The 2012 election cycle is off and running, with big implications for America’s schools. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) awaits reauthorization. The Obama administration is implementing new regulations targeted at for-profit colleges. Standoffs between the GOP-controlled House and the Obama administration have yielded budget brinksmanship, while domestic spending has been squeezed by massive deficits. President Obama, following in the footsteps of the Bush administration, has aggressively championed federal education initiatives like Race to the Top and the Investing in Innovation fund. Meanwhile, the Republican primaries have been marked by candidates’ rejection of an active federal role in education, as several have pledged to “turn out the lights” at the U.S. Department of Education.

In a discussion hosted by Ed Next editor Frederick Hess, the panelists included:

PETER CUNNINGHAM, U.S. Department of Education
KATHERINE HALEY, Office of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)
ALYSON KLEIN, Education Week
JOE WILLIAMS, Democrats for Education Reform
DAVID WINSTON, The Winston Group

More information about the event is available on the AEI website.

In the Spring 2012 issue of Ed Next, June June Kronholz looks at two school districts working with Khan Academy to boost math achievement.

The Chetty study shows that over a ten year period, the payoff for the students of a very effective teacher amounts to a total of $2.5 million. The harm done by a very ineffective teacher is the same. So if we could replace a terrible teacher with a great one, it would be worth $5 million total for all those kids affected by the switch.  And losing a great teacher, only to hire a bad one, would cost the same.   That’s convincing evidence for those who want to limit the tenure of non-performing teachers while giving the excellent ones their just reward.

But unions want to protect teacher tenure and pay all teachers the same, regardless of effectiveness.  So denying the Chetty study is absolutely crucial.

Though he lacks the necessary econometric skills, Michael Winerip takes up the assignment, claiming the data on teacher effectiveness, which comes from student testing during the 1990s, is too old to tell us anything.

But to ascertain the impact of teaching on student earnings that occur much later in life, it is of course necessary to look at those educated in the 1990s.   Those students have now finished high school (or not), gone to college (or not), and entered the work force (or not).  For today’s students, no one has that information–for the obvious reason that they are still too young.

Aha! says Mr. Winerip. That is the fatal flaw. Back in the 1990s, when students took standardized tests, No Child Left Behind did not exist, so “whether those results are applicable to our post-2004 high-stakes world, we cannot tell.”

If we are to buy this argument, the data will always be too old to tell us anything.  To learn what works we have to wait twenty years, and when that data is available, it will be just too old.

But is it?  Why should we assume that the tests taken back in the 1990s were more accurate than the post-NCLB tests given in 2005, when both teachers and students took them more seriously.  Student performance is more accurately measured when students take a test seriously and when teachers make sure the students understand the testing procedures to be followed. All that is more likely when tests count for something.

So if Chetty and his colleagues could identify large impacts of effective teaching using data from the 1990s, his successors will probably find even larger impacts from more accurate information gathered in the first decade of the 21^st century.

Of course, I cannot prove that, but it is certainly more likely than Winerip’s counter-hypothesis.  While he admits the 1990s tests were accurate, he claims tests today no longer are.  Only if Winerip is willing to make the astounding claim that most teachers today are cheating deliberately and systematically does that assertion hold. Otherwise, we can characterize his argument in one word:  Silly.

- Paul Peterson

In the video, leaders from Rocketship and School of One discuss the advantages of digital learning while sharing their concerns about California laws and union regulations that have limited the role of online learning.

More about the book is available here.

HT: Joanne Jacobs

On Thursday, Jan. 5 from 8:30-10:00 am we’ll be watching a live webcast of the Fordham Institute’s forum on accountability, starring Eric Hanushek, Charles Barone, Sandy Kress, and Mark Schneider. The event is described as follows:

Ten years ago, George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, the law that has dominated U.S. education—and the education policy debate—for the entire decade. While lawmakers are struggling to update that measure, experts across the political spectrum are struggling to make sense of its impact and legacy. Did NCLB, and the consequential accountability movement it embodied, succeed? And with near-stagnant national test scores of late, is there reason to think that this approach to school reform is exhausted? If not “consequential accountability,” what could take the U.S. to the next level of student achievement?

More information about the event and the panelists can be found on the Fordham Institute website.

Terry Moe was interviewed by Mike Petrilli for the Education Next book club podcast here.

Research by Hanushek which appeared in Ed Next in 2008 found strong relationships between achievement on accountability-based tests and economic growth. (See: “Education and Economic Growth,” Education Next, Spring 2008)

In this video, Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution discusses the shortcomings of the NRC report with Terry Moe, also of the Hoover Institution.

