In the world of film documentary, the word ‘see’ means ‘video tape,’ and Washington DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee was actually inviting us to run our cameras as she fired one of her employees.

My colleagues Jane Renaud and Cat McGrath accepted the invitation on the spot. As Jane recalls, “She told us to come back at a specific time, and so we got a sandwich, returned to her office, set up the equipment, and shot the meeting.”

Jane and Cat had spent the morning with Chancellor Rhee, filming her meetings with parents, and with community groups and principals. Rhee was a dynamo, moving easily from meeting to meeting, and from scene to scene, and always seemingly unaware of the presence of our cameras, including the scene where she fires a school principal.

Our film of that event was broadcast nationally on PBS NewsHour and helped to illuminate the persona of Michelle Rhee as a fearless and determined reformer who puts the interests of children first.

Now an Academy Award-winning filmmaker has inserted the footage into his new feature film, without our permission.
For me it is more than just another spat between filmmakers. It is a matter of principle and respect.

Here’s some background: Early in 2009 Davis Guggenheim reached out to us in an e-mail. He praised our work, and he asked me to call him. I had admired his earlier film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and I told him so on the phone. We had a pleasant conversation, and he told me he wished to use some of our Rhee footage. He identified the clips he wanted, including the scene where Superintendent Rhee fires the employee. When he asked to buy it, I told him that we had never sold footage before, but at that time we were actually having bit of a financial struggle, so I told Mr. Guggenheim that I might be interested, for the right price.

Rather than discuss terms, we agreed to get back to one another to work out the actual deal. I believed that the footage was worth at least $25,000, which would have been a great help to us at the time. I waited for an offer. Not long afterward his producer called. She offered $5,000.

My immediate reaction was that I was being low-balled, that because his people knew our situation, they expected us to take whatever they offered.

So I said no. Of course, this was a negotiation, and I expected a decent counter-offer, but I also thought that if none came that would also be okay. The truth is, we had long planned to put this footage into a documentary of our own. For me, for us, this was a win-win game.

But then came a bit of stunning news. In mid-January Mr. Guggenheim’s producer called. We are using the footage anyway, she announced, and we want to give you one last chance to take the $5,000. When we did not accept, she then cited the ‘fair use’ doctrine and noted that their film would give Learning Matters credit on screen.

Now, the doctrine of ’fair use’ is ambiguous at best and is very limited for creative works, where qualitatively important work is taken and the use undermines the market or replaces the market for the original–all which are the case in this situation. I believe that Mr. Guggenheim’s attempted purchase of our footage is nothing more than firm confirmation that they knew the ground rules before they went about making their film.

And it is, by all reports, a very powerful film. It was very well received at Sundance, and we understand that Paramount’s Vantage Pictures bought the rights for worldwide distribution. A fall opening is planned.

Well, our lawyer has informed Mr. Guggenheim that we intend to take whatever steps are necessary to protect our property. In turn, Mr. Guggenheim’s attorney has said that ‘fair use’ applies and has warned me not to criticize his client.

But our attorney has been down this road before; in fact, he even argued and won a landmark copyright case before the Supreme Court. Film at eleven!

COMING SOON ON PBS NEWSHOUR.

How does one teach a 17-year-old who reads at a third or fourth grade level?  “Dick and Jane” books are insulting, of course, even though they may be the right degree of difficulty.  What approach would you try with teenagers who have gotten in trouble with the law?

When Paul Vallas took over the New Orleans Recovery School District in 2007, he inherited hundreds of these cases. His solution was a network of alternative schools run by a private contractor, but that did not go as planned. This year Vallas is trying something radically different, hoping to address the deep roots of students’ academic and behavioral problems.  Tune in tonight to find out what he’s trying…and whether it’s working.

Check your local listings and stay tuned.  Sign up to receive emails about when our programs air.

Henry was for all intents and purposes a slave, but with a huge difference: he knew that he would become a free man on a specific contractual date. He might even gain his freedom before that date if he saved enough. But in either case, each day he worked brought him closer to his freedom.

Is it too over-the-top to propose that this is akin to America’s high schools today? Students are certainly not slaves, but at times they are a bit like indentured servants, who, if they put in their seat-time for a set number of days and years, will receive diplomas and be done with schooling. They will be free.

Back to Henry Merrow; he served out his  term and became a free man. He eventually married and moved to Reading, Massachusetts,  where he raised an impressively large family and prospered. His is a success story, but I find myself wondering if some indentured servants simply became fed up with the system and ran away before their terms were up.

It sure happens a lot today in our schools. Over the course of an average school year close to 6,000 high school students simply drop out every day. They decide not to stick around for the full term of their indenture.  We might ask whether the high school experience so stultifying and so frustrating that we should call their behavior rational, but that’s the wrong question. Rather ask, what is the cost of such ‘voting with your feet’? Well, it’s costly all around. We know that dropouts are more likely to be incarcerated, underemployed or saddled with children while still in their teens. We can calculate the cost to our economy, and it’s in the billions of dollars.

What brought my family history to my mind was the announcement a few weeks ago that dozens of high schools are going to give 10th graders the opportunity to test out of high school early.  Other countries, including Finland, France, England and Singapore have been doing this for a while, so it’s not an untested idea.

This effort is being organized by Marc Tucker’s organization, the National Center for Education and the Economy, with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

According to reports, the eight participating states (Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont) agree that the academic requirements for leaving must be high.  That is, the current high school exit exams, where the bar is set at about a 10th grade level, are not acceptable.  The new ‘Board exams’ will cover English, math, science and history  and will, presumably, not be exclusively multiple-choice.

What a concept: make it clear to students exactly what they need to master, set the bar high, and provide multiple opportunities for students to gain their freedom. Even those who fail to pass the tests the first time around will gain valuable knowledge.  Those who do  pass can move on to community college, four-year colleges, or the vocation of their choice.

Each of the eight states has pledged to recruit between 10 and 20 high schools to participate in the program beginning next school year. According to a report in the New York Times, the project’s supporters include the National Education Association and the National Association of Manufacturers, unlikely bedfellows on most occasions.

What’s not to like about this?  What could go wrong? Could this be the jump-start that we need in the direction of more challenging and relevant curriculum?  Or is this a stalking horse for a two-track curriculum, one for the Ivy Leaguers and one for workers?

Ever the optimist, I say, “Here’s to ending the indentured servitude that we know as high school.” I imagine Henry Merrow would approve!

——

Further Reading

High Schools to Offer Plan to Graduate 2 Years Early [New York Times, 02/17/10]

The big picture isn’t much brighter, what with some school districts embracing “creation science” as deserving of equal billing with evolution.

All of this is obscuring what may be a greater challenge – unlearning bad science.

A few years ago I watched a teacher at Cary Academy in North Carolina ask his science students which organism had the most chromosomes per cell: mosquitoes, corn, broad beans, cats or humans? The kids picked humans, which is correct, because we have 46 chromosomes, while cats have 38 and mosquitoes only 6. Then the teacher expanded the list to include horses, chickens, goldfish and potatoes. Once again, his students confidently chose their own species. At that point he told them that even potatoes, with 48 chromosomes, beat us humans, and goldfish had 104 chromosomes, more than twice as many as humans.

The students were stunned (as they are every year). How could they be less evolved than a potato? Or a horse? What this teacher wanted them to do was confront their assumptions, because he knew that, in order for students to learn science, they first had to unlearn what they have assumed to be true (in this case, the more chromosomes the better).

As kids, we make all sorts of “common sense” assumptions about the ways the world works, which is a loose definition of science. “We have more brains than horses or potatoes do, so we must have more chromosomes,” or “The sun makes us warm, it’s warm in summer, and so the sun must be closer.” All too often we never unlearn them; instead, “book learning” gets layered on top long enough for us to pass exams. Then we revert.

Filmmakers at Harvard’s graduation provided powerful evidence of this when they asked new graduates why it’s colder in New England in the winter and warmer in the summer. In the 1988 video “A Private Universe,” each young man and woman explains with perfect confidence that the sun is closer to the earth in the summer and farther away in winter.

Of course, the opposite is true; the earth’s orbit is elliptical, and New Englanders are actually closer to the sun in winter. The earth is tilted away, though, and it’s the tilt of the earth’s axis that determines climate.

We can assume that nobody actually taught those Harvard seniors bad science. Instead, they probably intuited that “fact” when they were young and never unlearned it. Since they were admitted to Harvard, they must have learned enough classroom science to get high grades on tests, but without dislodging or unlearning what they thought they knew from observation. As Lee S. Shulman, former president of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, has noted, “The first influence on learning is not what teachers do pedagogically, but the learning that’s already inside the learner.”

A ray of hope is the Obama administration’s emphasis on STEM–science, technology, engineering and mathematics–with dollars backing up the focus. But most of this energy is directed at the upper grades in schools and teacher preparation in college. We need excellent science teaching in elementary schools, instead of raising a hamster or a rabbit and putting an artichoke avocado pit in water to watch it develop.

Top photo credit: “Junk Science” by Bill Keaggy.

Connor graduated from Princeton College with a PhD in Classics in 1961, and went on to be a professor there for over twenty years. He then worked as the president of the Teagle Foundation, which advocates for liberal arts in higher education. Currently, he serves as the senior advisor to the president. Producer John Tulenko interviewed Connor about why he thinks liberal arts education remains as a valuable path for American students.

For more information on The Teagle Foundation, visit www.teaglefoundation.org.

The Asia Society is trying to change the reputation of America’s education system. Its created a network of 20 schools that try to answer the question, what should today’s students learn about the world? This network of schools, called the International Studies Schools Network, teaches foreign languages, connects students from across the globe to work on projects together, and seeks to embed global history in all facets of education. So, how are they doing? Producer John Tulenko speaks with Tony Jackson, Vice President for Education, Asia Society.

For more information visit www.asiasociety.org.

Photo credit: Jami Saunders.

How does that happen?  How does a kid who hasn’t learned enough to be promoted get moved up anyway?

Here’s what I have been able to figure out. Louisiana administers a state test called LEAP in the fourth and eighth grades, which students must pass to move into fifth grade and ninth grade, respectively.  The teenagers at Booker T. Washington Alternative School passed the fourth-grade LEAP — that much we know.

But what happened next?  Somehow they were promoted THREE times by their teachers and their schools. It might have happened a FOURTH time if the state hadn’t checked up again in eighth grade. Only then was someone held accountable.

And guess who was held accountable?  The students, not the adults who had let the kids fall through the cracks.  The students were told that they were deficient and could not move on to high school.  Are some of these young people angry?  Wouldn’t you be?

To her credit, principal Rosemary Martin — in her first year there — is candid. “We understand that somewhere along the road someone dropped the ball,” she told me.

She said that she tells students it’s not their fault and urges them to focus on the future. “I tell them,” she said, “’’We know that some things happen.  But we want to take you to where you need to be.  Allow us an opportunity to take you where you should be at, at this point.’  And most of them will say, ‘Okay.’”

I pushed her. “Are you willing to acknowledge that these kids got screwed?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Yes, we have to acknowledge that.  That’s the first step, acknowledgment.”

I am not a fan of cheap bubble tests, but, when you hear stories like this one, how could anyone argue against LEAP or tests like it?  If some adults in our schools are going to find excuses for promoting students whose skill levels are inadequate, then we need more LEAP-like tests, not fewer.

I am familiar with the arguments in favor of social promotion, that kids need to be with their age group, that their self esteem suffers when they are with kids who are four, five and six years younger, and that the younger kids can be victimized by the older youth.  Some teachers are under so much pressure with overcrowded classes and such that they end up having to triage.  Or perhaps they decide to promote a kid when they realize the alternative is to have him in their class again next year. Whatever the reasons, I think that “retention versus social promotion” is a false dilemma. Neither option is a good one.

The only viable option is to track progress carefully and intervene right away when kids start falling behind.  We need regular testing, we need to trust teachers and their evaluations, and we need to provide the resources those teachers need. It shouldn’t take a state-mandated test to “prove” that some kids need help.

And finally, the adults who let this happen must be accountable for their failure. They should not be allowed to collect a paycheck for their mediocre work. (That, by the way, is the argument of my new book.)

When you see the NewsHour piece, I think you will be inclined to approve of what Vallas and his team are trying to do for these “overage” youth.  Booker T. Washington middle school seems to have become de facto “ungraded” in that no one reminds the students that they are still in, say, sixth grade rather than eighth.  Rather, the kids know that they must pass the LEAP test and, when they do, they move on to high school.

The school has what amounts to an anger management class, which it needs.  In the piece you will meet one terrific young teacher who uses a so-called “smart board” to make basic grammar, spelling and punctuation a fun game.

But I walked away wondering why school systems create alternatives only after years of failing at the same old stuff.  Talk about being ‘overage’ learners!

This video is part of our series following the day in the life of a Teach for America recruit. Watch the entire series here and weigh in with your comments.

Some school districts and private and parochial schools around New Orleans have canceled school for the Monday after the game, reasoning that most students would be partying hard all weekend and wouldn’t show up anyway.

Call me an old fogey, but I find closing schools to be irresponsible behavior on the part of the adults. Are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders going to be worn out from partying? What are working parents supposed to do, or are they also exempt from going to work?

Worse, however, the educators are bypassing a remarkable teachable moment, a chance to connect learning with the city’s obsession with the Saints. Why not encourage kids to wear their Saints clothing to school that day, schedule a celebration (or a wake), and—this is the key—build some interesting lesson plans in various courses?  Math is a no-brainer because of all the statistics, but students could also write about the game and their experience watching it.  They could write letters to favorite players, congratulating or commiserating.  I’d assign students who don’t care much about sports to track commercials; then I’d show some in class and help the kids analyze the rhetorical and persuasive techniques being used.

By canceling school the adults are inadvertently revealing who’s really in charge: the kids. The unspoken message is clear: what we offer in schools isn’t enough to hold students’ attention.

Which brings me to the subject of classroom control: A careful viewer of The Real World of Teach for America, our series of portraits of TFA teachers, detected a thread running through many of the profiles.  “Most of these teachers seem to be overly concerned about control,” he told me.  “I get the feeling that they’ve been taught some simple rule like ‘Control first, teaching next.’”  What about Lindsay or Colleston, I asked him?  “They’re the exception,” he said.  “They seem to understand that control is a byproduct of stimulating education.”

I told the man about a Teach for America rookie whose class we filmed in last week.  Matt Taylor teaches English at an alternative school, a middle school for kids who are four, five or six years below grade level.  Just imagine trying to teach 16-year-olds whose literacy level is not much above “See Spot Run” but who are acutely sensitive to their age/skill level discrepancy!  In the 90-minute class I observed, Matt engaged his students in 8 or 9 different activities, using a Promethean Board to make everything interactive.  He peppered students with questions, rewarding correct answers without calling attention to incorrect ones.  At one point he displayed a long paragraph on the Board, a passage that contained at least a dozen errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation. What ensued was a game in which all but one student engaged (one slept most of the class).  If I remember correctly, Matt had told the students that he had found only 12 errors.  They found two or three more and enjoyed the triumph of outdoing their teacher, a darn good strategy on the teacher’s part.

Control was not an issue, ever.  It never is if kids are engaged.

But so much of school is about control, which brings me to technology and media, an opportunity that I think most schools are missing. Adults and kids encounter about 3000 media messages every day, from ads on TV to logos discreetly placed on a shirt breast pocket to loud New Orleans Saints jerseys.  It’s time for schools to acknowledge this, embrace this, and teach to it, but first they have to give up some control.

It’s often said that children today “swim in the digital sea,” but I’m a skeptic. We’re immersed, to be sure, but I think everyone needs swimming lessons, adults and children alike.  Kids may be digital natives, but that doesn’t mean they know it all. Adults—not natives but visitors–often try to harness technology in order to control the environment.

I’m in a plane on my way to the Ohio 2010 Educational Technology Conference in Columbus as I write this, and I’ve been learning from the writing and thinking of some of the participants, including Dennis Harper, the founder and CEO of Generation Yes and an internationally recognized expert on technology and education.

Harper is angry that students are, for the most part, excluded from meaningful participation in technology in schools—it’s done to them.  He likens this to civil rights struggles of blacks, women and gays.

“For decades, the U.S. missed out on a lot of talent that could have been provided by women and minorities if they had been engaged and empowered. Hardly anyone is considering how much talent is being wasted by not allowing students, who represent 93% of a school’s population, to be engaged and empowered.”

I gather that Harper wants another ‘civil rights movement,’ one that will turn over control of technology in school to the students.  He seems to think that high schools can and will adapt, that adults can let go of the reins.

I’m not so optimistic.  Today well over 1 million students drop out of school each year. That’s about 6,000 students every day over a 180-day school year.  Awful as that is, I’m almost as worried about those who do not drop out, who instead put in the seat time and endure a narrow curriculum.

So if high school doesn’t work for the million+ who drop out or for many more who endure, what’s the alternative?

We’re working on it. For the past four years we have been trying to develop an alternative to the traditional high school diploma and the GED.  Our goal is a valid and reliable instrument that measures the skills that young people are going to need to have as adults: persistence, the ability to work with others (including those who may not look like them); the ability to communicate, use technology, gather and assimilate data, and make public presentations.

We call it the Verified Résumé. It’s a work in progress, involving adult trainers at our Listen Up projects and those who eventually employ the young people.  Our trainers grade youth on the skills listed above, and then so do their employers.  Is there a match?  If not, what’s gone wrong?  This résumé is a living document, validated with each new job or learning opportunity.  It’s not about control but about shared learning—and learning of real skills that matter, not just stuff that can be tested on a multiple choice exam.

Will this work?  We are optimistic, and we are grateful to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which just last week renewed our grant to allow the work to continue for at least one more year.  I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Geaux, Saints!

University of Tennessee graduate Kady Amundson’s days rarely end when school is over. At the start of her Teach for America assignment, her school faced administrative and scheduling difficulties.  But that didn’t stop Kady:  she became a tutor and cheerleader to a 19 year old struggling to graduate senior year for the third time, and Kady is now in her third year of teaching.  How’d she overcome the early hurdles that so many TFA teachers face?

This video is part of our series following the day in the life of a Teach for America recruit. Watch the entire series here and weigh in with your comments.

Today, Teach for America (TFA) is the country’s largest provider of teachers for America’s low-income communities. Wendy Kopp sat down with us in Spring 2008 to talk about TFA’s core values, some bright alums (including Michelle Rhee) and how TFA is influencing DC and New Orleans school districts.

This video is part of our series following the day in the life of a Teach for America recruit. Watch the entire series here and weigh in with your comments.

#1.  Last week the PBS NewsHour aired our piece about what the federal government is calling the Race to the Top, the $4.35 billion competition for education dollars.  It aired the night 40 states and the District of Columbia filed their applications.

#2.  We’re rolling out a bonus web video and two podcasts that feature a lot more information about the Race. This bonus video with Race director Joanne Weiss (below) will give you a better sense of the woman Arne Duncan hired to run the huge grant program.  In one podcast, you hear Colorado’s Lieutenant Governor Barbara O’Brien try to persuade teachers and other locals that more state and federal involvement is a good thing.  Finally, representatives from Maryland and Delaware and Weiss herself talk about one of the elephants in the room, the Gates Foundation and its $250K grants to some—but not all—states competing for Race to the Top dollars.

#3.  And we are also releasing parts five and six of our 7-part series about Teach for America. These are short video profiles of rookie teachers in New Orleans, vivid pictures of the highs and lows of what it’s like to be on the front lines in urban education—with barely two months of preparation.  (There’s also an 8th part, an interview with TFA founder Wendy Kopp.)

That’s 12 (TWELVE) separate productions in the space of a few weeks.  Sounds like the work of a small army, doesn’t it? But there are only nine of us at Learning Matters

Watch the credit roll for a news program or a documentary sometime.  If you can, count the names as they scroll by.  Quite a few, aren’t there?

Our work continues.  We’re planning another segment about the Race to the Top, looking at the judging process and digging into the skepticism coming from right and left.  I’m in New Orleans now with two colleagues, working on the next installment of our series about this city’s attempt to rebuild its schools, under the leadership of Paul Vallas.

These are remarkable times in American public education. The federal government’s role grows ever larger, economic pressures on schools seem to increase weekly, and foreign competition is a growing threat.  In these circumstances, schools can be forgiven for battening down the hatches in hopes of surviving the storm.  It’s perfectly understandable—but it’s probably bad strategy.

Holding onto the old ways almost never works. It hasn’t worked for newspapers, it isn’t working in journalism, and it probably won’t in public education either.

But what will emerge?  Is Race to the Top just the breath of new energy that’s required in public education, or is it a last gasp, akin to breeding better, faster horses for the Pony Express?

We’ll do our best to report these stories for you.

This video is part of our series following the day in the life of a Teach for America recruit. Watch the entire series here and weigh in with your comments.

This video is part of our series following the day in the life of a Teach for America recruit. Watch the entire series here and weigh in with your comments.

Whether the additional funding will produce a better application remains to be seen. When winners are announced in April, many will be curious to learn who got help and who did not.

This video is part of our series covering the Race to the Top. Watch all related videos and listen to more podcasts here.

We joined her in Pueblo Colorado where she confronted a room full of skeptical teachers and parents.

This video is part of our series covering the Race to the Top. Watch all related videos and listen to more podcasts here.

On January 19th, 40 states and D.C. submitted their applications to the Department of Education. In the applications states outline their plan to improve schools and present strategies on how they intend to enact Secretary Arne Duncan’s four core areas of reform; including more charter schools and tying student achievement data to teacher performance. Weiss gives us an inside look at what it takes to win this race.

Make no mistake about the educational shape our schools are in—it’s bad!  More than one million students drop out of school every year, costing the economy billions of dollars. International comparisons are downright embarrassing.  Only 1.3 percent of our 15-year-olds scored at the highest level of mathematical proficiency, putting us 24th out of 30 nations participating in PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment.  By contrast, 9.1 percent of Korean and 6 percent of Czech 15-year-olds scored at the highest level.

Duncan believes he knows how states can shape up.  For openers, they have to step on a reliable scale.  In education, that means a transparent data system that tracks students’ progress throughout their school years, and it means common standards, so that everyone is using the same weight measures.  (Today each state chooses its tests and decides what constitutes passing.)

His plan for better nutrition, educationally speaking, includes a diet of charter schools, publicly funded but independently run institutions.

Losing weight requires more than better food.  Serious dieters also work out sensibly, focusing on the parts of the body that need attention.  In the gym, one might use the Stairmaster to tone up the legs and thighs and free weights to develop upper body strength; in education, that means putting the best teachers in the lowest performing schools.  It means paying the best teachers more money.

Another key to getting in shape is getting rid of bad habits, whether it’s smoking, snacking or eating a big dessert just before bedtime.  The bad habit that education’s diet doctor wants eliminated is the failing school.  Duncan wants states to close down their persistently bad schools, perhaps as many as 5,000 of them across the country, and reopen them only when there’s a serious plan for improvement.

Most states have just submitted their ‘diets’ to Washington, which will review them and decide which deserve a big reward. This spring some states could receive as much as $700 million.

But winners won’t get the money all at once.  Duncan plans to monitor their ‘diets’ over the next several years and will dole out the money only to states that stick to their promised education reforms.

Will Arne Duncan’s nutrition plan, his ‘Race to the Top,’ be successful?  Will school systems across the country lose weight and get in better (educational) shape?  If it does, it will be the exception to the rule, because, as nearly all of us know from personal experience, most diets fail.

It’s a massive gamble on Washington’s part, an effort to change state and local education policies by dangling the carrot of big dollars in front of states and school districts that are desperately trying to make ends meet. Washington wants more charter schools, merit pay for teachers, and plans for putting the best teachers in the worst schools.

In the weeks before the applications were due, we watched legislators and educators in Colorado, Maryland and other states planning their strategies. Some states changed laws just to qualify to compete, while others rewrote policies in hopes of increasing their chances of winning.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, some states will walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars, while others will be left without a cent.

Who will get some of the money? We look into the race preparations.

Download transcript (pdf)

This video is part of our series covering the Race to the Top. Watch all related videos and listen to more podcasts here.

This video is part of our series following the day in the life of a Teach for America recruit. Watch the entire series here and weigh in with your comments.

This video is part of our series following the day in the life of a Teach for America recruit. Watch the entire series here and weigh in with your comments.

This series explores those questions.

Over the course of two years, Learning Matters producers followed 7 Teach for America recruits as they fulfilled their assignments in New Orleans.
**

These are their stories.

Watch all 7 profiles and weigh in with your ideas and thoughts. Join the discussion happening here, on Facebook and Twitter.

These are important questions at any time, but I submit they are of particular importance today, with Teach for America (and other alternative routes into the classroom) growing in popularity.

No doubt about Teach for America’s ascendancy.  During the presidential campaign both candidates spoke favorably about the program, and President Obama often speaks highly of it.  Here’s one example: when he signed the Serve America Act last April he went out of his way to cite the growing popularity of TFA as evidence of young America’s commitment to public service, saying in part, “I’ve seen a rising generation of young people work and volunteer and turn out in record numbers…they have become a generation of activists possessed with that most American of ideas – that people who love their country can change it…they are why 35,000 young people applied for only 4,000 slots in Teach For America.”  (That’s a 42 percent increase over the previous year.)

Many of those young people come straight out of our finest colleges and universities.  Thirteen percent of Harvard’s class of 2009 applied, and TFA is more popular than top Ivies.   ‘Only’ 69 percent of those accepted into Princeton choose to attend, but 77 percent of those selected for TFA choose to join.

And when I linked President Obama and TFA in a Google search, it produced nearly 9 million citations.

At his Senate confirmation hearing in January 2009, Obama’s choice for Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, had high praise for Teach for America and Kopp herself.

Teach for America has become a household word in its short history.  I suspect everyone knows that Wendy Kopp developed the idea as her senior thesis at Princeton in 1989 and then founded the program in 1990.  As it prepares to celebrate its 20th anniversary, TFA has put more than 14,000 teachers into hard-to-staff classrooms, usually for two-year stints.  Less than a quarter remain in the classroom beyond two years, but over 60 percent of TFA ‘graduates’ stay connected to public education.  Prominent alumni include KIPP founders Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin and Washington, DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

In a funny way, I was ‘in’ Teach for America long before Wendy Kopp came up with the idea.  I had been accepted into the Peace Corps and was scheduled to teach English in East Africa, but then I failed the physical just a few months before my Dartmouth graduation in 1964.  Even though I had taken only one education course at Dartmouth, I was determined to teach.  And so, two months after my spinal fusion and still in a brace, I began teaching at a high school just outside New York City.

I worked long hours, spent most weekends grading papers, made a lot of mistakes, tried to bring imagination and creativity into my lessons.  There were four other rookies on the staff that year.  We supported each other, and, to be truthful, we shared a certain smug attitude toward many of the veteran teachers, who, we felt, were just putting in the hours and didn’t care as much about the kids as we did.

By the end of my second year, I hit my stride and was doing a pretty good job.  That’s when I left to go to graduate school.

As a reporter I have been in a fair number of classrooms with TFA corps members.  They are almost always fun to be around, because they are bright, energetic and outgoing.  Their idealism and goodness virtually ooze out of every pore.  What’s not to like?

Well, to be honest, sometimes their teaching is not to like.  After all, they are first-year teachers who have had just five weeks of summer training and a 1-week orientation in their assigned city.  They make all sorts of rookie mistakes.  Occasionally I recognized in them that smug attitude I once exhibited toward veterans.

This week we are releasing the first two of a series of video profiles of Teach for America teachers at work, scenes from their classrooms in high schools in New Orleans.

I think you will end up liking all of these young men and women.  We certainly did.  And you would be thrilled to have some of them teaching your children.  But probably not all of them.

Meet Yale graduate Daniel Hoffman. He entered Teach for America with high hopes, but one year later, Daniel was out of the classroom. Sometimes even the best of intentions aren’t enough.

This video is part of our series following the day in the life of a Teach for America recruit. Watch the entire series here and weigh in with your comments.

Meet Lindsay Ordower from Mount Holyoke College. She came to Teach for America determined to succeed. But on any given school day, Lindsay’s classroom was only half full. How do you teach students that aren’t there?

This video is part of our series following the day in the life of a Teach for America recruit. Watch the entire series here and weigh in with your comments.

Listen Up! has received a grant of $400,000 from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, MI to continue its Verified Resume project. The funds will be used to assist community-based and other organizations certify the career skills of young adults. The purpose is to help young adults, especially those who are disadvantaged, obtain and succeed at jobs. The mechanism is a Verified Resume. The ultimate goal of the project is to create a valid and reliable alternative to the traditional high school diploma that young adults can use when looking for jobs.

The Verified Resume process:

• Imparts skills and behaviors youngsters need for success in college and work such as responsibility, working in teams, listening and communicating.
• Provides a document for young people to use. Like a letter of recommendation, the VR is a valuable asset for those who don’t have someone to vouch for them.
• Establishes feedback from work to youth development organizations by connecting youth programs to immediate work supervisors who directly observe the youngsters on the job. Unlike a traditional diploma, a Verified Resume is a living document that changes to reflect a youth’s work experience.

The project’s goal is to engage up to eight organizations in each of five communities in the process and ultimately issue Verified Resumes to nearly 900 young adults over the course of 12 months. Dr. Arnold Packer, the distinguished economist, is directing the field work for Listen Up!
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About Listen Up!
Listen Up! is a youth media network that connects young video producers and their allies to resources, support, and projects in order to develop the field and achieve an authentic youth voice in the mass media. Listen Up! is a project of Learning Matters, Inc., a Peabody Award-winning production company. For over 15 years Learning Matters has been producing outstanding reporting about American education.

About W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Established in 1930, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society. Grants are concentrated in the United States , Latin America and the Caribbean, and southern Africa. For further information, visit the Foundation’s website at www.wkkf.org.

In mid-December the New York Times reported that poor children are four times more likely to be given powerful antipsychotic drugs than their middle-income counterparts. One study cited in the reporting indicates that poorer children also receive these strong drugs for less serious conditions. Why? Several explanations are offered: Medicaid pays less for psychotherapy and counseling than does private insurance; fewer counselors are available for the poor; and drugs are easier. As one co-author noted, “A lot of these kids are not getting other mental health services.”

That’s today’s news, but for me it literally is déjà vu all over again, because I have reported on this same issue twice, first in the 70’s and again in the mid-90’s.

Back in the late 1970’s when I was with NPR, I spent a couple of months in mental hospitals for poor and middle class children in Maryland and Texas. It was truly horrifying to see how young children whose major problem seemed to be poverty were being drugged. As I recall, their Medicaid coverage was limited to a small number of weeks, after which they were simply released to the streets. By contrast, the children of the well-to-do were less likely to be medicated, more likely to have one-on-one counseling with a psychiatrist, and so forth.

One teenage girl told her story of being walked to the highway and told to hitchhike home. She said a group of young men picked her up, took her to an apartment for sex, and then let her go. Her language was far more graphic, but we ran the story as she told it, with an advance warning to stations. Despite the warning, “Children in Mental Institutions” got me kicked off the air in parts of Texas. (It also led to a lifelong friendship with Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, who happened to hear the program and wrote me a lovely letter about it.)

Fast forward to 1995, when my colleague John Tulenko and I reported on Attention Deficit Disorder.  A.D.D.: A Dubious Diagnosis? followed the money trail and showed that, while the disorder was genuine, the A.D.D. epidemic was man-made. We learned that the maker of Ritalin, the popular A.D.D. drug, was quietly funneling money to a supposedly neutral parents’ group called CHADD. CHADD had managed to infiltrate the U.S. Department of Education, which had underwritten a series of so-called ‘public service announcements’ in which CHADD leaders passed themselves off as ordinary parents and praised Ritalin. Simultaneously CHADD was lobbying Congress to change the drug regulations to make methylphenidate—generic Ritalin—easier to come by. At the time the U.S. was consuming about 85 percent of the world’s supply of the drug. When we made the film, several million kids were being medicated, the large majority of them white teenage boys.

We found one heartening piece of good news in that story: African American parents were not inclined to accept a diagnosis that required medicating their children, whether the diagnosis came from a teacher or a counselor, because, as one parent told us, “We have enough drugs in our community. I don’t believe that more drugs are a solution.”

A.D.D. is a peculiar disease. It says, ‘You are deficient because you aren’t paying enough attention to what we (your teachers or your parents) think is important. And so we will medicate you!”

Gene Haislip of the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration Office was responsible for determining annual production quotas for methylphenidate and Ritalin. Haislip told us that, while there was a window of legitimate use for the drug, the data suggested, “this has become a popular fad…especially when you realize that the United States is using five times as much as the entire rest of the planet.”

As journalists are trained to do, we asked, “Who benefits?” We were shocked to discover when we followed the money trail, that Ciba-Geigy, then the primary producer of Ritalin, was covertly funding a parents’ group known as CHADD, Children with Attention Deficit Disorder . While not illegal for a pharmaceutical company to fund non-profit organizations, the transactions (more than $800,000 over three years) were made public, if at all, in very small print. CHADD maintained that there was no quid pro quo, but its widely distributed materials recommended Ritalin by name to parents concerned about their children’s behavior.

Although the American Psychiatric Association recognizes ADD as a mental disorder, the exact cause is unknown, there are no medical tests for it, no clear medical or physical evidence exists of its condition, and the identifying characteristics are blatantly subjective. They include fidgeting with hands and feet, squirming in your seat, getting out of your chair when you’re supposed to sit still, and running about and climbing excessively. That’s a perfect description of millions of impatient children in crowded classrooms.

Clinching the case for us, however, was the first-hand testimony of many boys and their parents, all of whom noted that the condition seemed to disappear during summers, and even on weekends. Whenever school was not a part of their lives!

CHADD, however, was telling concerned parents that ADD was a neurobiological disorder that stemmed from a chemical imbalance in the brain. Ritalin, a psycho-stimulant, presumably corrects that imbalance by activating neurotransmitters– the chemicals that carry messages in the brain.

We learned that teachers often recommended Ritalin for certain children. One parent whose son had been recommended for the drug implicated school districts in the growth of ADD. “They’re trying to cut their budgets and trying to keep big populations in the classes, and they can’t have kids who are not under control. Teachers are more than happy to have kids on Ritalin, if it in fact will control their activities in the classrooms.”

Some parents accepted a diagnosis of ADD because it offered a more palatable explanation for their child’s behavior. Helen Blackburn, an educational psychologist for the Greenwich, Connecticut, public schools, put it this way. “Parents want a school-based reason why a child isn’t doing well. And to say that a child is not bright, that he may be a ’slow learner,’ or that family issues are causing the problems in school, parents don’t want to accept that. They want a diagnosis and a label that then makes the school responsible for solving the problem.”

There are always doctors who will prescribe Ritalin for a child. Simon Epstein, a child psychiatrist in Connecticut, said he prescribed Ritalin for about 150 children a year. He explained his dilemma. “If I tell them that I don’t think it’s clinically indicated, the parents will just go elsewhere. If that’s what they want, they will go on until they find somebody who will prescribe it. ”

We discovered that some CHADD leaders had engaged in dubious behavior of their own, even going so far as to infiltrate parental information videos distributed by the U.S. Department of Education. On these videos, several ranking officials of state ChADD chapters present themselves as ‘typical parents’ agonizing over their children’s condition and then extolling the virtues of Ritalin. An embarrassed Department of Education hastily withdrew the videos after we reported the clear conflict of interest.

At one point, I asked Dr. Parker if he felt compromised by accepting money from Ritalin’s manufacturer and then recommending the drug? Did he feel ‘bought’ by Ciba-Geigy? “I don’t feel bought,” he said. “I feel they owe us that as a matter of fact. I feel they owe it to the parents who are spending their money on medication. They owe it to these families to give them something back.”

Dr. Gene Haislip of the DEA was incredulous. “You mean he really thinks there’s nothing wrong in taking this money and keeping it a secret like they have? Well, I think it’s an outlandish statement to make really, and I must say it surprises me.”

A Ciba-Geigy spokesman expressed satisfaction with the arrangement. “We’re getting big information out there and I think that’s the bottom line here…CHADD is essentially a conduit, providing this information directly to the patient population, and they do a pretty good job of it.”

Subsequently CHADD actively lobbied Congress, something non-profit organizations are not allowed to do, to make it easier to get methylphenidate, the generic form of Ritalin! This despite the gruesome fact that, at the time, the United States was consuming 85 percent of the world’s supply of the drug. ChADD’s lobbying effort was defeated, and for a time the consumption of methylphenidate actually fell. Since then, however, more studies have ‘proven’ that methylphenidate works, and today at least five per cent of our children, most of them young middle class boys, take Ritalin or a similar drug.

Of course it works. It dulls the senses and makes it easier to control a class. For the small number of children who actually are hyperactive and whose condition does not seem to respond to improved diet or more personal attention, the drug may be necessary. For most children, the behaviors that often lead to a diagnosis of ADD are situational and can be changed: smaller classes, more personal attention, less sugar and caffeine, and maybe more hugs at home.

But instead we medicate and, in so doing, deliver a pernicious message: “You have something wrong with your brain, but this little pill will make everything better.”

And apparently we are still sending that pernicious message today. But why not drug kids? It’s cheaper, faster and easier than individual counseling (or attending to underlying problems). And what the heck, they’re other people’s children, not ours, right?

Anyone out there have a New Year’s Resolution to suggest about medicating our children?

We’ve been following the efforts of this dynamic young leader since she took office in June 2007.  When I read about her appointment that spring, I called her up, introduced myself, and invited her out to dinner. Our senior producer, Murrey Jacobson, joined us, and I made a pitch: “We’d like to chronicle your efforts on the NewsHour. What do you say?”

Her immediate reaction was notable for its candor: “I have to figure out whether it will help me do what I have to do, which is make things better for kids,” is what she said in roughly those words.  If it would help, she’d be on board. If not, forget it.

I don’t know if our coverage–11 segments and counting–has helped her, but I do know that the NewsHour audience has benefited from a rare inside look at how a big urban school district works–and how it resists change.  We’ve watched Michelle Rhee change as well.

Producers Cat McGrath and Jane Renaud and I will continue our reporting into the coming year.  Watch the full series online and I hope you’ll stay tuned for more in 2010.

Trevor Packer, who represents the College Board in the Times’s discussion, argues that the only problem with Advanced Placement is how few minority and underserved students have access to AP classes. He says:

…studies have indicated that teachers’ preconceived notions of student potential are often at odds with student capability. We should applaud teachers willing to take on students whom others had pre-judged as lacking in potential, not just those interested in teaching students who are likely to earn a 5 on an A.P. test.

Of course, as teacher Patrick Welsh notes, the College Board has a vested interest–in the way of $86 per A.P. exam administered–in the steady increase of A.P.’s popularity across all demographics. And researcher Kristin Klopfenstein points out that many students hoping to get into selective colleges enroll in A.P. classes without taking the final exam. Because many high schools weight the grades of students enrolled in A.P. classes, students know that A.P.s will not only look good on their transcripts, they’ll also boost their class ranks.

We recently covered the success of BASIS charter schools in Arizona, where they credit much of their success to a heavy focus on A.P. coursework. Are college-level classes the key to successful learning in high school? Let us know what you think.

The Advanced Placement Juggernaut [NYT, 12/20/09]

Recently, while filming our PBS NewsHour story “Schools and the Recession” in Arizona, we discovered a school that surprised us.  Sopori Elementary is in a small, poor, rural town called Amado.  But Sopori is anything but poor.  Among other things, the school boasts a new gym, modern computer lab and a swimming pool.  Even more impressive is the way it serves its community.

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1. Paul Vallas in New Orleans: Episode 6 - Mixed Results for School Reform Efforts

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Valerie Visconti, Associate Producer: My favorite series is the one I have been producing for over two years on the New Orleans school system under the leadership of Paul Vallas.

I first met Vallas in Episode 1, at a rally where he pumped up his teachers for the start of his first school year as Superintendent. I was taken aback by his enthusiasm to take over one of the worst school districts in the country. Vallas was a whirlwind: eager, ready, armed with high expectations, and no one was going to stand in his way. His gusto surely rubbed off on his teachers, as they danced in the aisles to classic New Orleans trumpets and cheered at every catchphrase Vallas rattled off, in the incessant way he has of speaking. There was an excitement in that convention center room that was unmistakable; you had to be there to believe it.

Three years in, one thing is clear: Vallas has not lost one bit of zeal for his mission. His hyperactive nature has led him to roll out an abundance of new initiatives, many of which got off to a shaky start. A teacher once told me, ‘Vallas has about 500 ideas…but if we are lucky we can get maybe 5 of them to work.’

One of my favorite episodes is Part 6, which aired at the end of his first year. This segment highlights Vallas’ greatest challenge: overage students struggling to move on. In the episode we follow two students: one drops out of an alternative school and the other finally graduates from a traditional high school after an astounding number of attempts to pass her graduation exam. The segment made the reality of New Orleans schools all too real to me; half of these students will never make it across the stage. However, seeing a student who makes it against all odds exemplifies the very thing Vallas is trying to prove: it is possible.
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2. Turnaround Specialist: The Program

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David Wald, Managing Producer: One of my favorite projects is “The Turnaround Specialist,” which was a series we shot over the course of a year and aired in installments on the NewsHour. We did not know how Principal Parker Land, with years of experience in suburban schools, would perform at his first inner city school in Richmond, VA. So as we filmed him over the course of a year, everything was unexpected.

It was also kind of a confusing story because in the end scores went down at his troubled middle school and yet his superintendent “promoted” him to principal of a much bigger high school, requiring him to leave the middle school at least a year earlier than he’d planned.

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3. Michelle Rhee in Washington, DC: Episode 6 - Tough Changes and Controversy

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Cat McGrath, Producer: “What do you think of Michelle Rhee?”

Since joining Learning Matters in 2007 my focus has been on reform efforts in Washington D.C. under the leadership of Michelle Rhee. My first day on the job was the first day of school under Rhee’s watch and now, two years and eleven reports later, people continue to ask me what I think of her. Well, if you drop me an email me I might share some of my personal observations, but the reports pretty much say it all.

If you haven’t watched any of the episodes yet, I would start with Episode 6, which is a round-up of her first year in office. You’ll see a meeting Jane and I filmed in which the Chancellor fires a principal, and an end-of-the-year afternoon cruise I took down the Potomac with the staff of a school Rhee had decided to close. It has been quite a journey, and though it’s not over yet, I feel very fortunate to have met so many people in D.C. who are so passionate about education.

One of my favorite moments was when we ran in to a man who told us he had moved to D.C and taken a job as a Vice Principal after listening to one of our podcasts! He was also offered a job in Boston, but said the podcast inspired him to work in D.C. If you have a story about how our work has changed your mind about anything, one way or the other, I’d love to hear it!
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4. Pay for Grades: The Program

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John Tulenko, Senior Producer and Correspondent: “Pay for Grades” is one of my favorites. At the time we produced it, the idea of paying students was considered avant-garde in New York City and elsewhere, but we found a tiny steel town in Ohio that had been doing it for years.

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5. Podcast: After He’s Gone

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Jane Renaud, Producer: A favorite piece I worked on is the podcast “After He’s Gone,” which accompanied the NewsHour piece “Lessons of War.”

