By Katie Dulaney | Lakewood Montessori School

Even as we hold schools increasingly accountable for student achievement, we rarely seem to judge schools for their performance in citizenship preparation, an inauspicious “accountability gap” for a democracy.

-Michael Johanek and John Puckett, “The State of Civic Education” (2005)

Education leaders across the political spectrum – from Michelle Rhee to Diane Ravitch – have championed or renounced the academic accountability that increasingly rests upon America’s schools. Sadly, in our focus on academic attainment, we often forget the civic side of education.

This is unfortunate. Political socialization theorists find that students are most likely to form sincere ties to their polity between the age of fourteen and their mid-twenties. As such, the health of our democracy relies to no small extent upon secondary schools as they prepare students for effective political participation – or not. Such preparation involves not only knowledge (from civics and American history), but also “[the cultivation of] the skills and virtues of deliberative citizenship,” as Amy Gutmann argues in her book Democratic Education (1999). Gutmann goes on to say that “schools ought to teach the skills and virtues of democratic deliberation within a social context.” Ideally, then, America’s schools should be concerned with the development of an individual democratic disposition and the habit of substantive participation in a functioning community.

In this essay, I seek to illustrate ways in which the Montessori philosophy and practice inherently provide the individual and communal elements required by this high standard of civic education.

Maria Montessori’s Philosophy

Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was an Italian physician who brought her scientific training to the field of education. She developed a unique, student-centric philosophy of education around which she opened a childcare center in 1900, welcoming mostly low-income, inner city students who struggled in traditional classrooms. Philosophy and practice reinforced one another as she observed her students in community.

A central tenet of Montessori’s philosophy was her belief in four planes of development: infancy, childhood, adolescence, and maturity. Although her legacy is usually associated with children aged six through twelve, her philosophy extended to adolescents as well. She believed that both infancy and adolescence were times of great creation: the former preoccupied with the creation of a person, the latter with the creation of an adult.

Montessori called the adolescent’s maturation into a socially independent person “valorization.” Simply put, valorization is the process through which adolescents realize their purpose and their ability to effect change in the world. Montessori secondary schools are therefore charged with this important task.

The Montessori tradition holds that honoring the development of each individual member of a given community naturally benefits the larger society. Marta Donahoe, the Director of the Cincinnati Montessori Teacher Education Program, put it this way: “When we all do better, we all do better.” Secondary Montessori programs therefore display an “institutional commitment” to developing democratic dispositions in a way that traditional, comprehensive schools often fail to do.

Case Study: Lakewood Montessori Middle School

I teach in a Montessori secondary school and offer it as a case study in civic education.

Lakewood Montessori is a public, magnet school serving grades 6-8 in Durham, North Carolina. It operates on a lottery system. Lakewood’s student body is never more than three hundred students, or one hundred in each grade. Students from Durham’s two magnet elementary Montessori schools are given priority admission, but between 20% and 50% of each entering class come from non-Montessori elementary schools.

As a magnet school, Lakewood provides busing all over the city, which results in a diverse student composition. Approximately a third of our students are White, a third Black, and a third Latino. During the 2013-2014 school year, 48% of our students qualified for free and reduced lunch (64.79% of Durham’s K-12 student population qualified for the same assistance). Lakewood’s twelve core teachers have been, or are in the process of becoming, licensed by the American Montessori Society. Thus, the educational experience I describe at Lakewood is representative of any licensed public or private Montessori secondary program in the country.

Lakewood expresses the Montessori philosophy in the school’s three pillars: academics, community, and self. Each component is equally prized and mutually reinforcing. Whereas students in many traditional middle schools are divided into “teams,” a term which connotes competition, Lakewood’s students are placed in “communities,” a term intentionally chosen to signify collaboration. Each community is assigned two teachers. A maximum of fifty students is assigned to each community and aside from electives, communities spend the entire day together. In order to acclimate new Montessori students to Lakewood’s routine, 6^th grade students have their own communities. 7^th and 8^th graders, however, have all of their classes together. No matter the grade level, each community spans the full range of abilities.

(Lakewood) Montessori and the Adolescent

As its pillars suggest, Lakewood strives to help adolescents grow across multiple domains. As students approach valorization, the three pillars should converge; that is, the mature graduate of Lakewood realizes that “community” cannot stand independent of “self,” and “self” depends on one’s ability to reason critically. As students develop and realize their individual abilities, they also nurture Gutmann’s democratic disposition.

Lakewood’s rituals and practices support this process. One common practice is the Socratic Seminar, which happens in all core classes and ranges in topic – from the low numbers of girls pursuing STEM careers, to literature about the Jim Crow South. In seminars, students are trained to build upon one another’s thoughts, to agree or disagree with statements rather than with people, and to pose their own questions in a collegial spirit. Teachers facilitate, but students converse. In my classes, seminars often end with more questions than answers. My students ran out of time while debating whether or not there was a hero in To Kill a Mockingbird. We didn’t reach any firm conclusions, but I heard several students still discussing the topic three weeks later.

Reflection is another path to individual development. First, students use a daily leadership rubric to reflect on their individual contributions to the community – whether in the form of academic growth, behavior, or teamwork. Leadership rubrics are turned in to teachers each day, which encourages a fluid and consistent dialogue between teachers and students.

Lakewood’s communities also host student-led conferences twice a year in which students share about their learning experiences with their parent(s) or guardian(s). The students manage the conferences entirely, and are encouraged to assess their own strengths, weaknesses, and areas of potential growth out loud.

Lastly, students practice “solo time”: the school schedule allots fifteen to twenty minutes each day for students to silently unwind, calm themselves, and practice mindfulness. Solo time reminds students that they cannot be contributing members of the community until they first take care of themselves as individuals.

Students also experience their significance to the larger group in restoring the classroom at the end of each school day. They clean the floors, return desks to their proper places, water classroom plants, restart computers, close windows, return supplies to closets, take recycling out, and turn off the lights. Each individual member sees that he or she is a necessary part of the group, and students come to regard the classroom as their space. My students facilitate this end-of-the-day routine; it has been my observation that mutual accountability fosters a healthy pride.

Valorization of the personality is a lofty enough goal that when met, adolescents will also have developed a democratic disposition.

(Lakewood) Montessori and the Community

To meet the high standard of civic education described in the opening section, secondary students must also foster collective deliberation. Lakewood’s students do this by participating in regular, student-led “community meetings.” These gatherings provide time for peers and teachers to share relevant announcements; acknowledge one another for the good they’ve seen from each other throughout the week; discuss happenings in the community that need attention; and reflect on a selected quotation, story, or idea. Each community meeting opens with the students’ answering a “greeting,” a question that gets students talking about their preferences, histories, and/or lives outside of school. The students take turns facilitating different roles throughout the year. In my own classroom, I have seen confident students model effective leadership to their peers, and shy students gradually assume leadership positions. I have also witnessed students process difficult topics such as the fatal shooting of three young Muslims in the neighboring town of Chapel Hill; the necessity of lock-down drills at school; the ways in which we understand one another’s learning and social differences; and the changing face of our community as eighth graders prepare to enter high school. Although not every meeting involves such weighty concerns, having an intentional and regular space to air these questions, thoughts, and concerns, is inherent in the Montessori way.

Inter-age grouping also highlights community cohesion. It is typical for 7th and 8th graders to spend two years in the same community. Students are defined neither by their ages nor their abilities. Children of professors sit next to children of non-citizens; my student who reads at an 11^th grade level laughs daily with a classmate who is autistic. In such ways, students at Lakewood learn to be a part of an all-inclusive community.

Within these all-inclusive communities, Lakewood’s teachers emphasize team building and social growth, primarily through group initiatives and field studies. Group initiatives are weekly activities and games that exist for the purpose of reflecting on group dynamics. Teachers typically facilitate group initiatives, but students complete the challenges and games. This forces students to manage and rely on one another. Group initiatives are always followed by group processing, where students engage in a seminar-style discussion about what worked well; what difficulties were encountered; what, if anything, was learned; and how the community might apply what they’ve learned in the group initiative in the classroom. The parallels between classroom experiences and group initiatives often generate a common language that reminds students that they belong.

Field studies allow students to engage in hands-on learning experiences outside of the school environment. Our largest field study is a three-day wilderness trip referred to as Erdkinder, an experience Maria Montessori specifically imagined for the adolescent. Lakewood holds Erdkinder at a North Carolina beach or at a local river. Students study the ecology of the area, spend time alone in nature, live in community for the entire three days, and develop practical life skills. For many students, this is their first overnight trip away from home. Because Erdkinder takes place at the beginning of each school year, it serves as a wonderful bonding experience for Lakewood’s communities that students discuss throughout the year.

Outcomes

Montessori schools provide a climate that encourages individual growth and a spirit of collective deliberation. Lakewood’s graduates perform well academically at every high school in the Durham area. Their high schools report back that our Montessori students have developed firm habits of self that persist no matter their high school environment: these students know how to pace themselves, set their own boundaries, give voice to their thoughts, and uphold their responsibilities.

Our graduates have at times felt bereft when they enter high schools that are invariably more individualistic. One alumna visited Lakewood earlier this year, as do many recent graduates. She shared with her teacher, Beth, “I miss the community.” Her high school was large, her classes with different students all day, and the emphasis on social growth was lacking.

Beth reminded this student of the task set before every Lakewood graduate: create the community you seek. “You know how,” Beth told her. “You learned how to foster community here.”

This statement resonated with the student and reflects the capacity of the Montessori philosophy and practice to cultivate democratic growth. When adolescents develop habits of individual and communal deliberation to the extent that it changes the very way they interact with the world, Gutmann’s charge has been met.

——————-

Works Cited:

Donahoe, Marta. “Hope for the Adolescent: Valorization of the Personality.” Cincinnati Montessori Secondary Teacher Education Program, 2010. Web.

Gutmann, Amy. “Preface to the Revised Edition.” Preface. Democratic Education. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999. Xi-Xiv.

