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.

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.

The Richwine affair once again brings up the misconceptions about (and low expectations for) the potential of our children that are at the heart of the nation’s education crisis.

Jason Richwine’s forced resignation last week from the Heritage Foundation amid controversy over the anti-immigration report he co-wrote with political scientist Robert Rector and revelations of pieces he had written that had racialist and IQ fundamentalist overtones (including his doctoral dissertation on using IQ to determine which immigrants should be allowed into the United States) continues to capture attention this week. The former education policy and immigration policy analyst defended his work in an interview with Byron York of the Washington Examiner, while others such as Robert VerBruggen of National Review (along with the conservative biweekly’s editorial board) defended Richwine’s perspective as well as the report that led to Richwine’s ouster. [Ron Unz of The American Conservative takes plenty of issue with Richwine's views, while Daniel Drezner of Foreign Policy notes that a cursory review of Richwine's dissertation shows that it is riddled with errors.]

Meanwhile Heritage has remained quiet about the whole matter even as it has been criticized by all sides for its handling of the Richwine affair and the politically driven nature of its research as of late. The American Enterprise Institute, which also employed Richwine, has also remained silent. For good reason. After all, Richwine wrote his now-infamous dissertation while working at AEI. More importantly, AEI gave implicit support to Richwine’s efforts to use IQ data in research, including the study on teacher pay Richwine co-wrote with Andrew Biggs, one of AEI’s  scholars, as well as allowing Richwine to recycle aspects of the dissertation (albeit without the more-offensive references to the cognitive ability of Latino émigrés) on its own site (as well as in National Review). Richwine also declared at an AEI forum that blacks, Latinos, and American Indians could not supposedly assimilate into the American mainstream; the fact that blacks and American Indians have been the key players in shaping mainstream American life — including music, food, and art — should have made his peers at AEI jump down Richwine’s throat and call him on the carpet for such bigoted thinking.  The last thing AEI needs is to be placed into the harsh media spotlight.

Certainly Richwine’s role as one of Heritage’s foremost (and most controversial) analysts on education policy makes his resignation a matter of interest for the school reform movement, especially for those in the Beltway who either worked with him or considered his arguments on teacher compensation. [Your editor doesn't wish ill on Richwine at all; I do hope that he learns the right lessons from what has happened, and emerges the better for it.]  But there are three more reasons why the Richwine affair should be of interest to the movement. All of them have to do with the perceptions of the intelligence of our children, especially those from poor and minority backgrounds, which still shapes the failed policies and practices in American public education that reformers are working to put asunder.

For one, the Richwine affair is a reminder that IQ fundamentalist thinking remains in vogue in some intellectual circles, and especially in some of the nation’s leading think tanks. This is especially true at AEI, which has long backed the work of Richwine’s former colleague, Charles Murray, an IQ fundamentalist whose infamous book, The Bell Curve (along with its theories on race and intelligence), essentially endorsing the view among that crowd that that cognitive ability is genetically-driven and doesn’t change based on environment. Decades of research, including the work of James Flynn of New Zealand’s University of Otago, along with data on education and early childhood learning initiatives, have long ago proven that the views espoused by Richwine and Murray don’t stand up. [The fact that so many IQ fundamentalists have also touted racialist thinking, and that their views are often shaped by the times in which they live as well as by the groups that are considered non-white and thus, ethnic minorities, also makes IQ fundamentalist thinking rather suspect.] Yet AEI continues to give legitimacy to this thinking.

This is problematic for the school reform movement because AEI is one of the most-important players in shaping the ideas driving it. It is also troublesome because some of the thinking embraced by a few reformers — especially those who defend gifted-and-talented programs — is based on in part on IQ fundamentalism. It is to say that it is hard to say that you want brighter futures for all children and still embrace a theory that has been used almost exclusively to deny some kids the high-quality education needed to do so. Amid the Richwine controversy, it is hard not to ask tough questions about the positions of some of AEI”s current players on the education policy front on such matters as the importance of focusing on achievement gaps. Whether those questions are legitimate or not, they will be asked. It is time for AEI to fully disavow the IQ fundamentalist views of Murray, Richwine and others. [It will be interesting to see if AEI players such as Rick Hess, who was Richwine's colleague and from whose shop the teacher compensation piece was released, will say anything on his eponymous blog.] And for conservative reformers, it is also time to call out those fellow-travelers, both within the school reform movement and in the conservative movement, who embrace theories on intelligence and race that are empirically false and are damaging to the futures of children.

