California Abandoning Algebra for Eighth Graders

Image from Flickr, by ajaxofsalamis

California, which had some of the toughest academic standards in the nation, had to dumb down its curriculum and its expectations for students when it approved the Common Core Standards (CCS). One example is Algebra I, which used to be required for all eighth graders. Now, like other states that have adopted the CCS, California will allow students to take either Algebra I or an alternate course that includes some algebra, while the as yet unwritten new CCS exams will focus on content from this alternate course.

Many teachers and student advocates argue that this is appropriate since not all eighth graders are ready for algebra. When students are placed in courses for which they lack the requisite skills they are far more likely to struggle or fail, thus contributing to low self-efficacy and disillusionment with school—both reasons why some students later drop out of school. Furthermore, classrooms with large numbers of students who are not academically ready for a course can contribute to discipline problems and a poor academic environment in which a critical mass of students starts to believe there is no hope of passing, so why bother.  This can bring down the expectations, self-efficacy and motivation of the students in the middle (i.e., those who could pass with a little extra support), thus undermining their chances of success.

From the perspective of middle schools and school districts, delaying Algebra I allows them to improve their test scores (fewer students failing high stakes algebra tests because fewer would be taking them) and their graduation rates (fewer kids failing classes, in general). But this completely ignores the underlying reasons why so many eighth graders aren’t ready for Algebra I and merely passes the problem on to the high schools, where the kids may still lack the academic skills to succeed in the class. Studies indicate that 80% of students who retake algebra continue to fail the class (according to Inside Bay Area).

There are, no doubt, several factors contributing to this problem, but one is likely the social promotion that goes on in the lower grades, with students being passed from one grade level to the next, regardless of whether they have mastered their courses. One argument made in support of social promotion in the earlier grade levels is that holding students back is bad for their self-esteem and therefore harms their long-term success. However, if they are allowed to fail and move on, they continue to have low self-efficacy (i.e., “I cannot get good grades in school”) while picking up the mixed message that it doesn’t really matter (i.e., “I get to move on with my friends to the next level, regardless of whether I do homework, pass exams or classes”).

More significantly, success in math, like in reading, tends to correlate with students’ socioeconomic backgrounds and prior academic success in school. There are certainly some very bright children who are “math-challenged.” Einstein was said to be one. For these students, delaying when they take algebra may help them develop the academic maturity and discipline necessary to pass the course. But for those who are failing Algebra I, along with English and other classes, the problem is much deeper and more intractable. They may have numerous other problems (e.g., poor attendance, bad study habits, learning disabilities, low literacy, a history of failure and concomitant low self-efficacy) that will follow them throughout their academic career, regardless of when they take algebra and that have their roots in the students’ socioeconomic backgrounds (e.g., low income students often lack health insurance and, consequently, have higher rates of absenteeism).

Deferring the problem to high school has ramifications beyond students’ progress in future math classes. Basic algebra is necessary for high school chemistry and biology, courses students are likely to take in the ninth and tenth grades (and fail if they lack the essential math skills). Of course, even students who do take algebra, but fail it, may also have trouble in science, but at least there is a chance that they were exposed to enough algebra to succeed in science. Not taking algebra at all significantly decreases this possibility, as does ignoring the root causes of mass algebra failure.

Another concern is that the creation of two math pathways will allow schools to fall into past bad habits of tracking students based on race or socioeconomic backgrounds. Indeed, a recent report (see Inside Bay Area) showed that some schools were placing black and Latino students in lower level math courses even when they had the skills and prerequisites for advanced math classes. This could also lead to tracking in science classes and reduction of black, Latino and low income students taking college preparatory and ultimately Advanced Placement science and math classes.

Critics of the new Algebra I requirement argue that success in Algebra I is good predictor of future college graduation, while avoiding algebra in middle school may pull students off the college-bound track. When the 8^th grade requirement was implemented, black and Latino enrollment in the class skyrocketed—from 24% to 60% for African-Americans, and tripling for Latinos to 63%—(again, see Inside Bay Area). Even though pass rates for these groups are as low at 60%, there are still more black and Latino students passing the class than in the past (because more are taking the class).

