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The graduation-proficiency gap in DPS

Monday, June 6th, 2011

Alexander Ooms is a member of the board of the Charter School Institute, the West Denver Preparatory Charter School and the Colorado chapter of Stand for Children.

The recent Westword article on Denver North High School’s manipulation of its graduation rates, the  belief that “juking the stats” likely spreads beyond a single school and a sage comment at the end of Alan’s post wondering what other Denver high schools were affected all indicate that this is a topic where rhetoric might benefit from a closer relationship with data.

At its crux, the question is if graduation rates tell us something meaningful about how district schools are performing academically. And it sure looks like they do, but not in the way one might have hoped.

For what the North debacle — and a previous yet related controversy over Lincoln High School — bring into question is twofold. First, does a high school diploma signify a reasonable, baseline level of student achievement; and second, is the rise in DPS’s graduation rate spread evenly throughout the district or is being used by some schools to mask a lack of academic rigor and proficiency.

To answer the first question, we need to see if there a pervasive gap  – particularly at certain schools — between a school’s graduation rate and the ability of its alums to read, write, and do math at grade level.  As one teacher at North commented for the Wesword article, are we reaching a point where someone could say “Oh, they went to North? They’ll give a diploma to anyone” – and for how many schools might this be an issue?

So here is a quick graph comparing respective 2010 graduation rates (data here) and 2010 average proficiency rates* (from CDE’s schoolview.org) at a number of notable, open-enrollment DPS high schools.

The red line indicates the trend; the schools above the line will have more students who graduate with solid academic skills; those below the line will have more graduates who lack basic proficiency. How far you are from the line shows the gap: well above the line pretty much guarantees a close correlation between graduation and at least a base level of academic ability; well below the line increases the likelihood that a diploma has little relation to academic skills.

What do we see? Joining North below the trendline and as prominent outliers are Bruce Randolph and MLK – both of whom have graduation rates within spitting distance of 90 percent, and yet proficiency rates that are but a small fraction of those numbers. Also below the trendline, but somewhat closer, are Kennedy and Montbello; while Lincoln teeters just above the line but with poor scores on both. And perhaps this will surprise no one, but is is exactly these schools who have had the most recent progress with graduation rates, and DPS has not been shy on trumpeting this data as a mark of success.

The recent increases in DPS graduation rates seem to be driven by precisely this same set of schools — all of whom lag badly in academic proficiency.  While both Bruce Randolph and MLK are graduating their first class and don’t have previous data, the other schools all have double-digit percentage increases from 2009 (North 21 percent, Kennedy 17 percent, Montbello 15 percent and Lincoln 14 percent), while the four schools with higher proficiency saw far smaller jumps (East 4 percent, GW 6 percent, DSST 8 percent, and  TJ 10 percent).

So, are these schools masking their poor academic progress with the easier task of boosting graduation rates?  Should we celebrate these schools for their progress with graduation rates (as President Obama did with Bruce Randolph), or question why few of their graduates are able to do basic academic work? Particularly for administrators (as the Westword article showed), it may be far easier to achieve — ethically or not — higher graduation percentages (and proclaim your school a success) then the more difficult work of driving better academic results. Should one obscure the other, or should the two go hand-in-hand.

Mind the Gap

To look at the same data a slightly different way, here is a table showing the same schools, this time ranked on the final column of a graduation-to-proficiency gap (the ratio of graduation percentage over average proficiency).

There is one school with a graduation rate significantly above the mean, and a proficiency rate significantly below the mean: Bruce Randolph.  North places second, and it is testimony to its low proficiency that they do so while still ranking significantly below the mean in graduation rate.  Montbello manages the largest gap with stunning inadequacy at both ends, including some single-digit proficiency scores and the second-lowest graduation rate overall. Lincoln and MLK round out the quintet of schools where the numbers look askew (with Kennedy pretty close behind). While it is a somewhat arbitrary line, a gap ratio greater than 2:1 is a good place for further examination.

Does this mean that some of these schools, along with North, are “juking their stats”? It’s not clear – many are also achieving higher than average academic growth (including Bruce Randolph and MLK) — but then again, diplomas are intended to indicate some measure of academic proficiency, not growth.  And, as Westword pointed out, North, Montbello and Lincoln all have full-blown Credit Recovery centers offering a different (and let’s be honest and say a far less rigorous) path to graduation. In many ways, in boosting graduation rates — and any lowering of standards to ease the path to a diploma as is clearly the case at North — these schools are probably digging their proficiency holes even deeper.  It means not just that these schools may fulfill the fear articulated by the teacher at North of awarding a diploma to just about anyone, but that the gap may increase still further.

And, perhaps more importantly, does it even matter if the heightened graduation rates are “juked” (with programs such as online Credit Recovery) or honestly achieved if they are not accompanied by increased academic proficiency? In 2010, DPS increased its graduation rate by 5.4 percent but saw a boost in overall proficiency of just 1.3 percent (and that was for all schools – I’d bet for traditional high schools the proficiency increase was probably flat).  If you were a school administrator, where would you put your efforts (and what can you better control)? And if you were DPS, to which measure would you prefer to highlight?

Is Graduation an Academic Measure?

For the larger issue is a point on which there is surprising disagrement: Is it the primary purpose of public schools to graduate students with a certain threshold of academic skill?

A surprising number of people – some of them friends, many of them reasonable – argue that, particularly in high-poverty urban schools, academic achievement is subordinated to other measures. Advocates of these schools would say that increased graduation rates means kids are not dropping out, are meeting other metrics of responsibility (such as attendence and basic class assignments) to earn passing grades, and are absorbing critical social and other skills that leave them more mature and better equipped for their lives after high school.  Under this rubric, it is an achievement to simply keep these kids in school at all.

Detractors would argue that the purpose of schools is not simply to warehouse kids in a safe facility and build social aptitude, but to impart some basic level of academic ability, and that allowing them to graduate without these skills may do more harm than good, particularly when many of these students — who have, after all, successfully passed their classes — have no idea that they are ill-prepared compared to many of their peers, and will quickly find that the demands of college or the modern workforce far outstrip their preparation. There is no second chance at K-12 education.

A related problem involves rising remediation rates – the percentages of students who go to college who are unprepared and have to retake classes at a high-school level.  As Alan pointed out just over a year ago, this is a state-wide issue, but many of these same DPS schools (North, Montbello, Lincoln) are again leading the pack. There is a good and reasonable debate on what these remediation numbers really mean, but at a minimum, the relative differences between schools is cause for apprehension.  And in looking at proficiency scores, we are talking here about something even more fundamental – not just if students are prepared to continue on to higher education, but for those who have decided to stop (or are unable to continue) their scholastic careers, do they have the academic skills that one might expect after 13 years of public education?

Several states now require some independent assessment for graduation. California, by way of example, has a High School Exit Exam, which survived a considerable legal challenge on its way to becoming law. When they first instituted the test, nearly 20 percent of seniors failed it. Recent classes have done better. This exam is hardly draconian: one gets eight chances to pass, the test measures English at a 10th grade level and Math at an 8th grade level, and it requires just 60 percent or less of correct answers to pass. But if you have a high school diploma in California, it has a set meaning – one that connotes something of value to both its student recipients and the employers who seek to hire them. Does a diploma in Denver have the same meaning?

For these diplomas are widely viewed as a critical and central measure of public education. In the most recent (and final) mayoral debate, both candidates criticized DPS’s current 52 percent graduation rate and singled out graduation percentages as an important metric they would track to better understand the success and progress (or lack thereof) of public education in Denver. Graduation rates were mentioned more times than any other single metric, academic or otherwise.

As moderator of the debate, I asked both candidates about the graduation problems at North, and if they favored an independent academic assessment at graduation (or at other points in K-12 education) so that a DPS diploma would indicate a certain level of academic achievement. Both candidates somewhat slipped past the question without answering it directly (hear the question and responses in the full podcast at 36:30 to 40:40 via link or download).

Asking for a higher graduation rate without also wanting to measure or interpret what it may mean is the norm, and not just for politicians. This is partly due to the heightened political climate of Denver’s education debate, where a reform-oriented administration pumps up some stats beyond what they may deserve, while any negative news is seized by defenders of the status quo as a way to criticize the superintendent and  weaken the administration and its reforms. This discourse makes rational discussion increasingly difficult.

But aside from the political theatre, the people who are harmed the most by the graduation-proficiency gap are the legitimate students from many of these schools who have worked hard and justly earned their diplomas, only to find this achievement largely debased both by the actions of their peers, and a system that — rightly or wrongly — seems to increasingly use the mantra of “multiple measures of achievement” to boost graduation and other metrics while undermining academic preparation and proficiency. This, after all, is the blunt narrative at the heart of public education’s problems: adults fighting each other to protect jobs and for political supremacy while kids suffer.

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* Note: It might be more accurate for a particular class to use 10th grade proficiency from 2008 (since this will be the graduation class in 2010), but I thought it was a more complete to look at the proficiency for the school overall, and also more fair if a school has had significant academic progress in intermittent two years.

Popularity: 48% [?]

Posted in Accountability, featured, Grad/dropout rates, High school reform | 5 Comments »

Higher ed: The next bubble?

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

A provocative hypothesis is newly making the rounds: Does higher education currently have the basic characteristics of a speculative economic bubble?

Technology has progressed to a point where it is not just replacing menial labor, but a broad swath of middle-class, white-collar jobs that require cognitive abilities.

Given new life by investor Peter Thiel, it is an idea that has been around since at least 2009 and this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. On the back of a provocative discussion about the revenues needed to fund higher education in Colorado, I’ve been increasingly noticing a number of data points that seem to fit this hypothesis surprisingly well.

The most spectacular bubbles in recent years were the Internet (circa 2000) and housing (circa 2008). The hypothesis notes that bubbles such as these have certain qualities, among them: 1) everyone believes that the underlying value is both irrefutable and will continue to grow; 2) prices are rising exponentially faster than other goods or services; and 3) these prices are being met due in large part to the easy availability of capital (generally debt). To take these in turn.

That college is seen as inherently valuable is a truism.  Here is how Peter Thiel puts it:

“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

Bubble observers have heard this before — housing prices “always” go up (and owning a house is “always” good). Internet commerce, freed from the economics of retail stores, will enable unprecedented growth.   Does a dogmatic belief in the intrinsic value of a college degree make us unable to accurately assess what it is really worth?

Among those who think it might is Paul Krugman.  Part of the fidelity to a college education is the belief that the value of education will become increasingly important — that more and more jobs will require the basic reasoning and analytical skills which any college graduate should possess.  This is a universally accepted truth. Yet, as Krugman says, “what everyone knows is wrong:”

The belief that education is becoming ever more important rests on the plausible-sounding notion that advances in technology increase job opportunities for those who work with information — loosely speaking, that computers help those who work with their minds, while hurting those who work with their hands.

However, as Krugman points out, technology has progressed to a point where it is not just replacing menial labor, but a broad swath of middle-class, white-collar jobs that require cognitive abilities.  In contrast, Krugman notes:

Most of the manual labor still being done in our economy seems to be of the kind that’s hard to automate. [...] Meanwhile, quite a lot of white-collar work currently carried out by well-educated, relatively well-paid workers may soon be computerized. Roombas are cute, but robot janitors are a long way off; computerized legal research and computer-aided medical diagnosis are already here.

Even accepting that college is valuable, it is clear that the specific value is awfully hard to quantify, which makes an accurate assessment problematic. That college graduates make more money and have more productive careers than non-graduates is undoubtedly true.  But it is not entirely clear that it is their years at college which enables this success. What one would like to see is a study that matches the success of college graduates with people who were admitted to college but chose not to go (or whom left voluntarily)  – admittedly a data set that is probably so small and self-selecting as to be virtually useless.

In lieu of such a control group, other attempts to measure the value of higher education are raising a lot of questions.  At least one book, which performed an analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, found that “45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college” and 36 percent showed no progress in four years.  To rub salt in the wound, there also seems increasing evidence that the prestige of elite colleges — and their accompanying higher price tag — make little difference. One pundit went so far as to make a lucid comparison between American universities today, and American car companies at their zenith, presaging a long and sordid decline.

While value resists measurement, cost does not.  College has a price, and there is no doubt that it and the rise of technology stocks and housing prices — albeit on shorter cycles — have a common trajectory. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the last generation, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care. In fact, if there is a broadly consumed service that has risen more in price than college over the same time period, I’m not aware of it. The impact is particularly disproportionate on students from low-income families, who are more likely to be the first member of their family to attend college, and often have the most to gain.

Now the standard reply to the current price tag is that higher education is charging what the market will bear.  Of course, that was the argument in other bubbles too.  What is also similar is the influx of cheap capital, which echos the previous bubbles of housing (mortgage debt) and technology companies (equity investments).  In this case, the market depends increasingly on student loans.

So the primary components of a speculative bubble in higher education — a blinding belief in inherent virtue, rising prices, and increasing debt — seem to all be in place.

How do students and families afford the rising price of higher education? As I’ve written previously, and which is even more chilling with new data, student debt is dangerously high, approaching $1 trillion dollars.  As a 2006 report from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) states:

Students are deeper in debt today than ever before. Two out of three college students graduate with debt and the average borrower who graduates from a public [my emphasis] college owes $17,250 from student loans. Ten years ago, the average student borrower attending a public college or university graduated owing $8,000 from student loans (adjusted for inflation). [...] The number of college graduates with at least $40,000 in student loan debt has increased 10–fold in the past decade.

Student loan default rates are also rising, and at the same time there will likely be less assistance available (both scholarships and financial aid).  And in much the same way that the housing bubble was partially funded by government-supported mortgages (Fannie Mae), student debt is often supported by, um, government-supported loans (Sallie Mae). And, much like housing, the debt burden seems particularly inappropriate for  those who can afford it least. The sames AASCU report notes that 20% of the students who drop out of college without a degree have accumulated debt in excess of $20,000. And one important distinction remains: unlike other debt, one can’t declare bankruptcy and walk away from college loans. This is debt that is with you for life, with all sorts of unhealthy implications.

So the primary components of a speculative bubble in higher education — a blinding belief in inherent virtue, rising prices, and increasing debt — seem to all be in place. But the main characteristic about bubbles, of course, is that they eventually pop.  So, is higher education due for a shock decline similar to housing prices and internet stocks?

Personally, I don’t think so, mostly for a simple reason: there is a lack of viable alternatives.  Housing bubble? You can rent instead of own.  Technology  bubble? You can do lots of things with your money besides buy shares of internet companies.  But what else would one suggest that a smart, ambitious, 18-year-old do if they are not going to attend college?  For better or worse, it’s simply hard to see large groups of students who have the option of going to college – even at an exorbitant cost – deciding they would rather do anything else.

And there are other perverse strengths to the college model.  Not the least is that it intentionally promotes both scarcity and elitism.  Pretty much any other organization that, as Harvard University did last year, denied 92% of willing applicants the privilege of paying tuition and board in excess of $45,000 a year would probably find a way to make a little more space available (which Harvard could clearly do without a degradation in quality).  And, as Tiger Moms everywhere know all too well, this elitism trickles down. The inherent belief of the value of a Ivy League or similar education is so entrenched in our collective thinking – even without much hard evidence in support — that even if demand somehow fell by 50% at the most prestigious schools they would still have far more applicants than spaces. It is hard to see a decline in all of higher ed, all at once (which is, of course, exactly what people said about the housing market).

But there is no doubt that even if the bubble does not pop, there are some segments where it is either going (or has already started) to deflate, and fast. One place is the Tier III private colleges that are both expensive and not very good, as their high price and questionable value is already driving students to state universities and community colleges.

Another place that will see a deflating bubble is likely to be specialized schools, with the first of these seems to already have felt some impact.  The New York Times recently did a remarkable piece that posits pretty clearly that for recent graduates, the value of a law degree is often not worth the crippling debt that many students took on (no matter how determined a spin law schools place on their employment statistics). And it is no coincidence that law school applications in 2011 were down 11.5%, to the lowest level since 2001. Clearly, unlike heading off to college, there are a number of attractive opportunities a young person might pursue instead of three years of paper chasing and incurring substantial debt.

All in all – and I don’t think there is a definitive answer here — it is a fascinating hypothesis, and it will bear watching to see if the three winds of value, price and debt continue to blow, increasing the tension on the surface area of higher education.

