Sumo-wrestling the envelope

Posted on August 28, 2008 by axooms

One of the trusims of education reform is that large, entrenched school systems resist any substantial change and the best one can do is slowly inch them along. Enter Michelle Rhee.

Not content with merely pushing the envelope, Rhee opted for an earth-shaking body slam usually seen in Sumo. Since being appointed just over a year ago, Washington DC superintendent (and former Denver resident) Rhee:

“has shuttered 23 schools, canned 15% of the central-office staff, fired 250 teachers who failed to get NCLB-required certification, and bought out more than 200 others. As the new school year gets under way, she is pushing a revolutionary contract that may simultaneously kill the entrenched seniority hiring system and make Washington’s teachers the highest paid in America.”

Conventional wisdom is that anything other than baby-steps won’t work. Is it time to rethink what qualifies as aggressive reform? Article HERE; make your own comparisons.

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The logical fallacy of Broader, Bolder

Posted on August 25, 2008 by axooms

There is a growing division – as seen in this New York Times Magazine article – between the “Broader, Bolder Approach” and the “Education Equality Project.” Greatly simplified, BBA stresses that education strategies focused solely on schools will fail, and encourages investments in pre-school, activities outside of school hours, and health services. EEP stresses that the current education system is not designed for success and particularly fails minority students, and advocates substantial change of the education system in favor of a sharp focus on student learning.

What I find odd is the belief – in comments in the NYT article and other places – that these are somehow mutually exclusive or in conflict. Like any two programs, they will compete somewhat for some attention and resources, but it would appear that they can – and perhaps should – exist in parallel.

BBA seems to acknowledge the central mission of EEP — one of their “four priorities” is to “continue to pursue school improvement efforts.” But BBA also argues that these two programs offer a critical choice:

“America has a decision to make. We can continue to pursue education strategies that focus on schools alone and on narrow, test-based accountability […] Or we can ratchet up our ambitions and adopt a new and expanded strategy with the capacity to improve student achievement and adult outcomes more effectively and efficiently.”

Hogwash. This is a clear example of the false dilemma fallacy. Is there truly no other option? Why not both pursue education strategies focused on schools and at the same time look at ways to address some of the larger social issues? How is the pursuit of the former any serious drain on the latter? Does not BBA include as a subset most of the same goals of EEP? And does a policy program that insists other initiatives with any degree of overlap should be abandoned have even the slightest chance of success?

The hesitation among EEP supporters (of which I am one) is that BBA remains a broad, largely unquantified and abstract focus on an ambitious social agenda which will slow or stop the school-based reforms that are showing signs of real progress. Likewise, there are some real questions about the claims of a research-based foundation.

I suspect like many EEP advocates, I applaud the general goals of BBA, but I don’t give the broader effort much of a chance of either significant implementation or impact in today’s fiscal and political climate – particularly in its current amorphous form. I would even argue that these two efforts are more complementary than substitute: one would think that if EEP is successful, it advances the overall BBA mission.

But the position of Broader, Bolder that this discussion is limited to a binary choice between two discrete options, with supporters of EEP somehow therefore opponents of BBA, is both fallacy and farce.

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On selling schools

Posted on August 21, 2008 by axooms

The Urban Land Institute has given DPS a report recommending selling some property immediately to raise money (see Article or Report).

Am I the only person who reads this report and thinks it is counting the trees and obscuring the forest? Amid the myriad pages of qualified biography, there is no mention of the greater DPS mission of educating students or how these assets might be deployed to provide some sort of educational return. You might think these were generic big-box retail spaces, not single-use facilities. Perhaps the most valuable future tenant in at least one or two might be, um, a better school?

Instead, the report contained a single sentence underlined for emphasis: “DPS should not sell any properties to nonprofits for less than market value.”

Presumably under this analysis DSST – clearly the best open-enrollment high school in the city under any academic criteria, and now building their second school in five years, should not be given any discount on buying a school compared to a developer. Nor should DPS use any of this capacity to entice a proven school operator to come to Denver. Nor is education ever mentioned as a criteria.

ULI looked at this issue through the lens of trying to solve a financial problem. But that is the building’s facade — the foundational problem is educational quality. I don’t blame ULI – it’s not the group that’s wrong, it’s the question they were asked. If the instruction was to see how Denver’s students might benefit from these underutilized assets, would the answers have been different?

Until the district starts looking at how it best spends money and deploys assets to first maximize educational value – and secondly economic value – there will continue to be zero correlation between dollars spent and education received.

One can solve financial problems (pension, deficits, etc) for a single point in time, but one cannot rebuild the fiscal health of the district over the long term without vastly improving education.

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Open? Close? Repeat?

Posted on August 19, 2008 by axooms

In the past 3 years the Denver BOE has authorized exactly two charter schools now in operation: West Denver Prep (opened 2006) and Denver Venture Academy (opened yesterday). In contrast, in New York City, Mayor Bloomberg just announced that 18 charter schools will be opening this fall. Charter schools under Bloomberg (and Joel Klein) have grown from 3,200 students in 2002 to an estimated 24,000 this fall. Bloomberg says:

“It’s the charter schools that let parents vote with their feet and tell us what the parents think about the quality of the education, of the schools. And I can tell you, one of the reasons that the public schools in the city have gotten better is because the charter schools exist and give parents an alternative and let parents see that you can do something better.”

This Spring the Denver BOE authorized exactly one new school operator: the nationally known Envision Schools (as well as an expansion of the Charter for West Denver Prep). Depending how you count new operators versus expansions of existing charters (DSST received an expansion in 2007), that is a total of four operators and seven charter schools – in five years.

Part of the difference here is the quality and number of charter applicants, but it is also the decision (or lack) to integrate charters as part of a larger strategic effort to improve schools. This is where Denver and NYC have gone separate ways.

In addition, DPS also has yet to close a charter school, even though some are among the worst schools in the city. Paradoxically, when you can’t close the bad ones, it seems harder to open the good ones (and there have been BOE votes where may of the same members who vote to stop promising new schools from starting then vote to keep bad existing schools open).

My question is: Has NYC closed charters successfully? And is the ability to close underperforming schools (district and charter) a prerequisite to opening good ones?

After all, there are fiscal reasons to close schools, but if you are not replacing them with a better option, what’s the point.

Posted in Charter Schools, District Performance | Leave a comment

Negotiating power of unions

Posted on August 17, 2008 by axooms

Watching the continued dispute between DPS and DCTA over ProComp and other issues, and based on my somewhat cursory knowledge of collective bargaining agreements, I think teacher’s unions are clearly far better negotiators than districts. If I had to choose one side to represent me in a negotiation, I would pick the union, hands down. I surmise part of the reason for this success is the following:

  • Union leadership have been members for decades and are deeply versed in the issues; the average tenure of an urban district superintendent is under three years;
  • Unions are very focused and consistent in their demands (wages, job protections); districts argue for a variety of priorities that shift widely over time. The former builds on previous negotiations, the latter does not;
  • Unions have generally done a good job with public relations (everyone knows a teacher); districts are usually highly unpopular bureaucracies. Pressure to settle is often more on districts;
  • Unions negotiate for the long term; districts negotiate for the remaining term of the superintendent (see also #1);
  • District superintendents usually aspire to some higher office and thus have more to lose if there is no agreement than unions. It is hard to accelerate a political career if you can be held responsible for a highly unpopular strike;

On ProComp, the worst DCTA will do is have 10% of ProComp dollars paid as a bonus and not as salary. That tells me they have – in the broader context – won this negotiation already. If you were the district, would it be worth it to dig in and risk a strike for the, ahem, “victory” of 90% salary building?

What are other reasons? Or would someone care to argue that negotiations have more evenly distributed resources?

Posted in Teacher Compensation, Teacher Unions | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Theory of New Orleans…

Posted on August 15, 2008 by axooms

It is simply impossible, Pastorek has come to believe, for a traditional school system, run from the top down by a central administrator, to educate large numbers of poor children to high levels of achievement. “The command-and-control structure can produce marginal improvements,” he told me when we met last month at a coffeehouse on Magazine Street. “But what’s clear to me is that it can only get you so far. If you create a system where initiative and creativity is valued and rewarded, then you’ll get change from the bottom up. If you create a system where people are told what to do and how to do it, then you will get change from the top down. We’ve been doing top-down for many years in Louisiana. And all we have is islands of excellence amidst a sea of mediocrity and failure.”

This is from probably the best article I have read on Education in the general press this year. Balanced enough to include the perspective of Diane Ravitch (with whom I personally disagree):

“The fundamental issue in American education — I say this after 40 years of having read and studied and written about the problems — is one that is demographic,” she told me. Poor children, Ravitch said, simply face too many problems outside the classroom. “If you don’t buttress whatever happens in school with social and economic changes that give kids a better chance in life and put their families on a more stable footing, then schools alone are not going to solve the problems of poor student performance. There has to be a range of social and economic strategies to support and enhance whatever happens in school.”

ALL OF IT is worth reading.

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Is education less productive than other industries?

Posted on August 13, 2008 by axooms

There was a compelling – and overlooked – perspective in the Denver Post by the ever-interesting Marguerite Roza on how productivity has transformed most American workplaces and some suggestions on applications to education. HERE is the piece.

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