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.

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.

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.

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

Education Unbound

Below is my first post for the American Enterprise Institute's blog, The Enterprise. 

In an interview with Washington Post education columnist Jay Matthews, New York City Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein sensibly notes, “systems don’t change because you charm them. Systems change because you have levers that enable the system to move. And it’ll be noisy because the people who are there often like the status quo.”

Successful reforms and new practices have failed to change education on a grand scale because of the barriers that lie within our current system. 

In a similar spirit, AEI’s Rick Hess takes an in-depth look at such barriers in his upcoming book, Education Unbound: The Promise and Practice of Greenfield Schooling. Using examples of vibrant organizations and individuals who are finding promising ways to address our nation’s education needs, he offers, as Klein puts it, “a well-thought-through analysis of how to enable entrepreneurialism and innovation to flourish in a way that will drive truly dynamic school reform.”

Greenfield schooling eliminates obstacles to problem solving; outfits districts and providers to assess achievement on a multifaceted scale; creates policies that attract, retain, and respect teacher talent; and frees up capital for new ventures that are willing to shake the status quo. Enacting such levers will allow for sustainable, effective approaches to address our nation’s education needs.

Hope for an education

After spending time teaching in South Africa schools, I can say this NY Times article paints a beautiful and genuine picture of South Africa's schoolchildren. And after five months of working in education policy, I'm forever convinced that our systems of education need to be fundamentally restructured before we can tout the promise of the education.

Education for All

A lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of a California law which grants in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants is continuing forward in a state appellate court. Three year ago a group of out-of-state students filed a lawsuit against California’s public university and community college systems. Out-of-state students are angered that illegal immigrant students growing up in California are paying the discounted in-state rates.

Legally, states must provide K-12 education for undocumented children. For the last seven years, undocumented immigrants in California have also had access to in-state University tuition rates. The plaintiffs are arguing that federal law requires states that provide in-state tuition rates to undocumented students must offer the same for out-of-state students.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 clearly states, “An alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit.”

While it’s easily understood to be unfair to provide public benefits to children whose parents are not contributing to the tax system, it’s also important to keep societal values in check. Most of these children crossed the board illegally not by choice, but by the will of their parents. It seems immoral to withhold an education from bright students because of their parents’ mistakes.

And beyond the moral duty of California, it is in the state’s economic best interest to provide more affordable higher education for these students. To ignore California’s brightest because of their parents’ actions, is an injustice that will cost our taxpayers. Recent studies have shown that providing education for immigrants keeps them out of the public welfare system and rather participating in the marketplace. The contributions such educated immigrants will make to the California economy far offsets the costs of subsidized college tuition. Immigrants will continue to come illegally into California. It only makes sense to educate and equip these new residents to be productive contributor to our society and economy.

Given the socioeconomic state of California, it’s in the state’s best interest to educate all California youth, illegal or not. Out-of-state students should think twice before complaining and instead seek out the deeper issues behind the break in tuition.