Education Roundtable: Who Shouldn't Go to College?

This is the first installment of what I hope to make a recurring series of education roundtables.

Corey: EdWeek just ran an article on a new report from some Harvard researchers.  In short, the report argues that we need to focus more energy on preparing students for careers that don’t require college diplomas.  As such, students should have more opportunities -- even as early as middle school -- to “chart an informed course toward work” (quote from edweek).  

Why?  “For too many of our youth, we have treated preparing for college versus preparing for a career as mutually exclusive options.”  By this logic, those most harmed by our “college or bust” (my quote) viewpoint are those who want to go into vocations with good wages (plumber, electrician, etc.) that don’t require diplomas.  In other words, why go to college when you get a steady, stimulating, and reasonably well-paying job without wasting time sitting in lecture halls.

To argue that some students would benefit from more vocational training is all well and good, but it seems like a slippery slope to me.  Yes, not everybody needs to go to college -- but I don’t think we’re anywhere near the point where too many students are going to college.  And until we reach the point where there are somewhere close to as many steady vocational jobs as there are adults without a college degree, I remain unconvinced that expending more time and effort on vocational training will benefit our students or our economy.  Until that point, this type of argument seems like a convenient way for some upper-class families to justify expecting less from others’ children than they do from their own.

TofuLover: I agree that there is a danger of reifying social stratification that comes along with this argument, but I don’t know how you can say we don’t have too many people going to college.  Why isn’t 40% more than enough?  Let us not confuse the racial/socioeconomic breakdown of that 40% with the overall value of the 40%.  Do I wish that 40% had many more children of color and children from low-income backgrounds?  Yes, but that doesn’t mean the number needs to get bigger, it means the proportions need to change.  

What is your argument for the value of college?  And what about the expense?  According to the Project on Student Debt, the average student graduated in 2009 with $24,000 in loans.  That’s an outrageous amount of money to repay, and for what advantage?  Where are your stats that there aren’t enough jobs for people without college degrees?  It seems to me that while the education industry has been convincing kids to take out larger and larger loans, many other industries have been quietly replacing highly-credentialed workers with cheaper ones with smaller pedigrees (medical assistants, who are not college educated, doing blood work instead of nurses, e.g.).

I learned amazing things in college, but I didn’t learn facts that would make me better at Jeopardy and I most certainly did not acquire any skills that made me more employable (the credential made me more employable, but not the skills).  I also learned invaluable lessons about citizenship, community, honesty, ethics, and how I wanted to create myself in the world and mold my world to suit my values.  While I wouldn’t trade these things or try to put a price tag on them, I am also confident that they all could have been accomplished by a really good high school.  

I also once had a plumber with an MBA from Wharton -- he got it and then went back to plumbing because he realized he could make more money, be his own boss, and do a service that few could argue isn’t absolutely crucial to our society’s function.  

The bell curve is shaped like a bell, kids.  This isn’t Lake Wobegone.  Some people are cut out for highly specialized careers that require college educations, and some people aren’t.  And we do a disservice to kids and our society when we beat them over the head with a) tasks that are really hard for them, often prohibitively so, 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, and b) the notion that they are bad people because school is hard for them.  Between teaching 2nd and 4th grades, I saw the light go out in so many children’s eyes because they were just confronted with things that were too hard for them, and that’s not right.  There should be legitimate, valued options for kids who don’t naturally excel at academics.  Education could and should lead the way in changing how society treats its most important members -- its plumbers, mechanics, farmers, trash collectors -- those without whom we (whose skill set amounts to being able to think for a living; let’s see how far that gets us in the post-peak-oil world) would be in serious trouble.

ClassroomView:  Corey, you lost me at the slippery slope.  I agree that we want to be careful about what kinds of skills we teach all children, because we don’t want to short circuit future opportunities.  However, I don’t think that shuttling me off the intramural basketball team in seventh grade was a bad thing, even though it effectively ended my hopes to get a scholarship to a great basketball school, like say, Kentucky.  I feel kind of cheated, I must admit, because I really could have been the next John Wall.  OK, maybe this is a stretch, but the thing is, it’s an apt analogy for a giant percentage of our kids who are continually browbeaten with “standards.”

As a currently practicing teacher who doesn’t work in a particularly failing school, I can say without reservation that our relentless focus on standards and college is one of the worst ideas to come out of our hapless nation that seems to be full of bad ideas these days.  You said it yourself with the term “College or Bust”: kids will make it to college, or they will have their souls crushed while trying.  But the crazy thing is, that’s not even the worst part of it.

The worst part of it is maybe they will get to college.  Let’s not forget that the major downside of everyone going to college is that its competitive value drops significantly.  How many of these kids get to a mediocre school, turn out mediocre grades, and then enter a work force chock full of other BAs who simply can’t find a job because our educational system expanded way too quickly under an educational industry bubble fueled almost exclusively by federally-backed loans?

I’m not going to cite any figures because I’m too lazy to look for them right now, but there is an entire generation of 20-somethings who can’t find work despite the our nation’s incessant boasting that “education is the key to a better future.”  Well here’s the thing: an education may very well be a prerequisite for a middle class living, but it is certainly no guarantee of one anymore; there are simply too many people with college degrees competing for a disappearing pool of jobs.

Which brings me to vocational education...of course we should have it...and a LOT of it.  There is an entire private industry of tech schools that train high school graduates (and college drop outs) to do useful things that can’t really be outsourced.  From air conditioning repair to medical technology, there are all sorts of jobs that graduates can do and earn a living at that require no college whatsoever.  My question is this: Why do we make people wait until after they’ve wasted years in high school to pursue these fields?  Wouldn’t it be a lot more honest, to say nothing of efficient, to allow these students to learn something useful in high school?  It would save them from debt later on (which I can personally attest, sucks) and it would keep them interested in learning during a pivotal of their lives that is now completely going down the tubes for large populations of our students.

Let’s not forget the end goal of K-12 education should be creating happy and productive citizens for our democracy.  Any path that gets five-year-olds to this point by their 18th birthdays is fine by me, and should be actively pursued.


Corey: In 1975, about 22% of 25-29 year-olds had a bachelor’s degree.  For the last decade, that number has hovered around 30%.  Hence, my lack of alarm at the skyrocketing population of young adults with useless bachelor’s degrees.

70% of adults do not possess a bachelor’s degree.  I’m neither a demographer nor a labor economist, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that this means two things: 1.) There are far more non-college-educated adults struggling to make ends meet than there are underemployed college grads staggering under a burden of debt; and 2.) There are nowhere near enough skilled jobs to employ everybody without a college degree; even if they all receive top-notch vocational training.

How many of those 70% should earn college degrees?  I don’t know.  But the reality is that we’re nowhere close -- and won’t be at any point in the near future -- to a population where 100% earn bachelor’s degrees.  Heck, at the current rate it will take us until about the end of the century to reach the point where the majority do.

Now, for the large number of students who enroll in college but never graduate (if over half of students enroll in college, and only 30% graduate, this is a pretty big number), we can certainly find some who would do better with vocational/technical training.  But this isn’t the only option: there are any number of ways in which we might help this population instead successfully graduate from college.  So, no, we shouldn’t dismiss vocational/technical training outright, but I think we should think long and hard before steering somebody away from college.

Part of this is because college attendance benefits people in numerous ways.  I don’t have time to look up all these statistics, but those with a bachelor’s degree are less than half as likely to be unemployed as those with a high school degree; earn substantially more money per year; are less likely to smoke; are more likely to vote, and the list could go on.  Some of this is correlational (more skilled people tend to go to college), but some portion is certainly what is learned and who one meets in college.  For these (and many other) reasons, I would encourage my child to to go to college regardless of which type of employment he/she wished to pursue.  And I think quite a few parents out there feel similarly.

To how many should this “college or bust” attitude be applied?  This is where we hit a slippery slope.  We’re not going to have 100% of students graduate from college, nor (probably) should we aim to.  So where do we draw the line?  This is where I worry that we start to hit a slippery slope.

I say that because we already know what happens when we track at any level: poor and minority students tend to end up in the bottom tracks while the wealthy and White (and Asian) students tend to find their way to the top tracks.  By encouraging those who may want to enroll in college, but are perceived as unlikely to graduate, to instead complete a vocational or technical education, we will probably save some students from being debt-ridden college dropouts.  But we’ll also prevent a number of students who otherwise would have finished college from doing so.  And these students will largely be poor and/or minority.

It seems to me that Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” applies here.  If you had no idea how successful your child would be in school, at what point would you object to them being placed in remedial English, the vocational track, or being advised not to attend college?  Would you be ok if this happened if they were in the 70th percentile?  I wouldn’t.  50th percentile?  I wouldn’t.  30th percentile?  I might start to consider it.

The practical ramification of the argument that we don’t need any more college grads and should, instead, focus on vocational education, is that 70% of parents should encourage their children to skip college.  

And I worry that it’s easy for those of us among the educated elite to pretend that would be acceptable.  We’re pretty sure our kids will end up among the top 30% (no matter how many times we have to go meet with the principal, how many hours we have to spend helping with homework, or how much we have to pay for private tutoring or a private school), so what do we have to worry about?  We have more friends from college who end up working as a secretary than we do friends who are unemployed, jailed, or working a series of low-wage jobs.  So, knowing that my child isn’t the one skipping college, I can sit here in the ivory tower and declare that too many people are enrolling in college and would be better off aiming lower.  And then I can take comfort in the fact that my child won’t have too much competition for the top positions in society.

TofuLover: I prefer not to think about some being “top” positions and rather to focus on the dignity in any kind of work.  I had a college classmate who dropped out to become an auto mechanic.  Do his parents love him less?  Is he less valuable to society than I am?  Hardly.  I also don’t think pushing to get more kids to the point where they can step on others is a goal to be proud of.  If the point of education is to “get ahead,” I have to ask, ahead of whom?  That’s the problem with this way of thinking about jobs and pay, someone always has to be at the bottom of the ladder in order for others to climb is.  I’m more interested in making this a society where we learn to respect and remunerate jobs based on their importance (an auto mechanic is considerably more useful to us than I will be with my PhD) and where we learn to appreciate the amazing bounty even the poorest of us has.  This takes my efforts outside of the educational arena, but not exclusively.

Corey's wrap-up: I think it's fair to say that there's no easy answer to the question of who should go to college and who shouldn't.  The "college or bust" attitudes of many parents often seem to benefit their children, but there's legitimate concern as to whether a society-wide "college or bust" attitude ends up hurting those who don't attend or graduate from college.  While those with college degrees lead lives that are empirically "better" in numerous ways (see the recent Economist article on the rising returns to a college diploma), it's unclear whether the goal of a college degree should be to "get ahead" of others.  Should the goal, instead, be simply to better oneself and one's life?

If that's the case, it seems likely that some would prefer the outcomes of pursuing a vocational or technical education than a bachelor's degree, but determining who should make that choice -- and when, is tricky, if not dangerous.  That will be part of next week's roundtable discussion.

New Feature: Education Roundtables

Starting this morning, I'm going to introduce a new feature on this blog: education roundtables.  The basic premise is that I'm going to collaborate with various people I know from around the world who are working in education.  One of us will post a discussion starter at the start of the week and, as time allows, others will post responses that build on the previous post.  The goal is to foster critical discussion amongst ourselves and push each other to think through things in new and deeper ways.  I hope that readers from the web will enjoy the conversation.

For now, many of the collaborators will be using pseudonyms.  As self-appointed moderator, I'll do my best to avoid allowing people who represent a specific interest from advocating for the interest anonymously.  If there are background or contextual factors that you should be aware of about the person writing one week, I'll try to make sure they get included.  If you need more information about somebody, feel free to post a comment or e-mail me.

For now, the schedule will be to post the previous week's discussion each Monday morning.  I'll to stick to that for at least this first month, and then we'll re-evaluate.

Can TFA Hemorrhage Teachers and Still be Good?

Earlier, I wrote a post pointing out that Teach For America members can do a lot of good after their two-year commitment is up even if they're not in the classroom.  In that post, I wrote that "it’s a fact that most do not teach long, if at all, past their two year commitment".

A commenter over at Eduwonk takes issue with this statement by pointing to this post, which says that one study found that 61% of TFA teachers teach beyond their 3rd year and then continues to say that a TFA alumni survey found that 32% of current alums are teachers right now.

Even though TFA is 20 years old, substantial recent growth means that there are far more graduates from the last few years than from the first 10 or so.  Plus, it seems plausible that earlier grads might be harder to track down and/or less likely to respond (though this can be addressed by proper weighting of the results, I don't have the survey report so I'm not sure whether or not this was done).  So let's say that the average TFA alum in this survey is 5 years out and 32% of those 5 years out are still teaching.  That would be mean that over 2/3 of TFA members teach fewer than 5 years after their two year commitment.  And that few alums stick around very long in the classroom -- just as I wrote before.  Perhaps more to the point, the vast majority of TFA members do not become career teachers.

But my guess is that the criticism of my statement wasn't really an attack on my methodology or facts.  My guess is that it was a defensive reaction by somebody who supports TFA.  Indeed, I've seen TFA employees become very defensive when people ask about the attrition numbers.  And I don't think they need to be.  Because TFA can do a lot of good regardless of whether or not all their teachers immediately bolt the classroom.  We're once again confusing two separate issues:

1.) Does TFA transform the teaching profession?
2.) Does TFA positively impact high-poverty schools?

I've long argued that the most significant effect of TFA in the long-run is going to be the large number of people in power who have taught in high-poverty schools and care about the issues confronting them -- not the formation of teaching force that accounts for fewer than 1% all of teachers in America.  I think it's more than possible for 2/3 of TFA alums to quickly move out of the classroom and the program to have a significant net positive effect.

In other words, I don't see the exodus of TFA alums from the teaching profession as something that's necessarily, or at least entirely, bad.  TFA can still do a lot of good even if every single teacher leaves after their second year.

So, I'd argue that the answer to question #1 is mostly "no" and the answer to question #2 is mostly "yes" -- and that that's perfectly ok.  TFA employees and supporters should have no problem with this, and TFA critics should acknowledge that TFA can do a lot of good even if it doesn't provide a long-term, comprehensive solution to the shortage of high-quality teachers in high-poverty schools.

Here's how I'd frame it if I were in charge of PA for the organization: TFA is providing an emergency stop-gap intervention in the short run, with the long-term goal of transforming the system so that we no longer need emergency interventions.  Critics allege that TFA is nothing but a band-aid solution, but band-aids can do a world of good if they're then followed up with more extensive care.

The band-aid that TFA provides is reasonably good teachers in schools that, for the most part, wouldn't otherwise be able to hire people of comparable success.  Studies of TFA tend to find that TFA teachers are as good as, or a little better than, other teachers in the district.  If anything, it's likely that these studies actually understate the relative quality of TFA teachers.  I say this because they compare TFA teachers to other teachers currently teaching in the district.  But the most relevant comparison group are the teachers who didn't get hired because a TFA teacher was hired instead.  In some cases, a perfectly competent teacher lost out to a TFA member, but in many cases a TFA member was hired instead of somebody that was unqualified or even instead of the position remaining vacant for the year.  On average, it's likely that the teachers not hired because of TFA are a little worse than the average teacher in the district, or even the average new or provisionally certified teacher in the district.  All this is to say that it's likely that most schools that hire TFA members are better off in the short-run with a TFA teacher or three in place than they would have been had they not had the option of hiring TFA members (now, there may be exceptions -- schools were principals hire TFA teachers that will actually be worse than the alternative -- but, in the aggregate, there is little doubt that most schools that do so are better off, at least in the short run).

The more extensive follow-up care that TFA provides is through the engagement of thousands of the country's most ambitious and talented young adults in the issues facing high-poverty schools.  Countless TFA alums who might otherwise be doing something else are now teaching in high-poverty schools, leading high-poverty schools, or advocating for high-poverty schools.  In the decades to come, I think we'll see steady growth in the number of TFA alums leading schools and districts, publishing research on schools and districts, managing educational non-profits, serving in legislative bodies, and influencing the situation on other ways.  I'm not sure what, exactly, the end results of these efforts will be, but I have little doubt that they have the potential to do more for America's education system as a whole than do those TFA members currently serving in the classroom.  This is not to diminish the importance of those currently in the classroom -- to the students in their class(es), they might be the most important figure in their life -- but, rather, to say that since TFA teachers make up well under 1% of the current teaching force, there are practical limits as to what they can do for the entire system.

So, TFA really has no need to adopt a defensive posture and hide behind the misleading statistic that 61% of people teach at some point after their second year.  When TFA recruits and trains their members, they actively encourage them to spend a few years in the classroom and then go to pursue other careers (the job market for TFA alums is pretty robust, as are the job placement services provided by TFA). But, when people transition from their time as TFA members to their time as TFA alums they are encouraged to stay engaged in the issues surrounding high-poverty schools.  At the current rate, within a couple decades there will be hundreds of thousands of TFA alums in high-ranking positions throughout the country -- so, those who focus on the few thousand young teachers in the classroom may be missing out on the big picture.  No, we're never going to fully staff all of our high-poverty schools with TFA teachers, but that shouldn't be the measure of success for TFA.

So, to answer the question in the title, yes: TFA can hemorrhage teachers and still have a net positive impact on our society and our schools.  And TFA advocates and critics alike should keep that in mind.


*full disclosure: as it says on the front page of my blog, I am an alum of the NYC Teaching Fellows (a sister program of TFA) who no longer teaches in a high-poverty school, but remains engaged in the issues confronting them.  While I am not a TFA alum, it's possible that I have a soft spot for former teachers who believe they can still make a difference.

TFA Members, Year 3+

Eduwonk writes that the number of people signed up for Teach for America's upcoming summit "should put to rest the idea that corps members just do two years and move on".

But I think he's confusing two separate questions here:

1.) Do TFA corps members remain in the classroom?
2.) Do TFA corps members remain engaged in education?

It's a fact that most do not teach long, if at all, past their two year commitment. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though it does make it impossible for TFA in its current form to be a large-scale solution for the teacher quality problem.

But I've always argued that the second question is more important. There's a bevy of anecdotal evidence that TFA members move on to other careers (both within and outside of education) that impact our educational system. We're already seeing TFA alums serving as principals and superintendents, and in the next decade I think we'll see a growing number of TFA alums taking leadership roles in academia, government, and other fields as well. To me, this will be the largest impact of TFA in the long run.

So, regarding his post, I don't think a large turnout would say anything about the first debate, but it would say an awful lot about the second.

How the US Health Care System is like the US Education System

I was struck by this NY Times piece discussing a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences on longevity in the US and other nations..  I was struck because one could substitute an analogous remark about education for virtually every mention of health care and the report would still ring true.  For example:

Over the last 25 years, life expectancy at age 50 in the U.S. has been rising, but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. This difference is particularly notable given that the U.S. spends more on health care than any other nation

could become

Over the last 25 years, educational achievement in the U.S. has been rising, but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries . . . This difference is particularly notable given that the U.S. spends more on education than any other nation


Here's the best graph I could find of this trend (the red dots represent the US):

and another example:

With respect to income inequality, it is widely believed that such inequalities are higher in the United States than in other high-income countries . . . Poverty rates also appear to be higher in the United States than in most of the other countries . . .

This combination of factors could result in higher mortality rates among people in the lower socioeconomic brackets in the United States than in other countries, pulling down US life expectancy levels in general

could become

This combination of factors could result in lower achievement rates among people in the lower socioeconomic brackets in the United States than in other countries, pulling down US achievement levels in general

Additionally, we could draw parallels between the success of the highly sophisticated and specialized branches of both health care (e.g. cancer research) that the report lauds and our nation's elite college and university system.

So, what does this all mean?  I'd argue that the parallels illustrate two truisms about American education:

1.) Society matters more than any single institutions.  While the quality of our doctors and teachers influence how healthy and educated people are, other factors are, cumulatively, far more important.  Both are affected by parenting, neighborhood context, diet, exercise, and so on.  But while we rush to blame teachers for the failures of American students, I hear very few rushing to blame doctors for the American populace's unhealthy lifestyle.

2.) We excel when we strive for excellence, but place little emphasis on providing excellence for all -- one concoct examples from numerous other fields (e.g. transportation or housing).  Whether this is good or bad is largely a value judgment, but it's a fact that the US is more individualist and less collectivist than maybe any nation on Earth.

The end result of these two factors is that our health and education systems are quite similar in many ways (which should surprise no one) and, as such, are likely similarly difficult to reform.

How Many Bad Teachers Are There?

With all the discussion surrounding the need to fire "bad teachers" these days, I wish we could take a step back and examine how many teachers out there are truly worth firing.

A working paper by Thomas Kane and colleagues sheds some light on the issue.  In the paper, they investigate the validity of teacher observations conducted by outsiders and find them to be fairly strongly correlated with both teacher value-added scores and levels of teacher experience.  This leads to the conclusion that the observations are fairly good measures of teacher effectiveness.

Included in the paper is this chart showing the spread of teachers who averaged ratings on a 1-4 scale.

What sticks out to me is that the distribution is skewed far to the right -- well over half of the teachers earn at least a 3 on the scale, and there are only a few that score really low.  This gibes with TNTP's report on San Francisco, in which fewer than 1% of teachers are rated unsatisfactory, and 94% of principals agree that teachers in their school who are underperforming are rated as such.

In other words, maybe the vast majority of teachers are doing a pretty good job.  Which, of course, is not to say that teachers who are failing their students should remain as is forever.  Clearly, as in any profession, there are teachers who need to receive more training, work harder, and/or move to another job.  But if this is the case (and I'm not going to claim it is based on only one study), then we should be a little more careful with our rhetoric.  If most teachers are doing a pretty good job, then we should probably spend a little more time praising them, a little less time decrying the fate of the teaching profession, and refer to bad teachers as the exception rather than the rule.

3.6 Inches of Snow = 10 Days Without School

Last week, we had 3.6 inches of snow in Nashville (2.5 inches on Monday morning, .6 inches on Tuesday, .4 inches in Wednesday, and .1 inches on Thursday according to the NOAA).  The result was that Nashville's school system -- and almost all others in the mid-state region -- canceled school for the entire week.  Though only 5 days of school were canceled, the day off for MLK's birthday means that there will be 10 consecutive days without school in the Metro Nashville Public Schools.

As a Northern transplant, I've often cynically joked that Nashville cancels one day of school for each inch of snowfall.  Since I moved here, this the first time that the rule hasn't held.

Why would 3.6 inches of snow shut down a school system for an entire week?  You might think it's because of the lack of snow clearing equipment in Southern cities, and you'd be partially right.  But all the main roads had been plowed and salted by the end of the day Monday, and the vast majority of side roads were clear by Tuesday afternoon.  So what gives?  Well, a small fraction of the side roads -- including a number that school buses regularly travel -- remained covered with ice the entire week.  This was the result of two things: 1.) temperatures that remained below freezing the entire week; and 2.) the fact that side roads, apparently, do not get salted or plowed in this city.

The continued cancellation of school day after day must've gotten somebody's attention, because the district felt compelled to post this explanation of how they make the decision following this announcement of a fifth consecutive day of school closures which says, in part, that:


We had serious concerns about safe bus travel. We did not want children to be left standing at a bus stop in 13-degree weather because a bus was unable to safely travel on an icy road. Additionally, we did not want to risk having a bus try to travel on an icy road and getting into an accident. We simply could not guarantee safe transportation for EVERY student in MNPS.

The explanation isn't completely unreasonable.  The pictures posted on the website make it quite apparent that there were, in fact, still some icy roads on Friday.  But this doesn't mean the city and school district didn't drop the ball.  There are at least two easy solutions that could -- and should -- have been implemented.

1.) Since the main roads were clear on Monday, that left most, if not all, of the snow clearing equipment free for the rest of the week.  It, of course, costs money to salt other roads -- money that undoubtedly wasn't part of an already tight budget.  But at some point in the next four days, somebody has to have thought to themselves that it would be worth saving 3 or 4 days of school to go salt a couple dozen troublesome spots.  Since bus safety was the main issue, trucks could have simply driven the school bus routes and salted problem areas.

2.) MNPS officials should be aware after a similar episode last year that it can take a number of days for the snow/ice to melt from all the roads in the county.  Given this knowledge, it would seem prudent to have alternate/emergency bus routes set up for days where only a few hilly, shaded roads are dangerous.  For a couple of days each year, kids can be dropped off at bus stops slightly farther from home and still make it to school safely.  Many public transportation systems (including Nashville's) have such alternate routes for their buses.


The end result is that it's only mid-January and Nashville has already used 7 snow days.  They only have 4 built in, so they'll be attending school on President's Day and will tack on two extra days at the end of the year (after the state testing).  More importantly, students will have attended exactly four days of school between December 17th and January 17th.  I don't envy the teachers who have to re-establish classroom norms and get students back up to speed this Tuesday and for the rest of the week and month.


Now, this is not to say that it's always a bad idea to cancel school.  Overly zealous decisions to keep school in session regardless of weather conditions can be harmful or, at best, a waste of time.  During my two years in NYC, we had three days (including one where 19 inches of snow fell on Sunday) where virtually all of the surrounding suburban districts called off of school but NYC did not.  On all three days, the majority of teachers and majority of students did not show up.  The SOP for those days was for all present students and teachers to report directly to the cafeteria in the morning.  The administrators then surveyed the scene and assigned students to teachers (on one day I had about a half-dozen kids from three different classes) and a day of babysitting, videos, and hangman ensued.  Chancellor Klein undoubtedly thought he was doing the students right by preventing students from missing valuable instruction time, but those on the ground saw a different story unfold (though, to be fair, the kids who did show got free childcare and meals even if they didn't learn much of anything).


In the end, the Nashville situation is yet another example of ways that circumstances outside of the control of teachers and administrators can influence the achievement of students.  Beyond that, it's an example of the myriad ways in which school districts and cities can influence the achievement of students beyond the standard examinations of pedagogy, curriculum, teacher quality, etc.  When designing models to explain the achievement level of students, in addition to accounting for teacher, school, neighborhood, and family effects we may also need to include the ability of local governments to mitigate weather problems.

The Times' Tenure Math Problem

The NY Times today profiles some fairly reasonable, and minor, changes to the way tenure is granted to teachers in NYC (principals a.) have to describe why they're giving a teacher tenure and b.) are able to select from four ratings that can award, delay, or deny teachers tenure).

On the surface, those make sense, and the article seems to do a pretty good job describing them.  But I have a problem with the math on which the article is premised.  The second sentence of the article states that "virtually every new teacher earns" tenure, and then later cites a statistic that "6,400 teachers who were eligible for tenure, 234 teachers were denied it, or roughly 3.7 percent".

The problem here is that a "new teacher" and a teacher "eligible for tenure" are two very different things.  Writing that 96% of those eligible are awarded tenure is very different from writing that "virtually every new teacher earns" tenure.  Why?  To start with, NYC has a high attrition rate -- particularly among new teachers.  Nationwide, around 50% of teachers in urban schools leave within their first three years.  Let's say that that statistic is precisely correct for the teachers that entered NYC schools in 2007; the correct calculation would then be that 46% of new teachers who began teaching in 2007 were awarded tenure in 2010 -- which looks like very different.  In other words, the statement that "virtually every new teacher earns" tenure is demonstrably false.

Now, the 46% statistic wouldn't be all that helpful in judging the rigor of the tenure process because new teachers leave for all sorts of reasons.  Some leave because their principals threaten to fire them if they don't; some leave because they simply prefer a different district or profession; some leave because they're simply unhappy; and some leave for other reasons or a combination of reasons (e.g. family relocation, pregnancy, health, etc.).

So, leaving aside the silly -- but important -- syntax error by the Times, what would actually be the actual best way to compute how many teachers earn tenure?  There are a few different ways depending on exactly what the question is that one wants to answer, but I think you'd have to start by defining a population of teachers who want to earn tenure at some point during their teaching career (in NYC that would mean they want to teach in the city for more than 3 years).  Exactly who counts in that group is up for debate: for example, would we include a teacher who wants to make it a career during year 1 but finds that he/she just doesn't like teaching during year 2?  There's no clear answer.  I would certainly include, however, any teachers who leave explicitly because they believe they will receive a negative rating if they don't -- something that happens all over the place but never seems to get mentioned in the press and only rarely in academic work (I've heard economists reference "the dance of the lemons," to describe teachers who transfer to other schools to avoid being fired).  The estimate would shed some light on how many unsuccessful teachers -- teachers who might not receive tenure if they went through the process -- are leaving prior to starting their 4th year.

Whatever parameters one set, the answer to how many teachers tried to get tenure and didn't would be somewhere between the 46% estimate above and the 96% statistic cited by the NY Times.  The more practical questions to answer, however, would really be in estimating how many people would be valuable as tenured teachers but don't end up teaching more than 3 years for whatever reason and how many are not particularly valuable as tenured teachers but earn tenure anyway for any number of reasons (my guess is that the former group is larger than the latter, though there are also probably quite a few in the former who wouldn't stay in teaching almost no matter what), and then figuring out how to get more in the former group to stay and more in the latter group to leave.

At any rate, I don't think there's much disagreement that tenure is too easy to earn in NYC (personally I'd argue for a more meaningful process that's awarded a little later in one's career, and matched by some added distinction that's meaningful to teachers), so I don't want readers to think that this critique of the Times' math problem is really a veiled attack on any who would dare insinuate that all teachers aren't perfect.  But the Times should know better than to make such silly mistakes.  And I hope that readers know better than to accept such superficial calculations as gospel.

Do "virtually all new teacher earn" tenure?  No.  Do almost all teachers who go up for tenure review earn tenure?  Yes.  But those are two very different statistics -- and neither really answers the more important questions of how many excellent teachers don't receive tenure and how many poor teachers do.

Remember: Not Everyone Prioritizes Achievement

The commentariat seems to agree on two things regarding American schools: that they're not good enough and that students need to be learning more.  Read a random blog or watch a random talk show and you'll likely see or hear something about more rigorous curricula, longer hours, longer school years, or some sort of argument that our students need to be pushed harder.

And you're twice as likely to see or hear these things after the results of an international assessment are released (e.g. the latest PISA results this week) and the U.S. again ranks behind a lot of countries.

But we in the education world can sometimes forget that there are other things that matter too.   It would be wise for those driving this commentary to remember that not everybody shares their priorities and keep in mind that many people in our country have no interest in spending more time in school.  I'd divide this constituency into three different groups:

1.) People who absolutely detest school and can't wait for the bell to ring.  Witness this cartoon comparing school to jail . . . with the only difference being that the disgusting food offered in jails is always free.  For kids who believe school is tantamount to jail or torture, it's unclear how exposing them to more misery will improve their lives.  In other words, it may be more important to find a type of schooling that they only hate a little bit than to simply pile on more.

2.) Families with students enrolled in elite, high-pressure schools (usually private or suburban).  Witness the number of parents excited by the new movie "Race to Nowhere" that chronicles the downside of such schools.  Indeed, the most obvious sign of the difference between classes when it comes to schooling may be the broad push for more rigorous schooling for low-income students while high-income parents increasingly worry about the amount of stress their children endure while running five clubs, taking 4 AP classes, and waking up early for SAT prep class on Saturday before going out to volunteer at the local animal shelter.

3.) Those whose priorities lie elsewhere -- e.g. sports.  Witness the saga of Urban Meyer, the University of Florida's highly successful football coach, who stepped down yesterday -- at the age of 46 -- because he wanted to spend more time with his family.  Did the press release say that he wanted to help them with their homework or volunteer in their classrooms?  No.  It said that "after spending more than two decades motivating and celebrating the young men I've been so proud to coach, I relish the opportunity to cheer for my three terrific kids as they compete in their own respective sports".  For other families it's music, art, drama, religion, or any of a million other activities that evoke more passion.

 There's some overlap, of course, between these groups.  But an awful lot of students/parents/families fall into at least one of these groups.  This certainly doesn't mean that we shouldn't examine longer days/years or such reforms to boost our national achievement levels.  But it does mean that we shouldn't assume that these types of changes would automatically be popular or successful.  And it illustrates some of the trade-offs of these types of reforms.

In a number of the highest scoring countries, many kids spend countless hours in "cram schools" after school and on weekends -- essentially doing test prep.  American kids, on the other hand, are more likely to go to football practice, piano lessons, or their part-time job after school.  There's no objective answer as to which practice is better, but time is finite and kids can't do everything.  And many, many parents would prefer that their kids choose from the latter list.

So, by all means, we should be examining ways in which we can boost our national achievement.  But boosting these test scores isn't the only thing that the citizens of our country care about.  As such, any reform designed to boost these scores will not automatically be accepted by all.  In short, a more productive discussion would weigh the costs and benefits of emphasizing different areas rather than simply assuming that everybody wants higher test scores at whatever cost.

Are Superintendant Searches a Thing of the Past?

After NYC hired an outsider (Joel Klein) to run their schools, Pittsburgh decided to hire an outsider as well (Mark Roosevelt).  Both leaders were controversial, but can claim some successes.  And both were generally liked more by policy wonks than by teachers or parents.

When NYC decided to replace Klein this year, the process was done behind closed doors and -- as far as anyone can tell -- exactly one candidate was interviewed (update: apparently, at least one other person may have been offered the job).  The end result is a prospective new chancellor (Cathleen Black) that may be even more strongly disliked by parents and teachers.  When Pittsburgh needed to replace their superintendent this year, meetings were held behind closed doors and exactly one candidate was interviewed.  The announcement was made today that the board will hire Deputy Superintendant Linda Lane as the next leader of Pittsburgh Public Schools on Monday.  It remains to be seen how parents and teachers will react to the news, but it seems unlikely that the move was made to assuage their concerns.

There, are, however, three major differences:

1.) Lane has spent almost 40 years working as a teacher and administrator in public schools, while it was unclear whether Black had even ever set foot in a public school when her hiring was announced.

2.) While Bloomberg was evasive and seemed to insinuate that others were interviewed for the position, the Pittsburgh Board of Education is being upfront about it.  Said the board president: "What would be the point of spending the money to do the search when what we wanted was right here?"

3.) Many in the press and public turned on Bloomberg after his announcement.  Judging by the glowing article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, however, Lane is apparently already beloved by the press.  It will be interesting to see if the public feels the same way.  Despite the glowing review, it does seem somewhat unlikely that a board of ed that didn't even feel the need to pretend that they were conducting a thorough search would emerge completely unscathed.