Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

I recently wrote about an analysis of Michigan's education system that concluded that charter schools-contrary to what some of their backers claim-spend more on administrative costs, and less on instruction, than traditional public schools. But you didn't really think that would be the final word on the subject, did you? This week, a consultant writing for a charter school association takes issue with that claim, put forward in a study released by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education. In a blog post written for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Larry Maloney argues that the authors' research does not present a true comparison of administrative spending in charters and traditional publics, particularly in urban areas, such as charter school-rich Detroit.

"There has been a shift from the belief that we as a nation benefit from higher education, to a belief that it's the people receiving the education who primarily benefit and so they should foot the bill," concludes Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a trustee of the State University system of New York and director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. A more accurate description, I think, is "Failure by Design," the title of a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, which has long been a major source of reliable information and analysis on the state of the economy. The EPI study reviews the consequences of the transformation of the economy a generation ago from domestic production to financialization and offshoring. By design; there have always been alternatives.

I don't think there's any way to avoid publication, given that about a dozen newspapers will receive the data, and it's unlikely that every one of them will decline to do so. So, in addition to expressing my firm opposition, I would offer what I consider to be an absolutely necessary suggestion: If newspapers are going to publish the estimates, they need to publish the error margins too. Value-added and other growth model scores are statistical estimates, and must be interpreted as such. Imagine that a political poll found that a politician's approval rate was 40 percent, but, due to an unusually small sample of respondents, the error margin on this estimate was plus or minus 20 percentage points. Based on these results, the approval rate might actually be abysmal (20 percent), or it might be pretty good (60 percent). Should a newspaper publish the 40 percent result without mentioning that level of imprecision? Of course not. In fact, they should refuse to publish the result at all. Value-added estimates are no different.

I've said it before and taken heat for it, but I'll say it again: this is a result of straight up sexism. Christie never goes after the cops or the firefighters or even the CWA workers like he goes after teachers, and the reason is clear: he is comfortable verbally abusing women. He did it to Valerie Huttle and Loretta Weinberg and Marie Corfield without the slightest hesitation. Is it such a stretch to believe that he thinks that a profession with a majority of women is a profession that is full of bubble-heads that can be easily duped by their union?

Merit pay for teachers, an idea kicked around for decades, is suddenly gaining traction. Fervently promoted by Michelle A. Rhee when she was chancellor of the District's public schools, the concept is picking up steam from a growing cadre of politicians who think one way to improve the country's troubled schools is to give fat bonuses to good teachers.

(When i wrote this, I had no idea just how deeply this would speak to people and how widely it would spread. So, I think a better title is I Dare You to Measure the Value WE Add, and I invite you to share below your value as you see it.)

The complete cluelessness of our elites knows no limits: "I think (the ultra-wealthy) actually have an insufficient influence," Griffin said in an interview at Citadel's downtown office. "Those who have enjoyed the benefits of our system more than ever now owe a duty to protect the system that has created the greatest nation on this planet." [emphasis mine] Hedge-fund billionaires like Griffin have a "duty" to protect the system that made them billionaires off of schemes like credit derivatives - schemes that nearly destroyed our economy. Gosh, too bad no one listens to them...

Teacher satisfaction has decreased by 15 points since MetLife last measured it two years ago and is now reaching the lowest level of job satisfaction seen in the survey  series  in more than two decades. One simply need think of Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, New Jersey and other states and cities like NY and Washington where public schools, public school teachers, and their unions have been under serious attack to begin to grasp the "why" of that drop in teacher satisfaction. But is is more complicated than that.  

Just when you think the climate of disrespect for teachers can't get any worse, it does. This past weekend, the Chicago Tribune's editorial board urged Illinois parents to demand that the state emulate New York City (and Los Angeles) by making individual teachers' "value-added" ratings available for public scrutiny.

On occasion, students and reporters ask me what makes me trust or distrust folks who claim to be education researchers, and it's a harder question to answer than one might think. As an historian with some quantitative training, I am eclectic on methods-I have no purity test other than "the evidence and reasoning have to fit the conclusion." It's not the existence of error: even great researchers make occasional errors, and it's a good thing in the long run for researchers to take intellectual risks (which imply likely error/failure). Further, we all have the various myside biases cognitive psychologists write about. But when I come across something like the following produced by the Cato Institute's Andrew Coulson and displayed by Matthew Ladner twice on Jay Greene's blog (including on Thursday), I start to wonder.

According to its web site, "Parents Taking Action (PTA) is a coalition of New York City parents who believe every child should have access to a great public school. We are standing up for our children, holding the Department of Education accountable and ensuring children are put ahead of special interests." A grass roots organization of public school parents? Think again: "PTA is a project of Education Reform Now, a non-profit organization that envisions an America in which every child, regardless of class or race, has the social and economic opportunities afforded by an excellent public education."

Elmore's edited text illuminates a rarely discussed yet important aspect of school reform efforts: the critical reflective analysis of one's perspective (personal bias), or the connection between our experiences and our interpretations of those experiences. The volume's title and theme draw from a professional development exercise requiring conscious reflection on old points of view drawn from the experiences of educational reformers, theorists, leaders, researchers, and policy makers who have been on the front line of K-12 school reform. Contributors include Howard Gardner, Rudy Crew, Larry Cuban, Jeff Henig, Deb Meier, and Mike Smith, among others. This collection offers an insightful examination of some challenging educational issues of our time, including standardized testing; the role of special education; performance pay; the relationship between social theory and practice; teacher unionism; program development, implementation, and evaluation; the social role of education; and community involvement. The result is timely, as present educational policy is being reassessed on state and national levels.

The historic stability of higher education is remarkable. As former University of California President Clark Kerr once observed, the 85 human institutions that have survived in recognizable form for the last 500 years include the Catholic Church, a few Swiss cantons, the Parliaments of Iceland and the Isle of Man, and about 70 universities. The occasional small liberal arts school goes under, and many public universities are suffering budget cuts, but as a rule, colleges are forever. I think that rule is going to change, and soon. Many factors explain the endurance of higher education institutions-the ascent of the knowledge economy, their crucial role in upper-middle class acculturation, our peculiar national enthusiasm for college sports-but the single greatest asset held by traditional colleges and universities is their exclusive franchise for the production and sale of higher education credentials. In the last few months, however, that monopoly has begun to crumble. New organizations are being created to offer new kinds of degrees, in a manner and at a price that could completely disrupt the enduring college business model. The question is: Which colleges and universities will be the G.E. of the twenty-first century, and which will be as forgotten as U.S. Leather?

A recent post by one of the most thoughtful TFA bloggers on this site was called 'Don't Hate Me Because I'm TFA.'  In it, Tony B responds to another blogger that I think is great, Katie Osgood, from Chicago.  What people who have just begun following the education debate in this country might be surprised about is the 'hating' of TFA is something that has only recently become a phenomenon. A new TFAer might be confused about why she could be 'hated.'  After all, all she's trying to do is do her part, give back, be a front-line soldier in the war against the achievement gap.  What could be so bad about that?

Ravitch, who came to realize that what works in business doesn't work when it comes to education, notes that her critics condemn her as a defender of the status quo. But the status quo is now the unproven approaches championed by Wall Street's hedge-fund managers and billionaire "philanthropists" whose education reform views just happen to fall perfectly in line with efforts to crush organized labor, including teacher unions. The key to improving schools isn't found in vouchers, charter schools, teacher evaluations, merit pay and all of the other current approaches, according to Ravitch. Schools must end the punitive approach to education. They must identify their best performers and allow them to share what they know with other educators. It's making the arts a key piece of the curriculum and ensuring that students learn how to think critically and write well. It's ensuring health care for all children - including prenatal care - and quality early childhood education.

Since some people think that everything in education can be reduced to a number, let's follow their lead

In an era when school reform and budget savings are championed by representatives of both major political parties, Long Island cannot economically, politically, or culturally afford to maintain small racially segregated school districts. Based on demographic data available in New York: The State of Learning, an annual statistical profile of New York State school districts, Malverne schools and schools in surrounding communities do not have to be racially segregated. In near by Rockville Centre, 80 percent of the students are white. If Malverne, Lakeview, and Rockville Centre were combined into one school district, the student population would be 53 percent white, 30 percent black, 13 percent Latino, and 4 percent Asian. If we think even more broadly and Malverne, Lakeview, Rockville Centre, West Hempstead, Lynbrook, and East Rockaway were consolidated into a manageable district with under 11,000 students, the student population would be 69 percent white, 14 percent black, 13 percent Hispanic, and 4 percent Asian.

There is a small but growing body of evidence about the (usually test-based) effectiveness of teachers from Teach for America (TFA), an extremely selective program that trains and places new teachers in mostly higher needs schools and districts. Rather than review this literature paper-by-paper, which has already been done by others (see here and here), I'll just give you the super-short summary of the higher-quality analyses, and quickly discuss what I think it means.

The big headline from the recent Gates/Scholastic survey of teachers is that only 28% of teachers see standardized tests as an essential or important gauge of student assessment, and only 26% say they are accurate as a reflection of student knowledge. Another question reveals part of the reason this may be so - only 45% of teachers think their students take these tests seriously, or perform to the best of their ability. We have been stuck in an accountability rut for the past decade, with most reform initiatives revolving around test scores of one sort or another. Even the concept of student learning has been subtly redefined to mean "achievement on end of year tests." There are several assumptions that have driven this.

Note that the four dissenters on the Council on Foreign Relations' task force are never quoted in the news reports. Their dissent needs to be read. But what struck me, aside from the make-up of the committee, was the sponsor. Would they publish a task force report on Russian/U.S. relations written by people who had no background experience or expertise on the subject? Someone like me-although I suspect I know as much about that subject as their experts do on American public schooling. (I follow it.) But why is it that they think education belongs on their plate? I suppose that it's seen as one of our weapons for defeating our foreign enemies. Besides, as Jack Jennings of the Center on Education Policy, points out: "Everything the report recommends is already being done ... It's Joel Klein beating the same old drums in a different forum.'" Klein's reported rejoinder: "But it's not happening at the level we're needing ... we need to do it in a much more accelerated way." That sounds like a prescription for dismissing the democratic process-which is deliberative and thoughtful-conducted at the level appropriate to changing the way young people are raised-close to home. Or at least no further away than the Constitution permits. That's bad enough. After all, nearly all of the states adopted the several hundreds of pages of the new Common Core curriculum. How many do you believe read ANY of it?