Education News Colorado Opinion & Commentary

A sterling example of community-driven reform

Jeanne Kaplan — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:55:15 +0000

Editor’s note: Jeanne Kaplan is a member of the Denver school board.

Since I was first elected to the Denver Public Schools Board of Education in November 2005, improving our middle school programs has been a top priority.

As noted in Jeremy P. Meyer’s Denver Post story of Thursday, August 19, 2010, some of our middle schools are making academic and enrollment gains of which we can be proud.

However, Mr. Meyer’s story about Hill Middle School does not tell the whole story, so I would like to elaborate on its success.

In 2003, Denver taxpayers voted for a mill levy specifically to revitalize neighborhood schools in areas where schools were underperforming, under enrolled and not meeting neighborhood needs.

Hill Middle School was one of the first recipients of this money, and as we can see, it has used this money and its plan to become a resounding success.

Hill’s enrollment has grown from just over 52% capacity in 2006 (A+ Denver statistics) to close to full capacity with a waiting list in 2010. Its test scores have soared since 2004.

The Hill community worked very hard to determine and define what the preferences of its community were. It worked together in a very collaborative fashion with teachers, parents, administrators, and neighbors.

It determined that people wanted an arts and technology focused program with honors classes for all students who could qualify. It did not want to have a magnet program, but rather wanted a school that accepted all interested students, and it wanted a school with a good selection of electives.

The committee also placed a high value on being able to walk or bike to the revitalized school. The parents involved in this process have worked tirelessly to develop a middle school program with high expectations and equal opportunities for all.

Hill Middle School is an example of a very successful community-driven reform. It is highly unlikely that the academic gains and the attendance gains would have been as pronounced without the revitalization efforts, funded by the Denver taxpayers and implemented by a local school committee responding to the wishes of its community.

Is revitalization of neighborhood schools the only route DPS should be taking? Of course not. But then, neither should community-driven reforms be overlooked as viable solutions for struggling schools.

Congratulations to all of the Hill community for taking charge of its successful turnaround strategy.

From the publisher: Shine a light

Alan Gottlieb — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:48:56 +0000

Over the past many years, we have been inundated with articles, columns, essays and rants about the widening red-blue divide in this country. People on one side of the divide can no longer even fathom the perspective of people across the way. We are a long way from reconciliation.

I’m afraid a similar chasm has opened in the world of public education. On one side are people who favor data-driven accountability, school choice, autonomy and pay-for-performance (to name a few issues). I’ll call them (somewhat inaccurately) “outsiders.” On the other are “insiders,” those who feel that market-based reforms and an over-emphasis on testing constitute an assault on public education and specifically on teachers.

Rhetoric on both sides is tilting toward invective. Name-calling is crowding out dialogue. The pitched battle earlier this year over Colorado’s Senate Bill 191 – now the educator effectiveness law – exemplifies the tenor of the debate.

An ongoing Los Angeles Times series, “Grading the Teachers,” provides the latest flashpoint in this escalating rhetorical war. The newspaper hired a researcher and crunched seven years of data from standardized tests to create “value-added” scores for 6,000 third- through fifth-grade Los Angeles Unified School District teachers.

This week, the Times published a searchable database that allows readers to find any L.A. teacher in grades three through five and examine his or her value-added score. Is this teacher, by this measure, getting below average, average or above average test score growth from his or her students?

Some teachers’ scores are based on multiple years of data, some on just a couple. Any teachers in the proscribed grades who taught 60 or more students between 2002-03 and 2008-09 were included.

The L.A. school system has had this data for some time but has never released it to teachers – who might have used it to reflect on their practice. This is one reason the newspaper decided to make the information public.

Leaders of local and national teachers’ unions responded with varying degrees of outrage. Some trotted out the canard that the paper was “anti-teacher” because it chose to make public this potentially embarrassing and methodologically questionable data.

Fred Klonsky, a Chicago teacher and popular blogger wrote:

“For these reporters and editorial board, there is no complexity in assessing student performance that a series of tests and growth scores can’t simplify. It is simple enough that based on their results they are willing to put the names of teachers who don’t match up to the reporter’s expectations in their article.

“This is a shameful act of attempting to humiliate teachers. It is teacher bashing at its worse (sic). They treat teachers like Johns busted for hiring a prostitute. Why not publish their home addresses and phone numbers?

“Watch out. That’s next

Meanwhile, some leaders of the “outsiders” were over the moon. Charter school advocate and hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson said on his blog:

“I have no doubt that it will be among the most important and influential education-related articles of the year. This is breakthrough journalism.”

And education journalist John Merrow wrote on his blog:

“I applaud the Times for bringing this to the forefront. I worry that it could be a step backward if it merely heightens the significance of scores on bubble tests, but that’s a risk worth taking…

“So rather than boycott the LA Times, I say we should all subscribe. And we should turn up the heat on administrators who refuse to set and maintain high standards for their teachers, and on unions that don’t work hard to give teachers opportunities to be excellent.”

Even as Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other prominent “outsiders” backed the Times, the paper itself published the database last weekend with a somewhat defensive explanation:

“Although value-added measures do not capture everything that goes into making a good teacher or school, The Times decided to make the ratings available because they bear on the performance of public employees who provide an important service, and in the belief that parents and the public have a right to the information.”

And there were prominent voices of moderation in this debate. Even some prominent education voices usually associated with the “outsiders” flinched at the Times’ decision to publish teachers’ names and value-added scores. Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute wrote:

“I have three serious problems with what the LAT did.

“First, as I’ve noted here before, I’m increasingly nervous at how casually reading and math value-added calculations are being treated as de facto determinants of “good” teaching…

“… Second, beyond these kinds of technical considerations, there are structural problems. For instance, in those cases where students receive substantial pull-out instruction or work with a designated reading instructor, LAT-style value-added calculations are going to conflate the impact of the teacher and this other instruction…

“…Third, there’s a profound failure to recognize the difference between responsible management and public transparency. Transparency for public agencies entails knowing how their money is spent, how they’re faring, and expecting organizational leaders to report on organizational performance. It typically doesn’t entail reporting on how many traffic citations individual LAPD officers issued or what kind of performance review a National Guardsman was given by his commanding officer.”

So here’s where I come down on this. The methodology may be imperfect. Some teachers can’t be evaluated based on value-added criteria. Yes, some embarrassment will result.

Still, this information serves the public interest. If we could get similar data from Denver or any other school district, I would be inclined to publish it.

I’m no longer the parent of a school-aged child, but if I were, I would want this kind of data as I chose a school and possibly even a classroom for my child. Yes, this information will make principals’ lives more difficult, as pushy parents demand spaces for their kids in the most effective teachers’ classrooms. But isn’t parental engagement what we all want?

Arguments against the release from people like Hess are reasonable and give me pause. There are a number of red flags here. But then “insiders” like Klonsky make arguments so specious that it makes me think the more we know the better, even if the information is far from perfect.

Here’s what started bothering me during the SB-191 debate, and continues to fester. Some (nowhere near all) “insiders” – teachers and teacher advocates – have made the following arguments at different times over the past few months.

Anyone who wants to use imperfect, emerging data systems as part of a teacher evaluation system is by definition hostile to teachers.
Standardized tests, in any event, don’t measure the stuff that really matters.
Any form of evaluation that has a public component, or is released publicly represents a deliberate effort to shame and humiliate teachers.
Any school that is not part of the traditional public system and shows results above and beyond those of similar schools from within the public system is teaching to the test and creating automatons lacking critical thinking skills. Their students won’t succeed in higher education, and these schools aren’t the promising models “outsiders” claim they are.
Teachers get all the blame when the main challenge to student success comes from disengaged parents and unprepared kids. There’s only so much teachers can do given the raw materials with which they must work.
Anyone who hasn’t been a teacher can’t have a legitimate point of view about how to reform public education. And those former teachers who have become philosophical “outsiders” are corporate toadies and sell-outs.

So the message I’m getting from these folks is that only they know what constitutes good teaching and learning. It isn’t measurable in any traditional sense, but real professionals know it when they see and feel it. If only all the buttinskis from foundations and community organizations and non-profits and the media would let teachers teach, and give them adequate resources, everything would be dandy.

History shows these arguments to be naïve and ignorant at best, disingenuous and dishonest at worst. I’m still waiting for specific, affirmative, measurable ideas and plans from the faction of people who hate what’s happening now.

So far all I’m hearing is why everything Obama, Duncan, Bloomberg, Klein, Vallas, Bennet and Boasberg are trying is an unconscionable attempt to dismantle public education.

We’d all like to see better neighborhood schools and more money, wisely spent, for public education. So, “insiders,” how, exactly, do we get there from here?

I eagerly await your responses.

The shortcomings of value-added modeling

Kevin Welner — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:43:23 +0000

Hello EdNews readers. I’ll be checking in occasionally with blog entries here focused on new and worthwhile research. For this first blog, I want to point you to a research brief published on Sunday by the Economic Policy Institute.

The piece, with the dry but informative title of “Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers,” is authored by an extremely impressive collection of accomplished researchers. If you read nothing else about education this week, please read the three-page executive summary (then continue on and read the rest!).

Before discussing this research brief, I want to re-introduce myself. I teach school policy and law at the CU Boulder School of Education, where I also direct the Education and the Public Interest Center. In my blog entries here, I will try to point readers to useful resources on the EPIC website in addition to resources – like the new Economic Policy Institute brief – from other places.

The main point of the EPI research brief is straightforward: while value-added modeling (VAM) is a technical advancement that highlights student growth, the numbers generated are nevertheless too inaccurate to be used as a primary factor in making high-stakes decisions about teachers. That is, if someone tells you that a teacher is good or bad based on a VAM calculation, you are wise to take the judgment with a sizeable grain of salt. This is the same warning that I — with far less impressive credentials — issued a couple years ago, as did the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year.

The full EPI research brief does a great job explaining how and why high-stakes VAM policies cannot be supported by VAM itself. But there’s one quote and one illustration/study that I want to pull out of the brief, to hopefully entice you to read the entire thing.

First the quote:

“There is simply no shortcut to the identification and removal of ineffective teachers” (p. 20).

As I write these blog entries throughout the year, I could probably begin each one with, “There is simply no shortcut to…” In part, this reflects the complex nature of schooling, but it also reflects the sad state of policymaking, where politicians and others are so easily enticed by the quick fix.

The replacement of ineffective teachers with effective ones is unquestionably a worthwhile policy goal, but it’s much easier said than done. A policy intended to accomplish this goal would have to reliably (a) identify the ineffective teachers (without wrongly targeting the effective ones), and (b) identify and recruit effective replacement teachers. Also, the policy should accomplish this in a more cost-effective way than alternative possibilities (but given the problems with the first part of this puzzle, we’re not yet at the point where we should worry about such comparisons).

Now for the illustration. I’ll quote from page 2 of the executive summary:

One study found that across five large urban districts, among teachers who were ranked in the top 20% of effectiveness in the first year, fewer than a third were in that top group the next year, and another third moved all the way down to the bottom 40%. Another found that teachers’ effectiveness ratings in one year could only predict from 4% to 16% of the variation in such ratings in the following year. Thus, a teacher who appears to be very ineffective in one year might have a dramatically different result the following year. The same dramatic fluctuations were found for teachers ranked at the bottom in the first year of analysis. This runs counter to most people’s notions that the true quality of a teacher is likely to change very little over time ….

This is scary stuff, but only if used unwisely – only if policy makers give too much credence to the scores. VAM approaches do tell us something; a teacher (or school) whose VAM scores are consistently at the extreme high end of the distribution are very likely of higher quality than those consistently at the extreme low end. So here’s my alternative proposal: use VAM approaches as a first-stage, cost-effective tool that will help inform a more in-depth, second-stage quality analysis. A teacher or school at the bottom (e.g., the bottom 5 percent) in a state or district should be identified for classroom observations, principal evaluation, and other hands-on information-gathering that can lead to a determination of professional development needs or removal/turnover. Similarly, a teacher or school at the top might be identified for further study that might help us learn from successes. This approach has three major advantages:

The ultimate evaluations of teachers and schools will not be made based on the test scores; they will be more thorough and reliable.
The use of VAM here is supportable, since it is not being used to make fine-grained distinctions among teachers, but it does serve as a good tool that allows for a cost-effective use of hands-on evaluation tools.
A teacher will not feel extreme pressure to teacher to the test, since his or her career would ultimately be determined by hands-on observations and other information, not by students’ test scores.

Sadly, the approaches being considered and implemented in Colorado and elsewhere rely far too much on test scores and VAM approaches. We are rushing toward a system of teacher evaluation that is sure to wrongly identify teachers as good or bad, and it will likely be years before policymakers realize and correct the mistake.

A teachable moment?

Paul Teske — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:15:36 +0000

Complaints about some evaluators not fully understanding our true value … a sense that points were taken away unfairly, despite reviewer training in the appropriate rubrics …. evaluators not understanding, and not crediting us, for the things we do well… a sense that someone in a higher position should reverse the injustice. It all feels unfair.

Yes, but, most of these Colorado complaints about the round two R2T scoring could also be applied to premature teacher evaluation based upon the inappropriate use of faulty test score data.

Isn’t there some irony in the fact that some of the folks complaining about unfair R2T scoring of Colorado’s application are also among the ones who turned a deaf ear to, or brushed aside, some of the legitimate concerns about using current test scores to evaluate teachers?

My colleague Robert Reichardt made a similar point in April, after Colorado lost round 1 of R2T. Now we feel twice the pain.

Let me be clear. I support better teacher evaluation and we need to move in that direction, using multiple measures of better and more frequent principal and peer evaluation, and some appropriate use of student test scores.

There are certainly some individuals and groups who have looked for any reason not to advance real teacher evaluation, because they want to preserve the status quo (which is basically no useful teacher evaluation), and I don’t want to support that position. At the same time, there are lots of others who see legitimate problems with the current technology that ties student test results to specific teacher evaluations, and want to proceed carefully, in order to do this right. I was surprised how little attention policy makers gave to that latter group this spring.

As the implementation of SB 191 moves forward into the implementation stage, but now without federal funding to support it, we should keep these concerns in mind.

There are at least four reasons why we can’t now validly and reliably link teacher evaluations to student test scores. When we address some of these elements, we will be able to more fairly and more effectively evaluate teachers.

First, we don’t have good value-added tests. A annual March CSAP test is not good enough (you need a valid beginning and end of year test to the same students whose gain you want to assess), and more than half of Colorado grades/subjects don’t even have the annual CSAP available anyway.

Second, students are probably not randomly assigned to teachers, as this evaluation processes requires. If teacher Jane is known by her principal to be good at teaching students with serious family problems, and thus gets assigned a group of difficult students, and moves their knowledge forward by 0.75 grade levels, while teacher Joan is known to not be good with difficult students, and gets all of the easier ones, and advances their knowledge by 1.0 grade level, who has done a better job? (It isn’t clear that we can, or want to, “fix” this, but it is a reality that skews the data).

Third, one year of data is not a large enough sample to use for a teacher – you probably need 3. Classes of 26 students, with 50% mobility levels that are not uncommon in urban areas, leave 13 students with a particular teacher all year – that is not enough data to make a reliable judgment about teacher quality.

Fourth, lots of good teaching is joint and collaborative, especially at the secondary level. The social science teacher may be as responsible for improved student writing as is the English teacher. We don’t want teaching to only be a solitary practice with no sharing and collaboration.

Added to these concerns, making student test scores very high-stakes will greatly increase the likelihood of outright cheating, as well as more subtle “teaching to the test” (and not the good kind, where people teach the subjects they are supposed to teach, but the overly narrowing kind where you only ask the types of questions known to be on the test).

I won’t try to make this post double-ironic, but among the beauty of Denver’s own ProComp is that it was put together by and with teachers, and advanced by a teacher vote, and it incorporates multiple measures, to recognize that we can’t really nail down a single dimension of teaching to assess and reward. It is disappointing that we couldn’t summon that kind of process at the state level.

To see a different way of handling this issue, Chad Aldeman of the Quick and Ed blog (a strongly pro-reform voice) recently contrasted LA’s handling of teacher data with Tennessee’s approach:

“In contrast, Tennessee has been using a value-added model since the late 1980’s, and every year since the mid-1990’s every single eligible teacher has received a report on their results. When these results were first introduced, teachers were explicitly told their results would never be published in newspapers and that the data may be used in evaluations. In reality, they had never really been used in evaluations until the state passed a law last January requiring the data to make up 35 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. This bill, and 100% teacher support for the state’s Race to the Top application that included it, was a key reason the state won a $500 million grant in the first round.”

Information, evaluation and accountability

Mark Sass — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:55:49 +0000

Get ready to see a cheer from those who oppose any type of student data used to evaluate teachers after a report by the Economic Policy Institute is released late Sunday. The report titled, “Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers,” is already being heralded by anti-test groups like Fair Test. The report is actually a nod to policies like SB191 which state that student data should only play a part in teacher evaluation. This is something that I and other supporters emphasized in our support of the bill. The report says:

“A review of the technical evidence leads us to conclude that, although standardized test scores of students are one piece of information for school leaders to use to make judgments about teacher effectiveness, such scores should be only a part of an overall comprehensive evaluation.”

The report goes on to conclude:

” What is now necessary is a comprehensive system that gives teachers the guidance and feedback, supportive leadership, and working conditions to improve their performance, and that permits schools to remove persistently ineffective teachers without distorting the entire instructional program by imposing a flawed system of standardized quantification of teacher quality.”

I am good with that.

Larry Ferlazzo, who blogs for the Teachers Leader Network, describes such an evaluation system currently in place at his high school in CA. In his blog (as covered by the Washington Post) Ferlazzo describes an evaluation process that is not done “to” teachers, instead it is done “with” teachers. This includes the use of student data that does not drive instruction, but it informs instruction. (I have stopped using the term “data” and in its stead use the term “information,” as “data” has grown into a controversial topic, even an impediment for discussion with many teachers).

Ferlazzo goes on to describe how his school uses multiple forms and types of data that should inform one’s practice. When Ferlazzo had a year of poor test results, the administration did not rush in with punitive measures. They looked at possible mitigating reasons, evaluated whether additional resources were needed and kept up with his usual yearly observations. The following year his students were back at prior year’s levels.

Ferlazzo also relies on colleagues, students, and parents for feedback. Colleagues observe his class on a regular basis, providing feedback on the learning taking place. Note that the feedback is on the learning and not the teaching. Ferlazzo also relies on something that I see missing in many teachers: self-reflection. Ferlazzo asks himself a question that Robert Marzzano asks of teachers: If I was a student would I want you as my teacher?

Ferlazzo sums up his take on evaluating teachers:

“[Evaluations] underscore the importance of providing resources so well-prepared administrators have more time to observe teachers – of making sure teachers have regular opportunities to observe each other and give constructive feedback – of giving educators common time to prepare and evaluate assessments that show higher-level thinking skills – of making it possible for all school staff to engage more with parents. These are the ways we can help teachers become the best that they can be.”

Loco control

Alexander Ooms — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 00:01:39 +0000

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.

Student teaching prep week

Nate Reaven — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:22:07 +0000

I started student teaching today, but I think that instead of discussing this exciting milestone in my life, I would like to offer some exposition to this week. This year we have a new principal at my Wildly Diverse High School (the name I have assigned to my high school where I am student teaching), and as a result many changes have taken place from last summer until now.

In a school that attempts to teach about 3,500 every year, there were 40 new hires, many of which were first or second year teachers. Additionally, nearly every department chair was replaced. Murals were replaced, mottos changed, and ideas altered.

The first day of our preparatory week, our principal gave us an hour-long speech. He said there were problems at Wildly Diverse High School, but that was no excuse. He told us to ignore other responsibilities in favor of doing our jobs – in other words, in exchange for teaching our students. Success for every student does not appear to be just a slogan to him, but something worth striving for – a high, but still reachable goal. I found his excitable, energetic demeanor inspiring.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the talk though, was instead his focus on how to teach. He discussed taking two or three core skills the students need to focus on – tone, square roots, grammar, etc, and pounding those skills into our student’s heads. Teaching our students a little bit is better than teaching them nothing. He discussed how teaching the test was a good thing, a goal, an obvious answer to a question of curricula.

This was the first and most overt example of politicking I have ever experienced for a specific type of educational doctrine from someone who was in a position of authority over me. It was a little off-putting. I do not necessarily disagree with my principal’s philosophy, but I certainly found it slightly off-putting, this explicit educational directional road map for the rest of the year.

Sure, my Wildly Diverse High School has problems – what high school doesn’t? My question is who should be the one to dictate how we are instructed to teach? Administration? Politicians? Teachers? Students? Honestly, I do not know.

All I know is that as I begin my first semester teaching in a real-life school this week, and I am doing all I can to scrap by. Should I be worried about this sort of thing? Should I put my nose to the grindstone and focus on my 104 students? Should I speak my mind and live with the consequences? I am not sure how to assume leadership roles while simultaneously recognizing my role as a teacher with absolutely no job-security. As a student teacher, I haven’t even received a paycheck yet!

This is a tricky balance. Which side do I lean toward more?

We can’t win

Robert Reichardt — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:29:59 +0000

Colorado can’t win; that is lesson of the Race to the Top (R2T) competition. Actually the lesson is that states that can’t enforce compliance by schools are not going to win in national competitions. This means Western states where local control means something very different than in does east of the Mississippi will always be left out. (Hawaii is a singular case with a single statewide school district).

At the same time, Colorado districts have proved they can innovate with the best of them. Two Colorado districts (DPS and St. Vrain) won in the much more competitive Investment in Innovation (I3) competition where there were 49 winners out of over 1,600 applications.

It is not that Colorado lacks the ideas or the innovators at the state level, but when we can’t draw that straight line of authority from the Colorado Department of Education to classrooms, we won’t win…at least as long as the current top-down perspective on how education systems work prevails among education thinkers and leaders.

The problem is not just that the bureaucrats at the Department of Ed don’t get the West; the reviewers don’t get it either. The scores for both of our R2T applications showed wide variation among reviewers. This means Colorado’s tight-accountability, loose-compliance model is understood and supported by only some in the corps of evaluators. A significant number of education thinkers and leaders believe that top-down command and control is the way for states to get things done in school systems, regardless of how far that drifts from reality.

Colorado and the rest of the West will never win unless we can make the case that the tight-accountability, loose-compliance model can support innovation and improve student outcomes. This should not be a hard case to make.

The success of Colorado districts in the I3 competitions as well as the innovations from our charter school sector clearly show the benefit of being firm on outcomes but loose on means. The fact that the U.S. Department of Education continues to support charter schools while also pushing top-down models suggests there is (or at least should be) a debate in their own hallways on valid theories of action at the district and state level.

So what do we do next? There is plenty of work for everyone.

For our Washington representatives (that means you Sen. Bennet and DPS alum now Senior Advisor in the Department of Education Brad Jupp), repeat every day: “Local control is different in the West” and “Students are well served when schools and districts are allowed to innovate.” Equally important, if the reauthorization of NCLB moves towards more competitive grants, do not set up Colorado to compete with other states. Focus the competition between districts and schools, where we can win.

The research and journalism community must get better about explaining how local control looks in the West and that it is not a bad thing for kids. We all know that the words “local control” often are used to stall reform. But researchers need to highlight our successes throughout the state and show that with accountability for outcomes local control also can lead to innovation, creativity, and better outcomes for kids.

The foundation community should continue to support Colorado reform AND support those researchers, journalists and bloggers who can make the case to the nation that we are different from the East Coast and that our students are better off for it.

Finally, the education community must demonstrate that we can raise student achievement and close the achievement gap in Colorado. Our reform plate is full with new standards, teacher evaluation systems, and approaches toward low-performing schools. If we try to do too many things without enough resources, we are guaranteed to fail. We should slow down on teacher evaluation systems and focus on getting classroom fundamentals right by ensuring that teachers are implementing curricula that are aligned with our new standards.

AND we all should remember the core lesson from this: Stop trying to compete with other states. We can’t win.

Federal grant sweepstakes: An insider’s view

Alex Medler — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:53:54 +0000

Many people in Colorado are angry, frustrated or just confused after the U.S. Department of Education passed over Colorado while awarding grants in the Race to The Top (RTT). After a similar loss in round one, Colorado made advances in the last legislative session that were politically painful to achieve, but repeatedly praised and defended because they would help Colorado’s chances at winning this competition.

Nevertheless, the state managed to rank only 17 out of the 19 finalists. After the Feds decided to award only 10 grants, friends in Colorado are asking, “What’s up with that?”

A few assertions appeared throughout this process that deserve a response. Over the last year, I have repeatedly heard statements such as the following:

“But President Obama and Secretary Duncan want to support all our reforms, and they especially want to help Colorado’s new Senator, Michael Bennet. Since he is such a reform champion, and potentially vulnerable in the next election, surely they’ll help him bring home the bacon to Colorado.”

“This is too important a competition to leave it up to the bureaucrats and some peer reviewers. With 3.4 billion dollars at stake, the political appointees are definitely going to make sure the “right” states win, and we are certainly among the chosen in Colorado. They can’t deny us!”

As these ideas, or more subtle versions of them, were raised over the last year and a half, I have politely tried to explain that federal grant competitions don’t work that way. As a former employee at the U.S. Department, I worked around various national competitions for federal funds that were awarded through similar competitions – albeit for considerably smaller amounts and with lower profile programs and less political stakes involved.

I started out as neither a political appointee nor a career official at the department. I began serving with a temporary expert appointment and eventually I wormed my way into the Department’s career staff where I led the Department’s Public Charter Schools Program.

I’m not a lawyer so don’t ask me to quote the code, but all these competitions are run under the auspices of various federal rules and regulations and within the limitations of the statutory provisions for that particular grant program as they are written by Congress. They are administered by career professionals rather than political appointees. Peer reviewers rank the proposals in a “slate,” with the highest-scoring application at the top and the rest of the applicants listed in order of their score down the list. The funds are awarded to each high ranked applicant in order until the available funds are used up, or until the remaining applicants were ranked so poorly that they were basically determined ineligible.

Keep this piece in mind if you ever apply for these grants. Unless it is in the criteria of the review, the amount applicants ask for is not really part of the decision-making process until after the ranking takes place. Only then do the amounts matter, but only as they are totaled up in a running total as the officials designate grantees further and further down the slate. When they use up all the available funds at the funding levels requested the applicants, a line is drawn through the slate. Those above get what they asked for, and the rest of the applicants are bitter losers.

Political appointees are not allowed to do much beyond provide input into the creation of the RFP and the rubrics, or the writing of selection criteria for peer reviewers. Even the rubrics are subject to the rule-making process, or a set of “generic” criteria are applied for low-profile programs. Once those materials and the list of reviewers are set, the political folks would be violating the rules and regulations if they were making decisions. If they put pressure on the non-political folks to change scores, or if they insist that the career administrators pass over one applicant and award funds to an applicant that was given a lower score, the political appointees (and their bosses) get in trouble. It is juggling of this sort over Reading First that got folks in trouble during the last administration.

But there is one thing that political appointees could have done, or argued for, that might have changed the outcome after the ranked slate of applicants was determined by the application process. They could have tried to argue that the awardees should get smaller grants, which frees up money to award grants to the next few applicants on the slate. However, in this case, that is still extremely unlikely to have helped Colorado get funded. This is because of Colorado’s low ranking in the competition and the Department’s interest in ensuring that these grants be so incredibly big that states would do anything to get them.

An analysis of the states that were competing, their scores in the competition, their student populations, and the size of the awards granted to the lucky winners quickly shows us why any political shenanigans (even the quasi-legal effort to reduce award amounts to create money to fund lower-ranked applicants) were unlikely to have helped Colorado in this case.

The other forms of string-pulling that Colorado may have hoped, or other states feared, would generally produce scandals so distracting, and so potentially damaging to the Administration, that the risk of leaving Colorado – and even Candidate Bennet — without this prize would pale in comparison to the risk of trying to help them unscrupulously.

So if we assume adjusting amounts was the only strategy at their disposal, how could it have worked? It depends on how much states get and whether those amounts could have been adjusted enough to fund Colorado – not likely. Figure 1. below lists awards received from the RTT in the first two competitions, the student populations of each state, and the award amount calculated on a per-student basis (as if every student in the state had a portion of the RTT grant award spent on their education.) In truth, districts are guaranteed only 50% of the total, and how districts spend the money is dictated by the application. But the measure of each state’s student population gives a rough measure of the scale of their education system and the capacity to spend a huge grant like this.

Figure 1.

State	Students 2010	Total Award	RTT Dollars/student
D.C.	58,191	75,000,000	1289
Delaware	114,062	100,000,000	877
Rhode Island	113,066	75,000,000	663
Tennessee	963,264	500,000,000	519
Hawaii	179,897	75,000,000	417
Mass.	799,227	250,000,000	313
Maryland	845,700	250,000,000	296
North Carolina	1,425,076	400,000,000	281
Florida	2,645,680	700,000,000	265
New York	2,730,427	700,000,000	256
Georgia	1,646,010	400,000,000	243
Ohio	1,743,920	400,000,000	229

The RTT was not a formula. It was a competitive program. However, the amount a state could compete for was determined by a crude formula that set broad parameters for possible funds in each round of the competition based on relative state size. Under this formula Colorado was applying for $175 million. All of the awards certainly pass the “ginormous test” by any state’s standards of avarice. However, the variation in the dollars per student raise questions about the wisdom of such a crude formula driving the size of such huge awards.

There is unquestionably much that can be done to improve D.C. or Delaware’s education reform efforts, and maybe there are efficiencies of scale that make reform easier and cheaper in bigger states, like New York and Ohio — yeah, sure. No matter how you cut it, it is hard to argue these tiny jurisdictions need four or five times as much money per student as Ohio (where reform is presumably a pretty cheap and easy affair). But if you’re trying to fund additional states, these relatively excessive amounts for small states don’t help much because the totals would quickly be gobbled up by bigger states ranked higher than Colorado in the competition.

Given this distribution, and even despite regulations and announcements about the amount available to states of different sizes, there could have been room for political pressure. A hypothetical discussion would go like this, “That seems like a lot of money for some of these states. Can they really spend that much? How about if you look at their budget and their proposal and see if there are areas where it is imprudent to give them as much as they asked?”

If the amounts requested don’t match the work proposed, or there was too much uncertainty about such budgeting issues, then the amounts funded would be negotiated by the career administrators and the states. Again, the political appointees don’t get to do this directly. But the political appointees could send serious signals to career staff, and given the scale of these proposals and the rush to get them in, inevitably some wiggle room in award amounts would be possible. The award amounts might plausibly then be reduced to see who else on the slate could be funded.

For arguments sake, let’s say that it was determined that the amount that Ohio actually received per student was a reasonable thing to expect of all recipients – and the original formula proposed in the competition was abandoned in favor of this “little adjustment” to match the Buckeye State. Figure 2 below includes all states that were finalists in the second round, listed in a slate according to their rank. The columns on the right indicate the amount the states would have received if total awards were run by formula, with a per student amount set at the minimum of the Round 2 awards ($229 per student). The far right column indicates the total amount of spending given that per student amount. As we see, if this strategy were pursued, three more states could have been funded within before the total amount available to spend expended was used up (New Jersey, Arizona and Louisiana).

Figure 2.

State Massachusetts	RTT Rank (Round 2 ) 1	Amount if awarded $229/Student 183,022,983	Running Total 183,022,983
New York	2	625,267,783	808,290,766
Hawaii	3	41,196,413	849,487,179
Florida	4	605,860,720	1,455,347,899
Rhode Island	5	25,892,114	1,481,240,013
Maryland	6	193,665,300	1,674,905,313
District of Columbia	6	13,325,739	1,688,231,052
Georgia	8	376,936,290	2,065,167,342
North Carolina	9	326,342,404	2,391,509,746
Ohio	10	399,357,680	2,790,867,426
New Jersey	11	31,132,321	2,821,999,747
Arizona	12	226,054,602	3,048,054,349
Louisiana	13	149,165,333	Last grant 3,197,219,682
South Carolina	14	162,814,878	3,360,034,560
Illinois	15	480,698,022	3,840,732,582
California	16	1,434,646,299	5,275,378,881
Colorado	17	182,930,696	5,458,309,577
Pennsylvania	18	393,556,652	5,851,866,229
Kentucky	19	152,518,351	6,004,384,580

Continuing in this fashion, if the total grant award were reduced to $200 per student, with the current ranking, South Carolina would be the only state added. At $150 per student, it would add Illinois. It would take a reduction to awards based on a formula of around $135 per student before Colorado and California would receive grants given the current ranking among the slate of finalists. At that point the current round of successful recipients would have had to receive a total of $1.67 billion less to free up money to get down the slate all the way to Colorado. That’s a financial and political loss to all the current winners of an average of 167 million dollars less than what they actually received in the competition.

If Colorado were ranked 11^th out of 19 finalists, then the kind political pressure that might reduce a few grants to fund one more could have come into play. Entering the part of the process where political pressure is most likely to benefit a friend ranked 17^th out of 19 applicants made that help entirely unfeasible. Apparently New Jersey, the unfortunate state on the bubble, isn’t high enough on the Administration’s list of political priorities to incent them to play games with this competition.

Looking at a spread sheet like this I suspect any political shenanigans start to look mighty risky, with many more losers than winners. Even for the unscrupulous, a risk-benefit analysis would likely let this competition stand as originally conducted.

While there may be many reasons why people in Colorado are right to be angry at being slighted by the results of this race, the problems come from the score the state received and our rank relative to the other competitors. There is plenty to gripe about in the process that produced those scores — so there is no need to stop feeling indignant. But the problems come in the creation of the RFP, the rubric (to the extent they used one) and the various reviewer’s vagaries of scoring. It doesn’t look like the Western states had a chance, or that reviewers understood semi-rural states with their mixed levels of union representation and local control, or the courage Colorado’s leaders took to enact the reforms that are necessary yet offensive to some unions.

That still leaves plenty of reasons to raise your blood pressure. But these are different than the political ones I’ve heard. At least Colorado’s failure is not due to some imagined failure of political leaders to pull the strings a few people wish they had.

Super plug for “Superman”

Alan Gottlieb — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:29:03 +0000

Sure, The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman can come across as a self-important blowhard at times. But he is a smart guy, and more important, he gives a hell of a plug to “Waiting for Superman,” a documentary about public education that opens in Denver in October.

There is a lot of publicity building around this film. In Colorado, education reform groups are going to launch a major campaign to get people to see the movie, and based on their anticipated reactions, to get involved in demanding serious systemic change to education in Colorado, and across the nation.

Can a movie prompt such a movement? We’ll see. It’s directed by Davis Guggenheim, who directed “An Inconvenient Truth,” so there is some track record.

I saw the movie a month or so ago, but was told by studio media handlers I absolutely could not write about it until it opened. Well, if Tom Friedman can bust the embargo, so can I. But I’ll restrain myself and just say this: It is beautifully made and powerful. Unavoidably, it over-simplifies matters to make its points. Still, it surpasses other recent films that focus on the same topic — “The Lottery” and the overtly bombastic “The Cartel.”

So I’ll give it three stars (I’m a tough reviewer) and urge people to see it when it opens.

By the way, if you know where people stand on education issues, you can easily predict whether they’ll love or loathe “Waiting for Superman.”