Kevin Welner

Electoral College Shenanigans: One Possible Response

2013-02-05T15:47:11-05:00

"The Secretary of the Writers' Union

had flyers distributed on Stalin Boulevard
Saying the people had frivolously
Thrown away the government's confidence
And that they could only regain it
Through redoubled work.
But wouldn't it be simpler
If the government simply dissolved the people
And elected another?"
-- German playwright Bertolt Brecht, "The Solution" ("Die Lösung"), 1953.

In this past presidential election, President Obama defeated Governor Romney by a popular vote of 65.9 million to 60.9 million. In a sane world, that would be the end of the story. But the U.S. presidential election uses the Electoral College, so the official result is 332 electoral votes to 206. It's a wacky system that ended up focusing the election on just 10 states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. Obama won all but North Carolina.

It turns out that in six of these -- Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Virginia -- as well as Michigan (which Obama also won), Republicans control the legislature and governor's office. As an exercise of this control, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and others are considering changing the way in which electoral votes are allocated, to benefit future Republican presidential candidates. Essentially, electoral votes would be distributed to the candidate who wins the majority in each congressional district. Because Democratic votes are more concentrated and because of gerrymandering of congressional districts by these Republican-dominated legislatures (drawing lines so that Democratic voters are packed into a smaller number of districts), this approach could be very favorable to Republican candidates. (See a description of the strategy here.)

Various Huffington Post commentators have weighed in; see Terry Connelly,
Joan Fitz-Gerald, Paul Abrams, and Mark Yzaguirre. John Nichols, over at The Nation, has suggested some sensible approaches to stop this from happening. But assuming it does happen, one possible response for Democratic presidential campaigns would be to shift resources to other states, viewing the states with newly stacked decks as largely non-competitive and not worth the resources.

Another Possible Response

Instead, I now offer the following somewhat serious but also somewhat tongue-in-cheek suggestion for how such a strategy might be responded to. I'll use Wisconsin as my example, figuring that it would naïve to put anything past Governor Scott Walker. Let me state up front that, while I believe this response is likely legal (since nobody is being paid to vote or to vote in a particular way), it is more mockery than democracy. In truth, none of this nonsense should be legal. In a presidential election, a vote's value shouldn't depend on the location of one's home. And voters shouldn't need to be moved around like pawns in response to an opponent's strategic attack. But that's apparently where we now find ourselves, so...

There are eight congressional districts in Wisconsin. Each district has between 442,000 and 504,000 registered voters. Republicans represent five of the eight districts, and presidential results have similarly favored Republicans in those five districts.

Looking at 2012 vote totals, the Obama victory margin in the three D-leaning districts averaged 33.4 percentage points. The Romney victory margin in the five R-leaning districts averaged 8.5 percentage points. In three of those five, the margins of victory were 3.1, 4.2, and 4.4 percentage points, the equivalent of roughly 15,000 votes per district. If approximately 8,000 or 9,000 votes switched hands in each of those districts, they would shift to majority Obama.

Since cynicism has now replaced an honest valuing of democracy, perhaps the next Democratic candidate for president should use campaign resources for targeted housing "integration" (by party, but in many places this would also mean racial integration), which will help the candidate win elections and will also have beneficial side-effects, as described below.

To illustrate, if just 9,000 Democratic voters moved from Rep. Gwen Moore's safe 4th Congressional District to Rep. Paul Ryan's neighboring 1st Congressional district and supplanted a Republican voter each time (probably not feasible -- but this deck, too, could be stacked), then the 4.2 percentage-point Romney win in the 1st would shift to a narrow Obama win (this calculation assumes that all 447,732 registered voters turned out; a 70 percent turnout would require fewer reliable Democratic voters to move into the district).

This might be accomplished, for instance, through housing down-payment or rental assistance. For $4.5 million, a SuperPAC might make available to 9,000 4th District residents a $500 down payment incentive to move into the 1st District. In fact, the SuperPAC might target this benefit to past 'Obama for America' volunteers and others who have shown an inclination to vote and to vote for Democratic candidates.

(If at this point you're thinking, "My lord, have our elections devolved into this sort of farce?," you're not alone. And the heartbreaking answer is, "yes.")

(Update: Paul Ryan comes out against Electoral College tinkering.)

Assuming a total of 14 similarly narrow Republican districts in the seven states that could potentially succumb to this Republican scheme (Virginia legislators, including many Republicans, already rejected such a bill), we're talking $63 million total for moving incentives. That's admittedly a lot. To put that number in context, the Priorities USA Action pro-Obama SuperPAC spent approximately $55 million and the Obama campaign spent over $775 million. But in a close election with few electoral votes truly in play, this may in fact be the most effective way to spend that $63 million.

Will This Happen?

If any state's electoral system does end up transformed (rigged), the most obvious response from both Republicans and Democrats will be to pursue a strategy within states what they've already been pursuing between states: focusing resources on the districts that can realistically be won. But the approach I describe above is much less likely than conventional 'get out the vote' efforts. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive, but with only limited resources, the more conventional approach may be more cost effective. For better or worse, the conventional approach also mocks neither the current Electoral College system nor the (presumptive) new state system for allocating electors.

That said, there is another possibility to consider. The jarring part of the approach described above is the idea of subsidizing housing for voters, creating incentives to move into a given district. But monetary incentives could be taken out of the plan. Instead, each party might end up mounting "patriotic" campaigns to convince their loyalists to move into the swing districts. Think here of a motivational approach akin to Sarah Silverman's "Great Schlep". Of course, any similarities between such a micro-targeted and manipulative presidential campaign and a true democracy are minor and purely incidental.

Other Benefits

Notwithstanding the affronts of all this to our democracy, the housing-based response described above would have two important side benefits. First, the presidential campaign would be putting in play the congressional seats themselves, thus making the scheme less-than-enticing to the Republican representatives currently holding the seats in those districts. Second, by assisting approximately 126,000 families with their housing, the campaign would likely be increasing the housing integration in these communities, and racially integrated communities have lots of benefits.

Conclusion

If Republicans succeed in rigging the Electoral College system in any state, I would likely end up cheering on the cynical response I've outlined here. But it would be akin to half-heartedly cheering for the undersized rooster in a cock-fight: such an unscrupulous contest should never happen in the first place. Yes, let's pursue housing integration, but let's do it for reasons of our overall societal health -- not in response to Electoral College shenanigans. We can only hope that the wrongheaded and unfair proposals being floated today serve to strengthen our collective resolve to rid ourselves of the Electoral College, whichever party benefits.

