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This and next week I am raising objections to the idea that new standards — particularly new national standards — are worth the attention they get. It is ridiculous to think that they can be a meaningful lever of broad educational improvement. In fact, I do not think that they can have any significant impact at all.

Problem #3: Fear of Failure Rates

I am not a fan of most of what appears on The Quick and the Ed, but last month Chad Adelman made a great point about setting high standards. He explained that when they are taken seriously and the inevitable high failure rates occur, people find or create loopholes or backdoors.

Frankly, people do not have the stomach for high failure rates. It is easy to say that we want to raise standards; that is the good news. But it is hard to endorse high failure rates; that is public bad news.

In a 2001 episode of The West Wing, two characters discussed the impact of making the standard for poverty more rigorous and realistic. The good news was that they had a better sense of the problem and would be better able to address it.

Toby: Let’s get back to the bad news. Four million people
became poor on the President’s watch?

Sam: They didn’t become poor. They were poor already. And now we’re calling them poor.

Toby: What was wrong with the old formula?

Sam: I don’t know.

Toby: Find out.

Sam: It is possible that this is a statistical reality and not a political finding.

But public failure is always a political finding, too. And people subject to politics, be they elected, appointed or just in high visible positions, have great incentive to undermine bad news or prevent the news from coming out. So, the more rigorous the standards, the less seriously others will take them, knowing that they will likely be blamed for the bad news. The idealized senior staff of The West Wing could accept “the bad news” because it was really just a more accurate description of reality. But would our real flesh & blood leaders, with all of the pressures they face today, be as well able to accept “the bad news” — and potentially the blame for it? When new more rigorous standards lead to reports of fewer expert or even proficient students, those in positions of responsibility will be blamed. Will they allow that to happen?

Previous: Problem #2 — An Unrealistic Bar!
Next: Problem #4 — Classrooms!

• Klein’s data presentation to the city’s business executives was heavy on political undertones.
• Harlem Success Academy I’s principal has quit less than half-way into the year.
• Accountable Talk wonders if Michael Mulgrew will go the conciliatory route, or find his own way.
• NYC Educator says Weingarten is flip-flopping on test scores and teacher tenure.
• If we lift the charter school cap, will New York still get the best and brightest charter applicants?
• A teacher D.C. Chancellor Rhee honored in the spring is now among those being laid off.
• Nevada makes it clear that it’s not going to gamble on RttT funding.
• A recent dropout study may have overemphasized what higher graduation rates would produce.
• A substitute lesson plan could prevent chaos during a teacher’s absence.
• And Klein is the Queens Courier’s “Man of the Year.”

Klein argued that the gains made by city students on state exams compared to their peers elsewhere in the state are evidence that his experiments with school reform are working.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein made the case to city business leaders this morning that his school reforms are spurring real progress and should be supported.

Speaking to a group of corporate and investment executives assembled by the group Partnership for New York City, Klein asked them to throw their weight behind the changes that Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg hope to continue in the city.

“This community has got to make education reform a priority,” Klein said. (more…)

Image via Flickr

Two high school students are waging a campaign to get the Department of Education’s recent ban on lunch-time bake sales overturned.

Seth Hoffman, a senior at Beacon High School, and Matthew Melore, a senior at Bronx Science High School, will begin circulating a petition in their schools tomorrow, calling for the DOE to lift its restrictions on when and what students can sell to raise money for clubs.

Frustration over the new rules has already spilled into Facebook, which now hosts two pages — one created by Hoffman, the other by Melore — about the ban. Hundreds of students from other public high schools around the city have already joined both groups.

“Kids are talking about this a lot,” said Hoffman, 17. “This past week, everywhere I’ve been going it’s been a topic of discussion.” (more…)

Since last week, I have been raising objections to the idea that new standards — particularly new national standards — are worth the attention they get. It is ridiculous to think that they can be a meaningful lever of broad educational improvement. In fact, I do not think that they can have any significant impact at all.

Problem #2: An Unrealistic Bar

Even if we did not have the kinds of gaps that we see between schools, districts and even states, there is a common problem with where to set the bar. Standards are often set by content experts who have rarely worked with below average students in their field, and perhaps not even average students. They declare what they think students ought to know or be able to do by the time that they graduate from high school, for example. Imagine what college professors/instructors of mathematics would say that high school graduates should know. And historians. And scientists.

When these standards setting committees say, “To be proficient, a student should know…,” what do they actually mean by proficient? Are these bars set for the average student? For the honors student? For the student who truly excels in that subject and will major in it in college?

I don’t see a lot of pressure for these brilliant experts — and I am perfectly willing to concede that they are brilliant experts — to consider a bar any lower than what they think ought to be possible, what they would like to see happen. But they don’t do research or investigation to see how likely or practical their goals are, for whom they might be reasonable, or what it would require for schools to raise all of their students to that level of proficiency — presumably the goal, right?

This leads to aspirational goals and standards, rather than realistically achievable standards.

Previous: Problem #1 — Which Bar to Raise?
Next: Problem #3 – Fear of Failure Rates.

• Ten city charter schools piloting a merit-pay program handed out $1.5 million in bonuses. (Post)
• Some teachers use their classrooms to complicate the story of Christopher Columbus as hero. (AP)
• One-sixth of all students at a new Bed-Stuy elementary school are homeless. (Daily News)
• Fewer students were held back last year in the high-stakes grades of 3, 5, and 7. (Daily News)
• More eighth-graders were retained in the first year of a new promotion policy. (Post, GothamSchools)
• Staten Island elected officials want a new high school on the island’s crowded North Shore. (NY1)
• A former public school in Harlem is being turned into condos. (Times)
• Ed Sec Arne Duncan has launched a persuasion campaign to get more people to become teachers. (AP)
• Only about 2 percent of the country’s teachers are black men. (AP)
• Some are wondering whether schools are going too far with their zero tolerance policies. (Times)
• Readers weigh in on the city’s crackdown on school bake sales. (Times)
• The Theodore Roosevelt High School building was evacuated Friday after a pepper spray fight. (NY1)
• Mayor Bloomberg aims to place new charter schools in public housing buildings. (NY1)
• Jay Mathews: Local authorities, not state electeds, make the difference in schools. (Washington Post)
• Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill permitting test scores to factor into teacher evaluations. (AP)
• Liberal Democrats don’t know who’s on their side in national education policy debates. (NY Mag)
• The city denied a Queens family’s request for home instruction for a well sibling of a sick child. (Post)
• A Japanese style of professional development without experts is gaining ground. (Washington Post)

• Chicago students and police officers have a fascinating conversation about school violence and snitching.
• Bloomberg says it doesn’t make sense for parents to be involved in macro education issues.
• Quick and the Ed talks to one student voicing opposition to Congress’ proposed student loan reforms.
• InsideSchools wants to know if you think schools need bake sales.
• Some British parents can log online to check what their schoolchildren ate for lunch.
• Only half of principals in Texas stay in their jobs for three years, a new study reports.
• About 650 people have responded to Colorado’s call to help put together their Race to the Top application.
• Education Sector’s online discussion of school choice asks if we’re headed for “radical choice.”
• NYSUT’s polling center says that 72% of their respondents favor peer assistance and review for teachers.