That’s what President Obama called for yesterday, in relation to the emotionally heated abortion debate. But it’s a good principle for the education “war of ideas” too. Both opponents and proponents of “school reform” tend to vilify the other side with caricatures. Union bosses are power-hungry Machiavellians who want to keep poor children trapped in failing schools. Reformers are greedy capitalists determined to outsource our public education system to the highest bidder.

Actually, I think both sides care about improving children’s lives, want an education system that works for all kids, and think they are on the side of the angels.

So let’s keeping fighting the good fight, but by engaging over ideas, not by demonizing our opponents.

A week ago (i.e., in a timely fashion), Andy commented on President Obama’s budget request for education. I’m still catching up on the old Reform-o-Meter front, so let’s get to work.

As Andy reported, there’s plenty of good news for education reformers (key details here). The Teacher Incentive Fund, which supports pay-for-performance programs, would get funded to the tune of $500 million, up from $100 million now. The charter schools program got a more modest (but still important) increase of $50 million. And Teach For America will see $15 million if Obama has his way.

But let’s not get too excited. In typical Obama style, there’s a lot of love to go around. The Department’s more traditional programs get plenty of funding too (voc-ed gets over a billion, for instance), so this is hardly a case of Obama’s team showing preference for reform over business-as-usual. In fact, its temerity in cutting wasteful programs should be alarming to taxpayers. Whereas in its final year in office, the Bushies wanted to kill 47 Department of Education programs costing $3.3 billion, Team Obama has only found 12 programs worth sacrificing, to the tune of $550 million. And is that because its budget mavens have discovered diamonds in the rough? You decide; consider the Historic Whaling Program, which would get almost $9 million if the President’s plan goes through. Here’s the official description, from the budget document:

This program supports culturally based educational activities, internships, apprenticeship programs, and exchanges for Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, the people of Massachusetts, and any federally recognized Indian tribe in Mississippi. Activities include artifact exchanges, the development of culture-based learning models, collaborative research, teacher-driven curriculum development, and publishing print and web resources. Other, site-specific initiatives include exhibits, internships and apprenticeships, live cultural displays such as music and dance, gallery talks, guided tours, storytelling, and examinations of primary source material.

The unofficial description, as I’ve often stated, is: “Whales: The Other White Meat.” It’s pork, through and through, and it’s no coincidence that Senator Ted Kennedy, the chairman of the education committee, happens to hail from a former whaling mecca. But if President Obama isn’t willing to harpoon the whaling program (which has been ridiculed even by fellow Democrats), what chance do we have of reaching fiscal nirvana?

Budget requests are important, as they indicate policy priorities (even though Congress often ignores them). So I’ll give this a 4 out of 10 for significance. But in terms of its reform-mindedness, I think it only deserves a Lukewarm. Supporting merit pay, charter schools, and alternative certification is great. But I’d get more excited if we weren’t also funding the same-old-same-old too.

Do you agree? Cast your vote below.

Whale image from stevehdc on Flickr.

The Post turns in another great editorial on the DC scholarship program. Using as the jumping-off point a new Heritage report on the school choice decisions of members of Congress, the Post calls out Senator Durbin, Mayor Fenty, Del. Holmes Norton, and Secretary Duncan (but for some reason leaves out the president, despite his choice of a private school for his daughters). Evidently, nearly 40 percent of our federal legislators have chosen private schools for their kids.

The Post editorial board has been relentless. Good for them.

Let’s break it down:

• Good news: “NGA, CCSSO Launch Common Standards Drive“
• Great news: Oklahoma House votes unanimously to approve ABCTE
• No news: Obama’s “transparency” promise is yet to be fulfilled
• True news: Fordham signs “Coalition for Student Achievement” letter

Flypaper readers know we’ve been all over the saga of the District of Columbia’s federally-funded “Opportunity Scholarship Program” in recent weeks, but I’ve yet to give the latest twists the proper Reform-o-Meter treatment. How to view Arne Duncan’s spin of the IES evaluation report, and his decision to rescind scholarship offers to 200 students not yet in the program?