Rethink School Choice

2012-12-11T18:47:52-05:00

If I told you, "I favor school choice," what might I actually mean? Perhaps I'm a libertarian, so I favor choice because I place an extreme value on individual freedom. Or perhaps I believe in the invisible hand of the free market or I buy into certain assumptions about the benefits of school competition. Maybe I want a school that reinforces my religious beliefs. Or perhaps I see school choice as a way to create more diverse schools, uncoupled from neighborhood segregation.

But in truth, favoring school choice means about the same thing as favoring computers -- the statement means very little unless and until the ideas take on a specific form. After all, a choice plan intended to mitigate neighborhood segregation would be designed with very different rules than a choice plan envisioned as a way to increase competition.

So if I say, "I favor school choice," your next question should be, "How do you favor designing and operating school choice?" That is, "What does your school choice policy actually look like in practice?"

School choice isn't a single thing. In addition to charter schools and conventional vouchers, choice policies include homeschooling, cyberschools, magnet schools and other types of within-district "open enrollment" policies, choice across school districts, and tuition tax credit plans that provide a public subsidy for private school tuition (policies that I've called "neovouchers").

In addition, there are many variations on each of these approaches. Are vouchers provided to everyone or just to lower-income families? Do schools enrolling voucher students have to comply with the accountability policies that apply to public schools? Similarly, must they comply with anti-discrimination laws? Must teachers at cyberschools or charter schools be fully trained and certified? Should any constraints be placed on the choice decisions of parents and schools in order to avoid segregation and stratification by wealth, race, special needs, or other attributes?

There is a widespread misconception about school choice: that it's a complete policy in itself. In reality, it's a broad policy tool that can be included as part of a complete education policy. Like most tools, school choice can be used in beneficial as well as damaging ways. It's not a policy in itself any more than bell schedules are complete policies. At the most basic level, school choice is simply an approach for assigning students to schools. Once we appreciate this distinction, we return to our basic question: "In what ways do you favor designing and operating school choice?"

Unfortunately, our lawmakers have generally failed to ask such sensible questions. As a result, they wrongly look at school choice as a political end in itself, not as a tool. And this misunderstanding blinds them to all the ways that school choice tools can be used.

Along with three of my colleagues at the National Education Policy Center -- Gary Miron, Patricia Hinchey and Bill Mathis -- I recently edited a book called Exploring the School Choice Universe. It examines not just what school choice policies have done but also what those policies can do, offering reasons to believe that choice policies can further some educational goals but also suggesting many reasons for caution. If choice policies are to be evidence-based, a re-examination is in order. We hope that the information, insights and recommendations in the book will facilitate a more nuanced understanding of school choice and provide the basis for designing sensible school choice reforms that can pursue a range of desirable outcomes.

If we don't understand our options within the school choice framework, or if we're not even aware of them, we are very unlikely to carefully deliberate about them. We end up with choice-based policies that have a set of rules arrived at through default or through political pressure, rather than through careful -- and evidence-based -- consideration. Simply put, if we don't ask useful questions, we don't tend to get useful answers.

There can be a true value in parental choice -- matching, for example, a child's interests with the focus of a school. But in making policy we shouldn't assume school choice has some magical power. And in designing choice policies we should remain aware of potential unintended consequences: it can become a system for the rich to get richer, the poor to get poorer, and the entire society to balkanize further. What the authors of this book tell us, however, is that it needn't have such adverse consequences. We can design choice systems that advance the democratic nature of society and educational equality. But to make this work, we must rethink school choice, designing our policies with goals -- not tools -- at the center of our thinking.

A Modest Hurricane Proposal for Honoring Climate Change Deniers

2012-10-29T08:29:07-04:00

For almost 70 years, we have given tropical cyclones names. We now, for example, are focused on Hurricane Sandy. The "S" in Sandy means that this is the 18th tropical storm of the season. Next year, the first ten will be named Andrea, Barry, Chantal, Dorian, Erin, Fernand, Gabrielle, Humberto, Ingrid and Jerry.

This practice is, alas, boring and not the least bit instructive. We should turn to a much better option.

Because the odds of extreme weather conditions have increased due to man-made climate change, we owe it to the climate change deniers (and to the world's population) to use these naming opportunities as a reminder of how we got here. As with NASCAR, we should give credit to the proud sponsors who make these disasters possible. Even if the wusses at the World Meteorological Organization are too timid to take on this new practice, it's something that the rest of us can do.

So here are my suggestions...

The season should start off with Hurricane AEI, named for the American Enterprise Institute, in honor of that free-market think tank's offer to scientists of "$10,000, plus travel and other expenses, to highlight the shortcomings in a report from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group widely considered to be the authority on climate change science."

Next up, we would be drowned in the tears of Hurricane Boehner. Hurricane ConocoPhillips would follow, although the Competitive Enterprise Institute really deserves the recognition here as well.

For "D" I'd go with Hurricane DTE Energy, in honor of the Michigan company's campaign against renewable energy targets. Alternatively, there are plenty of climate-change denying members of Congress to choose from.

Next up, inevitably, is ExxonMobil, followed by either FreedomWorks or perhaps FACES of Coal (Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security).

For "G," Hurricane Gingrich has a telling ring to it. And for "H" we have both the Heartland Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

The strongest claim to "naming rights" for the letter I undoubtedly belongs to Congress's most renowned climate change denier, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. He explained during a radio interview that his climate change denying comes from the Bible:

Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that 'as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,' my point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.

For his devout work, the ninth tropical storm every year should bear Inhofe's name. This is perhaps unfair to the Institute for Energy Research (aka the American Energy Alliance), but so be it.

For the tenth tropical storm, I suggest the name Johnson, in honor of The Three Johnsons, members of the House of Representatives who voted in 2011 in favor of H.R. 910, which would have prohibited the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from stationary sources as a way to help address climate change: Sam Johnson of Texas, Timothy Johnson of Illinois, and Bill Johnson of Ohio.

Hurricane Koch would be next, in honor of Koch Industries, the Koch Family Foundations and other Koch-related entities for their support of coal and coal-friendly politicians.

Two House members make strong claims to "L": Rep. Dan Lungren (California) and Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (Missouri).

