Tag Archive for 'Fordham Foundation'

Teacher Quality, Unintended Consequences, and the Baseball Achievement Gap

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 6, 2008 in Education News and Educational Policy. 2 Comments

New York’s Department of Education is beginning to measure the performance of thousands of elementary and middle school teachers based on how much their students improve on annual state math and reading tests, the New York Times reported last week. A joint letter to NYC teachers from Chancellor Joel Klein and UFT President Randi Weingarten explained the data is intended to “empower teachers with information useful in our teaching. In this same vein, the letter expressly prohibits the use of that information for evaluating teachers, in both annual ratings and tenure decisions.”

When the plan first came up in February, Ed Sector’s Kevin Carey wrote a much-discussed op-ed in the New York Daily News, comparing value-added data to the pioneering work done by maverick baseball general manager Billy Beane. The subject of Michael Lewis’ 2003 book, Moneyball, Beane has often managed to keep his small-market Oakland A’s competitive with deeper-pocketed teams by rejecting conventional baseball wisdom in favor of data-driven decision-making. “By crunching numbers without prejudice, Beane discovered that certain statistics that really mattered on the field, like on-base percentage, were being hugely undervalued in the player job market,” Carey wrote. “While scouts and other executives made decisions based on personal bias and flawed perceptions, Beane kept to the statistical bottom line.” Seen through this lens, the hope and promise is that we can find equivalents to on-base percentage in teacher performance that drive student achievement.

The Moneyball comparison, however, strikes me as a potentially dangerous analogy. Here’s why: Players are to baseball teams as students — not teachers — are to schools. Teachers succeed by getting the best performances from their students. Their closest counterparts in baseball are managers and coaches. Baseball executives like Billy Beane do not use data to help ordinary players over-perform. They use data to replace underperformers with overachievers.  To run a school like Billy Beane runs the Oakland A’s would mean regularly replacing low-scoring students with high-scoring students.

That would be one way to close the achievement gap. Continue reading ‘Teacher Quality, Unintended Consequences, and the Baseball Achievement Gap’

Voice of the People

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 30, 2008 in Education News. 0 Comments

Alexander Russo at This Week in Education has a nifty poll up on his site (a good idea that I plan to steal) asking his readers everything from “Who’s your favorite education reporter?” to “Who will be the next Ed Secretary?”  He’s also asking readers to name their favorite ed blog (and we’re pleased even to be on the short list) but another poll question raises an issue: What does A-Rus have against Fordham?  The last question is ”Whether you always agree with them or not, which DC-based education group or think tank do you think does the best (highest quality, most useful) work?”  All the usual suspects are there: Ed Sector, The Education Trust, Rand, Brookings, but no Fordham Foundation??  There is a place for write-ins, however.

He also fails to list Elizabeth Green of the New York Sun in the best reporter category.  Alas, word came today that the NY Sun is folding.  Bad news for those who follow the New York ed scene.  But it’s a great day for whoever ends up hiring Green.  She’s too good to remain a free agent for very long.

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Why NCLB is MIA

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 9, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

Checker Finn noticed that the words “No Child Left Behind” never even crossed the lips of Obama or McCain in their convention acceptance speeches.

In the education sphere, that’s roughly equivalent to talking about America’s foreign and defense challenges without mentioning Iraq. NCLB is the 800-pound gorilla of federal K-12 education policy and the foremost topic of conversation whenever this domain is touched on. In fact, as I roam the land, it’s the only federal education issue that non-educators invariably ask about. Yet in their major campaign kick-off addresses, both wannabee presidents managed to talk about education without disclosing that they’re even aware of its existence.

NCLB is a “damaged brand,” Finn writes, even while the public still supports standards, assessment, and school accountability.  But the silence from the candidates has as much to do with “real and serious” internal schisms in each party, Finn says.  Democrats are split over the role of teachers’ unions, and if schools alone can boost performance, or if problems beyond schools’ control need to be addressed first. 

The GOP, too, faces a pair of big (and also overlapped) splits, both reverberating with past vs. present, of what might be called Reagan-era vs. Bush-era thinking about education priorities. One involves Uncle Sam’s role: forceful driver of reform or an undemanding source of dollars to states, districts and parents to do pretty much what they think best in the K-12 sphere. The other Republican schism is between supporters of school choice as the surest path to better education and advocates of standards, testing and results-based accountability, i.e. between reliance on the marketplace or on government-driven change.

