Moscow Education (Idaho)

Buy this book for your favorite legislator........if you have one.

Jack Wenders

The many untrue tales told about education
October 23, 2005

EDUCATION MYTHS: WHAT SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS WANT YOU TO BELIEVE ABOUT OUR SCHOOLS -- AND WHY IT ISN'T SO
By Jay P. Greene
Rowman and Littlefield, $24.95, 225 pages
REVIEWED BY MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER

The debates about our public schools are as contentious as ever. But in the clamor over education reform, education researchers are rarely heard from. There are lots of education journals out there, and education researchers are numerous enough to have their own professional association. Yet most education research remains obscure, even when professors produce studies that add to our knowledge on how to improve schools.

There are several reasons why you haven't heard of most education research. Like far too many social scientists, most education researchers produce jargon-laden prose that a parent, teacher or concerned citizen would find impenetrable. Moreover, education researchers use a great deal of sophisticated mathematical analysis that math-impaired readers find hard to understand.

Because education researchers are rarely heard from, there are a great many myths about our schools that should be refuted but aren't. In "Education Myths," Jay P. Greene decisively refutes 18 myths that are routinely taken as facts by pundits and reporters. Mr. Greene is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute (for which I have consulted). Anyone interested in education reform will find Mr. Greene's book timely and valuable.

Among the myths Mr. Greene refutes in his book are these:

• Public schools are "underfunded." This myth, Mr. Greene writes, is "so omnipresent that most Americans simply accept the truth of the claim unconsciously." But the National Center for Education Statistics reports that schools are getting more money than ever. Measured in inflation-adjusted dollars, the average public school annually spent $1,214 per student 60 years ago, $4,479 in 1971-72, and $8,745 by 2001-02. And numerous scholars, most notably the Hoover Institution's Eric Hanushek, have shown that there is no connection between spending on education and student achievement.
• Teachers are underpaid. Most people forget that teachers only work nine months a year, and many don't work an eight-hour day. If teachers worked as many hours as most professionals do, their incomes would be higher. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that the average elementary school teacher makes $30.75 an hour, while the typical high school teacher earns $31.01 an hour.
  
  Teachers who accumulate seniority do even better; American Enterprise Institute fellow Frederick Hess reports that between 15 and 20,000 public school teachers make over $100,000 annually.
• Better-trained teachers do better in the classroom. There's very little evidence that the training teachers undergo in any way helps them teach. Urban Institute researcher Dan Goldhaber reports "only about three percent of the contribution teachers made to student learning was associated with teacher experience, degree attained, and other readily available characteristics." Moreover, there's some evidence that teacher certification might actually hinder learning, since burned-out senior teachers who have the appropriate credentials grimly hang on until their pensions vest, even though they long ago lost the inspiration to do a good job in the classroom.
• Smaller classes produce smarter students. Most of the evidence that smaller classes improve learning comes from the STAR experiment of the 1980s, in which students in Tennessee elementary schools seemed to do better if they were in smaller classes. But the results of the STAR experiment have never been duplicated, leaving its findings problematic. [Also, the Tennessee Experiment showed that smaller classes produced somewhat higher student achievement only for kindergarten, and while these gains persisted up through grade 3, the smaller classes after kindergarten did not improve student performance.--JTW]  Moreover, class size reduction involves bringing in a huge number of new teachers, many of them unqualified.
  
  In 1996, California implemented a billion-dollar plan to reduce average class size from 24 students to 15. The result: The state teacher payroll ballooned from 62,226 in 1996 to 91,112, and this dramatic expansion of the workforce inevitably resulted in lower-quality teachers being hired.
• Private schools aren't democratic. One of the more potent arguments of the foes of school choice is that students should go to public schools to learn the principles of our democracy. But some researchers have found that private school students are more likely to vote and volunteer than are their public school counterparts. Researchers Patrick Wolf of Georgetown University and David Campbell of the University of Notre Dame have found that students at private schools are more tolerant of people of different faiths than comparable public school students.
• Private school students do better on tests because they go to wealthy schools. But most private school students don't go to Exeter, Choate or St. Albans. They attend inner-city Catholic schools that spend about half as much as public schools do, but whose students do better on tests than do public school students.

Mr. Greene exposes many more myths in his fine book, including myths about school choice, special education and the No Child Left Behind Act. Many of these myths (particularly those involving spending) should have been exposed long ago. Mr. Greene's important book ensures that these potent education myths have been decisively refuted.

Martin Morse Wooster is the author of "Angry Classrooms, Vacant Minds."

Is Harvard Economist Caroline Hoxby's defense of school vouchers hopelessly flawed in its data? 

Not likely!

• Here is the recent and excellent WSJ article on the spat.

For commentary, try

• Mahalanobis post, or
• MaxSpeak.  
• Critical take on Hoxby. 
• The Lowest Deep on the debate. 
• Brad DeLong

Brad DeLong gets the final word:

Caroline Hoxby has, in my view, the advantage of theory on her side: it would be very surprising if competition for students did not have an effect on school quality, and if school quality did not have some effect on outcomes.

HT: Marginal Revolution

"If the United States is to preserve our system of free public schools, teacher unions are going to have to stop accepting the status quo and making excuses for the poor performance of our students." – Morty Rosenfeld, member of the NEA New York board of directors, now infected because of his mention here. (October 17 Teacher Talk)

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

The American Federation of Teachers may be in second place in a two-horse race to represent the nation's teachers, but you wouldn't know that from the organization's payroll.

According to its federal disclosure report, AFT had 351 employees and executives and a payroll of almost $29 million last year. That's an average salary of more than $82,100. One hundred and ten of those employees earned salaries in excess of $100,000.

The parade is led by AFT President Edward McElroy, with a base salary of $281,256. McElroy also received $32,892 in taxable allowances, not included in the above computations. AFT Secretary-Treasurer Nat LaCour received $229,949 and Executive Vice President Antonia Cortese made $180,072. Chief of Staff Ronald Krouse and organizing director Philip Kugler were the high earners among staffers with $190,201 each. AFT spent an additional $10.9 million on benefits, an average of more than $31,000 per employee.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

One of the major cheerleaders of the new MSD bond levy was overheard discussing the bond levy at Jo-Ann's Fabrics today.

