The Education Gadfly Weekly

Last week, a long-simmering debate about which kinds of diversity—ideological, political, socioeconomic, racial, or ethnic—should matter most in our education reform community boiled over into public view.

This debate comes at an interesting time in my life because I am in the middle of a year-long leadership development program—50CAN’s Education Advocacy Fellowship—that was created to provide an on-ramp for more people to serve as education reform leaders. This experience has led me to realize something so simple it’s perhaps overlooked in all the back and forth over this debate:

There is more than enough work to go around.

It is exactly because of the scale and complexity of the challenges we face, and the numerous gaps left unfilled, that the best work in education advocacy is increasingly being carried out by coalitions that span the traditional divides.

That means intentionally elevating both ideologically diverse and racially and socioeconomically diverse leaders—because we all have something unique and different to contribute. Making room for a greater diversity of voices doesn’t have to mean asking anyone to step back from their work.

During my time in the 50CAN fellowship, I have come to learn from and respect the contributions made by conservatives who don’t look like me. They, in turn, have made time to listen to me and other emerging leaders with firsthand knowledge of the ways our education system has left poor kids and children of color behind. We both end up a little wiser because we are taking the time to truly listen to each other.

Where I come from

When I’m meeting people, I often make time to share why I feel so strongly about the need for change.

I come to this work in Arizona by way of Compton, California, where I grew up. My parents loved us very much, but they struggled to give us everything we needed. Life wasn’t easy. We didn’t have a lot of money, our neighborhood wasn’t safe, and the neighborhood schools we were zoned for were dropout factories.

My parents were only able to save up enough money to send one of us to a Jesuit high school. They chose me. My brother Ulysses had to stay behind in the public high school. Four years later, I became the first in our family to be accepted to college; meanwhile, my brother was entering the Los Angeles County jail. Four years after that, when I walked across the stage as a graduate of University of California, Berkeley, my brother was entering the penitentiary system for the second time.

Here’s what happened

My brother and I had the same parents and the same potential. We lived in the same house, and we shared the same Mexican heritage. But there was one thing we didn’t have in common: We did not have the same educational opportunity, because only one of us was able to attend a high school that worked.

I know that access to educational opportunity is what made our lives as different as they are. It’s a conclusion that left a scar on my heart. I went to college determined to become a lawyer so that I could fight for people like my brother as a public defender. But as I reflected on what happened to him, I came to the conclusion that as a public defender, I would reach him too late.

I decided instead to become the teacher he never had. The one who would understand him, who would take the time to connect with him; the one he would remember later in life, thinking, “If not for him, I would be in jail.”

The difficult truth is that my path diverged from my brother’s so dramatically because we ration high-quality education in our country. There just aren’t enough good schools to go around, and students from low-income families—like my brother—pay the price with their freedom. The research and statistics show us that this is true, but for me, the reality is much more stark; it’s reflected in the facts of my life.

I live with that difficult truth every day. It opened my eyes in such a way that they will never be closed again.

Most education reformers are committed to this work because we believe that you don’t need to ration good schools. It is our firm conviction that if we can muster the political will, it’s possible to create a system where everyone has the opportunity to get a good education regardless of their address.

It would therefore be ironic if, in our quest to achieve these ambitious educational goals, we slipped back into mistakenly believing that we need to ration leadership roles; that in order for progressive people of color to take a step forward, white conservatives need to take a step back.

I don’t believe that because it is the mindset of defeat. And defeat is the one thing we cannot accept. The price, paid in the broken dreams of kids like my brother, is simply too high.

What real leadership is about

Over the past year I have witnessed time and time again how the education reform community in Arizona has embraced a broader conception of leadership. It starts with leaders like Lisa Keegan, the former superintendent of public instruction and executive director of A for Arizona, and Tommy Espinoza, president and CEO of Raza Development Fund.

Lisa and Tommy have worked tirelessly to bring new voices into Arizona’s education reform community and open up more opportunities for new people to lead. They have sought out partnerships across political, racial, and ethnic boundaries and put the needs of kids above jockeying for the spotlight.

Most importantly, they have modeled what real leadership is all about: making the people around you more powerful rather than positioning yourself as gatekeepers to their success.

While I am still early in my journey as an education advocate, I am convinced of a simple proposition: The states that will truly transform their education systems will be the ones that adopt an outlook not of scarcity but of abundance—states led by education reformers who are constantly looking for ways to make room for as many people as are willing to commit their hearts to this cause.

This approach of addition, not subtraction, increasingly defines the Arizona education reform community of which I am proud to be a part. I believe that it points the way forward for an education advocacy movement strong enough, and diverse enough, to achieve our ambitious goals.

Martín Pérez is an Education Advocacy Fellow at 50CAN.

Editor's note: This essay was originally published in a slightly different form by Education Post.

You can only watch a dragon eat its tail for so long before you feel compelled to intervene.

As I’ve watched the education community react to Robert Pondiscio’s argument that the Left is driving conservatives out of education reform, I’ve been increasingly frustrated to see so many people whom I like and respect (from Marilyn Rhames to Justin Cohen, Chris Stewart, and Jay Greene) take aim at one another. I’m also convinced that the teachers’ unions are all having a good laugh at us while we play this verbal game of the Dozens amongst ourselves.

At the center of this conflict: A dividing line is being drawn between “markets” and “equity” as principles driving change in our schools. These two themes are both found in the underlying conflict of Pondiscio’s piece about the contrast between market/conservative solutions like school choice and the power of a movement like Black Lives Matter (with which the more progressive wing of the reform movement identifies).

I believe that Pondiscio’s piece only featured Black Lives Matter and the agenda of this year’s New Schools Venture Fund Summit (which I attended) as a proxy for capturing the changing view and face of the education reform movement. But using Black Lives Matter as the focal point charged and changed the exchange—and sparked a circular firing squad as commentators staked their ground and pious bullets filled the air.

Pondiscio’s core question was whether or not market thought continues to have a place in the work we all do, which many feel is a social justice effort first and foremost. This is a core question about voice and visibility, and it is, ironically, one that people of color should know well. But in the days that followed, many readers reduced this down to white male anxiety about a movement that is becoming increasingly diverse but that, overall, remains woefully white—so much so that even our grandest displays of inclusion often ring of tokenism. I offer up this assessment as someone who routinely speaks to large audiences of market believers, who are often white. I also say it as a person who didn’t know what New Schools was until a white foundation executive told me about it many years ago.

Back to Pondiscio’s original point: Does and should the market perspective—one focused on choice, pluralism, and opportunity as the prime drivers—continue to have a place in the education reform movement, effort, confab, or whatever you want to call it? The answer is yes. Competition and innovation are essential and may be the best way to level the playing field for kids of color. (I write this as a person who is deeply skeptical of government’s ability to create schools that liberate low-income black and brown kids from academic outcomes that ensure their economic servitude).

Ironically, the storm that has erupted around Pondiscio’s piece may just prove his larger point about a narrowing field of view: Even as the education reform movement strives to become more ethnically diverse, it could also become less so ideologically. This is important, and worth noting. We do not win with a smaller tent against a unified enemy that has created the conditions we battle against.

But this does not mean that “equity” has no place. Many education reformers identify themselves as “social justice warriors,” striving to give black and brown kids access to better classrooms and brighter futures. Yet as often happens in debates about inclusion, the question of whether one perspective can “belong” is seen as one that must co-opt or exclude another one.

Black Lives Matter is totemic of an underlying passion within the work of education reform—one that many politically progressive voices for change care about greatly. Though white reformers will, implicitly, only know the anxiety of having black skin in this country secondhand, many of them decry the existence of injustice that visits its victims based solely on the color of their skin. Violence against black people at the hands of the police makes evident the same societal force we fight in underperforming schools. This inequality seemingly targets people of color and removes, again, their ability to enjoy and make their own lives. This is vital context to understand if you want to turn the movement’s ownership over to communities that experience the brutal results of these systems.

