Not Just Test Scores

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

A column by Sylvester Brown Jr. in the Post-Dispatch today contains some thoughtful discussion about education reform. Although I don’t agree with all the conclusions, Brown raises important issues. For example, here is an excerpt from a discussion he had with Professor William Tate:

When politicians set the educational agenda solely based on test scores, they miss the big picture, Tate said.

"Test scores do not measure social development. You can’t talk about the educational phenomenon without considering the housing, health, juvenile justice and dropout phenomenons. That’s the role these great universities can play."

Politicians may set the educational agenda for now, Tate said, but St. Louis has the resources and "capacity to change."

"When it comes down to it, we’re all in charge; it’s a group deal. I think we can do better here," Tate said. "But it will require a consortium of leaders broadly concerned about the real future of our youth, not just test scores."

SLPS test scores are so poor that pointing them out is an eye-catching addition to any argument (including some of mine). But we shouldn’t base our support for any policy on test scores alone. After all, some countries have school systems that do a good job at achieving high scores but that fail in other areas, such as promoting creativity and independent thinking.

Tate and Brown think the plurality of educational purposes calls for more input from experts. I think it calls for more input from parents. When some parents look for a school, they are interested in test scores and academic achievement. A study summarized in Education Next has found that parents whose kids attend high-poverty schools are most interested in those measures of success. But even within socioeconomic groups, not all parents want the same things. Some parents care more about values and character education, extracurricular activities, a warm school environment, or a number of other factors. 

We don’t need one "educational agenda" for a diverse group of people. We should allow parents to make their own decisions about which schools their children attend. That way, parents can choose schools that excel in areas that matter to them — whether or not they include high test scores.

Time Is Money

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

I enjoy reading the Missouri State Teachers’ Association blog, which includes fun links to English and math websites, as well as commentary on education policy. But I don’t think this is exactly what they meant to say:

I agree it is virtually impossible to meet all standards and grade-level expectations in the limited seat time kids currently serve.

So now attending school is serving time? I know some kids view school as a prison, but I thought the teachers were generally more positive about it.

Semantics aside, the post argues for a longer school year and observes that increasing the time kids spend ("serve") in school would be expensive. This is a variation on the adequacy argument: we can’t meet the standards with the amount of money we currently have, so give us more money. The problem with this is that if money or time isn’t being used effectively right now, spending more time or money the same way won’t improve anything.

I have a better idea. Since many districts already operate summer schools, and several private schools host summer enrichment programs as well, we could give low-income kids vouchers to attend summer classes at any existing program they choose. Kids who want to attend would reap the benefits of additional time in school. And because the program would be in operation for only a few months out of the year, it would be a way to explore parental choice without making any major changes to the regular school year.

Way to Go, Missouri!

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

I’ve complained in the past about Missouri’s system of occupational licensure, which requires manicurists, martial arts judges, and lots of other people to get permission from the state just to do their jobs. However, it turns out we’re not doing that badly compared with the rest of the nation. This report from Reason (linked by David Stokes in August) compares states by number of licensed job categories. With 41 licensed categories, Missouri has the fewest of all. (California, with 177, is the worst offender.)

I’m also happy to see that most of our categories seem almost sensible compared with the list of outrageous licenses on page 50 of the Reason report. We have no licenses for fortune tellers, reptile catchers, or turtle farmers. Although now that we have official state reptiles and invertebrates, we should be on the lookout for regulation of their catchers and farmers. 

Education Tall Tales

Posted on by Justin Hauke

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an article this morning detailing a study by the Washington-based Center on Education Policy, which claims that urban private high schools are no more effective at academic achievement or college completion than inner-city public high schools.

Please. I guess that’s why the first question I’m asked when I meet somebody new in St. Louis is, "Where did you go to high school?"

I’m not going to argue with the results here (though I do question the methodology … and our own Michael Podgursky has had issues with the author’s research in the past) but I will stress that this is from a national study, and local results will not necessarily be the same. There is plenty of research that documents the success of individual school choice programs in some of the nation’s worst-performing public school districts. More than anything, their success results the fact that teachers are free to pursue alternative curricula in private schools, which enables them to reach students who have traditionally failed in public education. And, according to Post-Dispatch‘s coverage, the study itself admits that “overall, low-income students in private schools outperformed those in public schools.”

Furthermore (and I realize this isn’t an effective rebuttal) the Center on Education Policy is hardly an objective source. According to their website, they claim that they are “independent,” “unbiased,” and that they do not “represent any special interests.” Yet in the same breath, they unabashedly state that they are avowed “advocates for public schools.” How can you be independent, unbiased, and immune to a special interest, when you are explicitly tied to a special interest to begin with?

I believe that public schools would perform better if they had incentives to innovate. That’s hardly an unrealistic assumption. If they are as great as the Center on Education Policy believes, then they should have no problem responding to increased competition. So what are the public school advocates afraid of?

Oh, and speaking of those wonderful “public schools,” there’s another article today about just how much taxpayer money they are wasting in adequacy lawsuits. So, while school districts argue that they aren’t given enough money by the Legislature, they are simultaneously wasting millions of tax dollars in legal fees, through an endless appeals process.

I wonder what the Center on Education Policy would say about that?

Money Well Spent?

Posted on by Dave Roland

I guess I can’t really blame school administrators for their perspective from the losing end of this summer’s school funding lawsuit. If I had just helped to gamble away more than $4 million of someone else’s money, I’d also be trying to convince them that it was money well spent.

The Post-Dispatch reports today that school administrators and representatives of the Committee for Educational Equality and the Coalition to Fund Excellent Schools are not even slightly abashed at the revelation that state’s legal bill in this case ran so high. Then again, wasting taxpayers’ money is a daily ritual for many of these people, so perhaps embarrassment over this matter is too much to expect.

But hide your pocketbooks, gentle readers, because even after the trial court issued a thorough, well-reasoned opinion against the plaintiffs in CEE v. Missouri, these folks want to spend millions more of the public’s money in hopes of persuading the Missouri Supreme Court to … spend hundreds of millions more of the public’s money!

Let me be clear: If some well-meaning private citizens decide to fight out a legal battle about school funding, they are within their rights to use their own money in the effort. But with this case, it is your money they are spending, just as it is your money they would claim if their suit was successful. We owe it to ourselves to tell these school districts that enough is more than enough — they should follow the lead of the St. Joseph school district and abandon this lawsuit immediately.

All Eyes on the Midwives

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Lest anyone thought I had forgotten about the midwives, here’s another update. OK, not exactly an update, because the only news in the Kansas City Star article is this:

Before the law went into effect, however, opponents filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn it. The case has since made it to the Missouri Supreme Court, though attorneys don’t expect oral arguments until sometime next year.

For now, the issue has captured a nationwide audience and has been spotlighted on media outlets such as Fox News. And it’s the talk of midwifery circles.

However, the article does include a picture of a bunch of cute kids who were delivered by midwives, and some useful definitions of different kinds of midwives for those of you who haven’t been obsessing over the midwife saga like I have need a refresher. I just had to point out this article because I couldn’t let Midwifery Week go by without a post on the subject.

St. Louis Students Imagine the Benefits of Education

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The St. Louis Public Schools’ problems have been in the news a lot lately. In particular, students’ reading and math MAP test scores are way below the state average. But the schools always manage to resist pressure to "teach to the test." The Post-Dispatch describes the latest assignment at Fanning Middle School:

Each student was randomly assigned a career, a family situation and 18 decisions to make pertaining to such budgetary realities as groceries, health insurance, utilities, child care and clothing. …

Seventh-grader Derrick Lloyd, assigned the career of a chemist who is single and earns $41,000, made frugal choices down the line. "My goal is to retire at 32," he said.

Early retirement (or earning $41,000 a year) will be out of reach for most of these kids as long as the district’s drop-out rate stays so high and test scores stay so low. Only 15.1 percent of district 10th graders are proficient in math, which means that the vast majority of them are not prepared to become chemists.

Unless the schools improve, these imaginary science careers are going to remain a dream.

A Cutting-Edge Charter School, in Kansas City

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

An article in the New York Times describes private preschools that offer language immersion programs for kids:

Ms. Kinsale says that what she wanted for Sidney was a high-quality, nurturing, racially diverse school. At the two language schools, she has come to appreciate the mix of Asian, white, black and Hispanic children. “People who start their children on a language so young understand it’s a multicultural world and they want their children to be part of it,” she says.

I think teaching foreign languages to young children is a great idea. And there’s a charter school in Kansas City that’s doing exactly that. While many public schools postpone languages until sixth or seventh grade, Academie Lafayette starts French classes in kindergarten. Here‘s a profile of the school from a few years ago. And from the more recent statistics on DESE’s website, you can see that 48 percent of the students are minorities, and 31 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch. This is another great example of how charter schools give minority students access to educational choices.

In addition to being able to use unique curricula and educational approaches, charter schools have another advantage over traditional public schools: They are open to all students in the district, not just those who live nearby. When students from all neighborhoods and economic backgrounds can attend the same school, they encounter real diversity.

The New York Times article illustrates the challenges diversity-seeking parents face when they look for public schools for their kids:

Until two years ago, they lived in Orange, N.J., a community that is three-quarters black. They were happy there, they say, with a nice house that they spent a lot of time renovating and a racially mixed group of neighbors. But when Stirling was 4, they began looking ahead to school and studied the state test results. At Orange High School, more than half the students did not pass the 2005/2006 state proficiency test in English, and three-quarters failed math. “I looked at the report and looked at my husband and said, ?Do you mind selling this house?'” says Ms. Kinsale.

They were determined to find the best school district for what they could afford. “Taxes and real estate were so high,” she says. They pored over test scores and real estate listings in suburbs that were a reasonable commute to Mr. Kinsale’s Newark office and found a three-bedroom home in Millburn. 

Now the Kinsales are sending their daughter to the private preschool to experience diversity she’ll miss later when she goes to a traditional public school.

Here Is Something We Can All Support

Posted on by David Stokes

Governor Blunt has launched a loan program (article via Mr. Husband-to-be) for students interested in going into large animal veterinary practices. I don’t link to this because I think it’s a major issue — I am linking to it because it’s a good example of how the government should go about addressing needs such as this. It’s not a new tax credit, or an excise tax on pork products, or a new license fee to tailgate outside of Faurot Field, it’s just a simple, concise loan program that tries to help students move into a needed field. The governor deserves credit for this program and for keeping it at a reasonable level.

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