Download Notes from Class - Research Educational Practice - Fall 2005 | EDUC 695 and more Study notes History of Education in PDF only on Docsity!
EDUC 695: Notes from Class November 17, 2005 Next class we’ll have presentations on comprehensive school reform from SII (Study of Instructional Improvement) – study of high-poverty elementary schools, 3 comprehensive interventions in high-poverty schools, including Success for All, America’s Choice, Accelerated Schools. There will be readings on web on first two, Don Peurach and Josh Glazer will talk about their work on these interventions. Like the National Board, comprehensive school reform is one of largest non-governmental efforts to do same sorts of things that the policies we’ve been studying attempt to do. Differences and similarities are illuminating. Topic for final paper will be up on web by next class; DKC will revise after taking comments. Leftovers from last week: This morning we’ll compare instruments that charter schools deploy with those from big-city reforms and SBR – from perspective of policy-makers, instruments deployed by charter schools are much more economical and perhaps less politically risky than those deployed in SBR and big-city reforms. Reason is that the charter school policies don’t aim to change the infrastructure of schooling – they’re not concerned with standards, assessments, curriculum, or any of the matters that sociologists refer to as the technical core of public education. Charter school instruments instead reconfigure the political economy of schooling, the political and fiscal arrangements within which any possible educational infrastructure exists: who decides what schools exist (these decisions opened up to parents, various agencies, chartering organizations, etc. – this is remarkable difference where students will attend school – under existing arrangements, those decisions made by local governments, but charter school policies open up those decisions to parents, students, chartering agencies what students actually focus their curriculum on, who decides what the curriculum will be – under conventional arrangements, that’s a state and local government decision, made under pressure of competing interest groups; under charter school legislation, decision is made by chartering agencies and parents – not because parents tell school what they want their children to be taught, but because parents have choice among schools that presumably have some variation in curriculum. Who works in charter schools – charter school legislation (to varying degrees) relaxes the constraints on school managers and teachers that have grown up over the years
Taking all of these together, we can see that charter school legislation takes decisions about what kinds of schools will exist away from state and local government and gives them to parents, etc. Theory behind policy is that competition among schools will create incentives for schools to respond to family demand and create incentives to improve educational quality – it’s only in that competition that the policy indirectly reaches the infrastructure of schooling. It’s a very different response to the problems we’ve been dealing with in San Diego and Chicago. Part of theory behind the policy is that it shouldn’t make decisions about curriculum, the technical core of schooling – these are left to the market, to the preferences of parents and the interests of the educators who charter or operate these schools. So claims made for charter schools roughly same as those for SBR: improved schooling, decreased inequality – but despite similarity in the claims, means are almost as different as they could be. Acid test is whether charter schools deliver on these claims. Do they deliver? Dan: It’s really mixed – reports coming from charter school enterprises seem positive, but research is less so Seneca: Carnoy book reports that student achievement outcomes are no better, and possibly worse than regular public schools DKC: Carnoy et al did reanalysis of NAEP data; charter schools were found wanting. To extent that one accepts test scores as valid criterion for schools’ performance, there really isn’t any evidence that charter schools systematically do better than similarly-situated public schools. Isn’t any evidence that they do worse, either. Alex: Are we looking at it patiently enough? Has every great idea that could be tried in charter schools been tried? DKC: True, and newer the ideas the less likely that they are validly captured on standardized tests. So how would you assess them? Alex: It’s a dilemma. Almost a matter of faith – it’s like looking at capitalism in eastern Europe – they’re trying it; it may work, they may need to come up with their own version – many thing they’ll be better off eventually. DKC: Let’s assume that in five years we have roughly the same results: charter schools on average don’t outperform regular public schools…what then? Does it
Nate: Innovation that seems to be coming from charter schools often doesn’t involve curriculum or instruction – but school culture in charter often does look different. This variability in school culture doesn’t get measured by test scores – but parents may be pushing not necessarily for better test scores but for a different “feeling” in schools. DKC: Check out Catholic Schools and the Common Good (Bryk, Lee, Holland) – uses High School and Beyond data set – found that smaller high schools with more cohesive communities exhibited decreasing inequality in academic achievement and increasing average scores across kids – but also found that instruction was pretty much the same – in fact, it seemed even less innovative in Catholic schools than in many public high schools. So it’s not so clear that the bunch of things that we refer to as “climate” doesn’t show up in student performance. If there is a competition effect, than comparing charters with traditional public schools isn’t going to pick up the charter effect. Nate: Wouldn’t there still be something picked up? Hard to believe that ideas from charter schools are flowing that quickly into public schools… DKC: Doesn’t necessarily require the kind of knowledge-transfer that some of you are referring to…over time, one would expect knowledge-transfer, but that’s not the only mechanism involved. Nick: In Michigan, some charters offer before and after- school programs; as a result, districts have offered those as well to compete. Kenyatha: Who are the students in charter schools? Are they entering charter schools with lower scores? Dan: varies according to state laws – whether charters can have selective criteria varies DKC: one of the initial predictions when legislation first being considered was that it would mostly provide a means for advantaged people to escape from public schools. But in first five years of experience, it turned out that a disproportioned number of disadvantaged kids were enrolling in these schools, and that a disproportionate number of charter schools were opening in places like Detroit and LA. That pattern seems to have somewhat changed in last five or six years, with somewhat greater enrollment of non-disadvantaged students. Kenyatha: Then it isn’t problematic that average scores are the same? Seneca: a major complaint about charter schools is that they siphon off teacher talent from public schools…is there research on this?
DKC: such research doesn’t seem to exist…but it is the case that in many states salaries in charter schools are less than they are for public schools. Naomi: It’s the other way around; public schools siphon off from charters. Seneca: drastically better work environment in charter schools might compensate salary differences. DKC: but you’re making assumptions about charter schools – there have been increasing numbers of charter school failures. Alex: To extent that students in charter schools aren’t representative sample… don’t charter advocates point out that one advantage of charters is specialization, and that public schools should get busy focusing on serving the needs of the sorts of kids that they have? DKC: but they aren’t arguing for specialization on demographic variables, but on parents’ choice for curriculum – there’s very little evidence for much specialization. Mike: What if there were evidence that charter schools were delivering on student achievement outcomes, but were increasingly segregated? Deborah: In Chicago, schools that had most difficulty were those that were most culturally diverse. Nick: There’s an argument that tries to look at vouchers with a framework that takes this into account: social cohesion, equity, parental choice – more matters here than test scores. Christine: Most parents may not be thinking about things in this way – they may care more about whether their schools are serving the needs of their children; there may not be an outcry about segregation. Devra: Is there any research indicating that the workforce is becoming more diverse as a result of charter schools? DKC: Would be too soon to pick up those kinds of effects; most charter schools are elementary schools, most of the legislation is only a decade old. DKC: There’s sense in which that you could argue that charter schools have been protected from gross inequalities because they now exist in standards- based environment – that may well constrain the alternatives that are available to potential charter school operators – if there was a chance that someone might
DKC: Seems unlikely that we’d give up on NCLB – seems more likely that victory would be declared over not-very-satisfying results – we’d move on, someone else would be elected. Thing about late fifties/early sixties, when we were caught up in paroxysm of concerns over public schooling – all sorts of innovative curricula created, enormous amount of activity – then JFK assassinated, civil rights movement kicked into overdrive, and suddenly Americans were interested in something else other than excellence in science, history, and mathematics classes…so these things happen in a very unstable political environment. Most remarkable thing about SBR is that it has persisted since the late 1980s – we’re creeping up on two decades now, which is almost unparalleled run for any policy regime in American education. We live in the United States of Amnesia. *******Break******** DKC: Whatever drives policy-making, it is not a systematic connection with practice nor a deep connection with research. The current policy environment has been in some ways informed by research – for example, the cross-national studies in late 80s that seemed to show that American schools were doing less well than schools in many other nations – but current policy environment, like all policy, is driven by all sorts of other things. SBR has endured for nearly 20 years as dominant regime in ed policy – but one typical feature of policy-making in education has been relatively short life of policies – things seem to change at least every ten years. This is a kind of prelude to discussion of the National Board. These two initiatives (comprehensive school reform and National Board) represent an effort at social problem solving in education outside realm of government – both non-governmental initiatives aimed at serious school improvement. The goals of these initiatives are roughly same or similar, but premised on assumption that government is not most effective instrument for improving education. We need to pay attention to this underlying idea that perhaps non-governmental initiatives are better suited to educational improvement than the sorts of things we’ve been considering all semester. National Board: If had to imagine what the rationale is for NBPTS, what would it be? Why cook up this non-governmental effort to professionalize teaching? Why not just do something with teacher licensure, certification, education as they exist
- why go outside the system? Julia: Might be easier and faster to go outside the system, make it so schools and districts could quickly identify teachers more likely to be effective, make it standard across all states and boundaries? Mark: Relied upon medical model – licensing for practitioners, but legitimacy for practice exists in boards that are not run by the state
David O: need to professionalize teaching so that teachers are seen as having critical skills – underlying critique that teacher certification gets teachers in the door, but there isn’t anything to distinguish among outstanding teachers from the others – benefits of identifying outstanding teachers are many; include keeping those teachers in the profession. Differentiates teachers inside the profession. Christine: Teaching has been defined in certain way for a long time inside the system; this goes outside the system to redefine teaching. Old ideas about what teaching is or should be; perhaps we need to go outside the system to raise bar. Alex: Idea is to pull from the top rather than push from the bottom. People outside the profession may be more willing to enter the profession when they see excellence. Devra: Aims seemed to extend to teacher retention; offers teachers a little more money – this way very talented teachers might stay on for longer and will have increased opportunities and control over their work. Seneca: National Board makes