The Winter 2012 issue of Education Next includes a full critique of the NRC report by Eric Hanushek, “Grinding the Antitesting Ax: More bias than evidence behind NRC panel’s conclusions”

As Hanushek explains, the NRC report neglected the scientific evidence when it concluded that NCLB and high school exit exams were not good policies.  By the NRC’s own evidence, test-based accountability is very valuable, and investing in these programs has a rate of return that dwarfs that of virtually all governmental programs.

Research by Hanushek which appeared in Ed Next in 2008 found strong relationships between achievement on accountability-based tests and economic growth. (See: “Education and Economic Growth,” Education Next, Spring 2008)

Kipp shares her experience teaching 11th and 12th grade English online while she resides with her family in rural Colorado. Though not physically in a classroom, Kipp has been able to successfully engage students through live class sessions, emails, instant messaging, and texting. Kipp used to teach in a traditional classroom setting but says that despite some of the unique challenges teaching virtually presents, she finds the online teaching experience more rewarding and in many instances more effective.

Today (Thursday), tune in to a live webcast of an all-day conference on education governance sponsored by The Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress.

School reforms abound today, yet even the boldest and most imaginative among them have produced—at best—marginal gains in student achievement. What America needs in the twenty-first century is a far more profound version of education reform. Instead of shoveling yet more policies, programs, and practices into our current system, we must deepen our understanding of the obstacles to reform that are posed by existing structures, governance arrangements, and power relationships. Yet few education reformers—or public officials—have been willing to delve into this touchy territory.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress have teamed up to tackle these tough issues and ask how our mostly nineteenth-century system of K-12 governance might be modernized and made more receptive to the innumerable changes that have occurred—and need to occur—in the education realm.

More information is available here.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

This video highlights some of the strategies being pursued by the Partnership, which include identifying students for Gifted and Talented Education (GATE), parent engagement, professional development for teachers and principals, school accountability, use of new education technologies, protecting schools from the disruption of disproportionate teacher layoffs, and fostering inviting learning environments.

More information is available at http://www.partnershipla.org

The Georgia’s governor, state charter school commissioners, and parents all react to the May 16th decision.

Visit Education Next’s Charter School and Vouchers Archive to read more opinion, research, and news pieces on charter schools.

More videos in this series by NewSchools can be found here.

Are America’s highest achieving students being left behind?

A trio of recent studies and articles raises troubling questions about America’s “Achievement-Gap Mania.” Are we leaving our highest performing students behind in the quest to raise the test scores of students at the bottom? If so, what will this mean for our future international competitiveness?

Learn about the recent studies–Fordham’s Do High Flyers Maintain their Altitude? and the George W. Bush Institute’s Global Report Card—as well as Frederick M. Hess’s new National Affairs essay, “Our Achievement-Gap Mania.” And join a conversation about whether our focus on raising the bottom is blinding us to trouble at the top.

Panelists:

• Ulrich Boser, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
• John Cronin, Director of the Kingsbury Center for Research on Academic Growth at the Northwest Evaluation Association
• Frederick M. Hess, Resident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies at American Enterprise Institute
• Josh McGee, Vice President for Public Accountability Initiatives at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation

Moderator:

• Chester E. Finn, Jr., President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Find more information on student achievement and the global report card here.

More information is available on the conference’s main page, here.

The study on which the Global Report Card is based, “When the Best is Mediocre: Developed countries far outperform our most affluent suburbs,” by Jay Greene and Josh McGee, will appear in the Winter 2012 issue of Ed Next and is now available online.

The rankings of 13,636 U.S. school districts can be found in the Global Report Card, available on the website of the George W. Bush Institute, where readers can see how students in each school district compare to students in 25 other nations.

A detailed explanation of the methods used to conduct the analysis is available here.

My classmates complained that her class was too hard.

One of my other instructors spent class sessions badly summarizing the readings, instigating awkward and often one-sided class discussions, or trying to explain the homework assignments and projects she thought up. When she assigned one of her own articles for us to read, it became clear that despite having completed a doctorate at our university, she could not write a coherent academic article.

Desperate for a more challenging academic experience, I increased my course load for the second semester and handpicked my instructors. I actually enjoyed most of my classes that semester, but it was at this point that I began to deeply question the university’s approach to preparing future teachers.

