Transcript
R. Nessen: Good morning. Welcome to Brookings. My name is Ron Nessen, I'm the Director of Communications, and I want to welcome you to this Forum on Education Issues.
I'll just very briefly tell you about the event and our speakers, and then turn it over to them. The moderator today is going to be Tom Loveless. Tom is the brand new director of the Brown Center on Education Policy here at Brookings, a senior fellow in governmental studies here. He has just joined us from Harvard, the John Kennedy School of Government there, where he was associate professor of public policy. And he has a long record of research on education policy issues, and we welcome you to Brookings and to this important role on an issue that all the polls indicate is the number one issue on the minds of Americans as we head into the election season.
T. Loveless: Thank you.
R. Nessen: You know, at Brookings we sometimes say that this is the place for scholar practitioners, people who come here and study issues in a scholarly way, research and analyze the issues, and then periodically go out and apply their research in the real world. And Tom has really applied his research in the real world because he was a grade school teacher. He taught the sixth grade. So, he really knows education issues from the classroom level up to the scholarly level.
We also have with us today Joe Viteritti. Joe Viteritti is co-chair and director of the program on Education in a Civil Society at New York University, where he is a research professor of public administration in the Robert Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and also an adjunct professor of law in the School of Law at NYU. Joe is the author of a book, this is not what the book will look like when it comes out in a couple of weeks. This was an early copy that we had printed up so that you would have it. If you didn't get a copy, there are plenty of them outside for you to take one on your way out. It's a book about school choice, a scholarly, thoughtful, well-reasoned book on school choice, a very controversial issue and Joe will tell you in more detail his reasoning and why he concludes that a targeted voucher system is the way to assure equality of education opportunities for all American children, regardless of the financial status of their families.
I'm going to turn this meeting over to Tom, who will be the moderator, and also talk to you about his own area of special interest in education, which is tracking, and tell you what his plans are for the Brown Center. He and Joe will talk briefly, and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to ask your questions.
Tom.
T. Loveless: Thank you.
Let me say first that I'm delighted to be here, delighted to be at Brookings. I've been here for three weeks. This is my third week, and I'm down from 30 boxes unpacked in my office to 25 boxes, so I'm making progress. By the end of the year, hopefully I'll be unpacked and all moved in. I'm very happy to be here at Brookings. The history of Brookings and its authoritative voice in public policy is an important one. Education has now risen to the top of the nation's agenda, and it's good that Brookings is now going to assert itself and its reputation in this very important field.
What we want to do at the Brown Center is, over the course of the year, hold three or four of these press briefings, and do a couple of things. One, to introduce you to authors of upcoming books that we're going to publish at Brookings Press, and also to cover a very timely issue. This morning, I would like to tell you of one of the main projects that we have planned for the Brown Center in the upcoming year, and that's the preparation and release of a national report card every September on the nation's schools, and with a particular focus, unlike other kinds of reports like this, focusing specifically on achievement. The focus of the Brown Center will be on academic achievement. And very often what's done is, you'll get, for instance, the kind of release that we had two months ago where a certain spin is put on the scores when they are released. What we would like to do is take a very objective look at all of the data that we have coming in now on student achievement. As you know, about half the states now are testing students and administering tests, so we have a lot of new data coming online where we can really take a look and see, how are kids reading as opposed to how they used to read, how are kids doing in math, how are they doing in the other academic subjects.
So, the report card that we have planned, and the first one will be released next September, September of 2000, in the first week of school. It will consist of three parts. The first part will be this data analysis, and it will be written in prose that anyone can understand, basically. And that will consist of about 15 to 17 pages just saying how are we doing, how are America's kids doing in the academic areas.
The second section of the report will center on a particular theme. One year it may be the achievement of African Americans, where we take a long-term view and look at the achievement of a particular group, let's say, of students, or it may be in a subject, you know, how is math achievement doing over the long-term. So that second section of the report will be focused on a theme, a particular theme.
The third part will be the policy part. And in that section of the report, we will focus on policies around the country that we think are promising, or they're actually bearing positive results, and a positive effect on achievement, having a positive effect on achievement, and we might even single out some that we think are just simply nonsense, that are mostly what I call cotton candy reforms, they're all sort of puffed up and they're sugary sweet, and they're brightly colored, but they don't do much. They're not much of a diet in terms of our children's learning.
So, that's what the report is going to look like. That's what the Brown Center is going to be working on primarily over the next year is the preparation of that report. We will be holding, as I said, more of these press briefings focused to present authors of upcoming books, but also focused on particular topics. We have an event tentatively planned for December 8, which will be entitled Why Isn't Education Research More Like Medical Research, and the question that we will be tackling, we have three or four presenters that day who have looked at this issue, is why don't we do more experimental studies in education? Why don't we have more good controlled experimental studies with random assignment of the students to treatment and control groups? Other fields do this. Education does very little of it. And so, we have some scholars associated with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and with Harvard University, and the three of us, as organizations, are going to be making this presentation on December 8. So I hope you all can attend then.
The other thing we want to do is not spend a whole lot of time talking, so I'm going to stop right now and introduce Joe, so that you can ask questions about anything, the topics that we've talked about, or anything else that may pop into your heads. So, thank you, and I'll be talking in a minute about tracking when Joe is done.
Joe Viteritti.
J. Viteritti: Thank you, Tom.
I was asked today to provide a bit of an update on where we are in the whole debate about school choice, and it just happens to be the topic of a book I just finished that's coming out next month. The title of the book is Choosing Equality, and many of the points I make in the book and that I want to make to you today is that the choice debate is now entering the second generation. What do I mean by the second generation of the choice debate? Well, the first generation of the choice debate was built around a Milton Friedman market model of vouchers, and the vision of schooling that came out of that was a system of schools that was publicly financed but privately run. And those who were the real believers in that model anticipated the end of public education in a significant way.
The issue at the time resonated greatly with conservatives, Libertarians and Republican, but the support of the idea was very limited. In 1990, John Chubb and Terry Moe [sp] published a book out of Brookings which really brought the choice debate into the mainstream and got people in government and in politics talking about it, but until very recently support for the idea of school choice really remained focused among conservatives and Republican.
The second generation of debate, the second model of school choice is what I would call not a market model, but an opportunity model. We are no longer concerned as much with the abstractions of what power the market will have in making education more efficient, but more concerned about how choice can provide alternatives and opportunities for children who are not being well educated. The first voucher plans we've seen was the one in Milwaukee in 1990, and the one in Cleveland in 1999, which were specifically designed to help disadvantaged children and kids who were not being served well.
This year, earlier this year, we saw the State of Florida, at the urging of Governor Bush, create a voucher plan that was designed to target children attending failing schools, and just about a week or two ago, we saw presidential candidate or non-candidate George W. Bush propose that Title I should be reformed so that we invest money in children rather than in failing schools. Again, the target is poor kids and underserved populations.
Choice is no longer a plan that is designed specifically with the demise of public education in mind. Most voucher supporters today also support charter schools, and charter schools are public schools. In terms of sheer number, the most significant form of choice today is what is exists in charter schools. Depending on whose estimates you want to listen to, there are approximately 1,500 to 1,800 charter schools around the country. They exist in 34 states and the District of Columbia. Yes, charters and choice are designed to promote competition and eliminate failing schools, but the main force behind choice today is to provide opportunities for kids who are not being well-served in public schools, traditional public schools.
The most significant constituency for choice today is found in poor and minority communities, and we know that from poll after poll that comes out, whether you look at the Gallup poll or any public agenda polls, the most significant constituency for choice is in poor communities. I think the issue crystallized on August 24, when Judge Solomon Oliver made a very unfortunate decision in Cleveland and decided, at least temporarily to suspend the benefits of the choice program there to 4,000 students the day before school was supposed to be opened.
There I think for all who wanted to see it was a very stark exhibit on just who was benefiting form choice, and who was going to be hurt in a situation where choice was abruptly pulled out. I think the public outcry there was dramatic, and it was very interesting to see candlelight vigils not only in Cleveland but in Florida, in North Carolina, in Washington, in Michigan. I mean, it was a remnant of the old civil rights movement. Indeed, you had poor folks carrying candles and holding vigils and saying, give these kids an opportunity to go to the schools that they really want to go to.
Groups like the ACLU and People for the American Way, who have traditionally been defenders of poor people and their rights and very much associated with a progressive agenda, were on the other side of the debate.
I think the new politics of choice will create and has created a dilemma for the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party has always had a very strong support among minority and poor communities, but it's also very reliant on teacher's unions and other education groups that are opposed to choice. And it will be interesting to see how they deal with this dilemma.
What have been the results of choice so far? Well, one thing we know from the variety of experiments that we've had is that there is a wide range of choice programs around the country right now. I mentioned the charter schools, there are also in addition to the voucher programs that are in Milwaukee and Cleveland, there are private choice programs now being supported by private funding. There are 48,000 kids in the CPO program, and about 40,000 kids in the Children's Scholarship Foundation. It was amazing that earlier this years, when the Children's Scholarship Foundation had a national lottery, 2 million children applied to the opportunity to give up a public education for free, and pay $1000, which was the difference between the amount of the scholarship and the cost of tuition to attend non-public schools.
What have we seen in terms of the results of these schools? The achievement data I think has been encouraging but not definitive. Paul Peterson, who has written several studies that have been published by Brookings, has come out with some encouraging reports. There are counter opinions to that. And academicians have been involved in the debate over the efficacy of public and private schools over the last 20 years, and it's probably not going to be resolved within the next year. But, one of the things that we know for sure is when we ask parents how they feel about the choice programs their in, they like them a lot.
They like the quality of the education, they like the safety of the school, they like the opportunity for parental participation, they like the value structure of the school, whether it be disciplinary code, or whether it be religious orientation of the non-public school. Parents who have had an opportunity to choose like it. And that's clear across the board, both in the voucher programs we have so far, the privately supported choice programs, and the charter school programs. Poor parents seem to think that choice is an opportunity. It's an opportunity for the first time that they have that for a very long period of time in this country was limited to the middle class, the ability to choose the school that your children attend.
One of the questions raised about choice, and particularly vouchers has to do with constitutionality. Again, in the first generation there was a very strong consensus among legal analysts that vouchers, particularly vouchers for kids to attend religious schools, was unconstitutional. And that opinion was very much supported by a cluster of decisions handed down by the United States Supreme Court in the 1970s. There was a whole assortment of decisions that came down in the 1970s. In 1981, when the Merula [sp] decision came down, we began to see a change.
The court had begun to recognize the very significant legal distinction of aid to children versus aid to institutions. And there's good reason to believe that based on what's known as child benefit theory, the U.S. Supreme Court when they finally get to give us clear decision on this, will find that vouchers and choice given to poor people, poor children, rather than a school, is constitutional. I think there are two very recent decisions that sort of suggest that. Agastini, overturned in 1985, the decision that made it illegal to provide remedial services to poor children on the grounds of a parochial school, and last year the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to the Milwaukee program and let it stand. It's the largest voucher program in the country. We've also seen some very supportive decisions come down from the state supreme courts of Wisconsin, Ohio, and Arizona. There's been some alternate decisions, too. Maine, struck it down on federal grounds, and Vermont struck it down on state grounds.
I would say that in the second generation of the debate on choice we see a very different attitude today towards religious institutions than we did even five years ago. Once it was perceived that any aid given either directly or indirectly, any aid that would wind up, or government money that would wind up in a religious institution was detrimental to what we know as American democracy, detrimental to very sacred constitutional values. I think people are becoming more receptive to the idea of what positive role religious institutions can play in the United States. I think you see it in the charitable choice provision of the Welfare Act, which was supported by both Democrats and Republicans.
One of the things I talk about in this book is to show that this very strict notion of separation as a sacred constitutional value is almost a unique American concept. Most democracies around the world are very comfortable with the idea of providing aid to children who attend religious schools, and they see that as a way of embellishing religious freedom, and supporting a diverse environment. When you have this conversation in a room of people who grew up in Europe and under other systems, sometimes they're perplexed by our anxiety over it. I could go through the list of countries that do provide such support, but I won't because I know we're running out of time.
One of the things I want to leave you with, though, in this book is a very strong argument, which I believe needs to be heard about the role that churches can play in poor urban communities, in the educational realm. One of the things I would suggest is that this very strict notion of separation that we've entertained and that we've adopted in this country has undermined one of the most significant urban institutions around, and that institution is the black church. The black church is the bedrock and the most important institution of most urban communities. And they're a great potential resource for education. Many pastors are starting their own alternative schools, and there are about 350 black independent schools around the country. They have a serious problem, though, funding what they want to do, because their mission is to provide opportunities for the poorest population, and they don't have the money to do it. Money provided for poor children to choose where they want to go to school could help these institutions grow, and we'll be seeing more black church schools come about, and we'll be seeing more black churches become involved in the choice debate.
I don't know if you saw, there was a front page article in the New York Times yesterday about this Children's Academy in Harlem. That is a charter school, and it's a very unusual place, because it was started by Wyatt T. Walker. Wyatt T. Walker started it as a pastor for the Baptist Church. Wyatt T. Walker also has a very strong historic history in the civil rights movement. He was chief of staff for Martin Luther King. And he was a major force for having a charter school in New York City. And the school that was started there, was started in the community that was built around a church, but it's a secular school. And it's an interesting combination, you have a church there that is the brain child of a black minister, but it's a secular school, and it also happens to be run by a for profit organization, called Victory Schools, Incorporated.
So when you think about where education is going today, take a look in Harlem and you'll see some very extraordinary things going on. You'll see the role of a church being played out, you'll see a private entrepreneur providing a for profit education for kids. And you'll also see, as one of the mothers in the story said yesterday, black children in this community, in Harlem, for the first time going to a school that they believe in.
I will stop there, and open it up for questions.
T. Loveless: Thank you, Joe.
I'm going to speak about tracking from here, if that's okay. And I'll just take five minutes. I recently published a book called The Tracking Wars, which has to do with the ongoing controversy that has centered on the question of how we group students.
And tracking today, let me say right from the get go, tracking today refers just generally to any form of ability grouping, 20 or 30 years ago if you talked about tracking what you were talking about were primarily taking kids when they start high school, and channeling them into courses that essentially were predestined. If they were channeled into vocational education courses, they came out at the end of their high school careers with nothing but a vocational education, and they knew very little in terms of academics. If they were channeled into college prep courses, then they were prepared for college. There's almost no one today who defends that kind of program. But today what tracking means is almost any form of ability grouping.
So, for instance, take juniors in high school in mathematics. A junior in high school in mathematics might be taking Algebra II class, might be taking a calculus class, might be taking a geometry class, might be taking an algebra class, basic algebra, perhaps a pre-algebra class, if that student doesn't know basic arithmetic. That's a form of ability grouping, and that's the kind of tracking that occurs today, at least in mathematics. In English, and in history, not so much history but definitely still in English, children who can't read very well, for instance, might be in a remedial reading class, where their reading skills and their literacy skills, where teachers are trying to shore those up. Kids who are very good readers might in a reading class called Honors English, or College Prep English. But there are key differences between that kind of system and the system, the very rigid system that existed 25 years ago. For one thing, the groupings are decided from course to course, from subject to subject. So the math department typically gets together and decides how kids will be grouped in math, the history department in history, the science department in science, et cetera.
The reason why tracking is such a controversial issue in a number of small communities across the country is that some states and some localities have begun de-tracking. There's been a de-tracking movement that's been ongoing now since the late 1980s. My book looks at two of those states, the two most aggressive states in terms of middle schools, the schools serving young adolescents before high school. I look at California and Massachusetts, and I ask the question, okay, California and Massachusetts have been pushing schools to de-track, what's happened? Have they de-tracked? Did they just ignore the state? What actually happened?
What's interesting about asking that question is that's the kind of question that we really don't ask enough. And what's unusual, or what's rather puzzling, I should say, is the people who don't ask that question are really state officials. States, as you know, throughout the '90s, have been really raining down reforms on schools, but they really don't have the resources to go out and find out what happens. And I don't mean what happens in terms of whether it's good or bad, but even if those reforms are implemented or not. So my study is just a pretty simple study. What happened? Did the schools de-track, or did they ignore the state's recommendations.
And what I found was a mixed picture. I found, actually, that some schools did de-track, and it was very interesting the patterns that I discovered. One was that schools serving urban children, low income children, and students of color were more likely to de-track, to try to reduce ability grouping than predominantly white schools in suburban areas, or in wealthier areas. And what's fascinating about that is this. If you go back and you look at the reforms and how they were couched in both Massachusetts and California, they were really pitched to the schools as a reform that would help certain children. The reforms in both California and Massachusetts were presented to the schools as reforms that would help poor children, students of color, and urban children.
And so what happened was, the way in which the state framed the reforms, and I'm going to talk a little bit in a minute about whether or not these are good or bad reforms, t