The upshot: the less McCain and Obama say about NCLB the better. “Stick with the crowd pleasers today and save for tomorrow — some tomorrow after November 4 — any clear plans for what to do when statutory reality can no longer be avoided,” Finn concludes.

Pay Me My Money Down

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 5, 2008 in Education Practice. 4 Comments

Merit pay is back in the news.  For kids, that is, not teachers.  Washington, DC’s Michelle Rhee is the latest to float the idea of paying 12-year-olds to act in their own best interest.  Fordham’s Liam Julian thinks it’s a bad idea, preferring the stick to the carrot.  But he makes the emotionally satisfying argument:

It is expected that students will complete assignments and work hard; it is legally demanded that they come to school. When these obligatory activities are rewarded with cash, what was once mundane becomes exceptional. Standards of right behavior take a prima facie tumble. The student who shunned class is paid to be there, which makes a mockery of the rules, and the pupil who already came to school on time now receives money for it and learns the false lesson that punctuality and conscientiousness are extraordinary and noteworthy. 

I’m not immune to this line of moral hazard reasoning, although I remain agnostic and willing to consider any reasonable idea to boost performance.  Still, I have a hard time arguing incentives are bad when I know darned well that there are affluent kids who are routinely bribed — er, rewarded — for good report cards with everything from a ten dollar bill to a new car in the driveway.  Add the fact that many inner city families have learned not to expect much from their education, and it becomes hard to ask them to take our good word for it that education is its own reward.

Greg Foster nails it at Pajamas Media.  “Admit it,” he writes, “you don’t care about whether it works nearly as much as you care about whether it’s just inherently wrong. This policy is the sort of thing people respond to purely by visceral reaction.”  He then goes on to explain why it’s not wrong.

Joanne Jacobs, as usual, is the voice of reason:  “If foundations want to fund pay-for-performance schemes,” she writes, ”I suggest they put the money into college (or job training) scholarship funds for hard-working students. Connect doing tomorrow’s homework with a brighter future down the road.”

The Biggest Loser

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 4, 2008 in Educational Policy. 1 Comment

Who you callin’ a loser?  You’re not a loser.  I’m the loser! 

That’s the upshot of Mike Petrilli’s post over at Flypaper on who’s doing a worse job on education, the Dems or the GOP.  Ed Sector’s Kevin Carey has written a piece for the American Prospect titled “How the Dems Lost on Education,” which per Petrilli, ”is a call for Democrats to get on board the school reform train, particularly when it comes to NCLB-style accountability, charter schools, and public school choice.”

Not so fast, says Mike.  “I don’t mean to be ungracious, but if we’re talking about winners and losers, there’s a strong case to be made that NCLB has been a boon to the left and an embarrassment to the right.”

What with its race-based accountability system, Great Society-style aspiration for “universal proficiency,” disdain for the needs of high-achieving students (not to mention white and middle class kids), and enthusiastic expansion of the federal role in education, it looks to me that the Dems are winning big on education lately. And here’s the kicker: they get to promote progressive policies and regain their historical political advantage on the issue to boot. Compare that to the “Republican” scorecard. How are we doing on promoting educational excellence? Cutting red tape? Promoting private school choice? Making the public schools system more efficient? Getting rid of terrible teachers?

Petrilli says he’s going to write a piece on “How the GOP Lost on Education.”  I think he’s kidding.  Maybe.

More questioning of assumptions:  Eduflack wonders why accountability is seen as a Republican idea.  And why supporting teachers is associated with Democrats.

What’s In a Name?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 19, 2008 in Education Leadership, Education Practice and School News. 2 Comments

David Whitman’s new book, Sweating the Small Stuff, looks at Amistad Academy, KIPP, SEED, and other successful inner city schools that have done the best work at closing the achievement gap.  The book is winning early praise from the education cognoscenti.  But there’s a problem: 

“I hate his subtitle, ‘Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism.’ And I like his decision to refer to this group as ‘the paternalistic schools’ even less,” writes Jay Mathews in the Washington Post.  USA Today’s Richard Whitmire, guestblogging at Eduwonk agrees, saying simply Whitman’s subtitle “needs work.” Whitney Tilson, a big charter school supporter, praises the book in his latest ed reform email blast, but adds, “I don’t like the word ‘paternalism.’  What the schools are doing is instilling not only knowledge, but the absolutely critical soft skills that are necessary to succeed in life, such as ‘kindness, decency, integrity, and hard work.’”

