If you haven’t seen the film, this would be a great opportunity to see a free screening with other interesting people.  If you have seen it, the panel discussion planned for after the film should be a real treat.  Here’s the UA press release:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Waiting for Superman, an award-winning documentary examining the crisis of public education in America, will be screened Sept. 15 on the University of Arkansas campus as part of this year’s lecture series presented by the department of education reform. A panel discussion will follow.

Davis Guggenheim, who also directed An Inconvenient Truth, takes a comprehensive look at the nation’s education system and its failings in Waiting for Superman, while telling the stories of five families who are determined to give their children a chance at academic success. In the process, Guggenheim takes on the issues of teachers’ unions, entrenched school bureaucracies and the controversial promise of public charter schools. 

After the screening, which begins at 6 p.m. in the Union Theater at the Arkansas Union, education experts Howard Fuller and Christopher Heller will debate education reform issues. Reed Greenwood, former dean of the College of Education and Health Professions, will moderate the discussion.

“Waiting for Superman has sparked a national discussion about education reform,” said Jay P. Greene, head of the department of education reform and holder of an endowed chair. ”We wanted to continue that discussion in Arkansas by bringing Howard Fuller and Chris Heller together to share their different perspectives as we screen the movie.”

Fuller holds the rank of Distinguished Professor of education and is director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University. He was formerly superintendent of schools in Milwaukee and chaired the Charter School Review Committee for the city of Milwaukee.

Fuller, co-founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, has long been recognized as a pioneer in education reform and is one of the nation’s leading advocates for providing low-income children with educational options.

Heller, an attorney with the Friday, Eldredge and Clark firm in Little Rock, works primarily in the area of education law. As attorney for the Little Rock School District, Heller has challenged the legality of charter schools in central Arkansas.

Hard to believe, but rumors are swirling that tomorrow will bring a major development in the case, including the immediate release of 2 of the 3.  After all these years, I’m hesitant to believe it…but hopeful.

See here.

There has been a great deal of media attention over the past several months focused on the question of whether Universities should be paying salaries or stipends to student-athletes.  Some, including Jay Paterno (the son of Penn State football icon Joe Paterno) have opined that the players are already getting a great deal that other students around campus “would gladly take”.   Many others argue that top-level college sports is indeed big business, but relatively little money flows down to the athletes.  This question has recently become even more interesting as big-name football programs like USC and Ohio State have been sanctioned for payments to players or profit-seeking activities by the players that are against NCAA regulations.

So, what’s the truth?  A basketball-buddy of mine, who is himself an aficionado of college sports, Flint Harris added his $.02 to this debate recently on his Holy Turf web site (quite a good site — check it out).  Flint’s article sheds useful light on this question by simply providing the data regarding how much money athletes actually receive (or can receive within the existing rule structure) during their college career.  In my view, any discussion is more useful with real data as the foundation.  It turns out, according to Flint, that players can receive approximately $17K each year in living, eating, and clothing expenses (this does not include scholarship money that goes toward the cost of tuition and books and fees).

This information is helpful, but does not by itself settle the question of whether players should be paid additional dollars for their efforts.  But it does allow us to dismiss the exaggerated claims that we simply must pay stipends otherwise these players can’t afford to buy a pizza or go on a date.  This seems not to be the case.  However, it certainly seems reasonable that college athletes, like most college students, may mismanage their funds and at times find themselves out of pocket money.  But this situation, in and of itself, is not a justification for paying players stipends.

……….

To read the entire essay … surf over to:

http://www.holyturf.com/2011/08/ncaaownkids/

There is a widespread belief in education circles that the grades that students “earn” in college (and also in graduate school) may not represent the level of academic achievement that they once did.  Observers of K12 education in Arkansas have been paying attention to this issue for a while.  Indeed, our state has published a few “grade inflation” reports (first in 2005) in which researchers have identified schools where many students would earn A’s in their coursework but would nonetheless earn low marks on the state’s End-of-Course (EOC) exams in the same subject.  The most recent “grade-inflation” report identified many Arkansas schools where the students’ grades in Geometry and Algebra simply did not match up to their performance on the standardized assessments.

Source: Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy

The Economix blog on the New York Times web site today highlights this problem in higher education.  It turns out that, over time, students in college are far more likely to earn A’s, or at least professors are far more likely to give A’s, than in previous years.  The blog is highlighting the work of two authors —  Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy — who have been studying the concept of grade inflation for years.

It seems clear, from the data provided by the authors and illustrated in some neat graphs over at the Economix site, that it is becoming easier to get an A.  Should this bother us? Well, according to the authors, as grading standards may become even looser in the coming years, it will become increasingly difficult for graduate schools and employers to distinguish between excellent, good and mediocre students.  This seems to be problematic.

More disturbing, they argue, are the potential deleterious effects on educational outcomes from these declining standards and expectations.

“When college students perceive that the average grade in a class will be an A, they do not try to excel. It is likely that the decline in student study hours, student engagement, and literacy are partly the result of diminished academic expectations.”

If you’re not familiar with Salman Khan, you should be.  His vision for changing the way education is delivered is potentially game changing. He’s basically offering organized online educational content for free to anyone with an internet connection. Parents can create an account on the Khan Academy website and use the resources there to provide video instruction and assessment to their children while monitoring their progress.  And it’s all FREE.  Here’s a recent appearance he made on the Colbert Report.

Excuses, excuses ……  It happens in every walk of life.  It’s difficult to hold to high standards and keep expectations up …  It’s hard not to make excuses when obstacles get in our way.

Our favorite baseball team would be great, except …

• they keep battling one injury after another, and ….
• they can’t seem to get a fair shake from the umpires, and …
• teams like the Yankees just have too much money!

Or, my sales division would be doing a great job this year, except …

• this economy is making all of our customers skittish, and …
• new government regulations are slowing us down, and …
• upper management keeps cutting our budgets.

And, yes, this even happens in schools.  In fact, our own school district is really great, and we would be doing great, except …

• the state policymakers keep tying our hands with silly regulations, and …
• those tests are wasting our time and killing our creativity, and …
• the kids that come to our schools are just not ready or able to learn!

As these made-up examples illustrate, the “victim” mindset is by no means only found in schools.  We can find it everywhere and probably all engage in “excuse-making” to some degree in our own lives.  This is why it has been so refreshing over the past few weeks to engage in the Spotlights on Success project for the OEP.

In this project, we were able to observe and speak with educators and school leaders at five schools across Arkansas with wonderful records of performance, despite facing obstacles that have slowed down schools for years.  Very few schools have figured out how to effectively educate students who are just learning English, or racially diverse student groups, or students burdened with substantial economic disadvantages.

But these schools are figuring it out! And they’re not making excuses.  They didn’t spend their time talking about the problems that the kids brought with them to school, or the numerous requirements levied on them by state policymakers, or any other external challenges.  Instead, they talked about teaching better lessons, about working together and working harder, and mostly about improving the lives of their students by delivering a quality education and expecting the best from the kids.

We were lucky to get to spend a few hours in these schools.  Here’s hoping more schools follow their lead.  If you’d like to read more, visit our site.  Or, better yet, visit the 2011 Summer Leadership Institute, sponsored by the University of Central Arkansas, THIS FRIDAY from 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM at the Brewer-Hegeman Conference Center at UCA.

Bravo to these five “No-Excuses” Schools in AR that are recognized in the OEP report … and to the many others that are not recognized here but continue to look for success rather than for excuses!

– Gary Ritter, Director of UA OEP

You may recall the case of Kimberly Williams-Bolar, the Ohio mom who was jailed last February for lying about her address in order to get her children into a better school.  Now a homeless Bridgeport, Connecticutt mother has been arrested for doing the same thing.  How can a homeless person lie about their address, you might ask?  Well, apparently the homeless shelter where she had been sleeping was in a particular low-performing school district, so she used the address of her child’s babysitter to get into a better school.  Now she’s in jail, her child has been removed from the good school, and the babysitter has been evicted.  The mayor of Bridgeport, Richard Moccia, (you can just call him Dick) said “This now sends a message to other parents that may have been living in other towns and registering their kids with phony addresses.”  Here’s more from the Stamford Advocate.

It’s too bad that the obviously-flawed Western Michigan study targeting KIPP received so much media attention.  Author Gary Miron (Fellow at NEPC) was covered in Education Week, the New York Times, and numerous other lower-profile outlets throughout cyberspace. It was even covered here in our Democrat Gazette on April 1 (“Study assails charter school network’s feats; KIPP calls data flawed”).  KIPP provided its official response here very quickly after the Miron report came out.

So, who should we believe?  Where should we turn for the truth? KIPP – of course, it seems clear that KIPP has an interest in presenting a positive picture.  As for Miron –  it is at least the case that Miron’s past work has been critical of charters with potentially shaky methodology and that he belongs to groups that are typically antagonistic to charters and choice-based reform (Fellow at NEPC). Given all of that, let’s skip past the criticisms of Miron and the responses of KIPP and look for answers elsewhere, by somebody with no dog in this hunt.

Fortunately, just this past week, I was at AERA (American Educational Research Association) in New Orleans and attended two presentations at which researchers from Mathematica Policy Research , or MPR, (a well respected third party research firm) presented results from its multi-year evaluation of KIPP schools across the country.  Here are the key findings, taken verbatim from report:

KIPP Schools Get a Thumbs-Up from Mathematica!

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In the first report from that evaluation, “Student Characteristics and Achievement in 22 KIPP Middle Schools” (Tuttle et al. 2010a), we presented preliminary findings from a matched, longitudinal analysis designed to estimate KIPP’s effect on student achievement in a nationwide sample, the first study of its kind. Students entering these 22 KIPP middle schools typically had prior achievement levels that were lower than the average for the local school districts. Still, for most of the KIPP schools studied, quasi-experimental impacts on students’ state assessment scores in mathematics (18 of 22) and reading (15 of 22) were positive, statistically significant, and educationally substantial.

***

AND, regarding alleged high rates of attrition:

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Second, the report examined rates of attrition from KIPP schools relative to attrition from nearby traditional public schools. The data in that report showed that students do not leave KIPP middle schools before completion (finishing eighth grade) at higher rates than do students in local district schools. The cumulative attrition rate (defined below) in KIPP was 34 percent, compared to 33 or 35 percent, depending on how one defines the comparison group of “local district schools.”

***

Mathematica will report next year on a random assignment study of KIPP schools to further investigate the academic impacts of KIPP.  But as of now, it looks like KIPP is doing well by its students.  And these good results are not due to smoke, mirrors, or attrition; it looks like these results stem from strong leadership, great teaching, and hard work!

Congratulations KIPPsters!

Each spring, there are a few certainties across the US.  Many of us will procrastinate and hide from our tax forms.  Others will get out in the nice weather to ride bikes, run, or otherwise attempt to get in physical shape while enjoying the Spring air.  At the same time, our public schools will be testing our students’ mental fitness with annual state standardized tests (in Arkansas, we have our benchmark exams). And the information provided by these exams is useful and important for students, parents, educators, and the general public. Contrary to claims of critics, the results don’t tell us whether our children “test well”; they tell us if our students have learned what we hoped they would learn.

Unfortunately, the Spring air is also filled with cries of the critics bemoaning the “oppressive” standardized testing imposed upon our young students and claim (with NO evidence) that it is ruining our once-great system of public schools.  But don’t worry … these claims are either exaggerated or just plain wrong.

First, critics will claim that our children have to sit for weeks of mind-numbing standardized exams. In fact, when we last counted up the actual examination hours, here’s what we found:

“In fact, even the students in our most heavily tested grades (5 and 7) participate in standardized assessments for only 12 hours of the approximately 900 instructional hours availed to the students each year.  This represents only about 1% of total instructional time. As a point of comparison, state law mandates that 5th grade students spend 36 hours each year in physical education classes.”

OK, you might say, but what about all of that “teaching to the test” stuff I hear so much about? In a recent essay, Stuart Buck and I considered the concept of “teaching to the test” in Arkansas.  When considering this idea, it is important to understand two key points:

1. Arkansas  tests have been specifically designed to test those skills and subjects that are outlined in the Arkansas Curricular  Frameworks, AND
2. These frameworks have been developed by Arkansas policymakers (along with committees of educators and other members of the  community) to outline what our educators and citizens think children ought to be  learning in each grade (some version of this happens in every state);

It seems reasonable that the job of teachers is to teach a broad range of academic content (much of which will end up on the test) outlined in the Curricular Frameworks.  Ideally, the tests should require no additional preparation beyond what the teachers and students do each day.  Indeed, as many good teachers have shared with us in interviews, they should not do ANYTHING different because of the existence of exams.  Good teachers will teach to the curricular standards, whether or not there are state exams.

Unfortunately, some educators might choose to “teach to the test” in harmful ways. Critics of testing will share stories of teachers who put their students to sleep with repetitious drilling of one test item after another; we hear of schools in which students might be encouraged to “stay home” on test day; and we even hear of outright cheating on the state assessments so that school results can appear better than they might have been.  Of course, these practices are unhelpful for our students and even unethical. Nevertheless, the gamesmanship and cheating reported each year are isolated examples — we have no evidence that these problems are widespread. In any case, the problem here is the bad pedagogy, not the exams.

How strong can an argument be if it is based on a small minority of teachers who adopt poor practices in an effort to “beat the tests”? These teachers — and the chorus of testing critics — are missing the point.

The best way to “beat the test” is to spend the academic year ensuring that our students have the skills and content-knowledge they need to score well on them.  And that isn’t called gamesmanship, cheating, or even “teaching to the test” …. that’s just called teaching, and good teachers do it every day!

The defenders of the status quo in the heated debate over school reform have increasingly adopted a new strategy. Many of these folks — who incidentally criticize the “reformer” crowd for attacking teachers —  have decided that it is a good idea to attack KIPP schools. What would a critic say, you might ask, about the network of KIPP schools that spring up in the poorest of areas to serve the most disadvantaged of students and instill in them realistic dreams of success and college graduation??

Well, the argument goes, KIPP educators and students are succeeding because KIPP only takes on the best students (in these extremely disadvantaged areas).  That is,  KIPP’s success is due to high attrition and the fact that the “weakest” students leave.   This is not only silly, as has been shown by credible academic work, but it is also surprising and borders on mean-spirited.

Why would a researcher, who could choose to study anything, spend his or her time looking to poke holes in the good work done at KIPP? Many of us presumably got into this field of K12 education because we care about kids. Perhaps we worked in schools with disadvantaged students and thought we might make a more important positive impact for kids by attempting to influence policy for the better (my story). And, I imagine I am not the only one who sometimes feels far removed from the students who spurred me to enter this field … all of that to say, it is more than inspiring to marvel at the great work of dedicated educators working 12-hour days so that poor students can have access to post-secondary education (the same access that researchers like me take for granted for our own children… and likely so do you if you are the type of person who does research or reads a blog for fun!).

Motivation aside, if you haven’t heard, the recent KIPP-critique was published by Gary Miron of Western Michigan University and colleagues; it is entitled:  ”What Makes KIPP Work? A Study of Student Characteristics, Attrition and School Finance“.  Miron claims that KIPP succeeds because of abnormally high attrition and abnormally high levels of school funding.  Sadly, KIPP officials had to be spend some time last week rebutting some of this silliness and did so coherently and concisely — and graciously — on their own web site.   The holes in Miron’s argument are obvious and easy to expose. He claims that KIPP suffers from high attrition by comparing the attrition rate at KIPP SCHOOLS to the same rate at the nearby school DISTRICTS.  Obviously, the appropriate comparison would be between schools and schools; Miron’s analysis ignores any mobility BETWEEN traditional public schools within a district and thus significantly understates the attrition rates within traditional public schools.

Miron may or may not be aware of this obvious flaw in research design – he previously published a report called “Schools Without Diversity ...” in which he criticized various charter schools for being far too racially segregated based on comparisons between charter SCHOOLS and traditional public school DISTRICTS.  Here, again, this analytic strategy neglects to consider the obvious racial segregation within individual traditional public schools.

Back to KIPP ….. it is one thing to have an intellectual debate on the various benefits and costs of charters in general.  However, it seems another thing altogether for those in our field, ostensibly working so that kids have better life opportunities, to put so much effort into explaining away the obviously good work of those smart and hard-working educators who serve KIPPsters across the country each and every day.  We academics and policy geeks can and should continue to argue about the details of school reform, but let’s not spend our time denigrating teachers and leaders who are doing each day what the rest of us are not — improving the lives of poor students.

And make no mistake about it — KIPP schools are doing just that.  If you like hard evidence with real numbers and scientifically rigorous comparisons, check out the recent study done by Mathematica  Policy Research.  The only knock against Mathematica is that their impartial research designs are so conservative that they almost never find positive results. But, here is what Mathematica found when applying a rigorous research design to KIPP:

“ For the vast majority of KIPP schools studied, impacts on students’ state assessment scores in mathematics and reading are positive, statistically significant, and educationally substantial. ”

And if you’re not into numbers and data, check out these journalistic accounts of the good work being done by KIPP … produced by typical news organizations, by no means school reformers or so-called enemies of public schools.  Try this story on PBS, or this one on MSNBC, or the video below by NBC.  Or, if you like more music, check out this KIPP Welcome Video.

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