School Cheating Epidemic-Among Adults



Last week, Esther Jones, the principal of Santa Ana's Saddleback High School, circulated a memo asking teachers to reassess the failing grades of 98 students in hopes of helping the school meet the federal No Child Left Behind Act's standards. The note read, "please review your records for these students and determine if they would merit a grade of 'D' instead of a failure."

My opinion piece from Sunday's Orange County Register continues here. Registration may be required.

How Schools Cheat Florida Edition

The Primary Sources section of the July/August 2005 issue of The Atlantic looks at a study of how Florida suspended more low-scoring students than high-scoring students during testing periods--even when the students committed similar school crimes.

From The Atlantic:

Since 2001, when the No Child Left Behind Act tied federal school funding to performance on annual tests for students in grades three through eight, critics have charged that the law encourages schools to boost their test scores artificially. A new study of one potential score-padding maneuver—suspending probable low scorers to prevent them from taking the test—provides grist for this argument. Researchers examined more than 40,000 disciplinary cases in Florida schools from the 1996-1997 school year (when Florida instituted its own mandatory testing) to the 1999-2000 school year. They found that when two students were suspended for involvement in the same incident, the student with the higher test score tended to have a shorter suspension. This isn't in itself surprising: high achievers are often cut some slack. But the gap was significantly wider during the period when the tests were administered, and it was wider only between students in grades being tested that year.

The full study —"Testing, Crime and Punishment," David N. Figlio, National Bureau of Economic Research, is here.

You can read all about potential score-padding maneuvers in my Reason, June 2005, How Schools Cheat story.

Head Start Round UP or perhaps down

Julian Sanchez over at Reason's Hit and Run, has a round up of the various Head Start headlines.

Interesting to see the different spins on a new report gauging the effectiveness of Head Start:

Washington Post: "Head Start Children Show Some Gains"
Washington Times: "Head Start fails nearly half of study's 30 measurements"


NPR: "Head Start Study Suggests Minimal Benefits"


Head Start press release: "New Head Start Impact Study Shows 'Very Promising' Early Results, Points to Success of Program Boosting School Readiness of America's Most At-Risk Children. NHSA Warns of 'Politically Motivated Distortions' From Head Start Critics With Track Record of Negativity Toward the Program"

That last one's particularly telling—a kind of scrambling preemptive strike that reeks of desparation—but it's probably necessary to read the full report before jumping to conclusions. I do wonder, though, whether if the negative assessment is borne out, Head Start will stop being this sort of exemplar of what's wrong with libertarians and small-government conservatives (i.e. "These people even would repeal Head Start! It's puppies in blenders next!").


Unfortunately, spending billions on universal preschool is on the docket next and the libertarians and small-government conservatives who have reservations about turning a mixed preschool market over to the state will continue to be portrayed as the puppies in blender camp.

California Assembly to become Textbook Publisher

Since the legislature has already outlawed homemade cookies and cupcakes for school birthday parties, now the state assembly has voted to limit all school textbooks to 200 pages.

From a San Jose Mercury News editorial:

Maybe Democrats in the state Assembly should just go ahead and write textbooks for California's students. They're so confident they know what constitutes a good one.

For instance, who knew that making a textbook longer than 200 pages was such a bad idea that there needs to be a law against it?

Well, 42 Assembly Democrats knew. On Thursday they approved AB 756, a bill by Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, that says: Neither the State Board of Education nor a local school district ``may adopt instructional materials that exceed 200 pages in length.''

Textbooks, the bill's supporters argued, should sum up the basics and then refer students to the Internet and to libraries for the rest. Plus, shorter is lighter and cheaper.

Maybe. Their assumption doesn't seem that obvious to us. It seems like something that ought to be decided -- just brainstorming here -- by actually reading each proposed textbook, as opposed to laying down an arbitrary limit.

The bill doesn't jibe with other instructions (some from the Legislature) that textbook publishers have been getting to avoid textbooks that are just dry columns of words. They must be full of pictures and charts. And in each subject, they have to cover the state's comprehensive curriculum requirements. This makes them longer.

The bill now goes to the Senate.

