|
Opinion and News Analysis
Opinion: Yearning to break free
By Chester
E. Finn, Jr., Terry Ryan,
Emmy
Partin, and Jamie
Davies O’Leary
Education in Ohio, as in most of the country, is coming to
terms with a challenging “new
normal,” as Arne Duncan calls it—the prolonged period ahead when schools
must produce better results with diminished resources. The Buckeye State faces
a daunting budget shortfall over the next two years, the resolution of which
will powerfully affect K-12 education, which now consumes about 40 percent of the
state’s money. And Ohio’s situation is far from unique.
Yet schools—in Ohio and beyond—can produce better-educated students on leaner rations so long as their leaders are empowered
to deploy the available resources in the most effective and efficient ways,
unburdened by mandates, regulatory constraints, and dysfunctional contract
clauses. That’s the message that comes through loudest from a new survey of the
state’s school superintendents. And again there’s no reason to believe that
Ohio’s situation is unique.
While governors and lawmakers are responsible for balancing state
budgets, it is district and school leaders who must make their schools work on
tighter resources while still boosting achievement and effectiveness. Over the
past year, as the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has organized various
discussions, conferences, and symposia across Ohio on the big challenge of
“doing more with less” in K-12 education, we’ve been privy to innumerable
comments—usually off the record—by superintendents and school leaders along the
lines of, “We could survive these cuts if we had real control over our
budgets.” They called in particular for greater authority to manage their spending
on and deployment of personnel. Many even said that enhancing that authority
was more important than receiving more funding.
 |
These school leaders don't view lack of funding as the central problem with K-12 education...it's 'how and where the money is spent.'
|
|
| |
|
| |
 |
Due to political sensitivities, few of these leaders attached
their names in public to such comments. But when the door was closed, they voiced
them over and over. Keen on opening that door to the public—without making
trouble for individual superintendents—Fordham enlisted the FDR Group to
undertake a careful survey of Ohio superintendents and other public-education
leaders.
Yearning
to Break Free: Ohio Superintendents Speak Out, released today by Fordham, shows
that superintendents understand the scale of the fiscal challenges that the state
and its districts face, and they crave the authority and flexibility to make the
tough calls necessary to see their schools through budget cuts while also
helping their students to succeed.
Further, the report shows a major disconnect between the people who
teach in our public schools and those who lead them. While many teachers and
other school employees resist education reforms that might affect them, especially
changes to collective bargaining laws, superintendents recognize the need for
such fixes. In fact, they’re hungry for them.
Indeed, it’s the realm of collective bargaining and related
“personnel management” issues where district leaders most ardently seek change.
Seventy percent favor the abolition of “step and lane” salary increases while a full 80 percent believe state law
should be changed to make it “easier to terminate unmotivated or incompetent
teachers—even if they are tenured.” As for statutory “last hired, first fired”
requirements, two-thirds of supes called for their repeal.
 These school leaders don’t view lack of funding as the
central problem with K-12 education. Even
in today’s tightening fiscal environment, just 37 percent say the real challenge
is “that too little money is spent on the schools.” Instead, 52 percent say
it’s “how and where the money is spent.”
To that end, they want greater management authority,
particularly in high-need districts; 73 percent of urban and 60 percent of
economically disadvantaged districts opt for “significant expansion of
management authority over staff” rather than “significant increases in school
funding.”
Superintendents say that, if state leaders want academic
achievement to rise in a time of austerity, they must give district and school
leaders more autonomy. By an overwhelming 72 to 14 percent margin, they say
increased authority would result in measurable improvements in achievement, not
just efficiency. Moreover, they are so confident that they can deliver better
student achievement that nearly eight in ten (78 percent) favor linking their
own pay to improved outcomes – in exchange for greater authority over
staff.
Among other survey findings:
- Superintendents
support testing and accountability. Fifty-seven percent believe that evaluating
schools and districts based on how well students do on standardized tests and
publicizing the results is a good thing.
- They
believe that Ohio’s teacher-licensing system (much like that found in nearly
every state) fails to assure good instruction. Almost none say “that going
through the licensure process in Ohio guarantees that a teacher is
well-prepared to succeed in the classroom.”
- Superintendents
accept some blame for the imbalance between managers and staff, with 55 percent
agreeing that there have been labor issues where “the leadership of my
district—including myself—should have done more to hold the line.”
To be clear, untying such state mandates is not solely about
granting flexibility to administrators or saving money. Empowering education
leaders to ensure that the most effective instructors occupy the classrooms
that need them most is critical if Ohio and the nation are to succeed in
boosting the achievement of their children. And the need to strengthen academic
achievement has never been greater, as recent PISA and NAEP assessments
showcase.
In this tumultuous period of drying state coffers,
America must rethink its attack on the stagnation of student performance and
the achievement gap. And district leaders are key to this assault. They are the
educators-in-chief for millions of needy kids, the front-line professionals
responsible for executing state and federal education policies. They are the
decision makers charged with making schools and districts more effective even
as resources shrink. Ohio’s superintendents are ready and willing to lead. They
want the flexibility to do so. So, we strongly suspect, do their counterparts
across the land. Now is the time to give it to them.
|
|
Click to listen to commentary on Fordham's latest report from the Education Gadfly Show podcast
|
News Analysis: Disingenuous Dems
By Michael
J. Petrilli
As Alexander Russo has rightly
noted, many reformers (especially those
of the Democratic persuasion) are struggling to figure out what to say
about Wisconsin (and Illinois and Ohio) and the whole collective-bargaining
muddle. Last week, Joe Williams, our friend at Democrats for Education Reform, offered
a thoughtful, if tortured, take on the issue, ultimately landing at a bizarre
place: that “this attempt to stomp unions out of existence threatens to hurt”
the education-reform movement (check the same link above for more). Andy
Rotherham joined
the chorus, harping that “overreaching Republicans like Scott Walker may
actually be setting back efforts to make some common-sense changes to teacher
contracts.”
Yet these nonplussed progressives miss two
key points. First, the unions’ collective-bargaining privileges prevent the
expansion of the selfsame reforms—from merit pay and rigorous teacher
evaluations to quality-sensitive layoffs—that these Democratic reformers favor.
Yes, teachers “should have a voice,” but they don’t have a God-given right to
bargain for free health care, unaffordable pensions, or Kafkaesque
evaluation protocols. Second, the unions are only likely to offer concessions—on
wages, benefits, teacher evaluations, and more—under heavy pressure. Remember
the 1990s? Arguably it was the Republican drive for vouchers that gave rise to—and
cover for—the charter-school movement. Something similar is playing out now.
Democratic ed reformers should see Governors Walker, Kasich, Daniels, Christie,
and Scott as blessings from on high, for their “extreme” positions can make
DFER’s many bold ideas taste like plain vanilla.
Perhaps, as Rick
Hess noted, Williams, Rotherham, and others are just “triangulating”
between the unions on one hand and the Republican governors on the other.
Perhaps secretly they are rooting for Governor Walker to hold the line, even if
they can’t say so in public. But if they can’t, we will: Putting the unions on
the defensive is the best thing that’s happened in education reform in a long,
long time.
A version of this
piece originally
appeared on Fordham’s Flypaper blog. Sign up for Flypaper’s
RSS feed here.
|
|
Click to listen to commentary on Wisconsin from the Education Gadfly Show podcast
|
News Analysis: Blue-ribbon orator
In the education-policy realm, where the
currency of rhetoric earns followers and acclaim, Garden State governor Chris
Christie reigns as king—and it’s not a bad place to sit. While Reagan had his
“welfare queens,” and Giuliani his “squeegee men,” Christie has his “sprawling
and powerful public-sector unions.” To combat this leviathan, Christie has
found the perfect public rallying cry, well-articulated in a recent New York Times Magazine piece on the
governor by Matt Bai. Through anecdote (and a bit of demagoguery), Christie
explains the link between his state’s fiscal crisis and public-union fringe
benefits—giving himself plenty of room to act. Of course, Christie isn’t the
only education reformer to wage the war of words. Michelle Rhee puts “students
first.” Fordham battles the “status quo” and the “education establishment.” But
Chris Christie, in his own coarse and charismatic way, could teach us all a few
lessons. And, as the war of words melds into the war of ideas, we’d all be wise
to take notes.
Short Reviews
Review: The Nation's Report Card: Science 2009: Trial Urban District Assessment
By Gerilyn
Slicker
The newly released NAEP Trial Urban District
Assessment (TUDA) 2009 results for science in our major cities offer no
condolences: Of the seventeen large urban districts that participated, none
fared better than the national mean. Only three attained the national average
on the fourth grade test (Austin, Charlotte, and Jefferson County, KY); for the
eighth grade test, that number drops to one (Austin). Much more disheartening: Cleveland
and Detroit each claim only 4 percent proficiency in science in fourth grade. As this was the
first NAEP TUDA administered using the newly designed science frameworks,
comparisons to previous assessments aren’t possible. What is possible is to use
these dismal results to spur on a conversation about the need to focus on
strong curricular provision in this key subject.
|
|
Click to listen to commentary on Wisconsin from the Education Gadfly Show podcast
|
Review: Customized Schooling: Beyond Whole-School Reform
By Marena
Perkins
 The back-cover blurb for this book characterizes it as
“ambitious”—and the word couldn’t be more fitting. Within its ten chapters, nineteen
of education’s big thinkers (yes, including Checker Finn and former Fordham VP
Eric Osberg) challenge our basic conceptions of education—starting with the foundational
unit of educational delivery (it’s not the school, but the student). After identifying and explaining this education
customization (or “unbundling”), the book presents the challenges faced around
service delivery, quality control, and policy implications. The authors major
foci are parent choice (at the course-level, not simply the school-level),
differentiated instruction (both the content and the form), harnessing
technologies, and data collection. Throughout, the authors infuse
organizational and district case studies to drive home their points—a necessary
addition as the book itself asks the reader to reconceptualize ingrained
notions of schooling. Customized
Schooling is sure to ruffle feathers—not only does it force readers to
think outside the education-provision box, it asks them to tear apart the sides
and throw them in a shredder. But the conversation it will incite is long
overdue.
Review: Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector's Best
By Janie Scull
The authors don’t beat around the bush: Bad charters
may exist, but so do excellent ones—and the latter should be supported and scaled
to serve exponentially more students. If the top 10 percent of charter schools expanded
at a rate similar to other growing industries, we learn from this PPI study,
they could reach all children in poverty by 2025. To do so, the authors offer recommendations
on how to overcome current practical, political, and environmental barriers to
growth, borrowing strategies from businesses and organizations like Apple,
Habitat for Humanity, and Starbucks. First, they advise that the top charter
providers rid themselves of their “pervasive fear of growth”; leaders should
commit not just to excellence, but to excellence for increasing numbers of
students. Other suggestions include: negotiating performance-based funding in
contracts; ramping up efforts to import talent from other industries and
cultivate it in the education sector; extending the reach of the best teachers
through technology and innovation; providing incentives and rewards for leaders
who achieve successful growth; and aligning with other similar organizations to
share ideas and resources. While some may balk at the stark comparison between
the education sector and other (largely for-profit) industries, this brief may
prove to be the shot-in-the-arm that the charter sector needs to cure it of its
complacency and timidity. The report serves less as a blueprint for development
and more as a call to arms for top charter providers, and as the title implies,
the possibilities are exponential.
From The Web
The Education Gadfly Show Podcast: Rick rocks, Stevie Wonder-style
Mike and Rick compare GOP govs, determining who
is the fairest of them all. They then think outside the box on integration
before debating findings from our recent survey of Ohio supes. Amber dissects
the latest science NAEP TUDA results and Chris ODs on adderall.
|
Click to listen to the podcast on our website. You can also download the podcast here or subscribe on iTunes here.
|
Flypaper's Finest: CAP, Ed Trust, and federal-policy foolishness
By Mike
Petrilli
 Let me say from the beginning that I don’t think
the Center for American Progress and Education Trust are staffed by fools. On
the contrary, their leaders are savvy, courageous, talented people who have
taken difficult stands against the education establishment. No, my headline
refers to the old adage, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on
me.” Because if we embrace the latest CAP/Ed Trust proposal on ESEA, we’re
the fools.…
(Photo by Westside Shooter)
|
Click to read the rest on Flypaper.
|
Flypaper's Finest: Bloomberg loses the thread on unions
By Chris
Tessone
I nearly choked on my morning coffee when I
read this quote from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s New York Times op-ed on public-sector
unions:
But unions also play
a vital role in protecting against abuses in the workplace, and in my
experience they are integral to training, deploying and managing a professional
work force.
Bloomberg made his billions with Bloomberg LP, his
financial data and analysis firm. Are the programmers and financial analysts
there unionized? I bet not.…
|
Click to read the rest on Flypaper.
|
Gadfly Studios: SB5 and collective bargaining in Ohio
Terry explains in real terms his testimony in
favor of Ohio’s proposed collective-bargaining reforms—and the atmosphere at
the statehouse during the hearing. Mighty powerful stuff—especially since the
Ohio state senate passed SB5 yesterday.
Extras
Briefly Noted: Double the salary, double the fun
- Richard Whitmire explains the ins and outs of his Michelle Rhee biography,
The Bee Eater, in the first ever Education Next Book Club Podcast (hosted
by our very own Mike Petrilli). Check
it out.
- No wonder the teacher unions in Wisconsin are fighting tooth and nail. In
the Badger State, fringe benefits are
nearly double the average teacher’s salary, with the public paying 74.2
cents for benefits for every dollar of pay. The corresponding rate in the
private sector is 24.3 cents.
- After overwhelming House,
and subsequent Senate, approval, Obama
signed a measure that, for two weeks at least, would avoid government
shutdown. The stall cuts about $4 billion in spending, funding all but a few
programs at FY2010 levels through March 18. Of the $4 billion worth of programs
axed: Teach For America, Even Start, and Striving Readers, to name a few.
