1. Not much going on in ed news across Ohio. Must be all the anticipation of Election Day coming up. Speaking of which, interdistrict open enrollment is an important issue in regard to the levy on the ballot in Coventry Local Schools. To wit, the district is one of those “net losers” in terms of funding from so many students leaving to attend school in other nearby districts. However, Coventry has been in fiscal watch and/or fiscal emergency for more than 15 years, so there’s that. If the current levy doesn’t pass, district officials suggest they may seek a merger with one of those nearby districts – perhaps Akron City Schools, which is the largest recipient of open enrollment students leaving Coventry. (Akron Beacon Journal, 10/26/17)
    
2. Not too far away from Coventry, editors in Youngstown this weekend opined bluntly in support of ending litigation against the law which created the CEO-style Academic Distress Commission under whose aegis Youngstown City Schools currently operate. (Youngstown Vindicator, 10/29/17)
    
3. Speaking of school districts operating under the aegis of a CEO-style Academic Distress Commission, the other such district – Lorain City Schools – was unfavorably namechecked during a “community chat” event with officials in the nearby Oberlin school district last week. To wit: a candidate for school board opined with dismay over recent new hires in Oberlin who had come from Lorain. Another candidate for school board also had some negativity to express in that forum as well. (Elyria Chronicle Telegram, 10/29/17)

1. The D finally published some kind of actual news story based on what Bill Bush heard at the ECOT board meeting (and committee meetings and executive session) he attended earlier in the week. The money stuff is pretty obvious and barely qualifies as “news” to the school’s board, let alone Dispatch readers. However, the discussion of the functionality – or possible lack thereof – of the school’s attendance tracking software is kind of interesting. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/26/17) If ECOT’s attendance tracking difficulties sound familiar, it’s because they are. Five years after the Dispatch blew the lid on Columbus City Schools’ data manipulation program, many of the system changes/improvements aimed at shoring up processes and procedures to avoid a repeat are still not marked as completed. Some of them may indeed be completed, say school board members, or near completion, or perhaps completed up to the original point but being improved even more beyond the original scope (but that extra part’s not completed). But no one – especially Bill Bush – seems to be sure of any of it. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/26/17)
    
2. And speaking of shoring up procedures so as to avoid possible abuse, the House Government Accountability and Oversight Committee this week heard testimony on a bill to impose new reporting requirements and oversight on credit card use by a number of “political subdivisions” across the state. This includes school districts, and so a couple of school representatives traipsed to Columbus to testify. While listed as “interested parties”, both of the witnesses seemed to indicate that the requirements were generally onerous and unnecessary. Trust me. (Gongwer Ohio, 10/25/17)
    
3. Back in the old days of journalism, folks often waited to confirm “all sides” before running with a given story. Today, folks often run a story with one (or several) sides missing (XYZ didn’t return a request for comment before the deadline) and then run a follow up when XYZ does eventually comment (or formally refuses to comment, which is also sometimes newsworthy). The current way runs the risk of making both the original story and the follow up look a bit more “gotcha” than is strictly necessary, IMHO. But none of that preamble is relevant to this clip: a follow up on the story of ODE’s charter sponsor appeal process which we talked about on Wednesday – in relation to two school districts rated as “poor” in their most recent evaluations – and focuses on the department’s comments on the issues relevant to the original story and describes said process in some detail. Which sounds very “process-y” indeed. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/26/17)
    
4. Two stories from Youngstown today. You will recall that Youngstown City Schools has had long-standing, serious problems with its support of students with special needs. An ODE audit from 2015 detailed failures to provide appropriate education services. New CEO Krish Mohip promised families he would right the ship and implemented the Multi-Tiered Support System this past summer. The Vindy notes all this history in the context of a presentation in front of the elected school board this week, given by a district counselor who says that special education is being “neglected” today. She seems particularly concerned about the move to neighborhood schools, also implemented this past summer, but there is more than a hint that her concern is under-identification of students with special needs and/or mainstreaming of students thus identified instead of special classes/counseling/instruction. Interesting. (Youngstown Vindicator, 10/27/17) Youngstown’s superintendent is quoted in the story above, taking the counselor’s concerns very seriously from the sound of it, but no comments from any elected board member are reported. I assume at least some of them were present, but they could have been busy dealing with this other issue: CEO Mohip’s announcement that he does not intend to approve the board’s request for money to bankroll another appeal of the law which created the CEO-style Academic Distress Commission framework under whose aegis he now runs the district.  You will recall that the case was settled in favor of HB 70 a week or so ago, but that board president Brenda Kimble vowed another appeal. As noted at the time – and repeated here – there are other parties involved in the lawsuit who could also launch the next appeal. And pay for it too, if they want. (Youngstown Vindicator, 10/27/17)
    
5. Finally today: state superintendent, urban neighborhood resident, and self-professed optimist Paolo DeMaria gives us an all a lesson in cooperation and, well, optimism. A 150-year-old sycamore tree near his home is in danger of being cut down to accommodate a curb ramp that must be installed in the neighborhood. Lots of folks don’t want to see the beloved tree go away, so Paolo has offered to give the city some of his property on which to build the ramp. Awesome. It remains to be determined whether the ramp can be relocated within specs. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/27/17)

It’s understandable that my friend Rick Hess would tell the Washington Post that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s approach to K–12 education has been all over the map, that “it feels like they have pivoted through a number of strategies over the last decade or two.” At first blush, he’s right. Once it was small schools, then Common Core, and now “school networks” are the Next Big Thing.

But that take on Gates is not quite right, or fair, because it misses what hasn’t changed, which is as important as what has. Namely, the conviction of Bill and Melinda Gates, as well as Warren Buffett, that education is still a sturdy path to opportunity for poor and minority children. In their words, “a great K–12 education and a college degree or job-training credential is a bridge to opportunity like no other when it comes to good jobs and career paths, and personal growth and fulfillment.”

