When it comes to poor kids, suburban districts do no better in providing them high-quality education than their big-city counterparts.

If you want to understand how poorly suburban districts do in providing their growing enrollments of poor and minority children with high-quality education — and why reformers cannot simply ignore those woes — take a glimpse at the school districts in tony Hamilton County, Ind., outside of Indianapolis, whose suburbs are home to some of the Hoosier State’s most-prosperous families.

For most of the past three decades, districts such as Carmel-Clay, Hamilton Southeastern, and Westfield-Washington have only had to provide teaching and curricula to the children of executives and middle managers of such Fortune 500 outfits such as drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co., and healthcare giant WellPoint, who fled from the Circle City for traditional district schools perceived to be better than the failure mills of woeful Indianapolis Public Schools and even the relative mediocrity of its 10 sister districts. But thanks in part to the failures of IPS, along with the Hamilton County’s strong population growth, children from low-income backgrounds are making up large percentages of enrollment. Between 1999-2000 and 2010-2011, the percentage of children in Hamilton County’s traditional districts and charters receiving free- and reduced-priced lunch increased by 329 percent, according to a Dropout Nation analysis of data reported to the U.S. Department of Education. Poor children made up 12 percent of all students attending Hamilton County’s traditional districts in 2010-2011, versus 4.4 percent of enrollment 12 years ago. This includes Carmel-Clay, whose percentage of poor students increased by 467 percent within that period (they made up 9.5 percent of all students in 2010-2011), Hamilton Southeastern, which has seen an 11-fold increase in poor children attending its schools (who now make up 14.3 percent of enrollment), and Westfield-Washington, which has seen its enrollment of low-income children increase by nearly a two-fold (children from poor households made up 18 percent of enrollment).

Yet Hamilton County’s districts aren’t providing their poorest children the high-quality education they deserve. In Carmel-Clay, the percentage of low-income fourth-graders passing the reading and math portions of the Hoosier State’s ISTEP+ exams increased by only 6.3 percent between 2009 and 2011, according to a Dropout Nation analysis of data provided by the Indiana Department of Education, while the percentage of low-income fourth graders in Westfield-Washington passing ISTEP+ increased by just 6.5 percent. The percentage of low-income fourth-grade peers in Hamilton Southeastern passing ISTEP+ actually declined by 4.7 percent over that same period. All three districts trailed the 23.4 percent increase in percentage of low-income fourth-graders statewide passing the exams. The districts are also struggling to stem the wide achievement gaps between poor and middle class kids. The percentage of low-income fourth-graders in all three districts passing ISTEP was, on average, 20 percentage points lower than for middle-class peers, just a few points lower than the 24.7 percent gap statewide. But don’t think that just the poor and minority kids are being poorly served. The percentage of Carmel-Clay middle-class fourth-graders passing both parts of ISTEP+ increased by a mere 2.4 percent, while Hamilton Southeastern experienced a 4.4 percent increase; the percentage of Westfield-Washington fourth-graders from the middle class passing ISTEP+ increased by 5.3 percent. Both districts trailed the 9 percent increase in the percentage of middle class fourth-graders statewide passing the exams.

The suburban districts are also doing poorly in helping its poorest students gain the college-preparatory education they need to ultimately move into the middle class. Just 32 percent of Carmel’s high school graduates in 2011 on free lunch programs (and 20 percent of those on reduced-lunch programs) took an Advanced Placement exam, versus 55.3 percent of middle class peers did so; a mere 26.5 percent of Hamilton Southeastern’s high school graduates on free lunch (and 32 percent of reduced-lunch graduates) took AP exams, versus 73.5 percent of middle-class peers. Just 15.6 percent of Westfield-Washington’s graduates on free lunch (along with half of reduced-lunch peers) took an AP exam, versus 61.7 percent of middle class peers. The AP test taking levels for low-income students were were lower than the 38 percent national average for all graduates.

This isn’t to say that Hamilton County’s suburban districts are as woeful as IPS — which, despite improving the passing rates for its poorest fourth-graders on ISTEP+ by 12 percent between 2009 and 2011, remains the worst-performing district in the Midwest outside of Detroit. But Carmel-Clay, Hamilton Southeastern, and Westfield-Washington haven’t learned from the troubles of IPS or the struggles of formerly suburban (and now, completely urban peers) such as Washington Township, As a result,  poor children – as well as those from the middle class – are paying the price. Thanks to the Hoosier State’s efforts to expand school choice — including the nation’s most-expansive voucher program — the poorest families in Hamilton County do have opportunities to choose better options for their kids. But this isn’t true for many children from poor households (as well as those from black and Latino backgrounds) living in suburbia. And this is a big issue because there are more poor children attending suburban district schools than ever.

As the Brookings Institution has pointed out in a book it is releasing tomorrow, the percentage of poor families flocking to suburbia increased by 67 percent; on average, 12 percent of residents in suburbia are struggling economically and socially, versus 22 percent of residents in big cities. This, in turn, means that more low-income families are sending their kids to the suburban districts long considered to be cordons solitaire from the nation’s education crisis. As with black and Latino families from the middle class, poor families of all backgrounds move into suburbia thinking that traditional district schools in those communities will do better in providing their kids with high-quality teaching and curricula than the big city districts they fled. The strong job growth in the ‘burbs compared to big cities, along with the lower costs of rent and other housing and lower levels of violent crime, have also brought more low-income families to suburban communities and their schools.

But as it turns out, far too many suburban districts provide all children with mediocre education — and serve children from poor backgrounds worst of all. This starts with the Zip Code Education policies such as school zones that keep poor families from sending their kids to better-performing schools within districts. Thirty-three percent of suburban kids — and three out of every five black and Latino kids in suburbia — attend schools where more than half their peers are on free and reduced lunch (which essentially means that there is at least a one-in-two chance that they are poor themselves). The restrictions are especially galling considering that the growth of charter schools and other forms of choice in big cities has given poor families who live in those locales wider arrays of options.

These intra-district restrictions are matched by the longstanding opposition to the expansion of charter schools and other forms of choice that would avail poor families (as well as middle-class counterparts) of other options. States have aided and abetted their efforts by giving traditional districts approval over the opening of charter schools. Given that charters are competition with their schools, suburban districts have little incentive to either approve charters, authorize high-quality operators, or, as in the case of the fracas two years ago between the Fulton County district in Georgia and the Fulton Science Academy (now a private school), keep them around if they show up the competition.

The consequences of these restrictions, along with the unwillingness of suburban district bureaucracies to embrace the array of systemic reforms taken on by big-city districts such as New York City, can be seen in the performance of children from low-income households on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. One out of every two young men in suburban fourth-grade classrooms on free- and reduced lunch (along with two out of five young women peers) read Below Basic in 2011, a mere four and two points decline, respectively, from the levels of functional illiteracy four years earlier. Given that the percentage of low-income suburban fourth-grade young men struggling with literacy is only seven percentage points lower than that for big-city counterparts (and only six points lower for suburban fourth-grade young women peers than for big-city counterparts), suburban districts are doing as poorly as big-city counterparts in providing the poorest kids with high-quality education needed for success in an increasingly knowledge-based economy.

Meanwhile poor families are learning the hard way that many teachers and school leaders working in suburbia can be just as condescending to them — and think as lowly of the potential of their kids — as the instructors and school leaders in the big-city districts these families left behind. This isn’t surprising because black and Latino families from middle-class backgrounds, often having emerged from poverty themselves, have also been treated with the same disdain. As University of Michigan Associate Professor Karyn Lacey noted in Blue-Chip Black, her sociological study of middle-class black families in the suburbs surrounding the nation’s capital, black families living in Fairfax County found themselves battling teachers and guidance counselors who wanted to relegate children to academic tracks that keep them from getting high-paying white- and blue-collar jobs. This is not unusual. When one looks at the low level this country, these families are often not informed about their options for preparing their kids for success in school and in life, including opportunities to take Advanced Placement courses or participate in the growing number of dual-credit programs that allow them to take community college courses that they can use for getting ready for the rigors of higher education.

But the consequences of suburban district mediocrity aren’t just visited on the brown and the penniless. One out of every five suburban fourth grade young men from middle-class backgrounds were reading Below Basic in 2011, just three points better than levels of illiteracy four years earlier; big-city districts brought down the levels of illiteracy for their middle class students by four percentage points in that same period, with nearly as many students from those backgrounds struggling with reading. Twenty-eight percent of suburban fourth-graders overall were functionally illiterate in 2011, no better than the levels four years ago; this compares poorly to the one- and two-point declines, respectively, among big-city and rural districts. Meanwhile one out of every eight white suburban fourth-graders not on free-or-reduced lunch are struggling with reading  equal to the levels of illiteracy in big-city districts. Suburban districts can no longer pretend that low-quality teaching and curricula is just a problem for families in urban communities. And this aspect of the nation’s education crisis — one that the No Child Left Behind Act and its accountability provisions have helped expose — is one that reformers must address as part of transforming American public education.

This won’t be easy. After all, the complaints from suburbia about how No Child has led to revelations of traditional district mediocrity is one reason why the Obama Administration has undertaken its thoughtless waiver gambit. The fact that middle class families, who moved to the burbs for what they thought were high-quality schools, don’t necessarily want to admit how poorly their districts are doing with poor kids (as well as their own) is also a problem. But the very growth in the number of poor and minority families in suburbia offers reformers opportunities to rally support. Strong grassroots advocacy, especially with poor and minority families and the churches that are the hubs of their social and political lives, is a start. But simply focusing on the academic failures of suburban districts isn’t enough. Reformers would also do well to learn from the NEA and AFT, and provide financial support to new and emerging organizations — as well as old-school groups — to which a younger generation of black professionals now raising families belong. 

Advancing the expansion ofschool choice and Parent Power (including blended learning options) is also key. Making the case that choice allows for all families, poor or middle class, to meet the particular needs of their children can win support, especially from  white middle class families who realize that how they are hurt by school zones and other Zip Code Education policies (and are also condescended by teachers and school leaders when they want more for their kids), but don’t see any other way to avoid those problems beyond paying for private schools out their own pockets. Working at the state level to place charter school authorization solely in the hands of state governments would also make it easier to expand choice in suburbia. States such as Georgia and Tennessee have already made such moves; reformers should make this a reality in every state.

Advancing the implementation of Common Core reading and math standards is also keep, use especially in states where choice remains restricted; it is clear that neither poor nor middle class children are receiving comprehensive college preparatory curricula. Because this means making clear to middle class households (including those who are movement conservatives, and thus, often opposed to the standards) that the status quo is not good enough for their own kids or anyone else’s. [Oddly enough, Indiana's legislature has done a disservice to all children in suburbia last month when it moved to halt implementation of Common Core.] And recruiting newly-graduated teens — especially those who have managed to graduate from high school and attend college in spite of the odds — to run for state school board races would also help; this can help parents understand how mediocre education for other people’s children regardless of background may hurt their own kin.

With more poor children moving into suburbia, the struggles the traditional districts in those communities have in providing high-quality education to those kids (as well as peers from the middle class) can no longer be ignored. It’s time for reformers to tackle the problems of suburban districts are fiercely as they have done in big cities.

Unsurprisingly, the adoption of common educational standards is opposed by some hard-liners on the educational left. The Common Core’s call for coherent, content-based math and literacy standards threatens to undo the watered-down version of progressive education thinking that has dominated the public schools over the past half-century… Much more puzzling has been the fervid opposition to the Common Core by some conservatives, including tea party activists, several free-market think tanks and, most recently, the Republican National Committee. The most frequently repeated complaint from the right is that states were pressured (or bribed) by the Obama administration to sign on to the Common Core through the billions of dollars handed out by the administration’s Race to The Top competition. (Common Core was one of the education reforms that helped states qualify for Race to the Top grants.) Conservative critics say this was an unlawful federal intrusion into a policy area reserved to the states by the Constitution.

These claims do not stand up to close scrutiny. The Common Core Standards were not written by the federal government, but by a committee selected by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The committee’s efforts were backed financially by several private foundations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This is constitutional federalism at its best. The five states that declined to adopt the standards were not punished or sanctioned by the federal government. Conservative Gov. Mitch Daniels in Indiana, for example, refused to apply for Race to the Top funds, but he supported the Common Core because he understood they were the right thing to do for school children.

For most states—which have lacked demanding standards for years—the Common Core represents a remarkable advance in rigor and academic content. Since the standards call for a coherent, grade-by-grade curriculum, those states that have signed on to the Common Core are now having a serious discussion about the specific subject matter that must be taught in the classroom. This is a discussion that’s been neglected for almost half a century. Some conservatives want to continue trying to bring down the whole edifice of the Common Core, thereby returning public education to the curricular wasteland that has prevailed up to now. Wouldn’t it be more constructive to participate in the conversation about how to make the standards and the academic content taught in American classrooms even better?

Sol Stern and former New York City Chancellor Joel Klein, in the Wall Street Journal, calling out movement conservatives who complain about low-quality education, yet oppose the implementation of Common Core standards. Not that many of them are offering compelling (or honest) reasons against doing so.

When your primary contribution to urban education is the explanation as to why our kids can’t be educated it’s time for you to retire… When all is said and done, we will be judged by what we’ve done for kids not what we said kids can’t do.

Dr. Steve Perry, on Twitter, reminding all of us to be fire walkers for our children, the subject of this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast.

A lot of students thought if they don’t pass [graduate from ROADS Charter School 2 in New York City] that’s OK, I’ll just get my GED. I said guys, a GED is four years of high school crammed into a two-day test. If you’re at a fourth-grade reading level, you’re not going to pass. They’re not going to get angry if someone says you need support that isn’t high school work. They’re tired of people lying to them and giving them work that just keeps them busy in class.

Seth Litt, Principal of ROADS Charter School 2 in the South Bronx section of the Big Apple (which is profiled on GothamSchools), pointing out the need for teachers and school leaders to do more than damn children with low expectations.

Districts only improve if their own leaders are determined to make that happen, and that’s far too rare a situation in American education. They only respond to competition—that is, respond constructively to competition—if they’re well led, not brain-dead, and not completely entangled in their own bureaucratics, contracts, and governance malfunctions. Let’s assume that most bad districts are going to stay bad. Then the job of serious reformers… is to give kids every possible exit from them into something better. Helping an entire school to extricate itself from the dysfunctional system is surely one such strategy. Instead of pooh-poohing it, how about we put it on the list of possibilities, wish it well, and do our damnedest to help it succeed as often as possible?

Thomas B. Fordham Institute President Checker Finn, imploring fellow Beltway school reformers to ditch their myopia and embrace Parent Trigger laws that allow families to transform failing schools (and expand school choice) within their own neighborhoods.

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, RiShawn Biddle calls out talk of “reform fatigue”, declaring that we must embrace the fire of the challenges to systemic reform, and stay energized to help all of our children get the high-quality education they need and deserve. Reformers must walk through the fire of opposition to systemic reform in order to help our children and their families avoid the economic and social abyss.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle Radio or download directly to your mobile or desktop device. Also, subscribe to the podcast series, and embed this podcast on your site. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Zune Marketplace, Stitcher, and PodBean.

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Our kids deserve better than to be condemned to special ed ghettos.

At the End of the Special Ed Ghetto, Part II: One of the most-pernicious aspects of the practice within American public education of condemning children — especially young men of all ages — to special ed ghettos is that once those kids are placed there, they are unlikely to ever graduate from high school. This is especially true when it comes to children labeled as having specific learning disabilities, which can range from dyslexia to issues with processing words and sound. These are children who can succeed in school if given a little extra support. Yet, more often than not, because of the abysmal teaching and curricula within special ed, far too many kids labeled with a specific learning disability will not graduate from high school. Just 51 percent of 16-to-21 year olds labeled as having a specific learning disability graduate from high school, and only 31 percent of 16-to-21 year-olds labeled emotionally disturbed exit do so, according to Dropout Nation‘s 2011 analysis of federal data.

So the findings on graduation rates for SLD students released earlier this week by the National Center for Learning Disabilities aren’t all that surprising. But the report still serves as a reminder that we need to keep more kids out of special ed and help them stay on the path to success in school and in life. In four states — Nevada, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Idaho — fewer than 40 percent of SLD-labeled students exited special ed programs with a diploma in 2011, based on its analysis of federal Individuals with Disabilities Act Part B data. Even worse, in these states, SLD students are more likely to leave schools with a mere certificate of completion — essentially worthless paper — than graduate with a diploma. Yet it is hard to measure the percentage of students with SLD who are graduating in part because federal data doesn’t require states to use the adjusted cohort graduation rate formula applied to measuring school, district, and state performance in helping kids take the first step in moving into an increasingly knowledge-based economy.

Meanwhile the report also reveals how badly states are doing in helping all special ed students graduate on time when compared to already abysmal graduation rates for students in regular classrooms. Seven states — Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Nevada, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia — the percentage of special ed students receiving diplomas is at least 35 percentage points lower than graduation rates for all students. Only Arkansas, Texas, New Jersey, and Kansas have graduation gaps between special ed and all students that are 10 percent or lower. Certainly policies that essentially encourage districts to not support special ed students in staying on the path to graduation is part of the problem. But as Dropout Nation has made clear ad nauseam, the underlying problem lies with cultures of low expectations for kids, especially from poor and minority backgrounds, which condemn too many of are being condemned to special ed ghettos when they are capable of learning.

The school reform movement, which often ignores this aspect of the nation’s education crisis, should rally around some of NCLD’s suggestions, including cracking down on policies that “encourage early decisions that would put students” off the path to graduating with a regular diploma. More importantly, it is high time to start ditching special ed altogether.

Photo courtesy of Arizona State University.

A Final Word (For Now) About Heritage-Richwine: The forced resignation of Jason Richwine from the Heritage Foundation continues to garner attention. Charles Murray, the IQ fundamentalist who co-wrote  The Bell Curve,. defended Richwine  on the pages of National Review (as well as on the Web site of the American Enterprise Institute), proclaiming that criticisms of his protege’s arguments for screening out Latino and other immigrants with low IQ scores is merely another example of how folks no longer “engage our adversaries’ arguments in good faith”; the fact that Richwine’s views (along with those of Murray) have been discredited by the research of James Flynn and others doesn’t seem to factor into his arguments. [The fact that AEI seems unwilling to reconcile its role of being one of the foremost players in shaping the policies driving the school reform movement with its other role of giving succor to IQ fundamentalists and their racialism. One would hope at least one of the top folks at AEI, including the head of its education policy shop, would go ahead and condemn Richwine's thinking and be done with it.] Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute, on the other hand, rightly pointed out (as Dropout Nation did earlier this week) that IQ tests don’t really measure cognitive ability at all, and actually measure how various factors — including learning environments — impact levels of knowledge.

As Dropout Nation has noted the Richwine episode is a reminder of how IQ fundamentalism (and the debates over race and cognitive ability) still shapes American public education for the worse; it is another reason why reformers must continue systemic reform. At the same time, the Richwine controversy once again reminds all of us — especially those in educational research — of the need to broaden perspectives and include research and information from fields such as history and demography in our base of knowledge before making statements (and forming policy views) that both fail to square with reality as well as perpetuate bigotry. 

Much of the attention to the Richwine controversy has focused on the now-infamous 2009 doctoral dissertation, which he declared that Latino emigres were less-intelligent (and thus, undeserving of American citizenship) than white peers. But one of the biggest problems with Richwine is that he has made extraordinarily empirically thoughtless statements about blacks and American Indians and their supposed levels of assimilation into the American mainstream. During a 2008 AEI forum focused on a study put together by nativist Mark Krikorian, Richwine declared that blacks, Latinos, and American Indians have not assimilated into American life, pointing to the fact that Natives, in particular, still live on reservations. No one at the event bothered to challenge him on that statement. While it is extraordinarily clear based on the record — including his participation at workshops held by the notorious race-baiter John Tanton — that much of Richwine’s statements are little more than rank bigotry disguised as intellectual banter, his statements are also reflective of the sheer ignorance of the demography and history of minorities in this country that manifests itself in classrooms and in research. 

If Richwine had bothered to do some demographic research on American Indians, for example, he would that just seven percent of Native students attend schools on reservations operated by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education — and that the rest are educated in traditional public education settings. Richwine would also learn the rather inconvenient fact that only 22 percent of Natives live on reservations or other lands held in trust on their behalf by the federal government — and that the rest live in urban, suburban and rural settings; while many Natives live close to the reservations, many others do not. [The fact that Natives were often forcibly removed from their original tribal lands to reservations is a matter about which Richwine apparently had no understanding.] Then there is the fact that 44 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native adults claim an additional racial or ethnic background, what one would consider a key measure of assimilation; a Pueblo in, say, New Mexico, is likely to also have some Latino ethnicity, while a Lumbee in North Carolina may also have black or have Scots Irish heritage. 

Some reading on how American public education perpetuated abuse and neglect on Native children and their communities would also have given Richwine some much-needed perspective. For most of its history, the federal government has done all it can to subject American Indian children to what can be best called educational abuse and genocide. Starting with the launch of the notorious Carlisle Indian Boarding School in 1879, the federal government focused its schools on assimilating Native children into American culture, or as Carlisle’s founder, Richard Henry Pratt declared: “Kill the Indian in him and save the man.” By the mid-20th century, what is now the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education opened 26 such schools while another 450 were operated by missionaries on the federal government’s behalf. American Indian children were often forced to leave their families to attend schools where they were subjected to physical abuse, molestation, and substandard instruction; they spent at best four hours a day in classes they could not understand because the schools didn’t focus on English language proficiency and the rest of the time working in conditions that wouldn’t have been allowed under child labor laws. The consequences of this educational abuse continue to manifest today in the low graduation rates for Native students, as well as how the federal government has done little to improve the performance of BIE, one of the two districts operated directly by the federal government.

Certainly one of Richwine’s problems has been deliberate ignorance. After all, it is unlikely that he would have even bothered writing his dissertation if he spent some time reading Flynn’s What is Intelligence?, or any of the other books that have torn apart IQ fundamentalist thinking. But it’s not just about willful dismissal of evidence countering his perspective, or the likelihood that he has never met anyone who is Native (or obviously so) and may not have close, personal friendships with folks from other minority backgrounds. After all, there are plenty of people with friends from other races who are also bigots. Richwine’s ignorance also likely derives from the silo effect that has resulted from the two century-long move toward specialization in knowledge and scholastic research. While specialization has helped further our knowledge about areas such as economics, it also means that researchers don’t engage in the kind of multidisciplinary activities that brings additional perspective to research and also helps broadens one’s perspectives in areas outside of day-to-day work. Some researchers, who are passionate about their subjects and are intellectually omnivorous, approach their work from a multidisciplinary approach. But because such broad research activity (and thinking) is discouraged, especially in think tanks that are more oriented toward advocating particular policies, broad thinking isn’t encouraged. 

One can see the consequences of this narrow approach to research in some of the conclusions reached in various studies. For example, conclusions that charter schools are the biggest factor in the decline of Catholic diocesan schools fails to consider the secular problems facing those operations (including the lack of low-cost labor in the form of priests and nuns, as well as the dwindling number of parishioners in pews who can offset the cost of operating schools), as well as the decline in enrollment in many cities that has affected both traditional districts and Catholic schools alike, and the questions among theologians and parishioners about what role Catholic schools should play in educating kids whose parents aren’t adherents to the faith. Reformers, especially those inside the Beltway, need to discourage silos in thinking and research, and encourage multidisciplinary approaches that encourage the kind of intellectualism needed to transform education for our children. This, in turn, would lead to more-comprehensive thinking about policy and practice, as well as force folks such as Richwine to think their ideas (and biases) over.

Where is the teacher who is supposed to be there?

Asbury Park’s Teacher Absenteeism Problem: One reason why we must abandon the traditional system of teacher quality is because it offers perverse incentives for instructors to do anything other than focus on providing children in their care with high-quality education. This is particularly true when it comes to the array of sick days — usually around 10 days of more during the 180 school year — granted to teachers as part of  state laws and collective bargaining agreements. Thanks to these generous sick day policies written into teacher contracts and state laws, there are too many incentives for teachers lacking commitment to their work to skip out on classroom duty. It is why 5.3 percent of teachers were absent from school each day of the school year, according to the Center for American Progress in a 2010 study. And the consequences of these absences — which is especially ridiculous given that teachers usually have three months of time off away from the office — are borne by children who end up being taught by substitutes (who are often not equipped to improve student achievement), and lower levels of achievement. But this often doesn’t get discussed because local media outlets (as well as those at the national level) pay this issue little attention.

So it is commendable to see Bob Bowdon’s Choice Media TV reveal one particularly amazing example of teacher absenteeism in Asbury Park, N.J., where the average teacher missed a full 18 days — or one month — of the 2011-2012 school year, according to an analysis of personnel data obtained from that district (along with other school systems throughout the Garden State). Thanks to Asbury Park’s generous leave policy, which allows teachers to earn 14 sick days along with another four days of family time, there is little incentive for instructors in the district to help students achieve success. Little wonder why just 49 percent of the district’s original Class of 2012 graduated on time, according to the Garden State’s department of education. [Asbury Park has since issued a statement arguing that the Choice Media report is inaccurate; Choice Media countered that it was accurate based on what the data provided it.] More media outlets, especially those in local communities, should take a closer look at how often teachers are skipping out on serving our children well.

Common Core foes oppose teachers assigning children such important texts as Sir Winston Churchill’s Blood , Toil, Tears, and Sweat speech. Now you can laugh.

A reason why the coterie of movement conservatives and hard-core progressives oppose the implementation of Common Core reading and math standards in 45 states and the District of Columbia is their contention that the various works of fiction, nonfiction and so-called informational texts used to demonstrate what can be read under the standards are somehow overtly political. This view, which has been articulated by the likes of National Review‘s Stanley Kurtz and others, dovetails nicely with arguments by many movement conservatives opposed to the standards that the voluntary initiative developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers is somehow an Obama Administration plot. The latest example of this argument comes courtesy of Education Action Group in a report on its Web site detailing the wrongheaded move by a fourth grade teacher at Glenn C. Marlow Elementary in Mills River, N.C., to use a series of talking points opposing a move by the Republican-controlled state legislature to overhaul the Tar Heel State’s early childhood education program for a classroom lesson. EAG intones that Common Core will somehow lead to “students might soon be reading screeds about mean-spirited Republicans and their wrongheaded policies”.

But a closer look at what the developers of Common Core cite as examples of books and other materials that children can read as part of their learning shows that those statements are hardly true. If anything, the statements made by Common Core foes is another example of what happens when one engages in false statements as part of opposing systemic reform (as well as what happens when one doesn’t do something simple called research and reporting). And why the arguments of Common Core foes are so hard to take seriously.

At the heart of this aspect of the battle over implementing Common Core is also one of the more-interesting aspects of the effort itself: The implicit emphasis on moving away from costly (and often, sub-par) traditional textbooks (as well as the often-politicized processes of deciding what is contained in them that often complicate efforts to provide all children with comprehensive, college-preparatory curricula) to the use of fiction and nonfiction works of higher quality that are available at lower costs. Especially in reading, Common Core offers a compendium of what it calls “exemplar texts” or examples of fiction and nonfiction literature, along with informational texts, that are either culled from the public domain or can be easily purchased from any publisher. This list, which only exists to set examples for what teachers can provide to children for their reading, is in many ways a paradigm shift that will force teachers to actually focus on providing children with high-quality instruction; it will also reveal those laggards who shouldn’t be teaching in the first place. That moving away from traditional textbooks could actually lead to cost-savings also makes Common Core’s list of exemplar texts even more appealing. Most importantly, there will be opportunities to provide kids with the great writings of fiction and nonfiction that are key to understanding the world around them.

What are some of the exemplar texts? For kindergartners and first-graders, the list includes poet Richard Wright’s Laughing Boy, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, and . Third-grade teachers can assign books similar to Ruth Stiles Gannett’s My Father’s Dragon, Emily Dickinson’s Autumn, or even E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (which was one of your editor’s favorite books when he was growing up). Meanwhile middle school English teachers can assign such classics as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, English poet William Butler Yeats The Song of Wandering Aengus, and Langston Hughes’ I, Too, Sing America. By high school, teachers can assign Homer’s The Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Voltaire’s Candide, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Based on any sensible interpretation, the books that can be assigned by teachers can include nearly all of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books featuring the mischievous Anne Shirley, any one of Shakespeare’s plays, and plenty of classics. Nothing which one can say with a straight face is political, unless you really have trouble with, say James Weldon Johnson ode to the black struggle for freedom from slavery, Lift Every Voice and Sing. Of course, there are novel such as Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, whose more adult themes (along with its setting in pre-Castro era Cuba) is one that some find too offensive to their sensibilities. But last I checked, this can also be said of Geoffrey Chaucer’s scatological classic, The Canterbury Tales, which features a soliloquy by a woman discussing her lack of sexual chastity, and that is a classic Common Core foes would wholeheartedly approve of high schoolers to read. [Actually, this can be said of many classics as well as the Old and New Testaments of the Bible (especially the Song of Solomon).] In any case, the books are age appropriate, and also of high quality.

A list of Common Core’s Exemplar Texts include works by Thomas Paine and George Orwell (along with a couple of manuscripts crafted by the Founding Fathers).

Then there are the informational texts — which include works of nonfiction, science articles, and other materials — which have become the biggest source of criticism for Common Core foes. Besides the arguments that the materials are akin to political indoctrination, the fact that children will also have to read the very books that have helped shape the world around us (including speeches by Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln) also offends their view (as well as that of English teachers miffed about putting focus away from fiction) that kids should only read literature.  A close look at the various example texts show little in the way of anything political. From the perspective of folks such as Joy Pullman, the otherwise sensible editor of Heartland Institute’s School Reform News, these texts are “piles of trash“.

A closer look shows that both assertions are off-target. Kindergarten teachers can offer their students books similar to Earthworms, a book by Claire Llewellyn on those lovely Oligochaeta that are found in the soil. Sixth grade teachers for example can give their kids copies of the Invasive Plant Inventory published by the California Invasive Plant Council to read. From reading the 44-page booklet, which details the various plants not native to particular regions that can damage the soil of farms and other property, kids can improve their science literacy as well as understand how to read the very texts they will have to consult in adulthood. High school science teachers can assign sophomores magazine pieces similar to “Amusement Park Physics”, physicist Jearl Walker’s 1985 Scientific American column that explains the scientific principles behind theme park rides.

Eighth-grade teachers can assign to students such classic speeches as Sir Winston Churchill’s rousing Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat, which helped keep Great Britain from losing hope amid the early losses during the Second World War. Meanwhile high school social studies and history teachers can offer perspectives on the conflict between the United States and American Indian tribes by providing students books similar to Son of the Morning Star, historian Evan S. Connell’s history of the Battle of Little Big Horn, and Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Especially given that children rarely get a full, comprehensive perspective on Native communities in American history, providing both books makes sense to do. John Allen Paulos’ excellent book on understanding the role of mathematics in everyday life, Innumeracy, is also featured as an exemplar text. Just about every one of the informational texts found that are exemplars in Common Core are the kind of writing that you would expect to be taught in school. Unless you really want to argue that Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and American Civil War general Horace Porter’s account of Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox are both piles of trash.

Simply put, there is almost nothing about the examples that would be considered political. Or trash. Just two out of the 137 informational texts cited as examples by Common Core’s developers would even come close. This includes a 2009 edition of Fed Views, the newsletter of the Federal Reserve System’s San Francisco branch that focused on the economic conditions of the nation after the financial meltdown, and Executive Order 13423, the environmental policy issued by President George W. Bush in 2007 that requires federal agencies to use sustainable resources in constructing federal buildings. Certainly your editor would one can argue that the executive order could have been left out. But one can also argue that it is important for young adults, who will eventually have to deal with political issues, should understand the various documents that shape what government agencies do. For example, it would be hard to discuss the history of American Indians in the United States without talking about the Indian Education Act or any of the executive orders issued by various administrations over the past six decades; same is true in discussing the civil rights movement of the last decade (including Harry Truman’s 1947 executive order desegregating the military). This can be done with high-quality teachers leading discussions about both sides of underlying issues (as well as exercises such as debates). After all, that is what teachers and schools are supposed to do. And we want our children to be knowledgeable men and women equipped to engage thoughtfully in the marketplace of ideas. 

In fact, it would be hard for any teacher (or parent) to interpret the text exemplars as giving them leeway to offer anything that would be explicitly political. This is because Common Core’s list of exemplar texts is actually thought through. One can quibble about whether more texts should be added — nearly every book by Smith and John Stuart Mill should be on this list in order for children to gain a full understanding of economics — but it is almost impossible for any teacher to get this wrong if they have strong subject-matter competency, are knowledgeable in instruction, care for the lives of all children in their classrooms, and are entrepreneurial self-starters who know how to lead classrooms. Oh, and have that thing of nature called common sense.

In short, the teacher at Marlow Elementary didn’t follow the examples provided by Common Core’s developers. The teacher should have been sticking with the guidelines for fourth grade, which explicitly state that the focus was to be on showing her students “how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text”, as well as “determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words or phrases” in relevant texts. This could easily be done with a number of books and articles that include Nelson Kadir’s We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball and Henrietta Buckmaster’s Underground Railroad, both of which are already on the list of exemplar texts; she could have also found any reading material that is similar to those pieces for use in the classroom assignment. Ben Velderman of EAG, who wrote the original piece (and is following up the story) says that the principal told him that the particular piece used by the teacher was, in his view, appropriate under Common Core; the standards clearly show that this isn’t so.

What EAG and others argue is a problem derived from Common Core is actually the problem of low-quality teaching and school leadership, which includes the penchant among those teachers to engage in the kind of political activities that don’t belong in classrooms. That’s been a problem for decades. The solution for that lies not in ceasing efforts to provide all children with high-quality curricula, but to overhaul the abysmal system of recruiting, training, compensating, and managing the performance of teachers and those who oversee them. If Common Core foes are truly serious in addressing those issues, they can join with the rest of the school reform movement in making that a reality.

But as Dropout Nation has noted over the past few months, this is not the first time Common Core foes have engaged in the kind of misinformation, exaggeration and conspiracy-theorizing that reformers wouldn’t tolerate generally from traditionalists on a good day. Within the past year, Common Core foes have attempted to use a couple of asides about the standards in a U.S. Department of Education report on using facial technology in assessing student learning (along with the mention of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation program officer in the report’s acknowledgement section) to argue that the standards are the next step in some Orwellian plot to take control of the minds of children. From spinning conspiracy theories about the role of the Gates Foundation in advancing Common Core implementation, to false arguments about the standards leading to middle school students losing out on introductory algebra (when most don’t even take this much-needed course), what was once principled, if wrong-headed opposition to the development of national curricula standards has now devolved into a campaign of misinformation that should be offensive to those opposed to the standards who offer principled, more-serious arguments against them.

But the consequences of such misinformation and gamesmanship are borne by children, especially those from poor and minority backgrounds, who have long been subjected to educational abuse and malpractice. As this publication has demonstrated since its founding, far too many kids aren’t getting the kind of curricula needed to succeed in an increasingly knowledge-based economy. Thanks to the emphasis on such approaches as guided learning, children who are particularly struggling in literacy are never exposed to the kind of challenging books that help them become proficient in reading. Addressing this underlying culprit of an education crisis that condemns 121 children each day to poverty and prison requires a series of solutions. The implementation of Common Core is one of the key steps in helping all children get the college preparatory curricula they need and deserve. This isn’t to say Common Core foes don’t care about the futures of kids, including those who are brown and poor. Many of the movement conservatives (along with some conservative reformers) opposed to Common Core are men and women of good will. But it is crystal clear that they are far more concerned about preserving their ideological purity than about helping all children succeed.

Certainly Common Core foes have a right to offer honest, valid, and thoughtful reasons for opposing the standards. But when they engage in misinformation, false statements, and invalid arguments about that which the standards demand, then it is hard to take other arguments that are valid all that seriously.

Photo courtesy of Minnesota Public Radio

Over the past few couple of years, when they aren’t concerning themselves with passing laws recognizing the constitutional rights of gays to marry and approving subsidies for the National Football League’s Vikings team’s new stadium, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton and the state legislature have wrangled over how to address the insolvencies of its defined-benefit pensions, including the teachers’ pension for those working for St. Paul’s traditional district and the state’s emergency service workers. In fact, last week, the state’s lower house passed what is being called an “Omnibus Pension Bill“, which includes a plan for the North Star State to provide $7 million in subsidies every year to the St. Paul teachers’ pension just in order to address its officially-reported deficit of $589 million (as of 2012).