Mostly, I see this as a story of opportunities missed or squandered. That’s not meant as an indictment of the Obama Administration’s overall performance; with very little staff, too little time, and an enormous stimulus bill to implement, Arne Duncan and his team are doing a respectable job of keeping it all together at the Education Department. When it comes to the voucher program, however, they’ve made some early mistakes. The key question now is whether they will learn from them—and possibly salvage a valuable little program that is accomplishing some of their major objectives.

Their first blunder was underestimating the symbolic importance that both sides of the school choice wars assign to the D.C. program. It’s a little bit like Vietnam: on the surface, it’s small and strategically insignificant. But both  proponents and opponents seem to believe in a sort of domino theory of school choice. If vouchers make it in the nation’s capital, goes the thinking, they might spread like kudzu to other locales.

How else to explain the conflagration over an initiative that serves fewer than 2,000 students? Why else would the National Education Association send Democratic members of Congress a thinly veiled threat that they had better kill this program or face the music? How else to explain the heat that certain Congressional Democrats put on Duncan et al. after the Secretary voiced his sensible view that the students currently in the program should be allowed to remain in their schools? It looks so petty and mean-spirited that it’s hard even to understand unless these folks truly believe that D.C. is a harbinger of things to come. 

The Obama team’s second (related) mistake was to suppose that it could triangulate between the position of Democrats on the hill (”kill the program”) and voucher supporters (”extend  it”) and somehow oblige everyone. (As Ruth Marcus wrote this week, the President has yet to pick a real battle with the Hill, but needs to do so soon. She channels Machiavelli: “it’s better to be feared than loved.”) They seemed surprised that choice opponents on the Hill were strongly displeased by their statements about protecting current students. And then they got rolled over when Congress passed its Omnibus Appropriations Bill (which Obama dutifully signed) without any provision to help even current scholarship recipients.

Now they have tacked left again, trying to appease Congressional appropriators by rescinding scholarship offers to 200 low-income families who thought their children would be attending private schools come fall. I’m not sure whether that placated the Hill, but it sure did enrage the right. Now, on this issue, Team Obama is neither feared nor loved, and rightly so.

But perhaps the biggest mistake—and greatest missed opportunity—came when the program’s evaluation results were released a few weeks ago. President Obama and his team had a chance to live up to their rhetoric about following the evidence.  Remember that the President said while campaigning that “If there was any argument for vouchers, it was ‘Alright, let’s see if this experiment works,’ and if it does, then whatever my preconceptions, my attitude is you do what works for the kids. I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn. ” Well, now the D.C. findings are in, and they are mostly positive, which is unusual for gold-standard studies. So why not “do what works” for kids?

I suspect that he and Duncan and their teams didn’t even pause to consider whether they should adjust their position on vouchers (they’re busy these days, remember). Instead, they plowed ahead with the spin that “students from low performing schools, the program’s target group, continued to show no improvement.” Well if that’s the standard, Mr. Secretary, let me warn you that about 200 of your Department’s programs (in other words, virtually all of them) don’t measure up. Do you plan to axe them, too?

Now Messrs. Obama and Duncan find themselves in a Vietnam-style quagmire. They’ve crushed the hopes and dreams of 200 low-income D.C. families while staking out the otherwise-reasonably-decent position that 1700 youngsters already in the program should be protected until they graduate. Yet even that outcome is in doubt, as the program’s enemies strive to kill it outright. Meanwhile, both are vulnerable to personal attacks, with the President’s children in an elite private school and the Secretary admitting that he chose a (public) school outside the District for his daughter because he didn’t want to “jeopardize my own children’s education.”

The time has come for both to learn some key lessons. First:  though it might look like a teapot, the D.C. voucher program is capable of causing a major tempest that isn’t going to end anytime soon. Second: if you want Congress to cough up funds to keep the program’s current students in their schools, it’s going to take a fight—an affirmative fight by you in defense of vouchers that work for poor kids! And third: don’t fear such a fight, because the facts—not to mention a compelling human narrative—are on your side.

