May 2011 Archives

Today's blog is entirely a matter of assuaging edu-geek curiosity. My pal Mike Petrilli and I got into a conversation the other week that only someone trapped in edu-land could love: we started wondering which of the Education Week subject matter blogs drew the most interest. If you don't care, that's completely understandable. Skip on!

Now then. In our little world, it's well known that Alyson Klein and Michele McNeil's "Politics K-12" blog is heavily read. But how about after that? How much interest is there in school districts relative to special education, school sports, or school law?

Anyway, with the assistance of my uber-competent and indefatigable R.A. Daniel Lautzenheiser, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look. So, for the first four months of 2011, we tallied the average monthly page visits to each of the Ed Week subject matter blogs.

Here are the results (note: We couldn't do "Rural Education" due to a web glitch):

The most popular subjects, by far, are politics and curriculum, each average more than 30,000 page visitors a month so far this year.

Those were followed, at a discreet distance, by the blogs that tackle teachers, research, and special education. These all averaged 15,000 to a little over 20,000 visitors a month.

Averaging 8,000 to 15,000 monthly visitors were the blogs addressing the states, school law, digital education, college, and language learning.

And, finally, drawing less than 8,000 visitors a month, were the blogs tackling district affairs, sports, early childhood, and "Beyond Schools."

It is noteworthy that four of the top five blogs address questions of direct relevance to classroom teachers, while less than half of the others do. Topics that I might think would be big draws for parents and non-educators, like "School Sports," "Early Years," or "College Bound," don't generate as many visitors as I might've expected. (Which is probably why it's best for all concerned that I'm not in publishing.)

Not sure what else to make of the results, or whether there's any seismic meaning, but what the hell. Would be curious to hear what you make of it all.

Posted by Rick Hess at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Hey, folks, so I've got an interesting opportunity to announce as we head into the Memorial Day weekend. I just had an unexpected opening emerge, creating a rare and potentially very cool opportunity for a new research assistant to join my little AEI edu-team. I'm looking for someone smart, hard-working, and responsible who's eager to explore the world of edu-policy from the front row. If you're just starting out, are intrigued by the chance to plunge into an array of K-12 and higher education issues, and want to see the world of education policy from a prestigious D.C. address (17th & M, to be exact), please shoot a note to my crack research associate Daniel Lautzenheiser at dlautz@aei.org. One of the perks, for those interested, is that Daniel and his colleagues on AEI's edu-team are some of the nicest, smartest folks with whom you could imagine working. Oh, yeah, and one other perk that just may be worth a mention are AEI's famous chocolate chip cookies.

Posted by Rick Hess at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I was disappointed by the page one New York Times story on the Gates Foundation that my friend, NYT reporter Sam Dillon, penned last Sunday. The much-discussed, rather critical account on the Gates Foundation's role in K-12 schooling, is something I would've expected to like, but I found the treatment of my own contribution to reflect a broader problem with the storyline.

I went back and forth on whether to address it. But given that the article, by zooming in on Gates, masked larger questions about the dynamics of edu-philanthropy, I figured it might be worth clarifying the larger point. After hearing from a number of individuals who clearly thought I meant something other than what I said, I decided, "What the heck."

A crucial point in the NYT story was the contention that the Gates Foundation is (cue Dr. Evil finger-to-lip gesture) scheming to influence education policy, and that they're alternately buying up or intimidating researchers, advocates, and reformers along the way. I was quoted, seemingly making this point, saying, "We're all implicated."

Now, I'm supportive of hard, skeptical looks at Gates and any other foundation that wishes to influence education. I've raised questions about various Gates Foundation enthusiasms, including value-added teacher evaluation, the Common Core, and Waiting for Superman. I've long championed the need to cast a more skeptical eye upon philanthropists who seek to influence schooling. As I noted back in 2005 in With the Best of Intentions, "Media coverage and scholarly analysis...have failed to ask hard questions, challenge assumptions, or shine much of a light on philanthropic activity." I noted that, "[Effusive] headlines and stories are not unique to one foundation, but reflect the kid-glove treatment philanthropists habitually receive from the press and the education community."

I explained, "Academics, activists, and the policy community live in a world where philanthropists are royalty--where philanthropic support is often the ticket to tackling big projects, making a difference, and maintaining one's livelihood. Even individuals and organizations who also receive financial support from government grants, tuition, endowment, or interest groups are eager to be on good terms with the philanthropic community...Even if scholars themselves are insulated enough to risk being impolitic, they routinely collaborate with school districts, policymakers, and colleagues who desire philanthropic support."

I was quoted to this effect in NYT story. However, I was disappointed to see these quotes framed in a manner that suggested they were Gates specific. I was quoted as saying, "As researchers, we have a reasonable self-preservation instinct. There can be an exquisite carefulness about how we're going to say anything that could reflect badly on a foundation. We're all implicated." This is all fine. But it was framed by Dillon first writing, "Mr. Hess, a frequent blogger on education whose institute received $500,000 from the Gates foundation in 2009 'to influence the national education debates,' acknowledged that he and others sometimes felt constrained."

This caused many to read my comments as specific to Gates and to imagine that I was saying that we're all "implicated" in some kind of nefarious Gates plot. This is enormously frustrating, because my actual point, which is the same point I've made for many years, is that this kind of "exquisite carefulness" is a general phenomenon and is broadly true when it comes to foundations and donors. And it is silly to suggest or imagine that it applies uniquely to Gates. As one journalist of some repute wrote to me, helping incline me to pen this post: "Wow...I'd say he took you out of context because it absolutely seemed as if you were talking about Gates."

"We're all implicated" is not some guilty confession, but an observation that every researcher, reformer, practitioner, or advocate who accepts philanthropic support, might seek it, or collaborates with someone who does is naturally reticent to bite the hand that feeds or alienate potential partners. And donors of all stripes must acknowledge the resulting challenges. Unfortunately, presenting the "we're all implicated" line as the NYT did distorted that point. It allowed a bunch of folks who eagerly accept funds from friendly foundations for saying things those foundations like to rail self-righteously while declaring that they're not "implicated" by Gates. Those Gates bashers who sneered at the notion that "we're all implicated" because they don't take Gates money, are (like the NYT) kind of missing the point. If these brave critics are receiving support from any source, I'll be impressed only when I see them denounce their backers with the same energy they've turned on Gates. If they don't, I'll be curious whether that's because their silence has been bought...or because they're supported by funders with whom they're simpatico.

More broadly, if someone thinks it's problematic for the Gates Foundation's efforts to influence public policy through research and advocacy (and I don't), then I'd imagine they'd have been even more aghast at the Ford Foundation's decades-long effort to change educational finance policy through the far less democratic approach of litigation or Ford's current giant investment in promoting a very particular equity agenda. And I assume they'd recoil from the Annenberg Challenge's advocacy for rural schooling, as well as efforts to push federal and state government to fund the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. But I'd be curious to see some clarification on that.

Posted by Rick Hess at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Monday, at AEI, we hosted one of our major conferences, on "Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit: Sobering Lessons from a Half Century of Federal Efforts to Improve America's Schools" (you can watch it here). The conference featured eleven new papers by authors including Mike Smith, Checker Finn, Maris Vinovskis, Mark Schneider, Jane Hannaway, Paul Manna, and Mike Casserly (you can find copies of all of the papers here), and reactions from discussants including DC Chancellor Kaya Henderson, L.A. supe John Deasy, ED chief of staff (and former RTT chief) Joanne Weiss, former Congressman Mike Castle, RI state supe Deborah Gist, Ed Trust's Kati Haycock, and Fordham's Mike Petrilli.

The question of the hour was what we've learned over time about what federal government has does relatively well, and what it hasn't done as well, when it comes to K-12 schooling. There was surprising consensus from an array of authors with diverse perspectives and frames of reference. There seemed to be a shared sense that the feds can have enjoyed substantial success when it came to ensuring access for vulnerable populations (think IDEA), using cash to push states to adopt clear-cut policies (as with NCLB's assessment requirements), using the bully pulpit to raise issues on the agenda, and promoting transparency and information.

There was much more skepticism about the federal government's ability to actually improve schools. As Harvard's Jal Mehta succinctly observed, Uncle Sam has stumbled when has tried to "make schools get better, make schools do what they don't want to do, [or] foster innovation." Thus, the federal government was able to push states to comply with the reporting, assessment, and intervention requirements of NCLB, but it couldn't ensure that they were done thoughtfully or well.

