FOCUS DC News Wire 3/11/2014

 

 

From President Obama’s recent budget announcement proposing a $68.6 billion hike in the federal tobacco tax to help pay for universal pre-K, to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), and governors and legislators nationwide, there is a clamor for universal pre-K.

 

Republicans have been more reluctant, but some, including Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, have joined the chorus.

 

Polls underscore this emerging consensus—84 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of Republicans tell pollsters they support the idea.

But resources are scarce and the rush to legislate is ill-informed.  Headlines captured Obama’s State of the Union support for federal investment but overlooked an important sentence in his address: “Research shows that one of the best investments we can make in a child’s life is high-quality early education.” The last four words are key.

 

The debate concentrates on increasing access but fails to distinguish between effective early learning, which drives school readiness, and childcare, which does not.  Not all ‘pre-K’ is high quality and many childcare programs lack early learning.  The need for systemic change that prepares all young children for school success lies at the periphery of the debate, instead of the forefront.

 

This lack of clarity is damaging because it is the absence of effective early education for disadvantaged children that perpetuates the so-called “word gap” separating them from their more advantaged peers.

 

Academic research, tracking families from every socio-economic group, found that children born into low-income families heard, by age three, roughly 30 million fewer words than those from more affluent backgrounds.  Recent Stanford University analysis found an intellectual processing gap that appears as early as 18 months as a consequence. 

 

Underserved students also begin school with much less well-developed background knowledge, numeracy, comprehension and behavioral skills than those acquired by classmates with parents of greater means.

 

The word gap, and skill behavior differences, drive what is known as the achievement gap.  Because disadvantaged students arrive at kindergarten millions of words behind their peers and lack early learning skills, they perform much less well at school, with negative effects that last a lifetime.

 

Ending the achievement gap in preschool can break the endless cycle of “school turnarounds,” student dropouts, wasted lives and lost potential that frequently comes at a high social cost.  Erasing the achievement gap before kindergarten would get K through 12 education out of the business of what Secretary Duncan calls “playing catch-up.”

 

Sadly, current political dialogue only scratches the surface in terms of real solutions.

 

Much discussion revolves around Head Start, a Great Society anti-child poverty program that has radically improved nutrition and social services for economically disadvantaged children.  However, Head Start is not designed to provide a robust language, vocabulary, and early literacy component to prepare more children for school readiness. 

 

Discussion of Head Start has been captured by opponents keen to cut its funding and supporters who want to spend more.  Both sides miss the point: are scarce taxpayer resources invested effectively? Improving Head Start by replicating the way public charter schools have been authorized is one path forward.  This means considering time-limited performance contracts awarded with grants for planning and education program development, and with operators held accountable for results. 

 

Add to this confused debate advocates' overstating the effect of forty-year-old longitudinal studies.  The Perry Preschool study in Michigan, conducted in the 1960s, and the North Carolina Abecedarian Project, observed during the 1970s, demonstrated significant long-term benefits.  But enthusiasts argue that the effects of these evidence-based programs are common to all early childhood programs.  That isn't realistic.

 

By contrast, recent multi-year statewide research conducted from 2005 to 2012 by the National Institute for Early Education in New Jersey revealed strong gains from a state Supreme Court-mandated early education program.

 

The study concluded that, over two years, New Jersey’s initiative closed about half of the achievement gap between low-income children and their more privileged counterparts before kindergarten.  Evidence-based programs such as Every Child Ready have been similarly effective. 

 

Quality early learning should be defined in terms of important measurable outcomes that lead to success in school.  Such proven programs need to be brought to scale.

 

The achievement gap deprives us all of skills that disadvantaged students never develop.  How many doctors, engineers and scientists, among other valuable professionals, does society lose?

 

Public education could be the great equalizer it is supposed to be by closing the achievement gap before kindergarten.  Intelligently investing in genuinely effective early education is the way forward.

 

McCarthy is president and CEO of the Appletree Institute for Education Innovation.

 

 

I'm an optimistic person. You would have to be to advocate school choice as a solution to the seemingly intractable problems associated with public education in the inner city. I remember back in the dark days before charter schools became popular I would suggest that if parents were given the freedom to decide were their children could learn we could fix the schools. People would simply laugh. "How can poor uneducated adults pick a quality school for their kids," they would sarcastically reply. But when the doors opened allowing students to be taught in an alternative system we learned a new term when it came to Pre-Kindergarten to high school public education and that word was "wait list."

 

After almost two decades of struggle that has left many of us reformers physically and mentally exhausted we have finally made real progress in the District of Columbia. 44 percent of all public school students, over 36,000 kids, now attend a charter school. They now number 60 on 106 campuses. Some of the highest performing charter operators in the country such as Democracy Prep, Rocketship, and Harmony are opening franchises here. We are beginning to see many of our schools, such as D.C. Prep, Achievement Prep, KIPP, Thurgood Marshall Academy, and Friendship, for the first time in history closing the academic achievement gap between blacks and whites.

 

The exodus of families from the traditional schools forced the traditional schools to improve, as predicted by school choice theorists. Mr. Fenty orchestrated a Mayoral takeover of DCPS. He appointed Michelle Rhee as Chancellor who began some of the extremely difficult transformations needed to improve the regular schools such as an end to tenure protected teaching positions and implementing a pedagogical evaluation system tied partially to student standardized test scores. Kaya Henderson, who initiated many of the changes while working under Miss Rhee, replaced her as the head of DCPS with the election of Vincent Gray. Her tireless efforts to bring positive advancements to her school system have so far resulted in the second year in a row of enrollment increases. A rise in academic performance for underprivileged children are sure to follow.

 

While many were concerned that the Mayor would not have the stomach to continue reforms started by his predecessor he has demonstrated that they would continue at a new unimpeded pace. He has steadfastly stood by the efforts of Ms. Henderson. His appointment of Abigail Smith as Deputy Mayor for Education has resulted in a new norm for turning shuttered DCPS facilities over to charters. Her Adequacy Study for the first time detailed in print by the government the illegal funding of the traditional schools outside of the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula and included recommendations for making charters whole.

 

There is also, and this is no less significant than everything else I have mentioned, a new cooperation between charters and the traditional schools. There are numerous examples of this such as the recently developed common lottery and the D.C. Education Festival, a public education fair that for the first time included institutions from both school systems.

 

No one can underestimate how important all of these steps have been to all of the stakeholders in public education in the nation's capital. But now a new cloud hangs over Mayor Gray, one that could certainly end his time in office. I'm terribly concerned that the progress we have recently enjoyed will then begin to recede. Without Mr. Gray there may be no more Chancellor Henderson and Ms. Smith will be replaced.

 

Therefore, in order to protect the hard fought reforms that we have achieved I think we should call for candidates running for the city's highest offer to dedicate themselves to not turning back. They should commit upfront to maintaining the policies that are already in place. The recommendations of the Adequacy Study should go forward. Charters need to be able to maintain the independence that has allowed academic achievement to flourish. Closed DCPS buildings have to be part of the solution to the charter school facility problem. Finally, Kaya Henderson must be allowed to finish the work she has started.

 

 

DURING HIS successful campaign for New York mayor, Bill de Blasio (D) made clear that he had a different, less favorable view of public charter schools than did his predecessor. But even charter advocates who feared the worst wouldn’t have predicted that Mr. de Blasio would kick a high-achieving charter school out of its building, leaving hundreds of parents wondering where their children will attend classes next fall.

 

Success Academy Harlem 4, whose students boast some of the highest math scores in New York state, faces an uncertain fate in light of Mr. de Blasio’s decision to deny it free space. The school, in operation since 2008, is part of the Success Academy chain, which serves minority and low-income children with impressive results. The chain’s chief executive, Eva Moskowitz, is a political rival of the mayor; during the campaign, he said of her: “She has to stop being tolerated, enabled, supported.” Mr. de Blasio also rescinded the co-locations of two planned Success schools that had been approved by former mayor Michael Bloomberg.

 

The de Blasio administration has pushed back on suggestions that its decisions were politically motivated. Officials complain that decisions about school space were rushed by the Bloomberg administration so as to tie their hands; they say that the majority of co-locations, in which charters share space with traditional schools, were approved, including five other proposals from Success Academy. That is small consolation to such parents as Maria Rodriguez, who told us that she is beside herself with worry over where her three children will go if Success Academy has to shut its doors.“This is the future of my children they are playing games with,” she said, dismissing the nearby failing traditional schools as an option.

 

The city’s indifference to the success of this school (shouldn’t performance be a factor in who gets space?) is, unfortunately, emblematic of Mr. de Blasio’s stance toward charters. His newly revised capital budget shifts $210 million from charter schools to boost other programs. Charter schools serve about 6 percent of the New York City student population. Mr. de Blasio is correct in saying they aren’t the silver bullet to fixing public education, but they play an important role, and it’s illogical to deny them the support merited by their importance to poor and traditionally neglected students.

 

 

Teach for America, which places thousands of freshly minted college graduates in teaching jobs in some of the toughest schools in the country, is rethinking its training program in light of complaints from its own members that they need more preparation for the classroom.

 

The organization announced last week that it will launch a pilot program to offer TFA recruits a year of classes in educational theory and pedagogy, along with hands-on classroom experience, while they are still in college and before they begin teaching full-time.

 

Since its founding in 1990, TFA has provided its recruits five weeks of training in the summer before they begin teaching, a model that has been attacked as insufficient by both outside critics and TFA members.

 

Matt Kramer, who joined Elisa Villaneuva Beard in taking the helm of TFA last year from founder Wendy Kopp, said he and Beard decided to test a new training approach after a nationwide “listening tour” where they met with TFA members, school officials and community leaders.

 

“We heard there was lots of opportunity to get better,” Kramer said. “People told us ‘this is incredibly hard, and I need more support.’”

 

In recent years, former TFA corps members have been increasingly speaking up about problems with the program. A Web site “Students Resisting TFA” launched last year, and while TFA is active in many states, there has been some pushback. In May, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed an item in a bill that would have given $1.5 million to Teach for America over two years, saying he didn’t think the state should give tax dollars to an organization with assets of more than $350 million.

 

Olivia Blanchard, a 2011 TFA recruit who quit halfway through her stint in an Atlanta public school, faulted the organization’s training model. In an essay published in the Atlantic last year, Blanchard detailed problems with TFA’s model.

 

“Regardless of your position on TFA as a concept, I think most people can agree that the current training model is fundamentally inadequate, which is both harmful to students and insulting to ‘traditionally’ trained teachers,” Blanchard wrote in an e-mail from Oxford University, where she is earning a master’s degree.

 

Details are still being worked out, but TFA intends to offer the pilot program to about 500 college juniors who have applied early to TFA and been accepted into the program, he said. Most corps members apply in their senior year in college.

 

The college juniors accepted to begin teaching in the 2015-2016 school year will be offered the opportunity to take education classes in their senior year, and to practice skills in actual classrooms, Kramer said. TFA has not decided whether those courses would be taken online or through a participating university near the student, he said.

 

“With this extra pre-service year, we’ll give them more time to absorb the foundational knowledge all teachers need, more space to reflect on the role they are about to step into, and more time to directly practice the skills they’ll need as educators – skills like delivering a lesson or managing a classroom,” Kramer told a TFA gathering last week in Nashville.

 

Linda Darling Hammond, an expert on teacher education at Stanford University, said TFA’s pilot program sounds like “an inch forward” in the right direction. A better approach would be a year devoted to coursework about teaching and learning paired with student teaching under the tutelage of a master educator, she said. That’s a format followed by Stanford, Columbia and other universities as part of graduate programs in education.

 

Kramer said TFA will also encourage corps members to stick with teaching beyond their two-year commitment, answering another frequent criticism — that too many TFA educators leave the classroom before they’ve mastered the skills and create churn that destabilizes schools.

 

The changes at TFA come at a time when applications are below projections, and the organization says it is unlikely to meet its target of 6,300 new corps members for the next school year.

 

To date, TFA has received about 50,000 applications for the 2014-2015 school year, a 12 percent drop compared with last year’s applicant pool of 57,000, Kramer said. He attributes the drop to an improving economy coupled with the bitter political divisions around public education.

 

“The conversation in education right now is really poisonous, and that is tragic,” Kramer said. “People are sending a message to college seniors that the world would be better off if they went to make money in private sector somehow than go down the Rio Grande Valley to teach kids who really need great teaching,” he said.

 

This school year, there are 11,000 TFA members teaching in 3,200 schools, the organization said.