Lefty? You Take that Back!

June 25, 2008

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Mike Petrilli has completely misunderstood my response to his and Checker Finn’s NRO piece last week.

I would let it slide, but the man also called me a “lefty,” so now my honor is at stake. (And even while delivering this shiv to the ribs, he calls me “our friend Greg Forster.” Beware the smiling mamba!)

Pistols at ten paces being illegal, I must content myself with another blog post.

To recap:

1) Mike, writing with Checker, claimed that in the NCLB era the kids at the bottom had made good progress while the kids at the top remained unchanged.

2) They said this meant that NCLB had sacrificed “excellence” in order to promote “equality.”

3) I responded that if it’s true the kids at the bottom are getting better while the kids at the top are staying the same, it sounds like we’re making progress toward both more equality and more excellence.

Well now Mike throws this at me:

Is the whole population getting “more excellent”? No, the whole population is making incremental progress. That’s surely good. But excellence is something else entirely. According to Webster’s, it’s the quality of being “superior, eminently good, first-class.”

So the improvement in learning among the lowest-performing students is “incremental progress” but it is not an improvement in excellence. Well then, incremental progress toward what, exactly, if not toward excellence? If they keep making incremental progress until they’re all as smart as Einstein, wouldn’t that be excellence? And doesn’t that mean that the progress they’re actually making now is progress toward excellence? So if that’s not an improvement in excellence, what is it?

Then he delivers the shiv:

Greg’s definition equates “excellence” with a narrowing of the achievement gap. That’s breathtakingly radical. Who knew that Greg had become such a lefty!

Mike, I said we were making progress toward both equality and excellence. I didn’t say that progress toward equality was progress toward excellence. If I say that my daughter is getting both taller and smarter at the same time, does that mean I equate height with intelligence?

If we want to parse definitions, I would define narrowing the achievement gap between groups as an improvement in “equality,” and any raising of the level of achievement – whether across the board or in a particular group – as an improvement in “excellence.” And obviously you can have both of those at the same time without collapsing the distinction between them.

Meanwhile, by Mike’s definition, if some students improve while others stay the same, we have made no progress toward excellence. I don’t think that’s the way the word “excellence” is normally used.

If I wanted to respond to Mike’s final paragraph in kind, I could say this:

By Mike’s definition, no matter how much improvement the other kids in the class make, only the kids at the top of the class can ever be capable of “excellence.” That’s breathtakingly reactionary. I had no idea he was such an elitist!

But I would never do something like that to a friend.

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Posted by Greg Forster

More Equal and More Excellent? Yes, We Can!

June 19, 2008

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

While I’ve been debating the merits of the DC voucher study with Matt this morning, I’ve also noticed Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli have a colunmn attacking NCLB on NRO. They cite John Gardner’s question “Can we be equal and excellent too?” and argue that NCLB sacrifices excellence for the sake of equality – neglecting education for the top students in order to raise those on the bottom.

Their evidence? Students in the lowest decile have made big gains in the NCLB era, while those at the top have flat achievement scores.

The broader question of the tradeoffs made under NCLB I’ll leave for another day, but it seems worth pointing out that Checker and Mike’s evidence doesn’t back their argument; in fact, it backs the reverse.

Pop quiz!

Question One: If the kids at the bottom are doing better while the kids at the top stay the same, is the whole population getting more equal or less equal?

Question Two: If the kids at the bottom are doing better while the kids at the top stay the same, is the whole population getting more excellent or less excellent?

I’ve always agreed with NCLB critics that universal excellence is an unreasonable goal. But if it’s unreasonable, why are Checker and Mike holding that out as the goal by which NCLB should be judged?

On the other hand, if the current system is badly dysfunctional, then by correcting its worst flaws it may be possible to increase equality while also increasing excellence. Eventually we must reach a point where the two goals will start to diverge and we have to make tradeoffs. But that doesn’t mean we’re already at that point – as Checker and Mike’s evidence suggests.

Can we increase equality while increasing excellence? Yes, we can!

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Posted by Greg Forster

Tell Them about the Whales

June 9, 2008

(Guest post by Jonathan Butcher)

It is possible to meet the requirements of the much-maligned, perennially debated, and frequently mau-maued federal No Child Left Behind Act. No really, it is—in fact, last spring third and fourth grade students at Ocean City Elementary School in Ocean City, Maryland accomplished this feat. Here, let me help you pick your chin up off the floor. 

The Washington Post reports this school is the first in the state apart from some special education centers to have every student proficient in reading and math. This news is cause for celebration, of course; however, if you read the Post‘s article to the very end, you are given an almost backhanded reminder in the last full paragraph that Ocean City Elementary has to keep this up until 2014, according to the law. Ouch–six more years. 

Back to celebrating, though. Two questions come to mind whenever I read about a school’s remarkable success: First, how did they do it, and, second, how could their approach be replicated elsewhere? The Post helps us answer the first question, as reporter Daniel de Vise says the school has an “unusually structured, relentless, and consistent” approach and a skilled and motivated principal, Irene Kordick. De Vise provides the principal’s inspiring story of how she immigrated to the U.S. from Germany and was passed along in the public education system until the fifth grade before she learned to read and write in English. Kordick was determined not to let that happen to anyone else, and the rest is history. 

As to my second question, if I had the answer or if I could put Ocean City Elementary’s method in a bottle and sell it, I would have a better haircut and wear more expensive shoes. Things being what they are, though, I have to refer to larger issues regarding the federal government’s involvement in public schools.

For starters, we taxpayers spend nearly $2 million educating whales. Specifically, for years our representatives in Washington have funded the “Exchanges with Historic Whaling and Trading Partners” to the tune of $2 million or more (so I guess we fund “whalers,” not whales, or “exchanges with whalers,” whatever that is—for details check out this page on OMB’s web site; why this doesn’t have Greenpeace protesting on the Capitol steps I don’t know). In addition, OMB’s handy earmarks database shows, in nine pages of small type, mind you, that in committee deliberations in January everything from the Brooklyn Public Library to the Houston Zoo to the School Board of Broward County, Florida was on the dole. 

In searching this document, I didn’t find “Ocean City,” or better yet, “doing what Ocean City does” anywhere. I did find nearly $400,000 for jazz instruction in New York City and a similar amount for a parent training program in San Diego, though. Most of the programs listed on these nine pages of small type sound wholesome and like great ideas (“homework assistance,” “mentoring programs,” “after-school programs,” etc.), but I’ll ask the same question free market, small-government types have been asking for decades: why should Ocean City care about New York City’s jazz program? 

Now, I realize it is routine for right-of-center observers to bang the drum for fiscal responsibility in government—and I realize this drum is old and worn and some are tired of it. But considering the success of folks like me who dwell on this stuff, it makes me wonder if I shouldn’t be talking about it more (because it hasn’t worked so far) or if I should just pick another issue. 

The danger in suggesting that our government is spending money on pet projects instead of on spreading successful programs is that it is another way of saying, “Gee, if we’d only spend money on the right things maybe we could get something done around here….” So I won’t suggest this. Instead, I recommend we all move to Ocean City. Or New York City, if you like jazz. Because either one seems to be about as effective at getting government spending to produce more Ocean City Elementaries as my drum. 

Take every opportunity to praise exemplary students, schools, and school leadership. Spread the word about them. Celebrate them. But when somebody says, “Let’s take this same approach here! And here!” be ready for the question of “Why isn’t Washington doing more to help spread programs like this?” And then tell them about the whales. 

 

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Posted by JButcher

The Real Case for NCLB

May 16, 2008

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

My column on NCLB is on Pajamas Media this morning. A sample:

When you set aside all the implausible multi-year plans, toothless sanctions, easily evaded school choice requirements, and other window dressing, NCLB boils down to one simple commercial transaction: the system got a big cash payoff, in exchange for which it agreed to give standardized tests and release up-to-date information on how students are performing.

Before NCLB, many states didn’t give standardized tests at all, or didn’t release the results in a timely and publicly useable format. Now they all do. And all 50 states now participate in the Nation’s Report Card, a single national test of a representative sample of students, which allows researchers to conduct cross-state comparisons.

This transparency represents an incredible boon. The amount of empirical research done on education has been growing at a breathtaking rate. Before NCLB, education was a fringe element at best in economics, political science, and other social science disciplines. Now it’s everywhere. A lot of that research is due to the data made available by NCLB.

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Posted by Greg Forster

Anywhere But Here!

April 30, 2008

(Guest post by Matthew Ladner)

In the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, Captain John H. Miller (played by Tom Hanks) leads a group of American soldiers in storming the beach at Normandy. Pinned down behind inadequate cover and facing extremely heavy enemy fire, Miller orders his men to move out, prompting one of his soldiers to ask where they should go.

Miller bellows to his men: “ANYWHERE BUT HERE!”

Facing the task of reauthorizing No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Congress also faces an unsustainable status-quo. Although fashioned with the noblest intentions, NCLB created a perverse incentive for states to lower their academic standards — an incentive that will become increasingly powerful in coming years.

The law reflects contradictory urges regarding education policy. On the one hand, some want Congress to act to improve education, and on the other, some wish to preserve the tradition of state and local control of schools.

In NCLB, Congress attempted to finesse this contradiction, but failed to do so successfully. The law requires states to test almost all students, and to have an ever-increasing percentage of them reach proficiency in all tests by 2014. However, NCLB leaves the content and the passing thresholds of these tests to the states.

You don’t need a Ph.D. in game theory to see the problem with this, just a little common sense. As “proficiency” requirements have risen, states have begun to dummy down their tests to avoid federal sanctions.

Congress must now make an actual choice about which level of government should predominate in education policy — or the price will be very high.

Scholars have already noted the beginnings of a “race to the bottom,” as states lower passing thresholds and otherwise make the tests easier to pass.

Congress has set up a looming train-wreck in public schools. If allowed to play out, every child in America may “pass” state proficiency exams by signing their names to completely meaningless tests. American schools would return to the dark age in which no one has meaningful data concerning school outputs. Parents, teachers, administrators, policymakers and taxpayers will be flying blind on school reform. The racial achievement gap will be closed- but only as a complete fraud.

Congress can either become far more intrusive in the setting of state education policy, or let the states lead. Federal education policy must move in one direction or the other, but cannot remain stationary.

Senator Barry Goldwater opposed the first bill to provide federal funds to public schools, which was the antecedent of NCLB. Goldwater’s warning rings prophetic: “Federal aid to education invariably means federal control of education.”

Evidence regarding the effectiveness of federal aid to education has remained scant through the years. In 2004, Secretary of Education Rod Paige bluntly noted “We have spent $125 billion on Title I programs for disadvantaged students in the past 25 years, yet we have virtually nothing to show for it.”

Today, the total federal share of the K-12 education budget remains under 10 percent of the total K-12 budget, but serves as a vehicle for a huge number of federal mandates on schools. Fully 41 percent of the administrative costs for state education bureaucracies are spent on complying with federal mandates, the General Accounting Office estimates.

Despite this record, some see the race to the bottom as an opportunity to expand federal control over local schools. Some have begun to make the case for “national standards.” The logic is simple: states can’t lower standards that they don’t control.

We need to move precisely in the opposite direction. Above all else, first the federal government should do no harm in education policy. The mess of NCLB inspires no confidence in the ability of Congress to fashion standards, even if it were constitutionally appropriate, which it decidedly is not. With a good deal more modesty, the federal government might take on the role of maintaining transparency as a condition of federal funds, rather than undermining it.

The states have begun to function as labs of reform on education. States like Florida and Massachusetts have made a good deal of progress in recent years, far beyond anything which can be attributed to NCLB. Ironically enough, NCLB threatens this progress by all but ordering states to dummy down their tests- or else.

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Posted by matthewladner

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