Education Research Could Improve Schools, But Probably Won’t

That’s the title of a brilliant commentary by Ronald Wolk in the new issue of Education Week. It’s one of the best articles they’ve run in the last couple of years and should certainly be required reading for anyone working with education research. Some excerpts, with commentary:

In my idealistic days 25 years ago, I believed that education research would lead us to the promised land of successful schools and high student achievement……As much as I hate to say it—and I truly hope I am wrong—I no longer believe it, and here’s why:

Research is not readily accessible—either physically or intellectually—to the potential users. Summaries of major studies appear in periodicals like Education Week, by the detailed results (usually written for other researchers in academic-speak) are usually available only in separate reports or in relatively low-circulation journals that don’t reach those who most need to know.

The research that you see utilized in the schools is usually action research, usually carried out by the teacher as an individual or part of their team, and usually fairly meaningless to anyone but that one teacher. This is where “That’s always worked for me!” and “Oh man, this program was great!” come from, which is also the birthing ground of some of the worst habits in our schools.

And the heavy use of intelligentsia vernacular (like that, see!) is a major obstacle that cuts two ways; unapproachable language turns off teachers, and if you refine the reports too much (for example, turning the 500+ pages of A Nation at Risk into “Kids Is Dumb”), you risk losing the meaning in the condensing.

Even if research findings were widely available and written in clear prose that even a dimwit like me could understand, the reports would not be widely read. Most teachers are not consumers of research, nor are most principals or superintendents.

And even if educators and policymakers did read all the studies in a timely fashion, schools and education practice would not change very much, mainly because making significant changes means altering value structures, disrupting routines, and teaching old dogs new tricks.

My belief is that most teachers don’t care about research because there’s such a disconnect between the theory and reality. I’ll single out The Reading Teacher from the International Reading Association for a mild chiding here. They run research in every issue, but often times it’s impossible to see how you can translate what looks good on paper into a practical, useable classroom strategy. Schools are curriculum-driven; we trust that the curriculum is research-based, and during the adoption process some wag will often pipe up with a “What does the research say?” If there was research out there that said that an element of the curriculum wasn’t a best practice, most teachers would ignore the research and keep on with what’s in the teacher’s guide. It’s just what they do.

Moreover, researchers seem to delight in neutralizing each other. That’s easier to do in social sciences than the physical sciences because there are so many uncontrollable variables. And the bigger the question addressed, the more vulnerable the findings.

When one study claims small classes boost student achievement, another insists they do not. One study finds social promotion harmful; another says retentions hurts children more. Money matters; no it does not. Vouchers work; no they do not. And on and on.

This, too, is why teachers trust their own practices and their own numbers far more than they do anything that is passed down from the Ivory Tower. I can be a consumer and judge what’s working within my four walls, and I can mostly trust what I’m seeing with my own two eyes, but expanding beyond that invites a chorus of often discordant voices that may or may not help, and if I can’t trust that they’ll make my practice better, why bother?

It’s a good article, very thoughtful, and well worth tracking down. Highest recommendations!

Read more here, if any.

NCTM News Bulletin, July-August Edition

The newest volume of the News Bulletin from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has begun, and it has a snazzy new look that’s shaken off some of the stodginess of the old newsletter. Good work by their graphics department. Some highlights:

*My man-crush on Skip Fennell continues on unabated as he turns in another excellent column, this time on the inherent challenges of the No Child Left Behind act.

*You can apply to get a grant to cover your travel costs to the International Congress on Mathematical Education conference in Monterrey, Mexico next July. That’d be a heck of a way to spend part of your summer vacation.

*Their journal of secondary math, The Mathematics Teacher, is looking for thoughts from teachers on how they reach their ESL/ELL students in the math classroom. Submission details here; general NCTM publishing guidelines can be found here. If you get published because of something you read off of I Thought a Think, please give me second author credit.

(just kidding)

*My recent post on the research/practice gap (which was profoundly expanded upon by The Science Goddess—thanks, Goddess!) seems to have been on the mind of the NCTM as well; their series of Research Briefs is designed to help bridge the divide by, “strengthening connections between practice and research.” It’s a good start to what could be a very worthwhile project.

*This issue marks the beginning of a series on intervention in mathematics; I’m quite curious to see where it goes. The material on intervention for reading difficulties is voluminous, but not so much for the mathematics. This could be a good place to keep an eye on if you’re a math specialist or math coach here in Washington, because golly knows we could use the help.

Hope you're enjoying your summer!

Read more here, if any.

Liam Julian on Whiny Teachers

Over at The Flypaper, official blog of the Fordham Foundation, Liam Julian has written an interesting post on the defensive admonition common to the profession: "You can't know what it's like--you've never been a teacher!" He finds that to be a crap argument, and I don't disagree, but as a counterpoint I'd like to remind everyone of the words of famous education observer John Rambo:

Col. Troutman: You did everything to make this private war happen. You've done enough damage. This mission is over, Rambo. Do you understand me? This mission is over! Look at them out there! Look at them! If you won't end this now, they will kill you. Is that what you want? It's over Johnny. It's over!

Rambo: Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off! It wasn't my war! You asked me, I didn't ask you! And I did what I had to do to win! But somebody wouldn't let us win! And I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting. Calling me baby killer and all kinds of vile crap! Who are they to protest me? Who are they? Unless they've been me and been there and know what the hell they're yelling about!

Comparing teachers to mentally unstable Vietnam veterans is a stretch, but let's play with the idea for a minute.

I think it can be universally accepted that teaching requires a certain skill set to transmit information to the students and get them to retain it. There's a science to teaching, and there's an art to teaching. I don't think it's out of line to suggest that if you haven't practiced the craft then you don't really have an authentic understanding of what's involved.

Consider, as an example, the practice of law. I've a layman's understanding of what's involved in being a lawyer, but when it comes to knowing what goes into getting a case ready for trial, or having the knowledge of case law that makes a good lawyer effective, I can only guess. When I pass judgment on lawyers (e.g., "Marcia Clark sure screwed that up!") it's not an informed opinion, nor should it be considered as such.

And that's why this piece from Julian's article makes no sense:

Furthermore, the teachers who evoke this lame excuse are typically lightyears behind the wonks they vilify in realizing what actually works for public schools.

Oh, are they now? It's one thing to be Ken DeRosa and trumpet the power of Direct Instruction, but it's another to actually be in the schoolhouse and make the modifications to accomodate DI, or RTI, or SFA, or TAG education, or widening the math pipeline, or differentiated instruction, or more counselors, or more librarians, or.....

I think this also goes to the research/practice divide that I've written about before; a theoretical understanding can only become a practical understanding through application of the theory, and most K-12 schools as constructed aren't designed for that sort of experimentation.

It's an important conversation to have.

Read more here, if any.

Bridging the Research-Practice Gap

That’s the title of an interesting commentary by Stanford University’s Deborah Stipek in the November 14th issue of Education Week. It’s actually a paid-for advertisement, not uncommon for EdWeek, but I think this one rises above the fray for the examples it provides and the thoughtful tone it takes.

Narrative after the article calls it part of a series from the Education Deans Alliance. If this is their first effort, I look forward to seeing more of their work. You can find out more at their website, here.

Later on in the same issue of Ed Week there’s an article highlighting the recent launch of the Doing What Works website from the Department of Education. Designed to complement the What Works Clearinghouse they already run, Doing What Works is set to have video of teachers using those research-based practices in the classroom. I just checked it out, and there are some neat clips of ELL teachers working with primary students. It looks like it’ll be a good place to keep an eye on in the coming months!

Read more here, if any.

Should I Join AERA?

Yesterday I was singing the praises of WERA, the state-level education research organization.

They are a branch of the American Educational Research Association, AERA for short, best known for the ginormous conference that the put on yearly.

On one hand, I love me some educational research.

On the other, I’m a classroom teacher, and that sort of puts me on the wrong side of the research-to-practice chasm. Plus, it’s $120 a year.

Anyone out there a member? Does AERA hold any value for the teacher?

Read more here, if any.

Bridging the Academe/K-12 Divide

I think that anyone in education who has worked towards a master’s degree has met the sort. They’re nice enough, in their tweed jackets and sensible shoes, many of the things they say make sense on a visceral level, and their doctorates lend a sense of credibility to what they do. Then, one day, the realization comes to you. It might be as sudden as the flap of a hummingbird’s wings, or it might suddenly make itself obvious like an expected landmark on the horizon, but it’s an undeniable truth, and it’s earth shattering.

I speak, of course, of professors who don’t know what they’re talking about.

I’ve been blessed in my Leadership program to have had quality instructors, but I had some real lulus during my masters program. One had an academics understanding of teaching, but hadn’t actually taught in the classroom in better than 20 years; another crowed about how she went and read at her grandson’s elementary school for an hour a week. These were your strict Vigotzkians who believed that all knowledge could be discovered eventually through play, that all classes would follow the rules if only they wrote them for themselves, and that phonics was a plot by the same people who hate Head Start to take all of the joie de vivre out of education. These were the same folks who are telling my student teachers that an acceptable lesson plan is about 5 pages long when I’m telling them you should be able to write it on a note card.

These people are idiots.

I bring it up because of an excellent commentary in the February 28th Chronicle of Higher Education (Creating a Third Culture), penned by Robert Weisbuch of Drew University, where he talks about the “gorge” that divides the theory of the academe from the practice of the schools. I think that it’s an important topic, because if we were able to harness the brainpower of the colleges to give all of us in K-12 those things we actually need (Kindergarten readiness tests! Quick and easy phonics screens! A DIBELS for math!) the whole system would benefit.

It’s a thoughtful article that would benefit anyone interested in education policy. I've also written some other posts about the research-to-practice gap that you can find here.

Read more here, if any.

My Thoughts on the Math WASL

It isn’t that hard. God help me, it isn’t that hard.

This post might be more fun for you if you go over to WASL2006.com and download the practice test. I’d come across it before when Terry Bergeson mentioned it at the Summer Institute last year, and thought it was nice of OSPI to communicate with the parents like that.

Since then, though, the news on the math WASL has been bad, bad, bad. Thousands of kids failed their first attempt, thousands more failed their second try over the summer, and two weeks ago Bergeson and Gregoire were able to agree with stunning rapidity that making it a graduation requirement would be delayed for at least three years.

So this weekend I sat down and took the test. Printed it off at the school, brought it home, and worked on it in between bouts with the baby. There are 42 questions on the practice test (15 open ended, 27 multiple choice), and on the multiple-choice questions I nailed 24 out of 27. Two of the ones I missed were just carelessness (on #14, for example, I figured out the probability for area I instead of area II, while on 22 I put them in order from greatest to least instead of vice-versa), and one problem I didn’t even really attempt (#30) can be gotten to with some logical deduction. I haven’t scored myself on the open-ended questions yet, but I feel pretty good about them too. Some of them are multiple-step (#13 especially would require some good work with the calculator), but when it comes to higher-order mathematics the most complex formula that I can see that you would need to use is the volume of a cylinder. Many of them are simple addition and multiplication.