Lastly, as someone who spends more time thinking about K-12 than higher education, let me also say that I remain a fierce advocate of the option — if not the necessity — of college for every child.  It is one thing if, after reasoned consideration, a student elects not to attend a four-hear college to which she has been accepted; it is another thing altogether for a student to lack the basic academic skills that would permit them to attend, and graduate, from a quality, four-year college. For is not the idea and allure of college that may be out of balance, but only its actual application.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Posted in Accountability, featured, Higher ed | 5 Comments »

The price of milk in education (answers now provided)

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

I’ve updated this post with the answers and source links, which follow the questions below:
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Last week I moderated a mayoral forum on education at KIPP. The candidates were, I thought, quite good – there was a suitable range of opinion, and almost everyone was willing to take a stand on some of the more controversial recent issues (including SB 191 and the DPS turnaround efforts in Far Northeast Denver).

As part of the forum, I reflected that my first memory of watching a debate as a kid was seeing a group of candidates asked “what is the price of a gallon of milk.”  I thought this was a pretty good question – not just because as a kid I thought milk was still cool, but I also intuitively understood that this and similar queries were a way to see if candidates walked in the shoes of normal citizens and understood the simple, concrete realities of daily life.

So, as the moderator, I wanted to come up with equivalent questions —  what are the basic statistics that mayoral candidates (and indeed all stakeholders) should know about Denver’s K-12 public schools? What is the price of a gallon of milk in education?

Below are the questions I asked the candidates (who overall I thought did quite well); I’ll post answers to them in the next few days [Update: answers provided].  Some of these questions are more detailed and nuanced than the price of milk, and several were covered in recent news articles in the days leading up to the forum, so perhaps consider the line of questioning to include current events.

I invite other questions (or answers) in the comments (and if EdNews has video of the candidates for this segment of the forum, would be great to post).

Questions:

1. How many schools in DPS?  How many total students? What is the student to employee ratio?

- There are 162 total schools, however 11 are “alternative” (i.e. often not facilities-based) so the number most people use is 151;

- As of October 1, 2010 (count day), there were about 80,000 students (precise number is 79,423);

- The student to employee ratio is 6:1 (13,087 employees – note that this includes transportation, maintenance and similar activities)
Source: DPS website

2. Over the past five years, has DPS proficiency in CSAP core subjects (math, reading, writing) gone up, down, or stayed the same?  If up or down, by how much?

- Overall proficiency over the past five years has increased by about 8 percentage points, from 33% to 41% (note that this is not a weighted average by grade population.)
Source: CDE CSAP scores (although one has to do the math)

3. In 2010, what percentage of 3rd graders were proficient in core subjects? What percentage of 10th graders were proficient in core subjects?

- Third grade proficiency in core subjects was 45%; 10th grade proficiency was 32%.
Source: CDE CSAP scores via schoolview

4. What is the remediation rate for DPS high school graduates who go to college?

- Fifty-nine percent of DPS graduates who go on to college require remediation.
Source: Denver Post

5. What is the average teacher salary?  What is the starting teacher salary? How many days per year do teachers work?

- Average teacher salary is $52,845; starting teacher salary is $37,551; there are 184 contract days for DPS teachers.

- If one were to “normalize” teacher salaries over a full year, using a comparison of 245 working days for full-time, year-round employees, the average teacher salary would be $70,460 and the starting salary would be $50,068.
Source: DPS website, DCTA Master Agreement 8-1

6. What percentage of DPS students “choice-out” of their assigned school?

- Roughly 45% of DPS students choice out of their school of assignment.
Source: Locating Quality and Access (IFF Report)

7. What is the “on-time” graduation rate (the percentage of 9th graders who graduate four years later)  for DPS high schools?

- On-time graduation rate is 53%.
Source: DPS website

8. What percentage of DPS students dropped out of school last year?

- The DPS drop-out rate is 7.4%, or roughly 5,800 students each year.
Source: DPS website

9. What is the overall percentage of free and reduced lunch (“FRL” – a measure of poverty) students in Denver?  In 2010, what what was the percentage of FRL students in the top-ranked category (“Distinguished”) on the School Performance Framework?

- Seventy-two percent of DPS students qualify for the federal Free ad Reduced Lunch program; about 25% of students in DPS’s “Distinguished” schools qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch.
Source: DPS website, my analysis of the SPF

Popularity: 29% [?]

Posted in Politics | 3 Comments »

2010 top education stories

Monday, January 10th, 2011

One of the whimsical pleasures in a New Year are the end-of-year lists.  These are often more for amusement than instruction, but do a reasonable job of measuring the sentiment of the previous twelve months.  So, in contrast to Van’s somewhat parochial approach to the Best of 2010 in ed reform, here is a different take on the top 10 education stories from 2010.

I chose it out of various options because I think it’s a more interesting list than most, both appropriately wonky (National Education Technology Plan) and topical (Rhee).  However I was drawn to some of the more unconventional choices:

At #5 is the Apple iPad, as a precursor to the way children, especially younger kids, will change their learning through the use of educational software and mobile devices.  Add to that this story in the New York Times about schools purchasing iPads and other devices.

I’m personally mixed – technology, like any tool, can be used well or poorly and is never a replacement for quality teaching — but in the hands of a supportive environment, I’m intrigued by the potential. And anyone who has seen a young child (like my three-year-old) use the touch screen and intuitive interface on an iPad (well before he can adapt to a keyboard and mouse) should recognize that the long-term implications here are considerable.

Numbers 6 (National Traditional Media Presence) and 7 (Entrepreneurship and New Media) are also outside the realm of much conventional thought.

The former notes that for many of (what’s left) of traditional media, education stories have assumed a more central role.  I would obviously extend that to the prominence of new sources (like EdNews Colorado) which are more than worthy substitutes for some of the holes left by the implosion of print media.

The latter notes the amount of entrepreneurial activity in education, with companies like Edmodo and venture-capital backed LearnBoost (on whose blog this list appeared) — both which bear watching. In fact, there has been a significant boost in venture capital investment in start-up companies in education — over 30 deals announced in 2010 alone, including companies like Moonshot, MyEdu, Zinch, Knewton, Everfi, Altius, and Denver’s own TopSchool.

One of the more interesting developments over the past decade in education is the rise of new ideas and services from outside traditional providers — everything from Teach for America, to charter schools, to Revolution Foods — and the marriage of this interest in services with technology and entrepreneurs holds a world of promise.

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Postscript: another EOY list of Andrew Rotherham’s 11 education activists to watch for 2011, including Colorado’s Senator Bennet, Stand for Children (which has a terrific Colorado chapter) founder Jonah Edelman, and Revolution Food founders Richmond and Tobey.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Posted in Alternative pathways, The national stage | No Comments »

Pension debate heats to a boil

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

Two remarkable articles in the NYT about the dreary and critical subject of public pensions, including those of teachers.

The first begins with the YouTubed confrontation between teacher and Governor in New Jersey, but provides a very balanced and nuanced view of the issue:

Across the nation, a rising irritation with public employee unions is palpable, as a wounded economy has blown gaping holes in state, city and town budgets, and revealed that some public pension funds dangle perilously close to bankruptcy. In California, New York, Michigan and New Jersey, states where public unions wield much power and the culture historically tends to be pro-labor, even longtime liberal political leaders have demanded concessions — wage freezes, benefit cuts and tougher work rules.

It is an angry conversation.

The second takes that anger and examines how it is both given voice and exploited in the current partisan political dogfight:

Republican lawmakers in Indiana, Maine, Missouri and seven other states plan to introduce legislation that would bar private sector unions from forcing workers they represent to pay dues or fees, reducing the flow of funds into union treasuries. In Ohio, the new Republican governor, following the precedent of many other states, wants to ban strikes by public school teachers. [...]

In the 2010 elections, Republicans emerged with seven more governor’s mansions and won control of the legislature in 26 states, up from 14. That swing has put unions more on the defensive than they have been in decades.

But it is not only Republicans who are seeking to rein in unions. In addition to Mr. Cuomo, California’s new Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, is promising to review the benefits received by government workers in his state, which faces a more than $20 billion budget shortfall over the next 18 months.

What’s clear here is twofold: this issue is going to get hotter and will be at a boil for some time, and there are no easy answers — even the draconian measures headed to a hearing in some states will do little to mitigate a looming crises that already has trillions of dollars in underfunded pensions.

This issue is currently viewed though a bifurcated lens: public employees vs. private employees.  But I think that is just the first round — what will eventually happen (and the rumbles have begun) is an increasing divide between public employees who have received or are close to retirement, and those just starting their careers.  As I’ve argued previously, if you are just beginning your teaching career, you have pretty much zero chance at receiving the same benefits as your senior peers. Zero.

I don’t have much of an answer here – and neither does anyone else. Where ever else one is on the political spectrum, one can no longer be against the idea of pension reform. The only question is what form it will eventually take, and how long until it can no longer be avoided.

Personally, I think teachers and other public employees would be better served trying to get out in front of the issue than waiting for it to be decided for them.  I’m deeply partial to the belief that the present inadequacy of teacher salaries is, in some part, a result of a compensation system weighted too heavily to retirement. Cuts to pension benefits are now unavoidable. There is probably still a chance of negotiating something in return. However at some point in the not-to-distant future, that chance will be gone.

The only clear outcome is that this will not end for a long while, and it will certainly not end well.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Posted in Pension morass, Politics, Teacher unions | 2 Comments »

The performance of Denver’s charter schools

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

The movie Waiting for Superman, and the recent signing of a district and charter compact, has energized an intense debate about the quality of charter schools compared to their traditional school peers. Local opponents of charters have focused much of their criticism by emphasizing a national statistic quoted in Superman which is based on a patchwork, multi-state CREDO study that concluded just one in five charter schools outperform traditional schools.

The question of charter school performance is vital. However this line of critique is largely irrelevant. The overwhelming majority of education policy and practice is not national, but local — charter results in Dayton and Detroit have little to do with school decisions in Denver. And in Denver, the very same CREDO study explicitly stated — and further analysis of more recent performance data confirms — that charter schools are doing far better than their traditional school peers.

Indeed, school districts across Colorado would be well advised to look at Denver’s model with an eye to replicating its success.

It’s helpful to quickly revisit the essentials. A central premise of charter schools is simple: encourage innovation and a variety of school models. Measure outcomes. Expand the good schools, and change or close the bad ones. This basic combination of innovation, evaluation, and adjustment should lead — particularly over time — to more high-quality schools and better outcomes for students.

Denver is a vibrant example of this theory.  Over the past several years a consistent (if fragile) coalition on the Board of Education has established a solid process for encouraging and approving innovative charter proposals. Denver Public Schools (DPS) created a comprehensive annual evaluation system to measure school quality. And both forged the collective political will to close charters that do poorly.

Denver’s charters now display numerous models, including Expeditionary Learning, dual-language immersion, and entrepreneurship. These innovations have indeed produced a wide variation in quality: on the 2010 School Performance Framework, three of the top five schools were charters – and so were two of the bottom five.

However the best charter schools are expanding to serve more students, while the worst are being reconfigured and face closure. And in the aggregate, charter schools in Denver are now doing far better than their traditional peers on both quantitative academic criteria and qualitative metrics.

In Denver, we have a rare and somewhat unique ability to make comparisons based on two local frameworks for measuring school quality: the Colorado Growth Model (which measures the academic growth in individual students from year to year), and DPS’s School Performance Framework (which derives academic data from the growth model but also includes non-academic measures such as student engagement and parent satisfaction). Using these frameworks should provide considerable insight into the performance of Denver’s charter schools. And what they show us is a significant different in school quality.

On the growth model, adjusted based on the number of tested students in each school, Denver’s charter schools outperformed their traditional peers in academic growth by 15 percent, with an aggregate median growth percentile of 61.3 versus 53.4 (median growth across Colorado is 50). Charter schools scored higher at every school level, and in all subjects, with a single exception. The gains were stronger in the secondary grades (particularly in math and writing) with differences of up to 30 percent.

Denver’s School Performance Framework (SPF), similarly adjusted for school size, also showed a similar 15 percent gap in academic growth among charter and traditional schools – and both schools served equal percentages of students in poverty. However, charter schools excelled even further on the SPF’s non-academic metrics, with astounding differences in measures of student engagement (43 percent higher), parent satisfaction (27 percent), and re-enrollment (16 percent) (see data section below). These gains extended across all grade levels.

The final statistic — a school’s re-enrollment percentage — is particularly interesting.  Among the many unproven claims against charter schools is that they filter out low-performing students.  It turns out that charters have a far better track record of retaining kids.

Here is a full summary of the charter and district data from both frameworks.

Even their strongest proponents agree that charter schools are not a panacea for all of public education, and there are many external and societal factors impacting schools that also badly need our attention. More research should continue to look at the similarities and differences — but the direction here is clear. Across a growing body of evidence and several years of data, the performance of Denver’s charter schools surpasses their traditional peers. Superman is not coming to Denver, but the charter schools here are doing very, very well.

Extra Credit: The Data

If one wants to dig into the details, here is a larger discussion of the data:

CREDO Study: The 16-state CREDO study, which looked at five years of data ending in 2007-08, and to which charter detractors regularly refer, has received its share of criticism over its methodology.  I don’t know it if it useful to revisit that debate, but what is inexcusable is that the same people who cite this study for evidence against Denver’s expansion of charters completely ignore its local conclusions.  The CREDO study, which used only charter schools in Denver for its statewide comparison, explicitly found and concluded that these schools performed “significantly better” than their peers (see their own press release). To argue the whole of the study while not acknowledging the most relevant part is patently absurd, even for partisan political hacks.

Colorado Growth Model: Using this 2010 data, I did a weighted average based on the number of students in each school who took the CSAP. The growth model splits grade levels neatly into K-5, 6-8, and 9-12 – so if a school is a 6-12 program, the growth model counts it as two different schools (a 6-8 middle and a 9-12 high school).  A similar division happens with K-8 schools. This allows for a more precise comparison by grade.  Under this formula, Denver has 135 district schools and 26 charters (which comprise 12% of students of all students taking the CSAP).

Remarkably, charter schools did better on academic growth in every subject and school level, with the single exception of elementary school math. Aggregated across all 161 schools, charters received higher median growth percentile (MGP) scores in reading (+4.8), in writing (+9.4) and in math (+9.3) for an average difference of +7.8 points, or almost 15% higher:

Breaking it down by grade levels, in the elementary school grades (charter students composed 9.3% of tested students), charters did slightly better on average (+1.4); better in reading (+1.1) and writing (5.7) and worse on math (-2.6).

In middle school grades, (14.8% charter students) the differences in median growth percentiles were stark: reading (+7.9), writing (+12.1), and math (+15.5), or a double-digit average of 11.8 points better.  This is a percentage improvement of between 15% and 30%. The district’s lowest scores were in the middle school grades, suggesting that the renaissance in Denver’s middle school years is primarily driven by charter schools.

High school scores (8.7% charter students) were also positive: reading (+1.0), writing (+7.2) and math (+10.1), or an average of +6.1 points or 11% improvement.

School Performance Framework: Note first that this is based on 2010 SPF data (which covers the 2009-2010 school year), which is different than the recent 2010 count day data listed at EdNews.  The 2010 SPF lists 18 charter schools and 114 district schools. Using this data, I again adjusted scores based on enrollment (so that each school provides a weighted average in its category). I did not include alternative schools in either group.

Across the entire city, district schools enrolled 67,203 students in 2009-2010, while charters had 6,105 (or 8% of the total). The percentage of students in poverty is very close: 73% to 72% FRL. However, in the aggregate on the SPF, charter schools did considerably better on growth (+8 points); status (+13), reenrollment (+13), student engagement (+17), and parent satisfaction (+12).

But to look even closer, Denver has 68 traditional (K-5) elementary schools and just one charter elementary school, which makes any comparison for K-5 meaningless. What happens if we subtract all 69 of these elementary schools and look again at the aggregate SPF metrics? You get this:

Without elementary schools, the relative performance of charters improves even further.  The percentage of students enrolled in charter schools rises to 14%, and the percentage of FRL students is the same (71%). However charter schools receive higher marks across the board — on quantitative academic criteria (+13 growth, +16 status), on re-enrollment (+15), as well as on the qualitative aspects of student engagement and parent satisfaction (+21 each).  These are remarkable and meaningful differences, and as close to a viable district-wide comparison as I think we can get.

What happens if we continue to drill down into specific school grades, comparing K-8 schools, 6-8 middle schools, 6-12 schools, and 9-12 high schools? Well, of the eight academic criteria, charter schools outperform district schools in seven. Charters also do better in every measured level in both student engagement and parent satisfaction. I won’t cover all levels (you can see the full results in the link above); however let’s look at one particular segment: middle schools.

There are 12 district middle schools, and 5 charters (I included KIPP SP, which is listed as K-8 but only offers grades 5-8). The 14% of middle school students in charters provide a reasonable volume for comparison.  What are the results?

The academic differences are remarkable: +23 points on growth, and +18 on status — and charters have 17% more students in poverty.  Charter middle schools also do far better on student engagement. Two of the five charter schools did not have re-enrollment data, and two also did not have parent satisfaction, so I did not do a comparison for either.  But the schools who did report re-enrollment and parent satisfaction were higher than the district school mean. The academic data here is so strong, it makes me question how much of DPS’s recent middle school success is due to the impact of charters.  I suspect it is considerable.

Charter 6-12 schools also had double-digit scores: growth (+25%), status (+19), student engagement (+19), and parent satisfaction (+39). Reenrollment was lower (-13), but this was based primarily on just one school with a particularly low score (and which is being reconfigured).  FRL was comparable with charters at 58% and district schools at 60%.

K-8 schools also showed higher scores across the board for charters: growth (+8), status (+13), reenrollment (+24), student engagement (+13), and parent satisfaction (+17), however they did so with 11% less FRL students.

Where did charter schools fail to outperform district schools? Only in 6-12 high schools — which had the fewest number of charter students at any level and composed just 4% of the total — and in one category.  Charter schools lagged in growth (-10), but were higher in status (+5), and student engagement (+33), and had an FRL population 15 percentage points higher.

That’s the data, which included results from 2002 to 2010.  Of course, the arguments about charter school performance in Denver is, at many levels, based on political calculations and interest groups who have priorities other than the educational outcomes for students.  Those people and groups will continue their protests regardless (in fact, it would not surprise me if they called for a repeal of the metrics themselves). Which, or course, does not change the data: Denver’s charter’s are doing very, very well.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Posted in Achievement gaps, middle grades, Reform, School choice | 29 Comments »

Bullseye, overlooked

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

Overlooked in the controversies of the board meeting on Thursday night was an important vote that signifies a considerable change in policy.  The board was contemplating a course of action for Manny Martinez, a charter school who, in its first year, received the lowest score on DPS’s School Performance Framework, including perhaps the first (and hopefully the last) single-digit score for academic growth.

In the silence of the consent agenda, and thus passed on a unanimous 7-0 vote, the Board agreed to neither shut Manny Martinez entirely, nor to leave it intact. Instead, the Board voted to essentially freeze the student population by not allowing a new class of 6th graders to enter the school.  No current students were displaced, but the district was understandably unwilling to allow more students entry into an academic sinkhole.

This is an important shift, as previously the board only pursued a choice between two options – leave the school essentially intact with minimal consequences for poor performance, or shut it entirely thus displacing students.  Too often an unwillingness to do the latter left the BOE with a default to the former.  That binary world now has changed.

This is hardly a new idea. Cutting enrollment should allow a school to refocus its efforts and resources on a smaller base of kids (hopefully increasing their academic performance). Presumably the school will retain its best teachers, increase attention on academic improvement, and have a legitimate chance to get better. It serves as a clear signal of the board’s intention to move toward the harsher penalty of termination unless there is ample improvement, but the penalty falls most fully on the school’s adults, not the kids.

The controversial decisions last Thursday will no doubt be continually criticized, and in their wake there will be invective enough to cover the entire building. But in the hullabaloo over both sides’ impassioned accusations of having made the wrong decision, recognize that in this case — and in an unanimous act — the board got one absolutely dead-on right.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Posted in Accountability, Politics, School choice | 2 Comments »

I write the papers that make the whole world sing…

Monday, November 15th, 2010

Think that students are all doing their own work?  Try this truly stunning first-person piece from a hired ghost writer for, well, anything:

I’ve written toward a master’s degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I’ve worked on bachelor’s degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I’ve written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I’ve attended three dozen online universities. I’ve completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.

It’s pretty shocking stuff.  The amount of straight cheating and plagiarism that happens at an undergraduate level is both remarkable and has probably existed in some form throughout time.  However, technology has now enabled students to find someone to do their work who is geographically distant, qualified, affordable, and highly-skilled.

And I could not help but shake my head at the following:

I, who have no name, no opinions, and no style, have written so many papers at this point, including legal briefs, military-strategy assessments, poems, lab reports, and, yes, even papers on academic integrity, that it’s hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I’d say education is the worst. I’ve written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I’ve written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I’ve synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I’ve written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I’ve completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)

Yikes.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Posted in Ethics, Teacher preparation and training | 2 Comments »

Ghost alumnus

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

Perhaps it is the proximity to Halloween, but what I find most troubling about the wrenching and difficult decision to close or transform schools are the ghosts: All of the kids who went through the school, received an education wholly inadequate to the demands of modern life, and are no longer in view. Traces of them linger, but they have largely vanished.

I see this with the controversy over Montbello. Many of the people attending public forums to comment on the plan are current students, their parents, and teachers.  If the reform plan goes through, teachers will lose their jobs, and they are fighting intently for their positions and livelyhood.  That’s their right, and should surprise no one.

Students and parents are fighting for the devil they know.  I continue to think that the opinions of current students and parents are critical, valid, and almost hopelessly biased (in much the same way that all parents believe their children are beautiful – to them they are).  Several years ago a survey of parents showed that 72 percent of them gave DPS overall a grade of “D” or “F”, however only 27 percent of them gave their child’s school a grade of “D” or “F.”  As a parent, I implicitly understand this — how could any parent admit to themselves that they are sending their child off to a failing school each and every day?

How could a student get up each day with the knowledge that their school will not prepare them for full lives as adults? Students and parents in a school will always believe that it is better than it is, or that it is about to become much better. This hope is essential, but it is not a strategy.

No one questions Montbello’s numbers: Of the freshmen who start at Montbello, six percent graduate and go on to college without needing remedial work.  94 percent do not.  The overwhelming majority of these 94 percent are the ghosts. Over a 10-year period when Montbello’s performance has been an ongoing issue, the school has had roughly 3,750 students pass through its halls.  Probably about 3,300 of them do not receive a advanced degree of any kind.  Maybe 10% of these can overcome their lack of academic preparation and are successful. Who is left?  One decade, 3,000 alumnus ghosts.

These ghosts should be a haunting presence over the current proceedings. What is missing from the meetings where school closings are debated are alumni lining the walls to defend these schools.  Where are the alumni who can point to the significant role that Montbello played in their future success? How the school nurtured and prepared them for the challenges they face as adults? How it fostered in them an interest, or kindled a passion that they were able to follow to be a leader in their company, industry, organization, or community?  Not the odd alumni who succeeded despite the school, but legions upon legions who left its halls and prospered.

So when the voices are raised and rage, look to quietness. When teachers fight for their jobs, and students to stay with their classmates, and parents who want to walk their kids to school — all of whom are absolutely right to champion what they want — remember the absence of all the students who were once there, and consider where they might be today.

In the cacophony over school closings, remember the echoing, haunting silence of the alumnus ghosts.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Posted in Accountability, Achievement gaps, High school reform, Reform | 17 Comments »

The 2010 election and ed reform

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

One of the ongoing lessons of the shifting electorate is that party affiliation is less and less likely to predict specific election outcomes.  It’s simply no longer possible to count votes based purely on one’s declared party.  2010 clearly demonstrated this trend with victories for three officials — none of whom previously held statewide office — in related positions: a governor from one party, combined with a treasurer and secretary of state from the other. So, ignoring the limited lens of party affiliation (if we might), how was Colorado’s 2010 election for education reform?

Last fall saw a bitter contest — most of it within the Democratic party — on SB 191.  At the time, and exacerbated after the failure of R2T dollars to follow, there was the fear that 191 would be a ed reform waterloo, and many of the Democratic legislators who defied party stalwarts and traditional supporters to vote in favor of the bill were warned that they would suffer a lack of Democratic support, enthusiasm, and dollars in upcoming elections.

So how did they do?  Of the nine democrats (and 21 total legislators) who voted for 191 and were up for election, just one lost his seat — in a race where education was not a factor.

Also consider the local efforts of Stand for Children, a national nonprofit group founded by Jonah Edelman, son of activist Marian Wright Edelman. Stand is an non-partisan advocacy group for kids in a public school sector where most of the decisions are made both by and for adults (disclosure: I recently joined Stand’s local advisory board). For this election cycle, Stand both contributed money and developed an endorsement strategy that reached across party lines to find candidates whom its members believed were true education champions for children.

For Stand, party affiliation means little — it is the impact on the educational prospects and outcomes for kids that matters. Stand screened a number of candidates, with final endorsements contingent on a super-majorty vote of its members (a far more collaborative method to determine support than most organizations).  Stand eventually supported 18 candidates for Colorado’s legislature (a mix of 12 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and 1 Unaffiliated). On the dawn after Tuesday’s election eve, fully 15 of the 18 candidates will be in the legislature for the next session.

Stand’s singleminded focus on outcomes for kids rather than the interests of adults makes for shifting alliances: Stand and the Colorado Education Association (CEA) agreed on 8 candidates, 7 of whom won. However there were also four candidates that Stand supported and CEA opposed, three of whom won.

Election reformers had reasons to celebrate further up the ticket as well, with the narrow election of former DPS Superintendent Bennet, whose organization produced a remarkable GOTV effort that seems to have picked up where his personal shoe leather campaign for Manual left off.  In fact, if there is a unknown variable in Colorado’s post-election education reform algorithm, it is probably future Governor Hickenlooper, whose education policy statements have been bland and inconsequential — a reflection of a campaign where a viable strategy was not to draw too much attention to himself while his opponents cut each other into smaller and smaller pieces.

Where — and to what extent — Hickenlooper decides to pursue a specific education agenda is still a very open question.

Education has been mentioned as a potential wedge issue to separate Democrats.  But this survival of Colorado’s pro-reform Democrats in what may be the toughest partisan election in their careers makes that claim hollow.  Instead, it seems like education — mentioned specifically by President Obama as one of the areas where he hopes to find common ground with the new Congress — can serve as a meeting place for sanity, somewhere in between the conservative Scylla’s who wish to abolish the Department of Education and the liberal Charybdis’s who fight any change to the failing status quo.

Perhaps the group who emerged with the least amount of bruises, and the most hope, from the torrid Colorado campaign season are those who are still too young to vote.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Posted in Legislature 2010, Parental & community involvement, Politics, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

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