While we all make mistakes, the attached letter recruiting subjects for research is a small piece of evidence that appears to confirm our collective worst fears: for-profits are most interested in money, less interested in quality education (I have blocked out the student’s identifying information and the link to the student’s survey). Granted, many faculty, including myself, have participated on dissertation committees of students who produce less than stellar research, write poorly, etc. — and these students attend not-for-profits or publics. No doubt there is a problem with both the preparation of students and the quality of some programs.  I constantly strive to improve the quality of education for my students, but it is admittedly an ongoing challenge. But are for-profits and the model of education they trumpet helping to address these problems?

I think it is fair to single out the for-profits for several reasons. The first is the belief evident in current education policy talk that says markets and the profit motive (ignoring all the fraud, of course), will lead to greater educational access, quality and equality. I have suspected for a long time that for-profit education will at best not achieve these goals. At worst, I fear they will serve to make things much worse.

Research conducted with my colleagues has documented that for-profits receive the highest median Pell per full-time equivalent (FTE) compared to publics and non-profits for the years 1993, 2000 and 2004. This trend might be framed as another form of corporate subsidy. At the same time, for-profits continue to enroll an increasing number of minority students (my most recent research found a huge percent increase in the number of American Indian/Alaskan Natives attending for-profits, for example).

Most interesting is our finding that a smaller percentage of expenses is directed toward instruction at for-profits than non-profits. Sure, maybe for-profits are more efficient, but that line of argument doesn’t solve the problem of why this great efficiency appears to be applied aggressively toward groups that have been and continue to be subjected to discrimination and racist exclusion? Is it OK to “waste” money on rich White kids? (I don’t believe that small class sizes, and small teaching loads for faculty, with a broad range of social and cultural activities for college students, faculty and staff, and plenty of support for faculty developed curriculum and research, is “wasteful”; it just doesn’t line up with the present goals and values of the super rich who now think they reign supreme).

So, we should ask, efficient at what, for whom? Even if a particular student benefits from this type of educational opportunity that does not obliterate the real concern: does the rise of for-profits and marketization more generally herald a new kind of educational stratification, a new means for structuring inequality under the guise of accountability, access and “meeting student demands”? Since for-profits have a greater percentage of Pell eligible students, are we seeing a class bifurcation, especially as publics become less “public” (i.e., affordable)? Add to these concerns the role of for-profits in popularizing the view that education is equivalent to job training — that education has no other, broader social purpose.

Now let’s get back to the Chronicle. The only national newspaper dedicated to covering higher education has moved to sponsor — not simply advertise on their website and print edition, but endorse — email campaigns for a controversial sector of higher education. I for one expect them to cover for-profits in an unbiased fashion. Does the Chronicle of Higher Education actually endorse the for-profit model of higher education, despite the growing concerns that even for-profit PR firms have been unable to eradicate?

Well, upon receiving the first such email endorsement of for-profits, I sent a letter explaining my opposition to this practice to the Chronicle of Higher Education, and received no reply. Maybe the “efficiency” and “opportunity” and “accountability” evident in this recruitment letter will get someone’s attention!

Related Posts:

• Thousand Demonstrate Against California Education Cuts
• Bruce Baker: Smart Guy (Gates) makes my list of “Dumbest Stuff I’ve Ever Read!”
• Teachers have a right to unionize
• Inside Higher Ed: For-Profit Colleges Open Another Front
• Broad Foundation: Facts on the Wrecking of Public Education

http://www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au

Yesterday, the Buffalo News reported that the Buffalo Public Schools and the Buffalo Teachers Federation had negotiated a new teacher evaluation system. But what is particularly significant is that the News simultaneously reported on and endorsed the contract negotiated between Washington, D.C. teachers and administration, and promoted it as a model for Buffalo. The D.C. contract — known as IMPACT but not mentioned by name in the editorial — has, according to the Buffalo News, four key components: performance-based teacher evaluation, financial incentives to raise test scores, limits on the protections of tenure, and increased ability of the district to lay off “bad teachers” without “economic cause”. But the News is either unaware or unwilling to report facts unfriendly to its position of support.

While the News editorial characterizes the contact as one where “performance and the quality of teaching, not blind seniority, will determine who is hired and who is laid off,” it downplays the fact that “performance” and “quality of teaching” are determined by student test scores. Following adoption of the contract, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee fired 165 teachers based on lack of improvement in student test scores over one academic year. The method is said to measure the “value added” to students by their teacher.

Student test scores do not equal good teaching

Despite all the rhetoric supporting the use of scientific research to guide education reform, the amount of evidence against using test scores as a basis for teacher evaluation is very strong. President Obama, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and a host of billionaires who support Rhee are imposing this practice across the country, despite the warnings of the scientific community.

In his video Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures, professor Daniel Willingham summarizes the problems associated with what the News is promoting. But he is not alone. A recent report by the National Center for Educational Evaluation estimating the error in using test scores to classify teachers as effective or ineffective predicts that when using only one year of data, 35% of teacher classifications will be wrong (i.e., effective teachers will be classified as ineffective, and ineffective teachers will be classified as effective). For teachers in D.C., that means as many as 57 of the 165 teachers fired in DC might have been inaccurately identified as ineffective. The National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research also released a study examining the technical limits of using student test results to evaluate teachers. Among other things, the report found that different tests yield different teacher rankings.

The degrading effect of incentives

But more important than the technical limitations noted above is the philosophical underpinning of the entire system based on financial incentives to pressure educators to boost student test scores. Based on past practice, this gives rise to treating students as mere conduits of cash, leading ultimately to student abuse and debasement of public education. This is what happened under a similar system in England, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The negative results of what was known as Payment by Results were widely recognized by contemporaries, and the practice was eventually halted. It was precisely this system — one that abused teachers and pushed many competent ones to leave the profession — that contributed to teachers unionizing in Britain. And most interestingly, it was a method of teacher compensation rooted in an effort to reduce spending on public education during a time of great expenditures following the Crimean War.

Related Posts:

• Teachers have a right to unionize
• Stephen Sawchuk: States Aim to Curb Collective Bargaining
• Anthony Cody: Teachers Beware — They are Coming for Our Pensions
• Thousand Demonstrate Against California Education Cuts
• Labor Beat Chicago Video Exposes Duncan’s Record

November 17, 2009

Contact: Patrick McEwan, (781) 283-2987; (email) pmcewan@wellesley.edu

Gary Miron, (269) 599-7965; (email) gary.miron@wmich.edu

TEMPE, Ariz. and BOULDER, Colo. (November 17, 2009) — A report released three weeks ago looked at the competition effects of New York City’s charter schools, concluding that “students benefit academically when their public school is exposed to competition from a charter.” A new review of that report finds that the report’s own findings are pretty minimal, and even that slight improvement could be explained by factors other than charter-school competition.

The report is boldly titled, Everyone Wins: How Charter Schools Benefit All New York City Public School Students. It was written for the Manhattan Institute by Marcus Winters, a Senior Fellow at the institute. The report was reviewed for the Think Tank Review Project by Patrick McEwan, professor of economics at Wellesley College.

The report’s focus reflects an important premise behind the market-competition approach to education reform. While critics of market theory contend competition from charter schools or other alternatives will end up penalizing the public schools that must educate most children, market advocates contend competition will help the entire school population. Competition, this argument runs, doesn’t just expand choices for parents; it also prods existing public schools to improve in order to avoid losing students.

Everyone Wins draws on three years of test score data in mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA) from New York City public schools as well as data on the percentage of students leaving public schools for charter schools. As McEwan explains, the report uses the rate of departures for charter schools as a proxy to measure increased “pressure on public school administrators to ‘compete,’ improve test scores, and staunch the flow of students to charter schools.” Using appropriate statistical controls, the report finds that increasing competition does not appear to be associated with improved math test scores, while it has “small positive effects on ELA scores” that are “slightly larger among public school students with lower levels of achievement.”

In his review, McEwan observes that the report itself is modest in its conclusions and that it “correctly notes that the statistical findings do not necessarily imply that increases in the measure of competition cause test scores to rise…” Unfortunately the report’s title suggests a much more positive definitive outcome, and the nuances are lost as well in the executive summary. Causal claims also pervade Winter’s own NY Post commentary about his study.

McEwan notes that a longer, dryer, and more accurate title for the study might be: “Some win and some lose, but, on average, they slightly win — though mainly on the ELA test and with caveats about the causal interpretation of the effects.”

The reviewer praises the report on several counts: its use of “a high-quality, longitudinal dataset of student achievement,” its use of appropriate statistical methods, and its contribution to “an established literature that finds roughly consistent effects of ‘competition’ that are often zero or slightly positive, depending on the state and method.”

But he also points out important limitations. The statistical methods used, “while appropriate… cannot control for several potential biases,” McEwan writes. “As a result, the measured effects of competition could also reflect the influence of shifting peer quality, declining class size, or other unobserved variables.” Other sources of market pressure, such as private schools or schools of choice, are also not considered in this report.

The report notes in passing some of those limitations, but “does not make a serious attempt to assess their validity,” the reviewer concludes. In the end, then, it does not deliver what it claims, and we do not know whether, in fact, “everyone wins.”

Find Patrick McEwan’s review on the web at:

http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-Everyone-Wins

Find Everyone Wins: How Charter Schools Benefit All New York City Public School Students, by Marcus Winters and published by the Manhattan Institute, on the web at http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/cr_60.pdf

CONTACT:

Patrick McEwan, Associate Professor

Department of Economics

Wellesley College

(781) 283-2987

pmcewan@wellesley.edu

Gary Miron, Professor of Education

Western Michigan University

(269) 599-7965

gary.miron@wmich.edu

About the Think Tank Review Project

The Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org), a collaborative project of the ASU Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) and CU-Boulder’s Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC), provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications. The project is made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

Kevin Welner, the project co-director, explains that the project is needed because, “despite their garnering of media attention and their influence with many policy makers, reports released by private think tanks vary tremendously in their quality. Many think tank reports are little more than ideological argumentation dressed up as research. Many others include flaws that would likely have been identified and addressed through the peer review process. We believe that the media, policy makers, and the public will greatly benefit from having qualified social scientists provide reviews of these documents in a timely fashion.” He adds, “we don’t consider our reviews to be the final word, nor is our goal to stop think tanks’ contributions to a public dialogue. That dialogue is, in fact, what we value the most. The best ideas come about through rigorous critique and debate.”

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The Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University collaborate to produce policy briefs and think tank reviews. Our goal is to promote well-informed democratic deliberation about education policy by providing academic as well as non-academic audiences with useful information and high quality analyses.

Visit EPIC and EPRU at http://www.educationanalysis.org/

EPIC and EPRU are members of the Education Policy Alliance

(http://educationpolicyalliance.org).

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Related Posts:

• Alan Singer: Charter Schools Don’t Do Miracles
• Charter Schools/Market Violence/Disruptive Innovation: Student Beating, Paying the Rich, and the Irrelevance of Facts
• “Uncommon Schools” Charter School Executive Will Be NYS Education Deputy
• Duncan’s Bribe Reveals Where Demand for Charters Originates
• Are Charter Schools Public Schools?

Individual Teacher Incentives, Student Achievement and Grade Inflation, Pedro S. Martins, Queen Mary, University of London

Abstract: How do teacher incentives affect student achievement? We contribute to this question by examining the effects of the recent introduction of teacher performance-related pay and tournaments in Portugal’s public schools. Specifically, we draw on matched student-school panel data covering the population of secondary school national exams over seven years. We then conduct a difference-in-differences analysis based on two complementary control groups: public schools in two autonomous regions that were exposed to lighter versions of the reform than in the rest of the country; and private schools, which are also subject to the same national exams but whose teachers were not affected by the reform. Our results consistently indicate that the increased focus on individual teacher performance caused a significant decline in student achievement, particularly in terms of national exams. The triple- difference results also document a significant increase in grade inflation.

The paper can be downloaded here.

Related Posts:

• Buffalo News endorses flawed system of teacher compensation

approve plans to fire hundreds of Veteran teachers on the teachers’ low performance on evaluations, rather than on their seniority.

Even more controversially, the 134,000-student North Carolina district granted an exemption to teachers hired through the Teach For America recruiting program who meet teaching standards over more-senior teachers, and it is poised to hire more TFA alumni.

[...]

But members of the district’s school board said the decision was influenced by several factors, including the desire to maintain a contract with TFA and an overall sense that the teachers are doing well by their students.

Of course, firing veteran teachers and replacing them with new teachers saves money. Instead of making the legitimate demand for increased funds for education, the Board has caved in to the pressure that there is no alternative to cuts. Certainly, as well, folks in N.C. are pressured by Duncan and his “Race to Top” bribe to support, among other things, TFA.

But there are several questions. The first, raised by former TFAer Dan Brown in the Huffington Post, (“Overhyping Teach For America, Undercutting Millions of Students”) concerns the issue of turnover, or the fact that TFA teachers, by design, do no commit to teaching as a profession, creating more instability. “Our country requires broadly-conceived initiatives to ensure that our schools in all 50 states are staffed with talented, well-trained, and well-supported teachers–with or without that Princeton degree,” Brown writes. I’ll add: Schools don’t need the “support” of white-man’s-burden do-gooders arrogant and callous enough to claim bad teaching and unions are the root cause of social problems, and the presence of high-scoring Yale graduates for only a couple of years is sufficient to address the criminal conditions imposed on tens of millions of families across the U.S.

Yet, TFA is likely more than a poorly designed, silver bullet, and therefore significant in other respects. Lincoln Caplan writes, in Why big donors back Teach for America, that

TFA is … “theory of change’ [that] depends on ensuring that its teachers “attain high levels of success with their students—and then, as alumni, go on to bring about equity in education for kids of different classes and races, in the role of everything from principal to school superintendent to governor.”

While one might dismiss the theory on empirical grounds — Caplan reports one study observing that 30 percent of TFAers leave in their first year, not completing their two-year commitment — the theory itself deserve future attention (as it suggest in classic liberal fashion that the struggle for equality is most appropriate waged through the struggle for education, and not class struggle).

The other question is that of evaluation. What are the standards? In the context of a national campaign to blame collective bargaining, including the standard of seniority, what is to stop evaluators from favoring TFA recruits when that is the aim of school boards and senior officials. Sawchuk reports:

A second school board member, Tom Tate, added, “We seem to be getting good results from these teachers generally.”

He reports that earlier this spring, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg board approved a new policy that put a heavier focus on performance. In a context where TFA supporters bring millions, is it unreasonable to question to degree to which local TFA hype influences perceptions of competence? (the C.D. Spangler Foundation donated $4 million to expand the Charlotte TFA program this school year and next.) The policy directs the district “not to renew any teachers whose licenses are not current, those who do not meet minimum standards on local evaluation instruments, part-time teachers, and retired teachers who have returned to teaching. After that, it exempts TFA teachers and a handful of others in shortage subject areas, such as math, science, and foreign languages, over traditionally certified teachers with more seniority or equally high performance ratings” (emphasis added). Superintendent Peter Gorman is reported to be planning to “hire additional TFA teachers for 2009-10, rather than giving priority to teachers who are receiving pink slips.”

Are TFA graduates, with the Ivy League test scores, more effective teachers, or just cheaper and not likely to join the union ranks? Caplain reports that TFA

has attracted a list of accomplished critics in its adolescence. Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford’s school of education, is the lead author of the best-known study, which concluded that students of uncertified teachers of TFA lagged significantly behind students of certified non-TFA teachers. Deborah Appleman, the chairwoman of education studies at Carleton College, shadowed a former student of hers through the summer training of TFA’s first class in 1990. She came away disappointed and has been been a persistent critic ever since. She discourages her students from applying and refuses to write letters of recommendation for them. TFA also contends with the fear that the public will lose patience, since progress in closing the achievement gap has been so modest, given the large sums spent on education, including on Kopp’s brainchild.

It should be noted that Caplan writes:

In its defense, TFA cites a study from Mathematica Policy Research that looked at how students of corps members fared compared with students of the teachers hired instead (rookies and old hands, some certified and some not) in hardest-to-staff schools. Reading scores were the same, math scores notably higher.

A more careful review of the merits of that study can be found here, although this line of criticism has its limits too, as I hope to argue in the future (along these lines).

So with such limited prospects for “success”, why such public praise in the big media outlets? Certainly data are not driving this decision…

Related Posts:

• Teachers have a right to unionize
• Stephen Sawchuk: States Aim to Curb Collective Bargaining
• Anthony Cody: Teachers Beware — They are Coming for Our Pensions
• Buffalo News endorses flawed system of teacher compensation
• Thousand Demonstrate Against California Education Cuts

Over the past several months, a plethora of “research” and “investigateive” reports have been uncritically promoted by major media outlets. Acting as spokespersons for research think tanks funded by the largest monopolies, and aligned with the Obama administration’s education agenda, reporters take no responsibility to investigate the merits of these reports. No effort is made to evaluate the merits of the research or its status as “nonpartisan” (that is, not biased toward any particular political group). Reporters do not reprint the list of those funding these reports (lists which are easily obtained) and the known views of these funders (also easily obtained and by no means secret). In the worst cases, reporters produce their own articles supporting this line promoted by the think tanks. The undeniable fact is that all these reports are generated by rabid anti-union forces, who promote research driven by the demand for “data” that will “decide” teachers have no right to association. As Mike Petrilli, Vice President for National Programs and Policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute says, unions “need to be defeated, over and over and over again if reform is to advance.”

Some Examples

The most recent effort comes with a report, The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness, from the New Teacher Project. Their tag line is quite informative: “Teachers matter. In the fight to eliminate educational inequality, teachers matter most. The New Teacher Project works with school districts and states nationwide to ensure that poor and minority students get outstanding teachers.” (More on the significance of the title below.) Based on questionable research on 12 districts in four states, the report calls for eliminating the basic premise of a union with calls for pay for performance arrangements (note this is not merit pay or bonus, but pay contingent upon test score results).

As some critics have noted, to speak about educational equality absent the growing, grotesque social inequality that is in fact driven by those who fund such reports is irrational. Absent the affirmation of the human rights of poor and minority students, extant educational inequality will not be “eliminated.”

As reported in the document, “Primary funding for this report was provided by the Robertson Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Joyce Foundation. Additional funding was provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Arnold Family Foundation, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.”

Another example appeared in Education Week in April. Researchers Examine Contracts’ Effects on Policy Issues, by Stephen Sawchuk. It reported on a March conference held by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). Its funders include:

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
The Brookhill Foundation
The Louis Calder Foundation
Exxon Mobil Foundation
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Fisher Family Foundation
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Gleason Foundation
Martha Holden Jennings Foundation
Houston Endowment
Joyce Foundation
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Koret Foundation
Milken Family Foundation
Searle Freedom Trust

President of the Fordham Institute, Chester Finn, is on the Board of Directors. He and Fordham are not well known for careful all-sided analysis when it comes to research on teacher unions.

Here is one of the key reported findings from that “nonpartisan” conference. Researchers found evidence that salary schedules (which are associated with collective bargaining) appear to depress a school’s ability to attract the best teachers. The top 75th percentile of teachers in schools with salary schedules have scores on the SAT that were 2 to 3 percent lower than peers in schools without salary schedules. While admitting that I have not actually read these manuscripts, such a documented difference is probably only statistically significant. A 2 percent drop in an SAT of 1000 would result in a score of 980 (those in the latter group probably don’t get to line up in the Gold Executive Excellent Superior Because I have Access to Money Line when boarding planes).

But more troubling is the evident irrational logic. Ignoring the minimal difference in real life of a 2 percent lower score, unless the supply of “the best teachers” is unlimited (making the concept of best meaningless) the point is moot. Teacher quality will be unequally distributed, as housing, income and healthcare are unequally distributed, with many factors affecting distribution patterns. (Unionization is generally an equalizing force as it serves to raise the wages and benefits of its members, serving to close the income gap.) But the existence of differences in the quality of teachers is not caused by salary scales, although this illogic sneaks in the reported discussion; even if salary scales were eliminated, the “best” teachers could not be equally everywhere.

If one had a society where consciousness affirmed the need to place the best in the most challenging circumstances, understanding that with talent comes responsibility, things would be different. Such a society would reject the base notion that human beings only respond to narrow self interest and the reward of gadgetry and shallow Disney story line. However, being the best is presently a status that is linked to structural inequality.

McKinsey & Company (a “global management consulting firm”) is represented on the Advisory Board of NCTQ, who wrote that media celebrated masterpiece of pseudo science, “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools.” (While not explicitly about teachers, they are clearly implicated.) In that report we learn that the achievement gap “imposes on the United States the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession.”

The one graph not inserted into this prettified document tracks the achievement gap over time as it corresponds to real measures of recession over the same time period. (The Economic Impact report is premised on “what if” scinarios, not actual experience, using models inspired by the very partisan researcher, Eric Hanuschek, who has dedicated much time to justifying funding cuts to education, larger class sizes for teachers, etc.) This graph would clearly show that changes in the unemployment rate, the S&P 500 or the GDP do not correspond to average group differences in norm reference tests scores over the last fifty years.

Of course, the material in the “Economic Impact” “study” strategically confounds cause and effect. On the one hand, it goes to great lengths to claim that poverty is not a determinant of achievement. But than it goes on to assert that raising test scores will facilitate social mobility and measured economic prosperity.

Finally, there was the May 3rd “investigative” piece appearing in the Los Angeles Times, entitled, “Failure Gets A Pass,” just in time to create public opinion against teacher actions. It used the scientific method of anecdotes with selective reference to context, written in a style that leads the reader to assume that all of what is being described is clear cut and the fault of unions. By linking the existence of unions to several extreme cases, the right of teachers to associate becomes associated with protecting drug dealers, child molesters and abuse.

Certainly the governing class has no hand in these activities! In the fantasy world of philanthropy, the free market in sex trade of children and existence of drug abuse is probably the result of collective bargaining too, as are the documented abuses of children at non-union, philanthropy supported, KIPP schools. If unions did not exist, KIPP would not be needed, so the unions are at fault in the end for promoting the suspcious idea that people have a right to form associations to defend their common interests, a practice which only leads to moral transgression. It’s really “All About the Kids!” And kids want really large classes, with underpaid teachers who completed quickie bootstrapping, white man’s burden teacher training programs that narrowly focus on “following orders” and that all-time favorite pastime of youth: standardized testing.

Anyhow, the agenda that might explain the public adoption of such irrational thinking is the drive to cheapen education by eliminating unions. But maybe this is the way forward! We all know that lowering salaries and benefits will contribute to economic growth…because test scores, which are not affected by poverty, can be raised among the poor and thus close the achievement gap, which is responsible for our national recession, which does not affect test scores, because poverty is not an excuse, because all children can learn, especially when they are placed in academic sweatshops by parents who chose to be poor but are now reconsidering their ill-advised previous life choices.

This irrationalism is a result of the starting point of the “research”, that is, to gather “evidence” that supports the view of the monopolies and their philanthropic organizations that at the root of the teacher quality problem is teachers’ right to association. Underlying the idea of the title “Widget Effect” is an attack on the principal that stands against feudal notions of caste and loyalty and for equal treatment, rights and duties, but it now becomes apparent that such an argument must be the object of an entire article.

Related Posts:

• Teachers have a right to unionize
• Stephen Sawchuk: States Aim to Curb Collective Bargaining
• Anthony Cody: Teachers Beware — They are Coming for Our Pensions
• Buffalo News endorses flawed system of teacher compensation
• Thousand Demonstrate Against California Education Cuts

Under “General Principles” for the use of ARRA funds, the law states: “The President and the heads of Federal departments and agencies shall manage and expend the funds made available in this Act so as to achieve the purposes specified in subsection (a) [described above], including commencing expenditures and activities as quickly as possible consistent with prudent management.”      

While the ARRA provides broad latitude to heads of federal agencies, the emphasis on using ARRA funds to compel educators and state and local authorities to adopt the Obama administration’s agenda for education goes beyond what explicitly appears in the ARRA legislation and is possibly contrary to the explicit purpose of the law, that is, to stimulate the economy.

Approximately $100 billion of the stimulus package’s $787 billion is devoted to education programs. While the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), the national-level association for K-12 educational administrators, recognizes that the ARRA is aimed at “stimulating” the economy and “helping states address their deficits (of which education is one of the largest state expenditures) and forestalling teacher layoffs at the local level,” it also emphasizes another feature of the stimulus. In the ASCD brief entitled “Eligible Education Activities for Funding,” the association observes that, “Education Secretary Arne Duncan has, however, signaled a third priority for this unprecedented federal infusion of education funding: reform.” Duncan demands the funds be used for activities he determines “promote student achievement.”

The one-time nature of the stimulus funding (all of it is to be spent by September 2011 at the latest) encourages expenditures on activities that do not result in ongoing or recurring expenses beyond that date, after which districts will be solely responsible for the costs. Neither the law nor federal policy regarding the disbursement of funds addresses how meeting a main stated objective — forestalling teacher layoffs for example — will not result in “recurring expenditure.” In the words of the ASCD, the Department of Education dictates funds be used to “elevate the quality of the teaching profession by using a significant amount of the stimulus funds for professional development activities.” These activities, it should be noted, will have little impact on “stimulating the economy” although they will serve to enrich for-profit providers of professional development services (the value of which has long been questioned by educators), especially those “approved” by the U.S. Department of Education or state agencies.

Major Areas of Education Funding Within the Stimulus

Most of the nearly $100 billion for education activities will be delivered to states and districts through one of four distinct mechanisms: through the existing Title I and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) formulae, the state’s primary K-12 funding formula, and competitive grants under the auspices of the Secretary of Education. Both the $5 billion in competitive grants (“Race to the Top” funds) and the more than $50 billion in state fiscal stabilization funds (the largest portion of the ARRA money targeted to education) require application (from school districts and state governors, in the case of stabilization funds), with funds released to each state and district on the condition that the Secretary of Education judges their efforts to be in compliance with President Obama’s vision for education “reform.”

Title I, Part A—$10 billion

Title I is prominent feature of federal K-12 education funding. According to the ASCD: “The $10 billion of stimulus funds earmarked for Title I over the next two years are in addition to the regular appropriation for fiscal year 2009 of $14.5 billion.” Half of this money is being made available immediately (April, 2009), with the other half to be dispursed during the summer and fall of 2009, pending Secretary Duncan’s approval of state spending plans, record keeping and reporting. In addition, 95 percent of these funds must be allocated to districts for “school improvement” activities such as professional development as well as extension of the school day and school year.

In visits to numerous states, Duncan has suggested that states and districts that adopt governance mechanisms that eliminate unions (such as Colorado’s “Innovation Schools Act” providing waivers from collective bargaining agreements) and reduce or eliminate public control of school districts (such Secretary Ducan’s call for mayoral control of urban school districts) will be more likely to receive more ARRA funds than states that are less aggressive in adopting such measures.

Duncan’s model of education, as evidenced in his support of KIPP charter schools and similar charter programs across the U.S. that effectively ban teachers unions, require teachers “who are willing or able to work long hours for low pay” according to an article in Slate magazine. These schools run 10 hour programs during the week, half day programs every other Saturday, and require teachers to be available for hours in the evening for assistance with homework. Not surprisingly, these schools have high rates of teacher turnover, and despite monopoly media reports, do not perform better on state tests.

Title I School Improvement Grants—$3 billion

The School Improvement Grant subprogram under Title I funds “turnaround activities” at schools identified as “in need of improvement” based on the arbitrary testing requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Since 2004, under former Chicago School Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan, many neighborhood schools in African American and Latino communities have been closed despite public opposition. These schools were subsequently either turned into selective enrollment schools for the wealthy or over to outside “turnaround” specialists leading to corporate charter status. Closing “low performing” schools has been described by Department of Education officials as a key part of “school improvement grants” issued under ARRA.

IDEA Part B— $11.3 billion

Federal funding through IDEA helps “defray the additional costs of states and districts associated with educating students with disabilities” according to the ACSD. The stimulus funding of $11.3 billion essentially doubles the $11.5 billion for IDEA state grants in the fiscal year 2009 appropriation. “Additionally, the stimulus provides $400 million for the IDEA preschool program and $500 million for the IDEA infants and toddlers program.” As with Title I funds, half of this money is being made available immediately. In order to receive the remaining Part B recovery funds, a state must submit, for review and approval by the Department of Educaiton, an amendment to its fiscal year 2009 application to address the recordkeeping and reporting requirements under the ARRA.

Aside from the potential uses of IDEA stimulus dollars below, it is important to note that under the existing IDEA rules, local districts can reduce their state and local expenditures by up to 50 percent of any federal increase received under the normal IDEA appropriation and apply it to ESEA activities. The U.S. Department of Education is encouraging districts to take “advantage of this flexibility to focus the freed-up local funds on one-time expenditures such as the equitable distribution of effective teachers and the quality of assessments.” The move encourages state reliance on federal funding and thus increased federal executive control over state education systems.

