The Education Gadfly Weekly

The Condition of College and Career Readiness, (Iowa City, IA: ACT, 2010)

This analysis of the 2010 results from ACT’s college admissions assessment reveals the proportion of assessed students who are prepared for college-level work in reading, English, math, and science. (That means having at least a 50 percent chance of obtaining a B or higher in a first-year credit-bearing college course, or a 75 percent chance of getting a C.) As in earlier years, the findings are distressing: Fewer than a quarter of students met these college-readiness benchmarks in all four subjects, while 28 percent didn’t meet a single benchmark, and an additional 15 percent met only one. On the up side, the report did reveal a strong correlation between taking a core liberal arts curriculum in high school—four years of English and three years each of mathematics, science, and social studies— and meeting the benchmarks. Students who took additional courses beyond that core were even likelier to attain the benchmark scores. These data underscore the fact that all students need a rigorous, content-rich curriculum that is grounded in high standards—and the fact that we have a long way to go before all of them are truly “college and career ready.”

Yes We Can: The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males (Cambridge, MA: The Schott Foundation, August 2010)

What if, instead of our current high-school graduation rate of 71 percent, the U.S. actually faced a rate of 47 percent? According to this report, that’s the situation for black males. In more than a few places, more black males enter prison than graduate from high school. In bottom-of-the-barrel New York State, their graduation rate is 25 percent. The report lays the blame on numerous doorsteps: Black males are punished more severely for the same infractions and more likely to be misclassified as needing special education. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The report illustrates with Newark, where due to a large influx of Abbott dollars, the graduation rate gap between white and black boys has closed significantly since 2001-02. The report implies that more money is what makes the difference, yet more resources, badly used, would hardly solve the problem. Still, this report reveals documents a large problem and reminds us of an important challenge for education policy and practice, with implications, of course, that go far beyond education.

For those who may not believe in coincidence, consider: On Tuesday, Fordham released a brand-new study that found New Orleans to be the most reform-minded city in the country; Denver came in fourth. Also on Tuesday, the Department of Education shocked the known world by announcing that Louisiana and Colorado both came up short in Race to the Top, outdone by such reform stalwarts as Maryland (ha!) and Hawaii (guffaw!).

The full list of state winners also includes Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. (And, to be fair, D.C. and NYC also fared extremely well in the Hess analysis, coming in second and third respectively.)

This is a disastrous outcome for the Administration. Support for competitive programs, even among reformers, is apt to plummet as it becomes clear that the vagaries of peer reviewers and the prowess of grant writers are what drive results in such competitions, not true policy change, political courage, leadership or public commitment to reform. The lofty rhetoric of the Race to the Top has turned to farce.

One may well feel sorry for Arne Duncan and his team. By all accounts, it appears that they simply funded states in the order of their ranking by peer reviewers. There were no shenanigans or political gerrymandering, as far as I can tell. (While the White House must surely be happy with the outcome vis-a-vis Ohio and Maryland, where Democratic governors face tough re-election campaigns, it couldn’t have been too pleased about Senator Michael Bennet’s Colorado.)

But this was a situation that called either for a better choice of peer reviewers or greater political courage—and the Obama team delivered neither. At the end of the day, Secretary Duncan could have funded Louisiana and Colorado regardless of their scores. He might even have nixed Maryland, which nobody in their right mind regards as an incubator of serious education reform. Yes, he would have taken much heat (probably even from me, it must be admitted) for mucking around with reviewer recommendations. But it would have been worth it, just to demonstrate that Race to the Top’s—and Duncan’s own—focus on results and reform was for real. Instead—were they, perhaps, rendered gun-shy by the Reading First imbroglio?—he and his team chose the path of least resistance.

This won’t help their effort on Capitol Hill to extend the Race to the Top in future years or to big cities. Or to extend the principle of competition rather than formula to more federal programs. Chances are that Congress—now unimpeded by reformers—will turn back toward business as usual, with formulas driving funds to every nook and cranny of the country, regardless of how deserving or open to change. And cynicism about the federal role as an agent of education reform will deepen. On second thought, that might be the silver lining of today’s cloud. 

This piece first appeared on Fordham’s blog Flypaper. Subscribe to Flypaper’s RSS feed here.

Photo by Steve Johnson.

Reform via entrepreneurialism is all the rage in education circles, at least as revealed by magazine articles and conference keynotes. Think of Teach For America and New Leaders for New Schools, of KIPP and Uncommon Schools, of Wireless Generation, K12, EdisonSchools, SchoolNet, and so many more players that scarcely existed a few years back.

But how widespread is this spirit of innovation and enterprise in America’s major metropolises? Alas, not so much. Too few of our big cities turn out to have the talent, leadership, infrastructure, culture, and resources—both human and financial—to beckon enterprising reformers and then help them to succeed there.

That’s the core finding of Fordham’s newest study, America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform: Attracting Entrepreneurs and Change Agents, authored by AEI’s Rick Hess and two stalwart Fordham staffers, Stafford Palmieri and Janie Scull. But they found some positives, too: A handful of communities have succeeded in creating healthy reform environments. The actual, as Kant observed, proves the possible. If a few places can begin to resemble Silicon Valley when it comes to education reform, others could, too. Be warned, however, that it isn’t easy.

Let us be clear: This is a study of cities, not just school systems. We’re interested in the “conditions” that make education reform apt to gain traction in entire communities. It’s what Hess has previously coined an education “ecosystem,” the myriad factors that make education change likely to take root and blossom. He and his teammates examined thirty U.S. cities in search of seventy-some such factors (amassed into six areas) through public data sources and novel national and local surveys.

Nine cities rose to the top of the reform-friendly heap: New Orleans; Washington D.C.; New York City; Denver; Jacksonville; Charlotte; Austin; Houston; and Fort Worth. They all earned Bs. (There were no As. Everyplace we looked, there was room for improvement!) At the bottom were six cities with Ds and Fs: San Jose; San Diego; Albany; Philadelphia; Gary; and Detroit.

What to make of these results? On the one hand, they aren’t too shocking. Everybody knows about exciting reforms underway in New Orleans, Washington, New York, Houston, and Denver. And everybody rues the plight of unyielding education systems in declining communities such as Detroit and Gary.

But not everybody would have predicted that Austin, Charlotte, Jacksonville, and Fort Worth would turn out to be hotbeds—well, warmbeds—of edupreneurship. Austin apparently benefits from the long and successful run of superintendent Pascal “Pat” Forgione as well as the general spirit of innovation that pervades that community—not to mention a relatively weak teachers’ union. Charlotte has a well-run countywide school system with lots of middle-class support, and a labor environment conducive to reform. Jacksonville profits from the aggressive reforms of the Jeb Bush era in Florida as well as a burgeoning, reform-friendly, philanthropic community—and a strong state charter law. Fort Worth boasts a strong municipal environment and a school district that actively uses data to adjust its policies and programs.

A scan of the bottom-scoring cities reveals that reform apathy plays no geographic favorites. In their overall indifference or hostility to entrepreneurial education reform, we find scant difference between such “rust belt” cities as Detroit and Gary and more prosperous (and populous) coastal and “sun belt” locales like San Jose, San Diego, and Philadelphia. None is attracting scads of eager innovators and none boasts reform-friendly labor policies. Many feature calcified bureaucracies and lethargic municipal leaders.

Is there hope for the laggards? Indeed, yes. This study outlines ample opportunities for mayors, school systems, and business leaders to turn things around. Such transformations won’t come easily or fast—but, then, Silicon Valley did not become a hotbed of innovation overnight. It took decades to infuse it with the financial capital, talent, networks, and expertise that make it what it has become.

To move their community seriously toward entrepreneurial education reform, local leaders must think very differently than in the past. Monopolies and top down reforms can only get you so far. Competition is healthy for the public sector, as is out-of-the-box thinking. There's a nimbleness and creativity to non-governmental providers. But the injection of a small dose of innovation doesn't inoculate the entire body—or transform the whole ecosystem. Entrepreneurial growth needs to occur energetically, smartly, and in a sustained way.

We also acknowledge that entrepreneurial reform is no silver bullet. Equally important are quality teachers, rigorous academic standards, rich curricula, vibrant school choice, capable school leaders, data-based decision making, astute governance, rational finances, and scads of other elements. Many of these begin with sound, learning-centered, kid-oriented public policies and effective district (and state) leadership. But most of them also occur faster and more surely if those policies and leaders are open to innovation and assistance from entrepreneurs.

That’s really the lesson of this study. The reform needle is most apt to move when it is nudged twice. America’s most promising education warmspots blend sound top-down state and local policies with environments that welcome entrepreneurial activity and private initiative. The welcoming gradually permeates their public policies and their community culture. And their superintendents, chancellors, mayors and other leaders encourage and facilitate this melding because they recognize that it works better than government alone—even though opening the door and ushering unconventional people and organizations through it will cause dismay and discomfort in the usual places.

A decade later, Pennsylvania cyber schools go viral, by Devon Lash, The Morning Call, August 21, 2010

Cyber schools present myriad opportunities: Lower overhead costs, personalized instruction, and greater efficiency. Yet all those things are only as good as they are done well. And often they are not, it seems, at least in Pennsylvania. More than 23,000 students attend virtual schools full time in the Keystone State, one of the country’s highest enrollments. Yet most of those schools are failing to meet state standards. Of Pennsylvania’s eleven digital academies, five are in corrective action and five are “making progress,” while just one can show adequate yearly progress four years in a row. Thanks to the many lessons of the charter school boom, our vision here should be 20/20, if not 20/15: Innovative approaches to schooling that lower costs and give students more options should be lauded, but quality won’t magically happen by itself. Smart oversight and policies are needed, pronto. The virtual movement is exiting its infancy; now would be a great time to take on the quality-control challenge.

LA Unveils $578 Million School, Costliest In The Nation, by Christina Hoag, Associated Press, August 22, 2010

Think back to your high school—the maple-wood flooring, fine art murals, expansive manicured grounds, glass-ceiled atrium, state-of-the-art swimming pool, orchestra-pit auditorium…Doesn’t sound familiar? You must not have attended a “Taj Mahal,” a group of 100 or so public schools that cost more than $100 million to build. The newest member of this exclusive club is the $578 million Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex, due to open in Los Angeles this fall. It breaks the record for the most expensive public school ever, surpassing the $235 million whopper in New York City and the $185 million doozer in Brunswick, New Jersey. To be fair, some of the cost went to historical preservation, as RFK’s main building will inhabit the converted Ambassador Hotel, site of RFK’s assassination in 1968. And the industrial-style schools of the 1970s could surely use with some sprucing up. But nearly $600 million for 4,200 students in a 700,000 district—in a state that’s $20 billion in the hole—and counting—on education? Now that’s rich.

Legal Briefing: New Jersey Settles SEC's Pension Fund Fraud Charges, by Abigail Field, Daily Finance, August 19, 2010SEC Charges State of New Jersey for Fraudulent Municipal Bond Offerings, Press Release 2010-152, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, August 18, 2010

In its first ever suit against a state for securities fraud, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused New Jersey of misrepresenting as healthy its state employee and teacher pension funds to investors when it issued $26 billion in bonds between 2001 and 2007. New Jersey didn’t have the money to cover those loans and the predictions that it shared with the public about the state’s fiscal health were wildly optimistic—and largely untrue. With a new face in the governor’s mansion, the state quickly settled the case by promising to fulfill its financial commitments and thereby avoided paying fines to the SEC. Well and good. But this is just the tip of a big iceberg. State pension funds are mostly woefully unfunded, and neither the public nor current and future retirees truly grasp the scope of impending insolvency.

The Condition of College and Career Readiness, (Iowa City, IA: ACT, 2010)

This analysis of the 2010 results from ACT’s college admissions assessment reveals the proportion of assessed students who are prepared for college-level work in reading, English, math, and science. (That means having at least a 50 percent chance of obtaining a B or higher in a first-year credit-bearing college course, or a 75 percent chance of getting a C.) As in earlier years, the findings are distressing: Fewer than a quarter of students met these college-readiness benchmarks in all four subjects, while 28 percent didn’t meet a single benchmark, and an additional 15 percent met only one. On the up side, the report did reveal a strong correlation between taking a core liberal arts curriculum in high school—four years of English and three years each of mathematics, science, and social studies— and meeting the benchmarks. Students who took additional courses beyond that core were even likelier to attain the benchmark scores. These data underscore the fact that all students need a rigorous, content-rich curriculum that is grounded in high standards—and the fact that we have a long way to go before all of them are truly “college and career ready.”

Yes We Can: The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males (Cambridge, MA: The Schott Foundation, August 2010)

What if, instead of our current high-school graduation rate of 71 percent, the U.S. actually faced a rate of 47 percent? According to this report, that’s the situation for black males. In more than a few places, more black males enter prison than graduate from high school. In bottom-of-the-barrel New York State, their graduation rate is 25 percent. The report lays the blame on numerous doorsteps: Black males are punished more severely for the same infractions and more likely to be misclassified as needing special education. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The report illustrates with Newark, where due to a large influx of Abbott dollars, the graduation rate gap between white and black boys has closed significantly since 2001-02. The report implies that more money is what makes the difference, yet more resources, badly used, would hardly solve the problem. Still, this report reveals documents a large problem and reminds us of an important challenge for education policy and practice, with implications, of course, that go far beyond education.