The limited ability of the feds to "make" states, districts, or schools improve was a recurrent theme. Rhode Island chief Deb Gist was the first of several to talk about the advantages of focusing on a "coalition of the willing," and of encouraging leaders rather than policing laggards. L.A. supe John Deasy argued that the feds do better when they think of their role as working to "improve" schools and not as "fixing" schools.

Andy Rudalevige, Dickinson's gifted scholar on the presidency, pointed out the conundrum that, too often, "Good lawmaking leads to bad [education] policy." He explained that the broad coalitions needed to enact laws means that the policies are defined so broadly that they mean different things to different actors, creating implementation headaches that ultimately involve angering and then alienating some legislative supporters. This kind of "definitional ambiguity" can cripple implementation, meaning that the price of enacting a law might be the coherence of that law.

Mike Casserly offered a riveting take on the lessons he's learned in the Beltway's back rooms over the course of three decades. Wireless Generation founder Larry Berger and Drew University political scientist Pat McGuinn penned a piece that delves into four decades worth of federal efforts to promote innovation, and the bitter fruit it has often yielded. DFER federal policy honcho Charlie Barone and U. Georgia political scientist Elizabeth DeBray explained why federal requirements work best when they entail bright lines and measurement.

Checker Finn identified a number of game-changers and duds that have emerged from federal policy, and tried to reflect on what we might learn from these, while former Clinton and Obama hand Mike Smith drew on decades of lessons to try his hand at a "zero-based" reauthorization of ESEA. And there was much more in this vein, including terrific papers on the role of the courts, federal research, accountability, transformative change, and the lessons of programs like Head Start and OERI.

Anyway, you get the idea. What I found most energizing about the exercise was the opportunity to move past circular, stale, or naïve debates about whether something is a nice idea or whether it has "worked" in order to talk about what role the federal government is actually well-suited to play when it comes to the nation's schools. I can't do justice to the papers or the conversation in less than 3,000 words, so I'm just going to yank the cord and encourage interested readers to check it out for themselves.

Posted by Rick Hess at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I had the privilege of visiting with Rhode Island's superintendents and district business officers the other day, to discuss the fiscal crunch and how to stretch the school dollar. One of the things we touched on was the recent Phi Delta Kappan piece "Leading Through a Fiscal Nightmare." I used it to suggest how not to respond to a budget crunch, and to flag some tics common to superintendents and principals that are misguided and likely to alienate supporters.

The winning course, given that families (e.g. taxpayers) across America have lost jobs and homes, and had to tighten their belts, is to recognize that things are tough all over and then protect kids and programs by optimizing spending, rethinking instructional delivery, or finding ways for adults to shoulder the load. (If you want suggestions, check out Stretching the School Dollar.) But let's take a moment to discuss what not to do, using quotes from principals and superintendents in the PDK piece to flag four problematic habits of mind.

The first mistake: excuse-mongering. Quote: "I feel as though I am at a point where I have to say that it is OK for some kids to fail because we cannot provide the extra help they need." When parents lose their jobs, or take a pay cut, they don't say, "It's now okay for my kid to go foodless." When police budgets are cut, we'd be furious if the police said, "Hey, we can't keep you safe." Look, we all know that education is filled with vacuous declarations that "all children will learn." It's fine for educators to reject those banalities as a matter of course. What's not okay is to use budget cuts as an excuse to accept mediocrity--to say, "Well, we used to think no one should fail, but now we've changed our mind." Every leader, public or private, has good budget years and bad ones. Responsible leaders make it their mission to do the very best they can with the resources they have--that's the mission and the vision they share.

The second mistake: imagining that progress only comes with new dollars. Quote: "You can't push forward with new innovations without the funding to see them through." That's just silliness. The most innovative organizations in the world tend to be cash-poor start-ups. They rely on moxie, creativity, and elbow grease. In education, "innovation" has typically meant layering new dollars and programs atop everything that came before. So, districts didn't rethink staffing or school libraries when they got classroom computers or internet connectivity, they just laid these atop everything that was already in place. This is why education is the only professional sector with which I'm familiar (possibly aside from health care) which seems to have seen a decline in measurable productivity since the introduction of the personal computer.

The third mistake: thinking that any budget cut will be debilitating. Quote: "It is impossible to make cuts in a district and not have it impact teachers and students. We cut a secretary and many tasks are now falling to teachers. This takes up their precious time to prepare for students. We cut a technology integration person, and now teachers are having to spend more time researching web sites and online projects. We cut a mail delivery person, and now secretaries and paras are having to do curbside pickup and drop-off of mail so the mail can travel on buses." The underlying message is lunacy. By the speaker's logic, no organization--not the U.S. military, not the postal service, not General Motors--can ever make cuts or trim personnel without compromising quality. Well, the reality is that a slew of organizations have made cuts that seemed painful but that ultimately seemed to boost productivity, strengthen the culture, and left them more effective. Obviously, cutting in dumb ways (like by zeroing out music, art, or sports to save negligible dollar amounts) has an adverse impact. But the challenge for leaders is to prune in smart ways, to use rough periods as a chance to cut back so that their organizations will emerge leaner and healthier. To deny that one can do that is to abdicate one's responsibility.

The fourth mistake: countenancing rather than condemning unacceptable employee responses. Quote: "I was and continue to be surprised at how some people react. I had typically reasonable people telling me that they weren't going to do their job... I feel we have taken a huge step backwards in our communication, trust, and cooperation. So, we have more work to do and are working together more poorly." Surprised? Surprised?! The principal should have been livid, outraged, aghast. The employee reaction shouldn't have been calmly related but offered up as a case of moral depravity. After all, those "reasonable people" were expressing an intent to shortchange children and waste public funds. Until that kind of sentiment routinely draws an appropriately furious, public reaction from edu-leaders--instead of the watery "you know how hard times have been on our people" that the public so often hears--it's going to be tough for them to make the case that the public can be confident that new funds will be well spent.

For better or worse, I think I can safely say that this is one lesson that you're unlikely to get in the nation's educational administration programs.

Posted by Rick Hess at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I'm an advocate for charter schooling. Regular readers of RHSU know that this is not because I'm convinced they're the answer to the "achievement gap" or to driving up math and reading scores, but because chartering offers an opportunity to rethink how we go about teaching, learning, and schooling. In that context, I've long been concerned that our rethinking is almost entirely focused on reading and math scores and graduation rates and the result can yield a reflexive, frail conception of schooling. If we're going to reinvent schools, I'd like us to do so in a manner that respects the broad purpose of the schoolhouse, which means paying due attention to the arts, to a rich curriculum, and, perhaps most important of all, to helping students develop as moral individuals and citizens.

As part of our ongoing effort to explore and promote citizenship education at AEI (see, for instance, here), we had the pleasure of convening an array of terrific charter school leaders and teachers in San Francisco yesterday. The topic: how they approach citizenship education and gauge their performance, and what steps might help to encourage or support such efforts.

A bunch of intriguing issues arose, and charter impresario Robin Lake will be exploring them in a white paper that we'll be issuing this fall. For the moment, five particular points stuck with me:

First, I was pleasantly surprised by the admirable humility of the terrific charter school leaders and educators. I'd feared that this collection of educators would be dismissive of concerns as to whether they were doing all they could to develop moral character, civic knowledge, and engaged citizens. I need not have worried. In a conversation that included representatives from KIPP, YES Prep, Cesar Chavez High School for Public Policy, UNO, High Tech High, Basis, National Heritage Academies, Basis, and Democracy Prep, among others, participants talked bluntly about the need to do far better when it comes to developing character, cultivating citizenship, and monitoring their performance in these areas.

Second, the question arose as to whether parents actually care about whether schools are cultivating good citizens. One educator asked, "Do parents choose [us] because of the civic mission?" He answered his own question, "No." That was the consensus. Another school founder observed that, generally speaking, "Our parents don't give a [hoot] about democracy walking in the door. They come because of our academic performance, and because their kids will be safe." That said, it also seemed true that schools which deliver academically earn the parental trust that positions them to move as aggressively as they wish on issues of citizenship and character; the question is what they do with that.

Third, charters are particularly well-suited to tackle these questions because they don't have to wrestle with all the parental griping and constituency politics that hamper district efforts to establish strong codes of conduct, to encourage political participation, or to promote character development. Charter schools can make their civic vision an explicit part of their appeal, so that supportive families can seek them out, and others can go elsewhere.

