A Modest Proposal for B.B.

August 18, 2008

The advocates of B.B. (Broader, Bolder; or is it Bigger Budgets? or is it Bloated Behemoth?) have yet to muster the evidence to support widespread implementation of their vision to expand the mission of schools to include health care, legal assistance, and other social services. They do present background papers showing that children who suffer from social problems fare worse academically, but they have not shown that public schools are capable of addressing those social problems and increasing student learning.

And if you dare to question whether there is evidence about the effectiveness of public schools providing social services in order to raise achievement, you are accused of being opposed to “better social and economic environments for children.” Right. And if you question the effectiveness of central economic planning are you also then opposed to a better economy? And if you question the effectiveness of an untested drug therapy are you then opposed to quality health-care?

To help the B.B. crowd generate the evidence one would need before pursuing a reform agenda on a large-scale, I have a modest proposal. How about if we have a dozen large-scale, well-funded pilot programs of the “community school” concept advocated by B.B.? And, at the same time let’s have a dozen large-scale, well-funded pilot voucher programs. We’ll carefully evaluate the effects of both to learn about whether one, the other, or both are things that we should try on an even larger scale.

I’m all for trying out new ideas and carefully evaluating the results. I can’t imagine why the backers of B.B. wouldn’t want to do the same. So as soon as Larry Mishel at the union-funded Economic Policy Institute, Randi Weingarten of the AFT, and Leo Casey of the AFT’s blog, Edwize, endorse my modest proposal, we’ll all get behind the idea of trying new approaches and studying their effects — “community schools” and vouchers.

Wait, my psychic powers are picking something up. I expect that some might say we’ve already tried vouchers and they haven’t worked. In fact, Randi Weingarten just wrote something very much like that when she declared in the NY Daily News that vouchers “have not been shown by any credible research to improve student achievement.” Let’s leave aside that there have been 10 random assignment evaluations (the gold-standard in research) of voucher programs and 9 show significant positive effects, at least for certain sub-groups of students. And let’s leave aside that 3 of those analyses are independent replications of earlier studies that confirm the basic positive findings of the original analyses (and 1 replication does not). And let’s leave aside that 6 of those 10 studies have been published in peer-reviewed journals (including the QJE, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and the Journal of Policy Studies), three in a Brookings book, and one in a federal government report (even if Chris Lubienski somehow denies that any of this constitutes real peer-review). And let’s leave aside that there have been more than 200 analyses of the effects of expanding choice and competition, which Clive Belfield and Henry Levin reviewed and concluded: “A sizable majority of these studies report beneficial effects of competition across all outcomes… The above evidence shows reasonably consistent evidence of a link between competition (choice) and education quality. Increased competition and higher educational quality are positively correlated.”

Let’s leave all of that aside and ask Randi Weingarten how many random-assignment studies of the community school concept she has. Uhm, none. How many evaluations of community schools, period? Uhm, still none. But that doesn’t stop her from drawing the definitive conclusion: “Through partnerships with universities, nonprofit groups and other organizations, community schools provide the learning conditions and resources that support effective instruction and bring crucial services to an entire community.” How does she know?

But I’m eager to help her and all of us learn about community schools if she is willing to do the same to learn about vouchers. Better designed and better funded voucher programs could give us a much better look at vouchers’ full effects. Existing programs have vouchers that are worth significantly less than per pupil spending in public schools, have caps on enrollments, and at least partially immunize public schools from the financial effects of competition. If we see positive results from such limited voucher programs, what might happen if we could try broader, bolder ones and carefully studied the results?

And if community schools really deliver all that is being promised, great, let’s do that too. But if our goal is to do what works, why not give both ideas a real try?

(Link added)

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Che Studies

August 17, 2008

The Arizona Republic’s Doug MacEachern has a column today on the Raza Studies program in Tucson, Arizona.  Raza Studies is part of their Ethnic Studies program in Tucson public high schools emphasizing Latino history and pride.  But the particular way in which Tucson’s program does this has raised some critical scrutiny.  MacEachern writes:

The ethnic-studies directors make a great many claims that teeter over into the wrong side of truth.  They claim not to “teach” communism, socialism or Marxism in their classes. But they lionize Marxist revolutionaries like “Che” Guevara; they all but worship Marxist education theorist Paolo Friere; and they have developed entire lesson plans celebrating modern Marxists like Subcomandante Marcos, the southern Mexican Zapatista who considers himself a “postmodern Che.” But they don’t “teach” the stuff.

The directors of the program “humbly and respectfully welcome the scrutiny and spotlight” their program has attracted, but then denounce “the tyrannical and fascist perspectives that are held and espoused by our adversaries.”

To defend their program, the directors have produced what one local paper called nine “cohort studies,” which the school district claims show that Raza Studies has a positive effect on the high school graduation rate and state achievement test scores of the students who elect to participate in the program.  MacEachern sent the “studies” to me for my comment.  They were actually just a few bar graphs making simple comparisons between the outcomes of students who did and did not choose to participate in Raza Studies at some (but not all) of Tuscon’s high schools.  There is no way to know from a few bar graphs whether Raza Studies helped, hurt, or had no effect on student achievement since the self-selected group of students who chose to take Raza Studies may have already been higher achieving at the beginning.  A few bar graphs does not an evaluation — or nine cohort studies —  make.

3 Comments | civic values, politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Broader, Bolder = Bloated Behemoth

August 13, 2008

 

Over at D-Ed Reckoning Ken DeRosa reviews the “evidence” that the AFT’s Leo Casey presents on the effectiveness of the Broader, Bolder approach being pushed by the union-backed Economic Policy Institute (with the support of some impressive people who you would think would know better). 

The issue is not whether kids would benefit from better health care or social services, or even whether receiving those benefits might contribute to higher achievement.  The issue is whether public schools are capable of expanding their mission to effectively provide these additional services, and whether those schools can translate the provision of additional services into higher achievement.

The Broader, Bolder folks provide a list of “background papers” to support their cause.  But those papers are very far in the background in that only a handful of the more than 100 studies cited actually assess the effects of providing students with additional services.  And even fewer look at the effects of public schools providing those services.  Before we endorse a bold new plan for education wouldn’t we want at least a few  evaluations of pilot programs in which public schools actually provided the full set of services being advocated?  I can’t find one such evaluation in the list of 100+ studies provided.

But don’t worry, Leo Casey has stepped into the breach with the solid research we need.  Here’s DeRosa’s commentary bracketing Casey’s, uhm, evidence:

“Leo must have had a few of his underlings pouring over the ERIC databases non-stop finding the requested evidence. Here is Leo’s evidence. I am leaving in all the internal citations and footnotes.

Classroom teachers recognize immediately the educational value of providing a comprehensive array of services to students living in poverty. They have seen the effects of undiagnosed and untreated eye problems on a student’s ability to learn how to read, and of untreated ear infections on a student’s ability to hear what is being said in the classroom. They know that the lack of proper medical care heightens the severity of childhood illnesses and makes them last longer, leading to more absences from school for students who need every day of school they can get. They have seen asthma reach epidemic proportions among students living in poverty, and they know that the lack of preventive and prophylactic medical care leads to more frequent attacks of a more severe nature, and more absences from school. They understand that screening for lead poisoning happens least among children in poverty, even though their living conditions make them the most likely victims, with all of the negative effects on cognitive functions. They know that the stresses of life in poverty make mental health and social work services for students and their families all that more important, and yet they are least likely to receive them. They see how the transience that marks poverty disrupts the education of students again and again, as the families of students are constantly on the move. In short, teachers know that the students living in poverty lack the health and social services routinely available to middle class and upper class students, despite the fact that they need them even more. And they know that the absence of these services has a detrimental impact on the education, as well as the general well-being, of students living in poverty.

I emphasized Leo’s evidentiary citations since they do not conform to the generally accepted norm.”

(edited for typos)

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

The ALA Double-Standard?

August 11, 2008

Last week I had a post observing that high school reading lists were much less likely to contain feminist critiques if those critiques were of non-Western societies, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel. 

Later last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Random House had cancelled the imminent publication of a book that it had under contract that was a fictionalized history of one of Mohammed’s wives.  Random House engaged in this self-censorship out of “fear of a possible terrorist threat from extremist Muslims.”

Once again we see a double standard in the treatment of non-Western subjects.  Where is the American Library Association (ALA) to denounce this self-censorship?  The ALA rightly advocates against efforts to restrict the kinds of books that are available and maintains a list of the most frequently “challenged” books.  They preface that list with a quotation from Judy Blume: “[I]t’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.”

The ALA saw the need to issue a statement to denounce censorship in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.  When will they release a statement denouncing Random House’s decision not to publish a book that they had deemed worthy of a $100,000 contract because they were bullied by threats of violence?

2 Comments | civic values | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Best. Choice. Argument. Ever.

August 6, 2008

 

 Brilliant.

