The Education Gadfly Weekly

Along with the standard fare of curricula, scheduling, student discipline, and teacher effectiveness, charter schools have to navigate tight budgets and nonprofit-management and human-capital strategies. Many charter leaders, however, are far more experienced with instruction than with operations: They’re heavy on education-delivery skills and light on mission-, operations-, and stakeholder-management skills. This new book offers a toolkit for school leaders seeking a crash-course in B-school strategies. Each chapter covers an issue ranging from mission management to performance measurement and provides accessible explanations of how to implement proper business strategies—and why these strategies are important for charters. What might be most helpful for school leaders looking to flip from an ed-school to a B-school mentality are the chapters’ case studies, which offer further perspective on how each strategy can and should play out on the ground.  The authors use MATCH charter schools, for example, to highlight how development of logic models can help clarify a charter’s mission. The case of D.C.’s Cesar Chavez School provides insight into how strategic alignment can ensure longitudinal success. And that of the Compass Montessori School (CO) illustrates the need for financial stability—and what happens if it is not found. Following these strategies—and learning from these case studies—should help charter schools of all stripes personalize and strengthen their business models.

The Common Core State Standards have been widely adopted, implementation efforts have commenced, and assessment frameworks have begun to roll out. But how will the standards (if faithfully implemented) actually serve a college-bound student population? In order to test this primary aim of CCSS, David Conley and his team at the Educational Policy Improvement surveyed 1,815 two- and four-year college professors in twenty-five different subjects, spanning the gamut from English and math to history, business, and computer science, asking them how relevant and important various Common Core standards are to their courses. The findings: English language arts standards were deemed both relevant and important across disciplines, with particular importance placed on the CCSS’s “speaking and listening” standards. (Eighty percent found this slice of the CCSS standards to be of importance.) On the math front, several strands (including mathematical practices, numbers and quantity, and algebra) were generally found to be applicable for college coursework. The geometry standards, however, were not: Only half the math professors found them to be applicable. The most frequent criticisms from college profs relate to the wording of the standards and to perceived deficiencies in problem-solving and critical-thinking requirements. While the survey’s methodology has rightly raised some eyebrows (or even angry fists), it does provide a sort of affirmation of the CCSS.

Court costs; implementation speaks
(Photo by Brian Turner)

It’s “back to school” for the New York State Board of Regents and the State Education Department that it oversees. But will it also be “back to court”? Primed by the Race to the Top pump, Empire State legislators passed a bill last year ordering districts to base 20 percent of their teacher evaluations on student growth measured by state tests. They also stipulated that another 20 percent of the evals be based on “other locally selected measures of student achievement.” But the Regents got a little greedy. In May, they voted to merge the “locally selected” with the state assessment, effectively making 40 percent of the teacher evaluation dependent on state test scores. New York’s teacher union was predictably miffed—and took the matter to court. Flash forward to last week, when a state judge in Albany ruled against the Regents: New York cannot mandate that state test scores be used for 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Upon hearing the news, State Education Commissioner John King, Jr. sounded off that the state would appeal the decision. Hold on, there, King. We are in the infancy of teacher-evaluation reform. When it comes down to the details, we’ve got little more than educated guesses as to what will work best under which circumstances. Yes, tying 40 percent of an evaluation to test scores might make it easier to dump a teacher who gets terrible results. But it might also create unhealthy pressure for all educators in the state to teach narrowly to the test. Maybe 20 percent would strike a better balance—and still allow administrators to move bad teachers out of the classroom. We don’t really know as yet, nor does anybody else. So Regents (and NYDOE officials), be mindful: Your newfangled evaluation system is going to be miles more rigorous than what virtually all your districts have today, regardless of whether one-fifth or two-fifths of the ratings comes down to test scores. Call off the lawyers, and get down to work.

This piece emerged from two posts (one by Peter Meyer and one by Michael J. Petrilli) that originally appeared on Fordham’s Flypaper blog. To subscribe to Flypaper, click here.

Come the end of September, Memphis City Schools and the surrounding Shelby County School District will become one. To effect the merger, the two districts have cobbled together a twenty-three member school board—comprised of the MCS board, the Shelby Co. board, and another seven appointed members thrown in for good measure. (This bloated transition board is supposed to diet back down to the standard seven-member elected board by the districts' 2013 deadline for combination.) While the Memphis-Shelby merger won’t be the first such city-county union (Charlotte-Mecklenberg, NC and Jefferson Country, KY are other examples), the “how” behind this fusion is nothing if not unorthodox. Last year, Shelby Co. (which shares financial responsibility with Memphis for the River City's schools) postured that it would form a “special district,” thereby cutting financial ties to MCS (and damming up 26 percent of the Memphis Schools’s budget). In retaliation, the Memphis school board moved to dissolve its own district. (In a funky statutory twist, this decision by the board means that Memphis schools necessarily get subsumed into the Shelby Co. district—and are thus able to keep their funding stream open.) Two-thirds of city residents backed the move, in hopes that the higher-performing Shelby County schools would help boost achievement for Memphis’s 103,000 students. Of course, residents of the more affluent suburban district (47,000 students strong) were none too pleased. They sued, and lost, bringing us back to that 23-member school board. If done right, this merger could allow for dynamic and forward-thinking reform on both school governance and school finance. (Gadfly gets giddy thinking about the possibilities of expanded parental choice—countywide—and weighted-student funding among schools.) Here’s hoping that twenty-three turns out to be a lucky number.

“Tentative agreement in Memphis school merger,” by Adrian Sainz, Associated Press, August 24, 2011.

“School merger begins to take shape,” by Zack McMillin, Memphis Commercial Appeal, August 29, 2011.

A dollar for you, one hundred for me
(Photo by Stephen Depelo)

NCLB waivers, meet your new federal pal, easement of special education “maintenance of effort” requirements. Traditionally, IDEA has been interpreted to require school districts to maintain (or increase) their spending on special education from year to year or else face stiff penalties. Districts could apply for one-year waivers for particular reasons—for example, the graduation of an extremely expensive student, which might send costs lower. But they were expected to resume their higher spending the next year. A June letter from ED to the National Association of State Directors of Special Education trumpets a different tune. Now, the Department says districts may lower their special-education and then keep the same level in subsequent years as well. This small but significant change signals a willingness to rethink special-education spending’s status as untouchable—which is critical in this time of fiscal austerity. As Sasha Pudelski, a staffer for the American Association of School Administrators, told Education Week, “Fairness dictates that all programs and populations share in the burden of cuts, rather than holding a single program exempt.” Precisely.

First came the healthy school-lunch campaign, the sex-ed campaign, the gay-history campaign, and the environmental-literacy campaign (to name just a few)—all noble pursuits for individual schools usurped by state and federal policymakers. Today marks a milestone in another such campaign, as New Jersey’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights—understood to be the most stringent in the land—goes into effect. The law requires schools to create safety teams, allocate professional-development time for anti-bullying trainings, and assign an “anti-bullying specialist.” (Each district must find itself an “anti-bullying coordinator” as well.) Though Gadfly’s past admonishments seem to have fallen on deaf ears on this front, he’ll clear his throat and aver louder: Schools—and the parents of the children educated therein—should toil to create a positive school culture, free from schoolyard intimidation and classroom harassment. Efforts of this nature should not be mandated by the state; legislative arms cannot protect students from that height—no matter how long they are.

“Bullying Law Puts New Jersey Schools on Spot,” by Winnie Hu, New York Times, August 30, 2011.

Along with the standard fare of curricula, scheduling, student discipline, and teacher effectiveness, charter schools have to navigate tight budgets and nonprofit-management and human-capital strategies. Many charter leaders, however, are far more experienced with instruction than with operations: They’re heavy on education-delivery skills and light on mission-, operations-, and stakeholder-management skills. This new book offers a toolkit for school leaders seeking a crash-course in B-school strategies. Each chapter covers an issue ranging from mission management to performance measurement and provides accessible explanations of how to implement proper business strategies—and why these strategies are important for charters. What might be most helpful for school leaders looking to flip from an ed-school to a B-school mentality are the chapters’ case studies, which offer further perspective on how each strategy can and should play out on the ground.  The authors use MATCH charter schools, for example, to highlight how development of logic models can help clarify a charter’s mission. The case of D.C.’s Cesar Chavez School provides insight into how strategic alignment can ensure longitudinal success. And that of the Compass Montessori School (CO) illustrates the need for financial stability—and what happens if it is not found. Following these strategies—and learning from these case studies—should help charter schools of all stripes personalize and strengthen their business models.

The Common Core State Standards have been widely adopted, implementation efforts have commenced, and assessment frameworks have begun to roll out. But how will the standards (if faithfully implemented) actually serve a college-bound student population? In order to test this primary aim of CCSS, David Conley and his team at the Educational Policy Improvement surveyed 1,815 two- and four-year college professors in twenty-five different subjects, spanning the gamut from English and math to history, business, and computer science, asking them how relevant and important various Common Core standards are to their courses. The findings: English language arts standards were deemed both relevant and important across disciplines, with particular importance placed on the CCSS’s “speaking and listening” standards. (Eighty percent found this slice of the CCSS standards to be of importance.) On the math front, several strands (including mathematical practices, numbers and quantity, and algebra) were generally found to be applicable for college coursework. The geometry standards, however, were not: Only half the math professors found them to be applicable. The most frequent criticisms from college profs relate to the wording of the standards and to perceived deficiencies in problem-solving and critical-thinking requirements. While the survey’s methodology has rightly raised some eyebrows (or even angry fists), it does provide a sort of affirmation of the CCSS.