Shhhhh. Don’t talk about quality.

Posted on July 29, 2009 by axooms

The Denver Post’s article yesterday focuses on schools trying to attract students.  It talks about marketing, fliers, door-to-door recruiting, money, branding, promotion, etc.  Absent, except for one indirect instance, is any mention of school quality.

Quality not only matters, in choosing schools it is probably paramount.  Parents are smart, and most care more about their children’s future than just about anything else.  A flier may get their attention, but does one really think some district schools are facing lower enrollment because of a lack of four-color postcards and signage?  Will the parents for whom marketing collateral was the primary determinant for choosing their child’s school raise their hands?

Quality can be deeply individual – students (even siblings) may find specific schools more tailored to their personalities or academic needs, but the line of discussion here is that K-12 education is a base and equal commodity and that the “winners” (because you have to have a winner, it can’t be that competition might raise education standards across multiple schools) will be the ones with the most money and best advertising campaigns.

A dozen new schools — mostly charters — are planned in Denver in the next five years, the first of which open next month. If fully enrolled, the schools would serve a total of 7,771 students.

Well, why is this?  Is it because the current schools don’t have flashy marketing campaigns with “slick brochures and posters”?  Why is Denver opening new schools at all?  Perhaps because 9 out of 10 DPS kindergarten students won’t have the chance to attend college?  Maybe related to 10th grade CSAP proficiency in Math at 15.6% (far lower if you are a student of color)?  Because the high-school dropout rate is now above 50%?

Continue reading →

Posted in Charter Schools, Media, School Performance | Leave a comment

…the edge of the world and all of Western civilization…(fn)

Posted on July 24, 2009 by axooms

Nothing like kicking a dead-broke state right smack in the wallet:

California could lose out on millions of federal education dollars unless legislators change a law that prevents it from using student test scores to measure teachers’ performance, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is expected to announce in a speech today.

California has among the worst records of any state in collecting and using data to evaluate teachers and schools. Moreover, a 2006 law that created a teacher database explicitly prohibited the use of student test scores to hold teachers accountable on a statewide basis, although it did not mention local districts. […]

In recent public appearances, Duncan singled out California’s law as “ridiculous” and “mind-boggling,” saying that it prevents the state from identifying which of the state’s 300,000 teachers are effective and which are not.

“No one in California can tell you which teacher is in which category,” Duncan said at one meeting of education officials. “Something is wrong with that picture.”

If Duncan stands firm on his position, state legislators may have to renegotiate the sensitive issue with the state’s powerful teachers unions, which are concerned that their local collective bargaining agreements would be trumped by state law.

“We would have some very serious discussions with the Legislature” if they tried to rewrite the 2006 legislation, said David Sanchez, president of the California Teachers Assn.

“We’d suggest the state look very carefully at that before they made that move,” said Gary Ravani, an official with the California Federation of Teachers. […]

Regardless of the interpretation of the law, few would dispute that California is behind on data collection.

California ranks 41st among states in its use of education data, according to a 2008 survey by the Data Quality Campaign, a nonprofit based in Austin, Texas.

The federal guidelines have been widely anticipated for months and two other states, Arizona and Indiana, recently struck similar language from their laws to qualify for Race to the Top funds, according to the Data Quality Campaign.

fn: For extra credit, name the song.

Posted in District Performance, Fiscal & Economic, Teacher Unions | Leave a comment

As goes Detroit Public Schools, so goes…

Posted on July 21, 2009 by axooms

Well, probably more school districts. From the Wall Street Journal (may be gated); this is a remarkable read:

DETROIT — Detroit’s public-school system, beset by massive deficits and widespread corruption, is on the brink of following local icons GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy court.

A decision on whether to file for protection under federal bankruptcy laws will be made by the end of summer, according to Robert Bobb, Detroit Public Schools’ emergency financial manager. Such a filing would be unprecedented in the U.S. Although a few major urban school districts have come close, none has gone through with a bankruptcy, according to legal and education experts.

Students of Detroit’s Guyton Elementary School ring the bell for entrance in April. Guyton is one of 29 Detroit schools slated to close.

But in Detroit — where U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan dubbed the school system a “national disgrace” this spring — lawmakers and bankruptcy experts see few alternatives, given the deep financial challenges confronting the district and the state.

In a corporate bankruptcy, equity holders (shareholders, including employees) are usually wiped out,jobs are lost, and creditors unpaid.  What happens in a school system bankruptcy? Continue reading →

Posted in District Performance, Fiscal & Economic | Leave a comment

D.C. Defaults

Posted on July 15, 2009 by axooms

Somewhat ironically, after my post yesterday about the academic success in the DC school system, it seems that their financials are a particular mess.

The District missed a $103 million payment due to its 60 charter schools this morning, triggering serious cash flow problems for many of the publicly funded, independently operated schools and raising new questions about D.C. government’s ability to meet its commitments as revenue declines. The delay means that some schools will not be able to meet their payroll.

The sheer irresponsibility and irony of a district, unable to manage own its finances, that in turn stiffs the very organizations to whom it has granted financial autonomy is breathtaking.  That these same charters, who have managed their financial autonomy well enough to remain solvent, will now be unable to pay their teachers — while teachers within the dysfunctional district system are unaffected seems particularly delicious.

Posted in District Performance, Fiscal & Economic | Leave a comment

Results from D.C.

Posted on July 14, 2009 by axooms

DC is so far ahead of pretty much every other city in their school reform efforts, their results bear watching.  Here is an early indication of how they are doing:

D.C. public school students continue to improve their reading and math skills, and the achievement gap between African American and white students has narrowed, according to preliminary test results released yesterday. […]

Perhaps most striking was the change in what many education experts regard as the most alarming of all testing statistics — the gap between scores of white and African American students in public schools. Rhee reported yesterday that last year’s narrowing of the achievement gap continued in 2009 across all grade levels and subject areas. The gulf between secondary math students closed by 20 points, from 70 to 50 percent.

Individual school results will come out soon, and more in-depth analysis will dig into the numbers, but this is clearly positive news.

Posted in District Performance, Student Achievement | Leave a comment

Cows: sacred. Oxes: gored

Posted on June 11, 2009 by axooms

The Harvard economist Roland Fryer did a recent study on the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ).  The NYT’s usually reliable David Brooks sort of botched it.  That’s a shame, as it is worth an unfiltered read.  To whet your appetite for original (in every sense) research, here are two cows Fryer comfortably gores.

To begin, it is a trusim that low-income children do better in schools with more high-income kids.  Most people have always assumed that this difference is largely explained by income (peer group).  Fryer points out that might not be the case:

This suggests that a better community, as measured by poverty rate, does not significantly raise test scores if school quality remains essentially unchanged.  Additionally, and more speculative, there is substantial anecdotal evidence that the Children’s Zone program was unsuccessful in the years before opening the charter schools. Indeed, the impetus behind starting the schools was the lack of test-score growth under the community-only model. (p. 22)

That first sentence is pretty radical.  The usual assumption is that wooing the middle class back to urban districts will cure many school ills – now it seems that many parents who chose to leave poorly-performing schools in search of something better may have had an innate sense that in isolation, if you put (leave?) wealthier students in bad schools, all you get is a bad school with more affluent students.

Continue reading →

Posted in Poverty, School Performance | Leave a comment

Roads to somewhere

Posted on June 11, 2009 by axooms

In contrast to the blabble in the usually excellent NYT, a colleague alerted me to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed which also addresses some of the difficulties facing higher ed — particularly with the economic crises:

Is it possible that higher education might be the next bubble to burst? Some early warnings suggest that it could be.

With tuitions, fees, and room and board at dozens of colleges now reaching $50,000 a year, the ability to sustain private higher education for all but the very well-heeled is questionable. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care.

Rather than suggest we conscript an unwilling populace into an additional year of compulsory educational service, the authors look at how to make colleges and universities more productive,including both better use of current assets and technology enhancement. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Two former college presidents, Charles Karelis of Colgate University and Stephen J. Trachtenberg of George Washington University, recently argued for the year-round university, noting that the two-semester format now in vogue places students in classrooms barely 60 percent of the year, or 30 weeks out of 52. They propose a 15-percent increase in productivity without adding buildings if students agree to study one summer and spend one semester abroad or in another site, like Washington or New York. Such a model may command attention if more education is offered without more tuition.

Brigham Young University-Idaho charges only $3,000 in tuition a year, and $6,000 for room and board. Classes are held for three semesters, each 14 weeks, for 42 weeks a year. Faculty members teach three full semesters, which has helped to increase capacity from 25,000 students over two semesters to close to 38,000 over three, with everyone taking one month (August) off. The president, Kim B. Clark, is a former dean of the Harvard Business School and an authority on using technology to achieve efficiencies. By 2012 the university also plans to increase its online offerings to 20 percent of all courses, with 120 online courses that students can take to enrich or accelerate degree completion.

Posted in Higher Education | Leave a comment