A Must Read

A huge public thank you to Paul Krugman for his outstanding defense of academic freedom in Monday's New York Times. As an untenured professor and regular blogger, I am eternally grateful that he -- at least -- gets it.

He is absolutely right about the risks of letting this kind of behavior go by--

"... less eminent and established researchers won’t just become reluctant to act as concerned citizens, weighing in on current debates; they’ll be deterred from even doing research on topics that might get them in trouble.

What’s at stake here, in other words, is whether we’re going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It’s up to the rest of us to see that they don’t succeed."

Now if only UW-Madison Administration would take such a stance.

Unintended, Unforeseen Consequences

The challenges surrounding the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) plan to replace principals at underperforming schools across the nation (New York Times: "U.S. Plan to Replace Principals Hits Snag: Who Will Step In?") reminds me of the unintended consequences of California's class size reduction policies during the 1990s.

As the New York Times reported yesterday about the ED's $4 billion plan to radically transform the country’s worst schools by installing new principals to overhaul most of the failing schools, "[T]here simply were not enough qualified principals-in-waiting to take over."

California experienced a similar human capital problem when it reduced class sizes statewide in grades k-3. An unintended consequence of its state policy was the hiring of more emergency-credentialed and unqualified educators as a result of the additional teaching positions needed to enable smaller class sizes. As this Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning report noted, "[T]he implementation of class size reduction ... dramatically increased the shortage" of fully qualified teachers. In addition, the Public Policy Institute of California reports that it exacerbated educational inequality and disproportionately affected schools that served low-income and minority students:

CSR led to a dramatic increase in the percentages of inexperienced and uncertified teachers. In 1990, there were few differences in these characteristics by racial/ethnic and income groups. Even as late as 1995–1996, the year before CSR, schools with high percentages of nonwhite and low-income students were only slightly more likely
than other schools to have inexperienced teachers who lacked full certification and postgraduate schooling. By 1999, large gaps in teacher qualifications had emerged between schools attended by nonwhite and low-income students and other schools. For black students in schools with more than 75 percent of the students enrolled in subsidized lunch programs, nearly 25 percent had a first- or second-year teacher; almost 30 percent had a teacher who was not fully certified. At the other extreme, for white students attending schools with 25 percent or fewer of the students enrolled in subsidized lunch programs, only 12 percent had a first- or second-year teacher, and only 5 percent had a teacher who was not fully credentialed. These differences reflect the varying levels of difficulty that many schools experienced in attempting to attract and retain teachers following the implementation of CSR.

With all the current hullabaloo about wanting to fire more underperforming teachers as a chief reform strategy, the critical question is: "Who will replace them?" The belief that 'we can do better' does not necessarily make it so. We've got to attend to and recognize such human capital challenges before we put forth such policies, however well intended.

Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out

Gail Collins' (New York Times) political obituary of -- now lame duck -- U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut is well worth reading. She nails it with this line: "If you’re continually admiring yourself as you walk away from your group, eventually people are going to feel an irresistible desire to trip you."

Yep. I've always thought of 'sanctimonious' as the word I would choose if the name 'Joe Lieberman' came up in a word association game. Not one of my favorites, that's for sure.

Given his role in watering down health care reform and opposing a public option, I wouldn't be surprised if a cushy job in the insurance industry is in Lieberman's future. To his credit, he did actually vote for the final health care bill, however.

You can view Lieberman's version of his record on education policy here.

Schooling as if Democracy Matters

The focus of our Winter 2008 issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy was on the topic, “Schooling as if Democracy Matters.” In that issue, we raised the question about the ways we should teach the young about the foundations of our democracy and our collective identity in an age of the patriot act, NSA surveillance, extraordinary rendition, preemptive wars, enemy combatants -- all likely to involve violations of civil rights and liberties and a curtain of government secrecy? We asked, what story do we tell our young about who we are, who we have been, and who we are becoming?