Checker Finn of the Fordham Foundation, which brought out Whitman’s book, notes that the schools themselves “don’t much like the label of ‘paternalism’ and reject any suggestion that their schools condescend to students or their parents, which some feel is implied by the paternalism label…But it’s undeniable that these schools aim to change the lifestyles of those who attend them.”

David Whitman explains his title this way:

By paternalistic I mean that each of the six schools is a highly prescriptive institution that teaches students not just how to think, but also how to act according to what are commonly termed traditional, middle-class values. These paternalistic schools go beyond just teaching values as abstractions: the schools tell students exactly how they are expected to behave, and their behavior is closely monitored, with real rewards for compliance and penalties for noncompliance. Unlike the often forbidding paternalistic institutions of the past, these schools are prescriptive yet warm; teachers and principals, who sometimes serve in loco parentis, are both authoritative and caring figures. Teachers laugh with and cajole students, in addition to frequently directing them to stay on task.

It’s the rare person who works with or observes struggling inner city schools who doesn’t cite family disruption and a low-level of parenting skills as part of the problem.  As a teacher, I often thought my job was not just to teach my students but to help raise them.  Matthew Tabor gets it right when he notes that “very, very few education leaders, from individual community leaders to those on the national scene, are comfortable and honest enough to tell it like it is. We need to say what we are, what we aren’t, and get on with things.”  Fordham’s Mike Petrilli writes that as uncomfortable as it might be to discuss in public, “what these schools are doing is providing a middle-class, achievement-oriented culture to children who come out of a culture of poverty. And for that, the schools should be applauded (and emulated). It might not be politically correct to use these terms, but they are accurate. And that should count for something.”  

Whitman deserves praise for calling ‘em like he sees ‘em.  From what I know of the schools he profiles, his analysis–and use of the term paternalism–is spot on.  Jay Mathews worries that when a defender of these schools uses a freighted word like “paternalistic” those who don’t like the the schools methods will use the word like a cudgel.  Methinks he worries too much.  Nothing marginalizes criticism like success.  As long as these schools deliver on their promise of a solid education, you could call them “Pact with Lucifer” schools and they’d still be oversubscribed.  We ought to have reached a point where our patience with failing inner city children has shamed us into applauding and emulating success, whether or not we like the methods by which it’s achieved or take exception to how they are described.

A school’s culture matters a great deal.  In neighborhoods where children often lack strong adult guidance and authority–or are surrounded by adults who undermine it–it matters more than anything.  Whitman has done a valuable service by focusing our attention on it.  I’m looking forward to reading his book. 

“A National Embarrassment”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 12, 2008 in Assessment and Testing. 3 Comments

The historically strong performance of the U.S. in the Olympic games stands in stark contrast to the performance of U.S. students compared to their peers overseas.  This irony is not lost upon The Fordham Foundation, which goes to town on the poor performance on U.S. students in their entertaining yet pointed Education Olympics this week.  Meanwhile Two Million Minutes filmmaker Bob Compton is in Beijing.  He sent this essay to Whitney Tilson, who included it in his most recent ed reform email blast.  It’s reprinted here with permission from Compton.

What if the U.S. won no Olympic medals?

 

By Bob Compton

As I prepare to go to the Beijing Olympics, I wonder what would happen if the U.S. came home with no medals. From the first Olympic Games in 1896 through 2006, the U.S. has always fared very well, leading the world with 973 gold medals and 2,405 total medals won. No other country on Earth, big or small, comes even close to America’s athletic prowess.

 But as I pack my bags, I wonder – what would happen? What if the U.S. won no gold, no silver and no bronze medals? Even worse, what if the U.S. team finished 25th in the medal competition way behind both smaller and larger countries? Would we handle it with the same nonchalance we have about our children ranking 25th in the world in mathematics? Would it merit a Blue Ribbon panel whose recommendations are never implemented? Would it generate a brief mention in the news and then pass from our minds?

