Dems and ed reform, redux

Posted on October 15, 2009 by axooms

An illuminating piece by Nicholas Kristof in the NYT:

Good schools constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies. Yet, cowed by teachers’ unions, Democrats have too often resisted reform and stood by as generations of disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools.

However what it striking to me is how the piece echoes a seminal article in The New Republic back in May of 2005 titled “What Democrats need to say about education” (link here).  This is a longer piece, and (even as I reread it) far more pointed.  It is a reminder both of how much things have changed, and how little things have changed.  At a national level, there is a tremendous difference.  But all politics is local, and it is at the state and district level where the most resistance still lies.

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Pop quiz: Neighborhood schools

Posted on October 14, 2009 by axooms

Pop Quiz. Note that there may be multiple accurate responses.

Readers are free to suggest answers in the comments and I’ll update the post with the right answers (just kidding) my thoughts later this week.

Question One: Is a “neighborhood school”:

a) open enrollment
b) selective enrollment*
c) magnet
d) charter
e) racially diverse
f) always high quality
g) always low quality
h) it depends on the political point one is trying to make

*selective enrollment schools are those that include an evaluation of academic or skill-based performance in their admissions criteria.

Question Two: Which of the following qualify as a “neighborhood school”?

a) Polaris at Ebert
b) Bromwell Elementary
c) Denver School of the Arts
d) Manual High School
e) KIPP Sunshine Peak
f)  Denver Center for International Studies (DCIS)
g) Denver School of Science and Technology (DSST)

Update: Part II here

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Infinity and beyond…

Posted on October 11, 2009 by axooms

Pension discussions are not as interesting as DPS election hurling.  But I think they will have a far greater impact over the long term.  In many ways, the merger of the DPS pension into PERA makes it less of a local issue and more of a State issue, kicking it up to the legislature. So even in this minute election season it may feel it is safe to ignore as a local issue.  Do so at your peril.

Personally, I think the eventual and unavoidable pension brawl is going to make the strident debate over ProComp seem almost quaint. A recent piece in the Washington Post sounded similar alarms.  But it was the conclusion of the article that caught my eye.

In Ohio, for instance, the teachers pension system reported that it would take 41 years for its investments to catch up with the costs of meeting its obligations to retirees. That was before the worst of the financial crisis.

During the last fiscal year, Ohio’s fund lost 31 percent. Its most recent annual report detailed how long it would now take for its investments to put the fund back on track. Officials simply said: “Infinity.”

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NY charter study: What districts can do

Posted on September 24, 2009 by axooms

There is a lot of noise around the evaluation of charter schools, and a paucity of good data, which makes most comparisons of little use.  That is starting to change.

One of the problems in gauging the effectiveness of charters is the comparative group.  Charters are generally open-lottery admissions; critics claim that their students self-select, advocates believe that the schools do a better job educating kids.  The best way to test that theory would be to compare the students who applied and were randomly accepted with a group who applied and did not get in. There is no self-selection among applicants.

In NYC, a comprehensive eight-year study by Stanford professor Caroline Hoxby was just released. Here is an editorial from the NY Daily News:

It’s official. From this day forward, those who battle New York‘s charter school movement stand conclusively on notice that they are fighting to block thousands of children from getting superior educations.

An exhaustive, eight-year-long study has documented that kids in the city’s charter schools have outachieved students at traditional public schools by an enormous margin.

Continue reading →

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Sunlight and election questions

Posted on September 21, 2009 by axooms

The plight of newspapers is well known; how information about important topics like school board races is disseminated and reviewed by voters is both incredibly important and in real flux. How does the public – especially a younger demographic less likely to read newspapers — get in-depth information from candidates, especially on tough questions?

EdNews — with a staff whose news credentials are outstanding — sent all candidates for the Denver school board elections a questionnaire with some very pointed questions. How different candidates responded to this opportunity to reflect, consider, and publicly share their unedited views is a pretty good filter to judge how they might approach the office.

So, full story link and a quick summary follows – I encourage everyone to read the specific replies:

Continue reading →

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School Performance Framework shorthand

Posted on September 18, 2009 by axooms

I looked at the DPS School Performance Framework (SPF) data in a number of different ways. There is some intriguing data, but I found a shorthand that I think serves as a pretty good summary.

Let’s look at the DPS schools with an SPF score equal to 65% or higher of possible SPF points (which is roughly the top quintile). This group comprises the top 27 of the 140 total schools.

Start with these 27 high-performing schools:

Filter #1. Elementary schools (and selective K-8) do pretty well.  Fully 21 of the top 27 schools are either elementary (16 schools) or K-8 (7 schools). Full kudos to these 21.  The problems at DPS are not primarily at schools with elementary students.

…Subtract these 21 and you have six schools left.

Filter #2. Of the six remaining schools, 2 are selective admissions (DSA and CEC). Good schools both, but if you get to choose your students, you have a bit of an advantage.  Partial credit kudos.

…Subtract these 2 and you have four schools left.

That’s pretty much it.  After these two filters, there are just four remaining public schools in Denver that are both open admissions and serve primarily middle and high school students. Four.

…Who are these premier four?

Three are charter schools: DSST (ranked #1 overall); WDP (#2); and KIPP (#21).  These are now clearly three of the four best open-enrollment middle and high schools in Denver, particularly given that they are all serving a substantial percentage of low-income students (respective FRL of 45%, 93%, and 93%). The top two overall schools in the district are now charters.

The remaining school, the one and only open-enrollment district school without elementary students in the top quintile (with 27% FRL) is East High (#14 overall). Congratulations to East.

So, to put this in perspective, how far down the list of 140 schools do you have to go to find an another open-enrollment middle or high school with a FRL percentage greater than the DPS average of 67%?  All the way down to #48.

How many of the lowest performing 27 schools (the bottom quintile) have a higher FRL population than the DPS average? 25 of 27.

Filter #3 is that if you are a low-income student in Denver, your future remains very, very bleak.

–

Updated Note: I should point out that while KIPP is listed as K-8, the school only has grades 5-8 and I thus consider them a middle school.  Any similar updates would be appreciated.

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The ghost of selective admissions

Posted on September 15, 2009 by axooms

The Denver Post this weekend kept alive the oppositional dualism that far too often permeates the education debate by doing the usual Tastes Great, Less Filling argument on charter schools (see for; and against).

This puzzles me.  I don’t know too many reasonable people who think that all charters should be banned; nor do I know any people who think all district schools should be abolished.  Indeed, in some circles, there is occasionally mild agreement – briefly – that we should be looking at high-quality schools of a variety of types and educational models.

But what interests me more than any charter duel is the lack of any debate about selective admissions (I wrote about this topic in a piece published Monday).  Many critics of charters tend to claim — even though charters admit by open lottery — that they somehow either choose or self-select their students, and that any selective admissions criteria is automatically antithetical to public schools. The claim — in my view often incorrect — most often hurled against charters is that they are somehow “creaming” the best students from traditional schools. But for selective admissions schools and programs, that’s not just the claim, it is the intent.

Continue reading →

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