Education

Common Core Experiencing Delays

/ Gregory Clark / Leave a comment

The big discussion recently, among those who follow education policy around the United States, surrounds the “Common Core”. Dating back to 2010, the Common Core State Standards is a plan adopted by almost every state (there are five holdouts) which creates a common set of standards in the core areas of K-12 education; math, english, social studies, and science.

Here is a brief history of the motivations most won’t take the time to fill you in on the background information: No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the federal education policy which enforces strict accountability measures on schools that “underperform,” does not actually set the standards schools/districts/states have to meet. That’s right, states set the standards for their schools. As long as those standards are ‘reasonable’ the federal government is satisfied and accountability measures function as written. As you can imagine, states began to develop different standards to make it appear their students were “proficient.” Well, when funding is tied to proficiency, you better believe proficiency increases. But did proficiency actually increase? Probably not. In states like Texas where STATE “proficiency” increased, those same students did not improve on NATIONAL tests (which did not change meaningfully, if at all.) If you ever heard the phrase “Race to the Bottom,” it is likely this was the situation they were talking about. There was an incentive to feign improvement.

Common Core standards were developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to “ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter credit bearing entry courses in two or four year college programs or enter the workforce.” Sounds pretty good, right? Especially considering how everything was devolving at the state level. But now, everyone is up in arms about Common Core. Teachers unions are upset. Those on the Religious Right are upset. And states and governors have become upset about Common Core. All of this right when Common Core is finally being implemented (for reasons about the delay, see my note below). Why?

If you follow any of those links, you’ll find out what the stated complaints are. The teacher unions are upset they weren’t prepared properly. Conservatives think the federal government is just trying to take over more of public education. And states? State say they need time to evaluate, so they’re delaying implementation left and right.

I have a different theory about the reasons for the revolt about Common Core; the standards are too rigorous! Teachers and states have a lot to lose once they commit to higher standards, because NCLB still has strict accountability measures tied to performance on standardized tests. Everyone approves of accountability in principle (AFT- yes, the national teachers union– publicly endorses accountability and standards and testing). When asked, of course no public servant would say they don’t want to raise standards to ensure the children are educated properly. But those same people despise accountability in practice. (Conservatives hate it simply because it takes away power from states.)

Two things are going on which I think help explain the revolt against Common Core. First, everyone who endorsed it is finally getting to see the fruit of their labor. Second, NCLB hasn’t changed, so that same fruit has caught them with their pants down; in fact, there were new (and increased) financial incentives to adopt common standards. Now they’re all stuck with this new set of standards which they believe are too difficult to meet. Because NCLB has such strict punitive measures for those who cannot meet “proficiency” levels, there is a strong incentive to reject any standard of proficiency which is difficult, resource intensive, and (most importantly) takes a long time to reach.

I don’t blame the teachers, or the governors, or Obama, or even NCLB specifically. The entire idea of school accountability based upon standardized testing has “problem” written all over it. This is not to say public education cannot be improved through government policy. But I think it’s been just about long enough that we can call standardized testing a failed metric of keeping schools accountable.

Those familiar with the topics will recognize that I’ve just made some pretty bold claims. Those less familiar can still probably see some strong assumptions. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Note: So if the Common Core was developed two years ago, why are we talking about it now? Well, it takes a long time to develop what will actually go into the Common Core, and even longer to create a standardized test to measure achievement of the new standards.

Quick Update to the Department of Justice’s Lawsuit in Louisiana Over School Choice Program

/ Gregory Clark / Leave a comment

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the pending lawsuit over Louisiana’s voucher program. As some predicted, yesterday the lawsuit was dropped. However, the Obama Administration has called for a federal review of the program. It is likely this case will fade out of the conversation, but the battle over vouchers, and school choice more generally, is not over.

Here is a news piece with more information.

Sustainability: Higher Education’s Responsibility

/ Danielle Kloster / Leave a comment

This past weekend I attended a conference on campus sustainability at Pace University put on by the Environmental Consortium of Colleges and Universities. The conference was titled “Sustain What? Preparing Our Students by Greening Our Campuses” and while there was a huge amount of information on sustainability projects at various campuses, the underlying theme of the weekend was the importance of higher education in the sustainability movement.
On one level, campuses are uniquely positioned in their communities to serve as role models of sustainability. Thanks to large endowments and government and privately funded grants, they are often able to invest in renewable energy projects, sustainable construction of new buildings, sustainable food systems including composting projects, and other efficiency projects that the general population is often unaware of or unable to afford. Colleges and universities can implement relatively new technologies, educating the community and providing business to new companies.
However, higher education has a greater responsibility within the movement towards sustainability than simply incorporating efficiency into new building design and urging people to turn out the lights. The language of sustainability, argued some at the conference, should be incorporated into all classes offered by a university. I attended a break-out session directed towards faculty that led to a discussion of this issue. Coming from SUNY ESF, where all (or almost all) of our courses and programs are directed towards the environment and sustainability, it was interesting to see the perspective of faculty from other campuses, including predominantly conservative campuses.
The faculty members in the session discussed the lack of basic knowledge that their students had about the environment, including the connection between food production and climate change, and the history of environmental disasters including Love Canal and Bhopal. They also discussed the existence of environmental science/studies programs at their campuses, but the isolation of these programs from the rest of the schools. We came to a few conclusions about the role of higher education in our session (and the conference as a whole):
– Incorporation of sustainability concepts into classes other than those in environmental science/studies programs is not only possible, but necessary to making students more well-rounded as they enter a world facing ecological crises.
– If students learn about sustainability within their field of study, they are likely to take those concepts into their future jobs. Ideally, this would mean the next generation of bankers, businessmen and women, scientists of all stripes, educators, and so on will view the world through the lens of the need for sustainability.
– And most importantly, if higher education is not involved in sustainability, it is not performing its role as higher education.

Louisiana Voucher System Under Fire From the Department of Justice

/ Gregory Clark / Leave a comment

For those who have not been following this lawsuit, the federal government is claiming students in Louisiana are being racially segregated because of the state’s voucher system. What appears to be happening in the lead-up to the actual hearing (later this month) is a lot of political maneuvering to shape the conversation. In addition to a debate over whether or not segregation is occurring, both camps are using the attention to debate whether or not voucher systems (and private schools, generally) are beneficial. It is out of the scope of this post to discuss the merits of private education and vouchers.

However, I think a conversation about school choice, and the potential segregation that occurs as a result, is worth bringing up. As with many perceived problems in education research the answers depend on who you ask, what the specific question you ask is, and where you look for answers. The case for integration is no different.

Syracuse’s own MPA professor Bifulco finds integration to be endemic to voucher programs in North Carolina. Many people, and the Department of Justice, are claiming the same effects are happening in Louisiana. Is this a horrifying problem that must be addressed and changed immediately? I am not so sure, and here is why.

Children and parents are voluntarily choosing the schools to attend. This is not just a case of white parents taking their kids out of schools because they don’t like the racial composition (a problem many believe to be larger than it is). The families who are using the vouchers, those exercising choice, are predominantly minorities. In many places where voucher programs are set up, those eligible to use them are students from poor families and students attending failing schools; this means the students are heavily skewed toward non-white. Indeed, those who are “suffering” from segregation are minorities voluntarily segregating themselves. I’m not saying this cannot still be considered a problem, or that measures should not be taken to rectify the situation. I’m merely pointing out that the issue is probably not as sinister as the DOJ may have us believe.

Moreover, this lawsuit appears politically motivated. No schools are the same. Never, in the history of public education, have schools been the same. The control of schools at the local level has always resulted in providing unequal education to students. It is no secret that rich towns have better schools than inner cities. And these “rich” schools rarely have the same racial composition as “poor” schools. It is not a school, district, or state policy to racially segregate students, but it happens. Why isn’t the DOJ and the Obama Administration going after the hundreds of neighboring cities with racial and economic disparities for lack of integration? Probably because the schools aren’t part of a ‘school choice’ system. This difference in income and racial composition between schools is only more extreme when comparing public vs. private schools. Fairlie finds racial sorting to be very high in this case. Why isn’t the DOJ calling for an end to private schooling? Probably because they know the American public would not allow such a removal of freedom of choice.

In my opinion, Democrats generally protest school choice for a whole host of valid, political reasons (as numerous as the valid reasons for supporting school choice). But in this case and many others, using loaded words and ideas like segregation and racism are tactics which are used to mislead the public. If they really cared about the racial composition of schools, they would have MUCH bigger fish to fry than vouchers. It just so happens that their current ‘fish’ pisses off a lot of their core voters, teachers.

Freakonomics on College, Fake Diplomas, and the Value of Real Ones

/ Matthew Clemente / 1 Comment

Freakonomics on College, Fake Diplomas, and the Value of Real Ones

The Freakonomics Radio Podcast, recently re-ran an episode titled, “Freakonomics Goes to College: Part 1.”  Here is description of the podcast:

The gist: what is the true value these days of a college education?

(You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)

As you can tell from the title, this is the first episode of a two-parter. There is so much to say about college that we could have done ten episodes on the topic, but we held ourselves back to two.

The key guests in this first episode are, in order of appearance:

+ Allen Ezell, a former FBI agent who co-authored the book Degree Mills: The Billion-dollar Industry That Has Sold over a Million Fake Diplomas.

+ Karl Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff for President George W. Bush. Rove, it turns out, is not a college graduate. He is, however, a published author — of Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight.

+ David Card, an economist at Berkeley who has done a lot of research and writing on the value of education.