1. We start today out in the ‘burbs. (I know, right!) First up is a lengthy piece about some “options” for suburban kids for whom the traditional classroom route just doesn’t seem to work. It’s not a charter or a standalone STEM school, mind, but kids in Westerville and Gahanna do have some great-sounding IB, science, and career tech options. Those latter two are thanks to Ohio’s Straight-A Innovation Fund as well. Nice. (ThisWeek News, 5/24/17) Meanwhile, adults in Grandview Heights schools have a somewhat rosier view of how their kids behave when out of their sight than did the adults in Unioto schools discussed earlier this week in the Bites. Instead of slovenly, barbaric, screen-addicted couch rats who need stringent summer rules, warnings and checklists to remind them to “be more human”, Grandview teachers and librarians think their kids just need to read a lot and get out a bit, and maybe attend a summer camp if possible. Sounds more like it to me.  (ThisWeek News/Tri-Village News, 5/23/17) Further north, the Sylvania school district in suburban Toledo is still facing stiff opposition to its efforts to redraw school building boundaries. (Toledo Blade, 5/26/17) Probably coincidentally, it was announced this week that the superintendent of Sylvania schools will resign effective July 31, even though three years remain on his current contract. His replacement has already been named. Ouch. (Toledo Blade, 5/26/17)
    
2. While some may consider it a distant suburb of Columbus, Delaware City Schools seems to be facing some familiar urban school district problems at the moment. Deficits, staffing issues, benefit requirements, etc. And when the Auditor of State comes calling (Yost!) with some sobering audit results and a lot of sharp-edged recommendations, it’s probably safe to assume you’re in the big time. And not in a good way. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/25/17)
    
3. How do education professionals and policy makers feel about the Resident Educator Summative Assessment (RESA) program, designed to support young and early-career teachers in the Buckeye State? Based on Senate testimony last week, opinions range from “well-intended but problematic” to “daunting but necessary”. And those are the best things I could find. The program is currently slated for elimination via the state budget – which is the wish of the “well-intended by problematic” folks – but several members of the “daunting but necessary” brigade argued for tweaks rather than outright elimination. (Gongwer Ohio, 5/25/17)
    
4. Despite the other issues taking up his time these days (see Wednesday’s Bites for more details), Lorain City Schools supe Jeff Graham still has time for his monthly meeting with the district’s Student Advisory Council. Here’s a look at the topics covered at their most recent meeting. Sounds pretty good. I’m sure the new district CEO – whoever that may be – will continue this worthy endeavor. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 5/24/17) Speaking of which, the chair of the new Lorain Academic Distress Commission was named this morning. He is Anthony Richardson, Admiral King HS grad, former Lorain city councilman, and currently program officer of The Nord Family Foundation. Congrats! Next stop: hiring that aforementioned CEO. Wonder who it will be? (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 5/26/17)

City Academy High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, will celebrate a milestone in September: twenty-five years as the nation's first charter school. During that quarter century, charter school growth has been remarkable. Today, forty-four states and Washington, D.C. contain some seven thousand of these independently operated public schools, serving nearly 3 million students. Remarkably, charters account for the entire growth in U.S. K–12 public school enrollments since 2006.

Confusion abounds among educators and the broader public about the purpose of charter schools and how these independent public schools relate to school district improvement efforts. A mainline view sees them "as the research and development arm" of K–12 public education, crediting Albert Shanker, former leader of the American Federation of Teachers, with most fully envisioning this perspective. Yes, Shanker endorsed this approach, but that hardly exhausts what he—and others—thought about chartering more than twenty-five years ago when chartering was hatched.

Our analysis argues there are three ways chartering is, in the 1996 words of Ted Kolderie, perhaps its foremost theorist, "about system reform ... a way for the state to cause the district system to improve." In short, charters are research and development laboratories for districts; competitors to districts; and replacements for districts.

Charters as research and development labs. Chartering can advance district improvement efforts through R&D, i.e., be a laboratory for testing different approaches and ideas that are replicated in district schools. This could involve approaches to assessment and curriculum or organizational innovations like giving more site based freedom over budgets and personnel to other district schools, based on successful charter experiments. Shanker described this idea in a 1988 address to the National Press Club, followed by a New York Times column entitled "A Charter for Change."

A prime example of a district employing chartering as R&D is Denver Public Schools, shaping its system into a "portfolio district." It preserves the elected school board but outsources some school operations, including fifty-four largely independent charters and 36 less autonomous "innovation schools."

The seven-member board can hire and fire the superintendent—but also authorizes charters. Denver is a story of innovative superintendents and boards incorporating charters into a comprehensive system, learning from them, and giving families more quality choices.

Yet Denver has only just begun. Ninety-five schools still operate the traditional way, and some charters barely participate in the "portfolio." We are reminded that chartering, undertaken by a traditional district, must still navigate the clash between ingrained district culture and the dynamics associated with innovation.

It's not yet clear how those two approaches to public education are fully reconciled. But Denver's journey has shown real if modest results. Over the past decade, students scoring at the proficient level or better rose 15 percent, with achievement slightly superior in the city's charter schools.

Charters as competition. A less collegial approach has charters competing with the traditional system, drawing students and funding from district schools to charters. The assumption is that districts will respond positively by improving their offerings and enhancing school quality.

But a negative response is possible. States and districts find ways to limit competition. For example, a charter law may restrict the number of students who attend charters or the number of new schools allowed or require a state reimburse districts for the money it loses when a student leaves the district.

Reform-via-competition has origins on the political right and left. This approach in modern times is linked with conservative economist Milton Friedman. In 1962 (years before the first charter law), he described how competitive market forces would strengthen educational quality, efficiency and productivity.

Ironically, on the left, Shanker's 1998 New York Times piece describes a quasi-marketplace where, "Parents could choose which charter school to send their children to, thus fostering competition." So while we should accept Shanker's thoughts on charters as R&D, we cannot ignore his thoughts on how chartering is also about choice and competition.

Washington, D.C. is a prime example of a charter sector large enough to compete with the traditional district, enrolling nearly 47 percent of public school pupils, creating a mixed market of charter and district choices for families. Mayor Muriel Bowser presides over this dual system, where the traditional D.C. Public Schools are run by a chancellor and the parallel sector of independently operated charter schools is answerable to D.C.'s Public Charter School Board.

By 2015 to 2016, enrollment in D.C.'s public schools rose to 87,443, with 112 charters and 111 district schools. Test results have improved in both sectors, with charter gains surpassing those of district schools.

David Osborne, senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, completed an analysis of D.C.'s two sectors, documenting how competition led the district sector to emulate charters in many ways, including more diverse curriculum offerings; new choices of different school models; and reconstituting schools to operate with building level autonomy, especially giving principals freedom to hire all or mostly new staff. This competition "pushed both to improve [leading to] a surprising amount of collaboration between the two sectors." A highlight of this cooperation is My School DC, a program making it easier for district and charter parents to choose from the many D.C. school options available through a common lottery application system.

Charters as replacements. The replacement approach makes charters the primary vehicle for delivering public education in a community. In 1990, one year before Minnesota passed the nation's first charter law, Ted Kolderie dubbed this approach "divestiture." It envisions a school improvement strategy overseen by a new state created governance structure. It not so much improves the district as replaces it, making the procedure more akin to a heart transplant rather than a repair of part of the heart.

In short, where districts aren't able to reboot their schools, the district is stripped of its exclusive authority to create and operate schools and replaced with a governance scheme based on chartering. There is an overseers board setting policy; defining results expected from schools; contracting with organizations to run schools; and monitoring performance, closing and opening schools as necessary. New Orleans is the most evolved example of this approach.

Even before Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana lawmakers created a "Recovery School District" to revive the state's worst schools, mostly in New Orleans. By August 2005, the school district converted five failing schools into charters. Then came the hurricane, after which lawmakers widened the district's responsibilities, making it the instrument for overhauling public education in New Orleans.

By 2014, the Recovery School District in New Orleans was entirely charter, overseeing 57 campuses with more than 29,000 pupils, some 92 percent of the city's public school population. The other 8 percent attend schools run by a vestige of the Orleans Parish School Board.

Originally devised to serve youngsters stuck in weak schools, the Recovery School District became the city's main provider of public education, with charters as its delivery vehicle. Recent legislation returns charters to the Orleans Parish School Board, with charters keeping their operating autonomy and the remaining traditional schools converting to charters.

Impressive student results have emerged. Students scoring at or above grade level on state tests doubled from 31 percent in 2004 to 62 percent in 2014. Pupils attending schools in the bottom tenth percentile statewide shrank dramatically from 60 to 13 percent. The on-time four-year graduation rate rose from 54 percent to 73 percent.

In none of these cities is every school a source of quality learning. Bur in all three, chartering magnified the capacity of a challenged district delivery system to do things better, while furthering structural innovation within public education.

Today, more schools in each city are doing right by their students so that many kids are better served by today's restructured system than when there was no alternative to the traditional arrangement.

One major lesson can be drawn from this discussion: No matter how hard some search for a single "founding myth" for charter schooling, there was never a unique story line. Chartering has not been a single experiment or the product of a single vision, theory or doctrine.

Editor’s note: This article was first published by U.S. News & World Report.

NOTES: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute occasionally publishes guest commentaries on its blogs. The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of Fordham.

This piece was originally published on the blog of the Ohio STEM Learning Network and is reposted with kind permission from the author.

Throughout the three weeks that span the end of May and the beginning of June, students all over Ohio will be donning an unflattering tasseled mortarboard cap and a polyester gown, lining up in alphabetical order, and trying to remember all the words of their soon-to-be alma mater’s song.  They will be a bit apprehensive, somewhat self-conscious, and a tad more anxious than usual.  They’ve practiced this drill two or three times and generally know where they are supposed to go and when they sit and stand, but the gravity of the circumstance has them a little on edge.

Soon, they will walk across the stage, receive a diploma, shake a hand, and move on.  It all seems easy enough and has been done 100,000 times before, but there’s always a moment or two of hesitation.  It’s the thin line between saying what you are going to do and knowing what you are going to do that catches them off guard.  A thousand questions run through their collective minds  – Am I prepared? Did I pass Spanish? Does the tassel go on the right or the left?  The questions are certainly valid and most will get answered in due time, but the one that is most important is the first: Am I prepared?  It’s a big question for a lot of reasons, but on graduation day it is underlined, bold and italicized: Am I prepared…for the rest of my life?