Here's the quote:

I am sure it [the $15m bond levy] is going to go down.  It will take a third attempt to pass it and get anything built that we want built.

The CTA argues that Proposition 74 would discourage entering teachers.

Any teacher so discouraged would be exactly the kind that should be discouraged.

Jack Wenders

From the L.A. Daily News:

The California Teachers Association opposes Proposition 74, a ballot initiative that would make it easier to fire teachers in the state.

Campaign advertisements argue that the potential for dismissal will discourage people from entering the profession. And while that may be true for some potential teachers, others would no doubt be encouraged to think about teaching when they learn that they won't have to work in situations where incompetence is tolerated.

Morale suffers when poor teachers remain in place. Pride in your workplace requires that bad teachers be removed. No competent teacher wants her well-prepared students to fall behind because the next teacher doesn't put in the effort or have the skills necessary to teach well. Nor do teachers like inheriting a class that missed key concepts the year before due to teacher incompetence.

If Proposition 74 were to pass, two bad evaluations in a row would be sufficient cause for dismissal. But union worries are unfounded. Principals won't find it easy to arbitrarily dismiss teachers - parents and other teachers would complain loudly, and dismissed teachers are entitled to a review with union representation. No principal needs this.

...
Exceptionally weak links will be removed, but most of the improvement will come as teachers, knowing there are consequences to performance reviews, take them more to heart. The atmosphere in schools will change when incompetence is no longer tolerated. Teachers will focus more on learning and assuring that students have the materials they need to learn.

If teachers would no longer have to face incompetent colleagues on a daily basis, there would be a significant improvement in morale. Where morale is high, competent individuals are attracted to teaching and encouraged to stay.

Some teachers are afraid of this proposition. Even many of the best teachers hesitate to be judged by their principal or by a panel of their peers. Teachers who are strict and grade hard may fear that principals will replace them to improve graduation rates or because parents complain. We can't let this fear prevail.

Private companies hire and fire all the time. The situation in public schools is somewhat different, as there is no bottom line to penalize bad decisions, but parent and faculty oversight, as well as standardized test scores, to some extent, would play an important role in assuring that, for the most part, the right decisions would be made.

Proposition 74 has been a long time coming. When Richard Riordan was the mayor of Los Angeles, he expressed his concern time and again about the fact that poor teachers are not fired, just transferred - the dance of the lemons.

Incentives are everything. Being able to fire incompetent teachers is one critical tool to the proper functioning of an educational system. Proposition 74 puts incentives in place that will motivate teachers and improve teaching and learning across the state.

Why should an incompetent teacher be immune to being fired? The whole argument is just bizarre.

The 24 Oct 2005 edition of the Wall Street Journal had an article titled Making Waves: Novel Way to Assess School Competition Stirs Academic Row; To Do So, Harvard Economist Counts Streams in Cities; A Princetonian Takes Issue; Charges and Countercharges.

The article is by Jon E. Hilsenrath. Here's an abstract:

Dr. Caroline Hoxby responded in a National Bureau paper called "Competition Among Public Schools: A Reply to Rothstein," also slated for publication in the American Economic Review. By tossing aside her hand counts of streams, Dr. Hoxby wrote, Dr. Rothstein was proposing "the destruction of important information" and "promoting less informed measurement."

The author of the competition thesis, Prof. Milton Friedman, hasn't weighed in on the spat, but his enthusiasm for free-market approaches in education is undimmed. "The case for vouchers is so simple," the 93- year-old Dr. Friedman said to a crowd at New York's Mandarin Oriental Hotel in June, at a gathering to mark the 50th anniversary of his idea. "In area after area, things the government does, private enterprise can do at half the cost." In an interview, he describes Dr. Hoxby as "a very intelligent gal" whose papers "impress me favorably."

At the American Economic Review, editor Robert Moffitt says the journal wouldn't publish Dr. Rothstein's paper if its editors thought it had no merit. But he adds that the decision to publish isn't an endorsement of Dr. Rothstein's critique. "It's like we're saying, 'It's a good question,' " he says.

John Merrifield with the University of Texas (San Antonio) responds:

The Hoxby's piece discussed by your article is not about anything remotely resembling "free market competition."  And by the way, "free market competition in public schools" is an oxymoron.  Nothing in our public school system, or even the early 1990s Milwaukee voucher program, remotely resembles the key elements of free market competition.  For example, entrepreneurship, profits, product differentiation, and price change are not part of our public school system or Professor Hoxby's article, and they were virtually absent from the original Milwaukee program that allowed 1% of the children transfer to private schools under significant, market-stifling constraints.

As Professor Hoxby points out on the first page of her article, the subject is "Tiebout competition", which is political rivalry between government jurisdictions, in this case, school districts.  As she acknowledges, that's a very different issue than the likely effects of market forces.  Her interesting, carefully developed results demonstrate that when families can more easily change school districts, academic outcomes are slightly better.  The slight academic superiority of regions with more school districts says virtually nothing about the likely effects of genuine free market forces in K-12 education.

You mentioned the New Zealand studies.  New Zealand has tightly regulated public school choice.  Again, the New Zealand system has nothing remotely resembling the key elements of an actual market.  It's right there in the Fiske-Ladd study that launched the debate; no entrepeneurship, very minimal product differentiation, no profits, and no market-determined prices. 

There is as much free market competition in the New Zealand school system as there was in the former Soviet Union.  You can use any government-run provider you want.  Most of the U.S. offers even less freedom than that; you have to buy another home to change your assigned public school.

Can we please transform our desperation for data on the key issue of market acountability's transformative effects into a real free market experiment.  None of the present so-called experiments qualify.

John Merrifield
COB - UTSA DT Campus
501 West Durango Blvd.
San Antonio, TX 78207

From the Vox Day archive:

In 2001, the National Center for Education Statistics reported the average SAT score for intended education majors to be 481 math and 483 verbal. Only those interested in vocational school, home economics and public affairs scored lower.