Sacramento to Shutter 11 Low Income Elementary Schools

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Sacramento City Unified School District plans to close 11 elementary schools, primarily in low income neighborhoods around South Sacramento and the downtown area, the WSWS reports. With only 50 public elementary schools in the city, this amounts to closing one-fifth of the city’s elementary schools.

The district’s rationale for closing the schools is that they are “underutilized,” operating at 40% of capacity. However, as the WSWS correctly notes, this is based on the backward logic that their classrooms aren’t crowded enough [to justify funding them]. The 40% figure is based on a maximum class size of 32 students (even for grades K-2), which is up from 20 students per teacher last year and 16 per teacher in 2000. It is also based on the district’s fear of another budget shortfall, projected to be $10-12 million, despite the passage of Proposition 30, which was supposed to keep education funding steady at 2011-2012 levels. Rather than chopping from the top by laying-off administrators or cutting their bloated salaries, Sacramento (like most other school districts) has chosen to cut teachers and close schools in low income neighborhoods.

If schools were funded based on their actual needs, it would make sense to keep these schools open, even at “40%” of capacity, as this comes to just under 13 students per teacher—slightly less than the 2000 average class size of 16-to-1. The overwhelming body of evidence indicates that smaller class sizes benefit students academically. Teachers are better able to attend to the individual needs of each student, including being able to identify and support learning, emotional and behavior problems that often go unnoticed in larger classrooms. This, alone, could go a long way toward improving attendance, graduation rates and school safety. Smaller class sizes also allow teachers more time to plan, implement and assess more complex and meaningful lessons and activities (or rely less on multiple choice tests and lectures). Lower income schools also have a greater need for smaller class sizes as they tend to have higher numbers of students who are reading below grade level and in need of extra support or remediation.

By closing these schools, students will have to be bused or driven to neighborhoods far from their homes to be crammed into overcrowded classrooms where they will be more likely to slip through the cracks. But this is not the concern of Sacramento’s mayor Kevin Johnson, who built his education credentials by using Gates Foundation money to promote the conversion of public schools into charter schools, (nor his wife Michelle Rhee, who built her career by overseeing one of the largest cheating scandals in U.S. history, while mass-firing D.C. teachers, bashing teachers unions and promoting privatization), Indeed, the mayor’s long-term plans for the soon to be abandoned facilities may in fact be to sell them off to private charter companies.

The closing of these schools (and the growing class sizes) are part of the growing rationalization of public education which, until recently, had been run in a relatively inefficient and wasteful way from the perspective of capitalists. Increased class sizes support a reduction in state spending on education. Assuming that the schools continue to churn out graduates who are sufficiently educated to fill existing job openings and consume existing products, increased class sizes increase the efficiency of education (i.e., the number of workers produced per dollar spent). The desperate pleas by Obama, Bill Gates and others for a better educated workforce so we can compete with India and China are not pleas for the masses to have doctorates or expertise in programming and biotechnology. Rather, our successful competition depends on having a few who can create innovations that keep our domestic capitalists ahead of their foreign peers and a large docile, low wage workforce that churns out these innovations at the lowest wages and highest profits possible.

The past decade of budget cuts, layoffs, increased class sizes and emphasis on lectures and high stakes tests have had no noticeable effect on American industry, which has made record profits for each of the past several years and throughout most of the past decade (minus one or two years at the beginning of the recession). Despite the attacks on and gutting of the U.S. public education system, American children are graduating with sufficient skills to keep the system running, while a small minority of students (overwhelmingly coming from affluent families) continue to graduate with the skills to run the businesses and develop new technologies and innovations.

The Deplorable State of Adjunct Faculty Compensation

It is not just K-12 public school teachers who are getting squeezed by budget cuts, stagnant pay, declining working conditions and attacks on tenure. Today, nearly 70% of all college and university faculty are non-tenured, part-time adjunct faculty (according to a recent piece in Truth Out), with no job security and generally lower pay and fewer benefits than their tenured colleagues.

Many of these professors find themselves having to accept teaching positions at multiple universities and colleges just to make enough to support themselves, sometimes having to commute to two or three different campuses in one day. It is not uncommon in the community colleges for adjuncts to earn as little as $2,500 per class. For adjuncts teaching 3-4 classes per semester, this translates to $15,000-20,000 per year, often without any benefits.

