Spin Cycle

Education Next apparently has provided a platform for school choice advocate George Mitchell to shill for voucher schools outside of the state of Wisconsin. Here is his latest spin on a study that shows the high school graduation rate to be 12 points higher in seven Milwaukee voucher schools compared with 23 Milwaukee public high schools.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story by Erin Richards provides the crucial quote regarding causation from the study's author, John Robert Warren, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota:

"We still don't know whether it's going to the voucher school that causes you to be more likely to graduate, or if it's something about the kinds of families that send their kids to voucher schools would make them more likely to graduate," he said.

Then there's the whole question of which and how the voucher and public high schools were chosen for purposes of comparison. More questions than answers. Unlike Mitchell, I neither see this report as providing "another piece of evidence suggesting that urban students benefit when afforded more educational options," nor "new data" to encourage President Obama and Education Secretary Duncan to take "a second look at the power of parent choice."

The study was funded by the voucher-advocacy group School Choice Wisconsin, run by Mitchell's wife, Susan. The Mitchells have split from national school choice leader Howard Fuller who is devoting his current efforts to furthering accountability and quality in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

After the spin cycle, be sure to rinse.

For past perspective on Voucher Inc, please visit here.

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Obama on Education

Tonight, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, President Obama proclaimed three areas of investment of vital interest to the nation's economic future: energy, health care and education. Here are my favorite lines from the education portion of the President's speech (in no particular order):

• "But we know that our schools don't just need more resources. They need more reform."
• "...the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow."
• "And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country - and this country needs and values the talents of every American."
• "I speak to you not just as a President, but as a father when I say that responsibility for our children's education must begin at home."
• "That is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world."

I dare say the President's education proposals have a Clintonian air to them: opportunity and responsibility.

For those of you who missed the speech, here is a transcript courtesy of the Washington Post.

The third challenge we must address is the urgent need to expand the promise of education in America.

In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity - it is a pre-requisite.

Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish.

This is a prescription for economic decline, because we know the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow. That is why it will be the goal of this administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education - from the day they are born to the day they begin a career.

Already, we have made an historic investment in education through the economic recovery plan. We have dramatically expanded early childhood education and will continue to improve its quality, because we know that the most formative learning comes in those first years of life. We have made college affordable for nearly seven million more students. And we have provided the resources necessary to prevent painful cuts and teacher layoffs that would set back our children's progress.

But we know that our schools don't just need more resources. They need more reform. That is why this budget creates new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success. We'll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools.

It is our responsibility as lawmakers and educators to make this system work. But it is the responsibility of every citizen to participate in it. And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country - and this country needs and values the talents of every American. That is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

I know that the price of tuition is higher than ever, which is why if you are willing to volunteer in your neighborhood or give back to your community or serve your country, we will make sure that you can afford a higher education. And to encourage a renewed spirit of national service for this and future generations, I ask this Congress to send me the bipartisan legislation that bears the name of Senator Orrin Hatch as well as an American who has never stopped asking what he can do for his country - Senator Edward Kennedy.

These education policies will open the doors of opportunity for our children. But it is up to us to ensure they walk through them. In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework after dinner, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, and read to their child. I speak to you not just as a President, but as a father when I say that responsibility for our children's education must begin at home.

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A Class Gap in the "Gap Year"

Thanks to Joanne Jacobs's blog for alerting me to yet another story on the trend of high school graduates taking a so-called "gap year" before entering college. I was especially happy to see that she pointed to blogger Donald Douglas's post that points out the gap year is the privilege of students who can afford to take one.

So true, so true. In fact, as I wrote in a paper given at AERA in 2006, there is a "class gap" in the gap year. Using national longitudinal data (NELS), my graduate student Seong Won Han and I found that students from poor socioeconomic backgrounds are nearly six times as likely as students from more advantaged families to delay college between high school graduation and college entry. We examined two explanations for those differential rates of delay: academic coursetaking and family formation. Poor students are less likely than wealthy students to take a core lab science in high school, and they are more likely to become parents before college entry. We find that these differences, along with family background, educational expectations, and high school preparation, explain nearly one-fifth of the unconditional socioeconomic gap in delay.

There are consequences to delaying college. In a 2005 paper, Robert Bozick and Stefanie DeLuca found that each additional month of delay between high school and college entry decreases the odds of bachelor’s degree completion by 6.5 percent. That effect does not operate entirely via an increase in the time-to-degree or a delay in completion; rather, it acts to independently reduce the likelihood of eventual completion.

In sum, if middle and upper-class kids are increasingly exercising their ability to take some time off before college to gain interesting life experiences they can later bring to the classroom, while low-income kids only delay when required to earn money for school or raise a child, the socioeconomic gap in college completion rates is likely to only get worse....

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College Support Programs in Beantown

Today's Boston Globe ran a terrific story ('College Counselors Fill Role Of Parent') by James Vaznis about Boston-based nonprofits that support area students in applying to, enrolling in, and graduating from college. Most of these students are low-income and first-generation college go-ers, a population much less likely to attend and achieve a degree. One of these nonprofits is the 11-year-old Bottom Line, located in Jamacia Plain ("JP").

As part of a bold effort to boost dismal college graduation rates for Boston public school alumni, city leaders and philanthropists are banking on a heavy expansion of Bottom Line and other nonprofits to get more college degrees into the hands of city residents.

Many of the nonprofits cater to low-income students who often are the first members of their family to attend college. While a few programs are devoted to the city's elite college preparatory exam schools, Bottom Line and others also serve a large number of students from the city's less prestigious high schools, where many graduates enter college ill-prepared.

In a way, the counselors in these groups equip Boston students with a powerful force taken for granted by many of their affluent peers: They fill the role of parents who closely monitor their children's progress in college and have the knowhow or the connections to cut through bureaucratic red tape when problems arise.

Here's a shout-out to my pal Elizabeth Pauley (quoted in the Globe story) at the Boston Foundation, one of the groups funding this and related work to boost the city's high school graduation rates. Nice work. Go Celtics!

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When Only the Best Will Do....

I suppose my mom knew something about education after all (not that you'd have known it from how GWU treated her as a lecturer way back when)....

Apparently, I graduated from "the very best high school" in the whole darn country.

100% of the kids are said to be "college ready"? Well then how come lil ol' me, with my 1400+ SAT, and 4 AP classes, was counseled to attend Northern VA Community College, as I was pretty much Josie-average at that school? I was told that was the best fit for me. They were a little confused when I got into William & Mary....

That place was hard. Hard hard hard. Harder than grad school at U. Penn, and wayyyy harder than GWU. Sure, I work longer hours now-- but I'm also paid. In high school I woke at 6 am, stayed up past 1 or 2 doing homework, and studied constantly. Very little partying, play, and such.

I don't know-- it was a special place, for sure. It probably helped me 'get where I am today' (for more on where that is, see tomorrow's press release from UW-Madison). But wouldn't I have done the same with or without TJ? I wish someone would do a good study and get me the answer to that one....

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"Merit"-ocracy

The NY Times has an interesting editorial today arguing for a "broader definition of merit" in college admissions practices, taking up the now popular call to disregard (or at least supplement) SAT/ACT test scores. These tests were long only administered to a fairly elite group of high school students who knew enough to take them and could afford to do so, and now--while they're taken by a much broader base of students-- their scores are muddled by disparities in test preparation. In other words, rather than measuring simply what a student knows in terms of book knowledge, they also measure that student (and his family's) social and financial capital.

On that, I agree with the Times and all who make a similar argument.

Where we part ways is with regard to alternatives. The typical suggestion is for admissions to rely more heavily on high school coursework and grades. Coursework, at least, is a pretty strong predictor of college attainment. But if the goal is a "meritocracy" does this really get us closer? Shouldn't we take a step back and first figure out what we mean by encouraging "meritocratic" admissions to college?

A postsecondary education is hardly optional anymore. At least some form (be it technical training, an associates, or a BA) is needed to get a decent job, and perhaps even more importantly to feel like a valued member of society. Under such circumstances who doesn't merit admission to college?

One's high school grades and coursetaking certainly are partially reflective of effort and talent, but they are also substantially reflective of sheer luck. Does your high school or even your district offer an IB program? Do you go to school with a lot of other kids with high grades, or are your peers generally getting C's as well? How does your principal think about student achievement--are teachers who give all A's questioned? What about those who are "hard" graders?

My list could go on and on but my point is that social situations structure opportunity for coursework and good-grade-getting. These things are no less signals of social and financial capital as SAT/ACT scores are. We have to be honest about that.

If a college must narrow its pool of eligible students, and we acknowledge that there are few if any really "fair" ways to do so, then how about simply taking that eligible pool and selecting among them using a lottery? Let luck lead the way. Then you don't have to explain why student A is more "meritorious" than student B-- she's not. It was just dumb luck.

As an aside-- if colleges decided to do this, we'd be one step closer to being able to measure the actual value-added individual institutions provide. What an amazing contribution to society, and surefire way to encourage higher education to aim higher at serving students well. If your college would like to try this, feel free to send me an email.

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America's Greatest Education Governor

The National Education Association (NEA) -- the nation's largest teachers' union -- recently awarded the title of "America's Greatest Education Governor" to North Carolina's Mike Easley.

While many such awards may seem hokey on their face, this is actually one that is well-deserved, based on Governor Easley's leadership on improving teacher quality and public education in North Carolina.

Easley pioneered Teacher Working Conditions surveys. As my New Teacher Center colleague (and North Carolina resident) Eric Hirsch says, assessing working conditions involves collecting data to determine what teachers want and need, and how their perceptions of various aspects of their jobs correlate with student achievement and teacher retention. Fundamentally, it's about helping schools create environments where teachers can thrive and students can succeed.

In addition, the NEA recognized Easley's leadership on three other policy initiatives:

• The More at Four pre-kindergarten program for at-risk four-year-olds;
  
• The Learn and Earn initiative, which allows high school students to jump-start their college education through 42 Learn and Earn high schools located on community college or university campuses; and
  
• EARN grants, which have allowed approximately 25,000 students from low- and moderate-income families to receive up to $8,000 of financial aid over two years.

Easley was first elected Governor in 2000 and will complete his second term in office at the end of 2008.

Read the NEA press release

Read more on teacher working conditions here and here

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More On Inequitable Teacher Distribution

Yesterday I blogged about inequitable teacher distribution between schools. Today, Education Week posted an article about inequitable teacher distribution between grades within schools.

The Ed Week article discusses a new study authored by Ruth Curran Neild (a research scientist at Johns Hopkins University) and Elizabeth Farley-Ripple (a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania). It finds that high-school freshmen in Philadelphia are more likely to be taught by inexperienced, uncredentialed teachers than their sophomore, junior and senior counterparts. And those freshmen who take two or more classes with novice, uncredentialed teachers average two more absences per academic year.

The freshman year is regarded as a critical time especially for those students at-risk of dropping out of high school.

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Thumb On The Scale: High School Graduation Rates

Saturday’s editorial in the Wisconsin State Journal – a daily newspaper serving Madison (for you non-Badgers) – is merely the latest calling for consistency and transparency in the public reporting of high school graduation and dropout rates. In this version, Wisconsin is the whipping boy for inflating its graduation rate. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction says it's 91.2%, while the U.S. Department of Education says it's 85.8%, and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center says it's 77.3%.

Back in 2005, under the leadership of then-National Governors Association (NGA) Chairman and Virginia Governor Mark Warner, the nation’s Governors signed onto a Compact that called for a consistent measure for calculating high school graduation rates. Specifically, the Graduation Counts Compact calls for “a standard, four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate. States agree to calculate the graduation rate by dividing the number of on-time graduates in a given year by the number of first-time entering ninth graders four years earlier.” Joining the Governors in supporting this approach were national organizations including the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the Alliance for Excellent Education, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the Education Trust. Despite that seemingly high level of consensus, a number of states continue to conduct business as usual.

There are some honest reasons for this, such as the inability of state data systems to track students who transfer schools, districts, and even states and separate them from those who drop out of school completely. Some states are continuing to overcome this obstacle. In addition, many Governors don’t control their state department of education and can’t snap their fingers and make this happen. Further, more than a dozen of the Governors who signed this compact three years ago are no longer in office. However, the NGA is working to ensure that governors who have taken office since 2005 agree to the compact’s terms.

There’s most certainly some bureaucratic heel-dragging going on and politics at foot. In fact, two states--North Dakota and South Dakota--have dropped out of the compact all together.

Nonetheless, some progress has occurred. According to a 2006 NGA report, 13 states reported their graduation rate according to the Compact formula; two states used the Compact formula with local cohort data; and one state reported a sophisticated estimate consistent with the recommendations. By 2010, 39 states planned to report a graduation rate using the Compact definition. Two states have even codified the Compact rate: Colorado did so through state board regulations and Maryland through legislation.

On April 1st of this year, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings issued proposed regulations that would require all states and high schools to use the NGA-proposed high school graduation rate calculation by 2011. This action may impel recalcitrant states to get off the dime.

This issue clearly isn't liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat. If we truly are going to put the interests of students first, we need to capture accurately the magnitude of this problem. Perhaps doing so would impel policymakers to take more seriously their duty to reform high schools and support the teachers and administrators who staff them. Currently, too many high school dropouts are forgotten within data reporting systems much as they are forgotten by the school systems that serve them poorly.

If we can’t honestly collect and report basic data about the education policy issues we’re trying to address, why even bother with data or research at all? Let’s manage and legislate based on whims and fancies—and blatantly false perceptions. At least we'll feel good.

-----------------------------------

For those of you craving more on this topic, check out this 2006 report from the NGA Center for Best Practices, this April 2008 policy brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education or this August 2007 brief from The Education Trust.

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From High School to the Future: Chicago Leads the Way

As I've been accused a few times since starting this blog of being too negative about the possibilities presented by schools & teachers, I want to pass on my good vibes from attending an event this week that made my quite optimistic indeed.

For the last several years I've been working with a crew of outrageously talented folks at the Consortium for Chicago School Research (including Melissa Roderick & Jenny Nagaoka) who are collaborating with the Chicago Public Schools (most notably Greg Dardinier) to get high school students, teachers, and administrators focused on increasing the potential for student success after high school. With loads of financial support from both CPS (Arne Duncan) and the Gates Foundation (among others) CCSR and the school system built a tracking system that allows them to follow kids out of high school and into college & work, to see how they do-- and even more importantly, to figure out how to help them do better.

It's so unusual for a school district, especially one as large as Chicago's (130+ high schools!) to have the data capacity to do this. The vast majority of high schools in the U.S. rely on a student exit questionnaire administered in the spring of senior year, which asks kids "What are your plans for the fall" (choices include 4 yr college, 2yr college, work, etc) and their responses are used as a proxy for the real destination. In other words, the college-going rate for a high school or district is based on a student's self-report in May of senior year. This is a highly inaccurate measure, as several different data sources have proven-- plenty of kids who say they are going to college do not (or do not go to the kind of school they said they were going to, even if they were admitted and accepted) because they realize they cannot afford it, or get side-tracked during the summer, and many who say they aren't going, do decide to show up at a community college. Clearly districts need a much more reliable source of information if they are to learn about their high school graduates, and use that information to inform and change their educational practices.

Well, Chicago's got it figured out. They hooked up with the National Student Clearinghouse, which is able to identify students attending 91% of the colleges nationwide-- if they are enrolled, NSC usually knows about it. CPS checks with kids before they leave high school to make sure they have the right social security number & birthdate, and an idea of where the kid might be going, and then uses this data to track them. This is a not-too-complex and pretty inexpensive way to get consistent and reliable information back to individual high schools about their grads.

The results have been transformative for the Chicago Public Schools. Too much to get into here, but you can check out in this report and this report from CCSR to see what they've learned about who goes to college, what helps them get there, what the big barriers are to accessing more elite institutions, who graduates & from where,etc. Some principals were stunned to learn that even at their "high-performing" high schools only 3 or 4 in 10 kids actually went on to attend college. Because the district also asks about what students want to do (what they aspire to), and follows up on their wages, they can respond to people who make excuses such as "Not all kids want to go to college" (not true, nearly 90% do), or "Some kids are better off going to work" (not so--the wages of CPS students who go straight to work are very, very low). Changes have been made, and over the last several years, while the college-going rates of high school graduates nationwide have declined, they have gone up in Chicago.

Which leads me to this week. The Gates Foundation recognized how amazing this has been for CPS, and funded them to hold trainings to let other school districts from around the country in on the action. So we gathered in Chicago this week-- districts applied and 8 or 9 were chosen (including Philly, Austin, Portland)--to attend two days of sessions on how to use NSC data effectively to generate positive changes in high schools and colleges.

I was there as part of the Milwaukee team. As someone deeply concerned about all of the kids in urban districts left behind as the great masses moves towards higher education, I can't tell you how much it warmed my heart (really, it did!) to listen to k-12 district folks talk (in some cases for the very first time) about college-going and completion, and realize that these problems are real, widespread, and there is something we can do about it. It was especially wonderful that CCSR's team (led by Chris Mazzeo) also provided social opportunities for the districts to get to know one another, as they will need support in coming years when they try to go home and reorient administrators and teachers' thinking about how and why high schools can help increase college completion rates among our poorest kids.

During the next several months the teams will be working with their district data and then we'll reconvene in the fall to discuss what we've found and plan to do. I'll keep you posted.

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