Fourth, questions of citizenship are peripheral when it comes to charter authorizing. National Association of Charter School Authorizers president Greg Richmond pointed out that there are real, substantive disagreements over how to understand the civic mission of schooling. And, "when you can't agree what to measure, it's hard to focus on metrics"--so authorizers focus on less controversial measures, like reading and math scores. He also pointed out that public school officials long excused mediocrity by saying, "Maybe our kids can't read or write, but we're preparing them to be good citizens." This abuse, he noted, resulted in "toxic backlash." Today, Richmond couldn't think of any authorizer that meaningfully incorporates citizenship criteria into its decisions. Seth Andrews of Democracy Prep raised the question of how educators might start to transform citizenship from a "soft skill" into a "hard skill."

Fifth, the question arose as to whether schools serving disadvantaged students can or should actively seek to encourage students to feel an affection or attachment to the nation. Green Dot founder Steve Barr made the case that schools can't simply expect to teach at-risk students to be patriotic, because these kids haven't seen much from their nation that would incline them to love it--and that these kids need to build trust in the U.S. system before they can be expected to feel attached to it. He said, "When you're around [intense] poverty and injustice, citizenship has a different meaning. Just shaking hands and getting along is a big deal. If you want more, it requires building trust."

Finally, for what it's worth, a few terrific lines really struck me during the day:

"One complication with encouraging student activism is it can burn them out. We had a kid who went to two anti-war protests and, when the war didn't stop, he lost interest."

"The best way to imagine what I want our grads to be like is, if I'm a criminal defendant, I want kids who graduate who I'd want to be on my jury."

"Right now, [citizenship] just isn't a priority. I've got five jobs, and that's my fifth. I'm a history teacher, then an ELL teacher, then a dance teacher, then a 9th grade chair, and then the service learning coordinator. This means service learning is what I do Sunday night."

"We don't operate as a democracy [in the school], we're preparing students to be citizens in a democracy."

Posted by Rick Hess at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

One of the funniest developments of the past six months has been watching self-confident individuals at the Department of Education and at various advocacy outfits (especially putatively "conservative" ones) explain to newly committed small-government Republicans what Republicans are "supposed" to favor.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is trying to convince the Republicans that they're supposed to embrace a supersized, amped-up version of NCLB. The Fordham Foundation that they should embrace the Common Core, efforts to develop common curricula, and the rest. Reform-minded Dems that they're supposed to embrace federal direction on "highly effective teachers," ED's anti-bullying crusade, federally-mandated school turnarounds, more Race to the Top, more federal ed spending, and so on. Like an American tourist addressing a non-English speaker, the "reformers" have tried pleading, using outsized gestures, repeating themselves (a lot), and speaking louder. All to no avail.

Long hailed by the Bush administration as a bipartisan force for reform (the Bushies, shall we say, had a taste for big government), the Education Trust is having trouble believing that GOP staff now regard its ambitious proposals as conventional liberal wish-lists. Hill staffers tell of the Ed Trust showing up, with the Business Roundtable in tow, to make the case for an expansive NCLB reauth--imagining that this demonstration of spectrum-spanning will cow Republicans into submission.

After all, the would-be reformers know themselves to be smart, thoughtful, educated, and well-intentioned. They've anointed themselves (and been anointed in the popular press) as gutsy reformers. Thus, they can't imagine that any sensible person would feel otherwise. Conservatives who disagree must either be nuts, dim, or not yet had the issues properly explained to them.

It all brings to me the drawling prison warden in Cool Hand Luke who laconically observed, "What we've got here is...failure to communicate."

As one frustrated Senate Republican staffer told me: "We've reached the point where those in favor of nationalizing the system (surreptitiously of course) can only refute arguments against their position by implying they are the only serious people at the table and the other side is filled with pre-pubescent toddlers who don't understand that mommy and daddy should be trusted to take care of them just fine."

Even mainstream conservatives are being radicalized. Last weekend, standards guru Sandra Stotsky, a longtime champion of standards-based reform and generally regarded as an NCLB supporter, blasted the very notion of federal involvement in schooling. In an e-mail exchange regarding the Common Core, she wrote, "I've tried to think of sound federal policies in education (with positive effects on student achievement), and the closest I've come are the Land Grant Acts of the 19th century...In my lifetime, I can't think of ONE federal policy that has improved student achievement."

It's kind of amusing, really. The self-proclaimed reformers just can't imagine that, confronted with data showing that many children are poorly served, any sensible adult could look askance at their favored policies. When confronted with skepticism that the measures will work as intended, the would-be reformers ask with wide-eyed shock, "Are you willing to just let those children fail?" If a conservative House staffer suggests that maybe the feds lack the ability or purview to solve the problem, would-be reformers seem to think they've stepped through the looking glass.

I don't know how much longer this little show will run, but I'm betting it's at least through November 2012.

Posted by Rick Hess at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Houston superintendent Terry Grier has been making some impressive, controversial moves--albeit mostly out of the spotlight. It's a peculiar truism that giant districts like Houston or Clark County, Nevada, attract far less notice than much smaller districts like Washington, DC, Boston, and Newark. Anyway, last Friday, the Houston Independent School Board endorsed, 7-2, Grier's ambitious new teacher evaluation system for the nation's seventh-largest district. (For a terrific news account, check out Ericka Mellon's Houston Chronicle story here.)

The new system replaces HISD's familiar "everybody's-doing-swell" pro forma evaluation system which, one high-ranking HISD insider told me, "rated nearly all teachers satisfactory and gave them zero useful feedback." Under the new system, student performance (including value-added metrics and other measures of student learning) will count for about half of a teacher's rating. The other half will be comprised of principal evaluation and a matrix of other instructional and professional factors.

The new process requires all teachers to get at least four yearly, unannounced observations. (Formerly, due to exemptions based on experience and performance, only about half the district's teachers were evaluated each year.) In addition to student academic progress, the draft proposal calls for teachers to be judged on more than twenty factors related to instructional practice and professionalism. These are expected to include attendance, work attire, communication with parents, participation in professional training, the quality of their lesson plans, and whether they engage students in high-level work and vary instructional strategies. Each year, each teacher will be rated ineffective, needs improvement, effective, or highly effective.

Our earnest Secretary of Education opined, "The new [HISD] system uses multiple measures and incorporates student academic growth in a thoughtful and balanced way. Houston is providing a model for the state and other districts to follow."

Given my concerns about potential missteps on value-added and teacher evaluation, readers may wonder how I feel about HISD's approach. As I've said before, I've qualms about placing too much weight on value-added scores, so I'd look askance if value-added alone winds up being close to fifty percent of anybody's evaluation at this juncture. I think the measures of instructional and professional practice look promising, but implementation will be crucial--there's always the nontrivial chance these can give rise to simple-minded checklists or a bureaucratic morass. And, I support using rigorous observation as an evaluative tool, but am concerned that mandating a slew of annual observations may compromise quality and generate pointless paperwork. So, I'm a big fan of what HISD's doing in principle, but I'll hedge my bets until I see how it plays out in practice.

More relevant, though, is that I'm much more comfortable with any of these determinations being made by HISD than by a state legislature. Why? It's because Terry Grier and the HISD board are running a coherent organization. They're responsible for putting this policy into effect and for its implementation. They'll be responsible for how it plays out in practice, and will be in a position to make any necessary alterations. And, they're designing a policy that need apply only to HISD, with its labor situation, student population, culture, curricular offerings, and so on. This gets us out of debating the "best" way to evaluate teachers and permits school districts to craft systems that make sense for them.

Of course, just because HISD's efforts haven't drawn national headlines, doesn't mean that there hasn't been the usual local grief. Susan Morris, a Garden Oaks Elementary teacher, complained at a Houston Federation of Teachers meeting, "We all see we could lose our job just because someone didn't get it right. I feel like I'm being attacked."

The HFT says that teachers didn't have sufficient input, despite an expansive collaborative design process that entailed about 250 school-based committees. The final proposal reflects input from 2,600 teachers and 500 principals, as well as parents and community members. About ten teachers and principals who helped shape the evaluation system spoke in favor of it at the meeting, making the case for more regular and useful feedback and expressing their confidence in the use of student performance measures. Margaret Randall, a teacher at Lantrip Elementary, said, "I need to be ready to be valued by what my children are learning and not simply by how much I love them."

Given the multiple measures and the collaborative process, you'd think the HFT would be celebrating, not kvetching. After all, this is the kind of collaboratively-designed, thoughtful evaluation system that the AFT national leadership has said it supports.

Posted by Rick Hess at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

During the health care debate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked in October 2009: "Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?"

Pelosi responded: "Are you serious? Are you serious?" Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, later codified the dismissal, saying, "You can put this on the record. That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question." Pelosi Dems regarded conservative qualms about an expansive federal role as strange and insincere.

