edbizbuzz

An Update. Yesterday, I examined the arguments offered by Jay P. Greene in defense of the Manhattan Institute's release of his unreviewed report (Building on the Basics: The Impact of High-Stakes Testing on Student Proficiency in Low-Stakes Subjects) with the same fanfare that education policy organizations provide for reports subject to peer review. Greene has commented on that post, accusing me of being “fundamentally dishonest” because I left out the word capitalized in the title of this post.

Continue reading "The Letter From: "In short, I see no problem with research INITIALLY becoming public with little or no review.” (II)" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week I began an essay prompted by an exchange between left-of-center eduwonkette and right-of-center Jay P. Greene over the Manhattan Institute’s release of Building on the Basics: The Impact of High-Stakes Testing on Student Proficiency in Low-Stakes Subjects by Greene, Marcus Winters, and Julie Trivitt.

Eduwonkette pointed out that the study, offered to the press by Manhattan Institute Press Officer Bridget Sweeney in a July 1 media advisory email with the attention grabbing subject line “New Report Debunks High Stakes Testing Myth: Shows Student Gains in Science,” lacked formal peer review. When all is said and done, she argued that this was unprofessional, and has continued to do so here, and here.

Greene replied by arguing that he recognized a trade-off between getting information out early and quality control, consumers appreciate early information and discount it appropriately, and the marketplace of ideas would perform the necessary quality review. He has continued to offer variations on this theme on his blog here and here .

Continue reading "The Letter From: "In short, I see no problem with research becoming public with little or no review.” (Between I and II)" »

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This is the gist of an exchange between left of center eduwonkette and right of center Jay P. Greene over the Manhattan Institute’s release of Building on the Basis: The Impact of High-Stakes Testing on Student Proficiency in Low-Stakes Subjects by Greene, his long-time associate Marcus Winters, and Julie Trivitt.

Continue reading "The Letter From: "In short, I see no problem with research becoming public with little or no review.” (I)" »

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What remains relevant from this letter in the March 29, 2004 issue of School Improvement Industry Week (SIIW)?

All industries consist of three parts: supply, demand and government. Meeting objective criteria is necessary to prove the existence of an industry, but not sufficient. Industries must also have a subjective sense of self-awareness that goes beyond the separate parts.

Continue reading "The Letter From: March 29, 2004 Asks if There is a School Improvement Industry" »

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The Bottom Line

If you are a school improvement provider…. School Year (SY) 2009 will probably be more like SY 2008 than SY 2010. States and districts will behave much as last year, holding off on difficult decisions with market changing potential until after No Child Left Behind is reauthorized some many months following the Presidential election. This is not a time for management to make bold moves with much material risk for the company. It is time to consider: the 80/20 rule – and dropping the costliest customers, growing intensively with or near the best customers, creating low-cost growth options, and looking for federal grants and other forms of funding to maintain and build human and intellectual capital, rather than laying off staff.

If you are an investor…. Other things being equal, SY 2009 will not be the time to put funds into the typical school improvement provider. Over the long haul the market for products and services to improve teaching and learning based on student and program evaluation will grow. But today, the balkanization of demand for school improvement by state and district, the disproportionate impact of political risk on the school improvement marketplace (start here), and the extreme fragmentation of school improvement providers (start here), make betting on any one firm extremely risky.

It may be a good time to start investigating investments to be made in SY 2010, and it is probably a good time for major publishers to create acquisition options on the cheap. Ironically, the best bet on a growing school improvement market to lay today is with the major publishers. If demand for school improvement turns up, publishers will buy surviving providers or otherwise capitalize on the positive trend. If not, the publishers current business model will remain an attractive cash cow.

Continue reading "The Letter From: The School Improvement Industry’s Demand Side for SYs 2009 and 2010" »

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What remains relevant from this letter in the March 1, 2004 issue of School Improvement Industry Week (SIIW)?

