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A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute

January 14, 2010, Volume 10, Number 2

Breaking News Issue: take care below--some of our content is so hot off the presses, you might burn your fingers.

This week on The Education Gadfly Show Podcast: Stafford makes Rick cry

From Checker's Desk

Is 2010 the Year for NCLB?

The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald F. Seib is wise in the ways of Washington and practiced at reading its political entrails. But is he right to think that K–12 education is the great centrist issue of 2010--and that it will reignite the Democrats’ prospects by appealing to independents and least a few Republicans? Hmmm.

In a column on Democratic “opportunities to disperse storm clouds,” Seib wrote the other day that party leaders need to “find an issue that is popular in the political middle,” that some Democrats think education is such an issue, and that “Education Secretary Arne Duncan is taking steps that have actual bipartisan appeal.” As examples, he cited “forcing changes in ossified education systems by making states actually compete to win federal grants” and “helping parents with college access and affordability.” He says we should “look for more from the president on that.”

This may well happen as budget and state-of-the-union time draws nigh and the White House settles on its themes for the year ahead. Even without opening the Pandora’s box of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the administration’s “Race to the Top” (RTT) program will focus the attention of educators and state and local officials during 2010, and the administration’s final decisions on RTT will signal much about its approach to education policy and the federal role therein.

Arne Duncan and his colleagues have hinted that the priorities of RTT will also animate their NCLB proposal--and that they’re close to unveiling such a proposal and urging Congress to get cracking. Reauthorization of that contentious, landmark act is already three years late, and a big reason for that delay has been the absence of a plan that both Democrats and Republicans could support. If, indeed, the Duncan team proffers such a plan, it’s imaginable that Congress will indeed start to move.

Yet there are obstacles aplenty that have little to do with NCLB itself. This year brings an exceptionally hard-fought election. While each party would surely gain by attracting lots of independent voters, it’s not obvious that “bipartisanship” per se would turn out to be an asset to either side. The GOP in particular may judge that its November prospects benefit more from painting the administration and Congressional majority in the worst possible light than from cooperating with them. (Indeed, Seib’s analysis suggests that “bipartisanship” would work to the political advantage of Democrats.) Underscoring that calculus is the rancid mood left by the health-care fracas with its 60–40 votes in the Senate. Republicans on the Hill--and a nation of conservatives--are also still smarting from Obama’s assent to phasing out the D.C. voucher program. Then there’s the plain fact that neither Senate education chairman Tom Harkin nor ranking House member John Kline is anyone’s idea of a centrist.

Duncan is a centrist sort, however, and--riding the RTT wave (which could still crash down upon him)--can be expected to strive to convince both sides that the best interests of kids and schools call for an NCLB makeover that can only happen if each side yields some traditional ground.

For what it’s worth, we at Fordham sketched such a package a year ago, and our plan still has merit. Partly paralleling our suggestions--especially the precept of “tight about ends, loose as to means,” an inversion of the NCLB approach--but mostly on their own, the Duncan team emerged from 2009 with astute insights into federal policy and some appealing NCLB themes of their own.

Duncan and assistant secretary Carmel Martin outlined these in a recent interview with Education Week. In her words,

Continuing a strong focus on teachers and leaders and talent more generally. To continue to focus on college-ready common standards and assessments matched against those standards. Continuing the focus on the lowest performing schools, how we’re going to take aggressive action to turn them around. And continuing the focus on the data....Another big goal...is to improve the accountability system...helping to create incentives to move towards this new higher college- and career-ready set of standards....Continuing this disaggregation of data and looking at how the subgroups are doing. Also moving toward the growth model....Having a much stronger focus on rewards for high-performing schools, high-performing districts, high-performing states....We’re trying to find ways to create incentives and rewards for high performers at every level.

Add charter schools--ano ther Obama-Duncan favorite-- to this mix and one can see, at least thematically, an appealing, centrist sort of package. Yet actually enacting such a thing, not as one-time money like the stimulus package, but as part of the infrastructure of federal education policy for the long haul, will require major rethinking on both sides of the aisle. Democrats will have to agree to reward educational success and intervene forcefully in instances of failure. The former could mean shifting monies away from what have historically been deemed the “neediest” schools and districts, while the latter entails actions that teachers’ unions typically abhor. (So does rewarding exceptionally effective teachers, another oft-voiced administration priority.) For their part, GOP lawmakers (many of whom have been critical of NCLB) would need to buy into national (okay, “common”) standards and tests, to tie NCLB accountability to them, and to recognize that Washington is now charting the basic direction of U.S. education and prescribing its goals, norms, and standards.

In return, Republicans may be able to claim substantially increased state and local discretion in the actual operation of the education system as well as more and better choices via the charter sector. And Democrats may be able to boast significantly increased federal education spending and a laser-like focus on the performance of poor and minority children and the schools that serve them. The unions would applaud any loosening of federal micro-management of the “means” of education--though that will cause the “education reform” community to gag; they view all the gyrations by states to qualify for RTT dollars as proof of the efficacy of heavy-handedness by Washington.

It’s an appealing prospect, though, at least to me, and a package with centrist potential. That it’s a mighty heavy lift politically doesn’t seem to deter Duncan, who insists that “we really want this to be a bipartisan effort. We’re spending lots of time in the House and Senate on both sides of the aisle....I continue to think that education is the one area that has to rise above politics....The goal isn’t to get to 100 percent consensus. There’s got to be a body of substance that folks can come together behind. I think we have an opportunity to do that. Conversations on both sides of the aisle have been very, very encouraging.”

One can only wish him well. It won’t be any walk in the park.

This piece originally appeared in another form on National Review Online.

by Chester E. Finn, Jr.

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News and Analysis

Refinancing education's personnel

Human capital discussions in education nowadays typically start with the problem of “incompetent” teachers and what to do about them. The very notion of wholly-inept instructors in children’s classrooms inflames the emotions (think Steven Brill’s colorful New Yorker piece) and sometimes leads on to discussion of such other HR issues as tenure, compensation, hiring and firing rules, and evaluation. But “incompetents” are also a sort of distraction, as nobody thinks they comprise more than a tiny fraction of the total teacher workforce. When it comes to reforming HR practices, we might be better served to start with the challenges of mediocre-to-average teachers (and principals, too, for that matter) as they are far more numerous and cost taxpayers--and children--far more.

Teacher salaries and benefits typically comprise at least half of education budgets—and other school employees bring the total personnel cost to about three-fourths. At our “Penny Saved” conference on Monday, devoted to finding (and illustrating) ways that school systems can produce better results while spending less money, HR issues came up in virtually every discussion. It was evident that any serious budgetary reform in education is going to involve a serious rethinking and resizing of school staffing. So will any serious quality reforms. (You can access the conference papers here. They repay attention.)

Over the last forty years, we increased the size of the U.S. teaching profession both in absolute terms (47.9 percent between 1980 and 2006, for example) and relative to student enrollment numbers (the pupil-teacher ratio dropped from the high twenties to mid-teens since the mid-1950s). Though per-pupil spending rose dramatically, individual teacher salaries barely budged (in real terms). That’s because America opted for quantity over quality. (This point has been made before.) And at no point along the line did we--our public-school system, anyway--develop the kinds of evaluation systems we would need if we were winnowing the teacher corps according to performance or effectiveness. Almost no winnowing occurred, so why develop winnowing procedures, which, in any case, teachers and their powerful unions disliked?

But budgetary woes, Race to the Top, and technology are starting to turn the tide. Not only are teacher evaluations becoming methodologically stronger, but actually using them in personnel decisions is beginning to catch on. Not fast, to be sure, but there’s every reason to expect early moves to lead to more.

Two tactics are getting a bit of traction: removing seniority as a criterion of RIF-ing procedures and assignment practices, and breaking down firewalls between student performance data and teacher evaluations. On the first count, the Arizona legislature has forbidden school systems to use seniority and tenure in making firing decisions. This means districts can consider such factors as classroom effectiveness in making those choices and can (and perhaps must) renegotiate terms with local teacher unions on the subject. Rhode Island State Superintendent Deborah Gist didn’t go quite as far when she banned seniority bumping rights in the Ocean State but California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is currently drafting legislation that would loosen the state’s seniority-driven firing rules and eliminate a state-run appeals process that typically overturns a third of teacher dismissals.

As for linking student data and teacher evaluations, Arne Duncan has given this a considerable boost both by jawboning about it and by linking states’ Race to the Top eligibility to it (at least to not having laws that ban it). In November, Wisconsin received plaudits for knocking down the wall between student data and teacher evaluations; unfortunately, almost in the same breath, the state also banned the use of those data-driven teacher evaluations in teacher firing decisions. Perhaps Houston superintendent Terry Grier will have better luck. He hopes to implement a system where the value-added teacher evaluation model that the district currently uses to dole out performance bonuses will also be used in firing decisions. He sought to do that in his last post in San Diego but ran into a brick wall. Doing it well, of course, depends on having a well-engineered and accurate evaluation system, both in terms of fairly gauging teacher effectiveness and having the data infrastructure to back it up.

Performance evaluations of teachers have historically been infrequent and perfunctory, because the alternative w as costly and contentious. In a study of four states, The New Teacher Project found last year that an absurd 99 percent of teachers receive A’s or the equivalent on such evaluations. Last month we learned that Detroit teachers hadn’t been evaluated at all in more than a decade. Gist mandated earlier this year that Rhode Island districts revamp their teacher evaluation systems, according to a set of new standards developed by her office, and use them annually, a huge jump in frequency from previous practice.

We learned the other day that Teach For America has been collecting data on its (now) 7,300 corps members in various forms for the last twenty years. Since 2002, it’s been refining its recruitment and selection process to favor candidates who reflect a few “superstar” tendencies, such as setting big goals for themselves, constantly reevaluating their practice, meticulous and outcome-orientated planning, and relentlessness or “grit.” The real meat of TFA’s painstaking and highly-selective admissions process, which uses such data to predict potential corps members’ classroom success, will become public next month. And overhauls like Gist’s will likely inform other states’ attempts to make similar changes to their evaluation systems. The black box that is the classroom is now dimly illuminated by a sliver of light.

Opening the shades a bit wider, we find the AFT’s Randi Weingarten offering to reform teacher evaluations. In a National Press Club speech this week (see below), she said that our obsession with ineffective teachers “fails to recognize that we have a systems problem.” She went on to outline a four-part plan to overhaul teacher evaluations and dismissal procedures. Weingarten has thus given local affiliates cover to agree to more robust evaluation systems. Which doesn’t necessarily mean they will. But still and all, her words matter, because without giving principals and district leaders the ability to use evaluations in teacher staffing and firing decisions, they will remain largely meaningless.

We’re seeing slow progress. We have better evaluations, better data systems, state and local leaders somewhat more willing to use them, and a union whose chief says she’s willing to help make this happen. In the long run, changes in teacher evaluation could yield fiscal savings, too, as well as better use of the available personnel dollars. After all, if seismic changes in education finance are destined to force states and districts to rethink their HR budgets, shouldn’t we make sure that the teachers we engage, pay, and retain are the best ones?

by Stafford Palmieri

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Short Reviews

Quality Counts 2010: Fresh Course, Swift Current--Momentum and Challenges in the New Surge Toward Common Standards

Editorial Projects in Education
January 2010

For better or for worse, Education Week’s annual Quality Counts feature, now celebrating its thirteenth birthday, is the closest thing we have to a comprehensive annual report card on American K-12 education. Unfortunately, it’s fraught with methodological weaknesses. (Last year’s was too.) The state-by-state grades--which will inevitably grab most of the headlines--are actually the least reliable component. The grading is at times arbitrary (teacher experience is used to measure teacher quality, an unproven correlation), unfair (is the annual income of someone who graduated high school in 1965 really a good reflection of a state’s education system in 2010?), and redundant (NAEP scores are factored into both the Chance for Success and K-12 Achievement indices, and both children’s family income and statewide adult income are factored into Chance for Success). Such problems are nicely illuminated by CREDO’s Margaret Raymond in a new piece in Education Next. Raymond also recalculates some of the state grades on a fairer scale, with striking results. We’re glad to see people are beginning to cast a critical eye on QC. Still and all, the raw data that EPE gathers are valuable and reward analysis. Also deserving a look is this year’s focus theme--common standards, of course--and a new “Math Progress Index.” The report is available here--free to online subscribers, or in print for a small fee.

by Jack Byers

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How State Charter Laws Rank Against The New Model Public Charter School Law

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
January 2010

Finally, a strong, modern, quality-centered metric by which to judge the strength of state charter laws! The Center for Education Reform did pioneering and valuable work in this area but its metric is limited and somewhat archaic, having more to do with schools’ freedom from regulation than with their performance or their states’ accountability expectations. In this new report, the Alliance compares actual state charter laws with a model law that they developed, and ranks the forty states with such laws on elements like quality, accountability, and funding equity. “Quality control” measures (e.g., requiring performance-based contracts and having comprehensive charter school monitoring and data collection processes) are weighted the most heavily. Minnesota, DC, and California came out on top; Iowa, Alaska, and Maryland at the bottom. The indicators are presented separately so that state policyma kers, charter advocates, foes, and researchers alike can zero in on the elements that matter most to them. There’s a minor methodological quibble, however, which is more one of adequate explanation than analytical error; NAPCS fails to differentiate which scores derive specifically from state laws and which also derive from practice, which they took into consideration in three of the categories (e.g., on charter caps, they consider also if the state is at or approaching the cap). You can find the report itself and an accompanying online database of its contents here.

by Amber M. Winkler, Ph.D.

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Assessing the Effects of Voluntary Youth Service: The Case of Teach for America

Doug McAdam and Cynthia Brandt, Stanford University
Social Forces
February 2010

If you read only the coverage of this study, you’d come away with a vastly more negative view of TFA graduates than you should. So let’s put the record straight. The study asks whether the TFA experience “make[s] citizens”? The authors seek to compare the “civic engagement” of TFA “graduates” (those who finished two years of TFA), “dropouts” (those who began the program but did not finish it) and “non-matriculants” (those who were accepted but declined). They find that though graduates display the highest attitudinal scores on civic awareness, non-matriculants actually perform the most service. They attribute this difference to such factors as post-TFA burnout and disillusionment with TFA itself. That may be so, but TFA is an organization dedicated to recruiting and keeping talent in our nation’s classrooms, not creating Mother-Teresas-in-tr aining, even if Wendy Kopp commissioned the study herself. It is upon those metrics--and the effect that TFA teachers have on student achievement--that we should be evaluating the program. Even if you accept the premise of this inquiry, however, the findings are no black mark against TFA. For example, though “only” 89 percent of graduates said they voted in the last presidential election (compared to 92 percent for all three groups), that’s still 50 points higher than their similarly-aged peers. The lesson is that TFA doesn’t turn disengaged students into participatory citizens; rather, it tends to select the civic-minded from the get-go. You can order a copy here.

by Stafford Palmieri

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Charter School Performance in New York City

Center for Research on Education Outcomes
January 2010

This report adds to the pile of evidence that good charter schools elicit positive student achievement--and that something about New York City’s approach is worth understanding if not emulating. A follow-up to its June 2009 national study, CREDO undertook this one exclusively in Gotham. Lo and behold, it found that NYC charters have a significant positive effect on overall student achievement. In math, 51 percent of charter schools showed learning gains statistically larger than those shown by traditional district-operated schools, while 33 percent showed no difference and 16 percent fared worse. Gains in reading were less striking but still impressive. The study also disaggregated results by the number of years a student attended a charter, and found that, while first year charter pupils perform slightly worse than their district agemates in reading (and better in math), after three years their gains significantly outpace traditional school pupils in both subjects. Moreover, black and Hispanic charter school students perform significantly better than their traditional school counterparts. You can read it here.

by Janie Scull

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The Education Gadfly Show Podcast

Stafford makes Rick cry

This week, Rick and Stafford contemplate eleventh-hour RTT-minded legislation, the most creative ideas from AEI’s and Fordham’s conference on school finance, and Randi’s overtures on teacher quality. Then Amber explains the new NAPCS state charter law rankings and Rate that Reform forgets English. Click here to listen through our website and peruse past editions. To download the show as an mp3 to your computer, click here (no iPod required--this link will play through any music software on your computer, including Windows Media Player or RealPlayer).

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Flypaper's Finest (The best from Flypaper, Fordham's blog)

Texas being Texas or more to the story?

Andy Smarick

Texas has become the first state to rebuff the Obama administration’s Race to the Top. Governor Rick Perry made the call, deciding that the size of the investment wasn’t worth the strings. Texas, he believes, can do education reform on its own. Lots of things probably played into this decision…Read it here.

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Bankrupt of logic: Dayton's teachers union rejects Race to the Top, despite $5 million deficit

Terry Ryan

The Dayton Public Schools, in Fordham’s hometown, rang out 2009 with an announcement that it faces a $5 million budget shortfall caused by rising home foreclosures and delinquent property taxes. A mere two weeks later, the head of the Dayton Education Association announced that she couldn’t support the district’s participation in the state’s “Race to the Top” application. Her logic, “The requirements of the grant itself ask for too much....Too many strings.”...Read it here.

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Announcements

Discussing turnarounds

On January 28, 2010, we consider the timely question “School Turnarounds: Exciting and Felicitous or Expensive and Futile?” Featuring the authors of opposing Education Next articles, Bryan Hassel and Andy Smarick, we’ll also hear from Andrés Alonso, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, and Emily Lawson of the DC Prep charter network. Find the articles that started it all here and here. Find out more about the event here and RSVP to Amy Fagan at rsvp@edexcellence.net.

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Districting teacher assessment

Eight days earlier, on January 20, Jason Kamras, D.C. Public Schools’ Director of Human Capital Strategy for Teachers, will present and explain DCPS new effectiveness assessment for school-based employees. Co-hosted with the Young Education Professionals, “Human Capital in Our Nation’s Capital” will take place in the Fordham conference center from 5:30pm – 7:30 pm. Particularly if you are tantalized by Randi Weingarten’s speech about teacher evaluations (see above) you may want join us. Find more information here and register here.

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Change DCPS, today

Are you a graduate student itching to give an urban superintendent some new ideas? Are you hoping that supe will listen? The District of Columbia public schools are is looking for 3-5 person graduate-student teams to submit case studies on how the district can more effectively engage and motivate the public towards education reform. Three teams will be chosen to present their ideas to a panel of judges in April and the winners will take home a nice chunk of change. First round submissions are due February 19. You can find more information here.

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About Us

The Education Gadfly is published weekly (ordinarily on Thursdays), with occasional breaks, by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Regular contributors include Amy Fagan, Chester E. Finn, Jr., Kyle Kennedy, Mickey Muldoon, Jamie Davies O’Leary, Eric Osberg, Stafford Palmieri, Emmy Partin, Michael J. Petrilli, Laura Elizabeth Pohl, Terry Ryan, Janie Scull, Saul Spady, and Amber Winkler. Have something to say? Email us at thegadfly@edexcellence.net. Would you like to be spared from the Gadfly? Email thegadfly@edexcellence.net with “unsubscribe gadfly” in the text of your message. You are welcome to forward Gadfly to others, and from our website you can also email individual articles. If you have been forwarded a copy of Gadfly and would like to subscribe, you may either email thegadfly@edexcellence.net with “subscribe gadfly” in the text of the message or sign up online here.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is a nonprofit organization that conducts research, issues publications, and directs action projects in elementary and secondary education reform at the national level and in Ohio, with a special emphasis on our hometown of Dayton. (For Ohio news, check out our Ohio Education Gadfly, published bi-weekly, ordinarily on Wednesdays.) The Institute is neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.

The Education Gadfly

Contents

From Checker's Desk

News and Analysis

Recommended Reading

Short Reviews

The Education Gadfly Show Podcast

Flypaper's Finest (The best from Flypaper, Fordham's blog)

Announcements

From Checker's Desk

Is 2010 the Year for NCLB?

News and Analysis

Refinancing education's personnel

Recommended Reading

Randi's political prowess

Graduation rewind

Short Reviews

Quality Counts 2010: Fresh Course, Swift Current--Momentum and Challenges in the New Surge Toward Common Standards

How State Charter Laws Rank Against The New Model Public Charter School Law

Assessing the Effects of Voluntary Youth Service: The Case of Teach for America

Charter School Performance in New York City

The Education Gadfly Show Podcast

Stafford makes Rick cry

Flypaper's Finest (The best from Flypaper, Fordham's blog)

Texas being Texas or more to the story?

Bankrupt of logic: Dayton's teachers union rejects Race to the Top, despite $5 million deficit

Announcements

Discussing turnarounds

Districting teacher assessment

Change DCPS, today

About Us

News/Commentary