As long as I’ve been an ed researcher, my understanding of the literature on teacher effectiveness is that it’s a characteristic of Ts, not a product of school conditions.
But the closer my work has reached the instructional core, the more circumspect this view has seemed.
For 20+ years, ed reformers blamed the struggles of public schools on teachers.
The theory went like this: Teachers are the most impt factor in student outcomes (see
@TNTP
's Widget report). If bad outcomes = bad teachers, we need strategies for exiting the bad teachers.
@RobertEnlow
If the purpose of private school choice is to educate children, why is there so much resistance in the choice movement about measuring whether, in fact, children are being educated?
There's been a lot of discussion of teacher absenteeism. We think teachers are absent bc they don't like their jobs or they want to go on vacation. But what if the biggest driver is something more basic: the fragility of our system of caregiving. 🧵
@RobertEnlow
On the whole, existing data on voucher programs suggests 1-in-3 families exit each year. Parental accountability may “work” but not before children suffer a year or more of lost learning.
Teaching fads have real consequences for kids. My daughter was one of those kids, diagnosed w/dyscalculia after 2 years at a school that minimized fluency in foundational mathematics. As the innovation space reaches a fever pitch, I hope we can avoid repeating old mistakes
“Since 1995 in the US, all states have adopted standards to govern K-12 math instruction, and in most, standards have de-emphasized memorization and emphasized reasoning. Scientists who study the brain have verified this assumption was mistaken.”
77% of teachers are women & about half of all teachers have children at home (this percentage has likely gone up given the trend towards a younger, less experienced profession). Women are 10x more likely than men to stay home to care for a sick child
I increasingly believe the clear answer to this question is "no." As
@rpondiscio
points out, we need to make the job of teaching doable for people of "average abilities" not saints and not superstars. For most teachers, differentiating instruction for 25+ kids is impossible
But it's even worse than that. While women have long been called to teaching, school systems seem to be organized in ways that are hostile towards motherhood. Did you know only 18% of big city school districts offer teachers maternity leave?
I don't know why we struggle so much to see teachers for who they are: women, mothers, caregivers, who like their peers in other professions, struggle mightily to juggle work and life without the benefit of a safety net.
This perspective misses the enormous costs families bear when they are forced to “hold schools accountable.” I know about these costs because I once had to do exactly what parents at Hive Academy did. Here’s my story. 1/
Lessons on real accountability: Parents held The Hive Academy accountable more efficiently and effectively than any government accountability office could.
Schools have not been designed to cope with the fragility of our caregiving system. It has always been true that a teacher absence has ripple effects across a school-pulling the literacy coach from her duties or forcing a paraprofessional to lead lessons.
A lot of people seem to be framing absenteeism in terms of a foundational break in the educational contract but I have yet to see any actual data on this. I’m a mom to 4 chronically absent kids. My attitude about school hasn’t changed. What’s changed is a dramatic ⬆️ in illness
NYT story pairs nicely with the Brookings writeup from earlier in the week:
Parents are not fully aware of, or concerned about, their children’s school attendance
Why School Absences Have ‘Exploded’ Almost Everywhere
🚨Repeat after me: good curriculum is NOT enough 🚨
Ts are struggling to scaffold instruction with high-quality curriculum because Ss have gaps in fluency, background knowledge, etc.
We need strategies (and materials) capable of *closing* gaps.
New
@RANDCorporation
of grade 3-8 teachers - they estimate 44% of their students always or nearly always experience difficulty reading the written content within their instructional materials.
.
@rickhess99
&
@MQ_McShane
taught me to have a health dose of skepticism when evaluating K-12 reform.
In that spirit, I want to challenge them & my other friends leaning into choice to consider the downsides of a world organized to serve individual interests 🧵
A Unified Theory of Education
What are the guiding principles that can frame a conservative approach to education, whether we're thinking about preschool or graduate school?
@MQ_McShane
& I offer some thoughts, at
@NationalAffairs
.
According to the BOL, the # of parents missing work to care for a sick child skyrocketed in the fall of 2022. This dynamic had ripple effects, as the fragile system of childcare broke down prompting closures, which forced even more women home.
{Consider}
How can children “think” for themselves if they do not remember the things that they want to think about?
The foundation of creativity is expertise. Expertise is based on memory, which can only be developed through dedicated study & practice.
There are no short-cuts
Provide access to affordable high quality childcare, make allowances for back up sick child care, and build resiliency into system such that women/teachers don't have to perform daily juggling acts. In sum, make it easier to be both teacher and mother.
Or that it took an act of Congress, literally, to ensure teachers would be afforded a private room and 15 min break so they could pump milk for their babies (a benefit that hourly workers gained years earlier).
If your only accountability plan for low-quality schools of choice is families "voting with their feet," you aren't appreciating the human costs of being forced to exit a school due to its failure to educate.
Whenever people start talking about the value of “unbundled education,” I imagine the hell of selecting summer camps for my 4 children on a year round basis.
"The rise of these other, more niche providers offers America a glimpse of what’s possible as more states embrace not just school choice, but education choice."
Florida's expanding a la carte education providers
As the authors of this new report from
@MDRC_News
put it, the average 5th grade class contains students who range in achievement from a 3rd to 8th grade level. Is it reasonable to expect a teacher working alone in their classroom to bridge this gap?
Like many parents experiencing the realities of remote learning, I'm looking to when & how can schools reopen. We know the answer to this Q depends on our ability to get a handle on this pandemic. But it also hinges on the ability of our leaders to act upon evidence. 1/
This epidemic of absenteeism was driven by a surge in upper respiratory viruses. According to research in
@JAMA_current
, the rate of children admitted to emergency rooms for a URI surged 71% during the same period. .
Must read from
@rpondiscio
. As a recovering structural reformer, I've been fortunate to spend the last year deeply engaged in the work of teaching & learning thanks to my work with
@TheOaklandREACH
and
@OUSDNews
. Good curriculum is an essential first step but it is not enough 🧵
No one deserves more credit than
@rpondiscio
for putting curriculum reform on the national agenda. Be sure to read this article of his re-stating the case:
@The74
@HooverInst
My plea to any would be education reformer is simple;
Complicate the story.
If your reform strategy is simple, it probably won’t work.
If the narrative you tell to advance it has heroes and villains, it’s probably wrong.
Mike is right: Republicans shouldn't give up on improving public schools.
But ending tenure & making teacher pay contingent on "performance" (read: student achievement) will do little to solve what ills schools 🧵
I’m reminded of the economist George Loewstein: “When people are forced to make decisions for which they lack the requisite expertise, the consequences are likely to be lost time, bad choices, anxiety and self-recrimination.” Let do better 15/end
@ryanscottborman
@RobertEnlow
I don’t know what world you live in but in my world, we’ve been talking about test scores and achievement gaps for going on 30 years
🚨Another entry for your files on misleading claims from education research 🚨
The authors of this study, published in the flagship journal AJE, claim implementation of PBL generates 5-6 months of greater learning in social studies.
But what does that mean?
@mpolikoff
I have no qualms about punching down. That article is a slap in the face to the kids and families affected by poor reading instruction and an exemplar of how ed schools are out of touch. Policing the discipline is the only way to address this challenge.
Food for thought: if you want to launch a credible attack on SOR reforms, don’t start with ad hominem attacks.
Also, who’s going to break it to these folks that there was lots of self-dealing and profit before SOR reforms??
Signed, mom to a struggling reader
But I do know that we ignore these issues at our peril. If teachers' caregiving responsibilities contribute to their absences (and perhaps also to their exit from the profession), addressing them should be a high priority. The good news is there's a lot of low hanging fruit!
It’s hard not to become cynical about the state of
#edresearch
when misleading, unsubstantiated claims are published in a flagship journal!
These claims get ricocheted through the policy & practice space.
They have real consequences for kids, teachers and systems.
@rpondiscio
offers a remarkably clear-eyed take on the sometimes magical thinking embraced by reformers. "[We] assumed that schools & teachers know what to do, have the capacity for improvement, & need mostly to be properly incentivized-or threatened-to be made to do it."
Wowza: "The results were meaningful in size. E.g., a 1-std deviation increase in receipt of teacher-directed instruction correlated with exam score increases equivalent to a student being from a 2-parent vs 1-parent family, or about 75% of a SD increase in socioeconomic status."
Working with John Mantus of
@aeiecon
, I’ve released my first working paper on education. Using data from the OECD’s PISA exam, it looks at the debate between traditional “teacher-oriented” instruction and more progressive “student-oriented” instruction. Comments welcome. /1
What if parents' preferences for schooling is only weakly connected to what they actually want for their children? Families have diff tastes for education but what if these are driven more by fads & faulty assumptions than knowledge of how schooling produces outcomes? 🧵
@aejochim
@douglasharris99
@DuellSays
Value for a consumer depends on personal preferences and context. So when you say “quality” the people defining that should be parents and it’s individualized. I’ve had the same school be amazing for one kid and horrid for another.
You should give this convo a listen.
Hot take: We need a serious investment in a centrist-minded think tank committed to using evidence to solve problems, not advancing the whims of left- and right-wing activists who are increasingly out-of-touch with the views of most people.