Letters to the Editor: Memories of David Kearns, 1930-2011
David T. Kearns
was a towering figure in American business—CEO of Xerox during its best days,
for one—who cared mightily about education reform (he coauthored a seminal work
in this realm with Denis Doyle back in 1988) and was persuaded by George H.W.
Bush and Lamar Alexander to join their Education Department team as deputy secretary.
Not only did he do a smashing job in that challenging role (before being
semi-sidelined by a particularly awful cancer that he battled for almost two
decades), but he also served as inspiration to many in and out of government. After
learning of
his death last week, Gadfly invited some of his many fans to share their
recollections of this wonderful man.
Leslye A. Arsht
Former Counselor to the Secretary of Education, when Kearns was Deputy
Secretary
It
was impossible, when I heard that David Kearns had passed, not to have a sad,
then bittersweet moment.
David,
who might have coined the “believe in better” attitude, defied death for a very
long time…and he lived his life—post-cancer diagnosis—with the grace, dignity,
energy, and enthusiasm that he modeled before it.… (Read the rest here.)
John Danielson
Former colleague, U.S. Department of Education, 1991-1993
It
was a remarkable time in the history of the United States Department of
Education when David Kearns stepped forward to offer his considerable
leadership on behalf of America’s children. Halcyon days, indeed, when all were
present for the routine 9:00AM staff meetings during his time. … For me, I
think now of the marvelous tribute Churchill paid to FDR. He said that “knowing
FDR was like experiencing your first taste of exquisite champagne.” The vividness
of David Kearns and his singular vintage will live on for a very long time.
(Read the rest here.)
Barbara R.
Davidson
Former colleague, U.S.
Department of Education, 1991-1993
Probably
the most indelible image David Kearns made on me was when, in my first week on
the job as White House liaison, I was presented with the dilemma of bringing
onboard a young staffer who had blown the whistle on unethical behavior at
another federal agency and, having lost his job as a result, was looking to
join the team at ED. Despite the good impressions he made on many of the senior
staff he interviewed with, no one had yet bit the bullet on offering this young
man a job—so I went to David and presented the situation: Could we take a leap
of faith and bring him on board, hoping he’d make himself useful? David looked
at me and said, “I think he did the right thing and deserves a break.”… (Read
the rest here.)
Denis P. Doyle
Coauthor (with Kearns) of
Winning the Brain Race and co-founder of Schoolnet
…One of my most enduring memories
of David is emblematic of all that he was: the courtesy he extended to everyone
he met, from doormen and cab drivers to captains of industry and heads of
state. He was a true small “d” democrat, as good a listener as a talker, a
problem solver not an ideologue and, it goes without saying, a devoted husband
and father as well as a fine friend.
Several years ago, I was asked to
introduce him before a large audience gathered to honor his accomplishments and
could think of no more apt comment than Hemingway’s famous observation: courage
is grace under pressure. So it was with David.
Oh David, we hardly knew ye… (Read the rest here.)
Announcement: Walton's world
The Walton Family
Foundation’s Systemic K-12 Education Reform Team is on the hunt for two
education program officers. Those with a passion for education reform, who can
analyze, think critically, and understand emerging education-reform issues,
step right up. The complete job description, as well as application directions,
can be found here.
Announcement: New positions open at NAPCS
The National Alliance
for Public Charter Schools is searching for a vice president for external
relations and a senior director of communications. Interested parties should be
both creative thinkers and skills tacticians, with track records of
entrepreneurial leadership. For a full job description of either position,
email recruit@publiccharters.org.
Announcement: AEI on the right track
Join four prominent
scholars, including Fordham’s Mike Petrilli, at AEI on March 7 from 3:30-5:00PM
for a thought-provoking debate on the merits of student tracking. For more
information, or to RSVP, click here.
Announcement: Sing with the caged bird
The Maya Angelou
Academy, a first-rate charter school focused on juvenile detainees, is
searching for a new director. Interested parties must have strong leadership
skills, youth development experience, and an interest in fostering a committed
school culture. Learn more about the position or apply here.
Fordham's featured publication: Stretching the School Dollar: A Brief for State Policymakers
This policy brief lists fifteen concrete ways
that states can “stretch the school dollar” in these difficult financial times.
By addressing state mandates around teacher tenure, “last hired, first fired”
policies, minimum class sizes, and more, states can free local leaders’ hands
to make smart, courageous cuts and do more with less. In other words, this
challenging climate is an opportunity to make some real changes in education. Want
to read even more? Check out Fordham’s book
by the same name.
|
