He was the odds-on favorite in this blog last week, and sure enough, the ninth United States Secretary of Education will be Arne Duncan.

The selection drew strong praise from both sides of the education reform debate, as evidenced by this press release issued by the "disrupter" group, Democrats for Education Reform, and this release from the traditional, "incrementalist" approach champion, the National Education Association. Both sides haled Mr. Duncan as a savvy choice who would put their proposals first--merit pay and charter schools for the "disrupters" and increased funding and teacher pay for the "incrementalists".

If I haven't made it clear before, let me say it again: both sides are not likely to be right regarding Mr. Duncan. With only a limited amount of political capital, not to mention money, available to spend on K-12 reform issues in his earliest days in the White House, President-Elect Obama will be hard pressed to devote the kind of attention that would be needed to appease both sides in this debate.

Arne Duncan has a history of working collaboratively with the unions to achieve some significant results for Chicago's school children during his seven years as CEO of the district, so the potential for success at the federal level certainly exists. But how will he fare when the first set of major challenges comes down the pipeline? For instance, will he consider it a greater priority to push broadly for full-funding of No Child Left Behind (the NEA argues that it is under-funded, when compared to authorization levels, by $71 billion), or will he use increased school funding as a carrot to get unions and other traditional stakeholders to accept change on teacher pay, charger schools, accountability, and other fronts?

To help shed some light on how Mr. Duncan may perform, I dug up this video on YouTube of testimony he gave before the House Education and Labor Committee this past summer on how to close the achievement gap:

Posted by Aaron Tang at 12:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With a new administration preparing to enter the White House, I got to thinking about what we have seen change over the past eight years in federal education policy. There are some who argue that one of President Bush's most lasting legacies from his time in office will be his impact on K-12 and Higher Education. The President himself agreed with this assessment, referring to the No Child Left Behind Act as one of the "most significant achievements of my administration."

So what exactly will this legacy entail? It's hard to know for certain right now, since so much may change when the Obama administration tackles No Child Left Behind reauthorization, but there are at least a few lasting impacts that aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

One lasting impact is a heightened federal role in K-12 education policy. It's easy to forget just how tenuous was the authority and political support for the federal government to actively shape local and state level school policy. Take a guess as to when the following statement appeared in the Republican Party's National Platform:

“Our formula is as simple as it is sweeping: the federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula... That is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, and promote family choice at all levels of learning.”

1944? 1960? 1980?

Nope. How about 1996... just five years before President Bush took office and ramped up the federal government's "meddling" in schools to an unprecedented degree.

So historians will not be exaggerating in the future when they say that President Bush (43) was fundamentally responsible for ushering in a new, major role for the feds in school improvement efforts. But there's more to his legacy in education than simply ratcheting up the federal role in schools, there's the vital matter of how the feds are now involved in school policy that is equally paradigmatic.

The easiest way to characterize this fundamental shift in how the federal government approaches its role in improving education is to recall one of the best instances of rhetoric President Bush used during his time in office. Credit his speech writers for using the phrase, the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that plagued our schools. Put simply, perhaps the greatest legacy that President Bush will leave behind in K-12 education policy is the now-firmly entrenched role of the federal government in holding schools accountable for student success, no frills, no excuses. Prior to 2001, only a handful of states expected schools to show returns on public tax investments by way of student learning gains - now, school level accountability is the rule, even if an oft-derided one.

Courtesy of the Education Trust, I want to leave two images in closing to show exactly what President Bush was referring to by the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that absolutely must be eviscerated if all children in America are to receive the quality of educational opportunity they both need and deserve. You can compare and draw the conclusions for yourself by picturing, in your mind's eye, what kind of school handed out each of the two assignments:

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Is it just me, or with a full two months until President-elect Obama will take the oath of office as our nation's 44th President, is everyone and their political pundit mother questioning Barack Obama as though he is already our chief executive?

To be sure, a lot of the scrutiny Obama has received is rooted in key decisions that he is in the process of making regarding his plan to address our struggling economy--decisions such as the makeup of his team of economic advisors, the details of his stimulus plan, his level of support for an auto-maker industry bailout, and so on. And other sources of scrutiny are timely simply because they concern intriguing cabinet level selections, with Senator Hillary Clinton headlining the list.

But Mr. Obama is already drawing what can best be termed "challenges" from observers as to his leadership ability and reform views on a wide variety of less prominent issues as well--and education is a terrific example of this. Two pieces just this past week--one in Newsweek and another in the Wall Street Journal--call out Mr. Obama and whether he will be able to deliver on his promises of the change we need, changes that are particularly vital in school reform.

Newsweek questions whether Senator Obama's purported commitment to change in education will actually ring true through the lens of recent developments in D.C. Public Schools, where controversial Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee has threatened to unilaterally revoke teacher tenure in exchange for a merit pay system that would reward the district's best teachers salaries approaching $130,000--where "best" is judged by how much students improve in learning. In the Wall Street Journal, Stanford Professor Terry Moe questions more broadly whether Mr. Obama will have the political gumption needed to take on teachers unions to make changes that many in the school reform arena think are crucial: expanding school choice, strengthening school accountability, and reassessing teacher pay in exactly the kind of ways contemplated by Michelle Rhee.

Why the attention and, arguably, premature concern over Mr. Obama's ability to deliver reform in education when he becomes president? I suppose part of it owes to a desperately hungry media news cycle that has had a year's worth of Obama-watching and that is loath to give it up now that the election season is over (But wait! Media! What if we entered President Obama in this hotly-contested, closely-watched, and rife-with-implications electoral race!) And another part of it has to do with the de facto nature of a constitutional conundrum concerning where power actually rests during lame-duck periods like the one we are in now.

But another source of the unrest and concern over Mr. Obama's ability to lead has to do with the nature of the electoral coalition he put together and that propelled him to the White House. It's no surprise that any time a candidate receives more than 66 million popular votes that not all of those voters will agree with each other on big issues, but in education there is a divide, alluded to in the WSJ op-ed that has unique implications: a good percentage of the Democratic base plays by the old playbook of teacher-union driven reform models, while many others ask more exclusively, what is best for school children?

Here's where a recent development kicks in: President-elect Obama tabbed a pro-union, old-school reform thinker, Linda Darling-Hammond, to be the leader of his education policy transition team, drawing concerns from progressives in the newer camp of school reform. The same thing has happened, in some eyes, in the economic team put together by the Obama leadership, a team that has a lot of old-school ties to the Clinton years (not to mention Mrs. Clinton herself at State).

