Obama on Education

Interviewed on 60 Minutes:

OBAMA: When we're having education debates here in Washington, my positions are informed by having tried to figure out how to fundamentally change the way that we finance public education at the state level. It's informed by work that I've done as a community organizer in inner city classrooms. And so I end up recognizing that we need more money to fix our schools, but we also need a transformation in attitudes. And in Washington, that's typically framed as a "either/or" proposition. You know, the conservative position is we don't need more money; we just need to blow up the bureaucracy. You know, on the left, sometimes the sense is we just need more money, and we and our problems will be solved. When you have actually been in these schools and worked with these parents and talked to the teachers and sat down in a meeting with principals who are trying to figure out how to hold this thing together, then you realize that it's not an "either/or" proposition. It's both ends. You know, parents need to do a better job of parenting. Teachers need to do a better job teaching. Some of the anti-intellectualism that exists in the African-American community and Latino communities and low-income communities has to change. And the federal government's got to put more money, because the fact is that they don't have enough resources.

As an education person, I'm psyched to hear a candidate voluntarily deciding to talk about education prominently during an interview. And I really don't have anything negative to say about this. Sure, it sounds a bit like this, but instead of making it sound like a reductionist political calculation, Obama makes it sound drawn from real experiences with kids, families and schools, like a proper politician and good public speaker should. And he gets a nice Bill Cosby-ish hit in there, too. Certainly, I hope whatever debate over education there is in this election resembles the tone of his remarks more than these.

The Wire Once More

The debut of the fourth season of "The Wire" in the U.K. gives me a chance to go on about how great it is one more time, via the Guardian Unlimited.

Teachers SASS back

Interesting new data from the federal government’s School and Staffing Survey (SASS) released last week provides an interesting look into teacher attrition and mobility. The data comes from a follow-up survey of teachers in 04-05 based on the sample included in the 03-04 data collection. The great thing about this data is that it includes teachers who changed schools or left teaching—a subset of people that are often hard to track down for research. The study is also valuable because its sample includes nearly 7,500 teachers, of whom almost 92 percent responded to the survey.

Some highlights that I found interesting:

• The percent of teachers leaving the classroom has steadily increased from 5.6% in 88-89 to 8.4% in 04-05 (somewhat due to an aging workforce).

• Among teachers with no full time teaching experience, nearly 20% departed in 04-05, more than double the rate of any other group.

• Teachers in high minority schools are the most likely to move or leave.

• Teachers moved to other schools for a better teaching assignment, administrative support, and workplace conditions.

• Teachers left K-12 schools to retire (30%), work in education outside of teaching (29%), care for family (13%), and work outside education (12%).

The part that I found most interesting was the perceptions of former teachers now working outside of education. Compared to their current jobs, the only aspects on which teaching compared favorably were in benefits and the opportunity to make a difference in others’ lives. On every other measure, respondents felt their current position was superior or similar. On several dimensions, these differences were huge—65% cited a more manageable workload in their current work, 65% felt better able to balance personal life and work outside of teaching, 64% felt more autonomy or control over their own work, and 61% noted better general work conditions. These responses dwarfed the more common things you might think teachers were seeking improvements in: salary, prestige, performance evaluation, safety, etc.

It’s important to take these with a grain (or lump) of salt. These are the people who were unhappy enough to leave teaching, and it’s possible that some of them may have been less effective teachers—unfortunately we have no way to know. Also, we don’t know the types of positions that they have moved into—only that on average they did not experience dramatic salary changes.

However, these findings do suggest that there is a fairly significant problem of teacher support—whether that comes in the form of mentoring, planning time, or other measures to help teachers manage their workload and find balance. While I don’t often agree with Linda Darling Hammond, her description of most teachers’ early careers as “hazing” does ring true to me.

In addition to supporting teachers, this data suggests that working conditions and autonomy in teaching lag behind those in other professions. While complete autonomy is impossible in a standards-based environment, allowing successful teachers to innovate seems like a clear win-win to me. And finally, not to ride a union hobby horse, but the poor working conditions in many schools are totally inexcusable both for students and teachers. Schools not having heat (including Simon ES where I taught) is only the latest shameful example in D.C.

Flawed budget analysis from CAP, continued

A few days ago, I criticized a column about Bush Administration budget policy by Scott Lilly of the Center on American Progress. Here's Scott's response, and my follow-up:

Evidently my piece on No Child Left Behind funding failed to make my point as clearly as I had hoped—at least to Mr. Carey.

The question I pose is simple. What has happened to education funding once the White House got Congress to agree to the authorization that Bush so badly wanted? Spellings has attempted to dispel criticism that the Administration forgot about the resource side of the problem once the bill was signed by saying that funding has increased for NCLB programs since 2001. But nearly all of that increase--and in inflation-adjusted terms, more than all of the increase--took place before the act was adopted.

Another way to look at the same question is yearly funding increases for Elementary and Secondary Education for the 6 years before the bill was signed and the six years afterwards.

(Note: having a little trouble with blogger formatting here, in each row the first number is the federal fiscal year, the second is the total Elementary and Secondary Education appropriation, the third number is the dollar amount change from the previous year, and the fourth number is the percentage change from the previous year. - KC)

1996 14,404,928

1997 16,464,731 2,059,803 14%

1998 18,164,490 1,699,759 10%

1999 20,951,877 2,787,387 15%

2000 22,600,399 1,648,522 8%

2001 27,316,893 4,716,494 21%

2002 32,078,434 4,761,541 17%

2003 35,113,253 3,034,819 9%

2004 36,942,478 1,829,225 5%

2005 37,530,257 587,779 2%

2006 36,463,840 (1,066,417) -3%

2007 36,312,228 (151,612) 0%

2008 36,748,577 436,349 1%

The average increase in the years prior was 14%. The average increase since is 2.4%

In real or inflation adjusted dollars the picture is even worse. Real growth tumbled from 11% to a negative .4%. In real dollars we will be spending less on elementary and secondary education if the President’s 08 budget is adopted than was true when the President signed the law. I believed at the time NCLB passed that it was a political ploy to allow the White House to appear to have an education agenda when all they really wanted to do was stop the growth of the education budget. I believe these figures give support to that theory.

Here's the problem: Scott is just using the same flawed analysis in this post that he used in his column. His 14% to 2.4% comparison depends on assigning the large budget increases of FY 2002 to the period "before" NCLB. This doesn't make any sense. As Scott himself explains quite clearly in his column, the FY 2002 budget was negotiated at the same time as NCLB. They were enacted within weeks of one another, as two pieces of a single bargain.

Let me put it this way: If the NCLB had been signed into law a few weeks before the FY 2002 budget was passed, instead of a few weeks after, would that change his analysis? Wouldn't it have to? And doesn't that show that it rests on an essentially semantic distinction?

Moreover, the largest single piece of NCLB -- Title I -- is a forward-funded program. That means that even though the FY 2002 budget was finished in December 2001, schools didn't start to get the money until the beginning of the 2002-2003 school year--nine months after NCLB was enacted. To characterize this as pre-NCLB money makes no sense at all.

Scott might respond that even if you concede this point, the average year-to-year growth rate before NCLB was much larger than the average rate afterwards, which is true. But this also show's why Scott's average annual growth approach to comparing budget policies is, methodologically, the wrong way to look at this issue.

That's because it doesn't take into account the fact that a lot of the big growth in NCLB dollars took place up front, in year one. That significant percentage increase didn't just help schools in the first year, it helped them in the first year and every year afterward.

This makes a big difference. For example, let's say you're a school district that gets $1 million per year from NCLB. You have a choice. You can (A) Get a 25% increase next year, and no increase for the four years after that, or (B) Get no increase for the next four years, and a 25% increase in the year after that. Which would you choose?

According to Scott's analysis, you shouldn't care, because in both cases the average annual growth rate is exactly the same, about 4.5%. But of course, you would care, and you'd choose (A), because with (A) you would get a total of $6.25 million over those five years, while (B) would only give you $5.25 million, a difference of a cool million dollars.

