The next few years are critical for education reform, with the implementation of higher standards likely to put tremendous pressure on political leaders to abandon course, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday.

“The idea of implementing higher standards, the adoption in 46 states of higher standards, is clearly a huge step in the right direction. (But) that’s the easy part,” Duncan, referring to Common Core standards, said at a national education summit organized by Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education. “Will our political leaders have the courage when test scores drop 20, 30, 40, 50 percent? … Will they have the courage not to backpedal and dummy down standards like political leaders did under No Child Left Behind?”

Despite the challenges, Duncan said he was optimistic that state and local leaders would rise to meet them, and in bipartisan fashion. He pointed to recent reforms as proof.

“I’m actually extraordinarily hopeful,” he said in response to a question from moderator Andy Rotherham. “When I look at what states did, local legislative leaders, chief state officers, what they have done over the past couple of years, no one predicted that would happen. No one predicted that 46 states would adopt higher standards. No one predicted that three dozen states have taken teacher evaluations and principal support to a very different level. No one predicted that we would have 44 states working on the next generation of assessments. Frankly, we’ve had almost no rollback. And honestly, if a couple states choose to roll back, that would not be the end of the world.”

Duncan was a keynote speaker at the fifth annual summit, which drew about 800 participants from nearly every state. He made a pitch for continued investment in early childhood education and stressed teacher quality and teacher equity. He said the fact that not a single district has methodically moved to align its best teachers with its most struggling students is a sign of how far reformers have yet to go. (more…)

A “B” for teacher quality policies. That’s Florida’s grade, according to the National Center for Teacher Quality. That’s higher than any other state, notes the Gradebook.

Bang for the buck. Florida students made some of the biggest gains in the nation on NAEP despite some of the smallest increases in ed funding, notes researcher Matthew Ladner at Jay P. Greene’s Blog.

Lawmakers’ ties to charter schools. WFTV in Orlando takes a look. The Tampa Bay Times did a similar but more detailed story last year.

Charter school facilities funding. The Fort Myers News Press takes a look at a task force’s recommendation to increase property taxes to pay for building construction and maintenance at charter schools. Redefined covers the Florida Charter Schools Conference where this was a topic yesterday.

Report on charter school growth. Miami Herald. StateImpact Florida. redefinED.

Promising charter on its way to Pinellas. With little comment, the Pinellas school board voted 7-0 Tuesday for a charter school application that dovetails with a legal settlement over black student achievement. Lots of history here; I wrote a bit about this earlier this week.

More questions in special needs student’s death. Tampa Bay Times.

(Image from simplystatedbusiness.com)

Message from Florida. Skeptics in Louisiana shouldn’t fight expanded school choice and other reforms that boosted student achievement in Florida, writes Patricia Levesque, executive director of the Foundation for Excellence in Education. Some especially notable lines from her post on the new EdFly Blog: “No amount of regulatory compliance can hope to match a system of decentralized parental choice. Compliance models focus on school and grade-level average results, while empowered parents focus on the particular needs of their children.”

Ed reform group shuts down. Communities for Teaching Excellence, a group that supports the revamp of teacher evaluations and has a presence in Hillsborough County, is closing shop. The Los Angeles Times reports the Gates Foundation ended its financial support. It paraphrases Amy Wilkins, the group’s chairwoman, as saying CTE “was not hitting its marks in terms of generating press coverage and building community coalitions.”

Rick Scott tries to build bridges with teachers. Story from StateImpact Florida here.

High school meets boot camp. The Florida Times Union profiles an alternative school on the fringes of Jacksonville that gives at-risk teens a second chance with structure: “The cadets begin a highly regimented day at 4:45 a.m. with physical training then breakfast and inspection followed by classes starting at 8 a.m. The classes are segregated by gender except for special assemblies. They participate in tutoring, mentoring, counseling and do chores such as their own laundry or cleaning up the barracks and academy grounds. Lights out is 8:45 p.m.”

Superintendents put tax credit scholarships on list. The Tampa Bay Times Gradebook blog posts the ideas being considered by a committee of seven superintendents charged by Gov. Scott with finding ways to reduce red tape for teachers. Times reporter Jeff Solochek notes, “Many of the ideas under consideration have little to do with teachers and bureaucracy, though.” On the list: “Repeal of the state corporate tax credit scholarship program.”

One school made a calendar for parents, with a note like this one below every month’s Bible verse: Research says … the greater the parents’ involvement, the greater the academic achievement for the student.

Another organized a “scavenger hunt” for families, built around tips to help their kids succeed in school. The school usually considered an event a success if 10 parents showed up. The scavenger hunt drew more than 50.

These projects are small examples from a big effort – one fairly unique to both public and private schools, and which highlights an overlooked piece of the ed reform puzzle. For more than a year, Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that oversees Florida’s tax credit scholarship program for low-income students (and co-hosts the redefinED blog), has been quietly working with some of its partner schools to help them build better, deeper relationships with parents.

We're not talking about once-in-a-blue-moon spaghetti dinners. This effort is systematic and long term, led by each school and organically tailored to what it determines are its needs. The plan is for each school to constantly improve its ties with parents – and eventually, its student achievement - based on data the schools themselves will collect.

“Getting parents to be true partners is going to make the work (of teaching and learning) a whole lot easier,” said Carol Thomas, Step Up’s vice president of student learning. Schools in general have “put all of our eggs in one basket, trying to improve teachers and students. And we rarely looked at how we can improve partnerships with parents.”

There's a contrast here with the pitched battle over teacher quality in public schools. To maximize gains from teachers, the biggest in-school factor in student success, ed reformers are going at teachers unions over everything from pay and tenure to evaluations and seniority rights. The recent strike in Chicago, which paralyzed the nation’s third-largest school district for a week, was in large part over these issues. Meanwhile, the potential good that comes from energizing and engaging parents goes untapped.

The Step Up project began last year with 10 schools in Tampa. It’s expanding this year to include 16 more from Venice to Dunedin. Eventually, it will include Step Up partner schools anywhere in the state (more than 1,300 private schools accept tax credit scholarships) that are interested.

This week, the project took another step forward, with Step Up’s Office of Student Learning holding a two-day training session with about 40 representatives from two dozen schools. (more…)

A recent report from Harvard researchers offers more compelling reasons why expanded learning options are so needed for struggling students. Based on data from four urban school districts, the Strategic Data Project at Harvard's Center for Education Policy Research found lower-performing students are placed with brand-new teachers far more often than their higher-performing peers.

Given high turnover in high poverty schools, and the reluctance of school boards to address it, you’d expect more of these match-ups there. But the researchers found them across all schools. And given what we know about the effectiveness of rookie teachers, the tragic impact is obvious: “The systematic placement of novice teachers with lower-performing students can be expected to compound these students’ academic difficulties and exacerbate achievements,” the researchers wrote. They termed it a “double whammy.”

That’s putting it mildly. There is no justification for saddling students with the greatest need with teachers who are often the least effective. It’s a clear case of public schools perpetuating a vicious cycle that they can, within their power, do much to help mitigate.

The practice isn’t good for teachers either. The researchers ask, “Is it the best strategy to develop and retain highly effective teachers by placing them in challenging situations when they are at a critical stage in their development as teachers?”

The report suggests potential remedies, including paying teachers more to work in tough schools. Maybe, someday, school districts will get around to doing that in a meaningful way. In the meantime, how can anyone deny parents the chance to find better odds in an alternative setting?

After more than a decade working in education reform I learned long ago that if I stopped to kick every snapping dog along the pathway, I would never arrive where I needed to go. But every now and then I read something, such as Diane Ravitch’s latest op-ed on CNN.com, and have to take a breath and ask “Really?” One of my earliest resources as I was starting in education reform back around 2000 was her book, “Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms.” But now it appears she’s utterly abandoned that historical analysis in favor of status quo incrementalism and apologies for failure.

Let’s just think about Dr. Ravitch’s assertions:

The NAEP test scores of American students are at their highest point in history: for black students, white students, Hispanic students, and Asian students.

They are at their highest point in history in fourth grade and in eighth grade, in reading and math.

I tend to agree with Dr. Ravitch that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test is the most valid measure of academic performance. But why is that? Primarily, as my American Center for School Choice colleague, Alan Bonsteel, recently reminded us, it is because most states have catered to their own self-interest, aligning examinations to weak standards to give the appearance of academic achievement rather than actually increasing the amount of learning necessary for student success in this century. So for most of the last 10 years, under No Child Left Behind, we permitted widespread creation of dysfunctional and often meaningless standards aligned to dysfunctional and meaningless tests. Logically, this history does not make for a persuasive indictment of the value of legitimate standards and assessment tools.

But beyond that, let’s look at Dr. Ravitch’s assertion:

The “highest point in history” while true, is relative to what?

 

 

 

With the exception of the Asian/Pacific Islander group, I doubt anyone is throwing a parade for the educational system’s accomplishments over the last 20 years. Are 7-point gains over 20 years for African-Americans and Hispanics and a 9-point gain for white students really the kind of progress we expect after multiple billions of real increased educational spending? Yet this seems to be what Dr. Ravitch finds acceptable performance. (more…)

Years ago, the powerful director of a local teachers union told me in no uncertain terms: Differential pay for teachers in high-poverty schools wasn’t a good idea and wouldn’t help poor kids. He called it, and I quoted him, “a glitzy solution.”

So what a jolt it was to learn, after the union leader’s passing, that the big school district he helped shape for decades actually had a differential pay plan – a lucrative benefit he signed off on for a handful of teachers in the district’s elite magnet programs.

I bring this up now because of a new report that touches on teacher views about differential pay. And also because of the backdrop it brings into focus on so many ed reform issues, including expanded school choice. Too often – and I say this as respectfully as I can - school boards and teachers unions appear to lack the will to do the right thing for low-income kids.

Differential pay obviously isn’t all that and a bag of chips. But it is a tool that can be used to attract and/or keep high-quality teachers in high-needs schools. Survey after survey shows the vast majority of teachers agree.

In the latest, an Education Sector report that asked teachers about all kinds of things, 83 percent said they supported more money for teachers in low-performing schools. That’s up from 70 percent in 2008 and 80 percent in 2007. With young teachers, the results were even more lopsided: 88 percent of them liked the idea.

And yet, with few exceptions, school districts have not tried differential pay in a meaningful way. In Florida, this has been true even though state laws and rules have required it. Many districts abide by the letter of the law, offering minimal amounts that don’t make a difference, and so the vicious cycles that could be mitigated instead swirl on.

The district in Pinellas County, Fla., is no exception. That’s the district whose longtime union chief, Jade Moore, I was referring to above. (more…)

At every crossroads toward the future, it’s been said, tradition will post 10,000 people to guard the past. For frustrated Californians that see the need for significant change in the education system, a major number of those guardians are found in California’s Democratic-controlled legislature and the California Teachers Association (CTA), which is the state’s largest political contributor. Unfortunately, the problems are not new. I wrote at length on the terrible effects of California’s teacher employment laws and practices back in 2005, attacking tenure, seniority, and the evaluation and compensation systems as damaging to students. The depth of dysfunction in California has been documented repeatedly, perhaps most thoroughly in the 2007 “Getting Down to Facts” report, issued by Stanford University’s Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice.

One of the key conclusions of the report, based on 22 separate studies it commissioned, was this: Current teacher policies do not let state and local administrators make the best use of the pool of potential teachers nor adequately support current teachers.

Five years later and with virtually no changes to teacher employment, compensation, dismissal, or tenure laws or practices - and no hope of any legislation passing - California’s reformers are following in the steps of great civil rights movements and seeking relief from the courts. In October 2011, a group of families, with support from EdVoice, sued the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to force compliance with a mostly ignored California law known as the Stull Act, which mandates among other things that teacher evaluations occur regularly and that they include student performance data.

Even the current LAUSD superintendent admitted in his deposition that “the current system doesn’t best serve adults or students” and does not focus on “the whole part of an education, and that is how students do.” Now the Democratic mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, has jumped in on the side of the families, filing a friend-of-the court brief insisting on change and noting that LAUSD only evaluated 40 percent of tenured teachers and 70 percent of non-tenured teachers. Moreover, the district’s own task force found “only a tenuous link between evaluations and improved teaching and learning.”

Last month, my colleague at the American Center for School Choice, Steve Sugarman, analyzed the current Reed vs. State of California case that is, at least so far, defeating the “last in, first out” hiring practices that the CTA advocates and most school districts adopt. This policy leads to disproportionate firing of teachers in schools that serve poor neighborhoods and operate in difficult urban areas because the seniority policies of unions and districts place the newly hired teachers at these schools. Thus the trial court found the practice unconstitutionally deprives students of an equal education.

Just last week, lawyers filed on behalf of eight teenage students across the state a third attack on the teaching status quo that demonstrably damages kids. (more…)

Editor's note: High-poverty schools and low-income families are hurt the most by last-in-first-out layoff policies for teachers. In Los Angeles, groups representing low-income parents filed suit against the practice - and so far, they're winning. Berkeley law professor and redefinED host Stephen D. Sugarman writes in this post that low-income parents have the right to equitable treatment for their children.

Unions typically bargain for terms that protect current members and, if need be, give priority to members with more seniority than those with less. In hard times when an employer is downsizing, this “last in, first out” policy best serves the needs of longer-term union members who are most experienced and perhaps most economically dependent on holding onto a job they have done for some time. It also provides a routine practice that lies in contrast to what might be an employer’s desire to lay off those who are, say, the most expensive, the least productive, the most troublesome, or the most active union members.

This “last in, first out” plan is typical in union contacts with public school districts. What it means when teachers have to be laid off is that the least experienced in the district are the first to be let go. These teachers are generally the most recently trained and the least expensive. It is also typically the case that they are disproportionately employed in schools that have had the hardest time attracting and retaining effective teachers, schools that almost invariably contain a disproportionate share of children from low-income families and children of color. These are often under-performing schools as well, although in some cases they might have recently put into effect a promising school improvement regime with the cooperation of the in-place local teaching team.

Does this mean that, in times of economic downturn and curtailed school district budgets, high-needs schools end up with very few teachers and terrible student/teacher ratios? No. Union contracts and federal law require that student teacher ratios remain fairly comparable across the schools in a district. Instead, slightly more experienced teachers from within the district are meant to be shifted over to these teacher-short schools, either via transfer or after themselves being laid off and then re-hired. In theory, this could actually provide high need schools with more experienced teachers than they had before, and that could possibly be desirable for their students on the theory (generally supported by research) that brand-new teachers are generally less effective that those with three or more years of experience.

But on the ground, it often works out quite differently. (more…)

It’s a common refrain in ed reform debates: If only more parents would do the right thing, schools would be a lot easier to fix. Especially, it seems, black parents.

Whenever I wrote a newspaper story about struggling black students, it was guaranteed to make the web site’s “most commented” list. Scores of angry people would write in to berate and belittle black parents, often in blatantly racist terms. Bill Cosby makes similarly hard-line arguments in a tough-love kind of way. So do some media personalities, like nationally syndicated columnist Bill Maxwell.

In his column last Sunday, Maxwell takes on a faith-based group in Pinellas County, Florida called FAST, which stands for Faith and Action for Strength Together. FAST recently made headlines for urging the Pinellas County School Board to do something about abysmal reading scores in 20 high-poverty schools, many of them with predominantly black student populations. In a public meeting, 3,000 members of the group called on the board to adopt a “direct instruction” approach.

As he has done before, Maxwell called for more accountability from black parents. He suggested it was a waste of time to focus on what schools may or may not be doing. He said the district’s web site had plenty of good tips.

Maxwell is right to stress how much parents matter. Nobody in their right mind disagrees. But like many things in education, this isn’t a case of either-or. (more…)