It baffled me, for example, that I could get a master’s degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) after having completed only one rudimentary course in linguistics and one in English grammar. Almost all of my classmates struggled greatly in these two courses, leading me to wonder whether perhaps the admission requirements might also need refining. A class in adolescent development was useful, but the program offered no course in child development, despite the fact that my certification would be for grades K–12. It seemed that they were skimming over the important topics while bogging me down with courses in “theory and practice,” which did little to make me feel prepared to begin teaching on my own.

The focus of the third and fourth semesters was student teaching. My first placement was in high-school foreign language, for which I was also receiving certification. I was fortunate to work with a relatively strong supervising teacher; the infuriating aspect of this first placement was how I was evaluated. A supervisor from the university observed me during three lessons over the course of the semester. After each observation, she completed a write-up and made a few minimally helpful suggestions. During the final observation, she leaned over to my supervising teacher and casually asked, “So, what grade would you give her?” No criteria for evaluation, no request for a report on what I needed to work on. Fortunately, I did receive some valuable feedback from my supervising teacher that semester; I cannot say the same about my English as a Second Language student-teaching placement the following semester.

The final task I was asked to complete for the program was an “individualized project,” which sounded to me like a dumbed-down version of a thesis or capstone project. I have to confess that I took the easy way out. I knew I wasn’t going to get the kind of academic support I would need to complete an actual thesis, so I settled for designing a unit based on what I was already working on with my ESL students. After meeting with the professor a few times and receiving some vague suggestions, I handed in a project that earned me the last of a full transcript of easy As, with a friendly note on the cover and not a single comment or suggestion for how the unit could have been improved.

After observing and teaching in a variety of classroom settings over the course of my graduate studies, I have concluded that good teaching depends on three things: mastery of the subject, a keen understanding of how children learn, and an ability to maintain a disciplined yet positive learning environment. It is hard for me to express how disheartening it is to have spent two years and more than $80,000 in student loans on a program that did justice to none of those objectives.

The author earned a masters degree in education at a private university in the Northeast. Julia Harvey is a pseudonym.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

“The states’ fiscal crisis necessitates that they address pension underfunding,” writes Christian Weller of the University of Massachusetts-Boston, but the problem is manageable, and states will have several decades to come up with the money.

Christian Weller

But Robert Costrell of the University of Arkansas and Michael Podgursky of the University of Missouri argue that the situation is more serious, but that it offers an opportunity for real reform. However, Costrell and Podgursky also worry that some states are responding in ways – such as reducing benefits for new teachers– that worsen the problem.

Costrell and Podgursky argue that the current system of teacher pensions has structural problems that result in a) perverse incentives for teachers to stay on the job when they are no longer effective or to quit too early, b) huge penalties for job mobility, and c) very large transfers of wealth from young teachers working short spells to long termers who work full careers in the same system.

Robert Costrell

They believe that current teacher pension plans, which are mostly defined benefit (DB) plans, should be replaced by defined contribution (DC) or cash balance (CB) plans.

They write

As states grapple with the current pension crisis, a window of opportunity is open to implement more modern and strategic plans, or to make matters worse.

Christian Weller believes that states may want to spread out the pain of addressing pension plan underfunding so that not only new teachers are affected, and that states might set a floor under employer pension contributions to prevent underfunding in the future. However, he argues that switching from defined benefit pensions to alternative benefits (DC or CB plans) would have several harmful effects.

Michael Podgursky

Weller believes that average teacher effectiveness will likely decline under alternative benefits because of higher turnover among more experienced teachers, who will no longer have the security of a defined benefit pension to help inspire their loyalty.

Weller writes that switching to alternative benefits will also be costly. He concludes

The proposal to use the current crisis as an opportunity to switch retirement plans…will leave states with a much less efficient compensation system.

Podgursky and Costrell challenge Weller’s contention that a shift in pension plans would cause average teacher effectiveness to fall.

The full debate can be found at “Fixing Teacher Pensions: Is it enough to adjust existing plans?” which will appear in the Fall 2011 issue of Education Next.

For more on teacher pensions by Michael Podgursky and Robert Costrell, please see “Golden Handcuffs: Teachers who change jobs or move pay a high price” from the Winter 2010 issue of Education Next, and “Peaks, Cliffs, and Valleys: The peculiar incentives of teacher pensions” from the Winter 2008 issue of Education Next.

The Education Next article on this report, “Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?” can be found here. A PDF of the full report, “Globally Challenged,” can be found here.

