OK PINOCCHIO. Last week, Newswire sparked a mini-debate on what the sequester really means for education. But as CER president Jeanne Allen points out in today’s National Journal, “… that among all of these thousands of entities that spend and receive federal money, no one seems to know or to be even talking about how the almighty federal dollar flows.” The reality that CER continues to point out, is that most of the money has already been collected by states and districts. Thankfully we’re not alone in holding the Administration accountable for irresponsible rhetoric about a frenzy of “pink slips.” In fact, the US Department of Education has yet to produce any district-level evidence of lay-offs, according to the Wall Street Journal.

COVER UP. The Worcester County Teachers Association in Maryland has been making headlines as news broke of their botched attempt to cover-up the fact that Denise Inez Owens, the union’s former treasurer embezzled over $430,000 of teacher dues to fund her gambling addiction. In 2009 when the MSEA (state affiliate of the NEA) learned of the crime, they merely forced Owens to resign. We know these union contracts are ironclad, but come on, they sent a known-criminal back to teaching in a middle school classroom! Finally justice has been served, but where’s the accountability and “common good” that the union leadership supposedly values?

EXPANDING CHOICE. In a press conference last week Alabama Governor Robert Bentley applauded the legislature for sending an individual and corporate tax credit bill to his desk, “I truly believe this is historic education reform and it will benefit students and families across Alabama regardless of their income and regardless of where they live. I’m so proud we have done this for the children of this state and especially the children who are in failing school systems and had no way out. Now, they have a way out.” We couldn’t agree more Governor Bentley; now get back to the drawing board to finally bring charters to your state. There must be something in the water because in his 2013 Budget Address last week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie proposed a $2 million pilot opportunity scholarship program for low-income students in failing schools. A small plan, but at least it’s a start.

ON CHARTERS. Charter schools will be all the buzz in Tennessee and Mississippi state houses today. The Volunteer state’s House Education Committee will take up HB 702, a very modest proposal that would allow the state board of education to authorize charter schools on an appeal. Currently only local school boards and the Achievement School District can authorize charter schools. Charter school leaders and parents are rallying in Nashville in support of the proposal.

Today, Mississippi lawmakers are poised to act on legislation expanding charter schools in the state, trying to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of bills. Some issues include: whether school boards in districts with “C’’ ratings will be able to veto charter schools, whether students will be able to cross district lines to attend charter schools elsewhere, whether schools will be able to join the state pension system, and whether for-profit companies will be allowed to run charter schools.

VIRTUAL VINDICATION. Yesterday, the lead plaintiff in a class action securities lawsuit against K12 Inc. voluntarily and permanently dismissed their claims made about K12-managed schools, helping to drown out the often-unsubstantiated charges similarly made by critics and echoed repeatedly by the media. With a bit of luck, the dismissal of these claims will help put to rest these charges and serve as a sort of virtual vindication.

If nothing else, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has made waves. In the last four years, he has brought about incredible changes in education policy, no thanks to Congress. That’s a point that education writer Richard Colvin (a contributor to this blog) makes in a recent column in Kappan magazine. “The breakdown of the legislative process hasn’t prevented the U.S. Department of Education from pursuing what may well be one of the most far-reaching education reform agendas ever,” Colvin writes. Duncan shepherded $4 billion for Race to the Top competitive grants and created No Child Left Behind waiver program for states. Let’s not forget also that the Common Core State standards are now…well…common.

This has not made everyone happy, particularly conservatives who don’t want to see new education policies put in place by fiat. Fordham Institute Executive Vice President Mike Petrilli (whose boss Chester Finn is also a contributor on this blog) argued in reaction to Colvin’s article that the White House could have pushed for legislation instead of the NCLB waivers, even if it didn’t like where Congress was going. “Both the Senate and House passed reauthorization bills out of their respective committees, and had the administration wanted to get them across the finish line, it could have pushed for it, and I think achieved it,” Petrelli said in an e-mail. Had that happened, NCLB would have been more or less dead. But it would have been a sound legislative process.

It is debatable whether Congress would have been able to pass any bill reauthorizing the complex elementary and secondary education system. It is also worth asking whether the administration did the responsible thing in responding to the gridlock, which had real consequences for states, with its “We Can’t Wait” waiver program. But it is beyond question that everyone involved in the debate has been shocked at how difficult it is to accomplish anything. Everyone involved in the talks agrees with 90 percent of the changes that are on the table. Colvin quotes one Capitol Hill aide who quit out of frustration. I have met staffers who say that Congress has regressed more than 10 years in its thinking on education.

In spite of all this, Duncan broke through these barriers and instituted programs that education researchers will be studying for the next decade. If President Obama wins reelection, Duncan will stick around, but his impact probably won’t be as large as he continues the programs he started. He won’t have $48.6 billion in economic stimulus money to play with, and he will instead have to focus on where he can cut to meet budget constraints.

It doesn’t matter because Duncan has already made his mark.

What lessons can we learn from the Education Department under Arne Duncan? What is his legacy? How important is the waiver program in considering next steps for NCLB–i.e., assessments, testing, disaggregation? How important is Race to the Top in encouraging state innovations? Are there other, better ways that an agency can deal with an intransigent Congress? What did Arne do for us in Obama’s first term?

 
Response: We Need More Than Charm
by Jeanne Allen
National Journal
November 1, 2012

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is engaging personally and professionally. As a superintendent, he honed his communication skills, so whether he was talking to a teacher, the union president or a parent, they all equally think he’s on their side and committed to doing the right thing. He can shoot hoops with anyone, on or off the court. And he’s received praise far and wide for being so, well, so good and so reform-minded. But having listened and watched him carefully now for four years, I’m seeing a pattern. It’s the pattern of a disciplined player that knows how to get in the game, stay competitive, and never look like he’s going to miss.

Duncan’s basic formula is this: Speak to a group and mention all the things you know they are interested in; quality, charters, collaboration, we have to fix our schools, we can make them better, investment, accountability, choice, parents, engagement…. And in the process, we confuse activity with action, and policymaking with reform.

Duncan scores lots of points for reminding the nation that we have a problem and that there are many ways to solve the problem. A+ on that. And he’s tenacious in going places, meeting with people, speaking to people — keeping the issue alive. Great moves, all of it. But when it comes to his efforts resulting in substantive change that impacts student achievement, I’m not seeing any. In fact, Duncan has created a perverse incentive system where states and districts now know that in order to get money, all they have to do is promise to play ball for whatever policy prescription is on the table. Common core, teacher evaluation, turn-arounds/turn-overs/collaborative-reinvestment-engagement schemes, charter schools (though it need not matter what kind of policy one is recommending and whether it works)… The average state or local grant writer knows that once the money comes, they can have the meetings, convene stakeholders, make plans and try to do what they said they’d do, and whether or how quickly new processes and plans and goals and outcomes are sketched, they’ll keep getting paid for students based on archaic formulas that have little to do with whether children are learning.

Meanwhile, the states that have accomplished the most with reform are those where teacher tenure was significantly reformed or removed, where educators have more flexibility, where schools are turned over without account for union collaboration and where schools are scored and parents have choices. Our top ten states for Parent Power provide a key to why some states are doing better than others, if you need more context. It’s no secret why Indiana comes out number 1.

To be fair, Education Secretary Duncan’s positive, affable rhetoric and embrace of change has helped keep education hot amidst a sea of other important issues, and has allowed more Democrats to embrace changes they may have never have endorsed if it were only the Rs who were in power. He’s used the Bully Pulpit well, and that’s a clear score. But inside and outside the Ed Department, Duncan has indeed confused caused many to think they’ve already achieved significant gains because of the policies they’ve embraced. It all sounds the same, and whether or not one did performance evaluations right doesn’t matter as long as they did them, period. That means they’ll probably not push more on that, or closing failing schools, or taking on the unions, or charters or tenure, or adopt new innovations like widespread online learning or real school choice! They can claim credit and move on to another issue, which tends to be the attitude of a lawmaker not particularly engaged in education reform once they’ve done something, anything others praise. And that, I’m afraid, may be the extent of the legacy Arne Duncan leaves.

“Unfortunately, I had not actually sat down and read the research on school choice and achievement for myself,” Obama admitted during a press conference this morning. “I trusted the counsel of those who supposedly had. I can admit when I am wrong, and in this case, I see that offering options to parents is not only changing lives, but, on a large scale, can lift our entire school system to new heights. That’s exactly what this White House is all about.”

Joined at the podium by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the President outlined their proposal to launch a competition that, like its predecessor ‘Race to the Top’, asks states to collaborate with stakeholders to win gobs of cash. Only, this time, according to Duncan, “the stakeholders will not be teachers unions and school boards, but parents and students. We screwed up last time and relied on the input of those we thought had the best interests of kids in mind. We wanted urgency. What we got was a pile of promises that have not only been sitting in limbo for over a year, but in some cases abandoned entirely.”

Duncan also revealed that no outside consultancy would be accepted to boost the chances states have to win. “For ‘Race to the Top’, my staff was reading the same application over and over again. Only the state names changed.”

To prove his point, he brought up the winning applications of Maryland and Hawaii. “Honestly, we were just flipping coins at the end,” he said.

Details of the plan are still being put in place, but Obama clearly planted his Administration’s flag in the school choice camp today, going so far as to express admiration for state leaders such as Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Chris Christie of New Jersey and Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania.

“Those guys have been so right on this issue for so long, and I just didn’t see it. I’m trying to put a Beer Summit together between them, Eleanor Holmes Norton, George Miller and the NEA to get the truth about school choice out there.”

Also in the news, today is April 1st.

Perhaps it’s not so unusual that the same person who fought to get a waiver from NCLB’s tutoring requirement is the same person who is pushing a fast track for making the bill’s requirements more flexible. When some of Arne Duncan’s Chicago schools were failing kids, he asked then Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings for a waiver from the requirement that students be permitted to leave and take their tutoring money elsewhere. Arne Duncan thought he could do tutoring better than the private sector, so he sought to deliver tutoring rather than send the money out of house. There’s no data on whether it worked, and some in Chicago say not much changed during that period of time following NCLB, other than a heightened awareness of the problem and a tenacity by Duncan to pursue some modest, external reforms (charters, some contracting). Once a school superintendent, always a school superintendent. And while Duncan is not the issue, his brand of reform puts Superintendents and school boards in the driver’s seat. Problem is, last time they drove that car, it kept getting banged up.

But it was NCLB’s teeth – the threat of loss of money or worse – that got people motivated. The hard, fast consequences of accountability, and the spotlight on data, however challenged by differing vantage points, prevented the country from hiding the shameful state of education in our schools, from the world or ourselves…

Read the entire post HERE.

(*Image courtesy of yellowcloud)

Unpopular positions? Tough love? The teachers unions want you to believe they are being punished by the president’s policies. It makes for great copy and provides cover for both the unions and the Education Department as they manipulate Capitol Hill for a second multi-billion dollar bailout. But the truth is, it’s all in the family.

The administration’s education policy, including the “Race to the Top” initiative, has been easy on unions and their members. States have received money for saying they are going to factor performance into evaluations, when in reality to make meaningful performance pay work, you must either require performance to trump local union contract provisions or change the contract itself. Additionally, districts have been paid money for saying they will turn around failing schools. No one in the status quo is hurting or being forced to change very much because of what the president is saying. The talk is good and strengthens reformers’ hands, but the teachers unions won’t feel any discomfort until someone or something cuts into the lock they have on how schools operate and how policy is crafted.

Read the entire post over at The Arena…

First, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) tag teamed behind Education Stimulus 2.0 in a hearing on the ED budget, claiming that another $23 billion is “absolutely necessary” to save up to 300,000 teacher jobs, proving that everyday is Christmas for the unions (I guess last year’s $100 billion just wasn’t enough).

Then the NEA asked us to remember the children.

Tons of federal money + jobs + children + tears + zero historical context = Media Tsunami

Former CER colleague Neal McCluskey, however, actually grabs the data and puts it all into perspective:

For one thing, in 2007-08 public schools employed more than 6.2 million people; even the 300,000 figure is tiny compared to that huge number.

More importantly, preceding our schools’ few recent years of financial woe were decades of decadent plenty. According to inflation-adjusted federal data, in 1970-71 Americans spent $5,593 per public-school student. By 2006-07 we were spending $12,463 – a whopping 123 percent increase that bought lots of teachers, administrators, and other shiny things!

And, he points out, it hasn’t bought the student achievement demanded or intended.

• “While a little nerve-wracking for us around the White House, November elections by the people of New Jersey and Virginia solidified what will be an exciting opportunity for those states to break from the status quo and embrace the education reforms of their new governors and the incredibly bold leaders they have chosen to steer schools in their states. At the very least, McDonnell has kept Gerard so busy he hasn’t been able to bother me about DC scholarships.”

• “Frankly, my Education Secretary and I were disappointed with the results of special legislative sessions and bill proposals regarding charter schools. Our crack public affairs team spun things so R2TT would come out smelling like a rose, but, come on. Caps lifted when states weren’t even near them, Louisiana? Strengthening collective bargaining, Illinois? And two little guys out of New England – I’m talking to you Rhode Island and Connecticut – giving charter schools money you had already promised then taken away? Really? I hope that wasn’t used to support your applications. We went to Harvard, you know.”

• “The one real win in R2TT goes on the scoreboard for teachers. Check this out. In addition to $100 billion dollars to keep them employed through the stimulus, we figured out a way to take it a step further with R2TT and teacher evaluation methodology. You could drive a truck through the holes in state proposals regarding teachers. You should see some of the emails Arne sends me late at night with examples cut straight from the applications. It’s all I can do to keep from falling out of bed. I can’t wait for round two.”

• “I won’t be using a teleprompter this evening.”

The first real Odd Couples of education led some of the nation’s most fundamental shifts in education, shifts that had once been considered radical.  Looking back through the past sixteen years, it’s clear that while education reform has changed dramatically, broad, mainstream support for bold changes in education existed then, just as they do now.  It was just much less hip to say so.

Then, policymakers who led the fight for charter schools, merit pay (as it was called in those days), vouchers and the like were accused of being part of the vast right wing conspiracy and generally anti-public education, despite the fact that such nomenclature didn’t fit then, just as it does not now. CER’s first work celebrated legislators like Pennsylvania Democrat Dwight Evans, who joined hands with Republican Tom Ridge to pass that state’s charter bill.  Miami Urban League head T. Willard Fair teamed up with Governor Jeb Bush to bring vouchers to Florida, following in the steps of Representative Polly Williams, a former Black Panther, in league with conservative Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson.

These were the first, real Odd Couples of the modern education reform movement.  They were bold, tenacious, and courageous to cross party lines, incur the wrath of unions together and suffer all sorts of education establishment slurs.

Back then, school reformers were on a roll, enacting 22 of the 24 strongest charter laws in the country in just six years between 1992 and 1998. This was after numerous governors’ summits and pre-NCLB.  Only one more strong law would get enacted subsequently and several very mediocre charter laws have dotted the landscape since, with attempts to strengthen them marginal at best and modest by comparison, thinking small strides are better than big ones.

Turns out that’s not the case with anything we need to do to fix schools. So, on the eve of newest Odd Couple’s road show aiming to pick up where the old one’s left off, it’s time to do some honest recapping of history, in the hopes that what was good gets copied, and that lessons in futility do not.

With the theme of making education more competitive in the future, and a plea to put “aside partisanship and ideology,” Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton will flank Secretary Duncan at the first of several city tours.  Will they allow a real discussion of that city’s charter schools, the vast majority of which data show are succeeding beyond conventional public school achievement?

Wanna talk about closing the gap even more? How about doing something about that city’s union and performance pay?  Think bad schools should be closed? Why not consider giving the poorest children the same access to higher performing private schools that previous odd couples endorsed?

But I’m not hopeful.  Not only did Sharpton bring a phalanx of speakers to the May Education Equality Day rally that called charters divisive and argued for more money as the answer to our education woes, he also tried his best to keep former DC City Councilman Kevin Chavous off the dais because of his crusade for choice programs like the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program.  Chavous and President George Bush were yet another odd couple who got the unthinkable done by being courageous and bold.

Gingrich, on the other hand, has never minced words about his distaste for the teachers unions and understands that money is not the answer.  Education Secretary Arne Duncan is somewhere in the middle, probably leaning a bit towards Gingrich if one had to draw a solid line.

So, while they may think they are doing the public a service by bringing Sharpton around with them, they may actually be giving Sharpton cover to look and sound like a reformer, when he’s anything but.  A serious education reform forum would also have far more reformers on the program, not just administrators who pay lip service. Indeed, one highly successful charter leader was almost nixed for potentially being disruptive. That must be what you call a school where student achievement among poor students of color mirrors that of the wealthy suburbs.

We hope the cast tomorrow – and at subsequent Duncan road shows – have not been carefully chosen to avoid “disruption.”  I wonder how any conversation about an industry that leaves 30% of our kids every year without a high school diploma could or should be harmonious.

Meanwhile, here’s to Odd Couples that truly dare to challenge the status quo – and remain productively employed and engaged despite it.

The Department’s sympathy note contained three interesting tidbits:

1) It was dated April 6 – three days after a government evaluation of D.C. OSP showcased the effectiveness of the program. Knowing that no government agency could approve even a small letter without an amazing amount of revision and drafting, the DOE must have chosen not to reveal this (none too small) bit of information in their burial of the report.

2) Further, one sentence in the letter reads: “Enrollment for DCPS begins on April 1, 2009.” First of all, does this hint at the fact that the letter may have been in early drafts prior to April? How long has this plan been in motion? Secondly, this information can’t be helpful to parents. It’s like receiving a 30-day notice after you’ve been evicted – more than a little too late.

3) Co-signed by Jim Shelton (formerly program director of the Education Division at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and East Coast partner of the NewSchools Venture Fund), it is the only official notice we’ve seen of the fact that Duncan has filled the post of Assistant Deputy Secretary for OII. (Thanks for the heads up!)

The irony of the letter’s close would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad:

“We hope this information is helpful and look forward to working with you so that you can make the best choices for your child for the 2009-2010 school year.”

1) Walter Isaacson speaks some truth about NCLB, charter schools, mayoral control and teachers unions, but his argument that deep down Duncan supports the D.C. voucher program coupled with a sunny outlook on the affect $timulus money will have in the classroom raised this viewer’s eyebrows.

2) D.C.’s Mayor Adrian Fenty lays it out for Joe and states unequivocally that real change will come to public schools when principals are given control of a hiring/firing process based on merit. Be sure to watch the Mayor dance around Pat Buchanan’s assertion that what he is endorsing is union busting.

The best note of the morning, however, was hit by Joe when he shook his head in an attempt to understand the BLOB and their efforts to thwart true reform, saying: “It’s like these people are like holdouts, like those Japanese soldiers that kept fighting for 20 years on remote islands. They didn’t realize the world had changed.”