Some adjuncts make good money. At UCSF, for example, adjunct professors can earn six-figure salaries. However, their job security is based entirely on their ability to compete for scarce research grants, as the university provides them with little or no additional funding and makes no commitment to support them if their grants run dry.  These adjuncts, who must constantly contend with the threat of losing their labs and their income, often put in 60-80 hour weeks just to keep their grants flowing and, consequently, suffer an incredible amount of pressure and stress.

A number of factors have been contributing to the problem, including the nation’s economic crisis, which has exacerbated many states’ existing budget difficulties. In order to close their deficits, universities have not only been cutting classes and raising tuition for their students; they have also been squeezing their employees by cutting wages, benefits and teaching assignments. At the same time, the number of college graduates competing for these jobs has been rising. This may be part of the reason why the number of people possessing PhDs who receive public assistance has tripled over the last three years. Between 2007 and 2010 the number grew from 9,776 to 33,655.

However, the decline in tenured faculty positions started well before the current economic crisis. The New York Times reported in November, 2007, that tenured faculty had already become the minority on campuses across the country. 30 years ago, adjuncts made up only 43% of faculty nation-wide, whereas by 2007 they comprised 70% of faculty. The Times attributed the trend to administrators’ desire to save money and have greater “flexibility.” What this really means is greater ease in manipulating, coercing and firing, since part-timers and adjuncts, in general, have little or no job security and must toe the line and keep their mouths shut if they want to keep their jobs.

It also means more money is available for executive compensation, which has been on the rise even as tuition has climbed and employee compensation has declined. The San Francisco Chronicle reported this week that executive pay at the nation’s private colleges climbed 2.8% between 2009 and 2010 (the last year in which records are available). The median compensation for the nearly 500 presidents of private universities with budgets of at least $50 million was nearly $400,000, with 36 executives earning more than $1 million annually. However, executive compensation at public universities has also been rising rapidly. California Senator Leland Yee recently introduced legislation that would bar the state’s UC and CSU systems from giving any raises or bonuses until two years after the latest fee hikes.

As with many aspects of the education system, the interests of teachers are linked to the wellbeing of students. Several studies have found that freshmen taught by part-timers are more likely to drop out. This is probably due to the fact that part-timers and adjuncts, in general, have more work to do and less time to do it, forcing many to reduce or abandon office hours. They are more likely to accept excessive or unreasonable course loads in order to increase their salaries or to be eligible for benefits. They also are less likely to advocate for better conditions for themselves and their students out of fear of getting fewer (or no) classes in the coming semesters.

California Near Bottom, Texas Near Top in Graduation Rates—And Your Point Is?

The U.S. Department of Education has just published state-by-state high school graduation rates that are, for the first time ever, based on uniform accounting measures, according to the Los Angeles Times. California ranked 32nd in overall high school graduation rates for the 2010-2011 school year (tied with Washington, Utah and West Virginia), with only 76% of its high school students graduating on time. Iowa had the highest graduation rate, 88%, followed by Wisconsin and Vermont at 87%. Texas and Tennessee were tied for fourth with Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire and North Dakota, with a rate of 86%.

While California was one of ten states with worse graduation rates in 2009 than in 2002 (others were Nevada, Connecticut, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nebraska, Arkansas, New Jersey and Rhode Island), the graduation rate between 1998 and 2008 actually climbed from 67.5% to 73%, according to a report in Thoughts on Public Education (TOPED). The TOPED article points out that in 2005 the state’s graduation rate was 78.1% and then suddenly dropped to 62.7% in 2007 and then was back up to 73% in 2008, suggesting that accounting methods, rather than pedagogy was at play. One notable factor that likely contributed to the drop between 2005 and 2007 was the implementation of the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) in 2006 as a new graduation requirement.

The TOPED article also notes that the U.S. Department of Education has used three different formulas for calculating completion rates in recent years and that all were flawed and skewed by politics. The most recent data is being touted by the Dept. of Ed as the most consistent and reliable to date, as it relies on the same metric from state to state rather than the previous methods which relied on self-reporting data from each state that were calculated using a variety of different methods.

The new method uses a 4-year adjusted cohort graduation rate, according to the U.S. Department of Education, which is based on the number of students who graduate in four years with a regular high school diploma (in contrast to a GED) divided by the number of students who form the adjusted cohort for the graduating class. Put more simply: the number of students graduating in four years divided by the number of students who entered high school as 9^th graders. The cohort is adjusted by adding students who transfer into the cohort and subtracting those who transfer out, emigrate out of the country or die.

This still leaves considerable wiggle room for states to game the system. States can boost their graduation rates by having easier exit exams (or none at all) and fewer graduation requirements. There are also numerous ways states can also subtract out students who would be likely to drop out, thus increasing the percentage of students graduating. The Texas Tribune reports that school officials in that state have reported student withdrawals using more than twelve different “leaver” codes, several of which allow students to not be counted toward the state’s graduation rate. For example, students who are removed from public school to be home schooled are no longer counted toward the four-year graduation rate.

This is not a trivial point as Texas has both an unexpectedly high graduation rate and a documented history of cheating. The majority of states with high graduation rates (80% and above) have relatively low childhood poverty rates (less than 20%), though Texas has both a high graduation rate (86%) and a high childhood poverty rate of 27%, according to data from Kids Count. In 2006, a study by Harvard, UT Austin and Rice University determined that Texas was inflating its graduation numbers by allowing districts to not count students who left school for a wide variety of reasons. After this report became publicized, the state began using the federal definition, which still allows them not count student who leave school for a variety of reasons.

It Might Be Fascist, But At Least The Kids Are On Time

Proponents credit Texas’ creativity and innovation for its four-year rise in graduation rates, particularly its emphasis on accountability. One of these “innovations” has been the adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for students by many of the state’s school districts. The RFID tags allow schools to monitor students’ every move and quickly pinpoint whether or not they are in class. This can lead to quicker and more accurate identification of truancy, one factor that contributes to students dropping out. The plan was covered by Wired's Threat Level blog, and has garnered increasing attention in light of a lawsuit by a student who was suspended for refusing to carry her RFID tag.

While the RFID tags may lead to more efficient reporting and improved attendance, resulting in increased revenue for schools that are funded based on average daily attendance (ADA), the RFID tags are unquestionably an invasion of privacy. They allow administrators to know how often students go to the restroom and how long they spend there. They also allow administrators to know how often and how long children meet with counselors or school safety advocates, meetings that are supposed to be privileged and confidential. This could cause some students to avoid emotional assistance or counsel when needed. Perhaps the most insidious and oppressive aspect of the use of RFID tags in school is that it conditions children to accept a world in which surveillance, social control and a lack of privacy and civil liberties are the norm.

What is the Significance of the New DOE Graduation Statistics?

The new federal formula for calculating high school graduation rates was intended to make graduation data collection uniform from state to state so that valid comparisons could be made. However, because the new formula still allows states to define for themselves what counts as a “drop out” or a “leaver,” and to create their own graduation requirements, valid comparisons are not possible.

The primary reason why graduation rates are even in the national spotlight is because of the general hysteria about our “failing schools”—a myth (or at least a gross exaggeration) that has been used by free market education “reformers” to justify the privatization of public education.

In reality, graduation rates have been steadily climbing across the nation, and they have been doing so for the past 140 years. In 1870, the first year in which records were kept, only 2% of students graduated from high school. By 1940, half of all students were graduating from high school. By 1969, 77% of students were earning diplomas. Since then, there have declines and rises in the graduation rate, with a general rising trend over the last decade.

Those who worry about graduation rates seldom look at the actual reasons why students drop out. In the 1940s and 1950s, many students were dropping out to enter the work force, raise families or join the military. Poverty has also played a large role, with lower income children entering school far behind their more affluent peers in pre-reading and other academic skills (see here and here). This gap grows over time as they have less access to enriching extracurricular and summer activities and increases the chances that they will drop out of school. Anti-poverty programs in the 1960s helped mitigate this to some extent, but childhood poverty rates began to rise again during the Reagan years and this likely contributed to the declines in graduation rates seen in the 1990s.

More Nurses and Improved Educational Outcomes

(Image from Flickr, from Elgin County Archives)

The single biggest influence on students’ educational achievement is their socioeconomic backgrounds. While good teachers can help some students overcome the challenges they face and they can make the curriculum more exciting and engaging for the majority of their students, they cannot make all students succeed academically.

There are numerous reasons why lower income children do more poorly in school than their affluent peers. Lower income parents tend to read less to their young children and use less complex vocabulary, for example, which contributes to an academic achievement gap even before children have entered kindergarten. Lower income parents are less able to provide enriching extracurricular activities on weekends and during the summer, like camp, summer school, arts and music classes, and travel. They are less able to hire tutors or purchase supplemental learning materials. Many are working so hard to put food on their children’s table, often at multiple jobs, or at night, that they simply aren’t available to assist with homework or meet with teachers.

Poor children also have a higher rate of health conditions that can undermine their academic success. For example, they are more likely to be born prematurely or with low birth weight and to suffer from malnutrition or anemia, any one of which can lead to cognitive impairment or learning disabilities. They are also more likely to be homeless or suffer housing insecurity and have untreated chronic diseases or excessive absences, any one of which can undermine stability and consistency of educational programs and social relationships. They are more likely to suffer stress from financial uncertainty at home or from the violence in their neighborhoods, which can lead to overproduction of the stress hormone cortisol, which can impair memory and cognitive function. They are also more like to be exposed to excessive levels of cortisol in utero, which can affect their physical health and cognitive development.

While ending poverty and closing the wealth gap might seem intractable, many of the problems associated with poverty that threaten children’s ability to succeed academically can be significantly reduced by placing health clinics staffed by qualified registered nurses in every school.

As many as 18% of school children have chronic health conditions, according to the Wall Street Journal, including attention disorders, diabetes, epilepsy and asthma. 33% of students are now obese or overweight and many of them have specialized physical and mental health problems associated with their weight.

Nurses can treat mild injuries and disease symptoms, as well as administer medications to chronically ill students, thus helping to keep more students in class. They can help screen for vision and hearing problems, thus improving children’s ability to access academic lessons and resources. They can do health outreach to help reduce obesity, smoking, sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies and to reduce transmission of infectious diseases, all of which should also serve to keep more children in school.

Sadly, the trend over the past two decades has been just the opposite. According to the National Association of School Nurses, only 45% of public schools currently have fulltime nurses, while 25% of schools have no nurses at all. The state of Michigan has only one nurse for every 4,411 students. Vermont, in contrast, has one nurse for every 396 students.

In addition to eliminating nurses entirely, many districts are replacing registered nurses with licensed practical nurses and vocational nurses, who are less expensive, but also less qualified. Linda Davis-Alldritt, president of the school nurses association, said this is like replacing credentialed teachers with teacher’s aids, according to the WSJ.

The number of children needing medical attention at school is not trivial. The National Association of School Nurses says that 24% of American school age children have vision deficiencies, 13% are on prescription drugs, 6% are out more than 11 school days due to injury or illness, 10% have asthma, 5% have seizure disorders, 5% have food allergies, 5% have hearing deficiencies and 5% have ADHD.

Many of these children come to school, but cannot concentrate or focus for extended periods because of pain or discomfort. Many don’t come to school at all because they are too sick or uncomfortable.

There is also a strong connection between absences and academic success. In a study of Baltimore school children, high school drop-outs averaged 27.6 absences per year, while graduates averaged only 11.8. Therefore, anything that can be done to reduce infections and alleviate symptoms, such as increasing health services at schools, should help increase the amount of time kids spend in class and improve their chances of graduating on time.

55% of Oakland’s African American Males At Risk of Not Graduating

New research by the Urban Strategies Council of Oakland found that 55% of African American male students in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) were at risk of not graduating due to high suspension rates, chronic absences and poor academic performance. This compares with a still high rate of 37.5% for the general student population, according to the Bay Citizen.

Of those who were not on track to graduate on time, 73% were chronically absent in elementary school, missing at least 10% of school days. This parallels findings from a Baltimore study (see here). The same percentage had been suspended at least once in middle school.

It is easy to blame schools, teachers and parents for the problem. Indeed, the Bay Citizen quoted Hedy Chang, director of Attendance Works, who said that “five-year-olds don’t miss school without an adult knowing at home,” as if the parent was keeping the child home for illegitimate reasons. Yet, high absenteeism is not primarily due to irresponsible parents who simply keep their kids home or don’t monitor their attendance. Rather, high absenteeism correlates with poverty and lack of health insurance or access to affordable care, suggesting that poor kids stay home more because they are not receiving preventative or prompt curative care, leading to longer and more severe infectious and chronic illnesses.

Of course, at the higher grades, students sometimes cut class for other reasons, like preferring to be out on the streets or with friends, to avoid gangs or bullies, or because they are so behind in grades or academic skills that school has become a traumatic and unpleasant experience for them.

Most of these problems, likewise, cannot be directly blamed on parents, teachers or even the students themselves. Poverty creates an achievement gap before children have even entered kindergarten (see here and here). The achievement gap only gets worse as children progress through the system, with affluent students continuing to reap benefits like summer travel, enriching extracurricular activities and better health and nutrition that are denied to their lower income peers. Failure and frustration are thus built into the system and routine for many students and cutting class could be seen as a rational response to the embarrassment, powerlessness or frustration of being stuck in classes in which one is lost, confused and has little chance of passing.

Gangs are also a product of socioeconomic conditions and a problem that can be significantly reduced or eliminated by eradicating poverty and providing jobs and extracurricular activities for youth. Until that happens, students who must cross through rival gang territory in order to get to school could be provided with transportation alternatives that bypass the dangerous turf or reassigned to other schools.

Bullying is also a societal problem. It occurs at home and in the streets and playgrounds. Politicians, bosses and community leaders also engage in it. Until it as addressed at these levels, children and adults will continue to see it as a normal (and effective) way to interact and achieve one’s goals and the problem will persist. However, schools can do a lot more to reduce bullying on campus by better educating their staffs and creating and enforcing disciplinary policies that treat it as a serious offense.

High suspension rates are also related to socioeconomic factors. While racial bias probably plays a role in the higher suspension rates for African American males among certain teachers and administrators, it is unlikely the main cause (see Parsing the Black-White Suspension Gap for more analysis of this topic). Rather, lower rates of academic success (remember, the achievement gap is already in place before students even start school) likely create a frustrating academic experience that contributes to disruptive behavior. Also, the middle class culture, mores and expectations of school often come into conflict with the culture, mores and expectations of lower income and non-white communities, leading to the unnecessary escalation of conflicts and more severe punishment for students.

Oakland students of color, particularly black males, indeed have an appallingly high risk of not graduating on time from high school. However, if we really want to see improvements, we need to stop scapegoating the parents, teachers and children themselves and start addressing the socioeconomic factors that are the primary cause of the problem.

LAUSD Raises and Then Lowers the Bar

Schools are broken, so the mantra goes: Too many students are dropping out, while those who are graduating are doing so without proficiency in math and English. Therefore, we must hold them all to higher standards!

This reasoning is irrational and the solution is doomed to failure.

If the point of raising the bar is to prevent students from graduating when they haven’t mastered the basic skills, then graduation rates will necessarily decline when the bar is raised. Simply raising the bar cannot force kids who aren’t ready to meet the expectations to suddenly meet those expectations. Kids will not suddenly be able to pass a college preparatory science class, for example, simply because it is now a graduation requirement.

The problem isn’t the schools or the teachers, but the social circumstances of the students. Academic success is overwhelmingly influenced by factors outside of school, most significantly students’ socioeconomic backgrounds. (See here, here and here). Some researchers, like conservative economist Erik Hanushek, say the teachers’ influence accounts for less than 10% of students’ academic success, which means that it will take far more than better teaching to close the achievement gap and significantly improve test scores.

Despite the irrationality of the “reform,” school districts across the country started to implement tougher graduation requirements. In some districts, like Los Angeles Unified, every student was required to pass college-prep classes with a C or better (as required by the state’s university systems) and earn at least 230 credits in order to graduate.

Recognizing that they were setting themselves up for failure (to the tune of declining graduation rates), LAUSD has backed off these requirements, proposing to allow students to graduate with a D or better in their college-prep classes, according to the Los Angeles Times. The proposal would ultimately allow students to graduate with 25% fewer or 170 credits.

Critics have lambasted LAUSD for lowering their standards. However, requiring all students to take college-prep classes is actually a higher expectation than what previously existed, regardless of the grade earned or credits required to graduate. In the past, students were allowed to graduate without ever attempting a college-prep level course.

Another important point is that many of these students would not be attending a state university in the first place. There simply aren’t enough spaces available in the state systems to accommodate every high school graduate even if they did wish to go, while the skyrocketing costs are making the state’s two university systems out of reach for more and more young people. Thus, the C requirement would only be an issue for those students who were planning on attending to a state university immediately after graduation. Anyone else could attend a community college first and earn credits there in preparation for a later transfer to one of the university systems.

Ultimately, if we really want to see more students succeeding in high level courses, we need to make sure that they are adequately prepared for these courses academically and socially. They need sufficient support structures and they need them in place well before they even enter kindergarten. This will require a substantial social investment in families and a serious reduction in poverty.

Is Rising Teacher Productivity Increasing High school Graduation Rates?

The national high school graduation rate increased to 75.5% in 2009, up from 72% in 2001, according to a report by a nonprofit group headed by former secretary of state Colin L. Powell. Considering that socioeconomic status is the biggest influence on academic achievement and that familial wealth declined substantially during that same time period, one would have expected graduation rates to have declined. The fact that they didn’t is likely the result of increased teacher productivity.

Worker productivity across the nation has grown steadily for the past thirty years, with corporate profits rising in spite of massive layoffs and a general decades-long trend of downsizing and exportation of jobs off shore. While technological improvements have increased efficiency, many workers have also been forced to do the same work that was previously accomplished by a larger work force, working longer, harder and faster than they did in the past.

This same trend has been happening in schools, with teachers being expected to implement numerous “reforms” that require them to work longer hours and accomplish more in their workdays.

One particular way this has played out is in the closure and redesign of so-called dropout factories, where 60% of a school’s population fails to graduate on time. These schools have been under tremendous pressure to change, resulting in closures, conversions to charter schools or redesign.

Education reformers will no doubt try to take full credit for these improvements and continue their lambasting of teachers and their unions. However, even when reforms can be positively linked to improvements in graduation rates, it is ultimately the teachers who must implement the reforms and who bear the greatest burden in terms of increased workload and consequences when those reforms do not succeed.

It is also questionable whether Powell’s data are even significant. A 3.5% increase is not a very large gain, particularly in light of the fact that graduation rates for black (63.5%) and Latino students (65.0%) are still substantially lower than for white (82%) and Asian students (91.8%)—(data from the Washington Post).

Furthermore, there are several states (e.g., California, Nevada, Connecticut, Arizona, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Utah, Nebraska, Arkansas, New Mexico) with stagnant or declining graduation rates, despite the implementation of the same types of reforms implemented in states with large gains. Indeed, Los Angeles and Oakland have among the highest percentages of charter schools in the nation and have closed many of their dropout factories, yet dropout rates are still relatively high for black and Latino students.

Ultimately, there is no doubt that teachers are working harder and that administrators are getting more out of them, despite declining wages. This would be one measure of productivity. Whether or not Powell’s graduation improvements are real or an artifact is another question.

Extrinsic Motivation: Chitown Charter Implements Stiff Fines for Student Infractions

Image from Flickr, by Sebastian Bergmann

The Noble Network, which runs 10 charter high schools in Chicago, raised nearly $200,000 last year (and $400,000 since 2008) from discipline penalties, the Chicago Tribune reported this week. The Network, which has been praised by Ed Deformer Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has been charging students $5 per violation for such trivial infractions as having untied shoelaces, bringing chips to school or dozing off in class.

Critics are accusing the network of using the fines to cull low performing (and lower income) students in order to boost graduation rates. Last year the network lost 473 students, more than twice as many as the previous year.

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Noble CEO Michael Milkie believes that by enforcing all rules, even the little ones, he has made the school safer. He has also said that students who behave poorly should be forced to pay, arguing that bad behavior takes away teacher attention and resources from those who are behaving appropriately, thus justifying the fines to recoup students’ costs to the school.

In addition to the fines, students must serve three hour detentions, even for little infractions like not having their shirts tucked or being caught with potato chips or energy drinks. Furthermore, if behavior doesn’t improve, the costs go up. Students with more than 12 detentions must pay $140 to take a discipline class. One student was forced to take a night behavior class for not shaking a visitor’s hand.