Welcome to the redesigned Education Gadfly. The content you know and love is still here—opinion pieces, news analysis, short reviews, and more. But we’ve spruced up the presentation and organization, the table of contents in particular, to make it easier to access and to read. Please bear with us as we work out any remaining glitches over the next few weeks. You can always find the Gadfly online here.

New From Fordham: America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform. This study from the Fordham Institute tackles a key question: Which of thirty major U.S. cities have cultivated a healthy environment for school reform to flourish and which have not? Read on to learn more.

America's best (and worst) cities for school reform
New Fordham study shows which
Opinion | Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Amber Winkler

A big flop on Race to the Top
Where were Colorado and Louisiana?
News Analysis | Michael J. Petrilli

RTT Mostly Got It Right
Duncan deserves a B, the winning slate a C
News Analysis | Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Virtually unvetted
Cyber schools need more quality control
News Analysis

Snooki meet Ponzi; Ponzi meet Snooki
SEC calls out NJ: No more pension fraud
News Analysis

Extreme extravagance
School buildings for $100 million+? Yep.
News Analysis

ACT: The Condition of College and Career Readiness
A woefully low percentage of high school seniors are primed to succeed
Review | Kathleen Porter-Magee

Schott Foundation: Yes We Can: The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males
African-American boys still face an uphill academic battle
Review | Kyle Kennedy

Windsurfing was so 2004
This week: RTT, Fordham's new report, and LAT's value-added data analysis
Education Gadfly Show Podcast | Hosts: Mike and Rick

EduJobs: Brother, Can You Spare a Million?
It's like a multi-billion dollar time machine
Flypaper's Finest | August 25, 2010 | Peter Meyer

Attracting education reform: Worth the bother
There's more to reform than achievement
Flypaper's Finest | August 25, 2010 | Stafford Palmieri

Which American cities are reform-friendly?
Rick Hess explains the findings of Fordham's latest report
Gadfly Studios | August 26, 2010

Education west goes east
Meanwhile, D.C. charter students avoid catfish
Briefly Noted

A "common core" curriculum
Check out this CCSSI-aligned ELA curriculum
Announcement

Fordham seeks media guru
Are you keen to lead "new media" @ Fordham?
Announcement

Strategically manage data
Strategic Data Project seeks research manager
Announcement

Opinion and News Analysis

Opinion: America's best (and worst) cities for school reform
By Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Amber M. Winkler

Reform via entrepreneurialism is all the rage in education circles, at least as revealed by magazine articles and conference keynotes. Think of Teach For America and New Leaders for New Schools, of KIPP and Uncommon Schools, of Wireless Generation, K12, EdisonSchools, SchoolNet, and so many more players that scarcely existed a few years back.

But how widespread is this spirit of innovation and enterprise in America's major metropolises? Alas, not so much. Too few of our big cities turn out to have the talent, leadership, infrastructure, culture, and resources—both human and financial—to beckon enterprising reformers and then help them to succeed there.

That's the core finding of Fordham's newest study, America's Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform: Attracting Entrepreneurs and Change Agents, authored by AEI's Rick Hess and two stalwart Fordham staffers, Stafford Palmieri and Janie Scull. But they found some positives, too: A handful of communities have succeeded in creating healthy reform environments. The actual, as Kant observed, proves the possible. If a few places can begin to resemble Silicon Valley when it comes to education reform, others could, too. Be warned, however, that it isn't easy.

Let us be clear: This is a study of cities, not just school systems. We're interested in the "conditions" that make education reform apt to gain traction in entire communities. It's what Hess has previously coined an education "ecosystem," the myriad factors that make education change likely to take root and blossom. He and his teammates examined thirty U.S. cities in search of seventy-some such factors (amassed into six areas) through public data sources and novel national and local surveys.

Nine cities rose to the top of the reform-friendly heap: New Orleans; Washington D.C.; New York City; Denver; Jacksonville; Charlotte; Austin; Houston; and Fort Worth. They all earned Bs. (There were no As. Everyplace we looked, there was room for improvement!) At the bottom were six cities with Ds and Fs: San Jose; San Diego; Albany; Philadelphia; Gary; and Detroit.

What to make of these results? On the one hand, they aren't too shocking. Everybody knows about exciting reforms underway in New Orleans, Washington, New York, Houston, and Denver. And everybody rues the plight of unyielding education systems in declining communities such as Detroit and Gary.

But not everybody would have predicted that Austin, Charlotte, Jacksonville, and Fort Worth would turn out to be hotbeds—well, warmbeds—of edupreneurship. Austin apparently benefits from the long and successful run of superintendent Pascal "Pat" Forgione as well as the general spirit of innovation that pervades that community—not to mention a relatively weak teachers' union. Charlotte has a well-run countywide school system with lots of middle-class support, and a labor environment conducive to reform. Jacksonville profits from the aggressive reforms of the Jeb Bush era in Florida as well as a burgeoning, reform-friendly, philanthropic community—and a strong state charter law. Fort Worth boasts a strong municipal environment and a school district that actively uses data to adjust its policies and programs.

A scan of the bottom-scoring cities reveals that reform apathy plays no geographic favorites. In their overall indifference or hostility to entrepreneurial education reform, we find scant difference between such "rust belt" cities as Detroit and Gary and moreprosperous (and populous) coastal and "sun belt" locales like San Jose, San Diego, and Philadelphia. None is attracting scads of eager innovators and none boasts reform-friendly labor policies. Many feature calcified bureaucracies and lethargic municipal leaders.

Is there hope for the laggards? Indeed, yes. This study outlines ample opportunities for mayors, school systems, and business leaders to turn things around. Such transformations won't come easily or fast—but, then, Silicon Valley did not become a hotbed of innovation overnight. It took decades to infuse it with the financial capital, talent, networks, and expertise that make it what it has become.

To move their community seriously toward entrepreneurial education reform, local leaders must think very differently than in the past. Monopolies and top down reforms can only get you so far. Competition is healthy for the public sector, as is out-of-the-box thinking. There's a nimbleness and creativity to non-governmental providers. But the injection of a small dose of innovation doesn't inoculate the entire body—or transform the whole ecosystem. Entrepreneurial growth needs to occur energetically, smartly, and in a sustained way.

	To move their community seriously toward entrepreneurial education reform, local leaders must think very differently than in the past.

We also acknowledge that entrepreneurial reform is no silver bullet. Equally important are quality teachers, rigorous academic standards, rich curricula, vibrant school choice, capable school leaders, data-based decision making, astute governance, rational finances, and scads of other elements. Many of these begin with sound, learning-centered, kid-oriented public policies and effective district (and state) leadership. But most of them also occur faster and more surely if those policies and leaders are open to innovation and assistance from entrepreneurs.

That's really the lesson of this study. The reform needle is most apt to move when it is nudged twice. America's most promising education warmspots blend sound top-down state and local policies with environments that welcome entrepreneurial activity and private initiative. The welcoming gradually permeates their public policies and their community culture. And their superintendents, chancellors, mayors and other leaders encourage and facilitate this melding because they recognize that it works better than government alone—even though opening the door and ushering unconventional people and organizations through it will cause dismay and discomfort in the usual places.

A big flop on Race to the Top
By Michael J. Petrilli

For those who may not believe in coincidence, consider: On Tuesday, Fordham released a brand-new study that found New Orleans to be the most reform-minded city in the country; Denver came in fourth. Also on Tuesday, the Department of Education shocked the known world by announcing that Louisiana and Colorado both came up short in Race to the Top, outdone by such reform stalwarts as Maryland (ha!) and Hawaii (guffaw!).

The full list of state winners also includes Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. (And, to be fair, D.C. and NYC also fared extremely well in the Hess analysis, coming in second and third respectively.)

This is a disastrous outcome for the Administration. Support for competitive programs, even among reformers, is apt to plummet as it becomes clear that the vagaries of peer reviewers and the prowess of grant writers are what drive results in such competitions, not true policy change, political courage, leadership or public commitment to reform. The lofty rhetoric of the Race to the Top has turned to farce.

One may well feel sorry for Arne Duncan and his team. By all accounts, it appears that they simply funded states in the order of their ranking by peer reviewers. There were no shenanigans or political gerrymandering, as far as I can tell. (While the White House must surely be happy with the outcome vis-a-vis Ohio and Maryland, where Democratic governors face tough re-election campaigns, it couldn't have been too pleased about Senator Michael Bennet's Colorado.)

But this was a situation that called either for a better choice of peer reviewers or greater political courage—and the Obama team delivered neither. At the end of the day, Secretary Duncan could have funded Louisiana and Colorado regardless of their scores. He might even have nixed Maryland, which nobody in their right mind regards as an incubator of serious education reform. Yes, he would have taken much heat (probably even from me, it must be admitted) for mucking around with reviewer recommendations. But it would have been worth it, just to demonstrate that Race to the Top's—and Duncan's own—focus on results and reform was for real. Instead—were they, perhaps, rendered gun-shy by the Reading First imbroglio?—he and his team chose the path of least resistance.

This won't help their effort on Capitol Hill to extend the Race to the Top in future years or to big cities. Or to extend the principle of competition rather than formula to more federal programs. Chances are that Congress—now unimpeded by reformers—will turn back toward business as usual, with formulas driving funds to every nook and cranny of the country, regardless of how deserving or open to change. And cynicism about the federal role as an agent of education reform will deepen. On second thought, that might be the silver lining of today's cloud.