Well, now here we are again. This time the issue is budding unrest over the federal role in the Common Core. Of course, with Common Core, even proponents have taken pains to argue that this whole exercise is entirely state driven.

While Dems could imagine that they'd accomplish health care reform by jamming it through and then letting it set over time, I don't think even advocates imagine that common standards and assessments will hold up if they become the subject of a fierce, partisan dispute. Nonetheless, the Pelosi-like response of the Common Core-ites to conservative concerns is making a partisan schism increasingly likely.

So, what's the fuss about?

Remember, the General Education Provisions Act stipulates (in SEC. 438. ø20 U.S.C. 1232a), "No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system." Common Core skeptics like Cato's Neal McCluskey and the Hoover Institution's Bill Evers have argued compellingly that rewarding states for adopting the Common Core and funding the consortia to develop Common Core-friendly curricula amounts to "directing" curricula and programs of instruction.

An ED spokesman responded to these concerns in an e-mail chain last Friday, arguing, "Just for the record: we are for high standards, not national standards and we are for a well-rounded curriculum, not a national curriculum. There is a big difference between funding development of curriculum--which is something we have always done--and mandating a national curriculum--which is something we have never done. And yes--we believe in using incentives to advance our agenda." McCluskey's response: "'Incentives' to advance your federal 'agenda' for a 'well-rounded curriculum.' Like I wrote, if it walks like a duck..."

Jay Greene noted late last week that the 1979 law creating the Department of Education makes clear that ED "may not even direct or supervise curriculum." He argued, "I have no idea how the Department could fund the development of curriculum without also exercising some direction and supervision over that curriculum. Nor can the Department justify its current activities by claiming that they are only funding the development of curricular frameworks and instructional materials [because it] is also explicitly prohibited from directing, supervising, or controlling the content of instructional materials."

Common Core enthusiasts regard the prohibitions on federal curricular activity in a narrow "letter-of-the-law" sense; they see them as something to be discreetly ignored or worked around. They regard the precise scope of the federal role as a peripheral issue in a technocratic debate about how we get the "best" standards, curricula, and assessments. Like Pelosi, they don't take seriously the idea that critics might view prohibitions on federal action as essential safeguards, dismissing Common Core skeptics as "extremists" and peddlers of "half-truths."

When it comes to the Common Core, conservatives have thus far been disinterested, allowing Republicans like Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, and Lamar Alexander to casually wear their Obama-friendly ed reformer hats without worrying about their small-government right flank. Now, it's increasingly likely they'll start feeling pressure from Tea Party-types. On this count, the two most significant signatures in last week's counter-manifesto were anti-tax impresario Grover Norquist and William Estrada, head of federal policy for the Home Schooling Legal Defense Association. Both are capable of activating list serves to rile up conservatives activists and Republican state legislators.

Some Common Core enthusiasts will see a test of courage for leaders like Mitch Daniels and Lamar Alexander, and will laud them for their "statesmanship" if they disregard small government concerns to stand with Duncan and the Common Core push. But conservative activists will likely see a test of principle; a measure of whether these figures are serious about dialing back Washington or are Bush-style, "big-government" conservatives.

The result? Common Core may morph from something that enjoyed mile-wide, inch-deep support into a partisan issue. I have no trouble imagining conservatives next year wielding the Common Core as another indictment of the Obama administration's inclination to expand the reach of the federal government. At that point, however Republicans fare in 2012, the Common Core becomes a contested partisan marker.

Now, there is a whiff of hypocrisy in the air. The same concerns conservatives are raising about the Common Core should have been in full force during the Reading First debate. While RF focused on setting scientific standards for spending federal dollars, the actual design of the process--and especially the implementation at ED--very much wound up with the Department trying to influence state and district curricular decisions and instructional materials. When the issue was RF, conservatives mostly rolled over obediently for the Bush administration--a precedent which weakens their hand today. But, if you'll recall, the Inspector General ultimately flagged the failure to respect the strictures on federal curricular involvement as a serious problem, and one that helped bring Reading First down. Moreover, failure to defend a principle once doesn't render that principle inoperative.

And to think that the whole Common Core effort got off to a pretty auspicious start. If the feds had stayed out, if the stimulus hadn't provided hundreds of millions in federal bucks, if Race to the Top hadn't pushed this, and if the Al Shanker Institute hadn't been so eager to champion common content and more federal aid, this exercise might have yielded a gradual consensus. Of course, it would've started with ten or fifteen states instead of 40-odd, wouldn't have been such a big deal, and would've taken longer to come together. But it would've had a much better chance of assuaging conservatives and becoming an unexceptional part of the fabric of American schooling.

Ah, well. This is the way we do things in education: where reformers are eager to save the world, immediately; kind-hearted progressives can't imagine why anyone would object to expanding the reach of government if it's for a good cause; and impatience is the order of the day.

Posted by Rick Hess at 7:57 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

For several years now, would-be reformers have gotten away with claiming that there's a goopy, groupthink "reform consensus." They depict the edu-debates as a simple-minded morality play between a "reform" phalanx and "adult interests." This line has been sold most assiduously by Democrat for Ed Reform-types and NCLB enthusiasts who think conservatives are supposed to quietly, cheerfully sign on to the grand schemes crafted by their betters.

These reformers imagine broad sentiment that anyone who's not a union toadie agrees to a whole host of "reformy" things, including the Common Core, sanctity of value-added measures, race-based accountability metrics, niftiness of turnarounds, magic of Race to the Top, and so on. To question any of these has been enough to raise questions about one's seriousness and judgment. The result has been bad for schooling, bad for reform, and bad for public debate.

The Common Core debate last week, like that over teacher collective bargaining, is giving lie to the notion that all would-be reformers sing from a shared hymnal. There are serious divides even among would-be reformers; it's just that they've been submerged during the NCLB era. There are deep disagreements about the role of government, the value of unions, the merits of for-profit provision, and much else. Conservative reformers are finally starting to speak up. One veteran Hill staffer, cheering the anti-Common Core manifesto last week, perfectly captured this sentiment in self-identifying as a "Republican Aide Who Is Tired of Duncan's and Petrilli's and Haycock's and Spellings' Bull#!&*."

In the past few months we've seen Democratic ed reformers making common cause with the AFT's Al Shanker Institute over Common Core, with the unions over state-level efforts to restrict collective bargaining, and with conventional liberals over the need to protect federal edu-spending. Meanwhile, we've seen union voices cheering conservative calls to dismantle NCLB and teachers embracing conservative resistance to the Common Core. This reflects not so much the "splintering" of a reform consensus as the reality that these debates are more complicated than The New York Times or Education Week have often suggested.

Last week's heated Common Core debate made it clear that conservative reformers are increasingly skeptical of federal efforts to improve schooling--whether that's NCLB reauthorization or federal "involvement" in the Common Core. This is true, as I noted last fall, "Even if education scholars promise that the measures are sound. Indeed, it's less likely that 2010 Republicans will be swayed by such commentary than that they will see it as evidence that even putatively 'conservative' education wonks are part of the D.C. establishment" or that they've sold out their principles.

Small-government conservatives are doing their best imitation of Jack Nicholson in The Shining, busting through the door while brandishing that axe, and announcing, "Hi honey, I'm home!" After years of being marginalized, drowned-out, or discouraged by the Bush administration's expansive federal agenda, small-government conservatives are back. For the latest such blast, consider that House K-12 subcommittee Chair Rep. Duncan Hunter on Friday kicked off NCLB reauthorization not with some new scheme for spending or accountability but by declaring, "It's time to trim the fat. Today I will introduce legislation that will eliminate--not consolidate, not defund, but eliminate--43 wasteful K-12 education programs" (italics in original).

Conservative pushback is giving lie to the vacuous notion that left-leaning and right-leaning reformers are interchangeable when it comes to education. Whether the issue is collective bargaining, school vouchers, Common Core, or federal leadership, Left and Right are offering very different views of education reform and what's either desirable or constitutionally permissible. As I noted in National Review a couple months back, after DFER President Joe Williams penned his open letter blasting Republicans for their "creepy" efforts to restrict teacher collective bargaining: "So much for the vaunted bipartisanship of education reform. Turns out that DFER types are all for bipartisanship on things like teacher evaluation and pay, so long as Republicans support new spending, don't mess with the unions, and take care to respect progressive priorities."

