May 2011 Archives

Big NYT article over the weekend on kindergarten cut-off dates (the age by which children must turn 5 to enter kindergarten). Connecticut (along with New York City) has some of the latest cut-off dates in the country, and is considering moving them up. As my colleague Andy Rotherham notes, this is complicated stuff, and given the difference from other states, in may make sense for Connecticut to do this. But it is worth noting that there's been a trend of states moving up kindergarten cut-off dates over the last few decades, such that, while it was once the norm for kids to start kindergarten at 5 or almost 5, the trend has moved closer to kids starting at 6 or almost 6. And it's worth questioning the rationale there. Basically, the line has gone something like this: "As academic expectations in elementary school increase, kindergarten is starting to look a lot more like first grade used to, and young fives, or kids who aren't 5 yet at the start of the school year, just aren't developmentally ready to handle it, so let's have kids start school later." This may appear superficially to make sense, but it actually doesn't all that much.

To begin with, preparing kids to meet elementary standards doesn't mean that kindergarten has to look like first grade. It's possible to give children an educationally robust kindergarten experience that build their language, literacy, math, and social-emotional skills while maintaining a learning environment that looks more like a traditional kindergarten. The problem is a lot of kindergarten teachers--and the principals they report to--don't really know how to do this.

Moreover, age is hardly the sole determinant of children's readiness for kindergarten: early childhood experiences and individual development play a big role here. That speaks to the importance of leaving decisions about when to enter kindergarten up to parents at the individual child level. But it also underscores the importance of providing access to quality early learning opportunities--in pre-k and earlier--so that more kids are ready for kindergarten when they reach the entry age.

Finally, it's not like kids who turn 5 after new cut-offs disappear. They're still there, and what happens to them during the extra year they're now not in kindergarten matters. But states by and large have not supplemented new cut-off dates with expanded pre-k offering for kids who now must wait to attend pre-k. (California's creation of "transitional" kindergarten for children with birthdays between old and new cut-off dates is a noteworthy, and positive, exception here.) For children whose families can't afford quality pre-k, that often means another year of missed learning in which children fall further behind their peers. And it's also a real economic burden to working class families struggling with child care. Basically, states have used moving kindergarten cut-off dates to shift more of the burden of preparing kids to reach 3rd grade standards onto families, without explicitly saying that.

And that's not even taking into account the implications that kids who start kindergarten a year later are also a year older throughout their entire educational experience--which research suggests may have negative consequences down the road when kids get older.

All this speaks to two things: First, we need to complement increased student expectations in later grades with better access to high-quality pre-k and other early learning opportunities for children before they get to kindergarten. Second, we need to shift to thinking much more in terms of a continuum of children's early development from early childhood through elementary school. Regardless of where we set the kindergarten cut-off date, kids are going to be at different points when they start kindergarten, and our schools need to be able to support all of them.

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Many of the leaders profiled in this series are people who have started their own organizations to address education needs and challenges. But an equally critical challenge is ensuring the next generation of strong leaders working in existing organizations, to sustain these organizations and enable them to grow to scale. As Chief of Staff for Aspire Public Schools, a charter management organization serving more than 10,000 California students, Stephanie Wilson is one of these leaders.

Originally from the Philadelphia area, Wilson earned her Bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia and spent three years in management consulting before making the switch to education. After earning an MBA from Stanford, she joined Aspire as a director of growth and strategy before becoming chief of staff. She is an alumni of Education Pioneers and is currently Associate Resident in the Broad Residency Program. Wilson, 30, lives in San Francisco. [Click for more.]

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Last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the New Schools Venture Fund Summit, a major conference for education reformers, funders, and social entrepreneurs. And his comments there suggesting a desire to allow younger children to use Facebook have garnered considerable attention and controversy.

I actually asked Zuckerberg a follow-up question on this at the Summit (see minute 53:30 here), specifically around what he thinks quality educational technology and social networking experiences for preschool-aged children should/would look like (because his initial comments were framed in terms of the importance of education starting early). I didn't get much of an answer. That's understandable, given that Facebook does not currently attempt to serve very young children. But if Zuckerberg really wants to put aside some of the concerns and criticism that these comments sparked, he needs a better answer. And not just in terms of the safety of children's use of social media (which is an important issue), but also in terms of the developmental appropriateness and educational value of what they do there.

Here are four questions that Zuckerberg needs to be able to answer:

1. Can social networking tools be deployed with young children in developmentally appropriate ways? What would that look like? You don't have to answer this question alone—lots of really smart people are actually doing good work on technology and little kids. But you probably do need to have some kind of answer.
2. There's already no shortage of technology for kids. The iPhone ap store, for instance, has hundreds of aps for kids. Some of them are good, some of them are entertaining but have no educational value, and a lot are total crap. How could social networking tools help parents and educators to separate the gold from the dross and build demand to spur development of high-quality educational aps and games for kids? Note that one could work on doing this now, even with restrictions on kids' use of Facebook.
3. As you referenced in your comments, children's social and emotional development are just as, or even more critical than, cognitive development. Could social networking be designed to support children's social and emotional development? Should we be concerned about the possibility that using social networking tools at a young age could actually undermine children's social-emotional development? How do we guard against that?
4. You spoke passionately about the importance of education starting early (that's what started this whole conversation). But your investments in education to date have mostly focused on K-12 reform and not addressed preschool or other early learning. What are you going to do to help ensure that more preschool-aged children have quality early learning experiences?

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I should have said this earlier, but, given the outlines of the Early Learning Challenge program announced yesterday, ensuring high-quality evaluation/research for this program is really important. There's a big emphasis right now in the early childhood space on systems-building and coordination. That makes sense: The early childhood sector today is a total mishmash of unaligned programs, providers, funding streams, and policies--and that creates gaps in services, tremendous frustration for parents and providers, and inefficiencies. But--there is very little evidence about the various strategies states are currently using, and early childhood advocates are encouraging, to build systems and improve coordination. We don't actually know which design choices "work" better than others in a practical sense, or are more likely to lead to better results for kids. These are important questions. By instigating changes in state policies in these areas, the Early Learning Challenge can create real opportunities for high-quality research into the impact of different system building approaches and policy design choices on achieving our longer-term goals for the system and the kids and families it serves. Obviously, the evaluation strategies we use to measure the impact of structural reforms is different from the way we measure the impact of specific interventions. But that doesn't mean we can't study their effectiveness and we certainly shouldn't miss the opportunity to do so here.

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As young teachers in the New York City Public Schools, Evan Stone and Sydney Morris struggled with a feeling that the policies and practices that affected them and their students were being developed with little teacher input or voice. So they decided to work to change that, by created Educators for Excellence to organize teachers and provide an independent voice for them in public and policy debates over education.

Today, Educators for Excellence has 2,500 members, a staff of 6 former teachers, and is already putting its imprint on legislation and policy in New York State. Educators for Excellence reflects two emerging trends in education reform today. Like many of the other leaders profiled in this series, Stone and Morris work to empower and build connections among teachers, so that they no longer feel alone and unheard. Their work also reflects the growing recognition in education reform circles that driving real change in education requires organizing and empowering the people on the ground--teachers, parents, and community-members who care the most about how education policies affect their children. An avid runner and soccer fan, Stone, 26 was raised in Los Angeles and earned his bachelor's degree from Yale. Morris, 25, was raised in New York and holds a bachelor's degree from Tulane and a master's from Pace University. Both came into the classroom through Teach for America and currently live in Manhattan. [Click for more.]

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Big Race to the Top announcement today from Secretaries Duncan and Sebelius: Of the $700 appropriated by Congress, $500 will be used for a new "Race to the Top--Early Learning Challenge" competition, and $200 will be open for competition among the 9 states that were "Runners Up" in RTT round 2.

The decision to create a separate early childhood competition, as opposed to folding early childhood into the original Race to the Top program, isn't particularly surprising to anyone who's been following this issue--the FY2011 appropriations legislation clearly contemplates this, and both Congressional early childhood supporters and the early childhood community have been pushing hard for the administration to use the money for a separate early childhood competition, modeled off the administration's previously proposed Early Learning Challenge Grant program, which was originally included in the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act but jettisoned at the last minute due to rising Pell costs.

But the administration's decision to devote the lion's share of RTT funds to early childhood is news--and is being hailed as a big win by early childhood advocates, the achievement of a long-held objective and validation that early childhood is a priority for this administration.

While early childhood advocates are hailing the administration's decision, there is a real question about whether or not this program will actually generate meaningful progress and improvement for young children.

Many in the media and education reform worlds have assumed this is a "pre-k program"--but it's not. As defined in legislative language, this is not a program primarily about pre-k, as in educational programs designed to prepare 3- and 4-year-olds for success in school. Rather, this is a program that is focused in building integrated statewide systems of early childhood care and education for children from birth through age 5. Specifically, the legislation requires states to address three factors:

(1) Increase the number and percentage of low-income and disadvantaged infants, toddlers, and preschoolers who are enrolled in high-quality early learning programs;

(2) Design and implement an integrated system of high-quality early learning programs and services; and

(3) Ensure that any use of assessments is consistent with the recommendations of the National Research Council's reports on early childhood.

And the administration's rhetoric in talking about these programs has emphasized improving quality across the continuum of childcare settings and integrating comprehensive services for young children (including health, nurse home visiting, and mental health) as much as or more than educational quality in early childhood settings.

I'm concerned that, unless the administration designs the competition criteria to also emphasize quality instruction for preschool-aged students, they could squander an opportunity to lay a real foundation for improved student achievement. Research shows that the quality of instruction is seriously lacking in many preschool settings--even those that meet other standards of quality. And without addressing that, greater coordination and expanded access alone will not fuel long-term improvement in children's learning. The focus on "coordination" and "systems," while sensible, is quite broad--perhaps too much so to really focus states' efforts on activities and programs that will produce greatest impact for kids. Until the more detailed criteria are published, it's hard to know.

Details of competition criteria are still being formulated, and--given the breadth and vagueness of the legislative criteria--will be critical to determining whether or not this program really fuels long-term progress for young children. Due to short timelines the administration has chosen to forgo a formal comment period, as was held for the original RTT competition, and to instead solicit comments via a website. It will be interesting to see how this novel process plays out--some stakeholders have expressed skepticism about the approach, particularly the administration's decision to limit the lengths of comments that may be contributed to 1,000 words.

I will most likely submit comments through the formal process, but will offer three suggestions here for how the administration can maximize the impact of the early learning challenge competition:

First, the criteria should require states to have in place a definition of "high-quality early learning programs" that emphasizes instructional quality for pre-k programs, including use of effective instructional practices and strategies; clearly articulated and content-rich curricula; and use of data to monitor children's learning progress.

Second, the criteria should require states to demonstrate that they have strategies to increase the supply of high-quality providers serving infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, and should specifically award states "points" for: 1) allowing high-performing traditional and chartered public schools to receive per-pupil funding through the state funding formula to serve infants, toddlers, and preschoolers; 2) having solid plans to identify and support the expansion of high-quality early learning providers (including community-based, Head Start, for-profit, and public school providers); and 3) giving identified high-quality providers greater flexibility to braid child care, Head Start, pre-k and elementary and secondary funds to better serve more youngsters, and eliminating barriers to doing so (such as state policies that reassess eligibility for childcare subsidies on a monthly basis).

Third, criteria for the "systems" component should focus on rewarding states that have done the most with their Early Childhood Advisory Councils under the Head Start Reform Act, and pushing/supporting states to take those efforts to the next level--without overly dictating what that system-building must look like, since state situations and needs differ. Ultimately, definition of quality and building quality supply must be non-negotiables, but how states create systems to facilitate and coordinate that should be open to innovation--particularly since we have very little evidence as to which strategies are more effective than others in this latter area (but lots around what real quality and effective practice look like).

The administration is expected to release the formal notice of applications in late summer, and states will likely have relatively short timeline to turn their applications around. I'll keep following this and writing about it here as things develop.

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Mickey Muldoon has a knack for going where the action is: Shortly after graduating from Harvard, he did field organizing in Ohio for the Obama campaign. Last fall he joined School of One just as the initiative to transform schooling through radical personalization was gaining national attention. In between, he spent time at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

At only 26, Muldoon has already acquired an eclectic set of experiences that reflect not only his own wide-ranging interests, but also a broader mindset that characterizes this new generation of education leaders: A desire to go where the action and potential for impact are, an emphasis on impact over ideology, and a shift in focus from policy to implementation. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Chicago area, Muldoon currently lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with his wife and younger brother. [Click for more.]

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This new report from Georgetown University quantifying the earnings of people with different college majors was bound to get a lot of attention. Two quick observations worth noting:

First, Early Childhood Education is the second-lowest paying of all college majors surveyed--with a median earning of $36,000 beating out only Counseling psychology. The relatively low wages of Early Childhood Education bachelor's degree holders has serious implications for efforts to improve the quality of the early childhood profession--particularly those that focus on requiring pre-k teachers to hold a bachelor's degree.

Second, it's interesting to note that of the three majors in which African American graduates are most disproportionately concentrated, two are among the three lowest-earning majors (and the third is also not very high-earning). I don't really have anything informed to say about that, but it seems like something worth thinking about. There is a concerted effort underway to improve college-going and graduation rates for African American young people, which is much needed given the large disparities in educational attainment. But it's possible that college counseling efforts to help more African American students prepare for and succeed in college should also address guidance/support in choosing majors.

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As Jen Medbery notes, data-driven teaching and data-driven reform have become something of a buzz word in education circles over the past several years. But despite the profusion of data points, many teachers lack the time, tools, or skills to use this data effectively. And without those tools or time data can become a burden rather than an asset for teachers.

The company that Medbery founded, Drop the Chalk, is working to change that. Drop the Chalk gives teachers the tools they need to really analyze trends in student learning and behavior in order to drive improvements in instruction and school culture. Trained as a computer scientist, Medbery found her way into teaching through Teach for America, teaching in the rural Mississippi Delta and New Orleans before deciding to apply her computer science training to build solutions to the data-related challenges that she herself grappled with in the classroom. Drop the Chalk's first product, Kickboard, is currently being used in 15 New Orleans schools, with plans to expand to additional regions in the coming year. Medbery, 27, was raised in Connecticut and graduated from Columbia University. She lives in New Orleans. [Click for more.]

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In making a list of promising young education leaders, it only seemed reasonable to look at their backgrounds, to try to identify trends in where young education leaders are coming from--and where we might look for them to come in the future.

Perhaps one of the most striking features of this list is the diversity of the people on it--in terms of race/ethnicity, geography, life experiences, and the type of work they're currently doing. But a few clear trends emerge: Teach for America remains the dominant source of leadership talent in education, and the transformative reform efforts in post-Katrina New Orleans have made that city a fertile ground for new organizations and young talent.

More broadly, these young leaders hail from a variety of racial/ethnic backgrounds, states--from New Jersey, to Indiana, to Hawai'i--and even internationally. All currently live and work in urban areas, but they are dispersed across the country. Reflecting New Orleans' importance as a hotbed for education reform, three of these leaders live and work there--more than in any other city except New York. San Francisco, Boston, and the Washington, D.C., area each claim two. The others live in Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami.

Given the dominance of women in education generally, I was a little surprised that 10 out of 16 people on this list are men. I'm still not entirely sure why that is the case and want to investigate that further.

By far the most common experience among these leaders is time spent in the classroom as a teacher. 9 out of 16 have teaching on their resumes, 8 of those through Teach for America.

Largely as a result of that, a master's degree in education is the most commonly held advanced educational credential in this group, followed by law degrees (3), MBAs (2), one Ph.D., and one almost-Ph.D. But TFA and grad school certainly aren't the only pathways to leadership in education reform today: Two people on this list have neither teaching experience nor an advanced degree!

The people on this list earned their undergraduate and graduate credentials from a variety of institutions, including: Brandeis, Berkeley, Boston College, Columbia, Dartmouth, Davidson, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, Pace University, Stanford, Tulane, the University of Virginia, and Yale. And two programs designed to recruit and place recent professional school graduates and young professionals in education--Education Pioneers* and the Broad Residency--each claim two alumni or current participants on this list.

*Bellwether Education Partners has hosted Education Pioneers and currently does some consulting work for the organization.

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The New Teacher Project is known for encouraging the education field to be smarter and more strategic in its use of talent. So it's hardly surprising that TNTP was quick to spot and take full advantage of Ana Menezes' potential as an education leader. Landing in New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina, Menezes, a Teach for America alum, first trained teachers in TNTP's first New Orleans Teaching Fellows Cohort, then moved to managing the entire teachNOLA program (of which the teaching fellows program is one component). Today, as a Partner with TNTP, she manages teaching fellows programs in New Orleans and Philadelphia, a teacher certification pilot program in Denver, and is at the cutting edge of thinking about how to award teacher certification based on demonstrated teacher effectiveness, rather than the traditional coursework and seat time requirements.

Prior to joining TNTP, Menezes, 31, graduated from Boston College, taught in the Bronx through TFA, and earned her master's degree in education policy from Stanford. Raised in South Carolina and Brazil, she has a deep affection for her current home city, New Orleans, where she lives in the French Quarter. [Click for more.]

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Earlier this year, a California judge ruled that the Los Angeles' school district's practice of laying off teachers based on seniority--leading to massive layoffs in some of the districts' highest-poverty schools, where novice teachers disproportionately work--violated the rights of students in these schools to equal educational opportunity.

Hailly Korman was one of the lawyers who worked on the case. Korman, 31, has long been driven by a passion for social justice and civil rights, which first led her to teach kindergarten in a high-poverty Los Angeles school, and eventually to law school at UCLA and the litigation practice at Morrison and Foerster. Raised in Hawai'i, Korman has lived in Los Angeles since graduating from Brandeis University in 2002 and has an abiding passion for disadvantaged students in Los Angeles, their families, and their communities. [Click here for more.]

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Neerav Kingsland is one of a crop of education reformers who moved to New Orleans to help rebuild and reshape the city's schools after Hurricane Katrina. As a freshly-minted Yale Law grad, Kingsland helped launch New Schools New Orleans, which has been a key force in shaping the transformation of public schooling in New Orleans and in recruiting, supporting, and growing operators of effective schools to serve the city's students. Today, as Chief Strategy Officer, Kingsland operates NSNO on a day-to-day basis, as it embarks on an aggressive effort to transform the lowest-performing quarter of New Orleans schools over the next 5 years.

Raised in Indiana, Kingsland, 31, first came to New Orleans as an undergraduate at Tulane. An avid reader and writer, Kingsland is currently working on his first novel. [Click for more.]

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Most of the people on this list focus on elementary and secondary education reform. But when I think about how the next generation of education reform leaders are going to transform education, I can't help but think we're going to see them driving big changes in higher education, too. The American higher education system is widely regarded as "the best in the world," in contrast to the mediocre performance of our K-12 public schools. Yet fewer than 60 percent of students who enroll in 4-year colleges earn a bachelor's degree within 6 years (with much worse rates for many institutions and for low-income and minority students), college costs continue to sky-rocket (and with them student loan debt, defaults, and federal Pell grant spending), and we know virtually nothing about the quality or real value-add of our higher education institutions.

Andrew Kelly's research is shedding a light on these problems. In 2009 he co-authored (with Rick Hess, Mark Schneider, and Kevin Carey) a seminal report that documented the low graduation rates for American colleges and universities and called out high- and low-performers (relative to their demographics). Today he leads up a research project at the American Enterprise Institute focused on higher education--and we can expect to see his work shape the debate about how to improve quality, outcomes, and reign in costs in higher education in the future.

Kelly, 31, was raised in New Jersey. After graduating from Dartmouth, he worked as Rick Hess's first research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute before pursuing a Ph.D. in political science from Berkeley. He and his wife, Lindsay, who works for KIPP, recently purchased a home in Washington, D.C. He has driven across the United States 8 times and is an avid Springsteen fan. [Click here for more.]

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Kirabo Jackson's research tackles some of the most important questions in education today: What makes a good teacher? Do students benefit from attending "better" schools? What is the relationship between student demographic characteristics and teacher quality? Do extended public transit hours reduce drunk driving arrests and accidents? (ok, that's not an education question--but interesting!)

At a time when education policymakers are especially focused on teacher quality, Jackson uses the tools of labor economics to look beyond what research already shows (teacher quality matters and teachers vary in quality) to investigate still unanswered questions about the factors that influence teacher quality--and that policymakers might be able to leverage to improve teaching and educational outcomes.

Jackson, 31, was raised in African and the Caribbean and attended boarding school in England before earning his bachelor's degree from Yale and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. An assistant professor at Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy, he lives in Chicago. [Click here for more.]

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Alex Grodd knows that teaching can be isolating work--particularly for novice teachers. He's experienced that for himself, as a middle school teacher in Atlanta and Boston. And that experience motivated Grodd, now 30, to found BetterLesson to help change things for other teachers. BetterLesson is an online community that enables teachers to share lesson plans and access proven content from effective educators. Applying the tools of social networking to education, BetterLesson helps teachers to connect to one another. It's already gaining traction in some of the nation's highest performing charter organizations and has even greater future potential to leverage the highest-quality instructional content and connect teachers so that they no longer feel alone. [Read more.]

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In 2010, Bill Ferguson, a 27-year-old staffer for the Baltimore Public Schools, scored an upset victory over a 27-year-incumbent in the Democratic primary to represent Maryland's 46th Senate District, with a campaign built largely on support of Teach for America alumni and other Baltimore education reformers.

A freshman who had never previously held elected office, Ferguson faced a steep learning curve in his first legislative session this spring, but nevertheless was able to score victories on Baltimore school funding and charter school access to facilities. The lifelong Maryland resident, now 28, is just one of a growing number of Teach for America alumni taking the step into public office in recent years, and a figure to watch in Maryland politics and education reform going forward. [Read more.]

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You know you're doing something right when Dave Barry (yes, that Dave Barry) calls your first book "very funny." That's just one reason to highlight Roxanna Elden, whose book See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers earned not just Barry's praise but kudos from a host of educators. The audience whose praise Elden most values, though, aren't nationally recognized figures but the novice classroom teachers who are finding a lifeline in her book. At a time when many teachers feel their voices are excluded from public debates about education, Elden, a full-time classroom teacher, is bringing teacher voice to the debate--and is doing so with a good dose of humor, good sense, and none of the sanctimony that so often clouds conversations about teachers and teaching.

Elden, a National Board Certified Teacher and Teach for America alum, has taught for nine years at nearly every level from elementary school to adult education. Outside the classroom, she works to support new teachers through her writing (including a recent guest-blogging stint on Rick Hess' blog), public speaking, and stand-up comedy (a personal interest of hers). A Chicago native, she currently lives in Miami. I would tell you how old she is, but her students aren't allowed to know that until they graduate. [Read more.]

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What to do about chronically low-performing public schools is one of the biggest--and most debated--challenges in public education today. As President of the School Turnaround Group at MassInsight, Justin Cohen tackles this challenge every day, working with states and schools districts to put in place the right conditions and policies and turn around low-performing schools.

Since graduating from Yale in 2002, Cohen has worked in a variety of education organizations: the D.C. Public Schools under Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Edison Schools, and the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools. He serves on the Board of the Cesar Chavez Public Charter School, in Washington, D.C., which recently won a federal planning grant for the Promise Neighborhood Initiative, and the national board of the newly formed Students for Education Reform. He lives in Boston, Mass., with his wife Eleanor Vanden Heuvel, who studies and teaches Italian literature.He blogs here. [Read more.]

Photo courtesy of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Used with permission.

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Rafael Corrales is "a start-up guy." As an undergraduate at Georgia Tech (from which he graduated at only 19 years old), Corrales, an Atlanta native, co-founded College Knowledge, a tutoring company serving middle and high school students in the Atlanta area. Since then, he's worked with a variety of start-ups both in and out of education, including RentJuice and HubSpot.

While attending Harvard Business School, Corrales co-founded LearnBoost, an online gradebook, lesson planner, and calendar for teachers, students and parents that has been named one of the best start-ups of 2010. Now based in San Francisco, he also blogs frequently about his views on education and being a start-up entrepreneur. [Click for more.]

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Karim Ani is a guy who asks interesting questions ... and then translates them into real-world math lessons:

• "Do people with small feet pay more for shoes?" (Ratios & proportions)
• "Have video game consoles followed Moore's Law?" (Exponential growth)
• "Is Wheel of Fortune rigged?" (Percents & probabilities)

These are just a few of the questions around which Mathalicious builds high-quality, standards-based math lessons designed to transform how students learn math, and how teachers teach it. This emphasis on interesting questions is hardly surprising. Ani, a former middle school math teacher and coach, views Socrates as his role model. At a time when many education reformers and innovators are focused on high-tech and expensive solutions, Mathalicious is refreshing in its simplicity: "make math interesting."

Raised in Richmond, Va., Karim Ani (formerly Karim Logue), 32, attended Stanford University as an undergraduate and earned a Master's degree in math education from the University of Virginia. An avid photographer, he currently lives in Alexandria, Va. Fortunately, he took a break from asking questions to answer a few of mine. [Continue reading.]

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Over the past 15 years, public education in the United States has been profoundly shaped by the work of a generation of young educators and reformers who launched their careers in the early 1990s: people like Wendy Kopp, Dave Levin, Mike Feinberg, Michelle Rhee, Chris Barbic, Rick Hess, and my own colleagues Kim Smith and Andrew Rotherham. The first class of Teach for America corps members (1990) alone included a host of people who have since launched and led influential education organizations and/or had significant impacts at the local, state, and national levels. And its successors haven't done too shabbily, either.

When I began working in education policy 11 years ago, many of these people were already doing important work in education but had not yet achieved the levels of impact and prominence that they have today. Over the past 10 years, organizations these people have developed track records of success in improving student learning and begun to grow to scale. The public and policy debate around education has also changed dramatically--particularly around issues of teacher quality and charter schools--due in large part to the work of these individuals.

Thinking about this recently, I wondered: Who are the young leaders in their twenties and early thirties today who will have similar impacts on education reform over the next 10 years? That question led to a list of 16 young men and women who are launching and leading organizations that will lead in the transformation of public education over the next decade, as well as people who are doing important research, legal, political, and policy work that will shape the future of education reform. It's a diverse group of people working in a wide variety of ways--but unified by a shared belief in the necessity and feasibility of improving public education to deliver much better results, particularly for underserved students.

Here's the list, in alphabetical order by last name:

• Karim Kai Ani, Founder, Mathalicious
• Justin Cohen, President, School Turnaround Group, MassInsight
• Rafael Corrales, Co-Founder, LearnBoost
• Roxanna Elden, Teacher and Author, See Me After Class
• Bill Ferguson, Maryland State Senator
• Alex Grodd, Founder, Better Lesson
• Kirabo Jackson, Assistant Professor, Northwestern University
• Andrew Kelly, Research Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
• Neerav Kingsland, Chief Strategy Officer, New Schools New Orleans
• Hailly Korman, Associate, Morrison and Foerster
• Jennifer Medbery, Founder, Drop the Chalk
• Ana Menezes, Partner, The New Teacher Project
• Mickey Muldoon, Manager of External Affairs, School of One
• Evan Stone and Sydney Morris, Co-Founders, Educators for Excellence
• Stephanie Wilson, Chief of Staff, Aspire Public Schools

Although these people are doing exciting and important work in education, in many cases their work is not widely known. That's likely to change shortly. But to help more people learn about the work these young leaders are doing, I'm going to be profiling each of them here on the blog over the next two weeks. I'm very grateful that these incredibly busy people took time to answer my questions. They are incredibly smart, thoughtful, and passionate about their work. And I'm deeply humbled by their work and what I've learned from them--and think readers will be too.

A couple notes here: First, on the list. I built this list by seeking recommendations from a number of folks I respect in the education field, including my Bellwether colleagues, leaders of education reform organizations, and writers and analysts whose work in this space I respect. Everyone on this list meets the following three critieria: They are doing important work in education now, they are likely to have significant impacts on education practice or policy over the next 10 years, and they graduated college in 2001 or later.

Why 2001? Well, any list of young leaders has to have some kind of arbitrary cut-off for what constitutes young. But I had several reasons for this one. First, it's 10 years ago--a nice even number that means people on this list are still in the first decade of their careers. More substantively, I do believe that 2001 represents a generational turning point in individuals' life experiences--particularly in the realm of education reform. People who started their careers in 2001 or later have spent their entire careers in a post-September 11 world and, for those in education, a post-NCLB world. And those different experiences translate into somewhat different perspectives.This generation of reformers take for granted ideas their predecessors fought for: the ability of schools to impact children's lives and achievement, the importance of data, and the importance of teacher effectiveness as measured by impacts on student learning. But because they haven't had to litigate these ideas in the same way as those who came before them, they are also more free to question or to hold ideas that don't necessarily line up with the way sides have been drawn in media and political debates over education reform.

A note on the interviews/profiles themselves: Knowing how busy these folks are, I gave them the option of answering questions either in writing, in a phone interview, or (where feasible) in person. To the extent that differences in the format of these interviews have led to differences in the end products, that should be understood as entirely my fault and not a reflection on the thoughtfulness, cleverness, or articulateness of the people I interviewed by phone. (Hopefully readers won't even be able to figure out which are which).

Bellwether Education Partners has worked with New Schools New Orleans.

Posted by Sara Mead at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Alyssa Rosenberg reports on a forthcoming wave of school- and teacher-focused TV shows and movies, attributing the new pop culture focus on education to increased awareness in the wake of Waiting for Superman, Race to Nowhere, and other education-focused documentaries.

My question is: What took so long? In fairness, pop culture is no stranger to education--the saintly teacher movie is a well-worn cliche, and some of our most cherished movies and TV shows have draw gold from high school drama (and comedy!). But given the prevalence of both dramas and comedies organized around the workplaces of doctors, lawyers, and police detectives, I've always wondered why there have been so few notable TV shows oriented around schools as workplaces. Or why young female TV and rom-com characters are roughly 200x as likely to be employed as publicists, journalists, or chefs as they are teachers (given that the reality is much the opposite).

After all, there are 3.5 million elementary and secondary teachers in the United States--more than the number of doctors, lawyers, and police and detectives combined. And that's not even counting other education professionals. Clearly, the profession deserves a bit more pop culture love.

That said, pop culture has not always done the greatest job when it does deal with education. The sainted teacher pic is a much derided cliche for a reason, and almost inevitably does a disservice to the real difficulty of being a good teacher. In teen-focused TV and movies, teachers and adults are often notably absent or total idiots (which may well reflect the perceptions of teen protagonists but is also not accurate). Even the Wire, brilliant as it was, was notably ham-fisted and preachy in some elements of its treatment of education--although others rang true.

So it wouldn't be surprising if education types view the news of a forthcoming slate of school-focused TV shows and movies with a bit of trepidation. We've all sat with lawyers, doctors, or forensic scientists as they flinched through an episode of Law and Order or CSI. Here's hoping the forthcoming slate of school shows don't have the same effect on you and me.

Posted by Sara Mead at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If you want an indication of the serious potential for real progress on educational transformation in Tennessee under new Commissioner Kevin Huffman, the announcement that YES! Prep President Chris Barbic is leaving the organization he founded to head-up a new statewide Achievement School District (a vehicle for taking over and transforming chronically low-performing schools) is a pretty damn impressive sign. Barbic is a real education rock star, he's leaving one of the strongest organizations in the space at an important point in its growth, as well as a community where he has serious roots/connections, and taking on an incredibly daunting challenge that will inevitably put his name and reputation on the line. You don't do that unless you believe there's a huge potential opportunity for dramatic transformation that will positively impact kids' lives.

My guess is that we're going to see Tennessee become a real magnet for top-drawer education reform talent over the next several months, due to the combination of Race to the Top and Kevin Huffman's profile and reform vision.

In recruiting talent, Huffman's got an advantage over a lot of ed reformers in that Nashville, the Tennessee state capital, is a pretty cool city--at least that was my impression during the four years I was in school at Vanderbilt and seems also to be that of the college friends I have who've stayed in the area.

Speaking of which, Barbic is also a Vanderbilt alum. So it's possible the lure of SATCO, Swett's, and Pancake Pantry also had some bearing on his decision. In any case, congrats to Tennessee for a great catch, Barbic on an exciting new challenge, and Go 'Dores!

Posted by Sara Mead at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend