Why college matters

Posted on April 22, 2010 by axooms

Taking a break from state politics, and a short piece in The Economist with some sharp points on why students need to be prepared for college, and have the fiscal and academic ability to attend:

In 2007 graduates earned 77% more per hour than those with only a high-school degree. The share of poor teenagers aspiring to college tripled from 1980 to 2002. Nevertheless, rich, stupid children are more likely to graduate than poor, clever ones. Sadly, the increase in the proportion of Americans who graduate from college has slowed.

[…] Though some students are ill-prepared for university, many go to colleges that are not demanding enough. This makes them more likely to drop out, explains William Bowen, a former president of Princeton, who co-wrote a book on completion rates. Black boys who go to rigorous colleges graduate at higher rates than do similar peers at easier ones.

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CSAP (in advance)

Posted on March 29, 2010 by axooms

Students across Colorado finished their CSAP exams last week; results will not be distributed until late summer.

Of course, most articles about the CSAPs are written after the results are public, where most people dissect the numbers and look for data that supports/refutes specific arguments — often ones to which they are already attached.  And expect the usual carping about the CSAP itself (although the protests seem to have died down overall). So, well before the results are known, it’s worth asking what to look for — well in advance of the actual data.

The following is my list for DPS; I’m also interested in the perspectives of others — comments please!

1.  DPS Academic Growth – The district has seen encouraging news recently on enrollment (helped both by an expansion of preschool/kindergarten, demographic trends and the economic climate) and lower dropout rates.  What has been unclear is academic progress.  The district has spun the results positively — for example, pointing out where the DPS increase beats the State.  Unfortunately, this is easier to achieve when you have a low base: a 2 point bump starting at a score of 47 (overall DPS reading) is a little easier than starting at a score of 68 (overall state reading).  So when the 2010 CSAPs come out, start here: how much real academic growth has the district achieved?

Continue reading →

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Roundtable on Harlem charters

Posted on March 15, 2010 by axooms

An interesting piece in the NY Times on the current debate over charter schools in Harlem, featuring four prominent voices.  Try the one you disagree with most first. A brief sample:

Geoffrey Canada: The real question of choice is for the public school system itself: will it serve the children in our schools or the adults? I’ll support any school that will educate children. Can the critics make that same claim?

Richard Kahlenberg: Teachers have also soured on charter schools. Education Secretary Arne Duncan correctly notes that the late teacher union leader Albert Shanker was an early supporter of charters. But as I outline in my biography of Shanker, he envisioned charters as a vehicle for enhancing the teacher’s voice and grew disillusioned as they became a vehicle for bypassing union representation.

Jeffrey Henig and Luis Huerta: In communities where failing schools persist, the rationing of scarce resources and accompanying policies may be fueling resentment toward two groups: public officials, on the one hand, and new education “outsiders” on the other.

Michael Goldstein: Critics didn’t apologize for any of their predictions. They opened up new lines of critique. First, serving lots of black kids was now called “the new segregation.” A second angle: because Boston charters serve more native-born black children, inherently, then, we serve fewer kids born in Mexico, Vietnam, Cape Verde and China. But this is spun as purposefully not serving this student population. And so on. Therefore, I would predict that the greater the success of the teachers in Harlem charters, the more they’ll be attacked (and their principals) over the coming years.

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Kansas City’s second act

Posted on March 11, 2010 by axooms

The budget rumbles begin, but the story in KC has a lot more context.  To start, from the Wall Street Journal (or try the NYT):

The Kansas City Missouri School Board voted Wednesday night to shutter nearly half of its schools in an effort to avoid going broke. The action closes 28 of 58 campuses and eliminates about 700 of the district’s 3,300 jobs, including 285 teachers. […] The Kansas City School District, which serves 18,000 students, was twice as large a decade ago. That decrease has led to cuts in state funding. The district now runs a $12 million monthly deficit and expects to run out of money by 2011. […] Less than one third of elementary school students are reading at or above grade level. In nearly three quarters of the schools only one quarter of the students are characterized as “proficient,” according to the district.

If you are closing 48% of the schools while eliminating only 21% of the jobs, you are either closing schools that are close to empty, or your plan is probably doomed, or more likely both. The origin of this fiscal collapse is the long steady decline in the academic quality of KC public schools, where two-thirds of all elementary school students are already behind at least one grade level.  How did we get here?

Kansas City is best known among educators as the location of one of the great failures in education reform in the history of recorded time, where over $2 billion (and $2B bought a lot more 25 years ago) failed to make a dent in an underperforming system.

In 1985 a federal district judge took partial control over the troubled Kansas City, Missouri, School District (KCMSD) on the grounds that it was an unconstitutionally segregated district with dilapidated facilities and students who performed poorly. In an effort to bring the district into compliance with his liberal interpretation of federal law, the judge ordered the state and district to spend nearly $2 billion over the next 12 years to build new schools, integrate classrooms, and bring student test scores up to national norms.

It didn’t work. When the judge, in March 1997, finally agreed to let the state stop making desegregation payments to the district after 1999, there was little to show for all the money spent. Although the students enjoyed perhaps the best school facilities in the country, the percentage of black students in the largely black district had continued to increase, black students’ achievement hadn’t improved at all, and the black-white achievement gap was unchanged. (article here)

Money can’t buy you love, and it can’t buy a district high-quality schools.  As the impact of declining budgets starts to creep across Colorado, while dissident voices cry out for educational systems and regulations where quality is a secondary concern, it’s worth noting that high-quality schools do more to protect a district’s financial position than anything else. And if quality goes, it takes a whole lot down with it.

When budgets falter, most interest groups usually try to protect their pet projects or personal interests.  This often hastens the decline.  Quality first.

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Can you teach teaching?

Posted on March 4, 2010 by axooms

In this remarkably insightful article, Doug Lemov seems to think so:

Central to Lemov’s argument is a belief that students can’t learn unless the teacher succeeds in capturing their attention and getting them to follow instructions. Educators refer to this art, sometimes derisively, as “classroom management.” The romantic objection to emphasizing it is that a class too focused on rules and order will only replicate the power structure; a more common view is that classroom management is essential but somewhat boring and certainly less interesting than creating lesson plans. While some education schools offer courses in classroom management, they often address only abstract ideas, like the importance of writing up systems of rules, rather than the rules themselves. Other education schools do not teach the subject at all. Lemov’s view is that getting students to pay attention is not only crucial but also a skill as specialized, intricate and learnable as playing guitar.

I confess I am not a neutral in this debate — Doug is a long-time friend and former teammate, and it was he who first introduced me to the main tenants of education reform almost 15 years ago.  I’ve always considered him one of the most thought-provoking people I know.  We first talked about this subject when Doug stared on his taxonomy years ago.  I think it should be required critical reading for both teachers and parents (although I wish there was a free summary available, you can get a gist through Google Reader).

And the point here is both profound and simple.  While some teachers will recognize a special innate ability in a student, they chose their profession because they believe in their ability to help kids become better learners.  It is a small but critical step to extend this to the other end of the classroom — yes there are some teachers with native skills, but there are ways to help adults become better teachers.

I have seen very few teachers who are not devoted to their profession, and absolutely none that began with less than the best intentions.  I believe strongly that various grinding gears of our public education system prevent teachers from being successful.  I hope this article and the subsequent discussion help even the playing field.  Just as every child deserves a quality education, every teacher deserves the ability — and should embrace the responsibility — to fully develop their craft.

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Alternatives to seniority-based layoffs

Posted on March 2, 2010 by axooms

In the discussion regarding direct placement of teachers, it is sometimes perceived that this system is the standard course of events — that our nation’s public school systems all have a similar process.  A report from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) finds that there are several practicing alternatives to how individual school districts approach this decision:

The report … covers 100 districts nationwide, 75 of which reward seniority with job security. But most states don’t mandate seniority-based layoffs; they leave the decision up to districts. Twelve districts in the TR3 database use teacher-performance criteria, with Jackson, Mississippi, in particular, basing 60 percent of its decision on individual performance, 20 percent each on seniority and certification. In Davis, Utah, teachers who performed unsatisfactorily on their latest evaluations shoot to top of the layoff list.

The report states (or understates) “The factory model approach of last-hired, first-fired is unusual among white collar professions” and goes on to note the wide impact on students from the seniority-based layoff process.  It further points out that two of the sacred cows of the teaching profession — preserving jobs and increased teacher diversity — are negatively impacted by this process.

Instead of laying off 875,000 teachers to accommodate a 10 percent reduction in school budgets nationwide, districts would only have to lay off roughly 612,000 teachers — saving more than 250,000 jobs — by allowing criteria other than seniority to be factored into decisions about reductions in force.

In addition, seniority-based layoffs may cut into hard-won diversity in the teacher corps. For example, in California, school districts have managed to increase the number of minority teachers by 14,000 across the state since 2001, but layoffs of these more junior teachers under a last-hired, first-fired policy could erase much of this progress.

Layoffs are never easy, but faced with their inevitability, doing them as well as possible is deeply important.  This report is worth a read.

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It goes to 11…

Posted on February 15, 2010 by axooms

A state Senator in Utah has a plan that many in the state see as attractive given a $700M budget shortfall.

The sudden buzz over the relative value of senior year stems from a recent proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah make a dent in its budget gap by eliminating the 12th grade. The notion quickly gained some traction among supporters who agreed with the Republican’s assessment that many seniors frittered away their final year of high school..

It’s quite something when the perceived solution to an education problem is … even less education.  A similar solution for a perceived constraint was suggested by my generational high-school philosopher Nigel Tufnel who noted, that if you’re already on 10 on your guitar, where can you go from there? Where? Where?

High School in Utah?  It goes to 11.

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