point that profession hasn’t yet defined what accomplished teaching is – so it isn’t so much redefining as defining. It’s an essential first step in making teaching into a profession – without an idea of what expertise is, it’s hard to talk about training people to be experts. Deborah: Emphasizes fact that when one achieves certification, one is not done learning to be a teacher. And it’s good only for ten years; after ten years you have to go through the process again. Nate: National Board literature about how schools might learn to use Board- certified teachers was persuasive – this starts to create a career ladder. Kenyatha: Doesn’t compete with other sources of funding for schools. DKC: When we say “outside the system”, we mean trying to create expert knowledge about practice, not competing with other sources of funding… Seneca: Isn’t quite “outside the system”, since depends on states and localities to recognize this to work and give it meaning. DKC: all true, but in what sense could we say it’s outside the existing system? Seneca: It is outside the system in that it’s educators and not policy-makers offering the ideas and managing the program. DKC: How does one come to be a teacher inside the system? Nate: tests and coursework –
Alex: I worry about prospects for profession of teaching is that the enterprise is wholly government-owned. Holy grail of other professions is high-profile private practice…do we want that in teaching? If all doctors or lawyers worked for public institutions, extra certification might not do the trick. DKC: There are other countries that have strong professions that are not oriented so strongly toward private practice. France, for example, has universal health care AND a pretty strong medical profession – though French doctors are not paid as much as American doctors. Nate: How do these other countries go about professionalizing their teaching force? DKC: There is no nation in which teaching is not a public-sector profession, because modern nation-state has such intense interest in socialization of teaching. Teaching is everywhere a public profession, but independence and strength of profession varies across nation-states. French teachers, for example, are highly organized, think of themselves as professionals, don’t relate to parents and local interests the way British and American teachers do. And French system is much more oriented toward secondary and tertiary education – many French academics began as high school teachers (at a good lycee). Professions take very different forms in different countries – in Italy, for example, most people in the medical profession have no more training than an AB or BS, though there’s an upper layer of health care in Italy, which is quite good. Italians also have much lower rates of morbidity and mortality than Americans do, not because their medical system is better than ours, but Italy has universal health care, and anyone who gets sick can see a physician very quickly. In U.S., quality of health care is better, but coverage is nothing close to what there is in Italy. Devra: Size is also an issue – in Canada, no one cares where you get your degree; it’s getting in that matters. Assumption is that people who get into university are competent. DKC: and Canada has much different approach to governance of professions – there is universal access to health care in Canada. Main point is that when one thinks about what National Board is trying to do, it is trying to create knowledge about accomplished teaching, but also to build a profession in some sense outside of the existing, wholly government-owned operation. What instruments does the National Board deploy to do that? What socially-constructed tools has it cooked up to try to build something that is an independent profession of teaching? Nick: assessment itself – the portfolio of teacher work, the tests
DKC: teachers have to take tests, and there are about thirty specialties. Alex: the certification itself – it’s desirable, because allows teachers to distinguish themselves through an outside, credible source Mike: National Board standards also apply to all teachers DKC: professional standards Rachel: one of most powerful things about this is that it’s teacher-driven and teacher-developed – this makes it different from most other reforms. Buy-in by teachers may be improved by this – Andrea: There was some discontent in San Diego on part of teachers when things seemed to come from “above” – so National Board may have more credibility since it seems to come from “within” Alex: It’s trust – people like being evaluated and investigated by “us” and not “them” – teachers may trust other teachers to create professional standards. David O: hope is that a professional community may grow from that DKC: why couldn’t government achieve this? David O: the government could attempt to establish a secondary certification level – but what do you lose or gain from this? Nate: I don’t think you’d want the government to achieve it; once you create a private community, then government can work with it. One problem with SBR is that it engenders a huge amount of resistance because it’s so much outside pressure. If National Board ever grows big enough to create professional community, next step would be for it to join with SBR. Seneca: Because of fact that this knowledge has not been codified previously – government then could work with these things afterward (see Nate’s comment) – but idea of people who haven’t been teachers being able to create framework of what good teaching is and have it be credible seems unlikely. Nate: and it (what makes good teaching) shouldn’t be a political decision, either. DKC: Why shouldn’t it be? Nate: the question of how to make students achieve better has so much to do with what practices you follow in the classroom, and those practices aren’t something that it’s easy to imagine voters understanding and deciding on.
