Making the Exception the Rule
The New York Times Magazine takes up the many children “still left behind” in its Sunday cover story. The Times piece contrasts the success of the increasingly famous KIPP schools with the slow (or non-existent) progress under NCLB, and concludes that we do have the ability to break the link between family poverty and achievement, but that it will require a greater investment than we have been willing to devote thus far. As someone who is writing a book on No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I think the piece has a lot to recommend it, but making the exception the rule will be much more difficult than the story lets on.
If we track the changing liberal consensus by NYT magazine cover stories, the piece provides a nice counterpoint to the 2000 James Traub cover story “What No Schools Can Do.” As the title suggests, that piece summarized research dating back to the famous Coleman report in 1966 that suggested that the main determinants of achievement are student and neighborhood poverty rates and school peer composition. Traub concludes that schools in high poverty neighborhoods are fighting a long and mostly losing battle because of broader inequalities of racial and class segregation, and our purported optimism about the power of schools simply shields us from our unwillingness to confront these social inequalities.
This thread seems to have gotten lost in the current piece, which emphasizes a more hopeful story about the efficacy of schools. After pointing to an analysis by Douglas Harris that suggests that the chance of a school with “mostly minority poor kids” achieving high test scores is roughly 1 in 300 (in comparison to 1 in 4 for a schools that enrolls “mostly well-off white kids”), the piece does not draw the conclusion that we need to mix the kids or confront racial or class segregation, as Traub did in 2000. Rather, in the intervening years, the success of some charters like KIPP has convinced the writer of the latest piece, Paul Tough, that the links between family background and eventual achievement can be broken, even in high poverty settings, through a combination of much longer school days (and weekends), carefully supervised and data-driven lesson planning, and a conscious effort to teach “middle class” values.What to make of this shift? The first thing is to say that both the earlier and later views have considerable truth to them. The reality is that it is both progress to celebrate and seek to replicate the rare schools that are able to achieve remarkable results in breaking the link between poverty and eventual achievement, and that this same conceptual move marks a retreat from a willingness to challenge the racial and class segregation that makes this task so difficult.
The second is to say that despite the success of KIPP and a few other small charters, we still know more about creating more good schools than we do about creating good school systems. Researchers have known that individual schools could vary widely in their ability to affect children’s trajectories going back at least to the “effective schools” research in the 1970s. What we don’t know is how to get this to scale. There are no examples of entire districts producing results akin to those of KIPP; districts like Boston and others have made some progress under standards-based reform, but this progress has been comparatively very slow. The key policy question is why, and this is where the assumptions of the piece run into some trouble.
Tough seems to assume that the needed ingredients could be replicated if only we were willing to do it: districts and states would have to pony up more money, unions would have to agree to longer school days, etc. But it seems equally likely that the key ingredients that make a place like KIPP work are not easily replicable: strong leadership and teachers who are not only talented, but are willing to work 15-16 hours days plus weekends to bring their students up to standards of proficiency. In essence, under this view, places like KIPP and other successful schools with good leadership attract the most talented people to them, which is a kind of zero sum game that does not easily lend itself to reform of the system as a whole. (And it should be pointed out here that we still don’t know enough about KIPP – how much of their success is due to the selection of their students, how much to the school culture, how much to the initial talent of their teachers.)
In the final analysis, I think Tough is right on a number of fronts: 1) the difficulty of breaking the link between family poverty and school outcomes; 2) the fact that it can be done; 3) the difference between the kind of talent and effort expended at places like KIPP and what happens in most normal public schools; and 4) the folly of expecting such an extraordinary outcome through ordinary means such as NCLB. But the question remains – how do we make the exception the rule? To focus on just one central aspect of creating good schools, how could we create 3,000,000 KIPP teachers? This is a complicated and ongoing conversation, but the only obvious answer is pay – people in our society who are attractive job candidates coming out of college and work 15-16 hour days generally command salaries of $80,000 and up, which would mean a radical shift in our national priorities. Perhaps this could be coupled with some form of differentiated pay, which would make it slightly more affordable and more tenable to conservatives, but it is still a utopian enough idea to be outside of the current policy conversation. In other words, I think Tough is essentially correct that we could make significant progress towards reducing the link between poverty and outcomes if we were really committed to it, but I think he massively underestimates what it would really take to accomplish one of our most difficult social policy objectives.
