Today on Forbes.com , Checker explains why he finds reforms in LA, NY and Denver promising instances of thinking outside the box. It's all about the numbers--of the test score and dollar variety. When the old ways aren't working, shouldn't we try something new? Absolutely.

Cram schools seem to be popping up everywhere. Korea has them as does Flushing, Queens. The newest market? India. But where Korean schools are a post graduate addendum to improve university entrance exam scores, Indian cram schools are a high school addition. The goal is admission to one of the highly selective Indian Institutes of Technology and the cram schools only teach what will be on the test: math, physics and chemistry.??Traditional Indian public schools are complaining that the best and brightest are leaving their ranks for these schools (uh, hello? maybe these students are leaving for a reason?). On top of it all, these students still have to graduate from high school--while attending cram school at the same time, it seems.??

Local schools [in Kota, the cram capital] also have benefited: Cram students have to attend regular classes so they can pass their high-school exams and graduate. Some high schools have early morning classes so cram students can finish early and move on to cramming.??

Kota is in the throes of natural urban renewal as a result of the cram schools' popularity. The hoards of students need places to live, supplies and meals to keep them going 18 hours a day. It's like a cramming industry... or, cram-dustry!??

But on a more serious note, everything about these schools would seem repulsive to the American education worldview. Teaching to the test? The horror! Teenagers studying from 7am to midnight? The outrage! Ignoring literature, foreign languages, music and art? Crisis! But do these schools work? Seems so. Students graduating from Bansal Classes, the grandaddy of cram schools in Kota, are being accepted to the IITs in droves. And what does a degree from IIT mean? Admission to the educated elite. (And it must be noted that the Wall Street Journal??claims IITs are statistically more difficult to gain admission to than either Harvard or Cambridge.) Most importantly, these students are choosing??to go to these schools; they want to spend hours upon hours studying to get into these colleges.??

It's highly unlikely we'll be creating American cram schools anytime soon (although SAT prep seems to come to mind on that score) but it would be rather refreshing if we witnessed the same drive to excel as appears in our Eastern neighbors. This isn't about replicating the extreme education vision we see in India; it's about how much education is respected--understood--as the ticket to success. I know there are a host of other problems facing our country right now, but do we really need another Sputnik to see the renaissance of education as a top priority?

Now that the financial markets have steadied themselves a bit, and Congressional leaders have started putting Humpty-Dumpty together again, it's easier to look at the demise of the bailout bill on Monday with cool detachment. And what's clear is that three factions were responsible for the bill's defeat: liberals, conservatives, and members from swing districts, particularly freshmen. What's interesting to me is that these were the same factions that rebelled against Chairman George Miller's No Child Left Behind reauthorization bill last year--and that would likely kill a similar bill today if it were brought to the floor.

Seven years ago, when the original NCLB made its way through Congress, it benefited from strong presidential leadership (in the wake of 9/11), plus liberal and conservative bases mostly willing to go along with their party bosses. Obviously those dynamics have changed.

As I write, leaders in Congress are working to tweak the bailout plan to get a few more votes on either side of the aisle so the bill can make it out of the House. Likewise, what would it take for an NCLB reauthorization bill to succeed? It seems to me that there are two choices for Democratic leaders, who will maintain their control next Congress. First, they can opt for a party-line vote by loading up the bill with lots of goodies for the teachers unions (i.e., more spending) while stripping out most of the accountability and school choice provisions from the law. That would be bad for school reform and (I suspect) bad for Democrats over the long-term, putting them on the side of the special interests against meaningful change. But it could work legislatively.

Or Democratic leaders could try for a "grand bargain" that would bring liberals, conservatives, and moderates on board. Here's the deal: devolve key provisions back to the states, such as the minutia of how "adequate yearly progress" should work, or whether and how students with disabilities and English language learners should participate in testing. That will appease states-rights conservatives and pro-union liberals. Then, to placate the center, add incentives for states to sign onto rigorous, common standards and tests.

In other words, turn NCLB on its head, with a "tighter" focus on what students should learn, and a "looser" approach to what happens if they don't get there. Not only is this good politics, it's good policy, too.

Last night: "Science should be taught in science class."--Sarah Palin

August 2005: "Science class is for science"--The Education Gadfly

Check it out.

