Voice For Liberty

Tag: Education

  • Kansas school test scores haven’t declined, despite early reports

    In the wake of news stories reporting a decline in scores on Kansas school assessment tests, a decline in school funding is said to be the cause, as “funding was reduced to the 1992 level,” according to an op-ed penned by Karen Godfrey. She is president of Kansas National Education Association (KNEA), our state’s teachers union.

    In her op-ed, titled “Why is this a surprise?” Godfrey makes several claims that deserve examination before Kansas considers implementing the fix she wants, which is, as always, more spending.

    First, there are mistakes in the scores released in September. The revised scores, according to a press release from the Kansas State Department of Education, “show a leveling out of performance on reading and math assessments.” Not the “slight decline,” as a previous press release stated.

    So those who claim a reduction in funding caused a drop in test scores are operating on a false premise. It may have been unknowing, but it conveniently fit their narrative that more spending is needed.

    What’s troubling is this: Godfrey, in her article, can hardly contain her glee in the apparent finding that with declining funding, there were declining test scores. Therefore, there is the proof that the teachers union and school spending establishment needs: Spending less money equals lower achievement, and vice versa.

    Instead, we should be relieved that the test scores are not as bad as first believed.

    Godfrey also claims that school funding is back to the 1992 level, after accounting for inflation. Like most of the school spending establishment, this argument is based on only a small portion of state spending: base state aid per pupil. This figure has gone down. But at the same time, overall school spending has increased.

    Specifically, base state aid per pupil for the last school year was $3,780. But the state spent an average of $6,983 per pupil that year, and overall spending from all sources was $12,656 per pupil. Both of the latter numbers are higher than the previous year.

    It is a happy accident for the Kansas school spending establishment that base state aid per pupil has fallen at the same time that overall spending on schools has increased in almost every year. It allows the school spending lobby to make an argument that is superficially true, but deceptive at the same time.

    Base state aid compared to Kansas state spending and total spending. State and total spending has risen even though base state aid is mostly flat.

  • Kansas school test scores should make us think

    A publication by Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB) touts “Kansas student proficiencies in reading and math have increased 40 percent over the past decade and exceed 80 percent at every level.”

    Kansas public school officials also boast that Kansas does well compared to other states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), called the “nation’s report card.”

    But the confidence of Kansas public school leaders has been shaken a bit with the recent release of test results for the recent school year. Results are down. The Kansas Commissioner of Education will form a task force to investigate. Already excuses are being proffered, with some officials saying they always knew that scores would reach a plateau.

    (Later it was discovered that the reported decline was due to a mistake in tabulating results, and that overall, test scores were mostly unchanged.)

    While Kansas Education Commissioner Diane DeBacker is conducting an investigation, here’s two questions she ought to ask.

    One: Why have scores on Kansas assessments risen, while scores on the NAEP haven’t? Some know the answer, but it would be refreshing to hear the bureaucracy admit it: The Kansas State Department of Education has lowered standards on the tests it controls. When a state board of education member tries to ask questions about this, he isn’t allowed to have his questions answered.

    Second question: Let’s understand why Kansas NAEP scores are high, relative to other states. Here’s a table comparing Kansas with Texas (shaded cells indicate the state with the highest score):

    Notice that for all students, Kansas has the highest scores, except for one tie. But when we look at subgroups, all the sudden the picture is different: Texas has the best scores in all cases, except for two ties.

    How can this be? The answer is Simpson’s Paradox. A Wall Street Journal article explains: “Put simply, Simpson’s Paradox reveals that aggregated data can appear to reverse important trends in the numbers being combined.” (When Combined Data Reveal the Flaw of Averages: In a Statistical Anomaly Dubbed Simpson’s Paradox, Aggregated Numbers Obscure Trends in Job Market, Medicine and Baseball.)

    In this case, the confounding factor is that the two states differ greatly in the proportion of white students. In Kansas, 69 percent of students are white. In Texas it’s 32 percent.

    Texas, by the way, spends much less per student, and has a higher pupil/teacher ratio.

    Kansas liberals and those who support more spending on schools say we don’t want to be like Texas. I wonder if they are aware of Simpson’s Paradox.

    Will DeBacker and her task force will be interested in the answers to these questions? Kansans should be, especially as we wait the verdict on the school finance trial.

  • At Kansas Board of Education, some questions aren’t allowed

    At a meeting of the Kansas State Board of Education, it became clear that there are certain topics and questions that aren’t to be discussed in public.

    At September’s meeting (video here), BOE chair David Dennis interrupted questioning by board member Walt Chappell and proceeded to the next member’s questions. Chappell was asking whether “cut scores” had declined and whether definitions of “meets standard” and “proficiency” had changed. Dennis would not allow these questions to be answered.

    It’s clear that Dennis — and the entire Kansas public school bureaucracy — doesn’t want to talk about these questions. Here’s why.

    Until this year, scores on Kansas-administered and controlled assessments have been rising — “jumping,” in the recent words of Kansas Education Commissioner Diane DeBacker. But scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for Kansas students don’t reflect the same trend. Scores on this test, which is given every two years, haven’t been rising as they have on the Kansas-controlled test scores. Sometimes they decline.

    We now know why the Kansas-controlled test scores have risen: The Kansas State Department of Education has lowered standards. Kansas Policy Institute has done the research.

    In Removing Barriers to Better Public Education, updated in June with new data, KPI concludes: “In 2000 and 2001 a student needed at least 87% correct answers in Reading to be Proficient (the second-highest performance level), but from 2002 through 2005 they only needed 80% correct answers to be Proficient (the third highest level) on the same test; Proficiency in Math required only 48% correct answers, down from 60%.”

    It’s not only KPI that has noticed that Kansas schools have low standards. Data from U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reveals that Kansas has low standards for its schools, compared to other states.

    These are the types of things the Kansas school public school establishment doesn’t want Kansans to know. Board of Education chair David Dennis uses his authority to silence those who might mention these facts.

    While Dennis squelches those who ask inconvenient questions about Kansas public schools, he floated a proposal to increase regulation of homeschooling in Kansas. It’s simply incredible that someone presiding over a failing system — and proud to be part of that system — would want to extend his influence and control over people who have taken great effort to escape the public schools.

    Related: Test scores decline; educators quick to blame funding cuts

  • The machine is not for the kids

    America’s public education system is failing. We’re spending more money on education but not getting better results for our children.

    That’s because the machine that runs the K-12 education system isn’t designed to produce better schools. It’s designed to produce more money for unions and more donations for politicians.

    But for defenders of this machine — the public school spending establishment — it’s all about the kids, they say.

  • Schodorf legacy should be evaluated on policy, not politics

    News that Kansas Senator Jean Schodorf is leaving the Republican Party after her primary election loss has been treated as mostly a political story, which it certainly is. More important, however, is the potential for new policies and laws regarding Kansas schools that hold the promise of helping Kansas schoolchildren and families.

    Senator Schodorf’s most notable cause has been education. As chair of the senate education committee, she has been in a position of tremendous influence over education policy in Kansas. We should examine, then, the results of Kansas education policy.

    This summer Kansas received a waiver from the main provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. As part of the waiver, Kansas agreed to create a teacher evaluation system that includes student achievement as a significant factor in the evaluation. Many people would probably be surprised to learn that student achievement isn’t already the major factor, perhaps even the only factor, in teacher evaluations. But under Schodorf’s chairmanship of the senate education committee, this isn’t the case.

    Related to this is that Kansas ranks low in policies on teacher quality. Plentiful research shows that among the factors that schools have under their control, teacher effectiveness is by far most important. But under Schodorf’s chairmanship of the senate education committee, these important and broad-reaching reforms were not considered. Instead, her committee devoted enormous time and effort to tinkering with minor issues such as teacher tenure policy, itself a harmful policy.

    It’s true that performance on the assessments that are under the control of Kansas are rising. But scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for Kansas students don’t reflect the same trend. Scores on this test, which is given every two years, aren’t rising like the Kansas-controlled test scores. These scores are largely unchanged over the past years.

    Senator Schodorf, in her position of chair of the senate education committee, could have asked for an investigation as to why there exists this discrepancy. But she didn’t.

    Speaking of test scores: Kansas often proudly claims that its schools rank very well when compared with other states. Compare Kansas with Texas, a state that Kansas school spending boosters like to deride as a state with low-performing schools. But you don’t have to look very hard to realize that these scores are a statistical artifact. It’s an unfortunate fact that minority students do not perform as well on these tests as white students. When you combine this with the fact that Kansas has a relatively small minority population, we can see why Kansas ranks well. In Kansas 69 percent of students are white, while in Texas that number is 33 percent. So it’s not surprising that overall, Kansas outperforms Texas (with one tie) when considering all students in four important areas: fourth and eighth grade reading, and fourth and eighth grade math.

    But looking at Hispanic students only, Texas beats or ties Kansas in these four areas. For black students, Texas bests Kansas in all four. Texas does this with much less spending per pupil than Kansas.

    Kansas also likes to brag of its high standards for schools. But when compared to other states, Kansas has low standards. The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has analyzed state standards, and we can see that Kansas has standards that are below most states. The table of figures is available at Estimated NAEP scale equivalent scores for state proficiency standards, for reading and mathematics in 2009, by grade and state. An analysis of these tables by the Kansas Policy Institute shows that few states have standards below the Kansas standards.

    This table is from KPI’s report earlier this year titled Removing Barriers to Better Public Education: Analyzing the facts about student achievement and school spending.

    The conclusion by NCES is “… most states’ proficiency standards are at or below NAEP’s definition of Basic performance.” KPI, based on simple analysis of the NCES data, concluded: “Kansas is one of those states, with its Reading Proficiency standard set lower than what the U.S. Department of Education considers Basic performance. Math Proficiency levels are above what NAEP considers to be Basic but still well below the U.S. standard for Proficient.” Did Senator Schodorf, in her role as education committee chair, push for increasing Kansas standards? If she did, we didn’t hear of it, and it certainly didn’t become policy or law.

    Across the country, charter schools and school choice programs are offering choice and improved educational outcomes to families. While Kansas has charter schools, the charter school law in Kansas is one of the weakest in the nation, and virtually guarantees that public schools won’t face much meaningful competition from charters. School choice in the form of vouchers or tax credits doesn’t exist at all in Kansas. As a result, Kansas public schools face very little of the competitive forces that have been found to spur public schools to improvement across the country. As chair of the senate education committee, Senator Schodorf worked to make sure that charter schools and school choice are not available to Kansas families.

    The departure of Senator Schodorf and other moderate senators is a political story. But it presents a chance for Kansas to make some important changes to its schools that are greatly needed. For this important policy reason, we shouldn’t mourn the loss of Schodorf and the other moderates.

  • Donor disclosure rules are the same for everyone

    While liberal groups criticize the ability to spend unlimited amounts on political education campaigns without disclosure of funding, the rules apply to everyone, and liberal groups and unions use them, too.

    A report on OpenSecrets.org reads “But Patriot Majority’s backers are now as inscrutably invisible as those giving to any of the more numerous and well-known groups on the right.”

    In its reporting on Patriot Majority, Bloomberg wrote “Like Koch-backed groups including Americans for Prosperity and the 60 Plus Association, Patriot Majority is organized as a nonprofit, so it doesn’t disclose its donors and has limits on how much of its budget can be devoted to political activities. … Varoga wouldn’t disclose the nonprofit’s donors or say how much money it plans to spend this year.”

    A partial solution is to allow unlimited donations directly to candidate campaigns. Then, candidates are responsible for what is being said about them and their opponents. The current situation, where donation limits to campaigns are relatively low, has lead to the rise of independent efforts to aid candidates. It is these efforts that are often the most harshly negative, or even factually incorrect. But since the advertisements are from third parties, the candidate can dodge responsibility.

    Political contributions and political education campaigns are a form of speech. In order to exercise their right to free speech, must people consent to be identified? Of course, no one is required to listen.

    In the end, the best solution is government — at all levels — without the power to dispense favors and punishment, thereby eliminating the reason why many political contributions are made. A government without this power is likely to be a limited government, run on principle rather than opportunism.

  • Kansas reasonable: The education candidates

    As the Kansas primary election nears, candidates vie to see who is the “education candidate.” It’s part of the theme of the so-called “moderate” Republicans — that they follow a tradition of “reasonableness” that, they say, is characteristic of successful Kansas politicians — the “traditional” Republicans.

    Others call for a “balanced” approach to government and “responsible tax reform.” Senate President Steve Morris contributes an op-ed in support of “incumbent senators who put their local communities above the agendas of these special interest groups.”

    But when we look at Kansas schools, we find that most of the debate centers on school funding, with some candidates forecasting that public schools will be “devastated” as a result of recent Kansas tax reform.

    Kansas National Education Association (KNEA), the state’s teachers union, is a large player in determining who are the “education candidates.” But when examined closely, anyone can see that the union’s concern is money and teachers, not the schoolchildren of Kansas. KNEA is precisely the type of special interest group that Morris warns against, but Morris and the Republicans branding themselves as “reasonable” aren’t able to see that.

    An example of how KNEA functions as a special interest group is its public relations campaign titled “Behind Every Great Student is a Great Public School Teacher.” But what about the great Kansas students who go to private or church schools, or who are homeschooled? The answer is that KNEA cares nothing about these students, as they are taught by teachers who aren’t union members.

    A look at KNEA endorsements tells us that the union endorses and supports candidates who will increase spending on schools while at the same time blocking accountability measures and spreading misinformation about Kansas school spending and student achievement. When we consider the effects on Kansas schoolchildren, we start to realize the impact of this special interest group and the politicians and bureaucrats that enable it.

    Kansas school spending

    The union’s raison d’etre is to increase spending of tax dollars on public schools, insisting that there have been huge cuts in school funding that will lead to diminished student achievement. Kansas school district spending, however, has been rising rapidly for decades. From 1997 to 2010, for example, after accounting for inflation, Kansas state spending per pupil on schools increased by 18 percent. When all sources of funding are included, spending per pupil was up by 32 percent, again after inflation is taken into consideration.

    If more money is the answer, the problem would have been solved long ago.

    KNEA and many of the purported education candidates won’t even admit to the amount of spending on schools in Kansas. Their focus is on base state aid per pupil, which has declined in recent years. But that’s just part of the spectrum of total spending on schools, and the total has been increasing. The focus solely on base state aid is misleading — a statistical accident that is convenient for KNEA lobbyist Mark Desetti and school spending boosters. It lets them present a picture of Kansas school spending that is accurate but deceptive, both at the same time. Other school leaders like Wichita superintendent John Allison do the same.

    Voters need to ask those who claim to be education candidates why it is so difficult to recognize the entirety of public school spending.

    Kansas student achievement

    The education candidates promote the success of Kansas public schools. Scores on Kansas tests are rising — “jumping,” in the recent words of Kansas Education Commissioner Diane DeBacker. But scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for Kansas students don’t reflect the same trend. Scores on this test, which is given every two years, aren’t rising like the Kansas-controlled test scores.

    Voters need to ask those who claim to be education candidates why we don’t have an accurate state assessment of students.

    Kansas “education candidates” will point to Kansas’ overall high scores on the NAEP. It’s true: Looking at the gross scores, Kansas does well, compared to other states. But you don’t have to look very hard to realize that these scores are a statistical accident. It’s an unfortunate fact that minority students do not perform as well on these tests as white students. When you combine this with the fact that Kansas has a relatively small minority population, we can see why Kansas ranks well.

    Compare Kansas with Texas, a state that Kansas school spending boosters like to deride as a state with low-performing schools. In Kansas 69 percent of students are white, while in Texas that number is 33 percent. So it’s not surprising that overall, Kansas outperforms Texas (with one tie) when considering all students in four important areas: fourth and eighth grade reading, and fourth and eighth grade math.

    But looking at Hispanic students only, Texas beats or ties Kansas in these four areas. For black students, Texas bests Kansas in all four. Texas does this with much less spending per pupil than Kansas.

    Kansas voters need to ask those who claim to be education candidates if they are aware of these facts.

    Kansas school accountability

    The Kansas teachers union its stable of education candidates have also been successful in shielding teachers from meaningful evaluation and accountability for on-the-job performance. As part of the waiver from the No Child Left Behind ACT that Kansas recently received, evaluations of teachers will be changing. The Kansas State Department of Education announced: “Another key component of the state’s waiver is related to evaluating teachers and school leaders. Among the criteria for achieving a waiver request was implementing an evaluation system that includes student achievement as a significant factor in the evaluation. The Kansas plan calls for appointing a commission to identify the most effective means of tying student achievement to teacher and leader evaluations and building that into the existing Kansas Educator Evaluation Protocol (KEEP).”

    KEEP is an evaluation system that was first used in the last school year on a pilot basis. But according to Peter Hancock of Kansas Education Policy Report, KEEP does not currently have a component that includes student achievement.

    Many people would be surprised to learn that student achievement has not been the primary factor used in evaluating teachers in Kansas. This is one of the reasons why Kansas has been found to rank low in policies on teacher quality.

    Again, voters need to ask those who claim to be education candidates why student achievement has not been a component of teacher evaluation.

    Kansas school standards

    The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has analyzed state standards. The table of figures is available at Estimated NAEP scale equivalent scores for state proficiency standards, for reading and mathematics in 2009, by grade and state.

    The conclusion by NCES is “… most states’ proficiency standards are at or below NAEP’s definition of Basic performance.” An analysis of the NCES data found that Kansas is one of those states, with its reading proficiency standard set lower than what the U.S. Department of Education considers basic performance. Math proficiency levels are above what NAEP considers to be basic but still well below the U.S. standard for proficient.

    Voters need to ask those who claim to be education candidates if they are aware of this poor showing by Kansas, and if so, why have they allowed it to persist.

    There’s more: Opposing charter schools and school choice, opposition to improving teacher quality policies, insisting that schools fund balances can’t be used, insisting on lockstep salary scales that pay teachers more for things that don’t help students, opposing merit pay, opposing alternative certification — these are all hallmark of teachers unions and, generally speaking, the candidates they support.

    Kansas schoolchildren need school reform. KNEA — the teachers union — and the candidates it supports are there to block every reform. Ask yourself: Who are the education candidates?

  • Wichita school spending

    Talking about Wichita school funding this week, district superintendent John Allison was quoted in Wichita Eagle reporting as saying “We’re still at 2001 funding levels.” This claim is part of an ongoing campaign of misinformation spread by school spending advocates in Wichita and across Kansas.

    Mr. Allison may have been referring to a component of the Kansas school finance formula called base state aid per pupil. It has been cut, as shown in this chart that the Kansas school spending establishment uses.

    Kansas school spending, as presented by the Wichita public school district.

    But base state aid is only the starting point. When we look closely at all spending by USD 259, the Wichita public school district, we see a picture vastly different from that described by the Wichita superintendent.

    Considering all sources of funding, the Wichita school district has been able to spend more money each year for many years, despite the claims of cuts. What cuts have been made to base state aid per pupil have been more than compensated for by weighted state aid, federal aid, and local aid, as shown in the following chart.

    Wichita school spending, as reported by Kansas State Department of Education.

    Focusing on base state aid misses the larger picture. As an example, for the 2010-2011 school year, base state aid was $3,937. Yet the Wichita school district received $7,092 per pupil from the state, 80 percent more than the base aid number. Focusing only on base state aid per pupil also fails to recognize the federal and local sources of revenue to schools. For this year the Wichita district received $2,123 per pupil from the federal government and $3,855 per pupil from local taxpayers, for a total of $13,069 per pupil. The same figure for the previous year was $12,526.

    There are also other issues to consider when analyzing Kansas base state aid per pupil spending. Dave Trabert of Kansas Policy Institute wrote this is response to Allison’s statement:

    Superintendents sometimes talk about base state aid as though it was total aid, so let’s take a look at those facts. Kansas State Department of Education broke out the components of state aid back to 1997, when total state aid was $4,047 per pupil (base was $3,670, KPERS was $157, bond was $42 and all other aid was $178). Back in the days before a lot of weightings were added/expanded, districts had to cover At Risk and other weighting-funding costs out of the base.

    State aid in 2012 was estimated by KSDE to be $6,931 per-pupil … base was $3,780 … KPERS was $804 … bond was $230 … and all other aid was $2,116. More than a ten-fold increase in other state aid, most of which is in those weightings that formerly had to come out of the base.

    By the way, KSDE says 2012 was estimated to be a record-setting spending year.

    More information about the changing nature of base state aid is at Base state aid is wrong focus for Kansas school spending.

    Why do school spending supporters focus only on base state aid? Its decline provides the grain of truth for their larger and false argument about school spending. As explained in Kansas school spending: the deception this grain of truth enables school spending advocates like Mark Desetti (Director of Legislative and Political Advocacy at Kansas National Education Association (KNEA), our state’s teachers union) to be accurate and deceptive, all at the same time.

    We ought to demand more truth from school districts and school officials regarding school finance.

  • Kansas schools receive NCLB waiver

    Last week Kansas received a waiver from the main provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

    The press release from Kansas State Department of Education reads in part: “With the approval, the accountability system for Kansas schools will shift from ensuring a prescribed percentage of students achieve proficiency on state reading and math assessments each year to ensuring schools achieve a prescribed level of improvement on at least one of several Annual Measurable Objectives (AMOs) established by the state. … With the waiver in place, the state can now look to multiple measures to assess the performance of Kansas schools in helping all students achieve.”

    One of the major criticisms of NCLB is its emphasis on high-stakes testing in reading and math, which may lead to over-emphasis on these subjects at the expense of others. “Teaching to the test” is another related criticism.

    But we need to be watchful of the standards Kansas state officials establish going forward. That’s because few states have lower standards than Kansas. One of the features of NCLB is that it let each state establish its own standards for evaluating student learning. What we find is states like Kansas have rising scores on their own state tests, but steady or even falling scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, called “the nation’s report card.” See Kansas needs truth about schools.

    The waiver will also require Kansas to modify the way teachers are evaluated. Again, from the KSDE press release: “Another key component of the state’s waiver is related to evaluating teachers and school leaders. Among the criteria for achieving a waiver request was implementing an evaluation system that includes student achievement as a significant factor in the evaluation. The Kansas plan calls for appointing a commission to identify the most effective means of tying student achievement to teacher and leader evaluations and building that into the existing Kansas Educator Evaluation Protocol (KEEP).”

    KEEP is an evaluation system that was first used in the last school year on a pilot basis. In April Peter Hancock of Kansas Education Policy Report wrote: “Under guidelines for the waiver, states must either have an evaluation system in place that makes student achievement a ‘primary component’ of an evaluation, or they must commit to putting such a system in place by the end of this school year. Kansas is currently piloting a new system called the Kansas Educator Evaluation Protocol (KEEP), but it does not currently have a component that includes student achievement.”

    Many people would be surprised to learn that student achievement has not been the primary factor used in evaluating teachers in Kansas. This is one of the reasons why Kansas has been found to rank low in policies on teacher quality.

    The fact that 33 states have been granted waivers — and more have applied — raises questions regarding public policy and rule of law. Last year David Boaz wrote regarding the increased use of waivers from federal laws and regulations “The rule of waivers is not the rule of law. … Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School says waivers raise ‘questions about whether we live under a government of laws. Congress can pass statutes that apply to some businesses and not others, but once a law has passed — and therefore is binding — how can the executive branch relieve some Americans of their obligation to obey it?’”

    The No Child Left Behind law has proven to be very unpopular. The solution is to repeal it, rather than offering piecemeal waivers, especially since the waivers are accompanied by other regulation.