There’s another blurb in the WaPo article Andy refers to below that’s worth mentioning:

Although signs of academic success are unknown—this year’s round of standardized test scores has not been released—Green Dot has won praise for making the campus safer and sparking significant increases in attendance and student retention rates. That was enough for Rhee to consider Green Dot as a possible partner.

Parents often will pick a charter school over the neighborhood school for reasons of safety or class size or a host of other tangibles. This makes sense. Though we in the policy community focus on achievement, new charters often perform no better (and sometimes worse) than the neighborhood school. This lag is usually made up for after a few years, but in the meantime, parents often play up the other benefits of a well-run charter school, like feeling relatively certain their child’s classmate won’t bring a gun to school. It also makes sense that school safety would be an important factor for Rhee as chancellor of a notoriously violent school district. She’s made some steps to reign in the most troubled schools, but there’s still a long way to go. But this also underscores something else that Rhee apparently believes in: you can’t have a good school until it’s well-run, or put another way, student achievement depends on good management. Steve Barr’s Locke Senior High School takeover might not have produced stellar test scores yet, but it has whipped the management of the school into shape. And there’s something to be said for that.

As Mike noted, the third-year report on the DC voucher program, showing statistically significant benefits for scholarship recipients, presented a challenge for the folks at ED, who responded by using the time-honored tactic of releasing unwelcome news on a Friday afternoon.

The Washington Post, however, refusing to be bamboozled, turned in three separate pieces in Saturday’s edition.  Under the headline, “Study Supports School Vouchers,” a front-page Metro article reports on the main findings and sets up the debate to follow between program advocates and detractors.

Though the article says that the Department released a statement, I can’t find it anywhere (it’s not on their press releases page) and the Duncan quote used in the story is from a previous interview with the Post.* That quote uses possibly the weakest argument against the program—that it should be scrapped because it only helps some DC students instead of all.  But that same line of reasoning could be used to kill other targeted programs like Head Start, Title I, IDEA, AP, IB, and free and reduced-price lunch.  The obvious response to that criticism is, “Since the voucher program is helping approximately 2,000 students today, let’s keep it going while Chancellor Rhee continues her district-wide reform efforts.”

Second, under the headline “Don’t Pull the Plug Yet,” the paper editorializes in measured tones in favor of maintaining the program.  Referring again to the mysterious opposition statement from the Department,* the editors write:

It’s perplexing that Mr. Duncan, without any further discussion or analysis, would be so quick to kill a program that is supported by local officials and that has proven popular with parents. Unless, of course, politics enters the calculation in the form of Democratic allies in Congress who have been shameless in their efforts to kill vouchers.

Third, columnist Colbert King argues that voucher proponents should turn their attention to local lawmakers who have the power to fund and sustain the program. 

All that the seven members (of the city council) and the mayor would have to do is find $12 million in the mayor’s $5.4 billion budget to fund the voucher program beyond next year.

* If you have a copy of the Department’s statement, please send it along: asmarick@edexcellence.net

I agree with Amber’s post on the demise of the DC voucher plan.  I’ll add four quick things.

First, I can’t imagine how sad and frightened thousands of DC kids and parents are today.  Safe, high-quality schools that are serving them well are soon to be taken away.  As Andy Rotherham, no voucher zealot, recently wrote, “the spectacle of forcing the kids to leave their schools before they age out is pretty cold-hearted.”  Policy implementation is slow work, so it’s seldom that elected officials have the opportunity to see the full impact of their ideas.  This is one exception.  The scuttling of this program will have a swift and severe influence on about 1,700 low-income boys and girls.

Second, as Amber pointed out, at least one US Senator believes continuing the program is an attack on DC Public Schools.  That position cannot be sustained in light of Chancellor Rhee’s opposition to the program’s immediate termination.

Third, by launching this unnecessary attack, voucher opponents are about to cause both sides to expend enormous amounts of energy battling this out—energy that could be directed toward other pressing issues.

Finally, the politics of this could get ugly.  There are going to be some outraged families and commentators.  Hill Dems have put the President, who sends his children to a private school, in a box.  They are sending him a bill that, if signed, will deny poor parents a choice that he is exercising.  I would hate to be the WH official charged with responding to a press question along the lines of, “What does it say about this administration when the President in his public capacity suggests that DC public schools are good enough for the children of poor families while demonstrating in his private capacity that they are not good enough for his own children?”

