I’m with Jay Mathews in his column about David Whitman’s new book, Sweating the Small Stuff. The subtitle, “Inner-city schools and the new paternalism,” needs work.   I haven’t spent as much time in KIPP classrooms as Jay has, but I’ve watched enough to understand the roots of the subtitle. To say the schools are highly structured is an understatement. But they sure do work. Like Mathews, I have struggled to come up with a good term for the KIPPs, Uncommon Schools, Green Dots, Achievements Firsts, Masterys, etc. I call them the “elites,” which is accurate but somewhat objectionable as well.   Former Eduwonk guestblogger Michael Goldstein (we guest bloggers make up a support group, absent all the long meetings and white wine) has a good take on the book here.  

Writes Goldstein: “Is telling a kid to tuck in his shirt a “middle class value?” Go to a poor black church on Sunday, and to a middle class white church, and tell me who has got the tucked in shirts.”

One saving grace for the “paternalism” subtitle: In the long run, what matters most about these schools is what happens to these students in college. And if paternalism is the only academic glue holding together their lives, then the free wheeling college life will unravel that paternalism, and all that academic discipline, in a matter of days.

–Guestblogger Richard Whitmire

Recent guest blogger Kevin Huffman kept us up to date with TFA alum and Olympics fencing competitor Tim Morehouse. Now, Huffman brings us this important update. Folks, we have a winner!

–Guestblogger Richard Whitmire  

Not content to tolerate one of the (worst) least appreciated higher education systems in the country, Nevada is now vying for a medal in the highly competitive category of Most Interesting State Board of Education. Here we have the story of Greg Nance, 49, forced to quit the board after a series of public make-out sessions with his 20-year-old wife–who was parked next to him, strapped into her motorized wheelchair. Speaking on behalf of the hundreds of local education reporters who sit through interminable hours of school board meetings, I would like to defend Mr. Nance. We contend that school board meetings offer up too few racy incidents, not too many. Just putting that out there.  

–Guestblogger Richard Whitmire

Ok, time to get a bit serious. A great dialogue goes on at Eduwonk, where the important education reform issues of the decade get debated. I maintain, however, that these debates would be greatly diminished absent indirect contributions from the thousands of sentinels out there expending shoe leather at local schools and school board meetings. Those would be our members at EWA.

Our higher education reporters find themselves an endangered species, and yet lacking the protections recently afforded polar bears. See this Chronicle commentary wrote (password required) about that dilemma. At the K-12 level, things are only slightly better. At many papers, one or two reporters now shoulder the burden that was handled by a team. Can bloggers make up that difference? Doubtful.

Let me introduce you to a few of our members, and I’m deliberately profiling some of the best (avoiding the many cases where a rookie oversees multiple districts):

First up, Cathy Grimes from the 87,000-circ Daily Press in Newport News, Va., where three reporters cover nine schools districts, five four-year colleges and two community colleges. Grimes is an education team leader, which means she manages education coverage plus reports on one large district, three colleges and state and national education issues. During the school year, she files as many as six stories a week. Oh, and the paper is asking her to start a blog.

“We hear that readers want education news–it always ranks in the top five things they read both online and in hard copy–but with newsroom cuts or empty slots that take forever to fill (got to keep the bottom line down), good stories and packages, and good watchdog reporting are becoming more difficult to do.”

Next, Scott Elliott from the Dayton Daily News, one of the earliest and most successful education bloggers, with Get on the Bus. Despite the success, Elliott has no illusions about an independent blogger able to substitute for what he does. ”My blog certainly could not survive on its own. Even with strong and loyal readership, the blog is a narrow enough niche that it would be hard to sell enough ads to support it. And some of my pageviews are solely as a result from being featured at DDN.com. So I’d probably lose pageviews also, making it even harder to sell to advertisers.”

Here’s Elliott’s workload: 4-5 stories a week plus 5-7 blog posts. There are two full-time education reporters at this 150,000-circ daily, Scott on K-12 and another reporter on higher ed. Things would have to get a lot worse before bloggers could play a role. “I personally do believe that, eventually, there will be opportunities for self-supporting niche websites, especially as newspaper resources continue to erode and more communities are ignored.”

Now Jeff Solochek from the 316,000-circ St. Petersburg Times, regarded as one of the best (and best-staffed) regional papers in the country. His blog, the Gradebook, had about 70,000 readers in July. At times, the blog gets 7,500 page views daily.

The usual eight-person team is now staffed at six. Jeff covers one district with 80 schools, filing three to six stories a week plus a minimum of two daily blog posts; the entire team covers more than 400 schools.

“Could bloggers take up the slack as papers cut education reporters? Not unless the bloggers are education reporters themselves. Sure, there are the policy wonks who like to opine on all the national trends.” (Hmmm…could Jeff be talking about Eduwonk? Naaah) “But more mainstream readers like the ones we write for want to know about the local schools and the state’s policy directives, and these reports don’t just materialize out of thin air. That’s what we as education reporters provide, and blog about.”

