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Paying anyone--students or teachers--for test scores might be a bad idea. That's one of the big lessons I draw from Roland Fryer's now famous study of programs that pay students for good behavior, hard work or test results.
In fact, I think the implications of Fryer's study reach farther than that. The study offers a glimpse of how dangerous it could be to attach any big consequences--good or bad--to test scores alone. Here are some of the things I took away from Fryer's report:
We ignore inputs at our peril. It has become received wisdom that outcomes--and that usually means test scores--are all that really matter in school reform. But Fryer's study suggests that people in schools who call for more attention to inputs and the processes of arriving at outcomes aren't just whiners after all. The study found that cash rewards for certain behaviors--like reading more books--were more effective than cash for test scores. In fact, cash for scores seemed to have no effect on student achievement. Why? Incentives to do the right things, the things that promote learning, might well work better than incentives to do well on a test.
Getting kids too focused on their test scores may do them little good--and may even harm them--in the long run. Fryer's team noted that students getting cash for scores naturally grasped at test-taking strategies rather than, say, better study skills or deeper engagement in class materials:
Students [who were asked what they could do to earn more money on the next test] stated [sic.] thinking about test-taking strategies rather than salient inputs into the education production function or ...
As we hear about more and more teacher layoffs across the country, the debate on class size is bound to pick up again. The scars of this recession may be all the deeper and last all the longer if it increases our tolerance for large classes.
It's already becoming received wisdom that class size really doesn't matter, ever. Skeptics point to studies that have shown little or no payoff for class size reduction (CSR) efforts around the country. (Many forget to mention the strong evidence that CSR in early grades can improve learning outcomes, especially for poor children.)
Skeptics also note that CSR efforts forced some schools to scramble for extra teachers who lacked strong credentials. (Some CSR critics seem less concerned about similar problems struggling schools might face if laws compel them to replace most of their staff.)
I'm not ready to accept the research on class size as definitive. Here's why:
- Even the best studies don't necessarily measure the full impact of large class sizes. Most studies have to limit themselves to standardized test results. What's the impact of large class sizes on students' ability to write a first-rate research paper or carry out a long-term project? I haven't seen much research that answers this question. (If you have, please let me ...
No one disputes the powerful role that schools play in children’s lives. But schools shouldn’t go it alone in eliminating poverty and inequity in America.
Recent years have witnessed a surge of interest in efforts to create much stronger ties between schools and other providers of services for children. The Harlem Children’s Zone has captured the nation’s attention for its “cradle to career” focus on children’s well being. President Obama has pledged to support similar models to bring schools and communities together around the needs of young people.
One such model is Ready by 21, an effort to build community partnerships that support children from birth to adulthood, in school and out of school. The goal of this initiative? Prepare young people for college, work and life by the age of 21.
We recently spoke with three people who gave us a closer look at this project. Dan Domenech is the executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, a member of the Ready by 21 ® National Partnership. Shelley Berman is superintendent of Kentucky’s Jefferson County Public Schools (Louisville), which recently began a Ready by 21 effort to enhance its longstanding work to strengthen relationships between schools and communities. Rob Schamberg implemented a Ready by 21 effort when he was superintendent of California’s Black Oak Mine Unified School District. He is now an executive with the Forum for Youth Investment, which is the lead national partner in the Ready by 21 approach.
All three delivered a common message: As local budgets shrink and youth investments dry up, better coordination of local resources has become more important than ever.
What Exactly is Ready by 21?
Domenech described it well:
[Ready by 21] is a community-based approach that recognizes that, as important as the schools are—and as important as an education is—they are not the only elements ... of the ability of the child to succeed. There are other very significant factors, such as the ability of a family to have proper healthcare and live in an environment that is conducive for a child to learn. Nutrition, childcare, early childhood education…. Ready by 21 recognizes that all of these factors must come together in ...
Could it be that we're finally laying to rest the false debate between the value of schools and the value of community supports for children? That would be good news, indeed.
Deb Viadero's recent piece on a Harvard study of the Harlem Children's Zone's (HCZ) Promise Academy confirmed my sense that the debate might finally be dead or dying. When it came out almost a year ago, the study sparked a bizarre argument: Had the school alone raised test scores, or should we give credit to all those other services? David Brooks proclaimed the school the winner and implied that all that other stuff was just so much window dressing.
The marvelous Viadero, by contrast, notes that the jury is still out:
What we still don't know, of course, is whether students' improved performance was due to the quality of the schools or the combination of schooling and community supports that the children and their families were also receiving.
The study itself was just as cautious. The authors note that:
The [Academies] provide free medical, dental and mental-health services (students are screened upon entry and receive regular check-ups), student incentives for achievement (money, trips to France, e.g.), high-quality, nutritious, cafeteria meals, support for parents in the form of food baskets, meals, bus fare, and so forth, and less tangible benefits such as the support of a committed staff.
It's a relief that no new debate has (yet) erupted in the blogosphere. After all, as Viadero notes, the study has just won a rare nod of approval from the What ...
The "persistently low achieving" label can be a mixed blessing for schools. The stigma it brings can be just one more burden on a school already laboring under so many others. But it can also supply a bracing dose of reality to a school that sorely needs it. Leaders and policy makers will have to play their cards right if they want the label to have the best possible effect.
That's the main lesson I drew from an op-ed by Patrick Welsh in yesterday's Washington Post. Welsh, an English teacher at TC Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, makes an uneasy peace with the dreaded "low-achieving" label after the feds apply it to his school:
Labels can be unfair. They never tell the whole story. But though we never wanted to achieve our new label, I have no doubt that it will help us get back to achieving our best.
