The Credibility of the Obama Administration Is on the Line

April 7, 2009

The gap between the Obama administration’s rhetoric and action on education policy is growing larger each day.  I’ve written previously that Obama and Duncan talk a lot about charter schools, merit pay, and getting rid of bad teachers, but those rhetorical priorities are almost completely absent as legislative priorities. 

And, as Matt has pointed out in NRO this week, Obama declared that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works.”  Again, those lofty words do not match their actions.  When the DC voucher program produced positive results, they failed to release them in time to inform the congressional debate over killing the program, they buried the release on a Friday afternoon, and they attempted to spin the results as somehow disappointing.  Their actions were not guided by their rhetoric about ignoring ideology and doing what works.

Neal McCluskey captured the remarkable impotence of Obama’s “tough talk” on education:

So the Obama Administration is hostile to school choice. What, then, is its plan for reform? Here’s what Secretary Duncan recently told the Washington Post after dismissing DC’s voucher program:

The way you help them [all kids] is by challenging the status quo where it’s not working and coming back with dramatically better schools and doing it systemically.

Oh, challenge the status quo and deliver “dramatically better schools”! Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” I mean, that’s powerful stuff, along the lines of how do you get to Mars? You fly there! Obviously, the important thing is howyou challenge the status quo and provide better schools, and for decades we’ve been trying sound-bite-driven reform like Duncan offered the Post, and exhibited in his recent declaration that he will “come down like a ton of bricks” on any state that doesn’t use waste-rewarding “stimulus” money effectively. And how will we know when a use is ineffective? Why, we’ll make states report on test scores, teacher quality, and other things, and then threaten to withhold money if outcomes don’t get better. Of course, we know how well that’s worked before. Simply put, tough talk from politicians has delivered pretty much nothing good for kids or taxpayers.

Many of of the rhetorical points made by Obama and Duncan have been great.  But now it’s time to prove that those words can be matched by action.  The credibility of the Obama administration is on the line.

1 Comment | vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Rotherham Seems to Take a Dim View of the Intellectual Honesty and Courage of Democrats

April 6, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Over at Eduwonk, Andy describes the gains among D.C. Opportunity Scholarships as “modest” and says he doesn’t think this evaluation will change many minds.

Oi vey

On this blog, I’ve previously complained about what I viewed as an inappropriately high bar as the focus on the evaluation in an Intention to Treat model. Some of you disagree, but my view is that the question that most people want to know is whether the kids who used a voucher have improved performance, or not. The second year evaluation found that the answer to this question was yes.

Because some kids won the voucher lottery but then didn’t find a spot in a private school, under the high bar evaluation they went into the experimental group. Other kids who lost a lottery but wound up going to private school anyway went into the control group.

So basically, the kids who actually did receive a voucher and used it had to make gains large enough to drag these other kids as a group over the level of statistical significance.

I’ll be damned if they didn’t do it in the third year of the program. Modest? You can’t possibly be serious.

Andy doesn’t think that evidence is going to sway anyone. Really? Why did the President say:

“Secretary Duncan will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works.”

Why did Senator Durbin say “Allowing the program to continue through end of next school year (2009–2010) will give Congress a chance to examine all the evidence to determine whether or not this program works.”

Why did Senator Feinstein say “Why should the poor child not have the same access as the wealthy child does? That is all he is asking for. He is saying let’s try it for 5 years, and then let’s compare progress and let’s see if this model can work for these District youngsters.”

Senator Feinstein went on “I have gotten a lot of flak because I am supporting it. And guess what. I do not care. I have finally reached the stage in my career, I do not care. I am going to do what I sincerely believe is right. I have spent the time. I have gone to the schools, I have seen what works, I have seen what does not work. Believe it or not, I have always been sort of a political figure for the streets as opposed to the policy wonks. I know different things work on the streets that often do not work on the bookshelves. So we will see.”

Indeed we will, and now we have seen. Senator Feinstein should be applauded for her courage. It’s too bad she didn’t get to see this report before Congress voted to require reauthorization.

Perhaps Andy thinks that evidence won’t change minds because of this letter sent by the NEA demanding that Congress kill the DC program. Perhaps Feinstein’s courage really is in short supply.

There are 1,700 kids that just surmounted a very high bar that really hope that this is not the case.

9 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

DC Voucher Buzz

April 6, 2009

Here’s a summary (with my comments) of what people are saying about the new DC voucher study as well as the manipulation of its release:

Wall Street Journal — There is a great editorial this morning.  It condemns Duncan and the U.S. Dept. of Ed. for failing to release the positive voucher results in time for the congressional debate on killing the DC program last month: “Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.”

The piece also condemns the hypocrsiy of the Obama administration declaring that they will make education policy based on evidence, not ideology, while hiding and spinning the positive DC results: “Opponents of school choice for poor children have long claimed they’d support vouchers if there was evidence that they work. While running for President last year, Mr. Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if he saw more proof that they were successful, he would “not allow my predisposition to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn . . . You do what works for the kids.” Except, apparently, when what works is opposed by unions.”

And the WSJ has a quote from yours truly about how the DC results are consistent with evaluations of other voucher programs, where students initially suffer from transition difficulties but benefits compound over time.

National Review Online — Our very own Matt Ladner has a piece this morning in NRO that contains many of the same themes as in the WSJ piece described above.  In addition, Matt emphasizes his Rawlsian argument about the justice of vouchers: “If you have any doubt as to whether this program should exist, ask yourself a simple question: Would you enroll your children in violence-ridden D.C. public schools with decades-long records of academic failure? Bill and Hillary Clinton didn’t. Barack and Michelle Obama didn’t. Members of Congress don’t.  What about you? Would you enroll your children in those schools?”  And Matt notes that vouchers in DC produced superior results for a fraction of what is spent on students in DC public schools.

Washington Post — The Post objected to Secretary of Ed Arne Duncan’s rush to shut down the DC voucher program in the face of positive results.  “We had hoped that Mr. Duncan, who prides himself in being a pragmatist interested in programs that work, would have a more open mind…. So it’s perplexing that Mr. Duncan, without any further discussion or analysis, would be so quick to kill a program that is supported by local officials and that has proven popular with parents. Unless, of course, politics enters the calculation in the form of Democratic allies in Congress who have been shameless in their efforts to kill vouchers.”

Cato— Andrew Coulson emphasized the positive results results at a fraction of the DC public school spending per pupil. 

Eduwonk— Andy maintains his beltway credentials by dismissing the importance of evidence in deciding the fate of vouchers.  So, is Andy saying that Obama lied when he declared that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works”?  Maybe I’m naive enough to believe that evidence makes a difference in public policy.  If it doesn’t at all, then let’s shut down the universities and think tanks and leave public policy to the brute force politics of organized interest groups, since that is apparently all that matters.

Andy does correctly identify how determined voucher opponents are to crush the DC program and suppress the evidence ir produces (by releasing it on a Friday afternoon and not having the study available in time for the congressional debate):  “For voucher opponents the program is like that scene in “Saving Private Ryan” where the Germans keep shooting the runner to make sure the message dies with him.  As long as the voucher program lives it carries a message, they must stop that.”

Flypaper has a few posts on the topic.  Mike Petrilli has some excellent comments: “Releasing bad news on a Friday afternoon is a time-honored tradition among governments of all political leanings. (The public is distracted by weekend plans; few people read the Saturday paper.) The Obama Administration is showing itself to be no different; it’s no coincidence that the latest (very positive) findings about the D.C. “Opportunity Scholarship Program” were released this afternoon. It creates a conundrum for Team Obama and its allies on Capitol Hill, all of whom want to kill the program (some sooner than later)… Keep in mind that, as Education Week just reported, almost every “gold-standard” study in education finds “null” results. So the fact that researchers could detect such dramatic impacts for reading is a very big deal. (And it’s not too surprising that the same can’t be said about math.)”  And he concludes: “President Obama has saidthat he will support vouchers if they are proven to work. Now’s his opportunity to show his commitment to pragmatism and post-partisanship, and go to the mat for this unusually effective experiment.”

Andy Smarick correctly notes that the Obama administration has failed in their attempt to bury the study results despite their best efforts of releasing them on a Friday afternoon.  He also comments on how odd it is that people are focusing all of this energy to kill a voucher program that costs a tiny fraction of what has been newly committed to education spending by the Obamites. 

But Andy also had an unpersuasive post suggesting that we should focus on shutting down the bad schools that can be found in both the public and private sectors rather than on allowing people to switch between sectors.  What’s strange about this argument is that it doesn’t describe the mechanism by which one identifies and replaces bad schools with better ones.  Isn’t that what choice does?  Saying that we should just get rid of the bad schools doesn’t explain how they get to be bad and how new ones are likely to be better.

There’s more out there, and more will come, but this is some of the buzz so far.

4 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

DoE agency attempts to Bury the Third Year DC Evaluation

April 3, 2009

DoE to DC kids

(Guest Post byMatthew Ladner)

The third year evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program is out, and the results are POSITIVE.

I’ll leave a discussion of the results to others. I’m feeling more than a little perturbed by the blatant Machiavellian politics surrounding the use of the report. 

The Department of Education released this report today, on a Friday afternoon. This constitutes a completely obvious attempt to draw as little media attention as possible.

Worse still: WHERE WAS THIS REPORT DURING THE DEBATE ON THE FUTURE OF THE PROGRAM?

Let’s review: the Congress essentially voted to kill the program a few weeks ago, this report must have been sitting on some bureaucrat’s desk in the department of education. A number of Democrats, including President Obama by the way, have stated that they are open to the school vouchers depending upon the results of research.

A few weeks later, the Department releases the study in a way obviously calculated to draw the least amount of attention. I’m starting to read the report, but the press release looks to contain some negative spin as well.

The future of 1,700 students at stake, after all, and such attempts at manipulation are simply sickening.

3 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Quality not Qualified!

April 2, 2009

 

gordon-1-7398851

 

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Wall Street Journal reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan is planning on leveraging stimulus money for states to improve their collection and use of data demonstrating progress on student achievement and teacher quality.

How well states collect — and act upon — that data will determine whether they qualify for money, Mr. Duncan said. “In order for us to improve, we must be much more open and honest about what works in the classroom and what doesn’t,” he said in a conference call with reporters. Mr. Duncan added that the funding would be carried out with “absolute transparency and accountability.”

So far so good.

However, the article then says it wants states to track qualifications, especially in high-poverty schools.

There is of course a very large problem with that. Low-income students with high quality but “poorly qualified” teachers are lucky to have them. Far luckier than those with low quality but highly qualified teachers.

Overall, however, I like the direction they are going. If you are going to be doling out an absurd amount of money, you may as well try to get something in return for it. Participation is voluntary, and competitive, which is also good.

Leave a Comment » | school funding | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Domers for DC Opportunity Scholarships!

April 2, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Dan Lips on Notre Dame’s efforts to save opportunity scholarships.  A student group has established a blog to help coordinate the effort.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet a few of the Fighting Irish involved in this effort.  I can confidently report that the bad guys are in for some trouble, as indicated by this quote from Father Timothy Scully:

Today I’d like to ask you to join me in this fight, both to keep the DC parental choice program alive and to expand our capacity to provide educational opportunities to poor families. The social justice and education teachings of the Church have always courageously asserted that parents are the primary educators of their children, and that parents must have the right to choose the school their children attend. This is the central value proposition of parental choice. This is why I am so committed to this battle.

Leave a Comment » | vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Correction: Stuart Buck and Sherman Dorn were right to be suspicious

April 1, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Stuart Buck posted a question in the comments section of the post below, and Sherman Dorn likewise threw up the flag of skepticism on the $243,000 school district.

I went over to the website of the school district in question. The district has a school with 4 students, and another with 7, and spends a very large amount per pupil. However, they also have a charter school with a much larger number of students, which unhelpfully doesn’t report any financial data, which is odd, given that the districts do report such numbers.

Looking at the three district schools staffing, however, one can infer that the charter school has about 60 teachers, which is far more than the 3 district schools combined. The logical inference to draw therefore is that there is some sort of financial pass through set up where the charter school is getting a large percentage of the money. 

So in essence, these two districts with unbelievably high spending per pupil numbers are likely strange outliers: small rural districts with big district charter schools which for some strange reason don’t count on the district ADM.

Leave a Comment » | money myth | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Even on April Fool’s, Gadfly Says Earth Is Round

April 1, 2009

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

The annual April Fool’s edition of the Gadfly is pretty good this year. It includes, among other things: 

  • A letter from a school superintendent on how to spend stimulus money (“We’re slated to get millions of dollars from this windfall, which, and I say this in an entirely non-partisan way, we should definitely remember come November 6, 2012″)
  • The new Norris Is Power Program chain of learning-through-violence charter schools
  • The push for 22nd Century Skills (“it’s never too soon”)
  • An update on the “Narrower, Nambier-Pambier Approach to Education” initiative

That last item contains the initiative’s recommended academic standards for various subjects. In science, the standard is: “Students really just need to know that the earth is round. That debate is old enough it should be a cinch.”

A round earth, you say? Hmmmm.

Leave a Comment » | blogging | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Obama’s Courage, and “Courage,” on GM

April 1, 2009

obama

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

On Monday, Jay praised the president’s “courage” because the media were reporting that the administration was talking about bankruptcy for GM. I posted a comment to the effect that the media reports cited unnamed sources, and nobody should be praised for “courage” until somebody stood up and said “bankruptcy” in front of TV cameras.

Right after that, what does the president do but get up and say “bankruptcy” in front of TV cameras?

So, credit where it’s due. It was a bold move.

But there are two kinds of courage: the courage of the man who is resolved to do a hard thing because it’s right, and the courage of the man who is resolved to do a hard thing because it’s necessary to save his own skin.

We’ve yet to see which kind of courage this is. In today’s Journal, the indispensable Holman Jenkins makes the case that the president is bluffing because he needs to create the impression that he’s serious about bankruptcy.

Whatever else we may say about the president, he knows one thing the Clintons don’t: even if the only thing you care about is your own survival, you still have to take risks periodically. If you always do the “safe” thing, you’ll end up less safe.

Leave a Comment » | economics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

$243,000 per student school districts? It’s about sending a message.

March 31, 2009

 

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

I thought that DC public schools were burning through a mountain of cash because they spent enough to send two students to the University of Texas at Austin. Amateurs! Mere amateurs!

Lo and behold, Vicki Murray of the Pacific Research Institute sent me the following, which finds that there are school districts in California spending over $200,000 per student. Take it away Vicki:

More Money, Lower Achievement
How Californians can get the real story on California education finance.

By Vicki E. Murray

California’s budget deficit is getting worse, fueling fears about the impact on school funding. Fortunately, California taxpayers and policy makers now have the just-released California School Finance Center online database to help make informed decisions about education policies that affect six million students, the country’s largest share of public school children, six million in all.

Last year when California ranked 48th on Education Week’s national ranking of school funding, California Teachers Association president David A. Sanchez warned that the state would be “locked at the bottom nationwide.” Trouble is, five other states also claimed to be 48th in school funding last year: Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, and Oklahoma.

The CTA, along with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, now say that California “sank” to “a dismal” 47th place on this year’s Education Week ranking. Meanwhile, the CTA’s own parent organization, the National Education Association, ranks California much higher, around the middle of the pack, a statistic prominently posted on the website of O’Connell’s own education department. With so many competing claims, no wonder Californians are confused—including, it seems, some of the very people running the state’s public schooling system.

What really matters to most Californians isn’t how much other states are spending; it’s the money and the results their children’s schools are getting—or not getting. That is why the California School Finance Center database compiles information from a dozen California Department of Education sources and puts it right at users’ fingertips. It presents total and per-student revenue for more than 1,300 California school districts and charter schools spanning five years.

Unlike other resources, the California School Finance Center database presents complete revenue from local, state, and federal sources, all broken down into the finest level of detail currently available. The database also presents student achievement, demographic, census, and staff salary data. It even includes a “Return on Investment” feature developed by Just for the Kids-California to help quantify the relationship between a school district or charter school’s revenue, and its ability to increase student achievement.

For the 2006-07 school year per-pupil revenue averaged $11,600 per student, but Californians will probably be shocked by the staggering sums many school districts are receiving—sums that could even make “more money than God” districts, as education secretary Arne Duncan recently put it, like Washington, D.C, blush.

Dozens of California school districts exceed D.C.’s $26,555 per-student funding. Mattole Unified in Petrolia, for example, gets more than $225,000 per student. Less than one percent of its students are English learners, but only 43 percent score proficient in English language arts on the California Standards Test.

California finance experts will object to this example. Mattole’s small size qualifies it for substantial additional state funding through the state’s necessary small-schools allowance, which is supposed to help such districts achieve economies-of-scale parity with regular school districts. This funding, the reasoning goes, shouldn’t count. But consider the Ocean Grove Charter School in Placerville, which receives less than $2,500 per student. With proportionally four times more English learners than Mattole, as well as more low-income students, this charter school manages a 56-percent proficiency rate in English.

Mineral Elementary, another small-schools allowance district in Tehama County, receives even more funding than Mattole, $243,000 per student. Yet with no English learners, just 48 percent of Mineral Elementary students achieve English proficiency. Compare that performance with Hydesville Elementary in Humboldt County. English learners represent less than one percent of enrollment, but with just under $9,000 per student, a full 73 percent of Hydesville Elementary students score proficient in English.

Such examples defy the conventional wisdom that more money means better achievement, but so do most California school districts. The number of regular school districts where a majority of students is not proficient outnumbers the school districts where a majority of students is proficient by about three to one.  In fact, average student proficiency rates in English language arts and math at the state’s bottom 20 revenue districts averaging $8,900 per student are actually higher than proficiency rates at the top 20 revenue districts averaging more than $19,200 per student. Yet superintendent O’Connell and the CTA think more money for more of the same will improve California public school performance.

“What I am asking for is greater investment at a time when the state is virtually broke,” O’Connell explained in his State of Education Address earlier this year. “We must expect a different commitment from the citizens of California.”

Most reasonable people would agree that average funding worth nearly $12,000 per pupil ought to be enough to teach native-speaking elementary and secondary school children English. The Golden State fails to manage that, at $12,000 or $200,000 per student. Instead of an increasingly expensive bill for such foundering, the California schools chief should demand a commitment from the public schooling system that is truly “different.”

In good economic times and bad California schools should make the most of every education dollar. Some school districts and charter schools are doing a much better job of that than others. The California School Finance Center database makes it easier to identify them and replicate their success.

UPDATE: I made a bigger deal about the $243,000 figure than the PRI folks did, and mea culpa, I should have suspected that they were some sort of strange outlier.

4 Comments | school funding | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »