Why I like Jeb

Via Education Intelligence Agency

Be Careful What You Wish For.

Florida voters set themselves up for a mess when they approved a constitutional amendment to reduce class sizes in the state's public schools, but returned to office the man who campaigned strenuously against the measure: Gov. Jeb Bush. Faced with implementing an initiative he opposes, Gov. Bush squared the circle by floating his own method to cut class sizes… offer vouchers to students in overcrowded classrooms. "It's a cost-effective way of dealing with this issue," said the governor.

As you might imagine, supporters of the amendment are apoplectic. "It's totally inappropriate to empty classrooms by sending kids to private schools," state Sen. Debbie Wasserman told the Miami Herald. "That's not what the voters voted for."

Third World Choice

By this weekend, I should be out from under a couple of big projects that have me literaly tied to my computer. But in the meantime, please enjoy this fabulous article from the Institute for Economic Affairs, James Tooley, on private education in India and Africa. It has great stories.

$5 Mil and Counting

I guess DC union thieves figured if they were going to steal, they might as well go all out.

An audit released last night alleges that more than $5 million was looted from the Washington Teachers' Union over the last seven years by union officials and others, an amount far greater than previous estimates of improper spending.

The audit, prepared by a private firm at the request of the union's parent, the American Federation of Teachers, said three former union officers -- president Barbara A. Bullock, her assistant Gwendolyn M. Hemphill and treasurer James O. Baxter II -- diverted the money to themselves, their relatives and others for personal benefit.

The report said that because many records are still missing, the total amount of money found to have been misappropriated is likely to grow "and this increase could be substantial.. ."

Among the improper expenditures were political contributions, according to the audit. In 2000, Bullock contributed $9,000 to the Democratic National Committee and $2,000 to Hillary Rodham Clinton's U.S. Senate campaign and charged the payments to the union's American Express account, the audit said, adding that those funds have since been returned to the AFT.

I really shouldn't be shocked.

Edison Scores Up?

From Edison's press release:

Edison Schools (Nasdaq: EDSN), the nation's largest private manager of public schools, announced today that achievement gains at its schools far exceed, by ratios as high as 5 to 1 and by an overall average of more than double, those gains at similar schools in the locales where Edison is working.

Edison compared each one of its schools to every other "similar" public school within the same district. Similar schools were defined as those serving students with similar levels of economic disadvantage (as determined by free- or reduced-price lunch eligibility) and a similar demographic population (Edison's overall national demographic includes 88 percent minority enrollment) within plus or minus 10 percentage points of the Edison school. For example, if 73 percent of students in an Edison school were eligible for free- or reduced-price lunches (Edison's national average eligibility level), then that Edison school was compared with those schools with free- or reduced-price lunch percentages ranging from 63 percent to 83 percent (and serving the same tested grade levels).

Edison's comparably superior performance is true not only for gains made during the last academic year, but also for cumulative gains made since Edison began its management. For the 2001-2002 academic year, Edison schools with comparison schools available gained an average of 4.4 percentage points on criterion referenced tests and 4.3 percentiles on norm referenced tests; the gains at more than 1,000 comparable schools were 0.7 percentage points and -0.4 percentiles, respectively. Essentially, the comparable schools made no academic gains last year, while the Edison schools gained solidly. Viewed over the period of time since Edison began management at each school, the results are similar. Edison schools with comparison schools available have improved by an average of 3.6 percentage points every year on criterion
referenced tests and 5.5 percentiles on norm referenced tests. Comparable schools have gained only 1.4 percentage points and 2.7 percentiles, respectively-approximately one half of Edison's improvement rate.

I'm sure the negative analysis for why Edison has not really raised test scores will begin soon.

Funding Drives Children's Drug Use

In a new Lexington Institute brief, Robert Holland and Don Soifer point out that:

In a study released this week examining data for almost 900,000 youths who were enrolled in several states’ HMO or Medicaid programs, Dr. Julie Magno Zito and her associates at the University of Maryland found a 200 percent to 300 percent increase in use of behavior-altering drugs between 1987 and 1996. By far the largest increases occurred after 1991 -- and therein may lie a valuable lesson for policymakers who are concerned about the widespread drugging of American kids.

It was in 1991 that federal funds first were made available to treat what is called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Before a child gets the psychiatric drug, he gets a label -- often a preliminary one of learning disabled from school authorities, and then ADHD or simply ADD from a physician. The prescription commonly given is Ritalin, a powerful stimulant that is supposed to help its users focus their mental energies.

