Education

U.S. public schools seen as threat to national security

by Bob Weeks on March 20, 2012

The Council on Foreign Relations, described by the Wall Street Journal as “the clubhouse of America’s establishment” is now in favor of something very un-establishment: school choice. The data is so grim, writes the Journal, that the poor performance of American public schools is now a national security issue.

Some statistics from the article: “Only a third of elementary and middle-school students are competent in reading, math and science.” … “The military can’t tap the 25% of American kids who drop out of high school, and 30% of those who graduate can’t pass the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery.” … “Even excluding teacher pensions and other benefits, per-pupil spending today is more than three times what it was in 1960 (in 2008 dollars).” (School Reform’s Establishment Turn: The Council on Foreign Relations endorses choice and competition. subscription required)

The CFR reports calls for applying to education the same factors that have lead to success in other areas of human endeavor: “U.S. elementary and secondary schools are not organized to promote competition, choice, and innovation — the factors that catalyze success in other U.S. sectors.”

The CFR report is U.S. Education Reform and National Security. The overview is blunt: “The United States’ failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country’s ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role.”

In an interview with Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City Department of Education and co-chair of the task force that wrote the report, Klein said:

Probably the major finding that is sort of well known but not fully digested is that U.S. outcomes are essentially flat at the high school level, despite the fact the country has continued — over the last thirty to forty years — to invest significantly in K-12 public education. And while we’re making the investments and not getting the results, the rest of the globe is getting very different results.

If you [compare] the educational performance of the United States, for example, with that of China, or Finland, or Singapore, there are dramatic differences. The U.S. performance is much more akin to countries that we never could have thought would perform educationally at the level that we are. We used to have the highest percentage of high school graduates, the highest percentage of college graduates. It’s no longer so.

But perhaps the thing the report will shine a spotlight on is the national security implication. One statistic that blew members of this task force away is that three out of four kids today in America are simply ineligible for military service. It’s unbelievable. We’re drawing our national security forces from a very small segment of the population. And a lot of the problem is they simply don’t have the intellectual wherewithal to serve in the military.

The other thing we found is how non-innovative K-12 education is. K-12 education is still one teacher, twenty-eight kids, twenty-five kids, whatever, and trying to figure out the sweet spot for a class of very different and heterogeneous skills. Surely, you would think in an [education] industry that is as complex and dynamic and heavily invested in — second after health care in the United States — that you’d see dramatic innovations, and the truth is, you haven’t.

The report recommends adopting Common Core Standards, which is controversial.

A second recommendation, and one not present in Kansas to any degree, is school choice: “The second big idea is really a uniquely American approach, and it’s controversial. That is, to move toward meaningful [school] choice. We need to generate an environment that leads to innovation, and that empowers parents to really look over the next decade or so. We need to look at how we can transition from a monopoly on public school systems to one that gives parents and their children meaningful choices that stimulate innovation and differentiation.”

Tagged as: Education, School choice, Wichita and Kansas schools

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Class size reduction not effective

by Bob Weeks on October 25, 2011

Recently the Center for American Progress released a report about class size reduction in schools and the false promise it holds for improving student achievement. While I am normally quite cautious about relying on anything CAP — a prominent left-wing think tank — produces, I’ve read the report, which is titled The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction. It’s accurate.

It’s quite astonishing to see CAP cite evidence from Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution and Caroline Hoxby of Stanford and Hoover. These two researchers are usually condemned by the public education establishment and bureaucracy, including teachers unions. These are some of the key constituents CAP usually caters to.

In a nutshell, class size reduction produces very little benefit for students. (It benefits others greatly. More in a moment.) It’s also very expensive, and there are other things we should be doing instead if we really want to increase student achievement.

The report summarizes the important studies in class size reduction, and it’s accurate, based on the reading I’ve done over the years. The upshot is that there is only one study showing positive results from class size reduction, and that effect was found only among the early grades. The effect decreased after a few years, even though small class sizes were still used.

The report also notes that class size reduction is very expensive to implement. Because it is, the report says we should look to other ways to increase student achievement, such as policies relating to teacher effectiveness: “The emerging consensus that teacher effectiveness is the single most important in-school determinant of student achievement suggests that teacher recruitment, retention, and compensation policies ought to rank high on the list.”

Recently the Kansas Policy Institute sponsored a trip to Wichita by Sandi Jacobs of National Council for Teacher Quality. My reporting of that event and an audio recording is at Kansas ranks low in policies on teacher quality. The importance of teacher quality is this: “In the example she illustrated, third graders who had teachers in the top 20 percent of effectiveness for the next three years went from the 50th percentile in performance to the 90th. For students with teachers in the lowest 20 percent for the same period, their performance dropped from the 50th percentile to the 37th percentile.” Kansas ranks below average among the states in its policies that promote teacher quality.

Who benefits from class size reduction?

If class size reduction doesn’t work, why is it so popular? The answer is it benefits many special interest groups. The first group is the parents who send their children to public schools. While class size reduction doesn’t help their children (except in limited circumstances), they think it does. Intuitively, it seems like small class size should help. More individual attention to their kids, the parents are told. And what parent doesn’t want the best for their child? This leads to an effective tactic that school spending supporters use: Any reduction in school funding, no matter how small, will cause class sizes to “explode” or “balloon” out of control, causing student achievement to “plummet.”

