Don't Confuse High Stakes Testing With High Expectations

Frank Bruni recently expressed concern, in the usual hackneyed terms, that kids these days are "coddled". Some sports give trophies for participation, or end games early when the difference in score reaches a defined threshold. A middle school near Boston is concerned that kids' feelings might get hurt if they find out that they weren't invited to parties. Some kids get stressed by tests. Bruni complains that "Many kids at all grade levels are Bubble-Wrapped in a culture that praises effort nearly as much as it does accomplishment." As anybody, including Bruni, should know, people like Bruni have been writing this sort of column for generations.

All of Bruni's complaints are to set a context for his criticism of people who object to the high stakes standardized testing model imposed upon the nation's schools. Bruni conflates high stakes standardized tests with "tougher instruction [that should] not be rejected simply because it makes children feel inadequate, and that the impulse to coddle kids not eclipse the imperative to challenge them." While Bruni insists, that Common Core is "a laudable set of guidelines that emphasize analytical thinking over rote memorization", even he admits that "n instances its implementation has been flawed, and its accompanying emphasis on testing certainly warrants debate." Yet here he is, calling those who want to engage in the debate paranoiacs and whiners.

Then there’s the outcry, equally reflective of the times, from adults who assert that kids aren’t enjoying school as much; feel a level of stress that they shouldn’t have to; are being judged too narrowly; and doubt their own mettle.

Aren’t aspects of school supposed to be relatively mirthless? Isn’t stress an acceptable byproduct of reaching higher and digging deeper? Aren’t certain fixed judgments inevitable? And isn’t mettle established through hard work?

I don't mind at all the notion that school should be challenging. But what Bruni is overlooking is how standardized testing has displaced a lot of traditional classroom teaching and learning, or that the insistence that children master skills at earlier ages is not necessarily consistent with the students' cognitive development. After pushing more and more traditional first grade material into kindergarten, we're now hearing proposals to raise the age for kindergarten enrollment. If you end up with a kindergarten full of kids who, under the former system, would largely have been in first grade, what are you actually accomplishing?

Here's something it shouldn't take very long to figure out: When you tell a teacher, "Your ranking as a teacher, your ability to keep your job and the amount you are paid depends on how your students do on a series of standardized tests," the odds are that the teacher is going to devote a great deal of effort and classroom time to improving student performance on the test. Bruni ridicules a parent's complaint that as a result of that sort of focus on testing, his eight year old's class was left with "no room for imagination or play". Does Bruni not understand that children can be challenged academically, yet be encouraged in their imagination? Does Bruni not understand that children need breaks in their lessons during the course of a school day? That children can learn from play activities? It would seem not.

Bruni references David Coleman, "noe of the principal architects of the Common Core" as asserting that he favors self-esteem, but wants to "redefine self-esteem as something achieved through hard work". It's not that self-esteem cannot be derived from hard work, but that's not really what Coleman is talking about. In the schoolyard, self esteem is on the whole negatively correlated with academic performance. Bruni's ridicule of parents who are concerned about their parents feelings is, in a sense, more relevant than Coleman's goal, because Bruni's approach does not involve somehow changing human nature. When Coleman talks about how students "will not enjoy every step of it" but "if it takes them somewhere big and real, they’ll discover a satisfaction that redeems the sweat", he seems to be talking about the end of a very long process. If you don't find a way to let kids learn on an incremental basis that their hard work will be rewarded, you're not going to create an effective learning environment for most kids.

Bruni also references Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy, who has stated, "ile American parents are pulling their kids out of tests because the results make the kids feel bad, parents in other countries are looking at the results and asking themselves how they can help their children do better." But that's not the actual issue. Although certain factions of school reformers like to point to nations that obsess over test scores, holding them out as a model for the nation, it's very clear that we don't have the sort of culture that will cause us to follow the lead of South Korea, with kids leaving school to head over to private academies where they spend additional hours being prepped for tests, and we don't really want to follow the lead of nations that produce kids who are very good at taking tests but not much good at thinking outside the margins of a carefully darkened oval.

If you want good public schools, you don't need to do much. You need to make the profession of teaching sufficiently well respected and remunerated that you attract above average students into the profession, you want to make the task of classroom teaching rewarding, and you want parents who will reinforce the need for their kids to attend school, study and do their homework, behave in class, and achieve academically. When you do that you don't need to obsess over test stores - you can use standardized tests in their traditional manner, to assess individual and group performance with an eye toward improvement, and with no need for teachers to "teach to the test" because the goal is to obtain an accurate assessment as opposed to an artificially inflated score that reflects intensive teaching to the test at the expense of a rich classroom experience.

Ah, but high-stakes standardized testing is so much easier for school administrators and politicians, the ones who have positioned themselves to get prizes for "participation" - a large, steady paycheck with no consequences at all for the failure of schools, teachers or students. And it's so much easier to point to a computer-generated list of scores and pretend that you have objectively evaluated a teacher or school than it is to work hard.

Let's Get "Elitist" With Our Schools

A lawyer I know used to quip that, in a lawsuit, every lawyer added to the case would double the amount of time it took to resolve the litigation. A similar concept appears to apply to classrooms - each disruptive student added to a classroom doubles the amount of time a teacher must spend on classroom management instead of teaching. I saw that effect when I was in fifth grade and my classroom was split between neighborhood students and kids with emotional disabilities. I saw it in my high school, which had voluntary academic streaming, whenever I was in a class that was not academically streamed. I saw it during my brief stint as a substitute teacher. I will add the caveat that some teachers are much better than others at managing and redirecting classroom disruptions, but the multiplier appears to nonetheless be the same.

When people point to charter schools and argue, "This school is a great success," and I see a school that looks more like a juvenile detention center, with children subject to intensive behavior codes, required to march silently from class to class, squaring off their corners as they turn down another hallway, I see three things: First, the rigidity will almost certainly reduce the amount of time any given teacher has to spend on classroom management, even if they otherwise have weak skills. Why? Because the schools have a clear escalation schedule for behavior issues and clear consequences for repeated infractions. Second, even without considering the accusation that some of these schools actively "counsel out" kids who cannot adhere to their behavior codes, I see how the codes become a mechanism for discouraging problem students from enrolling and in ensuring that many or most who do enroll won't stay. Third, I see a school environment that most middle class parents would find unacceptable for their own children.

And when I hear how "success" is defined by many of these schools, with the trumpeting of any modest improvement over the performance of an average school in the district, I can't help but note that there are often public schools in the same district that perform as well or better, but are largely ignored. There are instances of public schools being hailed as significantly better than others in the district, and when politics enter that process the touted school can turn out to be as overblown in its success as a typical charter. But for the most part charter school advocates and the media portray this as a battle between successful charters and failing public school, whatever the facts.'

