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Race to the Top is marketed as a "solution" for states and districts in search of reform.  The catch - as with all federal money - is the cash comes with strings that will continue the emphasis on high-stakes testing and the top-down management theories that were the basis of No Child Left Behind. The U.S. Education Department wants teacher evaluations tied to student test scores regardless of how it is done, and they want it done quickly.  Asked about the lack of research during a presentation to school administrators from Georgia, Education Department Assistant Superintendent Teresa MacCartney replied, "We are hoping the research will catch up with us in a few years."  I admire her optimism, but deplore the fact that $400 million will be spent on the development and integration of a teacher evaluation method with no evidence whatsoever to support a positive effect on student achievement.  That's not a string; it's a rope.

Currently, many states plan to have teachers of non-tested subjects use a make-shift version of value-added measures where teachers identify learning objectives, choose assessments that correspond with these objectives, monitor student progress over the course of the year, and then present that progress as evidence of student growth. While this process may very well improve the overall quality of teaching, it is an ineffective way to evaluate teachers. If it takes complex statistical algorithms to measure student growth for English and math teachers, what makes us think that teachers of non-tested subjects can validly and reliably measure student growth on their own?

Despite ample evidence, we still fail to heed the lessons of what works in the world's top-performing school systems-an investment in teachers; a rich and robust curriculum; and wraparound services such as counseling, after-school programs and tutoring to counter factors outside the classroom, like poverty, that affect student performance.

This paper examines the policy context of charter school adoption and implementation in Indianapolis -- the only city in the U.S. with independent mayoral authorizing authority. Our study identifies specific implications of this hybrid of mayoral control, including expanded civic capacity and innovation diffusion across Indianapolis area public school systems. This qualitative study utilizes over 30 in-depth interviews conducted with key stakeholders. Legislative, state, and school district documents and reports were analyzed for descriptive evidence of expanded civic capacity, school innovation, and charter/non-charter school competitive pressures. The case of Indianapolis reframes the mayoral role in education reform, and expands the institutional framework for charter school authorizing.

Most teachers have long known that they affect the life chances of children. But it took the work of economists to convince the world of public policy to take seriously what is now known as "teacher effectiveness." Now one of those very same economists has turned to another subject that, to most teachers and principals, is similarly self-evident: Principals, like teachers, affect the life chances of children, too. Last week, Stanford's Eric Hanushek -- who conducted many of the early economic analyses on teacher impact -- presented a new research paper at a conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Educational Research. The findings show, in his words, that "principals matter."

Much has been written about the importance of school leadership, but there is surprisingly little systematic evidence on this topic. This paper presents preliminary estimates of key elements of the market for school principals, employing rich panel data on principals from Texas State. The consideration of teacher movements across schools suggests that principals follow patterns quite similar to those of teachers - preferring schools that have less demands as indicated by higher income students, higher achieving students, and fewer minority students. Looking at the impact of principals on student achievement, the authors find some small but significant effects of the tenure of a principal in a school. More significant, however, are the estimates of variations in principal effectiveness. The variation in principal effectiveness tends to be largest in high poverty schools, consistent with hypothesis that principal ability is most important in schools serving the most disadvantaged students. Finally, considering principal mobility, the authors find that principals who stay in a school tend to be more effective than those who move to other schools.

As discussed in prior posts, high-quality analyses of charter school effects show that there is wide variation in the test-based effects of these schools but that, overall, charter students do no better than their comparable regular public school counterparts. The existing evidence, though very tentative, suggests that the few schools achieving large gains tend to be well-funded, offer massive amounts of additional time, provide extensive tutoring services and maintain strict, often high-stakes discipline policies.

This article explores student mobility in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and its effects on student achievement. An urban district with plentiful opportunities for school choice, Milwaukee has a transient student population.  From 2003-04 through 2007-08, 11% of MPS students switched schools or left the district between the fall and spring of a given school year, while 22% were mobile between the spring of one year and the fall of the following year. Using both student fixed-effects and instrumental variables approaches, we examined the effects of this mobility on both the students who moved and their classmates who did not. We found evidence that mobile students' test score gains dropped immediately after they switched schools, but these students typically recovered their losses in the subsequent year. We detected modest but statistically significant negative effects of grade-level turnover on non-mobile students' academic achievement.   

There is no solid evidence supporting many of the positions on teachers and teacher evaluation taken by some school reformers today, according to a new assessment of research on the subject. The Education Writers Association released a new brief that draws on more than 40 research studies or research syntheses, as well as interviews with scholars who work in this field.

Even as research has begun to document that teachers matter, there is less certainty about what attributes of teachers make the most difference in raising student achievement. Numerous studies have estimated the relationship between teachers' characteristics, such as work experience and academic performance, and their value-added to student achievement; but, few have explored whether instructional practices predict student test score gains. In this study, we ask what classroom practices, if any, differentiate teachers with high impact on student achievement in middle school English Language Arts from those with lower impact. In so doing, the study also explores to what extent value-added measures signal differences in instructional quality.  Even with the small sample used in our analysis, we find consistent evidence that high value-added teachers have a different profile of instructional practices than do low value-added teachers. Teachers in the fourth (top) quartile according to value-added scores score higher than second-quartile teachers on all 16 elements of instruction that we measured, and the differences are statistically significant for a subset of practices including explicit strategy instruction.

As discussed in a previous post, there is a fairly well-developed body of evidence showing that charter and regular public schools vary widely in their impacts on achievement growth. This research finds that, on the whole, there is usually not much of a difference between them, and when there are differences, they tend to be very modest. In other words, there is nothing about "charterness" that leads to strong results. It is, however, the exceptions that are often most instructive to policy. By taking a look at the handful of schools that are successful, we might finally start moving past the "horse race" incarnation of the charter debate, and start figuring out which specific policies and conditions are associated with success, at least in terms of test score improvement (which is the focus of this post).

Mayor Bloomberg turned the announcement of the 2012 state test results into a promotional event for his "reforms" on Tuesday, despite the fact that an honest appraisal of the scores showed that city students as a group made only modest progress in both math and ELA.  The mayor's presentation ignored or downplayed results that didn't fit in with his triumphal narrative, including the fact that the racial achievement gap widened last year in a number of categories. State officials, by contrast, didn't even hold a press conference, and said publicly only that the statewide results (which mirrored the city's) showed "some positive momentum" but left too many students unprepared. The mayor, however, orchestrated a big press function and handed out a shameless PowerPoint that reported highly selective numbers and featured a comparison of charters and new schools founded during his tenure with "traditional" city schools - i.e. the vast majority of schools in the city system. But the numbers are there for all to see. "His" charters and new schools combined underperform the average school, in fact (see especially slide 6), and they gained only one to two points more than the "traditional" schools in percentages of students meeting standards in math and less than a percentage point in students meeting standards in English. That, according to the mayor, was conclusive evidence for the success of his reforms. 

There have now been several stories in the New York news media about New York City's charter schools' "gains" on this year's state tests (see here, here, here, here and here). All of them trumpeted the 3-7 percentage point increase in proficiency among the city's charter students, compared with the 2-3 point increase among their counterparts in regular public schools. The consensus: Charters performed fantastically well this year. In fact, the NY Daily News asserted that the "clear lesson" from the data is that "public school administrators must gain the flexibility enjoyed by charter leaders," and "adopt [their] single-minded focus on achievement." For his part, Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed that the scores are evidence that the city should expand its charter sector. All of this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how to interpret testing data, one that is frankly a little frightening to find among experienced reporters and elected officials.

While the fight over closing schools may be hotter than the weather this summer, the evidence shows that this is not a strategy that works to help all New York City kids get the education they deserve. Yet Mayor Bloomberg has adopted it with a single-mindedness that makes no sense. He has closed more than 140 schools since he took control of the city's school system in 2002. Bloomberg's agenda has disrupted school communities, alienated parents and destabilized neighborhoods. College-readiness rates in the new schools created to replace closing schools are abysmally low, and overall grad rates in these new schools have actually been falling, even as overall grad rates remained flat. Instead of closing schools, there is a better and more effective intervention to turn them around. The Chancellor's District was an innovative program involving nearly 60 schools that flourished from 1996 to 2003 under a joint agreement between then-Chancellor Rudy Crew and the UFT. It's an approach we can use in the 24 schools that are now the subject of litigation between the Department of Education and the principals' and teachers' unions over how they will be staffed.

K12 Inc. enrolls more public school students than any other private education management organization in the U.S. Much has been written about K12 Inc. (referred to in this report simply as "K12") by financial analysts and investigative journalists because it is a large, publicly traded company and is the dominant player in the operation and expansion of full-time virtual schools. This report provides a new perspective on the nation's largest virtual school provider through a systematic review and analysis of student characteristics, school finance, and school performance of K12-operated schools. Using federal and state data, this report provides a description of the students served by K12 and the public revenues received and spent by the company at the school level. Further, the report presents evidence from a range of school performance measures and strives to understand and explain the overall weak performance of these virtual schools.

The outcry over past co-locations has encouraged parents and faculty members of soon-to-be co-located public schools in Harlem, as well as local pastors,elected officials and NAACP representatives, to voice their outrage. "The potential for conflict is greater when communities feel decisions are being made out of the blue without them being at the table, and decisions are made quickly and by criteria that is obscure," said Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University. He added that minority neighborhoods such as Harlem do not trust charter schools because their expansion tends to fuel fears about gentrification.

"It's about time we all suck it up and realize that the best of economic research on factors associated with test score gains not only can, but must absolutely drive the redesign of our obviously dreadful American public education system! [despite substantial evidence to the contrary!] With that in mind, I have selectively mined some of my own favorite studies and summaries of studies in order to develop a framework for the absolutely awesomest school ever! I've chosen to focus on only economic studies of measurable stuff that is actually associated with measured test score gains. After all, that's what matters - that's all that matters! Mind you that this school will be awesomest not merely in terms of overall effectiveness, but also in terms of bang for the buck, because I'm not messin' around with expensive curriculum or elaborate facilities… or high priced consultants… or really expensive strategies like class size reduction."

Most of the controversy surrounding value-added and other test-based models of teacher productivity centers on the high-stakes use of these estimates. This is unfortunate - no matter what you think about these methods in the high-stakes context, they have a great deal of potential to improve instruction. When supporters of value-added and other growth models talk about low-stakes applications, they tend to assert that the data will inspire and motivate teachers who are completely unaware that they're not raising test scores. In other words, confronted with the value-added evidence that their performance is subpar (at least as far as tests are an indication), teachers will rethink their approach. I don't find this very compelling. Value-added data will not help teachers - even those who believe in its utility - unless they know why their students' performance appears to be comparatively low. It's rather like telling a baseball player they're not getting hits, or telling a chef that the food is bad - it's not constructive.

The leaders of one of the most economically depressed and racially segregated cities in the nation have decided that the answer to its problems is to fire teachers, close public schools, expand the number of charters, and possibly to expand the voucher program as well. In the eyes of Ohio's elected officials, evidence about the past performance of charters and vouchers means nothing.

Connecticut has joined the national frenzy. A state panel has just approved a teacher evaluation plan that includes using standardized test scores to decide whether or not to fire a teacher.