NEPC Press Releases

Charter Schools: How Many Bucks for the Desired Bang?

elaine — Thu, 03 May 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Contact: Bruce Baker, (732) 932-7496, x8232, bruce.baker@gse.rutgers.edu
William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/d8dlmeb

BOULDER, CO (May 3, 2012) — Do charter schools live up to their supporters’ claim that they deliver a better education for less money?

While previous research has focused on the first half of that claim – education quality -- a new report published by the National Education Policy Center examines the second half – what charters spend.

Schools operated by major charter management organizations (CMOs) generally spend more than surrounding public schools, according to Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations: Comparing Charter School & Local Public District Financial Resources in New York, Ohio and Texas.

The finding is significant, especially when programs such as the U.S. Department’s “Race to the Top” are directing more resources to charters deemed to be successful. The NEPC report presents new research on this question by Rutgers University Education Professor Bruce Baker, working with University of Colorado Boulder doctoral students Ken Libby and Kathryn Wiley. The research team examined spending in New York City, Ohio and Texas.

“Charter school finances are hard to measure,” says Baker. “Charters generally receive both public and private funds. Also, in-kind assistance and resources from districts and states to charters vary greatly. Yet we can see that the most successful charters, such as KIPP and the Achievement First schools, have substantially deeper pockets than nearby traditional schools.”

The report explains that most studies highlighting or documenting a successful charter school have sidestepped or downplayed cost implications while focusing on specific programs and strategies in those schools. The broad conclusion across these studies is that charter schools or traditional public schools can produce dramatic improvements to student outcomes in the short- and long-term by implementing “no excuses” strategies and perhaps wrap-around services. Most charter school studies conclude that these strategies either come with potentially negligible costs, or that higher costs, if any, are worthwhile since they yield a substantial return.

But according to Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations, a “marginal expense” may be larger than it sounds. An additional $1,837 expense in Houston for a KIPP charter school, where the average middle school operating expenditure per pupil is $7,911, equals a 23 to 30 percent cost increase.

“A 30 percent increase in funding is a substantial increase by most people’s definition,” says Baker.

The study compares per-pupil spending of charter schools operated by CMOs to the spending in nearby district schools. The report’s authors examined three years of data, including information on school-level spending per pupil, school size, grade ranges and student populations served. For charter schools, the report’s authors drew spending data from government (and authorizer) reports as well as IRS non-profit financial filings (IRS 990s). Notably, the data from these two different sources matched only for New York City; the data reported for Texas and Ohio from the two sources varied considerably.

The study found many high-profile charter network schools to be outspending similar district schools in New York City and Texas. But it also found instances where charter network schools are spending less than similar district schools, particularly in Ohio. In Ohio, charters across the board spend less than district schools in the same city.

In contrast, KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools charter schools in New York City, spend substantially more ($2,000 to $4,300 per pupil) than similar district schools. Given that the average spending per pupil was around $12,000 to $14,000 citywide, a nearly $4,000 difference in spending amounts to an increase of some 30 percent.

Similarly, some charter chains in Texas, such as KIPP, spend substantially more per pupil than district schools in the same city and serving similar populations. In some Texas cities (and at the middle school level), these charters spend around 30 to 50 percent more based on state reported current expenditures. If the data from IRS filings are used, these charters are found to spend 50 to 100 percent more.

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado Boulder produced Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations: Comparing Charter School & Local Public District Financial Resources in New York, Ohio and Texas, with funding from the Albert Shanker Institute (http://www.shankerinstitute.org/) and from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice (http://www.greatlakescenter.org).

The report is available on the National Education Policy Center website at: http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/spending-major-charter.

The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence. For more information on NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/

Report Identifies Racial, Gender Disparities in Colorado School Discipline

elaine — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Contact:

Ryan Pfleger, (202) 270-0028
William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/cmnlrhc

BOULDER, CO April 30, 2012 -- A new report confirms the existence of suspected disparities in school discipline in Colorado and calls for further research as well as policy changes.

The report, Colorado Disciplinary Practices, 2008-2010: Disciplinary Actions, Student Behaviors, Race, and Gender, is published today by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. It is written by University of Colorado Boulder graduate students Ryan Pfleger and Kathryn Wiley.

