Education funding still a sticking point on the war supplemental debate on the Hill.

Quick recap: The substance of this is complicated but not all that exciting:  Concerns about the deficit, concerns about the actual size of the problem (like the oil spill it’s hard to get good numbers on the teacher spill), concerns about whether the money would actually go to to layoffs because of how it would be allocated and also loopholes in the language allowing for states to divert it, and concerns that absent language address “last in – first out” or LIFO policies this money could actually make problems worse.

What’s more interesting is the politics surrounding this within the administration and also around what it portends for the administration’s agenda on the Hill even accounting for Rep. Obey’s impending departure.  Keep an eye on all that.

Bellwether’s Sara Mead helped The American Prospect organize a package on reading that includes some clever and different angles of the issue.

Charles Lane pretty thoroughly deconstructs the teacher layoff “crisis” in the WashPo. Aficionados wants more LIFO action, but he gets at the underlying issues.

So when are the higher performing for-profit colleges going to throw the laggards under the bus?  The strength in numbers approach doesn’t seem to be working all that well…

By the way, you can ask the same question of for-profit operators at the elementary and secondary level, too….

More on the ins and outs of the proposed $23B for teacher jobs, from Politico. Someone missed their blocking assignment and now nerves are getting raw… Keep an eye on Ed Department – Hill relations overall for the next 6 -12 mos, a lot in play.

The wins keep piling up for Paul Herdman.   Now one of the finalists for Ms. Delaware has made the state’s education reform platform “Vision 2015″ her policy platform should she win…More about Vision 2015 here.

Today’s NYT story on cheating seemed to really lack some larger context.

Cheating is an issue, yes.  But, in most fields professionals have results they’re held accountable for and not everyone succumbs to fraud or cheating. So Why?  What are the lessons from other industries and fields?  In terms of our field, what do the overwhelming majority of teachers who don’t cheat teach us?  And is cheating a function of the tests or does it, like low-test scores, drill and kill practices etc…speak more to the lack of capacity in the field to deliver powerful instruction?  Similarly, in the vast majority of places where the tests are not that demanding* and the only stakes attached to the tests are for the teachers should parents be outraged that adults are doing this?

My sense is that while hardly epidemic this is a bigger issue than people think, there is an incentive to sweep it under the rug and it’s hard to prove.  As a state board member I had to sort through a few of these and it’s always messy and there rarely is a smoking gun.  That said, shame on us if this becomes another reason to believe that education is so exceptional that accountability doesn’t apply (or isn’t needed) or that getting a handle on this has to be another three-ring circus.

Perhaps technology will save us…or I guess not reading the Wash Post today…more on that later.

*Remember, these are the same tests that are apparently too easy and basic!

Just finished reading the annual report from New Schools for New Orleans (pdf).   You should, too.  Hard work and enormous challenges down there, but they’re making more than a dent.  Their approach is a model for elsewhere as well.

That’s the theme of Paul Kimmelman’s new book, which discusses the issue through the lens of school leadership.   There is an event to discuss it next Wednesday morning, June 16, in Washington, 8:30 – 10 AM.  Proving to be a popular event so in a bigger room:  On the Hill in Rayburn 2175.  RSVP to Liz Kershaw to get a spot: liz.kershaw@learningpt.org

Keep an eye on where this strategy for coming up with funding for the education jobs bill goes…

Ed entrepreneur Chris Gergen is riding his bike across America (San Diego to Annapolis) with several colleagues to raise money for social ventures in Durham, N.C., including good stuff like Citizens Schools.  Help if you can.*  But don’t bother sending Chris good restaurant, camping, or sightseeing tips along they way.  They’re riding relay-style in seven days.

*Note also the results-based giving strategy that DurhamCares uses.

Three quirky issues you don’t hear enough about in the conversation about charter schools:

Funding. Isn’t it sort of ridiculous talk in declarative terms about whether various charter schools and charter school networks are sustainable when charter schools are so chronically underfunded?  A new study from Ball State (pdf) rolls up the issue and updates the Fordham study from a few years ago.

Quality.   The role that school districts have played in creating lousy charter schools (and how to improve things) doesn’t get a lot of attention in the quality conversation.   A new report from NACSA* rolls up authorizer demographics (pdf). Districts are not the only culprit here but when the National School Board Association cries foul on charters, it’s worth considering where some of the lousy ones come from and whether they should have the only keys to the car…

Bad Cues. Recent data from Michigan is interesting.   Michigan and Ohio have a much higher concentration of for-profit operators than other states.   The CW is that the for-profit operators there are all lousy rip-off artists.  Yet some of the best** schools in the state are run by an EMO. Certainly a lot of garbage in the for-profit K-12 sector, but perhaps how the IRS looks at organizations isn’t the smartest way to judge them overall?