Then, there’s the teachers union. Small class size means more teachers and more union members. Fewer students means an easier job for teachers, too, with less papers to grade, etc. The unions also oppose nearly all the policies that would improve teacher quality. For example, this year the Kansas Legislature spent quite a bit of time on a policy where the period before teachers are awarded tenure could be increased from three to five years in certain circumstances. This is what qualifies as “school reform” in Kansas. Remember, Kansas ranks very low in policies that promote teacher quality. Tinkering with the policy on teacher tenure is not going to improve our teacher quality, as tenure is a system that ought to be eliminated. In Kansas the teachers union is Kansas National Education Association (KNEA).

Public school administrators benefit from class size reduction. With more classrooms and more employees, their budgets and power swell. In Wichita, one of the main reasons USD 259, the Wichita public school district gave for the necessity of passing a bond issue in 2008 was the need for more classrooms to implement class size reduction.

Architects and construction companies. In my experience sitting in education committee hearing rooms in the Kansas statehouse, whenever there is any proposal that would reduce spending on school construction, a representative of architects is there to offer testimony in opposition. In the campaign for the Wichita school bond in 2008, an architectural firm headed the campaign, and construction companies contributed heavily. They also contribute to the campaign of school board candidates who are in favor of building more classrooms. Most of this is to support class size reduction, which is politically appealing, but we know doesn’t work. But the motivation of architects and construction companies is to build something, whether it is useful or not.

Politicians — liberals and most conservatives — promote small class sizes. Any politician who promotes policies other than small class size has to overcome the forces listed above. Therefore, most don’t try.

The rut we’re in

The perceived desirability of small class sizes by parents and politicians coupled with the powerful motivations of special interests like school administrators, teachers unions, and the construction industry have placed us in a rut. It’s going to be difficult to escape, and it’s refreshing to see the Center for American Progress on the right side of this issue.

The fact that such a well-known liberal think tank is promoting this issue provides a context other than the typical liberal vs. conservative dichotomy. We are now able to more clearly see the motivations of the special interests that benefit from high school spending and the incorrect evidence they rely on.

The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction

By Matthew M. Chingos, Center for American Progress

Class-size reduction, or CSR, is enormously popular with parents, teachers, and the public in general. The latest poll results indicate that 77 percent of Americans think that additional educational dollars should be spent on smaller classes rather than higher teacher salaries. Many parents believe that their children will benefit from more individualized attention in a smaller class and many teachers find smaller classes easier to manage. The pupil-teacher ratio is an easy statistic for the public to monitor as a measure of educational quality, especially before test-score data became widely available in the last decade. …

Parents, teachers, and policymakers have all embraced CSR as a strategy to improve the quality of public education. There is surprisingly little high-quality research, however, on the effects of class size on student achievement in the United States. The credible evidence that does exist is not consistent, and there are many low-quality studies with results all over the map.

Continue reading at The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction.

Tagged as: Education, Kansas legislature, Kansas National Education Association, KNEA, Wichita and Kansas schools

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Obama: Not enough spending on schools

by Bob Weeks on September 5, 2011

Andrew J. Coulson notes that President Barack Obama says we’re not spending enough on schools and presents evidence of just how much we are spending on schools. His article is Obama Jobs Plan to Push More K-12 Bloat?

Take a look at the chart that Coulson prepared, showing the growth rate of public school employment compared to the growth in students.

Changes in public school employment and enrollment.Changes in public school employment and enrollment.

Considering that personnel costs are the largest portion of school spending, it’s pretty hard to make the case that we haven’t been spending on schools. Coulson’s article also compares the trend in student achievement compared to spending.

Looking at the numbers a different way, I computed the ratio of staff to students, with the following result: There are many more teachers and staff for each student.

K-12 Education Staff Per Student Ratio

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Education, Government spending

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CAP: Class size reduction not effective

by Bob Weeks on April 21, 2011

Last week the Center for American Progress released a report about class size reduction in schools and the false promise it holds for improving student achievement. While I am normally quite cautious about relying on anything CAP — a prominent left-wing think tank — produces, I’ve read the report, which is titled The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction. It’s accurate.

It’s quite astonishing to see CAP cite evidence from Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution and Caroline Hoxby of Stanford and Hoover. These two researchers are usually condemned by the public education establishment and bureaucracy, including teachers unions. These are some of the key constituents CAP usually caters to.

In a nutshell, class size reduction produces very little benefit for students. (It benefits others greatly. More in a moment.) It’s also very expensive, and there are other things we should be doing instead if we really want to increase student achievement.

The report summarizes the important studies in class size reduction, and it’s accurate, based on the reading I’ve done over the years. The upshot is that there is only one study showing positive results from class size reduction, and that effect was found only among the early grades. The effect decreased after a few years, even though small class sizes were still used.

The report also notes that class size reduction is very expensive to implement. Because it is, the report says we should look to other ways to increase student achievement, such as policies relating to teacher effectiveness: “The emerging consensus that teacher effectiveness is the single most important in-school determinant of student achievement suggests that teacher recruitment, retention, and compensation policies ought to rank high on the list.”

Recently the Kansas Policy Institute sponsored a trip to Wichita by Sandi Jacobs of National Council for Teacher Quality. My reporting of that event and an audio recording is at Kansas ranks low in policies on teacher quality. The importance of teacher quality is this: “In the example she illustrated, third graders who had teachers in the top 20 percent of effectiveness for the next three years went from the 50th percentile in performance to the 90th. For students with teachers in the lowest 20 percent for the same period, their performance dropped from the 50th percentile to the 37th percentile.” Kansas ranks below average among the states in its policies that promote teacher quality.

Who benefits from class size reduction?

If class size reduction doesn’t work, why is it so popular? The answer is it benefits many special interest groups. The first group is the parents who send their children to public schools. While class size reduction doesn’t help their children (except in limited circumstances), they think it does. Intuitively, it seems like small class size should help. More individual attention to their kids, the parents are told. And what parent doesn’t want the best for their child? This leads to an effective tactic that school spending supporters use: Any reduction in school funding, no matter how small, will cause class sizes to “explode” or “balloon” out of control, causing student achievement to “plummet.”

Then, there’s the teachers union. Small class size means more teachers and more union members. Fewer students means an easier job for teachers, too, with less papers to grade, etc. The unions also oppose nearly all the policies that would improve teacher quality. For example, this year the Kansas Legislature spent quite a bit of time on a policy where the period before teachers are awarded tenure could be increased from three to five years in certain circumstances. This is what qualifies as “school reform” in Kansas. Remember, Kansas ranks very low in policies that promote teacher quality. Tinkering with the policy on teacher tenure is not going to improve our teacher quality, as tenure is a system that ought to be eliminated. In Kansas the teachers union is Kansas National Education Association (KNEA).

Public school administrators benefit from class size reduction. With more classrooms and more employees, their budgets and power swell. In Wichita, one of the main reasons USD 259, the Wichita public school district gave for the necessity of passing a bond issue in 2008 was the need for more classrooms to implement class size reduction. Now progress is in a “pause and study” phase, as the district has realized that funding to run the new schools and classrooms on an ongoing basis may not be available. (The bond issue pays for construction, but not operation, of new schools and expansion of existing schools.)

Architects and construction companies. In my experience sitting in education committee hearing rooms in the Kansas statehouse, whenever there is any proposal that would reduce spending on school construction, a representative of architects is there to offer testimony in opposition. In the campaign for the Wichita school bond in 2008, an architectural firm headed the campaign, and construction companies contributed heavily. They also contribute to the campaign of school board candidates who are in favor of building more classrooms. Most of this is to support class size reduction, which is politically appealing, but we know doesn’t work. But the motivation of architects and construction companies is to build something, whether it is useful or not.

Politicians — liberals and most conservatives — promote small class sizes. Any politician who promotes policies other than small class size has to overcome the forces listed above. Therefore, most don’t try.

The rut we’re in

The perceived desirability of small class sizes by parents and politicians coupled with the powerful motivations of special interests like school administrators, teachers unions, and the construction industry have placed us in a rut. It’s going to be difficult to escape, and it’s refreshing to see the Center for American Progress on the right side of this issue.

The fact that such a well-known liberal think tank is promoting this issue provides a context other than the typical liberal vs. conservative dichotomy. We are now able to more clearly see the motivations of the special interests that benefit from high school spending and the incorrect evidence they rely on.

The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction

By Matthew M. Chingos, Center for American Progress

Class-size reduction, or CSR, is enormously popular with parents, teachers, and the public in general. The latest poll results indicate that 77 percent of Americans think that additional educational dollars should be spent on smaller classes rather than higher teacher salaries. Many parents believe that their children will benefit from more individualized attention in a smaller class and many teachers find smaller classes easier to manage. The pupil-teacher ratio is an easy statistic for the public to monitor as a measure of educational quality, especially before test-score data became widely available in the last decade. …

Parents, teachers, and policymakers have all embraced CSR as a strategy to improve the quality of public education. There is surprisingly little high-quality research, however, on the effects of class size on student achievement in the United States. The credible evidence that does exist is not consistent, and there are many low-quality studies with results all over the map.

Continue reading at The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction.

Tagged as: Education, Kansas legislature, Kansas National Education Association, Kansas Policy Institute, Kansas state government, KNEA

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President Obama has not delivered on school choice

by Bob Weeks on October 5, 2010

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President Barack Obama has talked favorably about school choice, both in his campaign, and while in office. But his actions have not lived up to the expectations of Americans, and importantly, the residents of Washington, DC.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, William McGurn notes: “That deafening roar you hear — that’s the sound of Barack Obama’s silence on the future of school reform in the District of Columbia. And if he doesn’t break it soon, he may become the first president in two decades to have left Washington’s children with fewer chances for a good school than when he started.”

It’s come to the point where the president’s supporters are criticizing him for his lack of action on school choice. Over the weekend Kevin P. Chavous of Black Alliance for Educational Options placed a full-page ad in the New York Times. There is a news release (Leader of Black Alliance Blasts President Obama on Parental Choice) regarding the ad, and Chavous’ letter appears below.

Dear Mr. President:

One of the reasons I supported you, as did virtually all of the Black community in this country, is because we believed that you would stand up to vested interests and do the right thing even if it was not politically expedient. You have now left us confused and dismayed.

We simply cannot reconcile what you are saying about education reform with what you are actually doing to give parents the opportunity to choose the best schools for their children.

Last year, you refused to support the reauthorization of the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program. As you know, this program allows low-income parents to receive government-funded scholarships so their children can attend private schools of their choice. This initiative has been an educational lifeline to thousands of children.

You acted to eliminate hope for thousands of low-income children who live just blocks from the White House, despite compelling data that confirms these children are receiving a better education than they would receive in the D.C. public schools.

While opposing this program would appear to be a contradiction to what you said on the Today show earlier this week, some might call it the height of hypocrisy. As a beneficiary of a privately funded scholarship, you attended the most elite private school in Hawaii. You and Mrs. Obama have also chosen a private school for your own children. Because there is not enough money to provide private scholarships to all low-income families, you more than anyone should be an advocate for government-funded opportunity scholarships nationwide.

Far too many of our children are confined in schools that continue to fail, year after year. As Dr. Martin Luther King said during the civil rights movement, we need to act with the fierce urgency of now. Our children cannot wait. Opportunity scholarships help educate kids today.

So, Mr. President, there is still time for you to throw off the shackles of the educational establishment and join our ranks. There are over one million empty urban private school seats in this country that are waiting to be filled if low-income families had government-funded scholarships. If you would like to learn more about our work at the Black Alliance for Educational Options or would like to meet some of the families who would like to participate in these programs, I would be happy to introduce them to you
.
Please, Mr. President, let’s educate our children by any means necessary.

Sincerely,

Kevin P. Chavous
Board Chair
Black Alliance for Educational Options

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Education, School choice

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Teacher tenure reform starts

by Bob Weeks on July 28, 2010

The system of teacher tenure has suffered a blow that could spread to other parts of the country.

Washington D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee has fired 241 teachers for poor performance, are more are on notice. This is in a school system where, according to Wall Street Journal reporting, “Ms. Rhee said Friday she took over a system in 2007 where 95% of teachers were rated excellent and none terminated for poor performance. Yet, students posted dismal test scores.”

The system of teacher tenure in K through 12 education deserves examination, and if we believe that schools exist for the benefit of schoolchildren, it should be eliminated.

Defenders of tenure say it doesn’t prevent lousy teachers from being fired. Instead, tenure simply guarantees them due process rights. But the problem is that the process is so difficult for school administrators to pursue that some school districts — New York City, famously — create “rubber rooms.” These are rooms where the truly bad teachers report every workday to sit and while away the several years that their cases can take to work their way through the system. In 2007 the New York Times reported that 760 New York City schoolteachers were doing this in 12 “reassignment centers.”

(By the way, the “work hours” for the rubber rooms was 8:00 am to 2:50 pm. Teachers could leave for lunch.)

Since the rubber rooms are an embarrassment for all involved, the Times has reported that the past school year was the last for the rooms. Now, the worst teachers will perform administrative duties or be sent home.

Advocates of tenure also argue that it is necessary to protect teachers from the arbitrary decisions of school administrators. There might actually be some validity to this argument, but tenure is the wrong response to the problem.

It is said that school administrators — in a system without tenure — would practice “crony” hiring and promotion practices. They would reward their friends and family and punish their enemies or those they simply don’t like.

These things happen in a system insulated from market competition, and institutions don’t suffer when they do. In the private sector, when a manager makes staffing decisions based on cronyism — instead of hiring and retaining the best possible employees — the profitability of the company suffers. If managers’ compensation is tied to profitability, they suffer when making staffing decisions based on cronyism. Even if they don’t suffer pay-wise, these managers will not perform well on their own evaluations.

A system of market competition, however, forces each institution — schools, too — to be the best they can possibly be. When schools compete for students and funding, principals might learn to like their very best teachers, even if they don’t care for them personally.

They also might learn how to evaluate and recognize the best teachers. That’s important, as it is becoming apparent that the personal characteristics of teachers are far more important to student success than the things that schools presently use to reward teachers — credentials, additional education, and longevity.

The characteristics of teachers are also far more important than class size, which is another factor the education establishment focuses on. Eric Hanushek has estimated that students of the worst teachers will learn just one-half a year’s material in a year, while students with the best teachers will learn one and one-half year’s material in a year. This difference is far greater than the weak effect that school class size studies have found, and even those small findings are suspect.

Presently some states are considering using student test scores as a way to evaluate and reward teachers. Student test scores are viewed as an objective way to evaluate teachers, one that is removed from the subjective evaluations of school administrators who, as shown above, don’t have a very strong incentive to hire and retain the best teachers.

Any meaningful reform is strongly opposed by the teachers union and the education establishment. This makes Washington D.C. schools chancellor Rhee’s accomplishment all the more remarkable.

How did Rhee accomplish this breakthrough? Earlier reporting in the Wall Street Journal mentioned the political support of Washington’s mayor, Adrian Fenty, and the fact that the Washington schools were just terrible. Her challenge lies ahead, as the Journal noted: “Ms. Rhee’s challenge now is to use the new rules forcefully enough to drive improvements because the unions will assume they can wait her out.” The union will probably sue over these firings.

The education bureaucracy and the system is working against Rhee too: “Unfortunately, most school chancellors are careerists who don’t want to upset the unions because they are always looking for their next job. One example: Clifford Janey, whom Ms. Rhee replaced in D.C., went on to become the superintendent in Newark, N.J., whose schools may be worse than D.C.’s. Ms. Rhee, by contrast, came to her job as an outsider willing to endure the considerable abuse that the unions and their political backers threw at her.”

As seen in Kansas by the example of Kansas School Board Member Walt Chappell, if you’re not a team player, you’re going to suffer abuse from the education bureaucracy.

Giving Lousy Teachers the Boot

Michelle Rhee does the once unthinkable in Washington.
By William McGurn

Donald Trump is not the only one who knows how to get attention with the words, “You’re fired.” Michelle Rhee, chancellor for the District of Columbia schools, has just done a pretty nifty job of it herself.

On Friday, Ms. Rhee fired 241 teachers — roughly 6% of the total — mostly for scoring too low on a teacher evaluation that measures their performance against student achievement. Another 737 teachers and other school-based staff were put on notice that they had been rated “minimally effective.” Unless these people improve, they too face the boot.

The mass dismissals follow a landmark agreement Ms. Rhee negotiated with the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) at the end of June. The quid pro quo was this: Good teachers would get more money (including a 21.6% pay increase through 2012 and opportunities for merit pay). In exchange, bad teachers could be shown the door.

Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

Tagged as: Education, Free markets, School choice, Walt Chappell

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The long reach of teachers unions

by Bob Weeks on July 27, 2010

At one time teachers unions were professional organizations. Now they have been transformed into the same type industrial trade union that represents autoworkers or steelmakers, with the same political clout and parochial interests. This is at the same time that teachers demand respect for being professionals.

The Education Next article The Long Reach of Teachers Unions: Using money to win friends and influence policy is a must-read for those who think the teacher union is a benign fraternal group looking out for the interests of schoolchildren.

Even those familiar with the teachers union and their political activity may be surprised to learn that the National Education Association (NEA) has become the largest political campaign spender.

(In Kansas, the NEA affiliate is Kansas National Education Association, or KNEA.)

Its spending is mostly on politically liberal organizations and candidates, even though that doesn’t represent the will of all teachers. Internal NEA polls, says the article, show that union members are slightly more conservative than liberal. Other polling show that there is significant support (not majority support) among teachers for charter schools and merit pay. The fight against these two items, both supported by President Obama, consumes much of the union’s energy.

The problem is that the teachers union leadership is liberal and out of step with their members.

According to a Harris poll, Americans like and have respect for teachers, but they don’t trust union leaders. As the article explains, when union leaders can say they’re doing things “for the kids,” they can get a way with a lot. Newspaper reporting doesn’t help: “Press coverage of the teachers unions is usually assigned to an education reporter, which ensures the story will be framed around education issues.”

The article recommends giving the political activities of teachers unions their proper perspective: “Coverage of teachers unions needs to emerge from its current position as an afterthought on the education beat, and assume its place alongside national fiscal and political reporting. Only then will the public see that Big Oil and Big Tobacco have a brother called Big Education.”

The Long Reach of Teachers Unions

By Mike Antonucci

When the Florida legislature, on April 8th, passed a bill that sought to replace teacher tenure with merit pay, the Florida Education Association (FEA) sprang into action, organizing members and community activists to lobby Governor Charlie Crist to veto the measure. FEA, with the help of its parent union, the National Education Association (NEA), generated thousands of e-mails, letters, phone calls, and Internet posts in opposition to the legislation. When Governor Crist delivered his veto on April 15th, the union ran television and Internet ads, thanking him. A few weeks later, FEA gave a much-needed boost to Crist’s independent bid for a U.S. Senate seat by endorsing both Crist and Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek.

If you think it’s far-fetched to suggest that a teachers union could play the role of political kingmaker, think again. The largest political campaign spender in America is not a megacorporation, such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, or ExxonMobil. It isn’t an industry association, like the American Bankers Association or the National Association of Realtors. It’s not even a labor federation, like the AFL-CIO. If you combine the campaign spending of all those entities it does not match the amount spent by the National Education Association, the public-sector labor union that represents some 2.3 million K–12 public school teachers and nearly a million education support workers (bus drivers, custodians, food service employees), retirees, and college student members. NEA members alone make up more than half of union members working for local governments, by far the most unionized segment of the U.S. economy.

Continue reading at Education Next

Tagged as: Education, Kansas National Education Association, KNEA, School choice

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American education in 2030: teacher pay

by Bob Weeks on April 15, 2010

The Hoover Institution’s K–12 Education Task Force has produced a series of thirteen lectures on the subject American Education in 2030. These lectures take a look at what American education might look like in 20 years.

In one lecture, Caroline Hoxby, a Stanford University economics professor who studies the economics of education, looks at the future of teacher pay and teaching. While her vision of what might happen is positive for both teachers and schoolchildren, substantial change will need to take place for this vision to be realized. Specifically, the nation will have to overcome the harmful effects of our nation’s teachers unions.

(In Kansas, the teachers union is Kansas National Education Association (or KNEA). Locally in Wichita, the union is United Teachers of Wichita. It should be noted that Barb Fuller, the current president of the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, is a former president of the teachers union.)

In the future, Hoxby said teachers will be paid and managed as true professionals. Teachers will be paid based on what they contribute to student learning. This encourages productive teachers to stay in education, while unproductive teachers are encouraged to improve their skills or find other work. This is the same dynamic that is in effect in almost all fields of work.

In the future, good teachers will be paid well not because of union contracts, but because they are worth their high salaries. In 2010, at the present, Hoxby says that teacher pay, hiring, and training has more in common with auto industry workers than professional workers. Pay is based solely on seniority and educational credentials, not on how well teachers teach students.

“Schools paid more to teachers with education certificates even if everyone knew that the credentials were worthless.” She criticizes the present-day schools of education that she says are more interested in “inculcating social philosophy” instead of training effective teachers.

Factors that will work to increase our understanding of what works include longitudinal databases, which track individual students over time. These database have been helpful in understanding the effects of teacher performance on student learning. Teacher quality has been found to be a powerful effect, with the best teachers producing learning gains of half a grade equivalent per year. Some teachers consistently produced learning losses.

Once past the first year of teaching, these teacher effects did not depend on credentials or experience, the two factors that teachers unions insist must be the only basis for teacher pay.

A second factor that will change teaching is technology, allowing students to interact with expert teachers who are remote.

The third factor is choice and competition among schools. With parents able to choose among schools, there is a reason for principals to seek out and reward the best teachers.

