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Review: 75% of charter studies are flawed

January 20, 2012 by

Seventy-five percent of charter school studies are flawed because they fail to account for charter students’ differences in academic background and performance, according to a meta-analysis published in Science.

High-quality research is emerging from charters that use lotteries to pick students, write Julian R. Betts, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, and Richard C. Atkinson, a former president of the University of California system who once served as director of the National Science Foundation. Students who apply to a charter but lose the lottery represent a sound control group, they write.

The relatively small number of lottery-based studies of charter schools have generally shown that they either outperform or perform at the same level as traditional public schools, according to the authors. But those studies cover only a small fraction—about 2 percent—of charter schools nationally.

However, charters that need lotteries for admission may be unusually good schools, the authors warn.

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NEPC: Base productivity ideas on research

December 18, 2011 by

The U.S. Department of Education’s Increasing Educational Productivity project, which provides dollar-stretching advice to school districts, isn’t backed by solid research, charges a National Education Policy Center report.

Researchers have ignored efficiency and productivity “over the last half-century,” responds Rick Hess. “Most cost-saving efforts in most sectors are based on sensible intuitions and experimentation rather than “rigorous science.”

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Education reform’s future

December 6, 2011 by

It’s not quite the lion lying down the lamb, but Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute and Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford ed professor who served on Obama’s transition team, have co-written a New York Times op-ed, How to Rescue Education Reform.  They disagree on some key issues, but agree that the federal government should stick to what it alone can do and avoid trying to micromanage schools.

The first federal role is transparency:  No Child Left Behind required states to measure and report achievement, so parents, voters and taxpayers could “hold schools and public officials accountable.” However, states were allowed to set their own, low standards.

Instead of the vague mandate of “adequate yearly progress,” federal financing should be conditioned on truth in advertising — on reliably describing achievement (or lack thereof) and spending. To track achievement, states should be required to link their assessments to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (or to adopt a similar multistate assessment). To shed light on equity and cost-effectiveness, states should be required to report school- and district-level spending; the resources students receive should be disclosed, not only their achievement.

The second federal role is “enforcing civil rights laws and ensuring that dollars intended for low-income students and students with disabilities are spent accordingly.”

Third is supporting basic research in fields such as “brain science, language acquisition or the impact of computer-assisted tutoring.”

Competitive federal grants can support innovation, they conclude. However, the “Obama administration’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top competition . . .  ended up demanding that winning states hire consultants to comply with a 19-point federal agenda, rather than truly innovate.”

The feds should stop trying to improve schools by order from above, write Hess and Darling-Hammond. “The federal government can make states, localities and schools do things — but not necessarily do them well.”

Schizophrenic, responds RiShawn Biddle.

The odd couple call adequate yearly progress a “vague mandate,” but elsewhere  complain it’s too prescriptive, writes Andrew Rotherham.  The left and right are uniting to kill education reform, he adds in Time.

 

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What works for teachers? Let’s find out

November 4, 2011 by

“Teacher moves” — the many decisions a teacher makes every day — have been ignored by education researchers, writes Michael Goldstein, who founded the high-scoring MATCH charter school in Boston, in Education Next.

Should I ask for raised hands, or cold-call? Should I give a warning or a detention? Do I require this student to attend my afterschool help session, or make it optional? Should I spend 10 minutes grading each five-paragraph essay, 20 minutes, or just not pay attention to time and work on each until it “feels” done?

Researchers care about raising test scores, while teachers “care more about solving today’s problems,” Goldstein writes.

Teachers need to use time efficiently. Researchers don’t consider opportunity cost: They want teachers to spend more time on X without saying where they should spend less time.

Education researchers often put forward strategies that make teachers’ lives harder, not easier. Have you ever tried to “differentiate instruction”? When policy experts give a lecture or speak publicly, do they create five different iterations for their varied audience? Probably not.

