We’ve written before about Governor Bobby Jindal. There’s lots to like. And then there’s this (from the New York Times): Jindal campaigned in Louisiana as a social conservative, which meant “favoring teaching ‘intelligent design’ in schools as an alternative to evolution.”

From The Economist: Mexico is making moves to fix its broken educational system (a system that affects the U.S. in obvious ways). One wonders, though, whether Mexico’s union boss (see here and here) is really willing to give up any power over teacher-staffing decisions.

The newest Gadfly is out. In it, Checker and I write about how states, loath to see their dropout rates rise, are backtracking on high school exit exams. It’s easy to understand why: At a superficial level, reducing the number of dropouts and ensuring that all students leave high school with advanced skills are contradictory goals. Gadfly also contains this week reviews of reports about career and technical education, how Islam is portrayed in textbooks, and state standards.

Speaking of Eduwonk.... You may think you know Andy Rotherham. You’ve sat with him on panels, chit-chatted with him over cocktails, rubbed elbows with him in the corridors of power, enjoyed a cigar with him while lounging in leather chairs in the smoky wicket-doored rooms where American ed policy is crafted. Now, forget what you think you know; the real Rotherham is revealed.

Eduwonk Andy Rotherham is a business-minded fellow, and yesterday he made the point that as districts downsize, schools close, and some teachers (maybe) lose their jobs, public education will bear the same trials that globalization has brought to many businesses. He writes, “like trade it’s impossible to roll back these forces over time, and even if we could, the benefits of a more customized and performance oriented school system outweigh the costs.”

The benefits of a customized and performance oriented school system definitely outweigh the costs. But it is most certainly not impossible in k-12 education “to roll back these forces over time.” K-12 education is still largely a government-run and government-provided enterprise. Unlike most private companies, which either compete effectively against their competitors or shutter their stores, America’s schools can continue indefinitely and blissfully their assembly line production of poorly educated pupils. Also, think about the farm bill, which has lately been in the news. If bureaucrats will go to such lengths to protect from competition certain inefficient private industries, imagine the lengths they could conceivably go to protect a government industry—k-12 ed—that doesn’t feel nearly the competitive pressure that do, say, sugar and corn production.

As both Checker and Andy said last night at Fordham, education reformers have done much, much good over the past 25 years. Widespread talk about accountability and standards and school performance was not occurring in the 1980s. But continued progress, while probable, is not inevitable. The Regs and Randis of the world are still here. Eduwonk writes that our current education debate “pretty clearly puts on the table the question of whether school systems are educational programs or job programs.” Reg and Randi are with the latter, and they’re willing and able to fight for it.

Photo by Flickr user lhoon.

Joanne Jacobs features a thorough article, from Houston, about the new voc-ed—you know, voc-ed for the 21^st-Century, not your grandfather’s voc-ed, etc. The benefits of such programs are numerous. One ought not forget that, in some ways, high-school students are supremely practical, and 16-year-olds who know either that they aren’t prepared for college or that they don’t want to attend college directly after high school have few reasons to stick around in class and read Lord of the Flies. Many are going to drop out and find jobs that, while low-paying, are at least paying.

A fine method for keeping such students in high school is to provide them with training that is practical and profitable. They’ll stay in school, they’ll graduate, and they’ll emerge with useful skills that can help them find lucrative employment. Some will go to college after several years in the work world, others won’t—but all will be demonstratively better off than if they had attended a regular high school, one with a “college or bust” mindset, and dropped out.

Jeff calls California’s governor a “dismal failure” when it comes to fighting for better education. But Schwarzenegger is battling on behalf of parents in the Golden State who want to homeschool their children but, according the 2nd District Court of Appeal, can do so only if they possess teaching credentials (background here).

Don’t let anyone tell you that ed reformers are a ragged bunch. The crew I’m observing right now is as sartorially sophisticated as they come. Especially noteworthy: Ben Wildavsky, wearing a particularly natty sport coat, and our own Amber Winkler, whose skirt is multi-hued, multi-pleated, and strikes one as a fresh burst of springtime.

Update: Rick Hess just arrived; he’s sporting a heather green polo, another shirt draped casually around his shoulders, and he’s dancing.

We’re throwing a little soiree at the Fordham offices. The crowd is filing in, and one question is on many minds: How’s the food?

Meat on a stick I give two thumbs up. It’s a little dry, but it’s still red meat and it’s on a stick. Fresh fruit and crackers are a nice touch, but the mini eggrolls steal the show: each bite is truly packed with egg roll-ish flavor, and smoky notes linger long after the last bite. Well done, eggroll chef.

I read Bob Herbert columns when I have trouble sleeping, and so it was that I noticed his piece, published Saturday, about high schools—how they’re not preparing students for college and work, and how too many students drop out.

Herbert’s source was Bob Wise, the affable president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, and a former governor of West Virginia. Herbert deserves praise for writing about the sorry state of education for grades 9-12, but he disserves the topic by oversimplifying and misrepresenting it. What is never mentioned is that graduating more kids from high school and ensuring that high-school graduates are prepared for college and work, the two goals Herbert lauds, are not necessarily complements. In fact, the easiest way to mint more high-school graduates is by making high school easier, making a diploma worth less, and shuttling kids through the grades. The challenge is setting high standards and keeping them, while also setting up support networks and alternative routes for students who have difficulty meeting tough academic expectations.

It’s bad policy to argue with a man named Wise, but the former governor’s quote—”The best economic stimulus package is a diploma”—is true only if diplomas have value.

I’ve disagreed with Neal McCluskey before—about the federal role in education, the effectiveness of vouchers, the correct spelling of the name “Neal”—but I had a mostly positive reaction to his take, posted today on National Review Online, about ED in ‘08, the platform of which McCluskey finds as “inspiring as bologna on Wonderbread...without mustard.” I suspect Mike won’t like McCluskey’s disparagement of national standards, though.

Flypaper is the source for this Chroncle of Higher Education story, which profiles McCain’s education team. We revealed McCain’s edvisors last week, here.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist/political cartoonist David Horsey comments on the now-disbanded Office of Equity, Race, and Learning Support of Seattle Public Schools.

The director of the office, Caprice Hollins, gained notoriety for a variety of offensive acts. Most noted was the page she put up on the district’s Web site that asserted Seattle’s public schools bought into the belief that such things as planning for the future, emphasizing individualism and defining standard English were examples of cultural racism.

Horsey has a follow-up blog post here.

Matthew Ladner writes about how Catholic schools in Arizona are surviving.

For those who doubt that competition has positive effects on public-school systems, this article, from the Houston Chronicle, is instructive. The Houston district’s enrollment is dropping; meanwhile, charter schools there, such as KIPP, can’t keep up with demand (this is occurring in other cities, too). HISD school board member Diana Davilla told the Chronicle about KIPP, “They’re attracting more students than we are. Somewhere, we’re missing something because they’re building schools and we’re closing them.” The district hopes to change that:

Leaders said they’re also working on ways to use data, including performance pay information, to create a profile of ideal teaching candidates. They plan, for instance, to use the data to determine which universities are producing HISD’s best teachers.

Good ideas. None of which would have germinated without healthy competition.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a story titled “No Child Left Behind Lacks Bite.” Not in Washington, D.C., it doesn’t.

Someone once wrote, “You can’t trust Alexander Russo to report on a school bake sale and give an accurate account of the price of brownies,” so one hesitates to put much stock in this post. It is nonetheless peculiar that a gaggle of bloggers would criticize other bloggers for blogging, or that they would inveigh against time-wasting while sitting on a panel, discussing blogging. Certainly Flypaper’s frequent posting is a benefit to our readers, who desire timely analysis and opinion on the day’s education issues. And for those who would rather imbibe an occasional off-the-cuff observation or two, perhaps about baseball or Howard Stern, other outlets exist.

It’s tough to capture a summer internship at Fordham. Expectant mothers often email us tabula rasa resumes on behalf of promising blastocysts, in fact, to be updated as Embryonic Emmy and Zygote Zach grow and garner accomplishments over the impending score. This summer, however, we have an unexpected internship opening! Click here (quickly) for more information.

Check out this New York Daily News column about career and technical education (formerly vocational education).

Not only is career and technical education nothing to laugh at, it’s a way to replace the unrealistic “college for all” bias of public schooling with a greater degree of practical preparation for lucrative and rewarding careers in fields like nursing, desktop publishing, computer networking and the building trades.

This is encouraging:

And here’s the kicker: Two-thirds of CTE students go on to college, and when they do, there’s research suggesting they outperform other students. Those that go straight into the world of work are generally getting jobs in fields where the pay is good and demand is strong.

This week’s Gadfly is now available for public consumption. Fordham’s nascent research director, Amber Winkler, makes her Gadfly debut with a smart editorial about Reading First (she says it’s not yet dead). And former Massachusetts Commissioner of Education David P. Driscoll and the former chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, Jim Peyser, write in to talk MCAS and standards and college readiness.

The American Enterprise Institute’s education scholar, Rick Hess, has a new piece out about mayoral control of district schools. Basically, Hess concludes that mayoral control is no panacea for a city’s educational problems... so cross it off your “Educational Panacea” list.

At the very least, probably it could fix our schools’ cafeterias.

Mushy Mike knows it’s not news that college graduates live longer than high-school graduates. The article to which he refers is a comment on the lousy healthcare that many poor Americans receive, and it really doesn’t have much to do with getting a college education. To assume (as Mike seems to) that if we directed more academically unprepared pupils onto ivied campuses we’d see a marked drop in healthcare disparities is, for sundry reasons too numerous to expound upon here, an incredible oversimplification. College attendance, of course, does not cause disparities in health, wealth, happiness, etc. as much as it reflects the disparities that already exist. And I do not believe universities have the redemptive powers to magically reshape anyone who attends their classes.

K-12 schools are supposed to be places where students, regardless of their backgrounds, can garner the information they need to succeed at college or in the workplace. K-12 schools, not colleges, are supposed to be the equalizers. Obviously, America hasn’t yet structured the k-12 system to work as it should, and we keep graduating 18-year-olds who can’t read. Therfore, ed reformers, having so far failed to markedly improve k-12 classrooms, are shifting their aspirations for k-12 schools onto colleges. It’s a foolish strategy, and it will have bad consequences.

Here’s another interesting video from The New Yorker Conference (those New Yorker people are always so darn interesting!). In this one, the magazine’s financial columnist, James Surowiecki, chats with Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern about the future of unions. This year’s New Yorker Conference is supposed to focus on innovation, but even as Stern talks about how organized labor has innovated and changed with the shifting economy, it’s clear that he still thinks of employment as a collectivist enterprise. That is, he thinks of writers as working in a writer’s community, not as individuals who should be hired, fired, paid based on their individual skills.

Mississippi has passed legislation, and the governor has signed it, that would fire superintendents whose districts are labeled “underperforming” for two years straight. (Before it’s active, the law needs to be approved by the feds, for Civil Rights-related reasons that Education Week explains.) The Gadfly likes the law. I don’t.

Officials note that the Magnolia State is one of just three (in the company of Alabama and Florida) where some superintendents are elected. The thinking is this: Local elections for superintendent are easily corrupted because of their small turnouts; elected superintendents are more likely to make decisions based on politics, not on the interests of students; and elected superintendents, especially those supported by teachers’ unions, may fill the superintendent role for years without appreciably improving the classroom instruction of which they’re ostensibly in charge. (These concerns relate to few. Most superintendents in Mississippi are appointed.) Furthermore, advocates for the new law say, if the state holds teachers accountable, it should treat superintendents similarly.

Fair points, but points outweighed by the pitfalls of Mississippi’s new law. Pitfalls such as: There is no solid definition of “underperforming”; qualified candidates for superintendent positions will be dissuaded from taking open jobs in Mississippi; two years is not enough time to appreciably improve a failing school district; the law’s process for actually firing underperforming superintendents is complicated (see the Ed Week article); and voters are having their democratic voice overturned by the legislature.

To compare Mississippi’s new superintendent accountability with teacher accountability is to compare apples and rodents. Teachers in Mississippi who fail to drastically improve the test scores of their classrooms are not fired after two years—and neither should they be.

Prediction: The feds approve this law and after two or three years everyone in Mississippi hates it and the legislature tosses it out and why did we bother with this crude, top-down, hasty accountability system in the first place?

Photo by Flickr user nmcil.