This piece first appeared on Fordham's blog Flypaper. Subscribe to Flypaper's RSS feed here.

Photo by Steve Johnson.

RTT mostly got it right
By Chester E. Finn, Jr.

On sober, morning-after reflection, let me say this about Race to the Top. Arne Duncan deserves at least a B for initiating and persevering with it. With a relatively small (by federal standards) amount of money, he has catalyzed a large amount of worthwhile education-reform activity in a great many places. And the directions in which he has bribed the system to move are important directions to move in. This wouldn't have happened without the program's competition-style design, with states vying for (relatively) scarce money. (It helped, of course, that states and districts are desperate for money!)

But determining the outcome of a high-profile grants competition is a tricky, risky undertaking. Had the Duncan team opted to use their own judgment, the outcome might have been better in terms of who won, but he would have been accused of playing mid-term-election politics and surely the White House (and influential Democrats on Capitol Hill and in the statehouses) would have inserted themselves into that process. Meaning that the outcome might not have been better.

Instead, the administration opted for strict adherence to "peer review" of the written applications that states submitted (as well as oral presentations, etc.) This is not a satisfactory system, either, as it is swayed by the selection of reviewers (not all of whom share the Secretary's reform priorities), by the criteria and instructions given to them (and how they interpret those criteria), and by skillful grant-writers who are fully capable of asserting claims, plans and promises that the actual applicants (i.e. states) have no genuine commitment or capacity to carry out. This was a major problem 25 years ago when I worked at the Education Department and it has steadily worsened since then.

As a result, the distribution of "winners" and "losers" deserves no better than a C when graded by what any serious education reformer (including, I am confident, Arne Duncan) knows has actually been going on—and is likely to go on—in our state capitals and school districts. Some places that don't deserve it are being rewarded. Some that merit gold medals for their reform efforts and plans are instead punched in the nose.

But many of the winners do deserve to win. And most of the losers deserved to lose. So the outcome, while worthy of no honors grade, is no failure, either. And with its (relatively) paltry 5 percent of the money, Race to the Top, on balance, is doing American kids a lot more good than the 95 percent of the education "stimulus" funding that wasn't part of it.

This piece first appeared on Fordham's blog Flypaper. Subscribe to Flypaper's RSS feed here.

Virtually unvetted

Cyber schools present myriad opportunities: Lower overhead costs, personalized instruction, and greater efficiency. Yet all those things are only as good as they are done well. And often they are not, it seems, at least in Pennsylvania. More than 23,000 students attend virtual schools full time in the Keystone State, one of the country's highest enrollments. Yet most of those schools are failing to meet state standards. Of Pennsylvania's eleven digital academies, five are in corrective action and five are "making progress," while just one can show adequate yearly progress four years in a row. Thanks to the many lessons of the charter school boom, our vision here should be 20/20, if not 20/15: Innovative approaches to schooling that lower costs and give students more options should be lauded, but quality won't magically happen by itself. Smart oversight and policies are needed, pronto. The virtual movement is exiting its infancy; now would be a great time to take on the quality-control challenge.

Snooki meet Ponzi; Ponzi meet Snooki

In its first ever suit against a state for securities fraud, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused New Jersey of misrepresenting as healthy its state employee and teacher pension funds to investors when it issued $26 billion in bonds between 2001 and 2007. New Jersey didn't have the money to cover those loans and the predictions that it shared with the public about the state's fiscal health were wildly optimistic—and largely untrue. With a new face in the governor's mansion, the state quickly settled the case by promising to fulfill its financial commitments and thereby avoided paying fines to the SEC. Well and good. But this is just the tip of a big iceberg. State pension funds are mostly woefully unfunded, and neither the public nor current and future retirees truly grasp the scope of impending insolvency.

Extreme extravagance

Think back to your high school—the maple-wood flooring, fine art murals, expansive manicured grounds, glass-ceiled atrium, state-of-the-art swimming pool, orchestra-pit auditorium…Doesn't sound familiar? You must not have attended a "Taj Mahal," a group of 100 or so public schools that cost more than $100 million to build. The newest member of this exclusive club is the $578 million Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex, due to open in Los Angeles this fall. It breaks the record for the most expensive public school ever, surpassing the $235 million whopper in New York City and the $185 million doozer in Brunswick, New Jersey. To be fair, some of the cost went to historical preservation, as RFK's main building will inhabit the converted Ambassador Hotel, site of RFK's assassination in 1968. And the industrial-style schools of the 1970s could surely use with some sprucing up. But nearly $600 million for 4,200 students in a 700,000 district—in a state that's $20 billion in the hole—and counting—on education? Now that's rich.

Short Reviews

The Condition of College and Career Readiness
By Kathleen Porter-Magee

This analysis of the 2010 results from ACT's college admissions assessment reveals the proportion of assessed students who are prepared for college-level work in reading, English, math, and science. (That means having at least a 50 percent chance of obtaining a B or higher in a first-year credit-bearing college course, or a 75 percent chance of getting a C.) As in earlier years, the findings are distressing: Fewer than a quarter of students met these college-readiness benchmarks in all four subjects, while 28 percent didn't meet a single benchmark, and an additional 15 percent met only one. On the up side, the report did reveal a strong correlation between taking a core liberal arts curriculum in high school—four years of English and three years each of mathematics, science, and social studies— and meeting the benchmarks. Students who took additional courses beyond that core were even likelier to attain the benchmark scores. These data underscore the fact that all students need a rigorous, content-rich curriculum that is grounded in high standards—and the fact that we have a long way to go before all of them are truly "college and career ready."

Yes We Can: The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males
By Kyle Kennedy

What if, instead of our current high-school graduation rate of 71 percent, the U.S. actually faced a rate of 47 percent? According to this report, that's the situation for black males. In more than a few places, more black males enter prison than graduate from high school. In bottom-of-the-barrel New York State, their graduation rate is 25 percent. The report lays the blame on numerous doorsteps: Black males are punished more severely for the same infractions and more likely to be misclassified as needing special education. But it doesn't have to be this way. The report illustrates with Newark, where due to a large influx of Abbott dollars, the graduation rate gap between white and black boys has closed significantly since 2001-02. The report implies that more money is what makes the difference, yet more resources, badly used, would hardly solve the problem. Still, this report reveals documents a large problem and reminds us of an important challenge for education policy and practice, with implications, of course, that go far beyond education.

From The Web

The Education Gadfly Show Podcast: Windsurfing was so 2004

This week, Mike and Rick discuss Race to the Top's round 2 winners, Fordham's latest report on cities' education "reform-friendliness," and the sensational LA Times story on value-added data. Then Amber gives us the scoop on the ACT's latest stats and Rate that Reform picks academics over aesthetics.

Flypaper's Finest: EduJobs: Brother, Can You Spare a Million?
By Peter Meyer

So, my tiny school district (1,950 students, $43 million budget) just got word that we will be getting over $580,000 from the Education Jobs Fund (Ed Jobs) program (otherwise known as Public Law No. 111-226), passed just a couple weeks ago. (See here and here.) There's a scramble now for a special meeting of the Board to figure out how we're going to spend the dough. I'm not sure it's worth the effort. This money is more like a time machine: Turn the clock back by $580,000…

Flypaper's Finest: Attracting education reform: Worth the bother
By Stafford Palmieri

Is there more to school reform than student achievement? Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso would say no. (And echoing him is Education Sector's Rob Manwaring.) Responding to the latest Fordham report, America's Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform and Baltimore's subsequent grade of C and rank of 17 (of 26 cities), he queries: "If outcomes aren't part of the reform story, then why bother?" It's a good question, from a great superintendent, but misguided…

Gadfly Studios: Which American cities are reform-friendly?

In this short video, Mike interviews AEI's Rick Hess about Fordham's new report: America's Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform. What was the study's underlying question? And what did we find? Rick explains.

Extras

Briefly Noted: Western education goes east

• D.C. children will be eating healthier and exercising more this fall in accordance with the D.C. Healthier Schools Act. Unfortunately, charter schools, which often operate in transformed industrial spaces that lack gyms and cafeterias, are struggling to comply. But are charter students lucky to avoid the new unappetizing, albeit healthy, fare?
• South Korean parents want a Western education…in the East. Solution: American, Canadian, and British schools are opening campuses in the new Jeju Global Education City in Seogwipo, South Korea. The list includes one name close to home: St. Albans School for boys in Northwest Washington, D.C.
• The American Council for Trustees and Alumni is clear: An Ivy League name is not enough if you don't require a core liberal arts curriculum. Those receiving Fs? Berkeley, Brown, and Yale, among others.

Announcement: A "common core" curriculum

As explained in our review of state standards and the Common Core, standards are just the "cookbook" not the "dish." Enter Common Core (no relation to the standards), which has gone grocery shopping and spent some prep time in the kitchen. The result: a set of K-12 English language arts curriculum maps aligned with the new common standards. These are well worth your perusal.

Announcement: Fordham seeks media guru

Our talented Laura Pohl is off to new adventures, leaving sizable shoes to fill. Are you internet, audio, and video savvy? Interested in translating the complex issues of education policy into a variety of new formats? Working with a dynamic, education-reform team? Then this position might be for you.

Announcement: Strategically manage data

Harvard's Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) is looking for a Senior Research Manager for its Strategic Data Project (SDP). This individual would help develop SDP's analytic tools, report design, and project strategy. Do you love to crunch numbers but have great management skills, too? Find more information here.