Tag: A Byte at the Apple


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Building School Data Systems: The California Way Not to Do It


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Nearly two years ago, in A Byte At the Apple Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era, I noted the two decades of struggle California had with developing its school…

School data and integration

If it were only that easy.

Nearly two years ago, in A Byte At the Apple Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era, I noted the two decades of struggle California had with developing its school data system. In particular, the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System — which was supposed to combine nearly all of the state’s disparate databases — had a particularly troubled history. It took five years for CALPADS to make it from legislative intent to begin full development in 2008. It took another year for the system to become somewhat operational. Even then, it wouldn’t be the fully comprehensive data system that policymakers, parents and schools needed in order to improve the quality of education for their students.

These days, CALPADS is serving no use for anyone at all. Because it has been shut down.  As reported yesterday by John Fensterwald, state Superintendent Jack O’Connell put the system on hiatus after months of glitches — largely caused by state bureaucrats and computer giant IBM (which built out the system on the state’s behalf) — that have made it difficult for school districts to provide and access data. As the state education department’s consultant, Sabot Technologies bluntly points out in its assessment: “the overall [technology] architecture is sound… Instead, Sabot finds that the system implementation includes anomalies, errors and defects throughout.”

Certainly this shutdown will further hinder the delivery of timely data about student progress. But, in all honesty, CALPADS should probably be scrapped altogether. Not because of technical issues, but because the data system is too-narrowly focused on helping the state and school district meet No Child compliance, not on providing useful data. Even if CALPADS was fully operational, schools and researchers still couldn’t  track the long-term performance of individual English Language Learner students (or even determine if they are being fully-mainstreamed into regular classes). The lack of a universal identity number for each student means that student progress can’t be tracked once they enter college; it also means that universities can’t easily access high school student data. Even with the state’s decision to finally integrate CALPADS data with that from the state’s teacher data as part of the effort to tie teacher evaluations to student performance, CALPADS problems means this may not happen for at least another year.

The structural problems underlying CALPADS sheds light on an even bigger problem: An byzantine educational governance system — including a state board of education appointed by the governor, a state education department headed up by an elected superintendent and state universities and community colleges led by different boards at nearly every level — that complicates the development of a fully-unified school data system. Thanks to the sparring matches between each of the politicians and bureaucrats (along with the lack of leadership overall by McConnell and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger), data system integration is even less likely to happen now. Which means that parents can’t get the data they need to make smart decisions in shaping the educational destinies of their children — and teachers can’t use data smartly in shaping their classroom instruction.

This, by the way, isn’t just a California problem. Although Florida has succeeded in developing a truly longitudinal school data system, other states are plagued by similar versions  of California’s unwieldy school governance and paucity of leadership. It will take more than annual surveys by the Data Quality Campaign to shame states into fully addressing those problems. It is another reason why school reformers, grassroots activists (and business groups such as chambers of commerce) must work together to make data quality (and other elements of the reform agenda) a reality.

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Read: Snowbound Edition


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What’s happening today in the dropout nation: When the National Education Association took control of the Indiana State Teachers Association last year, Association after the collapse of its insurance trust…

What’s happening today in the dropout nation:

  1. When the National Education Association took control of the Indiana State Teachers Association last year, Association after the collapse of its insurance trust fund, it was more than just a colossal embarrassment of alleged financial mismanagement – and a loss of coverage for its 50,000 rank-and-file members. After decades of winning expensive compensation packages that have made teaching one of the best-paid professions in the public sector, the collapse of ISTA — along with $600 billion in pension deficits and underfunded retirement liabilities — exposes teachers unions to increased scrutiny — especially as taxpayers may end up on the hook for the unions’ failings. Read more about the collapse — and how it could help spur teacher compensation and quality reforms — in my latest Labor Watch report.
  2. Tom Vander Ark sums up the problem with the Obama Administration’s decision to essentially gut the No Child Left Behind Act by eliminating its Adequate Yearly Progress provisions: Doing so will abandon the promise of assuring that every child no matter their race or economic status, can attend a great school staffed by high-performing teachers. Of course, as I hinted last week in The American Spectator, the administration may be doing this (along with boosting education spending for FY 2011) in order to placate the NEA and AFT, whose help they will need in order to keep control of Congress.
  3. The folks behind The Lottery are rallying folks around an “Education Constitution” demanding teacher quality reforms, expansion of school choice and other reforms. Check it out and sign it.
  4. The U.S. Department of Education releases a timely report on an important — if rarely-considered — use of school data: Improving teaching, staffing, student diagnostics and other matters at the district, school and even classroom levels. As I wrote last year in A Byte at the Apple, school data will only be the most useful once the information is delivered and made accessible in ways teachers, administrators and parents find appealing and useful. Right now, however, this is still a problem.
  5. Speaking of useful data, the Consortium on Chicago School Research has a series of papers examining the on-time graduation progress of the Windy City’s high school students. Each of Chicago’s high schools are examined in depth. Read them. I am.
  6. EducationNews is re-running another one of teaching guru Martin Haberman’s fine essays, this on whether the right people are entering teaching. Given the efforts to reform ed schools and weed out laggards before they even apprentice, the piece is as timely as ever.
  7. And, with Gary Orfield’s study of charter school segregation gaining attention from newspapers and school reformers alike, Sonya Sharp of Mother Jones points out the one thing everyone forgets: Traditional school districts are just as segregated (and often, even more segregated) no matter where we go. Joanne Jacobs also offers a compendium of the arguments (including those by your friendly neighborhood editor). And, by the way, here is a piece I wrote a few years ago about diversity and public schools.
  8. Intramural Sparring Watch: Big Edreform Andy #1 (also known as Andrew Rotherham) This Week in Education‘s Alexander Russo (and his employer, Scholastic) for for allegedly running “hearsay” claims against Massachusetts’ education secretary, Paul Reveille, for his supposed intervention in the authorizing of a local charter school. Russo, by the way, has taken potshots against Rotherham and his folks at the Education Sector (which Rotherham, by the way, is leaving by the end of March) for years. Most recently, he accused EdSector of allegedly mucking around with a report authored by EdSector’s now-departed cofounder. Yeah, I’m exhausted from just writing about this.

Meanwhile, check out this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast on the reauthorization of No Child, along with my pieces this week on charter schools and segregation. The next podcast, on civil rights activists and education reform, will be available on Sunday before the Super Bowl. And since you are all stuck inside, get your debate on.

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Temporary Money for Permanent Issues


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There isn’t a state that isn’t scrambling for federal Race to the Top funding. But California, already mired in battles over spending priorities and bloated budgets, has the most intriguing…

Photo courtesy of the Sacramento Bee

Photo courtesy of the Sacramento Bee

There isn’t a state that isn’t scrambling for federal Race to the Top funding. But California, already mired in battles over spending priorities and bloated budgets, has the most intriguing proposal for using some of those dollars: Finally connecting its sprawl of education data systems into one longitudinal regime.

Earlier this month, state legislators defied the California Teachers Association by eliminating a restriction on tying together the state’s student data and teacher data systems. At the same time, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is championing measures that would create performance pay scales for teachers, essentially tying teacher compensation to student achievement.

Even if all of the measures (which includes eliminating the state-mandated cap on charter schools) get past the CTA and the legislature, California isn’t guaranteed Reach to the Top funds. And even if they get the money, it doesn’t solve the long-term reasons why state school data systems have been anything but: The lack of political will in overcoming the structural obstacles to unifying the systems. Until California addresses how it governs it primary, secondary and post-secondary education systems (including the atrociously balkanized college data systems within the University of California, California State and community college systems) and determines who will actually operate these systems, the funding will simply be spent with little in the way of results.

You can read more in my chapter on school data systems in A Byte At the Apple: Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era. Eric Osberg also offers his thoughts.

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The Read is Fundamental


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More Arne Duncan hoopla: Alexander Russo hits up his friends at Catalyst Chicago for more data on the Secretary of Education-Designate and finds him lacking. As always. Joanne Jacobs hopes…

More Arne Duncan hoopla: Alexander Russo hits up his friends at Catalyst Chicago for more data on the

A key to stemming dropouts can be found in a series of bound volumes. Read to your children -- and to the kids that aren't your offspring.

A key to stemming dropouts can be found in a series of bound volumes. Read to your children -- and to the kids that aren

Secretary of Education-Designate and finds him lacking. As always. Joanne Jacobs hopes Duncan will actually live up to expectations from the school reform movement.

Darling-Hammond: Still lurking: Mike Petrilli speculates that the Obama adviser may land inside the Department of Education anyway — this time overseeing the National Center for Education Statistics and all important What Works Clearinghouse as head of the Institute of Education Sciences. This is all just guessing. But if true, then putting the wolf in charge of the henhouse may have never been so wrongheaded. After all, Darling-Hammond is no Joe Kennedy and IES is not the SEC.

And more Petrilli: This time, teaming up with the Grand Pubah of the conservative end of the school reform movement to propose another federal path for education reform. One part of this ‘fourth way’ — using federal dollars to encourage states to pursue systemic overhauls and experiments — seems similar in a way to Andy Rotherham’s proposal last month to encourage innovative reforms. On the other side, the proposals to eliminate No Child’s school transfer, teacher quality, school sanctions and testing rules means that Petrilli and Finn are all but calling for a gutting of the law. More analysis later, but one can expect the EdTrust/EdSector/rest of us wing to first think: “With school reform allies like these…”

Dropping out early and often: A third of dropouts leaving the Rowan-Salisbury school district are freshmen, reports the Salisbury Post. Of course, these aren’t 15-year-olds, but 16-year-olds who never earned enough credits to move on to sophomore year. At the same time, the North Carolina school district seems to have another problem: So-called “career and college tech” tracks that allow students to evade a strong, useful college prep education that, by the way, can be used by those who want to go into welding or other skilled trades. The students don’t take Algebra II, even though the course teaches math skills used in manufacturing. High dropouts. Unchallenging curricula. What a formula for success.

Eduwonkette should lighten up: So writes EdSector’s Erin Dillon in response to the blogger’s tirade over the Washington Post’‘s fine series on the performance and governance of the Beltway’s charter schools. Dillon is particularly amazed that Eduwonkette — no pal of school choice or education reform — would use the American Federation of Teachers’ notoriously rubbish 2004 report on charter schools, which attempted to make conclusions that no one could actually reach based on the actual data itelf. Attempting to use broad national data to criticize a news organization’s report on one local school district is, umm, destined to be embarrassing for the person who does so.

And yes, Dropout Nation is back. Check out the sister Web site for some of the work that has kept your occasionally haggard editor away for a while.

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