The EDifierAugust 26, 2010 I have been looking over the results from the 2010 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll that were released yesterday, and there were some trends I found quite intriguing. For example, although the public is not sold on No Child Left Behind (NCLB), with nearly half having an unfavorable view of NCLB, the reason why is unclear. Maybe they have read that NCLB is ruining education as we know it by making schools into test prep factories. Or maybe they were reading others’ opinions that NCLB was designed so the public would lose faith in its public schools.
However, the answers to some of the poll’s questions provide a different picture. First off, no, the public has not lost faith in our public schools. As a matter of fact, parents have actually given their children’s schools higher grades for the first time since 2000, two years before NCLB was signed into law. In 2000, 70 percent of parents gave the school their oldest child attended an A or B, while in 2010 that jumped to 77 percent. So it does not appear that parents are losing faith in their public schools. Furthermore, the poll also shows that parents don’t believe their students are just becoming test-takers at the expense of actually learning. As a matter of fact, more parents in 2010 (63 percent) believe their schools have “caused their child to become eager learners” than parents in 1998 (50 percent). So it doesn’t appear that NCLB is making our students into test-taking robots either.
This isn’t a defense of NCLB. The legislation has a lot of shortcomings that need to be addressed, and soon. But while discussions take place on what changes should be made, we need to know exactly what the problems are. The hyperbole that NCLB has ruined public schools is overstated, and so is the rhetoric that NCLB needs no alteration.
While policymakers are figuring out how to change the law, let’s hope they use data to inform their decisions and not assumptions based on anecdotes. Without basing changes on facts, they will just wind up leaving more students behind. – Jim Hull
July 23, 2010 Budget cuts leave tall grass, weeds. This headline from USA Today caught my eye a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been getting quite annoyed seeing the tall grass surrounding the roads I drive every day. Not only are they an eyesore, they are making it more dangerous to make turns. And I really wasn’t happy to hear Virginia’s Transportation officials plead for private citizens to help mow public areas. Beyond the fact that sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen, it got me thinking about the budget cuts our nation’s schools have been facing.
While states are asking their citizens to mow their lawns, schools are asking teachers, parents, and students to provide resources once supplied by the school. Schools are asking for parents to bring in basic supplies such as cleaning supplies and chalk to help offset the severe cuts almost every school district in the country is facing. Unfortunately, the cuts go way beyond cutting necessary supplies. More than two-thirds of districts are eliminating teacher positions and even more are eliminating effective instructional programs.
There is some arguing that such cuts will be good for schools in the long-run by forcing them to become more efficient. I have my doubts. Since the economic downturn began in 2008, schools had already eliminated most of the so-called “fluff” in their budgets. They had altered thermostats to lower utility costs, deferred maintenance, and cut back on the number of employee BlackBerrys given out, just to name a few. But there is little fluff to cut anymore. With the dramatic decrease in revenues from state and local coffers, schools have been making more dramatic cuts that directly affect students.
Students are going to start school in September in larger classes, with fewer courses to choose from. Districts have had to lay off teachers and eliminate course offerings that are not required for graduation. Districts also have had to eliminate instructional programs not because they were ineffective but just because they didn’t have the money. The ineffective programs have been long gone and all that’s left to cut are programs that are actually working.
Seeing such cuts doesn’t give me optimism that our schools will all of sudden realize they can do more with less. Our schools face tremendous challenges. Research provides guidance on what works to meet those challenges. Unfortunately, districts are having to cut programs that have been proven to work. This isn’t more efficient. This is leaving the grass along the side of the road to grow until someone else cuts it. Schools should and are doing more with less, but how much less can schools get before they are unable to do more? – Jim Hull
July 21, 2010 NBC has had a great idea and decided to put education in the spotlight with its Education Summit this September. However, I have to say NBC needs a little education itself on how to read data.
First off, NBC provides the statistic that U.S. students ranked 21st in the world in math and 25th in science on the international assessment PISA. First, PISA results are not designed to rank countries, as if testing was like a horse race (read more about in the Center’s Guide to international assessments).
Second, PISA is just one international assessment. In TIMSS, which assesses the math and science performance of 4th and 8th graders, U.S. students compare favorably to their peers by scoring significantly (see statistically significant) above the international average in math in both grades. At the 8th grade level, U.S. students scored significantly better than 37 out of the 47 participating countries. Only 5 countries (all Asian countries) scored significantly above U.S. 8th graders. We may not be number one, but we’re doing a lot better internationally than you would think from NBC’s press release.
When using international assessments NBC just didn’t give a full picture of how U.S. students really perform. When using national assessments, NBC just got it plain wrong. NBC claims that NAEP scores show that 68% of eighth graders can’t “read at grade level.” This is not true. Sixty-eight percent of eighth graders scored below Proficient in 2009.
