Education Week 2/2/2011 issue

ESEA Renewal Could Gain Momentum, p. 1

Progress has been stalled on a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), pending since 2007.  The current version of the law is the No Child Left Behind Act, enacted in 2002.  President Obama is pushing for a more flexible version of NCLB, touting the $4 billion Race to the Top competition and recent efforts to develop common academic standards as approaches that could be incorporated into a reauthorization.  He would like to push back the goal to bring all students to proficiency on state tests to 2014, replacing this with new standards focused on getting students ready for college or for the work force.  He also wants to spend $100 million to recruit new science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teachers.

There is bipartisan agreement in a number of areas that could be included in a reauthorization.  There is a desire to modify the NCLB yardstick known as “adequate yearly progress,” which is seen as punitive and inflexible.  There is agreement that the federal government should address the needs of lowest-performing schools and promote teacher evaluation and improvement.  The focus should be broadened to other subjects besides reading and math.  And leaders in both parties want to give more control to states and districts over the strategies that are used to improve student achievement.

There have been some disagreements, however.  Republicans want to hold down spending, often do not like federal standards of any sort, and some question whether there should even be a Department of Education.  Democrats have clashed over whether test scores should be a factor in teacher evaluations and pay.  One prominent House Democrat suggested that teachers need to know how their practices affect student learning, but he acknowledged that teacher organizations will have to be involved in teacher evaluations.

[My thoughts:  Some of Obama’s comments about and goals for education, as outlined in hi s State of the Union address, are certainly laudable:  “When a child walks into a classroom, it should be a place of high expectations and high performance.”  Instead of another race or competition for limited available funding, however, I would rather see funding sufficient to foster innovation and improvement in all schools that are underperforming.  Wouldn’t it be great if we funded education fully, and required the military to hold bake sales and fundraisers to raise the money for new weapons systems?]

Wanted:  Ways to Measure Most Teachers, p. 1

A big issue in teacher evaluations is what measure or measures to use to estimate how much of an impact an individual teacher has made on student learning.  Almost a dozen states last year took steps to require teacher evaluations to include consideration of students’ academic growth.  One controversial approach measures a teacher’s “value added,” a measure that looks at the difference between students’ test scores on standardized tests at the beginning of the course and again at the end of the course.  These standardized tests are typically available on in the areas of math and reading, however, and only in grades 4-8.  According to one estimate, about 70% of teachers teach in nontested grades or subjects.  One problem with using such standardized tests to guide or evaluate teachers is that they represent a snapshot in time, a picture of where students are at, but they do not tell the teacher what needs to be done next or how to improve teaching strategies.  They measure the endpoint and not the beginning point in student learning.

In some areas throughout the country, teachers’ unions, administrators, and content-area specialists are working together to develop measures of teaching effectiveness in areas other than math or reading.  They are looking at alternative measures such as projects, portfolios (scored using guidelines), and classroom-based assessments.  In one North Carolina district, schools help teachers set rigorous achievement goals for their students and select or craft assessments to measure goal-attainment.  Performance pay in the district is based on these outcomes.  Studies have shown a correlation between rigorous learning objectives and higher performance by students.  Individually-set student learning objectives are difficult to compare with other schools, however, unlike district-wide or state-wide measures.  Several states now require multiple measures of a teacher’s contribution to student learning.  Other issues with teacher evaluations include finding ways to assess teachers of students with disabilities, and making sure that some teachers are not penalized because of the demographic makeup of their classes.

[My thoughts:  Some subjects are more amenable to standardized testing than others (math, for example), and these subjects are probably better-suited to more standardized criteria for teacher evaluation.  Other subjects have more variation in their curricula and do not have standardized tests, making comparative measurement of teacher effectiveness more difficult.  And then there are the larger questions, such as how to measure a teacher’s contribution to the development of students’ critical reasoning abilities.  I’d like to see a formula for that!]  

Educaton Week 1/26/2011 issue

Districts’ Efficiency Evaluated in Report, p.1

The Center for American Progress, a think tank that has produced a series of reports that examine government accountability and efficiency, has produced a report that evaluates the “educational efficiency” of some 9000+ school districts around the country, covering school districts with more than 250 students in all states but four (also excluding the District of Columbia).  The aim of the report is to generate discussion about how efficiently school districts are using their funding, especially as stimulus funds for education are drying up and states are having to cut back funding in all areas, including education, because of the economic downturn.  It attempts to measure “productivity” by looking at student math and reading test results compared to dollars spent.  It came up with three different measures of productivity:  (1) A “basic return on investment” measure rates school districts within a state based on how much academic achievement they get for each dollar spent (with some adjustment for more expensive students such as special ed students, free lunch-qualified students, and ELL students).  (2) An “adjusted return on investement” measure is similar to the basic measure, above, but it takes into account some additional factors that result in spending differences within a state.  (3) A “predicted” efficiency rating is even more sophisticated, attempting to gauge how much achievement a district produced compared to another district in that state that had a similar spending level and similar student demographics.

Some findings:  High-spending districts are often inefficient.  Only about one-sixth of the Florida school districts who ranked in the top third in spending were also in the top third in achievement, for example.  Also, students from disadvantaged backgrounds were more likely to be enrolled in highly inefficient districts.  Some of the more efficient school districts were spending more on teachers and less on administration, were partnering with their communities to hold down expenses (one school district shared a technology center with the town, for example), or were saving money by closing low-enrollment schools.  With a few notable exceptions, most of the efficient school districts were larger and wealthier.

The author of the report acknowledges that the research cannot account for all of the variables outside of the control of the school district and or for flaws in the database that it used.  One critic of the report pointed out that it does not adequately account for the extra resources that are needed to educate disadvantaged students.  And there was concern that the report might be used to justify cuts in funding.

[My thoughts:  Imagine two school districts with identical funding levels.  One is located in a blighted urban area and serves a high percentage of at-risk students, and the other is in an affluent suburb.  Since student achievement (test scores) is one of the two variables in the efficiency model, the first school district will most likely be “inefficient” while the second will be “efficient.”  How useful is this measure, even if you attempt to control for different student demographics?  There were few ideas offered in the article for how to control costs, on the one hand, or to increase student achievement, on the other.  The report pointed to a school district in a Kentucky coal-mining community that measured high in efficiency and was getting good academic achievement from a predominantly low-income student population, but there was no mention (at least in this article) of how that district was accomplishing this.  Identifying specific factors that contribute to efficiency (especially on the achievement side) would make this a much more valuable analysis.]

Choice Advocates See Issue Rising on Congressional Radar, p.17

The Republican takeover of the House of Representatives and the bolstering of Republican minority in the Senate may bode well for advocates of school choice, including those who favor school vouchers.  Republicans tend to me more supportive of vouchers, although their current priority is on reining in spending and cutting back programs, not creating and funding new ones.  The issue at hand is whether to reauthorize spending for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, which gives $7500 scholarships to students in low-performing schools who are from low-income families to attend higher-performing private schools.  The program expired in 2009, when an attempt to reauthorize it failed in the Senate, with Republicans in favor of reauthorization and most Democrats against it.  Senator Lieberman, who chairs a committee that oversees policy for the District of Columbia, is the major proponent of reauthorization and has been working with House Speaker John Boehner on legislation to accomplish this.  He proposes new spending that would go in equal parts to the voucher system, charter schools, and public schools in D.C.  The effort faces opposition from groups like the NEA, who are against spending on school choice when so many school districts are financially hard-pressed.

Reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind act, which has been pending since 2007, also will have to address the issue of school choice.  Currently, schools that miss NCLB achievement targets must allow students to transfer to a higher-performing public school.  The Obama administration wants to delete this provision from any NCBL reauthorization bill, but Republicans are generally in favor of it.  School choice advocates may find causes to promote in other areas as well, such as funding incentives for schools to provide online learning (which would be like changing schools but without leaving the actual building) and in voucher programs for special ed students.

[My thoughts:  I am somewhat ambivalent on the school choice issue.  On the one hand, if a school is “broken” we should fix it instead of paying students to go elsewhere.  On the other hand, if I had a son or daughter in school and the local school was a “broken” school, with no chance of being fixed any time soon, I would want my child to go to another school, preferably a well-rated public school—if one were available in the district.  If there were no good public schools in the district, I would send my child to a private school.  Would I like to receive a voucher or “scholarship” to help pay for this private schooling?  Of course.  Should public funds be used to pay for my child’s private school?  Aye, there’s the rub!]   

Education Week 1/19/2011 issue

School Restructures Student Grouping, p. 1

Palmer Park Preparatory Academy, a middle school in the troubled Detroit school system, is being used to test some innovative pilot programs that eventually could be expanded to include other schools in the system.  First, it will become a teacher-led school.  Four lead teachers are being trained to take on the budgeting and management duties usually done by an administrator.  Second, an extended day gives teachers the opportunity every afternoon to engage in “common planning,”  in addition to their regular prep periods during the day.  They use the common planning time to discuss things such as the results of their lessons, to analyze data from quarterly benchmark assessments, and to decide whether particular students are ready to be moved to another class.  Third, they are experimenting with “differentiated instruction” for students, especially  for those who have struggled to understand key concepts and who are at risk for falling behind.  Schedules are personalized for all students in the pilot program based on data culled from state, local, and classroom tests.  Students are placed into one of three classrooms for math and one of three classroom for English/language arts, depending on whether they need more intensive instruction in basic concepts or whether they are ready to move on to more in-depth instruction.  Student progress can be monitored on a weekly or even daily basis, and a student can move to another class whenever he/she is ready.  Scheduling is based on student needs, not on teacher preferences or convenience.

Differentiated instruction is not a new idea.  It is similar to the controversial concepts of “ability grouping" and “tracking.”  Critics of these concepts contend that they benefit high achievers but lead to greater educational disparities between them and the low-achieving peers.  Anecdotal evidence at this school, however, suggests that students appear to be more engaged and focused on their tasks; some have proactively asked to move on to other classes.  Although the program is so new that there is hard evidence to go on, the district will be carefully monitoring progress at the school and accumulating comparative data, including standardized test scores and other measures.  If the school shows progress, the district will consider expanding the concept to other schools.

[My thoughts:  The innovative approach being tried in this school came about because of a partnership among teachers, the local teachers’ union, the central administration, and a publisher that was hired to revamp the school’s curriculum and which provided the data to drive the differential instruction.  It may be difficult to bring together such a coalition in other school districts.  I’m not sure that I see the need for teachers to perform administrative roles, but the concept of differential instruction is intriguing to me.  It may mean longer hours and a more hectic schedule for teachers, but I see the potential of real benefits for students.  I hope that the editors will re-visit the school to see how the experiment has worked once comparative data have become available.]

 Renewed Push on ESEA Likely, p. 1

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is being pushed by the Obama administration for renewal.  The current version of the law, the No Child Left Behind Act, was passed in late 2001, touted as one of George W. Bush’s singular achievements during his presidency.  NCLB is now seen as outdated, however, and a revised version of ESEAwas put forward last year, pushed by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  The revised plan ties teacher evaluations in part to student test scores, gives states more control over how to improve student progress while calling on them to better prepare students for college or for a career, and proposes stringent programs to help those schools that are struggling the most.  Some of the administration’s K-12 priorities have already been partially realized through the $100 billion for education in the federal stimulus bill.  The $4 billion Race to the Top program, included in the stimulus bill, pushed states to adopt more uniform and rigorous standards, revise their charter school laws, and reconsider teacher tenure  and evaluation.

Prospects for the Obama administration’s revised ESEA appear to be uncertain, however.  Some of the newly-elected tea party Republicans would prefer to do away with the Department of Education and transfer decision making back to the state and local levels.  But Republican leaders share Obama’s concern with teacher quality and would be more inclined to work with the administration on a revised ESEA.  The problem has more to do with Democrats in Congress, who are divided over the proposed changes.  The NEA, which is usually a reliable ally of the Democratic Party, is highly critical of the administration’s push to link teacher evaluations and tenure decisions to student test scores.  A number of Democrats will not want to alienate the teachers unions, although others will want to support the President.  It remains to be seen whether they will be able to find common ground.

[Comment:  I am reminded of the politician who said, “I am a member of no organized political party.  I am a Democrat.”]