Bruno: TFA Is Great At Recruitment (Which May Not Matter Much)

I didn't initially think much about this short article about business and economics majors postponing lucrative careers in finance to spend a few years with Teach for America.

Blogger Andy Rotherham, however, was annoyed by the coverage of such teachers' effectiveness. And it's fair to say that the discussion in this case is almost entirely evidence-free. 

Still, Rotherham's defense of TfA raises more questions for me than it answers.He makes two points: that studies support TfA teachers' effectiveness, and that TfA's real strength is in recruitment, not training. His interpretation of the research - that TfA teachers perform "as well or modestly better than other teachers" -  is generous, but not unreasonable. (I'd say it's an over-simplification.)

If TfA's recruitment is so effective, though, why are their teachers only roughly "as good" as those who enter through other routes? As far as I can tell, the fact that TfA teachers aren't dramatically better (and don't demonstrate greater retention) implies either that TfA's training is substantially inferior or that their recruitment strategies don't matter much.

If Rotherham is right on both of his points, that would seem to imply that TfA's training is quite poor. My instinct is that he's actually overestimating the importance of recruitment strategies. I don't have hard evidence, here, but I can certainly speculate.

I actually fit the profile of a TfA recruit in some ways - I graduated (with honors!) from a prestigious university, for example - and indeed I applied but didn't get in.  But it's not obvious to me what about my background  better prepared me for teaching. I am also not aware of research indicating that high-performing graduates of prestigious schools do consistently better in the classroom. 

Moreover, I haven't seen any evidence that traditional teacher training is markedly superior to TfA's methods. My own training - at the same prestigious university where I did my undergraduate work - certainly left a great deal to be desired. Nor do I often hear other teachers - especially newer teachers - speak highly of their own traditional programs. 

All of which indicates to me that while Teach for America has made a name for itself in part by aggressively recruiting an "elite" corps of recent college graduates, those recruitment strategies may not matter much. That would be an interesting result in its own right.

- PB (@MrPABruno) (image source)

Thompson: Carmel Martin As "Candide"

During the Fordham Institute’s recent panel discussion, Turnaround Merry-Go-Round: Is the Music Stopping?, the Department of Education’s Carmel Martin reminded me of Voltaire’s Candide.

Like Candide, Martin bravely endured a devastating critique by Fordham’s Andy Smarick of the Duncan administration’s School Improvement Grant outcomes. She countered that it is wrong to compare decades of failed turnarounds with today’s turnarounds.  Her evidence was that Secretary Duncan meets with a lot of state leaders, and those talks make him optimistic.

Martin gamely responded to critiques of NCLB-type accountability schemes, citing the political pressures that produced such flawed metrics. Finally, Martin faced the question of unintended results of data-driven accountability.  In order to boost graduation rates, systems resorted to credit recovery gimmicks and, in order to raise test scores, they adopted assessments with easier questions. So, has that not undermined the transition to more challenging instruction required by Common Core? 

Martin replied, “Again, it’s an area where I’m going to take the optimistic view instead of the pessimistic.”-JT(@drjohnthompson) Image via.           

Morning Video: The Education Of Michelle Rhee

Watch The Education of Michelle Rhee on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Here's the PBS Frontline from last night, which critics feel goes too easily and allies believe illustrates courage and determination.

Afternoon Video: DC Charters Attract, Expel Students

 

This is the Washington Post video accompanying the recent story on expulsions (D.C. charter schools expel students at higher rates than public schools), focusing on student Elsie Mayo, who transferred from Anacostia to Thurgood Marshall and was expelled halfway through her senior year.

People: Dave Medina Makes The NYT

Congrats and best wishes to America Achieves DC policy guy David Medina (left), who made the latest NYT Style Section marriage page with partner Tim DeMagestris (who is not, alas, an education guy).  

As you may recall, America Achieves is Jon Schnur's shadowy post-New Leaders education reform group.  Medina has also worked on the Obama and Edwards campaigns.  

Thompson: The False Promise of "Big Data"

Education reformers have taken to invoking "big data" as education's next big frontier.  However, linguist Geoff Nunberg, in the NPR's Fresh Air report,"Forget YOLO: Why 'Big Data' Should be the Word of the Year," explains that "Big Data is no more exact a notion than Big Hair."

The quantity of digital data has increased, and true believers in number-crunching still claim,"'With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.'"  But Nunberg says "The trouble is that you can't always believe what they're saying."  That is no problem when algorithms predict "that I'd be interested in Celine Dion's greatest hits, as long as they get 19 out of 20 recommendations right." But even when we get to the point where we are measuring information in "humongobytes," we will still need people to ask the question of what are patterns for?-JT(@drjohnthompson) Image via.

Media: Why The Hoover Report On Media Fell Flat

It's not hard to get education reporters to write about things -- just tell them that their competition is thinking about writing about it, offer them an exclusive of some kind, or catch them when they haven't written and are starting to feel guilty. Your report doesn't have to be solid.  Your proposal doesn't have to be viable.  You don't even have to be addressing an obvious need.  Say something funny or outrageous.

But sometimes it doesn't work, and the recent Hoover Institution report on Media Hits and Misses in 2012 Education Coverage is a good example of the occasional miss.  The Hoover report found that journalists working for 43 outlets were doing a good job covering things like charrters, unions, SPED, pre-K, and NCLB, but a bad job on teacher pensions, Common Core, international comparisons, online learning, and Louisiana.

I didn't see any pickups from the mainstream media, or the trades.  I didn't even see any blog posts, which is an even lower standard. Why not?  There were obvious holes in the outlets that Hoover included -- the PBS NewsHour, for example.  There were questions about just how deep the "content" analysis went beyond superficial headline counts.  Last but perhaps most important, there wasn't any real measure by which to agree or disagree about whether the issues covered were important or not to warrant more coverage.   The standard used -- " important enough to deserve more extensive coverage than they received" according to a group of experts -- was so obviously subjective it was hard to take seriously, even without the ideological bent of the group assembled.

People: NSVF's Schorr Joining Duncan Communications Team

According to an unconfirmed but seemingly authentic email  passed along by a friend, longtime NewSchools Venture Fund external relations guru Jonathan (@jonathanschorr) Schorr is leaving California to join the Duncan communications team in Washington, "taking responsibility for the Department’s speechwriting and website, and working with an extraordinary team dedicated to communicating President Obama’s and Sec. Duncan’s education agenda and ideas to the country."

Schorr is, among other things, a TFA alum and the son of longtime NPR journalist Daniel Schorr.  The annual invitation-only NSVF Summit -- somewhat the creation of Schorr and the way many of us came to know about the organization and through which we have watched the evolution of the school reform movement -- is scheduled for the end of April in San Francisco.  Schorr isn't the first NSVF staffer to join the Obama administration, which includes Joanne Weiss and I'm guessing a few others. 

Related posts:  Offspring Of The Famous, Dynasties In The Making, Preview Of NewSchools Summit 2012.

Full text below

People: Amy Wilkins Leaves The EdTrust (Again)

Longtime EdTruster Amy Wilkins is leaving for the College Board in January, announced EdTrust honcho Kati Haycock in an email earlier today:

"In her many years with us, Amy has made extraordinary contributions to the organization and to the movement for educational justice," writes Haycock in what may be one of the nicest sendoff letters I've seen in years.  "Nobody has cared about low-income kids and kids of color more than she has.  And nobody played a greater role in building The Education Trust into the respected force it is today." 

I've known Wilkins since 1996, when she stalked/befriended me in Senator Bingaman's office  [and many other Hill staffers], and have written about her and the EdTrust's enormous and disproportionate influence over education policy many times on this blog.

In a recent AEI paper I wrote about her arrival on the scene in 1993 when the Trust was just getting off the ground and little if any education advoacy was being done outside of associations and unions. In this February 2012 blog post I named her as one of the best education lobbyists out there and got little if any disagreement.

Haycock leaves out that Wilkins has tried to leave the EdTrust before -- once to run an early childhood initiative that I think was called TEE, and most recently to be the founding ED at DFER (see here). She returned to the Trust in 2007. "This time it's for good," Wilkins promises, via email.

Haycock's email is below.

Quotes: Half-Day Kindergarten, The Forgotten Problem

Children enrolled in half-day kindergarten receive less instructional time, likely experience a narrowed curriculum, have less time for experimentation and exploration, and enjoy fewer opportunities for play. - New America's Laura Bornfreund

Morning Video: Fordham Panel On Turnarounds

Carmel Ninety-minute video of Monday's panel featuring Carmel Martin, Checker Finn, Andy Smarick, Jean-Claude Brizard (here)

Thompson: An Attempt to End Our School Wars

Former Chief Accountability Officer of New York City SchoolsJames Liebman's Education Week Commentary, "Ending the Great School Wars," takes a step towards a framework for understanding our educational civil war.  

He argues that "the real fight" is between three methods of rejecting central mandates and promoting school-level autonomy. 

But which of the three is the right one?

Alas, it's not the one Liebman endorses. 

Thompson: The Meaning Of The NAACP Education Plan

Nothing in our educational civil war is more painful to educators than the divisions it has caused within the civil rights community. We seemed to hit rock bottom when Jonah Edelman, the son of civil rights heroes, was videotaped bragging about his assault on Chicago teachers. 

So it was reinvigorating to hear his father Peter Edelman and other civil rights leaders, declare that it is time to stop attacking educators and tackle the real issue—poverty. Even better, the NAACP recently issued Finding Our Way Back to First,  a four-part education policy proposal that would extend school hours and years in school, improve preschool programs, better target spending for the neediest of students, and improve teacher training and evaluations, while recognizing the inherent flaws with value-added evaluations. 

I still can't understand why value-added evaluations were taken seriously as a tool for helping poor children of color. For the life of me, however, I cannot understand why liberals could not agree to reject that failed experiment, as we commit to the NAACP's proposal.-JT(@drjohnthompson) image via.

Morning Video: Brookings Choice Event Feat. Bobby Jindal

Here's the 90-minute video from Tuesday's Brookings event, and a link to highights.

Labor: What Do Reform Groups Think About Michigan?**

Asked if they have a position on "right to work" laws like the one that just passed in Michigan, natioanl school reform organizations like DFER, 50CAN, and Stand For Children all said they had no position one way or the other.

I found this interesting but not surprising (except perhaps in the case of DFER, which is nominally Democratic).  Education reform groups like to keep focused on a narrow set of education policy issues, and from their perspective asking them about labor issues is like asking them about health care reform or what to do with Syria.  

There's also a precedent.  As you may recall, the reform groups generally followed the Obama administration's lead and stayed in the background when lawmakers stripped collective bargaining rights from some public employees in Wisconsin two years ago.

The lone exception -- perhaps you won't be surprised -- was the Sacramento-based StudentsFirst, which responded with the following comment via email.

*See SF email and follow-up clarification below.

**SF clarification #2: "We've been clear that we support the right of workers to collectively bargain"

Cartoons: Anything But Teaching

Everyone wants to be involved in education, but sometimes it seems like nobody wants to teach. Via Scholastic Administrator.

Reform: Rhee Calls For State Law To Bolster LA Agreement

Following up on yesterday's LA Times article describing the recent LAUSD-UTLA agreement on teacher evaluation as a "major victory" for the union, former Washington DC schools superintendent Michelle Rhee is describing the tentative deal as"falling short in many ways" and citing it as an example of the need for a "strong statewide policy governing teachers' performance evaluations."

Read below for Rhee's statement, provided via email.

This isn't the first time that Rhee has urged districts and states to enact tougher teacher evaluation laws.

Charts: Poverty Hurts US Students More Than In Other Nations

Page 4 of the new NAACP report

People: Longtime Gates Staffer Heads To College Board

Stefanie Sanford, one of the few Gates Foundation staffers going back to the Vander Ark era, is heading off from the foundation to the College Board after nearly a decade with Gates.

The College Board sent out the announcement yesterday (here).  The Gates Foundation sent out the following comment via email:

“We are excited for Stefanie as she enters this next phase of her career as a member of the College Board’s executive team,” said Allan Golston, President of the US Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  “We will miss her as a foundation colleague, but are heartened to know that she will continue to use her tremendous talents, energy, passion and dedication to ensure our country’s youth have the opportunity to earn a quality education and succeed in life.” 

Anybody know the impetus behind the move, or what the College Board is aiming to do by adding Sanford, let me know.  You can read her official bio here.

Bruno: You Call It Indoctrination, I Call It Effective

At the end of an otherwise interesting post on trends in teacher training, Bruce Baker takes an unfortunately-phrased swipe at new, Relay-style ed schools.

The problem with these GSEs dedicated to training already-affiliated teachers is that they are "focused primarily on ideological & cultural indoctrination," according to Baker, who points specifically to one of Relay's instructional videos that I've discussed before.

It's fine if Baker is skeptical of the merit of Relay's program, but describing it as a form of indoctrination seems to me to confuse aesthetic objections for substantive criticisms.

After all, one person's indoctrination is another person's effective instruction.

Thompson: A Shoddy Study On Teacher Retention

The Washington Post's Emma Brown, in Study Chides D.C. Teacher Turnover,  reports that the TNTP, which was founded by Michelle Rhee, asserts that the D.C. schools do not retain enough "irreplacable" teachers but they are doing a better job of removing ineffective ones.  

The TNTP report, titled Keeping the Irreplaceables in D.C Public Schools, acknowledges one problem - that Rhee's IMPACT evaluation system is the fourth most important reason why top teachers leave.   And, as Dana Goldstein notes, up to 40% of D.C. teachers turned down IMPACT bonuses in return for giving up their seniority protections -- indicating a lack of trust in the district.

How did the TNTP try to address the all-important question of whether D.C. is unfairly evaluating teachers in high-poverty schools?  That's where the real action is.

Reform: War On Drugs = War On Schools?

I'm not generally conspiracy-minded or even mildly persuaded by the folks who say that there's some sort of war on teachers going on in America today, or even a war on teachers. But I have to admit that there were some chilling moments for me watching last night's Charlie Rose segment on the war on drugs, including a clip of David Simon explaining the financial incentives that skew the attentions of street cops and police departments towards drug arrests and another segment in which one of Rose's guests describing how the Southern Strategy (get tough on crime, disparate enforcement and punishments for certain crimes) became so popular that Democratic lawmakers starting espousing it along with the Republicans and working-class Southern whites for which it was originally intended. 

Only now, 40 years later, are they realizing what a mess they created.  Click here.  It's the final segment. Andrew Solomon was also on, and addressed the Horace Mann sex scandal that came out last winter.

Bruno: High Standards Or The Right Standards?

"High standards" is one of those educational phrases that gets thrown around a lot without actually meaning much; if higher standards are always better then there's no reason not to start teaching calculus in preschool.

Nobody favors "low standards" in education, they just disagree about what standards are appropriate in different situations. Framing the debate as about "high standards" vs "low standards" only serves to gloss over reasonable differences of opinion.

And so it is with the Education Sector's new report finding that "High Standards Help Struggling Students."

Even if we assume that the authors have successfully identified more than correlation, what the report mostly illustrates is that talking about "high standards" in general terms is not very useful.

Update: Goings-On At Green Dot

So there was a handful of Green Dot-related news that came out yesterday, including (a) word from USDE that its Race to the Top application had made it to the final 61 after the initial round of reviews, (b) news from Green Dot founder Steve Barr that Green Dot NYC (or whatever it's officially called now) received a "fat" A grade from the NYC DOE (phat?), and (c) word via a Green Dot press release and LA Daily News story that Barr had resigned from the Green Dot board on which he's remained all these years since he and Green Dot split.  (LA Daily News, KPCC).

I'm not really sure of the significance, if any, to the resignation, given that Barr has moved on to a new venture, Future Is Now, which is focused on NOLA.  The Green Dot NYC school has been transferred over to FIN.  Perhaps there was some sort of flare-up, though Barr says that he just has too many other monthly board obligations. Perhaps the press release was an indication of the remaining ill will Green Dot CEO Marco Petruzzi feels towards Barr, though Petruzzi says it was just SOP.  Perhaps I'm just making a mountain out of a molehill.

Previous posts:  Green Dot & Steve Barr Finalize Their "Divorce", The Book I *Should* Have Written, Back To Locke High, Unsolved Mysteries Of Locke High & Green Dot, 

Thompson: "Insiders" Voice Disregard for Educators

The Whiteboard Advisor’s latest Education Insider survey provides the best news for public schools since the 2012 election, which was the best news for teachers and students since the Chicago strike. A survey of policymakers, thought leaders, and association heads  found that only 12% on these insiders believe that the teacher evaluation laws that were passed in the last three years will be implemented intact. 

Rather than asking themselves why they ever thought test-driven evaluations was a good idea, however, many of these “reformers” blame teachers for successfully opposing policies that we (and most scholars) believe are wrong.  Some of the insiders made Mitt Romney’s response to his defeat seem gracious. They blamed their defeats on the "NEA and the rest of the blob,” unions that “speak out of both sides of their mouth,” “educrats and knownothings,” and unions that “get the uninformed out.” Another commented, “Sad to see all the defeats for reform… Reform is show politics for candidates. It’s not serious, even for Obama and Duncan. For the folks with special interests, it’s all serious business. This is why unions and educrats are beginning to run the show.”

Bruno: Baseball Analogy Doesn't Help LIFO Understanding

How should a professional baseball team go about laying off its employees and trimming its operating expenses? I have no idea - I don't even like baseball - but Chad Aldeman is sure that because seniority-based layoffs would be a bad idea for a baseball team, they must also be a bad idea for a public school district.

Aldeman does admit that "the parallels aren't perfect" between a baseball team and a school district, but the real problem is that it's not even clear what parallels there are.

Baseball teams and districts are very different organizations with very different goals operating in very different contexts. They're so different, in fact, that it's not clear why we'd even want to compare them in the first place.   Yes, baseball is a very physical sport so it sounds scary to have players who are "older" or not "healthy," but what does that really have to do with teachers? And are we really equally clear about which teachers and which baseball players are the best or most promising? Unfortunately, Aldeman fails to point to any but the most superficial similarities between the professions.

I'm generally skeptical about LIFO and a fan of analogies. Analogies, however, are typically only helpful for understanding phenomena that are difficult to think about literally and when we are clear about where the analogy is strong and where it breaks down. This particular analogy does not seem to meet those criteria. - PB (@MrPABruno) (image source)

Reform: Learning From The Gay Rights Movement

You probably won't learn much you don't already know reading David Denby's profile of Diane Ravitch but this article from the most recent New Yorker (Love on the March) about the evolution of the gay rights movement and gay culture includes some useful reminders and insights in there for anyone interested in education:   

1) Things can change a LOT in 20 years.  Twenty years ago, gay marriage and gays in the military were discussed but somewhat hard to imagine, and now they're here.  This can be true for education, too -- for better or worse.

2) Gay advocates disagreed vehemently over whether to focus on gays in the military and gay marriage -- and some still do. The education movement writ large is full of similar divisions -- as have been the environmental, labor, civil rights, and repro rights movements.

3) There are generational and stylistic differences in the gay rights movement, with the views and priorities and strategies preferred by one group seeming to be anachronistic or ineffective to the next group. Ditto education. 

4) Setbacks, pushback, regression -- whatever you want to call them  -- have marked the long history of the gay rights movement, and will likely (already has?) marked the school reform effort.

Morning Video: Election 2012 Postmortem At AEI

Panelists: Kristen Soltis, Rick Hess, Andy Rotherham, Andrew Kelly, Zakiya Smith, Alyson Klein.

Afternoon Video: Revisiting Camika Royal's Summer Speech

This is the eight-minute video you may have heard about over the summer but may not have seen, in which TFA '99 alumna Camika Royal urged incoming TFA teachers to be "swift to hear, and slow to speak. It was picked up by Gary Rubinstein and then Diane Ravitch, briefly taken down, then quickly restored: 

 

While some (including those most likely to comment below) have wanted to hear only Royal's admonishment to TFA and its alumni, her remarks also include a call for dramatic improvements to American public education.  Reformers may not have (yet) improved public education at scale, Royal and many others have noted, but they're not responsible for many its long-standing failings, either. Read the transcript here.

Update: The Narrow Absolutism Of Diane Ravitch

I was surprised to see that Diane Ravitch commented on my recent paper about TFA, HQT, and the use of political power - but then I realized that she hadn't actually read it, or if so only for narrow ideological purposes.  (She did the same with my book about Locke High School, for what it's worth -- boiling the story down into a single "turnarounds don't work" sound bite.)

In her very brief post, Ravitch describes my TFA paper as a piece about "how TFA has managed to have unusual influence inside the Beltway," but that's actually not what the piece is about.  Exactly the opposite, really.The piece is about how TFA for a long time lacked any real Capitol Hill chops, and still exercises its power mostly in the narrow pursuit of programmatic interests (appropriations, authorizations related to TFA). 

I pointed this out in the comments on her site last night, and the comment has been removed.  What's it like, I wonder, for Ravitch followers when she does things like this?  They must cringe a little bit, then justify it as only what reformers have done to Ravitch.  Some might argue that I've done her wrong as well for my heartfelt but skeptical post about her evangelical change of heart.   

People: School Matchmaker Wins Nobel In Economics

As you may have heard, one of this year's Nobel laureates in economics is Al Roth, currently at Stanford, who among many other things has helped several school districts figure out how best to match parent preferences and school spots in places like Boston and New York City -- formally called "market design." (Getting to know Al Roth).  I know, I know, economists are the bane of education policy.  But hey, at least it wasn't Fryer (joke!).

Roth works on markets for kidneys, tailors, and med school applications, but he's got a fascinating blog that touches on school district choice issues pretty regularly. Like Lucy Bernholz's blog on philanthropy, it's visually ugly (Blogspot!) but full of much more insight and expertise than a 100 of the education blogs you probably read. Some recent posts:  School choice in the news again in Boston, New zones in Boston Public School choice, New Orleans School Choice: bringing one application process to all schools, Forecasting school enrollment in Los Angeles.

I emailed a bit with him last year, and he was kind enough to share some papers that you might find interesting (see below).

Books: "Some Of My Best Friends Are Black"

Thursday night I got to see the new documentary, "Prep School Negro," which raises important questions about the unintendend effects of scholarship programs, and had the chance to learn a bit about  new book called Some of My Best Friends Are Black, Tanner Colby's look at integration efforts and the conversation white Americans aren't having.

Thompson: Reflections Of A Recovering Reformer

Recovering state schools administrator Andy Smarick explains in a new blog post that his political experience has provided a new appreciation for "Reform Realism," which was advocated in 2008 by Mike Petrilli and Checker Finn. 

Government service has taught Smarick more about "the terminal dysfunction of urban districts than the efficacy of competition," he writes in Crime, Punishment, and the Edu-Alamo. "We’ve had tests and reporting requirements in too many states for too long concomitant with little to no student improvement for me to believe any longer that transparency and accountability are the levers we need."  

Ironically, Smarick's conclusion could have been predicted by his intellectual hero, Nobel laureate Tom Schelling. Smarick links to Jonathan Rauch's brilliant "Seeing Around Corners," in the Atlantic Magazine (2005).  Although the reading is even tougher going than Smarick's prose, it is worth wrestling with Rauch's explanation why the social engineering known as school "reform" never had a chance. JT(@drjohnthompson) Image via.   

People: Race To The Top Guru Leaves USDE

Earlier this week, Mike Dannenberg has left the USDE for a job at the Education Trust. 

Matt Gandal (right) has left the USDE for a job at Education Strategy Group.

Gandal was at Achieve for a long time, and before that the AFT.   More recently, he was heading the USDE's Race To The Top implementation group.  

No word yet on how the Department is going to handle that key activity going forward.  Amanda Whalen?  Maybe it's already happened, or they're waiting until after the election.

 

Quotes: This Isn't A Policy Problem -- It's A Political One

This is not rocket science. But it is hard political work. The political will to meet the needs of children whose needs have never been met, is tremendously hard. –Terry Grier, Superintendent, Houston Independent School District

Quotes: "A Magical Drawer Of Effective Teachers"

There’s a lot of rhetoric in ed-reform now that says if you just cut the teachers you can open up a magical drawer of effective teachers, pull them out and stick them in. I have not been able to find that magic drawer. –Roland Fryer, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, at a recent Hamilton Project conference.

Bruno: Teacher Pay, Part 2: How High Should It Be?

I previously discussed Chad Adelman's complaint that teacher pay often rises with experience, but I'm also doubtful about another point that he raises: that teacher pay may be too high. (Alderman is definitely not the only person to be making these arguments; it just so happens he combined them into a single post very recently.) Adelman writes about Chicago teachers:

The other thing that’s worth pointing out here is that every step of the Chicago teacher salary schedule did better than inflation. Inflation increased a cumulative 18 percent from 2005 to 2012. Beginning teachers in Chicago saw their pay increase 26.5 percent. Because of those late-career raises, teachers with 14 years of experience were paid 28.3 percent more, and teachers with 25 years of experience were paid 31.6 percent more.

Reform: Chicago Delays Unified Charter-District Application

This year's application process in Chicago was supposed to feature a unified application process, timeline, and unified website.   That's what NYC, New Orleans, Boston, and Denver have for all or part of their systems, many of them using the same outfit to make the process work.

But that isn't happening for another year at least -- due in large part to concerns from charter schools about the district's ability to handle the system.  

That leaves Chicago parents who are willing to endure the process to pore through roughly 15 different kinds of schools, and seven different applications (not including charters).  It's only recently that parents can apply to some kinds of schools online rather than by mail or in person.

The process in Chicago is almost comically complicated, and the supply of high-performing schools -- district and charter -- remains woefully low.  One result is that roughly two out of three white, college-educated parents send their kids to private or parochial schools.

Coverage: Chicago parents: Get your [multiple] school applications ready WBEZ, Ready, Set, Apply…. for the 2013/2014 school year! cpsobsessed, CPS opens application process for selective, magnet schools Catalyst.

Thompson: Take A Breather, School "Reformers"

The Fordham Flypaper's Mike Petrilli says that reformers are ready to take "a breather." In "What's Next on the School Reform Agenda?" Petrilli writes, "Like a snake that's just swallowed a deer, most reformers (and the education system itself) simply can't take anything else on right now."

He then lists pension reform, digital learning, teacher preparation, and principal licensure as areas that some members of the PIE Network see as the next waves of reform.  I am not qualified to say much about pensions or digital learning proposals, so, in contrast to reformers who love to micromanage areas where they have little practical knowledge, I will remain silent on them.  But, I agree with Petrilli that teacher preparation is "a natural outgrowth of reformers’ obsession with teacher evaluations," and the second area raises the question, “are principals the new teachers?” It sounds like an effort to do to principals what they have been forced to do to teachers. 

Petrilli then makes the sensible suggestion that the next wave of reform should be finance reform.  I have doubts about much of Petrilli's proposal, but that is not the point.  School reformers should shift their attention to issues that they are qualified to analyse.  Let them bone up on state governance issues and get involved with macro finance debates, while avoiding micro issues in the types of schools that they never attended, and classrooms where they have little or no experience.-JT(@drjohnthompson) Image via.

Quotes: Correlation, Meet Causation

No, correlation does not imply causation, but it sure as hell provides a hint. - Slate via @kevincarey 

Thompson: The Promise of "Clustering" in Scaling Up Reform

Mass Insight's In The Zone offered a thoughtful response to “Common and Uncommon Ground,” a guest post at Rick Hess Straight Up by Neerav Kingsland and me. It also previewed its new report on the potential of “clustering” in order to scale up school improvement.  Mass Insight argues for:

A “Smart District” of the future, focusing on changing systems and structures so as to give schools more power to focus on the classroom level. Districts would create clusters of high schools and their feeder schools, bringing in Lead Partners to cover administrative and operational support for these clusters, and allowing central office to monitor performance, set standards, and serve as the go-between for federal and state agencies.

Clustering, I believe, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for systemic reform.  Until we hold clusters of school accountable, charters will remain free to focus on relatively easier-to-educate low income students and dump the most traumatized children on neighborhood schools.  Clustering, alone, will not force reformers to heed the research of the Consortium for Chicago School Research and Paul Tough which explains the additional challenge of improving schools with the most intense concentrations of extreme poverty. But, it could slow the “creaming” of more motivated students that has damaged neighborhood schools.

Reform: The Internal Battle Over Charter Schools

Today's Emily Bazelon piece in Slate about district-charter cooperation in New Haven sounds pretty cool as these things go -- a teacher exchange between the district and a charter network that seems to be a  win win for both parties.  

I'm told that something similar is going on in Denver, with three CMOs helping train district teachers to become district principals.  

But the article reminds me that there's a second, behind-the-scenes battle going on over charter schools in addition to the public one going on out in the open between districts and charters.  This second battle is basically taking place between charter school operators (CMOs, state associations, charter ideologues) and charter school reformers (a more diffuse group including authorizers, think tank folks, and a small subset of high-performing operators).  

It may be more important than the one going on out in public.  I'm not sure the good guys are winning, or seem to have much of a chance.  Basically, charter school reformers have lost control of their movement. 

Advocacy: State Advocacy Groups Talk Policy - Not Tactics

If I wasn't headed to my high school reunion in Chicago I'd probably be skulking around the annual PIE Network conference being held this year in Minneapolis (and for the first time seeking public attention).  

PIE is a fascinating creation, made up as it is of new and old state advocacy groups and born from five Washington DC think tanks who realized that their papers and pontifications weren't having much effect out in the real world (much less on Capitol Hill, which they continue to treat as a grimy cousin). 

As you can see from the agenda, the event will include speakers familiar (Mike Johnston, Don Shalvey) and not so much (Jamie Woodson, Tennessee SCORE, Anthony Kim, Education Elements). Along with lots of foundation and advocacy group folks, there's even going to be an NEA member there (Maddie Fennel, NEA). They're going to talk about the growing role of states in the NCLB waiver era, turnarounds in the post-SIG era, and charter school quality.  Once again, Rick Hess will be doing his standup act.  

All in all, pretty standard, wonky policy stuff.  Somewhat disappointingly, there's no Dirty Tricks Workshop on the official agenda, nothing about How to Hack the Speaker's iPhone.  Interestingly, there is a panel about engaging teachers in reform, but nothing about the breakout ed reform issue of 2012, parent empowerment.  That's policy, too, isn't it?  Or maybe they consider that tactics, which I'm told is handled at another separate event.

Thompson: Reforms Should Be Based On Evidence, Not Faith

Sara Mead's Education Week blog entitled "The Problem With Demanding Proof on Teacher Evaluation" went to the heart of the reason why not-ready-for-prime-time "reforms" provoked the Chicago teachers strike.  Mead argues, "One of the weirder memes I've seen going around the last few days is the notion that 'the real problem here is that there's no evidence the teacher evaluations Rahm Emanuel wants to put in place work.'" She then acknowledges that it is "by and large true that there's no evidence that the evaluation system proposed in Chicago will improve student achievement."  Like so many "reformers," Mead sees nothing wrong about conducting risky experiments on teachers and students. But in her next post, "Value-Added is Not a Magical Black Box," she takes their faith-based logic even further.  She ridicules the idea that the architects of experimental statistical models should have consulted with teachers while designing them.  Then, she argues that "experts," alone should engineer systems ranging from air conditioning to buildings' structure.  However, would Mead feel comfortable in a building where its structural engineering calculations were not tested?  Only in education would outsiders demand that theoretical systems should be imposed before research is conducted as to whether they make sense.  We teachers are used to the "Fire, Aim, Ready" approach to school improvement.  The so-called "teacher quality" movement, however, has taken the evidence-free school of reform to its illogical extreme.-JT(@drjohnthompson) Image via.     

Nonprofits: Schnur Starts A Hybrid Education Group

Right under your noses, while you weren't paying attention, the ever-present but never quite seen Jon Schnur has created a new school reform organization called America Achieves, and assembled a Seal Team 6 of education operatives to join him.  Michele Jolin.  Bethany Little.  Wendy Kopp.  Dave Medina. Mike Johnston as a board member. Melody Barnes as an advisor.  My grad school girlfriend. Other people.  Bloomberg, Gates, Arnold, and Noyce for funding.

As you may recall, the former Gore education advisor started New Leaders and then served as a policy advisor on the Obama education team.  Schnur formally left New Leaders a year and change ago, but wouldn't say exactly what he was up to next.  (A book.  Family time.  I'll call you back, he always said. Or maybe I was supposed to call him back.) For a time, there were murmurings about a new outfit called Proof Points. Then, in less time than it takes a Senegalese street vendor to whip out the umbrellas on a rainy day, there was America Achieves.  

America Achieves.  What does that even mean?  Is it a statement of fact ("America achieves about as well as some small European countries.")?  Or is it an imperative ("America achieves, or dies!")?  I have no idea.  There's a Broad-esque fellowship program for superintendents -- and teachers.  There's a Rising Leaders Policy Program (ie, Velociraptors Boot Camp). There's some Common Core, natch.  A West Village address with easy access to the PATH train (and, probably, a secret tunnel to the local Equinox).

 Worth noting: America Achieves does not look to be set up as a pure advocacy group, and doesn't seem like it's going to be a pure think tank, either.  I'd call it a nonprofit consulting firm, with some services and leadership development angles.  

Quotes: "Stop Behaving Like Ninnies"

Neither these nor any other policies are likely to have any meaningful effect unless the adults that purport to care about education stop behaving like ninnies.  -- NSVF's Benjamin Riley on teacher recruitment

Social Media: How Reformers Got Crushed Online In Chicago

Mainstream coverage and commentary might have skewed towards Rahm Emanuel's side of the issue, at least initially when it came to the substance, but on social media, teachers and reform critics crushed the Board of Education, City Hall, and reform supporters. 

This blog post tells you about the work of Kenzo Shibata, CTU's social media director: Social media acts as megaphone and sword in CTU strike (Chicago Public Radio)  Kenzo and his kind were more active, much more impassioned (annoyingly euphoric towards the end), and -- for better or worse -- much much more willing to be mean.  

Did it make a difference?  Made it feel different, at the very least, for the bloggers and journalists working online.

Maher: Not Every Alternative Certification Program Is TFA

This is a guest post from NCSU's Michael Maher (@mj_maher):

In early 2013 the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) will release it’s National Review of Teacher Preparation Programs.  Few of us in teacher education expect to fare well, regardless of the quality of our programs and candidates.  A quick glance at their website makes clear where they stand. 

Yesterday, Education Week reported on the findings of the Task Force on Educator Excellence in California.  That task force reported a staggering decrease in the number of teaching credentials issued from 2004 to 2010 and the number of students in teacher preparation programs dropping by 50%.  Undoubtedly, statistics such as these and reports written testifying to failing teacher preparation will once again lead to an increasing call for more “alternative certification” programs.  

Before making any such move, however, policymakers should understand that alternative programs are no longer few and far between, don't necessarily differ from traditional programs as much as may be assumed, and aren't all of the same high quality.

Thompson: School Reform As A Kind Of Wonky PTSD

As you may already have read here and on other sites, education writer Paul Tough said in a recent interview  "I think education reform has probably hurt the very poor.” The author of How Children Succeed argues that "the better-off portion of low-income kids are more likely to find alternatives [like charter schools]. That leaves the original schools more concentrated in their disadvantage, and thus even worse learning environments.”

What you may not have heard about yet is Tough's analysis of how and why school reform took the course it's taken -- and what can be done about it.

Tough's book takes us on a comprehensive tour of cognitive and social science, while describing the limits of contemporary school reform efforts, finally explaining why reformers took the wrong path. "The War on Poverty left some very deep scars on the well-educated idealists who waged it, creating a kind of posttraumatic stress disorder on policy wonks.” 

This contributed to a movement which, to borrow a phrase from historian Larry Cuban, “deputized” teachers as the driving force in fighting poverty.   Tough writes, “education reformers have mostly united around one specific issue: teacher quality.”  He terms it as “an article of faith” for reformers. 

Five Best Blogs: Chicago Contract Too Soft, Say Reformers

School reformers complain Chicago teachers deal too generous - Blogs On Politics - Crain's Chicago Business ow.ly/dOnFK

Fighting irrelevance with fire | The Economist ow.ly/dOaWF #5bb via @whet

Arne dances with the kids, Sen Bennet nearly goes Man Down at the :26 mark ow.ly/dOa9l #5bb via MP1

"Shame on MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, and Willie Geist" says John Wilson Unleashed ow.ly/dO6JS #5bb

Joe Nocera has no idea what he’s talking about!ow.ly/dO5Wh the daily howler #5bb

How to Fix the Schools - Nocera interviews Marc Tucker in the NYTimes.com ow.ly/dO47q via @robertpondiscio #5bb

A teacher's rant again Taylor Mali [and his famous poem, What Teachers Make]ow.ly/dNHLS #5bb