As President-Elect Obama continues the roll-out of his high-profile cabinet, the education reform world--and then some--is waiting with bated breath to see who he will tab as the ninth Secretary of Education in United States history.

Just how closely are people paying attention to the choice? Quite a bit more than you might think: editorials and articles on the question of who the President-elect will choose have appeared, all within the past week, in the Associated Press, Newsweek (twice!) Washington Post, NY Times, LA Times, Denver Post, and the Huffington Post--and that's just a partial list!

Why is it so important? We are talking about the Secretary of Education here, not the Secretary of State or Defense, where headliners like Hillary Clinton and Bob Gates have been chosen by the Obama transition team, the former notable for her 18 million primary votes and the latter because he's a Republican who has served at the pleasure of outgoing President George W. Bush. In fact, I'd put a good wager that most readers would have a hard time naming more than two or three of the eight Education Secretaries our nation has had since the cabinet post was first created in 1979. (Give up? Check the answer list at the bottom of this entry)

So why are so many people paying such close attention to Obama's choice? Partly, one can only hope, it is because observers recognize just how important education reform is to the long-term health of our economy; indeed one could plausibly argue that if the $700 billion TARP bailout plan is Congress's attempt at a band-aid for our nation's economic outlook, the underlying cure can only come in the form of drastic improvement of our K-12 schools and institutions of higher education.

But more significantly, people are setting odds on Obama's Sec Ed choice because who he chooses will tell us far more about what kinds of policy changes and priorities to expect from the Obama administration than anything he has actually said in his life as a politician thus far. The reality is, candidate Obama had his cake and ate it too on the tough issues of education reform, supporting controversial plans like merit pay for teachers and school choice to the delight of reformers (or "disrupters", as chairman of the House education committee George Miller approvingly refers to them); while at the same time appointing pro-Union, establishment Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond to chair his education transition team--a choice that caused near-panic among some die-hard members of the disrupter camp. (N.B. Rep. Miller refers to the latter group as "incrementalists" who support a slower, more measured pace of change in schools.)

The consensus is Washington is that if President-elect Obama chooses a reformer, it will be a powerful signal that the power of teachers unions over the Democratic party is over, and that the accountability systems ushered in under No Child Left Behind will be here to stay, at least in principle. But if he chooses a secretary from the education establishment, we're likely to see the same proposals that haven't done much good for children over the past few decades: protecting teacher tenure; opposing school choice for children in our lowest-performing schools; relying on schools of education to certify teachers; and increasing teacher pay at the discretion of union negotiators, regardless of student achievement.

So who are the leading candidates, at least in the eyes of the pundits? Here's a list along with odds that I'm setting (for recreational purposes only):

Arne Duncan (3:1) - One of the best compromise candidates available who would please both parties, Duncan has a successful record of reform as CEO of Chicago Public Schools but who has not made enemies with the unions in the process. Duncan also has the benefit of being a friend of Mr. Obama's from Harvard, and he has joined Mr. Obama on the basketball court from time-to-time.
Paul Vallas (15:1) - former Chicago and Philadelphia superintendent of schools and currently superintendent in New Orleans. Reform-minded and with a great deal of experience.
Michael Bennett (15:1) - a more controversial pick, Bennett is best known for his stewardship of the Denver Public Schools, which recently approved a teacher pay-for-performance plan that many of the teachers love even if the union dislikes it.
Joel Klein (10:1) - lightning rod reformer of New York City schools who is widely disliked by union types. His selection would be a major affront to the NEA and AFT, and a major victory for reformers.
John Schnur (50:1) - one of President Obama's chief education advisors during the campaign, Schnur is the head of New Leaders for New Schools and a widely respected thinker on education issues.
Linds Darling-Hammond (20:1) - the controversial Stanford professor who is the chair of the transition team on education. Her selection would please the powerful teachers unions but could incite a revolt among progressive education thinkers in the Obama camp.
Inez Tenenbaum (10:1) - former State Superintendent of Schools in South Carolina, Tenenbaum would be a favored choice among the incrementalist camp.
Some unnamed Governor (10:1)
Bill Gates (1000:1) - a long-shot, but a man who has shown tremendous interest in education policy issues through his foundation with a strong reform-minded angle.
Other (10:1) - possible short-list candidates include reformers Andy Rotherham, Kati Haycock, Michelle Rhee, Michael Johnston.

List of US Secretaries of Education in reverse chronological order: Margaret Spellings (2005 - present), Rod Paige (2001 - 2005), Richard Riley (1993 - 2001), Lamar Alexander (1991 - 1993), Lauro Cavazos (1988 - 1990), Bill Bennett (1985 - 1988), Terrel Bell (1981 - 1985), Shirley Hufstedler (1979 - 1981).

Posted by Aaron Tang at 05:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What is the most important issue facing the Obama family right now?

No, it's not the breed of dog they should bring to the White House (although the leading candidate is good news for animal shelters across the country who will get some free press: rescue dog!)

And it certainly has nothing to do with the drapes in the oval office or whether to team up with Senator McCain and Governor Palin to steal the hope diamond.

The most important issue facing the first-family-elect has to do with where Sasha and Malia...

should go to school.

It is a tricky question, substantively, to be sure. There are two widely renown, elite private schools that most pundits have at the top of the Obama's list: Georgetown Day School and Sidwell Friends School. The Obama girls both currently attend the University of Chicago's Laboratory School, a highly regarded private school in its own right, and it wouldn't be a culture shock for the two of them to transfer to either Georgetown Day or Sidwell Friends, where Chelsea Clinton was enrolled. I doubt either the Obama girls will have trouble getting admission, and their parents can probably foot the ~$30,000 tuition.

