• Five Recommendations For Reporting On (Or Just Interpreting) State Test Scores

    From my experience, education reporters are smart, knowledgeable, and attentive to detail. That said, the bulk of the stories about testing data – in big cities and suburbs, in this year and in previous years – could be better.

    Listen, I know it’s unreasonable to expect every reporter and editor to address every little detail when they try to write accessible copy about complicated issues, such as test data interpretation. Moreover, I fully acknowledge that some of the errors to which I object – such as calling proficiency rates “scores” – are well within tolerable limits, and that news stories need not interpret data in the same way as researchers. Nevertheless, no matter what you think about the role of test scores in our public discourse, it is in everyone’s interest that the coverage of them be reliable. And there are a few mostly easy suggestions that I think would help a great deal.

    Below are five such recommendations. They are of course not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather a quick compilation of points, all of which I’ve discussed in previous posts, and all of which might also be useful to non-journalists.

  • How Can We Tell If Vouchers "Work"?

    Brookings recently released an evaluation of New York City’s voucher program, called the School Choice Scholarship Foundation Program (SCSF), which was implemented in the late 1990s. Voucher offers were randomized, and the authors looked at the impact of being offered/accepting them on a very important medium-term outcome – college enrollment (they were also able to follow an unusually high proportion of the original voucher recipients to check this outcome).

    The short version of the story is that, overall, the vouchers didn’t have any statistically discernible impact on college enrollment. But, as is often the case, there was some underlying variation in the results, including positive estimated impacts among African-American students, which certainly merit discussion.*

    Unfortunately, such nuance was not always evident in the coverage of and reaction to the report, with some voucher supporters (strangely, given the results) exclaiming that the program was an unqualified success, and some opponents questioning the affiliations of the researchers. For my part, I’d like to make a quick, not-particularly-original point about voucher studies in general: Even the best of them don’t necessarily tell us much about whether “vouchers work."

  • Jobs, Freedom And Mr. March On Washington

    Today is the 49th  anniversary of the historic 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” in a year that marks the centennial of the birth of Bayard Rustin, the march’s principal organizer and chief strategist, referred to at the time as "Mr. March on Washington." Here, we reprint Albert Shanker’s 1987 eulogy to Rustin, who served as a mentor to both Shanker and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    The death of Bayard Rustin last week is an incalculable loss to our country and the world. He was the last of the great giants - A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Roy Wilkins - who brought us a grand, humane social vision and a dream of an integrated, democratic nation. I have lost a dear personal friend and inspiration.

    Bayard was a gifted leader, but he headed no mass organization. His extraordinary influence came not from numbers and money but from his intense moral, intellectual and physical courage. He was a black man, a Quaker, a one-time pacifist, a political and social dissident, a member of many and often despised minority groups, yet he always believed in the necessity of coalition politics to enable minorities to build majorities in support of lasting progress.

    He was a penetrating critic who had no use for those whose criticism merely destroyed and did not present a constructive program for change. He was an intellectual who could act and a visionary for whom no organizational detail was too trivial if it moved dreams to reality. Over his lifetime, Bayard was called everything from a dangerous revolutionary to a sellout conservative. The truth is that Bayard was a true democrat in a world of pretenders. Unlike those who lived by double standards and expediency, he remained constant to the principles and goals of democracy no matter what forces or insult were hurled against him.

  • Student Attrition Is A Core Feature Of School Choice, Not A Bug

    The issue of student attrition at KIPP and charter schools is never far beneath the surface of our education debates. KIPP’s critics claim that these schools exclude or “counsel out” students who aren’t doing well, thus inflating student test results. Supporters contend that KIPP schools are open admission with enrollment typically determined by lottery, and they usually cite a 2010 Mathematica report finding strong results among students in most (but not all) of 22 KIPP middle schools, as well as attrition rates that were no higher, on average, than at the regular public schools to which they are compared.*

    As I have written elsewhere, I am persuaded that student attrition cannot explain away the gains that Mathematica found in the schools they examined (though I do think peer effects of attrition without replacement may play some role, which is a very common issue in research of this type).

    But, beyond this back-and-forth over the churn in these schools and whether it affected the results of this analysis, there’s also a confusion of sorts when it comes to discussions of student attrition in charters, whether KIPP or in general. Supporters of school choice often respond to “attrition accusations” by trying to deny or downplay its importance or frequency. This, it seems to me, ignores an obvious point: Within-district attrition - students changing schools, often based on “fit” or performance - is a defining feature of school choice, not an aberration.

  • A Look At The Changes To D.C.'s Teacher Evaluation System

    D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) recently announced a few significant changes to its teacher evaluation system (called IMPACT), including the alteration of its test-based components, the creation of a new performance category (“developing”), and a few tweaks to the observational component (discussed below). These changes will be effective starting this year.

    As with any new evaluation system, a period of adjustment and revision should be expected and encouraged (though it might be preferable if the first round of changes occurs during a phase-in period, prior to stakes becoming attached). Yet, despite all the attention given to the IMPACT system over the past few years, these new changes have not been discussed much beyond a few quick news articles.

    I think that’s unfortunate: DCPS is an early adopter of the “new breed” of teacher evaluation policies being rolled out across the nation, and any adjustments to IMPACT’s design – presumably based on results and feedback – could provide valuable lessons for states and districts in earlier phases of the process.

    Accordingly, I thought I would take a quick look at three of these changes.

  • College For All; Good Jobs For A Few?

    A recent study by the Center for Policy Research (CEPR) asks the question that must be on the minds of college grads, now working as coffee shop baristas: “Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?" The answer: swallowed by corporate profits and the personal portfolios of the ultrawealthy.