So what does this mean for the Reform-o-Meter? I’m going to be generous and give this a “Cold” rating, rather than “Ice Cold,” only because I think the Administration is sincere when it claims that it’s trying to do right by the 1,700 students already in the program. What do you think, Flypaper readers? Are you willing to be so generous?

Sam Dillon from the NYT turns in an article that speculates on the contours of an NCLB/ESEA reauthorization. There’s no new news to report, and I doubt that we’ll see any real movement on legislation this year—ED is too busy with the ARRA and too short-staffed to push this hard themselves.  Overall, the piece tries to provide a sketch of what the administration would want in a new bill by looking at the stimulus package, Duncan’s comments, Obama’s speeches, the positions of the NEA and AFT, etc.

Update:  Andy Eduwonk accurately points out that there’s a difference between the reform people want to get out of the ARRA and the reform the legislative language is likely to get us.  And his final dig is brutal and funny.

Nope, no new Department picks to withstand some reform-o-meter treatment, but a dog. A Portuguese water dog, in fact, which will shortly take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We speculated and we wondered and now we know: Malia and Sasha are getting their puppy at last. They’ve apparently named him “Bo” after “Bo” Diddley, rock n’ roll great. (And (s)he is a present from Senator Ted Kennedy.) Nothing like a little bit of feel good fluff news for an early Monday morning.

I just caught a bit of the President’s "virtual town hall" on TV, and it happened to be his answer to an education question.  He provided a solid and sympathetic description of charter schools and noted that many are accomplishing great things.  He also said that some aren’t doing so well and that they should be closed.  But he added an interesting aside: low-performing traditional public schools should be closed too.  I like that.

On teacher pay, rather than defending the merits of performance-based compensation systems, he explained why teachers shouldn’t be evaluated based solely on a single "high stakes" test at the end of the year (and added a quick swipe at NCLB for evaluating schools that way).  He wants to work with teachers to develop alternative ways to evaluate performance.  He said that he talked to Bill Gates yesterday about ways technology can be used to help teachers learn effective methods.  Sounds like what these folks are up to .

Finally, on the subject of removing low-performing teachers, the president tried to get a teacher in the audience to admit that during her 15-year teaching career, there were at least a couple teachers that she had known in whose classrooms she wouldn’t have placed her own children.  The audience member demurred, but he made his point.  As he put it, some people aren’t made for carpentry or nursing, and some aren’t made for teaching.

Overall, nothing groundbreaking, but his views are becoming clearer: He really understands and likes charters, he thinks performance pay systems need to be based substantially on non-assessment-derived data, and he thinks getting rid of low-performing teachers is commonsense.  And of course, for each of these, the devil’s in the detail.

This morning, NYT columnist David Brooks turns in an uneven analysis of President Obama’s education speech.  His opening hook (the president’s anecdote about studying early in the morning with his mother) takes him off the rails a bit.  An extended discussion about the importance of “relationships” culminates in this curiosity:

Most important, it would increase merit pay for good teachers (the ones who develop emotional bonds with students) and dismiss bad teachers (the ones who treat students like cattle to be processed).

Both parentheticals are inapt.

After reviewing the president’s support of high standards, good assessments, and quality data, Brooks ends by properly chastising Mr. Obama for being “shamefully quiet” about the DC scholarship program, which congressional Democrats have all but killed.  But then he writes the following:

But in the next weeks he’ll at least try to protect the kids now in the program.

We don’t know that.  The president hasn’t said as much, and he signed legislation that does quite the contrary.  While his press secretary provided a small ray of hope, this problem now cannot be easily solved through the budget or appropriations process.  Due to language in the omnibus, reviving the program now requires action by the full Congress and the DC government.

President Obama delivered a major, long (over 4,500 words), and substantive speech on education this morning. Transcript here; coverage here and here.

