Per Previous

That last post grew out of some thinking I've been doing lately in response to the debate here in D.C. over Mayor Adrian Fenty's proposal to take over the DCPS system.

One of the big issues for opponents of Fenty's plan is that they believe parents need (and want) an elected school board as a forum to seek redress for their complaints about the public schools. Interestingly, many of the people making this argument are staunch opponents of choice and charter schools in D.C. I don't see this as a coincidence. Activism and choice are two distinctly different methods of trying to get schools to provide what you want for your child, so I think it makes sense that people who are particularly wed to one approach would be skeptical of the other. Of course, the two don't have to be in tension but can by mutually supportive, as Steve Barr's work in LA shows.

I know I have a clear bias here--I'm not a parent, but if I were, the choice approach, if available, seems much more sensible, efficient and rational to me than the advocacy route to get services for one's child--and part of me wonders if this is to some extent a generational issue.

I'm curious: Would you rather turn to advocacy before a public body or choice as a way to try to get educational services for your child? Or, in a more concrete example, would you prefer an elected school board or charter schools?

Let me know, and I'll post the most interesting and insightful comments I receive.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Parent Involvement

Everyone seems to think that parent involvement is important to improving public education. No one in the education policy mainstream opposes parental involvement, at least not openly. More and better parental involvement is kind of like the pony of public education reform. But what do we actually mean when we talk about parental involvement?

I would posit that there are three different things we talk about when we talk about parental involvement:

First is the traditional, education establishment-endorsed brand of parent involvement: showing up at parent teacher conferences, helping little Madison with her homework, volunteering at the bake sale, etc. This is, I think what most educators are talking about when they bemoan a lack of parent involvement or argue that greater parental involvement is critical to improving student achievement. This kind of parent involvement makes it easier for teachers to do their jobs. From the school system's perspective, it's also fairly innocuous. Parents do what the educational professionals want them to do; they don't rock the boat, or challenge the system, or demand additional things for their kids.

But this is not the only kind of parental involvement. Two other types of parent involvement focus less on what the parent can do for the child and the school, and more on how parents can get schools to provide the services they need for their children:

A second kind of parent involvement is activism: Parents work, either collectively or individually, to demand that schools provide something different or better for their children. There's a lot of variation here: It's everything from the pushy middle-class parents jockeying to make sure their child has the right first grade teacher, to the community activists organizing to demand smaller class sizes or better school facilities--the kind of work groups like PICO and ACORN engage in, and Steve Barr is teaching parents in LA. This type of activism on behalf of children can be either a zero sum--or even negative--game (the savviest or most connected parents get their kids in the best teacher's class, so less advantaged kids miss out), or it can be a net positive if it results in large scale changes that impact all kids in a community--including those whose parents didn't participate in advocacy. Understandably, schools and the people who work in them are a lot less favorably disposed to this kind of parental involvement, because it creates hassels for them and sometimes negative publicity.

A third approach to parent involvement is choice. Rather than advocating to get the school or system they're in to change, parents move their children to another school or system that they believe will do a better job of meeting their needs. In contrast to activism, which can be a long, drawn out process with no guarantee of getting the desired result, choice seems like it might be a relatively efficient mechanism for parents to get the educational services they want--but not if all the choices available are lousy or parents can't find accurate information to make a choice. Skeptics argue that choice will have the same zero-sum or collectively negative impacts as the worst types of parent activism. Boosters argue that market forces will spur improvement across all public schools. This type of parent involvement is newer, more controversial, and less available to many parents than the other types, and there is a lot we still don't know about it.

I don't mean to demean the contributions of the first type of parental involvement. God knows I wouldn't have gotten much of anywhere if my parents hadn't pushed and supported me in school. But I think when we look past the squishy-fuzziness of praising the first type of homework, and the cruel scapegoating of disadvantaged parents who for whatever reason haven't been able to do as much of it, then we'll find parent involvement is a much more complicated and prickly concept, one that offers plenty to oppose, but also, if wielded properly, has a lot more potential to improve public education.

More Props for Spitzer

Does this at least partly answer Kevin's question?

Utah Vouchers

So, the Utah House of Representatives passed voucher legislation that's expected to sail through the state Senate and get gubernatorial approval, too. Utah already has a special education voucher program modeled after Florida's McKay Scholarship program. You can read Andy's and my critique of McKay to see why I don't think that's such a hot idea.

Edspresso's predictably pumped. Me, less so. Utah has the not-to-great distinction of being the lowest spending state in the country on public education, at $5,008 per pupil for the previous school year. Despite that, it's students perform at or just a teensy bit above NAEP averages, except in writing. The voucher funding is even less generous that Utah's regular public education funding: Families would get $500 to $3,000 on a sliding scale based on income. That's not a lot of money and will probably restrict program participation to a.) Families that can afford to pay to supplement the voucher, b.) Schools that have other sources of income and can afford to charge tuition below cost of education (see Matt's concerns about this basically becoming a subsidy for LDS schools), c.) Virtual Schools. I think a potential boom in virtual schools is the biggest possibility here, given the small funding amounts and rural nature of much of Utah. And given the issues that have arisen with unaccountable virtual schools in places like Ohio, I'd say that's cause for concern. But aside from that, and wasting money subsidizing middle class parents to send their kids to private schools, I doubt this is going to have the impact to justify voucher supporters' crowing now.

Unlike the other states with any kind of voucher scene, Utah's got a moderate charter school law (rated weak by the Center for Education), and only 39 charters statewide. I tend to think charters are a better way to expand meaningful choice for kids than voucher are, particularly voucher programs designed like this one is.

More D.C. School Reform

Contra most of the press coverage, the group known as the Ward 8 Democrats didn't say they opposed Mayor Fenty's proposal to take control of DCPS. But they do want a referendum on it. The last time we had a major school governance change, when we established the hybrid elected-appointed school board in 2000, we voted (well, I didn't, because I had just moved here, but DC residents generally did). The previous governance change happened because the Congressionally-appointed control board took over the schools, without voter approval.

I don't fully understand why the Fenty administration didn't decide to submit their plan to the voters, thereby taking the home rule objection off the table (or significantly weakening it). The obvious reason is their proclaimed desire for immediate action, but is the difference between early May, when a referendum could occur, and April, when the council might vote on Fenty's plan, that big? As everyone needs to remember, serious school reform is a laborious, long-term process. If having a vote now could improve public support and chances of success over the long haul, wouldn't that have been worth it?

That said, I strongly believe that the primary threat to democracy here in the District is not Mayor Fenty's plan, but the fact that our long-term failure to educate significant percentages of our young people disenfranchises them socially, economically and politically.

"We don't say 'oooh,' we fix the problem."

We all--especially those of us in the education policy world--could learn a lot from the kids in Pre-K 114.

Spitzer Hearts Pre-K, Too

There's been a lot of bloggy talk about NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's budget proposal to dramatically increase funding for public education but require greater accountability and raise the charter cap. But what seems to have slipped under a lot of folks' radar--including, as Richard Colvin notes, the major print media outlets--is Spitzer's proposal to ramp up funding for New York's "Universal" Pre-k program over the next three years so that it actually gets to the point where it deserves that adjective. New York launched the program in 1998, with plans to ramp up funding through several "waves" of school districts, starting with the most disadvantaged. But it never quite got there, so it's remained in effect a smaller targeted preschool program. Now Spitzer wants to bring it all the way to full scale. That should be big news, and it would have been if Spitzer hadn't packed so many bold and controversial ideas into his proposals. But even with everything else going on, it still deserves significant attention.

All That Baggage

I think Joe Williams has a great point here:

Message to people who like the idea of things like weighted student formulas, decentralization, merit pay, improving the tenure process, etc: You have to think hard about whether this is really the crew you want implementing this kind of important stuff. How can we even talk about getting rid of incompetent teachers when the mayor has created a system that so warmly embraces incompetent bureaucrats?

