Edu Commentary

The Williams adequacy case in California appears headed for a resolution with an agreement between Gov. Schwarzenegger and the plaintiffs to spend roughly $1 billion more on about 2,400, relatively low performing schools in the state. (See Sara’s post below) There’s little doubt that the schools involved in the lawsuit and many more are substandard. But it’s less clear that money alone will fix them. I spent many days at one of the schools named in the lawsuit—Fremont High School in South Los Angeles. Teachers and even administrators at the school told me, explicitly, without my asking, that the issue wasn’t that they didn’t have enough money. Indeed, the school had stacks of textbooks that had never been used, mostly because studnets couldn’t read them. In classes in which teachers used textbooks students had a copy for their use at home. Another set of books was made available in the classroom. Tens of thousands of dollars had been spent on high security fences. Yet, new batches of computers disappeared before they could be used because the windows on the building where they were installed had not been made secure. Money may certainly help low-performing schools and the physical environment must be conducive to learning. But so must the “learning” environment. Without clear expectations for teaching, and effective management, the money will disappear, like the computers, without a trace. We already know this. Fremont and many other schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District were already receiving extra funds from the settlement of a previous case, known as Rodriguez. At Fremont, what that meant was that teachers received several thousand dollars each year to buy extra supplies or books. They also received a stipend for working in a high-need school. Teachers told me the materials they ordered took months to arrive. The stipend was supposed to compensate them for working harder to stay in contact with parents, through calls or visits after schools. But despite the administration’s beseeching, many of them were too demoralized to do that. Another hefty dose of money had come from state legislation that doled out money to the lowest-performing schools in state. A small group of teachers loyal to the principal decided how to spend the money, cobbling together a last minute wish list. The school also had received extra federal money because it had long been on a state list of poorly performing schools. But that money had gotten caught up in a dispute of some sort and had gone to buy materials and training teachers for a reading program that was never put to use. Since then, the school has gotten a new principal and some of the faculty members who were most resistant have been moved. Still, it’s possible the new money will make a difference at Fremont and elsewhere. The point to remember, though, is that it’s not automatic. It will take strong leadership and management and oversight and a focused instructional plan, as well as more money, to make a difference.

A story by Greg Toppo of USA Today reports on the national push to get more kids to take algebra. ”The average person is going to have to be able to think through things pretty clearly, and a strong argument could be made that the rigors of algebra help,” says Lynn Arthur Steen, a math professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., and editor of the 2001 book Mathematics and Democracy. Debate continues on how to teach algebra so that the subject is not diluted to useless activities just to make it more “accessible.” That’s a challenge, a big one. Many middle-schoolers have not yet mastered basic calculation let alone problem-solving and have little number sense or capacity for mental math. Also, many middle school teachers took little math themselves beyond arithmetic. Another roadblock is that not all educators even agree that teaching all students algebra makes sense. Some schools have chosen to put so much emphasis on reading and writing that math takes a back seat in the earlier grades. Plus, some folks still adhere to the idea that there’s two kinds of people in the world–those who “get” math and those who don’t. Here’s a quote from Nel Noddings, the prominent theorist whose most recent book is called Education and Happiness and who thinks it’s wrong to ask those not interested or talented in math to learn algebra. “I have come to suspect that teaching everyone algebra and geometry is both wasteful and inconsiderate. The effort required from teachers wastes energy that could be spent on those interested and talented in mathematics. Worse, it wastes a multiplicity of nonmathematical talents that could be nurtured if we were not so insistent on mathematics for everyone. It also frightens people and makes them doubt their own competence.” She says schools would do better to teach kids to be good parents, to “teach them about love,” and to teach them to be homemakers, because those are more likely to be universal aspects of adults’ lives than is algebra.

