Don Soifer of the Lexington Institute provides some interesting background on the portfolio issue, and why this wonky topic matters.
You read that right: Kudos to the NEA. According to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the teachers union and its California affiliate have coughed up $1.25 million to defeat an anti-gay marriage initiative in the Golden State. This is welcome news for two reasons. First, gay marriage is a good idea. (Not that you care what an education wonk thinks about gay marriage, but hey, what's a blog for?) And second, that's $1.25 million that won't be supporting the NEA's typical nefarious work of combating every promising education reform proposal known to man. It's a real win-win!
* Mike Antonucci says it was just the California Teachers Association that donated. Well darn, I wanted to praise the NEA for something.
That's right, the Gadfly is on top of its game this week. First you'll find Mike responding to the newly minted "Portfoliogate." Does Obama support portfolios as an alternate form of testing or is his still amorphous position on education in general the lesson of the day? Then you'll find a heap of Recommended Readings and Short Reviews (Gadfly was a bit of a bookworm this week--kind of like Rick Hess, who we learned via??the podcast??apparently lives under a rock, eschewing news sources in favor of their heavier leather-bound brethren). So what was on our reading list? Well the new report from AIR caught our attention, as well as the recent report on Australia from OECD. We also bemoaned the sad decision of some districts to move polling places out of schools and expressed our doubt, again, about??the first results of student pay programs. And last but certainly not least, don't miss the plethora of announcements, which are certainly worth a gander! Watch out, in particular, for our newest report... "A Byte at the Apple:??Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era."
We know you were waiting with bated breath. All this and more in this week's 'Fly.
That's one heck of a tough question that the next president - whether McCain or Obama - will eventually have to answer. Fordham's Mike Petrilli is trying to help out with a few suggestions. In an op-ed in the Washington Times today he tells leaders to "turn NCLB on its head." He suggests they loosen parts of the law that are excessively tight and tighten parts that are way too loose. Sound like a bad prom dress from the 80s? Not exactly. He lays out a very interesting solution. Mike writes:
Right now, NCLB micromanages the formula and timelines by which schools are labeled and sanctioned, yet it allows states total discretion over the academic standards and tests used to judge schools (and kids) in the first place. These should be flipped. Provide incentives for states to sign up for rigorous nationwide (not federal) standards and tests. Make the results of this testing publicly available, sliced every which way by school and group. But then allow states and districts (or private entities, such as GreatSchools.net) to devise their own school labels and ratings - and let them decide what to do with schools that need help.
Not everyone votes their pocketbook, but if they did, these education leaders would be pulling the lever for John McCain. That's because each one makes $250,000 or more per year:
Joel Klein, New York City Chancellor???????????????????????????????? $250,000 (as of 2005)
John Wilson, NEA Executive Director?????????????????????????????? $258,000 (as of 2005)
Michelle Rhee, D.C. Schools Chancellor???????????????????????? $275,000 (as of 2007)
Alberto Cavalho, Miami-Dade Superintendent???? $275,000 (as of 2008)
Jack Dale, Fairfax Co. (VA) Superintendent???????????? $280,000 (as of 2007)
Arlene Ackerman, Philadelphia Superintendent?? $325,000 (as of 2008)
Randi Weingarten, President, AFT and UFT?????????????? $600,000* $350,000** (as of 2008)
* Update (3:37 p.m.): I just heard from "Janet" in the AFT's press operation, accusing me of "making up" this figure. Not true! If you follow the link, it goes to??Mike Antonucci's??Education Intelligence Agency, where he reports that Randi planned to draw??salaries from both the AFT and UFT. Janet insists otherwise and is working on getting me documentation. She thinks Randi's true salary is in the $350,000 range.??I will make that change when I get confirmation. ??
** Confirmation received. Readers will note that I've now received blog-related calls from both Randi Weingarten and Joel Klein!
If you think that parsing Obama's portfolio policy is difficult, what to make of the conflicting signals over Teach For America? On the one hand, Barack Obama has praised Michelle Rhee, the poster-child for Teach For America's impact on American education. Several of his advisors are drawn from the group's alumni and friends. And as I mentioned last week, as far as I can tell, almost 100 percent of the TFAers I know are pulling for Obama to win.
So why on earth is the campaign allowing Linda Darling-Hammond to play surrogate for the Senator and say nasty things about TFA in high-profile events? See for yourself; check out Vaishali Honawar's Teacher Beat post about Tuesday night's Education Week debate and scroll down to the YouTube clip about TFA. You'll hear Lisa Graham Keegan of the McCain campaign promoting the program and LDH attacking it, arguing that it's not the way to "build the profession."
Believe me, we had plenty of policy disagreements within the Bush Administration too (see here, for example). And when they weren't resolved, they festered, and policymaking suffered. Someone--probably Barack Obama himself--is going to have to make a decision about whether to embrace reform (and in this case, TFA) or embrace the union-and-ed-school establishment (and in this case, LDH).* If he wins the election and appoints Darling-Hammond to a senior position, we'll know which way he's decided to go.