Cross-posted at Foresight.
"If we track the changing liberal consensus by NYT magazine cover stories." That'd be a mistake. Who are the regular contributors? We've Caldwell from a leading right-wing publication. We've Matt Bai, Noah Feldman, and others always eager to offer the Democrats the friendly advice of becoming Republican. Reiff is hard to define other than as apolitical; yesterday's column considered the war a disaster but quoted Samuel Huntington and came to a cuddly ending that eventually America won't hold the war against the Iraqis. (I bet they were worried over there.) They've made a GOP candidate their front-page face shot. And of course the article endorsed the post-Cosby line about values as the core of black underachievement. Just who is the liberal?
Also, I think you misperceive the article's idea. It acknowledges criticism of the school as not scalable (although it doesn't question success, and we know studies of charter schools have had disappointing results recently). It's basically taking in reply idea that a few schools is all it takes.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
November 27, 2006 7:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
" . . . how could we create 3,000,000 KIPP teachers? . . . people in our society who are attractive job candidates coming out of college and work 15-16 hour days . . ."
"We" can't. Even assuming hefty pay hikes, there aren't that many interested parties with the combination of intellect and personality the job requires. Bear in mind also that teaching has a fairly high burnout rate, even among those who only work 8-to-12 hour days; many teachers spend fewer years in their career than they spent preparing for it in college.
Besides: the middle class ultimately foots the bill for all this, and why should they want the poor to do better in school? That would mean more competition for them, which they would hardly welcome. The Tough article seems to assume that improving the lot of the poor is, or should be, our nation's foremost priority. But it isn't -- and won't be.
November 27, 2006 8:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Anyhow, for the article itself, I wonder if its real problem isn't framing the issues wrong. It may sound odd, but I don't actually mean its stress on building work habits, which is definitely part of good teaching. It even goes beyond blaming the black family and considers how schools may help, which isn't too conservative for me.
Rather, I mean its framing the debate between those (liberal) who insist schools aren't the problem, when we should be remaking society and eliminating income disparities, and those who still think schools count (and the market would find the answers). Now, I'd love to see a more just society that allows poor families time to spend wtih their kids rather than working nights at a fast-food restaurant and days cleaning toilets (as described in article today). But I think it's still a loaded version of the debate.
Mostly, the liberal argument, I think, has been that education matters a great deal, with, as Jonathan Kozol documents, huge disparities in funding between inner city and suburban schools, allowing such things as smaller class sizes, better teachers, working facilities, and more individual attention to students. We'd then say that the right is willing to abandon inner city schools, using any number of excuses or, rather, false claims.
It might be the claim that nothing can be done because black IQ or lousy parents is the real problem. it might be the claim that schools just need to be held accountable, the premise of No Child Left Behind, as if the invention of the ruler made everyone taller. It might be the claim that we're really going to do something unspecified because we're compassionate conservatives and I'll be the education president. It might be an educational fad, such as plain drill. It might be the need for free markets, on the theory that either a heretofore secret educational method will be discovered through the stimulus of competition or that it'll do away with all that bureaucratic waste or that we don't have to know because the market always does better. Oh, and none of this will undercut students left out by wrong choices and failing schools; the market demands good choices.
So it's that frame I really object to. What interested me is that the actual success, although put in terms of values, amounted to huge individual attention to students, thanks to such things as long class hours and still longer teacher hours. Presumably, unless teachers thus accept half pay (hourly) and schools can afford to stay open longer at no cost, this sounds awfully like the liberal prescription for investing heavily in schools. How nice that the frame can make us overlook that!
I like the idea of charter schools more than vouchers in theory, because maybe starting over would be nice, ditching old buildings falilng apart; because they might attract more teachers; and because they don't amount to defunding education for the poor the way vouchers necessarily do. I was almost sorry that studies consistently show charter schools do no better or even worse once one compensates for income levels, although I think it's wise to accept facts. I never dreamed that someone would claim that charter schools would succeed by the equivalent of throwing more money at the problem. If only that were part of actual charter school policy.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
November 27, 2006 8:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Follow the money.
Since most schools are funded in large part by local property taxes there is no good mechanism in place to bring spending in poor regions up to the level of wealthy ones. In NY the richest districts spend $18,000 per student while the poorest about $8,000. After a nine year law suit NYC was able to get only one billion per year more from the state to equalize things. This is a pittance for the country's largest system.
NCLB was put in place to fail. The idea was to prove that the problem lies with the school administrators and/or the teachers and thus break unions and get rid of tenure. Students are in school for 1/3 of a day for 1/2 of the year. These few hours are supposed to make up for all the influences in their lives the other 5/6 of the time?
If you want to improve school results, get rid of segregated schools (not only racially, but economically), equalize funding and eliminate politically motivated "reform" programs.
The majority of the well off and influential aren't interesting in seeing any of this happen, so there little chance of real change.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
November 27, 2006 8:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think the focus on straight economic poverty is inadequate. The true variable of significance is "Security" -- whether an individual child perceives their life situation as reasonably secure -- and this includes economic security, but other sub-variables too.
Security can include whether one lives in a fairly safe neighgorhood, whether whatever the family structure, it is nurturing and dependable, it certainly includes things such as whether family income sources are secure -- we always see clear deterioration of school achievement levels when a major employer walks out on a community and is not replaced. All of these variables, and others, contribute toward the critical measure -- does a child view his/her own circumstances as reasonably secure?
The matter of providing Professional Teachers can actually be addressed, though it is a bit expensive. What you want, afterall, is for those with the intellect, talent and personality to choose teaching while in College, and be able to see they will be rewarded for that choice. My own sense is that if the Federal Government took up the cost of repaying all college loans, and indeed the original cost of college over a fairly long period (say ten years) this would provide enough of an incentive for those who believe they have a vocation to teach, to make that choice. As things stand now, if let's say a math major looks at the choice between teaching or virtually any other job -- the difference is beginning pay for a BA or BS would be 50-60 thousand outside teaching, perhaps half that as a teacher. The teacher would not achieve the entry pay level in the private sector for perhaps eight to ten years -- in the mean time someone in the private sector probably would have added 25-40 thousand to annual income. A teacher with 20 years experience would be just at the post entry level private industry scale.
If we established a program that paid off loans, and then rebated college costs in the out years for established teachers, we could eliminate the worst of the economic aspect of the choice to become a professional teacher.
Finally we need to get serious about Professional Development. We need to do some serious surgery on Colleges and Schools of Education (many at land grant institutions) and tie their offerings at both the undergraduate and post graduate level to the needs of the schools and the teacher corps. There is no reason they cannot decentralize, and offer MA's and other advanced certifications in off campus locations easily accessable to working teachers, and yet tied to the state-of-the-art research in the field. The whole field of professional development needs much more rigor, but it also should be essentially free to working teachers. Afterall, private industry does not charge their employees for advanced training courses. It is a cost of doing business, deductable above the line from taxable corporate profits.
What we suffer from in the US is the residue of past cultural assumptions. Prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act which ultimately opened up many jobs previously closed to women, teaching was low paid, and something into which women were funneled. (as with nursing and social work). And while women's pay has not yet been fully equalized, enough has happened in that area that this reservoir of talented but lower paid potential personnel has largely disappeared. It is high time the justice of what was done in 1964 is clearly recognized, and we get on with building an alternative talent recruitment system.
November 27, 2006 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
You haven't commented on another aspect of KIPP and some of the other "successful" charter schools.
That is the question - are those schools actually serving the same families as the population at large, or does the selection process affect the outcomes.
My personal suspicion is that the selection process acts as a filter to pull motivated families seeking mobility to the schools. Further, the school profiles - with KIPP, the willingness to work long hours including weekends and summer, and mandated parental participation; at some other schools, uniforms and other social selections plus longer hours - act as another filter. And if something along these lines is true, then it isn't simply a matter of re-creating a lot more schools run like these.
Have you or any other researchers don't any in-depth study of this?
November 27, 2006 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
"My personal suspicion is that the selection process acts as a filter to pull motivated families seeking mobility to the schools." That came up, too, in the Times article, which danced around it. One would certainly think that parents willing to have their children to any special school have done some, well, homework and have an unusual commitment to the child's education, but especially so when the school will require unusually long or irregular hours. (I also agree with rdf that, much as I wish for equalizing education funding and think the article, despite itself, supports this, it's a hopeless cause. There really is a class war, and we're losing.)
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
November 28, 2006 7:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful comments. I think the broad question of whether there is any serious commitment on the part of the middle class to even making a dent in this problem is a critical one and one frequently excluded from public debate b/c it makes politicians uncomfortable, so I'm glad a number of you brought it up.
In response to Twenty One's question of whether there has been a rigorous study of the potential impact of selection of students on the KIPP results, as far as I know the answer is no. (I don't study KIPP myself, but I think if there were such an evaluation I would know, and you would probably know too.) In the absence of such a study, most people tend to take a middle course -- the effect of selecting students may contribute to the outcomes, but the degree of the success (in some schools as many as 99% of middle schoolers have been placed in exam high schools) suggests that what KIPP does is making a considerable contribution as well. So if the question is whether these kids would have done just as well in another setting, the answer is we can't know for sure, but it seems highly improbable.
If the question is whether kids who don’t apply to KIPP would benefit from this kind of treatment, that is harder to say. It seems possible that there are some kids with less or no parental support who would not thrive (or even show up) for a program that requires such a commitment. In this sense, you are right to imply that a one to one comparison with KIPP and an average high poverty school is unfair.
At the same time, I don't see that as an argument against KIPP as a charter -- if it works for some kids, that is better than not having it at all. I would actually like to see more differentiation within the public sector -- different things work for different kids, and we should recognize that fact if we want schools to work for as many kids as possible.
November 28, 2006 8:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
I live in San Francisco, which operated under a desegregation agreement and equalized school funding for at least 20 years.
The salient point is that this desegregation did NOTHING to raise student achievement among AfAm and Latino minority youth. (Desegregation meant that no school could have more than 40% of any minority.)
Another salient point is that equalizing school funding did NOTHING to raise student achievement among disadvantaged minority youth. The discrepancies persist even when the better schools get LESS money.
Whereas the KIPP schools seem to work.
What I have seen operating in SF is diversity as window dressing, where cute diverse photos seem to satisfy the progressive impulse, while the situation in the schools is a public health emergency of a sort - 40% of AfAm high school students getting an average grade of 'D' and a similar % cycling through the criminal system.
I was happy about the NYTimes magazine because I think the progressives in this area tolerate failure and all its consequences. If failure is not acceptable, more money and much more work is required. Kids are up for it. I think the biggest hurdle is the teachers, because they don't want to work that hard for the same pay. The teachers union drove Ackerman out of San Francisco (with the help of progressives of course) because she was trying to implement KIPP-like 'dream schools'. They were threatened and didn't like the hours. I do think the term 'soft bigotry of low expectations' applies here, because the tolerance of progressives for this ongoing human tragedy in our schools is utterly disgusting.
Desegregation and equal funding are GOOD in and of themselves -- but they don't fix the problem!!
What gets lost of course is the kids, whose lives are at stake.
My fix: increase the number of teachers 40% and make every low achieving school a KIPP school.
November 28, 2006 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just a couple of observations.
1. Some of what KIPP achieves may be explained by the "Hawthorne effect". They turned down the lights in a Western Electric factory in Hawthorne N.J .to measure the relationship between good working conditions and productivity. Productivity got better . Turned them down again. Same result.Etc. When people know they are being studied , they do better.
2. There are lots of ways to San Jose. The US
Navy has always recognized that superior results can be obtained by "tight ships" (meaning obvious) .....or by "happy ships".
November 29, 2006 7:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. Many minority teachers who retired or left the system due to these changes coined a phrase for what was becoming a systematic problem....'programming for failure'. They viewed the changes as deleterious to achievement and coupled with low expectations understood that the kids were no longer being educated but simply pushed the system with low grades and never having to strive or excell. Thus the term 'programming for failure'
Needless to say, the programming for failure coupled with a culture of poverty and high incarceration rates has resulted in a tremendous economic and social crisis that has now become too large to ignore...but was clearly predictable.
December 1, 2006 6:17 AM | Reply | Permalink