Testing Our Patience

The great thing about No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is that it has finally brought attention to the vast numbers of children --our children, our nation's future-- for whom our education system is failing. But that may be the only good thing about it.

No Child Left Behind has accomplished the same thing as many of our public policies do: it is creating a massive industry with benefits for many, except those the policy was intended to help. American students took 45 million tests in 2006, a number that certainly has risen as NCLB requirements have kicked in. The Government Accounting Office estimated that, between 2002 and 2008, states would spend between $1.9 billion and $5.3 billion to implement tests mandated under No Child Left Behind. These are just the direct costs; if the time spent on prepping students and coordinating and administering the tests are included, the costs could be 10 to 15 times higher.




If this type of expenditure were producing real progress among students, I'd say, "Hallelujah!" Instead it's producing some really perverse incentives:

• A recent report in the New York Times stated, "As deadlines approached for schools to start making passage of the exams a requirement for graduation, and practice tests indicated that large numbers of students would fail, many states softened standards, delayed the requirement or added alternative paths to a diploma. "
• It gets worse: in a second story, we find that, "Cheating on tests used to be thought of as primarily the domain of students, but as standardized test results have taken on an increasing importance as a way to measure schools, the culprits have increasingly turned out to be educators." The schools are changing the students' test scores so the schools look better. Never mind how the students are faring.
• If you do not have a teenager in a Minnesota high school, you might not be aware that in 2009, 43% of 11th graders failed to pass a math test needed to graduate. The legislature, horrified at denying diplomas to so many children, came up with an Einsteinian idea: let's tell them that if they take the test three times and still don't pass, we'll give them a diploma anyway.
• Because tests are costly, states are turning to multiple choice "bubble" tests because they are cheaper to administer, yet they are notoriously inadequate as a measure of students' knowledge as skills. How would you feel if your annual performance review consisted solely of a standardized multiple choice test, and it alone determined whether you'd keep your job? Other economically advanced nations use performance-based assessment where students are evaluated on the basis of real work such as essays, projects and activities. And by the way, they do just fine (or better!) on standardized multiple choice tests.
• Remedies must be taken at schools that fail to show annual yearly progress (another odd measure), one of which is "turnaround." Those teachers in Rhode Island? They've been turned-around. Here in Minnesota, where we're "nice", turnaround is a fancy word for reshuffling the deck chairs. One teacher described to me that when a school is reconstituted, the poor performing teachers are let go-- to another school.

In fairness, NCLB is creating pressure to help students who struggle the most. I recently completed a number of interviews with teachers and principals, and was struck by the variety and intensity of efforts they were making to help students pass standardized tests. People will argue whether this is a good thing or not. But the biggest takeaway was this-- how does standardized testing help the student, teacher or school when a student enters 9th or 10th grade with a 5th grade math level and must pass an Algebra II (i.e. quadratic equations and trigonometry) test by the end of 11th grade? As one teacher put it, "“How do I help? I’ve hit every tool in the toolbox. I don’t know what to do. They (the students) don’t know what to do. It’s very sad. They work so hard.”

more to come on this subject...

Our Little Genious Cheats and other Saturday tidbits

On Saturday mornings I read the New York Times, and I'm always struck by the arcane, the absurd and the avoidable. Here are a few from this morning.

Our Little Genius cheats... Remember seeing the ads for this game show in which super smart kids are quizzed? Fox has scrapped the show over allegations that they coached the kids on answers. Far less scandalous than real life--see the story in which schools actually changed students' standardized test score answers so the school would fare better under No Child Left Behind.

Tim Pawlenty, speaking before the Conservative Political Action Conference last week was quoted in two different articles, in the first saying: "God's in charge" and in the second "We should take a page out of her (Tiger Wood's wife) playbook and take a 9-iron and smash the window out of big government in this country." How someone could hold (or not) both of these beliefs is truly remarkable, and says everything we need to know about him as presidential material.

Sarah Palin started a row with an actress with Down syndrome who did a voice over on Family Guy. Palin's disingenuous blather was ignited over an episode in which Chris begins to date a girl with Down syndrome, and asks about her family. The girl replies "My dad's an accountant, and my mom is the former governor of Alaska." Palin claims it was a swipe at her son Trig. The actress, Andrea Fay Friedman, replied, "My mother did not carry me around like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes."

The latest threat in Haiti is the accumulation of human excrement. Haiti had no sewage treatment plants even before the earthquake; the lowliest workers cleaned latrines and the waste was transported to disposal sites. Now it just piles up. And worse, starving families rummage in it looking for food. Public health officials fear outbreaks of cholera, malaria and dengue. Cases of typhoid and shigellosis are already on the rise. "Haiti's pigs live better lives than we do," says a displaced mother of four.

Headline: "Fewer People Late Paying Mortgage." Details: The improvement was in the group that has only missed one payment. The percentage of homeowners missing two payments increased, from 6.25% in the 3rd quarter of 2009 to 6.89% in the fourth quarter , as did the percentage of those missing at least three payments, from 8.85% to 9.67%. And the number of loans in foreclosure rose from 4.47% to 4.58% --from 3.3% in the fourth quarter of 2008.

My weekend gift to you: No item on Tiger Woods.

The rine in spine sties minely in the pline, or, language is power

Yikes! It's funny how fast you can fall behind when you're traveling and swamped with work. While I'm sure no one put their life on hold while waiting for my post, I promise to be more consistent in the future.

I was in Albuquerque having great fun with my brother Kelly and his wife Debra. See pics below. We went to the zoo, and while I'm not normally a zoo fan, the cats were prowling, the gorillas fighting and the the birds were beautiful. Did you know a black leopard has spots? We waiting for him to walk into the sun so we could see his spots. Stunning!

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I met with my friend Mahmoud a few weeks ago. He is Iranian born, and is now a U.S. citizen, having been here since he was sixteen. He’s a linguist, and has fascinating ideas about language.

As a learner of English, he was determined to match his language to that of native speakers. He studied every type of English language pattern possible, from children’s nursery rhymes to Olde English to southern dialects to Boston dialects. And he still couldn’t figure out what made his speech different. So he went to the head of ESL at the University of Minnesota and asked her, “What is it that makes my English different from native speakers?” She told him, “When you find out, please let us know.”

Many years later, Mahmoud has yet to discover those intricacies of language that identify a person as a non-native speaker. But he has discovered how powerful those differences are. As a younger man he took a job in the restaurant industry. He was promoted five times in six years, moving from wait staff to the head of a multi-million dollar business. He says he did it by adjusting his language with each promotion, tailoring it always to the people around him.

Mahmoud believes two things. First, language has always been used, and still is, to separate people by status. Think "My Fair Lady" (see Eliza and henry below). Think the movie "Fargo". Second, language, thoughts and behavior are a package deal.

We judge people by their language. After the movie “Fargo” was released, there was a strong backlash from Minnesotans over the way their speech was portrayed. Check out this hilarious clip and you’ll see what I mean. An editorial in the Brainerd Dispatch ("Fargo was filmed in Brainerd) read, “ But the film's depiction of a typical Brainerd resident is particularly illuminating - a vapid moron presumably the product of inbreeding by a 100 percent Scandinavian population.” Much of the depiction was a product of language, which the Brainerd Dispatch shows great sensitivity to in a side bar reading, “Dey didn't show ya dis here really big watertower dat we're so attached ta in dat der movie, did dey?”

For Mahmoud, it’s not about sacrificing your native language. Instead it’s about gaining power through learning new dialects. Just as I am more effective if I know Chinese in China, I’ll be more effective in landing a job if I speak the dialect of a potential employer simply because I am communicating better.

Some of the work I do is in the field of education. The twist in thinking from, “this is the right and only way to communicate” (which rejects the students’ heritage, and hence their personal identities) to “people use many forms of language and the more you know the more powerful you’ll be” has profound implications. It’s interesting that young ESL students are often grouped with special education students. We treat them as needing remedial work. But in fact, they’re doing double the learning as native speakers, because they have to learn both the material and English at the same time. Instead of celebrating their dual language abilities, we punish them with inferior test and classroom grades. In fact, research is beginning to show that dual language speakers develop superior intellectual capacities as they mature.

I’ve noticed in my work with alternative school students that their writing is pretty dreadful by traditional standards—specifically, their grammar and spelling sucks. But their stories will tear your heart apart.

why is every little girls dream to become princess? No matter what color no matter rich or poor that seems to be every little girls dream. I used to always imagine I was the princess of the Ida B. Wells (that’s the name of the projects in Chicago that I grew up in) I use to stand between the orange poles (that’s where my throne was at) and imagine my prince charming was coming to take me away from my hell hole of a house. See my father was a well known drug dealer when I was born and by the time I was 5 we had lost everything dew to his full blow crack addiction...my mama spent her nights looking 4 him in the crack houses he use to own right on the rock block. When he wasn’t on the rock block he was stealing our TVs , vcr’s and ect. To provide for his problems.

If language is about communicating, surely this student has mastered a form of language, whether or not we approve of it. We often dump students with poor writing skills into the discard pile. They are made to feel “stupid” (their words, not mine). We fail with our own communication in helping them understand that language and writing are about power— it’s about developing the skills to thrive in a world of multiple dialects. Ultimately, they fail to master the language skills they need to prosper after high school.

Thanks Mahmoud! Hope I didn’t bastardize your elegant thinking too much.

Walkin' the Line

I’ve been stewing about the Central Corridor light rail line in Saint Paul. When officials came to their senses (somewhat—no full credit from me until we see the actual results) and announced on Tuesday the possibility of three more stations, I felt reprieved from writing a post on this subject. Alas, I can’t stop myself from weighing in.

It was determined, based on a federally-required cost-benefit calculation, that the spacing for certain stations along University Avenue would be one mile apart. These particular stations happen to be located in the lowest income, most transit-dependent neighborhoods. This means up to a half mile walk, if you live on University or another street intersecting the station. For some, the walk can be even longer. Planners like to draw circles with stations in the center, showing the ½ mile service area. But that’s as the bird flies. If people had wings they wouldn’t need the rail line.

The logic behind the mile-apart decision was that the rail line must meet federal standards for cost-effectiveness. Not a bad idea, although it creates some strange incentives, as highlighted by Net Density. But why was the decision made to space these stations more widely in order for the line to qualify as “cost-effective?” I hunted around quite a bit, and could not find the answer to that question.



So I went straight to the source and looked at the how the calculation of cost-effectiveness is made. I reached this conclusion: the cost-effectiveness modeling is done in a black box that few people know or understand. Quantitative models, by virtue of being number-oriented, masquerade as technical and objective in nature. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves; they are in fact laden with values (and other non-data-driven assumptions), values that are never made explicit because they’re buried in complicated numerical formulas.

The evaluation criteria for the stations included nine considerations, and as the transportation planners like to point out, “transportation service equity was not a criteria” (sic). It’s not just that equity was not a criterion; the criteria themselves were weighted against an equitable outcome. The criteria included considerations such as proximity to major employment centers and development potential. Lower income neighborhoods are often lower income precisely because they lack these attributes.

The cost-effectiveness calculation itself gives preference to some transit users over others (namely, the majority by virtue of being the majority) under the guise of a supposedly objective measure. Cost-effectiveness is a function of total user-benefits, measured as mobility improvements for all transit and highway users. A 2005 survey by the Met Council showed that half of LRT users would have made their trip by driving alone if LRT had not been available. A little more than 20% said they’d take the bus, and just under 10% said they couldn’t make the trip. Using aggregate benefits tilts the index towards the needs of people who would otherwise drive because they are the biggest share of the aggregate. Moreover, the benefits for drivers derive from different factors than the benefits for non-drivers. The benefits for drivers, who walk little or not at all, don’t wait, and don’t transfer, come from faster train times. For those reliant on transit, however, the opposite is true. Their total travel time is very long—they walk, they wait, they transfer.

So the calculation works like this (illustrative example). Suppose there are 100 drivers, and their travel time is five minutes faster because of fewer stations. This totals 500 minutes in benefits. Twenty people who could not make the trip without transit walk 20 minutes more with fewer stations (400 minutes in benefits.) Five hundred is more than four hundred. The drivers win.

I understand that getting people out of their cars is important, and that there are many different views on this subject. But let’s not pretend that the design and calculations are an impartial, objective, “best” way to do transit, stripped of value judgments. Kudos to folks like the District Councils Collaborative, the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability, and the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative for their efforts in getting decision-makers to acknowledge that.

Notes: thanks to the many readers who emailed me with comments on my first post. You made great points! Don't be shy--share them!

The Scorpion Sting I: Haiti

Day twelve and counting. An estimated 375 aid groups have registered in Haiti. One billion dollars have been pledged by the international community. Larry King raised $9 million from the safety of his stage desk (and his notes, without which Larry couldn’t interview Chatty Cathy). Hollywood hosts Hope for Haiti, pleading for donations.

Where is all of this money going and what do we have to show for it? Don’t get me wrong; I promptly made my donation to Doctors Without Borders. But as I watched the news reports, I began to wonder whether we’re in the midst of Katrina II, on a far more desperate scale…. maybe a materialized circle of Dante’s Hell.

Just like Hurricane Katrina, aid and donations fund the relief effort not the victims. This is a crucial distinction. Not to pick on Katrina Aid Today, but let’s use it as an example. With a $66 million grant, it established 138 offices in 34 states (that’s a minimum of 138 employees). 73,000 households were helped and $137 million was “leveraged” for the families. By my math, that means that the administrative costs were somewhere on the order of one dollar for every two dollars that went to the families (at best, depending on what “leveraged” means). Each family came away with $1,876. How much did each aid worker make?

With the rush of aid workers to Haiti, how much has been accomplished? A grand total of 132 people have been recovered from the ruins. The people most in need are not getting food and water. Aid workers admit that the food in the pipeline is a small fraction of the need. Even the food that has arrived is getting to only 100,000 people because there are not enough trucks and diesel fuel to deliver it. People are dying waiting for surgery because of lack of supplies, or after surgery for lack of food. Limbs are being amputated with nothing more than motrin for pain reliever.

Really, it’s not okay. Of course there are a million reasons that make this aid and recovery effort extraordinarily difficult, including the fact that Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world with minimal infrastructure to begin with. The infrastructure it did have was devastated by the quake. A good recount of all of the logistical problems can be found here.

Even in better times, aid in Haiti tends to serve the aiders more than the aidees, as Author Amy Wilentz points out in her blog the NY Times. “One estimate shows Haiti with more N.G.O.s operating per capita than any other country in the world, but those groups are not achieving that much, which is a terrible moral burden for a lot of development workers there, believe me.”

So my question is: if we face all of these logistical and historical problems with aid, why are we running recovery efforts as business as usual?  Why use limited capacity to bring things in that don't need to be brought in, when taking out will do--namely, medical care?

Why are we flying in doctors when there’s no electricity, water or supplies to provide needed medical services? Even for the lucky few who get care, there are unresolved questions about how they’ll get the follow-up care and surgeries they need to survive. And just as the U.S. military has vastly improved airport capacity to about 140 flights a day, many flights return empty (a possible reason some carriers have jacked up their rates so high). Why not airlift those who need medical help? After all, this is how we handle medical needs in war zones.

Hmmm…what country has great medical and transportation infrastructure and is close to Haiti (in fact, a mere 600 miles)???

Why, oh why, do we continue to conduct business in usual ways against such impossible odds? Do you know the story of the scorpion?

A scorpion was traveling across country and came to a lake. Unable to swim, he waited by the shore. A turtle swam by and so the scorpion asked for a ride across the lake. The turtle was shocked. “Do you think I am stupid? You are a scorpion and will sting me and I will die!” The scorpion applied logic—“Dear turtle, if I sting you, and you drown, then I will drown as well.” The turtle saw the logic in the scorpion’s plea. The scorpion hopped on the turtle’s back and they set off. Midway across the lake, the scorpion stung the turtle. As the turtle floundered, he cried, “Why did you sting me? Now we both shall die!” The scorpion replied simply, “Because I am a scorpion.”

note: all photo credits to Julie Remy, doctorswithoutborders.org