What does it all mean? We're still two months away from President Obama's first day in office, but already the second-guessing is starting. The second-guessing, however, does little good (other than to give me something to blog about). Better for us, as a nation and punditry, to ease off on the political commentary a bit and wait until the President-elect actually gets into office and develops a record on these very issues. Once that happens, any and every move and decision made by the administration will be fair game.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 08:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While large numbers of young Americans have gotten involved in the political process lately--both through exercise of the right to vote as well as through protests on issues such as California's recent Proposition 8 banning gay marraige--students in Europe have been busy making their own political statements in resounding fashion.

The video and pictures below are from protests in the streets of Italy (video) and Germany (photo), where students in the past weeks have taken bold action to show their anger with government proposals in each country cutting education spending and services:

It's impossible to analyze the events in Italy without reference to the flagging economic conditions affecting the entire globe. Italy is on the front-lines of the economic downturn, with the world's third largest debt (behind only the US and Japan), but only the 7th largest economy by GDP. In light of the economic situation, Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi has sought to make dramatic spending cuts--as much as $7 billion Euros, or $9 billion US--in the education system. Proposed cuts would include eliminating as many as 70,000 teaching positions in elementary schools and reducing spending in Italian high schools and universities.

In Germany, student protests are just beginning (compared to the protests in Italy, which started towards the end of October). German students are upset with overcrowded classrooms, high-pressure school exit exams, and teacher quality in general.

While estimates vary, the number of youth protestors in Italy has been widely reported as in the hundreds of thousands--anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000. Given that Italy's population is five times smaller than the United States, one has to wonder what would happen if hundreds of thousands or even millions of American youth stood united to demand improvements in our schools.

To be sure, much remains to be determined as to whether Italian student protests will lead Prime Minister Berlusconi to recant on his promises to cut education spending, or whether there will be some electoral blowback (a Reuters report showed Mr. Berlusconi's approval rating falling a significant 4% in just the past month as the protests have gotten underway). But if the experience from student social movement building in Chile is any lesson, we almost certainly have yet to see the final impact of the protests.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A treasure trove of implications for school children can be mined from the election returns on Tuesday--not just as a result of the big race but also from a number of key ballot measures I discussed last week.

But before getting to the initiatives, a quick dissection of what President-Elect Obama may mean for children in the early months of his administration. There are two quick and easy wins that look to be likely bets on any 100 days type calendar: expanding funding for children's health insurance --a measure vetoed by President Bush--via SCHIP and passing a new college tuition tax credit to benefit at-need college students in exchange for community service.

The tougher question is what President Obama will do about reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (AKA NCLB). It's unlikely that he will tackle NCLB in the early part of his legislative calendar simply because: 1.) It will cost a lot of political capital to do so, and 2.) that capital, in the eyes of most Americans, is more urgently needed on economic action, energy policy, troop numbers in the Middle East, and even health care. So the best answer to the question, what will President Obama do on K-12 education in the very early going? He'll punt... at least until middle-late 2009.

To the ballot measures. Missouri, Colorado, Maryland, and Arkansas each had ballot proposals to increase access citizen access to gambling with a back-end result of increasing (or substituting) public education funding. All four initiatives passed. Just goes to show what happens when you bundle up a bunch of core American values--freedom, education, risk-taking, greed--in one neat package and place it on a ballot: people will vote for it.

Nebraska and Colorado each had initiatives to ban affirmative action, part of California millionaire Ward Connerly's steady march to rid states of the policy one by one (affirmative action bans have been passed in Connerly's home state of California, Washington, and Michigan in previous elections). The ban passed easily in Nebraska, but was just declared defeated in Colorado, by the narrowest of margins.

Colorado wasn't done with controversial measures affecting education, though. A trio of anti-union measures, Amendments 47, 49, and 54 were up for decision as well, and the first two were defeated easily, largely through the campaign organizing of the Colorado Education Association. 47 & 49 would have made it illegal for school districts to force teachers to pay their union dues by witholding pay from their paychecks, a fairly common practice in schools across the nation--but Union control lives on. Amendment 54, however, passed narrowly--a measure designed to limit the lobbying influence of organizations who receive no-bid / non-competitive contracts from the government. The measure was supported as a pro-democracy plan to limit lobbyist and special interest influence; teachers unions are likely to file suit over the initiative on first amendment grounds.

Lastly, the initiatives I was personally most curious about: Oregon measures 58 and 60. Both failed by wide margins--58 proposed to restrict non-English instruction in schools and 60 attempted to change Oregon's system for teacher pay from a seniority-based system to a merit-based system. No question that 58 runs counter to progressive notions of equity along racial and ethnic lines by essentially rendering Spanish and other second language classes not just inferior, but illegal in certain school settings.

But measure 60 is a bit tricker. It is the kind of measure that was no doubt destined to fail, but which just may prove prescient; the kind of idea that is rightfully placed directly before voters because entrenched political interests are unlikely to support it. The idea is this: if we, as a people, believe that data systems are appropriate and in place such that educators can be measured, rewarded, or recognized as in-need of improvement based on how much they are helping their students learn, then shouldn't that be a system of paying teachers that deserves consideration instead of paying our oldest teachers most (which may be, at best, only loosely tied to student learning)? In other words, it's totally appropriate to pay an experienced teacher "A" the most money out of an entire staff if teacher "A" is in fact helping their students advance the most in math, reading skills, science, etc. And if that's the case, can anyone make an argument for why we would pay teacher "B", whose students, year-in and year-out, show absolutely no improvement in reading or math skills more than teacher "A"? No way right?

Now what if I told you that teacher "A" has been a teacher for 6 years and teacher "B" for 30 years. Would you suddenly want to pay teacher "B" more (in some districts, as much as 100% more) just because he is older? I can't think of a single reason why we'd do that. At its heart, that is what measure 60 was about, though. Of course, there are lots of nuances about the data and why any merit system has to be cautious so as to avoid over-drawn conclusions, but Oregon Measure 60 is not some political hack job idea--it's a serious issue.

Finally, in perhaps the most important decision still to be made, word on the street is that there is a leading contender in the race to be the First Dog promised to Sasha and Malia Obama:

GOLDENDOODLE!!!!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 01:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 4th promises to be a crucial and historic moment in American history for more reasons than just the headliner presidential election. Also at stake are more than 150 ballot initiatives and referenda in 36 states. Many astute observers are already aware of the most prominent among these initiatives such as California’s proposed amendment to ban gay marriage (currently polling almost neck-and-neck) and South Dakota’s amendment to ban abortion part II, but there are also a host of important ballot proposals that have not quite made the popular news media radar screen.

There is more at stake in the voting booth than just these state level initiatives too; in many towns and cities voters will have to choose between increasing taxes for various services or abiding by the pressure of a slowing economy and cutting local spending. In California alone, for example, there are more than 50 local education-related ballot initiatives having to do with teacher salaries, new text books, new school buildings or building repairs, and so on. Most of these local education spending bonds pass during ordinary election cycles, but during this economic downturn, it is anyone’s guess how much voters will be affected.