I’d like to raise this same question in light of today’s events. In an interesting NY Times op-ed article, “The Rage Is Not About Health Care,” Frank Rich talks about some of the underlying reasons for the rise in rage, venomous rhetoric, violence, and anxieties in today’s demonstrations against the recently adopted health care bill. Comparing the bill’s passage to earlier bills that shook the country – the Medicare Act of 1965 and the Social Security Act of 1935, Rich describes the rhetoric and the upheavals that these bills also caused. But the bill that comes closest to the type of vitriolic criticism that today’s bill is evoking, Rich argues, is the Civil Rights Bill of 1964.

This may sound like a strange claim given that the present Health Care bill actually contains many of the recommendations of the Republican Party, falling far short of the single payer system or public option plan that more liberal proponents advocated. Rather than a “government takeover,” it extends the free market’s involvement in health care. While there are legitimate arguments over health care entitlement, the type of reaction we are experiencing seems to be disproportionate. Rich argues that the health care bill is just a spark that is galvanizing anxieties at a deeper level.

He offers the following explanation for today’s rising tide of rage:

"The health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

"In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

"If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

"They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded." (The New York Times, March 27, 2010)

Both the 1964 and 2010 bills have become the catalyst for shaking the nation’s core understanding of itself. Rich notes the silence resulting from the lack of leadership among today's political leaders, who often tend to exploit the anxieties and fears instead. And this leaves us with the question with which I began this post. What is the responsibility of our teachers and public intellectuals for addressing these deeper issues in the classrooms and in the public square. We hope to address these more profound questions in our summer 2011 issue of the journal on “The Education our Children Deserve.”

(cross-posted on Social Issues blog)

Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change

Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
New York Times
Published: March 12, 2010

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

To read the entire article, go to: New York Times

**********************************************************
The 2011 summer issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy will engage readers in a conversation on "The Education Our Children Deserve." The Times article reports that "there were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings" of the board. It is time for public intellectuals, scholars, and teachers to join parents, community leaders and the general public in a conversation about the public purposes of our schools in a democratic society. We encourage a wide-range of voices to enter the dialogue and to submit manuscripts.

Go to our "call for submissions" for more information.

The city's desperate attack on the NAACP following their lawsuit to block the closings of 19 schools

Yesterday, the UFT, the NAACP, the Manhattan and Brooklyn Borough Presidents, city councilmembers, state legislators, and two Community Education Council presidents all joined to together in a lawsuit to block the DOE's plan to close 19 schools.

The lawsuit states that the DOE failed to comply with the public process outlined in the new governance law, and that its Educational Impact Statements were woefully inadequate, points we have made repeatedly on the blog and in our official comments to the DOE. (Here is the memo of law; here is the notice of petition and affidavits from the two CEC Presidents.)

The best coverage of the lawsuit was from NY1, whose education reporter, Lindsey Christ, continues to excel. See below.



Unbelievably, the NY Times did not run any story about the lawsuit, though it carried the news on its blog (Teachers' Union and NAACP Sue to Stop School Closings). The lack of judgment on the part of the Times editors never ceases to amaze.

Meanwhile the NY Post has a twofer, in their effort to undermine the credibility of the NAACP for joining the suit; a predictably misleading oped from Dennis Walcott and a predictably nasty editorial: The NAACP in the schoolhouse door. The Post's own news coverage on the lawsuit runs only eight lines: NAACP, UFT in school suit.

Methinks the city and its toadies on the Post doth protest too much.

Really, who are NYers going to trust about the effects of these destructive policies on the city's neediest kids, the NAACP or Rupert Murdoch?

Today’s New York Times Editorial on the “Over-Punishment in Schools”

Here is a link to some follow-up information from the media to our new You Tube posting below on the “School to Prison Pipeline.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/opinion/29sun2.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Entitled, “Over-Punishment in Schools,” today’s New York Times editorial talks about the concern we raised over the increasing criminalization of our students that has resulted from school policies and practices that channel students from the public schools into the juvenile justice system.

The editorial alerts its readers to the increasing awareness by social justice advocates of policies put into place in the last decade in schools across the country:

“… juvenile justice advocates across the country are rightly worried about policies under which children are sometimes arrested and criminalized for behavior that once was dealt with by principals or guidance counselors working with a student’s parents.

“Children who are singled out for arrest and suspension are at greater risk of dropping out and becoming permanently entangled with the criminal justice system. It is especially troubling that these children tend to be disproportionately black and Hispanic, and often have emotional problems or learning disabilities.”

One of the problems identified has been the overpolicing in the schools. The NY Times editorial talks about an attempt to address this issue by the New York Council that has drafted a bill called the Student Safety Act. One of the goals of the act is to bring greater accountability and transparency to the issue.

The editorial describes the goals of the act as follows:

"The draft bill would require police and education officials to file regular reports that would show how suspensions and other sanctions affect minority children, children with disabilities and other vulnerable groups. Detailed reports from the Police Department would show which students were arrested or issued summonses and why, so that lawmakers could get a sense of where overpolicing might be a problem.

"Most important, the bill would create an easily navigable system under which parents, students and teachers could file complaints against school security officers. This provision comes in response to a 2007 report by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which said students were being roughed up for minor infractions like talking back or walking the halls without a pass.

We would be interested in sharing actions taken in other states. Readers who have information on their state are encouraged to share it with our readers on this blog.

UPDATES

Here are links to a December 14, 2009 op-ed from the New York Times entitled, “Judging our Children,” and a December 16, 2009 editorial entitled, “De-Criminalizing Children.”

Both articles continue the conversation. The latter article urges Congress to reauthorize the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act of 1974. The act had required the states to humanize their juvenile justice policies in order to receive federal funds.

Another op-ed article from the NY Times on March 5, 2010: Cops vs. Kids

From the March 18, 2010 issue of the NY Times: School Suspensions Lead to Legal Challenge By Erik Eckholm

The latest from a NY Times editorial of September 18, 2010: One Strike and They're Out

Democrats, Poverty, and Schools

Renewing the War on Poverty clearly needs to be one of President Barack Obama's main objectives during the coming years. As Barbara Ehrenreich and so many others are documenting, the deteriorated safety net is failing poor people during this recession, leaving them in dire straits.

So when Nick Kristof decided to pen a column for the New York Times urging the Democrats to again lead a fight against poverty, his heart was in the right place. But his aim was way off. On Thursday, he wrote that the Dems must focus on public schools, since they "constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies. " Huh?

Social science researchers across the nation are scratching their heads. Where in the world did Kristof get this one? For decades, solid analyses have demonstrated that while aspects of schooling can be important in improving student outcomes and alleviating the effects of poverty, the effects of factors schools cannot and do not control are much greater (for a place to start, read Doug Downey's work). Kristof emphasizes teachers and improving teacher quality by taking on the teachers' unions because he reads the data to mean that "research has underscored that what matters most in education - more than class size or spending or anything - is access to good teachers." Simply put, wrong. Access to good teachers is the most important factor affecting student achievement that is under schools' control (or as many put it, the most important school-level factor). What matters most in educational outcomes is the poverty felt by students' families. And to my knowledge, no study has ever rigorously compared the effectiveness of interventions based on cash transfers, housing subsidies, and teacher quality improvement-- what's needed to reach the kind of conclusion with which Kristof drives his argument. At the same time, a simple glance at the relative effects of programs like Moving to Opportunity, New Hope, etc which target poverty itself rather than how adults interact with children from poverty (the aim of improving teacher quality), should convince anyone than his target is misplaced.

Experts who think daily about how to end poverty could, and undoubtedly will, inform the next steps taken by Democrats. Dems should listen to them, and not to Kristof. With that approach they will undoubtedly begin not with teachers' unions but rather by connecting job seekers to work that pays, installing strategies to promote stable families, making quality housing affordable and safe, and of course guaranteeing access to good health care.

Where Have You Been?

A spate of recent articles, including those covering Bill Bowen and Mike McPherson's new book (which I promise to review just as soon as my copy arrives), have left me a bit perplexed-- wondering aloud "where have you all been?" The punchline each time is that a fair proportion of adults starting college are not finishing. Yes, and duh. This is not new, and if it's news well I guess it's only because we've deliberately kept our heads in the sand.

But there's no way that folks like New York Times reporter David Leonhardt have been deliberately oblivious, and yet he's writing about low college completion rates as if they've just been unearthed. In a recent blog post, Kevin Carey implied the same-- just as he did in a recent American Enterprise Institute report. But this has been a prominent topic of discussion for years--maybe a decade plus! Just look at Kevin's own 2004 report A Matter of Degrees (which received plenty of media coverage), or the Spellings Commission report, or Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz's book. I know I could go back several more years and find plenty more evidence.

I think it's one thing to imply something is new when it isn't (because again, maybe you just didn't know, or you feel the issue still is widely known enough and want to beat the drum more), and it's another thing entirely to claim that policymakers still aren't paying attention. In Leonhardt's case, he's simply wrong when he says the current Administration isn't focused on college completion. Um, how about that $2.5 billion Access and Completion Fund, part of Obama's original budget proposal? What about the performance (outcomes)-based components of the new community college monies contained in HR 3221? Foundations like Lumina and Gates have been beating this drum for years, and those in the Administration are well aware. No one in DC is saying institutions should continue to be judged solely based on enrollment (even enrollment of disadvantaged groups). There is plenty of ado about completion rates. The question is now, what exactly are the best solutions? That's a debate that needs to be richer and more visible, since the answers are far from clear-- and we'd be terribly wrong to simply resort to NCLB-style responses that remind me of my toddler: "Institutions bad. Do wrong. I punish you and you do better. Now." Let's direct our energies toward really identifying the sources of the problems, and developing a sense of how reforms can be most effective. When I get a chance to read the new Bowen and McPherson book, I'm hoping I come away with new ideas on how to do that.

Image is Everything

Sunday's New York Times features a Style section article that quite frankly turned my stomach (at least, I'm pretty sure it was the article and not the 6 month old fetus I'm carrying!). It describes a debate over Harvard's decision to sign on to a new, expensive preppy clothing line-- one that charges more than $150 for a shirt, and up to $500 for a sports coat. A variety of opinions are represented, from that of the director of admissions and financial aid ( a former aid recipient himself) to an undergraduate who said, “I think it’s good that it’s [Harvard's] doing something to make money."

These deals apparently generate about $500,000 per year for the university, which (poor baby) saw its endowment decline by 30% last year. And that money goes to financial aid, so we're not supposed to worry that Harvard's being greedy.

And that's the main issue the reporter tackles--whether the decision to say yes to a clothing line that portrays an elite undergraduate student body conflicts with Harvard's stated goals of expanding diversity. Whether the money raised is enough to cover the additional costs associated with outreach. The "damage" done.

Well, of course it's not! Image, we all know, is everything-- especially when it comes to those families who rely on media for information in the absence of more informed sources. Harvard's biggest obstacles to bringing in more students from disadvantaged backgrounds are: (1) image; (2) cost of attendance; and (3) admissions requirements. The school is trying to conquer the second one with financial aid, by promising to cover all demonstrated need. That sounds great, but the fact is that the number of admitted students with tremendous financial need isn't very substantial-- if it were, the amount of money required to fulfill that promise would be much more foreboding.

The really poor kids just aren't applying in large numbers to Harvard and that won't change unless it becomes a place that doesn't scream "money, money, money" so loudly to everyone who's ever heard of it. The message that "aid is available, costs are covered" is a good one. But it doesn't neatly translate to "I'll be able to afford to go and enjoy myself and fit in with these kids."

Will TV commercials and print ads featuring Harvard blue bloods generate enough revenue to pay for some more scholarships? Definitely. Will that even begin to offset the damage done by further demonstrations of the internal inconsistencies and contradictions associated with a place that simultaneously wants to do good and yet be the very best? Is anyone seeing those ads (or not seeing them) buying that Harvard's really now open to kids wearing WalMart t-shirts? No way.

The Leadership Academy: the real deal?

Last week the Aspiring Principals Program of the New York City Leadership Academy, made headlines. On August 24, a NYU press release announced:

“Public elementary and middle schools in New York City led by ‘Aspiring Principals Program’-trained principals have achieved comparable or higher rates of student improvement than schools led by other new principals ... These results were obtained even though APP-trained principals were more likely to be placed in chronically low-performing schools.”

The New York Times chimed in: “Graduates of a program designed to inculcate school principals with unconventional thinking have gone on to help drive up English test scores even though the graduates were often placed at schools with histories of academic failure.” The article went on to explain that the APP graduates helped increase English Language Arts scores at elementary and middle schools “at a faster pace than new principals with more traditional résumés”; while in math the APP principals made progress, but “at a pace no better than their peers.”

The report

What did this report actually say? Written by Sean P. Corcoran, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Meryle Weinstein of NYU’s Institute for Education and Social Policy, it compared the performance of schools under the leadership of graduates from the Aspiring Principals Program (APP) with that of schools under other new principals.

Both groups had to have been placed as new principals and to have remained in their positions for three years. Of the 147 graduates in the 2004 and 2005 APP cohorts, 88 (60 percent) met the inclusion criteria. 371 non-APP principals met the criteria; of these, 334 were in schools with comparable grade configurations. So there were 88 APP principals and 334 comparison principals in the study.

The schools in the two categories were significantly different. Compared to other new principals, APP principals tended to be placed in lower-performing schools and schools trending downward in ELA and math. There were also demographic and geographic differences.

The study used two types of comparison: (a) a straightforward comparison of average achievement in both types of schools and (b) a regression analysis (controlling for various school and student characteristics). It was the regression analysis that suggested an APP edge in ELA (but not for math) for elementary and middle schools.

The findings

The study found that test scores at schools in both groups improved over the period of the study in terms of test scores– but not as much as schools in the rest of the city. More specifically, the regression analysis indicated that the ELA standardized scores of APP elementary and middle schools were relatively stable, compared to schools headed by new principals who were not APP graduates. In math, APP elementary and middle schools fared slightly worse than comparison schools in relation to the city, but the differences were not statistically significant.

At the high school level (not mentioned in the NYU press release or NYT article), the differences between APP and comparison schools were “minor and inconclusive.”

Unanswered questions

There are many questions that the study did not address. Only 88 out of 147 graduates in the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 cohorts met the inclusion criteria. More than 18 percent of APP graduates were never placed as principals at all. The rest stayed in their positions for fewer than three years.

Is this a high or low number? The authors wrote that they did not have comparative mobility information for the non-APP principals, but they presumably could have reported the average attrition rate for New York City principals overall.

Also, the study only analyzed test score data – which alone are insufficient to fully evaluate a school’s performance. Wasn’t there other data that could have been examined? What about the parent and teacher surveys at APP-headed schools compared to schools run by other new principals?

Though the study compared the size of the schools for both cohorts (APP graduates on average headed smaller schools) they did not compare class sizes – or other school-level conditions that could have contributed to the relative performance of both groups.

Most intriguing is the finding that the relative test scores at both sets of schools continued to decline compared to the rising achievement of schools citywide, but schools headed by APP principals declined less –at least in terms of their ELA results:

“... relative student test performance falls modestly in the years following the installation of a new principal, in both APP and comparison schools…..we find a statistically significant negative relationship between new principals and achievement in both mathematics and ELA.”

It was only after doing a regression analysis, by controlling for various factors (including student background), that they found that the relative performance of APP schools was relatively stable while the comparison schools continued to decline. See this graph:

Thus, the reigning philosophy of the Klein administration – that new leaders properly trained in the methods propounded by the Leadership Academy will spark significant improvements in low-performing schools does not seem to hold true. Instead, these appointees may stabilize what otherwise would be expected to be continued decline resulting from a new principal.

As a way to deal with ongoing attrition and fill positions in elementary and middle schools, the Leadership Academy might be said to be “promising”. But as a way to “turn around” schools it does not seem to be promising at all.

Unmentioned in any of the news articles was the fact that the research organization Mathematica had originally been commissioned by DOE to do an in-depth, multi-year study of the Leadership Academy. Yet after several years of analysis, this study was cancelled by DOE, just months before the results were supposed to be released. What Mathematica might have been discovered about the program and its graduates will probably never be known.

For another close look at this study, see Aaron Pallas’ critique at Gotham Schools.

Where are the Voices from the Grass Roots?

One of the purposes of this blog is to promote serious discussion between educational professionals and the general public. In reading much that is printed in the mainstream media like today's editorial in the New York Times - "Accountability in Public Schools," one constantly hears accounts and perspectives from the voices of those who are in power. Where are the voices from the grass roots about their concerns, frustrations, hopes, and challenges to what passes as educational reform in this country. I recently came across a website and a listserv that provides our readers with this alternative perspective. For readers interested in educating themselves on other perspectives, check out the following website and join the listserv of the Education for Liberation Network.

Website: http://www.edliberation.org/

To join the listserv: go to www.edliberation.org/join-us

Description and Purpose: The Education for Liberation Network is a national coalition of teachers, community activists, youth, researchers and parents who believe a good education should teach people - particularly low-income youth and youth of color - to understand and challenge the injustices their communities face.

Teachers may also be interested in their recent publication of a new kind of plan book that is called: Planning to Change the World: A Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers 2009-2010. You can find it at: http://www.justiceplanbook.com/. I am told that the first printing is already sold out, but more are being printed.

(Cross-posted on Social Issues)

Bloomberg Takes a Cue from Obama

When my colleagues and I crafted our Brookings blueprint on community college reform earlier this year, one of our greatest hopes was that federal leadership would spur real changes at the state and local level. More specifically, we hoped that if President Obama spoke out on the important role played by community colleges, and came forward with a proposal to substantially ramp up their resources, he wouldn't be alone. The message-- and the money-- would travel.

At least that was our hope. Call us naive, but really that's the best way to scale up change.

So we were all incredibly psyched to read in August 14's New York Times that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged $50 million to that city's community colleges-- provided he's there to give out the money during a 3rd term of course.

According to the Times, "Mr. Bloomberg’s four-year proposal calls for graduating 120,000 students by 2020 from the city’s six community colleges, a 43 percent increase over the 84,000 students that are currently expected to graduate by that time, his campaign said. Nationally, President Obama has allocated $12 billion aimed at getting 5 million more Americans to graduate from the nation’s 1,200 community colleges by 2020."

This is a welcome shift in attitude from Bloomberg, whom (at least as I understand it) hasn't exactly made life easy for community colleges so far. I'll be in New York several times this fall, and look forward to learning more about exactly how that city's community colleges feel about his intentions. Stay tuned...

Damned If We Do, Damned If We Don't

Cross-posted from Brainstorm

I began the article with a nice, warm feeling--a sweet story of how Barack and Michelle Obama are trying to keep connected and close with their children is a lovely thing to find on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. It's hard to imagine what it must be like to parent in the White House. Sure, you have plenty of help-- no trouble handling all those bags and kids when you're trying to get out the door, or worrying that you don't have a sitter when you need to stay out late. But I think all parents suffer from a feeling of being too visible, especially when confronted with tantrums or difficult decisions, and these two are right out in front of everyone.

So I both empathize with-- and envy-- the First Parents. Their summer trips with the girls sound idyllic; making gelato in Rome, visiting the Eiffel Tower, Ghana, etc.... While the article focused on those outings as educational opportunities, what they are most clearly is time spent with mom and dad. A very, very busy mom and dad, who've made it a priority to combine work trips with famiy time.

Of course, the article had to take a nasty turn-- revealing that some critics are after Obama for what they see as extravagence. The "nerve" to enjoy one's children while juggling a heavy work schedule, when other Americans can't afford a vacation. This is just so sad. It reaffirms just how workaholic and disfunctional this nation is. We make it hard in so many ways for children to be active parts of our lives, especially if we are working parents. It's hard to fit into the schedule, it's expensive to afford-- and we get judged for it.

I have a friend who often does what feels nearly impossible to me; bringing his kids along when attending conferences (especially those in exotic places). I'd love to do this more, if only. If only it didn't cost so much (the tickets for my son and my husband), require me to make guilt-filled choices between time in a meeting and time at an outing, and most of all, if it didn't seem to diminish me in the eyes of some colleagues. Push a stroller around an academic meeting for an afternoon, and watch as your status facilitates between scholar and Mama...it's no fun. Make it even more fun, and take a break to nurse on a bench-- just as one of your grad students walks by...

I've heard rumors that some funding agencies get the struggle that parenting academics and researchers feel, and allow for grant resources to be used to bring kids along, or finance childcare to make attendance possible. If it's true, that's fabulous and a practice that should be brought to scale. But in the meantime, let's start on the non-monetary side of things by simply casting a friendlier eye on all working parents who embrace children as part of their work and non-work lives. Barack and Michelle are simply showing us how it's done.

Everyone Gets an 'A'

The New York Times editorial page opines ("Truth in Teaching") this morning on teacher evaluation, informed by a new report from the New Teacher Project. I am happy to see the Times's expansive take on this issue, not focusing purely on firing ineffective teachers, but also talking about better training of school administrators, rewarding teaching excellence, and access to better quality professional development to improve classroom practice across the board. That said, the teacher evaluation process needs a complete overhaul to serve a real purpose for both teachers and students.

Read a selection from the editorial below:

Education reform will go nowhere until the states are forced to revamp corrupt teacher evaluation systems that rate a vast majority of teachers as “excellent,” even in schools where children learn nothing.

A startling new report from a nonpartisan New York research group known as The New Teacher Project lays out the scope of the problem. The study, titled “The Widget Effect,” is based on surveys of more than 16,000 teachers and administrators in four states: Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois and Ohio.

The first problem it identifies is that evaluation sessions are often short, infrequent and pro forma — typically two or fewer classroom observations totaling 60 minutes or less. The administrators who perform them are rarely trained to do the evaluations and are under intense pressure from colleagues not to be critical. Not surprisingly, nearly every teacher passes, and an overwhelming majority receives top ratings.

At the same time, more than 80 percent of administrators and nearly 60 percent of teachers surveyed said that they knew a tenured teacher who deserved to be dismissed for poor performance. Half of 12 districts studied had not dismissed a tenured teacher in the previous five years. The study also says that teachers who need and want to improve their skills find it very hard to get help.

Until things change, excellent teachers will not be recognized and rewarded, low-performing teachers will remain in the classroom and teachers who could become high achievers if they had more support never will.

To break out of this failing system, the report says, the states will need to create effective evaluation practices. Those must fairly rate teachers’ different levels of ability. School districts must also invest in teacher development programs and be prepared to fire bad teachers who show no ability or desire to get better.

In a related story, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports ("Ackerman vows tighter teacher standards") that just 13 of 10,700 Philadelphia teachers district-wide received an "unsatisfactory" evaluation last year. It is simply not possible in any human resources system -- assuming the existence of an honest, useful and properly weighted evaluation instrument (which clearly is not the case here) -- that only 0.12% of employees are performing unsatisfactorily. And, not that it is all the teachers' fault, but this in a school district in its sixth year of corrective action! This just further highlights the problem. Teacher evaluations are neither providing informative feedback to educators to help them improve nor are they holding truly ineffective educators accountable for either improving their performance or moving onto something else.

The Quality of Leadership

Reading Sunday's New York Times I was struck by a phrase used repeatedly by our president in describing a quality he seeks in Supreme Court justices. Not only must a candidate be smart, but also s/he should demonstrate the "depth and breadth of one's empathy."

Struck, quietly, struck.

This is why Barack Obama is my president.

He has the ability to elevate a personal attribute that many would consider "soft" to a high-level criteria for a most important job. To do it seriously, and cast it as pragmatic as well.

Imagine if more of the leaders in our daily lives were a bit less concerned with the bottom line, and a bit more capable of recognizing "who the weak are and who the strong are in our society." What if instead of protecting the powerful, the employed, the well-schooled, they instead emphasized the need to protect the powerless (even from themselves)?

Obama said, “I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book,” he said. “It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives, whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.”

We could replace "justice" and "laws" with "education" and "policies" or "practices" so easily. Just think about it.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

I've been thinking a lot about how the citizens of some states view their public universities, and in particular the people who work there. In a week I'll begin a trip around Wisconsin on a bus, with a group of UW faculty, staff, and administrators (included Chancellor Biddy), as part of the "Wisconsin Idea Seminar." I really have two personal goals for this trip-- first, to get a clue about where my students grew up and what those places look and feel like, and second, to hear how citizens around the state think about the UW.

I have to admit- I'm a bit nervous. Having listened to political scientist Kathy Cramer Walsh talk about her research in towns statewide, where she found quite a bit of animosity, partly related to claims of unfair admissions practices and ivory tower elitism, and having recently experienced the wrath of anonymous commentators on online websites who mistake my interest in protecting the kids from poor families for a belief that they are stupid-- well, I'm going in quite concerned.

Then there's this New York Times piece that says that traditional town/gown divides are heating up during the recession. I know something about these, having attended both George Washington University (famous for taking over Foggy Bottom) and the University of Pennsylvania (famous for creating bourgeois schools and coffee houses across West Philly). In contrast, Madison seems quite friendly. But in so many places college students are shunned from local neighborhoods, and their activities said to blight the town. Well, in some ways that's right on. Adolescents on the transition to adulthood probably don't make good neighbors. Bars and pubs don't either. I've watched lots of nice yuppie-fied places get absolutely trashed by students sleeping on couches, spending long hours with a single cup of coffee and a laptop not spending money, etc. But I've also seen the opposite-- empty stores, bored clerks, etc, when the students are gone.

I've got no solution to offer here. I just know one has to be found-- and it probably needs to come from more adults in the state (any state) feeling more a part of the institutions that take their tax dollars. Feeling disenfranchised is crummy, and people respond in kind. I'm not for PR-stunts intended to make colleges think they've done their part and can pat themselves on the back; I'm for trying effective ways to bring more people into the college experience, and helping them to feel that they've got a fair shot. Let's think of some good ways to get that done.

My Take on Taylor

Right now the blogosphere has run amok with talk of Mark Taylor's New York Times op-ed ("End the University as We Know It"), calling for the end of the university as we know it. Of course, with an op-ed like that, many will hate him. So I figured, why not highlight what's good here--and worth considering? In truth, Taylor hits a few high notes I'd like to simply echo. Such as....

1. There is far too little intra-departmental collaboration, and this may well point to the need for new models. I love the idea of cross-disciplinary organizational schemes with faculty gathered around common problems rather than traditional disciplines. But the "problem" areas have got to be more specific than simply "education" or "journalism" or "public policy." Not enough. I'm surprised Taylor didn't recognize that we already have a faculty focused on the problem of "law"-- duh.....

2. Grad students need to know how to get non-academic jobs, and know that life exists (and can be quite good) outside academia.

3. Colleges and universities need to start acting like teammates, especially those within public systems. Yes, SYSTEMS. Share resources, share students, share faculty--share. Can you tell I have a two-year-old?

The only one I strongly oppose--abolishing tenure. Not for the reasons you might think--truth be told, I'm not really focused on long-term job security. I think bright creative people tend to find jobs, somewhere (and of course I'd like to think I meet those criteria). But we need tenure, or something like it, because now is not the time to throw academic freedom into the wind. Trust me.

A Crushing View of Reality

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what money can buy -- $3,500 more specifically. In our project testing the effects of need-based financial aid on college students, that's how much the students attending 4-year colleges are being randomly assigned to receive. So I often ponder whether that amount is meaningful, in what ways, and why more might be needed.

This afternoon I was dealt a harsh dose of reality, bringing me down from "college-going land" to the real world. No sooner had my two-year old gone down for his nap and I'd picked up the New York Times to enjoy over a lovely and very necessary cappuccino, did my eyes fall on this front page story: "Chinese Hunger for Sons Fuel Boys' Abductions".

Know what $3,500 can buy in China? A five-year-old boy. That's right.

In a story full of weeping parents who've lost their kids--those who've had babies stolen from them, and those who unknowingly adopted stolen children--reality hits hard. It's not often that the Education Optimists write about anything outside the U.S. (and admittedly, shame on us for that). Thanks to this story, my mind is far, far from higher education on this very gray afternoon.

UPDATE: Higher Ed Cop Out #1

It's a trend! According to the New York Times: "Facing fallen endowments and needier students, many colleges are looking more favorably on wealthier applicants as they make their admissions decisions this year."

Says Morty Shapiro, "There's going to be a cascading of talented lower-income kids down the social hierarchy of American higher education, and some cascading up of affluent kids."

Darn straight-- remember cop out #1? Need-Sensitive Admissions. Lovely.