*??And maybe even a religion.

Economist Roland Fryer's Educational Innovation Laboratory is off to the races, thanks to the Broad Foundation, experimenting with new ways of incentivizing kids to learn in three big cities (New York , Chicago, Washington ). In D.C., the plan involves paying students in fifteen middle schools up to $1500 a year if they (a) attend, (b) behave and (c) get good grades.

I'm a longtime believer in giving young people real-world incentives to study hard and do well in school, though I've long supposed that means doing a better job of hinging promotion, graduation, college admission and jobs on school success. I don't have any big problem with more immediate and kid-like rewards, either, such as taking students with perfect attendance records to a theme park at the end of the year or giving pizzas to those who read more books .

Paying them cold cash to do the right thing gives me pause, however. It's fundamentally??amoral. It creates??weird and perverse incentives for pupils and teachers alike. It could get very expensive, using serious money that might otherwise go into better teachers, better textbooks, longer times, more instructional technology, etc. (Chicago has about 125,000 students in grades 5-8. At $1500 apiece, a totally successful program for them would cost $187.5 million per annum.)

Besides all that, I really want to know if it's going to work--and I really want that question to be addressed by analysts completely independent of Roland Fryer. Is there a freestanding evaluation built into this? Will the necessary??data be available to one and all to analyze? Fryer is a fine economist and presumably an honest man. But nobody should be his own evaluator. That's an even more dubious proposition than paying kids to do what's in their own interest in the first place.

Looks like Catholic schools are taking on a new role in urban France.

(We've written on the importance of Catholic schools in the US, too.)

This blog has seen various commentary on why Michelle Rhee's plan, "Capital Gains," to pay students for good behavior and good grades was a bad idea (try here to see the ongoing conversation). Liam, in particular, was vehemently opposed to it in its New York City and Washington DC manifestations. Well it didn't work (or had "mixed results," ahem-hem) in NY and it doesn't appear to have worked in DC, either. When will Fryer, the plan's mastermind, give it a rest?

Today's Washington Post reports that behavior has improved but grades have not. The program has now completed a two week test run (where it appears no money was rewarded, only the points system was implmented to demonstrate how the system would work) and started officially (in all its glitzy, perverse incentivizing glory) yesterday. I enjoyed, in particular, this tidbit:

Betts and his staff did a two-week trial run this month to give teachers practice with the scoring system and to give students an idea of what would be expected to earn points. He said that the sixth- and seventh-graders were "right into it" and that attendance and punctuality ticked up. Grades did not.

Eighth-graders, he said, are "crafty folk" and are likely to wait until the program ramps up before they make many changes. "They're like 'Jerry Maguire': 'Show me the money,' " he said.

And there, my friends, is the whole problem. Yes, this plan will tap into the little Jerry Maguires in all of us, but it will teach these kids zilch. And when the $2.7 million that has miraculously survived the recent advent of Great Depression Round II runs out, we'll be back at square one.

Mike may catch the attention of governors and superintendents, but school boards are deaf. John Deasy, Superintedent of Prince George's County, is set to resign. We hope his replacement is as reform-minded and result-oriented.

Update: I am not implying that the school board forced Deasy out (they did not) only to joke that Mike, who has caught the eye of district officials in the past (see above examples), was shockingly not consulted!

Update 2: Seems I'm not the only one who thought Deasy's departure looked a little fishy.

Oklahoma is trying an education venture some say will help kids stay in school and do better: removing one or perhaps two critical grades and creating separate schools for them. Ninth-graders in Coweta this year are the first to occupy a campus that's just for freshmen and Cache Public Schools plans something similar. Sand Springs Public Schools in Tulsa County placed prekindergarten, sixth-grade and ninth-grade students all in their own buildings, with the aim of focusing on the years that are the "biggest hurdles in the schooling process," said Superintendent Lloyd Snow. ??Supporters say such setups can help ease difficult transition periods, cut down on discipline problems and prevent kids from falling through the cracks or dropping out. Seems like it could be a worthy endeavor, though supporters didn't offer any hard evidence (at least in the article) of their claims. Coweta Superintendent Jeff Holmes said he expects to see results this year. You can check it out for yourself here.