The Education Gadfly Weekly

Hard on the heels of the AFT’s proposed “bar exam” for teachers, the Council of Chief State School Officers brings forth this sober, comprehensive, and exceptionally well-thought-out set of recommendations for fundamentally revamping the preparation and licensure of both teachers and principals. It’s a thirty-eight-page blueprint containing ten big recommendations that, if put into practice by states, would indeed be transformative.

Written in straightforward, non-inflammatory prose, the report, in some respects, doesn’t go as far as it could. It does not, for example, do away with state-level certification of educators—which it could justify on grounds that research has found no link between such credentials and actual effectiveness. But it does seek to make certification meaningful by building exacting standards into the framework, standards that rely on evidence of knowledge and performance rather than a checklist of courses taken. Also tucked into the recommendations are such worthy ideas as serious acceptance of alternative pathways and “residency”-style preparation; insistence on real standards for entering prep programs and getting certified; the demand that prep programs respond to K–12 education’s actual supply-demand numbers rather than enrolling as many people as possible (thus probably killing the proverbial ed-school “cash cow” within universities); and tracking the performance of those emerging from various prep programs and institutions—and actually closing those that don’t produce successful professionals.

Underlying all this is the fact that states have plenty of leverage that could be used to boost the quality and effectiveness of the education workforce—and most of them haven’t been using much of it. Of course they should. And this proposal shows how.

A version of this review appeared on Fordham’s Flypaper blog

SOURCE:

CCSSO Task Force on Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession, Our Responsibility, Our Promise: Transforming Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession (Washington, D.C.: Council of Chief State School Officers, December 2012).

Universal pre-Kindergarten programs, beloved by many education advocates and policy wonks, also have some critics (ourselves included). The critics aren’t anti-kid or unworried about Kindergarten readiness. Rather, they argue that states should target their limited resources at pre-K programming for youngsters truly in need. This CALDER study, which examines the impact of such a program in Texas between 1990 and 2002, backs that assertion. Drawing upon a huge sample of “at-risk” children, analysts compared those who participated in Texas’s PreKindergarten Early Start (PKES) program to those who didn’t. They found that PKES participation was linked to higher academic achievement in reading and math and lower likelihood of being held back or receiving special-education services. Two more items of note: These achievement data were collected in third grade, showing the staying power of the PKES program (positive effects of Head Start begin to fade after first grade). And the PKES program’s per-pupil cost is less than half that of Head Start in Texas. The report concludes, “Even modest programs can achieve important gains” for disadvantaged youth. A question naturally arises: What is the PKES program doing differently than its counterparts, many of which have been found wanting? We think we’ve found the answer: In Texas, even pre-K has standards and curriculum—and they’re aligned with those of the K–12 system.

SOURCE:

Rodney Andrews, Paul Jargowsky, and Kristin Kuhne, The Effects of Texas’ Pre-Kindergarten Program on Academic Performance (New York, NY: National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, November 2012).

Tony Bryk, Paul Hill, Terry Moe, and Paul Reville (among others) contribute to this wonk-studded volume, which was borne of a four-year Harvard working group and starts from the premise that today’s incremental reforms will not effect lasting change for K–12 education; rather, we must think bigger. To that end, the collection offers six provocative essays. While several extend current reform ideas (moving to a mixed model of government and market-based providers; addressing the disadvantages of poverty through social reform and wrap-around services; copying successful strategies of countries that improved rapidly), others are unique visions for the future. One would professionalize teaching through “network improvement communities” that allow educators to share research, instructional materials, and pedagogical insights across sites. Perhaps the most radical vision for change suggests that education tomorrow will not be synonymous with schooling, as access to knowledge from outside the classroom increases and youth engage in “lifewide” learning. (We would argue, further, that “schools” in the traditional sense might not even be the best vehicle for education delivery in years to come.) Taken together, the essays present a refreshing and forward-thinking design for education reform and reformers.

SOURCE:

Jal Mehta, Robert B. Schwartz, Frederick M. Hess, eds. The Futures of School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2012).

Mike and Daniela reflect on Newtown, and then look back at school reform in 2012. Amber ends the last podcast of the year on a more upbeat note with a look at Texas’s (effective) pre-K program.

Amber's Research Minute

The Effects of Texas’ Pre-Kindergarten Program on Academic Performance by Rodney Andrews, Paul Jargowsky, and Kristin Kuhne (New York, NY: National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, November 2012)

In November 2012, the U.S. Department of Education released an analysis of the federal School Improvement Grants program, which invests in persistently underperforming schools with the expectation that they will turn around. The early results of its most recent $3-billion infusion, as described by Education Week: "mixed" (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2012/11/initial_school_imp…). Two-thirds of the schools made gains in math or reading scores, but the other third saw achievement decline. Program supporters contend that one year of data is not enough to draw conclusions about the program. Critics ask whether taxpayers should expend a single cent more on what they deem a failed experiment.

Who's right? The Fordham Institute is bringing together three leading voices on urban schooling for a debate on the future of turnarounds: Bellwether Education and Fordham edu-wonk Andy Smarick; the Department of Education's Carmel Martin; and former Chicago schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard.

America has nearly 12,000 school superintendents, of whom the overwhelming majority are career educators who have taught in the classroom and risen through the administrative ranks of public education. Most are middle-aged-to-older white males—and almost half say they will retire within five years.

Joshua Starr has emerged as a fully fledged anti-reformer. Photo from WAMU 88.5.

You wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be ardent change-agents. They’ve lived and worked within this system and will benefit from its pensions in retirement. Why make waves?

To be fair, some are earnest, tireless, and imaginative reformers, bent on altering public education so that it better serves the country’s girls and boys. Among the most nationally visible of these have been Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Kaya Henderson, Tom Boasberg, John Deasy, Jean-Claude Brizard, and Andres Alonso. (Several of these, of course, followed non-traditional paths to the corner office.) Others, just as committed to major overhauls, are well known only in their communities, such as Cleveland’s Eric Gordon, Cincinnati’s Mary Ronan, and Dayton’s Lori Ward (if only she had a supportive board). These people strike sparks and light fires.

But thousands of superintendents are more set in their ways, sometimes firefighters but rarely kindlers. They preside (often ably) over “the system as we know it”: holding staff meetings, preparing budgets, meeting with their boards, entering into bus contracts, negotiating with their unions, promoting from within, and generally operating as the current heads of complex, enduring, and essentially complacent organizations that evolve slowly—mainly at the margins and without any particular impulse to change more or faster.

And then there’s Joshua P. Starr and a few more like him who have emerged in recent years as fully fledged anti-reformers, pushing back as hard as they can against the sorts of changes that the Joel Kleins, Arne Duncans, and Jeb Bushes are striving to make.

Starr is the school superintendent in Montgomery County, Maryland, where I live, a role he has occupied for a year and a half, following a half-decade in the same role in Stamford, Connecticut. He’s very bright, incredibly energetic, exceptionally articulate, and well-credentialed.

He’s also become perhaps the foremost critic of contemporary education reform in the Washington metropolitan area, outstripping anyone in the teacher unions, think tanks, or government. You can see and hear him in action at a recent Washington Post forum and read the Post’s thorough account of his views.

Starr is against testing, against achievement-linked teacher evaluations (“bad science”), and against Race to the Top—dollars from which Montgomery County eschewed, even when Maryland won the competition. He’s called for a three-year moratorium on standardized testing. He appears cool toward the Common Core (though Maryland has adopted it and he will have to deal with it). On the choice front, Starr (like his predecessor, Jerry Weast) thinks the central office knows best, hence is colder than cool when it comes to charter schools. (Sprawling Montgomery County operates 205 district schools for its 144,000 pupils but has granted exactly one charter.) Though the system has some magnet schools and special programs, students are generally assigned to the schools the administration wants them to attend; opting into other schools is the exception, not the rule. (At the secondary level, there are several high school “consortia” with lottery-based admission.)

Should districts like Montgomery County be subject to big sweeping reforms imposed by state or national governments? This is a legitimate question.

Admittedly, any Montgomery County superintendent has grounds for steering a steady course rather than promoting radical change: The school system has long enjoyed a reputation as one of the country’s best. Weast was much praised as a successful education leader, not least because of the progress the district made on his watch in reducing achievement gaps, boosting graduation rates, expanding AP enrollments, and more. Stacey Childress, Denis Doyle, and David Thomas chronicled all this in their 2009 book Leading for Equity. And the following year, Montgomery County was a finalist for the Broad Prize. Though Charlotte-Mecklenburg won that year, the system Starr was about to take charge of made a very respectable showing on the metrics that Broad respects.

Yes, it’s a good school system. It is also, for the most part, a prosperous, upscale system, much like Starr’s previous Connecticut venue. And of course, it’s expensive: For the next fiscal year, Starr has asked the county for a $49-million increase over the current budget, amounting to a total of $2.22 billion, which works out to $15,280 per pupil. The school system employs 22,230 people—one grown-up for every 6.5 kids. That’s a lot.

Should districts like Montgomery County—doing pretty well and generally content with what they’ve got—be subject to big sweeping reforms imposed by state or national governments? A legitimate question, to be sure, and there’s no denying that much of the backlash against big reforms arises from people who sincerely believe that such districts don’t need to change in big ways. Should reformers just leave them alone and honor the principle of “local control” in situations like Montgomery County? Should they tailor their reforms to sorely troubled situations and persuade lawmakers to write statutes and regulations that apply only in such situations?

Sometimes they probably should. There’s more grief than gain ahead when the state or federal government imposes a new teacher-evaluation system or charter school mandate on places that don’t want them—and that, by common consent (including at least the appearance of agreement by their own voters, taxpayers, and parents), are doing pretty well.

But in those situations, it’s vital to impose transparency via external audits and comparisons that such districts aren’t apt to do for themselves. How do 8th graders in Montgomery County compare—not just with each other or with Baltimore, but with Korea and Finland? Which schools are working well, and which really aren’t? Which truly “add value” to their pupils, and which just take smart, well-parented, upper-middle-class kids and keep them that way? How much per pupil does this system spend on special education versus the national average, and how many special-needs kids graduate from high school? How many of the kids taking AP courses then pass the AP exams? How many minority students are enrolled in the district’s International Baccalaureate program, and what is their rate of success? How many graduates of the county’s high schools must still take remedial courses in college? How many “eligible” students cannot get into “gifted and talented” classrooms due to the paucity of such programs? How many are turned away from the county’s acclaimed Montgomery Blair magnet high school program (which takes just 100 kids per year)? And much more.

Just as important is transparent information on who makes these policy decisions; who pulls their strings; and their views on what’s good, bad, and ugly. I’ve written before that as a Montgomery County voter, I find it next to impossible to get accurate information on the candidates for school board, even when I try. Yet it’s the board that picks the superintendent and—in a high-spending county in a heavily taxed, deep-blue state with a history of giving public-employee unions just about everything they ask for, including big policy wins—there is ample reason to suspect that the superintendent is, in effect, hired by the teacher union. How can voters determine this? Only if someone makes it their business to ferret out and make public all the relevant information on the politics as well as the performance of the system and those who run it.

Montgomery County (and other districts like it) needs a versatile, smart, and courageous education-advocacy organization to make sure that the interests of school-system employees and their friends don’t trump those of children (and taxpayers). Today it doesn’t have one—nor, to my knowledge, does it have anyone to point out the things that aren’t working, the kids who are badly served, the schools that are poorly led, the choices that don’t really exist, and all the other things that the system is not keen to make known.

In short, I’m saying that Starr is (of course) free to say whatever he likes, and so long as his district is performing well, there is no reason to impose scads of state and federal mandates on it. But those other levels of government, as well as employers, civic groups, philanthropists, and the media have a parallel obligation to bring all the relevant information into public view, about the system and also about who governs it. Local control in a democratic system is only as good as the means whereby it is exercised, ultimately by thoroughly informed voters. Who knows—it might even turn out that the children of Montgomery County would also benefit from some of those reforms that their superintendent is becoming famous for denouncing.

This week, Student Achievement Partners—the group co-founded by Common Core architects David Coleman and Jason Zimba—announced a partnership with the NEA and AFT to develop and disseminate Core-aligned curriculum at no cost to teachers, thanks to a three-year, $11-million grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. As Kathleen Porter-Magee noted in yesterday’s Common Core Watch, “Given the dearth of quality, CCSS-aligned materials available to teachers who are already working to align their practice to the new standards, this additional investment is welcome.” We eagerly await the materials.

A task force convened to determine whether D.C. charter schools ought to give admissions preference to nearby students came up with a verdict on Friday: While the District should allow charters that move into closed public school buildings to give neighborhood preference, other charter schools should not be compelled (or even allowed) to do so. This is a sensible compromise that will ease the burden on students transitioning from schools that are closing while maintaining a central tenet of the charter school idea: to be open to all students, regardless of home address.

As part of its “30 under 30” series, Forbes magazine identified thirty Millenials taking the education world by storm. We saw a few familiar faces (shout-outs to Catharine Bellinger and Alexis Morin of Students for Education Reform, Jon Cetel of PennCAN, and Patrick Herrel of the Mind Trust). These are young people who do think about the work to be done—and here’s hoping for more efforts like theirs and individuals like them.

That it’s taken me so long to write about the horrific acts of violence perpetrated on Newtown, Connecticut, is one indication of how torn up I’ve been about it. As the father of two small boys, this one really hit home. May God bless the children, their educators, and their families.

I can’t get Sandy Hook out of my mind—nor, in one sense, do I really want to. Photo from the International Business Times.

When we—the Fordham team and many of Flypaper’s readers—pick ourselves up and turn back to our day jobs, the work of school reform, there is an unavoidable question: What does Sandy Hook mean for that work? For our mission of bringing excellence to America’s schools and ramping up opportunity for all children? For the public discourse in which we engage?

One possible answer: nothing. As tragic an event as it was, it’s only loosely related to education policy. A deranged man with access to high-powered weapons chose an elementary school as his target. He might have chosen a hospital, a day camp, or a circus performance. As Americans, it’s absolutely appropriate to debate whether stricter gun controls or reforms to our mental-health system or greater security barriers might help to reduce the likelihood of such awful events occurring in the future. But as education reformers, it’s hard to see—despite some artless attempts to link the two—how the shooting is directly related to the major school-policy debates of the day. Testing, accountability, charter schools, teacher evaluations—these are still to be judged on their merits, and nothing that happened last Friday changes that.

Still and all, I can’t get Sandy Hook out of my mind—nor, in one sense, do I really want to. Thus far, I’ve resolved to take away two lessons from Sandy Hook; perhaps you’ll agree.

First, we in the reform movement need to tone down any rhetoric that implies that a typical teacher isn’t committed to doing right by her or his students. This isn’t a new idea, but the heroism of the Sandy Hook teachers (and administrators) brings the point into sharp relief. That’s not to say we should relax our efforts to identify and remove ineffective teachers from the classroom; just as there’s the occasional bad cop, there’s the occasional bad teacher. Like the police force, the teaching force is much stronger without them. But neither should we ignore indications from the field that many teachers, including great teachers, have been feeling unappreciated, villainized, and blamed.

Second, we policy wonks need to remember that the issues that so animate us—like Common Core standards, value-added measures, pupil-based funding, and blended learning—are not the totality of what schools have on their plates. I used to read stories of schools practicing lockdown procedures and scoff at such behavior, considering them bureaucratic CYA performances. Now it’s clear that such drills saved lives in Newtown. I am going to try to remember that “raising student achievement” is one top priority that school principals and teachers should be focused on—but it’s not their exclusive concern. And it’s surely not the top item on their list this week.

The sorrow remains, but the work goes on. Let us commit to bringing America’s heroic teachers and school leaders along with us on the path to reform, not to view them as the targets of reform—or of our scorn. Amen.

A version of this article appeared in Fordham’s Flypaper blog.

In November 2012, the U.S. Department of Education released an analysis of the federal School Improvement Grants program, which invests in persistently underperforming schools with the expectation that they will turn around. The early results of its most recent $3-billion infusion, as described by Education Week: "mixed" (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2012/11/initial_school_imp…). Two-thirds of the schools made gains in math or reading scores, but the other third saw achievement decline. Program supporters contend that one year of data is not enough to draw conclusions about the program. Critics ask whether taxpayers should expend a single cent more on what they deem a failed experiment.

Who's right? The Fordham Institute is bringing together three leading voices on urban schooling for a debate on the future of turnarounds: Bellwether Education and Fordham edu-wonk Andy Smarick; the Department of Education's Carmel Martin; and former Chicago schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard.

In November 2012, the U.S. Department of Education released an analysis of the federal School Improvement Grants program, which invests in persistently underperforming schools with the expectation that they will turn around. The early results of its most recent $3-billion infusion, as described by Education Week: "mixed" (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2012/11/initial_school_imp…). Two-thirds of the schools made gains in math or reading scores, but the other third saw achievement decline. Program supporters contend that one year of data is not enough to draw conclusions about the program. Critics ask whether taxpayers should expend a single cent more on what they deem a failed experiment.

Who's right? The Fordham Institute is bringing together three leading voices on urban schooling for a debate on the future of turnarounds: Bellwether Education and Fordham edu-wonk Andy Smarick; the Department of Education's Carmel Martin; and former Chicago schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard.

Universal pre-Kindergarten programs, beloved by many education advocates and policy wonks, also have some critics (ourselves included). The critics aren’t anti-kid or unworried about Kindergarten readiness. Rather, they argue that states should target their limited resources at pre-K programming for youngsters truly in need. This CALDER study, which examines the impact of such a program in Texas between 1990 and 2002, backs that assertion. Drawing upon a huge sample of “at-risk” children, analysts compared those who participated in Texas’s PreKindergarten Early Start (PKES) program to those who didn’t. They found that PKES participation was linked to higher academic achievement in reading and math and lower likelihood of being held back or receiving special-education services. Two more items of note: These achievement data were collected in third grade, showing the staying power of the PKES program (positive effects of Head Start begin to fade after first grade). And the PKES program’s per-pupil cost is less than half that of Head Start in Texas. The report concludes, “Even modest programs can achieve important gains” for disadvantaged youth. A question naturally arises: What is the PKES program doing differently than its counterparts, many of which have been found wanting? We think we’ve found the answer: In Texas, even pre-K has standards and curriculum—and they’re aligned with those of the K–12 system.

SOURCE:

Rodney Andrews, Paul Jargowsky, and Kristin Kuhne, The Effects of Texas’ Pre-Kindergarten Program on Academic Performance (New York, NY: National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, November 2012).

Tony Bryk, Paul Hill, Terry Moe, and Paul Reville (among others) contribute to this wonk-studded volume, which was borne of a four-year Harvard working group and starts from the premise that today’s incremental reforms will not effect lasting change for K–12 education; rather, we must think bigger. To that end, the collection offers six provocative essays. While several extend current reform ideas (moving to a mixed model of government and market-based providers; addressing the disadvantages of poverty through social reform and wrap-around services; copying successful strategies of countries that improved rapidly), others are unique visions for the future. One would professionalize teaching through “network improvement communities” that allow educators to share research, instructional materials, and pedagogical insights across sites. Perhaps the most radical vision for change suggests that education tomorrow will not be synonymous with schooling, as access to knowledge from outside the classroom increases and youth engage in “lifewide” learning. (We would argue, further, that “schools” in the traditional sense might not even be the best vehicle for education delivery in years to come.) Taken together, the essays present a refreshing and forward-thinking design for education reform and reformers.

SOURCE:

Jal Mehta, Robert B. Schwartz, Frederick M. Hess, eds. The Futures of School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2012).

Hard on the heels of the AFT’s proposed “bar exam” for teachers, the Council of Chief State School Officers brings forth this sober, comprehensive, and exceptionally well-thought-out set of recommendations for fundamentally revamping the preparation and licensure of both teachers and principals. It’s a thirty-eight-page blueprint containing ten big recommendations that, if put into practice by states, would indeed be transformative.

Written in straightforward, non-inflammatory prose, the report, in some respects, doesn’t go as far as it could. It does not, for example, do away with state-level certification of educators—which it could justify on grounds that research has found no link between such credentials and actual effectiveness. But it does seek to make certification meaningful by building exacting standards into the framework, standards that rely on evidence of knowledge and performance rather than a checklist of courses taken. Also tucked into the recommendations are such worthy ideas as serious acceptance of alternative pathways and “residency”-style preparation; insistence on real standards for entering prep programs and getting certified; the demand that prep programs respond to K–12 education’s actual supply-demand numbers rather than enrolling as many people as possible (thus probably killing the proverbial ed-school “cash cow” within universities); and tracking the performance of those emerging from various prep programs and institutions—and actually closing those that don’t produce successful professionals.

Underlying all this is the fact that states have plenty of leverage that could be used to boost the quality and effectiveness of the education workforce—and most of them haven’t been using much of it. Of course they should. And this proposal shows how.

A version of this review appeared on Fordham’s Flypaper blog

SOURCE:

CCSSO Task Force on Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession, Our Responsibility, Our Promise: Transforming Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession (Washington, D.C.: Council of Chief State School Officers, December 2012).