Johanek, Michael C., and John Puckett. “The State of Civic Education: Preparing Citizens in an Era of Accountability.” Institutions of American Democracy: The Public Schools. Ed. Susan Fuhrman and Marvin Lazerson. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. 130-59.

By Susan Crawford | Director, The Right to Read Project

As Congress progresses through its re-write of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), renamed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in the 2002 version, here is something for it to consider. NCLB contained a provision that might have enabled the full proficiency in math and reading envisioned by the law: the Reading First program. My suggestion is that Congress dust off the program, re-brand it if necessary, and re-insert it into the updated ESEA. If properly funded and executed, it could yield a fully-literate school-aged population in another dozen years.

During this year’s first public testimony on the re-write, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island noted that, if all children could read by the end of first grade, the persistent academic achievement gap would be ameliorated.  It was the first and only reference to this issue – let’s call it the “reading deficit” — that I’ve heard from a public official in a very long time. Having all children reading by first grade might be an unnecessarily heavy lift; school children in Finland, with its “first in the world” test scores, don’t even start to learn to read until age 7. Nevertheless, with the proper reading programs, supports, and interventions where needed, virtually all children in the U.S. could be reading proficiently by third grade.

Congress has a history of researching and pursuing such goals. Unfortunately, instead of supporting this goal, recent federal initiatives have spawned an array of initiatives that have far more to do with altering governance and payment structures in education (see ” Federal Mandates on Local Education: Costs and Consequences) than with actual instructional practices in the classroom.

The magnitude of reading difficulties in this country is huge.  For a description of how the reading deficit plays out at the ground level, see my 2011 essay on its prevalence in New York City public schools in, “To Help All Children Read, First Do the Math.”   An earlier report from the Abell Foundation, “The Invisible Dyslexics,” describes how students with dyslexia in Baltimore fall through the cracks.  These problems are duplicated in school systems throughout the country. Many so-called “failing schools” are in fact filled with over-aged students who have not gotten the reading help they needed.

In schools with highly effective reading programs, students do get the help they need, in their very own schools. In other so-called “successful” schools, however, the burden is on parents to find help outside the school (at enormous personal expense). Some otherwise strong schools counsel struggling readers out if they are not “getting it” by, for instance, third grade, when state tests kick in. In the case of “screened” schools, struggling readers seldom get in, even though barring their admission over reading difficulties runs counter to The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, in which gifted education is considered a “special need.” To remedy this concern, New York City replaced IQ tests for gifted and talented programs with “school readiness” tests. These newer tests focus less on intellectual giftedness or talents and more on reading readiness. Thus, they screen out those who, even with high IQs, do not show sufficient “emergent reading” by age 4.

Recognizing the depth of the reading deficits in this country, in the 1990’s, Congress asked the National Institutes of Child Health and Development (NICHD) to convene a Reading Panel of prominent researchers in the fields of reading instruction and remediation. In its Report to Congress (“Teaching Children to Read,” 2000), the Panel stated that by fourth grade, four out of ten children in the United States still struggled with reading.  Two out of ten were dyslexic.  The Panel recommended specific, scientifically-researched instructional and intervention protocols that were incorporated into Reading First, and the NICHD’s “Response to Intervention” (RTI) protocol that was included in the 2004 Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) legislation update.

Reading First was incorporated into the 2002 No Child Left Behind law; it specifically followed the Reading Panel’s six components of reading instruction that had been thoroughly researched and found to show significant improvement in reading ability when used. The Panel determined that research-based components of a strong reading program are phonemic awareness, phonics, oral reading fluency, vocabulary, comprehension strategies, and teacher professional development. The Reading Panel’s report can be read here, and a later description, written specifically for teachers, is here.

Such a program, and the financial support to enact it, was promising for this country’s children. Before long, however, the NCLB requirements for what could be used in the program were watered down, from “scientifically-researched” reading instruction and interventions to “research-based” curricula.  Soon after that, the whole program itself disappeared amid vendor scandals and pedagogical resistance.

Meanwhile, the other recommended help to struggling readers, Response to Intervention, has never been effectively implemented. RTI, too, was based on the findings of the Reading Panel, and was developed by NICHD to replace the “waiting to fail” model that had long been the trigger for a Special Education referral. Under that earlier protocol, students could not be referred for remedial help for their reading difficulties unless they were at least two grades behind in reading ability. Under RTI, remediation is to be offered as soon as a student starts to fall behind. The intensity of intervention is supposed to increase until the level that meets the child’s needs is reached.  Although it is still a component of IDEA, RTI suffers from inadequate funding that afflicts Special Education in general; Congress has not yet fully funded this law since its passage in 1975.  At the “ground level,” execution of RTI is extremely uneven. For instance, in New York State the most intensive of the three “tiers” of interventions for struggling readers  is accessible only through referrals to Special Education. Many parents resist such referrals, thus setting their children up for a cycle of reading failure is never addressed.

Congress could overcome this morass by championing Reading First in its original form (including the requirement that programs be supported by robust empirical evidence) and by funding RTI. It has the opportunity to do so as it rewrites ESEA and IDEA. Congress could provide the guidance and funding that would support truly effective reading instruction. It could finally fund interventions for students, at all grade levels, who need more help than regular classroom reading instruction can provide. Whether funding comes through ESEA, NCLB, IDEA, or any other alphabetical construct, every child who struggles with reading needs the proper instruction and supports for learning his or her ABCs.

By Gerard Robinson | Senior Fellow, CUNY Institute for Education Policy

“The gap between the Negro and most other groups in American society is widening. The fundamental problem, in which this is clearly the case, is that of family structure.”

— Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1964)

“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”

— Charles Darwin (1839)

In March 1965, 37-year-old U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan troubled the waters of civil dialogue with the publication of a 78-page report entitled, “The Negro Family: A Case for National Action.” It quickly became known merely as the Moynihan Report.

This progressive New Yorker articulated, for a broad American readership, discomforting facts about the black family in the 1960s: a surge in out-of-wedlock births between 1940-1963 (from 17% to 24% of all black births); a black male unemployment rate of 29 percent; and growing disparities between white-black, as well as between black female-black male academic achievement.

Of all the liabilities listed in the report, Moynihan believed the most pernicious was the growing number of households managed by (mostly) undereducated single mothers. Because this problem was associated with black families almost exclusively, federal—not state or local—action was essential to turn the tide on what Moynihan called “a new crisis in race relations.” And so the ideological war of words began.

The Moynihan Report was not the first federal inquiry into the challenges of black life; nevertheless, its findings shocked the nation. What was most striking was the culprit Moynihan identified: the weak family structure in black communities. Criticism came from different directions: on the one hand, from those who defended the structure of the black family and found the language of “pathology” offensive; on the other, from libertarians who rejected the role of government in “saving” families. [1]

Those who accepted Moynihan’s weak family thesis sought forensic evidence for the cause. Was it genetics? Physicist William Shockley had promoted this theory to explain the white-black IQ gap in the 1960s, but respected natural and social scientists invalidated Shockley’s claim. So was poverty responsible? Although black poverty was high in the 1960s, it was not obviously connected to single parenthood; many impoverished homes had two parents, or an employed parent, or an educated parent. Was it slavery’s peculiar reach from one century to the next? Although Moynihan considered slavery to have been a root cause of the problem, his interest was in solving contemporary problems, whatever their origin. His tool of choice was massive federal involvement.

This was the situation and the sentiments in 1965. Where are we now? The liability that so concerned Moynihan 50 years ago pales in comparison to the American family structure today. In 1940 the birthrate to unwed mothers of all ages and races was 3.8%; by 2013, it was 44.3%. It is true that the percentage of births to unwed mothers has leveled off from a high of 51.8% in 2007. Despite this plateau, however, the situation is far from ideal for the 71% of black children, 66% of American Indian/Alaskan Native children, 53% of Hispanic children, and 29% of white children who are being raised in single-family homes.

The Moynihan Report’s 50^th anniversary has provided a backdrop for national reflection. On March 5, 2015, I chaired two panels convened by Dr. Paul Peterson at the Hoover Institution in Washington, D.C. entitled, “Single-Parent Families: Revisiting the Moynihan Report 50 Years Later.” The panels focused upon the causes and consequences of children’s living with an unmarried mother, particularly their effects on educational attainment, and participants debated the appropriate role of schools and the government in responding to these challenges. [2]

I want to focus here upon two aspects of these conversations: the call to surround families with overlapping networks of support, and the need to accept and ameliorate the underlying structural problems.

Whereas Moynihan called for new and focused federal activism, recent conversations have emphasized the role that local government and philanthropy plays in creating social capital and academic supports for disadvantaged families. As the keynote speaker U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander put it:

“The schools cannot do it all, neither can the government. [W]e must create a revival of interest in these children and their parents from traditional sources: the religious institutions, the families, and the communities of this country.”

Such a stance recognizes the historic partnerships that have existed in this country since the colonial days. Catholic and Protestant churches opened schools for children of poor and rich families alike well before Horace Mann promoted the common school model, and black church-based schools taught thousands of African Americans to read before and after the Civil War. This legacy continued into the twentieth century, with Jewish congregations in New York City, and Muslim and Arab centers of faith in Detroit, setting up societies to help immigrant families transition into American life. Today, New York City children are served by organizations as diverse as the United Way of NYC, the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, the Children’s Scholarship Fund, and Communities in Schools.

Community-based organizations play a unique role, as well. Panelist Robert Woodson, Jr. founded the Center for Neighborhood Enterprises (CNE) in 1981 to help low-income urban families and children transform their community by transforming themselves through faith and free market principles. One of CNE’s successful youth mentoring programs is the Violence-Free Zone (VFZ), a public-private partnership between local churches, local public schools, and adult mentors. According to Baylor University evaluators, VFZ programs in Milwaukee, WI, and Richmond, VA, reduced behavioral and suspension rates; increased student GPAs and college going rates; and created healthier interaction between students, police, and school safety officers.

