Category Archives: Research

Little Eddie’s Florida-thon blogging continues. And today’s edition could be the most exciting yet. From Matt Ladner and Greg Forster (both writing on Jay Greene’s blog) comes word of a new research study by David Figlio and Cassandra Hart, who conclude: We find evidence that public schools subject to more competitive pressure from private schools raised their test scores the most following the introduction of Florida’s voucher program, and that the gains in test scores appear to generalize to students ineligible to participate in the voucher program. In other words, the competition of school choice through tuition tax credits helps to lift the boat of academic performance even for public school students who come from families with incomes too great to take advantage of a scholarship. Wow! Forster notes that top-notch empirical studies are 18-0 in showing positive competitive effects from school choice programs, then calls out detractors for their weak attack on the findings:

Years after changing the way they pay teachers with ProComp, Denver Public Schools finally has the first round of research in showing how well it has worked. Ed News Colorado yesterday reported on the University of Colorado evaluation: – Student growth on state reading and math exams was higher after the implementation of ProComp in 2005-06. Researchers used a measure similar to the Colorado Growth Model to analyze DPS test results from 2002-03 through 2008-09. They found all teachers’ median growth percentiles – essentially, how much teachers are moving students – increased about 4 points after ProComp. – Teachers hired after ProComp appear to outperform those hired before ProComp. Teachers hired after Dec. 31, 2005 are required to join ProComp; it is voluntary for those already employed by DPS. Those hired under ProComp demonstrate higher first-year achievement, between 2 to 4 points in median growth percentiles, and the differences persist through the first three years. – High-poverty schools with high levels of ProComp participation are seeing fewer teachers leave. Retention rates in schools designated “hard to serve,” which yields a $2,344 annual bonus, are still not as high as retention rates in more affluent schools. But those high-poverty schools where […]

I’ve written plenty about Colorado’s ongoing quest for Race to the Top federal education grant money. I’ve noted both the promise and the peril within this pursuit. But one issue I have yet to highlight is the Race to the Top requirement that states sign on to the Common Core Standards. In a new iVoices podcast, Colorado State Board of Education member Peggy Littleton explains how the pull of federal money threatens to lead us down a path towards national testing and curriculum, undermining local control and in some cases watering down the quality of standards. Follow this link or click the play button below to listen:

A quick Friday tidbit before your weekend, inspired by Mike Antonucci’s post “The Sound of Eyes Opening” and a comparison of the change in Ohio’s student population to the number of teachers at the Flypaper blog…. We hear a lot about Colorado school districts having to lay off teachers and other employees. It’s an unfortunate proposition that has come about as a result of rare budget cuts in K-12 education. When all is said and done, it will be noteworthy to see just how many local public school employees lose their employment statewide. The Colorado Department of Education reports the state had 724,508 students enrolled in public schools in October 2000, growing by 14.9% to 832,368 students in October 2009. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that during the same months employees of Colorado local government educational services increased by 20.9% from 108,700 (October 2000) to 131,400 (October 2009). If the same student-to-employee ratio from 2000 had been kept for 2009, that would be 6,500 fewer workers in Colorado local school agencies. And it raises many questions to be considered closely and carefully: How significant has the growth been among teachers? Administrators? Support personnel? How vital and how effective was […]

One of the main ingredients that gives public charter schools the opportunity to thrive in a competitive environment is the degree of autonomy to determine its own culture, curriculum, program, budget and personnel policies. But just how much autonomy do they have? We know that because of different laws and policies, all states certainly aren’t equal. The Center for Education Reform’s annual report card on states’ charter-friendliness is the leading example. But today the Fordham Institute released a report that takes a closer look at 100 charter schools in 26 different states, rating them on a carefully-developed metric of autonomy in the areas of: Vision and Culture, Program, Staffing, and Financial and Governance. An interesting aspect of the report was not only taking into account the effect of state laws but also adding the impact of contracts signed between charter schools and their authorizers (e.g., school districts) on autonomy in these different areas.

My friends at the Education Policy Center recently ordered a couple of new books by big names in the field: Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System and Paul Peterson’s Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning. If you want to whet your appetite for one or both books, or just to get a flavor of what their argument is, you need to check out the authors debating on the Eduwonk blog. I’ll boil down their arguments for you with excerpted quotes (or you can read Marci Kanstoroom’s summary at Education Next):

Yesterday brought news from the U.S. Department of Education of the new state-by-state NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores in 4th and 8th grade reading. These tests are the gold standard for comparing student performance between states and over time. The big headlines note that in the short term (since 2007) the nation’s reading scores stayed flat in 4th grade and ticked up slightly in 8th grade. In the long term (going back to the first comparable tests in 1998), the results are exactly the opposite: with 4th grade scores going up modestly and 8th grade scores essentially remaining the same. Colorado’s achievement at both grade levels remains above the national average, but continues to track at about the same level of progress. The real long-term winner is still the state of Florida — which, as Matthew Ladner reports on Jay Greene’s blog, not only is boosting student performance across the board but also cutting the achievement gaps based on race and poverty.

I’ve got spring fever and want to run outside and play in the almost-70 degree weather! So rather than one of my famous commentaries, today I’ll just point you to a great Wall Street Journal column by Harvard’s education policy guru Professor Paul Peterson on charter schools and competition (H/T Jay Greene). Here’s a couple key sections to grab your attention: To uncover what is wrong with American public schools one has to dig deeper than these recent developments in education. One needs to consider the impact of restrictive collective bargaining agreements that prevent rewarding good teachers and removing ineffective ones, intrusive court interventions, and useless teacher certification laws. Charters were invented to address these problems. As compared to district schools, they have numerous advantages. They are funded by governments, but they operate independently. This means that charters must persuade parents to select them instead of a neighborhood district school. That has happened with such regularity that today there are 350,000 families on charter-school waiting lists, enough to fill over 1,000 additional charter schools…. What makes charters important today is less their current performance than their potential to innovate. Educational opportunity is about to be revolutionized by powerful notebook computers, […]

Ed News Colorado’s top-line story today details the “surprising findings” of a new National Association of Charter School Authorizers report that a majority of Denver Public Schools students attend schools that don’t meet district performance expectations: “There are 20,000 elementary school students in the Denver Public Schools system who … don’t have a performing elementary school to go to,” said NACSA vice president William Haft. “That’s half the elementary-aged students in the system.” Discouraging results? In some sense, yes. But we have known that a lot of hard work remains before us in improving educational outcomes for American students, especially poorer students in urban settings. And the fact that Denver actually has been serious about establishing and using a performance framework puts the district ahead of some of its peers. The report is fascinating, with a lot of detailed information, so it’s worth a read. But one observation highlighted in the Ed News Colorado story caught my attention:

I guess some things in education you’re just not supposed to talk about. Hats off to the Fordham Institute for breaking one of the taboos and reporting on “private” public schools. What, you say? That doesn’t make sense? It does make sense when you understand what authors Michael Petrilli and Janie Scull are getting at: the fact that 2,800 public schools serving 1.7 million students in the United States have very, very low percentages of poor students in them. As they show, schools funded and run outside the government system aren’t the only ones that can be exclusive. The list of Denver-area “private” public schools is posted here (PDF). Those who are paying attention closely will note that 5 of the 55 on the list are public charter schools. That’s about in proportion to Colorado’s general school population, which reinforces our understanding that charters in our state cater to no more or fewer middle-class students than their neighborhood school counterparts do. I’m not saying we need to put an end to all of these exclusive schools — whether they be private or public, traditional or charter. The point is let’s stop bashing proposals to give publicly-funded scholarships (through vouchers or […]