In this episode, Susan Pendergrass is joined by Steven F. Wilson, senior fellow at the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research and author of The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America, to discuss the rise and decline of the “no excuses” charter school movement.

They examine how once high-performing urban charter networks lost their focus on academic achievement, why ideological shifts around DEI and anti-racism took root, and what it will take to re-center public education around effective instruction. Wilson also explains the importance of urgency in school leadership, the evidence behind student outcomes, and more.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on SoundCloud

Transcript: The Lost Decade – Steven F. Wilson with Susan Pendergrass

Download the Transcript 

(00:00) Introduction and background

Susan Pendergrass: Well, Steven Wilson, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. We were just speaking before we started recording about how long you and I have been kind of working in the—you completely in the charter space and me somewhat adjacently in the charter school space—and have just seen things change and evolve over time in ways that… some are great and some are less great.

You have a new book out, The Lost Decade: Return to the Fight for Better Schools in America, which is fantastic. You know, 20 years ago, I thought charter schools were going to be part of the answer—to competitively spur non-charter schools to do better and to give parents options and lifeboats in some of our worst urban districts. There were so many high-flying charter school networks emerging, like KIPP—the Knowledge is Power Program—that were like, “Look, it’s not the kids.”

These kids can do as much as any kids—even if they’re poor, even if they are in an urban district, even if their mom is single and has two jobs. We’re not going to give them excuses. We’re going to have high expectations and we’re going to instill discipline. And they started this whole “no excuses” thing. And I thought that was such a great thing for kids. Then… I don’t know. Please, you tell me. I’m sure you know more than I do.

(01:10) The shift away from academic excellence

Steven F. Wilson: Well, first of all, Susan, I’m delighted to be with you—and I’m even more delighted that you’ve read the book. That’s thrilling.

Yes, I think your introduction really nails it. We had found a once-in-a-century educational intervention that had extraordinary effects: the so-called “no excuses” school. (Terrible name, by the way—maybe we should clarify that for listeners.) Around 2000, or in the few years leading up to that, urban charter networks were posting extraordinary effects. They were beginning to show a way out of educational inequality in this country—and then they lost the thread.

They turned away from the North Star of achievement—of great instruction—which is what drove them and their success. And they began to embrace another ideology, another purpose, that I think has been quite destructive. That’s the theme of the book. I refer to it as anti-racist education or social justice education.

Look, we all thought we were doing social justice, right? We thought we were doing anti-racism. We thought that by providing an instructionally effective path—where children could enter the middle class and not be consigned to a life of the minimum wage—we were addressing inequality in America. But we’ve unfortunately turned away from that.

I called the book The Lost Decade because we are now exactly halfway through it. We need to make a sharp pivot back to what was working. My book is really a call to action—a call to return to what works, and pick up where we left off.

(03:47) Mislabeling structure as racism

Susan Pendergrass: So when you say the anti-racist movement, I think what I remember hearing is… making kids stand in line is racist?

Steven F. Wilson: Yeah, that’s right. So a whole lot of things were labeled racist when, in fact, they were just creating the conditions under which children could be safe, respected, and have an opportunity to learn—conditions where teachers could teach.

People forget what the urban classroom looked like 30 years ago when all this began. There’s a book called Let the Lady Teach by Emily Socker. She was an education journalist who taught for a year and took stunning photos. You see New York City classrooms with graffiti-covered walls, broken desks—a scene of abject neglect and contempt for students.

The founders of the no-excuses schools did two things. First, they established order. Children needed to feel safe from gangs, violence, and low-level disorder. The balled-up paper no one picks up, the broken pencil, the kids talking over the teacher—all that had to stop. That was the foundation for joyful, effective learning environments.

Second, they adopted the pledge of no excuses. As professionals, we agreed to stop blaming poverty, racism, or lack of resources for why students weren’t learning. Those challenges are real—but we cannot let them prevent us from doing our job: educating children. That was an ennobling cultural decision—and it drove the successes that followed.

(06:38) School uniforms and equality

Susan Pendergrass: I also remember how those high-performing charter networks were some of the first public schools to require uniforms. At the time, people said, “You can’t make low-income students wear belts,” and yet… they did. Schools helped them. They found a way.

Steven F. Wilson: Exactly. Uniforms did a couple of things: they created a sense of order and purpose and they eliminated status anxiety about clothes or sneakers. They created a level playing field where all kids could feel safe and focused.

(07:54) Why charter schools changed

Susan Pendergrass: So why did things change around 2005 or so? Why were charter schools so susceptible to this shift?

Steven F. Wilson: Good question. My view—and it can be contested—is that charter schools were uniquely susceptible because of their reliance on young, novice teachers, and because they experienced higher staff turnover than traditional districts. So you had more new teachers arriving, often from elite universities. These teachers had been acculturated in anti-racist ideology and brought it with them.

With 20 to 25 percent staff attrition over four years, you can essentially have a whole new faculty. These new teachers weren’t part of the early TFA generation who felt called to close the achievement gap. Instead, they came in animated by the ideas of Ibram Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, and more radical voices like Tema Okun—who claimed that objectivity and love of the written word were traits of white supremacy.

So teachers began to question whether enforcing discipline or holding students to high standards was racist. Some networks—like Success Academy and Brooke Charter Schools—held their ground. Others capitulated. They didn’t make the case for their methods or explain how they aligned with a true liberal arts education.

(11:35) Parental demand and satisfaction

Susan Pendergrass: And these were the very things that parents wanted, right? The structure, the discipline?

Steven F. Wilson: Absolutely. These schools conducted annual parent surveys—Ascend, KIPP, Achievement First. Satisfaction rates were consistently above 90%. I’ve never heard of a parent asking for more anti-racist programming. What they wanted was a better education and a secure path to college and career. That path has eroded horribly over the past five years.

(14:52) Test score declines

Susan Pendergrass: So what were the actual outcomes of the shift?

Steven F. Wilson: In New York City—the nation’s largest market—urban no-excuses charters used to dramatically outperform traditional schools on state tests. That performance premium eroded by two-thirds over five years. Now, many of them perform just slightly better than the city average. But the networks that stuck with their methods—Success Academy and Classical Charter Schools—have either maintained or improved their results.

(16:29) Can “anti-racist” schools succeed academically?

Susan Pendergrass: And you couldn’t find any high-achieving schools that had adopted the anti-racist framework?

Steven F. Wilson: I looked, and no—I couldn’t find any.

(17:24) What should we do now?

Susan Pendergrass: So what now? How do we turn this around?

Steven F. Wilson: We need to have honest conversations—conversations that have been avoided for too long. And then we need to win the contest of ideas. The no-excuses model works. RAND found that students who attend KIPP middle and high schools have nearly the same college completion rates as white students nationwide. That’s an astonishing result.

There’s growing recognition that the ideological shift hasn’t worked—but fear still dominates. I think that will change within the next year.

(19:47) DEI and illiberalism on both sides

Susan Pendergrass: Meanwhile, terms like “equity” and “DEI” have been politicized. What’s your take on that?

Steven F. Wilson: I support DEI—when it’s done right. Diversity, equity, and inclusion should foster a sense of belonging. What doesn’t work is dividing people into affinity groups or pushing a worldview of oppressors versus oppressed. That’s deeply harmful.

And the answer isn’t to fight illiberalism with more illiberalism—banning concepts, censoring teachers. That’s not how we solve the problem.

(22:24) Accountability, data, and racism claims

Susan Pendergrass: In Missouri, we’ve got very low accountability. Our state system gives almost every district an “A.” When we created our own school grading system, we were told assigning D’s and F’s is racist—because those schools mostly serve Black and Brown students. But parents know when their child’s school is bad. They want a way out.

Steven F. Wilson: Right. The claim that it’s racist to report poor outcomes is a distraction—usually from the teachers’ unions or anti-reformers. They say schools are just reproducing structural poverty and racism. Horace Mann would roll over in his grave.

We need competition. In many communities, the majority school systems are unreformable. The faster path to success is to build new schools around them.

(26:05) Urgency and action

Susan Pendergrass: I hear “fix the schools we have” all the time. But people have been trying that for decades. If your house is on fire, don’t just stand there—build something next door.

Steven F. Wilson: Exactly. People cling to the existing system out of habit or emotion. But it isn’t working. And as you said, we need urgency. That’s another value some now call “racist.” But if your kid is in a broken classroom, you feel that urgency.

High-performing charter schools acted on it. They made staffing changes midyear. They reopened quickly during COVID. They didn’t let failure sit.

(28:22) Conclusion

Susan Pendergrass: Yes, and that urgency made a difference. Our unaccredited districts have been that way for so long a child could attend from kindergarten to 12th grade without any improvement.

The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America couldn’t be more timely. Steven, thank you so much for coming on.

Steven F. Wilson: Such a pleasure, Susan. Great to see you.

Susan Pendergrass: Same. Thank you.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post The Lost Decade of Education Reform with Steven F. Wilson appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Is such an out-migration happening? Let’s dig into the numbers.

One frequently hyperlinked story comes from Sam Zeff of KCUR.  (A transcript can be found here.)  Unfortunately, it only offers two real data points. First:

“With just six weeks to go before classes begin, there are about 700 open jobs in Kansas, double, Wilson says, the number they usually have this close to school.”

The problem with this statistic? It has no context. On Monday, The New York Times dedicated its front page  to a story on states all across the country struggling to recruit and retain teachers. As author Motoko Rich points out:

“In California, the number of people entering teacher preparation programs dropped by more than 55 percent from 2008 to 2012, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Nationally, the drop was 30 percent from 2010 to 2014, according to federal data. Alternative programs like Teach for America, which will place about 4,000 teachers in schools across the country this fall, have also experienced recruitment problems.”

This is a macro-trend in education right now, not just an issue for Kansas. To wit, the Times story focuses on California, where voters dramatically raised taxes via Prop 30 at roughly the same time Kansas was cutting them. They’re struggling just as much, if not more.

The second bit of hard evidence from the KCUR story is even more underwhelming:

“Data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education suggest there is indeed a migration of teachers from Kansas to Missouri. In 2011 before huge tax cuts were enacted, only 85 applications for Missouri teaching licenses were filed with a Kansas address. In the next three years, as school budgets were slashed, applications doubled.”

That would be around 170 teachers total, and only 85 more than normal.  For a little perspective, Kansas has 41,243 teachers, so those 85 teachers represent 0.2% of Kansas’s teaching force. I’m not sure “migration” is the right word for that.

Probably the second most cited resource is this AP report that found 3,720 Kansas teachers leaving either Kansas or the profession entirely last school year, compared to an unnamed date in the recent past when only 2,150 left.  

Again, context: Using the numbers above, 3,720 teachers make up roughly 9 percent of Kansas’s teaching force. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 8 percent of teachers leave the profession nationally every year, and an additional 8 percent move to different schools.  That means Kansas’s numbers are right in line with, or possibly even better than, national averages.

Kansas has not been immune to national trends affecting the number of people becoming or remaining teachers, but I see little justification for Kansas-specific alarm. I know it doesn’t fit the preferred narrative, but the truth often doesn’t.

The post Is there evidence of a “teacher exodus” from Kansas? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Through a series of legal maneuvers, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and the State Board of Education attempted to prevent students, like Cotton’s children, from transferring from Normandy Schools Collaborative.

First, Normandy was unaccredited, then nonaccredited, and most recently, “accredited as a state oversight district.” However, the transfer law, which states that a student living in an unaccredited district can transfer to an accredited district, prevailed Friday when Judge Michael Burton ruled that Ritenour, Francis Howell, and Pattonville School Districts would have to accept transfer students.

Cotton rejoiced when she saw the news over the weekend, only to learn from Francis Howell School District that the decision extended to just the children named in the lawsuit. Only one Normandy student will be returning to Francis Howell. Because Cameral Cotton did not participate in the lawsuit, her children will remain at Normandy.