Does the equity perspective deserve a growing place in the education reform movement—both in terms of what is said and who says it? The answer is yes. I write this as a black person who has never felt as fearful for my own existence as I do now—and as a person who often wonders if I might be deprived of my freedom, which is to say my life, simply for being black and being in the wrong place.

But drawing battle lines around whether folks care more about markets or equity, or which should have primacy in this education fight, isn’t just unhelpful; it lacks nuance and assumes absolutes based on both race and political leanings.

Indeed, I have been in rooms with white, progressive technocrats who call themselves reformers but couldn't hear me over their own hubris. I also work for a white man and an Asian woman who understand me on every level. I’ve met with black folks talking about “community” who believe there is sovereignty in black-run schools—district, charter, or otherwise—where no one learns anything. But there is little I feel better about than when I help a black kid attend a school they want to—no matter where they live, who their parents are, or the color of the school’s teachers or leader. I know ostensible conservatives who think that the problem of failing schools is one of perseverance rather than behavior baked into our institutions by decades of racial injustice. I also got started in this work because a rich, white Republican took a chance on a Democrat from Baltimore on hiatus from the magazine industry.

All of these philosophies vie for dominance within what we do. But they’re all clearly incomplete when they stand alone.

Which brings me to something far more important: Equity and markets are not two different things fighting against one another to set the agenda for change. They are two separate lenses created and shaped by the same thing: the human pursuit of liberty. And just like the eyes we need to see, both lenses are required if we are to understand the depth and the breadth of the issues we’re trying to address.

When a child is conscripted into a school that does not work, that child is deprived of their liberty and will likely never be truly free. The market/conservative voice seeks to address this by empowering his parents to find a better option—or by rewarding or punishing institutions accordingly.

Similarly, when a child can be deprived of life and liberty for being the wrong color while walking down the street, that child is also not truly free. The equity/social justice warrior argument seeks to address this wrong by being more inclusive, fighting against privilege, and empowering communities to shape their own destinies.

What all education reformers must understand is that it is not “market vs. equity” but “market with equity.” Without seeing through both of these lenses, you not only miss the whole picture; you create a blind spot. As people who seek change in the way this country delivers education, we need to see more, not less—and with more people.

So let the dust settle, friends, as this too will pass. Remember it. Learn from it. But our work on behalf of kids remains, and it will not get done without all of us.

Derrell Bradford is the executive director of the New York Campaign for Accountability Now (NYCAN).

Editor's note: This post was originally published in a slightly different form at the 74.

I was the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s point person in Ohio for twelve years. I never met Robert Pondiscio but have followed his writing since leaving Fordham in 2013. I am also a former New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF) Pahara fellow (class of 2008). Pondiscio’s piece, “The Left’s drive to push conservatives out of education reform,” has triggered an important conversation about race, power, politics, and school reform.

I was the only Republican in my cohort of Pahara fellows, which included the likes of progressive education leaders John King, Cami Anderson, and Andy Rotherham. I had philosophical disagreements with some of my New Schools colleagues, and I wasn’t nearly as excited about the election of President Barack Obama back in 2008 as they were. But every single one of my NSVF friends treated me and my opinions with respect. What’s more, they actually wanted to hear what I had to say.  

I attended the New Schools Venture Fund Conference in California that was at the center of Pondiscio’s piece. My take is different from his. I was less offended by the “push” of the political Left than I was disappointed by how voiceless the conservative ideas around school improvement efforts have become at the national level. Our voices are lacking not because the Left is pushing us aside, but because we aren’t unified in what we are saying—or even what we think actually works. This despite history and facts being on the side of the conservative school reform agenda. 

When I started with Fordham in the early-2000s, Republic governors were in the ascendancy. Charter schools, school vouchers, and online learning (all matched by standards and accountability for performance) were the big ideas animating conservative school reform efforts. Big-state Republican executives like Jeb Bush in Florida, Bob Taft in Ohio, John Engler in Michigan, and Mitch Daniels in Indiana were driving school reform, and President Bush (a former big-state governor) was also a strong supporter. This was the high-point for conservative school reformers in America, and I was lucky to be a part of it in the Buckeye State.   

I was in Ohio when the Supreme Court declared the Cleveland voucher program to be constitutional. I was able to work with the state’s Republican leaders to expand vouchers statewide and create private school opportunities for students with disabilities and autism. We worked to expand Ohio’s charter school program and participated in a string of court cases that resulted in the state supreme court declaring Buckeye State charter schools constitutional. These were big victories for Conservative school reformers.

Unfortunately, these wins would have been better—and, I suspect, resulted in even better programs for families and kids—if at least some progressive Democrats had supported our early school choice efforts. This was well before groups like Democrats for Education Reform and 50CAN were working with left-leaning reformers in places like Cleveland and Columbus. In all the charter school debates in Ohio during the 2000s, only one Democrat (an African American House member from Dayton) ever voted in support of charters; she was promptly tossed out of her party as a result.     

During the heyday of these conservative school reform victories, the New Schools Venture Fund and its allies in philanthropy took to heart the advice of Milwaukee’s Howard Fuller. In every public appearance, Fuller insisted that activists needed to work to open up and make the school reform ranks more diverse. The fact that innovators like Teach For America, TNTP, KIPP, and many others have consciously built more diverse (both racially and intellectually) leadership, staffs, and teams over the past decade is one of the true successes of the school improvement struggle. Great conservative ideas are those that bring more people together over time.  

While I agree with Pondiscio that the Left has become the louder voice in the school reform space in recent years, the big ideas around conservative education reform are still prevalent and worth fighting for. Consider the numbers: All but six states have enacted charter school laws. There are now 6,700 charters across the country serving almost three million students. Most of these students are at risk children of color. There are twenty-six voucher programs in fifteen states, five states with education savings account programs, and a further fifteen states with tax credit scholarships.

Conservatives need not apologize for the work they’d done leading public education improvement efforts over recent decades, but we need to do a better job of explaining our successes and lessons learned. We also—and this is Fordham’s sweet spot—need to compete vigorously in the battle of ideas. Hopefully, Pondiscio’s piece can help make this happen.   

Terry Ryan is the CEO of Bluum, an Idaho-based school reform organization.

• With our laser-like focus on American K–12 education (and the even narrower territory of American K–12 reform), it can be easy to forget that good schooling can be found in many forms—and many settings. This week, the New Yorker brings us the story of Ayub Mohamud, a Kenyan teacher working to stave off religious extremism among Somalia-born students in Nairobi. The article is a riveting account of moral leadership in a complicated environment, but it may offer lessons for American education as well. Bereft of opportunity, exploited by local authorities, and vulnerable to negative influences, these young Somali refugees bear more than a passing resemblance to some disadvantaged populations here in our own country. Though the downside risks are vastly different, we need to develop ways of reaching out to similarly overlooked kids here at home.
• It’s a pretty easy concept to grasp: You can’t teach kids if they’re not in the building. Chronic absenteeism—defined as student absence over at least 10 percent of a school year—is often wrought by family factors like economic dislocation or the prolonged illness of a caregiver. Missing just two days per month, as roughly five million U.S. students are estimated to do yearly, puts children at grave risk of dropping out of school. But it’s not an insurmountable problem: NPR has a fantastic story this week of a Grand Rapids district administrator who has drastically reduced absenteeism through a coordinated campaign involving teachers, parents, and community partners. Using big data tools to discover which pupils had trouble making it to school, the district reached out personally to families with resources and education about the importance of regular attendance. Now they’ve cut the number of chronically absent kids by half. Like the man said, showing up is 80 percent of shrinking achievement gaps and boosting upward mobility.
• Remember the heady days of December, when the unicorn of bipartisan cooperation roamed the grounds of the Capitol and education voices from across the political spectrum were approaching harmonic convergence? Well, it’s now June, and Democrats and Republicans are at each other’s throats again. Specifically, the GOP is up in arms after the Department of Education’s release of nearly two hundred pages of draft regulations guiding the states in implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act. Republicans Lamar Alexander and John Kline, who played major roles in drafting and passing the law, have charged President Obama and Education Secretary John King with flagrantly disregarding the intent of Congress on school finance. Our own Mike Petrilli thinks they won’t like what they find in the proposed rules on accountability, either. Democrats claim that King is acting within his authority, but Mike ain’t having it: “Right now, it doesn’t feel like they have any interest in meeting the Republicans halfway. They are in the 'rhymes with bucket’ phase of the administration.”

