The Education Gadfly Weekly

For those who thought AIR’s Gary Phillips presented a bleak picture recently of American international competitiveness, be warned that it gets worse. This PEPG/Education Next study investigates how the U.S. fares in getting its students to advanced levels on the NAEP and PISA math exams. Of the fifty-six countries that participate in PISA, thirty best the U.S. Our highest performing state, Massachusetts, trails fourteen of them. (Fordham’s home state of Ohio boasts the same percentage of advanced math students as Lithuania.) No, these findings can’t be pinned to the fact that our country is large and heterogeneous: White students and those with college-educated parents fared little better. California’s white pupils, for example, matched evenly with the pupils of Poland. But don’t blame NCLB—as many do when fretting about inattention to academically-advanced students. The percent of students scoring at the advanced level on NAEP rose significantly after 2002, when the law took effect. One silver thread can be extracted from this depressing data quilt, though. Thanks to our size, out of these fifty-six countries, the U.S. still produces the largest volume of high-achieving math students.

Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann, “U.S. Math Performance in Global Perspective: How Well Does Each State Do at Producing High-Achieving Students?,” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and Education Next, November 2010).

In this recent Education Sector report, Bill Tucker discusses the use and effectiveness of data systems, drawing explicit lessons from strategies now employed in New York City. Tucker explains that education data have traditionally flowed upward—from school to district to state to Washington—and been used mainly as a cog in the compliance machine. They rarely influence classroom-level decision-making. Data systems, Tucker says, have become “de facto data morgues.” Enter New York City, which has, since 2008, utilized the Achievement Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS) to provide teachers and parents with real-time assessment results, attendance records, and course grades. This program enables educators to identify students’ strengths and learning gaps, craft needed interventions, and customize progress reports. It also allows cross-curricular collaboration. But it hasn’t penetrated very deep as yet. Through anecdotal evidence, Tucker indicates that ARIS data analysis is not effecting fundamental change in teacher practice or decision-making. To that end, he offers a number of useful recommendations for obtaining, analyzing, and deploying data, beginning with the central insight that data collected must match the goals for collecting it.

Bill Tucker, “Putting Data into Practice: Lessons from New York City” (Washington, D.C.: Education Sector, October 2010).

This report from the Rainwater Leadership Alliance brings back into focus the challenge of preparing top-notch school leaders. Utilizing case studies from nine highly-effective principal training programs (thankfully, none could also be called “traditional”), the volume adduces a six-stage model that’s worth examining. Each featured program attacks what we have dubbed the “crisis in leadership” head-on, through selective recruiting, on-the-job training, and support to their alumni in the field. Principals emerge from such programs better able to utilize data, offer ongoing feedback to teachers, create curriculum and student support programs, and manage staff and its development. Most importantly, they’re able to shift school cultures. Infusing the system with this new brand of school leader is just one part of the equation, though. They also need enough autonomy to be effective.

Gretchen Rhines Cheney, Jacquelyn Davis, Kelly Garrett, and Jennifer Holleran, “A New Approach to Principal Preparation: Innovative Programs Share Their Practices and Lessons Learned,” (Fort Worth, TX: Rainwater Leadership Alliance, 2010).

John Kasich won the Ohio governor’s race last Tuesday. He will take office in under two months with much goodwill and support in the General Assembly, where significant GOP majorities will rule both chambers. But he will also face a vast budget shortfall—estimated at $6 to $8 billion—for the next biennium. The resolution of this deficit is sure to affect everything the state supports and does, including K-12 education, which now consumes 40 percent of state dollars.

Yet education is no simple “government service” or “consumable.” It’s a critical investment in our children’s future and that of the entire state. It is central to creating great jobs, transforming the economy from physical labor to brain work, boosting competitiveness, strengthening the polity, and sustaining the culture—all of which Ohio mightily needs. That’s why education reform has been front-and-center in the Buckeye State for two decades.

Despite all the worthy effort by past governors and legislatures, however, Ohio’s young people are not nearly as well educated as they need to be and the academic payoff from its whopping investment in public education has been disappointing, to put it mildly. Costs are sky-high. Results-based accountability is weak. Bureaucratic regulation is rampant. Quality choices are few. Adult interests have over-ridden those of children, families, and taxpayers. Some foolish policies have been enacted along with sound ones. And now, of course, the state’s fiscal health is perilous, as is that of many schools and school systems.

Yet as new leaders take the reins in the Buckeye State, opportunity is at hand—the opportunity to build upon yesterday’s better policy decisions, rectify poor ones, and make lemonade out of sour circumstance. Ohio’s education system could be transformed into an effective, efficient engine of individual opportunity, academic achievement, and economic growth, even as the money flowing into it diminishes.

This can only happen, however, if the state’s new policy team is prepared to defy special interests, to alter entrenched but dysfunctional practices, to end low-payoff activities and invest in those that matter, to make sweeping changes in both education funding and HR, and to stick to its guns in the face of what will surely be intense opposition.

The bad news is that pulling this off will be incredibly hard. The good news is that persevering with it might secure Ohio’s future.

To move the Buckeye State forward in education, while spending less, Fordham recommends seven policy priorities:

1. Strengthen results-based accountability for schools and those who work in them.
2. Replace the so-called “Evidence-Based Model” of school funding with a rational allocation of available resources in ways that empower families, schools, and districts to get the most bang for these bucks.
3. Invest in high-yield programs and activities while pursuing smart savings.
4. Improve teacher quality, reform teacher compensation, and reduce barriers to entering the profession.
5. Expand access to quality schools of choice of every kind.
6. Turn around or close persistently low-performing schools.
7. Develop modern, versatile instructional-delivery systems that both improve and go beyond traditional schools.

See our full recommendations to the state’s incoming leaders here.

This piece originally appeared (in a slightly different form) on Fordham’s blog, Flypaper, and in full in this week’s Ohio Education Gadfly.

Though New York City’s academic achievement gains over the past eight years remain subject to some dispute, on Joel Klein’s watch the nation’s largest city also ended up among its most impressive when gauged by the kinds of structural and policy changes that comprise intelligent, promising modern-day school reforms. (New Orleans and the District of Columbia are the only real rivals for that title. For more on that, check out Fordham’s recent study on reform-friendly cities.)

Klein won his spurs not only as perhaps the most creative/persistent/productive reformer among America’s big city superintendents—his only rivals would be Paul Vallas and Michelle Rhee, probably followed by Arne Duncan while in Chicago—but also as a force to be reckoned with at the national level. Smart, tireless, shrewd, and well-connected, he seemed to be involved with everything nearly everywhere. He imported programs, ideas, and people to New York. He exported “proof points,” ideas, writings, and more. He teamed up with strong figures across the spectrum from Jeb Bush to (aaargh) Al Sharpton.

Joel made a couple of dubious initial personnel choices and got off to a slow start on the curriculum front, but he learned fast, generally hired well, and never rested on yesterday’s accomplishment when tomorrow’s challenge loomed. Despite ceaseless pushback from the country’s most powerful teacher union, led by the smart/tireless/shrewd Randi Weingarten, he made a series of profound structural changes in the system, along the way harnessing the powers of data, of choice, of decentralization, of technology, and much more. Of course, it helped that (until the last year or so) he had pots of public and private money to spend. It helped that he kept the job for eight years. It helped that he had the steadfast backing of a formidable mayor. But much of what looks promising today in New York City’s public-education system is owing to his own personal qualities.

Cathie Black has big shoes to fill and we wish her well. We wish Joel well, too, as he goes to work with another formidable figure. (Rupert Murdoch is cut from very different cloth than Michael Bloomberg.) And we thank him for demonstrating that even the biggest job in American urban education isn’t too big to tackle and, much of the time, prevail.

This piece originally appeared (in a slightly different form) on Fordham’s Flypaper blog.

“New York Schools Chancellor Ends 8-Year Run,” by Sharon Otterman, New York Times, November 9, 2010.

“Joel Klein’s bumpy learning curve on the path to radical change,” by Phillissa Cramer and Elizabeth Green, Gotham Schools, November 10, 2010.

“Black Isn’t Blank Slate,” by Barbara Martinez, Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2010.

In a word: Oops. A committee of the Maryland legislature voted Monday to reject a new state board of education regulation requiring half of teacher evaluations to be based on student learning—a regulation that was key to the Old Line State winning a chunk of Race to the Top moolah. Now the state education department and the Obama Administration both find themselves in a bit of a pickle. If Maryland lawmakers do not relent, the state will renege on one of its key promises to Uncle Sam. (And a change doesn’t seem likely, considering that Senator Paul G. Pinsky, chairman of the legislative committee that voted down the regulation, is a teacher-union organizer.) If MD is out of compliance, however, the feds will be forced to consider taking back the money. (New Jersey was next in line in the RTTT competition and Governor Chris Christie is more than ready to put the cash to good use.) For now, ED is mum on how it will handle the issue, stating that “significant” changes to RTTT proposals will be handled on a case-by-case basis. The chances that Duncan will take back Maryland’s grant are about the same as Nancy Pelosi keeping her job as Speaker of the House. But what a message that would send.

“Race to Top grant may be jeopardized,” by Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post, November 9, 2010.

In this recent Education Sector report, Bill Tucker discusses the use and effectiveness of data systems, drawing explicit lessons from strategies now employed in New York City. Tucker explains that education data have traditionally flowed upward—from school to district to state to Washington—and been used mainly as a cog in the compliance machine. They rarely influence classroom-level decision-making. Data systems, Tucker says, have become “de facto data morgues.” Enter New York City, which has, since 2008, utilized the Achievement Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS) to provide teachers and parents with real-time assessment results, attendance records, and course grades. This program enables educators to identify students’ strengths and learning gaps, craft needed interventions, and customize progress reports. It also allows cross-curricular collaboration. But it hasn’t penetrated very deep as yet. Through anecdotal evidence, Tucker indicates that ARIS data analysis is not effecting fundamental change in teacher practice or decision-making. To that end, he offers a number of useful recommendations for obtaining, analyzing, and deploying data, beginning with the central insight that data collected must match the goals for collecting it.

Bill Tucker, “Putting Data into Practice: Lessons from New York City” (Washington, D.C.: Education Sector, October 2010).

For those who thought AIR’s Gary Phillips presented a bleak picture recently of American international competitiveness, be warned that it gets worse. This PEPG/Education Next study investigates how the U.S. fares in getting its students to advanced levels on the NAEP and PISA math exams. Of the fifty-six countries that participate in PISA, thirty best the U.S. Our highest performing state, Massachusetts, trails fourteen of them. (Fordham’s home state of Ohio boasts the same percentage of advanced math students as Lithuania.) No, these findings can’t be pinned to the fact that our country is large and heterogeneous: White students and those with college-educated parents fared little better. California’s white pupils, for example, matched evenly with the pupils of Poland. But don’t blame NCLB—as many do when fretting about inattention to academically-advanced students. The percent of students scoring at the advanced level on NAEP rose significantly after 2002, when the law took effect. One silver thread can be extracted from this depressing data quilt, though. Thanks to our size, out of these fifty-six countries, the U.S. still produces the largest volume of high-achieving math students.

Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann, “U.S. Math Performance in Global Perspective: How Well Does Each State Do at Producing High-Achieving Students?,” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and Education Next, November 2010).

This report from the Rainwater Leadership Alliance brings back into focus the challenge of preparing top-notch school leaders. Utilizing case studies from nine highly-effective principal training programs (thankfully, none could also be called “traditional”), the volume adduces a six-stage model that’s worth examining. Each featured program attacks what we have dubbed the “crisis in leadership” head-on, through selective recruiting, on-the-job training, and support to their alumni in the field. Principals emerge from such programs better able to utilize data, offer ongoing feedback to teachers, create curriculum and student support programs, and manage staff and its development. Most importantly, they’re able to shift school cultures. Infusing the system with this new brand of school leader is just one part of the equation, though. They also need enough autonomy to be effective.

Gretchen Rhines Cheney, Jacquelyn Davis, Kelly Garrett, and Jennifer Holleran, “A New Approach to Principal Preparation: Innovative Programs Share Their Practices and Lessons Learned,” (Fort Worth, TX: Rainwater Leadership Alliance, 2010).