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Study says...
February 19, 2009
Getting an F or a D led schools to assign fewer essays, projects
When the Bloomberg administration announced it would assign every public school a letter grade, based largely on test scores, critics worried the grades would lead to a “drill and kill” approach to teaching. Forced to raise test scores, they said, schools might avoid teaching creativity and problem-solving in favor of focusing on basic skills. New research suggests that the critics worries may have come true — but the researchers don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
Jonah Rockoff, a professor at Columbia business school who has been studying the Bloomberg administration’s accountability system, presented the finding today at a lunch at New York University. It’s part of a paper whose central conclusion — that grading schools with D’s and F’s led schools to improve their test scores — was publicized last year. But the paper has many other interesting aspects, and Rockoff’s research is continuing. Today, I’ll stick to the “back to the basics” idea; future posts will tackle other areas of interest.
Rockoff’s paper draws three conclusions about schools tacked with D’s and F’s that lead to the “back to the basics” conclusion. In the months after getting the failing grades, these schools 1) spent less time on work that involved essays and projects; 2) saw an increase in emphasis on using test score data to make decisions about curriculum; and 3) were less likely to have teachers report that their administrators’ focused on teaching quality.
Here’s how Rockoff and co-author Lesley Turner explain this set of findings (emphasis mine):
“One story which reconciles all of these findings is that principals in F and D schools placed greater weight on direct instruction of skills that would lead to improvements on the state examinations, which involved a greater use of data driven instruction and less of what teachers deem a focus on teaching quality.”
The authors suggest that the shift to so-called “direct instruction” is not necessarily a bad thing. The study finds that F and D schools improved their math scores the next year, and that F schools also improved their English scores. The study also finds that F and D schools did not drop art and music classes, as some critics worried they would. And it finds that parents at F and D schools approve of the changes, reporting in surveys that they were more satisfied with the school’s academics after it got a low grade than they were before it was graded.
Rockoff acknowledged that the higher parent satisfaction could also be evidence of another one of critics’ charges: that parents, concerned about the prospect of their school closing, practice a kind of grade inflation. He said that one reason to believe they are reporting honestly is that parents with children who are about to leave the school — say, parents of eighth-graders or high school seniors — report results no different from parents whose children would be affected by a school closure. But he said it’s impossible to rule out the possibility that the survey responses aren’t honest.
A Department of Education spokesman, Andrew Jacob, said there’s nothing inherently wrong with focusing on basic skills. “You can’t do a project about the real-world applications of algebra if you can’t do algebra,” he said. He also pointed to an internal study that found that schools with high progress report grades were more likely to have parents, teachers, and students report in surveys that they find their school “engaging.”
Next up on Rockoff’s findings: The research he’s done on charges that schools try to “game” the system by mis-representing their own data.
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February 19th, 2009 10:04 pm
I think they’re missing something more basic than “back to basics”: In a typical NYC high school, you assign a project and maybe a third of the kids do it. Unless it’s really simple, then two-thirds will do it, but only a third will actually do it according to instructions. Meanwhile, they’ll ask you if they’ll fail the class if they don’t do the project. You don’t want to say no because then no one will do it. You can’t say yes because you’ll put yourself in a spot. Under Klein’s new rules if you fail kids you get in trouble. So, you know that if you assign a project, you’ll be in a position to either have to fail a bunch of kids who didn’t do it or hate yourself for passing them in order to avoid trouble. The solution is not to assign the project and thereby enable more kids pass the class. The increased passing rate means you get a higher report card grade and the chancellor is off your back and everyone loves the chancellor’s “reforms”, especially Bill Gates and our fine new education secretary. It’s what they call “win-win”.
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February 19th, 2009 10:53 pm
What an attitude! Glad you’re not my child’s teacher….we definitely need reform.
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February 20th, 2009 7:36 am
No, be glad your child isn’t part of the NYC Bloomberg/Klein run system. Smith is simply explaining the “top-down/business” approach of the “school reformers” where everything looks great until you look under the surface. Everything looked great on Wall Street awhile back, too, didn’t it?
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February 20th, 2009 10:03 am
Rockoff conducts a lot of interesting research on public schools. This is an article about his research on teacher-to-teacher mentoring programs in NYC schools. http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/ideasatwork/feature?&global.now=&main.id=137209&main.ctrl=contentmgr.detail&main.view=articlesb.detail
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February 20th, 2009 10:16 am
Is his paper posted online anywhere?
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February 20th, 2009 10:34 am
The paper is available at http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jrockoff/w14564.pdf
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February 22nd, 2009 12:28 pm
[...] The Gotham Schools blog, a prolific blog largely about education in New York City, reported on a research study that showed that rating a school with a D or F (all schools in NYC are now given such a mark, based largely on test scores) was correlated with fewer projects and essays after the rating was assigned and a greater emphasis on direct instruction. The scary thing, as Gotham Schools reports, is that the authors of the study support this change. [...]
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June 1st, 2009 8:14 am
[...] The Gotham Schools blog, a prolific blog largely about education in New York City, reported on a research study that showed that rating a school with a D or F (all schools in NYC are now given such a mark, based largely on test scores) was correlated with fewer projects and essays after the rating was assigned and a greater emphasis on direct instruction. The scary thing, as Gotham Schools reports, is that the authors of the study support this change. [...]
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