Sean Reardon has done the nationwide research on the extent to which the achievement gap in education has widened based on differences in income. Here's the abstract (with some key points highlighted): In this chapter I examine whether and how the relationship between family socioeconomic characteristics and academic achievement has changed during the last fifty years. In particular, I investigate the extent to which the rising income inequality of the last four decades has been paralleled by a similar increase in the income achievement gradient. As the income gap between high- and low-income families has widened, has the achievement gap between children in high- and low-income families also widened? The answer, in brief, is yes. The achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is roughly 30 to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born twenty-five years earlier. In fact, it appears that the income achievement gap has been gr...

In Delaware our education debates have generally centered on the idea that access to a high-quality education is either being improved or damaged by charters, choice, and the Neighborhood Schools Act. This is unfortunate in one sense because it detracts attention from what is actually occurring in our classrooms, and despite legions of data coaches and PLCs, we really don't know. This is also true on a nationwide basis. In the areas about which there is significant study, however, there are some extremely disquieting things happening. Take the coverage of evolution in our high-school Biology classes, for example . . . .

Lots of sound and fury both from choice/charter supporters and detractors over the past few weeks in the Delaware blogosphere . . . Lots of people raising interesting personal, ideologically based theories on both sides . . . And an astounding absence of real data on important questions. Here's one of the things we really need to know, in order to resolve the charter school/school choice controversy: Has choice and charter created harm? Harm would be hereby defined as a reduction in the educational outcomes of those students within the traditional public school system who have not had access to charter schools or have not been able to/chosen to utilize choice to find a more preferred school. Harm would be determined by going back to the period, say 1985-1995, to determine how well the minority/low-income students were doing before  choice/charter, and compare that to how well those students are doing now. The problems? 1--DOE does not keep those stats currently (eve...

In Colorado the issue is not charters, but online schools .  Nonetheless, the issue is almost exactly the same:  the State Department of Education apparently does not follow through with its oversight responsibilities: DENVER - State auditors delivered a highly critical report on online schools Monday, saying their students perform worse and drop out more often than their counterparts in public schools. Auditors also said the state Department of Education failed to act against school districts that sponsor underperforming online schools, despite state rules requiring that such districts have their accreditation revoked or be placed on accreditation watch. The report, presented to the Legislative Audit Committee, said students who get their education online had lower reading, writing and math scores on statewide tests than students in public schools. This raises an interesting question:  are State Departments of Education the best entities to be supervising experi...

Abuse Alcohol (beer and liquor), tobacco, or drugs Birthdays Bodily functions Cancer (and other diseases) Catastrophes/disasters Children dealing with serious issues Computers in the home Creatures from outer space Dancing Death and disease Dinosaurs and prehistoric times Divorce Geological history Evolution Expensive gifts, vacations, and prizes Gambling Halloween Holidays Homes with swimming pools In-depth discussions of sports that require prior knowledge Junk food Loss of employment Movies Nuclear weapons Parapsychology Politics Pornography Poverty Rap music Religion Religious holidays Rock-and-Roll music Running away Sex Slavery Terrorism Vermin (rats and roaches) Violence War and bloodshed Weapons (guns, knives, etc.) Witchcraft, sorcery, etc. Give up? These are all terms or topics that teachers may not use on tests in New York City Public Schools. This is presented as food for thou...

...and the dowry will be bazillions [they hope] of dollars of Federal money. The University of Delaware thinks Vision 2015 is tremendous. Not surprising: universities generally think whatever will bring them in millions of dollars of Federal grant money is a good thing. Nor is it surprising to find the News Journal continually pimping for Vision 2015 : For nearly four years a coalition representing a wide range of public sector and private sector interests, including unions and business leaders, teachers and administrators, has worked to develop a plan to transform our schools. It's a plan informed by data collected from around the country and around the world and it is a call for rigor and intellectual honesty and excellence. Called Vision 2015, it is the foundation upon which we can build a world class school system. That, at least, was clearly labeled as an editorial by John Taylor--former editorial page editor and now--wait for it-- executive director of the Delaware Public Po...

After a long, soccer-dominated weekend with light posting I have a number of things I want to write about today, some of which are actually time-sensitive and significant. Instead, I am going to spend most of the morning grading student papers.... But I thought this was funny at first, and then later I wasn't so sure. On my younger daughter's bus [she's in eighth grade] there is a boy who can solve the Rubik's Cube in something like 15-20 seconds. He's been trying to teach my daughter, who is--[how shall we say this charitably?]--as three-dimensionally challenged as her Dad. But, with written instructions and patience, he has gotten her about three-quarters of the way through the process. She can now make a Rubik's Cube look three-quarters solved on all six faces simultaneously. [The next move is conceptually pretty difficult it seems, and she has been stalled out there for several weeks.] OK--you got it? She can sort of, incompletely, almost solve a Rubik...

The relevant segments from today's WNJ editorial on the Obama administration's Race to the Top [which, by the way, represents another virtual continuation of a Bush program with a few cosmetic differences]: You may recall that George W. Bush's critics absolutely despised the emphasis put on test scores by No Child Left Behind. They said it cheapened the educational process and forced teachers to spend all their time "teaching to the test." Of course, that was just for public consumption. What really worried them was that tests -- along with the process of aggregating the data according to race -- would reveal, for all to see, the lousy job that public schools are doing in educating minority students. Well, now, as some critics on the left have pointed out, the Race to the Top actually puts even more emphasis on those dreaded test scores than did No Child Left Behind. The Bush measure used test scores to evaluate schools; what Duncan has in mind is to use those s...

Kilroy has up a post on the DSTP ; he and I have exchanged emails on this topic in the past, and his post convinces me that it is time to tell (most) of what I know and witnessed. I say "most" because I am going to explain what happened in some detail, but I am also going to leave out the names--at least 90% of them. From 1992-1995 I co-chaired the Delaware Social Studies Curriculum Frameworks Commission, which was charged with developing new K-12 Social Studies Standards. I also chaired the writing team, and did the bulk of the actual writing and editing of the final document. We produced standards in four different areas: History, Geography, Economics, and Civics. It is important to note that all the curriculum frameworks commissions (SS, English/language arts, Science, and Math) were charged to create standards that were to be tested through a process called authentic assessment . This was one of the big buzzwords in the early 1990s, and it essentially meant that stude...

... but only rates as number 172 in the nation. Cab Calloway ranks number 429. AI DuPont ranks number 641. Mount Pleasant ranks number 647. Dover HS ranks number 874. Concord HS ranks number 1,373. That's it. Out of the top 1,500 high schools in the nation, Delaware only managed to place six schools: none in the top 100, one charter in the top 200, two in the top 500... Yet Delaware public school expenditures per pupil are among the highest in the nation (usually ranking around sixth highest in the country ), at over $11,600/student. You have to ask yourself exactly what we are paying for.

A lot of our friends suggest that the question of greater taxation has been settled, that patriotic, adult Americans understand that that they have to be willing to pay significantly more taxes to improve education, infrastructure, health care, and that only rightwing extremists, racist tea baggers, and fanatic libertarians are still concerned about our tax burden. Apparently not so. Kilroy provided the link that sent me to this March 2008 study by the University of Delaware regarding what kind of tax burden First State citizens would be willing to accept in order to improve public education. The results are ... surprisingly libertarian for a State that is portrayed as a leading light in the Obama-nation. Here are the results: 83% of Delaware citizens reject the idea of a sales tax to support education. 76% of Delaware citizens reject the idea of increasing income taxes to support education. 66% of Delaware citizens reject the idea of increasing property taxes to support educatio...

My daughter calls it the Delaware Student Torture Program. I had to admit to her last year that between 1992-1995 I co-chaired the Social Studies Frameworks Commission and then in 1998 served on the Performance Indicators Committee that went into the design of the Social Studies component of the DSTP. She didn't actually care that I have spent multiple years criticizing the DSTP as essentially worthless in its current form: she just holds me responsible. Now the state is seriously reconsidering the DSTP--finally. Lieutenant Governor Denn and Education Secretary Lowery are in the initial stages of suggesting the replacement of the DSTP with a summative test at grade-level and benchmark adaptive tests during the year. That summative test is unfortunately still necessary, at least until the worst provisions of No Child Left Behind are repealed. The benchmark idea, which has been in play in several Delaware school districts for a couple years now, is tremendously important: The sec...

(with apologies to Waldo , as usual, whenever I steal the gag) It strikes me as entertaining when one political party, ideology, or apologist attempts to stake out the high ground on a scientific or intellectual issue... Like this : The GOP is the same party that wants Creationism taught in schools… Good point, potentially, except that--according to the Pew study done in honor of Charles Darwin's birthday--a lot of people who believe in Creationism (and even want it taught in the schools either in place of, or alongside, evolution)--must have voted Democratic in the past presidential election: Opinion polls over the past two decades have found the American public deeply divided in its beliefs about the origins and development of life on earth. Surveys are fairly consistent in their estimates of how many Americans believe in evolution or creationism. Approximately 40%-50% of the public accepts a biblical creationist account of the origins of life , while comparable or slightly larg...

[Sub-title: Dana, this one's for you] This afternoon my employer, Delaware State University, makes its pitch at the Joint Finance Committee. I don't usually blog about DSU because of potential conflicts of interest and my position as faculty union president. But sometimes you just have to go with what you believe. I suspect (I have absolutely no inside information on this) that DSU will put on a presentation that attempts to justify the same level of funding as originally projected, in an effort to avoid anything more draconian than a 3% cut. I suspect that many other agencies will do so as well. It's no secret that DSU--like a lot of American citizens these days--is walking a tight financial line. I could give details, but that might get me into confidential information--just go read the newspapers and public documents if you are really interested in the numbers. I have to say, however, that going in today and suggesting that higher education cannot take cuts at least ...

Here [courtesy Last Free Voice ] are excerpts from Dr Michael Munger's education commentary after he was again excluded from a major gubernatorial debate in North Carolina. First, on the debate itself: The Democratic and Republican candidates held another alleged debate today, sponsored by a supposedly non-partisan group, which excluded the third candidate in the race. Predictably, their answers focused on how they are going to fix the problem by using government power. The event was ironically held under the banner: “Education: Everybody’s Business.” Everybody, that is, except those who challenge the status quo, including a professor with nearly 25 years as an educator. Compounding the irony was the fact this “public” forum was held on private property and attendance was by invitation only. The program was recorded by the NC Telecommunications Association, another supposedly non-partisan group, and will be aired by WUNC on cable systems across the state. News14 Carolina aired the ...

You'd figure this story came out of Mississippi .... Ask any teenager and they'd probably say that they don't send messages to their teachers on social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook or via text messages ... it's just not cool! In Lamar County, Mississippi, there was a fear that students would try to socially connect to their teachers. Earlier this month, the Lamar County school board prohibited this contact over initial concerns that it's unprofessional. The policy is designed to prevent students and teachers from sharing personal information over the web and through text messages. Students and teachers are still allowed to create profiles. There is no word on what the penalty is for violating the policy. So far, there have been no penalities. Umm, they forgot to make it illegal to purchase Valentines for your teacher, to send your teacher roses, love notes on little scraps of paper, or to hire sky-writing planes to say, Miss x, I'd really like to f**k...

The recent WNJ editorial defending cuts in public education goes from the well-paid directly into the bizarre, with only a token stop at weird: Delaware's recently completed budget-writing process forced the Legislature to take a chunk of cash out of every government department. That included the schools. Among the victims will be mandatory summer school next year for students who don't fare well in statewide tests. That probably sounds worse than it is. Summer school really didn't help kids much. It was more punishment than actual aid to students. Tests, studies and teacher observation show that there are more effective ways to help students over a hump. So back in the spring when the General Assembly's budget writers asked a variety of education leaders for places to cut, summer school showed up high on the list. The Joint Finance Committee duly aired them early on. It might sound strange, but the action gives schools more freedom to help students who are having trou...

Three caveats before I start: 1) I have never been a great fan of Senator Colin Bonini, despite the fact that many Libertarians in Delaware see him as one of the most Libertarian Republicans in the State. He's always been too much of a social conservative for my taste. I bring that up only to make the point that when I give him props, I seriously mean it. And with his vote to override on eminent domain, coupled with the information in this post--well, I have to admit that I may have been doing him a disservice. 2) I think the DSTP should be replaced. So that might make it sound paradoxical below when I argue about the nature of the DSTP cuts. However, read my argument with this sentence appended in your head: "As long as we have the DSTP on the books..." 3) I don't have the usual number of links in this story because either the Snooze Journal's website is too convoluted for this technopeasant or they're playing tricks with the stories. I can't find ...

. . . here they are. I'm not sure if releasing them on April Fools Day was an intentional ploy by the Department of Education or not. At any rate, lovely page after page of wonkish stats . For the deeply concerned, according to the Feds, the average per-pupil expenditure is $9,138 per year; Delaware spends $11,633 (8th highest in the nation). In purely instructional costs, we're 7th, at $7,096 per pupil. The neat thing about bureaucracy is that you can publish all these stats and have them be meaningless without knowing what you're getting in terms of student performance. For that you have to visit the National Center for Education Statistics , which will compare our math, reading, science, and writing scores at 4th and 8th Grades against national averages on NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] tests. And that's about what we are . . . average. 4th Grade Math DE 240/US 237 8th Grade Math DE 281/US 278 4th Grade Reading DE 226/US 217 8th Grade Reading ...

. . . because while I loved the album, I fell asleep during the movie of The Wall . Who could forget, "HEY! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!" Apparently not the Media Awareness Project , which has one of the best intellectual dissections of what's wrong with random drug testing of American students, including this gem: None of this is to say random drug testing is totally indefensible. It's just that the following defenses don't pass muster: * If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. This is the single most odious line of reasoning ever concocted because it misses the point. People, including students, are not required to prove they've done nothing wrong. * For safety's sake. Though the safety message is appealing, at its heart, drug testing isn't about safety. It's about control. It is worth noting students are not police officers, airline pilots, doctors or even teachers. They shouldn't be forced to choose between priva...