But a wild card is in the picture, which makes the choice for the first family difficult not just substantively, but symbolically: Thomson Elementary School, one of the higher achieving elementary schools in the DC Public School system. The school seems to be a beacon in a district that is largely maligned by low test scores and high drop-out rates, although recent reforms under new school Chancellor Michelle Rhee have drawn positive reviews from a number of education reformers.

The substantive issues are relatively straightforward, and they are for the Obamas to decide: where do they think Sasha and Malia will get the best education to prepare them for a successful future? It's the same choice that face so many families across the country, except for two major differences.

The first difference, of course, is that the vast majority of families don't even have the option of sending their kids to $30,000 a year primary schools. If history is any guide, it's likely that the Obama kids will do what many wealthy families do and send Sasha and Malia to either of the private schools, since the last first kid to attend a public school was Jimmy Carter's daughter, Amy, over 30 years ago.

But the second difference between the Obama family choice and the choice facing most American families is that millions of people are watching their decision. Put simply there are political implications when one chooses to send their kids to an elite private school that is out of reach for mainstream America, and yet tries to understand mainstream America's challenges.

Now I, and many others such as the USA Today editorial board, don't think the Obamas should make the choice for political reasons. But that doesn't mean politics don't exist on this decision. Thomson Elementary serves nearly 300 school children, 69% of whom are from low-income families, and 96% of whom are minorities (40% Hispanic, 34% black, and 22% Asian-American, the remainder white). There is undoubtedly a message sent if Mr. and Mrs. Obama enroll Sasha and Malia there; whether one calls it faith in the American public education system, belief in the American dream, or just good old fashioned seeing-what-your-tax-dollars pay for.

Where do you think they should send their kids (or do you think its no business of nosy bloggers like me?)

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, so this is not exactly going to be an insightful, hard-hitting entry about some controversial education issue. In fact, this entry is not going to be about education at all.

It's going to be about the Olympic Spirit - a phrase that is being thrown around by native Beijingers and Chinese from across the country with ceaseless regularity. And it's about a moment that hits particularly close to home because, well, watch the video here and see for yourself:

What's so special about the Natasha Watley homerun, you ask? Well, the guy who catches it is my best friend from college, Matt Reagan. The fellow to the left of him doing a USA! USA! chant is me, and the lovely girl to the right is my girlfriend. That's right. Someone YOU know was on national TV just two days ago at the Beijing Olympics!

But the title of this entry is "The Olympic Spirit" for a better reason than the mere coincedence that a few Americans could get lucky enough to catch a homerun ball. It's called the "Olympic Spirit" because we never should have been at the game in the first place. You see, the game was all sold out (just like every venue is allegedly sold out here in Beijing, even if you see empty seats in the stands - those seats belong to someone who for one reason or another decided not to attend and not to give away their tickets), so we spent an hour before the game walking around the stadium looking for scalpers. There were none.

Then we ran into the parents of Stacey Nuveman, the starting catcher for the USA team, who were also looking for tickets. As we walked around outside the main gate asking people if they had extra tickets, it was--strangely enough--a couple of other Americans who showed the true Olympic Spirit by offering to give us extra tickets that they happened to have! We tried to pay them anything for the tickets but they flatly refused (although they later accepted a round of drinks bought by my friend the homerun-ball-catcher), instead helping us and the USA team's starting catcher get into the game for free.

So that's the Olympic Spirit. It is people who don't know each other, going half way around the world to do something nice for a random stranger. It's the pure chance of sitting in the right seat at the right time in order to catch a homerun ball. And it's the thrill of coming home to emails and facebook messages from friends who saw you on national TV (okay, fine, CNBC, but who's counting?).

Posted by Aaron Tang at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I write this entry from Beijing, China just one day before the start of perhaps the most highly anticipated and controversial Olympics in recent history.

At different times and by different observers, these Beijing Olympics have been referred to as both visionary and subversive. Depending on who you listen to, China's hosting of the epic contest is either a proud moment for a rapidly developing nation seeking to join the global community, or a perversion of major values that civilized nations should seek to affirm.

The feeling on the ground here in Beijing, at least among ordinary Chinese citizens, leans heavily toward the former view. Taxi cab drivers, construction workers, and middle-class office workers alike have expressed a great deal of excitement about the upcoming games, proud that their country is serving host to over five million international guests. Even as heavy smog and pollution sweep the skies, the energy is palpable across the country.

But as viewers in the United States tune in to observe the games, it is the un-televised competition happening betweeen students in American public schools and Chinese schools that matters most for the 21st century. By href="http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opwhe055789535aug05,0,5415291.story">one count, China produces more than nine times more engineers than does America--a gap of 650,000 to 70,000. A Canadian global think tank estimates that within two years, 90% of all engineers holding doctorate degrees will live in Asia.

Some of this owes to the fact that China has 1.4 billion people to America's 300 million. But only some. The reality is, China has yet to tap into a huge reserve of potential that resides in its rural areas where many children do not yet have access to public education. Once that takes place, and by some estimates it is already starting, America will fall even further behind.

So as US fans cheer a likely victory of our basketball team led by Lebron James and Kobe Bryant over the Chinese National Team on August 10th, what remains to be seen is whether the same fans will realize soon enough that the competition that matters most is not on the court, but rather in the classroom.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 06:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As millions of eyes have been trained on Pennsylvania for the past six weeks, incredible numbers of http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video_log/ads, speeches, and other forms of political messaging have hit the airwaves. Some of these ads have been though provoking, many have been negative, and all of them have been expensive. But one ad caught the attention of some education advocates last week.

The ad was a radio spot purchased by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in Pennsylvania, for the cost of $329,425. The ad supports Hillary Clinton for president, although previous AFT ads in New Hampshire and Iowa also supported Senators Obama and Edwards.

You can listen to the ad and read the script here. As you listen or read, pay attention to what is NOT said, bearing in mind that the ad was bought by the nation's largest urban teachers union, which has nearly one and a half million members.

