State Superintendent Race Update

The daily today has an article with the blow-by-blow of a debate taped for the Journal Corp's Sunday show with Mike Gousha, perhaps the only respectable TV news figure in Milwaukee.

In the debate, apparently, Bad Guy Gregg Underheim demonstrates why he would be bad for Milwaukee:

Underheim attacked Burmaster [. . .] for her support of the state program to reduce the size of classes serving low-income children in kindergarten through third grade. [. . .]

Underheim said he supported expanding the voucher program, which is close to the maximum size allowed under state law. Burmaster said it is up to the governor and the Legislature to decide what the limit should be, and that she has been advocating better financial, operational and educational accountability in the school choice program.

Gousha asked Underheim whether more controls are needed on voucher schools, given problems associated with the closing of five such schools in the last year. Underheim said he opposes any changes related to student performance but said there might be a need for changes related to such matters as schools being operated by convicted felons.

Let's start with SAGE, the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education, a program aims for a 15-1 student-teacher ratio in the primary grades. If Underheim says the research doesn't support SAGE, he's either mis-informed or a liar:

The researchers used Average Growth Curves (AGC) to measure SAGE student achievement. AGCs provide the expected average growth of student achievement over time, offering a useful basis for comparison in evaluating educational effects.

The report illustrates that SAGE students outperformed non-SAGE students, gaining 25-30% of a year's additional growth by the end of first grade. After first grade, the report shows that SAGE students maintained their advantage over comparison students in reading and mathematics through third grade.

According to the researchers, all students benefit from being in small classes, but African-American Students benefit most of all. African-American students entering first grade classes in SAGE schools had lower reading and math scores than African-American students entering larger classes in comparison schools. By the end of first grade African-American SAGE students' achievement scores were significantly higher than those of African-American students in comparison classes.

In addition, African-American SAGE students narrowed the achievement gap between them and their white classmates in first grade. This decreased gap did not widen in second and third grade for SAGE students. In comparison schools, African-American students fell further behind White students each year.

SAGE classes appear to minimize the devastating effects of low attendance as well, the report shows. Low attending SAGE students perform as well as high attending comparison school students.

Beyond that, every study of small-sized classes shows that there are both immediate benefits as well as benefits for students later on, even if in later grades they have larger classes. This Dept. of Ed page has an excellent summary of the research to date.

Underheim's stance on voucher schools is simply untenable. Sure, I appreciate that he wants guards in place to stop convicted felons from opening schools (would that we had that prior to the Alex's Academic of Excellence fiasco!). But Libby Burmaster understands that choice schools are only as good as you can hold them accountable for: Underheim wants to keep giving these schools a free pass on academic quality. We know from both a UW study and a General Accounting Office study that voucher students do not do any better (pdf) than their public school counterparts as they suck money out of public schools state-wide. If there were some oversight--any oversight at all!--of how well these schools taught their students, then maybe we could see the kind of results the voucher supporters dream of.

Right now, there are no academic standards at all for voucher schools, and apparently, Gregg Underheim likes it that way. The article did not say whether Underheim supports exempting Milwaukee's public schools from academic standards, but I doubt he really wants to level the playing field or buck his conservative masters on this one.