 

(HT, Stuart Buck and Lydia McGrew at http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2008/08/great_video_clip_on_government.html#comments )

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Arkansas Blogs Increase 200%

August 6, 2008

Well, not really.  But I’ve come across two relatively new Arkansas-based blogs (at least they are new to me).  One is The Arkansas Project, written by David Kinkade, Freeman Hunt, and Dan Greenberg.  Greenberg is a state representative who shares my interest in the naming of public buildings.  The other is the eponymous blog, Freeman Hunt.  And speaking of the symbolic power of names, Freeman Hunt appears to be her real name. 

They join the extremely high quality blog written by Stuart Buck at The Buck Stops Here.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

A Feminist Critique Double-Standard?

August 5, 2008

I recently finished reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and found her story to be very compelling and well-written.  She makes a feminist critique of Islamic culture based on her own experiences growing-up in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.  While one could wonder whether the horrible treatment of women that she describes is really inherent in Islam or just in the way Islam is practiced in certain places, she makes a powerful case that anyone interested in progress for women should consider.  Certainly anyone who would read Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, or Naomi Wolf, should add Ayaan Hirsi Ali to their reading list.

But then I wondered — given how often these American feminist authors are on high school recommended reading lists, how many of those lists also include Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

I did a quick Google search for the terms “Infidel,” “high school,” “reading list,” and “Ayaan Hirsi Ali.”  There were 158 entries after duplicates were removed.  Combing through those entries I found four high schools that had Infidel on a recommended reading list. 

I did a similar search, substituting “The Color Purple” as the book and “Alice Walker” as the author.  That yielded 575 entries (without duplicates).  After reviewing the first 158 of those entries I found 49 high school recommended reading lists containing The Color Purple in addition to statewide lists for New York and Florida.  There are also many Google entries describing efforts to ban The Color Purple or remove it from recommended reading lists, but it is clear that those efforts have largely failed.  The Color Purple is widely suggested for high school students to read by school officials.

Why is Ayaan Hirsi Ali largely absent from high school reading lists while Alice Walker is so common?  Perhaps the difference is explained by the literary quality.  Walker is read for her literary skill in addition to the themes she addresses, but I somehow doubt that literary quality fully accounts for the difference.  And I should emphasize that Infidel is very well-written.  Her detached, almost clinical tone, helps the reader grasp the horrors she describes.  And Ali writes without anger and with a fair level of sympathy, even for those who treated her very poorly.

Instead, I suspect that at least some of the difference is attributable to the fact that Walker’s feminist critique hits closer to home, while Ali describes issues that are more remote.  In part, this is reasonable because we legitimately have a stronger interest in things that are closer to us.  But in part this seems unreasonable.  If we feature only criticisms of Western treatment of women and neglect accounts of even more horrifying treatment elsewhere, we deprive students of a sense of perspective and proportion.  Students might fail to appreciate the accomplishments and progress of Western civilization because of the inability to compare it to the accomplishments and progress made in other civilizations.

Infidel contains many controversial and disturbing issues.  But so does The Color Purple.  It would be nice if we are willing to address those controversial and disturbing issues even when they don’t occur in our backyard.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Mascot Mania Strikes Back

August 4, 2008

 SchoolCenter Picture

In keeping with our love of summer blockbuster sequels, I have another post on school mascot names.  Just to set the stage, let’s have a flashback to my first mascot post:

“The names we choose matter.  When we name our children, or name a public school, or name a public park or courthouse — we are signaling what is important to us.  Once names are given, there is an opportunity for people to learn about the values those names represent and promote those values in the world.   

With Brian Kisida and Jonathan Butcher, I have already analyzed patterns and trends in what we name public schools.  We found a trend away from naming schools after people, in general, and presidents, in particular.  Instead, schools are increasingly receiving names that sound more like herbal teas or day spas — Whispering Winds, Hawks Bluff, Desert Mesa, etc… 

[We found] that there are more public schools in Florida named after manatees than George Washington.

Now I am turning my attention to school mascots.  I understand that mascot names aren’t taken very seriously and are often chosen without much deliberation or care.  But even something trivial, like what we name our pets or the mascot names we adopt says something about us.  Besides, this is a bit of fun.”

In a subsequent post I identified a national data set of mascot names and offered some very preliminary analyses.  With the help of Jonathan Butcher and Catherine Shock, I now have some more detailed analyses to present.  In particular, I can show a list of the most common mascot names, show that Indian or war-like mascot names are fairly common, and show that those Indian or war-like names have not become dramatically less common over time.

