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Dictators are bold, all right…

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Cross-posted from the Failing Schools blog.

Yesterday, Van Schoales of Education Reform Now published a piece in EdNews Colorado imploring local candidates for mayor to consider “bold” ideas like mayoral control of DPS.

Mayoral control is particularly challenging for Denver because of the Colorado constitution but it seems worth more of a public discussion given the increasing dysfunction of the Denver school board, which is likely to get worse, and the ever-increasing need for more quality public education in Denver…

One possible step for the next Denver mayor to consider, short of controlling DPS, might be to charter schools in collaboration with the Charter School Institute, a local university, or doing it independently.  Obviously this would take legislative action but it is worth considering given the dire state of education in Denver.

Now, I agree that there are problems on Denver’s school board. Some school board members seem not to understand their role vis-à-vis the school district, and rather than listening to all of their constituents, considering all of the facts at hand before making momentous decisions, or performing any meaningful oversight of district activities, they’ve decided it’s their job to help district officials push their specific “reform” agenda.

But the solution to this is more democracy, not less. I applaud efforts to increase school board member accountability through the electoral process, as well as other signs that the people most affected by their decisions are beginning to mobilize. If too few people vote in school board elections or pay attention to what they do, then we need to engage and energize the electorate– not silence them further!

Anyway, I see two main problems with mayoral control. First, there’s no strong evidence (repeated assertions, yes, but little evidence) that it has been successful. In some of the highest-profile experiments, it’s actually been quite problematic. For instance, in New York City, the much-hyped test score increases used to justify Bloomberg and Klein’s contentious approach to leadership were mostly the result ofsteadily declining standards for what constituted proficiency. Once the bar was raised again, proficiency rates plummeted. The city’s performance on the NAEP hasn’t changed at all– and none of that even considers broader questions about students’ growth as critical thinkers or citizens, or the impact of constant school turmoil on the social and emotional health of the students, teachers, and parents subjected to this punitive style of “reform.” Similar statements can also be made about Chicago, where test score increases coincided with lowered standards and turnarounds merely shuffled kids around different schools instead of meaningfully improving their prospects or the schools themselves. (Others who’d like to pile on examples for other cities, please be my guest. Where my DCfolks at?)

The second problem is much larger. Even if there were an unequivocally strong track record of successful school turnarounds under mayoral control, legally eliminating checks and balances is a dangerous thing to do. Just as mayoral control might make it easier to make positive changes in the system, mayoral control would also make it easier to make negative changes in the system. Are we truly silly enough to believe that each and every politician who comes to office is virtuous enough to deserve such absolute control over schools? Do we seriously believe that any single person and their small group of advisors are so perfect, and so knowledgeable of every single issue that affects their constituents, that they should be empowered to make sweeping unilateral decisions? We know politicians can be swayed by powerful, well-financed people and organizations whose interests don’t align with the public good. (Financial deregulation and Wall Street fraud, anyone?) Why make it even harder for everyday citizens to overcome that influence?

Yes, it might be bold to radically increase executive power, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. No individual or group is perfect. We need to constantly engage with each other, and disagree, and be willing to see where we might be wrong or right in order to generate good, sustainable plans for progress.

Here’s my message to those considering mayoral control in Denver or anywhere else: If your ideas cannot bear the weight of fair, open, and vigorous discussion amongst all stakeholders, they have no business becoming policy.

And if you cannot listen, consider, question, reason, and collaborate with the people charged with carrying out important policies, you have no business being in charge of anything.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Posted in Governance, Politics | 12 Comments »

Portfolio districts: An invitation

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

One of the more prominent reforms in insider circles, if not in popular discussions, is the so-called “portfolio strategy.” The strategy varies from district to district, but the basic idea is for the central administration of the school district to shift from the conventional bureaucratic model to a newfangled portfolio-manager model, whereby the district runs some schools and independent operators run others.

All the schools would be subject to closure or conversion or turnaround if they fail to meet performance expectations – in much the same way that a manager or a portfolio of securities would dump a poor-performing stock in favor of a more promising one.

Denver is among the districts that have gravitated toward the portfolio model, but it’s places like New Orleans, NYC, DC, and Los Angeles that have really been in the forefront.

Alas, that about exhausts my knowledge of the reform. But I plan to learn more on Friday, September 24th, when the EPIC policy center hosts a panel discussion with two researchers who have recently written about the reform.

Katy Bulkley has the definitive book on the topic coming out next month with Harvard Education Press, co-edited with Jeff Henig and Hank Levin, called “Between public and private: Politics, governance, and the new portfolio models for urban school reform.” She’ll be joined on the panel by Ken Saltman, who authored a largely critical policy brief earlier this summer that looked at the underlying research (or lack thereof) concerning the strengths and weaknesses of the portfolio approach — called, “Urban School Decentralization and the Growth of ‘Portfolio Districts.’” An earlier and much more sympathetic description of the reform model is offered by Paul Hill and Robin Lake over at CRPE.

This will be the first of two panel discussions that we will be hosting at CU-Boulder on the 24th; I’ll write about the second topic in a follow-up post here.  If you’re interested in attending, please visit here to learn more and rsvp.

For the portfolio discussion, in addition to Bulkley and Saltman, we’ll be joined by Vincent Badolato, the VP of Public Affairs at the Colorado League of Charter Schools, who promises to ask the panelists some tough questions. (Vinny, who I’m proud to say is a former advisee of my mine at CU, wrote a very nice piece on teacher data systems in Colorado, published on our site here.)

Popularity: 4% [?]

Posted in Governance, Reform, Research | No Comments »

Loco control

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Defeat often begets a scapegoat.  In the wake of the twice-short Colorado application to R2T, this has now solidified: the judges were “perplexed by local control” which led to a lack of objectivity. This is a familiar refrain — them pointy-headed Eastern elites jest don’t git the way things work out West, what wid our frontier sensibilities ‘n all.  So local control is the Western value we refuse to sacrifice to appease these high-fallutin fiscal brutes.

Except I think it would be prudent to entertain, at least briefly, one small possibility:

Um… What if they are right?

Colorado has 178 independent school districts, and the differences in size are staggering.  Using CDE data (Fall 2008), let’s look closer at these 178 districts that contain over 800,000 students:

  • The average district has 4,560 students.  But because there are a few large districts and a lot of small ones, a better metric is median district size, which is just 603 students.
  • The largest district has over 85,885 students, the smallest has just 54.
  • 106 (60 percent) of districts have fewer than 1,000 students. 79 districts (44 percent) have fewer than 500 students.
  • The largest 10 districts combined house 56 percent of total students.  The smallest 100 districts combined house 4 percent.

Now, say what you want about Eastern elitism and impenetrable Western values, but these numbers show a control system that is loco, not local. When the median school district contains just 600 students — the same size as many urban schools, it’s not local — it’s microscopic. We are, after all, the United States, not Cities, nor Towns.  But for school districts, we somehow ended up with micro control — the Districts of Individual Buildings (and not very large ones at that). Is it really so wrong to dock points in a competitive competition for this system?

The most lucid discussion on R2t and local control was from Robert Reichardt who makes several excellent points and highlights a central contradiction. Reichardt writes that Colorado “can’t draw that straight line of authority from the Colorado Department of Education to classrooms” and this bumps up against the pervasive belief that ”top-down command and control is the way for states to get things done in school system.” This, in turn, discriminates against Colorado’s local control system which is a “tight-accountability, loose-compliance model.”

But I don’t buy it: R2T was geared to move many districts away from command and control systems, and favored “tight-loose” models (for example, charter school expansion). Moreover, Colorado is clearly a national leader with the Innovation Schools Act which provides school-level autonomy within a broader system of district accountability.  So the conventional defense — that it is the reviewers judgment, not our system which is at fault — rings hollow.

There are, of course, plenty of ways to have a “tight-loose” system, but when a super-majority of 60 percent of  school districts have 1,000 students or fewer and combine for fewer than 5 percent of Colorado’s student population, I think it fails a basic logic test, and I don’t need to blame a complicated judging system. That two of five judges took off significant points for this actually makes sense to me.  Colorado’s single largest school district has more students than the combined population of the 136 smallest districts.  So forget the technical arguments for a minute, and let’s admit that our district arrangement is nuts.

Now I’m expecting (and encourage) some worthwhile discussion here, and I am certainly no fan of large school bureaucracies, but I have yet to encounter a single person who, given the choice, would set up Colorado’s system of local districts in the same way.

Yes, local control has somehow become a given in Colorado, and any change seems off the table of discussion  – not because it has merit, but simply due to the same old education demon of politics. Maybe in the wake of the R2T decision we should take a hard look at what the Western value of local control could mean, instead of what it is. Because schools districts of 600 students it ain’t.

And Colorado already has an interesting model – the Charter School Institute (CSI) which is not counted among the traditional 178 districts, but governs 19 schools and 5,728 students in various regions across the State.  CSI has a different organizing factor: It is the district for numerous charter schools, regardless of location. As a district, it groups its schools by their governance structure (charter), not by location.

Because the idea that geography is the primary defining characteristic of any organization has been in decline for almost 15 years, yet it remains the single way we define school districts.  What would happen if we instead, like CSI, organized school districts around something other than geography?  Could we not have a single governing body for the 79 school jurisdictions with 500 students or fewer (which would comprise a total of 19,000 students)?  Could we not have one for schools receiving increased autonomy under the Innovation Schools Act (which might even encourage more to do so)?

For many of the 41 middle-sized districts with between 1,000 and 5,000 students, should we consider school districts that encompass factors other than geography — whether it is instructional emphasis, grade levels, or something else?  This would not be mandated — schools could have the choice of belonging to their geographic district, or finding a district model that would provide better services and support.

For my guess is that many of those 79 jurisdictions with 500 or fewer students actually have a lot in common, and might benefit from not creating 79 versions of many similar things.  In fact, I bet most of the smaller districts have more in common than many of the schools clustered within larger districts (for example, what does the selective-admissions, 10 percent FRL, Denver School of the Arts high school have in common with open-enrollment, 95 percent FRL Cheltenham Elementary?).

Perhaps the R2T decision offers one of those moments where we can look at a legacy system with new eyes. If we were to preserve the idea of a “tight-loose” system, could we have a more sensible method of local (not micro) control districts structured around something other than geography is one thought.  Any others?

–
8/31: Paul Teske’s posting from almost two years ago deserves more prominent placement than his comment below. It’s a good read, and one wonders why this obvious issue was somewhat glossed over during R2T.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Posted in Accountability, CDE and state board of ed., Governance, The national stage | 6 Comments »

Here’s a concept: Charter cities

Monday, June 21st, 2010

The idea behind charter schools is to break free from the accretion of bureaucratic and institutional constraints in the world of education that make it difficult to operate an effective school.  And, in practice, many charters (like DSST, West Denver Prep, KIPP) now provide shining examples that low-income students can learn and perform well, despite the various disadvantages they face.

Paul Romer’s idea is to break the institutional constraints of poorly performing countries, by introducing charter cities into their geography.  This idea was recently highlighted in the Atlantic Monthly’s ideas issues:

And it had previously been discussed in forums like Freakonomics.

While critics appropriately point to some potential problems with the idea (it looks like neo-colonialism, what if regimes change or wars break out?), the idea is fascinating.  Basically, a first world country, or consortium of such, would agree to govern a small piece of geography, perhaps a city, in a third world or developing nation.

The institutions, rules, regulations, and laws, and their implementation, would all be from the first world.  Citizens of the developing nation would be encouraged to move to the charter city and try our business and other entrepreneurial ideas in that environment.  The hope is that this would provide an example of success, and would spread beyond the initial limited geography.

It is almost like trying to reproduce the historical accident of Hong Kong near China.  It might also have the advantage of encouraging migration to these areas, rather than to the first world countries that are often increasingly hostile to such in-migration from developing nations.

Of course, the big question with successful charter schools now is whether they can replicate and scale up.  Charter cities, if they can get a toe hold (and Romer has a few countries quite interested) would provide an even more fascinating scale up question.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted in Governance | No Comments »

Pondering the role of school governance

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

We’ve heard a lot about publicly elected boards of education lately.  OK so it was just one, but I’m also curious about charter boards of directors.  Maybe some charter school folks would comment.

As the Denver Green School Partnership took shape, we considered applying for a charter.  There were several reasons we decided on a different path but among them was our concern about recruiting and retaining a productive board of directors.  We’ve heard stories about boards turning and driving a school into the ground or turning it into something alien to its original purpose.

