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PPI Statement on Empowering Parents Through Quality Charter Schools Act

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
The Progressive Policy Institute




by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Education Task Force of the New Democrat Coalition released a statement expressing a commitment to the reformation and improvement of our K-12 education system saying “we are committed to bringing about change…that will encourage innovation, reward excellence, and provide all American students with a first-rate education so they enter college and the workforce fully prepared”.  The task force also expressed excitement in “working with our colleagues in the House, Senate and the Administration to reform Elementary and Secondary Education Act (EASA) to meet the needs of the next generation of American workers”.  Yesterday, Congress took a major step forward in the advancement of these efforts by passing the bi-partisan Empowering Parents through Quality Charter Schools Act (H.R. 2218). In an impressive display of unity the bill sailed through the House with a score of 365–54. This rare consensus suggests broad public backing for strengthening the charter experiment.

PPI has long asserted that we need to spur faster growth of the best charter networks to lift overall quality in choice and open more slots to the neediest students. In that vein, H.R. 2218 allows state entities (i.e. state educational agencies, state charter school boards) to provide subgrants from funds received by the Secretary of Education to charter school developers aiming to open new charter schools and expand and replicate existing high-quality charter schools. Under this new paradigm, grantees will be shown preference in states that do not impose any limitation on the number or percentage of charter schools or in the number of students that may attend charter schools. Additional preference is given to states that ensure equitable financing, as compared to traditional public schools, for charter schools and students in a prompt manner. This focus on equitable finance is a welcomed change since a recent study from Ball State University on funding inequality found charter schools, especially in urban areas, to be severely underfunded in comparison to their public school counterparts.

At a time of backlash from the education establishment against reform in general, and charters in particular, the House action is an encouraging sign of enduring policy commitment to closing school achievement gaps. PPI looks forward to future legislation that continues to support charter expansion while at the same time taking a serious approach to the closure of any low-performing charters.

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NEA vs. TFA

Thursday, July 7th, 2011
Laura Cunliffe


Laura Cunliffe is an education policy analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Laura Cunliffe

Simmering tensions between the nation’s largest teachers’ union and a highly acclaimed national service program boiled over this week. The National Education Association vowed to “publicly oppose Teach for America (TFA) contracts when they are used in Districts where there is no teacher shortage or when Districts use TFA agreements to reduce teacher costs, silence union voices, or as a vehicle to bust unions.”

Teach for America is a nonprofit organization that recruits graduates from leading universities to teach for two years in some of the nation’s most impoverished school districts. Study after study shows that TFA’s dedicated teachers are effective in lifting achievement levels among the poor and minority students they serve. Why would the NEA want to deprive our neediest kids of good teachers?

NEA member Marianne Bratsanos of Washington, who proposed the anti-TFA resolution, complained that the volunteer group undermines schools of education and accepts money from foundations and other funders who are hostile to unions. The key complaint, however, seems to be that TFA volunteers are displacing more experienced teachers, even in districts with no teacher shortages.

Full disclosure: I’m a TFA alum. You may discount my views accordingly, but the NEA’s indictment is very far from the reality I encountered on the ground teaching Language Arts to inner city kids in Charlotte, N.C.

TFA corps members fill vacancies in schools that many teachers want to avoid, or that are saddled with the least-skilled and effective teachers. Believe me, we don’t take jobs from good teachers who are making gains in student achievement. And it’s hard to see how TFA undermines schools of education. In fact, Teach for America has formed many successful partnerships with colleges of education to help train their recruits and provide ongoing development. TFA’s success in molding volunteers who bypass traditional education schools into good teachers may raise troublesome questions about the relevance and effectiveness of those schools, but whose fault is that?

Though green when I entered Teach for America in 2007, I quickly honed the requisite skills through classroom preparation, student teaching, and one-on-one time with my support staff. The first few months of actual teaching were difficult to say the least, but with the support and continuous development I received from TFA, my students demonstrated significant progress by the end of the year.

TFA isn’t anti-union, it’s pro-student. Its mission is to ensure that all children have a chance for an excellent education. It exists because there is a dearth of highly qualified and effective teachers in America’s poorest communities.

TFA members serve the lowest performing schools in 39 urban and rural regions. Teachers, known as corps members, commit to teach for two years to help end educational inequality. Applicants go through a rigorous application period, where approximately twelve percent of applicants are selected and around 4,500 first year teachers accept. Corps members begin their journey with five weeks of intensive training and are supervised by experienced teachers and support staff. TFA members are then provided with ongoing professional development and one-on-one support throughout their two years as teachers.

The Teaching as Leadership Model that Teach for America employs is different than the traditional training model used by many schools of education. Though many union members argue that the summer leadership institute is not the best way to insure excellent teaching, the proof is in the pudding.

In a 2010 study, Gary Henry and Charles Thompson found that TFA members had a greater impact on student success than teachers who graduated from a traditional school of education. A 2008 Urban Institute study likewise found that TFA teachers were more effective than other teachers in similar settings, including more experienced teachers and those certified in their field. Similarly, a NYC study concluded that TFA members were more effective in improving math and reading scores than those traditionally certified.

The RAND Institute has found that a five-year increase in teaching experience improved student achievement very little – less than one percentage point. Likewise, the level of education and the licensure scores held by a teacher had no effect on student achievement. Additionally, research has shown that corps members’ impact exceeds that of experienced and certified teachers in the same schools.

Policy Studies Associates, Inc. recently published a report that may explain why the NEA is kicking up such a fuss about Teach for America. “Ninety-five percent of the principals rated corps members as effective as other beginning teachers in terms of overall performance and impact on student achievement; sixty-six percent rated corps members as more effective than other beginning teachers, ninety-one percent of the principals reported that corps members’ training is at least as good as the training of other beginning teachers, sixty-three percent rated corps members’ training as better than that of other beginning teachers, and eighty-seven percent of the principals said they would hire a corps member again.”

In light of such evidence, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that what really rankles the NEA is competition, and worse, being shown up by the competition. Instead of trying to crush the competition, teachers’ unions ought to learn from it.

Here’s a thought for the NEA: why not work with Teach for America to develop ways to attract more talented college grads to teaching, and for that matter, encourage some of TFA’s two-year volunteers to go pro?

Photo Credit: Tulane Publications

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A New Approach to School Choice

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
Laura Cunliffe


Laura Cunliffe is an education policy analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Laura Cunliffe

“You’ve got to keep this country in the change business,” former President Bill Clinton urged a gathering of school reformers in Atlanta yesterday. It’s sound and timely advice progressives should heed, especially as a wave of reaction breaks over America’s two-decades- old experiment in public school choice.

Public charter schools, a form of school choice that Clinton championed as president, have come under fire from detractors who say they have failed to outperform traditional public schools. The right answer is to accelerate the growth of top charter operators and to shut down low-performing charters. And in keeping with Clinton’s admonition to stay the course of reform and experimentation, progressives should continue to look for ways to expand the concept of public school choice.

An intriguing example is New York’s innovative School of One, which offers a compelling model of choice within schools rather than choice among schools.

Founded by Joel Rose in 2009, the School of One is now the full-time math curriculum at three New York public middle schools serving 1,500 students.

The program operates in large spaces in each school to allow a variety of learning to occur, such as working in small groups or individually on laptops to complete lessons in the form of quizzes, games, and worksheets. When students arrive at school each day, they receive their “individual play lists” ­– their daily assignments to complete.

In essence, the School of One allows students to choose among a variety of ways of learning math depending on their unique abilities and interests. They might, for example, decide to work individually, with a peer, in groups, or with a teacher. The School of One eschews the traditional, one-size-fits-all approach to pedagogy in favor of differentiation and personalized instruction.

Students also take an assessment at the end of each day to determine if they are ready to move on to the next day’s assignment. Administrators analyze progress students are making on screens of their own and can monitor student achievement, as well as current progress via the student computer screens.

The School of One relies heavily on technology to adapt lessons to individual students. It incorporates popular tools that students already know and use daily. A 2009 study by Stanford Research Institute International (SRI) concluded that on average, students who learn by using online tools perform better than students who only learn one-on-one in a classroom setting.

The results have been impressive. According to the Educational Development Center, Inc. (EDC), there has been a twenty-eight percent rise in scores between pre-test and post-test for School of One 2009 summer school participants. Researchers also found that School of One students learned at a significantly higher rate — as much as seven times faster — than students with similar starting scores and demographic characteristics. In the 2010 Spring School Pilot, the New York City Department of Education’s Research and Policy Study Group (RPSG) estimated that School of One students learned at a rate fifty to sixty percent higher than those in traditional classrooms.

The School of One boasts a highly integrated and diverse student body in its three schools. For instance, M.S. 131 is comprised of eighty-one percent Asian, six percent Black and twelve percent Hispanic, I.S. 228 has thirty-four percent Asian, sixteen percent Black, twenty-three percent Hispanic and twenty-seven percent White students, and I.S. 339 has a student body of thirty-one percent Black and sixty-seven percent Hispanic students.

Arthur Levine, President of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation acknowledged, “New York City’s School of One may turn out to be the single most important experiment conducted in education so far. It is the future.”

Though the School of One has fostered remarkable gains among its students in a short amount of time, questions still remain. Is the model scalable for a larger group of students? How is the model different than the Montessori School model that has been around for a hundred years? Most important, even if the model is scalable and sustainable, can we afford it? The curriculum cost $1 million for the 2009 summer pilot program serving eighty students in one school. It is expected to rise to $13.3 million in 2012, when the program is anticipated to be used in 20 schools.

Perhaps some answers to these questions will surface as the program expands to four new sites in 2012. In any case, the School of One shows that New York city is, as Clinton put it, in the “change business” when it comes to lifting the quality of public education. Let’s hope other cities follow New York’s example.

Photo Credit: C.A. Muller

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Grading KIPP–Continued

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011
Laura Cunliffe


Laura Cunliffe is an education policy analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Laura Cunliffe

School childrenThe KIPP Charter School network is widely hailed as among the nation’s most effective, so naturally charter skeptics are always looking for chinks in its armor. Among the most thoughtful of those skeptics is the Century Foundation’s Richard Kahlenberg. In a recent blog post, Kahlenberg cites this eye-catching statistic: only 33 percent of middle school KIPP graduates go on to receive a degree from a four-year college.

That sounds low, but of course the relevant question is, compared to what? According to the same source Kahlenberg cited, about 75 percent of students who graduate from suburban schools get a college degree. But among low-income students in high poverty districts, only 8.3 percent graduate from college. That’s the only valid comparison, since KIPP operates almost exclusively in such districts and overwhelming educates poor, minority students.

More than 85 percent of KIPP students have gone to college, as opposed to 40 percent of low-income students nationwide. KIPP reports that more than 90 percent of its students outperform their district counterparts on standardized tests.

Kahlenberg maintains, while KIPP has impressive statistics on attrition and high school graduation rates, the model continues to fall short in overcoming poverty and segregation. This may be true, but KIPP’s mission is not to combat poverty. Instead, the network is “dedicated to preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life.”

The KIPP network’s goal is to see 75 percent of its students graduate from college, essentially matching the performance of students from high-performing suburban schools. This would be a staggering achievement. It’s fair to ask how KIPP plans to more than double its college completion rate. But it’s unfair to demand miracles from an organization that has existed for just 17 years, and only recently opened its doors in 2004 to elementary and high schools.

This is relevant because KIPP, like many other charters, does not have a vast array of data to work with and only graduated its first class of high school students in 2008 from Houston High School. It’s worth noting that the data KIPP and outsiders rely on comes from middle school students served by KIPP ten years ago, most of whom have not attended a KIPP school since eighth grade.

Finally, Kahlenberg and other skeptics discount KIPP’s successes on the grounds that its schools benefit from a selection bias, in that only the most motivated low-income families try to get their kids into KIPP. This claim, while controversial, is contested by KIPP and certainly merits further study. In the meantime, progressives ought to embrace and support KIPP’s efforts to build on its undeniable successes in educating low-income kids.

Photo credit: Neighborhood Centers

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Why One Critic of “Going Exponential” is Misguided

Monday, April 25th, 2011
Bryan Hassel


BRYAN C. HASSEL is Co-Director of Public Impact. He consults nationally with leading public agencies, nonprofit organizations and foundations working for dramatic improvements in K-12 education. He is a recognized expert on charter schools, school turnarounds, education entrepreneurship and human capital in education. Dr. Hassel’s recent work includes a chapter on how cutting-edge data strategies could transform public education in the book A Byte at the Apple: Rethinking Data Systems for the Post-NCLB Era and co-authoring “The Big U-Turn: How to bring schools from the brink of doom to stellar success” for Education Next. Dr. Hassel has also served as a consultant to leading efforts to create high-quality charter school systems, including the Mayor of Indianapolis’s charter school office and, more recently, Rhode Island’s creation of a network of mayor-led charter schools.

by Bryan Hassel

Writers usually do not respond to critiques from the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) because they are so one-sided and predictable, especially if a report suggests any potential benefits to charter schools. But since their review of our report for the Progressive Policy Institute on growing the best charter schools, seriously mischaracterizes the research base of our findings – and our claims about that base – we decided we needed to reply briefly.

As we explain clearly in the report, our findings are based on a review of existing literature about rapidly growing organizations in the business and nonprofit sectors.  We did not conduct, or claim to have conducted, original research in the vein of the multi-year Jim Collins research effort that produced Good to Great.  The Collins book did not focus on the extreme rapid growth period of interest to us in this paper, so it was not the proper base for this particular paper. Luckily, the phenomenon of rapid growth has already been studied by others, and therefore we drew on that literature in our report.

Though the NEPC review suggests that our “research section” contains “only three references,” in fact the report cites dozens of books, journal articles, and case studies in support of our conclusions.  The review also states that we do not discuss the nature of the studies, but readers will find just such discussion in the endnotes included in the report, available here.  As we explain in an endnote, for example, one the primary studies we used to form our conclusions, David Thomson’s Blueprint to a Billion, compared 387 sustained, rapid growth firms that achieved a billion dollars in revenue to over 5,000 peer companies that fell short of this mark.

Notably, the NEPC review does not challenge any of the lessons that we drew from this literature review, or suggest any alternate findings that would explain why some organizations manage to grow rapidly while others do not.  Nor does it challenge our main point, which is that millions of children could benefit if even a subset of the best charter schools grew at high rates like the best growth organizations in other sectors. Instead, the review questions the applicability of lessons from other kinds of organizations to charter schools, asking what relevance the interaction between a barista and a customer has to the interaction between a teacher and a student.

But here’s what’s interesting.  You could just as easily ask what relevance do barista-customer interactions have to the activities of Habitat for Humanity, networking-hardware giant Cisco, or a software firm like Microsoft.  And yet these disparate organizations used similar tactics to grow rapidly, most of which have little to do with the specific industries in which they work.  The real question is why educational organizations couldn’t use similar tactics in their effort to reach more students with high-quality teaching and learning. Too many children simply are not reached by teaching excellence today, and the teachers and other staff in the best charter schools have figured out how to deliver that excellence.

Of course, rapid growers in any sector would be thrilled not to have to use analogies.  Ideally, numerous excellent charter organizations will work over the next few years to grow rapidly.  They will use a variety of approaches, some of which will be more successful than others.  Primary researchers will then be able to learn a great deal from that experience, while many more children benefit meanwhile.  For anyone who would like to see more kids served by excellent schools, that’s the kind of action and follow-up research we need.

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Who Believes in Sputnik?

Friday, March 18th, 2011
David Blazes


David L. Blazes, M.D., M.P.H. is a Fellow with the Truman National Security Project.

by David Blazes

Many parents can’t decide whether they love or hate the Tiger Mom.  Either way, she has focused our collective attention on education in the United States. American students are falling behind students from other countries.  In the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing of 15 year-old students from 65 countries, our children placed 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and a below-average 31st in math. The results from January’s National Assessment of Education Progress were equally dismal – only 21 percent of the nation’s 12th graders scored ‘proficient’ in science. In his State of the Union address, President Obama called this our “Sputnik moment,” a crisis moment in the history of our country that should shock us into action.

But is it possible to change our educational system in the US? Success in today’s world is based upon proficiency and innovation in science. Multiple factors contribute to our poor performance, but one glaring problem is the disregard of scientific facts by a large segment of our society. Science allows for a certain amount of dissent, but when ideological, political or religious beliefs automatically nullify reasonable scientific facts, there is potential danger.

Many American students are raised to disbelieve some of the bedrock principles of modern biological science, including evolution. A troubling report, published in Science (Jan 28), describes the concern that 13 percent of high school biology teachers actively teach creationism and an additional 60 percent avoid the controversy of evolution. That leaves less than one third of educators who teach the scientifically-accepted truth about evolutionary biology.  To succeed in science, one needs to build knowledge from facts. If scientific facts such as evolution are taught to be false, what foundation then have we given our students?  This is certainly not a solid one upon which to base innovation or the next great discovery.

Only 39 percent of Americans believe in evolution.  Fifty-seven percent do not believe in global climate change.  And only 38 percent believe there is no link between vaccines and autism. Solid bodies of literature separate fact from fiction on these topics, but the majority of Americans apparently disregards the truth. If this denial of scientific fact is then passed on to our children, the next generation of Americans will find difficulty not only with the PISA test, but also with the real world challenge of finding scientifically valid solutions to big problems like climate change and finding cures for disease. We need our children to be innovators, but America’s ideological constraints are holding them back.

Everyone has the right to their beliefs. The rub here is how to balance one’s religion, politics, or ideology with the validity of science. Is it not the responsibility of a religion or ideology to make its teaching compatible with scientific facts? Faith, as I understand it, should be enough to account for the unknowable or unexplainable. And it should be strong enough to accommodate scientific facts within its belief structure. This is not a new struggle, but the consequences are greater in today’s information age where the internet can spread data instantly. It took the Catholic Church almost 400 years to vindicate Galileo for his support of the heliocentric view of the universe, despite solid scientific evidence from Copernican times. Today, religions and ideologies not only harm their own credibility by not accepting evolution but potentially contribute to the flawed science education that seems so prevalent in the United States now. In Galileo’s time, some scholars tried to harmonize the new data with Scripture and Church teachings, but were not able to carry the day. Eventually, it became untenable to deny Galileo’s claims; now is that time for evolution and science in general. We cannot wait another 400 years or we will be overtaken by cultures that advocate real science.

Last December, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in December. Near the end of her comments, she called the K-12 education problem in our country a national security issue. “There are a lot of problems,” she said. “Proliferation, Afghanistan, the Middle East. But the US needs internal repair more than it needs anything else.” Now is the time to start that internal repair.  We must teach true science to our children, before another country seizes our Sputnik moment.

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The Most Important Question About Charter Schools

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
Lee Drutman


Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Lee Drutman

Controversy rages over the overall contribution of charter schools to education reform. And while charter schools have produced mixed results, that is for a simple reason: not all charter schools are created equal.

Some charter schools do produce poor results. But other charter schools receive extraordinary results, turning around the lives of low-income children.

Rather than group all charter schools together and debate the wisdom of charter schools generally, here’s a better question to ask: How do we facilitate growth of the charter schools that work? How do we bring the effective teaching strategies from the most successful charter schools to more students?

That’s the question that Emily Ayscue Hassel, Bryan C. Hassel and Joe Ableidinger tackle in a new report for the Progressive Policy Institute, entitled “Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best.”

The report outlines nine lessons from fast-growing organizations that can be applied to charter schools. You can read it here.

But the big lesson is simple:

Charter leaders who want to pursue exponential growth and funders who want to support them must become much more familiar with the rapid-growth strategies used in other sectors and apply them to education. In addition, policymakers must prioritize removing any barriers to growth by the best – while also creating new incentives and avenues for excellent programs to reach more children.

Bryan Hassel will be on hand tomorrow (Feb. 17) at the National Press Club, to discuss the paper, along with R. Brooks Garber of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Eva Moskowitz of the Success Charter Network, and Andrew Rotherham of Bellwether Education Partners. For more details, click here.

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Will American Exceptionalism Sink or Save Obama?

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
Lee Drutman


Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Lee Drutman

A new Gallup poll out today highlights what could be a problem for Obama going into the 2012 election: his reluctance to embrace the idea of American exceptionalism. According to Gallup’s polling, 37 percent of Americans think that Obama does not “believe the U.S. has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world.”

What makes this dangerous is that Americans are in an anxious and insecure mood these days, seeing a world that doesn’t match up with well-established ideas about American greatness. These days, only 20 percent of Americans think the U.S. has the strongest economy in the world, and only 34 percent expect Americans can get back to the world’s top economy in 20 years. Only 17 percent of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States.

And yet, despite all this, 80 percent of Americans still believe in America’s unique greatness (73 percent of Democrats, 91 percent of Republicans).

There is a gap here. American exceptionalism is part of our cultural heritage and our self-identification. We believe there is something special about our nation. And yet, something is preventing us from achieving its full potential. What is it? No wonder there is so much anxiety.

The danger is the temptation to blame the wrong causes. The political right has increasingly spinning stories about how big government socialism is preventing America from achieving its true potential, and as The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty recently noted in an excellent round up of Republican talking points on American exceptionalism, “Lately, it seems to be on the lips of just about every Republican who is giving any thought to running for president in 2012.

But there is an upside here too, which is that despite the mood of declinism, there is also an underlying base of confidence and resilience. Americans still feel there is something special about this country, which means that there is a narrative on which to build a story of recovery. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. This is America. We can roll up our sleeves and make hard choices about our future.

Can Obama be the leader to make that pivot? The good news is that 58 percent of Americans actually do think Obama believes in America’s unique greatness, including 57 percent of Independents (not surprisingly, 83 percent of Dems but only 34 percent of Republicans think Obama believes this). Not overwhelming, but at least it’s a start.

As numerous commentators have noted, the Obama administration is in need of an overarching narrative, a coherent and aspirational story about the direction in which he is trying to take the country. Recently, Obama tried out a “Sputnik Moment” trope in speeches. Though it hasn’t exactly caught on (and the analogy is a bit strained), at least he’s thinking along the right lines.

American greatness does not have to be a jingoistic tool of the political right. It can also be a powerful set of ideas for Obama to tap into about how we don’t have to give into declinism, and how we can indeed get America moving again because always have. We’re special like that.

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A New Approach for STEM Education

Thursday, December 9th, 2010
Steve Norton


Steve Norton is communications director at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and a former journalist and speechwriter.

by Steve Norton

Most Americans appreciate the fact that the world is a very competitive place.  Policy makers and parents have long known that our kids, from grade school through college, need to step up their skills and understanding of science, technology, engineering and math – know in education circles as STEM studies – if they are going to compete successfully with their counterparts in China, India, Korea, and many European countries.  For this reason, for nearly 40 years there has been a lot of interest in improving STEM education.  While it is laudable that we are focusing on STEM education, we are running the risk of tethering ourselves to assumptions that might be a little faulty and outdated.  We can’t be truly innovative as a nation if we are not innovative in our thinking about STEM education.

The current assumption driving STEM education is that all students should get at least some STEM education at every step of their educational journey.  Supply students with high standards, great teachers and get as many kids excited about STEM as possible.  Call this the “some STEM for all” approach.  It sounds appealing, right?  Universal tech literacy for the 21st century.

Well, one problem with this is that most of us are not destined to be scientists and engineers – maybe five percent.  Some of us simply don’t have the acumen and the economy only needs so many engineers and scientists and actuaries.  So why should state and local governments, many of which are in deep financial peril, lavish resources on the “Some STEM for all” approach?  The answer is that they shouldn’t.

Another problem with this approach is that it wants to push young people into studying what might not necessarily interest them and deny the real STEM stars the resources they need to excel.  This is destined to fail.  A successful education experience begins with motivated, excited students pursuing what truly interests them and going where their talents can shine.  Forcing all students to take on AP physics or chemistry is going to have disappointing results during high school and beyond since these fields aren’t necessarily where the jobs are going to be.  Ironically, over 80 percent of the STEM jobs are in engineering and information technology but there is a paucity of courses in these fields at the high school level.  Therefore, the kids with the inclination are not getting access to what excites them – nor acquiring skills that employers actually need.

The time has come to try a more efficient and effective approach.  Flip the paradigm around.   Call it “All STEM for Some.”  It is based on identifying the kids with the most promise and interest in STEM areas early on and giving them the challenging, exciting educational experience. This  will allow them to move into advanced studies and then into the working world ready to contribute to a more dynamic U.S. economy.  Not everyone is going to be Bill Gates.  We don’t need everyone to be Bill Gates.  But we have to make sure we have at least a few Bill Gateses in the years ahead.

Gates’s case actually provides a good example of the wisdom of this approach.  As many of us have learned in the popular book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, Gates is a product of brains and hard work.  But just as important, he had the luck to go to fine private high school where a parent with vision and resources provided a computer lab.  This was a time when most universities had not computer lab.  For a kid like Gates, it was heaven.  He spent hours there.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

ITIF fleshes out the idea of “All STEM for Some” and offers up ideas that should be embraced as part of a broader education reform effort in a new report Refueling the U.S. Innovation Economy: Fresh Approaches to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education. Among the ideas in the report is placing a greater emphasis on making sure students can demonstrate skills rather than merely memorize content.  In addition, it would make sense to allow STEM-oriented students to spend more time in those courses and less time on other subjects.  Also, we need to make sure the resources are there beginning freshmen year so we don’t lose the kids who were STEM-inclined but instead nurture them with greater opportunities right away.

In addition, the report urges policy makers to get serious about creating entirely new institutions – STEM specialty schools – and develop the infrastructure to identify and recruit the most promising students to pursue their passions in exceptional world-class educational environments.

We should also revise how we incentivize schools to make their STEM programs more effective.  The report explains this could be done with a combination of federal grant money, as well as corporate or philanthropic efforts.  Bolstering STEM education should be part of needed national strategy to make our national labs, universities and private employers act in a more coherent fashion when it comes to preparing students and workers in critical new fields.

We are not going to be able to develop the game-changing advances in biotechnology, robotics, energy and other fields unless we nurture the talent of our students effectively.  Many of us will want to become artists, teach history, develop real estate, or run our own small business.  That is fine.  But we should get serious – immediately – about how we educate those students who show the keenest interest in the emerging growth fields of the future.  Giving a smattering of science and math to them along with the aspiring novelists is not going to work.  We only have about ten years to make changes in our STEM education so we will have the talent to create the STEM jobs so and therefore compete globally in the years ahead.  The time to get started is now.

This article is cross-posted at Innovation Policy Blog

Photo credit: Michael Surran

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A Better Approach to Textbook Adoptions

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
Joy Hakim


Joy Hakim, author of A History of US, published by Oxford University Press, and of The Story of Science, copublished by the Smithsonian and the National Science Teachers Association Press. Freedom: A History of US, a 16-part PBS special, was based on her writings.

by Joy Hakim

Until October, Texas owned the textbook debate. The Texas Board of Education, preparing last year for a book adoption, seemed determined to put a political spin into American history books Texas schoolchildren will be reading. That raised hackles and not just in Texas. A headline in England’s Guardian blared, “Texas school board rewrites US history with lessons promoting God and guns.”

Time and cool heads prevailed and the new Texas standards, adopted in August, are not much different from those in other states. The textbook hoopla calmed down. And then, last month, a Williamsburg, Virginia mother (who happens to be a history professor) noticed that her son’s 4th grade schoolbook was—well, outrageous. It stated that thousands of African Americans fought for the South during the Civil War, many led by Stonewall Jackson. This is not a view held by most historians.

The author of the book defended her work, claiming that she did her research on the Internet, where her source for information was the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  This created a bit of brouhaha. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson of Princeton University commented, “These Confederate heritage groups have been making this claim for years as a way of purging their cause of its association with slavery.”

Virginia has what is supposed to be a rigorous adoption system, books with agendas aren’t supposed to get through the process. This book was called “accurate and unbiased” by a committee tasked to read it. Virginia school districts, having spent a lot of money on the book, are now pulling it from classrooms.

Textbook nightmares are nothing new in the school world, and they are not unique to Virginia and Texas. But purchasing policies there, and in 20 other “adoption” states, determine content in textbooks for schools throughout the nation. Those books, routinely dull, are often error-ridden and biased. Actually the adoption process began with bias as a goal. After the Civil War, southern leaders didn’t want their children reading a northern version of that conflict. They set up their own school standards and the publishing industry complied with different books for Southern and Northern markets.

Today, in school districts in all 50 states, adoptions are usually a winner-take-all affair that leads to giant sales and huge profits for a few publishers. Those publishers spend their efforts—not on creating good books—but on promotion, gifts, and fancy presentations. Think of the power of lobbyists; textbook salespeople perfect lobby-like outreach to teachers and administrators.

This is not a minor affair: books are the intellectual meat and potatoes we feed our children. Shabby textbooks make a difference. They don’t have to be. Here are some suggestions:

  • Have closed adoptions. No salespeople allowed. Let books and other teaching materials speak for themselves to teachers and committees. Don’t limit choices to books from textbook houses. Have librarians share their expertise. Let a subcommittee of children read the choices and submit their thoughts. If a book doesn’t work for its potential readers, it shouldn’t be adopted. And call in experts: historians to comment on social studies texts, scientists on science texts.
  • If possible, do away with whole city adoptions.  The big bucks are just too tempting for those driven by bottom-line issues. Besides, given our diverse population, it doesn’t work for every fourth grade teacher in Los Angeles or Richmond to be forced to teach from the same history text. Have schools or even individual teachers pick books from a broad vetted list. Let some teachers, who can make a case for their decisions, pick volumes not on the list. Teaching U.S. history, or any subject, with good bookstore books, rather than texts, makes sense if a teacher wants to go that route. If we are to attract and hold sophisticated teachers we need to treat them as professionals rather than cogs in a bureaucratic wheel. Letting teachers choose their own books would not only support them and benefit kids, it might bring real competition to the schoolbook industry.

Some of our greatest thinkers have written books for children. Henry Steele Commager’s story of the Constitution is hard to top. Physicist Stephen Hawking is the author (along with his daughter Lucy) of a terrific physics adventure that is perfect for third graders. Why aren’t books like these read routinely in our schools?

Yes, the money-management folks will talk about the savings from mass purchases, an argument that doesn’t hold up. Most standard textbooks are outrageously overpriced.  Today’s massive adoptions bring billions of dollars in annual income to a few big publishers whose goal, as with most businesses, is to make money. Educating children is a minor consideration. Trade (bookstore) books are generally inexpensive.

How about assessments? Can they deal with a variety of books rather than one text? No problem if we assess ideas and what is usually the small number of essential facts that support those ideas. Currently our tests are shallow, dull, limited, and limiting. Detach them from specific textbooks and canned lesson plans and they can begin to test critical thinking tied to broad knowledge.

Some current conventional wisdom says the textbook issue has been solved. Books are out; technology is in. But, so far, online texts are aimed at test preparation, not deep thinking.  They promote skimming and browsing, not analytical reading. There’s a bigger issue here. We are giving up on whole book reading, which means losing our literary heritage as well as our national legacy. Right now, most schoolchildren have little access to what was once a shared body of heroes, villains, stories, and values.

As for our science scores, a recent study ranked us 48th internationally. “48th is not a good place,” said the New York Times. While hands on labs are exciting, without a story their concepts rarely stick. Only one state mandates science history. Ask your children: Who is Linus Pauling? How did we discover the atom? Chances are they won’t know.

Meanwhile, the current round of educational criticism is focusing on villainous unions and low performing teachers. Hardly anyone has looked in depth at factory-like education schools, administrator-heavy school systems, or the mental junk food we feed our children. All this is deeply discouraging to the good (and often great) teachers in our schools.

Photo credit: Judy Baxter

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Posted in Daily Fix, Issues, New Schools for the 21st Century | 1 Comment »

A Dear Jon (Stewart) Letter

Friday, October 29th, 2010
Lee Drutman


Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Lee Drutman

Dear Jon:

I’m looking forward to attending your rally this Saturday, but like many, I’m not sure whether you are intending to simply produce a Daily Show-esque send-up of the whole rally-on-the-Mall concept, or whether this is the moment when you give the genuine rallying cry of “moderate!”

I know a lot of your fans are hoping you don’t undermine your hip satire with the mawkishness of actually caring.  But I, for one, sincerely hope that you are actually serious here, and that you have every intention of giving voice to “the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat,” as you call them.

We need you Jon. You may be our last best hope.

As you know and well understand, political debate in this country is actually nothing at all like debate. The two parties and their loyal acolytes keep yelling right past each other. They effectively inhabit two separate unbridgeable worlds, drifting further and further apart.

The activist bases of both parties have been spending the last 30 or so years trying create a black-and-white world where you are either with us or against us. Increasingly, they hold the key to elected offices, especially on the Republican side, by being the source of campaign resources and energy. Meanwhile, a media culture drawn to sharp conflicts always zooms in on angry yelling over possible consensus for a simple reason: the schoolyard knife fight makes better TV than the debating society, and every attention-seeking pundit and politico now knows this.

And yes, this has excited and energized the most extreme elements on both sides, who by dint of personality are attracted to moral clarity these Manichean struggles offer. But it has turned off those who are prefer compromise and open-mindedness, who don’t see the world in such stark terms, who, as you put it: “who feel that the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones that get heard.”  Fewer and fewer Americans choose to identify themselves with either of the two major parties, and the plurality of Americans now think that neither party has “a clear plan for solving the country’s problems.”

The problem for political moderates is that there are so few leaders to turn to for inspiration.

But Jon, you know all this. It’s the basis for your satire. It’s why millions of viewers, especially those supposed disaffected young people who vote at significantly lower rates than their forebears, watch your show. You are the one who they trust.

I suspect that you are slightly uncomfortable with this power. You are, after all, a comedian at heart, the funny man who sits on the sidelines and says: you silly politicians, how you contradict and contort yourselves and say ridiculous things. Let us find the laughter in tragedy and thusly ease our sorrow over the sad fact that while we endlessly debate Christine O’Donnell’s latest gaffe, China is building a new city every sixteen seconds.

But sitting on the sidelines must also be frustrating. How can you curate the modern tragedy of American politics, day after day, and not think: why, the more I call attention to the idiocy, the more it metastasizes?

You have at your disposal the goodwill of millions of Americans. If you throw yourself into the political fray (as you may be about to, if this rally is indeed serious), you have the potential to make a major and I think quite positive impact on American political discourse. You are poised to be the leader of new moderate movement, one that rests on the premise of civil discourse, openness to reason, and an eagerness to actually solve problems.

I say, go for it. Make the most full-throated, heart-felt, call-to-reasonableness you can. Set up the moderate majority, or whatever you want to call it. Use your show and your brand to mobilize the millions of citizens who would pledge to support candidates who will adhere a platform of civility and open-mindedness and a spirit of pragmatic problem-solving – and who might even make it cool once more to solve problems instead of simply firing up the base. Be an explicit force for counter-polarization.

I know it’s a big task. But look around you. Glenn Beck and his merry band of truth-benders at Fox News are mobilizing the armies of cranky crazies to the right, and the loudest voices on the left are those complaining that Obama is a sell-out.  This country faces major, generational challenges of transitioning to a 21st-century economy and solving a looming deficit and entitlement crisis. We’re not going to solve them by shouting slogans past each other.

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Posted in Daily Fix, Issues, New Schools for the 21st Century | No Comments »

Gainful Employment: The Real Issue

Monday, October 25th, 2010
Michael Mandel


Michael Mandel is the chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute and the founder of Visible Economy LLC, a New York-based news and education company.

by Michael Mandel

Download the entire memo here

Sometimes a proposed piece of legislation or new rule can catalyze debate about a key issue. That seems to be the case for the ‘gainful employment’ rule currently being proposed by the Department of Education (DOE). The rule addresses a very real problem: The large amounts of debt being taken on by some students, mainly those attending for-profit colleges. However, if enacted in its current form, the new rule would require many institutions—for-profit, non-profit, and public alike—to follow complicated new procedures that could greatly limit their flexibility in offering new programs and potentially reduce the educational options open to students.

Are the benefits of the gainful employment rule worth the costs? DOE’s narrow cost-benefit analysis says they are, but its analysis fails to address a broader issue: How should higher education institutions be expected to deal with an uncertain and rapidly changing economic environment? In a world where tomorrow’s labor market may be very different than today’s, should colleges be encouraged to anticipate the changes, or should they stick to the steady teaching of accumulated knowledge and skills for existing jobs?

This policy brief will make one observation about today’s economy, and then draw three implications for policy. The observation is simple: Young educated workers face vastly more uncertainty in the labor market than recent generations of graduates. Young workers with a bachelor’s, associate degree, or other postsecondary education must deal with much higher unemployment rates, falling real wages, and a job landscape that keeps shifting.

The first implication: The increased uncertainty means that colleges have to take more responsibility for informing students about what their education dollar is buying them. In particular, the for-profit sector needs major reforms to deal with what a recent GAO report called “deceptive and questionable marketing practices.” With students facing a tougher time in the job market, for-profit institutions must move away from high-pressure sales tactics, increase transparency about potential outcomes, pay more attention to debt levels, and raise admissions standards. Non-profits and public institutions must bite the bullet as well by offering more information about estimated payback periods and making sure that their students don’t graduate with excess debt.

Download the entire memo here

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Posted in Daily Fix, New Schools for the 21st Century, Policy Memo | 2 Comments »

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