Researchers have recently begun to learn more about the effects of time spent on learning from natural experiments around the country. This new body of evidence, to which we have separately contributed, suggests that extending time in school would in fact likely raise student achievement. Below we review past research on this issue and then describe the new evidence and the additional insights it provides into the wisdom of increasing instructional time for American students.

We also discuss the importance of recognizing the role of instructional time, explicitly, in accountability systems. Whether or not policymakers change the length of the school year for the average American student, differences in instructional time can and do affect school performance as measured by No Child Left Behind. Ignoring this fact results in less-informative accountability systems and lost opportunities for improving learning outcomes.

Emerging Evidence

More than a century ago, William T. Harris in his 1894 Report of the Commissioner [of the U.S. Bureau of Education] lamented,

The boy of today must attend school 11.1 years in order to receive as much instruction, quantitatively, as the boy of fifty years ago received in 8 years…. It is scarcely necessary to look further than this for the explanation for the greater amount of work accomplished…in the German and French than in the American schools.

The National Education Commission on Time and Learning would echo his complaint one hundred years later. But the research summary issued by that same commission in 1994 included not one study on the impact of additional instruction on learning. Researchers at that time simply had little direct evidence to offer.

The general problem researchers confront here is that length of the school year is a choice variable. Because longer school years require greater resources, comparing a district with a long school year to one with a shorter year historically often amounted to comparing a rich school district to a poor one, thereby introducing many confounding factors. A further problem in the American context is that there is little recent variation in the length of school year. Nationwide, districts generally adhere to (and seldom exceed) a school calendar of 180 instructional days. And while there was some variation in the first half of the 20th century, other policies and practices changed simultaneously, making it difficult to uncover the separate effect of changes in instructional time.

Among the first researchers to try to identify the impact of variation in instructional time were economists studying the effect of schooling on labor market outcomes such as earnings. Robert Margo in 1994 found evidence suggesting that historical differences in school-year length accounted for a large fraction of differences in earnings between black workers and white workers.

Using differences in the length of the school year across countries, researchers Jong-Wha Lee and Robert Barro reported in 2001 that more time in school improves math and science test scores. Oddly, though, their results also suggested that it lowers reading scores. In 2007, Ozkan Eren and Daniel Millimet examined the limited variation that does exist across American states and found weak evidence that longer school years improve math and reading test scores.

Work we conducted separately in 2007 and 2008 provides much stronger evidence of effects on test scores from year-to-year changes in the length of the school year due to bad weather. In a nutshell, we compared how specific Maryland and Colorado schools fared on state assessments in years when there were frequent cancellations due to snowfall to the performance of the very same schools in relatively mild winters. Because the severity of winter weather is inarguably outside the control of schools, this research design addresses the concern that schools with longer school years differ from those with shorter years (see research design sidebar).

While our studies use data from different states and years, and employ somewhat different statistical methods, they yield very similar results on the value of additional instructional days for student performance. We estimate that an additional 10 days of instruction results in an increase in student performance on state math assessments of just under 0.2 standard deviations. To put that in perspective, the percentage of students passing math assessments falls by about one-third to one-half a percentage point for each day school is closed.

Other researchers have examined impacts of instructional time on learning outcomes in other states, with similar results. For example, University of Virginia researcher Sarah Hastedt has shown that closures that eliminated 10 school days reduced math and reading performance on the Virginia Standards of Learning exams by 0.2 standard deviations, the same magnitude we estimate for the neighboring state of Maryland. Economist David Sims of Brigham Young University in 2008 took advantage of a 2001 law change in Wisconsin that required all school districts in that state to start after September 1. Because some districts were affected while others were not, he was also able to provide unusually convincing evidence on the effect of changes in the number of instructional days. He found additional instruction days to be associated with increased scores in math for 4th-grade students, though not in reading.

Collectively, this emerging body of research suggests that expanding instructional time is as effective as other commonly discussed educational interventions intended to boost learning. Figure 1 compares the magnitude of the effect of instructional days on standardized math scores to estimates drawn from other high-quality studies of the impact of changing class size, teacher quality, and retaining students in grade. The effect of additional instructional days is quite similar to that of increasing teacher quality and reducing class size. The impact of grade retention is comparable, too, though that intervention is pertinent only for low-achieving students.

Although the evidence is mounting that expanding instructional time will result in real learning gains, evidence on the costs of extending the school year is much scarcer and involves a good deal of conjecture. Perhaps the best evidence comes from a recent study in Minnesota, which estimated that increasing the number of instructional days from 175 to 200 would cost close to $1,000 per student, in a state where the median per-pupil expenditure is about $9,000. The total annual cost was estimated at $750 million, an expense that proved politically and financially infeasible when the proposal was recently considered in that state. Comparing costs of expanding instructional days with the costs of other policy interventions will be an analytic and policy exercise of real importance if the call for expanded instructional time is to result in real change.

Complicating this analytic task are differences in costs that exist across schools and states. Utilities, transportation, and teacher summer-labor markets vary widely across geographic areas, and all affect the cost of extending the school year. So, while the benefits of extending the school year may exceed the costs in some states or school districts, they may not in others. A further complication is the possibility of diminishing returns to additional instructional time. Our research has studied the effect of additional instructional days prior to testing, typically after approximately 120 school days. The effect of extending instructional time into the summer is unknown. Also, our research has focused on the variation in instructional days prior to exams, or accountable days. The effect of adding days after exams could be quite different.

Costs of extending school years are as much political as economic. Teachers have come to expect time off in the summer and have been among the most vocal opponents of extending school years in several locations. Additional compensation could likely overcome this obstacle, but how much is an unresolved and difficult question.

Teachers are not the only ones who have grown accustomed to a summer lasting from June through August. Students and families have camps, vacations, and work schedules set up around summer vacation. “Save Our Summers” movements have for years decried the benefits of additional instructional days and proclaimed the benefits of summer vacation, and the movements have grown as states have considered extending the school year and individual school districts have moved up their start dates. Longer school years might reduce tourism and its accompanying tax revenue. These additional costs likely vary by state and district, but are clearly part of the analytic and political calculus.

Time and Accountability

As education policymakers consider lengthening the school year and face trade-offs and uncertainties, it is important to recognize that expanding instructional time offers both opportunities and hazards for another reform that is well established, the accountability movement. Educators, policymakers, parents, and economists are sure to agree that if students in one school learn content in half the time it takes comparable students at another school to learn the same content, the first school is doing a better job. How students would rank these schools is equally obvious. Yet state and federal accountability systems do not account for the time students actually spent in school when measuring gains, and so far have no way of determining how efficiently schools educate their students.

One implication of this oversight is that accountability systems are ignoring information relevant to understanding schools’ performance. Year-to-year improvements in the share of students performing well on state assessments can be accomplished by changes in school practices, or by increases in students’ exposure to school. Depending on the financial or political costs of extending school years, those with a stake in education might think differently about gains attributable to the quality of instruction provided and gains attributable to the quantity.

To see how the contributions of these inputs might be separated, consider data from Minnesota. Between 2002 and 2005, 3rd graders in that state exhibited substantial improvements in performance on math assessments, a fact clearly reflected by Minnesota’s accountability system. But during that period, there was substantial year-to-year variation in the number of instructional days students had prior to the test date. In Figure 2, we plot both the reported test scores for Minnesota 3rd graders (the solid line) and the number of days of instruction those students received (the bars). Useful, and readily calculated, is the time series of test scores, adjusting for differences in the number of instructional days (the dotted line).

Comparing the reported and adjusted scores is useful for at least two reasons. First, it illustrates the role of time as a component of test gains. Overall, scale scores increased by 0.4 standard deviations from 2001–02 to 2004–05. Of this increase, a large portion was attributable to expansion in instructional time prior to the test date. Adjusting for the effect of instructional days, we estimate that scores increased by roughly 0.25 standard deviations, nearly 40 percent less than the reported gains.

Second, the comparatively steady gain in adjusted scores over the period provides evidence of improvements in instructional quality, independent of changes in the amount of time students were in class. The fast year-to-year increases in the first and last periods result in large part from increases in the amount of time in school, while the negligible change in overall scores between 2003 and 2004 does not pick up real gains made despite a shortened school year. Adjusted scores pick up increases in learning gains attributable to how schools used instructional time, such as through changing personnel, curricula, or leadership. The point here is that time-adjusted scores provide information that is just as important as the overall reported scores for understanding school improvements. A robust accountability system would recognize that more instructional time can be used to meet goals, but that more time is neither a perfect substitute for, nor the same thing as, better use of time.

The Hazards of Ignoring Time

Failing to account for the role of time in student learning not only means missed opportunity, it also creates potential problems. First, it can allow districts to game accountability systems by rearranging school calendars so that students have more time in school prior to the exam, even as the overall length of the school year remains constant. Beginning in the 1990s, districts in a number of states began moving start dates earlier, with many starting just after the first of August. The question arose whether these changes might be linked to pressures on districts to improve performance on state assessments. David Sims showed that Wisconsin schools with low test scores in one year acted strategically by starting the next school year a bit earlier to raise scores. Evidence of gaming soon emerged in other states as well. Wisconsin passed its 2001 law requiring schools to begin after September 1 to prevent such gaming; similar laws were recently passed in Texas and Florida.

The motives driving earlier start dates could spill over into other instructional policies. Minnesota moved its testing regimen from February to April in the wake of accountability standards, while Colorado legislators have proposed moving their testing window from March into April, with advocates suggesting that the increased time for instruction would make meeting performance requirements under No Child Left Behind more feasible for struggling schools. While administering the test later in the year has potential benefits in measured performance, grading the tests over a shorter time frame costs more, estimated at some $3.9 million annually in Colorado. Schools thus sacrifice educational inputs (such as smaller classes or higher teacher salaries) to pay for the later test date.

A second hazard involves fairness to schools at risk of being sanctioned for poor performance: these schools can face longer odds if weather or other schedule disruptions limit school days. The impact of instructional time on learning means that one factor determining the ability of schools to meet performance goals is not under the control of administrators and teachers. We illustrate the effects of time on making adequate yearly progress (AYP) as defined by No Child Left Behind by comparing the performance of Maryland schools the law identified as underperforming to estimates of what the performance would have been had the schools been given a few more days for instruction.

We begin with data from all elementary schools in Maryland that did not make AYP in math and reading during the 2002–03 to 2004–05 school years. We adjust actual performance by the number of days lost in a given year multiplied by the marginal effect of an additional day on test performance as reported in Marcotte and Hemelt’s study of Maryland schools. This allows us to estimate what the proficiency rates in each subject would have been had those schools been open for all scheduled instructional days prior to the assessment. We then compare the predicted proficiency rate to the AYP threshold.

We summarize the results of this exercise in Figure 3. The light bars represent the number of schools failing to make AYP in math and reading in various years. The dark bars are the number of those schools that we predict would have failed to make AYP if the schools had been able to meet on all scheduled days. We make these estimates assuming that low-performing schools would have made average gains with each additional day of instruction.

The average number of days lost to unscheduled school closings varied substantially over the period, from more than 10 to fewer than four and a half. Many schools that did not make AYP likely would have had they not lost so many school days. For example, we estimate that 35 of the 56 elementary schools that did not make AYP in math in 2002–03 would have met the AYP criterion if they had been open during all scheduled school days. Even if these schools were only half as productive as the typical school, 24 of the 56 flagged schools would likely have made AYP if they had been open for all scheduled days.

There is, however, a way to reduce risks like these for schools and to limit incentives for administrators to move start or test dates at the same time: that is to recognize and report time as an input in education. A simple and transparent way to do this is for state report cards, which inform parents about school outcomes and summarize the information on AYP status, to include information about the number of instructional days at test date as well as the total number of instructional days for the year. This information is readily available and already monitored by schools, districts, and states. Local and state education authorities could use it when assessing performance, for example, in hearing an appeal from a school that failed to meet its AYP goals. Further, this information could be used to estimate test scores adjusted for instructional days, to be used alongside unadjusted changes in performance. Distinguishing between gains due to expanded instruction time and better use of that time can enrich accountability systems and provide more and better information to analysts and the public alike.

Looking Ahead

There can be no doubt that expanding the amount of time American students spend in school is an idea popular with many education policymakers and has long been so. What makes the present different is that we now have solid evidence that anticipated improvements in learning will materialize.

Practical obstacles to the extension of the school year include substantial expense and stakeholder attachment to the current school year and summer schedule. The benefits of additional instructional days could diminish as school years are lengthened. Further, it is unknown how teachers would use additional instructional days if they are provided after annual testing is already finished. Simply extending the year well after assessments are given might mean that students and teachers spend more days filling (or killing) time before the end of the year. This would make improvements in learning unlikely, and presumably make students unhappy for no good reason.

Though the issue has seen little movement in the past and faces real opposition going forward, the policy climate appears likely to be favorable once the fiscal challenges now facing public school systems recede. It is our hope that policymakers and administrators who try to take advantage of this window of opportunity don’t harm reforms that have succeeded in improving learning outcomes and don’t implement reforms in a manner that would fail to do the same. Advocates for extended school years have so far said virtually nothing about whether or how accountability systems should accommodate longer school years.

Across the country, a small number of schools and districts are modifying or extending the academic year. The Massachusetts 2020 initiative has provided resources for several dozen schools to increase the number of instructional days they offer from 180 to about 200. Other examples include low-performing schools that have lengthened their school day in an effort to improve, and the longer school days, weeks, and years in some charter schools. However, such initiatives remain rare, with no systemic change in the instructional time provided to American students. Our work confirms that increasing instructional time could have large positive effects on learning gains. Encouraging schools and districts to view the school calendar as a tool in the effort to improve learning outcomes should be encouraged in both word and policy.

Dave E. Marcotte is professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Benjamin Hansen is a research associate at IMPAQ International, LLC.

For more on this topic, please read “Do Schools Begin Too Early: The effect of start times on student achievement”

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Please join me on a short, visionary tour circa 2025, and let us glimpse the central role that data have come to play in American K–12 education.

Perhaps the most profound advance since 2010 is that individual achievement and attainment records for every subject are saved (with elaborate safeguards) in cyberspace and secure state databases, where “unique student identifier” numbers make it possible for data to be readily aggregated without revealing individual identity and for analysts to investigate things like learning gains by pupils in various schools and circumstances.

Student assessments (formative, summative, informal) are completed electronically, many through adaptive online programs. Software automatically analyzes the resulting information to create a data dashboard for each pupil, showing what has been mastered and what still needs work. Most assessments are graded by computer, although teachers read essays and occasionally offer separate “hand-graded” scores on other assignments. Instant preliminary feedback is the norm, and the official results, checked over by a data team, are available soon thereafter.

An artificial intelligence program periodically “sifts” each student’s cumulating education record to answer—especially for parents, teachers, and counselors—such key directional questions as whether the student is on track for college when she completes high school. Are there any warning signs of academic (or other) problems that warrant a change of course, maybe even a swift intervention?

Parents can log on and view their child’s cumulative report card, which is continually updated, not just with test results but also with sample work, attendance data, and teacher comments.

Multiple teacher web sites offer resources for planning lessons and obtaining supplementary materials. These include most everything an instructor might need, from student readings, workbooks, assignment ideas, web links and mini-tests to audio and video snippets for classroom use. The online curriculum vault includes thousands of videos of master teachers delivering lessons, and interactive web sites host discussion groups (most enable participants to view as well as hear and read each other). Increasing portions of students’ days are given over to virtual education: watching lectures, participating in online discussions, making productive use of software programs, e-mailing or conversing with distant experts, and teaming up with peers as much as half a world away.

Principals keep electronic files of data (as well as eyewitness impressions, pupil and parent and peer ratings) on individual teachers’ pedagogical strengths and weaknesses. Linked teacher and student databases are used to formulate professional development activities for each teacher. Classroom sessions are periodically recorded and viewed by online mentors who offer quick feedback to new or struggling teachers. Pupil achievement consultants review students’ data files and advise teachers on working with challenging students.

Schools regularly calculate gain scores for each pupil and every state has a Tennessee-style value-added scoring system that spits out data on the effectiveness of its teachers, schools, and districts. Analysts can now control for outside factors affecting achievement. Districts and schools can also use them to evaluate the effects of particular textbooks, teaching units, and professional development activities.

Information about individual performance is aggregated across pupil populations at the classroom (and teacher), school, district, state, and national levels and cumulated over time. Such data enable principals, superintendents, and state officials to determine which institutions, programs, and individuals are on track to attain their targets. The public gets data, too, and can gauge the return on its education investments. Media outlets faithfully publish England-style “league tables” showing raw scores, value-added results, and change over time for every school.

The progress in education data over the past two decades surpasses that made during the entire previous century. Considering the size and decentralized nature of U.S. education, the sluggishness with which it has reacted to many demands for reform, and the modest political oomph behind such mundane activities as crafting data systems, the gains are remarkable. The best explanation seems to be that the millions of people in public education have finally come to realize that the more you know the better off you are.

Chester Finn is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and senior editor of Education Next.

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Next in order of publicity was Forest Grove School District v. T. A., a case from Oregon in which the Court held 6 to 3 that parents could receive reimbursement for private school tuition even when their disabled child had never enrolled in a public school special education program. A brief filed by urban school districts raised the specter of wealthy parents gaming the system and driving up costs, but the effect of this decision will also likely be limited. Certainly, some parents will try to use the decision to fund private school, but significant requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) remain in effect. For families to be eligible for reimbursement, an administrative board or court will still have to find that a public program could not meet the child’s needs. In general, the cost and incidence of private placements appear to have been exaggerated in the media (see “The Case for Special Education Vouchers,” features, and “Debunking a Special Education Myth,” check the facts, Spring 2007).

Receiving almost no attention but potentially of utmost significance was Horne v. Flores, a case about English-language learning in which the Court divided narrowly along ideological lines, with Kennedy joining the five-member majority. The central issue is whether Arizona has satisfied the Equal Educational Opportunity Act (EEOA) of 1974, which provides that no state shall fail “to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation…in its instructional programs” (see “Language Barriers,” legal beat, Winter 2009).

The case called for the Court to weigh in on several controversial issues, the most important of which is the extent to which the judiciary should be able to dictate education spending by state and local governments. In considering whether Arizona was meeting the requirements of the EEOA, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion faulted the district court and the Ninth Circuit for focusing on the “narrow question” of funding, and ignoring whether managerial and instructional reforms had brought the state into compliance. The plaintiffs and lower courts had consistently used funding as the barometer of quality. Alito jumped headlong into the funding debate by citing “a growing consensus in education research that funding alone does not improve student achievement.” While the case does not bind state courts, it provides an important source of support for those opposing state school-funding lawsuits.

The Court also emphasized that cases such as Flores risk making the courts a manipulated contestant in disputes where one side uses litigation to insulate its policy and spending preferences from political debate. The majority was clearly distressed at the often collusive nature of institutional reform cases, as illustrated by Flores, in which then Governor Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, supported the lawsuit against the state as a way to leverage more school spending out of the Republican legislature.

Flores, then, sent perhaps the strongest signal of any of the cases that the Roberts Court was seeking to define a path of judicial modesty. Indeed, Roberts himself seemed to say as much at a judicial conference soon after the strip-search decision. Asked about it, he replied, “You can’t expect to get a whole list of regulations from the Supreme Court. That would be bad. We wouldn’t do a good job at it.”

Joshua Dunn is associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado–Colorado Springs. Martha Derthick is professor emerita of government at the University of Virginia.

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Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count.

There is no end to the debate over intelligence: how to define and measure it, how much of it is hereditary versus environmentally determined, and the extent to which it can be altered via purposeful interventions. The latest book-length entry into this debate is University of Michigan psychology professor Richard Nisbett’s rebuttal of Charles Murray, Richard Herrnstein, Arthur Jensen, and other “hereditarians.” The volume also serves as a partial, if unintended, rebuttal of today’s “broader, bolder” crowd and their assertion that schools cannot boost the life prospects of poor children. With Howard Gardner and others, Nisbett contends that intelligence takes multiple forms; that traditional IQ (and achievement) tests fail to capture this rich variety; that environment and education play larger roles than genetics; and that a handful of purposeful schoolcentric interventions (e.g., KIPP, Reading Recovery, Perry Preschool) have shown promise in boosting the intelligence of poor and minority youngsters. He acknowledges, though, that home, family, and culture matter enormously, and that a major source of today’s gaps is the extraordinarily discrepant experiences that children have outside of school. This leads to advice for parents “to increase the intelligence of your child and yourself,” though Nisbett focuses on such “21st-century” skills as “problem-solving” rather than reading books, acquiring knowledge, and gaining understanding. Of course, the parents most apt to follow his recommendations already have kids on the upside of the learning gap.

Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education. Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb (Jossey-Bass).

These two political scientists, authors of a best-selling provoucher publication, Politics, Markets and America’s Schools (Brookings, 1990), have shifted their bets from that spoke of the school-reform roulette wheel named “school voucher” to one marked “technological innovation.” The descriptions of the latest uses of educational technology both within schools and over the Internet are just as compelling as the evidence provided that teachers union leaders today are little more than modern Luddites. The latest publication is as much required reading as the one the authors penned 20 years ago, and it can be expected to spark almost as much controversy. But the analysis is better at isolating the political obstacles to be surmounted than identifying the political support for technological innovators who, according to Moe and Chubb, will nonetheless persevere. All the best.

Unlearned Lessons: Six Stumbling Blocks to Our Schools’ Success. W. James Popham (Harvard Education Press).

Testing impresario Jim Popham has penned a volume that mixes anecdote, personal experience, and scholarly analysis to ask why American schooling has had such a terrible time designing, adopting, or employing good assessment. Popham provides a pithy and highly readable treatment of key challenges in standards, testing, and assessment, one that is particularly timely as governors and influential supporters move to embrace some version of common standards (with hundreds of millions in federal dollars pledged to finance the ensuing tests). Popham argues that assessment in the United States has suffered from six crucial, recurring problems: too many curricular targets; the underutilization of classroom assessment; preoccupation with instructional process; the dearth of “affective” assessments, i.e., those focused on attitudes, interests, and values; instructionally insensitive accountability tests; and the reality that educators “know almost nothing about educational assessment.” Readers may take issue with some of Popham’s critiques and assertions, or the shape of his recommended remedy, which is explained in an enthusiastic treatment of Wyoming’s current assessment and accountability system. Even skeptics, however, would benefit from Popham’s insights regarding how and why high-quality assessment is a matter of politics, policy, and practice, as well as technical expertise.

Leading for Equity: The Pursuit of Excellence in Montgomery County Public Schools. Stacey M. Childress, Denis P. Doyle, and David A. Thomas (Harvard Education Press).

This self-described “celebration” of the Montgomery County Public Schools, a 140,000-student behemoth in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, is no doubt meant to add the district to the list of superstar systems worthy of national attention. No longer an exclusive enclave of affluence, the county has witnessed an influx of poor and minority students over the past quarter century. Ten years ago, Superintendent Jerry Weast divided the system into the leafy “Green Zone,” which he mostly (and benignly) ignored, and the struggling “Red Zone,” where he poured new resources, staff, and “capacity.” Test scores in the Red Zone are up, as is participation in Advancement Placement courses. The authors see much worth lauding, though one wishes for more of a critical eye. What to make of the white-black SAT test-score gap, for instance, which is bigger than ever? And is any of this replicable, anyway? Weast’s spending spree was enabled by the housing bubble, which pushed local property values—and property taxes—sky high, along with a liberal population willing to see its burgeoning tax revenue siphoned off to help needy students. For better or worse, history might show the “Leading for Equity” story to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not a model for others to emulate.

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Pre-K for All

Pre-K-for-all programs with research-based quality standards have led to larger enrollments of low-income children than targeted efforts and produced impressive outcomes regardless of family background. Oklahoma’s program has narrowed the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income children while elevating early math and literacy skills for all participants. The advances made by middle-class students are vital; one in three does not know the alphabet at kindergarten entry. Data suggest that low-income children have benefited more by learning alongside upper-income classmates instead of in the isolation of targeted programs.

Higher graduation rates and other lasting effects have been documented in large pre-K programs like Chicago’s Child-Parent Centers—conspicuously ignored by Finn. Though in relatively early stages, ongoing longitudinal studies in Michigan, South Carolina, and West Virginia are finding similar outcomes. Among New Jersey 2nd graders, those with two years of state pre-K were half as likely to have been held back.

Public pre-K regularly enhances and coordinates efforts to help the most disadvantaged. Enrollment policies typically prioritize children at greater risk of failing school. Many states combine pre-K dollars with funding from other sources, such as Head Start, to provide more comprehensive programs to high-need children. In Illinois, a portion of each appropriation toward its “pre-K for all” goal is dedicated to services for at-risk infants and toddlers.

Most important, parents’ quality pre-K options have expanded. Private and charter schools, for-profit and nonprofit centers, and faith-based groups are delivering state-funded early education, gaining the means for crucial quality improvements in the process. In Wisconsin, more than 80 school districts collaborate with businesses and organizations to give families a wider choice of pre-K settings.

States’ pre-K budgets rose 37 percent from FY06 to FY09, to $5.2 billion, because policymakers know that this investment is the first step in K–12 reform and offers a great return, a return that is maximized when all children are eligible.

Libby Doggett
Deputy Director
Pew Center on the States

Defending PISA
If Mark Schneider has doubts about the usefulness of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (“The International PISA Test,” check the facts, Fall 2009), he should consider whether the U.S. has used PISA effectively. Among the G8 economies, the U.S. assessed the second smallest number of students for PISA and collected the least contextual information, limiting the inferences that can be drawn for states and the usefulness of PISA for policy. While much of the industrialized world has extended PISA toward interactive electronic tests, the U.S. stuck to paper-and-pencil versions. While Schneider rightly notes that only longitudinal studies can establish causality, Australia, Canada, and Denmark are already implementing them, keeping track of the students assessed in PISA to find out how their knowledge and skills shape their subsequent life opportunities. In virtually every other federal nation, whether it is Canada or Mexico in North America; Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, or the U.K. in Europe; or Australia in the Pacific, individual states have implemented PISA successfully, employ it effectively, and find it useful for policy formation. They recognize that the yardstick for educational success is no longer improvement by state and national standards alone, but by the standards of the best-performing education systems internationally.

Schneider worries that international assessments, like any evaluations, embody judgments about what should be measured. That is so, and much of their value lies in allowing states to see their own standards through the prism of the judgments that the principal industrialized countries make collectively as to what skills matter for the success of individuals in a global economy.

Do international assessments provide causal evidence on what makes school systems succeed? No, but they shed light on important features in which education systems show similarities and differences, and, by making those features visible, can help to ask the right questions. Are the contextual data currently used for this perfect? Certainly not, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations constantly review and refine them. The methods used, however, are far more robust than the ways in which Schneider’s organization is patching together data from U.S. states and international assessments to suggest to states that they can pass over a process of thorough international benchmarking.

Andreas Schleicher
Directorate for Education
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Schneider responds:

Mr. Schleicher fails to address my concern that because PISA’s policy advice is not based on methodologically sound analysis and often fits preconceived notions, states will not get reliable guidance. Second, it is for this nation to decide how PISA fits into the U.S. system of testing and data-collection efforts in which we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars, including, for example, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and student-based longitudinal data systems. Mr. Schleicher’s comparison of the United States to countries that have not made similar investments is unhelpful. Finally, states have spent millions of dollars to ensure that their tests match what they expect schools to teach in each subject. How can states align with an international test that admits, even celebrates, not testing what schools teach?

Opportunity Scholarships
I applaud Professor Patrick Wolf for his excellent review of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) (“Lost Opportunities,” research, Fall 2009). Three of Professor Wolf’s main points warrant further amplification.

First, the evidence is clear and unequivocal that the program is working for the children and families who participate in it. Professor Wolf methodically dissects the evaluation conducted by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and notes that the program improved the reading achievement of the treatment group students overall across all subgroups examined. Importantly, the evaluation suggests that such gains will continue over time. While it is true that there were no statistical gains in math achievement found for the treatment group, it must also be noted that the review covered a three-year period compatible with the program’s infancy. It is reasonable to project that the longer a student is in the OSP, the more benefit will be realized in all academic areas.

Second, Professor Wolf points out how striking the OSP’s achievement results are when compared to the results of other programs. According to Wolf, only 3 of the 11 experimental evaluations conducted by the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) at IES have demonstrated statistically significant achievement impacts overall in either reading or math. The reading impact of the OSP is the largest achievement impact yet reported in an evaluation overseen by the NCEE. This finding is extraordinary.

Finally, in discussing the OSP’s impact on expanding school choice for parents, Professor Wolf relates that approximately 81 percent of parents placed their child in a private or public school of choice three years after winning the scholarship lottery, as did 46 percent of those who lost the lottery. He points out the high level of satisfaction with the program among parents. District parents are becoming more sophisticated about education options for their children, and they are sharing their knowledge with their neighbors and friends. The OSP, along with the successful D.C. charter school experiment, has created an atmosphere of receptivity for changing how we view K–12 education in our nation’s capital.

Kevin P. Chavous
Distinguished Fellow
Center for Education Reform

NCLB 2.0
As I was reading “The Future of No Child Left Behind” (forum, Summer 2009), I found myself agreeing with both authors. I support the tenets of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in theory, but in practice I think it misses the mark. And while the authors spend time debating the theoretical issues, neither one addresses how to change the law at the ground level. The problem is that lawmakers, theorists, and educators look at the law and what changes should be made to it, rather than scrutinizing how the changes will affect students. The new NCLB needs a “regs” before the law approach.

The number-one change that should be made: judge schools on a set of measures that together create a school quotient score. Sixty percent of the quotient should reflect the average of two sets of test scores, one set based on state standards and tests and the other based on national standards and tests (NAEP, the Stanford 10, etc.). The rest of the quotient should reflect such measures as opportunities for gifted students, including AP classes; participation in the arts, music, and extracurricular programs; attendance and dropout rates; community service projects; special education exit rates; use of technology; staff turnover; participation in state tests and pass rates among English language learners; and parent involvement. The quotient could be used to judge schools against established benchmarks and ensure they are developing well-rounded, capable learners. The quotient could also be used to judge the progress of schools over time.

NCLB needs to change. One option is developing a school quotient score that would maintain the tenets of NCLB while acknowledging other school strengths as well.

Peter Weilenmann
National Board-Certified Teacher
Arlington, Virginia

School Discipline
Richard Arum and Doreet Preiss have identified an often-overlooked impediment to education reform (“Law and Disorder in the Classroom,” research, Fall 2009). Due process was initially introduced into the public school context to protect basic fundamental rights. Today, an overly expansive understanding of what the law requires has produced rigid, bureaucratic discipline procedures that undermine the flexibility needed for intelligent, effective school management.

A culture of order and respect is the foundation of every successful school. It makes sense intuitively, and we have seen repeatedly that successful school reform, charter schools, and turnaround initiatives focus first on discipline and culture to establish a foundation for learning. Children cannot learn in disorderly schools where educators feel powerless and teachers spend as much time on discipline as they do on instruction.

Strong leadership, respect for authority, and perception of fairness are essential to create a positive, productive school culture. And yet the encroachment of due process into daily discipline decisions has undermined all three. Arum and Preiss show that the threat of litigation is a real presence in the lives of educators, one that casts a shadow over their decisions.

If we take just one lesson from Arum and Preiss’s research, it should be that we are on the wrong path. To reverse course, we need a dramatic reclarification of authority and an endorsement of educators as the leaders of schools. We also need to reeducate parents, students, educators, and the broader community about the value of strong leadership. Finally, we need to make school culture a priority and encourage all members of the school community to participate in promoting the values and discipline protocols in schools.

Philip K. Howard
Chair
Common Good

Union Voice
In “Brighter Choices in Albany” (features, Fall 2009), New York’s anti-union charter spokesmen misstated New York State United Teachers’ (NYSUT) position on charter schools.

As a union of more than 600,000 professionals, NYSUT proudly represents teachers in charter schools and regular public schools across New York State. Our local unions are strong partners in their schools. As the single strongest advocate for the public resources that benefit charter and regular public schools, NYSUT supports members with research, professional development, and advocacy. That includes pressing charter management on issues of accountability, just as we do in district schools.

We believe quality charter schools can strengthen public education by piloting and sharing replicable practices that advance student learning. But not all charters or their corporate arms are created equal. Too many put profits before performance, are run by operators who don’t know what they are doing, get lackluster results, and aren’t, as envisioned, collaborating with district schools.

Intended to be exemplars, only 17 percent of charter schools outperform their public counterparts, according to Stanford University’s June 2009 study. That means all of us—teachers, principals, administrators, researchers, and policymakers—in charter and in public schools alike, must redouble our commitment to scholarship and transparency in identifying “lessons learned” from the charter movement.

Are the Brighter Choice test scores a result of changed educational practices? Of millions in corporate and philanthropic support? Or an apples-to-oranges comparison? (The Albany Times Union reports Albany charters enroll and test only a fraction of students with disabilities in district schools.)

The questions matter. Honest answers should be sought through forums that go beyond “charter corporate” to include unions as a leading force in education reform. Union leaders at the local, state, and national levels are committed to ending the achievement gap as an essential part of our mission. We are dedicated to a principle of fairness that means support for charter or regular public schools should not come at the other’s expense.

As NYSUT’s policy and practice attest, we embrace high standards, accountability, and transparency for regular public schools and charter schools alike. Our members, who walk the walk every day in the classroom, deserve no less.

Richard C. Iannuzzi
President
New York State United Teachers

A New Model of Teaching
In “How to Get the Teachers We Want” (features, Summer 2009), Rick Hess urges us to rethink the teacher challenges of the 21st century. He argues convincingly that to ensure that all our schools have sufficient numbers of high-quality teachers to teach all our children well, we need to move away from outdated assumptions about teacher recruitment and the irrational arrangements of teachers’ work.

Taken together and implemented meaningfully, the changes Dr. Hess promotes would constitute radical, almost revolutionary, reform. Oddly, Dr. Hess ends on a moderate note, suggesting that we ought to “recognize that institutions change slowly and celebrate incremental advances” toward a “more flexible, rewarding, and performance-focused profession.”

We respectfully disagree. We believe that a large-scale transformation of schooling in America is just over the horizon and therefore the professional arrangements of the teaching enterprise will have to change sooner rather than later.

American schooling, as we’ve known it for more than a century, has already been disrupted. The Internet and an aggressive network of education entrepreneurs have exploded the monopoly that teachers and textbooks have long held over students’ access to knowledge. It is becoming increasingly clear that to truly educate all children well, instruction must be personalized for every student yet at the same time directed toward common goals.

Dr. Hess notes that to meet these instructional challenges, teachers’ roles must be specialized. We wholeheartedly agree, adding that what we term “unbundled education” requires that schools implement what we’re calling (in “Toward the Structural Transformation of Schools: Innovations in Staffing,” a paper from Learning Point Associates) a “neo-differentiated” staffing model. This model differentiates instructional roles according to staff skill and expertise and puts each student at the center of the organizational chart. It outsources some of the work of teachers to experts in the community in virtual learning spaces.

Structural transformation and differentiated staffing sound intimidating, but the work has already begun. Take a look at New Hampshire’s Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO) initiative or the newly piloted School of One in New York City. These innovations reject schooling’s “industrial rhythms” of the past. The options in 2009 are only as containable as we allow them to be. Now is the time to begin working together toward a system that helps to facilitate success for all learners.

Jane G. Coggshall
Research Associate

Molly Lasagna
Policy Specialist
Learning Point Associates

The post Winter 2010 Correspondence appeared first on Education Next.

The Education Equality Project champions accountability, pay reform, and school choice, while the Broader, Bolder coalition insists we must attend to health care, preschool, and parenting skills if students are to succeed in school. The Obama administration must negotiate this split in pursuing education reform; indeed, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was the only individual to serve as a founding member of both groups.

In this forum, president of Democrats for Education Reform Joe Williams speaks for the Education Equality Project and Pedro Noguera offers the Broader, Bolder perspective on improving K–12 schooling, the early record of the Obama administration, and the challenges that lie ahead.

Education Next: What principles unify the signers of the coalition [Education Equality Project or A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education]? Can you explain the key reforms the coalition is calling for?

Pedro Noguera: The basic principle underlying the Broader, Bolder Approach to school reform is that efforts to raise student achievement cannot ignore the unmet social needs of children, particularly those related to concentrated poverty—inadequate health, housing, and nutrition. These conditions have a tremendous impact upon child development and learning.

Poverty does not cause academic failure, but it is a factor that profoundly influences the character of schools and student performance, in at least three broad and interrelated ways: 1) in most cases, considerably less money is spent on the education of poor children. Per-pupil spending has bearing on the quality of facilities, the availability of learning materials, and the ability of schools to attract and retain highly qualified personnel. While high levels of funding do not guarantee that children will receive a quality education, money matters, and many of the most acclaimed charter schools spend more per pupil than public schools, even though they generally serve fewer high-need students (i.e., special education or English language learners); 2) the unmet, nonacademic needs of children (social, emotional, and psychological) often have an impact on learning; 3) schools serving large numbers of poor children typically lack the resources and expertise to respond to their academic and social needs.

This does not mean that poor children cannot learn or that until we eliminate poverty and related social issues we will not be able to educate all children in this country. There are schools across the country—some are charter, some are private, and many are traditional public—that have shown us that it is possible for poor children to achieve at high levels when we respond to their needs and create conditions that are conducive to learning. However, the fact that a small number of schools have experienced a degree of success does not mean that we can simply blame other schools for their failures or ignore what is happening to children outside of school. Many, though not all, schools that succeed with poor children devise strategies to mitigate the effects of poverty with site-based social services and extended learning opportunities.

BBA advocates providing universal access to health care for children, quality early-childhood education, and expanded access to extended learning opportunities, after school and during the summer. While these measures alone will not guarantee higher student achievement or large-scale school improvement, they are essential for creating a context in which other education reforms can be effective.

Joe Williams: The Education Equality Project is a coalition of leaders (from education, civil rights, government, public policy, and business) who believe that what happens inside schools (and in the politics surrounding schooling) plays a tremendous role in shaping the achievement gap that exists in this country between the haves and the have-nots. The focus for reform, therefore, should be on what happens between teachers and students. That isn’t meant to be glib; we keep finding ourselves debating that key distinction with people who argue that the external forces in a child’s life represent obstacles too large for even great schools to overcome. While we are very sympathetic to the obstacles that impoverished children face to their physical, emotional, and educational development, and support policies to address these deficiencies, we believe that when conditions outside of the classroom are less than stellar, it is even more important that we get the schooling piece right.

One of the beliefs that has tied together the signatories of EEP thus far is a commitment to eliminating the racial and ethnic achievement gap in this country. This is not just an education issue, but a civil rights issue. If we neglect the education needs of our children, we are depriving them of the kinds of opportunities that the American dream can offer.

The EEP has called for an effective teacher for every child (paying teachers as professionals, giving them the tools and training to do their work effectively, and making tough decisions about ineffective teachers); empowering parents by allowing them to choose the best schools for their children; holding grown-ups at all levels accountable for the education of our children; and, very important, having enough strength in our convictions to stand up to anyone who seeks to preserve a failed system.

EN: Is it fair to expect all students to meet a uniform performance baseline? Is it reasonable to hold schools and educators responsible for ensuring that students meet that bar?

JW: Yes, these expectations are fair and reasonable. The key is making sure that schools and educators have the tools to provide students with the kind of education they need to clear the bar, including resources, the ability to build teams of excellent educators, and enough flexibility at the school level to adjust the length of the school day and year (among other things). This will likely require both additional resources and smarter use of education budgets around the country. Newark mayor Cory Booker often talks about the fact that we allow time spent on education to be the constant, while achievement is the variable. We need the flexibility to flip that notion so that time is the variable and achievement is the constant.

PN: Setting high academic standards for schools and students to meet is important but relatively easy to do. The harder and more important task is to adopt and implement standards that create optimal conditions for learning. This means ensuring that all children, regardless of where they live, have access to high-quality schools. This is what government policy must strive to achieve. We have quality standards for airports, highways, food, drugs, and water, but no state has adopted standards for learning environments, and many poor children attend under-resourced, inferior schools.

In fact, the most troubled schools typically serve students with the greatest needs. These schools cannot solve problems related to inequality and poverty without additional support. Yet this is essentially what No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and most education reforms that preceded it have expected. Almost eight years after the enactment of NCLB, high dropout rates and low achievement are still pervasive throughout this country, particularly in schools where poor children are concentrated.

EN: Do you think the administration’s actions thus far on school choice and charter schooling have been too aggressive or not aggressive enough?

PN: School choice is an idea that should be supported in principle. It is good for parents to have a variety of schools from which to choose because not all children have the same needs or interests. The greater challenge is ensuring that there are many high-quality schools to choose from and ensuring that choice does not contribute to further segregation in schools. Unfortunately, in many communities that have enacted choice plans, well-organized and informed parents do their best to gain access to the better schools, and invariably, others are left out. Racial segregation in schools has increased in the last 20 years, and poor children have become concentrated in the worst schools. Furthermore, in most choice systems it’s not parents but schools that really do the choosing. The better schools are often able to screen out needy students and limit enrollment. Because of high demand, they can be selective about whom they choose. This often occurs even in charter schools that use lotteries to determine admission but set criteria that are difficult for low-income parents to meet. Those who are not chosen by the superior schools invariably end up in lower-quality public schools with fewer resources.

Many, but not all, charter schools have demonstrated considerable success in educating poor children. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has expressed his support for charter schools, even though in several states, such as Texas and Arizona, the charter schools are often no better, and in some cases are worse, than the public schools. As a trustee of the State University of New York, I am proud to say that the charter schools we authorize consistently outperform similar schools in the communities where they are located. If such quality-control measures can be adopted in other communities, charter schools should be supported as a means to increase the supply of good schools available to poor children.

JW: Choice, in and of itself, won’t bring about the kind of systemic change that we need. But it is difficult to imagine how we can drive that systemic change without choice playing a role. The administration’s actions to limit the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship (K–12 vouchers), for example, were perplexing, if only because the actions were accompanied by empty rhetoric about doing what is best for children. How do we look at low-income families with a straight face and tell them they can’t send their children to better schools because it isn’t the right policy to pursue for the broader system? We need to be doing everything we can to reform the larger system, but by all means, let’s help those families who need good schools now. All of that said, President Obama and education secretary Arne Duncan have provided tremendous cover for the public charter-school movement and have helped shift the focus toward identifying those schools that are doing an outstanding job of educating students and giving them the green light to bring their models to scale.

I have never believed that a voucher or a charter can teach a child to read or do math at exceptionally high levels. That stuff happens in great schools, and vouchers and charter school lotteries offer access to those schools for families who can’t afford to live in affluent neighborhoods or send their children to effective private schools. The key is ensuring that they have an abundance of great schools from which to choose. The public charter-school movement, in addressing both the supply and demand sides of this equation, has emerged as the most promising development in the broader attempt to save public education. The question is whether the charter movement will provide the political spark needed to fundamentally transform our public schools.

EN: Is basing pay on teacher performance essential to school improvement? Is it possible to craft a merit-pay plan that the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) will endorse? Are teachers unions and existing collective-bargaining agreements an impediment to school quality?

JW: I think we have gotten way too far ahead in this discussion. We are talking about merit pay and performance pay in school systems that recognize neither merit nor performance. Teachers unions are understandably squeamish about this topic because today’s testing regimens were not created to serve this purpose. Until people feel confident in the tests that we are using, it will be difficult to build compensation systems on them.

This is an issue we can’t afford to ignore, however. The unions set out to create a standard of fairness for all teachers. The end result, in many cases, is a system that doesn’t allow itself to view great teachers any differently than it does mediocre teachers. Evaluations rate teachers as merely “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.” As long as excellence is irrelevant in our schools, we will continue to be stuck in this holding pattern. Wouldn’t it be something if we could strive for systems filled with “excellent” teachers, where excellence actually means something? We’re going to need a lot of help from the NEA and AFT in getting there, since they are holding the keys right now.

PN: Addressing the effectiveness of teachers must be an essential part of education reform in this country. However, judging teachers and awarding bonuses simply on the basis of test scores is problematic. We have already witnessed a large number of schools that have adopted scripted curricula and a narrow focus on test preparation as one way to raise test scores. This tendency will undoubtedly increase if teachers are evaluated exclusively on that basis. Such an approach is likely to discourage good teachers from working in high-need schools and to widen the gap between poor and affluent students. A narrow focus on raising test scores is also likely to deny poor students access to an enriched curriculum that encourages the development of higher-order thinking skills.

It makes more sense to devise incentives, including increased pay, to attract teachers with a track record of effectiveness, to high-need schools and classrooms. Such teachers can be identified through systematic evaluations carried out by principals and peers. If we could combine such a strategy with lower class sizes and extended learning opportunities after school, we could see major gains for struggling students.

In many cities, unions have resisted giving districts greater flexibility in how teachers are assigned, and in too many cases they have made it difficult to remove teachers who are ineffective and inept. Since it seems likely that teachers unions will be around for many years to come, it would be wise to find ways to collaborate with them to devise peer review programs like those that have shown promise in districts such as Toledo, Ohio, and Rochester, New York. In these districts, ineffective teachers are removed in greater numbers than in districts that rely on principal evaluation. Districts should also be encouraged to use the negotiation process to push for greater flexibility in how teachers are assigned to schools.

EN: The president has touted the $5 billion for preschool in the stimulus bill. How can we be confident that the money will fund difference-making programs?

PN: Most of the nations that outperform the United States in educational outcomes provide universal access to quality preschool. Research in child development has shown that the learning that occurs during infancy establishes a foundation for learning throughout life. It is cost effective and in our national interest to expand access to quality early-childhood education for all children.

We know two important things about early childhood education: 1) children who have access to quality programs generally outperform children who do not, and 2) the benefits of quality preschool can be further enhanced if quality of education is maintained in the K–12 system. The situation is similar for elementary schools. Throughout the country we have seen a growing number of successful primary schools and increases in test scores. However, these gains often are not sustained in middle school. This should not be used as a justification to question the value of elementary school nor should similar logic be used to limit expansion of early childhood education.

JW: If high-quality pre-K isn’t such a good idea, why are rich people in my neighborhood running around thinking that the Earth will implode (and their kid won’t get into Harvard someday) if they don’t get a slot in the most sought-after preschool programs? Providing access to high-quality preschool opportunities to the have-nots is an important part of the overall reform effort, as long as those programs successfully help students prepare for the world that awaits them in kindergarten and beyond.

Critics note that finding “high-quality” early-childhood programs, just like finding high-quality K–12 schools, is where the proposition gets iffy. My organization, Democrats for Education Reform, has been pushing to extend state charter-school laws so that charter schools can offer pre-K while being held accountable for their results. Connecting pre-K to early childhood programs that run through 3rd grade would close the gap that exists between what is taught in pre-K and what students need to be able to do in the later grades.

This is about making sure that all students are starting off on as close to a level playing field as possible, whether or not they can afford to make a $100,000 contribution to get a leg up on preschool enrollment.

EN: The Broader, Bolder Approach has made the case that school reform must attend to the “physical health, character, social development, and non-academic skills” of students. Should schools and educators be tasked with this? At what point can or should we start to hold educators responsible for student outcomes?

JW: Students clearly have needs that extend beyond merely learning to read and do math. In the most successful schools serving low-income students, we see a wide range of child development activities, including sports, dance, art, chess, and citizenship enrichment activities. The notion that these activities are distractions from academic instruction assumes this is an either/or proposition. The best schools out there today seem to nail both.

This is where issues like better use of time come into play. Many educators decided long ago (seemingly correctly) that it is not possible to meet the complex needs of their students with a school day that ends at 3 p.m. This is particularly true for students who are two and three years behind where they are supposed to be academically.

PN: It is impossible and undesirable to separate academic performance from physical health, character development, and a variety of nonacademic skills. Sick and unhealthy children generally don’t do as well in school as healthy ones, and children who have trouble getting along with others typically don’t do very well either. From their very beginning, public schools have been charged with preparing children for work and citizenship, and such preparation has never focused solely upon academic skills.

To educate the “whole child,” schools must provide students with an enriched education that includes art, music, physical education, and character development in addition to the core subjects. The fact that skills in these areas cannot be easily assessed should not trouble us since most middle-class and affluent children receive such an education already and typically no one asks for evidence that such an approach has an impact on their test scores.

The highest-performing schools never focus exclusively on student achievement. In fact, what typically distinguishes the best schools from the others is the culture—shared expectations, values, norms, and beliefs—that permeate the school environment.

EN: The president has suggested that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, especially the $5 billion in “innovation” education funds, provides an opportunity to “transform” schooling. What are a couple of developments that give you cause for optimism or pessimism? How will we know in a few years if these education funds were spent wisely?

PN: While many public schools, especially in urban areas, are in dire need of reform, I am concerned that there is a lack of clarity about why past reforms have failed and insufficient understanding about the direction change must take if we are to obtain better results. Why do we still have dropout rates of 50 percent and higher in several cities eight years after the enactment of No Child Left Behind, and why are so many schools still foundering after substantial investments of public and private funds on reform? Several studies have shown that reforms have failed because we have ignored the nonacademic needs of children, because we have ignored school culture, because we have not evaluated reforms and insisted upon accountability, and because we have been too quick to pursue fads and gimmicks (small schools, technology, testing) while ignoring more substantive issues that support teaching and learning.

More funding is needed in many districts to address the lack of resources, but given the recession, we will need to rely upon better coordination between schools, nonprofits, and local government to respond to student needs. And money alone will not solve the problems facing America’s schools. We need a new vision and a new approach. A Broader, Bolder Approach offers part of the way forward. This must be combined with strategies that improve the quality of teaching and increase the accountability and responsiveness of schools to the communities they serve.

JW: The president and Secretary Duncan seem to have figured out that the leverage that comes from insisting that $5 billion be attached to innovation is tremendous. Even before a single dime was disbursed from the “Race to the Top” fund, we saw state legislatures take actions to support things like charter school expansion: Massachusetts, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, and Rhode Island were not exactly lining up to help charter schools until Duncan made clear that it would impact these states’ applications for federal funding. For a state like Tennessee, which risked losing $100 million in Duncan’s discretionary spending, the conversation quickly changed. A charter-school expansion bill that had been declared dead and tagged by the political coroners came back to life before our very eyes.

The challenge will come when it is time to convert the leverage Duncan has discovered into ongoing federal appropriations. This will launch a dramatic transformation of the role of the federal government in education. This is where we should be optimistic.

Politically, Duncan and Obama are going to need to tell good stories about what has been unleashed here through the stimulus package. If successful school operators like KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), Uncommon Schools, and Achievement First can get help (financially and legislatively) in bringing their models to scale, and if successful education programs can be brought to more and more students, there will be a compelling story to tell. Public education will be on its way to saving itself.

EN: What does BBA’s proposed accountability system look like? How does it differ from NCLB?

PN: The BBA proposal for accountability emphasizes qualitative and quantitative evaluations of schools. That is, rather than relying exclusively on test scores to judge schools, BBA calls for the creation of an inspectorate, similar to that used in other countries with high-performing education systems, that is comprised of experienced educators, policymakers and scholars, to evaluate schools and make recommendations about how they might be improved. Such an approach could be used to provide schools with detailed feedback on how to make better use of resources and employ strategies that will enable them to become more successful in raising achievement and overcoming obstacles to learning.

Under NCLB, schools are judged largely on the basis of test scores, and many schools have figured out that the system can be gamed simply by targeting groups of students with intensive test preparation. Schools that are faced with greater challenges are simply labeled “failing” and targeted with threats and humiliation. The underlying assumption is that the educators are lazy and that pressure can be used to force them to improve. Accountability is essential if we are going to bring about school improvement on a larger scale, but it must be accompanied by real assistance and support.

In some cases, shutting down failing schools, as Secretary Duncan has suggested, may be necessary, but we must acknowledge ahead of time that the number of failing schools is simply too great for this to be the only strategy that we use. It is more constructive and effective to find out why a school has failed and to work with educators and local stakeholders to address the causes.

EN: In the context of EEP’s proposed reforms, how will an expanded federal role make a significant difference? How should new federal funds be distributed?

JW: An expanded federal role will allow our entire nation to cut through some of the political fog that has prevented good, sound ideas about how to change our schools from getting the go-ahead to proceed as part of a major systemic reform strategy. This is about using the tremendous leverage of the federal government to force some really blunt conversations at the state and district level, the kinds of conversations that make people uncomfortable and often lead to political paralysis. We have this tendency, if policy conversations make people feel uncomfortable, to sweep important issues under the rug. This is one of the reasons so little has actually changed despite waves and waves of reforms. We have an opportunity to change that dynamic, but only if President Obama holds firm on his commitment to bring change to public education.

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An interview with Jay Greene about vouchers for disabled kids is available here.

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The big battles over school vouchers in American education have focused on programs serving low-income children who live in urban areas. Milwaukee’s program, begun in 1990, is the biggest and oldest in the country, and the District of Columbia effort, funded by the federal government, has been the most carefully studied. Both have been focal points of intense, partisan disputes, and both have been threatened by legislative actions in the past several months. But, even when they are considered together, those two programs are not as large as a hardly known, originally noncontroversial voucher innovation, the special education voucher. Four states—Florida (1999), Georgia (2007), Ohio (2003), and Utah (2005)—have special education voucher programs that together serve more than 22,000 students.

Special education voucher laws are very simple. The parents of any child found in need of a special education (in Ohio, only students with autism) can ask the school district to pay for their child’s education at a school the parent has identified as appropriate.

Special education vouchers have a political advantage that vouchers for low-income students lack: they can benefit not only the poverty-stricken disadvantaged, almost never a politically potent interest group, but also anyone who has a child with disabilities, a population that crosses all social and economic boundaries. The concept also stands on particularly strong constitutional grounds, inasmuch as special education vouchers add nothing in principle to the rights established by federal law in 1974. Part of the historic extension of equal educational opportunity rights to the disabled, Public Law 94-142, the Education of All-Handicapped Children Act, now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), was one of the most popular pieces of federal education legislation ever enacted.

That law has four key provisions: 1) every child, no matter how disabled, has a right to a free and appropriate education, which can take place in either a public or private setting; 2) an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) must be designed for each child in consultation with his or her parents; 3) the child should be educated in the “least restrictive environment”; and 4) parents can object to the educational provisions for their child by requesting a “due process” hearing with an independent hearing officer, whose decisions can be appealed to the courts (see sidebar). But schools tend to win most legal challenges brought by parents. Given the long odds and financial and psychological toll of suing the same people who take care of their child each day, most parents tend to accept whatever services are offered, even if the services fall well short of those required by law.

High Cost of Winning

In 1999, Joseph Murphy was a 9th-grade student with dyslexia and several other cognitive disabilities. His parents felt that the New York public high school’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for their son was not adequate. They followed the protocol of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and sued Arlington Central School District, requesting that the school district cover tuition at a private school that could meet their son’s needs.

The Murphys prevailed in the district court. Arlington was ordered to pay the tuition costs for Joseph at the private school. In accordance with IDEA, the school district was also required to pay the plaintiffs’ fees and the costs of the lawsuit, which, for the Murphys, included a bill for $29,350 from Marilyn Arons, an education consultant they had hired as an expert witness.

The school district refused to pay these expenses, claiming that the Murphys should not be reimbursed for the costs of Arons’s services, as she was not an attorney. In July 2003 the district court ruled that under IDEA the cost of an expert consultant was reimbursable and that the school district would indeed have to pay. The school district appealed, and in March 2005 the second circuit court affirmed the previous decision.

The school district then appealed to the Supreme Court to determine whether, according to IDEA, costs beyond attorney’s fees were reimbursable. In June 2006, the Supreme Court decided (6 to 3) that IDEA’s stipulations for reimbursement did not include expert witness fees, thereby absolving the school district of paying for the Murphys’ expert.

Suing for tuition reimbursement for their son’s private school and then fighting to be reimbursed for the costs of the expert who had helped them win took Joseph Murphy’s parents seven years. The Supreme Court ruling left the burden of paying the $29,350 on the Murphys’ shoulders.

As special education has evolved over the decades since IDEA was enacted, public school districts have provided most of the special education services students have required. But a small percentage of students are educated at private schools, most often because the district has deemed that facility to be the most appropriate and to provide the least restrictive environment, given the nature and severity of the child’s disability. Many of the private schools serving the disabled have a religious affiliation, but that has not proven to be a barrier to government funding of student placements under IDEA.

As of 2007, there were 5,978,081 students in special education nationwide, with fewer than 100,000 in private placements. Only 67,729 were being served by private schools at parental initiative, a mere 1.1 percent of disabled students, and a trivial 0.14 percent of the 49.6 million students in public education. Students placed in private schools are more likely to be autistic, have multiple disabilities, or suffer from emotional disturbances than those students who receive services in the public schools (see “Debunking a Special Education Myth,” check the facts).

Although few and far between, private placements nonetheless are an important constitutional precedent for special education vouchers, as the latter constitute only an extension of a long-standing practice that dates back to the civil-rights revolution. But unlike the procedures established under IDEA, school-voucher laws give parents the right to select a private placement without having to convince public school officials of the need for such services, to say nothing of the legal costs of proving to a hearing officer, or a state court judge, that the decision of the school district was in error. The rights of parents are seemingly identical under IDEA and under special education voucher laws, but the ease with which parents can exercise those rights is profoundly different.

The Debate

Almost 15 percent of students in the United States are said to have a disability under the procedures established by IDEA, so in states with special education vouchers, the potential for program growth is considerable. As the opportunity for private placement with a special education voucher becomes better known to parents, and as private providers become aware of the possibility of a larger clientele, one can anticipate an inexorable growth in the size and popularity of these programs.

Further expansion is likely to face some obstacles, however, as the programs become large enough to threaten vested interests. Arizona’s special education voucher law was struck down by the state courts after a challenge from the teachers union and civil liberties groups, which claimed that the law violated a state constitutional provision barring any public funds from flowing to religious institutions. Whether these state “Blaine Amendments,” named after the 19th-century presidential candidate who promoted anti-Catholic bigotry nationwide, will survive federal constitutional muster is not yet known. And whether other states of the 37 that have Blaine Amendments will interpret them as restrictively as Arizona or will follow Wisconsin’s example and still permit vouchers to be used at religiously affiliated schools is also not yet known.

In addition to legal challenges, opponents of special education vouchers are beginning to advance political and educational arguments against the idea as new programs are being considered in states such as Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and the existing Ohio program is poised to expand.

Opponents raise several arguments to which answers can be given from recent studies of existing special education voucher programs. A number of the studies were carried out by research teams in which Jay Greene participated; in the remainder of this essay we will refer to those studies as “our” research.

1. Is Current Law Adequate?

One of the most frequently heard claims is that such vouchers are unnecessary, as disabled students already have the right, under IDEA, to private placement, if that is the appropriate setting for their education. Andrew Rotherham, the well-known blogger for Education Sector, dismisses the need for such vouchers on the grounds that “many (in real numbers not percentage terms) special education students attend private schools at public expense as a result” of a provision in the “Individuals With Disabilities Education Act…for students with exceptional needs that the public schools cannot meet,” and this existing provision is “adequate to the task.”

But this claim ignores the complex procedures that must be followed in order to arrange for a private placement, a primary reason such placement is quite rare. As the United States Supreme Court noted in its recent Forest Grove School District decision, pursuing private placement through the legal system is “‘ponderous’ and therefore inadequate to ensure that a school’s failure to provide a [free and appropriate public education] is remedied with the speed necessary to avoid detriment to the child’s education.” And school districts win most legal struggles with parents over private placement. According to Thomas Mayes and Perry Zirkel’s empirical analysis of this type of case, “school districts won the clear majority (62.5%) of the decisions.”

Given the low probability of victory as well as the considerable time, expense, and psychological discomfort involved in waging a legal battle, it isn’t surprising that private placements are rare, especially among families who lack the wealth and sophistication required to navigate the legal system successfully.

Special education vouchers essentially use public funds to democratize access to private placement by reducing legal and financial barriers. In Florida, where the McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities program has offered vouchers to disabled students since 1999, vouchers allow 6.7 percent of special education students to be educated in private schools at public expense. That is six times the nationwide average for private placement. Current practices for securing private placement elsewhere are hardly “adequate to the task,” that is, if the task is helping disabled students find an appropriate alternative to their assigned public school.

2. Will Costs Rise?

Won’t expanding access to private schools for disabled students impose significantly greater costs on the public? The People for the American Way and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (PFAW/DREDF) expressed this fear as fact in their joint 2003 report on Florida’s McKay Scholarship program: “The costs of the McKay voucher program have escalated rapidly and have financially punished public schools around the Sunshine State.”

Fortunately, the facts don’t support the PFAW/DREDF claim. It is true that the overall cost of special education has become a significant financial issue for school districts nationwide as enrollments have steadily grown over the years, although our previous research found that the cost has been widely exaggerated in the media. However, vouchers are unlikely to increase the burden on districts: Special education voucher laws stipulate that the voucher amount should reflect the severity of the disability, that is, students who have more severe disabilities receive more generous vouchers, and that the cost to the district may not exceed the average cost the state pays for the education of children with similar conditions.

In Florida, eligible students are provided with a voucher equivalent to the lesser of the amount the assigned public school would have spent on the child and the tuition at the accepting private school. According to the Florida Department of Education, the value of McKay scholarships in 2006–07 ranged from $5,039 to $21,907, with an average of $7,206. Given that Florida public schools spend close to $17,000 per disabled student and that the McKay program contains a roughly representative distribution of disability types, taxpayers are actually saving quite a bit of money with special education vouchers, and public school districts are certainly not being “financially punished.”

3. Will Enrollments Rise?

Even if special education vouchers lower the public expenditure for each disabled student who receives a voucher, the vouchers might contribute to higher total costs if they increase the likelihood that students would be classified as disabled. Andrew Rotherham and Sara Mead expressed this concern in a paper for the Progressive Policy Institute in 2003: “Special education vouchers may actually exacerbate the over-identification problem by creating a new incentive for parents to have children diagnosed with a disability in order to obtain a voucher.”

Again, the facts do not support the fear. Though no one disputes that disabilities are real and that disabled students are more expensive to educate, it is not true that vouchers will necessarily increase the identification of disabilities, thereby raising overall education costs. It is current government funding policies that generate incentives for over-identification of disabilities. A number of studies have found a higher incidence of identified disabilities in those states that provide districts with additional dollars for each student diagnosed as disabled. Other states award a special education grant to each district, based on past numbers of disabled students, thereby reducing any incentive to over-identify students with disabilities. Our research has shown that when a state shifts away from paying for each incidence of disability to a “census” approach, the growth in special education enrollments slows. Other research confirms the pattern: Using district-level data, Julie Cullen finds that financial incentives explained 40 percent of the growth in special education in Texas during the early 1990s, and Sally Kwak finds a similar result in California.

Special education vouchers provide a different incentive. They discourage school districts from over-identifying disabled students, because any student identified as disabled becomes a potential choice student who might leave the district for a private school, reducing district revenue received from the state.

Our research has shown that vouchers have in fact slowed growth in special education enrollments in Florida. In a new study, we examined the impact of vouchers on the likelihood that Florida students would be placed in special education. We looked at whether the probability that a student would be identified as having a specific learning disability in Florida changed as more private schools that accepted McKay scholarships opened near the student’s public school. With more such schools nearby, students would have greater opportunities to leave if they were classified as disabled and therefore became eligible for a voucher. The willingness of public schools to put students into special education might be constrained if those schools feared that students would walk out the door with a voucher and all of their funding.

In fact, that is exactly what we found. The addition of 7.6 private schools that accept McKay funding within five miles of a public school, which is the average, reduces the probability that a student will be identified as having a specific learning disability by 15 percent. The evidence suggests that, rather than expanding special education, as Rotherham and Mead feared, introducing special education vouchers places some constraint on the rapid growth in students placed in special education.

4. Will Sufficient Services Be Provided?

If special education vouchers don’t increase costs, critics allege, then providers must skimp on services. Emory University professor Ann Abramowitz warned Georgians against adopting a special education voucher program that ultimately was enacted in that state, arguing that it “risks depriving many special needs students of services that they vitally need. Federal law requires public schools to provide appropriate services to children with special needs…. Parents would surrender these rights when they opt for a voucher under the proposed legislation.”

This is inaccurate. Parents don’t lose rights with special education vouchers; they only gain an additional mechanism for making the rights of their disabled children a reality. Even where special education vouchers are adopted, families can always choose to pursue their right to appropriate services in public schools through the legal system. Vouchers simply offer those families an alternative to engaging in a legal struggle or accepting subpar services. Instead, they can use their voucher-derived market power to purchase the services their disabled children need. If the market doesn’t provide satisfactory outcomes, parents can always return to the public schools with their relatively impotent legal rights.

The empirical research shows that when parents are empowered with vouchers, they are actually more likely to obtain necessary services. In another study, we surveyed participants in Florida’s McKay voucher program to see how likely they were to get services in their private school relative to their previous public school. Only 30.2 percent of voucher participants said they received all services required under federal law from their public school, while 86 percent reported their McKay school provided all the services they promised to provide. In addition, Virginia Weidner and Carolyn Herrington found through a large survey that “almost 90% of McKay respondents…were satisfied or very satisfied with the school their child attends, whereas only 71.4% of public school respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with the school their child attends.”

These families were more likely to get what they needed from private schools, even though they had no legal rights to specific services from those schools; they were less likely to get what they needed from the public schools, where they were legally entitled to those services. Market power can sometimes deliver better results than procedural rights. With special education vouchers, families get both: the right to an appropriate education from public schools and the option to purchase that appropriate education from private schools.

5. Will Some Students Be Left Behind?

But might the departure from public schools of some special education students and the revenue they generate undermine the ability of the remaining disabled students to get an appropriate education? Vouchers could drain resources and talent from the public schools, making it harder for them to serve their special education students. On the other hand, options for disabled students to leave and take resources with them might motivate public schools to attend to the needs of their students more closely and serve them better.

The latter seems to be the case. In a 2008 study, we examined whether the academic achievement of special education students was affected by the number of options they had to leave their public school with a voucher. In Florida, as more private schools that accept McKay funding opened near each public school, the standardized test scores of disabled students who remained in public schools significantly increased. The addition of about seven public schools with McKay funding within five miles of a public school improved the academic achievement of special education students by about .05 of a standard deviation. Contrary to common misconceptions, virtually all disabled students in public schools take the state-mandated test in Florida, so improvement in test results suggests that schools were serving those students better when they faced more competition from the McKay program. Vouchers do not drain public schools of their ability to serve disabled students; instead, schools are pushed to serve those students better.

6. Are Private Schools Accountable?

Special education vouchers appear to improve access to desired services for the students who use them, while also improving outcomes for the disabled students who remain in public schools. But the country’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, still frets that the program lacks sufficient accountability for results: “Voucher students are not included in state assessments, so taxpayers have no way of knowing how the voucher funds have been spent, and how students have fared.”

The simplest solution is to add a testing requirement to special education voucher programs similar to the testing requirements found in a number of other voucher programs. It might be best, however, not to require state accountability testing in a special education voucher program. With the difficulties disabled students face and the highly varied goals and criteria for success that may be appropriate for each student, state accountability testing is not always helpful in assessing the academic progress of individual special education students. Educational goals and assessments often need to be customized to individual circumstances.

Even when disabled students are in public schools with Individual Education Plans, accountability for progress on the goals contained in those IEPs rests primarily with the parents. If schools fall short, the public and policymakers would never know. Parents would have to detect the shortcomings and do something about it. The situation is no different in private schools that accept a special education voucher. If the private schools fall short, parents would have to detect it and do something about it. The only difference is that without vouchers the only thing that could be done is to pursue an expensive and time-consuming legal process; with vouchers, the parents would have the option of finding better services somewhere else.

It’s also important to note that we do not always require accountability by measuring outcomes whenever public funds are distributed, even in education. For example, large public sums are devoted to higher education in both public and private universities and yet no one is required to take accountability tests. Preschool is increasingly subsidized directly and indirectly by the government and still we do not make preschoolers take accountability tests.

Despite the frequency with which public programs rely on beneficiaries to hold the quality of services accountable, Sara Mead asserts in an Education Sector report that, “accountability to parents alone is insufficient to protect the public interest or ensure taxpayer money is used well.” It is unclear why these critics find parents of disabled 5th graders unreliable for accountability purposes, but find parents of students in preschool or university sufficiently competent.

Besides, the research evidence suggests that special education vouchers are benefiting both students and taxpayers. They improve the ability of disabled students to find appropriate services. They save taxpayers money, because the average voucher ends up costing less than educating the same student in public school and because the voucher curbs public-school financial incentives to inflate the special education rolls. And special education vouchers even improve the quality of services for the disabled students who remain in public schools because those schools risk losing students to the voucher program if they do not serve the students well. This all sounds like real accountability for results.

Most important, special education vouchers change the mechanism by which we ensure services for disabled students. Rather than forcing dissatisfied families to accept subpar services or to pursue legal action for relief, vouchers permit a lower-conflict, lower-cost method for resolving disagreements about the adequacy of public school efforts.

Jay Greene is professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Stuart Buck is a doctoral student in education reform at the University of Arkansas and author of Acting White: An Ironic Effect of Desegregation (forthcoming, Yale University Press).

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