When you get what you pay for

It is often said, in certain circles, that “money doesn’t matter in education.”  But, as that well-known social commentator, Deep Throat, observed, to understand what’s going on, we need to “follow the money.”

 

This chart shows the dramatic per pupil spending differences between some of our nation’s largest school districts, a sample of wealthy public school districts and three of our most prestigious private schools.

The three schools on the far right are well-regarded private schools, the American equivalents of Eton and Harrow.  They are boarding schools, so the typical boarding charges ($12,000 annually) have been deducted from these figures.  The remainder, the per student expenditure, averages $62,000.  Some of this is from tuition, some from the school’s endowment and other sources. 

The middle three columns represent the per student expenditures of school districts in upper-middle-class communities well-known for the quality of their schools. Their per student expenditure averages just under $20,000, less than a third of what the private schools spend.

Chicago, Los Angeles and Baltimore are large urban districts with all the challenges that go with that.  They spend, on average, $12,000 per student, less than one-fifth what private schools spend.

Phillips Exeter, St. Paul’s and Deerfield Academy have classes that average 11 students (remember this when you hear someone say,  “class size doesn’t matter”); student-to-teacher ratios of 5:1, and send their students to Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown, University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Dartmouth, Stanford, Brown, Middlebury, Princeton, Tufts and Amherst.

Presumably, the parents of the children sent to Phillips Exeter, St. Paul’s and Deerfield Academy know that investing in their children’s futures is worth the price. 

So it should be for all children in this increasingly inequitable society.

EdVox Blog: NY 2011 test scores are no time to celebrate

The citywide test scores for New York’s public school students were released this week, and Zakiyah Ansari from the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice voices concern about blowing modest gains out of proportion:


"Without a real commitment to providing the supports parents, students and educators need to get us out of this crisis, a small improvement measured by questionable scores that are already so low is nearly irrelevant."

Read Zakiyah Ansari's entire blog post, published on the EdVox blog, here.

Do away with "test-and-punish" for real opportunity to learn

By Monty Neill, Ed.D.

Executive Director, FairTest

With the teaching profession and public schools under attack as never before, teachers, parents and others rallied in Washington, D.C., at the end of July to “Save Our Schools.” The two most prominent themes at the SOS event were:

1. The nation’s failure to address poverty or to provide every child with a strong opportunity to thrive and learn, and
   
2. The overuse and misuse of standardized tests imposed by No Child Left Behind and made worse by the actions of many states and districts. 

Teachers, students, parents and many others recognize that testing mania has gone way too far. It undermines the limited educational opportunity low-income youth do have.

Under NCLB, the rate of improvement on National Assessment of Educational Progress reading and math scores has slowed or stagnated compared with the prior decade. This is true in both reading and math. It affects low-income and minority group students, English language learners and students with disabilities. (See here for a detailed report on this: http://www.fairtest.org/detailed-fairtest-study-naep-results-shows-nclb-ha.)

Meanwhile, the graduation rate barely reaches 50 percent in many cities. Harsh disciplinary policies combine with the boring drudgery of schooling-reduced-to-test-prep to drive many youth out of school. Far too many end up in the criminal justice systems. (For the links between testing, discipline and the school-to-prison pipeline, see http://www.fairtest.org/position-paper-nclb-and-school-prison-pipeline). 

Lack of funding and unwise testing policies combine to narrow the curriculum. Children lose access to subjects that engage them, missing out on knowledge and skills they will need as adults. Reducing instruction to test prep in reading and math, as is happening in many schools, compounds the problem. Children of color and low-income youth lose the most, in part because their families can’t afford to make up for what they don’t get in school (see http://www.fairtest.org/racial-justice-and-standardized-educational-testin). 

The U.S. must shift the “education reform” paradigm from test-and-punish to helping schools improve. The Forum on Educational Accountability, which I chair, has proposed ways to do that (see http://www.edaccountability.org). The recommendations include:

• reduce the amounts and consequences of testing, while supporting high-quality assessment;
• ensure strong professional growth for teachers;
• fully fund the federal Title I and IDEA Part B programs (respectively, funds for low income youth and students with disabilities); and
• provide high-quality early childhood education.

Other alliances and groups recommend similar changes. FairTest, for example, explains how to overhaul assessment and evaluation (see http://www.fairtest.org/fact-sheet-better-way-evaluate-schools-pdf). 

Unfortunately, the test-and-punish ideology of leading elements in both political parties, backed by some large foundations and major corporations, will be tough to dislodge – but dislodge it we must. That was the purpose of the SOS rally. One event in D.C. is only a step on our way, not the end. Winning the change requires educating, organizing and mobilizing the vast numbers of people who know we cannot defund or test our way to educational improvement. That work is our main task.

Public schools continue to outperform charters

Charter school advocates claim that they produce better results for children, but educational achievement as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) does not bear this out.

