Too Few Teachers, Too Many Consultants?

The Post ran two education stories yesterday, both unsatisfying, albeit in different ways. (Although it's possible that my mood was altered after reading that great/scary profile of the Vice President...)

The front-page piece, about teacher shortages, reads like the prologue to a good article about big-picture teacher policy issues. I just wish they had written the actual article. In summary: the current generation of retiring teachers entered the profession in a time when women had few career options other education. Thus, schools got a disproportionate share of really smart women, who stayed in the classroom for their entire career. Once the economy opened up, the best and brightest women started going into law, medicine, business, etc., and the teacher talent pool declined in quality. At the same time, NCLB has raised the bar for entering the profession, and new teachers are less likely to see teaching as a 30-year career, leading to frequent turnover and exacerbating the challenge of replacing the older smarter generation.

In broad strokes, all true, although the article should have pointed out that teachers shortages vary widely by region and subject. Some states still produce more new teachers than they need, and schools of education continue to graduate a surplus of elementary education majors even though the shortages are concentrated in secondary education, special education, and science and math.

But the more interesting question is where you go from here, and the article misses most opportunities to explore those issues. Some people, for example, see the shortage and the move to raise the bar for entering the profession as in opposition. Others think that the only way to attract all those women back out of law school is to provide an even higher bar, on the ground that ambitious people want to see themselves as part of a profession that implicitly denotes high standards for entry. Unions point out, correctly, that teachers get paid less than the professions to which smart women now flock. Others see this as a reason to support Teach for America-like alternate routes into the classroom. The article could have put some or all these issues on the table and helped readers sort through them, but for the most part they were nowhere to be found.

The other article, about management consultants hired by DC Public Schools, begins as follows:

Two dozen high-priced consultants have set up shop on three floors of the D.C. public schools' headquarters, wearing pinstripe suits, toting binders and BlackBerrys and using such corporate jargon as "resource mapping" and "identifying metrics."

That lede pretty much gives the game away, doesn't it? "High-priced suits," "pinstripe suits," and "jargon" -- oh my! And even Blackberrys, which would have been a meaningful signifier if this was 2001, not 2007. Newsflash: everyone and their Mom sends wireless email these days.

A couple of weeks ago, the Post ran a great, important series of articles making the case, in excruciating detail, that many of the woes of DCPS lie with comically incompetent bureaucracy that will never, ever, be able to reform itself. A problem of management, in other words. Now the same paper write a cynical article criticizing DCPS for hiring management consultants who, according to the article, have already saved the district $7 million to $9 million. What, exactly, is the problem? The article notes that DCPS has previously hired consultants at great cost, and then ignored their advice. Does that mean that if your doctor puts you on an exercise program to lose weight, and you ignore it, it was stupid to go to her in the first place and you never should again?

Goodbye, for now

This is a sad post for me to write, since it's probably going to be my last here for a while.

As Andy mentioned in an incredibly kind post over at Eduwonk, today is my last day at Education Sector. In a few weeks I'll be starting a new job at the New America Foundation, where I'll be leading their Early Education Initiative and also contributing to their work on federal education policy. This is an exciting opportunity for me to work with some great people on an issue I care a lot about.

At the same time, I'm sad to be leaving Education Sector: It's not often you get an opportunity to be a part of creating an incredibly successful and dynamic organization from the time it's just a spark in someone's eye, and I've really enjoyed and grown incredibly during the last two years I've been here. I'll particularly miss the incredible staff I've had the opportunity to learn from and work with here--especially Andy Rotherham. As Andy mentioned, he and I have worked together for almost seven years. I'm very grateful that he saw potential in me back then and for the incredible professional opportunities he's given me since then. He's a great policy thinker and entreprenuer, but he's also a great boss, mentor and friend.

I've also really enjoyed blogging here at the Quick and the Ed. I've enjoyed the back and forth with various folks, and I know I'm a better writer and thinker for it. While I won't be blogging here any more, I'm not entirely going to be gone from the blogosphere. You'll find me posting from time to time at the New America Foundation's Higher Ed Watch blog, and as Andy mentioned, I'll be guest-blogging for him at Eduwonk later this summer. And you may occassionally find updates on my doings at my boyfriend's blog, which, if you're not already reading, you should be.

So: Good-bye for now, but just for now, and don't be a stranger.

Are Men More Cleverer Than Women?

A new study just released in the UK claims that intelligence gaps do innately exist between the sexes, with men scoring an average of 5 points higher on IQ tests than women, and outnumbering women more than 5 to 1 in the “genius” category. The researchers found this interesting, given that "this is against a background of women dramatically overtaking men in educational attainment and making very rapid advances in terms of occupational achievement."

How revolutionary: scientists once again amazing themselves, Arthur Jensen style, by proving that white, upper class males perform best on a test designed by white, upper class males. Who defines intelligence? How exactly are we measuring it? The issue of intelligence test-bias has been debated for decades, with no agreed upon resolution. Although tests today are surely a great deal less biased then those of say, 1984, I dare say that what an IQ test is best at is measuring how well a person performs on IQ tests, and we should be weary in generalizing the results to represent the mental capacity of an entire race or gender.

Voucher Use in Washington Wins No Praise from Students

The title of this entry is a wordplay off Cato’s Adam Schaeffer's latest post, where he criticizes the NY Times and Washington Post coverage of the recent DC voucher program study, arguing the media outlets made too much of the report’s conclusion that voucher students fared no better than public school counterparts in the first year of the DC program, while downplaying the news that parents of voucher recipients were happier with schools than a control group. In calling the parental support a “wild success,” Schaeffer misses a key aspect of the analysis.

Compared to a control group, parents of students enrolled in the voucher program gave higher grades to their child’s school and believed the school had less violence. James Forman Jr. argues that parental satisfaction, if it matters in voucher program success, should be factored in public school accountability. Still, to hold up parental support as evidence of success here is pretty superficial, especially when we consider who made up the control group in the study. The authorizing legislation mandated the “strongest possible research design for determining the effectiveness of the program,” so the Institute of Education Sciences adopted a lottery system for the program, so that the results of the voucher recipients could be compared to the results of non-recipients, while controlling for motivation and other factors. The control group consisted of students who applied but were rejected for the vouchers. This makes for a valid comparison for student achievement, but not necessarily for parental happiness. All of the parents wanted their child educated outside of the DC public schools; it only makes sense that the ones who achieved this goal were happier than the ones who didn’t, especially after only one year.

