Most Annoying Education Blog Topics of 2008

December 16, 2008

Here are my top 5:

1) Who will be Obama’s education secretary?  OK, now we know it is Arne Duncan.  Can we stop now?

2) Who is Eduwonkette?  It’s Jennifer Jennings.  Can we now concentrate on whether what she writes makes sense or not?

3) Where will Obama send his kids to school?  It’s Sidwell Friends.  Next the People Magazine-type education bloggers will want to know whether he wears boxers or briefs.  Oh wait.  We’ve been through that before.

4) Should we push choice or instructional reform?  They’re both good together.  Will the next invented, self-destructive fight be about whether we should have Popeye’s chicken or cajun mash potatoes?

5) End of year lists.

UPDATE:  OK, I know that I said I was sick of the ed sec talk, but now that we know who it is I guess there is actually something new to say.  And Mike Petrilli has the best analysis I’ve seen, here.  I especially like that it is a 5 point list.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Al Copeland: Humanitarian of the Year

December 15, 2008

Al Copeland  may not have done the most to benefit humanity, but he certainly did more than many people who receive such awards.  Chicago gave Bill Ayers their Citizen of the Year award in 1997.  And the Nobel Peace Prize has too often gone to a motley crew including unrepentant terrorist, Yassir Arafat, and fictional autobiography writer, Rigoberta Menchu.   Local humanitarian awards tend to go to hack politicians or community activists.  From all these award recipients you might think that a humanitarian was someone who stopped throwing bombs (sort of like the pleasure of stopping to hit yourself in the head) or who you hoped would picket, tax, regulate, or imprison someone else.

Al Copeland never threatened to bomb, picket, tax, regulate, or imprison anyone.  By that standard alone he would be much more of a humanitarian.  But Al Copeland did even more — he gave us spicy chicken.  You see, Al Copeland was the founder of the Popeyes Chicken chain.  Copeland was a humanitarian because he developed a product that people really wanted and voluntarily paid for.  The Dr. John jingle says it best — “Love that chicken from Popeyes!”

By developing a product that people enjoyed, Copeland was able to build a chain of restaurants that served millions of customers while employing tens of thousands over his career.  Making products that people want and giving people opportunities for employment isn’t just a good strategy for making a profit, it’s also a morally desirable activity.

I’ve intentionally selected the founder of something as mundane as a spicy chicken restaurant chain to make this point.  The entrepreneur doesn’t just benefit himself.  He or she also benefits humanity.  Making new and better things improves the human condition.  Even spicy chicken makes life better.

It’s true that the entrepreneur also benefits from making something new or better, but that in no way diminishes from his or her contribution to humanity.  Life is not a zero-sum game in which one person’s improvement necessarily comes at the expense of someone else.  When the entrepreneur succeeds, customers enjoy a good product, employees enjoy their wages, and the entrepreneur enjoys a profit.  The invention of something new or better allows everyone to win.  

Al Copeland  didn’t always win.  When his company acquired Church’s Chicken, they bit off more than they could handle and had to enter bankruptcy.  But bankruptcy doesn’t mean that you put assets in a big pile and blow them up.  Popeye’s restructured and continues to operate, so we continue to enjoy the legacy of Al Copeland’s creation.

Al Copeland enjoyed his legacy as well.  He spent his fortune on a fleet of racing boats and cars.  He decorated his Louisiana mansion with such an elaborate Christmas display that it attracted thousands of visitors as well as a lawsuit from neighbors.  Undeterred by the failure of his first two marriages, Copeland married a third time in a lavish ceremony complete with a fireworks display.  The man lived large.

The fact that he sometimes failed in business, failed in his personal relationships, and often spent his money on frivolous pleasures still does not prevent him from being more of a humanitarian than many who receive such awards.  No matter how he failed or wasted, he still developed something that improved people’s lives.

And let’s remember that the more typical recipients of humanitarian awards are not completely selfless.  Even if they don’t have money squirreled away in Swiss bank accounts like Yassir Arafat, or ego-gratifying constant attention like Bill Ayers, they usually receive some sort of compensation for their actions.  Being rewarded in no way diminishes their accomplishments any more than it does the entrepreneur.  The only question is whether they really do things that help humanity — even with something as mundane as spicy chicken.

