The welcome earthquake
A new era of public education?
Opinion | Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Cuomo to unions�Be nice, or else!
The death and life of the great American teachers union
News Analysis | Peter Meyer

Re-VAMp the system
The case against making teacher ratings public
News Analysis

ED bullies schools over bullying
Two wrongs don�t make a right
News Analysis

Efficacy of Schoolwide Programs to Promote Social and Character Development and Reduce Problem Behavior in Elementary School Children
Review | Amber Winkler

Sounding the Alarm: A Wakeup Call with Directions
We don�t need innovation, but problem-solving
Review | Janie Scull

International Benchmarking: State Education Performance Standards
State cut scores still don’t make the cut
Review | Daniela Fairchild

Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness: How Teacher Performance Assessments Can Measure and Improve Teaching
Wrong methods for the right ideas
Review | Chris Irvine

Rick the pumpkin
Who needs character ed when we have drug-sniffing dogs?
Education Gadfly Show Podcast | Hosts: Mike Petrilli and Rick Hess

Embrace the mess
For the millionth time: there is no silver bullet
Flypaper's Finest | October 26, 2010 | Kathleen Porter-Magee

Columbus City Schools should be ashamed
They won�t work with high-performing charters
Flypaper's Finest | October 26, 2010 | Jamie Davies O'Leary

Checker contra the world!
School bus safety and America�s Most Wanted
Briefly Noted

Step right up, step right up
Fordham seeks winter and spring interns
Announcement

School leadership matters
Join us November 10 for a discussion on principal preparation
Announcement

Civil rights and education reform
Benjamin Jealous explains the NAACP�s take on school reform, sponsored by AEI
Announcement

Get schooled
University of Arkansas� Ph.D. program in Education Reform now accepting applications
Announcement

Opinion and News Analysis

Opinion: The welcome earthquake
By Chester E. Finn, Jr.

If a recent spate of Wall Street Journal articles is any clue, a week before the election we could be sitting on a tectonic fault with the potential to turn into an education earthquake—and that might actually be a blessing. It has to do with teachers, their unions, and U.S. politics—all of which would benefit from some profound movement.

Writing in the Journal on October 19, Eric Hanushek declared that “there is no ‘war on teachers.’” Three days later, a pair of Journal reporters displayed the National Education Association as the fifth biggest contributor to 2010 election races. And on the same day, in a piece headed “Gov. Christie’s Ultimate Test,” reporter Monica Langley described the Garden State’s feisty chief executive as “well aware that the fate of his fight with the teachers union could determine his own.”

All three are true. Hanushek’s key insight is that “we are seeing not a war on teachers, but a war on the blunt and detrimental policies of teachers unions,” especially when it come to purging classroom ranks of a smallish number of chronically weak instructors.

The reporters are right, too. The campaign-finance data show that both national teacher unions and their affiliates rank among the largest contributors—nearly always to Democratic campaigns at both national and state levels. This has been true for at least two decades and is true again this year. Nor do such dollar tallies count the many phone banks, door bell ringings, backpack enclosures, and other “in kind” offerings they supply to chosen candidates and preferred parties.

As for Governor Christie, he seems to understand that his titanic battle with the New Jersey Education Association—centering on public-education spending, but bearing many policy ramifications—may well be a fight to the death. Yet he appears undeterred. As Andy Rotherham noted in the article, Christie is “on to something big—that the huge cost for public schools is no longer sustainable.” And as both sides surely recognize, this state-level tussle is but one front in a nationwide war between taxpayers and teacher unions. (In the same article, Rick Hess termed New Jersey “the canary in the coal mine.”)

These three examples illumine the convergence of four big developments that could shake the bedrock of education policy and possibly of American politics. From the teacher union standpoint, this is seismic activity to be feared. From a reform perspective, however, it’s a much-needed disruption of the status quo.

* The country has come to understand the wide range of teacher quality and its crucial link to school effectiveness and student achievement, thanks in part to research ranging from Hanushek back to Bill Sanders’ early work in Tennessee. Big-name players like Barack Obama and Arne Duncan—as well as a handful of courageous superintendents (e.g. Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Terry Grier)—have picked up on this, and federal and foundation investments have eased their way. Combine this with the huge recent increase in longitudinal student-achievement data, and suddenly it’s no longer taboo—or impossible—to evaluate instructors based on the education value they add to their pupils or to do something about those who perform dismally. Tenure and seniority are no longer sacred, either, and the unions no longer get much traction with their declaration that it’s inherently unfair to gauge teacher performance on the basis of student learning. (It’s not unfair. It’s just difficult to do well!) If you don’t believe that other influential Democrats favor this form of evaluation, check out the Title I bill recently introduced by Reps. Jared Polis and Susan Davis.

*Economic hard times are posing major challenges to state and local treasuries, of which huge fractions consist of public education, within which 75 to 80 percent of the money typically goes into salaries and benefits, mostly for teachers. Barring more big federal bailouts—which this year’s election would seem to make ever less likely—school budgets are going to be strapped for years to come and cost-cutting, together with eking greater value out of the remaining dollars, is going to occupy the education-policy center ring. For most districts, this will force a rethinking of everything from salaries to instructional delivery. Online learning and “hybrid” schools are beginning to come into their own, for both quality and economic reasons, and America may finally face up to the fact that over the past half century we have reduced the student/teacher ratio from twenty-seven-to-one to fourteen-to-one with no matching gains in achievement.

* Recession, unemployment, and the Tea Party have fueled an intensifying resentment of the privileged status of public employees, their job security, their (relatively) generous pay, and their lavish but sorely underfunded benefits, which threaten to place an unsustainable burden on future generations of taxpayers. This one goes far beyond teachers—and all the public-employee unions know it (and so are pouring money into next week’s election). If Republicans do make major gains in Congress and the statehouses on Tuesday, the public sector may well lose some of its privileges. If Andrew Cuomo is serious, this might happen at the hands of Democrats, too.

* We’re witnessing a gradual but nontrivial change in public perceptions of teacher unions and their power over the system. Whether it’s Waiting for ‘Superman’ and other recent films, Oprah, NBC’s Education Nation, the L.A. Times’s publication of individual teacher data (and signs that something similar will soon happen in New York), or the emergence of a cadre of bona fide Democratic education reformers, tremors can be felt. The unions (and other established education interests) are scrambling to re-establish their once-solid footing by contradictorily pushing back against reform while trying to position themselves as champions of it (think Randi Weingarten).

News Analysis: Cuomo to unions—Be nice, or else!?
By Peter Meyer

Though the headline had it that New York State gubernatorial favorite Andrew Cuomo “Vows Offensive Against Labor Unions,” what he actually told the New York Times this week was much gentler. On the other hand, despite the power of the Empire State’s unions, Cuomo is surely not running as an old-fashioned tax-and-spend Democrat. In a 90-minute interview, he “for the first time laid out his strategy to isolate, destabilize, and ultimately defeat the tangle of entrenched interests that has left state government bankrupt, infamously dysfunctional, and mired in scandal.”

Historic budget deficits and angry, tax-weary citizens have a way, like guillotines, of focusing the mind and so the presumptive governor is already talking about “how to use a crisis.” This could prove to be an opportunity for Empire State education reformers. Cuomo says he will continue to tinker with the education aid formula—something begun in earnest by Republican George Pataki—and send more money to poorer districts. OK. But he also hints that he would cut overall spending in areas like education while taking a page from the Obama/Duncan play book and creating “pools of bonus money” (the Times’ phrase) that could be “won…in public competitions.” 

Given the fiscal condition in which New York finds itself, Cuomo has little choice but to talk tough about the budget, which means talking tough about labor. All of this, of course, is no music to the ears of the 66,000 strong New York State United Teachers. In August, NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi told the Albany Times Union that “you know, he’s been a strong supporter of education, of labor and social justice in the past, but when we look at his positions now—especially on issues such as tax caps, constitutional convention and the size of the public work force—we have serious issues.” 

While this little dance continues (NYSUT surely wouldn’t support GOP challenger, Carl “I’ll take you out, buddy” Paladino), the state’s education reformers have been working the politics of the education issue. When Cuomo wanted to meet members of the hedge fund crowd, seeking donors for his campaign, he was consistently pointed to Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform. With these connections, the budget ax falling, new Race to the Top funding for change, and a progressive Education Commissioner and Regents Chairman, it may be a perfect storm for reform.

This piece originally appeared (in a slightly different form) on Fordham’s blog, Flypaper.

News Analysis: Re-VAMp the system

It’s not just a Left Coast thing. The hub-bub caused in Los Angeles when the LA Times disseminated individual teacher ratings is now raging in the Big Apple, as several new organizations have sought similar information on New York City instructors. NYC’s Department of Education says the public has a right to view these value-added ratings for 12,000 of the city’s elementary- and middle-school math and ELA teachers. And people we respect, like Eric Hanushek, agree. The United Federation of Teachers, not surprisingly, sued to block release of such information. A state Supreme Court hearing is scheduled for the week of Thanksgiving. This issue is a tough one, but here’s our bottom line: such individual information is exceptionally valuable for teachers, principals, and parents, but not much good for anyone else. School and district leaders should see and use value-added rankings when making decisions about staffing. And parents should have the right to know how effective their own children’s teachers are—as well as the teacher down the hall. The public surely deserves aggregate data on teacher effectiveness at the building level and above. But releasing ratings of Ms. Jones and Mr. Smith to the media is inviting unnecessary trouble. We don’t say this often, but the unions are partly right on this one.

News Analysis: ED bullies schools over bullying

A week before the mid-term elections, Arne Duncan and his team have taken a courageous stand: they’re against bullying children. “Bullying is a problem that shouldn’t exist,” the Secretary said without a hint of irony when announcing a new initiative to define anti-gay bullying as a civil rights violation. Nobody has anything good to say about schoolyard bullying and the news that several gay teenagers committed suicide after relentless teasing and taunting is tragic. But what on earth do Duncan et al. think they can do about this via civil rights enforcement? OK, they’ll provide “guidance” and conduct “site visits” and work with local districts on “improvement plans” and probably threaten to withhold federal dollars. But here’s a prediction: all of that rigmarole will yield very little progress on the anti-bullying front. It will, however, reinforce the compliance mentality of school officials. (Forget student achievement; better make sure those anti-bullying plans are up to date lest the investigators appear!) Duncan talks a good game about federal education policy being “tight-loose” (forceful about results, laid back about means) but we’re still waiting to see signs of loose.

Short Reviews

Review: Efficacy of Schoolwide Programs to Promote Social and Character Development and Reduce Problem Behavior in Elementary School Children
By Amber Winkler

Are schools responsible for students’ character development as well as their cognitive achievement? Is this best done via discrete “character development” programs or by creating an overall school culture that seamlessly fosters good behavior and sound values along with academics? In this new study, analysts examined the impact of seven popular character-education programs (with catchy titles like “Love in a Big World” and “Positive Action”). They randomly assigned eighty-four schools in six states to receive one of the school-based programs or to continue business as usual. More than 6,000 students in third grade were followed to the end of fifth grade, during which various outcomes were measured. But the bottom line of this 700-page evaluation is that “on average, the seven programs did not improve students’ social and emotional competence, behavior, academic achievement, and student and teacher perceptions of school climate.” Analysis of individual programs proved no more encouraging, nor did analysis of subgroups. In fact, some of the few statistically significant outcomes that did appear indicated detrimental impacts on students, such as lowering their engagement with learning and their feelings of safety. The analysts engage in much hypothesizing about these lackluster findings. Still and all, this evaluation, by no means exhaustive, yet still rigorous, should prompt questions about the purpose of “character education” and whether specialized programs of this sort are the best way to instill responsibility and ethical decision-making in children.

Review: Sounding the Alarm: A Wakeup Call with Directions
By Janie Scull

Part of the “Refocus Wisconsin” project commissioned by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, this issue paper is a smack in the face to the standard education regime far beyond the Badger State. After depicting the discouraging state of Wisconsin education, AEI’s Rick Hess and Olivia Meeks point to seven areas in need of improvement: teacher quality, curriculum, accountability implementation, excellence recognition, discipline and safety, charter school expansion, and interventions in low-performing schools. They then offer three feather-ruffling suggestions meant to address the structural barriers that impede dramatic leaps in K-12 productivity.  First, the “Gold Star Teachers” initiative would allow high-performing teachers to voluntarily take on additional students in exchange for greater compensation. This would give more students access to great teaching while reducing personnel costs. The second recommendation would create a bonded system of performance guarantees for charter operators. (Operators that failed to meet agreed-upon performance goals would owe considerable money back to districts.)  This would reduce district risk and encourage collaboration with outside operators. Finally, the authors propose “education spending accounts” that would allocate a chunk of per-pupil funds directly to parents to spend at their discretion—on tutoring, language classes, or other electives. The rationale: by introducing choice into the system, such accounts would stimulate healthy price competition and reduce the burden on districts to meet children’s varying educational needs. Though each comes with its own implementation challenges, all three suggestions are concrete enough to be feasible and amount to a fresh breeze through current, stale solutions.

Review: International Benchmarking: State Education Performance Standards
By Daniela Fairchild

AIR’s Gary Phillips has previously shown how U.S. states compare with countries around the world in math and science achievement—generally not well at all. In this new analysis, using NAEP, TIMSS, and PIRLS data, he demonstrates how widely discrepant are the academic expectations of these jurisdictions. In fact, for math, the expectations gap between states, at a whopping four grade-levels, is double the nation’s black-white achievement gap. For Fordham regulars, this story is old hat—our 2007 study, The Proficiency Illusion, also found state cut scores to vary greatly—and other research has shown most of them to be much lower than NAEP’s “proficiency” cut-off. But Phillips also goes on to suggest a new “benchmark method” of standard setting (which, he hints, could be used for determining the cut scores on new Common Core assessments). This method links state-based performance-level descriptors to those for international assessments, assuring both national and international comparability of state proficiency levels. In an America seeking to regain its international edge, this benchmarking idea is a good first step.

Review: Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness: How Teacher Performance Assessments Can Measure and Improve Teaching
By Chris Irvine

Linda Darling-Hammond’s new paper hands the reader many good notions but few concrete recommendations. She explains the need for teacher assessments but bemoans those in use in America today. As she states, “current measures for evaluating teachers are not often linked to their capacity to teach.” Going forward, while she claims to favor value-added teacher assessments, she continues to push for qualitative methods (e.g., portfolio reviews and classroom observations) to determine teacher effectiveness—especially for beginner teachers. For those new to the classroom, she recommends development of a national performance assessment modeled after the National Board Teacher Certification program, and she also wants to follow these teachers over time. Through this early assessment and longitudinal tracking, Darling-Hammond argues, quality and consistency of data will be enhanced, allowing districts and school leaders to make better informed staffing decisions. While we agree that the teacher evaluation system needs an overhaul, we’re not convinced that Darling-Hammond’s approach is the way to do it.

From The Web

The Education Gadfly Show Podcast: Rick the pumpkin

Mike and Rick answer life’s mysteries as they pertain to the election, OCR overreach, and publically-available teacher ratings. And if that’s not enough, Amber questions character education and Chris brings in the dogs.

Flypaper's Finest: Embrace the mess
By Kathleen Porter-Magee

...In my own education circles here in Connecticut, I once heard someone describe the results achieved by places like Achievement First and KIPP as the education equivalent of discovering penicillin—that these schools had discovered what works, and all we had to do now was implement it across the country and weren’t we all being so silly and selfish to keep this magic elixir from students everywhere?...

Flypaper's Finest: Columbus City Schools should be ashamed
By Jamie Davies O’Leary

As an authorizer of two charter schools in Columbus, we’ve heard our fair share of stories about the district not being very cooperative with them (in the way of busing, facilities, etc.). The Columbus Dispatch ran an op-ed by the vice president of the Columbus Board of Education about the latest egregious example of the district undermining high-performing charter schools, one that involved Fordham-authorized Columbus Collegiate Academy—the highest performing middle school in Columbus and the second best urban charter middle school in the entire state. If you care about educational opportunities for poor kids (94 percent of CCA’s students), this will make your blood boil....

Extras

Briefly Noted: Checker contra the world!

• Checker squares off against the universal Pre-K goliath in November’s Phi Delta Kappan.
• What do Eli Broad, Arne Duncan, Rick Hess, and Checker Finn have in common? Well, they all appear on Fenwick English’s list of the “Ten Most Wanted Enemies of American Public Education’s School Leadership.”
• Zero tolerance for the older demographic: a county prosecutor in Michigan is proposing jail time for guardians of low-performing kids who miss parent-teacher conferences.
• Researchers in Alabama report school buses are safe enough without seat belts (they’re six times safer than driving with momma to school)—and the security devises are too expensive anyway.

Announcement: Step right up, step right up

Want to work with some of the best and brightest in education reform—and engage in some nifty research to boot? Fordham is now accepting winter/spring intern applications for our Washington, D.C. office. Learn the specifics and apply here.

Announcement: School leadership matters

Teachers matter, yes. But, what about principals? Join Fordham, the Rainwater Charitable Foundation, and the Center for American Progress on November 10 from 10:00­­ to 11:30 AM for a discussion on principal preparation, and release of the Rainwater Leadership Alliance’s newest report on the issue. Learn more or RSVP here.

Announcement: Civil rights and education reform

Education has oft been dubbed “the civil rights struggle of our generation” but many critics (including Rod Paige) have faulted U.S. civil rights leadership for their indifference to it. Wonder where the NAACP stands on issues like merit pay and charter schools? Head to AEI’s November 4 event featuring keynote speaker Benjamin Jealous from 4:00 to 5:30 PM to find out. Register for the event here.

Announcement: Get schooled

Can’t get enough of Jay Greene? The University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform is now accepting applications for its 2011 Education Policy Ph.D. cohort. Head over to the department’s website for more information on how to apply.