The Irony of Social Promotion

January 9, 2009

In the current issue of the Economics of Education Review, Marcus Winters and I have an article about the use of exemptions to Florida’s test-based promotion policy.  Under Florida’s policy students need to perform above a certain level on the 3rd grade reading test to automatically be promoted to 4th grade.  If  students score below that level they can still be promoted if they are granted one of various exemptions.  Some of those exemptions are objectively measured, like scoring well on an alternative test or having certain special ed or English Language Learning classifications.  But other exemptions are more subjectively determined, like having a portfolio of work worthy of being promoted.

Marcus and I looked at who received those exemptions and whether being exempted was beneficial.  We found that African-American and Hispanic students were less likely to receive exemptions and get promoted, controlling for other factors.  That is, minority students with the same test scores and economic status were less likely to be exempted from retention if they fell below the testing threshold.  The test-based policy is not racially biased, since all students who lack the academic skills to pass the test may be retained.  The bias is introduced in who gets exempted from that test-based policy.

And the irony of it all is that failing to receive an exemption actually benefited those minority students academically.  That is, students who were denied the exemption and repeated third grade outperformed their promoted colleagues on achievement tests two years later.  The retained students had more academic skill at the end of 4th grade than their comparable promoted peers at the end of 5th grade — despite being exposed to one less grade of curriculum. 

Minority students denied the exemptions may have been the vicitms of discrimination, but they ended-up making greater academic progress as a result.  Receiving those exemptions wasn’t doing many of the other students any favors.

The St. Pete Times has an article on the study today and had a blog post recently.

2 Comments | social promotion | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Randi Weingarten Can’t Get No Respect

January 5, 2009

In what the AFT web site described as “her first major speech since being elected AFT president in July,” Randi Weingarten “decried the widespread scapegoating of teachers and teachers unions for public education’s shortcomings.”  Her comments have generated numerous reactions, including from NYT columnist Bob Herbert, Andy Rotherham, Joanne Jacobs, and our own Greg Forster.  They all raised interesting points, but none addressed one of the most curious aspects of Weingarten’s speech:  Why do teachers, perhaps more than other professionals, seek praise for their work (or are particularly sensitive to blame)? 

I don’t think other occupations have produced bumper-stickers that are the equivalent of “If you can read this thank a teacher.”  I can’t imagine plumbers distributing bumper-stickers that said: “If you flushed your toilet thank a plumber.”  Nor can I imagine: “If you still have your teeth thank a dentist.” 

Teachers particularly demand respect — and of course they deserve respect.  But why do they give speeches, print bumper-stickers, write letters, hold rallies, etc… decrying their social status when I am hard pressed to think of other occupations that do the same?

Of course, one important factor is that almost all teachers are public employees.  The demand for respect can be understood as part of the demand for resources.  My plumber doesn’t have to demand my respect to get my resources.  He just has to do a good job to get me to continue paying him for his services. 

But the resources devoted to education are largely unrelated to how well teachers serve their students.  Political popularity largely determines the level of resources available for teachers, so not surprisingly, teachers actively lobby the public to enhance their image.

The problem is that it is hard to sustain political popularity and community respect as results continue to disappoint despite huge increases in resources.  Teachers interpret this disappointment as a lack of respect, when it is really just frustration at being forced to pay for services that are chronically inadequate.  If people could hire teachers like they hire plumbers or dentists, teachers wouldn’t need to demand respect to get resources.  They would earn respect and resources by serving their voluntary customers well.

9 Comments | teacher pay, teacher union | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Blaming Special Ed

January 4, 2009

It’s all too common but also completely mistaken to blame special education for the shortcomings of the public k-12 system.  If you point out that per pupil spending has more than doubled in the last three decades (adjusting for inflation) while student outcomes have remained unchanged, people blame the rising costs of special education.  (See for example Richard Rothstein on this).  If you point out that the teaching workforce has increased by about 40% in the last three decades (adjusted for changes in student population), people blame special education (see below).  If budgets are tight and programs get cut, people blame special education for draining money from general education. 

Blaming special ed is easy.  Most attempts to blame special ed don’t even bother presenting data or make the most crude use of data to support their claims.  Reporters simply accept assertions from school and state officials without question.  Folks accept the blame-special-ed-story so easily because — well, to put it bluntly — it is a a widely held but unstated prejudice.  People quietly resent special education because they fear that it is short-changing their regular education students.  They assume that money spent on disabled kids is necessarily money taken away from general education.  They can’t imagine that resources for general education have also increased at a very rapid clip even as special ed costs have risen. 

