Shanker Blog

The Cost Of Success In Education

Many are skeptical of the current push to improve our education system by means of test-based “accountability” - hiring, firing, and paying teachers and administrators, as well as closing and retaining schools, based largely on test scores. They say it won’t work. I share their skepticism, because I think it will.

There is a simple logic to this approach: when you control the supply of teachers, leaders, and schools based on their ability to increase test scores, then this attribute will become increasingly common among these individuals and institutions. It is called “selecting on the dependent variable," and it is, given the talent of the people overseeing this process and the money behind it, a decent bet to work in the long run.

Now, we all know the arguments about the limitations of test scores. We all know they’re largely true. Some people take them too far, others are too casual in their disregard. The question is not whether test scores provide a comprehensive measure of learning or subject mastery (of course they don’t). The better question is the extent to which teachers (and schools) who increase test scores a great deal are imparting and/or reinforcing the skills and traits that students will need after their K-12 education, relative to teachers who produce smaller gains. And this question remains largely unanswered.

This is dangerous, because if there is an unreliable relationship between teaching essential skills and the boosting of test scores, then success is no longer success. And by selecting teachers and schools based on those scores, we will have deliberately engineered our public education system to fail in spite of success.

It may be only then that we truly realize what we have done.

Selling The State

In a recent post, we discussed the explosive growth in privatization of public services, including one town that recently privatized everything and everybody. Along similar lines, this week, the Wall Street Journal published a story about desperate state and local governments, squeezed by declining revenues, selling or leasing public property to private interests. The reporter notes:

Cities and states across the nation are selling and leasing everything from airports to zoos—a fire sale that could help plug budget holes now but worsen their financial woes over the long run.

The notion that we should cede public services to the private sector has assumed the status of quasi-religious dogma in recent years. There was a brief time during the earlier, more dire days of the current recession during which many began to question this market fundamentalism. Such dissent continues in some circles today. But you wouldn’t know it looking at actual policy.

Things may even be getting worse. Cash-strapped governments have stepped up efforts in a new area: privatization of public assets.

Accountability For Us, No Way; We're The Washington Post

In his August 4th testimony before the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Government Accountability Office (GAO) official Gregory D. Kutz offered an earful of scandalous stories about how for-profit, post-secondary institutions use misrepresentation, fraud, and generally unethical practices to tap the federal loan and grant-making trough. One of these companies, so says the Washington Post itself, is Kaplan Inc, a profit-making college that contributes a whopping amount to the paper’s bottom line (67 percent of the Washington Post Company’s $92 million in second quarter earnings, according to the Washington Examiner; 62 percent according to the Post’s Ombudsman Andrew Alexander).

One might assume that the Post's deep financial involvement in Kaplan Inc. would prompt its editorial board to recuse itself from comment on new proposed federal regulations designed to correct the problems. Instead of offering "point-counterpoint" op-eds on this issue, this bastion of journalistic integrity has launched a veritable campaign in support of its corporate education interests, and offered up its op-ed page to education business allies. It is a sad and disappointing chapter in the history of this once-great institution.

Youth Unemployment: A Global Concern

The global economic crisis may be leading to a deep sense of despair among the world’s youth, warns the International Labor Organization (ILO) in a just- released report (see here and here) – with potentially damaging social and economic consequences for us all.

Youth unemployment is at its highest level since the agency began tracking it in 1991, the ILO reported, noting that among other impacts “…[i]n many countries with stagnant economies and poor prospects for productive employment, [young people are drawn to] religious sects, secular ideologies and revolutionary movements."

Although the report cites disaffected Nepalese youth and their growing attraction to Maoism, most Americans will probably be more interested in how this issue plays out in the Middle East and North Africa. That region is currently experiencing an unprecedented "youth bulge," with young people between the ages of 15 and 29 accounting for over 30 percent of the overall population, some 20 percent or more (for some countries, the estimates are over 45 percent) of whom are unemployed. Under the circumstances, the danger of a rise in radical Islamist extremism can’t be overstated – especially since, as the ILO notes, the figures for sub-Saharan Africa don’t adequately reflect the extent and extremity of the region’s poverty and lack of government services.

Data-Driven Decisions, No Data

According to an article in yesterday’s Washington Post, the outcome of the upcoming D.C. mayoral primary may depend in large part on gains in students’ “test scores” since Mayor Adrian Fenty appointed Michelle Rhee to serve as chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools (DCPS).