First, I’m thrilled to be affiliated with TBFI and have the chance to contribute to Flypaper.  Thanks Checker, Mike, Eric, and team.  It’s been great.

Like many others, I’m waiting for ED to release its guidance on the stimulus.  It’s late already, but that’s no surprise.  One big lesson I learned during my time at ED is that official documents like this take forever to get out.  There are countless drafts, an internal clearance process, OMB input, White House/DPC input, and on and on and on.  Add to this that lots of senior positions at ED are still unfilled (and many of the folks in place are new to DC), and you can see that this may take a while…

Terry Ryan has already written about the charters challenges out in Ohio, but the proposal is even worse than I expected—less funding, more reporting, messing with facilities, and banning for-profits.  Take a look if you’re interested in charter stuff.  And incidentally, didn’t somebody recently write about being optimistic about the future of charters?  Egad.

Be sure to check out Mike’s thorough treatment of the Duncan-voucher news.  Two quick thoughts: First, I find it interesting that Duncan and Rhee, the federal and city education leaders, both announced measured support for the program this week while their bosses are still conspicuously silent.  When will the President and Mayor weigh in? 

Second, I’m a huge Ted Kolderie fan, and I was looking through his way-underappreciated book Creating the Capacity for Change recently and happened upon a small section on vouchers that I hadn’t noticed before.  He makes the case that charters have made vouchers less controversial by getting people to see that parental choice is good, diversity within public education makes sense, and that non-district entities can run schools.  With that established, the only change offered by vouchers is making private schools eligible players in the system.  Think of it this way:  Pick any big city in America nowadays and there are countless organizations running public schools—and some of those groups are brand new and/or largely unknown.  Does it really make sense to ban, say, the Catholic Church—a well-known organization with a long track record of operating great schools—from also running a public school?

I think possibly the biggest mistake we’ve made in K-12 urban education is elevating the importance of a school’s sector (traditional public, charter public, or private) above its academic quality. That is, rather than distinguishing schools based on how well they serve disadvantaged kids, our politics and policies distinguish them based on who operates them. Think of all of the “us vs. them” arguments you’ve heard over the years. Think of all of the urban superintendents who measure their success by how much money, power, or market share their sector has.

I’ve quietly had a dream of becoming an urban superintendent and beginning my tenure by saying, “From this point on, we will be driven by a single principle: Getting as many students into great schools as possible. I don’t care if it is a neighborhood public school, a charter school, a Catholic school, a Lutheran school, or any other type of school. My position is that we love great schools no matter who runs them. Let me be clear. I am not in charge of protecting a system; I’m in charge of making sure all kids are well educated.”

Well, I’ve been beaten to the punch, and I couldn’t be happier.  This is a quote in the New York Times from Washington DC schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee responding to the current efforts to kill the DC voucher program.

Part of my job is to make sure that all kids get a great education, and it doesn’t matter whether that’s in charter, parochial, or public schools.

This is the future of urban education reform.  Thank you Chancellor Rhee.

The lady with a mission has a soft side. This morning’s Washington Post featured an editorial from DC Chancellor of Schools herself. I couldn’t help but hear a sharply defensive tone throughout and be somewhat mystified by the whole thing. Is Madame Scorched Earth, to ad lib Weingarten’s nickname for her policies, announcing the planting of a veritable forest? Or is she just trying to smooth things over after thoroughly alienating the District’s teaching force?

Three things, in particular, stuck out. First, she very much wants to set the record straight. “I want to be clear about something: I do not blame teachers for the low achievement levels,” she says. Although this statement, if memory serves me, is technically correct, Rhee is leaning a bit too heavily on semantics for my taste. Her argument is basically this: it’s not that she blames teachers for all of DC failures, but that she understands how important teacher quality is—the most important factor, in fact—when it comes to student achievement. But that’s like saying that 6 is the same as one half dozen. If teacher quality is the most important factor, then teacher quality is at the heart of DC’s dismal performance. Just last month, Rhee promised to use 90 day plans to fire a “significant share,” as she put it, of DC’s teachers who are incompetent or ineffective. Why would she fire a “significant share” of effective teachers? She wouldn’t. So that means that Rhee thinks a “significant share” of DC’s teachers are ineffective. In other words, she IS blaming teachers for low achievement levels.

