Topic: Education and Child Policy

Why School Choice Programs Should Not Require Testing

By
Jason Bedrick

As Georgia’s legislature considers a bill to expand the state’s scholarship tax credit (STC) program and increase transparency, some are calling for additional regulations. Writing in yesterday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Adam Emerson of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute argued that the Peach State should require private schools that accept scholarship students to administer standardized tests. That would be a mistake.

Emerson argues that parents, educators, and policymakers “deserve to compare the gains that students make in different school environments.” Test scores can be a useful, albeit limited and incomplete, method of comparing the academic effectiveness of different schools. Under the current system, parents are free to choose private schools that administer standardized tests and avoid those that do not or vice-versa. Likewise, donors are free to direct their money to scholarship organizations that only fund schools that do or do not administer standardized tests.

By contrast, a testing mandate would severely limit or even eliminate these choices. Parents who are concerned about the “teach to the test” phenomenon or whose child reacts negatively to testing, and educators who believe that standardized testing gets in the way of real learning will have little to no choice but to participate in the standardized testing regime, as even Emerson agrees.

Emerson argues that the vast majority of private schools would still participate in the STC program even with a standardized testing mandate. He cites a recent Fordham study of the impact of regulation in school choice programs showing that “only 3 percent of non-participating schools cited governmental regulations as the most important reason to opt out.” That’s exactly the problem. The mandate would force private schools to choose between eschewing both the tests and all the students who need school choice scholarships to attend their school, or accepting both. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of schools succumb to the financial pressure.

Researchers tend to support testing mandates because they allow them to evaluate the effectiveness of certain reforms, at least to an extent. But the very act of measurement itself can distort the very thing they are trying to measure. Even aside from the cheating scandals, the tests create strong incentives for teachers to teach differently in order that their students perform well on the test.

Of course, some will argue, “that’s not a bug, that’s a feature!” They support standardized tests as a means of increasing accountability. “If you want to move something, you have to measure it,” they argue, and they have a point. But standardized tests are not the only way to measure learning. Supporters of standardized testing know that, but they want a uniform measures so that they can compare apples to apples. The problem is that uniform measures create a powerful incentive to move toward uniform behavior. As James Shuls of the Show-Me Institute wrote recently:

The fact is that curriculum standards don’t tell teachers how to teach in the same way that a high jump bar doesn’t tell a jumper how to jump. You could theoretically jump over a high jump bar in whatever way you would like; but because of how the jump is structured there is a clear advantage to doing the old Fosbury Flop.

While standardized tests are not as imposing as curriculum standards, what’s on the test can drive what is taught in the classroom, when it is taught, and how it is taught. Professor Jay P. Greene argued along similar lines regarding national standards:

Such uniformity would only make sense if: 1) there was a single best way for all students to learn; 2) we knew what it was; 3) we could be sure the people running this nationalized education system would adopt that correct approach; and 4) they would remain in charge far into the future. But that isn’t how things are. There is no consensus on what all students need to know. Different students can best be taught and assessed in different ways.

Standardized tests create an incentive for uniformity when we should be fostering a diversity of traditional and innovative pedagogical methods. To the extent that researchers, policymakers and some educators believe that standardized tests are useful, they should make their case in the free marketplace of ideas and encourage parents to choose the schools that administer them. What they shouldn’t do is use the coercive power of government to fashion a top-down system of testing that could squelch diversity and innovation. 

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy

When A Public School Becomes the Bully

By
Jason Bedrick

We expect our schools to keep our children safe from bullies. But what should parents do when their assigned government school becomes the bully?

That’s what happened to the parents of Eileen Parkman, a Hawaiian second-grader who courageously stood up to several fifth-grade boys who were kicking and stomping a defenseless autistic child as he was curled up in the fetal position. The bullies then set their sights on Eileen, whom they threw to the ground and stepped on. The Maui Autism Center gave her an award for her bravery, but the boys continued to hit and kick her and throw balls at her face on several subsequent occasions. School officials at Kamali’i Elementary in Maui were apparently unable to stop the bullying, so Eileen’s parents decided to pull her out of the dangerous environment.

That’s when the school officials became bullies themselves:

It took Sean Parkman a while to remove Eileen from enrollment at Kamali’i. After the first incident, he was told the situation would be remedied, he said. But when Eileen endured more retaliation, Parkman said he received no help from school officials. He and his mother offered to help serve as school field monitors, but they were turned away, he said. Parkman said school officials told him that if he pulled Eileen from the school, then officials would report him to Child Protective Services because he could be violating school attendance policies. So, he held off. But after taking Eileen to doctors several times after getting beaten, doctors warned Parkman that Eileen was not safe. He then removed her from the school.

