E.D. Hirsch, Jr. turned ninety years old two weeks ago. And the state of Louisiana has given the Cultural Literacy icon and architect of the Core Knowledge curriculum a belated birthday present. In a little-noticed press release issued Monday, the state’s Department of Education announced its plan, under a provision of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, to develop and pilot a “streamlined English and social studies assessment….that align[s] with the knowledge and books taught in Louisiana classrooms.” Unlike most reading tests, which ask students to find the main idea or make inferences on reading passages about random topics, Louisiana plans to create test items on books and topics test-takers have actually studied in school and try them out in five school districts in the state, including two charter school networks.

If you’re familiar with Hirsch’s work, his many books including The Knowledge Deficit and The Making of Americans; if you understand the connection between background knowledge and language proficiency that he has championed for many decades, then Louisiana’s move is as obvious to you as it is overdue. For the uninitiated, University of Virginia cognitive scientist Dan Willingham in a recent blog post offered an economical summary of the Hirschean oeuvre:

Background knowledge is the main driver of language comprehension, whether written or spoken. Disadvantaged students are disproportionately dependent on schools to provide the background information that will make them effective readers because wealthy students have greater opportunity to gain this knowledge at home.

Simple. Intuitive. Obvious. At least until it’s time for students to sit for a standardized reading test. For years, Hirsch has made the case that such tests are fundamentally unfair to disadvantaged children, particularly low-income children of color, because of the nature of language itself. We may perceive reading comprehension as a content-neutral “skill” that can be taught, practiced, mastered, and tested in the abstract on any random topic, but this is deeply misleading. All reading tests are de facto tests of background knowledge, a point Hirsch made in a 2010 piece in The American Prospect, which I had the privilege to co-author, bluntly titled, “There’s No Such Thing as a Reading Test”:

Researchers have consistently demonstrated that in order to understand what you're reading, you need to know something about the subject matter. Students who are identified as "poor readers" comprehend with relative ease when asked to read passages on familiar subjects, outperforming even "good readers" who lack relevant background knowledge…Such findings should challenge our very idea of who is or is not good reader.

“The trouble is that by not requiring knowledge of any specific book or facts, reading tests have contributed to the false impression that reading is mainly about having skills such as being able to summarize, and not about background knowledge,” noted Lousiana’s state superintendent of education, John White. “By not requiring knowledge, tests create no incentive for particular knowledge to be taught.” This creates several kinds of mischief in schools trying their best to prepare students for high-stakes exams. When the knowledge demands of reading tests are unknown, it encourages teachers to devalue knowledge and prepare students by teaching comprehension “skills and strategies,” which are of limited value. And thus schools and teachers have no incentive to give disadvantaged kids what they need most: access to the broad general knowledge in science, social studies, the arts, and other subjects that advantaged kids are far more likely to encounter in their daily lives, and which are the true drivers of sophisticated language proficiency

In sum, what Louisiana proposes to experiment with is something of an assessment Holy Grail: a reading test that incentivizes the kind of teaching and learning disadvantaged students need to close pernicious achievement gaps in ELA. Keep that in mind next week when you hear the inevitably depressing results on NAEP reading.

The Louisiana proposal is a modest one, limited to five school districts and charter networks in the state. Modest, but portentous. For the first time, the education leadership of a U.S. state has demonstrated in its assessment policies a grasp of the foundational idea that English language proficiency is not a “skill” like throwing a ball or riding a bike that can be taught and tested in an abstract, content-agnostic way. The pilot signals the critical awareness that language-proficiency is knowledge dependent, and that educational equity is not served by ignoring this or trying to wish it away.

I suspect the pilot may get more attention for reducing the number of tests students take and for spreading them out over the school year, so that students are assessed immediately following a unit’s completion, leading to a cumulative score. But the longer-term win is to drive home the connection between broad general knowledge and broad general reading ability. Once established, that has the potential to have a dramatic impact by challenging the long dominant skills-and-strategies approach to reading instruction in favor of one that sees knowledge development in children—particularly disadvantaged children—as the indispensible Job One of reading instruction in American classrooms.

Bravo, Louisiana. And happy birthday, E.D Hirsch, Jr.

Scrapping regulations that burden schools, have little to do with student learning, and restrict local flexibility and autonomy is a worthy undertaking. Over the past few years, Ohio legislators have taken small but commendable steps in providing regulatory relief for public schools. For example, Senate Bill 3, enacted in December 2016, provides flexibility for high-performing school districts around various staffing regulations. Last month, the Senate passed legislation intended to further pare down regulations. With unanimous support, Senate Bill 216—known as the Ohio Public School Deregulation Act—now heads to the House for consideration. But what’s in this bill? What positive steps does it take? And what provisions should House members take a closer look at?

Let’s start with three solid provisions.

Provides flexibility around teacher licensing. Most Ohio educators are licensed to teach in specific grade spans (PK–3, 4–9, and 7–12) and in certain content areas. Although research has not shown a close link between standard licensing requirements and classroom effectiveness, licensing is viewed by many as a way to ensure minimum criteria around who teaches which courses. But at the same time, licensing also restricts the ability of school leaders to deploy staff in ways that meet organizational (and student) needs. Consider a school with a vacancy in tenth grade math. Its school leaders may want to fill that opening internally. But they could not easily assign that course to a ninth grade teacher licensed in grades four through nine, even though he or she is willing and able to teach tenth graders. The vacancy could also be filled externally. Yet as a barrier to entry, licensure regulations shrink the applicant pool, as only those specifically certified to teach math in grades seven through twelve could be hired. In some parts of Ohio—and in harder-to-staff subjects like math and other STEM fields—finding candidates meeting licensure requirements can prove difficult.

SB 216 would allow superintendents to more effortlessly deploy teachers in grades and content areas in which they aren’t licensed. Three conditions, however, must be met before they can do so: 1) the teacher’s license must be within two grade levels of the course being taught;[1] 2) the teacher must have at least three years of instructional experience; and 3) the teacher must pass an exam in the out-of-field area. Interestingly, the introduced version of SB 216 did not include any conditions—it would’ve given school leaders more latitude to match personnel to organizational needs—but the Senate added them as the bill moved through committee. All told, the Senate-passed version of SB 216 does a fair job balancing local autonomy with some basic quality-control provisions.

Increases the time before non-teaching staff can receive tenure. Like most states, Ohio has seen a boom in non-teaching staff. In many districts, state law grants these school employees job protections after their third year of employment—i.e., they receive tenure. SB 216, however, increases non-teaching staff’s probationary period from three to seven years before they receive tenured status. This is a smart change, and it’s one recommended in our 2015 deregulation paper. First, it aligns non-teaching employees’ probationary period with that of teachers, who generally become eligible after seven years. Second, by delaying tenure, school management will have a longer time to assess the capabilities, performance, and organizational fit of their non-teaching staff before awarding job protections that make it costly and difficult to remove them, should that become necessary. To be sure, a bolder overhaul of tenure, including potentially phasing it out entirely as a few states have done, should be considered. Nevertheless, this change would give school leaders more tools to effectively manage a large part of their workforce.

Preserves the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA). Perhaps the most-discussed provision in the introduced version of SB 216 was its proposed elimination of the KRA, a statewide test given to all incoming kindergarteners. The idea seems to stem from concerns about the burdens of the assessment. In Senate testimony last December, various educators noted the significant time needed to administer the KRA, as it requires one-on-one testing with each student. But in testimony, early-learning advocacy groups stressed the role of KRA data in revealing the need for high-quality preschool, particularly in disadvantaged communities. After much debate, the Senate decided to maintain the KRA, though it also directed the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) to recommend ways to streamline it. Both are good steps. As preschool initiatives continue to forge ahead, it’s critical to gauge progress statewide in kindergarten readiness. At the same time, minimizing testing burdens remains an important goal, and ODE should work on solutions to improve the efficiency of the KRA.

* * *

Now let’s turn to three provisions in SB 216 deserving of scrutiny in the lower chamber.

Masks data on student subgroups by increasing the minimum “n-size” to thirty. To ensure that schools do not overlook historically disadvantaged students, state law requires the disaggregation of data by various subgroups. Current Ohio law allows such data to be publicly reported when there are at least ten students in a subgroup—anything less is masked to ensure privacy. For school accountability purposes—as in the Gap Closing component that focuses on subgroups—ODE has used a higher threshold of thirty students, but it will soon lower that number to fifteen under its ESSA plan. As discussed by my Gadfly colleague Madison Yoder, SB 216 would change all of this by increasing Ohio’s n-size to thirty students for both reporting and accountability purposes. That’s wrong on both counts. It would conceal from public view disaggregated data on children who are most apt to get lost in our school systems. The higher n-size would also weaken accountability for their academic results. Because this policy directly relates to pupil outcomes—and not educational “inputs”—lawmakers should reverse SB 216’s proposal to raise the n-size to thirty.