When I hear proposals for school reform, I am reminded not only of the failure of one reform after another, I'm reminded of the partial success of the British grammar school model. That model, in very simple terms, involved testing children at age 11 and, on the basis of the result, tracking them into technical, 'modern', or intensely academically oriented grammar schools. In the following passage, George Orwell made observations that suggest that he, like everybody else, can form opinions based upon the passions of the time:

The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a 'job' should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly. The idea of a great big boy of eighteen, who ought to be bringing a pound a week home to his parents, going to school in a ridiculous uniform and even being caned for not doing his lessons! Just fancy a working-class boy of eighteen allowing himself to be caned!

I'm also reminded of visiting my stepfather's home town in the north of England, seeing two towering schools built side-by-side to respectively educate the boys and girls of a very working class region, and of the fact that for my stepfather and his brother that project was an undeniable success. A critic of the grammar school era who has come to soften his tone observes,

For a considerable time now, however, I have been in the process of changing my mind: did people like me, both a beneficiary of a grammar school education and also a vociferous critic of it at the time, make a grave error?

My thoughts coalesced when I was questioned while taking part in a BBC4 documentary, The Grammar School – A Secret History (to be next screened on Thursday at 9pm). This was a much more difficult U-turn for me than many because I wrote a book in 1975 about my former school, Dagenham County High (now defunct), entitled Goodbye to the Working Class. I was extremely critical of the school specifically and grammar schools in general. Though I do not recant everything, including the book's overall thesis, I now concede that I totally underplayed the value of the education itself.

The atmosphere of the grammar school, or of British schools in general, of the post-WWII period was critiqued, in a manner of speaking, in the movie and song, The Wall.

The concern was not on creating a warm, caring environment for the children, but for those who were lucky enough to make the cut at age 11, and took advantage of what was offered to them, there was the opportunity to advance through education: Getting not only a very strong (for lack of a better term) K-12 education, but also passage into top universities with very low tuition. When I heard my stepfather describe his experiences I had mixed feelings: Fist that I would have appreciated that type of academic opportunity myself and second, even as a student who didn't often get into trouble, that I would not have enjoyed the rule-driven authoritarian structure of his school. (I started school in the U.K., so I had a taste of the tail end of that authoritarianism, and I didn't like the taste even then.)

My stepfather once commented on high school reunions, that his grammar school had never held a reunion? Why? Because by the time he graduated, there were only about twenty students left in his class. There was some truth to what Orwell had to say about the clash of cultures in grammar school. That attrition rate, no doubt, was a significant factor in the winding down of that particular social experiment, but at a cost:

Indeed, when I bump into old boys and girls, the majority of them extol the virtues of the school and the education system which gave them – the sons and daughters of largely blue-collar workers – the chance to take a step on the ladder to a better life....

I supported the transformation to comprehensive schooling in the egalitarian belief that we should dispense with a two-tier state system (the third tier, technical schools, never worked anyway). But I now accept that we should not have rejected the educational ethos of grammar schools. As the testimonies in the documentary illustrate, they did a fine job. In phasing them out, we dumbed down instead of smarting up. And those grammars that have managed to survive prove the point.

The author also notes that although "only 1% of the children of semi-skilled or unskilled workers went on to higher education"

There were economic reasons for many not going on to university, allied to the fact that obtaining a place was difficult because there were fewer universities at the time. Most significantly, the schooling itself provided a springboard to the professions and led many to go to university later, as mature students.

The author concludes that grammar schools, "and particularly the disciplined culture they cultivated", worked, and that the present need is to reinvent them, not to dismiss them. But here's the thing: that takes us back to academic tracking.

I recently discussed tracking with a professor who spent a good part of his career helping K-12 teachers learn to better teach English, and he commented on how different a school environment could be within a large school district, with some schools under pretty good control and others largely out of control. He expressed sympathy for teachers who oppose tracking, as the net result can be that they're left with a classroom full of kids who don't see much or any value in learning. But he seemed to accept that in many school districts, tracking was pretty much the only way you would get the more academically capable students into a learning environment where they were challenged. The conceit of the public school is that smart kids will take care of themselves. Some will, but others will meander or drop out.

The best solution we seem to have developed for students with special aptitude is to offer magnet schools - to allow kids to voluntarily funnel themselves into schools that support academics, the arts, or even specific career training. It's an imperfect solution and, in my opinion, generally starts later than would be ideal. Like British comprehensive schools, even academically focused magnet schools are dumbed down as compared to the historic British grammar schools, but at least students have a shot at being not only prepared for college, but prepared to do well.

To the extent that the British once operated under the conceit that if you identified bright children and gave them the opportunity for a top quality education, albeit in a setting that was too rigid and authoritarian for many kids who were channeled into it, you could make them all college quality and they would all attend college. The reality did not meet that expectation, but when you look at what was accomplished you have to acknowledge a transformation of culture and the economic elevation of a great many kids who were otherwise unlikely to have moved beyond working class employment and wages. Their rise was buoyed by a number of factors, including the post-WWII economic expansion, the increased need for educated workers, and the fact that traditional class structures arguably contributed to a larger-than-otherwise-likely population of bright young people with supportive families who were nonetheless pretty much locked into the bottom end of the nation's class structure. But a valid takeaway is that you do help achieve social mobility, better society, and better the lives of individual young people when you give them the opportunity to pursue academically rigorous education.

Our nation presently operates under the conceit that schools can turn anybody into "college material" and that everybody will benefit from having a college degree. I disagree on both counts. In terms of the value of a college degree, a strong case can be made that an excessive population of college graduates, emerging from colleges that have dumbed down degree programs to ensure high completion rates, makes a college degree less valuable. When employers can no longer safely make assumptions about the academic abilities of a college graduate based upon their degree, and when there are many underqualified or lightly qualified graduates who look pretty much the same on paper as the ones who would be a good hire, the hiring decision is apt to turn on other factors. That's not new - the elite colleges that have traditionally served society's scions still carry intense brand value that is arguably in gross disproportion to their comparative academic rigor - but it puts many college graduates back in the position that high school graduates enjoyed back in the 1950's and 60's. A college degree is in some ways analogous to a union card - it doesn't necessarily show that you can do the job, but at least it opens the door for your application. A "college for all" attitude dilutes that value.

Also, even for some highly capable or highly intelligent students, completing college can consume years and money that would be better invested in other pursuits, such as jumping into a challenging field based upon a display of ability, or starting a business. Also, some students benefit from taking time between high school and college, as they lack the interest or motivation to study. (Think: the entire phenomenon of the "party school".)

I would like to see educational reform focus on helping students identify their aptitudes, and maximize the development of their skills. I would try to provide a structure in which a student whose interests changed, or whose aptitudes shifted, move from one track to another - or perhaps be the equivalent of a "dual major" - rather than locking kids into a track based upon choices made or test results from too young an age. And while I would try to provide equal opportunity for all, and to give all kids safe schools with competent teachers, I would not concern myself with notions of "elitism" when I allowed kids to choose academically tracked programs. It may well have been an "elitist" system that allowed my stepfather and his brother to leave a small, working class town, get Oxbridge educations, and pursue successful careers in business, but our nation's "reforms" of the past decade seem more likely to have kept them in under-performing schools while the nation's resources were poured into trying to bring sub-average students up to average and pretend that would make them all "college ready". If you pretend that the smart kids, or those who excel vocationally or artistically, in failing schools (or the mediocre charters we pretend are fantastic) will take care of themselves, you'll disadvantage those kids and deprive society of the full extent of their gifts.

The Perils of Standardized Testing

I was recently speaking with a career college professor who described to me his frustration with a class of students he's teaching. Having given them their first exam, a take-home assignment, he had found that only a couple of the students had written adequate papers. So he returned the students' papers, having duly marked them up with comments, and asked them to revise their submissions and turn them in the following week.

This brought to mind something I read recently, that scarcely more than a third of college graduates can successfully write an essay comparing two newspaper articles. "That's what I asked them to do," the professor said. Not two articles, but two pieces of poetry. "I can't simply ask them to analyze one poem, because most of them will search the Internet and copy what they find. This is the only way I can be sure I'm getting their own work."

A few months ago I read somebody's short-sighted retort to critics of high-stakes standardized testing. He gave an example of a question from a standardized test and asked, "Isn't this exactly what students are supposed to be learning?" But no, although I'm willing to allow for much greater emphasis on basic comprehension in the early grades, reading a few paragraphs and answering a series of multiple choice questions pertaining to that block of text is not a fair test of what students should be learning. High school students should be able to write essays comparing two newspaper articles or poems. College students should not be stumbling over such a basic task. For most college graduates to still struggle? Something is very wrong.

Two things, perhaps. First, it suggests that standardized tests are focused on the easily measurable, which means concrete tasks and concrete thinking, not more complex, abstract tasks or abstract thinking, and if students are unfortunate enough to be in a school district that spends a considerable amount of time "teaching to the test" they may become masters at reading a few paragraphs of text or a simple math problem then "ruling out the two unlikely answers and choosing the most likely of the two remaining answers", but aren't being prepared for more complex analysis, problem solving, critical thinking, or reading longer form materials.

Second, it reinforces the fact that not all students are college material. Some may become college material after a year, two years, or perhaps ten or more years in the working world. Some will be much better served by vocational training, a modern form of apprenticeship, or by simply entering the job market. Even if we ascribe some of the poor analytic performance of college grads to the colleges themselves, if that statistic is accurate it still suggests that about half of the students who presently attend college aren't likely to get much out of the experience - four years of expensive life-postponement. Nobody should view that as acceptable.

The Big Bucks in School Privatization (f/k/a Charter Schools)

It's been interesting to me to see the intense interest that some very wealth Americans have been giving to the charter school movement. Some (e.g., Bill Gates) appear to be genuinely interested in school reform, others (e.g., Mark Zuckerberg) seem interested in improving their public image, and many may see it as a fashionable social activity. But when hedge fund managers start sniffing around the perimeter you know that there has to be big money involved... somehow.

Well, here's an example of the big money.

Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction.

The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.

The article explains how some charter schools have seen their rent skyrocket, but with little interest from regulators or state auditors. And the charters aren't making much noise about it, even as rent doubles or triples over a couple of years because.... at least according to the article, it appears that they're in bed with the companies that are building the properties and leasing them to the schools.

In Albany, which boasts the state's highest percentage of charter school enrollments, a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation has employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city's nine charter schools.

But many of those same schools are now straining to pay escalating rents, which are going toward the debt service that Brighter Choice incurred during construction.

The Henry Johnson Charter School, for example, saw the rent for its 31,000-square-foot building skyrocket from $170,000 in 2008 to $560,000 last year.

The Albany Community School's rent jumped from $195,000 to $350,000.

Green Tech High Charter School rents went from $443,000 to $487,000....

And key officers of Albany's charter school boards are themselves board members, employees or former employees of the Brighter Choice Foundation or its affiliates.

Christian Bender, for example, executive director of the foundation, is chairman or vice chairman of four of the Albany charters.

So is this catching anybody's attention?

No wonder JPMorgan Chase announced this week it was creating a new $325 million pool to invest in charter schools and take advantage of the New Markets Tax Credit.

Who else is seeing opportunity here?

The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. today announced the formation of a $25 million charter school facility that will finance the development of approximately 16 charter schools over the next two years.

The Goldman Sachs Charter School Loan Facility will be capitalized by Goldman Sachs and credit-enhanced by funds awarded by the US Department of Education to LISC, which will also manage the facility and its lending program. LISC currently supports 130 charter schools nationwide. This facility will be focused on the greater New York City and New Jersey areas. In total, the fund is expected to leverage approximately $100 million in additional capital to support high-quality charter school facilities.

How might more money be squeezed out of charter schools? How about allowing them to operate as for-profit businesses (in the model of the University of Phoenix and Kaplan)? The AEI's on the case:

The Obama administration has been particularly guilty on this count, enthusiastically championing charter-school expansion even as its Department of Education radiates hostility toward for-profits in K-12 and higher education. The result is entrenched funding arrangements, policies, and political currents that stifle for-profit operators — organizations such as National Heritage Academies, which operates 67 charter schools in eight states, or EdisonLearning, which operates schools and provides supplemental education services across the United States and overseas. If choice-based reform is to yield more than boutique solutions, for-profits are a critical piece of the puzzle.

Meanwhile, even as they admit that charter schools are effectively doing nothing to improve school performance, with the help of their mainstream media stenographers they hope to create a funding structure that shifts more money to charters and out of the public system - in a manner that appears designed to benefit large commercial ventures:

A real marketplace in education, he suggests, probably wouldn’t fund schools directly at all. It would only fund students, tying a school’s budget to the number of children seeking to enroll. If there are 150 applicants for a charter school, they should all bring their funding with them — and take it away from the failing schools they’re trying to escape.

A "real marketplace" in which you defund the public school in favor of a for-profit charter school that doesn't actually get better results, but pays a lot of rent to the property investors who sit on its board, operates a large number of schools so that it can justify CEO-sized salaries to its management, doesn't offer amenities such as music, gym, art, libraries (all a "waste of money"), avoids public oversight, and leaves special education to what's left of the public school system. And if the public becomes concerned that you're scrapping the public system in favor of something that may not be better - may in fact be worse - and that these corporations are interested not only in the inner city but in extending their reach into successful school districts? Lecture them that results don't matter - what counts is "freedom of choice". Oops, sorry Ross - I mean being "Free to Choose".

As I've indicates, my initial hope for the charter school movement was that it would bring about more choice for parents. I would like to see charters offer parents a real choice of educational model with less focus on standardized testing. But with few exceptions the charter school movement has not lived up to that promise and, sorry, exceptions do not prove the rule. The charter schools that show the most promise in the inner city receive grants and other subsidies that expand their budgets well beyond the standard level of funding per pupil, while advancing an educational model that would be quickly and firmly rejected by most middle class parents. We're to extrapolate from that limited success to believe that if those charters not only operated without that additional grant money, but were operated by corporations that were also pulling out 10-20% of the school's money to satisfy investors and shareholders on top of oversized rents, we would be happy with the results? Why stop there? Let's push the argument right over the top.

And a world where more parents and kids have access to a fraction of the educational choices available to, say, Sasha and Malia Obama seems a like a better world by definition, no matter what happens to America’s average S.A.T. score.

First, while it's nice to pretend that we're talking about average SAT scores, the larger discussion of charter schools involves bringing children up to grade level in math and reading. We're not talking about a trade-off between "history, science, foreign languages, classic literature, mathematics and English composition" and "test scores" that a typical parent would find acceptable. If you're lagging two or three years behind grade level, it's absurd to pretend you can simultaneously hold an advantage in mathematics, literature and composition. Second, the school attended by the President's children is not in any way average, nor would the public have any interest in funding a school at @$35,000 per student per year. If it were, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Third, the school is a non-profit. As are most of the private schools to which those with the money to choose presently send their children.

Stop and think about that for a minute. If you're wealthy, your kids don't go to the University of Phoenix, and your kids certainly won't be attending the "charter school" equivalent of the University of Phoenix. It's quaint to pretend that if only corporations are permitted to pull profits out of the per-student fees allocated to charters we'll suddenly have thousands of schools across the country offering rich curricula and pedagogical choices. But if you look at the for-profit college industry you can see what you actually get - bottom feeders. No kidding, the advocates of that system are encouraging people to ignore test scores.

As for the conceit that "costs of educating kids who took vouchers were lower than for kids who stayed in the existing public schools", well, no kidding. Because public schools offer libraries (and librarians), sports programs, gymnasiums, school cafeterias, and other amenities, the cost of providing "alternative schools" for students with behavioral problems, as well as bearing the cost of medical support and special education services for special needs students even if those students are in charter schools and private schools. The money paid to charters reflects the fact that they don't offer that full set of services - not even close.

Yes, by all means, come up with systems that create true choice for parents, and let them pick a program that suits their child. But let's not pretend that the monied interests who are hungrily eyeing public school dollars are any more interested in education than private prisons are in reducing recidivism. Those who truly want to help charters offer a wider set of choices can follow the model of Clonlara, and develop curricula and teaching methods that can be employed by interested charter schools. If they do a good job, they should even be able to sell such a curriculum at a profit. And those who truly want to help kids can do so through smaller nonprofits that remain answerable to parents and the community.

Let's not offer up the elementary school equivalent of the University of Phoenix, and defend it by claiming that we're giving its students "a fraction of the educational choices available to" parents who can afford the elementary school equivalent of Yale.

Giving Michelle Rhee Credit Where It's Due (And Only Where It's Due)

I've been thinking about some of the post-mortems on Michelle Rhee's tenure at the D.C. Schools, now that she has decided to quit instead of trying to find a way to work with the incoming mayor. At Tapped, Monica Potts wonders if Michelle Rhee's abrasive style would have been tolerated had she been a man. I don't think the problem was her abrasiveness; I think the problem was that she had a tin ear for politics and didn't know when to soften her approach or bite her tongue. Given that Mayor Adrian Fenty, not Rhee, was the one voted out of office, and that he shared some of the same problematic personality traits, I don't think it's a gender thing. Politicians can have their tempers and their abrasive moments, but they must nonetheless smile for the cameras and kiss the (figurative) babies.

Potts endorses the view that

...it was Rhee's disdain of collaborating with teachers and getting the community on board with school reforms that helped contribute to her abrasive reputation. But on the merits, Rhee's probably right. There's something odd about the idea that parents who aren't trained in education should have equal input in how their children's schools are run. And that's where the divide between Rhee and everyone else really lies. Rhee viewed her job as a technician would, as a CEO might, someone who is charged with getting results, even if doing so is hard.

Yet Rhee's abrasiveness was not contextual. Potts links to an article that recounts an example,

Yet one of her less-famous moments sticks with me. It was tucked inside an Atlantic profile by writer Clay Risen. In the piece, Risen was trying to make the point that Rhee does "not suffer fools, gladly or otherwise." Here's how he supported that contention: "When I asked her how she would characterize her ideal relationship with parents, she replied, 'That’s a great question. So often reporters ask me stupid questions. I had one interview yesterday, and I was like, ‘Okay, you are not smart.’"

Her general attitude appeared Manichean. If you didn't understand what she was doing, you were stupid. Disagreement, no matter how well-placed, seemed to be interpreted as malice.

Further, it's the height of arrogance to suggest that parents are not positioned to question, let alone have a say in, how their schools are run. We're supposed to simultaneously praise parents for being concerned about their children, wanting better schools, involving themselves with their children's schools, etc., but they are to be dismissed as know-nothings the second they question the goals of the system's top bureaucrat? In a sense, that's an extension of the "sit down, shut up, do as your told" model that school administrators often seem to view as perfect classroom management, but it's presumptuous and rude when directed at concerned parents.

Further, parents had valid cause to question some of Rhee's methods and priorities. She carelessly fired hundreds of teachers then claimed, "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school." How would you feel if your child's teacher was fired, a teacher you liked, and you knew none of that was true about the teacher? How would you feel about the disappearing, reappearing money trick that was used to justify the firings? How would you feel if your school continued to crumble, but huge amounts of money appeard to be directed at schools that you perceived to be Rhee's pet projects? How would you feel if your school district's funding were so dependent upon corporate contributions, with an associated threat to withdraw money if they didn't approve of the district's management or performance, that you had to ask, "How 'public' is it when Wal-Mart can blackmail D.C. voters?"

Potts argues that it wasn't Rhee's job to "nurture":

It was Rhee's job to hire and fire teachers, to ensure the curriculum would teach students, and to revive D.C.'s beleaguered school system.

If Rhee found being respectful and accountable to parents and others inconsistent with managing D.C.'s schools, perhaps she belongs in the charter movement in which school administrators can insulate themselves from accountability to parents, let alone voters. Or perhaps she can move back to an advocacy group. Because last I checked, public schools are supposed to be accountable to parents and voters.

The aforementioned article lists what it describes as Rhee's accomplishments, and some of them are very real. She made the first day of school (and no doubt, many of the days that followed) much less dramatic and much more efficient. She negotiated a contract with the teacher's union that allows for greater teacher accountability. She took a modest stand on nutrition by banning flavored milk from schools.

The article also praises her for raising "standards, expectations, and test scores", but I think she can be better praised for her effort than for her accomplishment. As the article linked to document a rise in test scores indicates, this past year test scores went down.

Researchers in the field say that it is the nature of standardized tests that they rise from year to year when the same design of a test is given in the same schools. And they go down when a new design is given, or when a different demographic of students takes the test, or a bunch of kids in a class had a cold, or... well, you get the idea.

There are too many variables that can affect the scores of a single test to make the result completely reliable, which is why scores should never be used as a sole measure for any high-stakes decision.

By quitting now, Rhee puts herself in the position of claiming credit for a return to rising scores and blaming her successors if the scores continue to drop, although I would hope she would show more grace than to try to do either.

It's also reasonable to note that at their peak, the test scores remain deeply troubling.

Rhee said she and her team would “dig into the data” to find out why the elementary reading proficiency rate, which had risen 11 percentage points from 2007 to 2009, fell 4.4 points, to 44.4 percent, and why, after rising 20 percentage points from 2007 to 2009, the elementary math proficiency rate dipped 4.6 points this year, to 43.4.

The proficiency rate is essentially a measure of the portion of students who pass the tests.

Those scores indicate how much work remains to be done. They also highlight a problem I have with Rhee's "blame the teachers" approach to school reform. A more mature perspective would be, "Homes and communities make a huge difference in student performance, but we can't control those. All we can control are the schools and classrooms, so we have to proceed as if homes and communities don't matter." Instead she attempted to write children's lives outside of school out of the equation.

When done correctly, raising standards and expectations can be a very good thing. If you can convince a student that she needs to take ownership of her education, that her home life may make it difficult to study and succeed but she can succeed and even excel despite those obstacles, you've taken a strong first step toward making it happen. You then have to provide the necessary resources and support within the school environment (and outside, when possible) to make it happen. In an inner city environment's easy for teachers to become jaded or cynical - it's probably hard not to - and to let kids slide through the system without challenging them to reconsider their expectations for themselves and their understanding of their own capacity. When all you do is blame teachers, you shift the onus away from the students and effectively depict learning as a passive activity.

The article also argues that "Rhee stopped the skid in enrollment", pointing to a 1.6% rise in enrollment following two years of decline. That would be more compelling if the rise weren't associated with a severe recession that appears to have brought about similar rises in many other communities. This argument also seems inconsistent with the conception that it was parents' anger at Rhee that caused them to vote Mayor Fenty out of office.

Finally, the article credits Rhee for her new teacher rating system,

Rhee piloted IMPACT, a new method for evaluating teachers. Some say it's unfair and impossible to implement. But who's going to stand up and applaud the old system, whatever it was? Let's call this a start.

Fair enough, it's a start. But recall, if we're going to be judging teachers by a single year's test scores, why can't we judge Rhee's performance last year by the same measure?

But school administrators aren't to be judged by the same standards as teachers, are they. They negotiate the terms of a contract with the teacher's union, sign on the dotted line, then blame the union for seeking to enforce the terms they agreed to. They fail to monitor newly hired teachers such that issues of performance and classroom management aren't noticed before the teacher gets tenure, and then blame the teachers and their union for it's being difficult to fire teachers for their poor performance. Typically when they contractually agree to give teachers a raise, they happily give themselves the same or a larger raise. When they contractually provide teachers with generous benefits, insurance, sick time, personal days, etc., they typically reward themselves with the same or greater benefits. But how often are they willing to look into the mirror? The problems of our nation's inner city schools did not arise in a vacuum.

Now Why Would Civil Rights Groups Have Reservations About Charter Schools....

If you read the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, you will read that the only possible explanation for civil rights groups' reservations in relation to charter schools is that they're in bed with the teacher's unions.

By casting their lot firmly with teachers unions, the leadership of the NAACP and the Urban League hope to preserve their power and safeguard their traditional sources of financial support.

That's presented by the authors of the editorial, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West, both of Harvard, as a conclusory statement. A non sequitur. As if the only possible reason in the world why civil rights groups might express

"reservations" about the Obama administration's "extensive reliance on charter schools." They specifically voiced concern about "the overrepresentation of charter schools in low-income and predominantly minority communities."

Is that taking a different position might alienate teacher's unions.

The editorial also presents an argument that's all-too-typical, these days - that public policy should follow opinion polls:

Someone should remind these leaders who they represent. The truth is that support for charters among ordinary African-Americans and Hispanics is strong and has only increased dramatically in the past two years. Opposition along the lines expressed by the NAACP and the Urban League is articulated by a small minority.

* * *

Support for charters among African Americans rose to 49% in 2009, up from 42% in 2008. This year it leapt upward to no less than 64%. Among Hispanics support jumped to 47% in 2010, from 37% in 2008.

So by the authors' logic, whatever the facts and whatever their concerns, civil rights groups should have adamantly opposed charter schools a mere three years ago but now, with shifts in the result of opinion polls, they are obligated to support them. For that matter, what if next year's survey shows a significant drop in popular support for charter schools?

Even if you accept that public policy should follow the polls, and further assuming that the author's methodology was sound, the authors' logic falls flat:

Each year we provided respondents the same, neutral description of charter schools, followed by the question: "Do you support or oppose the formation of charter schools?" Those interviewed were also given the choice of saying they "neither support or oppose" charters.

That survey result is not, on its face, inconsistent with the position of civil rights groups. Quite obviously it is possible to favor the formation of charter schools while simultaneously having reservations about those schools, both generally and as a solution to the problems of inner city schools. To see an example of why, the authors could have turned to the news section of the very paper in which they're published.

The Equity Project Charter School garnered headlines and accolades when it opened last September with an unusual plan: recruit top teachers and pay them $125,000—substantially more than the average teacher salary anywhere in the country.

Its test scores did not match the hoopla: Only 37.4% of the students were proficient in math and 24% were proficient in English. On average, the other public schools in Equity Project's Washington Heights district performed better, the test scores released last week showed.

"It's not unexpected" for a first-year school, said Zeke Vanderhoek, founder and principal of the middle school. "I'm very confident in the vision of the school and the teachers we have, but we're not there yet."

Further,

Two weeks ago, the New York State Department of Education renewed the charter of Opportunity Charter School, the city and state's worst-performing charter school. Eight percent of the students were proficient in English and 7% were proficient in math. In the district in which Opportunity competes, proficiency scores in both subjects were above 50%.

I do expect the performance of the Equality Project to improve, and there are charters that are achieving results on par with, and sometimes better than, their public school counterparts. But the questionable performance of some schools based upon assumptions of what will improve school performance, and the terrible performance of other schools based upon what very well could be opportunism and profiteering by the private interests behind those operations, should inspire political, civil rights and opinion leaders to exercise caution.

Further, when the lessons of the charter school movement seem to boil down to "student performance improves with a longer school day", the question is raised: why is it necessary to have charter schools to lengthen the school day? For that matter, it may be that the same results can be achieved with the same length and number of school days, but with a shorter summer vacation.

The results of four-year pilot study, obtained by The Globe and Mail, show that children who have only a one-month summer break do better in math, retain more of their lessons and need less time for review.

This study rides on the tail of a 20-year investigation in the U.S. by researchers at Johns Hopkins University that found children from low-income families fell nearly three grade levels behind their higher-income peers.

The culprit? Summer vacation. The learning advantages families can offer their children during non-school months – like lessons, camp and parents who can afford to stay home with their children – are often only available to an elite few from high-income homes.

I think that last sentence incorporates a great deal of assumption and overgeneralization, but the results of the studies are not surprising.

Beyond the question of quality and opportunism, and the question of what they actually bring to the table, there are additional reasons why civil rights leaders may be skeptical of charter schools. First, charter schools tend to be segregated. Second, they tend to adopt policies toward children and classroom instruction that would not be acceptable in middle or upper class public schools. Third, the major "franchise" charter schools, such as KIPP schools, are not on the whole self-sustaining, but instead rely upon outside grants to balance their books, raising questions both of their long-tern sustainability and of whether that money might be better directed at public schools. Fourth, when you put education in the hands of a private organization, even if it's a well-meaning nonprofit, you diminish the oversight of state and local government. It's a fair retort that a lot of inner city governments and school boards have failed to do their job, or became hopelessly corrupt, but abandoning reform in favor of charter schools leaves a lot of children behind. Fifth, charter schools often rely upon the public schools for a significant amount of educational support, as their facilities often lack the amenities of public schools - sports facilities, cafeterias, libraries, art rooms, etc.

So there are many valid reasons why a civil rights leader might have reservations about an emphasis on charter schools. But wait, there's more. Let's hear what some unabashed racists have to say about the editorial and charter schools:

Even though the teachers unions oppose “charter schools”, I wonder if a lot of black teachers secret love them so that they can teach the few students who have more than a room temperature IQ. While many may be scams, I personally don’t have a problem with smarter than average blacks being separated from the dim bulbs when it comes to school. Since black teachers can no longer keep baseball bats on their desks, this is the next best option.

A nice display of loving concern, right? So how about vouchers instead of charter schools?

The main reason Whites send their children to private or Catholic schools is so their children don’t get beat up, terrorized by Black students in the public schools. Give these same Black students “Vouchers” to go to White private schools and the same process happens there.

Nope, nothing that might concern a civil rights leader there....

Why Rhee Wants To Break the Teacher's Union

CWD comments,

Clearly, Rhee is trying to sell the teachers a pig in a poke. On the other hand, these are the same teachers who have had union president's steal millions from them and who readily admit that they wouldn't want their children to attend the schools where they teach . . . and are surprised that anyone would expect them too . . .

I'm not sure that busting the Union is a necessary step in the process, but blowing the whole system up and starting over has some theoretical merit . . .

I'll admit, Rhee's professed goal - giving teachers a big raise and merit pay - is not the traditional opening gambit of a union buster. I do think it's a "pig in a poke" - that the proposed pay structure is unsustainable. But for now, let's assume otherwise. Obviously the goal here isn't to coerce the union into letting its members be paid more. Nobody's talking about expanding the school year. So what's left... oh, yeah....

Tenure.

Even when they offer wages comparable to other school districts, or above what other districts pay, school districts like D.C. have a hard time attracting quality job applicants for teaching positions. Why? Because teaching in an inner city school is considered to be a miserable experience. Teaching in a school where, despite your best efforts, you wouldn't send your own child? Where your best efforts, applied every single day, will do nothing to improve the status quo? Where your day is consumed with disciplinary problems and you struggle to maintain classroom order? I have admiration for teachers who can work like that, day after day, without burning out or quitting. But there aren't many of them.

So weak administrators hire weak applicants in order to fill positions, aren't diligent enough (or don't care enough) to ferret out those who don't have an adequate skill set before they get tenure, and the district ends up with large numbers of teachers who really aren't equipped to teach. Rhee supposedly will offer remedial programs for these teachers as part of her secret plan, so that they can in theory avoid being fired, but nothing is stopping her from offering remedial training right now. What she clearly wants to do is to break the tenure system so she can clean house.

I can't say that I blame her. I'm sure she can identify a lot of teachers who should never have been hired, and a larger group that may become highly motivated to improve their skills and performance if they can be threatened with termination. I have sympathy for an administrator who inherits a broken system. But let's be blunt: if teacher's unions were the cause of this problem, D.C.'s system should be typical of the nation's schools as opposed to being among the dregs. The roots of the problem lie in incompetent, unmotivated administration crossed with, in much of the system, what many teachers would find to be an unrewarding, often unpleasant, teaching environment.

Rhee was hoping that the offer of big money would be a sufficient enticement to get the union to voluntarily give up tenure, or allow teachers to opt into the merit system (possibly with the longer-term goal of trying to get the teachers who opted for the merit pay system to vote to decertify the union). But it's difficult to see why a union would regard a promise of an apparently unsustainable pay raise for some as grounds to surrender the largest benefit it has historically provided to its members - job security. And even if you're a good teacher, you have to have some concern about whether you would get merit pay, or have the bad luck of having a particularly bad class and be deemed to be underperforming despite strong efforts.

That Has To Be The Explanation....

The Post speculates,

Why is it that teachers were more apt to see problems with the behavior or character of minority students? One board member, according to The Post's Michael Alison Chandler, was "perplexed" that disparities in measures of character education mirrored the gaps in academic achievement. No one should be surprised that students don't do well when their teachers expect less of them.

Yes, that must be it - all the teachers are racist and expect less of minority students, and that's what causes behavior problems in class.

It couldn't be something as mundane as, say, kids whose parents have little interest in school performance raising kids who share their values. Could it? Because you'll find the same correlation in predominantly white school districts as well.

Improving Schools

Today, Bob Herbert points out that increased teacher credentials do not automatically translate into better teaching skills:

The first is teacher quality, a topic that gets talked about incessantly. It has been known for decades that some teachers have huge positive effects on student achievement, and that others do poorly. The positive effect of the highest performing teachers on underachieving students is startling.

What is counterintuitive, but well documented, is that paper qualifications, such as teacher certification, have very little to do with whatever it is that makes good teachers effective.

Part of this, in my opinion, results from the fact that there is typically a strong economic incentive for teachers to increase their credentials, such as an automatic raise upon obtaining a master's degree, which inspires teachers to pursue higher degrees (often a masters in education) without regard to their interest or aptitude, and seems to transform many education graduate programs into diploma mills. But even assuming otherwise, what is there to support the assumption that beyond a certain threshold, more training in educational theory will result in somebody becoming a better teacher? Or, if a teacher is more ambitious, how does a masters degree in math translate into better teaching skills for an elementary school math teacher - if the teacher has the interest and aptitude to complete such a masters degree, it is reasonable to assume they already had sufficient mastery of the subject to teach at the K-12 level.

Herbert proposes developing "New forms of identifying good teachers and weeding out poor ones - by carefully assessing their on-the-job performance". Fair enough, but the educational system is a forest that can't be efficiently improved one tree at a time. He knows this:

The second area to be mined for potentially transformative effects is the wide and varied field of alternative school models. We should be rigorously studying those schools that appear to be having the biggest positive effects on student achievement. Are the effects real? If so, what accounts for them?

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), to cite one example, is a charter school network that has consistently gotten extraordinary academic results from low-income students. It has worked in cities big and small, and in rural areas. Like other successful models, it has adopted a longer school day and places great demands on its teachers and students.

Not just alternative school models, though - but alternative educational models. Sometimes it seems that approaches to teaching certain skills or subjects depends upon the direction the wind is blowing, not any actual research into the effectiveness of one teaching technique over another (e.g., "whole language" versus "phonics" for teaching reading; "mandatory homework" measured by volume, not relevance or outcome). I was reading somebody advocate for speeding up ESL for immigrant students so that they wouldn't "fall behind" as measured by "No Child Left Behind" - but the real test should be whether the ESL program helps with longer term academic achievement, not the latest litmus test imposed by Washington. It may be that rapid ESL education does that, but that wasn't a concern articulated by the proponent of the "reform".

Length of the school day is an interesting subject to examine, but it's not likely to be a quick fix. There are school systems in other nations which achieve strong academic performance based upon a shorter school day (with a lot of homework). If kids won't have the opportunity to perform their homework outside of the school, or won't have necessary support at home, it is apparent how a longer school day (with less homework) can help overcome such problems. But in such a case the remedy is not one that "fixes the school", but one that compensates for certain problems in the home.

In any case, we can do a lot of bona fide research into teaching methods that work, by age and by subject, and see how well those techniques can be implemented in the classroom. (Language education, it seems to me, is largely dreadful in the public schools - yet we know that the government has already invested millions in efficient language education programs for its employees, and some of those programs and techniques must be transferable to K-12 settings.) Beyond that, we can examine what makes teachers good or inspirational, and try to teach (and coach) better teaching techniques to student teachers and newer teachers. (I suspect that a lot of it will come down to personality, which will make it difficult for many to consistently implement the techniques inconsistent with their personalities, and to going an extra mile or two on the teacher's own time (i.e., after hours, with no additional pay), which is not something that teachers can be compelled to do.)

Racial Balance As Window Dressing

Although it may be impolitic of me to suggest it, in looking at some of the school integration policies affected by the Supreme Court's dramatic narrowing of Brown, I can't help but wonder if the policies were not primarily about keeping up appearances. Juan Williams has listed some of the serious problems which continued despite school integration, as well as the limited effect of the decision:

Desegregation does not speak to dropout rates that hover near 50 percent for black and Hispanic high school students. It does not equip society to address the so-called achievement gap between black and white students that mocks Brown’s promise of equal educational opportunity.

And the fact is, during the last 20 years, with Brown in full force, America’s public schools have been growing more segregated — even as the nation has become more racially diverse. In 2001, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that the average white student attends a school that is 80 percent white, while 70 percent of black students attend schools where nearly two-thirds of students are black and Hispanic

Inner city school districts with very high minority enrollment are unlikely to appear integrated absent an inter-district integration plan. Meanwhile, in school districts which can engage in the balancing of minority populations through school busing, it seems that the central issue is not about equalizing school performance. Instead the primary goal seems to be to achieve ethnic balance when allocating space in the district's most desirable schools. Quality differences between schools don't appear to be much affected by this type of balancing.

Even accepting that having people from a variety of backgrounds and who hold divergent world views can enrich an academic environment, once you also accept race as the best measure of "diversity" you run into additional issues. If you ask random parents whether they believe integrated schools offer a better experience than segregated schools, many (perhaps most) will answer yes. If you then ask them which school they wish their own child to attend,

• An average quality integrated school across town, requiring at least thirty minutes of transportation each way;
• An average quality school which is poorly integrated, and in which their child will be in the ethnic majority, a two minute walk from home; or
• A superlative school which is poorly integrated, and in which their child will be in the ethnic minority, fifteen minutes from home,

how many parents would choose the first option? If the answer were any significant number, Seattle wouldn't have had to impose its affirmative action program on its students.

In respect to the argument that education is improved through ethnic diversity, consider a school district with three schools, with highly simplified demographics:

• School 1: 90% White; 9% African American; 1% Hispanic
• School 2: 85% White; 11% African American; 4% Hispanic
• School 3: 8% White; 85% African American; 7% Hispanic

Are we to assume that the first school is somehow more attractive than the third, simply by virtue of which race is in the overwhelming majority? If so, at least in the modern era, perhaps the problem is not that we can bus kids around such that the races are balanced in each school at 61:35:4, but that equality of funding does not automatically translate into either equality of opportunity or equality of outcome. Integration that does not elevate the quality of the bottom schools is a fig leaf - the population of students in bad schools may be more ethnically balanced, but their total number is not reduced.

Given equality of funding, there are not any easy answers to the question of how to improve lower quality schools. Some proposals, such as forcing the best teachers into the worst schools, are silly. Proponents of such measures often complain that teachers unions prevent this from happening. It would be more accurate to say that teachers' individual preference prevents it from happening, and that union contracts require school boards to give considerable weight to that preference. There is little which would prevent a school board from offering an incentive program to try to encourage teachers to accept positions at struggling schools, save perhaps for a lack of money to fund such measures.

Even if we were to assume that the parents whose children attend the best schools in town, and who are statistically most likely to both vote and to attend school board meetings, would tolerate their children's teachers being dispatched to other schools, such tolerance would likely end if, as this argument inevitably requires, those teachers were replaced with average quality and substandard teachers from other schools. This argument is also insulting to good teachers who have already chosen to work in troubled schools. The assumption that all student bodies are created equal is not correct. An excellent teacher may be able to achieve outstanding results in an academic magnet school, but excellent teaching skills are not of themselves sufficient to guarantee that outcome.

That argument also assumes that a skill set which makes a teacher outstanding within a high performing school will automatically translate into success within a failing school. Wrong. In a failing school, classroom management skills may prove to be more important to maintaining an appropriate learning environment than a teacher's ability to teach once the classroom is orderly. A few years ago I gave "law day" lectures at several middle schools. The students in the high SES school were reasonably well behaved. The students in the low socio-economic status (SES) school were significantly less well-behaved. The easiest environment by far, however, was a Catholic middle school in which the worst behavior I encountered was a boy who wore his winter gloves in class. (What's so bad about that behavior, you ask? Nothing, really.) I had similar experience substitute teaching - in some classrooms most of my time was spent maintaining order, while in others it was never even an issue. I can't draw racial inferences from that experience, as the school district was overwhelmingly white. SES was a highly significant factor.

I am not going to cheerlead "teach to the test" measures like "No Child Left Behind", and I find "mandatory homework" rules to be silly. While legislators don't pay attention to this, or perhaps don't care, such measures can also make it much less enjoyable to teach. But giving the devil its due, NCLB requires some amount of focus on the performance of individual students. I suspect that extra help and tutoring directed at struggling students will, on the whole, have a measurable positive effect on their performance. Forgive my skepticism of the American taxpayer, but I don't think school boards would get much voter support for proposals which overtly fund failing schools at a substantially higher level than average or quality schools, even if that funding is for programs and resources which are absolutely necessary to remedying the imbalance of performance. By moving the focus from the school to the student, you can avoid some of the issues which would emerge if you were to propose, for example, greater per student funding of failing schools. This would make the funding similar to special education, shifting the funding to a different budget such that additional resources could be applied to individual students without making it appear that other schools in the district are underfunded, even if the effect is the same.

You might argue that much of this is window dressing, and that the core of the problem is our society's misconception that public schools should cure all that ails our nation's youth. You might argue that a huge factor in student performance is parental attitudes toward education, parental support for their child's education, and the parents' own level of educational achievement. It would be hard to argue with that, save for observing that those factors are vastly harder to remedy than the problems of the public schools, and the hope is that by making schools better for the current generation you will improve those outside factors for future generations. We'll get better results, though, if we focus on curing the actual problems which underly failing schools.

What's Wrong With Schools

For, well, probably as long as there have been public schools, people have been quick to complain that various things are "wrong" with them, and to propose sweeping "reforms" or "solutions" which... usually aren't empirically researched, but instead fall into the category of "that feels right" or "that sounds good". Meanwhile, teaching colleges focus on preparing teachers for the status quo. And even within the realm of high-end private school education there is little to no real innovation, let alone an effort to research alternative educational models and their effectiveness. At best, research seems directed at "how to keep doing what we are doing, but improve it."

Where there is genuine research (e.g., "children learn better in kindergarten through third grade when class sizes are limited to 20") it often appears to be misinterpreted (e.g., "all elementary school classes should be limited in size, because children will learn better") or reinterpreted around budgetary concerns ("we're limiting class size to 28, so children will learn better").

Meaningless proposals are often tossed around as if they represent great wisdom.

Higher standards for teachers! Well, great... but how many school boards have policies of not hiring the best applicants?

Higher standards for teaching schools! Well, great... but if you cut down on the number of students accepted into education programs, how will we respond to a worsening teacher shortage?

Pay teachers more! Well, great... who is going to pay this money, again? And how do we know it will affect school quality - how much more do you have to pay teachers before you start attracting additional people to the field? (And if you draw people to the field on the basis of income, are you sure they will be better teachers?)

Oh, this is a good one... Make the best teachers work where they are most needed, in the worst schools and classrooms! Because the best teachers will rejoice at the opportunity, and won't simply apply for jobs in a different school district. And there's no better way to draw in top quality candidates from other fields of study than to promise them jobs in failing schools.

We need teachers who inspire the students! Inspiration is great, but I don't recall ever having a teacher who I thought could be trained to be more inspirational. I personally experienced many highly qualified teachers who were not inspirational, but were nonetheless very good at teaching. And some teachers, across the spectrum of subject matter competence, are amazingly adept at squeezing any enthusiasm right out of their students.

More competition between students! The Economist recently criticized teachers for disfavoring competition in school, whatever that means. Are we speaking about competition between students, or a student's internal effort to improve (competition with self)? Is the proposal that we would be better served by making all classes harder? By grading on a curve, such that students were forced to compete with each other for their grades? And what evidence is there that increased academic competition would work? (My high school's football team was among the worst in the city when I first enrolled, and had not improved by the time I graduated - competition failed. But the school had a great academic record.)

Equalized funding per student! It is presumed to be unfair when an inner city school has lower funding than a suburban school, but funding alone explains nothing. There are poorly funded school districts which perform well, and well-funded school districts which perform poorly. While equalizing funding can create new opportunities in poorly funded school districts, it's not a magic cure. Guess who has the most time to interact with, support, mentor, and teach children? Hint: It isn't their teachers.

Standardized tests for everyone! And perhaps mandating standardized tests to gauge student performance is, to some degree, necessary given the status quo. But too much testing becomes counter-productive, as teachers "teach to the test". And a system in which an excellent school can be given a "C+" grade for not improving, while a substandard school can get an "A" for improvement, is ridiculous.

Mandatory homework! Because... busy work helps kids learn? Is there any evidence that mandatory homework policies have improved student learning? My anecdotal experience is that most "mandatory homework" takes the form of busywork - stuff that either doesn't have to be graded, or is easy to grade, and consumes the required amount of time. Meanwhile, the kids who would in theory most benefit from homework often don't have the support at home to help them with that homework.

It has been commented that the "Three R's" have been supplaced by the "Three S's" - sit down, shut up, stand in line. With zero tolerance, and muddled, muddied "reforms", that doesn't seem likely to change. I once hoped that the charter school movement might inspire some true innovation, particularly where charter schools were partnered with teaching colleges. Unfortunately, there doesn't really seem to be any interest in driving true reform and innovative teaching methods.