The first point, then, reminds us that the federal government plays a necessary but incomplete role in improving life chances for at-risk young students. The second point, that the underlying social structures need to be addressed as well, is not necessarily in opposition to the first. In this view, it is not sufficient to “make up for” the obstacles confronting American families but, rather, to reduce the obstacles in the first place. Brookings Institute’s Dr. Isabel Sawhill emphasized this point:

“In the meantime, children are being raised in environments marked by inadequate resources and unstable relationships. No wonder that when they get to school, children are often not ready to learn. Schools are asked to compensate for the failure of children’s first teachers—their parents.”

Dr. Sawhill believes schools play an important role in preparing students for future economic mobility. However, schools lack the human capital to provide the emotional, financial, and parental support that children need. In Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage (2014), Sawhill contends that neither spending more money for social programs nor promoting traditional marriage will automatically reduce the 1.8 million unplanned births to unwed mothers and fathers under age 30 each year. Rather, turning “drifters”—teens and adults likely to give birth to a child they are under-prepared to raise—into “planners”—adults who postpone parenthood until prepared for marriage—is a more promising, and realistic, approach. Our education system should play a role in the drifter-to-planner journey.

A variation on this theme is that adult education comprises a key part of the solution:

“Confronting poverty and inequality in the inner city requires that we recognize the complex interrelated problems based in poor families. This necessitates an effective, sustained, and coordinated mission of government-funded institutions to support opportunity for economic self-sufficiency among the poor, which has yet to be realized.”

Dr. Julius Wilson believes providing impoverished urban families with workforce skills to lift them out of poverty require significant federal investments. These investments commence before a child’s birth, meaning access to comprehensive prenatal care, and into pre-school through adulthood. This harmonized approach aims to improve the lives of families, in part, by improving the wellbeing of men, particularly black men living in inner cities. A case he makes in When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (1996) and “Black Men and the Struggle for Work” (2015).

The viewpoints represented above do not necessarily contradict one another. Although discussants disagree about the appropriate level of public and private action required to address family structures, or what we can realistically expect from our schools in the process, they agree with two things: schools and the government cannot afford to do nothing, nor can we accomplish our mission without recourse to the assets of families, belief traditions, institutional collaborations, and individual tenacity.

In conclusion, we are living in a modern Moynihan moment. We are not short of suggestions on how to bolster the American family and, in particular, its educational options. I offer two suggestions based upon my experience working with nonprofit and state government organizations that support families and children.

First, invest in programs that empower and support parents. There are many such examples. The Open Society’s Campaign for Black Male Achievement awarded a $300,000 grant to the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) in 2009 to create the Parents, Power, Purpose (P3) Initiative. More than 2,000 parents in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and four cities in Louisiana (New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, and Lake Charles) participated in P3 institutes. Parents learned how to advocate for boys placed in special education, and for educational improvement for boys in general. A program of this type could be geared to all boys, regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion, as well as to girls.

The effects of strong parental involvement are significant. In 2013, William H. Jeynes’s meta-analysis of 51 studies of Pre-K-12 school-based programs found that parental involvement is associated with higher student achievement. These findings corroborated the author’s 2005 evaluation of 77 studies that found parental involvement improved students’ standardized test scores and grades. As for race and ethnicity: “The effects of parental involvement tended to be larger for African American and Latino children than they were for Asian American children. However, the effect sizes were statistically significant for all three of these minority groups. The results highlight the consistency of the impact of parental involvement across racial and ethnic groups.” A smaller study (2010) of 158 seven-year-olds, their mothers, and teachers found that parent involvement positively influenced a child’s cognitive competencies as well as student-teacher relationships. [3]

Second, conduct needs assessment surveys in high poverty, low-achievement zip codes with a goal to micro-target afterschool services to families and children – just as political campaigns target those households for votes. According to research sponsored by the Afterschool Alliances, 11.3 million youth are unsupervised between 3:00-6:00 p.m. This is prime time to replace involvement in unhealthy activities with involvement in afterschool learning opportunities. In 2015, Dollar General Afterschool Literacy Award recognized an Atlanta-based program for its success in improving the English literacy skills of refugee parents and their children. In 2014, Mozilla partnered with the Afterschool Alliance to build students’ web making and digital literacy skills. In 2012, Girls Inc. Eureka! partnered with the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) in Albany, N.Y. to host a 5-year program to prepare young women for careers and postsecondary options in STEM.[4]

Philanthropists are drawn to support these programs for a reason: a meta-analysis of 68 studies of quality afterschool programs showed that participating students improved their social and personal skills. In one particular city, Los Angeles, an evaluation of 28,000 students in L.A.’s BEST afterschool program found similar results. Regarding academic achievement, the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL)’s meta-analysis of 35 afterschool programs that targeted K-12 students in need of assistance found improvements in reading and math achievement. Strong afterschool programs are particularly important to low-income children; an Urban Institute evaluation of the B.E.L.L. summer learning program in Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. found improved reading skills compared to nonparticipants. [5]

Research supports the positive impact of parental involvement and quality afterschool programs upon students’ academic work. Such models exist; they merely need to be funded and replicated. These are areas into which social entrepreneurs could move to great effect.

As we design public policies for our modern families, our children must not become collateral in partisan-orchestrated family feuds, literally and figuratively. Our children are bigger than politics and brighter than sound bites. They also have destinies that zip codes should not constrain. An amended phrase from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream Speech” illustrates my point: Let us not judge our students by their family structure, but by the content of their academic tenaciousness. Government, business, faith-based institutions, nonprofit organizations, schools, and people of good will can do this. To achieve this goal, we must acknowledge that our charge in 2015 is to work with the families we have—not with the families we want, wish for, or invented 50 years ago.

References

[1] Writers working for the New Deal era Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration Studies published reports about Negro life during slavery, emancipation, and in post-WWI cities and rural enclaves between 1935-1943. The report was the first federal examination of the relationship between civil rights and the general welfare of the nation. President Harry Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights addressed this theme in a milestone report entitled “To Secure These Rights” published in October 1947. http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/authors-platform-federal-writers-project; http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/opac/wpalhabout.htm; and http://www.trumanlibrary.org/civilrights/srights1.htm.

[2] Hoover Institution: http://www.hoover.org/events/single-parent-families-revisiting-moynihan-report-50-years-later; and Education Next (Spring 2015): http://educationnext.org/journal/.

[3] http://www.hfrp.org/publications-resources/publications-series/family-involvement-research-digests/a-meta-analysis-of-the-efficacy-of-different-types-of-parental-involvement-programs-for-urban-students; http://www.hfrp.org/publications-resources/browse-our-publications/parental-involvement-and-student-achievement-a-meta-analysis; and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020099/.

[4] http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/AA3PM/infographics.cfm; http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/press_archives/2014_MetLife_Award_National_NR_FINAL.PDF; http://afterschoolalliance.org/press_archives/Dollar-General-Award-NR_031115.pdf; and http://afterschoolalliance.org/press_archives/LOA-Week-6-NR-100914.pdf.

[5] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10464-010-9300-6; http://www.lasbest.org/imo/media/doc/LASBEST_DOJ_Final%20Report.pdf; and http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ751154.

By Angela K. Murray, PhD | Assistant Research Professor, University of Kansas and Senior Researcher, American Montessori Society

Our nation struggles to prepare students for success in a modern economy. Some U.S. students are fortunate enough to be taught the necessary twenty-first century skills, but it is often a matter of chance or familial wealth rather than the deliberate design of our school system. Helping our most vulnerable children enjoy full participation requires not only strong academic skills, but also so-called “social capital,” capacities. Academic skills are important, but so is the ability to collaborate effectively, solve novel problems, and engage with confidence in the wider world. Montessori schools consistently demonstrate academic, social, and emotional success and offer an under-utilized resource for education policy.

What is Montessori?

The Montessori pedagogy was founded by Italian physician Maria Montessori [1870-1952]. Dr. Montessori’s philosophy of child development encompassed the whole child rather than only his academic achievement. Her pedagogy sought to create an optimal environment that would nurture children’s intelligence, creativity, and emotional awareness (Lillard, P., 1972) and that would prepare children for democratic citizenship (Williams & Keith, 2000).

A Montessori education thus brings an individualized approach to a long-term and community-oriented perspective. Children remain with the same teacher in multiage classrooms for three years, thus allowing for continuity in the learning experience. Within this environment, children work at their own pace with opportunities for cooperative learning in small groups according to ability and interest (Charlap, 1999). Montessori programs limit whole group instruction, grades and tests, and instead focus on student-chosen work with specially designed materials during long blocks of uninterrupted time (Lillard, A. & Else-Quest, 2006). According to the National Montessori Census which includes both public and private programs, more than three-quarters of Montessori schools serve the early childhood level and almost as many offer elementary education. Just over half of Montessori schools reported programs for children under three, but a much smaller proportion included children over 12. Obviously, many schools serve multiple levels, so overlap exists in these estimates (NCMPS, 2015a).

Does Montessori Work?

So far, so good: the Montessori philosophy and practice fit well within the longstanding goals for American education. But does Montessori actually work? A growing body of evidence demonstrates the success of this holistic approach in achieving strong results on both academic and socio-emotional student outcomes. A number of large, urban public school districts (Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Hartford, Denver, Dallas, and Chicago) have successfully implemented Montessori as a small part of their magnet, charter, and neighborhood schools. Based on school report card data, these Montessori public schools demonstrate superior academic results relative to other schools in their respective districts: the proportion of grades 3-6 students scoring at or above “proficient” on the states’ tests in in both English and math is higher in nearly every case. In fact, Montessori schools outperformed district results in 44 out of 46 comparisons and by an average of almost twenty percentage points (NCMPS, 2014).

Perhaps even more compelling is the fact that a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Research in Childhood Education shows that these early Montessori gains persist in mathematics achievement even after 7 years of traditional schooling. This particular study examined children who attended Milwaukee Public Montessori schools from ages 3 to 11 to a matched set of non-Montessori children who graduated from the same rigorous high schools. The children from Montessori backgrounds were superior to their peers on math and science assessments and were on par on English and social studies tests and grades. The authors suggest that such results may be due to the Montessori math curriculum’s being distinctive and highly consistent, incorporating concrete abstraction and early exposure to complex mathematical concepts (Dohrmann, et al., 2007).