That’s just my take, and thus the question has to be asked: why is this test so hard for so many kids? Here are some of the reasons that have been thrown out:

1. Poor math standards. The Fordham Foundation blasted our math standards as being some of the worst in the nation. I can’t personally speak to what’s expected of our high school kids but I do know the elementary grade standards pretty well, and I think they’re fair. Further, I don’t think you can blame the standards for poor performance; that would most likely be a function of…
   
2. Poor curriculum. I know that the state has done curriculum reviews for reading, but have they done the big research study on math curriculum yet? If so, are those programs getting used and getting to the schools that need them?
   
3. Poor teaching in the elementary grades that leads to a cumulative deficit by the time they get to high school. After all, K-6 is seven years, 7-10 is only four years. I think this reasoning is crap, mainly because I teach in the elementary grades and I’ve seen the incredible things that they do in 6th grade at my school.
   
4. Poor teaching in the middle and high schools that doesn’t prepare the kids for the WASL in 10th grade. I can hear the hackles rising around the state, because the math teachers have been dumped on more than any other teachers in the state. Part of this is because you don’t have “reading” teachers per se in the secondary grades, so the math teachers have been the ones most closely identified with a specific WASL test. I have trouble with this because I believe in the math teachers I know, but it also has to be acknowledged that there are teachers out there who aren’t doing what they need to do.
   
5. Poor effort from the kids. Perhaps we’re getting somewhere now. Accountability sucks, but I’ve never heard such sturm und drang as I have about the math WASL. The part that really grates on me is that Bergeson has gotten us the money for the remedial classes, has been talking about this requirement coming down for years now, has been telling people that they need to be ready and has been giving them the resources, and apparently the kids (and their parents) didn’t listen. That’s not a failure of the system, that’s a failure of the consumer.

So where do we stand? I think that the alternatives Bergeson proposed last summer are so weak as to be meaningless, with the exception of using the SAT or ACT to substitute for the WASL. Comparing the grades of one student to others doesn’t really say a whole lot about the student being compared. Similarly, I can’t agree with using report card grades because grade inflation happens, as does the Gentleman’s C. I’m sad that this has been made to be solely the teachers’ fault, and I don’t really know what this three-year delay does. Are the kids going to finally accept responsibility in 2011 in a way that they haven’t up to this point? Is the curriculum going to make the strides that it must in such a short period of time? Is there some magic training that has been denied to our teachers up to this point that they’ll get now?

In short, the nattering nabobs have won a round, and I think we’re poorer as a state for it.

Read more here, if any.

Everything You Need to Know From the January 9th Education Week

“Spellings Seeks to Cast Her Glow Over NCLB,” says the headline. Why Tori Spelling cares about No Child Left Behind is beyond me.

The page 1 above the fold headline gets into how the states as a whole probably aren’t going to be making education a number one priority for new spending this year. That helps Governor Gregoire here in Washington, because she can point to a national trend when she says no to the teachers.

From the “Glad it’s not me who has to make that call” department:

With too many students and too few classrooms, Calexico school officials took the unusual step of hiring someone to photograph children and document the offenders. Mr. Santillan snaps pictures at the city’s downtown border crossing and shares the images with school principals, who use them as evidence to kick out those living in Mexico.

This seems like a Republican wet dream. I can’t see kicking out kids who actually want to be in school, but OK.

Aligning your teaching to the culture of the students in your room has been a given over the years, but this article says that the research base for the practice is quite thin. EdWeek does a great newsletter on education research, which you can subscribe to here.

DC Superintendent Michelle Rhee got the authority she was looking for to be able to fire nearly 500 central office people if she so chooses. The city council also is backing her plan to close 23 schools by next fall. That should take care of the financial and the facilities—it’ll be interesting to see how the academics come along. It’s also worth noting that there’s a full-page ad at the back of the paper recruiting administrators to come work in the DC schools; is she cleaning out the principals, too?

In Georgia an entire school district can go charter if it so chooses, which is where this great quote comes from:

Districts and superintendents like the idea of districts’ getting more flexibility, but don’t like the idea of turning around and giving their schools more flexibility.”—Todd Ziebarth of the National Alliance for Public Schools

To me that’s the missing piece from many school reform proposals, ranging from Dino Rossi’s here in Washington State all the way up to the Aspen Commission. There’s plenty of talk about giving principals more power and districts more power, but why isn’t anyone outside of the union talking about empowering teachers?

Down in South Carolina, the new chair of the Board of Education is going to be a lady who home schools her four daughters. Someone who doesn’t believe in public education will be setting public education policy. Oy.

Reading First got absolutely reamed in the federal education budget last month, going from 1 billion dollars to slightly under 400 million. That’s a damned shame, because for all its controversy Reading First was still a good program that was getting money into schools that needed it the most. Sure there were strings attached, but there should be.

Finally, this issue has many letters in response to the articles that I highlighted during Leadership Week here at the blog. It's a neat commentary, especially on the highly qualified principals article.

Have a good day!

Read more here, if any.

A New Model for Education Research

That’s the title of a paid commentary from the Education Deans Alliance that appears in the December 12th Education Week. The research-to-practice theme is one that I’ve thought about quite a bit, so I found it pretty interesting. You can read it here.

Read more here, if any.

Hamilton and Eggs

A couple of weeks ago the big new thing was “Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job” from a group called The Hamilton Project, affiliated with The Brookings Institution. It’s not the easiest read in the world, partially because of paragraphs like this:

The dependent variable is the math score for person i in year t, Race/Eth is a vector of six racial/ethnic categories, ELD is a vector of five categories for English language development level, and Repeat is a dummy indicating whether the person is currently repeating a grade….The dependent variable is measured in “normal curve equivalents” (NCE). A normal curve equivalent is a linear function of test performance, which approximates the percentile for a normal distribution. If Z is a test score with mean zero and standard deviation of one, then the normal curve equivalent is calculated as NCE=50+21.06*Z. If Z is distributed normally, then NCE=1 at the first percentile of Z, NCE=99 at the ninety-ninth percentile and NCE=50 at the fiftieth percentile. One NCE point is used to approximate one percentile point.

To be fair, this is from the technical appendix. The trick is that their entire case on teacher quality rests on this formula making sense, and when you can’t understand the formula they use or the reasoning behind it the temptation is strong to ignore the entire work out of hand.

The report makes five recommendations on how to improve teaching. The first one is pretty interesting:

Recommendation 1: Reduce the barriers to entry into teaching for those without traditional teacher certification. The authors of the report, Robert Gordon, Thomas Kane, and Douglas Staiger, show that there’s really no difference in the performance of students of teachers who are traditionally certified, alternatively certified, or uncertified. This flies in the face of the “highly qualified” provisions of NCLB, but so be it. The barriers that I’d like to see out of the way are the ones that I have to pass just to keep teaching.

I’m part of the first groups to go through on the new Residency/Professional certificate program. For Washington State teachers the system used to be that you’d start with your Initial teaching certificate, earn 45 credits (a Master’s, essentially), then need 15 credits or 150 clock hours every 5 years to keep your certificate valid. The teaching force must not have been very good, because they moved the system into a “Professional Growth Plan” option. Now, instead of getting your Master’s degree and being done with it, you have to critically analyze your practice against 8 strands of effective teaching, carry out an action research project, present to a board….it’s a much different and much more rigorous process.

The end effect, though, is that teachers in their first five years are being pushed into doing backflips to keep their certification instead of doing the real work that is necessary to keep a classroom up and running. It’s a great idea if you want to run new teachers out of the system, but it’s a lousy way to start your career.

The total cost of getting my Masters and Professional Certificate together was nearly $9000. This is money that I had to spend just to keep on teaching, and that’s certainly a barrier. Sure, I could have done the ProCert alone, but a) you’re still required to work with an “accredited university” b) there’s still an action research project required and c) you’re still paying for university credits.

My wife is on the old certificate program. She just paid $90 to get her license renewed, plus all the money on credits and transcripts. Mo’ money, Mo’ money, Mo’ money.

Anyhow, now that I’m a Professional (finally?), I can settle for the 150 clock hours/15 credit program to renew. Clock hours are cheap and easy, and that’s what I’ll do.

The other trick to this proposal is the idea of lowering barriers into teaching. The idea of Antonio Banderas showing up to teach ballroom dancing to inner-city kids is appealing, sure, and if someone with the passion and the ability wants to share that with kids we’d be crazy to get in the way. I trouble I see here is that there are people who are coming through the ed schools who have no business teaching. They’ve run the gamut, from 21 year olds who act like they have conduct disorder to 50-year old career changers with lousy personal hygiene and no temperament for children. I had a great conversation with a professor in the teacher education program at Eastern a couple of years ago and I asked her how some of these people were able to get through, even with obvious problems. Her answer? Fear of lawsuits. The university president would over-rule the department staff because of the cost involved in defending the school in court. The hope was always that the master teachers in the schools would say no, but even if these people failed their student teaching they’d usually get placed somewhere else and pass the second (or third) time through. Many of the teachers felt pressured by the field supervisors to pass, and the only recourse they felt they had was a lousy letter of recommendation in their placement file and frank phone conversations with anyone who asked about them.

It takes an awful lot more now to get into and through the ed program than it did when I went there. To get in you need a minimum score on the Praxis, to get out you have to pass a different test, and they’ve beefed up the classroom hours required. This is a good thing for the ed schools, I guess, but will making it easier for anyone who wants to enter teaching really improve the corps as a whole?

I guess what I'm really wondering is where the happy medium is, if any. We make it hard to get into the ed schools, but too easy to get out. You can't teach without your license, but keeping your license is another onerous chore in an already hard job. We respect what you do, but not enough to wave any fees along the way.

Read more here, if any.

50 Ways To Save Money in the Education Budget

Yeah, I'm ripping off the EFF. So sue me.

A nice thing about Assembly Days for the legislature last week was that you see everything that's going on around education, from the PESB to the SBE to the QEC to the OSPI. It's difficult to keep track of--I don't know, frankly, how my friend the education staffer does it--but for education wonks and education hobbyists, it's fun stuff.

Anyhow, all the conversation about cutting education makes one wonder just what could be cut. I did a little playing around with the idea in April, when things were last going to hell, but I think it's worth bringing up again.

First stop: the enacted state budget, beginning on page 123.

Idea #1: Suspend development of the new finance system. I'm not saying throw all the work that's been done away, but is there any reason that it can't sit on a hard drive at OFM for a year until things maybe start getting better? Savings: $941,000.

Idea #2: Put aside the alternative pipeline programs at the PESB. These are the paras-to-teachers pipeline programs, alternative certification programs, and the conversion math teacher loans. All of them are good programs in a shortage, but we're laying people off--the market doesn't need these programs. Savings: $4,501,000 (I'm blending together subsections i and ii on page 124).

Idea #3: Suspend the Recruiting Washington Teachers Program. Same rationale as above--it's not needed right now. Savings: $231,000.

Idea #4: Suspend the Retooling Math/Science Educators Program. I'd be willing to bend on this if there was still a demonstrable need, I suppose, but in this economy I'm doubtful. Savings: $244,000.

Idea #5: Suspend CEDARS. This is the new data management system, and while I really like how it's coming together and the potential it has for the future, there's no reason it can't wait for a year. Savings: $1,227,000.

Idea #6: Don't put extra into teaching financial literacy to students. Yes, the lessons matter, but "practice what you preach" is a pretty good lesson to teach, too. Savings: $75,000.

Idea #7: Suspend the Interstate Compact on the Military Child. This one hurts to even suggest, because these are my kids--my school is 90%+ the sons and daughters of active duty servicemembers. The trick is that many of your school districts that serve military installations also are heavily into levy equalization money, and if this "macro" cut helps at the "micro" level, we have to do that. Savings: $45,000.

Idea #8: Suspend implementation of SB5410 (On-Line Learning). There's no reason that this can't wait until a different year. Savings: $700,000.

Idea #9: Eliminate Project Citizen. Good goals, not worth the money right now. Savings: $25,000.

Idea #10: Suspend School Safety Training. Training is important, but try to find a cheaper way. Savings: $100,000.

Idea #11: Eliminate the School Safety Center at OSPI. This would also have the happy side-effect of eliminating another state board (The School Safety Center Advisory Committee), which fits in with where we're trying to go in streamlining government. Savings: $96,000.

Idea #12: Cut funding for suicide prevention programs. This isn't an easy call to make. This is what the Governor means when she says that the cuts will hurt. But it's an open question as to whether the program works, and in these times....you have to. Savings: $70,000.

Idea #13: No more leadership training from the Institute for Community Leadership. Savings: $50,000.

Idea #14: Money for the technology to make CEDARS happen. There's absolutely no reason we can't wait a year for this. Savings: $1,045,000.

Idea #15: End the Special Services Pilot Project. They never should have started it to begin with. Savings: $1,329,000.

Idea #16: No more money for the Washington Achievers program. Savings: $750,000.

Idea #17: No more money for information about women during World War II. Being someone's pet project shouldn't make it a legislative priority. Savings: $25,000.

Idea #18: Eliminate Navigation 101. It's a decent curriculum that has a lot of district support, but there's no reason we can't go back to it when times are better. Savings: $3,220,000.

Idea #19: End dropout prevention programs. Research says this will cost us more money in the long run. Research also says that we can put a cost to this line item RIGHT NOW. Savings: $675,000.

Idea #20: End the initiative to reach out to Latino families. This was a partnership with the Seattle Community Coalition of Compana Quetzal, and they're just going to have to find their own way for a year. Savings: $50,000.

Idea #21: End the program to encourage bilingual students to go into teaching. Ideally every teacher would be bilingual. These aren't ideal times. Savings: $75,000.

Idea #22: End the dyslexia pilot program. Dyslexia has turned into a catch-all for 100 other reading difficulties, and this is a need that could be better met through federal Reading First dollars, Title funds, or other avenues. Savings: $145,000.

Idea #23: Stop the support of vocational student leadership organizations. I love the Future Farmers and Future Business Leaders and Future Whatever the Homemakers Are Calling Themselves Now, but they may have to find their own way. Savings: $97,000.

Idea #24: End the Communities in School Program in Pierce County. It's not basic education, and if Pierce County schools really need this, that's what levy dollars are for. Savings: $25,000.

Idea #25: Enough of the Math/Science work out of the ESDs. My hunch is that a lot of this money is going towards LASER, which has been one of the biggest time-wasters that I've ever encountered in my 10 years in the classroom. I truly don't believe that they have their act together; this cut seems common sense. Savings: $3,355,000.

Idea #26: End support for Destination: Imagination and Future Problem Solving. They're great programs--I worked with DI for about a decade before my schedule got to busy, and I've been a DI coach--but we can't afford this. Savings: $90,000.

Idea #27: End support for the Centrum Program at Fort Worden Park. I know nothing about this, beyond what it says in the state budget. Savings: $170,000.

Idea #28: Halt funding of math and science coaches. This money comes out of the Education Legacy Trust, so it's not general fund money, but it's the thought that counts. Savings: $1,925,000.

Idea #29: Postpone OSPI's STEM initiative. This pays for grants for 20 teachers and staff at OSPI to supervise; now is not the time. Savings: $139,000.

Idea #30: Cut funding for LASER. Oh, look, it's a line item just for my favorite science program! Lock the kits in a warehouse for a year and move on. Savings: $1,579,000.

Idea #31: No leadership academy for principals and superintendents. This has been one of the Association of Washington School Principals' big projects; in fact, they recently got a nice fat sole source personal service contract with OSPI to run the thing. This is a nice idea when things are flush--we can't afford it now. Savings: $900,000.

Idea #32: Eliminate the Washington State Reading Corps. This hurts, but it has to be done. Savings: $1,056,000.

Idea #33: Eliminate the Center for the Improvement of Student Learning. Savings: $225,000.

Idea #34: Cut back on OSPI technology leadership. This is a line item for improving, monitoring, promoting, and coordinating technology; it sounds like one big support program. Savings: $1,959,000.

Idea #35: Suspend National Boards bonuses for a year. Yeah, I said it. I have all the respect in the world for the people who go through the progress, and I believe that it's thorough--one of the most respected teachers in my district just tried and didn't get over the line, which is amazing to me. The point is that, reform efforts be damned, we simply can't afford this right now. Savings: $36,513,000.

Idea #36: Suspend the Local Farms-Healthy Kids program. I'm married to a farmer, and I think the state stinks when it comes to supporting agriculture most of the time, but a lot of this money went into creating yet another FTE at OSPI. Again and ideally, we'd be able to have this. Right now? Savings: $300,000.

Idea #37: Suspend the Beginning Educator Support Program (BEST). Here's the trick--since beginning educators are the first ones out the door in a financial crisis, is it better to support them and then fire them, or let them work? Savings: $2,348,000.

Idea #38: End the state funded internship program for principals and superintendents. Right now I don't perceive that these jobs go lacking for qualified applicants, and if districts have quality candidates who they want to support as they get their internships done that can be accomplished using local dollars. Savings: $530,000.

Idea #39: Lower the state funding for administrators by $1,000. Right now the state only funds about $59,000 of the cost per administrator, which is a terribly outdated formula. That said, the rest of the money comes from local funds, so let's allow local districts to make the decision: do they come up with the money, or do they ask their administrators to take a haircut? Teachers are losing the LID days, after all. Savings, based on about 5,000 school administrators: $5,000,000.

That's 39 ideas from the most recently enacted K-12 budget alone, and I didn't even touch everything there. Some of these may have already happened (I thought I heard, for example, that the WWII women's project didn't go through), and some of them are damnably shameful (cutting funding for Destination: Imagination would be a tragedy), but the discussion has to occur.

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Next up, playing with the Personal Service Contract (PSC) listings at the OFM website. This is money already spent, but I think it drives the point home that we could be doing things differently. I've listed them as "potential savings" instead of "savings", because the contracts are already signed.

Idea #40: Teach someone at OSPI how to read blogs: In July they issued a $15,000 PSC to a Washington DC consulting firm to track what's happening at the federal level. Can no one at OSPI do that now? Isn't there some sort of education department over there that tracks these things? Potential savings: $15,000.

Idea #41: Don't pay for crap like this. "Contractor shall communicate a vision for hands-on, project-based Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S.T.E.M.) curriculum, and promote the benefits and positive impacts of technology-rich learning environments attuned to the new digital learner." Bullshit bingo: succeed! Budget reality: failure. Potential savings: $12,000.

Idea #42: Put the Bylsma School Reform Plan on hold. Pete Bylsma's a nice guy--I've met him through WERA a couple of times--but we've already given him an awful lot of money to come up with his plan to fix failing schools, and now we're in line to give him $65,000 more. That's not OK. Potential savings: $65,000.

Idea #43: Price your meeting facilitators better. On page 38 you've got someone making $2,400 to facilitate a two day meeting. Why? Hell, that may not have even included expenses. Potential savings: $2,400.

Idea #44: Write your own damned reports. "The Contractor shall research if the two incentives for attaining National Board certification and serving challenging schools make a difference in the mobility, distribution, and retention patterns among the National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) compared to teachers with similar characteristics that teach in schools with similar characteristics and do not obtain this certification." There's no one on the state government payroll, be it OSPI, OFM, WSIPP, or whatever, that can do this? Potential savings: $80,000. (source)

Idea #45: No, really--write your own damned reports. "The Contractor shall analyze 2008 graduates’ course-taking patterns in high school and their enrollment in two-year and four-year colleges." Offered without comment: that particular contract went to the BERC Group. Potential savings: $30,000.

Idea #46: Avoid the appearance of impropriety. A $251,240 sole-source PSC look funny on its face--when you're giving it to the Washington Association of School Administrators, a group that's heavily involved in the consequences of the school reform debate happening right now, it's proper to raise an eyebrow.

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And ideas that I can't put a cost savings to:

Idea #47: Take another look at school district consolidation. Sure, it's the same drum I've been pounding for a while, but it's being taken up by more and more states around the country. Why not take a closer look at it for Washington State? Potential savings: depends on how you do it.

Idea #48: Freeze the state salary schedule. There was a rumor running around late last session that the legislature was seriously considering this, and it just might be the right thing to do. Sure, we teachers wouldn't get our step and lane increases, but on the other hand it could save jobs and have the happy side effect we wouldn't go backwards. Potential savings: millions of dollars.

Idea #49: Don't make membership in the Washington State School Directors Association mandatory. This also came up last session, but the time is ripe to revisit it, especially since the WSSDA just put a dues increase in front of their members. The timing couldn't be worse. Potential savings: varies by district; dues depend on size, and the district would have to opt-out.

Idea #50: Take a closer look at OSPI personal service contracts. Go here and marvel at the number of $100,000+ a year contracts that OSPI is giving out to support the school improvement efforts. Sure, they're paid out of Title I Part A, but is there no room to pay some of these folks $90,000 (still more than any teacher makes!) instead of $110,000? How competitive are these grants, anyhow?

Read more here, if any.

STEM Week, Day 2: A Little Bit More on the Women and STEM Discussion

In the December 21st edition of the Careers section of the Chronicle of Higher Education there’s a column from Rex Sayers (a pseudonym) about the effect that having children can have on the career paths of those in academe. His belief is that having children of your own can make you a better teacher, even if it lowers your productivity (read: writing and research) and impacts your career path.

That brings me to the effects of a new baby on an academic's ability to practice his or her craft, a topic on which there has been much debate. I am here to affirm that those effects are real and primarily negative. Before this latest birth, I had been working at a pretty good clip. I had a high teaching load, so it was hard to find time to write during the day, but I had developed a routine of putting the kids to bed and knocking out a page or two before my own bedtime.

Not anymore. Not only have we lost the luxury of a consistent bedtime, but in those seemingly rare moments when I do find myself with a free, childless hour in which to work, I'm simply too fogged to produce.

The reason that I think teaching appeals to many is that it’s a family-friendly career. Your breaks will typically be the same as those of your children; your child can be in your workplace with you; you can be a part of your child’s life while at the same time participating in your profession. Given that the primary caregiver role still tends to fall on the mother, it’s easy to see why women would choose teaching as a career.

Read more here, if any.

Merit Pay on the March

Last week the Department of Education rolled out the first of their grants to urban school districts for merit pay programs. Denver received better than $22 million dollars to supplement their existing ProComp program, while Chicago got $27.5 million to begin a program. The Chicago program is targeted, reports the Tribune:

The extra money will start flowing to about 10 high-poverty schools in Chiago next year, for a total of 40 schools by 2010. District officials will select schools that have improved test scores over time, but also struggle with high teacher turnover.
…
Each school would receive as estimated $500,000 to $750,000 a year depending on the size of its staff, and individual teachers could see yearly bonuses of as much as $9,000 for superior work and student gains, Duncan said.
…
Chicago officials said the program will improve teacher quality in the city’s most challenged school by creating incentives for them to stay and by rewarding teachers who act as leaders or take on extra assignments.

I don’t have a problem with this, as long as there are results. Giving extra money to people to teach in high-need schools isn’t a good idea unless they’re actually effective teachers. I question whether it will actually work (how much money would it take to get you to go from a great school to a failing one?), but it’s worth a shot, and a rising tide raises all boats, so there.

Then I got to thinking about how merit pay would affect me personally. This year we started something new in 1st grade where we ability-grouped the kids: high, two middle groups, and a low group. I’m teaching the high group, which is a blast. I’ve got more kids than the others—we tried as hard as we could to keep the low group below 20—but that’s OK, because my kids are mostly independent and ready to run, where the low groups needs more practice with the very basic skills.

The trick is, that’s 5 hours a week that I’m not teaching “my” kids reading. I believe that what’s going on in the low group will be a good thing, but what if those kids don’t grow the way they should? Under some merit pay systems that would be my problem and I would be the one who would get the blame, ignoring the fact that it’s really a failure of the team and the Title department. If that’s the way it were, I’d have a hard time voting to accept any merit proposal.

That’s why it works better to reward schools, and even grade levels within those schools, instead of teachers as individuals.

I’m also not quite sure what happens to specialists (art, PE, etc.) and Special Ed under merit pay. I’ve tried to research it on the Denver ProComp website in the past, but I couldn’t get anywhere.

Bottom line: I'm for anything that gets more money to teachers, as long as its done fairly.

Read more here, if any.

50 Ways to Save Money in the Education Budget (Revised and Updated)

Last month I did a post looking at the education budget passed last year. Since then the Governor has released her budget and I've come across some new ideas; this post is to aggregate the new information. Under each item I've noted how it was treated in the Governor's budget.

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A nice thing about Assembly Days for the legislature last week was that you see everything that's going on around education, from the PESB to the SBE to the QEC to the OSPI. It's difficult to keep track of--I don't know, frankly, how my friend the education staffer does it--but for education wonks and education hobbyists, it's fun stuff.

Anyhow, all the conversation about cutting education makes one wonder just what could be cut. I did a little playing around with the idea in April, when things were last going to hell, but I think it's worth bringing up again.

First stop: the enacted state budget, beginning on page 123.

Idea #1: Suspend development of the new finance system. I'm not saying throw all the work that's been done away, but is there any reason that it can't sit on a hard drive at OFM for a year until things maybe start getting better? Savings: $941,000.

Governor's Budget: This amount is unchanged, which is a little odd considering that she trimmed $9,000 from what was appropriated last year. If they're already underspending, why not encourage them to keep it up?

Idea #2: Put aside the alternative pipeline programs at the PESB. These are the paras-to-teachers pipeline programs, alternative certification programs, and the conversion math teacher loans. All of them are good programs in a shortage, but we're laying people off--the market doesn't need these programs. Savings: $4,501,000 (I'm blending together subsections i and ii on page 124).

Governor's Budget: She actually went there, cutting about $2.1 million from the alternative routes programs. That said, there's also some items that she left intact (Recruiting Washington Teachers, Pipeline for Paraeducators) that are of dubious need right now.

Idea #3: Suspend the Recruiting Washington Teachers Program. Same rationale as above--it's not needed right now. Savings: $231,000.

Governor's Budget: See Above.

Idea #4: Suspend the Retooling Math/Science Educators Program. I'd be willing to bend on this if there was still a demonstrable need, I suppose, but in this economy I'm doubtful. Savings: $244,000.

Governor's Budget: See Above.

Idea #5: Suspend CEDARS. This is the new data management system, and while I really like how it's coming together and the potential it has for the future, there's no reason it can't wait for a year. Savings: $1,227,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #6: Don't put extra into teaching financial literacy to students. Yes, the lessons matter, but "practice what you preach" is a pretty good lesson to teach, too. Savings: $75,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item. Savings actualized!

Idea #7: Suspend the Interstate Compact on the Military Child. This one hurts to even suggest, because these are my kids--my school is 90%+ the sons and daughters of active duty servicemembers. The trick is that many of your school districts that serve military installations also are heavily into levy equalization money, and if this "macro" cut helps at the "micro" level, we have to do that. Savings: $45,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #8: Suspend implementation of SB5410 (On-Line Learning). There's no reason that this can't wait until a different year. Savings: $700,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #9: Eliminate Project Citizen. Good goals, not worth the money right now. Savings: $25,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item. Savings actualized!

