CAPSO Midweek E-Mailer

The NAEP Geography Assessment endeavors to test the extent to which students know, understand, and apply related cognitive skills. This statement , issued by Jack Buckley, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (the arm of the U.S. Department of Education that oversees the NAEP), provides additional information about both the administration of the assessment, and its results.

Additional sample test questions can be viewed, here , a full report (in PDF format) can be viewed/downloaded, here , and the NAEP Data Tool, which can be used to generate custom reports, can be accessed, here .

Bill Proposes Unprecedented ESEA Flexibility

In the most recent development in the ongoing saga of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a House of Representatives committee has reported a bill that would offer an unprecedented degree of flexibility to states and local school districts. In fact, the popular title given the bill, which is authored by House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chair John Kline (R - MN), is the "State and Local Funding Flexibility Act.

The measure would expand the ability of public school districts to shift federal funds from one ESEA program to another. For example, a district could decide to use some, or all of its Title I funding (which is intended to benefit students at risk of academic failure) for professional development for teachers. By the same token, districts could opt to shift Title II, Part A professional development funding to Title I, or to other ESEA programs. A copy of the proposed legislation, which was reported in the form of a substitute amendment to H.R. 2445, can be found, here .

Extending such broad latitude to states and districts has been a goal of certain Republican Congressional law makers for a number of years. In 2007, Representative Peter Hoekstra (R - MI) introduced a bill known as the "A-Plus Act," that bore similarity to the current bill. Mr. Hoekstra's bill drew concern from private school leaders because it would have permitted states, rather than the federal government, to determine what constituted the equitable participation of private school students and educators in federally funded programs.

Thanks to the good work of the Council for American Private Education, the current bill contains language designed to uphold the federal equitability requirements. According to CAPE, several key majority staff members from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, "...made clear that the bill retains original formula funding for all ESEA programs as well as all required provisions attached to those programs, including provisions relating to services to private school students and teachers. The only monies available for flexible spending are those that remain AFTER all required activities, such as equitable services, are met under the original programs (see sections 6122(a)(3)(B)(i) and (b)(3)(B)(i))."

CAPE asked committee staff whether Republican members might be agreeable to according the same flexibility to private school officials as the bill proposes to grant local public school districts, and provided proposed statutory language that could be inserted to establish such provisions. The response was a non-committal, but non-dismissive statement to the effect that the door on language relating to flexibility would remain open in future ESEA reauthorization bills.

Unlike a couple of ESEA-related bills that preceded it, consideration of the current measure precipitated strict partisanship. According to this Education Week Politics K-12 report , Republicans contended that the bill, "...would make it easier for districts and states to direct federal money to where it is needed most, which they see as a must in tough economic times,"while Democrats argued "...that it would allow districts and states to ignore the students most at risk-poor and minority kids-and trample on students' civil rights." During the markup process, Democratic committee members proposed several amendments, each designed to safeguard funding for specific categories of students. Each amendment was defeated along strict, party votes, an outcome that presages difficulty for the measure in the Senate, where Democrats comprise the majority. One might also think the chances of a presidential signature on such a bill to be slim in light President Obama's support of a strong federal role in the direction of education policy.

The bottom line for now is that ESEA reauthorization appears to have devolved into partisan politics, which almost certainly dashes any hopes of a comprehensive rewriting of the major federal education law prior to the beginning of the coming school year, and further dampens prospects for reauthorization by the current Congress.

Stay tuned!

Quick Takes

Radio Spots Promote Catholic Schooling

A new marketing campaign bearing the theme "Catholic Education:Believe It!" has been launched with the development of three clever radio spots. The well produced, thirty-second spots were created through a grant from the Los Angeles based Specialty Family Foundation . One spot depicts a mother requesting a combination of great school features at a drive-through establishment. In a second spot , two female friends bump into one another (literally) at a supermarket. One asks the other whether she's seen "the special they've got going on on aisle five," which consists of "a values-based education with a proven track record of academic excellence, where your kids are safe, and people of all faiths are welcome." The final spot features two men chatting during the course of a Little League game. Here's hoping the campaign knocks the ball out of the park!

