CORRESPONDENCE: Single-sex Ed; School Board Elections; Teacher Values; Pension Plans; Missouri Tax Credits; "It's Being Done" Separating Boys from Girls 
Single-sex education programs (see “Learning Separately,” features, Winter 2008) have been operating in South Carolina public schools since 2004. Two-thirds of South Carolina’s school districts offer some form of single-sex education. That’s nearly 80 individual schools, with more than 40 additional schools exploring the possibility for next year. Boys and girls in our programs learn using the same state academic standards and are held to the same high expectations. For parents, single-sex schooling offers additional choices in how they want their children educated. For students, it’s a chance to be in classes without the distractions or pressures of the opposite sex. For teachers, it’s a form of differentiated instruction, another way to meet the needs of their students. For principals, it’s another way to improve standardized test scores and decrease discipline referrals. Jim Rex, South Carolina’s new state superintendent of education, recently hired me to help our local school districts research, plan, and evaluate single-sex programs. Everywhere I go, the idea is generating interest among teachers and excitement among parents. Although data on South Carolina’s single-sex programs are just beginning to accumulate, our standardized test scores, discipline referrals, parent survey responses, and anecdotal evidence are all pointing in positive directions. We have not yet determined if the single-sex model is the sole driver for these improvements. But when students say that they enjoy going to class, when teachers say that they “would never go back to teaching coed again,” and when parents continue to sign their children up for single-sex classes year after year, the message is pretty clear. Something good is happening.
David Chadwell We would like to thank Education Next for publishing such a rich and comprehensive article on single-sex education in the United States. We at the Young Women’s Leadership Foundation are always thrilled when this topic gets the attention it deserves. We do, however, want to clarify that the Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem (and its sister schools in Queens, Bronx, Astoria, and Philadelphia) are not charter schools, as some readers may have thought. Our schools are an option within the public school district for families who want to offer their daughters an all-girls, college-preparatory education.
Sarah Wendt Kathleen Ponze School Boards Christopher Berry and William Howell (“Accountability Lost,” research, Winter 2008) present an interesting academic study about whether student achievement data have an impact on school board elections. What would be even more relevant to know, however, is if the candidates for school board, either the incumbents or those newly seeking office, used student test scores in their campaigning. Was the public even aware of the data? Is this a question of correlation or cause? Perhaps the researchers might also have looked at, as a worthy comparison, whether or not city council members are held accountable for the health of the city’s economy or if members of Congress are held accountable for the well-being of the nation in their elections. I would argue that it’s incumbency, in any elected office in which the public knows the candidate, that is a greater indicator of winning or losing an election. Perhaps the candidate’s record on a number of issues and how he or she handled the office carries more weight than one factor—albeit the most important one—student learning.
Anne L. Bryant Teacher Values Robert Slater (“American Teachers,” features, Winter 2008) draws a mystifying series of conclusions from his research on what American teachers believe. I agree that educators have struggled in recent years to separate the teaching of values from the teaching of just about everything else. And, in pursuing political correctness, we have been drowning in a sea of mediocrity, having lost our capacity to distinguish the better from the worse. Moreover, I would argue, as a colleague of mine has, that this dearth of values manifests itself most dramatically in a startling deterioration of political intelligence, the mainstay of a free democratic society. That said, Robert Slater’s data paint a portrait of those who choose to teach in the nation’s public schools as the very mirror image of the culture and the educational process which has formed them… no better, no worse. He does point out that willy-nilly, parents and teachers do attempt to convey some values: the values of hard work, of doing things that we might not like, of persevering in the face of difficulty, of self-initiated effort, of listening to and respecting adults, and of meeting deadlines. Over many years, Public Agenda has conducted survey research with just about every constituency with a stake in public education. More than once, nine in ten parents have told us that the following lessons are very appropriate in public schools: “teaching honesty and the importance of telling the truth; teaching respect for others regardless of their racial or ethnic background; and teaching kids to solve problems without violence.” Moreover, parents repeatedly tell us that the people they most trust to make good decisions on behalf of their children are their children’s teachers. Since trust is a commodity in short supply these days, I would urge Mr. Slater to worry less about teachers imposing their views on homosexuality and abortion on their students and more about teachers conveying what it means to grow up and become adults who understand what their responsibilities are both to their communities and to our increasingly fragile democracy. I for one do not believe that a commitment to the democratic ideal as an organizing principle depends, as Mr. Slater puts it, on “felt needs,” or that preservice programs are the antidote to “help teachers develop the disposition to look persistently for ways to teach in accord with the democratic ideal.”
Deborah Wadsworth Pension Plans 
Robert Costrell and Michael Podgursky (“Peaks, Cliffs, & Valleys,” features, Winter 2008) make a compelling case for states to shift public pensions away from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans. The former are ill equipped to meet the needs and expectations of today’s workforce. The private sector has long signaled a growing preference for defined contribution plans. News-making “freezes” of underfunded defined benefit plans in recent years (Verizon, IBM, e.g.) dealt heavy blows to a practice that reached its peak among private sector employees two decades ago. America’s prospective teachers are perhaps less likely than veteran teachers to prefer defined benefit plans. At the fall 2007 meeting of the American Savings Education Council in Washington, D.C., it was reported that members of “Generation Y” in today’s workforce are more optimistic about their own abilities to save for retirement and less concerned about government-sponsored benefits than previous generations. State lawmakers have anticipated these trends. In 1999, a national task force of state legislators drafted model legislation at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Annual Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, to introduce portable, defined contribution plans for public employees. Since that time, 30 states have introduced versions of the legislation and 15 have adopted plans to either offer defined contribution alternatives to some or all public employees or phase out defined benefit plans altogether. Costrell and Podgursky’s call to states to reform teacher pensions is timely. Positioning teacher benefits to match the preferences of today’s workforce is critical to attracting and retaining the supply of qualified teachers needed to meet the challenges we face in education. At the very least, states must offer teachers choices.
Matt Warner Tax Credits I generally agree with Dr. Wilbur Rich’s well-detailed recipe (“St. Louis Blues,” features, Winter 2008) for legislative failure regarding the 2005 and 2006 tax credit proposals in Missouri. Like any good connoisseur of school politics, Rich pays close attention to inputs and outcomes. In his article, race, partisanship, and cartel politics represent the major ingredients in this recipe. As Rich adopted “the blues” as a working metaphor to explain the defeat of tax credit bills in Missouri, I have chosen “soul food” as the metaphor for my response. Soul food is only as good as the cook and the ingredients used in its preparation. Too many cooks in the kitchen contributed to the failure of the tax credit proposals. Republican Jane Cunningham and black state representatives Ted Hoskins and Rodney Hubbard, both Democrats, were the original cooks. Missouri Democrats watered down the tax credit bills with “killer amendments,” while the state teachers union and the AFL-CIO added extra helpings of sour cream and vinegar. By the time this motley crew turned off the stove, the tax credit bill had lost its flavor and its soul. Taste determines the authenticity of soul food. In the Missouri legislative battle, no matter how many times the sponsors called their bill a tax credit, opponents convinced diners that the bills smelled like, and had the consistency of, “school vouchers.” Because of the opponents’ successful this-bill-will-leave-a-bad-taste-in-your-mouth campaign, few people had the stomach to support it. Parental choice supporters nationwide should study Rich’s recipe before attempting to enact a school reform law. Since I was on the frontline of a similar legislative battle in 2006, I will offer two suggestions: First, cooks and ingredients needed for this battle are not found solely on the Hill; they also must be gathered in the ’hood. Second, soul food cannot exist without intense heat. It is needed to break down ingredients to create a jazzlike harmony of taste. Similarly, parental choice coalitions must bring together a proper blend of ingredients at the right temperature to achieve success in the legislative arena. These ingredients at minimum include an adult-size serving of money, a healthy dose of bipartisanship, and organic community ownership. To win a legislative battle for parental choice, bring the fire next time. Gerard Robinson Charter Wave Andy Smarick’s article (“Wave of the Future,” features, Winter 2008) outlines a roadmap for the successful development of a system of charter schools. Currently, New Orleans is the only city in the nation with the conditions in place to follow this map to success:
• 50 percent of our city’s public
schools are charters We have the great fortune to be presented with what Recovery School District (RSD) superintendent Paul Vallas considers an “historic opportunity to bring best practices and provide school choice” to one of the country’s most underserved communities. The RSD has developed more “charter-like” schools by giving autonomy to the school leaders, while still providing an appropriate level of support. In this decentralized system of accountable and autonomous schools, performance, and not politics, will drive the decisionmaking of government officials and education reformers alike.
Sarah Newell Usdin “It’s Being Done” In his review of my book “It’s Being Done”: Academic Success in Unexpected Schools (“Inside the Testing Factory,” book review, Winter 2008), Nathan Glazer wonders what I would think of Tyler Heights, described in Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade. I haven’t been to Tyler Heights, so I have to go by what author Linda Perlstein has written. I would never have included it as a school where, as I say in my book, “it’s being done.” Tyler Heights is essentially cheating students out of an education by focusing on the need of adults to look good rather than the need of children to learn a great deal. According to Perlstein’s account, the educators at Tyler Heights misunderstand what is required in reading instruction. They have defined reading primarily as a “skill” and spend inordinate amounts of time on “reading strategies.” Certainly skill plays a role in reading, particularly the skill of decoding. But once decoding is mastered, background knowledge becomes the most important factor in whether students understand text. The best way to achieve high reading scores is to provide a coherent, strong curriculum that includes all the content areas integral to education—history, science, art, music, and literature.
Karin Chenoweth |
QUICK LINKS: TOOLS: |