The funny thing is that reform-minded progressives often honestly just don't get small-government conservatism. After all, DFER-types and U.S. Department of Ed officials know in their bones that any sensible person sees the world like they do and would support government doing stuff that'll work. Ergo, they think conservative critics are wacky ideologues, ignorant, or must just be out to make trouble. The most telling window into progressive thinking on this score may have been Kevin Carey's New Republic article a few weeks back, the one in which Carey tried to explain Republican thinking on schooling to fellow progressives.

Carey casually suggested that Hill Republicans like House Higher Ed subcommittee chair Rep. Virginia Foxx are "crazy" for charging "that federal funding for education is unconstitutional," that "the larger Republican caucus appears to have little interest in or knowledge of education," and that House education chair Rep. John Kline's stance on NCLB appears to amount to "letting states do whatever they want." And this last, it's clear, Carey regards as a very bad thing.

Things are starting to get interesting. And, if I were a Common Core booster, I'd be starting to get a little nervous.

Posted by Rick Hess at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It was almost fifteen years ago now that I was sharing my Harvard dissertation, on the dynamics of school reform in fifty-seven urban districts, with a few potential publishers. The three presses I talked to--Teachers College Press, Harvard University Press, and the Brookings Institution--all sent the manuscript out for review. Brookings sent it to policy and political science professors. TCP and HUP sent it to education professors.

The Brookings reviews were broadly positive, with assorted smart criticism and caveats. The policy scholars deemed the research and the argument fresh and interesting, but sensibly noted that the manuscript needed a lot of work. I revised it accordingly. Brookings published the volume, Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform, in 1998. It went on to have a nontrivial impact on the debate about urban schooling and reform, doing much for my career in the process.

This is not the interesting part of the story. The interesting part was the response from the six education professors who reviewed the manuscript for TCP and HUP. Unanimously, they declared the manuscript to be uninteresting, unimportant, mean-spirited, and undeserving of publication. They thought my characterization of popular reforms, like block-scheduling and site-based management, was uncharitable. They thought my interpretation of the institutional politics was callous, unduly harsh, and devoid of any new insights. The editors at TCP and HUP were apologetic, but said, essentially, "Hey, I thought it was interesting, but there's no way I can go to my editorial board after this kind of feedback."

A few years later, in 2001, I wrote a white paper for the Progressive Policy Institute titled, "Tear Down This Wall." An unapologetic critique of teacher licensure and a recommendation for a dramatic overhaul of current practice, the piece gained favorable notice in the Washington Post and USA Today, was touted by then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige, and made me into a nontrivial presence in the teacher credentialing debate. It has since been widely cited in the scholarly literature. At the National Press Club event where the piece was launched, my friend David Imig, the then-president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, declared that my arguments qualified not even as "old wine in new bottles" but just "old wine in old bottles." He suggested that the University of Virginia (my then-employer) really ought to consider whether, given my skepticism about teacher education, I deserved to be employed at its School of Education.

Two years later, when I departed UVA for AEI, many of my ed school colleagues enthusiastically ushered me to the door, with my program chair taking care to tell me that he regarded my work as trivial and insignificant.

This all came to mind the other day when a colleague sent me the Teachers College Record review of my recent Harvard University Press book The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday's Ideas. The review was penned by James Kauffman, a professor emeritus of education at the University of Virginia. I probably should've known what to expect: one more assertion that there's nothing to see here.

The irony is that what HUP most liked about The Same Thing is that it provokes strong, complex reactions from serious readers in competing camps. (The rest of this paragraph feels ickily self-promotional, so skip if you're willing to stipulate that some thoughtful people think the book has merit.) KIPP CEO Richard Barth was kind enough to say, "Sooner or later [Hess] challenges everyone's assumptions. You probably won't agree with everything he has to say, but this book will surprise you into thinking in completely new ways about what schools could be." Deborah Meier generously offered, "Half the time I'm agreeing with every word Rick Hess says, and wishing I had said it myself. The other half the time I'm provoked, stimulated, and arguing with him. He's got it both all right and all wrong. Read him, argue with him, take him very seriously." In Washington Monthly, Johns Hopkins political scientist Steve Teles judged, "No one will be shocked that [Hess] has a lot to say that will infuriate liberal defenders of the educational status quo. The book's real surprise is that he is perfectly willing to take on the sacred doctrines of conservative education reformers...Hess is a refreshing change from many other analysts who hold forth on the subject of education."

So, what was Kauffman's take on The Same Thing? He opined, "Many scholars besides Hess have noted that school reform is the same thing over and over... Metaphorically, if previous essays on school reform are the tomayto, this book is the potayto or, at best, the tomahto." He explains, "Hess repeats the tired ideas of the earlier reformers he so justly criticizes." (Though, it may be worth noting that the quote used to make this point is from page one.) Kauffman complains that the book never "focuses squarely on instruction" and "contains the same-old-same-old complaints about rut-stuck educational structures."

There's plenty more in this vein. Check it out, if you're inclined. The insistence of ed school cognoscenti that I've nothing much to say, despite some occasional evidence to the contrary, has long puzzled me. I'm not sure what to make of it, but there it is.

Posted by Rick Hess at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The other day, I expressed the hope that Monday's hard-hitting anti-Common Core manifesto would prompt the Common Core-ites to elevate their game and start to more seriously address concerns about their efforts. I hoped that proponents would stop regarding the Common Core as something that "right-thinking" people must reflexively embrace and more diligently seek to make a coherent case for what they are doing and why critics need not fear overreach.

Happily, things are already looking up. Within hours of Monday's post, Mitch Chester, board chair of PARCC (one of the two Common Core assessment consortia) and the Massachusetts Commissioner of Education, sent me the kind of measured justification of the Common Core process that's been sorely lacking. I'm not sure I agree with his take and it doesn't seek to respond to the skeptics so much as it offers a bit of context and a window into his own thinking. But it's the kind of reasoned effort to justify the Common Core and to spell out its limits that's been lacking amidst the cheerleading, assumed inevitability, and impatience with skeptics. Please note that one thing that's especially welcome is its lack of defensiveness and willingness to countenance criticism. Anyway, I asked Mitch if I could share his take with you, and he kindly agreed.

Here's what he had to say:

Rick,

I think you did a great job with today's blog on the counter-manifesto. For the record, I was not a signatory to, nor is what follows intended to defend, the Shanker Institute manifesto.

I continue to think that concerns about an imposed, national curriculum are misplaced. For me, the Common Core Standards, Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC), Race to the Top and corresponding curriculum development efforts are not about federal oversight or standardized curriculum. Instead, they are about raising the bar while providing a scaffold upon which local districts can upgrade their instructional programs.

Every stop in my career (in Connecticut, Philadelphia, Ohio, and now Massachusetts) has reinforced for me that local practitioners rarely have the capacity to develop curriculum on their own, often make poor choices when it comes to selecting curriculum materials, and welcome the opportunity to be exposed to exemplary curriculum resources.

Development and dissemination of curricular exemplars were not seen as core responsibilities of SEAs (or even of LEAs, in the case of Philly when I was there) as we implemented the standards-based reform agenda over the past two decades. Districts with the expertise to provide high-quality programs of instruction thrived while those with limited capacity lagged (often relying on narrow test-prep strategies). The "best-in-class" performance of Massachusetts' students, which some assert will be ruined by participation in the Common Core and PARCC, is a case-in-point. Excellent standards and assessments by themselves did little to ameliorate vast discrepancies in the quality of the curricular programs--and thus performance gaps--that Commonwealth students experience from classroom to classroom, school to school, and district to district.

The lack of local capacity and the hunger for resources has convinced me that the development of exemplary curriculum modules is an appropriate role for SEAs (individually or collectively) and holds the potential to provoke stronger curriculum in districts with weak instructional programs. I am convinced that districts (charter schools, too) will welcome the opportunity to import, adapt, and build their own units based on the exemplars. The fact that some states will be using federal funds to develop these tools doesn't make them a national--or federal--curriculum; it simply is one way in which federal funds can support much needed state and local improvements.

I don't presume that there is any silver bullet--curriculum exemplars included. It is through a coherent approach to standards, assessment, curriculum, and staging their implementation--along with policies that exit low performing institutions and welcome new, promising ventures (including technology-enabled)--that we will orchestrate widespread, high-quality instructional programs.

The gauntlet you've thrown down is well aimed. We need to do a better job of stating what we are and are not about.

Mitchell

With any luck, we may now be embarking on a tougher, savvier discussion of the merits of the Common Core effort and whether it's being pursued in a manner that will deliver a happy result. Like I said on Monday, "Now it gets interesting."

