Vouchers revisited

About a month ago I wrote about the theory of charter schools, and how they haven’t lived up to the promise of becoming "laboratories for reform". I come back to this because several recent commentators have noted a shift in the political/philosophical argument used in support of vouchers - no doubt in response to all the research that has shown charter schools to be no more effective, and often less effective, than traditional public schools.

The emerging argument is one of “choice”, that is, parents have the right to make educational choices for their children, regardless of whether or not those choices result in a better education.

That’s an intriguing argument, but I’m not inclined to debate it. While the deference we give to parental decision-making is not as universal as it once was, for better or worse, our society continues to give a great deal of latitude to parents in how they raise their children.

In that light, I’m even willing to consider (shocker alert) a modest, limited voucher program. The point at which I draw the line, however – and where the line should be drawn - is the point at which charter and private schools begin to siphon resources from traditional public schools, which have, and which will continue to have, the responsibility for educating the vast majority of our children.

Of course, that proposal wouldn’t please anybody, and it’s not what has been suggested in Pennsylvania or elsewhere. None of the ‘take-the-money-with-you’ plans make any allowance for the substantial fixed costs in education (primarily in facilities), and none of these proposals hold the charter and private schools that stand to receive this windfall to the same academic or administrative standards.

For many voucher supporters, this has become a crusade, an attack on the idea of public support for universal education – which has been our country’s single greatest engine for economic success and a democratic society. As Dana Goldstein writes in Slate, “The standards-and-accountability movement has been superseded by a view of education in which public schools are not engines for economic growth but potential corrupters of the nation's youth.” 

We appear to be fixin’ to re-argue the 19th-century debate on the public’s responsibility towards education for all - and there’s a lot of money (and money to be made) on the pro-voucher side of the debate. But the good news is that “public money for private schools” remains unpopular by substantial margins.

To continue the math conversation

Dear Readers: last week I shared with a few friends on Facebook and elsewhere an interesting commentary in the Times, How to Fix Our Math Education

In response, Marilyn, a good friend and retired high school Math teacher of 38 years, writes today’s thoughtful guest blog.

To continue the math conversation:

      I always sat with a very unpopular viewpoint among my math educator colleagues. The current curriculum was instituted pre-Sputnik to create a generation of engineers. This curriculum needs to be available to some, but 99% of our students do NOT pursue engineering, and yet we subject 100% of our population to a curriculum which does not suit many of them. Yes, it can be a valuable set of mental exercises, but this can be accomplished through other disciplines in more relevant settings. Furthermore, I think it's criminal that this curriculum is a gatekeeper which, over decades, has prevented some really great minds from higher education.

     Sol Garfunkle, who wrote the article you posted, has a video series (which I used at Delta) on Discrete Mathematics - a series of disconnected topics related to management and information sciences (such as graph theory, cryptography, bin packing, etc.). There are many unsolved problems in the field, because, I feel, young learners are not introduced to these topics. I had the great fortune to study with the top mathematicians in the field through three summer NSF grants in the 90's.

     The NSF has been trying to push for Discrete Math even as early as an elementary school curriculum. It taps both sides of the brain, is very hands-on, and the issues are extremely relevant. I piloted the 1st Discrete Math course in the U.S. for 9th and 10th grades at Delta, using the galleys from the then, unpublished text. I in-serviced the HS math dept., which led to the introduction of a D.M. course as a senior alternative to calculus. It seemed to energize some of the HS staff. As a student in the 60's, I never saw D.M. until I was a junior in college as a math major, and it was presented in a traditional, theoretical way. I was blown away by what I learned from the NFS crowd.

     At Delta, though I taught the traditional curriculum., I created several other "alternative" courses, such as D.M., Personal Finance (checking accounts, investments, leases, car insurance, mortgages, how to do taxes, etc.,) Symbolic Logic, Statistics, Problem Solving (introducing the heuristics of Polya, using games, puzzles, traditional conundrums.) Our kids could meet the HS math credit requirements through a variety of means. But then came PSSA's.

     Over time enrollment dropped so low for some of these courses that we had to drop them from the curriculum - students did not sign up for them because the topics are not tested in the PSSA's. So much for autonomy to use good practices.

