Edu Commentary

Sac Bee says bravo to the school finance settlement in California. Also on the equity issue, in Ed Week New York finance litigator Michael Rebell lays out the case for why adequacy suits matter. The Salt Lake Tribune is going to follow a kindergarten class all year. And, action on pay-for-performance in Delaware. Local coverage here.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Remember Lisa Whelchel? She was Blair on “The Facts of Life” and the object of many an adolescent crush (though Edu Commentary was always partial to Jo). Well, she’s back in the public eye as an advocate for “hot saucing.” Hot saucing is a bizarre form of discipline for kids involving applying hot sauces to their tongues as punishment (obviously, Louisiana parents will have to think of something else…).

For a lot of people, like these Washington Post readers (and Edu Commentary), hot saucing leaves a bitter taste. But, if this is the new craze it could be great news for these folks…

No word on whether Tootie, Natalie, or Jo are also big on hot saucing. Let’s hope not.

Don’t miss Jay Mathew’s long and boffo feature look at KIPP schools in today’s Washington Post Style section. It has history, status quo, and great anecdotes. Too many must-read bits in here to pull them all out.

Mathews writes that there is no organized opposition to KIPP. Presumably that was written before the events of the last week. Broadsides like the NYT’s don’t differentiate high and low-performing charter schools but simply indict them all.

Also, in his online column, Mathews looks at math instruction.

Two SC professors have been fired for refusing to assign grades based on effort rather than merit. Chronicle of Higher Ed on this, too, here ($). This has all the ingredients to make some news.

Atlanta Journal Constitution weighs-in on the charter flap and Phil Andrews notes that charters are doing pretty well in magnolia country. Also, good news from Florida and Wisconsin (from John Witte who is certainly not a Kool-Aid drinking choicenik…). Here’s Witte:

“…the editorial board of the New York Times was incautious and reckless when interpreting the report’s findings on the August 18th editorial page. The AFT’s report does not show many statistically significant findings, nor does the report’s text claim to. Instead, when one considers two major educational factors, race of students and their families’ income, the AFT’s simple tables report that public charter school students do not achieve differently than similar traditional public school students.”

And, The Times clarifies the charter school story here. The Washington Times…Meanwhile, EIA’s Antonucci says all this is good news.

A Pennsylvania court has rejected a No Child Left Behind (NCLB) lawsuit there. This suit, which was not just a knee-jerk reaction against NCLB, alleged that the state had not done enough to help school districts meet the requirements of the law. Appeal coming. Decision here (pdf). More from NSBA’s legal department here.

In Japan, a Northwestern trained researcher is having a big impact on education policy decisions there.

Good news from the U.K.

On the left you’ll find a link to Scotusblog, a terrific resource for anyone following Supreme Court activities and appeals. The new Washington Monthly includes an article about whiz lawyer Tommy Goldstein who, along with his wife Amy Howe, are the Goldstein and Howe that produces Scotusblog. It’s quite a story (and quite a blog).

School is starting for Hip Teacher, fun to keep up with this.

Still no accountability for last week’s hatchet job on charter schools. The apparent strategy is either “dig in heels” or “ignore.” Sunday’s Week in Review reiterated the findings with no additional context, and today’s paper includes only a short letter from NCES Commissioner Robert Lerner.

Inside Baseball Afterthought: A big goal of the reorganization of the Department of Education’s research operation in 2002 was trying to separate educational research from politics. The fact that the political folks at the Department of Education were blindsided by the revelation that NCES was working on its own analysis of the NAEP charter school data seems like evidence the new system is actually working…

Still, the Bushies should have known about the NYT story and been more proactively ready to deal with it. Even Edu Commentary in the backwoods of Alaska with no Internet knew it was coming!

Update: A new blog, Miscellaneous Objections, written by Ryan Sager an editorial writer for the NY Post, has a lot more on the charter flap.

Writing on National Review Online Ronald Kessler offers education as one reason why many common perceptions about President Bush are wrong (full disclosure, Edu Commentary has not read Kessler’s book, just this essay). Kessler notes Bush’s reading efforts in Texas and as President as evidence.

As far as it goes, it seems like Kessler is right. Edu Commentary does not doubt that Bush (a) cares a great deal about the reading issue and (b) has sought to advance policies to improve reading instruction during his time in public life.

Yet Bush’s concern about education is weak evidence to counter the perceptions of him as incurious and staff-driven. For starters, despite his concern about education, his administration has done a remarkably ham-handed job of policy implementation. And, even if Bush is intellectually curious about education (as many people Edu Commentary respects argue he is) that’s not evidence that he’s eager to learn as much as he can about a host of other pressing issues. In fact, it makes his apparent unwillingness to all the more troublesome.

As part of a $143 million settlement in a price-fixing dispute between several large music companies and 43 state governments, the record companies were required to donate $76 million in CDs to school districts and libraries. But Rolling Stone reports in its August 5th issue that rather than give top-shelf stuff, many of the labels are dumping.

For instance, according to Rolling Stone, one librarian was happy to get some Johnny Cash and Herbie Hancock but perplexed about what to do with sixty copies of Jessica Simpson’s “Irresistible” (which is actually quite resistible). Likewise, the Puget Sound Education Service District got 25,600 CDs but they included 609 copies of Michael Bolton’s “Timeless: The Classics” as well as 1,355 copies of Whitney Houston singing the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Nice bit of corporate responsibility. Besides, 600 Michael Bolton CD’s? Seems sure to drive drop-out rates absolutely through the roof…

Bonus Paranoia Afterthought! But wait! Isn’t raising dropout rates to create cheap labor what corporate types are all about anyway? Uh Oh! The Bolton gambit is devilishly clever…

First ones are in here. None are particuarly illuminating. And, not one mentions the crux of the issue; the results the New York Times trumpeted were not significant when race was considered and in several other instances, too. That minor clarification is surely coming any day though…

Possible silver lining: They’re all straight from talking points letters so perhaps average people don’t care about this anyway…

Is statistics a multiple intelligence?

John Merrow takes an interesting look at St. Louis for The News Hour. Transcript and video here.

If you’re following the AFT-NYT charter school flap this Gadfly op-ed by Chester Finn is a must-read for background on the story. Finn also seems to be a member of the (ever-growing) don’t mistake ineptness for nefarioiusness school of thought! Gadfly also highlights a case of poor charter authorizing and makes an important pitch for quality. Also, DC Educationblog apparently didn’t get the memo that charters are bad, because he’s touting a new charter initiative in Washington…(he has a bunch about the new DC sup’t too).

Hippies, enjoy an NYT Flashback here.

NCES has a new data tool for comparing school district spending. Quick! Analyze before they bury the data!

Chronicle of Higher Education’s Glenn writes up an interesting new study about institutional factors affecting college graduation rates. Well worth reading.

Paul Hill writes that it’s time to expand our idea of what a school is and expand ways of funding them. Mathew Yglesias says sweeten the pot of federal education aid…and link it to something that states really give a damn about!

If this account is accurate, it is really awful and deserves more attention. It seems ready-made for some shout show on cable or a more serious treatment.

Charles Conrad, who was the executive director of OCRE (Organizations Concerned About Rural Education) passed away August, 14. This Wash. Post obit has some highlights, WWII service including Iwo Jima, active in politics in North Dakota, and running OCRE. It doesn’t, however, mention one other very important thing: He was a class act.

By the way, Tuesday was not the first time The New York Times bought hook, line, and sinker into an education study and trumpeted it on the front page only to discover big problems. For instance, in 2002 a breathless headline and story announced a major new study on high stakes testing. That study was later discredited when the data was reanalyzed using proper statistical methods. This subsequent NYT story tried to clear up the problem.

The two episodes have something in common. In both cases the body of research evidence is mixed. Nonetheless, in both The Times chose to present one-side as definitive and apparently did not evaluate the studies in question.

2002 high-stakes testing lede:

Rigorous testing that decides whether students graduate, teachers win bonuses and schools are shuttered, an approach already in place in more than half the nation, does little to improve achievement and may actually worsen academic performance and dropout rates, according to the largest study ever on the issue.

Tuesday’s charter school story lede:

The first national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and regular public schools shows charter school students often doing worse than comparable students in regular public schools.

The findings, buried in mountains of data the Education Department released without public announcement, dealt a blow to supporters of the charter school movement, including the Bush administration.

Oh yeah, one other commonality: The high stakes testing “study” was commissioned by the NEA…