A little more than 10 years ago, all the discussion in education circles in Columbus focused on the “Ohio Core” legislation proposed by then Republican Governor Taft’s administration. Thomas Friedman surfaced the quiet fears of middle class America with The World is Flat. Published a couple of years earlier, the political climate and fear of globalization was palpable, especially in Ohio, as our manufacturing base was slipping and our education levels were sliding.

The Core required students to take (and pass) three years of science and four years of mathematics in order to complete high school requirements for graduation.  The intent, at the time, was to raise standards and accountability so that Ohio’s students would be prepared to be competitive in a global economy. The thought, at the time, was that students would need some education beyond high school to effectively contribute to society.

While many of the arguments focused on the “what” of the core, very few questioned the “why.”  Preparing kids to be successful in the 21st Century was a no-brainer. One of the big sticking points was the requirement of Algebra II – long thought of as a gatekeeper for college entrance and success.  After countless negotiations with administrators, educators, unions and policy wonks, the Core passed.  In a sympathetic gesture, schools and districts were granted what amounted to a 10-year runway to ramp up and prepare for what most schools in Ohio were already doing – providing a quality education.

Slow forward to today—10 years has come and gone.  As we creep toward the end of the runway, a small number of the schools and districts are still stuck on the tarmac, waiting for clearance to stay in 2006.  Frantic calls to the statehouse have set off alarm bells across the state. The schools are demanding more time.  The districts are screaming for more resources.  The dire warnings are clear: if the 10-year new graduation requirements are activated, thousands of kids might possibly crash and burn.

Luckily for them, their SOS has been heard.  Well-meaning bureaucrats are lining up like a bucket brigade to douse the fire and put an end to this catastrophe.  Relief will be granted in the form of local control.  Higher expectations for students and accountability for schools all across the state will be abandoned, and, thankfully, no one will get hurt (for now).  Students will once again be eligible to graduate from high school based on rigid non-academic requirements such as attendance.  In Ohio, a high school diploma means they came, therefore, they learned (we hope).

To the casual observer, the path forward the state is taking might make perfect sense.  Kicking the decision-making down to the 4,300 local schools allows for plausible deniability.  No one wants to see kids fail.  No one.  High school dropout rates are already appalling.  Statistically, kids without diplomas tend to face some future horrific data points: higher levels of unemployment, drug use, and incarceration – the list of bad goes on and on.  However, the idea of giving a kid a meaningless diploma is just as damaging  – at best, it’s indulgent; at worst, it’s a breach of trust.

Even though the political climate has changed dramatically since the Core was passed, our responsibility to students hasn’t.  At the risk of sounding like a left leaning liberal (currently out of vogue), one of the underlining values of the Core was ensuring equity and access to meaningful coursework for all kids.  Without the opportunity to take classes that will get you into college, too many kids, mostly in poor rural and urban areas, are locked out of the game before it even begins.  In 2017, it seems almost unimaginable that we would consider denying our most vulnerable population access to high quality… (never mind).

Protectionism may seem like a good policy in the short term, but handing out cheap credit is the formula for a meltdown (see: Financial Crisis).  At the risk of sounding like a right leaning fiscal conservative (also out of vogue), if the taxpayers are going to invest millions of dollars into the education system, the high school diploma needs to be a highly regarded security, not a worthless paper certificate.  Denying the rapidly accelerating education levels of students in places such as Singapore, China, India, and  ____________ (insert country of choice here) is like ignoring climate change (ok, so maybe this isn’t such a great example).  The facts, alternative or real, are that the basic math of America lowering standards while the rest of the world is increasing them (Hello, Calculus!) won’t add up to America being great again anytime soon.  Worse – it puts our kids at risk on a global scale.

But the most important issue at stake here isn’t just academic – it’s a matter of trust.  High school graduation is a milestone that we, the adults, created.  We are the ones who sign the paper, file the documents, and stamp the transcript.  In the end, we, the adults, are responsible for setting the bar – but the students are the ones who will ultimately be held accountable for the result.

For students, what’s “next” after high school can take many shapes and forms – it might be a job, enrollment in college, an apprenticeship, or even an enlistment to serve our country.  But, as the adults in the room, we should never mistake what’s next for what’s always.   Choices made at 17 should not be life sentences without parole.  All kids are “gifted” when it comes to changing their mind.  It’s our responsibility to ensure they have all the skills necessary to adapt to wherever their journey takes them.  We can debate the merits of statistics versus algebra, but we would be hard pressed to defend complacency.  With each passing year, the economy demands more and our kids deserve better.

In a week, maybe two, a small box will unceremoniously show up on my desk.  Inside, there will be 100+ diplomas from the Metro Early College High School, a small liberal arts STEM school in Columbus.  Each piece of paper within the box is in need of a signature –mine – the Board President   Some may consider this an onerous task, but I think of it as the most important two hours of my year.  Staring down at names of kids I mostly don’t recognize, I’ll be a bit apprehensive, somewhat self-conscious, and a tad more anxious than usual.  I’ve done this drill two or three times in the past and generally know where my name is supposed to go, but the gravity of the circumstance has me a little on edge.   I know the world is flat, but that doesn’t make it even.  With one stroke of a pen, school board presidents all around our state are about to let loose tens of thousands of Ohio’s kids to the rest of the world.  Are they prepared?

David Burns is the Director of Battelle STEM Innovation Networks.

It’s one thing to behave badly. It’s another thing to take an official vote in support of behaving badly. But, lo and behold, that is precisely what the Massachusetts Teachers Association did last weekend at their annual meeting of delegates. And so a magnanimous gesture on the part of two retired delegates ended in a way that can only be described as classless and pathetic.

Mike Antonucci explains:

New Business Item #7 was introduced by retired delegates, and it called upon the union to “formally congratulate and recognize Sydney Chaffee,” the 2017 National Teacher of the Year. MTA was directed to “send a written letter of congratulations to Sydney Chaffee, and recognize her accomplishment via appropriate social media.”

Until this year, the National Teacher of the Year had never hailed from Massachusetts. Sydney Chaffee changed that, and she’s worthy of celebration and recognition. Common sense, right? Like, who in their right mind would be against that?

Meet the Massachusetts Teachers Association. They decided, by way of an official vote, that they would not congratulate Chaffee for being named the 2017 National Teacher of the Year.

Never mind that she works with a high needs population, fights for social justice, and by all accounts embodies excellence and love in the classroom. For this union, there’s one problem that outweighs all of that: She teaches at a charter school in Dorchester and Barbara Madeloni, MTA president, hates charter schools. In fact, Barbara will stand up for those in the excess teacher pool who are draining $34 million from Massachusetts because no principal wants to hire them—but she will not even congratulate a teacher that principals would be chomping at the bit to have work in their buildings.

More from Antonucci:

Chaffee is not a member of MTA, and the union is under no obligation to acknowledge her existence, never mind her achievement. Still, it illustrates that what MTA wants from teachers is not a high level of professionalism, or ability, or even adherence to social justice, but a blind devotion to a strict political agenda.

Keri Rodriguez lays out the sordid details for us—and, truth be told, it’s a tale of dishonesty and pettiness.

Word on the street is that President Madeloni pulled out all the stops to block the resolution from passing—forcing the item into the new business portion of the meeting when most delegates had already left instead of as pending business as it had been addressed in years past to make sure there was full participation of the body. Barbara apparently even got up and lied to the membership about the Council of Chief State School Officers being a collection of “corporate sell-outs” who selected Sydney because of question 2 and their love for charter schools/Charlie Baker/Donald Trump.

For the record, here’s the organizations who selected Sydney as teacher of the year who Barbara Madeloni has deemed “corporate sell-outs”:

• American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)
• American Association of School Administrators (AASA)
• American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
• Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI)
• Association for Middle Level Education
• ASCD
• Association of Teacher Educators (ATE)
• Educators Rising
• National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)
• National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP)
• National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP)
• National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE)
• National Education Association (NEA )
• National PTA
• National School Boards Association (NSBA)
• National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA)
• The Business Roundtable
• Previous National Teacher of the Year

In her recent speech to her fellow Teachers of the Year from all over the country, Chaffee tells the inspiring story of her student, Damien. It left me wishing every child could have a teacher like her. I felt the exact same way about Jahana Hayes, the Connecticut teacher who won the national award last year. She doesn’t teach at a charter school.

Incredible teachers exist in every corner of the educational landscape, and we should be celebrating and honoring all of them without a litmus test for their school’s governance model. If we put the needs of kids above all else, not doing so is inexcusable.

Congratulations Sydney Chaffee and to all whom have come before you. Thank you for your passion, dedication, and belief in the power of education to change lives.

Editor’s note: A version of this piece was first published by Good School Hunting.

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

Editor's note: This is the second essay of a three-part series (parts one and three can be found here) that examines the major challenges facing education reformers. The author adapted these essays from his keynote address at the Yale School of Management’s Education Leadership Conference in April.

In my last column, I wrote about the policy problem we face as people fighting for change in the education space. But that’s only part of what ails our reform effort.

We also have a political problem.

By that, I mean our policies have not reached a scale where they cannot easily be undone, or a breadth where their diversity of support makes them easier to get behind. And make no mistake, the threat posed by these conditions is as real as it is existential.

Politics is a numbers game, and you need politicians to actually change how the public square interacts with the policies we hold close. So let’s be honest—when a politician reviews your proposal, he or she is asking a fundamental and self-interested question: Does this get me more friends or make me more enemies?

If the answer is that something consistently makes more enemies, it’s going to be harder or, frankly, impossible, to get the support you need to get it done. We can talk about doing the right things for the right reasons—and we can wonder why politicos don’t behave that way—but, politically, the right things are rarely done for the right reasons. And until we’re willing to revisit our policy assumptions through the real-world lens of politics, we won’t be able to see the necessary path forward to grow and protect the work of previous decades.

Let’s take chartering and charter school authorizing as an example. Admittedly, the broadly accepted authorizing frameworks we know have given us some tremendous things. Most notably, they’ve created networks of schools, like those in New York or Newark where I have worked a great deal, that are particularly good at closing achievement gaps for low-income and minority kids. Those schools have become safe havens of order and creativity because of their strong emphasis on structure, great teaching, and high expectations—what folks commonly, if inelegantly, refer to as the “no excuses” model. They’ve changed and saved lives. This is laudable, and I support all of it.

But what haven’t those same authorizing frameworks given us? In their emphasis on bringing “quality schools”—or, rather, what “we” thought were quality schools—into existence, we may have perverted the pluralism inherent in the chartering power and instead substituted control.

This approach has some benefits. But over time, what we thought of as quality authorizing has morphed into a sort of technocratic risk management for the sector—a process whose own bias, one could argue, accelerated not the growth of charter schools but the replication of one kind of charter school with one specific sort of leader.

The possible result of this “bias”? A sector densely concentrated in urban areas, where a minority of the voting populace has children in those schools and statewide political reach is limited. And let’s be even more clear: Our anchor constituency is black and Hispanic families who don’t vote in the same numbers or contribute the same dollars as, say, the affluent Nassau County moms who typify the opt-out movement. Let’s review how government behaves in these two instances. Some rich folks get concerned about testing, President Barack Obama makes a speech, says there is too much testing, and states start rolling back not just testing but also the evaluation systems tied to it. Want to add twelve new charter schools a year to one of the country’s best charter sectors in Boston? Dies by the sword, two to one.

So you have to ask yourself, is this the way forward for sustainability?

And along with asking that question, you might consider revisiting some of your fundamental assumptions about our policy and politics, too.

Maybe you do need that dual-language-immersion charter school in the suburbs—not because you care about it educationally, but because its families help you make the case for charters politically. Maybe you think charter management organizations are the way to go, but to the extent the process to create them may crowd out leaders of color and neighborhood mom-and-pops—which grow authentic and local constituencies—you understand they shouldn’t be the only answer. Thinking like this could have headed off the NAACP charter moratorium with which we now all must deal.

Maybe you realize that if you believe in “choice,” you can’t believe in it only when the choice is you. And maybe you get that the fastest way to reach scale that has lasting political impact is actually to partner with private schools, who served the charter school base and educated generations of minority leaders, including our last president, long before the word “charter” was anything more than a kind of bus. And maybe you do that because you share opposition even if you don’t share interests.

If you don’t think we have a political problem and that, instead, the stars are aligned around us right now, maybe you won’t ask yourselves these questions.

If you do think we have one, maybe these are the only questions you should be asking at all.

Either way, failing to answer the political question puts all that we’ve made, care for, and wish to grow tomorrow, at risk.

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.

As I travel the country, working with educators and policymakers on improving services for gifted students, I’m usually struck by two themes, one encouraging and the other worrisome. On the positive side, people are starting to understand that advanced achievement matters and have become passionate about addressing excellence gaps—the yawning divides in advanced achievement between various racial and socioeconomic groups. But on the negative side, I’m routinely disappointed by how often that enthusiasm fades when we start talking about solutions. The conversation goes something like this:

Ability grouping? “Not in our district, people don’t believe in it.” Universal screening? “Too expensive.” Use of local norms? “Politically tricky. Pass.” Teacher and administrator training? “Preparation programs will never do it, and we don’t have the bandwidth at the district level.” And the kicker, which is so common that I’ve become numb to it: “This is an important topic, but my urban/rural district doesn’t have any bright kids” (a comment I’ve heard from principals, superintendents, and even a state school chief).

So although we have research-based strategies that shrink excellence gaps and raise overall levels of excellence, we rarely see a district tackle this problem.

This phenomenon has grown so frustrating for me that, in response to a reporter’s question about how to close excellence gaps, I recently replied, “Be overly enthusiastic and supportive if you see someone trying to address these gaps. They’re swimming upstream and need our support.”

In this spirit, the recent plan from the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland deserves attention. Rather than continue to offer a gifted program that serves primarily upper-middle-class white and Asian-American students, the district has produced a comprehensive plan that appears likely to address both excellence and equity goals. I encourage you to read the details, but the district essentially calls for a combination of improved frontloading in the early grades (i.e., raising rigor throughout the K–12 system to better prepare students for academic challenge later in their schooling), universal screening (having every student go through any identification process rather than rely on teacher nominations), removal of the parent opt-in (which can advantage more knowledgeable parents), use of local or group norms for identification (providing services to the most talented students in each school rather than the most talented students across the district), and more program opportunities throughout the district (helping to lower opportunity gaps and facilitate frontloading). These are exactly the strategies that my colleague Scott Peters and I call for in our recent book on this topic.

Of course, change is not easy, and changes related to talent development in schools are particularly fraught with political consequences. I am already hearing grumbling that the Montgomery County changes will “water down” the district’s advanced offerings. That’s a pretty common complaint when a district decides to tackle excellence gaps, but I have yet to see evidence that such lowering of standards occurs when the district frontloads effectively (which Montgomery County intends to do).

If you’re an advocate for creating educational excellence and removing excellence gaps, you should support educators and policymakers who are going out on a limb to make these things happen. If you’re in Montgomery County, lend your support to Superintendent Jack Smith; if you’re in San Antonio, Texas, support the impressive and comprehensive approach to excellence being implemented by Superintendent Pedro Martinez and his team; if you live in Colorado or Alabama, let your policymakers know that their support for universal screening will pay dividends for years into the future.

Excellence is neither accidental nor easy, and the American education system has a long way to go before truly and comprehensively achieving it. But a good first step is to support those schools, districts, and states that are willing to take the necessary, difficult first steps.

Jonathan A. Plucker is the Julian C. Stanley Professor of Talent Development in the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University.

Editor’s note: A version of this essay was originally published by the 74.

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

Linda Darling-Hammond, smart as she is, doubtless has many fresh thoughts and insights. In her new book series on “empowered educators,” however, after bringing in a sizable body of information on how other countries go about it, she and a number of colleagues recycle many of their sturdiest old thoughts and insights. Subtitled “how high-performing systems shape teaching quality around the world,” they—under the aegis of a Stanford policy center and Marc Tucker’s National Center on Education and the Economy—describe in depth (via a 280-page overview treatise and multiple supplemental volumes) “how seven international educational systems create a coherent set of policies designed to ensure quality teaching in all communities.”

Intrepid, they journey to some of American educators’ favorite locations—Shanghai, Singapore, Finland, and various parts of Canada and Australia—and do a swell job of describing the ways that teaching in those places is more professional, more respected, better compensated, more highly trained, more sensibly structured as a career, and overall more effective than in the United States. If you’ve followed Linda’s and Marc’s previous work, nothing here will surprise you—though you may yet learn plenty—and there’s no reason to doubt the accuracy of their accounts and explanations.

The issue for U.S. education reformers and policymakers, however, now as always, is whether we might draw workable lessons from such analyses for possible application in our own K–12 and higher ed systems.

On the margins, of course, a bold state, district or charter-school network might make important changes a la (say) New South Wales—a foresighted university could do likewise in teacher- and administrator-prep programs—and such changes would likely do some good in the place where implemented. If they did enough measurable good in a big enough place, others would doubtless take notice and perhaps follow suit.

But the obstacles are immense and the likelihood of these insights being applied on a large scale in the United States anytime soon are lamentably tiny. So much that’s so deeply rooted would first have to be overturned. Five big things in particular—and this isn’t the first time I’ve pointed them out, either, so déjà vu may set in if you persevere. 

First, at least since World War II, school-teaching in the United States has evolved as a mass occupation rather than a respected profession. As we near 4,000,000 teachers—yes, that’s four million!—it’s become the largest single occupation in the American workforce (not quite matched by nursing and 2.5 times the size of the military), and we haven’t a prayer of reaching numbers like that with our “best and brightest.” There just aren’t enough of them, especially when you consider the other opportunities now available to talented women and minorities. Teaching also behaves like a mass occupation because we’ve organized K–12 schooling into huge government bureaucracies, because school principals by and large are middle managers rather than full-fledged institutional leaders, and because the teacher unions have demanded and not deviated far from an industrial model in which everyone is treated alike.

Second, we’ve opted as a society for at least the last half-century to channel the tens of billions of additional dollars that have flowed into public education toward hiring more teachers rather than better ones. The crude ratio of students to teachers in American K–12 education when I was a kid was 27 to 1. Today it’s 14 to 1. (Look it up!) Everyone—parents and teachers alike—wanted smaller classes. Ed schools wanted more students. Teacher unions wanted more dues-paying members. Everyone’s interests seemed to be served in the short run by expanding the teaching ranks rather than concentrating the new money on better teachers, better prepared teachers, career ladders for teachers, more prep-and-collaboration time for teachers, etc.

Third, unlike the other countries in Linda’s sample, our public schools also employ an enormous number of non-teachers—on the order of half their total workforce. Some of those folks are necessary, of course, and many of them ease the burden on teachers, but the upshot is that a giant chunk of the education budget pays people who aren’t in the classroom teaching kids. At $12,000 per child, a classroom of twenty-three kids is “worth” 276,000 taxpayer dollars. Ask yourself how much of that sum goes into the pocket and benefits of the main classroom teacher.

Fourth, our universities notoriously treat their colleges of education as cash cows, not as elite places that are hard to get into and harder to graduate from. Our teacher prep programs are famously oblivious to what hard research has shown about key things like learning to read, and they’re careless about the practical experiences they arrange for future teachers. None of which is helped by idiotic state certification requirements that have been shown to have no bearing on classroom effectiveness.

Fifth and finally, we’re in love with technology, experimenting with all manner of blended and personalized learning plans, and it seems certain that any large future changes in the work of U.S. teachers is going to incorporate technology in major ways. Yet if the countries profiled in these books have made technology a significant part of empowering and professionalizing their educators, I’m not learning about it from Linda and her team and the themes they focus on.

I’d welcome the empowerment of American educators, teachers and principals alike. And yes, I admire what Finland, Ontario, and Singapore have pulled off—and appreciate the insights and reminders in these books. But the U.S. has some awfully steep slopes to scale before we reach similar heights. Who’s volunteering to climb? And can you carry enough oxygen?

1. We begin today talking about school districts and “their” money. But honestly, when aren’t we talking about that? Editors in Columbus opined in favor of more state money for school districts. Especially for Columbus City Schools. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/23/17) It must be 5-year forecast season across Ohio, based on the contents of local papers. Akron City School’s forecast, presented this week, appears relatively stable. Student flight from the district to charter schools has stopped for the time being and open enrollment into the district is currently higher than anticipated. Due, says the treasurer/CFO to “competitive programs and the fact that more staff members have children in the district.” That last bit is fascinating. (Akron Beacon Journal, 5/23/17) Toledo’s forecast looks stable too…as long those three renewal levies all pass. That is the second reference in less than a week to those levies and the importance of their passage to, well, everything. Those editorial endorsements are just writing themselves, don’t you think? (Toledo Blade, 5/24/17) Things are not so rosy for academically-distressed Lorain City Schools’ forecast. The treasurer seems optimistic about maintaining their student counts, stemming a long-standing tide of families opting for charter schools or vouchers, or open enrolling into a neighboring district. As the supe of the academically-distressed district optimistically says, “There’s no downside to us to bring back more students.” Yep. None at all. For you. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 5/23/17)
    
2. Speaking of the Lorain supe, he is apparently spending some time these days engaged in suing his former employer – Parma City Schools – over a year-old letter that he believes mischaracterized his work there and defamed him in the process. Sounds time consuming to me, but perhaps he’ll have more time on his hands in the near future to pursue it. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 5/22/17)
    
3. One more stop in Lorain before we move on. Here is a story that you might have seen part of in the social media sphere recently: a 12-year-old Lorain student stepped in to stop a fight between two of her classmates, an effort caught on video that went…well, you know. That student was this week given the “Do the Right Thing Award” for that action. According to the adults interviewed for the story, this is particularly remarkable because the young girl had apparently had a longstanding reputation – known by every one of those adults – for filming, photographing, and publicizing numerous student fights in her school over the years. She was assigned to research and write an essay about her behavior and every adult interviewed says that it was this reflection and work that led the youngster to choose to step out from behind the camera and act out the sentiment behind the title of that popular Spike Lee film. Kudos to young Dyamond Henderson, for sure. But your humble clips compiler humbly suggests that among these adults at least, the cart and the horse are actually in different universes currently. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 5/23/17)
    
4. Sticking with the theme of surreality for a moment, the hipsters of the Columbus Underground blog this week brought us a story that asks the question, are school lunches any more cool if they are served from a food truck decorated like a strawberry? An answer is proposed here, but who cares? The more important questions to me: Why is anyone asking about this, let alone spending time and money to find out the answer? (Columbus Underground, 5/23/17) And we conclude our detour in surreality-land with a description of this effort by a teacher in tiny Unioto school district in south central Ohio to help keep her students “human” over the summer. I’m not sure what she fears kids will become when out of her sight for a couple of months, but the usual admonition of “read!” (and even the provision of free books) is apparently not enough. Her effort includes rules, signature sheets, denial of screen time, and requirements like chores, brushing your teeth, making your bed, and occasionally showering. If it’s that bad, perhaps year-round school is called for out in the sticks. (Chillicothe Gazette, 5/22/17)
    
5. We’ll conclude today with a three-fer of state budget stories. First up, efforts are still underway to keep charter school performance from weighing too heavily (read: not at all) on the evaluation reports of their sponsors. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/22/17) Next, it was the College Credit Plus program under the microscope. Specifically, a plea from some higher ed institutions to institute a floor on per-credit-hour costs and a concurrent plea from school districts to lower costs as much as possible on testing, textbooks, and – you guessed it – per credit hour prices. (Gongwer Ohio, 5/23/17) Finally, the state budget could be used as a vehicle to allow paper and pencil tests back into the great state of Ohio, after a year of mostly computer-based testing being the law of the land. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/24/17) Surreality or education policy discussion? Who can tell?

A recent Fordham Institute study, Three Signs That a Proposed Charter School Is at Risk of Failing, compared the details of charter school applications to the performance of the resulting schools. According to authors Anna Nicotera and David Stuit, schools trying to implement “child-centered” models were more likely to struggle academically than schools pursuing other models.

There weren’t many such schools in the study, so it’s a better prompt for discussions about their issues than “proof” of anything. That said, I wasn’t surprised by its results. They echoed my experience as an authorizer and a researcher.

It’s important to first note that what makes a school “child-centered” is not rigidly defined, and some schools from every model have been more successful than others. Several well-known versions, like Montessori and Waldorf, primarily serve younger kids. Other models, like the Big Picture and Expeditionary Learning, serve older students. The details of these programs vary depending on the grades they serve and their founders’ philosophies. Generally, however, their students are actively working to direct their own learning, and teachers guide or facilitate this experience, rather than being responsible for delivering pre-established content. Child-centered schools, whatever they do, tend to avoid a single, structured, and sequential curriculum.

These schools are also quite popular. They already constitute a significant part of the charter sector, and their market share is likely to increase in years to come. In Washington, D.C., for example, child-centered models receive three applications for every available seat.

Despite their popularity, however, effectively implementing “child-centered” school models can be difficult because of at least three challenges: superficial understanding of the model; underestimating the importance and complexity of implementation; and disagreements over what constitutes “student success.” Authorizers should therefore probe applicants’ knowledge and expertise to determine just how well a new charter school is likely to address these challenges.

An old anecdote illustrates the first challenge of superficial understanding. In the mid-90s, I studied the missions of the nation’s first one hundred charter schools. Several planned to pursue the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) model. The CES model is a highly student-centered approach to high school that reduces the scope of the curriculum and redefines students as agents of their learning who are supported by teachers serving as coaches. I discussed my findings with Ted Sizer, who created the model based on his experience as a principal and extensive research about American high schools. I told Sizer about one of the schools I reviewed that sought to combine the CES approach with a very different model—E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Program. Hirsch’s model stood in stark contrast to Sizer’s model by emphasizing a structured and sequential curriculum. Sizer was incredulous and said something like, “That’s silly. You can’t do that. They must not even know what it means to be a Coalition school!” Ted’s skepticism underscores the risk of people proposing schools with only a superficial understanding of their model. Keep in mind that many founding teams are groups of parents.

Second, child-centered schools also have myriad implementation challenges. In their own unique ways, each of these schools redefines teachers’ and students’ roles. This requires impressive teacher skills, including the ability to evaluate student progress, manage classrooms, track data, help students with potentially unknown material, and more. It also requires that schools adopt effective systems and procedures for staffing patterns, scheduling, and use of space and material—all of which support students and make teachers’ work more sustainable.

Finally, authorizers of child-centered schools must consider what it means to be successful—and it ought to be about more than test scores. Indeed, many child-centered schools may perform below average academically, yet still deliver other highly valued outcomes for students and families. My wife and I, for example, chose a district-run Montessori school for our own children over a higher-performing and dramatically less-diverse neighborhood school. As parents, we were comfortable with our choice. But as both an authorizer and as a parent, I wouldn’t be if a school’s results were terrible.

Despite these challenges, however, charter authorizers mustn’t shy away from child-centered schools. Instead, they should put in the extra work it takes to ask smart, tailored questions that inform the rigorous decisions that these models require. The following seven are a good start:

1. Why did they choose this model? And how does it fit with the community?
2. What experience do they have with the model? Who is trained in the model?
3. What is the proposed school leader’s experience with the model?
4. What is the plan for recruiting, selecting, training, and supporting staff in the model?
5. What is the plan for community outreach, recruitment, and engagement?
6. Have they established partnerships with the groups that help schools implement this model?
7. Are there aspects of the model they intend to adjust or change for their proposed school, and if so why and how?

Alex Medler is a senior director at Safal Partners.

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

Almost seven years after the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were originally developed and adopted, inquiring minds want to know: Have they improved educational outcomes for students? Dr. Morgan Polikoff explores this very question in a recently published article, “Is Common Core “Working?” And where does Common Core Research Go from Here?.” It’s part of a broader AERA Open special topic on Common Core.

Polikoff’s article summarizes existing research in two key areas: how well Common Core has been implemented to date; and how it has affected student results. Neither question, it turns out, is especially easy to answer.

While measuring implementation at scale is challenging, research suggests that Common Core has increased states’ sharing of instructional resources and opportunities, such as professional development offerings. Polikoff also cites several informative teacher surveys conducted by organizations such as RAND and the Center on Education Policy that assess whether content and instruction is truly Common Core-aligned. In sum, these surveys reveal that, as recently as 2015, “large proportions” of math and English language arts and literacy teachers still had misconceptions about Common Core, “suggesting that their instruction is likely to be questionably aligned at best.” (Fordham came to similar conclusions in our surveys of math and ELA teachers.) Yet most of these surveys are self-reported. To better assess implementation fidelity, Polikoff suggests that classroom observations may provide another insightful lens into teachers’ instructional practices, albeit a time-consuming and expensive one.

How Common Core is affecting student outcomes is even more difficult to answer. First, deciding which outcomes to measure is itself challenging, given that not all states administer the SAT or ACT, that CCSS is not perfectly aligned to NAEP, and that measuring “career readiness” is harder still. Polikoff also outlines many research hurdles to determining whether Common Core is “working” or not. For starters, Common Core was not randomly assigned to states, making it nearly impossible to determine a direct, causal relationship between CCSS and student outcomes. Second, while the standards were developed in 2010, individual states adopted and implemented Common Core on very different schedules, with many states gradually rolling out implementation over several years, making it very difficult to pinpoint precisely when implementation actually “started.” It is also challenging to compare outcomes for adopter and non-adopter states, given that “states that adopted the standards certainly differed from those that did not”—and many adopters have since made revisions to the standards or dropped them entirely, further muddying the waters. And since research indicates Common Core isn’t always being implemented with fidelity in classrooms, it makes it even more challenging to assess the standards’ impact on students.

Seven years into Common Core, it’s clear there’s still much we don’t know. Yet given that the majority of states today are still using the Common Core standards, or a very close variant, it’s critical to understand how well the standards are being implemented in classrooms today, and what effect they’re having on students. As Polikoff stresses, ongoing implementation research is needed to document variation and statewide trends. Researchers should continue to address the impact question through quasi-experimental studies, and explore new and better ways to assess “college and career readiness.” More research must also be done on how district and school leaders can better support implementation and how effects vary by student demographics, and it must be both timely and accessible to policymakers and practitioners.

SOURCE: Morgan Polikoff, Ph.D., “Is Common Core “Working”? And Where Does Common Core Research Go From Here?,” AERA Open (January–March 2017).