Policymakers, analysts and advocates have spent the last two months debating whether NCLB constitutes an “unfunded mandate” – imposing new federal requirements on states without providing commensurate federal resources.

The term has political utility for those who oppose NCLB, for reasons that have less to do with their fears of insufficient funding than their discomfort with being held accountable for failing to achieve basic levels of student performance. If people can be made to believe that the law is too expensive, they will dilute its performance requirements, and protect opponents from real education reform.

Like any good diversionary tactic, this one leverages real substantive disputes state Republicans have with the federal government – the under-funding of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and intrusion into policy areas reserved to states by the 10th Amendment.

Continue reading "The Letter From: March 1, 2004 on Funding NCLB" »

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My editorializing is now confined to edbizbuzz and my weekly podcast SIIW Online, but on April 5, 2004 they were still part of School Improvement Industry Week. The examples may require a modest recollection of the industry's history and the last Presidential election, but I think the points made then remain relevant.

Investment, Political Risk, and Political Action

Political risk dominates the future of the school improvement industry. Any organization providing products, services and solutions to public schools could fail because of ineffective management, inappropriate products, low-quality services, poor customer selection, or bad cash management. But these factors are within the control of staff, management, the board and investors.

Every school improvement organization - however well run - operates in a market environment that lives or dies on politics. In most states, there are few legal restrictions on the purchase of school improvement services - up to and including school management. Political resistance at the local, state and national levels, is what makes it difficult. At each echelon, bureaucratic inertia combined with powerful interest groups and public concerns about commerce in the classroom, has slowed industry growth

Continue reading "The Letter From: Political Risk, Political Action (April 5, 2004)" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although it joined the edweek.org blog line-up in September of last year, edbizbuzz celebrated its first anniversary on March 7, 2008.

I started the blog for two reasons.

Continue reading "The Letter From: Reflections on My First BlogYear" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The specific question at issue in the Reading First controversy is whether NCLB confined federal funding to programs and materials that were demonstrated to improve student learning by evaluation, or extended that funding to programs and materials that could claim a relationship to such research.

We all know that the latter approach was taken and that, among other things, providers disadvantaged by the implementation of the program argued this decision was both erroneous and one cause of their misfortunes. Since then, there have been a slew of investigations, a great deal of debate, and occasional statements by current and former government officials – all to clarify which interpretation is correct.

Continue reading "The Letter From: A Detailed Statutory Analysis of "based on" in Reading First (I)" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My April 5, 2007 “Letter From” was titled “Department of Education Technology Study Says What Every Major Study of Broad Reform Initiatives Says: It Depends and We Don't Know.”

I could replace “Education Technology” with “Reading First” and write the same piece about the Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report conducted by Abt Associates, MDRC and Westat, and released by the Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences on May 1.

Here goes:

Continue reading "Reading First Interim Report Doesn’t Pass the “So What? Test”" »

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Political activists want change now; those benefiting from the status quo want it to occur as slowly as is required for them to maintain their positions and benefits; politicians triangulate somewhere between what they think is right, what is possible, and what will advance their careers; academics want to do more research; those who have developed products or programs want them to be purchased and used. The media informs the public. The business of public policy analysis is to identify the costs and benefits to society and the allocation of risks and burdens to stakeholders associated with the decisions about different paths that society might take.

As a practical matter, policymaking does not divide up so neatly.

Continue reading "The Letter From: Why Can't We All Just Get Along?" »

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As a thinking person, I know that student outcomes are the joint product of students, parents, teachers, administrators, superintendents, and school boards; the products, services and programs employed in the classroom; and the tax dollars citizens allocate to public education through the election process.

As someone involved in school reform in dozens of districts, I know that no single factor assures success, but any can assure failure.

As someone who values fair play, I want teachers to be held accountable, but not solely accountable.

Continue reading "The Letter From: Information Systems, Accountability and Adaptive Management" »

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Since NCLB passed, government efforts to develop the technical means of assuring provider accountability have languished. In contrast, school and district accountability have received the highest priority. Significant investments are being made in the information systems required to monitor individual students.