But while the SAT is considered to be a generally reliable intelligence test, the 2001 SAT is not the same SAT that many of us took prior to attending university. Those 2001 scores on the 1996 SAT, which was replaced this year by the New SAT 2005, are equivalent to pre-1996 SAT scores of 451 math and 403 verbal. In case any education majors are reading this, 451 plus 403 equals a cumulative score of 854.

Examining an SAT-to-IQ conversion chart calculated from Mensa entrance criteria, a combined 854 indicates that the average IQ of those pursuing an education major is 91, nine points lower than the average IQ of 100. In other words, those who can't read teach whole language.

Now, not every would-be education major goes on to complete her degree - 77.4 percent of those who do are women - nor does every college graduate with an education major go on to teach in the public schools. But since teaching's best and brightest so frequently quit upon exposure to the labyrinthine public school system and since most teachers who fail their competency tests are still allowed to teach - in Illinois, 7.8 percent of the teachers who have taken these extraordinarily easy tests since 1988 have failed them - it is not logical to conclude that the average teacher's IQ is any higher than the average would-be education major.

For a full investigative report, see this Sun Times article.

HT: Dave G.

This is a follow-up to the previous post titled Teaching The Teachers: Would You Like To Be A Teacher? Skip Grad School.

VoxDay writes:

An art director at a major game studio once complimented the art in our game and asked me how such a small development house had managed to acquire such a strong art team. Our answer was pretty simple. We gave the prospective artist a piece of paper, a pencil and told him to draw something. If he could do it well, we hired him. Most of the time, they couldn't and we didn't. I seldom bothered to look at resumes, much less diplomas or transcripts.

Colleges these days produce pieces of paper, not educated individuals. Unless you wish to work for a government or in a government-regulated profession - medicine, the law, hair-dressing - there is no longer any point to wasting four to seven years in a university system, and going into debt to do so.

Learning and education are tremendously important, but they have increasingly little to do with paying money to an "academic institution" for a piece of paper falsely claiming you know something that you demonstrably do not.

This has a lot to do with the shift that occurred in education in the US -- from teaching students how to think (being educated) to teaching students how to do (a graduate trade/VoTech school).

As reported in today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News by Kate Baldwin:

A special teacher taught Moscow Charter School students how to use dance to express themselves and tell stories Thursday.

Tyesha Trombetta, 7, expected the class to be boring when she found out last week that the guest teacher was coming. “But now it’s kind of fun. We play games, make stories and dance.”

Professional dancer and choreographer Wendy de la Harpe used an experiential approach. “My philosophy is to get children to love it — appreciate it as an art form,” she said.

“Like a piece of art speaks to you silently,” dance can do the same, she said. Through her instruction, students have been introduced to ideas like silent motion to help them express themselves without language.

Students had classes throughout the week that worked on concepts like identifying and isolating movements of body parts; demonstrating the difference between tension and relaxation in stillness and motion; and illustrating different movement qualities like dancing fast, slow, high or low.

“It’s kind of embarrassing the first day, but after that you are pretty fine,” Trombetta said.

She said she realized that because all of her classmates were around her, doing the same things, she could relax.

Over the summer, de la Harpe became the artist in residence for the Moscow Charter School. Her assignment with the school developed after a group of teachers attended the Idaho Commission on the Arts’ weeklong ArtsPowered Schools Summer Institute. As a special opportunity for the first eight schools enrolled at the 2005 Summer Institute, each was assigned an artist in residence.

The program coordinates eight ICA artists with their respective school teams. Together the artist and the school design a residency that could be personalized to the curriculum. The ArtsPowered residencies allow for the instruction that took place in the summer to extend into the school.

De la Harpe came to the charter school to assist with the reinstatement of the school’s dance program. A series of lessons incorporates the information on dance and movement into the core curriculum. De la Harpe uses dance standards set by the State Department of Education for humanities.

After she leaves Moscow, the school’s dance teacher will continue to work with the students on a weekly basis. While dance is considered a part of academia at the charter school, the residency also helps prepare the students for their year-end production. The production will be June 3 and includes theater and dance.

The charter school provides a focus on student enrichment in the humanities. Every year they choose one theme to unite the areas of dance, theatre, music, visual arts, and Spanish. For the 2004 to 2005 school year, the students have followed Lewis and Clark in “The Spirit of Discovery.”

Executive director Mary Lang said the script for the production will be written in January, but she revealed that the current plan is to write the story for the production through the eyes of the dog that traveled with the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Inside the Hamilton-Lowe Indoor Recreation Center on Thursday, the children’s waving arms and curling legs evoked the directions of de la Harpe, who read a story aloud in which water rushed by. The mayhem of the scene in the dance room left the watching teachers and parents to only imagine the scene that will develop by the time of the year-end production.

“I’m sure they (the students) will get to bark,” Lang said.

Kerry and John Trombetta of Moscow watched from the side of the room as their daughter Tyesha participated. They attended the school’s year-end production last year to watch her. Her father said it was awesome — he videotaped the whole thing.

“I wish I’d brought it (the video camera) today,” he said.

He described watching the students practice different movements that included mimicking a toothbrush. He said the children lay on the floor and shook and shimmied like they were cleaning teeth.

“It looks like fun,” he said.

“It gives them an actual interest in coming to school,” said Kerry Trombetta, who thought it was good to mix academics with the arts. “They don’t realize they’re learning something.”

From today's Wall Street Journal:

Educational reformers had reason to take heart earlier this year when Arthur Levine, the president of Columbia University's Teachers College, issued a report blasting the nation's schools of education. You can't go wrong attacking ed schools, even if you're the head of a famous one yourself.

Mr. Levine singled out the "inadequate to appalling" graduate programs in educational leadership and called for the abolition of the Ed.D. degree. These programs, he asserted, suffer under the weight of lax admissions standards, weak faculties and inappropriate degree requirements and are often cynically used by their host universities as "cash cows." A rather bold bit of truth-telling on his part; and apparently there are three more such scathing reports coming from Mr. Levine, as part of a project underwritten by the Annenberg, Ford, Kauffman and Wallace Foundations.
...
William Strauss and Neil Howe have recently argued in the Chronicle of Higher Education that with tuition and the resulting debt reaching surreal levels, and colleges and universities failing to reverse the post-1960s collapse of academic standards, parents and students are increasingly skeptical about the value of a college education.

Parents born after 1961, Messrs. Strauss and Howe have found, experienced that collapse of standards in their own college educations and are determined not to tolerate another overpriced and underperforming disappointment for their own children. This is the generation that "propelled school choice, vouchers, charter schools, home-schooling and the standards-and-accountability movement." These parents will be more likely to treat higher education as a market, in which smart buyers exercise discretion.

Academics tend to be contemptuous of markets, which is why the for-profit University of Phoenix is their bête noire. But markets will do a better job of sorting these things out, at least in some aspects, than the accredited professionals who, after all, merely respond to a system that rewards time spent on research and scoffs at time spent on teaching. Such incentives need to change.

It will be a good thing if parents and students become more demanding, and it will be a very good thing if more sources of information are made available to them about what constitutes good teaching and where it is taking place--and not taking place. There is a huge and completely unanswered need for college guides that are as frank, intelligent and unsparingly honest about the quality of undergraduate instruction as consumer guides are about, say, cars and stereo equipment. Unless, that is, we think of higher education as nothing more than a credential and a badge, a source of social prestige that we buy for ourselves and our kids. In that case, we will continue to get what we pay for.

Some questions for the readers:

• Were you born before or after 1961? Has your experience been similar to what Strauss and Howe have found?
• Do you think that it is the post-1961 parents that are spearheading the school choice, vouchers, charter schools, homeschooling, standards-and-accountability?

HT: Jack Wenders

From the Spokesman Review:

The most recent case involves a method of assessing the character of education students known as "dispositions," in which students are evaluated on their attitudes and behaviors. Dispositions range from assessing a student's cooperation and willingness to offer help to those regarding respect for "cultural norms" and diversity.

Swan is a senior studying elementary education. Over the last year, he was given four substandard evaluations, known as Professional Dispositions Evaluations or PDEs, though he was an A student. Swan was criticized in the PDEs for not having an open mind, for expressing "anti-gay/lesbian sentiments" and ideas about "a woman's place," according to FIRE and Swan.

Swan told his professors that he didn't believe in the idea of white privilege or male privilege, or that there is a bias any longer in favor of majority groups. One professor called him a white supremacist in one evaluation, though Swan saw that after the fact.

"I didn't know I was a white supremacist until I read my file," said Swan, who points out that he has four bi-racial children from a former marriage to a Hispanic woman.

Swan was made to attend a diversity training course and ordered to sign an agreement to abide by the dispositions to respect community norms and appreciate diversity. Swan didn't sign it, and the university withdrew it after receiving complaints from FIRE, which argued that it was an unconstitutional intrusion on Swan's freedom.

"That is incredibly dangerous," said French, who added that Swan was not being judged on his behavior but on his opinions. "They focused on the various expressions, whether it was writing phrases in notebooks, the T-shirt he wore … even wearing a camouflage hunting cap led one person to conclude he was threatening."

Judy Mitchell, dean of the College of Education, did not return a message seeking comment. But she has defended the dispositions, telling the Moscow-Pullman Daily News they aren't intended to enforce certain opinions, but to ensure that teachers are open to the range of people they may encounter in the classroom.

She said the school has used the forms for four years, in keeping with national accreditation standards. State law also requires an evaluation of student character. Mitchell said 1,364 students have undergone the assessments test and 34 have failed it, including some who are still doing student teaching and others who changed majors.

When asked by the Daily News whether U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia – generally considered the most conservative member of the court – could pass the dispositions test, Mitchell said, "I don't know how to answer that."

"It was a fascinating response," French said. "To me, the easy answer to that question is, if Antonin Scalia can manage a class of 10-year-olds, there's nothing in his ideology to prevent him from being a teacher."

In a letter to FIRE on Sept. 9, Mitchell wrote that the college would review its use of the dispositions and be careful not to apply them to political views.

"However, (Swan) may not display prejudice in the classroom setting and expect to successfully complete this program," she wrote.

From the Spokesman Review:

A national higher education watchdog group says Washington State University is failing to protect the speech rights of students who have controversial or unpopular opinions.

In the latest case, an education student who describes himself as a conservative Christian was threatened with dismissal and ordered into diversity training over comments that he didn't believe that whites are privileged, opposed adoption by gays, and wrote "diversity is perversity" in the margins of a book.

Professors accused the man, 42-year-old Ed Swan of Othello, of being a white supremacist and anti-gay, but WSU dropped its threat of dismissal against Swan after the university heard a complaint from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which pursues free-speech complaints at campuses around the country.

Swan denies being a racist and said his views wouldn't prevent him from being a good teacher or from treating children of different backgrounds fairly.

"Why am I more likely to proselytize than someone that's on the extreme left?" he said. "I'm no more likely to preach to a child in class than they are."

It's the second case in a year in which FIRE has helped stoke a controversy at WSU. Last year, the group defended student Chris Lee, who wrote and staged a play that he intended to be provocative.

Student protesters with tickets purchased by the university disrupted the play. The university has repeatedly refused to denounce them, saying the protesters were expressing their free-speech rights.

FIRE says that in both cases, the university "has shown an embarrassing lack of respect for the rights of its students."

"I think Washington State is not too different from all too many other schools around the country," said David French, president of FIRE. "They have a real inability to handle a certain kind of controversial or dissenting speech."

WSU Provost Robert Bates, who runs the Pullman campus, said thorny issues arise at any school over time and that WSU works to resolve them as fairly as it can. He said the College of Education is reviewing the use of the assessments that faulted Swan for not being "sensitive to community and cultural norms" of the program and for not valuing diversity.

"I don't think we're any different from any other public institution where you have varying viewpoints," Bates said Friday.

NEA New Mexico released the results of a poll this morning that show state residents want to use a state budget surplus to "improve public schools." Who conducted the poll? Just "a national advocacy group called Communities for Quality Education."

You could do an EIA archives search to learn about CQE, but all you need to know is contained in this March 29, 2004 story, back when the organization was called America Learns. EIA has been outing CQE as a union front ever since.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

Corrections in today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

A definitive timeline has not been approved by the Moscow School District Board regarding its consideration of a bond levy, as was stated in an Oct. 26 story. Incorrect information was provided due to a Daily News error. In the same article, it was unclear what was included in the resolution approved by the school board. The school board approved reconsideration of a levy of $15 million or less to address the facility needs of students currently attending Russell and West Park elementary schools. That could include remodeling the current sites or other facility options.

From Jim Hollingsworth:

Tom Luna is running for Idaho Superintendent of Public Schools, the position presently held by Marilyn Howard, the only Democrat in the state government. Tom ran last time and lost to Marilyn. Tom has decided to run again. At the present time he is the most conservative candidate running. He is a business man and served on the school board in southern Idaho.

There will be a press conference and rally tomorrow, Thursday, October 27 at Independence Point (next to the Coeur d’Alene Hotel on Sherman).

For the history of this, read School Board Restricts Usage for Bond.

From the Wednesday 23 Mar 05 edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

The Moscow School Board passed a resolution Tuesday to restrict how the proposed $29 million facilities bond could be spent if approved by voters.

The resolution prohibits any project cost overruns from cutting into money intended for other projects funded by the bond.

The $29 million bond, if approved by Moscow voters April 26, would be used to build a new four-year high school on Mountain View Road, move Paradise Creek Regional High School into Moscow High School's current site and upgrade Russell and West Park elementary schools.

The bond provides $20 million for the new high school, $4.6 million to remodel West Park Elementary School, $4 million to remodel Russell Elementary School and $400,00 for upgrades at the current high school to address needs of the alternative high school.

Superintendent Candis Donicht said the resolution clarifies the bond's intent for Moscow voters. If costs were to run more than budgeted for the new high school, money couldn't be taken from the elementary school budgets to complete the work, she said.

OK, follow this logic: the $29 million bond included:

• $4.6 million to remodel West Park Elementary School
• $4 million to remodel Russell Elementary School

How did the $8.6 million to remodel these two schools morph into nearly double: $15 million?

From the WSU Evergreen:

A WSU professor faces counseling and a lawsuit after the university’s human rights office found he sexually harassed a student last spring.

A Center for Human Rights final report released on April 1 stated Bernardo Gallegos, a College of Education distinguished professor in Pullman, harassed a graduate student in February.

The CHR report states: “CHR’s findings, including the credibility findings in favor of the complainant and against [Gallegos], and the totality of the circumstances in this case, compel the conclusions that [Gallegos]: violated the Washington State University Discrimination and Sexual Harassment Policy as Complainant alleged.”

The report recommended disciplinary action and counseling for Gallegos as well as a sexual harassment program for the education department to avoid similar incidents in the future.

Judy Mitchell, dean of the College of Education, wrote Gallegos a letter on Aug. 29 with expectations that he seek outside counseling through Salisbury Consulting before Sept. 17. Gallegos would not confirm his attendance or comment because of a pending civil lawsuit from the complainant.

Mandatory sexual harassment counseling was also scheduled for all faculty, staff and graduate students in the department, Mitchell wrote.

As reported in Wednesday's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Another Moscow school bond likely will be decided by voters in April.

The Moscow School Board decided Tuesday to approve reconsideration of a levy of $15 million or less to fund improvements to West Park and Russell elementary schools. It also would pay for big ticket items like a roof repair job or broken boiler for other schools, projects that can’t fit into the regular budget.

The district will place a smaller bond levy on the ballot in place of a plant facilities levy, a move recommended by its facilities task force.

“I’m very pleased for such an enthusiastic committee,” said Margaret Dibble, board chairwoman. “I’m very pleased they’re thinking on their own.”

At the task force’s Oct. 10 meeting, member David Nelson suggested a preliminary time line for exploring the bond options this fall. That would include a survey of the community in December and January. If the results show positive signs of community support, the district could stage the campaign in mid-February and hold an April election.

At the board meeting Tuesday, Superintendent Candis Donicht mentioned potential bond options including:

• Remodeling the existing schools on their existing sites;
• Building a new elementary school on Joseph Street to accommodate one of the schools and remodel the other; or
• Building a new elementary school on Joseph Street with the capacity to accommodate both student communities.

In addition to facility improvements, the task force will look for a financially viable way to provide kindergarten through sixth grade at all the elementary schools. Currently, West Park serves students in kindergarten through third grades and Russell serves students in fourth through sixth grades.

In April, the district attempted to pass a $29 million bond that would have paid for construction of a new high school and remodeled the two elementary schools. The plan, which was voted down by almost 60 percent of the voters, would have had students in kindergarten through fifth at the elementary schools, sixth through eighth at the middle school, and ninth through 12th at the high school.

Google "single standardized test" and you'll get a couple hundred scolding comments about how "using a single standardized test as the sole determinant for graduation, promotion,tracking and ability grouping is not fair" and that "test development experts agree that it is not appropriate to use performance on a single standardized test for making high-stakes decisions for individuals," et al.

The Sweetwater Union High School District in southern California has taken these comments to heart, and requires students to "write reflective essays, compile classroom work samples and make their case for graduation before an interview panel to earn their diplomas." District administrators consider the senior portfolio "an in-depth gauge of students' abilities that can't be captured in a fill-in-the-bubble exam."

But there's a constituency that objects to the portfolios: the students. According to a story in today's San Diego Union-Tribune, some students consider the portfolios "a last-minute scavenger hunt to assemble transcripts, letters of recommendation, job applications and work from their high school years." One student testified before the school board and called the portfolio "busywork" that interfered with preparation for Advanced Placement exams.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

Regarding States Ranked: Smart to Dumb, Jack Wenders responds:

I find little substance in this ranking, as many of the factors are based on the prevailing mythology of public education. Like positive factor #11, which says that the more teachers are over-paid relative to the taxpayers who support the teachers, the higher that state ranks. Am I missing something, or has someone now found a positive correlation between teachers' pay and student performance? That would be news.

Also, most of the negative factors used to determine the rankings are associated with higher school productivity. Curious. Since when is high labor productivity a negative factor? Similarly, has someone now found a positive correlation between smaller class size and student performance? That would be news. And do more employees relative to students improve student performance? That, too, would be news.

