School Breakfast Research

August 6, 2014

Education is dominated by “do-gooderism.”  Everybody wants to help children.  But sometimes the desire to help is seen as sufficient proof that one is actually helping.  And too often little thought is given to how trying to help might do some harm.

Which brings us to school breakfast programs.  Who could be against helping kids by making sure they start their day with a healthy breakfast provided in school?  Well, it is possible that those programs don’t do much good.  And it is possible they do some harm.

Last month Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and Mary Zaki of Northwestern University released their analysis of a randomized experiment in which access to free school breakfast was expanded.  You can read the abstract and full report on the National Bureau of Economic Research web site.  Schools that offer free breakfast often have low participation rates.  So to learn about how to increase participation 70 matched pairs (or triplets) of schools participated in an experiment in which they could offer universal free school breakfast regardless of individual student eligibility for subsidized meals or breakfast in the classroom (BIC), where all students are given breakfast in their classroom at the start of the school day.

Schanzenback and Zaki conclude:

We find both policies increase the take-up rate of school breakfast, though much of this reflects shifting breakfast consumption from home to school or consumption of multiple breakfasts and relatively little of the increase is from students gaining access to breakfast. We find little evidence of overall improvements in child 24-hour nutritional intake, health, behavior or achievement, with some evidence of health and behavior improvements among specific subpopulations.

Providing breakfast in the classroom, not surprisingly, has a very large effect on whether students participate in the breakfast program because it’s given to every student in the classroom.  Pretty much the only way you could not participate is by not being in school.  Universal breakfast has a more modest effect on increasing participation in the program (about 10 percentage points) because students have to arrive early to get the breakfast.

So if the goal of the program is to have people participate in the program, BIC is a huge success and universal breakfast is a modest success.  But if the point is to increase the amount or quality of calories students consume or to alter their behavior or learning in school, these programs don’t seem to be effective.  Universal breakfast does not even seem to have an effect on whether students eat breakfast or not.  It only shifts whether students eat breakfast at home or at school.  BIC does increase whether students eat breakfast (or have two breakfasts), but has no effect on total caloric intake.  Students just shift their eating so that they have fewer calories at other meals.

But when students eat might affect their health, behavior, and learning outcomes, so the researchers looked at whether the BIC program helped by increasing the likelihood that students would have breakfast even if those calories were offset by a reduction in eating at other times.  Unfortunately it didn’t.  They conclude: “The BIC treatment does not statistically significantly improve any outcome.”

So, expanding access to school breakfast does not seem to have any meaningful benefits.  Where’s the harm?  Leaving aside the cost to taxpayers, the greatest potential harm to these programs is that they alter the relationship between families and their schools by displacing the family’s traditional role of feeding their own children.  Doing so may make the families and students feel more dependent on the government and make school teachers and administrators view families and students as generally incompetent.  The state becomes the new Daddy and the parents become children incapable of providing for themselves or their own children.

This all makes me think of the new book by Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal: Please Stop Helping Us.  We need to hold in check our desire to do good by remembering first to do no harm.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Arizona charter schools and the new report card rankings

August 6, 2014

(Guest Post by Jonathan Butcher)

The new A-F report card rankings are up for Arizona public schools, and the news is good—if you’re sending your child to a charter school. Last year, 40 percent of Arizona charter schools earned an A, compared to 28 percent of traditional schools.

Now that Arizona has four years’ worth of A-F rankings, a year-to-year comparison of charter and traditional schools reveals that charter schools’ success over time is what we hope would have happened to all public schools: more charters are earning A’s and fewer are earning D’s as the years go by (note: Arizona managed to make it so hard to earn an F that few schools have done so).

2010-11 Arizona A-F Letter Grades, Charter v. Traditional

 Butcher 1

2011-12 Arizona A-F Letter Grades, Charter v. Traditional

Butcher 2

 

2012-13 Arizona A-F Letter Grades, Charter v. Traditional

Butcher 3

2013-14 Arizona A-F Letter Grades, Charter v. Traditional

Butcher 4

Between the 2010-11 school year and 2012-13 school year, charter schools occupied the two ends of the A-F distribution, with higher percentages of schools earning A’s and D’s than traditional schools.

This year, however, charter schools own the “A” category, while the percent of charters earning D’s has been cut in half—and, for the first time, is lower than the percent of traditional schools earning D’s. True, the percent of traditional schools earning A’s crept up each year, but not as quickly as charter schools. And the percent of traditional schools earning D’s was relatively consistent.

Nothing is held constant here, so I’ll be the first to admit the limits to these charts. Plus, data from the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) reports that Arizona high schools are not preparing students for college, so the achievement reflected in these report cards is decidedly less impressive than it should be.

But to the extent that these school grades reflect student success (see here for how the report cards are calculated), charter schools are leading the way—and at a per student cost of $1,500 less than traditional schools. And there’s something to be said for charter schools’ unique designs, whether it’s hybrid classrooms, college prep, or career and technology centers for at-risk students aged 14-21.

Clearly there’s a reason why charters are the fastest-growing sector of the public school system.

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Posted by matthewladner

You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat

August 5, 2014

(Guest Post by Lindsey Burke)

Thousands of families in Florida have applied for a Personal Learning Scholarship Account (PLSA) for their children. Step Up for Students received 1,200 PLSA applications in under a week, and according to Step Up’s Patrick Gibbons, Florida parents had started 2,050 applications as of August 5th. Enrollment in Arizona’s Empower Scholarship Account program has nearly doubled from last year to this year, to about 1,300 students.

School choice is a rising tide that lifts all boats. It looks like with school choice 2.0 – education savings accounts – You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

1 Comment | Education Savings Accounts | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Paul Peterson created Education Policy MOOC

August 5, 2014

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

MOOC there it is!  How long until Paul’s stodgy students get hip with MOOCs?

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Posted by matthewladner

“Pawns” can become Queens if not carelessly sacrificed

August 4, 2014

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Florida Education Association has filed suit in an effort to kill SB 850, that included the creation of the Personal Learning Scholarship Accounts, Florida’s new ESA program. The Goldwater Institute has intervened in the case on behalf of a group of parents enrolled in the new program. During the press conference, a radio reporter asked the parents the following question:

Rick Flagg: This is one for the parents in general, whoever wants to (take it). Your bill was going to pass, regardless. And then the Legislature stuck the corporate voucher provision on there, making this lawsuit inevitable. I’d like to know how you feel about the Legislature doing that to you, and in effect using your kids as pawns in the voucher fight. That’s not for you …

PLSA parent Ashli McCall: I don’t mind being exploited in this manner because I believe in it.

Rick Flagg: Does everyone pretty much agree with that? (Heads nod.) And you’re okay now with them using your kids as the face for this lawsuit? You’re okay with being used as pawns again?

Clint Bolick: I object obviously to the characterization.

Rick Flagg: How would you describe it then?

Clint Bolick: I would describe it as a program that was made part of an omnibus education reform bill. And these parents, are they in jeopardy of losing those opportunities? No question about it. How is that being made a pawn?

How indeed?

I have never met Mr. Flagg, but I assume that he’s a swell guy who loves his momma, waives the flag on the 4th of July and cheers for his favorite sports teams. Flagg may simply have his cynicism cannon pointed in the wrong direction.  Perhaps if he knew more about the travails of students with special needs and their parents, he wouldn’t second guess the decision of parents to participate in the program or to defend it in court. If Mr. Flagg had walked in the shoes of parents facing these challenges, it would not seem implausible to him that they might want to participate in a program that provides the opportunity for a truly individualized education plan for their child. It has been, after all, the unfulfilled promise of special education law from the outset.

The following is my distillation of the history of the travails of special education parents and students, as related by a joint project of the Progressive Policy Institute and the Thomas B.. Fordham Foundation. If you want to double-check me read it for yourself here. My summary is as follows:

Back in the early 1970s, a reported 1,000,000 special needs children were denied access to public schools.  As in, sorry, we don’t take your kind around here denied access to public schools. The federal government took action to put an end to this discrimination. While the legislation that evolved into today’s Individuals with Disabilities Education Act stands as a landmark piece of civil rights legislation, it did not fulfill the promise of an “individual education plan” for every child with a disability.  The federal government had promised to pick up 40% of the costs for special education services, but never entirely followed through. Educators complain endlessly about paperwork requirements and bureaucratic procedures. The PPI/FF tome describes the process in-school process for identifying and developing an education plan “an invitation for conflict” between schools and parents. Parents have a right to sue when districts fail to provide an appropriate education (2% of special needs children nationwide attend private schools at public expense either directly or indirectly as a result of this provision) but this is an option far more available to wealthy families due to the cost of specialized services.  What started as a system for granting access and providing individual education plans devolved into a system of CYA whereby districts wished to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit and far too many parents were left deeply disaffected. Process became the focus, not outcomes.

Despite the fact that only a tiny minority of special education students have debilitating disabilities precluding academic progress, an attitude of warehousing is not far from the surface among too many people. For instance, a school district official made the following statement to the Arizona Republic in 2011 regarding the state’s grading system and the emphasis on the gains of low-performing students:

“Our concern is that many of those in the lowest 25 percent are special-education students and . . . will probably always have a hard time.”

This prophecy is not only disgusting but falls straight into the self-fulfilling category: kids will automatically face a hard time if the adults in charge of their education don’t believe they can make academic progress. Mind you that like all other public schools, Arizona districts receive additional funds for special needs students, but bristle at the thought of being held to account for the learning progress of those students. One can only draw the inference that they see their role as warehousing special needs children, not educating them. The soft bigotry of low-expectations lives and breathes.

The PLSA parents are not pawns- they are doing what the parents of special needs children have been forced to do for decades: fighting for their children. If the FEA suit prevails, they lose the ability to take control of the education of their child. They have a direct interest in the outcome, and decided not to be a passive “collateral casualty” of the teacher’s union. The less the special education system operates as a “take it or leave it” system for those who cannot afford expensive attorneys the more children we will see reach their potential. Mr. Flagg lives in a state that has made remarkable progress for special needs children in public school while not coincidentally making them all eligible to attend a public or private school of their choice, so let’s avoid any pretense that this is going to hurt the public school system.

So my question for Mr. Flagg is as follows: if you were forced to repeat life as a special needs child, would you want your parents to have an opt-out for you if they found you in a school run by people checking off boxes on a form, unconcerned with your progress, and displaying the attitude expressed above? If not, why would you make yourself a willing pawn-a mere funding unit- of a public school ignoring your needs?  Even pawns have the potential to become a queen if not carelessly sacrificed.

If so, welcome to the parental choice movement. All is forgiven.

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted by matthewladner

Bringing Some Coherence to Arizona State K-12 Policy

August 3, 2014

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Arizona Republic ran a column by yours truly today calling for making the Arizona Department of Education an executive department reporting directly to the Governor rather than having a separately elected position.

Free from the word limitations of columns, I can provide a bit more detail.

Arizona’s student data system typifies what I describe in the column as dysfunctional policymaking. Officials from school districts and charter schools have complained bitterly about it for many, many years as being riddled with errors. It often crashes, and has remained down for months at a time.  I have spoken to district officials who told me that they despaired of the state system ever working and created their own data system as an attempt to cope. All accounts I have heard say that Superintendent Huppenthal has done a good job in making the best out of an awful situation, but one highly placed source described it as getting inaccurate information to you at a faster pace. The whole system, in short, needs to be replaced, as in at least a decade ago.

Okay, so go and get a new data system, right? Wrong. We’ve seen an endless cycle of finger-pointing on the subject. The Department has requested money to fix the system, the legislature has never provided these funds. One can draw the inference that the legislature has collective doubts about the money being put to good use and, well, it is hard to blame them.

Now imagine a world in which former Governor Janet Napolitano had appointed the head of the department. I had my problems with Governor Napolitano philosophically, but I had no doubts about her overall competence. In this alternative reality, a clown car show of a data system reflects badly on her. People that can’t get basic state functions settled don’t win plum assignments like Homeland Security and the University of California system. Moreover, she would have had her own people in charge and the ability to secure the required financing to get a decent system in place during budget negotiations. The means meets motive, problem solved. It would have been a much better and more enduring K-12 legacy for Governor Napolitano than what turned out to be unsustainable school funding increases. Ah, what use we could have made of the aughts…

Back here in the Arizona of the real world, we had, um, this going on during the aughts.  As you might imagine, it did not end well, nor inspire confidence in the legislative branch.

Honk! Honk! Data system coming through!

At some point, a problem goes on long enough to qualify a symptom of a much deeper disease. Your local Target has a data system that can track every purchase and reorder lollipops just as they start to run low. In 2014, a reliable and secure student data system isn’t exactly rocket science, but it continues to elude Arizona. Appointing a Superintendent won’t dry every tear or fix all of our problems. It may be more necessary than sufficient, and we really need to make good use of the next four years regardless of who wins the next set of elections.

In the end it may not happen because it just makes too much sense, but hope springs eternal even as time grows short.

Leave a Comment » | school accountability | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

More Abracadabra

July 31, 2014

conceptual image of an alarm clock showing that you are too late

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Further to Jay’s point about the magical thinking behind Common Core: In his response to that Politico story, Mike Petrilli seems to concede the point that whatever the origins of Common Core, the Feds are determined to colonize and control it – and there is really not much that can be done about that at this point:

In my view, the federalism concern is the one that carries the most urgency, since it’s driving almost all of the backlash on the right…But frankly, it’s also the hardest one to fix. We can’t go back and undo Race to the Top; we can’t take away the millions of federal dollars that have already flowed to PARCC and Smarter Balanced. And, as has become painfully clear, Arne Duncan and his minions—not to mention the White House—seem all but uncontrollable in their passion to make Common Core resemble their creation even when it wasn’t.

Far from predicting these efforts will diminish, Petrilli thinks the Feds are only going to work harder to take over Common Core:

Secretary Duncan…may be about to make matters worse. Will the Department now revoke Oklahoma’s ESEA waiver because the state no longer has “college- and career-ready standards”—even though this requirement is never mentioned in ESEA and is probably illegal if not unconstitutional?…By punishing Oklahoma (or any other jurisdiction) for repudiating the Common Core, they would cement the view—and the reality—that the federal government is driving this train.

Another looming disaster is the Department’s plans to “peer review” the new assessments under development—PARCC and Smarter Balanced but also the other exams that some states plan to use to assess student performance in relation to the Common Core.

So what is to be done? Petrilli makes it clear there is only one option: appeal to Arne Duncan’s “good sense.” Other than that, there’s nothing to be done. But thankfully, Duncan’s good sense will save us. (Apparently Arne Duncan is now Captain Hammer.)

In other words, it’s far too late at this point for CC to end up as anything other than a wholly controlled tool of the Feds.

Oh, if only someone had warned them that once federal power has been used to promote CC, the federal connection is irreversible!

Talk about a day late and a dollar short.

8 Comments | National Standards | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Abracadabra

July 31, 2014

Ancient mystics believed that one could have the magical power to create reality simply by uttering certain words.  This is the origin of “magical words” like abracadabra, which means “I create as I speak” in Aramaic.  But the belief in using magical words to create reality continues to this day, and not just among cheesy stage illusionists.  The Gates Foundation and their various grant recipients have “in a series of strategy sessions in recent months… concluded they’re losing the broader public debate [over Common Core] — and need to devise better PR.”

Common Core supporters haven’t considered the possibility that their political strategy is flawed because they are trying to impose a top-down reform on a hostile and well-organized opposition of teachers and affluent parents.  Nope.  It must be that they just aren’t using the right words.  In particular, they think they need to shift from talking so much about “facts” and “evidence” and start using more “emotional” words.  If only they say the right words, people’s interests will change and the opposition will melt.  Abracadabra!

This faith in magical words is a symptom of a larger disease.  Education reformers have invested way too much in people who do almost nothing except craft political messages.  They try to coin just the right soundbite to fit in their dozens of daily tweets.  But they don’t just repeat these soundbites on Twitter, they use this “messaging” at policy conferences, in essays, and in conversations with each other.  They have put so much energy into perfecting the Twitter-bite that they can no longer think in any way other than in short bursts of spin.  It is rotting their brains.

Unfortunately, I think the rot starts at the top.  The Gates Foundation not only funds a large amount of this messaging nonsense, but engages in this type of slogan-speak themselves.  I’ve been reviewing their own descriptions of the purposes of their grants and have found poetry, like “to support organizations in a strategic visioning engagement to develop their innovative professional development theory of action and implementation strategies” or “to bring together a coalition of thought leaders, policy-makers, consultants and practitioners as part of the Global Education Leaders’ Program (GELP) and support them through a convening.”  Ugh.  

Here on JPGB we’ve been warning about the abuse of the English language in education reform for a while now.  And Rick Hess has joined the party, alerting readers to common phrases that should raise alarms with your BS-detector.  As Orwell understood, the problem with slogan-speak is not just that it muddles debates by obscuring the substance of what people are really saying.  And the problem is also not limited to the fact that degrading policy discourse with this gibberish undermines the credibility of future attempts at serious policy discussion.

The worst problem of slogan-speak may be that it is distorting the thinking of the ed reformers themselves.  They are usually completely sincere when they spout this slogan-speak.  They believe it.  And so their analysis of education reform issues is stunted and superficial.  They can’t think through an issue much more than how it sounds in a Twitter post.  And perhaps this is why they are doubling-down on a top-down standards reform that has no political logic to it.  They just can’t think it through.  So, when it runs into trouble they revert to what they know — more messaging.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Can’t Get There from Here? Milton’s Been There He Knows the Way

July 31, 2014

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Today is the 102 anniversary of the birth of Milton Friedman. My favorite Friedman quote is one recently rediscovered by Stephanie Linn from a 1995 WaPo column Dr. Friedman penned:

The private schools that 10 percent of children now attend consist of a few elite schools serving at high cost a tiny fraction of the population, and many mostly parochial nonprofit schools able to compete with government schools by charging low fees made possible by the dedicated services of many of the teachers and subsidies from the sponsoring institutions. These private schools do provide a superior education for a small fraction of the children, but they are not in a position to make innovative changes. For that, we need a much larger and more vigorous private enterprise system.

The problem is how to get from here to there. Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a market system. The deterioration of our school system and the stratification arising out of the new industrial revolution have made privatization of education far more urgent and important than it was 40 years ago.

And even more important today than when Dr. Friedman typed the column. Friedman saw this clearly, and the time has come for the rest of us to catch up: today’s stock of private schools are a means to an end for an important but ultimately small group of students-even with a voucher or tax credit program in place. The stock of empty private school seats represent a vital opportunity for the students who could fill them, but in the big picture it is crucial to focus upon how to get new providers to create new opportunities for students. Voucher programs that can only be used at private schools and only provide enough funding to cover the marginal cost of adding a student to an empty seat are vitally important for the small number of students participating but ultimately represent an evolutionary dead-end.

It’s a shame that it took those of us in Milton’s intellectual debt a decade and a half to create a method to “get there from here” in the form of ESAs, but better late than never. We simply aren’t as bright as the great Milton Friedman, so we will need to work together to bring about the revolutionary improvements he saw as possible so clearly for so many decades.

Happy birthday Dr. Friedman-we are doing our best to catch up to where you got decades ago.

 

 

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Posted by matthewladner

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

July 30, 2014

35eb9-wile2be-2bcoyote2bfalling

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

That Politico story on CC’s new PR strategy is prompting gales of laughter among CC opponents. They seem to think the new strategy will be to have Bill Gates go on camera to shed tears and plead that “it’s for The Children!” But I don’t think that’s what the CC backers mean by “emotion.”

Here’s a shorter version of the article:

  1. CC supporters admit they were wrong to focus their strategy on bland, vague pronouncements coupled with accusations that their opponents were crazy or dishonest.
  2. So instead they’re going to focus on whipping up a frenzy of mob anger and directing it against their enemies.

Seriously, read the article. “Step one” of the new strategy is literally “get Americans angry.”

Guess what? They already are.

1 Comment | National Standards | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

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