Paul Peterson is editor-in-chief of Education Next, and Eric Hanushek serves on the editorial board.  Both are  senior fellows at the Hoover Institution and members of its Koret Task Force on K-12 Education

Panelists
Frederick M. Hess, Director, Education Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers

Moderator
Michael J. Petrilli, Executive Vice President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

This event will be webcast. There is no need to register for the webcast – simply visit www.edexcellence.net at 10 a.m. on August 23 and watch the proceedings live.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

For more on PLCs, please see “Getting At-Risk Teens to Graduation“ by June Kronholz.

Hampton, VA Performance Learning Centers
Photos by Keith Lanpher Productions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
William G. Howell, (312) 550-3767, University of Chicago
Martin R. West, (617) 496-4803, Harvard University
Paul E. Peterson, (617) 495-7976, Harvard University
Janice B. Riddell, (203) 912-8675, janice_riddell@hks.harvard.edu, External Relations, Education Next

Public and Teachers Increasingly Divided on Key Education Issues

National Survey shows increased support for vouchers, but public’s views on merit pay, charters, and other policies have not changed, though teacher opposition to reforms intensifies

CAMBRIDGE, MA – The fifth annual survey conducted by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) and Education Next on a wide range of education issues reveals that the opinions of the public have remained largely unchanged since one year ago, despite controversies in Wisconsin, Indiana and many other states.  However, teacher opposition to many reforms has increased, placing them more at odds with views of the general public.

An article, “The Public Weighs In on School Reform,” interpreting this year’s results by William Howell, Martin West, and Paul Peterson, will appear in the Fall 2011 issue of Education Next, and is currently available at www.educationnext.org.

Support for vouchers as a means to expand school choice increased by 8 percentage points between 2010 and 2011, the largest shift of public opinion over the course of the past year.  Forty-seven percent of participants who were asked if they support or oppose “a proposal to give families with children in public schools a wider choice, by allowing them to enroll their children in private schools instead, with government helping to pay the tuition” indicated their support.  “Although public opinion on most issues has remained stable, public support for vouchers has grown noticeably,” West observes.  “Meanwhile, teacher opinion has changed in a direction opposite to that of the public on such issues as merit pay and teacher tenure.”

Public opinion on charter schools showed little change, even though the topic received substantial media attention over the past year.  Forty-three percent of the American public support charters, and among teachers, favorable views of charters increased from 39 percent in 2010 to 45 percent this year.  Only 18 percent of the public opposes charter schools.  Of those surveyed, 39 percent of the public and 18 percent of teachers took a neutral position.

Notably, 33 percent of the public thinks that teachers unions have a generally negative effect on the nation’s public schools, virtually unchanged from 31 percent and 33 percent in 2009 and 2010, respectively.  The share perceiving a positive union impact has hardly budged from 28 percent in 2010 to 29 percent in 2011; 38 percent are neutral on unions’ impact.  Teacher opinion is moving in the opposite direction:  58 percent think they have a positive impact, an increase from 51 percent the previous year.  Meanwhile the percentage of teachers saying that unions have a negative impact on the nation’s schools has dropped to 17 percent from 25 percent in 2010.

Again this year, the poll found that a near majority of the public, 47 percent, favors merit pay – paying teachers, in part, based on the academic progress of their students on state tests.  Only 27 percent oppose the idea.  “Merit pay remains anathema to teachers, however, with only 18 percent in favor, and 72 percent in opposition,” Howell points out.

On teacher tenure, the public’s opposition to it has done nothing more than tick upward from 47 percent in 2010 to 49 percent in 2011.  The poll also shows that 55 percent of the public supports the principle that if tenure is given at all, it should be based on demonstrated success in raising student performance.  Teachers, meanwhile, like tenure more than ever; 53 percent support it, up from 48 percent in 2010, and only 30 percent agree that tenure should be based on student academic progress.

The affluent – defined as college graduates who are in the top income decile in their state – are more critical of unions than is the public as a whole.  Fifty-six percent say unions have a negative impact on their schools (versus 33 percent of the public as a whole).  The affluent like their local schools better than most people do (54 percent grade them A or B versus 46 percent of the public as a whole) but they think less well of public schools nationally (only 15 percent give the nation’s schools the highest two grades) and are more in favor of reforms such as charter schools.  Teachers are much more generous in their evaluation, with 37 percent giving the nation’s schools an A or B.

On questions of school spending, respondents’ opinions depend on how much they know.  For example, 59 percent of the public says that government funding for their district’s public schools should increase.  However, when they were informed about the level of per-pupil expenditure in their community, which averaged $12,300 for the survey’s respondents, enthusiasm for increased spending dampened, with public support falling to 46 percent.

