Federal Education Spending

At A Blog About School, Chris asks:

On the other hand, would it really be so hard for a state to pass up federal education funding and the (often expensive) mandates that go with it? As Roberts writes, “In the typical case we look to the States to defend their prerogatives by adopting ‘the simple expedient of not yielding’ to federal blandishments when they do not want to embrace the federal policies as their own. . . . The States are separate and independent sovereigns. Sometimes they have to act like it.” When it comes to No Child Left Behind, I wish they would act like it.

Using data from 2010-2011 Certified Financial Report (CAR) available here and data from the 2011 Annual Condition of Education Report available here:

• 473,493 – certified enrollment (includes 4,804 students categorized as “other”)
• $5,083,072,157 – general fund expenditures
• $10,735 – general fund expenditures per student [COE reports $8,603 (or $9,455 from all funds)?]
• $6,736,487,614 – local/intermediate/state/federal revenue
• $14,227 – local/intermediate/state/federal revenue per student
• $7,779,499,880 – total revenue (includes bonding and other sources)
• $16,430 – total revenue per student
• $640,301,946 – federal revenue (includes temporary ARRA funding)
• $1,352 – federal revenue per student (includes temporary ARRA funding)
• Federal revenue as percent of local/intermediate/state/federal revenue: 9.5%
• Federal revenue as percent of total revenue: 8.2%

In short, for chipping in a dime or less, the feds tell us how to spend the whole dollar.  [Sometimes the feds don't even have to chip in the money to get the states to do what they want.]

Note that we have no accounting for the compliance costs of accepting the federal revenue.  That is, it seems likely that if Iowa rejected the federal funds, we might save some of the money forgone by ending compliance activities and federally mandated programs that we don’t want to continue.  The rest of the money could be made up with some combination of short term spending freezes and slightly higher state or local taxes.

So why won’t we see Iowa rejecting federal money?  Here’s a few thoughts:

It’s easy to run the ad “incumbent cut education spending!”  It’s harder for the incumbent to explain the trade offs (preserving local/state control, less spending on compliance/unfunded mandates), especially when people may see federal money as “free” or as a return of Iowans’ federal taxes or the strings-attached as good ones.

Federal money pays for school lunch programs.  Even if we make up that money with state money, it’s easy to run the ad “incumbent wants poor children to go hungry at school!”

Austerity measures and higher taxes are unpopular, possibly even less popular than NCLB.

State School Board Retreat

The Iowa State Board of Education is meeting today and tomorrow.  The agenda is available here but be forewarned that clicking on the tabs will download pdf files (rather than opening them in a new browser window).

Here is what the State Board is reading (all available at Tab B):

• How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better – McKinsey & Company
• Standing on the Shoulders of Giants – An American Agenda for Education Reform – Marc S. Tucker
• High Reliability Organizations in Education – Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McRel)

Legislative update:  Tab C is a 59 page update on all school related legislation this session.  The legislative summary is annotated and some of the notes are interesting, such as these comments regarding students assessments:

The General Assembly requires the State Board to adopt rules that make the Iowa Assessment the only assessment that a school district can use for its district-wide assessment of student progress.  The State Board would have to request of the General Assembly any change in assessment instrument.

The General Assembly seeks to remove from the State Board the authority to make judgments about which assessment instruments best serve students and school accountability, and to move those judgments into the political realm.

The DE is proposing adopting Smarter Balanced Assessments in the place of the Iowa Assessments.  Perhaps “political realm” isn’t meant to be disparaging here, but this places the decision about assessments with (theoretically) accountable elected officials rather than with appointed members of the State Board, appointed director of the DE, and unelected/not appointed employees of the DE.

See also comments regarding the teacher and administrator evaluations provision blamed for the failure of Iowa’s NCLB waiver application:

The recommendations must go back to the General Assembly, rather than the State Board, thereby placing teacher and administrator evaluations in the political realm.

Legislators need to hear from us on these issues.

There will also be an update on the State Board’s priorities:

• online learning
• competency-based education
• reducing the achievement gap

Apparently literacy doesn’t rate a spot in the top three.

Smarter Balanced Assessments 1

Do we need better assessments?

The DE has already made plans to move from the Iowa Assessments (formerly known as ITBS/ITED) to the Smarter Balanced Assessments (still under development).  [See Iowa’s ESEA Flexibility Waiver].

Absent federal pressure (from programs such as Race to the Top and NCLB waiver applications), would there be any reason to change assessments?*  That is, if we are unhappy with student performance on basic skills tests such as NAEP or ITBS, does it follow that we need better assessments, i.e. assessments that purport to “emphasize a deep knowledge of core concepts within and across disciplines, problem solving, analysis, synthesis, and critical thinking”?

It seems to me that a more reasonable response to poor performance on basic skills tests is to adopt more effective instructional practices.  In any case, I’m not convinced that it is necessary or desirable to have national standardized assessments that try to assess everything that we might want children to learn.

In Republic of Noise, Diana Senechal observes:

It seems obvious that schools should help students learn to read and work thoughtfully, to develop a life of the mind.  Instead, there is a growing emphasis on visible activity and productivity.  What isn’t visible or tangible seems threatening, because it could be anything or nothing.  How do we know that students are learning if we can’t see signs of it here and now?  How do we know that the class has accomplished anything if there isn’t a product to put on the wall?  (pages 41-42)

Perhaps, we might add, how do we know if students are learning if there are no standardized assessment scores on record?

Basic skills tests can give us a clue about higher-level skills.  If children can’t multiply by ten without a calculator, then they don’t have deep understanding of place value.  If children can’t answer questions about grammar, punctuation, or capitalization (conventions of written language) they are unlikely to otherwise be proficient writers.

Furthermore, at the risk of sounding like one of those people who walked to and from school uphill both ways, my teachers didn’t need to wait for the results of standardized exams to know whether students were learning.  My teachers collected and reviewed homework, gave quizzes and unit tests, asked questions during class, and assigned other written and oral reports.  Standardized assessments may be valuable for identifying gaps in the curriculum or children who may need additional instructional interventions, but they certainly aren’t the only source of information on student learning for teachers.

In addition to standardized assessment score reports, parents should be receiving information on student learning from report cards, parent-teacher conferences and other communication with the school, graded exams, home work, and papers sent home with the student, and the student’s general feelings about school.

There is no reason that all information about student learning must come from nationally standardized assessments to be of value to parents and teachers.

Arguably, standardized assessments may distort instructional practices rather than improve them.  For example, see Chris at A Blog About School about writing instruction in the age of standardized writing assessments here and here.  Do we think standardized scoring rubrics for oral presentations or evidence of critical thinking won’t similarly distort instruction?  [Smarter Balanced Assessment ELA performance task rubrics are available here.   Writing starts at p. 39 and speech at p. 62).  Will “score four** voice volume” join the five paragraph essay in test prep style over substance?  If we value the skills SBAC purports to assess, we might reconsider sacrificing them on the altar of standardized testing.

*Note that the Iowa Assessments are aligned to the Common Core curriculum and can provide “on track” indicators of college readiness starting in sixth grade (see here).

**Top performance task score.

NCLB Waiver Not Approved At This Time

Iowa’s NCLB waiver application is not being approved at this time because the DE has no clear authority to change teacher and principal evaluation and support systems.

See the Branstad’s and Reynold’s comments here.

See coverage and related documents at The Sioux City Journal here or The Gazette here.

It seems that the Senate Democrats frustrated the investment of over 3500 hours of DE staff time (1.75 years of full-time work!).  However, the news coverage doesn’t address the question of whether the DE intends to forge ahead with other pieces of the ESEA Flexibility Request.  From the DE letter to the USED:

Over the past few weeks, we have worked through many of the concerns the U.S. Department of Education (USED) has pertaining to Principle 1 [College- and Career-Ready Expectations for All Students] and Principle 2 [State-Developed Differentiated Recognition, Accountability, and Support].  These conversations may have resulted in a plan for one of the best accountability systems in the nation and one that will improve outcomes for all students.

So, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens with the plans to adopt the Smarter Balanced Assessments and a new rating system for schools.

ADDED:  Senator Herman Quirmbach (D-Story) responds:

“The one thing that the governor requested but that SF 2284 did not do was to give Education Director Glass the unilateral power to adopt the educator evaluation system without legislative approval.  Both houses of the Legislature and both parties agreed that that was too much power to vest in an unelected bureaucrat.

Acceleration Policy

Resources from The Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration:

A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students (2 volume report) is available to be downloaded at no cost here.  From Volume II:

Acceleration does not mean pushing a child. It does not mean forcing a child to learn advanced material or socialize with older children before he or she is ready. Indeed, it is the exact opposite. Acceleration is about appropriate educational planning. It is about matching the level and complexity of the curriculum with the readiness and motivation of the child. Acceleration is about letting students soar. Acceleration is about respecting individual differences and the fact that some of these differences merit educational flexibility.

Schools pay lip-service to the proposition that students should learn at their own pace; in reality, for countless highly able children the pace of their progress through school is determined by the rate of progress of their classmates. In the majority of our classrooms, an invisible ceiling restricts the progress of academically gifted students. At the time of the publication of this report, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, which aims to bring all children up to proficiency, is the national focus on education. This is an admirable goal and worthy of our efforts. However, NCLB ignores those students who are well above proficiency, and these students are also worthy of our best efforts. It is this group that is currently invisible on the national agenda and this report is intended to restore visibility to these students and their legitimate education needs.

This report is presented in two volumes. Volume I contains the essence of the research reviews presented in Volume II. Volume II provides an extensive review of the wealth of research on the academic acceleration of gifted students so that discussion and decision-making about acceleration can be based on evidence rather than on myths, misconceptions, or personal bias. It is often difficult to make strong generalizations about research in education since, so often, scholars present contradictory findings. In fact, many educational interventions have been implemented with a flimsy research basis or no research basis at all. Acceleration stands as a striking exception to the rule.

Guidelines for Developing an Academic Acceleration Policy is also available to be downloaded at no cost here.

The Iowa Acceleration Scale (3^rd ed.) is available for purchase here.

I would note that in all the talk of promoting STEM education, it is curious that acceleration policy has been left out of the conversation.   Acceleration is an inexpensive intervention that could help children, who might otherwise become bored or frustrated, maintain an interest in math and science.

Gatekeepers

Sometimes you stumble across just the right word that helps to crystallize a thought.

I previously wrote this about The Blueprint:

The Blueprint offers an assortment of fixes such as higher teacher pay, teacher mentors, Common Core standards, and new assessments.  None of these changes can substantially improve student achievement if built upon our current approaches to reading and mathematics instruction.

But in a recent post Dan Willingham provided me with just the right word for the idea I was trying to get at, which is gatekeeper.

As Dan Willingham explains, in the post and in the comments, teachers are too busy teaching to keep up with all possible research in all possible fields that may be relevant to their teaching (and, in fact, it is ridiculous to expect them to develop sufficient expertise in all potentially relevant fields such that they could evaluate whether the research and claims based on the research were sound or constitute “sham science.”)

 Teachers don’t need to learn neuroscience, or better put, teachers shouldn’t need to learn neuroscience–not to be protected from charlatans. Teachers need to learn things that will directly help their practice. Charlatan protection ought to come from institutions: from schools of education, from district central offices, and (potentially) from institutions of teachers’ own creation.

Dan Willingham also notes:

[T]here is virtually always someone in the district central office who is meant to be the resource person for professional development: is this PD session likely to be legit, or is this person selling snake oil?  If teachers are exposed to PD with sham science, the right response, it seems to me, is not to suggest that teachers learn some neuroscience. The right response is outrage directed at the person who brought the knucklehead in there to do the PD session.

I think the situation is even more complicated than Dan Willingham suggests, in that, at least in Iowa, the gatekeepers may often also be the policy makers.  This means that if the gatekeepers make a mistake in distinguishing the legitimate from the snake oil, the snake oil may be incorporated into policy.  In other words, even if teachers get better information on what is or isn’t legitimate from another source, they may still be required to implement snake oil in the classroom.

So, I think now what I would say is this:  instruction in Iowa will only be as good as our gatekeepers.

Before we focus so heavily on “fixing” the teachers, we might want to ask how well the gatekeepers in our colleges of education, our district central offices, our Area Education Agencies, and our Department of Education are protecting teachers (and their students) from charlatans?  And if they aren’t protecting teachers from charlatans, how are we going to fix that?

ADDED:  Improving Teachers:  Millions Spent, But Little Done to Make Sure It’s Working

HT: Superintendent Murley

Time in School

James Q. Lynch reports in The Gazette today that the Iowa Department of Education will likely propose extended school time for some students in the next education reform proposal.

The article cites data from the International Review of Curriculum and Assessment showing that some countries require students to attend school more days of the year than Iowa does.  (See Table 15 Organisation of school year and school day here).  However, more days of attendance does not necessarily mean more hours of instruction.

In addition, it isn’t clear that every country that outperforms us on international tests does require more time in school.  For example, Finland appears to require only 608-640 hours of compulsory instruction for elementary age students compared to Iowa’s 990 compulsory hours of instruction.  (See Time in School report from the Center for Public Education, Total Compulsory Hours of Instruction by Country here).

