Rethinking policies around seat-time requirements, class size, compensating teachers based on their educational credentials, the use of technology in the classroom, inequitable school financing, the over placement of students in special education—almost all of these potentially transformative productivity gains are primarily state and local issues that have to be grappled with.

These are tough issues. Rethinking the status quo, by definition, can be unsettling. But I know that these discussions will be taking place in the coming year in schools, in districts, in union headquarters, in statehouses, and the governor’s mansion. The alternative is to simply end up doing less with less. That is fundamentally unacceptable.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, proclaiming during yesterday’s American Enterprise Institute conference that the status quo in American public education has to change. Well, it needs more than that: A revolution, not an evolution.

Photo courtesy of the Schott Foundation for Public Education

As Research Consultant for the Schott Foundation for Public Education, Michael Holzman has helped shed light on the impact of low teacher quality and systemic academic failure on the educational and economic prospects of young black men. Through his research, Holzman and Schott have done plenty to show in numbers the depths of the nation’s dropout crisis: Few young black men are graduating from school; far too many are being relegated into special education (and placed on the path to dropping out); and that in many urban districts, young black men are subject to the kind of educational abuse that would lead to incarceration for school officials and teachers if it were actual physical abuse. Along with Robert Balfanz, Jay P. Greene and Christopher Swanson, Holzman is one of the leading figures in revealing the nation’s educational decay.

Dropout Nation wondered what reformers such as Holzman were thinking these days, what are some of the surprising conclusions they have reached, and what they think about what’s happening inside the Beltway when it comes to school reform. The result is a new series, Three Questions on School Reform. Holzman offers some of his thoughts below. Read them, give them some thought and, if you so choose, comment and offer your own conclusions:

1) What is the one surprising thing you have uncovered during your research on special education and over-labeling of children as learning disabled and why?

Male African-American students are systematically over-labeled as Mentally Retarded in most districts.  In some cases this reaches levels five to ten times the percentage of male White, non-Latino males.  As percentages of non-institutionalized mental retardation in any large population are approximately the same, this over-labeling seems to be caused by district policies or staff training deficiencies.

2) How is black male academic failure and special ed connected and why?

Given that male African-American students are under-represented in gifted/talented programs in most districts, and very under-represented in Advanced Placement classes, it appears that racial and gender stereotyping takes place in those districts, to the great detriment of opportunities for learning for male African American, and, to a lesser extent, female African American and both male and female Latino and American Indian students.

3) What is the one thing school reform activists inside the Beltway seem to ignore when it comes to addressing education and youth issues and why?

Equal opportunity to learn includes opportunities during traditional k-12 class-time and beyond.  All schools should be equally well-supported, without regard to location and family income.  This means that real estate tax-based school finance methods are inherently inequitable.  It means that variations in the quality of facilities, curriculum and teaching staffs among schools within large districts cannot be rationally justified.  It means that the distribution of students through assignment or “voluntary” methods, as with charters and public school choice, are only equitable when the child least able to protect him/herself is protected by the adults responsible for the schools.

It also means that the educational investments available to the children of middle class families should be provided for children living in poverty by those adults responsible for the schools.  Such investments include 0-3 pre-literacy activities (such as library programs for toddlers), pre-kindergarten programs preparing children for schooling, all-day kindergarten, after-school and summer academic programs, throughout elementary and secondary school.

Another issue, which is not well-framed in most policy discussions is the connection between inadequate schooling and incarceration.  This is not merely a school to prison pipeline.  It is a feedback loop.  As astonishing numbers of male African Americans are imprisoned, it follows that between one-third and half of African American children grow up in poverty, raised by their mothers without financial contributions from their imprisoned fathers (or fathers whose income possibilities have been impaired by involvement with the courts and prisons).

Poverty is a major negative factor in regard to educational achievement, limiting the time of the parents as first teachers, limiting out-of-school educational investments, increasing the likelihood of enrollment in inferior schools.  And limited educational achievement, especially for male African Americans, is highly likely to lead to prison.

There are two lines of work that can break this cycle:  1) End the inequitable targeting of African Americans for drug law infractions; 2)  Make educational investments equitable.

• RT @ELWATERS: “A child has instincts. He knows If you love him or if you don’t.” ~@DrStevePerry 03/13/10 Hbg, PA #
• RT @ClaytonMuhammad: ‘Choice, not chance, determines your destiny’ ~ Aristotle #
• RT @mickeyrevenaugh: RT @tcnixon: If Rip Van Winkle woke up today, the only thing he would recognize is education. #edtech #onlinelearning #
• RT @Edubeat: America’s high school graduation rate ranks 19th in the world. (Forty years ago, it was number one.) #edreform #edpolicy #edgap #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Given the array of plays on the Indiana U.S. Senator’s name — including some of my own reports — I’ll shy away from the pile-on amid his decision to end his re-election bid. But Bayh’s exit does give one pause about the role he has played, not only in American politics (and especially in the Hoosier State), but in helping to re-shape how the nation measures academic performance and emphasizes rigor and data over guesswork and academic failure.

For the most part, Bayh’s role in this was incidental. Save for championing some odd policy or two, education was an afterthought for him. The earliest school reform efforts came before Bayh’s tenure as Indiana Governor in the late 1980s thanks to a group that included then-state superintendent H. Dean Evans and future state House Republican leader Brian Bosma.  The most direct impact he had on education wasn’t even on  policy itself, but on a move back in the mid-1990s to address the state’s perpetual deficit in its teachers pension. Although Bayh and his main successor, Frank O’Bannon, helped decided to use funds from the Hoosier Lottery to pay down those deficits and fully fund the pension, it didn’t work. Indiana’s teachers pension is currently $10 billion under water.

One indirect legacy lies not with Bayh himself, but with his onetime chief of staff, Bart Peterson. After becoming Indianapolis’ first Democrat mayor in four decades, Peterson struck a blow for school reform and school choice when he successfully battled his fellow Democrats in Indiana’s statehouse to become the first mayor in the nation to authorize charter schools. Whatever Peterson’s other flaws as a politician (namely a lack of focus on quality-of-life issues), he remains a pathbreaker in education reform through his founding of the Mind Trust, one of the leading incubators of education reform solutions in the nation.

Bayh’s most-important school reform legacy was rather incidental. It came during his last two years  in the governor’s office when he appointed one of his aides, a former state legislator (and onetime candidate for state schools superintendent) by the name of Stan Jones, to the state’s Commission for Higher Education. At the time, the agency did little more than serve as the sounding board for the state’s higher ed policymaking and presenting budgets to the legislature.  What Jones managed to do over the next 13 years set the path for how education policymakers — both in the Hoosier State and throughout the nation — should approach systemic reform.

Even before the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, Jones was among the first to call for reform of the state’s high school graduation rate calculation, which had been so inaccurate for so long that perpetual failing school districts such as Indianapolis Public Schools were allowed to post graduation rates of 95 percent and higher (even when it was more likely that they were graduating a mere 50 percent of freshman in four years). Not only did Jones call for replacing the old graduation rate calculation with a new one, with the help of one editorial board (on which I served) and a smattering of state leaders, Jones spent much of his tenure battling school districts, his fellow Democrats and even the state’s longtime education superintendent (and longtime foe) Suellen Reed to make it happen.

More importantly, along with the state’s Chamber of Commerce and Derek Redelman (a once-and-future Chamber executive who once, oddly enough, helped Reed beat Jones in winning the superintendent’s job), Jones began rallying state officials — including Bayh’s successor, Frank O’Bannon, Joe Kernan and Mitch Daniels — and business leaders to begin addressing Indiana’s most-pressing educational issues. He helped transform a politically-driven state college into a network of community colleges where high school graduates who weren’t ready for the rigors of Indiana University and Purdue could get prepared.  He began addressing the reality that the Hoosier State — home to the university that hosts the nation’s second-largest foreign student population (and another whose international tentacles extend into Asia) — couldn’t even assure that more than a quarter of its high schoolers were attending college.

These days, Jones is working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to address the nation’s problems of low college attendance and completion. But his past work has an impact far in Indiana and beyond. These days, state schools superintendent Tony Bennett — who may be the most-successful state schools chief executive in the nation — has to thank Jones for paving the way for Bennett’s own efforts to address teacher quality and end social promotion. Outside of Indiana, the work on graduation rates — along with the pioneering research of Jay P. Greene, Robert Balfanz and Christopher Swanson — is the underlying reason why President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top effort is gaining traction.

Bayh hasn’t exactly done much since on education policy. He hasn’t even been much of a presence in the debate over No Child or Race to the Top. But let’s give him credit for picking the men who cared about school reform and improving the lives of America’s children.

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I analyze President Barack Obama’s efforts to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act and argue why neither he — nor school reformers — should bother with reauthorization this year. Pursuing reauthorization may allow for Obama to put his finishing touches on the law, but not without exposing it — and himself — to battles between reformers and defenders of traditional public education that he isn’t likely to overcome.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod or MP3 player. Also, subscribe to get the podcasts every week. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley and the Education Podcast Network.

]]> http://dropoutnation.net/2010/02/01/the-dropout-nation-podcast-leave-no-child-alone/feed/ 3 Arne Duncan,Barack Obama,Congress,Dropout Factories,Elementary and Secondary Education Act,ESEA,graduation rates,No Child Left Behind Act,Race to the Top,school reform On this week's Dropout Nation Podcast, I analyze President Barack Obama's efforts to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act and argue why neither he -- nor school reformers -- should bother with reauthorization this year. (http://dropoutnation.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/dropoutnation_itunes_cover-e1263771405201.png) On this week's Dropout Nation Podcast, I analyze President Barack Obama's efforts to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act and argue why neither he -- nor school reformers -- should bother with reauthorization this year. Pursuing reauthorization may allow for Obama to put his finishing touches on the law, but not without exposing it -- and himself -- to battles between reformers and defenders of traditional public education that he isn't likely to overcome. You can listen (http://rishawnbiddle.org/RRB/media/rbradio/index.html) to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download (http://rishawnbiddle.org/RRB/media/rbradio/_mp3/2/dpn_podcast_leavenochildalone_02012010.mp3) directly to your iPod or MP3 player. Also, subscribe (../feed/podcast/) to get the podcasts every week. It is also available on iTunes (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=348527760), Blubrry (http://www.blubrry.com/dropoutnation/), Podcast Alley (http://www.podcastalley.com/podcast_details.php?pod_id=90977) and the Education Podcast Network (http://epnweb.org/index.php?request_id=3369&openpod=20#anchor20). RiShawn Biddle no 8:22 http://dropoutnation.net/2010/01/17/the-dropout-nation-podcast-beyond-dropout-factories/ http://dropoutnation.net/2010/01/17/the-dropout-nation-podcast-beyond-dropout-factories/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:44:52 +0000 RiShawn Biddle http://dropoutnation.net/?p=1006

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, while profiling one of  America’s worst school districts, I explain how the failures of every school district isn’t just a problem of teachers unions. School leadership at every level is critical in turning around dropout factories, the academic failure mills that feed into them, and the school districts that operate them all.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod or MP3 player. Also, subscribe to get the podcasts every week. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry and the Education Podcast Network.

Photo courtesy of AP

What’s happening in the dropout nation:

1. As readers know, I reported two years ago on the reality that high school exit exams are being watered down or basically rendered useless by so-called alternative methods that allow children to graduate despite being unable to pass the tests. Now the New York Times offers its own story on the same issue. Worth reading.
2. John Fensterwald notes that more districts in California signed on to the state’s ambitious Race to the Top agenda. Still, only eight of the top 10 districts (and 10 of the top 30) signed on, defying pressure from state NEA and AFT locals. Fensterwald also reports that the U.S. Department of Education official in charge of Race to the Top told a Northern California audience that she was pleasantly “stunned” by the response.
3. Speaking of districts, here’s my latest report in The American Spectator, this time on Arne Duncan, the bad news out of the Windy City about the district’s issues, and why reforming school districts (especially big urban districts) is so difficult to do.
4. And as for more Race to the Top news: Editorial pages in Boston and Buffalo advocate for their respective states to get off the wall and embrace reform. Meanwhile the AFT’s New York State affiliate is bringing out the proverbial shock troops to battle against the upcoming reform proposals, especially the lifting of the cap on charter schools. No shocker. (Thanks to Tom Carroll’s crew for the news).
5. Tom Vander Ark shakes his head at all the negative responses to California’s parent trigger law and other opposition to parental choice. Sadly, such elitism and expertist thinking is typical in education circles. And one wonders why parents struggle to be involved?
6. Graduation rate data is now streaming out of Indiana, D.C., and other states. In Milwaukee, there’s talk about forming a research and accountability group to observe the city’s woeful school system similar to the famed Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Dropout Nation Podcast. You can listen to the new one, on looking beyond Race to the Top, today.

Scenes of the Season: New York's Waldorf-Astoria at Christmastime

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you and your families. And to those celebrating other holidays: Happy holidays to you and the ones you love.

Here is what’s going on in the dropout nation:

1. The NEA’s Los Angeles local is suing L.A. Unified over its school reform plans. John Fensterwald’s response? The suit is merely “an attempt to preserve dues-paying members.”
2. By the way: Check out my latest report, this on the pressures forcing the American Federation of Teachers to make some (small) moves towards embracing school reform, in The American Spectator.
3. Tom Vander Ark offers more thoughts on the role of entrepreneurism in education and how it can improve education for all students. He also discusses some of the changes that need to come to education philanthropy.
4. While some parents and teachers in the New York City borough of Queens are battling the closure of Jamaica High School, schools Chancellor Joel Klein isn’t backing down. Says he: “I would like to know — who would send their kid to a school that has a lower than 50 percent graduation rate. Well, if your kids wouldn’t go there, whose kids should go there?” He’s got a point.
5. The Merced Sun-Star isn’t too thrilled with the California legislature’s struggle to pass a second round of Race to the Top-related legislation. Meanwhile, in Maryland, a former state board of education member accuses Gov. Martin O’Malley of being more-interested in teachers union votes than in take advantage of the federal money to improve academic achievement.
6. And in Indiana, the state Department of Education has unveiled its plan for competing for Race to the Top dollars. It admits that it doesn’t meet many of the data system requirements. It will also require school districts to fully embrace reform in order to receive whatever RttT money the Hoosier State can muster. At least the state’s making some progress on the teacher quality front.
7. For those looking for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act data on education stimulus spending, here is the state and program data for this month (in Excel spreadsheets).
8. In Rochester, the mayor there wants to take over the city’s atrocious school district. He’ll likely have more success than his colleague in Milwaukee has had this year.
9. At EducationNews, teacher Marion Brady accuses Arne Duncan, the charter school movement and education philanthropists of attempting to “hasten the destruction of… universal, free, public schooling.” But then, Brady offers suggested reforms that would fully alter traditional public education as we know it. Enjoy.
10. Heritage Foundation’s Dan Lips reads Walter Williams’ discontent with graduation rates for blacks, then offers examples of how to improve educational achievement.
11. The Economist discusses how technology disrupted the media business — in 1845. The interesting question for education policy types and teachers should be: What technologies will disrupt education policy as we know it today.
12. U.S News & World Report looks at the role of post-Katrina New Orleans as the epicenter of the charter school movement and education reform. Slowly, the city’s education model is starting to resemble the Hollywood Model for education I touted some years ago.
13. Edurati Review offers up its best posts of 2009. One of them: A well-thought explanation of why American public education must be reformed.

Sign up for the Twitter feed for up-to-the-minute news. Also, check out Dropout Nation’s featured reports:

1. Making Families Consumers — and Kings — in Education
2. Ability Tracking: Outmoded Idea in the New Education Paradigm
3. Voices of the Dropout Nation: Walter Dozier on Education and Violence

Good for thoroughbreds. Not for students

For those who don’t fully understand the issue of inflated graduation rate reports by state governments, here is a video produced by the Bluegrass Institute that details how Kentucky overstates its graduation rates by as much as 12 percent. If accurate school data were horses…