Next, Rhee outlines the “key goals” to creating “the most effective and highly compensated educator force in the country.” What a second. When did creating the most “highly compensated educator force” become one of Rhee’s goals? If history serves us, buying off the unions or other status quo groups is usually how reform gets passed in the first place. (This, in fact, was the subject of a recent Gadfly editorial that argued the recession might be the end of reform, since it relies so heavily on getting carried along with more money. Recession means no money. No money means no reform.) A perfect demonstration of this, in fact, is Rhee’s original contract proposal, which promised raises to all teachers, with teachers who give up tenure simply getting a bigger raise. This isn’t that surprising or new, but announcing that making DC’s teachers the most “highly compensated educator force” (versus, say, making DC the most highly scoring urban district or similar) is kind of strange. I thought paying teachers more was a means to an end (attracting and retaining better teachers, which will, in turn, result in higher achievement), not an end in and of itself.

And then there’s bullet point number four:

Protection from arbitrary firings. Some teachers are concerned a principal may want to fire them for reasons unrelated to performance. While principals who do this risk their own jobs (firing effective teachers is a sure way to lower school achievement), we will ensure protections for teachers. We need a fair and transparent process, free from bias and haste, designed with teachers’ input.

The parenthetical is an interesting, and in my opinion, much ignored observation. For teachers worried their principal would fire them over a personal grudge, I want to know, why would a principal fire a teacher if the teacher increases student performance and benefits the school (and the principal’s reputation) as a whole? That’s some grudge to overcome self-interest and common sense. And if they are such an excellent teacher, and they do get fired anyway over a personal grudge, wouldn’t another principal (without a grudge) recognize that and want to hire them if they applied to another school? If you’re good at your job and there’s a market for your services, then you should be rather secure in your job or at least your ability to be hireable. For teachers, it’s a bit more complicated than that, of course, but the rubber room up in New York demonstrates this point rather nicely. It’s a neglected point that Rhee is perhaps right to point out.

Now we’ll just have to wait and see if these friendly overtures result in contract progress...or if the union still holds a grudge.

With contract negotiations still stalled, Michelle Rhee has revealed the other prong of her DCPS overhaul: professional development. Rhee had hoped to let go (either by buyout or simple firing) a significant portion of DC teachers and overhaul the PD program for those that remained. But the new union contract stalled (and, notably, as yet to go up for a vote) and Rhee was left with “Plan B.” It seems Plan B has been put in motion and her PD changes will go into effect in 2010-2011. Details are scant so far but we’ve gotten a few hints at what’s to come:

—DCPS no longer supports National Board for Professional Teacher Standards certification. It’s unclear whether this means that having NBPTS certification will no longer hold the salary increases usually associated with it (which, presumably, would have been eliminated under the stalled union contract) or if this move is more symbolic. DCPS argues that having national certification has only weak ties to demonstrable improvement in teacher effectiveness.

—Creating a PD program based on the experience of DC’s suburbs, specifically Montgomery County. This would include an apprentice-master teacher system, where effective teachers mentor new teachers, and the introduction of The Skillful Teacher program, a six day seminar created by Jon Saphier of the Research for Better Teaching Program in Massachusetts. The program’s mantra is that every student can learn, regardless of background, circumstances, etc. According to the Washington Post, a 2004 independent study found that:

before taking the course, Montgomery teachers rated students’ home life and motivation as the factors that most influenced learning. After the course, home life dropped to 11th on the list, and teacher enthusiasm and perseverance were described as most important.

Pulling support for national certification has potential if it also means cutting ties to salary increases. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal since fewer than 1 percent of DC teachers have national certification anyway (according to the Post, 39 out of roughly 4,000 teachers). The PD improvements, however, definitely seem reasonable. For starters, The Skillful Teacher program has a “no-excuses” attitude that is common to many of the successful charter schools (David Whitman’s Sweating the Small Stuff details six of them). Breaking out of a closed-door classroom model with a mentor teacher structure also has potential. But as with much during Rhee’s tumultous almost-2-year tenure, only time will tell how these ideas will transplant to the District’s urban schools.

(Editor’s note: Beginning today, Fordham’s Ohio team will be blogging on Flypaper. This first post is from Terry Ryan, Vice President for Ohio Programs & Policy.)

Ohio has long been known as the cradle of presidents. The Buckeye State has seen eight of its sons serve as the nation’s top executive. More recently Ohio has been the incubator of education reformers.

Three national newsmakers with roots in Ohio and a passion for fixing schools are Michelle Rhee (raised in Toledo and a graduate of Maumee Valley Country Day School), Adrian Fenty (a graduate of Oberlin College in Lorain County) and Michael Bennet (former assistant to Ohio Governor Richard Celeste). All three have been at the forefront of American education reform over the last three years, and all three are Democrats.

Rhee is serving as the chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools, where she has worked closely with the Mayor Adrian Fenty to turn around one of the nation’s most troubled big city school systems. Their plan is audacious and, according to Rhee, seeks to transform D.C.’s public schools within eight years for its 50,000 children. The plan focuses on top-down accountability, standardized test scores, and, ultimately, working to close what she describes as “the achievement gap between wealthy white kids and poor minority kids.”

In her first year on the job, and with the complete backing of Fenty, Rhee closed 23 schools, fired 36 principals and cut 15 percent—about 121 jobs—of the central office staff. Just today, Rhee announced “a dramatic overhaul of the district’s 4,000-member teacher corps that would remove a ‘significant share’ of instructors and launch an ambitious plan to foster professional growth for those who remain.” Rhee and Fenty are both unabashed supporters of charter schools.

Michael Bennet has been serving as Denver Public Schools Superintendent where he supported charter schools and gave birth to a merit pay plan for teachers. Under his leadership, the district posted a 6.2 percent increase in reading scores over the three years—more than four times the state gain. In math, there was a 6 percent improvement, more than twice the state gain. And in the middle grades, Denver saw gains of 10 percent in reading and 9 percent in math. On Saturday, Colorado’s Governor Bill Ritter named Bennet as the U.S. Senate replacement for Interior Secretary nominee Ken Salazar.

Ohio, facing a budget shortfall for the next two years of more than $7 billion, badly needs new thinking on ways to improve its schools during these tough times. We should look to former Buckeyes Rhee, Fenty, and Bennet for ideas and inspiration. No interests, other than those of children, should be sacred.

Ohio map from GreenwichMeanTime.com

It’s hard not to root for Michelle Rhee, the butt-kicking, straight-talking, no-nonsense Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools. (Consider this piece of straight talk, from a related article on the incoming Administration, regarding her reluctance to vote for Obama: “It was a very hard decision. I’m somewhat terrified of what the Democrats are going to do on education.”) So I can’t help but say hooray for her making the cover of TIME this week. (The story, by Amanda Ripley, is very good too.) According to our intern Charlotte’s quick research, the last time TIME put an education official on its cover was September 1991; it’s nice to see the issue getting some national attention. Call this the last great success of the Ed in 08 campaign.

Still, let’s admit that Rhee’s tenure in DC is just in the very early stages, and as such she can’t claim much by way of results yet. Furthermore, her most farsighted reforms are being stymied by the teachers union, and they don’t appear to be letting up anytime soon. Consider this quote from the article from Randi Weingarten: “Michelle Rhee believes in scorched earth. I am not saying that D.C.’s school system doesn’t need a lot of help. But I have been part of a lot of reforms, and the one thing I have never seen work is a hierarchical, top-down model.”

Um, Randi, I guess working to fire bad teachers would be considered “hierarchical” and “top-down,” but scorched earth? And how would you characterize her bid to pay great teachers a lot more money? To me that sounds very empowering, even bottom-up.

The coming years in Washington are going to be very entertaining, and not just because the Obama administration is going to have to pull some magic out of a hat to reauthorize No Child Left Behind and otherwise find consensus on k-12 education policy. No, the best theater is going to be Rhee vs. Randi; I imagine the AFT press office is working double time to make sure that Weingarten gets a TIME cover of her own.

TIME magazine cover from TIME website