There's a tendency among folks in positions like mine to characterize teachers as being obstructionist or anti-accountability when they oppose the types of reform ideas Joe lists above, but the reality is that teachers who have been living and working in dysfunctional systems have good reasons not to trust the people that would be given greater decision-making authority under some reform schemes. And policy types should listen to that, not just dismiss it or wish it away. The dysfunction and problematic behaviors that weaken many of our school systems aren't independently occurring phenomena--they are causally connected and feed off each other. You can't address one without also impacting a host of other relationships and behaviors. That's why "add on" reforms, like new curricula, or reducing class size, or extending class time, or whatever else is the flavor of the week, even though they may be really good ideas, can't fix things on their own. Fundamental improvement requires shocking the system in a way that breaks through the baggage of accumulated behaviors and relationships. I don't think anyone has yet figured out how to do that really well. Even in the cities that are making positive progress on reform, there's still a tremendous amount of conflict and mistrust, lots of incompetence remaining in the system, and dysfunctional behavior going on at all levels.

Sex Offender Surprise

This story is truly a gem, but I'll try to stick to the education side. The basic story line is that 29 year-old sex offender Neil H. Roderick II attended a series of Arizona charter schools posing as a 7th grade student for almost 2 years. Using the assumed name Casey Price, Roderick lived in El Mirage, and attended a school called Imagine Charter School in a town called Surprise. (Far too good to make up). Aiding in his scheme were two older men, also sex offenders, who enrolled him in school.

Leaving aside the fairly obvious question of how a 29 year-old could masquerade as a 7th grader for nearly two years without attracting attention, why didn't Price's suspicious documentation alert officials before? The school that ultimately called authorities noted that Price's documents had different dates of birth and spellings of Price's first name. Also, why did he choose to enroll in a series of charter schools?

My personal suspicion is that in the hot charter state of Arizona, where there are 450 charter schools (1 in every 4 public schools) that enroll 8% of the student body, competition is real, and enrollment processes may not be as stringent as in the traditional system. In fact, a parent in the Times story comments that Roderick probably thought a charter school was an easier target, noting that "it is not really difficult to enroll."

While eliminating bureaucracy can be an important benefit of charter schools (which I support), sometimes red tape can be useful in creating a filter. Imagine Charter School is unclear about what documentation it requires (though notes it is reviewing its procedures), but its online enrollment form is fairly cursory. In contrast, the local school district in Surprise asks parents to provide: an original birth certificate, last school attended and academic records, proof of residence, custody papers, and proof of immunization. I'm sure all this paperwork is a hassle for parents, but nonetheless probably a good idea to ensure kids have not been kidnapped, are not actually adult sex offenders, etc.

Barely related aside: As a reward for reading to the end of the Times article, the reader is treated to the lovely revelation that the men who had posed as Price's uncle and grandfather were also tricked by him and had believed that he was a minor, though they were disappointed by his deception. Yes, you read correctly. These men were disappointed to discover they had been engaging in a sexual relationship with an adult, instead of a child. Surprise!

New York's Watchful Eye

Two news stories this week indicate that New York is leading the charge on higher education accountability. First, the NY State Department of Education is threatening to close the for-profit Katherine Gibbs School after finding major deficiencies, including not having enough faculty or remedial classes. Second, Attorney General Cuomo is sending out requests for information to national student loan companies on their marketing practices and also to universities on how they select which companies get on their ‘Preferred Lender’ lists.

Preferred lender lists are lists of lenders that financial aid offices recommend their students use for their loans. These lists can be as short as one lender or can include several options, and students almost always choose a lender off this list. For lending companies, getting on preferred lender lists is essential to maintaining high profits; it gives them access to federal loan business, but also to more lucrative private loan business. Of course, when high profits are involved, there is the potential for shady behavior – lenders aren’t supposed to bribe financial aid officers to get on preferred lender lists, but some smaller loan companies are accusing them of doing just that. It will be interesting to see how the Attorney General’s investigation shakes out, and whether it impacts the Department of Education’s proposed regulatory changes on loan company and university practices.

More accountability is a good thing. In the end, students and taxpayers are the ones that will benefit the most from a more watchful eye on the activities of for-profit colleges and student loan companies.

Say It Loud, Eliot Spitzer, and Say It Proud

Blogging again after a week on vacation. I could say I'm glad to be back, but given that I was here, that would be an egregious lie.

On Monday, Governor Elitot Spitzer made a big announcement about school funding in New York, supporting a multi-billion dollar increase in resources, but saying that the money would come with strings attached to new standards for high performance. Specifically, he said:

“My vision for education reform is built on a single premise: To be effective, new funding must be tied to a comprehensive agenda of reform and accountability.”

The details are forthcoming, and so this will sink or swim based on whether the implementation is smart and well-integrated into established accountability systems. But there is a very important symbolic issue here as well, one that could more significant in the long run than what actually happens in New York.

Supporters of more school funding, who tend to be liberals, Democrats, and/or people working in schools, basically have three options:

1) Fight the proposal, on the grounds that more state-based accountability and performance-driven oversight is a bad idea. In other words, the money isn't worth the strings.

2) Accept the proposal, on the grounds that the money is worth the strings, but in a grudging fashion, taking many opportuntities along the way to grumble that while this is an okay deal, more money with fewer (that is, no) strings would be a lot better.

3) Support the proposal wholeheartedly.

Some ostenible school funding supporters will choose (1), but most will probably choose (2). This is a bad and ultimately short-sighted choice to make. In the long run, (3) is the only way to go, both in terms of what's right for kids, but also purely in terms of the cause of more school funding.

Here's why: Before I moved to Washington, DC to write blogs and do other, more productive work, I spent six years working in the Indiana Statehouse, focusing on tax policy, budgeting, and school finance. I spent two of those years working as the chief advisor to the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. The committee had a Budget subcommittee, chaired by a Republican.

I didn't agree with his politics, but I had a lot of respect for him as a person and a legislator. He was a retired farmer and a Quaker with a Harvard M.B.A, a conservative in the sensible midwestern way. He thought that public resources should be spent sparingly and wisely, a principle that's hard to argue with, regardless of your politics. He was also a really nice, even-tempered guy. It took a lot to make him angry.

But it happened, as it did one day when some group or another was making a particularly ill-conceived and poorly justified plea to the committee for a sizeable increase in state appropriations. I don't remember if it was an education group or not, but their request basically boiled down to, "We think you should give us many millions of new dollars, on the grounds that we deserve it, and would probably be better off with that money than without it, all things considered."

To which the chairman reddened, shook his finger, and said "What you're asking is for the taxpayers of Indiana to give you more money for the same thing. And I am not going to do that."

Needless to say, he didn't. He wasn't a maniac anti-government conservative who thought that taxation was tantamount to theft. He thought the government did a lot of good--that's why he ran for office. He just thought it should do good in a restrained, efficient way.

The point being, most people in this country feel this way. There's really no such thing as big-government liberalism in 2007. There might have been once, but that was a long time ago. Hard-core anti-government conservatives are better represented on talk radio and in Congress and the White House than they are in the real world. Most people will pay taxes with relatively few complaints as long as they're reasonable and used for something useful. And education is pretty high on their list of useful things.

But there's a catch: they, like the chairman, don't want to pay more money for the same thing. This is completely sensible. It is the instinct that Eliot Spitzer is speaking to. It's the right thing to do from a policy perspective; there are a lot of children out there suffering in schools that are both under-funded and badly run. The only way to help them is to tackle both problems forcefully, at the same time.

Crucially, it's also the right thing politically. It's the path to broad public support for financial help for public education. There are a lot of people out there who could be convinced to pay for or even sacrifice on behalf of the public schools, not just the schools their kids go to but all public schools, if they could only have some reasonable assurance that the money would mean something, that it would be spent wisely and well.