That is my primary gripe about such rankings that put an emphasis on the class-size myth. In previous years, the "smartest state" rankings explicitly had per pupil spending--ie, low productivity--as one of the positive elements that determined the rankings. Now, that's in there thru the back door of class size, since pupils per employee and spending per pupil are highly correlated (negatively). Read Jay Greene's book before you take any of these rankings seriously. [EDUCATION MYTHS: WHAT SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS WANT YOU TO BELIEVE ABOUT OUR SCHOOLS -- AND WHY IT ISN'T SO By Jay P. Greene}

Of course, high student scores don't mean that the schools are better, which is what casual readers will conclude. It may just mean that they happen to have smart students. Only value-added measures, which control for student characteristics and prior performance, can tell whether the schools are good or just happen to have high performing students. After all. Moscow has high performing students with low performing schools measured by value-added.

From CNN:

These are the 2005-2006 findings of the Education State Rankings, a survey by Morgan Quitno Press of hundreds of public school systems in all 50 states. States were graded on 21 factors, including student achievement and attendance, positive outcomes, strong student-teacher relationships and school district efficiency. Other factors are the number of high school graduates, reading, writing and math proficiency, percent of school-age kids in public schools, high school drop out rates, student-teacher ratios and class size.

"The Smartest State Award recognizes those states that are committed to students and teachers, emphasize excellence in the classroom and ensure that public elementary and secondary schools are efficiently-run," said Scott Morgan, president of Morgan Quitno Press. "Vermont shines in many key areas of education. A high percentage of its students excel in reading, writing and math. In addition, schools in Vermont have smaller class sizes and lower pupil-teacher ratios than in most other states."

They're doing something right in New England. Massachusetts was designated the smartest state by Morgan Quitno Press the previous two years, and New England states dominate four of the five top slots this year.

The losers are Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Louisiana, Alaska, Alabama, Hawaii and Tennessee.

Where did Idaho rank? #28

Where did Washington rank? #30

We obviously need to spend more on education so we can be more like Washington...

From J. E. Stone:

A briefing we published last year concluded that Head Start is nearly impossible to change because it has become an employment program for Head Start parents:  http://www.education-consumers.com/briefs/mar2004.shtm.  The issue that separates Head Start activists from policymakers who want a more effective program is the question of what must change.  Readiness for school requires that children acquire preliteracy skills.  The activists want to boost self-esteem and foster the development of the "whole child"--approaches to preschool education that require little or no formal training. 

J. E. Stone, Ed. D.
Education Consumers ClearingHouse
& Consultants Network
www.education-consumers.com
professor@education-consumers.com
phone & fax 423-282-6832

For the study, see the American Enterprise Institut: http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.23373/pub_detail.asp

HT: Jack Wenders

The following Article is by Jack Wenders and ran in today's Lewiston Morning Tribune:

I can always tell when I've won a debate about public education: That's when an opponent surrenders by refusing to deal with specific facts and resorts to generalities like "You're just against public education."

Jim Fisher is a master at that deception [editorial, Oct. 23]. But all he does is reveal his inability to refute the facts by changing the subject to some "for" or "against" generality.

Fisher and the Tribune continually whine that the public schools in general, and in north central Idaho in particular, are underfunded. This assertion is, at bottom, a factual one.

I recognize that Fisher would never compare the spending of comparable private and public schools, because that would blow his underfunding belief completely out of the water.

But neither Fisher nor the Tribune ever presents even public school spending data that, say, compare the per-pupil funding of the area's public schools with other comparable (in enrollment) Idaho public schools. By that score, Moscow, for example, spends about $5 million more annually than its eight comparable public schools in Idaho. By this criterion, only one of the region's 15 school districts has per-pupil spending below its comparables' average.

Fisher defends Idaho's present teacher training, certification and licensing requirements by bashing the modest alternative certification program adopted by the State Board of Education last year. Again, if he bothered to consult the facts he would find that there is insufficient correlation between the requirements of the present system and student performance to justify its existence. Teacher competence, measured by value-added student performance, is mainly a function of verbal cognitive ability, a few years' experience and, at the secondary level, a master's or major in one's teaching field. Ironically, the present licensing system systematically screens people with these credentials out of public school teaching.

Then there's teacher pay, which Fisher and the Tribune think is too low. Every Econ 101 student knows that when wages are too low a general shortage develops in the market, accompanied by a high turnover as workers find plenty of opportunities elsewhere. Conversely, when wages are too high, there is a surplus in the market, accompanied by low worker turnover as there are few comparable opportunities elsewhere.

Clearly, the latter situation generally prevails in public school teaching where only 40-50 percent of education college graduates ever find jobs in teaching. Some 92-93 percent of teachers are on the job from year to year, and last year only 136 of Idaho's total certified employees (about 16,587 FTE ), of which about 86 percent are teachers, left Idaho's public schools to work in another state. That was the lowest number and percentage in a decade. This very low teacher turnover has resulted in a staid, aging teaching corps.

Similarly, Fisher bashes the state board's proposal for school curriculum reform. He wants those who created and perpetuated the problem to be in charge of solving it. Instead, why doesn't he look at some of the facts behind the state board's proposals: the low number of Idaho's high school graduates who go on to college, the high number who must take remedial and watered-down courses when they get there, the way in which college core curricula have been gutted to deal with the declining incoming students' abilities, the proliferation of fluff courses and majors needed to keep them in college, and the very low number (30-35 percent statewide) of entering Idaho freshmen who graduate in six years.

One cannot rationally be "for" or "against" something without having supporting facts. Fisher and the Tribune never want to look at facts because these get in the way of their beliefs, causing severe cognitive dissonance.

Wenders is an economist from Moscow

For the background data for what Wenders wrote about, see www.EdExIdaho.org

Here are some observations and predictions:

• Howard announced her retirement, not her candidacy, while criticizing No Child Left Behind.  
• She also used the opportunity to say that she used the skills she learned in the classroom everyday as superintendent.
• That is a subtle reminder that Luna has not been a classroom teacher.

Prediction: wait a couple of days and you will see Howard endorse Jana Jones, the number 2 bureaucrat in the Idaho State Department of Education. 

The big question is whether Sen. Bert Marley, D-Pocatello, will enter a Democratic Primary against Jones.

If there is no Democratic primary fight, this will allow the Democrat education establishment to cross over to the Republican primary and vote against Luna.

I expect that the establishment will run a RINO (like Smiley) against Luna in the Republican primary.

Developing...

From EIA:

The U.S. Department of Labor changed the format and requirements of the LM-2 late in 2002 (see the January 21, 2003 EIA Communiqué story "Unions to Face Increased Federal Regulation"). The new regulations require a detailed itemization of spending, disaggregated membership numbers and accounting of agency fee payers, plus the percentage of time each union officer and employee worked on various activities, including "political activities and lobbying."

The new form went into effect for the 2004-05 school year, and some of the reports, signed by union officers as recently as three weeks ago, are already posted on the U.S. Department of Labor's public disclosure web site. EIA has completed a preliminary analysis of the reports of national AFT, seven of its state federations, plus the Illinois Education Association, the lone NEA affiliate whose report is currently available.

The new report is a vast improvement over the old one, with payment amounts and recipients spelled out in exquisite detail. Previously, such payments could be batched together as contributions or fees, with individual recipients remaining anonymous. The new forms make it very clear who is receiving the union's money (though it's not always clear why).

For example, AFT gave $550,000 last year to the Economic Policy Institute, whose reports tend to support the union's positions on vouchers, charter schools, teacher pay and class size. Other recipients of AFT largesse include the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the Alliance for Retired Americans, Americans for Democratic Action, Fair Taxes for All Coalition, and Give Nevadans A Raise, among many more.

The disaggregated membership numbers also suggest AFT's "more than 1.3 million members" include an awful lot of people who no longer work in public education, or may have some other asterisk to merit their inclusion.

AFT reports 695,000 full-time members, 103,000 part-time members, 22,100 one-quarter, contingency or laid-off members, and 8,400 associate members for a grand total of 828,500. The union also has about 33,000 agency fee-payers.

It may take a few years before the reporting is standardized. AFT Oregon put its "membership" at 19, which is the number of Oregon locals in the state federation, and gave no figures for individual members.

Where the reports disappoint the most is in their itemizing of the percentage of time each union officer and employee spends on each of the following activities: 1) representational activities; 2) political activities and lobbying; 3) contributions; 4) general overhead; and 5) administration.

The LM-2 instructions make it very clear what constitutes political activities and lobbying:

"In this schedule report the labor organization's direct and indirect disbursements to all entities and individuals during the reporting period associated with political disbursements or contributions of money. Also report the labor organization's direct and indirect disbursements to all entities and individuals during the reporting period associated with dealing with the executive and legislative branches of Federal, state, and local governments and with independent agencies and staffs to advance the passage or defeat of existing or potential laws or the promulgation or any other action with respect to rules or regulations (including litigation expenses). It does not matter whether the lobbying attempt succeeds.

"Also report any disbursement or contribution that is intended to influence the selection, nomination, election, or appointment of anyone to a Federal, state, or local executive, legislative or judicial public office, or office in a political organization, or the election of Presidential or Vice Presidential electors, and support for or opposition to ballot referenda. It does not matter whether the attempt succeeds. Include disbursements for communications with members (or agency fee paying nonmembers) and their families for registration, get-out-the-vote and voter education campaigns, the expenses of establishing, administering and soliciting contributions to union segregated political funds (or PACs), disbursements to political organizations as defined by the IRS in 26 U.S.C. 527, and other political disbursements."

So when the form asks for the amount of time spent on political activities and lobbying, it is asking for time spent on any and all of the activities in the above two paragraphs. However, the instructions also state:

"Officers and employees have discretion in determining the allocation of their time. They must only make good faith estimates. No particular records are required to be created. However, if an officer does keep a calendar, for example, the calendar must be retained and made available for examination."

Caution! Loophole ahead!

An examination of the AFT reports shows AFT President Ed McElroy spent 6 percent of his time last year on political activities and lobbying. (It bears mentioning that last year was a Presidential election year.) State federation president estimates of their time on political activities and lobbying ranged from 30 percent (John Cole of the Texas Federation of Teachers) to 3 percent (David Hecker of AFT Michigan) to 2 percent (Debbi Covert of AFT Oregon).

The Illinois Education Association report is even more suspect. IEA President Anne Davis spent zero percent of her time on political activities and lobbying, and of the union's 225 employees and executives, 213 reported they spent zero percent of their time on political activities and lobbying.

The new disclosure requirements allow union members and the public to better monitor the activities of these organizations, but there is still some work to be done.

Postscript

AFT's LM-2 also sheds some light on a story that occupied EIA's attention for much of the year – the union's attempted "coup d'etat" against the Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR). You can read "Intrigue in Puerto Rico" in the July 15, 2004 EIA Communiqué, plus do a search of the EIA Archives for "FMPR" to read the other 12 installments of EIA's Puerto Rico coverage.

Though AFT still has yet to acknowledge any events in Puerto Rico to its members, it appears EIA's efforts were justified by the resources AFT deployed on the island. Last year, AFT spent $2,838,195 on what it called the "AFT Puerto Rico Project," with an additional $71,589 going to a local attorney for legal services, $108,369 to a Rafael Benitez of San Juan, presumably for organizing work, and $8,835 to Prensa Interactiva for publication services.

This $3 million expenditure dwarfs AFT's organizing outlay anywhere in the United States for 2004-05. The end result, however, was a defeat at the ballot box and in the courthouse.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

• "CTA is in the process of negotiating a necessary $40 million line of credit. The proposed terms for the new line of credit call for the income stream from the $60 dues increase, together with CTA's other ongoing income, to pay back the principal and interest. If the temporary restraining order is granted, it will greatly harm or destroy CTA's ability to get this line of credit. If CTA is unable to get this line of credit, there is a significant risk that an outstanding $20 million line will be called. Millions of CTA's members dues dollars are possibly at stake. Therefore, the temporary restraining order would cause great financial harm to CTA and affect CTA's ability to continue to deliver its current level of services to members over the long term. I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct." -- Carlos Moreno, controller of the California Teachers Association, in a declaration to the U.S. District Court, signed September 30.
• "CTA is not on the verge of being bankrupted." -- CTA President Barbara Kerr, in an October 15 open letter to members.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

I posted yesterday an article titled "Luna v. Howard?" which discussed that the race for Idaho schools chief will again be between Marilyn Howard and Tom Luna.

