The presidential candidates offered clashing views on education, with Republican Mitt Romney delivering some of his harshest judgments on teacher unions and President Barack Obama defending them.

Mr. Obama attacked Mr. Romney for wanting to cut education spending, while Mr. Romney said it’s wrong to saddle young people with more federal debt. The conflicting views came in separate interviews for NBC’s Education Nation summit, which covered a range of education topics.

“The teachers union has a responsibility to care for the interests of the teachers. And the head of the national teachers’ union said at one point, ‘We don’t care about kids. We care about the teachers.’ That’s their right,” Mr. Romney said.

He was referring to a 2009 speech by the National Education Association’s former general counsel, Bob Chanin, who was making a different point. He wasn’t suggesting that the union doesn’t care about children, but arguing that the NEA is an effective advocate for its point of view “not because we care about children” but because of the union’s political power.

Mr. Obama, in his interview taped over the weekend, said, “I think Gov. Romney and a number of folks try to politicize the issue and do a lot of teacher bashing.”

“When I meet teachers all across the country, they are so devoted, so dedicated to their kids,” he said.

The Obama administration has taken some heat from unions by pushing for more charter schools and seeking to tie compensation to student achievement. Mr. Obama described that as trying to “break through this left-right, conservative-liberal gridlock.”

Mr. Obama said that education reform isn’t enough, though, and must be accompanied by adequate public spending. On the campaign trail, he often mentions education as one of the areas where the nation should spend more to build for the future.

“This is a big argument and a big difference that I’ve got with Gov. Romney in this election, because they talk a good game about reform, but when you actually look at their budgets, they’re talking about slashing our investment in education by 20, 25%,” he said.

Mr. Romney didn’t dispute that he wants to limit government spending.

“I’m not looking for more federal spending. I mean, I know it is the nature of politics for someone in my position to promise more free stuff,” he said. But “I care so much about our kids that I don’t want to saddle them with trillions on trillions of dollars of debt.”

The common theme running through many (too many) teacher evaluation proposals is time. We need time to create new evaluations. We need time to observe a teacher (after taking the time to build them up). We need time to create a plan based on our observations. We need to give them time to prove they can get better (or not). We need time to figure out if they should be doing something other than teaching.

The problem with ‘borrowing time’ is that no one wants to quantify what that means – how much we need, how soon, and whether we really even need more to begin with.

Before ‘Race to the Top’, states grappled with the notion of paying teachers based on performance, and some attempted modest measures, but most fell short. ‘Race to the Top’ further encouraged evaluation systems, but guidelines conveyed no urgency and states needed simply to promise changes. Evaluation systems adopted have proved fuzzier than many originally thought. Now with budget struggles in states and more understanding that first-hired/last-fired policies actually harm kids (what a discovery!), state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pushing hard to put hard, firm measurements with consequences in place…

Read the entire post HERE.

How’d all that work out for everyone?

- Maryland and Hawaii winning ‘Race to the Top’ money? For what, exactly? They’ll be battling their unions until 2015 just to move the dial slightly on any of their promises.

- ESEA reauthorization during an election year? Good luck.

- At least we learned a few things about turnarounds, namely that they aren’t going to work unless the culture of a failing school is turned on its head.

Before we get accused of ending a year on a sour note, though, allow us to throw ourselves into the group of hopefuls looking to 2011 as a year that gets things done for our kids and for our schools.

Why the positive change of heart, you ask?

November.

Beginning next Monday, a new Congress just might leave substantive education policy decisions in the hands of those who have been getting the job done all along – Governors and state legislators.

And so, we end 2010 as many began, hopeful that substantive changes will come to our schools in the form of greater choice for parents, real rewards for our best teachers and accountability for those who steer the ship.

To help this process along, we offer up these 10 Education Reform New Year’s Resolutions for state lawmakers:

1. Increase the ability of higher education, mayors and other independent entities to authorize charter schools so more children have access to quality public school options.

2. Eliminate arbitrary and unnecessary caps on the number of charter schools that can operate in a state and on the number of students who can attend charter schools.

3. Close the gap between the funding for traditional public schools and public charter schools.

4. Allow charter schools to operate with operational autonomy and teacher freedom-freeing these schools to innovate and develop new best practices that serve our children.

5. Develop a school voucher program or a scholarship tax credit program to provide private school choice for children with special needs.

6. Begin the process of creating data systems that allow teachers, principals, district officials and state officials to link student achievement to teacher performance.

7. Protect teacher’s paychecks by prohibiting automatic deductions of union expenses that aren’t related to collective bargaining.

8. Create a teacher merit pay pilot program that allows great teachers-ones who improve student achievement-to receive extra pay in recognition of their hard work.

9. Increase pay for teachers willing to teach high-needs subject areas and in high-needs schools.

10. Develop meaningful alternative routes to teacher certification for talented midcareer changers who want to become teachers.

Happy New Year!

(see you on the flip side)

• “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 noise about President Obama’s impending speech to schoolchildren Tuesday is muffling the real issues.  While the President has every right to address any segment of the nation on any subject – and we all have the right to voluntarily listen or not – it’s both the way this thing was rolled out and the predicted content that should be most alarming to people – Republican or Democrat.