Moreover, who is the best judge of violence and overall school quality—parents, or the students themselves? On violence, students reported no statistically significant difference between public and private schools. In other words, the people who actually witness and experience violence, the students themselves, reported no increases in seeing weapons; being offered drugs; or being victims of theft, physical assault, or bullying. On school quality, the only sub-group who noticed a difference was the lowest performing students. They rated private schools worse, not better, than traditional public schools.

Honestly, there’s not really that much to be excited about here one way or the other. The voucher law passed, it’s being implemented and studied, and one year’s worth of data probably isn’t enough time delay to evaluate its effectiveness. While I’m a little less optimistic about the program than Schaeffer (who makes the mighty claim that, “all scientific assessments of choice programs show positive gains, and nearly all of those studies show statistically significant gains”), I’ll wait for more evidence before jumping ship or onto the bandwagon.

What can TPS reports teach us about education?

At a Business Roundtable event today featuring rockstars Wendy Kopp, Mike Feinberg, Chris Barbic, Jon Schnur, and Tim Daly, I was most struck by a small caveat that Feinberg made when comparing his KIPP teachers’ schedules to those of average business workers. They both work 7:30-5:00 days, but the teachers are working with kids. There’s no slacking off. They can’t exactly pull a Peter Gibbons of Office Space fame. When asked by the consultants, the infamous Bobs, to describe his daily schedule, he responds:

Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

Anyone who’s worked in an office knows what Peter is talking about here. And anyone who’s worked with kids knows that teachers can’t “just sorta space out” for a while.

The event today focused on taking the still relatively small reforms that TFA, TNTP, YES, KIPP, and New Leaders have implemented and taking them to scale. For example, how do we attract and retain enough teachers and principals willing to give up the Peter Gibbons moments for a career raising student achievement levels?

One of the panelists mentioned something about how quality teachers and principals are like all good leaders in that they set high goals and constantly assess their progress, and then they quickly said “like generals.” The conversation moved on, but I got stuck on that. What if we were to recruit and train teachers like the Army does for soldiers? Of course, teaching does not equal war, but there are lessons in recruitment and training. The Army gives large signing bonuses, especially for educational attainment and specific organizational needs. They train members in a relatively short period of time by building teamwork and getting recruits to buy into the mission and accept a common purpose. Members must demonstrate mastery before advancing in pay or rank, and when they finish their commitment, they are either given more bonuses to stay on, or take their occupational prestige with them to the private sector.

Granted, this is essentially the TFA/ TNTP model, but the key difference is the relative lack of integration within organizations. The military is absolutely seamless in comparison, while local, state, and federal governments, in addition to teacher colleges, non-profits, national councils, and unions all meddle in teacher issues. Maybe there’s something there. Maybe we need some sort of national teaching cadre a la the Peace Corps or the Army. Heck, maybe we should make service in one of the agencies required, like Israel, Denmark, and Germany. The Peter Gibbons lifestyle is just too tempting.

Preschool and School Choice Movement Leaders Combine Forces to Form New Pornographers-style Education Advocacy Supergroup

(No, not really, but keep reading)

Cato's Adam Schaeffer highlights a debate within the school choice community: On one side are activists pushing targeted voucher programs to help kids with specific needs--kids with disabilities (as in Florida), foster kids (Arizona), and poor kids in urban districts with crappy schools (in Wisconsin, Ohio, D.C.). On the other are those, like Schaeffer and Howard Rich (to whose WSJ column Schaeffer's piece is pegged), who actually think the whole public education system is the problem and want to replace it with a tax credit and/or voucher regime for all families. Curiously, this debate actually has a lot of similarities the debate among early childhood advocates on the merits of targeted versus universal preschool programs. And it's not the only thing these two issues have in common.

I believe that the school choice movement (in which I include the charter school movement) and the preschool movement are the two most vital movements in education today. For starters, they're both actual movements, with grassroots advocacy bases committed to moving the ball on the issues. While federal policymakers are hemmed in by the policy cage of NCLB and difficulties of its implementation, these state and local level advocates are driving real, on-the-ground change on choice and early learning.

Both are also terribly ambitious. They're questioning long-accepted relationships, roles, and responsibilities--In the case of school choice, breaking district educational monopolies and giving parents more control over their children's education; in the case of preschool broadening the understanding of public and communal responsibility to small children and their families. They're redefining the boundaries of publicly-supported education--In preschool, to include younger children; in school choice to include private, charter, and other non-traditional schools. And they're both building new institutions and infrastructure to deliver new types of education in new ways.

Both movements also rely on similar authority to make the case for their preferred reforms: A combination of arguments based on economic theory (each even has its own Nobel Prize winning economist in Milton Friedman and James Heckman!), program evaluation and effectiveness research aimed at showing their programs deliver positive results for kids and the public, and social justice arguments focused on the needs of historically underserved children. Both augment these arguments and research with savvy PR campaigns and grassroots advocacy to move the ball on their goals. And both movements have been driven by the strategic investments of committed patrons in the philanthropic world (both individuals and foundations).
And both, as their agendas advance and states start implementing their policy prescriptions, are having to deal with quality problems in the preschool programs and schools of choice that emerge.

In my experience, there's not a lot of love lost or perceived shared ground between the leading lights of the preschool and school choice movements. Conservative and libertarian choice advocates tend to hate the idea of public preschool funding, and preschool supporters have good reason to be wary of the market based on their experience with poor quality in unregulated private preschool and daycare programs. That's unfortunate, because they could learn a lot from one another and there are some natural synergies between their goals.

So, how do we get the preschool and choice movements talking? I don't think there's really much chance that they'll combine forces and form a New Pornographers-style education advocacy supergroup, but if folks were willing to lay down their biases, I think we might see some interesting conversations and collaborations emerge.

The Community College Transfer Problem

Give the New York Times' Sam Freedman credit for a good choice of topic today -- a program that helps community college students transfer to four-year universities. The story of Viviana Alcazar's journey from a local two-year school to a degree from Stanford also underscores the particular importance of community colleges to the nation's rapidly-growing population of Hispanic colleges students, who are more likely than both white and other minority students to attend a two-year school. That's because the states with large Hispanic populations, like California and Florida, also tend to be the states that chose to accomodate the mid-20th century surge in college enrollment by building highly-stratified higher education systems (in part because they didn't have an existing infrastructure of private schools) whereby only a small proportion of students go to presitigious four-year research universities while most go to local two-year schools. California alone has something like 1.4 million community college students, two-thirds of all the undergrads in state, public or private.

But I wish the column wasn't--like so much higher education media coverage--shot through the lens of super-elite institutions like Stanford. Two-year to four-year transfer is a huge problem in this country; while two-year transfer students tend to perform just as well in four-year colleges as students who start in four-year colleges, less than 40 percent ever transfer in the first place. In other words, the important goal isn't so much to get two-year students to transfer to Stanford as it is to get them to transfer somewhere in the four-year system, so they have a decent shot a bachelor's degree, increasing the dividing line of economic attainment in this country.

Private Colleges

Members of the Annapolis Group, comprised of about 80 liberal arts colleges including Sarah Lawrence, Oberlin, and Reed, announced yesterday they will opt out of the US News college rankings. It is the latest example of a failure to understand what the college accountability movement is all about.

While the US News ranking system is by no means perfect, there isn’t a lot of useful information on colleges and universities accessible for students and parents. It’s a pretty simplistic argument, but doesn’t the success and ubiquity of the magazine rankings indicate the huge demand out there?

The worst argument against accountability put forth by leaders of the Annapolis Group is that this is about privacy. As Thomas J. Hochstettler, President of Lewis and Clark College, argued last summer in an op-ed against the Spellings Commission:

Much of my colleagues' criticism centers on the perception that we can't trust the federal government with such sensitive data. Do we want Uncle Sam knowing every class our students are taking, every grade they earn, every course they drop? Critics have also noted the apparent ease with which the federal government could link data to students' Social Security numbers and, presumably, to their complete life stories.

Maybe Hochstettler forgot that the federal government has successfully conducted income tax, Social Security, and gun background check systems without breaches of privacy for years. For an even more apt comparison, consider that state education departments can now track individual K-12 student achievement year-to-year through student identification numbers.

No, this is a power grab. Some colleges in the Annapolis Group, like Amherst and Pomona Colleges, are able to graduate students in six years (the new four) around 95% of the time, but peer institutions are often well below this figure. The aforementioned Reed College (one of the leaders in the anti-rankings movement) succeeds at a 20% lower clip. Other members of the Annapolis Group, like Transylvania University and Hampden-Sydney College, graduate less than two-thirds of their entering students.

Graduation rates are crude measures of student success, but colleges provide us with little else. Imagine if a prospective student could know how hard they would be expected to work, or how successful the school is in placing graduates into jobs. Some of this data exists already, but it’s kept under wraps. Two of the seven colleges mentioned above (not the ones you’ve heard of) participated in the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement, a survey that measures things like how much time a student spends studying, how many papers they write of what length, and how approachable faculty are. It costs institutions of this size only $3,375 to conduct the survey, but still not all of them do it, and they are not required to release any of the data.

There has to be some sort of side-by-side comparisons for students to make educated decisions on where to go to college. US News may honestly be the best we’ve got right now. With tuition skyrocketing and loan scandals rocking the industry, the least policymakers can do is help students make a good choice.

Get Your Daily Dose of Virtual Reality

Do you have any burning but unanswered questions about virtual schools? Have you always wanted to attend one of Education Sector's awesome events but happen to live way outside the D.C. metro region? Are you going to be stuck on a really boring conference call around 3:00 P.M. this afternoon and need something to keep you amused?

Well, then, we've got a deal for you: Education Sector's first ever virtual forum on--appropriately enough--the topic of virtual schooling, this afternoon at 3:00 P.M. Join in the discussion with Education Sector's Bill Tucker, author of a recent report on virtual learning, Liz Pape, CEO of Virtual High School, and the NEA's Barb Stein. More info and registration here.

All About the Benjamins

I was at first appalled when I heard about Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer’s proposal to provide a cash reward for students who perform well on tests.

The plan seems a brutal affirmation of the financial incentives that seem to control this country. Is the only way to succeed in motivating our children by hanging dollar bills in front of their face? What kind of values would that teach? Like Danny said, shouldn’t we be able to instill in children the desire to learn, rather than initiating some mad goose chase for a wad of cash?

But let’s be honest with ourselves: What do we want for our economically disadvantaged students? Why do we push them to succeed? What images do we use to motivate them? The answer is, more often than not, we hope that their performance in school will allow them to obtain a scholarship to college, to continue their education, allowing them choice in the job market and in their future, choice that is provided by, you got it, money. Many adolescents (and more in poor areas where there isn’t much exposure to college, different career paths, or success in an academic sense) have a hard time visualizing abstract concepts such as their life ten years down the road, and molding their actions in the present accordingly. They do, however, have a compelling desire for the twenty dollar bill sitting on the table. Is there really a fundamental difference between pushing our students to succeed financially in the future and rewarding them with cash right now?

And it seems to work. A similar cash incentive program for teachers whose classrooms perform well on tests in Tennessee has proven a success and experiments done in the United Kingdom and Kenya have shown that cash incentive raises student achievement across the board, not just in students in the top percentile.

Of course, I am not arguing that cash incentives are a panacea by any stretch of the imagination, and if anything would act as a band-aid while larger problems with the education system are addressed. I will argue, however, that in a system where money and success are (albeit unfortunately) so synonymous, the proposal is more appropriate than it may appear at first glance.

NCLB, Version 2.0

What’s better than the original No Child Left Behind act? No Child Left Behind, version 2.0!

Yes, ladies and gentleman, it has almost come that time to reauthorize the 21^st century’s most controversial educational reform act. In anticipation for the looming congressional debate ahead, ETS presented its poll results at the seventh annual “Americans Speak” forum entitled, “Standards, Accountability and Flexibility: Americans Speak on NCLB Reauthorization”.

Despite the negative media attention NCLB has received in recent times, the poll showed that the public supports its reauthorization, with favorable attitudes strong among K-12 parents (48% in favor vs. 40% opposed).

But perhaps the most surprising finding of the ETS poll was the public knowledge of NCLB itself: only 32% of adults correctly identified NCLB as an education reform bill that has been signed into law.

Much of America remains in the dark about NCLB:

• 28% of the American public thinks that NCLB is simply “talk”, but so far has been no action.
• 13% of the American public thinks that the President/Congress has put together NCLB proposals, but that no deal has been reached.

And for further confusion; only 47% of Americans correctly identified the NCLB plan out of a 4 answer multiple choice question.

• 26% of the American public thought that NCLB meant “making sure that students keep progressing onto the next grade level until they reach graduation.”
• 12% of the American public thought that NCLB meant “requiring all students to pass a national test in twelfth grade in order to graduate from high school and go on to college.”
• 8% of the American public thought that NCLB meant “giving parents vouchers so that their child can attend the school of their choice.”

Whether it’s misinformation of lack of information, this data demonstrates a critical need for sound, balanced, and coherent information regarding NCLB. Why?

The ETS poll showed that while only 41% of the uninformed general public looked favorably upon NCLB, 56% of the general public approved of NCLB when presented with a clear definition of the law. Understanding NCLB is half the challenge.

Despite these complications, the other results presented by ETS make it clear that Americans believe that NCLB Version 1.0 (and soon to be NCLB Version 2.0) can be utilized as an effective means to achieve a greater end goal of improving the state of American education. Perhaps the anonymously-quoted policymaker said it best:

“Version 3.0, which is down the road, will be where you start to see the big shift, whether it’s things like national standards or really new forward-looking ways to doing accountability . . . we may be in a position to really go in a new direction.”

ETS’s poll results serve as a fresh reminder that greater transparency and access to education policy information is crucial in the NCLB debate. However, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to remain a bit cautious about ETS’s own motivations within the high-stakes testing industry during a time of increasing emphasis on accountability. ETS at its core is a business, and the company retains a clear interest in promoting measures like NCLB when they can benefit from a substantial increase in the demand for state testing.

$600

Last February, I told my geometry class about their upcoming state test. I said it was a chance to show what they had learned. I explained my new Saturday tutorial program and daily review problems. Luisa interrupted me.

"Mr. Rosenthal, the TAKS test doesn't even matter this year."

We were at a large urban high school in Houston and Luisa was in tenth grade. The TAKS test would matter next year, in eleventh grade. It would determine if she graduated. But the tenth grade test wouldn’t even determine if she passed geometry.

After the test, Luisa told me she had hadn't really tried. Other students said they started guessing half way through. They were tired. The test didn't matter, not to them. But it mattered a great deal to their school and their teacher. We would be judged on their scores.

I thought of Luisa when I heard about New York's pilot program to pay students for achievement. Among other incentives, the program would pay high school students $600 for passing standardized tests. The idea is to align their short term interests with their long term interests, while alleviating poverty and making test data more meaningful. I’m not convinced.

Maybe $600 could make Luisa care, but I think she wanted to pass all along. Like all of my students, she had a natural desire for knowledge and an affinity for success. I saw it in her eyes when she learned how to find the volume of a cylinder. But she had failed TAKS four years in a row and expected to fail again. She didn’t see the point of trying, and money couldn't address the root of her indifference. I have great financial incentive to play in the NFL, but I'm not practicing my spiral.

Maybe $600 could make Luisa care, but I could have made her care too. I could have convinced her that success was possible, inspired her to work harder. I could have shown her the value of striving for excellence, even against long odds. I think the fact that we're offering $600 means we didn’t do our jobs.

Maybe $600 could make Luisa care, but at what cost? (Besides $600, of course.) What would we teach her about the purpose of education? How would we change the way she sees school?

As Edwize (somewhat sarcastically) says, it's a very cool experiment. I'm really curious, but I'm even more wary.

Pay Gaps and the Boy Crisis

Matthew Yglesias uses the NYT's groovy new salary comparison calculator to illustrate gender gaps in pay for young women, and concludes that "Most of these people are just starting out, and the men are already earning substantially more."

Indeed. As I noted here, U.S. Department of Education data show that young men are earning more than women in their first jobs out of college--even after you control for field of study.

Table B. Average annual salary of 1992-93 and 1999-2000 bachelor's degree recipients who were employed full time, by undergraduate field and gender: 1994 and 2001

Gender and undergraduate field of study	Average annual salary (in constant 2001 $)
	1994	2001
Total
Male	$32,500	$39,400
Female	27,400	32,600
Business/management
Male	33,600	42,300
Female	29,900	39,000
Education
Male	35,100	29,600
Female	21,900	28,100
Engineering, mathematics, and sciences1
Male	33,300	45,200
Female	27,900	34,200
Humanities and social/behavioral science
Male	27,300	34,600
Female	26,500	29,400
Health, vocational/technical, and other technical/professional fields
Male	35,400	38,100
Female	30,300	34,30

¹Sciences include life sciences, physical sciences, and computer/information science. SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 1993/97 and 2000/01 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:93/97 and B&B:2000/01).

Still More on the Progessive Solution

This back-and-forth between James Forman and Leo Casey, picking up on the conversation Sara and I started last week on the lack of progressive solutions to dysfunctional urban school systems, includes someworthwhile posts on both sides. Leo's distinctions between corruption, patronage, and incompetence are legit, and he's right to disparage silver-bullet free market solutions--although I don't think anyone here is actually arguing that point.

But I'm inclined to agree with James that the conventional progressive education agenda, at least as described by Leo, still has no plausible solution for rank bureaucratic incompetence. I started my professional career as a government bureaucrat, so my general inclination is to be suspicious of those who blame everything on nests of cubicle-dwelling civil servants. Its a cliche, and usually wrong. But in the case of DCPS, when Leo says that "A thousand mile journey begins with a single step," my first thought is that the journey that needs to happen here is a lot shorter than that, starting in the DCPS administrative offices and heading on a one-way trip out the door.

Antioch R.I.P.

Antioch College announced its demise late last week. This is pretty unusual in higher education, a remarkably stable industry where institutions rise and fall but rarely drop off the board altogether. Since the last time the general public heard of Antioch was in the early '90s, when its parody-defying sexual conduct policy became a totemic example of P.C. excess, the college's downfall has inspired many people to note that there are apparently theoretical limits to hard-left ridiculousness, even in academia. Some of this commentary, like Michael Goldfarb's piece in yesterday's New York Times, has been pretty thoughtful. The rest, like the utterly predictable cackling at NROnline, not so much.

But the Antioch story also says a lot about modern higher education finance. One of the main reasons college tuition goes up so much every year is that, despite the increases, the vast majority of students still pay less than the market rate. For students attending public colleges and univerisities, that's because governments subsidize and control the price. At private institutions with selective admissions policies, tuition is below the market rate by definition (there are obviously limits to this, since selecitivity is in many ways the most important thing these institutions are selling, but there's little doubt that Yale could increase tuition or enrollment substantially without depressing demand).

The only institutions really out there on the ragged edge of the market, staying open purely with the revenue that customers are willing to pay for their services, are the relatively non-selective private colleges with small endowments. There are a lot more places like this than many people realize, particularly in the Midwest, where prior to the development of land-grant colleges and public higher education systems in the 19th century, states took a laissez-faire approach to chartering private colleges, most of which--like Antioch--had religious origins.

Some colleges are coping by becoming increasingly sophisticated at price discrimination, where instead of charging all customers the equilibrium market rate, a firm figures out how to walk up the demand curve and charge each customer the maximum amount they're willing to pay. Sports teams do this by selling courtside seats to rich people for phenomenal prices, even though the seatts are only marginally closer to the action than much cheaper seats a few rows back. Retailers do it by starting with an above-equlibrium price and then steadily dropping prices through sales. Colleges do something similar--start with very high tuition rates that only a few students pay in full, and then offer "discounts" on a case by case basis. Colleges are in a unique position to price-discriminate effectively because they--unlike sellers in a normal market--require customers to disclose incredibly detailed information about their ability to pay, in the form of financial aid forms, before they decide how much to charge them. (Erin Dillon wrote about this trend last year.)

But apparently if your enrollment drops low enough and your management is bad enough and your endowment has long since been squandered, it's possible to drive an institution like Antioch, despite a long and proud history that, in its totality, few colleges can match, into the ground. It's a shame.

Hey, It's Just How Business is Done

There seems to be an attitude among lenders and bankers that all of this ‘scandal’ about lenders offering kickbacks and inducements to financial aid officers to get on preferred lender lists* is really just ‘how business is done’. And all of us education-types just don’t understand how the world of business works.

They’re probably right about a lot of industries, where free lunches and free trips for customers are just part of selling your product, but those rules of business don’t apply when it comes to student lending—an industry supported heavily by federal (read: taxpayer) money, and that exists to promote college access and choice among those who couldn’t otherwise afford it. If the kickbacks and inducements increase the cost of loans to students OR to taxpayers, they undermine the public policy goals of the program and shouldn’t be part of business-as-usual in the student loan industry.

Of course, the question then is: have students really been harmed by these arrangements between lenders and financial aid officers? That’s a tricky question and we don’t (and might not be able to get) accurate information to answer it, but what is obvious is that these arrangements have the potential to harm students, and that potential for harm is serious enough that we need regulations to preemptively protect students. Let me offer up an analogy.

The healthcare industry has faced a similar predicament with doctors and pharmaceutical companies. Both the medical community and the federal government have established guidelines to curb the “gifts, meals, and consulting fees” pharmaceutical sales reps offer to doctors as part of their marketing strategy. But why even bother with guidelines it’s just how business is done? We want guidelines on pharmaceutical marketing because we all want to know that our doctor is prescribing medicine based on our medical needs and scientific research, and not which company offered the best lunch.

The same logic applies to student loans. Every parent and student wants to know that they can rely on the advice and guidance of their financial aid officers, without worrying about which lender happened to stop-in at the financial aid office before they got there. Just as the medicines you take can have a big impact on your health, so too can student loans have a big, long-term financial impact. For that reason, the argument that it’s just “how business is done” is both unacceptable and insulting to the concerns of parents and students who need the most affordable student loans possible.

*While this is clearly an egregious example of this kind of behavior, this email from a Bank of America representative (click on the image to the left) about what was ‘required’ of lenders to get on the University of Texas-Austin preferred lender lists is astonishing. At the very least, read about the tequila and wine.

New House Bill's Right on the Money

Like many college students across the country, I dread the fateful summer day where I receive the ominous “Financial Aid Award Letter” email in my inbox. Too often have I experienced Homer Simpson-esque “Doh!” moments as I count the ever-increasing loan amounts listed by my name.

Well fret no more (or at the very least, fret less), as the House education committee passed a bill Wednesday that seeks to cut subsidies to student lenders and halve the interest rates on a key student loan program over the next five years. The bill also includes provisions that allow for increases in Pell grants, tuition assistance, and loan forgiveness. And better yet, the Senate committee is expected to offer even more extensive reform measures. It’s about time.

ES has shown that the recent controversy surrounding Sallie Mae and other student lending companies has been a long time coming, and it’s truly refreshing to see that Congress is finally getting its act together:

“For far too long, college costs have grown faster than families’ ability to pay them,” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. “With this bill, we are saying that help is on the way.”

But of course not everybody is celebrating. According to the New York Times, the Consumer Bankers Association was bold enough to claim that the bill was an “anti-student bill in pro-student clothing”, and they’re even playing dirty. Excuse me? Since when is an estimated $18 billion in expanded benefits to students considered “anti-student”? Surely you’re mistaken.

I guess the moral of the day is “better late than never,” and though the future of student loan reform remains to be seen, it gives hope to millions of debt-mired students that there is indeed (some) light at the end of the tunnel.

Too Stressed by Tests?

Critics of standardized testing often tell harrowing tales of children breaking down on tests, crying, throwing up, or too nervous to sleep for weeks on end. These tales make me angry--not at standardized testing itself, but at the adults who've made kids so nervous about these tests. How kids feel about tests comes down to two things: 1) The messages adults give them about tests, and 2) How well adults have taught them the material the test covers. As Sophia Pappas points out, teachers can even make tests seem fun for kids, a far more productive strategy than getting them all worked up and freaked out:

I try to reduce the potential for inaccuracies by identifying the assessments as “fun games to play with the teacher,” which can help the children feel more at ease and less stressed by the experience. I ask students if they would like to play with me, and many times they jump at the chance to spend some one-on-one time with the teacher, especially since they get to press the “easy” button (thanks, Staples) when they finish. I remember Tyrique expressing sadness that he could not play our “game” a second time.

Appletree Early Learning Public Charter School, on whose board I serve, uses a similar approach to administering the tests that we use to track students' progress and inform and improve our educational practice.

Priorities

Even as D.C. politicos and residents are trying to decide what they think about Mayor Fenty's new pick to run the schools, Michelle Rhee, today Fenty's office announced his pick for another important position: D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission CEO Allen Y. Lew will head up a new, independent facilities authority created by the school reform law to oversee contruction and renovation of DCPS's stock of public school buildings. Over the last few years, DCPS has proved itself woefully incompetent when it comes to managing its facilities, and I thought that plans to create a separate school facilities authority were one of the promising elements of Fenty's school reform plan. Taking construction and maintenance out of DCPS will allow Rhee and her team to better focus on the core goal of improving student achievement. And the new facilities authority is able to bring in new talent that has a proven record on big public construction projects, rather than random people who rose through the dysfunctional DCPS system.

That's the case with Lew, who's well regarded for his successful work on the D.C. Convention Center and Stadium projects. His success with these complicated and contenious projects also suggests Lew has the bureacratic and political maneuvering skills to deal with the challenges of implementing the massive DCPS Master Facilities Plan. Fenty's willingness to move Lew off the high-profile and high-stakes stadium project to focus on schools also suggests he's got his priorities in the right place. If only that could be said for everyone in D.C. government:

Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) praised Lew but voiced concern about the fate of the stadium project. The ballpark's high public cost could rise further if it is not completed on time because penalties would be owed to the team owners.

"Do you want to take the main guy out of the picture, the guy who is able to get it done on time and on budget on opening day?" Evans said. "If you take him out of it, who will replace him? Getting the stadium done is not automatic."

Look, I live four blocks from the stadium, so I have a huge personal interest in seeing the project completed well and on time. But nothing is more important to the future welfare of this city than improving our youngsters' education.

And don't get me started on the "community activists" who are finding fault with Lew because he lacks experience in education. The guy's in charge of buildings, not instruction. He needs construction background, project management skills, and political and bureacratic savvy. The evidence suggests he's got them. What he needs to know about education he can figure out on the job. Did you hear the Nats owners bitching that Lew never played pro baseball?

What Will Rhee Do?

Many thanks to Kevin, Sara, Erin, and Eduwonk on leading the discussion on the DC Public Schools mess. But for those of you who had never heard of Michelle Rhee until yesterday when she was named DCPS Chancellor, or see no hope in her and Mayor Fenty overcoming the disarray that’s been exposed, I’ve got a quick primer on what she can (and probably will) do.

As the founder and President of The New Teacher Project (TNTP), Rhee has helped major urban districts across the country, including DC, attract and certify 23,000 “highly qualified” teachers in ten years of work. In my estimation, they’re an exceptional, not-for-profit human resources contractor that happens to focus on public schools.

What will Rhee likely tackle? In a district with well-documented problems ranging from school violence, high turnover, and inadequate personnel records (they’re storing them in boxes!! And they’re five years behind!!), Rhee will likely focus on staffing. TNTP has issued two major reports to date, both of which focus on the timeline for teacher hiring. In Missed Opportunities they discovered that many districts simply hired too late to get high-quality candidates. Thirty to sixty percent of candidates withdrew their applications, but “had significantly higher GPAs and were 40% more likely to have a degree in their teaching field than new hires.” These are the teachers we most need in struggling schools.

Both reports point to several bureaucratic blockages as the reason for the late hiring. The most important of these included:

• State budget processes taking too long into the summer, leaving funding for schools up in the air.
• Senior teachers being given priority in transfer. A new job opportunity would open and existing teachers would have a first shot at it, regardless of what the principal wanted.
• Principals gaming the system. They’d ask retiring teachers to wait until summer to announce so they would have first pick of incoming teachers, and they would label a teacher as “excess” staff those who were not performing well. Those “excess” teachers would be given priority over new hires.
• The almost complete inability for a teacher to be fired. Principals claimed they would need 15% of their time to address ONE under-performing teacher. Interviews with legal counsel determined that these processes would rarely lead to termination, let alone removal from that school.
• Experienced teachers being able to “bump” novice ones. Because districts considered jobs filled in the last year as “vacant,” between 10-50% of all teachers with a full year’s experience could get bumped by more senior teachers.

In a discussion hosted by Education Sector a little over a year ago, Rhee was adamant on the importance of fixing these problems. Now appointed to lead from the inside, Rhee will likely start by checking out the transfer and seniority provisions in the Washington Teacher’s Union contract. I’m anxious to see what she can do.

Virtual Reality

Every day, internet users send over 170 billion emails. For comparison, the U.S. postal service delivers 213 billion pieces of mail – in a year. Could a similar transformation take place in education? 700,000 public school students took online classes a year ago, enough to form the third largest school district in the country. Most did it to supplement traditional “brick-and-mortar” schooling. To get a better idea what it’s all about, test drive some sample lessons.

Bill Tucker explores a myriad of issues related to virtual schools in a new Education Sector report, showcasing their innovations in personalized learning, teacher quality and support, and funding. He makes a number of interesting points, like how virtual schools are recruiting retirees and stay-at-home parents who wouldn’t otherwise be teaching at all. The report makes recommendations about how to best encourage virtual schools and virtual innovation.

From a teacher’s perspective, I see tremendous potential here for engaging students, especially as these programs get bigger and better. My students love computer games, myspace, and text messages. I’ll be watching to see if virtual schools can leverage those interests into meaningful learning opportunities.

Budget: Deficit Thinking

After setting trade deficit records five years running, it was heralded as good news last week that our trade deficit may fall to only $705.9 billion and our budget deficit to only $150-200 billion this year.

Part of the joy of being an intern is the ability to attend events to put those monstrous numbers in context, like this panel discussion yesterday on balanced budgets, hosted by Democracy. The subtitle of the event, “Debating the Future of Progressive Fiscal Policy,” tells pretty much all the necessary details about the panelists’ political leanings. To varying degrees, all were bullish on the American economy, but they were also quick to point out that the type of deficits we’re currently running are not wholly advisable.

They all seemed to be in agreement that the type of spending mattered more than the actual amount of spending. That is, deficits can be used for positive purposes. This is where it relates to education. When mentioning good types of investments in the future, almost all of them referenced education, training, or some type of human capital investment.

Several of the panelists argued that progressives need to make the case for government in general. When conservatives attack the government and launch “starve the beast” type campaigns, the losers are inevitably the worst-off elements of society. Not coincidentally, they are also the least politically powerful. Investments in infrastructure like roads, water and air quality, transportation, energy, and yes, education, are things worthy of defending. They provide economic stimulus and keep the economy growing. There were a lot of investment metaphors thrown out, but my favorite is fairly simple. Think of an average American family. We’d say it would be a good thing for them to borrow to finance a mortgage or a child’s education. It probably would not be so prudent to purchase consumer goods like iPods, cell phones, or clothes. The same types of spending principles should be applied to the federal government.

For as much attention that is paid to balanced budgets, there is actually relatively little political will for it. Everyone thinks it’s a fine idea in principle, but no one’s for it when their pet program is on the chopping block. One of my college professors suggested this exercise: think of four priorities, like balancing the budget, cutting taxes, funding education, and keeping Social Security solvent. Which party is going to rank balancing the budget as their top priority in that list? The point is that balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility are principles for everyone, but priorities for no one.

The Absent Progressive Voice

Thanks to Sara for bringing a much-needed historical perspective to the question of the progressive role in education reform. Her post about Jonah Goldberg's blindered anti-public education rant, keyed to the Post series about DCPS incompetence, underscores my point--while conservatives like Goldberg may have foolish things to say about this problem, liberals too often have nothing to say, and that silence speaks volumes.

For some excellent thoughts on this topic, see this post from Georgetown Law professor James Forman, Jr. An exerpt:

In 2007, the civil rights community and, in particular, black folks, ultimately are going to have to make a decision: is the civil rights movement vindicated by having upper and middle-class black people (like me) run school systems that disserve poor black children? I believe the answer is no. My father gave most of his life to the movement, and I know that all the marching and the dying that people did was not so that some of us could have jobs. It was so that all of us could read, do math, develop a love for learning, feel the power that comes from knowing your brain can solve tough problems, and get a job you enjoy. Until we become clear on this question nothing else will get fixed.

That's the most progressive thing I've read in quite a while.

Let's Not Do Away with Public Education

It's hard to know where to start on conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg's recent column arguing that the U.S. ought to "do away with" public schools. Goldberg comes to this conclusion based on the Washington Post's recent series focusing on the horrible state of the District of Columbia Public Schools--which is sort of like concluding we should abolish the U.S. military because of the Abu Ghraib scandal.

There's no disputing that DCPS is a horrible mess, and that too many other school districts nationally are doing a grave injustice to the poor and minority kids they're failing serve. But it's hard to see where Goldberg's proposed solution would help.

Goldberg quotes Milton Friedman saying government is bad at providing services but good at cutting checks. But another thing government has been good at is ensuring that every child had a school to attend--an important achievement that could be lost in a purely market system. Obviously, that's not enough if the schools suck, but there's no reason to believe imploding the public schools would generate huge quality improvements.

The biggest problem in education today is an insufficient supply of good schools--public or private--particularly in high-minority, low-income communities. Simply cutting parents a check isn't going to fix that. We need a dramatic expansion of the supply of high-quality schools serving disadvantaged youngsters. Market mechanisms, combined with charity, can do (and are doing) some of that, but the woes of for-profit education management companies, combined with the inherent limits on the number of altruistic school founders, suggest there are serious limitations to what a purely market strategy can accomplish without a more aggressive public role.

In casting the debate as a choice between "greater funding" and "blow the whole thing up" Goldberg betrays a woeful ignorance about today's education policy landscape. What about the standards movement, which has for the first time given parents and the public meaningful information about student and school performance and focused educators on the goal of improving student performance? What about successful school turnaround efforts in San Diego, Sacramento, and elsewhere? What about Teach for America, the New Teacher Project, and other programs that aim to bring a much needed dose of new talent into the education system? What about performance pay, career ladders, and other efforts to make teachers truly accountable professionals and link teachers incentives more closely to actual public goals for schools? What about the charter school movement, which in barely 15 years has created nearly 4,000 new PUBLIC schools nationally, including, yes, too many bad ones, but also including some incredible successes--such as the KIPP and Achievement First networks--and expanded real choice for parents? Goldberg needs to take a look at Education Sector's website.

Yes, there are too many bad schools in the U.S. And, yes, too many reform efforts have failed. But imploding the current system, simply sending poor parents out to fend for themselves with a check and a wish good luck, would be just as great an abdication of public responsibility as anything in the current system.

Mapping D.C. Schools

Per Kevin's post below, if you're following the Washington Post's in-depth series on D.C. schools (or if you like cool interactive online tools), check out their online map tool here. A great way to see how school performance, teachers, and facilities problems are distributed throughout the district -- and you can layer all of that information with poverty data, street names, and wards. Good stuff.

More on the Progressive Solution

Kevin asks below what the progressive solution is the the entrenched, dysfunctional bureacracies that stifle progress and success in too many of our urban school systems. I don't presume to have the credentials to speak for progressives of liberals on this or any issue: I'm hoping Leo or Matt or Ed Muir and John See or Teacher Ken might be up for this.

It's important to realize, though, that historically progressives have been--far from defenders of dysfunctional, corrupt, and incompetent school bureacracies--some of the most radical advocates for dismantling schools systems when they disempower poor families and communities and perpetuate inequity for poor and minority children. James Forman, Jr. writes:

The late 1960s also saw the public school bureaucracy challenged by the community control movement, the topic of Part IV. Community control advocates included civil rights organizations, black nationalists, and some members of the liberal political establishment. They demanded that ghetto residents have more control over their neighborhood schools. While not itself a school choice initiative, the community control movement is an important part of the narrative. Like some choice proposals, it was premised on the notion that the public system was unwilling or unable to meet the needs of poor and working-class black children. Community control supporters also shared choice advocates’ belief that taking control from the bureaucracy and giving it to community members was an important part of the solution.

The Community Control movement faced some of the same challenges as other 1960s-era efforts to empower poor communities and foundered due to internal conflict as well as conflict between community activists, school boards, and unions--The latter of which, while often (and sometimes rightly) maligned as a source of urban bureacratic dysfunction, have also been advocates on behalf of teachers and communities against dysfunctional management. Between the high point of 1960s era activism and the 1980s, however, liberalism itself shifted to become much more defensive and invested in protecting the entrenched interests of its allies--including urban bureacrats--rather than expanding opportunity and social justice for the disadvantaged--a phenomenon that Charlie Peters, in his influential "A Neoliberal's Manifesto" cited as a core failing of late 20th century liberalism.

I would argue that a progressive vision of education reform needs to return to principles of parent and community empowerment. Ironically, the people who are doing the most to carry that banner these days are charter school operators and supporters who are often seen as centrists or even conservatives.

Understanding this--the need to empower poor families and communities and the potential of new, community-driven public schools of choice to do that--is why I became a charter school convert. Several years ago, the C.S. Mott Foundation arranged for a group of education policy analysts to visit a group of "small, autonomous schools," (not charters) created by the Oakland school district in response to the activisim and parent organizing efforts of a local community organization whose members were angry about the terrible conditions the Oakland schools had placed their children in. These working class and poor, largely black and Hispanic families were alienated from and disempowered by the local public schools, which had no meaningful connection to the community. Organizing, and persuading the district to create new schools the parents wanted, was the only way for these parents to get not only much better schools for their children, but also the type of ownership of public education that middle-class families take for granted. Those parents in turn became empowered to make other changes in their and their children's lives, and those schools became a cornerstone for building functioning communities in those neighborhoods.

It's important to understand that this is a different, and I believe richer, account of how choice empowers parents than standard market-based arguments, which ignore the importance of community and broader political forces, and tend to cast empowerment solely in terms of increasing poor parents' purchasing power and making them competent consumers, rather than helping them get real political power to influence institutions that affect their lives. Further, it's a view that's not in tension with the progressive belief that improving schools alone is insufficient without broader social and political changes to address the myriad other factors contributing to poor life outcomes for disadvantaged kids, since gaining power to influence public education instiutitons also puts parents in a position to influence other issues that impact their and their children's lives.

I'll admit this is a much messier strategy than the centrist and conservative approaches Kevin describes, and the potential it has to threaten certain established liberal consituencies may actually doom it as a progressive education agenda. But it's happening in places like Los Angeles, where Green Dot charter schools founder Steve Barr has organized thousands of parents to advocate for better schools for their kids, and I'd like to see what it could do, alongside more centrist and conservative reforms already underway, in a place like D.C., where God knows the parents and community need all the empowerment we can get.

Where's the Progressive Solution?

Day two of the Post's exhaustive series on the decades-long failure of DC Public Schools traces the history of constant leadership turnover and unfulfilled reform efforts. It also features more examples of corruption, recalcitrant bureaucracy and mind-boggingly inept management, such as this from former superintendant Arlene Ackerman:

Ackerman obtained extra federal money and pressed ahead with the summer school plan. But the school system's personnel office functioned too poorly to recruit additional teachers. Early in her tenure, for example, Ackerman came across a motorized filing system that had broken long ago, trapping hundreds of personnel records behind a wall.

"Somebody told me, 'Oh, this has been this way for years,' " Ackerman said. "Years! I'm thinking, no wonder people are telling me that they can't get data or records."

Ackerman and a few aides worked the phones to contact summer school teacher prospects. "One night, we were calling people until so late that I finally said, 'It's 11 o'clock. We can't call anybody else tonight and ask them if they want to work in D.C. They will know we're desperate,' " she recalled.

Ackerman puzzled over the central office culture. Late one night, after attending a meeting, she returned to headquarters to see a line of people in a hall waiting to see one of her subordinates. She said she eventually came to believe that the man, a longtime employee who no longer works in the system, had amassed great power through his ability to hand out jobs, award contracts and outlast superintendents. "He was like the godfather," Ackerman said.

So here's my question: what's the progressive / left-wing solution to the DCPS incompetence problem? I know what the libertarian / right-wing solution is: blow up the system and replace it with vouchers. I know what the centrist solution is: standards, accountability, and choice in a public context, i.e. charter schools. What's the liberal solution?

Unfortunately, I don't think there is one. That's not to say there's no progressive education agenda at all--left-wing folks reliably support things like funding equity and smaller class sizes, and there are places where those reforms are badly needed.

But those aren't solutions to the problem of an entrenched, dysfunctional educational bureaucracy. The biggest failure of the traditional liberal education agenda--and the main reason that vouchers and other dodgy ideas persist--is total silence in the face of educational problems like those in DCPS, failures that are literally ruining the lives of tens of thousands of low-income and minority students--the very students liberals are supposed to care about the most.

Understanding "Standards"

There has been much discussion of standards in the last week, fueled by the release of two major reports. The National Center for Education Statistics raised some interesting questions about the rigor of state standards and variation between the states. Their report compelled Secretary Spellings to argue against national standards on the editorial pages of the Washington Post.

There is some ambiguity in the use of the word "standards" in this debate. In terms of curriculum, standards are a specific description of what students should know and be able to do by the end of a course or grade level. This is what we mean by "national standards." In terms of assessment, standards are the level of performance to which students are held accountable -- the difficulty of the test. This is what we mean by "high standards" (which, incidentally, is also the reason women say they won’t go out with me). It's the difference between what a student should learn and how well they need to learn it to pass the test.

The distinction is subtle but important. As a high school math teacher, I immediately noticed a significant gap between my state’s curriculum standards and what was expected on the state test, and I often wished they were more aligned. There was more depth and more breadth in the curriculum standards. Of course, even these did not account for everything I wanted to teach my students, like mental toughness or the importance of going to college.

In policy discussions, we should be aware of the two types of standards and be clear about which we are referring to. It is crucial that all states have high assessment standards, which is why the NCES report is troubling (though in my view mitigated by flawed methodology). But this does not necessarily mean that all states must have equivalent curriculum standards. In theory, states can exercise discretion in what students learn and when they learn it while also ensuring that all students benefit from a rigorous and complete curriculum. The question is how to make sure it happens.

Nightmare on the Potomac

A few years ago, I took a tour of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's castle outside of Prague (if you've seen The Illusionist, a lot of the scenes were shot there). After a while, it became apparent that our tour guide, while friendly, polite, and knowledgeable, was also completely insane. Not "kind of eccentric" insane but "I am the Messiah" insane. Years of living under the utter absurdity of life in the former Eastern Bloc had driven him over the edge, never to return.

After reading today's Washington Post article about DC Public Schools, I wonder how many DCPS employees are at risk of a similar affliction. More than anything, it's a portrait of a school system where common sense goes to die.

The article, which is worth reading in full, is a litany of bureaucratic incompetence. It also highlights one of the real challenges of urban school reform. When new leaders are hired, they naturally focus on reforms tied directly to classroom learning. You'll never hear a new superintendant say something like this at his or her first press conference:

"We're not going to adopt any innovative or fashionable reforms. Nor are we going to implement wholesale changes to the curriculum or recruit new learning specialists and teachers. Instead, we're going to start by getting to a basic level of competence in running this place. There are no new ideas here, we're just going to work at not doing things that will make us subject to ridicule. Only after we've gotten there--and it's going to take some time--will we move ahead with the rest."

Yet that might be exactly the right thing to do. Most people are able to keep their sanity in the face of constant absurdity, but it tends to sap their motivation and will, breeding cynicism and hopelessness. It prevent legitimate reforms from taking root. And, as the Post shows in some great graphics, it leads to a school system--pay attention, those who think demography is destiny--where the average 8th grade math score for non-poor students is the same as the average score for poor students nationwide.

Or to look at it a slightly different way--there's a gap of 23 scale score points (225 to 248) between the scores of poor and non-poor students nationwide in 4th grade math. That gap is only marginally bigger than the 19 point gap between the national average score for poor students (225) and the DCPS score for poor students (206).

In other words, poverty is drag on educational attainment, but so is gross incompetence, and the effects of the two seem to be pretty comparable. And of course, most DCPS students have the soul-crushing misfortune of experiencing both at the same time.

It's enough to drive you crazy.