This might sound banal, or even clichéd, but if you’ve been paying attention you know that these sentiments are no longer taken for granted. The populist uprising that is destabilizing democracies throughout the West is driven by a fear—on both left and right—that “opportunity” is a mirage. The game is fixed; the elites are hoarding opportunity; systemic racism is keeping the power structure in place; the immigrants, or the robots, are taking all of the jobs. Such dystopian views have gone mainstream. Yet in the face of that, and to their great credit, Bill and Melinda and Warren declare: We are still optimistic. We still believe in opportunity. And education remains the key to a better life.

This is important. And in this light they can be viewed as focused, even resolute.

There’s another way that the Gates approach hasn’t changed—but this is for worse instead of for better. It’s their belief that what ails American schools isn’t a dearth of motivation to improve but not enough knowhow. While some think public education doesn’t operate under the right incentives and is too captured by vested interests, the Gates approach seems to assume that it mostly lacks capacity. This, I would argue, is where their optimism goes overboard.

Their focus on capacity-building isn’t new, however. The Common Core project, for Gates, was an effort to help inform classroom practice with the best evidence about what kids need to learn to be successful. The Measures of Effective Teaching initiative was meant to identify great teachers and help improve teaching techniques. Their support for “next generation learning” models was an attempt to help teachers differentiate instruction. And so it goes with their future investment plans: networks to help schools identify and implement evidence-based practices; collaboratives to help improve teacher preparation programs; stronger curricula aligned to college-and-career ready standards; support for “pathways” to postsecondary success, including high-quality CTE; research on personalized learning.

This is all well and good. I’m particularly enthusiastic about a big bet on curriculum, which, as my colleague Robert Pondiscio points out, is finally having its time in the sun.

But all of this assumes that what our schools most need is help. Better tools, better data, more support. What if help is necessary but not sufficient? What if what many of our schools really need is a swift kick in the ass?

What if lots of school board members and superintendents and central office staff and principals and teachers don’t really want to change? I mean, sure, they want to improve as much as the next guy or gal, but not if it means dealing with conflict, telling someone they are bad at their job, canceling a textbook contract, or heaven forbid denying a teacher tenure. What if the reason that teacher evaluation reform was so disappointing—with 98 percent of teachers still rated effective—was because we misdiagnosed the problem? It isn’t a technocratic issue—principals not having the training or tools to provide good feedback to teachers. It’s a political problem—principals don’t want to give negative feedback to teachers they have to live with because they can’t get rid of them.

Those sorts of barriers to better schooling for kids are the rai·son d'ê·tre of much of what we call education reform. It’s why so many of us believe that we can’t just leave “the system” to its own devices or plow more money or knowhow into it and expect better results. It’s why so many of us still support school choice—yes, partly to empower parents and allow schools to innovate and differentiate, but also to create market incentives that drive schools of all stripes to get better. And it’s why many of us have supported “top down” accountability efforts over the past twenty years—to put pressure on school systems to put the needs of kids first and to make the tough decisions they might otherwise avoid.

Of course we can and should seek every possible opportunity to help schools improve, by identifying evidence-based interventions and promoting standards-aligned curricula and creating personalized learning platforms and all the rest. And that can do a lot of good for school districts and charter management organizations that are already committed to getting better.

But in most of America we also need to keep up the pressure on the system. Competition from charters and other schools of choice is one proven way to do that, so continuing to grow alternatives to traditional public schools should remain at the top of our priority list. The same goes for combining the sunshine from state accountability reports with some heat and thunder from grassroots parent organizations to force systems to change, as reformers in the Bay Area are trying.

Those strategies are controversial, though. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, surely tired of being unfairly called haters of public schools, now want to be known as helpers instead. Fine. Mostly I’m glad they haven’t given up on the American dream and education’s essential role in helping more young people achieve it. And I look forward to working with them on important endeavors like improving the curricula used in schools nationwide. But the rest of us need to remain committed to pushing the system—which is the only way, I believe, that the Gates’s capacity-building initiatives have a shot at paying off.

When Bill Gates speaks about priorities, people listen. When he omits speaking about what should be priorities, people listen even more.

During my one year as the Deputy Director of Postsecondary Success at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, my colleagues and I often talked about the “Gates effect”—the extraordinary influence that the foundation’s goals and grants wield with policymakers, philanthropists, researchers, K–12 practitioners, and virtually every institution that is trying to improve outcomes for kids.

That's why it is important to read “Our Education Efforts Are Evolving,” a transparent and powerful essay by Bill Gates. He shares what he and his wife Melinda have learned since they and the Gates Foundation became involved in education reform in 2000, and delivers a five-pronged plan for the foundation’s future. Gates bemoans the fact that “schools are still falling short on the key metrics of a quality education,” and laments the persistence of the same disparities in achievement and postsecondary success for children of color and low-income students that motivated their action two decades ago.

The niggling question is why progress has been so meager despite the Gates Foundation’s billions of dollars of investment, as well as the enormous time and money spent by other foundations, philanthropists, and local, state, and federal governments—all no doubt influenced by Gates’s strategies to improve educational outcomes for kids.

Undaunted and still impatiently optimistic, however, the Gates Foundation expects to invest close to $1.7 billion in U.S. public education over the next five years. Unfortunately, the vision on which it is based and that Gates illustrates in his essay overlooks the vital role that families play in shaping the academic outcome of America’s children, and what schools might do to help their students form strong families as adults. Indeed, neither “parent” nor “family” are among the essay’s 3,000 words.

This lack of expectation of parent accountability is weird coming from a foundation that’s done so much to usher in the era of school accountability. And it’s simply stunning considering the foundation’s legendary and deserved reputation for expertly using data to inform its policies and find the true causes of the ills it tries to remedy.

Five decades ago, the enduringly relevant Coleman report established the primacy of family structure and stability in driving educational outcomes for children. At the time of that publication, 6 percent of American children were born to unmarried women. Since then, that number has skyrocketed, especially among women and men under the age of twenty-five. (See figure 1.) According to a recent CDC report, 2016 was the tenth consecutive year that 40 percent of American children of all races were born outside of marriage.

Figure 1. The percentage of births to unmarried women by age group, 1980 and 2015

Source: “Births to Unmarried Women,” Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, retrieved October 26, 2017, https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/family2.asp.

Indeed, in the seventeen years the Gates Foundation has been investing in education, more than an estimated fifteen million babies of all races were born nationwide to unmarried women under the age of twenty-five. And, based on 2015 data, almost half of these children were born to unwed mothers with multiple children—an almost certain recipe for poverty, stress, and poor educational outcomes for the single mom and (typically) her children.

This "new normal" of permanent, staggeringly high nonmarital birth rates is a catastrophe for our country. And it’s an overwhelming challenge for those of us who have the responsibility to educate children whose disadvantage begins in utero and multiplies before they step foot into a preschool classroom.

Of course, there are extraordinary single parents whose children defy the gargantuan odds against them and succeed in life. Similarly, the child of low-income couple in stable marriage is not guaranteed a ticket out of poverty.

So there are always exceptions, but the data are clear on the myriad difficulties facing these kids. Children from poor, unstable families led by unmarried young women and men are, for example, more likely to suffer cognitive impairments as infants, to be chronically absent in elementary school, and to have repeated disciplinary issues. And they’re much less likely to attend an effective preschool and read proficiently by third grade.

Consider, too, the work of Dr. Kathy Edin, who has studied low-income couples for decades. Due to a high degree of what she terms “re-partnering,” she’s found that more than half of children born to single parents will see their moms or dads form up to four or more romantic relationships during the child’s first five years of life. Many of these young people lack good education and aren’t ready emotionally, financially, or otherwise to raise a child. And far too many of the young men involved—themselves facing unemployment challenges—seem to be in a state of perpetual adolescence.

Mr. Gates’s failure to mention a strategy for educators to help stop the creation of fragile families is therefore a serious oversight worthy of critique. But it’s also a distressingly common problem in education policy, in which reform leaders like Mr. Gates rarely cite family fragmentation as a central contributor to the poor longitudinal outcomes of the charter sector.

Ironically, these same reformers regularly rise up against whack-a-mole crises like the NAACP’s mystifying opposition to charter schools, or Randi Weingarten’s absurd demonization of school choice, or the latest kerfuffle with celebrity hypocrite Matt Damon. But the reality is that these passing hullabaloos are nothing compared to the damage done by fragile families—a force that ceaselessly trudges forward, perpetuates poverty and achievement gaps, and severely hampers the children’s chances to lead a better life.

My point is not that Mr. Gates and other education reform leaders should present family breakdown as an excuse for the education system’s lack of progress. Far from it. The question is whether schools could be doing something to help their students form strong families as adults—to avoid perpetuating the cycle of fragile families and intergenerational poverty. And the clear answer is “yes.” Educators can teach students the sequence of life choices—education, work, marriage, then children—that is highly correlated with economic and life success, and that would empower students to overcome substantial race- and class-based institutional barriers.

Gates and others have come to embrace the role that social and emotional skills play in helping students achieve success. Others have seen the wisdom in teaching financial literacy. But when it comes to the importance of telling kids the importance of waiting till adulthood and marriage to have children, there is silence.

It does not have to be this way.

We only have to look back twenty years to a moment when the nation’s attention was galvanized with a bipartisan issue that catalyzed a movement that resulted in one of the greatest public health achievements on record.

***

On January 24, 1995, then President Bill Clinton used his largest platform, the State of the Union address, to issue an unprecedented call to action: "We've got to ask our community leaders and all kinds of organizations to help us stop our most serious social problem: the epidemic of teen pregnancies and births where there is no marriage....Government can only do so much. Tonight, I call on parents and leaders all across this country to join together in a national campaign against teen pregnancy to make a difference. We can do this and we must."

There were certainly prominent voices before 1995 imploring the country to train its eyes on teen pregnancy. But President Clinton’s moral imperative issued on the grandest stage was the tip of the spear. Within weeks, a chorus of bipartisan voices echoed his urgency, catalyzing a two-decades long campaign that has resulted in historically low teen birth rates. Since 1991, the most recent peak, the rate has declined 61 percent and reached a record low in 2016 of 20.3 births per 1,000 women between the ages of fifteen and nineteen.

Despite this progress, the U.S. still has the highest teen birth rate among developed countries, and roughly one in four American teens will get pregnant by age twenty. As figure 1 depicted, the percent of births, often unintended, to unmarried women between the ages of twenty and twenty-four has more than tripled since 1980. As economist Isabel Sawhill has noted in her work to improve opportunities for disadvantaged children in the U.S., “The problem of unintended births has moved up the age scale; a similar consensus [that formed to combat teen pregnancy] could eventually emerge here too.”

***

For leaders in the education reform movement, if we are serious about achieving equity in opportunity and superior educational outcomes for kids, then our country is in need of another call to action to address the social epidemic of rampant out-of-wedlock births to young women and men under the age of twenty-five.

We must recognize our necessary role in forging the consensus that families matter—and that schools alone cannot overcome the pathologies that develop when children are raised in communities in which fragile families are the norm. Schools can, however, help this generation of children form stronger families in the future.

The part of Mr. Gates’s essay that most reveals his worldview is that “schools are the unit of change in the effort to increase student achievement.”

What about decades of evidence that show families as the more dominant unit of change? Great schools are critical, but Kathy Edin is right when she says that “Moving the needle on mobility from poverty must include the family contexts into which children are born and raised.” So is the conclusion of a bi-partisan working group on poverty and opportunity organized by AEI and the Brookings Institution: “Political leaders, educators, and civic leaders—from both the political left and right—need to be clear and direct about how hard it is to raise children without a committed co-parent.”

Bill Gates might be most influential person in American education. But because his words have the power to sway billions of dollars and institutional ideology, we must respectfully speak truth to power. Neglecting to mention family structure and stability—and, more importantly, omitting any strategy to use schools to strengthen those levers—undermines the very ability of all of us who have committed our lives to improve outcomes for children. 

