Eduwonk

More misleading studies about whether the current regime of state teacher certification guarantees quality. Kate Walsh does a good job debunking them here. The Education Commission of the States did its level best to put a good face on the value of existing certification schemes last summer and couldn’t. Dan Goldhaber has it about right in his chapter in this book. It’s well past time to get serious about reforming this antiquated system.

They say in education there are not many good new ideas but the bad ones keep coming back again and again. Though not a pessimist, today Eduwonk is inclined to believe that. At a Capitol Hill event today Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) will roll out his latest GI Bill for Kids proposal, a $500 grant to every middle and lower-class school child now called “Pell Grants for Kids”. You can read more about the proposal in this Education Next article.

Alexander deserves credit for style. He’s announcing the plan at a forum sponsored by the New America Foundation where critics can question him. Too often both sides in the school voucher debate release studies and new proposals in comfortable surroundings confronted only by the adoring gaze of supporters. But a willingness to debate a bad idea does not make it any better.

Alexander first proposed the GI Bill for Kids in 1992 when he was U.S. Secretary of Education and continued to pitch it during the 1990s. It was worth $1,000 back then. That’s only about $850 in today’s dollars, so today’s $500 bid is further retrenchment. If there is any good reason to pass this proposal now, it is simply to do so while there is something left.

Like a worn through flannel shirt the times, however, have passed Alexander by. No Child Left Behind includes a substantial provision providing parents with grants for supplemental educational services (tutoring) if their child is in a persistently low-performing school. Eduwonk is somewhat skeptical of the mechanics of this policy in practice, but it is a de facto Pell Grant for Kids now.

Moreover, $500 isn’t much. Alexander himself acknowledges as much. In Education Next he writes that,

But private school tuition costs far more than $500. Correct. So those who worry that vouchers will hurt public schools should relax. But six hundred parents armed with $500 each can exercise $300,000 in consumer power at a public middle school. Five hundred dollars can also help pay for language lessons or remedial help. At Puente Learning Center in South Los Angeles, Sister Jennie Lechtenberg teaches students of all ages English and clerical skills at an average cost to the center of $500 per year.

The $300K example, while compelling, ignores problems of collective action. Besides, Puente Learning Center sounds like the sort of supplemental services provider No Child’s architects had in mind. And in any event Eduwonk would like to see parents be able to use their child’s full per-pupil expenditure, not some token amount, at the public school or charter school of their choice.

If Alexander is seeking to tickle a consumer culture among parents he’s too late there too. The wealth of data that No Child is creating is empowering parents to become more sophisticated advocates on behalf of their children and their schools. Below the radar screen of the Washington debate, that’s happening now.

Sadly, the only thing weaker than the arguments for this proposal will likely be the ritualistic arguments against it. Pell Grants for Kids will not “drain money from public schools”, “undermine” them, or frankly in any other way substantially affect education. And that is precisely the problem: This idea does nothing except make a very expensive political point.

Eduwonk is all for helping parents. Why instead not propose giving every low and middle income parent a $500 (or for the sake of nostalgia $1,000) refundable increase in the child tax credit? Then parents can do with that money what they choose…what a downright Republican idea! Or, Alexander could focus his energies on improving No Child’s supplemental services provisions.

Why is Alexander not focusing his energy and substantial expertise on these issues? The answer is obvious. While expanding the child tax credit or improving supplemental services could have much the same effect as the GI Bill for Kids cum Pell Grant for Kids if parents chose, those policies would not make a political point about school choice. That political point is, of course, the underlying purpose of this whole exercise.

Alexander’s proposal is not harmful it is, well, pretty meaningless. It is a $2.5 billion a year political gimmick. It should be treated as such, meaning not seriously.

Not surprisingly a lot of good coverage and commentary on Brown. In The New York Times Justice Stephen Breyer writes about the significance of the decision but UVA’s Michael J. Klarman says the ruling was less counter-majoritarian than it seems. On the same page Andrew Sullivan looks at the decision in light of the current debate about gay marriage and Albert Preston of DC’s Sousa Middle School reflects on Brown and his experience as a teacher.

Conversely, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle Clarence Johnson wonders “if we have spent too much time integrating classrooms and too little time figuring out how to truly guarantee our children a quality education.”

The Washington Post’s William Raspberry comes down in the middle. The Post’s Michael Dobbs examines school segregation in one community and also at how Brown impacted Secretary of Education Rod Paige’s thinking. And, NYT’s Greg Winters today looks at school finance and Brown in an article that will probably leave some readers hungry. In the Christian Science Monitor Gail Russell Chaddock examines teacher quality in relation to Brown, it’s a must-read, particularly the apparent sign of NEA movement on the issue.

And, if you want more of a Brown fix, here and here are other recent articles and commentary.

Afterthought: Not to take anything away from Brown, it’s very important — and hopefully Brown II will get some attention next year too — but is it just Eduwonk or have the other education related cases (for instance higher ed cases like, Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, Spiuel v. Oklahoma, Sweatt v. Painter, and McLaurin v. Oklahoma) that paved the way for Brown been ignored during this anniversary. They’re interesting by themselves and show that this was a process, change is slow and hard…something to keep in mind today.

Too much interesting discussion and reflection on the Brown anniversary to round it all up here. National and regional newspapers are devoting the kind of attention to the anniversary that it deserves, so you’ll have to read with more than just deliberate speed to get more than a sample. Both The Washington Post and The New York Times Sunday book sections have good reviews of new books and don’t miss Greg Winter’s provocative story in the Sunday NYT.

