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.

One of the key points made earlier today in Dropout Nation‘s commentary on the departure of Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Andres Alonso is that the district has struggled mightily in addressing literacy, especially among young black men. The percentage of young black male fourth-graders qualifying for subsidized school lunch reading Below Basic proficiency (as measured on the National Assessment of Educational Progress) increased by two percentage points between 2009 and 2011, even as the number of illiterate young black men in fourth grade throughout the nation declined by that same percentage; the percentage of young black men in eighth grade who were functionally illiterate declined by two percent in the same period, merely keeping pace with the rest of the nation. The high levels of illiteracy among young men is one reason why they make up 67 percent of all kids in the district’s special ed ghettos and only make up two out of every five kids in its gifted-and-talented programs.

The failures of Baltimore in improving literacy isn’t just limited to poverty: There was no little or decline in the percentages of illiterate eighth-graders coming from households where parents are either high school dropouts or had some higher ed completion. In fact, the percentage of young black eighth-grade men from college educated homes who read Below Basic proficiency increased by three percentage points (from 46 percent to 49 percent) between 2009 and 2011, while the percentage of young black women peers mired in illiteracy increased by one percentage point (from 39 percent to 40 percent) in that same period. The levels of illiteracy for young black men and women nationwide declined by three percent and one percent in that same period.

Certainly Baltimore’s problems in the literacy arena can be traced in part to the low quality of instruction among its teachers. As with other districts throughout the nation, far too many teachers in B’more lack the subject-matter competency and knowledge in teaching the science of reading needed to help kids become proficient in reading. The lack of strong focus on improving literacy for young boys is particularly problematic; while Baltimore has garnered acclaim for a project funded by the Open Society Foundations that focused on using art to develop solutions for keeping young black men off the path to dropping out, the district has not focused nearly as much time on the nuts and bolts of addressing the troubles young men of all socioeconomic backgrounds have when it comes to reading comprehension.

It isn’t as if Baltimore hasn’t devoted some time to addressing its literacy challenges. Starting in 2010-2011, the district rolled out a series of interventions geared toward improving literacy. This included using Earobics, a software program that helps children master phonics by addressing the issues they may have with sounding out words. Third graders struggling in reading can participate in a summer program called Read to Succeed. Meanwhile Baltimore’s literacy efforts on the curriculum front includes Corrective Reading, an instructional approach that is supposed to diagnose the reading issues students have and then help them build up their decoding and comprehension skills. And it also includes implementing the use of the Fountas and Pinnell literacy program sold by textbook publisher Heinemann which is the nation’s bestselling reading solution.

The problem is that the tools chosen by Baltimore don’t adequately address those challenges of illiteracy facing our kids. And it is the ineffectiveness of these approaches that make Common Core reading standards a necessity.

Fountas and Pinnell is what is called a guided reading program. This, by the way, is the approach that has been used in reading instruction throughout America’s traditional districts since the 1920s. Essentially what Fountas and Pinnell does is match kids with books that are supposedly appropriate, or just right, for their reading skills, keeping them from reading more-complex books with which those kids may struggle. This is especially appealing to elementary school teachers, many of whom have never been well-trained in the science of literacy, because they don’t have to provide struggling readers with the kind of supports they need to master reading. It is also appealing to districts such as Baltimore because it saves money and resources. After all, districts already struggle mightily to recruit high-quality reading teachers; that districts continue an approach of elementary school teachers as jacks-of-all-trades types (even as data shows the need for specialization because not all teachers are good at teaching both reading and math) also factors into the appeal of Fountas and Pinnell (and guided reading altogether).

The problem with Fountas and Pinnell is that there is little evidence that guided reading is effective in addressing illiteracy or improving student achievement. This is because guided reading doesn’t actually help students build up their comprehension. As Timothy Shanahan, one of the nation’s foremost researchers on literacy, points out, guided reading’s goal of matching kids to books they can easily read is little more than “relegating them to training wheels forever”; children don’t build up their comprehension and therefore, never become proficient and advanced in their literacy. In the case of Fountas and Pinnell, the activities suggested by the program for preparing kids for reading such as pre-reading (or previewing what will be read through discussions about ancillary topics) tend to do little more than focus on concepts that aren’t central to the book at hand; for example, a child taking on Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is told to learn more about such matters as deep-sea fishing even though none of those things have anything to do with the plight of the protagonist that is at the heart of the yarn. Meanwhile Corrective Reading has proven to have almost no effect in helping kids improve their reading comprehension and fluency, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse. Baltimore would be better off just throwing a few books under the noses of its students and moving on.

But Baltimore isn’t alone in providing kids with shoddy, abysmal reading curricula and instruction. The fact that 1.2 million fourth-graders — or 33 percent of all fourth-graders in the United States in 2011 — struggled with illiteracy, while another 1.3 million are barely reading at basic proficiency, are clear signs of how poorly American public education is faring in improving literacy. Considering that guided reading approaches such as that of Fountas and Pinnell are used throughout many districts in the United States, this shouldn’t be surprising. Why such approaches still are tolerated in spite of their ineffectiveness? One reason is because states have long tolerated a slapdash approach to curricula development which has essentially allowed districts and teachers to do the work on curriculum development even when the former can barely handle their basic tasks and most teachers lack subject-matter competency to do so. The fact that all but a few states have crafted reading standards that are shoddy, subpar, and often, reinforce the faulty thinking that drives guided reading efforts, is also part of the problem.

It is clear that the guided reading approaches to reading instruction used in Baltimore and in most cities for most of the past century won’t stem illiteracy. What will help more kids improve their reading is to help them take on challenging literature and nonfiction texts, then supporting (or scaffolding) them as they tackle complex reading with techniques such as explaining to them the concepts that are being discussed in books and helping them with building up their fluency with the written words within them. Because reading comprehension is developed in part by kids gaining background knowledge about the world around them (including aspects of society they may not have necessarily seen with their own eyes), it also means that we must also expand their experiences inside and outside classrooms. One way to do that starts with providing kids with nonfiction texts — from simple news stories, to entries in encyclopedias, to works such as The Wealth of Nations – that introduce kids to abstract ideas that drive economy and society.

In short, what children in Baltimore — and throughout the nation — need is the kind of literacy instruction demanded by the Common Core reading standards. Because Common Core emphasizes both fiction and nonfiction reading and writing, as well as reading War and Peace and John Milton’s On Liberty, the standards — along with other reforms such as overhauling how we recruit and train aspiring teachers in reading as well as move away from jack-of-all-trades teaching at the elementary level — can help more kids become proficient in reading, and be able to write their own stories.  This isn’t to say Common Core’s reading standards are perfect; nothing crafted by human hands will ever achieve that rarefied strata. But Common Core can help provide our kids, especially our young black men in Baltimore — with the challenging, college preparatory curricula they need in an increasingly knowledge-driven world. And this is something opponents of Common Core should keep in mind when they argue against implementing the standards. They should ask themselves: Can we really continue to deny children in Baltimore and other districts the knowledge they need to survive?

Children should be reading Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will and other great works of nonfiction that have shaped the world in which they are growing up.

One of the great joys of being the editor of this fine publication — and straddling both the media and education policy arenas — is that it allows me to indulge my inner geek and read through materials that I would otherwise ignore. This is especially true in dissecting the arguments of supporters and opponents of the effort by 45 states and the District of Columbia to implement Common Core reading and math standards. And it is particularly clear when one actually looks at the argument offered by the coterie of movement conservatives, hardcore traditionalists, and smattering of otherwise-sensible conservative reformers opposed to the standards that Common Core’s reading standards will weaken the quality of teaching, curricula, and learning in classrooms.

For much of the past two years, Common Core foes such as Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas, have articulated two reasons why they think Common Core’s reading standards are weak. The first? Because teachers are now required to focus at least some of their time focusing their students on reading so-called informational texts — mainly books of nonfiction such as Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, speeches such as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and op-eds as well as other forms of expository essays — as well as on writing their own fact-driven op-eds and essays articulating points of view. From where Common Core foes sit (and as some teachers, including those profiled this past December in the Washington Post), this focus on nonfiction comes at the expense of the traditional classroom focus on great works of fiction such as The Great Gatsby as well as on writing stories and other pieces talking about their experiences. In turn, Common Core’s emphasis on reading and writing non-fiction weakens the quality of curricula, instruction, and ultimately, student learning in classrooms because children are not exposed to the great works of fictions that challenge their minds and stimulates their thinking. Proclaims Stotsky in an abbreviated version of a piece she wrote for the Pioneer Institute: “Common Core’s damage to the English curriculum is already taking shape.”

Then there’s the second argument against Common Core’s reading standards: That the standards themselves are not clear or self-explanatory. From their perspective, the standards are incoherent, don’t offer teachers enough in the way of instruction to understand what they should be doing in classrooms, and don’t help kids fully understand what they should know. More importantly, because most English teachers haven’t been trained to do this work, they are unable to understand what they are doing, and thus, will fail. This argument, along with the complaints about the focus on nonfiction as well as the loss of that mythical thing called local control of education (which, given that states are charged constitutionally with providing public education, and that districts, as local governments, are merely arms of their respective state governments, has never existed), is among the more-serious arguments offered by Common Core foes.

Yet when one actually reads through the actual standards itself, the arguments Common Core foes offer fall apart.

For one, Common Core actually emphasizes both fiction and nonfiction reading and writing, as well as reading books on history and science. This is a good thing because many state standards don’t focus teachers and districts to focus kids on reading nonfiction, while the focus on fiction is often desultory at best. During the first two grades, teachers are required to focus students on such fundamentals of analyzing and interpreting fiction as describing characters and understanding the central plot and message of a story, while also learning how to describe the “main purpose of a text, including what the author wants to answer, explain, or describe”. By the time kids reach high school, they must figure out Shakespeare’s plays draw from other great texts such as Ovid’s The Metamorphosis as well as determine how, say, John Stuart Mill’s point of view in On Liberty and how he  ”uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose”. And on the path to high schools, kids are asked to understand how, for example, director Kenneth Branaugh’s version of Frankenstein digresses from Mary Shelley’s original work, and at the same time, “analyze how 2 or more authors writing about the same topic shape their presentations of information” on the same issue. Simply put, teachers are required to help students master the kind of sophisticated reading, writing, and analysis that they will have to do once they enter the adult world.

The standards implicitly forces English teachers to improve the quality of books they assign for students to read. After all, to engage in the kind of sophisticated reading required under the standards, children (and their teachers) have to actually read great works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Iliad and the Old and New Testaments. At the same time, it still grants teachers wide latitude in how can bring relevance — including incorporating American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian cultures — into instruction. For example, a teacher at the Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii, a private school focused on improving the futures of Native Hawaiian children, can actually tie together the ”rose by any other name” scene in Romeo and Juliet and Native Hawaiian poems about the various flora that kids can find on every one of the state’s islands. This ability to bring relevance as well as comprehensive learning into reading and writing is one reason why Native communities have become less-resistant to implementing the standards than foes of the standards outside them.

Meanwhile an actual reading through the standards themselves shows that they aren’t exactly hard for teachers and school leaders to understand. It is really hard for any competent district curriculum director to not understand what it means to “determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details” and even harder for a good or great teacher to comprehend what it means to “trace and evaluate the argument” presented in, say, a Thomas Friedman column. In fact, an average parent or caregiver with a strong understanding of concepts such as close reading (or the careful and sustained interpretation of fiction and nonfiction text) can grasp Common Core’s reading standards, and actually handle instruction themselves in a home-school or tutoring setting. If anything, Common Core’s reading standards do something that most state standards don’t do very well: Explain to teachers what they should be teaching in their classrooms, and what kids should learn in order to be successful once they enter higher education (including traditional colleges and apprenticeships) and move on to the adult world, regardless of what career paths they choose.

The importance of Common Core’s reading standards in focusing American public education on exposing children to the great works of nonfiction cannot be understated. After all, so much of our activities and discourse in public and private life is shaped by ideas espoused in books written by Thomas Paine, Aristotle, Marx, and Voltaire. One cannot understand, say, American and even international economic policy for most of the past six decades without reading the works of Friedrich von Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. The architecture of Washington, D.C., and, in fact, nearly every state capital, is shaped by architect Andrea Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura, which was read by the leading intellectual among America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson. Considering the role of nonfiction books in shaping how we think and what we believe, especially in an increasingly knowledge-based economy and society, there is more need than ever for children, especially those from poor and minority households, to read, write, and understand nonfiction. Arguments by Stotsky and other Common Core foes to the contrary are not only wrongheaded, but absolutely, positively lacking in seriousness.

All that said, one of the problems that will be faced in implementing Common Core is the fact that far too many teachers lack the skills needed to provide high-quality reading instruction. This is one of the culprits behind the nation’s education crisis — and why 33 percent of fourth-graders (as of 2011) are functionally illiterate as well as will likely drop out. But this isn’t the fault of either the standards themselves or even of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (which crafted them). This problem lies with the nation’s university schools of education, which have long ago faltered in their recruiting and training of aspiring teachers. As the National Council on Teacher Quality concluded in 2006,  only 11 of 71 ed schools  it surveyed in 2006 adequately trained future teachers in reading; recent studies from NCTQ have also reaffirmed the abysmal quality of teacher training. Common Core foes don’t seem to acknowledge the underlying problem, and in fact, offer no solutions to overhauling teacher recruiting and training. This unwillingness to admit that Common Core — which has only begun to be implemented — is not the problem, as well as their lack of solutions also makes their arguments hard to take seriously.

Of course, Common Core foes such as Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey will complain that your editor is merely mocking his allies. After all, they have already complained about the mocking of their positions by Common Core supporters such as Benjamin Riley of the New Schools Venture Fund, who satirized the arguments of Common Core foes in a recent piece on the school reform outfit’s blog. [Of course, at least Common Core supporter, Larry Grau of Democrats for Education Reform's Indiana affiliate, is engaging in equally unserious arguments against Common Core foes that are counter to the school reform movement's principled bipartisanship. DFER Executive Director Joe Williams should tell Grau to take a time out, and the organization should stop engaging in this ridiculousness. Right now.] What foes of the standards fail to realize is that it is hard to take all but a few Common Core foes seriously (McCluskey being one of them) because of their association with allies who engage in misinformation and conspiracy-theorizing.

From the argument of Gatesers that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has somehow engaged in a stealth campaign to implement the standards that is somehow a violation of American democracy (even as it has been clear long ago that the Gates Foundation’s efforts have been anything but stealthy or anti-democratic), to statements by others that Common Core’s implementation would lead to kids having to use facial recognition software, to less-than-factual statements by movement conservatives opposed to Common Core such as otherwise-sensible syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin that the standards would lead to middle-schoolers not taking introductory algebra classes (even though few take such courses now, and the standards actually allow for states to further efforts to provide seventh- and eighth-graders to take Algebra 1), Common Core foes have been their own worst enemies.

Take  the the particularly interesting rhetorical ploy that Common Core is unworthy of  implementing because they have been “untested”. The statement would have merit if not for the fact it isn’t completely so. Aspects of Common Core’s nonfiction reading standards, for example, are echoed by the curricula standards put in place by Massachusetts 12 years (and the similarities between those standards and Common Core may be one reason why the Bay State moved to adopt the latter). Just as importantly, standards  (along with other aspects of education, including those reforms that many Common Core foes tout, including charter schools, which have turned out to be successful) aren’t ever field-tested in the first place. Whether standards and curricula should be tested is a different story, and your editor would tend to support testing them out first. But Common Core foes have never articulated why such an approach should be taken. They have just tossed out the words “untested” thinking that would actually resonate with anyone other than those opposed to any form of common standard. That is clearly less-than-serious rhetoric unworthy of any consideration.

In fact, one of the reasons why they haven’t succeeded so far in halting implementation of Common Core is because supporters of the standards have been able to mock the less-than-serious arguments and obscure the more-serious objections. It is hard for even those who may support your position to publicly do so if they surmise that your allies are offering reasons and arguments that make talk about one-world governments seem more-plausible by comparison. This, in turn, has allowed Common Core supporters to evade important arguments such as whether there should there be national curricula (especially in reading and math) and whether anyone should fear this happening. This is an important question because the possibility of Common Core leading to national curricula is one reason why serious foes of the standards are so ardently opposed to its implementation. Given the wide latitude provided under Common Core for anyone looking to develop curricula — as well as the fears, well-founded or not, about the impact of a national curricula — this is unlikely to happen. In fact, one of the positive impacts of Common Core is that those who want to develop curricula actually have the ability to craft high-quality content based on a set of standards. All that said, whatever your position on that issue, it is a question worth discussing.

It also allows Common Core supporters to avoid discussing the real problems of implementing Common Core: That without strong accountability — most-concretely in the form of the No Child Left Behind Act, whose Adequate Yearly Progress provisions have been weakened by the Obama Administration as part of its waiver gambit — the standards may not actually be implemented effectively, especially in improving curricula for poor and minority kids). And that it will take vigilance on the part of reformers and state education departments to ensure that curricula actually meet the underlying standards, an issue already difficult to address now that textbook publishers are now trying to proclaim that their offering are “Common Core ready”. This matters because many Common Core supporters have oversold the likely efficacy of the standards. And this, in turn, is not a good thing for either side. When school reformers and those who want systemic reform (which movement conservatives opposed Common Core do want, something that their allies among traditionalists certainly do not) fail engage in serious discussions about implementing reforms, the movement suffers. Unlike education traditionalists (who depend solely on the passions generated from benefiting from a failed, amoral model), the school reform movement derives its strength and success from being thoughtful in developing solutions to address the nation’s education crisis. We need thoughtful conflict. Period.

Common Core foes could actually force supporters of the standards to actually think through these problems — and defend the standards in a more-meaningful way that advances systemic reform — if they rid themselves of those offering arguments lacking seriousness within their ranks. Until then, those less-than-serious arguments will be mocked. And so will they.

Earlier this week, advocates for reforming America’s obsolete and byzantine immigration laws – including children of undocumented émigrés forced into educational and economic limbo out of no fault of their own – held rallies throughout Washington, D.C. From a group of teenagers playing drums and cymbals while leading a large rally near the U.S. Senate’s collection of office buildings, to the crowds marching along the Supreme Court building into the early evening hours, these parents and activists were passionate about standing up against an immigration system that is arbitrary, capricious, and still driven by unproven nativist fears that émigrés are hardened criminals and welfare cases who contribute nothing to the nation’s economic or social fabric.

These families and activists were not alone. Within the past few weeks, families and school reformers have gathered together in front of statehouses – including in Tallahassee, Fla., and Indianapolis – to support the expansion of school choice and passage of proposed Parent Trigger laws that would allow poor and minority families to take over and overhaul failing traditional district schools in their neighborhoods. These collections of mothers, fathers, caregivers, and advocates were also zealous about ending Zip Code Education policies that condemned children to dropout factories and failure mills that damaged their futures and that of the communities in which they lived.

But immigration activists and school choice advocates have more in common than just their dedication to stand up for what’s right for their children and families. By standing up for their respective causes, they are forcing America to address the legacy of racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry that still shapes the nation to this day. This is a reality the school reform movement must keep in mind as it advances the transformation of American public education.

For one to understand how both immigration reform activists and school reformers are working toward a common goal, one must consider this fact: Before 1882, there was no such thing as illegal immigration. So long as they weren’t engaged in criminal behavior, an emigrating Irishman could simply walk into this country and after five years, become a citizen. In fact, immigration was encouraged by the Founding Fathers such as James Madison, who only demanded that immigrants be required to serve a probationary period just to make sure that they would “increase the wealth and strength of the community”. They did. Between 1836 and 1914 alone, some 30 million Irish, Russian, and other European émigrés alone risked their lives to come to this country. So did another 300,000 Chinese arrived between 1851 and 1882.

The nation benefited. Thanks to the hard work of Chinese émigrés, the nation’s first transcontinental railroad was built, allowing for businesses to transport their goods from New York to California, while opening new opportunities for people to settle in the American West. It was the Irish immigrants working in the mills and factories of New England who helped the United States emerge as the leading manufacturing and economic power in the world, as well as helped keep law and order in New York and other big cities. The six million German immigrants who arrived in the country became the architects who built up cities such as Indianapolis, and the farmers who helped America become the world’s bread basket. Open borders meant a more-prosperous nation that built upon the settlement of Europeans before the Founding Fathers broke the nation away from Great Britain in 1776. And from these immigrants and their kin came some of the giants of American history: Steel titan Andrew Carnegie; U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy; the playwright Eugene O’Neill; and literary icons such as Kurt Vonnegut.

But the presence of these immigrants was not welcomed by the descendants of earlier émigrés who now made up the native-born American population. The biggest reason for the nativist sentiment? Pure religious bigotry. American Protestants were particularly fearful of the Irish, whose adherence to Roman Catholicism stoked ridiculous fears that the Pope to try to take over the nation; the fact that Catholicism became the nation’s most-populous religion by 1860 didn’t help matters. Native-born Americans were also afraid of the Chinese because of their unwillingness to ditch their religious beliefs to embrace Christianity.

Another reason for the hostility was one that had been part of American history since 1662, when the Virginia legislature passed a statute forcing all children of female African slaves into permanently servitude – even when their fathers were white: Old fashioned racialism. As with African-Americans (including freed blacks in the American North), Irish and Chinese immigrants were unfairly accused of stoking violence and prostitution in big cities such as New York even when lawlessness in those communities – along with dueling volunteer police and fire departments – were coin of the realm long before immigration arrived. The fact that Irish and Chinese immigrants were willing to work some of the less-desired jobs in the economy for lower wages furthered stirred up ire against them; by the end of the 19th century, the first wave of the modern trade union movement disdained immigrants (as well as African-Americans and others who weren’t white or of Anglo-Saxon descent).

By 1840, nativist sentiment led the American Bible Society to successfully push for the nation’s public schools to force children – including those from Catholic homes – to read the Protestant King James Version of the Old and New Testaments. By the 1850s, these fears, exacerbated by the misperception that Pope Pius IX advocated for revolutionary unrest throughout Europe at the end of the previous decade, stoked the emergence of the Know-Nothing movement, which successfully elected mayors, governors, and even took control of legislatures in states such as Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Those politicians then worked diligently to bar immigrants from municipal jobs, as well as agitated riots against Irish Catholics all throughout the nation.

In southern states such as Maryland and Alabama, nativist sentiment often formed common cause with support of slavery, playing a major part in stirring the rancor between North and South over the evil practice that led to the American Civil War. Meanwhile in California and other parts of the West, Chinese immigrants were accused of promoting prostitution (even though nearly all émigrés from China before the 20th century were men), and subject to endless bigotry.

These nativists would make sure to ensure their legacy would live on through policies that still shape immigration and American public education.

Starting in 1882, anti-Chinese sentiment led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred the emigration of laborers from China to the United States. By 1917, Congress further codified racial, ethnic, and religious into immigration law by creating the Asiatic Barred Zone to keep the Chinese — and this time, other Asians — from arriving to the nation’s shores. Four years later in 1921, amid a wave of Klu Klux Klan- and nativist-inspired bigotry against those who weren’t White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, Congress enacted the Emergency Quota Act, the first of many quotas, restricting the number of Russian, Polish, Irish, Italian and other European, and Asian émigrés. A British immigrant, most-often Protestant and white, was welcomed; a Russian (who clearly wasn’t either) was not.

By the time of the Great Depression, the bigotry shifted to another group of Catholics, Mexican immigrants, who were targeted out of fear that they supposedly took jobs from whites. The bigotry – especially in California and Texas, states that had previously been parts of Mexico (and already home to Latino populations) led to the By the 1940s, it had lessened largely because of the need for additional labor as a result of the Second World War (as well as the fact that Japanese émigrés and their American-born children became the subjects of nativist sentiment). The Bracero program for contract workers brought in Mexicans to work as migrant farmers for a time, then return home when they made enough income to feed their families.

Eventually the civil rights movement of the 1960s would end up changing attitudes about explicitly codifying bigotry into law; by 1965, the federal government ended outright race- and ethnicity-based quotas once and for all. But the legacy of the bigotry remains in place today.

Meanwhile racialism and religious bigotry began shaping American public education much earlier – and continued even longer.

The first Zip Code Education law was passed in 1833 when Connecticut legislators, scandalized by the fact that the legendary educator Prudence Crandall took black children from outside the state into her private school, passed the Black Law restricting school choice. School residency laws would eventually become the norm. Starting in the 1840s, Protestants adapted the Unitarian-influenced civic religion in schools favored by Horace Mann in order to drive out foreign “papist” influences and put Catholics under their thumb. In Philadelphia, for example, Protestants burned down five churches after the diocesan bishop demanded that children of Catholics be exempted from having to read the King James Bible; in New York State, efforts by Gov. William Seward to provide funding to Catholic schools was met with the kind of bigotry that was otherwise reserved for African Americans of the time.

Then in the 1870s, the particular hostility toward Catholics (as well as other Protestant denominations) led to the passage of what would eventually be called Blaine Amendments restricting public dollars from being used to help taxpayers finance the education of their children in private schools. By that point, Catholic dioceses and parishes, driven by the Eliot School Rebellion two decades earlier, had launched their own schools and formed what was the alternate provider for both their own parishioners (as well as poor and minority kids). But this was challenged in 1922 when the Klu Klux Klan, capitalizing on anti-immigrant sentiment, succeeded in convincing voters in Oregon to pass a law barring Catholic families from sending their kids to diocesan schools. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually overturned the ballot measure. But such religious bigotry remained, especially with schools forcing students to pray, and oppression against Jehovah’s Witnesses for their refusal to swear an Oath of Allegiance they believe is idolatry.

Religious bigotry would then join forces with racism. Starting in the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, blacks in the American South would struggle to obtain access to just obtain education. From 1865 to 1870, for example, agents from the Freedman’s Bureau in Staunton, Va. (where my great-grandmother was born at the turn of the 20th century), struggled to obtain resources just to build schools. By the end of the 1870s, blacks would feel the full brunt of racial bigotry with the passage of the first Jim Crow laws restricting their children from attending schools with whites. It would take the efforts of teachers such as Mary McLeod Bethune and Booker T. Washington (the latter with the help of Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck & Co. fame) to open schools providing what was then considered education to black kids of that time. American Indians would also take the brunt starting in 1879 with the opening of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School, which aimed to assimilate Native children into American culture; by the mid-20th century, the agency now known as the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education opened 26 such schools while another 450 were operated by missionaries on the federal government’s behalf, subjecting Native kids to physical abuse, molestation, and substandard instruction.

The most-persistent racialism and religious bigotry in American public education came in 1918, when a committee of teachers and school leaders convened by the National Education Association decided that children of immigrants (along with blacks and the poor) were not equipped to do well in the college preparatory model of high schools championed two decades earlier by legendary Harvard University President Charles Eliot and his Committee of Ten. Instead of providing all kids with college-oriented learning (as Eliot supported), these educators pushed what would become the comprehensive high school model, with middle-class white kids (along with those few children of émigrés deemed worthy of such curricula) getting what was then considered high-quality learning, while poor and minority kids were relegated to shop classes and less-challenging coursework. By the time your editor’s grandmother (one of the last of her generation to obtain the kind of college prep education championed by Eliot) graduated from Mineola High School in New York State’s Nassau County in 1942, the comprehensive high school was dominant. This rationing of education and soft bigotry of low expectations for poor and minority kids would eventually trickle down into the rest of American public education in the form of ability-tracking and even special education.

A series of court rulings, most-notably the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, would eventually spur the end of official state-sanctioned racial bigotry. By the 1970s, outright bigotry against other children – including Native kids who were forced-fed substandard and assimilation-driven curricula – had ended as well.

But when it comes to immigration and American public education, the legacy of racialism and religious bigotry remains in place to this very day.

The race-based quotas still shape immigration today through the equally arbitrary and capricious country-based quota system limiting the number of émigrés allowed into the United States  to just 700,000 men and women; one’s country of origin (and thus, their ethnicity and race) is still as much a determinant in whether they can become citizens as on their employment prospects and their familial relationship to someone already on American soil. It is why it can take 20 years for a plumber from the Philippines with a brother in the states 20 years before qualifying for naturalization. The evidence has long-ago shown that immigrants are strong contributors the nation’s economy – especially in the form of the children of émigrés such as Google’s Sergey Brin, who become America’s top entrepreneurs and corporate leaders – and contribute more income into federal and state coffers than they cost in terms of education. Yet nativist sentiment – fueled both by less-than-thoughtful populist conservatives and private-sector unions on the political left, often with not-so-WASPY names – keeps those barriers in place. And the damage can be seen in the form of children of undocumented immigrants succeeding in school being denied entry into universities – and even being deported from the country that has been their home all of their lives.

Meanwhile the consequences of America’s racial and religious bigotry still damages the country in the form of an education crisis in which 1.1 million children from the original Class of 2012 will drop out of school and fall into poverty and prison. The consequences are clear in the overdiagnosis of young black and Latino (along with young white men) as learning disabled, relegated to special ed ghettos where their futures never recover. Mothers and fathers such as Hamlet and Olesia Garcia, Kelley Williams-Bolar, and Tanya McDowell, end up facing prison time because of Zip Code Education laws that keep them from providing their children with high-quality education. School reformers have managed to turn back some of those policies, most notably last month in the Indiana Supreme Court’s unanimous verdict upholding the Hoosier State’s school voucher program. Yet traditionalists – including descendants of immigrants named Weingarten, Ravitch, and Van Roekel – continue to perpetuate this legacy of bigotry by opposing the expansion of school choice and Parent Power.

The damaging legacy of bigotry that flows into the lives of immigrants and into American public education is one that both immigration reform advocates and the school reform movement are working to overcome. This is why we must fight so hard for our children to get all that they need to write their own stories. It is also why reformers on both sides need to join together to help stop policies that cheat our children out of better lives.

Back in 1997, California made a bold statement for providing all children with strong, comprehensive college-preparatory curricula when it mandated that all districts and schools should provide seventh- and eighth-grade students with Algebra 1, the key course for helping children master advanced mathematics. But between the time the state legislature mandated the coursework and the move this year by the state board of education to drop the mandate, traditionalists — including the  lobbying group representing traditional districts, the California School Boards Association, and the Association of California School Administrators (which represents school leaders) — did all they could to hold off full implementation. It took seven years for the state to develop the actual standards for the state’s Algebra 1 curricula. Then it took another four years before the state mandated that its battery of standardized exams would be the only test used to determine whether middle-schoolers reached any level of proficiency. Even after the state mandated the test, CSBA and ACSA sued to block the use of the test because they wanted they wanted kids to take a less-challenging exam that would have not forced districts to actually follow through with the state’s Algebra 1 mandate.