Posted by Rick Hess at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Nationally, until just the past couple years, nominal per pupil spending increased every year for three generations. Now, for the first time in memory, public educational leaders are being asked to do what their counterparts in any number of public, non-profit, and for-profit organizations do routinely--cut back and make do with less. A few K-12 leaders seem to accept that public schools, which have added staff at twice the rate they've added students in the past decade, need to shoulder their share of the burden as states confront budget shortfalls. A few even see a bracing opportunity to deliver stern medicine or trim programs that should've been cut loose years ago.

But, in a depressing depiction of the fecklessness that too often passes for educational leadership, two University of Kansas faculty shed some light into how most edu-leaders are coping with the burdens of actually be asked to, you know, lead.

The two professors, KU dean Rick Ginsberg and professor Karen Multon, start with a troublingly saccharine note, writing, "What often gets lost as the news about budget woes mounts is that people just like you and me, often our neighbors, are responsible for identifying and implementing the specific cuts. It isn't easy for leaders, even when they are distant from those being affected."

Ginsberg and Multon surveyed "93 principals from one large upper-Midwest metropolitan area and 100 superintendents from four states across the country" to see how they're holding up. The results are telling. They report that, "More than 50% of both [superintendents and principals] indicated that their health had gotten worse due to budget cuts, and on another health-related question, both groups indicated that they worry about their health."

Ginsberg and Multon explain, "Principals and superintendents have serious concerns about their personal time (for leisure, relaxation, and personal life), their physical health has been negatively impacted, they worry about their health, and cuts have created significant challenges in areas like making innovative reforms, services offered, and overall faculty and staff morale."

They report that principals say that "anyone who thinks that all cuts, no matter where they're focused, don't affect classrooms doesn't really understand the culture of schools. Students and teachers are affected by all cuts leveled at schools. Note this explanation one principal provided: 'It is impossible to make cuts in a district and not have it impact teachers and students. We cut a secretary and many tasks are now falling to teachers. This takes up their precious time to prepare for students...We cut a mail delivery person, and now secretaries and paras are having to do curbside pickup and drop-off of mail so the mail can travel on buses. It has further added to our already reduced office staff.'"

One especially distressing passage reported that "most [principals] were very concerned about the negativity the cuts had generated. It was taking a toll on the principals. For example, one commented, 'I felt attacked by teachers who believed I played a role in decisions.' Another lamented the 'reduced levels of trust with employees.' One principal summed it up this way: 'I was and continue to be surprised at how some people react. I had typically reasonable people telling me that they weren't going to do their job. ... I feel we have taken a huge step backwards in our communication, trust, and cooperation.'"

School and district leaders are free to do as they will. For what it's worth, though, I'm not sure that bellyaching or insisting that every cut is devastating is going to win a lot of sympathy among parents and taxpayers who have lost jobs, taken pay cuts, and been asked to tighten up their own household and work budgets.

Posted by Rick Hess at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A few months back, I noted that the impressive early success of the Common Core effort risked breeding overconfidence, complacency, and inattention to how the effort would play out in practice. I warned that many who signed onto common assessments might be alienated by an effort that pushed too far or too fast.

Well, as of this morning, the Common Core battle has been officially joined. The notion that something this potentially momentous would unfold with no more than a bit of carping was always unlikely. Today, the anti-Common Core-ites fired their first organized response, in a manifesto titled, "Closing the Door on Innovation." Organized by the Hoover Institution's Bill Evers, Jay Greene of U. Arkansas and the Bush Institute, Greg Forster of the Foundation for Educational Choice, standards crusader Sandra Stotsky, and former Bush administration official Ze'ev Wurman, the document opposes "the ongoing effort by the U.S. Department of Education to have two federally funded testing consortia develop national curriculum guidelines, national curriculum models, national instructional materials, and national assessments using Common Core's national standards."

The 100+ mostly conservative signatories argued in a press release announcing the manifesto that "current U.S. Department of Education efforts to nationalize curriculum will stifle innovation and freeze into place an unacceptable status quo; end local and state control of schooling; lack a legitimate legal basis; and impose a one-size-fits-all model on America's students."

The signatories charge that current efforts "are against federal law and undermine the constitutional balance between national and state authority;" that "the evidence doesn't show a need for national curriculum or a national test for all students;" that the "U.S. Department of Education is basing its initiative on inadequate content standards;" that "there is no research-based consensus on what is the best curricular approach to each subject;" and that "there is not even consensus on whether a single 'best curricular approach' for all students exists."

(In a potentially related development, Whiteboard Advisors reported on Friday that its April survey of influential D.C. "insiders" showed an 18 percent drop since July 2010 in how "important" the respondents think it is that a NCLB/ESEA reauthorization address the Common Core. Of the sixteen potential NCLB/ESEA elements addressed, Common Core showed the second largest decline. Common Core was the only issue for which "insiders" indicated there was less support in Congress now than in July 2010.)

Bill Evers reports that "Closing the Door" was underway before the Shanker Institute's recent manifesto on behalf of "common content," but this document has clearly been shaped by what its authors term the Shanker Institute's effort to champion "a single nationalized curriculum in every K-12 subject." In short, the Finlandophile wing of the Common Core movement is accentuating the concerns of those who fear the exercise is a Trojan Horse for efforts to involve Washington more deeply in running the nation's schools.

Signatories include legislators who chair or vice-chair education committees in Minnesota, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas; state board members from Colorado and Alabama; two former general counsels at the U.S. Department of Ed; and a grab-bag of Republicans like former California governor Pete Wilson, former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, former U.S. House member Pete Hoekstra, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, and Spellings Commission chair Charles Miller. They also include William Estrada of the Home School Legal Defense Association; Bob Enlow, president of the Foundation for Educational Choice; the heads of a number of state-level conservative think tanks; and academics including Shelby Steele, U. Chicago's Richard Epstein, Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom, and, intriguingly, progressive icon Joel Spring.

It isn't yet clear whether this document marks the emergence of anything more than scattered opposition, but it does signal that the Common Core effort is about to become more contentious. For those who remember the national standards imbroglio of the early 1990s, the fact that this pushback is taking on a conservative, partisan shape, especially in the run-up to a Presidential election and at a time when small government Republicanism is back with a vengeance, should prompt some anxiety. The presence of some politically potent signers, like the home schoolers and Grover Norquist, only ups the ante.

I've previously raised questions about the Common Core not to be nettlesome but because, done right, the effort could be a terrific boon to assessment, accountability, research, tool-building, and instruction. Done wrong, it may well unravel what leading states have accomplished on standards, undercut charter schooling and autonomous district schools, stifle online learning, compromise school accountability, and fuel a more destructive replay of the '90s national standards fight. And, as I've said, I think it more likely that the enterprise will go wrong than that it'll go right. This leaves me pretty conflicted, and agnostic, on the whole deal.

The challenge for Common Core-ites was never to win over Evers or Greene. They're smart skeptics more attuned to the risks than the potential benefits of the effort. The challenge for Common Core-ites has always been to convince the mass of policymakers, activists, educators, and observers that the concerns are overblown. Core-ites need to hold centrist policymakers, reformers, and voters by assuring them that there are no hidden agendas, the effort is working to anticipate and address adverse consequences, and the Common Core is not morphing into a covert national curriculum or a dramatic expansion of the federal role.

Over the past twelve months, I'd say that Core-ites have done a mediocre job on these counts. Rather, they seem to have blithely accepted (or welcomed) an active federal role, largely ignored how their efforts might impact charter schooling or online learning, dismissed skeptics as ideologues and know-nothings, and done nothing to rein in those eager to charge from common assessments to something like a national curriculum.

Common Core-ites would do well to regard today's blast not as a threat but as an opportunity to raise their game.

Posted by Rick Hess at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In the past month, new superintendents have taken the reins of the nation's three biggest school systems, in New York, L.A., and Chicago. These three friends--Dennis Walcott, John Deasy, and J.C. Brizard--have the chance to become the face of the next half-decade of school reform in the same way that Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, and Michelle Rhee helped shape the past half-decade. What notes they hit, especially in an era of tight budgets and rapidly evolving teacher policies, will have an outsized impact.

Yesterday, John Deasy, LAUSD's new supe, visited AEI to deliver an address on his hopes and plans for L.A. (You can watch the event here.) Deasy has just assumed responsibility for the nation's second-largest district. A troubled district wrestling with huge budget shortfalls, LAUSD enrolls 700,000 in over 1,000 school campuses, and has an annual operating budget of about $7 billion. The L.A. Daily News has described a district suffering from "abysmal academic performance, a bloated bureaucracy, a payroll system disaster, and sexual misconduct scandals." Deasy's appointment has been hailed, with the L.A. Times opining, "L.A. Unified presents imposing obstacles...But if anyone can change this, Deasy can." Deasy, most recently LAUSD's deputy chief, has been an executive at the Gates Foundation and previously had successful runs in a few superintendencies.

A full house heard Deasy insist that the core work of LAUSD is going to be the mantra "we improve instruction." He said the district will be "relentless" and "insistent" in pursuing that goal, and that he believes "success is found in the classroom, and almost nowhere else."

Deasy said that he intends to improve instructional quality by focusing on "human capital," "managed performance," and providing "a diverse portfolio of school options" to the district's families. Deasy described a "tale of two systems": an emerging, dynamic, and student-focused system that still clashes far too often with a "receding" system of "ossified rules and labor stalemates."

Saying, "I take money off of people's kitchen table and convert it to [educator] salaries," Deasy said the district had to do a much better job of "celebrating high performance," working to "instruct and improve practitioners," and remove persistently ineffective educators "gracefully and with dignity." Deasy called for a system of teacher and administrator evaluation based on four elements: clinical evaluation; contributions to learning throughout the school community; input from faculty, parents, and students; and measured student learning. Deasy said that he's "at a complete loss as to why incorporating student learning is controversial. If our core business is learning, then that's what you focus on."

Deasy said he favors "mending, not ending" tenure. He called for a higher bar, with teachers having to teach five years, or "at least three," before being eligible--"not eighteen months." Deasy also argued the tenure decision has to "be informed by achievement data" and that tenure should not be for life but that tenure decisions should have to be "renewed every ten years or so." He drew a laugh when he said that today's teacher evaluation "doesn't help, doesn't differentiate, and doesn't provide meaningful feedback whatsoever. The fascinating thing is that everybody agrees on that. But, when you ask about the next step..." The key player in addressing all of this, of course, will be the United Teachers of Los Angeles. Deasy could offer no reassurance that he'll get them on board, especially amidst looming layoffs, but he's a tough, relentless, and savvy sonovagun--so we'll see how that plays out.

Deasy sketched out his vision of a trade-off between "high autonomy and high accountability." He said the district should back off as schools achieve and that, "if you're doing well, you should see far less [central administration]." However, he said that schools which aren't performing should expect the district leadership to be in their face.

Saying he is "agnostic on charters," Deasy said he thought there were probably enough charter schools in L.A. and the new challenge is not adding more schools but boosting the quality of charter schools. He declared that he hopes to do this by using the "same metrics" that district schools employ as "guidelines for reauthorization, renewal, revocation, and initiation" of charters.

Deasy closed by talking about LAUSD's brutal budget situation. He said they're looking at 10,000 potential layoffs, and are currently in active negotiations with nine local unions to forestall those effects. He said the district is working hard to tighten its belt, having cut 52 percent of administrative positions in the past few years, but is crippled by a lack of funding. He said that he's telling the state, "I'm not asking for more money, but just the same pitiful, pathetic amount that you gave us last year."

Whether or not new dollars are forthcoming, Deasy's tenure in LAUSD will do much to inform national debates about schooling. Here's wishing him good luck and Godspeed in making the most of what he termed "an unbelievable opportunity to do better."

Posted by Rick Hess at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

On Wednesday, I stirred a bit of a hornet's nest when I wrote, "I think that...many people teaching today probably shouldn't be." Given the charged response from readers demanding that I justify this assertion, I'll say a few more words.

First, it strikes me as a banal, unremarkable statement, one that I've uttered regarding attorneys, professors, journalists, salesmen, federal bureaucrats, think tankers, and district administrators. In this context it wasn't intended as an attack on educators, which is what made the heated response so noteworthy. People vary in talent, energy, and performance, and this means there are poor performers everywhere--even in fields with relatively stringent selection or hiring requirements.

Second, education hires a lot of educators. We've 3.4 million teachers in the U.S., which represents more than ten percent of the college educated workforce. That's twice the number of lawyers and doctors, combined. The more people you need, the more challenging it is to ensure quality. In 2005, The New Teacher Project (TNTP) reported that, "Urban schools are forced to hire large numbers of teachers they do not want." It's no surprise that supes struggling with class size mandates, from Florida to California, have told me they've sometimes had to hire lousy candidates just to fill classrooms.

Third, the challenge is aggravated by weak quality control. As I wrote Wednesday, "Teacher education programs and school districts generally do a mediocre job of preparing educators and a pretty awful job of screening out lousy educators." Several years ago, University of Texas professor David Leal reported that teacher preparation programs actively screen out about two percent of aspiring teachers (including during candidates' student teaching). In its 2009 The Widget Effect report, TNTP reported that districts consistently judge 99 percent of their teachers to be satisfactory, suggesting (in TNTP's estimation) that district performance evaluation is broken.

Fourth, teachers themselves say that they teach alongside colleagues who shouldn't be in classrooms. Public Agenda has reported that 78 percent of teachers say there are at least a few teachers in their school who "fail to do a good job and are simply going through the motions." In a Public Agenda focus group, one New Jersey union representative confessed, "I've gone in and defended teachers who shouldn't even be pumping gas."

My take is also informed by a half-decade supervising student teachers and research and school observations in a lot of districts. But let's keep it simple. If 75 percent of the nation's 100,000 schools have at least a couple teachers who shouldn't be teaching, that means teachers themselves are reporting that 150,000 or more of their colleagues probably shouldn't be teaching. In my book, that's "many."

Posted by Rick Hess at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Yesterday, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels gave an education speech to a packed house at AEI that included CNN, C-SPAN, and a slew of breathless political press (they were hoping he'd signal whether he's going to run for President). You can watch the speech, and check out an interview by AEI's Nick Schulz, here.

I actually had to miss the talk because, after having extended the invitation, turned out I had to be on the road in Jacksonville yesterday. Ah, well. Brief aside: I was intrigued by the opportunities around the 120,000 student Duval County system. Jacksonville finished fifth last year in our study of America's Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform, and, up close, I could see why. Engaged civic leadership, an impressive public education fund, some serious local philanthropists, thoughtful district leadership wrestling with a wave of new legislation, and a district pursuing partnerships on a number of fronts. Reformers, entrepreneurs, and funders really ought to be giving Duval a good look, if they haven't yet.

Anyway, back to Daniels. The best take on his remarks was probably that offered by my AEI colleague Andrew Kelly, who noted that Daniels eschewed bombast in favor of the serious-minded, wonky, "roll-up-his-sleeves" demeanor that has got many hoping he'll make a run for the Republican nomination. (Andrew, rightly I think, contrasted Daniels' approach with the antics of the manifestly unserious Sarah Palin.)

Daniels discussed the reforms he's championed in the Hoosier State. This past legislative session he had a slew of big wins, racking up the most significant series of education reforms by an education governor in a decade or more. Indiana enacted legislation establishing the state's first school voucher program, expanding the number of charter school authorizers in the state, overhauling teacher evaluation, abolishing "last hired, first fired" staffing requirements, and prohibiting teacher collective bargaining agreements from including anything except salaries and benefits.

With the aid of the uber-wonk's inevitable power point, Daniels addressed these measures in his characteristically thoughtful, low-key manner. He said, "I don't have magic answers. If I did I would have been here giving this talk years ago." He said his efforts had focused on three buckets of reform: addressing teacher quality, administrator flexibility, and greater choices for families. He saw the four education reform bills the legislature passed as "a mutually reinforcing whole."

Like many Republican governors, Daniels has moved aggressively on collective bargaining, though his approach and language have been characteristically tempered. "Collective bargaining has its rightful place," Daniels said, "Always will." But he also argued that, "Leadership in Indiana--the principals, the school boards, the superintendents that we're determined to hold accountable for student growth--have been hamstrung and prevented from doing that in a myriad of ways, many of them stemming from the contracts that their school boards have signed with local teachers unions." Daniels noted that some of the state's contracts dictated what color the teachers' lounge could be painted or the humidity level in the classroom, limited the exact number of hours a teacher would spend with students, and required teachers to get several days advance notice before their principal could observe their classroom.

In a bipartisan nod, Daniels tipped his hat to President Obama and Ed Secretary Arne Duncan. He saluted their efforts when it comes to turning around failing schools and said that Race to the Top, as a one-time competition, helped to jar complacent states and school systems into adopting reforms.

On school choice, Daniels criticized "a regime that attempted to choke the charter school infant in its cradle" and touted his legislation boosting the number of charter authorizers. He noted that private universities can now be authorizers, thus "[giving] birth to a new educational opportunity somewhere in their vicinity." The new voucher legislation makes Indiana "the first state of universal, private-school choice...available in all places to all citizens."

Daniels said that about 60 percent of Indiana families will be eligible for a voucher covering 90 percent of per pupil public education costs. Daniels indicated that this amount would fully cover tuition at any elementary or middle private school in the state. To be eligible for the voucher, a child must first spend two semesters in a public school. "If the public school delivers and succeeds, no one will seek to exercise this choice," Daniels said. "But neither will we incarcerate any family's kid in a school that they don't believe is working having tried it for at least one full year." Daniels offered a pragmatic but hopeful view of school choice. The vast majority of students will likely remain in traditional district schools, he said, but "in the lives of those...1 or 2 or 3 or 5 percent of all our kids, [the choice] may mean everything."

Indiana has escaped much of the fiscal crunch with which most states are wrestling, because of Daniels disciplined stewardship over the past six years. Now Daniels has turned his energy to education, with remarkable success. Whether he opts to run for the GOP nomination or not, it'll be intriguing to see what he tackles next.

Posted by Rick Hess at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I got a number of notes regarding yesterday's post, mostly either dinging me for my concerns about value-added systems or asking how I can raise such concerns and still write, "Value-added does tell us something useful and I'm in favor of integrating it into evaluation and pay decisions, accordingly." Let me clarify. I think that two things are both true:

First, teachers vary widely in ability and performance, and many people teaching today probably shouldn't be.

Second, teaching is complex, and no simple score or algorithm usefully captures that variation in ability and performance, or reveals which teachers shouldn't be teaching.

(Oh, and a third relevant premise is that teacher education programs and school districts generally do a mediocre job of preparing educators and a pretty awful job of screening out lousy educators.)

Together, these premises argue for systems that aim to evaluate, recognize, and remove teachers based on performance, but that do so while respecting the bluntness of various measures. Today's value-added metrics may be, as I wrote, "at best, a pale measure of teacher quality," but they tell us something. Structured observation tells us something. Peer feedback tells us something, as does blinded, forced-rank evaluations by peers. Principal judgment, especially in a world of increasing accountability and transparency, tells us something. Well-run firms and nonprofits use these kinds of tools, in various ways, depending on their culture and workforce.

This is why I believe value-added metrics should be one useful component, but that "I worry when it becomes the foundation upon which everything else is constructed." My quarrel is not with value-added, but with the assumption that we can and should gauge the validity and utility of all other measures against today's math and ELA value-added results.

Now, don't give me too much credit. I trust that few RHSU readers will mistake my concerns for squeamishness or kind-heartedness. Any evaluation system will entail some misidentification. Some individuals will be unfairly terminated. That's the way of the world, and I can live with that. I'm not worried about imperfections and I'm not holding out hope for a perfectly "fair" system; I'm just concerned about enshrining a narrow, stifling, and incomplete notion of good teaching as the benchmark. I want a system which champions and rewards a robust vision of good teaching and that doesn't settle for a narrow, distorted conception because that's what econometricians can measure.

Firms and nonprofits use a variety of evaluative tools which identify a nontrivial number of employees as low-performing. That's kind of the point of the exercise. Especially in education, where I fear there is remarkably little front-end quality control, it is entirely appropriate that any system of evaluation should be routinely identifying teachers as low-performing and remediating or terminating them. The mistake is imagining that we can or should do this almost entirely through a reliance on value-added or its proxies.

Posted by Rick Hess at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Last week, while I was away, Brookings released another of its occasional "consensus" documents; this one's titled, "Passing Muster: Evaluating Teacher Evaluation Systems." The effort was once again led by Brookings' savvy Russ Whitehurst. The aim, more or less, is to tell state and federal officials how to "achieve a uniform standard for dispensing funds to school districts for the recognition of exceptional teachers without imposing a uniform evaluation system."

The report offers an impressive seven-step model to help policymakers figure out how many teachers will be misidentified by different evaluation strategies under different sets of assumptions. "Misidentification" is meant conceptually, but, practically speaking, is discussed in terms of how the teachers in question fare on value-added calculations. The report also features new jargon like "tolerance" and "exceptionality" to characterize "how willing policymakers are to risk an error of over-inclusion" or "the cutoff in a teacher rank distribution that is used for decision-making." The paper is clever, and fine as far as it goes, but leaves me concerned about the direction of teacher evaluation policy.

The exercise aims to inform efforts to evaluate teachers for whom districts can't do value-added analysis, but the underlying thread seems to be the casual, implicit assumption that reading and math value-added are the "true" measure of teacher quality. This is hardly a unique take; it's become the norm. The same stance characterized the Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching report last winter, with its effort to gauge the utility of various teacher evaluation strategies (student feedback, observation, etc.) based upon how closely they approximated value-added measures.

The whole thing brings to my mind the collateralized debt bubble, in which incredibly complex models were built atop a pretty narrow set of assumptions and the simple conviction that assumptions could be taken as givens. In 2004, questioning underlying assumptions about real estate valuation would get an analyst dismissed as unsophisticated.

Edu-econometricians are eagerly building intricate models stacked atop value-added scores. Yet, today's value-added measures are, at best, a pale measure of teacher quality. There are legitimate concerns about test quality; the noisiness and variability of calculations; the fact that metrics don't account for the impact of specialists, support staff, or shared instruction; and the degree to which value-added calculations rest upon a narrow, truncated conception of good teaching. Value-added does tell us something useful and I'm in favor of integrating it into evaluation and pay decisions, accordingly, but I worry when it becomes the foundation upon which everything else is constructed.

When well-run public or private sector firms evaluate employees, they incorporate managerial judgment, peer feedback, and so forth, without assuming that these will or should reflect project completion, sales, assembly line performance, or what-have-you. The whole point of these other measures is to get a fuller picture of performance; and that would be self-defeating if these other measures were supposed to measure one underlying thing.

The one downside to having a slew of first-rate econometricians engaged in edu-research nowadays is that in their eagerness for outcomes to analyze, they tend to care less about the caliber of the numbers than whether they can count them. In the housing bubble, rocket scientists crunched decades of housing data to build complex models. Their job wasn't to sweat the quality of the data, its appropriateness, or the real-world utility of their assumptions; it was to build dazzling models. The problem is that even the cleverest of models is only as good as the data. And it turned out that the data and assumptions were rife with overlooked problems.

Edu-econometricians love test scores because they can find increasingly sophisticated ways to model them. But if the scores are flawed, biased, or incomplete measures of learning or teacher effectiveness, the models won't pick that up. Yet those raising such questions are at risk of being dismissed as unsophisticated and retrograde. (To be fair, sensible skepticism isn't helped by the rush of union mouthpieces and carnival barkers eager to spout conspiracy theories, excuses, and ad hominem attacks.) So, the Brookings exercise is interesting and useful on its terms--but I'm growing more than a little concerned about those terms.

Posted by Rick Hess at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Hidy, all. I'm back. I'm sure you'd prefer to be left in the capable hands of Justin, Heather, or Greg a little longer--and I got some emphatic un-fan mail strongly encouraging me to make my blog vacay permanent--but life is full of these little disappointments...

Anyway, we were channel-surfing last night when we stumbled across the CNN scroll announcing that Osama bin Laden was dead. While watching the coverage, the President's remarks, and the celebrations, two thoughts struck me that touch directly upon the edu-world. One, I recalled how goodwill and generosity of spirit back in 2001 helped speed through a flawed, troubled statute called No Child Left Behind. Cheerful "let's-get-it-done" collaboration tapped not into shared horse sense, but instead greased the skids for a pleasant-sounding, poorly assembled pastiche of good intentions and confused mandates.

Second, I was reminded how nasty, personal, and petty our edu-debates have gotten. Wisconsin's Governor Walker is called a Nazi and worse for wanting to alter collective bargaining rules for employee benefits. (Talk about defining Nazism down...). Proponents of merit pay and value-added testing are called fascist teacher-haters, while skeptics of those proposals are denounced as villainous child-haters. In a perilous world, where our nation's very future stands in question and in which we must find a way to shoulder the burden of a decade's ruinous profligacy, I'd like to think we can reach back to September 2001 and find strength in our shared bonds.

That doesn't mean we'll agree on much, and I sure wouldn't want it to put our critical faculties on pause, but it'd be nice if those of us working to improve American education could try a little harder to recognize the validity of other perspectives. Out of respect for the young men and women who took down Osama and risk their lives to keep us safe, those of us engaged in educating tomorrow's citizens might try harder to recall the decency that prevailed when a shared crisis reminded us of all that binds us together.

Posted by Rick Hess at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend