One of the common themes I've seen in the so-called "Tea Parties" being thrown by conservative activists who oppose the federal government's recent stimulus and spending plans is the kind of thing you'll see if you scroll to the 23 second mark of this video:

If you don't have time to skip to that point in the video, the theme is this: the tea party protesters seem to enjoy justifying their actions by pointing to their children. For example, some of the most common signs at the tea parties read, "Stop taxing my grandchildren!" and "Stop spending my child's future!" And yes, as you'll see in the video, many protesters will bring their babies and toddlers to the actual events for a real live taste of the action.

The problem with this deficit-spending-today-is-bad-because-it-hurts-our-children-in-the-future argument is that it presumes that the best thing for today's children would be for the federal government to stop spending so much money today on things like building schools, rescuing state school budgets, keeping college affordable, and providing health care to the children themselves.

I've got news for those protesters: things aren't so great for young people as they stand today, and they only stand to get worse without an intervention. Take the perfect storm that is closing in on youth who dream of going to college these days: college tuition costs at public universities will be raised at record rates to offset state budget shortfalls (the UC system in California projects tuition rate hikes of 9.3%, for example); private universities are reacting to financial pressures by accepting more wealthy students who can pay their own way at the expense of perhaps equally deserving low-income youth; skyrocketing proportions of recent graduates are defaulting on their ever-growing student loan debt; and the K-12 public school system is hardly excelling in preparing students to even get to college in the first place.

So what should we do as these factors close in on young people, making college less and less affordable--even as it becomes more and more necessary to succeed in the global marketplace?

Well if you listen to the tea party protesters, their answer seems to be a combination of things: reduce federal Pell grants and student loans, making college even more expensive; cut federal aid to states, who will face the catch-22 of either raising tuition costs or sacrificing the quality of their higher education programs; reduce federal K-12 aid, rendering our children even less likely to be ready for college should they even be able to afford it; and make health care a privilege instead of a right for some 20% of children. If only we can do that much for our children, the protesters seem to suggest, we can be sure that our children and our children's children will thank us for it down the road.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Things are not always as we expect them to be, and that lesson was particularly true this past week in two separate worlds: the world of education reform and the world of reality television.

What do I mean that "things are not always what they seem"? Let's start with the reality TV world and see how that sheds light on a significant decision by the Obama Administration to effectively end the controversial DC Voucher program. Here's a clip from the British equivalent of American Idol that has been drawing rave reviews lately--trust me when I say it will be unexpected:

Alright, so how does that important life lesson from Ms. Susan Boyle--that things are not always what they seem--apply to the world of education?

Last month, without much attention at all, the Democratic Congress and President Obama moved swiftly to end a program that currently sends over 1,700 Washington DC public school students--many of them from low-income families--to area private schools. The program, now in its fourth year, has long been opposed by Democrats and teachers unions, while drawing most of its support from Republicans. So at some level, the decision to halt funding for the program after next school year couldn't have been that much of a surprise given the outcome of the 2008 election.

But the Congress and the President's joint decision to terminate the program cast a deep shadow over two important considerations--much the same as Susan Boyle's physical appearance kept hidden a remarkable talent. The first consideration is that, put simply, the voucher program works. The students who applied for and received vouchers (in the amount of $7,500, distributed randomly by lottery) to attend nearby private schools performed significantly better than control group students who applied for the voucher lottery but did not win and consequently attended traditional public schools. The difference in academic achievement was statistically significant in reading--a more than three month average advantage for the private school students as opposed to the control group public school students. There was also a slight--but not statistically significant---advantage in math scores, along with a substantial difference in parent satisfaction (but similar results in student satisfaction surveys).

To be sure, this isn't the only study out there about vouchers and their impacts on students, and much of the rest of the data is at controversial to say the least. But the study that I linked to above was commissioned by the Department of Education itself, not some right-wing school choice organization.

Now it's one thing to have a spirited debate over whether vouchers work and to reject funding for the program as a result, but what the Administration did instead is disconcerting: it hid the results of the study while Congress was debating the fate of the program last month! Upon releasing the results last week, a handful of news agencies have expressed disappointment in the Administration's decision to keep hidden this valuable information about the program's effectiveness that might have changed the nature of the funding debate. Alas, the upshot is that some 200 families who were already told earlier this spring that their children would receive the vouchers to go to private schools next school year have since been told that the Federal government is reneging on that promise.

Which brings us to the second *arguable* things-are-not-what-they-seem lesson courtesy of Britain's Got Talent to the education reform world: Maybe President Obama and Secretary Duncan are not the honest and bold reformers as has been advertised after all?

Posted by Aaron Tang at 07:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's a quiet revolution happening at the US Department of Education concerning the department's rules governing tutoring services funded by the federal government under No Child Left Behind. Ok, maybe revolution is too strong of a word, but the conflict taking place is real and it underscores a serious area in which reform could truly benefit students.

The debate is about NCLB's requirement that schools provide free tutoring services (called "Supplemental Educational Services" or "SES" by the law) to low-income children in low-performing schools that fail to meet state targets for annual yearly progress for three consecutive years. In basic terms, the law functions this way: if a child attends a school that is measured as failing by virtue of its low standardized test scores three years in a row, that school is required by law to offer the child access to free tutoring before or after school, paid for by the federal government. But the fed doesn't pay for the tutoring with new dollars, it instead requires that the school use the federal dollars that it is already receiving under Title I to pay for the tutoring --as much as $1,800 per student, depending on where the child lives.

The controversy that has arisen in recent days started with an April 1st, but not April-Fools letter from new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, which stated that he would be changing the rules as they had been applied in the previous administration. Under the Bush Administration and former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, school districts were required to pay a third party to provide the tutoring service--usually a for-profit or non-profit company with some pre-designed tutoring program. The law thus functioned as a windfall for existing tutoring companies and a spark for the creation of many new companies, but the results were hardly encouraging, as there were wide gaps in the effectiveness of the program and many of them showed little benefit altogether.

Part of the reason why all of the money spent on the tutoring--more than $2.5 billion in 2005--yielded such little in the way of results was that very few students actually participated. The NY Times observed in 2004, for instance, that of the 2 million students eligible for the tutoring services, only 12% were actually receiving them. Secretary Duncan, based on his experience from Chicago, has argued that one of the reasons why the program has had such little effect and enrolled so few students is because of the old rule requiring schools to outsource the tutoring to private companies rather than provide the tutoring themselves. So it was of little surprise that Mr. Duncan's letter to school officials on April 1st indicated that he would be changing the rules to allow schools to provide the tutoring services directly.

What will be the result of that change? If you listen to the nation's leading education thinkers, probably not much. The reality is, as long as these services are dubbed "supplemental" and described as "tutoring" they won't have the kind of buy-in from parents, students, or educators (whether from the school district or an outside company) that is necessary to foster a learning environment. The data tell us that there is little reason to think that a wholly voluntary program provided by a low-performing school to its children will do in an hour after class what it has struggled to do for years; and just as little reason to think that some for-profit (or even non-profit) company will be able to swoop in and do it either.

So here's a better idea: what if we require schools that are chronically failing to use their federal dollars to extend the formal length of the school year and school day? Instead of sending a letter home to parents to tell them that their child is eligible for free tutoring if the parent is able to bring the child to school early every morning or pick them up after school hours (which poses two problems: first, parents often are reluctant to affirmatively enroll their kids in a tutoring program that is seen as remedial, and second, the pick up and drop off are themselves logistically challenging), let's just require all of the children to spend more time on the vital learning tasks that schools should be doing to begin with. Now it's no solution by itself, since a lengthened school day and year is only as effective as the teachers in each classroom, but it would guarantee a much higher rate of participation than the 12% we're seeing with the current "tutoring" services. And it would potentially give teachers the kind of additional time they need with individual students to make the kinds of connections that foster learning.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the availability of a staggering $44 billion in stimulus funding to states for education. The primary purpose of the funds will be to help local districts and states bridge the growing gaps in their own education budgets, preventing teacher layoffs and other resource cuts. But the administration has also suggested secondary and perhaps tertiary purposes: to assist in new school facility construction and to provide financial incentives for systemic school reform.

While the three purposes of the stimulus funding may intersect in their ultimate goal of improving the quality of public education in America, there is a growing debate over just how the money should be spent. The issue is how the $44 billion pie should be divided up among the states. It's a pressing question, and one that the Department of Education just doesn't have enough time to tackle well (given the more immediate to need to stimulate the economy), but here are a few of the ways that have been suggested along with the pros and cons. As you consider the options, think not only about which one you think is best but also how one might convince lawmakers to go that route in the future.

Option #1: Use existing Title I formulas to distribute the stimulus funding to states. The existing formulas are based on a combination of three factors: (1) how high a concentration of poor students the state has, (2) how much money each state already spends per pupil, and (3) how many students the state in gross.

While the three factors sound reasonable, a recent NY Times article highlighted some of the weaknesses of this approach, which is the one that the Department of Education will ultimately use. The main problems with this approach are first, that federal aid will essentially reward those states that already spend the most on their students, and second, that low-income students who face similar hurdles will receive different amounts of federal support simply based on where they happen to live. The reason why Congress has nevertheless chosen this approach is pretty straight-forward: Congress doesn't want states to take the federal dollars and just use it as a substitute for state dollars. By conditioning the amount of funding on how much the states are themselves willing to pony up, the idea is that you'll give the states reason to spend more and more of their own money on schools, which can only be a good thing. And by giving more money to states with higher concentrations of low-income students, the theory goes that you're targeting more intense areas of need.

The problem, of course, is that the formula results in funding levels that are not based on need, and have no relationship to actual student improvement. For instance, New York, where there are high concentrations of low-income students and relatively high state spending, will receive roughly $1,700 per student. North Dakota and Wyoming will get similar amounts. But California, where educational achievement is quite a bit lower and where there are huge number of at-need youth, will only get $1,300 per student.

Option #2: Give money to states based purely on need. The disparities in funding levels that seem to benefit higher spending and often higher achieving states has led to a natural counter-proposal to give the money based purely on need. In this approach, the Depart of Education would give money to those states that are (1) currently spending the least on students, and (2) show the lowest level of student achievement. This is a similar counter-proposal to those in the anti-No Child Left Behind camp who suggest that the federal government should not be punishing schools that fail to meet Annual Yearly Progress but instead subsidizing them with more federal support.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that it may do exactly the opposite of what we want in the long run. Instead of giving states a reason to spend more of their own dollars on children, it encourages states to keep their school spending levels artificially low since that's one way to get more free federal money. Worse yet, it incentivizes states to care little about student performance, since the worse their kids do the more money they get. Adopting this approach, critics argue, would be tantamount to a parent awarding their son $50 for getting D's and F's while giving only $10 to their daughter who got straight-A's.

Option #3: Condition grants to states on actual academic performance and improvement, rather than need. A third and more recent suggestion, one that is gaining popularity in state-level decisions on how to distribute state dollars to local districts, would instruct the federal government to give money to states based, at least in part, on how well the states are improving student achievement. States that show strong improvement in increasing their students reading and math skills would get funding boosts, while states that struggle would not. The idea behind this approach is similar to a parent rewarding their son with $50 when he brings his grades up from D's and F's to B's and C's, while giving their daughter less money when her grades go down from A's to B's.

None of the formulas is perfect, which only adds to Congress's and the Department of Education's challenge. But at the end of the day, this may be one of the most vital nuanced decisions that is made as part of the stimulus package when it comes to the long-term success of the program and of our nation as a whole.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 08:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)