How Think Tanks Drive Polarization & Policy
Project 2025 is just the latest step in the long rise of partisan think tanks; they helped polarize Congress, replacing non-partisan expertise
New
#ScienceOfPolitics
with
@ejfagan
on The Thinkers
Mike is right: Republicans shouldn't give up on improving public schools.
But ending tenure & making teacher pay contingent on "performance" (read: student achievement) will do little to solve what ills schools 🧵
Republicans should embrace an “all of the above” approach to education reform: expand school choice AND work to improve the public schools.
My latest for
@NRO
Final thoughts:
1) When you hear someone say we need “new” models of schooling, ask for evidence
2) Be wary of the progressive education trap: children need to learn things that aren’t interesting & are less likely to learn those things when we de-emphasize direct instruction
I believe we need 3 additional investments to accompany curriculum reforms. 1) Teachers need access to robust curriculum-focused professional development. As
@DavidSteinerJHU
& Tom Kane point out, PD investments are not aligned with our hopes for teaching
Voters need fact-based analysis on private school choice & it’s in precious short-supply
Here’s what I want Kentuckians to know about private school choice based on the experience of Milwaukee, which operates the nation’s oldest voucher program 🧵
School choice advocates badly need to wrestle with this well documented reality:
School choice replicates the very inequalities proponents argue it will address.
Now in
@aerj_journal
: “How Do Socioeconomic Differences Among Low-Income and Racially Minoritized Students Shape Their Engagement and Access in School Choice Systems?”
Importantly,
#3
means reimagining teacher time. According to
@NCTQ
, the average teacher has 47 mins of planning time. In contrast, a charter school I visited this year offers teachers 2.5 hours daily to support its highly differentiated instructional model
Joy doesn't always translate into learning. The school's lack of direct instruction, assessment of student learning, & practice to build fluency in reading, writing & arithmetic put her years behind peers. We are still trying to get her caught up more than a year later...
What should we do in light of this? My take is that government has a key role to play in establishing minimum standards for schools and acting as gatekeepers to prevent educational malpractice. As a health care consumer, I have a lot of choice but…13/
It's easy to grow pessimistic about the prospects for reform in the face of retrenchment & little long-term improvement in children's futures. But we have taken the wrong lessons from the reform failures of yesteryear. Houston is replicating the same mistakes. 🧵
My latest for
@EducationNext
: "It's hard to name a former ed reform hot spot in better shape today than 25 years ago. But the biggest problem is that quietly, almost imperceptibly, the consensus and constituency for big-city reform is disappearing."
I rely on government and professional licensing boards to ensure my providers aren’t quacks. Moreover, in cases of malpractice, I have the right to sue for damages. Litigation is important here because it forces bad providers to bear the full costs of malpractice 14/
2) Schools need to invest in instructional models that better leverage tutors & paraprofessionals to support meaningful differentiation & acceleration.
@SuccessCharters
does this.
@OUSDNews
is doing this through
@TheOaklandREACH
's Literacy Liberator model
Teaching children to “think critically” means little if they don’t know anything about the world. Thinking is a byproduct of knowledge.
The best way to teach children how to “think” is to arm them with knowledge.
“…our curriculum review will develop plans to embed critical skills in lessons to arm our children against the disinformation, fake news and putrid conspiracy theories awash on social media.” - Bridget Phillipson
Let's clear some things up.
Do we have experimental evidence that private schools are less likely to participate in choice if they are required to administer state tests? No! 🧵
With 1-in-5 students identified w/a disability, it’s past time we asked whether our investments in special education are paying dividends for students and their families. Glad to see
@MargueriteRoza
and the
@EdunomicsLab
team tackling this!
Fact
#1
: Unregulated private school choice programs produce large
#s
of low-quality & ephemeral private schools
In Milwaukee, 2/3rds of all new private schools failed
Educational neglect, fraud, & grifting were common
The portfolio strategy isn't a "model" to be replicated, it's a problem solving framework that can and should vary based on community needs, says
@RbnLake
.
@edpolicyjunkie
@RobertEnlow
We don’t and that’s because no state is taking any serious interest in what happens to kids who return to public schools.
In FL, Chingos reported that 60 percent of low income families participating left the program by year 2.
While good curriculum is an essential first step to correcting the failures of prior reform efforts, I worry it is not enough. Why? Because even with good curriculum, teachers will struggle to meet the wildly varying needs of students in their classrooms.
What if the most basic element of our K-12 education system-the one teacher, one classroom model-is also a key reason why public schools struggle so much to close gaps in educational opportunity? This is the question I explore in this piece in
@EdSource
A popular bipartisan ed reform narrative is that increasing youth mental health challenges is a symptom of a failed approach to schooling.
