Exit Exam

This is long overdue as many New York teachers have failed the state exam multiple times. The New York Post reports that teachers who fail the next test are out:

About 2,500 teachers have flunked their main state license exams, and now thanks to stricter regulations, they'll be kicked out of the city public school system if they fail to pass the next time around, The Post has learned.

The Liberal Arts and Science Test (LAST) measures teaching candidates reading comprehension and writing skills.

Of the 9,581 uncertified teachers who took the exam this year, 2,512 flunked - or more than one out of every four instructors currently operating with a temporary teaching license.

And if the New York test is anything like the California CBEST; it is a simple, simple test.

More Money

ScrappleFace has a great spoof of the recently released NAEP scores, "Nation's School

Report Card Shows Taxes are Too Low."

My favorite line:

"This week the NEA will launch its "No Dollar Left Behind" campaign designed to ensure that every greenback has a chance to go to school."

More School Administrators with Zero Judgement at Graduation

Joanne Jacobs blogs this story out of New Jersey:

OK, kids. Maybe you made it out of kindergarten. But the odds are you'll fail soon enough. Not, perhaps, the point the vice principal meant to make. But it's no surprise parents at a New Jersey elementary school are upset. Newsday:

Some relatives were angry after a vice principal told children at a kindergarten graduation to stand during the ceremony to symbolize the number of students who wouldn't graduate high school because of alcohol, drugs or pregnancy.

Do school administrators have to pass a stupidity exam? Sometimes, I wonder.

Competition Without Consequences

Julian Sanchez, at Reason's Hit and Run, has an excellent post about why competition with public schools may not work to improve public schools:

Competition, Public Sector Style

The Washington Post writes that, contrary to what some had predicted, competition from charter schools hasn't visibly pushed public schools to improve. When you think about it, it isn't all that surprising given the ways in which this differs from ordinary "competition."

For one, while funding is tied to enrollment, the amount of funding tied to each student floats on the legislative breezes. More importantly, it's not clear how much incentive administrators actually have to compete even if their operating budgets do shrink somewhat. The school mentioned in the article dropped from 491 to only 178 students over the course of four years... but you can bet the principal's still taking home the same salary. Hell, he's probably glad to have less crowded hallways and fewer kids to deal with. And unlike many private firms, losing more than 60 percent of his "clients" doesn't put him in danger of having to shut down.. though maybe if enrollment dipped below a hundred we'd start to see the beads of sweat. Since teachers retire younger, on average, than other professionals, even flak from them can be deflected, since budget trimming can be handled (in part) by cutting back on new hires, instead of handing out pink slips. So how many administrators are going to go to the trouble of making real changes in the way things are done, just to be rewarded with a heavier workload?

Private Schools and NAEP Reading Scores

Yesterday the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the results of the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)(also known as The Nation's Report Card) in reading for 4th, 8th, and 12th grade students. Critics of vouchers and private schools often complain that private schools are not subjected to standardized tests and that private school performance cannot be verified. However, the historical data from the NAEP, including the 2002 NAEP 4th, 8th, and 12th grade reading scores give some indication that private schools outperform public schools. This is especially relevant when we consider the cost of school performance. For example, performance of Catholic schools(which have far lower tuition and subsidies than the average per-pupil spending at public schools and often have high low-income and minority populations) on the NAEP reading assessment exceeds public school performance by 18 points.

Obviously, the demographics at private schools may account for much of their superior performance. Yet, the NAEP score differential seems like yet another reason to let parents have more choices and let competition drive up NAEP scores at both public and private schools.

An interesting study might look at NAEP scores in states with the most concentrated competition and see if there has been any change in NAEP scores over time between different types of schools.

The 2002 NAEP average reading scale scores for public versus nonpublic schools show a 17-20 point higher average scale score for private schools.

2002 NAEP Reading Average Scale Scores

Grade 12 8 4
Public 285 263 217
All non-public 304 281 234
Non-Public Catholic 304 281 234
Non-Public Other 305 281 235

In addition, here's a link to a 2002 report on private schools and outcomes from the NCES that shows, based on NAEP data, that private schools also outperform public schools in math, history, and science.

Voucher Debate

I spend so much time reading about education, vouchers, test scores, charter schools, blah, blah, blah--that I sometimes do not realize that other people don't. In fact, we need publications that will take on this issue with a more general population. In its current issue, Brain,Child, the magazine for thinking mothers, takes on the voucher debate. My friend Katie Allison Granju offers a personal yet comprehensive essay about why she supports school choice.

In the interest of full disclosure, I want to say up front that my three children--a fifth-grader, a second-grader, and a preschooler--all attend private schools. In other words, not only do I believe in school choice, I have exercised it on behalf of my own kids. Additionally, of course, I continue to pay taxes to support our generally mediocre and monolithic local public school system. In essence, I pay tuition twice for the privilege of opting out of sending my children to schools I do not believe would offer them the education I want them to have.

My three kids' schooling needs are as individual as they are, and as their parent, I am best able to evaluate the right school, teacher, and educational method for each of them. For example, two of my kids do best in a Montessori classroom, while another needs extra support with math. I have never been able to understand the logic behind matching a particular child to a particular classroom based almost entirely on that child's street address.

Interestingly, annual tuition at the private Montessori school attended by two of my children amounts to less than the per-pupil amount spent each year in our local public schools. This is not an isolated statistic; many private and public charter schools across the country offer parents demonstrably higher achievement, smaller class sizes, and specialized courses of study for fewer dollars per student per year than the demographically-matched public schools in the same district.

California charter students score lower but improve faster

According to a new Hoover Institute study reported in today's Los Angeles Times:

The Hoover report analyzed Academic Performance Index test results beginning in 1999, when such data were first available from the state. It found that overall average scores in charter schools showed faster growth than among those at regular public schools but still lag because charters often enroll many students who were not doing well at other schools.

For example, in 2001 the average API test score was 612 for charter high schools and 635 for traditional high schools. But the charter high schools boosted their scores by 37 points on average from 1999 to 2001, compared with 18 points for traditional campuses.

The comparative gains for charter elementary school students were minimal, according to the report. In 2001, the average API test score was 676 for charter elementary schools and 691 for traditional campuses. The rate of improvement from 1999 to 2001 was 60 for charter schools, compared with 58 for traditional campuses.

Dammit, Private Schools Have Empty Seats!

The worst part about children stuck in failing schools in Los Angeles (or anywhere, USA) is the open slots in better private schools that remain empty every year while these children suffer with overcrowded conditions. In a LA Daily News commentary, Michael Warder, the executive director of the Los Angeles Children's Scholarship Fund, explains the plight of these children in one of the worst-performing schools in Los Angeles:

Manchester Avenue School is arguably the worst elementary school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Its students tested last spring in the very lowest of the lowest 10 percent of California schools. And the state ranks among the poorest performers in the country. . . .

Currently 1,694 students are crammed into the buildings in grades K-5. My respect for the administrators and teachers who faithfully do their job each day there is enormous.. . .

A few blocks down the street from Manchester is St. Michael's, a K-8 elementary school. Currently it has 242 students, but it could hold 315.

Despite being a private school, it is not a school for the economic or social elite. About 84 percent of the children who attend St. Michael's qualify for the federal lunch program. About 54 percent of its students are African-American, and 46 percent are Latino.

The basic tuition for children who are not part of the parish is $2,180, although the second child in a family would pay only $940. While tuition levels are low because of subsidies from the Catholic Church, children who attend need not be Catholic.

There is a wide body of scholarship showing that such private schools, even when controlling for demographics, do a better job at educating. This is especially the case when private schools are compared with the worst public schools.

In addition to St. Michael's, there are 11 other private schools in that same ZIP code area. If some of those children could move to these private schools, where there is room, at the minimum it would relieve the overcrowding and the busing in the public schools.

Private philanthropy could help. The Los Angeles Children's Scholarship Fund, for instance, provides partial-tuition scholarships for 145 children who live in 90044 with a total of $181,000. The average family income of the families in our program in that area is $18,060. The average tuition in the area is $2,734. This means that these families heroically pay about $1,486 a year of the tuition!

Throughout the city of Los Angeles, we offer 2,426 such scholarships. When they were first offered in 1999, we received more than 50,000 applications. There are perhaps 12,000 to 14,000 empty spaces in the 551 private schools located within the LAUSD geographic area.

Michael goes on to argue for a Florida, Arizona, or Pennsylvania-style tax credit to generate more scholarships for students in failing Los Angeles schools to take advantage of the empty seats in LA private schools.

Dressed Down

An academic paper out of Canada argues that teenage girls suffer all kinds of negative consequences thanks to their uniforms:

The school uniform, sold to parents and students as a way of simplifying student life and making all students equal, actually complicates the lives of teenage girls, according to a Montreal researcher.

Wearing a uniform to school opens up girls to unwanted sexual attention by men turned on by a "schoolgirl look" and harassment by those who view them as being rich, says a new study, which details the reactions of teenage girls to uniform wearing.

However, what was more revealing was the new academic field of, I kid you not, "dress studies."

The study fits into a relatively new academic focus, dress studies, which examines dress as a way of explaining culture and behaviour.

The school uniform paper was presented alongside papers on the prom dress, the influence of Britney Spears and "little girls in sexy clothes," and the pedagogy of shoes at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Halifax.

Our higher education dollars at work.

Recommended Reading

Education News fact checks the U.S. Department of Education summer reading list.

The US Dept of Education has posted a "Recommended Elementary Grades Reading List" for its "No Child Left Behind Summer Reading Achievers Pilot Program" that is replete w/ misspellings, misprints, and/or incorrect authors and titles. A cursory glance comes up with at least two in every grade so far.

For example mistakes from the kindergarten list include:

The Kindergarten List

The Very Best Spider, Eric Carle (The Very Busy Spider)
Have You Seen My Duckling, Nancy Tafari (Nancy Tafuri)
Richard Scarry's Best Mother Goose Book, Richare Scarry (Richard Scarry)