Chief among the crucial state initiatives concerning education are four categories: gambling for education proposals, proposals to end affirmative action, a set of controversial initiatives aimed at curtailing union power in Colorado, and a really controversial initiative in Oregon aimed at drastic reform of how teachers are paid throughout the state.

The first set of interesting ballot proposals are in play in Missouri, Colorado, Maryland, and Arkansas. Depending on how one looks at them, they are either pro-gambler’s rights proposals or proposals to supplement or modify existing school spending structures. Basically the states propose either to expand state lotteries, extend casino hours and gambling limits, allow slot machines, and raise casino taxes to fund education. In Missouri, for instance, there is a state cap limiting the amount of money that individuals can lose by gambling in a certain time period ($500 per 2 hours) that would be lifted, with all additional revenues turned over to schools—an amount estimated between $100 and $130 million per year.

Sounds like a pretty good idea, right? The primary concerns that have been expressed against the law are either the pretty standard anti-gambling argument, which may be true—but how much we should prefer to protect irresponsible folks who are pretty wealthy from harming themselves over providing better schools to kids is an open question. The second concern with these proposals, however, is a bit more on point: what if state legislatures decide to use the revenue generated from these plans to replace, rather than add to, current school funding plans? If this is all that the initiative would amount to then it’s not as clear that it’s worth supporting, and there are no guarantees in the actual law to ensure that new revenues would be added to the school funding pie.

In Colorado and Nebraska there are ballot proposals to end affirmative action. These are hardly new ideas, as similar measures have passed in California, Washington and Michigan all within the past decade. Both states’ anti-affirmative action measures look likely to pass.

Colorado has 5 more interesting ballot initiatives of its own, in addition to the affirmative action measure. Amendments 47, 49, 54, 58, and 59 propose collectively to limit the power of teachers unions and marginally increase taxes on industries such as oil and gas to further fund education. 47, 49, and 54 in particular have drawn the ire of teachers unions, for they attempt to stop unions from requiring that teachers join the local union in order by, among other things, making it illegal for a school district to automatically detect union dues from a pay check to be paid to the union headquarters. These "right-to-work" laws already exist in a handful of states which has brought down rates of union membership, though it is hard to say if this has led to any major gains for students. Amendment 54 would prevent anyone who receives a no-bid contract from the government from making a campaign contribution to any candidate. The idea seems pro-democracy in spirit, since wealthy corporate donors wouldn’t be able to buy influence from candidates, but some groups such as the teachers unions and firefighters who would be proscribed from contributing under the law have attacked it as an amendment limiting their free speech rights. More on these amendment proposals here; an argument against them from a Colorado teacher here.

Lastly, a pair of extremely interesting initiatives are on the ballot in Oregon courtesy of initiative-proposer-extraordinaire Bill Sizemore. Measure 58 would prohibit non-English-language teaching for more than two years, and Measure 60 would switch teacher pay to a performance-based rather than seniority-based system. You know these measures are controversial just by following the money: already Oregon teachers unions have spent over $6 million fighting these two initiatives.

Of the two, Measure 60 is especially worth watching, since it basically calls for the exact kind of paradigm shift in how teachers are paid that prominent education experts have called for in recent years—a proposal that even Barack Obama supports in principle. The idea, backed by a group called “Preserve Our Best Teachers” is simple, that classroom performance and not seniority should determine teacher pay raises. Unions object ostensibly because of data concerns with evaluating just which teachers are providing the best educational instruction to their students, but the concept of a professional being paid based on how good they are at their job, if it is discernible, is a tough value to oppose.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An insightful report was released this week by Steven Wilson of the Education Sector, an independent non-profit that does educational policy analysis. The report raises a major question about the numbers game facing school reformers: namely, how are we going to get more high-quality teachers into the schools where kids need them the most? Wilson presents the numbers question from the perspective of succesful charter schools that are emerging throughout the country.

Put succinctly, Wilson finds that teachers in widely-renown high-achieving charter schools (such as the 75 schools that belong to three celebrated charter networks--the KIPP schools, Achievement First schools, and Uncommon Schools) are so rare in terms of academic background and other qualifications that it would be virtually impossible to replicate these schools' high quality teaching staffs in other schools.

He draws this conclusion by starting with an analysis of the high achieving schools and what percentage of the teachers there come from selective colleges (as just one proxy for talented young teachers). It turns out that somewhere around 80% of the teachers in high-performing charter schools serving low-income youth graduated from colleges that are regarded by Barron's profile of American Colleges as "very competitive". By contrast, in the public schools writ large, only 19.2% of teachers graduated from the "very competitive" colleges.

What does that mean? Well for starters, it clearly means that we need to get more of our nation's brightest young people into teaching, and programs like Teach For America can help with that. But Teach For America currently has 5,000 corps members--barely 1% of the total number of teachers in just the public schools employed by 66 school districts in the Council of the Great City Schools. Moreover, only 140,000 students graduate each year from colleges ranked by Barron's as "highly competitive" - and even if half of them chose to spend two years teaching in these low-income city schools, only 33% of classrooms in the schools would have such a teacher.

Wilson goes on to suggest trying out programs to turn existing teachers who do not fit the elite college typecast into high-performing teachers as a way to out-flank the sheer numbers shortage. As a principle, he is absolutely right to suggest that nothing about a person's college inherently makes someone a qualified (or unqualified) teacher. After all there are plenty of book-smart people who would not have the personal skills to thrive in low-performing schools, and plenty of very educated and thoughtful people in schools that Barron's hasn't blessed with it's "highly competitive" label.

But Wilson's suggestion to focus our dollars, policies, and political capital on improving existing teachers is an interesting choice, since it has a clear alternative: spending the money and political energy to attract and retain high quality educators from all educational backgrounds. Put another way, what if instead of assuming a two-year teaching commitment from today's talented college grads we could recast the financial incentives and work-place conditions of the teaching profession to encourage them to spend 10 or 15 years teaching? What if instead of paying the oldest teachers the most and forcing talented young teachers to leave because they're not earning what they are worth, we flipped compensation on its head and paid the best teachers the most no matter what their age? Wouldn't a 25 year old making $55,000 teaching because they are getting tremendous learning gains for their students be more inclined to stay in the field than one who makes $35,000 as is the case these days? It's a numbers game when it comes to fixing our schools... but the trick is choosing among a load of options as to how to make the numbers work.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As the roller coaster ride that is the United States and global economy continues, one need look no further than to your neighborhood public school to see how the financial crisis will affect ordinary Americans. Stories are emerging across the country (New York here and California here, for instance) of states and local school districts passing emergency mid-year budget cuts which will result in delayed school construction projects, reduced classroom budgets, and squeezes on teacher salaries. An Education Week article published this week lays out in great detail many of the practical implications that will be felt in America's schools.

