Reason Foundation

California Provides the Case in Point Against National Curriculum

Posted on May 16, 2011, 2:17pm | Lisa Snell

Last week I signed onto a manifesto opposing ongoing federal government efforts to create a national curriculum and testing system with a broad coalition of over 100 educational leaders.

The manifesto, is entitled Closing the Door on Innovation. It argues that current U.S. Department of Education efforts to nationalize curriculum will stifle innovation and freeze into place an unacceptable status quo; end local and state control of schooling; lack a legitimate legal basis; and impose a one-size-fits-all model on America's students.

Congress is now preparing to debate renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main law authorizing federal aid to K-12 education. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education has been quietly funding efforts by two assessment groups to develop a national K-12 curriculum, along with a national testing system that tests every public-school student multiple times each year. This federal initiative will create a national system of academic-content standards, tests, and curriculum.

While I oppose National standards for a variety of reasons, I offer up a personal example from my children's experience in California public schools as to why I am certain that setting a nationwide ceiling for academic standards is a bad idea and will pointlessly limit academic potential and achievement.

While California has many shortcomings in how we educate children, the one bright spot has been the state's high academic standards. On the one hand, California provides a case in point on the folly of equating strong standards and a solid curriculum as the primary path to higher- quality education. It is simply not enough. California has some of the strongest standards, curriculum, and tests in the nation and yet the state is still plagued by poor student performance.  

On the other hand, California's strong standards have provided many children with opportunities that they would not have under the consensus -based common-core standards being proposed for the nation. More specifically, the common core standards do not have the strong preparation for Algebra that is currently the norm in California.

Algebra is where the debate over a national standards, curriculum, and tests gets personal for my family. Both of my children have been fortunate to have completed Algebra during middle school. During my children's elementary school years Algebraic concepts were an important element of the school curriculum. In other words, because of California's strong emphasis on Algebra in middle school, they introduced Algebraic functions at a much earlier age as part of a normal elementary school math curriculum. Every state test, even in third grade, had test questions based on Algebraic functions.  By the time California kids reach middle school Algebra is expected and familiar.

This year my daughter is doing very well in a 7^th grade honors Algebra class.  By the time she reaches high school she will start with Algebra 2. If a national math curriculum based on common core were currently the new norm, it is doubtful that California middle schools would regularly offer 7^th grade honors Algebra classes. My children have not been the only beneficiaries of California's strong math standards.

In a San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece "National standards would harm math curriculum," Ze'ev Wurman and Bill Evers explain the real gains California students have made because of the states tougher math standards:

Over the past decade and a half, California's Latino student population has almost doubled from 30 percent to over 50 percent, many of them facing special learning challenges. Yet the number of students taking algebra by eighth grade has jumped from 16 percent to 60 percent, while the success rate has jumped from 39 percent to 48 percent since 2002. In 2002, only a third of high school students took Algebra 2 by grade 11; now more than half take it, and with increasing success rates.

More importantly, between 2003 and 2009 the number of African American students successfully taking Algebra 1 by grade 8 more than tripled from 1,700 to 5,400; the jump among Hispanic students was from 10,000 to 45,000; and for students from low-income households, from 12,000 to 49,000. Algebra 2 in high school shows similar results. Finally, since 1997, California State University freshman enrollment has doubled from 25,000 to 50,000, while remediation rates in mathematics have dropped from 54 percent to 37 percent.

While there are many reasons to be skeptical of the claims made for the advantages of a national curriculum, California students have made real progress in math because of California's tougher standards. It seems unconscionable to subvert this progress because of a lower federal standard.  

Florida's School Choice and Accountability Lead to More Gains on 2009 NAEP

Posted on March 24, 2010, 7:04pm | Lisa Snell

While universal preschool did not help Oklahoma kids read better; school choice and accountability seem to be working for Florida.

As Mathew Ladner reports at Jay P. Greene's blog:

The NAEP released reading scores for the 2009 Reading exams for both 4^th and 8^th grade. Florida once again crushed the ball in improving student performance. While the nation’s  4^th grade reading scores remained flat, Florida’s scores surged ahead.

In 2007, Florida’s Hispanic students outscored 15 statewide averages for all students on 4^th grade reading. Two years later, Florida Hispanics tied or outscored 30 statewide averages. Florida’s Hispanics scored 13 points higher than the statewide average for all students in Arizona in 2009, over a grade level worth of learning (10 points roughly equaling a grade level’s worth of learning).

