REFORM: 10 [Crazy] Ways To Save Education

"From killing tenure and the SAT to requiring Spanish classes for everybody (er, para todos!), nutty ideas abound. Here are 10 crazy ideas for remaking our schools from K through College." (10 Ways to Save Education The Atlantic):

1) Eliminate summer vacation.
2) Extend the School Day.
3) Expand Bilingual Education.
4) Raise Compulsory Education Age
5) Kill the SAT.
6) End tenure.
7) Pay for Your Major.
8) Smart Loans to Make College Affordable.
9) Smart Certificates to Make College Non-Essential.
10) Rank Everything.

That's their list.  What's yours?  My favorite crazy idea was that recent one about selling futures on poor kids' future earnings.  Getting rid of local school districts is Matt Miller's.  Banishing teachers unions. Outlawing private schools is a Barr favorite.  What's yours?

CHARTERS: "The Catch" Behind Elite Charter Schools

"Here's the catch. All the schools in the elite charter school networks number only about 300..."
(Close Underperforming Charter Schools Rotherham and Whitmire)

INNOVATION: It's Like Magic!

"It seems to me that in many cases 'innovation' is being invoked almost as if it is magic.  We don't know exactly what it is and we don't know what it looks like, but if we could only release it, it would fix all of our problems." (A Conversation with Top Researcher Russ Whitehurst LFA)

MEDIA: Another Useful Education Site In Danger

Insideschools.org, a nonprofit New York City-based site, is apparently on the verge of going under, according to this post (Insideschools.org) -- which notes that a local newspaper has called the site “the single most valuable independent source of information on New York City public schools.”

What has made the site so valuable -- it reports having had over a milion readers in the past year -- is that it includes individual school profiles written by trained reporters. But that's expensive and sometimes slow work, and over the past seven years successful education sites have gotten faster and more interactive (ie, GothamSchools, whose co-founder Philissa Cramer used to work at InsideSchools).

To be sure, InsideSchools could have done (could still do) some things to make the site more timely and appealing and inexpensive.  But, as in the past, let me note how strange it is that many education funders are unwilling to put money into something that is such an obvious and relatively inexpensive service for parents, teachers, watchdog organizations, and policymakers. 

GATESWATCH: 10 Districts Vie For $500M In Chicago [upd]

UPDATE:  Looks like it might be Tulsa, Memphis, Atlanta, PG County, Denver, Palm Beach FLA, Hillsboro FLA, charters (LA), and _______ (Pittsburgh?)

We haven't been hearing much from the Gates Foundation of late and that's just the way they like it.  (They're like the Apple folks before the latest iPhone release.)  But everyone who's anyone is headed to Chicago this week for the big Gates Foundation teacher quality confab, which will likely include an appearance by Arne Duncan (who's already scheduled to be in town for another event). 

You can bet that TNTP, NTC, Green Dot, and other Gates faves will be there.  Prolly the AFT, too -- they're all frenemies now.  But the folks with the most at stake are the teams from 10 urban districts who are finalists in the Foundation's $500 million teacher quality initiative that was announced in November.  Just four or five will be selected this summer, down from the original 30 at the start.  Among the finalists are Tulsa and Memphis and Nashville -- I'm still working to track down the full and official list. [See comments]

Anyway, here's the Vision Statement for the event: PDF. Be nice and link here rather than pilfering it for your own site. Click below for a collection of related posts and links.

EDINO8: Gates-Funded Group Hands Baton To Sharpton, Klein

I knew that EDIN08's Marc Lampkin was doing some work with the Education Equity folks but I didn't put two and two together until I got this "goodbye" email from EDIN08 (aka Strong American Schools) in which the handoff is explicit, describing EEP as "picking up the mission that ED in '08 started-tirelessly advocating on behalf of students falling behind on education and the promise of the American dream." 