Fortunately, there are other voices, such as Hyman Bass of the University of Michigan, who makes a strong argument that math is as important as reading and writing. At a session at the AERA meeting in San Diego last spring, he said the fact that math is learned unequally has to do with the quality of schooling and teaching, not the presence or lack of some math gene. “Suppose someone said that reading and writing are unequally achieved, and that some groups cannot read or write as well as others, and so therefore insisting on reading and writing is discriminatory?” That, of course, would be unthinkable and inequitable.

Ed Week reports on a variety of proposals being floated that put more specifics on calls to “reform” or “fix” No Child Left Behind. Some parts of the proposals–like finding ways to incorporate value-added information into AYP–aren’t necessarily bad (though the do skirt some of the technical issues involved here). Others, like ditching disaggregated accountability, would allow schools to continue to leave poor and minority children behind. Overall, the discussion around these issues seems to be afflicted with a severe case of amnesia. Lots of people are calling for giving states more flexibility, particularly around AYP. But that’s basically what the status quo was before NCLB (remember, AYP and school improvement pre-date NCLB from the 1994 ESEA reauthorization), and those who paid attention to how the states used flexibility then (for example, the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights) are justified in being skeptical as to how poor and minority kids would be served under a looser AYP definition.

Lots going on in California this week: There’s still plenty of blowback on a variety of efficiency proposals from the Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California Performance Review, including replacing county school districts, eliminating the community college board of governors, and changing kindergarten eligibilty rules to prevent children who have not yet turned 5 from enrolling in kindergarten. As a Sacramento Bee editorial points out, there’s a case to be made for the latter proposal, but only if the state implements high-quality preschool access for children who aren’t ready to enter kindergarten — an area in which California falls woefully short and which is costly to address.

California also appears to have reached a settlement in the long-running Williams vs. California school finance suit brought by the ACLU, MALDEF and other groups there. The proposed settlement would devote $1 billion over several years to construction and repairs for some 2,400 schools and institute a process for parents and students to bring complaints about school conditions, as well as monitoring issues including textbooks and teacher quality. You can read more here, here, and here.

The Mercury News also weighs in on the California Charter Academy story. Their take: growing and strengthening California’s charter schools requires more self-policing and accountability on the part of the charter school community to shut down or improve low-performing charter schools. Again, does this sound familiar?

Speaking of charter accountability, if Californians are looking for a good model, they ought to check out Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson’s charter authorizing operation. Peterson is the only mayor in the country with authority to authorize charters, and his system has been recognized for both is strong safeguards to ensure quality in charter applicants, and candid reporting and accountability on how existing schools are doing. Now, in an unprecedented move, a school district neighboring Indianapolis has asked the Mayor to take over authorizing a charter school in that district. This seems like a wise move on the district’s part to realize it didn’t have the resources to effectively oversee charter schools, and turning to a proven authorizer is a creative solution that other states and localities might look into to address similar concerns.

A new study sheds doubts on the impact of Maine’s popular laptop program. Number 2 Pencil also weighs in on this.

Despite worries that there wouldn’t be enough transfer slots, DC reports few students are signing up to switch to better performing schools under NCLB, in part because there aren’t really any better performing high schools or middle schools for older students to transfer to. Interdistrict choice for DC anyone?

Well, at least it looks like DC might finally get a new superintendent. But fixing DC’s schools will take more than just a new leader.

The New Republic’s Adam Kushner comes out in support of legacy admissions.

The National AFT has affirmed a highly contested Chicago Federation of Teachers election, ruling that Marilyn Stewart did fairly unseat incumbent Deborah Lynch, who had refused to hand over the office alleging election irregulaties rendered the vote invalid.

This weekend’s Washington Post magazine took an interesting look at military recruiters working to attract high school students to the armed forces post-graduation. NCLB requires that schools provide access to military recruiters, an issue that’s become contentious in some communities.

Also in this Sunday’s Washington Post, John Merrow considers the DC superintendent search.

More school finance action in Texas courts and the Massachusetts legislature.

A federal court has ruled that Americorps members can work as teachers in parochial schools, but only if Americorps puts in place new (potentially burdensome) monitoring procedures to ensure that Americorps supported teachers aren’t delivering religious instruction. More than 500 Americorps volunteers now teach in sectarian schools. Americorps, which now requires volunteers to certify only that they haven’t provided religious teaching during time counted to their service obligations, is expected to appeal.

A Lexington Herald-Leader article inexplicably criticizes NCLB for holding schools — rather than parents — responsible for student learning, while ignoring that the achievement and teacher quality data NCLB generates actually make it possible for parents to play a more informed and active role in their children’s education. (Check out this book for more ideas on how parents can use data and make good, informed decisions about their children’s schools.)

Ironically, President Bush announced support for ending “legacy” admissions at elite universities. Hmmmm, didn’t John Edwards champion that idea in the primaries?

Finally, just in time for back to school shopping, the Arizona Republic takes and interesting look at students’ fashion choices, while this article looks at the big business side of back to school retail. And, for those deliberating over first day of school attire, this game is cute.

A battle is shaping up between the teachers union and the school district in Philly. The Philadelphia union is known to be a tough adversary that bargains hard in its members’ interests. That is hardly surprising and should be admired and even applauded. That is, after all, what a union is supposed to do. One of the points of contention in the current negotiations is that the district is proposing that the union members pay part of the cost of their health insurance premium. The union also is outraged that the district wants to abolish seniority rights that let experienced teachers decide where they’ll work. According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the union leaders believe the district’s proposal violates their “most fundamental rights.” The striking thing about the union’s reaction to the district proposal is how oblivious the leadership seems to be to the situation of most Americans. How many American workers contribute nothing toward the cost of their health insurance? How many workers are able to decide what their work assignment will be, without bowing to the wishes of their superiors or the need of the enterprise to decide how best to make use of their talents? Meanwhile, of course, the rising costs of health benefits are eating up greater and greater shares of local budgets. And there is a growing consensus that poor children and those in greatest need academically are routinely taught by the least experienced, least able teachers.

Fine story in the Orlando Sentinel, examining the effect of poverty on kids’ academic achievement. Richard Rothstein’s new book, Class and Schools examines this link in detail. Accepting that poverty matters, however, shouldn’t let schools off the hook or be used to justify low expectations, poor teaching, weak discipline or substandard conditions. Indeed, the schools serving poor children have to be better in every way than even those serving the middle class and the affluent. Rothstein argues, however, that school reform alone, no matter how robust, cannot close the achievement gap. He calls for efforts to raise wages, stabilize housing, establish school clinics, set up pre-k programs and offer after school and summer programs. The pricetag would be $156 billion annually, a figure he acknowledges is probably not politically viable.

Rudy Crew seems to be off to a fast start in Miami, laying out his plans for a uniform curriculum and other measures to the Miami-Dade County principals. According to a report on the meeting in the Miami Herald, Crew frequently invoked nautical metaphors and said, essentially, that those who are not on board should voluntarily walk a gang plank. “Save yourself the embarrassment and save me the trouble,” he asked them. “You’re going to be good or you’re going to be gone.” He also told them not to expect any more money with which to do the job.

More trouble in DC: Not only are there too few spaces in well-performing schools (and simply too few DC schools that aren’t low-performing) to provide transfer options for all students entitled to transfer to better performing schools under NCLB. Today, the Washington Post reports that the district doesn’t have enough money to provide suplemental services tutoring for all eligible students who have requested it, either. This is particularly problematic because district officials had planned to use supplemental services to address the lack of transfer options at the middle and high school levels. Clearly, the candidates for DC superintendent have their work cut out for them.

Texas education officials have removed the Houston school district from probationary status it’s been in for nearly a year since revelations surfaced that drop-out rates for the district’s schools had been dramatically underreported.

Also in Texas, school finance issues the legislature couldn’t resolve last session are headed to court.

And the New York Daily News weighs in on how judges handling the New York school finance adequacy case should resolve those issues.

Recent Claifornia legislation bars school districts from authorizing charter schools outside their boundaries. Although some districts clearly were abusing the practice and the state charter school association agrees stronger authorizing is needed, the new rules could jeopardize the existence of some good charter schools, too, particularly those located in districts hostile to charters. Sounds like California needs some strong new alternate authorizers. Hmmm, wonder where we’ve heard that idea before?

And a new NCES study says there are now 1.1 million homeschooled students in the United States.

The question of whether we spend enough on education in this country never seems to go away. And it’s been even more in the news since John Kerry promised $200 billion more for education over the next 10 years (including $50 billion to help pay for college.) Although that seems like a large figure, it would be but a fraction of the $8 trillion that will be spent on education during the next decade, even without any additional money. That’s right, the latest U.S. Department of Education figures, being used by the Bush campaign to show how fast spending has risen, show that during the 2003-04 year, American public schools spent $501 billion from all sources. (Higher ed costs another $300 billion a year)

Spending has doubled since 1990. Of course, the costs of special education, enrollment growth, inflation and school construction have eaten up a lot of that increase. It’s also interesting to note that the source of the money has shifted, with the federal and local share rising and the state share of spending falling from 43% of the total to 36% during that period. The clamor from educators over spending cuts, and complaints that the federal government isn’t kicking in enough to pay for No Child Left Behind, seem to stem from a recession-related drop in state spending. Last year, for example, the 50 states spent about the same on K-12 education as they did four years earlier. Local dollars, generated by property taxes, and, to a lesser extent, federal aid, more than made up for the losses, however. (See the recent report of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government for a state-by-state breakdown of local and state spending in recent years.)

The public seems to be of two minds about education spending. Although the public thinks more spending is necessary, it also believes that schools are wasteful of much of what they already have. The libertarian Cato Institute, not surprisingly, agrees. Their argument that the feds ought not to fund education at all, however, is off point and would be unpopular. A poll done for the Educational Testing Service by Peter Hart and the late Robert Teeter found that two-thirds of Americans also think more affluent areas should be tapped financially to help solve problems in schools serving the less fortunate—but first they want to know the money will be well-used. The poll also found that Americans resist hard choices when it comes to education spending. When you have districts in affluent areas surrounding New York City spending $20,000 or even more per pupil, with most of that coming from local property taxes that residents vote on, it’s clear some parents (and property owners) think that the more money spent on schools the better. But the fact that some districts want to spend that much shouldn’t set the bar for what constitutes a good education. Boxer Mike Tyson threw away a lot of money, too, without having much to show for it. That doesn’t mean everyone needs tens of millions of dollars and big houses, fast cars and strands of jewels to get by.

On the other hand, it seems to me simplistic to argue, as the Wall Street Journal editorial page did recently, that just because test scores haven’t gone up as a result of spending increases that money is not important or that all of it is being wasted. The increases in spending are not equally distributed. The needs of students are changing, as are social conditions. Also, NCLB asks schools to do something they simply haven’t done before–address the needs of all kids. Even Susan B. Neuman, the former Bush Administration assistant secretary of education, agrees that requires more money. She told the International Reading Association that to say all kids should achieve but not to give them the resources to do so constitutes “a fantasy.” But money is just one resource and some schools use it better than others. And, as University of Southern California professor Larry Picus points out, (Where Does the Money Go? Resource Allocation in Elementary and Secondary Schools, Corwin Press, Lawrence O Picus and James L. Wattenbarger, editors) we don’t have good ways of tracking spending into classrooms to see how it affects students and their learning. Yet, that is the key question. Is the additional spending changing how teachers interact with students around an important body of knowledge? Just having the same teachers teach the same low-level curriculum, yet earn a higher salary for it, does not change that equation. Nor does offering higher entry level salaries, if the recruitment mechanism and hiring standards are exactly the same as before. That’s why it’s welcome news that Mr. Kerry is calling for “new pay systems that reward teachers who excel at improving student achievement.”

Have you ever had that experience of learning a new word and then, like magic, seeing that word everywhere? I was struck by that thought in relation to an idea, not a word, when reading the guest op-ed column in Sunday’s New York Times by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Gates, of course, is the well-known author and W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. (Full disclosure: he’s also a member of the Board of Advisers of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media) Gates’ column explored what he called the “silence” of black leaders about what he said are actually widely held sentiments in the black community—the importance of good parenting, hard work, academic achievement and responsible choices. His comments took off from the powerful ideas of the rising political star and Illinois senatorial candidate Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention. Gates also referenced what he called the “huge flap” over Bill Cosby’s remarks in the spring that emphasized the importance of personal responsibility and working hard in school. (See letters on Gates’ column in NYTimes of Aug. 5th.)

But it would help if educators reinforced that perspective by having the same high expectations for African American kids (and poor kids and Latino kids and immigrant kids) as their elders do. A column in the Baltimore Sun on Tuesday (Aug. 3) focused on Maryland state Delegate Tony E. Fulton, who spoke of the expectations of his father, a railroad cook, that his son would get a good education. “We’re committing educational fraud in this town,” Fulton said, referring to news that one of Baltimore’s high schools had graduated students who hadn’t taken required courses. “If they looked at other schools, I bet they’d find the same thing happening. Every year, I try to get a bill passed in the legislature to stop the social promotion of kids, and it never gets anywhere. It’s been going on for years. We promote kids who can’t read and write, and won’t be able to compete in the world. Why would we do such a thing?” As Sam Freedman points out in his column in today’s (Aug. 4) New York Times, many education activists have railed against the Bloomberg Administration’s crackdown on social promotion. Freedman visited a summer academy for third graders with low test scores who are in danger of being held back, to see how the catch-up effort was proceeding. Rather than express anger, the parents Freedman spoke to expressed gratitude for the extra help and emphasized the need for their children to work hard if they’re going to get ahead. I remember hearing similar sentiments from black parents in South Los Angeles and Pasadena who sent their kids to private, after-school tutoring sessions to study SAT vocabulary. While they told their kids they had to work hard in school, the kids quickly figured out that they could get by (and get good grades) without even trying, just by showing up.

It’s not only newspapers where these ideas crop up. I’ve been reading the novels of Washington, D.C.-based crime writer George Pelecanos. The books are violent and graphic, depicting a horrible, revenge-driven, social underworld. But one point Pelecanos makes in every book is that the D.C. public schools are failing their communities. I’m now reading Walter Mosley’s newest, Little Scarlet, which takes place around the time of the Watts riots in 1965. As in many of his previous books, Mosley insists on the importance of education, even as he explores the evolving racial attitudes of Los Angeles. Mosley’s central character is Easy Rawlins, a philosopher-detective-apartment building owner who also works as a building supervisor in a Los Angeles middle school. Rawlins’ adopted son, Jesus, dropped out of school, in part, he says, because his teachers didn’t think a Mexican kid was worthy of their attention and left him to do little more than warm a seat. Rawlins has a younger daughter (also adopted) who reads aloud to him from her school books in the evenings when Rawlins is not out on the street fixing peoples’ problems. In this fictional world, Rawlins is doing what a lot of parents do in the real world, trying to hold his family together by working two or three jobs. And, like flesh-and-blood parents, he’s also trying to help his kids do better than he did, by making sure they get an education.

The Washington Post reports on limited opportunities for students to transfer to better performing schools under No Child Left Behind. Only three of the district’s high schools — all select admission magnet schools — and two middle schools are eligble to accept transfers. A limited number of elementary students — with priority to those struggling the most — will be able to transfer. Sounds like a good case for building the supply of high performing schools

Also in the Post, Jay Mathews highlights Eileen Gail Kugler’s book, Debunking the Middle-Class Myth: Why Diverse Schools Are Good For All Kids, and rebuts 7 myths about diverse schools. Although Kugler’s title seems antagonistic to “middle class” schools, her key contention — that diverse schools benefit middle class white kids as well as disadvantaged and minority students — seems to butress the arguments Rick Kahlenberg makes in his book, All Together Now: Creating Middle Class Schools Through Public School Choice. Just because diversity might be good for kids doesn’t mean it’s easy: the Sacramento Bee reports on Elk Grove, CA, school district’s efforts to build better relations between diverse student groups.

New state test results are released in Colorado.

And more homeschooling controversy is breaking out in Pennsylvania.

Instead of spending time at the beach, luxuriating by the pool or driving up gas prices by tooling around the nation in a giant RV, the governing boards of the St. Louis and Washington, D.C. schools are spending the summer looking for new leaders, both having lost out to Miami-Dade County in the competition to land Rudy Crew. Now that D.C. has identified four finalists, who were said by a committee member to be the cream of the superintendent crop, it made me wonder what school boards look for when wooing someone to fill the top job. Thomas E. Glass, a professor at the University of Memphis, conducted a nationwide survey of school board presidents a couple of years back that turned up an interesting, if troubling, answer to that question. School boards apparently want leaders who have good communication skills and are adept at interpersonal relations. Community relations is next on the list. Instructional leadership merits only an out-of-the medals rank of fourth, followed by management expertise. Given the size and complexity of large school districts and the fact that their purpose is to educate kids, it makes one wonder whether school boards have their priorities straight. Do they want nice guys and gals who are going to make them feel good and be able to soothe the egos of the activists who dominate school board meetings or do they want someone who’s going to keep the roofs from leaking, make tough choices about money and, most important, make sure kids learn to read?

More searches will begin soon. Mike Moses has announced that he’ll be departing Dallas at the end of August, toting a fat $313,000 in severance and vacation pay and nearly $200,000 in longevity pay (he stayed nearly four years) in his briefcase. Things also are looking rough for Robert Henry in Hartford, who is said to be wondering how long he can accept the school board’s micromanagement there. Anthony Amato is having a rough go of it in New Orleans. The board that hired him away from Hartford in the spring of 2003 began opposing him a year later, when he began trying to attack corruption and mismanagement. And Kenneth Burnley is resisting the call of the head of the appointed board in Detroit that he step down, vowing to stick around at least until his contract ends next summer. At least Los Angeles can say that former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer isn’t going anywhere. The board extended his contract to 2007 with board President Jose Huizar telling the Los Angeles Times that the action “brings stability to the district, which this district very much needs.” Romer has launched a $14 billion school building program and focused relentlessly on academics. Although some complain that Romer’s instructional approach is too structured and top-down, test scores have gone up significantly in the elementary and middle schools. He’s brought in math and literacy coaches and held the area superintendents within the sprawling 750,000 distict accountable for academic gains.

That’s a big contrast with St. Louis, which has an interim superintendent after another interim got the district’s financial house in some order. In a report in June, the Council of Great City Schools (which has produced honest, probing reports on several of its member districts) concluded that the district “has no instructional focus; it lacks a plan for raising student achievement; its instructional staff is poorly organized; and its sense of direction has splintered. The district is also marked by little sense of urgency for improving achievement, no accountability for results, and very low expectations for children.” If this were baseball, we’d say the new manager, whoever he or she is, will have to endure a rebuilding year. But since this situation has lasted for years and these are kids we’re talking about, kids who are having the door to their future slammed in their faces, it doesn’t seem right to be so glib. It’s hardly any wonder that Crew turned the job down. And one wonders whether the board will be able to persuade someone with the skills–yes, instructional leadership skills–and fortitude required.