Seems the Obamas finally decided where Sasha and Malia will go to school: Sidwell Friends. Since it’s in Maryland, its elementary school, at least, does not participate in the DC voucher program... which means breathing room for the President-Elect on that front. But its middle and high schools do participate, and Malia at least is very close to (if not in already?) middle school. Regardless, seems like a wise choice since the school a) has dealt with first family students before and b) is similar enough to the Lab School in Chicago to provide (hopefully) a smooth mid-year transition. She might be a First Daughter, but Sasha is still very young. On another note, poor Georgetown Day School. Guess it will get its day in the sun some other day.
I’m glad we have Flypaper to vent our internal disagreements, as I take umbrage with Ben’s Gadfly discussion of Weighted Student Funding. In his review of an AIR report examining WSF in San Francisco and Oakland, Ben is far too dismissive of WSF as a reform (it “adjusts the inputs in a field where outcomes are what really matter”). Of course that’s true at an abstract level, but it’s a big oversimplification.
First, rearranging school funding so that the poorest schools are funded on par with wealthier schools may indeed be an adjustment of inputs, but it’s an important one. The Education Trust, Marguerite Roza, and others have long documented the startling funding disparities that exist among districts, and among schools within districts. If we want great results from schools with underprivileged students, step one involves leveling the playing fields on which they compete.
But second, a more importantly, WSF is intended to change the way schools work, so they can produce great outcomes. It is meant to give principals greater autonomy, so they can tailor their school’s offerings to meet the needs of their particular students. It is meant to give them greater say over the teachers who teach there, so that the poorest schools aren’t always stuck with the newest or the cheapest teachers. And it is meant to respond to, and enable, the realities of 21st century schooling, in which students are mobile (so their funding should be as well) and choice options are proliferating.
When we released Fund the Child, arguing for WSF, a terrific list of education leaders agreed.
Of course, it’s important that AIR is evaluating its actual implementation, and the results should be taken seriously - they did not find as many changes in the resource allocations, staffing, or school-level offerings as they expected. But they did find some, and I think they would have found more if purer forms of WSF had been implemented. So we should still be optimistic about the powerful potential of WSF.
Arne Duncan’s lead is bigger than ever in the quest to replace Margaret Spellings. One friend of mine urges me to just accept that he’s the guy. Well, that’s probably true. Meanwhile, United Negro College Fund president Michael Lomax is working his way up the ladder, and now appears to be the pick as the Arne-alternative. And what about Bill Richardson, whom I’ve been promoting all week? First, the Washington Post’s “in the loop” reporter Al Kamen wrote this morning that Obama might find a spot for him at Interior, Commerce, or as ambassador to China. Then Alyson Klein at Education Week ridiculed my speculation since Richardson was well-known as an NCLB-hater on the campaign trail. (See, I’m terrible at placing bets because I always gamble on the horse I want to win, rather than the horse most likely to win. And a pro-accountability, anti-NCLB governor sounds good to me!) And now, The Fix is saying that Richardson is being “seriously considered” for Commerce. Well, Bill, it was fun while it lasted. And look—Geoffrey Canada, he of Harlem Children’s Zone fame—makes an appearance for the first time.
Other folks mentioned today: Colin Powell, Hugh Price, Janet Napolitano (???), Caroline Kennedy, Tim Kaine, Peter McWalters, Erskine Bowles, Beverly Hall, Ted Mitchell, Linda Darling-Hammond (!!!), Graham Spainer (a first time mention; Google tells me he’s the prez of Penn State), Jim Shelton, Susan Castillo, Mike Huckabee, and (another first-timer) Cory Booker.
Now take a look at the trends over the past two weeks, and you’ll see just how strong Arne Duncan’s candidacy is. Have a great weekend!
Speaking of David Whitman’s schools, I recently had the chance to visit a charter school of the kind he describes in Sweating the Small Stuff, and it was sobering. Of course it wasn’t my first visit to a “paternalistic” school, but most of those have involved the guided tour - the kind where you wonder if the students and teachers really act that way when nobody is watching. In this case, I knew the founder/principal, so I had a true behind-the-scenes look, unfiltered and unvarnished. And it was eye-opening.
It was amazing how many problems my friend encountered in the hour I was there - we must have been interrupted 20 times by students needing discipline, teachers needing guidance about discipline, others needing observation while they worked with a struggling student, etc. It was a whirlwind, and it was tiring just to watch. It gave me a deeper appreciation for the special talent, constant hard work, and unwavering attention to detail that it takes to run one of these schools.
