Perils of the Presidency

I guess that one of the perils of the presidency is that everything you do matters. So on that front, Obama is now facing two major decisions that will play out in the realm of educational policy. First, he has to pick a secretary of education. Second, he needs to pick a school for his daughters to attend. Frankly, in comparison, the first choice is looking like the easy one right now.

Who would have thought that the usually private decision of family schooling would take on such monumental consequences? Advocates rallied in Times Square on Wednesday to urge the Obama's to pick a charter school. USA Today published an op-ed piece saying that they should pick home schooling for the girls. Both public and private schools are all but begging to have the chance to educate the president's children.

The kicker of all this is that whichever he chooses is going to be seen as some sort of indication of where his educational priorities lie. If he picks public school it will send one message. If he picks a private or charter school or opts for home schooling it will send a very different message. No matter his pick, it will please some, anger others, and probably draw cries of hypocrisy.

But here's the deal. What the president picks for his children is not necessarily what he thinks is the best policy for the whole of the nation. Being president (or the children of the president) has a set of issues and considerations that no other person in the country has to deal with. So here's my take on it all: back off and let the family decide. It's not your decision and you're not in their shoes.

The Science of Vouchers

School voucher programs have become such an undeniable part of conservative orthodoxy that people writing about voucher programs often have to part with reality in order to make their arguements work.

Take an article published Monday in The Hill by David Keene. Writing about efforts to end Washington D.C.'s school voucher program, Keene writes that it's no surprise that liberals oppose this successful program. He says that liberals only care about bureaucracy and expanding the reach of government and don't care about kids. Never mind that the second part of the attack is ridiculous to the point of not even needing to be refuted, Keene is even wrong when he says the program was a success.

As the New York Sun reported, the results were mixed, at best. Frankly, having looked over the mix, that's even a little charitable. A recent study found that after two years in private schools, the vouchered kids showed no statistically significant academic gain compared to kids who applied for the program and didn't get in. That's right. This "successful" program didn't actually improve the academic achievement of the kids for whom it was so successful. Mission accomplished, anyone?

Things like vouchers, school choice, and introducing market-based reforms to education all make sense on paper. That's why they've gained such a following, particularly among conservatives. The only trouble is that there's no basis in the real world for thinking that the programs actually work.

Community Values and Education

I've written several posts before about my concerns with charter schools, voucher programs, and school choice. On the surface each one is virtually unassailable. Why not give kids a chance at better schools if we can? The propaganda surrounding each idea is such that it's hard to be taken seriously while saying that these programs aren't in the best interests of our children.

That's not even really the right way to say it. The problem, I guess, is not that the programs themselves are flawed. The problem is that as a society and as an educational system we are using these tools incorrectly.

While reading through the latest issue of New York Teacher, the newsletter of the state teachers' union, I cam across an opinion piece titled "Education needs to be a community value." In it, the author sums up my general complaint with the way charter schools in particular are used when she writes about the "prevailing emphasis on individualistic solutions to collective challenges."

Whenever I tell people that I don't think charter schools don't make much sense as an educational policy, I'm told some variation of, "But they work better than regular schools. Sure, they may not improve the system as a whole, but it's definitely better for the kids who are in them."

Let's set aside the debatable point that all charter schools are naturally better than public schools. My sense is that it's not true, but for the moment at least, let's assume it is true or at least irrelevant. The problem here is that helping one kid isn't enough.

The problems facing urban ghetto education are vast and tragic. Clearly something needs to be done. The logical solution (in my mind) is not to create a parallel school system. The logical solution is to fix the school system we have.

When we emphasize school choice, private school vouchers, or charter schools we are saying that the problems with public education are essentially unsolvable and that we need to give up on the whole system. That's not a leap I'm willing to make.

The catch for all of this is that the ostensible purpose of charter schools (to create a kind of pseudo-laboratory for educational methods) is not how the schools are actually used (to provide a refuge for a few lucky kids). I'm all for trying different things in the schools because clearly what we have now is not working as well as it should. But we don't need charter schools for that. We need public schools that are willing to try new things.

Public education is a community value and should be a community concern. Solutions that only target individuals aren't really solutions at all.