The podcast is a favorite of mine for two reasons. One, the listener really gets to take the time to get to know Scarlette Keeling, a 27-year-old mother of three whose husband, Corey, just deployed for Afghanistan. Scarlette and Corey were featured in our NewsHour segment, but as is often the case, we’re forced leave much of our interviews on the cutting room floor. Here, Scarlette and John Merrow’s conversation can unfold naturally, getting to that big question: “What do you say when they ask the big question: ‘Will Daddy die?’” Secondly, we interspersed sound recorded in the Keeling home and in their public school with the interview, giving an intimate, portrait feeling. This is one of the first podcasts I worked on, and it’s still my favorite.

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6. School Sleuth: The Documentary

John Merrow, Executive Producer and Host: My favorite of the decade has to be School Sleuth, primarily because of all the elaborate production and storytelling that went into it. I choose it because it was (and is) so different from everything else we’ve done. John Tulenko, Tania Brief, Alexis Kessler, our professional actress, Eliza Foss, and I had a blast. We shot the set pieces during the wee hours of the morning at an abandoned spice factory in Brooklyn and then wove serious elements into the story of “The Case of an Excellent School.” I had just completed Choosing Excellence, my book on the same subject, and we did our best to have the two appear at the same time. Winning a George Foster Peabody Award, our first, was just icing on the cake.

By the way, the great recession has prevented us from bringing back the Sleuth in a second case, “Who’s Killing School Reform?”

7.  When School is Home: The Program

Tania McKeown, Producer:  One report we produced last year that really left its mark on me was the story of homeless families and how schools were responding to this growing problem. We visited Green Bay, Wisconsin where dedicated teachers and social workers were identifying and assisting struggling families. Their work was inspiring and vital to the kids’ ability to succeed in the classroom. For me, the story highlighted that schools are (and should be) much more than a place of education…

Download transcript (pdf)

Arizona is ranked 50th in the nation in per-pupil funding.  On top of that the Tucson school district had to cut 10% of their budget last year.  Nonetheless Fagan is optimistic that innovative thinking will improve Tucson schools and reverse a steady decline in attendance.  For her sake it better work — only three of the five members of the Tucson School Board voted to hire her.

John Merrow spoke with Dr. Fagen to find out how Tucson schools are weathering the “great recession.”

The L.A. Times published an op-ed piece this week by Ben Miller, director of a Los Angeles non-profit that works to empower parents in the reform of public schools. Without participation from parents, Miller argues, how does California expect to attract Race to the Top dollars–which the financially unstable state desperately needs? In an even more incensed op-ed, Diane Ravitch, writes in her blog on the Ed Week website that New York’s efforts to prepare for Race to the Top–which she calls “the express train to privatization”–have come at public school students’ expense.

Finally, in higher education news, the Washington Post has a good piece on the civil rights investigation around gender distribution in American colleges. Women apply to and attend colleges and universities in greater numbers than do men; do admissions offices have the right to discriminate based on sex, if they want to keep things 50-50?

Secretary Duncan: Finish Line Nears for ‘Race to the Top’ [PBS NewsHour, The Rundown News Blog, 12/15/09]

Elevating the Teaching Profession: A National Town Hall Meeting with Arne Duncan [Ed.gov, Education News Parents Can Use, 12/15/09]

Put power over California’s schools in hands of parents [LA Times, 12/16/09]

The Race to Nowhere [Bridging Differences, Ed Week, 12/15/09]

Sex bias probe in colleges’ selections [Washington Post, 12/14/09]

This post came from my interest in one reader’s comments to my recent post on innovation in schools.  His name is Philip Kovacs, and he’s a former high school English teacher who now teaches would-be teachers at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. I also know that he has a PhD in Educational Policy Studies, a 6 month-old son, and some strong convictions about public education. (The latter is the focus of the interview, although the proud new Dad manages to work his son into the conversation a couple of times).

The Interview

So tell me what you believe, and why.

In my dissertation I argue for keeping public schools public, but after four years working with local public schools, I’m open to alternatives. I am now working on starting a project-based lab school.

How did you find Learning Matters?

It was research into the Gates Foundation that brought me to your website in the first place. The Foundation funds an unbelievable number of projects, some of which argue against one another, though the larger of the funded organizations agree on key points, none of which, in my humble opinion, are very innovative. I do not, for the record, think Bill Gates is controlling your content!

I am now editing a book about the Gates Foundation’s involvement in educational reform. I am 100% sure that the edited volume is going to anger the educational “right” and “left.”

You sound as if you want to anger both ends of the spectrum.

I guess I do, now that you mention it. Three years ago I helped about 30 scholars, teachers, and other concerned individuals create and post a petition calling for an end to No Child Left Behind. While I am listed as the author, it was a collaborative effort with me acting as editor. That document has 16 points, all of which remain irrefutably true, though I’ve changed my position on at least two points, and in retrospect I regret some of the wording.

When I posted the petition, I was attacked from the left and right. NEA leadership sent out a memo telling its 3 million members not to sign, and from the other side I was called misguided at best and an anarchist at worst. I can’t tell you how many people called me naive.

I just thought, and in fact continue to think, that NCLB is bad policy. I think I’ll get the last laugh on this one. At the very least the name will be changed, though I am not sure how much of a victory that is.

You can see the petition and read the signatures and comments here: http://www.petitiononline.com/1teacher/petition.html.

The comments from teachers and principals are quite powerful. There are also comments that are misguided and flat out strange. I think NCLB is an easy target for all sorts of educational ills. Deservedly so in many cases, but not so much in others.

My blog post about innovation in education touched a nerve, mostly because you feel that I missed an obvious contradiction, the notion of ‘top down innovation.’ So tell me more about that.

I’m not upset about your blog post, but I am stunned when the President and his Secretary of Education discuss ‘innovation’ and ‘national standards’ in the same breath. I’m equally shocked when business leaders such as Bill Gates engage in the same behavior. Does anyone believe that Gates would where he is today if he had been forced to do the same thing as his competitors every step of the way?

Those pursuing innovation in education through top-down mandates (success will be judged by scores on standardized tests alone regardless of whether or not you are a public or charter school) should look to history to see how top-down micromanagement has worked elsewhere.

They might begin by looking at the number of Russian automobiles on the market, the amount of Nobel Prize winners from North Korea, or more generally at the amount of innovation that has come from any centralized government over the past 200 years.

Go on…

With respect to the current administration and the most influential philanthropist on the planet, I have faith that both are acting in what they believe to be the best interests of the country and its children. That doesn’t, however, make their calls for innovation and standardization any less wrong-headed. And let me be clear, asking states to create more charter schools and then forcing all of those “laboratories of innovation” to use the same limited metric for judging success is wrong-headed, plain and simple.

So let’s pretend (or hope) that the political and corporate leaders interested in reforming our public schools are reading this right now. What would you tell them?

Of course I would commend them for wanting innovation, and then I’d suggest five ways to truly change status-quo schooling.

#1. Replace the word “rigor” with “vigor.” Seriously. I have a 6-month-old son, and the last thing I want more of in his education is rigor. I mean, look at the definition:

• strictness, severity, or harshness, as in dealing with people.
• the full or extreme severity of laws, rules, etc.
• severity of living conditions; hardship; austerity: the rigor of wartime existence.
• a severe or harsh act, circumstance, etc.
• scrupulous or inflexible accuracy or adherence: the logical rigor of mathematics.
• severity of weather or climate or an instance of this: the rigors of winter.
• Pathology. a sudden coldness, as that preceding certain fevers; chill.
• Physiology. a state of rigidity in muscle tissues during which they are unable to respond to stimuli due to the coagulation of muscle protein.
• Obsolete. stiffness or rigidity.

Contrast that with the meaning of vigor:

• active strength or force.
• healthy physical or mental energy or power; vitality.
• energetic activity; energy; intensity: The economic recovery has given the country a new vigor.
• force of healthy growth in any living matter or organism, as a plant.
• active or effective force, esp. legal validity.

Language matters, and the words we use to describe education speak volumes about the type of education we’re giving children. I want my son, and all children, to have educational experiences that require active strength, healthy power, and energetic activity, not an education that is harsh, severe, inflexible, or obsolete. Asking states to create more charter schools and then requiring those charter schools to adhere to standardized educative models guarantees rigor at the expense of vigor and that’s nothing parents or business leaders want.

No argument from me on that. My friend Debbie Meier often derides ‘rigorous’ by bringing up rigor mortis, not what we want in schools! So what is suggestion #2?

Make sure the “ends” of education are in line with the means. As we replace obsolete schooling with schooling that is active and flexible, we should remember that we educate children for more than jobs. We live in a democratic republic, and our country will neither be democratic nor a republic without citizens who have the skills and capacities necessary to maintain both. There is no reason to expect that, after years of “memorize and regurgitate” schooling, children will become the critical and engaged adults necessary to keep this country a beacon of hope beyond the realm of economics.

History shows that great countries fall more often from internal collapse than from external threat, and reducing education to job training is a recipe for internal collapse. Towards a more robust democratic social order, schools must encourage responsibility more than accountability and reward individuality more than standardization, as democracy thrives on individuals acting as responsible members of diverse communities. Standardizing educational experiences for all students and expecting them to become innovators is an invitation for student and social failure.

And number 3?

We must teach and encourage responsibility from students. To do this, we need to respect, listen to, and honor the student to the greatest extent possible. Every child brings something unique into the classroom. We need an educational policy that supports and recognizes the individual. That does not mean letting Sally do whatever she wants every day she comes to school. But if she is going to spend six hours a day working on what adults ask her to work on, then she should have at least one hour a day to work on something she loves. At the end of the year, she should be responsible for presenting her work to her peers, teachers, and members of the community. The next year, she should be asked to inquire further, ask more difficult questions, or learn more intricate skills, as required by the topic of her choice.

The results should be placed on a website maintained by the student as soon as she/he is able to do so. A web-based portfolio can and should replace the report card, which, in its current form, dates back to at least the 1830s. If doctors still relied on tools from that point in time, they’d be applying leeches. A website would allow any interested or invested individual to see exactly how a child is developing and growing without the use of any standardized test. A district moving from standardized assessment to individualized measurement of a child’s development and growth will save money and have a far more robust system for tracking teaching and learning…I’d ask teachers to keep similar online portfolios (see below).

I’m beginning to feel like Ed McMahon, but what’s next?

Use tests less frequently and make them more meaningful. The tests we use now—end of year exams, the SAT, the NAEP—are instruments for measuring recall and not higher order thinking. They are even less useful for determining whether or not children are acting intelligently.

We should teach towards and assess the degree to which our children are resilient, prescient, persevere when tasks get difficult, control impulses, are flexible thinkers, strive for accuracy, pose problems and find answers, apply past knowledge to new situations, take risks based on calculations, and are willing to offer controversial alternatives to difficult situations based on personal and group research.

These are the skills and capacities necessary to maintain a healthy democratic republic as well as an edge in an increasingly competitive global market place. There is not a single standardized test now in use capable of measuring any of the above. This means we need highly qualified, highly effective teachers to develop and employ a range of assessment tools in order to track the development of such skills.

And what’s last? Number 5?

We need to reform tenure. I suggest using a 5-point system to determine teacher promotion. There is no reason that a person who performs well on a job for three years should be guaranteed the job for 30, but at the same time, we should find a way to protect and reward great teachers. Rather than relying solely on standardized test scores, we should use data from five sources. These include 1) the teacher himself, via a webpage similar to the ones created by and for students; 2) the teacher’s peers, as most teachers know who is doing what and how well; 3) the teacher’s administrators; 4) student reviews, because if we don’t trust students to vote on good teachers there’s no sense in giving them the right to vote at 18; and 5) a robust sampling of student work.

The unions are right to oppose to merit pay based solely on test scores, which we know correlate directly with socioeconomic status. Basing pay on test scores alone will result in the best teachers going to the wealthiest school districts, something that is arguably already occurring. A 5-point data collection system would allow teachers in any district to show clearly how well they are (or are not) doing. The teachers doing the best work should receive more money. Those doing enough to get by should receive invitations to leave.

No offense, but these are fairly simple innovations, and not particularly new either.

Maybe so, but they are light years beyond the standardized educational experiences being pushed by the administration and most business leaders. Innovation will not thrive in our schools until we give those schools the freedom and support to innovate. Keeping in mind the five suggestions above, I believe that public and chartered schools can help produce children who become adults that maintain our country in a state of integrity and usefulness, socially, economically and politically.

As you know if you’ve been following our coverage of Rhee, it’s the D.C. teachers’ union who most vehemently oppose her approach to school reform; it’s been more than two years since we started following Rhee, and her prolonged contract negotiations with the union are still unresolved. In many states, especially those with strong unions, it may prove difficult to get teachers on board with proposals for reform. The Journal writes:

The problem with this passivity is that union-negotiated collective-bargaining agreements are often the biggest barrier to enacting these education reforms. By not using their bully pulpit to back state and local reformers like Michelle Rhee, Mr. Duncan and President Obama are sending mixed messages, emboldening the opposition and jeopardizing their own education objectives.

The Journal’s unilaterally positive read on Rhee, whose reign in D.C. has been controversial, seems full of jumped-to conclusions. But it will be interesting to see whether the Race to the Top will produce replicates of the situation in D.C., as states and districts come up against union resistance, and whether Duncan’s position–”We generally don’t weigh in on local labor disputes”–will change.

To catch up on the ongoing negotiations between Rhee and the D.C. teachers’ union, watch our most recent coverage for the NewsHour, below, and listen to our interviews with Rhee and union president George Parker, collected here.

Who’s Got Michelle Rhee’s Back? [The Wall Street Journal, 12/14/09]

Two Years of Talks with Michelle Rhee & George Parker [LMtv, 9/21/09]

This week at Learning Matters, correspondent John Tulenko brings us two new interviews: one, with Dr. Kay McClenney, focuses on a new report about American community colleges; the other, with the Ford Foundation’s Joan Dassin, deals with higher education on a global scale. John Merrow fleshed out the domestic side of the issue: his interview with Pat Callan of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education appears on his weekly blog, Taking Note.

And, if you live in New York, tonight’s event celebrating Gotham Schools (one of our favorite education blogs) will feature words from Diane Ravitch and Joel Klein.

Scholarly Investments [New York Times, 12/4/09]

Podcast - Brain Drain [LMtv, 12/7/09]

Podcast - The State of Community Colleges [LMtv, 12/7/09]

The Future of Higher Ed: An Interview with Pat Callan [Taking Note, LMtv, 12/8/09]

The GothamSchools party is tomorrow and you’re invited [Gotham Schools, 12/8/09]

One of Shakira’s foundations, Pies Descalzos–The Barefoot Foundation–builds and maintains schools in three regions of Colombia, and focuses its work on children whose families are part of Colombia’s large displaced population. The Barefoot Foundation’s approach to education seems to be holistic, in the vein of Harlem Children’s Zone:

We also support the broader community. On any given day our school buildings are hubs of activity—providing a range of services, including adult-literacy classes, youth-leadership development, access to libraries and computer training. Perhaps most importantly, we have also begun to form parent co-operatives focused on teaching parents and on income-generating activities aimed at ensuring that families are financially secure.

Learning Matters’ John Tulenko explores another side of global education in a recent interview with the Ford Foundation’s Joan Dassin. Dassin’s primary concern is the phenomenon of “Brain Drain” in the developing world: young people, once educated, often leave their countries of birth. The Ford Foundation’s college scholarship program tries to ensure that the talented and educated citizens of the developing world stay there.

Though they’re working from different ends of the education lifespan, both Shakira’s and Dassin’s thoughts are worth some attention this holiday season.

Shakira: The Voice of Early Childhood Education [Ed Beat, LMtv, 6/10/09]

Si, Se Puede [The Economist, 11/13/09]

Podcast: Brain Drain [LMtv, 12/7/09]

The Barefoot Foundation

It’s part of their series of profiles of presenters for the March 2010 conference, “Critical Transformations”.

Learn more about the conference here.

If you watched our documentary, Declining by Degrees, you know what Pat looks like. And you may have heard him on a couple of our podcasts. Now you can read him, in this interview.

Yes, Pat has been around for a while and has served with distinction on the California Higher Education Policy Center, the California Postsecondary Education Commission, the Washington State Council for Postsecondary Education, the Montana Commission on Postsecondary Education and the Education Commission of the States.

He’s a force to be reckoned with and shows little sign of slowing down.

The Interview

Let’s begin with higher education and the recession. I know that your organization has tightened its belt, and we certainly have done that at Learning Matters.  What about higher education generally?

There has been belt tightening and much of it has been difficult and painful.  But remember, John–colleges and states can pass significant portions of their financial problems along to their consumers—students and families.

That’s certainly happening in California now. A 32% increase has sparked angry protests on many UC and Cal State campuses. Did you see this coming, and does this spell the end of California’s Master Plan for higher education, its promise of a low cost education for all able citizens?

The current round of cuts, tuition increases, and enrollment reductions are shaping up to be the most severe, particularly with the severity of economic hardship Californians are experiencing, but it’s very consistent with the way California handles budgetary problems—the default position is pass as much of the pain as possible along to students and families.

Remember the history, John. In 1960 California became the first state—in fact, the first government anywhere in the world—to commit itself to provide higher education access to every adult who was motivated and could benefit from it.  But that commitment, in what was called the Master Plan, has eroded substantially over the last three decades.  In each recession since the early 1980s, California has raised tuition substantially and turned thousands of students away from college.  For example, in the recession of the early 1990s, California reduced public higher education enrollments by 230,000 students.  In the dot-com recession early in this decade, enrollment was cut by 150,000 students.  Each time this has happened, some higher education and political leaders and many in the media have proclaimed that an unprecedented breach of the Master Plan has occurred.

I look around my office and see everyone working much harder, but I haven’t heard of college faculty teaching an extra course per semester, or anything like that.  Am I missing something?

There have been increases in faculty teaching, due primarily to larger classes.  But there’s been little in the way of systematic efforts to improve productivity in ways that don’t undermine educational quality and are on a scale large enough to have an impact on access and affordability.  Many institutions could increase undergraduate teaching for full-time faculty, either as an emergency measure to protect student access to programs and courses or, in some cases, or to rebalance the faculty priorities and time devoted to undergraduate teaching, research, and graduate programs.

So why don’t they?  What’s in the way?  Faculty power?

It’s not a case of proponents of change losing great debates about the issue..  The problem is that these debates aren’t taking place at all in most of the country.  This is a leadership failure, beginning with governors and legislatures, college boards of trustees and presidents.  Tuition increases may produce just enough revenue for institutions to mitigate pressures for innovation.  And college and university leaders do not generally seek conflict with faculty, even in better times, much less when the faculty is already beleaguered by larger classes, hiring freezes, and salary cuts and furloughs.

Consider California again. One might expect the state that prides itself on innovation and is the home of the Silicon Valley and so much of the cutting edge media would have systematically explored, developed, and implemented innovative and cost effective approaches.  But this has not happened, at least not on a scale that has had impact on college opportunity.  Like much of American higher education—and the governors and legislatures are also part of the problem—California apparently prefers to expand and contract the existing ways of doing business, even when that leads to a pattern of diminished college access and affordability.

Even Harvard has cuts–it isn’t serving cookies in the afternoon—but elsewhere tuition and fees continue to go up in this recession.  Can you make sense of that?

It’s still a “sellers market” for higher education, and the high unemployment has increased the numbers who seek to enroll.  In a severe recession, college, which is already a necessary condition for most jobs that support a middle class standard of living, becomes the only option for many young people; and older and working (or formerly working) adults turn to colleges for new knowledge and skills.  So most colleges can continue to raise tuition despite the economic distress and still maintain enrollments.  This has been called “pricing with impunity.”

For years and years the conventional wisdom has been that private colleges were an endangered species because of the competition from subsidized state colleges and universities, but now it looks as if something very different is happening.  What once were ‘state-supported’ institutions are now, as one wag put it, ‘state-situated.’  And at least some private colleges, such as those that are character-driven, seem to be doing well. What’s going on here? Is there a real shift going on?  Are public colleges in danger?

I don’t think so. The rumors of state retreat from support of public higher education have been greatly exaggerated, often by public college and university leaders seeking to justify tuition increases.  State support for higher education, in the aggregate, has actually increased substantially in the recent past, in the 1980s, the 1990s, and in this decade prior to the current recession.

The problem is the volatility of state support, which is difficult to manage.  States have generally funded higher education well—better than many other state services in good budget years—cut colleges deeply in recessions, and then allowed colleges to make up substantial portions of the cuts with tuition.

Private higher education has demonstrated that it can compete in this environment, but lacks the capacity to compensate for a large-scale rollback in the capacity of the publics.

Let’s talk about the increasing debt burden carried by graduates.

That’s a darkening shadow hanging over private colleges and the more expensive public, their heavy reliance on the willingness of students, and in many cases parents, to borrow for college.  If, as some economists have predicted, the country emerges from this recession more debt-averse, that is, less willing or able to take on consumer debt and home mortgage debt, it is likely that this will extend to borrowing for college.  Student and parental debt is the principal way the middle-class has financed the run-up of tuition for the last two decades.  If reluctance to borrow becomes pervasive, higher education’s current economic model may be in serious trouble.

Both the percentage of students who borrow and the amounts borrowed has increased for each graduating class.  Student borrowing had doubled in this decade in the years prior to the recession.  Polling data shows growing public concern over the amount of debt students now incur to pay for college.  And, as the study just released by the Institute for College Access & Success suggested, students who graduated with debt last year entered an economy in which the employment prospects were problematic, even for college graduates.

Is the stimulus money getting through to post-secondary institutions?  How’s it being used?

We don’t yet have a full national picture yet.  However, the higher education dollars that flowed directly to states seem to have been used only sporadically to protect students and families from large tuition increases.  While it can be argued that things would have been much worse without the stimulus, this may be scant consolation to students whose tuition and fees are rising at a time of high unemployment and negligible inflation.

On a related subject, the administration’s initiatives to increase funding and streamline student financial aid make sense and deserve support.  However, it appears that, at least in the short term, increased federal investments in financial aid will not produce improved college access and affordability because most, if not all, of the new federal dollars will be absorbed by tuition increases imposed by colleges and states.  This is an example of the way that even the most enlightened federal initiatives and reforms in higher education can be effectively nullified by states and colleges.

And, in contrast to the stimulus money for public schools, none of the money provided to the states for higher education was directed toward innovation.  The only requirement is that it be spent.  So an opportunity to stimulate reform and improve productivity may have been lost.

President Obama and his Education Secretary have talked a lot about the value of community colleges, and Arne Duncan has chosen a community college president, Martha Kanter, to be his number two person.  What might this mean for higher education in Washington?  Does this tip the scale in favor of community colleges?

I think the scale had already tipped toward the community colleges.  After all, they are the largest sector of American higher education.  The Obama administration appropriately recognizes that these colleges must be one of the cornerstones if the nation is to achieve the President’s goals of significantly increased access and global leadership in higher education attainment by 2020. Martha Kanter is a key leader as well as the symbol for much of this.

There’s some talk about creating incentives for students to complete college in three years.  Does this have legs, or is it just more talk?  If it’s going to happen, where will we see it first?

The 3-year degree idea has been around for a long time and has yet to be widely institutionalized.  It should certainly be available to more students, but I doubt that it will (or should) be the model for all students. When it happens, it usually comes from the students’ own initiative, not the institutions’. These students take college courses or earn college credits by examination in high school, enroll in summer sessions while attending college, or take extra courses each quarter or semester. For the 3-year degree to become more common would require institutions and faculties to rethink and redesign curricula and courses so that learning that is determined to be requisite for the degree is achieved in a more compressed way.  For that to happen there would have to be greater clarity about the learning and skills that the baccalaureate degree certifies.

What do you mean by ‘greater clarity’?  I don’t think many colleges have shown much interest in measuring outcomes.

The reluctance of much of American higher education to define and assess learning outcomes is well documented.  It impedes innovations that might lead to enhanced learning and bring costs down, and the 3-year degree is only one example.

Colleges have barely tapped the potential of interactive electronic technology to individualize learning and improve productivity of on-campus courses and distance learning.

What we have is a system in which time (measured in seat time and credit hours) is the constant and learning is variable; it should be the opposite.  Without the capacity to compare and measure educational outcomes, systematic experimentation is difficult, and all too often an unreasonable burden of proof is placed on those who propose innovations.

After years of reform efforts to level the economic playing field that go back as far as Lyndon Johnson, today the best predictor of where someone goes to college is their parents’ economic status.  Do you have some radical suggestions as to how that might be changed?

Income is not only the best predictor of whether a student will enroll in college but also where—in a private, public, two-year or four-year college—and of the likelihood of completing a degree once enrolled.  In the fifty years after World War II, higher education was one of the major forces for the expansion of the middle class and for intergenerational social mobility—kids doing better than their parents.  Today, it is an impediment to mobility, with both access to college and the distribution of students within higher education highly stratified by income.

Any good news?

The Obama administration seems focused and determined, so stay tuned.

____________________________________________________

Want to know more?

Listen to Pat Callan talk about what’s wrong with American education.

Watch a recent program featuring Pat Callan and others discuss the rising cost of higher education.

The US Department of Education is “placing its desire for a federal takeover of public education above the interests of the 4.7 million schoolchildren in the state of Texas,” Scott said last week. He was discussing the USDOE’s “Race to the Top” (RTTP), a federal education grant program, the first of its kind, with $4.35 billion in cash for winning states.

To be competitive, states must agree to enact USDOE sanctioned reforms, including participation in the creation of common standards. Only two states have elected not to participate, Texas and Alaska. According to Scott, who says Texas’ standards are already high, the RTTP amounts to coercion.

The “Race to the Top” is the federal government’s latest, and arguably most ambitious, foray into education reform. In a recent piece for the NewsHour, we asked where RTTP fits into the history of federal involvement in public education. Watch it below.

A Race to the Top: The History [LM.tv, 12/03/09]

Texas Education head warns of federal takeover [Austin American-Statesmen, 12/03/09]

Can it be stopped?  The Ford Foundation is trying. 10 years ago it launched the International Fellowships Program, a 350 million dollar effort to nurture talent in developing countries and keep it there.  In this
podcast, we hear from the program’s director, Joan Dassin.

Dassin runs one of the largest international scholarship programs in the world and after hearing her you’ll want to tell your friends all about it.

Learn more about the International Fellowships Program: http://www.fordifp.net.

1. What percentage of college students attend community college?
A) 12%    B)  25%    C) 35%    D) 50%

2. To reform community colleges, President Obama proposes to spend?
A) 12 billion   B) 3 billion    C) 500 million    D) 100 million

3.  What’s the graduation rate at community colleges?
A) 35%    B)  22%     C) 55%     D) 65%

If you missed any of these questions, then you should learn more about community colleges.   They are overflowing with students seeking to save on college tuition and laid off workers seeking to train for new careers.  The President considers community colleges crucial to the economic recovery and wants them to get far bigger and better in the years to come.

In this podcast, Dr. Kay McClenney, discusses her just released report on the state of community colleges. “The Community College Survey of Student Engagement” polled thousands of students at some 300 campuses to find out what works in this fast growing section of higher education.

Read the report online: http://www.ccsse.org.

[Answers: 1) D; 2) A; 3) B.]

Women dominate any number of fields, but the kind of work that they were recruited to do during World War II, and for which Rosie is a symbol, has remained the province of men. Female construction workers, for instance, are a rare sight in American cities.

In Long Beach, California, a charter school using Rosie as its namesake–Rosie the Riveter High School–aims to close the gender gap in technical fields like construction, auto mechanics and electrical engineering. Students (both boys and girls) take a full range of academic courses, but they also take vocational classes at a local community college.

The non-profit that sponsors the school, Women in NonTraditional Employment Roles, was started by Lynn Shaw, a former miner and steelworker who says that prejudice is often what keeps women closed out of these specialized fields. She emphasizes the financial benefits of this kind of work:

For me, it was all about the money. Women in nontraditional jobs earn 20% to 40% more than women in what are considered ‘traditional’ women’s jobs. That’s $1 million over a lifetime.

If Rosie the Riveter High produces a generation of female millionaires with biceps like Rosie’s, we’ll have no reason to complain.

Nailing a trade at Rosie the Riveter High [The LA Times, 12/3/09]

Women in NonTraditional Employment Roles (WINTER)

“Sexting,” as it’s somewhat obnoxiously referred to by many, has become a real threat to the health and happiness of adolescents, as have other forms of online harassment. Check out our coverage of this issue from earlier this year to find out how some other non-profits are addressing it, and watch our favorite Lipton bit below.

Give it a Ponder [Official Site]

How “Give it a Ponder” Could Help Teens Think Twice [YPulse, 12/02/2009]

Relationship Abuse: That’s Not Cool [Ed Beat, LMtv, 6/30/09]

The competition is called the “Race to the Top,” and it is unlike any education reform efforts of the past. This program starts at the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and traces the growing involvement of the federal government in public education.

Download transcript (pdf)

In a conversation with John Merrow, Ravitch, a former Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush, questions the federal government’s new role in public education.

But there’s a catch: in order to compete states must promise to raise standards, track student performance and tie it to teacher pay, turn around the lowest performing schools, mainly by opening charters and more. The requirements are already causing a stir in the education community.

And so, it seems, will New York City. According to the New York Times, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made it a priority to encourage the growth of New York’s charter schools in his third term. Not only has he committed to opening twenty-four charter schools next fall and one hundred over the next four years, he has offered many of the city’s charters space to operate within existing public school buildings. In most other cities, charter schools are required to buy or rent their own spaces–this is in part what distinguishes them from traditional public schools and makes it more difficult for them to exist in the first place.

In an article for Counterpunch, David Wolff does a thorough job of explaining how the business behind charter schools–the investments that support them, and why it’s lucrative for companies to invest in them at all. According to Wolff, when charter schools use portions of their (public) funding to buy real estate, it often means that cutbacks are made in other areas:

In the case of the 100 Academy of Excellence, the principal told a state official that money was saved by letting go veteran (read expensive) teachers and increasing class size (read cost saving).

By Wolff’s reasoning, Bloomberg’s decision to house more charter schools in public school buildings may improve the quality of the education they provide. But, as Jennifer Medina notes in her piece for the New York Times, students in traditional public schools will still have to walk past their charter neighbors and wonder why their facilities are newer and better. Joel Klein, New York City’s schools chancellor, has said about charters:

“There are so many talented people out there, and I want them to come to New York…[w]hy would we want to put up barriers to that?”

His emphasis on importing talent begs the question: when charter schools move in, what will happen to what’s already here?

City’s Schools Share Their Space, and Bitterness [The New York Times, 11/29/09]
Speculating on Education [Counterpunch, 9/29/09]
Tracking the Charter Movement [Taking Note, 12/01/09]

I’d like to raise two issues: 1) quality control and 2) persistent opposition.

For one thing, the Obama Administration is embracing charter schools (or ‘chartered schools’) with great enthusiasm. Now, it’s true that Education Secretary Arne Duncan adds a qualification, saying that they support ‘good charter schools,’ but that strikes me as, for the moment anyway, an empty distinction, largely because of an absence of ways of measuring quality.

It’s true that egregiously bad charters get shut down, but mediocre ones keep plugging along, doing just as much damage to kids as mediocre public schools. But what the charter school proponents don’t seem to realize is that these mediocre institutions are also damaging ‘the movement.’ I’ve heard them (and you know who you are!) say that mediocre public schools aren’t punished, as if that justifies not closing mediocre charter schools! It doesn’t, precisely because the charter school advocates are claiming to be different.

I think that charter schools risk becoming like schools of education if they aren’t careful. How many of the 1400 or so schools and colleges of education are excellent? I’d say 50 but, if you want to argue for 100, I’ll go along with that. But are the 100 excellent ones doing anything to get rid of the 500-700 that are dreadful? If they are, it hasn’t made my radar screen.

I think that, for the charter movement to succeed, it must take the lead on setting high standards and then enforcing them.

Is that realistic? Is it happening somewhere?

A second issue I didn’t cover thoroughly in my Ed Week piece is the issue of opposition to charter schools. Everyone knows that unions have fought against charter schools because they’ve seen it in their self-interest (teachers in charter schools don’t have to belong to unions). But, guess what, local school boards have been as great a roadblock, and in some cases, even fiercer opponents. They go to court to keep charter schools from opening or expanding. Why? It’s about money and control, as far as I can tell. But if the demand exists for charter schools, why wouldn’t elected officials whose mandate is education be supportive?

Just yesterday in the neighboring town of Los Altos, California a county judge ruled against a charter school and in favor of the local school board. The charter school had sued because it wanted to expand to include 7th grade and needed space. Forget for a minute the particulars of that case and ask yourselves why it wanted a 7th grade? Could it be that parents of 6th graders wanted to keep their children in the charter school? And why is it that school boards are so hostile to success? Shouldn’t they be trying to figure out what that successful school was doing, so they could copy it? That was the hope of charter schools, that they’d be incubators.

If you and I both operate restaurants, and my restaurant is drawing a crowd and yours isn’t, wouldn’t you want to know why? Wouldn’t you think seriously about changing some aspect of what you are doing? Or would you sue me?

What can be done to change school board behavior? Is it all about money and power? What am I missing?  Share your thoughts in the comments.

When Roads Diverge: Tracking the Charter Movement [Education Week, 12/2009]

How New York City’s Charter Schools Affect Achievement [The NYC Charter Schools Evaluation Project, 09/2009]

When two roads diverge in a yellow wood, in poetry and in life, one must choose. After picking a path to follow, inevitably you ask the unanswerable question: What would have happened if you had chosen the other path?

Now we know what happens, at least in education, thanks to a remarkable study of charter schools in New York City. And that study, released in September, suggests that it’s time to widen one of the roads.

Because New York City doesn’t have enough room in its charter schools, admission is by lottery. Over the past seven years, only about half the 80,000 students who have applied have been accepted. Most of the others ended up going to traditional public schools in their neighborhoods.

Not only were the applicants similar in observable characteristics of race, gender, poverty, disability, and English proficiency, but, because all had made the effort to enroll in a charter school, researchers could infer similarity in motivation and family interest in education. Such an opportunity is what the study’s lead author, Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford University, calls ‘‘the gold standard’’ in research, the opportunity to compare apples to apples.

The announced results are dramatic. The lottery winners went to 48 public charter schools, and those who finished 8th grade performed nearly as well as students in affluent suburban districts, closing what the researchers call the “Harlem-Scarsdale achievement gap” by 86 percent in math and about two-thirds in English.

By the 3rd grade, each year in a charter added about 5 points to math and English language arts scores on state exams, compared with those who lost the lottery. Every year in a charter increased a high school student’s likelihood of earning a state Regents diploma by 7 percent.

The study’s results can be generalized, Hoxby maintains, because most charters are in cities, most urban districts use a lottery system, and New York’s students resemble urban students everywhere.
But, as with all education research, caveat emptor is a good rule to adhere to. For one thing, nowhere in the published study does Hoxby reveal how many children actually went through eight years in charter schools. She does acknowledge that she did a fair amount of extrapolating.
Just what does that mean? Think of an eight-mile road race in which only some runners ran the entire distance. Most, however, ran some portion of the distance—miles one through three, say, or miles five through seven. And then the race officials compiled the final standings by assuming that those partial race times would have been replicated over the full distance. If someone who ran only three or four miles of the course got a trophy, there’d be an uproar, of course, but statisticians like Hoxby are comfortable with drawing inferences about academic performance.

But did she extrapolate beyond what the data support? Some in the field are skeptical of the study’s conclusions. They note that the research hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, and that the study’s scope, confined to New York City charters, limits its usefulness on a national scale. A few also point out that Hoxby’s studies of charters tend to be consistently positive.

But Hoxby stands behind her results and their meaning. She told me recently that the peer-review process is under way and should be finished soon. But what’s more relevant to her, she said, is whether someone can articulate an actual problem with the methodology.

Meanwhile, her research shows clear performance differences among charter schools in New York City. While Hoxby will not name the best and worst, she is willing to identify the characteristics of the best. The high-performing charters have a longer school day and year; more time devoted to studying English; pay for performance, and not simply based on seniority and credentials; a clear academic mission; and a moderate disciplinary policy of both small rewards and small punishments (meaning that behavior issues—good and bad—are attended to on the spot).

Not all the charters were successful, though. It’s important to note that 14 percent of students in the study attended charter schools that had an overall negative effect on math performance, compared with students who did not win the lottery.

So what does all this mean for choosing education’s road to the future? What will happen now? Hoxby sees these results as a clear call to create more charter opportunities, something President Barack Obama, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and many others have been urging. The federal government, in fact, is doing more than talking. It has made it clear that states with limits on charters may be less likely to do well in competition for the $4 billion in Race to the Top stimulus funds it’s preparing to distribute. Some states already have removed their charter caps in response.
The general public clearly wants more charter schools—64 percent in the 2009 Gallup poll on education. And a 2009 survey conducted by Education Next reports that more than a third of public school teachers support charters, a number that jumps to nearly half when respondents are told of President Obama’s support.
Yet, that support notwithstanding, charter schools are not home free. To understand why requires some history.
Although the notion of chartering schools had been around for a few years by 1988, it was in October of that year that the charter movement was born, at a small meeting by the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Itasca County, Minn. Among those in attendance were two New York educators, Albert Shanker and Seymour Fliegel; Ember Reichgott, a visionary Minnesota state senator; and the Minnesota educators Joe Nathan and Ted Kolderie. The concept of a charter—a renewable license to innovate, free of most school district rules—was built on a simple idea: Educators would be free to carry out their dream, but would be held responsible for results.

I ran that meeting, and remember well the overriding spirit of optimism: Chartering would be embraced by school districts, which would use them to “incubate” best practices.

That has rarely happened, unfortunately. Most districts have resisted the idea of weakening their central control. And because charter teachers would no longer have an obligation to belong to a union, Shanker came to see them as a threat to union power.

Still, the idea had legs, in part because people could read into the term “charter” what they wished. Some on the political right supported charter schools as a wedge to break up the public school monopoly, while others on the left thought charters would be the equivalent of their own private schools. Allowing profit-making firms to create charter schools, encouraged by state laws, produced more support.
The first charter school opened in Minnesota in 1992, with fewer than 100 students; today, 4,000 charter schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia enroll over 1.3 million students—and counting. Many of the charters have been granted by entities other than the local school district (the State University of New York grants charters in New York state, for example), effectively ending district monopolies.

Leading the way have been nontraditional educators like New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, Superintendent Paul Vallas of the Recovery School District in New Orleans, and Chancellor Michelle Rhee in Washington. In the latter city, over 35 percent of students are in charters, and well over half of Vallas’ schools are charters. These three leaders encourage charters not as “incubators,” but as challenges to the rest of their schools.

Still, as Joe Nathan, a founder of the movement, says, “Some terrific charters are doing great things for kids, but charlatans have entered the field and have ripped off kids and taxpayers.” He says charter school organizations must develop better ways of screening out crooks and incompetents before they get to start schools.

Ted Kolderie, another founder, believes unions are coming to terms with the idea. He cites a United Federation of Teachers initiative in New York City, teacher cooperative schools in Milwaukee, and the charter organization Green Dot in Los Angeles as evidence that “when teachers play significant professional roles, the massive contracts generated by a boss-worker model are no longer required.”

Just as the waters of Lake Itasca flow into the Mississippi and down to the Gulf of Mexico, expect the movement that began there to continue to grow. However, just as the Mississippi is a dangerous and at times unpredictable river, the charter movement should not expect smooth sailing.

Because the recent New York City study will—quite properly—produce more enthusiasm for charters, it’s important to remember that 14 percent negative effect on math cited above. A buyer-beware attitude is more important than ever. Never forget that the name “charter” on a schoolhouse door reveals no more about a school’s quality than the word “restaurant” tells you about the food. There’s no substitute for transparency, high standards, and direct observation of the sort reported in this remarkable study.

John Merrow is the education correspondent for “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS, and the president of Learning Matters Inc., in New York City.

Soling’s documentary, now playing at the Quad Cinema in New York, argues that public schools are instruments of fear and oppression in the lives of children. Reviews in both the New York Times and Variety are quick to note that the film’s reporting could be more balanced, but neither dismisses its claims as outlandish, either. The film uses shocking images–of which you’ll get a taste in the trailer–of armed guards, police dogs and handcuffs to emphasize its points. It drifts, too, into analysis of other ways in which children are oppressed by adult institutions–namely, the over-prescription of drugs like Ritalin. Clearly, efforts to keep children–or adults, for that matter–healthy and safe can all too often lead to passivity and fear.

Watch the trailer below and, if you’re a fan of the Colbert Report, watch Soling’s appearance on the show tonight at 11:30 on Comedy Central.

The War on Kids [Official Website]
The War on Kids Review [Variety, 11/17/09]
The War on Kids: What Ails Public Schools? Better Ask, What Doesn’t? [The New York Times, 11/18/09]

Good news for Michelle Rhee this Thanksgiving: the DC Superior Court ruled yesterday that layoffs she made in October were legal. “This has been a difficult time for the entire school system,” Rhee stated through a press release Tuesday evening. “We all look forward to maintaining our focus on serving students and renewing a collective effort to improve the quality of education we offer every child across the District.”

The decision is a blow to the Washington Teachers’ Union, which had argued that Rhee had manufactured a budget shortfall in order to target teachers she wanted out of the system.

George Parker explains his version of events at 3:20, below.

Judge Judith Bartnoff acknowledged that some teachers may have been improperly removed but soundly rejected Parker’s larger claim, writing:

The Court recognizes that questions could be raised about particular RIF decisions, in terms of the position that was eliminated, the individual whose employment was terminated, or both… Nevertheless, some questionable RIF decisions do not establish that the RIF was a pretext for a mass discharge, given the undisputed evidence that the DCPS budget was sufficient to support the existing staff and the new teachers being hired for the current school year, until the Council reduced the budget by $21 million only two weeks before the new teachers were scheduled to report.

Parker and the teachers’ union may appeal Bartnoff’s decision. But for now, it seems that the dispute will return to its original venue, out of the courtroom, and back to the bargaining table.

Also important to note - at a city council hearing in October, council members questioned whether Rhee’s decision to lay off teachers was legal, but for a different reason. When the council cut Rhee’s budget over the summer, it ordered her to slash funds for summer school. Instead, Rhee made layoffs without seeking the council’s approval. That charge continues to be investigated by the council.

Full coverage of Michelle Rhee and DC Schools:
Michelle Rhee in Washington DC: The Series
Two years of talks with Michelle Rhee and George Parker

You’re not a teacher, you say? OK, neither am I by profession, but sometimes we are put in that role. Imagine you’re walking in your neighborhood when a stranger stops her car, rolls down the window, and asks for directions to a local restaurant. You know the place she’s asking about, so you immediately begin figuring out how to explain it to her.

You are, for the moment, her teacher, she your pupil. You’ll explain it as clearly as you can (“Continue for three blocks, turn right on Maple Street, and go for two more blocks. The restaurant is on your right.”). As her teacher, you’ll be watching to see if she understands your directions.

