Nice tribute to Paul Hill from Dom Brewer and Robin Lake.

For how many long years has NYT’s Sam Dillon yearned to write this graf?  I have a hunch he kept it in a pretty case above his desk on a little doily:

The administration’s proposal, if enacted into law, would encourage states to raise academic standards after a period of dumbing-down, end the identification of tens of thousands of reasonably managed schools as failing, refocus energies on turning around the few thousand schools that are in the worst shape and help states develop more effective ways of evaluating the work of teachers and principals. And those are just some of its goals.

A little over the top, yes, but he’s been patient.  Still, it does raise two important issues.

First, is our goal “reasonably managed schools” or, you know, ones where students are learning?  For a long time The Times thought the former, generally viewing schools through a more general social policy or welfare state prism rather than as a distinct policy issue where outcomes matter.  Let’s hope that’s not coming back.  And, the sentiment raises the question of how much accountability remains for underserved kids in the vast swath of schools in the middle is an enormous outstanding question in this reauthorization.

Second, even the Fordham Foundation after a exhaustive search couldn’t find evidence of a dumbing down race to the bottom.  The best they could come up with was a “walk to the middle.” I’m all for college and career ready standards but it’s essential that we not lose sight of (a) how much variation there was in standards prior to No Child Left Behind and (b) to the extent there is dumbing down it’s generally the result of state-level political pressure that favors looking good over doing well.   There is no inherent pressure to do that.   The effectiveness of the new ESEA law will hinge on how the policy accounts for those issues.

Dillon’s next day story on how much the unions hate it is important reading. A lot riding on that.

Longtime readers will recall the controversy over whether the United Federation of Teachers in New York should be allowed to have a few of New York’s coveted charters to run schools.  I thought they should and still think that having teachers’ unions run charter schools is a good idea.   Skeptics pointed to the poor record of union run charters and the NEA’s disastrous foray into charter schooling.

Well, the UFT charter came up for renewal and there is something for everyone.   As close observers know the school had some struggles and still does and as a result the authorizer gave it what amounts to a conditional renewal (pdf). In other words a mixed verdict because of performance and operations issues.  Jim Merriman, who also supported the schools at the time, and in fact originally authorized it, has more in a must-read blog post.

Like the Stanford charter school this shows that running great schools in challenging environments is brutally hard work.  In both that case and with the UFT school observers assumed, wrongly it turns out, that the schools would be outstanding given all the resources at their disposal.  But what’s really discouraging is how little desire there is to learn from schools that are succeeding in these places.   In both cases there are schools that are hitting the leather off the ball nearby.  And in both cases those schools a more commonly attacked than learned from.  The UFT frequently leads the attacks these days.

And before the usual suspects scream that “skimming” is the cause for performance variations, it turns out the UFT charter enrolls fewer free-lunch students, English-language learners, and special education students than surrounding schools.   I don’t think that’s because the UFT school is skimming, either, but I assume union will now stop irresponsibly making that claim against other charter schools.

If you’re looking for a quick overview of I3, Dutko has one for you (pdf).

AFT’s American Educator looks at 21st Century Skills in a big package.  Ravitch, Munson, Senechal…Dan Willingham and I offer our take on the substantial challenges here (pdf).

There is a lot to like in the Obama Administration’s blueprint for a new Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The idea of college and career ready standards, a push for innovation, attention to public school choice, and some big changes around programs intended to support better teaching are all good as priorities.   And this proposal clearly tries to weave together the various policy themes the administration has championed to date through its school improvement grants, Race to the Top, and I3. That’s good, too.  But there seems to be a four-pronged problem that isn’t getting a lot of attention in the generally effusive praise.

First, the document is largely aspirational.   It’s hard to argue with the priorities but the action is in the details.   You’d think that at some point the administration would get wise to the problems of leaving the details of major policy priorities to the Congress.   Given the suburban composition of the House there is a real risk that this ends up being a piece of legislation that lets suburban districts off the hook for educating under-served kids.    Chris Edley gives voice to some of that in The Times write-up of this.  It’s fine to focus intensive intervention efforts on the most seriously dysfunctional schools but the data clearly show that serious and life-constraining achievement gaps exist in all kinds of communities.

On the other hand, assuming they have some assurances from leaders in Congress, this may be a smart strategy since if the goal is to maintain accountability there will be fewer changes than you might think.  The document implicitly recognizes the reality that much of the No Child policy was misconstrued in the public debate and/or poorly implemented by states and school districts.  For instance the blueprint makes the point that new accountability systems will reward success as well as point out failure.  Well, the old law specified that states should do exactly that for Title I schools.   Few did in a meaningful way.  Likewise, the idea of customized interventions in low-performing schools is not new, the current law specifies that.  Hence, despite the rhetoric, you can’t find examples of schools being completely restructured because one subgroup of students lags behind.  In fact, when states were even encouraged to come up with even more customized approaches as part of a pilot program that Secretary Spellings offered they came up pretty lame.

But this raises the second problem:  The plan relies on state capacity and will and arguably over-relies on it.   The track record there is not good and that may prove to be an enormous implementation hurdle for this plan.  Ambitions for the states outstrip what they can do right now or what they want to do.  In fact, a close reading of the Race to the Top applications shows that while you’ve got a few outliers on the high side (less than 16, one can only assume that cut off for finalists was a substantial natural break in the scores) most states were pretty unimpressive even when presented with that opportunity.  And the kind of accountability systems the administration envisions are a long way from reality right now in most states, how will that problem be bridged without creating a (much wanted by many interest groups) hiatus from today’s pressure for school improvement.  Finally, absent federal pressure, what evidence is there that all (or even most) states will remain ambitious on accountability, especially for under-served populations?

Third, on the politics, how is this not 2007 all over again?  The teachers unions hate it, the Republicans on the Hill seem to be lying in wait, and so you again have an enthusiastic secretary and a seasoned reform leader in George Miller trying to draw to an inside straight.  So that’s your third problem here, what’s the political strategy?  The glimmer of hope seems to be some desire for bipartisanship after health care.  But now it seems that almost however things go this week the environment will poisonous on the other side.  And given the context of this election year, what is the incentive for Republicans to hand Democrats a win on a top priority?

Finally, also on the politics, so far the political detractors of common standards are having trouble getting traction because it’s hard to paint an initiative with a lot of Republican governors on board as a big federal power grab.   But common standards are a linchpin on this proposal (assuming it is supposed to happen with any rigor) so does that threaten to drag that effort into the partisan back and forth?  It’s not as though the perception of Washington overreach isn’t a potent political issue right now…

Smarick with a smart post on Central Falls.  More context.  Other links on this below.

Here’s an important entrant in the ESEA sweepstakes that lays out some issues that could prove lively as ESEA reuthorization is debated.

The cat’s climbing out of the bag.   National Journal recently wrote about Bellwether Education Partners(pdf).   Ed Week’s McNeill, the Fordham Flypaper blog and a few others did as well and New Schools has a press release with some information.     More to come this spring.

Basically, Bellwether will be a hybrid organization that is part think tank, part organization builder, and part professional services firm.  It’s non-profit and funded by a blend of grants and specialized and actionable services the organization will provide.   While the organization is ecumenical about who it works with — public and private sector, philanthropy, NGOs, socially entrepreneurial ventures, and individuals — Bellwether only works with entities with a clear and demonstrated commitment to dramatically improving educational outcomes for low-income youngsters.   

Bellwether’s work is organized around four core areas:  Executive search and placement, strategic advising and consulting, leadership and organizational development, and thought leadership and knowledge generation.  Monisha Lozier, Mary Wells, Kim Smith, and I will lead those four areas, respectively, but we’re in the process of  adding and figuring out relationships with some terrific people in different roles.  Sara Mead is on-board as well, adding some great capacity on a few issues.

For my part, I’m also going to do a few other things including publishing, along with John Bailey, a subscription-based forecasting and analytic newsletter about trends and likely outcomes in education policymaking.   That will be published by WhiteBoard Advisors, a non-lobbying affiliate of Dutko Worldwide. 

And I’ll continue to pen this blog.  Starting next week Eduwonk will look a little different, physically, but will otherwise be the same.  Depending on who you are I guess that’s good or bad news.

Stay tuned for some news about what’s next at ES, some good stuff.   The ES experience has been a great 5+ years for me and I’m excited about what’s next for the organization and about what’s next for me.

Evan Thomas and Elizabeth Green debate teaching in Newsweek. 

Worth reading.  But per the post below, Elizabeth casually compares two studies of Teach For America teachers.   Not to pick on her, but this is a classic example of the problem our field faces.  Those two studies she cites are not the same in terms of their methodological quality.   Until our field learns how to actually consume research rather than just piling up “studies” to see which stack is higher we are going to chase our tails. 

In the case of TFA, the evidence base is quite clear based on multiple high-quality studies done independently of the organization:  Teach For America teachers perform as well or better than other teachers, including veterans etc…

But, and you’d think this is what the critics would seize on because it has implications for the debate Evan and Elizabeth are having, the variance among TFA teachers is as great as among other teachers and, overall, while substantively significant (hence the popularity of the program among school districts) the effect sizes are not enormous.    But to make that point you still have to acknowledge that the organization is doing a lot of good and has other important externalities as well.  Yet right now the critics are more interested in castigating TFA than figuring out how to learn from what they’re doing, hence the confusion that surrounds the various “studies.

Big front page story in the WaPo today about a debate over getting rid of congressional “earmarks” for for-profit entities.   But is the problem that for-profits can get earmarks or that the earmark process is just not very meritorious in its selection regardless of the tax status of the recipient?  Plenty of for-profits will continue to get federal money through a variety of avenues.  Meanwhile, not every non-profit is a model of efficiency, virtue, or effectiveness.

In K-12, and education more generally, we have a similar problem when it comes to thinking about quality.    In the absence of serious signals or cues for quality we, too, rely on secondary cues like tax status.   Consider school management organizations.  In much of our field  for profit is synonymous with bad, non-profit and school district is synonymous with good.   Yet in practice there is wide variance in quality within all three sectors and the highest performing ventures across all three sectors have much more in common with each other than they do with their low-performing peers.  In other words, tax status doesn’t necessarily tell us much.   And to the extent this is ideological, anyone arguing that for-profit ventures shouldn’t be involved in education has no idea how school districts operate or procure a variety of goods and services.

Or consider research.  We constantly have debates about whether research from academic institutions or from certain kinds of organizations is inherently more reliable.  It’s a stupid debate.  In fact there is wide variance in the quality of research across all sectors and consumers have to be able to make discerning choices and put information in context.  For instance while the NEA or AFT,  rightly in my view, come in for criticism because of some of their policy positions it would be a mistake to dismiss their research efforts out of hand because they collect some important data.  Conversely, not every federal study offers strong explanatory leverage on the questions it is examining.  And Lord knows university research and think tank research are mixed bags and just because something comes from a university hardly makes it bulletproof.  Again, the superficial cues are pretty useless.

Here, in my view, is where the common standards push offers the most promise.   It won’t actually solve most of the problems many of its adherents claim it will.  But it could do one very powerful thing:  Help rationalize the field by creating a common framework for evidence of effectiveness that transcends geography.  The implications of that — in a $600+ billion industry where right now any claim goes and there are hardly any cues for quality  — are powerful.

The Common Core folks seem to like the new national standards draft…

It is really hard to run good schools, especially in challenging settings.  Still, Stanford’s much heralded charter school landing at the bottom of CA’s performance list, given all the resources the school has available to it, is a little embarrassing… 

BTW, Aspire Public Schools runs a school right nearby that is doing well, so don’t blame the kids, parents, neighborhoods, etc…

If the only person WaPo’s Nick Anderson can find to critique the push for common standards on the record is Susan Ohanian, does that mean it’s close to a done deal?   That pierced my skepticism more than anything else in this process so far!

Update:  A commenter notes that the article linked above is not the front-pager on common standards.   The original link here and on the WaPo site now directs to a new article published 3/11, so here’s a link to the original.

Item:  Big Kevin Johnson profile in WaPo Style.    Item:  The Obama White House will publicly support management in the Central Falls situation but no one will go on record criticizing Michelle Rhee?  Wow…sign ‘o the times…Item:  John Merrow is continuing his campaign over some footage in Davis Guggenheim’s forthcoming education documentary.  Keep an eye on all that.  Item:  At the Oscars:  Which education reformer is the close cousin of Avatar Director’ s James Cameron’s wife?  What Oscar presenter is a supporter of education reform in Los Angeles?  And what’s in the water at Arlington’s Washington and Lee High School, three Oscar winners now.

Hard-hitting Newsweek piece on Weingarten and Rhee.  What’s the over-under on how many weeks/months/years this adds on to the contract negotiations in DC?

Andy Smarick writes-up the final regulations.   You can read all the docs here.    But while he raises some important points, I think he misses the big understory, which is the evidence standards in the final draft.  There was a pretty hot debate about them before the draft regs, and again before the final regs, and these standards set a pretty high bar for the big money that largely reflects the views of some senior administration officials with strong views on research evidence.

As a result, there are some organizations, including some Smarick cites, that may not be eligible for the big money.  Not because they’re not producing results, but because they don’t have evaluations of sufficient methodological rigor completed yet.  

In my view, that’s OK, this is a chance to step up the game on evaluation and start codifying some new standards (that hopefully will ultimately extend across federal education policy, right now federal programs are a political mish mash with regard to how much evidence matters to policy decisions).  And the three-tier approach where money is proportional to evidence makes sense and allows for both scaling and innovation.  But before the usual assortment of paranoids and the easily-fooled conclude that this is just a big scheme to send money to ventures favored by the administration, they should review the evidence standards and the evidence base.  

All that said, if you thought RTT judging was going to be complicated, this is going to be unprecedented given the likely number of applications and the the volume of serious work reviewing them will require.

Debate and reasoning skills are essential — God knows our field could use more.  Here’s a chance to help with that, and an important Edujob: Executive Director for Urban Debate Leagues (pdf).

Signed copy of a picture of Tubbs Justin Cohen with a gun to the first reader who can name both the leading foundation official in our field and the person in the middle of the Common Core initiative who were debate champions back in the day…

Update:  Craig, you’re the winner.  Right answer and faster than some emailed entries.  Email me to claim your prize.

Nothing changes in this business.  Senator Lieberman has a voucher amendment on a piece of legislation moving through the Senate, the education interest groups send letters about how they hate it.

Here’s the list of states invited to come to Washington: CO, DE, DC, FL, GA, IL, KY, LA, MA, NY, NC, OH, PA, RI, SC,  & TN.

First reaction*:  With the obvious caveat that not all these states get money in the first round, still sort of an “uh oh.”   Some states with good apps here but OH and NY is not a great sign…and IL and CO were arguably bubble states at best and not sure what SC means given how out of step they are with parts of the administration’s agenda.   Hard to argue the political fix is in if SC is here though…And surprised that IN didn’t pop more, they had an interesting approach to this.  Stay tuned.

*Disc: I helped some states review their apps, including ones that did and did not make it to this round and some I’m picking on here.