Al Copeland passed away this year from a rare form of cancer.  As flawed as he was (and aren’t we all) he was a great humanitarian.

7 Comments | Al Copeland Humanitarian Award, economics, tributes | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Year That Was

December 15, 2008

It’s getting to be that time when people make lists of good and bad things that happened during the preceding year.  Here’s mine from an interview with Michael F. Shaughnessy of EducationNews.org:

What were the 5 most important developments during 2008 that contributed to reform of K-12 education?

 1)     Barack Obama strongly endorsed the idea that expanding choice and competition is an important part of improving public schools.  He limited his support to expanding choice and competition through the introduction of more charter schools, but the theory is not fundamentally different than doing the same with vouchers.  Whether Obama follows through on this campaign position or not, it is now clear that it is considered politically desirable among both Democrats and Republicans to support choice and competition.  Holdouts from this view, including the teacher unions on the left and curriculum-focused reformers on the right, are being increasingly marginalized.

2)     Sarah Palin, in her only major policy speech, pushed the idea of special education vouchers.  Like Obama embracing choice and competition, Palin embracing special ed vouchers is a symbol of the political attractiveness of the policy.  Special ed voucher programs already exist in Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Utah, and Arizona (pending the resolution of a court case).  I’d expect the idea to spread to several more states in the next four years regardless of Sarah Palin’s political prospects.

3)     Reform ideas, including choice, merit pay, curbing teacher tenure, and promoting alternative certification, are gaining mainstream acceptance in the Democratic Party largely thanks to the efforts of Democrats for Education Reform.  An important indication of this political shift was an event at the Democratic National Convention organized by the Democrats for Education Reform at which an audience of about 500 cheered speakers denouncing the teacher unions and embracing reform ideas. The Democratic supporters of reform largely (but not exclusively) consist of urban minority leaders, including Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Adrian Fenty, Cory Booker, Kevin Chavous, Al Sharpton, and Marion Barry.  Go ahead and make all the Sharpton and Barry jokes you like, but this (mostly) minority defection of urban Democrats from union orthodoxy is like a political earthquake that will have important implications for future reform politics.  And it’s true that some conservatives have begun backtracking on reform ideas, including Sol Stern, Diane Ravitch, and depending on the day of the week, Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli.  But if the reform movement has traded some conservatives for the new generation of minority Democratic leadership, I think we’ve come out ahead.

4)     We saw a string of new or expanded school choice programs in 2008.  Georgia adopted a universal tax-credit supported voucher program.  Louisiana adopted a voucher program for New Orleans as well as a personal tax deduction for private school tuition.  Florida expanded and decreased burdensome regulation on its tax-credit supported voucher program.  And Utah increased and secured a source of funding for its special ed voucher program.  For a movement declared dead more times than Generalissimo Francisco Franco, school choice continues to grow.

5)     I’ll take the privilege of the final development to brag about the launch of the new doctoral program in education policy in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.  It may not have been among the 5 most important developments in the whole country, but it was a big development in my little world.  With the first cohort of students starting in the Fall of 2009 (supported by a pool of generous fellowships) and a collection of outstanding faculty, we have the potential to significantly increase the number of reform-oriented researchers in academia, think-tanks, and foundations.

What were the 5 most important developments during 2008 that hindered reform of K-12 education?

1)     The reform movement lost two great champions this year with the passing of John Brandl and J. Patrick Rooney.  Brandl, who had been the Democratic leader of Minnesota’s state senate and Dean of the University of Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey School of Public Policy, contributed significantly to the argument that choice was not only efficient, but also enhanced opportunities for the disadvantaged.  He helped create the state’s pioneering charter school law and other choice programs.  Brandl also served as mentor to many of today’s leading choice researchers.  Rooney, who had always been active in the civil rights movement, personally sponsored scholarships for disadvantaged students to attend private schools.  His privately financed program became a model for publicly funded voucher and tax-credit supported scholarship programs.