In 2011, support for digital learning among the general public was 47 percent, a modest decrease from 52 percent the year before.  Forty-nine percent of teachers support digital learning, as do 42 percent of the well-to-do.  However, Peterson noted that “when respondents are asked about their own children, high levels of support are shown, with a majority of Americans and roughly two in three teachers indicating a willingness to have one of their children take ‘some academic courses’ in high school over the internet.”

When it comes to school and student accountability, the authors observe, “the public’s appetite for standardized tests appears undiminished.”  More than two in three Americans believe that the federal government should “continue to require that all students be tested in math and reading each year in grades 3-8 and once in high school,” which mirrors the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing mandates.  Whereas NCLB allows each state to develop its own tests for determining student proficiency, solid pluralities of all subgroups support the creation of a single national test in both reading and math.

About the Public Opinion Survey
The Education Next-PEPG survey was conducted by the polling firm Knowledge Networks (KN) between April 15 and May 4, 2011.  The survey interviewed a nationally representative sample of some 2,600 American citizens.  In addition to the views of the public as a whole, special attention was given to two potentially influential types of participants in school politics:  teachers (surveyed as a separate representative group for the third year in a row) and the affluent (considered separately for the first time).  Detailed information about the survey protocols is available online at www.knowledgenetworks.com/quality/.

About the Authors
William G. Howell is professor of American politics at the University of Chicago.  Martin R. West is assistant professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and deputy director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance.  Paul E. Peterson is the director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

About Education Next
Education Next is a scholarly journal published by the Hoover Institution that is committed to looking at hard facts about school reform.  Other sponsoring institutions are the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance, part of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

For more information, please visit:  www.educationnext.org

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Allison Sherry, asherry@denverpost.com
Janice B. Riddell, (203) 912-8675,  janice_riddell@hks.harvard.edu, External Relations, Education Next

Republican Governors Running on Strong Education Records as Candidates for President

Romney and Pawlenty earn high marks for student achievement, Perry can spotlight Hispanic performance

CAMBRIDGE, MA – The three most talked-about governors running for president in 2012 – (former governors) Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, and (perhaps a current governor) Rick Perry – come from states that outperform the U.S. average on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress tests.  Romney takes top honors for overall student performance in Massachusetts, and Perry can hail the outstanding achievement of Texas Hispanic students.

In an analysis of the leading Republican contenders in the presidential race, Allison Sherry writes, “In staking out platforms in the coming months for what will likely be a feisty GOP primary, Republicans face two quandaries regarding education policy.”  They need to distinguish their positions from Obama’s “centrist education reforms” and “to win over a Republican base that resists a growing federal role in education.”  Her article, “The 2012 Republican Candidates (So Far): What they’ve said and done on education in the past, and what they might do about our public schools if elected” will appear in the Fall 2011 issue of Education Next and is currently available at www.educationnext.org.

Sherry notes that as governor, “Romney proposed education reform measures that lifted the state cap on charter schools and gave principals more power to get rid of ineffective teachers.”  Statewide graduation requirement tests were started during his first year as governor in 2003.  In his third year as governor, 4th and 8th graders scored first in the country in math and English.

In his eight years as Minnesota’s governor, Tim Pawlenty’s “push against the teachers union grew stronger,” Sherry writes, and he called for tying teacher pay to performance, bringing up the state’s standards, and urging state lawmakers to authorize the use of a transparent growth model to see how well schools are really doing to improve student achievement.  Sherry describes Pawlenty’s approach to unions:  “I’ll try to work with you.  That is until you don’t work with me.”

Assuming he runs, Texas Governor Rick Perry is “likely to use his own state’s successes to argue that the federal government should dramatically downsize in education,” Sherry says.  He’ll likely call for the repeal of No Child Left Behind, and let states take charge of their education systems.  Test scores among students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds are higher in Texas than in Wisconsin, for example, which has fewer students qualifying for free- and reduced-price lunch.

Other leading Republican candidates profiled include Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich.  Sherry notes, “Under a Bachmann presidency, expect the U.S. Department of Education to be all but shuttered” and a push for No Child Left Behind to be repealed.  Newt Gingrich’s views have developed through the years, she observes, and include his call for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education in the 1990s and his push in the 2000s for improvements in math and science education.

Sherry concludes her analysis of the Republican candidates by saying, “What they all have in common is a belief that education needs deep reform that goes beyond anything Democrats have proposed.”

About the Author
Allison Sherry is Washington, D.C., bureau chief for the Denver Post.  She can be reached at asherry@denverpost.com .

About Education Next
Education Next is a scholarly journal published by the Hoover Institution that is committed to looking at hard facts about school reform.  Other sponsoring institutions are the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance, part of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

For more information please visit:  www.educationnext.org

Panelists:

Ted Mitchell, president and CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund.

Fiona O’Carroll, executive vice president of the New Ventures/Innovation Group at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Panel moderated by Gary Huggins.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Janice B. Riddell, (203) 912-8675, janice_riddell@hks.harvard.edu, External Relations, Education Next
Brian A. Jacob, bajacob@umich.edu, University of Michigan

Chicago Study Shows Principals Focus on Retaining Highly Effective Teachers in Dismissal Decisions – if Policies Permit

Reform improves student achievement by providing principals with the tools to manage the quality of personnel in their classrooms

Cambridge, MA – When current U.S. education secretary, Arne Duncan, headed the Chicago Public Schools in 2004-05, the city implemented a new collective bargaining agreement that covered teacher dismissal policy:  principals were given more flexibility to dismiss non-tenured teachers.  Now a new study by University of Michigan economist Brian Jacob finds that when given the authority, principals make dismissal decisions that put a premium on teacher effectiveness and student achievement.  The study will appear in the Fall 2011 issue of Education Next and is currently available at www.educationnext.org.

Jacob found that principals are more likely to dismiss teachers who received poor evaluations in prior years; who are frequently absent; and at the elementary level, who had demonstrated less effectiveness in raising student achievement in prior years than their peers who were not dismissed.

Comparing the characteristics of dismissed versus non-dismissed untenured teachers within the same school and year, Jacob was able to determine how much weight principals place on a variety of teacher characteristics.  Teachers who were given a rating of “satisfactory” in the prior academic year were 22.1 percentage points more likely to be dismissed than teachers in the same school who were given the highest rating, “superior.”  Teachers rated “excellent” were 4.3 percentage points more likely to be dismissed than those rated “superior.”

Teachers who were absent 11 to 20 times between September and March of the current school year were 11.3 percentage points more likely to be dismissed than their colleagues who were never absent, and teachers absent 6 to 10 days were 3.5 percentage points more likely to be dismissed.

Among elementary school teachers for whom direct measures of effectiveness in raising student achievement were available, less effective teachers were also more likely to be dismissed.  Specifically, teachers who were one standard deviation less effective (equivalent to the difference between a teacher at the 35th percentile and an average teacher) were associated with a 7.1 percentage point increase in the probability of dismissal.

Jacob examined dismissal among non-tenured teachers in the school years 2004-05, 2005-06, and 2006-07.  His sample of schools consists of 16,246 elementary school teachers and 7,764 high school teachers working in 588 schools.  He investigated the relationship between teacher value-added data and dismissal in a subsample of 803 elementary school teachers and 1,134 high school teachers for which value-added measures are available.

Comparing the year immediately prior to establishment of the new policy with the first two years of the policy’s implementation (2005 and 2006), Jacob finds that the total separation rate of non-tenured teachers increased by roughly 9 percentage points.  Among other findings are that dismissed teachers who were subsequently rehired by a different school are more likely to be dismissed again than other non-tenured teachers in their new school.  Jacob infers from these results that “many of the initial nonrenewal decisions were not idiosyncratic, stemming from a particularly bad match…but reflected a concern with the teacher’s general productivity.”

About the Author

Brian A. Jacob is professor of education policy and economics at the University of Michigan.  His article is based on a study that is forthcoming in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.  Professor Jacob is available for interviews and can be contacted at bajacob@umich.edu.

About Education Next

Education Next is a scholarly journal published by the Hoover Institution that is committed to looking at hard facts about school reform.  Other sponsoring institutions are the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance, part of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

For more information please visit:  www.educationnext.org

While physical education has been drastically cut back across the country — in response to budget concerns and test score pressures — Naperville Central High School, in the Chicago suburbs, has embraced a culture of fitness: PE is a daily, graded requirement. And for one group of struggling students, there’s an innovative program to schedule PE right before their most challenging classes. In the six years since that program started, students who signed up for PE directly before English read on average a half year ahead of those who didn’t, and students who took PE before math showed dramatic improvement in their standardized tests.