Continue reading "The Letter From: On Teacher Accountability" »

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If the post-communist former Soviet empire is any guide to changing economic sectors from vertically integrated government monopolies to markets of diverse private sector providers, it is thoroughly unreasonable to expect a smooth transition. Government doesn’t know what it’s doing; indeed, it is conflicted about the move. Pre-existing economic interests protect their positions by political means. Every new provider does not have society’s best interests at heart, and all providers are trying to figure out what’s required to survive and thrive. Investors act first on faith, and only come to understand the specific risks afterwards.

Welcome to America's school improvement market. With an opening that began in the early 1990’s, it is not quite twenty years old. So it is unsurprising that whether the subject is federal and state regulation; the role of school districts; the reactions of organized labor, insider consultants, and dominant publishers; the quality of provider offerings; or the flow of investment, problems outnumber solutions. It is also no surprise that someone who favors well-ordered markets rather than simply "the private sector," would have more opportunities to point out bad and incompetent actors, and where the transition is going badly, than to discuss exemplars.

That said, my support for market-based school reform is grounded in practice, not analogy, theory or ideology.

Continue reading "The Letter From: My Market Exemplars" »

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Looking through my “to do” list, I see the last segment of my series on the social keiretsu and a review of the Teacher Equity Project charter school’s proposed multi-year budget. Looking at my postings over February and March, I see a debate with Kevin Carey over NCLB’s Section 9401, another with Andrew Rotherham over the blur of advocacy and analysis in education policy, and critiques of Supplemental Educational Services, social entrepreneurship, education reform think tanks, the Administration’s implementation of the Reading First program and NCLB’s Scientifically Based Research provisions, and industry trade associations' approach to NCLB reauthorization.

Although I every week I post at least one RFP school improvement organizations should pursue, I do my best to link readers to the rest of my writing, and this blog’s “About the author” section explains that I am both pro-market and remain very much in support of NCLB as written in 2001, it is no surprise to me that the casual edbizbuzz reader often thinks I oppose the law and privatization.

Continue reading "The Letter From: Market Critic or Critical Friend?" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

To appreciate where Supplementary Educational Services (SES) need to go, I believe we must proceed from first principles.

In market democracies, the economy exists to enrich the whole society. It is not a perfect system, indeed it is seriously flawed – except, to borrow from Winston Churchill, when compared to every other approach to economic organization mankind has tried to date. Profit is the means by which our society encourages individuals and firms to employ their capital for the general good – remember Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Regulation is the means by which society places limits on competitive impulses, replacing "buyer beware" with some sense of fairness in economic transactions.

Continue reading "The Letter From: Getting SES Providers Past the Tough Times Ahead" »

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Edbizbuzz readers can explain the fears and hopes:

Continue reading "The Letter From: Why the Tough Times Ahead for SES Providers?" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I was reminded of this couplet when I started to read Using Scientific Research-Based Interventions: Improving Education for All Students, released by Connecticut’s Department of Education in February.

For weeks I have become increasingly pessimistic about the role of evidence in the success of school improvement providers over the next few years. Some reasons to be hopeless:

Continue reading "The Letter From: After SBR, RTI?" »

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Every little brother must know the big brother line: “Yes means no, and no means yes. Do you want me to hit you?”

No Child Left Behind was intended to encourage the private sector to develop a class of products and services with demonstrated efficacy. Providers and investors who believed this determined that if they could prove their offerings improved student performance, they could surmount the formidable barriers to entry that mainstream publishers built up over a century. This group welcomed the definition of "Scientifically Based Research" in NCLB that emphasized comparing the academic performance of similarly situated students who do and do not receive the program under study. Supplementary Educational Services providers, believing that they could not meet this standard, lobbied successfully for a lower, “Research Based” standard. That approach permitted evidence as limited as reference to bodies of related research that suggest a particular program might be effective.