Unfortunately, our education system has been trapped for decades in a unspoken agreement between conversatives who care more about keeping taxes low than improving the schools and left-leaning interest groups who care more about protecting the status quo than improving school funding. Neither will budge, and the students lose.

That's why it's incumbent on school funding supporters to not just go along with proposals like Spitzer's--assuming the particulars are well-thought out--but embrace them. To hold them up as the first, best option. That's what it will take to get the majority of the citizens to a place where they'll support the kind of broad, far-reaching funding reforms that many schools really need.

D.C. Governance Reform

The D.C. Council is holding hearings today on Mayor Adrian Fenty's proposal to take control over governance of the District of Columbia Public Schools. If you're a real school reform geek, you can watch the hearings here.

You can sense from the hearings that many of the councilmembers are very frustrated with the current system and eager for change. Carol Schwartz (R-At Large) seems to be the most opposed to Fenty's plans: She penned a Washington Post op-ed airing her concerns that ran over the weekend. I think Ms. Schwartz makes one very good point. Improving the District's public schools in long-term, laborious work that requires clear focus and a lot of political capital. Despite the D.C. Government's progress during the Williams adminsitration, there are plenty of city programs and agencies besides education that still need dramatic achievement. It is reasonable to ask whether a Mayor can have the energy and political capital to run the schools and improve student achievement while also fixing other city services. But the reforms Ms. Schwartz recommends in place of mayoral control are pretty weak. In particular, giving the council line-item authority over the school budget is a recipe for micromanagement that will only further complicated the tangled governance arrangements for schools in D.C. Mayor Fenty's legislation would also have given the Council a bigger role in school budgeting, and I think that's a mistake, too.

The current Board of Education also presented its own alternative plan yesterday. Under their plan, the existing board would maintain day-to-day control of school operations but set specific targets for school improvement in the next 18 months. Unlike Fenty's plan, which is purely a governance reform plan, the Board of Education's legislation includes a set of specific education reforms and goals. Both Fenty's plan and the Board of Education plan would create a new State Department of Education under the Mayor's control.

It seems pretty likely that, whatever else, we will get a new State Education Department for D.C. If so, we should take into account what nearly every major analysis of NCLB implementation so far has said: Existing State Departments of Education weren't designed to run accountability systems or support efforts to school improvement. The resources are focused in the wrong places and so they're doing a lousy job implementing the law. D.C. has an opportunity to build a new model of State Education Agency designed for today's education policy goals. Congress has an opportunity to help improve D.C. schools and address a key issue in NCLB by providing D.C. with additional funding to build an excellent model State Education Agency.

btw: Lots of speakers are talking about the impacts of other mayoral takeovers and what D.C. can learn from them. Completely independent of today's hearing, Ryan at edspresso looks at goings-on in NYC and LA here.

Reapply or Say Goodbye

The Baltimore Sun reports that Annapolis superintendent Kevin Maxwell is making the entire staff of Annapolis High School reapply for their jobs. The school is chronically low-performing and will face intervention next year if something's not done to improve student achievement. Teachers are feeling scapegoated (most amusing quote of the Sun article: "Where is the proof that teachers were to blame for this...Do you blame your doctor if you have cancer? Is it Giant Food's fault if I'm fat?").

And people are wondering... is this a desperate step, or a real strategy for change?

Maxwell might look to what superintendent Jesse Register did in Chattanooga five years ago with nine of the worst elementary schools in Tennessee. Register led a major overhaul of the teaching staff and principal leadership in an effort to turn these schools around. It seems to have worked–these eight schools have consistently improved their performance every year. But it wasn't just re-staffing that made the difference.

The Benwood Initiative, as it is called because of $5 million funding from the Chattanooga-based Benwood Foundation (added to $2.5 million more from Chattanooga's Public Education Foundation), involved a comprehensive plan for change. Teacher performance was evaluated by a fairly unique and objective measure. Teachers who were rehired, or who started anew, received intense training in reading instruction. Reading specialists and teaching coaches were hired, and incentives were set up to attract and keep good teachers (including performance bonuses, housing incentives and a free master's program). A parent involvement coordinator was also hired, along with extra staff for after-school and summer programs.

So take note, Annapolis. TN's was an expensive and comprehensive approach to reconstituting schools (and it still wasn't easy). Yours better be too if you want to see real change.

A Good Thing About What Works

I'm not the biggest fan of the What Works Clearinghouse (as you might note from my earlier rant on "What Works" best for ELL tots: lions or aardvarks). So it gives me pleasure to share, as reported in a recent EdWeek article, that IES has formally acknowledged that WWC might need some tweaking to actually become relevant to educators.

You might have expected big things in the first 4 years of the WWC. I mean, when the American Institutes for Research, which must be the biggest ed research firm by now having eaten up most of its smaller competitors in the past five years, teams up with big-time subcontractors like Lockheed Martin and the University of Pennsylvania, you'd think something pretty big would come out of it. But you'd be wrong.

Yes, there's been a lot of time and effort (oh, and a little money too) invested in creating an initial infrastructure and then protocols for review, advisory groups and other "products, activities and services". But still there are only 7 topics covered and a paltry number of studies that may or may not work but at least made it through the crazy filter set up to distinguish good research from bad.

Really, though, I'm glad that they've seen the light and are looking for ways to include real programs and practices that schools and communities are using. It should push AIR or any other potentially winning bidders to change the approach, which is a good thing.

Julie Amero and Technical Literacy

Technology and science bloggers and writers have been buzzing recently about the case of Julie Amero, a substitute teacher from Connecticut facing up to 40 years in prison because of an incident in which some students saw pornographic photos on a classroom computer. Amero's defense argues that the pictures the students saw were unwanted pop-ups, the result of a spyware infecting the computer. Her story sounds quite plausible and people who know more than I do about both technology and the specific facts of the case seem to believe she's an innocent victim here, not a criminal.

Somewhat surprisingly, education blogs have been pretty quiet about the case.

Reading accounts of the case, I couldn't help but be struck by the level of technological incompetence and neglect they suggested. The classroom computer involved was seriously outdated--WaPo reports it was running Windows 98. What's more, the school's technology infrastructure appears to have been very poorly maintained: Both the school's firewall subscription and the machine's anti-virus software were expired, which seems pretty inexcusable and possibly a violation of federal law. And I would be shocked if Norwich--which has more-disadvantaged kids than the average Connecticut school, but is hardly high-poverty and spends about the statewide average--is the only school district where this is the case. There's a lot of talk in education circles about the need to get kids proficient in using modern information technology, of which I'm sort of skeptical, but it's hard to see much chance of that happening if the adults in charge can't even take care of basic maintenance of their technology equipment. Moreover, and I know this is a cliche, but what other professionals would put up with working with the kind of out-dated, ill-maintained technology so many teachers are expected to use?

Better Than Anything in the SOTU

So, I think Assorted Stuff's suggestion for open source textbooks is a pretty good idea.

And, all due respect to The Essential Blog's objections, this sounds pretty sweet, too, certainly no worse than the umpteen other game shows out there built around the same "superficial nature of displaying knowledge" that Essential Blog finds so offensive. And way cooler than Deal or No Deal, which seemingly requires no knowledge at all.

Will the real Margaret Spellings please stand up?

Note to NBC: This woman is NOT Margaret Spellings.


This is Margaret Spellings. Yes, the pink suits can be confusing.

Bush Hearts Baby Einstein

Am I the only person who found it odd and somewhat unseemly that the President of the United States used a portion of his State of the Union Address to essentially advertise a line of baby toys? Does this mean they qualify as being based in scientifically-based research? (Cuz I'm skeptical: more TK)

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The Most Education-y Oscars Ever?

