10/14/2003 Policy

Prospectus due October 28

Nov 26, Final paper due (the final analytical paper, Bardach etc. 60%)

Dec. 2 Last Class – some papers will be presented

"Final essays" given out at that point

Take home essays, due in middle of exam period (40%).

Due date for final project?

What is US Ed problem?

1. Types of tests – norm, criteria, NAEP, AYP
1. norm

i. easy to hard, to create a bell-shaped curve.

ii. kids can be getting smarter, but they make the items harder to compensate, and get the perfect curve, so there's no longevity to data – they "re-norm" the test.

iii. 1940 National Assesment of Regulated Progress

2. Criterion-referenced test

i. Covers full domain of what kids should know

ii. Set standard of "how good is good enough" "What do you need for an A"

iii. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and HSEE

1. Advanced

2. Proficient

3. Basic

4. Below Basic

5. Well below basic

iv. Then you have to ask what the standard being used is – proficient? Basic?

v. Presumably, all kids could meet the "basic" standards – the test does not get re-normed.

vi. Problem with NAEP is seniors take it and they have no incentive to perform, as results have no impact on the individual

vii. No Child Left Behind – all kids must be "proficient" within 12 years – except states define "proficient" – and need to set annual yearly progress rate

1. CA defined proficient as eligible for 4-year college, before NCLB

2. State board of ed says what do we do now – look like we're lowering standards, or maintain impossibly high definition of "proficient" – chose the latter.

3. Hence, we have a huge number of people/schools not making "annual yearly progress.

4. Arkansas has only 3% not making AYP, because their definition of "proficient" is "below basic"

viii. HSEE consequences postponed for fear of opportunity to learn (OTL) lawsuits

ix. Jenn- what's in the GED? Tamecia: much harder than the HSEE Adam: Do colleges admit people who have GEDs as well as diplomas. MWK: Yes – but there is a stigma attached.

2. Trends in Achievement – Domestic International

Percentage of 8^th graders reaching TIMSS-R Median International Benchmark
School District	% of students
Singapore	93
Hong Kong	92
Korea	91
Naperville School district #203, IL	91
Japan	89
First in the World, Consortia, IL	87
Belgium (Flemish)	85
Michigan Invitational Group	77
Canada	77
Montgomery County, MD	77
US Average	61
England, Wales	61
International average	50
New Jersey Public Schools	48
Israel	47
Thailand	44
Chicago Public School, IL	41
Rochester City School District, NY	32
Tunisia	32
California average	32
Miami-Dade County Public Schools, FL	29
Iran	25
Indonesia	22

Internationally hashed-out test

US Study committee (US TIMMS National Research Center, William Schmidt at UMich) – why do some nations do so much better than others? They have analysed in depth not teacher quality but WHAT IS TAUGHT. The US curriculum is "a mile wide and an inch deep". "I can't remember any of it, but I did pretty well on the test…" Other countries are higher on concept and less on recitation of formulas.

Countries at the top are all HIGHLY centralized – except for Belgium, has "a Voucher system like Milton Friedman would kill for."

3. Race/income gap

Tamecia: Who is funding policy:?

The finding for most policy research that is not evaluation (US Dept of Ed funds lots of evaluation)

Like after school programs – eval found (21^st century schools) ineffective but Bush admin re-thought b/c of Schwarzennegger platform.

Variety of funding sources:

• Koret K-12 Task force funded by individuals, right-leaning
• Center for Ed Policy – (John F. Jennings) funded by left-of-center foundations (Carnegie, Ford)
• Center for Ed Reform (Jeanie Allen, formerly of the Heritage Foundation) heavy right, funded by John B Olen foundation.
• Some try to fund neutral research

Entirely soft-money shops – v. little endowment, run entirely on grant funding and individual donations. Distribution of foundation money Right-Left-Center is crucial in how much money is given to research on various topics and to who gets heard.

Tracing money from individuals and foundations to see how much goes where – there's a whole lot of money going into it and it's hard to trace. Afot money, you gotta hustle to get it.

How reliable are the stats that come out of the Dept of Ed?

Those that come from Secretary's office – carefully culled to make a case

NCES – pretty much just data

Mike: Why should we expect that data to be reliable when the EPA puts out biased data from oil industry – why is NCES reliable when EPA is not?

MWK: Sort the shops – if the Secretary releases it, watch out, it's cooked to support the administration's line. When you sign up to work under and administration, that's what you sign up to do.

NCES and other organizations beneath Secretary's office are professional data organizations, independent, staff that last longer than one or two terms – like census, NCES, Bureau of Labor Stats, parts of commerce department, mostly civil servants.

Problems à Objective àStrategies àAlternatives

Mike: What is a dropout?

MWK: Since we started local control of schools we have never constructed longitudinal data systems that track across districts, much less state-level aggregates. Since schools are independent and not a state-level organization, they don't share information. As of yesterday, David signed a bill to provide unique Ids to all CA students.

Mike: What does it mean when politicians talk about dropout rate?

MWK: NOTHING! They code students for what they think or assert or say they've done after they leave, but there's no follow up and it's not a consistent coding. We didn't have enough state money to re-do all the data system, so we tried to offer grants, and LAUSD said nope, we just re-did ours, don't wanna re-do to comply with your guidelines.

How they're doing dropout rates that "mean something" – they have a method for asking census people if they're a HS dropout or not, and they use census data to indicate who graduated (or received GED equivalency) v. who entered. Where the whole system is breaking down is that Bush & states want to keep track of school-by-school dropout rates, which are fiction as far as I'm concerned. CA won't use school-by-school dropout rates, because they don't know what they are.

API – "Index" based on ONE THING: Test scores

We wanted to put in dropouts and the committee convened and said they weren't reliable enough. There's no oversight, we don't know where the kids go, there's no way to track them.

Adam: Going back to quality of teachers (Justine's topic) why is it that most master's programs are 2-3 years and education it's only 9 months?

MWK: Not necessarily true – Soc, Anthro, etc. For teaching the assumption is you spend four years doing your subject matter and one getting a credential. It's partly what the market will bear – you can spend two years getting a JD or MBA and make more money, but how much is a Soc master's worth on the market? To me, that's a classic policy analysis question – how do you improve teacher quality? 2 year master's programs?

Tamecia: If you focus your strategies on one part of the problem (frame it as teacher quality problem) then what about issues with curriculum? Where do you invest your resources?

MWK: It's really an analytical question of where you are and what your current resources are. You have $50 million to address math performance, and a teacher shortage, and old math texts that don't match the standards – what do you do? The budget constraint forces the decision – splitting it gets you a little bit of nothing in both areas – where do you really _commit_ your resources?

Mike: What happened to 4-year education degrees?

MWK: Still have 'em, Arizona trains 90% of their teachers that way

Lee O'Brien in the 1950s in Ca decided that the problem with CA schools was the education BA – not good enough, too much methodology, not enough content. Passed a law mandating that all teacher training be fifth year graduate school training.

There are no new ideas – they all cycle around. Stanford School of Ed just got money and big new program to institute innovative new program of undergraduate prep for elementary teaching – the same program we abolished way back when! Now that CA legal constraints have been removed on teacher training requirements there's a market again – but there are still MASSIVE legal constraints on teacher education curriculum.

"This is public policy in action! You're seeing it! There are two things you never want to see made: Sausage . . . and the laws of this state."

Policy Instruments	Assumptions	Consequences
Mandates	Action required regardless of capacity; good in its own right Action would not occur with desired frequency or consistency without rule Central control needed to enforce	Coercion required, constracts appropriate Create uniformity, reduce variation Policy contains information necessary for compliance Adversarial relations between initiators, targets Minimum standards
Inducements	Valued good would not be produced with desired frequency or consistency in absence of additional money. Individuals, agencies, vary in capacity to produce; money elicits performance	Capacity exists, money needed to mobilize it. As tolerable range of variation narrows, oversight costs increase. Less state regulation could be an inducement.
Capacity-building	Knowledge, skill competence required to produce future value; or Local level cannot build its own capacity, so centralized stimulation needed Capacity good in its own right or instrumental for other purposes.	Capacity does not exist; investment needed to mobilize it Staff development and improvement networks increase.
System-changing	Existing institutions, existing incentives cannot produce desired results Changing distribution of authority changes what is produced.	Institutional factors incite action; provokes defensive response. New institutions raise new problems of mandates, inducements, capacities
Hortatory/Publicity	Publicity – Symbolism will change policy	More discussion & information will cause change

Source - Adapted from Lorraine McDonald and Richard Elmore

Type of Instrument	Ability to Implement	Willingness to Implement
Mandates	Exists; Fully Capable	Low; Needs Enforcement
Inducements (Incentive)	Exists	Possible if motivated
Capacity-building (Teacher Training)	Does Not Exist	Mixed
System Changing (Market/Vouchers – Decentralization)	Low	Considerable Resistance
Persuasion (Speeches)	Possible if Motivated	Low

In your paper talk about which mixture of these and lead instrument you are thinking about using. Helps you think about how to get from here to there. Don't overlook mandates, sometimes they'll get you where you want to go.