Advocacy: More Ways To Measure Advocacy's Impact

Today's as good a day as any to share with you the draft report I heard about a couple of weeks back when last discussing the issue of how to assess reform advocacy efforts.

As you may recall, the question keeps coming up if and how funders are going to assess the impact of their advocacy efforts, whether they be grants to nonprofits or direct contributions to campaigns or PACs:

"Teachers unions (AFT, NEA) and nonprofits on the other side (Broader/Bolder Alliance, Shanker Institute, and the new Ravitch thing) are actively engaged in advocacy as well, and have to figure out if their spending is making a difference, too."  (What About The Impact?)

As with teachers and schools, poor evaluations can lead to poor understanding, however.  It's not so easy to get it right.  Michigan State professor and TWIE contributor Sarah Reckhow took a stern look at several recent recommendations for advocacy evaluation (A Misleading Approach to Assessing Advocacy)

This newest report, called a Media Measurement Framework, is funded by Gates and Knight and produced by the SF-based LFA Group: Learning for Action, who tells us that the Knight Foundation is in the process of creating an online, interactive version of this framework. This static version will become a collection of online resources. 

No word yet on whether the framework is any good or if any advocacy grantees are using it yet.  That's where you come in.

Previous posts: A Misleading Approach to Assessing Advocacy [Reckhow]; So How'd The Advocacy Groups Do?; Gates Shifts Strategy & Schools Get Smaller Share [Reckhow]; EdWeek's Balanced View Of Reform Advocacy

Update: Classroom Teacher Wins LA School Board Runoff

Underdog LAUSD classroom teacher Monica Ratliff (right) has won a surprising upset victory in her school board runoff agaainst rival Antonio Sanchez (left) , according to a story posted on KPCC and tweets from LA Times and LA Daily News reporters:

“Elementary school teacher Monica Ratliff faced a David-and-Goliath competition for a seat on the Los Angeles Unified School Board — and won.” (LA elects new city attorney, controller and 3 city councilmen)

“Monica Ratliff wins #LAUSD race with 52%, says final #LAelection tally posted at 3:16 am,” tweeted LA Daily News‘ Barbara Jones. “Upset for reformers and candidate Antonio Sanchez… #LAUSD tally shows 37,022 of District 6′s 250,000+ voters went to the polls. That’s 16% turnout. Ratliff ahead by 1,464 votes.”

“Monica Ratliff edges out Antonio Sanchez for the Board of Education seat,” tweets LA Times reporter Laura Nelson. According to Nelson, the vote is “Almost final, but not quite,” with all of the precincts having been counted but not all the mail-in ballots.

Ratliff only campaigned part-time (she's a 5th grade teacher) and didn't have any outside campaign contributions (compared to Sanchez, who had boatloads of money).  She didn't even have the unequivocal endorsement of her union (UTLA endorsed both candidates). In the March primary, she was a whopping 10 percentage points behind Sanchez, 34 percent to 44 percent. This time around, it was 52-48 in her favor.

LA School Report will have a full analysis of how Ratliff won and what it means (or people want it to mean) later today.  For more background in the meantime, see: Ratliff Holds Narrow Lead; Voter Turnout Will Determine Outcome

Quotes: Negative Norms Around Teacher Observations

If evaluation systems are a vessel meant to ferry teachers to better practice, then observation systems remain the lead weight tied to the back, dragging systems down with unwaveringly positive feedback that obscures true insight into teacher practice. - Mac LeBuhn in new DFER paper, The Culture of Countenance.

Thompson: Schott Foundation Head Proposes Reform Revamp

President John Jackson of the Schott Foundation, in his Moving from Standards to Support, explains how school “reform” went wrong and how we should change course. Nearly a generation ago, sincere non-educators, influenced by the corporate worldview, mandated standards-driven school reform driven by “outputs.”  Jackson says that we must reject their failed focus on flawed metrics (outputs) and concentrate on a tough-minded system of supports (formerly known as inputs.)

Standards and standardized test-driven “reform” failed because it ignored the root cause of the achievement gap – poverty. As Jackson explains, “Standards-based reform creates an inherent system of winners and losers by raising the bar and assessing who makes the cut.” Because of its focus on tests for punishment, standards for children who are academically drowning have moved the shoreline further away in order to teach them how to swim.

It is time to hold “reformers” accountable for their educational outputs i.e. their results in terms of student performance.  Under any objective reckoning, test-driven accountability backfired. It is time to invest in “supports-based reforms.”  We must strategically align:

High-quality early education for all students; mandatory kindergarten with assurances that all students are achieving at grade level by 3rd grade; recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers, along with supplying the training and resources those teachers need to provide more learning time and deeper learning approaches; access to student-centered learning and personalized academic, social, and health plans to keep all students on a college path; and equitable resources and policies so that all students remain in engaging, high-quality educational settings.

Bruno: Do Educators Want Cameras In Their Classrooms?

Bill Gates used his most recent TED talk to make the case for putting video cameras in every classroom. Teachers, he says, don't get enough feedback about their practice and performance; recording and submitting lessons for review would have a "phenomenal" impact on teacher quality for a modest price.

To be clear, Gates badly underestimates how much feedback teachers currently receive. I've certainly never had a single evaluation in which I "just got one word of feedback", so I have no idea why he thinks "98% of teachers" get so little. New teachers in particular are often assigned dedicated coaches, and formal observation and coaching is not the only way to get feedback.

Still, it's not unreasonable to think that frequent videotaping and coaching could help teachers improve.  Sarah Brown Wessling agrees, and Cassandra Tognoni is so excited by the prospect of a camera in every classroom that she thinks Gates should just put up the $5 billion required to buy them himself.

But if cameras offer so much promise for improving education, it's worth asking why they're not already more heavily used. An adequate camera can be purchased for about $100: not nothing, but not so much that an enthusiastic teacher, administrator, or coach couldn't invest in one.

Quotes: Inequality & The Culture Of Celebrity

Instead of robust public education, we have Mr. Zuckerberg’s “rescue” of Newark’s schools. - NYT oped contributor George Packer (Inequality and the Modern Culture of Celebrity)

Afternoon Video: Meet John & Laura Arnold

 

"A young Houston couple is planning to give away $4 billion—but only to projects that prove they are worth it. Can they redefine the world of philanthropy?" The New Science Behind Philanthropy (WSJ via @mikepetrilli)

Update: What Next for TFA?

Read between the lines and there are lots of interesting tidbits in June Kronholz's Education Next piece (Still Teaching for America) for both TFA fans and skeptics.

The piece takes a look at the much-discussed school reform organization as it goes through a key transition of leadership and size.  

Two new co-CEOs have taken over from founder Wendy Kopp, and the annual budget that in 2012 was $320 million is expected to go up to half a billion dollars within the next three years.

Kronholz boils the organization's successful growth (if not large-scale impact on educational outcomes) on things like regional innovations (Houston's content coaches, Jacksonville's localized summer institute, South Dakota's rural principal leadership incubator), and its willingness to create and scrap ideas that don't pan out.

As has become increasingly common in recent years, TFA's new leaders are focusing as much on what alumni do as what they accomplish in the classroom:

"Kramer also paints a vision of TFA as an instigator of change, producing alumni that TFA expects—just expects—will become the sort of shake-up-the-beast leaders who will “do something radically different” for the schools."  

However, TFA won't share its specific leadership goals. And the organization is hampered by the need for more local and regional EDs, says Kronholz. Four of the regions were empty earlier this year, and plans to expand to two new (unnamed) cities) were scrapped for lack of management talent.  How interesting that an organization with such a surplus of applications for initial teaching spots is having trouble finding enough qualified candidates to staff its own expansion.

Image via Education Next.

Morning Video: DFER's New " Education Reform News"

EdSchools: Will 2013 Be Teacher Prep's Big Year?

From the latest Scholastic Administrator Magazine (by me):

For all those reasons, it’s very good and somewhat surprising news that there are now a handful of broad-based efforts and initiatives focused on teacher preparation in 2013 that might actually stand a chance of improving the quality and effectiveness of teachers...

There are predictable disagreements about how hard to make any new preservice exam—and whether to encourage or even require specific elements, or to rely entirely on outcomes such as longevity, evaluation, and effectiveness.

And the question remains: Will the higher education community—as well as state policymakers and the powerful national associations—block or water down the current momentum as they have in the past?

But for the first time in a long time there is activity—and with it, at least, the possibility of substantial progress.

Read all about it here. Agree or disagree?

Reckhow: A Misleading Approach to Assessing Advocacy

This is a guest post from MSU professor Sarah Reckhow:

A new article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review presents a quantitative framework to help philanthropists assess their advocacy grants. The authors all work with Redstone Strategy Group, a consulting agency that “helps philanthropies, non-profits, and governments solve the world’s most urgent social problems.”

Policy advocacy is a growing area of foundation giving, particularly in education. So it is not surprising that funders who view themselves as strategic or venture philanthropists would be eager to find ways to assess a “return on investment” for advocacy.

Unfortunately, this framework is based on a simplistic view of the policy process and it appears to overvalue short-term returns on investments.

The framework draws on a list of things that advocates, PR firms, political operatives, and philanthropists think work; it is not based on current evidence from political science or policy research.

Utilizing this framework could encourage philanthropists to continue making wasteful investments in short-lived advocacy campaigns.

Afternoon Video: Top Ten Reasons To Become A Teacher

 

David Letterman, 10 TFA newbies, and Van Halen's "Hot For Teacher." via TQATE's Quick Hits.  Gotta give TFA credit for snagging yet another chunk of free media. 

Advocacy: Costs Lots, But What About The Impact?

A few months ago contributor Sarah Reckhow wrote a post about philanthropy-funded education advocacy efforts that asked a good question:  "How does the Gates Foundation plan to evaluate its large portfolio of “advocacy” grants?"

Of course, this isn't just an issue for Gates or other reform-minded funders.  Teachers unions (AFT, NEA) and nonprofits on the other side (Broader/Bolder Alliance, Shanker Institute, and the new Ravitch thing) are actively engaged in advocacy as well, and have to figure out if their spending is making a difference, too.

To get at some of the challenges advocacy evaluation involves, Reckhow recommended a 201 article in the Stanford Social Innoviation Review (The Elusive Craft of Evaluating Advocacy).  

I promised myself I'd read it but -- big surprise -- never did. Then yesterday Fordham's Mike Petrilli sent over a link to a Spring 2013 SSIR article (Assessing Advocacy).

Afternoon Video: Lessons Of The Environmental Movement

A new documentary tracks the rise of the environmental movement, focusing on the Love Canal disaster and Greenpeace's "save the whales" campaign.  

 

Diversity: "When The Melting Pot Boils Over"

If you're like me, GreatSchools has always been a bit of mystery.  School profiles are great, but not much of a game-changer no matter how well-written or data-rich.  

But recently I've learned that the GreatSchools profiles are incredibly popular among parents, that there's a new Facebook app that allows parents to find friends and friends-of-friends who are discussing certain schools and neighborhoods, and that there are blog posts like this one (When the melting pot boils over) that address core school reform issues like diversity and gentrification.

"Many middle-class parents enter public schools with a dogged determination to improve them. They want to do good, while also doing right by their children. Yet when such efforts — however well-meaning — carry the taint of entitlement, it doesn’t take much for the ordinary elementary school to become an ideological battleground waged around bake sales and play structures."

It doesn't hurt that I've written about the challenges and opportunities of diverse schools and live in a neighborhood going through massive gentrification right now, or that I met executive editor Carol Lloyd at #EWA13 last week. Image via GreatSchools.

Thompson: TED ED & the Future of School Reform

Wasn't Sir Ken's PBS TED talk wonderful?  Did Bill Gates stick around after his presentation and hear Sir Ken Robinson proclaim, "leadership should not be command and control?"

Does the first public education television TED signal that Gates is changing gears?  After all, he downplayed the bubble-in accountability aspect of his talk, so maybe he is learning about the dangers of his test-driven approach to instruction.  And, Geoffrey Canada directed his anger toward the lack of budgetary support, not unions.  Neither did host John Legend seem like an enabler of Michelle Rhee. Maybe he is realizing that the "reformers" who he has supported are responsible for the curriculum narrowing that Sir Ken derided and driving music, hands-on science and media studies from public schools.  Finally, wasn't Angela Duckworth fantastic and wasn't that young poet, Malcolm London, inspiring?  

I kid myself.  I know that sometimes a PBS program is just a PBS program. I know it is humiliating for teachers to continually be watching the tea leaves in the hopes that a billionaire or a media star will stop attacking us. Educators have to continually worry about the next Waiting for Superman or Won't Back Down, using teacher-bashing as a quick fix for urban ills. But, what we really want is to be a part of a constructive, reality-based effort to improve schools.

The first PBS Education TED did not mention the keys to accountability-driven "reform," standardized testing and top down mandates for drill and kill, except to criticize them.  If veteran educators and researchers wrote the script, we couldn't have done a better job.  Maybe we are seeing a new day or maybe we're just seeing a kinder, gentler spin. We might just be watching the same excellence that is expected on PBS, and it might have prompted "reformers" to be on their best behavior. Or, perhaps we are ready to discuss ways for teaching students to be empowered students, improving instruction, and making schooling into a team effort, as opposed to seeking scapegoats for the failure to meet growth targets.-JT(@drjohnthompson) Image via.      

Morning Video: NewSchools Common Core Panel

Video from the NewSchools Venture Fund summit last week.  Or, you can watch Laurene Powell Jobs interview Arne Duncan (his answers on parent trigger are at the 38:00 mark).

Afternoon Video: TED Talks Education Trailer

Watch Rita Pierson: Build Relationships With Your Students on PBS. See more from TED Talks Education.

Afternoon Video: Lawmaker Tries To Explain His Teacher Evaluation Vote

Two updates from California to end the week, both via LA School Report: The first is an update on the "miscommunication" between DFER national and DFER California over the issue of a district waiver for LAUSD and other California districts (Reform Group Splits over Federal Waiver for LAUSD). No doubt, running a national organization with strong state leaders is no easy feat.  This is just one of several examples of the kinds of concerns and considerations that take place.

The second is an update from Sacramento, where six state senators on the senate education committee voted "abstain" on a proposed teacher evaluation bill that was being touted by LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy and Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst and opposed by the teachers unions and the state superintendent of instruction.  The six abstentions effectively killed the bill, and were all the more notable since five of the six had voted for or gainst it just a week before. You can watch one of the members try and explain his decision to abstain to voters in the video above. (Senators' Silence Dooms Teacher Evaluation Bill) 

People: Diane Ravitch, The "Engaged" Writer

The recent discussion about David Brooks' column on "engaged" vs. "detached" writers reminded me that, little more than two years ago, I posted this respectful but critical entry about NYU education historian Diane Ravitch's views about school reform efforts, which were somethat new at the time:

Later on today, education historian Diane Ravitch is going to head out from her Brooklyn Heights home and make her way into the city to be a guest on tonight's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" for the first time since May 2003.

...

The Comedy Central appearance will be a tremendous victory for Ravitch, who has been pushing to get on one of the two shows in the 11 p.m. time slot for almost a year now.  It will be a happy moment, too, for all of the educators and parents who have welcomed Ravitch into their arms.  

For me, however, Ravitch's appearance will be another moment to reflect on the nagging unease I have with what she's saying -- and in particular the absolute certainty with which she is saying it.

Full post:  Diane Ravitch's Stunning Certainty

Clearly, Ravitch is the category of the engaged writer, and I'm probably more in the detached camp. Ravitch's response to my column was to call Jossey-Bass, the folks who were then publishing my book about Locke High School, and demand to have her blurb removed from the back cover of the book.

Events: Live From The EWA National Conference

Today begins the Education Writers Association annual conference, being held this year at Stanford University's school of education.*

Last year's version was at UPenn's school of education, and this one is apparently going to be even bigger and better-attended. Some folks are fresh off the airplane or road, but many seem to be combining the event with AERA and/or NSVF and/or GreatSchools. Follow along at #ewa13. NYT columnist Thomas Friedman will be here to speak - he's everywhere in education these days.

Already last night I had the chance to catch up with the College Board's Peter Kauffmann and to meet David Coleman, as well as to meet a journalist named David Bornstein who writes "Fixes" for the New York Times and has an interesting new solutions-oriented journalism project he's working on.

As always, it's great seeing familiar faces -- including Linda Lenz, Stephanie Banchero, Greg Toppo -- and fun to meet people I've only talked to on the phone or emailed (like Russlynn Ali and David Lomax yesterday at NSVF).  Please feel free to come up and say hello (with apologies if I can't talk because I have to do some blogging).

*Funny sidebar about the Stanford education school:  As a sophomore here, I walked in and asked if I could major in education and they said 'nope.'  At the time (mid 1980s) many ed schools like Stanford were Masters'-only -- a situation that has long since changed.   I don't know if I would have followed up if the answer had been different, or would have liked the courses very much, or followed a different path after college. As a senior I gave a bit of thought about moving to LA and teaching there under an emergency certificate -- the only option that existed.   But I heard bad things from friends who'd taken the emergency route, and so I taught private school instead, and went to grad school, and etc.

Advocacy: Bloomberg Won't Say Much About Contributions

Heading over to the Bloomberg Philanthropies-sponsored reception to start the NewSchools Venture Fund education summit, I thought there was no time like the present to update you on my progress figuring out the ins and outs of outside spending on local school board elections like that being done by NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

As you may recall, Bloomberg and others have been giving funds to various local school board candidates over the past few years, either directly to the candidates or via an independent expenditure committee.  The funding is intended to provide a counterbalance to union contributions, local and otherwise, and is entirely legal but raises lots of issues when it is so new and novel (for a school board race) and also when it comes from outside the city or state where the race is taking place.

My issue is not with the campaign contributions themselves, which are perfectly legal, or even with the need for a counterbalance to union power in low turnout events.  The AFT spent $1M to get rid of Adrien Fenty, and the CTA spent $300K to block board members favorable to former San Diego superintendent Alan Bersin.

My question is whether the funding is worth the blowback, and whether reform advocates like Bloomberg (and DFER, and StudentsFirst) will ever figure out a way to tell their story and give their money without spending all their time defending themselves.  I also want to know how much of it is out there, on both sides.

StudentsFirst: Mismatched Donors, Endorsements, and Contributions?

It's not just reform critics and professional opponents who are seeking to define Michelle Rhee's school reform advocacy as predominantly right-leaning and Republican -- and so far at least StudentsFirst seems to be going along with it.

There's no argument that some of the organization's biggest funders like the Walton Family Foundation have Republican roots, or that Rhee will work with Republicans to get policy priorities moved ahead.

But increasingly, mainstream media press accounts of StudentsFirst are describing StudentsFirst's political advocacy (campaign endorsements and contributions) as Republican, too.

The latest example is today's LA Times piece:  "Nationwide, StudentsFirst has overwhelmingly supported Republican candidates, because they best match its policy platform."

The first part of that sentence is where I'm confused.  (About the second half of the sentence, I'd observe that only Rhee's support for the trigger and vouchers -- and her willingness to work across the aisle -- mark her as anything other than a mainstream Democrat.)

The question about Rhee's endorsements and contributions first started coming up for me last Fall, when readers started noting that SF's endorsees in Florida were Republican (See  Eighty Candidates Endorsed By StudentsFirst). It came up again after the general election when I was trying to tally the advocacy groups' performance (See So How'd The Advocacy Groups Do?*).

More recently, StudentsFirst keeps telling me that endorsements are one thing, campaign contributions are another.  But so far, at least, they've not provided any documentation about the direct contributions and superPAC contributions in the states they're involved with. All we have are lists of endorsements, which do indeed skew Republican.

The reason I've been asking is that my own limited experience with StudentsFirst and campaign contributions is that they're mostly Democratic.  This includes giving to LAUSD school board candidates, and trying to get Brian Johnson and others elected. (See CA StudentsFirst Candidate Squeaks Through*). 

Is the press getting this wrong and falling for an attack that isn't accurate, or am I just working off of incomplete information?

Events: Livestreaming the NewSchools Venture Summit

There's lots that's familiar about this year's NewSchools Venture Summit taking place tomorrow in Burlingame, California -- but at least one major change: livestreaming!

 

Watch live streaming video from newschools at livestream.com

That's right-- this somewhat expensive,  invitation-only event is going to be putting some of its main speakers and panels out onto the Internet where everybody can see them. Now if NewSchools would only dig up and send me the videotape of the heated 2008 exchanges between Randi Weingarten and Michelle Rhee, I'd be content.

Previous posts: New And Notable At NewSchools 2012; Microblogging The NSVF Summit;  Fashion Hits & Misses At The NSVF Summit; Edupreneurs Invade DC; My NewSchools Venture Fund Summit List

Campaign 2013: Undaunted Bloomberg Gives More to LA Board Race

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given another$350,000 to the Coalition for School Reform, an independent expenditure (IE) group in Los Angeles supporting Antonio Sanchez for School Board in the East Valley District 6 LAUSD School Board race that will be decided May 21.

“For years, the funding in these sorts of races was only on one side with the union,” said Bloomberg spokesman Marc LaVorgna (pictured on the left). Mayor Bloomberg is “committed to providing a counterbalance.”

During the primary, Bloomberg gave $1 million to the Coalition, which supported three candidates: Monica Garcia, Kate Anderson and Sanchez. According to the LA Times, this was the largest campaign contribution in School Board history.

Anderson lost narrowly to incumbent Steve Zimmer; some blamed a backlash to big out-of-state donations from non-Democrats such as Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch.

When asked if Bloomberg had any second thoughts about giving to the Coalition after the primary results, LaVorgna replied simply: “No.”

The Coalition, whose chief fundraiser is LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, recently got checks for $250,000 from Eli Broad, and $100,000 from Michelle Rhee’s organization, StudentsFirst.

So far, the Coalition has spent roughly $130,000 in support of Sanchez in the May 21 general election. SEIU local 99 and the Los Angeles Federation of Labor are also running IEs for Sanchez. His opponent, teacher Monica Ratliff, currently enjoys no IE support.

Cross-posted from LA School Report. Image via LinkedIn

TV: "TED Talks Education" On PBS Next Month

A couple of weeks from now will be the broadcast premier for the PBS "TED Talks Education" which is slated to include talks from familiar names (Bill Gates, Geoffrey Canada) and new ones -- to me, at least (Angela Duckworth , Ramsay Musallam, and Pearl Arrendondo, among others).

Audio: How Organizers See The Parent Trigger

There were lots of interesting tidbits thrown out during the Yale School of Management education summit session on mobilization, and no shortage of quips from panelists including Jeremiah Kittredge and Derrell Bradford, Kristen Wiegand, and Derwin Sisnett (moderated by Suzanne Tacheny Kubach).

Some of the topics that were touched on included the power of storytelling, the difference between mobilizing a community and engaging or organizing it for the long run, the struggle to mesh what advocates want and what low-income communities can and should do. You should really skip the rest of this post and just start listening at the 5 minute mark where the session begins (WS600022).

But the conversation at the end about the parent trigger was to me fascinating, revealing differences among organizers in terms of how they view the trigger, even as they admire its power and pull.

"The best hook anybody has found is parent trigger," said Kittredge -- even as he listed its flaws. "There's no better piece of persuasion to get people to come back out than the concept of parent trigger."  

Art: Shepard Fairy Asks Kids To Imagine "Life Without Limits"

Shepard Fairey (famous for his Obama "hope" poster) is doing an LA education arts initiative calling on students to submit ideas as a starting point for the visuals he's going to create:

Be warned, however. The LA Times story (Shepard Fairey taps LAUSD students for ideas) notes that Fairy attended public schools but sends his own children to private ones.  

Movements: Lessons From Earth Day 1970

Let's begin by stipulating that any comparisons between the environmental movement and the current school reform movements are ridiculous in the extreme. The environment and public education are totally different, and the issues, histories, and evolution of the movements to improve them are far-fetched, not worth your time. 

Then, let's talk about Nick Lemann's latest New Yorker article, What Happened to the Environmental Movement? 

Loosely built around a review of a recent book and several reports about the history of the environmental movement, the gist of Lemann's piece is that the environmental movement had its biggest successes (Earth Day, the Clean Water Act, etc.) long ago in the 1970s when it was still highly decentralized and community-specific.  

Lemann describes that period as "educational, school-based, widely distributed, locally controlled, and mass-participatory."

The movement's worst failures (most notably 2010's cap and trade debacle) take place when the movement has gone mainstream, according to Lemann:  "Even as the environmental movement has become an established presence in Washington, it has become less able to win legislative victories."

There's been lots of direct mail and social media outreach, too, of course -- but the enviro groups of today treat the public as a kind of background chorus rather than as real leaders, and thus lacks the "ability to generate thousands of events that people actually attend—the kind of activity that creates pressure on legislators."  

There's lots more -- Theda Skocpol, the issue of federated structures and concrete individual benefits vs. broad based social goods. Image via New Yorker. 

Thompson: Michelle Rhee Must Obey the Rule of Law

John Merrow's recent post, Michelle Rhee's Reign of Error, revealed the confidential "smoking gun" memo warning Michelle Rhee of the extent of the cheating that may have occurred in Washington D.C. schools.

But let's not forget that  this is only her most public scandal, and it is not the only case where Rhee's words could come back to haunt her. 

PRWeb links to another: Federal Judge Orders Michelle Rhee Suit to Go Forward, Will Broaden to Concealment and Fraud Claims describes the case which could be another double-barreled shotgun blast at the embattled "reformer."  A 53-year-old teacher, who worked for DCPS for 28 years, was terminated in 2009 due to “budgetary constraints” under a RIF (Reduction in Force).

Federal Judge Rudolph Contreras will allow the teacher to broaden the scope of Rhee’s alleged actions into possible civil fraud and concealment claims. This is based on testimony by the district's former Chief Finance Officer who, in 2009, appeared to admit that he willfully concealed the true accounting figures indicating that the DCPS had no budgetary shortfall. The judge could find that this was done with Rhee's knowledge and as a pretext for the RIF and the mass firings to take place. In that case, PRWeb reports, Rhee’s ideological experiment "may quickly unravel."

I have long been shocked by the cavalier way that "reformers" have brushed off Rhee's situational ethics. They ignore her statement to John Merrow, “If there are rules standing in the way of that, I will question those rules. I will bend those rules.”

Rhee et. al may resent the way that our constitutional democracy complicates school "reform," but sometimes the "rules" they don't like have the force of law. PBS's Merrow exemplifies one foundation for our democracy - a vibrant press.  Rhee never understood another foundation - our nation is based on "the rule of law," not "the rule of man."-JT(@drjohnthompson) Image via. 

Thompson: Hedgehogs, Foxes, & Hope Against Hope

Sarah Carr's Hope Against Hope chronicles a year in three New Orleans charter schools, Sci Academy, KIPP, and P.O. Walker.

Carr's masterpiece is heavily influenced by Isaiah Berlin's metaphor, "the hedgehog and the fox." A fox needs to know a little about a wide variety of realities. A hedgehog only knows one thing, but he knows it very, very well.

Historically, educators aspired to be foxes. Traditional public schools serve everyone who walks through the door. Students come with all types of personalities. Their diverse families make every imaginable demand on schools. Politicians impose one contradictory mandate after another. And, since education tends to be underfunded, educators have to become jacks of all trade. Facing such a range of issues, the need to improvise is nonnegotiable for the foxes who are teachers and principals.

It was a point of pride for Sci Academy, Kipp, and Akili Academy (another charter whose leader was often cited by Carr), however, that they were hedgehogs.

Update: StudentsFirst Continues To Expand Despite Controversy

As I noted yesterday on Twitter, reform critics, union leaders, and even some mainstream journalists like to suggest that StudentsFirst and other reform advocacy groups are dripping with money for electoral politics, neglecting to mention (perhaps they don't know?) how much teachers unions and other labor groups shovel into the process each year.

Last year, for example, StudentsFirst contributed less than $2 million to California races -- a pittance compared to union and other established stakeholder contributions.  If there's an 800 pound gorilla in the school reform debate, it's the veteran stakeholders not the newbies. 

On a related note, EdWeek's Andrew Ujifusa has a new post up suggesting that reform critics shouldn't be overly distracted by the possibility of the testing scandal bringing Rhee down because "the momentum behind the kind of policies Rhee's group supports may have too much power, time, and cash behind them" in DC as elsewhere. This seems like a good point to reiterate, considering that so many Rhee haters are thinking she's going down immediately.  

Ujifusa also notes that StudentsFirst is steadily expanding its state level operations nationally, which brings me to the news that StudentsFirst has hired a new political strategist, Fabian Nunez, to help move its agenda forward in Sacramento.  Nunez (pictured) is one of the town's most influential power brokers, according to the LA Times (as well as a longtime friend to the state teachers unions).  Hiring lobbyists and former elected officials to head state advocacy efforts is a tried and true approach, though it creates challenges for multi-state organizations trying to keep some sort of brand uniformity in place.  Rumor is that StudentsFirst is also hiring a state director (Nunez is an outside consultant.) Click the link for an interview I did with Nunez last week -- some of what he has to say about balancing the union voice in Sacramento seems interesting.

Quotes: "Big Data" Doesn't Necessarily Solve Real-World Problems

It can tell you what sort of student is likely to fall behind. But then to actually intervene to help that student, you have to get back in the world of causality, back into the world of responsibility, back in the world of advising someone to do x because it will cause y. - David Brooks New York Times

Reform: Rapid Response in Connecticut

Most education reformers and funders don't come from politics or organizing so they are loathe to set up or pay for the kinds of "rapid response" operations that professional political operatives use to help minimize the damage that constant attacks can create. 

But -- like the first-term Obama administration with death panels and birthers -- they're starting to learn that there's a price to pay for letting attacks stand, no matter how extreme or ridiculous they may seem.

One small example is CT Education 180, a relatively new spinoff of ConnCAN set up to respond to attacks on elected officials and others who are getting torn down online and in the mainstream media. 

Its stated mission is "setting the record straight on education reform, and exposing those who are more interested in self-preservation than doing what’s right for the more than 65,000 kids in Connecticut who are stuck in low-performing schools."

Eventually, reform advocates may have to not only create and fund rapid response operations like this, but also efforts to criticize their antagonists.  But I'll save that for another post.  

Right now, reformers are fighting with both hands tied behind their backs -- refusing to defend themselves vigorously or in any organized fashion, much less to attack those who are pretty much their sworn enemies at this point.  

It's noble, I suppose.  But even as someone with plenty of complaints about the reform agenda and implementation, it's hard to watch.  

Afternoon Video: Collective Responsibility for Kids

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

MSNBC Promo About Raising Children ‘Collectively’ Becomes News (TV Newser); Do We Underinvest in Public Schools? (Bloomberg)

 

Quotes: "Bill Gates' Warning On Test Scores"

When philanthropists have potentially useful ideas about education, they should by all means try them out, establish pilot programs, put their money where their mouths are. But before government officials incorporate those ideas into policy, they must study them carefully and make sure that what sounds reasonable in theory works in practice. - LA Times editorial page (Bill Gates' Warning on Test Scores)

Journalism: New Spencer Fellows, New Research Topics

Columbia's J-School announced three new Spencer Journalism Fellow for next year, and they include some new names (and interesting reporting topics):

*Jamaal Abdul-Alim, a correspondent for Diverse Issues in Higher Education (the national push to hold teacher preparation programs more accountable for student achievement);

*Lauren Smith Camera, a staff writer for CQ Roll Call (whether federal funding in the form of a competitive grant is a good investment); and, 

*Annie Murphy Paul, a magazine writer and book author (why American undergraduates are not learning critical thinking skills in their college years.).

Congrats to all of them. Read more here:  Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism J-School announces 2013-14 Spencer Fellows

Thus far four books (plus two more under contract and a few others in the process) have already come out from Spencer Fellows, along with a number of notable feature magazine articles, award-winning radio shows, etc.  

With some notable exceptions, the Spencer Fellowship program seems to have identified important education topics for books and other long-form projects that would not otherwise have been produced (including my book about Locke High School).  Check out the list here.

The results have generally been successful, by and large, in terms of producing quality journalism, though the program's only real breakout success so far is Elizabeth Green's NYT Sunday Magazine story about Doug Lemov from February 2010.  Perhaps the books that she and other Spencer alumni are working on will engage the wider public and -- this is what every Spencer Fellow wants to do -- change the conversation around education.  

Quotes: Talk About "Love" (Not "Rights")

They ran campaigns about “love” (a deeply shared emotional value that connects people), not about “rights” (a policy objective that reinforced disconnection between haves and have-nots.) The policy objective of the campaign didn’t change; how they talked about it did.

-- PIE's Suzanne Tacheny Kubach on lessons from the same-sex marriage campaign.

Events: Funders Meeting In Chicago

Over 1,000 philanthropy types have been meeting in Chicago the past couple of days as part of the Council on Foundations Annual Conference (#COF13). Scheduled speakers included Mayors Emanuel, Landrieu, and Nutter. It's not an education-specific event, as you'll see from the list of events, but scheduled site visits included North Lawndale College Prep.  The obligatory screening of Brooklyn Castle is also on the schedule.  Maybe some education types are there and have been tweeting out interesting happenings.

Morning Video: Treacly DonorsChoose Promo Goes Viral

 

Remember DonorsChoose?  Still around.  And this promo video featuring Harlem teacher named James Walter Doyle (!) is super sweet but that hasn't stopped 130,000 folks from watching it. (That's viral, right?) Or maybe it's the lilac button-down he's sporting.  Via ViralVideos.  He's also been featured in GQ.

Rebuttal: Stop Comparing Same-Sex Marriage & School Reform!

It's hard for me not to think education when the topic of same-sex marriage comes up.  I mean, Secretary Duncan practically made President Obama revise his position on the issue, and thereby won the 2012 campaign (right?).  What more do you need?

It's a connection I've been making on and off since last year:  More Lessons From The 2012 Gay Equality Campaign; Learning From The Gay Rights ...; How Vouchers Are Like Same-Sex Marriage; In Defense Of Arne ("Same-Sex") Duncan; Duncan Gets Ambushed

However, the connections only go so far, according to Fordham's Mike Petrilli, who in this new post (What can education reformers learn from the gay rights movement?) says it's understandable that folks like me (are there others?) want to make the connection but that school reform is more comparable to health care reform than a social/rights issue that doesn't cost money or have as many immediate programmatic concerns. (I'm paraphrasing.)

Petrilli's right that the same-sex/school reform comparison is a stretch -- that is sort of the point -- and education and health care are more readily conceived and compared in relation to each other. However, I'm not sure that this is always or necessarily the case.  

If and when the current programmatic, policy-focused attempts to improve public education have run their course for good or ill, I can imagine a return to a more rights-focused approach to school reform, centered around parental rights or the right to equal treatment.

School integration was to my simplistic understanding fueled by a focus on student rights.   The private school voucher issue is already discussed in terms of rights and equity.  Law enforcement actions against parents seeking better education for their children brings up some of the same issues.  

Related posts: Same-Sex Marriage Cases Hold Implications for Schools EdWeek

Washington: "He Who Makes The Rules"

There's a good long piece in the latest Washington Monthly looking into what happens to federal laws after they're passed, titled He Who Makes the Rules, that makes some good reading for any education watchers.  

While it focuses on non-education issues (Dodd-Frank implementation), it tells the story of how the regulatory process -- rules, interpretations of Congressional intent, public comment, and final determinations -- can make or break the statutory language that Congress passes and a President signs into law.  

"It may seem counterintuitive, but those big hunks of legislation, despite being technically the law of the land, filed away in the federal code, don’t mean anything yet."

Who cares what happens to a law once it's passed?  I can think of at least three education examples where rulemaking has played a big role:  (1) the 2002 passage of NCLB, which was followed by some frenzied rulemaking around such hot topics as highly qualified teachers, tutoring (SES), and AYP; (2) the more recent passage of what became Race to the Top, extremely brief statutory language that blossomed into a much bigger, broader program; and, (3) the higher education regulations and rules surrounding Title II teacher quality grants (about which I know frighteningly little except they've been hotly debated and delayed).

As you'll see from the TWM story, a committed group of individuals can carve up a law they don't like by attacking language and swarming the process.  It's been a while since that's happened in K-12 but if anything big ever happens and one side or the other (or both) doesn't like it, they know that they can probably get things changes further down the line, after most folks have moved onto other issues.

Afternoon Video: PBS Covers Return of Vouchers

Watch Should Public Money Be Used for Private Schools? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

The Indiana Supreme Court upheld a law allowing taxpayer money to be used for private schools through vouchers. Hari Sreenivasan examines the implications with Kevin Chavous, executive counsel for American Federation for Children, which promotes vouchers, and Dennis van Roekel, president of the National Education Association. (PBS NewsHour)

Documentaries: Could Principal Minor Have Done More?

Below are some interesting things I learned chatting Monday afternoon with Jacquie Jones, ED of the National Black Programming Consortium, about last week's "180 Days."  

NBPC is the outfit behind the documentary, which was also funded in part by the Ford Foundation, and according to Jones was conceived of as a way to deepen the school reform conversation but not necessarily as a response or rebuttal.

Jones puts the core question the film raises this way:  "How could this person [Principal Minor, pictured] who se so clearly smart in a real pratical way as well as passionate about these kids -- working at full capacity every day -- how could she be doing all this and it still sucked like this?"

I came away from the conversation much enlighted about some of the issues that had intrigued me -- especially the question of what if anything could have been done differently -- and informed about the thinking behind the scenes that were (and weren't) shown. 

Afternoon Video: A Flight Simulator - For Teachers?

Here's Teach Live, one of those things mentioned in the Gates/AFT joint oped Effective Teaching in The New Republic:

 

There might be better videos out there, or other edschools or companies doing other versions of the same thing.  You might recall this from a January 2012 Amanda Ripley story about 12 ed schools with classroom simulators.

Thompson: Two Ways of Speaking Truth to Power

The Annenberg Institute's Warren Simmons set the tone for the discussion of school reform at Columbia's Teachers College panel discussion, "Reconciling Race, Community, and School Reform," and in doing so he also highlighted some of the best features of the work of Sarah Carr, Sarah Garland, and Amy Stuart Wells.

Simmons explained how “ideologues” came to New Orleans and used its schools as a great experiment for their theories about charters and performance management.  Those reformers now proclaim New Orleans a great success, he said, even though it clearly is not. The people with power, Simmons explained, ignored the voices of the people.  They used their favored metrics as a “proxy” for the discussion that was needed about race and class. Some of these “reformers” have finally listened and, perhaps, learned.  Others, especially those with money and power, have not.

Another view of power was described by “reformers’” Brian Johnson and Joshua Thomas at the California Charter Schools Conference.  They saw unions as the power that will only respond to power.  They participated in a panel discussion, "Politics, Policy, and Advocacy,"   that focused on ways of telling their stories.  In fact, the panelists mostly agreed that everyone should have an opportunity to express their own beliefs.

But, then, Johnson and Thomas crossed a line that should never be crossed, saying that we teachers who support LIFO and oppose value-added teacher evaluations “believe that all poor children of color can’t learn at the highest levels.”  It is our prejudice that explains why “power” “hates high-performing charter schools.” Even if these young “reformers” can’t respect the voices of others, they should at least stop questioning the integrity of families and educators who have different stories to tell.-JT(@drjohnthompson) Image via.      

Morning Video: PBS's Peabody-Winning "Poverty" Series

Watch Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream on PBS. See more from Why Poverty?.

Here's just one of the several PBS segments on poverty that ran in late 2012, focused on the giant chasms between rich and poor and the reduced class mobility that has arisen in recent years.

Afternoon Audio: EdTech Taking Practitioners For Granted

It's not so much that there weren't many educators at SXSWedu earlier this month, notes this NSVF blog post (Elevating the Educator Voice), but rather that educators and entrepreneurs tended to participate in different tracks and that the business and innovation tracks tended to be more popular.  

So even if you were there, you might have missed 2012 National Teacher of the Year Rebecca Mieliwocki’s half-filled talk on Supercharging the Teaching Profession. Listen to it above.  

Thompson: The Tragic Endings of "180 Days" (Plus DCPS Response)

Viewers had been warned, but the tragic conclusion of PBS's 180 Days was more excruciating than anticipated.  The first two hours balanced the sorrows that students had endured with their concrete displays of grief and coping.   Delaunte was covered in tattoos in a way that could terrify outsiders. They are tributes to his deceased mother, Viola. His "FOE" tat is not a gang symbol; it means "Family over Everything." Raven shows us her private shrine for deceased loved ones, as well as symbols of triumph.

Similarly, the educators at D.C. Met alternative school prepared conscientiously for the best practices of demonstrating abstract concepts in concrete and understandable ways. Sports and the music program (which was destined to be cut) played essential roles.

Early in part two, the educators' efforts to keep Rufus in school died when his mother transferred him.  It was the only scene that I could not watch, forcing me to twice leave the room.  The goodbyes were interminable because everyone knew what the future would be for the kid with that captivating personality. Rufus was in a daze, a doomed student walking, not noticing a classmate he bumped into.  As Rufus exited his last loving sanctuary, he looked to be preparing for his cruel fate.

D.C. Met did the opposite when trying to avoid its predestined outcome.  In panic, a helter-skelter approach to test prep was thrown together.  Hands-on instruction became a parody of itself as the rush to remediate morphed into the syndrome known as "lost in activity."  Students were forced to drink from a firehose with only a desperate hope that enough disembodied facts would stick in their brains until testing concluded.

Charts: What The Rich Think About Education

Check out the poll results below, which are a followup on Friday's post and discussion about wealthy liberals' abandonment of education reform critics: As you can see, wealthy people -- liberal and conservative alike -- have somewhat different views on education than the general public:

To be sure, the wealthy lean to the right when it comes to ideology, so it's not even-Steven in terms of access to cash.   As the paper notes, "about twice as many of our respondents considered themselves Republicans (58 percent) as considered themselves Democrats (27 percent)."

Then again, there's no shortage of liberal wealthy individuals -- take a look at the Democratic fundraising operation during the 2012 campaign for a sense of that -- and sometimes conservative fatcats create philanthropies that support liberal-leaning causes -- like the Ford Foundation's funding of this week's PBS show, "180 Days."

Thanks again to Sarah Reckhow for pointing me to this article.