 No way! Dropping to 25th in the world at the Olympics would be a national embarrassment. There would be an outcry of humiliation from Americans. The President, Congress, Governors, in fact every elected official worth their salt would demand “athletic reform.” Experts would be appointed to analyze our programmatic weaknesses compared to other countries, and every American would expect serious, measurable changes to take place within four years before the next Olympics. We would muster the will and exert every effort never to lose again in the global athletic contest of the Olympics.

 So why are we so apathetic about the decline of our children’s intellectual achievement – where 24 countries outperform U.S. students in math, arguably a more important contest than any sport. Each year our children’s ability to compete academically in the world gets worse, and each year Americans seem to care less. Elected officials give the illusion of caring, but no truly hard choices are made, and no meaningful improvements are seen.

 Fortunately, America has been relatively unchallenged economically for the past 50 years. During that time our country won the race to the moon, won the Cold War and became enormously wealthy – on the strength of science, engineering and industry that produced the biggest, the fastest, the best of everything. But times have changed.

 Our accumulated wealth and a historically liberal immigration policy have allowed us to ignore how rapidly other nations are enhancing their intellectual capital. China, for example, has gone from the extreme poverty and illiteracy produced by the Cultural Revolution to become the fourth largest economy in the world – in a mere 30 years. That’s right – only 30 years! Today, the U.S has a trade deficit of $1.5 trillion with China, and China holds $150 billion in U.S. Treasury securities, second only to Japan. China has become both our supplier of goods and our banker. Does that worry anyone else out there but me? 

 China and India, the two most populous nations on E arth – each four times our size – are producing more and more well-educated young people, particularly in math and science. Their cultures revere, recognize and reward academic excellence, and so they are perfectly tuned to the global technology competition of the 21st century.

 As Americans we believe in being number one – in sports, technology, innovation, creativity, the military and in the global economy. But all of that success is based on being number one in educating our children – something we are no longer achieving. 

 Isn’t it time we admit to ourselves this is more serious than the Olympic Games. Americans traditionally rise to the challenge and prevail. It’s time to rise to the challenge of educating our children to the highest level in the world and ensure they bring home economic gold medals.

 Go U.S.A.!

Magic Bullets Frustrate Reformers With Elusive Ways

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 2, 2008 in Curriculum and Educational Policy. 8 Comments

The magic bullet for raising tests scores is….constant assessment? Tracking the progress of individual students? Parental involvement? All of the above?  An AP story quotes Colorado educators who have discovered — mirabile dictu! – there is no single magic bullet.

Apropos of that, the best post I’ve read this week comes from Fordham’s Mike Petrilli, who asks on the Gadfly, “Are we sure that “improving teacher quality” is the panacea that so many have suggested? Is it possible that our current fascination with ‘human capital development’ is misguided? That both presidential campaigns’ embrace of this issue is ill-considered?”

Yes, the research is quite clear that the quality of a student’s teacher has a greater impact on that student’s achievement than anything else that schools can control. It’s also clear that low-income and minority children are much less likely to be taught by “high quality teachers” (however defined) than are affluent and white children. So reformers make the jump: If we could just fill every classroom with society’s “best and brightest,” we’d have our education problems licked. Or, they continue, if we could just get our most talented teachers to serve in our neediest schools, we’d have our achievement gap beat.

The problem obviously, is that we’re unlikley to fill every classroom with the best and the brightest–the numbers are simply too great–and other favored solutions like merit pay are equally unlikely to work at scale.  “Shouldn’t we be thinking about how to make average teachers more effective, too, and augmenting them via technology and other stratagems, rather than putting all our eggs in the “superstar teacher” basket?” asks Petrilli.

Petrilli’s measured and thoughtful post offers a useful roadmap.  As Donald Rumsfeld did not say, “You go to school with the teachers you have.  Not the teachers you wish you had.” 

Forgive the inelegant analogy, but raising student achievement may not be a disease we’re going to cure, but rather a chronic condition we can manage with a cocktail of interventions and strategies.  One of those strategies ought to be a national core curriculum and common standards. It would certainly be a great help (not a magic bullet) in improving teacher quality, since it would enable teachers and staff developers on improving the craft of teaching–focus on the “how” of teaching, instead of what to teach.

More: Joanne Jacobs agrees with Petrilli on the relative lack of superstar teachers, but has questions about the efficacy of technology