One wonders what those of us here in Northwest Arkansas have done to deserve so much attention from charlatans lately.  In the last year we have been visited by Eva Klein and Associates, Tony Wagner, and now Sarah Palin.  Unfortunately, the community coughed up money to be wooed by Eva Klein and Tony Wagner.  Palin is at least coming for free, unless you count the cost the English language is incurring by losing any non-ironic use of the word “rogue” henceforth.

The latest sum of money the community will be parting with–$36,000 to be exact–is going to pay Phi Delta Kappa for conducting a curriculum audit of the Fayetteville School District.  Like Eva Klein & Associates did for Fayetteville (for $150,000), Phi Delta Kappa came into town  for a few days and held focus groups with community members to hear their ideas.  In February they’ll provide us with a nifty presentation that summarizes what community members told them.  The modus operandi of these types of consultants is well-known. Dilbert has been lampooning them for years.

To be sure, the report that Phi Delta Kappa comes up with won’t look exactly like the same ideas the community gave them.  They’ll be re-written in such a way that any resemblance or lack of substance will be obfuscated by consultant-speak gobbledy-gook.  For example, when the Rogers School District hired Phi Delta Kappa to conduct an audit, one of the recommendations they received was:

Develop and implement a comprehensive curriculum management system that delineates short- and long-term goals, directs curriculum revision to ensure deep alignment and quality delivery, and defines the instructional model district leaders expect teachers to follow in delivering the curriculum.

Translation: Establish a system to set and achieve goals. And make it a good one.

Here’s another recommendation from the Rogers audit:

Research, identify and implement strategies to eliminate inequities and inequalities that impede opportunities for all students to succeed.

Translation:  Do what you and every other school district has already been doing (or should have been doing) for decades.

I’m willing to bet Fayetteville’s audit will contain many of the same recommendations given to Rogers.  These types of consultant groups have stock boiler-plate language that they recycle time and time again.  I also expect to see some of the views of the community rewritten in consultant-speak.  Here’s some of the comments and concerns the Northwest Arkansas Times picked up from teachers and parents at one of the focus groups:

I got this list from the newspaper, which cost me fifty cents–a whopping $35,499.50 less than Phi Delta Kappa is going to charge for repackaging these ideas in consultant-speak.

I don’t know exactly why organizations pay money to outside consultants, like when the city paid Eva Klein & Associates to tell us that the University was one of our strengths, and that the perception that Fayetteville was anti-business was one of our weaknesses.   Don’t we already elect and pay people to think about these things and have a vision for what we need to do?  So why are they sub-contracting out their duties?

Still, I don’t want to prejudge the Phi Delta Kappa report too much, and I am hopeful that when the report comes out it will be useful.  But my concern and my prediction is that some form of the goals written above, re-written in consultant speak, along with some more generic goals, like the ones in the Rogers report, are going to make up the bulk of what Fayetteville receives.

We’ll come back to this in February when we finally get our hands on the report, at which time we’ll translate it into English and check my predictions.

Last Monday the Obama administration announced a new, largely privately funded, initiative which aims to “improve the participation and performance of America’s students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.” The administration is calling the campaign “Educate to Innovate.” You can check out the White House blog post here and the New York Times article here. The campaign is being supported by several media and technology companies as well as scientific societies across the nation. The administration kicked-off the campaign by announcing five public-private partnerships as its first steps:

1. Time-Warner Cable, Discovery Communications, Sesame Street, and other partners will get the message to kids and students about the wonder of invention and discovery.
2. National Lab Day will help build communities of support around teachers across the country, culminating in a day of civic participation.
3. National STEM design competitions will develop game options to engage kids in scientific inquiry and challenging designs.
4. Five leading business and thought leaders (Sally Ride, Craig Barrett, Ursula Burns, Glen Britt, and Antonio Perez) will head an effort to increase private and philanthropic involvement in support of STEM teaching and learning.

While this announcement may not be earth-shattering, it represents a significant shift in the way science and math will be treated on the national stage. It is my opinion that President Bush’s obvious disdain for science* (and intellectuals in general) had a significantly negative impact on the way the general public viewed scientists and their work. And I believe that having a President who celebrates scientists can have a similar positive effect. Here are a couple of good Obama quotes from the NY Times article:

“If you win the N.C.A.A. championship, you come to the White House,” he said. “Well, if you’re a young person and you’ve produced the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too.”

“Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models, and here at the White House, we’re going to lead by example. We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.”

There are, however, a couple of problems I can see with the President’s plan to celebrate scientists as we do athletes.  First science is inherently messy.  Unlike athletic competition, the arena of ideas often does not produce clear cut winners. In science, ideas generally undergo years of scrutiny and revision before they are adopted. Unless we engage in some type of Monty Python style competition between scientists (see video below) it will be difficult to determine who the winners are, at least in the short term.

Second, anytime the President speaks about a topic he brings a lot of political baggage with him. It would be difficult for the President to host any particular scientist without sparking a firestorm of debate about the scientists character or the validity of her work. His celebration of science could and would be construed as an endorsement of a specific person and her ideas.

I think the most consequential portion of the administrations campaign is bringing real-live scientists to kids in their classrooms and homes. This type of interaction with scientists and their work could make celebrities of our nations scientists, and encourage kids to explore these fields in ways their teachers and parents may never have been able to.

I would like to see local school districts and the University develop a partnership to bring real people working in science (both social and hard) and math into the classroom. Seeing these people and hearing about the work they do could be truly inspiring. Having a research university so close is a tremendous resource, and it’s time we started making better use of it.

*If you need some evidence of President Bush’s mistreatment of science, take a look at some of the articles referenced in this Wikipedia entry.

Brian and I had an op-ed about the State Board of Education and their handling of charter school applicants in Sunday’s Democrat Gazette.  Here is a link.

UPDATE: For those of you who do not have a Dem Gaz subscription, Jay Greene’s blog has reprinted an excerpt here.

Thursday, of course, was our national day of thanks.  Friday, then, was the national day of shopping.  When I turned on my TV Saturday morning, I was surprised to find that Saturday was the national day of Tim Tebow worship.

Here are some of the tidbits from Saturday, or Tebow-day:

Announcer’s Voice:  “The remarkable career of Tim Tebow ….”

Announcer’s Voice:  “Tebow has given so much to Florida ….”

Announcer’s Voice:  “Tim Tebow invented the I-phone during a TV timeout ….”

OK, I made that last one up, but the spirit was appropriate. 

Don’t get  me wrong …. he seems like a good football player and a really nice kid.  He interviews well, is polite, mentions God a lot, and even writes bible verse references on his eye-black for big games.  He also appeals to do-gooders like me as he has engaged in missionary trips to help the disadvantaged in other countries. 

That is all good.  But I still don’t understand this over-the-top hero worship of the quarterback in a powerhouse program that almost never loses.  It seems downright un-American.  Aren’t we supposed to love the underdog?  Don’t we hate the Yankees and the Patriots?  Don’t we cheer for the Valparaisos of the world to upset North Carolina in March Madness?

What gives?  Does he deserve all of this attention?

PS:  I guess we will learn a bit more how much we Americans love our heroes as we watch another Florida story (this one involving a squeaky-clean golfer possibly doing a John Daly imitation!) unfold this weekend…

Yes, as an academic, and as someone interested in the well-being of schoolchildren across the state, I am thankful for the cacophony of voices entering the education policy discussion in NW Arkansas and beyond.

I know that this is not a universal view.  Many of our friends and colleagues working in Arkansas public school districts may not share my rosy view.  Those working in local school districts or at the state level may not be too thrilled that our “genius little bloggers” or faculty in the Department of Education reform are injecting themselves into important policy discussions related to racial integration, school millages, charter authorization, or so-called “21st Century” learning.  I have heard it said that some of the Ed Reform group or our blogger friends are obstructionists to local schools — of course, I think they are wrong.  Disagreement is NOT obstruction.

In fact, they should be thankful for the interest and involvement of outside researchers and observers.  This is the work of the University; indeed, the motto of the U of A is Veritate Duce Progredi (in Latin).  In English, the motto is “To Advance with Truth as our Guide.”  In that spirit, faculty at the University (along with our genius little bloggers) should continue to examine data, evaluate programs, conduct research, rigorously address policy questions, and share our views with the public.  Anything less would be shirking.

And sometimes our (faculty, researchers, bloggers, etc.) view of the truth may not be the same as that of our friends in Little Rock, local school districts, or anywhere else.  And that’s OK.  Everyone engaged in the discussion with an interest in the well-being of our schoolchildren has an equal right to air our views and let the public decide which ideas are best.  Arguments over ideas are good for our democracy and good for Arkansas.  (Indeed, we should work to keep the focus on ideas and avoid personal attacks in these heated debates.)

Those employed by our local school districts do not have a monopoly on caring about children and education.  Sure, many of our school leaders have a deep faith in the importance of public schools and have dedicated much of their professional lives to leading these schools.  But this does NOT mean that they are always right.  They’re not.  And it is unfair to dismiss the views of any opponents of school leaders as “against public education.”

All of us who care deeply about kids and education do not need to think the same way.  In fact, our kids and our schools will all be better off if policy discussions can benefit from a diversity of views.  We can all learn from each other, we can all have the same ultimate objective of a well-educated Arkansas, and yet we can all still be individuals!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We’ve had some lively debates here at mid-riffs and in the community at-large about the quality of school buildings. While those debates have often been heated and full of disagreements, we ought to be thankful we live in a place that respects and encourages  a diverse set of viewpoints.

The situation in China is far worse. Chinese activist Huang Qi just received a three-year prison term for blogging about the quality of school buildings (or lack of) in the aftermath of the May 2008 earthquake that killed more than 87,000 people in China.

Of course Qi wasn’t officially charged with “illegally blogging.”  He was charged with “possessing state secrets” and was dealt a prison term in a hearing that lasted ten minutes. His wife said: “They still won’t say what the specific charge is, not even at the verdict. They just spoke of documents related to a certain matter.” She said it was clear the punishment related to his work after the earthquake. “I think it was revenge for the earthquake, and his other work. But the court would not even give me a copy of the verdict,” she said.

The Chinese government is bad, m’kay? You can read more about it here.

Diane Ravitch has a new post full of criticisms of charter schools. Unfortunately, the arguments are unsupportable and contradictory.

1.   Ravitch has gone to the NAEP website and downloaded snapshots of how students in public charter schools scored compared to students in other public schools. She then concludes, “Overall, public schools continue to outperform charter schools.”

No, no, no. You cannot tell anything about how a given type of school is “performing” just by looking at a cross-section of its students’ test scores — without even attempting to take into account the students’ backgrounds and previous test scores. And as I point out below, charter school students tend to arrive with somewhat lower test scores than average.

2.  Immediately after having praised other public schools for supposedly outperforming charters in student test scores, Ravitch pivots 180 degrees and criticizes charter schools for drawing off the “most successful” students and “disabl[ing]” the public schools!

My beef with charter schools is that most skim the most motivated students out of the poorest communities, and many have disproportionately small numbers of children who need special education or who are English-language learners. The typical charter, operating in this way, increases the burden on the regular public schools, while privileging the lucky few. Continuing on this path will further disable public education in the cities and hand over the most successful students to private entrepreneurs.

It’s just not convincing to say with one breath that public schools are “outperform[ing]” and in the next breath that they’re being “disable[d],” or to criticize charter schools for serving the “most successful” students just after having claimed that charter students don’t score well on national exams.

3.  Besides being contradictory, Ravitch’s argument is wrong. Charter school students may be “motivated” in some sense, but that certainly doesn’t mean that they are all academically successful. Quite the contrary: parents whose children are doing well in the public schools often tend to stay put, while it is precisely the parents whose children are struggling who may tend to seek alternative schools (whether through vouchers or charters). Painting with a broad brush, many charter school and voucher parents have said, “Gee, little Johnny isn’t doing so well, maybe I should check into a different school.” Such “motivation” doesn’t give rise to some sort of huge charter school advantage.

Some evidence for this point: Zimmer et al.’s October 2009 paper analyzing data from locations representing 45% of the charter schools in the nation. They find NO evidence that charter schools are cream-skimming. To the contrary, “in all but one case (Chicago reading scores, which are virtually identical to the district-wide average), students switching to charter schools have prior test scores that are BELOW district-wide or statewide averages.”

For another example, take Texas, which is home to over 450 charter campuses, about 10% of all the charter campuses nationwide. In Texas, charter schools that serve predominantly students identified as “at risk” can be rated under an alternative accountability system. In 2007-08, 43.3% of charter schools in Texas qualified to be rated under that system, compared to a mere 3.3% of public school district campuses in Texas (see page 147 here). No doubt, most of the parents of these “at-risk” youth could be described as “motivated” — motivated to find something, anything, that would help their children learn and stay in school. But this is not obviously an advantage for the charter schools’ academic performance.

Incidentally, people often make the same accusation about private schools generally, i.e., that they just skim off all the best students.  To the contrary, Derek Neal and Jeffrey Grogger found that “there is evidence of negative selection into Catholic schools. Relative to their public-school counterparts, urban whites who attend these schools appear to possess unmeasured traits that inhibit attainment.” They add this footnote: “Evidence of negative selection is common in this literature. Coleman and Hoffer (1987), Evans and Schwab (1995), and Neal (1997) all report evidence of negative selection into Catholic schools. A common hypothesis concerning this result is that some parents send their children to Catholic schools seeking a remedy for existing problems with discipline and motivation.”

The Northwest Arkansas Times had an editorial today about the Arkansas Board of Education and their stance on charters. Something tells me they’ve been spending some time here at mid-riffs. It’s nice to see them enter the debate.

A few thoughts:

1. The editorial uses circular logic to defend the actions of the board. First the editorial says the board must be highly selective because the charter school cap limits the amount to 24. The editorial then closes by saying we actually don’t need a cap because we have a highly selective board.
2. The editorial makes the same tired argument that charters must be innovative to gain approval, while simultaneously pointing out the innovative techniques proposed by the charter school applicants that were denied.
3. The editorial writers should have taken a close look at the Arkansas charter law before accepting and endorsing the board’s reliance on “innovation” as the ultimate test of a charter applicant’s worth.  How charters become approved isn’t up to the Northwest Arkansas Times or the State School Board.  It is up to the state legislature who wrote the law.  As we have pointed out before, nothing in Arkansas’ charter school law can reasonably be construed as to empower the board to reject charter applicants for lack of innovation.
4. The editorial literally says “It is the board’s job to identify charter schools that try something new that might lead to education reform, not just do the same thing as well or only slightly better.”  Really!?! They honestly believe “better” isn’t something that was paramount in the legislature’s intent when they wrote the Arkansas Charter Law? Really!?

I have a question for the editors of the Times and the state board members who have arbitrarily decided that “innovation” is the test for approval. What exactly is it? Let’s stop this whole song and dance and just get on with it. They must know what it is, because they claim to know what it isn’t. So, just tell us: Exactly what is the innovation a charter school applicant needs to incorporate to get approval?

Brenda Gullett of the State Board of Education left a lengthy comment on Jay Greene’s blog. Most of the comment, which is reprinted below, was really addressed to the Mid-Riffs bloggers.

I would invite Ms. Gullett to write to us directly — particularly if she feels that she has been misrepresented by the local newspaper — with a full defense of her and her fellow Board members’ actions in rejecting every single charter school application last week. We will be happy to print her words unedited as a guest post.

Indeed, public officials should welcome the opportunity to interact with informed citizens and consider their criticisms. That’s part of living in a democracy rather than a dictatorship — private citizens should be able to exercise their free speech right to criticize public officials’ actions. We look forward to Ms. Gullett’s response.

Here’s the comment:

Gosh, Jay, I can’t imagine you not having a comment. I am the state school board member you and those folks on Mid-riffs are referring to. I am also the co-chair of the Development Council for the College of Education and Health Related Professions. I believe that is where your “chair” is located. And, I just made my financial contribution.

Now about charters. By reputation, I perceived you to be wiser than to take newspaper articles as fact. But, I have been wrong before. My statement was that I had visited a school in Springdale that had made AYP for 2 years still having a large Hispanic population. This Dove school proposed to outsource it’s ESL work, and I did not see how they could improve on what the current system was doing in regards that. Their whole pitch was about working with Hispanic students.

I would like to invite you and some of you little genius bloggers on education to come to the State Board meeting. We meet every month on the second Monday. Unfortunately, we review charters in November.
We just had 2 grueling days of going over only seven charters and spent 7.5 hours one day and 4 hours the next. This is not a capricious activity.

I always love people like yourself who are fairly protected, but can criticize those on the scrimage line with all sorts of Monday morning comments.

I would be happy to post all of the 1000+ pages of charter application material on your blog for you to review and then we could discuss as a parent, grandparent, whatever if you would choose for your child to go there.

I have supported KIP ( may have 2 p’s) and E-Stem.
I have a degree in secondary education with a dual major. I have shepherded two children through public school and college graduation. Both U of A and one with a master’s. My husband Robert R. Gullett, M.D. was a school board member for 6 years. I have had a lifelong commitment to education and served as Vice-Chair of the Arkansas Senate Education Committee during the LakeView case.So, in all due respect to you and your little bloggers comparing my response to the definition of “pornography”, I DO believe I know a quality education when I see it.

Most recently I have spent time in Cincinnati for NASBE
(National Association of State Boards of Education) and heard and personally met Sec. Arne Duncan. I have been to DC twice since Pres. Obama announced the stimulus package and been briefed on that as it relates to education. I am very aware that this current administration considers caps removed from charters as important and may affect “race to the top” competetion for $$$.

The folks in the Midriff blog were all over my use of innovation. We much to their surprise, Sec. Duncan said that is the key and exactly what they are looking for.

You bring me a quality charter school, and you will have my vote.

Sorry, this is so long. I am not a blogger. I have much better things to do with my time. But, I was alerted to this by friends in Fay. And, I have heard a lot about you. So, you have talked about me and I have talked to you.

Jay Greene responded thus:

Jay P. Greene Says:
November 20, 2009 at 11:16 am | Reply

First, I’m not sure if you really are Brenda Gullett. Your comment doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that a member of the State Board of Education would write. And as you note, you can’t believe everything you read.

Second, if you really are Brenda Gullett, your opening paragraph seems to be a thinly veiled threat. Essentially, you are saying that you hold a powerful position with and are a major contributor to my employer. It’s not clear why this would be relevant other than to intimidate people who disagree with you. Fortunately, universities offer their accomplished faculty tenure precisely so that they won’t be intimidated.

Third, most of your comment seems to be directed toward things written on the blog, Mid-Riffs. While I agree with much of what they have written, their words and thoughts are their own, not mine. If you have an issue with what was said on Mid-Riffs I would suggest that you leave the appropriate comments there.

The current state of journalism is well known.  No one is surprised anymore when they learn that newspapers are losing revenue and closing.  No one is surprised anymore when television tabloid journalism receives more airtime and attracts more viewers than serious events.  Still, it’s worth noting when media outlets fall by the wayside.  And it’s worth pointing out when a half-serious blog run by volunteers (like this one) inadvertantly has more journalistic prowess than a full-fledged professional outfit.

Yesterday, the Fox News affiliate that serves Northwest Arkansas, KNWA, passed away after a bold attempt to water-ski over ferocious man-eating sharks.

Well, not exactly.  What they did do, though, was probably worse. They interviewed a frickin’ vampire.  And they did it with a straight face.  They did it without laughing at the loser.  They did it without laughing at themselves.  In fact, they pretty much insinuated that vampires were real.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that before KNWA jumped the shark they were a good example of quality journalism.  Even before the vampire interview they resembled student journalism, and it seemed intentional.  They had a laid back we’re-hipster-cool-cats kind of style and hired female newscasters for their uncanny ability to look good in HD.  But the vampire story was officially the last straw.

They’re not so cool as to make their videos embeddable, but you can view the vampire story, and pay your final respects, here.