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.