New College Affordability Website

From the Office of Non-Public Education of the United States Department of Education

The U.S. Department of Education has launched a new website for college affordability called, The College Affordability and Transparency Center . The site provides students, families, and policymakers with tuition costs for U.S. colleges and universities.

Using data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the website provides lists of higher education institutions based on the tuition and fees charged to students. One of the useful tools on the site allows the user to generate personalized reports by choosing from a listing of schools and the type of tuition type (highest, lowest, or net). The site also provides additional information about the world of higher education to those seeking it. Further, users can also search links about career and vocational program costs, applying for financial aid, exploring information on colleges across the country, and the increasing costs of college, which are all easily accessible on the Center's homepage .

New Study Finds High Degree of Teacher Attrition in Charters

A recent working paper produced by researchers at U.C. Berkeley found that 50 percent of teachers employed in charter middle and high school left their jobs during the course of a six-year period. Because the study did not investigate the reasons accompanying the departures, it may have raised more questions than it answered. Some may be leaving for more remunerative positions in "traditional" public schools. Others, may be the victims of early "burn out," precipitated by the additional hours and responsibilities often required in charter school settings. As economist Eric Hanushek observed in this Los Angeles Times article , "The real issue is the quality of people staying and leaving. Charters have more flexibility in making judgments about teachers. They are better able to let teachers go if they are not doing a good job."

Further complicating the interpretation of the study's findings is the fact that significant numbers of Teach for America teachers pursue assignments in charter schools. TFA requires a two-year teaching commitment. The study, which was conducted by a team of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) researchers, can be found, here .

Chicago Mayor's Children to Attend Private School

Ending weeks of (sometimes contentious) speculation concerning the school(s) in which Chicago's new mayor would choose to enroll his three children, Rahm Emanuel has announced they will attend the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools . Shortly before Mr. Emanuel made his decision public, he cut short an interview after chiding NBC reporter Mary Ann Ahern for asking what he viewed as inappropriately intrusive questions. Said the mayor: "Mary Ann, let me break the news to you. My children are not in a public position. I am. You're asking me a value statement and not a policy. No, no, you have to appreciate this. My children are not an instrument of me being mayor. My children are my children, and that may be news to you, and that may be new to you, Mary Ann, but you have to understand that I'm making this decision as a father. A video of the exchange can be viewed, here . Mr. Emanuel's former boss sent his children to the same private school prior to moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (and enrolling them in Sidwell Friends).

Cheating Our Kids, and Ourselves

If you're looking for summer reading and are interesting in the political sociology of the contemporary school reform movement, I suggest you pick up a copy of Joe Williams, Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education. Mr. Williams, a former education writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and New York Daily News, details the manner in which money and politics drive education policy, and offers a series of prescriptions to parents wishing to place the needs of their children above those of special interest groups. (Since writing the book, Mr. Williams has, apparently, come to appreciate the potentially ameliorating role to be played by politics. He now serves as Executive Director of Democrats for Education Reform.)

Being part and parcel of human nature, cheating is endemic to schools, both public and private. Which provides schools with a great and noble opportunity - that of inculcating, in partnership with parents, appropriate respect for rules, honesty, truth-telling, and fair play, and shaping behavior reflective of such respect. It is only when the preponderance of individuals voluntarily uphold these values that a society grounded in the rule of law can exist in place of a police state.

Cheating among students is dismaying, but hardly shocking. When teachers, principals, and those that supervise them cheat, the implications are considerably graver. And when laws are created and/or enforced in such a manner as to motivate cheating among those responsible for teaching our young people that such behavior is wrong, the entire system is stood upon its head. Sadly, that is what appears to be happening. In recent weeks, instances of cheating have been disclosed at virtually every level of school governance, from the classroom to the principal's office, districts, and state departments of education.

Two weeks ago, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal released a report disclosing rampant and longstanding cheating throughout the Atlanta public school system. It wasn't students who were the perpetrators, but teachers, principals and district staff. As The Economist reports, "Some teachers gave pupils answers. Some filled in answers themselves. Some pointed to answers while standing over pupils' desks. Others let low-scoring children sit near-and copy from-higher-scoring ones. One group of teachers had a test-changing party over the weekend." The authors of the report noted that, "there were far more educators involved in cheating, and other improper conduct, than we were able to establish sufficiently to identify by name." Evidence of "systemic misconduct" was traced as far back as 2001.

The scandal quickly became a topic of national discussion, even finding its way into Jay Leno's opening dialogue on The Tonight Show. In the midst of a Los Angeles heat wave, the comedian quipped, "I was sweating like a school kid in Atlanta trying to pass a test on his own."

Of course, this wasn't the kids' fault. But to read much of the ensuing punditry in the blogosphere and Twitterverse, one would think that the teachers, principals, and superintendent were, themselves, blameless. The real culprit, so the spin goes, is the No Child Left Behind Act, and its impossible requirement that all students demonstrate proficiency in reading and math by the year 2014.

Consider, for example, an article titled, "Prescribed Failure: No Child Left Behind and the Atlanta Schools Cheating Scandal ." Author Jack Random writes, "You cannot pass a law that two equals one. Neither can you mandate that every child will be above average but that is exactly what NCLB pretends to do."

That's simply not true. Mr. Random is confounding what may well be a practical impossibility - enabling every student to become proficient - with a logical impossibility. But let's not quibble over trivia, since Mr. Random's major point has to do with the putative intentions of those responsible for bringing NCLB into being. As he tells it, "...their real goal was to crush public education and open the door to privatization of the schools. Their design from day one was for a profit-based, corporate sponsored private school system that they could control." And there you have it: rampant and persistent cheating on the part of public school teachers, principals, and district staff is made inevitable, and ostensibly excusable, by the insidiously nefarious designs of proponents of school choice! (Has Mr. Random forgotten that the late Senator Ted Kennedy and Repreprentative George Miller were among NCLB's leading architects?)

To be fair, NCLB's pupil achievement objectives, while laudable, are unrealistic, and the law is in serious need of revamping. But should that excuse cheating? In 2001?

The week after news of the Atlanta cheating scandal broke, Education Week's Politics K-12 blog reported developments that may be even more distressing. Nearly every one of the states that won competitive Race to the Top Fund grants have changed the plans they submitted when making application for the $4 billion pot of available federal money. According to the author of the article, "The changes includes a 32-page amendment with dozens of changes to New York's plan, including one of the first amendments I've seen that doesn't just push back a timeline, but eliminates a small piece of the state's plan. That particular amendment eliminates a $10 million program to provide competitive grants for charter school facilities in New York, and redistributes the money across a few other programs..." Maryland is postponing implementation of the new teacher evaluation system it proposed to implement for a full year. All told, of the twelve RTTF grant winners, ten states and the District of Columbia have requested the approval of amendments to their plans. And the U.S. Department of Education is saying "yes."

This is just plain wrong, and, in this writer's opinion, the implications are even more alarming than what transpired in Atlanta. How can the federal government sponsor a contest, select winners, shower them with billions of dollars, and then permit them to essentially rewrite their applications? When an agency of the federal government broadcasts the loud and clear message that rules are fungible, how can We the People be expected to respect either the rules, or the rule makers?

We're not just cheating our kids. We stand to deprive ourselves of the values that have served as the bedrock of our society.

Ron Reynolds

E-Mailer on Hiatus

With many of our readers in the midst of their much deserved vacations, the E-Mailer remains in summer hiatus mode. The next edition of the newsletter will be published on August 30, 2011.