Better teaching — not more money — will help poor kids learn, writes John McWhorter in the New York Sun.

Take New Jersey in 1998. Since then, no funding discrepancy has been allowed between gritty urban schools and ones in cushy suburbs. And the result has been essentially nothing.

We know how to teach effectively, writes McWhorter. We just don’t do it.

Back in the 1960s, the federally funded education program, Project Follow Through, showed that the best strategy for reading was rigorous, phonics-based instruction termed Direct Instruction.

And since then it has been shown in one city after another that even when paint is peeling and there are not enough computers, this kind of instruction teaches kids to read. Period. Yet despite those findings, such programs have fought for space with people insisting that more “holistic” whole-language methods that teach word by word are somehow better — a story sadly playing out with Reading First, a national initiative to help young children to read, here in New York.

Many teachers don’t know about Direct Instruction.

McWhorter questions why Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, which calls for more funding, is revered in education school while Rafe Esquith’s Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire, which suggests effective ways to teach, is ignored.

High school seniors’ reading proficiency didn’t improve from 2002 to 2005 and declined from 1992 to 2005, according to the new Nation’s Report Card from NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress). In math, less than a quarter of students tested as proficient in 2005. Since 1992, the percentage of 12th graders reading at or above the basic level has slipped from 80 percent to 73 percent; the percentage at or above proficiency declined from 40 to 35 percent.

The 2005 math scores couldn’t be compared to previous years because the exam “includes more questions on algebra, data analysis, and probability to reflect changes in high school mathematics standards and coursework.” In 2005, 61 percent of seniors performed at or above the basic level; 23 percent performed at or above proficient.

Remember that many low achievers have dropped out by 12th grade. These are scores for students who’ve stuck it out. There’s a reason education reformers are focusing on high schools. We’re in trouble.

NAEP also released a more hopeful study of high school graduates’ transcripts, which show students are taking more academic courses and earning higher grades. The average 2005 grad has a 3.0 (B) average, compared to a 2.7 average in 1990.

There are many possible reasons for this apparent increase, including “grade inflation,” changes in grading standards and practices, and growth in student performance.

Fewer graduates are taking a low-level curriculum in high school. Not surprisingly, students who take harder courses earn higher test scores. But, at least in reading, that hasn’t translated into higher scores.

Update: Here’s the Education Trust analysis.

Over a quarter of the nation’s high school seniors lack even basic reading skills. Over forty percent lack even basic mathematics skills. Almost half are below the basic level in science. As bad as these numbers are, the data on the achievement of low-income students and students of color is even more painful and alarming.

. . . Reading achievement has declined since 1998, with no significant difference since the last time the test was administered, in 2002. This echoes the downward trends in high school science achievement we saw in the spring of 2005. . . . a comparison of mathematics achievement between 2000 and 2005 shows that 12th-graders are no better prepared to meet the expectations we have of them today than they were to meet expectations five years ago.

Of every 100 students who enter 9th grade, just 75 will make it to 12th grade four years later, Ed Trust estimates.

Official dropout statistics are lowballed almost everywhere, people are starting to get serious about the real, very high, failure rates. In California, the best guess is that 30 percent of students drop out. A select committee in the state Senate is looking at ways to boost graduation rates.

Increasing the availability of college-prep classes is one proposal among the five bills (Sen. Darrell) Steinberg is pushing as part of his dropout prevention agenda. Fewer than half of California high schools now offer enough college-prep classes to allow all students to participate in the curriculum, according to UCLA researchers.

The other bills in his package would:

• Expand the number of high school students who simultaneously enroll in community college. More community colleges would be able to grant high school diplomas under Senate Bill 218.

• Change the way the state calculates the academic performance index, or API, with Senate Bill 219. In addition to reflecting student test scores, the API for each high school also would indicate how many students dropped out, the test scores of students re-assigned to alternative schools, the availability of college-prep courses and what kinds of jobs graduates hold.

• Offer more help to struggling middle schoolers. Schools would be required to provide interventions to students in sixth through ninth grades who fail a class or miss more than 10 days in one semester.

• Limit which high school students could hold jobs. Students would have to maintain a C-average and an 80 percent attendance record to receive a work permit from their school.

Starting help in middle school and denying work permits to teenagers with poor grades and attendance could make a difference.

The API idea sounds way too complicated: How should jobs held by graduates be evaluated? How many years after graduation? But I’d like to see a way to prevent high schools from boosting their scores by dumping their worst students into alternative programs, though I’m not sure how to do it. This is very, very common.

I don’t see how adding college-prep classes would prevent students from dropping out. And students already can take community college classes for high school credit. Many pre-dropouts aren’t motivated by the prospect of college. They could be motivated by vocational programs good enough to qualify them for decent jobs or apprenticeships.

Learning centers with online curricula and “mentors” instead of teachers are attracting students — mostly in low-income, high-minority neighborhoods — reports the Rocky Mountain News. Opened two years ago, Hope Co-Op Online Learning Academy now enrolls more than 3,800 students in 79 centers run by contractors. Vilas, a tiny district in southeast Colorado issued the charter and supplies online lessons.

Students follow a curriculum provided by Vilas over the Internet, with one-on-one help from the mentors.

Some of the centers, however, devote more than half the school day to traditional instruction, including class discussion and reading from books.

Parents say their kids get a lot more attention in the centers.

A reporter took an online eighth-grade math test to judge its difficulty. He passed on the third try with a minimum score of 80 percent. That may say more about the reporter than the test: He didn’t know how to subtract negative numbers. There are a lot of journalists with poor math skills, but that’s pathetic.

“Charter schools are one of the great success stories of education reform in Massachusetts,” writes James Peyser, former chair of the state board of education, in the Boston Globe.

On last spring’s MCAS, almost 75 percent of Commonwealth charter schools outperformed their host districts in English and math, with average proficiency rates that were almost 8 percentage points higher than neighboring district schools. Almost one-fifth of Commonwealth charter schools had proficiency rates that surpassed their local district average by over 20 points. Some of the highest performing charter schools are located in some of the lowest achieving school districts.

The flip side is that low-performing charter schools are supposed to lose their charters. But the state is having a hard time closing unsuccessful schools, especially when it means displacing students. Peyser suggests transferring control of low-performing schools to new operators who can demonstrate “experience and proven success.”

Recipients of these transferred charters would have an obligation to enroll all the current students who chose to stay on, but they would not be obliged to retain the staff or continue the existing educational programs.

This makes sense. Sometimes the original charter team lacks the managerial skill or the educational savvy to raise scores, but the school is good enough — compared to local district-run schools — to retain students. New charter management could make the difference.

In Indianapolis, a new principal tries to take back the city’s worst middle school, a place of disorder, violence and rock-bottom expectations. He transfers 17-year-old seventh- and eighth-graders to alternative schools, suspended students for fighting and tries to enforce a dress code. The Indy Star reports:

Students … might be obeying, but teachers were another matter. (Principal Jeffery) White couldn’t persuade them to assign exciting projects, provoke students with controversial questions or teach hands-on lessons.

To a science teacher, White suggested dissecting frogs.

“You want me to put scalpels in their hands?” she responded. “That’s crazy.”

Teachers were afraid, outside evaluators told White. Afraid to step beyond the same old lesson plans. Afraid of their students.

And the students knew it.

The principal lets students hold a talent show in the long-abandoned auditorium. The show is a success — but a fight breaks out in the parking lot.

Three girls from Shortridge Middle School had jumped a John Marshall student leaving the show. Hundreds of children poured into the brawl.

White planted himself in front of the school, instinctively protecting the grounds even as he felt anger and disappointment.

“This is why you can’t let them do anything,” a teacher called out.

Still by mid-year, eighth-grade test scores are up, passing several other middle schools.

Education Sector’s Eight for 2008 are bipartisan education ideas for the next president. They include expanding pre-K and creating a “National Corps of “SuperPrincipals” and opening new schools in low-income neighborhoods.

I’d tell you more, but I have the flu and can’t seem to stay awake for more than 20 minutes at a time.

Mr. AB writes about a fifth-grader with fetal alcohol syndrome who tackled multiplication with the help of a computer program in D— Triumphant and D— Resilient. After earning a 70 percent on a math test — up from 12 percent at the start of the year — D— couldn’t replicate his success, Mr. AB writes.

In discovering the possibility to succeed, D— simultaneously found the pressure to do so. People were watching, people were paying attention, and D— couldn’t handle that. Week after week, I watched him start the test and, two or three minutes in, start to think he was going to fail and begin to tear up. Soon he was looking at me, looking at the principal, and sobbing instead of finishing the test.

But division brought new hope.

Over and over again, I had him write complete division problems and tried to help him see that it was just the opposite of multiplication. About a week ago he got it. Every day this week, ten times a day, he came rushing up to me with news that twenty-seven divided by three is nine. On the playground, before school, or during class I heard that nine divided by three is three. D— has begun to believe in himself again.

. . . I’ve also realized that there is a greater lesson for D— in these tests than math. Life is filled with stress and pressure, if D— is to find any sort of independent existence, he will need to learn to deal with them.

One commenter, also a teacher, thinks D— will remember the weeks of frustration, not the day he won the math T-shirt. She also criticizes “drill and kill.” Mr. AB believes students need fluency in math facts to learn higher math.