State Fiscal Stabilization Fund for Education—$39.8 billion

$48.3 billion is earmarked for state use under the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund and is allocated to states by formula: 61 percent on the basis of relative population of 5–24-year-olds and 39 percent on the basis of the relative share of the total population. The money is divided into two pots for use within states. The largest pot, $39.8 billion, must be used to restore (in equal proportions) both a state’s K-12 and higher education funding to either fiscal year 2008 or fiscal year 2009 levels, whichever is higher. States must distribute these funds to local districts based on the state’s primary education funding formula. If any funds remain after K-12 funding restoration, such a surplus will be distributed to districts on the basis of the Title I formula (but is not required to be used for Title I activities).

This method does not take into account actual state and district financial needs, serving to exacerbate inequalities between states and regions. For example, states such as Texas, Alaska and Wyoming have not cut K-12 funding, yet they will nonetheless receive stimulus funds aimed at restoring educational funding. Rural districts will receive relatively little ARRA funds as a result of this calculation. States such as California and Florida will not receive enough funds under this formula to achieve the stated aim of “restoring funding” to previous levels.

The second pot, the remaining $8.5 billion, is to be used for “public safety” and other government operations and may include K-12 services (or the renovation/repair of school facilities—but not new building construction). At the district level, there are specific provisions related to the use of education funds, which can be used for any activities under No Child Left Behind, IDEA, the Adult and Family Literacy Act, or the Carl. D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins Act).

To receive the initial 67 percent of the State’s allocation under the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, a Governor must submit to the Department of Education an application that includes assurances that the State will commit to advancing education reform in four specific areas:

(1) Achieving equity in teacher distribution;
(2) Improving collection and use of data;
(3) Enhancing the quality of standards and assessments; and
(4) Supporting struggling schools.

Secretary’s Innovation Fund—$5 billion

The most direct and obvious stimulus investment in education reform is a $5 billion fund overseen by the Secretary of Education to promote his four reform priorities. The “Race to the Top Fund” is $4.35 billion worth of competitive grants to states “making the most progress” in reform as determined by the Secretary.

The Investing in What Works and Innovation Fund is $650 million in competitive grants to Local Education Authorities (LEAs) and nonprofits that “have made significant gains in closing achievement gaps and are models of best practices. Because the grants are awarded on a competitive basis and are also somewhat contingent on state and district use of other stimulus funds, the government will award these grants last. The 2010 awards will be made in two rounds, first in late fall 2009 and then again in summer of 2010,” according to the ASCD.

Education Technology State Grants— $650 million

The stimulus plan provides $650 million for the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT, or E2T2) state grant program beyond the fiscal year 2009 appropriation of $270 million. The program helps districts utilize technology to improve teaching and learning to increase student achievement and technological literacy. States must use 25 percent of stimulus funds distributed under this program for professional development.

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Before addressing the political basis of this methodological project, it is important to note that the authors make the mistkae that Robert Yin suggests is all too common: research on school performance confounds schools as the proper unit of analysis with individuals; this is especially common with those obsessively turning to randomized field trials. (See Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: design and methods (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.)

I think exposing their position as emanating from political theory — rather than an thoughtless imports from the natural and sciences — might prove helpful in both evaluating the book and articulating the political significance of school choice policy more generally.

Random Trials as Opportunity Science

Of note is the book’s adoption of U.S. Department of Education, and in particular the Institute of Educational Sciences, insistence on the “gold standard” of experimental design: the “random assignment of units to experimental and control or contrast conditions (2).”

“Randomized field trials” are thus adopted as the key method for studying school choice. By studying the measurable outcomes of applicants who were lotteried into an oversubscribed charter school or voucher program to those who were lotteried out and attended a traditional public school, the influence of family background can be separated out from that of the school itself (but again, this promotes confusion regarding the unit of analysis).

According to the authors, the strength of this method and other efforts such as over time measures of “value added,” is that they help “take into account the powerful influence of families” and help “establish the separate and distinct contribution of the school to a student’s achievement.”

The postulate that experimental design is equally the gold standard for the social sciences as it is for the natural sciences is taken for granted. It presents itself as a solution to a perennial problem in school evaluation research predating even the “Coleman Report”: controlling for the influence of family characteristics on school outcomes. It seems as a rational way out of that conundrum — but only if certain things are ignored or forgotten.

What is the assumption behind the presupposition that students must be separated from their historical position, their social circumstance, in order to assess the quality of their school and the degree to which they have learned what is required of them? How does this premise inform the cultural meaning of “achievement” as distinct from student learning?

What is the political significance of the fact that this kind of “controlling” for social circumstance was largely impossible under a traditional public school model where place of residence determined school assignment for all but a tiny minority of public school students?

Irrespective of the logic justifying the “controlling” for social circumstance, is not such a project irrational? Can one “control” for social circumstances? Such efforts reveal a profound distortion and patently unscientific view of social reality. Does not the entire project of “controlling” for social circumstance — which includes everything from assumptions about “ethnicity” and parental “SES” to larger understandings of religion, culture and sub-cultures of neighborhoods — itself constitute a social circumstance and a patently normative project which serves the interests of some over others?

Political Logic of Random Selection

In beginning to answer my own question posed above (“What is the political significance…”) I am not arguing with the general logic of the controlled experiment, or the statistical reality of randomization and its utility for understanding cause and effect. What I am arguing is that this fetish of random trials pushed by the IES is derived from the following notion: that schools are successful to the degree they produce students who successfully compete in the academic marketplace (the exchange of grades and test scores for places of opportunity, praise and so on). Closing the achievement gap is an official effort to contend with the overgrowth of social inequality while simultaneously violently blocking any real effort or even discussion of reducing (let alone eliminating) social inequality. This pathology stems from the long-standing assumption of American political theory that replaces class struggle with the struggle for education. (Refer to classic quotes from Horace Mann for an elaboration, or even better, see Rush Welter’s (1962) Popular education and Democratic Thought in America.)

The underlying logic of this strand of charter school research (Berends et al.) is that charters should be promoted, not because they are necessarily proven to be better, but because they create competition — not only among schools, but among teachers, as researchers document a lower average salary, yet a larger spread in annual earnings for charter as compared to traditional public school teachers. Randomization is opportunity science speak for fair competition (e.g., no “selection bias”).

This competition is key because it allows for arrangements heretofore difficult to make, like linking student achievement with teacher pay, something the authors deem of obvious value and unproblematic. Teachers are evaluated on the degree to which they help students compete (e.g., note the language and real meaning of “high flying schools”), irrespective of the background and ability of the students. Good teachers are those whose students successfully compete in academic competitions (i.e., high stakes tests). Charter schools eschew the working class politics of union and solidarity and stand as institutions more firmly on the grounds of individual merit and competition. That is to say, good teachers are those that help liberate students from their social place through academic competition (again, there are other notions of “good teacher”) just as black and poor kids are supposed to “achieve” because in this “meritocracy,” race and class aren’t factors in determining ones place in the social order — charters are to replace public schools as the means for this liberation. Those that have a different view are deemed to have a bad attitude (“low expectations”).

The logic goes like this: pointing to realities of structural inequality and the impact “going without” has on child development (and thus “achievement”) introduces bias, just as introducing lotteries eliminates it. One could of course point out that it is quite biased to set up a social system which forces some more than others to be in positions where they need to “choose a good school.” This question has of course been forced off the agenda by advocates of “change” and “innovation”.

Randomization helps create, then, as a standardized norm-reference test does, a “fair playing field” — a free market, unencumbered by the realities of ones historical location, only “merit” rules. Like academic tests, charters, the logic goes, are the engine of a meritocracy for educational institutions, and the “best and brightest” will rise to the top, but could fall any moment, like a dot.com, if they don’t continually “strive” and “achieve”.

In this way, the research continues not because it is helping to answer questions of policy makers or the public (an admission that openly appears in the book) but because it is a mechanism for instituting more forcefully that arrangement of which charters are a part. The idea that one “lotteries” into a school not only suggests an open disregard for planning for the future of youth, a willingness to gamble on their future, but also a particular notion of fair play — rich and poor are equally selectable by the dice.

This entire view is antithetical to education as a right and signals an outright rejection of the notion that society has any responsibility to its members. Yet, successful schools are those that are not able to coach kids to the top of the heap, but prepare them for full participation in social life, in solving problems, etc.

Related Posts:

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• Clifford Adelman’s “White Noise of Accountability”
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In one of her lasts posts as a blogger for Education Week, Jennifer Jennings (better known as Eduwonkette) argued that the development of good policy “depends on compelling answers to ‘why’ questions about both the observed effects and non-effects of policies and programs.” She emphasized that these “why” questions pertain both to the “inner workings of policies and programs” as well as their contexts.

Given the pragmatic fanaticism that demands the rush to adopt what authorities deem “best practices”, this observation cannot be overstated. Jennings continues: “Borrowing policies that have been found to be effective in one setting and expecting the same results in another setting makes sense only if we know why the policies were effective in that first setting. A research study showing that a policy or program ‘worked’ in a particular setting doesn’t tell us that.”

Researchers that are conducting investigations with the aim of influencing practice should be particularly adept at answering “why?” Why might there be little effect of a well-designed, new program for this or that educational or social malady? Even knowing why a program or policy yielded positive results can lead to not adopting that program, for the cost of achieving “results” might be found to be high. For example, recent documentation of the physical and mental violence of KIPP’s bootstrapping methods, would reveal the “how and why” of test score increases.

Thus, research that addresses “why” questions is more useful than research that addresses “what works?” questions because it has so many more applications. Knowing “why” a program failed to yield a specific improvement might in fact help make that program effective in the future, thus reducing the sense of waste and frustration that accompanies no documented evidence of positive change.

Yet, Jennings notes, researchers are often trained to ask “what,” not “why.” “Asking ‘why?’ more often will require some hard thinking about research training and the infrastructure for education research in the U.S.”

It is for this reason that I continue to grow in my enthusiasm for training in case study method and design as this method is best suited to ask these “why” and even “how” questions. I recommend the pursuit of case study, especially as developed by Robert Yin, who has the most advanced discussion, to my knowledge, of case study method and design.

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