      So as Sol says in his article - keep the engineering curriculum for those interested and suited, but give the rest of the kids accessible, interesting, relevant math content.

My 2 cents, Marilyn

Confrontation v. Collaboration

There is considerable political rhetoric these days that blames ‘overpaid’ teachers and recalcitrant unions for the so-called “crisis” in education. It’s sad when I hear school board members - who ought to know better - piling on, as I did at a recent state meeting.

(I say ‘so-called’ because educational quality has not declined over the past generation; the reality is that public education hasn’t kept pace with a vastly increased expectation, both in terms of the knowledge and skills we expect students to learn, but also the proportion of students - i.e., everyone - we expect to be successful.)

First, if teachers really are overpaid, how do we explain the fact that half of new teachers leave the profession after five years - three years at inner-city schools - long before they become vested in those ‘overly-generous’ pensions? Second, anyone who believes that a typical teacher works a 35-hour week, with three  months vacation, hasn’t talked to any real teachers lately.

What the rhetoric overlooks is that we have no chance of accomplishing the necessary transformation of our education system unless everyone – policy-makers, administrators, teachers, students and parents – begins to see themselves as on “the same side”; as partners with differing roles. This won’t happen if we continue to pit “sides” against one another. Even the feds appear to understand this: a top DOE official recently told a gathering of state lawmakers: “States need to take a more active role in promoting cooperation between teachers' unions and school districts”.

This is why Joel Klein had little chance of success in New York. As noted in Irving Hamer’s commentary in Education Week (Collaboration Is Essential in Public Education), Klein’s “combative approach …  ignores the reality that reform cannot be something we do to teachers.” (The same criticism could be made of Michelle Rhee.)

It continues to amaze me that it never seems to occur to these so-called reformers to ask teachers what they think could be done to improve education. Trust me, if you ask, you’ll find many teachers who’ve given a lot of thought to this and have something to say.

Instead, it’s often just the opposite: “teachers cite a lack of support and poor working conditions” as the biggest reason for leaving the profession, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education.  As Walt Gardner put it (in yet another response to Steve Brill): it’s not about finding “a way to motivate the rank and file. … these teachers are already motivated. What they are not, however, are masochists.”

At worst, a confrontational, toxic school climate will drive away the good teachers (or keep them from coming in the first place). At the very least, it will inhibit the collaboration, risk-taking and creativity that is essential to meaningful organizational change.

Simple solutions to Complex Issues

A couple of recent book reviews have shown a lot more insight than the book they reviewed.
I mentioned one Monday - Dana Goldstein's review of Steven Brill's “Class Warfare.” Today, I'd like to note Sara Mosle's piece from Sunday's New York Times.

Mosle is particularly critical of Brill's belief that "unions are the primary cause of failing public schools" in spite of the almost total lack of evidence to support that claim.

Let me repeat that. There is almost no evidence to support the belief that unions are the primary obstacle to education reform. Yet a lot of people believe just that, largely because unions are an easy, simplistic scapegoat that conveniently absolves everyone else of responsibility.

Human beings have an understandable affinity for simple answers to complex problems. The particular challenge of education reform is that it is tempting, and fairly easy, to make a simplistic argument about this particularly complicated issue; developing a coherent counter-argument is far more challenging and time consuming.

Brill bases much of his argument about unions on the success of the non-union KIPP charter schools in Harlem, which nearly everyone admires. But even a KIPP founder concedes that the program "relies on superhuman talent that cannot be duplicated in large numbers" - and cites examples of educators who unexpectedly quit, citing burnout and unsustainable workloads. KIPP does great work, but it's not a universal model for reform.

Mosle also makes a point that was emphasized by Goldstein: while teacher quality is the most important variable within schools, "mountains of data, going back decades, demonstrates that most of the variation in student performance is explained by non-school factors: not just poverty, but also parental literacy (and whether parents read to their children), student health, frequent relocations, crime­-related stress and the like."

The achievements of the Harlem Children's Zone - another oft-cited success story – are due to the fact that they specifically and deliberately attempt to address those issues.