2)     In 2008 we saw a number of “implementation” problems undermine otherwise promising reform initiatives.  For example, Georgia adoption a social promotion policy that required students to pass a test or follow a formal exemption policy to be promoted in certain grades.  My research with Marcus Winters on a similar policy in Florida suggested that it would improve student achievement.   But in several districts around Georgia more than 90% of students were promoted without passing the test and without following the formal exemption procedure.  They simply disregarded the law on a large scale with no consequences for any district or school employee.  Another promising idea undermined by implementation was Reading First. There is a lot of rigorous science to support a phonics-based reading approach, but getting public schools to do it well is a completely different matter.  Implementation also appears to have done-in a promising teacher mentoring program.  I could go on, but the point is that there is no shortage of clever reform practices out there.  The problem is that without addressing the lack of proper incentives in the public education system to improve, we regularly see these clever practices fall flat. We need incentive-based reforms along with reform of educational practices.

3)     Earlier this year an Arizona court struck down voucher programs for students with disabilities and students in foster care on the grounds that the state constitution forbids aid to private schools.  This month defenders of the program argued on appeal to the state Supreme Court that the program aids students, not schools.  And the state already sends disabled students to private schools when it is determined that the public schools are unable to provide adequate services.  That practice may also be in jeopardy, even though it is actually required by federal law (IDEA).  Who knows how this will all be resolved, since courts can adopt any interpretation they like, reasonable or unreasonable.  But court action has prevented these beneficial programs from operating and threatens to kill them.

4)     A Florida court struck down the ability of a state commission to approve charter schools.  If upheld by the (notorious) Florida Supreme Court, only school districts could approve charters and existing charters approved by the state commission may have to be closed.  Giving districts the exclusive power to grant charters essentially allows the districts to decide with whom they will have to compete.  It’s like giving McDonalds the exclusive power to approve the opening of all new restaurants.  The state Supreme Court used the same narrow interpretation of clauses in the state constitution to strike down the Opportunity Scholarship voucher program, so the prospects for a vibrant and competitive charter sector in Florida are not good.

5)     And finally the most disappointing development of 2008 is that we spent another half trillion dollars on public education without significantly altering the dysfunctional system that fails to teach a quarter of 8th grade students to read at a basic level or get them to graduate from high school.  Results for minority students are significantly worse.  The economic bailout may be a $700 billion enterprise, but the public school system spends almost that much each and every year.  Every year that we spend that money without fundamentally altering how we operate public education is another fortune wasted and another year lost for millions of students.

(Note: corrected spelling of Marion Barry’s name)

3 Comments | politics, social promotion, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Update on Fiscal Impact of Milwaukee Vouchers

December 15, 2008

(Guest Post by Robert Costrell)

Does the funding formula for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) adversely affect Milwaukee taxpayers, even as it benefits taxpayers statewide?  The answer I gave in my recent Education Next article is yes, based on data through the 2007-08 school year.  Since publication, some confusion has arisen as to whether this result still holds for the current school year, as reported in the news and opinion columns of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (“Fairness is in the Eye of the Beholder,” by Alan J. Borsuk and “Taxpayers, Parents on the Same Side,” by Patrick McIlheran) as well as an early version of Greg Forster’s post, since corrected here.

So let me update my Ed Next figures to the 2008-09 school year (hereafter FY09, for fiscal year).  The answer, in short, is still yes:  the adverse impact of the MPCP formulas on Milwaukee taxpayers continues unabated, even as the statewide benefits grow.  This is true, despite some modest efforts over the last two years by the Wisconsin legislature to address the problem.

First, let’s consider the size of the pie — the net savings available from the voucher program.  These savings derive from the fact that voucher expenses are $6,607 per child, while state and local revenues for MPS are set by the revenue limit at $9,462 per child.   These public savings are partially offset by the voucher expenditures on students who would have attended private schools anyway.  My best estimate is that these students comprise 10 percent of MPCP’s 19,500 students (see my full report for an explanation of this estimate, as well as my evaluation of different estimates).  Under this assumption, the net savings available to taxpayers totaled $37.2 million in FY09, up from $31.9 million in FY08 (the figure given in my Ed Next article).

The problem lies in the distribution of these benefits.  The savings accrue entirely to property taxpayers outside of Milwaukee and to Wisconsin state taxpayers:  Milwaukee property taxpayers do not share in these savings. 

The fiscal impact of MPCP on Milwaukee property taxes is driven by the fact that 45% of voucher expenditures are deducted from MPS aid, even though MPS receives no aid for these students.   As I explain in Ed Next, it certainly made sense to remove MPCP students from MPS enrollment counts when the system was reformed in 2000, but it made no sense to continue to deduct any of the voucher expenses from their remaining aid.  Milwaukee is allowed to raise its property taxes to recoup this deduction (the “choice levy”), and has to do so if it wants to maintain MPS’ per pupil revenues at the level specified by the revenue limit formula.   That is the essence of the “funding flaw.”

This is partially offset by 2 things.  First is that the removal of MPCP students from MPS enrollment counts saves the state aid money and some of that is passed on in statewide property tax relief; Milwaukee receives a small share of this.  The other offset, which began last year, is “high poverty aid,” an ad hoc appropriation to alleviate a portion of Milwaukee’s choice levy.

For FY09, these 3 pieces are $58.0 million (45% of voucher expenditures) minus $3.4 million (my estimate of Milwaukee’s share of statewide property tax relief) minus $9.9 million (“high poverty aid”) equals $44.7 million.  This is the adverse impact on Milwaukee property taxpayers of the voucher funding mechanism. 

It is worth emphasizing that this impact is on property taxpayers, not Milwaukee Public Schools.  Per pupil revenues available to MPS are unaffected by the voucher program, so long as Milwaukee fully utilizes the tax capacity granted to it under the MPCP formulas.   Milwaukee did utilize its tax capacity in FY09 (as it has done in all other recent years, with one exception noted below).

The picture is different for the rest of the state.  For FY09, I estimate the net benefit to property taxpayers outside of Milwaukee at $52.0 million, and the net benefit to state taxpayers at $30.0 million.   (The assumptions underlying these calculations and the basis for them are laid out in my Ed Next piece and my longer report for the School Choice Demonstration Project, along with details of the calculations.)

Taken all together, the net benefit to Wisconsin and Milwaukee taxpayers from the voucher program is $52.0 million (benefit to property taxpayers outside Milwaukee) plus $30.0 million (benefit to state taxpayers) minus $44.7 million (adverse effect on Milwaukee taxpayers) equals $37.2 million.   This is the net savings figure given above.

The pattern of winners and losers is depicted below, in the update of my Ed Next Figure 4.  The loss to Milwaukee property taxpayers is depicted by the blue bars in negative territory; the gains to other property taxpayers and state taxpayers are depicted by the maroon and tan bars in positive territory.

What was the impact of the “high poverty aid” program, enacted last year to alleviate the “funding flaw?”  As the diagram indicates, because of this additional aid, the adverse impact on Milwaukee property taxpayers for FY09 is no worse than in FY07, which is to say it did not grow as it would have without the aid. 

In addition, last year Milwaukee chose, for the first and only time in recent years, not to tax all the way up to the limit allowed by law.  There was $15.1 million of unused tax capacity.   Consequently, the diagram’s blue bar depicting the adverse impact on Milwaukee property taxpayers is shorter than it would otherwise have been for FY08.   This means that MPS received less than the per pupil revenue limit.   The figure attained was $8,978 instead of the revenue limit of $9,141.  The per pupil revenue still exceeded the FY07 figure, but did not increase as much as state law allowed.  In other words, this $15.1 million represents the shortfall for MPS, relative to the per pupil revenue limit.  This is depicted in the figure by the green bar for FY08, in negative territory. 

This year, Milwaukee has resumed its past practice of taxing up to the revenue limit, so the green bar disappears and the blue bar is no longer truncated:  there is no adverse impact on MPS, as the property taxpayers of Milwaukee make good on the full amount of the choice levy.

To summarize: 

(1)  Net savings from the Milwaukee voucher program continues to grow along with MPCP enrollments, and the widening gap between the voucher and the MPS revenue limit.   I estimate the net fiscal benefit at $37.2 million for FY09, up from $31.9 million for FY08.

(2) Milwaukee property taxpayers do not share in these benefits.  I estimate the adverse impact for FY09 to be $44.7 million.   The “high poverty aid” enacted in FY08 has kept the adverse impact from growing beyond its FY07 level, but has not materially reduced it either. 

The “funding flaw” persists.  As I stated in the conclusion of my Ed Next piece, “It remains to be seen whether, as the program grows, this flaw will undermine it or instead lead legislators to complete the reforms … so the benefits can be shared by all.

bob-3

 (Note 1:  the bars depicted for FY08 are revised from those published in Ed Next.  There I assumed Milwaukee taxed up to the revenue limit, as it had for preceding years.   This one-year departure from past practice came to my attention when the article was in press, too late to amend Figure 4.)

(Note 2: Alan Borsuk’s article, “Fairness is in the Eye of the Beholder,” includes a short summary of my Ed Next article, which states that I conclude “MPS is losing money […] on a per-pupil basis.”  My article actually states, “To avoid this result [MPS revenue loss on a per-pupil basis], MPS is still allowed to offset the [voucher] deduction by raising property taxes and it has chosen to do so.”  As the diagram above shows, the loss is for Milwaukee property taxpayers, not MPS, except for FY08, when Milwaukee chose not to offset the entire choice levy.)

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Is Lost Like Riverworld?

December 12, 2008

It recently dawned on me that the TV series, Lost, resembled the Riverworld series of books written by Philip Jose Farmer.  Given that I hadn’t read these books since I was about 13, I started to re-read them to see if there really were similarities and if the resolution of Riverworld might tell us something about what will happen in Lost.

Let me first say that you should re-read books you really liked at 13 with caution.  It wasn’t quite as great as I remembered.  I wonder what else I thought was really cool at 13 that turns out to be mediocre.  No wait, I don’t want to know.  In any event,  I was struck by the plot and thematic similarities to Lost.

The basic premise  of Riverworld is that every person who ever lived on Earth up until 2008, all 36 billion or so, is resurrected on a giant planet that consists of one super-long river that zig-zags from pole to pole and back again.  The river is lined by impassably huge mountains, so one can only move up or down the river, not over the mountains.  Everyone is reborn healthy at the age of 25 and is provided with food daily from special stones.  If they die in the Riverworld, they are just reborn somewhere else along the river.

The hero of the plot is the explorer, Sir Richard Francis Burton.  He is determined to discover who created the Riverworld and why.  He decides to find the headwaters of the great river, just as he strove to discover the headwaters of the Nile in real life.  Along the way he encounters all sorts of historical figures from different places and eras, including the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland (Alice Liddell), Hermann Goering, Samuel Clemens, and others.

Here are the similarities between Riverworld and Lost:

  • In both people are stranded (perhaps after “dying”) in a place and are trying to figure out who made that place and why they are there.
  • In both the need for food and shelter is largely eliminated — in Riverworld the stones provide food and clothing and the weather is mild, while in Lost the Dharma stockpiles provide food and the weather is mild.
  • In both the purpose of their being there seems to have something to do with their moral development.
  • In Riverworld the people controlling the planets (The Ethicals) plant spies among people when they are resurrected.  In Lost the “Others” also plant spies among the Losties.
  • In both the spies are detected and the control of the Ethicals/Others is challenged.
  • Both the resurrectees and the Losties form new “governments” and split into competing factions that fight against each other.
  • People do not appear to age on the Island or in the Riverworld.
  • In both it appears that dead people come back.  In Riverworld it is more obvious.  But in Lost the dead regularly visit the living (e.g. Christian Shephard, Harper Stanhope, Mikhail Bakunin, etc…). 
  • Amazingly there is also a character (based on the historical figure) Mikhail Bakunin in Riverworld.

And I’m not the only person who sees connections between Riverworld and Lost.  While searching for material to verify similarities between the two I cam across this post on the Entertainment Weekly site by “Doc Jensen” that concludes: “C’MON, PEOPLE! There MUST be a CONNECTION!”

Let’s say that the Lost writers were at least partially inspired by Riverworld.  If that’s the case we might expect that the purpose of the Island will be like the purpose of the Riverworld.  Both may be designed to identify who is morally worthy to reproduce and create future civilizations.  Perhaps the whispers are the spirits of the deceased who sometimes find a way to materialize in a new body.  Perhaps the obsession the Others have with getting babies born on the Island is to re-embody those spirits or to figure out a way to create the future civilization.  Perhaps Aaron is important either because he embodies an old spirit or because he has passed the test to carry-on the new civilization.