Yet it is quite likely that Dayton and his colleagues have been addressing the issue based on faulty officially reported pension data coming out of the state’s Teachers’ Retirement Association and other pensions.  Thanks to inflated assumed rates of return on investments, and other practices noted earlier this month in a Dropout Nation Podcast (and in other reports this year) that have allowed the pensions to not account for investment losses, the shortfalls for the state’s teachers’ pensions are higher than officially reported. 

Let’s start with TRA, which isn’t exactly faring well. Between 2006 and 2012, its officially reported pension deficit increased by nearly a three-fold thanks in part to the financial meltdown and a 32 percent increase in annuity payouts over that same period. The hits keep coming. MTRA reports an official pension shortfall of $6.2 billion for 2012, a 23 percent increase over the previous year. But those numbers are still not close to reality. For one, TRA’s official deficit doesn’t include $119 million in unrecognized investment losses between 2009 and 2012 that aren’t on the books. The second problem lies with its annual rate of return of 8.35 percent — a combination rate based on a move made by the legislature last year to require the pension bring down its rate of return assumptions down slightly to 8 percent for five years, then increase it back to 8.5 percent for years afterward — which isn’t even close to reality. In fact, TRA lost $1 billion in 2012; only unrealized gains from 2010 and 2011 offset the numbers. If one adds in the $119 million in unrecognized losses, its reported deficit would increase to $6.3 billion.

But Dropout Nation took a closer look at the numbers based on a modified version of a formula developed by Moody’s Investors Service which is geared toward fully revealing pension shortfalls. Under this model, the rate of return is reduced to a more -realistic 5.5 percent based on the performance of the Standards & Poor’s 500 and other indicators used by money managers. The results are amazing. Based on Dropout Nation‘s calculations, TRA’s true pension deficit is $8.6 billion, or 38 percent more than officially reported. Based on a 17 year amortization, Minnesota taxpayers would have to pay out an additional $504 million annually just to pay down the insolvency; this is more than the $485 million contributed annually by districts and teachers (and ultimately, taxpayers) into the pension. Even if a 20-year amortization schedule was used,  taxpayers would still have to shell out an additional $430 million just to shore up the pension.

But this analysis doesn’t include the $119 million in unrealized losses. Add those in and then conduct the formula, and TRA’s likely insolvency increases to $8.7 billion. On a 17-year amortization scale, Minnesota taxpayers would have to pay an additional $514 million a year just to shore up the pension; on a slightly easier 20-year payment schedule, it would be $437 million. Either way, taxpayers would have to pay out double what is currently being contributed to the system.

The problem for Minnesota isn’t just limited to TRA. There’s also the teachers’ pension in St. Paul, which reports an official deficit of $589 million. But that doesn’t include $30 million in unrecognized losses. Add those losses in and the officially reported deficit increases to $619 million. But because the St. Paul Pension assumes a rate of return of 8 percent — in spite of the fact that it has lost millions over the past four years, including $82 million in 2012 — that number is unrealistic. Using the modified Moody’s formula and just calculating the officially reported deficit, St. Paul’s actual pension deficit is likely $799 million, or 36 percent higher than officially reported. Based on a 17 year pay down schedule, St. Paul and Minnesota taxpayers would have to hand off an additional $47 million a year just to cover the shortfall, or more than the $39 million contributed into the pension right now; a slightly more-lenient 20 year amortization schedule would require taxpayers to put down $40 million annually. If one includes the unrecognized losses into the formula, St. Paul’s pension deficit is likely $840 million. Based on a 17-year amortization, taxpayers would have to cough up an additional $49.million to cover the shortfall; it would be an additional $42 million based on a less onerous 20-year schedule.

Then there is the Duluth Teachers’ Retirement Fund, which will receive  $6 million in subsidies as part of the proposed pension plan in order to deal with a pension deficit that has increased by 50 percent between 2010 and 2011 (the latest years available). The pension officially reports a deficit of $86 million for 2011. But that number doesn’t include $21.7 million in unrecognized losses from the past four years. If included, the pension deficit would increase significantly to $108 million. Even those numbers are still low because of the extremely inflated 8.5 percent rate of return. Based on Dropout Nation‘s analysis just looking at the officially reported deficit, Duluth’s pension shortfall is more likely to be at least $120 million, or 40 percent more than officially reported. Based on a 17 year amortization schedule, taxpayers would have to shell out an additional $71 million — or more than double the $5.9 million currently contributed in 2011 — just to shore up the pension; it would $6 million under a slightly less-onerous 20 year schedule. Add in the unrealized losses and then do the calculations, and the Duluth pension deficit is likely $151 million. Based on a 17 year schedule, taxpayers would have to pay out an additional $8.9 million a year just to shore up the pension; it would be $7.5 million based on a less-costly 20 year pay down schedule.

All together, Minnesota faces $9.7 billion in teachers’ pension deficits, far greater than the numbers reported. Dayton should ask his colleagues to amend the current bill to require all pensions to adopt realistic rate of return assumptions, report honest numbers on their financial conditions, and begin the hard conversation about overhauling teacher compensation (as well as compensation for other employees in the public sector). As with other states Dropout Nation has covered this year, solutions aren’t possible without honest discussions about the insolvencies facing taxpayers, and ultimately, our children.