October 2011 Archives

Note: Celine Coggins, founder and CEO of Teach Plus, is guest blogging this week.

Thanks to Rick and his crew for tapping me as a guest-blogger. I promise to live up to the provocative blogging Rick's known for later in the week. I want to start, though, by discussing one of the programs we run at Teach Plus as an example of what we're all about. The results are in from the first year of our T3: Turnaround Teacher Teams initiative in the Boston Public Schools. I'm breaking the news here first!

At Teach Plus, we work to ensure that a greater proportion of students have access to experienced, effective teachers. We run three programs designed to help great teachers stay in the classroom while taking on leadership opportunities that place them at the center of reform. Our programs are: the Teaching Policy Fellows Program, the T+ Network, and T3: Turnaround Teacher Teams. In two years, the organization has grown from 16 founding teachers to more than 4,000 teachers in six cities (Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, Indianapolis, and DC).

T3 is a teacher-designed model for staffing low-performing schools with high-performing teachers. The teachers who developed the proposal (as part of our Teaching Policy Fellows program) argued that many experienced teachers who have a track record of success with urban students would be willing to teach in the most challenging schools under certain conditions. The conditions they specified were:

• Excellent colleagues including a strong principal and a team of teacher leaders who would be rigorously selected and comprise at least 25 percent of the faculty.
• Formal leadership roles that allowed them to expand their impact beyond their classroom.
• Specialized training and time to work with colleagues.
• Compensation that reflected their expertise and additional time commitment.

The formula is not rocket science, but it also was not happening in any school in the country a couple of years ago.

Today, the program operates in six Boston Public Schools and is rapidly expanding. It is becoming a proof point for a few important and contested areas of the education reform landscape.

First, it demonstrates that it is possible for teachers to take ownership over the "big picture" problems that inhibit the success of students across our nation. This is key to what it means to be part of a profession. So often, "solutions" to the most pressing problems our students face come from people who are not in daily contact with schools. Teachers, in many cases, have great ideas for how to address these problems, but have too few entry points for getting their voice heard beyond the walls of their school.

Second, the program is challenging the conventional wisdom that high-performing, experienced teachers will not teach in low-performing schools. The program is competitive, with about six candidates for every position from around the country. The recruitment and selection process we run is far more labor-intensive than most districts currently have the capacity to do alone, but it's rooting out the most damaging pathology that exists in schools today--routinely placing our highest-need students with novice and/or weak teachers.

Third, (finally, after the long wind up, I'm getting to the breaking news part) it is demonstrating that it is possible to move the needle on student learning in a "turnaround" setting. Big shout out here to John Papay of Brown University who crunched the numbers for us. We found that T3 schools outperformed all possible comparison groups in terms of student growth on the MCAS, our statewide assessment in Massachusetts. Comparison groups include:
• All schools statewide;
• All Boston Public Schools;
• All turnaround schools statewide, and
• All BPS turnaround schools.

T3 schools as a group outperformed 89 percent of all schools in the state in elementary mathematics. Orchard Gardens, the one T3 school with students in grades 6 to 8, deserves special mention. OG performed at the 96th percentile of all schools statewide in producing student growth in ELA and at the 98th percentile in mathematics. The median middle school student at Orchard Gardens demonstrated more growth in mathematics than 82 percent of other students statewide.

Getting these results takes many ingredients, but the most important is the adults in the building. Kudos to all of those teachers who took the risk and are making it happen!

--Celine Coggins

Posted by Celine Coggins at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Note: Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric, lawyers at the Federal Education Group, will be guest posting this week.

In this final post, we propose strategies for tackling the compliance rules that interfere with good educational programming. As we explored this week, these rules shape the culture of education organizations because they create compliance fears that discourage effective spending. This makes little sense, especially in an era where every dollar matters.

The theme that connects the strategies below is engaging implementers. Policymakers sometimes assume a rule is working when they don't hear examples about the damage it is doing in practice. This is why addressing fiscal and administrative compliance rules, while tedious, is so critical to education reform.

National Level

Federal policymakers could:

• Identify the fiscal and administrative compliance rules that impact education. It is time to reexamine the compliance rules that get in the way of education services, and the first step in this process is to identify what those rules are. This would be a significant undertaking - ED's Office of Inspector General once estimated that Title I alone contained 588 separate compliance requirements. While not all of those rules are fiscal or administrative in nature, many of them are. Unfortunately, these types of rules are often overlooked during policy debates or reauthorization discussions, so they remain in law even if they create undesired consequences.

• Engage with implementers. State and local school superintendents, grant administrators, financial personnel, principals, teachers, and parents have important perspectives as to which federal compliance requirements cause the most trouble at the district, school, and classroom level.

• Eliminate counterproductive compliance requirements. Eliminate requirements that interfere with sound educational practices and federal policy intentions, or are not worth enforcing because they provide little bang for the buck.

• Eliminate duplicative requirements. Take planning requirements in ESEA. Schools and districts must draft a variety of plans including schoolwide plans, school improvement plans, professional development needs assessments, and parental involvement plans. Each has similar, but slightly different requirements. Completing required plans takes a great deal of time; more importantly, because there are so many plans to complete, it is common to have different people complete different plans. As a result, school district and school-level planning - which at its most effective is comprehensive in nature - can become fragmented so that few have a good overall picture of how all of the pieces fit together.

Reporting requirements are similarly challenging. States and districts have to submit numerous reports that ask for similar (if not the same) data.

Eliminating duplicative compliance requirements would not only reduce administrative burden, which could help direct more resources to classrooms, but could also drive more effective decision-making.

Federal agencies could:

• Engage with those implementing federal programs before issuing final guidance. ED issues guidance about federal programs that, while not legally binding, shapes the way federal education programs are implemented (and audited). Posting guidance in draft first, and then soliciting feedback from stakeholders, would help ensure the concerns of program implementers are taken into account.

• Ensure that guidance on compliance requirements is provided in a consistent manner. While the answers to questions about the law always depend on specific facts and circumstances, states and districts sometimes receive different advice about the same issues from different federal offices. This makes it very hard for states and districts to evaluate their options, which can contribute to the "lock down" mentality where defensive spending patterns continue because past spending is safe from a compliance perspective, even if it isn't effective. Consistent advice about the parameters of federal rules could help states and districts move away from a culture driven by compliance to one driven by results.

• Develop education specific guidance for states and school districts that explains how to comply with general grants management rules (like rules developed by OMB, such as time and effort). Information that explains how these rules work in the education context would be very helpful to those responsible for implementing federal programs. In addition, this guidance could include information for states and districts about less burdensome compliance options that are available under current law.

State Level

State education agencies could:

• Re-examine state rules and processes that affect federal grants. Most large federal education programs are "state administered," meaning the state is responsible for ensuring school districts comply with federal requirements, so states often impose rules, procedures, and requirements that are actually more stringent and/or burdensome than what is required by federal law. States could take a fresh look at how they interpret federal laws, as well the processes they require their school districts to follow, to ensure everything is aligned with the state's strategic vision and no unnecessary obstacles are in the way.

• Engage with ED to push available flexibilities. States play an important role in the administration of federal programs, and we are lucky to work with leaders who push for flexibilities that make a difference to students in the classroom. When auditors get things wrong, these states are not afraid to defend their districts. When a requirement is overly burdensome, these states work to find more flexible alternatives. This creates space for districts to succeed and helps to improve outcomes for students.

Local Level

School districts could:

• Raise concerns to Congress, and federal and state agencies, about barriers to carrying out effective programs. Because fiscal and administrative requirements are not hot topics, the barriers they impose on districts are not widely discussed. When working with districts engaged in the very important and difficult work of improving schools, we see the amount of effort it can take to find a compliant way around these barriers. And while the districts we work with are varied, the barriers often look the same - this despite significant differences in geography, students, and philosophy. Hearing from implementers such as superintendents, grants administrators, principals, teachers, and parents about these barriers could play a vital role in breaking them down.

• Ensure core operational systems - like planning, financial management, procurement, contract administration, inventory management, etc. are strong. While this may seem unrelated to federal grants, these core systems are vital to the proper stewardship of public funds (and in fact, most of those core systems must currently meet certain federal standards). If the flexibility movement that Congress and ED are signaling continues, school districts that have strong core systems will be best positioned to make the most of it.

If policymakers want to foster improved educational outcomes, all potential barriers to that goal need to be examined. Fiscal and administrative rules are just such barriers, and we hope these blog posts help to generate more conversation about these often overlooked but deeply influential requirements.

Finally, a big thanks to Rick for letting us camp out on his blog this week. It has been a great learning experience for us and we are deeply appreciative.

--Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric

Posted by Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Note: Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric, lawyers at the Federal Education Group, will be guest posting this week.

Education policies cannot be successful if school districts are required to implement those policies in ineffective ways. While education policymakers passionately discuss the merits or flaws of big picture policy ideas, once policies actually make it into law few look back to see how the policies work in day-to-day practice. This is unfortunate, because overly burdensome or complicated administrative requirements can trip up policy goals.

To illustrate this point, consider the "equitable services" requirement. This requirement, which has existed since federal education programs began in the 1960s, requires public school systems to provide services to eligible private school students with federal funds. We recognize there are larger public policy issues surrounding this requirement, which we will not examine here; instead we want to look at how the policy is implemented. We come to this issue having represented both "sides" - the public school systems tasked with administering equitable services, and the private schools that are supposed to receive the services. In our experience, neither side is happy.

For context, most large federal education programs, including Title I, Title II, and IDEA, contain an equitable services requirement which mandates that school districts set aside some of their federal grant funds to provide services to eligible private school students, teachers, and/or parents. School districts are also required to:

• Consult with private school officials on a variety of topics, including what kinds of services would be helpful for private school students;
• Determine what services the private school students will receive after the consultation;
• Control the federal grant funds and property purchased on behalf of private schools; and
• Ensure the services are actually delivered to private school students, teachers, and parents.

These implementation rules require both districts and private schools to invest substantial resources in administering equitable services, rather than on the services themselves.

The system can also feel illogical for both sides, and can foster a more contentious relationship between public schools systems and private schools than would otherwise exist. For example, when a public school district purchases an item to be used by students in a private school:

• The item must remain the district's property;
• Be a part of the district's inventory management system; and
• The district is responsible for monitoring how the private school uses the item to ensure it is only used by eligible students.

From the district perspective, this creates serious risks. If the private school misuses the item, then the district is on the hook for any audit or monitoring finding. From the private school perspective, district monitoring can feel like micromanagement of the private school's educational program.

And there is more that doesn't make sense administratively. Different federal education programs have different equitable services requirements, for example:

• In some cases federal law provides a formula for how much money should be set aside, while in others the district must consult with private schools to figure out how the money should be divided between public and private school students.
• In some cases districts must serve private school students who live in the district regardless of where they attend school, while in other cases districts must serve private school students who attend private schools located in the district regardless of where they live.

From the school district perspective, this means a district cannot develop one set of operating procedures that applies to all of the equitable services it delivers. Instead, the district must administer each program separately. As a result, many school districts, especially large urban districts, have personnel dedicated solely to carrying out equitable services requirements.

From the private school perspective, this means school officials must learn how to navigate a complex bureaucracy to get services for their students. And, because federal rules vary so dramatically from program to program, it can be hard for private school officials to know precisely what their students are entitled to receive under each program.

Noncompliance with equitable services requirements is a real issue for public school systems; in fact, it is one of the most common findings raised by U.S. Department of Education monitors. (For a breakdown of findings see these spreadsheets.) Because of this compliance pressure, many districts feel they are forced to spend a disproportionate amount of time worrying about the needs of private school students. On the other side, private school officials can become so frustrated with the way services are (or are not delivered) they resort to administrative litigation. This makes equitable services one of the few K-12 federal education issues outside of special education that is actually litigated.

All of this is an example of the importance of sensible administrative rules because such rules powerfully influence how policies are implemented. While equitable services is one example, similar administrative disconnects exist throughout federal education programs. Unfortunately, it is rare that these types of implementation struggles are discussed. Because overlooked administrative requirements can impede the delivery of services to students, we hope they become a more prominent part of the education conversation.

-- Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric

Posted by Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Note: Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric, lawyers at the Federal Education Group, will be guest posting this week.

Yesterday we talked about how the supplement not supplant rule can work against federal policy goals by impeding comprehensive school reform efforts and encouraging poor educational spending decisions. Today we will look at how another rule - known as "time and effort" - also inhibits comprehensive educational approaches.

Time and effort, a rule that requires employees paid with federal funds to document the time they spend on specific activities, is not unique to Department of Education (ED) programs. In fact, these rules cannot be found in federal education laws such as NCLB or IDEA. Instead, time and effort rules (also known as time distribution rules) are contained in "cost principles" developed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and apply to all federal grant recipients regardless of which federal agency is giving out the grant money.

The concept behind time and effort is completely understandable; namely, the federal government wants its grant recipients to be able to demonstrate that people paid with federal funds actually worked on the federal programs that paid them. However, because time and effort rules are confusing, compliance oriented, and easy to audit, they encourage defensive spending -spending that is safe from an audit perspective rather than effective.

As we noted in our first post, ED's OIG has questioned hundreds of millions of dollars because of time and effort non-compliance. Understandably, this creates tremendous pressure to avoid time and effort related audit findings which discourages districts from designing comprehensive programs.

Comprehensive programs typically use multiple funding sources to carry out a variety of related activities to accomplish a particular goal. The more activities a federally funded employee works on, the harder it is to comply with time and effort requirements. Working on more than one activity triggers a lengthier form that requires different signatures and must be completed more often. Add to this mix the fact that there is very little clarity about what an "activity" is in the K-12 context, which causes widespread misunderstanding, even among auditors, about what time and effort records should look like.

This all means that it is easiest to comply with time and effort requirements when an employee works exclusively on one activity supported by one funding source. If a school implements a comprehensive improvement initiative that is supported by multiple funding sources, the time and effort reporting can become far more burdensome.

Given the millions of dollars at stake, it is little wonder that school districts (typically with the backing of their state) feel compelled to design their programs to minimize the risk of time and effort noncompliance. As we discussed with supplement not supplant yesterday, this often means school districts shy away from comprehensive approaches, instead taking the "silo" approach to federal funds which is far less risky from a compliance perspective.

The irony is that while time and effort requirements were designed to protect federal funds, compliance with time and effort requirements does little to ensure federal funds are spent appropriately.

For example, a state or district could have compliant time and effort records, but have weak core systems such as payroll and human resources (HR). Good payroll and HR information is generally far more critical to preserving the integrity of federal funds (as well as state and local funds) and accomplishing the mission of an organization than time and effort records. Unfortunately, federal rules can incentivize states and districts to focus on time and effort reports instead of core systems like payroll and HR.

There is good news on the time and effort front too. For one, OMB permits institutions of higher education, but not states or districts, to use their existing payroll and HR systems to meet time and effort requirements in lieu of specific time and effort forms. While states and districts can apply to implement alternative time and effort systems under current law, we think they should have the same flexibilities available to institutions of higher education as a matter of course without the need for prior approval.

In addition, ED's Administrative Flexibility Pilots are a great opportunity to develop more meaningful time and effort systems. It is fantastic that ED is recognizing that traditional time and effort records do not promote good outcomes. There are many options available to states and districts, and we are hopeful that those with on-the-ground experience with the unintended consequences of time and effort come forward with flexibility proposals. Reducing the burden and risk of complying with time and effort requirements will go a long way towards unlocking the potential of federal funds.

So, in the end, what do supplement not supplant and time and effort have in common? Both are largely unknown, administrative rules that force states, districts, and schools to think about their various funding streams in silos. Rules that force entities to manage their money in silos ultimately encourage them to deliver educational services in silos. If policymakers want to encourage more comprehensive approaches to improving schools, it is vital to remove the administrative barriers confronting the field.

--Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric

Posted by Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Note: Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric, lawyers at the Federal Education Group, will be guest posting this week.

In our last post, we introduced the idea that federal compliance rules can have an unintended effect on what goes on in the classroom by encouraging defensive spending, discouraging comprehensive programs, and creating administrative burdens that take away resources from students. Over the next two days we will give examples of how two seemingly unrelated rules - supplement not supplant, and time and effort - interfere with comprehensive school improvement.

Policymakers have encouraged states and school districts to use federal funds to support whole school improvement initiatives for many years. From the schoolwide program model under Title I, to the shorter-lived Comprehensive School Reform program, as well as the more recent School Improvement Grants, Race to the Top, and some of the turnaround principles in the new ESEA waiver initiative, policymakers have tried to encourage comprehensive school improvement as a way to help students in high-poverty or low-performing schools.

While there are many reasons why whole school improvement may not be implemented well in a particular school or district, compliance rules are often overlooked as barriers.

Consider for example, supplement not supplant, a fiscal rule that applies to the largest federal K-12 programs, including Title I and IDEA. At its most basic, it requires that states, school districts, and schools use federal funds to provide eligible students with extra services, staff, programs or materials they would not normally receive.

This is an important policy; yet, the way supplement not supplant is enforced encourages the sort of defensive spending we talked about in our last post. This is because compliance with the requirement is tested on a cost-by-cost basis, meaning states, districts, and schools have to prove that each individual cost charged to federal funds is extra and something they would not have paid for if they did not receive federal funds. As a result, it can be easier to spend federal funds on things that clearly look "extra" - like field trips - than on educational costs that link to a school's core curriculum - like reading or math interventions.

Even if a district or school can show it would not have provided a particular service if federal funds were not available to pay for it, the district or school can run into a supplement not supplant problem if an auditor or oversight entity thinks the service should be provided with state or local funds.

For example, we have school district colleagues throughout the country whose states (which are responsible for administering most federal education programs) and auditors have told them supplement not supplant prohibits them from spending Title I funds for things like:

• Interim assessments to determine student progress with early literacy skills;
• Outside data experts to help school staff better analyze data and use it to develop more effective interventions ;
• An additional section of 9th grade English so that more attention could be focused on improving literacy skills (for a school with very low basic literacy rates); and
• Attendance incentive programs for schools struggling with low attendance rates.

As frustrating as these denials are, consider how much more frustrating it is for a school district superintendent or school principal to be told no for these types of costs when these kinds of comprehensive interventions are actually encouraged in guidance from the U.S. Department of Education. To make matters worse, many school districts and schools throughout the country wouldn't even try to use Title I funds for the above types of services because of confusion over how supplement not supplant works, particularly in Title I schoolwide schools. Therefore, using funds to support comprehensive interventions - which could be an important part of turning around a struggling school - are routinely denied, or not even attempted, because of supplement not supplant.

The mindset encouraged by supplement not supplant can have a substantial effect on state and local funds as well. This is because the easiest way to show that something is "extra" is to build a budget in layers; in other words, to first budget costs supported by state and local funds, and then budget federal costs. The problem with this is that it encourages a fragmented approach to spending decisions, where costs for each funding source are considered and budgeted for in separate "silos" in order to head off compliance violations with supplement not supplant. It would be more educationally effective if a state or district could comprehensively plan how to spend their funds depending on district and school needs - not the origin of the funding source. In practice, however, the supplement not supplant rule discourages that type of comprehensive planning.

These types of unintended consequences have a powerful impact in the classroom. For more examples of real-life unintended consequences, here is a paper we wrote on this topic for a joint project of the Center for American Progress and the American Enterprise Institute.

There is some good news on the supplement not supplant front. Congress is taking note of how the rule can get in the way of comprehensive interventions, particularly in Title I school programs where supplement not supplant is supposed to be tested differently (i.e. not through a cost-by-cost test). Congress is considering language that would help clear up the confusion over how the rule is tested in schoolwide programs, but given the substantial impact that supplement not supplant has outside of the schoolwide model, and even outside of Title I, it could be very powerful if Congress addressed this rule more broadly.

--Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric

Posted by Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Note: Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric, lawyers at the Federal Education Group, will be guest posting this week.

As education lawyers who work with states and school districts on federal education programs, part of our job is to advise clients on those programs' fiscal and administrative compliance rules. For the most part these compliance rules are largely unknown and rarely discussed among the education policy crowd and other important stakeholders, like parents and teachers. Federal compliance requirements like supplement not supplant or time distribution (also known as time and effort) are not exactly hot topics of conversation. They should be.

These, and other, little known and little understood compliance rules have far-reaching and often unintended effects on how education services are delivered to students. Our goal this week is to explain how federal compliance rules can shape the way states and school districts think about using money for education (not just federal funds, but state and local funds as well), introduce some of the specific federal rules we see as barriers to effective programs, and offer some potential solutions along the way.

As we describe in this paper, federal compliance rules have an impact on what goes on in the classroom. This is because fear of audit or monitoring findings can lead states and school districts to do what we call "defensive spending" - i.e. spending federal money in ways that are safe in terms of audit risk, rather than effective in terms of programs that might better drive student achievement or improve a student's experience in school. This has a cascading effect on state and local funds as well.

This defensive spending is understandable if one looks at what gets states and school districts into trouble with the U.S. Department of Education - it is largely the failure to meet technical compliance requirements. Some of the most common federal audit or monitoring findings concern non-compliance with the following rules:

• Time and effort (in short, a requirement that those paid with federal funds document how they work);
• Supplement not supplant (a requirement of many federal programs that states and districts use federal funds to add to, and not replace, state and local funds);
• Equitable services (a requirement that school districts use federal funds to provide services to students in private schools); and
• Missing elements of federally required planning documents (many federal programs require schools or districts to develop plans with a specific number of elements and if any one of these elements is missing, the plan is non-compliant).

Noncompliance with these rules can have serious financial consequences. For example, in 2010, the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) Office of Inspector General (OIG) questioned $107 million in federal salary charges in one district due to problems with the district's time and effort records. Other time and effort findings have come in at $52 million, $49 million, and $2.3 million. Even if ED ultimately does not require funds to be repaid, the threat of repayment, along with newspaper stories about funds being questioned, and the increased scrutiny that a state or district faces after receiving one of these findings, understandably makes states and school districts very sensitive to compliance rules. In this environment, it is easy to understand why some districts continue the same spending patterns because they are "safe" in terms of audit risk - even where that spending has not moved the needle on student achievement.

While accepting federal funds means accepting responsibility for being good stewards of public money, ironically, some of the compliance requirements originally designed to protect federal funds and better serve students can actually curtail effective spending and stifle innovation. It can take an extraordinary leader, for example, to spend federal money in an entirely new way because it is always possible change could trigger additional scrutiny and raise audit risks. (We are honored to work with many such extraordinary leaders who are laser-focused on student needs, want to figure out how to do things better within the existing rules, and are willing to push the envelope by rethinking legacy interpretations of what the rules mean.)

There is some good news. The federal government itself recognizes that many of its rules are overly burdensome and may not be linked to desired outcomes. As Rick blogged about earlier this month, ED recently announced a new pilot program that would allow states and districts relief from certain federal requirements in exchange for implementing alternative systems tied to program outcomes. The Office of Management and Budget and the General Accountability Office have announced their own burden reduction initiatives as well. These initiatives could be a great opportunity for states and districts to think about how these rules shape their daily practice, and how alternative systems and approaches could promote better outcomes. In addition, members from both parties in Congress have indicated they wish to find ways to address the unintended consequences triggered by certain compliance rules.

In light of this opportunity, over the next few days we will explore what we see as some of the most problematic rules, paying particular attention to how certain federal rules:

• Can encourage districts and schools to deliver education services in a fragmented way and make poor spending decisions;
• Likely do not protect federal money the way intended; and
• Create administrative hurdles that take away resources and attention away from the classroom.

Congress, the White House, and the U.S. Department of Education are signaling that there is an opportunity to address the unintended consequences of some of these compliance rules. Given that invitation, we are taking this opportunity to raise some of the issues we see states, school districts, and schools struggle with on a daily basis. Solving these issues could make a real difference for students.

--Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric

Posted by Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Hidy, all. So I'm taking one of my quarterly breaks from RHSU for the next few weeks. Happily, once again, I think we've assembled a terrific line-up of guest bloggers. They're all a lot more interesting and accomplished than yours truly, so it should make for a lively stretch.

First up, next week, we have Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric. Melissa and Sheara are co-founders of the Federal Education Group (FEG) law firm and are my go-to experts when it comes to understanding how federal law impacts states and school systems. Previously, they served as counsel to a number of state education agencies, districts, and charter schools. This past summer, they penned an AEI Outlook, "Federal Compliance Works against Education Policy Goals," an incisive take on how federal rules can stifle smart problem-solving. They grasp thorny questions like Title I's "supplement not supplant" and "maintenance of effort" regs as well as anyone I know (see their 2011 AEI-CAP white paper "An Examination of How the Supplement Not Supplant Requirement Can Work Against the Policy Goals of Title I" for a tour de force on the subject), and--if forwarded to the wrong LEA Title I director--their guest posts could quite possibly melt a brain or two.

The following week, the inimitable Celine Coggins will take the helm. Celine is founder and CEO of TeachPlus, the much-discussed venture that focuses on engaging talented young teachers in policy debates. I've been an admirer of Celine's efforts at least since I was one of the judges on her winning application to The Mind Trust several years back. Before TeachPlus, Celine was a labor management consultant in Rhode Island and Massachusetts and a special assistant to the Massachusetts Commissioner of Education on teacher quality. Oh, and she holds a Ph.D. in education policy analysis from Stanford.

Finally, back by popular demand, Roxanna Elden will be returning the week of November 7. Roxanna guest blogged back in January to rave reviews, with posts such as "Five Words and Phrases that Sound Different to Teachers" going viral. A veteran high school teacher in Miami, Roxanna is Nationally Board Certified and author of the fantastic See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers. As I've noted previously, "The book is a funny, engaging, practical guide...And, best of all, it features the kind of pander-free straight talk that warms even my icy tundra of a heart."

Enjoy! And I'll see you soon.

Posted by Rick Hess at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Saw Brad Pitt's new flick Moneyball the other week. Good, not great; thought the book was better. A lot of the interesting stuff gets lost in translation. I've noted the same thing when K-12 thinkers latch onto the "moneyball" analogy. K-12 enthusiasts point out that Billy Beane used sophisticated statistical analysis to build winning teams, and sensibly presume that the same kinds of tools can help drive school improvement. (Back in 2003, when the book was published, the edu-analogies consisted mostly of paeans to data dashboards; today, it's all about "value-added" metrics.)

Here's the problem. Author Michael Lewis made it real clear in the book (though it's less clear in the movie, which features scouts talking about whether players have attractive girlfriends) that the problem in baseball prior to Beane's revolution in Oakland was not an absence of data. In fact, baseball has been a geek haven for generations because of all its statistics. The problem? The stats in question--typically home runs, runs batted in, and batting average--are flawed measures of individual performance. They routinely understate (or overstate) a player's value by ignoring the stadium he plays in, how often his teammates get on base, how selective he is at the plate, how well he fields, and so on. A big part of the problem wasn't a lack of numbers; it was a reliance on overly simplistic measures. Consequently, players who hit a lot of home runs or who hit for a high average were massively overpriced, while players who walked a lot or hit a lot of doubles were undervalued.

This is where value-added enthusiasts come in. Value-added is a potentially very useful (if limited) tool, but it's one that's still in its relatively infancy. It can tell us what we might otherwise overlook or fail to see, helping correct our tendency to overvalue or undervalue certain teachers and techniques. The problem is our impatience and, sometimes, hubris. There's a sense among too many would-be reformers that our new edu-statistics are ready for prime-time, and even an inclination to imagine that they can render judgment and common sense superfluous. Nope.

Look, it's frustrating, but today's data dashboards and crude value-added measurements only mean we have finally caught up to the pre-"moneyball" era. We finally have simple, incomplete performance measures like home runs and batting average. These tell us something useful, but they can provide a distorted picture or lead us astray if not used with care. Today's metrics conflate the effect of support staff and teachers of record, capture only a narrow slice of instructional quality, are exceedingly imprecise, and are relevant (even incompletely) for no more than perhaps 30 percent of teachers. This is a far cry from counting and measuring everything that matters, and then allowing calculations of cost-effectiveness to guide hiring and staffing decisions.

Paul DePodesta, the inspiration for Jonah Hill's ubergeek statistician in the movie, has explained that the "moneyball" idea was not to scrap baseball's traditional metrics or scouting systems. (Again, this kind of gets lost in the film version; and even in Lewis's book.) Rather, DePodesta has pointed out that baseball execs are "constantly trying to predict the future performance of human beings. We're trying to get our arms around that uncertainty. Scouts really help you deal with that uncertainty. On the other hand, we looked at it and said, 'How can we further decrease that uncertainty?' And being able to use data was one of the ways we could do that."

It's not that "moneyball" is a bad analogy. It's a terrific analogy. But you've got to use it right. And I fear that the value-added enthusiasts who imagine they're right now gearing up to play moneyball in K-12 are actually going to find, to their chagrin, that they're the potbellied scouts hoping to sign an overpriced free agent because the guy drove in 100 runs for the Yankees last year.

Posted by Rick Hess at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

For nearly two decades, one of the striking findings in school choice research is that parents are hugely positive about schools of choice even when the test results show only modest benefits for their kids. In some circles, particularly among education professors, this has led to various lamentations about what dopes parents are. (Now, I think people are frequently dopey, but it seems to me there are also other viable explanations here.)

Charter and school voucher advocates haven't exactly covered themselves in glory when answering these concerns. A big chunk of the charter community has embraced death-grip regulation based on reading and math scores--presuming that parents are indeed dopes, and easily suckered. Meanwhile, libertarian choice enthusiasts argue that what parents choose for their kids is none of our business (though they should recall Milton Friedman's observation that the state has an obligation to safeguard minors, and perhaps ask themselves how much support you'll win championing the right of parents to feed lead paint chips to their kids). For what it's worth, seems to me there's a sensible middle ground that values quality-conscious authorizing and performance metrics but that doesn't imagine that reading and math scores are the be-all and end-all when it comes to gauging schools.

Directly relevant here is the intriguing new National Bureau of Economic Research paper "School Choice, School Quality and Postsecondary Attainment." What economists David Deming, Justine Hastings, Tom Kane, and Doug Staiger find is that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) open-enrollment initiative, which launched in 2001, yielded surprisingly substantial long-term gains for the participating students. They were able to track the results for nearly 20,000 students after high school graduation, and reported that students who won the lottery to attend a school outside their own neighborhood were more likely "to graduate from high school, attend a four-year college, and earn a bachelor's degree. They are twice as likely to earn a degree from an elite university." The researchers found no evidence of "cream skimming," and noted that lottery winners closed nearly a quarter of the black-white difference in college completion.

Maybe parents aren't dopes. Maybe reading and math scores, at least on today's assessments, are actually muddy measures of how much kids are benefiting. Maybe parents who express high levels of satisfaction with choice see that their kids are better behaved and more focused, disciplined, and academically engaged. Maybe they judge that this gives their kids a much better shot at a bright future, even if their short-term reading and math scores aren't moving a lot. (After all, one of the seminal findings from James Coleman's 1980s research on Catholic schools was that low-income, African-American students who attended parochial schools were vastly more likely to make it to college than were otherwise similar students in the public school system).

Now, let's be clear. I don't know that any of this is true. But it seems as viable as the "parents are dopes" hypothesis. Yet school choice researchers have been so focused for two decades on examining whether choice lifts test scores that they've not yet spent much time exploring just why it is that parental satisfaction seems to so dramatically exceed the test score evidence. On the bright side that just means there are huge opportunities ahead. So, guys, how about it?

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

Substantively, I don't have a ton to add to what I wrote yesterday. But there were a couple of interesting developments, and various declarations have helped clarify where things stand. Here's my take.

The Good: Over the weekend, Harkin and Enzi scrapped the proposal to require states to adopt federally-approved teacher and principal evaluation systems. Instead, they opted to offer federal dollars to support smart state systems as a competitive grant for which states can choose to apply. This happy development marked a big win for Senator Alexander and those concerned about federal overreach. It marked a big setback for the CAP-Ed Trust Democrats, which is why Secretary Duncan lashed out at the announcement. The upshot here is that the pro-NCLB Dems didn't much like the original Harkin-Enzi proposal, and they're going to like any version that emerges from HELP even less.

The Bad: The consequence of killing the teacher and principal evaluation mandate is that Harkin-Enzi now leaves wholly intact the paper-chase monstrosity that is the Highly Qualified Teacher provision. This effort to police teacher quality from DC by regulating paper credentials has been a bureaucratic headache of no obvious value, and here's hoping it gets addressed along the way.

The Alexander Update: Senator Alexander announced yesterday that he'd support moving Harkin-Enzi out of the HELP Committee, but would be proposing a series of major amendments on the Senate floor. He said he couldn't vote to enact the bill in its current form.

The Establishment Update: The NEA, AASA, NAESP, NASSP, and NSBA issued a joint letter calling on the Senate to take its time. After several years arguing that ESEA urgently needs to be reauthorized, they reversed course and urged that the Senate slow down and not "race against the clock."

The Politics: RHSU readers know I've been saying for a year now that there was no chance that NCLB/ESEA reauth would happen before the 2012 election. Rather, I'd long predicted an "AMT patch" alternative (e.g. the administration's industrial scale "conditional waiver" strategy). Nothing much has changed. Finding sixty votes for some version of Harkin-Enzi in the Senate will prove enormously difficult, if not impossible. Most of the Senate Republicans are going to resist anything that includes much in the way of categoricals, HQT, and mandated improvement strategies; DFER-type Dems will insist on those things; and blob-backed Dems are going to want more money and less accountability. How you assemble sixty votes there is tough to see. And, even if you do, it's hard to see how you reconcile whatever emerges with what House Republicans are hoping to do.

The Bottom Line: The odds of reauthorization happening before the 2012 election may have moved up a tick from 1-in-100, but they haven't moved much more than that. The maneuvering and fighting are less about what ESEA reauth will look like, and more about setting markers and default language for the next go-round--the shape of which will depend on what emerges from next fall's elections.

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

The horrified shrieking you heard last week was the anguished cry of liberal NCLB enthusiasts denouncing the Harkin-Enzi ESEA proposal as a dreaded retreat into the distant past. They fretted that it would whip us back to the primitive year of 1994--when Bill Clinton was president and the feds didn't mandate school improvement plans based on the performance of racial subgroups. The keening will continue apace, as this is the week for the big mark-up.

For my friends at Education Trust and the Center for American Progress, the Harkin-Enzi proposal marks an unfortunate retreat from the Bush-era ambitions of NCLB. For most of the rest of us, the proposal elicits a more positive reaction. Now, I don't think the Harkin-Enzi proposal is nearly as good as the Alexander et al. proposals rolled out a few weeks ago. But the five Alexander bills are elegant and appealing because they don't make the compromises required by bipartisan legislation--they are markers more than anything else. For better and worse, Harkin and Enzi managed to cobble together a bipartisan proposal--with all the fudging and unwieldiness that implies.

I'm not worried about going "back" to 1994, partly because edu-world has changed (due in substantial part to NCLB) and partly because some of the "retreats" are actually sensible steps informed by a better sense of what the feds can and can't do well. There have been three big shifts, in particular, this past decade, and they augur a more measured federal role. First, testing and transparency are here to stay. Second, the idea that the federal government can intervene effectively in the nation's school systems has been discredited. Ten years ago, Al Gore spoke during the presidential campaign of "SWAT" teams of experts being dispatched by the feds to help turn around troubled schools. Today, no one has any illusions the Department of Education can fix schools. Third, a critical mass of reform-minded leaders exists across the land, and what they seek from the feds is political cover.

On the big-picture politics, there's been some hand-wringing in "reform" quarters about the fact that the NEA embraced Alexander's proposals. Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) even tried to argue that the Republicans--the same folks DFER savaged last spring for supposedly horrific and mean-spirited attacks on teacher unions in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and elsewhere--are now NEA dupes. For what it's worth, I think a far more sensible take was offered in early 2009, by a couple analysts who observed:

Conservatives should also be willing to draw a principled line in the sand with liberal reformers. After all, conservatives are justified in regarding as suspect much of NCLB's approach to accountability, especially its obsession with race, its narrow focus on low-level math and reading skills, its fairy-tale treatment of students with disabilities and English language learners, and its pie-in-the-sky dream of universal 'proficiency'...Poorly conceived and overly ambitious policies championed by progressives have only increased the pool of people sympathetic to union complaints about NCLB. Rather than carrying the progressive reform movement's water on these issues in the face of union pushback, conservatives should be willing to throw off decades of conditioned responses and say to the unions something that doesn't come naturally: 'We agree.' By addressing the legitimate concerns the unions have raised (yes, there are a few), reformers can highlight the unions' less justifiable stances on questions like merit pay and teacher accountability.

Self-proclaimed "reformers" have to understand that they have sometimes driven past the bounds of common sense and a well-ordered federal role, and it should hardly surprise that Republicans seeking to bring Uncle Sam back in line are going to find some common ground with teacher unions on this score.

Accountability: Happily, Harkin-Enzi sticks a fork in AYP and the idea of setting 100 percent proficiency targets by a set date. Instead, it goes for a big-time fudge, requiring "continuous improvement." That massively ambiguous phrase is interpreted by the states. It's not as good as an honest admission that the feds just aren't equipped to make states fix schools--and it's not nearly as good as the Alexander bill's emphasis on transparency rather than accountability--but it's still certainly better than the Rube Goldberg contraption in NCLB. States would be required to flag the 5 percent of schools with the lowest rates of student achievement, the 5 percent with the largest achievement gaps, and all high schools with graduation rates of less than 60 percent. According to proponents, this will flag about 5 to 10 percent of schools in a state each year--and they expect the list will be fairly stable. Skeptics argue that, because states will have to generate the list each year, the real number will be much, much higher. Because it's all kind of vague, I'll admit right here that I'm not 100 percent sure how it would play in practice. A big bill with so many details and so much ambiguity will benefit from some hard scrutiny; I trust I'll understand its practical impact much better a week from now than we do today.

Teachers: Within five years of the law's passage, states and districts would be required to set up an evaluation system that includes at least four rating categories for teachers and principals. And districts have to create evaluation systems based in "significant part" on evidence of improved student achievement (though determining what that means is left entirely to the several states). In one of its most disturbing bits of overreach, the proposal requires states and districts to use these systems to report on the percentage and retention rates of teachers in each performance category, and to then take steps to equalize disparities among high- and low-poverty and high- and low-minority schools. In this, much like over-caffeinated state level champions of teacher evaluation, the self-styled "reformers" are getting way ahead of themselves and of what current practice can justify, and opening the door to all kinds of gaming, federally ordered mischief, and troubling use of data.

Otherwise, Harkin-Enzi is pushy but vague and largely toothless when it comes to trying to prescribe teacher evaluation from DC. The proposal is weak enough that it amounts to little more than exhortation to do teacher evaluation better. Where the Alexander package kills the awful paper-chase that is NCLB's highly qualified teacher provision, Harkin-Enzi retains it. But, it does drop it for veteran teachers as states adopt the mandated teacher evaluation systems. The proposal also makes clear that Teach For America corps members, and similar entrants, qualify under HQT.

Flexibility: The Alexander proposals take a much-needed meat cleaver to the slew of categorical programs. But proponents of Harkin-Enzi argue that while it may not go that far, it does go as far as the House GOP proposal. The House bill reduced the number of categorical from 82 to 42. Harkin-Enzi cuts the number to 40. Its advocates assert that it creates 100 percent flexibility in funding, aside from the protections for special populations. Again, the actual degree to which the proposal zeroes out categoricals and reduces federal micromanagement should be much clearer a week from now.

State standards: Harkin-Enzi requires that state standards prepare students to be college or career ready. States can adopt the Common Core or other standards as they see fit. In the administration's "Blueprint," higher ed institutions have to sign off on the state's standards. In Harkin-Enzi, there's no such requirement. The proposal's language prohibits the Secretary from approving or reviewing the standards, but does empower him to ensure that states are in compliance. Exactly how that bit of fudging is supposed to work is unclear. The limited federal role seems reasonable, but that kind of ambiguity can create lots of room for mischief.

Charter Schools: There's an effort in Harkin-Enzi to standardize and federalize charter schooling. This has some obvious appeal, especially setting a bar for the kinds of autonomies that charters should enjoy. But the resulting rule-writing is almost sure to eventually prove troubling in one context or another, while the effort to bring uniformity to performance metrics will inevitably yield some concerns about narrowing and homogenizing the charter space.

As we turn our eyes towards these draft proposals, it's a useful time to think about what the feds can and can't do when it comes to school improvement. The feds can make states and districts do things, but it can't make them do them well. Washington is good at prohibiting things or writing checks. It's not good at fine-tuning the operations of thousands of complex organizations. We can't fix schools from Washington, and trying to do so is more likely to yield burdensome regs and rule-bound management than improvement. That said, I'm firmly convinced the feds can play a very valuable role.

First, it's appropriate and helpful for the feds to insist upon transparency and clean reporting of performance and spending data as a condition for federal dollars. This entails special attention to the information regarding vulnerable populations and communities, including bright line guidelines regarding regularity of reporting, what gets reported, and so forth.

Second, the feds can offer support for leaders who choose to step out front, without trying to dictate just what those policies should look like. Hence, better to award Title 2 funds to states pursuing ambitious plans for teacher evaluation than to lay out a particular system of evaluation or mandate its adoption. Providing competitive funds for those state and district leaders willing to tackle the tough task of upending century-old routines focuses those dollars in useful ways and makes it more possible for those leaders (and the union chiefs with whom they're working) to present efforts to rethink tenure, pay, evaluation, and the rest to affected teachers as a potential win-win.

Third, basic research is a public good, and one that demands an active federal role. In principle, I'm supportive of Senator Bennet's proposed amendment to create an ARPA-ED. That said, the focus must be on cultivating new tools and technologies that will fuel problem-solving. If it's designed to focus on "reforms" and implementation-dependent strategies, then I'm going to jump off the bandwagon real quick.

Anyway, should be an interesting week. With any luck, we'll know much more at the end of it than we do today.

Posted by Rick Hess at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It's no secret that I've been displeased with the Obama administration's NCLB waiver strategy. I think the decision to make waiver relief conditional on states embracing provisions that exist nowhere within the statute is a troubling, unsettling course.

Anyway, I'm happy to report that the administration has also announced a less-ballyhooed but more promising waiver push; one intended to reduce the burdens of federal red tape. Where the President's NCLB waiver agenda imposes brand-new mandates in return for flexibility, this other effort focuses on finding less onerous, more performance-based ways to report on current spending.

At a time when states and districts are strapped for cash, one obvious tack is to let officials spend dollars in smart, cost-effective ways. In a February memo the President noted as much, and asked federal agencies to see what they could do to help. The Department of Education has launched a process intended to provide relief when it comes to the ludicrous time-and-effort reporting currently demanded by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-87 as well as similar record-keeping and reporting requirements. ED will be offering flexibility to pilot efforts in states or districts which agree to ensure appropriate use of federal funds in more results-based ways, for instance, the Department notes, "by measuring outputs or improvements in student achievement associated with Federal investments."

Happily, unlike with the NCLB waivers, this process is not being used to quietly advance a particular agenda. As one administration source explained, "The accountability being provided in exchange for flexibility is not the RTT agenda; we are trading off better but vanilla reporting on outcomes for reduced cruddy reporting on inputs." The idea is to shift accountability from inputs to outputs, reducing the burdens associated with minutely tracking time and spending in return for better, more useful data on outcomes.

Right now, districts spend enormous time and energy tracking the "time-and-effort" of staff, fearing that not doing so will result in a bad audit. The irony, as an OMB official told me, is "Every district has to do this and do it for every federal program. It's not only burdensome but there's confusion about how it works. Are you trying to track back to the source of the dollars, or who the money is spent on, or how it's spent? One of the biggest sources of [Inspector General] findings is noncompliance with time-and-effort requirements. Usually it's because the documentation isn't there--not because something bad happened or because the district has misspent money, but because they don't have all the papers in order." That encourages officials to manage defensively and inefficiently, with one eye on the piles of regs and the other on the reporting requirements.

The official elaborated, "Districts have to report which teachers are funded with federal dollars and certify that that teacher is still working there. There are biweekly reports in which the teacher has to say 'I spent X percent of my time on Title I, IDEA, p.d., and so on.' All this reporting is only there to show that federal dollars go to fund this teacher who teaches this child. And then we hope there's a good result. We're saying, 'Why don't we instead focus on the results, and assume that [satisfactory] results mean the district is spending the dollars in the right way.' Instead of focusing on proxies for accountability, let's shift it to real accountability."

Like I said, this is the good kind of waiver. Kudos to ED (and OMB) for a promising start. Now the question is whether this effort bears fruit. We'll just wait and see, I suppose.

Posted by Rick Hess at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the ed press's disconcerting habit of relying almost entirely on professional Democrats or Democratic-leaning academics to provide commentary on Republican education proposals when it comes to the Presidential contest and federal policy. It's obviously appropriate to offer the Democratic take on such matters, but veteran Democrats are often quoted as seemingly nonpartisan "experts." Meanwhile, whole stories are penned with little or no insight from conservatives. And given that most of the familiar edu-professors and major education interest groups--from the NEA and AFT, to the NSBA and AASA, to DFER and the Education Trust--are left-leaning, it's easy for whole stories to portray nothing more than varying flavors of liberal thought.

In response, several reporters and/or bloggers who work this beat wrote to say they sympathized with the point, but that a recurring frustration-- as I'd noted-- is that the edu-universe is disproportionately Democratic. (Now, it's a different story with the handful of folks who have sometimes pooh-poohed to me the notion that relying primarily on liberals to explain conservative proposals could ever be problematic. To them, I'd just ask whether they'd have any qualms about the coverage of Obama's jobs bill if it featured nothing but competing takes from conservative academics, business industry groups, and ex-Bush administration officials.)

So, as a public service, here are about two dozen Republican and/or conservative (and/or libertarian) edu-thinkers that enterprising reporters might tap for expertise when writing about GOP policy proposals or the GOP Presidential field and education. All have held public office, worked for or advised public officials, or play prominent roles at organizations where they champion policies regarded as "conservative." (I'll skip current Hill staff, just because they're well-known and are limited in what they can freely share. I'll also skip former U.S. Secretaries of Education, just due to the "duh" factor.) The folks below span the gamut on the issues of the day, reflecting massive disagreement about everything from NCLB to the Common Core to the Obama edu-record. Hope it's useful:

Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform
John Bailey, former Bush official now at Dutko Worldwide
Tony Bennett, state chief for Indiana
Kerri Briggs, former Bush official and now director for education reform at the Bush Institute
Lindsey Burke, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation
Jonathan Butcher, education director at the Goldwater Institute
Bob Costrell, former Romney adviser and now professor at U. Arkansas
Chris Cross, Cross & Joftus LLC
Robert Enlow, president and CEO at the Friedman Foundation
Bill Evers, former Bush administration official and scholar at the Hoover Institution
Checker Finn, president of the Thomas Fordham Institute
Jay Greene, University of Arkansas professor and fellow at the Bush Institute
Jim Guthrie, senior fellow director at the Bush Institute
Rick Hanushek, Hoover Institution scholar and adviser to the Bush Institute
Gene Hickok, former Bush official now at Dutko Worldwide
Gary Huggins, director of the commission on No Child Left Behind at the Aspen Institute
Lisa Graham Keegan, former Arizona state chief and advisor to John McCain's 2008 campaign
Vic Klatt, principal at the Penn Hill Group
Sandy Kress, former Bush official who played key role in negotiating NCLB
Matt Ladner, research scholar at the Goldwater Institute
Patricia Levesque, executive director at Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future
Neal McCluskey, associate director at the Cato Institute
Charles Miller, former chair of the Spellings Commission on Higher Education
Cheryl Oldham, former Bush official and now executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Paul Pastorek, former state chief in Louisiana
Mike Petrilli, former Bush administration official and now executive vice president at the Thomas Fordham Institute
Nina Rees, former Bush official and co-coordinator of Mitt Romney's education team
Robert Scott, state chief for Texas
Lisa Snell, analyst at the Reason Foundation
Jim Stergios, executive director of the Pioneer Institute
Sandy Stotsky, University of Arkansas professor and former Massachusetts school board member
Marty West, Harvard professor and co-coordinator of Mitt Romney's education team
David Winston, pollster and adviser to Speaker Boehner
Ze'ev Wurman, former Bush administration official

Posted by Rick Hess at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I'm frequently frustrated by our inability to talk sensibly about the role of for-profits in schooling. Most discussion amounts to reflexive demonization, occasionally interspersed with hired-gun salesmanship or protestations of good intentions. Nearly absent is thinking about the role for-profits can play in promoting quality and cost-effectiveness at scale, or what it'll take to make that happen.

This black-and-white storyline plays out in education, even as other sensitive areas of domestic public policy (like health care or environmental protection) prove far more comfortable with the role that for-profits play. In an invaluable new analysis, John Bailey of Whiteboard Advisors--and veteran of the White House, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Commerce--examines how the federal government excludes for-profit educational providers even as it welcomes for-profits in a raft of other vital areas (Full disclosure: Bailey's piece is published by my shop at AEI, as part of my ongoing series on "Private Enterprise in American Education.")

Bailey notes, "When it comes to other crucial challenges our country faces--creating a more reliable health care system, finding efficient sources of clean energy, or improving space exploration--policymakers do not ask whether they should engage for-profit companies, but how they should."

Bailey surveys key federal agencies that are actively engaging for-profits as collaborators. For example, NASA, with President Obama's approval, set aside $6 billion to support private ventures that will compete to build and operate spacecraft, with NASA overseeing quality assurance and safety. The upside of tapping into private sector capabilities can be immense. Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) recently launched into orbit their Dragon capsule, designed to transport humans and cargo into space. The total cost of the Dragon was $800 million--compared to the $10 billion NASA spent on similar models in the past six years. By utilizing private companies like SpaceX, NASA can access innovators who would likely never choose to work in the public sector. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, for instance, also founded PayPal and Tesla Motors. Let's be honest: Musk wasn't going to work for NASA.

Bailey notes a similar comfort with for-profit ventures in the fields of electronic medical records and energy. The dreaded emphasis on profitability means that private sector ventures have much more cause to pursue efficiency and scale than do non-profits or public ventures. They also have the luxury of operating free from much of the red tape and bureaucratic culture that characterizes government agencies.

When it comes to education, however, policymakers create unique policy and funding barriers that apply to for-profit entities. Citing numerous examples, Bailey observes, "Federal policy toward private-sector education companies lags compared to other sectors. As a result, education remains one of the only public policy areas where private companies have difficulty entering and thriving." Restrictive laws, limited funding, and numerous regulations limit for-profit providers from entering the education space. Such measures are visible in i3, school improvement, and the Obama administration's gainful employment proposal--making it hard for even high-quality for-profits to compete on a level field.

Given the Obama administration's goal of having the feds play a catalytic role in school improvement, it's a useful time to revisit this state of affairs. Let's be clear: the point is not to advocate for federal subsidies or marketplace manipulation, but for policymakers to relax the anti-for-profit mentality that is uniquely evident when it comes to schooling. As Bailey writes, "[A]n entrepreneurial education landscape...is one in which [government and foundations] help remove barriers to entry for quality providers and think deeply about the impact their policy or philanthropic decisions will have on the broader educational marketplace and potential investors or entrepreneurs in the field."

Posted by Rick Hess at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Superintendents for large, urban school districts are a hot commodity, moving often and commanding big bucks. This is a topic I've thought about a bunch over the years--hell, it was a question at the heart of my doctoral dissertation and first book, Spinning Wheels. Anyway, Dallas is currently going through a search, and the Dallas Morning News asked if I'd pen a piece offering a few thoughts. It occurred to me that most of the points apply equally well elsewhere. With that in mind, here's a slightly trimmed version of what I had to say (a full version of the Morning News piece is available here).

For decades, the challenges of school reform seemed nearly insuperable. Even as they spent as much or more than nearby suburbs, city schools struggled under the weight of poverty, broken families, turgid bureaucracies, depressing conditions, and low expectations. The result has been dismal performance.

Worse, big-city school chiefs routinely serve only a few years before leaping to a new job or getting pushed out of office. Knowing the drill, they learn to launch a slew of reforms fast, seeking to build momentum and shake up the system. It also means that superintendents are frequently on the move before their bright ideas have much chance to succeed or fail. Teachers and principals have learned to wait out each superintendent's new ideas, knowing that the savior of the hour and the newest set of innovations would soon be gone.

The demands of urban schooling--a lot of students and teachers, big budgets, and looming budget shortfalls--require tough-minded leaders able to navigate around familiar pitfalls. Here are four tips to keep in mind when seeking a supe equal to the challenge.

First, when it comes to putting an end to the destructive cycle of leadership turnover and the resulting churning of reform, it's vital to keep a wary eye on would-be superintendents touting fanciful new fads and to think hard about continuity and coherence.

Second, successful urban superintendents have long relied upon cozy relationships with school board members, teacher and principal associations, vendors, neighborhood groups, and community leaders to keep things on an even keel. It's become increasingly clear in recent years, though, that these adults can get along swimmingly without doing much for the kids. Calls for collaboration and consensus-building ought to be judged accordingly. Healthy cooperation is obviously a terrific thing, but it has too often served as an excuse for ducking the hard stuff.

Third, school reformers are oft tripped up by the belief that, if superintendents helming troubled districts would just concentrate on curriculum, instruction, and "best practices," everything else will sort itself out. This myth has been promoted by education advocates, consultants, and professors who would rather avoid wrestling with more prosaic questions of organizational efficiency and competence.

It is a seductive fiction that massive, troubled school systems can be transformed without revamping infrastructure and organization. For all the inspiring paeans to strong principals, individual schools depend on their districts to provide personnel, supplies, data management, and other essential services. High-performing organizations, whether they manage schools, hospitals, or private businesses, require reliable data, transparent budgeting, and high-quality human resources to get the job done.

Finally, while educators decry talk of "efficiency" and "productivity" as displaying an unhealthy fascination with a business mindset, the truth is that trying to maneuver around broken personnel, recordkeeping, budgeting, and textbook distribution systems is a recipe for frustration. Managing instruction depends on the right teachers and staff. If incomplete files, balky personnel systems, or outdated technology make it more difficult to hire good people, train them, or assign them to the right positions, expensive investments in instruction and curriculum yield little.

Such work is not glamorous, doesn't garner headlines, and won't generate hosannas from education professors or advocates. But overhauling the personnel system and information technology, ensuring that the central office is responsive, and squeezing out new efficiencies will signal a no-glitz seriousness and assure educators that their work is being supported and dollars are being spent sensibly.

It's painfully obvious by now that transforming an urban school system is not easy work. It requires strong instructional chops, being a smart steward of limited funds, revamping troubled systems, and exploring how to use new tools and technologies to start pushing the boundaries of what's possible. All of that requires a gritty willingness to fight hard and fix systems much more than glitzy promises regarding new programs and pedagogy.

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

Higher education is paying far too little attention to the needs of adult, nontraditional students. While the quintessential college student leaves home at eighteen to go live on a college campus for four years, that familiar archetype is now the exception.

There are 17.6 million undergraduates enrolled in American higher education today. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that just 15 percent of them attend four-year colleges and live on campus. Forty-three percent of them attend two-year institutions. Thirty-seven percent of undergraduates are enrolled part-time and 32 percent work full-time. Of those students enrolled in four-year institutions, just 36 percent actually graduate in four years.

The most significant shift is probably the massive growth in the adult student population in higher education. Thirty-eight percent of those enrolled in higher education are over the age of 25 and one-fourth are over the age of 30. The share of all students who are over age 25 is projected to increase another 23 percent by 2019.

The demands for degrees reflect this changed population. Slightly over half of today's students are seeking a "sub-baccalaureate" credential (i.e. a certificate, credential, or associate's degree). In 2008-09, postsecondary institutions conferred 806,000 certificates and 787,000 associate's degrees, compared to 1.6 million bachelor's degrees.

While public debate typically focuses on four-year degrees, these other credentials matter, a lot. There are plenty of good jobs that don't require a four-year degree. After all, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that two-thirds of the labor force has less than a four-year degree, including nearly half of those in professional occupations and one-third of those in management roles. It pays for workers to earn these credentials; according to the BLS, workers with an associate's degree earned $141 more per week, on average, than those whose highest degree is a high school diploma.

And yet, sub-baccalaureate programs continue to often seem marginal in the press and the higher education mainstream. Rankings, awards, and honors go to institutions with great sports teams, prize-winning researchers, or elite student bodies--never to those that are helping nontraditional students master new skills so that they can reenter the workforce, get promoted, or change careers.

Even nonselective four-year institutions strive to imitate more richly funded research universities, catering to "traditional" students, as best they can. They aspire to limit the time that faculty spend teaching so as to block out time for "research," and make little effort to police the caliber of syllabi, instruction, or assessment. They do little or nothing to ensure that the best teachers are teaching the most important classes.

It's the rare community college that has even attempted to figure out who its best teachers are. Indeed, both community colleges and teaching-oriented four-years aspire to hire Ph.D. instructors whenever possible, despite the fact that the doctorate is a research degree which says little about instructional ability.

The vast majority of community colleges adhere to a semester system that works well for 19-year-olds used to the rhythms of high school, but that's hugely frustrating for workers whose schedule may not fit the academic calendar (or unemployed workers trying to get retrained in a hurry).

Go-to resources, such as the U.S. News rankings, focus on four-year institutions and traditional measures of prestige like acceptance rates and graduation rates--while offering nothing for those trying to choose among a stew of certification programs.

Intriguingly, there are some colleges--especially for-profits--that have made greater efforts to fundamentally refashion their programs around the needs of adult students. What's that entail? Ensuring that new courses are starting continuously, not just in September and January. Hiring practicing professionals to teach, when appropriate. Investing in high-quality syllabi and assessments, and ensuring that faculty are prepared and willing to use them.

Absent high-quality retraining, it's easy for workers in dying industries to get stuck, their skills to atrophy, and their networks and work habits to erode. This shrinks the supply of skilled workers, discouraging employers and perhaps leading them to put off expansion or to look overseas. Doing a better job of providing accessible, high-quality training, and helping students identify those programs, may not garner the headlines of a new research lab or football stadium--but is a whole lot more likely to make a difference for workers and communities across the land.

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

A few weeks back, I penned a post about the lack of response we'd received regarding our in-the-works Education Next forum on the Common Core math standards. I heard from a number of individuals who offered to defend the standards. One was Hung-Hsi Wu, professor emeritus in mathematics from UC-Berkeley, who has just penned the cover story on this topic for AFT's magazine American Educator. Dr. Wu, who started teaching at Berkeley in 1973, has been actively involved in math education for the past two decades, helping write California's 1999 Mathematics Framework and California's Standards Tests. He was also a member of NAEP's Mathematics Steering Committee, 2000-2001, that contributed to the revision of the NAEP Framework.

I appreciated Dr. Wu's offer to share his take and was impressed by his willingness to talk frankly about the Common Core effort, as he sees it. Here's our (e-mail) conversation.

Rick Hess: In layman's terms, what do you see as the big differences between the Common Core math standards and those in most existing state standards?
Hung-Hsi Wu: The Common Core math standards place great emphasis on mathematical integrity, [in other words] the statements of the standards are mathematically correct and the progression from topic to topic is logical. In this regard, it is at least comparable to the best state standards, such as those of California and Massachusetts. However, the Common Core math standards are unique in being sensitive to the multiple defects in the existing de facto national curriculum that is already embedded in existing textbooks (see my article for further discussion) and address these defects directly. For example, there is a profound common misunderstanding about something as basic as what it means to solve an equation. ...The Common Core math standards, however, ask that students "understand solving equations as a process of reasoning" and say explicitly what needs to be taught about this process (see Standard A-REI 1 in High School Algebra). As another example, when state standards ask that the concept of congruence be taught in middle school, they do not realize that what students will end up getting is that congruence means same size and same shape. As a mathematical definition, the latter is completely unacceptable. By contrast, the Common Core standards explain that congruence means what one gets by a sequence of rotations, reflections, and translations (grade 8, Standard 8.G 2). Such sensitivity to the existing defects is absolutely essential to any meaningful improvement in our math education; in this regard, the Common Core standards leave all rivals far behind.

RH: What do you make of the concerns some have raised that the thematic focus of the 9-12 is an awkward fit for the familiar organization of courses like algebra, geometry, and calculus?
HW: One would feel this way only if one is already wedded to the traditional offering of one year each of Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II in high school. There are mathematical reasons why this sequence is not an optimal way to organize high school mathematics. For example, mathematics is best taught without being handicapped by such rigidity. On the other hand, those who are bent on following the so-called American Integrated Curriculum also find fault with the high school set-up of the Common Core, but there are also valid reasons to argue that such an integrated curriculum, by not being sufficiently attentive to mathematical integrity, is not an optimal way to organize high school mathematics either. In any case, the 9-12 standards of the Common Core are what they are because the Common Core made a conscientious decision to stay neutral in this debate by describing only the mathematical content of the various strands in high school and allow[ing] each state to make its own decision. This flexibility makes it possible to formulate a high school program that conforms to neither the traditional nor the integrated format; see here for example.

RH: What's your response to the concerns raised by UPenn dean Andy Porter, who has suggested that, in practice, the standards "do not represent a meaningful improvement over existing state standards" and that they have "a greater focus than certain state standards and a lesser focus than others?"
HW: These conclusions are based on data that are demonstrably wrong: for example, the claim that state standards in grades 3-6 spend 14.47% of instruction time on "Advanced algebra" and 0% on "Measurement" (compared with 0% and 17.79% in Common Core standards, respectively)...His claim that Finland puts "far less emphasis on higher order thinking skills, and far more on basic skills" than do the Common Core standards is also not consistent with the data of Finnish students' performance on their own internal exams. It may be more profitable to wait for Porter to clarify his dissatisfaction with the Common Core using valid data before we discuss this issue further. In the meantime, I would like to make a general statement about Porter's methodology. He did not mention having looked at the mathematical quality of the Common Core standard but relied solely on the findings of a content-analysis procedure (the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum) for his conclusion. There is no denying that such a procedure, when used properly in conjunction with other data, could be a valuable research tool. But when it is used all by itself, it is a crude instrument. This explains why, for example, Porter missed the essential mathematical information about the Common Core described in the answers to questions 1 and 2 above.

RH: What do you think of the concerns raised by critics who argue that the math standards have never been benchmarked against international competitors by independent analysts?
HW: Usually such benchmarking is done by asking whether topic X is taught by a certain grade, and whether each grade teaches too many topics. If topic X is fixed, then the usual criterion of excellence seems to be that the earlier X is taught, the better the curriculum. The Common Core math standards do not play this game, but are nevertheless fully consistent with the research findings of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel on curriculum from an international perspective (see Chapter 3 of the Report of the Tasks Groups). People who are worried that the Common Core math standards have not been benchmarked against international competitors may be those who have bought into some myths, e.g., all high-achieving nations finish Algebra I in grade 8. A rational discussion of this issue would show that there is no intrinsic merit in finishing Algebra I by grade 8. When it comes to school algebra, it is not how early you teach it but, rather, how well you teach it. The standards of those states in the U.S. that mandate the completion of Algebra I in grade 8 manage to do so only by stinting on the necessary background material that students need in order to learn linear equations and their graphs. Furthermore, the math standards of both China and Japan postpone the teaching of quadratic equations and functions to grade 9, and these are two of the highest-achieving nations in the world in math education.

RH: What do you say to teachers concerned that moving objectives, units, and skills across grade levels may not seem like a big deal in theory, but that it will pose big headaches for today's teachers?
HW: I presume the "moving objectives and skills across grades" refers to, for example, spreading the teaching of fraction addition over three grades: grades 3 to 5. Contrary to what the question implies, this is a big deal because it is part of Common Core math standards' design to optimize mathematics learning by giving students enough time, whenever feasible, to absorb the material as well as time for teachers to teach the material. For children, the addition of fractions is so conceptually complicated that they need the time to internalize the whole process. This particular treatment of fraction addition is one of the outstanding features of the Common Core standards. A forthcoming document from CCSSO, "Progressions on Fractions," will elaborate on this process; in the meantime, teachers can look at a somewhat discursive discussion here. Ultimately, what is at issue is that all teachers owe it to every child to give [him or her] the best chance to learn. If the student takes more than one grade to do it, then that is what it takes. If it takes the Common Core standards to wake us up to our basic obligation to children, then we should applaud these standards.

RH: Okay, softball. What would you argue are a couple of really good things about the Common Core math standards that people generally do not yet know?
HW: The Common Core math standards provide guidance to the teaching [of] fractions in a way that is pedagogically sensible and mathematically correct. Since the fear of fractions has almost become a national pastime, these standards---if properly implemented--- will bring relief to many parents and students. The same can be said about these standards on negative numbers. In addition, the teaching of geometry in middle and high schools is so defective at present that it cries out for a new approach; essentially nothing can make things worse in most cases. The Common Core math standards outline a new approach that makes mathematical sense and, for the first time, provide a seamless transition from middle school geometry to algebra and high school geometry. So finally, there is at least some hope of changing the culture of failure in the teaching of school geometry.

RH: What gives you confidence that teacher preparation and professional development are going to rapidly and effectively make the necessary changes? What have you seen on this score that's worrisome or reassuring?
HW: Nothing, and nobody, has ever given me such confidence. But for the record, let me say in no uncertain terms that, the state of school mathematics education being what it is, we need better teacher preparation and improved professional development in order to stay educationally afloat no matter what the standards may be. If we cannot get better teacher preparation or improved professional development, then we would be better off with a set of standards that is at least mathematically sound. In the meantime, the Common Core people are striving to provide teachers with as much help as possible. There will be a set of Progressions documents that highlight the main ideas of each major strand in the standards. There is also the Illustrative Mathematics Project that will provide problems to illustrate the standards. Various individuals are also pitching in to help teachers. My homepage already has a long document explaining how fractions can be taught according to the Common Core standards; by the end of the year, I will have some documents on the teaching of geometry. So there are resources to make the situation more tolerable. What I find most worrisome is the fact that many educators and administrators believe that the status quo (of doing nothing) is plenty good enough. It is not. We need effective professional development, period.

RH: How aware is the professional mathematics community of the Common Core effort? As a policy observer, it seems like there's been relatively little activity on behalf of the standards by math professors or interested professionals. Is that fair? If so, why is that?
HW: What I have observed among most mathematicians in major research universities is a longstanding apathy towards all things related to schools in general, and the reason for that is complex but partly understandable. So long as school math education continues to be long on politics but short on intellectual substance, the apathy will remain. It has to be said, too, that the reward system in a research university does not favor work done about school mathematics; the reason in this case is perhaps self-explanatory. Nevertheless, there are very knowledgeable mathematicians like Richard Askey and Roger Howe who are making an effort to improve math education, and there are responsible organizations such as the American Mathematical Society that are trying to make the math community aware that, for a change, the extraordinary quality of the Common Core Standards merits extraordinary action. So we should not lose hope yet.

RH: What's your take on the state of the Common Core math assessments? How concerned are you about potential problems, delays, or fears that they'll give insufficient attention to "hard" math skills?
HW: I am not as well-informed about the math assessment efforts as I should be, but in general terms, I want to make sure that students will not be in any way over-assessed, and that the mathematical quality of the test items be above reproach (which has not always been the case; see Chapter 8 of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel Report of the Tasks Groups). Students should be assessed, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. On the other hand, I do not believe that a good mathematics education should pursue "hard" skills per se. But by maintaining the high mathematical quality of test items, one will automatically give proper attention to such "hard" math skills. In order to maintain such high mathematical quality, however, very competent mathematicians will have to be involved in the assessment process every step of the way.

RH: Last question: Big picture, what does "success" for the Common Core math standards look like in 2015? If things go well, how different will teacher preparation, math instruction, and assessment look?
HW: Nobody can pass judgment on the success or failure within a year of the kind of profound change promulgated by the Common Core math Standards unless the standards are an immediate disaster (which I hope they are not). I think a more reasonable date to make such a judgment is 2017. If things go well, teacher preparation will begin to concentrate on the most urgent need of the moment: better content knowledge. Math instruction in classrooms will be long on reasoning and short on giving out orders, and textbooks will at least be free of ghastly errors. Assessment will pay equal attention to one-step questions as well as those that require multi-step reasoning. For anyone who is aware of what mathematics education is like at present, such seemingly modest goals, if achieved, would already be cause for celebration.

Posted by Rick Hess at 8:01 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Press interest has been picking up the last couple weeks when it comes to the GOP contenders and education. Here are seven keys to keep in mind when making sense of what the Republican field is (and isn't) saying on that score.

First, most of those opining on the edu-thinking of the GOP candidates are committed Democrats (if only because the edu-universe is disproportionately Democratic), so the frequently snide tone of the commentary ought to be interpreted accordingly. This isn't to deny the smarts or insight of media go-to's like Jack Jennings or Charlie Barone. But keep in mind that they're veteran, professional Democrats, and are hardly neutral parties when it comes to weighing in on what GOP candidates are saying. Yet, frequently these guys are quoted as seemingly neutral experts, rather than partisan experts.

Second, education is not going to be a make-or-break issue in 2012. Since its emergence on the national agenda in the late 1980s, education has tended to fare best when the economy is good and the international situation is calm. In 2012, education, at best, is likely to be competing for fourth in issue attention--behind the economy/jobs, health care reform, and foreign affairs.

Third, that said, education may matter more symbolically than it will substantively--because it neatly illustrates central themes for both the President and his challengers. For the President, education (especially post-Solyndra) is the most appealing example that he's a centrist, forward-looking kind of Democrat. He can point to Race to the Top, i3, NCLB waivers, and his community college initiative to argue that he's taking bold, bipartisan steps to invest in the future. For the GOP candidates, education--especially after the American Jobs Act and the administration's NCLB waiver ploy--is one more telling example of Obama-style overreach (for more, see my post from July on Obama & Schooling: Two Fact Patterns). Republicans add conditional NCLB waivers, federal involvement in the Common Core, and an outsized federal edu-role to the familiar litany of the stimulus, Obamacare, auto bailouts, cash-for-clunkers, Frank-Dodd, cap-and-trade, NLRB v. Boeing, and so on.

Fourth, this stark contrast exists even though most of the GOP field seemingly agrees with the President, in principle, on charter schooling, overhauling tenure, promoting real evaluation, and tackling persistently lousy schools. Heck, the President's gotten big-time plaudits from the Wall Street Journal on this stuff. But conservatives are torn between sympathy for his aims and a resistance to doing these things from Washington. The big risk for reformers is that some of their favored projects, including Common Core and perhaps school turnarounds, may get caught up in partisan politics. That would turn formerly bipartisan efforts into more partisan ones, hindering efforts to build sustainable, broad support.

Fifth, GOP concerns about Obama's overreaching also mean that candidates need to tread gingerly when it comes to issues like teacher tenure. When saying things that reflect support for administration aims, GOP candidates need to be real careful--at least during primary season--not to suggest that they intend to legislate from Washington. This means it's tough for Romney, Perry, or Huntsman to talk too much or too forcefully about what they've done at their state or might like to see happen, because of the risk that it'll sound to GOP primary voters like they're sketching out a big new federal agenda (this was a real killer for Pawlenty, who had a terrific state edu-record but couldn't say much about it). In other words, Republican antipathy for the ambitious education stylings of Bush and Obama has made it dangerous for GOP Presidential contenders to take up the mantle.

Sixth, reporters have yet to push GOP candidates to explain what they actually mean when they say that they intend to abolish the Department of Education or get the feds out of schooling. After all, abolishing the Department wouldn't itself end any federal education programs. That would require actually deciding to zero out students loans, Pell grants, Title I, IDEA funding, and so on. That's the test. Will even a Bachmann or a Perry call for abolishing student lending or IDEA? After all, these are popular programs with influential, sympathetic, middle-class constituencies. But the media gets so distracted by bold promises to "turn out the lights" at ED that no one pushes any further. If a candidate won't zero out all federal aid, will they push to turn everything into a giant block grant? (Doing so requires that they be willing to say "yes" when asked, "Are you willing to gut existing assurances that federal Title I aid and IDEA will help at-risk children or those with special needs?" and I have trouble seeing even Bachmann or Perry actually going there.) If you're not zeroing out everything or calling for pure block grants, you still have categorical programs and the attendant rules, regs, bureaucrats, and the rest. In other words, you wind up with an incremental downsizing. Is that what we're really talking about?

Finally, let's keep in mind the difference between conservatives and progressives when it comes to federal policy. Progressives see problems, seek the "best" response, and feel impelled to act. Concerns about statutory barriers or unintended consequences strike progressives as so much excuse-mongering. Conservatives tend to focus on all the problems with trying to identify and adopt big federal solutions, envisioning all the perverse incentives that loom and all that can go wrong--even if it means that problems will go unaddressed. That gaping philosophical divide is likely to be the ground on which 2012 is fought, in education as elsewhere. Making sense of it, though, will be a lot easier if we're hearing from Republicans as well as Democrats, and not just Dems explaining what they think Republicans mean.

Posted by Rick Hess at 7:54 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend