Jay P. Greene's Blog

Education policy debates, like national political disputes, are increasingly frustrating because we are having difficulty agreeing on and sticking to a set of facts.  It’s particularly frustrating because people are mis-stating basic facts that quite often are not even necessary for continuing to hold their opinions.  I’m not sure what accounts for this sloppiness in public discourse, but I suspect that it is a general decay in professional norms and standards of behavior encouraged by the stupid brevity and speed of Twitter.

Let me describe a recent example of an obvious, factual error from a debate about charter schools and regulations.  To be clear — there’s nothing wrong with making mistakes.  So what is remarkable about this example is how the people making the demonstrable, factual error never say “Oops, I made a mistake.”  They could easily admit the mistake and still continue to hold their opinion and make their arguments.  The fact that they don’t is what is truly troubling.

A Recent Example — Greg Richmond, who is the head of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), wrote a piece for The 74 in which he claimed: “A recent report from Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance found that a school’s rating from the independent application review process was the only factor that predicted its success.”  But if you look at the report, specifically in Table 7, you will see that the NACSA rating of charter school applications is not a significant predictor of any student outcome.  Richmond’s claim is demonstrably false.  He says that a report found something that it simply does not find.  I had previously noted the falsehood of this claim, but this has not deterred the folks at NACSA from repeating it.

Rather than admit the error, NACSA tries to rescue the claim.  Importantly, they don’t rescue the claim by showing that it is true.  They can’t.  Instead, they shift the discussion to a different point.  NACSA’s Nelson Smith, echoed by their spokesperson Kristen Forbriger, quote a policy brief written by Doug Harris summarizing the findings of the report he co-authored and that they falsely invoke:

“None of the application measures predict the value-added performance of schools, though there are signs of a positive relationship between the NACSA ratings and value-added (emphasis added). It is not surprising that our statistical confidence is weak here because value-added measures are imprecise and the NACSA ratings did not vary much among approved applications.” In other words, it’s hard to detect correlation to specific outcomes when the approved applications all scored at high levels.

Note that this does NOT say that the report “found that a school’s rating from the independent application review process was the only factor that predicted its success.”  In fact, it clearly states that Richmond’s original claim is false: “none of the application measures predict the value-added performance of schools.”  And saying there are “signs of a positive relationship” is just spin, not the actual finding.

Rather than support the truth of the original claim, this quotation provides a rationalization for why the report did not unearth the desired finding — the sample size was too small and there was too little variation in the NACSA rating.  Whether the rationalization is persuasive or not, the fact remains that the report did not find what Richmond claims it found.  His assertion is demonstrably false.  But neither he nor his colleagues at NACSA will say so.  Instead, in Trump-like fashion, they continue to assert that they were right all along even as the evidence contradicts them.

Unfortunately, this recent example of a factual error that is never acknowledged or corrected is becoming part of a pattern.  If people in our field can make demonstrably false claims without having to acknowledge or correct them, it’s unclear to me how we are going to make progress in policy debates.  I am not arguing here what the correct policy should be.  I’m simply arguing that if people in these debates can make false claims with impunity, we have allowed the Trumpization of debates to creep into the area of education policy and will suffer similar highly negative consequences.

(Guest Post by Jason Bedrick)

Proponents of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) assured us that it would curb executive overreach by the U.S. Department of Education. Skeptics like Neal McCluskey and Lindsey Burke warned us that the law didn’t go nearly far enough. In their view, ESSA contained enough ambiguous language that a clever EdSec or her staff could mold it into practically anything.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the skeptics were right. (Neal jokes that he was wrong, but he was only wrong about which ambiguous language the DOE would exploit first.) Earlier this month, the feds rejected Delaware’s ESSA compliance plan because aiming to cut the number of low-performing students in half by 2030 is “not ambitious enough.” You see, ESSA calls for “ambitious” goals, but doesn’t define the term “ambitious.” Acting assistant secretary Jason Botel explained to the New York Times, “Because the statute does not define the word ‘ambitious,’ the secretary has the responsibility of determining whether a state’s long-term goals are ambitious.”

As the skeptics said, give the feds an ambiguously worded cookie and soon they’ll be redefining that cookie to mandate that all children achieve proficiency in cookie baking by 2030. Or, y’know, something “ambitious” like that.

To Rick Hess, the whole thing sounds eerily similar to Soviet central planning:

General Secretary: Comrades, I call to order this meeting of Politburo Bureau of the Communist Party. We will start by turning to the implementation of our new Every Farmer Succeeds Act. Comrade Minister?

Minister of Agriculture Petrovsky: Thank you, comrade General Secretary. Comrades, you will recall that we adopted the Every Farmer Succeeds Act—EFSA, for short—after various complaints with the No Farmer Left Behind Act. That effort, initiated by the former regime, did not work out as intended.

Minister of the Interior Kirov: I’ll say, Mikhail! When we told farmers that they were to ensure that 100% of acres delivered adequate production, we got many complaints. We sent many to Siberia, but others still complained. Just to avoid running low on farmers, is good that we changed strategy.

Petrovsky: Thus, new Every Farmer Succeeds Act. We are working hard to implement. Instead of telling farmers that 100% of acres must produce adequate grain, we now tell them we realize world more complicated than that.

General Secretary: So, what is problem whereof you spoke?

Petrovksy: In giving collectives more flexibility, we still told them to set ambitious targets. Yes? Yet we have encountered resistance from some collectives. In its wisdom, the Politburo told farms they needed to be ambitious. However, my deputy, Comrade Botelinksi, informs me that some of the collectives are only proposing to double production. We have decided that production must go up tenfold. Anything less is not ambitious.

General Secretary: Da. And so?