Requires reading improvement plans from additional districts and schools. It’s odd to see new administrative burdens included in a deregulation bill, but SB 216 does just that. It requires districts, charters, and STEM schools to submit reading improvement plans to ODE when less than 80 percent of their students reach proficiency on the state third-grade English language arts exam. Ohio law already requires districts and charters with low K–3 Literacy ratings and less than 60 percent proficiency in third-grade ELA to submit an improvement plan; hence, this would likely place more districts into a “needs improvement” status. It’s far from proven that creating these plans alone leads to learning gains, but it would create more paperwork. How is that deregulation?

Maintains state requirements on teacher evaluations. SB 216 makes major changes to Ohio’s teacher-evaluation framework by eliminating the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System (OTES) and replacing it with a rubric designed by the Educator Standards Board. As discussed in a separate piece, my view is that matters of personnel evaluation should be delegated to local management. No single framework can work in the context of all local schools, and trading one set of requirements for another doesn’t seem to meet the goal of enhancing flexibility and autonomy.

* * *

Much more work remains for those of us who want to free educational leaders to organize their schools in ways that best meet student needs, along with parent and community demands. But by passing SB 216, the Senate has approved several solid ideas that would provide greater managerial flexibility, while maintaining—with the exception of the n-size change—accountability for outcomes.

1. Herewith: the new leader (and the revamped mission) of FutureReady Columbus. (Columbus Monthly, 4/2/18)
    
2. Speaking of revamping, a guest commentator in Cincinnati opined this week against the legislation which proposes, among other things, to consolidate K-12, higher ed, and workforce development governance in Ohio. I’m sure the other side of the argument will be along any day now in the Enquirer. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 4/2/18)
    
3. A while back, I asked rhetorically whether any cash-strapped school districts actually institute the budget cuts that the state auditor’s office recommends after an audit. Or if they just shut down mid-year and help their students transfer to charter and private schools head immediately to the ballot box for a levy. We might find one anecdotal answer this week when the board of education of Niles City Schools (in state fiscal caution status currently) votes on a budget proposal. Perhaps it depends on just how dire the fiscal situation is. Niles’ situation seems pretty dire, but the l-word is bandied about here too. (Youngstown Vindicator, 4/4/18)
    
4. The biggest winners in terms of the largesse that LeBron James and his family foundation have bestowed upon his hometown are of course the students of Akron City Schools. We have seen this time and again over the years, including Savannah James’ Prom Promise outreach in providing lovely prom dresses for Buchtel and East High Schoolers. But the second biggest winners might just be the staff and owners of the Hilton Hotel in Fairlawn, where every foundation event seems to occur these days. (Akron Beacon Journal, 4/2/18)

This is the fifth and final post in a series of commentaries leading up to the release of new NAEP results on April 10. The first post discussed the value of the NAEP; the second looked at recent national trends; the third examined state-by-state trends; and the fourth reviewed urban trends. Also see Ian Rowe’s post making the case that NAEP should track results by family structure.

When the National Assessment of Education Progress results are released on Tuesday, reporters, educators, and policy wonks will have a lot to digest. Over the past several weeks, I’ve examined recent trends at the national, state, and local levels. First let me review the highlights, then identify seven stories to watch when the new data go live.

• After big increases in the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially in math, especially in fourth grade, and especially for our lowest-performing students and disadvantaged subgroups, national trends have been mostly flat for almost a decade.
• However, the national picture hides a lot of state-by-state variation. In the past, states including North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Massachusetts have made big improvements. More recently, the District of Columbia, Indiana, and Tennessee have posted big gains, overall and for most subgroups. On the flip side, quite a few states have lately regressed in math; Texas and Kansas saw some of the most widespread declines.
• Among large urban districts, the progress of D.C. Public Schools, Chicago, and Miami is especially impressive since 2011.

With that in mind, what should we be looking for next Tuesday?

1. Will the flat national trends continue? Given recent history, this is the safest bet. But predictable doesn’t make it any less disappointing. It will be time to start talking about the “lost decade” for educational progress in the United States. The question is why we hit a wall in the late 2000s. Was it the recession? Kirabo Jackson thinks it could have been. Was it the accountability movement running out of steam? Something else? We can speculate, but it will take rigorous scholarship to ferret this out.
2. Did the switch to tablet-based assessments have an impact on the scores? The 2017 score release was delayed by months because the experts at the National Center for Education Statistics wanted to make sure that the switch from paper-and-pencil testing to tablet-based assessments—fully implemented this round for the first time—didn’t mess up the findings. But were they able to adjust the scores appropriately, including at the state and local levels? Louisiana state superintendent John White is not so sure. If scores drop among low-income and low-performing students—the kids least likely to be comfortable with digital devices, especially in the fourth grade—that could signal that something went awry, possibly that the scores aren’t truly comparable with those that came before. And that would have a particularly large impact on states and districts serving lots of disadvantaged students—especially because NCES included a paper-and-pencil sample at the national level large enough to ensure consistent national trends but did not do the same at the state and local levels.

Another question to ask: Did the states that still use paper-and-pencil tests for their own annual assessments do worse? Most states now employ online tests for grades three through eight, with exceptions allowed for students with disabilities. But there some paper-and-pencil holdouts, and their students may be at a disadvantage on the new NAEP. Seven states give districts the option of using paper-and-pencil tests: Iowa, Louisiana (for grades three and four), New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas. Another two use paper-only assessments through grade four: Oklahoma and Tennessee. And Kentucky uses only paper tests for all grade levels. If these states in particular see declines, it could be because of the tablet-based testing format.

3. What’s the verdict on the Michelle Rhee/Kaya Henderson era in Washington, D.C.? After years of positive press and lavish praise from reformers, the District of Columbia Public Schools have faced a series of scandals in recent years. A debate is now raging about whether the remarkable progress reported there was real. The new scores will give us more clues about which view is right. Keep in mind that we should look at trends over at least four years, and especially for subgroups, given D.C.’s rapidly changing student demographics. But if this is the year that D.C.’s meteoric rise in NAEP scores ends—a rise that started before Rhee—it will surely strengthen the argument of those who think that the DCPS reforms were overhyped.
4. Is Indiana still an Ed-Reform Idol? The state’s progress from 2011 to 2015 was remarkable, with gains in both reading and math, in both fourth and eighth grades, and across all major racial groups. We can’t know for sure what accounted for this progress but it’s surely possible that the reforms of the Mitch Daniels/Tony Bennett era paid off. Did they continue on (then-governor) Mike Pence’s watch? And will any other states steal the spotlight—perhaps including Arizona?
5. Fiesta, forever, in Miami? Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of Miami-Dade County, made a big splash this year when he accepted, and then rejected, an offer from Bill de Blasio to serve as New York City’s schools chancellor. His impressive progress on NAEP was a big part of his calling card; will it continue through 2017? He’s scheduled to speak at the release of the data next week, which could signal that the party will continue.
6. Is Chicago’s fifteen minutes of fame over? Chicago Public Schools have received numerous accolades of late, thanks to an analysis by Sean Reardon that examined “cohort gains” on state assessments and NAEP that showed tremendous movement as students progressed through elementary and middle school. But as I pointed out the other day, the district’s fourth graders have also made big gains of late, which ironically will make it harder for the district’s cohort gains to look as impressive going forward, at least on NAEP. I hope Chicago enjoyed its moment in the sun while it lasted.
7. Is the “California Way” working? Over the past decade, California has been a holdout from some of the big national reforms that most other states have embraced, especially clear and tough school accountability systems and test-based teacher evaluations. State board chair Mike Kirst has argued that the Golden State’s approach leads to more teacher buy-in and will prove itself in the end. And at least in a few subgroups, California has seen some progress in recent years. What will the 2017 data show?

For me, of course, there is one last question to ask: What will I do when I no longer have NAEP to obsess about? The 2019 results should be out soon enough—unless, of course, they go back to paper-and-pencil!

A new study by Susan Dynarski and colleagues examines the effects of a large for-profit charter school operator. Most existing charter school research is on non-profit operators with very little, if any, evidence at the K–12 level on for-profit outfits (although research findings on for-profit institutions at the college level are downright grim).

Analysts leverage randomized admissions lotteries from forty-four National Heritage Academy (NHA) charter schools in Michigan that were oversubscribed between 2002 and 2012 (NHA is the fourth largest for-profit operator in the country). The dataset includes roughly 27,000 applications, and analysts are able to observe at least one post-lottery achievement score for 90 percent of the students in the sample. Scores are observed through grade eight only, in part because most applicants are in kindergarten or first grade. Analysts are able to verify that the lotteries were indeed carried out randomly so they are essentially comparing the outcomes of lottery winners and losers.