Of course, Lost is not bound by Riverworld.  And maybe the connections are largely coincidence or just common themes in sci-fi.  But I’m guessing that J.J. Abrams and the writers were influenced by Riverworld. After all, Abrams is my age and may well have read the same books when he was 13.  So, Riverworld may give us some clues about where Lost is heading.

7 Comments | Lost | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Why JPGB Beats Edwize

December 11, 2008

 

  Edwize is a blog by Leo Casey that is sponsored by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the New York affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers.  The UFT has tens of millions of dollars at its disposal and thousands upon thousands of members.  Jay P. Greene’s Blog (JPGB) by contrast has a $25 registration fee for the domain name and a couple of laptops. 

Despite this huge disparity in resources, JPGB has a significantly larger audience than does Edwize.  According to Technorati JPGB has an authority rating of 95 while Edwize has a rating of 74.  An authority rating measures how many other blogs link to a given blog during the last 180 days, which is meant to capture how much influence a blog has in the blogoshpere.  In addition, each post on JPGB generates about 4 or 5 comments, on average, while posts on Edwize generate about 1 or 2 comments, on average.  Fewer comments suggest fewer readers and/or material on which people do not care to comment. 

None of these measures is perfect, but it is clear that JPGB beats Edwize.  Why?

The primary challenge for Edwize is that it has to tout teacher union views on education issues.  And those views are mostly junky.  So, Edwize suffers because it takes significantly more resources to interest people in crappy ideas than in sensible ones. 

In case you doubt that the unions have to push junky ideas, ask yourself whether it is sensible to have a system of education in which students are mostly assigned to schools based on where they live; where teachers are almost never fired, no matter how incompetent they are; where teachers are paid almost entirely based on how many years they’ve been around rather than on how well they do their job; where teachers are required to be certified even though there is little to no evidence that certification is associated with quality; and where all teachers are paid the same regardless of subject, even though we know that the skills required for expertise on certain subjects have much greater value in the market than other subjects.

The mental gymnastics required to sustain the union world view has a much greater “degree of difficulty” than the views that are regularly expressed on JPGB.  And the resources required to generate support for these union views are enormous.  You need millions of people financially benefiting from these policies to volunteer as campaign workers.  You need millions of dollars in union dues for campaign contributions.  You need a large team of paid staff in every state and in Washington, DC.  It takes an army and a fortune for the unions to hold their ground.

This not only helps explain why JPGB beats Edwize, but also why reformers are able to beat the unions in the policy arena.  It’s true that the unions win most of the time.  But given their enormous advantage in resources, it is amazing that the unions ever lose.  The reason that the unions lose as often as they do is that their policy positions are much more difficult to defend intellectually.

So, we should feel sorry for Leo Casey and his union comrades.  They may have a lot more money and a lot more people, but they constantly have to defend obviously dumb ideas.

(edited for clarity and to add photo)

3 Comments | blogging, politics, teacher pay | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Great Minds Think Alike

December 10, 2008

I’m not the only one to compare the auto bailout to K-12 education.  Andrew Coulson has a great piece with that theme over at Cato.

Also, I’m not the only one to see Rorschach (or is it Horshack) inkblots in the TIMSS results spin-fest.  Rob Pondiscio over at Core Knowledge also references Horshack — er, I mean, Rorschach.  And in the forthcoming Gadfly a little birdie named Mike Petrilli told me that he also has a Rorschack/Horshack piece forthcoming.

If this continues I’m going to have to re-position my lead helmet that keeps others from reading my thoughts with their Alpha rays.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

How Much Do We Know About K-12 Education?

December 10, 2008

Some folks in Utah showed how little we know about K-12 education.  And the errors are not random.  People believe we spend less than we really do, that teachers are paid a lot less than they really are, and that our students fare better against students in other countries than they really do.

3 Comments | money myth | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Is Chuck E. Cheese a Bad Influence?

December 9, 2008

The WSJ has an article today about the surprising number of incidents of disorderly conduct and fights at Chuck E. Cheese children restaurants.  The piece reports:

“Chuck E. Cheese’s bills itself as a place “where a kid can be a kid.” But to law-enforcement officials across the country, it has a more particular distinction: the scene of a surprising amount of disorderly conduct and battery among grown-ups.

