• Attempted Assassination In Pakistan

    What would drive armed gunmen to open fire on a bus full of schoolgirls, with the express aim of assassinating one talented young teenager? That’s the question on the minds of many people this week, following Tuesday’s attempted assassination of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in northwestern Pakistan. A refugee fleeing Taliban violence and oppression in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, Malala had already won a following for her precocious and courageous blog posts, written when she was really just a child, arguing that young women have a right to an education, and indeed, to a life free from discrimination and fear.

    She is also a hero to many Pakistanis. In 2011, the Pakistani government awarded her a national peace prize and 1 million rupees (US$10,500). In 2012, she was a finalist for the International Children’s Peace Prize, awarded by a Dutch organization, in recognition of her courage in defying the Taliban by advocating for girls’ education.  

  • NCLB And The Institutionalization Of Data Interpretation

    It is a gross understatement to say that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law is, was – and will continue to be – a controversial piece of legislation. Although opinion tends toward the negative, there are certain features, such as a focus on student subgroup data, that many people support. And it’s difficult to make generalizations about whether the law’s impact on U.S. public education was “good” or “bad” by some absolute standard.

    The one thing I would say about NCLB is that it has helped to institutionalize the improper interpretation of testing data.

    Most of the attention to the methodological shortcomings of the law focuses on “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) – the crude requirement that all schools must make “adequate progress” toward the goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2014. And AYP is indeed an inept measure. But the problems are actually much deeper than AYP.

    Rather, it’s the underlying methods and assumptions of NCLB (including AYP) that have had a persistent, negative impact on the way we interpret testing data.

  • The Stability And Fairness Of New York City's School Ratings

    New York City has just released the new round of results from its school rating system (they're called “progress reports"). It relies considerably more on student growth (60 out of 100 points) than absolute performance (25 points), and there are efforts to partially adjust most of the measures via peer group comparisons.*

    All of this indicates that the city's system is more focused on school rather than student test-based performance, compared with many other systems around the U.S.

    The ratings are high-stakes. Schools receiving low grades – a D or F in any given year, or a C for three consecutive years – enter a review process by which they might be closed. The number of schools meeting these criteria jumped considerably this year.

    There is plenty of controversy to go around about the NYC ratings, much of it pertaining to two important features of the system. They’re worth discussing briefly, as they are also applicable to systems in other states.

  • Assessing Ourselves To Death

    ** Reprinted here in the Washington Post

    I have two points to make. The first is something that I think everyone knows: Educational outcomes, such as graduation and test scores, are signals of or proxies for the traits that lead to success in life, not the cause of that success.

    For example, it is well-documented that high school graduates earn more, on average, than non-graduates. Thus, one often hears arguments that increasing graduation rates will drastically improve students’ future prospects, and the performance of the economy overall. Well, not exactly.

    The piece of paper, of course, only goes so far. Rather, the benefits of graduation arise because graduates are more likely to possess the skills – including the critical non-cognitive sort – that make people good employees (and, on a highly related note, because employers know that, and use credentials to screen applicants).

    We could very easily increase the graduation rate by easing requirements, but this wouldn’t do much to help kids advance in the labor market. They might get a few more calls for interviews, but over the long haul, they’d still be at a tremendous disadvantage if they lacked the required skills and work habits.

  • Are Charter Caps Keeping Great Schools From Opening?

    ** Reprinted here in the Washington Post

    Charter school “caps” are state-imposed limits on the size or growth of charter sectors. Currently, around 25 states set caps on schools or enrollment, with wide variation in terms of specifics: Some states simply set a cap on the number of schools (or charters in force); others limit annual growth; and still others specify caps on both growth and size (there are also a few places that cap proportional spending, coverage by individual operators and other dimensions).

    A great many charter school supporters strongly support the lifting of these restrictions, arguing that they prevent the opening of high-quality schools. This is, of course, an oversimplification at best, as lifting caps could just as easily lead to the proliferation of the many unsuccessful charters. If the charter school experiment has taught us anything, it’s that these schools are anything but sure bets, and that even includes the tiny handful of highly successful models such as KIPP.*

    Overall, the only direct impact of charter caps is to limit the potential size or growth of a state’s charter school sector. Assessing their implications for quality, on the other hand, is complicated, and there is every reason to believe that the impact of caps, and thus the basis of arguments for lifting them, varies by context – including the size and quality of states’ current sectors, as well as the criteria by which low-performing charters are closed and new ones are authorized. 

  • Our Not-So-College-Ready Annual Discussion Of SAT Results

    Every year, around this time, the College Board publicizes its SAT results, and hundreds of newspapers, blogs, and television stations run stories suggesting that trends in the aggregate scores are, by themselves, a meaningful indicator of U.S. school quality. They’re not.

    Everyone knows that the vast majority of the students who take the SAT in a given year didn’t take the test the previous year – i.e., the data are cross-sectional. Everyone also knows that participation is voluntary (as is participation in the ACT test), and that the number of students taking the test has been increasing for many years and current test-takers have different measurable characteristics from their predecessors. That means we cannot use the raw results to draw strong conclusions about changes in the performance of the typical student, and certainly not about the effectiveness of schools, whether nationally or in a given state or district. This is common sense.

    Unfortunately, the College Board plays a role in stoking the apparent confusion - or, at least, they could do much more to prevent it. Consider the headline of this year’s press release:

  • New Teacher Evaluations Are A Long-Term Investment, Not Test Score Arbitrage

    One of the most important things in education policy to keep an eye on is the first round of changes to new teacher evaluation systems. Given all the moving parts and the lack of evidence on how these systems should be designed and their impact, course adjustments along the way are not just inevitable, but absolutely essential.

    Changes might be guided by different types of evidence, such as feedback from teachers and administrators or analysis of ratings data. And, of course, human judgment will play a big role. One thing that states and districts should not be doing, however, is assessing their new systems – or making changes to them – based whether or not raw overall test scores go up or down within the first few years.

    Here’s a little reality check: Even the best-designed, best-implemented new evaluations are unlikely to have an immediate measurable impact on aggregate student performance. Evaluations are an investment, not a quick fix. And they are not risk-free. Their effects will depend on the quality of systems, how current teachers and administrators react to them and how all of this shapes and plays out in the teacher labor market. As I’ve said before, the realistic expectation for overall performance – and this is no guarantee – is that there will be some very small, gradual improvements, unfolding over a period of years and decades.

    States and districts that expect anything more risk making poor decisions during these crucial, early phases.

  • That's Not Teacher-Like

    I’ve been reading Albert Shanker’s “The Power of Ideas: Al In His Own Words," the American Educator’s compendium of Al’s speeches and columns, published posthumously in 1997. What an enjoyable, witty and informative collection of essays.

    Two columns especially caught my attention: “That’s Very Unprofessional Mr. Shanker!" and “Does Pavarotti Need to File an Aria Plan” – where Al discusses expectations for (and treatment of) teachers. They made me reflect, yet again, on whether perceptions of teacher professionalism might be gendered. In other words, when society thinks of the attributes of a professional teacher, might we unconsciously be thinking of women teachers? And, if so, why might this be important?

    In “That’s Very Unprofessional, Mr. Shanker!" Al writes:

  • Does It Matter How We Measure Schools' Test-Based Performance?

    In education policy debates, we like the "big picture." We love to say things like “hold schools accountable” and “set high expectations." Much less frequent are substantive discussions about the details of accountability systems, but it’s these details that make or break policy. The technical specs just aren’t that sexy. But even the best ideas with the sexiest catchphrases won’t improve things a bit unless they’re designed and executed well.

    In this vein, I want to recommend a very interesting CALDER working paper by Mark Ehlert, Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons and Michael Podgursky. The paper takes a quick look at one of these extremely important, yet frequently under-discussed details in school (and teacher) accountability systems: The choice of growth model.

    When value-added or other growth models come up in our debates, they’re usually discussed en masse, as if they’re all the same. They’re not. It's well-known (though perhaps overstated) that different models can, in many cases, lead to different conclusions for the same school or teacher. This paper, which focuses on school-level models but might easily be extended to teacher evaluations as well, helps illustrate this point in a policy-relevant manner.

  • "We Need Teachers, Not Computers"

    I’ve been noticing for a while that a lot of articles about education technology have a similar ring to them: “Must Have Apps for K12 Educators," “What Every Teacher Should Know About Using iPads in the Classroom," “The Best 50 Education Technology Resources for Teachers." You get the drift.

    This type of headline suggests that educators are the ones in need of schooling when it comes to technology, while the articles themselves often portray students as technology natives, naturally gifted at all things digital. One almost gets the impression that, when it comes to technology, students should be teaching their teachers.

    But maybe my perception is skewed. After all, a portion of the education news I read “comes to me” via Zite, Flipboard and other news aggregators. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that that these types of software applications have a bias toward certain types of technology-centered stories which may not be representative of the broader education technology press.

    So, is it me, or is it true that the media sometimes sees educators as a bunch of technological neophytes, while seeing students as technological whizzes from whom teachers must learn? And, if true, is this particular to the field of education or is something similar seen in regard to professionals in other fields?