Posts in category Ed. Policy
The Politics of Education: Charter Schools
You couldn’t expect a guy with a doctorate in the politics of education to let the education portion of Wednesday night’s presidential debate go unchecked, could you?
Apparently, both candidates support charter schools. No surprise from McCain; the Republican party tends to support most forms of school choice (that’s a gross generalization, but I’ll live with that for now). That Obama supports charter schools signals an interesting policy shift, assuming that Obama’s stance is representative of the Democraticy party as a whole (which it may very well not be). I’m personally pretty mixed on charter schools. On one hand, I think any policy or set of policies based in free market principles where perfect information on the part of consumers is assumed is highly problematic in the field of education. On the other hand, these days I’m for anything that attempts to disrupt the status quo in public education.
And, speaking of “perfect information,” both candidates at least implied that charter schools “work” or that they are “effective” in some way (as opposed to voucher programs, where there seemed to be some disagreement). Well, that’s less than perfect information. Consider this study conducted as part of NAEP’s pilot study of charter school performance in 2003. According to the executive summary for the report, “After adjusting for student characteristics, charter school mean scores in reading and mathematics were lower, on average, than those for public noncharter schools.”
I also bring your attention to more recent research conducted by colleagues and “social associates” (I’m not sure I can call them “friends,” but I have been out socially with them on multiple occasions) Sarah and Chris Lubienski. Based on their analyses of NAEP data, Sarah and Chris concluded that “charter schools, privately operated and publicly financed, did significantly worse than public schools in the fourth grade, once student populations were taken into account.”
(BTW, teachable moment…the next sentence in the NYT article is as follows: “In the eighth grade, it found, students in charters did slightly better than those in public schools, though the sample size was small and the difference was not statistically significant.” That’s a nonsensical statement. If the differences were not statistically significant, then nobody did better than anybody else; not even slightly better. So, the first part of the sentence cannot logically precede the second part. This bugs me!)
The body of research on charter schools and school choice policies more generally has become overly politicized. There are too many researchers with agendas dabbling in that field, and too many policy advocates who cherrypick a single study to support their argument. However, in my reasonably well-informed opinion, the two studies above are as “independent” as they come.
So, Senators Obama and McCain, I’m in favor of exploring any and all educational policy options, including choice-based alternatives. But, let’s please not mislead the American public.
You say you want a revolution? (take two)
On April 16 of this year, I wrote a post entitled “You say you want a revolution?“ In it, I wrote of true visions of the future of education, with particular reference to writing by Dale Mann and a white paper by Roger Schank and Kemi Jona. I often ask my students to read the Schank/Jona paper to get them thinking about the possibilities for the future of education. Mostly, my students have visceral reactions and think the ideas in the paper are outlandish and unrealistic.
Outlandish? Maybe. Unrealistic? Nope. In fact, I just learned that the VOISE Academy opened a week or so ago in Chicago. It’s billed as a hybrid school, combining computer-based learning with face-to-face socialization opportunities. As described, the school sounds a lot like what Schank and Jona suggest.
Well, as it turns out, one of the board members of VOISE Academy is…Kemi Jona!
It will be interesting to see how things go in that school. I’m sure someone will be studying the school; nothing happens in Chicago without somebody studying it. Some academic colleagues of mine have built entire research agendas around Chicago school reform. For now, though, I wish VOISE had a better website. It’s a little hard to believe that this particular school launched with such a basic and incomplete website.
Ed. Tech. and Student Achievement
As the result of a quick Twitter back-and-forth, I told @JeffNugent and @mcglaysia that I would write a blog post about the research linking technology integration and student achievement. A couple of points before I get into it:
- I have been the lead investigator on many (maybe a dozen or so?) studies aimed at examining the relationship between technology integration and student achievement. These studies ranged from small studies (one or two schools) to federally-funded, statewide investigations. So, I have a pretty decent practical understanding of this body of research and how the work gets done. Some day I’ll write about the politics and the nitty gritty of this sort of work. For now, though, I’ll just say that the old joke is more true than it is funny: “educational research is like sausage. If you like to consume either one, you don’t want to watch it being made.”
- This pool of literature is deep and getting deeper all the time. I can’t possibly get to everything. In fact, I’m only going to cover those with which I am most familiar. That means, I’m not necessarily presenting the “best” research; just those that I know of and that I think are reasonably respectable.
- The Ed. Tech. Action Network (ETAN) has done a decent job of summarizing some of the research. You can find their page with lots of links here.
- Finally, I’m not terribly proud of my work in this area. I know that advocates of ed. tech. say that we MUST show positive student achievement effects to move the policy agenda forward. But, for me, student achievement, especially as typically measured in these studies, is not even close to the most important outcome we need to be considering when evaluating the impact of technology in education. I’m much more interested in outcomes such as student engagement and student learning (as distinct from student achievement).
Anyway, onward…
*The study that’s getting the most attention and that is politically loaded is one that is still being undertaken. Mathematica, Inc., along with SRI, two of the major independent research firms in the country, have been contracted to conduct The National Study of the Effectiveness of Educational Technology Interventions. The project’s website contains all the information you need to know about the study, including the first report which was issued last year. So far, after one year, according to the press release issued at the time of the release of the report, “On average, after one year, products did not increase or decrease test scores by amounts that were statistically different from zero.” So, no link between tech. and achievement. But, that was after one year. The next report should be out soon.
*I’ve been pleased with the amount of attention the West Virginia study I co-lead in 1998-99 has received over the last decade. The report from that study documents fairly significant positive relationships between the use of computers and student achievement.
*Harold Wenglinsky has done some significant work in this field. His first major study, conducted in 1998 while he was at ETS, demonstrated that under the right conditions, the use of computers in schools was positively related to math achievement. More specifically, “higher mathematics scores were related to adequate access to computer technology (hardware, software, and overall infrastructure) in conjunction with teachers trained in technology use and the use of computers to learn new, higher-order concepts.”
*The USEiT (Use, Support, and Effect of Instuctional Technology) study, stands out to me for its high quality and for the quality of the many reports that have been disseminated from that one study. Take a look, particularly, at Reports 10 and 13. Of the many findings coming from that study, the researchers discovered that “students who reported greater frequency of technology use at school to edit papers were likely to have higher total English/language arts test scores and higher writing scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) than students who did not.” I still use some of the scales that the USEiT researchers developed for my own work.
*Finally, and more recently, Missouri’s eMints program has been well-documented and thoroughly studied. There’s an entire page of research reports, including the most recent analysis of student achievement. eMints has been consistently positively associated with student achievement.
There’s more; gobs more. If you cross-reference the works I’ve pointed to, you’ll be well on your way to collecting a critical mass of the work that’s been done in this area.
Change and Mutual Adaptation
There’s quite a bit of really good edublogging and commenting that lies at the intersection of “change” and “21st Century Schools” (see e.g. Chris Lehmann’s blog and Will Richardson’s blog). As one who has studied extensively the research and literature on school reform, school change, policy implementation, etc., I’m having a hard time with a few aspects of the conversations that are going on.
First of all, what are we changing? Are we talking about a classroom (i.e. changing one teacher’s pedagogy?)? Are we talking about changing multiple classrooms? Are we talking about changing a whole school? Are we talking about changing the whole institution of public schooling? Those are all very different scenarios and require very different approaches. And, it gets back to the macro vs. micro distinction I made in my last blog post.
More importantly, though, let’s please consider that there is a HUGE, DEEP pool of research and literature on school change. There’s not a huge need to re-think this stuff; there’s a lot to be learned from what has already been learned.
In the mid 1970′s, the Rand Corporation conducted a national study of four federally funded programs “intended to introduce and support innovative practices in the public schools.” The Rand researchers examined a sample of 293 local projects funded by these four federal programs in 18 states. This so-called “Change Agent” study remains the paragon of all “implementation” studies. According to Milbrey McLaughlin (1990), one of the principal investigators on the Change Agent study:
“…the following strategies generally were seen to be ineffective:
- reliance on outside consultants
- packaged management approaches
- one-shot, pre-implementation training
- pay for training
- formal, summative evaluation
- comprehensive, system-wide projects
The following strategies generally were effective, especially when applied in concert:
- concrete, teacher-specific and extended training
- classroom assistance from local staff
- teacher observation of similar projects in other classrooms, schools, or districts
- regular project meetings that focused on practical issues
- teacher participation in project decisions
- local development of project materials
- principals’ participation in training (p. 12)”
Since the 1970′s we’ve learned even more about change and policy implementation. McLaughlin revisited the study in an article in 1990. Her main conclusion there was that some of the findings of the original study needed to be reconsidered, but mostly, things remained the same. “A general finding of the Change Agent study that has become almost a truism is that it is exceedingly difficult for policy to change practice, especially across levels of government (p. 12)” In one study I conducted, I was able to determine that of all the variance in student computer use across the country, less than 2% could be accounted for by differences in state-level policies. An additional study of the effects of state-level policies on pedagogy showed that 3% of the variance in teaching practices could be attributed to state-level polcies. As the Change Agent study taught us, effective change in schools doesn’t happen by “adoption,” it happens by mutual adaptation; the adaptation of a project or policy and the organizational setting to each other.
So, what does this all mean? Well, I think we’d all to well to internalize the bullets above as a list of what works. First, one-and-done, sit-and-git PD doesn’t work; it has to be ongoing and as close to the classrooms/teachers as possible. Second, teachers must be included in the change process, especially as learners. Third, leadership must be involved at all stages and at all levels. Finally, change is interpreted locally and the context of the institution adapts along with the change.
I also want to bring our attention to the final bullet in the list of ineffective strategies: comprehensive, system-wide projects don’t work. We can’t change the system all at once. So, it seems to me that School 2.0 is going to have to come about in one of two ways. Either we get enough teachers and leaders to understand why change needs to happen in their schools and HOW that happens effectively (and what not to do). Or, we go outside the “system.”
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