Less Deliberation; More Leadership

Looking for signs of leadership in the newly formed Senate HELP Committee, I watched the entire education hearing held last Tuesday. The deliberative chamber is certainly taking it’s time considering reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)—the sweeping education omnibus that in its last iteration became the driving force in American education. Taking an extra year could actually be a good thing if a coherent bill was in formation, but it’s difficult to detect where bipartisan leadership will emerge on this committee to complement Miller’s leading man role in the House.

Joel Klein, NYC Chancellor, and Marco Petruzzi, Green Dot CEO, headlined the panel. The Committee was at least deferential to the successful close/replace strategy that the two have executed on opposite coasts. Klein, having replaced 90 failing schools with 400 new schools, argued that districts should use outside partners given their ability to attract talent and deliver coherent solutions.

Sen. Harkin noted that the entire panel supported schools of a manageable size but desperately wanted the answer to be class size. The panel unanimously suggested teacher quality was a much more important variable. Harkin suggested that there should be a child psychologist to every classroom—this could be a long deliberation.

Senators Enzi, Murray, and Franken all suggested the Departments four turnaround strategies didn’t fit rural challenges. A South Dakota superintendent said they had experimented with online learning but were back to DIY solutions. This discussion was a big strike out; the committee needs to hear from skilled and scaled operators like Connections Academy, K12, and KCDL. There is simply no way to offer high quality, high level college prep STEM nationally without incorporating online learning.

Lamar Alexander, who served as Education Secretary in the early 90s, suggested (a little disingenuously) that the feds should just override all local contracts and policies and empower governors. I’d love to see draft language on that proposal. Governors are empowered to lead, but many punt—like Charlie Crist did in Florida last week—when given an opportunity.

Michael Bennet, the senate’s edu-star, seemed distracted and may not even be around for reauthorization given his primary polls.

In short, the Dems are sweating context variables and uncomfortable pressing for improvement (and losing campaign contributions). The ‘just say no’ crowd on the other side of the isle appears unwilling to engage in real problem solving. And the chairman is waving reports from 1991.

We haven’t hit bottom, but other countries are making real progress while we tread water. Greenspan may have missed the crash but he was right that in the long run it’s all about education. It is time to lead.
Who will take the mantle of bipartisan education leadership that Ted Kennedy carried in 2001? Breaking with caucus leaders to do the right thing will be uncomfortable for senators but everything is at stake. And who will cross the aisle and help Miller write a great House bill?

With another round of Race to the Top applications due, which governors will step up? With a great state superintendent, Bobby Jindal has the opportunity to put Louisiana in the poll position and become the leading education governor. Who else will take a stand to convert promises into policies?

There is an opportunity to lead at every level—neighborhood, school, district, and state. It’s time for folks with a backbone to say we want a great teacher in every classroom and we want a good school in every neighborhood. Once you get started, tell your senator it is time to lead.

RttT Phase 2 Slog

I had hoped that after the Department held a high bar for phase 1 Race to the Top awards, that we’d see a rush of bold improvements to state plans.  It doesn’t appear to be working out that way.

A number of governors and chiefs appear disheartened or bitter; some are considering not reapplying.  And the ‘just say no’ crowd is newly emboldened.

The high bar set by phase 1 awards suggests that most states need to convert some/all promises into policies before making phase 2 application.  Florida Governor Crist’s veto of SB6 after a massive ‘no’ campaign suggests that this conversion process won’t be easy when it comes to lifting charter caps or improving teacher evaluations.

Where is the next Jeb Bush? Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has the chance to be the leading voice among Republican governors (in fact, all governors) simply by supporting his chief, Paul Pastorek.  The poll position is open.

After giving the nod to an inclusive process, Duncan will need to take sides and come out strong if he wants to see real follow through.

The New Learning Landscape

This week I talked to:

• an education author, a blogger, and consultant;
• two districts executing a multi-provider portfolio strategy;
• a charter management organization, a charter network and an online provider;
• a former state commissioner and two state education officials;
• an impact investor, a venture investor, and a private equity investor;
• a social learning platform, a learning game platform;
• an equity advocate, a choice advocate, and an innovation advocate;
• and a handful of teachers.

These two dozen conversations (and a few thousand others) lead me to the conclusion that we’re at the beginning of a golden age of the edupreneur—a time when the options for learning and learning professionals and learning investors is blooming. There is an expanding array of options for people that want to learn and those that want to help young people learn. Teachers are at the heart of this expanding ecosystem.

These days, for many teachers it’s not a great job—except when you retire. Starting pay is lousy, first assignments can be awful, the job is daunting, support is weak, resources are lame, and there’s little time to work with other adults. This is not a good system. But there is an emerging picture of the new employment bargain for learning professionals–one that President Obama and Secretary Duncan are pushing–and it includes:

1. Great opening offer: an attractive starting salary;
2. Competent leadership: fair and thoughtful with a sense of urgency;
3. A supportive and collaborative environment that provides rich team, online peer-to-peer, and whole-school learning experiences;
4. Rational working conditions and assignments including an equitable distribution of teaching talent;
5. The opportunity for rapid advancement based on demonstrated performance (measured by all available means) and initiative leading to a year round contract;
6. Tiered staffing structure where master teachers make a great salary and aren’t forced into administration if their gifts are better used teaching;
7. Differentiated pay based on skill set that recognizes that a talent market exists;
8. Reliable and responsive human resource systems;
9. The use of anywhere anytime talent—the right person for the right role regardless of zip code delivered just in time for the learner.

And here’s #10: if that doesn’t work, start a company, consult, build digital content, advocate. The sky is the limit for learners and professionals committed to helping young people learn.

The unions cling to the 1950 style back-loaded minute-by-minute, lowest common denominator bargain but the world has moved on. It’s time to learn.

NEA Hits the Brakes on Obama’s Plans

The NEA just flipped President Obama the bird and used Charlie Crist’s finger to do it.  The FEA apparently gave Crist, who is trailing in the Republican primary, a deal too good to pass up.  He followed their lead and vetoed SB6, the bill that would have killed tenure and implemented value-added evaluations.  Read more from the Miami paper.

The veto of SB6 also signals Crist’s willingness to give up Florida’s poll position for phase 2 Race to the Top, setting up a possible Hail Mary run for governor as an independent.

More importantly, this a sign of NEA using a state affiliate to hit the brakes on the Obama/Duncan teacher effectiveness agenda. The NEA supported the budget backfilling portion of ARRA but is obviously willing and able to torpedo the reform agenda baked into the last 5% of the stimulus bill including RttT, School Improvement Grants, and teacher effectiveness grants.  We’re seeing more evidence of this inColorado and Louisiana this week.

I was meeting with Florida charter leaders in Tallahassee when the Governor vetoed SB6.  They suspect things will get really interesting in Florida–and nationally–in the next few months.

EdReformer Interviews Mike Magee, RIMA

EdRefomer interview Mike Magee, RIMA

Rhode Island Mayoral Academy breaks a big bureaucratic logjam.

I don’t see RIMA in terms of breaking or fixing existing systems but rather in terms of building new ones – how the existing systems respond to that is really up to the people who operate them.  I think Mayor Dan McKee and I (and everyone involved in our effort) see what we’re doing as a public responsibility that can’t wait.  Rhode Island desperately needs better public schools for a large percentage of its student population. We have a plan and an opportunity to build them.  It’s true that what we’re building is significantly less bureaucratic, a decentralized approach to school networks that matches a high degree of flexibility and autonomy with a high degree of accountability.  I have no doubt that what we’re building will be relevant to traditional school district governance and we’re open to having those conversations but also very focused on what we can control.

Does Mayor Fung have some breaking new school news?

Mayor Fung sits on RIMA’s board. He is someone who really understands the issues and is completely committed to creating great public school options for the families he represents. RIMA has signed a Letter of Intent to partner with Achievement First to open schools enrolling students from his community, Cranston (the third largest city in our state), as well as Providence. We’re working with Dacia Toll and Reshma Singh (AF’s Director of Rhode Island Expansion) to meet a number of final requirements so that our respective boards will be 100% confident moving forward with a plan to open the first Achievement First mayoral academy in August 2011. Mayor Fung will chair its board.

Another thing we’re excited about is RIMA’s first facilities development project for Democracy Prep Blackstone Valley, the first mayoral academy. This is a $4 million project on a permanent elementary school facility.  We’re testing whether we’ll be able to provide facilities solutions for all of our CMO partner which would remove an enormous barrier to entry in RI. And we’re optimistic.

Is there an endless pool of capital available for bringing charters to scale?

Not as far as I can tell!  But we have been lucky to raise a significant amount of funding in our first year and I think our funders see their support of us as very high-impact.   Whether we’re talking about the extraordinary achievement of students in mayoral academies (two full grade levels of growth in reading, on average, in Democracy Prep’s first year) or the innovative models we create to support our schools, funders are impressed with the outcomes.

To achieve the kind of ambitious growth we have in mind, we still need to make major investments in facilities solutions and teacher and leader development.  We think we have an excellent plan to develop a finite number of private facilities while working in parallel with the mayors to make empty and underutilized public facilities available to mayoral academies.  And we’re currently working with the education policy organization Public Impact on a very exciting, comprehensive human capital development strategy.  Interested funders should contact me immediately.

Kids are tapped into new media. How do we incorporate tech used outside of school to fostering learning inside?

I must admit that I am skeptical much of the time when I listen to people talk about leveraging technology in the classroom.  I think this has less to do with the possibilities of technology than it does with the quality and practicality of the ideas.  I also worry that technology is presented as a panacea in classrooms that lack great teachers. That being said, there’s no doubt that schools should be doing a much better job implementing technology in the classroom.  I think the “low-hanging fruit” is around cost-containment and differentiated learning. I anxiously await the death match between Apple and the textbook companies.  And I like the idea of dynamic classrooms where technology makes possible all kinds of differentiated and self-directed learning, so long as a great teacher is conducting that orchestra and everyone is being held accountable for the results.

How are teachers assessed? Are your partners using performance pay?

We expect that most of our CMO partners will have developed their own highly effective teacher evaluation systems though there may be an opportunity down the road to work with new school operators to develop their systems based on best practices.  Democracy Prep Public Schools has a really superb, comprehensive teacher evaluation rubric; likewise, Achievement First.  At Democracy Prep Blackstone Valley teachers are eligible for performance bonuses up to 9% of base salary.  I think most great schools have sophisticated ways to monitor teacher effectiveness and support and encourage continuous improvement. Another model I’ve been especially impressed by is Boston Collegiate’s classroom observation model.

Whatis your vision for the way data should be used to build effective schools?

Data should be used to drive the thinking of teachers, school leaders and policy makers towards continuous improvement.  What’s working? What’s not?  What’s the best way to move forward? Good data prevents us from deceiving ourselves when things aren’t going well. It allows us to replicate what’s working in close to real-time.  It enables a very rich conversation among teachers and school leaders about how to ensure that every student in the building reaches his/her full potential.  We see this in action at a school like Democracy Prep Blackstone Valley, in the way that teachers use and respond to the University of Chicago’s STEP literacy assessment program.  Recently, all the teachers in the building got together to talk about the gap in literacy growth between boys and girls over the course of this year – now, this is all relative, the boys still grew at an impressive rate.  But to see teachers laser-like focus on improving this particular outcome was to understand how a very healthy, mission-driven school culture responds to information they can trust.

Where does Rhode Island stand on RTTT?

Race to the Top is a provocation, — it is only as good as the plans it provokes and the follow-through on those plans.  It has obviously encouraged a number of education departments, including Rhode Island’s to think boldly about reform. I think RttT’s biggest impact will end up being on state statute – Rhode Island’s House of Representatives passed a bill lifting the charter cap last month by a vote of 69-3.  Sixty-nine to three! That would have been inconceivable without RttT.

RIMA figures prominently in Rhode Island’s RttT plan – we’re viewed by Commissioner Gist and her team as the engine for high-quality charter school growth in the state. We plan to play a major role in human capital development. I think it’s inevitable, and felicitous, that many of the teachers and leaders who work in Mayoral Academies over the next ten years will play a role in school turnaround efforts in forward-thinking districts. And I think we will be one of many partners with thoughtful, substantive things to say about teacher evaluation and student assessment as RI builds better data systems.  So, we plan to play a vital role in building a culture of high achievement in RI and creating the sustainable systems and human capital to make good on our own expectations.

-Doug Crets, Executive Editor, EdReform.com

Is Choice Good?

A few good school choices that provide viable pathways to college, careers and citizenship are a real gift to a community.

Melody asked some great questions about school choice in a comment to the portfolio blog.  The goal of the discussed portfolio is to produce better outcomes especially for low income students.  It’s typically an attempt to transition from a traditional system with comprehensive high schools to a system of managed choice where students/families have several quality pathways to college/careers.

Most high schools have lots of choice–just the wrong kind.  A catalog of courses of varying degrees of difficulty stitched together with little adult guidance often has disastrous consequences for low income students.  The intent of a portfolio strategy is to get all kids into a coherent and personalized pathway as quickly as possible by improving district options and adding new schools as necessary.

Yes, too many choices can be paralyzing or counter productive.  Given an early concern on this subject, I commissioned Paul Hill to publish Doing Choice the Right Way, Brookings, to address the type of choices, enrollment policies, transportation, and funding strategies.  It doesn’t mean that a portfolio needs to be a top-down design, but it does suggest that a group of responsible community representatives should be asking, “what kinds of schools do our children need?” and “how to best leverage our community assets?” and “how do we ensure equitable choice across our city?”

Choices are also a search for the motivational ‘hook’ that will encourage persistence.  For some students the hook will be a theme, for some an instructional approach.  As digital curriculum becomes more adaptive, I think we’ll learn more about learning modes and motivations.  When the school of one is a portable desktop and when schools operate under a common results-oriented employment and accountability system, it may not be as necessary to launch as many different kids of schools.

All good non-selective high schools with strong graduation rates for low income kids are small. All good school developers still use the 100 kids/grade rule of thumb.  It’s not a fad, it’s a historical rule.  The failed fad are the 3000 student urban high schools created in the 1970s.  That said, small schools are a pretty unsophisticated approach to personalization.  It’s likely that we’ll see combinations of organizational and digital customization strategies that work well together–a digital school of one, a project team of 4, an advisory of 18, a house of 100, a school of 1,000.

Also worth noting here that I’m on the board of MLA Partner Schools–an experiment in making big LA neighborhood schools work.  A variety of personalization strategies and wraparound services and activities attempt to make two schools with 6,000 student between them work well for every student.  It’s a challenge but I’m keeping an open mind.

Many choice supporters bank on the role of competition.  There are some apparent benefits to some positive performance and customer service pressure, but as Petrilli points out today, it’s really instructional effectiveness that’s the goal.  Portfolio managers should constantly ask this question, “how do we get all students into effective instructional pathways that work for them ASAP.”

Flipping Florida; The New Employment Bargain

The only thing at stake is the future of America.  Two big dramas involving teachers and testing are at play in education.  My last post discussed the $350m federal grant program that is likely to lock in another decade of bubble sheet tests rather than a forward leaning framework open to the flood of keystroke data telling us more than we ever knew about achievement, motivation, and learning modality.

The other drama is playing out in Florida. The Palm Beach Post outlines the new teacher employment framework sitting on Gov Crist’s deck:

Collective bargaining could be used to establish salaries and raises, but the process would have to set a pay raise schedule based on two-part evaluations:

• Half on factors such as classroom management, advanced degree, knowledge of subject.
• Half on student ‘learning gains’ as measured through end-of-course exams.
• No credit for raises could be based on years of teaching.

‘Learning gains’ and how to measure them would be defined by the Florida Department of Education after the law is passed:

• The department is working closely with researchers at Vanderbilt University.
• Lawmakers say ‘learning gain,’ not score on exam, needs to be measured .
• Teachers want language exempting them from issues beyond their control, such as attendance or socioeconomic status.

End-of-course exams to measure learning gain must be developed by each district for all classes by 2013-2014:

• Officials are struggling with the concept when it comes to the arts.
• Department of Education won’t have to approve every exam in every district, but will do random sampling yearly.

Tenure would end for teachers new to the system:

• First-year teachers would be on a one-year probationary contract and could be dismissed at any time without cause.
• After that, a teacher would be put on an annual contract. To receive a new contract each year, a teacher would have to be ranked as ‘effective’ or ‘highly effective’ over two of the three preceding years.

What the law would do:

• Partially base teacher and administrator pay raises on students’ end-of-course exams as of July 1, 2014.
• Require each district to develop end-of-course exams for all subjects in all grades by 2013-2014.
• Eliminate tenure for teachers hired after the law takes effect, but keep it for current teachers.
• Offer extra pay for teachers who take on extra duties or teach in high-priority locations or subject areas.
• Require districts to use at least 5 percent of funding to implement end-of-course exams and merit raises.

President Obama and Race to the Top made this possible; the landscape is irreversibly different this year with a clear focus on the importance of teacher effectiveness.  When Crist signs this bill, it sets a new benchmark for phase 2 RttT applications in the most heavily weighted section.  Like welfare in Wisconsin, state examples of new policy frames are useful models and can lead to rapid and widespread adoption.

Next up: ending tenure for schools–a state moving to performance contracts (i.e., charters) for all schools as the basis for accountability.  Who will lead the way?

More Widgets, Less #2 Pencils

With last week’s launch of the $350m federal grant program last week, National Journal is hosting a conversation about student assessment.  Here’s my contribution.

Students should be assessed all day every day but not the way we do it today.  We currently attempt to use 1950 tests for instructional improvement, student progress, school accountability and increasingly for teacher evaluation—all over weighted toward reliability (i.e., cheap) rather than validity.  Assessment should be largely invisible and incorporated into learning experiences and performance demonstrations.

The exciting opportunity right in front of us is the potential for assessment frameworks flexible enough to incorporate the flood of keystroke data to come from learning games, simulations, virtual environments, adaptive assessments and online end of unit quizzes. This world of instant feedback will be especially useful for students and teachers—if we don’t get in the way.  Here’s a couple postcards from 2015 if you want examples.

A comprehensive online assessment system, possibly including merit badges, would also take the pressure off end of year exams.  Key will be using these grants to build something more like a widget platform with a lot less #2 pencils and bubble sheets

Catherine Gewertz, EdWeek, wrote a good summary of the federal grant program that has forced states into the 1) lock in gains with cheap/uniform tests group, or 2) there must be a better way to incorporate student work group.   The problem with the grant program are the intended recipients—states are broke, under pressure to adopt new standards, and don’t have the capacity to innovate.  Let’s hope there are a few interesting assessment consortia in the i3 applications.

Why Great Teachers Matter to Low Income Students

Here’s a great op-ed in WaPo by Joel I. Klein, Michael Lomax and Janet Murguía:

In the debate over how to fix American public education, many believe that schools alone cannot overcome the impact economic disadvantage has on a child, that life outcomes are fixed by poverty and family circumstances, and that education doesn’t work until other problems are solved.

This theory is, in some ways, comforting for educators. After all, if schools make only a marginal difference, we can stop faulting ourselves for failing to make them work well for millions of children. It follows that we can stop working to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently known as No Child Left Behind) and stop competing in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative, which promises controversial changes.

Problem is, the theory is wrong. It’s hard to know how wrong — because we haven’t yet tried to make the changes that would tell us — but plenty of evidence demonstrates that schools can make an enormous difference despite the challenges presented by poverty and family background.

Consider the recent national math scores of fourth- and eighth-graders, which show startling differences among results for low-income African American students in different cities. In Boston, Charlotte, New York and Houston, these fourth-graders scored 20 to 30 points higher than students in the same socioeconomic group in Detroit, Milwaukee, Los Angeles and the District of Columbia. Boston fourth-graders outscored those in Detroit by 33 points. Ten points approximates one year’s worth of learning on these national tests, which means that by fourth grade, poor African American children in Detroit are already three grades behind their peers in Boston.

Not surprisingly, these differences persist (or grow) by the eighth grade, at which point low-income African American students in Detroit are scoring 36 points behind their peers in Austin.

The scores tell a similarly painful story for low-income Hispanic students in different cities. In fourth grade, there is a 29-point difference between test scores in Miami-Dade and Detroit. By eighth grade, the gap has closed slightly, with low-income Hispanic students in Houston outscoring their peers in Cleveland and Fresno, Calif., by 23 points.
These numbers represent vast differences in millions of lives. Low-income African American and Hispanic students in different cities are sufficiently similar in terms of their academic needs, but their outcomes are so dramatically different.
The main difference between these children is that they are enrolled in different school districts. And research indicates that if the data were broken out for the same students in different schools the differences would be more dramatic; and more dramatic still if broken out for the same children in different classes.

What explains these differences? Schools and teachers. “Teacher quality is the single most important school factor in student success,” the Aspen Institute’s Commission on No Child Left Behind recently noted. Given how much research supports this view, it is especially troubling, the commission found, that “teacher quality is unevenly distributed in schools, and the students with the greatest needs tend to have access to the least qualified and least effective teachers.”
Different teachers get very different results with similar students. So as reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is considered, we should look closely at those whom we attract and retain to teach, with regard to their quality and to ensuring they are distributed equally across our school districts. If we can do those things, we could at least make Detroit students perform like those in Boston, and make Boston students do a lot better.

A few things need to happen:
First, we must attract teachers who performed well in college. Countries that do best on international tests draw teachers from the top third of college graduates. In the United States, however, most teachers come from the bottom third. Moreover, the bottom of that group is vastly overrepresented in our highest-needs communities.

Second, we must create systems that reward excellence rather than seniority by creating sophisticated evaluation systems that include student performance and merit-based tenure and compensation. We must make it easier to remove teachers who are shown to be ineffective.

Third, we must do more to attract teachers to high-needs schools and subject areas, such as English Language Learners, special education, and other areas to which it is difficult to draw talent because of opportunities in other industries.
These are common-sense and ambitious reforms. Such efforts are rewarded in the Race to the Top initiative and ought to be fully integrated into a new Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Yes, they call for a reevaluation of seniority — the staple of most collective bargaining agreements — in the context of what actually serves children. But right now, one bad teacher with seniority earns as much as two great young teachers. Who really thinks this is best for our kids?

Apologists for our educational failure say that we will never fix education in America until we eradicate poverty. They have it exactly backwards: We will never eradicate poverty until we fix education. The question is whether we have the political courage to take on those who defend a status quo that serves many adults but fails many children.

Joel I. Klein is chancellor of New York City schools. Michael L. Lomax is president and chief executive of the United Negro College Fund. Janet Murguía is president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza. They are co-chairs of the Board of the Education Equality Project (www.edequality.org).

JD Hoye Taking NAF to Next Level

Sandy Weill can be very persuasive.   About three years ago, a consultant enjoying a Bay Area lifestyle found the former Citi CEO’s pitch good enough to convince her to commute to New York City every week.

Sandy formed National Academies Foundation in 1984 (when I was still working in a coal mine).  As one of the early high school reformers, Sandy had the insight that many students needed the ‘hook’ of relevance to pull them through a difficult high school course sequence.  He pulled together a couple corporate partners and launched a network of small career-focused academies with interesting internship and application opportunities.

JD Hoye answered Sandy’s call and took the helm of NAF, a network of over 500 academies and one of the few nonprofits to have achieved scaled impact.  JD turned the organization’s attention to quality and cut ties with schools that no longer represented NAF’s principles.

Evaluations of NAF’s results speak most strongly to improved persistence among minority males.  Online learning communities and improved ability to manage projects are two of the current efforts aimed at improving instructional quality.  Like New Tech Foundation, NAF is likely to become a more platform-centric network.

From a fellow west coast commuter that like JD flies more than a pilot, I appreciate her commitment to taking NAF to the next level.  With JD at the helm, we’ll see another half a million careers launched from NAF academies.