As we prepare to enter a new year that may or may not see significant reform over federal education policy, this much is clear: there will continue to be plenty of action in the states.

The impetus for that action has been the perfect storm created by plummeting state revenues due to the economic downturn in combination with an innovative federal stimulus proposal, the Race to the Top Fund

I wrote in July about how the fund was producing promising state level policy changes in response to the four criteria that states need to satisfy in order to be eligible RTTT funding.

That promising start has turned into a "breathtaking impact" according to Joe Williams, the president of Democrats for Education Reform. This Education Week article describes the dizzying array of states who have made substantial policy changes to allow charter schools, to enable student achievement data to be tied to teacher pay, and to enact new school turnaround plans.

If $4 billion in one-time competitive grant funding by the feds can lead to such wholesale change on issues that recalcitrant stakeholders have long fought, one has to wonder whether the Department of Education could do more with the rest of its nearly $50 billion in outlays. Perhaps RTTT has demonstrated that the recipe for meaningful school reform is for the federal government to provide cash and political cover to states to do the heavy lifting themselves. One major reformsthat could get accomplished in the future through a similar formula: enactment of national standards.

There is cause for concern however, if the RTTT becomes a victim of its own success. The $4 billion slated to be given out can only be sliced up in so many pieces. What if so many states have enacted policy changes to qualify that there is a shortage of grant money to reward deserving actors? Will the backlash of denied RTTT grant applications lead state lawmakers to backslide on their earlier changes? Only time will tell.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 07:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the longest time, schools of education have gotten a free pass. Amidst the tough talk of school reform and real accountability for schools, teachers, and students, very little has been said or done to hold schools of education accountable for what they produce.

Until now. Enter Louisiana's new system for tracking teacher performance based on the schools that teacher come from. It's the first statewide system of its kind, but it likely won't be the last.

The key to the system is the buy-in of the state's various schools of education. As E. Joseph Savoie, president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, observes, the state's system is "accountability on steroids."

Under the new program, data will be compiled on value added learning gains (how much students improve from year to year) and aggregated based on teacher training schools, the vast majority of which are based in the state's universities and colleges. Schools that consistently produce graduates who struggle to improve student achievement can face mandatory reforms and even closure.

Undoubtedly there will be those in the anti-standardized testing crowd who criticize this proposal as further entrenching the role of standardized assessments in K-12 education. There will also be some who believe that evaluating teachers is itself an impossible endeavor, much less evaluating where they were trained.

But these criticisms miss the crucial mark: what Louisiana's data system does is provide policy makers with key information about what is working and what is not. A college the regularly graduates first-rate teachers should not only be recognized and rewarded, it should serve as a model for schools that churn out low-performing teachers also.

The potential downstream effects of this kind of data system and public recognition (and shaming) device are profound: some day it might become recognized as prestigious to enroll in a school of education that is recognized for producing high-performing teachers, and school districts would do well to use signals such as graduation from a top teacher training to program in hiring decisions.

In the long run this may lead to a higher education landscape where students actually compete for spots in the best programs--the exact kind of message we want to send to talented young people who are interested in the teaching profession. In other words, what starts with the simple process of gathering data may well lead to cultural changes in the way teachers and teacher training is perceived by society writ large.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 01:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As the President struggles with complex and politically sensitive issues like the war in Afghanistan, health care, and how to accept a Nobel Peace Prize, there are some in the education world who worry that Mr. Obama will not have any political juice left to make the tough decisions needed in K-12 education.

Not to worry, says Jay Mathews over at the Washington Post, for he has an interesting proposal as to what the President can do to placate friends and foes of serious school reform alike: lead a charge to close down chronically low-performing schools.

The idea has its merits. As one study has reported, just 2,000 American high schools--13% of the nation's total--produce more than 50% of our dropouts. Many of these so-called "dropout factories" have shown little progress in changing their ways.

But as Mr. Mathews correctly points out, closing these schools isn't as simple as one would think. Because it is the states (and local school districts) who control schools, the federal government can't just come in and shut down dropout factories on its own.

Instead, Mr. Mathews suggests that the President's school-closing initiative should focus on charter schools, because those are the schools that are most susceptible to state and federal influence and since there is broad consensus--among teachers unions and even charter school proponents alike--that bad charter schools should be shuttered wherever they are identified.

As someone who has taught in one of these bad charter schools in St. Louis, I can attest to the value of ending an experiment that has gone wrong, especially when it brings the hopes and dreams of children down in the process.

The problem with the idea is two-fold. First, shutting down charter schools (or even failing public schools) only has value if the schools that children would attend instead are any better. And the sad reality is that families are only opting in to charter schools because the other options, including nearby traditional public schools, aren't world-beaters either.

Second, shutting down charter schools may not be as easy as one would think. It's true that closing a charter school won't encounter the same kind of fervent opposition of teachers unions as would closing an ordinary public school since most charters don't have unionized teaching staffs that are a part of a powerful collective bargaining base, but charter schools still serve students and parents. And many of these parents, despite the fact that their charter schools may not be performing well academically, report increased satisfaction with the schools nonetheless.

Which brings us to the big-picture question that Mr. Mathews and President Obama need to consider when it comes to school reform in the first place: what is the end-game? Is the goal giving parents choices? If so, it doesn't seem like closing down any school is in line with that; schools should shut down as a function of parent choice in the first instance--if no one wants to send their child to a particular school it will get closed by default.

Or are we striving for an American education system where every kid has a first-class academic education? If that's the case, it's unlikely that any feel-good, everybody-wins type idea will get us there: the President will have to knock quite a few heads and need some help from other stakeholders--unions, school leaders, parents, and students themselves--to get there.

If that's the case, closing down just charter schools doesn't make sense; why not put pressure through federal incentive grants like the Race to The Top Funds on states to close down any and all failing schools. A parent's satisfaction seems like a red herring, after all, if her child can barely read and write.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)