Justin Cohen takes-on Andy Smarick on turnarounds.  Important debate.  Speaking of debate, some new research on its benefit for students.  In our space a few leaders have emerged from the debate scene (Sims, Coleman, for instance).

Charter school market share continues to grow, and you can see its impact politically in more places as well.

Interesting article on Sesame Street from Miller-McCune.

Pets, poems, and pupils, what’s not to like?

In the spirit of the season this new Century Foundation brief on differentiated compensation is a cornucopia of questionable assumptions, leaps, and strawmen as is too much of what’s out there on this issue.  This podcast from NPR is a better bet, which is a broader conversation about how to link compensation to outcomes and CAP has done some useful work on this.  

Also on teacher quality, Louisiana is leading the way on looking at the effectiveness of teacher preparation schemes.   A lot of learning there for the teacher prep community and state policymakers looking to get serious about quality.    And keep an eye out for some new research coming from Jane Hannaway and her colleagues on teacher effectiveness in high-and low-poverty schools, some human capital management implications.

Daily Beast looks at the dropout issue.  Some good stuff.

Everyone is chattering about this full-page ad the AFT took out in this morning’s Washington Post.  [Update here's a link to the ad (pdf), judge for yourself].  I work in this space and am quite familiar with all the protagonists and the  issues and it took me a minute to make sense of the point of the ad.  Maybe I’m stupid or needed more coffee but  it was really busy and the punchline is buried in two unchecked boxes on the lower right.     So I’m not sure it’s going to move the casual observer to action – or even to an opinion.  It needs a clearer message but it’s probably hard to get that message on paper without giving away the game.

Leaving aside technical deficiencies, clearly the strategy is to appear reasonable everywhere else in order to box in Michelle Rhee in D.C.  But there are two problems with that strategy.  First, at the elite level people get what’s going on (increasingly the press, too) so the whole thing is sort of  over before it even started and that plan only works if they can make this stuff real elsewhere and the clock is ticking on that.   Meanwhile, even those frustrated with aspects of Rhee’s style and tactics are still sympathetic to what she’s trying to do and the obstacles to that.   Second, and more basically, outside of big reform initiatives with lessons I don’t think Michelle Rhee really cares about what’s happening elsewhere and she’ll hold her ground.  She responds to different incentives like the rest of us but peer pressure isn’t one of them.

Unfortunately, it increasingly looks like the only way the AFT is going to get its way in D.C. (and outside of neutering Rhee it seems a little unclear what their way is) is by turning the schools into Verdun, which I think they’re prepared to do.  That’s tremendously unfortunate and in the long run counterproductive to their goals, too.

You all did so well with the No Child Left Behind naming contest that your ideas are being sought in another wisdom of bloggy crowds request: Name a new start-up in the entreprenurial education space. Some folks with extensive and diverse experience in our field are starting up a non-profit consulting organization to strengthen the current field of  organizations and individuals working to substantially improve outcomes for low-income kids. The organization will work on issues around leadership, strategic advising (internal and public strategy), executive search and placement, and idea and knowledge generation. It’ll be funded by a blend of fee-for-service work as well as grants from foundations.   

The criteria:  They need a name that conveys the values of the place and also something about what they do but is also crisp and clear. Sky is the limit on names except they don’t want one that’s taken in the education space (for instance by a local organization somewhere) or in other sectors, and an open url for it must be available. 

If your name is selected you will get a nifty prize.  A better prize than a book, but not as good as dinner with a former President.

Enter below in the comments section:

This blog doesn’t pause for all the M & A activity that happens in education (and yes, at $600 billion annually it’s an industry, a dysfunctional one but one nonetheless) but one acquisition announced last week is worth a look:  Wireless Generation has acquired The Writers Express (pdf).    A few things that make this interesting. 

First, if conversations I have are any gauge then most people don’t realize how big Wireless is today.  And at the same time how it became that way by growing the old-fashioned way rather than buying stuff up.   So this move to acquire is a noteworthy one.   Second, Writers Express was a non-profit.   It’s commonly assumed that because the K-12 education marketplace is such a nightmare going non-profit is often the best path to survival politically and economically.  In fact, for some ventures it might be the other way around.   There are instances where a for-profit company can support and grow an idea or method in a way that a donor-supported entity can’t.   Finally, on the substance of the deal, The Writers Express forges a middle-ground between the fairly rote writing instruction that is all-too-common (eg the burger model) and the substance and structure-free approach that characterizes the other extreme and is also too common.  All this makes Writers Express an interesting arrow in the Wireless quiver and one worth watching.

Punchline:  There are a lot of ‘em…

…is obviously a method that allows for dramatic improvement without changing a single thing.   The field is desperate for such a breakthrough innovation.  Someone should sponsor an X-Prize for that…

The other day I was talking to a knowledgeable and pretty teachers’ union-friendly colleague in our space who was deriding this new New Haven teachers’ contract agreement (I have not been able to find a link to it online though hard copies are about).  Their point was that’s it not yet real but merely a path toward creating something real through various processes so all the praise for it is premature until there are actually big changes on the ground. Tom Carroll is more pointed in this HuffPo piece calling the whole thing into question as a fraud since the actual changes are minimal.

They’re both fair points but I’d disagree for three reasons – opportunity, deviation, and perception.

Opportunity:   Sure, there must be further agreements to make this into a real reform but the opportunity – and as importantly the risk – is there now.   The opportunity is pretty straightforward, there is reform energy in New Haven, the mayor seems fired up, arguably the best EAO in the country operates there (ConnCan) and Alex Johnston is on the New Haven Board of Education, that’s a pretty good line-up.   And the teachers’ unions surely get the risk.  If they’re just trying to kick the can down the road it’s going to backfire, the press is paying attention (what David Brooks gives he can take away!), and the stakes are high for their leadership to deliver real results.   A part of the strategy may well be that they’re are more likely be able to get something done if it’s not in the context of the actual contract negotiations with all the attendant politics.*  Besides, if they don’t accomplish anything with this they’ll have a lot to answer for in the wake of all the big talk.

Deviation: For a long time the teachers’ unions had a lot of trouble tolerating much deviation from various norms. That’s why in some states, for instance New Jersey, local contract negotiations are keenly watched by state teachers’ associations. It’s also why you’d see state teachers’ unions rush to file unfair labor action complaints when faced with deviations from the single-salary scale and so forth.  And why the NEA has had so much trouble with almost any kind of significantly differentiated compensation.   Thankfully that’s changing. Things like this agreement are not sufficient but are signs of change and a greater tolerance for deviation than in the past. That sort of change and disruption at the bottom will ultimately intersect with the imperative for change at the top.

Perception:Perception matters a lot to the teachers’ unions. For instance this year they’ve been as concerned about the growing perception that Arne Duncan doesn’t listen to them as they are about actual policy differences with Duncan. Though they’re powerful organizations they do benefit from perception as well and there is more than a little bit of a “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” quality to aspects of this debate.  That they’re OK with even the perception that this contract is wildly different is not a small thing even if the details– at this point — don’t support that perception.  In other words, in just a few years they’ve moved from a posture of, “move along, nothing to see here” to one of implicitlyacknowledging that these contracts must change.  That’s not sufficient, but no small thing either.

So what went down in New Haven isn’t a silver bullet or the only change that needs to happen with regard to teachers’ contracts. But it’s something, and given the politics and pace in our field  it’s a real something and could turn into a laboratory for change. Declare it a failure in twelve or eighteen months and hold everyone accountable if that’s not happening, but to do so now is premature.

*One illustration: A colleauge who runs a big city teachers’ union once called me during contract negotiations and we were talking about where things stand and he said, “well, their first offer was good, really good actually, but of course I can’t take it because my members would have my head if we don’t fight with them for a few months…”

Update:  NYT editorial page makes the same caution in Thurs’ edition.

Via USAT, here’s a new strategy to address teacher shortages that hasn’t really been tried: Just pretend there is no 13th Amendment!  What’s frustrating is that these problems are not actually that difficult to solve:  States and districts need to demand more transparencyfrom these companies about their operations not do away with efforts to hire teachers from overseas where appropriate.

Does not seem there is anything new in today’s Times story about the Gates Foundation* and Race to the Top outside the ridiculous claim that you can’t do charter schooling in rural areas.  That’s a failure of imagination.   It’s different there, sure, than in big urbans but in many ways rural areas with single big comprehensive high schools are more in need of options for students than urban and suburban communities.  Also, see IDEA Public Schools, some of the best charters and serving rural students. 

But on the now infamous “Gates 15,” I never got the concern that those states Gates favored meant the fix was in on Race to the Top.  On the contrary, if some of those states were selected – absent substantial policy changes – it would be in indictment of the Race to the Top.   They’re just Gates priority states, and so what?  This whole thing is a little circumstantial — Former Gatesies work at the Department of Ed now > Gates gives grants for policy issues and reform = Must be something fishy happening.  There have now been several stories in the press in this vein but is that really so airtight?   In any event, the Gates 15 issue is a moot point now and to the extent that a part of the RTT theory of action is, as with prize theory more generally, to incent changes and learning even among those who don’t win all is well that ends well here and all would have been well absent this change, too.    And besides, if I have a critique here it’s that foundations don’t get close enough to policy and advocacy, not that they’re too close.

More generally, Gates had better get used to this sort of thing and have some strategies for dealing with it and holding their ground when necessary.   A friend of mine, a Marine officer, is a huge guy.  Big from birth and then a lot of time in the gym.   Also, the nicest, gentlest, most fun loving guy you’d want to meet and the kind who wouldn’t start trouble with anyone.  Yet everywhere he went, after they’d had a few drinks, people wanted to fight with him.  He couldn’ t go to a crowded bar without trouble starting because there was always some guy who wanted to see if he was really as tough as he looked (he was).Why?  Because he was the biggest guy in the room and that made him a target for the kind of people who did want to start trouble.  He became really good at knowing how to defuse situations and also when they could not be diffused.  There is a lesson in there for Gates because many days education is like a crowded bar — and other days like the bar scene in Star Wars…

*ES Funder.

Tomorrow is a big day at the D.C. City Council that already promised some drama, and now there is a pro-Michelle Rhee rally gearing up for 9AM as well.

Be sure to check out Sol Stern’s interview with Don Hirsch.   And who can get enough Hirsch?  So, here’s an ES interview with him, too. 

And on the issue of curriculum, this Russ Whitehurst paper is important (pdf).  But, while I think Russ’ point on Bedouins and water-skiing is often right, I’m not sure when curriculum and reforms like choice, teacher quality, etc…became either/or?  Most thoughtful people get that there isn’t anything out there right now that’s going to move the needle on achievement where this nation needs it to be, so we need progress on multiple issues.

Update:  To be clear, I wasn’t implying that Russ made this issue either/or, his paper is measured.   The  link was to the Robert Pondiscio post for a reason.

You should certainly check out Andy Smarick’s Ed Next article on turnarounds.   And here’s an off-the-beaten path turnaround post that’s worth your time as well.

Dorothy Rich passed away on Sunday.   Valerie Strauss does a nice job of capturing her interesting and well-lived life in today’s WaPo.   My wife and I were fortunate enough to know her professionally as well as socially.  Dorothy was an absolutely tireless advocate for better education, in particular parent-school linkages, and also a wonderful person with a mischievous appreciation for life.  Her footprint can be seen through her work and books and in federal policy but more importantly in lives she touched for the better.

Then you might have missed the hip-hop charter school, a bear on ice-skates, and a movie idea!

Two new papers out on how teachers work and how to better leverage teachers’ time and effort.  Not unrelated to this recent solve for x post.

One, by ES’ Elena Silva, takes a look at the Generation Schools model in New York.  Silva argues that without attention to using teachers’ time differently today’s human capital efforts will likely fall short.   That’s almost certainly right and Generation Schools is at the vanguard of efforts to use people differently in education in an effort to improve outcomes.  But, there is a second question policymakers also have to ask:  Even if the ”Gen Schools Approach,” if you will, can succeed at some meaningful level of scale, is it going to be sufficient given the scale of the educational challenges the country faces?   In other words, can it address the recruitment challenge at enough scale to really change aggregate outcomes?

Answering that broader question is essentially the focus of a new paper from Public Impact:  3x for All:  Extending the Reach of Education’s Best (pdf).   This paper flips the way the question is often formed by instead asking how, given that we know some teachers are 3x more effective than others, how do we get to 3x levels of instruction at scale by extending the reach of the most effective teachers?  It’s an exciting and daunting question and paper because it puts everything on the table, including some big risks.    The paper examines ways to leverage in-person reach extension, remote reach extension, and boundless reach extension – the latter really attacking traditional time/space constraints in instructional delivery.   

In a similar vein, this morning at the Nat’l Press Club the Hope Street Group is rolling out some new ideas on teacher evaluation and improvement there.   And some new Public Agenda data on the views of teachers.  Those data amplify and juxtapose some of the findings from this survey of TFA teachers (pdf).

New DLC policy brief “Brain Freeze” on R & D investments (pdf) is well-worth your time.  Has some eduangles…

Deb Gist takes on seniority in Rhode Island.    Since the teachers’ unions are so focused on turning D.C. into the education policy version of Ypres in order to stop Michelle Rhee, does this give reformers elsewhere a window of opportunity?

Update:  Maybe not?  Looks like this one is going to court.  Gist is pretty much certain to prevail in at least one court though:  Court of public opinion…

Aspen NLCB Commission is getting the band together in Denver on the 28th, focus on teachers and principals.

First, Kristof…then Friedman…and now David Brooks weighs-in on what’s happening on education reform.  Brooks has a RTT must-read.

Ted Sizer has passed away.   He was an amazing force and thinker in American education.  In fact, our  first interview at Education Sector was with him.  As both an educator and intellectual in education he changed lives for the better.  Not much more you can say for someone than that.

HGSE has more here and the Coalition of Essential Schools, which he founded, is here with more.  NPR with an interview here.  NYT is here.  Merrow is here.

For me couple of things stand out.   First, Sizer was a serious thinker.  He didn’t like No Child Left Behind, for instance.  But he also had an alternative that was serious and nested in a well thought through theory of action.  That forward looking perspective (and willingness to take an unpopular stand, his remedy didn’t endear him to many either) is all too rare.   Second, you didn’t have to agree with him on everything to see that he offered ideas that may yet prove timeless.  We’re not there yet but I’d be surprised if his ideas about how to teach writing (and by extension thinking) do not become more commonplace as public schools begin to think in different ways about staffing.  Finally, and completely selfishly, he’s the reason I came to know Ethan Gray, a remarkable person in our space who is now at the Mind Trust in Indianapolis.   Sizer was Ethan’s thesis advisor and steered him my way upon graduation.  For that, as much as for his provocative ideas, I remain indebted.

The Boston Globe checks-in on the Senate race in MA and it’s social venture angle via social entrepreneur Alan Khazei.  Update:  Here’s Khazei on the education issue.

In Ed Week J.W. Towne pleads for better teaching to help stem the dropout problem.    In the WaPo Bill Turque checks-in on where the teachers’ contract talks stand (or apparently more precisely lay).    It’s a good overview of where things are but since these contract talks are now a multi-year affair can one contemporary event (in this case the recent layoffs) really be the cause of the slowdown?  Seems more likely that it’s the latest excuse for a slowdown rather than a stand-alone cause because things were hardly chugging along prior to the layoff.

All over Twitter and now on one blog there are reports that education rabblerouser Gerald Bracey has passed away.   If true this is as sudden as any loss is unfortunate.  Literally just yesterday and Monday he was attacking editors and reporters at the LA Times for publishing, in his view, ”crap” about teacher value-added methods, all the while liberally cc’ing anyone who might pay attention.  He was never one to mince words or pull punches.

Bracey was a complicated person.  Though I’m sure some of my colleagues disagree, I think he called useful attention to some of the myths that do surround public school performance and the facility with which these myths travel.   But too often amongst his adherents that morphed into denial of the gravity of the problems that do actually exist and face the public school systems and too often amongst those unfamiliar with statistics it led to misunderstandings.  The sky may not be falling but all is not close to well.  His acerbic personal attacks on people he disagreed with (he once swore at Dick Riley of all people) were as counterproductive and marginalizing as his columns on research were generally must-reads. 

Aside from the usual things, perhaps his passing should again remind us that while education has plenty of critics, and plenty of people who want to be  seen in the critic role, we really don’t have a true critic function right now.  Maybe it’s impossible to be disinterested from something we’re all as emotionally involved in as education and where everyone has priors of varying degrees of intensity.  But in any event we’re worse off for that as a field.

Update:   Ed Week here.

New York’s ban on using teacher test scores in evaluation decisions (or more precisely tenure decisions, but if that’s not an evaluation then what is?) has been getting most of the air time in conversations about New York’s prospects in the “Race to the Top” competition.  But New York’s charter school cap could present another obstacle.   Buffalo Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, as good a state leader on this issue as you’re going to find, is now leading an effort to better position New York in the competition.

Absolutely great Times profile of an attorney turned TFA teacher.

Two DC schools articles worth checking out.  First, it’s hard to overstate the irresponsibility of those who are stoking this teacher RIF issue in this way. No one should be naive about the various imperatives of politics, that’s life, but some things cross the line in terms of the potential for collateral damage.

And, per the WaPo column the other day I thought all the local philanthropists and civic leaders were put-off by Michelle Rhee?  Apparently not judging by this piece in today’s paper by Katherine Bradley and others…

Howard Gardner (and others) with some interesting thoughts on that in the WaPo.

Two new evals from MDRC worth checking out.  One on helping prisoners transition back into society and one on after-school programs.   I flag the prisoner one for two reasons.  First, it’s just an important issue — and if you think public schools have some problems check out the education and support programs in prisons.   But, second, it shows that there are more randomized studies (RFT’s) going on than people assume, something with some i3 implications (more on that hopefully next week).   And, it shows that RFTs don’t relieve anyone of the burden of being thoughtful about what the results show or don’t show.   Lisbeth Schorr has been writing on the limits of RFT’s in evaluation, well-worth checking out, but as with many issues around research isn’t the issue as much one of intelligent consumption as of  methodology?

Some news on teacher tests from MA.  And The Times looks at alternate routes.