Schools for Tomorrow Blog

It is simply impossible, Pastorek has come to believe, for a traditional school system, run from the top down by a central administrator, to educate large numbers of poor children to high levels of achievement. “The command-and-control structure can produce marginal improvements,” he told me when we met last month at a coffeehouse on Magazine Street. “But what’s clear to me is that it can only get you so far. If you create a system where initiative and creativity is valued and rewarded, then you’ll get change from the bottom up. If you create a system where people are told what to do and how to do it, then you will get change from the top down. We’ve been doing top-down for many years in Louisiana. And all we have is islands of excellence amidst a sea of mediocrity and failure.”

This piece in The New York Times is from probably the best article I have read on education in the general press this year. Balanced enough to include the perspective of Diane Ravitch (with whom I personally disagree):

“The fundamental issue in American education — I say this after 40 years of having read and studied and written about the problems — is one that is demographic,” she told me. Poor children, Ravitch said, simply face too many problems outside the classroom. “If you don’t buttress whatever happens in school with social and economic changes that give kids a better chance in life and put their families on a more stable footing, then schools alone are not going to solve the problems of poor student performance. There has to be a range of social and economic strategies to support and enhance whatever happens in school.”

ALL OF IT is worth reading.

In my introductory blog, I wrote that I wanted to investigate/examine/interrogate the notion of teacher as professional. I wrote that teachers need to view themselves as professionals and that society needs to treat teachers as professionals, as opposed to treating teachers as well-intentioned “Mother Teresas,” fighting the good fight.

One way to judge whether or not teachers are treated and act like professionals is to compare teachers to other “professionals.” In 2005, the Finance Project, an organization that looks to “support decision-making that produces good results for children, families, and communities,” published a report that compared education to six other fields. The report, titled Preparing and Training Professionals: Comparing Education to Six Other Fields compares professional development in education to six other professions: law, accounting, architecture, nursing, firefighting and law enforcement.

Since we know that teacher quality is the most critical factor in improving student achievement, professional development of teachers is crucial. So how does education stack up as far as professional development?

In comparing preparation programs, all of the other professions had “greater consistency than education in standards across states.” Education, as opposed to the other professions, has no national standards, which, the report says, would “enable preparation programs to better compare their work to that of their peers and to measure progress towards established goals.”

Most of the other professions require practitioners to pass national exams before practicing. The report goes on to compare education to those other professions in six categories. But let’s stop at the issue of national standards.

Accountants, architects, and nurses must pass a single national exam. Lawyers must pass state bar exams, which employ a national or multi-state component.

Why no national exam for teachers? The major stumbling block to a national standard exam for teachers is disagreement around what the standards would entail. Why is it so difficult to come to consensus around the issue of teacher standards? Other professions do it. Does the resistance come from within the ranks of teachers and teacher unions (although the AFT is way ahead of the NEA on proposing teacher standards)? Do states get in the way here? Are they concerned with losing their autonomy? What about society in general? Is there reluctance by society in viewing their children’s teachers as professionals? What do you think?

If former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer wants to draw the attention of politicians and the public to the failings of American schools, holding a Capitol steps news conference may not be the best tactic.

The ever-energetic Romer and a phalanx of Colorado education and political worthies lined up on the west steps Thursday to raise awareness about the need for education reform. (See story here.) The event was part of Romer’s nationwide Ed in ’08 campaign, sponsored by the well-funded Strong American Schools group.

Several reporters lurked on the steps to listen, and a row of TV cameras was rolling. But, the event seemed to yield little coverage in Denver’s MSM (mainstream media, generally used as a term of derision on journalism blogs and discussion groups).

The Denver Post used only two smallish photos and a copy block on page 2 of its second section. There was a sparse four-paragraph story on the paper’s website. The Rocky managed to squeeze a somewhat more substantial story into print – way in the back of the tabloid.

I’ll confess I didn’t watch any local TV news Thursday evening (hey, the Olympics were on), but the Romer event only had a 1-for-5 showing on station websites. Channel 9’s site had a text story with no video; there was no mention on the sites of channels 2, 4, 7 and 13.

To be fair to the local MSM, the news value of the event was as thin as the proficiency levels of some schools, given that it announced no new study, action plan, financial contribution, office opening or anything else concrete that reporters could hang a story on. And there was plenty of other local news Thursday, like the Roan Plateau leasing story and the latest dump of DNC stories. (Come to think of it, how much of that is news?) Finally, times are tough for the MSM – disappearing ad revenue, shrinking staffs, fewer pages in the papers. There’s less room for borderline stories that might have been more fully covered a decade ago.

So, the lesson for Strong American Schools (and every other group trying to raise the profile of education issues) is that names – Romer, Lamm, Ritter, Brown, O’Brien, Hickenlooper, et al – don’t necessarily make news on their own.

It is simply impossible, Pastorek has come to believe, for a traditional school system, run from the top down by a central administrator, to educate large numbers of poor children to high levels of achievement. “The command-and-control structure can produce marginal improvements,” he told me when we met last month at a coffeehouse on Magazine Street. “But what’s clear to me is that it can only get you so far. If you create a system where initiative and creativity is valued and rewarded, then you’ll get change from the bottom up. If you create a system where people are told what to do and how to do it, then you will get change from the top down. We’ve been doing top-down for many years in Louisiana. And all we have is islands of excellence amidst a sea of mediocrity and failure.”

This is from probably the best article I have read on Education in the general press this year. Balanced enough to include the perspective of Diane Ravitch (with whom I personally disagree):

“The fundamental issue in American education — I say this after 40 years of having read and studied and written about the problems — is one that is demographic,” she told me. Poor children, Ravitch said, simply face too many problems outside the classroom. “If you don’t buttress whatever happens in school with social and economic changes that give kids a better chance in life and put their families on a more stable footing, then schools alone are not going to solve the problems of poor student performance. There has to be a range of social and economic strategies to support and enhance whatever happens in school.”

ALL OF IT is worth reading.

There was a compelling - and overlooked - perspective in the Denver Post by the ever-interesting Marguerite Roza on how productivity has transformed most American workplaces and some suggestions on applications to education. HERE is the piece.

The state’s largest school district – Jefferson County – opens its doors to students today. On August 12, you say? Yes, indeed. It appears that Jeffco is helping to push the trend of earlier and earlier starts to the school year.

In a sort of non-binding way, Colorado Revised Statutes § 22-33-102 defines the “academic year” as “beginning about the first week in September.” Right now, with the Olympics crowding the airwaves and the Democratic National Convention coming to town immediately thereafter, the first week in September seems like quite a long time from now.

Once upon a time, it was more the norm for the public schools to kick off the year right after Labor Day. Much of this of course stems from our nation’s agrarian roots and the need to comport with planting and harvesting schedules on the family farm. So by bringing up the fact that Jeffco Schools start today, am I merely bemoaning an antiquated tradition that should be out of place in a 21st-century education system?

Or does the scheduling shift indicate a larger push toward the year-round schooling model? Research shows that the purported academic gains of dropping the long summer break for a series of shorter breaks dispersed throughout the year have largely been oversold. Or am I missing something here? Is there more evidence out there that the year-round model really does help reduce summertime learning losses?

And what about the vital needs of others? Are parents—especially Jeffco parents—on board with starting the school year before the middle of August, much less supportive of the idea of year-round schooling? What about teachers? Is it professionally beneficial to shorten the long summer break and spread out the recesses, or does that model cut into alternative earning opportunities?

Just a little extra food for thought, at least until we reach next week and most other major school districts join Jeffco and get the 2008-09 school calendar underway.

Is the AFT’s new president Randi Weingarten really serious about her social welfare vision for education, or is she just giving us all a big head fake to take our eyes off reforms that really need to happen? It’s a question worth asking. From Education Week, via the blog Kitchen Table Math:

In her speech, the new president also called for a federal law that promotes community schools to serve needy children that provide all the services and activities they and their families need.

“Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities and homework assistance … and suppose the schools included child care and dental, medical and counseling clinics, or other services the community needs,” Ms. Weingarten said. “For example, they might offer neighborhood residents English language instruction, GED programs, or legal assistance.”

The fundamental problem with this “broader, bolder approach” is exactly the one pointed out by Matthew Ladner in his guest post on Jay Greene’s blog. Though I probably wouldn’t use the tongue-in-cheek “Cheech and Chong” analogy, Ladner’s analysis is spot-on:

Personally, I’m trying to imagine a system of public schools that could teach 4th grade kids how to read after spending $40,000 or more on their education. In 2007, 34% of American public school 4th graders scored below basic in reading on the NAEP. If we can’t trust schools to teach kids how to read, just why would we want them trying to fix our teeth or attempting to resolve our legal issues?

The approach touted by Weingarten, the Economic Policy Institute, et al is not only fraught with tenuous assumptions that should have been dispelled after The Great Society experiment, but also would distract schools from their primary purpose. Do KIPP-operated schools and others like West Denver Prep succeed because they try to be all things to their families or because they focus like a laser beam on the things that matter? Yes, the latter.

A strong education grounded in the ability to read and understand math proficiently is what will give the poor and underprivileged the tools to break free from chronic dependency. Randi Weingarten may want a nanny government to perpetuate dependency among certain classes, but individuals and our society will be better off with greater breadth and depth of knowledge. They will be worse off under centralized, government-run welfare services. Let’s promote constructive compassion through families, communities, churches, and private charities, and keep our schools from being further afflicted by the destructive tendencies of government bureaucracy.

The approach? It may be broad, it may be bold, but it’s also—at best—hopelessly naïve. Let’s look for ways to beat the odds, not to compound them. Then again, maybe Randi Weingarten has succeeded in momentarily distracting one old Colorado codger from the primary focus of education reform.

While it is probably human nature to look to solve a particular problem with a “silver bullet” (magic pill, pixie dust, panacea, Batman, whatever) – that single, usually simple solution rarely seems to exist in the complex world in which we actually live.

Certainly education policy research, as well as 30+ years of pretty well-analyzed experience on the ground, suggests that no silver bullet will solve yawning achievement gaps and lower than desirable average performance, whether in Colorado or any other state.  But, we tend to continue looking, instead of focusing our efforts on implementing a handful of policies that show at least some promise of gains.

I am reminded of this most recently by the CSAP results in Denver and Aurora.  Hopefully, those positive results are more indicative of a real turnaround taking hold in those urban districts, and not a one-year blip or statistical “regression to the mean” type result.

Assuming the more positive outlook, what is interesting is the different approaches in these neighboring urban districts.  While there are some overlaps, Aurora’s former military leader John Barry has pursued a series of reforms related to the Broad Foundation training he received to become a superintendent.  I know there was some initial skepticism in the Colorado reform community about these approaches, but they may now be paying off.

Michael Bennet in Denver focused upon The Denver Plan, better literacy, reading, and ESL training, middle school focus, and a variety of leadership and quasi-autonomy reforms.  They too seem to be working.

On the other hand, Mapleton has been the district that many reformers have highlighted as doing lots of great things.  But, their CSAP scores have been moving in the opposite direction, and not just this year – perhaps a long implementation dip, but you have to worry a bit.

All of this says to me that we know a few things that work, but a lot more effort needs to be expended in combining them and really implementing them thoughtfully, not just chasing the next magic fad.  And, that takes a little time and patience, not as an excuse, but as a reality.