In 2010, an Ed Next video featured another innovative physical education program for high school students, the 25th Hour P.E. Class at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. The program uses heart rate monitors to hold students accountable for how long and how hard they work out.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
James A. Peyser, jpeyser@newschools.org, NewSchools Venture Fund
Janice B. Riddell, janice_riddell@hks.harvard.edu, External Relations, Education Next

Success is in the Details at High-Performing Charter Management Organizations

A “no excuses” approach to teaching and learning and tight management make the difference

Cambridge, MA – A new analysis of charter schools shows that while there is no “secret sauce,” there are identifiable practices that produce their success.  The highest-performing charters are those that that have most fully embraced a “no excuses” approach to teaching and learning; have created strong school cultures based on explicit expectations for both academic achievement and behavior;  have an intensive focus on literacy and numeracy as the first foundation for academic achievement;  feature a relatively heavy reliance on direct instruction and differentiated grouping, especially in the early grades;  and are increasingly focused on comprehensive student assessment systems.

James A. Peyser, managing partner at the NewSchools Venture Fund, writes that his investigation of the eighteen charter management organizations (CMOs) in the NewSchools Venture Fund portfolio reveals that these common ingredients include “an unflagging attention to detail and an uncompromising commitment to excellence in all things, from the classroom, to the hallway, to the principal’s office.”  His article, “Unlocking the Secrets of High-Performing Charters,” will appear in the Fall 2011 issue of Education Next and is currently available at www.educationnext.org.

Charter schools in the NewSchools’ portfolio achieve proficiency rates in reading and math that are about 9 percentage points higher, on average, than those achieved by schools in their host districts.  When comparing only low-income students, NewSchools charters outperform their district peers by an average of almost 12 percentage points.  Limiting the sample to charter schools open five years or more, NewSchools charters outperform district schools by an average of 14 percentage points.

College-going rates for NewSchools’ graduates are significantly higher than national rates:  84 percent of graduating seniors from its CMO schools last year enrolled in college the following fall, compared to college-going rates of 70 percent nationally and 57 percent for low-income graduates.

The highest-performing CMOs invest more on recruiting and developing talent, as well as building instructional support systems grounded in the use of performance data.  Successful CMOs have tended to add new schools at a steady incremental rate over time, while the low performers tended to grow faster early in their development.  Peyser notes that over the past five years, the size of CMOs’ central office staffs (about 4.5 staff on average per school) has been declining and the size of their education staffs has grown.

Charter management organizations came on the scene roughly a decade after the nation’s first charter school opened in 1991.  NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit grantmaking organization, operates in several major cities across the U.S.  CMOs in its portfolio work exclusively in urban neighborhoods, serve predominantly low-income students, with demographics that are similar to those of their local public school peers.

About the Author

James A. Peyser is managing partner for city funds at NewSchools Venture Fund and a former chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education.  He is available for interviews; please contact him at jpeyser@newschools.org.

About Education Next

Education Next is a scholarly journal published by the Hoover Institution that is committed to looking at hard facts about school reform.  Other sponsoring institutions are the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance, part of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

For more information please visit:  www.educationnext.org

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

Veronica Nolan is executive director of the Urban Alliance, an organization which helps young people from under-resourced areas in the District of Columbia prepare for successful careers through internship and mentoring opportunities in professional settings.

Stephanie Saroki is co-founder of Seton Education Partners, a non-profit working to help struggling urban Catholic schools find alternatives to school closure.

Veronica and Stephanie describe their experiences as Teach for America corps members, explain what inspired them to lead entrepreneurial education organizations after teaching, and consider what it is about TFA that has made its alumni so successful as change agents in education.

This video accompanies a new study that attempts to determine which organizations are most effective in spawning leaders of entrepreneurial ventures in education. That study, “Creating a Corps of Change Agents: What explains the success of Teach for America?” by Monica Higgins, Jennie Weiner, Wendy Robison, and Frederick Hess, will appear in the Spring 2011 issue of Education Next, and is now available online.

HT: Gotham Schools

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Janice B. Riddell, (203) 912-8675,  janice_riddell@hks.harvard.edu, External Relations, Education Next
Dan Goldhaber, dgoldhab@u.washington.edu, University of Washington Bothell
Roddy Theobald, roddy@uw.edu, University of Washington

Seniority Rules Lead Districts to Increase Teacher Layoffs and Undermine Teaching Quality

“Last in, first out” reduction-in-force policies give greater weight to teacher longevity than effectiveness

Cambridge, MA – Most school districts devote well over half of all spending to teacher compensation, and strained budgets are forcing layoffs of teachers.  In a new study, researchers find that seniority-based layoff policies — the norm in public schools — lead to higher numbers of teacher layoffs than would be necessary if administrators were allowed to make effectiveness the determining factor in issuing layoff notices, rather than length of service.  If districts instead adopted effectiveness-based layoff policies, they would be likely to lay off fewer teachers, achieve the same budgetary savings, and have a higher quality teacher workforce.