    Despite the fact that the American economy has experienced “enormous” productivity gains since the late 1970’s, the study finds that the number of “good jobs” (defined as those paying at least $37,000 per year, with employer-provided health insurance and an employer-sponsored retirement plan) has declined from 27.4 percent in 1979 to 24.6 percent in 2010.  This discouraging trend was strong even before the onset of the country’s economic crisis: in 2007, the year before the onset of the recession, only 25 percent of college grads had “good jobs."

    CEPR notes that the prevailing explanations for the failure to share productivity gains are “technology” and lack of necessary skills among American workers. But, if this were true, the CEPR study argues, one would expect college grads to have a higher share of good jobs than they did 30 years ago. They don’t. Instead, at every age level, today’s college grads are less likely to have a “good job” than their 1970s counterparts. This is especially surprising, the researchers note, since twice as many Americans now have advanced degrees as compared to the 1970’s.

  • Large Political Stones, Methodological Glass Houses

    Earlier this summer, the New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO) presented findings from a longitudinal analysis of NYC student performance. That is, they followed a cohort of over 45,000 students from third grade in 2005-06 through 2009-10 (though most results are 2005-06 to 2008-09, since the state changed its definition of proficiency in 2009-10).

    The IBO then simply calculated the proportion of these students who improved, declined or stayed the same in terms of the state’s cutpoint-based categories (e.g., Level 1 ["below basic" in NCLB parlance], Level 2 [basic], Level 3 [proficient], Level 4 [advanced]), with additional breakdowns by subgroup and other variables.

    The short version of the results is that almost two-thirds of these students remained constant in their performance level over this time period – for instance, students who scored at Level 2 (basic) in third grade in 2006 tended to stay at that level through 2009; students at the “proficient” level remained there, and so on. About 30 percent increased a category over that time (e.g., going from Level 1 to Level 2).

    The response from the NYC Department of Education (NYCDOE) was somewhat remarkable. It takes a minute to explain why, so bear with me.

  • Common Core Opens The Second Front In The Reading Wars

    Our guest author today is Kathleen Porter-Magee, Bernard Lee Schwartz policy fellow and editor of the Common Core Watch blog at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Previously, Ms. Porter-Magee served as both a middle and high school teacher, as well as the curriculum and professional development director for a network of public charter schools.

    Up until now, the Common Core ELA standards were considered path-breaking mostly because of their reach. This isn't the first time a group attempted to write “common” standards, but it is the first time they’ve gained such widespread traction.

    Yet the Common Core standards are revolutionary for another, less talked about, reason: they define rigor in reading and literature classrooms more clearly and explicitly than nearly any of the state ELA standards they’ve replaced. Now, as the full impact of these expectations is starting to take hold, the decision to define rigor—and the way the CCSS define it—is fanning the flames of a debate that threatens to open up a whole new front in America’s long running “Reading Wars."

    The first and most divisive front in the reading wars was the debate over the importance of phonics to early reading instruction. Thanks to the 2000 recommendations of the National Reading Panel and the 2001 “Reading First” portion of No Child Left Behind, the phonics camp has largely won the day in this battle. Now, while there remain curricula that may marginalize the importance of phonics and phonemic awareness, there are none that ignore it completely.

  • School Grades For School Grades' Sake

    I have reviewed, albeit superficially, the test-based components of several states’ school rating systems (e.g., OH, FL, NYC, LA, CO), with a particular focus on the degree to which they are actually measuring student performance (how highly students score), rather than school effectiveness per se (whether students are making progress). Both types of measures have a role to play in accountability systems, even if they are often confused or conflated, resulting in widespread misinterpretation of what the final ratings actually mean, and many state systems’ failure to tailor interventions to the indicators being used.

    One aspect of these systems that I rarely discuss is the possibility that the ratings systems are an end in themselves. That is, the idea that public ratings, no matter how they are constructed, provide an incentive for schools to get better. From this perspective, even if the ratings are misinterpreted or imprecise, they might still “work."*

    There’s obviously something to this. After all, the central purpose of any accountability system is less about closing or intervening in a few schools than about giving all schools incentive to up their respective games. And, no matter how you feel about school rating systems, there can be little doubt that people pay attention to them. Educators and school administrators do so, not only because they fear closure or desire monetary rewards; they also take pride in what they do, and they like being recognized for it. In short, my somewhat technocratic viewpoint on school ratings ignores the fact that their purpose is less about rigorous measurement than encouraging improvement.

  • Literacy For Life: The Role Of Career And Technical Education In Reading Proficiency

    It is well established that a student’s reading proficiency level in elementary school is a good predictor of high school graduation success. The lower the reading level, the more likely it is that the student will not graduate on time. Against this background, it is sobering that many U.S. students reach high school without the reading and comprehension skills they need. According to NAEP data, in 2011, more than a third (33 percent) of 4th-graders were reading at a below basic level; among 8th-grade and 12th grade students, the percentage of students who were stuck at the below basic reading level had dropped, but only to about 25 percent. Many of these students drop out; many go on to earn a diploma, but enter the work world singularly unprepared to earn a living.

    What is to be done? Certainly, intensive remediation is part of the answer, but so are practice and motivation and interest. The challenge for struggling readers at the high school level is hard to overstate; by the time they enter high school, they often display a negative and despairing attitude toward school that has been hardened by years of failure. Furthermore, most high school teachers are not trained in literacy instruction, a specialized skill which is theoretically the purview of early elementary school. Indeed, for many urban teachers, motivating kids just to come to school is the major challenge.

    How do we motivate these kids, who sometimes exhibit stubborn resistance to reading or to any other kind of schoolwork?  One effective strategy is to make the purpose of reading as interesting and obvious as possible. For many youngsters, that means access to high-quality Career and Technical Education (CTE).