Zero Sum Funding

When a guy runs for office as the "Education Mayor" you'd tend to think that things wouldn't devolve the way they have in New York in the last few weeks. For those of you who don't read anything, the nation (as well as the states and cities in it) are facing a bit of a tough time coming up. Budgets are going to be tight and spending is almost certainly going to have to be cut. That's where things start getting interesting education-wise in New York.

A few years ago, a lawsuit brought by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity won a huge victory. The gist of it is that the state needed to do more to fund schools in New York City. After that landmark decision, both the state and the city pledged to fund the schools at certain levels over the next several years.

Enter the budget cuts.

The minute things got bad both the state and city started looking at cutting education spending. This naturally set off a political firestorm as no one really wants to see school spending reduced. The state legislature, seeing which way the wind was blowing, reversed itself and will now be funding city education at the level that it had promised. So all eyes turn to Bloomberg, who is defiantly not increasing the amount he'd indicated.

(Where it gets complicated is that spending will increase over the next fiscal year, but not as much as promised. Given the increases in the prices of food, gas, and everything else, though, the increase the mayor is currently proposing really just holds the schools even in an actual dollars sense.)

So after weeks of the Mayor saying he wasn't going to increase the amount of spending in schools, the Chancellor released a statement yesterday that just strikes a chill in me for how intentionally divisive it is. As reported in the New York Times, the Chancellor is claiming that the "good" schools in New York City are going to take a disproportionate cut in funding because state mandate (remember the CFE lawsuit) says that certain levels of funding need to go to underserved and low performing schools.

This is a disgusting tactic. It is clearly an attempt to play parents off against one another. Those with kids who go to good schools are going to feel cheated by their own success. Those in bad schools are going to have to deal with those resentments. The kicker of all this is (in the words of Governor Paterson), "If the City were not reducing its own promised spending for schools, it would have sufficient money to balance funds for other schools if it chose to do so."

In other words, Mayor Bloomberg is trying to set parents against each other because he doesn't want to have to pay what he said he would for schools.

The other point that's important to note here is that it makes sense to increase funding for the highest needs schools. Yes, every child needs to learn. However, some need more help than others. As has been drilled into me repeatedly: fair not everyone being treated equally, fair is everyone getting what they need. Clearly higher needs schools have greater needs.

It's a shame that the Mayor has tried to turn this into a zero sum game where the gains of one school are the loss of another. I can think of very little that he could do that would do more to set back the efforts of creating educational equality in the city. Coming from the "Education Mayor" that's just inexcusable.

No Accounting

One thing I always find fascinating in political debates is the debate over terms. The abortion debate is a great example. It seems like half the battle is what to call each side. On the one hand, you have pro-life (which logically would be opposed by anti-life or pro-death). On the other side, you have pro-choice. Both sides are taking "pro" positions that don't really relate to the other one. You have life positioned against choice when most logical readings of those words would indicate that they are not mutually exclusive.

The environmental movement has also made a smart linguistic choice lately by shifting the focus from "conservation" to "sustainability." Conservation sounds static and limiting. In contrast, you can sustain a way of life, you can sustain growth, you can sustain the planet. A subtle shift, sure, but an important one.

Sometimes the words that get chosen are so powerful in themselves that it's next to impossible to argue against them, even if they are misused or apply to something that isn't all that desirable. In education, a great example is the recent focus on accountability.

Just saying the word you realize how impossible it is to argue against it. No one is going to argue for the right of teachers or administrators to be unaccountable. The very notion sounds so aloof and undemocratic. That's why every critique of NCLB starts, "I'm all in favor of teacher accountability, but ..." The very terms of the debate (such as it is) have skewed things entirely toward one side. The irony is that I'm not convinced how accountable the current systems in place actually make teachers and administrators.

Last week I posted my outline for a plan on how to improve education. It got generally good feedback (thank you) from readers, but the lack of testing and "accountability" in the plan was remarked on a few times. Where was the testing?

Frankly, I don't think that statewide high stakes testing does much to ensure accountability at all. Ahead of time it's unclear what the tests are going to be measuring. Afterwards it's not clear what contributed to success or failure. This, paired with the punitive response to test scores, make the accountability experiment a farce of itself.