During the third-grade retention debate, opponents (reasonably, I think) asked what is to be offered during the summer after third grade that will effectively remediate reading problems in a few weeks, that couldn’t be remediated in the prior four years of schooling?  And if they know how to remediate reading problems in a few weeks, why not do it during the regular school year and as soon as possible?  I think similar questions ought to be asked here.  Are we effectively using the time we already require students to attend school?  What do we plan to do differently during the additional time, how do we know it will be more effective, and why can’t it be done in the time we already have?

The fact that the proposal will involve some, but not all, students raises other questions.  How will they identify which students will receive more time in school?  Will it be voluntary or compulsory?  Is it fair to the students to tell them, the less you seem to be benefitting from school, the more time you have to spend in it?

Looking Out For Their Future Selves

I just wanted to respond more fully (and more thoughtfully) to the comment Chris left on this post, in part:

But I do think that most of the problems with our educational system can be traced to the fact that kids have no say over their own treatment.

I’ve been thinking about a comment left on Kitchen Table Math.*  The commenter noted that he has to balance the interests of his child’s current self with the interests of his child’s future self.  Which I take to mean, that even if our children can’t imagine their future adult selves, we have to do the imagining for them and keep both the current and future adult selves of our children in mind as we make decisions.

Now, I hope that someday my children will appreciate the value of good table manners and knowing how to “use their words.”  But those are the easy decisions.  Education is full of tougher decisions.  We need to balance our assessment of skills and knowledge our child’s future self will need (or want) with their current interests in not being bored or frustrated, in not learning poor study habits or to hate school, and in having time for other pursuits.

As my daughter’s teacher told me, it is less important when children learn how to read and more important that they love reading when they get there.  In other words, what’s the use of a child learning to read “early”, if they never voluntarily read again?

Which I think illustrates the danger that we [the decision-makers] will focus too much on some notion of their current or future selves (or frankly, on the next standardized exam) at the expense of some other interest of their current or future selves.  Which is a subject Chris raises at  A Blog About School: namely, that we ought to look at the effect of educational programs on children beyond does it work to raise standardized test scores (or compliance with school rules) in the short term?

The other danger is that we will confuse forcing them in the direction we’d like them to go with acting in their “best interest.”  Insert your anecdotal horror story of parents trying to live through their child here.  There’s no reason to think that institutions or other adults can’t confuse pursuing their own interests with acting in a child’s best interests in a similar way.

I happen to be a proponent of Montessori education, and one of the concepts I like is the idea of following the child.  Following the child, as I understand it, involves the idea that if teachers (and parents for that matter) mindfully observe the child, the child’s choices will reveal the child’s inner self as well as the child’s developmental needs to us.  Following the child is rooted in a recognition that children have an innate drive to learn about their world (which can be nurtured or extinguished) and a respect for the child’s individual personhood (that is, recognizing that even young children have personalities and preferences and a need to be treated with dignity, even if we can’t allow them the full autonomy generally reserved for adulthood).  When something isn’t working in the classroom, a teacher following the child considers whether she needs to reevaluate the prepared environment or whether she is pushing the child to do something either too hard or too easy, or has otherwise chosen the wrong approach.

This kind of “follow the child” respect seems to be at odds with centralized decision-making, at least of the current sort we have now.  Calls for more accountability to increasingly detailed statewide or national standards are an implicit rejection of recognizing children as individuals with their own preferences and their own developmental timetables.

Chris goes on to say:

I would just like a system where the people in power were more mindful of the hazards of that role [of acting in the best interests of a disenfranchised group], and where the power was more in the hands of the people (parents, teachers) who I think are most likely to see the kids as individuals, not as data points, and thus to come closest to treating them with the dignity that enfranchised people receive.

I would like that too and I tend to agree that parents and teachers are most likely to act in a child’s best interest (if they have the authority and means to do so) because they are most likely to see the children as individuals.

I’m not sure how we get to that system, but perhaps it starts with us asking questions like why can’t parents and teachers have more control over educational programs?

*I would like to properly credit the KTM commenter but I don’t seem to have the necessary 21^st century skills required to search blog comments!

Transforming Education

There has been a lot of talk in the past year about teachers in Iowa: raising entrance requirements into teacher preparation programs, licensing exams, professional development, collaboration, and peer evaluation.  In the upcoming year, we’ll be hearing more about teachers as instructional leaders and creating new salary structures and career options.

In other words, there has been a lot of talk about a teacher’s relationship to other teachers (like collaboration time and peer evaluation) and to the institutions of public education (like licensing requirements and salary structures).  But there hasn’t been much, if any, discussion of the teacher-student relationship.

The heart of a profession is the special duties that a professional owes to persons with whom we enter professional relationships (think attorney-client or doctor-patient); duties, which go beyond not committing criminal acts against clients or acts of dishonesty.

So what would our public schools and our system of public education look like if we focused on professionalizing the teacher-student relationship instead?

I am a lawyer by training, so the Iowa Rules of Professional Conduct (for attorneys), available here (scroll down to Chapter 32), seem as good a place as any to start.  [The Iowa Rules of Professional Conduct (with comments) currently run ninety-one pages and make for interesting reading, in my opinion.  For comparison, The Iowa Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics for practitioners licensed by the Board of Educational Examiners is located in the Iowa Administrative Code 282—25.1-25.3, available here, but you will have to open the Administrative Rules, then Administrative Code, and then Educational Examiners Board.]

There is a lot of potential for interesting conversation about which duties might be applied to a professionalized teacher-student relationship and how.  For example, thinking about how the duty of competence, the duty of diligence, or conflict of interest analysis might be applied to the teacher-student relationship.  For the sake of blog post length, I’d like to focus on just two areas: the scope of representation and allocation of authority, and the duty to exercise independent professional judgment.

Scope of Relationship and Allocation of Authority

It can often seem that all decision-making authority regarding education matters are reserved for educational professionals, which I don’t quite understand.  Attorneys attend years of college and law school to develop specialized legal skills and knowledge and yet the legal profession explicitly acknowledges that decisions regarding the purposes of representation (as well as some particular decisions such as whether to settle a matter) are reserved to the client and not the professional.

Furthermore, if there is a disagreement about the means by which the purposes of representation are to be pursued, the client may terminate the attorney-client relationship.  In other words, where there is an unresolved disagreement, the disagreement is not resolved by the attorney imposing the attorney’s judgment on the client but by a parting of ways.

I wonder what public education might look like if, instead of increasing the centralization of education decision-making, we discussed how we might differently allocate decision-making authority between teacher and student (assuming for purposes of this post that the student’s parents would exercise that decision-making authority for students under the age of majority).

What if students determined the purposes and scope of the instructional relationship?  Would preparation for “global competitiveness,” high-standardized test scores, and “college-for-all” remain the purpose of every teacher-student relationship?  Would we see a continued push for a single, nationwide curriculum?  Or would we see a variety of instructional programs with a variety of curricula and purposes?

What if students had the authority to terminate the teacher-student relationship over unresolved disagreements about the instructional methods, materials, and other school policies?  Would it change the way teachers and schools communicate with parents and students about instructional and policy choices?  Would we still see fifteen minute lunches and decreasing time for recess?  Would we still see widespread implementation of PBIS?  Would educational leadership still be talking about more time in school?  Would we see more discussion about and variety in educational philosophy and choice of instructional methods and materials?

Independent Professional Judgment

Lawyers are expected to exercise independent professional judgment in representing clients [see Rule 32:2.1] and are expected to identify and resolve actual or potential conflicts of interest that would interfere with exercising independent professional judgment or that may otherwise adversely affect the client’s interests [see many of the other rules].  Consider Rule 32:5.4(c):

(c) A lawyer shall not permit a person who recommends, employs, or pays the lawyer to render legal services for another to direct or regulate the lawyer’s professional judgment in rendering such legal services.

Now think about applying this rule to the teacher-student relationship:  A teacher shall not permit a person who recommends, employs, or pays the teacher to render instructional services for another to direct or regulate the teacher’s professional judgment in rendering such instructional services.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you are either laughing or have already thought of a number of significant institutional obstacles to teachers exercising independent professional judgment on behalf of their students.

When decisions about curriculum, instructional methods and materials, allocation of time in the school day (lunch, recess, pull-out specials, requirements for ninety-minutes of daily literacy instruction), and behavioral/classroom management programs are made by others, what meaningful decisions are left for a teacher to exercise professional judgment upon?

If teachers could meaningfully exercise independent professional judgment on behalf of their students, what would schools look like?  Would there be fewer politically or corporate-driven fads in the classroom?  What are the institutional implications for protecting the exercise of independent professional judgment by teachers?   At the very least, it would seem to require much less centralized control of curricular and instructional decisions.

The trend is clearly towards centralization but I wonder if we would be more likely to get the schools that we (or at least some of us) want, schools that reflect community values and preferences, schools that help every child maximize their potential, and schools that achieve high rates of literacy, if we focused more on professionalizing the teacher-student relationship and less on standardized curriculum, standardized testing, and new top-down accountability schemes.