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Topics: 
Education and Child Policy

School Board Votes to Shutter Three of California’s Top Schools

By
Andrew J. Coulson

On Wednesday, the Oakland school board voted 4–3 to close three of California’s highest performing schools: the American Indian Model (AIM) charter schools. When Ben Chavis took over the American Indian Public Charter School just over a decade ago, it was the worst peformer in Oakland—an utter shambles. Today, it and the two sister schools Chavis created are among the highest-performing in the entire state. I know—I did the math. In a 2011 study comparing the performance of all of California’s charter school networks, I found that AIM was #1 by a wide margin. For contrast, I included in the study two of the state’s most elite, academically selective high schools: Lowell in San Francisco and Gretchen Whitney outside of Los Angeles. After controlling for student characteristics and peer effects, the AIM network beat them both—not just on the official state tests, but on the Advanced Placement tests administered by the College Board as well. More remarkable, AIM accomplished all that while spending less per pupil than the Oakland Unified School District, whose performance is abysmal by comparison. And that’s the great irony of the school board’s vote to close the AIM schools: the board accuses Ben Chavis, who is now retired, of fiscal irregularities or mismanagement during his tenure. Think about that: The board’s own schools are expensive failures. The AIM network is an incredibly cost-effective success. Yet somehow Chavis is the one accused of mishandling a budget? The core of the allegations seems to be that Chavis, who has a real-estate business, leased space to his schools and made money from that transaction, while vaulting AIM schools to stratospheric success. So, naturally, we should punish his schools. $#%#?!?

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Topics: 
Education and Child Policy

“Nice Charter School Bill You Got There… Shame If Anything Were To Happen To It”

By
Jason Bedrick

The latest politician to blur the lines between legislating and running a protection racket is Representative Dan Eaton, division chairman of the New Hampshire state legislature’s powerful House Finance committee.

In what Charles Arlinghaus of the New Hampshire Union Leader generously described as “a rare moment of candor”, Rep. Eaton recently stated during a committee hearing that he was going to hold up an entirely uncontroversial bipartisan charter school bill purely for political purposes. As he explained, “I’m looking at this as political. We have a [budget] negotiation [with the state senate] coming up in June and I want to have a trump card or two, and this is … a very healthy trump card.”

House Finance chooses to play politics over helping children?

Arlinghaus breaks it down:

Consider what he’s saying: He liked the bill and supports the policy, but he believes he can use the bill as part of a hostage negotiation with the Senate. He wants to say to the Senate “I know you want this, but we’ll kill it even though we like it too unless you do something else we want that is completely unrelated.”

Without question, some give and take and normal compromise will be part of a budget process. Everyone expects the House and Senate to pass different budgets and to then negotiate over the details of what gets included. But this bill isn’t part of that process and wouldn’t be part of that negotiation unless Eaton gets to keep it captive in a back room. In effect, he’s looking at charter schools and saying, “I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire, but I think I can sell you for a good price.”

The bill in question was intended to clear up a misunderstanding about a recent change to the Granite State’s charter school law that the state attorney general’s office understood to mean the opposite of what the legislative authors had intended. The bill, which restored the previous statutory language, had already received a positive recommendation from the NH House Education Committee and passed the full NH House on a voice vote, meaning that the support was so overwhelming that it was unnecessary to count the votes in favor and opposed. What seemed like common sense to most legislators apparently looked like an opportunity for political hostage-taking for Rep. Eaton.

Without the fix, the five new charter schools that are already in the governor’s budget cannot be authorized. Even a delay until the budget negotiations in June will jeopardize the ability of these charter schools to be ready to open in September.

As a former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, I can attest that the “Live Free or Die” state’s citizen legislature often embodies the highest ideals of self-government. Most of the legislators I encountered in both parties were principled and completely dedicated to making New Hampshire an even better place to live. Unfortunately, these sort of legislative shenanigans leave a stain on the august institution. Let us hope that sunlight proves to be a sufficient disinfectant.

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy, Government and Politics

School Choice Gains Momentum in Idaho

By
Jason Bedrick

For the first time in state history, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a scholarship tax credit (STC) bill. Like the bill that the Alabama legislature passed last month, Idaho’s STC legislation is a step in the right direction though it has some limitations.

The Idaho bill would grant tax credits to individuals and corporations in return for donations to nonprofit scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). The SGOs would fund low- and middle-income students attending nonpublic schools. To be eligible to participate, a family’s household income could not exceed 150% of the federal free-and-reduced lunch program’s income threshold ($63,964 for a family of four). According to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, that would cover about 59% of Idahoans. The program is limited to students who attended a public school in the previous year or are entering kindergarten or first grade.

