The EDifierJanuary 11, 2011 This morning, Education Week (EdWeek) released its annual special report Quality Counts 2011, which included its annual State of the States report card. Maryland once again earned top honors with a B plus while the nation as a whole received a C. The report card shows that states have been very active in easing the transition for students from high school to college by defining college readiness. However, defining such goals for achievement at the end of high school has yet to significantly improve student achievement.
Here are some of the key findings from this year’s report card:
Summative Grades
How did the nation as a whole and each individual state perform across all policy and performance areas?
- Overall, the nation received a grade of a C across all policy and performance areas, which remained the same as a year ago.
- Maryland earned the highest grade (B plus) for the third consecutive year, followed by New York and Massachusetts who both earned a B. Nine states earned a B minus.
- The vast majority of states earned grades between a C plus and C minus.
- No states received an F, but Nebraska, South Dakota and the District of Columbia each earned a D plus.
Chance for Success
What are the odds that the average child who grows up in a particular state will do as well as the average child in the top-ranked state, at each stage of his or her educational life? (the early childhood years, participation and performance in formal education, and educational attainment and workforce outcomes during adulthood)
- Massachusetts ranked first for the fourth consecutive year by being the only state to receive an A, while once again Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New Jersey each received an A minus.
- This means that children in Massachusetts have the best chance of achieving positive life outcomes.
- On the other hand, children in Nevada and New Mexico have the least chance of achieving positive life outcomes by earning a D and D plus, respectively.
- The nation as a whole earned a C plus.
K-12 Achievement
How do states compare on the academic achievement of their students in elementary through high school?
- Overall, our nation’s schools received a D plus in the academic preparation of our school children.
- The grade is based on the academic status and growth over time in math and reading scores, narrowing of poverty-based achievement gaps, as well as high school graduation rates and the performance on the advanced placement test.
- Once again Massachusetts received the highest grade with a B, although Maryland and New Jersey performed nearly as well by earning a B minus.
- New Mexico, Louisiana West Virginia, Mississippi, and the District of Columbia all received failing marks.
Transition and Alignment
How do states compare on implementing various education policies to better coordinate the connections between K-12 schooling and other segments of the education pipeline such as early-childhood education, college readiness, and links to the world of work?
- Arkansas, Maryland, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia are leaders in ensuring students are ready to move up the education ladder, earning A’s for their policy work in this area.
- Each of these states have implemented at least 12 of 14 alignment policies tracked by EdWeek.
- In contrast, Montana and South Dakota have implemented just three such policies, earning them a D minus, while Nebraska earned an F for implementing just two policies.
- Although the nation as a whole earned just a C plus, 33 states have defined college readiness, which is an increase of 13 states since 2009.
School Finance
How much do states spend on their schools? Is the spending distributed equitably?
- Although no state received a failing grade, Wyoming was the only state to receive an A minus for adequately funding its schools.
- On the other hand, five states — Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, and Utah received grades of D or D minus.
- As a whole, the nation received a C on funding education. However, on average the nation spends more money on wealthier school districts than poorer districts nationwide.
- Wyoming, New Jersey, Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, and Nevada are the only states to spend as much or more on their poorer districts than their wealthier counterparts.
- On average, across the nation over $4,000 more is spent per-pupil in each state’s wealthiest districts than in their poorest districts.
- When adjusting for regional cost differences, the U.S. spends on average $11,223 per pupil.
- This ranges from $17,114 (adjusted for regional cost differences) in Wyoming to $6,525 in Utah.
–Jim Hull
January 7, 2011 “Look on the back of their baseball card.”
That’s the common reply from baseball managers and general managers around the major leagues when asked about what kind of production they expect from a player in an upcoming season.
It is a reference to the career stats of baseball players, which appear on the back of their baseball cards. Most often, at the end of the season a player’s stats will be more or less as their career stats.
This basic assumption is so accepted in Major League Baseball that teams offer tens of millions of dollars to those players with the strongest career stats, while players with the weakest stats tend to disappear after a few years. The stakes don’t get much higher than that.
But in education, it’s still rare for similar high stakes decisions about school personnel (teachers, principals, and other administrators) to be made using data such as student test scores. Critics argue that evaluating educators primarily based on student test scores would be unfair. That even the most complex statistical models designed to isolate educators’ impact, such as value-added growth models, are not reliable enough to base high-stakes decisions such as salaries or tenure.
Now, these critics argue correctly that there is only a moderate correlation between a teacher’s past performance, as measured by value-added models, and their future effectiveness. For example, a Brookings report on value-added models stated that the correlation between test-based measures of teacher effectiveness between one school year and the next is between .30 and .40 (1.0 would mean a perfect correlation and 0.0 would be no correlation). This is a low to moderate correlation in statistical terms. Sounds like the critics have a strong point.
However, Brookings also points out when comparing that correlation to statistics used in other professions, such as Major League Baseball, the correlation doesn’t sound very weak.
Take batting average—one of the most widely used statistics to evaluate a player. The between-season correlation for batting averages for Major League Baseball players is just .36. Yet, a team will pay a player millions for hitting .300 and cut a player for hitting .250.
Of course batting average is just one statistic teams use to evaluate a player and value-added scores are just one statistic that could be used to evaluate educators, but both can be key measures to determine how effective they will be in the future if used correctly.
Do teams sometimes make the wrong decision by paying millions for the player who hit .300 last season while cutting the player who hit .250? Yes, it does happen. But overall, the teams are better off signing the players who had the strongest stats on back of his baseball card. Our schools could be more effective if they kept the educators with the strongest stats as well.– Jim Hull
January 6, 2011 Are public schools moving away from public funding? It’s starting to look like that could one day be a possibility.
It’s no secret that schools have faced years of sharp budget cuts. If you read the Center’s report, “Cutting to the Bone,” you’ll see that the recession has caused such a drop in school funding that schools have not only been forced to cut extra services, but some essential ones as well.
Two metro DC districts have started to look to private funding in order to make up some of that difference. Most publicly, former D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee turned to private grants for money for teacher raises and bonuses last year.
Now Fairfax County Public Schools (widely regarded as one of the country’s wealthiest districts) is creating its second foundation in order to raise money for projects “such as reducing or eliminating the fees for Advanced Placement tests, helping seniors through the college admissions process and supporting a host of programs for under-represented students.”
Those are great projects. And the money raised last year from the foundation is a miniscule fraction of the Fairfax overall budget — $330,000 out of a $2.2 billion dollar budget.
But what about this line from the article: “Donors also will be able to propose their own projects in conjunction with the school system”?
I’m concerned that this might signal the beginning of a trend that will just widen the gaps between the haves and the have-nots. Will the best education go to the districts that can attract the most grant money? Will big donors control what is taught in schools, rather than the local community?
Those who wish to donate to schools should be applauded and thanked. But public schools should stay public — and that means continuing to run off of public funds. If public schools find that they can’t do their basic jobs on public money, perhaps we need to take another look at the funding system. – Rebecca St. Andrie
January 4, 2011 We Americans love to argue about what students should be taught. Witness last year’s fisticuffs in Texas over revisions to the state social studies curriculum – a debate that became a national story for months. But while we’ll go to the mat over what to include and what to leave out, once the dust settles we all agree that the facts should be, well, factual. Unfortunately for Virginia students, that’s apparently too much to expect.
History textbooks approved by the Virginia Board of Education were recently outed as, shall we say, accuracy challenged. The first tip off was an eye-popping statement in the state-approved 4th grade textbook that thousands of African Americans fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.
That so? According to the Washington Post:
The author, Joy Masoff, who is not a trained historian but has written several books, said she found the information about black Confederate soldiers primarily through Internet research, which turned up work by members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Let’s see. Information found on the Internet from a potentially biased source … aren’t these red flags we should be teaching 4th graders to watch out for? We certainly shouldn’t have to teach these lessons to authors and publishers of history textbooks, too.
The state immediately asked for a review of the textbooks in question. The state reviewers, who unlike the author were trained historians, documented numerous mistakes. Many of these were relatively innocuous like misspelled names. Still others gave a skewed picture of events, for example, grossly understating casualties in the Battle of Bull Run, or claiming that Sir Walter Raleigh was in Roanoke Island (he wasn’t). Regardless of their relative significance, teachers, students, parents and the public expect facts presented in textbooks to be accurate.
How did so many mistakes make it through the review process? Part of the problem is the process itself. In Virginia, potential textbooks are reviewed by teams of classroom teachers who recommend for or against adoption. A teacher-based review makes sense: teachers are well-positioned to evaluate whether textbooks are readable for the intended grade level and offer good, rich teachable material. But there also needs to be assurance that the content itself is based on solid scholarship, and Virginia does not require a review by subject specialists.
We can’t absolve the publisher from their responsibility, either. Choosing a non-academic as the principal author isn’t itself a bad decision. Textbooks, especially those intended for elementary students, can really benefit from good storytelling. But if the author is not a scholar, the publisher needs to at least have a thorough scholarly review process in place.
The Virginia assembly will soon be considering a new process for textbook adoption in order to prevent further embarrassments. An early proposal calls for shifting the fact-checking burden to publishers. It’s a good first move, but I would hope that the state will also provide scholarly back up in its own review process as an additional check on the system. After all, this is one history lesson we don’t want to repeat. – Patte Barth
Here’s a question that’s been floating around a lot: how do you evaluate teachers?
Here’s one that hasn’t: how do you evaluate teacher preparation programs?
The University System of Ohio is linking the two with its new “Ohio Educator Preparation Metrics” system. The first of its kind nationwide, the system evaluates teacher preparation programs on:
- placement of graduates in hard-to-staff Ohio school districts
- the quality of the student teaching experience
- the teacher’s ability to demonstrate student growth as measured by the Battelle for Kids Value-Added Growth System and Ohio’s new Teacher Performance Assessment (which measures the beginning teacher’s ability to communicate effectively with parents, structure lessons and manage a classroom).
No matter what you think about the particular qualities they’ve chosen, it’s an interesting idea to evaluate teacher preparation programs. What do you think should be included? And what do you think should be included in evaluating teachers? Stay tuned for the Center for Public Education’s upcoming report on the subject.
The first report on how well these programs did will be released in December 2012. –Rebecca St. Andrie
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