You Can't Escape If You Don't Know Soon Enough

Chad Aldeman has a post on The Quick & the Ed today (Apr. 1) about an Obama administration retreat on options for children to escape failing schools. As Aldeman puts it:

Secretary of Education [Arne Duncan's] letter rolls back a regulation that could have helped provide parents of children enrolled in unsuccessful schools the option of choosing a better one.

Aldeman explains the retreat by asking us to use our imaginations to consider a parent in the following situations:

1. [I]f you're a parent, imagine going through the school registration process in the fall, buying supplies for your child, and believing that your child will begin attending school X. Then, on the first day of school, your child brings home a letter that says her school failed to make adequate yearly progress last spring, and she now has the option to transfer to another school.
2. Instead, imagine you, as a parent, were notified at least two weeks in advance of the new school year.
   

The second scenario -- adequate notice -- is what the Bush administration's regulations called for. With adequate notice, you as a parent would be in a much better situation:

You would have time to consider your options, visit new schools (maybe even new teachers), and plan transportation. You might be altogether more interested in exercising your right to choose [a better school for your child].

The Obama administration's retreat traps parents (and their ill-served children) in scenario #1. This retreat also exacerbates another important problem: late reporting of test results.

[Secretary Arne Duncan's letter] makes it less urgent for states to turn around test results promptly, which has implications beyond just an under-used school choice provision. Late data results also penalize schools labeled in need of improvement, because it gives them little time to implement a real school improvement plan.

There you have it: less school improvement and less opportunity to escape failing schools.

DLC Head Harold Ford Defends DC Opportunity Scholarships, Praises Pres. Obama's Courage

In a recent opinon column in the Mar. 26 issue of Politico newspaper, former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford Jr. praises President Obama's courage and resolution on school reform. Ford is current chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

President Barack Obama...called for higher standards, more charter schools, merit pay and eliminating bad teachers....

Ford clearly identifies the public-school Establishment that he expects will oppose genuine reform:

Obama expects that special interests will oppose his reform agenda. Those who do will fight vigilantly to hold onto the failed schools that shame us as a nation.

But their actions will put them against the best interests of our children and on the wrong side of history.

Ford says the past anti-reform efforts of the Establishment lead one to expect more of the same from them. He mourns the death of opportunity scholarships in the District of Columbia, "tragically... killed by Senate Democrats":

Teachers unions and education groups have expressed opposition in the past to ideas like merit pay and charter schools. They are strongly opposed to a successful voucher program in Washington, D.C., which tragically was killed by Senate Democrats in the omnibus spending bill that passed the Senate last week.

But Ford says we have reason to hope, because when it comes to education policy, President Obama will be a brave and tenacious leader:

On behalf of the nation's children, Obama is prepared to take on members of his own party and the special interests.

Perhaps, most interesting of all, Ford calls for a mass movement of aroused parents. With a combination of "missionary zeal and political sophistication," an organized grass-roots force of well-informed parents could apply effective and lasting pressure:

It is also time we wake the sleeping giant: the parents who have children attending public schools....Parents — motivated by wanting a world-class education for their children and being highly informed and organized — could bring persistent pressure to members of Congress to adopt an agenda of change to fix our failing schools.

Ford describes well the hopes that President Obama has created for genuine school reform. We should also consider seriously Ford's thoughtful proposal of a mass organization of parents committed to student success.

What do readers think of Pres. Obama's response thus far to the impending demise of DC opportunity scholarships?

UPDATE (3/31/09) For an alternative view of President Obama's courage on school reform, see Richard Cohen's Mar. 24 column in the Washington Post. Here is the relevant excerpt:

[I]n domestic matters, Obama's image has become muddled. He remains more popular than credible. Where does he draw the line? Not at tax delinquency, clearly, and not at earmarks, clearly, and not at real school reform, which he advocates but has done little to implement.

They Keep the Formulas in Place for a Reason

The Sunday New York Times today has a front page article on the Obama administration's decision to channel its stimulus money to the states using existing formulas. Times reporter Sam Dillon writes:

In pouring rivers of cash into states and school districts, Washington is using a tangle of well-worn federal formulas, some of which benefit states that spend more per pupil, while others help states with large concentrations of poor students or simply channel money based on population. Combined, the formulas seem to take little account of who needs the money most.

As a result, some districts that are well off will find themselves swimming in cash, while some that are struggling may get too little to avoid cutbacks.

The story reports that Democratic members of Congress say they want to keep using the old formulas to save time in disbursing money. But there's more to it than that.

The best recent analysis of the Title I formulas was done by Susan Aud for the Heritage Foundation. Here's a condensed executive summary of her findings:

1. Formulas have become increasingly complex and obscure;
   
2. Distribution of funds is characterized by seemingly unintended variability;
   
3. Amounts reserved for administration significantly dilute what reaches the classroom;
   
4. Title I's Education Finance Incentive Grant encourages states to equalize spending across school districts, despite the fact that this is an unproven education reform strategy; and
   
5. Rather than delivering effectively on good intentions for helping poor children, congressional action over eight reauthorizations has led to a convoluted, bureaucratic system that is less student-centered, less transparent, and therefore less accountable to the public.
   

Here's a link to a column by Dan Lips and Evan Feinberg on Aud's study.

The truth is the members of Congress keep the formulas in place for a reason. The Democratic Leadship Council (DLC) pinpointed that reason some years ago:

The reality is that the allocation of Title I dollars is based more on politics than on need, on a formula geared to spreading these important federal dollars thin and wide.

In essence, the DLC was saying (and I would concur): Congress's not targeting Title I money narrowly on students from poor households is no accident.

CAVEAT CONSUMPTOR: It's not how much money there is for schools but rather how it is spent and what the incentives are for productivity and performance. Economist Rick Hanushek calls the issue of whether money matters “trivial,” saying that “the research neither says that resources never matter nor that resources could not matter” but only that “providing resources without changing other aspects of schools … is unlikely to boost student performance.”

10 Toughies for Arne

AEI's prolific researcher and research impresario Rick Hess has a provocative guest-editorial in today's (Mar. 19) issue of the Gadfly. Hess poses some challenging questions for U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Hess has good insights into the logic of the situation that Secretary Duincan finds himself in. I have condensed his queries somewhat:

1. ...[You've...indicated a concern about wasteful spending and ensuring that the money is well-spent. Would you regard it as a problem if the money is being spent inefficiently but is creating jobs?...

2. ...[W]e know that much of "what works" today consists of elite charter schools bolstered by talented staff, missionary zeal, and philanthropic support. These commodities are in limited supply, and history shows that early successes fueled by them are tough to replicate at scale. How will you ensure that funding...doesn't slosh dollars into [unscalable] boutique programs...?

3. [Skipping over this one for the moment.]

4. In Chicago, ...most of your successes entailed introducing reforms like merit pay pilot programs and charter schools on top of and around the existing school system....Do you think the "on top of and around" strategy is viable for transforming K-12 schooling across the country?

5. ...Do you think it possible to craft a substantial, game-changing merit pay plan that the AFT and NEA will endorse?...

6. ...[T]here is scant evidence of [early-childhood] programs delivering big, sustained benefits for large numbers of children. How can we be confident that the money will fund difference-making programs and not simply pad enrollment or staffing levels?...

7. ...[T]here are many...restrictions [that are less formal] than caps that also hinder charter schools, including unfriendly state and federal regulations, facilities headaches, and teacher certification policies. Do you intend to use your office...to spotlight those barriers and, when possible, to remove them?

8. ...In light of disputes over the merits of "21st century" skills, which the President has explicitly advocated, and concerns that good standards might be crowded out by bad ones, how confident are you that [the creation of national standards] would end well?...

9. The President has said...that if [state and local] officials don't spend the stimulus funds wisely that he will "call them out and put a stop to it." In your view, how would we know if these funds are misspent?...

10. ...History suggests that universal access tends to encourage a decline in rigor and the relaxation of standards....[H]ow do you intend to police [higher education to prevent such a decline]?

My personal favorite is this one:

3. The President announced his intention to "scrub" the budget for wasteful or inefficient programs. Which programs have been identified in the Education Department?

Throughout, Hess asks what Secretary Duncan is concretely willing to do if money is wasted or if programs don't produce.

Whether Secretary Duncan ever explicitly answers these questions in words, he will have to answer them through his actions.

Pres. Obama Mistakenly Contends That Dropping-Out Is "Quitting on Your County"

In his Mar. 10 speech on education, President Obama outlined his policy initiatives. But he also had this to say to young people who are thinking of dropping out of school:

[D]ropping out...[is] quitting on your country, and it's not an option -- not anymore.

Granted that political speeches often contain exercises in hyperbole, in this case President Obama went too far. He is saying that dropping-out is akin to treason.

America is free country -- and part of freedom is freedom to do unwise things. It is truly unwise (for the vast majority of people) to drop out of school. But they should be free to do it.

We should counsel young people against dropping-out; we should have research-based programs that discourage it and that try to get people to come back to school. (The Doing What Works website is scheduled to post research-based material on dropout prevention later this year.) But we should not end dropping-out by blocking the possibility.

Bye-Bye Tutoring

Swift & Change Able has a recent (Mar. 9) post on the effort by the public-school Establishment to crush after-school tutoring programs for children. Each year more and more children participate in these tutoring programs. (Participation in 2004 was five times what it was in 2003, for example.)

School administrators never liked SES and choice. They see these programs as taking money out of their pockets (never mind that the funds are sent out to serve students). So they in most cases have done everything possible to prevent parents and students from availing themselves of them. Then they say demand is anemic - see? they were right all along - and that the programs should be terminated.

Swift & Change Able points out that the largest study so far of the tutoring program, done by RAND (2007), said that:

"In five of the seven applicable districts, students scored better in both reading and math in the first year of participating in the services and even better in the second and subsequent years.

Students participating for multiple years enjoyed gains twice as large as those of students participating for just one year.

African-Americans, Latinos, and students with disabilities all recorded positive achievement results.

All these gains were statistically significant."

The way that the Establishment seeks to crush tutoring is through the arcane process of "waivers of Title I set-asides." Such waivers by the Obama-administration U.S. Department of Education will allow districts to avoid putting money into tutoring.

Swift & Change Able sums up the situation aptly when he entitles his piece "AASA to After-School Tutors: 'You're Fired.'"*

*AASA=American Association of School Administrators

Is Pres. Obama Continuing the Ed Policies of Pres. Bush (43)?

Andy Rotherham has a post on Politico that clarifies the issue of policy continuity between the Obama and Bush (43) administrations. Rotherham says that there is "some overlap" between the education agendas of President Bush (43) and President Obama, as there was between President Bush (43) and President Clinton, and between President Clinton and President Bush (41). Rotherham says that "anyone expecting radical deviations from the path we’re on will likely be disappointed" by President Obama's policy proposals.

For the past fifteen years or so the dual and complementary ideas of standards and accountability and expanding school choice – at least within the public system – have largely driven the education debate, so it’s not surprising that there is a fair amount of common ground today.

After all, some of Bush’s key allies on the issue were Democrats in Congress including current leaders like Senator Kennedy and Congressman George Miller.

And today’s...reform thrusts have a bipartisan pedigree tracing to reformist governors from both parties.

Rotherham thinks the thing to watch for is not changes in policy (I respectfully disagree with Andy on this) from one administration to another, but President Obama's political skill (certainly important, I agree) in dealing with critics and interest groups on the path to getting the reforms (like merit pay) that President Obama calls for.

I wonder if another possibility isn't continuity of rhetoric, but changes in actual policy.

VP Joe Biden: Last Chance for Public Education

Vice President Joe Biden has told members of the Delaware teachers' union that the needed money for reform is now available and that this is the last chance for public education. His message in essence is: fix yourselves or die. As reported in the Feb. 28 News Journal:

Vice President Joe Biden asked 150 Delaware teachers Friday evening for help in transforming the nation's public education system.

"I genuinely need your help to make this work because, folks, look at it this way. We've been given all the ammunition. If we shoot and miss, if we squander the opportunity, tell me how long you think it's going to take for another American president to go and ask for more dollars to correct the education system," Biden said to the Delaware State Education Association members....

Citing about $105 billion that is coming to the U.S. Department of Education from the federal stimulus package, Biden said teachers will finally have the means to improve education.

..."The good news is, we have the resources. The bad news is that everyone is watching so we better do this right...,"Biden said.

Spending skeptics have sometimes asked spending proponents: how much? Vice President Biden has now given the answer: The amount in the stimulus package is enough to do the job.