Education Archives - Page 38 of 40 - Progressive Policy Institute

A New Approach to School Choice

Posted on June 22, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

“You’ve got to keep this country in the change business,” former President Bill Clinton urged a gathering of school reformers in Atlanta yesterday. It’s sound and timely advice progressives should heed, especially as a wave of reaction breaks over America’s two-decades- old experiment in public school choice.

Public charter schools, a form of school choice that Clinton championed as president, have come under fire from detractors who say they have failed to outperform traditional public schools. The right answer is to accelerate the growth of top charter operators and to shut down low-performing charters. And in keeping with Clinton’s admonition to stay the course of reform and experimentation, progressives should continue to look for ways to expand the concept of public school choice.

An intriguing example is New York’s innovative School of One, which offers a compelling model of choice within schools rather than choice among schools.

Founded by Joel Rose in 2009, the School of One is now the full-time math curriculum at three New York public middle schools serving 1,500 students.

The program operates in large spaces in each school to allow a variety of learning to occur, such as working in small groups or individually on laptops to complete lessons in the form of quizzes, games, and worksheets. When students arrive at school each day, they receive their “individual play lists” – their daily assignments to complete.

In essence, the School of One allows students to choose among a variety of ways of learning math depending on their unique abilities and interests. They might, for example, decide to work individually, with a peer, in groups, or with a teacher. The School of One eschews the traditional, one-size-fits-all approach to pedagogy in favor of differentiation and personalized instruction.

Students also take an assessment at the end of each day to determine if they are ready to move on to the next day’s assignment. Administrators analyze progress students are making on screens of their own and can monitor student achievement, as well as current progress via the student computer screens.

The School of One relies heavily on technology to adapt lessons to individual students. It incorporates popular tools that students already know and use daily. A 2009 study by Stanford Research Institute International (SRI) concluded that on average, students who learn by using online tools perform better than students who only learn one-on-one in a classroom setting.

The results have been impressive. According to the Educational Development Center, Inc. (EDC), there has been a twenty-eight percent rise in scores between pre-test and post-test for School of One 2009 summer school participants. Researchers also found that School of One students learned at a significantly higher rate — as much as seven times faster — than students with similar starting scores and demographic characteristics. In the 2010 Spring School Pilot, the New York City Department of Education’s Research and Policy Study Group (RPSG) estimated that School of One students learned at a rate fifty to sixty percent higher than those in traditional classrooms.

The School of One boasts a highly integrated and diverse student body in its three schools. For instance, M.S. 131 is comprised of eighty-one percent Asian, six percent Black and twelve percent Hispanic, I.S. 228 has thirty-four percent Asian, sixteen percent Black, twenty-three percent Hispanic and twenty-seven percent White students, and I.S. 339 has a student body of thirty-one percent Black and sixty-seven percent Hispanic students.

Arthur Levine, President of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation acknowledged, “New York City’s School of One may turn out to be the single most important experiment conducted in education so far. It is the future.”

Though the School of One has fostered remarkable gains among its students in a short amount of time, questions still remain. Is the model scalable for a larger group of students? How is the model different than the Montessori School model that has been around for a hundred years? Most important, even if the model is scalable and sustainable, can we afford it? The curriculum cost $1 million for the 2009 summer pilot program serving eighty students in one school. It is expected to rise to $13.3 million in 2012, when the program is anticipated to be used in 20 schools.

Perhaps some answers to these questions will surface as the program expands to four new sites in 2012. In any case, the School of One shows that New York city is, as Clinton put it, in the “change business” when it comes to lifting the quality of public education. Let’s hope other cities follow New York’s example.

Photo Credit: C.A. Muller

Grading KIPP–Continued

Posted on June 8, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

School children The KIPP Charter School network is widely hailed as among the nation’s most effective, so naturally charter skeptics are always looking for chinks in its armor. Among the most thoughtful of those skeptics is the Century Foundation’s Richard Kahlenberg. In a recent blog post, Kahlenberg cites this eye-catching statistic: only 33 percent of middle school KIPP graduates go on to receive a degree from a four-year college.

That sounds low, but of course the relevant question is, compared to what? According to the same source Kahlenberg cited, about 75 percent of students who graduate from suburban schools get a college degree. But among low-income students in high poverty districts, only 8.3 percent graduate from college. That’s the only valid comparison, since KIPP operates almost exclusively in such districts and overwhelming educates poor, minority students.

More than 85 percent of KIPP students have gone to college, as opposed to 40 percent of low-income students nationwide. KIPP reports that more than 90 percent of its students outperform their district counterparts on standardized tests.

Kahlenberg maintains, while KIPP has impressive statistics on attrition and high school graduation rates, the model continues to fall short in overcoming poverty and segregation. This may be true, but KIPP’s mission is not to combat poverty. Instead, the network is “dedicated to preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life.”

The KIPP network’s goal is to see 75 percent of its students graduate from college, essentially matching the performance of students from high-performing suburban schools. This would be a staggering achievement. It’s fair to ask how KIPP plans to more than double its college completion rate. But it’s unfair to demand miracles from an organization that has existed for just 17 years, and only recently opened its doors in 2004 to elementary and high schools.

This is relevant because KIPP, like many other charters, does not have a vast array of data to work with and only graduated its first class of high school students in 2008 from Houston High School. It’s worth noting that the data KIPP and outsiders rely on comes from middle school students served by KIPP ten years ago, most of whom have not attended a KIPP school since eighth grade.

Finally, Kahlenberg and other skeptics discount KIPP’s successes on the grounds that its schools benefit from a selection bias, in that only the most motivated low-income families try to get their kids into KIPP. This claim, while controversial, is contested by KIPP and certainly merits further study. In the meantime, progressives ought to embrace and support KIPP’s efforts to build on its undeniable successes in educating low-income kids.

Photo credit: Neighborhood Centers

A Postcard from the Middle East: A Suggestion for Obama’s New Beginning

Posted on May 23, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

America has no wasta. Lacking substantive relationships is especially damning in the Arab world, because it is the informal connections, or wasta, which spells the difference between influence and irrelevance. Problem is that while Arabs might eat Cincinnati-style chili at the Dead Sea, teeny-bop to Justin Beiber, and yearn for democracy, there is very little person-to-person connection between America’s consumers of these products and the Arab world’s.

In his 2009 Cairo speech, for example, the president rightly called for a “new beginning” in U.S.-Arab relations. He doubled down late last week, with a speech designed to cement America on the side of the little guy across the region. But without wasta, no matter how well-intended or thought out, President Obama’s vision for the region will flounder.

