The Education Gadfly Weekly

Hot off the Brookings Institution press is Terry Moe's magnum opus on teacher unions. Magnum, indeed (at 500-plus pages), it's deeply informative, profoundly insightful, fundamentally depressing, and yet ultimately somewhat hopeful about an educational future that unions won't be able to block—though they'll try hard—due to the combined forces of technology and changing politics. Insights along the way—and there are many—include the gaps between teachers and their union leaders, the false promise of “reform unionism,” the strength of union influence even where there's no collective bargaining, the many faces of Randi Weingarten, and the mixed bag that is Race to the Top. This is a book you'll want for your shelf and, one hopes, a book you’ll actually read and savor and learn from.

Terry M. Moe, “Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools,” (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute Press, March 2011).

Response to Intervention (RTI) has become a buzzword in both general education and special education circles—yet understanding of the approach remains superficial. Enter this EdWeek special report, which serves as a solid primer on what RTI is, why it’s used, and what some of its common pitfalls are. As articulated in the series of articles, RTI is an instructional technique that educators use to assist students with academic or behavioral problems; it entails providing these students with tiered and increasingly intensive instruction to address problems in their infancy. RTI first appeared on the scene as a special education diagnostic tool, and is now utilized in the gen ed setting as a preventive measure for a host of potential student hang-ups, both academic and behavioral. Yet despite the popularity of RTI, obstacles remain: Few education schools adequately prepare teachers to effectively use RTI, and some parents have reported that RTI led to unnecessary delay in special education identification. Further, RTI’s fluidity can cause districts ire, as appropriately doling out funding for the effort (often between Title I and special education coffers) gets awkward. In the end, though, the greatest obstacle facing RTI is the dearth of research conducted on the topic. The report notes that, while RTI has gained many advocates, no rigorous study of the entire RTI model has ever been conducted. And though special education numbers have decreased as RTI has expanded its reach, a definitive link between the two has yet to be proven. Though many agree that an RTI-like approach is simply good teaching, we won’t know how good for some time yet.

Put away your crystal balls—the National Center for Education Statistics has released their projections of education statistics for the next eight years. And they’re worth taking seriously; analyses of previous predictions showed them to be remarkably accurate. So let’s peer into the future: Between 2007 and 2019, K-12 enrollment will see a 6 percent increase overall—mostly coming from a boom in America’s school-aged Hispanic population. While white and black student enrollment will actually decrease, Hispanic student enrollment is projected to increase 60 percent over these thirteen years. In terms of graduation rates: Twenty-one states (including most of the Northeast) will see a decrease in their graduation rates by at least 5 percent, while seventeen states will see an increase by at least the same percentage. NCES further reports predictions on student-teacher ratios, education expenditures, college enrollments, and teacher qualifications. While the projections rely on a host of assumptions external to the education system (like fertility rates and migration), and don’t take political and fiscal climates into account, they’re still fun to explore.

William J. Hussar and Tabitha M. Bailey, “Projections of Education Statistics to 2019 (Thirty-eighth edition)” (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, March 2011).

Taking promising reforms and innovations “to scale” is a challenge that has bedeviled public schools for decades. One prominent example was the multi-million dollar New American Schools program, which, supported through federal and private dollars, solicited proposals from around the country for novel or proven whole-school design programs—such as Success for All—and engaged school districts to adopt school-based professional-development programs designed to help schools replicate the programs. Like so many other efforts to replicate best practices, New American Schools failed due to uneven implementation. The New American Schools experience, like decades of similarly ineffective efforts to replicate successful education programs, should teach us that the “uptake problem” in public education warrants serious attention in order to foster innovation and improve productivity in U.S. education.

New instructional innovations using technology hold great promise for dramatically improving educational delivery systems and resource productivity. Schools, like Rocketship Education and School of One, that blend distance learning and computer-driven curriculum with on-site, teacher-based instruction demonstrate that smart uses of technology can allow public schools to use teacher time more productively, more effectively engage students, and save labor costs so that money can be invested in teacher salaries, social supports for students, or smaller class sizes. However, getting these and other innovations to take hold more broadly across the United States is far from a sure thing.

The same issues have come up when we look at how few districts have tried to replicate what works in high-performing charter schools. One Center for Reinventing Public Education study of charter-management organizations (CMO) has shown that only a few districts are working seriously to import apparently successful literacy programs, “no excuses” cultures, or even the support structures that make Achievement First, KIPP, and Aspire Public Schools well-known.

Erin Dillon and Bill Tucker at Education Sector were smart to point out that the rush to support technology-based school expansion must avoid exaggeration of the benefits and embrace rigorous outcome evaluation—a necessity for the charter sector as well. But history tells us that there’s a bigger problem: There is little evidence that our public-school system will open or transform schools to high-tech and high-performing models, even if those programs demonstrate success under the most rigorous conditions. And, even where programs are adopted, it still won’t be easy.

The political barriers alone are daunting. Status quo defenders advance policies that would limit or block innovations, such as online learning, by requiring students to participate in a certain number of hours of classroom-based instruction each day. State and federal restrictions on how money is spent can make it difficult, if not impossible, for schools to experiment with innovative approaches to spending.

	There is little evidence that our public-school system will open or transform schools to high-tech and high-performing models...

More mundane, but possibly more of a pervasive threat, are attitudes toward adopting new innovations. Using technology for instruction challenges some of the most fundamental beliefs about education and the role of teachers, prompting significant reaction from teachers and parents alike. Without strong state accountability systems, school districts and schools have limited incentive to experiment in order to identify better instructional approaches. And even when all of the policy stars align, school districts and state departments of education tend to be risk averse, valuing compliance with known rules over entrepreneurialism.

Still, some school districts are actively working to embrace technology and other innovations to support their learning goals. New York City’s iZone is perhaps the most ambitious example. The city hopes to transform or create 100 or more schools, including new charter schools, over the next three years by building on fundamentally new assumptions, such as scheduling staffing and class time around student learning needs rather than a one-size-fits-all model. In the iZone, technology is used to catalyze these innovative school attributes for breakthrough learning outcomes.

It remains to be seen, though, whether even innovation-friendly school districts like New York can effectively partner with entrepreneurs, become wise consumers and evaluators of new innovations, train and gain the support of their teachers, and effectively engage parents and students. State education agencies face their own capacity issues.

New flexibilities from federal and state laws are needed to ensure that state and district leaders who want to innovate can do so. State policymakers who wish to champion innovation will need to pursue strategies and policies such as:

• Gathering information about promising approaches, evidence of effectiveness, cost, and implementation requirements;

• Re-doing state budgets to allow for startups, demonstrations, and partnerships with private providers;

• Creating budgetary flexibility so that capital-labor tradeoffs can be made at the school level;

• Designing incentive programs that encourage innovation and build new capacities;

• Creating situations under which schools must either adopt innovations or be replaced by other providers; and

• Considering policies to relax rules in exchange for specific performance outcomes and strong accountability measures, similar to the “operational freedom in return for results” that should govern charter schools.

State leaders will also need to identify and eliminate policy barriers to the quick spread of productivity-enhancing approaches. For starters, states can remove laws and regulations that are based on inputs. Prime candidates for elimination are student “seat time” requirements, pay scales that reward seniority and teacher education levels rather than performance, and funding formulae that prevent districts from combining funds in innovative ways. States would also do well to do “innovation audits” to assess which rules most prohibit innovation.

School districts and state agencies face serious cultural and political barriers in overcoming a dismal track record on innovation. Until this changes, we can expect that public education will continue to adopt only marginal innovations that will result in negligible productivity gains for students. Greater policy and funder attention is urgently needed if American public schools are to hit desired outcomes for productivity, innovations, and renewal.

Robin Lake is the associate director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). A version of this essay originally appeared in the Policy Innovation in Education’s policy paper “Schools in High Gear: Reforms That Work When They Work Together,” released this week in conjunction with the PIE-Network annual meeting.

Two days ago, the Ohio legislature affirmed their commitment to low-income children, to turning around failing schools, and to education reform writ large: Both the state House and Senate passed legislation that paved the way for a Teach For America site in the Buckeye State while also making it easier for TFA alums to gain teacher certification. Even in a Republican-controlled state like Ohio, opening the state to TFA wasn’t a sure thing, and the House and Senate proceedings leading up to the vote were a stark reminder of an underlying hostility toward change. Pre-vote, heated claims about TFAers being little more than dramatically underprepared “white missionaries” echoed through the House gallery. They were followed by asserted fears that TFA teachers would steal jobs from more “qualified” education-school graduates. It was a long time coming, and there’s still a long ways to go, but after this week, the Buckeye State is one step closer to ensuring that that every child receives the excellent education he or she deserves.

This piece originally appeared (in a slightly different format) on Fordham’s Flypaper blog. To subscribe to Flypaper’s RSS feed, click here.

“House backs Teach for America plan,” by Jessica Alaimo, Zanesville TimesRecorder, March 24, 2011.

“School-choice options advocated at rally,” by Catherine Candisky, Columbus Dispatch, March 23, 2011.

As some modicum of normalcy returns to Wisconsin, Ohio, and other Midwestern states that have been embroiled in collective-bargaining furor, it’s worth keeping watch on the NEA. As Mike Antonucci writes in his latest EIA communiqué: “There should be no mistake about it—NEA sees [this push-back] as a threat to its very existence.” And the union may be right. The 2010 elections—and the sea of red they ushered in at the state level—emboldened Republicans for the first time to attack, systematically, the NEA’s sacred cows. But don’t expect the nation’s largest teacher union to quietly fade away. The group has already begun launching a two-pronged response: Kill potential anti-union legislation and, when that isn’t possible, attack that selfsame legislation in courts (a la Wisconsin at present). A white flag, from either side, is far away yet, but the war, for better or for worse, has definitely begun.

“‘We Are at War’—NEA’s Plan of Attack,” by Mike Antonucci, Education Intelligence Agency, March 21, 2011.

Hot off the Brookings Institution press is Terry Moe's magnum opus on teacher unions. Magnum, indeed (at 500-plus pages), it's deeply informative, profoundly insightful, fundamentally depressing, and yet ultimately somewhat hopeful about an educational future that unions won't be able to block—though they'll try hard—due to the combined forces of technology and changing politics. Insights along the way—and there are many—include the gaps between teachers and their union leaders, the false promise of “reform unionism,” the strength of union influence even where there's no collective bargaining, the many faces of Randi Weingarten, and the mixed bag that is Race to the Top. This is a book you'll want for your shelf and, one hopes, a book you’ll actually read and savor and learn from.

Terry M. Moe, “Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools,” (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute Press, March 2011).

Response to Intervention (RTI) has become a buzzword in both general education and special education circles—yet understanding of the approach remains superficial. Enter this EdWeek special report, which serves as a solid primer on what RTI is, why it’s used, and what some of its common pitfalls are. As articulated in the series of articles, RTI is an instructional technique that educators use to assist students with academic or behavioral problems; it entails providing these students with tiered and increasingly intensive instruction to address problems in their infancy. RTI first appeared on the scene as a special education diagnostic tool, and is now utilized in the gen ed setting as a preventive measure for a host of potential student hang-ups, both academic and behavioral. Yet despite the popularity of RTI, obstacles remain: Few education schools adequately prepare teachers to effectively use RTI, and some parents have reported that RTI led to unnecessary delay in special education identification. Further, RTI’s fluidity can cause districts ire, as appropriately doling out funding for the effort (often between Title I and special education coffers) gets awkward. In the end, though, the greatest obstacle facing RTI is the dearth of research conducted on the topic. The report notes that, while RTI has gained many advocates, no rigorous study of the entire RTI model has ever been conducted. And though special education numbers have decreased as RTI has expanded its reach, a definitive link between the two has yet to be proven. Though many agree that an RTI-like approach is simply good teaching, we won’t know how good for some time yet.

Put away your crystal balls—the National Center for Education Statistics has released their projections of education statistics for the next eight years. And they’re worth taking seriously; analyses of previous predictions showed them to be remarkably accurate. So let’s peer into the future: Between 2007 and 2019, K-12 enrollment will see a 6 percent increase overall—mostly coming from a boom in America’s school-aged Hispanic population. While white and black student enrollment will actually decrease, Hispanic student enrollment is projected to increase 60 percent over these thirteen years. In terms of graduation rates: Twenty-one states (including most of the Northeast) will see a decrease in their graduation rates by at least 5 percent, while seventeen states will see an increase by at least the same percentage. NCES further reports predictions on student-teacher ratios, education expenditures, college enrollments, and teacher qualifications. While the projections rely on a host of assumptions external to the education system (like fertility rates and migration), and don’t take political and fiscal climates into account, they’re still fun to explore.

William J. Hussar and Tabitha M. Bailey, “Projections of Education Statistics to 2019 (Thirty-eighth edition)” (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, March 2011).