US Congressman George Miller, the chairman of the House Education and Labor committee, gave a speech yesterday at the National Press Club in which he discussed the future of No Child Left Behind, the 2001 law that he played a major role in passing.

Miller is widely known to remain a strong supporter of the law who opposes suggestions that the accountability requirements on schools be weakened. So his statement that the law is not fair, flexible, or funded is an interesting one--and certainly one that is informed by the opinions of the teachers and parents that he's spoken with at forums across the country. Despite Rep. Miller's pledge to get the House Education & Labor committee to act on the bill quickly this fall, there have certainly been mixed messages as to whether the law will have to wait until 2009 for renewal. Earlier in the week, Education Week published this article describing some of the committee's decisions to delay debate and the likely outcome: no progress until after the Presidential Election.

There are several issues on the table that need to be hammered out if a bill is to pass through both houses. High on the list is what to do about the law's testing requirements. Rep. Miller has suggested that school districts be allowed to employ "multiple measures" to show that their schools are meeting annual yearly progress goals, though "multiple measures" is a red flag word to many civil rights groups who worry that it is a way to water-down the law and let schools off the hook for educating poor and minority children. One of the kinds of measures that Rep. Miller is pointing too, however, is the use of growth models which would compare this year's fourth graders against how they performed on tests last year--a marked difference from the current testing system in the vast majority of states where this year's fourth graders are compared to last year's fourth graders.

Another question is what the new NCLB will do about teacher quality. The teacher quality provisions of the 2001 version, which focused largely on requiring teachers to show subject-matter proficiency and requiring schools to make public the percentages of their teachers who are certified, are now widely recognized as being complicated and without much impact. Several prominent political figures have since called for a new kind of federal involvement in teacher quality reform, notably New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a deal where new federal dollars would be given to schools to use as bonuses to pay teachers for outstanding performance. While this may be a non-starter for teachers unions, the idea that new federal money would be used for the performance pay might have enough appeal to work, since there would be no 'losers' in the evaluation insofar as existing salary money would not be redistributed.

And of course there is the funding issue. House democrats recently passed a bill that would increase Department of Education spending by 8% in the next year, which the President is threatening to veto. Any reauthorization of NCLB will have to acknowledge the reality that states and local districts are clamoring for more dollars and, rightfully so or not, there is some public perception of the law as an underfunded (if not unfunded) mandate. All of these issues bear watching both in the Congress and in the Presidential election cycle.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a first-of-its kind meeting, a group of high school students from across the nation met with Deputy Secretary of Education Ray Simon yesterday in Washington, DC to ask that the Department of Education take the lead in doing something that is startlingly rare in education policy: create a permanent channel for student voice.

In America today, five out of six local boards of education lack any form of student representation whatsoever, and only twenty state boards of education have permanent youth advisory committees or student members. So the idea of national level youth representation, while not unheard of in local and state policy circles, is far from the norm. Despite this, Deputy Secretary Simon agreed with the students that the need for further youth engagement in contributing viewpoints to school policy discussions on issues such as No Child Left Behind is an important one, and he pledged his support to explore possibilities with his staff for how to create such channels.

Mr. Simon made a number of other interesting comments on the inquiry into student participation in national level education policy conversations. His first suggestion to students was to become more involved in local level school boards—an idea that he focused heavily on when told that only 15% of school boards have youth representation. His reasoning behind this suggestion was that “the local level is where you can make the greatest difference”, though it must be mentioned that the scope of change possible at the local level is limited to individual school-by-school improvements. For example, if a group of students want to change their curriculum, request new instructional resources, or change a school start time in their school, they can do so by going to the local school board. But if the students seek to mount a serious challenge to inequalities in school funding across city, county, and state lines; if they seek to suggest ways that standardized testing can be improved in America; or if they object to the notion that children born in different states are held to different standards simply because of their geography, these are issues that only the federal government has the power to address in a systemic fashion.

Another point that the Deputy Secretary asked the group of students about was the idea of what youth representation at the national level should look like. How would students be selected to participate? Could it be done in a representative fashion? This is a point for which there are no obvious answers, since there are no clear examples in the history of American education. While several other nations do have youth involved in national education policies (Chile, Singapore, England to name a few), an American system of youth voice—one which empowers youth from all kind of schools, and particularly those which are in need of greatest improvement—may be more complicated to fashion given the size of the country and variety of schools we have.

What do you think student representation to the federal Department of Education should look like? Should it be one, two, or some other small number of representatives who apply to the department and are accepted to serve a one year term where they come to the department and advise key officials there on how certain decisions could impact youth? Should there be a national committee with representatives from every state, who in turn elect a few of their members to advise the department? How can we ensure that the students selected are truly representative of America’s youth? We’d love your feedback – email us at info(at)oured.org with any ideas.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 08:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the first study of its kind, a pair of economists at the University of Chicago have found data which they believe indicates that NCLB has had a demonstrable effect in "teaching to the middle."

The concept--and corresponding critiques--of "teaching to the middle" are not new. In its quickest version, the theory goes that NCLB or any similar attempt to increase the number of students passing a proficiency standard will invariably shape the nature of the students upon whom teachers and schools will focus their greatest attention. If the standards are set extremely high, the schools will invariably respond by catering most closely to those students at the upper end who are nearest to meeting the standards. If the standards are set very low, the school will focus more attention on the students at that particular end of the achievement spectrum with the same hope of maximizing the number of proficient students.

The study finds evidence from Chicago Public Schools in the wake of NCLB that students in the middle of the achievement spectrum have had the greatest gains since NCLB's inception, while students at the upper and lower levels have experienced smaller gains. The implication that the researchers draw is that NCLB, which requires states to set standards that many reformers would agree are best described as middling to low, has had exactly the effect that one might expect from the "teaching to the middle theory". That is, because Illinois students are expected to reach a mid-level standard in reading, math, and science the schools have responded by focusing on those students in the middle to get them to pass, and have essentially left the high end students to their own devices (since they'll pass without much special attention) and the lowest-end students to the same (since it would take far more resources to get one low-performing student up to proficiency than a student is in the middle and just under the bar).

The irony, of course, as this Education Week article explains, is that while NCLB was passed for the ostensible purpose of defeating the "soft bigotry of low expectations" as President Bush famously declared, it is in fact by holding a lower standard that the students in most need of help will receive the most attention.

Or so the theory of "teaching to the middle" goes. The truth is, the study from the Chicago Public Schools is but one small sample in a sea of moving targets and variables, and it would be unwise to take it as conclusive proof of anything. Moreover, it's entirely possible that "teaching to the middle" and its effects have happened long before NCLB was even in the works, since it is a common instructional instinct to focus on the "low-hanging fruit" represented by mid-level students who have the potential to do better. Many young teachers report focusing on those students since they see their high-achievers as being more self-sufficient and the low-achievers as being far more difficult and requiring more time and attention than they might be able to afford.

Even if this is the case, it doesn't render the problem solved; there is still a basic fairness question here. Should students receive more or less attention depending on their achievement level? If so, who should receive more attention - those at the top who may be the future engineers and poet laureates, or those at the bottom who could also be future engineers and poet laureates if only given more support and attention in school? Even after we answer that question in principle, how do we actualize it from a policy perspective?

The best answer we have to that question, from a theoretical basis, is to begin moving from a proficiency standards based accountability system to a growth model / value-added system that more and more reformers are pushing for today. By holding schools and teachers accountable (and rewarding them) for sparking student learning gains regardless of whether those are gains with low end or high end students, policy makers have the potential to avert the "teaching to the middle" problem. The problem is, most states still lack the kind of data systems necessary to implement the growth model accountability system, and there is significant resistence from major education stakeholders (teachers unions in particular, who argue that growth model evaluation is still unproven) from having the growth model tied to any real stakes.

Got any better ideas for how to avoid the teaching to the middle problem? Feel free to share them here.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maybe it's his rock-star public persona and celebrity appeal. Maybe it's his strong oratory skills and ability to bring a crowd to its feet. Or maybe the timing of the moment was just right. Whatever the reasons behind it, an interesting thing happened at the nation's largest teachers union convention--the NEA--last week: Barack Obama said a very, very unpopular thing without getting booed for it.

For years, presidential candidates have been going to the annual National Education Association convention to praise teachers for their hard work on the frontlines of the country's most critical policy issue. And for years, most of these candidates have been quick to offer their support for the union's primary goals of increasing teacher pay and reducing class size. Senator Obama was no different last Wednesday, as he argued for increasing teacher pay across the board, and as he pandered to other NEA positions such as their opposition to No Child Left Behind. At one point in his speech, the Senator declared that he would not support re-authorization of the law unless the law received more federal funding and softened its focus on standardized testing.

But the part of his speech that raised eyebrows throughout the education reform world was when he stated, "If you excel at helping your students achieve success, your success will be valued and rewarded as well." Taken within the context of his entire speech, in which he praised a pay for performance plan being executed in Minnesota, the Senator took a calculated risk by expressing a view in opposition to the majority of his audience: the idea that teachers should be measured and rewarded, at least in part, on their ability to improve the learning of their students. Yet the reaction of the audience was telling - they stood and applauded at the end of his speech as though Barack had just promised them free iphones!

Lew Solmon, the president of the Teacher Advancement Program, a comprehensive teacher pay and career ladder system in over 130 schools, reacted to Senator Obama's bold move with this editorial, suggesting that pay for performance is on its way. Is he correct that a long history of anti-merit pay positions by the NEA is on the march towards inevitable defeat? Maybe so - but what is clear is that the discussion is no longer a non-starter with union heads, and that strong leadership has the potential to push the matter even further. Stay tuned to this issue and to what the exact details of Senator Obama's pay-for-performance plan and education plan are when he unveils them in the next months.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The US Supreme Court handed down its second--and noticeably more controversial--opinion concerning schools last week, this time striking down the racially-based school districting plans implemented in Seattle and in Louisville. Writing the majority opinion for the court, Chief Justice Roberts declared,

“For schools that never segregated on the basis of race, such as Seattle, or that have removed the vestiges of past discrimination, such as Jefferson County, the way to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis is to stop assigning students on a racial basis.”

Where the Court shot down the districting plans in those two cities because students' school assignments were determined almost exclusively by race, the five judge majority--pushed by moderate justice Anthony Kennedy--stopped short of completely eliminating the role of race in K-12 school policy. In his concurring opinion, Kennedy noted, “A district may consider it a compelling interest to achieve a diverse student population. Race may be one component of that diversity, but other demographic factors, plus special talents and needs, should also be considered.”

In other words, last week's decision represents the natural extension of a pair affirmative action cases decided in 2003 in Michigan, where the use of race in undergraduate admissions was upheld in principle, so long as it is one of many factors considered in an admissions decision. In the K-12 arena, Justice Kennedy clarified that it would still be permissible for districts to take race into account when choosing sites for new schools, when drawing attendance zones based on neighborhood demographics, in allocating resources for special programs, in recruiting students and faculty members “in a targeted fashion,” and in tracking enrollment and performance by race.

Apart from the direct implications on Louisville and Seattle, which will have to come up with new school districting plans, the effects on America's large city school districts will be intriguing to watch over time. As Council of Great City Schools Director Michael Casserly noted, "I worry that a lot of school districts will simply give up [trying to desegregate schools on a racial basis] in the face of repeated challenges." In context, the decision is especially controversial because segregation in schools has actually risen over the past decade. As the Harvard Civil Rights Project's research concluded, more than 70% of African American students now attend schools with populations that are more than 50% minority, up from 62.9% in 1980. And fully 36.5% of black students in America go to schools with a minority enrollment higher than 90*--a 12.5% increase since 1986.

One likely outcome of the case is a switch to the use of family income as a more prominent factor in assigning students to schools. Approximately 40 districts use income as a factor in school districting currently, and the school board in Louisville is already considering adopting a similar policy in light of the Supreme Court decision.

In the end, only time will tell if the decision is one that, as Justice Breyer observed in his dissenting opinion, "the nation will come to regret." At minimum, it has brought race back to the forefront of our nation's consciousness yet again--without a clear benefit for our nation's children. Would instead that the Court had picked a case and issued a decision to erode at a different landmark case--the San Antonio v. Rodriguez decision (1973) which found that there is no fundamental right to an education in the US constitution, a decision which has resulted in immense disparaties in educational opportunity among and within the 50 states.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)