developing this knowledge about effectiveness a priority. It hasn’t been on the table. When policy put it on the table beginning in the 1980s, profession of teaching wasn’t organized in a way that made it possible to respond very effectively – teachers have no particular access to research and development. So National Board has taken on impressively large assignment. What do we know about its effects from articles read for today? Julia: seems that does a good job identifying effective teachers; however, doesn’t actually seem to improve teaching once teachers reach Board certification. But this is a success; allows school administrators more information when hiring. Nick: But if data say that teachers certified in past are not more effective, then what does this data really offer to principals? Seneca: This work seems like good first step in evaluating National Boards – but National Board is new. Developing capability may take time. DKC: There is another study from Florida that shows even more convincingly the same results that Goldhaber and Anthony find – that NBPTS certification is a signal of greater effectiveness…but what about National Boards as a signifying devise rather than a means of building human capacity? Christine: Might depend on what states do with this…some states offer incentives, which may increase numbers of teachers who want it, which might mean that they will have to learn to teach in the requisite way. DKC: Let’s just suppose that states do the right thing and offer substantial incentives, and the evidence continues to show that NBPTS teachers outperform both unsuccessful applicants and teachers who don’t even apply…would that be a success? Naomi: would be for me; it’s articulating meaningful teaching practices. Kenyatha: But goal is for all students to have good outcomes and good teachers…so if there’s nothing making sure that all students have access to board-certified teachers… Nate: goal of this really isn’t equity – it’s just related to question to how we can get at improving teacher quality. Once we know more about teacher quality, we can use that knowledge to address equity.
Eli: schools will still end up trying to decide where to put their money Nick: there are two delayed effects that we might see from NBPTS: teacher education might improve its offerings so that more students are able to pass National Boards; may improve collective efficacy among teachers, and that belief itself may raise student achievement. DKC: your point suggests that in order for National Board to succeed, its effects would have to have ramifications outside of the system in which it is attempting to operate. How effective can this scheme be in gaining leverage on this existing system? Naomi: It might be troubling if National Boards inform hiring decisions; NBPTS teachers are often lured out of their inner-city districts, for example. Andrea: To be able to invest sufficient effort into achieving National Board certification, have to have a certain lifestyle, etc. DKC: Nationally Board certified teachers say that the experience was immensely rewarding, that it was best educational experience they’ve ever had. Alex: Fact that we have unequal education system doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t allow excellent teachers to be recognized. If National Board certified teachers are snapped up by best school districts, then fact that they have the NBPTS label will just make the situation clearer to the public. DKC: These things vary depending on what state and localities do…if they offer incentives to work in disadvantaged schools, they will much more frequently work in those schools. Seneca: States and localities could find ways to make the process more accessible to wider range of people, including teachers who are working in schools that require a lot more work from all teachers than other schools. DKC: Considerable human and fiscal costs have troubled NBPTS since the beginning. Devra: did they consider also defining good teachers as those who have had experience in a variety of schools and with a variety of students? Could make it part of application process to demonstrate work with disadvantaged students… DKC: may have considered it, but made very different choice.