Capitalizing on the socially networked revolutions and protests, the Millenial generation is the best place to start building wasta. Famously community-oriented, cussedly apolitical, yet relentlessly idealistic, the Millenials understand the importance of inter-connectedness. Eschewing romantic crusades for the nitty-gritty of service, this generation builds a better world one project at a time. To help transform the region, the president should summon his inner Kennedy. Mobilizing the Millenials, Obama could create a new Peace Corps to meet the Arab world’s challenges: The Sharaka (together). The Sharaka would not only deliver developmental aid across the Middle East, it would help mend America’s tattered image, assist in the region’s democratization, and earn Obama some wasta.

I have come to appreciate the need for a Sharaka-like organization from direct experience. Over the past two summers, I have led Millenials on service-learning trips to Madaba, Jordan. Located 20 miles south of Amman, Madaba is famous for its archeological ruins and mosaics. Settled by Christian Bedouins, Madaba now boasts a Muslim majority, largely comprised of Palestinians. Situated in the heart of the city is our home base, the Latin Patriarchate School for Girls. Utilizing the connections our State Department lacks, my school, Gannon University, gained entrée to the region through that most time-worn wasta of the Levant: the Catholic Church.

A Catholic school in a religiously mixed city is hardly representative of the Arab world. Madaba and the Latin Patriarchate School for Girls, however, are the exceptions that prove the rule. Even here, in a relatively affluent and tolerant city, the Arab Spring’s echoes are felt. In a scene reminiscent of Tahir Square, last week scores of Madabans marched peacefully to call for the mayor’s resignation. Moreover, Christian and Muslim, alike, Madabans call for democracy, freedom, and meaningful reform.

After teaching English in the Catholic schools, my students and I spend the afternoon at the Sharaka Center for Democracy. Intended as a community hub to inculcate democratic practices, Sharaka connects us to Madaba’s Muslim community. Eager to learn English, children and professionals flock to Sharaka to learn a world language and engage with Americans.

In serving thousands of hours over the past two summers, my students not only have earned the wasta our State Department lacks, they have been changed. Unlike their peers, who harbor deep anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments, these Millenials are friends with hundreds of Muslim and Christian Arabs. They understand Arabs needs a partner, not a hegemon. Presidential speeches matter and American leadership remain crucial, but the path to influence, in the Arab world, begins with befriending our Arab brothers and sisters.

Why One Critic of Going Exponential is Misguided

Posted on April 25, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Writers usually do not respond to critiques from the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) because they are so one-sided and predictable, especially if a report suggests any potential benefits to charter schools. But since their review of our report for the Progressive Policy Institute on growing the best charter schools, seriously mischaracterizes the research base of our findings – and our claims about that base – we decided we needed to reply briefly.

As we explain clearly in the report, our findings are based on a review of existing literature about rapidly growing organizations in the business and nonprofit sectors. We did not conduct, or claim to have conducted, original research in the vein of the multi-year Jim Collins research effort that produced Good to Great. The Collins book did not focus on the extreme rapid growth period of interest to us in this paper, so it was not the proper base for this particular paper. Luckily, the phenomenon of rapid growth has already been studied by others, and therefore we drew on that literature in our report.

Though the NEPC review suggests that our “research section” contains “only three references,” in fact the report cites dozens of books, journal articles, and case studies in support of our conclusions. The review also states that we do not discuss the nature of the studies, but readers will find just such discussion in the endnotes included in the report, available here. As we explain in an endnote, for example, one the primary studies we used to form our conclusions, David Thomson’s Blueprint to a Billion, compared 387 sustained, rapid growth firms that achieved a billion dollars in revenue to over 5,000 peer companies that fell short of this mark.

Notably, the NEPC review does not challenge any of the lessons that we drew from this literature review, or suggest any alternate findings that would explain why some organizations manage to grow rapidly while others do not. Nor does it challenge our main point, which is that millions of children could benefit if even a subset of the best charter schools grew at high rates like the best growth organizations in other sectors. Instead, the review questions the applicability of lessons from other kinds of organizations to charter schools, asking what relevance the interaction between a barista and a customer has to the interaction between a teacher and a student.

But here’s what’s interesting. You could just as easily ask what relevance do barista-customer interactions have to the activities of Habitat for Humanity, networking-hardware giant Cisco, or a software firm like Microsoft. And yet these disparate organizations used similar tactics to grow rapidly, most of which have little to do with the specific industries in which they work. The real question is why educational organizations couldn’t use similar tactics in their effort to reach more students with high-quality teaching and learning. Too many children simply are not reached by teaching excellence today, and the teachers and other staff in the best charter schools have figured out how to deliver that excellence.

Of course, rapid growers in any sector would be thrilled not to have to use analogies. Ideally, numerous excellent charter organizations will work over the next few years to grow rapidly. They will use a variety of approaches, some of which will be more successful than others. Primary researchers will then be able to learn a great deal from that experience, while many more children benefit meanwhile. For anyone who would like to see more kids served by excellent schools, that’s the kind of action and follow-up research we need.

More College Graduates, More Democratic Voters?

Posted on March 24, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

This week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced competitive grants to encourage states to increase their college graduation rates, with a goal to add eight million college graduates by 2020.

Sure, there are plenty of legitimate policy-related reasons why we might want to increase the number of college graduates. After all, as Secretary Duncan put it, “We all know that the best jobs and fastest-growing firms will gravitate to countries, communities, and states with a highly qualified work force.”

But, for those who can’t imagine Obama doing anything without an ulterior motive, consider the graphs below that show that increasing the number of college graduates might also increase the number of Democratic voters and reduce the number of Republican voters.

The first graph shows the state-level relationship between the percentage of individuals identifying as Democrats (data from Gallup) and the percentage of individuals with bachelor’s degrees. There’s a clear, statistically significant relationship that explains 28 percent of the state-level variation in Democratic identification. For every one percentage point increase in college graduates in a state, the percentage of Democratic identifiers increases by 0.75 percent.

The second graph shows the state-level relationship of Republican identifiers and college graduates. As you’d expect, it’s pretty much the reverse. For every one percentage point increase in college graduates, the percentage of individuals identifying as Republicans decreases by 0.76 percentage points. This simple regression explains 30 percent of the variation.

Now let’s look at the relationship of state-level education to state-level liberals and conservatives. Here the relationship is even more significant:

For every one percentage point increase in state-level college graduates, the percentage of liberals also increases by 0.75 percentage points. Impressively, education level explains 66 percent of variation in state-level percentage of liberals.

By contrast, for every one percentage point in college graduates, there is a 0.88 percentage point decline in the share of conservatives, and this by itself explains 58 percent of the state-level variation in the number of conservatives.

Does this mean that there is a simple causal story that education makes people more liberal either because (in the conservative telling) it turns them into elitist snobs, or (in the liberal telling) it gives them enough knowledge to understand how the world works?

Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps liberal, Democratic states invest more in education, which is why those states have more college graduates. It’s also important to note that 1) these are state-level, not individual-level relationships, and 2) this is a static relationship, not a time series.

Nonetheless, the graphs are quite telling. The more college graduates, the more Democratic (and especially more liberal) the state. The fewer college graduates, the more Republican and (and especially more conservative) the state. There’s clearly something going on here, and I’m actually quite curious to hear how conservatives would respond.

Increasing the number of college graduates by eight million would bring the number of college graduates in the United States from approximately 83 million (27 percent) to 91 million (about 29 percent in 2020). That’s two percentage points, and if the relationship between state-level education and voting is indeed causal, it would mean a 1.5 percentage point increase in the share of Democratic identifiers and a similar decline among Republican identifiers. This could tip some states.

Well, now I’ve given conservatives an argument against increasing the number of college graduates.

Who Believes in Sputnik?

Posted on March 18, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Many parents can’t decide whether they love or hate the Tiger Mom. Either way, she has focused our collective attention on education in the United States. American students are falling behind students from other countries. In the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing of 15 year-old students from 65 countries, our children placed 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and a below-average 31st in math. The results from January’s National Assessment of Education Progress were equally dismal – only 21 percent of the nation’s 12th graders scored ‘proficient’ in science. In his State of the Union address, President Obama called this our “Sputnik moment,” a crisis moment in the history of our country that should shock us into action.

But is it possible to change our educational system in the US? Success in today’s world is based upon proficiency and innovation in science. Multiple factors contribute to our poor performance, but one glaring problem is the disregard of scientific facts by a large segment of our society. Science allows for a certain amount of dissent, but when ideological, political or religious beliefs automatically nullify reasonable scientific facts, there is potential danger.

Many American students are raised to disbelieve some of the bedrock principles of modern biological science, including evolution. A troubling report, published in Science (Jan 28), describes the concern that 13 percent of high school biology teachers actively teach creationism and an additional 60 percent avoid the controversy of evolution. That leaves less than one third of educators who teach the scientifically-accepted truth about evolutionary biology. To succeed in science, one needs to build knowledge from facts. If scientific facts such as evolution are taught to be false, what foundation then have we given our students? This is certainly not a solid one upon which to base innovation or the next great discovery.

Only 39 percent of Americans believe in evolution. Fifty-seven percent do not believe in global climate change. And only 38 percent believe there is no link between vaccines and autism. Solid bodies of literature separate fact from fiction on these topics, but the majority of Americans apparently disregards the truth. If this denial of scientific fact is then passed on to our children, the next generation of Americans will find difficulty not only with the PISA test, but also with the real world challenge of finding scientifically valid solutions to big problems like climate change and finding cures for disease. We need our children to be innovators, but America’s ideological constraints are holding them back.

Everyone has the right to their beliefs. The rub here is how to balance one’s religion, politics, or ideology with the validity of science. Is it not the responsibility of a religion or ideology to make its teaching compatible with scientific facts? Faith, as I understand it, should be enough to account for the unknowable or unexplainable. And it should be strong enough to accommodate scientific facts within its belief structure. This is not a new struggle, but the consequences are greater in today’s information age where the internet can spread data instantly. It took the Catholic Church almost 400 years to vindicate Galileo for his support of the heliocentric view of the universe, despite solid scientific evidence from Copernican times. Today, religions and ideologies not only harm their own credibility by not accepting evolution but potentially contribute to the flawed science education that seems so prevalent in the United States now. In Galileo’s time, some scholars tried to harmonize the new data with Scripture and Church teachings, but were not able to carry the day. Eventually, it became untenable to deny Galileo’s claims; now is that time for evolution and science in general. We cannot wait another 400 years or we will be overtaken by cultures that advocate real science.

Last December, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in December. Near the end of her comments, she called the K-12 education problem in our country a national security issue. “There are a lot of problems,” she said. “Proliferation, Afghanistan, the Middle East. But the US needs internal repair more than it needs anything else.” Now is the time to start that internal repair. We must teach true science to our children, before another country seizes our Sputnik moment.

Overcoming the Obstacles to Charter School Growth

Posted on February 17, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

High-performing charter schools need to grow faster to serve more students, but to do so, they will have to overcome not just organizational obstacles but also significant political ones. That was the takeaway from a panel discussion on charter schools the Progressive Policy Institute held at the National Press Club today to launch a new PPI report: “Going Exponential: Speeding the Growth of High-Quality Charter Schools,” by Emily Ayscue Hassel, Bryan C. Hassel and Joe Ableidinger.

Bryan Hassel led off the panel by discussing his report, which begins from the premise that high-performing charter schools need to grow faster in order to serve more low-income children. “They only serve a tiny fraction of the students, only ten percent,” he said. “And the average number of schools being added annually is 1.3 schools. Only five CMOs [Charter Management Organizations] are planning to have more than 30 schools in their network by 2025. I don’t see a lot of prospects for serving millions of kids who need these schools.”

Hassel’s report focuses on urging leading CMOs to think big, and he distills nine lessons from high-growth organizations in the private sector that could apply to charters. On the panel he focused on four: generating cash flow, tackling talent scarcity, reaching customers where they are, and finding top leaders committed to growth.

To improve cash flow, he proposed a pay-for-performance scheme: “What if the best charters were paid more?” Hassel asked. “What if the top 10 percent received 10 percent more? Then they could invest in growth. And then we’d pay worse charter schools less, which would hasten the closing of the worst charter schools.”

To improve reach, Hassel proposed micro-reach and micro-chartering strategies: “How do you do more without having to find a facility?” Hassel said. “One idea is that policymakers could issue charters not just to whole schools but to individual teachers who want to serve 20-40 kids.”

Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Charter Network (who was featured in the documentary “Waiting for Superman”), applauded the goal of rapid growth. Success Charter Network has doubled in size every for the last four years, and will open up two more in the next year. “And I don’t die of exhaustion,” said Moskowitz, “I could keep going.”

And when she says exhaustion, she means exhaustion from the politics. “In our world it’s really hand-to-hand combat,” she said. “It’s the teachers’ union blockading students and preventing them from entering the school. We’re talking about having to ask police to come to usher our kids, five year olds, into the building” These politics, she noted, put real obstacles on growth.

Andrew Rotherham, partner at Bellwether Education Partners and former PPI colleague, echoed Hassel’s call for scaling up. “This field does not understand scale,” he said. “The only thing we consistently know how to scale is problems, bad ideas, and perverse incentives.”

Like Moskowitz, he also put a focus on politics. “We’ve done a poor job of using regulation and incentives,” he said. “Really there’s only one state, Michigan, that in meaningful ways incentivizes a process where good charter schools can replicate effectively.”

Rotherham noted that in many ways, top charter schools have grown beyond expectations. Once upon a time people predicted KIPP would never expand beyond two dozen schools (it is now at 100) and TFA would never expand beyond 500 core members (it now has 20,000 alums). But he also posed a question for future growth: “Do we need more CMOs or bigger CMOs? We talk about more-more-more, but what should it look like.”

R. Brooks Garber, vice president of federal advocacy for National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, added a note of caution to the rapid growth strategy. Quality control is important, he said. “It takes only one failure, and one failure would be the end of the brand. We open schools one grade at a time.” But he agreed that charter schools could be more strategic.

Hassel responded by suggesting that even if rapid expansion resulted in slightly reduced performance for top charter schools, it would still probably be better than the alternative – the continuation of inferior public or other charter schools.

All and all, the discussion highlighted the tensions between the aspirations of rapid growth and the substantial on-the-ground obstacles, both political and organizational. Everyone wants high-performing charters to grow faster. But it ain’t easy.

The Most Important Question About Charter Schools

Posted on February 17, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Controversy rages over the overall contribution of charter schools to education reform. And while charter schools have produced mixed results, that is for a simple reason: not all charter schools are created equal.

Some charter schools do produce poor results. But other charter schools receive extraordinary results, turning around the lives of low-income children.

Rather than group all charter schools together and debate the wisdom of charter schools generally, here’s a better question to ask: How do we facilitate growth of the charter schools that work? How do we bring the effective teaching strategies from the most successful charter schools to more students?

That’s the question that Emily Ayscue Hassel, Bryan C. Hassel and Joe Ableidinger tackle in a new report for the Progressive Policy Institute, entitled “Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best.”

The report outlines nine lessons from fast-growing organizations that can be applied to charter schools. You can read it here.

But the big lesson is simple:

Charter leaders who want to pursue exponential growth and funders who want to support them must become much more familiar with the rapid-growth strategies used in other sectors and apply them to education. In addition, policymakers must prioritize removing any barriers to growth by the best – while also creating new incentives and avenues for excellent programs to reach more children.

Bryan Hassel will be on hand tomorrow (Feb. 17) at the National Press Club, to discuss the paper, along with R. Brooks Garber of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Eva Moskowitz of the Success Charter Network, and Andrew Rotherham of Bellwether Education Partners. For more details, click here.

PPI EVENT – Going Exponential: Speeding the Growth of High-Quality Charter Schools

Posted on February 15, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Going Exponential: Speeding the Growth of High-Quality
Charter Schools

Featured Speakers:
R. Brooks Garber, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
Bryan Hassel, Public Impact
Eva Moskowitz, Success Charter Network
Andrew Rotherham, Bellwether Education Partners

Moderator:
Will Marshall, President, Progressive Policy Institute

Date:
Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011
10 a.m.–11:30 a.m.

Location:
National Press Club
529 14th St. NW
Bloomberg Room
Washington, DC

View map

If you have any questions, please contact 202-525-3926.

Register for this event.

Space is limited. RSVP required.

_____________________________________________________

The public charter school movement, hindered by major political and financial obstacles, has made slow and uneven progress over the last two decades. Its detractors charge that charters produce, on average, results no better than traditional public schools. Yet no one denies that there are many high-quality charters. As movingly described in documentaries such as Waiting for Superman, these schools are giving hope to poor families desperate for alternatives to the “drop-out factories” that plague many low-income communities.

Charter skeptics and enthusiasts, therefore, ought to be able to agree that it would be good for America’s neediest families have more high-performing charters schools. The question is how to spur such growth.

Please join us as PPI unveils a new study by Bryan Hassel, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Joe Ableidinger of Public Impact: Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best. The report draws lessons from high-growth organizations in other sectors for charter school operators and management organizations and offers charter operators practical advice for how to scale up.

PPI is also proud to present three distinguished commentators: Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Charter Network in New York, Andy Rotherham, co-founder at Bellwether Education Partners and Brooks Garbor Vice President for Federal Advocacy of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Healing the Teaching Profession

Posted on February 4, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Just before the holidays, the National Center for Teacher Quality released a report evaluating 53 institutions* that train and educate students for the teaching profession in Illinois. Immediately and predictably, all hell broke loose. Schools responded that the report methods and data collection were skewed and lazy—the NCTQ responded back that its methods are well-founded and that great volumes of data were reviewed to inform their judgment.

The debate swirls on with US News and World Report’s recent announcement that it will be using NCTQ’s rating system to form its annual ranking of education prep programs. That’s okay. Debate is good, particularly around something like education, which is an undeniably big deal. But debate can also be obscuring.

At almost exactly the same time that NCTQ revealed its findings about Illinois’ teacher prep programs, another report was released, to relatively little fanfare, let alone debate. Prepared by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, the 40-page document argues that the training of teachers needs to be “turned upside down”—more clinical experience, more rigor, more accountability, more careful placement for new teachers. In short, pre-ed should look a lot more like pre-med.

Citing both medicine and education as practice-based fields, the NCATE report argues that a doctor can’t practice from books alone. In fact, she can’t even begin to conceptualize practice without actual patients. Education works similarly.

This report is also hardly alone in the analogy—the National Research Council points out that this argument has been made in various forms since the ‘80s, and at least one Boston program has been placing “teacher residents” in city classrooms since 2003.

There are clear similarities between education and medicine: both draw from a rich body of knowledge, scientific inquiry, and multi-disciplinary information. Both seek to impact the body or mind to some degree, dealing both with internal structures and external stimuli. Both aim for betterment and regulation, though differently defined.

The biggest disconnect between the two might be the argument that education is not practiced to achieve a singular, universally agreed upon outcome—though I think any randomized sample of doctors would might have more to say (medicine to heal, to prevent, to improve, to harmonize, etc.). In both fields, technique is easy once you know the basics. And opinions on the purpose of your vocation will ultimately be self-generating. In education, it’s a common starting point that’s missing.

What would it look like if we were to train teachers they way we train doctors?

It would look interdisciplinary. It would look reflective. It would look more holistic than it does today—meaning, technique (how to get your 17-year-olds to pay attention to you for 42 minutes) and theory (17-year-olds are at a particular developmental phase, are suffering from over-taxed short-term memory, and are having difficulty building cognitive schemas that they need to organize and access information) would be linked, rather than siloed into separate classes or disciplines.

And it would look hard, I think. There’s a reason for the high attrition in freshman O-Chem courses. There’s no reason to assume that the demands of learning to teach should be any less. Being able to nurture an intellectual life is just as important as being able to save one on the operating table.

The old axiom “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach” is standing in the way. But if we also value the statement that “Education is the silver bullet” (I’m quoting West Wing there, but the idea behind this statement saturates the panic about educational achievement we live with today) maybe it’s time to change axioms for good.

Making it happen, of course, is the sticky wicket. The NCATE report suggests that the solution might be in the change itself. It advocates involving clinical hosts (districts, schools, principals and individual teacher mentors) at the start of the training process.

This means not only co-designing goals and strategies for their achievement, not just providing placements, but also allowing for networks of critical reflection and feedback between the college classroom and K-12 learning site. Going beyond superficial partnership to create a deeply interconnected learning system does more than just give stakeholders a seat at the table—it changes the way they think about that table, and allows for a ripple effect of changing values.

Teach for America has long grounded its successes in the quick leap from its participants’ boot camp training to their presence in actual classrooms, and some charter schools or alternative certification programs have followed their lead to create their own quick-start or feet-wetting recruitment programs that often bypass traditional, certification-earning coursework for teachers—and often lead to high attrition and rapid teacher turnover.

Instead of squabbling over efficacy, traditional teaching colleges and university programs should learn from the best these programs have to offer (rapid introduction to clinical practice) and incorporate it into the just-as-necessary academic content they’re most equipped to provide: study in cognitive and learning sciences, developmental and psychological theories, and the most recent neurological findings that impact kids’ learning.

It’s not the NCATE report that’s ignited the firestorm of debate. But I would argue it should be. We’re used to a few key scapegoats for kids’ low achievement in schools (unions, assessment measures, etc.). But placing blame at that level disregards the source of the problem.

Re-tooling how teachers are educated seems to get us much closer to the root of the problem of our broken educational system. If nothing else, training teachers on a med-school model might provide some desperately lacking consistency in the field. The single-word summation of the NCTQ Illinois report was not, despite the responses it garnered, “evil” or “incompetent.” It was “inconsistent.” So maybe that’s the surest foothold to climb out of the teacher quality trap, stop placing blame, and start doing something.

*I would be remiss not to note, as a student and employee at DePaul University, one of the institutions in reviewed in the NCTQ Illinois report, that my views here are wholly my own and are not to be considered representative of the school.

What would it look like if we were to train teachers they way we train doctors?

Grading the State of The Union: A Solid B+

Posted on January 26, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Last week, the Progressive Policy Institute released a Memo to President Obama, which contained 10 Big Ideas for Getting America Moving Again. How did the President’s speech match up to our recommendations?

Overall, he did quite well. Eight of our ten ideas were largely consonant with proposals included in the address, and the future-oriented rhetoric echoes the language in our memo. We also appreciate his willingness to look to both sides of the aisle to find solutions.

However, we were disappointed that he did not discuss the sluggish housing market, and that he did offer any ideas to address the roots of the partisan rancor in Washington.

Our overall grade: B+

Here’s a proposal-by-proposal scorecard:

1. Removing Obstacles to Growth: A Regulatory Improvement Commission

We proposed: A periodic review process conducted by a Regulatory Improvement Commission, modeled loosely on the BRAC Commissions for military base closures.

The President said: “To reduce barriers to growth and investment, I’ve ordered a review of government regulations.”

Analysis: The President clearly understands that we need to prune obsolete and ineffective regulations and stimulate economic innovation and entrepreneurship. But agency self-review is inadequate.

Grade: A-

2. Internal National Building: A National Infrastructure Bank

We proposed: Smart, innovative financing solutions that enable us to restore the backbone of our economy. A well-structured National Infrastructure Bank can play this role by leveraging public dollars with the participation of private-sector investors.

The President said: “The third step in winning the future is rebuilding America. To attract new businesses to our shores, we need the fastest, most reliable ways to move people, goods, and information — from high-speed rail to high-speed Internet.”

Analysis: Making infrastructure one of five sections of the speech gave it real prominence. But the President needs to do more than just propose “that we redouble those efforts.” He needs to lay out a mechanism to do that rationally, and to identify clear funding for it. A National Infrastucture Bank could accomplish that.

Grade: A-

3. A Way to Pay for High-Speed Rail

We proposed: Restructuring the Highway Trust Fund into a Surface Transportation Trust Fund that recaptures its original mission—to build and maintain an efficient national transportation network—and updates that mission to reflect 21st-century priorities, including upgrades to our passenger and freight rail systems.

The President said: “Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail. “

Analysis: We applaud the President’s full-throated commitment to high-speed rail. However, he’s going to need to figure out a way to pay for it. We suggest he read Mark Reutter’s excellent memo on how to finance high-speed rail.

Grade: A-

4. Restoring Fiscal Discipline in Washington

We proposed: Restoring fiscal discipline in Washington by trimming the $1.1 trillion in outdated tax expenditures, capping domestic spending (including defense), eliminating supplemental defense budgets, and slowing mandatory expenditures by reducing benefits for affluent retirees.

The President said: “Starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years… we cut excessive spending wherever we find it –- in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes… we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations…we simply can’t afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.”

Analysis: The President clearly gets the seriousness of the looming debt crisis, but understands the difference between smart cuts and needed investments. But he could have come out more strongly in favor the Fiscal Commission’s work, and he only paid lip service to entitlements.

Grade: B+

5. Setting National Targets: A Balanced Energy Portfolio

We proposed: A national Balanced Energy Portfolio with a target fuel mix allocated into thirds by 2040: one third of our electricity generated by renewable resources, one third by nuclear power, and one third from traditional fossil fuels.

The President said: “By 2035, 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all — and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.”

Analysis: The President is thinking big, but also recognizing that nuclear and natural gas need to be part of any energy mix.

Grade: A

6. Greening the Pentagon: An Energy Security Innovation Fund

We proposed: An Energy Security Innovation Fund, housed in the Pentagon, to help companies bridge the gap. Such a fund would leverage public dollars with private money to support research and deployment of the most promising green products.

The President said: “We’re telling America’s scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we’ll fund the Apollo projects of our time.”

Analysis: The next clean energy breakthrough is going to require support from the government. But Obaa should look beyond the Department of Energy and recognize that the military can be a fertile source of innovation, too.

Grade: A-

7. Bringing Public Education into the 21st Century

We proposed: To radically transform public education by growing charter schools, ending teacher tenure as we know it, spurring a network of “Innovation Zones”, and creating a “Digital Teacher Corps”.

The President said: “Our schools share this responsibility. When a child walks into a classroom, it should be a place of high expectations and high performance. But too many schools don’t meet this test.”

Analysis: Education is clearly the key to our ability to “win the future,” and the President understands this. We support his Race to the Top program and the call for more bright young people to go into education. But we also hope he thinks more creatively about radical new ideas for 21^st century education, embracing the possibilities of charter schools, digital education, and “innovation zones.”

Grade: A-

8. Lifting Housing Markets: One Million Homeowner Vouchers

We proposed: An innovative way to jump-start the housing market would be for the federal government to provide a million vouchers that allow low-income renters to become homeowners.

The President said: (Nothing)

Analysis: Surprisingly, the President failed to mention the sluggish housing market, which many economists believe is one of the leading factors holding back an economic recovery.

Grade: F

9. Align Innovation and Immigration

We proposed: Aligning innovation and immigration by providing a citizenship path for foreign students with advanced technical degrees and illegal immigrants’ children who are interested in national service.

The President said: “I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration… I know that debate will be difficult. I know it will take time. But tonight, let’s agree to make that effort. And let’s stop expelling talented, responsible young people who could be staffing our research labs or starting a new business, who could be further enriching this nation. “

Analysis: The President deserves points for having the courage to bring up immigration reform. But he clearly gets it: our global competitiveness depends on continuing to be a magnet for the world’s best and brightest.

Grade: A

10. Taking Power from Special Interests: A Fair Way to Finance Elections

We proposed: A hybrid Fair Elections system introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to allow federal candidates to choose to run for office without relying on large contributions by using federal money to match small donations.

The President said: (Nothing)

Analysis: Campaign finance reform is not on the agenda, and the President does not seem particularly interested in putting it there. This is too bad. A great way to break the partisan rancor in Washington would be change the way politicians get elected to office. As long as congressional campaigns are privately funded, and as long as the big donations come primarily from ideologues and special interests, pragmatic candidates are going to have a tough time raising the resources they need to get started, and a difficult time winning in all-important low-turnout primaries.

Grade: F

Conclusion:

Overall, it was a great speech. It laid out the problems that we face as a nation, and provided a vision of an America that invests smartly in the future, building infrastructure, providing educational opportunities, and remaining a magnet for the best and brightest in the world, and all in a way that could move us past partisan divides.

Impossible DREAM

Posted on December 20, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

One of Barack Obama’s finest moments as President came this past September, when he gave a speech to Congress urging passage of the health-care reform bill. In his closing remarks, he invoked the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, and what Kennedy had written him in his final days: “What we face is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.” Those words resonated with Obama. “I’ve thought about that phrase quite a bit in recent days – the character of our country,” he told the country that night.

Those same words stung with relevance this weekend. Overshadowed by the landmark repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, a triumph of social justice, was a cruel development: the Senate’s failure to break the filibuster to pass the DREAM Act.

In more reasonable days, the DREAM Act would have been a no-brainer. The bill paves a path to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. by their parents. It would grant permanent residency status to immigrants who graduate from high school and complete two years of college or enter the military. In other words, young men and women who were brought to this country illegally by their parents and who want to become more integrated into our national life would finally have the means to do so.

A good idea, and a bipartisan one too – once upon a time. In a period when our nation is in need of as many achievers and public servants it can get its arms around, the DREAM Act would seem to be a common-sense solution (not to mention a deficit-reducing one, as the CBO found).

But those days are long gone, and when the vote to cut off debate came up, the bill fell five short of 60. Three Republicans – Richard Lugar, Robert Bennett, and Lisa Murkowski – voted in favor, while five Democrats voted against. All this despite the fact that, under the Obama administration, there have been a record number of deportations, part of Obama’s effort to convince the bill’s holdouts that it is serious on enforcement.

The pictures that accompanied the news stories of the bill’s failure tell the story. Here’s how the Times described the scene:

Young Hispanic men and women filled the spectator galleries of the Senate, many of them wearing graduation caps and tassels in a symbol of their support for the bill. They held hands in a prayerful gesture as the clerk called the roll and many looked stricken as its defeat was announced.

For those young men and women, the rebuff must have been unfathomable: Why would this country explicitly deny them the opportunity to be productive contributors to our national life?

That the DREAM Act has gone from a pragmatic, consensus policy to anathema to not just the right but even a handful of Democrats speaks to a worrisome shift in American attitudes. Demagoguery is rife; resentments are in full bloom. It makes one worry for the character of our country.

A New Approach for STEM Education

Posted on December 9, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Most Americans appreciate the fact that the world is a very competitive place. Policy makers and parents have long known that our kids, from grade school through college, need to step up their skills and understanding of science, technology, engineering and math – know in education circles as STEM studies – if they are going to compete successfully with their counterparts in China, India, Korea, and many European countries. For this reason, for nearly 40 years there has been a lot of interest in improving STEM education. While it is laudable that we are focusing on STEM education, we are running the risk of tethering ourselves to assumptions that might be a little faulty and outdated. We can’t be truly innovative as a nation if we are not innovative in our thinking about STEM education.

The current assumption driving STEM education is that all students should get at least some STEM education at every step of their educational journey. Supply students with high standards, great teachers and get as many kids excited about STEM as possible. Call this the “some STEM for all” approach. It sounds appealing, right? Universal tech literacy for the 21^st century.

Well, one problem with this is that most of us are not destined to be scientists and engineers – maybe five percent. Some of us simply don’t have the acumen and the economy only needs so many engineers and scientists and actuaries. So why should state and local governments, many of which are in deep financial peril, lavish resources on the “Some STEM for all” approach? The answer is that they shouldn’t.

Another problem with this approach is that it wants to push young people into studying what might not necessarily interest them and deny the real STEM stars the resources they need to excel. This is destined to fail. A successful education experience begins with motivated, excited students pursuing what truly interests them and going where their talents can shine. Forcing all students to take on AP physics or chemistry is going to have disappointing results during high school and beyond since these fields aren’t necessarily where the jobs are going to be. Ironically, over 80 percent of the STEM jobs are in engineering and information technology but there is a paucity of courses in these fields at the high school level. Therefore, the kids with the inclination are not getting access to what excites them – nor acquiring skills that employers actually need.

The time has come to try a more efficient and effective approach. Flip the paradigm around. Call it “All STEM for Some.” It is based on identifying the kids with the most promise and interest in STEM areas early on and giving them the challenging, exciting educational experience. This will allow them to move into advanced studies and then into the working world ready to contribute to a more dynamic U.S. economy. Not everyone is going to be Bill Gates. We don’t need everyone to be Bill Gates. But we have to make sure we have at least a few Bill Gateses in the years ahead.

Gates’s case actually provides a good example of the wisdom of this approach. As many of us have learned in the popular book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, Gates is a product of brains and hard work. But just as important, he had the luck to go to fine private high school where a parent with vision and resources provided a computer lab. This was a time when most universities had not computer lab. For a kid like Gates, it was heaven. He spent hours there. And the rest, as they say, is history.

ITIF fleshes out the idea of “All STEM for Some” and offers up ideas that should be embraced as part of a broader education reform effort in a new report Refueling the U.S. Innovation Economy: Fresh Approaches to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education. Among the ideas in the report is placing a greater emphasis on making sure students can demonstrate skills rather than merely memorize content. In addition, it would make sense to allow STEM-oriented students to spend more time in those courses and less time on other subjects. Also, we need to make sure the resources are there beginning freshmen year so we don’t lose the kids who were STEM-inclined but instead nurture them with greater opportunities right away.

In addition, the report urges policy makers to get serious about creating entirely new institutions – STEM specialty schools – and develop the infrastructure to identify and recruit the most promising students to pursue their passions in exceptional world-class educational environments.

We should also revise how we incentivize schools to make their STEM programs more effective. The report explains this could be done with a combination of federal grant money, as well as corporate or philanthropic efforts. Bolstering STEM education should be part of needed national strategy to make our national labs, universities and private employers act in a more coherent fashion when it comes to preparing students and workers in critical new fields.

We are not going to be able to develop the game-changing advances in biotechnology, robotics, energy and other fields unless we nurture the talent of our students effectively. Many of us will want to become artists, teach history, develop real estate, or run our own small business. That is fine. But we should get serious – immediately – about how we educate those students who show the keenest interest in the emerging growth fields of the future. Giving a smattering of science and math to them along with the aspiring novelists is not going to work. We only have about ten years to make changes in our STEM education so we will have the talent to create the STEM jobs so and therefore compete globally in the years ahead. The time to get started is now.

This article is cross-posted at Innovation Policy Blog

Photo credit: Michael Surran

A Better Approach to Textbook Adoptions

Posted on November 10, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Until October, Texas owned the textbook debate. The Texas Board of Education, preparing last year for a book adoption, seemed determined to put a political spin into American history books Texas schoolchildren will be reading. That raised hackles and not just in Texas. A headline in England’s Guardian blared, “Texas school board rewrites US history with lessons promoting God and guns.”

Time and cool heads prevailed and the new Texas standards, adopted in August, are not much different from those in other states. The textbook hoopla calmed down. And then, last month, a Williamsburg, Virginia mother (who happens to be a history professor) noticed that her son’s 4^th grade schoolbook was—well, outrageous. It stated that thousands of African Americans fought for the South during the Civil War, many led by Stonewall Jackson. This is not a view held by most historians.

The author of the book defended her work, claiming that she did her research on the Internet, where her source for information was the Sons of Confederate Veterans. This created a bit of brouhaha. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson of Princeton University commented, “These Confederate heritage groups have been making this claim for years as a way of purging their cause of its association with slavery.”

Virginia has what is supposed to be a rigorous adoption system, books with agendas aren’t supposed to get through the process. This book was called “accurate and unbiased” by a committee tasked to read it. Virginia school districts, having spent a lot of money on the book, are now pulling it from classrooms.

Textbook nightmares are nothing new in the school world, and they are not unique to Virginia and Texas. But purchasing policies there, and in 20 other “adoption” states, determine content in textbooks for schools throughout the nation. Those books, routinely dull, are often error-ridden and biased. Actually the adoption process began with bias as a goal. After the Civil War, southern leaders didn’t want their children reading a northern version of that conflict. They set up their own school standards and the publishing industry complied with different books for Southern and Northern markets.

Today, in school districts in all 50 states, adoptions are usually a winner-take-all affair that leads to giant sales and huge profits for a few publishers. Those publishers spend their efforts—not on creating good books—but on promotion, gifts, and fancy presentations. Think of the power of lobbyists; textbook salespeople perfect lobby-like outreach to teachers and administrators.

This is not a minor affair: books are the intellectual meat and potatoes we feed our children. Shabby textbooks make a difference. They don’t have to be. Here are some suggestions:

Have closed adoptions. No salespeople allowed. Let books and other teaching materials speak for themselves to teachers and committees. Don’t limit choices to books from textbook houses. Have librarians share their expertise. Let a subcommittee of children read the choices and submit their thoughts. If a book doesn’t work for its potential readers, it shouldn’t be adopted. And call in experts: historians to comment on social studies texts, scientists on science texts.
If possible, do away with whole city adoptions. The big bucks are just too tempting for those driven by bottom-line issues. Besides, given our diverse population, it doesn’t work for every fourth grade teacher in Los Angeles or Richmond to be forced to teach from the same history text. Have schools or even individual teachers pick books from a broad vetted list. Let some teachers, who can make a case for their decisions, pick volumes not on the list. Teaching U.S. history, or any subject, with good bookstore books, rather than texts, makes sense if a teacher wants to go that route. If we are to attract and hold sophisticated teachers we need to treat them as professionals rather than cogs in a bureaucratic wheel. Letting teachers choose their own books would not only support them and benefit kids, it might bring real competition to the schoolbook industry.

Some of our greatest thinkers have written books for children. Henry Steele Commager’s story of the Constitution is hard to top. Physicist Stephen Hawking is the author (along with his daughter Lucy) of a terrific physics adventure that is perfect for third graders. Why aren’t books like these read routinely in our schools?

Yes, the money-management folks will talk about the savings from mass purchases, an argument that doesn’t hold up. Most standard textbooks are outrageously overpriced. Today’s massive adoptions bring billions of dollars in annual income to a few big publishers whose goal, as with most businesses, is to make money. Educating children is a minor consideration. Trade (bookstore) books are generally inexpensive.

How about assessments? Can they deal with a variety of books rather than one text? No problem if we assess ideas and what is usually the small number of essential facts that support those ideas. Currently our tests are shallow, dull, limited, and limiting. Detach them from specific textbooks and canned lesson plans and they can begin to test critical thinking tied to broad knowledge.

Some current conventional wisdom says the textbook issue has been solved. Books are out; technology is in. But, so far, online texts are aimed at test preparation, not deep thinking. They promote skimming and browsing, not analytical reading. There’s a bigger issue here. We are giving up on whole book reading, which means losing our literary heritage as well as our national legacy. Right now, most schoolchildren have little access to what was once a shared body of heroes, villains, stories, and values.

As for our science scores, a recent study ranked us 48^th internationally. “48^th is not a good place,” said the New York Times. While hands on labs are exciting, without a story their concepts rarely stick. Only one state mandates science history. Ask your children: Who is Linus Pauling? How did we discover the atom? Chances are they won’t know.

Meanwhile, the current round of educational criticism is focusing on villainous unions and low performing teachers. Hardly anyone has looked in depth at factory-like education schools, administrator-heavy school systems, or the mental junk food we feed our children. All this is deeply discouraging to the good (and often great) teachers in our schools.

Photo credit: Judy Baxter

Economic Uncertainty and the Challenges of For-Profit College Regulation

Posted on October 25, 2010 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The so-called “gainful employment” rule currently being proposed by the Department of Education (DOE) has generated extensive controversy. The rule, designed to crack down on widespread recruiting frauds that can lead to huge student loan debts and ultimately put taxpayers on the hook, has drawn 90,000 comments.

DOE announced recently that it would implement the new regulations on July 1, 2011, as planned, though it may make a few changes in finalizing the rules.

Today, PPI is releasing a new memo by PPI senior fellow Michael Mandel on how to understand the new “gainful employment’ rule. You can read the full memo here.

But here’s the quick summary:

Mandel argues that in an uncertain economic environment like the one we are currently facing, it’s really hard to make specific rules about debt-to-income ratios or to predict in what sectors there is going to be demand for employment even a few years down the line. (Mandel shows how poorly the Bureau of Labor Statistics “hot job” list has predicted the future in recent years.)

Mandel also worries that too much focus on debt-to-income ratios is going to disproportionately hurt those students who most need education – poorer students from hard-hit states who don’t look like a great investment given the formulas drawn up by the DOE guidelines, but need the most help if they are going get the training they need to be part of any economic recovery.

The big point is that given the current economic uncertainty, you want institutions that are capable of reacting quickly to market demand for training and skills-acquisition. And while there are obviously needed reforms to prevent for-profit colleges from taking advantage of students and student loan programs, too many rules and regulations are going to make it difficult if not impossible for for-profit colleges to respond quickly to market needs for skills.

As Mandel writes: “When the economy starts growing again, we want our educational institutions to be able to react quickly, not drag behind. DOE’s proposed approval process is a disaster, hurting the parts of the educational system that are the most flexible.”

Re-Learning After-School, Re-Imagining Education Reform

Posted on October 13, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Recent belt-tightening (forced or otherwise) in education has resulted in major casualties to after-school programs around the nation. As funding priorities shift to privilege teacher prep and accountability, after-school programs have been among the first to get the funding axe.

The 21st Century Community Learning Centers, a federal framework to support programs that target under-served or at-risk populations, provide academic support to struggling students and create opportunities for exploring arts, sports, and music. They are emblematic of after-school programs everywhere—in what they do, what they don’t do, and how we understand after-school time at large. So a proposed budget increase of almost $100 million to the 21st CCLCs should come as good news, right?

Not necessarily, according to some in the broader education community. The proposed appropriations bill bundles 21st CCLC support with money to “expand learning time” by extending the school day, or year. A recent Education Week article notes the ambivalence among after-school providers, citing “fears that opening the program to extended-learning-time initiatives could come at the expense of high-quality after-school efforts.” The Afterschool Alliance, a national advocate for after-school programs, has taken up a standing opposition to the bill.

So, what’s going on here under the surface conflict of too many line items and too few dollars? Why wouldn’t the nation’s biggest after-school supporter want a huge network of after-school programs to receive more funding?

Even more buried than the defensive concern about diverted support, there is also a surfeit of competing ideas about what education could or should be—and not enough space, consideration, or funding to follow each of those ideas to any sort of fruition.

Current funding strategies are furthermore pushing after-school and other interventions (extended-day included) to fit themselves into the ever-more restrictive reform rhetoric of increased academic achievement. If programs can’t be shown to improve kids’ test scores, they’re passed over, slashed from the budget, and relegated to the “tried and failed” pile.

The expectations placed upon after-school programs in recent years (increasingly, say, with the advent and legacy of No Child Left Behind) have reflected this slow constriction of values. After-school hours are expected to be as academically enriching as the classroom hours from which children are directly coming—if not moreso, as after-school has increasingly been incorporated into NCLB’s “supplemental services” for remediation.

Once valued primarily as a safe space in the hours between school and home for kids in at-risk areas or circumstances, or as an outlet for the abundant energy and creativity that accompanies and overwhelms adolescence, after-school time has steadily been re-appropriated as school-time in a slightly different setting.

Research, however, has shown that after-school programs are perhaps not as up to this new task as their proponents (and funders) would like to imagine. Even among the 21st Century Community Learning Centers, research has shown the programs have “few impacts” on participating students’ academic performance. Reports from 2004 to the present, available through the Department of Education’s website, show that fewer than half of participating students’ grades improve, and less than one-third of students’ state assessment scores improve after spending time in a 21st CCLC.

Presumably, someone, somewhere is gearing up to use this data to add fuel to the competitive fire of education reform—and that might be what the Afterschool Alliance really fears. If these programs don’t work, toss them out, forget about ‘em, and bring on the extended day (or value-added teacher assessment, or private tutoring services, or those helper-monkeys they’re using at the Commonwealth Games)! But before we throw the babies out with the after-school bathwater, let’s look a little deeper. There is, in fact, research on the obvious flipside of the issue: what are after-school programs good at doing?

Robert Halpern of the Erikson Institute has spent significant time wrestling with this very question, in part by asking: why aren’t after-school programs good at academic enhancement?

Citing the heterogeneity of after-school programs, the lack of a cohesive professional “field” for providers, the mixed backgrounds of staff, and unstable or unsustainable relationships with the resources upon which they so heavily depend, Halpern argues that after-school programs are poorly equipped to take on academic remediation. In Halpern’s view, after-school programs are not extensions of schools, and shouldn’t be viewed as such. They should provide what schools can’t, not simply make up the difference.

Re-assessing after-school programs along these lines, as first and foremost spaces for acceptance, socialization, and exploration – a new spectrum of possibilities for after-school hours begins to emerge.

The strengths of after-school programming, in Halpern’s estimation, suggest to me the same rubric of what’s being variously defined as “deeper” or “student-centered” learning, or as “21st century skills”: self-guided learning, collaboration, problem-solving, and communication. The basics beyond the academic basics, if you will.

Furthermore, the development of many of these skills or competencies is in conflict with many of the institutional particularities of the modern school system (as Richard Halverson and Allan Collins suggest in their work on technology’s place in learning and education).

The debate over 21st century skills assessment is almost as hot as the debate over what exactly to call this skill set. But advances are being made, and indicators outside of test scores have also been tracked in after-school programs for as long as such programs have been assessed. In 2004, 21st CCLC after-school programs were shown to have some positive effects on student-adult interaction, parental outcomes, and feelings of safety and security among participating children.

The most recent 21st CCLC report, from 2007, shows the target goal of three-quarters of participating students “demonstrating improved homework completion and class participation,” has nearly been met. Other unexplored after-school indicators could include: increases in school attendance, elective or extracurricular participation patterns, creative output, community involvement, and perhaps eventually job placements and earnings.

After-school programs may be as necessary an experiment in improving American education as anything else—including the extended day, and value-added assessments (probably not those security monkeys, but who’s to say?). And we should be looking for ways to both support and improve that experiment by enriching the after-school field, creating professional development opportunities for staff, creating standards to which providers can reasonably be held accountable for their successes as much as their failures. We shouldn’t be blocking after-school support because we’re not sure if another solution is as valid—saying no to something that works because we’re not as sure about something else that could also work.

If education reform is really more of a series of parallel structures rather than a single declarative (to draw from my 8th grade grammar lessons)—if we have to try this, and this, and this, and this, to try to arrive at some answers, then after-school programming, 21st century skill development, and an extended school day or year all deserve both attention and funding. Otherwise we lose $100 million for after-school programs and an untold amount of intangible support for experimentation and innovation within a reform that will only, ultimately, be more than the sum of its parts.