How do you turn a $600 billion industry on $5 billion?  Well, hanging tough on stuff like this is a very good start.  Making states with arbitrary restrictions on charter schools or lousy charter school laws ineligible for ”Race to the Top” dollars would help turn that money into a more powerful lever than it might otherwise be.  Update:  More here.

Even leaving aside the sleazy innuendo about researcher Jane Hannaway* (stay classy NEA!) this National Education Association email (below), from the organization’s executive director, is startling in its tendentiousness (in case you were wondering why there is so much misunderstanding about the research on Teach For America, here’s why…).   Other methodologically strong studies confirm what Hannaway found, for instance the Mathematica evaluation of TFA.  And, the NEA fails to mention that the studies they lean on have been challenged on non-trivial issues, even by colleagues of the researchers.   No one is saying that TFA teachers are hitting the cover off the ball, but at a minimum they’re certainly not worse than others including veterans.   Still, even if one takes the NEA assertion at face value, the proper comparison is the actual labor market in the communities TFA serves, not some hypothetical labor market that currently doesn’t exist and unfortunately won’t for the foreseeable future.   Moreover, if TFA teachers are such trouble, why are superintendents clamoring for them?   Also, I’m not sure how you’d quantify ”predominate” but KIPP has an awful lot of TFAers in various roles and their schools are pretty good…

In any event, none of that is really the point here anyway.  Even with TFA’s robust recruiting, the 4,100 teachers they are preparing for this fall is a trivial number in relation to the overall teacher workforce, the natural job turnover that occurs every year in the field, or the number of teachers who might be laid off in this downturn absent government intervention.  In other words, this little crusade is ideological not substantive.  Here’s my take on the broader reason TFA matters and sparks bad behavior like this.  If the AMA acted in this fashion there would be an outcry, no?  I thought we wanted education to be like medicine…

From: Wilson, John [NEA] [mailto:JWilson@nea.org]
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 4:15 PM
To: State-Presidents [AFF]; State-Executive-Directors [AFF]; Rose, Robin [CA]; Ogles, Mary Bruce [AL]
Subject: : TFA

We are beginning to see school systems lay off teachers and then hire TFA college grads due to a contract they signed. I hope this will be helpful to you. Please let us know if this occurs in your state.

You’ll want to be aware of these studies (attached) which show that TFA recruits are significantly less effective in their first two years than beginning teachers who are fully prepared and certified – and beginning teachers in general are less effective than experienced teachers. In all of the independent studies, more than 80 percent of TFA recruits have left teaching by year 4, just as they are beginning to become effective, costing districts about $20k apiece to replace them and adding to the high turnover rates in urban districts – which itself negatively affects school performance.

The only studies that have found TFA recruits to be as effective as other teachers (including the recent Urban Institute North Carolina study they are touting – which was conducted by the mother of a TFA employee, Jane Hannaway) are those that compare TFA recruits to other teachers who are even less likely to be certified and prepared – because they are teaching in schools that have generally become dumping grounds for underprepared teachers serving low-income and minority teachers. It is a race to the bottom – which saves money but costs lives – in these schools.

There is no study that shows that schools in which TFA teachers predominate are succeeding. In fact a recent study that was done in Oakland shows that the schools with them largest numbers of 1st and 2nd year teachers (mostly TFA and New Teacher Project recruits) have a huge negative hit on achievement, wiping out the effect of all the other reforms they have tried to implement.

*Disc.   She’s a friend, colleague, and occasional co-author.  And she fly fishes…

Update:  Ed Week’s Sawchuk has more.

Update II:  Don’t miss the comments section of this AP story on TFA’s recruiting numbers.  Here’s a taste:  “these “teachers” will be hand picked socialists, and will use every moment of class room time to “teach” their rotten agenda!”

The lattes are boiling in Seattle over seniority-based RIF policies…

I’m late to this but it’s still relevant.   David Brooks’ recent column on the Harlem Children’s Zone occasioned a lively debate amongst the blogs about the methodology of the Doobie – Fryer study the column was based on (pdf) and whether or not Brooks overstated the results.   This Q & E  post has your key links to all that.   But the debate really buried the policy lede here.   There is a raging debate right now in education about whether or not and how much schools matter to student learning relative to other variables such as community, race, income and so forth.   Through some natural experiments embedded in the HCZ design, this study offers some evidence that despite all the hoopla about HCZ, it’s the schools that actually matter most even in the HCZ model.  In a policy debate that’s ultimately about hard choices on sequencing reforms and the political lift of holding schools accountable for serving students and where there are plenty of gambits designed to distract, that matters.

Prompted by Diane Ravitch, who best I can tell is now a stronger teacher unionist than most of my friends actually active in teachers’ unions, Mike Petrilli hosted a lively debate on the question of whether or not teachers’ unions get in the way of reform — using the landmark Massachusetts reforms as a test case.   All the installments can be found through this post.  Like most large state reform packages, Massachusetts had its own set of idiosyncrasies and the discussion plays some of those out. 

On the more general question, it’s a common one but it’s the wrong question.    My take remains pretty much what’s in this post from a few months ago:  In today’s education system “unionization” per se tells us very little about the norms and operations of schools and there isn’t solid systematic evidence one way or the other.  See Dan Goldhaber’s chapter in the book on teachers’ contracts Jane Hannaway and I did a few years ago for more.  I thought Leo Casey was going to make the same point when I saw the title of this EdWize post.   But alas no.

This debate goes on and on.  A few years ago you’d go to dinner parties and be asked about vouchers, then it was performance pay, now it’s teachers’ unions.   So here are the three most common assertions related to the debate that I’ve heard and some basic rules for non-eduwonks:

1. What’s good for teachers is good for students.   Well, not quite.  Teachers’ unions are not inherently at odds with what’s good for students but neither is everything they want in the best interest of students.   Overall, most of what they want (funding, better professional development for teachers, etc…) is for the good, but not all.  And that is where the action is today.   Their resistance to better performance measures for teachers and support of rigid salary schedules and seniority policies are one example of stances where the interests of the workforce and the interests of the students diverge.  So is their general opposition to allowing more providers of public education — for instance public charter schools – into the marketplace to better serve students who are not well served now.  This shouldn’t surprise anyone, to varying degrees most interest groups are mixed bags.  It’s the nature of the beast.  The NRA, for instance, supports a lot of problematic gun measures that are at odds with public safety, yet they also promote very good gun safety programs for youths.  Overall I prefer the NEA to the NRA, but you get the point.
2. Schools in the South aren’t very good and they don’t have unions so unions must not be a problem.   Actually, schools are pretty similar across the country in their norms and their procedures.   Visit a lot of schools, not the outliers on the high-or low-end but rather the average schools that define the system, and it’s striking how alike they generally are in how they approach things.  State and local policies are, too, to a large extent.  That’s why “unionization” actually tells us very little.  Culture and institutional norms are powerful in this field.  Virginia, for example, has some of the weakest “unions” in the country but you wouldn’t know it based on how the commonwealth runs its schools.
3. Education is unique among human endeavors so what works elsewhere can tell us little.   Education is not as unique as its insiders often try to make it out to be.  The idea that the education field is completely an N of one and consequently best left to its elites is a strategy to build prestige and hoard power.  It’s undemocratic considering the democratic imperative of good public schools.  And the basic norms of human behavior don’t stop at the schoolhouse door.  So, when thinking about education policy questions, ask yourself, in a large field, a mass service profession, with complicated, dispersed, and sometimes opaque work, does x or y make sense?  For instance we don’t link student data to teacher data in most places, does that really make much sense if we’re allegedly committed to using data and evidence to improve the system?  Sure, education has some peculiarities that policymakers must be cognizant of and some complex implementation questions, but more often than not comparative analysis can serve a useful purpose here in thinking through various strategies and revealing proposals that really don’t make sense for what they are.

There is a lot happening in this op-ed worth a glance for those who don’t follow education politics in Florida.  It’s about the state’s tax-credit program for private school choice.   It’s written by a former teachers’ union president there who now runs the program and mentions the growing bipartisan support for the initiative.  I’m not a big fan of the tax credit programs (although ones like this one in Florida are at least an improvement on the traditional education tax credit) but the politics are fascinating and something Democrats should pay attention to.

Here’s your chance to own a classic piece of school ditching history…for the bargain price of $2.3m.

Usually Reliable Robelen takes a look at some of Judge Sotomayor’s education decisions.   She’s not surprisingly heard some special education cases — they all have given the nature of special education law.   Robelen notes Somoza but there is also Frank G.,  much of which has a lot of relevance right now in the debate about tuition for special needs students in private schools.   Judge Sotomayer has also shown a very pro-disability streak in cases like the Bartlett bar case about testing accommodations for a dyslexic candidate.

There are other cases that offer glimmers around education, too.  In a 4th Amendment case on strip searches in 2004, Sotomayor wrote a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part that went further than the majority opinion in the case in over-turning the strip searches of two juveniles.   And there is her dissent in the racially charged Gant case, about an African-American student sent back a grade, which will likely get some attention during the confirmation process along with the higher profile race case about the promotion of firefighters from Connecticut.

What can we infer from all this?  Not too much on education specifically, arguably less than on Roberts, but Judge Sotomayer seems inclined to favor student rights (she won’t be joining in Justice Thomas’ efforts to overturn Tinker (pdf)) and seems to in general be sympathetic to individuals over the system.  And disability advocates will also likely have another friend on the high court if she is confirmed. 

If you haven’t checked out Colorado’s growth model site you should, it’s an interesting tool for assessing school performance.

Slate takes a look at the economics of The College Board.

Education is always just one crisis away from irrelevance on the policy agenda…

In Ed Week, J.H. Snider calls for democratizing school finance data.

…teacher testing in Massachusetts is back!

There was this crazy kerfuffle in New York this week when a proposal emerged in Albany to take SUNY out of the authorizing business and give exclusive chartering authority to the state Board of Regents (never mind that SUNY is among the best authorizers in the country and that multiple authorizers and professional authorizers can help with charter quality concerns). Various explanations for the proposal were floated from teachers’ union pressure to a desire from the other statewide charter authorizer to control more board seats at charter schools as political chits. In any event, the legislator who introduced the bill has now apparently seen the data on SUNY, had a change of heart, and withdrawn the proposal. That’s for the good but a lot of people are wondering why Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch wanted to go down this road in the first place…

Update:   More here.

Kevin Carey takes a look at 529 plans in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education column. He’s skeptical of incentives that primarily benefit the well-to-do. I share that skepticism but in the case of 529s it seems that if they were coupled with (a) some steps and incentives to control college costs (although policymakers need to tread carefully there) and (b) a robust set of direct supports for low-income students you would have a pretty rational “intervention in inverse proportion to need” strategy. 

That said, I have a different concern about 529s. An entire college-cost scare industry has emerged around them with in some cases ridiculous estimates of what it will cost to send your child or children to a four-year state university in say 2025. Ridiculous because our politics simply won’t tolerate some of the higher estimates for potential costs at those schools and there would be policy changes on the financing or cost side as a result. So my concern, apropos of the current fiscal downturn, is that some people are making the decision to save too much for college at the expense of saving for retirement. In other words college savings anxiety could be leading to bad savings decisions. Kevin notes that two-thirds of 529 plans are held by people with a median income of $200,000 annually (I assume that’s family income). But although that’s a comfortable income, and recent Republican assertions that $250K makes you “middle class” were absurd, even at $200K a family with children is still making some choices about savings, especially in more expensive real estate markets and places with higher cost of living and of course absent other streams of income for retirement.

As financial planners are quick point out, funding college at the expense of retirement is a mistake because you can borrow for college but not for retirement. There isn’t good data on this, at least that I’ve found, so the extent of this problem is something of a hunch based on other data points about saving habits as well as the anecdotal things you hear in conversation.  Still, seems worth watching.

ES’ Erin Dillon has a nifty new paper out on choice and markets.

So a while ago Green Dot Founder Steve Barr introduced “pig fuc*er” into the education vernacular. It caused a splash at the time and got some attention on this blog, natch. But since then things have been pretty quiet on the pig fornication front.

So there was some surprise when “pig fuc*er” showed up again, in of all places within the august pages of The New Yorker and from of all people the well-mannered Ted Mitchell of NSVF (who I can’t imagine has ever cast a lustful eye toward anything more porcine than apple smoked bacon).

But what’s interesting here is how, like the children’s game of telephone, what Barr said has mutated from a point he was making about evidence to him seemingly calling the head of LA’s powerful teachers’ union a “pig fu**er” (although The New Yorker noted the distinction).  That may mean that ideas like pig fu**ing just don’t travel well or perhaps it says something about the zeitgeist of the moment?

So Arne Duncan is speaking to the New Schools summit this morning in LA (it’s morning here) and just announced that New Schools Venture Fund partner Joanne Weiss is going to head up the “Race to the Top” effort. It’s a great choice, she’s no nonsense pro-reform, thoughtful, and deliberate. For those of us concerned about the $5 on $600 problem, this couldn’t be better news.

Update:  More 411 and links here.

I’ve been swamped lately and neglected to mention the great news that Michael Johnston is now a state senator in Colorado. You’ll recall he guestblogged here last year during the presidential campaign along with Jon Schnur and he’s an education reformer extraordinaire. Doesn’t this pretty clearly make Colorado the state with more school reformers in elected office per capita than any other? 

I have no idea if Dan Willingham would agree or not, but this sure seems like common sense to me.

Elizabeth Green has the latest on Green Dot in NYC.  And this dispatch from NYC, in the Village Voice, has everyone chattering.  And this study from Chicago (pdf) shows the scale of the challenge in our largest cities.

Solutions?  Mort Zuckerman is on the ed tech bus.  Secretary Duncan is heading for the Hill this week, to George Miller’s committee.  And if you’re interested in human cap issues, here’s the webinar for you, recruiting in tough times.  Also, be sure to wash behind your ears.

And, speaking of recruiting, ES is hiring for two positions, policy analyst and communications manager.

I’m hearing rumors of 40,000 people for tomorrow’s EEP rally in Washington…

Update:  Those rumors turned out to overstate things a little.  I’m not an expert crowd counter (although I’m pretty good at guessing the attendance at American League games) but I’d say about 3K people +/-.  The rain didn’t help and there seemed to be some logistical issues, buses showed up right near the end and the crowd started growing…

Random thoughts:  Couple of great musical acts.  Former National Teacher of the Year Jason Kamras and former D.C. City Councilman Kevin Chavous were fiery and closed things out with a bang.   Chavous gave an impassioned “by any means necessary” kind of speech.   Also, you wouldn’t think Joel Klein would be such a galvanizing speaker but he has an activist in him bursting to get get out, the crowd responded to him, too.   And they liked Arne Duncan a lot.   UNCF’s Michael Lomax also really strong.  Tom Vander Ark has some pictures on his Facebook page.

The number of pro-D.C. voucher program signs in the crowd was noteworthy as was the support for the program when speakers mentioned it.   Something to keep an eye on as the debate about the compromise goes forward.  If someone actually organizes those parents…

Update II:  One reader writes:  “Saw it on C-Span.   Joel Klein and Dick Vitale… separated at birth?  I thought I was going to hear a “dipsy-doo, dunk-a-roo ba-by!”  Which is to say, he’s awesome.”

This is a pretty handy tool…grant writers were just disintermediated…

It takes more than data to change outcomes and that has implications for the stimulus money.   That’s the topic of my most recent US News column.

Missed this Politics Daily story last week and surprised it didn’t get more airtime given the header, so much for the kinder, gentler, Rhee 2.0 theory!  But, it’s an open question whether that is so bad given where the idea that it’s a priority that all the adults in education systems get along harmoniously has landed us as country. 

Perhaps this is exactly the kind of impolitic urgency too often lacking in the space?

Politics Daily: If you’re pulling [reform ideas] from here and there, why are you so controversial?

It’s no secret that Steve Barr is pretty popular around these parts.   So The New Yorker story on his education efforts in LA was welcome and it was a great piece as well.   But Gary Coleman should clearly play him in the movie.  While I’m doing a casting call, here’s a free edutip:  Journos feeling late to this story should not despair.  Consider writing about Mike Piscal or Don Shalvey or for a real unknown star with an interesting story James Willcox… and that’s just in California…there is a lot of great stuff out there… 

Also in the mags, TNR’s Darby isn’t buying the excess pool in New York City.  Joel Klein’s recent policy change is creating a very high stakes game of chicken with the excess pool, keep an eye on that…Meanwhile, this excess pool leak is significant on a few levels…

I hope that foodie Mike Petrilli doesn’t catch wind of his colleague Andy Smarick’s disdain for using education stimulus funds for kitchen equipment.  Nevermind, too late.

If you can stand the heat, then two balls to watch on the stimulus are the modifications to the Department of Education’s guidance (pdf) that seem to discourage the use of the funds for school construction and the growing concern about whether all the states with both administration-friendly governors and lousy charter policies will really face any serious pressure to reform.

You don’t even have to shell out $39.99 for pay-per-view.  The great New York education debate is now available online for free.

Michael Goldstein came, saw, and went wild.   So a big thanks to him for some great guestblogging.  More guestbloggers before too long.

Also last weekThe Post asked some folks to comment on President Obama’s voucher compromise.  Here’s my take from the package:

If President Obama wanted the [voucher] issue to go away, he just made a mistake. His compromise proposal will breathe new life into the debate over school vouchers in Washington and nationally.

Although he did voucher supporters a favor by giving political cover for efforts to protect participating students, ardent supporters are not satisfied with an arrangement that basically terminates the program through attrition. Meanwhile, voucher foes are aghast at the prospect of the program slowly turning into a bloody shirt for school reform. They understand that every year students are enrolled in private schools through the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is a year the voucher issue remains alive. Thus, the fight over what is really a marginal program in the broader landscape of American public education has become an intense battle.

The president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, recently called the voucher program “an ongoing threat to public education in the District of Columbia” and urged Obama to oppose any effort to extend the program. That’s not really the language of moderation.

The real test of Obama’s political style is how vigorously the administration pursues this compromise on Capitol Hill. The president’s critics say he will not cross swords with Democratic special-interest groups. Even many admirers wonder when smoothness will give way to steel on a tough question. Oddly, protecting a school voucher program is emerging as a test.

The irony of the situation is striking.   But, it’s not a good position to be in.   Sometimes in public affairs when you strike a middle ground all you really do is upset everyone and prolong a problem rather than forge a genuine compromise.  Although some voucher foes are putting on a game face to support Obama, no one is really happy about this deal.  And voucher opponents understand that while Obama’s policy is a humane one, it seriously erodes their bright line argument against vouchers.   The President would have been better off either saying that this is a small program that was not doing any harm and letting it be or ending it quickly and putting it behind him (for instance by only continuing it until students age-out of their current schools as Secretary Duncan originally floated).*    As Machievelli (who in fairness wasn’t much of a post-partisan) counsels, in politics when you have to do something like this, do it swiftly and in one stroke.  This was neither so it’s not the last we’ve heard of all this.

*Which raises two interesting possibilities:  Is Duncan’s idea the fallback position here?  Or, is Obama as subversive and effective a leader as conservatives claim and he’s actually discreetly trying to perpetuate the program until the issue isn’t so toxic…

Arne Duncan once tried out for the Boston Celtics. Didn’t make it. But he’s got a chance to sink a clutch shut for us Bostonians. Let me explain. Two pro-charter guys—Sac mayor Kevin Johnson, Motown mayor Dave Bing—were shoot-first, 6′ NBA point guards. You need a certain fearless vibe to do that. Most NBA points are pass-first. Turn on your TV: Fisher, Rondo, Skip, Kidd.  Because if you don’t pass to the 7 foot guys, they get mad. And they’re, you know, 7 footers.  

“Call Me Arne” wasn’t a glamour guy on the court. His game was rebounds, picks, hustle, self-deprecation. Guys like that are always beloved on the team.  

At some point, Arne has to decide if he’ll be the shoot-first point guard, which will get teammates (Democratic Governors) mad at him/his boss.

From today’s Boston Globe: “With your charter cap, we can’t expand in cities like Boston,” said KIPP CEO Richard Barth.  ”Based on my experience today, if the state were to lift the cap, I have to believe Boston would have to be our top choice for our next city.”

If the Secretary is serious about his (awesome) April 15 warning—that states with charter caps are going to get locked out of $300 million-ish chunks of Race To the Top $ (which will almost all flow to districts), and that is made explicit to policymakers—then I’m convinced Massachusetts will lift the cap. Would you really throw away $300 million to improve your school districts, just to throw a bone to the unions? And if that happens, you’ll see some terrific local schools, along with some CMOs, help a few thousand more kids become college-ready.  

However, a number of MA anti-charter folks believe the Administration will cave on the “stimulus for charter cap lift” quid pro quo. They expect to win the giant competitive state grants with charter-variation stuff INSTEAD of charter growth (rather than in ADDITION to charter growth, as it should be).  

We shall see. Can Duncan channel his inner KJ?

—Guestblogger Mike Goldstein  

Kobe put up 40 last night.  Also in Tinseltown:

For seven years, LA Unified has paid Matthew Kim a teaching salary of up to $68,000 per year, plus benefits. His job is to do nothing. About 160 instructors and others get salaries for doing nothing while their job fitness is reviewed. They collect roughly $10 million a year.  

Mr. Kim’s side of the story here.  

Long Steve Barr/Green Dot profile in the New Yorker. Delicious reading.  

“I don’t want to blow up L.A.U.S.D.’s ass. But what will it take to get this system to serve who they need to serve? It’s going to take that kind of aggressiveness.”

and

“There’s this cult around charter schools. They’re not even close to being the answer.”

and, per this, about Green Dot’s takeover of Locke:

“When I (the reporter) wandered around campus during lunch periods and between classes, looking for disgruntled kids, I never found any. “The whole atmosphere is different,” a Latino boy, sketching graffiti in a notebook, said. ‘The teachers pay more attention to you.’”

—Guestblogger Mike Goldstein