This will make you laugh. And then it will make you cry at the poor state of the U.S. education system.

Gov. Strickland needs to make up his mind about what to do with persistently failing schools in Ohio. Most recently, Strickland's position seemed to indicate that closure was out of the question. As Gongwer News Service reported, Strickland referenced the state constitution as his primary justification.

"Gov. Strickland said a failed Senate amendment, that would have applied the same closure standards for both charters and traditional public schools would have violated the constitutional requirement to provide a free education for Ohio's students.

"I think chronically failing public schools should be reorganized, closed, the leadership should be changed," he said. "So I'm not willing to let public schools off the hook either, but the fact is that it's not possible to actually close a public school because the state is constitutionally required to maintain public schools for the students of our state." (see here for more on this, and Strickland's conversation with Secretary Duncan about charters).

However, it wasn't long ago that Strickland was proposing legislation to shut down entire school districts for non-compliance. During his January State of the State Address, he said, "In short, if a school district fails, we will shut it down." School accountability is one of Strickland's six pillars for reforming Ohio's school system, with "revoking the school district's charter and shutting down the district" listed as the fourth possible consequence for district non-compliance.

Normally, I wouldn't spend a Friday morning pointing out inconsistencies like this, just for spite. But given that one of the five main criteria for winning Race to the Top (RttT) dollars is how well a state can turn around struggling schools (for how Ohio ranks according to the other criteria, see Terry's earlier post), not having a clear stance on what to do with failing schools could put Ohio at a comparative disadvantage. The New Teacher Project (TNTP) just issued a report to help states interpret the RttT guidelines and see how well they fare according to the give criteria. Overall, TNTP considers Ohio to be competitive, but notice where our weakness lies.

Strickland needs to make up his mind on this, and quickly.

The sixth video in our Fun Fact Friday! video series looks at students and the attention they receive at school.

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Video fact source:

???High-Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB : Part 2,??? Steve Farkas and Ann Duffett, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, June 2008.

Fun Fact Friday! - Waiting.... from Education Gadfly on Vimeo .

Often it's hard as a writer to know if you are having any impact, in fact to know if anyone is even reading your stuff. Most weeks that I author a piece in the Gadfly I don't hear a peep, and I just hope for the best.Not this week! My article about the Montgomery County, Maryland schools under the leadership of superintendent Jerry Weast (and based on my reading of Leading for Equity: The Pursuit of Excellence in Montgomery County Public Schools) led to the bombardment of my email box by angry local parents, teachers, and activists. To whom I am very grateful. Let the debate begin!

I am seeking permission from several of these folks to post their comments on this blog; one of the most incisive is below.

But before that, a thought. I'm struck at how the Montgomery County activists are so like many of the New York City activists. They both get steamed when the national education policy community holds their local districts up as exemplars, when they know the underbelly of those systems up close and personal. Maybe there's a rule for reformers: The more you know about any particular district, the less you like it. (I'll admit to knowing very little about Montgomery County, even though I live there--in the "Red Zone" no less!)

Now here's another side to the Montgomery County story, thanks to Joseph Hawkins:

I don't know your colleague Mike, but I would like to share a few observations about his pieces, "For progressive school reform, look South." Basically, the piece praised the Montgomery County Public Schools and its superintendent Jerry Weast.  Since I worked for this district for nearly 20 years in its Accountability Office I have a few opinions.  I also have some pretty unfriendly opinions about Weast based on my experience of trying to open a charter school in this county.  Where does one start!

• Let me start with my charter school experience.  As you know, from 1999 through 2004, I was the president of the Jaime Escalante Public Charter School, Inc.  This group spent 4 and half years on two failed charter school applications.  What did I learn from this experience?  Weast will say one thing in private meetings behind closed doors and then in public he will actually lie to your face about what was said.  I wouldn't walk in front of him down any dark alley ways.  If there is reform going on in Montgomery County, charter schools are not part of the agenda at all.  (By the way, we ended our charter school with a legal action.  We settled that dispute with a promise from Weast that he would open a KIPP Academy in Silver Spring.  Well, that went over like a lead balloon in progressive Montgomery County.  No KIPP.)
• Nothing that has occurred during Weast's tenure in Montgomery County is supported by any real empirical data.  And here I'm talking about controlled studies.  And this unfortunate because the school district is rich enough and well-staffed to the point that it can actually afford to engage in good science.  Okay, even if you discount controlled studies, one still cannot get out of the school district public use data-sets and files for secondary data analysis.  So there are no independent checks and balances on any claims and the new Harvard book is void of secondary data analysis.  I dare anyone to walk up to Weast and ask for a public data set - you will be laughed out of the room.
• I disagree that Montgomery County actually engaged in "taking" from the rich to give to the poor.  This implies a serious zero-sum game.  I don't think this is what really occurred (or still occurs).  In life luck is really important.  Or as my parents use to say, "Being in the right place at the right time never hurts."  Weast not only landed in one of the richest school districts in the world but it did so at a time when the county was busting with money from the over-heated real estate market.  What happened in Montgomery County was tax-payers grew the pie making it possible to push lots of extra cash and resources into the schools that were in the poorer sections of the county.  The county gets credit for sharing the wealth but people in my Burning Tree neighborhood (I live the green section of the county) aren't suffering.
• Finally, there are lots of test score gaps that remain unclosed.  My favorite one is the SAT gap (I'll get to the numbers in a moment).  And this is interesting one because it shows how liberals will talk out of both sides of their mouths.  Frequently, you will hear liberals in this county say that at the lower grades they have refused to accept income and race as an excuse for performance.  With that said you will find Weast claiming that he's closed the reading achievement gap in the early grades (end of kindergarten and 1^st grade).  (By the way, again I will point out that there is no independent testing or data analyses of these claims.)  However, at the other end of grade span, you will hear the same liberals still offering excuses for why poor kids of color score poorly on the SAT.  You know the excuses - the SAT correlates with income, and on and on.  Anyway, take a look at the attached chart.  When Weast arrived the black-white SAT score gap was 228 points.  It now stands at 274.  You can drive a truck through this gap.

* Percent participating

Not too much breaking news in the education world during these quiet August days. Secretary Duncan has even????decamped to the Last Frontier state.

• More good reform news in Charm City:????200 TFAers coming to Baltimore
• My take on the rush to apply for RTTT funds
• Report showing GA charters struggling financially

As always you should read this week's????Gadfly (and listen to the????podcast while you're at it, though I've been sent back down to????triple A). ????The careful reader will notice that the Errata section offering a mea culpa for a spelling error actually includes another spelling error.

I typically wouldn't point out such a thing but a) it's August, and b) the mistake is so egregious as to warrant universal outrage. ????I'm listening to????Appetite for Destruction on repeat until Gadfly makes amends. ????Consider this GNR-gate, day one.

If anyone else is similarly appalled, let me know. ????It'll give me a chance to reminisce about buying the????Paris pay-per-view back in '92.

Photo courtesy of popserious.com

Today at a conference hosted by the Alliance for Excellent Education, titled Teachers'?? Use of Data to Impact Teaching and Learning , I was quickly reminded of how critical it is to be explicit in describing what one means by phrases like "data-driven instruction." The presenters called for a "fundamental shift" in the way the teaching profession thinks about assessment and student learning. In the new paradigm, teachers would take responsibility for the achievement of all students. They would embrace testing as a tool to improve student learning, rather than bristling at it (see an earlier post about why Cleveland State University education professor Karly Wheatley is wrong to demonize testing).

This sounds like common sense, but it might not be. I wonder if perhaps the two camps (those who rally behind increased testing and data-driven instruction, and those who show hostility toward it) are using two totally different definitions of "testing." Today's conference reiterated that assessment can take many forms, and encompasses far more than the end-of-year summary assessments???i.e. state standardized tests. I imagine this is the type of testing that Wheatley has in mind when he describes the collateral damage it creates. But what about formative assessments that can be given every week or every few weeks, to signal whether students have mastered the most recently taught objectives? If interim assessments allow teachers to create richer lesson plans, know the status of each and every student, and be more far more effective in the classroom, how can anyone be against it?

There's encouraging news out of Hillsborough County, Florida this morning, the home of Tampa and the eighth largest school district in the country.??The headline from the??St. Pete Times says it all: "Hillsborough schools and teachers' union join hands with Florida voucher advocates to train private school teachers."

On a normal day, oil and water just don't mix.

Public schools and teachers' unions don't say nice things about those who support school vouchers, sending kids to private schools with public money. Most of the time, such folks just don't get along.

But Wednesday wasn't a normal day.

In a move that experts are calling nearly unprecedented, the Hillsborough County schools and teachers' union have joined forces with a nonprofit Florida voucher group to help train private school teachers.

Granted, it's not totally unprecedented for public school districts to provide professional development to private school teachers; it happens through the federal Title I program all the time. Still, here's some welcome rhetoric from a local teachers union president:

"Bottom line is these are our children, they are disadvantaged children, and they often return to our public schools," said Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers' Association. "I want them to get the best possible education, wherever they get it."

Kudos to Step up for Students, Florida's (and the nation's) largest tax credit program, which initiated this effort and is proving that the private school choice issue doesn't have to be white hot. If you want to learn more, come to Fordham's panel next week ("With Charter Schools Ascendant, Is There Still a Future for Vouchers?"), where John Kirtley, the chairman of Step up for Students, will be one of the speakers.

So I argue in today's Education Gadfly. Read it here.

Gadfly was beset with a startling case of G 'n R letter confusion in last week's Recommended Reading, "A conflict of interest." The last name of the mayor of Los Angeles is Villaraigosa, not Villagairosa. We tender that hizzoner (and Axl Rose) our sincerest apologies.

A previous version of this piece (ironically) misspelled the first name of Axl Rose. It has since been corrected.