Cotton’s daughter, Mar’Kita, dreams of becoming a history teacher for Teach for America. Her son, Mark, just wants to get into college. Both of these children blossomed at Francis Howell, and yet, they must remain in a school that, they believe, failed them.

If the transfer law was upheld for a few students, then it should be upheld for all students. Cameral Cotton should not have to wait for another class-action lawsuit just so her children can attend an accredited school. Burton’s decision may just apply to a few students, but the logic behind his decision applies to all Normandy students.

The post The Transfer Law: Another Disappointment appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The journal Educational Policy recently released my latest academic paper, “Teacher Effectiveness: An Analysis of Licensure Screens.” My co-author, Julie Trivitt, of the University of Arkansas, and I examined whether teachers who were traditionally certified are more effective than teachers who were alternatively certified, as measured by their ability to increase student achievement on Arkansas’ standardized tests. Traditionally certified teachers typically graduate from colleges of education and have student teaching experience whereas alternatively certified teachers often enter the classroom with little to no classroom experience. What we found might surprise you— the two groups of teachers performed at very similar levels.

How could it be that teachers who have gone through education programs and student teaching are no more effective than teachers with little to no experience? It seems a large factor in teacher effectiveness is a teacher’s academic capability. In our sample, there were significant differences between the traditionally and alternatively certified teachers in this regard.

The individuals entering the profession via an alternative route score higher on licensure exams. This is not out of the ordinary. In New York, “only 5 percent of newly hired Teaching Fellows and TFA teachers in 2003 failed the LAST [Liberal Arts and Sciences Test] exam on their first attempt, while 16.2 percent of newly hired traditional teachers failed the LAST exam.”

Opponents of alternative teacher licensure programs often lament that the new teachers will be “experimenting” on students. There is certainly something gained from experience, but the academic literature consistently shows that the difference between traditionally and alternatively certified teachers in terms of effectiveness is negligible.

Trivitt and I concluded that “Quality teachers simply cannot be identified exclusively by their licensure route or exam scores.” Therefore, there are really only two options: “improve licensure screens to the point that we can identify teacher quality very accurately or allow schools to use reasonable screens and identify quality teachers in practice.” To me, the latter sounds like a better policy — let local schools hire the individuals they think are the best for the job, regardless of certification.

The post Traditional vs. Alternative Teacher Licensure: What Does The Data Say? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but your child will have a Yale grad teaching him math and a Harvard grad teaching science this year.” Those are the words that every suburban parent dreads hearing from his or her child’s principal . . . wait, no they don’t. In fact, I think most parents would love having a highly educated person teaching his or her child. Yet, time and again, critics of Teach for America (TFA) make a big deal of the fact that TFA places highly talented graduates of top-notch colleges in the classrooms of disadvantaged students. They are experimenting on children, they cry.

Well, how has the experiment fared? That was the topic of a rigorous study that the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences released this week: “The Effectiveness of Secondary Math Teachers from Teach For America and the Teaching Fellows Program.”

Researchers randomly assigned students to TFA teachers and their non-TFA colleagues who taught the same math course in the same middle or high school. The study covered a two-year period, contained more than 4,500 students, 111 classroom matches, 136 math teachers, 45 schools, and 11 districts in eight states.

What did they find? “On average, TFA teachers in the study were more effective than comparison teachers.” TFA teachers produced significantly larger learning gains. These gains were the equivalent of an extra 2.6 months of learning. The researchers also noted that:

• TFA teachers were more effective than comparison teachers from both traditionally certified and less selective alternative certification routes.
• Novice TFA teachers were more effective than both novice and experienced comparison teachers.
• TFA teachers were more effective than comparison teachers in both middle and high school.

Yes, you read that right. TFA teachers were better than traditionally trained teachers and new TFA teachers were better than veteran teachers. So the next time you hear someone say that TFA is experimenting on children, tell them they are correct . . . and the experiment has been a success.

The post TFA Experiment Has Been A Success appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In areas like voting, charitable giving and civic engagement, graduates of the program lag behind those who were accepted but declined and those who dropped out before completing their two years, according to Doug McAdam, a sociologist at Stanford University, who conducted the study with a colleague, Cynthia Brandt.

The reasons for the lower rates of civic involvement, Professor McAdam said, include not only exhaustion and burnout, but also disillusionment with Teach for America’s approach to the issue of educational inequity, among other factors.

The study isn’t online yet, but when it is, I’d like to read how McAdam concluded that burnout and disillusionment account for the graduates’ lower rates of political activity. Were those reasons self-reported by the graduates? Or are they the researchers’ conjecture?

I can think of a few other reasons that graduates might be less likely to vote or participate in campaigns. Perhaps the people who completed the program were the most dedicated to their teaching jobs, and now that they’ve graduated, they’re equally dedicated to the jobs they currently hold. Maybe they’re so busy working that they don’t have time to dabble in the political process.

Another possibility is that their teaching experience convinced graduates that the political process is not the best way to achieve their goals. Maybe graduates remain as idealistic as when they started, but they now want to pursue their ideals through means other than politics.

As for the lower rate of charitable giving, a licensing effect could be at work. Alyssa Curran explained what a licensing effect is in her post about a study that found a connection between purchase of “green” products and a decline in altruism. Researchers don’t think subjects in that study became disillusioned with the products; rather, subjects acted as though choosing a socially-valued product gave them a license to be less generous later on. Similarly, Teach for America graduates may feel that because their service was worthwhile and important, they have already done their part for society and are free to be less charitable later.

Whatever the true reasons are, it’s odd to evaluate Teach for America based on graduates’ behavior. What matters is whether participants in the program are effective teachers. It would make more sense to research students’ test scores after they’ve been taught by a Teach for America participant than to analyze their former teachers’ levels of civic engagement.

I hope residents of St. Louis and Kansas City don’t look unfavorably on Teach for America participants in their cities because of research findings that are beside the point.

The post Explaining Teach for America Graduates’ Lack of Activism appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For nearly two decades now, Teach for America has been persuading graduates of the nation’s best universities to commit to spending two years teaching in some of the most challenging classrooms that can be found. These range from urban schools populated almost entirely by the low-income, minority students that some proclaim to be “unteachable” to small rural schools in the Mississippi Delta or on Native American reservations, where students consistently rank among the lowest achievers in academic performance. Regardless of the circumstances, Teach for America’s recruits have demonstrated that a good teacher can make all the difference in the world when it comes to inspiring students to academic success. And, thanks to the experiences they have with the Teach for America program, more than two thirds of the program’s alumni continue to work in the field of education when their two-year commitments expire.

Kansas City has just recently started welcoming Teach for America recruits into its school district, and the preliminary results are very promising. So promising, in fact, that the district is clamoring to get as many of them as possible for the upcoming school year! This is an excellent development, and it gives me hope that the prospects are improving for Kansas City public schools.

The post Inspiration From Teach for America appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It’s interesting to see all the alternatives to the university that are suggested by the article, but overlooked by Asch. For example, a quote from one academic quoted suggests offering scholarships for students who plan to go into public service. They could take a scholarship and choose from the dozens of public and private schools of public service that are already out there. No way, says Asch. That’s not prestigious (read: centralized) enough.

The article notes that Asch worked for Teach for America early in his career. Teach for America has achieved considerable success. Why couldn’t we start a similar program for other government jobs? Recent college graduates could spend a year or two working for different federal agencies, polishing their resumes and bringing new talent into government. We don’t require all the Teach for America teachers to attend one particular public university, and we shouldn’t encourage other public servants to do that either.

Putting all the future government workers in one place may sound convenient, but there are many advantages to a system of dispersed, competing schools and private-sector involvement — as Asch should know. After all, he went to Duke.

The post A Scheme to Improve Public Service appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

They train not-so-recent grads, too:

When it comes to her postretirement career, Karen Evans, 61, says her acquaintances are of two minds. […]

Grant Besser, a Teach for America recruiter, said approximately 15 percent of the 37 men and women training for the program this summer don’t fit the program’s typical path of college straight to classroom.

The article lauds Ms. Evans’ completion of the “rigorous” Teach for America application and five-week training camp. By all reports, Teach for America’s preparation is excellent — but it uses essentially the same methods as other alternative certification programs. It’s interesting that alternative training and mentoring is considered rigorous when you call it TFA, but risky when the acronym is ABCTE.

The post Everyone’s Favorite Alternative Teacher Certification Program appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

She pointed to federal programs such as Teach for America to recruit more college students and alternative certifications for people with other careers who want become teachers.

"We’re going to have to figure out how to recruit mid-career professionals into our classrooms," Spellings said.

Both Teach for America and alternative certification are good ideas, but I think alternative certification has the potential to be more effective. Teach for America is popular, but graduates generally teach for just a year or two and then go on to something else. Whereas, if you help people switch careers — say, from working as a scientist in a lab to teaching high school science — they may stay in their new career for 15 or 20 years. This could be a particularly attractive option for older people who want to cut down on their work hours but don’t want to retire completely.

However, alternative teacher certification is much more controversial than Teach for America. I’m not sure why; neither program requires extensive education coursework. But many people seem to think that older people need more theoretical training than recent graduates. The NEA criticized Spellings’ alternative teacher certification idea, not her mention of Teach for America:

Chris Guinther, Missouri president for the National Education Association, said the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence checks whether people know a subject, not whether they can teach it.

"As we hold our students to higher standards, it seems incongruous that we’re willing to lower teacher standards," said Guinther.

The post Margaret Spellings on the Teacher Shortage appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In 1994, Dave Levin and I started KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) with 50 students in Houston after completing our two-year commitment to Teach for America. Our first year in Houston, two-thirds of students came to KIPP with a "bilingual" label. By the end of the first year, two-thirds were "gifted and talented."

Feinberg explains that KIPP schools, rather than skimming the cream from diverse traditional public schools, cater specifically to students who have fallen behind:

We are not achieving results by "cherry-picking" students. All schools are open-enrollment public schools. There is no admissions test. The average student enters KIPP two years below grade level in fifth grade, and leaves KIPP in eighth grade achieving at a ninth-grade level. Over 80% of KIPP students nationwide are low income, and 95% are African-American or Hispanic/Latino.

Feinberg also writes about KIPP’s projected expansion in Houston, where it hopes to capture 10% of the public school market and thereby pressure the traditional public schools to shape up.

I doubt KIPP will cause any improvement in the stagnant St. Louis public schools, which have proved themselves resistant to change from all quarters. But KIPP will provide some students who are currently trapped in SLPS with an attractive alternative. And it may pave the way for other charters and more choices for students.

By the way, I should mention that Kansas City already has a KIPP charter school, the KIPP Endeavor Academy. Here you can learn more about the school and see cute pictures of students and teachers working hard.

The post More About KIPP Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Should anyone doubt that patronage still trumps pupil performance in the St. Louis Public Schools, look no further than the recent board vote to grant Lizz Brown a no-bid contract for "marketing" ("Firm with ties to city school board gets no-bid deal to counter charters," May 30).

It also notes that the district ended its contract with Teach for America:

The board also voted to discontinue its contract with Teach for America, an innovative nonprofit program celebrated nationally for its efforts in aiding urban schools. In her rants against outside contracts, Ms. Brown derisively refers to the group as "Can’t Teach for America." What, in her "expert" negative marketing opinion, does she know that the rest of the nation does not?

The district is panicking because parents are turning to the increasingly attractive charter schools. But it won’t keep anyone in the district with this unpopular PR contract or by getting rid of Teach for America.

This situation illustrates an important economic principle. The prospect of competition doesn’t necessarily cause a business or organization to make smarter decisions. It might keep doing the same counterproductive things. But competition allows the customers (in this case the students) to choose better alternatives. Of course, virtually everyone would prefer that the St. Louis Public Schools improve when they’re threatened with losing students. Unfortunately the board’s recent actions show that change probably won’t happen as soon as we’d like.

The post The St. Louis School Board’s Downward Spiral appeared first on Show-Me Institute.