Innovations occurs when you realize that you are not getting through. At that point, like a good teacher, you will scrap that ‘lesson plan’ and devise a new one. That is, you will find another way to teach her how to get where she needs to be. (“See that church steeple. Go one block past that and turn right. Then when you see the two gas stations…”)

Suppose she still doesn’t get it? At that point, more creativity: you might draw a map. Anything at all, just to get her to her destination.

Why is that innovation, you might be wondering? Maps aren’t new, and neither is rephrasing. But being innovative doesn’t require complete invention, only finding different approaches to a problem. Putting new wine into old bottles qualifies as an innovation because solves the problem of what to do with the wine.

What conditions are necessary for innovation in education? I find several, and all exist in my example of the lost driver: a relevant task; a measurable outcome; a willing student; and instructional flexibility.

You (the teacher) and the driver (your student) have a clear goal, getting her to understand how to get to her destination. Because the challenge is relevant—she wants to get to her destination–she is a willing student. You, the teacher, have instructional flexibility, the room to be innovative, precisely because the goal is clear. And because the goal is clear (and you are not sadistic or antisocial), you want to be successful. It’s odd, because you have never seen the lost driver before and most likely will never see her again, but at that moment you are measuring your own worth according to how well she learns. In effect, you believe that you haven’t taught effectively if she doesn’t learn it.

The parallel works in another way in that most of the work—ultimate success—is up to the student, not the teacher. The driver still has to follow those directions in order to get to her destination, and that’s as it should be. Teachers should not be expected to do it all.

But don’t you wish all teachers worked that way? Many, perhaps most, would like to but cannot because schooling’s goals and outcomes are murky or trivial. Without clear and relevant goals, process inevitably becomes the focus. Because process rules, many teachers today are given detailed lessons plans describing what they should be doing in class, every day. Innovation is neither expected nor encouraged. That in turn leads to a ‘cover the material’ philosophy, as in “I taught it, but they didn’t learn it.” What they really are doing is covering a certain part of their anatomy.

Transfer that situation—unclear goals and outcomes and a consequent focus on process—to my analogy of the lost driver. What might happen if you asked a stranger for directions and then didn’t grasp what he told you? Rather than find an innovative way to communicate, he’d just say the same thing again, but louder, or maybe slower. And if you still didn’t get it, he would raise his voice again. Before long, he’d be SHOUTING slowly.

It wouldn’t take you long to realize that, with that guy as your teacher, you’ll never get where you need to go, and so you would step on the gas and seek help elsewhere.

And he would write you off as a dense student who failed to grasp the material.

Some teachers, schools and systems take that approach to learning. Just as that guy would blame you for not grasping his shouted directions, schools and teachers often blame students for not understanding. When students don’t get it, they fail and have to repeat the grade, which is the equivalent of shouting the same words.

Many of those failing students—well over one million a year–do the equivalent of ‘driving away.’ They drop out of school.

My question is, who is failing? If school systems consistently fail at teaching and then at remediation–and that’s what often happens–can we just blame it on students? In fact, most remediation programs are echoes of what’s already failed.

The recipe for good schools has three steps, which must be taken in order: 1) figure out where we want to go and how we will measure our achievement; 2) hire capable, trained people and let them figure out how to get there; 3) and hold them accountable for results. Innovation per se isn’t a goal and shouldn’t be, but we can encourage it by replicating the conditions described above: clear and measurable goals, relevant tasks, and instructional flexibility, the freedom to innovate.

Here in Doha at WISE, the World Innovation Summit for Education, six groups were recognized for innovation, sustainability or pluralism. I managed to snag interviews with five winners.  Martin Burt’s project in Paraguay, ‘the Self Sufficient School,’ seeks to enable the poor to make a living while living on the land. As he told me, “Experts talk about ‘eliminating poverty,’ but that’s too abstract. I’m talking about putting money in the hands of the poor, money they have earned.”

I had a lively conversation with Joyce Dongotey-Padi of Ghana, whose project, known as WANE (Widows Alliance Network), aims to emancipate Ghanaian widows from the social, cultural and economic deprivation brought about by the prejudices they face because of their status. Ms. Dongotey-Padi is not a widow herself but was moved to act when a neighbor and friend became widowed and found herself virtually helpless and penniless.

I also talked with the Executive Director of Curriki, Dr. Barbara (Bobbi) Kurshan, and soon will put up an interview with her colleague Peter Levy.  Curriki’s name comes from ‘Curriculum’ and Wikipedia’ and is meant to suggest free, user generated curriculum for teachers.  Pretty neat stuff that is deservedly catching on and now has about 100,000 participants, almost all of them teachers.

The project to educate girls and women in India, Nanhi Kali, caught my attention.  It began in 1996 but didn’t really take off until recently.  It now reaches 52,000 girls across 8 states in India, up from just 1700 girls in 2002.  Its stated goal is to reach 100,000 girls by the end of this year, but its real goal is to change the social attitudes that devalue girls and women.  Ms. Sheetal Mehta was at WISE representing the project, and her energy and optimism jump off the screen.

Unfortunately I did not get to talk with representatives of the two other projects but both are worth your attention.  Escuela Nueva in rural Colombia uses collaborative learning to transform the traditional classroom and promote entrepreneurial skills. It was initiated in 1975 in rural Colombia in response to endemic educational problems like high dropout rates, weak school-community relationships, ineffective teacher training and the lack of children’s learning materials.

The second one I missed is a successful distance learning project in the Amazon forest, where many small towns and villages are accessible only by boat.  It was launched in 2007 by the Secretariat of Education and Learning Quality of Amazonas State and today transmits live classes via a two-way videoconference link to 25,000 students in 300 secondary schools and 700 classrooms, throughout the 62 county districts. A teacher is also located in each classroom to support local activities.

The awards were formally presented at the gala Tuesday night by Her Royal Highness Sheika Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned.  Each project received $20,000.   The first WISE Awards attracted 500 entries, and I was told that the judges could have honored many more projects than they did, so expect an even bigger splash next year.

Dr. Abdulla bin Ali Al-Thani is the Chairman of WISE and Vice President for Education of the Qatar Foundation.  Dr. Abdulla knows the United States well, having gone to graduate school at Colorado State University. I spent a few minutes with this soft-spoken, focused and optimistic leader on the first day of WISE.  He was very clear about his high hopes for the event.

Not on the tape but revealing: When Dr. Abdulla learned that I live in California, his face lit up.  He told me with great excitement about the time he and a cousin rented motorcycles, took a 1-hour driving lesson, and then drove down our Route One from Big Sur down to Santa Barbara.  He told his parents, he confessed, only after the trip had concluded successfully.

About 1000 delegates from more than 120 countries are represented here in Doha, Qatar, at WISE, the World Innovation Summit for Education. Plans are to make this an annual event, and it’s backed by the Qatar Foundation and the prestige of Her Royal Highness, Sheika Mozah, the wife of the Emir. She opened the 3-day meeting with a rousing call for innovation in education.

She reminded us that more than 75 million school-age children are not in school and that nearly 800 million adults cannot read or write. And she sounded a theme that is of profound importance: the education gender gap is wide and growing, because discrimination against women and girls is deeply entrenched.

The need for innovation is clear, because business as usual means accepting severe teacher shortages, funding deficits and low completion rates. Can this conference energize at least some of the participants to work for significant change?

For this stranger,a lesson on arrival had to do with pronunciation of Qatar. I’ve always said ‘ka-TAR’ but they say ‘cotter’, as in cotter pin. The second lesson: This is a new country intent on leaping into the 21st century: Construction cranes everywhere, and what they have already put up is impressive. Google ‘Education City, Qatar’ and see for yourself.

About 50 journalists are here, and the organizers have ‘quarantined’ us at a hotel miles and miles from the meeting hotel, the Ritz. We are downtown, where life happens, and we have a 30-40 minute bus ride morning and night that gives us a chance to see some of Doha. Those ensconced at the Ritz are out on a peninsula, miles from anything else. They do get the famous Ritz chocolate chip cookies, however.

After Sheika Mozah’s speech, we were talked at, about the importance of innovation in education. Why is it that the pedagogy never changes? Does someone believe that’s the best way to communicate?

When I’m president, we’ll fight to make sure we’re once again first in the world when it comes to high school graduation rates.

-Barack Obama (Dayton, Ohio, September 9, 2008)

I admit I do things that get me in trouble at school. I like to talk in class, argue with the teacher and make people laugh. But I feel like the teachers and principals are always waiting for me to do something stupid so they can jump on my case. It’s like we’re in a war. The only question is who’s going to strike first.

- Desmin, New York, New York, April 2009

Many Americans hear from or about President Barack Obama near daily.  But voices like Desmin’s - an 8th grader struggling to finish middle school in New York City - are less heard, though education reform remains a high priority of this president (and the last).

A recent report commissioned by the America’s Promise Alliance (PDF) puts the national high school graduation rate at 71%.  That number drops sharply in large urban districts like New York, where in 2008 just 60% of students earned a diploma within four years — a new high for the city.  

Youth Communication attacks the problem from an unusual angle.  Founded almost 30 years ago in New York, YC is dedicated to helping teenagers develop reading and writing skills by publishing magazines written by and for teens.  A recent issue titled “Getting to Graduation” included Desmin’s story.  An excerpt:

Now I am on the brink of being kicked out of school because of my behavior. I think my teachers feel like the school would have no problems if they just got rid of me, and that upsets me. I feel disgusted because they label me the bad seed. I don’t see myself as that.

I just want to pass 8th grade and move on to high school. I don’t really want to draw negative attention to myself for acting up. I’d rather draw positive attention to myself for being on the honor roll.

I want to go to college and get my master’s degree. I want to become an architect or maybe an entrepreneur so I can be my own boss. With this brain, I feel that I have the skills to start my own business—like a champagne label or maybe a record label. But first I have to graduate from high school.

This weekend, take the time to read Desmin’s story and others on the Youth Communication website.  Often our discussions of education pivot around adult stories, neglecting the voices of those sitting in the classroom - or leaving it too early.

Learn more: Youth Communication
Related content: Listen Up! Youth media network

Free For All, Poppendieck’s exposé of the American school lunch, claims that public schools need to prioritize providing nutritional, free breakfasts and lunches to all its students. The issue of school lunch is wedded, she argues, to issues of race and class: after all, the accepted measure of poverty at a given American school is the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. In many schools, the free lunch fed to poor kids is not only unhealthy, it’s also ridden with social stigma. From Christensen’s review:

The three-tiered system of free, reduced-price, and full-price lunches ostensibly provides for needy kids but in fact intimidates and confuses parents with endless forms to fill out and fosters a sense of shame in eligible kids, who opt to go hungry rather than expose their poverty to their peers. The program therefore often fails to reach the very kids it was designed for.

Christensen compares Poppendieck’s book to Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and one hopes that the popularity of Pollan’s ideas will carry over into the realm of education. We all deserve to eat well, but with the considerable challenges they face, schoolchildren may deserve the finest dining.

Midday Malaise [bookforum.com, Dec/Jan 2010]
A Reading List [Taking Note, LMtv, 9/22/09]

Obama and Duncan Are Wrong About Charters ["Bridging Differences," EdWeek, 11/17/09]
Ford Gives Money to Teachers Unions [WSJ.com, 11/17/09]
Concern at a School in a Building Tied to Iran [NY Times, 11/13/09]
Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C.: Tensions Rising [LMTV and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 11/17/09]

At the center of the storm: over 200 teachers who lost jobs in October. That may not sound like much — but the layoffs follow a national campaign to recruit teachers to DC. Why did Rhee hire 934 new teachers between spring and fall only to make layoffs six weeks into the school year?

One thing is for certain — the temperature is rising in Washington, DC. Contract negotiations with the teachers’ union have ground to a halt. And in the words of one DC councilmember, “We are sitting in a chamber where tensions couldn’t be higher.”

Download transcript (pdf)

In this interview, John Merrow interviews Jodie Gittleson, Eve McCarey, Crystal Proctor and Tina Bradshaw-Smith, four DC teachers who were laid off during the Reduction in Force (RIF).

Podcast producer Selly Thiam interviewed Jason Kamras, one of the architects of IMPACT and the Director of Human Capital Management for Washington, DC’s teachers about the evaluation system and how he thinks it is going to change teaching in Washington, DC.

Though he was perhaps the most clearly partisan in his opinions, Gingrich stood out for the clarity and specificity of his thoughts during this interview. Whereas Duncan said a lot of things we’ve heard him say before, all along the lines of “We all have to take responsibility…we all have to step up,” and whereas Sharpton made some basic, declarative statements about de facto racism in education and the achievement gap, Gingrich pushed his own education agenda. He said twice that he’d “like to have a Pell Grant for K through 12,” and he claimed that charter schools are a solution to the discipline problems in inner-city schools:

We have a friend whose daughter is now teaching in a school [in D.C.] where there have been 23 lawsuits this year over discipline in a school that’s fundamentally undisciplined.  And so teachers are told basically, “You can’t get enough control to teach.” And this is why, when you go out to the KIPP school and to other systems like that–and there are 82 KIPP schools in the country–they’re very structured.  The Mastery schools, very structured. These kids, for the first time in their lives, are being given discipline; and therefore, they can attract great teachers because they can actually focus on the kids.

Despite the vagueness of some of their answers, it’s impressive to see such seemingly mismatched political partners united in their concern for American schools. Watch the full episode below.

Media Monday: BASIS Charter Schools [Ed Beat, 11/9/09]

I’m headed to the first World Innovation Summit on Education in Doha, Qatar. Hundreds of education innovators, policy makers and experts will be gathering there and I plan on recording video, audio interviews and filling you in on what’s happening there as it unfolds. This week, expect a post a day from me until Thursday, when I return.

To learn more about the WISE conference, visit their website: http://www.wise-qatar.org.

“Changing the Odds: Learning from the Harlem Children’s Zone Model,” a three-day conference attended by upwards of 1,000 educators, municipal leaders, and non-profit workers, was held earlier this week in New York. Secretary Duncan gave a keynote address, explaining that grants would be competitive, and that communities must base their proposals on already existing systems of schools–money won’t be spent on good ideas alone.

The Harlem Children’s Zone has received extraordinary praise for the very real gains it has produced in reading and math achievement among students who attend Promise Academy schools. As the New York Times‘ David Brooks points out, “In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.”

But Harlem Children’s Zone has some advantages over its proteges, among them a politically savvy, high-profile leader and a $65 million yearly budget furnished by big sponsors (including the chairman of American Express). Without that kind of influence or cash, it’s unclear that other programs will be able to match HCZ’s explosive success.

Non-Profits Look at Harlem Children’s Zone and Ask: Only in New York? [WNYC, 11/11/09]
The Harlem Miracle [David Brooks, NY Times, 5/7/09]
In The Zone [Ed Beat, LMtv, 8/28/09]

The study, an “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning”, includes research from 1996 to 2008, and focuses mostly on online courses for adults in continuing education programs. For years, continuing education has been where the bulk of online learning has happened. According to the New York Times:

Until fairly recently, online education amounted to little more than electronic versions of the old-line correspondence courses. That has really changed with arrival of Web-based video, instant messaging and collaboration tools.

In other words, online learning has been and will continue to be transformed by its ability to bring people together. The Times quotes Philip Regier, the dean of Arizona State’s Online and Extended Campus program:

“People are correct when they say online education will take things out of the classroom. But they are wrong, I think, when they assume it will make learning an independent, personal activity. Learning has to occur in a community.”

Last week, John Merrow wrote about the potential uses of technology in the classroom, and the resistance to innovation that exists in some public school communities. If online learning can truly “take things out of the classroom,” though, one wonders whether it will be possible to integrate an online classroom with its real-life counterpart. And how will these new learning communities affect the kind of “hands-on” (for lack of a better term) learning that traditional school fosters? Play, classroom discussion, and verbal communication all seem to be at stake.

Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom [NY Times, 8/19/09]

Technology in Schools: Problems & Possibilities [Taking Note, 11/3/09]

In 2006, Jenkins and his team at the time published a white paper called Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.  This paper was the reason why I decided to apply to the CMS program at MIT because it so fundamentally changed my view of the relationship between technology and education. I had been teaching video for a couple years in day and after school programs in NYC public schools, and I was finding myself frustrated by my students’ obsession with social networks and video games.  I came across the whitepaper and realized that they were “obsessed” because these new media both engaged them and allowed them to be a part of a community inside and outside of the school walls that was relevant to their lives.

What are the New Media Literacies?  What are a few of your favorites, and why?

The New Media Literacies are a set of social skills and cultural competencies that we believe are necessary for students to participate fully in society - this includes being a good student, a successful worker, and an engaged citizen.  The whitepaper, which you can access here, explains the conditions that are necessary for a participatory culture to exist.  It also outlines three major challenges we must deal with moving forward.  First, while we are making strides in the digital divide by putting computers and broadband in most schools, we are now facing a participation gap, which is “the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow.”  Second, there is a transparency problem, which means that young people are unable to see the ways that media is shaping their perceptions of the world.  And third, there is an ethics challenge, stemming from “the breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants.”

With these three challenges in mind, Jenkins and NML created a list of 11 (now 12) social skills and cultural competencies that broaden the idea of what it means to be literate today.  (Read the full list here.)

We all go back and forth about which skill we think is most important because they so often overlap and interconnect, it’s hard to just choose one.  That being said since I’m currently doing research around using digital games in education, I am a little partial to the benefits of play.

Tell me a little about what the project “does” and why you think it is important.

I’ll answer the second part of your question first.  Academics get some flack for never leaving the university and thinking up new ideas, but NML makes sure it grounds its research in practice.  We learn a lot developing our resources, but we probably learn even more when we take them into educational settings and see how teachers and students use them.

Over my past year at NML we’ve been very busy.  Since the publication of the whitepaper, NML has created several resources that are putting the new media literacies into action.  NML developed a web-based activity center called the Learning Library, that introduces users to skills through what we call challenges.  These challenges are interactive multimedia lessons that pull in elements from the web, such as videos, images, or audio.  The Learning Library is a tool that encourages educators and students to participate in learning, allowing both to create, remix, or share a challenge.  You can check it out here, and see some of the challenges the NML team created or even make your own challenge, if you like.

NML, working under the idea that media literacy should be incorporated across the curriculum, has also been working on Teacher Strategy Guides for use in formal education.  The first one, Reading in a Participatory Culture, was piloted in several schools last year.  It is a modular curriculum that  consists of four units, each of which focuses on a handful of skills.  While the idea was that the guide could be used with many different texts, our example uses as source texts, Moby-Dick and a contemporary theater adaptation by Ricardo Pitts-Wiley called Moby-Dick: Then and Now.  As Jenkins often says, we wanted to “be conservative in content, and transformative in method.”

Our website has more information about these resources, and others like our Digital Ethics Casebook collaboration with Howard Gardner’s GoodPlay project.  We also presented much of our research in Threshold magazine’s spring ‘09 issue which you can find here.

I’m interested in the fact that appropriation is one of the literacies–this one seems particularly specific to internet culture and is something that all internet journalists grapple with all the time.  How do we learn to successfully “sample and remix” content generated by others?

We’ve found that appropriation is a particularly complex skill when it comes to schools.  Teachers are concerned with the apparent ease of plagiarism and confusions around copyright and fair use.   We tend to talk about appropriation in terms of remix culture because most young people are more familiar with it.  In the Teachers’ Strategy Guide, we even talk about Herman Melville as a remixer because of the way he incorporated elements from many sources, including the Bible and scientific texts, with a classic story of revenge in his novel Moby-Dick.  With remixes we don’t just mean a creative work that borrows pieces from others, but a creative work that builds on and transforms the meaning of the original source or sources.  We see in the process of making remixes a way for students to think about media critically, become an author, and understand their audience.

That being said we understand educators and students want to know more about their rights around copyright and fair use.  NML made several required challenges in the Learning Library that explore real-world situations and provoke discussion around the state of copyright and how our use of new media is challenging it.

On John Merrow’s blog and in general at Learning Matters, we’ve been thinking a lot about access to technology in schools and whether traditional public schools, especially, will be resistant to the flow of technology into the classroom.  What do you think?  What–if anything–has your work with NML shown you about the disparities in access across lines of race, class, etc?

As I mentioned above, NML is very concerned with the participation gap.  Many schools today have computers and broadband internet access, but these are not useful to teachers or students if they don’t know how to use them as full participants. A growing trend seems to be that schools ban access to YouTube and social networks because they are distractions or liabilities, but these are also resources that students will need to learn how to navigate and use once they are out of school.  Students with access to these resources at home usually have ample time to become proficient in using them.  Students who are not able to engage with new media resources at school or only for a limited amount of time could be less likely to develop the skills, knowledge, opportunities and experiences that are required for students to fully participate in our increasingly digital society.

Do you think you are new media literate?

I am lucky that I was able to learn video production in high school, go to film school, work in documentaries at LMI, and now study media at MIT.   After all that, though, with the pace of technology innovation increasing, I still find it hard to keep up with the latest gadget, app, or social network.  Above any technical skills I’ve acquired though, I think I most value the skills I’ve learned that help me navigate across a range of media, evaluate and synthesize the information I find, and express my point of view in a variety of ways.

Indeed, according to the Economist, school founders Michael Block and his wife, Olga, started the school because Olga, who is Czech, was “horrified by the mediocrity and low expectations at American public schools.” One of the school’s teachers, interviewed in the clip below, says that the Blocks “took a blend of the Asian and European style, and it has an American flair.”

Reverend Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich have both publicly supported the school, and in 2008, Newsweek ranked it the #1 public high school in America (this year they are #5). Michael Block accounts for the schools’ success by citing its rigorous academic demands–the BASIS high schools use only Advanced Placement curricula–and the hard work of its students. Are high academic standards and “four hours of homework a night” the keys to education reform? Watch Block’s interview with Tucson local news, below, and tell us what you think.

