What's with Edison Schools?

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / May 28, 2002

Dozens of times in recent weeks, people have asked what I expect will happen to Edison Schools, formerly known as the Edison Project, considering the parlous state of the company's stock price, other signs of financial woe, the gnarly situation in Philadelphia, and the recent separation of Edison from one of its first schools (Boston's Renaissance charter school).

No doubt I get asked this because I was once part of Edison's "core team" and helped develop its school design. People suppose that I must have inside knowledge or a particularly clear crystal ball. Neither is true. And I've had no financial entanglement with Edison for a couple of years. I'm just another nosy, puzzled observer. But it's worth pausing to ask what to make of Edison at this juncture, why it seems to be in trouble and what would be the implications of an Edison collapse.

Seven points seem especially important.

First, when properly implemented, Edison's basic school design works well to educate children, especially disadvantaged youngsters. No single feature is revolutionary-not the longer day and year, not the academic standards, not the specific reading and math programs, not the multi-year "team" approach to teacher-student relations, not even the intensive technology-but nobody else has stitched all these elements together in so promising a way.

Second, neither this nor any other whole-school design is foolproof. Much can go wrong in even the best-intentioned implementation effort. Bad personnel decisions lead to principals or teachers who don't

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What's with Edison Schools?

Beyond instructional leadership

May 28, 2002

What does it take to be a successful principal? In the 1980s, "effective schools" research introduced the idea of instructional leadership. In the most recent issue of Educational Leadership magazine, a number of authors examine the theme "Beyond Instructional Leadership." In one article, a high school principal from Illinois argues that the concept of instructional leadership was flawed because it focused school leaders on inputs and intentions rather than results. As a principal, Richard DuFour devoted years to observing and improving individual teachers and their classroom strategies until he realized that he needed to shift his attention from teacher behavior to student learning. When the attention of the school was re-focused on which students were learning and what could be done to improve it, he writes, the structure and culture of the school changed. Teachers learned to work together to clarify the desired outcomes, to develop common assessments, to analyze the results, and to develop strategies for improvement based on the analysis. The key, DuFour writes, was his own conversion from instructional leader with an emphasis on teaching to the leader of a professional community with a focus on learning. "The Learning-Centered Principal," by Richard DuFour, Educational Leadership, May 2002.

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Beyond instructional leadership

Illiberal critics of school choice

May 28, 2002

While the debate over school choice tends to focus on things like whether vouchers weaken public schools by draining away state funds or creaming the best students, most such contentions can be refuted by evidence. But the root of the hostility to school choice among many who see themselves as progressives is really something far deeper, writes Peter Berkowitz in a recent review of four books on school choice. At bottom he finds a disagreement about the ends of education in a free society. What choice opponents really fear, Berkowitz suggests, is that private schools, particularly religious ones, won't educate children to be autonomous free agents who transcend narrow communal and religious attachments. But he would have us resist this impulse to force all citizens into a single mold, to use the state to rescue children from sectarian parents (a strand that Berkowitz names "homogenizing liberalism"). True liberals recognize that there are a variety of human goods, and that the role of the state is not to regulate private affairs in order to liberate individuals from ways of life it deems hidebound, cramped, or fettered (which is to say, lives that incorporate tradition and religion). For more see "Liberal Education," by Peter Berkowitz, The Weekly Standard, May 20, 2002.

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Illiberal critics of school choice

Bringing in a New Era in Character Education

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / May 28, 2002

edited by William Damon, Hoover Institution
2002

Another new edited volume on education from the Hoover Press, this one put together by Stanford education professor William Damon, addresses character education, a topic much discussed but little understood. In 190 pages, it pulls together 9 essays by interesting writers (e.g. Christina Hoff Sommers, Amitai Etzioni, Irving Kristol) plus an excellent introduction by Damon that doesn't shy away from either religion or patriotism as important wellsprings (and manifestations) of character. The ISBN is 0817929622 and you can obtain further information at http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/homepage/books/character.html.

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Bringing in a New Era in Character Education

Education in the Twenty-first Century

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / May 28, 2002

edited by Edward P. Lazear, Hoover Institution
2002

Hoover's Edward P. Lazear is the editor of this 190-page collection of essays on education by Hoover scholars and others. The first half is devoted to "education and income." Authors here are Gary Becker, Robert Barro, Robert Hall and Paul Romer. It contains some interesting findings, such as Barro's observation (in a fine essay on education as a determinant of economic growth) that the quality of a country's education system is considerably more consequential for that country's economic development than the amount of formal education that its people obtain. Paul Romer also contributes a very skeptical look at the distributional consequences of education choice. (He's unconvinced that it'll be good for the poor.) The volume's second half, grandly entitled "education and society," contains excellent essays by Hoover's Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell as well as contributions by Andrew Coulson and Jennifer Roback Morse. The ISBN is 0817928928. You can obtain additional information at http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/homepage/books/ed21st.html.

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Education in the Twenty-first Century

Mayoral Influence, New Regimes, and Public School Governance

Terry Ryan / May 28, 2002

Michael W. Kirst, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education
May 2002

On May 22nd, The New York Times reported on negotiations between New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver concerning a bill to give mayors in New York's largest urban school districts new powers to run their cities' troubled school systems. That same day, in Michigan, the Detroit Free Press reported that the Republican Lt. Governor formally kicked off his campaign for Governor by "calling for a mayoral takeover of the city's public schools." It is this recent trend to entrust the city school system to hizzoner that Stanford's Michael Kirst addresses in this paper. "It is too soon," Kirst writes, "to assess whether mayor control in such cities as Chicago, Cleveland, Harrisburg, and Boston will provide more coherent governance and improved pupil performance. But there are some positive signs." It's hard to generalize, however. Kirst says that, "The striking thing about the growth of mayoral influence over schools is the distinctiveness of each city. There are no established patterns, form, function, and operation of mayoral influence are all over the map." This report will interest anyone wondering whether mayors belong in the business of running public schools. A PDF version of this report is available at http://www.cpre.org/Publications/rr49.pdf. You can order a hard copy for $5.00 from CPRE Publications, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, 3440 Market

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Mayoral Influence, New Regimes, and Public School Governance

School Boards at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Conditions and Challenges of District Governance

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / May 28, 2002

Frederick Hess, National School Boards Association
2002

The prolific Frederick Hess of the University of Virginia authored this 40-page paper for the National School Boards Association. It's full of data drawn from a 2001 survey of school board members in large, medium-sized and small districts. Indeed, one of the report's more useful contributions is its presentation of survey results in those sub-categories. And Hess finds some tantalizing differences between school-board service in large and small districts. Some are predictable, such as greater board-level concern with discipline and violence issues in large school systems, as well as far more of board members' time being consumed by school system business. (Two-thirds of large-district board members say they spend more than 25 hours a month on board business and a quarter say they spend more than 70 hours monthly. In small districts, these figures are minuscule.) Other findings are fairly obvious when you think about them, such as wider availability of various sorts of school choices for students and families in the larger districts. Some findings are disturbing, such as the fact that few board members feel the need of greater training in various aspects of their duties or the issues they're facing. The report contains plenty of demographic information about board members, as well as data on the extent of school boards' fiscal independence-generally quite high-from their municipality. Finally, there's information on board elections-turnout, degree of competitiveness (not very), the role of money in

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School Boards at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Conditions and Challenges of District Governance

School Choice Tradeoffs: Liberty, Equity, and Diversity

May 28, 2002

R. Kenneth Godwin and Frank R. Kemerer
2002

This valuable new book by R. Kenneth Godwin and Frank R. Kemerer is, in Terry Moe's jacket-blurb account, "probably the best overview and appraisal of the school choice issue yet written." It's about the tradeoffs that inevitably get made when education policymakers seek to balance the rival values of freedom, equity, efficiency, accountability, student achievement and school diversity. In the background is admirably clear thinking about education within the framework of liberal democracy. The book ends with a chapter setting forth the authors' own version of a balanced school choice policy, a carefully structured voucher plan that contains many safeguards for needy students. Especially refreshing is that the authors don't simply promulgate and argue for a specific plan; they also explain their reasoning in reaching their own policy conclusions on some of the stickier issues needing to be resolved. They also explain why they do not believe that an all-charter system would go far enough, chiefly because it doesn't provide schools with sufficient autonomy. Whether you like their own formulation or not, you will benefit from their closely reasoned exposition of issues and trade-offs. 315 pages long, this fine tome is published by the University of Texas Press. The ISBN is 0292728425. You can get more information from http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/godsch.html. - Chester E. Finn, Jr.

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School Choice Tradeoffs: Liberty, Equity, and Diversity

School Reform: The Critical Issues

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / December 20, 2002

edited by Williamson M. Evers, Lance T. Izumi and Pamela A. Riley, Hoover Institution and Pacific Research Institute, 2001

Boston College political scientist Alan Wolfe edited this 350-page, 12-essay collection by a number of people who do and don't favor school choice. (It's based on a conference two years ago.) Wolfe describes the endeavor as an examination of the "moral, normative, philosophical, and religious concerns" posed by the school-choice debate. The book's four sections address equality, pluralism, the "social ecology" of the schools, and legal matters, the latter mainly having to do with First Amendment issues. It's a balanced treatment by smart, literate, strong-minded experts from diverse disciplines and viewpoints. It won't resolve the debate but reading it will inform the debaters! The ISBN is 0691096619, the publisher is Princeton University Press and you can get further information at http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7421.html.

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School Reform: The Critical Issues

Technology Counts 2002: E-Defining Education

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / May 28, 2002

Education Week
May 2002

One of Education Week's annual emanations (this is the 5th such) is its 90-page account of technology in education, the preparation of which is underwritten by the Hewlett Foundation. This year's edition, entitled "E-Defining Education," follows the familiar pattern of introductory essays, then pages of national and state data, then profiles of individual states. The most interesting items this year involve the ways that "cyber schools, online teaching and testing, and other e-learning initiatives are changing how schools operate." There's a LOT of activity on this front, though it's changing so fast that we must assume that any hard-copy publication on the subject is already partly obsolete. Also visible in these pages is the mounting resistance of traditional education groups, who doubtless see this technological change leaping right over them and gradually marginalizing them. There are worthwhile essays on what it's like to be an on-line teacher, how good is the academic content, what students (at the high-school level) think of it, and what primary-secondary education can learn from higher education's ventures into cyber-education and distance learning. Note how far we've come from our previous pre-occupation with simple access to technology-it's now nearly ubiquitous in conventional schools and in kids' lives-and how we're now focusing on what it can be used for. Along the way, of course, we find that it's beginning to redefine what we mean by school itself. If you don't already have a copy-many are

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Technology Counts 2002: E-Defining Education

The High School Diploma: Making It More Than An Empty Promise

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / May 28, 2002

Russlyn Ali, The Education Trust-West
April 2002

The new western outpost of The Education Trust recently submitted this testimony by Russlynn Ali to the California state senate. In 18 pages, it does a nice job of explaining why high school diplomas should matter but why, in the United States (including but not limited to California), they don't actually signify much accomplishment. Included therein is a short, interesting account of how San Jose implemented a "default college readiness curriculum," meaning that every student finds him/herself in the college-prep program unless they work at getting themselves into something different. The early results of that reform, it appears, are encouraging. You can find this testimony on the web in PDF form at http://64.224.125.0/main/documents/Edu_trust_west_booklet.pdf.

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The High School Diploma: Making It More Than An Empty Promise

To Assure the Free Appropriate Public Education of All Children With Disabilities

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / May 28, 2002

Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education
2001

The U.S. Department of Education reports annually to Congress on implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The 2001 report is now out. With data appendices, it runs hundreds of pages. These voluminous data are why most people (at least most special ed policy types) will want it. As for the Department's conclusions about IDEA, there is some good news, particularly regarding rising high school graduation rates among disabled youngsters. State implementation, however, remains troublesome. Note that this is not meant as a policy analysis or reform document. It's mainly an extensive collection of facts about the current program. As such, it provides important data for those beginning to ponder IDEA's reauthorization and possible reform. You can download your own copy at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/Products/OSEP2001AnlRpt/

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To Assure the Free Appropriate Public Education of All Children With Disabilities