The program would be capped at $10 million per year. While the cap would adjust for inflation, there is no “escalator” provision to grow the program over time to meet demand, as in Arizona, Florida, and New Hampshire.

The program would also require participating private schools to administer standardized tests. This is an unnecessary provision that’s intended to provide accountability but could exacerbate the “teach to the test” problem. The most effective form of accountability is the chosen schools’ direct relationship with parents who can choose to leave if their kids’ needs are not met. Most STC programs do not require schools to administer standardized tests, yet many schools voluntarily administer them because parents desire it. However, when the state mandates testing to participate in school choice programs, there are fewer choices available to parents who want to avoid the “teach to the test” issue.

Despite the bill’s limitations, the Idaho House of Representatives just took the Gem State one step closer to having an education system that empowers families to choose the education that best meets their kids’ individual needs.

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy

Beware the Data, II

By
Neal McCluskey

A couple of months ago I warned about the dangers of having government gather and publish growing reams of information in the name of making education better. Sure, it sounds great – help people get as informed as possible! – but the dangers are legion. You can read about several such pitfalls in that old post. You can also get a sense of the great wealth of data already out there in this op-ed. What I haven’t discussed – and what might concern many Americans more than anything else – is the threat that massive data collection poses to our privacy.

Articles over the last week or so have started to draw significant attention to the growing education-information complex and its connection to long-standing efforts – especially federal – to accumulate information on Americans from birth to boardroom. Gaining particular traction has been a story about how student data collected in New York could be sold to companies or other entities outside of school districts. Even more concerning is a story by Joy Pullmann in the Orange County Register about lots of data collection and mining that is either already happening or under consideration nationwide.

What’s especially troubling to some people, including Pullmann, is that not only is there ever-growing centralization of curricula such as the federally backed Common Core, as well as centralized testing of knowledge, but there are also moves to assess students’ “affect” that could include wiring them to “facial expression” cameras and “skin conductance sensors.” Contemplating such things, it’s hard not to conjure up images of A Clockwork Orange.

When you read the federal report that proposes using “affective computing methods” such as skin sensors, it doesn’t appear that the authors have nefarious, big-brother intentions. The object of the report is to examine how students’ “grit” and perseverance can be improved, and that is a reasonable goal. Similarly, furnishing information about the academic status of incoming freshmen at a college, the amount they learn while in school, and how well they fare after graduation, is driven by good intentions.

But we must never feel content with good intentions. We must care primarily about the effects of the policies stemming from our golden goals, and as I’ve written previously, there are likely big, negative, immediate effects that would go with empowering more government data collection. There are also potentially even worse long-term consequences, including that government would begin to try to adjust students’ feelings and attitudes if doing so might produce better test scores or some other, politically determined, outcome. Indeed, such affect-engineering arguably already takes place with huge increases in ADD and ADHD diagnoses that lead to personality-altering drug-taking.

It’s easy – and almost always innocent – to say that we need more information so that we can make things work better. But with that comes very big potential dangers we must never ignore.

Cross-posted at seethruedu.com

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy, General, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

Because a Less Informed Public Is a More Compliant Public

By
Walter Olson

Remember when organized teachers used to be big on civic education and raising awareness about the voting process? Times have changed, as Jeff Mapes of the Oregonian reports: 

The Oregon Education Association wants state legislators to remove the notice on ballot envelopes warning voters of a potential property tax hike in upcoming elections. 

Oregon voters passed the requirement as part of Measure 47 in 1996, but the union sees now as a politically propitious time to get rid of it: 

Union officials say the warning, which the law now requires to be “boldly printed in red,” unfairly singles out property tax measures and is not needed because the ballots themselves contain clear information about proposed tax hikes.

Critics and taxpayer advocates say the union’s objective is to reduce turnout by tax-skeptical voters, especially in low-participation off-year elections where the union might otherwise prevail just by turning its own people out. (An uncharitable observer might even see the aim as “voter suppression.”) The union’s response is a classic: 

[OEA spokeswomen Becca] Uherbelau said the teachers union is not trying to depress turnout.

“Our history has shown that we have done a lot to increase voter participation,” she said, noting that the union has frequently spent money encouraging people to vote in local school levy and bond elections.

Right, because a history of dragging their own supporters to the polls totally refutes suggestions that they’re trying to reduce the likelihood of their adversaries’ backers making it there.  

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy

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