Anti-privatization Law Cripples California Schools

My latest Reason Foundation commentary on how California's new privatization law handicaps school administrators during this severe financial debacle is here.

Computers Down

Reason's Hit and Run has the unsurprising story that computers in the classroom do not raise student achievement. Just proves that when it comes to raising achievement content matters most.

A three-year study by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency found "no consistent relationship between computer use and pupil achievement in any subject at any age." In fact, some of the greatest educational gains were made by students who used PCs the least.

Yet, in the US the e-rate and other dubious government technology programs continue to enrich contractors and school officials--even if children rarely use the technology effectively.

D.C. Vouchers

Deroy Murdock helps turn on the pressure for school vouchers in the nation's capital.

On the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress, for example, 6 percent of DCPS' eighth graders performed math at grade level, versus a U.S. average of 31 percent. On the 1998 NAEP writing test, 11 percent of DCPS' eighth graders were proficient or advanced, compared to 25 percent nationally. On that year's NAEP, only 10 percent of DCPS' fourth graders read at grade level, versus 35 percent nationally.

While 31 percent of U.S. students currently fail to finish high school, 42 percent of DCPS pupils drop out. Among DCPS graduates who reach the University of the District of Columbia , 85 percent need remedial education.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported in 1997 that DCPS officials illegally kept two sets of books and “reprogrammed” money to pay unauthorized staffers. That year, $1.6 million mandated for needy students somehow became employees' salaries.

According to a December 18 FBI affidavit, labor bosses in the Washington Teacher's Union waltzed off with some $2 million in members' dues. As WTU honchos reportedly let rent and utilities bills pile up, they allegedly purchased a $6,800 crystal ice bucket, $17,000 in furs, a $57,000, 288-piece Tiffany sterling silver service set, and more.

DCPS itself is virtually gold-plated. It spent $10,477 on each of its 67,500 pupils in 2000-2001, versus a national average of $7,483 as the National Education Association estimates. Ahead of the 50 states, the NEA ranked DCPS as America 's number-one school system...in public funding. Taxpayers finance 10,967 DCPS employees; only 4,719 of them teach.

D.C. kids need something besides money that ends up paying for school officials vacations, clothes, and dining. Let the public schools compete for the kids.

No Surprise Here

The $2.25 billion E-Rate program has helped connect thousands of schools and libraries to the Internet, but it may also be enriching unscrupulous contractors, according to a report released yesterday.

The program is ‘‘honeycombed with fraud and financial shenanigans,’’ said the report from the Center for Public Integrity in Washington.

What a federal education program riddled with fraud? Get out.

Hard to Imagine

My children are 4 and six and a half and I can't imagine leaving them alone for twenty days. What's more, the mother told the four year old and seven year old to stay inside and they did. My children probably would have alerted the neighborhood--and we live in a remote area not an apartment. Terribly amazing.

Spielberg Effect

Jay Mathews has a very good column on people who succeed despite being rejected from their first-choice colleges.

One of the teachers he had asked to write recommendations told Siegman he had decided, on his own, that no matter how much the teenager believed in his dreams, the teacher thought they were out of whack. The teacher had told the colleges that Siegman was a nice enough young man and worked very hard for his grades, but he did not have the intellectual capacity to flourish at such schools. He was not Ivy League material.

There are many Greg Forbes Siegmans. America is a country built on supersized ambition. The 120-pound water boy thinks he can be quarterback. The book store clerk dreams of writing the great American novel. The high school dropout is certain he will win a Grammy and live in Bel Air. The college admissions process is designed to bring all those hopes in line with reality. Siegman's teacher probably thought he was doing Siegman a favor. If he went to Harvard, the teacher figured, he would only be disappointed and struggle against his limits without any hope of reward.. .

When Siegman was twenty-four, working as a part-time restaurant doorman and just starting as a substitute teacher in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago, he decided to start a mentoring program called brunchbunch.com. He invited people of different backgrounds to weekly meals designed to break down stereotypes and other psychological and social barriers.

After 70 weeks of successful brunches, in which young professionals forged deep relationships with young people needing mentors, Siegman set up a foundation. It supervises the brunchbunch.com program and raises money so young people can get the opportunity he was denied to attend their first-choice colleges.

