REFORM: The Charter Expansion Challenge

"At the moment where you can't touch and feel all of your schools on an everyday basis, it becomes harder to sustain and maintain the culture," [Mitchell] said.

NewSchools Venture Fund honcho Ted Mitchell, as quoted in a recent newspaper article (Poor Economy, Poor Student Achievement Threaten Charter Schools)

QUOTE: Reformers "Need To Get Their Act Together"

"Human capital (e.g., TFA), charter, and gap-closers, with support from the business lobby, need to get their act together--and push."  (Tom Vander Ark)

REFORM: Performance Pay Parking

"The best way to make change appealing is probably to earmark the revenue specifically for use in the area getting the performance parking."

Blogger Matthew Yglesias (Making Performance Parking Appealing)

USDE: Ed Sector Staffer Heads To USDE

Fritz had it yesterday morning, and nothing's official until May but I think you can count on it: Ed Sector communications guru Stacey Jordan is headed to the Department, where she'll do intergov communications. Official title: Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Office of Communication and Outreach (or something like that). She used to work in the NYC DOE and for the Mayor of Providence, which will come in handy when it comes time to make sure these governors and mayors are doing right by their stimulus money. In addition to fancy bachelor's and master's degrees (official bio here), she's a proud graduate of Francis W. Parker School in Chicago. Go Colonels.

KIPP: "Just Another Model Program"?

"Until KIPP tries to succeed within an entire, single community, it is, for all its remarkable rise and deserved praise, just another model program that has yet to prove it can succeed with all—or even most—disadvantaged children."

Sara Mosle on Jay Mathews' KIPP book in Slate

APRIL 1st: Fordham Fools

For a long while, what seems like a long while ago, the education analysis from the Fordham Foundation (now Institute) was witty, self-deprecating, ideologically coherent, and, well, readable.

One of the highlights was their annual April Fool's education headlines, in which they made up all sorts of plausible-sounding nonsense and filled it with hot air quotes and sendups of everyone (including me).

In honor of Fordham's faded glory -- and in hopes of encouraging a return to form sometime before too long -- here are some suggested headlines for the Fordham April Fool's 2009:

Fordham staffer gets new job writing for "Two & A Half Men"
Credits Gadfly for honing his comic timing and depth of knowledge.

"Hey, what happened to my Foundation?"
Checker dismayed at decline during 10 month visit to Mongolia.

Former Bush staffer takes job working for Duncan
"I really didn't have as much government experience as I needed," said Petrilli.

Think you can do better?  Go for it. 

Your fool always

--Alexander

IN THE TANK: Ed Sector Update

Everyone thought that Rotherham would be the first to go, but in a surprise twist it is co-founder Tom Toch who says he's leaving the Ed Sector (to work for a local association of private schools).  Toch brought gravitas and journalistic credibility to the organization.  In his "so long" post, he says he's proud of what ES has accomplished and thanks Mike Smith for being an early supporter and funder.  

Meanwhile, Rotherham announces the winner of the NCLB renaming contest he was running.  I wonder if there will be a post about Toch's contributions, and what it's like working at an organization with so much uncertainty surrounding it.  What will happen to ES if Rotherham leaves, too?  (What will happen if he stays?)

NCLB: Policy Is Easy -- Implementation Is Where It's At

"The study of how public policy is carried out has been the stepchild of scholars and practitioners alike," writes Elaine Kamarck in The American Prospect.  "Yet the overwhelming breakdowns of government that lead to political breakdowns have often been failures of implementation."

This is partly why I'm so critical of policy wonks and academics, and so obsessed with leaders having real-world political or administrative experience.

STIMULUS: Building Schools Vs. School Reform

First, New America's Sara Mead made the rather retro case for school construction in the stimulus (The Case for Building Schools). Then boyfriend blogger Matt Yglesias posted that, well, his girlfriend was right (School Construction Stimulus).

Building schools has little to do with improving education -- though it has lots to do with pleasing political supporters.  I'm not saying that schools shouldn't be part of the economic stimulus, or don't need to be built.  I'm just saying that it's not really school reform.  

PS: Mead is another who might end up going to the USDE, doncha think?

REFORM: Rethinking The Conventional Wisdom

While the selection of Arne Duncan and other recent events may make it look like the more centrist (aka "reformy") crowd is tromping the more traditionally liberal (BBA) reform crowd, there are a couple of counter-examples that bear noting: 

Linda Darling-Hammond could still end up as a muckety-muck in the Department or as a special assistant in the West Wing.

Centrist advocates like DFER had to throw BFF Joel Klein overboard in order to avoid seeming to have gone too far to the right.  Watch your back, Rhee.

During his time in Chicago, Duncan spent way more time arguing for more resources and better programs as he for merit pay and charter schools.  Hated AYP, too.

The $100B education funding in the current stimulus package over all seems to focus more on resources for schools than on accountability or charters or merit pay. So much for reform out the gate.

Last year saw a rebirth of traditional Democratic education advocacy (in the form of the BBA) and the rebranding of NCLB as a comic punch line. 

President Obama has no real record (beyond generally supporting charters and performance pay) of going against his base. 

THINK TANKS: $100 Billion (A Year) To Get Rid Of School Boards

Each time out, Matt Miller gets slightly more savvy about his idea to get rid of local school boards, focusing not just on the benefits of getting rid of these relics but the practicalities of getting such a major change implemented.

This time out (Nixon’s the One — to Imitate on Education) Miller debunks the notion that most urban districts are dens of corruption that spend more than their suburban counterparts, points out that we've already nationalized much of our financial system (health care is next), and goes back to a 1972 Nixon-era study calling for the feds to cover 25-30 percent of education costs.  Miller even acknowledges that "A little more federal money might be needed to sweeten the pot, round up the votes and give a boost to the poorest schools." 

Getting closer, Matt.  But you still don't have much of a plan for how to persuade Congress, that bastion of local control, to vote for the change, or much for how to pay for the $100B or so per year that it would take to boost federal education spending to those levels.

Previous Posts:

Pointy Headed Pundits Can't Make Local Control Go Away
"First, Kill All The School Boards"

REFORM: Beware Over-Exhuberance About Success Stories

"KIPP works. Achievement First works. Cristo Rey works...But replicating these schools 1,000 or 10,000-fold is more than just a challenge," it says in a Flypaper post from yesterday (Hubris Alert!). "It might be impossible."

EDUWONK: Will Blog Help Or Hurt Rotherham's Job Prospects?

I guess it's some sort of a coup for Andy to get/let lame duck Ed Sec Margaret Spellings post on his blog today, but I'm not sure what the point is.  (She's on her way out.  We already knew that Rotherham sucked up to her.)  More immediately, however, I thought that Rotherham was trying to get an administration job and was laying low with the whole blogging thing.  The infamous Obama vetting questionnaire asks specifically about blogging:

There nary a mention it in the DFER memo's four-paragraph (auto)biography (see "Wish List" below), though the blog has been a big part of Andy's rise.

PETRILLI: Punk, Punk'd

What a mischievous little punk that Mike Petrilli is turning into.  First, the Checker Finn protege takes all week to admit what everyone else already knew:  that he messed up thinking that one of Obama's education advisors said Obama wanted to dump standardized tests.  Punked by his own self (self-punk'd?).  But in true Washington style Petrilli can't be wrong alone or keep it simple, so he tries to pull other people and other issues into his mess.  The result is one of those non-apology apologies:  No campaign education advisor left behind.  But don't be confused -- this isn't about long-standing divisions among Democrats on education issues.  That's something else.  This is about how nobody but Petrilli goofed up, tried to make news where there was none, and is still trying to weasel out of coming clean.  Not that it's not sort of entertaining to watch him try. 

PROPOSALS: Renaming Federal Innovation Office

This Brookings report (Changing the Game) isn't getting a ton of attention and I make no claims of having read it.  But I did notice that this EdWeek story (U.S. Aid Urged for Education's Entrepreneurs) leaves out the fact that one of the Brookings report's main recommendations seems to be...renaming the current Office of Innovation and Improvement with something called the Office of Education Entrepreneurship and Innovation.  The report also suggests something called Grow What Works. 

"Total Student Load" Makes All The Difference

Check out this interesting column (Beware of the Easy School Fix) from Jay Mathews about the idea that total student loads per teacher -- not class size -- might have a lot to do with raising student achievement (and making teachers happy) in middle and high schools especially:

Apparently, TSL is capped in some districts -- 170 in NYC, 225 in LA.  (Chicago?) The column  is based on a not-yet-published study of 442 schools including Chicago by a UCLA professor who advocates school-based budgeting that eliminates nonclassroom positions in favor of reducing teacher loads.

I'm going to try and get my hands on the report and will let you know more.

Cross-posted from District 299

The Head Start Problem

American Public Media's Emily Hanford does a good job in this radio segment updating us all on business-based effort to support early childhood investments, noting the reportedly high rate of return on early childhood spending and quoting the widely-held belief that test scores are used to project prison populations. 

But no one in Hanford's piece -- indeed, no one in the entire early childhood community has explained how any such investments that might be made on a large scale don't end up turning out like Head Start.   Whether it's preschool for all, or Obama's Promise Neighborhoods, I still haven't heard much of anything about implementation quality, capacity, and all the rest that's required.

Transcript here.
Previous Posts:
Ducking Head Start
NCLB + UPK = A Mess, Or A Great Opportunity?
Hype & Foundation's Role In Pushing Universal Preschool
What Happened To Head Start Could Happen To Obama's NFP Expansion

Not Every Book Klein Reads Gets Turned Into Reality

It seemed to me that last week's New York Sun article about Joel Klein's reading and reforming habits (Klein Goes by the Books ) left out at least one key bit of information.

Not all of the ideas that Klein reads about and then proposes actually succeed in getting implemented. 

Most notably, this includes the weighted student funding plan, which was substantially watered down. 

Meanwhile, Klein protegee Michell Rhee has eliminated WSF for District schools, according to this EdWeek article.

Back To School For The Aspen Institute

It's a cavalcade of stars.  Apparently Al Sharpton is going to be keynoting the dinner portion of today's big Aspen event, and Secretary Rice is at about 4:30.  See updated agenda here. Watch it all from the comfort of your own desk here. Check out the issue paper, too. 

As always, the question has got to be:  how are they going to accomplish the things they want to accomplish, and what if anything is going to come from the event?

Another Week, Another National Summit

The good folks at the Aspen Institute are putting on a national education summit next Monday, the 15th, in DC, and you're invited (Agenda).  Everyone's invited.  I think. Some of the names you might not have heard before include journalists Juan Williams and Ron Brownstein, as well as some Brit (not John Oliver, unfortunately).  Looks very high quality.  The logo itself is a wonder to behold.  Wish I could be there.  Tell me what I miss.

CORRECTION:  You're not all invited -- sorry.  Everyone can watch the webcast, but it's invite only. 

Conservative Foundation Takes Side Of Inept Democratic Governor

In what seems like a particularly humorless and reactive moment, the Fordham Foundations' Gadfly takes the side of do-nothing scolds like Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on the Chicago-New Trier school funding protest (Blowing Hot Air In The Windy City). 

Remember when Fordham was funny and smart (and their positions had some coherence)? Now they just seem mean and clamorous.  (I should talk, but then again I'm not a fancy think tank with offices and all.)

In the meantime, the protest -- sending poor Chicago students to wealthy New Trier to
register for the first day of school -- has drawn national attention and -- maybe -- some funding equity for Illinois schoolchildren.

Paying Lip Service To Poverty

In a post from yesterday, the Ed Sector's Kevin Carey seems to minimize the differences between folks like him who are focused on school reform and folks like everyone who signed the BBA manifesto who include health, poverty, and jobs (Say What You Mean). 

"Every school reform advocate I know absolutely wants better social and economic environments for children, and thinks that doing so would help their education," writes Carey.  "Division of intellectual labor doesn't automatically imply indifference or antagonism toward other issues."

But that's not exactly right.  There is a difference between acknowledging the importance of poverty or unemployment and working to do something about those things. We are what we do.  Pretending otherwise seems dishonest, or at least incomplete.

What about the other side? On this front, at least, the situation seems a little different.  Many of the BBA signers have paid much more than lip service to school reform.  I'm not sure that the same can be said of many EEP folks who seem to have washed their hands of anything that happens outside the schoolyard gate. 

Center On American Progress Owes Me A Beer

Here's my new rule:  anytime that someone proposes a policy solution for education that doesn't make mention of how to get that policy accepted in the political process owes me a beer.  Simple, right? 

This week, it's CAP, whose head honchos Podesta and Brown take to the pages of EdWeek to lament the lack of enforcement of the comparability provision in Title I:

"It is absolutely necessary for the next administration and the next Congress to examine such examples of progress and fix the federal funding requirements for Title I schools. For the future of all American children, and our country, these changes can’t come a moment too soon." (here)

They're not the first to point out the comparability problem.  Pretty much everybody has.  It's a problem.  We get it.  But pointing out the problem doesn't make for any real solutions.  This round's on CAP. 

More Education Staff For CAP

The Center on American Progress continues to staff up with a new appointment, Melissa Lazarín.

She comes to CAP from First Focus and NCLBR. She has been appointed Associate Director for Education Policy.

The other education folks listed on the CAP site include Cindy Brown, Robin Chait, Robert Gordon, and Matt Miller.  There's also Cassandra Q. Butts.

CAP has a new report coming out next week, College-Ready Students, Student-Ready Colleges.

Redshirting Boys = Earlier Dropouts?

"Children (particularly boys) who are held back a year before entering kindergarten are a year older than their peers," writes New America's Sara Mead (The Cost of Redshirting) "which allows them to legally drop out of school a year earlier than they could have if they had started kindergarten when they were eligible, depressing educational attainment."

"What's Your Plan For Making This Happen?"

The big problem in education reform right now isn't that there aren't any good ideas out there about what to do to make things better, but that no one has any real idea how to get them moving. 

Take any number of interesting proposals -- national standards, weighted student funding, differential pay, community schools, inter-district choice, universal preschool -- and what you'll see are lots of arguments and policy specifics but no real plan for getting any of these things implemented in the real world.  (You know, enacted into law.  Paid for.) 

Advocacy only gets you so far.  Electing more Democrats in November will create as many problems as it solves.    Eventually, you have to figure out how to shape an idea into something that can make it through the gauntlet.  For starters, begin asking people:  "What's your plan for making this happen?"

Rotherham Last To Jump Onto The Obama Bandwagon

The Ed Sector think tank doesn't like to take positions, and apparently neither does its co-founder.  Former Clintonite Andy Rotherham waited until well after the primary was a done deal to endorse Barack Obama for president, only just today announcing his position at the end of a long blog post.  In delaying so long, Rotherham avoided that ugly Bill Richardson business of looking disloyal with an early Obama endorsement -- or the UFT-style embarrassment of picking Clinton and then having to switch over to Obama later on.  But this after-the-fact endorsement can hardly be called timely, and reveals a troubling lack of transparency.  On a blog that seemingly prides itself for giving readers the unvarnished truth, Rotherham kept mum about his position for months when it really mattered. There's still no word on whether he supported Obama from the start, or how he came to his decision.   Tell us what really happened, Andy!

A Secret Think Tank Blogger Would Solve All Our Problems

Most of the time, I find much to agree with and little that's objectionable from Kevin Carey's blog posts over at The Quick And The Ed. Though sometimes a little too self-serious and lengthy for my tastes, he's usually a reasonable and reflective  antidote to all the predictable puffery we usually get from the think tank boys.   

Carey's post today about blogs and anonymity (Realism and Anonymity) doesn't go down so easily, however -- in large part because it seems like Carey is trying to make fine-grained distinctions that aren't particularly useful or consistent, and because he fails to acknowledge the self-interest that's involved in his arguments. 

It would be much more interesting for Carey to reflect on the questions that many have about the predetermined nature of think tank research findings, consider the the advocacy role played by his and other think tanks, and acknowledge that transparency and attribution questions surround politically-minded think tanks as much if not more so than  journalism.

Perhaps he -- or someone else inside the education policy complex -- could best (or only) address these delicate issues with -- yes -- a pseudonymous blogging identity that would allow complete candor.  I highly recommend it. 

Suggested Categories For Andy's Blog

Several readers have noted that Andy doesn't seem aware of or inclined to use the categories function on his new blog, which allows him to divide posts into different groups so that readers can find them later.  My thought is that perhaps he's having trouble coming up with categories, and so here are some ideas, based on past posts:

Me
More About Me
Me And My Friends
Past Posts That I Have Made
Attacks On Those Who Dare Disagree With Me
Blind Links For You To Click
Conventional Wisdom, Repackaged
Fancy Terms I Learned In Grad School
My Crush On Spellings

Anything that I've missed?  I'm sure I have.  Feel free to suggest another category.

Eduwonk Old Vs. Eduwonk New: Yes, He Can.

Eduwonk's much-anticipated new blog page is up, and the reviews are streaming in.  Moving from Blogger (left) to WordPress (right), the color scheme is ominously darker but the graphics are sort of ghosty and washed out.  The logo has a vertical ".com" thing running awkwardly up the side. I hope he didn't pay a lot for that.  The long list of aging blurbs is still there running down the side -- including one from me ("don't hate Eduwonk cuz it's so good") from back when Eduwonk was, well, so good. Still no search button, so there's no way to go back and find things unless you know when they happened. But there's a button for you to become one of Eduwonk's fans up near the top -- and comment RSS, a big step for the guy who long disparaged commenters as idiots who should get their own blogs.  Somehow, I think he still thinks the same thing.  But he loves the extra readers.

Much is being made of Eduwonk's decision to move the main text column from right to left -- perhaps it's a signal to the Obama campaign that he's not one of those crusty old Clinton administration people. Yes, he can.

In Defense Of The Times, Wendy Kopp, and Arrogance

Click here to read Eduwonk try and defend both the Times for its recent profile of Wendy Kopp and TFA against the accusation that the program is arrogant.  Delicious.  Ironic.  Unsurprising. 

The Downsides Of Deseg (For Kids And Schools, Too)

There's an absolutely brutal article in the new Atlantic magazine (American Murder Mystery) describing the downsides of once-lauded racial and economic desegregation efforts around the country.

In essence the piece suggests that residential desegregation -- once thought of as a solution for problems associated with large housing projects -- might instead merely pull down the moderately poor nearby minority communities where residents tend to cluster, overwhelming under-prepared community services.

This matters even if you're more of a school reformer type than a poverty/race (broader, bolder) person, because the deseg effects include new struggles for schools receiving the children of former housing project residents, and new pressures on middle-class minority children who are targeted by newly arrived gang members:

  "Clean-cut kids serve the same function as American recruits for al-Qaeda: they become the respectable front men... The college boy, raised outside the projects, might be dreaming of being the next 50 Cent, or might be too intimidated not to join...The schools were not much better, and children were no more likely to stay in them."

In fact, there are all sorts of school reform lessons here, including the dangers of overselling ideal-condition small-sample studies and the importance of quality implementation in the face of political pressures to do it big and quick and dirty. 

Preschool, voucher, NCLB transfer, reconstitution advocates, are you listening?

A New Nickname For Andy

Leave it to the AFTies to come up with a new and improved nickname for Andy.

Group Genius -- All Together Now

Yesterday I wrote a post about the power of small ideas (Could "SingleStop" Help SES & NCLB Transfers?).  Today it's all about really really large ones. 

Malcolm Gladwell's latest New Yorker article is about how major scientific discoveries often occur at nearly the same time by groups of different people, not by solitary inventors working in isolation as we've been led to believe.  Not only that, but you can apparently gather supersmart folks together and come up with patentable ideas -- lots of them (Annals of Innovation). 

Could this be done in education?  Could a group of folks come together and invent some new solutions?  Or would it end up looking just like any other Aspen Institute conference?  Has there ever been a gathering of reformers from which a major new idea (aka invention) has emerged?

Looking Back At The Girls Crisis (2 Updates)

**2 updates at the bottom**

Haven't already made up your mind about the AAUW report on the "boys crisis"?  The Chronicle's Peter Schmidt revisits the history of the AAUW's efforts to promote the "girls crisis" in a blog post (Derailing Efforts to Help Troubled Boys) that you might want to check out. 

Schmidt writes about affirmative action for the Chronicle and -- pointing to writing he did for EdWeek and the Weekly Standard -- suggests that the AAUW's work on behalf of the girls crisis in the early 1990s may be one of the most effective examples of advo-research in recent education history.  I don't know Schmidt, but if his reporting holds up it's pretty damning stuff.

Meanwhile, I'm still taking lots of heat for suggesting that the mainstream news coverage of the recent AAUW report was shoddy and that journalists (including women) aren't capable of the ideal of journalistic objectivity that is promoted within journalism  (Women's Group Says Boys Not In Crisis; Female Reporters Agree).  Bad Alexander.

UPDATE:  Over at the Online Journalism Review, USA Today's Richard Whitmire admires the AAUW for it's surprising success pulling the wool over reporters' eyes.

UPDATE 2:  The AAUW report is off the mark says Andywonk.  But not because it's self-serving advo-research.  In fact, it makes some good points. But overall it's wrong.  Graduation ceremonies.  Saramead.

Measuring Think Tanks By Media Hits Not Real-World Impact

Last week on the HotSeat, political scientist Jeff Henig described two kinds of think tanks -- independent and otherwise.  Around the same time, a new study came out listing think tanks by the number of media references they got in 2007.

Media hits are a superficial measure, to be sure.  Think tanks should be measured by the quality and quantity of their work and its positive influence, not by their ability to self-promote.

But the reality is that many think tanks -- a small but prominent minority -- are all about the media and not really about the work.  They focus on events and reports, and their staff talk to journalists pretty much regardless of whether they're really the most qualified to speak.   

Anyway, there's no breakout for education, and none of the specialty shops made the list.  I'm guessing that the only of these think tanks to be substantially bolstered by their education shops are AEI (Hess et al) and New America (Dannenberg et al).  Maybe Hoover, too.  Brookings and the UI are just giant over all.  Heritage and Cato seem to have fallen off the face of the planet when it comes to education. From FAIR.  Via Eduwonk. 

Spinning The Spinners: Henig On The HotSeat

Lots of folks have noted that Teachers College political scientist Jeffrey Henig has a new book out called Spin Cycle in which he dissects the relationships between education research, media coverage, and policymaking.  But no one's put him on the HotSeat -- until now.

As you can see below, Henig tries valiantly but doesn't stand a chance under intense questioning.  He says that education is still a fringe topic for political scientists but is getting better, claims that there's more agreement on things like class size, phonics, and charter school effectiveness than there used to be, and says he's more concerned about misuse of research than some people think.  He distinguishes between "independent" think tanks and others, and gives shout-outs to the feisty group of folks who write about this stuff. 

"No, But I Did Stay At A Holiday Inn Express Last Night."

The unintentional comedy from Andy's attempts to pose as an expert on both journalism and education research continues in his most recent post (AERA'ed), along with a whole lot of backpedaling and argument-bolstering.  Andy seems not to realize how obviously self-interested it is for him to argue that reporters should ignore where research comes from or to warn traditional researchers off of talking to the press. Just as annoying, he seems not to realize how absurd it is for journalists and researchers to be lectured by someone who's never been a journalist and (last I heard) is still himself working on his PhD.  Most folks are just too polite (or intimidated) to tell him so.  But expertise is not so easily acquired as Andy seems to think, and each field's principles and incentives can't be so easily integrated.  Andy could be lots of things -- pundit, scholar, advocate, appointee  -- but he shouldn't expect to be accepted as all of them.

My Flying Carpet To National Standards

I don't know what I'm more sick of -- pointy-headed pundits gushing over The Wire or gibbering all over each other about nationalizing public education (Nationalize the Schools (...A Little)!  And I'm not even against national standards.  I just can't believe that, after Clinton failed, and Dodd flopped, and Fordham et al got NOWHERE, that anyone thinks Matt Miller's latest foray is going anywhere.  Sure, national standards might help.  But so would flying carpets.  Neither ain't going to happen anytime soon.  Or if it does, it'll be by accident.  Just how are we going to get there, boys? 

Even The Think Tanks Shifting Obama's Way

Over at The New Republic, Michelle Cottle describes how "Hillary's" think tank -- the Center on American Progress -- got Obamafied (CAP Trade).  According to Cottle, Obama "has captured the affections of a Beltway institution widely seen as an unofficial outpost of Team Hillary: the Center for American Progress."

Wow.  Two years ago I wrote about the way things used to be:  "Does everybody have to have their own think tank these days -- Hilary has the Center, so Barack gets Hamilton?." (Not Another Center-Left Think Tank).  Some of this shift isn't new, of course.  Longtime readers will remember that Cassandra Butts, who does some of CAP's education work, is a longtime Obama ally. (More Obama-CAP Connections).

Think Tank Moonlighting

One more thing about education think tanks that's been nagging at me since last week:  Some think tanks say that they're all about transparency and full disclosure but don't really follow through where it counts.  This is most obvious when it comes to political work.  We have no formal knowledge of what kinds of support and involvement anyone at the Ed Sector (or at the other think tanks) has been having with the political candidates or party organizations.  Ditto when it comes to working the Hill.  That's far more significant to how reporters, readers, and others would weigh what they say in their reports and blog posts or where they got their money from or who's on their board.   And everyone in DC knows who's moonlighting for whom.  I'm not sure I'm advocating for a think tank registration and disclosure process like the ones there are for lobbyists and campaign givers.  Some of this work probably needs to be done in private.  But let's be honest about what full disclosure and transparency would really mean.  And in the meantime, we should all remember that reports and events and blog posts are sometimes the least juicy work that think tanks are doing.