Before we get to the findings, here’s a bit of background on NHA. Unlike other charters, almost half of NHA schools are located in suburban areas, forty percent in urban areas, and twelve percent in towns/rural areas. Their students are also less likely to qualify for free or reduced price lunch (61 percent versus 71 percent in other statewide charters) and more likely to be Asian, Hispanic or white than students enrolled in other charters in the state. The NHA schools are all brick and mortar—not online schools—focused on secular virtues modeled on Plato’s cardinal virtues (wisdom, respect, integrity, and so on), and use a “Dean Model,” which pairs an administrative dean—not the principal—with a team of no more than fifteen teachers to render instructional coaching and other supports.

The key finding is that attending a NHA charter school for one additional year is causally linked with greater test score gains in math (about 0.04 standard deviations), with smaller effects in reading that are not statistically significant. There are also no significant differences when it comes to attendance rates, classification as a special education student, and on-time grade progression. Yet when analyzing subgroup differences, they uncover a novel finding: Unlike other charter school studies that find the greatest benefits for low-income or minority students in urban areas, the benefits of attending NHA is concentrated among non-poor students attending their schools outside of urban areas.

Digging further, they attribute much of this difference to dosage in the treatment. In short, poorer kids who won the lottery accumulated just 0.4 more years in an oversubscribed NHA than those who lost the lottery. Specifically, the former are substantially less likely to enroll in NHA the very next fall compared to their advantaged peers. Why? Additional analyses show that distance may be a factor since poorer students are farther away from the nearest NHA school than non-poor kids (in fact, about a half mile farther on average), and as is the case elsewhere, charter schools are not obligated to offer transportation.

Finally, Dynarski and team survey faculty in NHA schools, other charter schools, and the traditional public schools that the NHA students most likely would have attended. Results show that NHA faculty devote more hours per week to math instruction, are more likely to group kids by their math ability, and generally provide teachers with more mentoring—all of which may help explain their key finding.

It’s not like we need another reason to say that charter schools can be a good option for all kids and that we need not restrain them to city limits. But this report provides one anyway. 

SOURCE: Susan Dynarski et al., “Estimating the Effects of a Large For-Profit Charter School Operator,” The National Bureau of Economic Research (March 2018).

The complaint that kids these days are addicted to their smartphones is a familiar refrain among parents and educators. While some schools try to pry iPhones from their students’ hands, others attempt to embrace the ubiquity of technology by integrating them into instruction with Bring Your Device (BYD) policies. Yet our understanding of how smartphones influence our ability to learn and focus is still limited. So let’s welcome a study by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin that examines how our smartphones affect cognition when we aren’t using—or even thinking about—them.

The analysts conducted experiments in which undergraduate participants completed a series of tests designed to measure their working memory, reasoning and problem solving, and sustained attention. The participating students were randomly selected to have their phone in one of three places: face down on the desk, in the testing room but in their pocket or bag, or outside the testing room. They also took a survey about the influence of their smart phones during the test and their personal smartphone dependence. 

The study finds significant differences in students’ capacities for working memory, reasoning, and problem solving based on the location of their phones. Participants whose phones were in the other room scored significantly better on the working memory test than those whose phones were in their pockets or on their desks. And students with their phones on the desk performed significantly worse than their peers on tests measuring reasoning and problem solving. Indeed, the only measure not affected by phone location was sustained attention.

In the survey, however, the majority of participants (75.9 percent) said the location of their phone didn’t influence their performance. This difference between perception and test results suggest that participants failed to anticipate the influence of their phones on their ability to perform cognitively demanding tasks. Additionally, the study finds that students with smartphone dependence one standard deviation above the mean saw much larger differences in working memory scores based on phone location. This suggests that those with a higher dependency on their smartphone are most affected by their phone’s presence—which means they also have the most to gain by putting their phones out of sight.

Although the study’s results are potentially worrying for educators, its conditions don’t necessarily reflect real classroom environments, in which other factors might mitigate phones’ influence. And the study was of undergraduates, so we can’t say for sure how it applies to middle and high schoolers. But it probably does, and the fact that simply having your phone nearby might limit students’ abilities to perform cognitively demanding tasks is cause for concern. It suggests that limiting in-school phone use—by, for example, requiring students to keep their phones in their lockers—could improve student learning.

SOURCE: Adrian F. Ward, Kristen Duke, Ayelet Gneezy, and Maarten W. Bos. “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research (2017).

Speaking before the Council of Chief State School Officers last month, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos surprised many in the audience by criticizing a number of states’ Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans and pleading with states to aim higher. Broad criticism followed her remarks: DeVos had an opportunity to leverage the enforcement authority of her office to ensure the very innovation she claims is lacking.

However, DeVos’s critics cannot forget that, for the first few plans to receive Education Department responses, her staff read the law, reviewed the plans, and delivered thorough feedback to spur improvements. Chief state school officers voiced their objections, the agency responded and its review process became less stringent.

Given how this developed, DeVos’s criticism was jarring, but perhaps not altogether surprising. Her sentiments about the quality of state plans were shared by governors on a bipartisan basis. Several governors, prior to their states submitting final ESSA plans, pressed state education agencies to bolster plans with bold reforms that would drive improvement.

Governors were not alone. Bipartisan concerns, from independent peer reviews to respected policy organizations, were ever-present throughout the process.

Rather than the panacea many hoped for, state ESSA plans became federal compliance forms. And although there is undoubtedly good policy included in the plans, no one should place their hopes for an equitable, future-ready education system solely in a compliance exercise. Every state needs more creativity and vision than that limited exercise allowed states.

So instead of dismissing calls to improve the quality of state plans or dwelling on state plans as a missed opportunity, it is time to listen once more to educators, families, school board members, district leaders, and communities to develop solutions that will support student success under ESSA, whether every state submitted a perfect plan—or not.

Governors’ pursuit of a better education system for all students does not end with federal approval of their state plans. To ensure the student success touted in ESSA’s title, states must go beyond the “bare minimum” DeVos denounced.

Approved state plans should be the start of a conversation with schools and communities about how we can ultimately achieve better educational results for students. Through shared ownership and a commitment to continuous improvement, the bold ideas, strategies, and solutions governors were seeking in a number of ESSA plans can still be uncovered.

In many circumstances, because they were viewed as a compliance exercise, approved ESSA plans are unable to stand on their own as a guiding light for educational excellence. But by utilizing the following strategies, states can provide cities, counties, districts, schools, and families the tools they need to make sure that the ESSA plan is—as promised—only the floor, and not the ceiling, for what students and schools can achieve.

• Stakeholder engagement must continue. “You are listening, but not hearing,” an educator told a state education agency official during an ESSA listening session, frustrated that months of input had not been meaningfully incorporated into the state plan. The ideas of educators, parents, and the civil rights community should have been the foundation of every ESSA plan submitted for approval. Stakeholder engagement should be reinforced throughout the ongoing administration of the law with a permanent process in place for school and district feedback to inform state action.
• Statewide strategic and comprehensive education plans. State chiefs have indicated that state plans “do not reflect everything a state is doing to move education forward in their state.” If that is the case, where do we find the missing pieces not included in the ESSA plan? It is a different answer in every state, if the information is available at all. In most, comprehensive state education agency plans need significant updates to align with their ESSA plans. States should also articulate an ambitious vision for K–12 education and its connection to early education, postsecondary education, and workforce training by developing a statewide strategic plan for education. A strategic plan presents an opportunity for states to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their education system and communicate a holistic strategy to move it forward.
• Reader's guide for parents and educators. Districts and schools need to understand their state’s ESSA plan to implement it. Illinois became the only state in the nation to produce a reader’s guide to level the playing field for the education community and help them understand the impact of ESSA on their state. By crafting a reader’s guide, states can distill elements of their ESSA plans—and more comprehensive, strategic plans—into a clear format for communities, and leverage it as a critical tool for clear messaging and smooth state implementation.
• Don’t dismiss feedback; utilize it. Once a state has gained federal approval of its ESSA plan, leaders should not dismiss all of the related letters, comments, public remarks, reports, and independent reviews submitted from governors, experts, educators, and parents to state education agencies and the U.S. Department of Education. These can be a resource for states to adapt their policies; provide focused district guidance; develop resources that augment approved plans; and better understand which stakeholders are skeptical of the final plan, which will help states find the middle ground that will make ESSA implementation successful.
• Submit amendments to state ESSA plans. ESSA provides states the ability to submit amendments to their approved plans at the state’s discretion. With thirty-nine gubernatorial elections and at least seventeen new governors expected, many states will need to use the amendment process to align their educational visions with fresh leadership to fully take advantage of the possibilities in the law and address possible shortcomings as lessons are learned from initial ESSA implementation.

Though undertaking such strategies can seem overwhelming, given the recent state plan development process, the clarity and stakeholder buy-in it could generate would propel states’ education systems forward beyond the narrow nature of state plans.

The views expressed herein represent the opinions of the author and not necessarily the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Like any life transition, preparing for a new job and saying farewell to colleagues and allies offers a bittersweet window of time to reflect. I’m sitting in that window now. Having finished almost a decade in the Ohio K–12 education policy space and my second stint at Fordham Ohio, I’m shifting into the early childhood policy domain.

Here are five essential ingredients for any advocate’s personal tool kit that I’ve been reflecting on and that I’ll be taking with me.

Principles that ground you—deeply

Working in public policy inevitably means you will interface with politics, whether you like it or not. When I began working in education policy at the state level, Obama had just been elected and Arne Duncan was his education secretary. There was a strong bipartisan coalition around charter schools—nationally at least—and I had been living and working in states where charter schools weren’t as partisan or as contentious as they are in the Buckeye State. It was news to me when I arrived back in Ohio and quickly learned that charter schools were almost exclusively supported by Republicans. Moreover, Democrats would be contesting the creation of Teach For America – Ohio, a program I—as a first-generation college graduate—had joined precisely because I believed in equity and justice.

I’ve always believed in principles above partisanship, and that’s helped me stay afloat in an otherwise often contentious policy space. More specifically, I think it’s vital to be able to identify your defining moments and remember why they led you where they did. Mine include:

• The night I met a man with epilepsy while volunteering at a homeless shelter; he was the same age as my brother, who has the same neurological disorder. It occurred to me that without strong family support and stable public services, my brother would be living on the streets himself. I applied for a public service fellowship shortly after.
• The moments leading up to the realization that I wanted to be a teacher, and nearly every moment spent in the classroom through the lens not only of a teacher but also as an observer of parents and grandparents who were ferociously dedicated to their little ones. This led me into education policy, specifically.
• The afternoon a student’s mother asked my honest advice about sending her to a (better) charter school up the street. This initiated my conversion to school choice supporter.
• The days my kids were born—for too many reasons to elucidate here. It’s safe to say that parenting informs much of what I believe now about policy priorities, choice, high expectations, and believing the best about others.

Your life’s defining moments should inform your principles, and combined with both experience and trial and error, they should inform your theory of change. When you’ve carefully and earnestly defined these for yourself, you can stand tall in what you do, even if you become discouraged on the policy front.

Commitment to research and data

This is one attribute I appreciate uniquely about my Fordham colleagues. As a think tank, Fordham is committed to research and data and does not stoop to the spin that has come to define social media and much of the news cycle.

Fordham will publish studies that actually contradict its own policy objective. That takes a tremendous amount of intellectual integrity. Every single colleague I’ve worked with looked at data carefully and monitors the latest and best research on K–12 education policy religiously.

I wish that more policymakers and advocates would take a deeper dive into research and data, and would resist arriving at conclusions prematurely. Perhaps that’s a tall order in this day and age, but there need to be more among us who care about technical truth and accuracy even if it dampens otherwise great-sounding rhetoric.

An understanding of context and history

In any policy endeavor, it’s important to get a run-down of the past. What was the impetus behind a current trend or piece of legislation? (Example: Common Core was developed by a bipartisan association of governors and state leaders, not by Obama, and not by evil leaders conspiring to brainwash our children.) Why has this policy proposal failed before? How do other states do it? What had to happen there in order to make a change?

These might sound like obvious points, but they weren’t immediately apparent to me upon entering the policy world. I assumed that smart policy ideas could and should be enacted by the mere fact that they were good ideas. Context matters so much that it’s nearly all I think about now, maybe to my detriment. Be careful not to focus on context exclusively, though, because that’s a one-way road to Irreversible Cynicism. For example, you may realize that an idea will never pass because there are not enough people in office currently to support it, so why even bother. But someone still needs to believe in Big Ideas, and if that someone is you—please continue carrying the torch. Recruit others if you must, or take a break, but by all means keep going.

Empathy

Empathy is conspicuously missing from most public debate, and this is part of the reason why the policy/political sphere gets a bad name for being so ugly and nasty at times.

Working alongside people at Fordham with whom I disagree in some areas—particularly those policy domains outside of education—has been challenging at times. But it’s strengthened my own reasoning and has sometimes revealed weaknesses in my own positions. It’s pushed me to try to practice dialogue that is respectful, civil, and productive. It’s required me to examine nuance and not oversimplify matters, and it’s made it easier to extend the benefit of the doubt to people with whom I may not share political affiliation but do share principles.

There’s too much demonizing and not enough humanizing, with social media exacerbating the problem at every turn. I don’t know the solution to this problem, but I encourage anyone working in the policy arena to seek out others who are not like you. Talk to them, learn from them, maybe befriend them. And by God, spend less time on Twitter.

Humor

Finally, stay humble and keep a sense of humor because, without it, the work can become grueling. And that’s no fun for anyone.

***

Thanks to all of the great people I’ve had a chance to work with and learn from. Keep at it and know that I’ll be cheering you on from whatever window I’m looking out.

Jamie is the Associate Director of Policy at the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy at The Ohio State University. She’ll be working on public policy impacting young children in schools, at home, and in the community. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter. 

1. I believe there is a headline error in this piece looking at the precarious state of play in Trotwood Schools after several years of poor report cards and attempts to remedy that problem. See if you can spot it. (Dayton Daily News, 4/2/18)
    
2. Meanwhile, and on a similar theme, editors in Toledo say: “Fire bad.” (Toledo Blade, 3/30/18)
    
3. The only person I can think of who could get away with publishing a serious education-related commentary piece on April Fools Day is the Vindy’s venerable (and irascible) Bertram de Souza. That being said, I will admit I am not sure whether he’s being serious here or not. Anyone else want to read it and take a guess? (Youngstown Vindicator, 4/1/18)
    
4. This one is almost certainly not an April Fools Day prank, although certain phrases—“the baseball team goes to watch the school play”—did give me pause. If the community-wide movement to increase student participation in sports in Talawanda Schools is indeed real, let’s hope they get another story published on a different day so as not to potentially confuse folks. (Middletown Journal-News, 4/1/18)
    
5. A round-robin series of facilities moves among the City of Chillicothe and Chillicothe Schools will begin soon, culminating in some nice new digs for the various agencies, including a new bus garage for the district. I kind of wish this one was an April Fools prank, but I don’t think they’re kidding about the infestation of bats which started the whole thing back in 2016. Yuck. (Chillicothe Gazette, 3/30/18)
    
6. Fairfield County’s Got Talent! First up, a Lancaster High School student is heading to a state level baking competition. Interestingly, she had previously been homeschooled but enrolled at LHS specifically for their culinary arts program. Her talent is now rising nicely. (Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, 3/30/18) Second, a young violinist from Bloom-Carroll High School is heading to Carnegie Hall in June to play with the Columbus Youth Symphony. His private instructor speaks highly of him, and of her school’s ability to give BC’s bands and choirs a boost by “providing them” with some great players. Not sure what that says about the quality of my alma mater’s music programs exactly, but I never cared much about them anyway! (Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, 4/2/18)

In a year of daily surprises and jaw-dropping outrages, even cynical political insiders were rocked by today’s news that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will replace John Kelly as President Trump's chief of staff, after Kelly was fired in the so-called “HAM Incident.” But those of us who have watched Secretary DeVos closely for the past eighteen months understand that this is a rare stroke of genius from President Trump. Here’s why.

First, as I have often noted, DeVos has spent her career as a behind-the-scenes strategist, not an out-front advocate. Though Kelly gave an unusual number of interviews, the chief of staff role is typically one for an insider’s insider. This will fit DeVos’s background and skillset much better.

Second, presidents typically want a savvy political player in this role, and that is where DeVos excels. She and her family have supported Republican politicians and conservative causes for decades. She can now leverage the resulting relationships to get things done on Capitol Hill and in the states. (Republican governors will be especially important to the president in the run-up to the 2020 election.)

And third, thanks to her leadership on the school safety commission, she already has a working relationship with key cabinet secretaries. In fact, we pundits should have seen the school safety commission appointment—and her many meetings with the president and vice president—as a sign of things to come.

This is good news for the administration, though bad news for late-night comics and the education press. The Betsy DeVos era at the Department of Education: February 7, 2017–April 1, 2018. Felix dies Aprilis Stulte!