Friday, February 16, 2007
Revolution In The Air?
You decide...the Our Education guys are trying to foment one...
Per this, that right of action recommendation has some legs...Hard to paint Chris Edley as some conservative wacko out to get the public schools...
Great Moments In GR
While we're piling on the NEA on this snowy Wednesday, this lobbying letter from NEA is a keeper:
“DEAR SENATOR ALEXANDER: …we urge you to vote NO on … An amendment to be offered by Senator Alexander (R-TN) that would provide $99 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund”
Worth asking, where is the AFT on this? They claim to like the Teacher Incentive Fund and to be tired of being lumped in with the NEA, now's a good chance to show up on both...
Incidentally, the Alexander Amendment enjoys bipartisan support. But what was once an approps gimmick to free up some money has turned into an NEA-sponsored run at differentiated pay...obviously, readers know which Senators to watch…
Update: The AFTies respond. Sure sounds like wanting to have it both ways...I wasn't going to point this out but it's completely ludicrous to say that a competitive grant program where localities can apply (or not...) to participate constitutes having something "thrust upon" anyone. Please. I ache.
NGA is hosting a forum on high school reform (pdf), this Thursday afternoon, pegged to the NGA Honors Grant initiative.
Loads of back and forth on the Aspens*, Toppo's USA Today piece especially worth reading.
But in this NPR story Fordham's Mike Petrilli seems to imply that Democrats will embrace the basically pro-No Child Left Behind take of the commission. But the teachers' unions are going ape over it, NEA President Reg Weaver called one recommendation "crap,**" and there has hardly been a groundswell for the law within the Democratic ranks recently or in the wake of this report. So while that analysis certainly furthers Petrilli's position on the law, less is more he thinks now, it hardly fits with true cross-pressured position of Democrats.
*Forget the snow, that's the real storm today.
**Again, worth reading Toppo, the ideas aren't perfect or necessarily ready for prime time but it's the right direction to go (and the Aspens seemed to acknowledge that). Weaver's comments illustrate perfectly the extent to which many folks in the leadership of the NEA fail to grasp that they work for and are part of a public trust where the public does have some prerogatives, it’s not some sort of oligarchy. And the notion advanced by the Aspens that low-performers, after getting help, etc...should be dealt with after say - five years - is hardly unreasonable.
The Aspens Speak
There will be lots of commentary and back and forth on the Aspen Institute’s No Child Left Behind Commission report (pdf) that was just released and people will pull out their favorite thing to love or hate and jump up and down about that. Bottom line: It’s an important piece of the NCLB reauthorization debate, even more because of the seriousness and level of detail the commission brought to its task.
Those that just want to “fix” NCLB won’t love it because it doesn’t provide much cover for gutting the law, in fact in some subtle ways it draws a harder line on accountability than the administration does right now. And, there will be complaints that the emphasis on accountability and results means low-performing schools continue to be “punished.” Meanwhile, Mike Petrilli hates the report because it’s not radical enough and that will become the line du jour from various circles, it’s hip to think big. But, the 1994 Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization and the 2001 version were pretty radical. Forcing states to develop standards, and forcing them to get serious about measurement and accountability, sea changes and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. Now the challenge is getting all the secondary policies that undergird the big changes right. This report offers some sensible ideas about how. And, considering the macro stakes, I think it’s pretty noteworthy that a commission with this composition* didn’t call for decelerating on the NCLB policy. That’s the story.
In fact, my biggest complaints are less some of what is in it than what’s not. For instance, it’s no secret that I favor a big federal new schools strategy to help open new public schools in underserved communities. Likewise, though it points some new directions on quality and effectiveness, this plan does not attack the human capital problem (teachers and leadership) nearly as aggressively as I’d like.
But, it’s got plenty of small actionable ideas to improve some the NCLB policy. Starting to move toward measuring teacher effectiveness more empirically is a step in the right direction, albeit a complicated one. I’m no great fan of the SES program but the steps the commission recommends are sound. It should spark a serious discussion about timelines and support for school restructuring. And on AYP, it’s a serious and grounded set of ideas rather than the rhetoric that mostly passes for discussion of that issue.
But, all of those things are policy ideas in evolution. A decade from now I suspect we’ll be talking about the same themes but very different ideas and policy decisions. Yet one thing the commission put forward would, if enacted, radically alter education accountability. That idea is providing real recourse for citizens to hold schools accountable:
…we recommend that parents and other concerned parties have the right to hold districts, states and the U.S. DOE accountable for faithfully implementing the requirements of NCLB through enhanced enforcement options with the state and the U.S. DOE.
Basically, the commission lays out a set of ideas for legal recourse in cases where states, school districts, or schools are failing to meet the terms of the law. You can imagine the potential force of class actions around teacher quality, public school choice, or school restructuring. If enacted, this would further change the producer – consumer equilibrium in American education and likely force a new seriousness around enforcement of federal education laws outside of special education.
*Only one and hardly unreasonable dissenting view.
Transparency
In response to this post AFTie Ed (who I still owe a pension post) makes an interesting point and raises a caution about weighted-student funding. What I think he's getting at, though it isn't often mentioned, is that transparency, while good, does create its own set of problems. In general, school finance is an inequitable opaque mess right now, but that opaqueness does hide some subsidies and there will be some political riddles to really getting at equity in a more transparent financing scheme. No one should be naive about that.
In the Philly Inq. RAND's Brian Gill revisits the Philly Findings, similar to his Eduwonk take.
Jeff Solochek of the St. Petersburg Times has started a new edublog: The Gradebook. It's local but the issues resonate so worth checking out. And yes, it's the same name as the now-defunct Miami Herald edublog, must be that media consolidation I keep hearing about...