A few weeks ago, the Democratic leader in the Senate, Don Perata of Oakland, held a news conference to say that his colleagues were committed to more funding for education and less interference in day-to-day decisions.

National Implications of Florida Voucher Case

I share my op-ed in today's San Diego Tribune.

Via Reason Alert:

State Aid for Students at Private Schools

"Last school year, more than 200,000 of California's college students received Cal Grants from the state government (via taxpayers) to help cover the costs at the public or private university of their choice, including religious colleges, like the University of San Diego. But that may change. Next week the Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether that state's Opportunity Scholarships Program, which provides the parents of more than 700 students in failing public schools the right to move to better-performing schools, including religious schools, violates the state constitution because it provides 'aid' to religious schools in violation of the Florida Constitution's Blaine Amendment. The most obvious flaw in the claim is that the program doesn't provide aid to religious schools, but to parents and their kids in failing schools. Nevertheless, lawyers on both sides agree the decision will have implications for states like California, where financial aid winds up at religious institutions. Today, 38 states, including California, have placed some restrictions on government aid going to sectarian schools." - In today's San Diego Union Tribune, Reason's Lisa Snell writes that failing public schools, school choice, and the separation of church and state have been rolled into one Florida Supreme Court case that will likely impact the rest of the country.

Unfortunately, My 2001 Prediction about Edison and the Chester, Pennsylvania School District was Correct

In the last couple of days the end of Edison's contract in Chester, Pennsylvania school district has been big news. In 2001 in this policy brief, I first predicted the failure of this contract:

The Role of Interference in Failure

With each new school contract signed, it seems that Edison loses more autonomy. The company currently has a deal with the Chester Upland School District. But Education Association members there voted against an agreement that would have allowed more frequent teacher evaluations and extended the length of both school days and the school year. No, doubt these compromises impact the way future contracts are negotiated.

Unfortunately, thirty years of research demonstrates a very low rate of success in privatization efforts where contractors are unable to make decisions about their employees. A comprehensive World Bank study of 200 privatization contracts found that all but one of contracts overseeing an unsuccessful privatization effort included limitations on the contractor’s freedom and authority over labor. In contrast, all of the successful contracts gave the contractor maximum autonomy over personnel decisions—including the ability to fire personnel and set wages.

From CNN's report on the end of the Chester Upland contract:

Edison Schools, a for-profit company hired four years ago to run eight of the city's nine schools, is pulling out in June, partly because it has not gotten paid about $4 million in fees.

The decision followed a tumultuous year that began poorly -- with book shortages, teacher shortages, and a riot at the high school that led to 28 arrests -- and got steadily worse, with Edison at the mercy of local officials when it came to control over the district's finances and getting the information it needed to do its job.

Among other things, it turned out that the district's poor accounting concealed a $35 million budget deficit. District officials said recently that without an immediate loan to pay teachers, the system would have just $9 left in the bank.

"We have not been able to work well together," Edison spokesman Adam Tucker said. "We knew that we were no longer going to be enough of an active agent for positive change."

In the policy brief linked above, I detail all the reasons that Edison's contracts violate classic privatization best practices that are essential elements for successful privatization contracts.

In this December 2002 Reason piece, I look further into why Edison schools should not be the litmus test for school privatization:

On top of that, Edison has a lousy business plan. Instead of working with individual customers, it has dealt only with large government bureaucracies. To win contracts, it gave up the integrity of its original pedagogical model. Edison sometimes sacrificed key pedagogical components (such as longer school days and more teacher training) to satisfy the unions and school districts.

Many other for-profit education companies have realized that the key to growth is to satisfy students and their parents rather than the bureaucrats who can sign large government contracts. According to a January report by the Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State University, there were 36 for-profit education management companies in the U.S. in 2001, operating 370 schools in 24 states. An overwhelming majority of those schools are public charter schools, which receive their funding only after attracting students to enroll in their schools. These companies have managed to grow their businesses incrementally, hoping for a small profit at each school.

Only when the funding truly follows a child will we have a market in education that is responsive to the right customers: the students and their parents. To the extent that Edison has failed that test, the company has also failed public education.