March 2006: Education Updates
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Political Landscape section is a collection of news items, updates, and essays on policy issues, state and federal legislation, academic standards, testing issues, the politics of funding, and other issues.
Supplemental Education Services
How does your tutoring program stack up? In a report by the New York Times, (2/13/06) Susan Saulny notes that only about 12 percent of American children received the needed help from supplemental educational services programs according to the data from a report by the U.S. Department of Education. From its inception, this program has provided federal funds to pay for supplemental services provided from largely entrepreneurial businesses.
Officials cite reasons why more students are not taking advantage of the program: there is too little federal money, the program is poorly advertised to parents, there is too much complicated paperwork for signing up, and the neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of poverty and failing students do not take advantage of it.
There is a lack of data to know what is working and what is not working and there is no consensus on how the data should be determined. Additionally, in New York City for example, most students who sign up for the service do not complete the service.
Although the department is advising districts to step up their outreach to parents, several districts do not have the capacity to administer a program like this. The federal officials are now providing waivers to districts that provide their own programs for their students rather than farming them out to commercial groups. Based on the success of the three cities with waivers—New York, Chicago, and Boston, others may be replicated.
It is estimated that the amount of money spent on supplemental educational services last year was $879 million and that the figure would grow to $1.3 billion by 2009. Some educational groups believe that some tutoring companies shun students with learning and language difficulties, and these are the very students who are underserved.
Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Report: The State of Black Ohio
The Ohio Legislative Black Caucus, State Representative Barbara Sykes President, presented on January 24, 2006 “The State of Black Ohio: Strengths, Trends and Challenges,” which was prepared by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University.
The achievement gap between Caucasian students and African American students is closing and more African American students are attending college, but work must continue to ensure that all students pass state graduation tests and graduate. The current graduation rate of African-American students in Ohio is 66 percent and 89 percent for Caucasian students. To close the achievement gap Ohio must fully fund intervention programs, provide qualified teachers, and support teacher education programs that build an understanding of cultural competency.
The presentation also noted an alarming trend regarding the segregation of Ohio’s schools. Rates of school segregation increased in Ohio’s major metropolitan areas and there is a high number of African American students attending high poverty schools
New Study on Student Achievement in Private vs. Public Schools
The National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education,
Teachers College, Columbia University, released in January 2006 a
study called Charter, Private, Public Schools, and Academic
Achievement: New Evidence from NAEP Mathematics Data, by
Christopher Lubienski and Sarah Theule
Lubienski, University of Illinois. The study found that after
accounting for certain student demographic characteristics, students
in public schools perform "remarkably well, often outscoring private
and charter schools" on the National Assessment of Progress Exam
(NAEP) in mathematics.
The national debate over how to improve student achievement has led to the charter school and voucher movements, which provide parents with resources to opt out of public schools in favor of privately operated charter schools or private schools. A study of the 2003 data of NAEP results in mathematics challenges the assumptions about private school superiority, and shows that students in public schools outperform most private schools, when student characteristics, such as socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, gender, disability, limited English proficiency, and school location, are considered. According to the Executive Summary, to summarize the most important findings once demographic and location differences were controlled:
- Public schools significantly outscored Catholic schools (by over 7 points in fourth grade and almost 4 points in eighth grade).
- Of all private school types studied, Lutheran schools performed the best. Fourth-grade scores in Lutheran schools were roughly 4 points lower than in comparable public schools, but were (a statistically insignificant) 1 point higher at the eighth grade.
- The fastest growing segment of the private school sector, conservative Christian schools, were also the lowest performing, trailing public schools by more than 10 points at grades 4 and 8.
- Charter schools scored a significant 4.4 points lower than noncharter public schools in 4th grade, but scored (a statistically insignificant) 2.4 points higher in eighth grade.
According to the Executive Summary,
“These notable findings regarding the remarkable performance of public schools are significant, not just statistically, but also in terms of their policy implications. The presumed panacea of private-style organizational models—the private-school advantage—is not supported by this comprehensive dataset on mathematics achievement. These data suggest significant reasons to be suspicious of claims of general failure in the public schools, and raise substantial questions regarding a basic premise of the current generation of school reforms based on mechanisms such as choice and competition drawn from the private sector. Furthermore, assumptions that academic quality will be driven by parental choice need to be reexamined in view of the fact that conservative Christian schools, the fastest growing segment of the private school market, were also the lowest performing.”
The researchers are now examining the 2003 data to determine the relationship between school size and academic achievement; the relationship between teacher certification and student achievement; and the interactions among school sector, school climate, and achievement. The report is available at http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP111.pdf
Equity after Katrina
The Winter 2006 issue of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s Voices in Urban Education: “Educational Equity after Katrina,” calls attention to factors that still divide America, such as race, class, and the lack of opportunities for poor people and people of color. Several authors contribute to this issue, which also suggests new strategies for promoting equity and excellence in education. The following articles are included in the issue, and are available at http://www.annenberginstitute.org/VUE/archives.php#10:
- “Now They’re Wet: Hurricane Katrina as Metaphor for Social and Educational Neglect” by Gloria Ladson-Billings
- “The Real Crisis in Education: Failing to Link Excellence and Equity” by Charles V. Willie
- “Segregation and Its Calamitous Effects: America’s ‘Apartheid’ Schools” by Jonathan Kozol
- “Transformation, Not Tinkering: School Reform after Hurricane Katrina”
by Dennie Palmer Wolf and Hal Smith