Keep in mind, Jeff works for one of the best staffed papers in the country and all three are top-of-the-game reporters. Now try to imagine what life is like as an inexperienced education reporter at a sub-par 40,000 daily. I don’t pretend to have an answer here. I think there may be a model where foundations support national education reporting (written by bought-out education reporters). But what happens at the local level? On the count of three, let’s all shudder together …

–Guestblogger Richard Whitmire

I’m soliciting for the Friday fish porn site. Please send photos (along with suggested blog items on actual education issues) to me here. A threat: Should no suitable photos materialize, I plan to run a photo of me holding a beaver (an evil beaver) that was “fished” out of my pond. It’s not a pretty sight, so please send me pornable fish!!!

–Guestblogger Richard Whitmire

I’m Richard Whitmire, an editorial writer for USA Today and president of the National Education Writers Assn. I have a part-time deal with my paper, which allows me to stir up mischief elsewhere, at my single-subject blog, Why Boys Fail and free lancing, occasionally with the master fly fisher himself, Mr. Eduwonk.

–Guestblogger Richard Whitmire

Four MATCH School peeps, 2 kids and 2 staff, combined on this tuna off the New England shores. 

Thanks to Andy and Renee and all you wonkish readers. Have a great school year. 

–Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

Per this, “Dallas public school students who flunk tests, blow off homework and miss assignment deadlines can make up the work without penalty, under new rules that have angered many teachers.”

Um, and parents, too. Check out the torrent of unhappy customers in the comments section of the Dallas Morning News article.

–Guestblogger Mike Goldstein 

Just read two interesting nuggets. Read both.

First, Eduwonkette comments on the video link below and on the notion of “Teacher Hero.”

Second, (former Teacher) In the 408 shares his thoughts on the same topic (and more). FYI, he just joined Ed Trust West.

–Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

Deep breaths, uber-wonks. We’re going into slide rule and plaid shirt territory. Grab your pocket protector. I’m trying for nothing less ambitious than to create a new vocabulary for discussing every aspect of education reform.

Da-dum! It’s called a production function. A production function spells out how much output you get (learning) from certain inputs.

There have been other efforts at this.  But I think those are wrong.  

I’ll spell it out in the Comments section so we don’t mess up the Eduwonk front page. …

–Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

This 10-minute video set in the S. Bronx is pretty impressive. Mikey says: try it, you’ll like it.

–Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

Per this, Charles Murray in today’s WSJ:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a “BA.”

Favorite buzzword remains: “people who do not possess adequate ability.”

–Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

Let us think about the school-resistant teenager. 

Initially, he gets the usual combo therapy. Teachers encourage. Parents called. Extra tutoring offered.  Connected with a mentor. Possibly evaluated for a disability.  

Still he struggles. Now what?

a) Try something very different.

b) Try same stuff, but execute better, and tailor the interventions more precisely.  

In this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, they examined a variant of that question–how to treat the drug-resistant tuberculosis pati ent, someone who has been treated several times by a doctor without success? 

A team tried “B”–same stuff, execute better, more precision. Combo therapy of 5 drugs, plus home visits by social workers who made sure the patients actually did their homework, oops, took their medicine. 

They were able to cure about 60% of previously drug-resistant patients. 

Lesson? Right now we put secondary teachers in an untenable position. They write prescriptions (assigning homework, readings, studying), but the school-resistant teen simply never actually takes the medicine. Then we’re never quite clear on who owns that noncompliance: kid, parent, teacher, someone else? 

In the TB experiment, the medical team took on that responsibility. But there was division of labor.  Doctors wrote the prescriptions, but social workers got patients to actually take the medicine. Who is the “someone else”–not teachers–who essentially act as personal trainers to get school-resistant kids to exert effort? 

–Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

Question:

Among low-income black and Hispanic kids, fill in the variables: 

• A, % become college grads
• B, % enroll in college but never finish
• C, % get high school diploma only
• D, % no diploma, possibly GED  

–Guestblogger Michael Goldstein

High school student didn’t exert any effort all year? Therefore likely to repeat and drop out? 

No sweat. Recover! A few days online, perhaps 10 to 20 hours. Don’t actually learn much. Just click and click until stumbling upon acceptable answers. Sure beats the chumps who did try for 900 hours of class and perhaps 400 hours of homework/studying.

This is not your father’s social promotion and overruling of teachers. “Credit recovery” comes with the imprimatur of “learn at your own pace!”

WaPo weighs in on the growing abuse, following on heels of NYT April story, and Edwize 2007.

“Bria was struggling on a world history quiz, the same 10-question, multiple-choice quiz she had taken five times.”

Attention human capital reformers!  This is something that drives urban teacher batty. 

With Greene and Swanson having led an admirable effort to expose our nation’s high dropout rates circa 2000, this is the response of some districts: lower the bar until there’s not a bar.

Despite alarm bells in the Redwood Forests, credit recovery is the rage: from the Gulf Stream waters, to Kosciusko MS (100% success!), to Lakeville, IN (where, predictably, CR also allowed the local school to hire a basketball coach. Two birds with one crossover. Go Hoosiers!)

–Guestblogger Michael “Goldstein Goes Wild”

Sorry, one transitional Olympics post. As you sit back and root for the red, white and blue, don’t forget the Education Olympics brought to you by The Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

And, blogging live from the REAL Olympics, Teach For America alum Tim Morehouse sends this picture from opening ceremonies, and a picture of him hanging with LeBron. You have to love it…

–Guestblogger Kevin Huffman

I joined Teach For America 16 years ago as part of the 1992 Houston corps (the best TFA corps ever–see here and here and here and here and here and–wild card edition! – here). Like two-thirds of TFA alumni, I’m still working full-time in the education space. Why?

My sense of outrage gets sparked anew on a weekly basis. Someone told me yesterday that they think the world is hardened to realities like “billions of people living on a dollar a day.” True. But I actually think most people in America simply don’t get how bad things are and the extent to which this country fails millions of kids–really, dooms kids to a lifetime of poverty–on a daily basis.

Does the average voter know these realities: that only about half of African-American high school kids graduate from high school within four years, or that the Detroit City School System graduates 25 percent of students in four years and the Indianapolis Public Schools graduate 30 percent of students? Or that even among low-income kids who do graduate, only half immediately enroll in college? That kids in low-income areas are seven times less likely to graduate from college than their wealthier peers?

And yet, it doesn’t have to be this way.  We see evidence every day of different results in individual classrooms.  In individual schools. In whole networks of schools. The point is that when you see that the world actually could look different, you start to believe that there is a moral imperative, and the only question is how.

Here is a video for 5 minutes of inspiration this weekend from my friends at KIPP. Peace.

–Guestblogger Kevin Huffman

Well, it’s been fun blogging this week at Eduwonk. Special thanks to Renee Rybak at Ed Sector for getting our posts up daily. I think we were a total disappointment to frequent commenter John Thompson who wanted us to take on the hard policy issues of the day.  What can I say, it’s August in DC. Time to lay off the hard stuff.

I was reminded this week of the challenge in keeping up with a blog—it is truly the monster that must be fed.  Every day, several times a day.  Hard to have a real job and keep it up—hats off to Andy.  I suspect he doesn’t need a lot of sleep.  My personal theory on life is that people who need a lot of sleep don’t make history. Me, my dream would be to get nine hours a night, but I have two kids under the age of four, so I haven’t gotten enough sleep in, let’s see, about four years.

Speaking of sleep and creatures that go bump in the night, if you have never seen Some Kind of Monster, I urge you to put it in your Netflix queue. It’s about the heavy-metal band Metallica going through group therapy. I kid you not. It’s the struggle within.

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin

Tall. Unassuming. Masterful at articulating Teach For America’s theory of change. Likes: Ohio State Bukeyes. Dislikes: Naysayers.

Starting with basically one other staffer and a fax machine, Kevin led a 30 percent compound annual growth in his seven years heading Teach For America’s development efforts. Not too shabby. Of course, Kevin would be the first to say he didn’t do it alone, that it was also about identifying key staff to lead the charge and developing a regional funding strategy. But, I still think it’s a pretty amazing story. Hello, Chronicle of Philanthropy, are you listening?

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin

When Andy first told me, “Dude, we always do porn on Friday!” I was shocked and intrigued. After I had already conducted several hours of research to ready for today’s post, Michele told me, “Um, it’s actually fish related.”  Embarrassing.

Anyway, here’s your fish porn to end the week. It’s the latest craze in the DC area.

–Guestblogger Kevin Huffman

I may never have sent a text message, but I was able to download Silverlight* at the Library of Congress and use the Reading Pre-Columbian Artifacts interactive, part of the Exploring the Early Americas exhibit. I love ceramics, but if you are more of U.S. history buff, get up close and personal with the U.S. Constitution interactive, part of the Creating the United States exhibit. The Library of Congress web site is a tremendous resource and well-worth exploring–makes me feel almost as patriotic as when I hear my 3 ½ year old sing God Bless America. (He recently learned the song at school. Not sure if he knows what “oceans white with foam” means, but I get downright teary-eyed listening to him to sing it.)

Oh, and all you teachers out there should also take a look at Library of Congress’ lesson plans and online activities.

*Takes half a hot minute to download.

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin

Joe Williams riffs on Michele riffing on Andy riffing on Michele. With the whole letter thing too–an L, an A, an F and a T, all thrown around and mixed up.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about you are totally not one of the cool kids and are probably either a) pandering to the status quo needs of adults; or b) de-professionalizing the field.  

–Guestblogger Kevin Huffman

Over at The Early Ed Watch Blog, Sara Mead provides a roundup of recent blogging about the practice of “academic redshirting.” I gotta say, as the mom of a 3½ year old with a December birthday, I am quite puzzled by the pro-redshirting crowd. Who are these people prepared to pay for an extra year of child care? I can’t wait until my son starts kindergarten—I’ll get a about a $15K raise! Looks like new research shows it doesn’t have the academic payoff commonly thought anyway. Oops!

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin

Keeping its eye on the really critical issues facing Americans this election season, the Times this week reports on the dearth of private school placements for kindergarten in Manhattan–“it’s harder than getting into college!” Apparently things are so bad that one tony pre-school graciously decided to open an elementary school after a few five year olds didn’t get their first choice private school.  It is really great when people step into the fray and fill a pressing social need like that.

In other news, Donna Foote notes in this week’s Newsweek that at Locke High in Watts a few years ago, 1,000 kids started as freshmen, 240 graduated in four years, and 30 of them had the prerequisites to go to a California state school. 

–Guestblogger Kevin Huffman

How can you not fall in love with an article on teaching practice with that kind of title? Love it! This article is just one of several worth reading in UnBoxed, the online education journal published by High Tech High’s Graduate School of Education.

If you don’t know, High Tech High is grounded in the theory of project-based learning. One of the other articles in this issue written by Jeff Robin, a founding faculty member at High Tech High, talks about the importance of planning, management and exhibition in doing project-based learning well. Here is what may be the best example ever of the importance of planning to effective instruction:

Exhibiting projects is a difficult task. Sometimes you get lucky and it comes together on its own. Mostly it takes planning and skill to do it well. I personally have been knocked unconscious hanging a ceramic mobile. I saw stars, and if I had planned it better and thought it out I would have never been in that position, 15 feet in the air on a lift, unconscious.

Hard to top that! After perusing UnBoxed, be sure to look at some of the students’ digital portfolios. Very cool stuff.

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin

One of the coolest nonprofits in DC is Critical Exposure, which provides students with training in documentary photography, leadership, and advocacy, so students can document their experiences at school and use their voices and images to impact decisions that affect their education. I first learned about Critical Exposure when I saw the gallery of student photos from their DC project displayed in one of the Smithsonian buildings. Be sure to check out their entire gallery of photos from projects in Baltimore, DC, Austin and Albuquerque, and maybe sign up for their Photo of the Month Club.

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin

Since Kevin brought up the Presidential race, I can’t resist linking to two posts on the candidates written by my favorite humorist, Andy Borowitz. In true bipartisan fashion, I give you one on McCain: McCain Makes Historic First Visit to the Internet, and one on Obama: Obama Releases List of Approved Jokes About Himself. Enjoy!

 P.S. Just like the election, neither post has anything to do with the education.

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin

Education is scoring pretty low right now on most voter ratings of “most important issues,” with only 12 percent rating it as the top issue in one* survey, and four percent in another. Yet when voters are allowed to rank how strongly they feel about multiple issues simultaneously, education scores about the same now as it did back in 2000 when it was a much bigger campaign issue.

One obvious explanation is that voters consistently care a lot about education, but the state of the country and world makes other issues variable. In a close election, though, can education policy make a difference in the minds of voters?  Maybe more as a metaphor than as an actual issue. Arguably, George Bush’s focus on education in 2000 helped flesh out the “compassionate conservative” meme. People didn’t vote for his ed policy per se, but it helped reinforce a carefully crafted image–a man with conservative values who cared about poor people. It seems like there is a large swath of domestic policy middle ground sitting wide open in a close election right now, and it’s not hard to imagine creative ways for either candidate to use education policy to flesh out a broader image of change or pragmatism or accountability or other memes. The issue still seems there for the taking.

On the other hand, The Onion has an alternate theory on THE key election issue, and I find the case somewhat compelling.

*Story via Education Week, subscription needed to view.

–Guestblogger Kevin Huffman

This bit on Jon Stewart last week reminded me of how easy it is to go for an obvious blog post title. Stewart mocks CNN’s American Morning for using unimaginative songs as the “bump in” for a story. Rock Me Like a Hurricane for a story about . . . a hurricane. Take the Money and Run for a story about . . . the economy. Bowie’s Changes for a story about . . . pretty much anything. I was definitely guilty of this in my former blogging life—I know I used Changes! We must dig deeper bloggers and avoid the easy hook!  Now if I can only build a post around The Daily Show theme song, Dog on Fire. I’m an old Husker Du and Sugar fan—love that Bob Mould.

Check out the clip at the 7:20 mark.

–Guestblogger Michele McLaughlin