Hamlet: Do you see that cloud that’s almost in shape like a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and it’s like a camel, indeed.
Ham: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Pol. It is back’d like a weasel.
Ham. Or like a whale?
Pol. Very like a whale.

Though it's been a week since the intial "jolt", my EGOM is still picking up Updating this entry, the University of Virginia has also decided that--with the 2006 election cycle just on the horizon--'tis the season for empty gestures . UVA has up and decided that their university would be better off without early decision.

I love to see how ideas fall in and out of vogue like this--if it was such a bad idea and was producing such detrimental results, then why was everyone doing it in the first place? At least Nietzsche would be happy to know that the herd instinct, even among elite institutions of higher learning, is alive and well.

I hope that someone is already planning the study that will compare the demographics of the freshman class at these universities before and after they got rid of the early decision program (If not, I'm calling dibs on this one). I will wager you dollars to donuts, as my dad likes to say, that the change will be negligible at best. Those same students that were taken under early decision, affluent though they may be, will still get accepted under regular decision and everything will be as it once was.

Posted by Ethan at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Alright, I admit it, I have something of an intellectual crush--always have, always will--on E.D. Hirsch, the author of several education books and founder of Core Knowledge Foundation. Though I think at some level I have always been interested in the nature and dynamics of the public education system, I remember reading Hirsch's The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them in the summer of my senior year of high school and realizing for the first time how deep my passion for understanding the formation of our nation's schools and for improving our nation's schools is. If it hadn't been for that book, who knows maybe I would have become, but I'm sure it wouldn't have been pretty. So why am I bringing this up now? Well, Hirsch recently published a new book on our country's (growing) achievement gap, especially with respect to reading skills. I just checked out a copy from the library and, if you're looking for an interesting read (he never disappoints whether you love him or loathe him (Howard Gardner [cough, cough])), I recommend you do the same.

Not buying my Hirsch hype? Check out the interview he did earlier this month with Andrew Rotherham of EdSector and see what you think.

Posted by Ethan at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ethan and I have been waiting for this day for quite some time now: the day when we feel we've been able to connect with enough students across the country that we can begin building a talented, diverse, and representative body of young leaders to help guide Our Education in the coming months and years. Our Youth Advisory Board will be a body of ten-twenty high school and college students who will be responsible for providing leadership and direction for Our Education and executing innovative growth and advocacy strategies too!

How will you know if you a good candidate for this important position? It's really pretty simple: does it bother you that millions of children in America simply do not have access to quality educational opportunities? And are you ready and willing to stand up and become a leader in our movement for change?

If you answered yes to both questions, we strongly encourage you to apply now by downloading this application and filling it out. One part of the judging will be your participation in or leadership in a petition drive in your school or campus, so get in touch with us about starting a petition drive also if you have not done so yet!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to our friend Robert Logan, a sophomore at Lusher Charter School in New Orleans, who is working with his friends to start up an Our Education club in his school. He drafted this charter for his club (get it? Charter? Like Charter School? haha? No? Not funny because it's not even a pun, it's just the same word used twice with the same meaning? Fine. It's Friday, I'm out of good material) and emailed it to me agreeing to us share it with all you out there who are interested in learning what it might be like to start up your own Our Education club as well!

Bear in mind, you don't have to start up an Our Education club to run a petition drive in your school at all -- you can work with an existing group or a supportive teacher instead. But we have a whole curriculum created for how you might engage your peers in a club, in addition to the petition drive and bracelet fundraiser. So check out this charter and contact us if you'd like to explore starting up your very own club!

Lusher Charter High School
Fall 2006
Our Education Club

Article I. Mission
The Our Education Club shall work to inform the student body of Lusher Middle School and Lusher High School about their rights as students and members of our society through informative campaigns. It shall also encourage as many students as possible to sign “Our Education’s Petition for an American Right to High Quality Education,” a petition being organized by the non-profit student organization, Our Education.