The Richwine controversy also reminds us once again that IQ tests (and the data gleaned from them) are still used in decisions within American public education (as well as in research). Districts and school operators use IQ tests in deciding which children are worthy of being admitted into gifted and talented programs that are supposed to be cordons solitaire from low quality teaching and curricula endemic within American public education, as well as in deciding whether certain children (particularly young men of all backgrounds as well as those from poor and minority backgrounds) should be condemned to special ed ghettos. In fact, the use of IQ exams and cut scores on other tests (along with the perceptions of teachers and guidance counselors, who serve as gatekeepers of gifted-and-talented programs, of poor and minority kids), explains why 3.4 million children from poor backgrounds who were top performers in school were excluded from gifted and talented programs.

Yet IQ tests are terrible at determining the academic potential of children. As University of Iowa psychologist David Lohman and Katrina Korb (now of the University of Jos in Nigeria) pointed out in a 2006 report, just 45 percent of first-graders who scored higher than 130 points on the Stanford-Binet test used by many to determine cognitive ability would have scored at that level on other IQ exams. Most first-graders considered gifted in first grade don’t keep that label two years later. And, according to Lohman, only 25 percent of four year-olds scoring 130 on the Stanford-Binet will do so as 17-year-olds. This shouldn’t be surprising. Cognitive ability (or academic talent) is dynamic and not a constant. Especially for children in the preschool and early elementary grade levels, cognitive ability is as much influenced by the quality of learning environment (especially in school), along with the amount of  challenge (academically and otherwise) provided in those environments, as it is by any innate ability.

There’s also the reality that IQ tests probably don’t measure cognitive ability. As Flynn noted in his book, What is Intelligence?, IQ tests actually show what children and adults have learned over time, the context in which they are accumulating knowledge, and even the modernity of one society compared to another. Because the questions behind tests such as Stanford-Binet and the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children (along with variants such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test) are shaped by those contexts, the ability to correctly answer questions on them depend largely on the time and place in which one lives and the amount of exposure they receive to the world around them. A 19th century European émigré to the United States from a rural community, for example, would respond to the question of “in what way are ‘dogs’ and ‘rabbits’ alike” by answering that one uses the former to hunt the latter; this would be a sensible (if incorrect) response given the time in which they live, along with the dearth of elementary and secondary education for that time, and the fact that they didn’t benefit from 20th century advancements in sorting experiences according to new abstract categories. An adult living in the United States today, living in a modern society with a flourishing K-12 system and having benefited from those advancements in cognition, would give the correct answer that both are mammals. These contextual differences, along with the low quality of teaching and curricula within traditional public education, would also explain why a poor white child from a rural community who has never attended classical music concerts would struggle mightily to correctly answer questions about Vivaldi and Rachmaninoff, while a middle-class black child whose has learned to play violin would ace them.

[The fact that IQ tests and exams used as proxies for IQ such as the SAT don't really measure cognitive ability is one reason why the Richwine-Briggs study -- which used SAT scores to conclude that aspiring teachers (and those who worked in the profession) were cognitively inferior compared to their colleagues headed down other career paths -- is so flawed. At best, the results show that teachers are less-knowledgeable than their peers and have likely garnered less in the way of academic curricula. But the reality the fact that performance on the SAT is shaped by how much one has learned means that it is a poor proxy for determining cognitive ability.]

There are far better ways of measuring how much children are learning and what is contributing to their achievement — including standardized tests and the use of Value-Added assessment of student test score growth — than IQ tests. More importantly, if we believe that all children are worthy of high-quality teaching and curricula, then we shouldn’t be using IQ tests to determine which kids should be provided it. Weaning American public education off the use of IQ tests in deciding the futures of children must be as much a goal of the school reform movement as expanding school choice, enacting Parent Trigger laws, and overhauling how we train and compensate teachers.

Finally the Richwine controversy is one more reminder of the wrongheaded thinking about the potential of children that is an underlying culprit of the nation’s education crisis. As Dropout Nation noted last month in its commentary on why school reformers and immigration reform advocates should work together, arguments about the perceived cognitive ability of immigrants of that time (whose descendants are now among the nation’s political and social elite), along with racialist views about the potential of black children, have been an underlying justification for nativists and others to enact the array of immigration quotas that remain in place today, as well as for denying children high-quality education. Ability tracking, the comprehensive high school model, gifted and talented programs, and even special ed ghettos are all derived from early 20th century beliefs of teachers, school leaders, and education theorists that only some kids were capable of mastering what was then considered to be college preparatory curricula. The consequences of such thinking can be seen today in the high levels of black children overlabeled as special ed, as well as the high levels of white middle class peers being put onto the college track; as Vanderbilt University Professor Daniel J. Reschly noted in his 2007 testimony before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, adults in schools end up labeling black and Latino children as learning disabled because they think they are destined to end up that way.

These beliefs still remain prominent among traditionalists today, especially among those who adhere to the Poverty Myth of Education (which proffers that poor kids are incapable of learning), as well as similar views from the likes of Murray and his ilk. Few in education would infer race and ethnicity today. But many still offer the poverty-is-destiny argument in justifying the failures of traditional districts in improving student achievement; because black and Latino children are among the very poor in our schools, the racialist thinking of the past continues to wreak havoc on our children now.

The controversy over Richwine (along with the overall ire over Heritage’s immigration study) will eventually pass. But the issues about race, ethnicity and intelligence raised by the controversy over Richwine will remain. And as reformers, we must tackle the faulty thinking that continues to contribute to far too many children being put on the path to the economic and social abyss.

Photo courtesy of Politico

As you probably know by now, education and immigration policy think-tanker Jason Richwine resigned this afternoon from the Heritage Foundation amid a firestorm over a report he co-authored with Robert Rector arguing that the immigration reform plan being touted by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio would cost $6.3 trillion. The personnel move happened after it was revealed that Richwine had written a doctoral dissertation which asserted that the federal government should use IQ (or perceived levels of cognitive ability) in immigration decisions — especially to keep those immigrants who test low on those exams out of the country — and after Chris Moody of Yahoo News reported that Richwine wrote for the race-baiting outlet Alternative Right. This news led some to speculate that the underlying arguments in that dissertation (and Richwine’s general view that intelligence is genetic and thus unchangeable regardless of environment) may have informed Heritage’s study.[Heritage denied the accusation.] The perceptions that Richwine’s and Rector’s study was bigotry-driven, along with the myriad flaws in the piece (especially in light of the foundation’s own past research supporting expansive immigration policies), the criticisms from those inside and outside the conservative movement over its increasingly politicized research and the lingering animosity between Heritage President (and former senator) Jim DeMint and his onetime colleagues in the federal upper house, may have forced the venerable institution into a corner.

As you would expect, Richwine’s resignation of hasn’t gone down well with fellow think tankers such as Charles Murray, the coauthor if the infamous tome on race and intelligence, Bell Curve, who tweeted that Richwine was a victim of “mindless bashing” and was happy that the American Enterprise Institute had the gesticular fortitude to let him write his bigotry three decades ago. Given the flaws of IQ tests in measuring cognitive ability and potential, the weak correlation between IQ and economic outcomes, and all the other issues, political, ethical, historical, and research-wise, that come with using IQ in reaching any conclusions about anything, Murray and others defending the use of IQ in research should be a lot more thoughtful in defending Richwine then they have been. [Richwine himself should distance himself from using IQ in future research.]

Richwine’s resignation is definitely news within education policy circles. After all, he has written plenty about the education issues, especially in the area of teacher compensation and whether there should be a focus on stemming socioeconomic and gender-based achievement gaps. Particularly for Heritage, Richwine was its most formidable thinker in these discussions (which isn’t saying much),  and in many cases, its most-controversial even before the immigration fracas. Not that  One can only imagine the conversations now going down among Beltway reform types.

Certainly it is hard to know how much Richwine’s resignation is driven by this study or by other issues between himself and Heritage; after all, there are always the officially stated reasons for a separation of employment and the real reasons left unsaid by all sides unless brought to the courts. [Heritage merely issued the typically oblique press statement offering nothing. ] But if Richwine is being forced to resign over this issue, then it is a terrible thing. Even if you think Richwine’s views are repugnant (as I do), no one should be served up as a fall guy by their former employer because of its own irresponsibility in publishing faulty research and touting a rather faulty agenda. If anything, the embarrassment over the Rector and Richwine study should force Heritage to do some soul searching over the quality of its research overall, especially its politically-driven pieces arguing against Common Core reading and math standards.

More importantly, Heritage shouldn’t have even tried to express shock about Richwine’s penchant for using IQ in his research. Back in 2011, Heritage released a report by Richwine and Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute that essentially focused on whether teachers were overpaid based on their “cognitive ability”. The report, which used data from the Scholastic Aptitude Test and the Armed Forces Qualification Test to conclude that “teachers exhibit low cognitive ability compared to other college graduates”, was roundly criticized by education policy types for analyzing teacher’s scores on the AFQT without controlling for education and other methodology flaws. The report’s conceit that teacher’s were less intelligent than their peers even led U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan to command his speechwriter to pen a piece taking aim at the report because it “insults teachers.” Your editor, in particular, was critical of Heritage and AEI for indulging in the kind of rhetoric that alludes to eugenicist and racialist thinking (and does the school reform movement no favors). In spite of the criticism, Heritage, along with AEI, touted the Biggs-Richwine report, implicitly backing Richwine’s thinking.

So Heritage can’t think it can just sack Richwine and think it is free and clear of criticism over its efforts. If anything, the think tank may now be subject to even more scrutiny.

Photo courtesy of Colorado State University

The End of Ed Schools — and Teacher Credentialing, Part II: There are numerous reasons why far too many low-quality teachers end up in classrooms perpetuating educational neglect and malpractice on our children. One is because the nation’s university schools of education do such a shoddy job in recruiting and training aspiring teachers. Another and equally important reason is because the battery of exams (including the PRAXIS tests administered by the Educational Testing Service and exams offered by the Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium that includes the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education) used in credentialing teachers (and, in some states, even to decide whether an aspiring teacher can be admitted into an ed school), do little to weed out laggard teachers from high quality counterparts. This is a considerable problem because PRAXIS and other exams are usually the only gates available for determining teacher competence; once teachers pass the exams, they land in the classroom, unlikely to leave the profession unless a district is aggressive in weeding out laggards through the use of evaluations using objective student test score growth data. Just as importantly, the exams end up being a drudgery for teachers, who often have to take more than one exam depending on whether or not they are instructing in more than one subject. An instructor in Indiana, for example, may have to take four or more exams, depending on the subjects they are teaching and the setting in which they work; a teacher will take even more tests just to gain National Board recognition (and additional dollars in salary).

The fact that PRAXIS and other exams merely the whether teachers have the minimum level of knowledge needed to instruct in a particular subject is part of the problem; after all, you want to know that a teacher can help kids improve their achievement and that they care for every child in classrooms regardless of background, along with knowing that they have some level of subject-matter competency. But as the U.S. Department of Education highlighted last week in its report on the quality of teacher training and certification, another culprit lies with the fact that state teacher certification agencies poorly utilize the tests to assess subject-matter competency by setting cut scores lower than necessary. As a result, pass rates for aspiring teachers on the exams are likely higher than they should be.

Alabama, for example, set a cut score of 137 points (or a mere 68.5 percent of the 200 points total) for aspiring teachers to pass the Praxis II exam called Elementary Education Content Knowledge in 2009-2010. This is 21 points lower than the national mean passing score of 166 (or 83 percent of the total points) achieved by those who successfully completed the exam. [The average scaled score for those taking the exam was 163 points, or three points below the national mean.] No wonder 98.5 percent of aspiring teachers passed the exam in 2009-2010. In Tennessee, the cut score for the same exam is even lower, with aspiring teachers needing to score 140 points (or 70 percent of total points) to pass. This is 26 points below the national mean score of successful test takers. [The average aspiring teacher in the Volunteer State scored 164 points on the test or two points below the national mean for those passing the exam.] All but three-tenths of one percent of the 1,785 teachers taking the exam passed it. Meanwhile Rhode Island had set a higher passing score for this Praxis II exam, demanding that aspiring teachers score at least 148 points (or 74 percent of total points) on the test. Even then, it is still 18 points lower than the national mean passing score achieved by those who passed the test; on average, teachers in the state taking the exam scored only 158 points on it. Ninety nine-point-three percent of teachers in Rhode Island taking the test passed it.

Not one state using the Praxis II exam on elementary education content knowledge had set a cut score above 150 points. Only half of the 12 states that used this particular Praxis II exam had average scaled scores that were either at or above the national mean for aspiring teachers who passed the test. Certainly one has to be cautious in reading the results, as Education Week‘s Steve Sawchuk noted yesterday in his report. The fact that aspiring teachers can take the test multiple times raises questions as to whether their scores are weighing down the average scaled scores; federal officials noted in one report that the mean score for those who failed the test was 34 points lower than the mean for those who passed. There’s also the reality that Praxis doesn’t really do the job in assessing whether an aspiring teacher can hack it in a classroom. In any case, the fact that the cut scores for this PRAXIS II test and other exams are so low– especially given that that many teacher licensing tests include relatively easy questions such as figuring out the percentage of ninth-graders on a school bus — should be a concern.

Of course, one can argue that teacher credentialing is a waste anyway. As studies, including one on  Florida teachers released two years ago by the Manhattan Institute, there is no correlation between credentials — including certification and attaining graduate degrees  — and student achievement; in fact, studies have shown that have shown that credentials and experience account for only three-to-five percent of student performance, making the credentialing process all but meaningless. This fact is one reason why American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten’s constant (and disingenuous) call for submitting teachers to exams similar to those given to law school graduates to gain admittance to the bar have fallen flat; almost no one believes that teachers should be subjected to taking yet another test that is unlikely to provide information on their levels of competence. The better approach to selecting aspiring teachers is to take a combination of approaches: This includes selecting from those with the highest scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, using the approach pioneered by legendary teacher training guru Martin Haberman of placing aspiring teachers in rooms with students from backgrounds different from their own, and embracing Teach For America’s emphasis on selecting teaching candidates who have entrepreneurial self-starter and leadership ability. [Efforts on the recruiting and training front, by the way, would also ease the burden on districts and other school operators, who can then focus on weeding out those few laggards who may have slipped in, as well as supporting high-quality teachers on their payrolls.]

This work is what the nation’s ed schools should be doing. But they are not. In fact, ed schools are failing when it comes to training their teachers, especially in reading instruction. Expecting them to do a better job of selecting teacher candidates is akin to wishing upon stars. After all, growing evidence suggests that ed schools aren’t tightening up standards because it would mean sacrificing revenue; after all, based on the fact that grade point averages for ed school students are higher than those for economics and other courses of study, ed schools may be way stations for collegians, who have figured out that getting a teaching degree is such easy work that they just go in, grab the degree, and then head into another field.

That problem could be mitigated if states did a better job of identifying and shutting down the worst of the abysmal lot of ed schools out there. But that’s not happening. Thirty-five states have never identified an ed school either deemed low-performing or at risk of being shut down. Florida, New York, and South Carolina were the most aggressive in identifying failing ed schools; Florida identified at least one low-performing or at risk ed school every year from 2003-2004 to 2010-2011, while New York  and South Carolina each identified at least one laggard ed school for seven years between 2002-2003 and 2010-2011. Of those that have, a mere 38 were identified in 2009-2010, while another 28 were identified a year earlier. This shouldn’t a surprise. Because ed schools in most states are supervised by teacher certification agencies separate from education departments means that ed schools are not well-scrutinized and regulated; the fact that the certification agencies themselves are also stuck in an old-school mindset (and, until recently, have been banned in nearly all states from even allowing for the use of value-added data in certification) is also a problem. The federal government hasn’t done a good job of holding states responsible either. Because  ed schools are governed by federal law under the Higher Education Act — which deals solely with universities — and not under the No Child Left Behind Act (which deals with teacher quality and its impact on American public education), ed schools escape much-needed scrutiny and accountability.

It is really hard for ed schools to continue justifying their existence. Same too for state teacher credentialing agencies. We need to move to a system of teacher recruiting and training that focuses on performance instead of on paper.

When Hess and Merrow Behave Badly: As you know, Dropout Nation celebrates sparring, especially among reformers over solutions for the nation’s education crisis. After all, healthy conflict is good for the movement. Yet this publication is none too thrilled when conflict borders on the juvenile. Such antics do nothing to shed light on the substantial issues at the heart of discussions.

The latest example of this came earlier this week when Rick Hess, the education policy czar for the American Enterprise Institute, proclaimed that Learning Matters’ John Merrow’s latest reporting on allegations of test-cheating in D.C. Public Schools under the watch of Michelle Rhee — along with earlier, more-positive reporting on Rhee’s work — exemplified what Hess thought was a tendency for “wheeling so hormonally from one extreme to another.” >Merrow, in turn, took to Hess’ Education Week column to insinuate that Hess was just snippy because Merrow had mentioned the supposedly “hidden support” Hess and AEI have received from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the think tank’s education policy shop. Wrote Merrow: “Neither my company nor I have ever hidden our sources of support, nor do I ever expect to do so.”

Both men should be ashamed of themselves. Certainly one can argue honestly and fairly that Merrow ruined what was an otherwise fine example of investigative reporting (and in the process, became a partisan in the ongoing controversy) with his editorializing against the use of objective student test score data in teacher evaluations and about the success of the reform efforts undertaken under Rhee’s tenure and that of her successor, Kaya Henderson. But in proclaiming that Merrow is merely behaving like a “dumped sophomore”, Hess did little more than engage in the kind of grade school nastiness unfitting of his stature in the education policy arena.

At the same time, Merrow’s declaration that Hess’ criticisms merely stemmed from anger over information on AEI’s funding sources is rather ridiculous. Gates Foundation has long provided a database on all of its funding sources for public perusal. AEI has also fully disclosed Gates Foundation funding in its pieces, including a report released in January 2011 on college completion. As Merrow noted himself, Gates Foundation’s support for AEI’s education policy work has also been reported on by outlets such as the New York Times, a story in which Hess was quoted. Insinuating that Hess and AEI were engaged in unethical behavior, as Merrow (a dean of education reporting) has done, when the evidence doesn’t support it is unacceptable.

Hess and Merrow owe each other an apology. Enough said.

As opposed as the American Federation of Teachers and its president, Randi Weingarten, have been to most aspects of systemic reform, one could at least say that the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union has been correct in supporting both the concept of national curricula standards and common academic curricula. So it wasn’t too shocking that the AFT decided four years ago to back the development of Common Core reading and math standards by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

At the same time, you have to always remember that the AFT is first and foremost a teachers’ union, and it has no interest in backing anything for long if it has the potential to weaken its already-declining influence over education policy. This is especially true if it involves the use of objective student test score performance data in teacher evaluations and other efforts to end the shoddy teacher evaluation regimes (as well as near-lifetime employment privileges) that have helped make teaching one of the professions public sector or private insulated from any performance management (as well as justifies the union’s existence). The AFT is also loathe to continue supporting anything that threatens the grand bargain it (along with the National Education Association) has struck with Baby Boomers among the rank-and-file members under which they give the union carte blanch to do what it pleases so long as it stands stalwart for traditionalist thinking as well ensure that the profession is insulated from accountability. And when the AFT is faced with both trouble and opportunity, the notoriously crafty Weingarten will stop at nothing to take advantage of it.

Considering all this, it isn’t all that shocking that Weingarten announced yesterday that the AFT was calling for states to issue moratoriums on rolling out the new exams being rolled out as part of the implementation of Common Core. After all, the union finds itself in a rather tough spot, both with Baby Boomers among the rank-and-file already annoyed with the union for its modest acquiescence on allowing the use of some test score data in evaluations, and with hardcore progressives among the traditionalist ranks who have teamed up with movement conservatives to oppose the implementation of the standards in 45 states and the District of Columbia. Whether this latest effort at triangulating reformers and the most fervent of traditionalists within her ranks will work? That’s a different question altogether.

As you would expect, Weingarten only alludes slightly to the underlying intra-traditionalist and internal union politics in her latest bit of rhetorical rope-a-dope. Proclaiming that the AFT still supports implementing Common Core, Weingarten still argued that states needed to delay implementation of the tests in order to keep it from being relegated to “the overflowing dustbin of abandoned reforms”. Borrowing language from Common Core opponents, Weingarten argues that states need to delay launch of the tests — and their use in teacher evaluations as well as in assessing district and school performance – for at least two years in order to “field test” the assessments. From where she sits, “decoupling” Common Core exams from their proper use as accountability tools will help relieve supposed “anxiety” among those concerned about the tests, as well as ensure the viability of the standards.

Weingarten certainly chose a good time to call for a moratorium on launching the tests. Districts and AFT locals in New York State, along with teachers and some parents, have already expressed annoyance with how the Empire State’s education department has rolled out the new Common Core-aligned exams. The fact that Indiana is itself struggling with glitches and other issues involving the online version of the Empire State’s ISTEP-Plus exams (which aren’t aligned with Common Core) just as the Hoosier State has passed a law temporarily stopping (and, to the hopes of foes of the standards, permanently stop) implementation of the standards and the array of exams geared to assessing how well students are learning the new lessons (and how well districts, teachers, and school leaders are doing in educating them), also gives Common Core foes additional ammunition for opposing implementation. By borrowing the words of Common Core foes — as well as harping on the reality that families and their children often bear the consequences of test performance (largely because the AFT and the NEA have worked hard to insulate teachers from accountability) — Weingarten has put together some well-polished sophistry.

Yet Weingarten’s argument that the Common Core tests need to be “field-tested” doesn’t hold water when one looks closer at the facts. For one, states have been working on implementing Common Core for most of the past three years — and actually longer than that, since NGA and CCSSO (along with the PARCC and Smarter Balanced consortia that are directly handling the day-to-day development of the online and paper tests) began developing the standards (along with thinking through the technology issues that will come with implementing the exams) since 2009. As Weingarten admits, the AFT has been actively involved in developing Common Core and has been training teachers to understand and implement the standards; the union has also actively touted its Share My Lesson joint venture with Times Educational Supplement publisher TSL’s online unit, which features lesson plans developed by teachers aimed at helping their peers adapt to the changes being wrought by the standards. And the supposed “anxiety” over Common Core testing is no different in substance than the usual angst that comes whenever the performance of kids are being assessed — especially when adults in schools are also being held accountable for success or failure.

Certainly Common Core supporters should be concerned about implementation, especially when it comes to the assessments, almost all of which are online. Traditional districts and states need to devote more energy to addressing the technology infrastructure issues that can complicate both reform efforts and day-to-day operations; rural districts (especially those serving American Indian and Alaska Native communities), which have just adopted late 20th-century technology, have particular struggles on the broadband access front. Yet even in those communities, Common Core implementation has already been proceeding apace. Even if the online assessments aren’t yet ready, states can conduct testing through traditional pen and paper.

Of course, Weingarten knows this. Which is why she sidestepped so many of these issues in her speech. The reality is that Weingarten is doing nothing more than what traditionalist-minded school leaders such as Montgomery County, Md., Supt. Joshua Starr are seeking: Halting any effort to hold districts, teachers, and school leaders accountable for success or failure in improving student achievement. After all, the new Common Core exams are being launched just as states are launching new teacher evaluations that require objective student test score growth data on those exams to account for at least 20 percent of (and sometimes, as much as half) of the overall performance reviews. The fear that declines in student performance on the exams will adversely impact evaluations is largely overblown. But the reality is that the new evaluation systems will likely lead to more teachers being sacked. This doesn’t help the AFT’s bottom line or its effort to preserve influence.

Weingarten knows that states will not delay implementation of Common Core tests unless their legislatures and governors have decided to abandon the standards altogether. More than likely, Weingarten and AFT affiliate bosses at the state level will seek agreements from states to not use objective student test score data from the new Common Core tests for at least two years. Such a move would delay the development of more-accurate teacher evaluations and more-stringent performance management until the AFT can find another reason to halt reform efforts.

At the same time, Weingarten’s play isn’t just about resisting reform. After all, throughout its idiosyncratic history, the AFT has embraced comprehensive curricula as an ideal (even if it works to resist such efforts in practice). Weingarten is not only attempting to once again co-opt school reformers– an effort that has failed for a variety of reasons, including the ideologically-driven missteps of Weingarten’s minions along with her own — she is also trying to mollify unhappy allies within her ranks.

Baby Boomers within the union ranks and hardcore progressives among traditionalists (including those also in the AFT’s rank-and-file) are none too happy about the implications of Common Core’s implementation for their defense of failed thinking. This reality is none too comforting for either Baby Boomers who make up an increasingly smaller percentage of teachers working in classrooms, or other traditionalists dead set against standardized testing in general — especially if the exams are even better at assessing student performance than those currently in use today. Weingarten’s decision to embrace at least some marginal use of test score data in teacher evaluations — albeit in the so-called multiple measures approach championed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — hasn’t exactly gone over well with many of her fellow traditionalists, even though the union is no more committed in action than the NEA to using test data in teacher performance management. Some were especially displeased with her this month after teamed up with Gates Foundation education czarina Vickie Phillips on an advertorial touting multiple measures in the New Republic. By calling for a moratorium on Common Core testing, Weingarten has thrown a bone to these fellow-travelers that at the very least keeps them somewhat pleased to have her on their side.

But it isn’t just about the impact of Common Core exams on teacher evaluations — or standardized testing in general — that is displeasing to Weingarten’s allies. Hardcore progressives among traditionalists such as Susan Ohanian and Education Week columnist Anthony Cody have long opposed implementation of Common Core, because of the involvement of private-sector interests such as the Gates Foundation in shaping and supporting implementation of the standards, and because of the fact that Common Core also pushes teachers to move away from the longstanding practice of crafting their own curricula without any high-quality North Star to guide their efforts (part of the tradition of teaching as a solo and autonomous practice that traditionalists have long-fetishized). The fact that this slipshod approach has damaged the futures of generations of children, along with the reality that far too many teachers lack the subject-matter competency needed to develop their own curricula without guidance, doesn’t factor into their thinking. Add in the reality that Common Core standards, even if poorly implemented, will likely further expose the low levels of subject-matter competency among laggards within the teaching ranks — an underlying cause of the nation’s education crisis — and suddenly, the standards are a threat to traditionalist opposition to systemic reform. The fact that the AFT has continued to support implementation of the standards even as fellow-travelers such as the intellectually demagogic Diane Ravitch have decided to abandon past advocacy for them is particularly annoying; so long as Weingarten didn’t waiver on Common Core implementations, foes of the standards (along with their movement conservative allies) were relegated to the fringe.

But now, thanks to Weingarten’s triangulation (along with the move last month by the Republican National Committee to pass a resolution opposing Common Core), the Ohanian-Cody crowd (along with the likes of Michelle Malkin and otherwise-sensible conservative reformers such as Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute) now have some small leverage in opposing further implementation. Expect Common Core foes, especially movement conservatives, to cheer on Weingarten’s call for a moratorium, even as they loathe teachers’ unions in general and oppose the AFT on nearly every other education policy issue. [The fact that this will likely happen shows clearly that opponents of the standards on both sides are more concerned with succoring their ideological leanings than helping poor and minority kids attain teaching and curricula worthy of their potential.]

Will Weingarten’s move lead to more states abandoning Common Core? If the RNC’s resolution didn’t lead Alabama’s legislators to stop implementation of the standards, why would the AFT’s proposed delay? Weingarten’s does provide the AFT some opportunities for a defensive victory on the teacher evaluation front, and allows for her to keep the most-fervent traditionalists oppose to Common Core at bay. More importantly, the Obama Administration’s own desire to ensure that its effort to eviscerate the No Child Left Behind Act — under which states have agreed to launch performance-based evaluations in exchange for being allowed to ignore federal law — may stand in the way of any dealmaking between AFT affiliates and state governments.

As for mollifying Common Core foes and other fervent traditionalists, especially within AFT ranks? That may not work out either. Many in that crowd has long ago written Weingarten off as little more than someone more-interested in playing both sides against the middle than as one of their  own. They may be pleased in part with Weingarten’s triangulation, but they will soon find it wanting. As always.