The Lewiston Tribune was incorrect. Howard is retiring.

State superintendent announces 2007 retirement

Superintendent of Public Instruction Marilyn Howard announced today she will retire when her second term expires in 2007.

"I appreciate the opportunity the people of Idaho have given me to serve them and the children of Idaho," Dr. Howard said. "My goal throughout my tenure as superintendent has been to be an advocate for the needs of our children and our public schools."

One of the hallmarks of Dr. Howard's tenure as the school chief has been focusing the state on improving the reading skills of its youngest students.

Four months after taking office, Dr. Howard was charged with implementing the Idaho Reading Initiative. The sweeping proposal required the creation of new reading tests for students in kindergarten through third grade, extra programs for children not meeting standards, and a new research-based training for teachers. When the initiative was launched in 2001, less than half of third graders were reading at grade level. Last spring, 66 percent were at grade level.

Dr. Howard was instrumental in securing a $6.7 million federal Reading First grant to expand programs for struggling readers. Thanks to these efforts, more than 90 percent of Idaho's K-3 teachers have been trained in the latest research on how to improve reading skills.

She also launched a grassroots effort, "Dinner and a Book," to encourage parents to read with their children for 20 minutes every day and to make meals a time for family conversation and stories. In 2002, she began sending newsletters with school readiness information and tips to parents of 15,000 preschool children in Idaho.

Dr. Howard also insisted on transparency in the reporting information about student performance to allow state and local school boards to identify strengths and weaknesses. To that end, she changed how Idaho test data was reported to show the performance of all students and specific groups of students, including minority groups and students with disabilities.

Also during her seven years as the state's schools chief, Dr. Howard successfully shepherded many state and federal school reforms including:

• No Child Left Behind Act - Dr. Howard shepherded the state's agreement to ensure Idaho was in full compliance with the federal law;
• Charter schools - Dr. Howard assigned a staff person to provide technical assistance to these new schools and secured $8.3 million in federal grants to assist schools in start up and other costs;
• Civics and character education - Dr. Howard is an advocate for ensuring that students leave schools prepared to be active citizens. She has secured federal grants to create and promote school/community-based character programs in schools, as well as secured grant funds to help expand service learning and civics opportunities in schools;
• International education - Dr. Howard appointed an International Education Task Force to help expand Idaho teachers' and students' understanding of the state's major international trade partners, and countries with historical and cultural ties to the state.

Dr. Howard was first elected as Idaho's 23rd Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1998 and took office in January 1999. She was re-elected in 2002. Prior to her election to statewide office, Dr. Howard was a school principal and teacher for more than 30 years in Idaho and Washington.

The 66-year-old said retirement will allow her to spend more time with her family, including two grandsons.

HT: Jack Wenders

Race for Idaho schools chief will again be between Marilyn Howard and Tom Luna

It appears the race for Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction will feature the same players as four years ago.

Both schools chief Marilyn Howard, a Democrat, and her 2002 Republican opponent, Tom Luna of Nampa, plan announcements about the November, 2006, election next week.

Howard will hold a news conference Monday at the J.R. Williams building in Boise, according to a news release from her office.

Although Howard has so far refused to confirm whether she will run for a third term she is expected to announce her candidacy.

Howard said two years ago that she might not run for a third term because her daughter was in poor health and she needed to help care for her.

However, Howard's daughter has continued to improve since then, reigniting speculation that the superintendent would run for a third term.

As the state's only elected Democratic administrator and a member of the State Board of Education, Howard has often been a minority voice for the issues she champions.

Luna, a businessman and former member of the Idaho Assessment and Accountability Commission that developed Idaho's new curriculum standards, will make campaign stops through Idaho next week, according to a news release issued by Wayne Hoffman.

Hoffman is a former political reporter for the Idaho Statesman and currently is the public relations officer for the Idaho State Department of Agriculture. His connection to Luna is unclear.

Luna, four years ago, advocated running public schools more like a business and favored tying school funding to student performance.

He criticized the current system for what he said was a high drop-out rate and a large number of high school graduates unprepared for college.

Why would board ask teachers about education?

Jim Fisher

It is indeed hard to understand why Idaho's State Board of Education would change high school graduation standards without consulting teachers and administrators, as some of them pointed out at a board hearing in Lewiston Tuesday evening -- until you understand the regard this board has for professional educators.

Which is, not much.

In recent years, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne's appointed board has demonstrated two contradictory positions toward teachers and administrators. The first is that education is too important to be left to educators. The second is that teaching is so easy anyone who passes a computerized test can do it.

Both positions reflect the same contempt toward those who struggle to meet an increasing battery of requirements handed down by state and federal politicians.

That is not a charge that should be made lightly, or without sufficient evidence. But this board has provided more than enough.

It begins with the board's interactions with the professional educator who sits on it by virtue of her election as the state's superintendent of public instruction. In vote after vote, other board members have left former Moscow Principal Marilyn Howard the lone opponent of education "reforms" that do not come from educators. They are the proposals of a national movement to weaken the influence of teachers especially, and to funnel public school resources into profit-making enterprises.

That explains this board's drive to expand the number of publicly financed charter schools, including those that simply transfer Idaho tax dollars to management and curriculum companies like K12 of Virginia.

It also explains the board's creation of a committee to write a merit-pay plan for teachers, and appointment to it of at least one opponent of any public education, Moscow economist Jack Wenders.

And it explains the board's adoption of the computer test from the American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence as an acceptable alternative to teacher training and certification.

Kempthorne's board is also the first in memory to slash the education community's annual legislative budget request before passing it on to lawmakers.

If you wonder whom the board has consulted in making these moves, look to the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry. Representing such companies as Potlatch Corp. and Avista, IACI has set out to yank education from the hands of educators. It has also sought to unseat school-friendly legislators like Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow. And now, it has decided all students must take more math and science courses, even at the expense of the humanities and other disciplines.

So get out of the way, teachers and principals. Where did you ever get the idea you know what's good for kids? -- J.F.