Article II. Overview
Section 1. The Our Education Club shall meet once every other week for sixty minutes to plan for and organize a week in which all eligible students in Lusher Middle School and Lusher High School will sign the petition mentioned earlier.
Section 2. The Our Education Club shall organize a week for students to sign the petition every year until the petition has achieved its goal with regards to the number of students signing it.
Section 3. The Our Education Club shall work with other clubs and student organizations, as well as Our Education in order to accomplish its mission.

Article III. Duration
The Our Education Club shall remain fully functional past the set week for the petition to be signed and may conduct other activities from time to time in order to increase student awareness and participation in as well as ownership of their education.

Article IV. Organizational Independence
The Our Education Club shall be free to organize itself further as it wishes within reasonable limits

Posted by Aaron Tang at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today, at my college, Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, a woman named Paula Crisostomo spoke. Thirty-eight years ago, she lead a group of Chicano (Mexican/American) students to walk out of the public schools in Eastern Los Angeles. By the time that week was over, more than 20,000 High School students from Los Angeles had walked out of their schools, protesting the horrendous quality of the education offered to Chicano youths.
"We were disgusted by the low expectations of teachers," explained Cristostomo, who was at the school to promote awareness about a HBO movie about the demonstration. The movie, entitled "Walkout" premiered this past March on HBO.

"Education," said Cristostomo, "was tailored to the Lowed Common Denominator of students." Men were expected to be auto-mechanics and women were expected to be housewives, or at best, secretaries. But the high school students of Eastern LA knew that they were better than that. What they wanted was "education and equality for all students."
The problems that the Chicano students were protesting back in 1968 have not been addressed today. At that time, the dropout rate was over 50%, and there were serious problems with overcrowding, run-down buildings, a lack of books and supplies in the classrooms, and racist teachers. The students wanted "education and equality for all students." They were tired of being "conditioned not to have dreams and aspirations." They wanted teachers who believed in them, with schools that gace them a chance of success, a place where they would not be "patrionized, belittled, and ignored." They wanted access to an education that would push them to continue on to college.
It's amazing how little things have changed in East LA. Today, the dropout rate for African Americans is over fifty percent, and the dropout rate for Chicanos is over sixty percent. Worse than that, the overall dropout rate is sixty-eight percent. In addition, each High School in Los Angeles has a single college counselor to help the entire student body, which is sometimes as many as 5,000 students. It's no wonder students don't feel that they have access to college resources.
"Something drastic has to be done," Crisostomo lamented. So little has changed in LA, and throughout this country, since 1968. But this organization is trying.
Crisostomo gave advice to organizations trying to achieve social justice. The walkout was a "final step," she explained. Through organizations like the Chicano Youth Leadership Conference (an organization that is still in existence) and others, Crisostomo learned how to create a movement. She told the crowd that it took two years to organize the walk-outs, and that the key to a successful organization that is going against the mainstream is to reach out to anyone who will help you. In her quest for equality in Los Angelos, Crisostomo's organization looked for help to groups that ranged from the Black Panthers to Labor Unions.
So, to the students of Lilncoln, Wilson, Belmont, Garfield, and Roosevelt High Schools in Eastern Los Angelos, there is no reason that you should accept the abysmal education that you are subject to. There are other students around the nation who are prepared to help you and to stand with you.

Posted by Guest at 02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Aaron and I are always pleased to hear about our alma mater doing good things. So we, along with hopefully thousands of intellectually curious minds around the world, welcomed today's news that Yale will be offering free online video of lectures in seven undergraduate courses beginning in fall 2007. The video of the lectures will accompany online transcripts (in several languages), syllabi, and additional course materials that can be used by students who want to follow along at home. Good stuff!

Yes, the cynic in me questions the timing of the release of this news story given that Harvard and Princeton have each grabbed education headlines the last two days (here and here) for their decisions to drop early admissions (more on this is a second). But the funding for this project, coming from the Hewlett Foundation, must have been a long time in the works since foundations move like...well, lets just say slowly. This story will certainly buy them some time to figure out if they want to follow suit in dropping early admissions.