Let other folks be all about the SOTU; I want to talk about the educational implications of today's Academy Award nominations. In what may well be an historical first, three out of the 20 acting nominees are nominated for their performances as teachers: Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson and Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal. I haven't seen Half Nelson--though I want to--but Notes on a Scandal was very good and impressively acted. It's worth noting that none of these actors are playing the sort of teacher/hero/martyr character NYT contributor Tom Moore was all worked up about earlier this week; in fact, none of the characters are admirable, and some might even find them, especially Dench's Barbara Covett, despicable. I'm not sure if this says anything about public perception of teachers today (I kind of doubt it) or simply reflects that fact that deeply flawed characters tend to give actors more opportunities to show off their chops than saintly ones do. While you'd think martyr teacher roles would be Oscar bait, given the Academy's affection for "socially-conscious" movies (cough!-Blood Diamond-cough!), that doesn't seem to be the case. I can't find a recent example of someone being nominated for such a role, and I believe the last person to win an Academy Award for playing a teacher was Maggie Smith in the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie--a complicated character who inspired her students, but with some tragic effects. (I may be missing someone here, though: If I am, please shoot me a note and I'll correct.)

The educational relevance of this year's Oscar noms doesn't end there, however: Will Smith got a nomination for his performance in The Pursuit of Happyness, from which Richard Colvin drew some very interesting observations related to education.

And, lest we forget it's really all about the kids, there's awesomely adorable Abigail Breslin with a supporting actress nomination for Little Miss Sunshine. Indeed, the entire best supporting actress category is pretty kid-centric this year, including Breslin, Blanchett, Adriana Barraza as a nanny/housekeeper in Babel (her storyline includes some moments of not-high-quality childcare), and Rinko Kikuchi, also in Babel, playing a deaf mute teenager (even though Kikuchi herself is 25). The only one I can't make fit into that scheme is Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls, which I guess is sort of appropriate seeing as how her character also winds up getting cut out of the group in the movie.

UPDATE: So it's not really Academy Awards or education related, but I'm pleased to read this story (via Joanne Jacobs) about young girls admiring recent Golden Globe winner (for Ugly Betty) America Ferrera. Ever since I saw Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (ok, make fun of me, yeah), I've believed that, if we lived in a good, righteous, just and proper world, America Ferrera would be oodles, oodles more famous, highly-compensated and adored than, say, Lindsay Lohan or the zillions of other stick-skinny, dippy starlets I keep seeing on the magazine covers in the supermarket chekout line. I was annoyed to learn she was being cast an an "ugly" character in Betty, but the show is proving itself worthy and Ms. Ferrera's getting mad kudos, so maybe the world is good after all.

UPDATE II: Speaking of things that prove the world is good and just (and now totally unrelated to education), yay for Mark Wahlberg getting nominated for his hysterically profane performance in The Departed.

More School Time

There are a lot of people celebrating the merits of Time right now. Policy proposals to add time to the school day or school year are popping up in states, districts and even on the national front. More school time is seen as the best way to help schools and students meet higher academic standards and keep the U.S. globally competitive. More time, it is said, will lead to more of everything: more core academics, more enrichment, more teacher planning and professional development.

There is no question that schools are struggling to fit it all in. But is adding time the answer?

Education Sector just released a new report on time. In it, I turn to research on time and learning to try to explain that while time certainly matters, it may not be the linchpin of school improvement. Of course it's a valuable resource for schools and yes, in good schools with quality teachers and strong curriculum, having more of it will lead to more good learning. But in schools with fewer experienced teachers, high turnover rates in staff and leadership, and a record of poor performance, it just doesn't sit right to keep kids in these schools longer. The kids in these schools-- generally the poorer kids who don't have their parents waiting at home to read to them or take them to private music lessons or language programs--do need more quality learning time to keep up with their peers and to get the education they deserve. But we must be careful not to assume that quantity matters as much as quality. It simply doesn't.

Read Jay Mathews take on it here, and read the full Education Sector report here.

Join us on February 7th to hear more perspectives on extending time in school.

The 99th Percentile of Intellectual Dishonesty

Charles Murray, in the first($) of a three-part(!) series on the relationship between IQ and education in the WSJ opinion page, says:

What IQ is necessary to give a child a reasonable chance to meet the NAEP's basic achievement score? Remarkably, it appears that no one has tried to answer that question.

He then goes on to say:

That total lack of knowledge will not, however, prevent me from making a series of wholly unsubstantiated assertions about the educational limits of persons possessing various levels of intelligence. Such as saying of a student in the 49th IQ percentile, "It is not within his power to learn to follow an exposition written beyond a limited level of complexity." Or that a student at the 20th percentile "will be able to comprehend only simple written material." Or that "To have an IQ of 100 means that a tough high-school course pushes you about as far as your academic talents will take you." Or that "it makes sense for only about 15% of the population, 25% if one stretches it, to get a college education." These statistics and facts are, mind you, complete fabrications. But that's okay! As a reader of the Wall Street Journal Opinion page, you undoubtedly have a high enough IQ to discern the larger truth.

I may have made some of that up (not the quotes). But you see my point.

Note also the class condescension here:

The spread of wealth at the top of American society has created an explosive increase in the demand for craftsmen. Finding a good lawyer or physician is easy. Finding a good carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason -- the list goes on and on -- is difficult, and it is a seller's market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the income distribution while master craftsmen can make six figures. They have work even in a soft economy. Their jobs cannot be outsourced to India. And the craftsman's job provides wonderful intrinsic rewards that come from mastery of a challenging skill that produces tangible results. How many white-collar jobs provide nearly as much satisfaction?

Apparently, we should all appreciate the sacrifices made by Charles Murray and his ilk in the white-collar world, who have selflessly foregone the arcadian satisfactions of a blue-collar livelihood in order to enlighten us with their wisdom. And what do they get in return? An education system so hell-bent on giving everyone a chance to learn that you can't get any good help around the house. Why are those people wasting time in college when they could be downstairs fixing my sink?!

Bennet's (Revised) Rescue Plan

This week's New Yorker magazine features a story about Denver superintendent Michael Bennet's efforts to reform one of Denver's worst public schools. You may have seen some pieces of the ongoing saga about Manual High School, which by all accounts was a tough place to succeed as a reformer or as a student. Boo's account captures the story of this school and its students as a defining part of Bennet's tenure as superintendent, which began in the summer of 2005.

Bennet previously served as the chief of staff for Denver's mayor Hickenlooper and as a managing director for an investment company. An "educational outsider", Bennet looked to some basic principles of management and problem-solving, and immediately announced bold plans to improve and reform Denver's lowest performing schools. He developed three "steps to success", which he laid out in a July 2005 op-ed:
1. Create a safe and orderly environment in every school and every classroom;
2. Develop a highly skilled faculty in every school with access to robust professional development and real-time diagnostic data to evaluate student progress;
3. Support and equip principals to be instructional leaders for the faculty in their school.

All good ideas. But not enough. At least not for Manual High School. With good reason, Bennet set his sights on Manual from the start. Reforms at Manual had failed. Achievement was among the lowest in a low-performing district. In 2005, the 35 percent of Denver public school 9th graders scored proficient in reading, 24 percent in writing, and 12 percent in math. At Manual, 9th grade proficiency levels were just 12 percent for reading, 4 percent for writing, and a miserable 2 percent for math.

Bennet decided to close Manual, abruptly and without community buy-in or involvement. Bennet called it a "rescue mission" but the community was outraged and called the closure an "attack" on the low-income minority neighborhood and student body (Manual's student body is 90 percent Latino and 10 percent Black, 70 percent receiving free and reduced lunch, and nearly half designated English language learners).

As Boo describes, the plan was to redistribute Manual students among four higher-performing schools but, despite campus tours, new bus routes, and additional counseling, the kids scattered to schools throughout the city, including other low-performing public schools as well as online and night programs. Many registered but never showed up at their new schools.

Bennet still has high hopes for Manual, which is scheduled to be re-opened next year with a ninth grade (subsequent grades to be added each year), and stands behind his goals for all schools to be rigorous, high-performing and headed by strong leaders.

But Bennet has changed his tune and now acknowledges publicly that the culture of school and community has proven to be a stronger force than he expected, or bargained for. So he's now calling for more direct community involvement, even leadership, in redesigning Manual and other schools.

Boo's article reminds us of the obvious– school reform isn't easy. It also reminds us that separating school change from community change is not the best way out. Saving Manual will take innovation and smart ideas but, as Bennet has seen, it also will require collaboration and community support. There's a Manual Renewal Project, complete with community council, now in place. Whether this will work to save or re-invigorate this or any other failing school depends largely on how and if the community is really engaged and sustained in the effort to improve the school. After years of community-school reform efforts at one high school, I've learned that parent and student involvement in meetings and committees will not do the trick. Manual will need not only strong leadership (the job of Manual High School principal is open), high quality teachers and a new paint job, but also some systemic and ongoing partnerships with CBOS, local businesses and colleges to ensure that these kids get all of the resources and opportunities they need to succeed.

Down the Financial-Aid Hole

Two articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education today illustrate the complicated, head-spinning world of financial aid.

First, the White House issued a response yesterday to the Democrat’s proposed bill to cut interest rates on student loans. The response states:

Reducing student loan interest rates would direct subsidies to college graduates, not to students and their families who are struggling to meet current and future educational expenses. College graduates have higher lifetime earnings, and can already take advantage of flexible repayment options available under current law and reduce the effective interest rate they pay through the existing tax deduction for student loan interest.

While I agree with the White House’s argument that the Democrats’ bill neglects needed increases in grant aid, I disagree with the implication that all college graduates are equally able to repay student loans, or that current policies sufficiently help students with low post-graduation earnings. Few students take advantage of alternative repayment options--only 11%, according to an NCES report--and yet those with high debt or low incomes are at much higher risk of default. This is likely because 1) students don’t understand their options and 2) these programs don’t provide a real benefit to students, they only increase the repayment term and total cost of loans. Also, while current interest rate tax deductions provide some relief, it is minimal compared with the Democrats’ proposal. According to a GAO report, the average annual deduction is $134, which, over a 10-year loan amounts to much less than the $4,000 benefit under the Democrats’ plan.

Add to this mix story #2 from the Chronicle about a recent report from Eduventures on the rise in institutional aid among colleges and universities. While not entirely new information (see here and here), the report adds fuel to criticisms of colleges’ use of institutional aid. The report states that "need-based awards may be used, in part, as a recruiting mechanism to attract students of relatively higher academic profiles." This also means that less of this money is going to low-income students.

All this to say that financial aid in this country has become too complicated, too much of a black box, for most students and families to understand, much less optimize. The complicated and changing array of federal programs, not to mention state and institutional aid programs, makes a comprehensive financial aid reform bill both formidable, and absolutely necessary.

Mysteries, Puzzles, and Think Tanks

Malcom Gladwell published an article in the New Yorker a few weeks ago about the difference between a puzzle and mystery. While his focus was mainly on Enron, Watergate, and the changing nature of foreign intelligence, it strikes me that the distinction has a lot of relevance to some of the ongoing tensions between the research and think tank spheres. Gladwell says:

The national-security expert Gregory Treverton has famously made a distinction between puzzles and mysteries. Osama bin Laden's whereabouts are a puzzle. We can't find him because we don't have enough information. The key to the puzzle will probably come from someone close to bin Laden, and until we can find that source bin Laden will remain at large.

The problem of what would happen in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein was, by contrast, a mystery. It wasn't a question that had a simple, factual answer. Mysteries require judgments and the assessment of uncertainty, and the hard part is not that we have too little information but that we have too much."

The foreign intelligence community has been struggling, according to Treverton, because the nature of its job is changing. During the Cold War, it spent a lot of time solving puzzles. In this day and age, it is increasingly charged with solving mysteries, which requires a different set of skills and attitudes.

On some level, the same kind of thing is happening in public policy. There's a lot we don't know about education. But we certainly know much more know than we ever knew before. Formulating good policy, therefore, is increasingly becoming a function of making sense of the information we have, not finding new information to consider. In other words, solving mysteries instead of puzzles.

The research and think tank spheres engage in both of these activities. But their underlying value systems are different. The most important thing you can do in the research sphere is create new knowledge, add to the collective sum of human understanding. The think tank sphere does some of this, but for reasons of design and purpose it tends to put more emphasis on interpreting information and translating it into specific policies. The end product of research lends itself to puzzle-solving, while think tanks tend to focus on mysteries.

You can see how these value systems clash by observing the way people criticize think tank reports. For example, a few weeks ago, Education Sector released a new report called "Frozen Assets," which used data and findings originally published by many other researchers to do two things: (1) Identify a group of common teacher contract provisions that, according to research, have a weak or inconsistent relationship with student learning, and (2) Estimate how much those provisions costs -- $77 billion nationwide.

Teachers union critics of the report immediately said, "There is no new or original research here." Implicit in this criticism is the idea that new and original research is inherently more valuable and worthy of discussion, and that by lacking those elements the paper is unworthy of serious consideration by definition. This is clearly an argument that resonates, otherwise critics wouldn't use it. "Move along," they're saying. "Nothing new to see here."

This misses the point entirely. "Frozen Assets," like a lot of think tank work, is not about solving puzzles by finding new information. It's about finding new meaning in the information we already have. In this case, that consists of connecting research about how various school factors and policies do--or do not--improve student learning with research and analysis about how much related contract provisions cost, in a way that makes sense to policymakers and the general public. This kind of mystery-solving isn't inherently more or less valuable than puzzle-solving. It's just different, and deserves to criticized on its own terms.

The larger issue lies with the fact that as the amount of freely-available information grows ever larger and the world becomes more complex, education policy will become more like foreign intelligence. The key issues will tend to be mysteries, not puzzles, and influence will accrue to the mystery-solvers.

Many people in the research and academic communities find this troubling, for some completely valid reasons. The media, public, and policymakers don't always have the time or expertise needed to figure out which reports and information sources are truly credible. The academic community addresses this problem with strong internal controls based on credentialling and peer review. But as we learned during the recent Abramoff scandals, anyone can hang out a shingle and call themselves a think tank, all you need is a Web site and an important-sounding name. Remember the "American International Center," the "premiere international think tank" run by a lifeguard in Rehoboth Beach?

That said, there are also many really good think tanks and NGOs. They're meeting the growing demand for mystery-solving, in a way that's purposefully designed to change policy. That doesn't excuse them from any and all scrutiny of the quality or integrity of their work. But that scrutiny is more meaningful when it focuses on what their work actually is.

Update 1: Alexander Russo weighs in here.

The Other 25% of D.C. Students: Fenty's Plans for the District's Charters

D.C. edu-watchers have been abuzz lately--with good reason--over Mayor Adrian Fenty's plans to take over operation of the city's public school system. Less attention has been devoted to Fenty's plans for charters, which serve 25% of D.C.'s public school students. But Theola Labbé takes up the issue in today's Post.

There are three key elements of Fenty's plans related to charters. First, the plan would strip the existing Board of Education of its chartering authority and transfer oversight responsibility for schools chartered by the BoE to the city's other chartering authority, the Public Charter School Board (PCSB). In addition, Fenty would require PCSB to review school charters every three years, instead of the current five-year reviews, and would give the State Education Office greater oversight authority over PCSB, including allowing schools to appeal charter denials or revocations to SEO and allowing SEO to revoke charters itself.

Labbé's piece focuses primarily on the concerns some BoE-chartered school leaders have about shifting to the PCSB, which some view as less publicly-responsive, since it's appointed by the Mayor rather than elected. It made sense for some school leaders to prefer the Board of Education earlier in the history of D.C.'s charter movement, because there was a perception that charters had been Congressionally-imposed on the District and some charter leaders felt affiliating with the semi-elected Board of Education gave them greater public legitimacy. But when you consider that the elected Board of Ed. itself wants to get out of the chartering business, that half the Board of Ed's members are already mayoral appointees, and that Fenty's plan would make virtually all the key decisionmakers for public education in D.C. mayoral appointees, the concern seems less compelling. More significantly, the definition of publicness in charter school oversight should not be whether an authorizer is composed of elected or appointed officials, but how well it serves the public good. And the scandals of the past year have made clear that the Board of Education has done a much poorer job executing its public trust as a charter authorizer than has the Public Charter School Board. That's why I think putting all the existing charters under PCSB oversight is a good part of Fenty's plan.

I'm more concerned about some of the provisions regarding SEO oversight of the PCSB. I have studied charter schooling in other states where it was clear that there was a need for greater state-level oversight of charter school authorizers, but the PCSB's record and reputation do not suggest a major need for greater oversight of authorizers in D.C. Three-year rather than five-year reviews for all schools would dramatically increase PCSB's workload, as well as the burden on charter schools. I understand the call for more frequent reviews, but at the very least the new legislation should allow five-year reviews for established charters with a strong record of compliance and performance. This is just being smart about where to devote oversight resources. The charter school community is also understandably concerned about provisions giving the State Education Office the right to revoke charters.

But my biggest disappointment with Fenty's plans as they concern charter schools is what I don't see. First, I'd like more clarity about how the new Facilities Construction and Maintenance Authority will ensure that children attending charter schools benefit from new investments in D.C. school buildings just as much as their non-charter peers do. Second, I wish Fenty had considered taking on some charter authorizing responsibilities himself. The Public Charter School Board is a good authorizer, but it's in the best interests of D.C.'s charter sector--and indeed the overall educational ecology here--to have multiple high-quality authorizers operating in the District. Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson is doing a great job of chartering schools there. Fenty should consider following Peterson's lead and establishing a new charter authorizing office under the Deputy Mayor for Education. This would create another high-quality charter school authorizer in D.C. and send a signal that Fenty cares about and has a stake the city's charter school sector as well as DCPS.

An Appletree Grows on Capitol Hill?

I forgot to mention last week that D.C.'s Appletree Early Learning Public Charter School, (disclosure alert!) on whose board I serve, got some good news from the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment (BZA). Last year the Zoning Administrator denied Appletree a permit to build a school on a lot it owns near Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill. As Joe Williams has noted, gaming zoning rules has become a popular tool in the "ground war" against charter school growth. Last week the BZA granted Appletree's appeal of that denial. Appletree's still not in the clear--as yesterday's Examiner noted, neighborhood residents who oppose the school plan to continue fighting it--but this is good news for the school and for families struggling with the shortage of high-quality preschool and childcare options on the Hill. The Examiner also subtly notes the real source of neighborhood opposition to the plan: white, affluent Lincoln Park residents don't want the school bringing disadvantaged and minority students into their neighborhood.

btw: It's recently come to my attention that the Examiner runs a surprising number of articles focusing at a fairly granular level on various goings-on in public education in the District. The Examiner and the Post also tend to cover different stories in education, with the Examiner sometimes bringing more of a muckraking angle to education coverage in DC.

Stands Scotland where it Did?

WaPo gives more background to the racial tensions that have surfaced at Montgomery County’s Winston Churchill High School following a string of recent fights and letter sent home by the school’s principal describing them as “Black-on-Black violence.” Residents of Scotland, an historically African-American community in the school’s attendance area viewed the comment as a specific attack on them. In the more recent article, the principal says she made the comment to defend the school’s black students, who have recently raised their test scores.

But the school's African-American students are still not doing very well on state achievement tests. In the most recent assessment, in 2006, only 51% of the school’s black students (who make up 6% of its enrollment) tested proficient in reading—worse than the average for black students in Montgomery County or the state of Maryland as a whole, and a sharp contrast with the 95% of the school’s white students—well above state and county averages—who were proficient in reading. Gaps between Winston Churchill’s white and black students were similarly large in math, although the school’s black students performed marginally better than the state average in math. The racial tensions at Churchill accompany large achievement gaps.

These gaps exist in what is generally regarded as a high-performing, elite suburban school—according to Jay Mathews, one of America’s 100 best—underscoring why disaggregated accountability reporting, a la NCLB, is so important to advancing educational equity for poor and minority kids. Some of Winston Churchill’s students are learning much less than others, but you’ve gotta look past the averages to see what’s going on. Further, Winston Churchill's African-American and low-income students are barely matching or doing worse than their peers statewide even though they attend a racially- and economically-integrated (at least at the schoolwide level), high-resource, generally high-performing school. That’s not an indictment of efforts to advance racial and socio-economic integration, but it is a caution against expecting either to be a silver bullet for improving the achievement of disadvantaged and minority students.

Frosty the Anti-Snow Man

Frosty Hardison, a concerned parent of seven, wants Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" banned from school. In an interesting twist, he objects not because he doesn't believe in global warming, but because the movie doesn't present an alternative explanation for global warming: instead of rising carbon emissions, it's a sign that the biblically ordained end times are upon us. Which seems pretty ridiculous, but then again I did just read that shockingly reasonable Bracey report....

For Lenders, the Trouble Begins

Next week, the house will consider a bill to cut interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans in half--to 3.4%--over five years. The cost of these cuts will come close to $6 billion and, under the new ‘PAYGO’ rules, the Democrats are paying for it with cuts in lender subsidies. While some students will benefit from the lower interest rates, this bill is more about freeing-up money from the heavily-subsidized lending industry than it is about making college more affordable.

Making college more affordable will require broader changes in the lending ‘system’ (although our confusing and complicated financial aid system is hardly a system at all), including targeting aid to students who need it most and providing help to students who are struggling to repay their debt. While interest rate subsidies will alleviate debt payments for some, they are poorly targeted, do not encourage colleges to lower costs, and do not take into account students’ post-graduation income levels and ability to repay debt.

This bill does make some important steps forward, however, in how money is allocated in our lending system. Currently, a lot of money is tied up in lender subsidies and payments. This bill starts to chip away at those subsidies and reallocate the money to students. Hopefully, once it's apparent that lenders can survive reduced government subsidies, it will make room for more lender subsidy cuts and more reallocations to financial aid.

A Sign of the Coming Apocalypse

Jerry Bracey has released his annual "Rotten Apples" awards. Roughly speaking, I agree without about half of the awards. I find this to be an inordinately high and deeply disturbing number. It's some kind of leading indicator of deterioration in the education policy sphere--the more often Bracey is right, the worse things have become.

Down to Brass Tacks on Teacher Pay

Leo Casey has weighed in on "Frozen Assets," Education Sector's recent report on the fiscal consequences of teacher contracts. Or as he puts it, "yet another" Education Sector report. Sorry, Leo--plenty more where that came from! No rest for the wicked!

It seems like just a couple of days ago--oh wait, it was just a couple of days ago--that Leo laid out some sensible ground rules for substantive, informed blogging on education policy, such as the fact that union critics are not wrong by definition. So it's a little disappointing to see him dismiss the research cited in the report as "old thin gruel by the anti-union, anti-public education short order cooks." There have been cease-fires in the Middle East that lasted longer than that....

But Leo's post is nonetheless useful, because he quickly gets down to the heart of the matter: merit pay. "Frozen Assets" isn't a merit pay manifesto by any means, but it does put the idea squarely on the table, and it does criticize the seniority-based single salary schedules used by the vast majority of school districts. Even though research clearly shows that teacher effectiveness tends to stop increasing after about five years in the classroom, salary schedules keep bumping up pay for years or even decades beyond that.

To his credit, Leo concedes this point. But he defends perpetual seniority-based raises on the grounds that they're needed to retain teachers, particularly after all that goes into getting them past the five-year threshold. And to do that, we have to "take into account the mid-life financial pressures faced by teachers, as they pay home mortages and send their own children to college."

In this one sentence, once can learn a great deal about why issues of teacher pay are so contentious and hard to resolve.

I suspect that teachers unions often wonder why people keep obsessing over merit pay, particularly when they concede, as Leo does, that it would be okay to have differential pay for other things, like working in hard-to-staff schools or getting National Board certification.

The answer, I think, is that getting paid based on how well you do your job is so ubiquitous and inherently sensible that to deny it on principle is to fundamentally dissociate onself from both logic and the common experience of workers and professionals in this day and age. In that sense, merit pay is about more than the issue at hand. It's a litmus test for reasonableness, an indicator of whether you're serious about schools and educators being driven by performance, about whether you believe that teachers should or should not be compensated in basically the same way as everyone else who has a job requiring similarly high levels of education, professionalism, and dedication.

Leo can object to merit pay "schemes which seek to replace the entire structure of teacher salary schedules with pay differentials decided by subjective supervisory judgments and by poorly crafted standardized tests." But I think we all know that it goes deeper than that, that even if the schemes became plans and the supervisory judgments became objective and the tests became well-crafted, the basic issue would remain.

The vast majority of people who work, particularly in professional jobs, are paid what their labor is worth in the open job market, no more, no less. That amount can often seem arbitrary or divisive or insufficient or unfair. And all those things are frequently true. But in the end, they don't get paid more than their colleagues who do work of the same value, or more, just because they happen to be of a certain age or have kids in college and a mortgage to pay. That's the world we live in.

Perhaps Leo think that's the problem in a nutshell, that teachers unions have achieved a more enlightened way of doing business, one that keep workers together instead of pushing them apart, one that is more stable, fair, and humane. Which makes merit pay a litmus test of a different kind, an indicator of whether people want to preserve the past victories of labor and build on them, or attack those victories and tear them down.

I believe in unions. As I've said before, I think the final reckoning of the last 100 years will show that unions are disproportionately responsible for much of what's decent and honorable in the working lives of Americans. But on this issue, I think teachers unions are trying to do too much, at too great a cost. The best way to help teachers with kids in college isn't to pay them extra, it's to fully fund Pell grants and keep tuition low. Unions can, and should, push for increasing the overall amount of money teachers are paid, which I think is too low. But the dynamics there are not the same as, for example, increasing the minimum wage. And banding together to collectively fight for higher wages doesn't preclude teachers from making distinctions about those wages based on something as elementary as performance. Unity and uniformity are not the same thing.

In the long run, performance has to matter in education. If you tell a group of people that their status and salary will be determined in a manner that is indifferent to how hard they work or what they ultimately accomplish, they will, collectively, accomplish less. In the long run, teachers unions are going to have to concede this principle. That doesn't mean that there are no difficulties in transforming the principle into practice, or that teachers shouldn't play a major role in making those decisions. They absolutely should. But as long as unions stay on the wrong side of this line in the sand, they're going to be fighting a losing and increasingly lonely battle.

Update: Sherman Dorn comments here. Briefly: Sherman gives Leo (or me, not quite sure which) too little credit here--I actually think Leo does a good job of engaging seriously on the ideas, which distinguishes him from some of his colleagues. I just think his ideas are problematic. I'm not sure what "significant logical flaws" Sherman is talking about--does he mean Leo's comments about the NYC class size limitations? Of course eliminating a class size reduction or limitation policy would increase class sizes. That goes without saying, doesn't it? What else could it mean? What the paper says is that there's little in the way of research to suggest that marginal class size reductions, along the lines the 1.5 or 2 per class that Leo describes, have significant benefits. Big reductions below a certain threshold, yes. Small reductions that don't reach that threshold, no. Therefore, that money could potentially be spent for other, more productive purposes--like increased teacher salaries.

When Mom and Dad Don't Show Up

Sophia Pappas has a really terrific post up about parent engagement and teacher responsibilities. After trying--and failing--to engage the mother of one of her lowest-performing students, Pappas writes:

I grow frustrated and decide instead to focus solely on Tyrique and our work inside the classroom. With our efforts to target his needs in one-on-one, small group, and whole group interactions, Tyrique has now started to identify beginning sounds and some letters in words on his own. He can also write his name and read the names of his friends.

Is family support important? Of course. But what happens when difficulties with parental investment arise, even as early as pre-k? Does the child become a lost cause? Of course not. Should teachers relinquish their own responsibility? Just the opposite.

This strikes me as just about right. Communicating with parents and trying to engage them in their children's learning when appropriate is part of teachers' jobs. But teachers have relatively little leverage to change parent behavior, so focusing on what teachers can do to address children's needs directly often has better returns to effort than trying to engage unresponsive parents.

In an ideal world, we'd want all kids to have engaged, supportive parents who were eager to get information from teachers about how to support their children's learning and to put that information in practice. In reality, that's not always the case, even when parents love their children very much, for a host of reasons. And the kids who are getting the least support at home are also those who can least afford to have their teachers give up on them as a result of their parents' shortcomings.

Anyway, I've really been enjoying Ms. Pappas' blog since it launched in early December, so if you haven't checked it out yet, you should.

Merit Pay is Murder

Per the post below, to get a sense of just how much some local teachers union officials hate the idea of merit pay, here's a quote from local president in Nashville (Hat tip-Joanne Jacobs):

Last fall, the association passed on a $400,000 donation that would have put up to $6,000 extra in the pockets of Inglewood and Alex Green elementary schoolteachers. Any changes to Metro teacher salary or compensation need approval by a majority of the union’s members. Association President Jamye Merritt said the money was rejected because the terms of the gift were unclear, and teachers didn’t know what expectations they would need to meet. “People take money every day for things I would not do ... there are people that are paid to be assassins,” she said. “Sometimes it’s just not worth the sacrifice you would have to make for the money.”

Teachers, Unions, Money

Educaton Sector has released a new report authored by Marguerite Roza of the University of Washington and the Center on Reinventing Public Education, analyzing the fiscal impact of teacher contracts. Titled "Frozen Assets," the paper finds that roughly $77 billion nationwide is tied up in supporting contracts provisions that have a weak relationship with student learning, and could thus potentially be put to better use.

The Washington Post has a good story on the report here. NEA president Reg Weaver offers the standard "object first, figure out what the heck I'm talking about later, or more probably never" non-sequiter response, by saying: "Research has shown us time and time again that low salaries drive committed people from the teaching profession." Had he read the report, he would know that it has nothing to do with cutting salaries for teachers overall. If anything, it would increase teacher salaries by redirecting money that is currently being used for purposes that, according to research, don't contribute to student learning, such as teacher's aides, marginal class size reductions, ineffective professional development, and overly generous non-salary benefits. As the paper notes, that money could be used for proposals that the NEA itself supports, like increasing the average starting salary for teachers.

AFTie Michele posits that one of the provisions analyzed--excessive sick days--may be a function of the fact that teachers, more than most workers, tend to (A) be women, who take time off to go the doctor when pregnant, and (B) spend a lot of time with children, who spread a lot of germs. Seems like a fair point, whether it accounts for all the differences the report notes, I don't know.

Beyond that, her objections mostly boil down to "This is all about not liking seniority and the single salary schedule." Well, sure, it is mostly about those things. The report explains these positions and cites research to back them up (hopefully this will address the concerns of Sherman Dorn). If you disagree, you have to say why you disagree. Noting that private schools have similar policies isn't enough, they may just be making the same bad decisions.

By contrast, I recommend this post from Leo Casey at EdWize, who, unlike his colleagues at AFTBlog, actually offers detailed arguments and evidence to back up his disagreements. In doing so he inadvertently exposes some of the internal contradictions in the way unions talk about teacher salaries, which are apparently vitally important unless we're talking about differential salaries, in which case teachers are suddenly much more motivated by "an altruistic sense of public service and nurturance, to make a positive difference in the lives of children." But it's still a thoughtful post on the topic of wage compression and the history of teacher salaries and collective bargaining, and well worth reading.

Too Many Asians at Berkeley?

In today’s NYTimes Education Life supplement, Timothy Egan writes an unsatisfying story about an interesting issue: the growing number of Asian students at elite universities.

Egan pegs his story to UC-Berkeley, where the percentage of Asian students has grown to 41% in the wake of a statewide ballot initiative prohibiting the consideration of race in public college admissions. But while he gives a sense of the changing atmosphere on the Berkeley campus, Egan doesn’t really dig into the heart of the matter—affirmative action.

Affirmative action comes with serious costs. But on the whole I think it’s a good idea, for three reasons.

First, not all students get the same opportunities in K-12 schools. Black and Latino students, on average, are forced to attend schools that receive less funding, are taught by worse teachers, have less access to advanced curricula like Advanced Placement tests, and generally suffer from the hard bigotry of low expectations. Affirmative action helps students who would have come to the admissions process with better credentials if they’d been given a fair shot to begin with.

Second, affirmative action works, in the words of Yale law school professor Stephen Carter, whose Reflections of An Affirmative Action Baby is required reading on this topic, as a tax. Taxes are necessary for a functioning society, and there’s plenty of precedent for tax policies that treat different people differently. For example, the federal income tax system taxes rich people at a higher rate than poor people. This is a good, workable policy because (A) rich people can afford it, and (B) other people need that money more.

Affirmative action is basically an educational opportunity tax on white people. Like progressive income taxes, it redistributes resources from people who have a disproportionate share to people who need them more. This seems unfair to white people who themselves come from less advantaged backgrounds, and it probably is. But it’s no more unfair than applying the same tax rate to the rich person who earned every dollar from the sweat of his brow as to the person who inherited his money and got a cushy job in the family business. Policies are by nature imperfect, and in the end it’s still better to be rich than poor in America, and white people still enjoy huge advantages that others don’t. Having to settle for a slot in a slightly less competitive college moves the traditional losers in the zero-sum affirmative action game—unusually smart, well-qualified white people—from being in the 99.999th percentile of luckiest people on the face of the Earth to about the 99.998th. They’ll be fine.

The third justification for affirmative action is diversity, which is certainly important—it makes sense for colleges to create an academic environment with broad, differing perspectives, backgrounds, and beliefs. But I tend to value diversity less than the first two justifications for affirmative action, mostly because of how the idea gets used and applied in practical terms. Proponents don’t do a good job of explaining the theoretical limits of diversity as a value, the degree of its benefits or cases when it should be subordinate to other things. Nor do they seem eager to discuss the fact that some perspectives, backgrounds, and beliefs are more worthwhile than others. As a result, diversity as an idea is routinely diluted and abused by people like the college coach in Dan Golden’s excellent book on the corruption of the college admissions process, The Price of Admission, who justified giving preferences to academically suspect athletes on the grounds that the university would benefit from “academic diversity” in that students who aren’t as smart ask more questions in class.

Moreover, for reasons of constitutional law and, I think, a fair amount of intellectual dishonesty, the diversity benefits of affirmative action are increasingly framed in terms of what’s good for white people, as if the whole point is to give the sons and daughters of privilege a chance to spend a few years in a controlled environment hearing about how what it’s like to be a minority in America, before going back to the economically and racially segregated world from which they came. As Dahlia Lithwick said in a discussion of the Michigan affirmative action case, “Schools are not petting zoos.” Or do we honestly think that the main benefit of affirmative action is to give minority students a once-in-a-lifetime exposure to the white perspective? Don’t they get more than enough of that already?

Asian students make all of this more complicated. Many are striving first-generation immigrants from modest economic backgrounds, the embodiment of the American dream. They belong to ethnic groups that have suffered significant past legal and cultural discrimination. Given the added benefits of diversity, the more in college the better—right?

As it turns out, not so much. As Golden made clear in his book and subsequent articles in the WSJ, a number of elite colleges now have what amount to reverse quotas for Asian students, admitting a smaller percentage of Asian applicants than other groups even though those students have stronger qualifications by basically reviving the racist policies the same colleges first developed in the 1920s to keep out Jewish students. Apparently, a college can become too diverse, or it least it can when diversity is defined as “degree of difference from the white people who run things.” What institutions like Princeton (which is being sued by an Asian student with perfect SATs it rejected) seem to want is enough diversity to keep things interesting, but not so much that it threatens their overwhelmingly white base of wealthy alumni, particularly those who have children up for admission.

This collision of race, class, privilege, and history has led to a lot of confused thinking. Both Egan and one of the students he interviews refer to UC-Berkeley as “overwhelmingly Asian,” a strange thing to say about a university where Asian students are still less than half the population. This is neatly reflected in the cover of the Education Life supplement, which is comprised of 100 identical squares, 41 of which feature a picture of an Asian student, exactly the same as the percent of Asians among Berkeley undergrads. But the other 59 squares don’t feature the white, black, Hispanic, and other non-Asian students that make up the majority of the Berkeley campus. They’re blank, so all you see are Asians. The cover reflects the same skewed perspective as Egan and his interviewee.

Egan also quotes a professor getting several things wrong all at once:

“I’ve heard from Latinos and blacks that Asians should not be considered a minority at all,” says Elaine Kim, a professor of Asian-American studies at Berkeley. “What happened after they got rid of affirmative action has been a disaster — for blacks and Latinos. And for Asians it’s been a disaster because some people think the campus has become all-Asian.”

Most of the Asians interviewed in the article seemed pretty psyched to be enrolled at the top-ranked public university in the nation with lots of other Asian students. To say that getting rid of race-conscious admissions has been a “disaster” for them is bizarre, and represents a common failure among affirmative action advocates--an unwillingness to acknowledge that admissions policies are zero-sum. You can't say there are no winners and losers in affirmative action. You can only say who should win, who should lose, and why.

Moreover, the last thing Latinos and black should want from a purely selfish standpoint is for Asians to not be considered a minority, unless they mean a minority that’s actively discriminated against. Berkeley in 2007 is what happens when race isn’t considered in admissions, not when it is.

It will be a long time before society can consider racial issues or embody them in public policy without considerable pain and controversy. But it strikes me that the difficulties of considering race in higher education admissions could at least be lessened if universities would be more nuanced about their criteria and more disciplined in their decision-making. Treating students from Japan, China, and Korea (much less India, Pakistan, etc. etc. etc.) similarly just because their countries of origin are sort of near one another and they kind of look the same to Western eyes is absurd. It would be better if colleges developed some rational criteria (diversity value, historical discrimination, etc.) for deciding exactly which racial/ethnic groups deserve various degrees of admissions preference and which don’t, using as many categories as it takes—10, 50, 100, whatever makes sense. Then they should be a lot more transparent about how that plays out in the admission process, instead of hiding behind the “we consider the whole student” generalities that act as smokescreen for whatever vague or sinister policies they actually have in place. The Michigan decision is driving things in the opposite direction, of course, but that’s what happens when the Supreme Court resorts to using sketchy constitutional law to try to do the right thing.

The great dilemma of racial and ethnic differences lies with reconciling the need to recognize their value and meaning with the need to heal the wounds that have been and continue to be inflicted in their name. As a result, affirmative action will always be hard to sort out. But as the case of Asian student admissions shows, we can’t stop thinking about it, even if we want to.