On the other hand, I have to imagine that high functioning charters have a productive, or at least not destructive relationship with their boards.

Maybe some of the stories are overstated or even apocryphal.  Maybe it happens rarely enough that it need not dominate planning for probable futures.  We are involved in defining our governance model and I’m very interested in how different approaches play out in practice.  I guess my interest is mostly academic since, as I mentioned, we’re already well down another path.

But it’s something I think it’s very important to wonder about.  I believe the quality of the adult interactions around a school and the quality of the interactions between adults and kids have a profound and mutual impact on each other.

An important finding from complex systems theory shows that analogous patterns of interaction appear at different levels of organization.  That suggests that if we want teachers and students to have respectful, differentiated and optimally developmental relationships, we should establish the same conditions in our adult interactions.

To say that it’s the culture I think misses the opportunity to investigate a variable we don’t know a whole lot about.  Governance should provide structure to facilitate the desired culture rather than demand it and create an uphill battle to get it.  It should be the path of least resistance (that’s not to say it’s not work to move down that path) rather than pushing a rock up a hill.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted in Governance | 2 Comments »

Moving toward portfolio management?

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Yesterday the University of Colorado at Denver’s School of Public Affairs — along with the Piton Foundation, Donnell-Kay Foundation, and my own Independence Institute — co-hosted a conference centered around the theme of school district “portfolio management”. The event featured an array of presenters and respondents, none more prominent than the two national “rock stars” — CRPE’s Dr. Paul Hill and NACSA’s Greg Richmond.

I’m not even going to feign claims of understanding all the ins and outs of the issue, nor do I plan anytime soon to play a portfolio management expert on TV. But I did find some of yesterday’s conversation thought-provoking. Denver Public Schools clearly has taken some steps toward this new model of:

  • Less hands-on school board governance
  • Performance-based accountability
  • Proactive effort to provide a menu of schools to meet the community’s diverse educational needs and demands
  • Equitable treatment of traditional, charter, contract, and other innovative schools

But more than one person asked how to apply the portfolio management model to other districts: small and medium, suburban and rural. Though as far as I can tell it’s not a question that’s been researched in depth, Dr. Hill especially offered some thoughtful, constructive answers.

It’s clear that the political will is lacking to implement such a change outside the urban centers because a sense of crisis has not been reached. All too true of many reform efforts. With the economy still slumping and tax revenues restricting growth in government budgets, the approaching crisis may be in taxpayer confidence.

Robert Reichardt raised a significant question on the closing panel: Essentially, how should school governance look so communities feel like tax dollars are well spent? He and I agree the answer there lies in genuine and useful across-the-board transparency — a vast improvement from today’s compliance-oriented administrative system.

Now yes, it’s going to take more than reworking the existing role of local school boards to effect successful reform. Expanding the supply of quality instruction — both through personnel and technology — is vital. So is making funding less restrictive and more student-based.

Yet while we’re having those debates, a creeping crisis of confidence may demand (in more districts and communities than we think) that public education would be served better by a portfolio-based system than the existing bureaucracy. What levers of state policy can be used to help spread the bold vision of a more nimble education system, and put it into practice?

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted in Governance | 1 Comment »

NY charter study: What districts can do

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

There is a lot of noise around the evaluation of charter schools, and a paucity of good data, which makes most comparisons of little use.  That is starting to change.

One of the problems in gauging the effectiveness of charters is the comparative group.  Charters are generally open-lottery admissions; critics claim that their students self-select, advocates believe that the schools do a better job educating kids.  The best way to test that theory would be to compare the students who applied and were randomly accepted with a group who applied and did not get in. There is no self-selection among applicants.

In NYC, a comprehensive eight-year study by Stanford professor Caroline Hoxby was just released. Here is (more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Posted in Achievement gaps, Governance, School choice | No Comments »

Policy Discussion: School Leadership Team

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

The recent descent into labels (union-basher vs. union-apologist) seems deeply counter-productive.  I personally would rather discuss specific policies, not people or entities. I don’t doubt that people on all sides of the issues have good intentions. So let’s look at some very specific policies in the DCTA agreement and perhaps we can exchange opinions and ideas on how they might be improved, or if they need improvement at all.

I’ll start with one (not the most controversial) that has always baffled me: the School Leadership Team (SLT). Here is the language from the DCTA contract:

5-4 School Leadership Team.

Each school will have a School Leadership Team (SLT) consisting of the principal, the association representative, a teacher appointed by the principal, and a minimum of 3 teacher representatives who should represent a cross section of the faculty including grade levels, specials, department chairs and special service providers. These (SLT) members are elected annually by a majority of the faculty voting by secret ballot. The SLT will seek to operate in an environment marked by mutual support and respect.

The SLT will make decisions by consensus. A consensus is either a unanimous decision or a majority decision that the entire SLT, including the dissenters, will support. If consensus cannot be reached, the matter shall be referred to the Instructional Superintendent who shall consult with the Association prior to making a decision. The SLT will meet regularly. [...]

The decisions the SLT is in charge of extend (page 11 of the DCTA agreement) to school improvement, professional development, and instructional policies and practices. Major policies of a school are at the purview of a six-person committee, of which five members are usually teachers. Decision-making is required to be unanimous (I don’t see how a dissenter supporting a decision is different, although I admire the lingual construct).

At the heart, I think this structure essentially eliminates accountability from governance.  The principal, nominally in charge of the school, has 1/6 of the voting power. The vaulted appeal to other “stakeholders” does not include parents, external experts, community groups, etc.  Students have essentially no voice.

Second, all decisions are consensus and unanimous.  I believe in consensus when possible, but anyone involved in them knows difficult decisions are rarely unanimous.  Government, school boards, universities, non-profit organizations – I know of no other body that requires that decisions be supported by all elected members. Even ESOPs (employee-owned companies) have a decision-making hierarchy. This is a recipe for avoiding any controversy or hard choices.

The only other institutions I know with similar structures are essentially political in nature (the UN comes to mind).  Even these tend to make decision by majority vote, and dissension is regarded both as essential to the process, and not reason enough to derail action.  In addition, these institutions have little to no operating authority at the communal level – but a school is fundamentally an operating entity.  Even the UN, when it embarks on a peacekeeping mission, puts someone in charge.

So, is an SLT the best governance model by which to run a school?

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted in Accountability, Governance, Teacher unions | 10 Comments »

School board elections

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

With Denver’s school board elections inching closer – with at least two open seats and four seats total to be decided – a recent election in Los Angeles may serve as a harbinger:

Candidates backed by the teachers union won Tuesday’s contested races for the Los Angeles Board of Education, but they will answer to not only the union but other powerful political forces, including the city’s mayor and backers of charter schools.

It’s not clear to me that the candidates are correctly portrayed by the division of union v non-union – at least one seems to have a wider base of support, including charter advocates.  But with the potential for a majority coalition elected at one sitting this November, Denver should pay attention.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Posted in Governance, Teacher unions | No Comments »

A divisive idea in Boulder County

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

There are rumblings emanating from Boulder Valley School District, and they don’t have anything to do with exploding tofu factories or yoga studios.  Rather, the hubbub is due to a parent petition that would split the district right down the middle. 

The move is opposed by district bigwigs, including the superintendent and the president of the school board, and for good reason.  Splitting the district would not only be logistically onerous, but it would compromise the quality of one of the best school districts in the state.

BVSD is surprisingly diverse.  It’s 55 schools are spread over 500 square miles, and encompass affluent Boulder enclaves, newer suburbs, working class neighborhoods, and mountain towns.  The petition highlights an ongoing conflict in Boulder and other districts throughout the country.  A natural tension exists between the parents, usually white and affluent, who are deeply involved in their children’s schools, and the district and community at large, who are charged with providing a high quality education to all kids in the district, not just those who happen to live in wealthier areas. 

While it is laudable for parents to be involved in their kids’ schooling, too many parents are getting caught up in the “me first” thinking that creates systemic inequities in the first place.  Splitting BVSD would magnify the educational inequities that already exist in the district.  For example, while the district’s CSAP scores typically exceed the state average, its achievement gap between white and Latino students also ranks near the widest in Colorado.

Rather than Balkanize a high-performing district, Boulder Valley’s parents should work to make sure that every child in the district has access to a high quality education, whether they live in a two million dollar mansion on two room apartment.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Posted in Achievement gaps, Governance, Integration | 1 Comment »

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