On this week’s podcast, Mike Petrilli and Alyssa Schwenk discuss the debate sparked by Robert Pondiscio’s recent article, the Department of Education’s proposed ESSA regulations, and Kansas’s school funding debacle. During the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines whether a teacher observation framework can affect student outcomes.

Amber's Research Minute

Andrea Lash, Loan Tran, and Min Huang, "Examining the validity of ratings from a classroom observation instrument for use in a district’s teacher evaluation system," WestEd (May 2016). 

A new study by Dan Goldhaber and colleagues examines whether a teacher candidate exam (“edTPA”) predicts both the likelihood of employment in the teacher workforce and of teacher effectiveness via value-added measures.

edTPA is a performance-based assessment developed by Linda Darling Hammond and other researchers at Stanford. It is administered to would-be teachers during their student teaching experience. Like the National Boards, it’s a portfolio-based assessment that includes between three and five videotaped lessons from candidates, as well as lesson plans, student work samples, evidence of student learning, and reflective commentaries written by candidates. The test assesses three areas (planning, instruction, and assessment); it includes fifteen scoring rubrics, for a maximum summative score of seventy-five; and it comprises assessments for twenty-seven different teaching fields, such as early childhood, secondary science, and special education. At present, edTPA is used in six hundred teacher education programs in forty states, and passing it is a licensure requirement in seven of them (states determine the passing score). Candidates pay $300 for the exam and can re-submit any failed tasks.

The study’s dataset comprises roughly 2,300 teacher candidates in Washington State teacher education programs who took the edTPA in the 2013–14 school year. (Results, for the most part, are from the first try.) Test data are linked to other licensure data, and for a subset of teachers who enter the workforce and teach math or reading in grades 4–8, the analysts also include their students’ test scores.

Key findings: Teachers who perform better on edTPA are more likely to be employed in Washington State’s public schools the next year. Specifically, teacher candidates who passed edTPA at the cut score are 15.2 percentage points more likely to enter the public teaching workforce compared with those who took the same test but failed it at the cut score. They also find that candidates who pass at the cut point are more effective at reading instruction. Students assigned to those passing teachers score a quarter of a standard deviation higher than do students assigned to candidates who failed edTPA, all other things being equal. Yet the test is not predictive of teacher effectiveness in math. Analysts hypothesize that its content focuses more on candidates’ writing capacity, which is more likely related to an educator’s ability to teach reading than math.

edTPA is being quickly adopted by teacher programs across the country despite scarce research linking it to outcomes. In that regard, these results are intriguing and warrant continued study. What’s less clear is whether the test, though subject-specific, prioritizes and measures content knowledge in addition to pedagogical knowledge. We know that both are important, yet teachers tend to get more of the latter in their education programs. If we need both, teachers should be suitably tested on both.

SOURCE: Dan Goldhaber, James Cowan, and Roddy Theobald, "Evaluating Prospective Teachers: Testing the Predictive Validity of the edTPA," CALDER (May 2016). 

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states now have greater flexibility regarding accountability and how to assess student learning. States are still required to test students in math, English language arts, and science at least once in high school, but now they can choose between continuing to deliver a state-designed test or adopting a “nationally recognized state assessment.” This might include tests used by multiple states that are also widely accepted by institutions of higher education (like the ACT or SAT) or tests created by consortium of states, such as Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

To help states navigate this transition, Education First’s High-Quality Assessment Project (HQAP) recently commissioned a brief that frames key choices and tradeoffs that states should consider in selecting their high school assessments. Although it might sound desirable in theory to streamline high school assessments into one single test (almost half of all states currently require students to take the ACT or SAT at some point during high school), author and assessment expert Erin O’Hara encourages policy makers and educators to ask several important high-level questions: What is each test intended to measure (high school content knowledge or college readiness)? What authority might states have over non-state-specific (or state-developed) tests? And how can states ensure that tests are objective, valid, and fair for all students, including those with disabilities or difficulty learning English? Under each of these “big-picture” issues, the report also lays out more detailed questions to examine. For example, how well aligned is each test is to an individual state’s academic standards? How much does each state value continuity in testing across elementary, middle, and high school? And which test will provide the most useful or important information to teachers and parents about student performance?