Does this mean that exceptional teachers cannot make a real difference in the lives of these students, or that teachers shouldn't be held accountable?  No, what it means is that it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to design an accountability system - particularly one that depends primarily on test scores - that accurately takes into account all those non-school factors. And that's precisely what the simplistic reformers are proposing.

Any experienced teacher will tell you that even in a relatively homogeneous district such as ours, one year's class can be completely different from the next year's. How does one account for that?

I particularly like argument Mosle make towards the end: "Brill likens the battle over the nation’s schools to “warfare,” but the better analogy may be to the war on cancer. For years, scientists hoped a magic pill would cure this ravaging disease. But increasingly, doctors have recognized that they will have to fight a multi-fronted war, as cancers (like failing schools) aren’t all alike."

We should be outraged

Credit to the Centre Daily Times for running this recent AP story above the fold: “Cutbacks in state aid for public schools hit Pennsylvania's poorer school districts the hardest, slashing nearly three times as many dollars in aid per student compared with wealthier districts.

On the same weekend of that story, I heard the following comparison of the “top” and “bottom 50” of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts:

	Avg. teacher salary	Avg. education	% of students in poverty
“Top 50”	$74,000	Master’s +	17%
“Bottom 50”	$44,000	Bachelor’s	47%

Of course, correlation does not imply causation. Higher teacher salaries do not “cause” better education; it’s far more complicated than that. On the other hand, it’s pretty hard to say that teacher salaries don’t matter, or that level of education doesn’t matter - or that poverty doesn’t matter.

Which, of course, is exactly what the Corbett administration is saying, has said, and has backed up through action. As hard as the state budget cuts were on every Pennsylvanian school district, poor districts were hit the hardest.

It should also be noted that as part of this year’s omnibus school code bill, all reference has been removed of the ‘costing-out study’ that was developed during the prior administration. The study, of course, acknowledged the Commonwealth’s responsibility towards equity in education funding.

As a member of a district that came out of this relatively well, perhaps I shouldn’t say anything, but there’s no other way to put it: it’s unconscionable, and probably unconstitutional.

A post-script:

This article from Dana Goldstein is worth noting.

In a review of a recent book by Steven Brill - he of "Rubber Room" fame - Goldstein takes issue with the commonplace claim that teacher effectiveness can overcome the disadvantages of poverty. (The impact of some of these disadvantages - food insecurity, lead poisoning, etc. - should be hard to ignore.)

Well, no one disputes the value of good teachers, nor - it ought to follow - the importance of "focusing education policy efforts on sustainable teacher quality reforms such as ... requiring new teachers to undergo apprenticeship periods working alongside master educators, and creating career ladders that reward excellent teachers who agree to stay in the classroom long-term and mentor their peers."

However..

"the work of the many researchers Brill cites shows that while teaching is the most important in-school factor affecting student achievement, family and neighborhood characteristics matter more. The research consensus has been clear and unchanging for more than a decade: at most, teaching accounts for about 15 percent of student achievement outcomes, while socioeconomic factors account for about 60 percent."

I share Goldstein's frustration that this point has to be made over and over again. 

A natural synergy

There is a natural synergy between two of (what ought to be) the most important ideas in education reform: 21st-century skills and school climate.

To review: the concept of 21st-century skills is based on the understanding that in order to prepare today’s students for successful careers and lives, nearly every student will need far more than the primarily content-based education that most of us received if we went to school in the 20th century. They will also need learning and application skills, such as:
    * Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
    * Communication and Collaboration
    * Creativity and Innovation

Good communication skills will be essential: how to communicate with different audiences, in multiple ways; knowing when to speak and how to listen. They’ll need to understand and balance diverse views in order to reach workable solutions, particularly in multi-cultural environments. (What I refer to as ‘deliberative skills’.)

Tomorrow’s citizens will need to be able to work with others collaboratively, but also know how to lead. They’ll need to be flexible and adaptable. They will need a deep understanding that learning is a life-long and self-directed process. To a far greater extent than our generation, they’ll need to make their own way.

Much of this may not sound all that revolutionary; what’s changed is that in tomorrow’s world, every student will need to be so equipped. There used to be an understanding that only the ‘elite’ students needed these skills, which they’d pick up when they went off to college. 

