After watching their students' test scores drop for nearly 20 years, school officials in Mapleton, Colo., took steps to shut down the city's traditional, comprehensive high school and replace it over a period of years with a network of six to seven smaller schools as part of a broad, and bold, effort to improve learning.

The story of the school system's transition over the next five years is the stuff of a new book, titled Against the Odds, by five researchers and school reformers. The team, led by noted Stanford University researcher Larry Cuban, draws on interviews, analyses, and observations conducted between 2006 and 2009 as the initiative kicked into high gear.

Yes, I know small schools are yesterday's news in national debates on school reform, but this book extracts some interesting lessons and observations from Mapleton's experiment, which was heavily backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For one, the school system found the conversion was expensive, largely due to increased building and transportation costs. That may not have been unexpected, but the surprise (for me, anyway) was that the added 5 percent in costs meant that educators had to make up the money somewhere else. The cut, for Mapleton, came in instructional services. The district reduced some staff development and asked teachers to volunteer their time for other professional development workshops.

Another surprise: While participation in high school athletics dropped off after the conversion, it grew for after-school clubs, including those that were academically oriented.

In the end, while the district did succeed in creating more personalized learning environments for students, it still had not seen the hoped-for, dramatic learning gains by 2008. But dropout rates appeared to be decreasing by the end of that time span, and district officials were hopeful that, with a little more time, test scores would follow suit. At the same time, though, the district was facing increasing pressure to ratchet up accountability measures and boost lagging test scores.

It's hard to know how many, if any, of these changes were due to the high school's downsizing. (In a second phase of the reform, the district also began shrinking its elementary schools.) As part of the transformation, the district embraced a more constructivist-oriented approaching to teaching. And each of the new schools also adopted a different instructional model, such as Big Picture High School or Expeditionary Learning, so much was happening at the same time.

But, for any school system that's still interested in downsizing, Mapleton offers a candid and cautionary case study.

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The movement to build longitudinal-data systems on student achievement has long butted heads with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, better known as FERPA, a 1974 law created to protect students' privacy.

The conflicts got to be so frequent that the U.S. Department of Education, under Margaret Spellings, even updated its regulations on the law last year to make it clearer that schools may share student data with outside contractors who perform work that school employees would otherwise do, such as electronic recordkeeping and testing.

This story from Inside Higher Ed suggests, however, that the conflicts haven't gone away. In the Feb. 1 article, the Education Department's top FERPA watchdog, Paul Gammill, contends that he was fired because he argued in internal meetings and documents that the agency's approach to spurring states to expand their longitudinal-student-data systems was running into conflict with the privacy law. In the story, department officials made no comments on Gammill's allegation, which they say is a personnel matter.

But there is one congressman who is outraged. U.S. Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, said in a statement issued Friday that "the allegation that the U.S. Department of Education is making an end run around student-privacy laws is a serious charge and one that Congress should investigate immediately."

My guess: We haven't heard the last of this issue.

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The Institute of Education Sciences announced this week that it is soliciting proposals for a boatload of research competitions, including one aimed at helping states and districts gear up to evaluate the school-improvement efforts they put in place with economic-stimulus dollars from the Race to the Top Fund.

Working in partnership with universities or research groups, states and districts can get up to $1.2 million a year, over five years, to measure their progress in implementing a wide range of education-reform efforts, including some that might be underwritten by Race to the Top, through the research agency's Evaluation of State and Local Education Programs competition. This is an ongoing grant program, says Lynn Okagaki, IES' commissioner for education research, but the agency added a new April 1 deadline to accommodate researchers who want to hit the ground running when states and districts start up their new new federally funded initiatives in the fall. The other two deadlines for this research program are in June and September.

The agency is also looking for bidders on at least four national research centers, some new and some ongoing, each of which can qualify for up to $2 million a year over five years. The National Research and Development Center for State and Local Policy, for instance, will study state and district education policies aimed at improving education outcomes for K-12 students. The agency has two centers that operate under this umbrella now—the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Date in Education Research, or CALDER at the Urban Institute and the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University—but their contracts are due to expire soon. The number of centers will depend in part on the quality of the proposals; applications are due in September.

Under the Special Education Research and Development Center, IES wants to create a center to focus on school-based interventions for secondary students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD.)

"The projects we've funded so far target preschool and early elementary children with ASD," Okagaki said. "IES is competing this new center, in part, to direct research attention on adolescents with ASD." Applications are due in September for this award.

Another national research center out for bid is the National Research and Development Center on Cognition and Adult Literacy, which is aimed at studying the cognitive processes that underlie reading and basic math in adult learners and developing instructional approaches targeted to that group.

The fourth center will be aimed at research on postsecondary education and employment. The agency already funds the National Center on Postsecondary Research at Teachers College, Columbia University, but the new incarnation of the center calls for broadening the focus to include labor-market outcomes.

The agency is also shopping for institutes to run two postdoctoral training programs— one in education sciences and one in special education—and one interdisciplinary predoctoral program to nurture budding education researchers. To learn more about these programs, which are growing in number throughout the country, see this story I wrote back in 2008.

Finally, the institute is offering grants of up to $400,000 a year, over three years, for research projects aimed at developing new or improved methods for conducting the kind of research that the agency supports. In particular, it seeks techniques for boosting the power of research effects in randomized studies. Remember all those "no effects" studies?

If this seems like a long list, just wait. Later this month, IES plans to announce the rest of its research competitions for 2010. And that list, which covers the majority of the agency's research dollars, will be much longer.

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When it comes to achievement gaps between students of different racial, socioeconomic, and gender groups, the good news in recent years has been that the distances between those groups seem to be narrowing. The bad news: Not so for everyone.

For the nation's best and brightest, a new report says, academic gaps between girls and boys, between white students and disadvantaged minority students, between poor students and their better-off peers, and between English-language learners and their English-speaking counterparts have only widened, stagnated, or declined by a hair since the late 1990s. If present trends continue, the authors of this new report say, black 4th graders won't catch up to their white classmates on mathematics tests until 2107!

"People aren't talking about the gaps at the top," said Jonathan A. Plucker, the lead author of the study, released this morning by the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University in Bloomington. "What they basically say is let's just focus on minimum competency gaps." Indeed, under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, states and school districts get credit for raising test scores overall and raising the test scores for particular subgroups, such as black and Hispanic students, but there's no particular incentive to pay attention to the top performers, many of whom may be hitting the ceiling anyway on their state assessments.

The center's report is not the first to point to trouble at the top. In a 2008 longitudinal study looking at black-white achievement gaps, Stanford University researcher Sean Reardon noted that the most able African-American students were the ones who lost the most ground to white students over the course of their school careers. Likewise, the Fordham Institute in 2008 published "High-Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB," which pointed to stagnating improvement rates in recent years for the most advanced students.

What makes the Indiana University report a little different is that the researchers analyzed data on lots of different students from lots of different angles. They looked at assessment numbers from the late 1990s until 2007 on both national and state-level reading and mathematics tests administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and they looked at results from state assessments in those subjects. (There's a nifty interactive map on center's Web site, by the way, where you can find an "excellence-gap" profile for your own state.)

The researchers also defined high achievers in different ways, looking at those who fell in the top 10 percent as well as those who scored in "advanced" categories on state or national tests. In most cases, the trends were the same for the most advanced kids. That is, with a few exceptions. In 8th grade reading, for instance, 37 states managed to shrink their gender gaps a bit.

The researchers say their findings are important because they disprove policymakers' hope that a rising tide would lift all boats. When a state narrowed gaps at the proficient level on state tests, their analysis showed, it didn't necessarily follow that the gaps at the top were reduced as well.

"In policy discussions, policymakers need to ask two specific questions," says Plucker, who is also a professor of education and cognitive science at IU. "They need to ask how will this specific policy affect our brightest students? And how will it help other students achieve at high levels?"

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An entry that I posted a week or so ago raising questions about President Obama's pitch, in his State of the Union address, for bolstering the nation's community colleges has generated some debate in the blogosphere.

The best critique comes from Sara Goldrick-Rab, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the co-author of a thoughtful blog called The Education Optimists. As one of the architects of a paper that served as the blueprint for the president's initiative on community colleges, Goldrick-Rab is an expert on that subject.

She argues in this post, that I "jumped to conclusions" when I suggested that, in some respects, for-profit or career colleges may have a better track record than the troubled community college sector. She says I neglected three important considerations:

1) Studies don't show whether students attending career colleges differ from those attending community colleges. Are they more motivated, for instance, or financially better off?

2) If career colleges are more successful at, say, graduating students, research doesn't off any definitive evidence on which career-college practices are linked to that success; and

3) Students who attend career colleges tend to accumulate more debt on average than their counterparts in community colleges.

"Community colleges have a long, rich history of serving this nation," she writes. "Sure, there's room for improvement, but without more solid evidence of which changes are needed let's not jump to conclusions and tout the for-profits as a model to which they ought to aspire. We might end up in a bigger mess than we're already in."

All good points, I say. Still, it certainly wouldn't hurt to look at what the career colleges might be doing differently, given the low graduation and completion rates at community colleges.

Over at the Quick and the Ed, Kevin Carey offers a much more searing attack critique, questioning my use of statistics from a study by the Educational Policy Institute,which was formed to support career colleges. Hey, it's a blog, Kevin! Had I been writing a story, I would've had the full report.

I also commend to him the book After Admission: From College Access to College Success by James E. Rosenbaum, which I have read and which points to some practices that seem to contribute to the success that some career colleges are having at graduating students. I drew on those findings, too, in my blog entry, but Kevin doesn't mention that.

Finally, if you're interested in learning more about some of the efforts that community colleges are making to increase student success, there's a study out this morning from the MDRC research group. It reports on a randomized experiment at South Texas College to test a simple intervention aimed at improving passing rates in low-level math classes. Basically, the college recruited and trained employees to visit math classes and talk, very briefly, about the services available to struggling students there. The result: While there was no overall increase in passing rates or students' persistence in college, the study did find some benefits for part-time students and those categorized as developmental or remedial.

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Most studies of school-choice programs tend to focus on whether the programs improve the academic performance of the students who attend them. A new report, however, explores a very different, if unintended, consequence of school-choice initiatives: their impact on housing values.

In a study published last week by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, a trio of researchers used national data to study changes in
housing values and residential populations between 1990 and 2000 as states introduced inter-district public school choice programs. According to the report, 31 states now offer such plans, which permit parents to enroll their children in schools outside of their assigned school district, and 26 of them were put in place during the course of the study.

What the researchers found was that, when states enacted such changes, population density increased in districts with low-quality schools that were near the jurisdictions with the "good" schools. This came as relatively high-income families moved into those lower-cost areas and, in essence, began to gentrify them. The study calculates that, as a result of those inflows, home values in the cheaper districts rose by as much as $3,631 to $6,342, depending on which calculation the researchers used. Because some of those families left the more-expensive districts with high-quality schools, the overall effect is that home values started to even out throughout those areas.

"Residential homogeneity increases across local districts when excludable local public services become less exclusive," the study concludes.

Led by Erick J. Brunner of the University of Connecticut, the study is not the first to advance the idea that home values rise when choice programs open up. Other researchers have come to similar conclusions using computer models. But the study authors say theirs may well be the first to weigh in with some empirical evidence on the topic.

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President Obama's budget request contains some good news for education research, says Jim Kohlmoos, the president of the Knowledge Alliance.

According to a budget summary published this morning by the Office of Management and Budget, the administration favors giving the Institute of Education Sciences an additional $61 million in the 2011 fiscal year for investing in "development, evaluation, and dissemination." If Congress goes along, funding for that purpose would increase from an estimated $200 million this year to $261 million.

Presumably, a big chunk of that money would help underwrite the big $10 billion evaluation that IES is spearheading looking at what states are doing with their economic-stimulus dollars and whether those efforts are working. But, as Kohlmoos says, this particular pot of money is "really the most flexible" of IES's funding streams, so lots of other research initiatives may benefit as well.

Smaller spending boosts for statistics and assessments are also part of the administration's spending plan for IES, which is the U.S. Department of Education's main research arm and includes the National Center for Education Statistics under its umbrella. One puzzle in the budget request: The administration recommends extending funding for the regional education laboratories at current levels for one more year. Does this mean that the expected overhaul of the laboratory system is being delayed?

Outside of IES, the budget proposal calls for investing an extra $500 million for the Investing in Innovation program, some of which includes research on innovations that show promise.

"I think this is pretty good news for research and development and innovation," said Kohlmoos, whose Washington-based organization represents many of the research groups that stand to benefit from any funding increases. Stay tuned.

Also, for a broader look at the budget, see my colleague Alyson Klein's post today in Politics K-12.

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New data from the American Institute for Economic Research finds that the cost of education-related products and services has nearly doubled over the 20 years, growing three times the rate of the Consumer Price Index.

While the Consumer Price Index rose by 71 percent from 1990 to 2009, education costs grew by more than 200 percent. That rate is even higher than the cost increases found for health care and fuel over the same period, though we hear more often about the inflationary pressures in those economic sectors.

Bear in mind we're not just talking about runaway tuition and fee increases at college and universities, although they do account for much of that increase. Tuition and fees at private elementary and high schools rose by more than 250 percent. The cost of educational books and supplies increased by more than 200 percent and fees for lessons and instruction grew more than 100 percent, according to the Barrington, Mass. research group.

The one bright spot for schools in this economic picture: The cost of personal computers and other information processing equipment dropped nearly 90 percent over the same time span.

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In his State of the Union address last night President Obama reiterated his longstanding support for community colleges, calling them "a career pathway to the children of so many working families." He may be right about that. But, as I reported in this story back in September, the research on community colleges suggests they can also be a dead-end for students who get bogged down in noncredit remedial courses and never earn a certificate or a degree.

A new study out this month, however, suggests that community colleges could take a cue from for-profit, or career, colleges. The Educational Policy Institute, a research group in Virginia Beach, Va., based its study on a federal data on nearly 7,000 higher education institutions, 41 percent of which were career colleges, as well as its own surveys.

It focused on students who were at risk of not graduating for a variety of reasons, including lack of a high school diploma, delayed enrollment, enrolling part-time, being a parent, or holding down a full-time job, and found that they stood a better chance of completing a degree or a certificate in a career college than they did in a community college. The career colleges had an average graduation rate of 59 percent for this group, compared to 23 percent for public two-year colleges and 55 percent at private, not-for-profit institutions. (A grain of salt here: the study was sponsored by a group that supports career colleges.)

Part of the problem may be that community colleges are asked to be all things to all people. They provide a stepping stone to four-year colleges, vocational training, and English-language instruction for new immigrants, among other services. In my September article, James Rosenbaum, a Northwestern University researcher, offers some additional thoughts.

"Community colleges are big on choice exploration, delaying decisions about your major, and getting a lot of diversity in your first studies," he said. "Private two-year colleges help students make a decision quickly at the outset and then have a very set curriculum. You don't make mistakes. You don't waste time, and it doesn't take you longer to get a degree." He said the private two-year schools also cut out vacation time, schedule classes in ways that are more compatible with maintaining a regular work or child-care schedule, and mandate student-counseling sessions.

It's something to keep in mind, at least, as Congress debates legislation that would make sweeping changes to the federal student loan program and redirect money from the projected savings to bolstering community colleges, among other education-related uses.

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When I was in elementary school, I always admired the kids who were nimble enough to write with either their left or right hands. What a neat trick!

A new study by a group of European colleges suggests, however, that there may be a possible downside to this rare ability, which occurs in about one of every 100 children. Children who are ambidextrous are more likely to have problems that affect their schoolwork than right- or left-handed children, according to this study, which is described today in Science Daily.

Set to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Pediatrics, the research is based on a sample of nearly 8,000 Finnish children, 87 of whom were ambidextrous. At age 7 or 8, the researchers found, the ambidextrous children were twice as likely as their right-handed peers to have difficulties with language and to perform poorly in school. At 15 or 16, they faced twice the risk of exhibiting symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADhD, than their right-handed peers.

Researchers were quick to caution, however, that their findings don't mean that all mixed-handed children will develop the same problems. But, if future studies bear out the same trend, ambidexterity might provide a useful early-warning flag for parents and educators.

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