He called it the 11-10-02 Foundation, celebrating the day that he would turn 30 and his belief that people under 30 were as capable as anyone to do anything. By that date he was resolved to have made a difference in the world, no matter what his high school teacher had thought, no matter how unrealistic his dreams still seemed to many of the people he met.

Naturally, long before the deadline, his optimism and energy had exactly the desired effect. Not only did the weekly brunches change many lives, but the foundation raised more than $250,000 to further the cause. His ShakingUpChicago.com Scholarship Program gave out tens of thousands of dollars in college grants. In 1999, Siegman was honored by Hasbro as a real-life American hero. In 2000, he became the youngest adult in the country to be honored at the National Jefferson Awards for Public Service. He was named a Man of Distinction by Zeta Beta Tau in 2001. In 2002, he was honored as one of America's Points of Light.

There is now a term for this phenomenon, invented by Stacy Berg Dale of Mathematica Policy Research and Alan Krueger of Princeton University, who have been working with data on the effects of selective college enrollment on lives.

While looking at their numbers, Dale and Krueger noticed something odd. In many cases, they found that applicants who were rejected by brand-name schools did as well in later life as those who were accepted. The researchers began to wonder whether students' sense of themselves made admissions committees' opinions less important. Under this theory, if you applied to Columbia, Wellesley, and Swarthmore, then you were by definition Columbia, Wellesley, and Swarthmore material, even if those schools spurned you and you had to make do with Cleveland State.

The notion deserved further study, they decided. In the meantime, they gave it a label. It seemed fitting to use the name of a scrawny, bespectacled senior at Saratoga High School near San Jose, Calif., who applied to the famous film school at UCLA but was rejected. He went to Long Beach State (later to become California State University-Long Beach) instead, still thinking about a way to create the career he had in mind. He later tried to transfer from Long Beach State to another famous film school, the University of Southern California, but again he was rejected.

He made five films at Long Beach State, crashed some of the student film screenings at USC, and pushed the studio executives so hard that eventually he got a chance to show what he could do when allowed to make a real feature film.

His name was Steven Spielberg. Dale and Krueger dubbed the phenomenon of rejected college applicants succeeding in spite of their disappointment the "Spielberg effect."

Sanitizing Text Again

New York state education officials are still rewriting literature according to today's New York Times.

In new guidelines, the state promised complete paragraphs with no deletions, but an excerpt from Kafka (on the importance of literature) changes his words and removes the middle of a paragraph without using ellipses, in the process deleting mentions of God and suicide.

The new state guidelines promised not to sanitize, but a passage on people's conception of time from Aldous Huxley (a product of England's colonial era) deletes the paragraphs on how unpunctual "the Oriental" is.

But the saddest example of how standardized testing is lowering academic standards (as a recent national study by Arizona State University reports) can be seen in the way New York officials butchered an excerpt from a PBS documentary on the influenza epidemic of 1918.

Like any good historical work, the documentary on this epidemic, which killed half a million Americans, included numerous interviews with historians, novelists, medical experts and survivors, and quoted primary sources of the era. But the three-page passage read out loud to students on the state exam is edited to make it appear that there is only one speaker.

Though the new guidelines promised to identify the authors of any excerpts, the state does not identify the documentary's author, Ken Chowder. It does identify the narrator, although — oops! — incorrectly: the narrator was Linda Hunt, not David McCullough. As Ms. Heifetz says, any student who melded the words of a dozen people into one and then misidentified the narrator would surely be flunked.

The state version cuts out the passages with the most harrowing and moving accounts of the epidemic, as when children played on piles of coffins stacked outside an undertaker's home. It removes virtually all references to government officials' mishandling the epidemic. It deletes the references to religious leaders like Billy Sunday, who promised that God would protect the virtuous, even as worshipers dropped dead at his services.

Of course this trend is what is wrong with most public school curriculum: by cleansing information to make it politically acceptable, literature and history become just boring.

Top Ten

I liked the number one pick for education quote of the year from the Education Intelligence Agency top ten:

1) “If you’re looking at test scores on standardized tests, the higher the test score, the worse the teaching because it means that they have narrowed their focus.” -- Janice Auld, president of the North Sacramento Education Association, in the June 13 issue of the Sacramento News & Review.

The list also includes a special Wayne Johnson Wing in honor of the many choice quotes from CTA's president.