The Education Gadfly Weekly

“As we start to rethink outdated tenure, evaluation, and pay systems [for teachers], we must take care to respect how uncertain our efforts are and avoid tying our hands in ways that we will regret in the decade ahead,” warns Rick Hess in the foreword of this insightful contribution to AEI’s Teacher Quality 2.0 series. Authors Sara Mead, Andrew Rotherham, and Rachael Brown of Bellwether Education Partners caution that the deluge of teacher-policy legislation over the last few years, while markedly better than the old policies, may in fact have the effect of drowning progress and innovation by mooring premature solutions and imperfect metrics in place. Moving forward, policymakers should keenly examine the fundamental tradeoffs and tensions inherent in the teacher policies they create, especially those regarding evaluation. As we strive to get teacher-evaluation policy right, we must balance flexibility and control, accept the complications created by new education models (like blended learning), and determine the right use of value-added data (human judgment must play a role in teacher evaluations). With these perspectives in mind, Bellwether’s authors offer a number of smart policy recommendations. Among them: Focus on improving, not just purging, low-quality teachers; encourage and respect innovation by creating and funding “innovation zones” for pilot evaluation systems; and accept the limits of legislation (don’t lock too much policy into legislation, as it creates a rigid system that is antagonistic to innovation). There is much to celebrate about the recent teacher-evaluation policies enacted in over twenty states. But Mead, Rotherham, and Brown are right to remind policymakers that a bit of humility is in order.

SOURCE: Sara Mead, Andrew Rotherham, and Rachael Brown, The Hangover: Thinking about the Unintended Consequences of the Nation’s Teacher Evaluation Binge (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, September 26, 2012).

July brought us the annual U.S. Census Bureau Statistical Abstract (flush with data on educational attainment, staffing, finances, etc.); October washed in the latest federal school-enrollment data. Once again, private-school enrollment suffers: Battered by a harsh economic climate, private-school enrollment has eroded precipitously in recent years. Since its high-water mark in 1965, enrollment in these schools has dropped by 2.2 million; since 2005, enrollment is down 12 percent. Now just 11 percent of students attend private or parochial schools. While Census data cannot show the reasons for these declines, the causes seem to be tripartite. Catholic-school enrollment has steadily decreased over the past few decades; in New York City, Catholic enrollment fell by over 14,500 over the past five years alone. This at the same time as the charter-school market share has steadily increased (particularly drawing students away from urban Catholic schools). And finally, enrollment in early-childhood education has largely shifted from a private- to public-school phenomenon. In 1965, the vast majority of nursery-school enrollments were private; by 2011, that percentage had dropped by over 34 points. (This while public-preschool enrollment jumped from 24 percent to nearly 59 percent.) And the trends are equally jarring for Kindergarten enrollments. The proliferation of publicly funded school-choice programs may help stem this decline but those who believe private schools provide a necessary competitive mechanism will find these data sobering.

SOURCE: United States Census Bureau, American Community Survey, Census 2011 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, October 2012).

The statistics, though jarring, are not novel: In 2009, only 58 percent of students who had enrolled in four-year colleges graduated within six years (just 79 percent persisted through their first year of post-secondary schooling). Just one-third of those who matriculated at two-year institutions completed their degree within three years (two-thirds persisted to year two). The figures are even starker for low-income students; even high-performing youngsters from this demographic struggle. This report from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) offers tangible recommendations for what can be done to reverse this trend. Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study, NSBA authors track characteristics of students who successfully persist through year two of post-secondary schooling. Controlling for prior achievement and socioeconomic status, NSBA finds three traits of high schoolers that predict greater success in college: taking upper-level math courses (students of low socioeconomic status who took pre-calculus or calculus were 44 percent more likely to persist to year two than those who took only algebra or geometry), enrolling in AP or IB courses (even if the student did not pass the associated exam), and consistently meeting with academic advisors. (Researchers did not examine how participation in high school extracurriculars affected college completion.) “No excuses” charter schools have long experimented with these types of initiatives—and have shown them to be successful. But the NSBA fails to acknowledge a key factor: Academic readiness and innate smarts are only two rungs on this ladder to college success. Students’ abilities to persevere through challenging circumstances are also necessary for them to persist in college.

SOURCE: Kasey Klepfer and Jim Hull, High School Rigor and Good Advice: Setting Up Students to Succeed (Alexandria, VA: National School Boards Association, Center for Public Education, October 2012).

Rick and Mike pick apart an egregious example of Continental Achievement-Gap mania and take on differing proficiency goals based on student race and ethnicity. Amber asks if we’d be better off spending our edu-dollars in very different ways.

Amber's Research Minute

How Do Public Investments in Children Vary with Age? A Kids' Share Analysis of Expenditures in 2008 and 2011 by Age Group by The Urban Institute - Download PDF

The membership of the Chicago Teachers Union approved a new contract last week but the legacy of the rancorous strike is far from settled. Did the experience prove Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker right? Will unions continue to impede reform—and add to costs—so long as state law gives them expansive collective bargaining and striking rights?

France's president plans to ban homework, citing the disadvantage it poses for students without a supportive home environment to aid their after-school studies. While the move would give us one less country to worry about come the next PISA administration, discouraging kids from learning outside of school for reasons of equity is perhaps the most absurd example of Achievement-Gap Mania yet.

Amidst the turmoil of Chicago Public Schools's CEO Jean-Claude Brizard's sudden resignation last week, Windy City Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced plans to make arts a "core subject." Although the news may be crowded out by the leadership changes, Chicago deserves credit for making sure the arts aren't crowded out of the curriculum.

Speaking of curriculum narrowing, civics education is wanting, according to a new report from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. Almost a dozen states don't require any civics or American-government education, and states are increasingly cutting the essay portions of the civics state tests that do exist, a trend that Americans should address this election year before civic literacy declines any further.

Education-reform groups are split over California’s Proposition 32, a “paycheck protection” measure that would keep unions from automatically deducting funds from employees’ paychecks for political purposes. Their opponents, however, are not divided, and if the practice is allowed to continue in the Golden State it will come directly at the expense of education reforms.

Many states are using NCLB waivers to set new proficiency goals for students—often different goals for students in different racial and ethnic subgroups. The fierce criticism from equity advocates over this move is a distracting exercise in idealism. As a certain incumbent said last month when asked about shifting from goals of universal proficiency to goals that differ between racial groups, "you've gotta continue to keep those high standards. But we are going to measure growth."

Quite a two-week stretch for education economists: Hard on the heels of Raj Chetty’s MacArthur award, Stanford’s Al Roth snagged a Nobel prize in economics. Don’t miss Alexander Russo’s roundup of Roth’s edu-research and commentary.

New York City’s Department of Education announced plans to petition the state for the right to certify new teachers trained by veteran Gotham educators in hard-to-fill subjects. Given the generally sorry (or at least intransigent) state of university teacher-prep programs, this is a move all urban districts (and CMOs) should emulate.

Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and Barbara Mikulski teamed up to take a none-to-subtle shot at the ACLU in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, defending the merits of single-sex education against the ongoing attacks of educational-equality groups looking to stamp the model out. Here’s to an excellent example of sound bipartisan thinking on this issue.

The Washington Post previewed Mike's new book this week. Keep an eye on Flypaper for more on how parents should navigate the "Diverse Schools Dilemma."

The traditional urban public school system is broken, and it cannot be fixed.

It must be replaced.

Given urban districts’ unblemished record of failure over generations, you’d think these statements would be widely accepted and represent the core of the education-reform strategy. But somehow, just about everyone working in this area assumes that the traditional school district is essential and immortal—that because of its age and standing, it must be the focus of reform. Few recognize the anachronism of a model created by historical circumstances—mass immigration, industrialization, and Progressive Era-idealism—rather than today’s social realities and educational priorities.

Chartering provides a blueprint for the urban school system of the future. Photo by Todd Ehlers.

I am convinced that the district is not part of the solution. It is the problem. Persistent low performance is the natural consequence of this institution that our predecessors placed at the heart of urban public schooling. No city will ever realize a renaissance in K-12 education so long as the district continues as the dominant, default delivery system.

The blueprint for the urban school system of the future can be found in charter schooling.

Chartering’s systemic innovations have already shown that the district need not be the exclusive operator of all public schools. A wide array of organizations can deliver a public education. Chartering has also demonstrated that there can be variety and churn within public education: Diverse new schools can be continually created, failing schools can be closed, and great schools can be replicated and expanded.

What remains to be seen is whether these revolutionary characteristics can form the core of a comprehensive and coherent new urban public education system. As I explain in my new book, The Urban School System of the Future: Applying the Principles and Lessons of Chartering  (Roman & Littlefield Education), they can.

The key is making use of a government reform embraced by other sectors for at least twenty years.  The basic idea, proposed by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler in their seminal Reinventing Government and advanced by other experts like former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith, is developing an “entrepreneurial government” that ensures that important things get accomplished while allowing others to do most of the day-to-day work. The government “steers” the ship, while others (primarily nonprofits) “row.” The implication for urban education is that city governments should manage portfolios of schools operated by others.

