A young black man with textbooks. Now, this is what we should all see. Photo courtesy of blacksgiveback.blogspot.com

The dropout nation at a glance. Updated throughout the day:

1. What shall be done with No Child Left Behind: Some such as Checker Finn of Fordham are arguiing for a major re-write of the law while Diane Ravitch — she of the Broader, Bolder Coalition — think it should probably be dumped altogether. Meanwhile Sol Stern argues that, instead of re-writing the law outright, it should essentially be strengthened to show which states are gaming the system by lowering standards. Feel free to read more of the debate at Newtalk.org.
2. Editor’s note: Ryan Hill of TEAM Schools argues that the gaming of the system by states exemplifies the need for national standards. I would generally agree. Except for this: If the federal government is already struggling to get all 50 states to comply with No Child’s goals — and that’s with a wide array of exemptions and allowances for missed deadlines thusfar — why would anyone think that it can go so far and actually enforce curriculum standards? And as we have seen in debates over phonics versus whole language and Reading First, a growing federal role will only mean additional battling over whose standards are best — leading to a set of curriculum rules that are as mushy as many of the standards at the state level.
3. It’s never about the teachers: At least that is the perspective of the piece written by California Federation of Teachers President Marty Hittelman, who mentions that California is among the last in school spending per student (even though California is also, by the way, the nation’s largest state and spends $40 billion annually on K-12) and argues that the allegedly low spending, along with the lack of librarians, are among the reasons why some 127,300 students in the state’s original Class of 2007  are failing to get their sheepskins. I must ask: What about, umm, high-quality instruction by high-quality teachers? Which may be obtained if the state’s rules governing teacher evaluations allowed for more stringent analysis of teacher competency.
4. Meanwhile the Golden State’s school superintendent, Jack O’Connell advocates for using data in solving the state’s dropout crisis. It would help if his department had a better relationship with the most powerful congressperson on education — California Congressman George Miller.
5. Not acceptable at any level: So says the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette about the spate of bad news about Indiana’s — and Indianapolis’ — low graduation rates.

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One could write 600 words to describe how the dropout crisis adversely affects young black males. But this map of the Dropout Nation, released last week by the Schott Foundation for Public Education as part of its annual report on low dropout rates, says far more than words ever can. Click on the map, read it and weep.

Schott Foundation's 50-state map

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What’s happening inside — and outside — the dropout nation:

Image courtesy of C'Ville Weekly

1. When civil rights groups get it wrong on education: Is access to a high-quality education a civil right? Depends on where you sit ideologically (personally, this libertarian thinks it isn’t necessarily so, but a public education system being funded with tax dollars should actually do the job and educate all students). But civil rights groups such as La Raza and the NAACP have long ago began bucking their ties to teachers’ unions and supporting the No Child Left Behind Act. Now, according to the New York Times, other groups are also doing the same, this time fighting with the NEA and AFT over a congressional bill aimed at weakening an accountability provision in the law.
2. Diane Ravitch and James Heckmann should know better: Essentially, that’s what Ken DeRosa concludes in his latest sharp criticism of the Broader, Bolder Coalition, the strange bedfellows group of conservative and left-leaning education policy stars demanding that the the kind of standards-and-accountability embedded in the No Child Left Behind Act ought to be abandoned because it blames schools for academic failure. This isn’t the first time he has claimed that the group ignores data that may not support their position.
3. Are teachers’ unions anti-teacher?: Larry Sands of the California Teachers Empowerment Network offers his own thoughts.
4. Meanwhile in my birth-state: New York is once again reeling from unrestrained spending and prospects of a recession, notes the Economist. The chances for comprehensive education reform in the state — whose legislature and new governor overturned a successful effort to reform how new teachers attain tenure — is about as likely as the city handing over Liberty Island to New Jersey.

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"Play 01" by RiShawn Biddle

What’s going on inside — and outside — the dropout nation.

1. Grad rate inflation: One out of every three California freshmen who made up the state’s original Class of 2007 likely dropped out, according to the state Department of Education. Sure, nine percent of them are considered “completers” or having gained a GED or a certificate of completion of some kind. Either way, the reality is they are dropouts and haven’t gotten a high-quality education. Meanwhile one out of every four students in L.A. Unified’s original class of 2007 failed to graduate. Just 6.5 percent of the original class of 2007 at the Animo charter high school run by Green Dot schools — whose battles with L.A. Unified over the former’s expansion is legendary — dropped out. But for federal reporting purposes, those numbers are meaningless: Based on the federal government’s more-inflated graduation rate calculation, nearly 80 percent of the Class of 2007 graduated. How nice. The Mercury-News has more on this.
2. And for the Hoosiers out there: Here are the graduation rate stats for Indianapolis Public Schools and the state as a whole. Yes, the numbers are les miserables.
3. Meanwhile, Dan Weintraub explains in Education Next how the Terminator was laid low by the state’s powerful teachers’ unions. For Sherman Dorn, an apparent skeptic about the role of teachers’ unions in state policymaking, this may serve as another example of how teachers’ unions skillfully work the corridors of the nation’s statehouses.
4. Is improving the quality of America’s teaching corps the answer to improving education? I say it’s just one of the answers, but not the only one. And Mike Petrilli over at The Education Gadfly argues why it may not be the answer at all.
5. Intra-ed policy dust-up: EdSector’s Kevin Carey and Neil McCluskey at Cato trade shots over the latter’s most recent policy brief. Carey insists that McCluskey exemplifies that there may be a “libertarian conspiracy” to end the nation’s public education system. McCluskey accuses him of engaging in a smear campaign. I’m just going to let these guys argue among themselves.
6. Jay Greene explains why the No Child Left Behind Act isn’t, as opponents of the law claim, an unfunded mandate. Sample quote: “I do not believe that a single tenured teacher out of the more than 3 million teachers currently working in public schools has been fired, experienced a pay-cut, or otherwise been meaningfully sanctioned because of NCLB.” Good point.

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