The Education Gadfly Weekly

For school administrators and board members lost in the forest of books, reports, and briefs written on “doing more with less,” this outstanding volume provides a compass, map, and sturdy walking stick. Finance guru (and former superintendent of Arlington [MA] Public Schools) Nathan Levenson offers rational, honest, and tangible ways for cash-strapped district leaders to shed budget heft without compromising student learning. Guided by four principles—embrace “crazy” ideas, analyze details to make informed decisions, spend on what works, and align interests—Levenson explains how to manage even the most sacrosanct of education-budget items (all without the need for legislative changes or union approval). For example, district leaders should base funding on academic return on investment (A-ROI) determinations—cutting ineffective programs and beefing up those that see results. Take early investment in reading: In an average-sized elementary school (about 400 students), early reading intervention costs about $2,500 per child (and takes about three years to get struggling students up to grade level). Compare this with special-education referral and placement—which costs an additional $5,000 per year (for mild to moderately disabled students) and likely will last throughout the student’s K-12 career. This need to look beyond singular budget line-items manifests in staffing costs as well. Superintendents must think about fully loaded costs (salary plus benefits) when planning for personnel shifts—and must be willing to think creatively about how to fill certain positions. Levenson provides an anecdote: To save the district long-term dollars, he reclassified a part-time clerical office position as “paraprofessional” (meaning that it didn’t qualify for benefits packages or fit union rules for automatic salary step increases). The first fully loaded cost totaled about $80,000 for the position instead of $350,000 in the old system. Along with these insightful and concrete examples, Levenson provides sample budgets, staffing formulae, and worksheets—all geared toward helping readers find specific solutions to their individual districts’ budget woes. (The book also has a linked online tool that further simplifies this process for district admins.) It blazes a clear trail to leaner and more productive district spending—prepare to take notes.

Nathan Levenson, Smarter Budgets, Smarter Schools: How to Survive and Thrive in Tight Times (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2012).

The bullish economy that greeted high school and college graduates in 2006, when the feds last revamped career and technical education (CTE) programs, looks like ancient history six years later. Gone are many easy entrance points into steady careers, especially for “classically” trained liberal-arts majors. Yet despite high unemployment rates, firms complain of too few qualified applicants for their technical and blue-collar positions—making smart implementation of strong CTE policies all the more important. The Obama Administration’s recently released blueprint for overhauling the Perkins Act (which will dole out $1.14 billion in FY 2012) offers a thoughtful way forward. It looks to bridge the divide between employers’ needs and potential workers’ skills through four core principles: alignment (between CTE programs and labor market needs), collaboration (among secondary, postsecondary, and industry partners), accountability (based on common definitions and clear metrics), and innovation (supported by systemic reform). Accountability will prove the trickiest: CTE must shed the stigma that it’s a watered-down track for disruptive, lazy, or low-performing kids, meaning programs bearing this label must be held accountable for actually producing graduates who are well prepared for available jobs. Still, the blueprint offers an interesting solution: Create intra-state competitions to distribute funds, allowing these jurisdictions more autonomy to be responsive to regional market needs. This focus on working with employers to ensure excellent CTE education opportunities for all marks a promising start.

Office of Vocational and Adult Education, Investing in America’s Future: A Blueprint for Transforming Career and Technical Education, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2012).

Education Week’s latest report provides readers with an overview of the concerns and challenges—and a few of the early successes—surrounding implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). This compilation of six articles offers anecdotal information on a number of “early adopter” districts—including specifics on how the Common Core may affect classroom instruction and content delivery. According to the report, most early adopters are phasing in the CCSS, initially for Kindergarteners and first graders only; a number of them are collaborating on curriculum development and training materials—all available via open-source online portals. Still more are incorporating the special-education teaching tactics of “universal design for learning” (UDL) and “response to intervention” (RTI)—which promote flexible classroom materials and help individualize instruction—into general-education learning. Some promising initiatives are afoot—but Ed Week’s anecdotes (as well as its inattention to how states are preparing for Common Core assessments and linked accountability systems) do little to assuage fears that CCSS implementation is moving too slowly.

Education Week, Math, Literacy, & Common Standards (Bethesda, MD: Editorial Projects in Education, April 2012).

Pre-Kindergarten funding is in a precarious position. Over the last two years, more than $90 million has been trimmed from pre-K programs. And, as ARRA wells run dry, more cuts to this $5.5 billion enterprise are on the way. This while enrollment continues to creep up. That’s the news from this tenth yearbook by the National Institute for Early Education Research which, despite its name, must be counted as an advocacy outfit. The briefing is chockablock with statistics on enrollment, length of school day, class-size requirements, and more. But it tells us little about quality or efficiency, such as just how much bang are we getting for our preschool buck? (While the report does comment on pre-K quality, the metrics it uses are wholly input based; states that spend more on pre-K programming rank higher in quality.) As resources become ever scarcer throughout our education system, a rethink of how we fund preschool—and how we measure its quality and gauge its efficacy—is long past due.

W. Steven Barnett, Megan E. Carolan, Jen Fitzgerald, and James H. Squires, The State of Preschool 2011 (Newark, NJ: National Institute of Early Education Research, April 2012).

Janie and Daniela debate designer Kenneth Cole’s foray into education reform and the Department of Education’s CTE overhaul, while Amber examines turnover among charter school principals.

Amber's Research Minute

The State of the NYC Charter School Sector by New York City Charter School Center

Ten years ago, George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, the law that has dominated U.S. education—and the education policy debate—for the entire decade. While lawmakers are struggling to update that measure, experts across the political spectrum are struggling to make sense of its impact and legacy. Did NCLB, and the consequential accountability movement it embodied, succeed? And with near-stagnant national test scores of late, is there reason to think that this approach to school reform is exhausted? If not "consequential accountability," what could take the U.S. to the next level of student achievement?

Join three leading experts as they wrestle with these questions. Panelists include Hoover Institute economist Eric Hanushek, DFER's Charles Barone, and former NCES commissioner Mark Schneider, author of a forthcoming Fordham analysis of the effects of consequential accountability. NCLB drafter Sandy Kress, previously identified as a panelist, was unable to attend.

USA Today ran a story Saturday entitled, “Common Core Standards Driving a Wedge in Education Circles.” The article comes after a week of exceptionally bad press for standards- and accountability-driven reform, capped off by the tale of a talking pineapple and his apparently cannibalistic friends.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. In fact, it was just two short years ago that a remarkably broad and bipartisan coalition that united union leaders and market reformers helped secure passage of the new standards.

What a difference a couple years makes.

What’s interesting, though, is that, with some limited exceptions, the debate over the Common Core standards has very little to do with the standards themselves. In fact, on all sides of the ed reform aisle, people seem to agree that these particular standards are rigorous, clear, and better than the vast majority of the state standards that were in place previously.

Instead, the debate over the Common Core is now caught up in a larger fight about the merits of education reform writ large. In this increasingly toxic environment, Common Core has become one more conspiracy to uncover, one more grand scheme for the fringe on the right and left to fight against.

Every day brings a new line of attack, each less comprehensible than the last. Some believe the standards are part of a giant corporate plot, the main goal of which is to pad the pockets of testing companies. Others believe they’re part of a grand scheme—led by “corporate reformers”—to privatize public education. (As if it’s impossible to believe that many well-intentioned educators are trying to leverage the considerable resources at their disposal—some given by corporate philanthropy—for the good of our students.)

The view of the the Common Core in America's classrooms is much more pragmatic than it is among wonks.  Photo by frankjuarex.

Still others blame standards and testing for what amounts to the end of democracy. (In a particularly hyperbolic post, Susan Ohanian claims “the reality is that if people who care about public education don't find a way to fight [the Common Core standards], public schools are dead—and so is democracy.”) To round it out, we have those who believe it’s part of the long-term effort by the federal government to take over everything in the states that isn’t nailed down.

It’s reasonable to wonder if the entire education reform debate has turned nihilistic. But then you realize that this fight is really a debate among policy elites. At the classroom level, the conversation remains much more pragmatic—with discussions centering on the pros and cons of the content in the standards themselves, or about the best way to help students achieve the goals.

And for many classroom teachers, the basic appeal of these standards remains as strong as it’s ever been. Even teachers whose instinct is to reject the standards and what they represent often reluctantly agree that the expectations laid out in the Common Core are worth aspiring to. In an online forum, for instance, one ELA teacher put a challenge out to all teachers. She said:

…if you want to criticize David Coleman and the CCSS, then do so. But, do not criticize until you have read the standards, specifically Appendix A. I challenge all teachers that criticism of the CCSS be not personal or political; but be based on solid assertions and well-informed evidence.

Well said. The critics who are trying to politicize the standards would do well to heed this teacher’s sage advice. The question now is whether this brand of classroom-level pragmatism will hold or whether this fighting among an elite chattering class will drive the whole debate in an even more contentious and destructive direction.

This week, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a bill that guarantees high-achieving students a number of accelerated learning opportunities—such as skipping a grade—while making sure parents and kids know how they can take advantage of such possibilities. The measure was championed by State Representative John Legg, who feared that talented students were going through school unchallenged while principals focused on bringing low achievers to proficiency. While other initiatives, such as Advanced Placement programs and dual-enrollment efforts, provide valuable options to top students, studies have shown acceleration to be particularly effective. Yet many educators resist such policies because of (mostly unfounded) fears of negative social consequences for students. Without being overly prescriptive, the new Florida law requires school districts to, at minimum, offer whole-grade and mid-year promotion for eligible students as well as early graduation options. We’re always queasy when states create mandates around schools’ instructional policies, but this might be a case in which a little nudge from above will prod districts to do right by their high-achieving students.

“Fast-Track Academic Path Approved in Florida,” Sean Cavanagh, Education Week Charters & Choice blog, April 30, 2012.

With trivial exceptions, Washington does not run schools, employ teachers, buy textbooks, write curriculum, hand out diplomas, or decide who gets promoted to 5th grade. Historically, it has contributed less than 10 percent of national K-12 spending. So its influence on what happens in U.S. schools is indirect and limited. Yet that influence can be profound, albeit not always in a helpful way.

Uncle Sam is dreadful at micromanaging what actually happens in schools and classrooms. What he's best at is setting agendas and driving priorities. Through a combination of jawboning, incentivizing, regulating, mandating, forbidding, spotlighting, and subsidizing, he can significantly influence the overall direction of the K-12 system and catalyze profound changes in it (though the system is so loosely coupled that these changes occur gradually and incompletely).

Washington's influence on U.S. schools is indirect and limited—but it can also be profound, albeit not always in a helpful way.  Photo by Joe Portnoy.

It's just as well that such big directional shifts don't happen very often, because the change, however gradual, can be wrenching. And it isn't apt to happen much more often in the future, either, because the "federal government" is no single entity. It is, at minimum, three branches, two political parties, 535 members of Congress, innumerable judges, the White House, the Office of Management and Budget, and umpteen executive-branch agencies—a list that only starts with the U.S. Department of Education. Nearly all of these stars must come into rough alignment before anything important begins to change. And that only occurs once in a while, often under extraordinary political or historical circumstances, usually when the country faces a big challenge, crisis, or widespread injustice.

Let's look at seven examples of federal "agenda setters" in K-12 education, one per decade.

1950s. One could legitimately cite Sputnik and the National Defense Education Act, but the decade's real game-changer was the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, striking down government-mandated racial segregation in Southern schools.

1960s. In the name of fostering opportunity, ending poverty, and giving needy kids a boost, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the modern era of federal aid to K-12 education via the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, and the Economic Opportunity Act, which incorporated such high-profile programs as Head Start, the Job Corps, and the "domestic Peace Corps" known as VISTA.

1970s. Enacted in 1976, and signed (with some public misgivings) by President Gerald R. Ford, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, righted another historic wrong by declaring that every youngster with disabilities is entitled to a "free, appropriate public education" in the "least restrictive environment." Combined with the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the law meant public schools now had an obligation to educate such children in ways that responded to their needs.

1980s. Though nominally just a commission report, A Nation at Risk (1983) told Americans that we faced a crisis of educational achievement and began to nudge the country through a 90-degree change of course from the "equity" agenda of the previous quarter-century to the "excellence" obsession of recent decades, complete with academic standards, tests, and results-based accountability systems.

1990 ushered in the first-ever state-by-state results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress as well as the first-ever reporting of NAEP results according to newly established performance benchmarks. This dual development opened a new era of awareness of academic achievement in the United States and made possible the first bona fide comparisons of state performance at a time when state-based reform was in the ascendancy and governors craved such comparisons. It also launched what amounted to the first real set of standards by which to determine just "how good is good enough" when it comes to student achievement in various subjects.

2001 brought passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, a momentous reauthorization of the ESEA, declaring not only that every single student should become "proficient" in math and reading, but also that every school in the land would have its performance reported, both school wide and for its student demographic subgroups, and that schools failing to make "adequate yearly progress" would face a cascade of sanctions and interventions. NCLB transformed the federal government from funder to would-be reformer of American public education. In the course of becoming a reformer, Uncle Sam also became a regulator as never before.

And the present decade opened with the Race to the Top, the brainchild of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, based on the bold hypothesis that sizable grants of federal dollars, disbursed via a competitive process, can induce states to jump through reform policy hoops that they likely would not otherwise have attempted.

American education is a very different enterprise—and for the most part a better enterprise—as a result of these game-changing initiatives from Washington.

Add them up: America desegregated its schools, with respect both to race and handicap. It inaugurated big-time federal aid to K-12 education, initially in the name of equitable opportunity, now more targeted on academic achievement and gap-closing. It devised new ways of assessing, judging, and comparing achievement across the states—and prodded those states to make politically difficult changes to reform a system that wasn't producing satisfactory results. And in the process, unsurprisingly, Washington evolved from funder and equalizer into enforcer and regulator.

None of this worked as well as ardent advocates had hoped. All brought unintended consequences, pushback, and sizable financial burdens. But American education is a very different enterprise—and for the most part a better enterprise—as a result of these game-changing initiatives from Washington.

What causes some federal initiatives to function, at least for a while, as positive game-changers, while so many others almost immediately become duds? I see four conditions:

First, there needs to be a sizable, pent-up problem in need of a large solution—a lot of accumulated pressure seeking a release valve. That's a very different thing from a notional seems-like-a-good-idea or scratch-a-minor-itch add-on to a pre-existing portfolio of programs.

Second, the problem needs to be one that affects the whole country (for example, economic competitiveness, social justice, national security), even if the solution focuses mostly on a region (the segregated South) or significant constituency (kids with disabilities).

Third, the solution needs to be something that can be crafted by implements in the federal toolkit, which is basically limited to financial incentives, regulation of state and district practices, research and data, and litigation or the threat thereof. (And, of course, the bully pulpit itself.)

Fourth, and finally, enough political stars must align—and stay aligned long enough to make a difference.

Not all of them need to be aligned, however. (If they were, the problem would likely have been tackled already.) Congress was not about to outlaw racial segregation in 1954, for example, and plenty of prominent educators declared A Nation at Risk wrong in 1983. Lots of states dragged their heels big-time on No Child Left Behind, and any number of psychometricians denounced the NAEP achievement levels.

But there has to be enough oomph of one kind or another—moral, economic, political, judicial, even occasionally (in the case of school segregation) military—behind these kinds of changes for them to overcome resistance and gain real traction. And when that oomph diminishes—whether because of fresh election returns, limited attention span, newfound prosperity, exhaustion, backlash, or whatever—what remains may be a country with its education direction lastingly changed for the better. Or it may be the husk of yet another federal initiative that was promising at the start but grew stale, obsolete, or oppressive. Or both.

This editorial originally appeared as a commentary in Education Week and is adapted from an essay in the book Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit (Harvard Education Press, 2011).

Designer Kenneth Cole dipped his toe into the education reform fray recently with a New York City billboard that framed “teachers’ rights vs. students’ rights” as an issue in his foundation’s “Where Do You Stand?” campaign. The offending sign was quickly scrapped amidst the ensuing Internet furor, but its very existence should give reformers pause: Education reform is an increasingly mainstream cause, but one that will bring plenty of headaches if billboard rhetoric replaces serious discourse.

As he is obliged to do, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan defended the Obama Administration’s education track record this week, describing “transformational change” that is “beginning to fundamentally improve the lives of students.” While not everyone shares Arne’s rosy assessment, it’s worth reviewing in case Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney decides to run as the “education candidate” in 2012.

Attorney (and dogged special-ed reformer) Miriam Kurtzig Freedman provided four sound ideas for updating this entire realm in a recent essay for TheAtlantic.com, wherein she outlines outlining a less bureaucratic, less litigious, and more commonsensical approach. Here’s hoping lawmakers give Freedman a read.

Ten years ago, George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, the law that has dominated U.S. education—and the education policy debate—for the entire decade. While lawmakers are struggling to update that measure, experts across the political spectrum are struggling to make sense of its impact and legacy. Did NCLB, and the consequential accountability movement it embodied, succeed? And with near-stagnant national test scores of late, is there reason to think that this approach to school reform is exhausted? If not "consequential accountability," what could take the U.S. to the next level of student achievement?

Join three leading experts as they wrestle with these questions. Panelists include Hoover Institute economist Eric Hanushek, DFER's Charles Barone, and former NCES commissioner Mark Schneider, author of a forthcoming Fordham analysis of the effects of consequential accountability. NCLB drafter Sandy Kress, previously identified as a panelist, was unable to attend.

Ten years ago, George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, the law that has dominated U.S. education—and the education policy debate—for the entire decade. While lawmakers are struggling to update that measure, experts across the political spectrum are struggling to make sense of its impact and legacy. Did NCLB, and the consequential accountability movement it embodied, succeed? And with near-stagnant national test scores of late, is there reason to think that this approach to school reform is exhausted? If not "consequential accountability," what could take the U.S. to the next level of student achievement?

Join three leading experts as they wrestle with these questions. Panelists include Hoover Institute economist Eric Hanushek, DFER's Charles Barone, and former NCES commissioner Mark Schneider, author of a forthcoming Fordham analysis of the effects of consequential accountability. NCLB drafter Sandy Kress, previously identified as a panelist, was unable to attend.

For school administrators and board members lost in the forest of books, reports, and briefs written on “doing more with less,” this outstanding volume provides a compass, map, and sturdy walking stick. Finance guru (and former superintendent of Arlington [MA] Public Schools) Nathan Levenson offers rational, honest, and tangible ways for cash-strapped district leaders to shed budget heft without compromising student learning. Guided by four principles—embrace “crazy” ideas, analyze details to make informed decisions, spend on what works, and align interests—Levenson explains how to manage even the most sacrosanct of education-budget items (all without the need for legislative changes or union approval). For example, district leaders should base funding on academic return on investment (A-ROI) determinations—cutting ineffective programs and beefing up those that see results. Take early investment in reading: In an average-sized elementary school (about 400 students), early reading intervention costs about $2,500 per child (and takes about three years to get struggling students up to grade level). Compare this with special-education referral and placement—which costs an additional $5,000 per year (for mild to moderately disabled students) and likely will last throughout the student’s K-12 career. This need to look beyond singular budget line-items manifests in staffing costs as well. Superintendents must think about fully loaded costs (salary plus benefits) when planning for personnel shifts—and must be willing to think creatively about how to fill certain positions. Levenson provides an anecdote: To save the district long-term dollars, he reclassified a part-time clerical office position as “paraprofessional” (meaning that it didn’t qualify for benefits packages or fit union rules for automatic salary step increases). The first fully loaded cost totaled about $80,000 for the position instead of $350,000 in the old system. Along with these insightful and concrete examples, Levenson provides sample budgets, staffing formulae, and worksheets—all geared toward helping readers find specific solutions to their individual districts’ budget woes. (The book also has a linked online tool that further simplifies this process for district admins.) It blazes a clear trail to leaner and more productive district spending—prepare to take notes.

Nathan Levenson, Smarter Budgets, Smarter Schools: How to Survive and Thrive in Tight Times (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2012).

The bullish economy that greeted high school and college graduates in 2006, when the feds last revamped career and technical education (CTE) programs, looks like ancient history six years later. Gone are many easy entrance points into steady careers, especially for “classically” trained liberal-arts majors. Yet despite high unemployment rates, firms complain of too few qualified applicants for their technical and blue-collar positions—making smart implementation of strong CTE policies all the more important. The Obama Administration’s recently released blueprint for overhauling the Perkins Act (which will dole out $1.14 billion in FY 2012) offers a thoughtful way forward. It looks to bridge the divide between employers’ needs and potential workers’ skills through four core principles: alignment (between CTE programs and labor market needs), collaboration (among secondary, postsecondary, and industry partners), accountability (based on common definitions and clear metrics), and innovation (supported by systemic reform). Accountability will prove the trickiest: CTE must shed the stigma that it’s a watered-down track for disruptive, lazy, or low-performing kids, meaning programs bearing this label must be held accountable for actually producing graduates who are well prepared for available jobs. Still, the blueprint offers an interesting solution: Create intra-state competitions to distribute funds, allowing these jurisdictions more autonomy to be responsive to regional market needs. This focus on working with employers to ensure excellent CTE education opportunities for all marks a promising start.

Office of Vocational and Adult Education, Investing in America’s Future: A Blueprint for Transforming Career and Technical Education, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2012).

Education Week’s latest report provides readers with an overview of the concerns and challenges—and a few of the early successes—surrounding implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). This compilation of six articles offers anecdotal information on a number of “early adopter” districts—including specifics on how the Common Core may affect classroom instruction and content delivery. According to the report, most early adopters are phasing in the CCSS, initially for Kindergarteners and first graders only; a number of them are collaborating on curriculum development and training materials—all available via open-source online portals. Still more are incorporating the special-education teaching tactics of “universal design for learning” (UDL) and “response to intervention” (RTI)—which promote flexible classroom materials and help individualize instruction—into general-education learning. Some promising initiatives are afoot—but Ed Week’s anecdotes (as well as its inattention to how states are preparing for Common Core assessments and linked accountability systems) do little to assuage fears that CCSS implementation is moving too slowly.

Education Week, Math, Literacy, & Common Standards (Bethesda, MD: Editorial Projects in Education, April 2012).

Pre-Kindergarten funding is in a precarious position. Over the last two years, more than $90 million has been trimmed from pre-K programs. And, as ARRA wells run dry, more cuts to this $5.5 billion enterprise are on the way. This while enrollment continues to creep up. That’s the news from this tenth yearbook by the National Institute for Early Education Research which, despite its name, must be counted as an advocacy outfit. The briefing is chockablock with statistics on enrollment, length of school day, class-size requirements, and more. But it tells us little about quality or efficiency, such as just how much bang are we getting for our preschool buck? (While the report does comment on pre-K quality, the metrics it uses are wholly input based; states that spend more on pre-K programming rank higher in quality.) As resources become ever scarcer throughout our education system, a rethink of how we fund preschool—and how we measure its quality and gauge its efficacy—is long past due.

W. Steven Barnett, Megan E. Carolan, Jen Fitzgerald, and James H. Squires, The State of Preschool 2011 (Newark, NJ: National Institute of Early Education Research, April 2012).