A number of other recently published peer-reviewed studies involving Montessori students from preschool through adolescence also demonstrate strong academic results along with effective development of “soft skills.” One analysis compared Montessori private preschoolers to non-Montessori children with similarly well-educated parents. The results showed that the schools with a strong implementation of Montessori pedagogy demonstrated stronger school year gains in executive function, reading, math, vocabulary, and social problem-solving (Lillard, A., 2012).

Another peer-reviewed study compared outcomes for kindergarten and elementary aged students who attended an urban public Montessori school serving predominantly minority children to similar non-Montessori public school students by using lottery selection as a method of randomization. Five-year-olds in the Montessori programs evidenced superior results across many areas, including better scores on reading and math standardized tests, more positive interaction on the playground, more advanced social cognition and executive control, and more concern for fairness and justice. The twelve-year-olds enrolled in Montessori programs also showed superior strengths on socio-emotional measures; they showed more positive responses to stories depicting social dilemmas such as a situation in which children are having difficulty taking turns on the swing set. They also reported a stronger sense of community at school with more positive responses to statements such as, “Students in my class really care about each other” and “Students in this class treat each other with respect.” In addition, the older Montessori children’s essay compositions were rated as being more creative and as having a more sophisticated sentence structure than those of non-Montessori students (Lillard, A., 2006).

Finally, Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi (2005a,b) examined outcomes of Montessori education at the adolescent level in a group of suburban and rural schools. The researchers used questionnaires and the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) where students were signaled eight times each day for a week and were asked to complete a short response form of their activities and feelings in that moment. They found that Montessori students were more positively engaged at school, articulated more positive perceptions of school and teachers, and were more likely to perceive classmates as friends. These adolescents also reported more energized feelings, stronger intrinsic motivation as well as more undivided interest and flow experience. Undivided interest was gauged by the amount of time students reported high intrinsic motivation (i.e., enjoyment, interest, and desire to be doing the activity) coincident with high salience (i.e., challenge level and importance of the activity). Similarly, flow was ascertained as times in which students were engaged in activities that were above average in both challenge level and required skills. The authors hypothesize that a rich social environment such as that found in Montessori adolescent programs yields deep engagement, enjoyment and concentrated work, compared to environments that reflect competition, ability grouping, and public evaluation, and that diminish student choice and cooperation

Conclusion

There are approximately 20,000 Montessori schools worldwide and 4,500 in the United States (NAMTA, 2015). However, only 500 of the 4,500 U.S. Montessori schools are in the public sector, which means that access to Montessori education is limited primarily to those with the means to pay for a private education (NCMPS, 2015b). As policymakers search for proven pathways of success for disadvantaged children, they should consider expanding the availability of Montessori education to more of our public school students. If we are to have a more equitable and effective public education system, skills that have been the province of the few must become universal.

References

Charlap, J. (1999). Montessori for the elementary years. Tomorrow’s Child, 7(2),
pp. 5-7.

Dohrmann, K. R., Nishida, T. K., Gartner, A., Lipsky, D. K., Grimm, K. (2007). High school outcomes for students in a public Montessori program. Journal of research in childhood education 22(2), p. 205.

Lillard, P. P. (1972). Montessori: A modern approach. New York: Schocken Books.

Lillard, A. & Else-Quest, N. (2006). Evaluating Montessori education. Science, 313, p. 1893-1894.

Lillard, A. (2012). “Preschool Children’s Development in Classic Montessori, Supplemented Montessori, and Conventional Programs.” Journal of School Psychology 50.

National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector (NCMPS). (2014, 01/15). Personal Communication.

National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector (NCMPS). (2015a, 02/08). Personal Communication.

National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector (NCMPS). (2015b) retrieved from http://www.public-montessori.org/growth-public-montessori-united-states-1975-2014 on 2/6/15.

North American Montessori Teacher Association (NAMTA). (2015). Retrieved from http://www.montessori-namta.org/FAQ/Montessori-Education/How-many-Montessori-schools-are-there on 2/6/15.

Rathunde, K. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2005a). Middle school students’ motivation and quality of experience: A comparison of Montessori and traditional school environments. American journal of education, 111(3), pp. 341-371.

Rathunde, K. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2005b). The social context of middle school: Teachers, friends, and activities in Montessori and traditional school environments. The elementary school journal, 106(1), pp. 59-79.

Williams, N. and Keith, R. (2000). Democracy and Montessori education. Peace review, 12(2).

By Chelsea Farley | Ms. Farley is the Communications Director for the Research Alliance for New York City Schools.

In recent years, states and districts have made academic outcomes, such as standardized test scores and graduation rates, the primary measure of a school’s performance. This focus on outcomes has been valuable for tracking student achievement and identifying both schools and students in need of support. One of the weaknesses of the approach, however, has been its failure to provide information about how schools should improve. Faced with lackluster performance data, struggling schools are often left wondering, “Now what do we do?”

The good news is that there is a growing body of evidence about specific areas of school practice and capacity that are essential for improving student achievement. The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research used data from hundreds of schools in that city to identify five “essential supports for school improvement,” including elements like effective leadership and strong family-community ties.[i] The researchers found that schools doing well in most of the five areas were at least 10 times more likely than schools with just one or two strengths to produce substantial gains in reading and math. Prolonged weakness in even one area “undermined virtually all attempts at improving student learning.”[ii]

This study, and others that have reinforced its findings, help us understand much more concretely the skills and capacities that enable schools to improve. The next question is how to provide schools with information about these key areas and help them use that information to bolster their work.

An initiative taking place in New York City may begin to shed light on this question. In the fall of the 2014-15 school year, the New York City Department of Education introduced a “Framework for Great Schools” based largely on the Chicago research. A critical first step toward using the “Framework” has been to figure out how to measure its elements in each of the City’s schools. With help from the Research Alliance for New York City Schools, the NYC DOE overhauled the 2015 Parent, Student, and Teacher School Surveys, to collect better information about where each school stands in relation to the necessary capacities identified by research. The DOE will use the survey results, along with other information, to assess schools’ current strengths and weaknesses, and to target areas in need of improvement. Below, we describe changes made to the Survey and outline some crucial issues we hope this work will address as it develops.

Retooling the Survey

The NYC School Survey is administered each spring to students in grades 6 through 12 and to all district parents and teachers, making it one of the largest efforts of its kind in the nation. In 2014, nearly a million parents, students, and teachers completed the Survey, yielding information about some 1,800 schools.[iii]

Since 2010, the Research Alliance and the DOE have collaborated to strengthen the survey. Our 2012 report Strengthening Assessments of School Climate, provides an interim view of this process; we had found that while the Survey had robust response rates and effectively tapped into parents’, students’, and teachers’ unique perspectives, the information gathered was of limited value for assessing key aspects of school practice and capacity. Thus, the report recommended incorporating new measures that would better distinguish between schools and that offered clear links to other performance indicators, such as grades, attendance, and test scores.

The introduction of the “Framework for Great Schools” provided an opportunity to do just that. Throughout the summer and fall of 2014, teams from the Research Alliance and the NYC DOE developed strategies for measuring the elements in the “Framework”. In some cases, we were able to use measures that research had already validated. When these were not available, we created new measures. As a result, the 2015 Survey looks quite different than past iterations. For example:

• To assess Effective Leadership, the Survey will ask teachers if their principal “communicates a clear vision for this school,” “sets high standards for student learning” and “knows what’s going on in my classroom.”
• To assess Family-Community Ties, the Survey will ask if “teachers really try to understand parents’ problems and concerns,” if “parents are greeted warmly when they call or visit the school,” and if “school staff regularly communicates with parents about how they can help their children learn.”
• To assess Rigorous Instruction, the Survey will ask students if they “build on each other’s ideas during class discussions,” “use data and text references to support their ideas” and “provide constructive feedback to their peers/teachers.”
• To assess Supportive Environment, the Survey will ask students how safe they feel in and around school and will ask parents if students at the school “feel it is important to come to school every day,” “think doing homework is important,” and “try hard to get good grades.”
• To assess Collaborative Teachers, the Survey will ask teachers about professional development opportunities and whether they “look forward to each working day at this school” and “feel loyal to this school community.”
• To assess Trust, the Survey will ask students if teachers “always keep their promises” and “treat me with respect.”

Over the next several years, the Research Alliance will continue to analyze the Survey’s results and provide feedback about the quality of the measures being used.

What We Hope to Learn

New York City’s use of research to develop the “Framework,” and to recalibrate the Survey accordingly, is a strong beginning to an ongoing process. In the coming years, the Research Alliance anticipates advancing our understanding of school capacities and outcomes in at least two areas:

• Building a better survey. By analyzing survey results, alongside information collected through other instruments (like the Quality Review or the district’s instructional audits of struggling schools), we hope to help NYC build a Survey that effectively gauges schools’ capacity—in areas that matter most for enhancing students’ achievement and development. We will examine, for instance, whether the organizational capacities identified as essential in Chicago and other cities also predict improved student outcomes here in NYC. And we will make suggestions for improving specific capacity measures.
• Developing a meaningful cycle of improvement. We also hope to work with a small group of schools, as part of an intensive pilot project that will explore strategies for sharing and making use of capacity data. Among the questions we will examine are: How is information about school capacity best communicated to reflect the unique assets and challenges of individual schools? What kind of support do schools need to interpret and make use of that information? And what actions do schools take in response to the data they receive?

Ultimately, we hope that when schools have a clearer picture of their strengths and weaknesses, and receive support in making important changes, they will be able to serve students and communities more effectively. As New York City’s initiative unfolds, it is sure to produce valuable lessons that inform school improvement efforts, not only in New York City but across all of our country’s large urban school districts.

[i] http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/organizing-schools-improvement-lessons-chicago

[ii] http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/publications/OrganizingSchoolsPressRelease.pdf

[iii] http://schools.nyc.gov/Accountability/tools/survey/default.htm

By Derrell Bradford | Mr. Bradford is the Executive Director, The New York Campaign for Achievement Now (NYCAN)

There is a great deal of controversy and division around education policy in New York City and State. Few issues highlight the complex nature of these debates more than the enrollment composition of, and entrance requirements to, New York City’s selective high schools.

With one exception (Fiorello H. LaGuardia High, which is also determined by audition and academic record), entrance into eight of the City’s nine specialized schools is determined solely by a student’s results on the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT). Any current eighth grade student in NYC public schools, and any first-time ninth grade student in public, private, and parochial schools, may take the SHSAT. Students are ranked by the resulting scores on the SHSAT, and then matched against their choice of high school on a space-available basis.

Stuyvestant High School, The Bronx High School of Science, The Brooklyn Technical High School, and Hunter College High School are among the City’s most famous selective schools. The first three use the SHSAT exam. Bronx Science counts eight Nobel Prize winners among its alumni. Stuyvesant counts among its graduates such notables as actress Lucy Liu, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and Eva Moskovitz, CEO of the Success Charter School Network. Incidentally, Mayor de Blasio’s son, Dante, attends Brooklyn Tech. These three schools are not the most selective of the selective high schools—The High Schools for Math and American Studies at City College and Lehman, respectively, and Queens High School for the Sciences at York College, only accept approximately 1 percent of applicants—but they boast the highest number of applicants overall. In 2014, 23,408 students applied to Stuyvesant, 19,635 to Bronx Science, and 23,371 to Brooklyn Tech.

Hunter College High School (HCHS) includes Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, numerous Pulitzer-Prize winning journalists and editors, and senior academics, including current Hunter College President Jennifer Raab, among its alumni. Its application process occurs two years earlier (in 6th, not 8th, grade) and HCHS uses its own, not the SHSAT, admissions test. In 2014, 2,268 students applied for admission to an entering class of 225.

However, critics focus on these schools’ demographics rather than their selectivity per se: In 2014, only 3 percent of students admitted to HCHS were African American or Hispanic (although an additional 7 percent listed one parent as either Black and Latino); 37 percent were Asian. At Stuyvesant, only 2.9 percent of admitted students (28 students) were African American or Hispanic, while 71 percent (678 students) of those admitted were Asian. This means that Asian students overwhelmingly made Stuyvesant their first choice and also earned the lion’s share high scores on the SHSAT.

Asian students are also disproportionately represented in the test-taking pool. As Capital New York reports, “27,817 students took the [SHSAT] exam last year, and 5,096 were admitted to one of the eight [selective] schools. The number of black students who took the exam was 6,566, representing 24 percent of the total number of test-takers. Only 246 of them, or 4 percent of the total number of admitted students, received an offer to one of the eight schools. By contrast, Asian students constituted 30 percent (8,226) of total test-takers last year, and 33 percent (2,725) of the total number of admitted students.”

Faced with this information, some have elected to shoot the messenger instead of reading the message. “Diversity,” a moving target of the highest order, seems more important than excellence and equality of opportunity to many of the city and state’s elected officials. Mayor de Blasio, who campaigned against what he perceives as systemic inequity in public education, offered, “It’s just this simple. This is a society that’s supposed to be based on fairness. Our specialized schools don’t reflect the kind of fairness that any New Yorker would recognize by any common sense measure.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/mayor-de-blasio-defends-plan-scrap-test-only-admissions-elite-high-schools-blog-entry-1.1920767

The City Council has also joined the fray. Last summer it introduced three initiatives meant to address segregation in the City’s schools. The first was a binding initiative that required the City’s Department of Education to report publicly on various measures of diversity. The other two constituted “non-binding resolutions.” One called for the NYCDOE to declare diversity an official policy goal. The other would gut the current admissions requirements at the City’s most selective high schools and would move instead to a portfolio system that takes factors other than student results on the SHSAT into consideration. The resolutions had a hearing and are currently tabled.

It’s difficult to argue with some of these goals and assertions. Diversity of population is a good thing, though I would argue that diversity of thought and opinion is more important. However, in the case of the City’s selective schools some of the champions for change have missed the real problem, opting to diagnose the symptom—diversity or lack thereof—as the disease, instead of doing what must be done to cure the patient. In this instance, we should be asking why more students of color aren’t scoring in the top tiers of the SHSAT, and then targeting and fixing the conditions that create those results.

The easiest issue to address is simply one of numbers: why are so many more Asian students than African American and Latino students taking the SHSAT? It cannot be because there are no children from these subgroups capable of surviving and thriving at the City’s selective schools. As Mayor de Blasio offered, “If you’re asking me are there lots of black and Latino young people who would do very well at Stuyvesant and would uphold the noble tradition of Stuyvesant – unquestionably.” On this, we vehemently agree. The fix, though, is simple and doesn’t require changing the process: make the SHSAT mandatory instead of voluntary. The best way to ensure that no “Will Hunting” child of color is missed is to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to apply, be ranked, and choose. In other words, keep the bar high, but encourage more people to attempt to jump over it.

Advocates for changing selective admission also forget that, in the current process, there is an intervention in place for minority students who test on the cusp. The Specialized High Schools Student Handbook states that specialized high schools can sponsor a Discovery Program to “give disadvantaged students of demonstrated high potential an opportunity to participate in the Specialized High School program.”

But what do the Mayor and other advocates for change want? To simply change the requirements of the Hecht-Calandra Act of 1971 which upheld the single-test entrance system? Much like the arguments against high stakes exit exams, these advocates believe a portfolio approach—one that incorporates other measures of student work and in-person interviews—is a better way to change the enrollment composition of the city’s selective schools. Not necessarily.

Such an approach misses the fact that the city already has a series of “Screened” high schools that reflect a portfolio method of admissions. As the Department of Education describes them, “Students who apply to Screened programs are ranked and selected based on criteria that may include: final report card grades from the prior school year, reading and math standardized test scores, and attendance and punctuality. There may be additional items that schools require to screen applicants such as an interview or essay. Review the Selection Criteria to determine what other criteria Screened schools use to rank applicants.”

The screening portfolio process at the top Screened schools (such as Manhattan’s Beacon School) has indeed resulted in schools where Asian students do not disproportionately constitute the minority student subgroup. But they are also much whiter and wealthier. A portfolio process, therefore, will not necessarily create the diversity the Mayor desires.

As the City Journal published in Summer 2014, “The specialized schools are 13 percent black and Hispanic, 24 percent white, and 60 percent Asian. The top Screened schools are 27 percent black and Hispanic, 46 percent white, and only 26 percent Asian. And while 50 percent of the students at the specialized schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, only 37 percent of the students at the top screened schools do.”

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with this mix. The point, rather, is this: the path to having more schools that resemble the city’s Screened admissions process is to, well, have more of them, not to change the entrance requirements for the City’s schools that use the SHSAT. In typical policymaker fashion, many are focusing on redistributing a fixed pool of “excellence” in the City’s schools instead of increasing the number of excellent schools of all types (which could include replicating Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, or HCHS for instance). We can, of course, see the same issue playing itself out in the contentious relationship between the Mayor and the City’s charter school sector, where the fighting eclipses efforts to replicate what works best in both the district and charter sectors in the service of expanding the number and type of quality options.

There is one clear solution, however, that no one wants to discuss: fix the chronically underperforming schools that African American and Hispanic children disproportionately attend. There are 143,000 students attending 371 of the City’s schools where 90% or more of students failed the most recent round of state assessments. The New York City Department of Education itself has identified 94 schools that it promises to “hug until they change,” but the plan to change them is tepid at best. And the recent deal reached with New York City teachers doesn’t attack what the Obama administration and the Center for American Progress have both identified as a major challenge to closing the achievement gap: the misdistribution of excellent teachers in schools with the highest minority and low-income student populations.Rectifying this situation will require prioritizing excellent instruction over seniority-based teaching assignments. Without such companion strategies that aim to provide rigorous intellectual preparation for all the City’s students, talk of eliminating ethnic disparities in the City’s education system will remain merely idle chatter.

Diversity is a laudable goal in public education and one that I support, but excellence is more important still—regardless of the optics of student diversity. Making Stuyvesant or the current SHSAT process the enemy does not grow the number of great schools our students can choose from and does not ensure that a child who is without an excellent teacher gets one. Changing the requirements for entrance to selective schools assumes that there can—and will only ever be—a fixed (and modest) amount of great schooling available in the City. It also assumes that for children of color to have better access, others (mostly Asians and new immigrants) must have less access. These are untenable assumptions.

The real story of New York City’s selective high schools is that of a shortage of great schooling options for kids. Rather than trying to change the channels that dictate which students get to attend an exceptional school, we should, instead, endeavor to create more highly desirable schools. Mayor de Blasio campaigned on a platform of eliminating what he saw as two New Yorks…one with the “haves” and one with the “have nots.” Let’s not turn the City’s high schools into two camps where one “has a little” and the other “has a lot less.”

By Gerard Robinson

“S’ils n’ont pas de pain, qui’ls mangent de la brioche.” – “If they have no bread, let them eat cake.”
Queen Marie Antoinette [ca. 1789]

Thus spoke Queen Marie Antoinette in response to the peasants’ indignation about the scarcity and expense of bread in pre-revolutionary France. Scholars debate the authenticity of the quotation on several fronts: its translation, date, origin, and even its true delegate (whether it be Antoinette, philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau, or Maria Theresa of Spain, the first wife of King Louis XIV).[1] While the remark’s trustworthiness remains in question, nonetheless, the logic undergirding this “if-then” conditional statement represents an age-old algorithm powerful people employ to create prescriptions to solve problems for the masses. Today, the masses in America have a modernized “if-then” statement, and a well-meaning remedy too.

“If they have no jobs for lack of higher education, let them eat debt.”
2015

My amended “if-then” statement reflects the contemporary American dilemma over the availability and cost of higher education. Adult learners value an education for economic prosperity and self-enlightenment. This is hardly new; education in our Western democratic tradition has a long history that began in classical antiquity. In an American context, various states and private entities provided colleges for higher learning, beginning with Virginia’s (unsuccessful) Henrico College in 1619. Harvard College followed in 1636, and the College of William and Mary in 1693.[2] Several additional colleges opened throughout the colonies before George Washington delivered his first state of the union address in 1790, in which he referenced the, “[p]romotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis for public happiness.”[3] Over the next 175 years, presidents, legislators, and intellectuals debated the merits of a federal role for higher education, as well. The creation of land grant colleges with the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, and benefit packages for World War II veterans with the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (i.e., The G.I. Bill), are two examples of how the federal government defined its role in higher education.

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson, the only president to earn a degree in education, became a modern architect for an expanded federal role in higher education when he signed into law the Higher Education Act on November 8, 1965, at his alma mater, Southwest Texas State College. His goal in the Higher Education Act was to open the doors of postsecondary education to millions of qualified people by minimizing financial barriers to its access. The cornerstone of the law remains Title IV, which supports our Federal Pell Grant Program as well as Federal Direct and Family Loan programs.[4] Every president from Nixon to Obama has supported the Higher Education Act’s value, revising federal student aid policies along the way.

Fifty years later, the ambition of the law remains the same. Federal aid continues to make a sizeable contribution in the forms of grants, work-study opportunities, and scholarships. Federal loans, however, pay the lion’s share of students’ direct investment into their education. And unlike other forms of federal aid, students must pay back federal loans. The same is true for private loans. Even more concerning for first generation and low-income students, a report on student debt notes that:

Graduates who received Pell Grants, most of whom had family incomes under $40,000, were much more likely to borrow and to borrow more. Among graduating seniors who ever received a Pell Grant, 88% had student loans in 2012, with an average of $31,200 per borrower. In contrast, 53% of those who never received a Pell Grant had debt, with an average of $26,450 per borrower — $4,750 less than the average debt for Pell recipients with debt.[5]

These numbers do not even take into consideration the high number of low-income students who take on college debt but never complete; they are left with debt but no degree. Regardless of type of university or college, the majority of full-time enrolled students across this country uses a federal loan[6], and will continue doing so into the foreseeable future.

These numbers add up. In November 2014, the U.S. Department of Treasury identified an $806 billion balance in the Federal Direct Student Loan line.[7] Adding non-federal and other loans to this amount, student debt stands at $1.2 trillion, according to a study by global credit company Experian. Student debt increased by 84% between 2008-2014, eclipsing home loans, cars, and credit cards as America’s second highest consumer debt after mortgages.[8] Student loan debt is also a problem for 31 million students who enrolled in college between 1995 and 2014 but did not complete the program.[9] Loan default is a problem as well. According to September 2014 data calculated by the U.S. Department of Education, 13.7% is the national default rate for borrowers who entered repayment in 2011 and had defaulted on a loan in 2013. Of the 650,727 borrowers in default by 2013, 45% were affiliated with public universities, 44% with for-profit universities, and 11% private universities.[10] Loan default remains a problem in all three higher education sectors, most particularly in the for-profit sector.[11]

To put the enormity of student debt in context, let us compare it to the wealth of higher education institutions. A recent report notes that 835 American colleges and universities, ranging from Harvard to Howard and U.C.L.A to Southern Virginia University, received an 11.7% average return on investment for fiscal year 2012-2013. Some 82 of the 835 schools hold endowments worth more than $1 billion, and 70 hold endowments worth between $501 million and $1 billion.[12] Student debt dwarfs these endowments. Even if each of these 835 schools had an endowment worth $1 billion in 2015, their cumulative total of $835 billion would still lurk in the shadow of $1.2 trillion in student debt. This is simply untenable. When debt accumulated by adult learners to pay for an education surpasses the wealth of our nation’s institutions of higher learning, we must find a remedy. “Let them eat debt” is no longer a sufficient response.

Where do we go from here? I offer four practical and two conceptual recommendations and identify the key stakeholders who must support them, based on my experience as a former Virginia Secretary of Education, Florida Commissioner of Education, and as a current trustee of Patten University.

Practical

• Technology is pointing the way to new, cost-effective and resource-use efficient examples for delivering education. Savings derived from an innovative use of technology can support financial aid or make higher education more affordable. For example, UniversityNow, a social venture based in San Francisco, has created a world-class technology platform that can deliver a quality, competency-based education online and at affordable price of $3,900 a year for an undergraduate degree. Key stakeholders: governors, state legislators, college presidents, and entrepreneurs.
• Community college students have the lowest debt among postsecondary learners. High school students should consider this an option after graduation. Key stakeholders: community college presidents, nonprofit organizations that support community colleges, high school counselors, and PTAs.
• Colleges and universities can increase their students’ completion rates by providing additional supports to at-risk students. The City University of New York’s ASAP program significantly increases completion rates by providing additional financial, academic, and social capital support for full-time students. The Texas Interdisciplinary Plan at the University of Texas at Austin has done the same. Key stakeholders: trustees, provosts, and philanthropists.
• State Department of Education leadership must ensure that its high school curriculum prepares students to enroll directly into credit-bearing math, reading, and writing courses to avoid spending money on non-credit-bearing courses at four-year colleges and universities where remediation is not a priority. This requires that Commissioners of Education lead the way in back-mapping K-12 preparation to ensure readiness for freshman year. This is politically difficult, as New York State Commissioner John King found when he raised the cut scores required for graduation and tried to align a curriculum that would prepare students for the new challenge. Commissioners need critical support from college presidents, business leaders, and parent organizations in the process. Key stakeholders: state legislators, college admission deans, employers, and high school teachers.

Conceptual

• Our nation must align the growing demand for quality jobs with a quality education essential for securing them, and without sacrificing the humanities, social sciences, and the arts in our pursuit of STEM. Creative thinking, clear communication, problem solving, and knowledge about human synergy are skills our corporate and nonprofit employers want from college graduates. Requiring students to engage with a balanced college curriculum would increase students’ overall skills and employability. Stanford University, for example, created a “digital humanities” program for students to major in English and computer science, or music and computer science. Another option is to require STEM majors to enroll in more non-STEM courses. At MIT, at least 25% of coursework is in non-STEM courses. Key stakeholders: deans for each discipline, Nobel laureates, employers, and college students and alumni.
• Adult learners over age 25, employed, and not living in a college dormitory are the new normal. We must reimagine higher education costs with them in mind too. This means creating alternative systems for delivering education to nontraditional students while maintaining the quality of the college’s degree or certificate. The University of Virginia’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, for example, provides a top-ranked education to adult workers through online courses and on campuses located throughout the Commonwealth. The University of Utah created the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute to cater to the educational needs of students over 50 years of age. Key stakeholders: federal and state legislators, college residential and student life deans, online education providers, corporation-based tuition assistance specialists, and working adults.

These recommendations constitute interlocking, not isolated, solutions. It does no good to encourage first-generation students to attend community colleges on debt ratio grounds when their completion rates are still abysmally low (a social capital issue). It is also of little benefit to prepare students intellectually and socially when they cannot receive a financial aid package to make higher education affordable—as it does for athletics (an equity issue). An optimal strategy would attack the various components of the debt dilemma in concert.

Here are a couple of strong models. At the two-year level, Project Success at El Camino Community College in Torrance, CA, has a proven track record of producing first-generation students who graduate with a degree or certificate and transfer to a four-year college or university—and without major debt (a social capital solution). At the four-year level, Davidson College in North Carolina addressed the debt issue by becoming the first liberal arts college in the nation to offer incoming students a financial aid package that is free of loans (an equity solution).

America will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Higher Education Act of 1965 this year. Let us remain thoughtful about ways to keep the spirit of the law alive. This will require vigilance, single-mindedness, and the courage to be unpopular. Our taking up this charge will replace “let them eat cake [debt]” with “let them eat an affordable piece of the American pie.”

___________________________

[1] See Fraser, A. (2002). Marie Antoinette: The Journey. New York: Anchor; Temerson, C. (2000). Marie-Antoinette: The Last Queen of France. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin; and Lanser, S. (2003). “Eating Cake: The (Ab)uses of Marie-Antoinette.” In D. Goodman & T. Kaiser. Marie Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen. New York: Routledge; andhttp://www.history.com/news/ask-history/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake.

[2] Urban, W. & Wagoner, J. (2004). American history: A reader. New York: Routledge.

[3] http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29431&st=knowledge&st1=.

[4] For a history of the Higher Education Act of 1965 see http://www.tgslc.org/pdf/HEA_History.pdf.

[5] http://projectonstudentdebt.org/files/pub/Debt_Facts_and_Sources.pdf

[6] http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_331.60.asp?current=yes.

[7] http://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/fsreports/rpt/mthTreasStmt/mts1114.pdf.

[8] http://press.experian.com/United-States/Press-Release/experian-analysis-finds-student-loans-increased-by-84-percent-since-the-recession-40-millio.aspx.

[9] http://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/NSC_Signature_Report_7.pdf.

[10]http://www.ifap.ed.gov/eannouncements/092414CDRNationalBriefings3YR.html.

[11]http://www.ticas.org/pub_view.php?idx=954, and http://febp.newamerica.net/background-analysis/federal-student-loan-default-rates.

[12] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/28/college-endowment-funds-did-well-market-2013; and http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/EndowmentFiles/2013NCSEPressReleaseFinal.pdf Note: National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).

By Mark Bauerlein | If you teach English in the deep South, as I do, the first line of Emily Dickinson’s poem #1068 doesn’t make much sense.

Further in summer than the birds . . .

It sounds poetic, to be sure, with the echoing “-er” sound, but what does it mean? None of the words is difficult or strange, but their combination strikes southern youths as gibberish. How can you measure summer by the birds?
Poems often open with puzzling statements, of course, and they are clarified soon after. Here, the following lines don’t help.

Pathetic from the grass
A minor Nation celebrates
It’s unobtrusive Mass

What is the “minor Nation,” and what kind of Mass transpires? The words themselves won’t tell you, no matter how skillful and experienced you are in the reading of verse. When I present the poem to first-year students, they stare with blank faces, even though they have a half-dozen AP courses and 1200 SAT scores on their résumés.

The next stanza extends the religious language, but one little word remains enigmatic.

No Ordinance be seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness.

Most students need a dictionary for the second word, “Ordinance,” which signifies an official or divine decree. “Grace,” too, confuses the non-religious students, and I lay out its basic meaning as God’s virtue and support. The terms amplify the “Mass” of the fourth line, but even so, we are far from realizing what exactly is going on. We have some kind of religious ritual at hand, but we’re in the grass, not in church; a “minor Nation” celebrates it, not regular parishioners; and it happens only in summer, not every Sunday. We still don’t know what “it” is.

Students grow more frustrated as the next stanza stumps them, too.

Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify . . .

The dictionary defines “canticle” for them (a religious song such as the Canticle of Mary), but it doesn’t help with “Antiquest.” If they keep the first stanza in mind, they might connect “August burning low” to “Further in summer,” and, of course, the song extends the Mass motif, but those connections only baffle them the more.

When the last stanza arrives, it’s a letdown.

Remit as yet no Grace
No furrow on the Glow
Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature Now.

Their reaction is universal: “Huh?” They can’t untangle this new reference to “Grace,” nor can they attach the phrase “furrow on the Glow” to any actual thing. A quick explanation of the Druids doesn’t reveal what a “druidic difference” is, either. We never reach that satisfying “Aha!” moment.

What’s a teacher to do?

As an English major at UCLA in the early-1980s, I was trained in “close reading,” which begins by treating the poem as an independent verbal universe. The critics we read (Cleanth Brooks, W. K. Wimsatt, I. A. Richards’ Practical Criticism) warned against external evidence such as a poet’s biography and impressionistic responses such as “It seems like Dickinson is trying to evoke what it’s like to . . .” They insisted on objective analysis of words within the context of the poem, mindful of the way literal meanings of certain words are loaded, charged, turned, and intensified by their place in the verse. To do that, you should proceed with nothing but the text and a dictionary.

That was 30 years ago, but the approach lives on in the Common Core State Standards. The standards require that teachers assign “complex texts” and guide students to read and reread them carefully and deliberately, analyzing precisely the layers and turns of meaning that close reading targets. David Coleman’s well-known formulation offers a neat metaphor for the “close” approach: “Sometimes I sum up the standards by saying they require you to read like a detective and write like an investigative reporter” (http://usny.nysed.gov/rttt/docs/bringingthecommoncoretolife/part4transcript.pdf). The organizations created to help teachers implement the standards treat this reading habit as a seminal goal. Student Achievement Partners, for instance, provides “Close Reading Model Lessons” (http://achievethecore.org/dashboard/300/search/1/1/0/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12/page/752/featured-lessons-list-pg), while PARCC’s ELA “Model Content Frameworks” document (http://www.parcconline.org/sites/parcc/files/PARCCMCFELALiteracyAugust2012_FINAL.pdf) repeatedly underscores “close, analytical reading.”

Given ACT’s determination that the leading differentiator of students who are college-ready and those who are not is “their proficiency in understanding complex texts” (http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/reading_report.pdf), Common Core and associated projects are right to do so. Teachers of freshman English classes see students three months out of high school enter their classes and falter when they have to comprehend a dense piece of prose or poetry. They read too quickly, overlook ironies, and miss significant figures of speech. Much of the meaning of complex texts escapes them.

Close reading is the remedy. It focuses attention on the text itself. It forces students to pause over single words, distinguish figurative nuances, mark ambiguities and bias. Students become less passive and impatient, less like consumers and more like detectives. Words are clues, sentences are evidence. We skip appeals to how students feel; no pat social or political themes serve as “what the text is about.”

But there is a problem. Some works are explicable only if we draw on outside evidence. The words they contain aren’t enough to deliver the meaning of the poem, at least not to certain students.

In this case, two external appeals have to be made.

First, the scene. Dickinson composed the poem in the mid-1860s at her home in Amherst, Massachusetts. When she stepped outside on a mid-August afternoon, she might look up and watch gigantic flocks passing overhead, millions of birds heading south for the winter. In June and July they filled her neighborhood with song, and their departure by late-August leaves a marked quiet in the air. Southerners and Westerners haven’t experienced it, which is why a teacher has to add that context to the text.

Once the setting is established, students can visualize the situation. Dickinson stands in her yard and listens, but hears something else, grasshoppers chirping. That’s the easy step. The next one requires a leap. Dickinson proceeds to describe the sound in religious terms, as if this natural thing were a supernatural event. That’s the purpose of the poem, to impart a curious and haunting observation. Nothing happens. Instead, an ordinary phenomenon is elevated into an odd religious apprehension. To “get it,” students must make a parallel exertion. The words form the outcome of the poet’s fanciful vision, and for the words to make sense, students must launch their imaginations. The teacher guides them to another time without cars or cell phones, late summer and high noon, the ringing in the grass. They have to feel Dickinson’s solitude and imagine how a supernatural presence seems to descend. The teacher’s aim is not to have the students emote. It is to help them experience her emotions. Dickinson’s poetic description of the scene isn’t meaningful until students put themselves in her place.

Once they do, students can see how one might regard the whole thing as religious devotion. The music, the light and landscape, a 35-year-old woman absorbed in matters of faith and loneliness . . . they result in a divine perception. All is “pensive.” The season is ending, time is passing, and crickets “pray.” The words “repose,” “unobtrusive,” “Loneliness,” and “Glow” now fit.

In this case, understanding an important bit of American literature doesn’t so much involve analyzing the words as it does reconstructing an experience. Teachers succeed by charting the structure of the lyric and tracking the worship motif—a solid close-reading effort. But after that, they act like stage managers setting scenes and profiling characters. To be sure, we need students to sharpen analytical skills, to focus intently on one text at a time. But they need to strengthen their imaginations, too, not to be creative in their own right, but to share in the creations of our greatest writers.

BY DR. TONY FISHER | If you are responsible for designing the curriculum for a school of gifted and talented high school students with a diverse set of interests, you face a fundamental choice: What will you require of every single student in your school?  The answer to this question inevitably reveals something of your school’s educational philosophy. This article will explore some of the advantages of different approaches, with recommendations for ways in which one can work to have the best of all possible worlds.

The question of requirements, as posed above, is more complicated than it first appears.  Just about every G & T school is a “college prep” school with students who have high aspirations for their college admissions.  As a result, most schools will require a certain number of years in the core subjects (English, history, mathematics, science and foreign language) along with requirements in the arts.

However, those requirements allow for a great deal of variation.  At most schools, there are different “tracks” for mathematics classes, and there is sufficient research about student variation in speed of comprehension to justify that approach.  But – will your school take a similar tracked approach to foreign language study?  To science classes?  To the humanities?  If the answer to any of these is “Yes,” at what grade will your school begin to differentiate in this way?  How you answer may depend on a variety of factors, such as the size of your school and whether your school has already, to some extent, identified itself as a specialized school (e.g., as a STEM school or a Governor’s School for Social Sciences or the Arts).

There are some clear benefits to allowing for this kind of differentiation in multiple disciplines early on in high school (say, tenth or even ninth grades).  Students who show special interest in, and aptitude for, particular subjects can spend more time on advanced topics and less on basic skills, allowing for even more advanced study in future years.  Students who are advanced in one area, but whose learning style is less well fitted to others, can proceed at different paces in different subjects, and won’t have to spend a potentially disproportionate amount of time on a subject with which they struggle.  Your school could even allow students to choose “majors,” asking juniors and seniors (or even younger) to take multiple courses per year with a cohort of similarly-interested students.  This kind of design allows for every student to experience depth in some subject area, for potential inter-disciplinary approaches within the subject of concentration, and for the creation of smaller communities of learners dedicated to a particular discipline.  All considerable benefits.

However, delaying specialization and having a more substantial set of “core” requirements which gifted and talented students of all predispositions and talents take together has significant benefits as well.  As noted above, every school for gifted students likely provides all students with a solid foundation in a wide variety of subjects.  However, will your school hold its scientists and its writers alike to a high level of proficiency in both?  Your gifted scientist, who may end up being a leader in her field, will have plenty of time to specialize in her field of research, but perhaps no better chance to truly hone the writing skills which will be so important inwriting grants and in communicating to non-specialists why her work is so important; the future op-ed writer will not have another clear chance to learn about the sciences (and the bases of scientific thought and procedure) which may have bearing on his future columns.  Moreover, there is added value to students with the broadest range of interests and talents taking these classes together.  Having the gifted young mathematician and the gifted young historian study history side-by side – at least up to a certain level (say, through eleventh grade) – realizes benefits for both: the historian gets to see his subject through a different lens, while the mathematician returns to her field with a more sophisticated sense of history than had she only studied it with other mathematics-oriented students.

How, then, can your school have the benefits of a robust set of commonly required courses and still allow students to follow their passions earlier on in their high school careers?  Many schools are answering this question by creating a more comprehensive and intensive set of what I would call “co-curricular” activities.  These activities can range from science, computer science and mathematics research, to journalism (more than just the newspaper!), to international relations and government-related studies and activism.

I would suggest that these kinds of programs best complement a solid core curriculum when the following conditions are met:

• The work of the co-curricular activities is as authentic as possible (e.g., favoring of science research over the more knowledge-based “science bowl”), and whenever possible, involves professionals in the field;
• Co-curricular activities are arranged in such a way that students can make a lesser commitment early on (“dip their toes in the water,” so to speak) and then choose to increase that commitment over time if they wish;
• The cumulative work of the required classes is not so overwhelming that students cannot dedicate themselves to meaningful pursuits outside the classroom.

Allowing gifted students to delve deeply and authentically into their interests – or find new ones – while they study all core academic subjects with the full spectrum of their peers is one way that a gifted school can have its cake and eat it, too.

To a certain extent, the main thrust of this article – advocating for gifted students to delay specialization, at least in their school course of study – runs against a trend of the times. Many cities/districts are creating more and more “themed” high schools and even middle schools designed to attract students with particular gifts and predispositions.  These schools often serve the important purpose of providing students and parents with meaningful choice.  Still, I do not know of a “specialized” middle or high school which does not also strive to give all of its students a comprehensive course of study. Therefore, I hope that the above discussion of advantages and disadvantages of different approaches can help planners at gifted schools think about how we can best serve our unique populations.

Dr. Tony Fisher is the principal at Hunter College High School.

Below you will find the outline of some thoughts on educational accountability. The topic has become one of the central issues in contemporary reform efforts in American education, with particularly heated debate over efforts to measure the effectiveness of teachers through test scores as well as classroom observations. But the issue is wider than this, encompassing principal and whole school performance, and potentially school districts and school superintendents. The document below was the result of a set of discussions in Washington, D.C., involving a wide range of practitioners, academics and policy makers. I was one of those involved, and I have signed the document, because it strikes me as thought-provoking and pragmatic in its approach.

Although the CUNY Institute for Education Policy examines a broad range of current educational issues, we return repeatedly to four core themes that are fundamental to a strong school system. One of these is, “Telling the Truth.” This accountability document fits within this larger responsibility to bring difficult news about where we stand, to those who can make a difference in where we should go.

September 24, 2014

An Open Letter On School Accountability

To State Superintendents of Education and Governors

Meeting under the auspices of the Center on Reinventing Public Education and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a group of scholars and policy experts has reviewed the current debate about K-12 school accountability. In most states, accountability policy is in flux, due to conflict around the Common Core State Standards, uncertainty about whether and how to hold teachers accountable, and teacher and (more limited) parent resistance to testing.

We identified serious problems and internal contradictions in current accountability policies, which can and must be solved. These include:

• State accountability systems serve a range of different purposes, which can conflict with or limit each other’s impact.
• New expectations and assessments have increased burdens on students and schools, without providing enough actionable information in return.
• Rigid requirements can stifle innovation and lead to efforts to game the system rather than foster systemic change.

These problems warrant serious work, not abandonment of accountability. States that give in to proposals to abandon or postpone school accountability are abdicating their responsibility to children, parents, and taxpayers, and for our nation’s civic and economic future.

We offer this paper as a starting point for defining the public purposes of state accountability systems and rebuilding them on sound principles. In the next six months we will convene meetings that include senior state officials and prominent critics of current accountability systems, to refine these principles and help states launch accountability redesign efforts.

Why is accountability important?

Accountability is about making sure children—who have a great deal to master in the few years they can be full-time students—learn what they need to be independent adults and contributors to their communities. (In this sense, “accountability” should be taken as a synonym for performance management, or for government’s due diligence in a situation where it compels students and their families to receive a particular service.) In modern America, this means graduating from high school able to choose between entering college without the need for remediation, or taking a career-ladder job that will support a family. It also means having the analytical capacity and free time to be an informed voter and an engaged citizen. In this, the whole community shares an interest with the child and his or her parents.

So that children can learn, states require parents to surrender their children several hours a day for 13 years, and create local entities that tax residents to pay the costs of education and hire individuals to teach in and manage schools. Each of these parties—the state, local officials, and those hired to educate children—have their own interests, which are not perfectly identical to those of children. Communities that don’t always absolutely trust even parents to protect their own children certainly can’t blindly trust that government officials and educators will always do their best for the children in their charge.

The state, community leaders, families, taxpayers, and educators all need to know whether the schools to which they are sending their children are effective in preparing students for success in college, careers, and life. Parents and citizens would be negligent to trust unconditionally, never demand evidence, or never ask whether a different method has produced better results under similar circumstances elsewhere. Parents and citizens need to be shown, when not all students are being fully prepared, that no option is ruled out in improving school quality and students’ opportunities. This is particularly the case in communities where large numbers of children, year after year, quit school or finish unprepared for higher education or career-linked jobs.

What is an accountability system?

An accountability system is a set of standards, measures, judgments, and actions all meant to:

1. Ensure that public schools are judged, sustained, and changed based on whether children learn what they need to succeed in higher education, work, and adult roles in family and community.
2. Give adults with stakes in children’s learning the assurance that that is the case.
3. Give everyone concerned about the child’s welfare the information they need to accelerate his or her learning.
4. Press for continuous improvement of the schools available in any community.

To pursue these ends, an accountability system includes measurements of results, and remedies for children who are at risk of not learning what they need. These, however, are means not ends. The goal of an accountability system is neither to punish teachers nor shield teachers from consequences, to promote competition or sustain existing schools, nor to subject students to performance pressure or relieve them from it. The goal is to ensure that children in public schools are given the opportunity to succeed in life.

While research demonstrates some of the pitfalls and unintended consequences of poorly designed accountability systems, it also shows that accountability can spur desired behavioral changes and result in meaningful improvements in student success. Differently designed accountability systems use different methods, and these can have different costs and benefits. A system that is biased in favor of one means or another (e.g., punishing or insulating teachers, favoring or hamstringing new school providers) will not serve the interests of children well.

Principles for the design of accountability systems

To start a more productive discussion about accountability we propose eight principles, on which we think scholars and groups seriously concerned about protecting children’s opportunities can agree:

1. All parents need to know immediately when their children are not learning at a rate that makes it highly likely they will graduate high school, enter and complete 4-year college, or get a rewarding, career-ladder job.
2. No family should be required to place or keep a child in a school in which she is unlikely to learn what she needs. Every family should have the choice among public schools that are demonstrably capable of educating a child like theirs.
3. To enable parents to act effectively in their children’s interest, states should provide them valid, reliable, and easily understood data on individual student progress. Parents and other stakeholders in the community should have information on the learning rates of different groups of children in all schools. The standards used to assess school performance should be tightly linked to these outcomes, and applied objectively and uniformly to all schools.
4. Student test scores provide indispensable information, but they should be used in a way that provides trend data for individual students and for schools, and be combined with other valid evidence of student progress (e.g., course completion, normal progress toward graduation).
5. Because science, technology, and the economy are constantly shifting, the standards used to assess schools must not be set in stone but must adapt and possibly become more demanding over time.
6. Because a student’s level and pace of learning in any one year depends in part on what was learned previously, the consequences of high and low performance should attach to whole schools, not only to teachers in grades tested. In evaluating teachers, school leaders should have the fullest possible information about individual teachers and be free to consider additional factors (e.g., classroom observations, contributions to school professional climate, and parent or student surveys).
7. School leaders must have enough freedom to lead their schools and take responsibility for implementing instructional improvement strategies. This requires control over staffing, instruction, and making financial tradeoffs.
8. States and school districts must have and exercise multiple options with respect to a school where children learn at low rates that threaten their adult opportunities. This must include supporting teacher improvement, changing school staffing, assigning schools to new operators, and allowing families to opt for other school options.

These principles can ground a productive debate. There is still plenty to argue and worry about, and to submit to objective test. For example:

• Whether and how to combine test scores and other outcome measures in ways that refine, rather than obfuscate, the facts about student and school performance.
• How a state or locality can assess student progress and identify children falling behind, without specifying outcomes so exhaustively that schools are unable to innovate and solve problems.
• How to coordinate federal, state, and district demands for data so that a given school must respond to one, not several different, accountability systems.
• How to prevent public officials and educators from falsifying data or hiding results for individual students and for historically underserved groups.
• How to protect children while ensuring that school leadership and teaching remain desirable occupations.
• How to help students understand that they stand to gain or lose more than anyone else from diligence in their studies and earnest effort on performance assessments.
• How to try out new ideas about educating the children most at-risk or with distinctive needs, without causing a constant churn in their educational experience.
• How to adjust measurement and accountability to innovations in instruction, including those introduced by technology-driven mastery- and unit-based learning.

We offer to work with state officials and accountability critics to develop solutions. Though advances in measurement and data display might ameliorate some of these problems, full solutions will require new policies and governmental capacities. Issues of design and implementation issues must be addressed, carefully and through disciplined trials. But it is time to stop mandating whatever measures can be pushed through legislatures, and start working through the problems of accountability, with discipline, open-mindedness, and flexibility.

It is also time to assess the consequences of accountability systems objectively and generally, in terms of student gains and increased availability of seats in high-performing schools. Cherry-picked results, whether about imaginative use of performance data in one school or excessive emphasis on test preparation in another, only sustain controversy. This will require serious investments by foundations and government.

What needs to happen next

Both supporters and critics of current accountability systems include policymakers committed to educating all our children, and competent analysts who can devise and rigorously assess alternative designs.

What is needed is a sustained dialog, crossing ideological and professional lines, about how to put the eight principles outlined here into practice. We propose a series of invitational working conferences, insulated from immediate news reporting, that can develop:

• Areas of consensus about the design of accountability systems.
• Areas where competing views cannot yet be reconciled.
• Proposals for disciplined trials of different accountability systems in particular localities or states, and for rigorous analysis of those trials.
• Areas of remaining technical uncertainty, and needs for new research and development.
• Proposals for state legal frameworks and capacity investments.

We are reaching out to a broader group of scholars and policymakers, and hope this document will spark a productive give and take in the near future.

Signed,

Charles Barone, Democrats for Education Reform

Naomi Rubin DeVeaux, DC Public Charter School Board

Chester E. Finn, Jr., Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Betheny Gross, Center on Reinventing Public Education

Jane Hannaway, American Institutes for Research

Paul Hill, Center on Reinventing Public Education

Sandy Kress, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP

Robin Lake, Center on Reinventing Public Education

James Liebman, Columbia Law School

James Merriman, New York City Charter School Center

Amber Northern, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Paul Pastorek, Former LA Superintendent of Education

Scott Pearson, DC Public Charter School Board

Michael Petrilli, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Morgan Polikoff, University of Southern California

Robert Pondiscio, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Van Schoales, A+ Denver

Nelson Smith, National Association of Charter School Authorizers

David Steiner, Hunter College School of Education

Joanne Weiss, Weiss Associates

Richard Wenning, BeFoundation

Judy Wurtzel, Independent Consultant

This statement was originally published by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE).