Stanford Review Interview with Bill Evers

The Stanford Review (a newspaper at Stanford University put out by conservative & libertarian students) published in its current issue an interview with me done by the paper's editor-in-chief Brian O'Connell. Most of the interview is about K-12 education in America; a small portion at the end is about education in Iraq. To improve clarity, I have slightly edited the Review's transcript in a few places.

Here is the text of the interview:

The Stanford Review
Volume XLII, Issue 8 (May 29, 2009)

Department of Education Assistant Secretary Williamson Evers on Education Policy in America

By Brian O'Connell

Williamson Evers served as U.S. assistant secretary of education for planning, evaluation, and policy development from 2007 to 2009. The Review caught up with him this past month to discuss education policy in America, teacher pay, No Child Left Behind, and also his time served in Iraq in 2003 as a senior adviser for education to Administrator L. Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

SR: Why are there relatively few conservatives involved in education?

WE: I think it has to do with the historic interests of conservatives. They’re interested in criminal justice, they’re interested in national security, and economic policy. Not enough of them are interested in...education policy… I think it is a shame, because I think there is a lot of room for improvement… I would also say that in terms of bringing more people to conservative and libertarian values out there in society, it is a very fruitful ground for recruiting people. Because a lot of people are disappointed in the public schools as they are.

SR: Do you think the achievement gap between races and genders can be closed?

WE: We saw some of the achievement gap closing in the 1980s, but it’s been tough to make improvements lately. There are lot of pieces there in the “Standards and Accountability” movement, mainly setting academic goals and topics to be learned and testing children to see whether they’re learning and trying to hold schools, administrators and teachers responsible. [These things] will help with [closing the gap], but still I think probably more radical steps, more incentives are needed—more things that will encourage teachers and administrators to be more productive. There are some things that are laid down that are helpful, but more things like charter schools and performance pay are needed.

… Eventually, a series of presidents: Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43, and the Congress, implemented Standards and Accountability. In its final form that we’re living under now, which is from 2001, they said that there’s going to be a test every year, in English and in Math, and that the kids have to take the test, and that states have to participate in a national benchmarking test called the National Assessment of Education Progress. Kids that are in failing schools have to be able to transfer out of them, if possible. If schools persist in having serious problems, there has to be some kind of restructuring that has to take place. This is all dependent on the fact that these schools are getting all this federal aid. The law says that, if the state does not want to take this money, they do not have to report results, or test. All states have taken the money.

SR: Do you support voucher programs?

WE: I would certainly say that President Bush tried to get in 2001 a change called “exit vouchers.” That is, if it’s a failing school, you should be able to get out. Now he was not able to get all-school vouchers or all[-school] opportunity scholarships [not able to get vouchers usable for private or Catholic schools]. He was only able to get through Congress that you could go to another public school. Even that has not worked very well. Partly it is the logistics of getting a kid to a different school. The school districts themselves have kind of discouraged it. They get paid based on the attendance of students. They don’t always notify the parents clearly or properly about what their rights are.

SR: Why has America lagged behind in international testing?

WE:... American students are having problems in math and science, which are fields that we can tell pretty well how students are doing across different countries… [In math] we’re not doing too bad in some of the early grades, but as children go through in higher grades, the children in other countries seem to be pulling farther and farther ahead. It’s for a variety of reasons. Our textbooks are not as good at going as far in depth into the problems. Our teachers are not as prepared as teachers in other countries. It’s very complicated because in some of these countries, such as in China, many of the teachers of elementary math did not even go to college. They went to a special high school for teachers, but no college. Still, they get more out of their students than American teachers do for American kids. [A contributing factor] could be that in China, teachers specialize in elementary grades, but we’re not sure. We are making progress though, in setting forth what teachers need to do, and in getting better textbooks and better curricula for America.

We like to think that in America that education is highly valued, but we also have, “anti-egghead,” anti-intellectual attitudes in America, we admire Huck Finn, Davy Crockett for not liking school learning. [In] some of these countries [that] are very high achieving, like the East Asian countries, Hungary, and Israel there’s a lot of respect and high value on book learning.

SR: What are your thoughts on teacher pay?

WE: Teacher pay is a uniform step-by-step thing mostly governed by seniority, and somewhat by credentials. There are several things that are neglected by this rigid pay scale. One thing is, [the absence of higher pay for teaching in] tough schools that are low performing makes the challenge greater. So you want to pay more to attract people to take on that challenge… [In this system] you are paying a math teacher similar to a physical education teacher—you might lose a math teacher to an accounting job, or lose a potential science teacher. There is a demand that is not really being met for certain fields because of the pay. The same is true for teachers of students with learning disabilities.

Another question is that in most jobs in life, if you are adding to the company’s success, if you are adding to the productivity of the company, you are paid accordingly. Teaching is not like that; if you’re effective, it does not affect your pay. You are paid fundamentally according to your years on the job. It discourages high performing teachers from staying on the job.

SR: Newark Mayor Cory Booker came to Stanford earlier this year and mentioned that Newark spends close to $20,000 per pupil on education annually, but students are still underachieving. Why are the most expensive per-pupil schools often so low performing?

WE: What you have are districts that have become dysfunctional. Despite huge amounts of money—we had one in Sausalito, CA—they usually have a combination of things, they usually have corruption, they usually have an unwillingness to hire teachers based on [merit]. There is cronyism involved in hiring and promotion. There is an unwillingness to fire teachers that are low performing. They usually have a lot of programs to try to fix things, but none of them are coordinated, or are matched by the standards of the state… Another problem that could be the case is that a lot of these students come from low education backgrounds and need a lot of time and concentration in a lot of academically focused things. Sometimes a lot of these [intervention] programs are “learn through play”—these programs aren’t sufficiently academic-focused. Since [the students] come from families that are not particularly highly educated, they need more background knowledge to succeed. It’s understandable that the [educators] would be seeking motivation, and trying to interest people, but they’re focusing so much on motivation, that they neglect the need for knowledge gain—that is so important for students if they are going to catch up. These districts have this problem.