The report comes as the Colorado legislature has recently taken school discipline policies under review, pursuant to SB 11-133. The report analyzes the most complete set of Colorado discipline data, and according to the authors, “adds to and reinforces existing studies, documenting some troubling patterns, and suggests important changes in policy and in future data gathering.”

Among the report’s findings:

Behavior categories identified as discretionary – meaning that schools have latitude in choosing what disciplinary measures to employ as a consequence of those behaviors – account for the vast majority (85.5 percent) of student behavioral incidents in the two years from 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years. Such behaviors include disobedience, detrimental behaviors, and “other” violations.
Schools are, on average, more likely to assign out-of-school suspensions than any other disciplinary action. The next most common category is in-school suspensions.
Higher percentages of Black, American Indian, and Latino students receive disciplinary actions compared with White and Asian American students. Black students and other students of color are assigned out-of-school suspensions at rates far higher than White or Asian students.

The authors note that while past research has shown patterns in which certain racial groups are assigned discipline disproportionate to any race-identified differences in behaviors. The Colorado datasets do not allow for such analysis, however.

The authors identify two policy issues from their data. The first is whether racial disproportionality reflects a disproportionate number of students of color engaging in certain types of behaviors, or whether it reflects students of color being punished for behaviors that White students engage in without such serious consequences. The second issue involves out-of-school suspensions and the negative consequences, such as the higher dropout rates, correlated with this type of disciplinary action.

They urge the consideration of remedies to address the frequent use of out-of-school suspensions, and in particular its frequent use for students of color. They recommend revising school discipline policy to take into account the over representation of students of color in disciplinary actions, as well as the collection of additional data to further understand patterns and reasons for those patterns in disciplinary practice.

Find Colorado Disciplinary Practices, 2008-2010: Disciplinary Actions, Student Behaviors, Race, and Gender, by Ryan Pfleger and Kathryn Wiley, on the web at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/colorado-disciplinary-practices.

The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence. For more information on NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.

Reports, Reviews Offer Little to Commend Milwaukee Voucher Schools

elaine — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Contact:

William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Casey D. Cobb, (860) 486-6278, casey.cobb@uconn.edu

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/7agpr5w

BOULDER, CO (April 19, 2012) – Three recent reports on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), produced by the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas use largely sound methods, but the data they assemble provide little to support the 22-year-old school voucher program.

Those are the conclusions of three separate reviews released today of the reports.

The reviews are all written by Casey D. Cobb of the University of Connecticut. They are published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.

The three reports were produced by the School Choice Demonstration Project, which has conducted a five-year longitudinal growth study of the Milwaukee voucher program. Milwaukee’s program, which was created by state legislation in 1990, enables low-income residents of the Milwaukee Public School district (MPS) to enroll at taxpayer expense in private schools that have been certified by the state Department of Public Instruction.

The reports under review are Nos. 29, 30, and 32, two of which offered what superficially appear to be positive findings:

A sample of elementary and middle school MPCP students outperformed a matched sample of Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) students in reading in the fifth year of the program. The MPCP sample also showed trends of outscoring the MPS sample in math, but these were not statistically significant (No. 29).
Voucher students who attended a private school in 8th or 9th grade in 2006 “were more likely to graduate high school,” “enroll in a four-year post-secondary institution,” and “persist in that four-year institution beyond the first year of enrollment” (No. 30).
Comparisons of the test performance of MPCP students with that of a sample of students from the Milwaukee Public Schools revealed mixed findings with no clear pattern (No. 32). For example, a sample of low-income MPS students scored higher than MPCP students on average in 4th grade reading, math, and science, and in 8th and 10th grade math. The MPCP students scored higher than the MPS sample in 8th and 10th grade reading and science.

In his reviews, Cobb found that the study comparing voucher and MPS elementary and middle school test-scores (No. 29) used sound and appropriately qualified methods. But he also cautioned that the study overgeneralized its findings.

The report’s authors acknowledged that their findings were surprising in light of earlier data showing no differences between MPCP and MPS samples, and the report suggested that the jump in the final year may be due to the introduction of a high-stakes accountability policy for the private schools just before the fifth year. But in his review, Cobb observes that the failure of math scores to similarly jump for the voucher students raises questions about that explanation – as well as about what if anything can be learned from the study as a result.

Regarding the study comparing graduation and post-secondary enrollment and persistence rates of MPS and MPCP students (No. 30), Cobb raised methodological concerns.

By 12^th grade, he notes, roughly three out of four of the original 801 MPCP 9^th graders were no longer enrolled in a participating private school. The sample attrition “severely clouded” the inferences that could be legitimately drawn about MPCP’s real impact on graduation rates.

Additionally, only one of the findings in the study’s most carefully controlled analytic models was statistically significant by conventional measures. Both limitations, Cobb writes, prevent broad conclusions about whether MPCP really improves graduation and higher education continuation rates over MPS.

Of the third study, on comparative test performance of MPCP and MPS students in grades 4, 8 and 10 in reading, math, and science, Cobb agrees that it reveals mixed findings with no clear pattern. MPS students scored higher than MPCP students in fourth grade in all three areas, and in eighth and 10^th grade in math. MPCP students, however, scored higher than MPS students in reading and science in those two upper grades.

“The results are not particularly useful beyond providing a snapshot of how MPCP students and a comparison group of low-income MPS students performed on a battery of state exams,” Cobb writes. Moreover, a supplementary analysis identifying more “very low” performing MPS schools employed “arbitrary cut scores” and was potentially biased by unequal group sample sizes, he adds.

None of the three reports, Cobb concludes, provide substantial support for the voucher program. To some extent, this is because of specific methodological or analytical shortcomings. But it’s also because the data and the reports simply fail to demonstrate that voucher schools are associated with improved outcomes.

Find Casey D. Cobb’s reviews on the NEPC website at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-Milwaukee-Choice-Year-5.

Find the three reports from the Milwaukee School Choice Demonstration Project on the web at:

http://www.uaedreform.org/SCDP/Milwaukee_Research.html.

The Think Twice think tank review project (http://thinktankreview.org) of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. The Think Twice think tank review project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/

Report on Teachers in Digital Age Lacks Rigor of Evidence

elaine — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Contact:

William J. Mathis, (802) 282-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Luis A. Huerta, (212)-531-1638, huerta@tc.columbia.edu

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/bslolbm

BOULDER, CO (April 3, 2012) – The Fordham Institute’s Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction, an advocacy document outlining a vision for how technology might transform the teaching profession, provides little or no empirical research evidence to support its central claim that digital age technologies will improve the education system, according to a new review.

The report was reviewed for the Think Twice think tank review project by Luis Huerta of Teachers College at Columbia University. The review is published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.

Huerta writes in his review that the report’s rationale is based on claims that the current education system lacks the capacity to support revolutionary changes needed to unleash the technological innovations of online instruction that will yield increased effectiveness and efficiency.

The report explains that effective teachers are central to the demands of online instruction and will be even more necessary in the digital age than in the current system. It asserts that the elements that constitute effective teaching can be broken down into discrete skills and then packaged and distributed to a wider group of learners via digital media.

Harnessing the talents of effective teachers will be critical in both meeting the needs of students and in making teaching a “true profession” (p. 2) through increased specialization and tiered salary structures, the report asserts.

Huerta notes that while the report addresses an important topic, the empirical research evidence to support its fundamental premise is insufficient and inadequate. Consequently, he concludes, the report amounts to only a vision of what changes might be necessary as the digital revolution comes of age in public education.

Find Luis Huerta’s review on the NEPC website at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-teachers-digital-age

Find Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction, by Brian and Emily Hassel on the web at:

http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/teachers-in-the-age-of-digital-instruction.html

This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/

Review Debunks Desegregation Claims: Report Ignores Contradictory Research, Attacks ‘Straw Men’

elaine — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Contact:

William J. Mathis, (802) 282-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Susan Eaton, 617-216-6388, seaton@law.harvard.edu

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/cqabxfw

BOULDER, CO (March 29, 2012) – A recent report that claims school desegregation has failed is based on misrepresentations of proposals that it criticizes and ignores an extensive body of research literature whose findings do not support the report’s conclusions, according to a new review.

The report was reviewed for the Think Twice think tank review project by Susan Eaton of Harvard Law School. The review is published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.

Eaton reviewed Our Immense Achievement Gap: Embracing Proven Remedies While Avoiding a Race-Based Recipe for Disaster, written by Katherine Kersten and published by the Center for the American Experiment in Minneapolis.