There are effectively three broad categories of losses that schools will incur in the coming years, each of which will have significant impacts on school children. The first category is direct losses that school districts have sustained as the result of a significant portion of their operating and capital budgets being held in stock assets that have lost tremendous value. The most obvious examples are school districts such as the 26 in California's San Mateo county which had budget resources tied up in Lehman Brothers at the time of the company's collapse. More than $60 million is now tied up in bankruptcy court proceedings from the county's 26 districts, with the schools likely to lose a significant portion of that total.

Making matters worse is that some of the affected districts will need those dollars in the near-term in order to finance school repairs, make payroll, and other day-to-day operations. Sequoia Union High School District, for example, estimates a loss of $6 million from the county's decision to invest its savings in Lehman Brothers--money that will have an impact on the district's 8,200 students this year.

But even those school districts without huge direct losses from falling asset values are getting pinched as well. The overall downturn in the economy, evidenced by reduced economic activity, falling property values, and home foreclosures will also have an impact on school district pocketbooks by reducing annual tax revenues that all schools rely on, at least in part. Since local property tax funding accounts for as much as 70% of many school districts' revenues, district leaders across America are watching with a weary eye as home foreclosures and falling property values persist. This is the second category of trouble that the financial crisis is threatening upon schools.

This effect is compounded by the fact that reduced property tax revenues may, in some cases, affect the credit scores that rating agencies give to districts who try to sell bonds to finance their school budgets -- meaning that schools will have to pay investors higher interest rates to raise money for building fixes, books, and other expenses. A half point interest rate increase on a $250 million, 6-month loan would amount to an extra $1.2 million that a school district or state has to spend on things other than teachers and school improvement efforts.

Thirdly, many schools are running into short-term problems associated with the nature of their budget receipts. School districts that receive property tax revenues in lump-sum payments once or twice during the year typically finance the early months of their budget cycles with safe, short-term loans. But as banks increasingly hoard cash reserves, the rates that schools have had to pay have increased drastically, leading to further cuts in order to make payroll and finance other school necessities.

The federal government's $700 billion rescue / bailout may help to address some of the structural issues, but as long as the economy itself is contracting, schools will have to bear some significant brunt of the nation's losses. Which means that the only sure-fire long-term investment that America can make to ensure a healthier future economy--an investment in our children--will undoubtedly take a backseat.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Philadelphia student activitists made the news in a terrific Philadelphia Inquirer article this week for their efforts to ensure that ongoing teacher union negotiations with the school district would focus on what matters most: student learning.

At stake in the union contract negotiations are some pretty typical issues: teacher pay, length of contract, work hours. Specifically, the city's new schools superintendent, Arlene Ackerman, wants to increase the length of the school day and raise pay for teachers in hard-to-staff subjects and schools. While both ideas are widely regarded as having positive impacts on student achievement and closing the gap between wealthy and low-income students, the unions have been reluctant on both fronts. The union is also bargaining for a long-term contract, while Superintendent Ackerman is looking for a one year deal--purportedly because she would like to become more familiar with the district before signing a longer teacher union contract.

Commenting on the ongoing negotiations and how they have tended to miss the issues that matter most for students--such as getting high quality teachers into every Philly classroom regardless of the school's achievement levels, socioeconomics, and racial breakdown--one student observed, "I've seen students cut class and come to my classroom to avoid bad teachers. The system of teacher distribution in Philadelphia is broken."

What is fascinating about this news item is that the student protestors, more than two dozen organized by the Philadelphia Student Union who gathered outside an elite magnet school in the city to deliver their message, got quick responses from the negotiating parties. The Superintendent's spokesperson issued a statement saying, ""The district's top priority in negotiating the current contract is ensuring that we place teachers where children most need them." She went on to say that Superintendent Ackerman would welcome sitting down with students and parents at the negotiating table if the unions approved it.

Unfortunately, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union president, Jerry Jordan, did not express his support for the idea of student participation in the negotiations, although he pointed out that the union "has always taken a position of watching out for kids." One may wonder how this position of watching out for kids can possibly be consistent with refusing to let them have a voice in these issues that direly affect their education.

What might it look like if low-income and low-performing schools were staffed by caring teachers who are committed to their students? Maybe something like this (a staff video made to congratulate graduating students in a Bronx middle school):

Posted by Aaron Tang at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bold statement from Washington Post's Jay Mathews in his most recent column touting the vital importance of firing bad teachers as a step to improving schools. His argument--an increasingly common one in light of proposals made by DC Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee--is that school children in low-income, chronically low-performing schools will not experience significant achievement gains until administrators have the power to fire the manifold bad teachers who disproportionately work in such environments.

Mathews's inspiration for writing the article is the experience of a principal at a DC charter school called KIPP DC:KEY Academy, where two low-performing teachers were fired before Christmas and replaced with what Mathews describes as, "proven talents" who turned around their classrooms to the benefit of students. In ordinary public schools, because of union protections for teachers, principals do not have the freedom to act this quickly and unilaterally. Instead, in traditional public schools the principal would likely only have the power to authorize mentorship and professional development for the struggling teacher, make negative comments on evaluations, and then recommend not rehiring the teacher at year's end (or in some cases, after a period of years of probation).

Mathews is right to point out the powerful lever that charter school principals have to weed out hopeless teachers, but he misses an equally important, if not more important issue: what good is it to be able to fire teachers if there aren't higher quality alternatives to replace them? In the DC KIPP academy example that Mathews cites, it only helps that the principal can fire the two bad teachers because she has access to two better teachers who can replace them!

The problem is, most schools don't have a deep reserve pool of high quality job-seeking teachers in wait, should their initial staff members prove ineffective. Indeed, from my own teaching experience, where our school was able to fire three teachers mid-year (15% of the full time teaching staff), the challenge of taking over an often times dysfunctional classroom from the previous teacher can prove insurmountable to even the most hard-working replacement. If that replacement is not a "proven talent" as was the fortunate case for the DC KIPP principal, the power to fire a teacher is only half of the solution.

The other half, of course, is increasing the pool of high quality teaching candidates in low-performing school districts--a challenge which is much more complicated than the power to fire. It incorporates licensing rules, pay structures, workplace rules, and other issues that have plagued K-12 public education for some time. In other words, the power to fire is only a part of the equation--truly fixing our struggling schools will also require a fundamental shift to the human capital picture in public education.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 07:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Wall Street Journal op-ed published earlier in the week brought attention back to the connection between Senator Obama and a former domestic terrorist--a connection couched in Mr. Obama's experience in education reform. So it merits asking, who is Bill Ayers and what difference should it make in our estimation of the Democratic candidate for President of the United States?

