Happy New Year and thanks for reading, commenting, and writing me during the year.  Since 2004 the blog’s growth has been robust but 2009 was the blog’s best year for readership, reader loyalty, and penetration.  A blog without readers is just a diary, so thank you.

A few odds and ends to close out 2009:  

Stephen Sawchuk continues to do great work staying on the trail of state and local resistance to Race to the Top.   This is an important issue for reformers to follow.  In both counterinsurgency and education reform don’t assume that because the statues in the capital come down the resistance is over.   And in many ways the school reform movement is not well positioned in state capitals.

All around the blogs, on Twitter, and on some listserves this Washington Post story on Arne Duncan’s record in Chicago is being made out to be a great repudiation.   I dunno, seems like a fair story to me and one that  — if it’s the hardest hit on Duncan —  means he can phone it in from here on out.  It’s not a bad story and to make sure I wasn’t missing Waterloo as it happened I bounced it off a few media pros who had the same reaction.  Besides, if Duncan isn’t touting Chicago as an unqualified success is there much of a story?  If there is a complaint here, it’s the one voiced publicly and privately that the circumstances in Chicago shielded Duncan and his team from some of the political challenges urban superintendents elsewhere face.  That would be an interesting story.

Just before Christmas I wrote about the new Detroit teachers’ contract and what it means there and nationally.   Ed Darden takes a look at Detroit’s cousin, New Haven, in the New Haven Register.

The Baltimore Sun excerpts Kalman R. Hettleman’s new book (I’ve seen the galleys, well worth reading he has an interesting background on urban ed reform).  First of three excerpts here.    Speaking of Baltimore be sure to have a look at the Urban Teacher Center and their new white paper, “Rethinking the Teacher Lottery (pdf).

And here’s an entertaining transcript from Tutor.com.

Finally, unrelated to education but related to the end of 2009, check out the Rolling Stone article on Springsteen’s decade.  Happy New Year.

All federal programs carry paperwork/compliance estimates, so you could write pretty much this exact story about any of them and just sub in the specifics like a Mad-Lib…

Maybe the “bigger/bolder” crowd has it half right?  It is an out-of-school issue that will really maintain/improve American society, but the issue that we should really be paying attention to as a lever is…immigration?

…as done by Blake, the Alex Baldwin character from Glengarry Glen Ross.  Needless to say, must-read.

Michael Barber’s (pdf) recent commencement speech at Moscow University is well worth reading (pdf), a personal take on the foundational purposes of education.

Is an event on fiscal belt tightening at the Mayflower Hotel like an event on dieting held at a cruise ship buffet? 

Update:   Word is that Rick Hess will hold a seminar on temperance afterwards at a bar up the street.

Per this post, the new teachers’ contract in Detroit is not a breakthrough in terms of teaching and learning and doesn’t even hold the promise of a breakthrough to come soon.  My take from today’s Detroit News op-ed page.

In US News I take a look at two different alternative programs (Rikers Island in New York City and Youth For Tomorrow in Virginia) and the role they play in the effort to ensure all students receive an education.  This is an issue that gets insufficient attention at all levels of education policymaking.

Don’t miss J.B. Schramm and E. Kinny Zalesne in The Times on post-secondary preparation:

…the real revolution, tucked away in the Race to the Top guidelines released by the Department of Education last month, is that high school has a new mission. No longer is it enough just to graduate students, or even prepare them for college. Schools must now show how they increase both college enrollment and the number of students who complete at least a year of college. In other words, high schools must now focus on grade 13.

It’s a rare day when I have anything printable to say about the New York Yankees.  Seriously.

But Jorge Posada, who plays catcher, and his wife stepping out for education reform is noteworthy and praiseworthy.   Too few professional athletes (and entertainers for that matter) are willing to take on issues like ed reform in meaningful way because it cuts against the grain and also carries the potential for blowback.   Posada and his wife have agreed to be spokespeople for HCREO, a group advocating education reform on behalf of Latino students.  This is in addition to work he already does to raise awareness about, and support families dealing with, Craniosynostosis, which is a birth defect affecting the skull.

This new teachers’ contract in Detroit isn’t nearly as good as it’s being made out to be – and that’s not even very good!  My take in 140 characters here and here.  More later.

On Saturday Michigan passed an ambitious package of legislation to address eligibility and competitiveness for Race to the Top.  The tough crowd at the Detroit News editorial board likes it.   Tim Melton is among the heroes here but a lot of folks stepped up.

Among other provisions the legislation includes the most ambitious version of a “smart cap” for charter schools (pdf) in the country.  California, Texas, and Ohio have some version of priority replication for high-performing charters, but Michigan took it much further.  Detroit Democratic State Senator Buzz Thomas deserves the praise on that one.

Some great and high-impact eduinternships at District of Columbia Public Schools.

Yesterday we checked in on the Race to the Top debate in Michigan.  Today, Detroit News editorial writer and columnist Amber Arellano writes up a guest post on the debate in Motown over the possible arrival of “rubber rooms,” which as we’ve noted on this blog aren’t as fun as the name implies.

Detroit’s New Rubber Room

New York City’s embarrassment is Detroit’s education reform “revolution”

This month the Detroit Public Schools posted the lowest student achievement results in the 40-year history of the NAEP. Educators began weeping when briefed on the news. And city charter schools, once Motown’s hope for change, on average are performing just as terribly as the school district.

As if Detroit’s education reputation couldn’t get any worse, consider: a new teachers’ contract, if ratified today, would create Detroit’s first Rubber Room.

Call it a “creative” contract as some economic analysts have — or call it devastating for school reform. Either way, the Rubber Room is a long way from Detroit’s state-appointed Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb’s earlier negotiating goal of ridding of teacher seniority.

Bobb faced two significant hurdles during contract talks: 1) among the most militant and backward teacher union locals in the U.S.; 2) improving the worst performing urban school district by almost any measure.

He and Barbara Byrd-Bennett, his academic czar (former Cleveland supt and leader of NYC’s special chancellor’s district) got the Detroit Federation of Teachers to agree to create a new High Priority District within the district for chronically failing schools. High Priority teachers must be district-certified through a new evaluation process. The unfit “teachers-at-large” will be booted.

As Bobb and Byrd-Bennett readily admitted during an exclusive 90-minute interview, Detroit’s new “teachers-at-large” essentially will be put into a Rubber Room — unless they end up at a non-High Priority school — costing the bankrupt district millions and more national humiliation.

That’s because Detroit’s new contract doesn’t include an exit strategy for ridding of bad teachers. Plus, bumping rights remain at non-High Priority schools.

Anyone familiar with New York City’s infamous Rubber Room knows there are tremendous financial and human costs to Rubber Rooms — and such “special” districts.

NYC has drained its classrooms of millions to pay for salaries of teachers wasting away in Rubber Rooms.

Students in non-Priority Schools also are at risk for being dumped on with the low-performing “teachers at-large.” That is precisely the problem that Washington D.C schools chancellor Michelle Rhee is grappling with now due to teacher contract limitations, Rhee told the Detroit News. 

So why did Bobb agree to this insanity?

“To get a contract, both on economic issues and on reforms,” he said. “Clearly we could’ve gotten there through bankruptcy, but with measurable impact on all of Michigan’s municipalities and school districts” and their bond ratings. “So we looked at how to move the dial in low-performing schools . . . There are contracts out there that include seniority.”

Added Byrd-Bennett: “I think there’s a place for a rubber room.” Her argument: Isn’t it better to have bad teachers in Rubber Rooms, rather than teaching students?

Bobb promises there won’t be many “at-large teachers” once his team creates an evaluation process — the first system-wide one in Detroit, ever — in January.

That change, though, depends upon whether the teachers’ union members ratify the new contract. Dissident union leaders are charging DFT president Keith Johnson with compromising too much on reforms, calling him a sell-out, among other choice words. His allies are championing the new contract as “revolutionary.”

As Bobb so aptly put it: “Anywhere else in the U.S., this contract would be considered evolutionary. In Detroit, it’s revolutionary.”

At the rate of this revolution’s change, Detroit kids will wait another century for better schools.

Amber Arellano is an editorial writer and columnist at The Detroit News.

Detroit Press covers the action on the legislation moving in MI to position the state for Race to the Top.*  Money quote from Democratic House education chairman Tim Melton:

“What’s been terrible for me the last few years is watching the communities that are most affected by this, that are Democratic districts, and Democrats seem to be the ones that don’t want to stand up and say enough is enough,” Melton said. “Well, enough is enough.

“Let’s get the best operators in the country in the areas with the highest need. Let’s close down the bad operators. Lets give parents the choice. … We know now that the new civil rights movement of our generation is quality education.”

*(disc – I’ve testified in the MI House and Senate on these bills).

A few days ago we looked at Florida’s pretty strong Race to the Top application and in particular its language requiring adults to actually put the interests of kids first in order to get the money.  

Now along comes Stephen Sawchuk to point out that in most states the language basically is going to say, ‘if you can agree, great, otherwise continue to squabble amongst yourselves or do whatever you want…’ Let’s hope the process doesn’t reward that because it’s where reform goes to die.

College Summit has a Race to the Top guide for the state success factors around post-secondary.  As a bonus there is video with Andrew Beyer  J.B. Schramm.

 A lot of good stuff in the new American Educator.

You should check out this essay by Chester Finn on the state of play in education reform:

The next wave of education reform will require both the right and the left to let go of some long-held premises about education policy. ­Conservatives will need to see, for instance, that local control and funding are no panacea; that the difference between more private-school choice and more public-school flexibility, accountability, and variety is not as great as it might seem; and that national standards and tests — for all their flaws and risks — may be essential to meaningful improvement in student performance.

The left, meanwhile, will need to see that the dream of a single best public-school system, with the teaching profession largely held apart from the usual standards and practices of professional life, simply will not work in 21st-century America. On the contrary, the model of self-governing schools — whether private or public — with significant control over their own operations, staffing, curricula, and budgets is far more likely to serve the ends of performance-based reform.

Per this post, here’s how you do satire.

And, in other dental news, here’s a contest for kids to design toothbrushes.

US News has a useful map of where the charter schools are.  On the Hill Jared Polis (D-CO) wants to see more of ‘em and has a good bill to do that.

NCTQ puts together a Race to the Top scorecard (pdf).

Keep an eye on a subtle trend in the voucher debate.  Past presidents (think President Clinton) took political heat over where they sent their children to school and their school choice positions.   But President Obama is facing a slightly different  and even more personal issue — his own education.

Over the past few months the school voucher crowd has turned up the heat on President Obama over the D.C. voucher program, which Congress is in the process of ending.   For instance Derrell Bradford discusses Obama’s own education here (pdf) and Kevin Chavous and Anthony Williams do the same in the WaPo.  The tactics have not gone unnoticed at The White House and are causing consernation among Obama allies.

Substantively it’s unclear (and seems doubtful) if any of this will have an effect on the fate of the D.C. voucher program.  Politically, however,  it’s worth watching going forward – especially after Race to the Top stops sucking up all the oxygen in the education debate and gravity is restored for the last few years of Obama’s first term.

There are loads of smart things floating around – on all sides of the Race to the Top issue – and then there is this essay in Education Week…wow…really?

Quite a Race to the Top edit from the Lowell Sun in MA.  There will be some legislative action there and in MI in the days leading up to the first Race to the Top application deadline.

Also, overheardfrom one of the under-appreciated wits and wonks in our space, a good name for Race to the Top Phase II:  R2T2.

A few weeks ago in USN I looked at the prospects for Elementary and Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind) reauthorization.

Conclusion:    That’s why despite everything else on his plate, if he’s serious about seeing education reform in 2010 President Obama must expend political capital on it himself. So far education policy is providing a surprising success for the president. Few thought the issue would be the green shoot it has become on Obama’s agenda. Improving the No Child law and firmly embedding the Obama-Duncan stamp on federal education policy is the president’s chance to see education reform through and claim a genuine policy accomplishment for 2012. Or, conversely, it’s an opportunity to watch reform unravel as status-quo-challenging changes in American education too often do.

But that strategy is going to be hamstrung if this doesn’t turnaround.  Political capital diminishes fast south of 50 percent.  So, although not out of the question a 2010 ESEA package looks increasingly unlikely and may well not be something reformers want anyway.   2011 looks like a better bet to see something signed.   In any event, the favorite sure came in…

Someone is going to be disappointed…states or reformers…TBD!

Two reports new reports are well worth your time.   Important new paper from College Summit on “year 13″ data and strengthening the feedback loop  (pdf) on how students do after high school.    Look for some similar ideas from ES in January.  At CAP, Raegen Miller turns in a paper on value-added that advances the discussion(pdf).

And, the WaPo writes-up the much ballyhooed (with good reason) Louisiana data system, RTT implications.

Here’s Kevin Huffman’s inaugural WaPo column is out.  It’s about the President’s Nobel acceptance speech.  My shorter take on that is here at Politico.

Florida has made some of their Race to the Top materials public.  And it’s useful to see because it shows the seriousness about reform in some of the states that are competing.   The entire MOU is worth reading — especially if you’re a state wondering how serious this all is.

Per Andy Smarick’s comments on teachers’ contracts, below is language from the MOU Florida plans to use for school districts (pdf).   Good that this is out there because if states are coming in with language like this then no one (the administration or the states) will have a place to hide on the hard issues.  This is tight and serious language.  In the old days it would have only been the first sentence…that second sentence is for real:

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RESPONSIBILITIES: The parties to any applicable collective bargaining agreement will use their best efforts to negotiate any terms and conditions in the agreement necessary for the full implementation of the State Plan. The parties understand that the failure to negotiate any term or condition in a collective bargaining agreement necessary for full implementation of the State Plan will result in termination of the grant.