Guest post by Jim Ryan

Thanks to Andy for inviting me to guest blog.  I haven’t blogged much at all, so I apologize in advance if I’m lousy at it.  I’m a law professor at the University of Virginia, and I write and teach about law and education.  I recently finished a book, which will be published this week by Oxford University Press, which I may talk about later this week.  For the first couple of days, though, I want to raise some questions that have puzzled me.  I’m hoping readers will have answers.

A front page story in the NYT on July 27 described the recent findings of some education economists regarding the impact of good kindergarten teachers on their students over the long haul. The headline of the article says it all:  “The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers.”  The researchers estimated that this was the present value of the additional money a full class of kindergarteners taught by a standout teacher would eventually earn over a class taught by a less talented teacher.

The findings have not been peer reviewed, and they may not hold up.  But that’s not what’s interesting to me.  What I’m wondering is why more social scientists don’t make an effort to translate their findings into points that resonate with other, non-expert academics (think, say, law professors), policymakers, or the public?  The economists who studied the value of kindergarten teachers seem to be following in the footsteps of preschool researchers, who, brilliantly I think, have tried to quantify how much return governments can expect from “investing” in preschool.  See, for example, this RAND study about expanding preschool in California.

Yet anyone who regularly reads articles by social scientists would see most findings reported in somewhat arcane and relatively inaccessible terms, like standard deviations or percentile gains over the median, which are difficult for the untutored (including yours truly) to translate into something more meaningful.  You know that bigger is better, so a .06 effect is better than a .04 effect, but you (or I, at least) have no real sense of what a .06 effect means in the real world.  In another context, I suppose phrases like statistically significant or robust to multiple variations might be evocative, but in these studies, they leave me a little cold.  I get writing for other academics, not pandering, maintaining professional standards, being precise, etc., and I recognize that not all findings can be easily translated to plainer terms.  But I bet a lot more could.

Ultimately, aren’t social scientists who write about education trying to influence public policy?  If so, what would be wrong with translating the findings into terms anyone could understand?  Instead of talking (just) about a percentile gain over the current median test score, for example, why not talk about gains in terms of months or years of school work?  (And, while we’re at it, why not try more often to compare the costs and benefits of different interventions?)  Or is a front page story in the NYT a bad thing for the academic credibility of social scientists?

Guest post by Hae Sin Thomas, Great Oakland Public Schools

I have been an educator and education advocate in Oakland, California for almost two decades, and I have spent those decades working towards the achievement of those four words. In California, an Academic Performance Index of 800 is the minimum score for a school to be considered good. In 1999, Oakland operated 42 “red” schools, schools with API scores of less than 500. 38 of those “red” schools sat firmly in what we call the “flatlands” of Oakland, the area occupied by predominantly low-income communities of color. At that time, there was only one charter public school, struggling as well. In 1999, Oakland Unified was widely considered one of the worst school districts in the country.

In response to this crisis, families across the flatlands mobilized to demand reforms that supported small, autonomous, new schools and more rigorous curriculum in all schools.  New and bold leadership responded to this call and brought school and principal accountability, greater autonomy over school budgets and programs, student-based budgeting, an options policy for ALL families, and a policy to close failing schools and replace them with new schools.

In 2010, the Oakland public school landscape has been dramatically altered. From 2003 to 2007, Oakland Unified closed 18 failing schools and replaced them with 26 new schools, most with carefully-selected staffs, new program designs, and greater autonomies. The district created a culture of accountability and performance, used data strategically, and focused on rigorous standards-aligned instruction. Oakland Unified has been the most improved urban school district in California for five consecutive years, and today, there are only 5 “red” schools.

There are also now 33 charter schools – six strong Aspire Public Schools, three top-rated American Indian Schools, as well as many other high-performing charters.  Charter schools have made great strides, many dramatically increasing student achievement in some of our lowest-achieving neighborhoods.

Last month, a visionary new Superintendent and Board of Education adopted a bold direction to continue transforming the Oakland public school system into a center for innovation and full-service community schools.

So, are we close to GREAT yet? I wish I could answer with a strong affirmative. I would say we are at Better-But-Still-Overall-Mediocre.  What will it take to get to GREAT for ALL schools and ALL children?

1. Where we have excelled and need to continue to push hard is accountability.  Naming traditional and charter schools that are failing as failing, making student performance data very public, removing ineffective leadership, and closing persistently failing schools has been an overall strength in this city. We need to maintain the courage to strengthen the accountability system, holding ALL adults and schools accountable for student growth.
2. Though Oakland is a city with many resources, we struggle with partnership, alignment, and collective responsibility. Oakland Unified has not traditionally worked effectively with the City of Oakland, with labor, with community-based organizations, or with charter public schools.  With resources constantly declining in this mad state, we must be much more strategic about sharing and aligning resources and working collaboratively around a common set of outcomes.
3. Some of the success we achieved in the new schools we achieved because we gave these schools increased control over people, time, program, and money. We did not succeed in all of our schools because we did not give them the increased control and the additional resources and support they needed for a long enough period of time, especially in our toughest neighborhoods. Some needed to be buffered, supported and prioritized for at least five years to truly turn them around. The Los Angeles Locke High School turnaround (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/education/25school.html) shows us the amount of intense support and resources some schools require and the persistence necessary to see the turnaround through. We need to more effectively resource and buffer our turnaround schools and sustain them through a complete turnaround.
4. Oakland’s reforms came through grassroots organizing for equity. Both the growth of charter and new autonomous schools came in response to angry community. Community accountability is a tremendous force for change, for hard conversations, and for disrupting the status quo, and one of Oakland’s greatest assets is its activist community.  We must partner with this force and leverage it to push through the adult politics and more effectively serve our children.

A year ago, committed to seeing all of Oakland’s children get a quality education and afraid greatness could not be achieved without a more active and informed “public”, several of us founded GO Public Schools (Great Oakland Public Schools – www.gopublicschools.org).

GO Public Schools is a coalition of community members committed to pushing those hard conversations, driving those policy changes, holding the system accountable and creating an informed public force to make our schools great.   We believe that it is the public’s responsibility to drive Oakland’s public school system to greatness and to ensure that all of our children get the education they deserve.

It’s not a conversation had very often across the education reform community – the role of the “public” in public education reform.  It’s a conversation in Oakland we have everyday.

Guest Post by Tim Daly, President, New Teacher Project

In his first foray into the blogosphere, Rick Hess argued that people on all sides of education policy debates are too quick to invoke the “it’s for the kids kids” mantra, as though it’s possible to corner the market on moral superiority. He’s right; people too often hide behind a “pro-child” cloak to avoid substantive discussions of important issues. Even worse, though, is refusing to acknowledge when current policies are demonstrably harmful to kids.

Consider the case of quality-blind teacher layoffs.  Earlier this year, as school districts across the country confronted the unpleasant prospect of teacher layoffs, we released a short paper describing how layoff rules based exclusively on seniority would make a bad situation even worse. These outdated rules force schools to cut effective teachers while retaining less effective ones. They maximize the number of layoffs necessary achieve a given budget reduction, since newer teachers earn the lowest salaries. They have a disproportionate impact on the neediest students, who are more likely to have newer teachers. And they are unpopular with teachers – even most veterans.

Now, new research from the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research confirms that quality-blind layoffs harm student performance. Let me say that again: the way we do layoffs causes kids to learn less than if we factored in teacher effectiveness. The esteemed Jane Hannaway discussed these findings in Thursday’s edition of USA Today.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that quality-blind layoff policies harm students, there’s been relatively little outcry from adults to change them. We’re told by some that any other layoff system would be subjective, opaque or discriminatory—in other words, that a quality-blind layoff system is the worst one except for all the rest (apologies to Churchill).

But why should we give up so quickly? Our paper outlined a smarter layoff system that considers several measures of effectiveness—like teacher attendance and evaluation ratings—in addition to seniority. Most districts could implement this idea with data they have on hand right now.  In Chicago, the CEO and board of Chicago Public Schools has announced that the relatively small number of unsatisfactory-rated teachers will be laid off before higher rated teachers.  In Colorado, a new law was passed with AFT support that requires layoffs to be done based on performance.

I’m not suggesting TNTP has a monopoly on good layoff policies or that Chicago or Colorado models should be adopted across the board. The point is that we all need to sit down and have the conversation. We need to commit to solving difficult problems instead of running away from them.  But the conversation must have parameters – we need a system the supports the core work of schools, not the comfort level of those who must administer the system.

The coming year will give us another opportunity to get layoff policies right, and it’s critical that we do. Given the economic climate, large districts will probably have to lay off teachers next spring, even if a new round of federal aid materializes. Between now and then, why shouldn’t we be able to find a way to minimize the impact of layoffs on students while reducing the number of layoffs necessary? Why can’t stakeholders come together in every district to create sensible, transparent layoff rules that consider both effectiveness and seniority, and that are careful to guard against any discrimination?

The inertia that buttresses bad policies isn’t limited to layoffs. Many districts still force-place teachers into schools—without regard to the preferences of anyone involved—even though brokering genuine matches can improve teacher performance. States require teachers to spend significant time and money earning master’s degrees that don’t appear to have any impact on classroom performance.  The federal government spends more than a billion dollars a year on top-down professional development that teachers generally loathe and that has shown no impact on student achievement. The list goes on.

For a field that professes to value “evidence-based” strategies, we’re awfully wedded to disproven traditions.  That doesn’t mean we should shy away from trying things that don’t have a mile-high research base – there is a place for experimentation.  But it means when the returns are in and something doesn’t work, we need to hold ourselves more accountable for admitting it and coming up with something better.

Guest post courtesy of Victor Reinoso, Deputy Mayor for Education, Washington, D.C.

There’s a lot of debate here in DC right now about education reform and the root causes of recent progress.  As a former member of the Board of Education and the current Deputy Mayor for Education, I have been fortunate to have two front row seats for this debate.

As I see it, the recent progress in student achievement has not happened by accident, or because of some grand, genius plan.  Rather, leaders stuck to some fundamental principles:  Be unafraid to try something new. If it’s in the best interests of kids, do it. Process, while important, cannot be the enemy of reform.

When I was elected member to the District’s Board of Education in November 2004, I was optimistic about pursuing real reform for a school system that needed it perhaps more than any other in the country.  In 2004 DCPS was at the bottom in performance, led by its sixth superintendent in ten years.  Enrollment was declining, due primarily to a flourishing charter school movement – a movement most viewed as something to fight rather than a resource for innovation, ideas, and talents to embrace.  Half-empty facilities were crumbling, books and services weren’t reaching classrooms, and a dysfunctional special education system was draining schools of resources that all students needed, without even meeting the needs of kids in special education.

What alarmed me and many others the most, was that there were so many dedicated people in leadership positions – on the school board, in DCPS, and in the mayor’s office – and despite all our work, we weren’t gaining any traction.

It wasn’t that we didn’t know what to do – It was that we lacked the will and collective leadership to make it happen.  For example, we knew we had to close schools. Here was a system that had lost 30,000 students in 15 years and had dozens of half-empty buildings show for it.  Multiple studies confirmed the need to “rightsize” the system so we weren’t spending millions heating empty space when kids didn’t have art and music teachers.

Back then, we met with school administrators and debated the data, the process, and the plan. Eventually we agreed on a recommended course of action for the superintendent.  Yet by the time the plan was ready for a vote, it had been butchered and watered down because of the need to please so many adults and different agendas.  We went from a plan to close about 20 schools to a proposal to close six.

Today, with Mayor Fenty overseeing the school system and Chancellor Michelle Rhee at the helm, we still arrive at decisions after analyzing the data, hearing from the community, debating potential actions, and determining the best path forward. The difference is that once we decide what’s best for kids, we execute, and with a greater focus and sense of urgency. In just 3 ½ years, we closed 27 schools, established accountability measures for central office staff, negotiated a landmark teachers’ contract, created innovative partnerships with charter schools to turn around low-performing DCPS schools, implemented a groundbreaking new teacher evaluation system enabling performance rewards for highly effective teachers and dismissals for ineffective teachers.

It hasn’t been perfect along the way, but as the first time up on the bike of this new approach to reform, it’s more than any of us had been able to do in decades. Most encouraging are the results we have seen already – increased student achievement on state and national assessments, higher graduation rates, a stabilized enrollment, and modernized classrooms for students from every neighborhood in the city.

What has enabled all of this is leadership; leadership that embraces bold action and never backs away from necessary change, no matter how difficult.  Leadership that unequivocally supports the push forward, regardless of politics and opposing interests.   Without this, we would not have an environment in DC in which reform could succeed. I’ve been fortunate to see firsthand how these dynamics of leadership are playing out in DC. And from where I sit, that’s why we must keep going forward – because going back, like failure, is not an option.

Guest post by Tim Daly, President, The New Teacher Project

The hunt has intensified recently for a shadowy menace: the “blame-the-teacher crowd.” Everyone seems to be on the case, from major magazines to pundits on Twitter. This anti-teacher cabal has grown so powerful that it took center stage at the conventions of the national teachers’ unions last month. AFT president Randi Weingarten spoke of being “shaken to the core” at witnessing “so few attack so many, so harshly, for doing so much.” NEA president Dennis Van Roekel warned of an effort to “blame teachers and our unions for every problem in a school.”

Strangely, nobody can credibly identify any members of this nefarious crowd. We know who’s not in the group. Not Barack Obama, who has made clear that he is “110 percent behind our teachers,” and made good on it by supporting tens of billions of dollars to save teacher jobs. Not Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who recently paid tribute to teachers and said that his “job is to fight for them, empower them and support them.” Not even Bill Gates, who earned multiple standing ovations during his speech to the AFT convention. In fact, the only people talking about blaming teachers are the ones supposedly defending them from this threat.

Perhaps the danger lies in subversive policies, not words. Allegations of teacher bashing often surface when districts dismiss ineffective teachers. But simply acknowledging that some teachers shouldn’t remain in the classroom doesn’t make you part of the blame-the-teacher crowd. If that were the standard, Weingarten, Van Roekel and a clear majority of teachers across the country would be members.

So, is there an anti-teacher streak in the actual implementation of these notions? Is that where the hostile rubber hits the road?  Washington, D.C. dismissed 5% of its teachers last month, mostly for performance issues. But three times as many were rated “highly effective” and stand to be paid a lot more money under the district’s new compensation system. Overall, the vast majority of teachers were found to be doing solid work. Another example: Last week, New York City announced that it had delayed or denied tenure to 11% of eligible teachers, up from 7% last year—which means that 89% of eligible teachers earned tenure and the de facto lifetime job protection that comes with it. In both of these cases, the results of standardized tests were considered alongside many other factors.

What part of any of this could be construed as an attack on the average teacher?

The truth is that the existence of the blame-the-teacher crowd is a myth. Like many myths, it relies on heated rhetoric and fear to exaggerate controversy. Does anyone really disagree with the idea that teachers should, in President Obama’s words, bear a “measure of accountability” for helping their students learn? Isn’t the real question how this can happen fairly, transparently, and in a way that gives teachers the support they need to grow as professionals? That’s the conversation we should have if we’re serious about improving our schools. But it can’t happen as long as we’re distracted by myths that imply ill intentions rather than genuine policy disagreements.

There’s a lesson here for teachers, principals, policymakers, and even education reporters: Next time someone warns you about the monster under your bed, don’t be afraid to look. Chances are it’s not there.

Guest post courtesy of Becca Bracy Knight, Executive Director, The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems

When was the last time you spoke to a student about his or her experiences at school? I don’t think anyone working in education reform can have these conversations often enough. I was fortunate to hear from a group of high school students last week at one of The Broad Center’s professional development sessions.

To help make our discussions about the current state of education a little more real, we invited a group of students and teachers from local schools to talk about their views on education today. It was a powerful, stark reminder that our young people are amazingly resilient, but also keenly aware that we as adults are, in general, letting them down.

One high school student had this to say about the current budget crisis in her local school district:  “I don’t understand why we have to suffer because adults don’t know how to manage their money. It’s not right. If we are the country’s future, you are cutting off the tree at the root.”

She’s right.  Miles away from the classroom, central office leaders, although well intentioned, haven’t always been part of the solution.

The blame game in education is never productive.  Problem-solving is.  There is simply a great deal more that central office leaders can do to better manage dollars and strategically align resources to best serve teachers and students.

Of course, outstanding leaders and managers in central offices aren’t the only thing needed to transform education, but as this student points out, we can’t get there without them.

Although they are often tasked with leading organizations the size of Fortune 500 companies, too many school district superintendents lack the critical management experience needed to effectively lead thousands of employees, oversee million- or billion-dollar budgets, and navigate complex labor and political environments.  And they often shy away from making tough, unpopular decisions that are best for kids.

However, today, in a growing number of school districts, leaders are going against the grain.  Closing dozens of under-enrolled and failing schools.  Firing hundreds of low-performing teachers.  Abolishing teacher tenure. Leaders like Joel Klein in New York City and Michelle Rhee in DC stand out for having taken dramatic action to make smart, strategic use of dwindling taxpayer dollars to better educate students.

We are proud that among such leaders are a growing number who have graduated from The Broad Superintendents Academy.  [Note:  Stay tuned, as we will soon release the first student achievement results under academy graduates’ leadership.]

For example, Robert Bobb, the former city manager and deputy mayor of DC, and now the emergency financial manager of Detroit Public Schools, which may be the lowest-performing urban school district in the country, has gone, in the words of Star Trek, where no man has gone before.  He’s identified 250 phantom employees on the payroll, fired 685 administrators, closed 29 failing and under-enrolled schools and reduced expenses by $115 million.  He has also recruited 5,400 volunteers to donate 633,000 hours to help kids read.

In Pittsburgh, Mark Roosevelt, former President Teddy Roosevelt’s great-grandson and a former Massachusetts legislator, has upgraded the district’s curriculum, closed 22 underperforming schools, reached an agreement to provide principals with raises based on increased student achievement rather than on tenure, and raised $100 million to send every Pittsburgh public school student to college.

And Superintendent John Covington in Kansas City, Missouri has proven that it’s possible for school boards and communities to back dramatic changes when they understand that the result will be a better use of existing resources for all students.  In Kansas City, the public schools had long been half-empty, and the district faced potential bankruptcy, despite receiving $2 billion in recent years from a court-ordered desegregation plan.  This year, Superintendent Covington recommended the closure of nearly half of the district’s 61 schools in order to reallocate existing resources to benefit children.  He was fortunate to have the backing of the school board and community.

However, actions like these, which put children’s needs above those of adults, are more often met with criticism and controversy than with praise. Not everyone likes these leaders.

But as another student wisely told me last week, his best teachers were often the ones that he didn’t like, because they were tough and strict and made him work really hard. They didn’t try to be his friend. But by the end of the year he knew he had learned a lot – and that felt good.

So my question for Eduwonk readers is this:  how can we change the standard for successful school district leadership from being popular to being effective?

Guest post courtesy of Terry Ryan, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Dayton – the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s hometown, where I go to work every day – is famous not only for the Wright Brothers but also for being a school choice Mecca. Annually since 2006, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has put Dayton on its top-ten list of charter communities by market share (27 percent of public school kids in the city attend charter schools). Another 1,500 children use a state-funded voucher to attend a private school of their choice.

With more than a third of all children in the city now utilizing school choice, the Gem City is an excellent place to test theories and arguments about charter schools and choice more generally, which is exactly what we’ve recently done with two theories about charter schools.

The first is a favorite of charter school advocates — that parents will make sound decisions about schooling and select high-performing schools for their children while shunning low performers. If this theory holds true over time, parents’ positive and proactive school selection will lead some schools to improve and weak ones to close as the high performers gain market share. In short, parents will be picky consumers and good schools will thrive while bad schools wither.

The second theory has been promoted by charter school opponents since the first charters opened their doors in the 1990s and holds that charter schools drain public schools of students and resources. Opponents frequently wield this criticism against charters when districts are facing deficits or declining enrollment; in effect, they deflect the conversation about how districts ought to right-size or make cuts by rallying anti-charter sentiments.

Do these shibboleths around charters hold up in Dayton?

Fordham commissioned economist Richard Stock of the Business Research Group at the University of Dayton to analyze student-level data from the Ohio Department of Education and track student movement among schools and across local school districts from 2005-06 thru 2008-09.

When it comes to Dayton, his findings refute both theories:

1)      There is no evidence that student movement is driven by a decision to attend a better-performing school. In fact, according to the data analyzed by Stock, students who move from a low-rated school are more likely to move to a school with an equal or lower rating than would be expected if the students were moving at random.

2)      There is no evidence that Dayton district students are moving to charter schools at high rates. Instead, mobile students are moving outside of Montgomery County and disappearing from the system altogether. Over the last four years there has been little overall movement of students from district schools to charter schools. Further, there is no evidence that charter schools are gaining or losing higher-performing students – evidence that at least among the most mobile student population, charters aren’t “creaming” the best students. In Dayton, school movers actually have significantly lower reading scores than do non-school movers. The single greatest indicator of whether a child is likely to move from school-to-school is his or her reading score on the state achievement test. The lower the score, the more mobile the child.

These findings from Dayton dispel commonly touted notions from both charter advocates and foes, and point to another cause for concern: outstanding levels of mobility among disadvantaged kids that have an adverse impact on their educational outcomes. The findings also serve as a reminder of the need for more such data to test ideas about the impact of school choice, and to add concrete evidence to the rhetoric so that policy decisions can be well-informed.

Guest post courtesy of Paul Herdman, Rodel Foundation of Delaware

Right now, 18 “round-two” states and DC are prepping for their high stakes interviews. They’re probably also breathing a collective sigh of relief that their applications are out the door, attending to fires left burning while they were working on their proposals, and catching up on sleep.  Yet, with all this, there are other things that the finalists might want to add to their to-do lists prior to the RTTT announcement in a few weeks.

While the Rodel Foundation of Delaware is not directly engaged in the implementation of the state’s RTTT work, we are endeavoring to be as helpful as possible in our state.  I’m looking for your input, and offering a few observations from the sidelines that I hope will be helpful as other states think about what they should be doing before September.  I’ve captured them under the headings of Capacity, Communications, and Courage.

Capacity.  Implementing new standards, data systems, teacher evaluation systems, and strategies to turn around your failing schools will strain even the most capable state Department of Education.   This is a complex set of new tasks, so capacity is critical.  Simple example: Half of the money that goes to a state will go to the districts and charters.  Each of them will have 90 days to develop a “scope of work” on how to spend their funds.  Therefore, in a medium-sized state like Colorado, that means the state will need to negotiate more than 100 scopes of work involving tens of millions of dollars in very little time; incredibly tough to do well.  Bottom line, it would be good to begin thinking now about how to organize your current team and how you can build, borrow, or buy the staff you’ll need if you win.

Communications.  With all the implementation work on your plate, it could be easy to de-prioritize the importance of letting people know what RTTT will mean to them, whether they are in schools, or not.  But little else will be as critical.  Race to the Top provides a big check, and a lot of interests will be lining up to spend it.  But the commitments are clear, with very specific deliverables.  Tennessee SCORE has done a good job of laying out a platform for this with its “Expect More Achieve More” campaign.  This is an area where the private sector could partner with a state to develop a comprehensive communications’ plan – whether they win or not — with a website, speaker series, etc., before the announcement.

Courage.  Delivering on RTTT will be hard.  The plan may be set, and the money may be there, but implementation will require lots of changes in policy and practice.  And the average citizen isn’t going to see the benefits right away.  In fact, moves like raising standards and telling thousands of parents that their child isn’t as well prepared as they thought is going to be incredibly difficult.  The push back to policy makers will be significant.  So, real thought needs to be given to the work that will be needed to sustain and build political momentum for this work over time.  (Many of your states have advocacy groups associated with a national network known as PIE and could be a good resource.)

The nation’s schools are going through what MLK might have called a point of “creative tension.”  A point where people of good faith are openly debating and fighting about what they believe is in the best interests of children.  This is a good and necessary thing, and RTTT is a critical part of this movement.  Based on what I’ve seen, DE and TN are eager to share what’s working and what’s not with the next round of RTTT states and ultimately with the nation. We will begin that process this fall when DE and TN leaders will host the first of what we hope to be a series of forums for all the RTTT states to learn from (and lean on) one another as we begin to break new ground together.  What are the topics you want to see discussed among the states?  If you head a union, a school, or a foundation, what would you want to talk through with your peers to realize your state’s vision?

Guest Post by Sarah Newell Usdin and Neerav Kingsland, New Schools New Orleans

Five years ago, New Orleans was perhaps America’s worst school system. The FBI convicted over twenty district officials for stealing from kids. A valedictorian of a local high school failed the high school exit exam. Five times. Her school had failed her. Her district had failed her. Her school board had failed her. At every level, the system was broken.

Five years later and the results in NOLA are incredible:

• We’ve out paced the state’s growth by nearly a factor of 4 over the past four years (growth of about 12 pts. vs. 3 pts)
• We’ve halved the percentage of failing schools (about 60% to 30%)
• Our highest-performing open-enrollment schools are out-performing selective-admission magnet schools.

In short, we’ve gone from “F” to “C” in five years. Now we need to go from “C” to “A”. Can we? We don’t know. Anybody who says they know how to get an entire city to “A” is much smarter than us. Of course, we do have some ideas.

The upcoming years present daunting challenges. The problems we face? We call them Charter Issues 2.0. Charter Issues 1.0 are the issues you face when you’re 10% of the system. Charter Issues 2.0 are the issue you face when you’re on your way to be 80% of the system. Some of the problems are the same. Some are very different.

Charter Issues 2.0: Duty, Virtuous Cycle, Talent, Government

Duty: When charters are the system, you must meet every need. Special education students. Adjudicated youth. Mid-year enrollees. Every kid. Every time. And entrepreneurs have to work with government to build effective systems. Common enrollment systems. Transparent expulsion processes. This isn’t about validating results by showing we serve the same kids. It’s about validating the very idea that charters can be the system.

Virtuous Cycle: Great schools must expand. Failing schools must close. We must create a virtuous cycle whereby great schools expand to serve more students, then hire more staff, and then develop more leaders who can takeover or start new schools. But there are undeniable costs to this cycle: closing schools disrupts communities, expanding schools requires large amounts of up-front cash, and managing the whole process expends a lot of political capital. If our virtuous cycle rate stalls, our growth will flat line. Will we keep it up? Or will a monopoly (district) be replaced by an oligarchy (entrenched charter interests)? Will we fight for excellence or fall for the soft chorus of better than before?

Talent: Back of the envelope math indicates that New Orleans has the highest % of TFA and TNTP trained teachers of any city in the country (roughly 30%). This number will increase. What does this mean? Is the new teaching track 2 years and out? This won’t work. Four years and out? Maybe. But what about lifelong teachers? We have lifelong economists. We have lifelong doctors. So what will our school talent system look like? Are schools run like law firms (teachers = associates, school leaders = partners)? Or like sales departments (teachers = rainmaker sales people, school leaders = managers)? Or are they a labor system unto their own? We don’t know. But our young teachers want to be developed. Our veteran teachers want to be developed. We better figure it out.

Government: How do you run system when the district no longer operates schools, recruits talent, or provides professional development? Does government become obsolete? No. Governance is essential. But it will look wholly different. At its core: effective school operator authorization and performance management. And resource allocation. And facility oversight. And a forum for public debate and accountability. Can we build this structure? Or will the urge to operate schools be just too much?

One Possible Future Worth Making a Bet On

New Orleans is one possible future for the nation’s education system. It’s not the only possible future. Other cities are doing great work. DC. New York. Maybe their results will be better than ours. Maybe their methods of reform will be more scalable. Maybe. Maybe not. The point is we don’t know. And for the nation to not at least make one bet on New Orleans would be a terrible waste. New Orleans may be the answer. It may be part of the answer. We don’t know. But we need to find out. At New Schools for New Orleans we’re trying to raise resources and recruit talent over the next three years to see if we can work with great New Orleanian educators get a city to “A.” We’ve been honored to fight the fight for the past four years by incubating schools, recruiting and developing talent, and advocating for excellence. But we need money and we need friends. We’re not that different than an annoying teenager. Come join us. Our parents are out of town. And while they’re away we just might change the future of education in this country.