Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Can public-sector pensions be reformed, particularly for teachers? Everyone knows that unfunded and underfunded pension systems of the traditional kind ("defined benefit"), plus ancillary health care costs and related benefits for retirees, are burdening state and local education budgets across the land, particularly at a time of broader economic frailty. But few communities and states have yet demonstrated the wisdom, fortitude, capacity, and imagination to devise workable alternatives and put them into place. We're at a point in time where a major public-policy (and public-finance) problem has been defined and measured, debated and deliberated, but not yet solved.

The national media consensus is that New Orleans has discovered the miracle cure for urban education.  Their conclusion is largely drawn from data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education, which obviously has a vested interest in emphasizing the good and ignoring the bad in the post-Katrina education changes.  New Orleans is important in the national education debate, but not for the reasons we commonly hear; it is important because it is the beachhead for a national movement to remove schools from local democratic control and accountability.  The privatization trade-off is that the public sacrifices control of schools for a privatized system that delivers better education for the same tax dollar.  While the citizens of New Orleans certainly lost control of their schools, it cannot be said that they have received a better education, if that also means an equitable education, nor can it be said that it came at the same cost.

"Why are school districts paying millions in "finder's fees" to an organization that places people without education degrees to teach in urban schools-even where applications from veteran teachers abound?"

"Value Added Models (VAMs) are irresistible. Purportedly they can ascertain a teacher's effectiveness by predicting the impact of a teacher on a student's test scores. Because test scores are the sin qua non of our education system, VAMs are alluring. They link a teacher directly to the most emphasized output in education today. What more can we want from an evaluative tool, especially in our pursuit of improving schools in the name of social justice? Taking this a step further, many see VAMs as the panacea for improving teacher quality. The theory seems straightforward. VAMs provide statistical predictions regarding a teacher's impact that can be compared to actual results. If a teacher cannot improve a student's test score in relatively positive ways, then they are ineffective. If they are ineffective, they can (and should) be dismissed (See, for instance, Hanushek, 2010). Consequently, state legislatures have rushed to codify VAMs into their statutes and regulations governing teacher evaluation. (See, for example, Florida General Laws, 2014). That has been a mistake. This paper argues for a complete reversal in policy course. To wit, state regulations that connect a teacher's continued employment to VAMs should be overhauled to eliminate the connection between evaluation and student test scores. The reasoning is largely legal, rather than educational. In sum, the legal costs of any use of VAMs in a performance-based termination far outweigh any value they may add.1 These risks are directly a function of the well-documented statistical flaws associated with VAMs (See, for example, Rothstein, 2010). The "value added" of VAMs in supporting a termination is limited, if it exists at all."

"Families for Excellent Schools of New York - the Don't Steal Possible folks - has just released an impossibly stupid analysis in which they claim that New York City is simply throwing money at failure. Spending double on failing schools what they do on totally awesome ones (if they really have any awesome ones)."

"Much is being sacrificed to meet both this expensive mandate and the newly enacted tax cap, all while serious challenges to the program's validity and the research upon which it is based remain."

There is widespread concern that administration consumes too much of the educational dollar in traditional public schools, diverting needed resources from classroom instruction and hampering efforts to improve student outcomes.  By contrast, charter schools are predicted to have leaner administration and allocate resources more intensively to instruction. This study analyzes resource allocation in charter and district schools in Michigan, where charter and tradition public schools receive approximately the same operational funding.  Holding constant other determinants of school resource allocation, we find that compared to traditional public schools, charter schools on average spend nearly $800 more per pupil per year on administration and $1100 less on instruction.

There's horrific news in today's Daily News: that NY State Education Commissioner King is likely to approve the mayor's proposal to fire half of all of  teachers at 33 struggling schools:"That's a pretty aggressive teacher evaluation system," the state insider said. "We believe the switch meets all the federal requirements." Firing a fixed and arbitrary quota of  at least half of all teachers, regardless of their ability, is not a real teacher evaluation system; it's a meat cleaver approach. This proposal reveals Bloomberg's phony hypocrisy and any supporter who  claims to care about the importance of "teacher quality."

A scholar who studies and blogs about education finance says improving the state's urban schools will take more money - and that merit pay is not likely to help. Bruce Baker, an associate professor at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education, spoke with The Associated Press for an occasional series of interviews on public education reform in New Jersey.

Over the past several decades, schools have faced increasing pressure to partner with businesses, both to be seen as responsive to the business community and out of the hope that partnerships would help make up budget shortfalls as states reduced public funding for education. Often, school-business partnerships are little more than marketing arrangements with little if any educational benefit and the potential to harm to children in a variety of ways. The 2010-2011 Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercializing Trends considers how commercializing activities in schools harm children educationally.

"School officials have chalked up $21.8 million of the expected budget increase to four new publicly financed, privatelyoperated charters set to open in 2014-15, along with expansion of existing charters."

"Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction. The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years."

"According to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, childcare workers earn about 4 percent less than animal caretakers-$20,940 and $21,830 per year, respectively."

"While much is known about the effects of class size and teacher quality on achievement, there is little evidence on whether policymakers can improve education by utilizing non-instructional resources. We exploit plausibly exogenous within-school variation in counselors and find that one additional counselor increases boys' reading and math achievement by over one percentile point, and reduces misbehavior of both boys and girls. Estimates imply the marginal counselor has the same impact on overall achievement as increasing the quality of every teacher in the school by nearly one-third of a standard deviation, and is twice as effective as reducing class size by hiring an additional teacher."

When the nearly 300 students of the Irene-Wakonda School District returned to school this week, they found a lot of old friends, teachers and familiar routines awaiting them. But one thing was missing: Friday classes.

As I noted yesterday, my National Affairs essay "Our Achievement Gap Mania" has stirred some conversation. Let's take a moment to address those who've asked, "Rick, why are you trying to stir up trouble? There are no losers here!"

"WHEN we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don't blame the soldiers. We don't say, "It's these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That's why we haven't done better in Afghanistan!" No, if the results aren't there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition. And yet in education we do just that..."

"The New Jersey Assembly passed landmark legislation Thursday that requires teachers and other public employees to pay sharply more for pension and health benefits, driving a wedge through the Democratic caucus that controls the chamber but was deeply divided on the bill."