SR: Why is this true in Sausalito, CA as well?

WE: The district of Sausalito includes Marin City as well [in addition to wealthier Sausalito], so there are a lot of less educated families in it. The combination of the two cities is actually kind of strange, because often the parents in Marin City want a concentration on solid academics, and the Sausalito people are more interested in self-esteem. Self-esteem was actually a program that was very heavy there, but it did not seem to improve the academics. I am for self-esteem that is earned by achievement. We know that heavy, knowledge-oriented, rigorous academic programs build self-esteem [for students] because they realize they are mastering all this material. You can have self-esteem, though, and not be doing that well in life. Gang members often have extremely high self-esteem. If you compare Chinese students, in China, or Japanese students in Japan, they think “I’m not doing really well in math, I don’t know enough math.” Americans think “I know a lot of math.” Well, American students are wrong. They’re not achieving in math as well as the East Asian Tigers are.

SR: Is No Child Left Behind under threat with the new Administration and what are Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s prospects?

WE: There’s $100 billion in the stimulus fund that is being used to perpetuate the existing system as it is: not very productive and disappointing... That dwarfs all these other little funds. I don’t see a big reason to blame Secretary Duncan for this. He’s only to blame if he misspends his discretionary fund. Congress and President Obama are to blame for the [$100 billion] in the stimulus bill. Duncan has talked about “21st century skills,” which is to make kids work well in groups, or to make kids media savvy. Kids who don’t know what the American Civil War is need to know what the American Civil War is. I don’t see why they need to be spending time becoming media savvy. They are naturally going to become media savvy living in the world they live in. It’s a diversion; there’s only so much time in the day, and they should be concentrating on the most important things.

I’m also worried about the research [sponsored by the] Institute for Education Sciences. I am worried that it will not live up to the level of quality and rigor that the institute had under Bush 43. In terms of different people that President Obama could have looked at to be Education Secretary, Arnie Duncan showed that he made a lot of effort to do a lot of positive things in Chicago…We don’t know enough to see how he will do.

SR: How would you describe your time in Iraq as a senior adviser for education to Coalition Provisional Authority?

WE: I was there from July to December in 2003… Our basic goal was to get the schools re-started and get the teachers back in the classroom. We were trying to help the Iraqis, they had been isolated for 20 to 30 years. We were trying to facilitate [them getting] their feet back on the ground. We were not trying to impose some ready-made Americanization on them. Our view was that they needed to find their own way to improve their schools, but if we could answer questions, that would be fine. But we weren’t trying to impose some big program on them. That worked very well. They developed interest in things from Jordan and other countries from around the world. They wanted teachers trained in ways that were successful in other places. I thoroughly enjoyed being there, it was exciting hearing rockets and explosives going off all the time. I felt that I was able to be helpful to the Iraqi people so I’m glad I did it.

These schools are not like schools under the Taliban in Afghanistan or radical Islamist madrassas in rural Pakistan. The schools in Iraq are state schools. Saddam had pretty much abolished private schools. You have to think of Saddam Hussein as a fascist like Mussolini in Italy. He wanted both boys and girls learning in schools how great he was and how great the Ba’ath party was.

Sandy Kress Raises Questions about National Standards

Austin attorney Sandy Kress was President George W. Bush's principal adviser on drafting the No Child Left Behind law and, earlier, was the chief architect of Texas's school accountability system. (Prior to that he had a long history at the highest levels of the Texas Democratic Party.)

Kress recently (June 5) commented on eduwonk on the current fascination with national academic-content standards.

He speculates that governors, chief state school officers, and others are under the spell of utopian "good feelings" about national standards that do not yet exist.

But once the good feelings "wear off," Kress says, they will start asking questions. Writing national standards will stir up perennial controversies: whole language vs. phonics, computation vs. concepts. Then, Kress points out, come all the questions of detail "that arise once you get below the level of 30,000 feet."

At this point, Kress says, policymakers may get to the place where they find out the new national standards under consideration are not ideal, not perfect, indeed no better than (or even possibly worse than) the standards that the states already have.

Kress asks reasonable questions about the horse-trading and interest-group jockeying that will inevitably arise:

Could it be that the tradeoffs that happen nationally will be the same as those that occur in the states? Could the same interest groups intervene? Could this nice dream [of national standards] be interrupted by the demons that bedevil state standard-setting? Could these interests be the problem as much as variation [among state standards documents]?

Then Kress brings up the centrally important issue of a nationally uniform grading policy (technically known as "performance standards"):

If we ever get to detailed, precise [national academic-content] standards in each grade for reading and math, do the participants agree to common performance standards? If they don’t, who’s kidding whom? The real problem today is not so much that some states have vastly higher [content] standards than other states; it’s more that their performance standards are greatly different.... [W]ill the states, commit to making those the same? If not, [the national standard-setting process] will be utterly fruitless.

Although Kress did not make this point in this eduwonk comment, he and those he works with have often pointed out that revising academic-content standards can be a time-consuming excuse for not doing the hard work of fixing failing schools and closing the achievement gap.