Speaking of cynic in me, when Harvard and Princeton announced their decisions to end early admissions the needle on my Empty-Gesture-O-Meter (EGOM) started going crazy. At first blush this sounded like a great idea: eliminate some of the pressure and stress from the admissions process and, even more importantly, help out poorer students who are less likely to apply. But on further reflection, I'm not sure I understand how this is going to benefit economically-disadvantaged students at all because the same admissions officers that were letting more affluent students in under early admission/action can still do so, only now it will happen two months later. That is, unless Harvard and Princeton admissions officers are suggesting that because early admission existed they felt compelled to let people in who they might not otherwise take--you know, because (1) they have a hard time saying "No." [they have 11% and 9% acceptance rates respectively] and (2) if they didn't take students early, they might not fill the class. If this were the case, well then what are you waiting for? Hoist the banners, cue the music, and hail the conquering heroes--thank goodness the beast is dead.

Posted by Ethan at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you been searching for a new voice in media that "expresses this generation's merger of capitalism and idealsim"?! Well by golly you're in luck. Good magazine, the brain-child of 26 year old millionarie Ben Goldhirsh, just released its first issue.

Though the New York Times has dismissed described the magazine and its mission--to speak to a generation of "critical idealists"--as "New Age meets new money Volunteerism meets the consumerist imperative" and the review from Gawker is a total pan ("The back page is a goddamned project. Because, you know, that's how you fix America: making a bumper sticker about voting."), I think I'll stay on the fence a little while longer. Those of us involved with Our Education would no doubt be described as "idealist do-gooders" too, so I'll call for a little solidarity amongst do-gooders and check out their next few issues. So if you're in to collecting RSS feeds, you might as well get your hands on the Good stuff (sorry, the puns are just too easy).

Posted by Ethan at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the past several days, we've been very pleased to find a number of motivated high school students who are involved with their schools' Key Clubs, Student Councils, National Honor Societies, and other service groups. And we've found them through an unlikely source that some out there would seek to ban: MySpace!

So if you are a student out there who thinks that having a MySpace profile doesn't automatically mean you are anti-social and don't care about making the world a better place, here's a chance to show how! I've said it before and I'll say it again: MySpace and other social networking sites are just a medium for people to connect through. What they do once they connect is a matter of presenting compelling opportunities and engaging people in positive work. Our Education is testing this idea now -- and if you've gotten a myspace message from us in the past week, you're a part of the test too!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, it turns out our earlier problems with email aren't resolved after all. We're still experiencing problems related to our webserver and domain registrar, and the result is that some number of emails aren't getting sent out properly, and neither are we receiving some messages correctly.

So, if you have sent either Ethan or Aaron a message in the past month that we did not reply to, please let us know and write again to ethan.hutt@gmail.com (ethan) or atang15@gmail.com (aaron). Additionally, if you expected to receive an email from us in the past month that never arrived, please email us to let us know so we can resend you what we promised from our gmail accounts. Please bear with us as we try to figure out this whole internet thing and it's complicated, inter-weaving, tricky web of tubes.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 03:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Because apparently the people at in the Health section of Washington Post don't think you read their section/paper (note to Washington Post: shame on you for thumbing your nose at so large a literate population), they have written a rather obnoxiously condescending article on some recent research concerning multi-tasking while studying.

Researchers at UCLA have concluded that "multi-tasking "while studying can have a negative impact on your ability to retain the information. The researchers used fMRI to monitor participants' brain function (all the participants were in their twenties) while they performed the tasks in the study. Interestingly, the fMRIs revealed that when a participant was performing a task under non-multi-tasking situations his hippocampus hippocamus was involved. But when the same task was performed under multi-tasking conditions (participants had to count a series of beeps while they performed the original task of sorting a pile of objects based on a process of trial and error) their brain activity shifted away from the hippocampus to the striatum-- a sign, researchers say, that the information learned during the process is less likely to be available in future situations (in other words, you would not remember the information when you took your test).

I would love to know if different age groups would perform differently on this test. Everyone always talks about how much multi-tasking young people do and how their minds are always in so many different places. Does that mean that as distracted as young people became while multi-tasking that adults would perform even worse? What does that say about corporate America where people are constantly being required to multi-task? Also, I would love to know whether the study's participants personally prefer to study in quiet or while multi-tasking as I could see that those who are used to studying while multi-tasking might get better at performing two tasks at once.