Interesting that a Gates-funded effort that was hindered by its desire to be so broad and noncontroversial (staying away from NCLB reauthorization) would morph into a effort that is so much more specific and comfortable taking sides. 

TWITTER: "A Suspension Bridge Made Of Pebbles."

I'm the last one to tout Twitter, the mobile microblogging message exchange system that has many folks so fascinated.  I mostly do it when I'm bored or too lazy to bring (or open) my laptop -- not because I think there's any great magic to it.  Like liveblogging (updating a blog every few minutes with what just happened), it's usually tiresome and uninspiring -- and way too much work to produce and to read.  Plus which, I'm still working off of a regular cell phone not a Blackberry or iPhone. 

However, one of the main anecdotes used to relate the "power" of Twitter in a recent TIME Magazine article has to do with the Twittering that went on during an education conference called Hacking Education that was held a couple of months ago in New York by Union Square Ventures.  They were doing as much Twittering as talking.

So here's a rare situation where you can read about pop technology trends AND education reform all at the same time:  (How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live). 

If you're so inclined, you can read highlights of the Twitters from the event here. Or you can read the onling Twitter conversation going on here.  However, it might be a lot faster and easier to click to the event wiki here, see who was there, check out the lovely room that they were all in (pictured) and then get on with the rest of your day.  If anything substantive had come from the meeting in terms of fixing schools, we'd probably know by now. 

VANDER ARK: Former Gates Ed Guru Slams Crisis Response

"I was hoping that we would see this financial crisis used more creatively to have fundamental conversations, but it's not really happening, not that I see."

Tom Vander Ark in Scholastic Administrator This Month's Interview

FUNDERS: A Cheap, Direct Engagement & Accountability Strategy

Foundation and school reform folks in Colorado did good when they shifted money they had been spending on other things (printing and mailing glossy reports, commissioning research no one read, PR firms and consultants) towards a regional education site that includes a tasty combination of original reporting and commentary.  

In just a short time, their fulltime reporter Nancy Mitchell has broken a bunch of stories -- including most recently this one* about how much the top executives at one of the state's highest-rated charter networks are being paid (Board president defends Chavez exec pay). The story's being picked up by at least one local TV news show, and is creating transparency and accountability that helps everyone -- parents, teachers, reformers, funders.

My guess is that more funders will see what an incredibly cheap and effective way sites like this are to elevate an issue in the public, compared to print, studies, and PR retainers - or even those sponsored coverage efforts that foundations use on EdWeek and PBS. I've got my fingers crossed that, someday soon, someone will come along and give me the backing to do the same with this site or the Chicago one. 

*Correction:  The Caesar Chavez story was broken by the Denver Post.  Nancy Mitchell's buzz-creating story was about CO's broken teacher evaluation system.

POSTSEC: CC Credits Help Character From "The Wire"

Kati Haycock was wrong about community colleges, after all.  In the future, brainy drug dealer Stringer Bell "uses his community college credits to transfer to space community college, get his space diploma, and use his space-business acumen to open up a chain of intergalactic pizza parlors," according to this delightful post from Videogum.

PHILANTHROPY: Grading The Givers (Fair's Fair)

All too often, educators feel like big foundations are rating education programs and approaches that the funders may or may not know a lot about -- without very much transparency or accountability for themselves.  There are at least two sites that take some steps towards grading the givers, however:  Charity Navigator and The Funded.  (If there are more, let us know!).  Click below to see how these two sites rate a big education funder, and what could (should) happen next.

PHILANTHROPY: A Reverse DonorsChoose

 Not seeing anything you like on Donorschoose.org?  Want to create your own fabulous unit about, say, drums and unicorns?  (Dibs!) Click on over to the Generation Project and you can design and fund an activity for teachers to choose as they see fit.  It’s like DonorsChoose in reverse: the donors do the designing, teachers do the picking. It’s the brainchild of Michigan-based Jessica Rauch, a TFA alum and staffer who was kind enough to come up and say hi to me (by mistake) at the NSVF event in Pasadena.  No idea if it’s a good idea or not, or well-executed, but I’m always ready for new ideas on the micro-donations front.

STIMULUS: A Windfall For Edupreneurs?

I'm back in Brooklyn but still digesting the NSVF summit this year.  So far my takeaway from the event was that the innovation and entrepreneurship folks -- the Republican wing of the Democratic party? -- feel really warm and fuzzy about all that's going on in Washington these days.  Obama with his charter cap-lifting talk, Arne Duncan, who they consider one of theirs, and many of Duncan's hires who come from the Gates/ Broad/ NewSchools world.  And they're REALLY excited about the "Race To The Top" funding that is accompanying the stimulus -- it's like the federal government just dumped a ton of cash on top of all the Broad and Gates money that they already had. 

Of course, there were relatively few real-world district and state administrators or union leaders or elected officials there, the folks who will actually have to receive and implement these changes (and whose political and budgetary issues are still much larger than Gates and RTTT combined).  This has always been a weakness of NSVF, and seemed even more apparent this year.  Michelle Rhee, the darling of last year, was in attendance but not featured in any of the panels. Too aggressive and fate uncertain, I guess.  Ditto for Joel Klein, who used to be these folks' best friend, or Cory Booker or Adrian Fenty.  Even with all the RTTT money and the pipeline into the USDE, the edupreneurs and innovations folks still seem to be working at the margins and still seem weak on the political / real-world fronts.  Or maybe that's just how it seems to me.

Cross-posted from D299:  A Windfall For Edupreneurs?

PHILANTHROPY: Seventy-Eight Schools In Afghanistan

I'm way more hard-hearted than most, but this segment about the man who wrote Three Cups of Tea and helped build 78 schools in Afganistan is still pretty moving:

The kicker: his mom, an elementary school principal, helped start it all by inviting her son to talk to her students.

NSVF: Another Spring, Another Summit

Each year, the NSVF annual summit gets a little less secretive and -- probably -- a little less interesting. Hell, they even invite press now. The real summit takes place the day before.

This year's event -- my third -- is in Pasadena and features David Kelley (no idea) as the keynote speaker. Other speakers include Duncan (via video), Deasy, Feinberg, Fryer, Hess, Villaraigosa -- the usual suspects, that rotating crew of Gates-Broad-NSVF-Obama administration types. Here's the agenda. 

For a look at previous summits, click here:  The "Sundance" Of School Reform (2007), Microblogging The NSVF Summit (2008). For a peek at the full reach of the NSVF empire, click below. I'll be there, bringing the overall quality of the event down as usual.  I might even Twitter.

VIDEO: Unlikely Duo -- Plus Gingrich & Duncan

Nearly a week later, it's still jarring to see Newt Gingrich, Al Sharpton, and Joel Klein together talking up their weekend event at the White House (with a glimpse of Arne Duncan thrown in for good measure).

MEDIA: EdWeek Staffer Gets Knight-Wallace Fellowship

Speaking of fellowships, Christina Samuels from EdWeek was recently named to be receive the Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan.  Congrats!

MEDIA: Chicago Education Editor Named To Knight Fellowship

Last year it was the Tribune's Stephanie Banchero who got the prestigious Knight fellowship in Journalism at Stanford.  This year's new fellows include Catalyst Magazine editor Veronica Anderson (2009-2010 U.S. Knight Journalism Fellows Named at Stanford). Congrats!

FOUNDATIONS: Broad, Gates To Fund "Union-Led Innovation Effort"

Last week, I joked that the Broad Foundation should start recruiting and supporting talented individuals who might want to help run teachers unions.  Little did I know I wasn't that far off.  The AFT, Broad, Gates, Mott, and Ford are all pooling money to do some collaborative work around innovation.  The AFT is taking the lead with an event tomorrow (see advisory below).

Without more details it's hard to tell whether this is a fig leaf or something likely to generate changes from the status quo.  Innovation means lots of things to lots of people.  And it's not entirely unprecedented, at least for Broad.  Broad funded TURN earlier in the decade, and has funded local-led innovation efforts in the past.  There's also been funding for the Mooney Institute from Broad.

MEDIA: New Spencer Journalism Fellows Announced

I'm happy to say that the new batch of Spencer Education Journalism Fellows has been announced -- the second year of the program, based at Columbia's Journalism School. The 2009-10 fellows include: Peg Tyre, a former senior reporter at Newsweek Magazine; Sarah Garland, a reporter at Newsweek International; and Elizabeth Green, who covered education for U.S. News & World Report and the now defunct New York Sun. Congrats to them all.  I'm sure their projects are going to be amazing. 

MEDIA: Colbert Does DonorsChoose (Again)

What's the world coming to? Apparently, the regular stream of education types on the Colbert Report aren't all just due to the influence of super-producer Emily Lazar, who's also the wife of Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter. Colbert himself is involved.

Specifically, he's a new board member for DonorsChoose.org. Those rascals really know how to do the media thing, don't they. And today, Colbert, DonorsChoose, and Vicki Phillips (of Gates) did an event at a Manhattan school.  Footage to come. 

Colbert's done DonorsChoose things in the past -- his run for President included a DonorsChoose bit, and he talked about them a lot during this interview, too (DonorsChoose On The Colbert Report). 

JOBS: Working Both Sides Of The Street

Over at District 299, there's an interminably long and self-involved post about my long-ago near-brush with working for the UFT (My Almost-Job With The UFT).  The most interesting part of the whole thing is considering how few people have worked on both sides of the union-management divide, which I think would be a good thing for everyone involved. 

I know of only two -- Jonathan Gyurko (NYC DOE / UFT) and Matt Gandel (AFT / Achieve).  A friend reminds me that Denver's Brad Jupp went from the union local to the central office.  Are there others who've worked both sides of the street, so to speak, and -- more important -- has it helped them do their jobs better in any observable way?  If so, I propose that TFA and the Broad Foundation start placing people in union locals ASAP.

VIDEO: "Fresh Approaches To Learning"

Looking for something new?  You might want to check out one or more of these short videos from Mobile Learning Institute, which is profiling individuals who "embrace and defend fresh approaches to learning."

Stephen Heppell makes his way through London, describing his vision for schools, meeting with kids at the Be Very Afraid conference, and exploring ideas for classroom design in a technology pilot school in Teddington.

Elliot Soloway and Cathie Norris take a road trip through Texas and Louisiana to see firsthand how mobile devices are being used in schools.

Jean Johnson: Notschool.net director Jean Johnson describes how and why Notschool works, and two of her researchers – Jamie and Jake – show how it has helped them turn their lives around.

Yong Zhao, a university professor, argues for giving kids room to innovate by following their passions, not subscribing to a set of rules and interests dictated to them from the outside.

Alan November challenges some of the accepted wisdom about technology in schools and proposes a scheme for enabling students to become more active participants in a 21st century classroom.

Steve Barr describes how Green Dot, a charter school network in Los Angeles, is using the takeover of Locke High School to show how small schools with high expectations can fundamentally change how public education is delivered.

Larry Rosenstock describes a vision for educaiton that blends the head, the heart, and the hands.

More to come.

CHOICE: What Charters Owe Vouchers (But Rarely Admit)

"Vouchers have made the world safe for charters. And the moment that vouchers really do stall, the enemies of school choice will redirect their fire at charters, strangling them with regulation and repealing charter gains."

Jaye Green via Lisa Snell

MIAMI MYSTERY: Gathering Of Leaders

Here's some more information about this year's Gathering Of Leaders, New Profit's annual confab (no, they're not joining the SEIU):

"The fifth annual Gathering of Leaders is bringing together a set of remarkable leaders who are ready to share their experiences and lessons learned with more than 170 Gathering participants. Our objective? To explore the opportunities for the Gathering community in this new era of social innovation."

Lead funder is the Knight Foundation.  Key speakers and panelists include the usual -- Fenty, Booker, Rhee, etc.  Schnur, Barth (KIPP), Steve Barr, Rob Gordon, Wendy Kopp. (The "fix it from outside" crowd, by and large.)  No, you're not invited.  (Neither am I.)  But don't worry -- there's lots of smart folks there and I'm sure they can get it done without us. 

EVENT: Live From The Yale SOM Education Conference

I'm at the Yale SOM education conference today, saying hi to old friends and meeting new ones.  This thing gets bigger every year, though as I noted before there are precious few "real" educators here (ie, district administrators, teachers, government officials, etc.)

Joel Klein is starting things off with remarks to a room of 500 folks.  

Like him or not, Klein should have - might have - was almost Obama's education secretary.  

You can find what I have to say via  Twitter (alexanderrusso).

YALE SOM: Showdown In The Snow

Be sure to come up and say hello if you're there on Friday in New Haven at Yale SOM's Third Annual education conference, which will include lots of reformy types such as Joel Klein and Michael Bennet as well other luminaries like Randi Weingarten and Alberto Carvahlo. 

There'll be a lot of understandable excitement about this whole Obama thing - as well as some uncertainty about the economy and this crazy charter unionization thing that's been bubbling around. 

As always, I'll be looking to see whether folks there are are figuring out how to work in the system as well as along side it, or just looking internally. Speaking of which, check out this EdWeek article from last week about programs like the Broad Residency that try and bring talent in -- ideally (in my mind) into districts not CMOs. 

NONPROFITS: Which Education Nonprofits Will Close Or Pull Back?

Businesses aren't the only ones affected by the economic downturn, notes this recent Wall Street Journal article (Bear Market for Charities) in which one expert predicts that one out of ten nonprofits could end up having to close shop just this year. 

Many others won't go away but won't be able to expand, either.  They'll hunker down, slashing costs as much as they can, hoping to wait it out like everyone else.  

Among major funders, only the Gates Foundation has announced an intention to maintain spending on education. 

I wonder which nonprofits won't be around a year from now.

NONPROFITS: "Charismatic" Communities In Schools

What with the selection of ardent advocate Arne Duncan and its inclusion in a new book, Communities In Schools seems like it's on the rise.  The book is called The Charismatic Organization: 8 Ways to Grow a Nonprofit that Builds Buzz, Delights Donors, and Energizes Employees. Check it all out here and see what other familiar organizations are included.

EDWEEK: McNeil Smacks Down Fordham EdSec Guess

I'm starting to worry about the credibility problem over at the Fordham Institute.  Here, Michele McNeil belittles the Petrillian notion Bill Richardson will be Secretary (NCLB Foe as Ed Sec?) and reports on some NEA favorites. 

UPDATE:  Indeed, Friday afternoon it was reported that Richardson was offered Commerce.

OPRAH: School Scandal Drops From Headlines

On November 5 [2007], Oprah Winfrey appeared live via satellite on a 10-foot television screen at a South African hotel. She told journalists she had been “shaken to the core,” and called the Makopo incident “one of the most devastating—if not the most devastating—experience of my entire life.”

But among South Africans, the “Oprah school scandal” has been greeted with a shrug. It’s not that the public is averse to tabloid news. It’s just that the charges against Makopo have been swallowed by the horrific headlines we read every day.

The Oprah School on Trial

[that's Makopo, the accused schoomistress]

 

GATESWATCH: Grantee Calls CC Plan A "Huge Mistake"

You'd never know it from the happytalk headline (Gates' New Approach Gets Good Reviews!!) and the slew of predictably complimentary quotes, but one of the Gates grantees summoned to Seattle to hear about the new Gates plan actually had the courage to criticize some what she was hearing.  And EdWeek's Erik Robelen put it in there.  The EdTrust's fearless Kati Haycock (pictured) calls the foundation's decision to focus on community colleges "a huge mistake."

EDSEC: Fordham Insiders Get It Wrong

So much for the Fordham Foundation's Institute's panel of expert "insiders."  Governor Hunt says he's out of the running for Education Secretary.  Meanwhile, has anyone taken a look at whether all the new media have decreased Fordham's report-writing output?  I count 8 publications so far for 2008.  It sure seems like there used to be more there there.  Or maybe it was the name change. 

GATESWATCH: "It's A Separate School Inside There"

"All the kids go through the same front door, but really it’s a separate school inside there that’s allowing us not to be part of that insanity, and so don’t mess with the thing that works well for us," says Bill Gates (describing the reaction of parents to reform efforts in this EdWeek blog post).   "If we go to a school and say, let’s change things here, they say, no way, you’re going to mess our little enclave up."

NATIONAL STANDARDS: Brought To You By The Gates Foundation? [updated 4x]

People ask me all the time whether the big education foundations -- Gates, Broad, et al -- have too much influence over the districts where they are funding initiatives, and my usual response has been "no."  But if Gates develops national standards and tests, which is apparently its next big move, that might change things. 

I support national standards and tests, and I'm as impatient as everyone else.  But Gates-made national standards creep me out a little bit.  I'd rather the states or the USDE develop the tests than the Gates Foundation do it.  Give the Obama administration a chance to do something.  (Or at least have Achieve do it.) Then again, I'd rather have standards than the current mishmash of uneven and generally low-level state standards.

UPDATE:  I didn't see it until now, but check out Eduwonkette's post on this from last night:  Bill Gates, U.S. Superintendent of Schools.

UPDATE 2:  According to the Gates website update which includes the speeches, the Common State Standards Coalition is going to be the vehicle through which this would happen.  But there are no results on Google for what that is, so I can't tell you what that means. 

UPDATE 3:  Robert Pondisco at the Core Knowledge blog says "bring it on."

UPDATE 4:  Best tidbit yet.  Elizabeth Green apparently crashed the Gates event uninvited.  Kudos to her for going and getting in. A little more critical distance next time, please?  (Gates announcement A-list, continued: So many power players!, Gates will fight for national standards and make national tests).  Gates et al already have enough cheerleaders. 

UPK: When School Meets Preschool

The latest edition of the Harvard Ed Letter ($) is out, and I'd recommend highly the cover story by David Mckay Wilson on what happens when UPK meets K12:

"Adding another grade to a school isn’t  as easy as it sounds, especially when those being taught are three  or four years old," writes Wilson.  "There were facility issues...There were oversight issues...Then there was the impact on the elementary schools where those four- year-olds were getting ready for kindergarten."

There's also a new HEP blog that's been rolled out, called Voices in Education, that will feature HEP writers (and blog newcomers) including David Berliner, Robert Rothman, Ron Ferguson, Frederick (Rick) Hess, Laura A. Cooper, Michael J. Feuer, among others. Welcome. 

826: Eggers Tutoring Project Goes National

An old friend of mine from Feinstein's office sent me a link about how the Dave Eggers "826" tutoring program is going national -- check it out: 826 National (Facebook).  They started in San Francisco and now have outlets in a bunch of places including Chicago and Nueva York.  Not sure where they go next, but it seems like it's on the march. 

MTV: Obama Hypes Harlem Children's Zone On MTV

Over the weekend, Presidential candidate Barack Obama highlighted the Harlem Children's Zone in response to a question about helping disadvantaged neighborhoods (Ask Obama).

Now I'm all for new ideas and for making things better, but I'm also extremely allergic to hype.  Some questions: 

How comprehensive is the HCZ in terms of Harlem kids it serves?  (According to this recent interview about the HCZ only 1-2,000 kids have actually gone through Canada's "conveyor belt" so far.)

How new or different is what HCZ is doing from what others have done or tried to do in the past?  (It doesn't seem all that different to me from things like Empowerment Zones, except that it's deemed to have worked.) 

Do we have any real sense why HCZ's efforts panned out so much better than everyone else's, or whether HCZ is replicable?  (The absence of other success or examples to point to suggests that it's not.)

No Bailout For EDINO8

After 16 months and $24 million spent, EDINO8 has stopped receiving funds from the foundations that started the effort, according to this clip found by an eagle-eyed friend of the blog (Gates, Broad foundations stop contributing to election-awareness campaign on education).

Four Questions For This Guy

Questions Stephen Colbert should ask KIPP co-founder David Levin on the show tonight (but probably won't):

KIPP -- that's sort of a preppy name for an education organization, isn't it?  Are you ashamed of your faith?

If KIPP is so good at what it does, why doesn't it spin off and work with regular public schools that need help?  Or are you too good for regular public school students?

Teaching kids to nod and keep eye contact -- isn't that sort of, well, creepy and paternalistic?  Look at me when you answer that question.  Good job. 

Marry, boff, kill?  Wendy Kopp, Mike Feinberg, Linda Darling Hammond.

Want to know what questions I asked the other KIPP co-founder, Mike Feinberg on the HotSeat, and how he answered?  Go here.

Got any better ideas about what Colbert should ask?  Lay 'em on us.

Washington DC Think Tank Debuts Coverage Of Brutal, Fast-Growing Sport

Once known for its education research, the Fordham Foundation recently unveiled its newest effort:  a webTV effort focused on the fast-growing but still largely unknown sport of Mixed Martial Arts:

How TFA Thinks About Supporting New Teachers

I don't envy the folks who are in charge of studying and improving the training and support for TFA teachers, which has been criticized as the organization's glaring weakness (here, in the Kappan, and in Donna Foote's book, Relentless Pursuit). 

Click below to read more.

Indie Research Outfits Could Spread Beyond Chicago, NYC

New York's new "Research Alliance"  will resemble Chicago's Consortium in many ways -- but with some key differences, according to the Consortium. They describe the New York effort as a replication, not an exact clone.

Both organizations will have broad data sharing privileges, including both public and private information.  Of course, New York won't have data going back to the early 90s.  The Consortium has a steering committee on which CPS and CTU and ISBE sit, while the Research Alliance has a governing board which may have greater authority over the work that is done.  Both organizations have agreed to a "no-surprises" rule to avoid disputes or over-reactions based on new findings. 

Balancing impact and independence is one key.  Another key to making this work, according to one insider, is to make sure that the research efforts conducted are based on school needs, not researchers' interests.  More tidbits:  Folks in St. Louis and Baltimore are looking to do the same type of thing.

Cross-posted from D299.  Previous Post:  Cloning The Consortium

Fordham Follies

The problem with some folks in the DC school reform world is that they just can't bear to be wrong.  Even if they haven't been in DC all that long.  Yesterday, for example I gently chided the Fordham folks for not having noticed that I, too, had written a response to Emily Bazelon's desegregation piece.  My post (Merge Integration With Accountability -- Or Let It Go) had come out the morning after the Bazelon article.  But the Firefly had curiously not included mine among those it rounded up a few days later.  Hence my simple complaint.  This made Fordham's Liam Julian (pictured) quite angry -- so angry that he seems to have misunderstood completely what I was saying.

TFA Says No To Beefing Up Its Corps Members' Classroom Impact

Too bad that the recent set of Kappan articles about TFA aren't free online so more folks could read Megan Hopkins' proposals for revamping TFA -- and Wendy Kopp's fascinating "no thanks" response.

Polite and measured in her writing, Hopkins doesn't come off as a a fire-breathingTFA-hater.  She proposes that TFA add a residency year to the two-year TFA model, provide better PD, and add incentives for teachers to stay in the classroom longer. 

Kopp responds that TFA has improved its PD and support for classroom teachers (apparently reducing mentors' caseloads from 50 to 32) but that bigger changes like reduced apprentice salaries and three-year commitments would scare off lots of candidates.  This is probably true.  But TFA already has way more qualified candidates than it needs.  And has access to money that could be used to subsidize salaries and encourage longer classroom stints.

Kopp also talks a lot about building a "massive force of leaders" to change education -- seemingly belittling much of its teachers' classroom efforts.  This is what I don't get.  If effective instruction is still a TFA goal, then why not make bigger moves to improve it?  And if education leadership is the real goal, then why not get rid of the classroom piece and focus on leadership?

TFA Reform

TFA-watchers will want to check out the June Kappan ($) for a set of articles about what TFA is -- and what it could be. 

Two of the pieces are by Megan Hopkins, a former TFA participant who has put together some suggestions for improving the organization's impact on public education. 

Linda Darling-Hammond weighs in.  TFA founder Wendy Kopp responds. (Contents).

What "Relentless Pursuit" Reveals About TFA

Hidden inside Donna Foote's book about four first-year teachers assigned to teach high school in South Central LA is a scathing critique of the teacher training and support program that makes up the first "prong" of Wendy Kopp's two-pronged Teach For America effort. Having read the book, I can't imagine any parent encouraging their kid to do this -- not the teaching part, but TFA.

While the three subjects I interviewed a few weeks ago still admire the program and say it's made lots of changes since 2006, few readers of the book will come away with a tremendous amount of confidence in the organization.  These four teachers seem to have survived in spite of TFA, not with its assistance.  The organization micromanages them instead of supporting or encouraging them, implements an obviously unhelpful scripted mentoring system that is -- along with many other things -- "quietly shelved" before the next year, and pressures teachers to conform to a cockamamie accountability system based on irregular, self-reported, unverified achievement data. Talk about juking the numbers.

In all, TFA comes off not much better than the dysfunctional school and ineffective school district in which the teachers are working. It belatedly tries to re-brand itself as a school reform effort, but still won't call districts and schools out for hindering improvements.  It focuses on growth and numbers, not quality.  And it seems manipulative and technocratic-- "cold and distant," as one teacher describes it.  Is this really the best we can do?  Is this really the best TFA can do?

More Reports From New Schools Venture Fund

Don't say that funders and reformers never reflect critically on their own work.  (They just don't do it all that often.) Earlier this year, NSVF released a report called Practices from the Portfolio, Volume 1 in which the organization profiled "some of the most effective practices in use by the entrepreneurial organizations we have supported."  Just this week, NSVF has put out Practices from the Portfolio, Volume 2, which identifies "four critical challenges faced by charter management organizations (CMOs) as they grow to scale."  Great weekend reading, I'm told.

New Biz School Blog Should Be Called "After TFA"

BusinessWeek has started a new biz school blog called  Getting In to go along with all its other award-winning B-school content.  Shouldn't they just call it "After TFA"?

Transparency & Accountability...For Funders

Funders love to talk about creating transparency and accountability in education -- deliverables, measurables, value-added, etc. How would they feel if the shoe was on the other foot, and they were getting rated and reviewed? 

That's what comes to mind when I first heard about The Funded (thanks, secret helper!), a site that shines a flashlight on the world of venture capital by letting people rate VC firms and describe their experiences working with them.  The Funded lets readers rate VC firms for their clarity of communication, fair treatment, and timely decisions -- requiring that commenters ID themselves, too. (Reckoning Day For Venture Capitalists?).  This kind of transparency took the VC world by storm when it first appeared (with an anonymous creator at the time).

There's lots of potential for misuse, of course, but wouldn't it be a nice and good thing if there was a little less mystery around who gets funded, and why, and what grantees' experiences are?