As Fordham stressed in our recent evaluation of several “next-generation” Common Core assessments (also funded by HQAP), selecting a state test is all about tradeoffs on administration time, cost, interstate comparability, and overall alignment to standards. States should carefully consider their priorities and the various pros and cons of each assessment before selecting their high school tests. And this thoughtful brief will help leaders do exactly that.

SOURCE: Erin O’Hara, “Choices and Trade-offs: Key Questions for State Policymakers when Selecting High School Assessments,” Education First, High-Quality Assessment Project (May 2016).

Implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is looming on the horizon, and education leaders and policy makers are in need of accurate information regarding stakeholder perceptions and opinions. The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) recently answered that call by releasing a comprehensive survey of perceptions of K–12 assessment. The survey asked a range of assessment-related questions to superintendents, principals, teachers, parents, and students.    

Some of the results are unsurprising. For instance, more than seven in ten teachers, principals, and superintendents say that students spend too much time taking assessments. Their opinions on specific tests vary, however. Six in ten teachers rate their states’ accountability tests as fair or poor, but most gave a thumbs-up to both formative assessments and classroom tests and quizzes developed by teachers. The approval gap between state tests and other assessments is most likely due to their perceived usefulness. While state tests give a summative picture of student performance, they aren’t designed to provide diagnostic information or inform instruction—functions that classroom tests and formative assessments perform well. (Of course, let’s not forget that NWEA makes millions of dollars selling a formative assessment.)

In contrast to teachers and administrators, three out of four students and approximately half of parents believe that students spend the right amount of time (or too little time!) taking assessments. Large majorities of parents consider all types of testing—including classroom tests and formative assessments—helpful to their children’s learning. A lack of communication between teachers and parents appears to be a problem: While 87 percent of teachers reported using assessment data to discuss student progress with parents, only 38 percent of parents said that their children’s teachers often or very often discussed their children’s assessment results with them. The fact that teachers and parents have such different views is troubling, but it could be explained by a lack of teacher training—most teachers claimed that although they’ve received training on how to use assessments, they have not received training on communicating assessment outcomes. As a result, only 38 percent of teachers feel very prepared to communicate results to parents. The gap could also be explained by the tense atmosphere surrounding accountability issues, which can sometimes put teachers’ and parents’ interests at odds.

Interestingly, low-income parents have different views about and experiences with assessment than their middle- and high-income counterparts. For instance, 33 percent of parents with a household income under $60,000 agree or strongly agree that state tests improve learning—compared to only 16–17 percent of families with a household income between $60,000 and $119,999. In addition, educators working in low-income districts are more likely than those in middle- or high-income districts to say that students spend too much time taking assessments. Principals in low-income schools are more likely to say that they have a data coach and have developed an assessment plan, and teachers in low-income schools are more likely to say that they modify teaching based on assessment results and use those results to collaborate with peers. 

Although 61 percent of parents say they believe that parents should have the right to opt their children out of state assessments, only 15 percent say they actually plan to opt out their own children. Furthermore, the vast majority of teachers (87 percent) said that they have never or rarely had a conversation with parents about opting out. Numbers are similar for principals (87 percent) and superintendents (82 percent).     

In its conclusion, NWEA offers a few recommendations—including a note on how important it is for states and education organizations to foster open dialogue and provide information on the new federal law to administrators, educators, students, and parents. In particular, states and education agencies should dedicate resources to training teachers on best practices for assessment and data usage so that the communication gap between teachers and parents will lessen.

SOURCE: “Make Assessment Work for All Students: Multiple Measures Matter,” Northwest Evaluation Association, (May 2016).