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.

Head Start, 21st-C Skills, Multiple Choice, Productivity -- Is Pres. Obama Missing What's Important?

Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution responded briefly to President Obama' speech on education policy. But he also pointed back to his (Whitehurst's) Feb. 4 analysis of the President's stimulus plan. In this earlier analysis, Whitehurst made several important points on preschool education, 21st-century skills, testing formats, and school productivity:

Early Childhood

On early childhood, we should not be satisfied with more programs, “like Head Start.” A rigorous national study of Head Start found positive effects in some performance domains at the end of a year in the program, e.g., naming letters of the alphabet, but not in others, e.g., vocabulary. Most children in the study were still far below average in school preparation skills on exit from Head Start. We can do better, and there is a lot of evidence on effective preschool programs to lead the way.

21st-Century Skills

The president’s call for assessments that measure 21st century skills such as creativity and entrepreneurship is fraught with danger and difficulty. There are serious questions about whether it is possible to teach someone to be creative in a general sense, disconnected from expert knowledge in particular domains. In any case, the definitional and measurement challenges are huge.

Instead of chasing abstractions, it would be more productive to construct standards that reflect what the best experts in particular fields agree that students need to know and be able to do to be competent in those fields. That will surely involve problem solving, creativity, and the like, but anchored in content rather than floating free.

Pres. Obama's Opposition to Multiple-Choice Tests

[P]lease, Mr. President, no more talk about needing to teach students more than how to bubble in answers on tests. Any assessment expert will tell you that very complex skills can be measured with multiple choice test questions. The issue is what we are expecting students to learn, not the structure of the test item that is used to determine whether they’ve learned it.

Efficiency & Productivity

What about efficiency and productivity? We spend more on education per student than any other nation. Shouldn’t we be pursuing ways to get more out of our current investments before we double down?

Whitehurst is asking the questions that the education-beat journalists should be asking.