Tomorrow (January 19th) is the deadline for phase-1 Race to the Top applications.  As our readers know, the so-called Race to the Top program is a federal program that aims to disperse around $4 billion in education funding to states.  We describe the program here, and we’ve been worried for months about Arkansas’ ability to compete against other states that seem to be more enthusiastic and knowledgeable about education reform.  While some states have been busy tuning-up their engines,  it seems that Arkansas is still fumbling around in the trunk looking for a pair of jumper-cables.

We’ll review Arkansas’ application once it becomes public.  In the meantime, the group Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) has been keeping tabs on what other states are doing.  You can check out DFER’s own blog here.  They’re doing a great job of monitoring RTTP activity.  Here’s a sample from their January 18 post:

After months of legislative work around the country, states are scrambling to meet the Jan. 19th deadline for legislative and policy changes as part of the “Race To The Top.” What gets negotiated and signed in the next 12 days will largely determine which states cross the finish line with the kind of gusto it is going to take to win some serious federal dinero for public schools.

California – Lawmakers there yesterday shifted power away from bureaucrats and foot-dragging school boards and placed it in the hands of parents, passing new “Race To The Top” legislation which allows parents from failing schools to yank their kids out and/or vote as parents to take drastic measures at their local zoned schools. Kudos to our friends, Ben Austin, at Parent Revolution, and Sen. Gloria Romero (our September education reformer of the month – http://www.actblue.com/page/dferseptember09) for their inspiring leadership on this one. The Governator will quickly sign the bills into law to make the Jan. 19th RTTT deadline.

Massachusetts — Early this morning, the House passed RTTT legislation that will allow Boston school officials to shutter failing schools and convert them to new charter schools, without having to allow the teachers union to decide which schools could and couldn’t be closed. Boston Mayor Tom Menino told the Boston Globe “this bill was made in Heaven.” (Which probably means we better read the fine print!) The Senate previously passed its version of the RTTT bills and conferencing on the two bills was expected to start today. Legislators were on track to pass the bills into law by Jan. 14^th, so that the state would have ample time to prepare its application by the Jan. 19^th deadline.

New York — Regular DFER readers know we have been frustrated for much of the year by the Empire State’s unwillingness to take the reform competition seriously – particularly at a time when the state’s coffers are beyond bare. But things have been moving quickly in the last month, starting with bold action by the Board of Regents in passing a series of K-12 reform recommendations. The Senate and Assembly are looking at what they can do to allow New York to apply, and earlier today Gov. David Paterson introduced a program bill that would eliminate the cap on charter schools, kill a law that bans using student performance in teacher tenure decisions, and allow the Regents to take control of persistently low-performing schools, among other things. The next week will be very interesting, as New York decides whether it wants to try to take the necessary steps to become a national leader. Stay tuned.

Tennessee — Gov. Phil Bredesen is calling for a special session of the legislature next week in order to change several laws in time for the Jan. 19^th application deadline. “The (the feds) don’t want any promises for the future, they want things in law,” Bredesen told reporters. One change high on Bredesen’s wish-list: a change in state law to allow the use of student achievement in teacher evaluations.

Education Week recently released their annual Quality Counts Report. You can see their nifty graphics here and some more detailed information here. Arkansas received a B- this year (it’s worth mentioning that we received the same grade last year as well). To create a report like this it is necessary to define what quality in education is. It’s obvious from the data items included in this report that, for the Ed Week editors, quality is almost entirely about inputs. While it is true that better ingredients tend to make a better product, good ingredients are not sufficient. You could give a bad cook the highest quality ingredients but the end product would still be inedible.  Further, education research has shown time and again that the inputs we think matter are at best loosely correlated with achievement. So why focus on inputs?… because it is easy. While I think the right inputs are important, I would much rather see that Arkansas’ students are achieving at the highest level regardless of what input mix got us there.

And what does our achievement grade look like? Ed Week gives us a D where it counts!

Stuart Buck wrote a great critique of the Quality Counts Report over at Jay Greene’s blog last year. You can see it here. But for those of you who are lazy here is a little taste.

…imagine a state that managed to produce A-level achievement even though its population was poor and disadvantaged (and thus got a lower grade on the “Chances for Success” measure).  Under any rational grading system, we should give that state the highest possible rating.  But the Quality Counts method would actually downgrade the state for having too many poor children.  By the same token, Quality Counts would upgrade a poor-achieving state that happened to have a privileged and rich student population, even though that state’s education system would obviously be far more incompetent and inefficient.  If anything, the “Chances for Success” ranking should be counted inversely as compared to all the other measures of a state’s education system.

Margaret Raymond from CREDO writes on the Ed Next blog that the variation in the report’s Chance-for-Success Index can almost entirely be explained by state demographic changes rather than changes in education quality. Here is the money quote.

Until the measures that are incorporated into the Quality Counts ratings are more clearly tied to education outcomes, we are likely to see continued shifts in rankings that bear little resemblance to actual changes in education quality.

Margaret and her CREDO team present revised estimates of the index here. Arkansas moves up ten spots, from 45th to 35th, but is still in the bottom third of the ranking.

Anyway you look at it, Arkansas has a lot of work to do to improve the quality of its schools.

As we’ve seen, there’s reason to suspect that Arkansas benchmark tests may have been subject to some shenanigans in recent years — at least the Arkansas Department of Education hasn’t shown otherwise. Now comes a New York Times story that highlights criticisms of Arkansas’ high school algebra exam:

Also among those states using end-of-course exams is Arkansas, where seventh, eighth or ninth graders will this year for the first time be required to pass the end-of-course Algebra I test to qualify for a diploma.

Critics of Arkansas’s system say it fails to show true math proficiency because students have only to score 24 out of 100 to pass the test and those who fail will be granted two additional chances to take the test. After that, they can take a computerized tutorial that is followed by a test.

Tom W. Kimbrell, the commissioner for the Department of Education in Arkansas, rejected that criticism.

“The alternate options are not some escape valve that everyone gets to use,” Dr. Kimbrell said. “They are mechanisms that require the student and teachers to go back and actually learn the material.”

On the other hand, while I’m all in favor of making sure that (say) fifth graders learn all of the basic math skills, I’m a bit more dubious that all high schoolers really need to know algebra (let alone geometry). For example, I’ve never even heard of an actual adult who needed to use the quadratic formula — other than high school math teachers. So maybe it’s no great harm if the high school exit exams are dumbed down.

The so-called Race to the Top is up and running and approaching the home stretch.  We will be covering it in more detail here on Mid-Riffs in the coming days, but here are the preliminary guidelines:

WHAT? The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Race to the Top

HOW MUCH? About $4 Billion (with a B!) total to be awarded in two phases

HOW MUCH for us? The Feds have listed some non-binding guidelines to help states develop budgets — Arkansas should apply for somewhere between $60-$175 million

WHEN? Phase 1 applications due from states on January 19 (next week!); Phase 1 winners will be announced in April.  (Phase 2 apps due in June; winners announced in Spetember)

WHY? In addition to providing an economic stimulus, these funds are intended to encourage state departments of education (and hopefully our ADE) to engage in some out-of-the-box (jargon alert!) thinking and some ambitious reforms.  According to the federal website, the purpose of the Race to the Top (RTTP) is:

Through Race to the Top, we are asking States to advance reforms around four specific areas:

• Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;
• Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;
• Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and
• Turning around our lowest-achieving schools.

Awards in Race to the Top will go to States that are leading the way with ambitious yet achievable plans for implementing coherent, compelling, and comprehensive education reform. Race to the Top winners will help trail-blaze effective reforms and provide examples for States and local school districts throughout the country to follow as they too are hard at work on reforms that can transform our schools for decades to come.

HOW ABOUT US?

Arkansas Commissioner Tom Kimbrell sent this 19-page memo to Arkansas Superintendents last week to encourage participation in the Arkansas application.  From our quick read, the memo asks the Sup’s to pledge allegiance to the general stated principles of the RTTP (data are good, find effective teachers, etc..) and does not ask for much in the way of specific reforms or plans.

However, we will read more carefully and study this more in the days to come.  We will also look at what some other states are doing to see if we seem to be in a good competitive position.  According to his memo, Commissioner Kimbrell expects fewer than 5 states to be funded in this first phase, so it may take something extraordinary to bring these resources home to the Natural State.  Stay tuned!

While many of us were hibernating or visiting the mall Santas, a familiar story was published in Arkansas Democrat Gazette about the gaps in teacher salaries between higher-paying and lower-paying districts.  In fact, this story was also linked to the website of the nationally influential Education Week.

The story begins with this provocative line:  ”The gap between the haves and the have-nots among Arkansas schoolteachers has widened.”

Then, there are a few salary tables along with the sympathetic comments from legislators, one of whom bemoaned, “It’s very unfair and unfortunate that people can make twice as much as people doing the same thing with the same credentials with the same experience.”

You might ask …. what’s the problem here?  There are a few.  First, there is little if any mention of student learning; presumably, the public should care about teacher salaries because of the potential link to the quality of the schooling delivered to our children.  However, the tone of the article  feels much more like we should worry about this for the sake of our teachers.

Moreover, the article is laden with flawed reporting and erroneous implications.  Allow me to briefly summarize the key points of the story and simultaneously describe the associated problems.

1.  The teacher salary group is defined as the difference between the highest average district salary and the lowest.

This is not a good way to define any such gap — average salary is a function both of the pay scale in a district and the age of the teaching force in that district.  Thus, generous districts with younger teaching forces will have lower average salaries than will lower-paying districts with older faculty.

Moreover, defining the gap simply by the 2 districts at the high and low end of the scale is not very meaningful.  These districts might be extreme outliers. A more thoughtful strategy for assessing the gap might be to focus on the districts in the bottom 10% of average salary to those in the top 10%.  This measure of the gap, at least, would not be wholly defined by 2 individual districts.

2.  The article then presents a table of the average salaries of 20 districts — the 10 highest and 10 lowest — and includes a column for enrollment.  This shows that all of the high-average salary districts are large and all of the low-average salary districts are small.  The article then puts forth the idea that this is because of higher funding in the larger districts and the choice (and ability) of some larger districts to levy additional local property taxes.

Indeed, it is not necessarily fair to conclude that our state policies unfairly disadvantage small districts, as this article seems to imply.  In fact, the article does not focus on the actual data which show that smaller districts receive additional state support to the extent that, on average, small districts spend more per pupil than do large districts in Arkansas.  This deserves repeating — small districts actually have more dollars per pupil than do large districts.  For example, in the DemGaz article, the average per-pupil expenditures for the 10 high-average salary large districts was about $8,200, as compared to $8,500 for the lower-salary smaller districts!

So, if we need to remedy the differential salary levels, we should at least proceed with evidence in hand.  We can’t fix this by simply ensuring that the poor small low-average salary districts get as much funding as the bigger districts do — they already get more!

3.  Finally, while the article relays that this is a difficult issue without an obvious answer (true!), it perpetuates the concern that teachers are not fairly compensated and that we should base fairness on equal pay for equal experience and credentials.

This is so 20th Century!  These days, we realize that all teachers, even similarly experienced and credentialed ones, are NOT doing the exact same jobs.  Fairness does not mandate that they all be paid equally.  In fact, this type of a pay plan is “unfair” to the hardest-working and most effective teachers, right?  If we really care about students in rural and poor areas, we should figure out who the best teachers are and pay THEM a lot more to live and work in these areas.

Furthermore, these analyses, which simply compare the nominal pay of one district to another, ignore one very important fact — costs of living differ widely among districts within the state.  It may cost more to live in Rogers than in Caddo Hills … any true analyses of a salary gap must pay attention to this.

***   ***   ***   ***

So, here is what makes me cranky about these cursory “analyses” focusing on our “paltry” teacher pay.  They perpetuate the common belief that teacher pay in Arkansas is our primary problem and that the equity we should focus on is equal pay for all teachers.  Shouldn’t the focus be on equal opportunities for all students?   Indeed, it may well be the case that, to be “fair” to our students, policymakers are going to need to create intentional inequities in teacher pay (for example, for more effective teachers, for teachers of math or special ed, or for teachers in hard-to-staff geographic areas) so that our students are served by the best possible teachers in all areas.

Our friend Michael McShane had a recent op-ed in the Kansas City Star that dishes out some tough McLovin to the Kansas City School District for fudging their dropout rates in order to make them look better.

KC School District’s dropout rate doesn’t add up

I know we’ve been talking a lot ( too much) about charter schools and the situation in Little Rock lately, but the editorial in Monday’s Dem-Gaz packed such a punch that it deserves a mention, especially because I don’t think it ran in the Northwest edition.  Here are some excerpts:

Imagine that. A group of private citizens in Southwest Little Rock wants to open a college prep school for young men. How dare they! Who do these people think they are-Americans? Concerned citizens and parents who want their sons to have the best education they can get? Maybe they’re just school patrons who believe there ought to be a school dedicated to making men of boys. And well-educated,courteous, hard-working, decent men at that.

What nerve. These people don’t know how things are done ’round heah. Why can’t they be content with their failed schools? Like so many other families in America’s inner cities. Don’t they know their place?…

…The upwardly mobile in these latitudes once had to contend only with police dogs and water hoses; now they’re up against a far more formidable force: a plague of pettifogging lawyers who’ve made a highly successful career of thwarting any kind of progress or justice in public education…

…The lawyers also want the state to tell the proposed charter school it can accept only low-income students. That way, the regular public schools could hope to keep the better-off students captive. What does it say about the quality of a school district if the only way it can keep its most prized students is to fence them in? Nothing good.

Maybe the lawyers could ask the state to put barbed wire around the school and barricades at the front doors. Also, in back. In case some kid tries try to sneak off the reservation in hopes of a better education…

…What this country needs is a clear, simple amendment to the Constitution of the United States that would grant the equal protection of the laws to all, including families who ask for nothing more than a chance for their kid to attend a good charter school.

Oh. You say we already have such an amendment, the Fourteenth? And even a Civil Rights Act that forbids such discrimination on the grounds of race?

Then how come those laws aren’t being enforced? Because, as the lawyers and judges and other intellectuals all agree, those laws don’t mean what they say.

Wouldn’t it be grand if they did? Wouldn’t it be something if this country had a new birth of freedom, even in Little Rock, Arkansas?

The Arkansas State Board of Education approved the Little Rock Urban Collegiate Public Charter School for Young Men(LRUCP) on Monday making it the only new charter to gain board approval this year. The school will aim to serve underperforming children who are in danger of or have already dropped out.

While the State Board unanimously (7-0) passed the charter, it was not without conditions.  Heeding the advice of the Little Rock School District (I blogged about their recommendations here) the Board placed two stipulations on the new charter.

1. The school must undergo a 1-year review
2. The school must serve a student body that is 80% poor and 80% who score Basic or below on the State’s Benchmark tests

Board members Brenda Gullett and Ben Mays were the two most vocal opponents of the charter.  Clinton veterinarian Ben Mays raised questions about the completeness of the applicant’s paperwork.  Ms. Gullett seemed to be reading from the LRSD playbook, raising questions about the charter’s effect on desegregation.

I would be interested to hear how a school which hopes to have an enrollment of a few hundred would affect the desegregation efforts of a district with an enrollment of 25k plus.  But that is beside the point.

The real point here is that it sets a bad precedent to create schools which are legally mandated to be segregated, in this case by poverty status and achievement. The State already has a charter approval and review process which provides the State Board with rather broad powers.  If the school does not fulfill their mission, the State Board can revoke their charter.  Any further charter restrictions are unnecessary, and imposing them may lead to legal challenges.

In this specific case, I question the legality of creating a public school which is required to serve only poor, low achieving kids.  Throughout this debate, the District and their lawyer have continually conflated poverty and low performance with race.  This practice is extremely disappointing, and it is even more of a disappointment to see our State Board of Education tacitly endorse this backward way of thinking.

UPDATE:

Looks like the Dem Gaz editorial staff agrees with us.  Check out their opinion piece here.

Here is the Dem Gaz article about the State Board’s action yesterday.  Looks like several people share my concerns about the legality of the conditions placed on the new charter.

A story in today’s Northwest Arkansas Times reports that Arkansas’ charter school law is weak relative to other states.  The Center for Education Reform gave the state’s charter law a “D.”  The only states to receive “A”s were California and Minnesota. Here is an excerpt from the NWA Times article:

Arkansas’ charter school law doesn’t fare well in national reports — at least two such reports in recent months — which comes as no surprise to several who follow charter school development in the state and around the country.

Jay Greene, who heads the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, wasn’t surprised by the “D” letter grade given to the charter school law by the Center for Education Reform, a national nonprofit organization that promotes charter schools and school choice.

Arkansas is one of 13 states to receive Ds from the Center for Education Reform. The state ranked 31st among the 40 states which allow charter schools.

“Arkansas has a very weak law,” Greene said Wednesday, citing the level of funding, the low number of charters operating in the state and the fact that Arkansas has only a single authorizer — the Arkansas Board of Education — that can approve charter schools.”

The good news? We are still ahead of Mississippi, who ranked weakest in the nation.

We have been critical of the law and the State Board’s implementation of it.  You can check out our Op-Ed in the Dem-Gaz here and a couple of our previous blog posts  here and here.  It seems we have been driving the charter school conversation inside Arkansas as of late.

Ok, just one more charter school post, and then we’ll put this topic aside for a while.

Little Rock School District lawyer Chris Heller has apparently secured the services of a promoter.  Or at least that’s the way it appears when every time Heller says or does anything it is immediately picked up and praised by the folks over at the Arkansas Times.  Max and his crew love this guy, and Heller keeps the information flowing.

And yes, the irony of our also posting about Heller’s every move is not lost on me, but here I go anyway.

Max’s most recently fulfilled his role by posting a document written by Heller providing recommendations to the State Board of Education with regard to a proposed Little Rock charter school.  The school in question, the Little Rock Urban Collegiate Public Charter School for Young Men (LRUCP), would aim to serve males who are at risk of dropping out of school.

In section eight (pg. 23) of this document Mr. Heller proposes nine conditions he feels the State Board of Education should place on the LRUCP charter. See four of the nine below.

1. Student recruitment efforts must be directed toward low-achievement students.
2. During the student registration process, the school must provide LRSD, NLRSD and PCSSD with weekly updates of their students who have applied for admission to the school.
3. At least 80 percent of new enrollees each year must qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and/or be performing at the basic level or below on the Arkansas Benchmark Exam.
4. The school must require parents to sign a “contract” agreeing that the student remain at the school for the entire school year.

I find these recommendations a little odd given the district’s previous claims about charter schools.  LRSD has routinely made two arguments against charter schools.  First they claim that charters increase segregation, or at the very least impede LRSDs desegregation efforts.  We have questioned their evidence of this claim, or lack there of, in this space many times before.  And second, in a related claim they say that charters dump their bad kids back on the district.  Charter schools cream the best and leave the rest.

Now, in a surprising about-face, LRSD and Heller have reversed their stance on both segregation and dumping with the four conditions listed above.  LRSD indicate they are all for charter schools as long as they are only used as a dumping ground for the district’s unwanted students.  Heller’s proposal would create a school that would be nearly completely segregated by income and achievement, and not only that, but he would also have the parents of these kids sign a “contract” to make sure they don’t come back to LRSD.  It must be strange for a lawyer who has built a career on civil rights issues to find himself first arguing against providing educational opportunities for black urban kids and then to make recommendations which would in essence create a segregated school.

I do not know if the proposed charter school will be able to deliver on the promises of their proposal, but shouldn’t they be allowed to try and serve students LRSD has failed without preconditions?  If the school does not serve their students well or violates their charter in some way, the State Board already has the power to revoke the charter.  Why complicate the situation with further, utterly unnecessary, conditions?

UPDATE:  Edited for clarity.