“The Future of Learning” [Ed Beat, 10/26/09]
“Desert Excellence” [Economist.com, 10/29/09]

That all changed when Andrew joined Rochester’s Work Experience Program (WEP), which combines small academic classes with vocational education. Carleen Meers, Assistant Director of the program, told us that close to 80% of WEP graduates obtain competitive employment or enroll in college after high school.  

That’s an impressive figure — but it’s also important to note that the fact the figure exists at all is impressive!  When Meers joined WEP, there wasn’t any data to track student outcomes after graduation.  That’s not unusual. 

In many states, school systems simply do not know how well they have prepared special education students for life after high school.

Oregon, where 1 out of 8 students is in special ed, is trying to learn. An article from The Oregonian details a recent survey conducted by the Oregon Dept. of Education, the first of its kind in the state:

 Telephone surveys of former students in every school district found that about 1,150 of the 4,200 special education students who finished their high school education in 2006-07 spent the next year without getting a job that paid minimum wage or any post-secondary education.

That’s a quarter of Oregon special ed students.  But officials are optimistic:

State and national officials called the results a big success, simply because schools are finally tracking what happens to students with disabilities once they leave school, information that will help them better prepare future students.

I’m reminded of a conversation John Merrow had with then-Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings about No Child Left Behind in 2007.  In the video below, at about 8:30, John asks a question about states using loopholes.  Spellings’ response — a “Hooray” that the question can be asked at all because of the new availability of data — underscores the tension, playing out in school districts across the country, between the act of measuring success and acting meaningfully on the information learned.

In Rochester, where schools received $30 Million from the federal government, the money helped to save three innovative programs and many educators’ jobs. According to President Obama and his education staff, this kind of change has been and will continue to be fostered by stimulus dollars. In a speech yesterday in Madison, Wisconsin, the President laid out the tenets of his Race to the Top program, in which states are eligible to win stimulus grants if they “develop a strong plan to improve the quality of education”in their states. He described what states need to do to qualify and how applications will be evaluated. Meanwhile, the Department of Education has released a report detailing the effects of stimulus money in the education sector, which states that 325,000 jobs have been saved since the money went out.

Pieces in both the New York Times and EdWeek say that the report’s data is somewhat suspect, however, and “only as good as the recipients that have reported it.” In many cases, it remains unclear what kinds of jobs were created and whether “saved” jobs were ever really in danger–for example, many Head Start programs seem to have given raises to employees whose jobs were reported as saved. The Obama administration has prioritized transparency by making these numbers public so quickly, but the report itself sheds only a hazy light on the stimulus and its usefulness.

Stay tuned for continuing coverage from us on both the stimulus and, more narrowly, the Race to the Top.

“Holding the Line” [LMtv & The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 10/3/09]

Watch Obama’s Speech in Madison

Reports Show Conflicting Number of Jobs Attributed to Stimulus Money [NY Times, 11/4/09]
Transparency Watch: Evaluating Stimulus Reporting [Education Week, 11/2/09]
ED Recovery Act Report: Summary of Programs and State-by-State Data
[ED.gov, 11/2/09]

We hope that in light of this unprecedented refund offer, parents will be reassured that their babies do not need videos in order to learn and grow optimally.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children under two shouldn’t be exposed television or “screen media.” I’ve known many children under two to watch an episode of “Sesame Street,” though, and in the age of New Media Literacies, one wonders how useful–or possible–it is to keep an infant in a screen-less bubble. Baby Einstein’s programming–for example, this short clip below that pairs an image of a cow and the letters ‘c-o-w’–seems potentially ineffectual, but relatively harmless.

Early-childhood education programs–not to mention music and dance “classes” for infants–are all the rage, but it seems like educators and parents still have a lot to learn about early development.

Disney Expands Refunds on ‘Baby Einstein’ DVDs [New York Times, 10/23/09]

But I think there are three reasons to worry.  Reason one, the technology will be unevenly distributed, meaning that the gap between rich and poor will actually widen.  Two, schools won’t respond to the creative potential of technology in positive ways.  And, three, they will respond uncritically.

First, the technology gap (which I wrote about on this blog a few weeks back). This issue is major, because in most of history the rich have gotten richer, and there’s no reason to expect things to be different this time around.  Creating special programs to put technology into schools with poor children won’t work unless those programs are accompanied by serious professional development, because most teachers I know are uncomfortable with computers and even more uncomfortable with the notion that kids know more than they do.

What do poor kids get when schools are their main source of advance technology?  Not much!  As teacher Esther Wojcicki of Palo Alto notes, kids in school are forced into what she calls ‘the airplane mode.’ “They’re told to sit down, strap in and face straight ahead for the duration of the flight.”

Right now, well off children have access to technology at home, meaning that they will find it easier to cope with the ‘powering down’ that happens when they walk into their schools.  Not so for poor kids, who end up suffering through a lot of drill.

My second fear is that schools will resist innovation and become irrelevant. A tsunami, a huge wave of technology in the hands of young people, is approaching, but many educators seem unaware that their students swim in a sea of technology outside the school. They want to continue to use computers and other tools to control students and to manage information, and that’s about it.

Because they fear technology in the hands of kids, they look for ways to keep it out of schools. When a couple of students were found looking at ‘inappropriate’ videos on YouTube in one school recently, the administration decided on the spot that no students would have access to the site.  That’s overreaction based on ignorance, and a valuable teachable moment thrown away.  Of course kids are going to go to places we don’t want them to, but what that requires is vigilance on the part of adults as well as scads of interesting and challenging work.  Even in a high tech world, idle hands (and minds) do the devil’s work.

Imagine the response of the rest of the kids when they learned that YouTube couldn’t be accessed at school.  Guess what site they were sure to visit at home?

My third fear has to do with what happens when schools do embrace technology. That is, I worry about the enthusiasm of technology’s supporters. Last week I participated in a 2-day event held at Google headquarters in Mountain View and organized by Sesame Workshop, Common Sense Media and the MacArthur Foundation. At one point we watched a short homemade video of a young man purporting to teach how to solve a quadratic equation.  With great energy, the boy lunged at the camera lens and enthused about how easy it is. He wrote on a white board, enthused more about changing the minus signs to plus signs, and concluded by nearly shouting again that it was easy.  The audience applauded, but for what? He hadn’t explained why he was changing signs, or anything else for that matter. It was terrible teaching, pure and simple, but technology was being used, and most of the adults loved it!

But ignoring technology is the greater danger. We saw another video in which a high school student told us that he never read books, hadn’t read one in years.  Why bother, he asked rhetorically, when you can read plot summaries on line in 30 seconds.  He confessed (rather he boasted) that he’d aced a test on Romeo & Juliet without reading a word of Shakespeare’s play.

I think technology is a huge threat to a decent education precisely because it allows shortcuts like that.  We know that students everywhere are downloading term papers written by others and submitting them as their own, and now they don’t even have to read the material.  We’re producing students with no deep understanding of our culture and a fundamental contempt for education.

There is a solution, of course. It’s not anti-technology, but it does require slowing things down. Take Romeo & Juliet.  I’ll wager that it was one of three or four plays the students were assigned to read and the teacher required to ‘cover’ in a few weeks.  Under those circumstances, SparkNotes may be appropriate.

But suppose three or four weeks could be devoted to one play?  Then the odds would be that no student could get by without reading.  And if students don’t give a rip about Shakespeare, change the assignment: put Macbeth and Lady Macbeth on trial for first-degree murder, with kids playing the roles of Macbeth, his wife, Duncan, Banquo, et cetera.  Now they’ll have to prepare to give testimony, while the students who are the defense and prosecutors will have to prep for cross-examination. That is, they’ll have to read what Shakespeare wrote, think about the meaning, perhaps watch Olivier or Orson Welles in film versions, and more.

There’s a marvelous role for technology in this.  Assign students to videotape the proceedings and prepare nightly news reports ‘from the courtroom,’ to be posted on the web and aired on the school’s broadcast or narrowcast system.  To be able to interview intelligently, these students also would have to dig deep into the play itself.  So long, SparkNotes!

In a perfect world, this kind of curriculum would be found in our poorest schools, giving those kids the opportunity for deep learning and powerful intellectual challenges, not the ‘drill and kill’ routine they are more likely to encounter.

Today’s path–a breakneck pace through a required curriculum aimed at enabling students to pass cheap bubble tests—is antithetical to the effective use of technology. Instead, students in East Palo Alto, Greenwich, Mumbai, Shanghai and London should be connected, working together on projects to, for example, analyze acidity in rainfall or traffic patterns or election results. (Often they are already connected–outside of school–through Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.)

The choice is ours:  We can use technology in schools to support students who dig deep and create knowledge, or we can continue with business as usual, an environment that invites kids to use technology’s power in ways that ultimately hurt us all.

The goal of the Teacher Salary Project is to generate energy and excitement around the idea that public school teachers should be paid much, much more. As one teacher convincingly puts it in the trailer:

I mean, if you were to say to me, if I were to make a lot more money, would I stay in teaching—if that’s all that would happen, I would probably say no. But I know that if the salary went up…things would follow in terms of the level of prestige and I bet the level of effectiveness and I bet the retention.

The project has amassed a good deal of video footage of teachers–some in a kind of video diary format, some of it simply observing their work in the classroom. The more personal clips tend to focus on long, exhausting days through which teachers cheerfully struggle; the classroom clips are there to celebrate the innovative work of good teachers (below, a Spanish teacher uses music and rhythm to teach vocabulary).

When we covered Teach for America teachers working in New Orleans during the 2008-2009 school year, we found that many of them were struggling, and that only a few of them planned on staying in the teaching force long-term. It’s refreshing to watch the teachers featured by the Teacher Salary Project, whose hard work is ongoing. Now it’s time to properly reward them.

The First Ever GOOD 100 [GOOD.is, 10/7/09]

The Teacher Salary Project

Paul Vallas in New Orleans, Episode 10: The TFA Effect [LMtv, 7/7/09]

Bob Compton, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, set out to find the answers in his documentary film, 2 Million Minutes.  The film takes a look at how six high school students from three different countries–U.S., China and India–spend their high school years.

The film argues that America is losing its competitive educational edge and therefore is at risk of losing its global and economic power, too. The idea that America is the center of innovation has increasingly been questioned and with the global economy in such flux, the rules of the game seem to be changing daily.

As Shirley Ann Jackson, Physicist and President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, succinctly states in the film, “Brains are everywhere. Discoveries can be made everywhere. And industries built on those discoveries also can be made anywhere.”

The film’s focus seems to be on creating a student population that will help secure a nation’s economic and global power. And while I understand that educated citizens are ideal, something seems to be missing from the analysis: the students’ needs and educators’ responsibility to fulfill them. How can the U.S. engage and invigorate students’ capacity to learn in ways that will encourage a lifelong commitment to curiosity and learning? Wouldn’t it be great if all students were hungry for knowledge, building tools that would improve our lives and world, creating smart and thoughtful policy and more?

The central question of 2 Million Minutes is, “How will these students spend their 2 million minutes in high school?” Maybe a more appropriate question would be “How can educators make sure those two million minutes are worthwhile?”

On Ed Beat and beyond, there’s been a ton of conversation around digital learning, using technology more effectively in schools and increasing access to technology globally. There are emerging projects that aim to empower youth-directed learning by valuing non-traditional learning–learning that happens socially but is valuable for students and their prospective employers. I am thinking specifically of Barry Joseph’s write-up of a project his organization, Global Kids, is currently working on.

He, Bob Compton and dozens of other education innovators will gather tomorrow and Wednesday at Google Headquarters for a conference called “Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age.” The forum is a mixture of panels (some moderated by our very own John Merrow!), exhibits and discussions meant to “help refresh and reboot American global leadership in education.” You can tune in via webcast here or stay tuned for a report back from us.

In the meantime, watch the 2 Million Minutes trailer and share your thoughts in the comments.

2 Million Minutes [Official website]

Barry Joseph on “Using Alternative Assessment Models to Empower Youth-directed Learning” [10/23/09]

Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age [Official website with agenda, speakers, and more]

Podcast: Bob Compton has education advice for the next president [LMtv, 9/16/08]

When the economy tanked last year, schools in Rochester, New York braced for the worst. Faced with a 50 million dollar shortfall, the school district expected to lay off 500 of its 3,800 teachers. For Rochester’s students, the downturn meant the end of programs–including job training for high school students with special needs and a program to help struggling kindergartners.

Then the stimulus bill, signed in February, sent $100 billion to the nation’s schools to be spent over 2 years, marking the largest federal investment in education in history.

Download transcript (pdf)

The money has gone out, what’s it done? We visited Rochester–which received about $30 million in stimulus money this year–to find out.

As you can see in the chart, there is some good news.  Net costs — what students actually end up paying, once financial aid is taken into account — declined over the past five years, but as the report’s authors remind us, assessing the impact of the changing cost of college involves weighing a number of factors:

In considering the impact of price increases, it is accumulated patterns, not one-year changes, that determine current charges. Relatively low prices may rise rapidly in percentage terms without causing significant difficulties, while even freezing high prices does not put them within reach of the typical student. Current prices and dollar increases, not percentage increases, best measure the impact on students and families.

In other words, though the net cost of college has decreased slightly, that price drop hasn’t happened in a vacuum.  It’s happened in the midst of an economic crisis that is stretching students and their families to the limit.

Last fall, we covered the rising cost of college in a 2-part report for The NewsHour, investigating both the challenges of paying for a bachelor’s degree and the underlying reasons behind the upward trend in pricing.

While producing that report we heard from students, over and over, that the cost of college and the crippling debt that many times ensued is worth it, because alternative routes to solid careers have disappeared.  One senior told told us, “I think that it becomes a sort of standard practice to just accept the fact that, if you want to get what you want out of life, you’re going to have to be in debt.” And if students will pay, there’s not much incentive for colleges to stop increasing tuition and fees.

I invite you to revisit the segments, and share your thoughts…

Paying for College, Drowning in Debt [Learning Matters for The NewsHour, aired 12/08/08]

The Costs for Colleges [Learning Matters for The NewsHour, aired 12/09/08]

While his friends, admirers and supporters are many, Ted Sizer’s influence reaches far beyond that group.  Make no mistake, Ted Sizer was one of the giants of American education, a force for good for more than 50 years.

He is well known as the founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, which in 1984 launched a wave of change based on the idea of engaging students in useful and challenging work.  He knew that seat time was a completely inadequate measure of learning, and he was highly skeptical of the value of multiple choice tests and conventional grading.

His seminal book, Horace’s Compromise, will be read for years to come, as it should be.

You can read more in the New York Times.  George Wood of the Forum for Education and Democracy has a thoughtful appreciation on their website. And Ted’s own organization is collecting tributes online.

Two personal memories that capture Ted’s spirit and approach to life.  Ten percent of Walter Annenberg’s $500 million gift to American education went to support the Coalition of Essential Schools’ effort to transform high schools.  That’s a great story for a journalist, and so I called him up and proposed that we follow, on television, the efforts of one school to adopt Ted’s nine principles. As my opening gambit for what I assumed would be serious negotiations, I told him that we would need full access, no strings. “Fine,’ he said.  ‘What sort of school are you looking for?’

We ended up filming in Woodward High School in Cincinnati for three years, and Ted had no problem with our reporting on what was clearly a ‘2 steps forward, 2 steps back’ process.

Openness was just one of his virtues.  He was also a true gentleman, full of humor and charm.  While he must have been tough (he ran schools, after all!), he was also gentle and optimistic, a gracious host.  When we were producing School Sleuth in 2000, I called him at his home in Harvard, Massachusetts, to see if we could meet him at his office for an interview. “Why don’t you come to our home instead?” was his response.  If I remember correctly, he and Nancy also offered us beds for the night. Ted, Debbie Meier, Don Hirsch and a few other thoughtful people brought that program to life.

Ted never sought the spotlight or worried about who got credit, which may explain why he accomplished so much.  In 2006 I was asked to speak at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Commencement, and before I flew east from California I wrote Ted and Nancy asking if we could meet for breakfast that day.  We met at a small restaurant and exchanged news.  Ted looked strong and waved away questions about the pump he had to wear as part of the chemotherapy.  When he left the table briefly, Nancy told me how excited he was to be back because this commencement marked his 50-year anniversary with the school. I wanted to know how Harvard was honoring him. Nobody knows, she said, because Ted doesn’t want any fuss.

Not on my watch are we going to fail to honor this great man, I thought to myself.  After we parted, I made a beeline for Dean Kathy McCartney’s office and told her.  Her powerful tribute to Ted, who was seated on stage with the rest of the faculty, produced a standing ovation that went on for many minutes.  There weren’t many dry eyes in the house, certainly not mine.

The greatest tribute we can pay to Ted Sizer is to keep alive his vision—that students must be respected, and that the highest form of respect teachers can show their students is to challenge them with work that stretches their minds.

Rest in peace, my friend.

_______________________________________

Back in 2000, I visited Ted and asked him to talk about his vision for creating excellent schools.  Listen to the interview online >>>

• David Warlick. His blog, 2 cents Worth, focuses on the importance of incorporating technology-based and new media skills in the everyday classroom–a subject we’ve covered extensively on Ed Beat and on which Warlick seems to be somewhat of an authority. He often presents on the topic to conferences of educators, and his blog reveals some impassioned–and potentially controversial–opinions, like the following (from a post on national standards):

I would also urge developers to include, as a reading skill, the ability to locate information to be read. If my children can not skilled in use something like Google to find information that is appropriate to what they are trying to achieve, then I might prefer that they not be able to read it.

• JT Spencer. This blog feels as youthful as its author–it’s bound to be appealing to the many young teachers who enter the country’s teaching force right out of college. Spencer “muses” (his word choice) about a lot of things, some of them unrelated to teaching, but his posts about education are thoughtful and complex. Check out this post about how he’s wary of his students using social networking sites–Spencer might be the voice of his generation of teachers.

• Cool Cat Teacher. This teacher’s blog is less about the classroom experience and more a response to current issues in education. It presents an incredibly thorough daily round-up of education stories and teaching resources: the combination of news and helpful hints feels just right.

• Kathy Cassidy’s Classroom Blog. This one is a pleasure to skim through, even if you have zero interest in teaching or education. Cassidy’s blog belongs not only to her but to her entire first-grade class: she posts photo montages of their work, news about their ongoing projects, and videos cataloguing their outspoken selves (watch one below). It must be exciting for parents to track their children’s progress via a blog like this; not to mention its value as an online literacy tool for the six-year-olds themselves.

The full list of blogs offers an embarrassment of other riches for educators, including relevant twitter feeds.

Ever since he lectured Theo on the merits of a college degree on the first-ever episode of “The Cosby Show,” Bill Cosby has been an outspoken advocate of education in the African-American community. This week on “Taking Note,” his blog, John Merrow interviews Robert C. Bobb, the Emergency Financial Manager of Detroit Public Schools, who attracted Cosby’s attention to the woefully under-performing–not to mention broke–school district last year. Though Detroit is in much the same boat as a lot of large, urban public school systems–like Washington, D.C., where Bobb used to serve on the school board–it has its own unique set of problems, among them overspending, corruption and what the Detroit newscaster below describes as “apathy among some Detroit families.” Detroit has for years now been a kind of ghost town, romanticized–as in these photos by two French photographers for TIME–for its “beautiful, horrible decline.” Will Ghost Dad be able to help? Read Merrow’s interview and watch the Detroit news coverage below to learn more about Bobb and Cosby’s efforts to make over Detroit Public Schools.

Bill Cosby, Back in the “D” [WJBK FOX 2 Detroit, MI, 9/13/09]
Detroit’s Beautiful, Horrible Decline [TIME, March 2009]

[Editor's Note: Just a few days after this was published, Mr. Bobb and the State of Michigan reached agreement, and he is staying for another year.]
**

The Interview

Secretary Arne Duncan referred to Detroit as “New Orleans without Katrina,” and we’ve seen pictures of some truly awful schools.  Are schools really as bad as those pictures make them look, or are those outliers?

Detroit schools and the school district are in dire straights. No question. That’s why Governor Jennifer Granholm felt it necessary to appoint an Emergency Financial Manager to take over. And that’s why we are taking a comprehensive approach to overhauling the system, looking not just at the money but also the educational model and analyzing where we need to improve security and operations. I recruited Dr. Barbara Byrd-Bennett, former CEO of Cleveland schools and New York City’s Supervising Superintendent of the Chancellor’s District, to serve as the district’s Chief Academic and Accountability Auditor. We needed that because our schools post some of the worst test scores and graduation rates in the nation. Dr. Bennett is working on a systematic approach, beginning with early childhood education (including a zero to age three plan), to overhaul our academic program. We are also overhauling 40 low-performing schools and restructuring most of our traditional high schools.

The rampant waste, fraud and abuse that plagued this system also led me to appoint John Bell to serve as Inspector General and oversee our police department and a team of internal auditors and investigators. Mr. Bell has 100 cases ongoing, including several that have been moved to the county prosecutor’s office.

How ironic is it that you now have the kind of power in Detroit that Michelle Rhee has in Washington, and she’s the woman who basically took all your authority when you were President of the School Board in Washington and the Mayor took over the schools?  That is, you’re doing stuff–closing schools–that as DC School Board President you might have resisted. Have your views changed about mayoral control now that you are in a different seat?

There is no doubt that the school board structure hasn’t worked in Detroit. But my views have been consistent that voters should have a say on this matter.

You inherited a deficit of about $260 million.  How on earth did that happen?

The district had overspent its budget for the last seven years. There was also a pervasive environment of misspending and outright corruption. For instance, an audit we conducted to determine eligibility of healthcare dependents initially showed 411 ineligible people on the rolls, including some who were deceased. The number of ineligible dependents dropped from the rolls has since increased to 3,903.  The annual savings is estimated at $13.3 million. The school system also undertook a review of transportation in the spring of this year looking for improvements in both effectiveness and efficiency.

In the school year 2008-09, the district used taxicab service along 447 cab routes and serviced 1,155 students at a cost of $4.6 million. Not any longer: this year we’re spending just $1 million on 106 routes and 162 students. We are consolidating some bus transportation routes and saving another $4 million. These are operational reviews that are standard in any industry and should’ve been conducted. In addition to misspending, though, we also have people stealing computers from our schools, stealing bags of money from the lunchroom and other outrageous wrongdoing. I created an Office of Inspector General to root out such corruption. I won’t tolerate one red cent being stolen from Detroit’s schoolchildren.

It can’t all be bad. Or can it?

It’s not all bad. We have some shining examples of great schools. We have five of the best high schools in America. At one of our schools, Davis Aerospace, students can earn their pilot’s license as soon as they are old enough to drive. We have schools where students can take the traditional Spanish and French, as well as Chinese. We also have the first single-gender public high schools in the state of Michigan. And the Detroit School of Arts is a shining example of an excellent program that includes amazing partnerships with places like the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

But if most schools are bad, why would families choose to enroll?

Some parents choose DPS because they want their children to attend a neighborhood school, but many opt for our schools because we are the best option. We outperform many of the area charter schools, and we have many excellent teachers, including the most Nationally-Board Certified teachers in the state. And one in four of our schools have new leadership this year. And to reference my previous answer, we also have many outstanding programs that cannot be found anywhere else.

You’ve got Bill Cosby on your side.  How did that come to pass?

Dr. Cosby first volunteered to assist DPS after being impressed with CNN coverage on the indictment of DPS’ workers for fraud and theft.  He heard me say: “I don’t care if the crook is a little guy or the chief executive. I do not care if they own the company or drive the trucks to the company’s loading dock. I do not care if they’ve been doing this for 20 years or 20 minutes. We’re coming to get you.” Dr. Cosby called me and said, “Where do I pick up my uniform? I want to be on your team!”

What’s been the impact? People talk about the ‘Obama effect.’ Is there a ‘Cosby Effect’?

You bet! The impact has been profound. I had no idea how valuable his assistance would be in shining a spotlight on the importance of public education and the great things happening in Detroit Public Schools. Dr. Cosby captured the attention of local and national media, as well as the hearts and minds of our parents. His words speaking directly to parents – both via the television cameras and face-to-face on the streets of Detroit – resonated in ways that we continue to hear about every day. The citizens of Detroit were touched to hear Dr. Cosby tell them why it’s important to take advantage of public education, which we know can open doorways to a bright future. And they heard Dr. Cosby’s message that it’s important for them to stand up for their children and get them to school well-rested and on time.

The local union president said that students and adults have come to accept ‘the abnormal as normal.’  How do you go about turning that around?  Do you want consumers to be angry?  (And why aren’t they?)

We are working extremely hard to turn around not only the reputation of Detroit Public Schools, but the systems of Detroit Public Schools. That means taking a comprehensive approach, as I’ve mentioned above. We have to overhaul not only the finances and eliminate our $259 million legacy deficit, but completely transform the educational system and vastly improve school security. Only with real action can we turn around this school system.

You didn’t answer my second and third questions?  Do you want parents to be angry? And why aren’t they?

Some parents are angry and should be. And I have said that if I were a lifelong Detroiter – and not the recent emergency financial manager of DPS – I long ago would have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit about the poor educational system in Detroit.

Your term ends in February.  What’s next for Detroit, and for you?

While my term is one year, it can be renewed, and I am in talks with the governor about staying on additional time. The school system and city need consistency.

Sounds as if you want to stay. Do you?

Yes. This is much larger and a lot more complicated than even I had imagined when I came on board. My staying, though, still is pending the outcome of negotiations. If those negotiations go well, then, yes, I’m in DPS to see this project through.

My work isn’t done yet. If I stay, one of the first things would be to make sure construction projects are done right and proper oversight is instituted if voters give approval to the $500.5 million bond issue to build 8 new schools and modernize 10 more.

[Editor's Note: Just a few days after this was published, Mr. Bobb and the State of Michigan reached agreement, and he is staying for another year.]

What do you feel you’ve accomplished?

My team has accomplished much so far, including many of the systematic changes I mentioned above. But there is much more to do.

Hiring Dr. Bennett for academics and Mr. Bell for finance were big steps. Her team is on the ground doing the necessary work to overhaul the academic system. Mr. Bell and his team have uncovered enormous waste, fraud and abuse.  They’ve saved us nearly $30 million in areas like healthcare and transportation.  We have also reaped savings from closing 29 schools and through painful but necessary staff reductions.

How long will it take to make the system whole?

My first task is to balance the budget, which we have done for this year, and to eliminate the legacy deficit from seven years of misspending. At the same time, we need to be putting systems in place to transform the district operationally. We also must be working to raise academic achievement and expectations. That is absolutely our top priority. We already announced a $148.4 million academic reinvestment plan, to be paid for through Stimulus funding.  We’ll spend it on class size reductions in early grades, enhanced extended day programs, high priority school partnerships, Netbooks for nearly all DPS students in grades 6-12 as well as their teachers, “Double Dosing” of high school math and English Language Arts instruction, expanded professional development and increased supplemental learning materials.

While we have seen some immediate changes, we expect that full transformational change would likely take three years, especially before you see real achievement results based on national examples. Still, in every area, we will expect and demand that progress be demonstrated along the way. The parents and children of Detroit deserve no less.

——————————————————

Watch an Ed Week profile of Robert Bobb that also features some of the photos of abandoned Detroit schools that John mentioned in his first question.

For the displaced, the idea of “home” was put on hold and many New Orleans residents looked forward to returning to their old neighborhoods despite what had happened. But the reality was frightening: a year after Hurricane Katrina, homes were still boarded up, many schools weren’t open, job prospects were slim, and city infrastructure was still rebuilding.

For those who insisted on coming home, the work was just beginning.

“So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away” is a short documentary that follows three teenagers as they trek back to New Orleans two years after Katrina and their persistence to build their new lives in a familiar place. The film, all of nine minutes long, gives viewers a glimpse into their struggle to return to New Orleans without their families, resume high school and try to thrive. Their stories are heartbreaking, touching and above all else, tenacious. Watch it online here.

Watching it, I was reminded of the many young men and women we’ve encountered in our series following the Recovery School District in New Orleans. The stories we’ve followed involve students and educators trying to succeed in a stricken school district, young people without any parental support and families simply trying to survive a devastating reality. In episode 3, we met Antoine Duplessis and Brittne Jackson, two young people with similar stories, but different trajectories.

Watch episode 3 below or follow the entire series here.

So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away” POV film [Official Website]

Related Program: Paul Vallas & New Orleans Schools

Photo Credit: Radhika Chalasani/Getty Images

The lovable mischief-maker is hardly a new archetype, whether in stories for adults or for children. In fact, Sendak’s Max seems tame and sensitive compared to, say, Bill Waterson’s Calvin, who drives his parents to the brink of insanity in almost every comic strip. Zalewski says that recent children’s books play up the rebelliousness of their five- and six-year old protagonists to the point of absurdity, at which they become “pure spectacle.” Parents in these books have no choice but to throw themselves at the mercy of their children’s mischief.

Zalewski ends his article by recommending the books of Kevin Henkes for their treatment of children’s misbehavior: “Henkes’s book is squarely traditional in its message,” he writes, “yet in the context of modern picture books its confidence in the idea that young children are capable of sympathy—even moral growth—feels positively radical.” There is a way in which stories for children have always been an important disciplinary tool–see Grimm’s fairy tales or Aesop’s fables–and Zalewski is right to be put off by the way parenting culture seems to have caved to “the defiant ones.” Still, stories of any type are best when “moral growth” is the by-product of pleasure, fantasy or fun.

“The Defiant Ones” [The New Yorker, 10/19/09]

“Some of his Best Friends are Beasts” [The New York Times, Manohla Dargis, 10/16/09]

The highly-anticipated film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are comes out this week. Today, the New York Times’s “Learning Network” blog posted a lesson plan titled “No More Moldy Oldies: Appreciating Classic Texts,” with suggestions for teaching Sendak’s classic, which was published in 1963. Their approach seems to indicate that today’s elementary school students need some help getting interested in the “wild rumpus,” which begs the question–will kids be interested in the film? Even if they aren’t, it’s clear that theaters will be packed with adults who remember the book fondly.

In anticipation of the movie, I’ve been thinking a lot about the particular pull of “one of the most beloved books of all time,” as the movie trailer puts it. I have been asking my friends, all in their twenties, what they remember about reading it when they were younger and whether they are excited to see the film adaptation. The results have been quite varied. My friend Nick, who is a writer and musician, says:

As a child I thought a lot about how the monsters were ferocious but not particularly scary. I was a supremely frightened child. I got anxious about things that didn’t exist, like walking dolls and gruesome corpsemen, and about things that did exist, like war and car crashes. But the wild things didn’t scare me one lick. They represent(ed) mischief rather than malice, and their world was inviting.

It’s true: in the book the wild things “roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth,” but something about their strange, wide-eyed faces and lumpy bodies renders them lovable. My friend Max, who shares a name with the book’s protagonist, remembers the way the book celebrates rebellion:

I think that’s probably the best part about the story, that although Max is portrayed as having misbehaved in the beginning, there’s never the moment where he realizes that he misbehaved and feels guilty about it and says sorry (or maybe there is–I haven’t read the book in probably ten years). He just goes on misbehaving until he tires of it, and then goes home and gets his dinner once he’s calmed down. He’s actually rewarded for his audacity in the monster world by being made king of the monsters.

Where The Wild Things Are is not a typical story for children, or even a typical fairy tale, in that it doesn’t seek to teach children anything in particular. Instead, in its few cryptic lines, it opens up a mysterious, wild world, the bulk of which has to exist in the reader’s imagination. I assume it’s this–the pull of the book on the imagination–that made Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers want to bring the book to life, to flesh out its brevity. Eggers has written a novel-length version of the book-and-now-film, called Wild Things. All of this adaptation makes me nervous, but my friends who work in film tell me to relax. Watch the trailer, below, to get yourself excited (or worried) about the movie, which comes out tomorrow.

No More Moldy Oldies: Appreciating Classic Texts [NY Times, 10/15/09]

Review: The Wild Things by Dave Eggers [Flavorwire, 10/7/09]

Numbers and Types of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools From the Common Core of Data: School Year 2007-08 [National Center for Education Statistics, 10/13/09]

Governor praised for signing education funding eligibility bill [LA Times, 10/14/09

States Stung by Criticism on Use of Stimulus Aid [Education Week, 10/12/09]

Texting, Surfing, Studying? [New York Times, 10/12/09]

Lowell Milken & $25,000 for Exceptional Teachers [Taking Note, LMtv, 10/13/09]

Lowell Milken is a businessman and philanthropist whose foundation has been surprising outstanding teachers with $25,000 rewards, no strings attached, for the past 23 years. So is it working? He says it is. He also has plans to change entire school systems, and he says that’s working too. Skeptical? Read the interview and then share your thoughts on his plans.
**

The Interview

You’re about to start your 23rd year going across the country rewarding outstanding teachers with $25,000 in cash as part of the Milken Educator Awards. Most teachers say that they don’t go into teaching for the money, but has anyone ever turned the money down?

I am proud to say that no recipient has walked away from the $25,000 financial prize. Despite the “attention grabbing” nature of the financial award, I am convinced that the public recognition, the validation of their excellence, and the opportunity to join a national network of reform-minded exemplary educators are probably of greater value to the winners. Those are there after the money is gone.

Milken Educators frequently tell me that the Awards helped make their voices heard on local, state and even federal education issues. So the Awards, in fact, go beyond the money, becoming what many recipients call “the gift that keeps giving.”

How about some numbers? How many winners each year? How much money has the Foundation given out so far?

We have recognized more than 2,400 outstanding educators and presented more than $60 million in Awards. In addition, we have expended more than $50 million in the development and ongoing support of state and national networks and in the development and operation of the Milken Educator Awards program itself. This year we will present more than 50 Awards.

What’s been the most memorable reaction?

Perhaps the funniest was in Michigan in 1999, when we presented the Award to a surprised Kendra Hearn, who was in her pajamas. It just happened to be “Pajama Day’ at her school when we showed up with TV cameras in tow.

Others?

While each announcement is memorable, two that stand out in my mind are Daphne Whitington of Chicago and Robin Turner of Austin, TX. Daphne, who received her Award in 2007, was an Ivy-League graduate who deliberately chose one of teaching’s toughest assignments—Las Casas Occupational High, the last stop for students repeatedly expelled from mainstream schools due to severe emotional and behavioral difficulties. A touching moment of the event was when Dominique Lewis, a Las Casas graduate, brought her high school diploma to show Arne Duncan, CEO of Chicago Public Schools at the time. When Dominique found out that it was Daphne—her favorite teacher—that we were honoring, she was moved to come forward and publicly thank Daphne for helping her complete high school and train for a job.

As for Robin Turner’s event, we typically invite veteran Milken Educators to congratulate the new recipients and say a few words about the Award’s impact. One such “vet” was Donald Moran, who received the Award in 1992 as a principal in Illinois. Fast-forward to Austin in 2006, where Donald takes the stage to congratulate Robin. All of a sudden we hear a gasp from Robin, who asks Donald, “Do you remember me?” Donald takes a step back, and, when he learns her maiden name, gasps, too. “You were my principal!” Robin exclaimed. And that, right there in a nutshell, explains the chain reaction caused by outstanding educators. It was a great “Milken Family” reunion of sorts.

And who knows what will happen this year?

Are the winners genuinely surprised to win?

I created the program back in 1985 with the surprise element as a core component, because we wanted to recognize those outstanding teachers and principals that were “unsung”—educators who every day were making a profound difference in students’ lives but not interested in promoting themselves for awards. That is why the Awards do not have an application or nomination process. And it is why we say at the surprise assemblies that: “We find you, you do not find us.”

Our goal is to elevate the teaching profession and send a powerful message to young people that greatness in education can be recognized, too (not just in the field of sports or entertainment). We wanted talented young people to consider the impact they could make in their lives by becoming a teacher.

How are the winners chosen? I know that the “Teacher of the Year” can be pretty political. Can you assure us that your award isn’t balanced by race, gender, subject taught, and so on?

While we do not like to be too specific in how educators are selected, I can tell you that we work with State Departments of Education to surface names of outstanding individuals. “Due diligence” is then conducted with respect to such individuals, recommendations are made to a blue-ribbon committee in each state, and their findings are sent to the Foundation. We make the final decisions, and while we look for the best candidate in every jurisdiction, it is not difficult to find great teachers and principals each year of every race, gender and subject taught.

What was your motivation for creating the program?

My parents and outstanding teachers. As far back as I can remember, my parents instilled in me the love of learning. And I was fortunate to have talented teachers who nurtured this understanding, particularly in the cases of my fifth- and sixth-grade teachers, Mr. Lou Fosse and Mr. Elliot Sutton. When I walked into their classrooms, I was entering a special environment led by warm, caring coaches, who were also firm and challenging instructors. A few years after graduate school, I began to sponsor programs that supported effective teachers. From those initial efforts, I wanted to do something far more comprehensive—in fact, national in scope—to reward and celebrate the work of talented K -12 teachers and principals.

And so, in 1985, I put in place the elements of what became the Milken Educator Awards. By focusing the spotlight of recognition on excellence, we hope to inspire educators, students and entire communities to new heights of commitment and expectation.

I know it’s great PR for your Foundation, but do you believe it’s having an impact on the teaching profession generally? What’s your evidence?

Good question. Let me give you a couple of examples. Consider Julie Herman, an inspirational intervention specialist from Canton, OH, I notified in 2006. We were captivated by Julie’s remarkable accomplishments against what would seem unbeatable odds. A quadriplegic since birth, she used her mouth to write and her guide dog to navigate life in a wheelchair. Before receiving the Milken Educator Award, she wasn’t known beyond her school. Now district folks shadow her moves, associations call her for advice, and after years of asking, she received not one, but two, student teachers.

Remember I called it a “gift that keeps on giving”? Well, a sight-and-hearing-impaired high school student named Shelby, who doubted she could realize her dream of becoming a teacher, read in the newspaper about Julie’s achievements and asked to meet her; subsequently she enrolled in a pre-education course and began tutoring children after school.

And here’s a very different example. The Virginia Teachers of Promise Institute is, in a way, one of our “children.” It shows how a group of Milken Educators can collaborate to make an impact beyond their schools. Wade Whitehead, who received his Award in 2000, worked with his Milken Educator Network to create the Institute to provide guidance for pre-service teachers from all of the Commonwealth’s 37 teacher-accrediting institutions as they transition into the classroom.

The Institute is hosted annually at James Madison University, where 1999 Virginia Milken Educator Philip Bigler is a director. Two hundred teachers-to-be participated in this year’s event, representing 30 different Virginia schools of education.

You have started something you call TAP. Tell me about that.

We’re trying to change the system through a comprehensive school reform focused on the most important school related factor driving student performance—teacher quality. The national Milken Educator Network became the breeding ground for the development of TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement. We conceived of TAP as a way to transform school cultures into a powerful and nurturing environment for both teachers and students to succeed. TAP provides teachers the opportunity to become mentor and master teachers—and make more money when their students learn more. When I unveiled TAP in 1999, there was little discussion in the country about teacher quality as the key to school reform. And concepts like performance pay were seen as a revolutionary departure. But as TAP started “restructuring” school cultures—with a focus on high-need urban, rural and suburban districts across the country—discussion and then acceptance of TAP’s bold elements began to change. Our national results show that TAP teachers are producing higher student achievement growth than comparable non-TAP teachers because they have strong mechanisms in place through TAP to improve their skills and behaviors. At the same time, TAP is creating a culture of collaboration and teamwork along the way.

You say it’s successful. Where? Who’s using TAP?

TAP has grown significantly in numbers over the past nine years. TAP started in a few schools in 2000; now, TAP is impacting more than 7,500 teachers and 85,000 students and growing rapidly. We are seeing progress in all places TAP is implemented, but I want to draw on a few examples from Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas to demonstrate its success. In New Orleans, TAP started in the Algiers Charter Schools Association, whose schools were among the first to open post-Katrina. The student bodies had a 93% free and reduced-price lunch rate, many of whom were also displaced. With TAP as their way of strengthening teachers and students — as well as the community around them — all six schools met their value-added growth targets. Five out of the six schools received the highest value-added score of “5,” meaning that they significantly exceeded a year’s growth compared with similar schools across the state. The sixth school made a solid year’s growth.

In South Carolina, where TAP is primarily serving schools of the highest-need, 80% of TAP schools made school-wide value-added gains, and more than 90% of teachers reported positive effects on TAP’s collegiality, teacher evaluation and professional development. In Texas, two-thirds of TAP schools scored a “5″ value-added score, performing exceedingly higher than their peers across the state.

Retention rates are soaring in these places, too. In Richardson, Texas, for example, Richardson Audelia Creek Elementary’s rate shot up from 33 to 92% after only two years of TAP, Thurgood Marshall Elementary jumped from 36 to 87%, and Forest Meadow Junior High’s rate increased from 56 to 80%. TAP is essential recruitment tool for attracting high-quality teachers to high-need schools.

What kinds of things are the winners–the “Milken Educators” saying about the overall impact of No Child Left Behind?

Most Award recipients seem to have some concerns about a single assessment measure under NCLB. They understand the need to assure that every child is receiving the maximum educational opportunities, and they are willing to be held accountable for results. Recipients are generally supportive of the assessment of every child, insuring that schools cannot hide behind the averages, as was so often the case before NCLB, but the vast majority believes that value-added models should be incorporated within NCLB.

Arne Duncan was on The Colbert Report recently and–not jokingly–acknowledged that he doesn’t say much about No Child Left Behind or even use that name. How did that law become damaged goods to such an extent?

That’s a remarkable change, but when you base assessment on a single measure and do not take into account where the child started and what progress the child has made, you leave yourself open to criticism. At the time NCLB was instituted, many believed that growth models (value-added) were not sufficiently refined. Today, much progress has been made, but the original opposition to NCLB has remained.

Despite the need for modifications, I believe that NCLB is an historic piece of legislation, perhaps the most important education legislation in our history. It should not be abandoned, but rather refined.

What should the next version of NCLB look like? Should we drop the goal of having all students reach proficiency by 2014, for example?

To respond fully would require a two-volume set. However, there are two key points that we believe should be addressed.

First, we need to use value-added/growth models that track students’ movement toward proficiency goals rather than absolute levels as a measure to determine Adequate Yearly Progress. Measuring a student’s growth from the beginning of the school year to the end of the school year is the proper measure to assess teacher effectiveness. The TAP system has been using this measure since 2001 with great success in driving student achievement gains and increasing teacher effectiveness.

The second point relates to increasing the prestige of the profession and ensuring that teachers have effective means for improving their skills and increasing student achievement growth. A rewritten NCLB can raise the level of teaching talent in our schools, particularly high-need schools. Federal funding, through Title II, should be used to support meaningful and sustained improvements in compensation, professional development, and career opportunities for teachers

We seem to be moving inexorably toward national or common standards. To get “Race to the Top” money, for example, states have to promise to raise their own standards, 48 states and the District of Columbia have endorsed the concept, and the Department of Education is pumping dollars into their development. But the first draft for English Language Arts strikes me as bizarrely complex and almost unreadable. Is this a fool’s errand? How would you go about creating national standards?

I’m going to “side-step” that question, because we haven’t been involved in “crafting” specific content standards. However, I continue to be a strong supporter of the need to set in place world-class standards in each content area—standards that will enable students to acquire the skills and knowledge to be successful in the 21st century.

Other countries are way ahead of us on this. Over the years, I have had the opportunity through my business operations in Asia and Europe to observe firsthand those educational systems that realize significant student achievement growth and high-quality teaching practices. A common denominator of each system is world-class standards that focus students and teachers on the specific skills, knowledge and experiences that will ensure that young people are prepared for the workforce of today and tomorrow. That’s what we need.

Young people often have the enthusiasm and creativity that can help solve big problems, but they’re often left out of the decision-making process. Youth from the Bronx and Brooklyn aren’t accepting that as reality and have begun confronting neighborhood planning challenges head on. Listen to them talk about what they’re doing to make change in their neighborhoods–there’s no way you’ll leave feeling uninspired.
[When Young People Talk ... People Listen]

Arts education has long been underfunded, and money for the arts doesn’t seem to be flooding in anytime soon. Which begs the question: how can schools be more resourceful about teaching arts? Last month we talked with Jenny Hartman, a musician who goes to classes and leads singalongs based on books. It’s a way to jumpstart creativity as well as teach reading. We recently found out about an online resource that could just be a way to teach kids about music:  The Virtual Piano. You can learn about notes, keys, sounds, or brush up on your skills all while sitting at your computer. It would be a great tool in any classroom (and it’s free!). [The Virtual Piano]

A great PSA for arts education (it’s an oldie but a goodie):

According to Project New Media Literacies, a research initiative run through MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, there is a lot more to technological literacy than learning how to best use Internet search engines or setting up RSS feeds. On their website, you can watch a short clip featuring a few of their young researchers talking about the project’s mission: to figure out “how to interact with information, with culture…with just…the pace of life, which is very different than it was twenty years ago.” Their research has produced a list of twelve skills, or “literacies,” for the what they call our newly “participatory” culture, where everyone is both a consumer and producer of media, on a daily basis. Far from being just a bastion of ideas, Project New Media Literacies produces teacher strategy guides to help ease their work into the classroom.

Of course, as we develop our ability to interact with virtual spaces and vast electronic networks, some of our basic survival skills are bound to drop off. The Edible Schoolyard Project has been around since 1995 in the home of all things Alice Waters—Berkeley, CA–but this week marks the launch of its Brooklyn affiliate’s new website, which is well worth a look. At P.S. 216 in Gravesend, Brooklyn, the Edible Schoolyard Project will coach kids in agricultural skills they would otherwise have little access to. Students–whose neighborhood has “the lowest percentage of green, open space in Brooklyn”–will cultivate a quarter-acre organic farm and a four-season greenhouse, on their school grounds. Particularly for urban kids without the means to leave their cities, nutritional and agricultural literacy are crucial.

Stay tuned for more on both of these projects on Ed Beat in the coming weeks.

Project New Media Literacies
Edible Schoolyard New York
“Geography is Destiny” [Learning Matters, 10/6/09]

Will it take Comedy Central’s coverage for the US to take education reform seriously? Or is everyone just infatuated with the idea of playing basketball with President Obama? If you missed it, click above to watch Arne Duncan on Colbert Nation. [Colbert Report, 10/5/09]

Race to the Top was formally announced this week and Secretary Duncan put the call out for applicants to “show us their best evidence that their programs will boost student learning.” With $650 million to spend, the administration is literally banking on innovation. [NY Times, 10/6/09]

Secretary Duncan’s attention was temporarily diverted back to his old hometown, Chicago, where he and Attorney General Eric Holder appeared in solidarity with a community outraged by the recent death of a high school student by a group of youths outside a community center. [NPR, 10/7/09]

In higher ed news, the Senate is holding hearings on a measure to increase the maximum Pell grant amount - currently $5,350. The House recently passed the measure. [Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/6/09]

In Washington, D.C., recent layoffs of over 220 teachers — including one ‘exceptional’ teacher from Anacostia, a high school we’ve been covering for the past two years– has the community up in arms and Chancellor Michelle Rhee defending her tough choices. [Washington Post, 10/6/09]

Rhee and the D.C. teachers union have yet to sign a contract after two years of negotiations - a fascinating dance you can listen to here. [LMTV, 9/21/09]

A new U.S. Census Bureau shows how Latina moms are changing the perception of the nation’s stay-at-home mothers. [NPR, 10/6/09]

And in commentary this week, John Merrow asks: How does geography determine one’s digital destiny? Should schools be doing more? [Taking Note, 10/6/09]

Many of us seem to be living in a world of information overload, but many people still lack access to the same technology that we take for granted. This “digital divide” is playing out all over, and is especially problematic when it comes to education. Because while some schools have all the latest gadgets and students get to learn using technology in innovative ways, there are students in less economically advantaged schools who don’t get that opportunity.

It got us thinking: how are teachers nationwide using technology in the classroom?  Could access to technology invigorate and democratize education?

If you’re a teacher or administrator, we’d love to know how you’re using technology in your classrooms or districts. Have initiatives in your schools or districts been successful? What challenges have you encountered along the way?

Share your stories here or join the discussion we’ve got going on Facebook.

Now a new report sponsored by the Knight Foundation suggests that geography is also destiny for our democracy. The just-released report, “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age,” suggests that we now have what it calls ‘second class information citizenship.’

Many of us suffer from information overload, but some communities—geography again–have a very different problem: not enough information and insufficient skills to separate the wheat from the chaff.

In an era when many of us are embracing Twitter, Facebook and other ‘virtual communities,’ we may think that walls are breaking down everywhere, but this report tells us that real (geographic) communities matter more than virtual ones. Technology itself is inherently democratic—a computer doesn’t know (or care) whether you are rich or poor; able-bodied or not; black, white or brown—but access to technology is a different kettle of fish.  Who has access to technology is crucial—and access often comes down to geography. Some have more access to better information, meaning they are better equipped to participate in the digital revolution we are in right now.  Others are being left behind—and it’s based on geography.

Marissa Mayer, a vice president at Google and co-chair of the commission, told the San Jose Mercury-News that geographic communities are critical regardless of income.  People spend 70% of their money within five miles of their homes, she said.  And even if you spend hours on Twitter, My Space and Facebook, you live in the real world, meaning that, when you need someone to fix the sink, repair your car or educate your children, you find these things near your home. Moreover, we elect officials to govern us by geography and pay taxes based on geography.

“In the end, our democracy is structured geographically,” Mayer said. “People don’t realize how much they’re centered around their home.”

Maybe so, but the economically advantaged use technology to leave their geographical boundaries behind, while the poor don’t.

Here I hold the schools responsible, because it’s not just a matter of who has broadband and who doesn’t. The report points out a huge gap in the skills and experience needed to take advantage of the benefits of digital communications.  That’s where the attitude of the adults in schools is crucial.  In my experience as a reporter, even when schools in poor areas do have access to modern technology, the technology is generally used to control kids. That is, technology is done to poor kids—they go to computer labs to do vocabulary and math drills on the computer.  Meanwhile, the affluent are allowed and encouraged to use the technology to create, to cross boundaries, and to grow. They’re making videos with footage from partners in schools all over the world. They’re comparing rates of precipitation in a dozen countries.  And so on.

Technology doesn’t recognize walls, but people do. Kids in the nastiest places imaginable can be connected to youth in Scarsdale, Palo Alto and prosperous communities in India, Japan and the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, often the adults in charge accept limits and abide by borders.   When they do that, they are making certain that geography is digital destiny, and that’s unfair, immoral and counter-productive.

One reason I am so proud of Listen Up!, our project that trains less advantaged kids in media, is its unwavering commitment to access. We believe that everyone has something to say, but we recognize that less advantaged youth may need help in articulating their ideas and in using modern tools to craft their message. Listen Up! has been doing this work for 11 years in about 160 communities worldwide.

In an ideal world, schools recognize their obligation to be digital enablers.  When will that be?

We’ve been following the school food movement and mobilization to increase the federal contribution to school lunches on EdBeat for awhile now. School nutrition got some front-burner coverage today, with the Washington Post’s inside look at a KIPP school budgeting for healthier food and the NY Times‘ profile of an inventive school chef armed with garam masala, cooking food that “makes [students] feel comforted and cared for” in a less than ideal Brooklyn school kitchen.

For a glimpse at some other ambitious professionals, NPR looks at career changers and alternative certification for teachers and also asks what exactly should go into a teaching degree. Online we’re following an interesting (if snarky) discussion about home-schooling (which does not require a teaching degree, for the record) and its effect on socialization. [Salon, Jezebel]

Speaking of social skills, in the School Issue of the NY Times Magazine last weekend, Paul Tough wrote a great article on ‘Tools of the Mind,’ a program that aims to teach pre-schoolers about self-control through make-believe, which got us thinking about Joachim de Posada’s short and sweet TED talk (video above!) about delayed gratification–in this case the gratification that comes from eating a marshmallow–a skill that can be a surprisingly good predictor of the future success of students. [TED, 5/09]

Mmmmm… marshmallows…

Fans of “My So-Called Life,” the early-nineties high school drama and cult classic, will recognize the scene in the above clip that starts around 3:48. When Angela, Claire Danes’s character and the central figure of the show, finds out that a list has been made of the attractive sophomore girls in her high school, she feels envious and excluded. Her friend Rayanne screams, “Do you love it??” when she finds out she has the “most slut potential,” and although Angela claims to be offended by the list, we know as viewers (who were once teenagers) that her jealousy outweighs her indignation, or at least that the two reactions are profoundly mixed up.

This week, the New York Times’s “Week in Review” featured a piece by Tina Kelley on girl-on-girl bullying in a New Jersey high school, where a “slut list” circulated on Facebook. The article quotes Rosalind Wiseman, author of the 2002 book on adolescent girls, Queen Bees and Wannabes, who has had to write a new edition of her book because “There was not enough information on hazing, technology and the more graphic sexual stuff.” In general, the article makes the argument that bullying among young women is increasingly attached to sexuality, and that a girl’s social status rises in direct proportion to her degree of promiscuity.

Girl-on-girl bullying is quite a hot topic these days, maybe since “Mean Girls” came out, or maybe since “Gossip Girl” took off. And no one would argue that the age at which a girl becomes cognizant of her sexuality and its power has gone way down in the past decade. But it seems silly to act as if women, old and young, haven’t always been forced to see each other through the eyes of their male peers. “So the whiff of sexual prowess actually raises the status of girls on the forbidden list among their high school peers. It’s a celebration of machismo, but for girls only,” says Kelley about the Jersey slut list. Not only is this old news, it isn’t that simple. Angela Chase wanted to make it onto her high school’s list, but she was also outraged that it was allowed to exist in the first place. No doubt a lot of these Jersey girls would identify.

When the Cool Get Hazed [NYT, 9/26/09]

“Lee was forever young and ageless,” Andrea Mitchell, NBC news correspondent, told the audience. “Her legacy will certainly live on in the educational institutions she benefited.”

Learning Matters is part of the Annenberg legacy, but our connection came about in an odd—but certainly not unique—way. I never met Walter Annenberg, Mrs. Annenberg only once in passing, but they supported our work for nearly a decade.

And if my answering machine had malfunctioned, it might never have happened.

Here’s what I remember.  I had been out of the office for a few days, filming somewhere and then moderating a panel at the United Nations.  I returned to the office late one night and noticed the blinking light on the answering machine.  A voice introduced herself as “Gail Levin with the Annenberg Foundation.”  And she said, “We are wondering whether you would like some support for your work.”

Can you say ‘speed dial’!  I would have called back immediately if it hadn’t been after 10 PM, and you can bet that I called Dr. Levin first thing in the morning.  She told me that Ambassador Walter Annenberg really appreciated what we were doing on PBS and was wondering if we had adequate support.

I was speechless.  Anyone in the business of trying to raise money for a non-profit knows how difficult it is, and here I was being offered money, no string attached.  I don’t remember how we arrived at an amount, or even what it was.  But their support, only now coming to an end, meant that Learning Matters was free to concentrate on covering public education.  Because of Walter and Lee Annenberg, I did not have to spend half of my time, or more, looking for dollars.

I got to know Gail and Scott Roberts pretty well over the years. Neither one ever ‘suggested’ a story or an approach to coverage. Even when I asked (as I sometimes did), they were reluctant to scale the wall they erected between funder and grantee.

The Annenbergs supported hundreds, probably thousands, of institutions and organizations.  Those in and around Philadelphia must be hoping that someone will step up.  Education and arts groups are concerned as well.  Somehow, most of us will survive financially (we hope).

But will anyone ever replace the Annenbergs as patrons, as exemplars of the responsibility that great wealth brings?  Let us hope so.

Students should be considered among the foremost experts on the state of education today, but it’s rare they are asked directly for their thoughts on improving schools, curriculum or even how education is affecting their lives.

Seems like that might change now that President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have put out a call to action to students nationwide. Students aged 13 and older have been asked to create short videos (2 minutes or less) that describe “the role education will play in achieving their dreams, and the goals they will set for themselves to get there.”

They have until November 2 to get their videos in and the top three videos will be crowned winners and given $1,000. In his video announcement, Duncan suggests that winners spend the money on college, books or “anything they choose.” Who knows how they’ll actually spend the money, but it’s probably good incentive and it will be interesting to see what kinds of videos students submit.

Before the election, we collected people’s advice on education for the next president. We talked with dozens of education experts and policymakers, and we also caught up with quite a few students. The students’ advice for then-President-elect Obama was candid, thoughtful and unique.

Students live out the policies set in place by policymakers and school administrators, and they’re the ones whose lives are most affected by an education system that isn’t working. Isn’t it time they had a chance to speak up? Maybe now’s the time to listen to what they have to say.

I Am What I Learn [Ed.gov]

Ed Advice for President Obama [Multimedia project]

Beyond the question of whether TFA teachers perform on par with or significantly better than their veteran or traditionally trained counterparts, critics point to the fact that just 60% of TFA teachers remain in the classroom beyond their 2-year commitment, contributing to the high rate of turnover that plagues many struggling schools. For many TFA teachers, challenges emerge not just in the classroom — living in unfamiliar, often high-poverty communities proves difficult.

Grow Your Own Teachers Illinois takes a different approach.

In Illinois, where teacher turnover hits 40% in some communities, legislators set the goal of adding 1,000 new teachers from non-traditional sources (not a school of education) by 2016. But instead of looking for new teachers outside the state, the Grow Your Own Teachers Act taps those already embedded and invested in school districts. Parents, community volunteers, and school staff members like teachers’ aides and maintenance workers — GYOT candidates are people who want to teach, but lack the college degree required by other alternative certification programs. They pass what GYOT director Anne Hallett calls “the zip code test. They are people who already know the kids, who love the kids, and who want to make the neighborhood schools better.”

How it works: school districts partner with a public college and a community organization to offer teaching degrees, counseling, and forgivable loans to candidates who commit to teaching in an eligible school for five years. In 2007, 82% of the GYOT candidates were female, 85% were people of color, 87% were parents, and the average age was 39.  Those numbers stand in sharp contrast to the demographics at other alternative certification programs, including TFA, where 30% of the 2009 corps members are people of color.

The program is young - it was signed into law in 2004 - but it’s picking up steam. Arizona, California, Mississippi, and New Jersey are considering similar programs. The struggling economy in Illinois mean that GYOT recently suffered a 10% budget cut, but the organization says its main efforts will continue.

Grow Your Own Teachers website

Related programs: The TFA Effect [LM.tv VIDEO, 07/09/09]

Though Frost observes every family closely before “implementing” her “techniques,” the techniques aren’t in and of themselves varied or complex. She coaches parents–often painstakingly and repeatedly–on how to set house rules and enforce consequences when they’re broken. She uses visual aids reminiscent of all of our elementary school classrooms, like big whiteboards with “House Rules” in bubble letters at the top. Good parenting, according to Supernanny, is a science, and the Wischmeyer mom–who you can watch struggling to get her children to go to sleep, below–agrees: “The bed technique is wonderful,” she says. “I think it should be manually written, handed out at birth, to every mother and dad in the world.”

Of course, there are subtler aspects to parenting and family that Supernanny addresses but ultimately glosses over. When Frost sits down with families for the first time, she’ll often make sweeping, arm-chair psychology assessments of “why” a mother can’t discipline her daughter or “why” a father focuses on his son’s negative qualities. But in the end, those deeper questions about how parents and children relate to one another emotionally go unanswered by a show like Supernanny, and it’s probably just as well–it’s much more pleasant to see a good set of house rules do their work. Those readers looking to probe the issue a little more should check out Alfie Kohn’s recent piece in the New York Times on whether parents should love conditionally or unconditionally–a riddle it might take the combined efforts of Mary Poppins, Jo Frost and Fran Drescher to solve.
Supernanny Official Site
When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do as I Say’ [NYT, 9/14/09]
All Unhappy Families Need Mary Poppins [NYT, 1/17/05]
Getting Parents Involved [Taking Note, 6/1/09]

Photo credit: Charles Rex/ AP

Art schools suffer during recession [Ed Week]
Harlem Children’s Zone to go national [This Week In Education]
Some evidence in favor of charter schools? Closing the ‘Harlem-Scarsdale’ gap[New York Times]
Arne Duncan to discuss education reform with the Dalai Lama [Mind and Life Institute]
Even though Michelle Rhee and the DC Teachers Union is still without a contract, we’ve got an inside look at the negotiations. Listen in on 2 years of conversations right here. [LMTV]
Extra Credit: Take a look at John Merrow’s reading list. What are you reading?

In his first post, he examines two films that investigate what happens when “doing the right thing” gets complicated.

It’s 3AM. You’re tired and almost home. But you’re stuck at that red light that lasts forever. No one is around and, remarkably, there’s no video camera at this intersection. Just as you start to creep forward a voice in your head stops you dead, smugly saying: “you can get away with it, but you know it’s wrong!” Where does that voice come from? Philosophers have been debating the question for thousands of years. My guess is it’s learned by example, from parents, siblings, teachers, clergy, and other role models. But what about when the stakes are bigger and the decision more complicated? Two new movies about whistle blowers may shed some light.

Steven Soderbergh’s dark comedy “The Informant!” is based on the true story of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a VP at a gigantic agri-business company. He claims to be blowing the whistle on his company’s participation in an international price fixing scheme because he’s a good guy who “wears the white hat.” But during the course of the film his motivations become much more complex. In the end Whitacre seems less a guy in a white hat than a victim of fear, greed and mental illness.

A much more honorable example is provided by “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” a documentary by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith. The film tells the story of Daniel Ellsberg’s dramatic transition from committed cold soldier — he is a former marine and Pentagon insider — to government mole, culminating in his leaking of the “Pentagon Papers” in 1971. The 7000-page document revealed that the government had been lying to the American people for years about Vietnam. By blowing the whistle on the Pentagon’s activities, Ellsberg risked life in prison, but he was sure he was doing the right thing: his patriotic duty.

Why did Ellsberg do it, at the risk of losing friends, family and freedom? The documentary offers compelling possibilities: his experience in Vietnam, a left-leaning wife, the commitment of other young men choosing prison over military service. Midway through the film, sitting at a piano, Ellsberg himself provides the most intriguing suggestion. He describes a family road trip taken when he was 15. While driving, his father falls asleep. The car drifts off the road and hits an embankment. His mother and sister are killed. Ellsberg’s nose is broken and he remains in a coma for a day and a half.

The accident, he says, taught him to trust no one. Even his father could fall asleep at the wheel.

The Informant [Warner Brothers]
The Most Dangerous Man in America [Judith Ehrlich and Rich Goldsmith]

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Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner City Schools and the New Paternalism, by David Whitman. Published in 2008 by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the book is conservative in its angle of entry. Whitman is now a speechwriter for Arne Duncan.

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The Paradoxes of High Stakes Testing: How They Affect Students, Their Parents, Teachers, Principals, Schools, and Society, by George Madaus, Michael Russell and Jennifer Higgins. (Information Age Publishing, Charlotte NC, 2009) I know and admire George, who is a clear thinker and writer, but I am puzzled by the title. Paradoxes are apparent contradictions, but in our interviews George has pointed out a number of actual ones. So I will find out when I read it. All three authors are from Boston College.

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No Challenge Left Behind: Transforming American Education through Heart and Soul, by Paul D. Houston, published by Corwin Press and AASA, Paul’s old employer, in 2008. One reviewer called it a “funny, uplifting page-turner.”
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Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us, by Mike Rose (The New Press, 2009). Anything Mike writes is worth reading, and that includes this personal book.

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Learning from No Child Left Behind: How and Why the Nation’s Most Important but Controversial Education Law Should be Renewed, by John Chubb (Hoover Institution Press, 2009). A short and strong argument by Chubb, one of the brains behind Edison. (funny typo on page 4 as well)

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Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics and the Future of American Education, by Terry Moe and John Chubb (John Wiley & Sons, 2009). Here’s Chubb again, this time with long time colleague Terry Moe. Their argument for the power of technology goes beyond anything I have read elsewhere, including Clay Christensen’s Disrupting Class. Too much of the book, however, is Terry’s familiar anti-union screed.

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why cant u teach me 2 read?, by Beth Fertig. This book by the duPont Award-winning reporter for WNYC and NPR has a subtitle (with capital letters), “Three Students and a Mayor Put Our Schools to the Test.” (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2009). Beth tells the story of three learning disabled students who sued the schools for failing to teach them to read—and won. I haven’t read it yet but am taking it on the plane with me.

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Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut, by Chester E. Finn Jr. (Education Next Books, 2009) is lively and argumentative. It’s Checker’s effort to derail what he sees as a costly and ineffective approach to early education. It’s persuasive, even though Checker admits that he did very little on-the-ground research; he has not visited the Chicago Public Schools project, one of the shining lights in the opposite camp, for example.
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