainly won't cover everything related to NCLB in this post, so we'll have more discuss another time, another place.

First we have to figure out what's the fault of NCLB and what is the fault of our state, and what's the fault of our own as parents, citizens, and educators, for overemphasizing the test results and attaching such high stakes to them. A lot of good suburban districts, for example, really don't need to worry about ever being in academic watch but they allow themselves to stress out about the testing program as much as districts that are in the lower categories. It would be refreshing if they would just say to their communities, "hey, we're in the middle of our similar districts grouping, and we're OK with that, because we just want to spend our time on preparing students for citizenship, and if they do well on the test, fine. We are aiming for something a little higher," and it would be nice if voters were OK with that. Sometimes the competitiveness between districts, the desire to be #1, turns districts into monsters. NCLB is only indirectly responsible for that.

Likewise, it would be nice if some of the more affluent districts agreed to allow students from so-called failing districts to transfer in for the sake of some racial/ethnic/ecomonic/academic diversity, and were willing to take the hit, if there were one, on their test scores. But it doesn't happen. My point is that a lot of districts and parents allow the pressure of NCLB and the Ohio tests to drive their decision making, when it really shouldn't.


I have to admit, I have some mixed feelings on NCLB. I think there are a lot of problems with the overemphasis on testing, and I think those problems are obvious. The testing mania didn't start with NCLB, but NCLB has made it worse.

I think there is a federal role for education. The federal government needs to fund districts impacted by poverty to help make up the gap with more affluent schools. This has been the government's role in the past, and it should continue. Federal reading intervention programs, Head Start--those things help. NCLB promised to add to that a system of supports for students in so-called "failing" schools. (I have a huge problem with that terminology, but we'll save that for another time.) Money would be spent on tutoring programs to get kids who were "behind" caught up. Now the Republicans for ideological reasons wanted that money to go to the child in the form of a voucher to be spent on private tutoring... that's annoying, but OK. I can live with it. At least the kids were supposed to get some extra help on the federal dime. But that, the best part of NCLB, never got funded. Not adequately.

My biggest gripe with NCLB is this unrealistic goal of having 100% proficiency by 2012, or whatever year it is. The year doesn't matter. I always compare it to health for kids when I'm talking about it at parties and such. Here's my speech. "We'd love to have a goal that all kids will be healthy by 2012. What a great goal. Who could oppose it? And it sounds great in a campaign speech for a politician to say, 'I would make sure all kids were healthy by 2012.' Huge applause. But even if that politician were sincere, and he or she spent the entire defense budget on training doctors and reaching the sickest kids, would we still have some kids sick in 2012? Of course. Accidents happen. New diseases spring up. Some diseases just can't be cured. Medical errors happen. And so on. No matter our best intentions and efforts, kids will always get sick. Guess what: some kids will not learn. It shouldn't happen, and we should do everything to make sure it doesn't, but some kids just aren't going to learn. For as many reasons as there are that kids get sick." Should it be our goal? Of course. But not policy. It should be a goal in the abstract, the way it should be our goal that no kid goes to bed hungry. But let's inject some realism into our policy.

NCLB, if it is reauthorized, needs to have a few fundamental fixes.

1. That tutoring money has to get where it's supposed to. If it goes directly to the family, fine. I don't care. The problem with that is that it (the tutoring) should happen during the school day (any educator will tell you that the kids just won't show up after school.) But the feds have to pony up some cash for extra help.

2. Get rid of the recruiting provisions of the law. Let the recruiters do their jobs outside of school. It has nothing to do with learning, and doesn't belong in the bill.

3. AYP is a mess. It's just not fair and it doesn't work. Scrap it.

4. The "highly qualified teacher" language is just plain old political bullshit. It really is. A teacher is either qualified or isn't. A teacher either has a license or doesn't. This "highly qualified" nonsense is just an extra layer of idiotic bookkeeping for administrators and it doesn't do a damn thing to help kids. But it sounds great, doesn't it?

Want to help get more highly qualified teachers into the profession? Start offering full scholarships to high performing college kids who want to major in education. Spend some damn money. Don't just make districts check off a bunch of boxes on a stupid form and say you've demanded highly qualified teachers.

5. Write something in the law, AND FUND IT, to expand arts and foreign language instruction in all public schools. Arts and foreign languages matter. With all of this talk about a "flat world", what has the federal government (or the state of Ohio for that matter) done to expand the number of Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Hindi, and so on, teachers in this country? I'm sure lots of districts would love to offer Chinese or Arabic in their schools except for one very important thing: You can't get qualified teachers. Why not fund start up programs or relax the licensure rules for teachers in these areas?

Finally, a bully pulpit type of item or two: It's time we start talking about some sacred cows. Here are two:

1. The 185-day school year just isn't enough anymore. We could go to, say, 205, and kids could still have their summer camps, summer school, and so on. But again, it costs money.

2. Athletics. I'm a former coach, and I believe in physical education. But the amount of time and energy kids and teachers and school officials spend on high school athletics is outrageous. Is that what schools are for?

Looking forward to continue this discussion here, and elsewhere in the Ohio blogosphere.

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NCLB Hearings Begin

NCLB Senate hearings begin with talk about how to fix underperforming schools.

Here is a sample from Ed Week (reg. req.):

But educators offered several ideas on fixing the problems of struggling schools using existing public school services.

In Michigan, the state education department has identified what it calls high-priority schools and assigns school support teams to them. Those teams, which are based in the state’s intermediate districts, audit the schools’ performance and help school leaders devise plans to turn the schools around.

In Alabama, regional reading coaches have helped schools identify their problems and address them. The goal is to change the culture of the school so that all teachers in it believe that their students can meet the NCLB law’s ambitious achievement goals, said Martha S. Barber, a regional coach for the Alabama Reading Initiative.

“When that changes, then everything else changes,” said Ms. Barber, who works with schools in and around Birmingham.

At the K-8 Achievable Dream Academy in Virginia, school is in session 205 days a year—25 more than required by the state—on a year-round schedule. The school day lasts from 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday classes are offered to students who are not keeping up with their schoolwork.

During two-week breaks throughout the school year, teachers examine student performance on tests and map out instructional strategies to address students’ weaknesses and build on their strengths, said Mr. Coleman, the school’s director.

The problem with all of these approaches is that they assume that there is something wrong with the school. What doe we know about underachieving schools?

They are made up of underachieving students.

Are students underachieving because of poor instruction? Poor curriculum? Maybe it's poor administrative and managerial practices. Maybe the leaders of the school need help "identifying the problems and addressing them." Maybe it's the "culture" of the school.

Or, maybe the students aren't achieving for other reasons. Maybe they move around and change schools a lot. Anyone ever look at that? Maybe they are mired in poverty. Maybe they miss a lot of school.

I realize that public policy has to focus on those things that schools can affect, and the home lives of kids isn't one of them. But Ted Kennedy is way too smart and too interested in the effects of poverty not to understand these things. I hope he spends some time using his committee to help Americans understand that it's not always the teachers or the school doing something wrong that causeus underachieving schools.

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Get Educated: Read Up on NCLB Reauthorization

NCLB is up for reauthorization, and I wanted to offer several links/excerpts to readers who want to keep abreast of developments and get informed on the where the various factions fall into line on NCLB.

For my part, I don't think the question is if NCLB gets reauthorized, but how. And one promise that wasn't fulfilled in the law was the promise of tutoring funds to be made available to schools where students are underperforming. And be clear, the money needs to go to schools, not to parents in the form of vouchers which are spent at private tutoring companies trying to get rich off the law. The financial promise of the law has to be kept or else it just becomes an unfunded mandate.

Second, Congress should look at allowing children in schools where large numbers of students are underperforming to transfer not only within the district, but outside of the district as well. Some Republicans like to brag about what a radical civil rights bill NCLB is. If they really want to be radical, start letting urban kids get on a bus and transfer into wealthy suburban districts. That would be radical.

Finally get rid of the assinine goal of 100% proficiency. Would we have a goal that 100% of children were healthy? Of course it's a worthy goal, but imagine punishing states that don't achieve 100% health among its children. It's crazy.

Lots for you to read or click on below.

Joanne Jacobs:

No Child Left Behind’s fifth birthday leaves Fordham’s Mike Petrilli with little to celebrate. Once an ardent booster within the Bush administration, he now fears the law’s flaws probably aren’t fixable.

The “highly qualified teachers” mandate was “a huge overreach” and requring all students to reach “proficiency” by 2014 while letting states define “proficiency” has created “a race to the bottom.” Petrilli also is disappointed by schools reliance on test prep rather than providing a broad, content-rich education. Getting districts to inform parents of their school choice options has proven “un-implementable.”

The "highly qualified teacher" element of the legislation is really a joke. All states have certification standards. It sounds good in one of Luntz's focus groups to say "every child should have a highly qualified teacher." But for one thing, NCLB simply requires a teacher to be "qualified." The "highly" part is meaningless Bushspeak. Secondly, it unfairly punishes districts where "qualified" teachers don't want to work. Trust me, urban districts don't hire uncertified teachers because they want to. Want to get certified teachers in the urban schools? Start doing 3 things. 1. Create a safe and orderly environment for teachers to work in. 2. Pay them more than in the suburbs. 3. Pay for their Master's degrees. (I guess 1(a) would be create effective programs to deal with special education students and support those who are included in regular classes.)

Back to my list of readings.

Ed Week's terrific new blog:

A week ago, nearly everyone was predicting it would be 2009 before NCLB got renewed. Since then, things have gotten a little messier, but the basic dynamics are clear. A powerful set of folks folks (Spellings, President Bush, the Chamber, the BRT) are pushing for a quick NCLB reauthorization this year. Other folks (Miller, Kennedy especially) are also pushing for reauthorization-- and lots more cash. Meantime, NCLB opponents (the 100 groups that signed the letter) want to see NCLB revamped substantially and don't seem particularly concerned about when it happens -- though of course the sooner the better. Last but not least, some folks (Dodd, Ehlers, Fordham, New America) want to focus on national standards, which many of those who want to see NCLB reauthorized (Bush, Spellings, Chamber, BRT) consider something of a threat to a timely reauthorization. Got it?

National standards. Ugh. Don't get me started. Dodd, you need to change your tune on that one, or Newt Gingrich will be writing your national history standards. Is that what you want? (Dodd is advocating adopting the current national standards that professionals have created. That would be OK, but I don't trust the shriller parts of the evangelical Christian movement to accept those standards, evolution and all... do you?)

Incredibly, Spellings and I actually agree on that point.

Earlier in the day, in a speech commemorating the law’s anniversary, she said she would not support anything that would give her or her agency control over the content of such standards. “I’m not sure people want me to be the person setting standards for their schools,” she said.

Read the entire Ed Week piece. If you really are interested in these issues, you need to come back to Ed Week regularly (use the link in my left sidebar).

Also, for your listening pleasure, a couple of NPR links:

A principal in Baltimore talks about NCLB. Talks about AYP. This is one of the most pernicious parts of the law.

Andrew Rotherman on funding issues related to NCLB. Rotherman refers to the Report on the Skills of the American Workforce, in more positive terms than I have, and he also talks about the interesting report on teacher contracts suggesting that some contract provisions waste money. I'll have more to say about this in a separate post.

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