If NBC had read our report The proficiency debate, it would know that NAEP’s “Proficient” level is not synonymous with “on grade level.” Proficient is a higher standard than being on grade level. So saying that two-thirds of eighth graders can’t read at grade level is plain wrong.
It’s not that all our schools are doing so well that we don’t need to do anything. NAEP’s “Below Basic” level shows that far too many students perform poorly in our schools. But exaggerating the problems and painting all schools with the same brush will do nothing to help the students that need the most help. Across the country, there are countless traditional public schools that are just as or even more successful than highly touted successful charter schools such as KIPP and Harlem’s Children Zone. Although you can read about the traditional public schools’ success stories here, they rarely garner the national media attention successful charter schools receive. If we focus too much on national averages, as NBC has done, we will lose sight of these successful public schools – and their lessons on how to improve other public schools.
So, when evaluating our public schools we have to be careful to get the picture right. We have numerous great public schools that parents, communities, and local businesses know are meeting the needs of their students. We also have too many schools that are struggling to meet tremendous challenges. Instead of painting all schools with the same negative brush, NBC should ask these questions: what are the problems, where are they, and what can we do about them? Basing our decisions about education on a couple of misinterpreted pieces of data will only impair our effective schools while denying ineffective schools the support they need. – Jim Hull
June 9, 2010 What are “virtual charter schools,” and what does it mean for education that they seem to be growing? Right now, the answers include way too many unknowns.
In our recent report on charter schools, authors Eileen O’Brien and Chuck Dervarics noted, “Education management organizations (EMOs) are creating a growing number of virtual or cyber charter schools, which deliver curriculum and provide instruction via the Internet and electronic communication. For-profit EMOs have increased the number of virtual charter schools they operate from thirteen in the 2003–2004 school year to fifty by 2008–2009…There is little research on virtual charters, and a recent review of research (Cavanaugh 2009) indicated “mixed outcomes” when comparing virtual charter school achievement with classroom-based charter programs.” Read the full report to see how little is formally known about virtual charter schools.
Now a recent article in The New York Times questions the funding received by one of these online virtual charter schools. As presented by the article, it’s unclear how the state and federal money received from these schools is used. While some goes toward curriculum, computers, and support, the lack of other services (transportation, for one) brings up questions of where the “extra” money goes.
But there are differing reports about the amount of money received, and no clear explanation in the article on how these students are, or are not, part of the public school system. Charter schools, remember, are public schools. But the students described in the article, while they seem to be tested under the public school accountability system, are more like homeschool students than public school students.
The lack of clarity raises a lot of questions. Is the federal and state money received being used for its intended purpose? Should we evaluate these students’ performance as part of public schools in general, charter schools, or home schools? They seem to be a hybrid of both. And who is ultimately responsible for the students’ learning? Such confusion can’t be good for anybody, no matter what kind of education the students are receiving.
To me, it just seems like one of those situations where each of the different groups involved thinks the other group is responsible for or taking care of a specific task. I’ve been in enough of those situations myself to know that they usually end badly. With all these virtual unknowns floating around, I think somebody had better find out something soon. –Rebecca St. Andrie
May 4, 2010 It sure is grim out there for our public schools. School boards across the country have been making very tough decisions as they adopt budgets for the 2010-11 school year. With federal stimulus funds running out– which likely saved hundreds of thousands of jobs– and the further decline of state and local revenues, our public schools are being asked to do more with much less.
According to a new survey by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), 8 in 10 districts nationwide will eliminate an estimated 275,000 jobs in our public schools—the vast majority of which will be teachers. Such a decrease in the number of teachers will most certainly end up increasing class sizes and offering fewer courses.
Of course there are those that will argue that there is plenty of low-lying fruit that districts can cut before making cuts that directly affect the classroom. However, districts across the country have made those cuts over the past couple of years and there is little left to cut. Districts have lowered thermostats during the winter, changed bus routes to conserve gas, cut or eliminated professional development, laid off administrative and support staff, imposed furlough days, and have even gone to a shorter school week. Unfortunately, the cost of educating students is rising as the revenue districts receive have plummeted, so school boards have been forced to make more drastic cuts. Even more worrisome is that the outlook for school budgets in the 2011-12 school year doesn’t look any brighter.
With school districts across the country forced to make such drastic cuts we must ask ourselves what will the impact be in the long run. If teachers are laid off, class sizes will increase. If early education programs are eliminated or cut back, fewer students will begin school ready to learn. If districts have to layoff the least experienced teachers now, our students will not have enough good experienced teachers in 10 years. If professional development programs are eliminated, our teachers will not be able to stay abreast of the current most effective teaching strategies. If students spend less quality time in school, they will have less access to quality instruction.
These are just some of the negative long-term effects of not investing in our public schools. Or as former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich argues in this video, these are some of the long-term effects if we do not bail out our public schools and invest in our country’s greatest resource—our future human capital– just as we invested in our future financial capital by bailing out Wall Street. –Jim Hull
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