As a result, only 281,890 California seventh- and eighth-graders — or 30 percent of all middle-schoolers in those grades — took Algebra 1 by 2009-2010, according to Dropout Nation‘s analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. That is certainly far fewer than all middle-schoolers taking the course. The lack of full implementation of the Algebra 1 standard — and the fact that so few children were provided that curriculum — is likely one reason why California reduced eighth-grade math illiteracy by four percentage points between 2005 and 2011 — just keeping pace with the decline in innumeracy across the nation in that same period — according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and why the state’s three percentage point increase in number of middle-schoolers scoring at Proficient and Advanced levels trailed the four percent gain for the nation as a whole. With so much resistance from districts and other traditionalists — and with the change in the reform climate from the strong efforts undertaken by governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger to the weaker approach of once-and-future governor Jerry Brown — it’s little wonder why the state education board members, under the guise of enacting Common Core math and reading standards, took the opportunity this year to ditch the Algebra 1 push.

California isn’t the only state in which efforts to provide kids with the college preparatory curricula don’t always lead to traditional districts actually doing so. There are numerous obstacles — from obstructionism by districts as well as affiliates of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, to the low quality of teaching in mathematics, to the Simply legislating that all children should be provided college preparatory math isn’t enough to make it happen — a lesson reformers who work on the ground (as well as reporters who cover such efforts) understand all too well. Education researchers should also consider such context and incorporate it into evaluating the results of a reform.

This lesson comes courtesy of Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution, who recently raised questions about the efficacy of providing Algebra 1 to middle-school students in the latest edition of the think tank’s annual report on the state of education policy and practice. Based on Brookings’ analysis of NAEP data from 2005 to 2011, Loveless concludes that there was no evidence that increasing enrollment in Algebra 1 and other advanced math courses led to improvements in student achievement. Loveless admits that NAEP’s scale scores may “assess mathematics too broadly” to figure out what role efforts to provide Algebra 1 to middle school students is having on results, and concedes that the effort in California has so far shown positives in the form of more kids (especially poor and minority kids often denied such college preparatory work) participating in the courses and passing the exams (as well as thriving on the challenge). But Loveless still hypothesizes that the effort may not be having much of a positive effect on student achievement — especially when one compares states that have required Algebra 1 versus those who have not done so — for a number of reasons, including the possibility that Algebra 1 courses are being “watered down”. As a result, media outlets and others have run wild with Loveless’ analysis without giving it a closer look.

But Loveless’ analysis is incomplete. Why? Because he failed to consider the most-likely reason for why Algebra 1 (as well as other advanced math courses) hasn’t helped reduce innumeracy or increased the number of kids becoming proficient in math: The fact that few middle-school students are actually being taught introductory algebra in the first place. Dropout Nation has made this clear in its collection of briefs on how districts such as Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Fairfax County, Va., fail to provide all kids with college preparatory curricula. Some of this oversight is understandable; Loveless was relying on responses to the NAEP questionnaire, which indicates that 47 percent of students taking the exam had taken algebra or some other form of advanced math. But even Loveless admits that students may have mistakenly believed they were taking such courses when that wasn’t so. That alone should have led Loveless to look at another U.S. Department of Education database that would have provided additional context: The Office for Civil Rights data collection, which garners its data from administrators who would have better data on the classes students are taking.

This publication, on the other hand, did look at the OCR data  – particularly at four states Loveless singled out for increasing enrollment in Algebra 1 and other advanced math, as well as for requiring districts to provide Algebra 1 instruction — and did some simple math: Dividing the number of students taking Algebra 1 in seventh- and eighth-grade in states that have mandated such courses to be taken from the number of kids in those grades overall. Sure, it isn’t multivariate analysis. But this time around, none is needed. Now, because OCR’s database combines middle-school enrollment with high school numbers, getting the latter data can be tricky. But thanks to that other federal database called the Common Core of Data, one can get accurate data on middle school enrollment in each state. And the results were revealing.

In Minnesota, one of the states Loveless cited, just 19 percent of seventh- and eighth-graders took the course in 2009-2010. Four-fifths of kids in those grades were not provided the coursework.  One reason lies with the fact that Minnesota didn’t require districts to provide Algebra 1 to middle-schoolers until it released its standards in 2007. Considering that it can take time for districts to implement the standards — Minneapolis’ traditional district, for example, expected to provide Algebra 1 to all students sometime around 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 — it is unlikely that the policy would have immediately helped kids improve their numeracy. This, by the way, is also true for Washington State, where Algebra 1 only became required learning for middle-schoolers in 2008; just 14 percent of Evergreen State seventh- and eighth-graders took Algebra 1 in 2009-2010. [Washington State, by the way, is still requiring middle-schoolers to take introductory algebra even as it is implementing Common Core standards.]

In Virginia, just 23 percent of seventh- and eighth-graders were taking Algebra 1; the other 77 percent of kids in those grades were not provided that college preparatory course. This shouldn’t be all that shocking given that Virginia didn’t mandate eighth-graders to learn introductory algebra until 2009, when the Old Dominion released the most-recent version of its Standards of Learning regimen. As a result, it is unlikely that districts would have fully implemented Algebra 1 by the start of the new school year. Even if all middle-schoolers were taking Algebra 1, it wouldn’t have meant the kids would have learned anything of high quality. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute gave a “C” rating to SOL’s math standards because it wasn’t comprehensive or strong enough.

Then there is Pennsylvania, which has mandated that middle-schoolers are provided Algebra 1 since 2003. Just 23 percent of seventh- and eighth-graders took Algebra 1 in 2009-2010, while the other 77 percent of their schoolmates didn’t take the course. This isn’t shocking; as Dropout Nation reported last year, just 45 percent of Latino students, 46 percent of white students, and 51 percent of Asian students were provided introductory algebra; Philly, oddly enough, is doing better at helping middle schools access this course than most of its peers in the rest of the Keystone State. Because of Pennsylvania’s decision to scale back that mandate as part of its move to implement Common Core — which the state (along with California) could have still required anyway — it is likely that even fewer middle-schoolers are taking Algebra 1 now than three years ago. [By the Way: Later this month, Dropout Nation will look at how many minority kids in each state are being provided access to Algebra 1.]

These numbers aren’t unusual. Just 19 percent of seventh- and eighth-graders in Florida — a state that Loveless didn’t cite in his analysis — took Algebra in 2009-2010. In fact, the U.S. Department of Education noted last year in its sampling of civil rights data that seventh- and eighth-grade students represented just a quarter of all students taking Algebra 1. The reality is that there are far too few middle-schoolers taking Algebra 1 (or any advanced math course) to actually have much of an effect on either NAEP scores or on any other macro measure of impact of systemic reform. [There's also the fact that Loveless doesn't consider that the benefits of Algebra 1 may not initially show up in eighth grade, but over time as kids progress into high school ready to take on the challenges of higher level math, or the need to improve math instruction and curricula in the early grades, but those are different discussions.]