The media will likely focus on the several issues certain to raise the ire of unions, such as performance pay, firing weak teachers, and strong support for charter schools. But there are many other noteworthy points throughout the speech as well as some standard fare and a few passing references that will need more filling out.

The speech had familiar anchors: achievement gaps, personal responsibility, and international competition. It also made use of the common Obama tactic of framing his positions as inhabiting the sensible middle ground between polarized parties and being beyond the ideological battles of the past. Interestingly, he twice made the point that money alone would not solve our education problems.

As for the substance, it was built around “five pillars”: 1) early childhood, 2) standards and assessments, 3) recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers, 4) promoting innovation and excellence, and 5) higher education

In early childhood, he touted funding in the stimulus for Head Start and child care programs. He also challenged states to raise the quality of their early learning programs.

In the standards and assessments section, he avoided taking a position on the dominant issue of the day (national standards), which might be a position in itself (opposed?). He lamented that US curriculum is less challenging than other nations’, and that we have 50 different accountability systems. The President encouraged “tougher, clearer standards,” and called on governors and state chiefs to develop systems that measure “21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity.” (No mention of whether this should be 50 different systems, several regional systems, one organically developed system, one federally created system…)

He also checked two important boxes on data, speaking highly of systems that “keep track of a student’s education from childhood through college,” (“K-16” or “K-20” data systems) and those that “track how much progress a student is making and where that student is struggling” (value-added systems). The most striking part here, however, was his noting that value-added systems (presumably with teacher identifiers) can “tell us which students had which teachers so we can assess what’s working and what’s not.” This will not make the unions happy.

In the recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers section, he made a Teach for America-style call for “a new generation of Americans to step forward and serve our country in our classrooms.” This, however, was followed by an ambitious but overly general list of new, unnamed programs (I’m guessing these will be in the fleshed out in the 2010 budget?), including initiatives to “prepare teachers for their difficult responsibilities and encourage them to stay in the profession,” create “new pathways to teaching and new incentives to bring teachers to schools where they are needed most,” “offer extra pay to Americans who teach math and science,” and build “on the promising work being done in South Carolina’s Teacher Advancement Program.”

The most striking part of this section and probably of the entire speech was his taking aim at underperforming educators:

…that means states and school districts taking steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom. Let me be clear: if a teacher is given a chance but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.

In the promoting innovation and excellence section, he praised charter schools and called on states to remove their charter caps. This is a major statement and an unequivocal position. He also called for longer school days and school years, saying our current school calendar is a relic of a bygone age that puts our students at an international disadvantage.

The higher education section focused on affordability and accessibility issues, such as making Pell Grants a mandatory spending program (and indexing maximum awards above inflation) and expanding federal loan programs.

Big speech. Provocative points. Let the debate begin…

If President Obama was miffed when his daughters’ school closed because of “what, a little bit of ice” earlier this winter, I wonder how he feels about Sidwell being shut down for Washington’s six inches of snow today. (Maybe a little better—it really IS coming down around here. I just walked by the White House and took in the view. I hope the Obamas are enjoying it; it’s gorgeous. But I digress.)

It’s one thing for the Obama girls to miss a few days of school because of inclement weather, but some of their classmates are going to miss school every single day, at least if David Obey and other House Democrats have their way. This morning the Washington Post editorial page relays the story of Deborah Parker, whose two children also attend Sidwell Friends thanks to a voucher from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.

“The mere thought of returning to public school frightens me,” Ms. Parker told us as she related the opportunities — such as a trip to China for her son — made possible by the program. Tell her, as critics claim, that vouchers don’t work, and she’ll list her children’s improved test scores, feeling of safety and improved motivation.  

But the debate unfolding on Capitol Hill isn’t about facts. It’s about politics and the stranglehold the teachers unions have on the Democratic Party. Why else has so much time and effort gone into trying to kill off what, in the grand scheme of government spending, is a tiny program? Why wouldn’t Congress want to get the results of a carefully calibrated scientific study before pulling the plug on a program that has proved to be enormously popular? Could the real fear be that school vouchers might actually be shown to be effective in leveling the academic playing field?

Kudos to the Post for calling out Obey and others for their hypocrisy. There are plenty of reasons to be against vouchers in theory, but what are the reasons for taking away these opportunities from actual Washington, DC children in reality? I can think of none.

Photograph from White House website

And neither was the headline, but you can find Checker’s and my National Review Online article about President Obama’s education agenda here.

President Barack Obama gave another great speech last night. What made it great was its honesty and directness. Rather than looking for scapegoats (OK, he did scapegoat Wall Street executives a bit, but we can forgive him that), he spoke candidly about the fact that we’re all responsible for the mess we’re in:

Our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank. We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for. And though all these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election.... People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day. 

Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.

Nor was that the end of his tough talk. Banks will be held “fully accountable” for any assistance they receive. The “days are over” when CEOs could use bailout funds for “fancy drapes” or a “private jet.” And he discussed working toward “efficiencies” in our health care system that are “long overdue.”

So when he turned to education, did his tough talk continue? At first I was hopeful, as his rhetoric did a good job framing the international argument for education reform:

In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity—it is a pre-requisite.    

Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education.  We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish. 

This is a prescription for economic decline, because we know the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.  That is why it will be the goal of this administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education—from the day they are born to the day they begin a career. 

OK, so far, so good. But then he turns to happy talk:

Already, we have made an historic investment in education through the economic recovery plan.  We have dramatically expanded early childhood education and will continue to improve its quality, because we know that the most formative learning comes in those first years of life. We have made college affordable for nearly seven million more students. And we have provided the resources necessary to prevent painful cuts and teacher layoffs that would set back our children’s progress. 

And what are we getting in return for preventing these “painful” (if necessary) cuts?

But we know that our schools don’t just need more resources. They need more reform. That is why this budget creates new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success. We’ll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools.  

And, soon thereafter, the president set a goal that “by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” And he promised to “end education programs that don’t work.”

Now, I understand that I’m supposed to swoon at the combination of the words “reform” and “teacher performance” and “innovative programs” and “high standards” and “achievement gaps” and “charter schools” and “college graduates” and “end education programs that don’t work.” He hit all the bases, right?

Well, I’m sorry. Perhaps President Obama is suffering from the soft bigotry of high expectations, but in the course of such a frank and direct speech, I was prepared for him to speak some truth about the reasons our education system is lagging. It doesn’t need “more resources,” it needs more “efficiency”—like our health care system. It’s not an accident that our schools aren’t producing enough well-educated graduates; it’s because the system has been designed to put the needs of adults over the needs of kids.

In the spirit of truth-telling, why not talk about our country’s obsession with smaller class sizes over the past thirty years, which has made education dramatically more expensive and gotten us nothing in return, achievement wise? Why not discuss the pension promises we’ve made to teachers, and how we can’t afford them? Why not talk about seniority protections and tenure rules and “last hired, first fired” policies that keep our schools from laying off ineffective instructors when times get tough?

In other words, for all of the “pain” he’s asking us Americans to share, where’s the pain for the education system? What sacrifices is he asking of the NEA, other than to accept the radical notion that some of its members will get paid more money? He’ll propose in his budget to scrap a few little education programs, and Congress will ignore him. Then what? When will the “day of reckoning” arrive for our schools?

I’m looking for substance, not sound bites. From where I sit, it looks like the education system just walked away with $100 billion in new federal spending, and all us reformers got in return was some poll-tested language. So I’m turning our Reform-o-Meter to Cold for this speech.  What do you think? Cast your vote below.*

* In terms of importance, I rank the speech a 5 out of 10. That’s a lot for “just a speech,” but then again, this was a key bully pulpit moment.

The latest Education Next is out, and its cover story is an excellent piece by Richard Lee Colvin previewing the Obama education agenda and contemplating the Democratic Party’s schism over school policy. Here’s the key argument:

Widespread agreement that only a massive stimulus package could rescue the U.S. economy presented the new administration with the opportunity to placate both sides of the Democratic divide. The unions and their allies would get a massive infusion of federal funds into the schools that would help offset state and local budget cuts. And this would give Obama cover to push for tougher reforms down the road.

The question is: how far down the road? Perhaps tonight’s speech will provide an indication.

Join Fordham’s Checker Finn, Ed Sector’s Tom Toch, and CCSSO’s Gene Wilhoit tomorrow at 3 pm for a live online chat of Obama’s education plan. The chat is sponsored by Education Week and coincides with the release of Ed Week’s latest book, The Obama Education Plan: An Education Week Guide. Tune in here and submit questions in advance here.

Democrats for Education Reform appears to be playing a big role staffing the Obama Administration because another one of its picks is getting a key job. Roberto Rodriguez, a longtime staffer for Senator Ted Kennedy, will be working on education policy issues from the White House Domestic Policy Council. We’ll give Roberto the Reform-o-Meter treatment later this week.

As President Barack Obama might have said, I screwed up on Friday afternoon when I reported that Senate moderates had agree to strip “most” education funding from the bill. There are cuts, to be sure, but the majority of the money remains. Education Week (which employs real journalists!) reports that the major reductions are for school construction, which was zeroed out (though bonds for construction remain) and the state bailout fund, which was reduced from $79 billion to $39 billion. But the big bucks for special education and Title I mostly got spared. Importantly, a little bit of Arne Duncan’s “incentive grant” fund stayed in (to the tune of $2.5 billion versus the House’s $15 billion). Even if they split the middle, that’s a whole lot of discretion for the Secretary and could provide some needed leverage to push states toward reform.

All in all, not a terrible outcome; as I wrote last week, less money plus more reform equals a better deal. Now let’s see what happens during this week’s conference committee. If the President pushes hard to keep the best features of the House bill (with its dollars for charter schools, merit pay,  and data systems) and the Senate bill (with its somewhat more modest spending), and walks away with at least some “incentive” dollars in place, this thing could do at least a little bit of good.

My composite rating so far is “luke warm.”

As loyal Flypaper readers know, last week we introduced the Obama Administration Reform-o-Meter. This handy contraption analyzes the reform-mindedness of key administration decisions, from policy pronouncements to personnel decisions and beyond. I offer a rating, from Ice Cold to Red Hot, and the Flypaper community gets to weigh in, too. I also weight each event by its importance on a scale of 1-10.

So how hot is the new administration when it comes to education reform? We’ve taken two readings thus far, first for Arne Duncan’s selection as Secretary of Education (an 8 in terms of importance), and then for the President’s stimulus plan (a 5), which I equated with the House bill.

Readers’ composite rating so far is “neutral.”

I rated the first as “Warm” and the second as “Chilly” for a composite ranking of “Luke Warm.” Flypaper readers agreed with me about Duncan but were tougher on the stimulus, weighing in with a solid “Cold” reading, for a composite of “Neutral.” Either way, the bottom line is that President Obama and his team are far from Red Hot when it comes to reforming America’s education system. Here’s hoping for some heat in the weeks and months ahead.

Yesterday I promised to rate President Obama’s stimulus plan in terms of its reform-friendliness. But what a difference a day makes; now that the Senate has moved to strip the most interesting provisions from the House stimulus bill, it begs a question: which plan is Obama’s? And what role is he playing in these deliberations? It’s hard to know from the outside, so I’m going to make an executive decision and assume that the Obama team had more of an impact on the House bill than the Senate one, so that’s what’s worth evaluating with our Reform-o-Meter.

As I’ve explained before, it’s hard to see this huge spending bill doing much to “stimulate” education reform. Budget cuts are painful, but they can force school districts (all organizations, really) to make tough decisions that they might otherwise put off but which can lead to greater effectiveness down the road. In education, that means: rethinking overly generous pension promises that we can’t afford; reconsidering salary boosts for master’s degrees that have no relation to improved student achievement; allowing class sizes to rise modestly; and eliminating the least effective staff, whether they be administrators, bureaucrats, or teachers. By making school budgets whole, the big stimulus bill will push these actions off to another day, while adding to the debt on national credit card.

On the other hand, the House bill isn’t a complete disaster for reform, because it at least includes some goodies in its Santa Claus sack: money for charter school facilities; dollars for teacher merit pay; a promise that charter schools will have equal access to the federal largesse; investments in state data systems that could (one day) be used to tie student achievement to individual teachers. And, let’s face it, the federal funds will also help to protect good charter schools and keep Teach For America teachers from losing their jobs, which are worth feeling good about.

So on our scale (from Ice Cold to Red Hot), I think the House bill deserves a rating of Chilly. As for its importance, I’d rank it a 5—only because what really matters are the details in the final stimulus plan. If Congressional negotiators and the Obama Administration decide to split the middle between the two bills, expect that rating to be a whole lot chillier. Stay tuned! And offer your own rating on the House bill below.

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For months, pundits of all persuasions have debated whether or not President Obama will turn out to be a bona fide education reformer. But now, the wait is over! We don’t have to keep speculating; with him in power and making decisions, we can start keeping track instead. And that’s what you can do with our brand-new, spiffy-nifty Obama Administration Education Reform-o-Meter !

Here’s how it works: Whenever Team Obama makes a major announcement—regarding policy, personnel, etc.—I’ll give it a reform rating, from Ice Cold (think: Reg Weaver nominated as Deputy Secretary) to Red Hot (think: teacher tenure abolished by executive order). I’ll also give the news a ranking from 1 to 10 in terms of significance. Those ratings and rankings will be fed into a gigantic super-computer (OK, crunched in an Excel spreadsheet) and will spit out an ever-evolving cumulative assessment of just how reform-minded President Obama and his team have been to date.

Now, you might say, why does Mike Petrilli get to decide Obama’s Reform-o-Meter rating? Simple: because I came up with the idea. But since that’s not really the spirit of Web 2.0, you get to play too. Each time the Reform-o-Meter is brought out of the closet, YOU get to register YOUR vote. These reader ratings will be tallied too; we’ll see if they differ much from my own.

Sound good? Let’s get started. We have a little catch-up to do, as there have been, by my count, two significant education decisions made to date. We’ll tackle the second (the stimulus package) tomorrow, but let’s start with some old business today.

Education Reform-o-Meter Rating Number One: The selection of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education

Famously, Arne (“You can call me Arne ”) Duncan was viewed as the “consensus candidate” that could bridge the reform and establishment wings of the Democratic Party. There was some truth to this; someone like Linda Darling Hammond, who is close to the teacher union and ed school types, would have been a huge disappointment to reformers, while someone like Joel Klein, who has been a polarizing and brash critic of the establishment, would have angered the traditional education groups. If Duncan really did “split the middle,” that would argue for a rating of “neutral” on our scale.

But in truth, Arne isn’t right down the middle of these two groups. While the teachers unions supported his nomination, and while Duncan has consistently pushed for greater education funding and more flexibility under No Child Left Behind, his actions and statements put him closer to the reform camp than the establishment group. His willingness to shut down failing schools , for example, shows a toughness and resolve that gives reformers reason to cheer. His support for charter schools appears to be deep and abiding. And his disdain for the single salary schedule makes my own heart go pitter-patter.

So Arne Duncan’s selection has to be considered at least “Luke Warm,” but I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and throw my vote for a full-fledged “Warm .” Maybe he’ll surprise me and turn out to be Red Hot.

And how important was this decision that Obama made? I’d rank it an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. “Personnel is policy,” after all, and most likely Secretary Duncan will be making most of the day-to-day decisions on federal education policy over the next four (or eight) years.

Do you agree with my assessment? Cast your vote below.

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