Posts filed under 'Education'
Have said it before and will say it again: If Obama comes out for school choice, he has my vote. If he does not have the courage to do that, he is not a new kind of leader. Full stop. Given a bit too much pandering criticism of basic elements of NCLB’s accountability provisions, one wonders if there is any hope of even a half-substantive approach on education. One hopes… which is what we are supposed to do with the Obama campaign.
Other leaders, like Joel Klein of NYC and Michelle Rhee of DC are more constructive on NCLB. For example, in testimony before the House Committee on Education and Labor, Rhee, who runs probably the most difficult urban district in the nation, called for bolder action to tie accountability standards in NCLB to merit pay. The US News summarized her testimony as
offer[ing]ed another idea to improve NCLB that has also been highly contentious: tying teacher pay to student outcomes. As the head of the only school district in the nation that has fallen into “high-risk” status with the federal government for its dismal performance, Rhee is trying to narrow the achievement gap by getting rid of ineffective teachers and using bonuses to encourage the best ones to work in challenging schools. Ultimately, she wants to evaluate teachers based on test scores and other measures of student performance.
Jonathan Alter in the latest Newsweek asks why Obama isn’t stronger on the question of “higher pay for teachers in exchange for much more accountability for performance in the classroom.”
Teachers unions bristle at the business comparison. But they should listen to Andy Stern, head of the nation’s largest union, the SEIU: “Education is like any business. You need a return on investment. Outcomes do matter. Paying people according to outcomes does matter. I don’t care if a teacher has a high-school degree, college or a Ph.D. if he or she can produce results.” Stern is worried that if his brethren in the teachers unions don’t embrace accountability now, “parents will vote with their choices” and the unions will begin dying, as they already are in reform-minded cities like Washington, D.C., and New Orleans.
If Stern can say that, why not Obama?
Yeah.
July 18th, 2008
In June Mike Rebell, an experienced litigator with expertise in taking on states in funding “adequacy” lawsuits, held an advocacy conference in D.C. It was called the 7th Annual Quality Education Conference, and one of the speakers on the program was Justice John Greaney of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Justice Greaney gave what to many will seem a shocking presentation.
The document gives remarkable insight into what the good Judge would have done in taking over the state’s education business, had his side prevailed in the Hancock v. Driscoll (2005) case.
Greaney’s June presentation is striking for, as a friend as put it,
Its breathtaking arrogance and the Judge’s elevated view of the court’s “special skills,” independence from special interests — all of whom he says he would then invite to participate in the remedy! — and ability at “truth finding.”
At the same time, he dismisses the majority opinion in Hancock as “utterly unpersuasive” (evidently they don’t have the same ability at “truth finding” that he possesses), and attributes the decision to “what can happen when membership on the court changes.” So perhaps he’s saying that the court membership is not so independent after all?
He seems pretty upset by the fact that his colleagues on the court had the wisdom to see the quagmire they faced. As Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe, in a piece published the day after the Hancock decision in February 2005 noted:
[T]he high court dealt a stunning loss to those who had hoped to sidestep the political process to achieve court-ordered remedies. That includes the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, two unions that had provided most of the funding for the so-called Hancock lawsuit alleging serious underfunding.
Lehigh was spot on in noting that “the high court actually ended its long-running role in monitoring the state’s educational efforts.”
He was also right to note that “[i]n arriving at its decision, the SJC ignored the recommendations of [then] Superior Court Judge Margot Botsford, whom it had appointed to make a finding of fact on the case.”
The problem is that Judge Botsford now sits on the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, appointed by Governor Deval Patrick. With the membership of the court changed, and with Botsford now sitting on the bench beside Greaney, the MTA knows that it is one seat away from clear sailing…
The implication of this presentation is crystal clear: As court membership changes, Judge Greaney and the MTA are all for court control of the schools.
July 15th, 2008
From the weekend Wall Street Journal, an editorial worth noting. The Wrong Education Fix notes that there are Republicans who have gone soft on the accountability measures associated with the No Child Left Behind Act. On the other hand:
What’s heartening about this story is who has lined up to block this nonsense. The coalition includes the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights, the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the National Urban League, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and more than a dozen other liberal outfits.
In a letter to House members, the coalition said it opposed the proposal because “it would allow states, districts, and schools to receive federal funding under the No Child Left Behind Act with no accountability for complying with key provisions of the law.”
Accountability matters to most everybody, no matter what their political persuasion. Thus the disappointment we feel at the Governor’s shuttering of the state’s independent accountability office. Really, shame on you, Governor. For all the talk about leadership on education, this single action risks putting us behind other states in terms of performance. The state’s accountability office cost $3 million a year, to provide transparency for the $9 billion (with a B) that we spend annually on education. Didn’t we learn anything from the Big Dig?
July 15th, 2008
“Do they deserve tickets out too?” That was the question posed to then candidate Deval Patrick by David Gergen during the October 19 gubernatorial debate. He was referring to school choice and public charter schools — chances that were made available to Mr. Patrick as a child, and choices that Governor Patrick has made for his own children.
The relevant portion of the debate:
Moderator: Mr. Patrick, you talked about the need for change. I’d like to ask you, sir, about the change in public education. This question: when you were young, you won a scholarship to go off to the Milton Academy. You essentially won a ticket out of poorly-performing public schools to go to a private school where you blossomed and you have a stirring life story. Why sir, then are you so opposed to giving tickets to children who are now in public schools in Massachusetts who might want to go to a charter school or they might want a voucher. Do they deserve tickets out too?
Patrick: Well, I’ll tell you, first of all, I’m not opposed to charter schools. I think they have a critical role to play in education reform. We’ve been on this journey, I think we ought to continue on this journey.
Moderator: Right, but what about the question - there’s a lid, as you know, on charter schools. You’re opposed to lifting the lid.
Patrick: I’m coming to that and I think we can lift the cap on the number of charter schools, David, when we fix the funding formula, and it’s broken right now. What it creates is an unnecessary and I think, unhelpful tension between the families of the kids in district schools- traditional public schools- and the families of kids in charter schools. And it disserves both. It seems to me that if the state is going to support this element of education reform - and I think that’s important - then the state has to step up and provide the kind of funding that makes both charter schools and district schools flourish. That’s one point. Second point I’d make is, I want the best innovations that come from the best charter schools- and they’re not all great, but the best of them- to be imported into the district schools- whatever that takes. And I will tell you, having talked with teachers and parents and kids, frankly, who are in the district schools, and many who are in the charter school movement- they want that collaboration, too. That’s a leadership issue.
Ross: Yeah, I think, Deval, it’s interesting when I hear you say things like that because I’ve been in many debates with you and that’s the first time I’ve heard you say that maybe someday we’ll lift the cap.
Yep, it’s a leadership issue. And a campaign promise. A year and a half into the administration’s tenure, we have had numerous education task forces and an unwieldy set of proposals, many of which are still in the trial balloon stage.
The key question on the table is the achievement gap. Charters have outperformed district schools and pilot schools in urban districts. We need some urgency — the same kind of urgency we all have for our children. More years, more talk, more task forces, will not do.
It seems Grace Ross was prescient on this one.
July 10th, 2008
Massachusetts is supposedly in a “new era of education reform,” according to many a press release from the Governor’s office. I like the merit/differential pay idea and a couple of other items, but the Readiness proposal is just a sketch at this point. Kind of odd for one year’s worth of work. Feel like we in Massachusetts have gotten complacent and are “adrift in the edu-sphere,” as the Globe editorial put a few months back.
On the other hand, there has been building momentum in Florida. Florida is pretty wise in terms of reform — as it experiments it seeks stronger accountability models, especially when compared to some other voucher and choice systems. Choice is no panacea. You need high academic standards and accountability; otherwise, there is no way to know if what you are buying is a good product.
Christin Coyne of the School Reform News reports on the opportunity to move the dial further in Florida. Florida’s Taxation and Budget Reform Commission meets once every 20 years. It can place popular referendum items on the election ballot — and this year it did so. As my dad used to say, and what a doozy (blog etymologists please weight in on the spelling of doozy…) it is!
Florida voters can do away with the state’s Blaine amendment to the constitution, which bans state aid to religious institutions.
In 2004 a Florida appellate court struck down Bush’s statewide school voucher program for students in failing public schools, the A+ Opportunity Scholarship Program, as unconstitutional, citing the Blaine amendment.
The ballot initiative is simple. It inserts:
a new sentence stating “individuals or entities may not be barred from participating in public programs because of their religion” would essentially replace the Blaine amendment wording, which states “no revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”
(Yes, Massachusetts is one of 36 other states with a Blaine amendment. Oddly, the amendment seems only to K-12 education… I wonder what Boston College would think if the same restriction on aid to religious institutions were applied to higher ed.) Good luck, Florida.
July 9th, 2008
In DC and pick up a paper and it is all DC Public School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, all the time. We hear a lot of talk about a new era in education reform in Massachusetts, but during the Romney administration the focus was not there and during the first two years of the Patrick administration there have been backward steps, moving of some boxes (Board of Ed, creation of a Secretary of Education, etc.), but no real action.
Compare that to the urgency of Mayor Adrian Fenty and Chancellor Rhee. In the WaPo today, there is an op-ed by Margaret Spellings calling for the continuation of the DC voucher program (also supported by Fenty and Rhee, who care less for party and more for the kids).
Signed into law by President Bush four years ago, the program is the first to provide federally funded education vouchers to students. It awards up to $7,500 per child for tuition, transportation and fees; in 2007-08 it enabled 1,900 students from the underperforming Washington public school system — the highest total yet — to attend the private or religious schools of their choice.
Results?
An independent study of the program released last year confirms this parental satisfaction… The IES study reported academic gains in reading by three student subgroups, totaling nearly 90 percent of all students. They gained the equivalent of two to four extra months of learning. An IES report last year found increased math scores among some of the same subgroups.
This is especially impressive when you consider that nearly all of the participating students are from families that are at or below the poverty line; the average income of participating families is $22,736, only $2,000 above the poverty level for a family of four. Ninety-nine percent of the children are African American or Hispanic. Many escaped poorly performing public schools, where they worked below grade level in a city that has struggled for years to educate its young.
Some in Congress (many of whom send their kids to private schools) are still opposing the program. Spellings notes:
If Congress were to discontinue funding for D.C. opportunity scholarships, 86 percent of the students would be reassigned to schools that did not meet “adequate yearly progress” goals in reading and math for 2006-07. We cannot allow that to happen. Fortunately, Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee share my enthusiasm for reform. It’s an exciting time for education in Washington. The three-sector approach enjoys strong support among District residents. It has been a catalyst for innovation. It may also inspire other cities to develop their own scholarship programs.
If Congress (R & D) tends to be all talk, Fenty and Rhee show what local public leaders can do. And fast.
July 8th, 2008
If McCain wins? No, I don’t think so. He cannot win the debate given the numbers in Congress. Obama? No, I don’t think so. As this space has noted many times, he is the person best positioned to do the Nixon in China routine, but he has changed his position on the issue, well, effectively. Before the Wisconsin primary he was for vouchers. The day after his campaign “clarified” his position. A pity, but that is also political reality.
What I am referring to is that, as Joe Follick of School Reform News reports,
A commission agreed to give voters an opportunity to reverse a 2006 Florida Supreme Court decision that found then-Gov. Jeb Bush’s prized voucher program unconstitutional.
It is going to be really hard to defeat this referendum item. Why? After all, voucher initiatives were defeated in California and Utah. Well, try this on for size:
To help sweeten the measure for voters, the proposal was abruptly joined with an unrelated plan that requires school districts to spend at least 65 percent of their revenue on “classroom instruction rather than on administration.”
Expect no movement at the federal level. The action is all at the state level.
July 8th, 2008
In today’s WaPo, the second editorial is dedicated to even more change in the DC Public Schools. After moving resources out to the schools, closing and rationalizing the distribution of resources among schools, implementing accountability in the central office and out in the field, DC Public School Chancellor Michelle Rhee has moved to attract a new cadre of teachers by changing the terms of engagement — the contract and compensation for teachers.
DISTRICT SCHOOL officials are drafting a bold plan to revolutionize how teachers are paid. So exciting is the proposal that Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has persuaded outside foundations to pony up millions of dollars to underwrite the plan as a national test case. D.C. teachers could become among the highest-paid in the country, but, predictably, opposition is being fomented by those fearful of any change. They should not squander a unique opportunity for teachers and the students they serve.
Months of negotiations with the Washington Teachers’ Union have resulted in the broad outlines of a plan that would provide for two pay scales. Teachers in both categories would get raises, but only those willing to forgo tenure and the salary steps of seniority would be in line for thousands of dollars in bonuses and special awards. Compensation for teachers in this new tier would be linked to their effectiveness in the classroom, as measured by student achievement. Teachers could almost double their salaries, in some cases earning up to $131,000. Imagine the kind of talent the hard-pressed system could attract. Instead of facing the loss of promising teachers to better-paying jobs in the suburbs, the city would be able to fashion an exciting new workforce in which positive results — and the teachers who bring them about — are rewarded. No teacher with tenure would be forced to give up seniority-based benefits; the new salary structure would be voluntary, save for those new to the system. Indeed, we wonder whether the proposal is overly generous, in that ineffective teachers, no matter their seniority, should not be tolerated, much less rewarded with raises.
The real winners would be the students. Not only would there be a powerful incentive to make a difference in the classroom, there would be new flexibility in how teachers are assigned. No longer would seniority be the sole determinant of which school gets which teacher; there would have to be mutual agreement between teachers and principals.
There was no year-long planning process, no circling the wagons of special interests. Fenty decided it was important and found the right person to do the job. Pretty inspirational stuff to see one of the worst public school districts in the nation undergoing so much reform.
July 8th, 2008
Interesting overseas item: it seems that Amsterdam, one-third of whose population is now immigrant, is looking to the U.S. for solutions to help desegregate its schools. Among the cities whose school selection process Dutch officials are taking a look at are Seattle and Boston.
As our own Steve Poftak pointed out last year in an op-ed in the Dorchester Reporter, Boston’s school selection process is bewilderingly complex and, at the end of the day, doesn’t respond to the choices the city’s parents are clearly making.
Here’s hoping Dutch officials don’t fall into the same trap.
July 2nd, 2008
At long last the Readiness Project’s report has been released. The subcommittees that constituted this effort met for months, the report’s release was pushed back twice and, once it was ready, it seemed like the administration was intent on milking news coverage for all it was worth by leaking the report in dribs and drabs. But it is now out and you can download it here.
General reaction has so far been mixed - simply because of the sheer number of recommendations outlined in the report. The most controversial seem to be the recommendations to regionalize smaller school districts to create economies of scale and to negotiate one, state-wide teachers’ contract rather than 391 separate district-level contracts. (Read the Worcester Telegram & Gazette’s reaction here.)
There has also been some grumbling on both sides of education’s political spectrum: on the left because the Governor remains committed to MCAS as a graduation requirement and on the right because the report includes nary a word about charter schools. In fact, as I discussed in a previous post, there were even rumours that the administration was considering a freeze on charters as a carrot to districts to opt into their readiness plan.
As I’ve read all of the reaction in the press and on blogs, I’ve formed a tentative conclusion - not as to the plan itself, however, but as to the pole positions held by the people doing the reacting. For it seems to me that how one reacts to the Readiness Project is based almost entirely on whether you take the Governor and his administration at their word.
For example, anonymous sources within the administration are quoted as saying that the readiness recommendations, specifically the readiness schools as outlined in the report, will be the Governor’s attempt to reform public education in Massachusetts with all of the major stakeholders at the table, but that, if the stakeholders are unwilling to play along and enact the necessary reforms from within, the Governor has no compunction against reforming the system from without, including expanding charter schools. From The Boston Globe:
The administration official said that the charter school debate has reached a stalemate in the Legislature, forcing Patrick to look for new options to provide communities with school choice and innovation. But if Readiness Schools don’t take off, Patrick may revive the charter debate, the official said.
If you trust the Governor, you are far more likely to view this as a pragmatic approach to reform, that the readiness schools, which, if enacted, will incorporate a number of the successful lessons gleaned from charter and pilot schools, represent the best compromise the Governor can reasonably expect to achieve in the current political climate and he should be congratulated for moving the debate as far as he could.
If you don’t trust the Governor, you are likely to view readiness schools as a Trojan horse built to destroy charter schools.
Likewise the state-wide teacher contract. If you trust the Governor, you might view this as a way to clear a path to reform, that instituting contract and salary reforms such as differential pay for hard-to-staff schools and subjects and even merit pay based on real student academic achievement will be far easier to achieve if it only need be negotiated once and not 391 times.
If you don’t trust the Governor, however, you might view the state-wide contract as his attempt to give away the store by offering inflated salaries and benefits. (Personally, I think the state-wide contract is a no go, simply because of the disparity in pay and benefits between districts such as Chelsea, where I used to teach, and Lexington. To bring teachers in the Chelseas of the world up to the same pay scale as in the Lexingtons of the world would be prohibitively expensive and I’m pretty sure teachers in Lexington aren’t going to accede to the salary and benefits outlined in Chelsea’s contract. Though, it should be pointed out that, if implemented, a state-wide contract would dramatically reduce the financial incentive for proven, mid-career teachers to leave tough, urban districts for leafier, suburban ones and that would definitely be a good thing.)
All of this is to say that the Governor’s readiness project may tell us less about the state of education in Massachusetts than it does about our own political prejudices.
June 28th, 2008
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