More talk of a state lawsuit against No Child Left Behind claiming it is an unfunded mandate. The law could use more funding to make its implementation more effective, but as a technical matter it is not an unfunded mandate.

The only “mandate”, the testing provisions, are funded at a minimal but technically sufficient level as this GAO study shows. There should be more funding for those provisions because kids deserve better than minimal (in practice cheap multiple choice tests), but garnering such support requires a political not judicial strategy.

Besides, No Child’s opponents look ridiculous arguing that the problem with a law they obviously hate is that it is underfunded. This law is awful, but it must be fully funded now! There’s a message…

Dog that Didn’t Bark Afterthought: Whatever happened to that vaunted NEA lawsuit against the “so called No Child Left Behind Act”?

Sensible Message Afterthought: Ted Kennedy and George Miller have the right idea here on message and policy. Support the law and fund it. Not one or the other.

Historical Afterthought: When did so-called progressives become such states’ rights fanatics?

Update! NCSL analysts think the Wisconsin lawsuit might be the vaunted lawsuit. Could be…the straight from talking points quotes in this article reveal it for the blatantly political exercise it is.

Relaxing poolside this weekend? Rick Kahlenberg in Slate and Cass R. Sunstein in The New Yorker both offer interesting discussions of Brown.

On the show “Uncommon Knowledge” legal scholar Douglas Kmiec and historian Garry Wills discuss church-state issues. Well worth listening or reading, a thoughtful discussion and good context on today’s debate.

And, this book is essential pool or beach reading for any eduwonk.

Public Agenda just published a study on discipline in schools in cooperation with Common Good, Phillip Howard’s legal reform organization. Not surprisingly teachers and parents see discipline as a major issue and a major problem (one in three teachers said it was the top problem at their school) although they blame a small minority of students for most of the problems. However, in terms of solutions the devil is very much in the details. Respondents favored “zero tolerance” policies, for example, but wanted such policies to also include “common sense”. Of course, one person’s common sense is another’s inconsistent discipline policy. Common Good undertakes important work to rein in our lawsuit culture and we should wish them success. Schools have been forced to adopt uniform policies in part because of lawsuits. Uniformity not discretion is a foil against litigation and until the current climate changes it’s hard to blame the schools for protecting themselves.

It’s all worth reading — particularly the raw data in the back.

Current Event Afterthought: One concern raised by teachers in this study was discipline for special education students. Both the House and Senate IDEA reauthorization bills include changes to IDEA’s discipline provisions. The House language, however, is stronger. Look for that to be an issue in conference.

Fordham Foundation’s Education Gadfly endorses universal access to pre-k education. It’s a crucial issue and not unaffordable, even now. The success of technology education surely convinced them of the efficacy of some progressive ideas! But will Bush – Cheney listen? It is anybody’s guess who will find religion first, liberal Democrats on accountability or conservative Republicans on the importance of pre-k education. But that party will be in pretty good shape…

By the way, Gadfly’s analysis of Kerry’s education plan gives the teacher quality provisions short shrift and minimizes the importance of the graduation rate issue. And, like Mickey Kaus they focus on the the political challenges down the road which, while formidable, do not minimize the significance of the proposal now. Gadfly does, however, note that President Bush needs an agenda in the first place.

Of course, Eduwonk feels like an ingrate for criticizing on the heels of being labeled perspicacious. Maybe they’ll find a fancy synonym for ungrateful next week!

In the interest of fairness and balance Eduwonk notes that for the most part President Bush’s education speech in Arkansas on Tuesday and remarks at NIH on Wednesday were pretty good. Sure, there were Bushisms galore and he fuzzed up the funding question, but his fundamental point — that it is essential to hold schools accountable for student learning and imperative that we do a better job looking out for the interests of struggling students — is an important one that progressives should be trumpeting not resisting.

Bush also noted that NCLB’s provisions are not punitive or draconian as opponents (and his former assistant secretary of education) claim. There is possibly a danger for anti-NCLB Democrats if he starts beating this drum…because it’s true. Good thing the press doesn’t think so! Besides, as Andrew Sullivan pointed out recently, liberals should favor doing something serious about low performing schools.

Yet Bush is in a hole of his own creation because he’s only saying these things now and focusing on education when his back is to a political wall. He left implementation of the most ambitious federal education law in a generation — which would have been a challenge in the best of circumstances — to an ideologically driven Department of Education that quickly turned it into a mess. In the process he became an unlikely ally for the law’s most virulent opponents. A three-day political roadshow is too little too late.

Senator Kerry will not move many votes except among public policy scholars by calling for a sustained implementation effort — it’s the last thing the law’s foes want — but it is exactly what is needed right now. What might such an effort include? For starters, real technical assistance particularly with accountability design and testing, professional development for both implementers and teachers, and targeted resources. State departments of education need help too. Someone should suggest that. Someone did!

Looking Glass Afterthought: If you needed more evidence that education is politically twisted, consider this: Reid Lyon, the NIH researcher who hosted Bush yesterday (and advises him on reading), has made his life’s work learning more about how children learn to read. In the process he’s produced seminal research that is helping to prevent learning disabilities and improve reading instruction. Yet the left loathes him…something about phonics. Did we mention he’s also a Democrat?

In The Washington Post, Michael Dobbs takes an interesting look at Brown and David Broder kinda likes NCLB again. The Boston Globe looks at dropouts. Boston is now reporting them more forthrightly.