Imagine that you work at a Starbucks. There are others in the area, but demand is such that your particular branch is open and filled most days. One day, a representative from corporate headquarters comes and gives you an evaluation. You knew the evaluation was coming, but all you know is that you're going to be evaluated on how good a Starbucks employee you are. Fine. You go about your day as usual. The representative thank you and leaves. You carry on as usual. Months later, you get your evaluation in the mail. Turns out you failed. No word on why, just that you did. Not only that, but a lot of other employees at your branch failed as well. Again, it's unclear what rubric you're being judged on. You don't get a raise and won't until you show on your evaluation that you can be a good employee. Not only that, but you're told that you'd darn well better improve before the next evaluation. However, in the meantime, Starbucks corporate headquarters will be trying to get some of your regular customers to go to other Starbucks locations. Your store is going to stay open because there's too much demand to be accommodated by the other stores, but you're going to be undermined as you stay open. So now you've got to improve in the amorphous area of being a good Starbucks employee as the system tilts against you. This way, the people at Starbucks headquarters say, you're accountable for your service.

Does this make sense? Is this accountability?

Obviously Starbucks doesn't do things that way. They run a successful business. They understand that accountability has to actually mean something.

Setting high expectatons, clearly stating standards, and offering meaningful feedback in a timely manner will all help (both the hypothetical Starbucks and the very real education system). But ultimately, high stakes tests are not the answer to creating better schools.

As I've witnessed it, the biggest difference between schools in the Bronx and schools on the Upper East Side is the level of parent involvement. And that goes back way before No Child Left Behind. The parents are there and that is what makes the school accountable. And that's also what makes the school successful. We need to start looking less at making schools "accountable" through high stakes testing and spend more time developing involved parents and communities so that the schools actually have someone to whom they can be held accountable.

Fixing Education: The Plan

I've written a lot on this blog about problems with education and problems with talking about the problems with education. I think I've offered hints as to where my brand of solution would work, but I don't think I've ever put it into a coherent form before. Given the importance of the issue and the need for clear direction in order to actually make effective change, here's my plan for saving public education.

1) Focus on where the problem is.
Say what you will about a Nation at Risk and all that, but it's not the entire education system that's a problem. In fact, many (if not most) schools work very well. Look at the public schools in upper middle class suburban neighborhoods and see if there's a crisis in those schools. Odds are, you won't be finding one. The crisis in education is located almost entirely in areas where there is extreme poverty and a lack of appropriate social services. Any plan to address the problems in education shouldn't be trying to focus on a solution that would apply equally to all schools. That's unneeded and counterproductive. Look at the schools that need the help.

2) Get parents more involved.
I've worked with schools in two vastly different New York City neighborhoods: the Bronx and the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Both sets of schools are government-funded and operate under the same set of Chancellor's regulations. They operate under the same testing and curricular requirements. But they are not equal. Without question, if deciding where I was going to send my own children, the Bronx wouldn't merit more than about a tenth of a second of consideration.

So what's the difference?

In brief, it's the parents. While in the Bronx getting 1/3 of parents to parent/teacher conferences was considered a pretty high success rate. Having parents check in once a year or so on their child's progress was rare, to put it mildly. On the Upper East Side, it's almost the opposite problem. The parents are all over the place and are on the edge of being too pushy. Except that's not a problem. That's the solution. Where the parents care the schools will improve.

Increasing parental involvement will require a huge community organizing-style campaign to get parents interested and involved in the system. Parents need to be educated on what they can do and why they should do it. They should be taught to read to their kids every day, talk about school and homework, and come to conferences. Once the parents are on board, the kids will follow.

3) Increase investment in social services in high-poverty areas.
It's great to say that parents should just get involved in schools. But even with community organizing and education, parental involvement won't necessarily become a reality. An increased investment in social services like health care, day care, and more will help bring more parents - and their children - into the kind of stable situation that allows for parental involvement and student success.

4) Invest in early education.
We can't afford to continue waiting until kindergarten to begin educating children in high-needs areas. By that point the kids are already behind their more affluent counterparts. Experience has shown us that those problems don't diminish with time. In addition to reading to kids more at home we need to start building in kids the foundation that will carry them through their education. On the Upper East Side, the parents do this. Clearly, in underserved neighborhoods parents often don't or can't. This is where free public early education programs can step in to aid in the solution.

5) Increase teacher quality.
Repeatedly, studies have found that good teachers make the difference in the classroom. So, as a society, we need to work to make sure that we have the best possible teachers in every classroom. This means stepping up recruitment efforts to find dedicated teachers willing to teach in high poverty neighborhoods. It also means that we need to put a huge investment into professional development for teachers. Some people are naturals and walk in knowing what to do right away. Others need to be taught. We can't expect every teacher to be exceptional, but we can give every teacher the tools and training they need to be successful.

6) Create a system of national standards, but back off on testing.
Eighth grade students in New York City are expected to take at least 12 state or city mandated tests each year. That's simply absurd. The absurdity of the situation is rendered even more starkly by the fact that these tests are almost a sham. Right now the federal government mandates that each state have standards, test students on those standards, and that students make progress on meeting the standards. However, the standards themselves are up to the states as are the tests to measure student success in meeting the standards. This creates a system of perverse incentives where states are literally racing to the bottom. A system of national standards across the curriculum paired with a testing system that is not purely punitive will obviate that trend and give us actual data to work with as we plan our next steps in education reform.

And that's more or less it. Increasing funding and all that is great, but only if it's used intelligently. Throwing good money into bad programs doesn't help anyone. However, a plan that looks at the schools themselves and the environments in which they exist and tries to improve both is out best chance at creating an effectively working education system for all children.

It Takes More Than Words

In a New York Times column published on Tuesday Bob Herbert tries to sum up what's wrong with education in America. I can't say that I'm entirely convinced that he did that. However, he did a knockout job explaining what's wrong with education reform in America. In fact, he exemplified it.

Herbert cited some pretty stark facts. For instance, an American student drops out of school every 26 seconds. The dropout rate is too high and the literacy rate is too low. He also uses the great line that "Ignorance in the United States is not bliss, it's just widespread."

After going on for the length of a column about the importance of education and the various measures that show what a mess things are, Herbert comes to this brilliant conclusion: "We've got work to do."

You think?

The problems with education won't get solved just by saying we need to work on them. People have been saying that we need to work on education for about 25 years now (if not longer). The notion that public education in the country is in need of work is hardly new. The problem is that people still seem to think that saying we need to fix education is the same as actually fixing it. Herbert and so many others fall into this trap. Simply saying we need better education doesn't make it so.

Part of the problem is that we're really not sure what's going to make schools better. For everyone who says you need to put more money into the system you find someone who says we need to dismantle public education and go toward a more market-based (read as private) system. Find someone who says you need greater attention paid to the basics like math and reading and you find someone else who says that we have to be devoting more time to art and music. Say that teacher quality is the way to improve education and you get 50 ways to try to bring in better teachers in addition to the people saying that teachers are the problem in the first place.

I'm not saying that the problem is hopeless. There certainly is a way to improve schools. I am saying that it's not yet clear what exactly that model looks like.

This is part of the problem with saying that education reform is the civil rights movement of our generation. From a moral standpoint, that is absolutely right. But from a practical viewpoint it's less helpful. The way to cure the problem of legalized segregation and other Jim Crow laws was to end segregation and repeal the laws. In contrast with today's challenges in education that's a fairly straightforward task. Not only is the end result clear, but the path to get there was clear.

That's a clarity we lack today. We can see the promised land where every kid knows how to read and write and do math. We just don't know what road to take to get there. And saying "We've got work to do" doesn't help us find that path.

School Choice Isn't the Answer

Well, the school choice debate seems is still with us. Months after Sol Stern (a longtime advocate of school choice) published a piece in City Journal saying that he'd pretty much changed his mind on the issue, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece saying that Stern is wrong.

Here's the argument boiled down: Stern used to say that he supported school choice (charter schools, private school vouchers, etc.) because they allowed poor kids to escape their failing schools. In doing so, this would also bring market forces to bear on the education system which would improve all schools. Now, he says that the evidence doesn't support his position. He says that in cities like Milwaukee that have introduced major voucher programs there has not been a similar upturn in the quality of education as a whole. Therefore, he concludes, school choice doesn't provide the market incentives that he thought they did and the program isn't as successful as he thought it would be.

The Wall Street Journal says he should have stuck with his original position.

I tend to agree with the new Sol Stern, at least on this issue. His position on changing pedagogy is for another post.

As I've written before and will probably write again (no link yet), free public education is one of the essential preparations for living in a democratic society. As such, I'm deeply suspicious of any attempts to begin to privatize that system, which is exactly what happens with charter schools and vouchers for private schools. Even with that, I'm not opposed to reforms that will improve public education for all students.

For the sake of argument, let's assume (as Stern and the WSJ do) that charter and private schools will always serve children better than traditional public schools do. This is a slightly dubious argument and one that is hard to prove given the lack of apples to apples comparisons that can be made. Even with this assumption, the only thing proven by a successful charter or private school is that good schools produce good results. This would apply equally to public or private schools.

Put another way, if a charter school truly works, it's because that school is doing something effective, not because it calls itself a charter school. If something is effective it can be copied by other schools, be they public or private. The argument, then, is really just that we should have good schools. Seems obvious enough.

The way see that charter schools/private school vouchers can be really justified and defended is that the competition from these programs will cause the public schools to improve. The thinking here is that competition will breed success. But empirically, that's not the case. As Stern notes, there was no "Miwaukee miracle." Public schools across the city didn't improve just because there was competition. There is a lack of evidence to show that privatizing education has any widespread positive impact on a school system. As such, the argument that privitization for some kids will create better results for all kids simply doesn't stand up.

What you're left with is an argument that schools can be made better than they are and a failed argument about competition and market forces. That's a pretty weak leg to stand on while making an argument about undermining something as important as public education.

Mind the Gaps

The notion of the achievement gap in education has become a pretty ingrained part of our understanding about education in America. It's widely known and indisputable that white children in America do better in school and receive a better education than black children. This is the ground from which we get No Child Left Behind and all sorts of other good and bad reform ideas.

Now, as I've written earlier, I'm not sure if the gap is a racial one. I don't think that there is something that makes white kids do better than black kids. I do think that the gap is one of classes. Kids who are well off do better in school than those who are poor, regardless of race. That poverty overlaps so much with race makes it hard to separate. What seems beyond question, though, is that there is an achievement gap in the country. About 30 seconds of looking at the data shows that.

So then imagine my surprise when I got an e-mail from the Educator Roundtable saying that they were exposing the "bogus" achievement gap. They even sent me a link to a video that you can check out here (it's only 45 seconds long).

If I can sum up the video, it's that there's a lot of things that happen outside of school that affect what goes on inside the school. With poverty, unemployment, homelessness, and murder rates relatively sky high in black communities, it's no wonder that the kids aren't doing well in school, the video holds. This makes perfect sense to me. However, this obviously doesn't mean the achievement gap is bogus. It just provides context for it.

For the sake of argument, if nothing else, I'm going to accept that all the statistics in the video are accurate. I also agree that all of the statistics cited certainly come to bear on children as they enter the school. You can't leave abuse or homelessness or dangerous communities outside the school house gate. People just don't work that way. Every kid comes into school carrying a combination of all the things that happened outside of school. And yeah, trying to get a kid to learn algebra when his dad is in jail and he didn't have breakfast is hard. So in a sense, the Educator Roundtable is right that the problems don't lie squarely on the backs of schools and teachers.

So then what's the answer?

Emphatically, it's not to say that the achievement gap is bogus and that educators might as well throw their hands up in the air until society is fixed. That will never happen. Education is one of the keys to helping close all those other gaps the video highlights. The fact is that people with good educations are less likely to be homeless, unemployed, or incarcerated. Education is where that cycle can be broken and so as much attention as possible needs to be focused there.

But attention also needs to be focused on programs and policies that affect children outside of school. There needs to be better health care, nutrition, social services, parenting classes, and a host of other policies that make it so that when children come to school they are ready to learn.

The various gaps described in the video are chicken and egg. One causes the other, which causes the first. You can't end that vicious cycle by attacking only one side. You need both. That's the point that the Educator Roundtable seems to miss. And any real educator should know better.

Homeschooling and Democratic Education

A California appeals court just agreed to revisit a decision rendered about a month ago that essentially said home schooling was illegal in the state unless the parent doing the schooling had a teaching credential.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, this sent some people through the roof.

Even less surprisingly, John Stossel (the mustachioed crusader behind the "Stupid in America" report) is unhappy. In an article published yesterday he rails against an overreaching court that's in the pocket of the teacher's union. He takes particular exception with one line from the court's ruling which read, "A primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism, and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."

Stossel hits the roof, but the fact is, the court is right.

Now, I don't really know if it truly makes sense to say that parents shouldn't be allowed to homeschool their kids. I would never homeschool my own children and I think that it's generally not a wise idea. But I also don't think I'm the boss of what everyone else does. So I don't think I'd have wanted the court to go as far as it did.

However, the unassailable point made in the court's ruling is that public education in this country is our means of socializing and democratizing our children. In addition to the three R's, school is where kids learn how to get along with other people, how to exist without being the constant center of attention, how to participate cooperatively with people for unlike backgrounds. In terms of living in the world, these skills are just as important as most of the academic skills that children can learn in school.

The reason I worry about charter schools, private school vouchers, and (to a lesser extent) home schooling is because I see those efforts as ways to fragment and detract from the public education system. In the interests of public welfare, we need to insure that all children are capable of living cooperatively in a democratic society. In terms of educating all children to live in a democratic society, nothing has yet been devised that can match free universal public schools. And without that education, America truly would be stupid.

National Standards and NCLB

As the Bush administration stumbles through its final months in office, Slate has been going issue by issue and explaining how the next administration should fix all of the mistakes that this administration made. Yesterday's focus was education, particularly the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). (Nice to see that someone at the national level is paying attention to the subject.)

The article was quite good and I don't have a whole lot to add to it. Essentially, the suggestions boiled down to: test kids less, make the tests mean more, standardize standards, be good to teachers, and pay more attention to preschool. All of which I agree with. So rather than argue, I'll amplify here, especially on the issue of national education standards.

Perhaps the one thing on which I agree with the Bush administration is his stated challenge to lax educational standards. As he said, "We need to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations. If you have low expectations, you're going to get lousy results." Not bad for a guy who can't pronounce nuclear.

The problem was that despite saying we need to challenge low expectations, Bush through NCLB did very little to actually challenge low expectations. Instead, he set that out for the states to do. As we've learned - somehwat predictably - in the intervening years, states want to look good and keep getting lots of federal money. That means making sure schools aren't failing. That means making sure kids aren't failing the tests. And that means making sure the tests are pretty darn easy. Already low expectations got even lower.

That's where national standards come in. We have standards for financial records, air quality, food quality, and a host of other things. It's about time that we had some national standards for education as well. The fact is, there are certain things that kids need to know in order to be successful in the world today. We need to set clear, rigorous, universal standards in this country. That's the only way to truly begin challenging the "soft bigotry" that's invaded our system.

A few caveats. First, while the federal government should set standards, they should not set curriculum in any way. Not even a little bit. What works in Biloxi may not work in Boise, let alone Boston. The feds should set the bar and let each state, city, school, and teacher decide how best to get their kids over that bar. In other words, the government should set the standards, give the money, and then get out of the way.

Second, accountability needs to be carefully reconsidered. I think it's clear that there should be some accountability, but I'm not sure exactly what form that accountability should take. Punishing failing schools by taking away support doesn't make any sense. That's like taking away the life jacket from a drowning person. On the other hand, giving them more money might just be more cash into an educational black hole. I also disagree with Jim Ryan who says that schools should be ranked on their quality, but not have any real consequences as a result. That doesn't make sense because ranking doesn't lead to improvement. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays have ranked near the bottom of the baseball standings for years now and they're not getting any better. Putting a name at the bottom of the list doesn't necessarily breed improvement. Rather, what's needed in failing schools is a massive infusion of aid, restructuring, and redesigning. But like with curriculum, the federal government and I are not in the position to say what that should be for each school.

Those caveats in place, national standards are the next big step in education reform. When those are in place we can compare apples to apples within states and across states. With a nationally-defined criteria for educational excellence, we can truly begin to combat the soft bigotry of low expectations.

The (In)Equity Project

Yet another story about charter schools has been brought to my attention. This time, a school is being founded around the idea that paying teachers more will attract more top-flight teachers, which in turn will lead to greater student achievement. I think this is all true. In order to test this premise, the new school, The Equity Project, will be paying its teachers $125,000 a year and up to $25,000 in performance incentives. Not to state the obvious, but that's a whole lot of money.

In the New York Times story about the new school, the school is being presented as an experiment in increased teacher pay and in charter schools in general. However (as is often the case when we start talking about charter schools), I have serious misgivings about what we're actually going to learn from this experiment, rather than what we're going to perceive to learn from this experiment.

First of all, let's assume that the program is a success. Let's assume that the students at this school perform significantly better than their public school counterparts. The assumption will be that this was caused by better teachers and the better teachers were attracted by better pay. And that may be the case.

But it may also be the case that the students perform better because they have more engaged parents. While the students are selected by a lottery, the parents still have to be engaged enough to enter their child into that lottery. Even that small step means that they're engaged in the process somewhat more than what may be the case for the average public school parent. Clearly, having engaged parents will help children.

Also at the school, there will be different discipline structures than public schools, a non-unionized staff, longer hours, and a host of other differences from your standard public school. Anyone trying to compare apples to apples here is going to be pretty much out of luck.

Even beyond the impossibility of meaningful comparison between this charter school and a public school, I worry about some of the tactics that are being used. The principal of the school says in the article that he's not interested in hiring first-year teachers. That means that everyone he's hiring is already in the school system is in one way or another. Pulling these top-flight teachers out of their current schools really amounts to robbing Peter to pay Paul. Unless you're bringing new teachers into the system (which The Equity Project is not) then you're talking a zero sum game. An increase in good teachers at one school becomes a decrease in quality teachers at another school. In that light, The Equity Project becomes a rather ironic name for the school indeed.

A related concern is that this project cannot be widely duplicated if it does work. The whole premise of the project is that paying teachers above the prevailing wages will attract better teachers. If everyone starts trying to pay above the prevailing wage, then that new elevated salary becomes the prevailing wage. And then you're back where you started. Because you aren't trying to attract new teachers into the system, nothing has been accomplished for the kids.

What this school scheme is doing is showing that people within a profession will seek the highest salary they can in their profession. Well, duh! A-Rod demonstrated that years ago to anyone who was paying attention. I don't see it bringing equity and I don't see it creating meaningful education reform.

I have no doubt that this school will produce results. Similarly I have every expectation that when it does it will be hailed as a prototype for new school reforms. Maybe the seeds are there for reform, but this isn't it. Don't buy the hype.

Save Public Education

If I try to write about the election today it's only going to make me sad or angry for the rest of the day. So with that in mind, it's back to the old standby: education reform.

Let me start by saying that even with it's problems (and they are numerous) I am still a 100% believer in free public education. In addition to the obvious economic advantages of having a well educated society, public schools act as an Americanizing, socializing influence that create a common culture in a way that little else can. Free public education is one of the great democratizing forces in our country today.

That being said, reforms are obviously necessary. One reform track that's gaining more and more steam in places as far flung as Arizona and New York City is the charter school movement. A charter school is a tax payer funded school run by a private and/or non-profit group rather than the government. The idea is that this will both create more market incentives for a failing system and that different charter schools will be more free to experiment and try new approaches to teaching than would be allowed in the regular, government-operated public schools.

It all sounds very attractive in theory. However, I view the charters with great suspicion. First, it strikes me as a plan to essentially have tax payers pay for private schools that have a fair amount of say over who gets in to the school and who gets to stay in the school. Second, because of those differences in enrollment, it's nearly impossible to have a true apples to apples comparison between charter and public schools. Even charters that select based on a lottery of all parents who submit an application are still drawing from a group of parents that care enough to fill out an application. Such cannot necessarily be said for a public school. If we assume that parental involvement influences student learning (and I think we can) then the "random" kids at the charter school are going to have a leg up. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

With all that in mind, I present for your viewing pleasure this video from Reason TV. If you can get past the fact that Drew Carey is the host and that the representative from the teacher's union looks a lot like Tom Hanks' character from the Ladykillers then it tells a pretty interesting story about a failing public school in L.A. trying to become a charter school.

The video hinges on the idea that powerful interest groups (the Department of Education, teacher's union, etc.) are what's holding back education in America and that if we could get past those groups the schools would be better. In this case, the way to move on is to create charter schools.

Frankly, I'm not sure if this is really the answer. As I said earlier, I'm already suspicious of charter schools as inroads to doing away with public education in favor of a privatized system. I also think it's naive to think that there will be no institutional hurdles to educating children in a private/charter school model. Also, it overlooks the obvious point that public schools can be reformed.

Assuming that the charter school representative can be taken at his word that the charter school will take everyone and keep everyone (which I would want to see to believe), then he's basically operating a public school in a different way. So why not operate a public school that way? Yes, it would take a school board willing to institute reforms and a teacher's union who remembers that unionism is a means, not an end in itself. But it can be done. And I think we should give it a try before we start dismantling the system.

School and Education Reform

I promised earlier this week that I'd offer something a little more constructive in terms of the direction that education reform should take. Not one to break my word, here goes.

First, school reform can't come at a national level. As I posted earlier, there's no clear consensus on what direction reforms in the schools should take. Changing broad governance structures or individual classroom curricula may help, but there's so much conflicting data out there that I would never want it to be mandated at a national level. I even have some pretty major misgivings about it coming from a city level. The fact is, every kid is going to need something a little bit different in order to learn and achieve their full potential. The other fact to keep in mind is that no one knows what those keys for learning may be better than the teachers in the classrooms. Any sort of school-based reform has to come from the bottom up and must be tremendously adaptable to the needs of individual classrooms, teachers, and students.

Second, education reform has to be much more than school reform. I was told once that trying to reform education by focusing just on schools is like trying to purify the air on one side of a screen door. What comes from home and the community doesn't stop once the child walks into the schoolyard. It's a screen door (or, more likely, a chain link door). If we want children to learn, we, as a society, need to make sure that children come to school ready to learn. Doing that means looking at what is holding kids back.

Despite doom and gloom assertions by just about everyone you meet, public education in America works pretty well. But there is a set for whom the system is failing abysmally. Generally, that set is the residents of poor, urban areas. If we want to raise up education in these areas (and I do believe that a rising tide lifts all boats) then we need to focus on more than the schools in these areas. We need to make sure that there is health care, libraries, food, and all of the other things that make sure a child is physically, mentally, and emotionally ready for school.

Some of this can and should come from the government. But it can't all come from the government. There must also be a commitment in these neighborhoods to the ideal of education. Attention must be paid. Speaking solely from my own experience and from anecdotal evidence from friends and colleagues, I say that too often this commitment is lacking. Some parents just don't care. Others do care, but don't know what to do about it. Either way, the value is absent and the kids pay the price. In turn, their children will pay the same price.

The catch 22 of all this is painfully clear. The way to break the ghetto cycle is through education. Yet it is exactly the ghetto mindset that thwarts education from succeeding in its purpose.

I don't know the way out. Hopefully greater minds than mine will see farther than I do to find a solution. But I do know that it is in this realm that the solution lies.

The Problem with Education

The problem with education is that no one knows what the problem with education is.

For as many people as you hear bemoaning the state of public education in the county you will hear an equal number of rationales for why things are the way they are. Like the joke about economists, you can lock three educational reformers in a room for an hour and they’ll come out with four conclusions. And they’ll probably be willing to fight to the death for each one.

Ask parents in good schools what the problem in bad schools is and they’ll tell you poverty. Ask the parents in the bad schools what the problem is and they’ll tell you racism.

Is it that standards aren’t set high enough or that too much time is spent testing the standards? Is it that teachers aren’t prepared with a good education background or that they aren’t prepared with a good content background? Is it that parents aren’t providing support at home or that teachers aren’t engaging the students? Too much phonics or too much whole language? School day is too short, school day is too long, school is just in the wrong part of the day for kids to learn? Each of these views has a devoted following who can offer up as many facts and statistics as you please. Each will say that if the schools did things their way all the problems would be over.

One of them may be right. Heck, they might all be right (though that stretches logic a bit). The one indisputable fact is that we don’t know. And therein lies the rub. If we don’t know, how do we fix it?

The nature of the beast is that we try to find the problem by finding a solution. Education reform often takes on a striking resemblance to TV’s Dr. House (who is considered reckless even in the fictional world he inhabits). House diagnoses his patients through treatment. If the treatment works, his diagnosis was correct. If not, on to another one until the solution is found and the hour is up. It works well in fiction.

If only education could be reduced to an hour long TV show. Maybe it could be made a reality show. That might get some results and some decent ratings.

Running these kinds of experiments on kids is something very different. The stakes are much higher because we’re talking real lives with real consequences. A wrong turn doesn’t just mean a big “uh-oh moment” before a commercial. It could literally mean someone’s life. Those are the stakes we talk about when we talk about education reform.

The point of all this is not to spread hopelessness. Rather I want to lay the proper foundation before talking about the issues. Despite the conflicting claims of educational salvation, I think that there is a way out of the forest here and I’ll share more of those ideas in a later post. The point is that anything I (or anyone else) says on this has to be taken with several grains of salt.