Editor's note: The views expressed herein represent the opinions of the author and not necessarily the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Janus, the two-faced Roman god from which the month of January draws its name, is associated with gates, transitions, and duality. Janus is best known, however, as the god of beginnings and endings (hence his placement at the start of the Roman calendar). So it’s hard not to see the irony of Janus v. AFSCME, a case on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket whose resolution could signal the end of public-sector unions as we currently know them.

The case is the other shoe to Friedrichs v. California, which ended in a stalemate after the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. And when the result drops, everyone will be watching.

I wrote about these potentially catastrophic challenges to compulsory union dues last fall, but Rishawn Biddle at Dropout Nation and Nat Malkus at AEI have gone all in on the tea leaves.

Biddle notes that the American Federation of Teachers spent $44 million of its members’ money on lobbying activities and contributions. Those included $900,000 to The Atlantic, $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation, and $175,000 to the Center for American Progress, which released a hit job “report” on private school choice earlier in the year, complete with retweets and holler backs from AFT President Randi Weingarten. It’s a smart strategy when you consider that the media, politicians, and the think tank world are critical of advancing, or stopping, policy change. Malkus offers an “it’s the economy, stupid” view when he details how the Janus ruling would raise the price of union dues precipitously…by as much as 300 percent in some cases.

Either way, a universe of lower dues could certainly curtail teacher union profligacy and influence.

The Janus ruling may also deliver the closest thing to a level playing field possible for those engaged in the dog-eat-dog scrap over how to evolve American education. But that potential victory will still come with caveats. It’s naive to think (as Malkus also points out) that even with less money in their political coffers, teachers’ unions will stop being formidable adversaries. Their influence, as well as their ability to spin, corrupt, sabotage, and pollute policy, will remain. An army of smiling women and men will still be among the most trusted people in schools. And the noise machine the unions command—with the megaphone of mailboxes in teachers’ lounges everywhere—won’t go gently into that good night.

Indeed, teachers and their associations in right-to-work states are powerful despite a lack of forced unionization (e.g., Texas).

Rockets, however, don’t reach escape velocity without sufficient fuel, and the unions are likely not prepared for the gravity of this situation. Having put all their eggs in the basket of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, with an eye toward her appointment of a sympathetic Supreme Court nominee to succeed Scalia, Janus represents the worst of all possible presents, and futures, for both the National Education Association and the AFT.

That said, this nightmare scenario presents a golden opportunity for a group that would seemingly have the most to lose with a gutting of the teachers’ unions’ financial apparatus. That group is, ironically, none other than card-carrying elected members of the Democratic Party at the local, state, and national levels. Part hostage, part partner, the party now has a chance to pivot and refine its vision in a world where teachers’ union dollars are now, potentially, just pennies.

To be clear, in recent years the partnership has been mostly one-sided, and the Democratic Party has paid a price for its allegiance. Having failed to deliver the presidency, watched Democrats lose almost one thousand elected seats in states and Congress since the first midterms of the Obama administration, and driven a wedge between the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton wings of the party by endorsing Clinton’s candidacy early, you could argue the party is more divided and less empowered despite NEA and AFT support—or, in some cases, because of it.

Indeed, the teachers’ unions’ prize handmaiden, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, didn’t even receive their endorsement during his campaign.

But it wasn’t that long ago when Democrats, particularly those who believed in school choice, like former Newark mayor and current U.S. senator Cory Booker, were talking to the world about what a drag the teachers’ unions had become as the Dems worked to embrace new solutions for their communities.

In 2008, Booker offered: “Ten years ago when I talked about school choice, I was literally tarred and feathered. I was literally brought into a broom closet by a union and told I would never win office if I kept talking about charters.”

Now, with the deep pockets of the teachers’ unions potentially compromised, maybe accepting underperforming schools and iron-clad work rules in return for campaign cash doesn’t have to be the default position anymore. Our kids and our families should be so lucky.

Some folks think this longtime marriage of convenience between the teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party should have ended already. Though a significant percentage of teachers are registered Republicans, the likelihood of an NEA or AFT local backing a Republican in a blue-state statewide election is highly unlikely. That is, unless it has a score to settle: The New Jersey Education Association currently backs a Trump Republican against the sitting state Senate president, Steve Sweeney, who is a Democrat. Sweeny, an ironworker and member of a private-sector union himself, refused to support a constitutional referendum that would have given pensions a super priority in the state budget, a provision that would have been as selfish as it would have been foolish. Folks deserve more of that sort of leadership, not less.

Sweeney doesn’t need NJEA money, but lots of elected officials do. Maybe the NEA and AFT having less of it will lead to a wealth of something else: good decision making—particularly on education—by members of the party whose key constituency is supposed to be “the little guy.”

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in The 74.

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

Remember how the Wizard of Oz, once the curtain was drawn back, turned out to be an insignificant little blowhard? What if “college education” in America, especially the kind that culminates in a bachelor’s degree, is headed toward a similar revelation?

Once upon a time, it was determined by the Great and the Good (as they say in England) that almost everyone needs a college education—and that the country needs for everyone to have a college education—and that it’s discriminatory and evil to deny anyone such an education. Whereupon we started slowly but surely to dilute what we mean by it.

That was inevitable in part because we weren’t able to fix our K–12 system to get everyone ready for what we formerly meant by college. When you declare that everyone—or almost everyone—should graduate from high school and enter college, you come smack up on the reality that tons of young Americans haven’t learned enough in twelve or thirteen years of school even to qualify for what we once meant by a high school diploma, much less college admission.

So at the high school end, we tried to boost standards—and some places did a pretty good job of it—but even much-praised Massachusetts wasn’t able to raise its high school exit standard to equal college readiness as traditionally defined. Lots of other places eased off or deferred their exit standards, while still others hacked alternate paths to diplomas that circumvented their exit standards and/or devised ersatz “credit recovery” schemes whereby diplomas could be “earned” without even passing the classes dictated by the old Carnegie Unit rules.

Then there’s the college end. There, our egalitarian impulse led us to create—starting decades ago—thousands of open-admission institutions that have essentially no prerequisites, often not even a high-school diploma (a GED will suffice, and maybe not even that). Then we watched selective campuses do away with some of their own long-standing prerequisites, such as the expectation that entering students would have studied and become reasonably proficient in at least one foreign language.

Most colleges employed (and many still do) placement tests to determine whether an entering student was adequately prepared to undertake credit-bearing courses in core subjects like math and English, with remedial classes assigned to those who weren’t. But remediation was an ugly and discouraging term, so a decade or two ago, it got relabeled “developmental,” and one of today’s hottest trends is to replace “developmental” with “co-requisite” courses, whereby you can actually earn credit toward a degree by completing a course with passing norms that may (or may not) fall somewhere between what we used to mean by remedial and credit-worthy.

Today’s other hot trend is “dual credit” or “early college,” whereby high school kids can begin to pile up credits toward a college degree while they’re still working on their diplomas. In some places (Texas, for example), dual credit can start as early as ninth grade—and some community colleges now derive close to half of their state formula dollars from enrolling high-school kids. Well-wrought early-college programs can be fine. Yet college credit via dual credit in most places is automatic for anyone who gets a passing grade from the instructor, who is typically an “adjunct” assigned by the community college and not infrequently a regular high school teacher with the appropriate master’s degree. Quality control is uneven, to put it gently.

Nor should we forget grade inflation, in both high school and college, whereby the kind of student work that once earned a “C” now gets at least a “B+.”

Along the way, because there was so much oomph behind the goal of getting everyone into college—and so much aversion to anything that resembles “tracking”—we devalued and stigmatized what used to be called vocational education and are now having to reinvent it under the shiny new label of “career and technical education” a.k.a. “CTE”. This stigmatizing of explicit workforce preparation had the further effect of wooing kids into college who, even by the degraded standards applied to them, were so ill-prepared that they were destined to falter, flunk, and drop out, often with a heavy debt burden—because as we were wooing everyone into college we also made it far costlier to attend, causing us to proffer easy credit to those who otherwise couldn’t swing it. If normal economic rules applied in this case, the student-debt “bubble” would make the tech and housing bubbles look like bubble tea.

Some kids got over-matched in the college where they found themselves, others under-matched. But the push to get more of them into college was relentless.

Everything seemed to make sense at the time. Many high school kids were bored, spinning their wheels during the last year or two, having completed their diploma requirements but not yet graduated. The economy needed a higher-skilled workforce. Many of tomorrow’s jobs appeared to demand college-level preparation. A college degree looked like the surest path to upward mobility. Everyone saw the urgency of increasing the enrollment of black and Latino students. And nobody, but nobody, dared take the risk of being called elitist, much less discriminatory.

There were, to be sure, efforts to hold the line on rigor, even to beef it up. Elementary-secondary academic standards rose—thanks mainly to the much-maligned Common Core—and many state tests improved, too. Some high school end-of-course exams are pretty solid (which doesn’t mean there aren’t paths around them). The Advanced Placement program has worked hard to justify its gold standard reputation, and the much smaller International Baccalaureate program does that, too. Large-scale assessments such as NAEP, TIMSS, and PISA have clung to their demanding norms and continue to speak the truth about actual performance in relation to those norms.

It’s those metrics, mainly, that reveal how little progress we’ve actually made, despite all the effort to get more kids a better education. That’s how we know that for every effort to beef up standards, there were moves to define “proficiency” downward, to ease back on cut scores, to create alternate paths, and to confer exemptions.

Those metrics are mostly at the K–12 level because the higher education industry has successfully stonewalled any comparable outcome measures of student learning. Hence today our best source of evidence of what college accomplishes is the work of analysts like Raj Chetty and Mark Schneider, who have been able to link college degrees—and different kinds of degrees in different fields from different kinds of colleges—to subsequent earnings.

From their analyses, and those of Anthony Carnevale and others, we’ve recently learned many things about the value of a college degree. We’ve learned that many respectable, well-paid jobs don’t require such degrees. We’ve learned that associate’s degrees, and industry certifications in some fields, pay better than many bachelor’s degrees. We’ve learned that some college degrees are far more reliable tickets to upward mobility than others–whether because of selection effects and the sorting that takes place at their admissions offices or because of the superior educational experience they deliver.

We’ve certainly learned that aspiring to a four-year bachelor’s degree for everybody, without regard to institution or field of study, is a costly, frustrating, and ultimately feckless target. It’s hard to be sure how much of that sober conclusion can be attributed to diminished, inflated grades, waivers, exemptions, and eyewinks that take the place of true academic accomplishment. Certainly it’s no secret that the more widespread a credential becomes, the less comparative advantage it confers on those possessing it. But it’s also no secret that a growing number of employers who once treated the college degree as a passport to hiring by their organizations now demand other evidence that an individual can truly do the job expected of him or her.

Please understand that I am not here seeking a return to some halcyon yesteryear when only the children of those with college degrees were expected to get their own degrees. Access to the varied (if limited) benefits of such degrees ought not be determined by zip code, parentage, or race. But—a very important but—that doesn’t mean individuals or society benefit when we cavalierly hand out credentials that, in the end, signify very little—credentials that, like grades, have themselves been inflated beyond their true worth.

Higher education today gives analysts, policymakers, and critics so much to fret about—cost, free speech, leftward lurching faculty, politically trendy majors—that we haven’t been paying nearly enough heed to the quality and value of the product itself. Some revisionism may be setting in as a few of the Great and the Good begin to weigh multiple pathways to prosperity and mobility. Some serious analysts and gutsy policymakers are pushing to catch up with Singapore, Switzerland, and other places that have long featured rigorous and respectable career preparation as well as university-style education. It’s important to note, however, that while they’re pushing for other pathways besides the traditional four-year college, they’re not paying much attention to the degraded state of the college degree itself. Practically nobody except the occasional cranky professor is doing that, and such critics are typically dismissed as academic snobs on a nostalgia trip. It’s impossible to get most policymakers beyond the smug assertion that “America has the best higher-education system in the world, the one that people from other countries clamor to get into.” What such claims usually refer to, of course, are the top hundred or so U.S. research universities—despite mounting evidence that they’re being gained on. And often it’s the graduate programs on those campuses, not their undergraduate colleges, that are the center of attention.

College itself is what needs a rethink, both in its own right and as a universal destination for young Americans. No, I’m not holding my breath, for many, many influential organizations, thinkers, and philanthropies remain wedded to “college for all,” and it’s too easy to get called nasty names if you cast doubt on that goal. The last thing these folks want is for anyone really to peel back the college curtain—as A Nation at Risk did for K–12 back in 1983. But we might do well to recall that scene where Toto darts behind the curtain in the Emerald City and finds a wimpy little non-wizard frantically working the controls of the machines he has been using to fool people into thinking that he’s mighty and magical. 

My daughter had two great privileges growing up: she attended a pair of first-rate private schools; and she played youth sports for many years at a competitive level. Here’s something I’ve said privately for years, but have been reluctant to say publicly: If I had it to do all over again and could provide only one of those two advantages—private school or competitive sports—I’d choose sports. And it wouldn’t be a difficult decision.

Given my perch as a teacher and education policy analyst this is, I suspect, a surprising admission. My reason for coming out of the sports dad closet is a piece written last week by Mark L. Perry at the American Enterprise Institute. “Why do American parents push their kids so hard when it comes to sports, but not so much when it comes to academics?” he asks.

Hand wringing over Americans’ obsession with sports at the expense of academics is a hardy perennial in education writing, social commentary, and even sketch comedy. Many parents “don’t push their children very hard when it comes to academics” Perry explains, because they “don’t necessarily believe in the connection between effort and academic achievement, and don’t believe that academic success is within reach of any student willing to work hard for it.”

Not quite right. For starters, I don’t buy entirely the comparison; I’d wager that most parents still make participation in organized sports conditional based on their child’s keeping his or her grades up. It’s also easier for most parents to engage with their child’s athletics than academics. By the time my daughter was in middle school, my days of helping with her math homework were over. But I can still lace ‘em up and go for a run with her.

But there’s another explanation for our comparative indifference to academics, and it bears the thumbprints of education policymakers: If you are of a certain age, it’s a fair bet that your parents held you—and you alone—accountable for your grades in school. Over the past several decades, we have eroded student accountability, assigning it as a matter of public policy to schools and teachers. If a child is an indifferent student, even that is perceived to be an adult failure for failing to stimulate and engage every child. On the one hand, this was an essential corrective for decades of the system’s neglect and complacency; on the other, we have overcorrected to the point where we hold children insufficiently accountable for their educational outcomes.

Eric Kalenze, Director of Education Solutions for the child-development research firm Search Institute, made precisely this point in his under-appreciated 2014 book Education is Upside-Down. “As responsibility for engaging students and helping them succeed has almost completely shifted to teachers, any personal stakes students may have had in their own education has dwindled down to nothing,” he wrote.

While there’s no shortage of toxic and obnoxious sports parents eager to blame coaches, referees, even other kids—for their child’s poor performance, competitive sports remain unabashedly old school. Kids are held directly accountable. You show up, work hard and perform, or else you sit; the scoreboard is the last word in accountability and resiliency. School-based “social-emotional learning” rarely equals the lessons learned through long hours of practice alongside teammates to whom you are directly and intimately accountable. Small wonder then that many parents “push” their kids to excel as athletes. You’re simply more likely to see a clear cause-and-effect relationship between effort and outcome in sports than in school. Perry hints at this in his piece noting—correctly, I think—that grade inflation and the “diffusion and degradation” of academic excellence “would never be tolerated in sports where there are still state champions, state rankings for sports teams, and state records like track and swimming.”

Most parents still hold their kids accountable for their efforts in school, but that effort is more visible in sports. Mike Goldstein, the founder of Boston’s MATCH Charter School points out that we get to watch our kids play volleyball and basketball. Physics lab is not a spectator sport. “I suspect if this were reversed—never see sports, frequently see kid-in-classroom—so would the headline,” he sagely notes.

It has become commonplace to complain about youth sports where kids play without keeping score and everyone gets a participation trophy. Criticizing parents for valuing sports over academics is the exact opposite complaint, and just as overly broad. A more sober critique might ask what lessons one can learn from the other. We are comfortable recognizing and cultivating extraordinary talent and ambition in sports; we think it’s un-egalitarian to accept unequal ability and outcomes in school. In sports you rarely succeed without putting in the work. In school, we create the illusion of success when it’s not entirely warranted, particularly when it serves adult interests to be less than candid with kids about where they actually stand. The stopwatch and the scoreboard are the most honest report cards some kids will ever get.

Comparisons between sports and school are inexact, and it’s not a binary choice. I can afford to be somewhat blithe about my daughter’s schools because of the considerable advantages conferred upon her by race, class, and zip code. But it’s a mistake to assume parents don’t see the connection between hard work, practice, and rewards in school. For many, those habits and virtues are simply more likely to be learned—and more likely to stick—on the court and between the lines than in class. 

One founding premise of the charter school initiative was that these new schools would be laboratories of innovation. Cutting red tape would free educators to test new approaches that, if successful, could be incorporated into the regular school-district environment.

In reality, however, what makes the highest-performing charters so effective is tireless staff and a relentless pursuit of continuous improvement, not curricular or pedagogical innovations.

Yet there’s a stir within several of the best charter school networks that deserves to inspire imitation in schools of all stripes. It’s not about technology or school culture, or even pedagogy. It’s the embrace of a broad, well-rounded, content-rich curriculum, starting in the early elementary grades. This approach to what’s taught to young children would constitute a sea change for U.S. elementary schools in general and charter schools in particular.

In the No Child Left Behind–Race to the Top era, reading and math scores determined a school’s accountability rating, and in English language arts classrooms, the mandate was “learn to read, and then read to learn.”

Many elementary educators are rediscovering that this approach, however logical-sounding and well-meaning, simply doesn’t work well with many children. A more evidence-based mantra would be, “learn a bit about everything, so you can read about anything”—or in the words of University of Virginia cognitive scientist Dan Willingham, “Teaching content is teaching reading.” This points to a seismic shift in how we allocate students’ learning time in the early grades.

Building a knowledge base

Born in Houston as the Knowledge Is Power Program for middle schoolers, KIPP is now the biggest and best-known national charter network, educating 88,000 students in 209 schools nationwide. Almost all KIPPsters are poor and minority, and the KIPP network now extends from pre-K through high school and college graduation.

Despite the “knowledge” in its name, KIPP didn’t launch its elementary schools with any uniform curriculum, instead trusting such choices to principals and teachers at the building and classroom levels. As in many American elementary schools, reading focused on teaching kids how to decode words (phonics, phonemic awareness, etc.), followed by plenty of exposure to texts targeted precisely at students’ current reading levels, plus ample practice at the skills of “reading comprehension.” This, it was widely believed, was the recipe for helping children in general, and low-income students in particular, to achieve “grade-level reading” by the end of the third grade.

At first it seemed to be working. A 2015 Mathematica study found KIPP elementary schools making a statistically significant impact on letter-word identification and passage comprehension. Other analyses showed KIPP schools, and other high-poverty charter schools, narrowing the reading proficiency gap compared with schools in more affluent areas.

Sadly, some of this charter progress might have been a mirage. In the NCLB era, schools could narrow the proficiency gap by helping students reach a relatively low bar, even if more affluent students were achieving well over that bar. Overly easy tests gave schools false confidence. In later grades, early progress appeared to fade. Students could decode words, but often struggled to comprehend what they were reading in middle and high school classrooms.

With the adoption of the Common Core standards in 2010—and especially with the implementation of aligned assessments in 2015—the flaws in America’s approach to reading instruction became clear. ELA proficiency rates plummeted nationwide. For even the best charter schools, the achievement gap was once again a mile wide.

Willingham has been arguing for years that background knowledge in subjects such as history, geography, science, and literature is essential for students to comprehend the wide variety of passages they later encounter—in class, online, at the library, or on state tests. A second-grader might be able to sound out “Ty-ran-no-saur-us Rex,” but if she hadn’t been taught about dinosaurs, the term would hold no meaning for her. The way to address this isn’t to drill seven-year-olds on SAT words, but to teach them about dinosaurs and other animals, the history of the United States and the world, cultures here and abroad, key folk stories and works of children’s literature, and so on.

This is particularly important for low-income students, who tend to learn most content in school and, unlike affluent children of college-educated parents, generally do not get to benefit from trips to museums, story times at the library, and other opportunities.

Most importantly, learning about the world and how it works need not wait until kids learn to read. In the early grades, children can and should learn essential content by listening to books read aloud, watching educational videos, and partaking in experiential activities—opportunities that wealthier kids enjoy. By middle school, when children can “read to learn” about these topics, many disadvantaged youngsters are hopelessly behind in their reading comprehension abilities, precisely because they lack the knowledge base that makes comprehension possible.

Keys to the knowledge kingdom

These insights were embedded into college- and career-ready standards that most states adopted in 2010. However, educators could be forgiven for missing it. The standards in English language arts are focused almost entirely on decoding, comprehension, and writing skills. It’s a complementary passage that unlocks the keys to the knowledge kingdom:

By reading texts in history/social studies, science, and other disciplines, students build a foundation of knowledge in these fields that will also give them the background to be better readers in all content areas. Students can only gain this foundation when the curriculum is intentionally and coherently structured to develop rich content knowledge within and across grades.

Adopting such a curriculum is up to educators. And as with most elementary schools, charter schools like those in the KIPP network were late to the party. But, as they say, better late than never.

A coherent curriculum

In 2015, as the new assessments were starting to unmask the big achievement gaps that still afflicted many KIPP pupils, the network embarked on one of its most important initiatives. Rather than viewing curricular uniformity as a straightjacket, KIPP would build a coherent curriculum as a resource for its teachers.

That became the job of Dana Fulmer, director of ELA curriculum and assessment at the KIPP Foundation. Fulmer is a lifelong educator, who spent most of her career directing professional development in public and private schools. Inspired by leading educators such as Robert Marzano and Mike Schmoker and working with the nonprofit group Great Minds, she led a two-year effort to design what would eventually be called the KIPP-Wheatley curriculum.

Fulmer and her colleagues set out with three goals. First, the program was to be “joyful.” Fulmer wanted KIPPsters to “love books, to love reading, to love writing.” A second goal was to build students’ reading and writing skills, with particular focus on close reading. Rather than having students read little snippets of text, they would read something meaty over and over again through different lenses.

The group’s final, and arguably most important, goal was to develop “world knowledge”—science, social studies, art, and literature—commencing in kindergarten with lots of read-alouds. The curriculum is designed around topics, such as bridges or the Underground Railroad. “We stay with those topics for seven weeks, intentionally,” Fulmer says, because of the importance of content knowledge, and because as students go deeper into a content area, the level of text complexity that they can handle rises and their vocabulary expands. The ability to tackle more complex text is the key to boosting reading comprehension.

KIPP and Great Minds created the first drafts of KIPP-Wheatley, which KIPP then adapted, highlighting what worked for KIPP’s mission and network. Great Minds tested the drafts in 12 public and charter schools across the country and created Wit & Wisdom, a K–8 coherent curriculum based on the same principles.

“People are seeing results,” Fulmer says. “Students and teachers love the texts, are engaging more with the texts, and writing and vocabulary are improving.”

The curriculum’s use in KIPP schools is voluntary, though “strongly encouraged.” Uptake has been high, however, as teachers hear from one another about the successes they are seeing with their students. KIPP is now sharing the curriculum with other charter schools, and public schools too.

Not just for KIPP

Several other high-performing charter networks, including Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, and Success Academy, are also discovering the need for a new approach to teaching reading. Success is particularly aggressive about a well-rounded curriculum, with units on the Wampanoag, Greek myths, and the American Revolution—all before kids turn ten!

Traditional public schools can use Great Minds’ Wit & Wisdom curriculum, which just received nearly perfect scores and all “green lights” from EdReports.org. Or, they can download the Success Academy curriculum for free.

This might not be exactly “innovative,” but it sure represents progress.

Editor’s note: A version of this essay originally appeared in Principal Magazine.

The Council of Chief State School Officers launched the Network for Transforming Educator Preparation (NTEP) in 2013. Its purpose is to identify states with track records of innovative teacher preparation and support them in their efforts to implement aggressive and lasting improvements. The network’s first cohort comprised seven states: Connecticut, Idaho, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Washington. In 2015, they were joined by eight more states: California, Delaware, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah.

A new report examines the progress of those states, mainly in four key areas: stakeholder engagement; licensure reform; preparation program standards, evaluation, and approval; and the use of data to measure success.

In the realm of stakeholder engagement, participating states were required to outline how they would gain the “public and political will to support policy change.” Collaborations between stakeholder groups led several states to recognize the importance of clinical practice for new teachers. For instance, a working group made up of the Louisiana’s Department of Education, Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, and Board of Regents collaborated to create a yearlong classroom residency for new teachers alongside an experienced mentor teacher, complemented by a competency-based curriculum.

Since states determine their own teacher licensure policies, NTEP focuses on how participating states could ensure that candidates who earn a license are ready for the rigors of the classroom on their very first day. States have made strides in various ways, including requiring performance-based licensure assessments, setting higher minimum GPA requirements for entry into preparation programs, and requiring programs to extend and improve candidates’ clinical experiences. But difficult challenges remain, including license reciprocity across state lines and establishing effective licensure systems.

Another important reform that NTEP states are pursuing is toughening their approval and reauthorization standards for teacher preparation programs. States including Kentucky made progress in this domain by developing an accountability system that includes information about the selectivity of programs, the performance of candidates on licensure exams, and scores on evaluations of practicing teachers. States also updated the standards used to review and approve programs by transitioning from examining inputs, like faculty qualifications or program resources to examining how prospective teachers perform while in the program.

As for using data effectively, participating NTEP states recognize the importance of measuring new teachers’ effectiveness. But CCSSO also found that the quality and relevance of collected data are sorely lacking. NTEP states overcame these obstacles by auditing data that were already being collected in order to ensure that they were shared with other agencies and programs; building and implementing improved data systems; providing data-related training to state and institutional staff; and developing data-based rating systems for preparation programs. California, for example, uses its statewide teacher preparation data system to create public dashboards that show how a program’s graduates score on assessments as well as the results of district surveys about newly hired teachers’ performance.

Finally, although NTEP focused on state policy, several higher education institutions within states made significant changes in order to transform the way they prepare their candidates. Clemson University, for example, plans to offer a combined bachelor’s-master’s degree path with an embedded teacher residency program. Similarly, Missouri State University’s College of Education created an internship program that replaced the traditional twelve weeks of student teaching with a yearlong co-teaching model.

For states that are interested in making advancements with their teacher preparation programs and policies, this report serves as a good place to start.

SOURCE: “Transforming Educator Preparation: Lessons Learned from Leading States,” The Council of Chief State School Officers (September 2017).

As we’ve come to learn more about sleep and how it affects adolescents, school start times (SST) have become part of a national conversation. Several studies published in prestigious outlets such as the American Economic Journal and Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine indicate that later SST could be beneficial for students, as insufficient sleep is associated with poor academic performance, increased automobile crash mortality, obesity, and depression. And as more benefits of sleep have come to light, several medical organizations—such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine—have recommended that middle and high schools shouldn’t start until 8:30 a.m. However, understandable concerns about pushing back SST remain, largely regarding increased transportation costs and whether the shift might negatively affect after-school extracurricular activities and employment opportunities.  

Enter RAND Europe and the RAND Corporation, which conducted a recent study in which they aim to gauge whether the benefits of later SST are worth the costs. Throughout the process, they sought to address two questions: If there were universal shifts in SST to 8:30 a.m.—versus the U.S. average start time of 8:03 a.m.—what would the economic impact be? And would that shift be a cost-effective policy measure?

Based on prior studies, the researchers focused principally on the notion that students would reap academic benefits given the opportunity to gain additional sleep in the morning; this includes increased high school graduation and college-matriculation rates that in turn should generate economic gains. They also assumed benefits in decreased mortality based on fewer automobile accidents tied to sleep deprivation. On the cost side of the ledger, the RAND analysts considered increased transportation expenses to accommodate the later SST and infrastructure costs associated with pushing back extracurricular start times (e.g., installing lights for athletic fields).

Based on their cost-benefit calculations, the RAND analysts predicted that universally delaying school start times to 8:30 a.m. would be a cost-effective policy. On a national scale, they estimated that after as little as two years, there could be a significant return on investment—an economic gain of about $8.6 billion to the U.S. economy. After ten years, the researchers predicted that the later SST policy would contribute a cumulative $83 billion to the economy. In per-student terms, the analysts predicted a $346 benefit two years after the policy change and $3,309 after ten years. State-by-state estimates were also provided. These net benefits assumed what the RAND analysts consider “normal” costs associated with the policy shift (a $150 per student bump in transportation costs and upfront infrastructure costs of $110,000 per school). However, under higher cost assumptions, RAND analysts estimated diminished returns that don’t actually turn positive for quite some time. For instance, in the higher cost simulations, the payoff of later SST in many states doesn’t turn positive until ten years after the policy change.  

This study suggests that it’s worth it to modestly delay start times. Of course, their findings hinge on assumptions about the aggravation and costs associated with changing school schedules. But in practice, schools across the country are indeed making this shift, likely in the hopes of increasing the odds of students arriving to school safely and improving their readiness to learn from the moment they step through their school’s doors. These schools seem to recognize that the old phrase, “you snooze, you lose” might not be correct after all. We shall see.

SOURCE: Marco Hafner, Martin Stepanek, Wendy M. Troxel, “Later school start times in the U.S.: An economic analysis,” RAND Europe (2017).