But it was also disheartening, for my friend confessed her fear that the “model” of such hard work and long hours won’t be sustainable - that principals and teachers who exert that kind of energy day after day will inevitably burn out. From my vantage point, it was hard to disagree.
“Nagging is love,” I used to tell my daughter. “I am a much-loved child,” she’d reply. And so it is: if you care about a kid, you tell her what she’s doing right and what she’s doing wrong. You stick with her when she makes mistakes. You honor her successes. You nag. In Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism, David Whitman finds that idea replicated in education. To give disadvantaged students a shot at college and mainstream success, he argues, schools must teach “not just how to think but how to act according to what are commonly termed traditional middle-class values.”
Other folks mentioned today: Janet Napolitano (come on folks, don’t you read the papers, not to mention this blog?), Colin Powell, Hugh Price, Caroline Kennedy, Tim Kaine, Peter McWalters, Erskine Bowles, Ted Michell, Linda Darling-Hammond, Jim Hunt, Jim Shelton, Alan Bersin, and (ha!) Mike Huckabee.
I’m still waiting for my invitation, but a source passed this along to me:
Please Save The Date
The Portrait Unveiling of Secretary Spellings
Date: Thursday, December 18, 2008
Time: 3:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M.
Location: Lyndon B. Johnson Building, Barnard Auditorium
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, S.W.
Washington, DC 20202
My my. Is this really the best use of taxpayer dollars in a time of economic crisis? The Washington Post reports that these ego-enhancers can cost the public up to $35,000. Wouldn’t a snapshot do? Still, if she’s going to have a portrait, and if it isn’t too late, maybe the artist can add a background relevant to her time as Secretary. Here are some suggestions:
Rod Paige, getting pushed under a bus
Buster the Bunny, and his lesbian friends, “threatening” America’s children
A piece of Ivory soap, with “NCLB” carved into it
Chris Doherty, getting pushed under a bus
Sketches of all of the tourist spots she visited on her international junkets
GOP governors [should] use their posts to show the country how conservatives can solve problems, especially the dismal state of American education and its menacing cousin, lagging American competitiveness. If one governor would fully implement a widely circulated proposal to transform U.S. education — based on having most children graduate after 10th grade and using the savings to pay teachers like professionals — it could serve as a model for the nation and bring the United States back to world standards.
He’s right that the “Tough Choices or Tough Times” proposal to which he refers would be a good start, though there are other ideas too. But the sentiment is unassailable. GOP governors: stop complaining and start a revolution.
Innovation and politics don’t play well together. Take the District of Columbia Student Opportunity Scholarship Program as an example, since Messrs. Mitchell and Schorr forgot to mention it. If innovation should break the mold, this program truly meets the test. Some Democrats and Republicans consider empowering low-income families with the option to enroll their children in well-established private schools an innovation worth exploring; many more, however, do not.
The scholarship program is part of a unique “three sector” initiative designed and championed by local leaders in Washington, and it has infused significant new federal funding into the city’s traditional public schools and charter schools alike, alongside funding for new private-school-choice options. The program includes a rigorous evaluation to test its impact on student achievement and on the public school system.
Its fate is in limbo today, however, as it is unclear whether the next Congress will see the need to continue the program. We hope the next office of innovation will at least adopt the little orphan (just as we adopted the whaling program the Commentary authors singled out) until we better understand its impact.
So Dems, what will it be? Just innovation that the left likes, or any innovation that’s good for children?
As I predicted, Arizona governor Janet Napolitano got a big bounce on the education secretary front from the news that she’s not likely to get the nod for the Attorney General job. United Negro College Fund president Michael Lomax is now viewed as the most likely higher ed alternative. And New Mexico governor Bill Richardson’s star is rising too (my campaigning is clearly paying off).
Other mentions today: Colin Powell (out of the “top contenders” race for the first time), Hugh Price, Caroline Kennedy, Peter McWalters, Wendy Kopp, Tim Kaine, Ted Mitchell, Linda Darling-Hammond (with her first mention today), Jim Hunt, Erskine Bowles, Jim Shelton, and Alan Bersin.
The Institute of Education Science’s final Reading First evaluation report is out today, and the news is mixed. Schools receiving funds from the program saw their students’ decoding skills improve, but not their comprehension skills. Not surprisingly, Margaret Spellings focused on the former, and the press focused on the latter. And in his last hurrah, IES director Russ Whitehurst, the subject of a new Education Next feature, sided with the naysayers: “It is a program that needs to be improved,” he told the Washington Post. “I don’t think anyone should be celebrating that the federal government has spent $6 billion on a reading program that has had no impact on reading comprehension.”
Well, let’s keep a few things in mind. First, children can’t learn to comprehend if they don’t first learn to decode, so we shouldn’t minimize the real gains made there. Second, as Whitehurst has admitted before, this is a study about the impact of Reading First funds, not its instructional methods. The schools in the “control group” may not have received federal dollars for reading, but many likely borrowed Reading First-style teaching strategies. So we really don’t know anything new about whether or not those strategies work or not.
But even I, an ardent Reading First supporter, will acknowledge some political reality. With Democrats in charge of the executive branch and Congress, this program is cooked. Still, word around town is that the Obama Administration is going to have to do something on literacy. So here’s a suggestion: focus on comprehension a la E.D. Hirsch. Promote strategies for schools to build students’ content knowledge in history, literacy, science, and the arts, since that’s the best way to build their vocabulary and comprehension abilities. That would be a worthy next step in the war against illiteracy.
Several news outlets are reporting that President-Elect Obama is likely to nominate Eric Holder to be his Attorney General. Many speculated that the job might have gone to Arizona governor Janet Napolitano. Which now begs the question: will she get the education job instead? It’s not a sure thing; she might also be tapped to lead the Department of Homeland Security. (And I still think Bill Richardson is going to end up at ED.) But I bet our insiders give her a bump up today.
Chicago superintendent Arne Duncan maintains his big lead today in our education insiders poll. Former South Carolina state superintendent Inez Tenenbaum has solidified her hold on the second-place spot, a proposition that makes libertarians nervous. (Frankly, I’m not thrilled about it either.) Meanwhile, our group is warming to the prospects of Michael Lomax, the head of the United Negro College Fund. He’s a higher education expert, and look—he’s a fan of KIPP! But come on people, face it: it’s going to be Bill Richardson, trust me.
Other folks mentioned today: Mike Easley, Freeman Hrabowski, Kathleen Sebelius, Hugh Price, Bill Richardson, Peter McWalters, Ted Mitchell, Wendy Kopp, Tim Kaine, Erskine Bowles, Jim Shelton, Alan Bersin, and Jon Schnur.
Flypaper readers know that I’ve been partial to the selection of former North Carolina governor Jim Hunt as the next secretary of education. But now that he’s taken himself out of contention for the job, I have to look around for another favorite. And I’ve found him: New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. There are two things I like about Richardson. First, he’s very strong on charter schools, which is why Fordham found New Mexico to be the second-best state in the country for school reform a few years ago. Second, he’s pro-accountability but anti-No Child Left Behind, because, as a governor, he sees the perverse incentives it’s created at the state level. Here’s a man who could credibly bring governors together to work toward common national standards and tests, while also explaining to reformers in Congress why they should temper their instincts to try to regulate their way to nirvana.
It’s true that his campaign platform played heavily to the teachers unions, what with its call to raise salaries across the board. But that just makes him an appealing consensus candidate. (Obama is not going to pick someone who is obviously anti-teachers union.)
So does Richardson have a chance? If the State Department job goes to Hillary Clinton, Team Obama will need to find a home for Richardson. Why not at 400 Maryland Avenue? Could we have an Hispanic education secretary come January? Si se puede!
Our ten Washington insiders are back at work today, making their predictions for who will lead the U.S. Department of Education. And not much changed over the weekend, though Arne Duncan has certainly solidified his overwhelming lead:
But there is some interesting news to report. Among the honorable mentions today* were Michael Lomax, the head of the United Negro College Fund, and Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico. Lomax brings higher education experience, which is a commodity the Obama team might value. And Richardson needs to find a home if State goes to Hillary Clinton. He’s already led the Energy Department and served as Ambassador to the U.N. And while he said plenty of nasty things about NCLB on the campaign trail, at the state level he’s been strong on accountability and charter schools. (We found New Mexico to be among the most reform-minded states a few years ago.) Oh yes, and he’s Latino. Let’s see if his star rises.
* The others were Caroline Kennedy, Beverly Hall, Peter McWalters, Ted Mitchell, Tim Kaine, Erskine Bowles, Jim Shelton, Alan Bersin, and Jon Schnur.
I believe renewal and reform will come from the states. There will be, in Washington and New York, a million symposia, think-tank confabs, op-ed pieces, columns and cruises; there will be epiphanies on the Amtrak Acela while delayed at Wilmington; there will be polls and books, and pollsters’ books. All fine and good, and a contribution. But the new emerging Republicans are likely to come in the end from the states, because that is where “this is what works” will come from. It is governance in the states that will yield the things that win-better handling of teachers’ unions,* better management, more effective, just and therefore desirable tax systems. And, of course, more clean lines of accountability.
— Put great curricular materials into the hands of teachers, via the Internet. This is an easy win, doesn’t need to be terribly expensive, but is sorely needed. Ask your Department of Education to partner with curriculum developers to take your state standards and turn them into usable, clickable resources for the classroom. Include lesson plans and videos of master teachers delivering them; embedded assessments; readings; digital snippets; the whole shebang.
— Make schools’ finances and results transparent, via the Internet. Empower taxpayers and parents with easily accessible information. It’s a crime that nobody knows how much individual schools spend. Change that. Put it online, down to the last penny. And link spending with results, displayed in user-friendly ways.
— Provide excellent coursework to students, via the Internet. Lots of states are already doing this, of course, via virtual schools, virtual charters, and the like. But there’s still a ton of room for growth, and some gubernatorial leadership could ensure that the resources provided to kids are top-notch, paid for by the state in a way that will keep them getting better, and accessible to the children who need them most.
And yes, this soup has a theme. One thing the Internet is really good at is creating efficiencies. And we all know that we need those now. So get to it, guvs.
Earlier this year, we tapped three young promising scholars for our new inaugural research grant program, known as the Fordham Scholars. Just this week, one of them—Daniel Nadler— co-authored a fine study, already growing into the “Scholar” appellation. The study, published in this month’s Education Next, examined alternative teacher certification programs and found that states that offered “true” alternative certification programs—meaning the ones where would-be teachers didn’t have to take the same number of courses as traditionally certified teachers—generally had a greater representation of minority teachers within the ranks, as well as higher student gains as measured by NAEP. The study created an index of representation, which was the ratio of the percentage of teachers of minority background to the percentage of the state’s adult population of minority background. In the 21 states that offered genuine alternative certification routes, the weighted average index of minority representation was 0.6, but in states with “symbolic” alternative certification routes, it was just 0.2. It appears that if we want to recruit more minority teachers into teaching, we’d be wise to strike down some of the barriers that keep them out. The study authors explain, “Hardly anyone bothers with an alternative certificate if the requirements are essentially the same as for the traditional one.” There’s much more to the intriguing study to be found here.
The American testing system has often been blamed for the simplification of curriculum, the cutting of art, music, and physical education classes, and the decline of quality education overall. Perhaps a laser-like focus on reading and math has produced some unintended consequences but it’s a far cry better than recent developments in the United Kingdom. This weekend, the Telegraph reported that traditional subjects are being foresworn for “lifestyle” classes, like sex ed, citizenship, and British national identity. In fact, one survey found the amount of time spent teaching geography has dropped 70 percent. Students certainly should have a civics curriculum, but let’s not cut history to do it.
On Saturday, the Washington Post advised Barack and Michelle Obama that as they think about the pros and cons of various schools here in D.C., they might also want to keep in mind the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which gives District parents the same power of choice for their own kids. The Post won’t weigh in on the whole public vs. private debate, of course. But the piece muses:
Let’s hope the experience of moving his girls and finding the place where they will flourish resonates with Mr. Obama so that he reexamines his stance on the District’s voucher program. How is it right to take away what little choice there is for needy D.C. children?
It’s one thing for Candidate Obama to oppose publicly funded vouchers on principle. It’s quite another thing for a President Obama to eliminate an existing program and kick his daughters’ classmates out of their beloved school.
That means classmates of Malia and Sasha might lose the ability to attend their chosen school if the vouchers were eliminated. That wouldn’t seem fair.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra criticizes the No Child Left Behind Act, using it as an example of the foolhardiness of “compassionate conservatism” (Letters, Nov. 14).
But NCLB was premised on a simple fiscal conservative principle: If you take federal money, you must be accountable for what you do with it. And if you don’t want to live by those rules, you can opt out by refusing to take the federal money with its attached strings.
Republicans who disagreed with NCLB could have put their local-control principles into practice by voting to cut federal funding to schools entirely. But that would have been politically unpopular. So instead they joined with teachers unions and Democrats to help undermine this worthwhile, if sometimes flawed, education reform effort, making it very difficult for grassroots education reform and school-choice activists to push forward the principles of choice and accountability embodied in NCLB.
She’s right; Republicans that want to kill No Child Left Behind in its entirety should also propose to eliminate its $25 billion or so dollars for k-12 education. If that sounds like a poison pill, here’s an idea: push for transparency, via national standards and tests, instead of “accountability” via the heavy hand of Washington.
Yes. indeed, there are rifts nowadays, rifts almost as wide as the Great Rift Valley within both political parties when it comes to education policy, particularly at the national level. That’s probably necessary, as both parties go through some soul-searching and repurposing. But this weekend it feels as if the anti-reform crowd may be winning among both Democrats and Republicans. Friday brought two distressing hints.
First, we learned that the nascent Obama administration has picked Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond to lead the policy side of the transition operation at the U.S. Department of Education. She is a pleasant and smart woman but she surely does harbor a lot of retro ideas about education. She’s Public Enemy #1 of Teach for America, for example, and for twelve years (since her report, “What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future,” came out) has been the nation’s foremost embodiment of the view that improving teachers ought to be America’s chief reform strategy, the heck with standards-and-accountability on the one hand and school choice on the other. If her policy views dominate the new administration’s education-policy stance, groups such as Democrats for Education Reform might as well take a LONG vacation. The unions and the ed schools will be overjoyed.
Friday also brought letters to the Wall Street Journal and Detroit News from Michigan congressman Pete Hoekstra, a GOP stalwart and, on the whole, a terrific guy. As ranking Republican on the House intelligence Committee, he has served his country well. But as a member of the Education and Labor Committee, he is increasingly inclined to blame No Child Left Behind (and John Boehner) for the party’s political decline and to urge upon his colleagues a return to something akin to blind support for local control and school choice. Maybe that formula still works well in the pastoral precincts of western Michigan where Hoekstra’s district is located, and the local electorate seems to like him well enough. (Earlier this month, he got 62 percent of the vote in his House race.) I don’t doubt that his view of education is pleasing to the party’s “base.” But if it prevails, members of that base may cast the only Republican votes in future elections—and all those poor, minority and inner-city kids who live in districts other than Hoekstra’s will continue to be trapped in the miserable schools that NCLB, however clumsily, sought to transform (or extricate them from).
It’s Day Five of Fordham’s name-the-next-education-secretary-tracking-poll, and Chicago superintendent Arne Duncan has solidified his position as the top contender. That much isn’t surprising, but what’s new is the rise of Inez Tenenbaum as his primary challenger. In part that’s because our insiders increasingly seem to believe that neither Jim Hunt nor Colin Powell would accept the ed sec job if offered. It also reflects the conventional wisdom that President-Elect Obama might need to appoint a woman to this position in order to balance his cabinet’s diversity.
But would Tenenbaum be a good pick? It’s true that under her leadership as state superintendent, South Carolina was a poster-child for No Child Left Behind-style reform, setting, as it did, some of the clearest and toughest standards in the country. Her state also became a friendly environment for the Teacher Advancement Program. But that’s where her enthusiasm for reform stopped; she was known to toe the party (and teacher union) line on charter schools and certainly vouchers. Her selection would be viewed as a victory for the NEA.
Other folks mentioned today: Caroline Kennedy, Hugh Price, Tim Kaine, Ted Mitchell, Ronnie Musgrove, Jim Shelton, Erskine Bowles, Susan Castillo, and Jon Schnur. (Note: a trio of former governors—Roy Barnes, Roy Romer, and Bob Wise—are no longer anywhere to be seen.)
Now let’s take a look at the trends over the course of the week:
This picture tells quite a story. The Jim Hunt bubble burst Wednesday night when he pretty much took himself out of contention. His loss was Arne Duncan’s gain. The Colin Powell speculation is running out of steam, as is Joel Klein’s candidacy. Meanwhile, Tennebaum and Atlanta superintendent Beverly Hall are making inroads.
Most likely we have another couple of weeks to go; expect more ups and downs before an announcement is made.
I’m still waiting for my invitation, but a source passed this along to me:
There’s a 
Several news outlets
Flypaper readers know that 
Fordham’s newest book, 
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