But the most competition will generally be found when we get around to the thirteenth tropical storm each year. Fox News columnist Steve Milloy and Sen. Mitch McConnell have stellar credentials. But so do the Mercatus Center, the Manhattan Institute and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Sen. John McCain, Gov. Bob McDonnell, and Gov. Susana Martinez also have strong claims for their contributions to climate change. Prof. Pat Michaels of the Cato Institute and Lord Christopher Monckton from across the Pond are also extraordinarily deserving.

And so it goes. Here in the U.S., at least, the explosion of climate-change deniers has given us a wealth of names to choose from. No more Dorians and Humbertos! Bring on Hurricane Lungren and Tropical Storm Milloy.

Alternatively, we can name to the storms after the untold numbers who have died and will die because of the more extreme weather conditions. But where's the fun in that?

Correction: Sen. Inhofe is the senator from Oklahoma, not Nebraska, as was previously stated.

The Lesson of the Cupcakes: Fix Schools by Resisting Gimmicks and Heeding Evidence

2012-04-26T10:46:30-04:00

An early episode of The Simpsons had Lisa carrying out a science fair experiment called "Is my brother dumber than a hamster?" She rigged up parallel enticements for each. The hamster reaches for a pellet, gets a shock, and learns to avoid the pellet. Bart grabs at a cupcake, is shocked, but does not learn: grab-"ouch!"-grab-"ouch!"-grab-"ouch!"

Welcome to the world of education policy. Once a lawmaker becomes fixated on a cupcake, no amount of evidence will dampen that pursuit. And recent years have provided no shortage of evidence-free fixations: charter schools, cyberschools, private school vouchers, teacher merit pay, evaluation of teachers based on students' test scores, and -- most recently and most persistently -- grade retention policies that require students to repeat a year in school.

Let's use grade retention to illustrate. States across the U.S. are adopting mandates requiring that third graders with low reading scores repeat the grade. The 'leave the student back' policy is being heavily marketed by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, an organization created by former Florida governor Jeb Bush. But retaining students is not a new idea. It's an experiment that's been tried on and off for generations, and it's been studied for almost that long.

The overarching message from research in this area is that retaining a low-scoring third grader will not help her do better than a similar classmate with similar scores who is moved along to fourth grade, but she will be more likely to eventually drop out.

Viewed from a taxpayer perspective, retaining a student will likely have one of two outcomes:
1. She may drop out, meaning she will pay about $60,000 less in taxes over her lifetime, be more likely to commit crimes, and be more likely to depend on government assistance; or
2. She may complete high school, at a cost of an extra year of school -- about $10,000.

If retention had a substantial payoff, paying for an extra year of school would be worthwhile (although it nationally adds up to billions of dollars each year). But there's no benefit. With grade retention, we are paying more and getting a worse outcome.

That's the evidence. It's what we have learned (or should have learned) from decades of experience. Grade retention can be expected to have the same destructive results in 2012 as it did when it was tried ten or twenty or forty years ago -- or any of the years in between. Yet our lawmakers do the same thing over and over again, each time expecting different results.

To be clear, "social promotion" -- the movement of students from grade to grade with no meaningful intervention for those who fall behind -- is also not supported by research evidence. Instead, as proven approaches to address the problem of early reading gaps, research supports high-quality early-childhood education, intensive early reading interventions, and smaller class sizes in early grades for at-risk students. These are all less costly and more effective than grade retention.

Evidence supports grade promotion combined with these sorts of interventions, and it clearly cautions against a systemic use of grade retention, even retention combined with additional academic support.

A reckless disregard of evidence is harmful. It leads to the waste of precious resources: our tax dollars and our children themselves. And grade retention is only one example of the larger problem.

The U.S. achievement gap, which is among the largest in the world, is the foreseeable and inevitable result of a corresponding gap in opportunities to learn provided to the nation's children. Disadvantaged children are confronted with obstacle after obstacle, from segregated housing and concentrated poverty to crumbling schools and inexperienced teachers; from hunger and inadequate health care to low-track, dead-end classes.

These opportunity gaps will not be closed by lawmakers who reach for cupcakes -- policies like grade retention that are enticing and easily swallowed but that are ultimately malnourishing. Rather, progress will follow from policies that promote deep, systemic, long-term changes in a system that shortchanges children in so many ways.

Children learn when they are engaged. They learn when they are challenged and supported in safe, nurturing environments. They learn when their teachers are prepared and are also supported, so that they can provide an education that is engaging, stimulating and rigorous. None of these needs are met by today's gimmicky fads such as merit pay, vouchers, charter schools and cyberschools, or high-stakes evaluations of teachers, principals and schools based on student test scores.

So what makes Bart persist, in spite of the evidence? Has Lisa created a situation where Bart simply can't resist, where following his instincts and engrained way of thinking won't let him get what he wants and expects? Are there lessons here for lawmakers? Maybe Bart (and lawmakers) just can't imagine that something so attractive and obviously within reach can't be possible? Maybe they think they can outsmart past experience?

I'm reminded of a sign held up at Jon Stewart's 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity: "What do we want? Evidence-based change. When do we want it? After peer review." While peer review is neither a precondition nor a guarantee of sound evidence, it does represent a process that forces attention to the quality of evidence. And that's the trick: to change the dynamics so that weak yet alluring policy choices become less attractive while evidence-supported policies become more attractive.

This can only be accomplished by changing the nature and content of our nation's policy discussions. Yet in writing this, I'm wondering if I'm also like Bart, in that I think -- in spite of years of evidence -- that it's reasonable to expect us as a nation to change the way we think and the way we make decisions.

Nonetheless, I do hold out hope, perhaps because the alternative is so unpalatable: continued diversion of effort and money to dead-end policies when so much evidence exists to point lawmakers toward best practices.

There are no miracle cures or magic beans. If we increase opportunities to learn, the result will be more learning; if we deny opportunities to learn, the result is equally predictable. Even a hamster can figure that out.

Teacher Job Satisfaction Plummets (Perhaps Teacher-Bashing Isn't Productive)

2012-03-07T11:35:47-05:00

It's not fun to be repeatedly punched in the gut. And we can now quantify how not-fun it is, at least when teachers are the punchees.

Over the past two years of gut-punching, teacher job satisfaction has fallen from 59 percent to 44 percent. That's according to the annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher.

While this 15-point plummet is no doubt caused in part by the bad economy and budget cutting, it's also hard to overlook things like Waiting for Superman, the media deification of Michelle Rhee, and the publishing of flawed "scores" that purport to evaluate teachers based on students' test results -- an offense first committed by the Los Angeles Times and now taken up by the New York Times and other New York papers. Teachers knew these evaluations were unreliable and invalid even before researchers documented those problems.

Similarly, teachers see states and districts implement policies that largely base their performance evaluations on student test scores. These new policies are layered on top of No Child Left Behind and the subsequent years of narrowed curricula and teaching to the test. Teachers have been watching sadly as the sort of engaging learning that attracted them to the profession is increasingly squeezed out. Further, teachers in many states are facing attacks on their collective voice in education policy by anti-union governors such as Walker (Wisconsin), Scott (Florida), Christie (New Jersey), Daniels (Indiana), Kasich (Ohio), and Brewer (Arizona).

While all those governors are Republican, the trashing of teachers has been a bipartisan effort, led by groups that include Democrats for Education Reform and Stand for Children. In fact, President Obama is widely viewed as part of the problem. He will never achieve a Santorum-esque level of anti-public-school rhetoric, but Race to the Top and related policies have continued the drive toward privatization and test-focused instruction. Although the title of a U.S. Department of Education press release from a few weeks ago read "Obama Administration Seeks to Elevate Teaching Profession," the headline a couple years ago was, "Obama Official Applauds Rhode Island Teacher Firings."

None of us would want to have our job performance judged on an outcome that we don't really control. Research suggests that a student's teacher for a single given school year influences as little as 5 to 10 percent of her or his test-score growth. Sensible policymaking does not leap from "teachers are important" to "teachers can be evaluated as if they are the only thing that's important."

Similarly, none of us would want to have our evaluation based on an outcome, like test scores, that we know represents only a fraction of what we do and why we do it. And we wouldn't want to pursue a good evaluation by doing our job in ways we think unwise or even harmful.

But that's where teachers now find themselves. Maybe we should feel grateful that their job satisfaction only dropped 15 percentage points.

Pundits, Researchers, and Reporters: Education Media and the Search for Expertise

2012-01-24T11:58:11-05:00

On October 13, 2011, Rick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, published a list on his blog of "about two dozen Republican and/or conservative (and/or libertarian) edu-thinkers that enterprising reporters might tap for expertise when writing about GOP policy proposals or the GOP presidential field and education." Hess' primary impetus was what he called "the ed press' disconcerting habit of relying almost entirely on professional Democrats or Democratic-leaning academics to provide commentary on Republican education proposals when it comes to the presidential contest and federal policy." His list is composed of people who have "held public office, worked for or advised public officials, or play prominent roles at organizations where they champion policies regarded as 'conservative.'"

That list may in fact be of assistance to reporters and others looking for comments about education policy proposals from the conservative perspective. But it's important to note the obvious: his list of sources was focused on the ideology of the people on it, not their knowledge of the research evidence that may or may not underlie a particular proposal. Only a half-dozen of the names on his list of 34 "thinkers" make their living as researchers.

Shortly after the Hess list was published, I was contacted by someone in the education press and asked if I "could assemble a similar list of some not-so-conservative folks." But in truth I had no interest in doing so. Instead, I thought it might be helpful to compile a list of researchers who are comfortable speaking with media and policymakers.

To be blunt, and to risk offending some of my friends in the education press, I thought it would be useful to offer assistance in overcoming another "disconcerting habit" of the media coverage of education policy: the elevation of pundits over experts (and, for that matter, over practitioners).

To help address this, the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) has just released Researchers as resources: A list of experts who can speak to the overall knowledge base on important education issues. The 64 researchers on the list are identified by their areas of research expertise. They can all speak to the overall knowledge base - to the weight of scholarly thought and research evidence in a given K-12 education policy area. Our list is weighted toward those we've worked with in the past at the NEPC. It is certainly not comprehensive, neither in terms of topics nor in terms of experts (although we do offer more names in connection with topics that are currently of great policy interest). We at the NEPC, as well as organizations such as the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association, could point interested members of the media to many other researchers who could serve as experts. Individual universities and reputable research organizations such as the RAND Corporation could be called upon to do the same.

The distinction I've drawn here between Hess' list and the one NEPC is publishing is not meant as a criticism. Rick wrote the list, after all, in the context of reporting on the statements of political candidates. Our list is, in contrast, for reporters who are seeking information about the quality of the research evidence relevant to a given policy. This doesn't mean that researchers don't have what Rick often calls "priors" (the values and beliefs that everyone brings to meaningful issues). The experts on our list no doubt do have such "priors," but first and foremost they speak to evidence and have the social scientific knowledge necessary to interpret it. They can all point to high-quality research to explain and support their conclusions. I believe public discussions of policy will greatly benefit when that becomes standard practice.

New York's Rebellious School Principals

2011-11-10T12:49:00-05:00

Principal Skinner may cower in the face of authority, but his counterparts on Long Island have not hesitated to take a stand against policymakers pushing a wrongheaded agenda.

Head over to www.longislandprincipals.org and see what I mean. And read the front-page article in Newsday. When confronted with New York's new system that uses students' test scores to evaluate teachers and principals, they responded with a clear statement that the policy will hurt students and should be opposed.

This was not a group of 50 or even 100 school leaders. The letter had 330 principals signed on initially. The group has now -- as I write this -- grown to 433, which is two-thirds of all the principals in two heavily populated counties in New York. And the number is still growing.

The principals' letter is detailed and strong, and the website includes a "Reading Room" that explains the research and rationale behind the letter.

Principals sometimes joke that if you put 10 of them in a room, you will have 11 different opinions. Not this time. Over the past decade, these principals had a front-row seat as they watched NCLB and related policies create perverse incentives to teach to the test and narrow curriculum, they are pushing back against ramping up those incentives. As they point out, the New York evaluation system is (ahem) untested and, in fact, flies in the face of a solid research base documenting the limitations and harms of accountability and evaluation approaches dependent upon student test scores.

In particular, these principals know from experience that the curriculum will narrow, electives will disappear, and struggling students will be steered from more challenging courses. They also know that the evaluation system will provide teachers with disincentives to teach classes with at-risk students. And so they wrote a letter that straightforwardly sets forth these and other concerns.

Importantly, the letter also includes sensible recommendations such as piloting the evaluation system, creating a common index based on scores and local concerns, and evaluating teachers and principals without attaching an invalid and unreliable number between 0 and 100.

Indicative of what I see as a growing movement of parents and others who have simply had enough of the status quo "reform" agenda, teachers, parents, superintendents, professors and others are signing on and expressing their gratitude and support (almost 1,400 names as I write this, including the 433 Long Island principals). There are, it would appear, a lot of battered but wise educators in New York who were just waiting for a letter like the one these principals wrote. And there are a lot of us outside of New York cheering these principals on. I, for one, just added my name to their list.

Letter to Arne Duncan

2011-07-29T15:30:34-04:00

A few days ago, Carol Burris and I sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The letter was invited by Secretary Duncan during a phone conversation with Dr. Burris.

Our letter is summarized briefly below, with the full text of the letter available on the website of the National Education Policy Center. It
offers concrete guiding principles for evaluation of educators and suggestions for a way forward.

The telephone call from Secretary Duncan to Dr. Burris was apparently prompted by Dr. Burris' public response to New York State's new policy, forcing schools to use student test scores as part of a mandated evaluation process aimed at both teachers and principals. Similar policies have been adopted in Colorado and other states.

The letter begins with an agreement that high-quality evaluation of educators is important and should be pursued, even while we also stress the obvious: "If we fail to invest in our schools and communities, even the highest-quality educator evaluation will lead to little success."

Here, I want to simply quote the final page of the (6 page) letter, which focuses on our recommendations:

Just as no pharmaceutical would be brought to market without first being tested for effectiveness and for adverse reactions, neither should a practice with the potential to profoundly impact the lives of the nation's students and their teachers. Considering both the cost and the high-stakes nature of mandated evaluation systems, we offer the following interrelated recommendations.

Put on hold the policy push to use student test scores to evaluate teachers and principals, unless and until data demonstrate the likelihood that such an evaluation approach will positively, not negatively, affect student learning. Existing systems, such as [Washington DC's] IMPACT, that use student scores for educator evaluation are already in place. These should be treated as pilots and should be used to understand the systems and their results, including effects on student achievement.

More broadly, call upon the National Research Council or the National Academy of Education to document teacher- and principal-evaluation approaches that are proven to successfully meet all four criteria for sound evaluation practices listed above. [We contend earlier in the letter that an evaluation system should be evaluated by its overall effect on student learning. Such an overall effect implicates at least four overlapping areas, each of which is explained: (a) summative, (b) formative, (c) working conditions, and (d) incentives.] Such a report might also identify and describe promising additional approaches and recommend pilot programs and evaluations of those approaches. Based on this report, the U.S. Department of Education could embark on an evidence-based policy that would continue the existing push for high-quality educator evaluation while ensuring that the specific push will be beneficial for the nation's students.

While awaiting evidentiary guidance from the work of the National Research Council or National Academy of Education, focus the federal push on rigor and balance. Educator evaluation systems should pursue the four criteria for sound evaluation practices, recognizing also that multiple measures, pursued diligently and conscientiously, will allow weaknesses in any given measure to be compensated for by others. In lieu of obliging states to impose a non-evidence-based evaluation approach, the federal government should encourage the use of well-designed and well-executed locally appropriate strategies. In this regard, one of the most long-standing and promising teacher evaluation approaches relies on peer assistance and review (PAR) programs, such as those in Toledo, Ohio and Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. We note with alarm the likelihood that current policies are not just failing to promote such programs with apparently successful track records--the new wave of evaluation policies are actually having the effect of discouraging and terminating these success.

Whatever system is used, insist that it be subject to rigorous outcome monitoring; that is, locally designed review and evaluation.

Insist that all evaluation systems enhance the professionalism of teaching and the principalship. [The] New York APPR policy will almost surely undermine that professionalism. Similarly, public dissemination of teacher- and principal-level value-added data will undermine attempts to improve performance. For example, given the different degrees of efficacy among parents, it is likely that demand for highly rated teachers will result in students with the greatest need being assigned to the lowest-rated teachers.

Evaluations can be powerful interventions. While high-quality, thoughtful evaluation undoubtedly carries the potential to improve schooling, misguided evaluation approaches have a corresponding potential to harm our schools. Like most policy tools, evaluation can be used soundly and beneficially, or it can be abused. We fear that the current policy push does the latter.

'The Acquisition of 16,905 Students'

2011-06-09T13:26:24-04:00

Prior to my career in academia, I practiced law. I took my first job back in 1988 during a boom in so-called mergers and acquisitions. There were lots or reasons bandied about for why one corporation would benefit from acquiring another, but one frequent reason for "M&A" was the coveting of useful assets held by the target company. One airline, for example, might acquire another in part to gain access to an important hub or local market. Although that particular M&A frenzy soon petered out, the idea of growth through acquisition is certainly still an important part of U.S. business strategy.

This, oddly enough, brings us to the new growth industry of public schooling.

The other day, I was editing a policy brief about virtual schooling -- online, computer-mediated instruction of K-12 public school students. The brief's author explains how this field has grown tremendously over the past decade, and he addresses some of the challenges presented by that growth. He also describes the dominant role played by private, for-profit companies. As I read about the largest of those companies, K12 Inc., I decided I wanted to learn more.

I soon clicked on a story from the Wall Street Journal's "MarketWatch" and was jolted by this sentence:
"In the latest quarter, average enrollment jumped 47 percent to 101,030, including the acquisition of 16,905 students." As the story explains, K12 Inc. was able to boost its enrollment by acquiring other, smaller companies that had been providing virtual schooling to these students.

Of course, a provider of instruction needs students to instruct, otherwise the flow of taxpayer dollars will cease. This is true whether the provider of instruction is a local school district or a private, for-profit company like K12 Inc.

But what does it tell us as parents and citizens when the private "acquisition of 16,905 students" is now intertwined with the provision of "public" education? Public services are different from private services, and the privatization of public education has often-negative consequences for equity, quality, and democracy.

Nevertheless, industry public relations specialists have told us throughout the years that M&A activity increases shareholder wealth and increases consumer services through various efficiencies. Pursuant to this argument, these 16,905 acquired students have now been moved to a company that will better meet their educational needs.

I expect that this will sometimes be true, and sometimes it won't. I also expect that those acquired students and their parents will generally not even be aware that they'd been sold from one company to another. Corporate M&A activity takes place in a private business realm that is not part of the world of most parents. By way of illustration, how many consumers know that Dove soap and Skippy peanut butter are owned by Unilever or that "YUM! Brands" runs KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut?

Yet what leaves me troubled is not so much that we won't be aware of who is making a profit from our children's education. Nor is the problem the unfortunate intrusion of biz-speak ("acquisition" of children) into public schooling. Rather, what's extremely troubling is that our elected representatives have decided to allow -- and even encourage in many instances -- the transfer of our children's education into the hands of private, for-profit corporations. The biz-speak and the bottom-line decision-making are the inevitable consequences of that transfer.

It troubles me too that those policy makers' campaign coffers are being filled by corporations who then benefit from policy decisions in ways that look indistinguishable from how defense contractors, oil companies, and others have raided the public coffers for years. Just as mortgage servicing companies work for investors, selling our mortgages repeatedly and then informing us of changes to whom we owe our payments, we can now expect that our children and their associated taxpayer payments will be fluidly moved from investor to investor.

So now our children effectively become corporate assets. How long before they are commodities to be bought and sold on the open market as if they were pork bellies or wheat futures (or bundled sub-prime mortgages)? I'd like to believe we can reverse course. But at least one of the two major political parties will have to find the courage to stand up for public education; and there'll be a lot of corporate donations lost for whoever takes that stand.

Mold, Cancer, Viruses and... Walmart?

2011-05-09T16:06:44-04:00

When people become so convinced their perspective is unimpeachable, they do and say some pretty funny things. A recent example was Rep. Denny Rehberg, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat in Montana. He recently tried to convince a town hall audience in Missoula that he and his wife "are struggling like everyone else." According to his financial disclosure forms, he has a net worth of up to $56 million. He apparently didn't realize that such a statement doesn't play well to an audience of non-millionaires.

Comparable blinders seem to be the new fashion statement among advocates of market-based education policies.

I direct the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado at Boulder. One of our endeavors is the "Think Twice" think tank review project, which applies academic peer review standards to reports from think tanks and provides brief reviews published on the project web site. The reviews, written in non-academic language, are intended to help policy makers, reporters, and others assess the merits of the reviewed reports.

This past month, we asked ASU professor David Garcia to review a new report called "Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector's Best," published by the Progressive Policy Institute - a prominent neoliberal think tank. According to the review, which is published on the NEPC website, the PPI report is weak and troubling in a variety of respects. But what struck me as I read through Garcia's review of the report was that the authors seem to be so ensconced in a cocoon of like-minded thinkers that the report's weaknesses might never have been challenged before publication. Most humorously and shockingly, the report's authors seemed to think it was a good idea -- in a report advocating the exponential growth of their favorite charter schools -- to compare those charters to somewhat undesirable things like viruses and cancer:

We also conducted research about when and how exponential growth occurs in the natural world, specifically examining mold, algae, cancer, crystals and viruses. We used these findings in addition to cross-sector lessons to fuel our thinking about fresh directions for the charter sector. The similarities between the natural world and organizational worlds are rather striking and useful for understanding the critical elements of exponential growth.

Garcia points out that the report never quite explains how the growth of viruses applies to the growth of charter schools. But even if the authors had somehow managed to do so, I can't help but feel that the comparison is a bit tone deaf. Setting aside the example of crystals, which I think are rather interesting and attractive, what I take away from this comparison is that exponential growth in the natural world runs the gamut all the way from disagreeable to deadly.

But the PPI folks are not alone. Less colorfully, but just as intriguingly, I was recently criticized by someone working for/with the "Fordham Institute" think tank, for failing to understand the beauty of the market -- and he chose Wal-Mart as his poster-child. The author of this critique was upset by an essay I published in Dissent magazine. In the essay, titled "Free-Market Think Tanks and the Marketing of Education Policy," I explained how free-market-oriented think tanks have successfully shaped education policy debates. And, included in the piece, I wrote the following (quoted in the Fordham critique):

This points to what should be the fundamental progressive response -- the critique that many progressives seem hesitant to seize: that educational opportunities should be among the most precious public goods. While public education does provide an important private benefit to children and their families, it also lies at the center of our societal well-being. Educational opportunities should therefore never be distributed by market forces, because markets exist to create inequalities -- they thrive by creating "winners" and "losers."

The Fordham author was not happy because, he explained, my essay "misunderstands markets." It seems that -- if "carefully tend[ed]" -- they generate only winners, at least at the consumer end of things. To understand this truth, we're pointed to Wal-Mart:

If Wal-Mart and another retailer compete, in a well-functioning market the consumer wins by paying lower prices, enjoying higher quality, or both, regardless of whether Wal-Mart or its competitor wins a given customer's business. Markets don't exist for the sake of competition, or to provide wealth for "winning" competitors. Competition is intended to serve end users.

Is that really how people look at Wal-Mart? Isn't there long-term damage caused to communities (and consumers -- sometimes known by their other name: community members) by the 'consumer-benefiting' effects of Wal-Mart's competition closing down main street stores? And aren't those same community members harmed by Wal-Mart's leading role in undermining labor and safety regulations and its use of China sweatshops?

Perhaps the Fordham author's choice of Wal-Mart to make his point was influenced -- consciously or subconsciously -- by the Walton Family Foundation's leading role in pushing market-based education policies. From my perspective, in any case, the choice couldn't be more apt.

It's not just Wal-Mart, of course. Does anyone remember way back to 2008, when the bottom dropped out of our economy because of reckless trading of securitized real-estate loans? Perhaps this market wasn't 'carefully tended' (or 'well regulated,' as I believe the Fordham author does sincerely advocate), but neither as a rule are the educational markets being advocated by the free-market think tanks whose reports NEPC's authors have reviewed.

In the end, I fear that students will indeed continue to be losers as our public schools are turned over to private corporations. After all, there's only so much one can learn from mold.

Tough Times at the L.A. Times: Standing Behind Incorrect Teacher Ratings

2011-02-28T16:43:29-05:00

The newspaper business can't be much fun these days. Editors and reporters are desperate to find ways to hold on to readers. Such desperation, however, can never justify misleading readers, publishing factual errors, and then doubling-down on those mistakes when confronted with the truth. Yet that's where the Los Angeles Times now finds itself.

It's been three weeks since the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) released a reanalysis of the research underlying the August 2010 Times story that rated teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) based on an attempt to estimate the growth of their students' test scores. The new NEPC study concluded that the research on which the Times teacher effectiveness ratings were based was not capable of producing valid ratings of individual teachers.

On February 7, 2011, the Times covered the NEPC research and gave the article the inconceivable title, "Separate study confirms many Los Angeles Times findings on teacher effectiveness." (The subtitle: "A University of Colorado review of Los Angeles Unified teacher effectiveness also raises some questions about the precision of ratings as reported in The Times."). True to the headline, the story incorrectly characterized the re-analysis as "confirm[ing] the broad conclusions of a Times' analysis."

In fact, the NEPC study, conducted and authored by Derek Briggs and Ben Domingue and titled Due Diligence and the Evaluation of Teachers, confirms very few of the Times' conclusions -- and none of the key ones.

The Times story was written by Jason Felch, the reporter who also wrote the August 2010 Times story that relied on the problematic research. The article was apparently assigned to Mr. Felch by assistant managing editor David Lauter, who I am led to believe oversaw the August project. That is, Messrs. Felch and Lauter teamed up for the original coverage and then, when the foundation of that work was critiqued, they teamed up again to misrepresent the critique.

In response to the Times article, NEPC posted a "Fact Sheet" on its website, walking readers through the article's most misleading and false statements. Others joined in, expressing outrage that "the facts reported in the study [were] studiously ignored" in the Times coverage and wondering "how one could reasonably draw such a conclusion [the Times' headline] from the highly readable 32-page research report written by Briggs/Domingue".

Faced with this second set of criticisms, the Times again chose to deny and mislead, defending its reporting and the accuracy of its teacher ratings as well as its coverage of the NEPC report. The Times on February 14th published a post by its "readers' representative" and a separate unsigned statement from the paper's management defending its reporting while making demonstrably false claims about what was included and not included in the NEPC report.

A point-by-point response to the defense presented by the Times is provided on the NEPC website. Readers of that response will see that what is at stake here is not a battle over semantics or arcane statistical details. The Times contends that the teacher effectiveness ratings it published online were built on sound research, offering a fair and reliable assessment of the relative quality of individual LAUSD teachers. Parents are encouraged to rely on its searchable database in order to make choices about who will teach their children.

The NEPC report explains that the model used to construct the Times database of individual teacher effectiveness ratings is not adequate to that task. Using a stronger, alternative model, 53.6 percent of the teachers in the database -- more than half -- would fall into a different effectiveness category for reading than the one assigned by the Times. While the NEPC researchers explain why they think a stronger model is preferable, that's not really the point. Instead, the point is this: because two reasonable models reach such different results, the Times' decision to publish ratings based on their preferred model is reckless.

The Times has not been simply reporting on teacher evaluations or ratings. It has been creating them and publicizing them. This unusual position confers upon the Times a profound obligation to ensure that any ratings it publishes are both valid and reliable. It is incumbent on the paper's reporters and editors to cautiously report on the effort's weaknesses.

This ethical obligation is amplified when the Times is presented with a critique of the social science work that the paper had commissioned and used. Yet inexplicably the story about the critique was assigned to the same reporter who wrote and has repeatedly defended the original story, and this assignment was apparently made by the same editor who worked on the original story. The result, not surprisingly, was an attempt to mislead readers and whitewash the critique. It's been enlightening but chilling to watch a desperate newspaper determined to make its own reality -- behaving in ways I've come to expect of politicians, not journalists.

I am nowhere near a neutral observer of this morality play, but I still hold out hope that the protagonists at the Times will be reached by the researchers, teachers, and others who have tried again and again to shine a light on the truth.

Professor Alex Molnar, NEPC's publications director, joined in the drafting of this post.

Philanthropies and Education: Breaking the Cycle of Systemic Inequity

2010-12-17T15:37:16-05:00

I teach at a public university, which pretty much guarantees that I'll never be a major philanthropist. But the main beneficiary of my largess -- such as it is -- is my local homeless shelter. It's well-run, and it really does excellent work. But it does almost nothing to help end homelessness. Instead, it addresses the immediate and dire needs of my community's homeless -- needs that are likely to continue long after I'm gone.

I've been thinking about those donations because of a report I just wrote for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. My co-author Amy Farley and I contend education grantmakers will have the most success in advancing equity and access if they do two things. First, and perhaps most obviously, focus greater attention and funding specifically on the needs of vulnerable communities. Second, focus on addressing systemic inequality by devoting more funding to policy engagement and community organizing.

My donations to the homeless shelter do the first; they do not do the second. That's fine, since my intent is charity, not philanthropy. My goal is to address short-term needs - to help my neighbors survive. But is that what institutional philanthropists should be doing? Our answer is a qualified "yes", because the needs are so incredibly dire and urgent -- however, we also argue that addressing immediate needs should be balanced with true philanthropic goals. This entails longer-term projects designed to improve society, and we contend that for educational improvement it requires support for advocacy, community organizing and civic engagement. We point to the cycle of systemic inequality (see the representation of the cycle below), which produces unmet needs generation after generation. The cycle needs to be broken if we ever expect to see an end to the unmet needs arising anew with each generation.

Breaking the intergenerational cycle of inequity requires investments that help to equalize the voices of people in marginalized communities -- investments that address the power imbalances and inequalities in the ability to effectively participate in policymaking process. Philanthropy that supports such advocacy-related activities will have the largest impact, particularly in the long-term, on improving educational opportunities and access for the entire country.

Every education policy is adopted and implemented within a context, and that context is ever-changing. In fact, the nature of the context is -- in large part -- deliberately shaped by people and groups with an interest in policymaking. Consider the many discussions on HuffPost about Waiting for "Superman". The film itself, as well as most of the commentary surrounding the film, should be understood as attempts to shift the policymaking context (e.g., to be more supportive of charters and less favorable toward unions).

But look again at the cycle. As long as the power imbalances and participatory inequality continue, then the voices of those communities that are the actual foci of these reform efforts are effectively silenced. Yes, Davis Guggenheim or Bill Gates or even I might have some great ideas about the needs of other people's schools. And we should be able to pursue those ideas. But isn't it troubling that we (well, not me, really) have such disproportionate power over the terms of the debate?

This is where philanthropies, certainly including the Gates Foundation, can truly help. Education foundations can assist in breaking the cycle of systemic inequity by working with vulnerable communities to genuinely develop local power and voice through building advocacy capacity -- and to truly foster a sense of shared purpose by funding civic engagement and community organizing. Only then will the context for education policymaking legitimately reflect the needs and wishes of all communities.

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy report, "Confronting Systemic Inequity in Education: High Impact Strategies for Philanthropy," is available for download at http://www.ncrp.org/paib/education-philanthropy.

Duncan from the PISA Hole: 'Keep Digging'

2010-12-10T08:30:00-05:00

According to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the PISA scores released this past Tuesday were "a massive wake-up call." The scores show American students holding relatively steady in the middle of the pack of the developed nations taking the international exam.

I can't figure out what to make of Duncan's response. Certainly he knows that the 15-year-old Americans taking this exam grew up in schools dominated by the high-stakes testing of No Child Left Behind. He must also know that the other main trend in education during these students' schooling was a great increase in charter schools and other forms of school choice. One might think, then, that the massive wake-up call he's experiencing would sound something like Will Rogers' wisdom: "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."

Alas, that's not what Secretary Duncan's wake-up call is apparently telling him. It sounds more like, "If high-stakes tests directed at schools didn't work, let's intensify the policy and add high stakes for teachers." He's apparently hearing a charter-school siren as well, telling him that lifting state caps on charters will somehow increase overall quality in a sector that segregates and stratifies but doesn't improve overall test scores.

There's a weird thing going on here with test scores, isn't there? We turn to them when they seem to support our pre-existing policy agenda. But we ignore or denounce them when we don't like what they have to say. So let me acknowledge that, to some extent, I'm being facetious. The United States' scores on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) don't represent a crisis. Yes, the scores do mean something, but we shouldn't blind ourselves to other information. Go down to your local school and judge for yourself whether you see students who are engaged and learning -- that'll tell you a lot more than the PISA. Similarly, the fact that charters don't outperform (and probably do underperform) other public schools on standardized tests should mean less to a parent than a visit to her local charters and neighborhood schools.

Before putting much stock in our new PISA scores, do yourself a favor and PLEASE go read a 2005 article from the late-great Jerry Bracey, called "Education's Groundhog Day." Then phone up Secretary Duncan and urge him to read it.

Whatever we think of these tests, however, there's a hypocrisy emanating from Washington, DC (yes, that's shocking news) that we shouldn't ignore. Secretary Duncan is telling teachers and schools that they should live and die by students' standardized test scores. But when it comes to charter schools and when it comes to the record of two-decades of test-based accountability reforms, he won't heed the clear wake-up call from those tests: It's not working.

Either the scores should be trusted, or not.

Inside Job or 'Superman': Which One Better Explains the School Crisis?

2010-11-26T13:18:05-05:00

Over the past couple months, I've been asked to participate in a few panel discussions about Waiting for "Superman". The film presents a stark, moving portrayal of the denial of educational opportunities in low-income communities of color. But while the movie includes statements such as 'we know what's wrong' and 'we know how to fix it', viewers of the movie are hard-pressed to identify those causes and solutions -- other than to boo and hiss at teachers' unions and to cheer at the heroic charter school educators.

So in the panel discussions we try to make sense of that simplistic black-hat/white-hat story. We argue about whether the movie offers a fair and complete picture (it doesn't even come close, unfortunately). But we never get to deeper issues about what's wrong and how to fix it.

I thought about that when leaving a showing of the other prominent documentary currently showing, called Inside Job. It offers an explanation of how the current economic crisis came about, describing the securitization of mortgages; the extraordinary leveraging of assets; the regulatory capture by Wall Street leading to minimal enforcement of federal regulations -- a deregulation intended to spur innovation; and the fraud, greed, hubris and general belief among hedge fund titans and others in the financial services world that they are infallible. The film also points out the growing and now extreme inequality of wealth distribution in the United States "The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation's pretax income in 2007 -- up from less than 9 percent in 1976."

Consider those final three items: (1) the advocacy of deregulation in order to free up innovation, (2) hubris and general belief among hedge fund titans that they are infallible, and (3) increased wealth inequality. If Superman had explored these issues instead of bashing unions and promoting charters, moviegoers might have walked away understanding a great deal about why the families it profiled and so many similar families across America face a bleak educational future.

The movie certainly showed scenes of poverty, but its implications and the structural inequalities underlying that poverty were largely ignored. Devastating urban poverty was just there -- as if that were somehow the natural order of things but if we could only 'fix' schools it would disappear. Rick Hanushek is put forth, saying that if we fire the bottom 5 to 10 percent of the lowest-performing teachers every year, our national test scores would soon approach Finland at the top of international rankings in mathematics and science. But no mention is made of the telling fact that Finland had, in 2005, a child poverty rate of 2.8 percent while the United States had a rate of 21.9 percent. That gap has likely gotten even bigger over the intervening five years.

Rather than addressing these poverty issues, Superman serves up innovation through privatization and deregulation. We're shown charter schools that give hope to these families. But what we're not told is that the extra resources and opportunities found in these charters are funded in large part with donations from Wall Street hedge fund millionaires and billionaires. Problems of structural inequality and intergenerational poverty are pushed aside in favor of a 'solution' grounded in the belief that deregulation will prompt innovation, all the while guided by the infallible judgment of Wall Street tycoons. It's no wonder that Inside Job better explained the school crisis than did Waiting for Superman.

Teachers: Gagged but Accountable?

2010-10-27T01:18:52-04:00

Have you heard of "performance-based" education policy? That a catch-all term that includes things like firing teachers when they don't improve student test scores. The underlying belief is that what separates good and bad teachers is their ability to do "whatever it takes."

But our courts seem to have not gotten the memo -- teachers who dare to veer from the scripted curriculum are at risk of being fired, and they will not find any protection from the law. Between this lack of legal protection and the pressure to teach to ensure higher scores on standardized tests, it's not a great time to be an innovative teacher.

Seven years ago I wrote an article that was published in the UCLA Law Review. At the time, legal protection of teacher's in-class speech was minimal, and I pointed out that greater protections were needed to further the "diverse-approaches" and "innovation" goals of the charter school movement (then in its early stages), as well as a general interest in a robust exchange of ideas.

Courts, unfortunately, have gone in the other direction. Last week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (one step below the Supreme Court in the federal hierarchy) issued an opinion that denied any First Amendment speech protections to an Ohio high school English teacher who taught a unit on "banned books" (as well as Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

The message to teachers is as clear as it is incongruous: do whatever it takes, just don't exercise too much of your own judgment while you're doing it.

We're left with an interesting question. What is educational innovation? Currently, it seems to be about the federal and state government promoting unproven policies. But what about teachers? Do we want teachers to follow a scripted curriculum, or might there be some value in also asking teachers to be innovative?