First, let’s talk about process, i.e. the rollout.  Rather than simply announce that the president was making a back-to-school speech, the policy/PR/other sundry staffers attached to this wrote and distributed superficial lesson plans as if they knew anything about education to begin with and as if this speech was indeed about the president, not the nation’s education crisis.  Telling teachers they should consider engaging students in a dialogue about how President Obama inspires them is ludicrous, not because some may not agree with him, but because it suggests this speech is after all about HIM.  To then go ahead and attack people for attacking the speech is like smoking and then getting outraged when someone says they smell smoke on you.

The speech massagers were clearly set about getting the president press. While I don’t doubt the president wants to give a great, meaningful speech to kids, his handlers messed up and have thwarted that potential now, not Bill O’Reilly or dozens of other known detractors.  The president’s “men” fell on their swords on this one, and President Obama should take full responsibility for that.

Second, the president’s predicted content which we’ll all now see prior thanks to the defensive posture the White House has had to take on this, should not just be about working hard (that’s what parents, teachers, school people and community leaders all over the country are saying to our kids hourly every day in their journey so far this year). It should be about what he – the president – and policymakers around the country can and should do to make schools work better for all children. He should tell them that while all schools try hard, some schools are just bad and we’re all working to change that. Obama should tell these kids that their academic achievement still ranks below most other industrialized countries, that they should have opportunities to make good choices; that they should urge their parents to get active in changing the way schools do business.

He should give a speech like he gave to the NAACP earlier this year, in which he said that there should be no excuses for failure, that some adults who aren’t doing well should be removed, and that we need to be willing to get rid of what doesn’t work and grow what does.

The president could also use this opportunity to applaud successful reform initiatives, be they public, private or charter-based, and put this notion of perestroika with the teachers unions to rest once and for all.

That would be a meaningful speech, and one only he could get away with at this point in our political history.  So please, to my friends in the media, to the President’s staunchest supporters and to the pundits – let’s not lose sight of just how important a speech like this can be, but keep your eye on the real issues, and whether and how he talks about them. Then cheer him or take him on all you want.

Here are three examples of teaching/teachers at work for students:

1) The new paternalism

David Whitman spoke last Thursday at a CER event about his book Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism. Whitman dedicated a section of both his talk and the book to a discussion focused on the aspects of a paternalistic teaching/learning environment. Here are but three examples:

• Provide teachers with more on-site training and new opportunities to review student progress and discipline problems, and to observe other teachers’ classrooms.
• Principals, with assistance from teachers, need to create a sense of mission and concern for student character. They should enlist all staff in attaining their goals, including the secretaries and janitors.

Finally, hire principals and teachers who like — and celebrate — their students.

2) Intervention (via ProJo)

“Education Commissioner Peter McWalters has ordered the city schools to begin filling teacher vacancies based on qualifications rather than seniority, an order that could fly in the face of the teachers’ contract.

McWalters, in a no-nonsense letter yesterday to Supt. Tom Brady, said the district hasn’t been moving fast enough to improve student achievement and that it was time to intervene in a much more aggressive fashion.

The order should come as no surprise to the district. Over the last two years the commissioner has issued a series of “corrective action” orders that spelled out what the district needed to do to improve student performance.

“This is intervention,” McWalters said yesterday. “Every state gets to the point when it’s time to stop suggesting. The district can’t come back and tell me they can’t get it done.”

McWalters said that seniority can no longer be the way that teachers are assigned and vacancies are filled. Starting this fall, teachers at six Providence schools, including the new career and technical high school and the new East Side middle school, will be assigned based on whether they have the skills needed to serve students at those particular schools.

McWalters made it clear that contract language will not stand in the way of the changes he expects.” (read MORE)

3) Taking one for the team (via Jay P. Greene’s Blog)

Matthew Ladner shares a story from the New York Times about NBA player Shane Battier. Battier is a true team player, Ladner says, a “white space” employee in business-speak. “The term refers to the space between boxes on an organizational chart. A white space employee is someone who does whatever it takes to achieve organizational goals and makes the organization work much better as a whole.”

Ladner ties the story of selfless Battier to teaching this way: “There’s no reward for being a white space player OR a superstar in the current system of teacher compensation-just an old player. Imagine a system of compensation for the NBA in which Larry Bird was still riding the pine on NBA squads and getting paid more money than LeBron, Kobe or Battier. Hall of Fame = National Board Certified, but you no longer want Bird in the game if you want to win.”

Got Mandate?

While there’s nothing glamorous about firing nearly 300 teachers and principals, Rhee has made more changes within DCPS in one year than most could even dream about over several decades. She’s not your typical cover girl, as TIME points out. She’s been called a “nightmare” but Chancellor Rhee seems okay with that. “Have I rubbed people the wrong way? Definitely. If I changed my style, I might make people a little more comfortable… but I think there’s real danger in acting in a way that makes adults feel better.”

A piece in today’s Washington Post shows that this new style can work, but with folks like AFT boss Randi Weingarten highly critical of this new trend, it is unlikely to catch on without bold leadership from our elected officials.