Most schools, however, are not currently designed to accomplish these outcomes for average students. How do we get there?

One of the keys will be that we pay much closer attention to the school's learning environment, also referred to as "school climate”.

School climate is defined as “the character and quality of school life”. This includes:
     • school norms, goals, and values
     • the nature of interpersonal relationships (student-student, student-adult and adult-adult)
     • teaching and learning practices
     • leadership styles and organizational structure.

The first argument for the importance of school climate is obvious. Students are more likely to learn when they feel physically, emotionally and intellectually safe, when their classes are engaging, and when their voice is valued (key elements of a positive school climate). 

There is also what we now know from brain research: learning performance is deeply affected by the student-teacher relationship and the emotional environment in which learning takes place. (By the way, business leaders increasingly understand the significance of employer-employee relationships on business success.)

Similarly, teachers are more effective when they have opportunities for professional growth and collaboration with other teachers, and when the insights gained from years of experience are valued. Parents are better positioned to help their children with their education if they feel welcomed and valued in the school.

This may all seem obvious, but it doesn’t occur consistently without focused, intentional effort.

The second argument is more direct: many of the characteristics of a positive school climate model for students these essential skills.

To take an obvious example, a school environment in which collaboration is the norm helps to develop collaborative skills in students. Similarly, a teacher who encourages students to ask their own questions, in so doing, helps to develop their critical-thinking skills.

Well, you get the point, but I’ll suggest one more that gets to the heart of several key 21st-century skills: ”the school community develops practices that promote social and civic responsibility”.

The theory of charter schools

Whenever I talk about charter schools, I invariably refer to the theory that is typically used as its intellectual foundation: "relieving charter schools from some bureaucratic requirements allows them to explore educational innovation that could be replicated elsewhere."

Or, as I've heard recently, charter schools were supposed to be "laboratories for reform".

As of today, I cease and desist. While intuitively appealing in theory, charter schools have existed in Pennsylvania for 14 years, and to my knowledge - and as was pointed out in the CDT series - rarely has an innovation from a charter school been used to inform the practice of a traditional public school.

For starters, our charter school law has no mechanism for implementing these "lessons learned." Rather, by design it creates an adversarial relationship between charters and the 'authorizing' school, as was also pointed out by the CDT.

Second, while charter schools are required, as a condition of the charter, to describe their 'innovative approach', it is only superficially enforced by PDE - woe to the district who challenges - and there is no follow-up.

Then there's that bit about 'freedom from mandates'. For examples, public schools are required to have 100% of their teachers certified ("highly qualified" in NCLB lingo).

But in charter schools, only 75% of their teachers must meet this requirement. Well, is "certification" important, or isn't it?  Same issue for special ed students: charter schools are not required to file the detailed reports that regular public schools must file. Well, why not? If it's not important, why do public schools have to do it? (Ask any administrator: this is not an insignificant burden.)

Although I'm sure many charter school supporters are well-intentioned, it has become hard not to conclude that the driving forces behind the charter school movement are 1) money, and 2) an ideological or emotional disposition against public schools.

In Pennsylvania, one of the leading advocates for charter school legislation (which was recently defeated, at least temporarily) has been state senator Anthony Williams. Listening to him, it is hard not to believe he is sincere about wanting to help kids - but it's also hard to ignore that his biggest campaign contributors were people who stood to gain financially. Schools as a profit center!

As Twain(?) once observed, "it is hard to convince a man of something when he is paid to believe otherwise."

That's not to say that some charter schools aren't innovating, with some success (statistically, about 15-20%). In State College, we have four charter schools, at least a couple of which are doing some fairly interesting stuff.

But there's no mechanism for closing the "laboratories" that appear to have "failed" - a fact that does not appear to concern most charter school supporters.

If we are to take the concept of charter schools seriously, two things need to happen: 1) the state should produce detailed reports describing the success, or lack thereof, of each charter school "innovation" and 2) charter schools should be funded in a way that makes them "revenue neutral" to local districts.
 
The most recent state budget eliminated the entire state reimbursement for charter schools. What does that tell us?