This distinction can be seen in the very numbers Scott has posted above. In the five years from 1996 to 2001, schools received a total of $33.5 billion more than they would have received if ESEA funding had been fixed at 1996 levels for that entire a time, a difference of $6.7 billion per year.

In the seven years from 2001 to 2008 (assuming for the sake of argument that the 2008 proposed number becomes the actual number), schools received $60.0 billion more than they would have if funding had been fixed at 2001 levels for that entire time, a difference of $8.6 billion per year.

So even though the average percentage increases were much bigger from 1996 to 2001, schools actually got more money from 2001 to 2008, because percentages compound, and because NCLB money came sooner rather than later. Even if you adjust for inflation and population growth, the numbers are comparable.

As I said before, I don't think the Bush administration has done nearly enough for NCLB funding. But if you want them to do more, you should start by giving them fair credit for what they've actually done.

Paychecks and Privacy

So, I see Beth's point about "secret bonuses" being divisive. But I think she's missing the Fordhamites' point. To a lot of people, the idea that everyone in a workplace should know what everyone else makes because it's determined by a set of rules in a contract is a little wierd. Following Beth's suggestion to "take a moment to picture how this would play out in our own workplaces": I have no idea how much money Kevin, Elena, or Erin makes, nor do I particularly care. It's not really any of my business.

A Cross to Bear

As a William & Mary alumna, I have received many of the emails and petitions circulating about the issue of the Wren Cross. For the most part, I have ignored it, hoping that the attentions of higher education reporters and the William & Mary community would turn to, quite frankly, more important issues (like the under representation of low income and minority students). But, after the second time the issue made my Inside Higher Education daily news blast (maybe it was just a slow news day), I figured it was time to post a response.

For those of you not familiar with the issue, William & Mary’s president, Gene Nichol, had a cross removed from the college’s historic Wren Chapel in a move to open the space to students and faculty of all religions. There was a backlash from William & Mary alumni (students, too, but mostly alumni), who felt that the cross was an important part of W&M’s history and community, and should not have been removed. No doubt, the vast majority of the protesters to the cross removal are Christian, and take their faith and its dominance on W&M’s campus for granted. As the article on Inside Higher Education points out, the white, Southern, Christian dominance on campus is fading with the increased diversity of cultures and religions in the United States and Virginia. William and Mary will only be hurt, in its reputation, ability to attract a diversity of students, and ability to educate students on the diversity in this world, if it continues to allow its Christian roots to determine its future course.

If it isn’t clear yet, I support Nichol’s decision to remove the Wren Cross from permanent display, and to open up the Wren chapel, a historic and otherwise neutral space on campus, to students from all religious, and non-religious, backgrounds. I think his decision, as many of his actions as President have, shows a respect for William and Mary as a public college and a desire to create a culture welcoming to the next generation of students. This is, in part, evidenced by the quote from the campus newspaper, the Flat Hat, “It would be hard to find many students who are up in arms… I think you have on both sides of the issue a few students who are very concerned about it, but that’s a minority.” The debate is mostly among alumni, many of whom experienced W&M as a less diverse campus than it is today (although it still has a long way to go to reflect our society’s true diversity in culture, income, and religion).

There are a couple facts that sometimes get buried in the debate, but are important to the issue: first, W&M (despite it's private-sounding name) is a public, Virginia state college and second, while the Wren Chapel was built (and then re-built a few times after fires) in 1695, the cross was placed there much later, in the 20th century and is in no way a permanent fixture. This debate, though, is not about technical details of historical accuracy, it is about whether a college should actively place a religious symbol in what would otherwise be a secular place. Opponents of removing the cross need to realize that W&M is no longer a Christian institution and is evolving into a more diverse, and hopefully welcoming, place. In my view, that spells nothing but success and good fortune for William & Mary.

CAP Blows Its Top On NCLB Funding

Curently (a little after 7PM on Thursday), the front of the Center for American Progress Web is featuring an article by Scott Lilly titled "No Gimmick Left Behind: Bush's Education Budget Claims Define Disinformation," along with the requisite unflattering picture of the President.

The Bush administration has, to say the least, done plenty to explore the theoretical limits of disinformation over the past six years. But in this case, the criticism is largely semantic and overblown.

Lilly's ire is directed at claims from Secretary of Education Spellings that "the president’s new budget would result in a 41 percent increase in education funding relative to 2001 levels." Lilly goes on to say that "A number of news organizations understandably interpreted that to mean funding had increased by that amount since the No Child Left Behind, or NCLB, law was signed. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Lilly argues that the 41 percent figure, while accurate, is deceptive, apparently because of the order in which the FY 2002 budget and NCLB were passed into law. Throughout 2001, the White House was negotiating with Congress about both NCLB and the FY 2002 federal budget. The two negotiations were tightly related, since many members of Congress, particularly Democrats (who controlled the Senate starting in May 2001 due to the Jeffords defection) wanted increased funding in return for accepting tougher accountability requirements for schools. As a result, the FY 2002 budget, which passed Congress in December 2001, contained $4.7 billion in new money for education. The President signed NCLB into law a few weeks later, on January 8, 2002.

Lilly's argument seems to be that because the FY 2002 budget was passed just prior to the enactment of NCLB, it doesn't count as new money for NCLB. He also implies that because the administration only agreed to the new money as part of the NCLB negotiations, it should get partial (or no) credit for it.

This is, to be frank, a silly and semantic point. If you want to say that most of the 41 percent came in the first few years of NCLB implementation and there's been little new money since, fine, that's true. If you want to argue, as Lilly does, that the numbers look worse when you adjust for inflation and student population growth, that's fine too. If you want to note that Bush administration budget proposals for NCLB have fallen short of the maximum allowable under the law, true once again, although one should also note that Democratic budget proposals haven't reached the authorization targets either, and probably won't this year now that they're back in power.

But the 41 percent number is perfectly valid. It's not as much money as a lot of people, myself included, think is needed. By not providing more funding, the administration has missed a historic chance to help a lot of students and solidify a genuine bipartisan coalition for school reform.

That said, it's still a lot of money, and it's not the definition of disinformation to say so. Let's maintain honesty in claims of Bush administration dishonesty -- it's not like there are a shortage of legitimate examples to choose from.

More D.C.: Does Fenty's Lack of Education Experience Matter

Sounds like yesterday's D.C. Council hearing, which offered community members an opportunity to tell the council what they think of Mayor Fenty's plans to take over the D.C. Public Schools, turned into a bit of a circus--albeit a tragic one, considering how our city's schools are performing. I understand passions are high on both sides of the issue, but this really doesn't sound like the best way for the activists opposing the plan to persuade the council to their side. The Post's David Nakamura hosts an online chat here.

I want to say a word about the complaints that Fenty doesn't have an education background or that his plan doesn't put forward specific proposals to improve the schools. Fenty is not proposing to actually make educational decisions about the schools' operation himself: He's proposing to hire a chancellor who will have the authority to make those decisions but will be accountable to Fenty for the results. It's also proper and smart for Fenty's folks to keep specific education proposals out of the current governance debate. This is not supposed to be a discussion about specific measures but a discussion about what kind of structural arrangements, what kind of distributions of power and lines of accountability, are the most likely to create an environment that leads to good decisions, the ability to carry them out, and public accountability for results. The question is whether or not Mayor Fenty's proposal will create clearer public accountability for results, give the chancellor and other key education leaders the autonomy to make and carry out decisions, and provide the political clout to carry through with contentious and difficult changes that may need to be made to improve DCPS. Specific proposals would be an unecessary and inappropriate distraction from those issues.

Alter-native Takes

Ken DeRosa's not having the oversimplified rehashing of centrist wonky consensus (and I mean that in the very most positive way) that is Johnathan Alter's latest Newsweek column on education. I don't agree with a lot of what Ken says, but I think his arguments deserve a serious listen. The big problem with the accountability movement is that incentives don't matter a hill of beans if people honestly can't figure out how to get the desired results. The next generation of ed reforms has to be about combining the tough mindedness NCLB was supposed to bring with a lot more capacity-building, support and R&D to help schools and educators actually get there.

AP-palooza

The College Board is getting some serious press for their release yesterday of data on national and state-by-state AP test-taking and results for the class of 2006. The big news is that more of last year's grads--15%, up from 10% in 2000--took and passed AP exams. The percent of schools offering classes--62%--is also up. But there are still big inequities in AP course access and test-taking.

Jay Mathews, as usual, takes a novel tack, framing his report around the idea that some students in the D.C. suburbs' competitive hothouse high schools may actually be taking too many AP tests, because 3 to 5 courses are plenty to impress college admissions officers. I think this is kind of goofy logic. AP tests have a lot of value beyond getting kids into college. For starters, there's the whole preparation for college work thing. There's also the possibility of getting college credit. Back when my dad convinced me to take a ridiculous number of AP tests, his intent was not to get me into a competitive college, but to enable me to get out of college faster, thereby saving me and my parents money. (That didn't actually happen, but c'est la vie.) Of course, the really high-end schools don't let you get course credit for AP, so "hothouse" kids with their sights set there may not benefit from the extra tests, but a lot of schools do award course credit for AP, so we should be encouraging kids to take advantage of those opportunities to the extent it's possible for them to do so successfully and still maintain a healthy, happy teenage life (to the extent that any teenager is every happy of course).

The bigger issue, as Jay notes, is certainly not kids taking too many AP courses, but too few kids taking or having access to any at all. Jay knows this better than anybody--that's why his challenge index focuses on how many AP tests a school's students take.

Nickleby?

It's a little random, but the start of this Burlington Free Press op-ed criticizing NCLB caught my eye:

In its most benign interpretation, No Child Left Behind, known as Nickleby

Since I've been working as an education policy analyst since the law's passage, you'd think I'd be familiar with whatever people were calling it--NCLB, "No Child," even "No School Board Left Standing,"--but Nickleby? People call it that? With a straight face? Then I remembered I had once read Susan Ohanian explaining that NCLB was called Nickleby, and I started to wonder if the abbreviation is used primarily by people opposed to NCLB as a way of signaling their contempt for the law. A quick and admittedly highly unscientific google search suggests that may be the case. Anyone out there have more insights into this?

Kopp on Colbert

Thanks to Tivo, my late-night comedy viewing tends to take place on a 20-hour time delay, so I didn't know that Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp was on the Colbert Report until I came home from work today. You can watch the video here. In a lot of ways, it's most interesting for what you don't see--this has to be one of the most straight-up interviews Colbert has done. Colbert's one real fake question was along the lines of, "Why do we need you, since we already have a law that says no child shall be left behind?" To which Kopp said, quite correctly, that's exactly why we need organizations like TFA. NCLB tells us where the problems are, TFA is one of the solutions.

Some messages are so clear and compelling that they're hard to make fun of, even on Comedy Central.

For A Good Time...

Come join us at the National Press Club tomorrow at 9am for some hot coffee and good talk about school time. Hey, if it snows and schools close (uh-oh, now they're only getting 179 days of school this year!) bring the kids. We'd love to hear what they think about extending the school day or year.

P.S. For those of you cringing at the thought of cold weather, it could be worse. That one's for you, Renee.

Why the Primary Schedule is Bad for Education

John at AFT blog asks "Who Lost Vilsack?" in response to the Iowa Governor and '08 candidate's call, at a DNC event, for repeal of the No Child Left Behind Act. But who ever had Vilsack on this issue? Contrary to leftwing bloggy conspiracy theorist opinion,* my former employer, the Democratic Leadership Council, does not have any special mind control over the elected officials connected with it, nor can it bend them to do its will or follow a preset party line. The DLC is not a monolith but a network of elected officials who share some similar values and goals but also have their own perspectives, priorities, and constituencies to represent. And sometimes these people disagree with DLC leaders on specific policy issues.

Vilsack is clearly on record as a critic of NCLB. Take this from a 2003 speech to the Democratic Governors Association:

Unfortunately, the President’s education plan is fundamentally flawed. The “No Child Left Behind” program is focused on failure and it is funded for failure—it is currently $6 billion short of adequate funding. The program assesses a schools performance and punishes accordingly, but fear of failure serves as no incentive to schools that are already struggling. We urge him to join us in a renewed effort to improve education.

I mean, the guy's from Iowa, for crying out loud, one of the strongest local control states in the country and the only one that didn't adopt state standards in response to the 1994 Improving America's Schools Act. So he's probably naturally not disposed to be a big fan of the law. And his campaign depends on the idea that the Iowa native will do well in that's state's primary. So of course he's gonna be talking smack on NCLB.

This leads me to a broader concern, though: The current structure of the early presidential primaries is particularly inhospitable to education reform. It's a common complaint in political circles that Iowa and New Hampshire aren't demographically representative of the rest of the country, and that their particular parochial concerns tend to skew policy (support for ethanol subsidies, anyone?).

The consequences for the national debate on education policy are significant: These are both very strong local control states that aren't fans of state standards, accountability, or the federal role in education. They're not big fans of school choice either, and they have some of the country's weakest charter school laws. While most states have been debating how to expand pre-k, New Hampshire hasn't even required all its school districts to offer kindergarten. Perhaps most significantly, the extremely pale hue of these states' populations means that the nation's most serious educational challenge--the huge achievement gap between white students and black or Hispanic students--doesn't resonate there. Instead, we saw campaigning there during the 2004 campaign pushing some Democratic candidates in a more stridently anti-NCLB direction.

Will the same forces play out in 2008? Will a speeded up primary calendar make a difference? I don't know. There's plenty of room for candidates of both parties to offer constructive criticism of NCLB and new, innovative ideas for how the federal government can help improve education. My colleagues and I might even offer them a few ideas for how to do that. I hope they rise to the challenge.

*I don't mean to imply that John is a leftwing bloggy conspiracy theorist.

Are Lenders Crying Wolf?

In yesterday’s Washington Post, Michael Dannenberg and Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation proposed a fundamental change in how subsidy amounts to student loan companies are set (see here for the full idea). They proposed changing from the current system, in which Congress sets the subsidy rate, to a system in which lenders bid for the right to make government-guaranteed loans – one way lenders would sweeten their bids is by offering to take lower subsidies. Dannenberg and Longman argue that using an auction will minimize federal subsidy payments on loans. Not surprisingly, lenders are resistant to this idea.

When John Kerry proposed something similar in 2004, the lending industry responded by saying that an auction mechanism would create too much uncertainty for banks, would cause smaller lenders to withdraw from the federal loan program, and that promised savings were uncertain and services to students might be reduced. Interestingly, very similar claims were made against President Bush’s proposed subsidy cuts in his 2008 budget, released yesterday.

President Bush’s proposed cuts, including a ½ percent cut in the interest subsidy, an increase in fees charged to lenders, and a reduction in the amount lenders are reimbursed for defaulted loans, caused a steep decline in lender stocks – Sallie Mae saw a 9% drop, it’s largest in 14 years*. Predictably, lenders are up in arms, claiming that the reductions will result in higher fees charged to students and other reduced borrower benefits, as well as claiming that it will push out small and medium sized lenders from the industry.

There are a lot of difficult decisions to make about the details of a lender auction plan - details that are important to ensuring that there is sufficient loan money available and that students are not the ones footing the bill through higher loan fees (see this 2002 GAO report for a discussion). Still, the lending industry’s constant doomsday cries are not as effective as they once were, evidenced by Bush’s budget proposal. It’s time for the lending industry to stop crying wolf about cuts to subsidies and start cooperating to create a system that works both for them and for students and taxpayers. While the lending industry claims that the instability of an auction system would make it too hard for them to do business, I can’t imagine that the current system of relying on lobbyists and keeping friends in office is a particularly stable way of ensuring profits.

* Fortunately, Sallie Mae's CEO saved himself over $1 million by selling less than 5% of his stock last week.

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.