This much is uncontested: Bill Ayers participated in the bombings of several public monuments, including the New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the US Capitol Building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972. He was a leading member of a radical, leftist terrorist organization called the Weatherman. He spent a short period of time in jail after turning himself in for these crimes in 1980. And he is affiliated with US Senator Barack Obama.

But what is the nature of that affiliation? And perhaps more importantly, what does Bill Ayers believe and how does he act today? Without question, if Senator Obama has in any way shown signs of supporting Mr. Ayers admittedly guilty and radical past, his candidacy would be suspect. But there is no evidence that this is the case.

To begin with, the connection between Senator Obama and Mr. Ayers comes down to three principal items. First, and most notably, they served together on a Chicago school reform initiative called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an effort designed community partnerships with local public schools that was also launched in fifteen other communities. Also serving on the board of the Annenberg Challenge in Chicago were individuals such as Patricia Graham, former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Arnold Weber, former president of Northwestern University.

How, you might ask, did a self-admitted domestic terrorist come to rise to lead a well-funded and well-reputed school reform initiative? Because Mr. Ayers, since his days as a leftist terrorist, has gone on the straight and narrow. He is currently a distinguished professor of education at the University of Chicago who has garnered attention for his academic efforts in pedagogy, along the way working with officials such as Chicago Mayor Richard Daly and others.

The second connection is that Mr. Ayers and Senator Obama also served together on the board of an anti-poverty foundation called the Woods Fund of Chicago, which continues to provide support to organizations that seek to educate and empower low-income residents of Chicago. Thirdly, Mr. Ayers contributed $200 to Senator Obama's Illinois State Senate election campaign in 2001.

So does Mr. Obama support a hyper-radical leftist ideology of domestic terrorism? Does he support some unorthodox, militant view of the role of public education? There is no evidence of it. After all, Senator Obama was only eight years old when Bill Ayers committed initial, unjustifiable acts of violence. But I'd love to hear facts about their relationship and how it might impact the next five weeks if you have evidence or conclusions that I've missed here!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"I've always said you get 100 votes if you change the name." - California Congressman George Miller, the Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, discussing the likelihood of No Child Left Behind being renewed in the next president's administration.

Representative Miller's comment sheds light on an interesting phenomenon. The American public overwhelmingly supports action to improve public education, even at the federal level. When asked in general whether they support the goals of the law--increasing student achievement and narrowing the achievement gap for low-income & minority children by holding schools accountable for student performance--large numbers of voters agree. But when you ask someone how they feel about the actual law named "No Child Left Behind"? Cringe, sneer, boo.

Need numbers? Start with last month's Phi Delta Kappa / Gallup poll, which found that 67% of Americans thought the law should be changed or scrapped. Or how about this ETS poll, which found that Americans favored the law 56% - 39% when it was explained based on its component parts and goals, but were against the law 43% - 41% when it was actually referenced by name.

Maybe that's why the No Child Left Behind is the "10,000 pound gorilla" in the room that neither of the candidates is talking about.

But how, you ask, is it the case that so much about the law rides on the name alone, and not the actual substance? Part of it is a branding issue--interest groups actually opposed to the substance of the law such as the teachers unions have done a great job equating the brand of NCLB with teaching to the test and other unsavory, if vague, notions. Another part is just a general lack of understanding about what the law actually entails; a post hoc ergo propter hoc effect, so to speak. Public schools have been struggling, particularly in low-income urban and rural areas, for quite some time in the US, but today's observers tend to attribute this failure to the most recent event in education policy: NCLB. It's no better logic than attributing my winning $10 on an instant lotto ticket because I had a banana for breakfast, but it's a common enough fallacy that NCLB would be probably unpopular regardless of its name.

One thing is for certain, though. Both candidates have been right as a strategic matter to steer clear of mentioning NCLB in their campaign speeches. It's toxic, and it's just as easy to score points by talking about education as a values issue instead of the nitty-gritty that seems to make NCLB so controversial. Seems like we'll have a big gorilla just hanging out until the election is over, when some new catchy name will be unveiled to headline a law that will most likely be strikingly similar to the existing No Child Left Behind Act.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 07:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the time of the election cycle when things get painful. Candidates and campaign staff, on the one hand, have to dig deep to make tough decisions about tactics and targets with limited time and resources as November 4th draws close. And they do so amidst heigtened attention even after some 20 months of non-stop campaigning with hardly any sleep.

But the most painful part of the campaign season for most ordinary Americans is how we are subjected to senseless lies and irresponsible attack ads which make it virtually impossible to make any kind of accurate judgment about what the two candidates would do for our country.

One of the most disgusting ads I've seen in quite some time was put out just two days ago by the McCain campaign. Understand that I would be the first to call out the Obama campaign if they had put the ad out instead--my interest here is in challenging either candidate when they misrepresent their own positions and records on the ever-important issue of public education reform... or in this case, when one misrepresents his opponent's views. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the issue is too vital to millions of children and indeed the very future of our nation to play partisan political football with. Judge for yourself in the following 30 second clip being shown in various battleground states:

The ad basically alleges that Barack Obama thinks it is more important to teach kids about sex than it is to teach them how to read. It begins by misrepresenting a series of Education Week and Washington Post articles that actually speak approvingly of Senator Obama's maverick and reform-minded views on school reform, and then goes on to suggest in voice-over--on top of a picture of a smirking Obama--that his only accomplishment in education is a sex education bill for kindergarteners. The not-so-subtle implication is that Senator Obama is actually a run-of-the-mill sleezeball or perhaps worse, a pedophile.

The truth? Senator Obama is actually well-regarded by reform-minded education thinkers who respect his bold uncoupling of the Democratic platform on education from the narrowly-focused goals of teachers unions which have dominated Democratic views on school reform for the last half century. And the sex education bill that he passed while in the Illinois Senate? It actually supported age-appropriate sex education that would help teach children how to protect themselves from sexual predators and pedophiles. In other words, if one watches the McCain ad while considering the truth, the ad actually implies that Senator McCain is against providing children with critical information that may help them avoid sexual abuse.

But Aaron, wait! Who are YOU to say that the McCain ad is mis-representing the Washington Post and Ed Week positions on Senator Obama's education platform? Aren't you no worse than the McCain ad if you don't provide facts to back up your assertions? Fair enough. So don't take it from me that the Washington Post and Ed Week support Senator Obama. Take it from them, directly, here (the Washington Post actually fires back at the McCain camp directly for twisting its words, and here for the original Ed Week piece.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Give John McCain credit: he spent more than two whole minutes talking about public education in his nomination acceptance speech last night and about his general vision for improving our schools were he to be elected president. Barack Obama, for what it is worth, only spent seventy seconds in his acceptance speech last week.

Senator McCain begins explaining his views on public education in the first minute of the above video, with a bold pronouncement that, "Education is the Civil Rights issue of this century." He continues to talk about the importance of giving every child access to a good school, and the role of the government in providing families with choice if their neighborhood public school is failing. It is all pretty standard rhetoric at this point for Republican candidates--and rather appealing rhetoric at that, since even many of those who are against the controversial idea of vouchers can understand the sentiment of wanting to provide all children with the chance to get out of a chronically low-performing school.

But at two minutes and fifty-three seconds, Senator McCain fires a direct shot across the bow at his opponent, saying, "Sen. Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students." A powerful charge, indeed, which the McCain campaign hopes to mount as part of a broader challenge against the idea that Senator Obama will bring change to Washington, DC. If Senator Obama only wants to make schools answer to unions and bereaucracies, after all, how will that put children in any better a position than they are today?

The problem is, the charge is patently false. Regardless of whether one has conservative or liberal leanings on public education issues, no objective observer could look at the Obama education plan without thinking that he is walking a fine line with regard to teachers unions who have long been a friend to the Democratic party. Even a full year ago, Obama was making bold and risky statements to the face of the unions themselves --such as his appearance in front of the National Education Association in July 2007 where he expressed his support for teacher merit pay, an idea that could not be more anathema to the unions.

In an election where both candidates have made unfair and at times inaccurate statements about each others' records and character, one would hope that an issue as important as the education of millions of children might be sacred ground. For the next two months, sadly, it doesn't seem that this will be the case.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 06:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The economy. War in Iraq. Health care. Energy and environmental policies. All of these issues, at different times, have dominated the headlines of the 2008 presidential election cycle. So too, have campaign strategies, personal attacks, and the occasional speaking gaffe.

Lost in these headlines, however, has been one key topic that may well have as much impact on the future of our nation as all the rest: education. Indeed, school reformers interested in pushing education into a more prominent position of debate between Senators Obama and McCain have more or less held a backseat over the past several months.

This is not how the leaders of at least one non-profit organization envisioned the election cycle. Ed in '08, a $60 million effort funded principally by the Gates Foundation to raise the election day prominence of public education as an issue. The group has made major ad buys in radio, print, and even on TV without much impact--one TV ad is embedded here:

Why hasn't education been more talked about? It's hard to say. After all, it's not as though the voting public isn't interested in public education, and it's not like there aren't meaningful debates to be had over key issues like teacher pay, charter schools, pre-kindergarten, and school accountability. One possibility is that other news have been "sexier" in the sense that they are more timely and seemingly urgent--the housing crisis and gas prices fit this description. Another possibility is that the two campaigns do not disagree enough on the major questions (both are more or less in support of NCLB with modest revision) to be the point of a debate. Either way, it doesn't bode well for America's children that more public attention has been paid thus far to John McCain's real estate holdings and Barack Obama's wife's dress color than to their schools.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A diverse and highly respected group of leading education reformers from across the country gathered today in Denver, CO to challenge Democratic officials to fight for fundamental changes to the nation's public schools. Elected officials such as Adrian Fenty and Cory Booker, the mayors of Washington, DC and Newark, NJ respectively, were joined by a slew of prominent school experts and civil rights leaders who called for a commitment to six key steps to fighting the achievement gap that plagues low-income and minority students.

The six steps include: providing universal access to pre-kindergarten programs for low-income children; expanding parent choice and access to charter schools; improving standards and accountability systems so that high achieving schools and teachers can be rewarded and modeled; extending school days and the school year to help low-performing children; improving teacher recruitment and hiring practices; and re-examing school funding within the realms of teacher pay and after school programming.

The six proposals are hardly radical ideas; each of them has been suggested to improve student achievement at one time or another. What is interesting, however, is the timing and target of the call--a plea for action by widely respected Democrats who see education as an issue that can propel the Obama - Biden ticket to victory in November.

A recent PDK / Gallup poll seems to confirm this possibility. In the poll, respondents were asked which presidential candidate they would vote for if they were choosing solely on the basis of improving public schools. 46% said they would vote for Senator Obama, compared with only 29% who supported Senator McCain (the remaining 25% said they did not know).

The poll result is noteworthy for two reasons. First off, it shows a clear issue-motivated party preference on the part of voters that did not exist in either the 2004 or 2000 president elections, when President Bush was virtually tied with Sen. Kerry and Vice President Gore on the question of who would improve public schools more. To the extent that this preference is deeply held, education seems to be an issue on which Senator Obama has potential to draw voters to his camp.

The second interesting element of the poll is that the clear candidate preference has emerged in spite of a relatively quiet campaign season when it comes to the issue of education. It is one thing that voters express preferences on economic issues and the Iraq war, where both candidates have spoken extensively on the subject and where clear distinction exists. But voters support Senator Obama on education even without a clear sense of how he differs substantively from Senator McCain. One wonders if Senator McCain would be wise to draw comparisons between his education platform and Senator Obama's, rather than contrasts as a way to reduce the gap expressed by likely voters.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lots of happenings in the past few weeks to catch up on, perhaps none more interesting than a speech given by Senator McCain to the NAACP two weeks ago where he officially unveiled his education platform for the presidential campaign.

While the edu-world consensus seems to be that there wasn't too much in the way of earth-shattering policy suggested in the speech, there were at least a couple items that caught my attention.

The first observation has to do with the over-arching positioning behind Senator McCain's proposals. It's pretty clear that he has no intent of making education anything close to a center-piece of his campaign, instead choosing to allow education to serve as an echo and reinforcement of themes upon which he and his advisors have already bet their campaign livelihoods. For instance, the second and third sentences of his education platform declare:

"Now is the time to demand real, new reform earned through discipline, grinding work, tough choices and leadership. John McCain has dedicated his career in public service to the hard and sometimes unpopular work of achieving meaningful reform."

Sure, sounds great, but I couldn't help but notice that the same two lines could have been used in a campaign statement on health care, energy policy, campaign finance, the housing crisis--heck the two lines could be an intro to Senator McCain's position on Major League Baseball and steroids. My point here is not to criticize the Senator, especially since he has some thoughtful viewpoints on teacher pay, teacher recruitment, and school choice later on in his plan. But I do mean to point out that the first question his campaign asked when weaving an education platform was not, "what is best for children?" but rather, "what makes the most sense for this campaign?" To be fair, Senator Obama has arguably done the same on the issue.

Second observation has to do with Senator McCain's opponent and the issue of race. He spent a good minute in the opening of his speech praising Mr. Obama in front of a predominately African-American audience, both graciously and eloquently. But I wonder how much of Senator McCain's remarks and choice of venues--in front of the very same NAACP that he refused to speak at in 2007--have to do with this recent poll from the Public Education Network that shows that African American and Latinos actually support the No Child Left Behind Act more than do white voters, by a pretty significant 3-to-2 margin.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

News yesterday from the presidential campaign trail was that Senator McCain was preparing to give an address before the NAACP next week discussing his plans for how the federal government can help improve public education outcomes in America. While his talk, even by his own campaign's admission, is unlikely to be as deep and detailed as Senator Obama's parallel speech on education more than a month ago, word is that he will discuss No Child Left Behind and a handful of more intricate issues such as teacher pay-for-performance.

The fact that none of the presidential candidates have been so measured in their approaches on education--even Senator Obama's 19-minute address six weeks ago did not contain any headliners--indicates that they have both bought into the current orthodoxy of education reform in Washington, DC: the standards-based accountability movement. This is the movement that has resulted in states setting standards for what students should know in each subject area by each grade level, and implementing testing systems to measure whether those standards are being met.

In principle, the standards based accountability movement is a sound strategy that owes much of its genesis to successful business practices designed to monitor and enhance productivity. But unlike the business world, where workers rarely object to the idea that they will be held to a set of performance indicators to determine their efficacy, we have seen a fair deal of back-lash from educators and other stakeholder groups against the standards based model in education, particularly on the testing front.

I have often been quick to play devil's advocate against this brand of backlash, asserting the general logic that anytime an institution is suddenly and openly confronted with its own failures (and in the institution of public education, the magnitude of those failures is immense indeed), that the institutional stakeholders will reject and rail against the accountability system that reveals its weaknesses. But it must also be admitted that there is some degree of resonance to what those who object to NCLB and standards-based school reform are saying. The appeal of their arguments can be described this way: is the end goal and sum-total of what we are trying to achieve in public education reform really just an increase in the number of students who correctly fill-in some arbitrary percentage of bubbles on an annual test?

To be sure, those bubbles, the arbitrary percentage, and the tests themselves represent real skills that are indicators of what our children need to know to compete in the world economy. But that's also the problem: they are only indicators. If Susie Q. passes her state-written 4th grade reading proficiency test she still has a ways to go before she has earned her way into a prosperous participation in the global economy.

None of this would be a problem if we didn't have better indicators. That is to say, most people agree that institutions, whether public or private, ought to be held accountable to meeting their stated purposes, and we should use the bets-tailored indicators possible to decide if they are in fact succeeding. But in the case of public education, I believe we do have better indicators to determine whether our schools are meeting the goal of preparing all youth for productive future lives as democratic citizens and members of an ever-changing global work force: college completion rates and, by extension, high school drop-out rates!

In other words, in addition to holding schools accountable for annual yearly progress on standardized tests, shouldn't we be asking our schools to meet the more publicly-accessible end goal of increasing the proportion of students who complete college (which is an indicator for success in today's world that adds a more humanizing element than a passing score on a 4th grade math test, I submit)? So here's my big idea for Senators McCain and Obama: come up with a plan to inject new Federal and State dollars** into public schools and school districts as an incentive to reward those districts who BOTH increase their numbers of graduates who go on to complete college AND who decrease high school drop out rates by at least the same amount. A program that essentially challenges schools to provide more students with a full high school education AND do so in a way that prepares them for success in college can only do great things for our national economy and certainly our society. Schools who participate in the program would be rewarded for doing what their ultimate purpose is in the first place, and a race to the top could ensue as opposed to a race to the bottom with the standards on current state tests.

Best of all for the candidates is, in my opinion, the political aspect of such a proposal. Why? Because when I say "new" federal and state dollars, I really mean it. Put it this way: if America's high school drop out numbers were reduced by half, and a similar number of youth went on to complete college instead of stopping after getting a high school diploma, America would increase government tax revenues by at least $40 billion simply through direct and indirect benefits of reducing our incarceration rate! Since high school dropouts are 8 times more likely to go to jail than high school graduates, and since a year of prison costs the government an average of $27,000 plus lost tax revenues as prison inmates do not work, much of the incentive program to push schools to bring up college completion and bring down high school dropouts would pay for itself (over a period of time).

Now if only we could find a leader willing to stand up and stomache the political costs of putting the money up for such a program up front with the firm belief that America's people do indeed desire to educate themselves, and do want to achieve success in the workplace and beyond...

Posted by Aaron Tang at 05:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As the school year winded down for the 240 middle school students and 20+ staff at my school, there was a lot of carnage.

In the last week, two of the students who I had thought made a great deal of progress were expelled because of a fight involving a thrown garbage can and a brandished fire extinguisher. This would have been the most notable occurence of the day, except that earlier in the day the 8th grade math teacher finally called it quits. He had shown remarkable resolve by staying in the classroom despite not getting along with the students or much of the administration for most of the year. But twenty minutes before the fire extinguisher fight, the math teacher stormed out of the building and quit after he was pelted in the face by a group of several students who used fruit cup, oranges, and other foods as ammunition.

But the end of the school year was actually less bloody for the students and teachers than it was for the administration. My principal had been fired a month before the end of the year and replaced with a new principal who had a stronger background in urban education. The last month of the school year was thus filled with a great deal of stress for the other two administrators (a dean of students and a director of curriculum and instruction), along with the few teachers who were hoping to return. In theory at least, the new principal would be evaluating those who hoped to return to decide who would make the cut and return next year.

Well on the day after school let out, we found out that both the dean of students and the director of curriculum & instruction were fired. Which means that not a single administrator will be carried over from the school's first year into year two.

What are the implications of this? For the students, I have to say that it is a good thing. Sometimes when an organization fails at its mission, there is something to be said about sticking with the people who made up the organization so that they can improve based on lessons learned. Other times, institutional memory can be a bad thing if unsuccessful practices become ingrained. In the case of our school, we needed a brand new fresh start.

But there are broader implications as well. Our school is far from the only one in the nation where administrators and teachers are being fired (or deciding not to return) left and right. In a profession where half of the employees quit their jobs within five years there are a whole host of problems that arise. Indeed, any serious policy response to teacher quality problems has to address problems with retention as urgently as it addresses recruitment.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nine minutes and forty-five seconds into his speech, Barack Obama gets it.

"... From the moment our children step into a classroom, the single most important factor in determining their achievement is not the color of their skin or where they come from. It's not who their parents are or how much money they have. It's who their teacher is."

In the longest single-issue, education-only speech any of the candidates have given for the public record thus far, Barack Obama did not disappoint earlier this week. Speaking in front of an audience of students, educators, and parents outside Denver, CO (a notable location, and location, of course, is everything), Senator Obama outlined a serious of key principles and policy ideas that would guide his legislative leadership on education were he to be elected president (full text of the speech here).

If you can get past the relatively slight amount of political pandering, where the Senator criticizes NCLB with the standard throw-away sentiment that NCLB left the funding behind, he actually makes some fair points. To begin with, he takes the bold and even slightly controversial position among liberal educators that NCLB itself is a good law with good goals. The problems, he correctly points out, have to do with the implementation. So far so good.

He then goes on to tell the truth about another straw-man argument that liberal educators wrongly bash the federal law for, the idea that NCLB has turned schools into factories where teachers no longer innovate in the classroom but only "teach to the test". And he did it in a way that garnered applause from an audience that I believe didn't quite catch his deft pivot. Stating, "we need to realize that we can meet high standards without forcing teachers and students to spend most of the year for a single, high stakes test," the Senator then changes gears to say that, "if we want our children to be great... our schools shouldn't stifle innovation, they should let it thrive." In doing so, I believe the Senator is pointing the blame for the "teaching to the test argument" at the correct party: not the federal government, but rather the schools and school districts who over-react to the concept of accountability by turning to rote memorization and test prep! As he goes on to say, the idea of school accountability for learning is important, and a standardized test is a necessary thing. But standardized tests and critical thinking skills, art, music and the like are not either / or propositions, they are both / and propositions.

Most importantly, the Senator sees the crucial issue threatening the quality of education in America: teacher quality. He recognizes that our children--particularly those in low-income urban and rural schools--will only go so far as their teachers can teach them, and that right now, our teachers are far from good enough. So he suggests a number of promising teacher recruitment programs and financial incentives that will help bring much needed talent into the field.

Unfortunately, the only place where I'm afraid he falls short is in a lack of candor over the other side of the teacher quality coin. Carrots are great to bring more people into the profession, but sticks are needed too--in fact the carrots won't do much without the sticks when all is said and done.

After all, we don't really have a shortage of nice people who come to school to teach every day. Plenty of low-quality candidates come to interview at my low-performing school each month, after all. The problem we have is that schools, by and large, are too slow to get rid of the worst teachers. More pointedly, schools are also too reluctant to pay good teachers what they deserve and bad teachers what they deserve as well. I hope the reason why Senator Obama did not come out and say this is because he understands that he can only make these kinds of changes if he doesn't go on a public anti-teacher union crusade, and not that he is unwilling to broach the issue. It won't be pretty if he tries, but if he can bring unions, students, and parents to the same table, crazier deals have been struck in the name of what's best for the future.

Lastly, I've heard Senator Obama use this refrain about needing parents who are willing to turn the T.V. off if we are going to really give our children the education they deserve--this idea of shared sacrifice and responsibility. It's a brilliant political line, and a popular part of his education passages in speeches. It accomplishes two things: (1) it gives him the appearance of "street cred" as a truth-talker, unafraid to confront delinquent parents, and (2) it seems to make sense. The real beauty of the line, though, is that it accomplishes both tasks without any political cost! Why? Because the parents he is talking about, by and large, do not recognize that they are the ones at fault! Parents as a whole are quick to point out when other parents are doing a bad job, but rare to admit that they are failing their children (and if you need to know more, just ask me to tell you about a student who's mom enrolled him in the wrong grade at the start of this school year because she forgot what grade he was supposed to be in!).

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A US News & World Report article published earlier this month provides an accurate overview of how education has been treated on the presidential campaign trail so far this election cycle.

In short, education has played an insignificant role in both of the primaries, and appears to be headed in the same direction in the general election. None of the three remaining candidates have staked out bold positions on the most important K-12 and higher education issues, and none of them have made much in the way of headlines in terms of promises or policy proposals.

Both Senators Obama and Clinton appear to be content with criticizing funding levels for NCLB, clamoring for increased loans to help with college affordability, and drawing moderate lines on teacher pay and quality initiatives. One disjunction between the two is that Senator Clinton has toed the teachers union supported line of rewarding teachers based on how well whole schools are doing whereas Senator Obama has taken the more controversial stance of rewarding only those individual teachers who are dramatically improving student achievement.

For his part, Senator McCain has had even less to say about education. He doesn't even yet have a full education platform published on his campaign website, and has really only issued standard GOP responses on education, trumpeting such ideas as school choice, merit pay for teachers, charter schools, and sometimes even vouchers. To the degree that education remains a low-priority issue, it will benefit Senator McCain since he has little expertise on the matter, especially given a traditional Democratic advantage among voters who consider education to be a key election day issue.

My only challenge to the article regarding low attention paid to education on the campaign trail is to the title. US News has the piece printed under the headline, "Presidential Candidates Have Little Opportunity to Talk About Education." I question whether this gets to the heart of the matter, or if it actually gives the candidates a bit more credit than they deserve regarding this issue which, after all, may be one of the most pressing policy matters facing our nation's future.

To me, the presidential candidates have plenty of opportunity to address whatever issues they deem to be important. After all, we're talking about candidates who give multiple speeches each day talking about all of the changes they'd like to make to the country. Senator McCain, for instance, has had no trouble making headlines with his unique views on global warming and climate change--issues which he has raised on his own, without having to wait for the right "opportunity". In other words, I'm afraid the candidates have not lacked in opportunity to address education, but have instead lacked sufficient interest to make it a crucial topic. And if you're wondering why none of the candidates (not just this year, but really for the past half-century since K-12 education has become a federal issue) have made K-12 school reform a priority, allow me to ask you a question to offer a hint why education will take a backseat for the foreseeable future: how many elementary, middle, and high school students are allowed to vote?

Posted by Aaron Tang at 05:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you want to know how good a school is, here's a novel idea: ask the students.

At a bad school, you'll hear complaints that are well-founded, such as a number of the quotes from a powerful report published earlier this week in Washington, DC .

One elementary school student complained, "Give us harder work, not the busywork that we already know."

A middle school student, when asked about her teachers, said that "they let you know you are failing but then let you go on struggling and then send you to summer school."

A student at the same school reflected, "Teachers don't teach us a thing throughout the entire period. When visitors come, they start working."

And at one of the city's high schools, one history class had an almost unbelievable lesson plan, where students were asked, "Where is your favorite place to shop?"

The concept of students complaining about school is not a novel concept, of course, especially at this time of the year when summer is just around the corner and patience grows thin on the part of adults and students both. But there is something telling in these comments from DC's students--and its telling more because of who says them, than what they are saying.

After all, were you really all that surprised to hear that it was students from an inner-city with high levels of poverty complaining about bad teachers, low expectations, and overall low quality of education? I hear similar statements from students all the time in my school, and I have to confess that they are often on point. In short, reports of student discontent are numerous in DC, St Louis City, and other areas with high concentrations of low-income and minority children, and they often hit on important themes, such as those having to do with low quality teachers or run-down school buildings.

Meanwhile, if a school is actually pretty good, you'll likely hear a combination of compliments and complaints. The difference about the complaints, however, will be marked. Instead of focusing on obvious problems such as inept teachers, broken facilities, lack of safety, and inadequate student support and discipline, in the nicer suburbian schools, complaints will sound a lot more like the student in the video below, which is to say high on passion and energy, but low on common sense.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 06:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)