I finally watched??Charlie Wilson's War last night (we have a toddler at home; we're not in the movie-theater stage of our life!). Toward the end, the Philip Seymour Hoffman spook character tells Tom Hanks's Charlie Wilson, "Charlie, you're a hard man not to like." And I have to say, that's how I feel about Arne Duncan too. There he is, day after day, saying the right things, earnestly trying to do good, enthusiastic about the "transformative" possibilities of the federal stimulus package.
Granted,??I'm actually quite skeptical that any of this is going to make our schools better, but that's no reason to root against Duncan. And he surely deserves praise for a couple of provocative statements he made this week.
First, in??a press call that was like manna from heaven for charter school advocates, he said flatly that "States that do not have public charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top Fund," referring to his $5 billion carrot-qua-kitty. (That??wasn't enough to put a Maine charter school bill over the top, but that sort of rhetoric seems to be helping in??Illinois,??Tennessee, and??Massachusetts.)
Then??he told Libby Quaid of the Associated Press that "to somehow suggest we should not link student achievement to teacher effectiveness is like suggesting we judge sports teams without looking at the box score." That's a pretty good line, though I wish he and other reformers would talk about giving principals some discretion to make salary decisions, rather than hinting at formula-driven approaches to bonuses or salary enhancements. In other words, it's stupid to try to robotically link test scores to bonuses for teachers,??for lots of good reasons, but just because it's hard to measure teachers' effectiveness doesn't mean we can't differentiate among them and make pay decisions accordingly. Lots of businesses (including the think tank business) have results that are hard to quantify. But bosses still get to manage their employees using basic tools like pay.
What remains to be seen is whether all of this talk will translate into action. Will Massachusetts really not get "Race to the Top" funds if its charter school cap remains in place? What will the Administration do if the Hill ignores its request to boost funding for the Teacher Incentive Fund, which supports pay-for-performance and "combat pay" initiatives, as??Rep. David Obey and??Sen. Patty Murray seem wont to do?
Still, we'll bring out the Reform-o-Meter from its closet* to give Duncan some credit for these statements: a??Warm even. (If he had said that no states with charter caps were getting Race to the Top funds, period, then he'd deserve a Red Hot.) But since it's just talk at this point, I'm only ranking it a 3 out of 10, which doesn't move our cumulative R-o-M past neutral.
What do you think? Cast your vote below.
How would you rate Secretary Duncan's comments about charter schools and merit pay in terms of education reform?(polls)
* With most of the major staff appointments made, and the real news coming out of the U.S. Department of Education slowing to a trickle, we're going to turn the Reform-o-Meter into an occasional feature. And that means taking it down from Flypaper's sidebar. But loyal Reform-o-Meter fans, don't worry. When big federal policy news breaks, we'll be here to pick up the pieces, and to offer our take.