Dan Goldhaber and Roddy Theobald of the University of Washington conducted the study, which will appear in the Fall 2011 issue of Education Next and is currently available at www.educationnext.org.  The study analyzes data on the actual outcomes of reduction-in-force (RIF) policies in Washington State in academic years 2008-09 and 2009-10.  The authors’ analysis is based on a sample of 1,717 teachers who received a layoff notice in 2008-09 and 407 teachers who received one in 2009-10.  Teachers who received RIF notices were less likely to hold an advanced degree and their salaries were approximately $15,000 lower than those of teachers who did not receive layoff notices.  The authors find that if the RIF-notified teachers made the average salary in their district, it would only be necessary to lay off 1,349 teachers in order to attain the same budgetary savings, or roughly 20 percent less than the actual number of teachers who received layoff notices.

The authors report that there are large differences in classroom effectiveness between teachers who actually received layoff notices and those who would have received them had an effectiveness-based system been in place.  The impact on student math and reading achievement differed by about 20 percent of a standard deviation, a difference which the authors note is “striking, roughly equivalent to having a teacher who is at the 16th percentile of effectiveness rather than at the 50th percentile.”  This difference corresponds to roughly 2.5 to 3.5 months of student learning.  Effectiveness-based layoffs also would result in more equitably distributed layoffs across student subgroups.  For example, in a seniority-based system, black students are far more likely than other students to have been in a classroom of a teacher who received a RIF notice.

Goldhaber and Theobold estimated teacher effectiveness by linking a subset of teachers to their students’ reading and math test-score results on the Washington State Assessment of Student Learning (given annually in grades 3-8, as well as in grade 10).  Confirming the disproportionate impact of current RIF systems on new teachers, the study finds that approximately 60 percent of teachers receiving layoff notices in 2008-10 had two or fewer years of experience, and approximately 80 percent had two or fewer years of seniority within their current district.  The authors find that if a teacher’s subject specialty is in a shortage area, they are less likely to be laid off, estimating, for example, the probability that a first-year special education teacher receives a layoff notice is 6.2 percent, compared to 17 percent for a first-year health/physical education teacher.  However, this difference “pales in comparison to the difference in probability that a first-year teacher will be dismissed compared to a teacher with 12 or more years of seniority,” which is less than one-quarter of 1 percent.  Seniority-based layoff policies can thereby exacerbate difficult challenges as districts cope with losing shortage-area teachers.

About the Authors
Dan Goldhaber is director of the Center for Education Data and Research at the University of Washington Bothell and a co-editor of Education Finance and Policy.  Roddy Theobald is a researcher at the Center for Education Data and Research and doctoral student in statistics at the University of Washington.  The authors are available for interviews;  please contact Dan Goldhaber at dgoldhab@u.washington.edu and Roddy Theobald at roddy@uw.edu.

About Education Next
Education Next is a scholarly journal published by the Hoover Institution that is committed to looking at hard facts about school reform.  Other sponsoring institutions are the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance, part of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

For more information please visit:  www.educationnext.org

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

Behind the Headline
Teaching Math to the Talented
Education Next | Winter 2011

On the occasion of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to the White House, the New York Times’ David Leonhardt writes about what Germany is getting right these days, noting that German kids have stronger math and science skills than American kids (and citing an Ed Next study to back this up). The study, by Eric Hanushek, Paul Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann, appeared in the Winter 2011 issue of Ed Next.

Behind the Headline
The NRC Judges Test-Based Accountability
Education Next (blog) | 06/03/11

Jay Mathews critiques the new NRC report on test-based accountability, arguing that the NRC has an unreasonable standard for evaluating the reform strategy. Jay’s column quotes Rick Hanushek, “Nowhere does the report indicate an alternative educational program that leads to as large an improvement in overall U.S. achievement as accountability. Nowhere does the report suggest any single program or package of reforms that would close the achievement gap with the highest performing countries.” Rick’s original critique of the NRC report appears on the Ed Next blog.

HT: Jay P Greene’s blog

Behind the Headline
Competition Makes a Comeback
Education Next | Summer 2010

The 84th Scripps National Spelling Bee has a winner! June Kronholz wrote about spelling bees and other academic competitions in the Summer 2010 issue of Ed Next.

Also check out our interview with George Thampy, who won the bee in 2000.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

Behind the Headline
The School Lunch Lobby
Education Next | Summer 2005

Republicans in Congress are fighting the Obama administration over new rules that would require healthier school lunches. An article by Ron Haskins that appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Ed Next looked at the history of the federal school lunch program.