How summer increases the achievement gap

As I was visiting a school in Delaware last month, an elementary school principal ushered me over to his computer to show me a graph that distressed him. It traced how one of his students, who came from a poor family, had progressed over the course of two years.

A test taken in September of the previous school year was a low point. Then, the student’s achievement level leapt upward in remarkable increments, to a high point in the spring. But by the next fall, the student’s achievement level had sunk again, back toward the point where he had started the previous year.

The principal named the culprit: Summer.

Much of the discussion about the wide discrepancies in educational achievement between poor and affluent students is focused on what schools and teachers should be doing to close it. But researchers are gathering more evidence suggesting that summer—when students are typically out of contact with their schools and teachers—is one of the root causes of the gap.

At the Education Writers Association annual conference last week, a panel of researchers and educators, moderated by Education Week’s assistant managing editor-online, Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, discussed how summer affects student learning, and what to do about it.

“When kids return to school in the fall, on average they’ve slipped by about a month from where they were in the spring,” said Catherine Augustine, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research group, and co-author of a report released last year on summer learning programs. But, she added, the averages mask significant differences between poor children’s summer learning loss compared to that of their wealthier peers.

More advantaged children tend to stay at the same achievement level, or even make gains, over the course of the summer, Augustine said: “They’re reading, they’re being read to, they’re going to fancy camps.”

In contrast, poor children fall far behind. “Low-income kids are less likely to be going to those camps,” she said. “They’re more likely to be playing video games, watching TV, and staying indoors, particularly if they live in unsafe neighborhoods.”

She added that the discrepancies between the two groups are perpetuated summer after summer, helping to increase the achievement gap as children grow older. (She also noted, however, that both low-income and high-income children lose ground in math over the summer during the elementary school years.)

The panelists did not necessarily recommend year-round school, however. Many parents dislike the idea, and there is still little research on whether cutting out summer vacation entirely actually helps shrink the achievement gap.

Instead, schools and community groups should work together to create programs that are both fun and educational, said Gary Huggins, CEO of the National Summer Learning Association. Rather than being “remedial and punitive,” he suggested school districts create programs that low-income students actually want to attend.

“It’s not just about more school,” Huggins said. “Programs have to be engaging and innovative.”

Ideally, he suggested, summer school might become a laboratory for experimental strategies—like hands-on activities, field trips, theme-based curricula and Socratic teaching methods—that schools can also incorporate into the regular academic year.

Kathryn LeRoy, who oversees the extended summer learning program for the Duval County Public Schools in Florida, said her district is already doing some of that experimentation. Using federal funds, the Duval district, which encompasses Jacksonville, expanded and renamed its summer school program “The Superintendent’s Academy.” Administrators then conducted walks through local public housing projects to recruit low-income families. The program, which targets struggling students, now includes music, dance, physical education, field trips and partnerships with local camps, not just reading and math classes, LeRoy said.

So far, the schools with students involved in the program have seen remarkable gains, she added, going from Ds and Fs on their state report card to As and Bs. “Our gut tells us that summer absolutely had a part to play in the achievement we’re seeing in in those elementary schools,” she said.

Causes and consequences of high suspension rates

Sarah Carr, a contributing editor at The Hechinger Report, talked recently with ABC radio about the causes and consequences of high suspension rates in schools. The Hechinger Report focused on these issues in a recent piece for Time.com set in New Orleans and Baltimore. Both the article and the radio interview dive into the long-term implications for students who are chronically suspended, as well as the tradeoffs involved in keeping disruptive students in class.

Listen to the interview (3:44)

What can the failures of desegregation teach us?

In a New York Times editorial over the weekend, University of California, Berkeley professor David Kirp asks why we’ve turned away from school integration, an education reform that has quite extensive evidence showing it worked:

“Economists’ studies consistently conclude that African-American students who attended integrated schools fared better academically than those left behind in segregated schools. They were more likely to graduate from high school and attend and graduate from college; and, the longer they spent attending integrated schools, the better they did.” 

Indeed, during the 1970s and 1980s—the time when desegregation was in full force—the achievement gap closed faster than it ever has before or since. Why did we abandon such a successful intervention? Kirp writes that “desegregation was too often implemented in ham-handed fashion, undermining its effectiveness,” but doesn’t go into detail.

In fact, the “ham-handed” way that busing was done in many cities is part of the reason for its downfall. Black students may have benefited, but there were many sacrifices that came along with busing—and not just long bus rides for black kids. Kirp doesn’t mention how black families viewed desegregation, and the flaws many saw in the way it was framed and then implemented. In reporting I’m doing for a book due out next January, Divided We Fail, I have spent the past few years talking to a group of black families about their views of busing, and why they led a charge against desegregation in their city of Louisville, Ky.

The other piece of the puzzle of why desegregation disappeared is the rise of the school-choice movement. Others have argued before that the two don’t mix well, and school choice won out.

None of this is to say that desegregation should be considered irrelevant. Quite the opposite. Both its successes and failures have a lot to teach those seeking to reform the public education system today.

What value-added models can—and can’t—tell us about teaching and learning

Getting your middle-schooler in front of a high-quality teacher for even one year will improve his or her chances of going to college and earning a good salary later in life, according to a recent study. The study’s authors used value-added modeling—predicting how well a given student will do on a standardized test, controlling for variables such as past scores and individual characteristics—to reach their conclusions.

Nationally, the question of whether value-added calculations should be included in teacher evaluations remains controversial. Critics of value-added models argue that they’re not reliable enough to be used in high-stakes decisions, and that the tests on which they’re based are themselves a poor measure of student achievement.

In the latest issue of Education Next, the study’s authors present their findings. Raj Chetty, John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff write that the students of teachers with high value-added scores “are more likely to attend college, attend higher-quality colleges, earn more, live in higher socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods, and save more for retirement. They are also less likely to have children during their teenage years.”

The authors analyzed two decades of test-score data on more than 1 million children in grades 4 through 8.

“I think we’ve shown pretty convincingly that there is likely a role for student tests in teacher evaluation,” said Rockoff, a professor at Columbia Business School. “However, nothing we’ve said in our paper says that the role has to be very large.”

Having a teacher with a high value-added score increases a student’s cumulative lifetime earnings by $50,000, according to the researchers. Teen pregnancy rates were also found to be lower, on average, for the students of teachers with high value-added scores.

“We can say that the teachers who tend to raise their students’ test-scores also provide them with something that is going to help them down the road,” said Rockoff.

Though he doesn’t believe value-added scores should be the sole measure of a teacher’s quality, Rockoff said he takes offense at “people who say it should go down to zero.”

The study adds to a growing body of research on the validity and reliability of value-added modeling, as educators and policymakers work to change how teachers are evaluated across the country. Many schools are in the midst of overhauling their evaluation systems as part of the federal School Improvement Grants program.

Rockoff and his colleagues acknowledge some of the potential pitfalls that could come with a greater focus on value-added scores, such as greater teaching to the test and cheating. Rockoff also said that knowing one’s value-added score doesn’t do much to help a given teacher improve his or her teaching.

“One really important reason why value-added can’t be the only component in evaluations is that it provides no feedback to teachers,” Rockoff said. “It’s like telling a baseball player what [his] batting average is. You know you batted .320 last year and that’s good, but it doesn’t tell you what you did that made you do poorly or do well, or what you have to change to get better.”

Radio interview: Funding community colleges based on their success

With the debate continuing about matching graduates’ skills with workforce needs, Hechinger contributing editor Jon Marcus speaks on the Callie Crossley Show on WGBH, Boston, about a proposal in Massachusetts to fund community colleges based on their success in training students for jobs in growing industries. Long-neglected community colleges are being pressed to do more professional training, in spite of increased enrollments and dwindling resources. Can they handle the load? Hear the discussion here (or with the player below) and read Marcus’s story on this topic from the Boston Globe Sunday magazine.

New report suggests School Improvement Grants are paying off in California

In 2009, the federal government made an unprecedented investment in the country’s lowest-performing schools when it sent them $3.5 billion with an order: turn things around. Sufficient time has now passed for researchers and policymakers to begin examining how well the School Improvement Grant program (SIG) is working.

So far, the evidence has been largely anecdotal. In a recent series of stories on the program, The Hechinger Report, together with the Education Writers Association, Education Week and a group of news organization around the country, found mixed reports on how the schools in the program have fared.

A new study looking at preliminary data indicates that California schools receiving SIG money made significant gains as measured by test scores, to the surprise of the study’s author, Thomas Dee, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia. By using data from schools right above and below the eligibility cut-off for SIG money, Dee found that SIG reforms raised a school’s score on California’s Academic Performance Index (API) by 34 points. Before the program, SIG-eligible schools had an average API of 650, while the state’s performance target is 800, so an increase of 34 points translates into a narrowing of this gap by 23 percent. (API scores range from 200 to 1000.)

In California, annual SIG awards averaged about $1,500 per pupil, or $1.5 million per school.

States identified their bottom 5 percent of schools in the SIG program, and those meeting both the “lowest-achieving” and the “lack of progress” criteria could apply for a grant. To get the money, schools had to follow one of three improvement strategies: “restart,” “turnaround” or “transformation.” As a fourth option, districts could take a small amount of money and shut down a failing school.

Nearly three-quarters of SIG schools nationally and 60 percent of those in California opted for the transformation model, which required schools to replace their principals, develop new teacher evaluation systems and lengthen the school day. About 20 percent nationally and a third of California schools picked the turnaround option, which mandated that they fire the principal as well as at least half of the teaching staff.

The amount of buy-in required to make these reforms work was just one reason that Dee was skeptical of the SIG program’s chances for success. The checks came in right as the school year was starting, meaning there was limited time to plan for changes. And, Dee says, it’s just hard to find reforms that work when evaluated rigorously.

Once he analyzed his data, Dee said, “I was staring at these results and exploring alternative interpretations for basically the last five or six months.” But in the end, he said, his conclusions hold up.

In his research, Dee compared schools just above and below the benchmarks set by California to determine SIG eligibility. For example, elementary schools needed to have under a 29.97 percent proficiency rate to apply for a grant. Dee analyzed the test scores of schools just shy of this mark that got the SIG money along with the scores of schools just above it (which made them ineligible for the money).

In the paper, Dee writes that “there were significant improvements in the test-based performance of schools on the ‘lowest-achieving’ margin but not among schools on the ‘lack of progress’ margin.” And the improvements were mostly evident in schools that followed the less-popular “turnaround” model, which required far more staffing changes than the “transformation” model.

As for whether the multibillion-dollar federal investment has proven worthwhile, Dee compares the SIG program to class-size reduction efforts, including the famed Project STAR experiment in Tennessee in the 1980s. He says his findings suggest that “SIG-funded school turnarounds are cost-effective relative to expensive class-size reductions, generating roughly half of the achievement gains associated with Project STAR but doing so at a third of the cost.”

U.S. to fall short of 2025 college grads goal—by 24 million degrees

Despite persistent appeals from policymakers and politicians to increase the number of college graduates in the United States, a new report projects a shortfall of nearly 24 million degree-holders by 2025.

The cost to the U.S. economy in lost wages and income taxes? About $600 billion a year.

They’re the most dramatic figures yet in the ongoing debate about the need to improve the rates at which Americans successfully complete a higher education.

In order to reach the goal of having 60 percent of adults with college degrees by the year 2025, the United States would have to confer an additional 24 million degrees beyond what it is already producing—but it is projected to award only 278,500 more degrees, the Center for Law and Social Policy and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems reported Thursday.

“These increases can’t be put off for another five or 10 years if we want a strong economic future for America,” said Vickie Choitz, a senior policy analyst at the law and social-policy center.

The three countries with the highest college-attainment rates—Canada, Japan and South Korea—are all expected to reach the 60 percent target by 2020.

The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce previously projected that there will be a need for 22 million new college-educated workers by 2018, but that the nation will fall short of that number by at least three million.

The center estimates that, by 2018, more than two-thirds of the 47 million expected job openings in the United States will require some level of postsecondary education or training.

Report: California sees large returns on higher-ed investments

Is it worth it for California to invest in higher education? That’s the central question posed by a new report examining the state’s spending on its university system and how much graduates end up contributing back to the state budget. The answer? “A resounding yes,” said Michele Siqueiros, executive director of The Campaign for College Opportunity.

Released today, “California’s Economic Payoff: Investing in College Access & Completion” finds that for “every dollar California invests in students who go to college, it will receive a net return on investment of [$4.50].” Returns for college graduates were double those who went but dropped out before completing a degree. And for college graduates, the money spent by the state on their education is paid back, on average, by the time they’re 38 years old.

California’s higher education system has been hit with a slew of budget cuts totaling billions of dollars since the recession started. The state’s colleges and universities have raised tuition and eliminated entire degree programs. Although it never addresses the budget crisis explicitly, the report will help interested groups make the case for California to devote more funding to higher education.

The California Civil Rights Coalition, for one, plans on using the report in its advocacy, said statewide coordinator Claudia Pena. “To the extent that California invests in its future, we’ll see a reduction on poverty, incarceration and unemployment,” she said. “We actually cannot afford to deny this investment in education without continuing to increase the disparities in education.”

The return-on-investment that the report calculates is based in part on a projection of increased tax revenues for the Golden State. As students with some college experience or a college degree earn more money than high-school graduates and dropouts, they’ll contribute more in state taxes later on. The authors also point to the fact that those in college are far less likely to cost the state money down the line, as well, whether through welfare programs or incarceration.

The findings are particularly important due to California’s demographics, according to one of the report’s co-authors, Jon Stiles. The state’s two largest age groups are 15-19-year-olds and 20-24-year-olds. And, unlike the rest of the country, the majority of these individuals are Latino or black. “That means California is going to have to take the lead in solutions in dealing with this young population,” Stiles said.

New report says tuition tax breaks helping wealthier families

Education Sector reports today that federal higher-education tuition-tax breaks are increasingly benefiting wealthier families.

The tax breaks, and other aid that goes to students who do not meet the federal definition of financial need, were the subject of this story by The Hechinger Report, which appeared on the front page of USA Today last November.

Education Sector said that before 2001, nearly 83 percent of higher-education tax benefits went to families making less than $75,000. Today, nearly a quarter of the tax benefits go to families earning between $100,000 and $180,000.

The share of the tax credit enjoyed by middle-income families, meanwhile, has sharply declined.

Education Sector analyst Stephen Burd said the tax breaks should be eliminated.

“Providing billions of dollars in tax benefits to upper-middle income families who would send their children to college without the help is a luxury that the government can no longer afford,” Burd said.

The report cites U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the government will have spent about $55 billion on tuition tax-break programs between 2010 and 2014.

Report details principals’ impact on student achievement

Teacher effectiveness. The term has become a buzzword for policymakers, researchers and educators alike as they talk about the pressing need to improve our nation’s worst schools. But the rarely discussed factor of principal effectiveness is nearly as important, according to a new report by the Center for Public Education.

“The principal perspective: at a glance” takes a look at the small but growing body of research on principals’ influence of student achievement to make the case that school leadership cannot be neglected. “Education policy and education research [have] focused primarily on teachers,” said Jim Hull, senior analyst at the Center for Public Education and the study’s author. “The impact principals have on student outcomes has largely been ignored until recently … [Policymakers] should focus more on recruiting and retaining effective principals in the schools that need them most.”

Things are changing, though, Hull said, with the principal position receiving more attention than ever before. The Hechinger Report has also found that whether in charter or traditional public schools, training and retaining good leaders are top priorities, if also major challenges.

In part, the focus is a result of recent federal policies. Almost all of the schools that received federal School Improvement Grants (SIG)—reserved for the lowest-performing institutions in the country—had to fire principals in an effort to turn their schools around.

It’s also partly because of advances in research. The studies that Hull examined for his report all measured principal effectiveness slightly differently, but each relied on student test-scores—more specifically, value-added measures in which a student’s test-score is predicted based on his or her characteristics and past test-scores. A school is held responsible for getting the student to reach at least his or her predicted result. Researchers attempt to take into account all of the factors that influence a student’s performance but that are outside a principal’s control.

“There are a lot of other variables to come in to [play that] really impact the performance of the school, and to be able to isolate the impact of the principal is quite difficult,” Hull said.

Hull’s report, which combs the primary research on principal effectiveness, concludes that principals have a clear impact on student achievement, he said, especially at challenging, high-poverty schools. Not only do effective principals help raise student test-scores, but they also make a difference on other indicators, such as reducing the number of student suspensions and absences or increasing graduation rates.

Ineffective principals drive effective teachers out of a school—or out of the district entirely. Effective ones are able to work with teachers to help them improve while simultaneously recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers.

Hull also found that effective principals observed teachers more often and made more unannounced visits to classrooms than their less-effective peers. And, notably, “effective principals almost always provided immediate feedback to their teachers,” he said.