One favorite study habit that was not investigated by this study was whether listening to music (or other passive tasks) impacts a person's brain activity while studying. So if you do decide to sign offline, at least you can keep listening to your iPod.

Posted by Ethan at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good thing for our friends over at School Me, who never let any education news slip through their fingers--even when it appears in the British press. Don't get me wrong, I read the British papers too. But, understandably distracted by this and this, I missed this new report on higher education access and participation worldwide.

The bottom line of the report is that other countries are making progress and closing the gap with America (and in some cases eliminating it) when it comes to quality of higher education, access to higher education, and higher education completion. While there are many education stories that warrant their doom and gloom billing, I'm not sure this one deserves to be on the marquee.

The study notes that now the U.S. is only one of nine countries with more than 60% of its young adults participating in higher education. Who are the other eight countries you ask: Iceland (83%) New Zealand (81%), Sweden (80%), Finland (73%), Poland (70%), Hungary (69%), Australia (68%) and Norway (68%). In other words, not a single other G8 country. That does not mean that countries like Japan, Korea, France, and Canada aren't closing ground on us (they are) but this is not exactly the same as when our 10th graders finished 24th out of 29 nations. All of this, of course, does not mean that the U.S. doesn't need to do a better job of increasing curricular alignment and higher ed affordability so that participation and retention rates can increase but it's always good to retain some degree of perspective in all of this.

Posted by Ethan at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Throughout the past week, Facebook, the huge social networking system, underwent some rather extreme changes. The ramifications of this turmoil could affect our movement and thus the state of public education in this country!

On Monday night, Facebook introduced a new feature called "News-Feed" where all of the sudden you could see the second by second activities of anyone on your friend list displayed on your news feed. High school and college students accross the country went into a uproar, evidenced by the immediate growth and proliferation of hundreds of groups titled "Anti News-Feed" "Anti Facebook Makeover" and "I hate the new facebook." The most interesting part of this for our purposes is what happened with one particular group...

The group including the words "Official Petition to Facebook" against the news-feeds grew in only three days to include over 500,000 people! Ironically, it grew so fast because everyone saw in their news feed as soon as one of their friends joined the group and then consequently immediately joined it. Over half a million people rallied in protest in less than 72 hours! As a result, the founder of Facebook introduced new privacy controls to control the news-feeds by Thursday of that week. We can only wish that people would become so angered and active about the state of public education in this country.

However, we need to take full advantage of this new feature of the news feeds and get as many of our friends to join the global group now. As they join, all of their friends will see this new group on their news feeds and join it. This viral advertising could help the OurEd campaign grow exponentially.

Furthermore, I think this situation speaks to the fact that when you appeal to people's personal emotions - people were actually angry about the changes to Facebook and its implications for their privacy - then they act on those emotions. We need to continue to use engaging stories, eye-opening testimonials, and creative ideas to draw people's emotions into this campaign. Public education is not some abstract, unimportant phenomenon, it is an instrument for equality of opportunity, a fundamental American value.

Posted by Stacy Tolos at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those unafriad of arousing the wrath of state education departments everywhere, the Education Sector has just released Making the Cut: How States Set Passing Scores on Standardized Tests. The short "explainer" (it's only 10 pages) will tell you just about everything you want to know about the different methods states use to set the cut scores for their standardized tests.

Cut scores definitely deserve more attention than they get from the media (it's much sexier to report the results of the cut scores: "Scores plunge, thousands fail!" or "Governor lauds, claims credit for spike in test scores") so this report is a welcome first step in educating students, parents, and the public at large about how these seldom spoken of numbers have a huge impact on the tone of the education news we receive.

It's really about time someone took states to task over their cut scores and pulled back the curtain on the whole enterprise. Rotherham (author of the report) calls for all states to put information up on the web that explains what their current cut scores are and how they were developed. According to Ed Sector's analysis, only 60% of states currently offer such information on their websites. While it's certainly important for the public to know that information, as Rotherham himself notes in the report, knowing a cut score in the abstract is totally meaningless--it's just a number. A low cut score doesn't mean it's easier to pass a test, it might just mean the test is (justifiably) harder; and a high score doesn't mean it's harder to pass a test, it could just be an easy test. The states can post all the cut scores they want on their websites (here I'll throw out a few too: 45, 69, 32. Feel better?) but without having the test they are associated with they are worse than meaningless and may be harmful--they're creating the illusion of full disclosure.

When I was at the Commission on NCLB hearing last week, Checker Finn wondered aloud about when the lawsuits to compel states to release copies of the state tests developed and paid for with our tax dollars would start being filed (the tests are currently kept in a lockbox somewhere (maybe the same one as our Social Security dollars) and way from prying eyes). Not to sound like a broken record, but the problems stemming from the secrecy surrounding tests and cut scores are exacerbated by the fact that there are 50 tests with 50 different cut scores. At least if there were a single test (even if you never saw it), you would be able to compare your state's cut score to that of another state and you would at least get the benefit of a relative assessment. Oh well. For now, you'll have to settle for just learning about where cut scores do and don't come from.

Posted by Ethan at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A recent Alliance for Excellent Education report found that the US spends $1.4 billion a year on remedial education for students who graduate high school without the preparation needed to succeed in higher education.

Add that to the $2.3 billion our nation loses because remedial reading students are more likely to drop out from college and produce less value for the economy and you're suddenly talking about real money. How much money? Well, $3.7 billion dollars could buy you:

10 of these
26,470 of these
123,333,333 of these

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I promised in my last entry that I would offer a few thoughts on the recent “mayoral take over of LAUSD” so here we go:
Though I have tried to find facts in the case that would allow me to join CEO & Founder of Green Dot Public Schools and Eduwonk guest blogger and Steve Barr in declaring victory for the students of Los Angeles, after several days of searching I admit to have come up empty handed. Sure a mayoral take over of the city’s schools has a nice ring to it as does the rallying cry of “greater accountability,” “less bureaucracy,” and being able to hold a single man (the mayor) accountable for the schools’ success or failure, and it is true that Mayor Daley (of Chicago) and Mayor Bloomsburg (of New York) have been able to claim successes in their district take-overs, but in this instance I can’t help but be reminded of a certain bit of advice Benjamin Franklin once gave to Thomas Jefferson.

Franklin, seeing Jefferson sulking because Congress had muddled the ideas and beautiful prose of his masterwork with its edits, shared with Jefferson a parable (you’ll have to indulge me forgive me, I was a history major):

"I have made a rule, whenever in my power, to avoid becoming the draughtsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you. When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an apprentice hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words, 'John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,' with a figure of a hat subjoined. But thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments.
The first he showed it to thought the word 'Hatter' tautologous, because followed by the words 'makes hats,' which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word 'makes' might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats. If good and to their mind, they would buy them, by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said he thought the words 'for ready money' were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Every one who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood, 'John Thompson sells hats.' 'Sells hats!' says the next friend. 'Why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What then is the use of that word?' It was stricken out, and 'hats' followed it, the rather as there was one painted on the board. So the inscription was reduced ultimately to 'John Thompson,' with the figure of a hat subjoined."

Though I doubt this story brought much comfort to Jefferson (he ended up writing out his original draft three more times (no small feat) to ensure its preservation in history), I do think it is instructive in the case of Mayor Villaraigosa and the LAUSD. As with the hatter whose sign was edited so many times it no longer made sense, so too with Villaraigosa's vision of increased accountability and decreased bureaucracy for LAUSD.