Certainly there may not been much improvement in scores even if every middle in each of these states were taking Algebra 1. After all, only three of the five states covered in this analysis — California, Washington State, and Minnesota — had math standards rated A or B by Fordham in its most-recent analysis, while none of the states on the list ranked as having eighth-grade math standards equal to the top seven nations in math, according to the American Institutes for Research’s 2010 report on curricula standards. But Loveless doesn’t offer any evidence that providing Algebra 1 to all students doesn’t help kids succeed. If anything, based on the California evidence Loveless cited (as well as on the work of Education Sector’s Peter A. Cookson Jr. and Constance Clark, as well as Allan W. Gottfried of California State University, Fullerton), more-challenging curricula (along with high-quality teaching) actually works.

This isn’t to say that Loveless’ analysis doesn’t raise important questions. The fact that so many young adults in the middle grades are not getting opportunities to take advanced math — even in states where there are strong efforts to require schools to provide it — is one more example of how American public education cheats so many kids out of brighter futures. It is also another reminder that reformers have to work harder on the ground to make sure efforts come to fruition. But Loveless’ analysis doesn’t include the context needed to understand why efforts to provide middle school students with Algebra 1 are not working as well as expected. And the need for such context is one all education researchers should incorporate into their analysis.

Should Houston Independent School District, which won the Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation’s prestigious and eponymous award 11 years ago for being the exemplar of what a high-performing big-city district should be, win it again? Based on Dropout Nation‘s analysis of its performance data, this is a question worth posing — and one that is also worth asking about the nominees, and including San Diego Unified, Corona-Norco Unified in California’s Orange County, and Cumberland County, N.C. Because the school reform movement must continually demand better examples of success (and expect more from districts in the midst of being overhauled), especially in a second period of reform in which the focus is moving beyond helping kids get the basics needed to graduate from high school.

Your editor has been pondering this matter for quite a while — and this outlet has alluded to this in its reports on the failures of districts such as Fairfax County, Va., and Philadelphia to provide kids in their care with comprehensive college preparatory curricula. But the question was publicly raised last month by Andy Smarick of Bellwether Education Partners, who looked askance at the fact that Houston (along with San Diego) was nominated for the Broad Prize in spite of what he considered to be sub-par performance in improving student achievement. Certainly this complaint didn’t please many reformers, who often want to tout successes in improving student achievement as much as they want to shine light on the symptoms of the nation’s education crisis. Yet Smarick’s question is important to consider because systemic reform isn’t just about improving literacy and stemming the number of kids becoming high school dropouts.

Certainly thanks to the first wave of reforms that were launched by southern governors in the late 1970s (and advanced by the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001), there were 216,266 fewer fourth-graders mired in illiteracy in 2011 than there were in 2002. Those reforms have also helped keep more kids on the path to high school graduation, with graduation rates increasing from 66 percent for the Class of 1999 to 73 percent of the Class of 2009, according to estimates by Education Week for its annual Diplomas Count report. But in an increasingly global economy in which what you know is more important than what you can do with your hands, just being able to read at an eighth-grade level and graduate from high school is not enough.

As clear in the unemployment and job growth numbers released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is little growth (and often declines) in sectors such as retail and construction that were the go-tos for high school grads without at least some college education (as well as dropouts), while the sectors with increasing job growth are in fields demanding higher levels of knowledge. Meanwhile the advent of the Internet, along the emergence of quantifiable data, the automation of basic tasks in white-collar fields, and the increasing complexity of blue-collar work (with welders needing strong college-level math skills such as trigonometry, as well as understanding of computer languages such as C, to do their tasks), have made middle-class more complex and knowledge-based.  In this day and age, attending and completing some form of higher education – from traditional college to apprenticeships in welding and other blue-collar professions – is the critical step our children need to get the kind of jobs that help sustain families, help communities revive and thrive, and help America remain an economic, political, and military superpower in the 21st  century.

As a result, reformers must more-aggressively advance the transformation of American public education, as well as develop new solutions that will help kids reach beyond basic levels of reading, math, and science proficiency. This, in turn, requires recognizing and rewarding districts and other school operators that do so. It is especially important in the case of big-city districts, whose vast majorities of poor and minority children are the ones in most-need of college-preparatory curricula that is critical to helping them and their communities move into the economic mainstream. But this can’t happen if the school reform movement doesn’t raise the bar for what high-quality should be. And based on the data Dropout Nation has culled on the four nominees for the Broad Prize, the most-prestigious award in the movement, the models of quality are not good enough.

Take Houston, which has garnered national acclaim over the past two decades for the work of Supt. Terry Grier and predecessor Rod Paige in embracing systemic reform. Between 2002 and 2011, the percentage of Houston fourth-graders reading Below Basic declined by nine percentage points, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress; that’s better than the six percent decline in illiteracy for the nation as a whole. The percentage of eighth-graders who were functionally illiterate declined by 10 percentage points in that same period, better than the one percent decline nationwide. The average fourth-grader in Houston was reading at more than half a grade point level higher than their counterpart nine years earlier, while the average eighth-grader was reading at nearly a half a grade point higher than in 2002. In some ways, the gains made in Houston seem impressive. This s why the district, along with San Diego, Corona-Norco, and Cumberland County, is a nominee for the Broad Prize this year. But Houston’s success is far less impressive, both compared to its peers, and given the need to prepare kids for college completion.

Houston Superintendent Terry Grier

New York City did a far better job in reducing illiteracy in the early grades, with a 15 percentage point decline in illiteracy in that period; the average Big Apple fourth-grader read at grade level higher than a peer nine years earlier.  Chicago was also more-impressive in stemming illiteracy among fourth-graders, with a 14 percentage point decline in the same period; the average Second City fourth-grader was also reading at a grade level higher than a peer in 2002. Meanwhile the scandal-tarred Atlanta district and notoriously intransigent Los Angeles Unified managed to do better in reducing eighth-grade illiteracy, reducing the percentage of middle-schoolers struggling with reading by, respectively, 16 and 13 percentage points. The average Atlanta middle-school student was reading at a level two grades higher than a peer nine years earlier, while the average City of Angels eighth-grader was reading at nearly a full grade level higher than an eighth-grade counterpart back in 2002.

Meanwhile there is the fact that Houston hasn’t done as well at helping more kids move beyond basic levels of literacy, which is key for kids being able to succeed in college and an in an increasingly knowledge-based economy. The number of Houston fourth-graders reading at Proficient and Advanced levels increased by a mere six percentage points between 2002 and 2011. While Houston did better than L.A. Unified (which only increased the number of students reading at Proficient and Advanced levels by just three percentage points), those gains were  lower than the 12 percentage point gain made by Atlanta in the same period, the 10 percentage point gain made by New York City over that time, and the eight percentage point gain made in Chicago. Houston’s one-point gain in the percentage of eighth-graders reading at Proficient and Advanced levels is also far lower than the 10 percentage point gain made by Atlanta in the same period, and the six percentage point gain achieved by L.A. Unified in that time.

This isn’t to say that Houston hasn’t made substantive achievements in helping kids make the first basic steps towards success in school and in life. After all, Houston improved its five-year graduation rate (based on eighth-grade enrollment) from 54 percent for its Class of 2002 to 67 percent for its Class of 2011. But the improvements in graduation rate masks the fact that so many kids — including those who manage to be promoted from eighth-grade to senior year of high school — still end up dropping out of school and into despair. This is indicated by the difference between Houston’s graduation rate and its five-year promoting power rate (also based on eighth-grade enrollment) of 81 percent. Thirteen percent of the original class of 2010 — or 1,882 students who did managed to become high school seniors  — didn’t graduate on time. While some may have ended up graduating a year later, more than likely, those kids also likely dropped out. This is on top of the 2,607 eighth-graders — or 19 percent of the original class — who likely dropped out before their senior year.

While more of Houston’s kids are graduating, they aren’t necessarily getting the college preparatory curricula they need in order to do well in traditional colleges, community colleges, technical schools, and apprenticeships that make up higher education. Just 8.8 percent of Houston’s high school students took trigonometry, statistics, and other forms of advanced math in 2009-2010, according to the U.S. Department of Education, while only 19 percent of high schoolers took Advanced Placement courses that help prepare kids for college and career success. Meanwhile only 10 percent of the district’s middle-school students took Algebra I that year; given evidence that many kids who wait until high school to take an algebra course never take anything more challenging than the introductory course, Houston is doing a poor job of preparing its students for long-term success. Simply put: Houston has a long way to go before it can be held up as an exemplar of how traditional districts can move.

But Houston isn’t the Broad Prize’s only problematic nominee. There’s also San Diego, which has made substantial gains between 2003 (when it began participating in NAEP’s Trial Urban District Assessment project) and 2011. While the district reduced the percentage of functionally illiterate fourth-graders by 10 percentage points in that period, that performance doesn’t stack up to Atlanta’s 17 percentage point decline, Boston’s 14 percentage point reduction, or L.A. Unified’s 13 percentage point decline in that time. The City in Motion’s eight percentage point decline in illiteracy for its eighth-graders is also lower than Atlanta’s 17 percentage point decline, L.A. Unified’s 13 percentage point decline, or the nine percentage point decline for Houston in that period. While San Diego’s graduation rate has improved from 68 to 79 percent between 2003 and 2011, there is still the reality that many of its students who are promoted from eighth-grade to senior year of high school still end up dropping out. Fifteen percent of the district’s original Class of 2011 — or 1,510 high school seniors — still didn’t graduate on time.

Meanwhile San Diego is also doing poorly in preparing kids for the rigors of higher education. Just 14 percent of the district’s high school students in 2009-2010 took trigonometry, statistics and other advanced math. Only 18 percent of students took Advanced Placement courses in that same period. And while San Diego deserves credit for making sure 39 percent of its seventh- and eighth-graders are taking Algebra 1 (partly prompted by the now-abolished state law requiring such course-taking), it should be working to make sure that all students take the college preparatory course before they head into high school.

As for the other Broad Prize nominees? Corona-Norco can be credited for ensuring that 52 percent of its middle-schoolers took Algebra 1 before entering high school, while its five-year graduation rate (from 97 percent for its Class of 2002 to 95 percent for its Class of 2011) has been consistently good. But the fact that only 15 percent of its high school students in 2009-2010 took AP courses, and only 13 percent took any form of advanced math should give all reformers pause about whether it is deserving of being called an exemplar of what a high-performing district should be. Same is true for Cumberland County. A mere seven percent of its seventh- and eighth-graders took Algebra 1 in 2009-2010, while only 21 percent of high school students took AP courses that year. Cumberland County has also done a poor job in other aspects of preparing its students for the rigors of higher ed; none of its high school students took any form of advanced math in 2009-2010.

Let’s be clear about this: Houston, San Diego, Corona-Norco and Cumberland County are not alone in doing poorly when it comes to preparing kids for success in an increasingly knowledge-based economy. Traditional districts that have not embraced systemic reform are struggling even more mightily on that front. In fact, the low quality of curricula in traditional districts (including in suburbia) is one reason why a fifth of collegians in four year universities — including 39 percent of black college students and 21 percent of Latino peers — take at least one remedial course, according to College Complete America. It is also why so many college students, especially those in community colleges, often fail to graduate with degrees. This is just the high school grads who do enter high education. The failures of traditional districts, especially in big cities, to provide high-quality education to all kids is also the reason why so many kids drop out in the first place.

At the same time, there’s no reason why these four districts are getting recognition for just doing better than their counterparts. If your editor was handing out the Broad Prize, none of the districts would get it. In fact, the prize would be allowed to collect dust for a few years just to make this point: It’s time to raise the bar. Certainly that bar must also be raised for failing urban districts as well as for suburban districts that have been allowed to mire children in academic mediocrity. But the bar raising starts with Broad Prize nominees and other reform-oriented districts because their leaders already know their good work right now isn’t the best that can be done.

As an intellectually honest movement (as well as one committed to the moral mission of helping all children gain all they need to write their own stories), the failure of reformers to elevate their standards for success — especially at a time when economic and social changes demand a higher standard — means accepting what it increasingly y becoming mediocrity. That’s not acceptable at all. This isn’t to say that the districts chosen as nominees for this year’s Broad Prize aren’t doing a good job. It’s just that they aren’t doing a great job in what increasingly matters most. And as a movement, we must demand better of American public education — and especially of reform-minded districts whose efforts we want to support and recognize.