Education Research Enlightenment

E.D. Hirsch Jr. has one of the best articles I have ever read on education research in Policy Review. I can't do it justice so you will just have to read the whole thing.

Special Education's Shame

The October issue of Governing magazine has a feature on "Special Eduction's Dark Secret." Like my December 2002 Reason article, Governing's John Buntin argues that "The number of children with learning disabilities is surging. Some say the real problem is schools' failure to teach students how to read." He writes:

According to Gloeckler, New York's experiences with extending accountability to students with disabilities has been both encouraging and sobering. The good news has been that students with disabilities seem to respond well to higher expectations. "What we found was, once everyone understands that kids need to be included and that access to general curriculum is absolutely essential, we're finding that kids are doing better than people thought they would," says Gloeckler.

But New York's data on the performance of students with disabilities have also highlighted the educational chasm that divides the wealthiest 15 percent of the state's school districts from the state's four largest urban school districts. "We found in the 4th grade particularly, but also in the 8th grade, the special-education students in wealthy districts are outperforming general-education students in the cities," says Gloeckler. In short, by Westchester County standards, almost all inner-city students are learning disabled.

Parental Judgment

The Goldwater Institute has a fascinating piece by former UCLA Dean of Education Lewis Solmon. He found that when Arizona parents graded their charter schools, the grades closely matched state grades for the same charter schools.

Critics of school choice have long questioned the ability of parents to choose the best schools for their children. Critics fear that parents do not have the time, qualifications, or information to make informed decisions about the quality of their children’s schools. New evidence tells us it’s time to put this fear to rest.

Gathering data for the fourth annual Arizona Charter School Parental Satisfaction Survey, I surveyed parents of children attending 239 charter schools in Arizona, and asked them to grade their schools on 21 characteristics. At the same time, the Arizona Department of Education was preparing profiles of 163 charter schools, ranking them as excelling, improving, maintaining, or under performing. The department ranked elementary schools based on Stanford 9 and AIMS scores, and high schools based on AIMS scores and graduation and drop out rates. 112 of the charter schools ranked by the state were included in my parent survey.

Comparing the two report cards helps us answer the all-important question: Are parents good judges of school performance? The data suggest they are.

Across the board, state officials and parents gave nearly identical grades to the charter schools in question. On 16 of the 21 characteristics on which parents graded their charter schools, the highest grades went to Tempe Prep Academy, the one charter school rated “excellent” by education officials.

Moving down the line, the pattern of parallel ratings continues. The lowest-graded schools by parents were the schools most likely rated “under performing” by the state.

Retest

The LA Daily News reports on how California's high school exit exam is working out:

So far, the California high school exit exam seems to be a measurement not of students' learning but the educational bureaucracy's competence.

And the bureaucracy is flunking.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District and elsewhere, due to the year-round academic calendar and other factors, the exam must be administered every eight weeks. The only problem is, it takes 10 weeks to score the results.

Consequently, students who have already passed the test and thus shouldn't have to take it again are left taking it again. Schools then have to find the space to administer the test to students who ought to be studying new material, and finding personnel to monitor the testing sites.

Bathroom Man

Yet another reason for homeschooling, school choice, or perhaps privatizing janitorial services with performance-based contracts that specify outcomes like clean bathrooms.

With upwards of 900,000 public school lavatories in the United States (Keating estimates that as many as forty percent are "horrific"), it's a monumental, never-ending battle. "Everybody knows the problems. What people don't spend time on is suggestions or solutions," says Keating, 61, a self-employed educator based in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. For Bathroom Man the problem goes beyond empty soap dispensers, cracked mirrors and overflowing toilets—it's a fight against the forces of apathy. "Some school superintendents will say, 'This is a problem that has been around forever and everybody has this problem,'" reports Keating.

Instead of giving in to this failure mentality, Keating started Project CLEAN (Citizens, Learners and Educators Against Neglect) in 1996. He got the idea from his son and daughter, who, along with a lot of other kids, avoided the restrooms at school at all costs. "I would be mowing the lawn and our next door neighbor, Ty, would race into his house to go to the bathroom because he held it in all day," remembers Keating.

In fact, it was the neighborhood kids' unending horror stories that led him to investigate the issues. "I got permission—which took a little doing—to go to a high school in Dekalb County [Georgia] and cleaned toilets for six hours one day," he recalls. "I went back the next day and they were just as bad as they were [before I cleaned them]."

Today, Keating doesn't need to don rubber gloves to be effective. "My job is as a coordinator, facilitator and cheerleader," he says. "I'm trying to get school districts and kids to do what they ought to do."

Life Makes a U-Turn

Robert Holland from the Lexington Institute has a nice synthesis of of all the 2002 happenings favoring school choice beginning with the November 5 elections.

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Jeb Bush's landslide re-election as governor of Florida secures what has become School Choice Central in the never-ending experiment that is American federalism. Arizona is the only other state that comes close to matching Florida in the array of public/private education choices offered families.

In addition, the shift of power in the Senate means Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, a leading advocate of portability (public money following a child to a school of choice), is likely to take over as chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

Together, Mr. Gregg and House Education Committee Chairman John Boehner, Ohio Republican, could argue effectively that federally aided programs such as the mammoth Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) — currently up for reauthorization — should allow for increased consumer choice as an alternative to mindless bureaucracy.

On the House side, two significant reinforcements for the cause of choice at the level of national policy are Reps.-Elect Trent Franks, who played a key role as a state legislator in passage of Arizona's pioneering scholarship tax credit, and Tom Feeney, who as speaker of Florida's House filed the state's first full-fledged voucher bill in 1990.

Bond Boondoggles

My op-ed on school bonds and public-private partnerships ran in the LA Daily News today. I write about some of the history of school construction waste in California and go on to describe how private builders can build schools more quickly for less money than their public school counterparts. Here's a sample:

The poster child of school-construction nightmares is the Belmont Learning Center, just west of downtown.

The LAUSD poured more than $150 million into the school and then ceased construction -- with it halfway done -- because of environmental concerns. If the school is ever finished, the price tab will exceed $250 million, and it will go down as the costliest school in state history.

Los Angeles isn't the only city that has trouble keeping tabs on its cash.

Records show San Francisco Unified School District used as much as $100 million of bond and tax money to support a sprawling bureaucracy and to finance ill-conceived construction projects that ran far over budget. Most of that money -- as much as $68 million -- was spent on salaries for nonteaching employees, including several officials who are now the focus of corruption investigations, including one who stole more than $850,000 from the district.

And recently the state was forced to appoint a financial expert to monitor the Oakland school district after accounting discrepancies revealed the district was missing millions.

The sheer dollar volume of the new bonds makes the potential for future fraud and waste enormous.

The LAUSD will receive nearly a quarter of the new bond money -- more than $3 billion dollars (in addition to the $3.35 billion approved by local voters with Measure K). Given the district's sad history when it comes to construction, LAUSD officials should focus their attention on educating our children and allow companies actually in the construction business to handle the new school construction projects.

Another State's Standards Bites the Dust?

According to Michigan's Mackinac Center for Public Policy, state school officials are considering lowering state education standards in response to the federal "No Child left Behind Act."

State Board of Education members are debating whether or not to lower Michigan's education standards, in order to keep Michigan schools off federal "failing schools" lists.

New federal regulations, part of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, require states to set improvement standards for schools and sanctions for underperforming schools. The program developed by Michigan will affect how the state uses federal funds for education.

The State Board is torn between wanting to maintain existing standards and not wanting the sanctions generated by schools listed as "failing." Under current standards Michigan has the most "failing" schools in the nation: 1,513.

"By lowering standards, we increase the flow of federal money into Michigan and protect a significant number of schools," David Plank, a Michigan State University professor who studies K-12 issues told the Lansing State Journal. "On the negative side, we want our kids to achieve higher levels. To scale that back in exchange for money is not a legitimate bargain."

Perverse incentives work. A law where the consequences mean that Arkansas has zero failing schools and Michigan has 1,500 is bound to have unintended consequences--every state strives to be Arkansas.

School Buildings, Taxes, and Proposition 47

Keeping it all in the family, my husband, Michael Snell, takes on the bad math of propositon 47, California's largest ($13 billion) bond initiative at Reason online.

California spends, on average, about half of the entire state budget for education. It spent $53.7 billion on K-12 (not counting college and university expenditures) during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2002, according to the state's Department of Finance.

Polls indicate 57% of California's population finds Proposition 47 attractive. It has received a vast amount of positive press and is supported by all the usual suspects, from the state PTA to the League of Women Voters (ironically charged by the state with presenting non-partisan analysis of ballot measures). . . .

What is most bothersome is that Prop. 47 supporters are, to be charitable, disingenuous, and to be uncharitable, lying, when they make the claim that Prop. 47 will not increase taxes. This gross misstatement, bandied about in print, radio, and TV ads splashed across the Golden State, has garnered much of the support that exists for the proposition. It would seem that everybody wants something for nothing and we are quite willing to believe it can be had for that price.

The harsh certainty is this: The bonds must be repaid, together with interest, and the funds to repay the debt can only come from tax dollars. Taxes will increase or other government expenditures will be cut so as to service the debt on these bonds. That is a fact just as absolute as the fact that a leap from a tall building will splatter you on the sidewalk like a ripe watermelon.