Friday, August 17, 2007
Programming Note
I'm taking a break offline through a week from next Tuesday, UFT leader Randi Weingarten starts blogging Monday. Enjoy!
The annual back and forth on college rankings started today and should really get going next week. Kevin Carey's opus on college rankings is a great way to get up to speed and see some leading-edge thinking on this issue.
Everyone seems fired-up about multiple measures etc…Sherman Dorn has a post that is well worth your time, and I think his conclusion is a pretty good educated guess…just sadly 7 years too late, but better late than never.Meanwhile, at the HuffPo, Jerry Bracey is wallowing in pity. But, cutting through it he seems to be coming out against multiple measures, but more for capacity reasons. Bracey knows this stuff so I'd be interested to know what sort of multiple measures system he thinks could stand up, near term capacity issues aside? Outside of things like AP and IB, I'm pretty skeptical in the accountability context and would hate to see the hard won progress of 1989 (Clinton and Bush I), 1994 (Clinton), and 2001 (Bush II) on common standards for all kids eroded.
About all of this, three things jump out at me. First, as my colleague Tom Toch has reported, the testing industry is stretched. But, what I don't know is on a per capita basis how many more (or less) errors are we seeing? Is the industry getting worse or have they always had these mishaps. I do recall problems prior to 2001, so what's the trend? As a state policymaker I can't even get a decent sense of what companies are better or worse on say, errors per 100,000 standardized assessments given. Who are the worst offenders and best corporate citizens here? And what states have the most effective enforcement mechanisms in place to hold companies accountable? There are penalty clauses but considering the scale of these contracts they just might be considered costs of doing business. And, when there is an error everyone jumps up and down but sometimes in terms of the overall percentage of tests given, it's pretty minor, what are those numbers? That'll either be headline or snooze inducing depending on the data...
Second, a lot of stuff gets conflated in this debate and blamed on No Child Left Behind. For starters, on this curricular narrowing point, make no mistake, pre-2001 (when No Child was passed) was hardly a golden-age for high-poverty schools where kids were getting a rich education complete with arts, music, well rounded physical education, and a great college-prep curriculum. NCLB does get hit with a lot of correlation-causation attacks. And, narrowing at the expense of content backfires anyway. In addition, while I don't want to see all multiple choice tests, an ethic is springing up that multiple choice is all bad. That's actually not the case and you can have high quality multiple choice tests. E.D. Hirsch has written about this.
Finally, this is an archaic technology, no? Surely there are better ways to assess kids than pencil and paper tests that can get information back to teachers faster, in a more useful way, with less time spent on testing, and so forth. I look at what, for instance Wireless Generation or Grow, are doing and wonder why we're not looking further ahead? But there is not a lot attention being paid to all that via public policy. Instead, we're really creating incentives to keep the world as it is and I worry that we could be on the verge of trying to invest a great deal to make the very best gas lamp the world has ever seen when electricity might be just around the corner…In a way it's like the aerospace industry in the early 1970s when the competition was all about making planes that were a little faster or lighter through marginal advances in metallurgy or fuel mixes. Then along came Skunk Works with a plane that no one could see -- stealth technology. What's our "stealth-like" breakthrough on this issue and how do we support the work to get there?
He Only Wanted To See Some Dali!
You don't hear about things like this every day...
Plus, since it is August, enjoy this one, too.
If you're looking for a biography to round out your summer reading, Rick Kahlenberg's "Tough Liberal" is about as good as you can do. In typical Kahlenberg fashion it's 3 yards and a cloud of dust stuff, but it walks through the life and influence of education reform legend Al Shanker more thoroughly than ever before. Absolutely must-reading. Got hope? Karin Chenoweth, formerly of the WaPo now at the Ed Trust writes-up case studies of highly performing high challenge schools in "It's Being Done." Whatever you think of the high poverty schools debate, you should check this out. And, a new entry in the school choice debate from Cato -- surprise! -- argues that school choice works. But, if you're looking for a primer from the pro-choice camp, this is it, Herbert Walberg covers a lot of ground.
This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education sort of stunned me, and I'm jaded. It's about ongoing evaluations of federal programs -- the TRIO programs in the parlance -- that aim to help prepare disadvantaged students for higher education. It's an enormously important goal but the overall results have been disappointing. Consequently there are evaluations going on to try to shed light on what might work better. But check this out from The Chron:
Mr. Oxendine [the federal official who oversees the program] surmised that the reason Upward Bound failed to increase college-going rates for the rest of the participants was because those students would have gone to college anyway. He hypothesized that if Upward Bound were refocused on higher-risk students, its impact on college-going rates would be greater and its limited budget would be spent more effectively. To test his theory, he proposed a second study comparing high-risk Upward Bound participants with a control group of nonparticipants and with lower-risk Upward Bound participants.
The study, under way in several states, has been harshly criticized by the Council for Opportunity in Education, the program's main lobbying group. The council says it is unethical, even immoral, of the department to require programs to actively recruit students and then deny them services. They have taken their fight to Congress in an attempt to stop the study.
Arnold L. Mitchem, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, is bothered by the study's methodology. He likens the study to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments, in which the government withheld treatment from 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis so that scientists could study the ravages of the disease.
"To take a kid who is vulnerable and say, 'You've got a shot at college,' and then take it away," he says. "What is it that you were so desperate to find out that you had to abuse people?"
Huh? We can disagree on various policy remedies but to compare efforts to evaluate the programs with the awfulness of Tuskegee is just about shutting down inquiry not figuring out what works best for kids. Full disclosure, Urban Institute's Jane Hannaway, with whom I've collaborated on projects, is involved in the evaluation.
“We’ve taken the country to war with less hassle than this.”
Amusing (telling?) passage from former White House speechwriter Mathew Scully's Atlantic piece:
Even on the dreariest days—slogging through a tax, education, or Chamber of Commerce speech—Mike and John and I endlessly entertained one another, with all the running jokes and gags you’d expect three guys in a room to develop. Education speeches in particular—with their endlessly complicated programs and slightly puffed-up theories, none of which we could ever explain quite to the satisfaction of our policy people—were always good for a laugh. As John observed in late 2003, around draft 20 in the typically chaotic revising of an education speech, “We’ve taken the country to war with less hassle than this.”
Update: Q & E are Atlantic readers, too.
Don't miss Sam Dillon's NYT look at Michael Barber.
Thanks to Chris Cerf for some great guest-blogging the past few days. UFT leader Randi Weingarten starts Monday.
Couple of good reads while I was gone: Manual High School in Denver has been in the news a lot, here's a look at Rob Stein and what he's trying to do there now. Blogger and professor Sherman Dorn sits down with Doug Christensen to talk about testing. Governing's Alan Greenblat blogs about mayoral control. And, if you didn't get enough New York already, here's an article about ed reform there from Sol Stern. A lot of claims being made on all sides about what parents want/don't want etc...proof will be in the pudding in a couple of years...In a forthcoming article Christiana Stoddard and Sean Corcoran look at support for charter schools, some interesting data. I finally got to the summer issue of American Educator and you should, too. UVA's Daniel Willingham turns in a must-read on critical thinking and content and Leo Casey reprises the argument he made in his chapter in this book. The Indy Star ed board is at it again! This time they look at special education...See this Erin Dillon analysis for more. If you were not at the New Schools Venture Fund Summit in New Orleans you can read about it here (pdf). Finally, this is a depressing story from LA, and it will help you understand why a lot of rank and file teachers may not love their teachers' unions overall but sure do --understandably -- want protection from this sort of craziness and lousy management.
Some Political Musings
Opinions here are my own and not those of the NYC Department of Education, where I serve as Deputy Chancellor.
How in the world did we get into the fix we are in today in urban public education? When the average African American and Latino 12th grader reads at a level equivalent to the average white 8th grader, when we find ourselves rejoicing when graduation rates rise to a mere 60 percent, and when we know that these aren't bloodless statistics but remarkably good predictors of life outcomes, including staggering unemployment and incarceration rates and depressed earnings potential, it is high time that we confront the question as forthrightly as possible. Sure, we are making some progress as a nation, especially in the early grades, and here in NYC every important trend line has a steep upward gradient, whether measured by graduation rates, math scores, literacy performance or the number of economically disadvantaged children now taking AP courses and college readiness tests like the PSAT. But, the hole urban school systems collectively dug for themselves over the last several decades is mighty deep, the human cost beyond unacceptable. Forward progress is better than the alternative. But the moral measure that counts is the absolute number of young lives that we are failing to launch into adulthood prepared to participate in the American dream. By any measure that number is orders of magnitude too high.
So how did this happen? Both the left and the right offer easy explanations, both of which, as it turns out, are unpersuasive. The former, while often dressed up in the lofty prose of academia, comes down to this: "It's not the schools, it's the kids." Even notable scholar (and seemingly full-time critic of our efforts in NYC), Diane Ravitch stunned us all by espousing this perspective a few weeks ago. Aside from the shudder the argument should inspire, it suffers from a fatal circularity. Success must be measured by how well children learn, not how hard educators try or how well they teach. The second we accept the opposite view is the second we flat out give up. And the minute we are resigned to children's failure, you can pretty much guarantee that the expectation becomes self-fulfilling. No one is naïve enough to suggest that considerations extrinsic to the six or so hours children spend in school each day are irrelevant to the hard work educators are asked to do. And, contrary to Dr. Ravitch's suggestion, this has nothing to do with assigning "blame." But, our charge is not to teach, but to make sure children learn. End of story. Moreover, if the insurmountable barrier to success is the tough circumstances of students' lives, why are so many schools serving "these kids" succeeding?
The explanation from the right is more sinister: Either by their nature or through the happenstance of now irreversible historical forces, urban school systems have become a Gordian knot of corruption, self interest and bureaucratic incompetence, where the needs of children are rarely the primary lens through which decision-makers act. (The "sword" most often advanced to cleave the knot it is a voucher system.) At best, this is an overstatement. Like most caricatures, there are significant kernels of truth, but hardly enough to support the generalization. I've spent the last 12 years in senior positions in public education, both inside and outside the system. While I often disagree vehemently with opponents, only rarely have I thought they were motivated by anything but good intentions. Perhaps more relevantly, while I can't speak for anywhere else, I deeply believe that New York City is on a path where truly breakthrough change is underway. Importantly, this is change generated "from within," albeit within the context of mayoral control. (Notably, the strategy also embraces charters as part of the reform strategy.) To be sure, there is no shortage of naysayers or organized efforts to derail the work, voices that at times seem motivated by an almost primitive allegiance to the status quo ante and a deep suspicion of anything that smacks of non-incremental change. Whatever constellation of motives may lie behind the Greek chorus of resistance that provides an inevitable backdrop to virtually all serious reform efforts, the fact is that in NYC the reforms are moving forward with notable success—and that they are internally derived.
If the above are unpersuasive explanations, how then did we get into this fix? While hardly exhaustive, several mutually reinforcing causes stand out for particular mention.
First, the people most hurt by a failed urban education system are the least powerful politically. Imagine a world in which the shameful achievement gap were reversed—with African American and Latino children systematically surpassing their white counterparts. Does anyone seriously doubt that political forces would have been arrayed to generate a Manhattan-Project-level effort to correct the imbalance?
Second, you don't need to be a disciple of Adam Smith to know in your bones that competition and accountability for results drive innovation and quality. For the most part, however, both are anathema to public education. When they are embraced at all, it is usually after fierce resistance and in watered down form. Witness the fight-to-the-death opposition to charter schools, the hostility to merit-based compensation, the opposition to using evidence of student learning to evaluate teacher performance and even (incredibly) the concern that NCLB is problematic precisely because it focuses too much attention on which schools are succeeding and which are failing. It is simply too facile an explanation to suggest, as many do, that this resistance is the inevitable reaction of any monopolist that wants to keep the good times rolling. I am convinced that the antipathy to competition and accountability has deep cultural roots that go well beyond narrow self interest.
Third, the politics of school reform pretty much guarantee inaction, or at best incrementalism. I am especially distressed by the failure of courage in my party, the Democratic party, even to engage in a serious debate about the kind of structural reforms that might really make a difference. As Robert Gordon recounted, John Kerry’s hasty retreat from a strong opening salvo in the 2004 election is sadly typical. The party that prides itself on social justice consistently avoids pushing the envelope on serious reform, resorting instead to comfortable sloganeering like "more money," "fewer tests," and "lower class size." The worst part? In private, the better candidates totally "get it," but tell you that now is not the time to rock the boat. While Republicans are more likely to "call it like it is," they have succeeded in marginalizing their voice in the debate through excessive reliance on market-based solutions, overheated union bashing, and an often suspect track record on other civil rights issues. The result of this left/right dynamic is political inaction. And as bad as this is at the national level, the more local you get, the worse it becomes.
Fourth, real reform takes time to sink roots, at least five years and often more. Continuity of leadership is absolutely critical to organizational change, yet urban school systems often turn over their leadership with almost comic frequency. As a result, school districts are like archeological digs: scrape down a layer and find the favorite initiative of a long departed superintendent, go a layer deeper, and find the preferred fad of yet another, and on and on. Before Mayor Bloomberg had the political courage to ask for control of—and accountability for— the school system, NYC had 10 Chancellors in 20 years. Since his arrival in 2002, there has been one.
Fifth, the overheated flights of rhetoric that regularly emanate from teachers unions and management alike too often obscure the one truth that should guide both parties: The single most important determinant of positive student outcomes is the quality of the teachers in every classroom. Our collective failure to forge a positive collaboration around this shared ideal represents a missed opportunity of significant proportions and a real barrier to progress. In NYC, for example, the centrality of teacher quality represents a fundamental tenet of the Bloomberg/Klein administration. But it is no less so for the United Federation of Teachers. This is fertile terrain for important work—finding, training, developing, and retaining the best in the business, and ensuring that only those who are succeeding with students remain in our classrooms. Shame on us if we can't find a way to tackle it together.
The only value of a diagnosis is to facilitate the design of the right cure. I have some thoughts on that as well. Having already exceeded Andy's space restrictions, however, I will need to await his next invitation as guestblogger to develop them. In the mean while, thanks to Andy as well as to my colleague, Joel Rose, whose assistance has been indispensable this past week.
--Guestblogger Chris Cerf
Picking the Right Leaders
Opinions here are my own and not those of the NYC Department of Education, where I serve as Deputy Chancellor.
Take your typical 500 student elementary school in any city in America. Assuming the district receives $8,000 per pupil and spends 20 percent of it on central expenses, the school's total budget is over $3 million. Many schools in NYC have budgets in excess of $10 million.
Leading an organization of this size is no small feat. Private sector organizations spend millions of dollars in search fees each year to grow or recruit the right leader for organizations or divisions of this size. And that's for widget-making. Helping to launch children into adulthood with the tools to succeed in life is far more complex. Pick the right school leader and great teachers will come and stay. Pick the wrong one and, over time, good teachers leave, mediocre ones stay, and the school gradually (or not so gradually) declines. Reversing the impact of a poor principal can take years.
Too often, however, school districts don't invest the requisite level of care, resources and hard work into the critical mission of recruiting and identifying school leaders. In many districts, the principal selection process is left to regional officials, many of whom were former principals themselves. Their experience base can be uneven and their decisions, despite the best of intentions, are too often exposed to political pressures. Most districts have neither the capacity nor data systems to infuse rigor into the principal selection process, and so they rely on their best judgment, and sometimes even pure inertia. (On plenty of occasions I see a principal appointed for no better reason than that a vacancy suddenly materialized and it was his or her "turn.") Sound, experienced-based judgment is, of course, critical to successful hiring. High-performing organizations, however, take pains to infuse that judgment with as much information and the most effective recruiting and placement systems possible.
Over the last five years, NYC has closed 62 schools, opened 286 new schools, and hired over 900 new principals. Although leadership has been one of our central pillars from the outset, the law of large numbers guarantees that we’ve made our share of mistakes. The need to step up to a new level is especially critical for us given our central "theory of action." Our biggest bet on achieving dramatically higher gains in student achievement is to broadly empower principals with more resources and expanded programmatic discretion while holding them rigorously accountable for results. As our critics have not been shy in pointing out, the success of this approach is highly dependent on the capacity of our school leaders.
So what are we doing? We continue to invest heavily in our nationally recognized Leadership Academy, which identifies, trains, and places over 50 candidates a year and provides training and support for all new principals. We successfully negotiated merit bonuses (up to $25,000) and an additional $25,000 for principals with an extraordinary record of success who accept the challenge of leading our highest needs schools. (Kudos to the leadership of the CSA, which represents principals, for is openness to and support of these ideas). In exchange for greater autonomy, every principal signs a performance document. And perhaps as importantly as anything, we empowered them to craft their own path to success, ending the more prescriptive "top down" approach that most districts favor. That alone has significant potential to attract a new cadre of quality candidates, while encouraging our many superstars to stay on. To a substantial degree, leadership capacity comes from within, but it is our responsibility as administrators to create a professional environment that supports great leaders in their desire to step up to the challenge. If we fail to do this, we should expect our most entrepreneurial principals to seek employment elsewhere.
But none of this is enough. That is why we are engaged in a thorough reengineering of our principal recruitment and placement process. One critical component of the work is to link the data from our new accountability system to the data in our HR systems so we can more clearly identify our future leaders, prepare them for leadership and more thoughtfully match them to schools. Another is to ensure that every time a school has an opening, a pool of candidates that meets our high standards of excellence is available for it to consider.
Here's another idea: As Teach for America and others have observed, some of the most successful principals previously were "teacher leaders"—great teachers who exhibited leadership both in their classrooms and in their buildings. (In Great Britain, principals are known as "Head Teachers.") Why shouldn't districts work with union leaders to identify such promising individuals early in their career and put them through a "grow your own" program that will prepare them for leadership several years out? Some might fear a "fox in the henhouse." But I am not one of them. One of the beauties of the rigorous accountability systems we have put in place in NYC is that the only thing that matters is success. How individuals get into a position to succeed or fail should be of little moment. If through collaboration with the UFT we create a career ladder for aspiring teachers, not only do we afford them the professional respect they are due, but we may well go a long way towards creating a cadre of future school leaders who will make a real difference for children. As in all things, our motto should be "whatever works." I suspect this would.
--Guestblogger Chris Cerf