For example, the Washington Post reported on June 1 that immediate-past U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has voiced a cautionary note on this matter. Spellings said in a recent interview that she supports a process of states working together from the bottom-up to raise academic standards. But she is concerned that the strenuous effort required to create new national standards could divert attention from students who are failing right now:

We have a speedometer, and it says we're going too slow. Should we get a more precise speedometer? Sure. But the most important thing is speeding up.

California's Conditions on National Standards

Patrick Riccards, blogging at eduflack, reports that California has signed onto the national-standards effort, but (wisely in my opinion) has placed conditions on its commitment to adhering to the outcome of the process. A decade ago I was a participant in the drafting of California's academic-content standards. These standards have been judged (by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and by the American Federation of Teachers) as among the clearest and most rigorous in America , and it would be a shame to water them down in the name of national commonality. Congratulations to Governor Schwarzenegger and California ed officials for their sensible letter setting forth the conditions on the state's involvement.

Complaining About Testing -- Can You Guess in What Year This Complaint Was Made?

"[T]oday's schools are driven by assessment to a degree that surprised us....[T]ests [are being] used as ends in themselves, rather than as one means to assist in intellectual development of the individual student, or even as a reasonable method of public accountability.

"Tests -- usually standardized tests, but even including tests that teachers devise to monitor and judge week-to-week progress -- are omnipresent and constantly on everyone's minds. Teachers, administrators and students are preoccupied with scores and grades -- often against their better judgment, and often against the values that parents, students and they themselves say that the schools should reflect....

"More than one researcher returned from the school sites with stories about how schools elsewhere had boosted their scores by encouraging low-performing students not to attend school on the day of the [state-developed] examinations.

"In another unnamed school, according to another rumor, twelfth-graders took revenge on the school's administrators, who had cancelled the traditional Senior Skip Day, by deliberately scoring poorly on the tests....

"[T]hese [standardized] tests have encroached powerfully on the schools and on teaching....

"Many teachers and school administrators agree that the emphasis on and uses of testing reflect an educational practice out of control. Points, credits and scores are pursued and accumulated as if they represented the core values of the high school....

"[T]eachers have articulate, idealistic educational goals for their students, but amidst the pressures they face, they proceed to test in predictable ways, often modeling their approaches on the externally developed examinations they see most often, the standardized achievement test....

"In many cases, review for a test meant the teacher coaching the youngsters about the specific pieces of information to be included on the exam, along with the appropriate answer."

[Source: Inside Schools: A Collaborative Approach, by J. Myron Atkin, Donald Kennedy, and Cynthia L. Patrick (Falmer Press) -- published 20 years ago, in 1989.]

More Musings about NAEP

Guest post by Ze'ev Wurman

Yesterday’s release of the long-term NAEP results has been already written about here, here, and here. For 9-year-olds and 13-year-olds the news is good. Significant increases since 1999, and particularly since 2004, in both reading in math. Most gratifying is the jump in reading achievement for 13- and 17-year-olds -- age groups that have been resistant to change for almost three decades.

Another piece of good news is the fact that much of the growth, in both reading and math, was concentrated in the lower achieving students, at the 50^th percentile and below. The ethnic achievement gap was either reduced in the early years or did not change because all groups kept advancing—a rising tide lifts all boats. And some of the reduction has been nothing but spectacular, as noted by Sandy Kress in his comments on Bill McKenzie's Dallas Morning News blog post. So far so good. Enhanced accountability -- whether through the standards movement of the 1990s or through NCLB in the last decade -- is finally paying off.

Much journalistic coverage has concentrated on the fact that our 17-year-olds are still essentially stuck in place, barely returning to their achievement level during the 1970s. Other coverage has pointed out that despite students taking more impressive-sounding courses, perhaps the reality is grade inflation or course-name inflation. But there is a larger question we should ask ourselves. Why should we even expect NAEP results to rise much? After all, if our education level was rather high in early 1970s when NAEP started, why should it get much better? For the 17-year-olds, there was an achievement dip in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so clearly we should be able to reclaim the 1971-73 level. But we have achieved this level in the 2008 results. Why should we expect to do notably better in the future?

One could answer that since we are doing better with our 9- and 13-year-olds, we can also expect more of 17- year-olds. Yet one could argue that the increases in the earlier grades have come not because they know more in absolute terms, but simply because now we teach material earlier, material that 30 years ago was delayed to later grades. Think of it—we push algebra to earlier grades, we expose kids earlier to a variety of cultures and facts through TV and the Internet, so they broaden their vocabulary earlier—it may be only natural that their skills look better at a fixed age. But the question still is how easily we can educate our HS graduates to a significantly higher level than in the past. Could it be that the immovability of achievement for out 17-year-olds represents some cultural constant or barrier that is hard to break, and not simply the failure of high school? It would be interesting to compare how other nations have fared with their 17-year-olds over time, but the data is hard to come by. For example, the last year of high school was sampled by the 1995 TIMSS, and it found that the best countries achieved only about 50 points above the international average, while the best countries' elementary and middle school students achieved 100-130 points over the international average. That would be consistent with the existence of some 'natural' constant that is hard to break. Makes me wonder.

[Ze'ev Wurman was a senior policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, 2007-2009. He also serves on the panel that reviews mathematics test-items for the California standards-based tests, and he was a member of the California State mathematics curriculum-framework committee.]

NY Times Panel Members Far Apart on Best Strategies for K-12 Progress

The U.S. Department of Education today (Apr. 28) released the 2008 results for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Long-Term Trend Reading and Mathematics Assessments. After the release, the New York Times asked a panel of individuals interested in education policy to suggest the best strategies for progress.

The Times picked people who they thought would have different views. The editors got what they hoped for.