I have a list of 19,785 mascot names (including some private and Canadian schools), while there are about 23,800 public secondary schools in the US (some of which probably do not have mascot names).  So, my list captures a large portion of all high school mascot names in the US.

There are 1,566 unique mascot names, but the more common 182 names account for 88% of the total.  Below is a list of the 60 most common mascot names, which account for 79% of all mascot names.  As you can see, animal mascots predominate.  Human or humanoid (like devils) mascots are about 36% of all names.  The remaining 64% are almost all animals, with a sprinkling of weather names (e.g., blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes). 

Eagle, which suggests both patriotism and ferocity, is by far the most common mascot name, accounting for 6% of all names.  The next most common names are tigers, bulldogs, panthers, and wildcats.  The most common “person” mascot is warrior, which ranks 6th and accounts for 3% of all mascot names. 

Rank         Name          Frequency

1 eagle 1223
2 tiger 914
3 bulldog 816
4 panther 804
5 wildcat (or kit) 706
6 warrior 630
7 lion 507
8 cougar 469
9 knight 466
10 indian 435
11 hawk 424
12 mustang 400
13 raider 399
14 bear 387
15 trojan 387
16 viking 362
17 falcon 361
18 devil 336
19 wolves 325
20 ram 322
21 cardinal 299
22 spartan 288
23 pirate 268
24 hornet 264
25 patriot 241
26 crusader 210
27 rebel 188
28 bobcat 182
29 yellowjacket 164
30 angels 155
31 wolverine 146
32 dragon 143
33 huskie 143
34 titans 140
35 saint 137
36 jaguar 134
37 charger 126
38 braves 116
39 rocket 111
40 chief 107
41 pioneer 102
42 cavalier 88
43 bronco 77
44 ranger 75
45 redskin 72
46 cowboy 71
47 owl 71
48 gators 70
49 longhorn 69
50 hound 66
51 tornado 66
52 royal 66
53 bruin 63
54 bluejays 61
55 hurricane 55
56 buccaneer 55
57 highlander 55
58 colt 55
59 irish 54
60 buffalo 53

Indian mascots, including chiefs, braves, and specific tribal names, are about 4% of all mascot names.  The warrior is sometimes represented by a Native American, but I have not included warriors among Indian mascots. 

Indians are not the only ethnic/national group featured as mascots.  There are also a fair number of Highlanders, Irish, and Scots as mascot names.

War-like names, including anything with “fighting” in it or warriors, raiders, pirates, bombers, etc…, are about 19% of all mascot names.  Excluding animal mascots, war-like mascots account for about half of the remaining “people” mascots.  Respect for a martial spirit is represented in a very large portion of all mascot names.

This interest in ferocity has only declined slightly over time.  Repeating a technique that I employed in the study of school names, I used the age of school buildings as a sort of “time machine.”  If schools built more recently have mascot names that are different from schools built a long time ago, then we could observe a trend in mascot selection over time.  Of course, there are problems with this technique.  For example, old schools might change their mascot names.  I can’t observe old schools that have closed.  I only have building age for a limited number of schools in a limited number of states.

With all of these confessions out of the way, I still believe that if there were a big change in mascot names, newly built schools should have very different mascot names than old schools.  I do not find a big change. 

I looked at mascot names for schools built before and after 1970 in Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Wisconsin.  There appear to be some modest trends.  Schools seem to be less likely to have a “person” mascot over time.  Animals are becoming somewhat more common as mascots.  And Indian mascots in these five states are becoming less common, but by no means have disappeared.  Lastly, there has been a modest decline over time in schools having war-like names. 

  Before 1970 After 1970
“Person”    40.0% 35.6%
Indian    8.1% 6.5%
War-Like    22.2% 19.2%

It’s possible that flaws in the analysis are understating the trends, but even if that were the case the changes are unlikely to be large.  The shift away from “people” mascots, away from Native American names, and away from war-like names is happening, but it is happening gradually. 

My guess is that the appeal of tradition in mascots is likely to be very strong.  Change can only occur gradually, as old schools are closed and new ones opened.  We occasionally hear news stories about schools changing mascots, but those stories may account for almost all of the instances of such shifts actually occurring.  When a school changes mascots it tends to make news.

Curiously, the change in mascot names over time is much less dramatic than the change in school names.  Perhaps school boards increasingly avoid naming schools after people because they wish to avoid fights over who should be honored, but are less politically sensitive about mascot names because they provoke less conflict.  Maybe our commitment to the values of fierce mascots has not changed much over time, while our commitment to honoring great presidents, educators, and other people has declined.

The first person to post a comment identifying the schools and mascot names represented by the three images at the top wins a prize!

15 Comments | civic values | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

NCLB: Less Than Meets the Eye, More Than Nothing

July 29, 2008

Given all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth, one would think that NCLB was a crushing burden on the school system.

In actuality NCLB demands very little. It only requires that states wishing to receive Title I funds have to establish goals for student success, select tests for measuring progress towards those goals, and report results from those tests broken out by subgroups.

The sanctions for failing to make progress toward those goals are almost non-existent. Schools failing to make progress have to offer tutoring or allow students to transfer to better-performing public schools in the same district (if one can be found). But, as we have previously discussed on this blog and in this article, there is widespread non-compliance with even these minimal sanctions. Too often schools fail to inform parents properly of their options under NCLB or direct students into their own tutoring programs, resulting in very few students taking any resources out of their local school, let alone district. Without placing school funds in jeopardy, the only possible sanction is public embarrassment. And that plus $4 will get you a latte at Starbucks.

I do not believe that a single tenured teacher out of the more than 3 million teachers currently working in public schools has been fired, experienced a pay-cut, or otherwise been meaningfully sanctioned because of NCLB. I do not believe that a single student out of the 50 million enrolled in public schools has been held back a grade, been denied a diploma, or otherwise been meaningfully sanctioned as a result of NCLB. (Some states have retention and graduation requirements as part of their state accountability systems, but those policies are not required for NCLB.) Yes, chronically failing schools might eventually face “restructuring” but that is likely to be yet more bark and no bite. Next they’ll be put on double secret probation.

So what supports complaints about “pressure cooker NCLB testing,” or “NCLB-post traumatic stress disorder,” or other “NCLB outrages”? If NCLB has almost no real consequences for teachers or students, what is all of the fuss about? The overwrought reaction seems to have more to do with a political campaign over the future direction of education policy than the actual effects of the current policy.

The most important future policy that the higher volume of squealing is meant to influence is increasing education spending. A center-piece of the complaints about NCLB is that it is an unfunded mandate. Let’s leave aside the fact that federal spending on education has increased 41% since passage of NCLB. And let’s leave aside that NCLB is not actually a mandate, since states do not have to comply with NCLB if they do not want Title I funds (which have increased 59% since 2001).

Besides neither being unfunded nor a mandate, the argument that NCLB is an unfunded mandate is especially odd because it makes one wonder what all of the funding that schools received before NCLB was for. It’s as if the unfunded mandate crowd is saying: “The $10,000 per pupil we already get just pays for warehousing. If you actually want us to educate kids, that’ll cost ya extra.” Remember, that NCLB just asks states to establish and meet their own goals. Didn’t they have goals before NCLB?

While NCLB demands much less than the overwrought rhetoric about it suggests, it does not demand nothing. Most importantly, NCLB entrenched the idea that we should take regular measures of student achievement and report the results, including results for subgroups. Even this is a smaller thing that it may seem at first glance since 37 states had already adopted state testing and accountability systems before passage of NCLB. But NCLB brought the laggard states on-board to this growing national consensus that we ought to have some systematic measures of how our students are doing. It also made reversal of this growing testing and accountability culture more difficult by placing it in federal as well as state law.

Greg Forster has already made the case for why this shift under NCLB has been important, so I will not repeat it here. I would just emphasize that the controversy over NCLB is not really about what NCLB does, but about the broader policy shift that it represents and the extra funding that folks hope they may get as they acquiesce to that policy shift.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Broader, Bolder — Bigger Budget

July 28, 2008

Check out Ken DeRosa’s critique of Broader, Bolder (the union backed plan to improve the struggling education system by doubling-down the bet and expanding the responsibilities of those struggling schools to include health care and other social services). 

Here’s my favorite bit of his post:

“Let’s take Ravitch’s defense first:

I care as much about academic achievement as Checker or anyone else in the world, but I don’t see any contradiction between caring about academic achievement and caring about children’s health and well-being.

The issue isn’t about who cares about children’s health and well-being. The issue is whether public schools, who are by and large failing at their primary task of education, should take on the additional responsibilities of caring about children’s health and well-being. You could care very much about the health and well-being of children and NOT think it’s a good idea to hand these services over to our public schools.

The argument seems to be that since children attend school every day (cough, cough) that social services could be easily provided at school. Then why not hand over these responsibilities to the post office. After all, they make house calls six days a week regardless of the rain, snow, heat, or gloom of night. They could give the kids a quick vision screen and drop off any drug prescriptions.”

4 Comments | myth of helplessness | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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