Friday, October 06, 2006
Oh Brother...
What is it with presidential brothers?
If you want more teacher quality debate check out this editorial in the Indy Star and the debate that it sparked. Certainly does seem like more attention, and finer grained attention, to this issue in the past few years. Whatever one thinks of NCLB's teacher quality provisions, gotta give them some credit for that.
Here's a very fun one and you'd be working with great people and working on policy around an emerging issue -- charter school authorizing. Also, word is, that for the right person Chicago location is not a deal-breaker...
Department Of Everyone Reads The Same Polls
Disregarding the previous item, now that it's come to light that the GOP's idea of a growth model actually has nothing at all to do with school performance, President Bush has suddenly scheduled some education events around No Child Left Behind to shore up support with women. This morning he's visiting the Department of Education, a school, and doing a press event.
Update: It didn't work so well, hardly broke through even in the WaPo.* But, the speech the President gave is actually a pretty good primer on his views about education reform and it's hard to disagree with all of it. He's back, though, to pitching the Sadly Shrunken Teacher Incentive Fund but still with no explanation of why, if it's such a priority for him, he allowed Congress to fund it at only 20 percent of his request... Human capital in education is an enormous issue and he's throwing $100 million at it...
*Politically, for the Rs, isn't the real problem with this scandal the nature of it? Not just that it's appalling, but in particular a lot of parents are anxious about online chat rooms, IMing, and so forth. They feel a real loss of control and sense of risk there. This scandal is as squarely in that wheelhouse as possible: Creepy guy, emailing and IMing kids, without parents knowing. Going to take more than teacher pay to break through that.
Today's Washington Post op-ed calling for growth models ignored a pretty relevant part of NCLB's accountability requirements: The percentage of kids required to pass state tests rises over time so just focusing on kids likely to pass the test in any given year, as the author says teachers are*, is a time-limited strategy. So, "triage" might make sense for individual teachers but is not going to work school-or district-wide. You can argue that the rising floors are unrealistic, as many do, but they do address the central critique of the article. In fact, it's state accountability systems that often focused on fixed percentages of kids passing the tests not the federal system...
Also, the op-ed says: "When students improve on their previous performance but don't clear the passing threshold, schools still deserve credit." If we're trying to teach kids to standards, do they? And at what point is just improving performance not enough? Those are not abstract questions with growth models and the pretty tight parameters that the Department of Education put on their growth model pilot means they likely won't do everything people want them to do or address the core complaint in this op-ed because floors will still rise so just progress won't be enough. Besides, while there is an obvious dual client issue here, schools serve kids, are we ultimately concerned about schools or kids? Too often the former...
Finally, the author notes in passing at the end that, "the mechanics of a growth-based accountability system are tricky." Yes, they are! And few states can implement one, which is why the Dept. of Ed. pilot includes just two states right now. That's why calling for them as a universal cure right now is like calling for a manned mission to Jupiter this year or an immediate cessation in the use of gas-fueled cars. Instead, some sort of tiered system (pdf) is likely where we're headed for the near future and that raises some tricky policymaking questions.
*Worth noting, does one anecdote here really cut it? There is a fair amount of literature on this issue and it's not cut and dry at all.
I keep hearing that ABCTE is some wacko conservative hand maiden...but then stuff like this keeps happening. Today's installment: NAACP official joins the board. And, considering what we know about teacher preparation and quality, what's the argument against ABCTE as one option anyway?
There is a mutual fund out there that a lot of investors love to hate or hate to love. VICEX is the opposite of a socially responsible mutual fund. It invests almost exclusively in defense contractors, alcohol, tobacco, and gambling interests (pdf). Not surprisingly, it also earns a not-too-shabby return.
But I'm starting to think that Florida's teacher pension fund may be education's VICEX...first they bought into Edison Schools and now they're funding Rod Paige's new venture through their NY investment arm!
Now, as it turns out, that investment arm, pace pp. 54 here, may not be a VICEX in the returns department (pdf), though by all accounts Chartwell is doing well. But, there is something more interesting here: Florida has passed a controversial law banning state funds from supporting travel to countries that the U.S. State Department says are bad news in the war on terror. Yet it looks like Chartwell is planning to spend some time working to improve education in the Mideast partnered with a firm that does business in some of those countries that State is down on...
A Nativist, A Union Leader, And A Reverend Walk Into A Bar...
If you're wondering what Lou Dobbs, Randi Weingarten, Jesse Jackson, and Kevin Chavous have in common, and who isn't, the answer is that they're all going to be on the Montel Williams show on the 12th of October discussing American education.
This LA Times story on the narrowing LA sup't search is very worth reading if you're following it...
Mike Petrilli responds in NRO to this earlier piece laying down the conservative marker against national testing. Petrilli makes the case that choice needs standards and standards need choice. That's obviously a case I basically agree with. But seems that Petrilli's essay is as much a defense of standards and testing in general as a push for national testing. Doesn't that illustrate another problem here for the national testing boomlet? In today's political climate national testing supporters might soon find themselves fighting a two front war. Perhaps the best defense is a good offense, but while they're talking about nationalizing standards and testing, plenty of folks on the right and left are talking about walking today's policies back...In any event, Petrilli (nom de guerre "The Prince") has his hands full these days...
12 Steps...And, The NEA Dumps Their Steady!
The NEA has released a new 12-point blueprint for reducing the nation's high school dropout problem. First, as a general issue, this is a departure for the NEA and one that should be welcomed, this is not just a memo from Dr. No. In fact, some very good stuff in it, especially the emphasis on catching kids who are post-high school age but could still complete. Leaving aside some yet unfleshed out details, my only quibbles are (a) they call for $10 billion for new dropout prevention initiatives over the next decade. I'm all for more resources targeted at this problem and that's a nice round number but I'd like to see the analysis on $1 billion annually. Seems you could argue that more or less is needed and (b) they call for essentially making 21 the compulsory schooling age. That's a really boneheaded idea that would be next to impossible to enforce and likely distract from the other items on their agenda.* But hey, 11 out of 12 isn't bad. Also, inside baseball, the NEAers embrace the Jay Greene grad rate numbers and diss the EPIers! That's like spending thousands on gifts for your wife and then taking off with the babysitter.
*I suspect some pollster told them that they had to have a tough love part of their agenda and that's the most they could swallow. I'd substitute something more substantial like a dramatic federal-state intervention in the serious dropout factories (pdf) if the goal is to (a) show voters you're not just about spending gobs of money and (b) actually address the problem.
AFTie One-L rounds-up some bloggy discussion about teacher quality. She asks a good question about new (TFA) teachers but the assumption on which it is based seems more grounded in AFTie ideology than research and a heretical answer follows. First, while there have been several studies of the effectiveness of Teach For America (TFA) teachers, the only one that is really rigorous found that TFA teachers did as well or better than other teachers, including veterans and ones who came through various preparation routes. To be sure that's as much an indictment of teacher preparation as an endorsement of TFA, but those are the cards we're playing today and consequently, on average, hiring a TFA'er isn't a bad move. Second, as this TFA'er pointed out, TFA is not replacing outstanding veteran teachers, rather they are often going into schools where there would likely just be a warm body were it not for the TFA supply line. Third, and related to the first point, right now research shows that in terms of teacher effectiveness there is more variation within various preparation routes than between them (pdf). Finally, in discussions about TFA and novice teachers in general, "churn" is considered an inherently bad thing in education, but is it? In many cases excessive churn surely disadvantages kids. But you do want some churn. People leaving a profession they decide, or someone else decides, they're ill-suited for is not necessarily a bad thing -- on the contrary. And, though it's heretical to say, there are certainly some ways of organizing schools, perhaps with a small number of experienced senior teachers overseeing a cadre of novices with more energy than experience, that could be effective in some circumstances. Besides, though it's also heretical to say, considering the research on TFA, hiring them is a perfectly rational educational and fiscal decision for school districts even as it's a politically contentious one. Also worth noting that TFA contributes less to churn and more to education's human capital supply than people commonly assume.The point here is not that TFA is a panacea, or that teacher experience doesn’t matter, I don't subscribe to either notion. Rather, it's that these issues are a lot more complicated than people generally let on.
For years Rod Paige and George Bush have said that when it comes to the nation's young people their party is the one that is serious about measurement. Guess it wasn't just rhetoric...
MA Teacher Matt Matera comes clean in a Pittsburgh Post op-ed that will make Margaret Spellings blush....
Looked at this way, testing seems dreadful, and as I began to teach I also decried the continual assessments that seemed bound to lead to such stultifying education conditions. Testing is one of those rare topics, however, on which I have had a full-fledged conversion experience. Over time, I realized that tests evaluating students' ability to do math and read and write intelligently aren't necessarily the worst things in the world.
More IG Action
It's not just about reading.
I'm all for solid induction activities that involve new teachers and engage the community but this might not be quite the way to do it...
As Bruce Reed points out, Tony Blair's speech to Labour last week is an incredible political roadmap and a top-flight speech. Popular and successful education policies played a role in his success. Here's Blair:
The beliefs of the Labour Party of 2006 should be recognisable to the members of 1906. Full employment; strong public services; tackling poverty; international solidarity. The policies shouldn't. The trouble was for a long time they were.
You could say much the same thing about the education policy debate in the United States, no?
This New Teacher Project news seems to have ruined AFTie One-L's weekend and she's now back to arguing that the AFTie teacher transfer data (pdf) is definitive, a stance she'd previously seemed to back away from. So, if you're keeping score at home, the argument is that district-by-district case-studies, with data, are invalidated by national data that can't really account for a key variable here -- school district size. In other words, while the plural of anecdote is not data, NTP isn't peddling anecdotes. That said, while I don't think the AFTie data closes the case here, there is some interesting data in their report. Leave all that aside though, I understand why they're picking this fight, but I still think it's the wrong one to pick substantively and politically for them. Sorry AFTies...The bipartisan vote in CA didn't stem from ignorance.
For its education issue WaPo's Outlook section looked at the plight of Washington D.C.'s schools. ES's Toch and Mead here, advice from various quarters here. Toch and Mead go pretty Cuban in describing the mess that passes for schooling in the city. But they spend more time on current superintendent Janey than what I see as the key variable in the near term: Fenty. He's going to engage on this issue in a big way and could put together some interesting alliances. As Toch and Mead point out, DC's governance is screaming for reform, it's an amazing amalgam of the worst aspects of city and state educational governance and Fenty has some play there.
Also, while you're there, Michael Grunwald provides a handy example of the concern that this Reading First fiasco is going to undermine the consensus around reading instruction and set back that effort. And, George Will phones in a sort of ridiculous column about the "65 percent solution." The definitional issues are part of the problem with the 65 percent idea, but does Will seriously believe that (a) the states won't game the definitions as this comes to pass and (b) there is not some legitimate debate about what is and isn't an instructional expense? Update: Kevin Carey has much more here.