But in order to realize the full benefits of this new system, we need a drastic change in perspective, a two-step intellectual leap that few, even among the most daring reformers, have been willing to take.

First, we must see chartering not as a sector and not even as a system but as the system for urban education’s future. The systemic practices it has introduced into public education must be the playbook for how urban school portfolios are managed. Second, we must accept that the full flourishing of this new system requires the permanent demotion and the potential cessation of the district.

The Urban School System of the Future is now available from Amazon.

These two intertwined ideas are the logical extension of the best thinking about structural education reform (by leaders like Ted Kolderie and Paul Hill) and the most exciting on-the-ground developments over the last two decades.

Charter schooling has proven that districts can no longer claim a proprietary right to public education. Now, in most cities, a diverse assortment of nonprofits operates public schools. Moreover, chartering has shown that the key practices of chartering identified by and advocated in my book can work in public education. Every year, a wide array of schools is started in America’s cities. Authorizers are closing charters not delivering on their promises. Great single-site charters are adding grades and campuses, and the nation’s best charter-management organizations are replicating their successful models and serving more and more students.

These ideas have spread beyond the charter sector, having been put to work in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, and other cities. Importantly, a growing number of district leaders have begun talking about “a system of schools” instead of a “school system.” And in the cases of New York City and New Orleans— thanks to the extraordinary leadership, respectively, of former chancellor Joel Klein and former state superintendent Paul Pastorek—nearly all of the pieces have been put in place, and the results are remarkable.

Despite this progress, most leaders in the establishment and reform community still fail to recognize that chartering represents a systemic solution. When speaking of a “system of schools,” their emphasis is on schools not system. Many believe that the key is empowering principals: They prioritize site-based management. But this is a small piece of the puzzle. It is possible for a city to have completely independent but dreadfully low-performing schools. School-based autonomy is ultimately meaningless to the system unless there are sensible, consistent consequences for different levels of performance.

But the most portentous error made by even those sympathetic to these arguments is the assumption that the district must be the central actor moving forward. Those who have written in support of “portfolio management” invariably assume that the district will become the manager. In the cities where this strategy has taken root, the district leads.

But the district was created to be a monopoly owner and operator of schools, not an impartial assessor of schools run by others. The district’s longstanding job has been codified in laws and regulations. As importantly, the district has developed innumerable beliefs and hoary practices to support its old line of work. We can’t expect a century-old organization to completely change its fundamental nature. No one would try to turn General Electric into General Mills.

Moreover, the urban district is quite simply a failed organization. It has done an astonishingly poor job at its primary task, running schools. Why in the world would we think an organization that’s extraordinarily bad at its job would be great at another? The work of revitalizing urban education is far too important to give the district the central role.

The answer is to create from scratch a new entity that will manage a city’s schools portfolio. The replacement must be a new “system of schools,” governed by the revolutionary practices of chartering.

The replacement must be a new “system of schools,” governed by the revolutionary practices of chartering.

Though this new system will require the demotion of the district and the development of a new citywide education authority, neither shift will be as dramatic or disruptive as it may first appear. The district will merely become one of a range of coequal providers. It will still be able to operate schools, but it won’t hold a privileged place in the landscape. The new system’s guiding principles will apply to the district’s schools in the same way as other providers’ schools.

The new authority, let’s call it the Office of the Chancellor of City Schools, will be a relatively small entity. It will neither operate nor authorize schools. It will execute the system’s principles—diversity of options, new starts, replications/expansions, and closures—acting as the citywide “portfolio manager” of schools.

In many ways, the new system will look and behave like the healthy industries so common in the private sector. Quality, consumer choice, a wide array of alternatives, and innovation will play much larger roles than in today’s district-dominated arrangement. However, the system will not be a freewheeling marketplace. There will be public management and public oversight, and it will carefully preserve the key elements of public education, such as universal access, open enrollment, and nondiscrimination.

Once operational, this new system of schools will not only deliver improved results, it will also feel extraordinarily familiar: For years, other critically important city government functions such as welfare services, urban development, public housing, and more have been carried out by community-based organizations.

Through these changes we’ll soon come to realize just how anomalous and deeply flawed our previous urban public school system actually was.

Andy Smarick is author of The Urban School System of the Future: Applying the Principles and Lessons of Chartering (Roman & Littlefield Education), a partner at Bellwether Education Partners, and a Bernard Lee Schwartz senior policy fellow with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. 

The membership of the Chicago Teachers Union approved a new contract last week but the legacy of the rancorous strike is far from settled. Did the experience prove Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker right? Will unions continue to impede reform—and add to costs—so long as state law gives them expansive collective bargaining and striking rights?

The membership of the Chicago Teachers Union approved a new contract last week but the legacy of the rancorous strike is far from settled. Did the experience prove Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker right? Will unions continue to impede reform—and add to costs—so long as state law gives them expansive collective bargaining and striking rights?

“As we start to rethink outdated tenure, evaluation, and pay systems [for teachers], we must take care to respect how uncertain our efforts are and avoid tying our hands in ways that we will regret in the decade ahead,” warns Rick Hess in the foreword of this insightful contribution to AEI’s Teacher Quality 2.0 series. Authors Sara Mead, Andrew Rotherham, and Rachael Brown of Bellwether Education Partners caution that the deluge of teacher-policy legislation over the last few years, while markedly better than the old policies, may in fact have the effect of drowning progress and innovation by mooring premature solutions and imperfect metrics in place. Moving forward, policymakers should keenly examine the fundamental tradeoffs and tensions inherent in the teacher policies they create, especially those regarding evaluation. As we strive to get teacher-evaluation policy right, we must balance flexibility and control, accept the complications created by new education models (like blended learning), and determine the right use of value-added data (human judgment must play a role in teacher evaluations). With these perspectives in mind, Bellwether’s authors offer a number of smart policy recommendations. Among them: Focus on improving, not just purging, low-quality teachers; encourage and respect innovation by creating and funding “innovation zones” for pilot evaluation systems; and accept the limits of legislation (don’t lock too much policy into legislation, as it creates a rigid system that is antagonistic to innovation). There is much to celebrate about the recent teacher-evaluation policies enacted in over twenty states. But Mead, Rotherham, and Brown are right to remind policymakers that a bit of humility is in order.

SOURCE: Sara Mead, Andrew Rotherham, and Rachael Brown, The Hangover: Thinking about the Unintended Consequences of the Nation’s Teacher Evaluation Binge (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, September 26, 2012).

July brought us the annual U.S. Census Bureau Statistical Abstract (flush with data on educational attainment, staffing, finances, etc.); October washed in the latest federal school-enrollment data. Once again, private-school enrollment suffers: Battered by a harsh economic climate, private-school enrollment has eroded precipitously in recent years. Since its high-water mark in 1965, enrollment in these schools has dropped by 2.2 million; since 2005, enrollment is down 12 percent. Now just 11 percent of students attend private or parochial schools. While Census data cannot show the reasons for these declines, the causes seem to be tripartite. Catholic-school enrollment has steadily decreased over the past few decades; in New York City, Catholic enrollment fell by over 14,500 over the past five years alone. This at the same time as the charter-school market share has steadily increased (particularly drawing students away from urban Catholic schools). And finally, enrollment in early-childhood education has largely shifted from a private- to public-school phenomenon. In 1965, the vast majority of nursery-school enrollments were private; by 2011, that percentage had dropped by over 34 points. (This while public-preschool enrollment jumped from 24 percent to nearly 59 percent.) And the trends are equally jarring for Kindergarten enrollments. The proliferation of publicly funded school-choice programs may help stem this decline but those who believe private schools provide a necessary competitive mechanism will find these data sobering.

SOURCE: United States Census Bureau, American Community Survey, Census 2011 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, October 2012).

The statistics, though jarring, are not novel: In 2009, only 58 percent of students who had enrolled in four-year colleges graduated within six years (just 79 percent persisted through their first year of post-secondary schooling). Just one-third of those who matriculated at two-year institutions completed their degree within three years (two-thirds persisted to year two). The figures are even starker for low-income students; even high-performing youngsters from this demographic struggle. This report from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) offers tangible recommendations for what can be done to reverse this trend. Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study, NSBA authors track characteristics of students who successfully persist through year two of post-secondary schooling. Controlling for prior achievement and socioeconomic status, NSBA finds three traits of high schoolers that predict greater success in college: taking upper-level math courses (students of low socioeconomic status who took pre-calculus or calculus were 44 percent more likely to persist to year two than those who took only algebra or geometry), enrolling in AP or IB courses (even if the student did not pass the associated exam), and consistently meeting with academic advisors. (Researchers did not examine how participation in high school extracurriculars affected college completion.) “No excuses” charter schools have long experimented with these types of initiatives—and have shown them to be successful. But the NSBA fails to acknowledge a key factor: Academic readiness and innate smarts are only two rungs on this ladder to college success. Students’ abilities to persevere through challenging circumstances are also necessary for them to persist in college.

SOURCE: Kasey Klepfer and Jim Hull, High School Rigor and Good Advice: Setting Up Students to Succeed (Alexandria, VA: National School Boards Association, Center for Public Education, October 2012).