* My friends inside the campaign say "don't worry, Obama's with us." But we're also hearing through the grapevine that LDH is preparing to move to Washington and that top NEA officials aren't worried a bit about Obama's rhetoric, believing they have a "great" relationship with him. In other words, both camps believe that they have Obama's ear. You have to hand it to him; it takes a very good politician to pull off that trick.
If many recent polls are to be believed, Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. And this week we got an important glimpse into the dynamics of his education team that might preview what we can expect in the four years to come.
"Portfoliogate" started Tuesday morning on the Diane Rehm Show, when Obama staffer Melody Barnes expressed her candidate's openness to using portfolios to assess student achievement under No Child Left Behind. "We have to deploy and employ the proper kinds of assessments," Barnes said, "portfolios for example and other forms of assessments that may be a little bit more expensive but they are allowing us to make sure children are getting the proper analytic kinds of tools."
Both Greg Toppo of USA Today and I thought we heard Barnes make news, and said so on the air. (We were guests on the show, along with Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation.) Neither of us remembered the Obama camp speaking so effusively about portfolios before. Later, I wrote that this appeared to signal a big shift for Obama, opening the door to portfolios as an alternative to standardized testing.
It turned out that both Toppo and I were wrong about the first point; as Michele McNeil of Education Week demonstrated, Obama mentioned "digital portfolios" way back in his first big education speech (last November in New Hampshire). And the Obama campaign strongly disputed my second point, releasing a statement hours later calling my interpretation "a willful misreading of his comprehensive agenda on education" and pointing to comments he made after his second big education speech (in May in Colorado) that showed a clear commitment to testing.
But a few hours later, the plotline took yet another twist, this time when Obama advisor Linda Darling-Hammond spoke about portfolios during her Education Week/Teachers College debate with McCain adviser Lisa Graham Keegan. "If you look at other countries, their assessments include relatively few multiple-choice items and in some cases none," said Darling-Hammond. "Their kids are doing science inquiries, research papers, technology products. Those are part of the examination system." Later, she addressed Barnes's statements on the Diane Rehm Show. "She said in addition to standardized tests we need to look at other assessments. She did mention portfolios. They are used in the charter school she is on the board.... And we have to get knowledgeable about what does go on in other countries....They routinely include elements like research products, they are scored, they are scored in consistent and reliable and valid ways."
So here we have an Obama advisor speaking in glowing terms about assessments in other countries that include "science inquiries, research papers, technology products" but "few multiple-choice items." Doesn't that sound a lot like portfolios? And regardless of what Darling-Hammond insists, experience has shown portfolios to be unreliable measures of achievement, since, by their very nature, they include so much variability and subjectivity on the part of those who evaluate them. (They're also time consuming and costly but save that problem for another day.)
Why does any of this matter, beyond the specific policy concerns about using portfolios in lieu of standardized tests? First, it illustrates, in stark relief, the divisions within Obama's own education team. It's hard to imagine Andrew Rotherham or Jon Schnur speaking with such conviction about "authentic assessments"; these Obama advisors have been known as accountability hawks who support standardized testing, imperfect as it may be. And this is just one area where the "reform" camp within the Obama campaign (and the Democratic Party) disagrees with the "establishment" camp, epitomized by Darling-Hammond. (Support for non-traditional routes into the classroom, such as Teach For America, is another obvious example.) These factions are still jockeying for position, and this week their infighting spilled out into the public domain.
Second, this fracas shows how fluid Obama's education policy still is, especially when it comes to the No Child Left Behind Act. It's hard to pinpoint the Senator's position on assessments, for example, because that position has yet to solidify. We simply don't know where a President Obama would go on NCLB, because he (like McCain in this regard) has been coy about the specific fixes he would propose.
Perhaps we should be grateful; as of now, at least, Senator Obama hasn't irrevocably embraced any terrible ideas about how to fix NCLB. But he hasn't embraced any great ideas, either. And he probably hasn't even decided yet which way to go politically: throw the reformers under the bus and embrace his union and ed-school friends, or throw his establishment pals under the bus and hug the reformers.
If he chooses the latter--let's hope--he will need to find Republican votes in order to get a reform-minded NCLB reauthorization through Congress. That's because many members of his own party won't be so brave as to buck the unions, and they want the law eviscerated. So he will need to find some version of bipartisan compromise.
What might that entail? Right now, NCLB micromanages the procedures and timelines by which schools are labeled and sanctioned, yet it allows states total discretion over the academic standards and tests used to judge schools (and kids) in the first place. These should be flipped. Turned upside down. Inside out. Uncle Sam should provide incentives for states to sign up for rigorous nationwide (not federal) standards and tests. (Tests, not portfolios!) Make the results of this testing publicly available, sliced every which way by, state, district, school and group. But then allow states and districts (or private entities, such as GreatSchools.net) to devise their own school labels and ratings--and let them decide what to do with schools that need help.
This will not only enable parents, policy-makers, and taxpayers to compare schools in an apples-to-apples manner, across state lines, but will also empower states and communities to take the driver's seat again when it comes to determining which schools need help and how to intervene.
This solution won't please everyone. And perhaps it won't thrill anyone, either--not a bad definition of consensus, ultimately. Some reformers will worry that, absent stern mandates from Washington, some states will fail to hold troubled schools accountable. Some conservatives will complain about "national" testing. And some union leaders, maybe all of them, will still chafe at the transparency of school results and the possibility of tying student performance to teacher effectiveness.
But reasonable people on all sides of the issue will see that this approach is better aligned with Uncle Sam's true skill set. After all, Washington is at least three or four steps removed from the operation of local schools. There's only so much policy-makers can do from Capitol Hill and the federal Education Department, whatever their intentions. It would be far better for the feds to focus on making school standards explicit and results transparent, and then allow the states, communities and expert educators to focus on how to reform schools that aren't making the grade.
To be sure, this would be a radical departure from current policy under NCLB, and is different from what anyone is talking about now. But it could work, both politically and substantively. And there's nothing about this proposal that would conflict with what Obama and his warring sidekicks have laid out during the campaign. So perhaps we should be heartened that he has left himself so much room to maneuver, after all.
This article was adapted from an Op-Ed that appeared this morning in The Washington Times.
There may be no Greek columns to back-drop these stump speeches, but they're still promising big change. In fact, the school corridors and cafeteria tables only serve to emphasize the issues of the day: class trips and cafeteria food. That's right, election fever has hit southern Florida elementary schools--election fever for school council elections. "I will try to get your class more parties and field trips and make school more fun," pledged one candidate. "I am a people person and that's why my slogan is 'Every student counts,'" explained another. Students find themselves evaluating the qualities they cherish in others and, perhaps, themselves. ''They should have excellent grades as president, they should be respectful, they should be nice and they shouldn't lie,'' recommended Miami Shores Elementary fifth grader Shabreya Johnson. And national candidates might well take a page from their younger counterparts. "I won't steal any money," promised fourth-grade treasurer candidate William Howell, "I swear." Now that's a speech promise any constituent would love to see kept.
"Student politicians promise just about anything," by Hannah Sampson, Miami Herald, October 21, 2008
Ending social promotion is a good idea, but merely forcing students to repeat grades--same stuff, same classrooms, often same teachers--has been shown to be an inadequate alternative. Which is why Jefferson Parish, Louisiana deserves kudos for devising a promising "third way": grade 4.5, the destination for fourth-graders who fail to pass the state's LEAP test. This intermediate level will serve as a "transitional class" that "combines intense remedial math and language arts with regular fifth-grade courses" to give students a chance to catch up to their peers. Wisely, not all of the 22 percent of the system's 3,100 fourth graders who failed to pass their LEAPs are eligible. Admission requires contract-style parental support for the "intense effort and focus" required to pass 4.5--and a minimum score of "approaching basic" in math and English. Regrettably, details are scant on how the new grade will work and some may argue that Jefferson's approach is nothing new--after all, it's basically a return to grouping students by current ability, a sensible policy that unfortunately went out of fashion in the 1990s. But if it results in six-graders who are ready to do sixth-grade work, that will be something we can all LEAP about.
"Program to help students catch up," by Barri Bronston, New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 18, 2008
It's no secret that Gadfly and his friends harbor some doubts about the programs now popping up in various cities that pay students for improved attendance, behavior, and grades. But now that these initiatives are in motion, we might as well learn something from them. Last week, DC students received their first checks and the results were mixed. Some kids reported being more motivated to participate in class, show up on time, and pull up their grades. Others' aspirations were less high-minded. "I'm going to the mall," declared one seventh grade girl. "What d'you get? What d'you get?" whooped others, gleefully waving their checks, as they bounded out of schoolhouse doors. Teachers reported that the most obvious change so far is a decline in tardiness. But not everyone is convinced. Diane Ravitch notes that students in other countries make costly sacrifices to attend school; can the future really belong to those that must be "cajoled and bribed" to do that which is in their best interest-learn? But perhaps these cash incentives aren't that different from the car-and-Hawaiian-vacation rewards of wealthier suburban students, argues Richard Daley, Mayor of Chicago. Some of these kids have "never seen a $10 or $20 bill," he reasons. Mayor Daley, with all due respect, you need a better sound bite than that. Meanwhile, we're waiting for this "Show me the money" initiative to show us some data.
"We Shouldn't Pay Kids to Learn," by Diane Ravitch, Forbes.com, October 17, 2008
"Delighted - or Deflated - by Dollars," by Bill Turque and N.C. Aizenman, Washington Post, October 18, 2008
"Daley: Why can't kids get paid for good grades?," by Fran Spielman, Chicago Sun Times, October 18, 2008