Declaring educational bankruptcy

Chester E. Finn, Jr. / June 4, 2009

Turning around bad schools is harder than turning around Chrysler, GM, or AIG--but our fearless, tireless, irrepressible new federal administration seems bent on doing this, too. Just listen to Education Secretary Arne Duncan on the topic of closing and "reconstituting" failed schools.

To be sure, schools are smaller than giant corporations, but they're at least as burdened by employee contracts, long term obligations, community roots, political entanglements, all manner of vendors and suppliers, and "shareholders" in the form of children and parents who depend on them. And because they are public agencies rather than private firms, there is nothing quite like "Chapter 11" through which they can be stripped of their debts and obligations, reorganized, and given a fresh start.

Duncan is bent on changing this. He has no power to do so directly but insists that he will persuade state and local school systems to close thousands of dreadful schools, sometimes termed "dropout factories," starting with at least 250 in 2010 and rising to 1,000 a year. (The U.S. has about 88,000 public schools, of which some 6,000 have already been designated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) as long-term failures in urgent need of "reconstitution." Thousands more will soon join them.)

As academic standards, assessments and "accountability systems" have gained traction in American primary-secondary education in recent years, districts and states have become adept at identifying bad schools on the basis of their woeful results as documented

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Declaring educational bankruptcy

How high-performing charter schools do 'merit pay'

Stafford Palmieri / June 4, 2009

With all the positive press surrounding high-achieving charter schools, it's not surprising that they've turned into the education reformer's go-to point of comparison. And so, when Jay Mathews wrote earlier this week that districts could learn a thing or two from high-flying charters about performance-based pay for teachers, I was intrigued--especially because, as Mathews made clear, these schools generally don't pay their staff that way.

Instead, the reward for teaching in great charters is a great work environment--a culture of success, where strong performance is praised, and, more importantly, shoddy work holds consequences.

Mathews explains that successful charters are wary of performance pay because such a compensation system could pit teachers against one another. It would also refocus the spotlight away from student performance and back on the squabbles of adults.

But we have to be careful. Just because charter schools don't do merit pay doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't experiment with it in traditional public schools. Why? Because, when it comes to individual teachers, charter and district schools start from a completely different premise: in most charters, teachers can be fired, usually without much hassle, while in traditional, unionized schools, they cannot. Put another way, teachers are pitted against one another--for their very jobs.

This is an important distinction because it means that charter schools already have an incentive scheme that encourages good work: if you don't perform, you'll get fired. That's not to say that pay is equal across all

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How high-performing charter schools do 'merit pay'

Common cause

June 4, 2009

This week's news that 46 states plus the District of Columbia have signed up to pursue common education standards is a big deal but it's also potentially a big nothing. If this effort leads to rigorous national standards and tests in reading and math, historians will view this milestone as historically significant. But nobody has yet committed to anything of the sort. It's not too hard to say "we're interested in participating in the development process"--which is about all that's happened so far. It's something else to convince state legislatures and boards of education to jettison home-grown standards for the national variety, much less to use a common test with common cut scores to denote proficiency. (Recall the states' promise to measure high-school graduation rates using a common metric--a bold statement that later evaporated when the going got tough.) And it's anyone's guess as to how the standards will turn out. Still, we're heartened that the politics of national standards have shifted enough that all but four states feel comfortable contemplating playing ball. Let the games begin.

"46 States, D.C. Plan to Draft Common Education Standards," by Maria Glod, The Washington Post, June 1, 2009

"4 states yet to agree to standards for academic rigor," by Ledyard King, USA Today, June 1, 2009

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Common cause

Three strikes and you're in

June 4, 2009

Policymakers, what do you do when your state's newly adopted high school exit exams might result in a precipitous drop in graduation rates? Give failure a pass. Yes, that's right; if you're a Minnesota high school student, you have two options when it comes to the allegedly "extraordinarily challenging" eleventh grade math exit exam: pass once or fail three times. Either will get you a diploma. This seemingly nonsensical policy is apparently the result of dismal marks on the math graduation test for the class of 2010, which was piloting the new slate of graduation tests. The Minnesota legislature is now worried that such abysmal scores will yield a flood of dropouts. But don't worry, soothe the pols of St. Paul, these three-strike-and-you-get-to-first-base success stories still have to pass the rest of the graduation requirements in order to score a diploma. (Like completing ridiculously easy high school courses?) We're not placated. Perhaps the math test is indeed too hard (one independent analyst estimates that a student who barely passes it would score in the 75th percentile on the ACT; we're seriously skeptical) but now its results are also meaningless, along with a Minnesota high school diploma.

"Minnesota's must-pass math test goes by wayside," by Emily Johns, The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, May 30, 2009

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Three strikes and you're in

Putting the 'ouch' in voucher accountability

June 4, 2009

The original voucher pioneer, Milwaukee, is now pioneering voucher regulation. The Wisconsin legislature's latest budget proposal includes a host of new stipulations for schools participating in the choice program, including administering the state's assessment to voucher recipients (previously they could use one of several nationally-normed tests), employing only teachers with at least a bachelor's degree, and meeting the same amount of minimum instructional time as public schools. The final regulations were the result of intense negotiation, and, unsurprisingly, not all parties emerged satisfied. But long-time voucher advocate Howard Fuller termed the end product "a decent result" and we're inclined to agree, at least about the testing part. Twenty years into the voucher movement, we've learned the hard way that competition alone isn't a sufficient form of educational quality control. Vouchers are an important component of ensuring every child has access to a high quality education--but receiving public dollars means some public accountability, too. Wisconsin would have been wiser to adopt our "sliding scale" solution--the more dollars a school receives from vouchers, the more transparency and accountability it should face--and it's hard to justify regulating such "inputs" as teacher credentials and instructional hours. But voucher supporters need to acknowledge, as Fuller does, that private schools, too, must produce evidence that publicly-financed pupils are actually learning.

"Budget proposal includes new rules for voucher schools," by Alan J. Borsuk, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, June 1, 2009

"School Reforms on the Brink," editorial, Wall