 Experienced teachers have seen fads, allegedly supported by research, come and go. Newbies pick up the veterans’ skepticism. To develop useful research, “it makes sense to focus on topics that teachers care about,” writes Goldstein.

1. How to be more efficient. Many teachers want to work less without being neglectful. Or they’d like to free up time to invest in new priorities.

2. How to manage the classroom so kids behave better, thus lowering the “misbehavior tax” on learning. If a middle school teacher can “reset” the class only 3 times per period, instead of 5, that’s probably 1,440 fewer times per year that he has to deal with misbehavior. (By “reset,” I mean when a teacher says something like, “Guys, come on. I need your eyes on me. I need you to settle down. Joey, that means you. I’m going to wait until I have everyone’s eyes.”)

3. How to motivate and generate student effort, especially, how to “flip” kids who arrive having not worked hard in previous classes or years. This includes both getting kids to exert effort during class and getting them to work hard at home.

4. How to get kids to remember material that they seemingly once knew. Cognitive science has moved the ball forward here; now we need applied experiments with teachers.

5. How to best explain particular ideas and concepts. Each year, tens of thousands of math teachers try to get kids to understand the notion that division by zero does not exist.

Goldstein proposes the Teaching Move Genome Project to identify teacher moves and rate their effectiveness. He wants randomized trials, not just perceived best practices.

In his best-selling book Teach Like a Champion, Doug Lemov describes 49 teaching moves he has observed in the nation’s top charter schools. At the University of Michigan, Deborah Ball and her colleagues are close to unveiling a list of 88 math teacher moves. Lee Canter’s Assertive Discipline and Jon Saphier’s Skillful Teacher discuss scores of moves, like the “10-2” rule (have kids summarize for 2 minutes in small groups after 10 minutes of teacher-led instruction), much of it supported by nonrandomized research.

Goldstein envisions a randomized trial of Lemov’s  “Right Is Right” move.

The idea is that when a kid gives an answer that is mostly right, the teacher should hold out until it’s 100 percent correct. Lemov describes various tactics the teacher can use to elicit the 100 percent right answer from the student (or first from another student, before having the original student repeat or extend the correct answer).

The obvious cost of implementing this move is time. These back-and-forths add up to lost minutes each period when other topics are not being discussed. A less skillful teacher might be drawn into a protracted discussion, when her next best alternative (simply announce the 100 percent right answer, and move on) might work better. We just don’t know.

Is it feasible to test the effectiveness of “teacher moves” for different teachers and different sets of students?  Is it a good use of time?

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Researchers: Single-sex ed is ‘pseudoscience’

September 24, 2011 by

Single-sex education is based on “pseudoscience,” charge a team of neuroscience and child development experts in a Science article. There is “no empirical evidence” that segregating students by sex improves education, they argue. There’s plenty of  evidence it can increase gender stereotyping among students and adults.

The National Association for Single-Sex Public Education estimates more than 500 schools separate boys and girls for at least some classes, reports Inside School Research.

A new curriculum may yield a short-term gain because it’s evaluated by true believers, the scientists said.

“Novelty-based enthusiasm, sample bias, and anecdotes account for much of the glowing characterization of [single-sex] education in the media. Without blind assessment, randomized assignment to treatment or control experiences, and consideration of selection factors, judging the effectiveness of innovations is impossible.”

“There are some definite brain differences in boys and girls as children, but there are a lot of overlaps, and there’s absolutely nothing to suggest that they learn differently,” Claremont McKenna Psychology Professor Diane Halpern told Inside School Research. “The underlying biology of learning is the same.”

Students in single-sex classes don’t perform significantly better than those in mixed-gender classes, once the students’ prior performance and characteristics are taken into account, the critics said.

Update: If there’s no evidence single-sex education is any worse than mixed classes — and there isn’t — then let parents decide, responds Paul Peterson on Ed Next. Many parents like the idea for a variety of reasons, he writes.

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Do vouchers boost achievement?

July 29, 2011 by

Vouchers have “no clear positive effect” on student achievement and mixed outcomes overall, according to a review of 27 studies by the Center on Education Policy. From Ed Week‘s Inside Schools Research:

Low-income students receiving vouchers made similar achievement gains to comparable public school students in district schools in several studies, the report found.

The report also noted that some research found that voucher students graduate at a higher rate than their public school peers, and that overall achievement at public schools was higher in those schools most affected by voucher competition. However, the report said it is difficult to tease out causation in those results, because schools most affected by vouchers often are targeted for other intensive school reform efforts.

The CEP review did not include privately funded vouchers or tax credits or voucher programs for students with disabilities or students in foster care.

“CEP’s study narrowly cherry-picks school choice studies in a handful of states and inaccurately characterizes the results of these studies,” said Andrew Campanella, a spokesman for the American Federation for Children, a voucher advocacy program based in Washington.

A rival analysis of voucher research by the Foundation for Educational Choice found large benefits for some programs, but modest gains for most.  No voucher studies have found a negative effect, said Greg Forster, a senior fellow at the foundation. “When the small, restricted programs produce moderately positive results, that indicates we should be trying bigger things,” Forster said.

 

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Gates: Was the $5 billion worth it?

July 25, 2011 by

After spending $5 billion on education grants and scholarships, Bill Gates tells the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley,  “It’s been about a decade of learning.”

The Microsoft co-founder’s foundation is worth $34 billion, more than the next three largest foundations (Ford, Getty and Robert Wood Johnson) combined.

Small schools, an early Gates Foundation initiative, didn’t improve achievement. I was impressed by the foundation’s willingness to admit that.

Small schools improved students’ attendance and behavior, but “didn’t move the needle much” on college attendance, which is a foundation priority, Bill Gates told Riley.  “We didn’t see a path to having a big impact, so we did a mea culpa on that.”

The foundation decided to focus on curriculum — Gates strongly backs a core curriculum — and teacher quality — the foundation is researching what makes good teachers effective.

Many worry that a multi-billionaire has too much power, even if his intentions are noble. (And not everyone thinks they are.) And Gates tells Riley he’s trying to use his money to influence how public money is spent.

 Instead of trying to buy systemic reform with school-level investments, a new goal is to leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent.

However, the foundation’s approach is scientific, not political, Gates say.

“I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.” Compared with R&D spending in the pharmaceutical or information-technology sectors, he says, next to nothing is spent on education research. “That’s partly because of the problem of who would do it. Who thinks of it as their business? The 50 states don’t think of it that way, and schools of education are not about research. So we come into this thinking that we should fund the research.”

Gates supports charters — he’s a KIPP fan — but not school vouchers.

. . .  the politics, he says, are just too tough right now. “We haven’t chosen to get behind [vouchers] in a big way, as we have with personnel systems or charters, because the negativity about them is very, very high.”

Gates’ approach is doomed to fail, responds Jay Greene. While trying to influence education policy is sensible, “education does not lend itself to a single ‘best’ approach.” The foundation invokes science “to advance practices and policies they prefer for which they have no scientific support,” Greene charges.

Attempting to impose particular practices on the nation’s education system is generating more political resistance than even the Gates Foundation can overcome, despite their focus on political influence and their devotion of significant resources to that effort.

Greene’s part 2 on the Gates Foundation is here.

In a new mini-book, Greene advocates school choice as the way to create incentives for school improvement.  Here’s his interview with Jason Riley.

Community College Spotlight, which I write for the Hechinger Institute, is funded, in part, by Gates money. Gates is funding almost every innovative idea involving community colleges, notably research on how to improve remediation and boost graduation rates. I think it’s money well spent, though the research isn’t likely to find a silver bullet.

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Obama: 4% more for K-12 education

February 15, 2011 by

The Obama administration is proposing to spend 4 percent more on education, excluding Pell Grants, in fiscal 2012, reports Ed Week. That includes small boosts to Title I grants for disadvantaged students, special education funding and School Improvement (to be renamed School Turnaround) Grants.

And, as part of its proposal for revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (aka the No Child Left Behind Act), the administration is asking for $300 million for a program called Title I rewards, to help give a pat on the back to schools that are making progress in boosting student achievement.

Race to the Top will be directed at districts, not states. And Obama proposes to create an education R&D institute like the Defense Department’s DARPA.

Counting Pell Grants, which go to low-income college students, K-12 and higher education spending would go up by 22 percent.

It’s about the 2012 election, not the kids, grumps Mike Petrilli.

House Republicans want to cut education spending, reports Politics K-12.

The measure, which would continue federal funding for rest of the fiscal year, takes aim at some programs that were previously considered untouchable, including special education spending and Pell Grants to help low-and-moderate income students pay for college. Overall it would cut $4.9 billion from the U.S. Department of Education’s fiscal year 2010 budget of $63.7 billion.

Curriculum Matters lists the Republicans’ proposed cuts in adolescent literacy, math and science education, teaching U.S. history and more.

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Character education shows no results

October 22, 2010 by

After three years of character education, elementary students showed no gains in behavior or academic performance compared to a control group, concludes a large federal study (pdf) of seven schoolwide programs for third- through fifth-graders. From Education Week:

In the end, researchers found no evidence that the programs, taken individually or together, improved students’ behavior, academic performance or gains, or their perceptions of the school climate. And the results were no better for schools with better implementation.

Some say it takes more than three years to show results. Brian Flay, an Oregon State health and human sciences professor married to the founder of Positive Action says research due for release soon has found lower rates of bullying and substance abuse among students who have remained in the program through eighth grade. “In these inner-city, high-risk, high-poverty neighborhoods, it takes a while for the effects to become significant,” Flay told Ed Week.

Others say interventions targeted at troubled students have shown success. But these programs are designed for all students. If they’re not working, why not devote the time to something else?

Character education is hard to define, said Linda McKay, a state and federal character education advocate. It includes “pieces of ethics, civics, diversity, problem-solving, and social-emotional development, among other topics.”

“I think it’s absolutely one of the most critical pieces for education, particularly in high-risk schools,” Ms. McKay said. “If we don’t focus on creating a climate for learning and a classroom culture where students and faculty feel cared for and respected, we won’t get to the academics.”

I agree that creating a safe, orderly, learning culture is critical. But how?

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Does education research measure up?

September 15, 2010 by

Is there a crisis of quality in education research? In a forum Sept. 29, a team of education experts will discuss National Education Policy Center‘s new book, Think Tank Research Quality: Lessons for Policy Makers, the Media and the Public.

On National Journal, one of the book’s authors, University of Colorado Education Professor Kevin Welner, argues that shoddy think tank research is pushed to the fore by marketing campaigns drowning out more rigorous academic research.

The state of public discourse on education is woeful, with academic researchers conducting high-quality studies but talking mainly to one another, while along a parallel track run meaningful conversations between policymakers and well-connected advocacy think tanks.

Drawing on our Think Tank Review Project, the book presents 21 reviews of recent think tank reports on key issues such as school choice, early-childhood education, education finance, teacher quality, and standards-based accountability.

“New entrepreneurial providers (like the NewSchools Venture Fund) and advocacy and research operations (like the Education Trust or the Fordham Institute)” have challenged the old gatekeepers of research (ed schools, ed journals and national associations), writes Rick Hess, director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Now, there is a continuing, worsening embrace of what I’ve called “the new stupid” in how data and research are used, but that points to problems with how practitioners and policymakers use the research that they read. As I argued a couple years ago in Educational Leadership, “Today’s enthusiastic embrace of data has waltzed us directly from a petulant resistance to performance measures to a reflexive and unsophisticated reliance on a few simple metrics.”

NEPC’s Think Tank Review Project is not the ultimate arbiter of good research, Hess writes, though it can contribute to the discussion.

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