I was reading the Arkansas Times Blog as it reported on a court filing in which Attorney Chris Heller argued, among other things, that the Little Rock School District’s efforts at racial integration were being hampered by charter schools.  Since most traditional public schools in big cities are already heavily racially segregated, I imagined that Heller would have an uphill battle in making his case.  So, I gave the filing a read to see what Heller would say.

It ends up that his arguments are so implausible that I am left with only one reaction, summed up perfectly by John McEnroe in perhaps his most famous on-court tantrum, when he screams to the official:  “You Cannot Be Serious!”

Attorney Heller – You Cannot Be Serious!

In Heller’s brief, filed on September 11 in US District Court, the Little Rock School District (LRSD) is listed as the plaintiff and raises a concern about whether the Pulaski County Special School District and North Little Rock School District are meeting their desegregation obligations.  So far, this is fine — a battle in court among three school districts is just not that interesting …. Until we get to page 2 of the brief and the following lines:

Both districts’ ability to meet their desegregation obligations may be negatively affected by the loss of students and funding caused by the proliferation of open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County. First, open-enrollment charter schools may be negatively affecting the racial balance of PCSSD schools. The Arkansas State Board of Education (“State Board”) has failed to impose racial balance requirements for open-enrollment charter schools necessary to ensure compliance with the 1989 Settlement Agreement. As a result, open-enrollment charter schools are some of the most racially segregated schools in Pulaski County.

Fortunately for Heller, he does not define what he means by “racially segregated” and thus he is free to make any charge he wishes.  However, once we constrain his argument by employing any reasonable definition of racial segregation, the conclusion any sensible person would reach is the opposite.

Let’s back up for a minute … there is a history in the debate over various types of school choice (charters included) of questions surrounding the potential segregative effects of choice.  The concern, essentially, is that if school systems provide parents any form of choice over schooling, parents and families may choose to self-segregate and sign up for schools attended by other families who look like themselves.  And this, the argument continues, is less desirable than the integrated traditional public schools in which parents cannot make that choice.  This argument hinges on 3 assumptions:

1.  Segregation (racial and economic) is bad. Agreed.  We believe that kids are better off (all else equal) if they attend schools that are representative of the community as a whole and are not segregated.

2.  If given the choice, families will choose segregation. Not so fast.  This may be true, or it may not be true. We believe (but of course are not sure) that most parents will choose the school that they believe provides the best education for the students.

3.  Traditional public schools are racially integrated. In most cases, this is dead wrong. In most large public school systems, and certainly in Pulaski County, the traditional public schools are VERY segregated.  This is because, of course, public school enrollment zones are connected to residential zones, which generally “segregate” citizens by their financial ability to purchase a home in that neighborhood.  Thus, traditional public schools are generally not well-integrated, either economically or racially.

Back to Heller’s claim.  Heller seems to argue that charters are even more segregated than the traditonal schools.  Seems unlikely, but let’s check it out.

We’ll start by employing a very reasonable definition for racial integration and segregation.  Since Heller is discussing the county, we will define a school’s level of racial integration by how close it comes to the racial composition of the county as a whole.  In 2008-09, approximately 66% of the public school students are minority students and approximately 34% are white students.  So, a well-integrated school in Pulaski County would be one that is roughly 1/3 white and 2/3 minority because this is representative of the overall county demographics.

Using this straightforward and reasonable measure, we sorted all the Pulaski County public schools based on how far they deviated from this hypothetical perfectly integrated school.  What do we find? Well, Heller is right to say that the Academics Plus Charter School in Maumelle is one of the most highly segregated (2nd on our list).  He also cites Dreamland Academy which serves roughly 96% minority students.

Unfortunately, what Heller omits from his filing is even more problematic.  In fact, there are 9 — yes NINE — traditional public schools in Little Rock district alone that are MORE segregated than the Dreamland charter that Heller highlighted.  In each of these traditional public schools – Stephens, Franklin, Geyer Springs, Wakefield, Cloverdale, McClellan, Washington, Watson, and Wilson - more than 96% of the student body are minority students.  These schools were racially segregated before charters entered the picture and remain segregated today.

After this simple review of the demographics of the traditional public schools in Little Rock and beyond, we see that only 2 of the 25 most segregated schools in the county are charters.  A further look reveals that 2 of the county’s 5 best integrated schools are charters (eStem High School and LISA Academy)  Thus, it appears that we need to add a small qualifier to Heller’s claim that charters are some of the most racially segregated and the newer, more accurate wording, would go something like this:

As a result, open-enrollment charter schools are some of the most racially segregated schools in Pulaski County …. Except for nearly ALL of the traditional public schools in Pulaski County!

In the end, Heller’s argument would be funny, if it were not flat out dishonest.  How can he, with honesty or seriousness, claim that the racial integration in Pulaski County schools is due in any part to the relative handful of students (fewer than 5%) who have exited traditional public schools in favor public charter schools?

The answer is of course … He can’t … He CANNOT BE SERIOUS!

Update: The Dem-Gaz picks this story up here.  And Max Brantley strides into the fray in his typical accusatory-name calling style.

Should lawmakers read through a bill before voting on it? The case for having lawmakers read a bill seems intuitive and obvious, but Eric Posner makes a good case that they should not do so. Slate’s John Dickerson makes a similar argument here.

The Fayetteville School Board will discuss the election results of the failed  millage increase during the board’s meeting this Thursday at 5 p.m. in the Adams Leadership Center at 1000 W. Stone Street.  Also on the agenda is a scheduled vote on a proposal from the Prism Education Center to open a new public charter school in Fayetteville.  A show of support from the board could signal how much the board has learned in the aftermath of the millage defeat.  Financially, the proposed charter school would save the district money.  Yet the Northwest Arkansas Times is reporting that Associate Superintendents Ginny Wiseman and John Colbert are looking this gift-horse in the mouth and have recommended that the board vote against authorizing the charter school.

In the immediate sense, the public charter school would save the district money because charter schools in Arkansas operate solely on state funding.  This is in turn leaves more revenue from local property taxes available for other projects, like, say, constructing a new high school.

You may hear opponents of charter schools argue that because the district won’t receive the state allotted per pupil funding, the net result of local students being lost to charter schools represents a net financial loss to the district.  Not so.  While it is true that the district will not receive the money attached to the students who opt to attend the charter school, they also won’t have to pay  for teachers and facilities to educate those students.  It comes down to a difference between levels and ratios.  While the level of dollars received and spent could be less due to the presence of  an additional charter school in the area, the fact that the district won’t have to commit any local revenue to the charter school means that the ratio of dollars to students in the district will actually increase.

In the broader sense, Arkansas’ stance on charter schools could have million-dollar implications.  President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have called for states like Arkansas to lift their arbitrary caps on the number of charter schools that are authorized.  Currently Arkansas caps the number at 24.  And the President and Secretary Duncan are doing more than just nudging states to fall in line.  They have indicated that states with charter school caps will be at a “competitive disadvantage” for $4.35 billion that is to be handed out under the “Race to the Top” program.

Ultimately, the vote by the Fayetteville School Board on Thursday is little more than a statement.  The Arkansas State Board of Education actually has the power to approve new charter school applications, and it is up to the state to lift the cap.  But Thursday’s vote will give citizens of Fayetteville a chance to see if the board has learned any valuable lessons in the aftermath of defeat.  An overwheling majority of voters indicated that they have reservations when it comes to the district’s ability to manage money.  Are they listening?

The newspaper – you know the thing made of paper your father used to read at the breakfast table -  is quickly going the way of the dodo.  Yes, people still have an appetite for news but they are getting it increasingly from electronic sources.  And not only from “traditional” outlets.  Now, more than ever,there are bloggers and other independent providers of information are becoming many people’s go-to sources for information. I know you have all heard this line of reasoning before, and I’m sure it is starting to sound a little stale. It is en vogue to decry the death of the print media.

Just last week Arkansas newspaper man John Brummett got into the act with a speech titled “The Burden of Freedom” (click here for his column on the same topic). I think Mr. Brummett and others of his ilk get a lot of things right and a few wrong (they cling a little too closely to old news gathering tactics in my opinion).  But regardless of my individual inclinations, I am glad someone is fighting this fight.  I am glad someone is bringing to our communal consciousness what could be lost if the citizens of our country can no longer rely on good journalism as a resource in their search for truth. It is simply not possible for us to keep up with (or find) all the tidbits of information we use to inform our lives on a daily basis.

But, I am not writing this blog post to pontificate about the economic realities the profession of journalism is facing. No, I am writing because our state’s largest newspaper is attempting to commit suicide, and its time for an intervention. In an era when most newspapers are adapting to the changing media environment and expanding their internet footprint, the Dem-Gaz (at least the northwest Arkansas edition) has nearly unplugged from the net. I understand the move to pay content may have been needed in these difficult times as all newspapers struggle to find a working business model, but the Dem-Gaz shrank their internet presence considerably in the process. It is now almost impossible to find old content (subscription or not) using Google’s news search, their own archive search, or even Lexis-Nexis.  After a day or two the content simply becomes lost somewhere in cyberspace.  And even if you do find the article you were looking for, they are likely to ask for another dollar or two to view it. The paper has effectively made their website obsolete as a research tool.  Anyone who is interested in old content must either purchase a paper everyday and clip things they think are interesting or make a trip to the library and sort through hundreds of articles to find the content they seek.

While it is true that the Dem-Gaz has cornered the market on print news in northwest Arkansas, they would do well to remember that they are not the only source of information. Other independent voices can quickly fill the void, and I expect that they will if the leaders of the Dem-Gaz do not come to their senses and start planning for the future instead of clinging to the past.

Didn’t Walter Hussman watch Pixar’s latest movie UP? You can’t just tie balloons to your paper and float away from reality.

In a new post, educational historian Diane Ravitch says, among other things:

As I predicted on this blog, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are now the spear carriers for the GOP’s education policies of choice and accountability. An odd development, don’t you think? The Department of Education dangles nearly $5 billion before the states, but only if they agree to remove the caps on charter schools and any restrictions on using student test scores to evaluate teachers.

What is extraordinary about these regulations is that they have no credible basis in research. They just happen to be the programs and approaches favored by the people in power.

* * *

There is also no research that justifies the Obama administration’s belief that tying teacher evaluations to student scores will improve schools.

No research?

Take the charter school point first. In a study that Ravitch herself cites, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University found that “states that have limits on the number of charter schools permitted to operate, known as caps, realize significantly lower academic growth than states without caps, around .03 standard deviations.”

To be sure, .03 standard deviations isn’t huge. But it’s something. And it’s a “credible basis” for the Obama administration to give states a financial incentive to eliminate charter school caps. I am aware of no studies finding any benefit whatsoever from state laws restricting the number of charter schools that can open. Incidentally, Arkansas currently restricts the number of charter schools statewide to 24. There is no basis for this limit.

Second, take the merit pay issue. No research? Consider David N. Figlio and Lawrence W. Kenny, “Individual Teacher Incentives and Student Performance,” Journal of Public Economics 91 no. 5-6 (2007): 901-14. Looking at national data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, they find that “test scores are higher in schools that offer individual financial incentives for good performance.” To be sure, Figlio and Kenny concede that their cross-sectional study can’t tell definitively whether it was better schools that adopted performance pay, rather than vice versa.

But here are a few studies that weren’t cross-sectional:

1) Gary Ritter and Josh Barnett, “When Merit Pay is Worth Pursuing,” Educational Leadership 66 no. 2 (2008). Ritter and Barnett studied a Little Rock merit pay program. After two years, “schools implementing the program achieved average gains of approximately seven percentile points for students in mathematics and reading. Scores of students in the pilot schools improved, whereas those of students in comparison schools decreased.”

2) Adele Atkinson, Simon Burgess, Bronwyn Croxson, Paul Gregg, Carol Propper, Helen Slater and Deborah Wilson, “Evaluating the impact of performance-related pay for teachers in England”, Labour Economics 16 no. 3 (June 2009): 251-261 (a working version is available here). Atkinson et al. use a sophisticated methodology to evaluate a merit pay scheme in Englnad, controlling for pupil effects, school effects, and teacher effects. They find that “the scheme did improve test scores and value added increased on average by about 40% of a grade per pupil.”

3) Victor Lavy, “Performance Pay and Teachers’ Effort, Productivity, and Grading Ethics,” NBER Working Paper 10622. Lavy evaluates a merit pay program in Israel that gave cash bonuses to teachers whose students earned more “credits” on national graduation exams. He used two sophisticated methods: regression discontinuity design and propensity score matching. His results are substantively significant: As to one estimation, he notes that “the effect of treatment on credits earned in math is 0.256, a 18 percent improvement relative to the mean of the control schools (1.46). The effect of treatment on awarded credits in English is 0.361, a 17 percent improvement relative to the mean of the control schools (2.11).”

These aren’t the only studies, of course, and incentive schemes sometimes don’t show much benefit. Still, to claim that there is no evidence in their favor isn’t accurate. Once again, the position that lacks evidence here is the position that Obama and Duncan are trying to combat, i.e., that it should be illegal to use test score data to assess a teacher’s performance (as is the case in several states). These states might as well have passed a law stating that because so much of a patient’s health depends on factors outside a doctor’s control, it should therefore be illegal to consider whether a doctor’s patients were killed by incompetence.

On the bright side, I applaud Diane Ravitch’s announcement of the Partnership for 19th Century Skills.

Fall is upon us and football season is here.  All is right with the world. But there remains one pesky loose end which eats at the Razorback nation. Our beloved former starting quarterback Matt Jones still has not signed with an NFL team. How could this be? He has all the physical skills of an NFL player; at 6-6  and 203lb he can run a sub 4.4sec 40yd dash and has a vertical of nearly 40in.

Matt, who was the Jacksonville Jaguars’ 1st round pick in 2005, has had his share of problems since leaving the Razorbacks.  He was arrested in Fayetteville last year with a small amount of cocaine and he hasn’t exactly gotten along with the Jaguars’ coaches. Jones has a very laid back demeanor that can sometimes be (and often is) misinterpreted as apathy. But this kid can play.  Matt Jones ran the wildcat at Arkansas before the formation became the staple it is today. Here at Mid-Riffs we have decided to take a stand on this issue. We are calling on Jerry Jones to do the right thing and sign Matt Jones. Here is our reasoning:

1. Matt Jones is a Razorback and good at football
2. Dallas needs a receiver
3. Matt Jones is cheap and available

This plan has the added advantage of collecting all of the Arkansas Joneses (Jerry, Felix, and Matt) in one place. We believe this would create a triumvirate of Hogtastic Jonesiness in the Big D which could dominate the NFL from for years to come.

Jerry, you have taken a risk on Pacman Jones, Tank Johnson, and who can forget T.O.  Why not make a bet on Matt Jones? If not for your own sake, do it for Razorback fans everywhere.

News:
Matt Jones still isn’t in Cowboys Plans
Titans look at three WRs; don’t sign any
New York Times Review of the new Cowboys Stadium (just wanted to throw this one in here)

Of course, a great deal of activity on this blog will focus on the nuts and bolts of schools — tests, teachers, and even tiffs about school buildings. As mid-riff watchers are well aware, we have talked a bunch about the Fayetteville millage over the past week. 

For me, a mere academic, the local story is not as interesting as news across the Natural State.  And, since a lot of the recent back and forth has been controversial, let me engineer a change of pace and steer clear of controversy … I simply want to start your weekend off with some good news and talk about a report from a UA Research Unit — the Office for Education Policy (OEP).  The report, Highlighting Top Achieving Arkansas Schools, is by no means a fancy statistical analysis or a complicated study.  Instead, this OEP report merely recognizes the excellent performance of many students and schools throughout the state, thus reminding us of the true work of schools (teach kids stuff) and reminding us that our Arkansas schools may be doing better than many of us think. 

For example, the first section of the report highlights the top 20 elementary and middle schools across the entire state in both Math and Literacy.  In many of these schools, more than 90% of the school’s students are scoring at advanced or proficient on the state’s exams.  Topping the list of elementary schools was the Vilonia Academy of Technology for math (100% of its students earned score of proficient or advanced) and the Park Magnet School in Hot Springs for literacy.  For middle schools, the Vilonia Academy of Service Learning and Technology led the state in math scores while the Umpire High School in Wickes and the Lisa Academy Middle School topped the state on the literacy exam.

Is this just a list of the state’s most advantaged schools?  Sure, on these lists, we find some of the usual suspects — wealthy schools in the Conways, Bentonvilles, Bryants, and Fayettevilles of the state — posting very high numbers.  But we also see so-called poor schools in the top spots on these lists, emphasizing the fact that AR schools and teachers are able to effectively educate rich and poor students alike.

This is what is so compelling about the second section of the OEP report, just released this week, which focuses exclusively on high achievement in high-poverty schools.  On these pages, we find schools like Eudora Elementary in Lakeside, Richland Elementary in West Memphis, Noble Lower Elementary in Hamburg, and Bragg Elementary in West Memphis – each of these schools are populated entirely with students eligible for free and reduced lunches.  In other words, these kids are poor.  In the face of such poverty, more than 90% of the students in these schools scored at proficient or advanced on the 2009 Arkansas Benchmark Math exam.  On the literacy exams, on which only 70% of the state’s elementary students achieve at proficient or advanced levels, three of our state’s poorest schools boasted scores easily besting the state average.  Each of these three schools serve students that are all poor according to our free lunch measure, yet more than 85% the elementary students in Richland Elementary in West Memphis, Noble Lower Elementary in Hamburg, and Portland Elementary in Hamburg scored at proficient or advanced on the 2009 Arkansas Benchmark Literacy exam.

On the exams given to middle school students, which are more challenging to students in the entire state, students in the aforementioned Umpire High School  performed exceptionally well.  While all of the students at Umpire High are eligible for free and reduced lunches, 93% of the school’s middle level students scored at proficient or advanced on the 2009 Math and Literacy Exams. 

Before you scoff at these results, let’s be clear … these exams are not simple!  If you don’t believe me, take a look for yourself at the details on the Arkansas Department of Education website.  Check out questions 1 thru 10 on the eighth grade math exam (send in all the correct answers and you win a prize!).   To do so, you’ll need to brush up on your knowledge of probability, compute the volume of a pyramid, and figure out how to interpret a box and whisker plot.  Good Luck!

If that’s too hard for you, you may want to take a look at some of the 5th grade elementary level math questions.  Here’s an example test item from page 12:

Question:  Josh purchased 4 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, and 2 ties that can be combined to create several new outfits.  If an outfit consists of 1 shirt, 1 pair of pants, and 1 tie, how many different outfit combinations can Josh choose?  Show all your work and/or explain your answer.

Perhaps you were able to do this fifth grade question, but I imagine the 8th grade questions gave you some trouble.  Nevertheless, there is a valuable lesson to be learned (or at least reinforced) here, and it has nothing to do with probability, volume, or box and whisker plots.   Rather, this OEP report provides a stark and simple reminder that all kids, regardless of socioeconomic environment or financial poverty, can learn and achieve at high levels.  Let’s congratulate the teachers at these Arkansas “beating the odds” schools for working hard to help their students not view poverty as an excuse, but rather as a mere hurdle on the way to academic success.

(Guest post by Jay P. Greene)

The Fayetteville school board and district leaders fully supported a plan that was soundly rejected by the voters this week.  How did school officials so badly mis-read what voters wanted?  It’s especially puzzling how school officials could have seriously misjudged their constituents given the years of deliberations, countless hours of public meetings and charrettes, and even a commissioned opinion poll.

Unfortunately, these countless rituals of public input are exactly what misled school officials to support an unpopular plan.  They were misled because these rituals of public input are better indicators of the views of the self-selected, small minority of people with the most intense (and often the most extreme) preferences than they are indicators of what the electorate would want.  School officials mistook the opinions of this self-selected few as the voice of the people.

School officials also hired consultants to lead these public conversations, but in doing so they were steering discussions in a pre-determined direction.  Bringing in education consultant Tony Wagner and requiring all school employees to read his book steered the plan toward a high school divided into small learning communities.  That idea didn’t come from the voters.  It came from certain school officials, was made the topic of discussion in schools and community events, and then was echoed back to school officials.

Similarly, the design “charrettes” led by consultants from New Orleans were not truly open brain-storming sessions about a new high school.  If they were, how did several small break-out groups independently arrive at the same Trail of Tears design concept?

There is nothing inherently wrong with holding public discussions on important decisions or with bringing in expert consultants to inform and direct those conversations.  The problem is in falsely believing that what results from those discussions is in fact the opinion of the community.  They are more like echo-chambers, repeating back the preferences that school officials had going into them.

But school officials saw the community discussions as a sign of general public support for their vision.  They even went so far as to describe the plan that was developed from these events as “The People’s Plan.”  And then when asked why voters should support the millage, the advocates and editorial writers told us that it was The People’s Plan and had come from us so we should support what the community had developed.

This People’s Plan campaign strategy almost felt like bullying.  If you weren’t among the tiny, minority of atypical people who could spend evening after evening in community discussions, you had lost your chance to have a say.  It was time for you to get in line and support what the involved people had already determined.

Perhaps for this reason opponents of the millage stayed generally quiet during the campaign.  Yes, there was a handful of active letter writers and a Facebook group with fewer than ten members, but there was no organized opposition, no “vote no” yard signs, and a string of elite (even if tepid)  community endorsements.  But in the privacy of the voting booth, people clearly felt free to open-up and clearly say no.  Once the result had been announced, opponents discovered that they weren’t so isolated, and Facebook pages began to light-up with people explaining their reasons for opposing the millage despite their commitment to education and their understanding of shortcomings of the existing facility.

The solution is not to hold even more public input rituals to scale back the cost of the project but leave all other decisions in place.  Presumably, the $116 million price tag followed from all of the design and policy decisions that had preceded it.  If all of the design and policy goals could have been met for a lower cost, why wasn’t the initial millage for a lesser amount?

Instead, the solution is to stop the echo-chamber decision-making of meetings, charrettes, and consultants, and start with real leadership.  School officials should step-up and tell us what they think would be educationally desirable at a reasonable cost.  Of course, it is difficult for them to gauge what the community would consider a reasonable cost without public input, but the election result has given them better feedback than any town-hall discussion or charrette ever will.

Superintendent Vicki Thomas is particularly well-positioned to offer her vision of our educational future.  She bears no responsibility for the development of the failed millage plan and can start with a fresh slate.  We hired her to lead our schools and leadership is what we need.  She has enough information from voters and past public meetings to assess the community’s priorities.  Now she can give us a new plan and convince us that it is what she thinks is best, not what she thinks we told her to say.

Jay P. Greene is endowed professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas and a parent of three children in Fayetteville public schools.

Oklahoma’s Flaming Lips made an appearance on The Colbert Report last night.  Stephen grilled Wayne Coyne about the fact that Oklahoma governor Brad Henry made the band’s song “Do You Realize” the Official Rock Song of Oklahoma, despite it’s “questionable” lyrics.  Wayne Coyne does a good job of defending the song’s message.  I wonder what would make a good Official Rock Rock Song of Arkansas….

Here is the video for “Do You Realize.”

Flaming Lips – Do You Realize??

Reports are coming out that the nays have it in the Fayetteville millage election.  After reporting early numbers via twitter that made passage look like a slamdunk (1,175 for and 630 against), Alan Wilbourn is now tweeting that the unofficial vote total is 4,085 for and 5,954 against. Over ten thousand Fayetteville residents cast ballots on the millage issue. That is quite a turnout for a special election. The table below provides a breakdown of the voting numbers.

Here is The Morning News article about the election.

The proposal to build a new high school failed to get voter approval.  So, what happens now?  Check back later today tomorrow (Sept. 17th) for some good riffing on this very topic.