Teachers Don’t Hate America! (and Then There’s the Bad News)

Here's my newest American.com blog post, which was published today in conjunction with the release of our new study, High Schools, Civics & Citizenship: What Social Studies Teachers Think and Do.

Good news rarely gets its fair play. But here’s a worthwhile gospel according to a new study released today by AEI: teachers don’t hate America!

Although public school teachers are often accused of being left-wing and anti-American, this new survey of over 1,000 high school social studies teachers says otherwise. An impressive 83 percent of teachers report seeing America as a “unique country that stands for something special in the world” (see graph below). This finding parallels a study of the general public which found that 84 percent of respondents see America in the same light.

So what does this mean for our high school students? Well, it likely means they aren’t being taught to view America as a fundamentally flawed country. Instead, 82 percent of their teachers find it important to teach students to “respect and appreciate their country but know its shortcomings.”

For those waiting for the bad news, it’s not clear that high schoolers are actually gleaning anything from these well-intentioned teachers.  Regarding key concepts of citizenship, no more than 24 percent of public school teachers express great confidence that most of the students from their high school have learned these concepts before they graduate.  So while our students aren’t learning to disavow America, they may not be learning how to participate, either.

America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform

This post was originally published on American.com.
  
Today AEI’s Rick Hess and the Fordham Institute’s Stafford Palmieri and Janie Scull are releasing a major study ranking the reform environments in America’s 25 largest cities and a handful of other noteworthy places. While many education studies focus on test scores, this report instead takes a look at numerous environment-related indicators, acknowledging that education reform is a bigger undertaking than just adopting the pedagogical fads of the moment.


Not surprisingly, New Orleans came in at the top, followed closely by Washington, D.C., and New York City. Rounding out the top five were Denver and Jacksonville. It’s interesting to note that all top five cities’ states are round-two finalists in the Department of Education grant competition Race to the Top. Those winners will be announced today at noon.

Cities were scored on the ability to attract talented individuals; access to reliable funding from both public and private entities; a robust charter school community; application of helpful quality-control metrics for entrepreneurial endeavors; district friendliness to nontraditional education providers and reform; and municipal support for entrepreneurs and district reforms. As witnessed in cities like New Orleans and D.C., noticeable reform requires political support, financial flexibility, gutsy and talented individuals, and useful checks and balances.

Despite its limitations and imperfections—the authors were subject to survey responses and public data—“America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform” is an interesting and useful way to consider school reform. While ranking the health of a city’s ecosystem is a common approach in many sectors, it’s a rarity in education. By considering the environment of a city, the report looks beyond the popularity of particular pedagogical or reform practices within the district and instead lays out a more comprehensive guide for sustainable and penetrating school reform. For further reading on such a holistic approach to ed reform, I recommend Hess’s newest book, Education Unbound.

New ‘Edujobs’ Bill Threatens Long-term Reform

I spent most of last Thursday night glued to CSPAN and Twitter as I followed the "edujobs" saga. This post is a result:

Late last night, the U.S. House of Representatives passed Rep. David Obey’s (D-Wisconsin) amendment to the “edujobs” provision in the House version of the 2010 Supplemental Appropriations Act, which focuses mostly on defense. To pay for the $10 billion edujobs provision, Obey’s amendment proposes to siphon $800 million from the Race to the Top fund and other education initiatives—charter school grants and the Teacher Initiative Fund—championed by the Obama administration. In response to the amendment, the White House announced, “If the final bill presented to the President includes cuts to education reforms, the president’s senior advisors would recommend a veto.”


The bill will move on to the Senate, to be voted on when session resumes the week of July 12th. A key education expert in the Senate shared with me this morning that it is “highly unlikely that the House version of the defense supplemental will become law” and that the Senate version will likely succeed instead. The Senate’s passed version of the defense bill contains no education provisions. And, this afternoon, 13 senators signed a letter to Senator Daniel Inouye, chairman of the Senate’s appropriations committee, asking him not to cut $800 million from education reform efforts.

We once again find rhetorical battles over “it’s for the kids.” American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten spoke out against the Department of Education and President Obama’s opposition, accusing the Department of Education of trading teacher jobs for its pet programs. She said failing to save these jobs will cause “well-documented harm to children.” The National Education Association’s “Speak Up For Education and Kids” initiative urged their Facebook fans last night to call their members of Congress and urge them to vote for the Obey amendment.

On the opposing side, Democrats for Ed Reform and 25 other education reform organizations released a statement decrying the amendment for cutting funds to programs that “show promise in improving the quality in education for ALL our nation’s schoolchildren.” Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution wrote, “When push comes to shove, it is appears that it is not about the kids—it is about the adults.”

So which is it? Are America’s schoolchildren most at risk with understaffed classrooms or with underfunded initiatives seeking to spur educational entrepreneurship? A case could certainly be made for both. Saving teaching jobs is a noble aim, but one that shouldn’t be pursued at the cost of reforms which are working to improve both the teaching profession and the quality of American education.

Teaching Citizenship

Happy 4th of July! Here's a post I recently published on The Enterprise blog:

Recent education reforms such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the Common Core standards movement have kept the spotlight on mathematics and reading, overshadowing other vital subjects such as history and civics. A 2006 study by the Center for Education Policy found that 71 percent of the surveyed districts reported they have reduced instructional time in at least one other subject to make more time for reading and math due to NCLB. The Center for Civic Education, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and many others have launched impressive campaigns to attract attention back to civic education. However, the lack of useful data on both expectations for civic education and teachers’ attitudes towards civic education makes thoughtful policy discussion difficult.


Students’ civics knowledge has remained rudimentary and stagnant over the years. The most recent 2006 NAEP civics test reports that only 27 percent of twelfth graders scored at or above the proficient level. Students in grades 4, 8, and 12 who took the NAEP civics test in 1998 scored at the same level as students in 2006, with improvement only in grade 4.

However, there’s little clarity as to what is meant by “citizenship” in schooling today. In 1996, 86 percent of respondents to the annual Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup poll said “prepar[ing] students to become responsible citizens” was a “very important” goal for public education. However, the 2000 poll found that training “responsible citizens” wasn’t nearly as important as “enhance[ing] people’s happiness and enrich[ing] their lives” and “dispel[ing] inequities in education among certain schools and certain groups.” The PDK/Gallup poll has not asked questions regarding citizenship and schooling since 2000.

Most essential to assessing our civics education is a better understanding of teachers’ attitudes and actions in regards to citizenship and the classroom. Before suggesting reforms to current policies that may stunt civic education, we must understand what teachers are being expected teach, what teachers are teaching, and what civic ideals teachers esteem in their classrooms. It’s very possible that our idea of civic education has evolved over the years and that current policies, curricula, or even school structures are not supporting our goals.
AEI’s new Program on American Citizenship has partnered with AEI’s education policy department to take a closer look at precisely that. The forthcoming fall 2010 report, “Schools, Civics and Citizenship: What Teachers Think and Do,” asks teachers what civic values or facts they believe to be most important for their students to learn, what the current system expects to be taught and what is realistically happening in their classroom.

A preliminary read of the survey data suggests that almost half of the teachers surveyed have seen social studies de-emphasized as a result of NCLB and that teaching “facts” is considered amongst the least important objectives for social studies teachers. Stay tuned for the AEI report this fall. It promises to be a helpful addition to the discussion, and will offer guidance on what to do next to ensure our children are getting the best education.

Too Alone

I'm too alone in the world, yet not alone enough to make each hour holy.
I'm too small in the world, yet not small enough to be simply in your presence, like a thing-just as it is.

I want to know my own will and move with it.
And I want, in the hushed moments when the nameless draws near, to be among the wise ones-or alone.

I want to mirror your immensity.
I want never to be too weak or too old to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.

I want to unfold,
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

WWFG

Those who know of my new life here in DC often hear about WWFG, which translates to "Weekly Women's Food Gathering." Here's the latest photo op from our goodbye dinner for our beloved Mary (LA girlfriends if any of you need a roomate, Mary's your girl!)

From L to R: Rachel, Kerry, Mary, Christy, me, Karen, Whitney & Amy. Missing are Carmela, Jackie & Jaclyn.

March Madness

Looks like my first-ever attempt at a March Madness was a bust. However, I did discover another way to compete without relying on my own (very lacking) athletic abilities--which is worth the temporary humiliation of being at the bottom of my office pool. Watch out March 2011, I'll be prepared!

And while I'm on the topic,  a shout out to my alma mater, Azusa Pacific University, for being the first NAIA school since 1998 to have both their women's and men's basketball teams in the championship. While we didn't walk away with wins, it was still quite the feat. I couldn't be prouder while reading LA Times' "Azusa Pacific loses, but triumphantly." Go Cougs!

Race to the Top… For What Reasons?

*This blog was written by my colleague, Daniel Lautzenheiser & I and published on AEI's blog The Enterprise.

With the announcement of the Race to Top (RTT) winners expected in early April, many of us in the edu-space have turned our eyes back to the Obama administration’s $4.3 billion education initiative. Today a new report has been released, which takes an in-depth look at the RTT application process to date. Among other concerns, Andy Smarick, an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Education, worries that “many states were giving the impression that they were competing not because they were deeply committed to reform, but because the recession had decimated their budgets.” Both the rhetoric and the numbers appear to lend credit to such a concern.

Smarick gives several examples in his third report of the Education Stimulus Watch series: New York Governor David Paterson seemed to make his motives clear when he said, “There is a potential $400 to $700 million that can come into this state to help pay off some of these bills. Seven hundred million would be very helpful right now.” Ohio’s—a finalist state with a weak application, notes Smarick—Senator John Husted said, “During these tough and uncertain financial times, I believe it is imperative that Ohio be in a strong position to take advantage of the Race to the Top dollars.” And more overt was Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s declaration that “we want to get Illinois in that race and make sure we get as much money as possible from Washington.”

In addition to such rhetoric, the numbers seem to raise suspicion. As shown here, 15 of the 16 finalists in the first round of RTT requested more than their maximum recommended amount per guidelines from the Department of Education. Massachusetts, whose budget range was $150-250 million, asked for $287 million. New York, with a $831 million request, asked for $131 million more than their $350-700 million suggested amount. Top prize goes to Florida, whose $1.1 billion ask was $400 million above their budget range. All told, these states requested $6.5 billion, or more than $2 billion more than the entire RTT fund.

It’s understood reform efforts cost money to enact over the long haul—reason to be even more skeptical of RTT, since this $4.3 billion is just a drop in the $64 billion federal education bucket. But in the face of these extraordinarily high ask amounts and worrisome comments from state politicians, it’s hard not to believe this is simply another overly ambitious and ill-timed reform effort that starts strong but lacks proper oversight.

The underlying fear is, in the face of massive budget shortfalls, winning states will use RTT money to plug budget holes instead of investing in promised reforms. This worry is only exacerbated by requirements under the brand-new health insurance bill requiring states to maintain current Medicaid and children’s health insurance levels, potentially making spending cuts in education far more likely. As the RTT round-one winners are announced and states begin to enter the second round of applications, the Department of Education would be wise to stop and consider states’ motives.

bones.

What is love?

I can’t put it to words.

But my pen on the paper knows.

It can’t help but write of love.

Can you feel love?

These bones of mine are stiff.

But I know these bones were made to love.

When love comes, my bones will know.

They’ll crackle and tighten.

But wait. Deep sigh. Exhale.

Love brings rest.

Can you learn love?

I’ve read all about it.

My mind is full of Jane Austen, Shakespeare and Rumi.

When love comes, my mind will race.

It’ll imagine and muse and wonder.

But wait. Deep sigh. Exhale.

Love brings simplicity.

What is love?
Rest. Simplicity.

Sounds like His love.

snowpocalypse 2010

Friday morning's local Washington Post homepage read: "Awaiting Snowmaggedon" http://bit.ly/bsFoVL. And we survived Snowpolalyspse/Snowmaggedon/Snowtorious BIG 2010! This storm ended up being the 3rd largest in the history of DC.  After 28 straight hours of 26 inches of snow, we finally got out of the house and played! We went sledding on the Capitol lawn, walked to our favorite coffee shop and just enjoyed a sunny, post-blizzard morning.

dual degree

Columbia University and Wits University of South Africa just announced a dual degree program with both universities schools of journalism. The degree "reflects the global nature of journalism in the 21st century." Students spend a year in Johannesburg and a year in New York studying advanced journalism. A journ program in two of my favorite places? Too good be true! Something to add to "maybe one day" list...

http://www.mediaclubsouthafrica.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1504:dual-degrees-from-wits-columbia&catid=49:medianews&Itemid=113

all blogged out?

Blogging is on the decline amongst the younger folks. According to a new study, "young people are losing interest in long-form blogging, as their communication habits have become increasingly brief, and mobile." Surprise, surprise. Us Generation Y-ers have found yet another means of communication to be too "complicated" and "time-consuming." And I'm as guilty as anyone.  My blog continues to shrink in the frequency and substance of posts. I've found much more delight in my 140 character commentaries (follow me on Twitter at @JennaMSchuette).

I find this to be troubling--and a matter that won't simply be solved by more adderall. Blogging encouraged many of us youngest, aspiring writer types to consistently practice our trade--even if just for an audience of one. But, why put the hours in to blogging when you can generate much more traffic via punchy, well-thought out, 140-word sentences? My answer's likely one to be touted by journalism professors. Blogging, now, isn't about the reward of an audience, but rather a classroom. It's a place to practice. And more importantly, I guess, it's a place to engage. It's vital that we keep writing.

A Penny Saved

Whew! I just finished my first research conference at AEI--an accumulation of six months of exhausting planning, researching, editing, & worrying.  And, CSPAN joined us all day for live coverage of "A Penny Saved: How Schools and Districts Can Tighten Their Belts While Serving Students Better." 

Given our education system's enormous financial dependability--we count on $600 billion in local, state & federal funding--and our economy's unpromising instability--half of the states are anticipating a cumulative shortfall of $144.8 billion for FY 2010--this is a timely topic. We must consider smart, sustainable ways to cut costs while also freeing up financial resources that can then drive promising reforms. My boss, Rick Hess, and Eric Osberg of the Fordham Institute did a wonderful job of bringing together key scholars, researchers, consultants, and district leaders to offer hopeful solutions to our education funding shortfall.  Be on the lookout for the research compiled in an edited volume, to be published by Harvard Ed Press this coming fall!

A few highlights: 

"Notice I don't have a PowerPoint presentation. We cut PowerPoints." --Jose Torres, Superintendent School District U-46

"The pressure for success from the outside world, state, federal, the community, has to become greater than the pressure for maintaing the status quo. My Superintendent friends always told me, 'Nate you gotta remember, no superintendent ever got fired cause the kids can't read.' You get fired because you shifted dollars around, you took away money from some favorite program that wasn't working."--Nathan Levenson, former superintendent of Arlington, MA

"The public is uninformed about school budgets. They often underestimate perpupil spnding in their dist by $5,00." --Martin West, Harvard University. 

"We must ask what the purpose of public education is. We don't all agree on that." --Lily Eskelsen, vice president of the  National Education Association