What Villaraigosa wanted was to have greater authority and decision making power in the district, especially when it came to the hiring and firing of the superintendent. That sounds great, but since LAUSD includes some 27 cities besides Los Angeles, what Villaraigosa ended up getting was a “Council of Mayors” that will have to approve of the hiring/firing of a superintendent. Granted Villaraigosa will have considerably more power in the council than the other mayors (he has a veto vote), but a perspective candidate must first get the school board’s OK, then need 90% approval from the council of mayors (Villaraigosa’s vote counts for 80%, the proportion that Los Angeles school children comprise of the entire district population). Now I was never particularly good at math and I only took one class in college on organizational theory, but how a council of mayors comprised of 32 people (27 city representatives and 5 country supervisors) is an improvement over a school board with 7 members when it comes to stream lining the decision making process and creating clearer accountability, considering that now both the school board and the council of mayors will be part of the decision making process is totally beyond my grasp.

Designating the mayor as the hero or fall guy for the district appears at first blush to be an improvement—it’s easier to vote out one mayor than a majority of school board members. But in my view, putting the mayor in charge actually decreases the ability of voters to cast an education vote that contains substance because now district policy will become just one plank in a whole mayoral platform, and just one stance that voters will have to weigh when determining their mayor. Do we really want district policy to become part of mayoral politics? Though I am dubious that this scheme will bring the people of Los Angeles (and the other cities in LAUSD) greater accountability, this accountability has been won at the cost of the ease of their ability to vote out the person accountable—a pyrrhic victory if there ever were one.

Villaraigosa’s take-over-by-legislative-fiat was obviously inspired by the actions of Mayor Daley in Chicago and Mayor Bloomberg in New York City, who each seized control over the local school system in order to create clearer accountability and accelerate the pace of reform efforts. But unlike mayors Daley and Bloomberg he will not have the power to renegotiate employee contracts, alter work rules, turn low-performing schools into charter schools, restructure or remove leadership teams a chronically under-performing schools, or even have clear authority (see above) over the school board (Bloomberg gets to appoint 7 of the 13 school board members).

My last concern is the rather “sketchy” way in which the legislation was passed. I don’t know why the mayor should be allowed to skirt local voters and appeal to the state legislature to increase his authority within his own city—this seems more like a matter for the city council than legislators from Eureka or Fresno. This concern is made more acute when you consider the string of events that led to the bill’s passage. When the bill was first called to vote, it did not have nearly enough votes to pass. But after intense lobbying from Mayor Villaraigosa of his former colleagues (he was a member of the California Assembly for six years, including a two year term as Assembly Speaker) the bill was passed. Despite voting in favor of the bill on the second go-round (they each abstained on the first vote), several members of the legislature expressed strong concerns about the legislation: “’There is a lot in the bill that I think is unconstitutional," Horton said. "I think it goes to the court and I think it gets overturned. But to stimulate the debate about school reform — it serves to do that purpose.”’ Assemblywoman Negrete-McLeod, who presents a district whose students do not attend LAUSD, told the LA Times: “’I still have some problems’ with the legislation. But she said ‘that it's only for five years and so if it doesn't work, we'll see that it doesn't work.’” It serves to stimulate debate and if it doesn’t work we can always undo it—that’s why you voted for it? Huh?! You can’t be serious.

The mayor’s plan needed 41 votes to pass and received 42, so you could say that Horton and Negrete-McLeod—with their strong convictions and support—cast the deciding votes. What all of this will mean in the end for the students of LAUSD is still unclear. The bill will first have to survive an imminent legal challenge. After that, who knows? But fear not, students of LAUSD, it’s like Assemblywoman Negrete-McLeod said: Lighten up. It’s only for five years.

Posted by Ethan at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Welcome back everyone - we hope you had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. It was a busy weekend for Our Education, full of ups and downs. It was one of the most important sports days of the year for both Ethan and myself on Sunday, but the excitement was soon tempered by news that saddened us all.

Setting the weekend aside, we're pleased to unveil a pair of fliers that you and any of your peers can download and customize for use in your petition drives this fall. The fliers are in word format so that you can add the dates & locations relevant for your school. Here's one, and here's another. You can also find them at our downloads page.

Additionally, we've begun to receive a couple submissions for our first-ever Our Education contest! We hope you will consider applying for any of the four competitions - each of which will award a winner with a $75 gift card to a retali store of your choice!