If you don't have time to check out the ad, I'll cut to the chase for you. In 57 seconds of talking, the American Federation of Teachers advertisement mentions the word "education" a grand total of zero times. It mentions the word "school" just once - when a woman named Margo announces that she is a public school teacher. Margo's next line should be about Hillary's plan to improve schools, help students learn, refocus our national energies on our children, right? Instead, Margo says that she supports Hillary Clinton because "She's capable, she's experienced, and she's a fighter."

In other words, the major education lobbyist group at play in the Democratic primary is buying ads that are education free. What hope do our children have if even the teachers don't think education is an issue that merits our attention this election cycle?

Posted by Aaron Tang at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New Year gets off to a fast start with the Iowa Caucus on January 3rd and the New Hampshire primary just 5 days later. As I've been discussing with my 8th graders, these first 8 days of the year will offer a strong hint as to who might be our next President of the United States.

What could the new year and all of the election cycle buzz bring for our students from an education policy perspective? There is room for hope on one front, as a major news media source gave significant attention to the efforts of some very brave and committed students in Los Angeles who continue to fight an uphill battle to ensure that LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa listens to their voices as he works to bring reform to their schools.

As you'll see in the article, though, the Mayor appears to be treating the student organizations--who are campaigning for some pretty common-sense improvements like finding permanent teachers rather than long-term substitutes for math and science classrooms, better staffed guidance offices, and more college counselors--with a grain of salt. At one point during a recent evening meeting with the mayor and over 700 community members, a student asked the mayor whether his high school diploma would have any value given the lack of rigor or college track classes in his school. The mayor dodged the students question and instead replied, "Look at this young man. He's in a suit. He's ready. He's intelligent. This is what we want in our school. . . . A diploma should signify that you're prepared." Just like it is with national student organizing, it sounds like it will take more numbers, more visible approaches, and more pressure before the LA students have the voice they deserve in local reform discussions.

On a second front, it looks as though there might not be too much progress for serious education policy discussions at least during the contentious early primary season. While both Senators Clinton and Obama signalled an open-mindedness towards controversial reforms like paying teachers on a merit basis several months ago, they've all steered clear of possible negative buzz lately. One thing that is grabbing headlines is that GOP candidate Mike Huckabee, who leads polls in Iowa as of the day before the caucus, appears to be as supportive (or "submissive to"), if not more supportive of the teachers unions than perhaps any other candidate--including all of the democrats! See for yourself if you think this diagnosis is accurate based on a speech he gave to the NEA this past summer. The fact that he even appeared at the NEA convention has been seen as anathema to some die-hard conservatives, some of whom object to the idea of a US Department of Education--let alone a strong role for unions in what they view as a local issue:

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the common debates in education theory circles today concerns the kind of environment that teachers should be attempting to foster in classrooms. Liberal educators bemoan what they see as an increased focus on grades, class rankings, and other forms of competition. They allege that this competition reinforces learning for the wrong reasons and punishes the losing students without just cause. Typical of this argument, a recent article from one such liberal education theorist suggests that competition among students in schools and classrooms--for better grades, teacher praise, honor roll, or any other similar recognition--is a destructive force in our schools today. The author of the article, Dr. Marshall, writes in his tagline, "competition increases performance, but collaboration increases learning."

While I certainly appreciate Dr. Marshall's sincere interest in the emotional and developmental well-being of all children, I see two problems with Dr. Marshall's line or argument from the perspective of my 8th grade students in Saint Louis. The first problem is that he has set up a straw-man argument. There are very few classrooms in America today where teachers set out to create perfect competition for every grade, every bit of praise, every recognition. To the degree that giving children grades shows them how they are progressing and to the degree that this is an important educational process, I would suggest that the purpose of these grades is to get a student to compete against themself and not against others.

In fact, that there are really two kinds of praise and recognition that students should be receiving, either in grade form or in teacher-verbalized form: praise for improvement over past performance, and praise for objectively good actions. The kind of praise and recognition that many liberal educators decry is one that doesn't actually happen much in school: that which tells one student that they are doing a great job (i.e. they are the "winner" or the "best" in a classroom), but which indirectly tells other students that they are not the best or not winners. In other words, Marshall is right on that teachers should not be fostering competition where one student wins and the others lose, but he might be just as perceptive to argue that there should be less corporal punishment in schools too.

My second complaint with the anti-competition in schools theme is that it misses out on one of the most important things we have learned about human nature in the past century: competition is a crucial way to increase the quality of outcomes in virtually every enterprise we see fit to undertake. Again, I'm not referring to the kind of competition that says one kid is the best and all the rest are worthless--I'm referring to the kind of competition where student should be seeking to better their own grades, do as well as possible on assignments and tests, and earn the respect and praise of their teachers and peers. I just don't see this as being incompatible with a collaborative environment; indeed, the teacher's job should be to create a classroom where students want to help each other succeed. Put another way, bell curves are bad, but grades are good.

When liberal educators suggest things like, "competition increases performance, but collaboration increases learning," they assume that there is some fundamental difference between performance and learning. I fail to recognize this distinction. I could create a classroom where every thing we do is done in small groups or as an entire class, and where we only go as fast as the lowest performing student will allow so as to avoid leaving anyone behind as a "loser". The students might love this since it would make my class less challenging and lower-pressured. But would it actually increase "learning" (and decrease "performance", as Marshall submits)? I don't see how that is possible. Much better would be to provide challenging curriculum to all the students, and reward students not just for their snapshot performance but for their effort and their personal growth. I'm pretty sure that this (challenging lessons, regular assessments, praise when a good job is done and stern encouragement when more effort is needed) is the way to icrease my students' abilities to think critically about the causes of the Revolutionary War and to explain why our treatment of women, blacks, and Native Americans was so unfair. If anyone can explain to me how this would be good for performance but bad for learning, I'd love to hear it.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 07:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Six weeks can be a long time. As of tomorrow, I will have spent six weeks in the classroom; six weeks at a school in the heart of Saint Louis, working with eighth graders who have precious little going for them in their lives.

In these first six weeks, I have met a 13-year-old student (soon to be 14) who has a one year old baby girl. I've met a 14-year-old student who has now made four trips to juvenile detention centers here in the city, mostly for drug-related offenses (the student is one such center currently). I've wasted hours on the phone trying to negotiate with the juvenile justice system to be allowed to visit this student, with no success. I've met a handful of talented, motivated, and genuinely caring educators who have taught me loads about what works and doesn't work in classroom management. And I've met more teachers than I would like to admit who are offering absolutely no support, help, or educational value to our students.

As I sat down earlier in the week and reflected on the major lessons I've learned so far, the following few are what I came up with. I don't care to make any assumptions about whether these lessons are universally applicable to all urban education settings; in fact I am quite certain that at least a couple of the lessons are only applicable to me. Nevertheless, I think these observations may shed at least a little light on what is really happening in America's least advantaged schools... and how we might overcome the shared challenges.

Lesson #1: Calling a student "Sir" or "Ma'am" (or Mr. / Mrs. followed by their last name) is much more effective than asking them to call you "Sir" or "Ma'am". On the first day of school, out of a mixture of nervousness, respect, and confusion (our class rosters had first and last names mixed up and were missing about half of the names), I began what has remained an important habit: I call each and every student "Sir" or "Ma'am" when responding to them, and if I call their name it is always "Mr. Johnson" or "Ms. Antonette". The impact that this has had, at least from what I can tell, is significant: the students are used to being told to respect adults and to do what adults tell them to do, but they are not as used to being 100% fully respected by adults. The names we call them are just one small symbol of the respect that we as educators can show, but it is demonstrative of the kind of respect we need to be showing every moment in school. It's not enough to preach respect to these students--since so many of them have heard the preaching before but continue to hit, swear, insult, and otherwise abuse their peers and teachers. We have to model it too.

Lesson #2: Positive reinforcement should not be seen as a result or product of a good class... it should be seen as a cause of a good class. I'm still working on this lesson every day, but the more I think about it the more I realize that complimenting a student for good work and behavior (or even ordinary work and behavior) is much more likely to produce solid work and behavior in the future than is chastising or berating a student for negative behaviors. In truth, I think the biggest deficit that many of our nation's most under-privileged youth have experienced growing up is not a deficit of people telling them when they're doing something wrong, but rather a shortage of people telling them when they are doing something right! My best days in class are almost always the ones where I make a point of complimenting and giving positive reinforcement to all of my students, most critically the ones who other teachers see as "problem" students.

Lesson #3: An educator cannot afford to take anything personally. I learned this one from my cousin who is a teacher in Berkeley, CA - and he is right on. When something is bothering my students and they take it out on me, it is a natural reaction to take it to heart and wonder what I have done wrong. To be sure, there have already been many instances in which I have made mistakes to students (and apologized for them aftewards). But more often than not, student complaints and acting out have nothing to do with the teacher him or herself, and so the teacher must march on and do the best they can to teach the entire classroom.

Lesson #4: Parents will only help teachers out if they think the teacher cares about their kids. Seem like an obvious one? It should be - but I'm constantly surprised at the ratio of positive to negative phone calls that our staff is making home. In fact, I'm certain that 90% of our teachers have only used their office phones to make negative phone calls home to parents--that is if they even bother to call at all. I've learned early on that in order to get support at home from these parents (or, as is the case with many of our students, aunts, grandparents, and other legal guardians) we need to tell them what is good about their children much, much more often than what is bad. So even if I have to lie through my teeth, I will start off every negative phone call home with a positive thing that the student has done in my classroom.

I"m sure more lessons will come, but this is what I thought of for now... feel free to comment with other ideas, corrections, etc.!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's a busy time of the year in school buildings around the country, as students, educators, and parents alike get prepared for the new school year.

As one of two full-time Co-Directors with Our Education over the past twenty-four months, and as a serious follower of major happenings in education policy here in America, I've always looked on at this time with a mixture of excitement and jealousy. Excitement, because of all the new opportunities that the school year brings, and chances for us to do better by our children. And jealousy because for the past two years I've only been able to work with high school students from afar, operating as an outsider who seeks to effect indirect change through slow, steady social movement building.

This year is different. Effective in mid-August, I have stepped down from my permanent post as full-time director with Our Education and am now working with the project on a part-time basis. With my newfound time, I will be teaching 8th grade social studies at a new charter school start-up here in Saint Louis, MO called the Imagine Academy of Careers. As a brand new school, we have already faced (and will surely continue to face) a tremendous number of challenges, communication hiccups, and other logistical nightmares with school busses, scheduling, enrollment rushes, and more. But I can tell you already that in my time in school already just this month that it is an entirely different feeling being inside the system working for change.

I will be blogging regularly each week as I have over the past several months. You may notice a change in the content of some of my entries here on wiretap - there'll be less focus on policy-wonkish happenings in DC and other ed reform hot zones and more of a focus on the day-to-day situations that our students are facing, now that I have some better perspective here in Saint Louis.

In particular I'll be eager to report on my impressions of the charter-school trend in school reform, and how much different (and for better or worse) the legal structure of a charter school is than a traditional public school. For instance, I can tell you already that two observations that are commonly made about the charter school vs. traditional public school debate are true: 1.) for all the talk of competition, innovation, and choice, charter schools look quite similar to traditional public schools in the day-to-day look of what a student experiences; and 2.) there is indeed some degree of public school backlash against charter schools, though rumors of full-scale war between traditional school employees and charter school employees seem to be blown out of proportion. On this second front, for example, I can report that multiple parents whom I spoke with during our school's enrollment period were in fact employees of Saint Louis Public Schools, and when they heard about my school they were immediately upset and defensive. One parent who taught elementary school at a local city school even told me, "the last person I want to talk with is a teacher at your charter school!"

To be fair to this Saint Louis city teacher, I don't think there's anything wrong with placing the burden of proof on new school start ups like the Imagine Academy of Careers to show that they are indeed offering strong educational opportunities to children. But I would submit that the same burden be carried by the traditional schools as well!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings made an appearance on Comedy Central's The Daily Show late last week, and received strong reviews for her performance. As one of the highest ranking members of the current administration to spend time with Jon Stewart in a long, long while, Secretary Spellings deserves high praise for her courage, candor, and comfort-level during the interview. A few major take home points from the interview, though we recommend you check it out yourself:

First, the Secretary continued to hold a strong line on the administration's chief education law, No Child Left Behind. In response to questions about teaching to the tests and other common criticisms of the law, Secretary Spellings pointed relentlessly to the need to teach all students how to read and do math before other curricular subjects. Indeed, when asked to point to the one change that she would make in the system if she had the power to change anything, she pointed to the President's stand-by line, the "soft bigotry of low expectations". In other words, until we expect more of all children (and measure whether they are meeting our new, higher expectations), any effort to improve schools will be high on form and good-will, but low on impact.

Second, there were a couple moments where Stewart tried to slip one by Secretary Spellings, but she was able to react gracefully. At one point she was asked if her one change to the system would be to "smite the teachers union", and after a playful smirk she said that she wouldn't (a response that her predecessor Secretary Paige was unable to give). There was also a telling moment in the beginning of the interview where federal inefficiency was underscored, and where Spellings could have easily passed the buck and blame local and state government for more of the problems in our schools - but she was quick to share responsibility.

The end of the interview brought on a serious question about the college loans scandal that the department of education and many of our nation's universities have been involved in with "preferred lenders". Spellings dodged on a bullet on this one, as her non-answer answer was cut short by the TV commercial break (anytime you hear a politician say, "well that's not the only problem, what we need is comprehensive reform" you're getting more spin than substance).

Perhaps the most interesting observation to be made about the Secretary's appearance was what it indicates about the administration's strategy to reauthorize No Child Left Behind and ensure that the President's primary domestic achievement of note remains in place beyond '08. The Ed deparment recognizes that NCLB is not the most popular law in classrooms across America, and it realizes that to win the PR battle it will have to turn to channels like Comedy Central. The Secretary also had a very important line about how the discomfort that adults are showing over NCLB owes somewhat to the fact that they are indeed, "peeling the onion" and showing that we really just aren't serving low-income and minority children with the quality of education they deserve. To fix a broken system--and there is little doubt that the education system in America is in need of fixing--it should be taken as a given that the system itself will groan under the weight of corrective action. The question is whether the groaning that we're hearing about NCLB stems from this necessary backlash, or whether it's because the new law is actually worse for the students than the status quo.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sarah Sparks captures some of the highlights from Wednesday's Silent Epidemic Summit hosted in DC by the folks at Gates, Time Magazine, and MTV here, but I'll go ahead and add some observations as well (as promised).

First of all, the most highly referenced moment that took place during the course of the event (I guess I could have written that more simply as, the 'most talked-about thing that happened') was the discussion among current students and recent high school dropouts about their motivations, ideas for change, and thoughts on high school reform in general. Jynell Harrison, the winner of MTV's Be The Voice Contest, gave a rousing opening speech in which she talked about the critical need for high schools where there are more teachers and counselors who establish genuine, quality connections with the students; more challenging classes; and higher expectations. Lyle Oates, a high school student in Boston, MA who had dropped out of school to sell drugs before going back to a charter school called YouthBuild where he rededicated himself to education, talked about the importance of a shared community of success and caring in high school, where kids don't drop out because they actually feel like their peers and teachers are in it together for the same purposes.

The rest of the conference was full of research experts, local and state politicians, activists and philanthropists, and even federal representatives in First Lady Laura Bush and US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, each of whom put their own unique spin on the dropout problem. It was an urgent feel in the room, if also a predictable one; no one questioned the need to make progress in increasing high school completion rates, but debates between business representatives from the Chamber of Commerce and teacher union leaders like Reg Weaver were straight out of the book.

For Our Education's part, we did get a chance to ask Secretary Spellings a question that she artfully dodged. The question was, "Given that she and the other summit speakers were quick to cite the stories told earlier in the day by Jynell and Lyle as critical factors and valuable insight into how to address the dropout problem, would she and the US Department of Education consider creating a permanent, structural role for actual students to help inform the discussion and decisions made in Washington, DC about issues facing their schools?" Her answer was, in sum, "that is a very interesting idea."

The title of this post is, 28 Weeks Later. It's not a shameless plug for a even more shameless horror movie, but rather an allusion to a critical time frame in which the impact of Wednesday's summit will be measured. 28 weeks later, will anyone have done anything differently because this week's summit on the Silent Epidemic? Will you? The speakers at the event struggled to provide clear and easy ways for people to take action for change, other than through the new Gates / Broad funded Ed in '08 campaign, an ambitious and worthy undertaking. Hopefully that, and the current work in the field, will be enough to spark movement between now and the start of 2008.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got an email today from our friend who is a high school junior at a Chilean private school and who had spent a year in San Antonio public schools prior to going back this fall. She had a bunch of interesting observations to share about her education in Chile, and the education reform scene there in general (if you recall, there were massive student protests there last year, to great effect). Here's what she wrote:

Dear Aaron,
I'm in 11th Grade, but here it's much harder than in the USA. We have to take a "weekly schedule", meaning we don't have the same classes everyday as in the American high schools. Besides the regular school curricula for 11th Grade, we have to take classes for PSU (Chilean SAT/ACT) in the afternoon.
Per week I have: 6 hours of Biology, 4 of Chemistry, 3 of Physics, 7 of Spanish, 6 of German, 4 of English, 8 of Math, 2 of P.E., 2 of Visual Arts AND 2 hours of Philosophy.

That's why people from the conservative (school agencies) are protesting, because they say that this bill will not improve our education, but will cause money issues.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Heard from our student at Marlborough High School in Massachusetts about the messy situation there earlier this week; turns out she was able to speak to her school committee on Tuesday night and that the committee agreed to ratify the teachers' contact after all. So after a month of work-to-rule where all extra-curriculars and after school activities and after-school help was cancelled, it's life back to normal for the students there.

Two observations. First, what's up with the media on this one? Several articles were written in the MetroWest Daily News and Marlborough Enterprise about the issue when things were ugly, but there hasn't been any coverage of it since it's been resolved?

Second, my understanding is that nothing was substantively changed between the version of the contract that the school committee approved this week, and the one it rejected back a month ago. So why all of the fuss about it? It's this kind of pointless political bickering, where the education of thousands of children hang in the balance, that illustrate just how far gone some of our elected officials are. It's one thing to temporarily hurt some children if the long-run gain is worthwhile, but this was a case of school committee members voting to hurt children for no reason whatsoever. If it wasn't Friday, and if it wasn't that MARCH time of the year, I'd issue a much louder !

Posted by Aaron Tang at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got an email the other day from a student who expressed the concern that efforts like Our Education and the newly launched Prepare The Future, may be wrong-headed, especially to the degree that they seek donations and contributions from the citizens we seek to mobilize. The student wondered whether the 10-year, $250 million plan that Prepare The Future intends to implement in order to mount sustained pressure on elected officials for improving public education (provided the test period works) is the most effective method and use of resources, or whether that money would be better spent on direct services to the youth in question who need the most support.

Here is how I replied. I'd love to hear what you think about the discussion!

Dear ______ Thanks for your very thoughtful message and concerns!

2 – The alternative that we are suggesting is similar to the notion of the civil rights movement. Instead of asking donors to give five, twenty or fifty bucks at a time to impoverished African Americans back in the 50s and 60s, what Martin Luther King Jr. and others sought to do was leverage those resources to push for systemic change—changes which only elected officials had the capacity to make in a sweeping scale. In other words, if we believe that children ought to represent more than just 2% of the entire US Federal Budget, and we can convince legislators of the same thing, each percentage point increase is equal to $30 billion dollars more a year for our children (or 1,200 times more per year than the $25 million it would cost Prepare The Future to fight for those changes).

The downside with advocacy, of course, is that there are a couple of potential risks:
1.) If an advocacy group does not succeed in its efforts, the money would indeed have been more wisely spent on direct service to those in need.
2.) If an advocacy group actually hinders the chances of a cause to see improvement (for instance if a group uses wrong-headed and controversial tactics, adopts poorly conceived goals, etc.) then that the stakeholders in question (students) would actually be better off without the group at all, to say nothing of the money being spent more effectively on direct service provision.

Our Education and Prepare The Future both aim to avoid both of the above, pitfalls, obviously, and build effective, impactful, and positive movements. But our ability to do so will depend on citizens like you and I to keep our values and the best interests of children in mind!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Public policy is responsorial, this much we know for certain. Just what interests and constituencies politicians choose to respond to is what is up in the air, and the answer to this question has the power to determine nothing less than the well-being and future of our democracy, economy, and society writ large.

Political pundits and a handful of politicians have charged for some time now that the driving force behind our nation’s current precarious plight—a plight exemplified by continuing federal budget deficits; stagnant real wages for a shrinking middle class; troublesome poverty, high school dropout, and health insurance rates; and an unsavory choice looming between tax increases or benefit cuts to bedrock entitlement programs that make up our social safety net—is what one can only describe as a paradigm shift in the interests and constituencies that politicians respond to most when setting public policy. Whether you love them or hate them, commentators like Lou Dobbs, Paul Krugman and others point to increased lobbying power and influence held by special interests at the expense of what is best for ordinary Americans.

For our part, American citizens have struggled to rise to the challenges presented by this increased influence wielded by special interests because more often than not our answers have themselves been shaped and overtaken by partisan politics. Too often, citizen-based efforts to restore proper priorities to our leaders in DC have turned into (or were from the get go) nothing more than bitter, oppositional vendettas. Rather than stand up together for the middle class, our children, and our future, people in both parties have grown obsessed with pointing fingers and declaring how if only this party or this individual were out of office everything would be made right.

The problem with this, of course, is that public policy is still responsorial, no matter who is in office and who has control of the Congress. In other words, until citizens can send a unified, common-sense message to our leaders—whoever they might be—our fractured voices will continue to be shouted down by thousands of finely-tuned (and well-greased) special-interest lobbying machines.

Amidst this stark picture, there is hope. An organization named Prepare The Future was launched just today with the goal of organizing ordinary citizens, across the country, in a national movement to put first things first: our children and the future that they represent. Rather than trying to rally citizens on the basis of partisanship and electoral politicking, Prepare The Future is working to bring people together in pursuit of common values: trust, fairness, responsibility, and caring communities.

The effort is being led by David Hornbeck, the former superintendent of Philadelphia schools, former Maryland state superintendent of instruction, and retired chair of the Childrens’ Defense Fund. Over the next six months, the group hopes to demonstrate that the potential exists to build an infrastructure of hundreds of thousands, even millions of supportive citizens from all backgrounds who care deeply about the values of trust, fairness, responsibility, and caring communities and want politicians to do the same by ensuring all children in America have access to quality educational opportunity. The strategy being used to prove this idea is crucial, as it is based on personal, one-to-one conversations that citizens like you and I can engage in about the things that matter most.

Our Education is pleased to be hosting one of the first six “action trees” that are working together to show that the concept can work, which will provide the basis for a coalition of funders to support the project in full down the road. If you are interested in this values-based education agenda and want to be involved in the earliest stages of this effort, you can learn more about the campaign and join now at www.preparethefuture.org/OurEducation/register_initial.php. And if you decide to join you could be eligible to win a new iPod Nano (or cash) in one of our weekly drawings!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The founder of Teach For America, Wendy Kopp, who is one of the education reform field's most renowned and successful entrepreneurs, was on the Colbert Report earlier this week on comedy central. The interview, which can be seen here, was an unusual mix of humor and serious reflection on educational inequity. You hear doctors talk about how they have to have a sense of humor in order to get through some of the toughest parts of their jobs, well the same is true for those who deal on a daily basis with the deep and at times heart-wrenching challenges that face millions of American children in school each day.

A couple highlights of the interview (before a more pertinent reflection on what we've learned from Teach For America over the past decade):
- Colbert's opening "good Kopp, bad Kopp?" throw-in,
- the "school of hard knocks" that Colbert retorts is more important than 'bookworm' education (before admitting that he himself, of course, attended Dartmouth College)
- Colbert's proposal to eliminate all educational inequality by eliminating schools altogether (a silly idea, of course, but it does force a relevant question which is, what level of inequality are we willing to tolerate in educational opportunity? We'll never be able to totally level the playing field since affluent families will always have access to resources and environments that we wish we could, but simply cannot, provide to all children)
- The end of the interview zinger (you'll have to watch the video for this one!)

The most important reflection to be made, of course, is that it is an unqualified good thing for the field of education reform and for those passionate about closing the achievement gap when bold leaders like Wendy have time in the spotlight, and I'm glad she accepted the interview with Colbert because of how many millions of young people she can reach that way. Wendy has been a role model to numerous young educational entrepreneurs--hundreds of charter school starters, and the staff at Our Education included--and she deserves high praise for how the model that TFA has built and the impact they've had over time.

Regardless of what people think about the actual classroom impact of TFA teachers (and there are experts on both sides of this debate - pro-TFA here and anti-TFA here), there are al least a few good things that cannot be argued with. First, the program does create access for thousands of talented college graduates to a field that is otherwise very hard to enter without a teaching certificate that can be cumbersome to obtain for one who is interested in other subject areas in a liberal arts education. And the benefits of these experiences may indeed be critical as TFA teachers emerge as leaders in numerous other fields over the next decade. Second, the program has pushed the conversation forward among ed reformers on the teacher certification track in general. For if highly motivated college grads without a four year school of education preparatory experience can do on average just as well as traditionally prepared teachers, what value does the certificate hold, and what should the implications be on our current operating theory (high barriers, low accountability - as opposed to low barriers, high accountability) in staffing the field? Third, the program reinforces a notion that is often lost among policy makers: at the end of the day, the problem we are dealing with is a people problem, a human capital problem first and foremost (as opposed to a technology problem, etc.). Students tend to all agree on this simple point, which is part of TFA's most optimistic premise: if every child had a great teacher in every classroom, that would make all the difference in the world.

What are your thoughts on TFA? Would love to hear from potential applicants, current corps members, casual observers, anyone!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the most interesting developments of 21st century school reform has been a shift among members of both parties on Capitol Hill in the angles from which they approach the topic. In the past, virtually the only shared reference point (or at least the dominant one) that both Republicans and Democrats could agree with was the notion that education was critical for our nation from a national economic and competitive standpoint. It was this line of thinking that led to the National Defense Education Act in 1958 (after the kick-in-the-butt presented by the Russian launch of Sputnik the prior year), that was underscored with the landmark A Nation at Risk report in 1983, that sparked President Bush’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Competitiveness Act, and that has been bandied about in debates at all points in between.

Recently, however, and owing largely to the No Child Left Behind Act, there has emerged a greater consensus among both parties that another shared angle from which to approach the school reform topic is the academic achievement gap angle. So while GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was still saying back in 1964 that “The child has no right to an education; in most cases he will get along very well without it,” members of both parties today recognize the paramount importance of a federal role in ensuring educational opportunity for low-income and minority children.

This evolution, however, has not reduced the impact of the notion of international competition and the image of an educationally-lagging American population. Articles citing US students falling behind European and Asian counterparts in math and science, and our graduate schools being dramatically out-produced in engineering doctoral degrees still make great media copy and still elicit strong reactions among law-makers and ordinary citizens, both of whom are concerned about our international position.

Critics of this position (often pro-public education advocates who seek to throw water on the provocative image of widespread failure in our schools) commonly claim that these international comparisons are either off-base or completely irrelevant. The Center for Public Education recently released a study evaluating these claims, and it found a middle-ground conclusion: that our students are not “failing” in international comparisons, but neither are they thriving. It cites test data that finds US 4th graders actually doing well above average (though never first) in reading, math, and science tests against international counterparts as part of a case against a sky-is-falling scenario.

The problem with this data, of course, is that it is only a partial picture (and unfortunately, the least important part) of the true story. The truth is, where our 4th graders do quite well, our 8th graders do measurably worse in an international context than our 4th graders do, and our 15-year-olds are dramatically outscored (particularly in science) by a whole slew of countries. In other words, unless you know many technological advances or 21st century industries that rely on the abilities of nine-year-olds, our students and our schools need a lot of help if we want to keep up with—or better, lead—the rest of the world. I’m still waiting for a reporter or policy maker to make this point (can you imagine an NFL coach saying, “I think we did pretty well this year. Sure we only finished 4-12 this year but we were leading after the first quarter in nine of our games!”)… perhaps you’ve seen it before and can share a link?