*I’m on the policy advisory board.

**In terms of test scores (h/t on word precision to Premack).

Democrats for Education Reform, where I’m a founding board member, just turned three-years-old.  Joe Williams reflects.   Discuss.

David Brooks has two pieces worth checking out.

One is on the zeitgeist around teacher quality, good summation of the times and the evolution of the issue.

The second is his regular Times column, this one about the humanities. Unfortunately, what’s happening at too many public institutions is that as public funding declines and an “eat what you kill” ethos starts to define internal funding decisions among various schools, liberal arts and humanities are getting squeezed.   They can’t attract the big dollars the way more vocationally-oriented or applied schools generally can.   I don’t minimize the inefficiencies of universities and the need for real cost-containment and productivity enhancing strategies.  But, at the same time, we need some governors willing to stand up and point out that great states invest in great universities precisely because of the intrinsic benefits, the good or just society, and not because of any particular vision of economic returns, development, or competitiveness.

Preview: On my stack of books to read is this new one from Martha Nussbaum that discusses this issue.

The National Education Association’s foray into states’ rights is at a predicable end. Worth noting that the NEA’s own internal analysis found this line of argument lacking in merit but that didn’t stop both the political/media circus surrounding it or lot of time tying up courts.

Supplemental spending bill moving, so far sans teacher money.   No LIFO reform talk mostly because the education money seems an unlikely outcome (and privately it’s astonishing how few people even buy the “crisis” talk anyway).  In the Senate, education now pitted against Medicaid funds and it turns out all spending requests are equal, but some are more equal than others…Background here.

Don’t miss Dan Weisberg on why it matters over at NJ.

New website and provocative new paper (pdf) from Public Impact about teacher quality/effectiveness.   The Hassel’s have been at the forefront of thinking about these issues for more than a decade now and what’s striking is how things that were wildly controversial then are accepted now.

TNR’s Seyward Darby turns-in a great overview of the last in – first out issue as it relates to layoffs and the pending $23 billion being debated by Congress.

Michele McNeil has the latest on the Department of Education’s reaction to the side deals story. Also, GGW has another idea on a public check.

Update: Sawchuk on this, too.

Alice Rivlin backing Vincent Gray in D.C. instead of Adrian Fenty. I don’t agree with her on this, but Alice Rivlin is one of the most impressive people you’re going to run across in public service…That’s why this has tongues wagging today…Fenty was not her choice in 2006 but this election seems likely to be closer.

All that jazz…who lost Hentoff?

From Indy, Matt Tully on Tony Bennett.

Mathematica just released a study that did not find learning gains or improvements in teacher retention as a result of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP)* in Chicago.   The initiative was funded via the federal Teacher Incentive Fund. There is plenty of bloggy noise about this so just five quick observations mostly about context:

1) This is just one study (and a small one, eight schools each year, that also had some attrition as schools were closed) of TAP, so the rush to judgment is lacking in context.  Overall the evidence on TAP is mixed but encouraging and the big challenge has been controlling for selection effects (teachers choose to participate), which Mathematica** sought to do through their design here.   TAP is doing a second study to see what’s going on in Chicago, stay tuned for that.  Hopefully some lessons for Chicago but also more generally.

2) TAP is a lot more than merit pay, it’s about creating a career ladder for teachers that creates opportunities for new responsibilities and opportunities that do not mean a teacher has to leave classroom teaching.  That’s why it’s supported by organizations like the American Federation of Teachers.   So the rhetoric about how this is some sort of verdict on merit pay is uninformed.

3) This is just one Teacher Incentive Fund location so everyone should slow down with the rush to a verdict on that initiative.   And anyone who thinks the field knows how to do any sort of incentive pay has not been paying attention.   What’s known is that the current system of allocating about 4/5ths of the $600-plus billion we spend annually on K-12 schools is not linked with outcomes and creates some perverse incentives.  How to fix that is going to require a lot of innovation, experimentation, and failure.

4) As with Reading First and other initiatives, the apparent glee and celebration when things don’t work is one of the most depressing aspects of education policy today.   Something went wrong with this initiative in Chicago, to their credit TAP wants to figure out what it is rather than attack the study, make excuses, etc…and yet what you get from the bleachers is some cheering and crowing.  Really?

5) If this was not Chicago would it be getting as much attention?

*Bellwether works with TAP and its parent organization the National Institute for Effective Teaching.

**Mathematica continues to come up with creative evaluation strategies on issues (eg. teacher effectiveness) that previously were assumed to be impervious to this sort of evaluation.

In The Times David Brooks gushes over Race to the Top as a model for center-out government.   He’s largely right but there are two big outstanding questions on RTT that we won’t know the answers to for several years:

First, how durable will the policy changes be?  Will states relax things when the money is gone and/or will “loser” states undo the reforms they put in place in an effort to win? Prize theory is built on the idea that the progress generated in an effort to win is built upon.  That idea has not been fully tested yet in the public/political sphere.

Second, will the policies work?  Right now education policy knows more about what doesn’t work at scale (e.g. the current pay system, across-the-board class size reduction, etc…) than it does about what works.  So RTT is a bet on a theory of action, that (h/t Churchill) is the worst one except for all the others.  There will be a lot of learning as it goes but anyone expecting a ten-strike is going to be disappointed and that shouldn’t be the standard anyway.  Brooks makes a great point when he describes RTT as opening the door for reform.

Matt Miller asks the $5 on $600 question in The Washington Post and says, “more please!”

Meanwhile St. Petersburg Times’ Ron Matus breaks a big story:  Side agreements around Race to the Top between local districts and their unions.  He focuses on Florida but rumors about this abound.   Two big implications here.  One is, per the point above, plans to bailout after the money is gone threaten the durability of RTT because the initiative is about sustainable reforms not one-time hiccups. Second, in the interest of a fair competition the reviewers have to have full transparency about what states are up to.   Side agreements create a situation where there can be two states with seemingly different degrees of local commitment that do not accurately reflect the facts on the ground.   For instance state A may have 50 percent coverage and no side agreements and state B 75 percent and some side deals.   On paper without knowledge of those deals state B looks better but state A may in fact have the more durable plan.   Ed Week has smart coverage here.

Sherman Dorn has a ridiculous post on this.  First he wonders if I have a hidden interest in skewering Florida.   Umm…I would have disclosed that to Matus, who also asked, he’s not a rookie.  As I’ve noted in past posts about RTT and states, I advised a bunch of states, formally and informally, on RTT (including Florida) but have no interest in any specific outcome except a clean competition since it becomes impossible to offer good policy or strategic advice if the rules are not the rules.  I also think that allocating some federal money on a competitive basis for large reforms is a promising strategy and too many more Brill-like accounts and that’s going to be nearly impossible to do.  And I’ve written in the past that I like Florida’s approach and would like to see them win.  So, if any interest, I guess I have one in papering over things for Florida, which I kinda blew by talking to Ron on the record…oh well.

But they don’t need me to paper over their issue because they have Dorn to do it for them.  He does rhetorical gymnastics to argue that these side agreements somehow are not an issue even though they would constrain districts and by extension the state and by extension the reform plan.  The language in some of them clearly says that districts do not have to modify local contracts based on the state’s RTT application. Earth to Dorn:  That’s an issue given how this competition is supposed to work.  Here’s an even more basic question which Dorn asks but fails to answer:  If these agreements have no bearing on the state’s application or implementation then why go through the laborious exercise of crafting them…duh.

Arne’s Perfect Game? Harder issue is how the Secretary can deal with this without opening a huge can of worms.  He could let it ride but that’s an obvious risk.   He could require state AG’s to submit an additional certification, but as Steven Brill showed these are not bulletproof either in no small part because of how complicated the applications are.  Short of that he could ask states to provide more context but this could raise additional complications around interstate consistency.  Or, he could allow the reviewers to access this information but that would undo one of the most important controls on the scoring — keeping the reviewers grounded in the actual applications not all the noise around them.  Not an easy call at all…Beer summit with Duncan and Selig?

College Track, a very cool social venture based in Oakland, needs a CEO.  More 411 via BW’s website.

Retailer Wal-Mart is offering online degrees for employees.  The size of this will have ripple effects:

“If 10 to 15 percent of employees take advantage of this, that’s like graduating three Ohio State Universities,” said Sara Martinez Tucker, a former under secretary of education who is now on Wal-Mart’s external advisory council.

Talk about sexing up an issue.   A book to the first reader to identify the 2008 school choice conference that is now at the center of the latest allegations in the South Carolina governor’s race.

Piscal on CBS.  Video is here and text is here.

Piscal on Stanford’s charter school.