Petrovsky: We have told collectives to change their plans. They must promise to increase production tenfold.

Kirov: But, is that not what caused problem with No Farmer Left Behind in first place? That no one took targets seriously?

Petrovsky: Comrade, do you want people to go hungry? And, that was last time. This time will be different.

Lesson: don’t give the feds any cookies. They make a big enough mess without the crumbs.

Despite living in Fayetteville, AR, which is the greatest center of Yiddishkeit in all of the Ozarks, I had to travel to Boston to see the wonderful new film, The Wedding Plan, in a theater.  You should make an effort to see it if you live in a city where it is now showing and, if not, you should plan to see it when it arrives eventually on Netflix.

The Wedding Plan is the second film from writer/director Rama Burshtein, following her debut movie that I also loved and previously reviewed on JPGB, Fill the Void. Like the previous film, The Wedding Plan is set in an Orthodox Jewish community in Israel and focuses on questions of love and marriage.  But unlike Fill the Void, The Wedding Plan is not primarily about love and marriage.  It is really about faith and whether it is reasonable to expect that good things will happen — perhaps even miracles.  In this sense it is more like another fantastic film set in an Israeli Orthodox community, Ushpizin.

The premise of The Wedding Plan is that Michal is finally set to be married when her her fiance gets cold feet and backs out a month before the nuptials.  She has the dress and the wedding hall is reserved, so she decides to go ahead with the plan.  All she needs is a groom.  I know this sounds like the sort of Rom-Com plot that might feature Julia Roberts hilariously racing from one bad date to another until she finds Mr. Right just in time (and the American trailer has that feeling), but this movie is about much more.

The Hebrew title of the film means Through the Wall, which highlights a scene in which Michal explains that her plan to get married by the end of the month is like a karate chop.  She says she has to believe 100% to break through the wall.  If it is 99% she’ll break her hand.

Her friends and family fear that she will break her hand regardless.  They bring a rabbi to advise her. “What you are doing is counting on miracles,” he tells her. “Who gave you the right?” She answers quoting the Talmud: “The world was created for me.”  Is this just hubristic entitlement or should each of us feel like there is a plan for oneself in the world that includes enjoying the good?

Given the excessively cynical — even nihilistic — tilt of our culture and politics, it is worth considering whether we might be better off just having confidence that good things will somehow work out.  Or does believing this just set us up for even greater disappointment?  As Michal says, sitting alone in her wedding dress, “The bubble is about to burst.”  Should we protect ourselves from disappointment by not expecting anything good to come from the world?

These are questions that a Julia Roberts movie would not ask, but The Wedding Plan does.

And here is the American trailer:

NH Gov. Chris Sununu speaks at a rally for school choice. (Credit: Union Leader)

(Guest Post by Jason Bedrick)

In a week that’s already loaded with good news for school choice, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire decided to add some more with the signing of a town tuitioning bill. Check out this blog post at EdChoice for more info:

SB 8 clarifies that any town—not just towns that share a border with other states—may include non-religious private schools in their town tuitioning plans. Town tuitioning, a longstanding tradition in New Hampshire and other New England states, occurs when a district “tuitions out” students to public or private schools in surrounding towns and districts because their home district does not provide schools with the grades those students need.

An equivalent bill was sent to the governor’s desk last year; however, then-Gov. Maggie Hassan vetoed it, claiming that a failure to exclude religious schools violated the state’s Blaine amendment. The current bill excludes religious schools, freeing legislators to deal with that issue in a separate fight.

The exclusion of religious schools is a serious defect, but I noted earlier this week, Blaine’s days might be numbered. The Live Free or Die State already has a tax-credit scholarship program and the legislature is currently considering a universal ESA.

(Guest Post by Jason Bedrick)

In a week with so many wins for kids, the North Carolina legislature decided to add another. Today, NC legislators overrode the governor’s veto to pass a budget that included funding increases to the state’s school voucher program and created a new education savings account policy for students with special needs.

Eligible students can receive up to $9,000 annually, and students with the highest need (i.e., those with autism, development disabilities, moderate or severe intellectual disability, hearing or visual impairment, and/or multiple, permanent orthopedic impairments) can receive the ESA funds in addition to NC’s Special Education Scholarship Grants for Children with Disabilities, which are worth up to $8,000. Parents can use ESA funds for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, homeschool curricula, educational therapy, certain education technologies, various education-related fees (e.g., standardized tests), and student transportation. Funds are disbursed quarterly on prepaid debit cards after parents submit receipts for eligible purchases in the previous quarter.

All students with disabilities who are switching out of a district or charter school or who are entering kindergarten or first grade are eligible. In addition, students with disabilities are also eligible if they are in foster care, if at least one parent is an active-duty member of the military, or if he or she is enrolled part-time in a public school and part-time in a nonpublic school that exclusively provides services for children with disabilities.

With an ESA, parents like Liz Bradford can provide their children with the education that works for them:

The Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, who worked tirelessly to pass the legislation, praised the passage of the ESA:

As a statewide education advocacy organization, PEFNC applauds legislators for their ongoing commitment to funding educational choice, and to ensure more of our state’s families have access to the educational options they desperately need. […]

With their vote to override the governor’s veto, North Carolina lawmakers continue to solidify our state’s status as a national leader in providing highly impactful and innovative educational options for children and families. Despite the governor’s opposition, the General Assembly is demonstrating our state’s ongoing commitment to initiatives and programs that contribute to improved educational outcomes for students.

For more information, visit the Exceptional Education for Exceptional Children website.

Parents interested in applying for the special-needs voucher can do so at the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority website. Presumably they will also post application information for the new ESA once the program is implemented.