Welsh writes that the label forced him to face facts. The school sends its top students to colleges like MIT and Yale, but too many of its low-income students don't even master basic skills. Welsh wasn't prepared for the challenges he would face as the school's demographics changed. "I just never thought that I would need to teach reading in the 12th grade." Williams is a good school, he suggests, but only for some of its students.
But the label can also do harm. Students can feel the sting, too. Welsh quotes a 10th-grader: "There are a lot of smart, hard-working kids here who are ...
Education historian Diane Ravitch has just published a new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. The book has been a runaway success. It currently ranks among the top 60 best-selling books on Amazon.com, where it sold out within a week of its release.
Public School Insights: I’ve heard your book characterized as a “u-turn,” an “about-face,” a sudden shift from “conservative” to “liberal” views on education reform. Are those characterizations accurate? What are some of the fundamental beliefs that unite your efforts over the past four decades?
Ravitch: I did not do a "U-turn" or an abrupt "about-face," nor (as one story said) did I "recant" almost everything I ever believed or wrote. I certainly did change my mind about things I had advocated in the past, but the change was more gradual than it appeared to those who have not read what I have been writing for the past three years. As I write in the book, I concluded that NCLB was failing when I attended a conference at a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, on November 30, 2006. I was given the assignment of summing up the day's proceedings; paper after paper demonstrated that NCLB's remedies were not working. Very small proportions of students were choosing to leave their school or to get tutoring. In my remarks at the end of the day, I said that NCLB was failing. The next fall, in 2007, when NAEP scores were released and showed meager improvements, I wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times titled, "Get Congress Out of the Classroom." Since then, I have written several articles in opposition to NCLB. So my turn-about on NCLB was very public and not ...
People in our business commonly talk about the challenges of teaching students who are still learning English. Not so Ted Appel of Luther Burbank High School in California. He sees these students as an asset.
More than half of his school's students are English language learners. About nine in ten come from low-income families. Though some schools might see such students as a drag on their test scores, Luther Burbank High welcomes them from neighborhoods far from its own. For Appel, such students enrich the school in ways standard school rating systems cannot begin to capture.
Appel recently told us about his school--and about the state and federal policies that can at times impede its vital work.
Public School Insights: Tell me a little bit about Luther Burbank High School.
Appel: It is a comprehensive high school with about 2100 students. About 90% are on free or reduced lunch. About 35% are Southeast Asian, mostly Hmong. We are about 25% Latino, about 20% African-American, and whatever percentage is left is from everywhere else in the world.
Public School Insights: So you must have a lot of different languages spoken in the school.
Appel: Yes. The predominant languages are Hmong and Spanish. For about 55% of our student population, English is not the primary language spoken at home. They are English learners.
Public School Insights: I would assume this population has a pretty big impact on your school and the teaching strategies you to use. Is that true?
Appel: Absolutely. One of the advantages of having such a large number of English learners is that we in a way do not have an English learner program. We try to foster a sense that all teachers are likely to be teaching English learners, so there is not a sense that English learners are the kids that somebody else ...
If you have any doubts about the need for good civics education, then read this. David Barstow's account of troubling undercurrents in the Tea Party movement shows us just how precarious the fate of our civil society can be.
And lest people think I'm singling out certain Tea Partiers unfairly, I'll extend the critique to anyone on the left or right who flings about words like tyranny or fascism any time they encounter an opposing political view. It's all too easy to paint those we disagree with as traitors to the American cause.
It's not enough to swear fealty to the Constitution. We have to sustain and build institutions where people with different views work together to tackle common problems. And we have to nourish better civic habits in our young people. We shouldn't leave people to discover the nation's founding documents for the first time when they feel a grievance or sense that the world is changing around them. We have much to worry about if Americans get their first taste of civic action in a climate of fear and anger.
Tell me--Am I right to worry? ...
Incentives are all the rage. If we can just find the right carrots, we can move people to do marvelous things. We see this thinking in teacher merit pay proposals, of course, but it's also a regular feature in discussions of student motivation.
Unfortunately it's becoming harder and harder to find the right incentives for our students. Here's why:
We're swimming against strong cultural currents. The worst sides of youth culture aren't doing us any favors. For example, reality TV serves up a grotesque parody of a lesson we all want to teach our children: Work hard, and you'll reap rewards. What are they learning from reality TV? Distinguish yourself through vanity, venality, selfishness, boastfulness and intrigue, and you'll win the prize. Fame, however ill-gotten, is its own reward.
Perverse notions of self esteem weaken the drive to work hard. Recent polls suggest that American students on the whole think very highly of themselves. Jean Twenge, who has studied these polls, worries that “self-esteem without basis ...
Run, don't walk, to the February edition of the Phi Delta Kappan. First, there is a truly gripping interview (PDF) with Kevin Jennings, who directs the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education. Jennings describes how his childhood experiences with bullying in school have shaped his life's work.
He also calls for "standards around school climate" as well as "a data system so parents know what kind of environment a kid will encounter in a school":
But I do know that what gets measured is what gets done. Over time, it will force this issue onto the agenda. There will always be a role for grassroots activism. What the government can do is to push those ideas along a little faster.
I’m hearing loud and clear from people at the grassroots that they need help with this issue. We can’t just crank out standardized tests and expect that will make our schools better. We have to look at ...
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