There’s only one problem: what if it’s completely wrong?
🧵
@aejochim
@jandrewclark
@AaronGarthSmith
@AZBethLewis
@NealMcCluskey
I’m open to basic health and safety regulations, but almost anything that constrains what counts as “education” usually locks in the status quo.
I’ve seen many students whose confidence had been so damaged by schooling (sometimes to the point of suicidal ideation on a daily
If you've made it this far, my parting thought - taken straight from Rick's wisdom - is this.
Unbridled enthusiasm is destructive to any reform. Improving education takes a combination of curiosity, wisdom, & humility.
We need more of it today.
There was precious little attention to on the ground realities: weaknesses in preparation, coaching, curriculum, leadership, & tiered student support.
What does it mean to hold someone accountable when we fail to provide them w/the required tools?
In conclusion, whether you love choice or hate it, we need more realistic assessments of how choice impacts families and what investments are needed to ensure families bear fewer costs and secure more benefits from choice. Behavioral economics has a lot to offer here! 15/
@natmalkus
The rate of upper respiratory infections has increased dramatically in the last two years (not covid-related). I wouldn’t suggest it explains 100 percent but I have concerns that we are telling a story about attendance w/o data or consideration to health factors).
Since federal leadership is unlikely to arrive anytime soon, a consortium of states could work with the public health community to arrive at consensus recommendations around school reopening. 11/
Something missing from the convo related to chronic absenteeism: the differential rates & impacts of excused and unexcused absences. According to data from Washington, unexcused absences are up but the % of students with 10+ unexcused absences has only changed modestly (up 1.3%)
You won’t win the school choice battle by denying the lifeline it can open up for families whose children are suffering the consequences of educational neglect in public schools.
Fair take:
"One of my friends thinks private-school vouchers are horrible public policy. But a private school offered a lifeline for his child during a tough time, and he wrestles with the ethics of having an option that other families can’t afford."
@ilana_horn
As an early career education researcher, the most formative experiences I had were talking to teachers about their work. It was through these conversations that I realized how large the gap is between policy and practice, assumptions and reality.
I want to endorse a lot of this and add something else. IES has been focused on replicating a medical model of education research focused on RCTs & so-called “quasi” experimental studies. While this work is needed, it’s grossly incomplete. 1/
{must read} What if our efforts to control for “observables” fails to account for the factors that meaningfully impact student learning? How many supposedly causal estimates of effects would change if we adequately accounted for the gradients of disadvantage students experience?
🚨Now in
@EEPAjournal
🚨
Research from my dissertation on school choice, socioeconomic status, and stratified enrollment in Detroit!
Lots of quant and qual findings in here, but the findings are captured well in this figure:
My daughter was diagnosed with “dyscalculia” after 2 years of poor, constructivist math instruction. We need to wake up to the profound consequences of poor math curriculum and instruction and the long term consequences of mathematical illiteracy.
.
@latimesopinion
gets this much right: "K-12 schools have to put the same kind of intense effort on building students’ math skills, starting at the earliest grades, that they are currently putting into reading. Math is, in its own way, just another form of literacy"
Must read analysis of funding reform in CA & whether dollars targeted to high needs students reach them. My take: it's a mistake to believe that restrictions limiting the use of targeted dollars to services provided to targeted students will yield good outcomes. Let me explain 1/
We should be concerned w/SWD's experiences in private school choice initiatives. But let's not forget: SWDs are excluded, discriminated against and poorly served every day in TPS. It's these experiences that cause families to flee public schools when given the chance.
Before IDEA, families w children with disabilities heard, "We don't have the resources for your child. I am so sorry"
Now, voucher advocates are eager to turn back the clock to that era of exclusion
Read & listen to a TN parent's testimony. This is not "educational freedom"
As many cities search for new superintendents,
@rickhess99
cautions that *how* superintendents put their plans in place probably matters more than *what* superintendents say they want to accomplish.
A lot of chatter recently about what it will take to reopen schools. Paul Hill and I weigh in with one piece of the puzzle that seems to be missing from these conversations: the role of trust. 1/
According to
@jeremylsinger
the *dramatic* rise in absenteeism is equivalent to a shift of 1 extra day absent per month. Good reminder that an increase in chronic absenteeism *rates* may actually equate to a very small change in actual attendance.
Here is some additional context from MI: it’s been ~1 extra day absent per month on average. That’s pretty consistent across the board as mentioned by the NYT. So there’s been a broad shift but maybe not a fundamental change in the culture of education…
Today we released the most in-depth look yet at the
#pandemicpod
movement yet. Pandemic pods were borne out of crisis but along the way, families and educators gained a historic opportunity to remake education in their own visions. 1/
How to design instructional systems capable of aligning instructional content and dosage w/o relegating struggling students to a permanent education underclass is *the* educational challenge of our time.
The solution is hiding in plain sight.
I wish I'd said this. "Differentiate instruction" is the pedagogical equivalent of "let them eat cake." Easy to say, impossible to do well, and less effective than grouping students by ability. Homily-based instruction doesn't reduce inequity, it cements it in place.
The point isn't that we should ban schools emphasizing Progressive ideals. But we should be honest that families' preferences are not infallible - they are often based on faulty assumptions & incomplete info about the kind of education will help their children thrive.
My failure to understand how my tastes would translate into the educational outcomes is not unusual. Human judgement is greatly influenced by biases, emotions, & social contexts. These can work to our advantage but they can result in us choosing poorly
@mattfrendewey
We can acknowledge the weaknesses in current accountability and act to address them without pretending that families are well positioned to hold schools accountable on their own.
@BernerEd
has written about international examples of how to do this in high choice systems
1) Using to choice to optimize educational opportunity is far less straightforward than it looks, even when parents have enormous resources. Did I mention our neuropsych cost $8k? 10/
Thank you
@rpondiscio
for elevating an issue too often ignored by those working to improve public schools. Here's to more fruitful conversations about the investments needed to meaningfully move the needle on instruction and outcomes.
Families bear enormous switching costs in their efforts. Disruptions to friendships and community are gut wrenching. And there are no guarantees that the next school will be better. Many families will avoid these costs even if they believe the school isn’t delivering 11/
Do we have evidence to suggest that chronic absenteeism is caused by a “deterioration in the value of attendance”? Absences have serious negative impacts on worker productivity, which is largely born by women. Count me skeptical. Signed, exhausted mom to 4 chronically absent kids
Next time you hear someone (usually a man) spouting off about how we shouldn’t invest in childcare, remind them of the 👆consequences of forcing women to sacrifice their professional aspirations
Signed, exhausted working mom of 4
Cc
@JessicaCalarco
👏👏 We badly need to create systems that reflect the professional work that educators do.
The average teacher gets just 45 mins to plan for instruction.
Changing this requires us to stop treating the work of teaching as an hourly job.
Schools are better off when teachers are brought into the fold to make decisions and leadership is distributed. But school cultures in which every single interaction must be time sheeted and paid removes teachers from decision making and concentrates leadership at the top.
Asking about results demands we have understanding of what it's like to be a teacher in the United States. After spending the last year talking with school staff, I believe there is a profound disconnect between what people want of educators and what's actually possible. 1/
If this literally means the 7 people in the world actually calling teachers enemies should stop — yes. If it's code for "we should just be thankful teachers even show up and not ask about the results," which it often is — that's a big part of what's wrong with the K-12 discourse.
To be clear, not all children subjected to these approaches will struggle as mine did. Some will emerge unscathed thanks to some combination of natural ability and out-of-school learning. But those that are harmed, the consequences will take years to fully emerge and assess.
We talk a lot about the barriers families confront to taking advantage of school choice. But one underappreciated one is that families may not be aware they have a choice. As one parent told us, "I thought my child had to go to the neighborhood school, so I was stuck."
In athletics, we know that a rigorous training program, regular assessments of fitness, & coaching are *how* you get better. Speed, agility, & skill are key benchmarks.
Why do these things make us so uncomfortable in the context of academics?
I know a little about this because faulty thinking has informed my own choices about my children's schooling. Like a lot of white, affluent parents, I was drawn to schools that emphasized the principles of Progressive education...
If the author of this "research" wanted to trace the political uptake of knowledge-building curriculum or SOR, they have badly missed the mark.
This article is full of inaccuracies & misrepresentations, while including little actual data to back up its claims.
I co-edit
@AJEForum
& was proud to publish this piece! To me, the focus is more how ideas about the importance of knowledge-building curriculum flow across time, space, people, organizations, and have meshed with ideas about reading instruction. (1/4)
Why do the drivers of chronic absenteeism matter? Because they are critical to understanding possible solutions. If illness is a significant cause of absenteeism, we might spend less time talking about "nudges" & more time talking about how to catch kids up.
A lot of people seem to be framing absenteeism in terms of a foundational break in the educational contract but I have yet to see any actual data on this. I’m a mom to 4 chronically absent kids. My attitude about school hasn’t changed. What’s changed is a dramatic ⬆️ in illness