‘The biggest problem is you have a bunch of adults acting like juveniles,’ says Town of  Brookfield Police Capt. Timothy Imler. ‘There’s a biker bar down the street, and we rarely get calls there.'”

Hey, Ryan!  We know you have special familiarity with the big Cheese.  Any theories to explain this?

2 Comments | random pop culture | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The TIMSS Rorschach Test

December 9, 2008

The Rorschach inkblot test is a psychology test that was used to assess personality and emotions.  The way in which people saw ambiguous images, like the one above, was supposed to say something about who they really were.

The same is true for the interpretations being applied to the results of the 2007 TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) released today.

Over at Flypaper, Mike Petrilli interprets the gains the US has made in math but not science as suggesting that accountability testing is shifting resources toward math and away from science: “The lesson is that what gets tested gets taught. Under the No Child Left Behind act, and state accountability systems before that, elementary schools have been held accountable for boosting performance in math and reading. There is evidence that American elementary schools are spending less time teaching science, and this is showing up in the international testing data.”

And Mike interprets the relatively good results that Minnesota had (yes, MN took the test as if it were a country) as supporting rigorous standards: “There’s also good news out of Minnesota today, which has made dramatic gains since adopting new, more rigorous math standards.”

But also at Flypaper, Diane Ravtich offers different interpretations.  She sees the gains even in math results as “actually small, only four points.”  She also declines to credit NCLB for any of those gains, even as a perverse result of resource shifting away from science.  She notes that gains were at least as large in the US during the period prior to implementation of NCLB.  And on the topic of Minnesota she takes issue with Mikes explanation for success: “Minnesota showed dramatic gains on TIMSS not because of ‘new, more rigorous standards,’ but because of that state’s decision to implement a coherent grade-by-grade curriculum in mathematics.”  Umm, I would explain the difference but I got so bored trying to distinguish standards from curriculum that I dozed off for a bit.

Rather than focusing on the gains (or lack of gains) made by the US relative to itself in the past, Mark Schneider at Education Week focuses on the comparison between the US and other countries.  He notes that while the US looks relatively strong on the TIMSS, that is distorted by the large number of  “low-performing countries in the calculation of the international average [including Jordan, Romania, Morocco, and South Africa that] drives down that average, improving the relative performance of our students.”

He further notes that we fare worse on the PISA, which reports results from the 30 OECD countries who are our major trading partners and economic competitors: “We do better in TIMSS than we do on PISA, but this is a function of the countries that participate in each, and we should not let the relatively good TIMSS results lull us into a false sense of complacency. Even in the relatively easier playing field of TIMSS, we are lagging far too many countries in overall math performance and in the performance of our best students.”

And at Huffington Post Gerald Bracey was able to offer his reaction to the results last week, before they were released.  He wrote: “It might be good to keep a few things in mind when considering the data:

1. The Institute for Management Development rates the U. S. #1 in global competitiveness.

2. The World Economic Forum ranks the U. S. #1 in global competitiveness.

3. The U. S. has the most productive workforce in the world.

4. “The fact is that test-score comparisons tell us little about the quality of education in any country.” (Iris Rotberg, Education Week June 11, 2008).

5. ‘That the U. S., the world’s top economic performing country, was found to have schooling attainments that are only middling casts fundamental doubts on the value, and approach, of these surveys…'”

Bracey also said that our students could beat up the students in other countries with higher TIMSS scores.  (Actually, I made that last bit up.)

To summarize, Mike Petrilli sees evidence supporting his past concerns about the narrowing of the curriculum and the need for rigorous standards.  Diane Ravitch sees no evidence to alter her negative view of NCLB.  Mark Schneider, the former head of the National Center for Education Statistics, sees the need to review more testing.  And Gerald Bracey doesn’t even have to see the results to know that our education system is doing a great job.  And when I look at the inkblot I see a pudgy guy with a beard and male-patterned baldness laughing.

(edited for clarity)

7 Comments | research reports, school accountability | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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