School officials — people who should know better — play upon this popular prejudice to rationalize their failures.  They would never dare blame the programs that have been created or expanded in the last three decades for the education of poor and minority students.  Those programs also cost quite a lot of money.  No, school officials choose to blame special ed because it seems like blaming fate.  Fate has overwhelmed us with a rise in disabilities, the story goes, which have drained general education of money, teachers, and flexibility under tight budgets.  Never mind the considerable evidence that the rise in special education over the last few decades is almost certainly due to an increased classification of students as disabled rather than a true increase in the rate of disabilities in the world.  Fate had nothing to do with it.

I’ve rebutted the claims that special ed is largely responsible for rising per pupil spending in chapters 1 and 2 of the book Education Myths as well as in this Education Next article and in this paper that was published in the Peabody Journal of Education. 

My purpose in this post is to address the comment written by “Kevin” that attributed the increase in the teaching workforce to special education.  Kevin was responding to a post by Greg in which he wrote: “But teachers’ unions have pushed up costs – dramatically. In the past 40 years, the cost of the government school system per student has much more than doubled (even after inflation) while outcomes are flat across the board. And this has mainly been caused by a dramatic increase in the number of teachers hired per student – a policy that benefits only the unions.”  And Kevin replied: “Any comparison of staffing in schools 40 years ago and today typically ignores one group of staff that didn’t exist in 1968 – special education teachers and aides. Special education programs weren’t in most schools 40 years ago, hence there were no staff hired to work with those specific populations, particularly students with cognitive delay and autism who need a much higher staff ratio than is provided in the general education classroom.”

I’m bothering to rebut Kevin’s claims because 1) he appears to be a state employee (perhaps a school official, judging from his email address), and 2) his comments are typical of the blame special ed rhetoric.  Notice that Kevin doesn’t bother to present any evidence.  He just tells a plausible story, which because he and many others have “pre-judged” it to be true, they consider persuasive without need of any proof.  But let’s consider the evidence here.

In 1974, the year before federal legislation governing the education of disabled students was adopted, there were 2.165 million public school teachers and an average student to teacher ratio of 20.8.  In 2006 there were 3.177 million public school teachers, an increase of 1.012 million teachers.  And in 2006 there were a total of 404,577 teacher FTEs providing special education services.

But we have to adjust for the fact that that some of those 404,577 teachers assigned to special education have been shifted (or had their lines shifted) to special education as more students have been reclassified as disabled.  We also have to adjust for the fact that there are more students in 2006 than in 1974.  To make everything comparable, let’s assume that the student-teacher ratio had remained at 20.8 for all students.  Given that there were 49.370 million public school students in 2006, there would have been 2.374 million teachers if ratios had stayed the same for everybody instead of the 3.177 million teachers we have.  So there was really an increase of 803,442 teachers, adjusted for the change in student population.

But if the 6,081,890 students classified as disabled also had 20.8 students for each teacher, they would have 292,398 teachers.  Given that there are 404,575 teachers assigned to special education, the lower student-teacher ratios required for disabled students only results in a net increase of 112,179 teachers (404,575 minus 292,398).  So, of the 803,442 teachers added since 1974 only about 112,179 can be explained by the need to offer smaller student-teacher ratios to disabled students.  That is, special ed may only account for about 14% of the increase in the teaching workforce.

What people like Kevin forget is that while virtually “no staff” were hired specifically for special education several decades ago, there were also virtually no students classified as disabled (although most were in schools and under-served).  If we shift 6 million students into special education and maintained the same 1974 ratio of 20.8 students per teacher, we would have shifted 292,398 teachers with them.  It’s true that with an increase in federal and state subsidies along with a mandate to provide services, we’ve reduced student teacher ratios for disabled students.  But we’ve only added an additional 112,179 teachers to produce smaller ratios for disabled students.

Of course, Greg also makes an excellent point when he says in the comments to his post that resources devoted to special ed should also be expected to produce improvements in results.  Regardless of how resources have been allocated between regular and special education, the money should be yielding benefits for students.  The fact that we have observed virtually no change in student outcomes over the last four decades despite a huge increase in real expenditures (regardless of how it was allocated) is a source of chronic frustration with public education. 

The unstated assumption of these blame-special-ed stories is that money spent on special education is basically money flushed down the toilet.  They assume that nothing can help disabled kids, which fuels the quiet resentment of resources devoted to special education.  Rather than looking for scapegoats — special education, rising poverty, cosmic rays, etc… — folks should focus on the perverse incentives of a broken public education system.  The fault, dear reader, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.

