NYT education reporter Michael Winerip’s method of holding up schools that are not meeting various accountability requirements and giving an incomplete picture of these schools and what’s going on is well-established.  The archetype of the genre is Lake Alfred in Florida. And of course, Wheeler Elementary deserves a place in the pantheon, too.

Today we get Oyster River Middle School. Scary! And just in time for Halloween.  The school isn’t making “adequate yearly progress or AYP.” Winerip says that’s just because,”about a dozen of its 110 special education children did not score high enough.”  Sure, what’s 10 percent of the special ed kids here among friends?  Actually, it also looks like some low-income students may be lagging, too, (only about 3 in 4 low-income fifth-graders are proficient in math) and schools are unfortunately quick to blame special education students for AYP problems when other groups aren’t doing well either. (You can find data here via Great Schools).  Winerip basically says it’s a great school and this is just more evidence of the folly of accountability.  It does look like a good school – and to their credit they apparently want to do better – but just for the sake of argument: What about the poor students or special education students there? Don’t they matter? Nevermind, I think I know the answer.  Apparently they don’t.  Winerip touts SAT scores instead…which, of course, not all students take…

In his own subtle way Winerip’s work is actually a spectacular argument for No Child Left Behind-style policies requiring disaggregation, transparency, and accountability.  It’s pretty clear that absent those policy elements students who lag behind are swept under the rug. This is one reason special education advocates, for instance, are in favor of No Child Left Behind’s approach.  The performance targets required by No Child do need to be changed, yes, because the law is several years overdue for reauthorization.  But it’s exactly this ethos that makes many people leery of various alternatives to today’s policy and is consequently slowing progress on Capitol Hill.  Or, put another way, ‘except for them’ sounds reasonable, unless it’s your kid.

Ed Note – This week Eric Hanushek and Diane Ravitch debate the pros and cons of more concerted efforts to remove the lowest-performing teachers in schools.  Hanushek starts the discussion today, Ravitch responds tomorrow, and additional responses Wednesday and Thursday as well.

By Eric Hanushek, Stanford University

Almost everybody concerned with educational policy agrees on two things: the U.S. has a very serious achievement problem and teachers are the most important element in our school for addressing this problem.  Beyond these, agreement breaks down.

In the face of this I want to offer one simple thought:  The future of our schools depends heavily on dealing with the small number of teachers who simply should not be in the classroom.  Specifically, by replacing the bottom 5-10 percent of teachers with the average teacher found in today’s classrooms, research indicates that the achievement of U.S. students would rise from below the developed country average to near the top if not at the top.  The gains to students and to the U.S. economy from that improvement are truly enormous – making it worth considering some alternation in current policies that ignore the problem.

It is useful review the evidence. The details surprise many who begin by accepting the opening line as being factual.

First, U.S. students are not competitive with those in other countries.   They fall below students in the typical European country, comparing favorably to only students in a few such as Greece.  On the PISA assessment of international math proficiency, the average U.S. student falls around the 34^th percentile of Canadian students and the 28th percentile of Finnish students.  Second, trailing, say Canada, by the amount we do acts as a brake on future economic growth, and the costs to the economy from lost growth are 25 times the costs of the current recession.

Third, and most important for this discussion, the variations in teacher effectiveness are huge, probably larger than most parents realize.  Teacher effectiveness here is placed in simple terms – how much do students learn with a given teacher.  Considerable research has gone into separating the impact of teachers on achievement from that of families, neighborhoods, and school peers.  This research has produced extraordinarily consistent and similar results.  From one perspective, a very good teacher can get a year and a half of student gain in learning over a school year, while a poor teacher gets half a year – a huge difference that leaves some students permanently harmed.

It turns out that overall impacts are particularly important at the bottom end of the teacher distribution.  If, as noted, we could replace just the bottom 5-10 percent of teachers with an average teacher, we could expect the achievement of U.S. students to rise at least to the level of Canada and perhaps to Finland.

But think about it.  Replacing the bottom 5-10 percent amounts to replacing two or three teachers in a school that has 30 teachers.  Such a movement would not startle those in most businesses of the country.  Surely it is less than seen in most law or accounting firms or in most hospitals.

Nobody doubts that there are teachers currently in our schools who should not be there.  And, nobody doubts that the identity of these teachers is known to essentially everybody in the schools – from the principal, to the other teachers, to the students and parents, and to the union leaders.

Nonetheless, if one broaches this subject in schools, it is frequently labeled as anti-teacher.  To the contrary, it is pro-teacher.

The good teachers in the school are simply hurt by being lumped together with the small number of teachers that are harming our kids.  Indeed, it is almost certain that the prestige of the profession along with teacher salaries would rise significantly if the good teachers were not tarnished by the bad.

Let me close with a couple of responses to people who are critical of this view.  First, nothing says that one should use test scores to decide who these ineffective teachers are.  In fact test scores are essentially irrelevant, because of the obviousness of the identity of these bad teachers, an identity that would be revealed by virtually any sensible evaluation system.

Second, it does not say that we need to replace an additional 5-10 percent each year.  If we once got the stock of teachers up to par, we need  only worry about the small percentage of new teachers each year that fall below the acceptable range.  We are talking about trimming out just the new teachers who prove to be ineffective, not additional existing teachers.

This is not a call for replacing all teachers.  Nor is it a call for returning all female doctors and lawyers to classrooms.  It is simply a call for applying standard management practices to schools.   When we entrust our children to a school, we should be able to trust that they are not harmed.

Editor’s Note: The chart that originally appeared in this post has been changed to the one above because the author feels that this graphic – from Education Next – is more clear.

Some legal action in Los Angeles over evaluations (pdf).

My TIME column last week was about our lousy national debate about teaching quality. But although it was toward the bottom this paragraph sparked a lot of debate:

When Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek looked at teacher performance he found that removing even the lowest five percent of performers could boost overall student achievement substantially. There are two key takeaways from this research. First, the lowest-performing teachers have a negative effect on student performance that is disproportionate to their numbers. Second, in practice this amounts to just one or two teachers per school on average. Most workplaces have similar problems.

Historian Diane Ravitch and Hanushek disagree about this point and agreed to discuss it here on Eduwonk next week. Thanks in advance to both of them for that.  So addition to regular content look for that debate to start on Monday.

This looks like a great Young Education Professionals event with Senator Michael Bennet and a strong panel to discuss family engagement. November 2nd on the Hill.  RSVP required.

This week’s TIME column takes a look at the achievement gap backlash. Why it’s overstated and why the gaps do matter – a lot.

Ah, the achievement gap. So much trouble to fix, so why bother trying? That seems to be the attitude in Washington, where pundits have spent the last several months ripping the current focus on improving the low end of student performance in our nation’s schools. In September the Obama Administration put forward a plan to offer waivers to states that want more flexibility — i.e., less ambitious targets — under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Last week the bottom really fell out when the Senate committee that handles education passed a rewrite of the No Child law basically leaving it to states to figure out how (and probably, in practice, even whether) to close the gaps. In other words, a decade after an overwhelmingly bipartisan effort to get serious about school accountability, it’s open season on a strong federal role in education. How did we get here?

Here’s an easy gap to close: The gap between that paragraph and the entire column.  Click here to do that for free.

It seems the administration may be trying to do exactly that (pdf).

At TIME Annie Murphy takes a look at ed tech – and really the importance of content and knowledge more generally – it’s well worth reading.  Includes an appearance by the infamous tree octopus.  There is indeed a lot of garbage out there in the ed software and online learning platform world and a disconcerting amount of tech-euphoria right now. But that doesn’t mean it’s all garbage.  I’ve been road testing Dreambox, for instance, with my kids as guinea pigs and it combines engagement with actual content, in this case math.  Not perfect or a replacement for teaching but a solid tool. Mathalicious is great, too. What do they have in common?  Attention to instructional quality and content.

In Ed Next Bruno Manno takes a look at the rise of new groups like Stand for Children* and other insurgent parent groups.  His overall thesis that it’s not the PTA of old is obviously spot-on and the article is a great roadmap to these new players. But worth noting that in a few cases the PTA isn’t the PTA of old either.  For example in Washington State the PTA just came out in favor more more parental choice via charter schools.

*BW works with Stand.

Want to work with a program that only focuses on high performing and experienced teachers? Here’s your chance with CBE. They need content experts and instructional designers.

Like public policy and want to work at Teach For America?  This this VP role might be for you.

A few weeks ago I mentioned our new Bellwether partner, Rex Varner.  We’ve also added several new team members, here’s a little more about each of them:

Veenay Singla is now an associate partner. Most recently, Veenay was an independent consultant focused extensively in the education reform sector. Her consulting portfolio included Bellwether Education Partners, Chicago Public Schools, New Leaders for New Schools, Washington University in St. Louis/St. Louis Public Schools, The National Association of Charter School Authorizers, UChicago Impact, and The Achievement Network. She previously worked for the Chicago Public Education Fund, a Chicago-based venture philanthropy and taught fourth grade in Houston, Texas.

Saamra Mekuria-Grillo is also joining as an associate partner focusing primarily on leadership development. Prior to joining Bellwether, Saamra was a consultant at Bain & Company, where she worked on organizational design, strategy, and due diligence projects for clients in education, private equity, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. Saamra also spent several years at Google.

Harsha Dronamraju is an Education Pioneers Analyst Fellow. Prior to joining Bellwether, Harsha was a consulting associate and team leader at Cambridge Associates, an investment consulting firm serving mostly non-profit endowments. Most recently, he served as an Education Pioneers Summer Fellow, launching a teacher coaching initiative with the Houston Independent School District.

Last week’s TIME column was about our dysfunctional debate over teacher quality.  In a letter to the editor AFT President Randi Weingarten kindly makes my point for me.

I’m out of the office at a NACSA meeting as part of a project we’re working with them on, so it seemed like a good time for a guest post by NACSA’s Alex Medler:

Accountability for Authorizers

Charter schools provide plenty of compelling news.  Often the coverage is of great schools producing amazing outcomes for kids.  But too often the stories are more tragic or sordid.  A school’s governing board becomes mired in dysfunctional arguments; a school’s students are performing badly on state tests for several years running; somebody absconds with money; or a student with disabilities is discouraged from enrolling in a school.

Facing these unfortunate circumstances, a person is likely to shout, “Somebody should do something!”  The outraged observer is correct.  Generally, the “somebody” that ought to act is a charter school authorizer.  Strong charter school authorizers screen initial applicants to avoid future failures. They also implement practices that respect each school’s autonomy while also protecting against abuses and ensuring that floundering schools close.  Twenty years into the charter school movement, it appears that it will be difficult to hold all charter schools accountable unless we start to hold authorizers accountable for fulfilling their responsibilities.

Charter authorizers are the public entities charged with overseeing charter schools. Each state charter law designates the entities that will serve as authorizers.  Most authorizers are either school districts, state departments of education, or specially-created independent state boards.  There are also a few states where higher education institutions, non-profits, and mayors serve as authorizers.

The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) has been helping authorizers with their work for more than a decade. To articulate the required work, NACSA has established Principles & Standards of Quality Charter School Authorizing.  But not all authorizers rise to these industry standards.   NACSA has developed a 12-item Index of Essential Practices to measure whether authorizers are implementing practices covered by the standards.  Using data from NACSA’s annual survey of authorizers, we recently released a report evaluating more than 120 authorizers with this index.

The results of our research are mixed.  Many authorizers report implementing most of these practices; some authorizers lack quite a few of them. Our hope is that all authorizers will compare their current practices to this index and identify what they need to put in place. Obviously, how well they perform these tasks also matters. So authorizers need to look at the recommended practices they already have in place and ask how they can strengthen them.  Information on the work of authorizers is also useful to policymakers or other observers. Everyone has a right to ask whether authorizers are doing these practices and to press them to do this work well.

In many states, there is more than one authorizer available to any single school or charter applicant. In these communities it is important to ensure that all authorizers are using rigorous practices.   Since school operators can quickly identify the least rigorous authorizers, the schools that would be closed by a quality authorizer are likely to seek out the authorizer with the worst practices that will let them operate indefinitely.  As a result of this forum shopping, the rigorous authorizers are likely to be left with only the schools that would stay open under any authorizer.  Accountability mechanisms tend to be irrelevant to excellent operators.  In these circumstances, states should work to ensure that the worst authorizers either improve their practices or are removed from this work entirely.

A great deal has been learned about how to hold public schools accountable.  But it takes quality authorizers to act on those lessons.  NACSA’s Index of Essential Practices provides a mechanism to strengthen accountability for the authorizers. This is a tool that could eventually help us realize our goal of accountability for the schools as well.

Guestblogger Alex Medler

A couple of new papers out on teacher pensions if you follow that issue.  At CAP Raegan Miller puts forward some reform ideas. And Christian Weller urges caution. Over at Fordham they take a broader look at pension reform and lessons.

There is a fun discussion going on about the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top today at an event in D.C. And some of the key behind the scenes players like Ann Whalen are stepping out for it.  You can follow along via this hashtag on Twitter. The underlying question is obviously whether RTT will “work.”  I’ve written previously that it’s just too early to answer that.

But it may not be the right question anyway.  The RTT initiative has indisputably created space for and caused a bunch of changes to state education policy.  All of those won’t turn out to be durable (or even good ideas) but it’s undeniably a pivot point.  Meanwhile we spend $650 billion annually on K-12 schools.  So is getting the amount of change we’ve seen in a notoriously change-averse field for a one time shot of $3.5 billion – or less than one percent of what we spend yearly – a pretty good deal?  That’s a hard sell politically but it just might be the case.

Check out Kristof on early-childhood education (features BW board member Kathleen McCartney) but also check out Sara Mead on the same.

And Jay Greene Matt Ladner joins the anti-anti achievement gap crowd: “The focus on the achievement gap is important because it cuts to the heart of American ideals.”

Some great and thoughtful feedback pro and con to the “Blame Game” column in TIME today. One issue a few people have raised on the web and in notes is “sure, let’s drop 5 percent, but who will replace them?” That wasn’t the core point of the column, but it’s a great question and exposes a couple of interesting things about our education system and our education debate.

First, if you remove the lowest performers it’s not really the right question to ask.  That’s because if someone is at the bottom of the distribution you are better off with a random draw from the overall applicant pool than that person.  But, even accounting for that, a random draw isn’t actually the choice in most cases. Again from a standpoint of probability you’re on firm ground choosing teachers from certain teacher prep programs (traditional and alternative) based on the evidence today.  Unfortunately, some of those programs are controversial – see Project, New Teacher The or America, Teach For – and we’ve done a lousy job policing quality in teacher prep so the good and the bad are basically on equal footing. You could also – and I know this is crazy talk but just for argument’s sake – do what some schools do and actually audition prospective teachers in a live teaching setting.

We also have a peculiar situation as a country where we produce more teachers than there are jobs yet still have shortages.  That’s because there is a geographical, subject matter, and grade-level mismatch so it’s not one to one but it does speak to poor signaling from states, school districts, and prep programs today.  It also speaks to the need for a more ambitious set of incentives in many cases.  Finally, in some instances, it would make sense to raise class size by a student or two rather than retain demonstrably low-performers.

Each of these approaches has trade-offs, of course, and each one is not applicable across the board.  The point is that doing nothing is not an acceptable option, and it is a choice, and there are other choices that can be made.

Why can’t we have a real conversation about teachers?  That’s the topic of my TIME column this week:

When a prominent educational figure remarked that, “a lot of people who have been hired as teachers are basically not competent,” it was a rare candid statement about teacher quality. The comment arguably overstates the problem and — in fairness — he was also quick to point out that with several million teachers there would of course be some lousy ones, just as there would be in any field. Still, it was a jarring thing to say.

Education policy debates are often like an argument between a couple in a bad relationship — about everything except the actual problems. Our leaders seem congenitally unable to lead a difficult but honest conversation about our nation’s teaching force that acknowledges that several things are all true at once — we have a teacher quality problem and a management problem, teachers are not to blame for all that ails our schools, we can’t fire our way to better schools, but removing some percentage of low-performers would be quite good for students. Instead we have a shallow debate dancing around the thing that matters most in schools: instructional quality.

Here’s one thing we probably all can agree on – the media industry is in trouble.  So do your part to help and click on this link to read the entire column.

I was really honored and humbled to get a journalism award last night from America’s Promise Alliance for the work we’ve been doing at TIME, and grateful to my editors there for their support and guidance – they’re a big part of what makes the column work.  Be sure to check out the other honorees – Casey Medal Winners – some really amazing work from around the country looking at issues affecting children and families and either directly or indirectly bearing on schools.  In particular some impactful work on homelessness policy from Kansas City and first person accounts from young people on Minnesota Public Radio but many spectacular stories across several mediums.

There is a great line in the Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous when the fledgling writer at the film’s center is struggling to get his story about a rising band manageable and on paper.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman, playing writer Lester Bangs, tells him to tell his editor:

“Tell him…you know, it’s a– it’s a think-piece…about a mid-level band…struggling with their own limitations…in the, you know, harsh face of stardom.”

The idea being that this would be catnip for an editor and buy him some time to get his act together.

I can’t help but think of this line when I hear people describing and pitching education technology initiatives.  “It’s tech-enabled, engaging, and completely customized with gaming elements and productivity enhancing.” That’s like catnip for the tech crowd…

Where are the Winerip dittoheads?  Nothing but silence when his column today talks approvingly about kicking a  student out of a school (skimming!) and falsely classifying staff (fraud!)? If he wrote about a charter school doing the same wouldn’t it be further evidence of pervasive mendacity and lead to a day long festival of tweets from the usual suspects?

John Bailey – who I publish Education Insider with – turns in a provocative look at education and the private sector (pdf) via AEI. Private sector involvement in education is a seriously impoverished conversation in education, a lot of hysterical rhetoric, boosterism, and not a lot of thoughtful analysis.  The private sector can’t fix what ails public education but it can play a useful role in helping to solve some problems.  Two recent BW looks at this here and here.

Evaluations changing in Los Angeles but the most interesting parts of the LA Times account are in the second half of the story. Some background here. Also, while I was not and am not a fan of what the LAT did with value-added scores but it’s hard to argue that it didn’t change the terms of the conversation there.

In Indy The Mind Trust – an org whose board I serve on – has launched a charter school incubator there. Incubators were popular in the early days of the charter school movement but were not always successful.  Now there are some version 2.0s springing up in different ways. By the way, Indy has a sleeper music scene and a sleeper ed reform scene.

On the edujob front:

Everfi is an interesting and fast-growing ed tech company – financial literacy but broader applications.  They’re hiring for a host of roles.

And here’s a great role in D.C. – CEO of DC Prep, a successful and interesting public charter school network with good support behind it from parents, community and funders.  My partner Monisha Lozier is leading the search.  More info and how to apply here.

I’m generally a fan of Rick Hess’ blogs and willingness to challenge the CW but his post offering up a list of sources for reporters to call about the Republican candidates is off-key.  Hess’ basic thesis here is that reporters talk to too many Dems and not enough Rs in getting views on the current crop of presidential candidates and ed policy more generally.  Perhaps, I haven’t seen any kind of content analysis.  It is though an ironic gripe coming from Hess, who is at the top of the heap of most-cited pundits in the ed media and works at the American Enterprise Institute.  In fact, there he was in the NYT just last week on this very issue.  And it’s also hard to argue that many people on his list aren’t getting a lot of media exposure – Rick Hanushek was featured in the film “Waiting for Superman” for God’s sake.  And to be clear, I don’t have quibbles with anyone on his list as a source.  Many (including Hess) have appeared in attributed quotes and cites in my column for TIME and previously at USN and in other writing and others have been sources.

But, as a source and someone who uses sources, it seems there are a few problems with his argument and this conversation shouldn’t be about list-building.

First, Hess must know that a number of people on his list are actively advising Republican presidential candidates.  There’s a chance that might make their takes less candid or less objective than they might otherwise be, no?  Some people on that list have reached out to lobby me when they feel coverage of a candidate or politician they have a relationship with hasn’t been fair or with a cheer when they were happy I criticized a prominent Dem for something. Others have ties to commercial vendors.  None of this is disqualifying if appropriately disclosed, but the point is that all these folks are not just toiling in Horace’s groves waiting to illuminate the big issues of the day for any journalists or writers who happen past.

Second, in Hess’ original post on this he cites Charlie Barone – former George Miller aide and current Dems for Ed Reform policy director – as an example of the problem.  Really? He’s actually the counterargument. Barone, who I’ve known for years, has a viewpoint, obviously, but it’s more about specific policies than partisan politics. Barone’s a great source precisely because he criticizes both sides when they run afoul of his preferred course of action on policy. See next graf.  And he shoots straight.

Third, even in this election with Republican candidates backpedaling furiously on the federal role, education still doesn’t graft cleanly onto traditional left-right delineations.  Consequently when you’re writing about policy ideas partisan affiliation is often less useful a cue than a person’s priors on the issue.  In the case of Barone, for example, it’s less important that he’s a Dem than that he favors a strong, specific, and coercive federal role in school accountability.  Knowing that is key to understanding and appropriately positioning his take on things.  But Barone is probably closer to George W. Bush on federal education policy than Rick Perry is – so how useful is partisan affiliation?

Finally, looking at who ends up in a published story is often not an accurate proxy for what the writer did.  Quotes in a story capture an idea or perspective and make the story flow but that’s generally not the universe of people you talk with or read to learn about something.  Ability to turn a clever phrase is not the coin of the realm for quotable sources but the ability to put something concisely so that it can fit in a story is.  That’s also why some people only talk on background, they don’t like that constraint.  It’s also why some people on Hess’ list don’t appear in the media so much.

In my view the real structural problem here is the convention of reporting whatever the news or hook for a story is and then getting a few perspectives on it and moving on rather than nesting today’s issues in any kind of historical or analytic framework or providing some authoritative unpacking of various claims. But that obviously won’t be solved by calling different people and putting them in the same framework.

In the past Hess has been vocal about the superficial cues that too often – and counter productively – serve as proxies and guideposts in the education debate.  Yet now he’s offering up a pretty superficial one of his own.  He gives away the game by specifically excluding former education secretaries from his list.  Except by the most superficial criteria why would you exclude, for example, Margaret Spellings? Margaret – who is in the media a lot by the way – has a lot of state experience in addition to federal experience and understands policy at a deeper level than many of those opining on it.

If you want to curry favor and for the press to call your friends more Rick, that’s fine. But just come out and say it. Would make a fun blog post. For now though, the ed press has its issues, sure, but but not calling the right people isn’t a big one.

Over at CAP Ulrich Boser and Diana Epstein point out some problems with the recent Fordham high-flyers analysis. I don’t doubt there are trade-offs when policy identifies different things as points of emphasis but the actual findings in the report and the subsequent rhetoric were disconnected – in large part because there is not longitudinal data allowing causal inferences but also because the effects were not that pronounced and hard to capture anyway because of limits in the data available.  Their piece is worth reading.  And lost in this whole debate is the extent to which it’s high-achieving low-income students who really get lost in today’s system.

More generally, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen such a rhetorical disconnect.  Most recently Fordham’s report on the alleged “race to the bottom” on state standards because of No Child Left Behind found, at most, a “walk to the middle.” Meanwhile some states are raising standards on their own tests.  Yet that really hasn’t curbed the race to the bottom talk either…

This matters because as Boser and Epstein rightly point out, Fordham is respected and listened to for a reason.  But as Peter Parker learned, with power comes responsibility.  And surely there are enough problems and even some genuine crises in American education – many of which Fordham has done or is doing great work to address – that we don’t need the rhetorical-Viagra to create more.

This week’s TIME School of Thought takes a look at Moneyball and schools. (And while you’re there be sure to check out TIME’s new ideas and opinion vertical).  At one level I’m all for this, of course better use of data can help improve schools.  But there are technical and cultural barriers to address before such tools can really have systemic impact.  And they also need to be balanced with training and judgement. Or put another way, there is a lesson in what happened to this year’s Boston Red Sox that applies to public schools.

Data analysis is so trendy these days that Brad Pitt is getting millions of people to sit through a movie about quantitative methodology. Moneyball, based on the 2003 bestseller by Michael Lewis, traces the rise of new methods that the Oakland A’s used to identify undervalued baseball players so the team could win more games with a smaller payroll. A lot of education reformers are calling for a similar approach to evaluate teachers and improve student performance. Given that I’m a longtime reformer and love baseball, you’d think I’d be all over this idea. But there are some significant strikes against a Moneyball approach to education.

Here’s an easy quantitative method: 1 click on this link here gets you to the entire column for free over at TIME.com.

I think (hope) one thing most people on all sides of the school choice debates can agree on is that Jack Coons is thoughtful and a lovely person and was influential on education policy in a variety of ways.  Give Doug Tuthill and John Kirtley credit for figuring out how to get him to blog on the issue.

In the din of swift criticism (pdf) of the proposed Harkin ESEA overhaul bill over its accountability rules – or lack thereof – it’s easy to overlook that there is some good language in the bill.  In fact, that’s the irony – the proposed bill actually reflects a lot of smart learning about policy over the past decade-plus, including some that hasn’t shown up anywhere else.

Some examples: In considering gaps it explicitly calls for averaging student achievement data over three years rather than leaving it to states to make bad decisions (yes, flexibility not always great, some of the flexibility in the 2001 law led to silly policies). It introduces “mutual consent” (meaning teachers and their school have to agree to a placement, no force-transfers) in a few places.  And it closes the comparability loophole that shortchanges poor students under Title I (though it seems that was the price of admission for Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado – a former school superintendent familiar with the inanity of that rule).  It includes language on teacher evaluations and would protect Teach For America from efforts to eliminate the program using federal regulations. It also includes good policy on special education and limiting some abuses there.  And it has a few things on teacher prep programs that – if adequately enforced – could make a difference.

But on the big question of accountability it takes the federal policy back to an approach on accountability that didn’t work in the 1990s under the 1994 Improving America’s Schools  Act, and really before that.  In other words the plane has some lovely wings and some nifty new stuff in the cockpit, it just wants for an engine.

The Times writes up “To Be Heard,” which opens this week. It is a powerful film and should be an Oscar contender.  Get to the theater and see it if you can.

Here’s a provocative guest post from Public Impact’s Bryan and Emily Hassel:

Our friends at Democrats for Education Reform and a long list of education reform organizations last week released their recommendations for ESEA reauthorization provisions addressing teacher quality.

Although we see nothing objectionable there, even if our nation managed to pass and fully implement such legislation over the coming decade, we would still be far behind where other nations that best us were a decade ago. Proposals by the other party tend to leave education up to state legislators, on whose watch education has plateaued and declined. What’s the alternative?

If our nation is remotely serious about being competitive economically, we need a well-educated populace whose skills and competencies match higher-value, higher-wage roles in the global marketplace. We do not need just to close U.S. racial and economic achievement gaps. We need every student who achieves standards to leap ahead.

The only way to accomplish that is to put excellent teachers, the top 20 to 25 percent who achieve well over today’s “year of learning progress,” in charge of every child’s learning—consistently. With today’s merely solid teachers, those who achieve a full year of progress, students who start behind stay behind, and those in the middle do not leap ahead. Moreover, the current teacher pool feeds the anemic principal pipeline, meaning excellent teachers are regularly pulled from instruction—or forced to work under inadequate leaders.

We see three major ways to induce the significant will needed to put an excellent teacher in charge of every child’s learning. We must, at the federal or state level:

• Limit who can teach to top high school graduates, with further screening for behavioral competencies of excellent teachers;
• Offer large financial incentives for districts, schools, and teachers when they produce high-growth learning; and
• Create a new civil right to excellent teachers, one that parents and students can enforce legally when a child is behind standards, not making a full year of progress annually, or has not had an excellent teacher in a subject for two years running.

We’re open to equally powerful ideas. Let’s hear them, but no more of the weaker versions that we all know from experience won’t get this field moving.

The only way to implement any of these reforms successfully, within budget and at scale, is to help excellent teachers increase their productivity: swap portions of their time with digital instruction so they can teach more classes; let them delegate nonessential tasks to other adults; use digital tools to save time on instructional monitoring and planning; put them in charge of other teachers; and let them have more students to nurture under their strong wings. Find discussion of these options and more in Seizing Opportunity at the Top (policy options to reach every child with excellent teachers), Opportunity at the Top (why we must), and 3X for All (how we can). This is not new: Other professionals, whose jobs and pay aren’t frozen into molds, started making these changes for themselves a half-century ago.

Public Impact, with help from teachers and others, will soon begin releasing designs that clarify how to make these changes in schools, within budget, and pay excellent teachers more for the additional children they reach. “How to” models will help, but without major policy changes to induce the will, all evidence is that schools simply won’t budge—not even the ones that already can (e.g., charter schools).

ESEA could also help. At a minimum, it could:

• Require states to identify excellent teachers immediately (even if full-blown evaluation systems take longer to develop);
• Require reporting of the percentage of students reached by teachers at each effectiveness level, not just the percentage of teachers at different effectiveness levels—rewarding places that increase the productivity of excellent teachers; and
• Make federal funding contingent on clearing barriers that keep excellent teachers from reaching more students, such as limits on their pay, class sizes, and non-teaching staff who could monitor digital instruction.

Absent will-inducing provisions, though, ESEA is grossly inadequate. Policy and political leaders at all levels: Our nation needs us to step up.

– Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel, Public Impact

Is United States Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) gearing up to take away a lot of rights from students with special needs and return decision-making about their education to states and localities?

Of course not, he’s a leading advocate for special education on Capitol Hill.  But given how his proposed rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act would leave most school accountability decisions to states and localities (Update: Full text now online here (pdf)) it’s a question worth asking.  After all, like special education students a generation ago the needs of poor and minority students are systematically overlooked by states and local school districts.  You see this in access to resources like curriculum and effective teachers, you see it in the flows of public dollars to schools, and you see it in areas of emphasis.

What’s different for special education students today?  Well, for all of its ongoing problems and friction points the federal “IDEA” special education law is widely credited with a substantial leap forward for students with special needs.  Why?  It established standards and legal recourse when special education students were being shortchanged.  Hasn’t always been pretty and is far from perfect but has resulted in real progress for kids in special education.  The obvious counterfactual is how much progress would have been made for special education students absent IDEA?  I’d argue some, sure, but not as much and not as systemically.

I’m not arguing for an IDEA-like arrangement to address achievement gaps and improve equity.  But I am asking why people who wouldn’t think of gutting IDEA’s rules and accountability requirements because they don’t trust states and localities to address the challenges facing special needs students absent a legislative prod don’t worry about the same problem when we’re talking about a different population of students?

Perhaps states and localities care more about economically disadvantaged kids and ethnic and racial minorities than they do about special education students?  That’s one hypothesis, sure.  But it’s hard find much evidence supporting it.  Or perhaps the policy environment has changed so much in the last few years that it’s a different ballgame.  Again, perhaps, but if that’s true then why are the same small groups of state ed chiefs and governors trotted out again and again as evidence of this paradigm shift?

Here’s Charlie Barone, policy director for Democrats for Education Reform and a former top aide to Rep. George Miller (D-CA), “”Federal law is usually the one place where priority is placed on kids whose needs are overlooked at the state and local level,” Barone said. “It’s not clear that this [Harkin] bill would really do that so much anymore.”

No one is arguing for keeping No Child Left Behind’s accountability provisions fully intact.  But there is a sensible middle ground between the NCLB status quo and a rollback.  Unfortunately consensus seems to be building around the latter. Like special education, we’d be lucky to find ourselves in a place a generation from now where we could say, ‘for all the problems those policies moved the ball forward for underserved students.’ That sort of fitful progress is how things generally unfold in our society.

Occupy the ed schools? Are students organizing getting behind the USN – NCTQ effort to push for more transparency in ed schools?  Here is one student stepping up, trend?