Edu Commentary

Today’s USA Today includes an editorial page back and forth between the ed board and John Kerry. Basically, USA Today urges Kerry to Sister Souljah the National Education Association over NCLB. But this is not quite fair because implicitly Kerry has already done just that. The paper basically acknowledges as much, writing that

Kerry bashed the law during the primaries and complains that it is underfunded, though he voted for it and says he favors the tough accountability provisions at its core. But he hasn’t campaigned for a principle advanced by Bush and rejected by the NEA, reinforcing critics’ portrait of him as a waffler.

This is wrong (and the wrong yardstick). Take, for instance, Kerry’s teacher proposals, which also run counter to NEA policy and were not warmly received there. There is also a lot of daylight between Kerry’s NCLB position and the NEA’s. Most importantly, the paper itself says Kerry’s not backing away from the core of NCLB! What’s the issue?

Kerry responds by sensibly pointing out that: (a) Since the Democratic primaries there have been some changes to NCLB and (b) NCLB is necessary but not sufficient. It seems that USA Today’s real beef is with the NEA. That’s fine, but making Kerry guilty by association isn’t fair.

Motoring…Daryl Cobranchi is still displeased with Edu Commentary’s view on the VA home-schooling law. You can read why for yourself here.

Cobranchi cites Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) to bolster the argument that the state should not regulate home-schooling noting that the SCOTUS said,

The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.

Right, but in the same decision SCOTUS also said,

No question is raised concerning the power of the state reasonably to regulate all schools, to inspect, supervise and examine them, their teachers and pupils; to require that all children of proper age attend some school, that teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition, that certain studies plainly essential to good citizenship must be taught, and that nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare.

Virginia’s law seems to fall within these broad parameters.

Daryl Cobranchi doesn’t like Edu Commentary’s views on the Virginia home-schooling debate and cites this study as evidence of the folly of requiring home-school parents to have a college degree. Problem is, the study is a voluntary sample of home-school parents so it’s hardly representative.

Cobranchi notes that the study shows that even when neither parent has a college degree home-schooled children out-perform the public school student average. Yet this statistic is interesting, but essentially meaningless. A self-selected group of home school students (whose parents are more likely to have college degrees in the first place, a key predicator of academic performance) out-perform the average for all public school students. Eye catching? Sure. Yet irrelevant to the college degree debate.

In fact, in terms of the importance of college degrees the study noted that among home school students, “children of college graduates out perform children whose parents do not have a college degree.” And remember, we’re talking about college degrees here, not having the state require teaching certificates for home-school parents (even though, interestingly, the study found that, “almost one out of every four home school students (23.6%) has at least one parent who is a certified teacher”).

Cobranchi argues that the issue is one of personal religious freedom. Fair enough, and again, Edu Commentary’s not against home schooling. But Virginia’s collegiate degree requirement includes a religious exemption (keeping it on the right side of SCOTUS rulings in this area) and has some other loopholes that hardly seem unreasonable in light of the complexity of the content students need to master. In fact, the law is sufficiently accommodating now that it’s hard not to speculate that proponents of the bill Virginia Governor Warner vetoed were less interested in “improving” the current policy than scoring political points with key constituencies.

NY Daily News reports that First Daughter Jenna Bush wants to teach at a charter school in New York. Long hours though, surely gonna conflict with happy hour…

Black and Hispanic students leave high school, on average, four grade levels behind white students. This is on top of an average 50 percent dropout rate for minorities. Yet these people think it’s hilarious!

In the NYT another Freedman gem. He writes about Latino displeasure with bilingual education programs in New York. A counterintuitive story that doesn’t get enough attention. Public Agenda looked at this a few years back, too. Two thoughts: (A) Al Shanker understood this and (B) This is a classic case of interest-group disconnect.

Speaking of Shanker, in the Wash Post Jay Mathews writes up Sandy Feldman’s impending retirement from the AFT. This is very important on a couple of levels.

New incentives for National Board Certified Teachers in PA. Would be nice if they were targeted to help poor communities.

Good news from the Arthur Academy, a public charter school in Oregon. Impressive results and plans for replication. But remember, despite this, it’s very important that people organize to make sure schools like this can’t open…

This letter looks like another constituency realizes that NCLB provides real leverage for under-served groups…

Ed Week readers, including former governors Barnes and Hunt, weigh in on all sorts of stuff (some serious and some silly) here (reg). And, Ed Week’s Keller writes up the NEA’s convention. Some interesting nuggets buried in here.

LA Times readers weigh in on Riordan-gate.

Joanne Jacobs offers one more reason to be suspicious of the French!

Still can’t get enough TFA? Jay Mathews weighs in here. It’s funny though, when NBPTS teachers turn in incremental gains relative to their peers people shout hallelujah to the rafters. When TFA teachers do the same thing (even compared to veteran and certified teachers)…mostly silence…

Edu Commentary is in Orlando for the ECS conference this week. Great program this year and — U.S. Department of Education take note –- really killer tote bags. Most definitely not man purses.

NYT’s Arenson reports on serious grading mistakes on the Praxis that caused about 4,000 people to wrongly “fail” the test. Of course, considering the rigor of the Praxis you would have thought that the high failure rate would have raised red-flags before now…

Update: Number Two Pencil has more (and knows a thing or two about ETS…)

For new board members in Buffalo, it’s payback time for all that teachers union help in the election. This works out well for everyone…except the kids…

Kaus weighs in on Riordan. But he blames the victim! No, not the kid…the hapless state assemblyman who waded into the middle of this.

Last week’s musing on the five (plus two more) underreported education stories generated a lot of interesting emails as well as posts elsewhere. President Clinton liked to say that every problem is being solved somewhere around this country and, as it turns out, every story is likely being written somewhere — especially on a blog somewhere. But, just because it’s been written once or somewhere does not mean the issue is getting the sustained attention it merits.

Number 2 Pencil took issue with Edu Commentary’s assertion that President Bush’s mishandling of NCLB is not getting the attention it deserves. She pointed to the slew of stories about NCLB and assumed Edu Commentary was kidding. Perhaps this wasn’t clear. The stories are mostly about interest group ginned up resistance to NCLB. Interest group angst is an old — if too often misunderstood — story. Any reform with broad benefits to the public or a broad class of citizens (in this case poor youngsters) but burdens on selected constituencies is bound to spark the sort of resistance that NCLB is facing. That same dynamic is why it’s hard to reform agriculture subsidies, drug costs, and a host of other policies with strong special interest backing. Education is no different; people just like to think it is.

President Bush is, obviously, not to blame for this dynamic. However, it was pretty clear that this was going to happen and he is culpable for (a) failing to plan for it through an aggressive public information campaign and (b) making several key implementation blunders that only served to fuel the fire rather than help tamp it out. This article has more on all that. Examination of these issues — rather than tired back and forth about funding or the law itself — is sorely needed, especially considering the President is campaigning on “leadership.”

James Metzger writes in Sunday’s Washington Post that Virginia Governor Mark Warner was wrong to veto a Virginia bill that would have allowed a parent without a college degree to home-school their children (current law already includes a religious exemption for parents lacking a degree who wish to home-school for faith-based reasons).

Metzger would be on firmer ground if he didn’t have to resort to an exceptional anecdote about Benjamin Carson to make his case or absurd examples of regulations the state might put on home-schoolers. He might have mentioned, too, that home-schoolers do well in the national spelling bee, but that’s not any more relevant. The plural of anecdote isn’t data.

Edu Commentary’s not opposed to home-schooling (and knows several families doing a phenomenal job at it) but some commonsensical regulations are important. Virginia’s current policy towards college degrees makes a lot of sense, particularly considering the lack of data about this issue. Not only was Warner right, but more states should follow Virginia’s lead and ensure that there is sufficient regulation of home-schooling.

Afterthought: Home-school advocates promoting this bill inappropriately conflate the college degree requirement with current teacher certification policies. They’re right that teacher certification isn’t a good proxy for effectiveness. (That’s so obvious you don’t even need a college degree to make that point! Sorry, couldn’t resist…) But certification is not relevant to this debate about college degrees either.

NCLB is helping with equity lawsuits, say the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund.

But in MA it’s leading to uninformed hysteria. Via Educationnews.org.

In the CSM, Hoover’s Evers and Walberg say bring on accountability.

More Riordan news and the LA Times ed board turns up the heat. They say: Show Riordan the door. Not a lot of ambiguity there…

In Florida, Governor Bush vetoed a proposal for universal pre-K for four-year olds there. The Trust for Early Education says he was right to do so. Trust executive director Libby Doggett:

“I wish to commend Florida governor Jeb Bush’s courageous veto of HB 821. While the legislation would have provided pre-kindergarten for all Florida’s four-year-olds, it didn’t include the quality standards necessary to ensure all children enter school ready to succeed.

Governor Bush’s veto sends a resounding message to the children of his state, their parents, and elected officials: The promise made to Florida’s children in the ballot initiative for a high quality pre-kindergarten system will be kept.”

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Jay Mathews discusses portfolio assessments.