Young Turks: Rewriting the textbooks

Behind the numbers

Don Wheeler

As I pored over the 2008-2009 Annual School Performance Report recently published by the South Bend Tribune I found a lot to think about.  We recently learned that the South Bend Community School Corporation realized a ten percent improvement in High School graduation in one year, which is great cause for celebration.  That sort of thing can’t happen solely because of what happens in the High Schools – it must start earlier.  The achievement would seem to indicate the whole SBCSC has made strides that really matter.

But when one throws in the No Child Left Behind program and the test scores which have been elevated to an almost dictatorial status, suddenly the waters muddy.  Suddenly it looks as though we’re actually doing worse.

I’m going to use examples of two particular schools – not because I think they are necessarily the best; rather, just that I know a bit more about them. 

Warren Primary Center on the west side and Hay Primary Center to the south are clearly two of the top non-magnet programs in the SBCSC.  Their test scores have historically topped state averages – but not in the most recent report.  Suddenly by this measure they have become inferior to mediocrity.

I know less about Warren than Hay, but here’s what I do know.   Someone I work with voiced great frustration last year because his son who attended Wilson Primary Center seemed to be doing fine but was told just ahead of summer break that he must attend summer school – or be held back.   Since Wilson is on probation, I suggested he look into other options for his son.  His son now attends Warren and by his father’s reports is doing fabulously well.  Other Warren parents seem happy too and last year’s Indiana Teacher Of  The Year, Tania Harman just happens to work there.

Our daughter is a First Grader at Hay.  My wife is Co-President of the PTO there.  We chose this school over all the magnet  programs and we’ve not been disappointed.  Principal Craig Haenes is not just an inspired administrator and team leader – he is the reason the Wilson LiPS reading program exists in the SBCSC.  Sarah’s teachers Debbie Fraser (this year) and Dixie Eichorst (last year) are dedicated, caring professionals.  The school flat feels good when you walk in the door.

But the test scores are down in both these schools – fairly dramatically over the prior year.  By this measure they would seem to be in crisis.  I don’t think they are.

I think that these schools are victims of their success – by test score standards.  Warren and Hay were designed to educate neighborhood kids and have done so with aplomb.  As nearby schools were designated as being in probationary status, both became destinations for students whose parents were looking for a better option.  Some of these students naturally had some learning deficits, so their test results would drag down the average numbers.

I sense this turn of events is a bit discouraging for educators at Warren and Hay.  But I hope they can hang with this and ride out an ill-conceived program to its death.   Getting kids a better opportunity for success at the cost of a lowered institutional test average seems like a fabulous trade-off to me.  Just as long as these folks doing what we absolutely need them to do aren’t penalized.

NIEER Feb. Hot Topics

Teach the Scientific Method in Pre-K? Here's How …
Two Rutgers University professors affiliated with NIEER have co-authored Preschool Pathways to Science, a new book that serves as a guide for implementing science in preschool classrooms. In addition to writing the book, Rochel Gelman, a NIEER scientific advisory board member known for her research on children's causal and quantitative reasoning, and Kim Brenneman, NIEER assistant research professor and lead author of the policy brief Math and Science in Preschool: Policies and Practice, are content advisers to the popular PBS show Sid the Science Kid. They explain in the video in this week's post on Preschool Matters … Today!

Mothers Influence How Children Develop Executive Functioning
A new longitudinal study finds that the way mothers act when they are playing and solving puzzles with their babies can explain some of the differences in how their children develop executive functions such as controlling impulses and showing mental flexibility. Children of moms who answered their children's requests for help quickly and accurately and talked to the kids about their thoughts and memories during play performed better on tasks requiring executive function.

Pew Center Report: How the Recession Might Change States
The states are running out of short-term fixes for the deficits plaguing most of them, forcing them to consider downsizing government and re-examining delivery of services and outdated tax policies, says the State of the States 2010 report just out from The Pew Center on the States. It takes a clear-eyed look at the economic drama unfolding in many states and predicts it will take years for states to return to normal in part because the recession reduced the base for future revenue for many states.

Art Rolnick to Retire from Minneapolis Fed This Summer
The Star Tribune reports that Art Rolnick, senior VP and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, is retiring from the bank in July after 40 years of service. Rolnick, who has focused attention on cost-benefit analysis of early childhood education, will become co-director of the Human Capital Resource Collaborative at the Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota. He said he hopes to raise funds and develop pilot early education programs in Minneapolis, his home town of Detroit, and perhaps other cities.

Online Early Ed Degrees Seventh Most Sought After
The distance education web portal eLearners.com says that online degree programs for early childhood education rank seventh on its list of top 10 online degree searches. The company says it has seen an increase in searches for the "helping professions" since the downturn in the economy began.

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New on nieer.org

State Pre-K: Will Tight Budgets Threaten Progress?
In the latest issue of Preschool Matters, NIEER looks at state budgets and preschool education, one of many areas where the funding progress seen in recent years has taken a considerable blow. Other articles in the new issue include:
• Yet More Evidence: Time to Beef Up Math and Science in Pre-K
• Long-Term Studies Show Lasting Gains from Pre-K
• The Benefits of Investments in Early Development Around the Globe
• Preschool's Role in Fighting Childhood Obesity

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NIEER - Early Ed hot topics 1/15

Head Start Study: Gains Made by 4-Year-Olds Don't Show Up in First Grade
The latest results from the Head Start Impact Study were released this week. As originally reported, providing access to Head Start has modest benefits for both 3- and 4-year-olds in the cognitive, health, and parenting domains, and for 3-year-olds in the social-emotional domain. However, the advantages of Head Start are no longer evident at first grade. NIEER Co-Director Steve Barnett said that, like the 2005 findings from the same study, the new results are likely to be taken out of context by opponents of publicly funded preschool education. He writes about the subject in his recent post on Preschool Matters ... Today!

White Students are No Longer a Majority in the South's Schools
Public schools in the American South no longer enroll a majority of white students when people of other backgrounds are considered, says a new report released by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF). Whites now comprise 49 percent of the student population while Blacks comprise 27 percent, Hispanics 20 percent, Asian-Pacific people 3 percent and Native Americans and others 1 percent. The SEF also says that in 2007, children eligible for free or reduced-price lunch became a majority in the South's public schools.

Universal Pre-K Recommended for Michigan Economic Development
If Michigan invested the additional $300 million per year required to raise participation of 4-year-olds in state pre-K from the current 18 percent level of attendance to 70 percent, the present value of that investment in enhanced workforce productivity would be $834 million, says Timothy Bartik, senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo. The universal pre-K recommendation is one of eight Bartik presented at the University of Michigan economic forecast conference. They're detailed in his new working paper What Should Michigan Be Doing to Promote Long-Run Economic Development?

NACCRA Report: The List of State Budget Cuts to Children's Program is Long
State Budget Cuts: America's Kids Pay the Price is a report just published by the National Association of Child Care Resources and Referral Agencies (NACCRA) that provides a state-by-state run-down of early childhood programs that have fallen victim to the budget axe. California and Connecticut are leading the pack by cutting nine programs each. Included are recommendations for future investment.

Jerlean Daniel to Become NAEYC Executive Director
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has announced that Jerlean Daniel is the executive director designate of the association. She will replace outgoing Executive Director Mark R.Ginsberg on July 1 of this year. Dr. Daniel has most recently served as a deputy executive director of the association and is also a past president. A member of NAEYC for more than 30 years, she joined NAEYC as a staff member after 21 years at the University of Pittsburgh where she served as a Chair of Psychology in Education. In addition, she was director of the University Child Development Center for 18 years and it received NAEYC accreditation under her leadership. Dr. Ginsberg, who has been NAEYC executive director since 1999, will become Dean of the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. We wish both of them great success in their new endeavors.

A serious proposal

By BOB HERBERT
New York Times

The president of the American Federation of Teachers says she will urge her members to accept a form of teacher evaluation that takes student achievement into account and that the union has commissioned an independent effort to streamline disciplinary processes and make it easier to fire teachers who are guilty of misconduct.

In a speech to be delivered Tuesday in Washington, Randi Weingarten plans to call for more frequent and more rigorous evaluations of public schoolteachers, and she says she will assert that standardized test scores and other measures of student performance should be an integral part of the evaluation process. The use of student test scores to measure teacher performance has been anathema to many teachers. Ms. Weingarten is not proposing that they be the only — or even the primary — element in determining teacher quality.

But she told me in an interview over the weekend that she wants to “stop this notion” that her membership is in favor of keeping bad teachers in the classroom. “I will try to convince my members that, of course, we have to look at student test scores and student learning,” she said.

The use of test scores, as Ms. Weingarten sees it, would be part of a new, enhanced process of teacher evaluation that would offer clear professional standards for teachers. It would replace current practices, which in many districts across the country are lax, haphazard and, in the words of Ms. Weingarten and others, often amount to little more than “drive-by” evaluations.

It is not uncommon for teachers to be observed in the classroom just a couple of times a year for only a few minutes each time and then get a satisfactory rating. Under those circumstances, hardly anything is learned about the quality or effectiveness of the teachers. Most teachers are routinely rated as satisfactory, and many are never evaluated at all.