As always, feel free to email us with any questions!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After being cooped up all week by relentless rain and endless work, I finally got to get out of the house/office and take a little field trip up to Boston. Despite being forced to drive a (rented) Chevy Aveo painted an impossibly ugly Mylanta-blue, I was able to make great time to Boston and arrive at the hearing in time to hear eight of the nine scheduled witnesses. Sometime during my journey north, and apparently unbeknownst to anyone at the hearing, Secretary Spellings was quoted by the AP saying, "I talk about No Child Left Behind like Ivory soap: It's 99.9 percent pure or something," Spellings told reporters. "There's not much needed in the way of change." While one could easily say that such a claim of NCLB perfection is "moronic", "dillusional", or "proof that she resides in an alternate universe with the rest of the Bush administration" (I'm generously paraphrasing the NEA here), I will simply say that I am thankful that the witnesses at the hearing were more thoughtful and trenchant in their observaions than Secretary Spellings.

Now, if you're interested in reliving the magic of this morning's hearing in vivid 210 k/sec streaming video, you're in luck. The Commission read your mind:
vivid 210 k/sec streaming video of Commission on NCLB's 8/31 hearing.

If you are interested in recreating the magic of this morning's session, but aren't so keen on streaming video, the Committee's got you covered there too: you can print out each of the speaker's testimony from the Commission's website and have your friends read it aloud to you.

If neither of those appeal to you, or if you're just the trusting type, then you can put your faith in my keen recollection and crack note taking skills to fill you in on what went on.

The purpose of this morning's hearing was to give the Commission a chance to explore the issue of state standards--more specifically the wide variance in state standards and how that has impacted the enforcement and effectiveness of NCLB. Though each of the speakers (I can't actually vouch for Gov. Romney, I missed his testimony) offered an interesting array of thoughts, I'll give you the ultra-Cliff Notes version:

David Driscoll (Mass. Commissioner of Education):
*Concerned about the cookie-cutter approach(es) used to fix schools that don't make AYP.
*Concerned the NCLB creates disincentive to set high standards, which punishes states like Massachusetts that do set high standards.
*Progress based in standards alone will only take you so far before achievement stagnates, at which point we must look at other, more systemic, reform possibilities.

Chester Finn (Fordham Foundation)
*Current state of state standards is 'woeful' (a "C-minus" average according to Fordham's new report)
*NCLB may have made the quality of state standards worse ....despite considerable revision of most state standards the average quality is the same as it was six years ago the last time Fordham conducted its review.
*Standards matter-- it's hard to have bad standards and high achievement.
*We should be thinking as a nation about moving to a national standard.

Antonia Cortese (AFT)
*Standards are important because they drive all other activities at a school.
*We need better alignment of our current standards (only about 11 states in the AFT's estimation have strong standards and have them aligned with their state tests).
*Standards need to be specific and uniformly strong, perhaps broken down by grade level (as opposed to the current range of grade levels given for a specific standard) or even by specific course.

Michael Cohen (Achieve)
*Need for better alignment of standards to the college level.
*States are beginning to collaborate and join together to agree on standards and develop collective tests (9 states are currently developing a single Algebra II test).
*Told committee to "do no harm" to the budding efforts of states to collaborate on setting standards.

Neal McCluskey (Cato Institute)
*No level of government--local or federal--should be trusted with the task of controlling schools...[must allow (parental) choice to drive the system].
*Politics--the game of politicking--ruins good ideas, including those in the world of education
*Those with a vested interest in the education status quo will always have more political power than the average voter who has many priorities to consider when casting a vote.

Arthur Rothkopf (U.S. Chamber of Commerce)
*Concerned that America will fall behind in the global economy if we do not have sufficiently educated workers.
*Standards need to be "consistent" with the needs and requirements of businesses (and higher ed. institutions).
*All students should be on a curricular track that will prepare them for higher ed. (or the workforce).

Brian Gong (Nat'l Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment)
*NCLB requirement to test in every grade, every year creates incentives for states to make "cheaper" [read: simpler, read: worse] tests.
*The pressure to deliver test results by the end of the year causes (forces) many states to opt for multiple choice tests.
*Many states have dropped writing portions of their tests because they are expensive and not required by NCLB.
*Need to get states to develop more coherent, fleshed-out, specific standards--this can happen by encouraging more collaboration between states.