22 Comments | myth of helplessness, special ed | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Samuel Huntington (1927-2008)

December 30, 2008

I returned from vacation to learn that one of my graduate advisors, Samuel Huntington, passed away on Christmas eve.  Huntington was the type of broad intellectual that has become a vanishing breed in academia.  He had a knack for identifying the big themes that were worthy of our attention and had the courage to make bold arguments while always remaining respectful of those with whom he disagreed. 

Now we are mostly left with academics who dwell on the latest methodological technique rather than what is substantively important.  Just pick up a recent copy of the American Political Science Review and you will search in vain for anything important, useful, and accessible. 

And the public intellectuals who still attempt to ask the big questions too often give answers that have all the depth of a self-help book.  Has Thomas Friedman ever made an argument that was not already the bland conventional wisdom of the Rotary Club in a small midwestern town? 

Josef Joffe said it best: “But who will embark on projects of this kind of sweep, breath and depth? Or write as elegantly as Sam has done?  That’s over in American academia, as is that fabulous confluence between America’s rise to world power and the influx of some of Europe’s greatest minds, courtesy of Adolf Hitler. Never before has there been such a perfect match between the demand for and the supply of great talent. One hates to think what would happen to a young Sam today. He might still graduate from Yale at age 18, but would he have become a Harvard professor at age 23? With that independence of mind, that contrarian spirit, that relentless search for conventional notions to be slain? Would a young Sam still be able to ask the Big Questions? And sin against so many idols demanding fealty to contemporary standards of correctness?”

Huntington’s passing isn’t just the personal loss of a wonderful man, teacher, and scholar.  It also marks the end of an era.

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

Most Annoying Education Blog Topics of 2008

December 16, 2008

Here are my top 5:

1) Who will be Obama’s education secretary?  OK, now we know it is Arne Duncan.  Can we stop now?

2) Who is Eduwonkette?  It’s Jennifer Jennings.  Can we now concentrate on whether what she writes makes sense or not?

3) Where will Obama send his kids to school?  It’s Sidwell Friends.  Next the People Magazine-type education bloggers will want to know whether he wears boxers or briefs.  Oh wait.  We’ve been through that before.

4) Should we push choice or instructional reform?  They’re both good together.  Will the next invented, self-destructive fight be about whether we should have Popeye’s chicken or cajun mash potatoes?

5) End of year lists.

UPDATE:  OK, I know that I said I was sick of the ed sec talk, but now that we know who it is I guess there is actually something new to say.  And Mike Petrilli has the best analysis I’ve seen, here.  I especially like that it is a 5 point list.

Leave a Comment » | blogging | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Year That Was

December 15, 2008

It’s getting to be that time when people make lists of good and bad things that happened during the preceding year.  Here’s mine from an interview with Michael F. Shaughnessy of EducationNews.org:

What were the 5 most important developments during 2008 that contributed to reform of K-12 education?

 1)     Barack Obama strongly endorsed the idea that expanding choice and competition is an important part of improving public schools.  He limited his support to expanding choice and competition through the introduction of more charter schools, but the theory is not fundamentally different than doing the same with vouchers.  Whether Obama follows through on this campaign position or not, it is now clear that it is considered politically desirable among both Democrats and Republicans to support choice and competition.  Holdouts from this view, including the teacher unions on the left and curriculum-focused reformers on the right, are being increasingly marginalized.

2)     Sarah Palin, in her only major policy speech, pushed the idea of special education vouchers.  Like Obama embracing choice and competition, Palin embracing special ed vouchers is a symbol of the political attractiveness of the policy.  Special ed voucher programs already exist in Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Utah, and Arizona (pending the resolution of a court case).  I’d expect the idea to spread to several more states in the next four years regardless of Sarah Palin’s political prospects.

3)     Reform ideas, including choice, merit pay, curbing teacher tenure, and promoting alternative certification, are gaining mainstream acceptance in the Democratic Party largely thanks to the efforts of Democrats for Education Reform.  An important indication of this political shift was an event at the Democratic National Convention organized by the Democrats for Education Reform at which an audience of about 500 cheered speakers denouncing the teacher unions and embracing reform ideas. The Democratic supporters of reform largely (but not exclusively) consist of urban minority leaders, including Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Adrian Fenty, Cory Booker, Kevin Chavous, Al Sharpton, and Marion Barry.  Go ahead and make all the Sharpton and Barry jokes you like, but this (mostly) minority defection of urban Democrats from union orthodoxy is like a political earthquake that will have important implications for future reform politics.  And it’s true that some conservatives have begun backtracking on reform ideas, including Sol Stern, Diane Ravitch, and depending on the day of the week, Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli.  But if the reform movement has traded some conservatives for the new generation of minority Democratic leadership, I think we’ve come out ahead.

4)     We saw a string of new or expanded school choice programs in 2008.  Georgia adopted a universal tax-credit supported voucher program.  Louisiana adopted a voucher program for New Orleans as well as a personal tax deduction for private school tuition.  Florida expanded and decreased burdensome regulation on its tax-credit supported voucher program.  And Utah increased and secured a source of funding for its special ed voucher program.  For a movement declared dead more times than Generalissimo Francisco Franco, school choice continues to grow.

5)     I’ll take the privilege of the final development to brag about the launch of the new doctoral program in education policy in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.  It may not have been among the 5 most important developments in the whole country, but it was a big development in my little world.  With the first cohort of students starting in the Fall of 2009 (supported by a pool of generous fellowships) and a collection of outstanding faculty, we have the potential to significantly increase the number of reform-oriented researchers in academia, think-tanks, and foundations.

What were the 5 most important developments during 2008 that hindered reform of K-12 education?

1)     The reform movement lost two great champions this year with the passing of John Brandl and J. Patrick Rooney.  Brandl, who had been the Democratic leader of Minnesota’s state senate and Dean of the University of Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey School of Public Policy, contributed significantly to the argument that choice was not only efficient, but also enhanced opportunities for the disadvantaged.  He helped create the state’s pioneering charter school law and other choice programs.  Brandl also served as mentor to many of today’s leading choice researchers.  Rooney, who had always been active in the civil rights movement, personally sponsored scholarships for disadvantaged students to attend private schools.  His privately financed program became a model for publicly funded voucher and tax-credit supported scholarship programs.

2)     In 2008 we saw a number of “implementation” problems undermine otherwise promising reform initiatives.  For example, Georgia adoption a social promotion policy that required students to pass a test or follow a formal exemption policy to be promoted in certain grades.  My research with Marcus Winters on a similar policy in Florida suggested that it would improve student achievement.   But in several districts around Georgia more than 90% of students were promoted without passing the test and without following the formal exemption procedure.  They simply disregarded the law on a large scale with no consequences for any district or school employee.  Another promising idea undermined by implementation was Reading First. There is a lot of rigorous science to support a phonics-based reading approach, but getting public schools to do it well is a completely different matter.  Implementation also appears to have done-in a promising teacher mentoring program.  I could go on, but the point is that there is no shortage of clever reform practices out there.  The problem is that without addressing the lack of proper incentives in the public education system to improve, we regularly see these clever practices fall flat. We need incentive-based reforms along with reform of educational practices.

3)     Earlier this year an Arizona court struck down voucher programs for students with disabilities and students in foster care on the grounds that the state constitution forbids aid to private schools.  This month defenders of the program argued on appeal to the state Supreme Court that the program aids students, not schools.  And the state already sends disabled students to private schools when it is determined that the public schools are unable to provide adequate services.  That practice may also be in jeopardy, even though it is actually required by federal law (IDEA).  Who knows how this will all be resolved, since courts can adopt any interpretation they like, reasonable or unreasonable.  But court action has prevented these beneficial programs from operating and threatens to kill them.

4)     A Florida court struck down the ability of a state commission to approve charter schools.  If upheld by the (notorious) Florida Supreme Court, only school districts could approve charters and existing charters approved by the state commission may have to be closed.  Giving districts the exclusive power to grant charters essentially allows the districts to decide with whom they will have to compete.  It’s like giving McDonalds the exclusive power to approve the opening of all new restaurants.  The state Supreme Court used the same narrow interpretation of clauses in the state constitution to strike down the Opportunity Scholarship voucher program, so the prospects for a vibrant and competitive charter sector in Florida are not good.

5)     And finally the most disappointing development of 2008 is that we spent another half trillion dollars on public education without significantly altering the dysfunctional system that fails to teach a quarter of 8th grade students to read at a basic level or get them to graduate from high school.  Results for minority students are significantly worse.  The economic bailout may be a $700 billion enterprise, but the public school system spends almost that much each and every year.  Every year that we spend that money without fundamentally altering how we operate public education is another fortune wasted and another year lost for millions of students.

(Note: corrected spelling of Marion Barry’s name)

3 Comments | politics, social promotion, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Why JPGB Beats Edwize

December 11, 2008

 

  Edwize is a blog by Leo Casey that is sponsored by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the New York affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers.  The UFT has tens of millions of dollars at its disposal and thousands upon thousands of members.  Jay P. Greene’s Blog (JPGB) by contrast has a $25 registration fee for the domain name and a couple of laptops. 

Despite this huge disparity in resources, JPGB has a significantly larger audience than does Edwize.  According to Technorati JPGB has an authority rating of 95 while Edwize has a rating of 74.  An authority rating measures how many other blogs link to a given blog during the last 180 days, which is meant to capture how much influence a blog has in the blogoshpere.  In addition, each post on JPGB generates about 4 or 5 comments, on average, while posts on Edwize generate about 1 or 2 comments, on average.  Fewer comments suggest fewer readers and/or material on which people do not care to comment. 

None of these measures is perfect, but it is clear that JPGB beats Edwize.  Why?

The primary challenge for Edwize is that it has to tout teacher union views on education issues.  And those views are mostly junky.  So, Edwize suffers because it takes significantly more resources to interest people in crappy ideas than in sensible ones. 

In case you doubt that the unions have to push junky ideas, ask yourself whether it is sensible to have a system of education in which students are mostly assigned to schools based on where they live; where teachers are almost never fired, no matter how incompetent they are; where teachers are paid almost entirely based on how many years they’ve been around rather than on how well they do their job; where teachers are required to be certified even though there is little to no evidence that certification is associated with quality; and where all teachers are paid the same regardless of subject, even though we know that the skills required for expertise on certain subjects have much greater value in the market than other subjects.

The mental gymnastics required to sustain the union world view has a much greater “degree of difficulty” than the views that are regularly expressed on JPGB.  And the resources required to generate support for these union views are enormous.  You need millions of people financially benefiting from these policies to volunteer as campaign workers.  You need millions of dollars in union dues for campaign contributions.  You need a large team of paid staff in every state and in Washington, DC.  It takes an army and a fortune for the unions to hold their ground.

This not only helps explain why JPGB beats Edwize, but also why reformers are able to beat the unions in the policy arena.  It’s true that the unions win most of the time.  But given their enormous advantage in resources, it is amazing that the unions ever lose.  The reason that the unions lose as often as they do is that their policy positions are much more difficult to defend intellectually.

So, we should feel sorry for Leo Casey and his union comrades.  They may have a lot more money and a lot more people, but they constantly have to defend obviously dumb ideas.

(edited for clarity and to add photo)

3 Comments | blogging, politics, teacher pay | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Great Minds Think Alike

December 10, 2008

I’m not the only one to compare the auto bailout to K-12 education.  Andrew Coulson has a great piece with that theme over at Cato.

Also, I’m not the only one to see Rorschach (or is it Horshack) inkblots in the TIMSS results spin-fest.  Rob Pondiscio over at Core Knowledge also references Horshack — er, I mean, Rorschach.  And in the forthcoming Gadfly a little birdie named Mike Petrilli told me that he also has a Rorschack/Horshack piece forthcoming.

If this continues I’m going to have to re-position my lead helmet that keeps others from reading my thoughts with their Alpha rays.

Leave a Comment » | myth of helplessness, school accountability | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

How Much Do We Know About K-12 Education?

December 10, 2008

Some folks in Utah showed how little we know about K-12 education.  And the errors are not random.  People believe we spend less than we really do, that teachers are paid a lot less than they really are, and that our students fare better against students in other countries than they really do.

3 Comments | money myth | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Is Chuck E. Cheese a Bad Influence?

December 9, 2008

The WSJ has an article today about the surprising number of incidents of disorderly conduct and fights at Chuck E. Cheese children restaurants.  The piece reports:

“Chuck E. Cheese’s bills itself as a place “where a kid can be a kid.” But to law-enforcement officials across the country, it has a more particular distinction: the scene of a surprising amount of disorderly conduct and battery among grown-ups.

‘The biggest problem is you have a bunch of adults acting like juveniles,’ says Town of  Brookfield Police Capt. Timothy Imler. ‘There’s a biker bar down the street, and we rarely get calls there.'”

Hey, Ryan!  We know you have special familiarity with the big Cheese.  Any theories to explain this?

2 Comments | random pop culture | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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