Tagged as: Education, Kansas National Education Association, KNEA, School choice, Wichita and Kansas schools

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When informed, attitudes toward public school spending change

by Bob Weeks on June 9, 2009

One of the problems with forming public policy is the lack of information possessed by the general public, and, sometimes, even by elected officials. A recent research report published by the Hoover Institution titled Educating the Public measures the problem.

Importantly, this report shows the changes in people’s attitudes after they receive correct information.

I’ve experienced the lack of information about basic facts myself. Last year a colleague and I conducted some “man-on-the-street” interviews during the bond issue campaign. Very few people knew how much the Wichita school district spent. Most estimated levels of spending less than half of actual spending.

It’s not just the public. Elected officials like Rep. Melody McCray-Miller and Wichita school board member Lanora Nolan have disputed the total amount of spending by the Wichita school district when presented with the actual figures.

The following excerpt from the press release gives more information.

When Provided with Accurate Information, Public Support for Increased Spending on Schools and Teacher Salaries Declines, Researchers Find

Cambridge — The better informed people are, the more likely they are to oppose increased school spending. That is a key finding in a newly released survey, “Educating the Public,” conducted by Education Next and the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at Harvard University. The survey is posted on the Education Next website: www.educationnext.org. (The direct link to the study is Educating the Public.)

Survey results indicate that if the public is given accurate information about what is currently being spent on public schools, their support for increased spending and their confidence that more spending will improve student learning both decline. Education researchers William G. Howell of the University of Chicago and Martin R. West of Brown University also found that knowing how much the average teacher earns lowers support among the general public for salary increases.

To understand how public opinions shift, Howell and West embedded a series of experiments within the Education Next/PEPG survey by dividing respondents into randomly chosen groups: some were simply asked their opinion about school spending and teacher salaries, while others were first provided with accurate information about each of these issues.

The average per-pupil spending estimate from respondents to the 2008 Education Next/PEPG survey was $4,231, and the median response was just $2,000; but for these respondents, local average spending per pupil at the time exceeded $10,000. When told how much the local schools were spending, support for increased spending dropped by 10 percentage points, from 61 percent to a bare majority of 51 percent.

Howell and West find that these differences in opinion based on exposure to key information are consistent across a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds, views about the local public schools, and political ideologies.

“It’s clear that the American public is quite willing to update its views in light of new information about public schools,” Howell and West said.

Interestingly, note Howell and West, differences also appear among teachers, whom one might believe already have deeply entrenched and well-informed views about public education. Whereas 35 percent of teachers not specifically informed of spending levels claimed that spending should “greatly increase,” only 22 percent of those who were told the amount of money spent to educate a child in their district thought so. Additionally, 29 percent of uninformed teachers expressed strong confidence that increased spending would boost student learning. When exposed to the current spending in their district, however, that confidence dropped by 9 percent.

As with per-pupil expenditures, the public significantly underestimates how much their states pay public school teachers. On average, Education Next/PEPG survey respondents underestimated average teacher salaries in their state by more than $14,000, nearly one-third of the actual average salaries of $47,000.

Tagged as: Education, Lanora Nolan, Wichita and Kansas schools

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The inevitability of parental choice

June 4, 2009

By Howie Rich

A year ago, the nation’s largest newspaper wrote in an editorial that it was time to “move beyond vouchers” in the debate over America’s educational future.

Although it did not reject any particular solution outright, the paper’s recommendation at the time was that America focus its energy and attention on less controversial education reforms. In other words, it was a victory for those who have spent years — and expended untold taxpayer resources — in an effort to demonize parental choice and its supporters.

Then, two weeks ago, USA Today suddenly changed its tune.

Tagged as: Education, School choice

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School choice is a civil rights issue

June 4, 2009

Al Sharpton called school reform the civil rights challenge of our time. He said that the enemy of opportunity for blacks in the U.S. was once Jim Crow; today, in a slap at the educational establishment, he said it was “Professor James Crow.” Sharpton is only partly correct. School reform is not solely a racial issue; it’s a vital issue for the entire nation.

Tagged as: Education, Kansas Association of School Boards, Kansas National Education Association, School choice, Wichita and Kansas schools

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Education reformer to speak in Wichita

May 11, 2009

Noted education activist and reformer John Taylor Gatto will be appearing in Wichita on May 22.

Gatto will present an insider’s perspective on problems within public schools.

He is the author of The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling.

Tagged as: Education, Wichita and Kansas schools

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In voucher debate, who can we believe?

February 12, 2009

Two articles appearing close together in the same prominent newspaper illustrate the problem in trying to make sense of school choice programs.

These articles are Voucher plan would help sponsor, not students (February 4, 2009 Atlanta Journal-Constitution), which is opposed to vouchers, and Will School vouchers improve public education? Yes: New studies show all students’ scores rise (February 12, 2009, same newspaper).

Tagged as: Education, School choice

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Stimulus bill payoff to wrong education interests

February 8, 2009

The Wall Street Journal analyzes some of the earmarks in the stimulus bill, and finds that specific provisions for spending are going to be wasted — except that they payoff special interests:

Tagged as: Education, Interventionism, United States government

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Is 65 Percent the Solution?

January 22, 2009

At the Kansas Education blog, a post titled Is 65 Percent the Solution? examines some of the arguments and policy considerations surrounding the popular proposal that schools must spend at least 65 percent of their funds in the classroom.

Whatever that — “in the classroom” or on “instruction” — means. And that’s part of the point. Determining what counts as expenditures in the classroom versus (allegedly wasteful) administration is somewhat arbitrary.

Besides — and the post mentions this — markets provide a powerful incentive for firms to operate not only efficiently, but effectively, too.

Tagged as: Education, Wichita and Kansas schools

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Charter school students more likely to graduate high school

January 15, 2009

Jay P. Greene discusses a news study examining charter schools:

The researchers look at whether attending a charter high school in Chicago and Florida increases the likelihood that students would graduate high school and go on to college. The short answer is that it does. … This study comes on the heels of positive results from Caroline Hoxby’s random-assignment evaluation of charter schools in New York City.

Tagged as: Education, School choice

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Charter Schools Can Close the Education Gap

January 13, 2009

We don’t have these, to my knowledge, in USD 259, the Wichita public school district, and there are very few in Kansas. Across the country, however, charter schools are making a difference, particularly in addressing the needs of urban and high-poverty students. Joel I. Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, and [...]

Tagged as: Education, School choice, Wichita and Kansas schools

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Video Reveals Uninformed Citizenry

December 10, 2008

Utah Education Facts has released a video that illustrates the startling lack of information possessed by the average citizen. This video was made in Utah and uses Utah’s facts, but I’ve made some similar videos in Wichita, and the results are similar. People are mostly uninformed about basic facts. School districts use this to their [...]

Tagged as: Education

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Obama Deserves a Scarlet “H” for Hypocrisy

November 25, 2008

At the Goldwater Institute, Clint Bolick exposes Barack Obama as another in a long line of politicians that deny school choice to the masses, but exercise it themselves: During the campaign, Obama stated that school choice doesn’t work. If he believes that, why not simply send the girls to whatever school the District of Columbia [...]

Tagged as: Education, School choice

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Obama’s Education Transformation

November 20, 2008

At one time it seemed like Barack Obama might be an education reformer. He was actually booed when speaking before the National Education Association for his support of merit pay for teachers. But after observing Obama’s recent actions, Liam Julian, writing in the National Review Online piece Hoping for Change in Education? comes to this [...]

Tagged as: Education

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Public Charter Schools Help Students and Save Tax Dollars

November 16, 2008

This press release spotlights the fact that charter schools operate much more efficiently than to public schools. Kansas could save money and increase parent satisfaction if our state had more charter schools. The education establishment in Kansas — the teachers unions, administrators, and school boards — are happy with as few charter schools as possible, and they spend significant sums lobbying for laws that suppress charter schools. Meanwhile, students, parents, and taxpayers suffer.

Tagged as: Education, School choice, Wichita and Kansas schools

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Charter Schools Are Mostly Okay Despite Misconceptions

September 26, 2008

A recent Wichita Eagle Editorial Blog post mentioned charter schools in Arizona. A comment writer wrote “Arizona found out, ‘Charter schools tend to be fly by night’ schools operated by entrepreneurs looking for new profit centers at the giant expense of the public school system.”

Tagged as: Education, School choice, Wichita and Kansas schools

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School Choice Resource Center Now Open

September 24, 2008

I’ve created a small portal of information and links about school choice. I hope to expand this as I become aware of more school choice resources and success stories. Particularly, I want to include more information about school choice initiatives in Kansas. The link to the page is here: School Choice Resource Center.

Tagged as: Education, School choice, Wichita and Kansas schools

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A Monopoly by Any Other Name

August 16, 2007

What’s in a name? Apparently, to a government school monopoly, it’s everything.

Last month, Pittsburgh Public Schools announced the district would be dropping the word “Public” from its name in order to avoid the negative connotation often associated with public schools. A paid marketing consultant helped develop the plan, which will also result in renaming the individual schools themselves.

Tagged as: Education

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Adjusting the Testing Gap

June 20, 2007

In the July 25, 2006 Wall Street Journal Charles Murray has a commentary titled “Acid Tests” which describes how the way that the No Child Left Behind program uses test scores is misleading. Actually, misleading is too mild a word. The subtitle of Murray’s article is “No Child Left Behind is beyond uninformative. It is deceptive.”

How are the performance measures that are the yardstick of the success of No Child Left Behind deceptive? By adjusting what states use to measure “proficiency,” states can appear to be closing the gap between different groups of students. In Texas, the gap between the percentage of white and black students that passed a test was at one time 35 percentage points. Now it is only ten. Does that mean the gap in true student learning and performance has decreased?

The answer, Murray says, is we can’t tell from the data we have. Perhaps Texas made the test easier, or changed the definition of passing, or “taught to the test.” Any of these could explain the narrowing of the gap. As Mr. Murray wrote: “If there really was closure of the gap, all that Texas has to do is release the group means, as well as information about the black and white distributions of scores, and it will easy to measure it.”

The fact is that these tests, administered by the individual states, are subject to manipulation that is not in the best interests of schoolchildren:

Question: Doesn’t this mean that the same set of scores could be made to show a rising or falling group difference just by changing the definition of a passing score? Answer: Yes.

At stake is not some arcane statistical nuance. The federal government is doling out rewards and penalties to school systems across the country based on changes in pass percentages. It is an uninformative measure for many reasons, but when it comes to measuring one of the central outcomes sought by No Child Left Behind, the closure of the achievement gap that separates poor students from rich, Latino from white, and black from white, the measure is beyond uninformative. It is deceptive.

You can learn more about deceptive testing from a recent study performed by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. A press release titled “Testing the NCLB: Study shows that NCLB hasn’t significantly impacted national achievement scores or narrowed the racial gaps” is at http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/news/pressreleases/nclb_report06.php.

The Charles Murray article may be read here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008701

Tagged as: Education

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Curious Logic

March 22, 2007

There’s something about our nation’s capital that converts many leading Democrats to school choice. But in most cases this extends only to their own children — not to the millions of children in failing public schools.

Tagged as: Education, School choice

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Bureaucracy vs. something that works

February 3, 2007

Here’s how the education bureaucracy and teachers unions won out over students in the creation of the No Child Left Behind Act:

Tagged as: Role of government

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Market forces and teacher (mis)-education

January 30, 2007

In a system governed by market forces, teacher pay would be based on how well students learn, not how many superfluous degrees teachers accumulate

Tagged as: Education, Free markets

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Minimum wage price controls hurt Kansas

December 7, 2006

This article presents compelling evidence that raising the minimum wage is not in the best interests of low-wage workers.

Tagged as: Economics, Kansas state government

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Adjusting the testing gap

July 25, 2006

Charles Murray has a commentary titled “Acid Tests” which describes how the way that the No Child Left Behind program uses test scores is misleading.

By adjusting what states use to measure “proficiency,” states can appear to be closing the gap between different groups of students. In Texas, the gap between the percentage of white and black students that passed a test was at one time 35 percentage points. Now it is only ten. Does that mean the gap in true student learning and performance has decreased?

Tagged as: Education

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Even the New York Times recognizes testing fraud

July 3, 2006

A New York Times editorial titled “The School Testing Dodge” realizes that nearly all states report student achievement scores, as measured by their own tests, that are much higher than what the same students do on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress exam.

Tagged as: Education

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No Child Left Behind Leaving Many Behind

May 11, 2006

Recently an Associated Press article reported how the test scores of some two million children aren’t being counted, due to a loophole in the No Child Left Behind Act. (See ‘No Child’ loophole misses millions of scores at CNN, April 18, 2006.)

Tagged as: Education

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A declaration of independence from public schools

March 13, 2006

Mary Moberly, a young woman just 15 years old, wrote this piece. She lives in Manhattan, Kansas. I have been reading her two websites for the past few months, ever since I saw that she referred to a post on this website.

If you look at her two websites, Tea and Crumpets Zine and Just Go Boil Something, you will discover her wide-ranging interests and accomplishments, both remarkable for someone so young. I particularly recommend her essay What Makes a Well-Educated Person?

Tagged as: Education, Wichita and Kansas schools

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School choice helps those best who have least

March 8, 2006

An article in the March 2, 2006 Wall Street Journal by Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star Tribune tells of the large numbers of African-American families in Minneapolis who send their children to charter schools or to schools in other districts, thanks to Minnesota law that allows district-crossing.

Tagged as: Education, School choice

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The wonderful and frightening uncertainty of competition

March 2, 2006

Take education. Bureaucrats like to say, you will go to this school, because we said so, and you will be taught according to this program, because we said so and we know best. Those of us with confidence in markets think you could do better deciding for yourself. Neither the bureaucrats nor the freedom lovers can judge what’s in your interest better than you can. One big difference is, we know what we don’t know, while they think they know everything.

Tagged as: Economics

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Schoolchildren Will Be Basically Proficient

March 1, 2006

A few months ago I wrote how most states, when testing their schoolchildren, post results such as “80% of our state’s students are proficient in reading or math,” but when tested by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the number judged proficient falls to 30% or so. (See Every State Left Behind.) It was noted that local education officials are eager to tell parents and taxpayers that students are doing well. The NAEP test hasn’t felt such pressure.

Now a commentary in the February 27, 2006 Wall Street Journal by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Diane Ravitch tells us that under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which uses the NAEP tests — not the state tests — to measure student progress, there is pressure to water down the NAEP test so that more students test at the proficient level.

Tagged as: Education

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Lack of Literacy is Threat to Liberty

February 13, 2006

Writing in a recent commentary, Stephen M. Lilienthal of the Free Congress Foundation expresses concern over the literacy skills of recent college graduates. The findings of some recent studies are quite troubling.

Tagged as: Education, Liberty

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Book Review: Separating School & State: How to Liberate America’s Families

January 7, 2006

Public schools are a great intrusion on liberty. Attendance is compulsory, as is paying for the public schools. Could the government devise a better way to expand its influence? “Despite the claim of moral neutrality, public education is linked to a particular set of values, namely, the values of the modern welfare, or social-service state. Those values include moral agnosticism (erroneously called tolerance), government activism, egalitarianism, ‘welfare rights’ to taxpayer largess, collectivism, and a watered-down version of socialism that looks much like the economic theory of the 1930s known as fascism.

Tagged as: Education, School choice

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Book Review: Education Myths: What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools and Why it Isn’t So

January 6, 2006

Education policy, says Jay P. Greene, is dominated by myths. Myths aren’t lies. They’re intuitive, they seem to be true, and we want them to be true. There is probably some evidence supporting the myth. But if the myth isn’t true, if it isn’t accurate, and we make policy decisions based on the myth, we create disastrous results. As important and expensive as public education is, this means we need to examine myths and discard those that don’t truthfully describe the world.

Tagged as: Education, School choice

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On Paul Mirecki

December 31, 2005

There are two aspects to the Paul Mirecki matter that I haven’t seen discussed, or discussed only in passing.

Tagged as: Wichita and Kansas schools

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Every state left behind

November 30, 2005

In Kansas, according to Standard & Poor’s Statewide Education Insights, about 60% to 70% of students are proficient in reading, as evaluated by the Kansas state reading test. But on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, only 33% to 35% of Kansas students are proficient. A similar discrepancy exists in the math test scores.

Tagged as: Education

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