That struck me as particularly interesting because, as far as I can tell, Michelle Rhee has never released any test scores to the public. Not an average test score for any grade level or for any of the district’s schools or any subgroup of its students. None.

What About Curriculum Effects?

Our guest author today is Barak Rosenshine, emeritus professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Bill Gates, the Los Angeles Times, and others have argued that teachers should be held accountable for the achievement of their students. This has led to heated debates over the validity and proper use of value added statistical measures. But no one seems to be talking about curriculum effects. What if an excellent teacher is in a school that has selected a curriculum for mathematics or for reading that isn’t very good. How accountable should the teacher be in those circumstances?

Think You Know About Teacher Attrition?

Every four years, with the release of the Teacher Follow-Up Survey (TFS), we get what is virtually our only source of reliable information on the rates of and reasons for teacher attrition in the U.S.

The survey is a supplement to the much larger Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), which is also conducted every four years by the National Center for Education Statistics. The SASS is an extensive survey of characteristics, conditions, and other variables of over 30,000 teachers across the nation. The TFS simply contacts a sample of the SASS participants the following year to see if they’re still teaching, and if not, what they’re doing. For this round, the 2007-08 SASS respondents were contacted again in 2008-09 for the TFS.

The TFS divides respondents into three categories: stayers (teachers in the same school as last year); movers (teachers who are still teaching but in a different school and/or district); and leavers (teachers who left teaching for whatever reason, including retirement). Overall, among public school teachers in 2008-09, 84.5 percent were stayers, 7.6 percent were movers, and 7.9 percent were leavers (note that these are annual, not cumulative rates).

While some of the TFS results are unsurprising, there may be plenty about teacher attrition that you thought you knew but didn’t.

Education Reform, Redux

Ever get the feeling that we are having the same old educational debate, over and over? A glance through the archives of the Atlantic Monthly helps to cement the notion.

One writer describes schools as “society's dumping ground,…a vast refuse heap for any and every unwanted service or task that other social or governmental institutions and agencies find too tough to handle. The community, the home, and to some extent even the church have used the public schools to relieve their consciences of feelings of guilt by passing on unfinished business which they have found [too] difficult …or just burdensome." That was 1959.

Another pleads for “education reform," while admitting that the term has been so overused as to become virtually meaningless. “America has been oversold on pedagogical gadgets which never perform up to expectations," he says. But, since “standards in American public education are deplorably and inexcusably low," something must be done. In a democracy, he writes, every citizen deserves “an education… [grounded] in learning, in mastery, in growing insight, in standards which really operate – and not just in going to school. So when multitudes of young people accumulate credits, pass courses, carry off elegant [diplomas], and come out knowing little or nothing, it is simply intolerable." That was 1939.

Public Apples, Private Oranges

Hardly a week goes by during which an editorial or column in a major newspaper doesn’t comment on how public sector workers are making a killing compared with their private sector counterparts. Recently, as a result of the "edujobs bill," there has been even more of this chatter than usual about “overpaid” government workers with “bloated benefits” and “fireproof” positions. Some of these commentaries even purport to present “evidence."

Earlier this week, for instance, a piece in the Washington Examiner cited data showing that average compensation (salary plus benefits) for federal government workers was roughly twice that of private sector workers. Sound remarkable? Not so much.

This “argument” is akin to comparing the compensation of employees at IBM versus WalMart. You are talking about two very different groups of jobs.

Why Aren't We Closing The Achievement Gap?

When it comes to closing the academic achievement gap between students from lower- and higher-income families, we share the fate of Greek mythological figure Sisyphus, who was sentenced to spend eternity pushing a giant rock uphill, watching it roll back down, and then repeating the task.

The gap in school performance comes “pre-installed," as it were, beginning well before children ever step foot in the classroom. By the time they enter kindergarten, poor children are already at a huge disadvantage relative to their counterparts from high-income families. By the time they take their first standardized test, the differences in vocabulary, background knowledge, and non-cognitive skills are so large that most poor children will never overcome them – no matter what school they attend, which teachers they are assigned to, or how these teachers are evaluated. And, like Sisyphus, whatever gap-closing progress we may make with each cohort of struggling students after they enter school, we must start all over again with the next.

What can be done? Stop putting out fires and prevent them – address the achievement gap before it widens.