Ms. Weingarten is urging school administrators to observe teachers more closely and more frequently. (The enhanced, clearly articulated professional standards she is calling for are already in use in some districts. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.) Experts trained in best practices and using a variety of objective data, including measures of student achievement, would do the evaluating. Teachers who are struggling would be given an opportunity to improve their performance. If, after remedial efforts, they still did not measure up, they would be fired, whether tenured or not.

As Ms. Weingarten put it, “We would have to say, ‘Look, we helped you. We tried. You’re just not cut out to be a teacher.’ ”

Ms. Weingarten also addresses the fact that it is sometimes scandalously difficult to remove teachers who have engaged in serious misconduct. While emphasizing the need for due process, she bluntly asserts, in a draft of her speech: “We recognize, however, that too often due process can become a glacial process. We intend to change that.”

The union has asked Kenneth Feinberg, the federal government’s so-called pay czar, to develop a more efficient protocol for disciplining — and when necessary, removing — teachers accused of misconduct.

This would be a big deal. Mr. Feinberg is highly respected and widely viewed as independent. He administered the government fund that compensated those who were injured and the families of those who were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. He also administered a fund set up in the wake of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007.

He is not the kind of guy to go into the tank for the teachers’ union. (John Ashcroft chose him to lead the 9/11 fund.) It will be very interesting to see whether the union actually goes along if Mr. Feinberg fashions a workable plan to streamline teacher discipline that is viewed favorably by school administrators.

“We look forward,” said Ms. Weingarten, “to working with Mr. Feinberg on this critical undertaking.”

If the union follows through on Ms. Weingarten’s proposals, it would represent a significant, good-faith effort to cooperate more fully with state officials and school administrators in the monumental job of improving public school education. More than 90 percent of American youngsters go through the public schools. The schools were struggling and failing too many youngsters even before the latest economic downturn, which is taking a terrible toll.

My view is that America’s greatest national security crisis is the crisis in its schools.

Ms. Weingarten’s ideas for upgrading the teacher evaluation process are good ones and should be embraced and improved upon where possible by those in charge of the nation’s schools. The point is not just to get rid of failing teachers, but to improve the skills and effectiveness of the millions of teachers who show up in the classrooms every day.

If the union chooses not to follow through on these proposals, its credibility will take a punishing and well-deserved hit.

NIEER - Early ed news roundup 11/13

Early Education News Roundup

November 13, 2009
Va. keeps focus on early-childhood education, official says
Despite tough economic times, Virginia has taken a strong interest in maintaining its programs for early-childhood education, according to a member of the Virginia Board of Education.

November 10, 2009
Editorial: Pre-K program is doing what it should
Nevertheless, getting the pre-K students ready for kindergarten and first grade, it would seem, satisfies a major objective of the program, and that is what the report found. The program was not designed to create super students who would show up their peers for the next dozen years but to put disadvantaged students on a par with those who were tutored at home or attended private preschool programs.

November 9, 2009
State to rate child-care providers on star system
The state of Montana is gearing up to roll out a program next year that would take the guesswork out of finding top-notch early childhood programs. Called STARS to Quality, the voluntary program would rate early childhood programs, either centers or in-home providers. Programs would be evaluated based on early childhood education research.

November 9, 2009
Opinion: Parental anxiety is ruining playtime
It is well known that many preschool parents have become super-anxious trying to give their kids a leg up on kindergarten, but I didn't realize just how nutty things had become until I talked to several dozen preschool program directors. The preschool directors wanted to discuss the worsening anxiety they see in parents who recognize that children are being required to read and write in kindergarten and want to make sure little Johnny and Joanie stay on track -- whether or not they are developmentally ready (and lots aren't).

November 8, 2009
Editorial: Don't mess with success: Gov.-elect Chris Christie should catch up on preschool
Today, more than 50,000 kids are in these programs, most of them in the poorest urban districts. Class size is limited to 15, and teachers must be college graduates with special training in the workings of the young mind and how it learns.

November 7, 2009
Alarm raised on early education
Sherri Killins, commissioner of the Department of Early Education and Care, told a group of legislators at the Statehouse Thursday only 15 percent of children who apply for subsidies for early education or after-school programs receive state aid. There are 22,774 children on the waiting list, according to Killins, who estimated the cost for subsidizing tuition for all of the children at $214 million.

November 5, 2009
Study: Preschools Could Save Prison Costs
According to a new study, the state could save millions of dollars in prison costs by getting more children in preschool. The study also found that 28 percent of kids who did attend preschool were sent to jail in their lives while 52 percent of those who didn't attend preschool went to jail.

November 4, 2009
Opinion: Early education: Aim for quality across spectrum of providers
There are currently a variety of options for delivering high-quality early learning opportunities to Massachusetts' children. This "mixed delivery system" is comprised of community-based child care centers, public preschool programs, after-school and out-of-school-time programs, family child care homes, Head Start programs, and child care provided by families, friends, and neighbors.

November 4, 2009
Editorial: Investment in early childhood good use of stimulus dollars
Gov. Rick Perry recently named his appointees to the newly formed Texas State Advisory Council on Early Childhood Education and Care, a new council mandated by the federal Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007. The council will direct spending on a pending $11.3 million federal stimulus grant and work towards developing a comprehensive system of early childhood education and care that ensures coordination and collaboration among early childhood programs throughout Texas.

November 2, 2009
Report: Tenn. Pre-K Not Effective After Second Grade
A new report shows the effectiveness of Tennessee's pre-kindergarten program diminishes after the second grade, but supporters say it still provides a valuable foundation that will help at-risk children succeed. The report commissioned by the state comptroller's office late last week reveals kindergarten students who participated in the pre-K program performed better academically than a group of those who didn't.

October 30, 2009
State budget crisis threatens pre-K programs
If Illinois pre-K administrators and educators are given the same budget they received last year — which amounted to a 10 percent reduction from the previous year — cuts would have to be made across the state. More than 9,500 3- and 4-year olds could go without pre-kindergarten.

NIEER - Early Ed hot topics 11/13

Growing Fear: Middle Class Kids Are Being Left Out of Public Pre-K
Pre-K program expansion is in retreat or at risk in a number of states, and dire warnings are already being issued for future state budgets. At the same time, new federal resources are aimed primarily at disadvantaged populations. Understandably, fear is growing that more working families who don't qualify for targeted programs, yet can't afford private pre-K, will increasingly have no pre-K. Cutting back on pre-K for working families, as Ohio has already done by eliminating its Early Learning Initiative, is a policy mistake since there is no sharp differentiation in school readiness or later educational success between those above and below the poverty line, says NIEER co-director Steve Barnett. Instead there is a strong linear gradient along which school readiness, achievement, and graduation rates increase with income. Barnett blogs on the subject this week in Preschool Matters … Today!

Top Brass Call for more Public Pre-K to Help Address Shortage of Recruits
Retired military leaders belonging to the group Mission: Readiness delivered a shocker recently when they released a report saying that 75 percent of young people in the U.S. can't join the military because they are too poorly educated, are overweight or have a criminal record. Calling the situation a threat to our national security, they made a strong case for devoting more resources to public pre-K to help address the problem. The group called on Congress to act this year. Former NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark issued something sounding like a direct order, telling Congress it "must pass" the Early Learning Challenge Grant. That bill, which would provide $1 billion in funding for early childhood programs each year over the next 10 years, passed the House but is unlikely to be taken up in the Senate until it finishes with health care reform.

NIEER International Study: Early Interventions in Many Countries Have Positive Effects
Early childhood interventions around the world vary widely and not much exists in way of research reviews looking at their effectiveness. To help address that gap, NIEER recently completed a meta-analysis of studies looking at 30 interventions in 23 countries, finding that conditional cash transfers, early care and education, and nutritional interventions all had moderate positive effects in all domains of development. Educational interventions had the largest effects on cognitive abilities. NIEER Assistant Research Professor Milagros Nores, who led the study which appears in Economics of Education Review, says studies looking at effects at later ages found the gains were lasting. She blogs on the subject in Preschool Matters … Today!

Cause for Alarm? Preschoolers Watching Loads of TV
Data released this week by Nielsen News shows that American children aged two to five are spending more than 32 hours a week — or more than 4.5 hours a day — watching television. That's four more hours per week than kids six to eleven. The younger kids are also more likely to watch advertising in playback mode than the older group. The Lehrer NewsHour took up the issue in a segment recognizing the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street. It featured Michele Obama, Big Bird, Sesame Workshop CEO Gary Knell and Lisa Guernsey, author and director of the early education initiative at New America Foundation. Read the transcript here.

Early Lessons Radio Program Revisits Perry Preschool, Charts Pre-K's Progress
American Radio Works producer Emily Hanford traveled to Yipsilanti, Michigan, to capture the essence of the Perry Preschool Program, interview Perry teachers, and document the advances in early education that emanated from it and other programs that are the basis of so much high-quality research. Her program, called Early Lessons has been drawing rave reviews. Read articles by Hanford about the project and download the program at the American Radio Works web site.

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