Writer Sandra Tsing Loh contends that the presence of middle-class white and Asian children would lead low-performing students to succeed. Hence she calls for centrally-designed class and racial intermingling, if possible through magnet schools.

Howard "Multiple Intelligences" Gardner (Harvard psychologist) suggests "benign neglect" toward inter-group comparisons. Instead he proposes concentrating on minimum academic competency for every student.

NYU education professor Marcelo Suarez-Orozco says that we should "throw out" all high-stakes tests and instead "nurture interpersonal sensibilities." In particular, he promotes the wolly concept of 21st-century skills:

[W]e’ll need intellectually curious and cognitively flexible workers comfortable with ambiguity, able to synthesize knowledge within and across disciplines and work collaboratively in diverse groups.

I (Bill Evers) was one of the panelists. In my commentary, I said: that incentives matter for administrators, teachers, and students, and that solid academic content matters. I also point out that pluralism in delivery of K-12 education (charter schools, opportunity scholarships, virtual schools, and the like) is now a permanent part of the educational landscape.

"One of the Most Important Education Books of Our Time"

Christopher F. Chabris has a book review in today's (April 27) Wall Street Journal of a truly important book. The book is Why Don't Students Like School?, by University of Virginia psychologist Dan Willingham.

I have long been an admirer of Willingham's effort to make empirical educational psychology accessible to teachers. He writes a regular column ("Ask the Cognitive Scientist") in the American Educator, the national magazine of the American Federation of Teachers. The fact that the AFT presents Willingham's understandable, but nonetheless intellectually challenging articles on a regular basis is a great credit to that organization and has undoubtedly helped thousands of teachers.

Willingham's brand-new book, Why Don't Students Like School?, is one of a handful of books about which one can honestly say: This is one of the most important education books of our time.

Reviewer Christopher Chabris accurately summarizes Willingham's approach:

[Willingham] poses nine questions that a teacher might want to ask a cognitive scientist -- beginning with the question in the title -- and then answers each, citing empirical studies and suggesting ways for teachers to improve their practice accordingly.

Striking the Right Balance When Teaching Abstract Concepts

Let's consider the question that Willingham sets forth in the title: Why don't students like school? Here's Chabris's summary of the answer:

[W]hat school requires students to do -- think abstractly -- is in fact not something our brains are designed to be good at or to enjoy. When we confront a task that requires us to exert mental effort, it is critical that the task be just difficult enough to hold our interest but not so difficult that we give up in frustration.

When this balance is struck, it is actually pleasurable to focus the mind for long periods of time. For an example, just watch a person beavering away at a crossword or playing chess in a noisy public park.

But schoolwork and classroom time rarely keep students' minds in this state of "flow" for long. The result is boredom and displeasure. The challenge, for the teacher, is to design lessons and exercises that will maximize interest and attention....

Drill & Practice

One of the constant refrains of today's proponents of Progressive education is that we should do away with "drill and kill." Willingham tackles this issue by showing how drill-and-practice enables learners to commit information to long-term memory, thus freeing their short-term memory to deal with novel problems. As Chabris puts it:

[R]esearch shows that practice not only makes a skill perfect but also makes it permanent, automatic and transferable to new situations, enabling more complex work that relies on the basics.

Critical Thinking Skills

Anyone who has been around schools in the last few decades has heard the Progressive mantra that we need to give priority to a stand-alone skill of "critical thinking." It is part of the repertoire of "21st-century skills" that President Obama wants to impose on our classrooms. But Willingham punctures this fashionable ballon. As Chabris writes:

[S]tudents cannot apply generic "critical thinking skills" (another voguish concept) to new material unless they first understand that material. And they cannot understand it without the requisite background knowledge. The same is true of [reading comprehension]: Trying to use "reading strategies" -- like searching for the main idea in a passage -- will be futile if you don't know enough facts to fill in what the author has left unsaid.

Multiple Learning Styles

My favorite article of Willingham's in the American Educator has always been his 2005 piece "Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?"

Willingham also has a video on the topic on YouTube, entitled "Learning Styles Don't Exist." (He replies to his critics on this topic here.)

Chabris summarizes what Willingham says in the new book:

The trendy notion that each person has a unique learning style comes under an especially withering assault. "How should I adjust my teaching for different types of learners?" asks Mr. Willingham's hypothetical teacher. The disillusioning reply: "No one has found consistent evidence supporting a theory describing such a difference. . . . Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn."

Willingham doesn't just asset that learning styles don't exist. He carefully explains the experimental evidence against these supposed learning mechanisms.

Content is King

Dan Willingham is a proponent of content-rich instruction. He argues for this approach because scientific research demonstrates that it is the best one.

Mr. Willingham...is not in favor of merely making learning "fun" or "creative." He advocates teaching old-fashioned content as the best path to improving a student's reading comprehension and critical thinking.

This is a book aimed at teachers, but it will be of interest to all who seek better k-12 education policy. Willingham is one of the rare academic authors who can take a technical finding in cognitive psychology, explain its importance, and show how to apply it in the classroom -- and present this classroom application in way that charms and fascinates the reader.

Must We Give Up High School Exit Exams?

Education school researchers at U.C. Davis and Stanford assert that California's high school exit exam is keeping girls and non-whites from graduating from high school.

The study speculates that girls and non-whites have been failing the exit exam in high numbers because of a "stereotype threat." "Stereotype threat," as suggested by psychologist Claude Steele, is a situation in which blacks, women, etc. are put off their pace by awareness that others expect them to fail.

The Los Angeles Times story on the study paraphrases Sean F. Reardon, one of the study's co-authors:

Reardon said there was no other apparent reason [than stereotype threat] why girls and non-whites fail the exam more often than [those] white boys who are their equals in other, lower-stress academic assessments.

Here's what the executive summary of the study says:

Among students in the lowest quartile of achievement, the CAHSEE [exit exam] requirement has no effect on the graduation rate of white students, but a large negative effect on graduation rates of black, Hispanic, and Asian students.

On average, among students in the bottom quartile of achievement, graduation rates were 19 percentage points lower among Black students, 15 points lower among Hispanic students, and 17 points lower among Asian students who were subject to the CAHSEE requirement than among similar students not subject to the requirement.

Likewise, graduation rates were 19 percentage points lower among female students, but only 12 points lower among male students who were subject to the CAHSEE requirement than among similar students not subject to the requirement.

I wonder about several things:

• In theory, the stereotype threat should not be lowering scores for Asians.
• It should not be lowering scores for boys in the lowest quartile almost as much as for girls.
  
• Why is the stereotype threat working only on the lowest-quartile students? In theory, it should be lowering scores for blacks and girls in all quartiles on this high-stakes test.

There would seem to be many difficulties for stereotype threat as the explanation for the results.

(The authors anticipate these objections and attempt, not very persuasively, to respond to them in their paper.)

Without getting into my skepticism about some aspects of the stereotype-threat effect, let's assume that it's true or can sometimes be true. The need then is to accustom blacks and women to competition and challenges, and the potential would seem to be there for greater success when people have instead high, demanding expectations about blacks and women.

The solution cannot be to cushion blacks and women from all challenges (like passing the not-very-tough high school exit exam). [This is a point that has been made about the stereotype threat by John McWhorter both in interviews and in his book Losing the Race.] Life is full of challenges.

Getting rid of the high school exit exam cannot be the solution. The solution has to be preparing low-performing students to pass the exam and telling them that their teachers, parents, ministers, and other community leaders expect them to succeed and will accept no excuses.

California State Supt. Jack O'Connell and others put the exit exam in place in order to have a meaningful high school diploma. It will help the students in life if they reach at least the foundational levels of knowledge that the exit exam measures. The Los Angeles Times describes those foundational levels:

The exit exam, which students can take multiple times beginning in their sophomore year, includes math and English tests, with the math aligned to eighth-grade standards and English to 10th-grade standards.

Abolishing the test and handing out meaningless diplomas to uneducated students will not really help them.

High achievement on tests stems from diligent effort and effective study habits. These need to be persevered in over time, so that knowledge, skills, and understanding can accumulate and be stored in long-term memory.

Blaming all problems on a stereotype threat and then giving up all high-stakes tests (as Reardon and others have suggested) will solve nothing.

[Thanks to Ze'ev Wurman for his advice and counsel on this post.]

UPDATE (4/23): A better place to look for advice is the 2008 report of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) called "Predicting Success, Preventing Failure: An Investigation of the California High School Exit Exam," by Andrew Zau and Julian Betts. This report says that after-school reading programs and the use of peer coaches in professional development -- both instituted in San Diego during the Bersin-Alvarado years -- could help students pass the exam. It also says that the evidence suggests that intensive tutoring focused on academic content is likely to be more effective that less-intensive tutoring focused on test-taking strategies.

The Zau-Betts report also proposes spotting students early who are at risk of failing the exit exam. Then schools should provide them with academic tutoring in elementary and middle school -- rather than waiting until high school when making up the academic deficit is much more difficult.

There is room for improvement on the particulars of what San Diego did, but the Zau-Betts report points out an evidence-based path to better exit exam results: early detection, supplemental reading instruction, and intensive tutoring on academic content.

California Schools Superintendent Wants to Water Down Academic Standards in Name of "21st-Century Skills"

California State Schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell spoke to the annual EdSource Forum in Irvine today (April 17).

O'Connell, who holds a nonpartisan office, began his speech with political partisanship:

President Obama won a mandate for change that has placed him in a position to cause a massive shift in the way our government operates and in the manner in which it serves the needs of its citizens....

In just the first few months of this Administration, I can easily and confidently say that we have seen a dramatic shift in the willingness of this White House to be a partner to states — this is a welcome difference from the previous Administration....

There was more, but you get the general idea.

O'Connell then went on to identify "four key areas" that the Obama administration wants states to concentrate on:

• Adopting internationally benchmarked standards and assessments...;
• Building high-quality data systems that track students' academic careers, making it possible to tell which teachers, programs and schools are effective;
• Recruiting more high-quality educators to underperforming schools, as well as to subjects like math and science; and
• Supporting effective strategies to turn around underperforming schools.

Superintendent O'Connell proceeded to voice views that reflect the standards-and-accountability consensus on most of these matters.

I should point out that he was particularly careful to note that any "creative approaches" and "creative solutions" on teacher pay would be done only "in partnership with all the professionals involved in teaching and learning."

A flag of caution almost went up when the Superintendent said that we need to test California students more "comprehensively" than we do now. Often such phrasing is coded language for statewide portfolios or project-based testing. But then the Superintendent went on to promise that any revised testing would be as "valid" (a technical term in testing) as the current California standards-based tests and the high-school exit exam (of which the Superintendent is rightfully the proud author).

But there was one place where Superintendent O'Connell set off alarm bells: His desire to revamp and "re-up" California's academic-content standards.

The Superintendent acknowledged that this is "an area in which California has served as an established leader for some time now":

I am proud, as all of you should be, that California purposely set the bar high for what our children should know and be able to do, and we have never wavered from that commitment.

But instead of maintaining these internationally-benchmarked high standards, he wants to "rededicate and reinvigorate" them. "Evolving them is healthy," the Superintendent says.

Superintendent O'Connell wants to revamp the California academic standards because, he says, they are “a mile wide, but only an inch deep.” But, with all due respect -- as I have stated in the Los Angeles Times -- I have to disagree. Indeed, the California standards have been judged among the best in the country by the Fordham Foundation and the American Federation of Teachers. California already has official Key Standards in mathematics, for example, to identify teaching priorities and the topics that should be covered in depth.

The Superintendent also wants to revamp the California standards:

...in order to fully engage both students and teachers in the learning process in a way that sees both parties benefit and helps to better prepare students for success in the economy of the 21st century.

Translation from education jargon: He wants to water down California's existing high standards in the name of the wolly concept of "21st-century skills," that is, communicating with each other, working in groups, media literacy, and so forth. He wants to subtract from classroom time spent on solid subject-matter content to teach these supposed stand-alone skills

Unless advocates of solid academics speak up, California will -- in the name of 21st-century skills -- follow Massachusetts down the primrose path of diluted standards.

Inadequate Journalism: Will Money Buy Happiness in Arizona?

The Apr. 8 issue of Education Week has a story about Flores v. State of Arizona, a lawsuit that claims that school programs for English-language learners (ELLs) in the border town of Nogales receive inadequate funding from the state of Arizona. This is one of a series of school-finance lawsuits around the country seeking, in the name of "adequate funding," to have the courts determine school budgets.

Much of the long and detailed article is filled with quotations from advocates of higher spending saying that “adequate” (that is, massively higher) spending would fix the schooling of English-language learners.

But there are some details that might escape notice if they are not highlighted:

--Despite relying largely on local tax funds rather than state money (requiring more state spending is what the suit is about), four of the Nogales district’s six elementary schools ranked in the top 10 in the state for ELL performance.

--The child on whose behalf the suit was filed is now a student at the University of Arizona, having taken AP and IB courses in high school – so much for having had a blighted K-12 experience.

--An unforeseen consequence is that the lawsuit has forced Nogales and school districts around the state to alter the way they teach English-learners, including separating them for four hours each day from other students. Nogales school superintendent Shawn A. McCollough says that this court-mandated separation program constitutes "segregation" rather than "inclusion" for ELLs.

At Nogales High School, ELLs are grumbling about the required four-hour block, and some teachers oppose it as well. Many ELLs who had been taking only regular classes are being required to take four hours of English each day.

….In a class of 21 ELLs at an advanced level of proficiency in English, at least seven said they had been attending Nogales schools since kindergarten.

Maximiliano Bonorand, 16, a 10th grader who was born in Tucson but has spent his whole school career in Nogales, said he was in regular classes last school year and doesn’t think he needed the four-hour English block this school year. "I speak and write English better than Spanish," he said.

The reporter Mary Ann Zehr is on target in saying that if the suit succeeds before the U.S. Supreme Court, members of the plainiffs’ bar in other states will sue under civil-rights law in federal court, calling for states to provide “adequate funding” for ELL education.

Now let’s turn to the professional-journalism side of the article, focusing on this important issue of “adequate funding.” Let’s see whom the reporter quotes.

On the more-spending side, quotations from:

• The plaintiffs (mother and child);
• Roger L. Rice, the executive director of Multicultural Education, Training, and Advocacy Inc., a Somerville, Mass.-based advocacy group for ELLs;
• A U.S. circuit court judge;
• the school improvement director for the Nogales district; and
• two ELL teachers in the Nogales district (the number of ELL teachers has already increased three-fold in the district because of the court-mandated four-hour block).

Also listed as supporting more spending are:

• Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest,
  
• a federal district judge,
  
• Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard (identified as a Democrat),
  
• Gov. Janet Napolitano (identified as a Democrat), and
  
• the Obama administration (which has filed an amicus brief).
  

On the side of opposing court-ordered spending, quotations from:

• Nogales school superintendent Shawn A. McCollough;
• State superintendent Tom Horne; and
• The attorneys’ brief for the state (the article points out that the defense’s legal team includes Kenneth Starr)

Also listed as opposed:

• Gov. Janice K. Brewer (identified as a Republican) and
  
• the Republican leadership of the state legislature.
  

Here we have biased journalistic judgment. The reporter has lined up nonprofits, grassroots teachers-parents-and-children, and Democrats (including President Obama) on one side. She then has lined up local and state management (defended by Kenneth Starr of Monica Lewinsky fame) and Republicans on the other.

The problem with this morality play is that it leaves out any grassroots teachers, parents, and children who oppose more spending -- indeed, any taxpayer activists who are informed about Arizona education -- and any nonprofits on the other side (like the Goldwater Institute -- see its analysis here and here).

The Education Week article also fails to look at the evidence on whether spending alone boosts student achievement. Yet there was an amicus brief by stellar school-finance specialists which argued that attention in Arizona should focus on outcomes for students rather than money per se, as well as another much less impressive brief of experts for the plaintiffs.

Inadequate journalism on adequate spending.

UPDATE (4/15/09) Mark Walsh on the School Law Blog has an Apr. 13 preview on this case that covers the dueling amicus briefs from school-finance specialists.

This Is Not an Item from The Gadfly's April Fool Issue

The Mar. 30 Guardian in Great Britain reports that Birmingham City University is offering a £4,000 one-year master's degree in Social Media.* The degree program will study Twitter and other social networking websites. Students will get the degree for learning such things as how to start a blog.

An organizer of one the Social Media courses, Jon Hickman, says:

It's very relevant and very scholarly. It's a new course, but its importance is unquestionable.

One student says the course is

a complete waste of university resources....Virtually all of the content of this course is so basic it can be self-taught.

The item ("Never Too Soon") in the Apr. 1 issue of The Gadfly about 21st Century Skills was made up. But this isn't.

* £4,000 = about $6,000

HT to the Core Knowledge Blog

Confining Virtual Schooling (in Fla.)

Bill Tucker had a Mar. 31 post on The Quick & the Ed about efforts to limit virtual schooling in Florida. Recently, the Center for Digital Education ranked Florida as having the #1 online-learning program in the nation, and other states are, as Tucker puts it, "trying to match Florida's current success."

Yet, Tucker points out that a bill in the Florida legislature would block students students from taking additional credits (beyond the annual norm) through the state-operated Florida Virtual School:

Want to extend the school day virtually? Nope. Fail algebra I your freshman year and want to take an extra course online to catch up to the college track? No dice. Want to graduate early (and save the state money)? Not gonna happen.

Excited about school and want to take a high school course while in middle school? Way too ambitious. Stuck because you need to pass a course and there is no summer school option? Sit in the same class again next year.

Tucker adds that the bill would also restrict the courses that the Virtual School could teach to those in the core curriculum:

Forget...students options to take AP Art History, Computer Science, or any number of other courses. Elective options are limited to what your bricks and mortar school can offer.

Today (Apr. 1), an anonymous commenter on Tucker's post says that a "huge chunk" of the Florida Virtual School's current courses are outside the core curriculum and points to what Florida Tax Watch said about the Virtual School in its 2007 evaluation. The commenter summarizes the tax group's evaluation as follows:

[The Virtual School] saves $1000 per student vs. traditional schools, [has] higher AP scores, higher test scores in math and reading -- the list goes on and on.

Virtual schooling is an innovation with tremendous transformative potential. (See the forthcoming book Liberating Learning by Terry Moe and John Chubb.) But realizing that potential in public schools may be delayed by this sort of hobbling.

UPDATE (4/3/09) The Apr. 2 Tampa Tribune had a detailed article on this story.

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.”

Smearing the Evidence on Reading Instruction -- And Admitting It

Robert Pondiscio has a Mar. 20 post on the Core Knowledge blog about the controversy surrounding Australian whole-language proponent Brian Cambourne's candid effort to smear phonics-based reading instruction -- by associating it (wrongly) with hating to read.

Professor Cambourne sent a mass e-mail to reading teachers, Pondiscio writes:

suggesting they flood an education minister’s office with emails linking phonics to “readicide”, which Professor Cambourne describes as ”the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools,” The Australian [newspaper] reports.

Professor Cambourne’s suggestion was in response to the official’s announcement of the nation’s “[upcoming] first direct comparison of phonics-based reading methods with other techniques.”

When The Australian newspaper asked Professor Cambourne why he didn't present evidence for whole language and against phonics, he invoked "framing theory," as related by the newspaper:

When the email was quoted back to him, Professor Cambourne said he and his colleagues had to rely on cognitive science’s framing theory. “It’s a way of making ideas change based on new theories rather than just denying or trying to argue with people you can’t argue with,” Professor Cambourne said.

“When you rely on evidence, it’s twisted. We can also present evidence, but we never get a fair hearing. We rely on the cognitive science framing theory, to frame things the way you want the reader to understand them to be true - framing things that you’re passionate about in ways that reveal your passion.”

“We have to use the same kind of tactics that have been used to demean and demonise whole language,” Pondiscio reports that Prof. Cambourne said before adding that, if The Australian reported his words: “I will deny I ever said this.”

I would supplement Pondiscio's post as follows: Sad to say, but Professor Cambourne has been reading too much of George Lakoff's foolish advice to liberals that they should lie in order to win. Instead of Lakoff, Professor Cambourne should have been reading Steven Pinker's disemboweling of Lakoff's cognitive relativism in the Oct. 9, 2006 issue of The New Republic. I can only give a brief excerpt here, which does not in the least do justice to Pinker's wonderful article (you should read the whole thing):

Lakoff tells progressives not to engage conservatives on their own terms, not to present facts or appeal to the truth....Instead they should try to pound new frames and metaphors into voters' brains. Don't worry that this is just spin or propaganda, he writes: it is part of the "higher rationality" that cognitive science is substituting for the old-fashioned kind based on universal disembodied reason....

I would not advise any politician to abandon traditional reason and logic for Lakoff's "higher rationality."

Not just to lie in an obvious fashion, but to admit that you are doing so. Please, Professor Cambourne.

Booker T. Washington: Advocate for Black Education

Historians David Beito of the University of Alabama and Jonathan Bean of Southern Illinois University have an interesting article on African-American educator and civic leader Booker T. Washington in the March 23 National Review.

To progressives, Washington's creed of self-help, opportunity, business achievement, and rejection of self-pity wasn't politically correct. Washington sought a "blotting out" of racial prejudice in civic and business life. But he didn't think African-Americans should rely for their economic advancement on government aid and political remedies. As Beito and Bean point out, "Liberals don't have much use for Washington." He was simply too bourgeois.

Washington succeeded in life in important measure because of his diligence in school, at the Hampton Institute. He went on to be the first president of the Tuskegee Institute.

Beito and Bean (drawing on the important historical work on Washington of Robert J. Norrell) point out that Washington had "no small role" in the "spectacular" rise in African-American literacy in the American South between the end of the Civil War and the early years of the twentieth century. Among other things, he encouraged philanthropist Julius Rosenwald (of Sears Roebuck) to contribute money toward the building of thousands schools for African-Americans throughout the South.

Washington stressed effort and intellectual disciple in school as necessary to student progress. Beito and Bean quote Washington, in a 1898 letter to a Birmingham newspaper, writing:

Each day convinces me that the salvation of the Negro in this country will be in his cultivation of habits of thrift, economy, honesty, the acquiring of education, Christian character, property, and industrial skill.

That same year, Washington made this point again in a speech in Chicago:

[W]e in the black race [shall acquire] property, habits of thift, economy, intelligence and character, [and each make] himself of individual worth in his own community.

Beito and Bean quote Washington as writing that "any man, white or black, with education" can find a job or create work for himself if he is willing "to begin at the very bottom."

Washington's message was a gospel of self-help through hard work, determination -- and education.

UPDATE (3/21/09) You have to have a subscription to National Review to read its article online. But Beito and Bean have also published a related piece on History News Network (HNN), which unfortunately doesn't cover Washington's views on education as fully.

How Regular Schools with Regular Teachers Could Replicate the Results of High-Powered Charters

Education Sector's Steven Wilson in an important AEI pamphlet (drawn from an earlier scholarly paper) looks at the talent that has contributed mightily to the success of high-performing charter schools. He then discusses how regular schools with regular teachers can achieve the same success.

First, Wilson asks, "Do the 'no excuses' schools depend on rare human capital?" He finds that they do:

I found that more than half of the...staff members [of the six high-performing Boston charter schools that he studied] had attended elite undergraduate institutions (Barron's "most competitive" rank), and fully 83 percent had attended at least a "very competitive" college (Barron's third-highest rank)....

I examined the educational background of the academic staff of eight "no excuses" charter schools outside of Boston....As with the Boston-based...schools, faculty members were most likely (37 percent) to have attended institutions in Barron's "most competitive" category; 56 percent had attended "highly competitive" schools or better, and 77 percent attended "very competitive" schools or better.

Wilson also looked at the qualities that "no excuses" schools seek in teacher candidates. One exemplary charter school looks for prospective teachers who graduated from a top-tier college with good grades and a major in an academic discipline and, moreover, who:

• have a "history of getting high student achievement, tight discipline and culture";
• believe that "measurable student achievement is the number one goal"; and
• "[like] standards, statewide testing, and accountability."

Student achievement is a part of a teacher's evaluation at this charter school.

Wilson then points out that prospective teachers having "the educational credentials and commitment" sought by such charter schools are scarce.

How then to get the effective teaching that's needed? Of the two solutions that Wilson considers, one is the most promising. It is "making the job manageable."

Wilson asks us to consider the teaching force once again:

Imagine the broad swath of career educators who, though they may not have attended elite colleges and universities, are nonetheless committed to rigorous academic standards, the continuous improvement of their craft, and a path to college for every child. Could they be equipped with a powerful set of tools that would permit them to produce gap-closing results...?

Consider the job of the "no excuses" teachers....These schools often expect teachers to devise curricular and pedagogical systems largely for themselves....If teachers neither had to remedy years of prior failed schooling nor forge their own tools, then the job would be far more manageable.

In the course of Wilson's discussion of existing effective programs, the reader gathers what Wilson thinks is needed (as re-phrased by me) -- namely, schools with:

• a solid, step-by-step curriculum;
• a "no excuses" culture;
• a focus on college-preparatory academics;
• teacher-led, whole-class instruction;
• clear lesson-plans aligned with state standards;
• regular, frequent diagnostic testing;
• classroom discipline;
• explicit teacher accountability for performance; and
• a school principal with the power to make key decisions.

All this has to reside, Wilson says, in an institutional setting (work-rule and pay flexibility, local district policy, state law) that allows such schools to thrive.

If these components are there, Wilson contends that regular schools can have KIPP-like results without Teach for America/Ivy League-grad teachers.

Wilson recognizes that a major obstacle to putting into effect this promising proposal for success is the"thought world" of K-12 education:

Ironically, such systematic approaches pose a challenge in recruiting teachers. Many career educators have a long-standing aversion, fanned by unions and schools of education, to external oversight. Powerful norms protect the teacher's "autonomous sphere of private discretion" and are more likely to celebrate teacher innovation than measurable effectiveness.

Waiting for enough Superman-teachers and Superwoman-teachers is waiting for Godot.

Instead, Wilson's proposal could give regular teachers the tools to succeed and the incentives to excel professionally.

Does DC Union Want It To Take Longer Than Forever to Fire Teachers?

Andy Rotherham and Richard Whitmire have an article in The New Republic on AFT President Randi Weingarten. In it, they divulge some details about the counter-offer of the teachers' union in DC contract negotiations. It seems that the union, as things stand, wants to make the firing of teachers more complex and protracted than it already is:

...[T]he counter-offer, which hasn't been made public, would complicate rather than streamline [the teacher-firing] process in D.C. ... [It wraps] teachers even more tightly in tenure protections and extend[s] the termination process....If adopted as currently proposed, [DC schools chancellor Michelle] Rhee's hurry-up reforms would be throttled back to a glacial pace and students would suffer.

Rotherham and Whitmire point that some people contend that, in the mirror-world of labor negotiations, this complexifying proposal is "actually a signal from Weingarten that she's open to negotiating and moving in Rhee's direction."

We'll see.

UPDATE (3/22/09) D.C Wire had a blog post on Michelle Rhee's reaction to the union's counter-proposal -- the counter-proposal that I discussed above. Rhee reported to the DC Council: "There are some fundamental issues we can't come to agreement on....Both sides are drawing a line in the sand."

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.