Susan Traiman (Business Roundtable)
*Business community thinks 50 standards for 50 states is "absurd"
*"Politics often create conditions where absurd ideas are the only rational approach"
*Students who are good in math are crucial to the future success of the U.S. economy.
*Need to better focus standards towards college/workforce readiness.

Phew. Still with me? Okay a few thoughts about the hearing and the standards debate:
Maybe it is more a reflection of my own mindset/selective hearing and having read both of the recent Fordham reports, but there seemed to be unanimity among the panelists that the state of state standards are abysmal and that moving forward the federal government must do more to at the very least encourage greater collaboration between states and maybe even go so far as to create (e.g. fund a panel/commission/organization to create) national standards and incentivize the adoption of those standards by states (and maybe further incentivize the adoption of a common "cut score"). As I have noted before, and as I stressed to several of the commission members at lunch, the students Aaron and I have met over the course of our work have never grasped (or supported) the idea that the rigor of standards should differ from state to state. Forget the rather compelling financial arguments for creating more uniform standards (it is cheaper to develop 1 test or 10 tests than it is to pay to have 50 tests developed), it really is a matter of fairness. Trying not to overstep my bounds as an invited guest, I tried to suggest that the longer we delay the adoption of uniform standards the greater the harm we are inflicting on the academic futures of our nation's students, not only because I see uniformity in (rigorous) standards as being a first step towards Our Education's vision of high quality education for every American child, but because people talk about the virtue of state standards as if there aren't pinch points today along the education pipeline where every student is required to know the same body of information. Even if you throw out the SAT as being generally content neutral (it's an aptitude test), there are still AP exams, the ACT, and a host of SAT II subject tests that most colleges require applicants to submit scores in. The idea that math is different in different states has rightly been treated as equal parts risible and ridiculous, but I think it is crucial to remember that students are already required to meet on common ground in a lot of other subjects as well. Everyone is talking about how every child should be prepared to go to college, but they are doing it in an environment that doesn't acknowledge the hurdles that students have to get over in order to apply. States that pull the covers over their eyes and hope it's all a dream are creating a reality for students that is nightmare. I could harp on this point for hours, but I'll let it sit rest at that.

Many of the witnesses' sound ideas speak for themselves and don't need much elaboration from me, but I would like to highlight one other point, because I think it is especially relevant to the Our Education national student movement. During Ms. Traiman's testimony she observed that politics often requires the adoption of irrational ideas, which prompted Chairman Barnes to chime in "you're right, politics isn't about rationality. It's about passion--usually the passion to get reelected. ". This exchange brought home for me a point that Mr. McCluskey had made about the difficulty of changing the status quo because those whose livelihoods are the status quo will have more political power than those who are done harm by the system--a case of diffuse costs and concentrated interest. The more centralized the power becomes, the harder it is to overcome institutional inertia or wrest control back from the powers that be. Mr. McCluskey uses this as an argument for why government should not be involved at all in education. I see it not only as a reason to be concerned about the recent take over of LAUSD by the mayor (more on that in my next blog), but, way more importantly, as a key reason why a national student movement is so important. While parents and voters in the general public will have their priorities spread out among a host of issues, young people have a chance to create a strong, unified cohort to exert political pressure to protect and improve our nation's schools. Make no mistake about it, without a strong and concerted effort by students to "shake up" the status quo, we will never get the kinds of schools we need in this country.

As a last point, I just wanted to say how impressed I was by how the Commission on NCLB is approaching their task of making recommendations on NCLB to Congress. It would have been easy for them to take the Spellings approach and settle for tinkering on the margins. Instead they have really set themselves to the much more difficult task of trying to substantially improve the law and our schools. No one knows what the Committee's final recommendations will be (and it's near impossible to guess what Congress will do with them) but I have strong feeling that they will be something America's students can get excited about. Obviously, we will keep you posted....

Posted by Ethan at 01:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)