In a June 14th blog on the Huffington Post, Michael Bennet says he intends to lead public education into the new education labor market by introducing The Lead Act, aka Senate Bill 3469. Bennet thinks of himself as a visionary in the arena of education reform, and his blog certainly establishes his credibility in this regard -- he has no idea what he's talking about and his actions don't make a lick of sense.
Bennet writes --
We need to update our theory of human capital. Put simply, our education system was designed around a labor market that hasn't existed for at least a half-century, so the way we attract and retain talent in our classrooms must change as well. If teaching isn't rewarding and challenging, we're going to continue to lose our best teachers to work in other fields (emphasis added).
It's hard to know what Bennet means by rewarding and challenging, at least based on his performance at Denver public Schools.
- Rewarding might refer to the fact that DPS teachers receive ~$55,000 per year with an advanced degree and over 10 years of experience, a paltry sum at best for this level of experience and education.
- Under Bennet's touted ProComp rewards plan, the average teacher will add just over $2,000 in bonuses to his/her salary each year, or roughly 4% of the average DPS salary, which is not all that rewarding. (Tom Boasberg's bonus is over 35% of his salary, which is unmistakably rewarding).
- Rewarding could be the fact that teachers won't get a raise for the next two years in DPS, in part because Bennet squandered millions of dollars in the financial markets in 2008.
Of course, finding challenges when working under Mr. Bennet's leadership has never been a problem. Let's see, we have --
- Teachers being run out of schools because they are over 55 (see "Is DPS holding more teachers accountable? You do the math!" from this past week's Westword.).
- Teachers and principals who work in a culture of fear created by Mr. Bennet to support his reform-without-data-or-planning campaign, which will tolerate no dissenting conversation or opinion (see Alan Gottlieb's blog post "Why We Lose Leaders").
- Parents who are afraid to speak out about their children's school for fear of retribution from District flunkies in the principal role (see comments found on line to the Westword article cited above).
- The CSAP metric, a gauge for judging all education success and failure, the data from which is provided to teachers 4 months after students matriculate out of their classrooms.
All of this can be directly attributed to Mr. Bennet and his vision of reform in Denver's public schools. While there, Bennet oversaw substandard test scores that didn't improve, flat graduation rates at around 50%, and an ever increasing budget deficit brought about by his own hand. Then, to continue this legacy, Bennet personally ushered in his prep school buddy, Tom Boasberg, to take the position of superintendent in his place when he went to the U.S. Senate on Mr. Obama's coattails.
When Mr. Bennet starts talking about addressing the 21st century job market using innovations he himself concocted, Coloradans and the nation should start to worry. Bennet will address a few of our nation's many concerns regarding education by introducing "...the Lead Act to create more opportunity for our best principals and make sure more of them end up in the schools where they're needed most."
Why? Mr. Bennet has concluded that good principals help retain good teachers.
Bennet correctly concluded that teachers are an important part of the student performance equation. He seems to forget that parents are actually the most important variable in the student performance equation, but education reformers don't like to talk about that.
Bennet's assumption that good principals retain "good" teachers is spurious at best. What personnel data from across the business community overwhelmingly show is that mangers tend to hire and reward people who are like them. Principals who are hard-driving will hire teachers who are the same. Principals who are dedicated to educating kids will hire and reward teachers who are the same. Principals who are about climbing the District ladder will hire teachers who are interested in doing the same.
Bennet's cronies hire principals who are much the same as they are, except the principals have more education experience. This would be a good thing if the principals were allowed to focus on performance rather than playing the game.
As an example, data show that principals who have participated in Mr. Bennet's Innovation Schools Act reform, the flagship DPS' education reform efforts, are having little success. Look at CSAP scores for the District's innovation schools like Cole Arts and Sciences Academy, Montclair Elementary, Bruce Randolph, and Manual High School. The CSAP results at these schools are, for the most part, flat, just like they are for DPS as a whole.
All the proof anyone needs about the importance of "fitting the mold" can be found in Rob Stein, Manual High School's excellent ex-principal. Stein was shut down at every turn by DPS' administration. Stein simply didn't fit in at DPS. He wasn't a political climber or a yes man who did as he was told, all skills required for a successful principal in DPS. Mr. Stein's problem is he cares about education.
Surrounding one's self with people who agree with us is a basic trait of managers. (It is not a trait of leaders, who are always looking at all the angles.) This should come as no surprise to anyone, least of all Bennet himself. While at DPS, Bennet surrounded himself with cronies from Ivy League schools and the business world, all of whom have next to no experience in education. Bennet's subordinates tended to be very political, have no process sensibilities whatsoever, and no ability to admit when they're wrong, which, the data tell us, was most of the time.
Now, however, Mr. Bennet intends to give the best principals more opportunity to do what? Well, he doesn't say, really, but he does talk about what his Leads Act will "give" school leaders:
- Establish Regional School Leadership Centers of Excellence to train principals to lead turnarounds by partnering them with non-profits, institutions of higher learning, and state or local agencies;
- Establish a School Leadership Academy to empower principals with a framework for leading successful transformations; and,
- Provide principals with access to research and statistics to assess the effectiveness of their programs.
- Every principal I have worked with knows how to connect into nonprofits, state and local agencies, and local universities to help school performance. Most every school district I can think of has resources to help with these connections, as well. The trick for most schools is, once principals have connected into these off-campus resources, can the District get out of the way and let the school implement without a nightmare of red tape and purposeless oversight?
- Transformation planning is definitely not most principals' strong point, but it shouldn't be. Principals should be focused on instruction, not business planning. Business planning and enterprise transformation are the business of the school district. When tactical implementation and change management hit the actual school, principal training is a great tool to increase the success of school-level transformation efforts. However, district-level resources must be committed to ensure success.
- It's really not clear what Bennet means by access to school data and research. School-level data and statistics should be readily available to principals through the school district itself. Outside academic research about education and education reform is readily available at a number of Internet sites and through research-based organizations. The reality is, however, most principals don't have time to wade through reams of data and research as part of their daily job activities. They are simply too busy running their schools, and, thus, it is unclear at whom this element of the Leads Act is aimed. For those principals who need access to this type of information outside the usual professional publications, it can be accessed with little effort once you know what you are doing.
- Bennet doesn't understand what the demands of balancing district, principal, and parent expectations against the actual education needs of students is like for a public school teacher.
- He doesn't understand the role a principal actually plays in creating a successful school culture, balancing personalities, fostering team spirit, helping teachers succeed and assessing that success, creating school-level budgets, and dealing with every parent who walks through the door all while attending every school activity during an academic year.
If Bennet did, he would actually create legislation that would improve the ability of teachers and principals to successfully navigate these waters.
The lens through which Mr. Bennet views education was ground by attending St. Albans School, an expensive prep school in Washington D.C, then a private school for his undergrad years and Yale for law school. Mr. Bennet knows putting big corporate merger deals together and getting his boss, Phillip Anschutz, big stock dividends. Mr. Bennet thinks he knows Wall Street finance and the derivatives market.
In public education, however, Mr. Bennet knows dick. His reform efforts have not worked. His financing schemes have not worked. His handpicked successor hasn't worked. The data back up this lack of success in detail.
Michael Bennet says the burden of proof isn't on people looking for ways to improve our schools; it's on people who want to keep things the same. This mindset is just how hundreds of millions of dollars got thrown away on the Michael Bennet leap-before-you-look reform plan for Denver's schools.
Mr. Bennet convinced himself and his friends in business that all of his ideas would transform education in Denver. He didn't take the time to understand the problems facing public education, or to plan a solution to those problems. He saw no burden of proof for himself, so he just did what felt right to him, and in doing so, he wasted precious resources that our schools will likely never recover.
Bennet's Leads Act is just another example of his leap-before-you-look approach to reform. It offers a lot few nice sounding tools, but these tools won't help our failing schools or our struggling teachers and principals.
The burden of proof should be on the reformer to show that proposed reforms have a strong chance of success, or, in this case, will have any outcome at all. Our school systems must be reformed in a step wise manner and these reforms must be governed by rigorous, detailed reform plans that help guarantee a maximal impact on our schools and the students they serve. We simply don't have the money in education to waste our efforts time and time again.
No doubt Michael Bennet would understand this if he had any real experience in public education at the classroom level. He would understand that real education reform is about promoting the development of leaders, not vehicles for delivering unneeded services.
We must have change in our schools if we are going to meet the challenges of the 21st century. After five years of Bennet-style school reform with little success to show for it, I agree with Michael: it is time for a change. I can meet the burden of proof associated with this statement. Real, positive change in education is about almost everything Michael Bennet was not at Denver Public Schools.
All the education data back me up.