NAEP Grade 8 Reading scores for 2009 showed that students in charter schools were much more likely to score below the Basic level than students in other public schools and less likely to score at the Proficient level.

Both students who are not eligible for National School Lunch Program (a measure of poverty) – that is, students from more prosperous households – and students who are eligible because they come from low-income families do better in non-charter public schools than in charter schools.

White, non-Hispanic students do better in charter than in non-charter public schools, as measured by NAEP Grade 8 Reading scores, while Hispanic students do about the same. Black students do better in non-charter public schools and Asian students do considerably better in non-charter than in charter public schools.

The numbers paint a telling portrait. As a nation, we must commit ourselves to investing in public education – a system that serves the majority of our children.

Charter schools have proven to be a lackluster attempt at education reform. What the data tell us is that public schools continue to serve our children better than charter schools, and it makes sense to invest our taxpayer dollars in public education, where it can have the greatest impact.

How much a family earns shouldn’t determine how much a child learns

Do Americans today believe it is fair for children from wealthy families to have greater opportunities to learn than children from poorer families?  Few would say so.  Most of us would say, most of us believe, that children at every income level should have an equal opportunity to learn.

But this chart of 8^th grade reading data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress — “The Nation’s Report Card” — shows an enormous gap in student reading proficiency based on family income.

After eight years in school, students from low-income families – those that are eligible to receive free and reduced-priced meals through the National School Lunch Program – have between one-third and a half the likelihood of reading at or above Proficient as those from families with higher incomes.  This holds true for Black, Hispanic, White and Asian students.

Our public education system was founded to create a level playing field,  so that all children would have an equal opportunity to learn, prosper and thrive.  How have we reached the point where the quality of the education a child receives is determined by the quantity of income available to his or her parents?

It is time to return to the vision of the Founders:  a first-class public education system for all children.

Shedding light on education and civil rights

By Tina Dove

National Director, The Opportunity to Learn Campaign

In a recent House of Representatives debate, a heated discussion arose about light bulbs and energy-efficiency standards. As an environmentally conscious American, I’m quite concerned about energy efficiency. As an educator, I’m extremely interested in light bulbs, specifically the ones inside of our children that come to life when they learn something new.

As a high school social studies teacher, I saw those light bulbs come to life when my students had the famous “aha!” moments we teachers know all too well.  I worked hard to make those bulbs light up because my students deserved that kind of inspirational learning moment.  It’s this energy that fuels lifelong learning and future academic success.

Sadly, for many of our nation’s students, this light bulb moment hasn’t happened because the conditions that enable such an experience don’t exist for far too many of our neediest and underserved children. For them, the lamp shows up for school, but too many obstacles exist to get the light bulbs working. 

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) recently released extraordinary data that provides in stark detail the level of inequity that exists in schools serving our poorest students, our students of color, and our students with special needs.  

According to Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, “Despite the best efforts of America's educators to bring greater equity to our schools, too many children — especially low-income and minority children — are still denied the educational opportunities they need to succeed.”  

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, “These data show that far too many students are still not getting access to the kinds of classes, resources and opportunities they need to be successful.”  

In short, these students are being denied an equitable opportunity to learn; a chance to have that light bulb moment that so many of their peers across town or in the suburbs enjoy in their everyday school experiences.

The numbers don’t lie.  Of the 7,000 schools sampled: 

• Only 22 percent of local education agencies (school districts) reported that they operated pre-K programs targeting children from low-income families.  This runs counter to the research that speaks to the overwhelming benefits associated with access to high-quality early childhood education for all children, particularly those from poor families.
   
• Schools serving mostly African-American students are twice as likely to have teachers with only one or two years of experience than are schools within the same district that serve mostly White students.  This when the research is abundantly clear about the impact highly prepared and effective teachers have on student success.
  
  
• 3,000 schools serving nearly 500,000 high school students offer no Algebra II classes — a course that is a basic requirement for acceptance into two- and four-year colleges and universities — essentially robbing them of access to college-preparatory curriculum.
  
  
• Only 2 percent of the students with disabilities are taking at least one Advanced Placement class, thus contradicting the notion that all students deserve rich and rigorous academic curriculum.
  
  
• English language learners make up 6 percent of the high school population (in grades 9-12), but are 15 percent of the students for whom Algebra is the highest-level math course taken by the final year of their high school career.  Meanwhile, girls are underrepresented in physics, while boys are underrepresented in Algebra II.  

Data like this underscore our need to question the equity of not providing access for all children to the kinds of resources that are proven to help students become successful in school, their careers and in life.

So instead of having raucous debates about whether Americans should be able to purchase incandescent light bulbs instead of compact florescent ones, Congress (and other policy makers) needs to be coming up with equitable solutions that flip the switch on the most important lights we have and keep them shining brightly — those found inside all of our children.