Extra Credit

Most of what we hear about juvenile facilities is bad. Here’s a good program.

Reid Cramer from the New America Foundation has this report. I’m not sure if it will work, but it seems worth paying attention to.

Money quote:

Rather than identifying amorphous targets or unattainable goals, Mayor Bloomberg committed himself to remaking the toolbox. And he pledged $150 million a year to do so, some of it to be raised in the private sector. Much of the money will be used to try and test out new approaches. At the center of the effort is a newly-formed city office, called the Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO), which is designed to operate as a combination of a philanthropic foundation and a venture capital fund. This office will be charged with seeding innovation by supporting a range of experimental programs. But in addition to investing in R&D, the CEO will be in charge of evaluating the results, so programs that demonstrate success in reducing poverty can be built upon and those that don’t can be shut down. This results and evidence-based approach is gaining momentum in other areas of government, increasingly influencing budget decisions at the federal and state level, but the funding of policy innovation, especially in anti-poverty program at the local level, is breaking new ground.

In light of claims that Bloomberg’s team has manipulated school test score data, one hopes that they will be honest about the evidence.

My friend Paul Butler, esteemed law professor at George Washington University, and Black man, is always running into the police. As he puts it, “in terms of the race/gender permutations of 21st century urban police forces, I’ve had statistically significant interactions with cops who are white men and women, African-American men and women, and Hispanic men.” His latest account is worth a read.

In my education law classes, I normally say no. Or at least not normally. And Jim Ryan at UVA law school has written that we should be skeptical that these efforts will work. This new report suggests that maybe one has made a difference: Williams v. California, a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of students in California’s lowest-performing schools. The report is produced by the lawyers who brought the lawsuit, so there’s plenty of potential bias. But it is worth keeping an eye on.

Some blog posts are drivel. Many more are average. A few are great.

Whether you think about accountability from a schools perspective or a criminal justice angle, this is laughable:

Thanks PREA Prez

The Quick and the Ed has the latest on 2 important new reports. Ed Trust exposes how little states pay attention to graduation rates, and The National Center for Education Statistics has a massive statistical analysis on the background of who goes into teaching and what happens once they get there.

In light of my recent exchange with Joe Williams on merit pay, I cannot omit this latest from Ed Week.

Strategies for luring more students and working adults into math and science teaching have proved as popular among elected officials as financial incentives, which try to make one of the least appealing aspects of the job—low pay—a little less daunting.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are considering a number of bills that would expand existing incentives, such as scholarships and loan forgiveness for aspiring educators, and create new monetary inducements. Dozens of states, meanwhile, already offer their own incentives for teachers in subjects with shortages, including mathematics and science.

But those who have studied financial incentives say evidence is scant that they are attracting substantial numbers of college students and career-changers to math and science teaching, despite years of investments in those programs.

Opinions vary on why incentives have not shown greater results. Some believe the money available is relatively insignificant when weighed against potential job candidates’ worries about poor salaries and working conditions. Others say the hodgepodge of federal, state, and local incentives is so fragmented that few potential teachers are aware of what’s available.

“There’s been virtually no research on how effective [these] options are,” said Dan Goldhaber, a research professor at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, based at the University of Washington in Seattle. “We ought to be making decisions about these programs based on something more than what might be effective, and instead base it on empirical evidence.”

I hate it when common-sense doesn’t pan out. Next thing you know we’ll find out that paying kids for better test scores doesn’t work either.

While education researches sometimes seem consumed with tearing each other apart over what works, certain interventions have been proven time and time again to make a difference. Here is the latest study from Arthur Reynolds and co. documenting the lasting benefits of high-quality early childhood programs. Ed Week’s summary is here.

My editorial accompanying the study is here (Why Prison Not Pre-School). My bottom line:

The Chicago Longitudinal Study examined a cohort of low-income students who attended preschool beginning at ages 3 and 4 years at Child-Parent Centers in Chicago. Many of the children and families received additional remedial services during the early elementary school grades. Reynolds et al tracked the students, now 24 years old, to measure the impact of the intervention on educational attainment, crime, economic status, and physical and mental health status.

The results are striking: students who received the services were more likely than a comparison group to graduate high school and attend 4-year college, more likely to be employed full-time, less likely to be involved with serious criminal behavior or to be incarcerated, and less likely to suffer depression. These results matter, they are consistent with other research on the long-term impact of quality early-childhood education, and they deserve wide attention.

Johnetta Rose Barras nails this.

The facts:

Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee tells a tale about a tour of the central administration of D.C. Public Schools that is revealing evidence of a major problem that confronts her, Mayor Adrian Fenty and other reformers.

“What do you do?” she asked several administrators, who in response offered their job titles.

“I know your title,” she continued. “I mean what do you do?”

Staffers seemed baffled. Absent a prepared script, they were unsure of the answer she sought. Eventually they replied “Whatever [my supervisor] tells me to do.”

Barras’ analysis:

These are windows into the DCPS culture, where people without relevant portfolios are retained simply because they do what they’re told - although what they’re told often has no direct connection to the education of children. And folks, like Millet, are protected by political connections. Relevance, accountability and merit are foreign terms.

Rhee has instituted a hiring freeze. Hopefully that action is an early offensive against a malignant culture that celebrates complacency, mediocrity and incompetence.

The new chancellor admits that she has fired only one individual; a couple of central administration staff have retired. She and the mayor need not wait for others to realize the jig is up. Firing clueless or poor-performing employees is a liberating experience - especially for parents and their children.