Per the Weingarten “glacial curtain” speech there is a lot of interest in eval again.   Here’s a really good overview from MassInc.

And per “L’Affaire Lynch Mob” civil rights groups and activists in LA are demanding action from Weingarten (pdf).

Speaking of LA, this ACLU suit out there is worth watching it highlights the educational problems facing adjudicated youth.

This new book from Paul Hill is must reading on the educational choice issue.    Most important work in a while on where things are on the issue and why.

US News has a big package on education in the current print issue on newsstands.  It’s online now.  One section is on what’s next for NCLB.  My take, “what to how” is here.  My take on the prospects and politics from last fall is here.

New set of charter school law rankings from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools*, they should help on the overall charter school quality issue (pdf).  Important on a few levels.   First, the model law that they are based on balances growth and quality for charters.  Second, the other set of rankings now in use, from the Center on Education Reform, while valuable do in my view, and the view of others, prioritize growth over quality too much.

Good a time as any to point out an overlooked angle in this whole charter quality conversation:  School districts authorize the majority of charter schools in this country and the independent authorizers tend to do a better job (pdf).  Worth considering before the charter quality problem is considered any great vindication for the current system…

Also, on the authorizing issue here’s an initiative from NACSA* to support quality via a competitive process.

*Discs:  I was a founding board member of this organization although I no longer serve on the board.  More recently, I was on the team that put together the model law this is based on.  I also serve now on the National Advisory Board for NACSA.

Andy Smarick makes a very important point about RTT, namely that two values are in collision on the applications – consensus and reform.  Old story in ed reform but points to two issues here.  First, the whole MOU issue and how tough they’re actually going to be.    And second, the reader issue, but that one is coming into more focus…

Want to marry advocacy and policy?  Stand for Children is hiring for a national policy director.  This is a high-impact role with a great organization.

Here’s the NY charter school association* calling for and supporting the closure of an under-performing charter school.  They’ve done this before as have some other state charter associations.  Of course, you frequently see the traditional education groups and associations calling for closing low-performing schools so there is no news here, but it’s still interesting…*I was on the board of this association ’05-’07.

In Sunday’s ProJo I took a look at how this “smart cap” idea for charters could be a big play for Massachusetts.  Michigan passed a version as part of RTT late last year.  Background here (pdf).

Today at the National Press Club AFT President Randi Weingarten is calling for reforms to due process for teachers.  You can’t do much better than Sawchuk’s take on it here, but Washington Post and Jay Mathews, USAT, and Bob Herbert also write on it this morning.  And although the text isn’t online yet here’s Weingarten herself over at the Huffpo.  Update: Text on the AFT site now (pdf).  Update II:  Sawchuk has some must-read follow-up and implies that his MSM colleagues are easily fooled.  Update III:  TNR’s Darby is skeptical.

First the good:   This is an important acknowledgement from Weingarten and one with some big implications.   She deserves credit for that.  For a long time the union line on all this has been that it’s not hard to rid the field of low-performers, the problem is lousy administrators and a blame the teachers mindset.  This isn’t all wrong by the way, administrators are not just chompin’ at the bit to rid schools of under-performing teachers.  The problems are systemic ones.  But by laying this on the table Weingarten is opening the door on that conversation more than a crack and pulling the rug out from under a lot of folks.   That’s important.  By calling the process “glacial” the genie is out of the bottle, perhaps more than Weingarten herself may realize.

In addition, bringing in Kenneth Feinberg is important.  He demonstrated an ability for reasonableness in thorny situations.  And because he has no aspirations within education he has no reason to pull any punches.   Perhaps most importantly, with Feinberg you get the sense that if this is all a big ruse, that will become clear.  He doesn’t seem like someone with a lot of patience for misdirection plays and so forth.  In other words, involving him increases the accountability.

Second the things to watch:   Related to the question of accountability, this is hardly Weingarten’s first “it’s all on the table” style speech.  In fact it’s becoming an annual event.  And each time the press swoons and then moves onto other things.   But so far not a lot has come from all this.  The jury is out on New Haven (we should know more by summertime), Detroit was disappointment, and the teachers’ contract in DC remains unsettled despite how much rhetorical alignment there is between last year’s speech, this year’s speech, and what DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee says she wants to do.  It’s unfair to lay all of these issues exclusively on Weingarten, but it does speak to the challenge she faces in moving teachers’ unions forward and also the dance she ends up having to do to balance public  and private pressure on her.  The question about those cross-pressures that Richard Whitmire and I asked last spring in TNR is still germane.

On the details, a few years ago the United Federation of Teachers in New York put forward a new rubric for evaluation that included using outcome data like test scores.  The problem was that outcome data comprised a small percentage of the overall metric.  Even now states are debating how much to use data like test scores in Race to the Top and many state and local teachers’ unions are hostile to even having outcomes comprise 50 percent of evaluations.   So the devil will be in the details here.  

Finally, it’s great that Weingarten is reaching out to different groups to be part of this effort, but watch if one, in particular, is involved — The New Teacher Project.  They have generated more learning, data, and capacity on these human capital questions than any other organization in the country – and that includes the national teachers’ unions.   Will be interesting to see if and how that is brought to bear.

Overlooked angle:  Steven Brill can get things done…

Two quick thoughts on this whole “lynch mob” controversy in Los Angeles where the head of the teachers’ union there* characterized the parental trigger policy as lynch-mob like.    Background:  San Francisco Chron. is here and Antonucci is here.  Let’s stipulate it was a poor choice of words, he should apologize, and if he doesn’t his peers should call on him to do so.  

But the incident is noteworthy for two other reasons.  First, it does seem basically to be a Kinsley gaffe, not in the sense that it’s true but rather in the sense that this is what a lot of folks believe about parents and why, despite all the rhetoric about “parental involvement,” you don’t see a lot  of people within education tripping over themselves to encourage it. 

Second,  and related, the teachers’ unions really hate this policy idea and are not keen to see it spread.  So given the viral way this whole lynch mob remark has spread it’s hard not to think that ultimately the real damage here isn’t bad PR, it’s much more attention to this trigger idea than there otherwise might have been.

*Update:  Per several notes, the way I wrote this was obviously unclear, the “there” referred to California, the head is the President of the California Federation of Teachers, Marty Hittleman.

By the way, over at the National Journal education blog they’re debating the parent trigger issue.

Michelle Rhee is hosting a case competition for graduate students to develop ways to help the schools do better.

Now if you really want to inflame tensions in education the way to do it is to change reporting requirements around the Recovery Act just before the holidays.  Think I’m kidding? (pdf)

Also, speaking of controversy, here’s an evergreen headline from the math wars.

Don’t miss Medina’s NYT account of where things stand on Race to the Top.

In today’s WSJ Gerald Seib sees an opportunity for education to emerge as a bipartisan progress point in 2010.   I, too, don’t think it’s out of the question that something could be accomplished but it’s going to take a real investment of capital by the President.  That was the topic of a column I did in USN this past November.  It’s challenging because while Seib sees bipartisanship on education, that may be through rose colored glasses given the landscape right now.  Anything that is truly meaningful will necessarily be bipartisan because it loses votes on both ends of the political spectrum.  Education reform still splits Democrats and the interest groups are not happy about the Race to the Top status quo right now.  And it’s still unclear who among Hill Republicans will emerge as leaders willing to make a deal with Democrats to get something done.    Finally, the midterm election looms large and not necessarily in a helpful way at all.

Also, in Politics Daily Sandra Fish takes a look at the Michael Bennet race in Colorado and the implications of the retirement-fest the other day.   Bennet could benefit from a stronger candidate at the top of the ticket but this seems unlikely to change the fundamental dynamics he faces:  Tough primary, tough general election.  That too has education implications not only because Bennet’s an outstanding leader on the issue but also because, per the above, that means Republicans are unlikely to do things that help him this year.

More Hoosiers than Footloose, some movement on teacher quality in Indiana…

Important Ed Trust analysis on achievement gaps and implications for RTT (pdf).

From the FT, here’s a signal on the direction of fiscal policy via John Podesta…eduimplications, as they say.

Keep an eye on this NCATE project on clinical experiences for teachers.   It’s a big step for the organization and a signal for the field.   Inside Higher Ed is here, Chronicle of Higher Ed is here.    Disc:  I’m on the panel.  Backstory: here’s NCATE President Cibulka at AEI last year.

Update: In the comments section Claus von Zastrow, Minister of Propaganda for the education status quo, and a second commenter don’t see much news in the NCATE project. This is old news they say. OK. If it’s old news, and seemingly so widely supported, then why hasn’t the idea gone further in more than two-decades?

Perhaps it’s because it is challenging on the politics and the substance, hence why Jim Cibulka deserves credit for taking it on.

Any real shift toward “clinically” oriented training would necessarily involve a shift away from traditional colleges of education toward more job-embedded training. This wouldn’t eliminate the need for education professors but would change the composition of much of the work. The colleges and the people who work in them are not stupid and know what that would mean at some level…jobs. Hence one source of quiet resistance. Because costs are an issue everyone knows that at some level the resource question is a zero-sum one and new training can’t be layered on the old. Another major obstacle.

While I’m not going to blog the NCATE panel’s discussions, I’m not giving away any secrets by noting that even among those disposed toward these ideas there are big consensus gaps around how much pluralism should exist in teacher preparation, how to structure and evaluate these programs, and even what effective teaching is really about. I’ve been privileged to serve on the oversight committees/boards of two education schools, at UVA and Harvard, and the challenges of leadership and change in these institutions are daunting and fascinating even more so in my experience than some other departments. The good deans deserve more credit than they get.

It’s important to remember that while the debate about teacher preparation is often characterized as Linda Darling-Hammond versus the reformers, that’s really not quite right. Rather, it’s Linda and the reformers debating both with each other but also at the same time with much of the ed school establishment. In other words there is a no-change camp and then several different change camps. In the relative world of education politics the ed schools much prefer Linda to the alternatives but given the choice they’d take ‘none of the above.’

That’s why progress is slow and it’s why given the challenges of the debate anyone willing to take it on rather than take the easy path deserves credit. Cibulka could have done the latter. And it’s also why the work of this panel, if it can generate a strong report with actionable ideas, could help move the field because of the lever that NCATE could be.

Florida’s Race to the Top application is sparking some buzz and what went down in Michigan caught some eyes, too.   Now in New York the commissioner there, David Steiner, has put forward an ambitious set of ideas intended to breath some life into the educationally moribund legislature there.  Recall that reformer Sam Hoyt’s bill was basically declared DOA.  But since then the reality that this thing may not be wired for New York has set in.  Keep an eye on that. 

Also, Louisiana, a state long considered a top tier candidate, is putting together what looks like a strong plan.  A lot of excitement from reformy types in the state.

And watch the legislative action in CO.

Update:  It’s one step forward one step back in Michigan…

Proving that no good deed goes unpunished this new study on Teach For America (TFA) Teachers is proving to be catnip for the program’s detractors.   In short, a forthcoming Stanford study finds lower levels of civic activity for Teach For America program completers than for non-completers or applicantswho where accepted but chose not to join the TFA Corps (non-matriculants).  I’m pretty sure you could hear the cackling from the AACTE office’s as far away as southern parts of Pennsylvania.   The Times writes the study up here.  Stanford’s Rob Reich responds with his thoughts here. 

But if TFA has anything to be bothered about here, it’s the spin rather than the underlying study itself – and that’s a potential problem in its own right.  The Times account does a nice job of laying out the data on the sample for the study but provides less data about the, you know, findings. In the data a few big trends jump out. First, everyone in the study, TFA completers, non-completers, and non-matriculants have substantially higher levels of civic participation relative to the baseline. Second, while some of the differences in participation observed, the “lagging” effect that is getting the attention, are statistically significant, it’s debatable how substantively significant they are. For instance, while 92 percent of the sample overall voted in the last presidential election, only 89 percent of TFA completers did. You decide how much of a problem this is given that these rates are about double the averages for the age-cohort overall. Likewise, completers give to, on average, only 2.2 charitable organizations while dropouts give to 2.6. And it does appear that a small percentage of outliers may be skewing some of the data.

On the other hand, there are some differences between non-matriculators and graduates that are worthy of deeper investigation, particularly as it may relate to the intensity of the TFA experience. In fact, the question battery had 100+ items measuring civic attitudes and TFA completers scored higher on 62 percent of them relative to the other groups. Where they “lagged” is on certain measures of actual civic participation.  Learning more about why is important.  Obvious explanations include fatigue or a desire for a break, but it could be something else, too.

So the punchline is not anything negative about TFA per se but rather that it’s unclear if the TFA experience increases civic participation (from an already abnormally high level) based on this study. That’s a legitimate question relative to the service movement overall. But it’s not central to TFA’s mission, which is to improve outcomes for disadvantaged students and create a cadre of alums with a firsthand understanding of the educational challenges facing low-income students. In other words, while the civic question is hardly irrelevant, let’s hold TFA accountable for what the organization wants to do via its mission. And please let’s not discourage them from transparency and cooperating on various studies where researchers can glean important pieces of knowledge by taking the results out of context.

By the way, TFA is basically the largest teacher preparation program in the country today. That, among other things, makes it a target. In a new Atlantic article Amanda Ripley looks at the organization’s learning and knowledge base about teacher effectiveness – something too often ignored in all the back and forth.