Posted by Aaron Tang at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whenever I read stories like this one, about parents who stand up to defend their neighborhood schools from being shut down due to budget cuts, I am reminded of a common finding among studies and opinion polls on public education: America’s parents, by and large, believe that the schools their own children attend are good even as they believe that public schools as a whole are not. In 2004, for instance, 70% of parents graded their own neighborhood school an A or B, but only 22% of parents gave the same high marks to the nation’s public schools as a whole. Conversely, the same parents rated their child’s school a C, D, or F in only 28% of responses, but gave a C, D, or F mark to the public schools writ large in 63% of cases. These disparities have persisted over time, even as respondents have been selected from a diverse and representative sample.

In other words, public school parents are quick to agree with assessments about the need for dramatic improvement in public education across America, but they largely believe that their own schools are exceptions to the rule. Unfortunately, the parents can only be correct on one count. Either the first assessment is correct that our schools have something to do with our lagging performance internationally, staggering dropout rates, and inequality of educational opportunity, in which case a significant number of parents are simply overrating their own school for whatever reason, or the second assessment is correct and the vast majority of our schools are actually doing an exemplary job at preparing all children for successful lives in the 21st century.

If, as I am led to believe, the former is the case, what ought to be investigated further is why parents consistently overrate the quality of their own schools and, more importantly, what the implications of this tendency are for school improvement efforts. In asking these questions, my point is not to argue against parental involvement in community and state decisions about education (after all, parents frequently do have critical things to say, such as the complaints being made about high performing schools on the Detroit school-shuttering list), but simply to highlight a tricky tension that is unfolding in today’s standards based reform era when parents react to the bad news implicit in enforcing these standards. For in order for standards to hold any meaning, the lowest-performing of our schools must undertake at least some kind of serious corrective measure if they continue to fail children.

In light of this, many hard-nosed school reformers from both sides of the isle have argued for some time now that what is needed today is strong leadership that shuts down (or reconstitutes) continuously under-performing schools, rewards strong schools, and tries to foster and support all other schools to meet the same high standards as our best schools. The use of NCLB’s AYP measures and a growing number of value-added approaches ensures that what qualifies as a “strong school” cannot just be a comparatively wealthy district cherry-picking its already successful kids; indeed, our strongest schools will actually be those serving low-income rural and urban schools that raise the collective bar, against fierce headwinds, to proficiency .

But what if all of this just flies in the face of what parents want for their kids—which turns out often to be a desire for the status quo, to send their children to their neighborhood school even if it is worse than a viable alternative? What are policy makers to do—abide by the discretion of parents even if it’s not in the best academic interests of students, or do what they believe to be better for America’s democracy and economic future and shut down struggling schools that parents want to leave standing? What would you do?

Posted by Aaron Tang at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As the year winds down to a close, I thought that it might be appropriate to close with some stories told by students themselves about the status of our public schools. Now of course these stories are not representative of every school in the country, but the fact that they come from virtually every state and from wealthy and poor school districts alike is telling. It’s not just low-income and minority kids who need better schools; suburban classrooms in the middle of America are languishing too. And it will take all manners of students and concerned citizens, coming together from diverse backgrounds, if we hope to mobilize the political resolve necessary to meet the task at hand.

From Samir, in IL:
Naperville has among one of the highest tax brackets in the nations…I still saw five cockroaches at school on Friday.

###

Posted by Aaron Tang at 07:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

in the spirit of the holiday season, Our Education is pleased to announce an awesome, inexpensive gift idea if you're looking for a present for a friend or loved one! The gift idea is a new DVD film called The Onyx Project, which reviews in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are calling the "future of film". Unlike traditional movies, which feed you information in a rote fashion, The Onyx Project is the first ever movie to allow the viewer to explore the characters and world on their own terms!

For a limited time only, if you visit http://www.theonyxproject.com/?source=edu and click "purchase", you can buy the DVD for $14.95 (it sells for $29.95 on amazon.com!) and best of all, $4 of your purchase will be given by the film's producers as a donation to your favorite charity, Our Education!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm sure it was well intentioned, but this latest gaffe by the star of terrific films such as the Parent Trap and Mean Girls has unintentionally shown us just how much improvement is needed in America's education system... and other countries are taking note.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As we approach the Thanksgiving Holiday, we here at Our Education encourage you to take time to give thanks to someone who truly deserves it: the teacher who has had the greatest influence in your life.

If you're looking for a powerful way to thank your teacher, there are none more powerful than nominating your teacher to be a member of the USA Today's All-USA Teacher Team.

Continue reading "A Great Idea for Thanksgiving" »

Posted by Aaron Tang at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Yesterday's Student Newspaper at Vanderbilt:
List serve mistake presents opportunity
If you had the opportunity to share anything you wanted with virtually the entire campus, what would you choose to say? That is the dilemma facing the many students on the commodore-card@list.vanderbilt.edu list serve. Some are choosing wisely, but most are not.

Continue reading "By Any Means Possible?" »

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looking for a good time to run your Our Education Petition Drive in your school this fall? Look no further than the week of Nov 13 – 17, “American Education Week”!

Continue reading "Run Your Drive During American Education Week!" »

Posted by Aaron Tang at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Center for Community Change just released a report with a number of student stories in it about the "educational aftermath" of Hurrican Katrina in New Orleans.

Continue reading "Student Report about New Orleans Released" »

Posted by Aaron Tang at 03:38 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!

Continue reading "Charter School Charter (for an Our Ed Club)" »

Posted by Aaron Tang at 03:12 PM | 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)