Diana Jean Schemo:

WHEN the federal Education Department recently reported that children in private schools generally did no better than comparable students at public schools on national tests of math and reading, the findings were embraced by teachers’ unions and liberals, and dismissed by supporters of school voucher programs.
But for many educators and policy makers, the findings raised a haunting question: What if the impediments to learning run so deep that they cannot be addressed by any particular kind of school or any set of in-school reforms? What if schools are not the answer?
The question has come up before. In 1966, Prof. James S. Coleman published a Congressionally mandated study on why schoolchildren in minority neighborhoods performed at far lower levels than children in white areas.
To the surprise of many, his landmark study concluded that although the quality of schools in minority neighborhoods mattered, the main cause of the achievement gap was in the backgrounds and resources of families.
For years, education researchers have argued over his findings. Conservatives used them to say that the quality of schools did not matter, so why bother offering more than the bare necessities? Others, including some educators, used them essentially to write off children who were harder to educate.

More on the Coleman Report from Clusty.
Kevin Carey has some comments:

Schemo frames No Child Left Behind as one side of an argument between people who believe that factors outside schools affect students, and believe who don’t believe that factors outside schools affect students. There is no such debate. No reasonable person believes that students’ economic, social, and family circumstances are irrelevant to educational progress.
To say that NCLB “holds a school alone responsible” for student progress is to ascribe far more power to the law than it, or any law, could possibly have. There are whole worlds of responsibility for the dire circumstances of disadvantaged students who aren’t learning well. All No Child Left Behind does is create a system that identifies which schools those students attend, and insists that we should try to make those schools better.

Hara Estroff Marano:

Maaybe it’s the cyclist in the park, trim under his sleek metallic blue helmet, cruisin along the dirt path… at three miles an hour. On his tricycle
Or perhaps it’s today’s playground, all-rubber-cushioned surface where kids used to skin their knees. And… wait a minute… those aren’t little kids playing. Their mommies—and especially their daddies—are in there with them, coplaying or play-by-play coaching. Few take it half-easy on the perimeter benches, as parents used to do, letting the kids figure things out for themselves.
Then there are the sanitizing gels, with which over a third of parents now send their kids to school, according to a recent survey. Presumably, parents now worry that school bathrooms are not good enough for their children.
Consider the teacher new to an upscale suburban town. Shuffling through the sheaf of reports certifying the educational “accommodations” he was required to make for many of his history students, he was struck by the exhaustive, well-written—and obviously costly—one on behalf of a girl who was already proving among the most competent of his ninth-graders. “She’s somewhat neurotic,” he confides, “but she is bright, organized and conscientious—the type who’d get to school to turn in a paper on time, even if she were dying of stomach flu.” He finally found the disability he was to make allowances for: difficulty with Gestalt thinking. The 13-year-old “couldn’t see the big picture.” That cleverly devised defect (what 13-year-old can construct the big picture?) would allow her to take all her tests untimed, especially the big one at the end of the rainbow, the college-worthy SAT.

University of Florida:

However, the trend once known as “mainstreaming”— widely considered the best option for such students – appears to have stalled in some parts of the country, the study’s authors report. And a student’s geographic location, rather than the severity of his disability, often determines how he will spend his school days, the researchers say.
“We’ve known for a long time that students with MR (mental retardation) are better off educationally if they can spend at least part of the day in a typical classroom,” said James McLeskey, chair of special education in UF’s College of Education and an author of the study. “We’ve found that there are still lot of students who could be included in the general classroom but aren’t included.”
Before the mid-1970s, most children with mental retardation were completely segregated from other children in the school system, if they were formally educated at all. Society widely viewed these children as uneducable, and those who did attend school were sent to institutions solely for children with mental retardation.

Jim Wooten:

School reform matters especially in Atlanta. The city may or may not be in the midst of a return-to-the-city movement. Certainly, condos and apartments are going up everywhere. But until the problem of a laggardly school system is cured, people with children won’t return, unless they have alternatives. Atlanta’s revival will be limited to the childless and to retiring baby boomers. I think that means, of course, some program of vouchers or tax credits that encourages new schools to be created by the private sector or by groups of educators starting their own.
It’s always necessary to try to improve the existing school system for parents who will always prefer to let government do it, who will choose to be uninvolved and are perfectly happy to hand Jimmy over at age 5 and check him back out at age 18, hoping he’s educated enough to get out of the house. The question for conservatives, though, is whether that’s enough. Can the model designed for a farm economy be fixed so that it serves most everybody? And if you’re open to reform, what’s the boldest reform you’d support?

Bob Sipchen:

This ugly two-story Lawndale strip mall seems better suited to selling kalua pork at the Hawaiian BBQ downstairs than to educating high school students. In fact, when I first walk into the standard-looking classroom on the second floor, not much education seems to be going on. Not that teacher Jeanett Hector isn’t trying. She’s picked a Stephen King teleplay for the class to read aloud, and she’s brimming with enthusiasm for it, certain that the 17 students slumping in their seats will get into it. At the moment, though, most of them are mumbling excuses and acting bored. Well aware that a reporter’s watching, Hector grows increasingly annoyed.

Paul E. Peterson and Elena Llaudet:

According to the NCES study, the performance of students attending private schools was superior to that of students attending public schools. But after statistical adjustments were made for student characteristics, the private school advantage among 4th-graders was reported to give way to a 4.5 point public school advantage in math and school-sector parity in reading. After the same adjustments were made for 8th-graders, private schools retained a 7 point advantage in reading but achieved only parity in math.
However, NCES’s measures of student characteristics are flawed by inconsistent classification across the public and private sectors and by the inclusion of factors open to school influence.
Utilizing the same data as the original study but substituting better measures of student characteristics, improved Alternative Models identify a private school advantage in 11 out of 12 public-private comparisons. In 8th-grade math, the private school advantage varies between 3 and 7 test points; in reading, it varies between 9 and 13 points. Among 4th graders, in math, parity is observed in one model, but private schools outperform public schools by 2 to 4 points in the other two models; in 4th-grade reading, private schools have an advantage that ranges from 6 to 10 points. Except when parity is observed, all differences are statistically significant.

Chicago’s Black Star Project launches the “Million Father March“. Molly Snyder Edler has more:

Chicago’s Black Star Project launched a nationwide event called the “Million Father March” that encourages African-American fathers, grandfathers, stepfathers and foster fathers to “march” their kids to their first day of school to demonstrate their commitment to education and their kids’ futures.
Even thought the “Million Father March” is based in the Windy City, it will take place all over the country. Almost 50 cities are on board with the project, including Milwaukee.
Local organizers Phillip Bridges and Todd Pierce hope to see thousands of dads escourting their kids to class on the first day of school. Milwaukee Public Schools start Tuesday, Sept. 5.
“Research has shown that when a father takes an active role in the educational and social development of a child, the child earns better grades, gets better test scores, enjoys school more and is more likely to graduate high school and attend college,” says Bridges.
In Milwaukee, only 24 percent of African-American males graduate from high school, and 54 percent are unemployed. Also, it’s speculated that by 2007 the incarceration rate of black men in Milwaukee will be over 65 percent.

Susanna Capelouto:

While many students around the country still have weeks left of vacation, the school year began today in Rockdale County, Ga. The early start is part of a trend in pockets of the country, as summer breaks get shorter.
Schools are under pressure to raise test scores, and experts say a shorter break can help kids retain what they’ve learned in the previous year. But parents are split over whether that’s worth sacrificing their childrens’ summers.
Rockdale County, 20 miles east of Atlanta, is one of a handful of school systems that are opening up in July. And an early August start date is now common in Georgia. The trade-off for the short summer break comes in the form of two week-long breaks through out the year.

Joseph Epstein:

And child-centered we indubitably are, like no other people at no other time in history. A major enticement for parents to move, for example, is good schools. Private schools, meanwhile, flourish as never before, heavy though the expense usually is. Parents slavishly follow their children around to their every game: soccer, little league, tennis. Camcorders whirl; digital cameras click. Any child who has not been either to Disneyland or Disney World by the age of seven is considered deprived. Serious phone calls are interrupted because Jen or Tyler needs Mom or Dad now. Attention must be paid.
Nor does it end in childhood. A friend wrote to me about his 16-year-old: “My daughter Hope is a serious rocker, and I’ve been taking her and her girlfriends to a lot of concerts recently. The latest was at a biker-bar-like club in a suburban Virginia strip mall next to a Korean grocery store to see a Swedish metal band called Opeth. It was about 95 degrees in the place, and when I got home at 1:30 a.m., my clothes were still damp and smelled of smoke.” He wasn’t complaining, please understand, merely describing.

Robin Good:

Question: What big idea of 2006 will be extinct in 2036?
Answer: Modern teacher training
By 2036, the forms of teacher preparation that currently prevail in Western nations will have sunk into oblivion.
We will have discarded schools of education, the pedagogies they teach, and the certification apparatus that they serve. Such schools, pedagogies, and certifications have clung to life stubbornly for the better part of a century despite ample evidence of their unsuitability.
Why predict that in the next 30 years they will finally follow the giant ground sloth into the La Brea tar pit of history?

Clara Hemphill:

THE word “kindergarten” means “children’s garden,” and for years has conjured up an image of children playing with blocks, splashing at water tables, dressing up in costumes or playing house. Now, with an increased emphasis on academic achievement even in the earliest grades, playtime in kindergarten is giving way to worksheets, math drills and fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests.
Nowhere are the demands greater than at Achievement First East New York Charter School in Brooklyn, which holds classes through this month. On a recent Friday morning, 20 kindergartners in uniforms of yellow shirts and blue jumpers or shorts, many yawning and rubbing their eyes, filed into the classroom of Keisha Rattray and Luis Gonzalez. Some sat in plastic chairs lined up before the teachers for phonics and grammar drills, while others sat at computer screens, listening through headphones to similar exercises.

Edweek.org:

For the third year, The National Survey of Salaries and Wages in Public Schools was released to Education Week by Educational Research Service as part of a research partnership.
The survey of more than 600 school districts conducted by ERS, a nonprofit organization based in Alexandria, Va., that has been conducting the survey for more than 30 years, revealed that district size has a more pronounced effect on the salaries of superintendents than any other staff category.
The strong relationship between district size and salary for more senior administrators weakens among lower-paid education professionals. On average, assistant principals, teachers, counselors, and librarians earn the highest salaries in mid-sized districts serving between 2,500 and 25,000 students.

Full survey [292K PDF]

Daniel de Vise:

State auditors told legislators yesterday that they had found 11 convicted sex offenders who were certified as teachers and eligible to be hired by Maryland public schools.
None of the 11 was actually working as a teacher. But all remained in a database of teachers with valid certification from the Maryland State Department of Education because of inadequate communication between the state agency and some of the 24 local school systems, the auditors said, speaking to the Joint Audit Committee of the Maryland General Assembly.
A routine audit of the public school system, completed last month, found a similar lapse in the oversight of school bus drivers. In one school system, which the auditors did not name, a driver remained on the job after failing a drug or alcohol test and was subsequently involved in two accidents.
In each case, auditors faulted the state school system for failing to properly update a database, which included lists of certified teachers and of drivers who had tested positive for drugs or alcohol. The audit covered a three-year span ending June 30, 2005.

Michael Strong:

Four years ago I moved my family to Angel Fire, New Mexico, to create a charter high school. Two teachers with whom I had previously worked ten years earlier in Alaska moved to New Mexico to work at the school I was creating. By the second year of the school, we had the created the highest ranked public high school in New Mexico based on Jay Mathews’ Challenge Index. The third year, we ranked among the “Top 100 Best Public High Schools” on Newsweek’s list.
But at that point, I had been forced out by the state of New Mexico because I was not a licensed administrator. When I had moved to New Mexico charter school administrators did not need a license. But the law had changed, and I would have needed seven years’ experience as a licensed public school teacher in order to enter an administrative licensure program. Despite the fact that my work as an educator has been praised by leading educational theorists and practitioners, and despite the fact that I have achieved spectacular results, it is not legal for me to lead a charter school in New Mexico. Moreover, beyond spectacular academic results, my focus as an educator is always first and foremost on developing adolescent happiness and well-being. It is inexcusable that it is not legal for me to lead schools. We need to legalize markets in happiness and well-being.

Debra Viadero:

The Urban Institute and six universities have joined forces to start a federal research center to mine the wealth of long-term data now piling up in state education databases.
The newly created Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, or CALDER, is being launched with a five-year, $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.
The job of the center, which the Urban Institute announced last week, is to tap into the trove of statistics that states are amassing through new data-collection systems that use unique “identifier” numbers so that students—and teachers—can be tracked anonymously over time as they move from classroom to classroom or district to district.
Center researchers intend to focus their efforts for now on studying issues related to teacher quality—who teaches what kinds of students, what determines quality, and how hiring, compensation, and retention policies affect student achievement.

Mickey Kaus:

Eduwonk thinks so. Some evidence (and not just from Eduwonk): 1) Democratic Governor-in-waiting Eliot Spitzer of New York has endorsed opening more independent charter schools–which are typically not unionized to the same degree as public schools–after a study showed many of them to be doing better than their traditional public competitors.** 2) Speaking at the recent fancy Aspen Institute event, former Clinton official (and now New York City schools chancellor) Joel Klein made a “case that teachers-union contracts are the main obstacle to improving urban education,” according to Mort Kondracke:

“The contract protects the interests of adults at the expense of kids,” he told a rapt audience, describing how it bars pay differentials based on student performance and service in difficult schools; makes it impossible for principals to fire underperforming teachers; and allows teachers to choose their own professional development tracks, regardless of supply-and-demand needs, such as those for more math and science teachers.

Carl Campanile:

Charter schools in the city are vastly outperforming public schools in their neighborhoods, according to a bombshell state report obtained by The Post.
The just-released study by state Education Department found students in 11 of 16 city charter schools outscored kids in nearby public schools on the state’s fourth-grade English and math exams in 2005.
The academic gap widens in the upper grades, the report said, with kids in five of six upper-grade charter schools faring better on eighth-grade English and math exams.
Charters are privately managed but publicly financed schools that have more flexibility in developing a curriculum, hiring personnel and establishing work rules than traditional schools.

New York State Department of Education website.

Education Sector:

Requiring students to take greater numbers of rigorous courses that are more likely to prepare them for college does not necessarily lead to lower graders or higher dropout rates, if the courses are taught by capable teachers, the new research suggests.
Intensive “catch-up” courses help a significant percentage of students who enter high school well behind their peers reduce their chances of dropping out and get on the track to college.
But researchers have found that though creating more supportive educational environments for students is critical, doing so produces more significant improvements in student learning when combined with high expectations and rigorous instruction. Improving school climates alone is not the answer.

Center on Education Policy [PDF Report]:

This report highlights the important facts concerning the U.S. education system and how things have changed– and will continue to change — over time.
The primer provides a comprehensive picture of the nation’s public schools with data about students, governance, funding, achievement, teachers, and non-instructional services.

Ms. Cornelius:

Dennis has a lovely post discussing the myth that God has abandoned the public schools over at his place. It is beautifully written. I hope you go over and read it; it is really well-crafted and obviously comes straight from the heart. Here’s the intro: Dennis was sent one of those chain emails:

Mike Antonucci:

The North Dakota Supreme Court let stand a ruling that the Kenmare school district could offer and pay more money to fill a speech-language pathologist position. The district’s action was the subject of a lawsuit by the Kenmare Education Association (KEA).
The union filed suit in July 2005, after a state fact-finding committee recommended the district be allowed to offer an additional $15,000 in salary to find a taker for the hard-to-fill position. The union asserted that paying a pathologist more money than was proscribed by the salary scale violated the collective bargaining agreement.
Last November, a state district court judge upheld the district’s action, prompting KEA President Donna Schmit to say, “For one individual to be allowed to negotiate up to $15,000 additional salary is wrong.”

John Engberg and Brian Gill:

Graduation and dropout rates are difficult to calculate. These difficulties arise because of both conceptual ambiguities and imperfect data. In this paper, the authors review some of these challenges, discuss how the challenges have been approached when using cross-sectional data, and describe a method that analyzes longitudinal, student-level data to provide an improved estimate of graduation and dropout rates. They then apply that method to estimate graduation and dropout rates for the Pittsburgh Public Schools district-wide and for each high school in the district.

Joe Smydo and Tim Grant have more:

City school board members angrily denounced a study that estimates 35 percent of high school students — including nearly half of all black male students — drop out of Pittsburgh Public Schools.
“It’s very incendiary to put something like this out there when there’s so much gray area and speculation,” board member Randall Taylor said at a meeting last night. “For us to tell the city we are not graduating this many students, this is devastating to the city.”

Andrew Rotherham notes that “It’s the PR, Stupid“…… “The report also offers a nice walk-through of some of the issues surrounding calculating grad rates.”

Budget Hangs On Enrollment Middleton Watching Numbers
The Capital Times Tuesday, July 11, 2006
By Christopher Michaels
Increased enrollment in the weeks preceding the start of the school year could mean more state aid for the Middleton-Cross Plains School District. It also could mean an easing of planned staff reductions of special concern to one of the district’s elementary schools.
Teachers and parents from Park Elementary School in Cross Plains are asking the School Board to do what it can to avoid staff cuts at their school, which has a number of special needs students.
In a preliminary 2006-07 district budget approved by the School Board Monday, the tax rate remains unchanged from the 2005-06 school year. However, state revenue limits mean the district has had to reduce its budget by about $1.4 million compared to last year.
That reduction is taking its toll on programs and staffing with about 15 positions districtwide being eliminated, said Superintendent Bill Reis. Some of those positions, including two teachers and available hours for educational assistants, are at Park.

(more…)

Andrew J. Coulson:

Mr. Buffett and the Gateses are not the first to invest over a billion dollars in an ambitious school reform plan. Ambassador and TV Guide mogul Walter Annenberg trod this path during the 1990s, donating $500 million of his own money and another $800 million in matching funds to the “Annenberg Challenge.”
Mr. Annenberg’s goal was to create exemplary schools and districts that would act as models for the nation. He sought not incremental change, but systemwide transformation. He didn’t get it. Though some Annenberg Challenge projects showed promise, at least for a time, their impact on the system as a whole was negligible.
Why? The Wreck of the Annenberg can be attributed to a single fundamental flaw in the ambassador’s approach: he assumed that excellence, once demonstrated, would automatically be imitated.
It is easy to see why people who have amassed riches in the private sector might assume that successful models are always mimicked on a broad scale. That is what happens in competitive markets – including competitive education markets.

More on the Annenberg Challenge.