Eaton, in her review, finds that the report misrepresents and then criticizes recommendations from the Minnesota Department of Education, a think tank and two independent study groups, each of which recently encouraged particular voluntary efforts to reduce concentrated poverty and achieve racial and socioeconomic integration in schools and housing in Minnesota.

In building its case against the recommendations of these bodies, Eaton writes, the report sets up and attacks two straw men -- “busing” and “lawsuits” -- neither of which was recommended by the organizations.

The author relies heavily on selected research literature to make its arguments but ignores dozens of the most important peer-reviewed research studies that suggest strong relationships between racial, ethnic, economic diversity/desegregation and academic gains, Eaton finds. The report also relies heavily on anecdotes about desegregation policies and funding-equalization efforts in several states.

While endorsing accountability-based reforms of the sort implemented in Florida, the report fails to fully explore what is actually known about the results of such policies. Investigations into the programs in Florida strongly suggest that claims of success about the state’s accountability measures and teacher-accreditation practices are often unsubstantiated or exaggerated.

In attacking the wrong targets, Eaton concludes, the report distracts rather than focuses the attention of policymakers seeking to close the achievement gap.

Find Susan Eaton’s review on the NEPC website at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-immense-achievement-gap.

Find Our Immense Achievement Gap: Embracing Proven Remedies While Avoiding a Race-Based Recipe for Disaster, by Katherine Kersten, on the web at:

http://www.amexp.org/sites/default/files/article_pdf/Our%20Immense%20Achievement%20Gap%20WEB.pdf.

This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/.

Freer Rein for Online Learning Programs? Review Finds No Evidence to Support Unrestricted Expansion

elaine — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 21:08:25 +0000

Contact:

William J. Mathis, (802) 282-0058, wmathis@sover.net

Michael Barbour, 313-577-8349, mkbarbour@gmail.com

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/75r9wj7

BOULDER, CO (March 22, 2010) – Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning, the fifth and final paper in the Fordham Institute’s series examining digital learning policy, proposes steps to move the governance of K-12 online learning from the local district level to the less restrictive state level and to create a free market for corporate innovation in K-12 online learning.

In a new review of the report for the Think Twice think tank review project, Michael K. Barbour of Wayne State University finds that its central premise—that K-12 online learning will lead to increased student achievement—lacks support.

Reviewer Barbour has been involved with K-12 online learning in Canada, the United States and New Zealand for more than a decade as a researcher, teacher, course designer and administrator. His research focuses on the effective design, delivery and support of K-12 online learning, particularly for students located in rural jurisdictions

The review is published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.

Barbour observes that the body of research to date suggests that there is no learning advantage for virtual schools.

Further, no evidence is presented that supports the wisdom or efficacy of centralizing governance at the state level or that moving to a market model is a superior, productive, or economical practice, he writes.

Barbour observes that the recommendation that virtual schools should be funded at the same per-pupil amount as traditional public schools raises the question of profiteering, given Fordham’s claim that virtual schools operate more economically—a claim for which is limited evidence.

The report, he concludes, appears to be ideologically motivated and designed to open up the $600 billion market of K-12 education to for-profit corporations.

Find Michael Barbour’s review on the NEPC website at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-overcoming-governance

Find Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning, by John E. Chubb on the web at:

http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/overcoming-the-governance-challenge-in-k-12-online-learning.html

This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/

Review Questions Report Promoting New Orleans as School Reform Model

elaine — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 04:26:56 +0000

Contact:

William J. Mathis, (802) 282-0058, mailto:wmathis@sover.net

Kristen L. Buras (404) 413-8030, kburas@gsu.edu

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/78flp7v

BOULDER, CO (March 20, 2012) – In its report, The Louisiana Recovery School District: Lessons for the Buckeye State, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute criticizes local urban governance structures and presents the decentralized, charter-school-driven Recovery School District (RSD) in New Orleans as a successful model for fiscal and academic performance.

Reviewing the report for the Think Twice think tank review project, Kristen Buras of Georgia State University writes that the report ignores the distinctive history of New Orleans and fails to provide evidence for its claims.

The review is published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.

Buras, a native of New Orleans, is coauthor of Pedagogy, Policy, and the Privatized City: Stories of Dispossession and Defiance from New Orleans. Her research on educational reform in New Orleans has been published in Harvard Educational Review and Race Ethnicity and Education, and in edited books such as Schooling and the Politics of Disaster and The Assault on Public Education.

In her review, Buras notes that the Fordham report, which is written by Nelson Smith, lacks any consideration of the chronic under-funding and racial history of New Orleans public schools before Hurricane Katrina. No evidence is provided that a conversion to charter schools would remedy these problems.

The report also misreads the achievement data to assert the success of the RSD when the claimed gains may be simply a function of shifting test standards. The report touts the replacement of senior teachers with new and non-traditionally prepared teachers, but it provides no evidence of the efficacy of this practice.

Additionally, the report claims public support for the reforms, Buras writes, yet other indicators reveal serious concerns over access, equity, performance, and accountability.

“Ultimately, the report is a polemic advocating the removal of public governance and the replacement of public schools with privately operated charter networks,” Buras concludes. “It is thin on data and thick on claims, and should be read with great caution by policymakers in Ohio and elsewhere.”

Find Kristen Buras’s review on the NEPC website at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-louisiana-recovery-buckeye.

Find The Louisiana Recovery School District: Lessons for the Buckeye State, by Nelson Smith, on the web at:

http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/the-louisiana-recovery-school-district.html.

This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/.

Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project Makes Important Contribution to Research Base

elaine — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:36:44 +0000

Highlights the Variability in Teacher Performance Measures Based on Classroom Observation Instruments, Raises Important Questions

Contact:

William J. Mathis, (802) 282-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Cassandra Guarino, (812) 856-2927, guarino@indiana.edu
Brian Stacy, (843) 696-5496, stacybri@msu.edu

Note: The following release replaces the original NEPC release, which failed to reflect final edits.

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/82zrr3d

BOULDER, CO (March 13, 2012) – The Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, published by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, examines several methods of evaluating teacher performance, including so-called value-added measures, the subject of much recent attention.

The project's second report, Gathering Feedback for Teaching: Combining High-Quality Observation with Student Surveys and Achievement Gains, focuses on analyzing ratings of classroom observations using a variety of observation instruments. Cassandra Guarino of Indiana University and Brian Stacy of Michigan State University reviewed it for the Think Twice think tank review project. The review is published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.

Reviewers Guarino and Stacy question the emphasis placed on validating classroom observations with test score gains. Observation scores may pick up different aspects of teacher quality than do test-based measures. It is possible that neither type of measure used in isolation captures a teacher's contribution to all the useful skills that students learn in schools. From this standpoint, the authors' conclusion that multiple measures of teacher effectiveness are needed is justifiable.

The omission of relevant information is a shortcoming of the report. Key details regarding the study design and methodological approach are lacking.

The review provoked several important questions to consider:

Given the cost and painstaking efforts required to train classroom observers, can districts implement a classroom-evaluation system that creates a highly reliable measure?
Do the classroom observations pick up on non-cognitive skills?
Can the feedback they provide improve teaching effectiveness in a meaningful way?

The authors conclude that the report offers ground-breaking descriptive information regarding classroom observation tools and raises many questions to be addressed in future research. It takes a large step forward but only scratches the surface in exploring how these measures can best be used or improved upon as evaluation tools.

Find the review by Cassandra Guarino and Brian Stacy on the NEPC website at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-gathering-feedback

Find Gathering Feedback for Teaching: Combining High-Quality Observation with Student Surveys and Achievement Gains, by Thomas J. Kane and Douglas O. Staiger, on the web at:

http://www.metproject.org/reports.php

The Think Twice think tank review project (http://thinktankreview.org) of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. The Think Twice think tank review project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/

Online School Cost Comparisons Rest on Problematic Data, Methods

elaine — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:08:46 +0000

Contact:

Jennifer King Rice, (301) 405-5580, jkr@umd.edu

William J. Mathis, (802) 282-0058, wmathis@sover.net

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/7zmgwbo

BOULDER, CO (March 6, 2012) – Schools and school systems throughout the nation are increasingly experimenting with using various instructional technologies to improve productivity and decrease costs, but evidence on both the effectiveness and the costs of education technology is limited.

A recent report published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute sets out to describe “the size and range of the critical cost drivers for online schools in comparison to traditional brick-and-mortar schools.” The report, The Costs of Online Learning, was written by Tamara Butler Battaglino, Matt Haldeman, and Eleanor Laurans of the Parthenon Group, a Boston business consulting firm. It was published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

The report was reviewed for the Think Twice think tank review project by Jennifer King Rice, a Universityof Maryland education professor whose research interests include education policy, education productivity, and cost analysis applications to education.

Rice writes that the study divides online learning into two broad categories—virtual schools and blended-learning schools—and, based on data from 50 experts, reports that “the average overall per-pupil costs of both models are significantly lower than the $10,000 national average for traditional brick-and-mortar schools.”

These findings, however, are undermined by a general lack of clarity about the models being studied and problematic data and methods.

While the report addresses an important topic, the utility of its cost estimates are limited. Of more value are the qualitative findings about how various cost drivers affect the overall costs of online learning. The study would be more useful if it provided a rigorous analysis of a set of well-defined promising models of online learning as the basis for its cost estimates.

Find Jennifer King Rice’s review on the NEPC website at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-cost-of-online

Find The Costs of Online Learning, by Tamara Butler Battaglino, Matt Haldeman, and Eleanor Laurans, online at:

http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/the-costs-of-online-learning.html.

This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/

Report about U.K.-Style School Inspection Not Useful in Determining if Approach is OK for U.S.A.

faith — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Recent Education Sector report promoting English system of school inspections presents advocacy, but little evidence

Contact:

Jamie Horwitz, (202) 549-4921, jhdcpr@starpower.net

Steven Jay Gross, (215) 204-8064, sgross02@temple.edu

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/82m54n2

BOULDER, CO (February 28, 2012) – A recent report from the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Education Sector urges American educators to look to an English system of school inspections as a means of assessing schools and as a tool for guiding policymakers and educators to better understand and improve student achievement. A new review of that report from the National Education Policy Center, however, finds that the document lacks any research base and has little to offer any discussions of education reform on this side of the Atlantic.

Evaluating schools is a hot topic amid current debates over reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act. Education Sector’s report suggests that the English system of reviewing schools is a worthwhile alternative to evaluating schools based on high-stakes testing. The report, On Her Majesty’s School Inspection Service, by Craig D. Jerald, was reviewed for NEPC’s Think Twice think tank review project by Steven Jay Gross of Temple University.

Jerald’s report offers an outline of the English inspection system, the rubrics it uses to judge teaching, the characteristics of inspectors, and the potential costs of implementing such a system in this country. These descriptions may be useful to many readers in introducing the approach. What the report doesn’t offer, according to Gross, is any research to support the efficacy of the approach – or, for that matter, to demonstrate any faults it might have.

“No research questions are posed and few examples from the extensive literature on English school inspections are offered, thereby excluding scholarship that is critical of the inspection process or of the concept of the inspection service itself,” writes Gross in his review. While the report does present data from recent inspections results, neither those data nor other data in the document are analyzed.

“Because there is no research question, no formal method, little reference to the literature, and little analysis of data, readers are dealing with a testimonial,” Gross continues.

At bottom, the report is a descriptive and journalistic account of the English system, and it is an advocacy document. Lacking any research questions or research-based evidence to analyze, Gross points out that the report is ineffective in three key areas: building the case for the English inspection system, alerting readers to challenges to that system, and illuminating the evaluation of quality teaching under the system.

In the end, Gross writes, the report leaves many relevant questions unasked and unanswered, and it never engages an extensive body of literature critiquing the English inspection system. Further, in the area of assessing teacher quality, while the report includes language from the inspection system’s teacher-assessment rubric, it never explains how inspectors can make accurate evaluations against that rubric “based on only two days of observation in which each inspector is required to see more than one classroom.”

Even assuming that an English-style inspection system does have solid evidence to support it, the report never acknowledges the enormous challenges likely to face any attempt to graft such a system onto the American education system, especially under the current twin pressures of time and money facing public schools across the country.

“In order to make sound judgments, states need clear information about alternative approaches, hence the possible attraction of publications such as the one reviewed here,” Gross concludes. Given its shortcomings, though, “the potential for On Her Majesty’s School Inspection Service to provide such help is marginal at best.”

Find Steven Gross’s review on the NEPC website at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-on-her-majestys

Find On Her Majesty’s School Inspection Service, by Craig D. Jerald, on the web at:

http://www.educationsector.org/sites/default/files/publications/UKInspections-RELEASED.pdf

This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/