Dana Goldstein

Public School Choice as Practiced Abroad

It's ironic that a year after our Supreme Court struck a blow against school integration, the Christian Science Monitor reports that Holland is planning on importing American de-segregation programs. In Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague, about 10 percent of neighborhoods are overwhelmingly made up of ethnic minorities. Nineteen percent of the Dutch population is foreign-born and 6 percent are Muslim.

The challenge of school integration in the Netherlands isn't just a question of mitigating the effects of segregated housing patterns, but also of a longtime emphasis on parental choice when it comes to Dutch schools. The new concept, which is based upon American models, is called "controlled choice":

In the controlled-choice setup, parents visit local schools and rank their top four. The system then tries to give parents their preferences while balancing demographics such as race, class, and parental education level in all the schools. Sometimes it factors in other variables such as gender and proximity, and whether a potential student has siblings in the school.

The potential problem here is the assumption that parents will have the time, knowledge, and inclination to visit many schools in order to rank their top four picks. Some immigrant parents who aren't fluent in Dutch (or, here in the states, English) will likely opt-out or never even hear about the opportunity. That means that when the district sits down to make school assignments, some kids have parents who've registered a choice for a top school, and other don't. That disadvantages already underprivileged kids, but still -- public school choice is one of the best options out there for keeping college-educated, middle class and affluent parents engaged in the public school system, which offers serious benefits to low-income families, who often aren't as active in pushing for school reform.

cross-posted at TAPPED

The Dirty Secrets of Higher Ed

An Atlantic essay by "Professor X," a pseudonymous community college English teacher, is an interesting and demoralizing read. The author writes that the vast majority of students he's taught over the years in "colleges of last resort" aren't able to read, write, or analyze at the college level, either because they haven't been adequately prepared by the K-12 education system, or because they simply don't have the ability. Sadder still, these students have often been sent back to school by their employers, who will not allow them to advance at work without a diploma and won't reimburse them for their classes if they get a failing grade.

There is a sense that the American workforce needs to be more professional at every level. Many jobs that never before required college now call for at least some post-secondary course work. School custodians, those who run the boilers and spread synthetic sawdust on vomit, may not need college—but the people who supervise them, who decide which brand of synthetic sawdust to procure, probably do. There is a sense that our bank tellers should be college educated, and so should our medical-billing techs, and our child-welfare officers, and our sheriffs and federal marshals. We want the police officer who stops the car with the broken taillight to have a nodding acquaintance with great literature. ...

I, who teach these low-level, must-pass, no-multiple-choice-test classes, am the one who ultimately delivers the news to those unfit for college: that they lack the most-basic skills and have no sense of the volume of work required; that they are in some cases barely literate; that they are so bereft of schemata, so dispossessed of contexts in which to place newly acquired knowledge, that every bit of information simply raises more questions. They are not ready for high school, some of them, much less for college.

I am the man who has to lower the hammer.

No Child Left Behind and most of the popular education reform proposals out there are based around the idea of pushing all students to meet higher academic standards. Indeed, it's depressing to see that in many low-income schools, children are learning elementary school math in ninth grade, reading middle-grades books during senior year, and the like. Vocational education is profoundly out of style, which corresponds with the shrinkage of the manufacturing sector. But can't we do much more to realistically prepare people for the workplace, without assuming everyone should read Proust? I'm thinking about courses in personal finance, basic sentence structure and letter writing, and Internet research skills (not academic research, but how to find the answers to common questions, search for job listings, interact with local government via the Internet, and accomplish business tasks). Students who need them should be able to enroll in such practical courses in high school and beyond, while still being expected during the K-12 years to read literature, write essays, master basic math, and learn about the structures and history of their political system.

cross-posted at TAPPED

What Megan is Missing on Teachers Unions

I would not defend teachers or principals unions in all cases; indeed, I agree with Megan McCardle that their resistance, in some parts of the country, to paying professionals a bonus for working in low-income schools isn't in the best interests of children. That isn't merit pay tied to test scores or other factors a teacher can't fully control -- it's simply paying professionals more for agreeing to do a much more difficult job, which would in turn attract better teachers and principals to where they are most needed. But by crediting the break-up of the New Orleans teacher's union with a subsequent small improvement in test scores there, Megan ignores many of the other factors at play in the Big Easy overhaul. Here's how the New York Times describes it:

Since Hurricane Katrina, most of the schools here have been taken over by the state, and are run either by [Superintendent] Vallas or as citizen-controlled charter schools. The local school board and administration — long notorious for corruption and political interference — have been neutered.

Classes are smaller, many of the teachers are youthful imports brought in by groups like Teach for America, principals have been reshuffled or removed, school-hours remedial programs have been intensified, and after-school programs to help students increased.

Still, the challenge remains substantial in a school district of 32,000, where 85 percent of the students are at least several years below their grade levels.

Just as it's easy to pick out circumstances in which the interests of teachers unions seem antithetical to the interests of children, it's easy to point to times when the two are in sync. Teachers unions advocate for smaller class sizes. Teacher's unions advocate for newer, better supplies, from textbooks, to chairs and desks, to cleaner classrooms. Teacher's unions advocate for more support staff, such as guidance counselors, psychologists to deal with learning disabilities and problems at home, and classroom assistants. All of that is very good for kids.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

The Case of the Missing Education Policy

Over at The Prospect, I report on the fact that John McCain hasn't released a detailed education platform since the year 2000, confusing education experts as to how exactly he's planning on improving our schools -- if at all.

McCain's thin education record raises questions about whether he has rethought either the central idea or the specifics of his 2000 education platform: a $5.5 billion, three-year national experiment in private school vouchers.

Since McCain first advocated vouchers, a growing body of research has confirmed that they do not improve students' academic performance or help close the achievement gap between affluent white children and poor children of color. Furthermore, the value of the vouchers McCain and other conservatives have proposed -- $2,000 -- is equal to less than half the average annual tuition at an American private school -- $4,689. That means vouchers won't give poor families many educational options beyond inner city parochial schools, which are far less expensive and exclusive than secular prep schools focused on ensuring college admission. Voucher programs stack the deck against families who prefer a secular education for their children. In Milwaukee, the site of the largest private voucher experiment to date, 102 of 120 participating schools are religious-affiliated.

In 2000, McCain wanted to fund his proposed federal voucher program through repealing sugar and ethanol subsidies. He has continued to argue against such subsidies, but no longer links that platform to education. In fact, McCain's track record in the Senate shows a long history of voting against redirecting money toward public schools, although he did approve $75 million in funding for abstinence-only education.

Read the whole thing.

How Well Do Our Kids Write?

While high school grades remain the single best indicator of how successful a student will be in college, a new study finds that of all the sections on the SAT, the writing section is the best predictor of academic success. The College Board decided in 2002 to roll what used to be the SAT II writing subject test into the SAT I, which now contains both an essay and a multiple choice grammar review.

I am a total writing triumphalist, but I'm a bit surprised the SAT essay section has proven to be so predictive. The topics students are asked to write about on the exam do not at all reflect the typical college assignment. The SAT prompts personal essays on broad, amorphous topics, not exercises in building an argument through carefully engaging with competing evidence. That's why I've always been a fan of the "Document Based Question," which New York State uses on its Regents examinations. Those essays give students a number of primary sources around which to build an argument. For comparison's sake, here's an example of an SAT writing prompt:

Being loyal—faithful or dedicated to someone or something—is not always easy. People often have conflicting loyalties, and there are no guidelines that help them decide to what or whom they should be loyal. Moreover, people are often loyal to something bad. Still, loyalty is one of the essential attributes a person must have and must demand of others.

Adapted from James Carville, Stickin': The Case for Loyalty

Assignment: Should people always be loyal? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

Now a really engaged (and privileged) high school kid, one who might even know who James Carville is, could use this prompt to write about the presidential race. But most students will write about friendships, relationships on athletic teams, and other examples of loyalty in their personal lives. If they do so grammatically, include an introduction and conclusion, and begin their paragraphs with topic sentences, they will potentially ace this section of the exam. The sad fact is, most American high school students can't do even that. And that's not a problem, of course, that can be solved at the college level.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

Last Night's Education Debate

One of the more interesting moments of the debate last night was the conversation about affirmative action, in which both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton said they supported the inclusion of poor white children in the group of people who benefit from college admission preferences. The truth, though, is that most elite colleges already consider class alongside race as they try to diversify their student bodies. Enshrining this concept across the board is a good idea, but only if it is accompanied by a real commitment to racial diversity, as well.

That commitment is under threat this year, as voters in five four more states (Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma) will be asked to either accept or reject ballot initiatives, crafted by the infamous Ward Connerly, that would roll back all affirmative action. While Clinton made a smart move last night in using the affirmative action question as a chance to pivot into a larger discussion of education reform, it's important to remember that banning affirmative action affects a lot more than just college admissions. It would outlaw state programs that help women and minority business owners apply for government contracts, as well as after-school programs that introduce girls of color to science and technology careers.

Clinton's statement was helpful, though, in that it reminded us that endlessly debating affirmative action -- a policy that can boast of real successes, although it should be tweaked -- is really a distraction from addressing the troubles facing our K-12 and higher education systems. She said:

I think we've got to have affirmative action generally to try to give more opportunities to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds -- whoever they are. That's why I'm a strong supporter of early childhood education and universal pre-kindergarten.

That's why I'm against No Child Left Behind as it is currently operating. And I would end it, because we can do so much better to have an education system that really focuses in on kids who need extra help.

That's why I'm in favor of much more college aid, not these outrageous predatory student loan rates that are charging people I've met, across Pennsylvania, 20, 25, 28 percent interest rates. Let's make college affordable again.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Will Obama Be More Aggressive on Education Issues?

TNR's Josh Patashnik has an interesting rundown of Barack Obama's commitment to education reform. Patashnik focuses mostly on Obama's willingness to buck the teachers' unions on merit pay. He also suggests that Clinton hasn't released as comprehensive of an education platform, but in actuality, we know quite a bit about how the Democrats differ on these issues. Here's an overview. In short, Obama is open to both private school choice and linking teacher pay to standardized test scores. Clinton outright rejects private and parochial school vouchers, and her merit pay plan calls for extra money to be distributed when an entire school improves its performance. It is Clinton who has the more aggressive plan on expanding access to preschool education, while Obama wants to provide four-year college scholarships to students who promise to become public school teachers.

All that said, I disagree with Patashnik's suggestion that, once in office, Obama would prioritize education more than Clinton would. That could be true, but there's not a lot of evidence for it from where we stand. Neither Obama nor Clinton has injected education into the race in a deeper way than occasionally criticizing No Child Left Behind and promising to overhaul it. Supporting new ideas in white papers doesn't necessarily equal a commitment to pushing them through Congress.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

How Big of a Factor is Teacher Pay?

Basically, the biggest, according to Zeke Vanderhoek, the founder of a New York City charter school that will open its doors in 2009 with a minimum teacher salary of $125,000. Nationwide, the average salary for a middle school teacher is less than $50,000. Vanderhoek's project is profiled in today's Times. His school will have larger classes (as many as 30 students) and fewer support and administrative staff in order to afford the higher salaries. It will offer only two non-core subjects, music and Latin, and the principal will initially earn less than teachers -- $90,000. The school's students are expected to be primarily from low-income Latino families.

Vanderhoek, a Teach For America alum, says he formed his ideas about the primacy of teacher pay in part through his experience tutoring for a company called Manhattan GMAT in 2000, which lured the most qualified tutors by paying them $100 an hour. Here is the website for that company. As you can see, it caters to quite a rarefied group of customers: adults looking to obtain admission into top MBA programs, and who are willing to pay a premium for all the extra help they can get. The comparison to teaching impoverished children is a tenuous one at best. Poor kids bring a host of challenges with them into the classroom, challenges that may require more extras, not fewer. For example, the new school will have only two social workers and fewer extracurriculars in order to pay for the higher teacher salaries. But research suggests poor kids need more counseling, more after-school help, more of everything just to have a fair chance of academic success.

That said, there's no doubt that experts across the spectrum agree that making teacher pay competitive with that of other professions is a crucial reform with the potential to broadly upgrade the public education system. So there's no doubt Vanderhoek's school will be watched closely for results. If it's successful, though, it will be difficult to isolate teacher salary as a factor. After all, this will be an innovative, small charter school with a highly engaged and vetted staff. They'll be earning more than the staff at other charters, but that won't fully account for the school's outcomes.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

Obama v. Clinton on Education Policy

For those who are still -- still -- struggling to identify policy differences between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, check out Education Week's run down of their education platforms. There are some real distinctions; Obama has supported teacher merit pay pegged to the test scores of individual instructors' students, while Clinton, who has been endorsed by the major national teachers' unions, believes merit pay should be awarded only when entire schools improve their performance.

In interviews with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel prior to the Wisconsin primary, Clinton rejected private school choice outright, while Obama expressed some openness to private school vouchers -- if studies ever show they improve student achievement. Still, he made it clear that he's aware of the many problems with real-world voucher programs. "My view has been that you are not going to generate the supply of high-quality schools to meet the demand,” Obama said. “Instead, what you’re going to get is a few schools that cream the kids that are easiest to teach." That describes almost perfectly the problems with the Utah voucher proposal that voters in that state rejected last November.

Indeed, it's long been my view that the more promising school choice is public school choice.

What about NCLB? Both Obama and Clinton are critical of the bill and want to expand the way it assesses students' progress to include measures such as Advanced Placement exams, graduation rates, and student portfolios. There have been some tonal distinctions in the way the candidates talk about the law, with Obama speaking about it being an unfunded mandate, while Clinton focuses more on the problems of NCLB's testing requirements, in which each state is allowed to craft its own standards, some of which are pitifully low.

Both Obama and Clinton want to move toward universal pre-school, though Clinton has signaled more of a commitment to attacking the issue at the federal level. On teacher education, Obama is more aggressive; he would like to provide full college scholarships for students who agree to teach for four years, and has said there should be a national teacher certification exam.

On education, a Democratic president will have a host of Congressional and union pressures on them. So make of these subtle distinctions what you will.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

Cash for Grades?

Growing up in a diverse, middle-class suburb, I used to marvel at parents I knew who paid their kids for grades. You know, $25 for an A, $10 for a B, and so on. My parents weren't the type to look over my homework every night or demand I hand over each graded assignment for examination. When I brought home mediocre grades in math and French, they simply encouraged me to keep working, and when I did well in English and social studies, they said they were proud. The message in my house was clear: Education is its own reward, and you're only hurting yourself if you perform to less than your full ability. No cash incentives were involved.

Looking back as an adult, however, I'm not so quick to judge. I've seen the frustration of parents whose kids suffer from ADHD or other learning disabilities that make studying an uphill climb, or whose kids simply don't love reading, writing, and arithmetic. Those parents understandably look for extra ways to motivate their children to learn and succeed. Of course, not all parents have equal amounts of time and money to devote to educational extras. And sadly, not every child grows up absorbing pro-education messages or seeing up close the results of academic success. So despite my gut reaction against some of the new programs in New York City, Baltimore, and Atlanta that pay students for high grades and test scores, I'm willing to give them a second look.

Education Week reports that some initial research on those programs is positive:

A recent study by C. Kirabo Jackson, a professor of labor economics at Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., found that a Texas program that pays students in disadvantaged public schools for passing Advanced Placement exams has been accompanied by increased participation in AP classes and higher scores on the exams. ("Tying Cash Awards to AP-Exam Scores Seen as Paying Off," Jan. 16, 2008.)

But Mr. Jackson isn’t so sure that the promise of cash is solely responsible for the increase.

“[It’s] more that there’s a cultural change in the school on the part of the teachers and the students,” he said. “Teachers have a more inclusive attitude towards AP tests, and students are more likely to take them.”

The question then becomes how schools can change their culture regarding achievement without depending on a reward structure that may not be sustainable, or that sends mixed messages about the value of learning. One answer is upending stereotypes about what types of kids are "prepared" or "motivated" enough to succeed in advanced classes. Students won't take the plunge into a tougher course if they haven't gotten the message that advanced classes are for kids like them. Many low-income and non-white kids are actively dissuaded from challenging themselves by adults at school, and don't have someone at home pushing back. In the short term, cash incentives can give a shock to a school's culture by turning these kids into their own best advocates; if they need or want the money bad enough, they'll push to take the class and succeed in it. In that way, cash incentives make school more like life.

But the problem is much deeper than these cash-for-grades programs can fix. I'll end with this quote from Damian Gillepsie, a high school senior in my home town of Ossining, New York, who participates in a group called Project Earthquake, which provides educational and personal support for African American boys:

When you, a black student, walk into class, they say, ‘It's great if he gets a B.' But if the white student gets a B, it's, ‘You could do better, you gotta do better, don't settle for less.' That's what Earthquake is trying to do. We're trying to say to the black community, ‘don't just settle.'"

Money is one way to do that. But one-on-one and group counseling are others -- and they cost more than giving kids pocket change for better scores.

cross-posted at TAPPED