The policy problem facing legislators and the Department of Education is how to balance three requirements.

First, to assure that the government does not waste its money, teachers' time, or students' education, on programs that simply don’t work. We’d like a standard high enough to at least weed out products and services benefiting solely from the placebo effect.

Second, understanding that the state of the art in k-12 program evaluation is nowhere near advanced enough to be confident that a very high bar will not screen out more useful programs than those lacking utility, to create a standard that leads to a market large enough to give educators real choice among offerings. We don’t want a standard no one can meet.

Third, recognizing that the growth of private sector offerings in school improvement depends on new investment in new providers, assuring that the standards are simple, clear and stable. Investors will not put money into something when they don’t understand the criteria of technical success or can’t rely on it to hold for the period during which they expect to see their financial return. We don’t want an arbitrary, capricious or ever-changing standard.

Continue reading "The Letter From... SBR is Really RB, and RB is Really SBR: Do You Want Me to Apply SBR to Your Program?" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the last week, I’ve posted a lengthy series on the so-called education think tanks – the many nonprofit organizations inside the Washington Beltway that engage in public education policy. These include relatively small standalone outfits like the Center on Education Policy and the Center for Education Reform; and programs in larger organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institution. They range across the political spectrum and quasi-academic respectability from New Democrat Education Sector to the new conservative Black Alliance for Educational Opportunities. They provide people, papers, commentary and fora - the fodder for the education policy debate.

In three essays (here, here and here) I examined these organizations in the context of what we expect think tanks to do – supply policy innovations for government to implement; how they compare to the organization that the term was coined to describe – the RAND Corporation and its relationship to the Department of Defense in nuclear weapons policy; and how they spend their time and money. The three perspectives yield the same conclusion. These organizations are not think tanks. They have played a minor role in the origination and sale of education policy innovations to government. Their relationship to the Department of Education bears very little resemblance to RAND’s with the Air Force. They spend their time and money on activities that amount to marketing. Hence, my term “policy marketing shops.” It might be taken as an insult, but it’s simply intended to be accurate. Marketing is important too, it’s just not the description of a think tank, and to accept the description is to misappropriate the term and its meaning.

In the first essay of this series, I suggested that the last and most recent of six material innovations in education policy is the application of the “value chain” analytical techniques first developed by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter to public education operations by management consulting firms.

Continue reading "The Letter From: Management Consulting Firms are the Real Education “Think Tanks”" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While for-profit publishers have come to dominate the content employed in teaching and learning, I would argue that nonprofits have owned technical assistance and sole practitioners define the market structure of general consulting in public education.

Continue reading "The Letter From: Provider Accountability is Arbitrary and Capricious (II)" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week I argued that in the context of public education policy, accountability consists of standards, consequences and due process. Moreover, whatever its other faults, No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) provisions meet that definition.

If schools are held accountable for their role in student performance, what about those who supply schools with the products, services and programs employed in teaching and learning? In my view, NCLB made at least as good a start here – on paper, but the law has been implemented in an arbitrary and capricious manner.

To make this case, I need to provide a background of concepts and history.

Continue reading "The Letter From: Provider Accountability is Arbitrary and Capricious (I)" »

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In the context of public education policy, accountability consists of standards, consequences and due process. If the purpose of accountability is to advance a social goal, all three elements must be present. Standards without consequences and due process amounts to reporting. In the absence of standards and due process, the implementation of consequences amounts to tyranny. Due process without standards and consequences defines a discussion group.

Accountability so defined is a problem throughout the public education market. In the case of public schools, we’ve put a nation-wide system in place. All schools are treated equally. NCLB accountability doesn’t work perfectly, but it’s a very good start. The challenge is making sure that it is improved as a means of accountability when many would “improve” the law by gutting its substance.

In the case of the organizations providing products, services and programs, accountability under NCLB looks good on paper, but hasn’t worked in fact. All providers are not treated the same. Those already in business enjoy de facto presumptions of efficacy, new firms face relatively high hurdles of proof; nonprofits enjoy similar advantages over for profits; rules are applied arbitrarily; and providers injured by government action have no means of appeal.

In the case of labor relations, we've had a system where process has favored the incompetent. The District of Columbia has pointed the way towards one that encourages tyranny.

In this election year, when every policy option is up in the air, it might be useful to talk about these issues in terms of first principles.

Continue reading "The Letter From: What is Accountability in the Public Education Market?" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over at the blog This Week in Education, colleague Alexander Russo accuses me of imagining to be a liberal. Were it that simple.

Read my reply.

Continue reading "What is "A Liberal"?" »

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Yesterday’s “Letter From” argued that responsibility for the failure of market-based school reforms to break out of the margins of public education lies with those engaged in the reforms, more than the opposition of entrenched institutional interests who make up the status quo. If the opposition cannot be overcome, reform is obviously futile (and revolution may not be possible either). If the effort is not futile, then reformers need to start by accepting that the opposition’s opposition is not within the control of those engaged in reform; but reform activities are.

Finances are another external explanation for the marginal status of market based-reform. But like opposition, this is a factor beyond the control of reformers. Philanthropy and private investors decide whether to make capital available and on what terms. Legislators decide how much of the tax dollar might go to the reforms’ fee-for-service organizations. What‘s in the control of reformers is learning to play by those rules, doing their collective best with the financial wherewithal that’s been made available, and succeeding in terms that will cause those with the cash to provide more.

This has proved hard for market-based k-12 education reforms.

Continue reading "An Addendum to "Why Market-Based Reforms Don’t": What About Funding?" »

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Revolutions replace, reforms change. Vouchers offer a market-based revolution. Charter schools, comprehensive school reform and the results-based school improvement industry created by No Child Left Behind propose to move public education from centralized school systems to decentralized systems of public schools. So far, with a handful of k-12 experiments and die-hard supporters, the voucher revolution has been a political failure. Charters, CSR and SII have enjoyed enough bipartisan political support to become national phenomena. But while each idea has managed to achieve the critical mass necessary for a kind of sustainability, the first two have had marginal effects on the structure of public education, and the third shows every sign of following suit.

Why?

Proponents of the three reforms have a ready response. The traditional institutions of public education are remarkably able to resist unwanted change.

It’s not very helpful answer. The implication is either that reform is futile, or that it requires a level of support upfront that is quite unrealistic. It also conveniently puts the focus on external factors, rather than problems within the reform movement.

Continue reading "The Letter From: Why Market-Based Reforms Don't" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Those who propose to offer a weekly column on the school improvement industry – and the forces that shape its development, are pretty much obligated to give their audience a “best guess” of the year to come.

Here’s mine:

On the whole, 2007 will be a difficult year for school improvement providers. I expect neither a catastrophe, nor a cakewalk. Today’s best school improvement providers will eke out some growth in sales, the least sustainable may go out of business. The glimmer of hope for capital-raising kindled by K12, Tutor.com, Scientific Learning and Princeton Review in 2007 will wink out. The boards of larger firms that might otherwise have remained independent will be sorely tempted to sell out to a publisher.

Three “E's” lead me to this conclusion: Election, Economy, and Evaluation – in that order.

Continue reading "The Letter From: Three "E's" In The School Improvement Industry's Year Ahead" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

("The Letter From" is on hiatus through December. This is an "encore presentation" from April 19, 2004 - before edbizbuzz came on the scene. Consider it an opportunity to judge my predictive capacity and to revisit the school improvement industry trade groups' Washington strategies. For those of you who were expecting something on venture capital, I apologize for the change of mind.)

Always stay in with the outs.
David Halberstam

Inside Washington and out, the school improvement industry is associated more with Republicans than Democrats and more with conservatives than liberals.

Some