Arizona had company. Florida’s Hispanic students also outscored or tied the statewide averages for all students in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Federal Education Spending Increased 72 Percent; National Reading Scores Still Flat

Posted on March 24, 2010, 12:35pm | Lisa Snell

As Education Week reports on the nation's report card in reading released today:

Reading scores stayed flat for 4th graders and rose only slightly for 8th graders on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, results that some find disappointing after many years of intensive attention to improving the reading skills of American students. . . .

Eighth graders’ reading scores have hovered between 262 and 264 since 2002, and have risen 4 points overall since 1992, the year that marks the beginning of this series of reading exams. Fourth graders’ scores, also, have risen 4 points since 1992, and since 2002 have stayed within 2 points of the average 2009 scores.

Unfortunately, unlike reading scores, school spending has not stayed around 1992 rates--between 2001 and 2008, federal education spending jumped by 72 percent.

And still around 30 percent of kids remain proficient in reading.

No Child Left Behind R.I.P.: A Balloon Payment that will Never Come Due

Posted on February 1, 2010, 4:27pm | Lisa Snell

The New York Times reports:

The Obama administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of President Bush’s signature education law, No Child Left Behind, and will call for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing, as well as for the elimination of the law’s 2014 deadline for bringing every American child to academic proficiency.

The 2014 deadline which requires that all states have students that are 100 percent proficient is a balloon payment that the states were never planning to pay. In California, for example, in 2010 the state still does not require that even 50 percent of students are proficient in reading and math to meet the federal benchmark of "adequate yearly progress." The states were counting on a change in administration long before the 2014 deadline.

In 2001, I predicted that No Child Left Behind would make little difference in student achievement in a Reason magazine feature, Schoolhouse Crock. What I wrote back in 2001 holds true. Billions of dollars later, most indicators for student achievement and graduation rates remain flat. 

The new federal budget calls for an increase of $3 billion in education funding. The budget gives some indicator of where the Obama Administration may go with No Child Left Behind. They may move toward more competitive grants like Race to the Top. As U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said about the budget:

"Race to the Top taught us that competition and incentives drive reform," said Duncan. "So even as we continue funding important formula programs like Title I and IDEA, we are adding money to competitive programs that are changing the landscape of our education system."

Unfortunately, the new list of education programs funded by the $3 billion seem a little short on competition and look like the same old urge to create new programs rather than save money and reallocate existing funding to new priorities. It looks like more of the same heavy spending and creating new legacy programs rather than allocating existing resources more flexibly. Judge for yourself:

• $539 million for innovative teacher and leader reforms such as performance pay, bringing the total to $950 million, and $269 million for teacher and leader recruitment and preparation, bringing the total to $405 million.
• $354 million for school turnaround grants, bringing the total up to $900 million.
• $250 million for special education students, bringing the IDEA Grants to States total to $11.755B
• $210 million for Promise Neighborhoods, a new competitive grant program modeled on the Harlem Children's Zone that combines comprehensive social services with school improvements in order to transform whole neighborhoods.
• $197 million for programs designed to promote a well-rounded education, supporting comprehensive literacy, STEM and other core subjects including history and arts.
• $81 million for expanding educational options, including at total of $365.5 million in funding for charter and other autonomous schools.
• $50 million for English Language Learner Programs, bringing the total amount up to $800 million.
• $45 million for school safety and student health programs for a total of $410 million under a new funding stream called Successful, Safe and Healthy Students.
• $98 million for Historically Black Colleges and Universities
• $96.57 million for Hispanic Serving Institutions, and other Minority Serving institutions

Lower Standards in Schools: Preschool Edition

Posted on October 30, 2009, 3:23pm | Lisa Snell

The new report from the National Center for Education Statistics calls into question whether we need a new $8 billion federal investment in early education challenge fund or whether we need to be spending scarce taxpayer resources on fixing the schools.

Today the New York Times reports on a new study from the National Center for Education Statistics that examines the rigor of proficiency standards from one state to another.

In the study, researchers compared the results of state tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2005 and 2007, identifying a score on the national assessment that was equivalent to each state’s definition of proficiency.

The study found wide variation among states, with standards highest in Massachusetts and South Carolina. Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee had standards that were among the lowest.

What do Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee have in common besides setting a very low bar for proficiency for their kids? They all have what advocates consider to be gold-standard state-run preschool programs. Georgia and Oklahoma have universal programs.

There is a huge disconnect between these states spending billions in taxpayer funds on early education and then being in the very bottom for proficiency standards for 4th and 8th graders in math and reading in the nation. What's the point?

And it gets much worse! Not only do these states score very low when compared to federal benchmarks and other states, they have actually lowered their standards between 2005 and 2007.

Oklahoma is the poster child for high-quality universal preschool. Unfortunately, this supposed investment in high quality does not include having high standards for students once they enter elementary school. Oklahoma is perhaps the worst offender for gaming the state system and lowering proficiency rates for 4th and 8th graders so that more of them would appear proficient under the No Child Left Behind requirements for proficiency in reading and math. In fact, Oklahoma was one of three states that lowered the proficiency standards in all measured subjects and grade levels from 2005 to 2007. Georgia and Tennessee were among the 15 states that lowered proficiency standards for some of their tests in math and reading in fourth and eighth grade.

In addition, both Georgia and Oklahoma score below the national average on the just- released 2009 NAEP assessment for 4th and 8th grade math, which is considered the nation's benchmark for student achievement:

• The average scale score in the nation for 4th grade math on the 2009 NAEP was 239; Georgia scored 236 and Oklahoma scored 237.
• Similarly, the average scale score in the nation for 8th grade math was 282; Georgia scored 278 and Oklahoma scored 276.

The bottom line is that the two states in the nation with huge financial commitments to universal preschool for over a decade now have the lowest expectations for  K-12 students in terms of grade-level proficiency and they continue to score below average on the nation's benchmark for student achievement.

Should the federal government really be investing more money to scale-up Oklahoma-style preschool programs that have not improved big-picture outcomes for the states that have already made these types of investments? Fix the schools, rather than spending billions more on the hope that early education can somehow compensate for low expectations in K-12 schools.

Obama Takes the Easy Out: Leaves Thousands of DC Children Behind

Posted on May 7, 2009, 1:29pm | Lisa Snell

As the Associated Press reports:

President Barack Obama wants to keep paying for private-school vouchers for students receiving them in the District of Columbia, an administration official said Wednesday.

Obama is proposing to spend $12.2 million for the 2010-2011 school year to continue the program for about 1,700 kids. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposal has not been made public.

The president would like to continue the funding until all the students participating in the program graduate from high school. He would not let new students into the program, the official said.

See Reason.tv on Obama and the DC Voucher program and how Obama promised to support programs based on evidence and not politics. This makes it clear that for Obama teacher union politics will always win.

As Jay Greene points out:

On the one hand, this is a victory for the voucher advocates and shows that their efforts have been effective.  On the other hand, this is a clever political move for Obama that allows him to kill the DC voucher program without paying the political price of denying low-income kids access to a program that the official evaluation has deemed beneficial.  Just because he’s not ripping this opportunity out of the hands of the existing 1,700 students doesn’t mean that he’s not ripping it out of the hands of every future student who could benefit from it.

And my favorite picture from yesterday's rally (also from Dr. Greene) from the hundreds of kids that are not grandfathered in to the successful voucher program:

NCLB is NOT Closing Achievement Gap

Posted on April 29, 2009, 12:57pm | Lisa Snell

As Sam Dillon at the New York Times reports:

The achievement gap between white and minority students has not narrowed in recent years, despite the focus of the No Child Left Behind law on improving the scores of blacks and Hispanics, according to results of a federal test considered to be the nation’s best measure of long-term trends in math and reading proficiency.

Between 2004 and last year, scores for young minority students increased, but so did those of white students, leaving the achievement gap stubbornly wide, despite President George W. Bush’s frequent assertions that the No Child law was having a dramatic effect.

Although Black and Hispanic elementary, middle and high school students all scored much higher on the federal test than they did three decades ago, most of those gains were not made in recent years, but during the desegregation efforts of the 1970s and 1980s.

In conclusion, billions in federal spending has not improved scores for high school students or improved the achievement gap over the last thirty years. President Obama continues to act as if the federal government can spend its way to higher student performance. I remain skeptical that the next $100 billion will do the trick.

Seventeen Year Olds Show No Improvement on Nation's Report Card

Posted on April 29, 2009, 12:02pm | Lisa Snell

This week the National Center for Education Statistics released the 2008 Long-Term Trend Report Card. The report found some progress for 9 and 13 year olds but 17 year old performance remains flat since the early 1970s in reading and math despite large increases in per-pupil spending and billions invested in education reform strategies such as Title 1 for disadvantaged students, No Child Left Behind, and early education. While improvement in the early grades is promising, to date it has not led to improvement at the end of students' education careers. The bottom line is that by 2008, we have seen cohorts of students who made improvements in earlier years reach the high school testing category. These earlier improvements have not been sustained with older students.

Here is what the NAEP Long Term Trends reports about students at the end of their education career:

• At age 17, the average score in mathematics in 2008 was not significantly different from the scores in 2004 and 1973.
•  At age 17, the average reading score in 2008 was higher than in 2004 but not significantly different from that in 1971.

This evidence again demonstrates that although we have doubled education spending in real dollars in the last thirty years and spend more money on education than any other industrialized nation, in the end we have not improved outcomes for students at the end of their long stint in public education.

Schoolhouse Crock Part II: Education Stimulus Cash in Exchange for Data

Posted on April 2, 2009, 12:53pm | Lisa Snell

Call it No Child Left Behind version 2.0. Yesterday Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that the second wave of stimulus funds, approximately $16 billion would be tied to schools reporting more data.

As the New York Times reports:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told the nation’s governors on Wednesday that in exchange for billions of dollars in federal education aid provided under the economic stimulus law, he wants new information about the performance of their public schools, much of which could be embarrassing. . ..

To qualify for a second phase of financing later this year, however, governors will need to provide reams of detailed educational information. The data is likely to reveal that in many states, tests have been dumbed down so that students score far higher than on tests administered by the federal Department of Education.  It will also probably show that many local teacher-evaluation systems are so perfunctory that they rate 99 of every 100 teachers as excellent and that diplomas often mean so little that millions of high school graduates each year must enroll in remediation classes upon entering college. Such information, Mr. Duncan’s letter said, “will reveal both strengths and underlying challenges.”

Yes, just like the data that states were required to report under No Child Left Behind (NCLB)proved to be embarrassing. From NCLB data reporting requirements, we learned that thousand of schools are low-performing and that low-income and minority student have low levels of proficiency in reading and math.

Yet, these same states that report that “transparent” data under NCLB continue to get billions in federal aid. So, I’m a little skeptical that requiring yet more data from states, as if we didn’t already know what the problem is and where the low-performing schools are located, will just be more of the same.

We have reams of independent reports that reveal exactly the kind of information Secretay Duncan is requesting. Right now I could go to the Fordham Foundation and find out how states proficiency rates compare to proficiency rates on the NAEP, the nation’s benchmark for student achievement. Right now I could find out from every state the number of students that must take remedial coursework in college.

All the federal government is doing is requiring governors to report to the feds what we already know. There is no word on requiring actual changes in student performance in exchange for the money. If states aren’t embarrassed enough to change their behavior already, reporting that 100 percent of teachers are rated as competent hardly seems like the data point that is going to do the trick. Like the No Child Left Behind the stimulus bill does not require actual change before states receive the stimulus money.

The bottom line is states may be more embarrassed, but kids will remain in failing public schools and we will have spent another $100 billion.

I wrote about the ineffectiveness of the No Child Left Behind and how states and schools game the system here, here, and here.

Differences Between Obama's Education Speech And His Adminstration's Actions

Posted on March 18, 2009, 6:30pm | Lisa Snell

My new column looks at President Obama's recent education speech, which had some good rhetoric that would appeal to those of us interested in seeing some real education reforms. The president endorsed the expansion of innovative charter schools, performance pay for teachers, and the elimination of ineffective teachers. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any real legislative action planned on any of those items:

Most of the reform policies that Obama mentions, from charter schools to performance pay, are completely missing from the actual legislative agenda.

Charter schools received almost no funding from the stimulus package and there was no requirement for states to remove destructive charter school caps in exchange for billions. Similarly, while he plans to fund a few teacher incentive pilot programs, President Obama missed the opportunity to tie the billions in new federal education dollars to outcomes that could result in serious personnel reform.

Mr. Obama has also remained silent about the children who have escaped Washington, DC,’s failing public schools and used vouchers to attend higher performing private schools. At the very moment, he was giving his speech on how to fix America’s schools, Senate Democrats voted to effectively kill the DC voucher program and prevent more poor kids from fleeing failing schools.

Obama’s staff has hinted they’ll try to preserve the voucher program, at least for the kids already in it.

"I don't think it makes sense to take kids out of a school where they're happy and safe and satisfied and learning," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said. "I think those kids need to stay in their school."

And Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that “it wouldn't make sense to disrupt the education of those that are in that system, and I think we'll work with Congress to ensure that a disruption like that doesn't take place.”

We’ll see if the administration follows through. Right now the president’s education plan is rife with inconsistencies. He is willing to spend more on Pell Grants (vouchers) for adults to attend college, but opposes them for children. He calls for professionalizing the teaching profession, yet effectively gives the unions huge amounts of new money to preserve the current rigid staffing models. He says the education system is failing, but wants that failing education system expanded to include universal preschool.

President Obama often talks about challenging the status quo. Education offers him the chance to do just that. Unfortunately, right now it looks like we’re just throwing more money at that status quo.

Full Column
Obama Can Help Michelle Rhee Fix DC's Schools

House Democrats Seek to End DC Voucher Program

Posted on March 3, 2009, 9:11am | Lisa Snell

Last week the House Democrats passed a spending bill that would end the DC Scholarship program after the 2009-2010 school year. The Washington Post examines the Democrats real motives in defunding a tiny program that provides higher quality education choice for students in low-performing public schools during a time when spending billions is almost passe:

But the debate unfolding on Capitol Hill isn't about facts. It's about politics and the stranglehold the teachers unions have on the Democratic Party. Why else has so much time and effort gone into trying to kill off what, in the grand scheme of government spending, is a tiny program? Why wouldn't Congress want to get the results of a carefully calibrated scientific study before pulling the plug on a program that has proved to be enormously popular? Could the real fear be that school vouchers might actually be shown to be effective in leveling the academic playing field?

The bottom line is that this is a purely political. There is no solid academic or economic reason to kill the tiny school voucher program. The Democrats could easily leave those families alone. The only thing they have to lose is that the voucher program might actually provide the kids with a better education. The irony continues to be that none of those House Democrats or Obama would sacrifice their child's education to the future of the DC public school system.

As Alexander Russo reports at This Week in Education, DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who oversees schools that are directley competing with the school voucher program, was the one Democrat still willing to stand up for parental choice.

“I don’t think vouchers are going to solve all the ills of public education, but parents who are zoned to schools that are failing kids should have options to do better by their kids.”

I wrote about the olden days when some Democrats were for Education Reform here.

Finally, I have to agree with Jay P. Greene today:

Vouchers have made the world safe for charters. And the moment that vouchers really do stall, the enemies of school choice will redirect their fire at charters, strangling them with regulation and repealing charter gains. To say that vouchers haven’t really done much of anything politically because charters are really where the action is to ignore how much charters owe their political strength to the credible threat of new and expanded voucher programs.

Oakland Charter Schools Outperform Other Public Schools in District

Posted on February 10, 2009, 8:31am | Lisa Snell

Charter public schools in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) are outperforming their district public school peers at all grade levels, with high-poverty students, with English Language Learner (ELL) students and with ethnic minority students with the exception of whites, according to a new report released today by the California Charter Schools Association. The report also found that these gains are most prominent at the middle and high school levels, and that these gains are increasing over time.

Entitled, “A Longitudinal Analysis of Charter School Performance in Oakland Unified School District,” the report analyzed results from California’s Academic Performance Index (API) Growth results and also assessed, in the most detailed analysis to date, charter schools’ performance compared to their most “similarly-matched” Oakland district public schools that students would otherwise likely attend.

The report found that nearly seven in 10 charter schools (69 percent) on average outperformed their three most “similarly-matched” district schools on 2008 API Growth results.

The report also found that charter schools significantly outperformed district public schools in middle (836 to 624) and high schools (688 to 528) and slightly outperformed district schools at the elementary school level (725 to 705). Of the top ten highest-performing public schools in Oakland, all secondary schools were charter schools.

Oakland’s charter schools outperformed Oakland’s district public schools on behalf of Asian, African-American and Latino students, as well as ELL and high-poverty students while they slightly trailed in the performance of white students. Of all subgroups, charter schools most significantly outperformed among African-American and socioeconomically disadvantaged students (a gap of 77 and 76 points, respectively).

Read the full report here.