Idea #10: Suspend School Safety Training. Training is important, but try to find a cheaper way. Savings: $100,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #11: Eliminate the School Safety Center at OSPI. This would also have the happy side-effect of eliminating another state board (The School Safety Center Advisory Committee), which fits in with where we're trying to go in streamlining government. Savings: $96,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #12: Cut funding for suicide prevention programs. This isn't an easy call to make. This is what the Governor means when she says that the cuts will hurt. But it's an open question as to whether the program works, and in these times....you have to. Savings: $70,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item. Savings actualized!

Idea #13: No more leadership training from the Institute for Community Leadership. Savings: $50,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item. Savings actualized!

Idea #14: Money for the technology to make CEDARS happen. There's absolutely no reason we can't wait a year for this. Savings: $1,045,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #15: End the Special Services Pilot Project. They never should have started it to begin with. Savings: $1,329,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #16: No more money for the Washington Achievers program. Savings: $750,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item.

Idea #17: No more money for information about women during World War II. Being someone's pet project shouldn't make it a legislative priority. Savings: $25,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item.

Idea #18: Eliminate Navigation 101. It's a decent curriculum that has a lot of district support, but there's no reason we can't go back to it when times are better. Savings: $3,220,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #19: End dropout prevention programs. Research says this will cost us more money in the long run. Research also says that we can put a cost to this line item RIGHT NOW. Savings: $675,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item.

Idea #20: End the initiative to reach out to Latino families. This was a partnership with the Seattle Community Coalition of Compana Quetzal, and they're just going to have to find their own way for a year. Savings: $50,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item. It also cut $10,000 from last year's appropriation.

Idea #21: End the program to encourage bilingual students to go into teaching. Ideally every teacher would be bilingual. These aren't ideal times. Savings: $75,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item.

Idea #22: End the dyslexia pilot program. Dyslexia has turned into a catch-all for 100 other reading difficulties, and this is a need that could be better met through federal Reading First dollars, Title funds, or other avenues. Savings: $145,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item.

Idea #23: Stop the support of vocational student leadership organizations. I love the Future Farmers and Future Business Leaders and Future Whatever the Homemakers Are Calling Themselves Now, but they may have to find their own way. Savings: $97,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item.

Idea #24: End the Communities in School Program in Pierce County. It's not basic education, and if Pierce County schools really need this, that's what levy dollars are for. Savings: $25,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item. It also cancelled last year's $25,000 appropriation.

Idea #25: Enough of the Math/Science work out of the ESDs. My hunch is that a lot of this money is going towards LASER, which has been one of the biggest time-wasters that I've ever encountered in my 10 years in the classroom. I truly don't believe that they have their act together; this cut seems common sense. Savings: $3,355,000.

Idea #26: End support for Destination: Imagination and Future Problem Solving. They're great programs--I worked with DI for about a decade before my schedule got to busy, and I've been a DI coach--but we can't afford this. Savings: $90,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #27: End support for the Centrum Program at Fort Worden Park. I know nothing about this, beyond what it says in the state budget. Savings: $170,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #28: Halt funding of math and science coaches. This money comes out of the Education Legacy Trust, so it's not general fund money, but it's the thought that counts. Savings: $1,925,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left mostly unchanged--there's a reduction of $90,000, which equates to about 1 FTE.

Idea #29: Postpone OSPI's STEM initiative. This pays for grants for 20 teachers and staff at OSPI to supervise; now is not the time. Savings: $139,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #30: Cut funding for LASER. Oh, look, it's a line item just for my favorite science program! Lock the kits in a warehouse for a year and move on. Savings: $1,579,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #31: No leadership academy for principals and superintendents. This has been one of the Association of Washington School Principals' big projects; in fact, they recently got a nice fat sole source personal service contract with OSPI to run the thing. This is a nice idea when things are flush--we can't afford it now. Savings: $900,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged, and I'll continue to bitch about it until the budget passes.

Idea #32: Eliminate the Washington State Reading Corps. This hurts, but it has to be done. Savings: $1,056,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item.

Idea #33: Eliminate the Center for the Improvement of Student Learning. Savings: $225,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #34: Cut back on OSPI technology leadership. This is a line item for improving, monitoring, promoting, and coordinating technology; it sounds like one big support program. Savings: $1,959,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #35: Suspend National Boards bonuses for a year. Yeah, I said it. I have all the respect in the world for the people who go through the progress, and I believe that it's thorough--one of the most respected teachers in my district just tried and didn't get over the line, which is amazing to me. The point is that, reform efforts be damned, we simply can't afford this right now. Savings: $36,513,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged. In fact, the cost has gone up to $37,204,000, about a $700,000 increase.

Idea #36: Suspend the Local Farms-Healthy Kids program. I'm married to a farmer, and I think the state stinks when it comes to supporting agriculture most of the time, but a lot of this money went into creating yet another FTE at OSPI. Again and ideally, we'd be able to have this. Right now? Savings: $300,000.

Governor's Budget: This item was left unchanged.

Idea #37: Suspend the Beginning Educator Support Program (BEST). Here's the trick--since beginning educators are the first ones out the door in a financial crisis, is it better to support them and then fire them, or let them work? Savings: $2,348,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item.

Idea #38: End the state funded internship program for principals and superintendents. Right now I don't perceive that these jobs go lacking for qualified applicants, and if districts have quality candidates who they want to support as they get their internships done that can be accomplished using local dollars. Savings: $530,000.

Governor's Budget: The Governor's budget eliminated this item. Nah, just kidding--they're still in line to get their half million dollars, and that's ridiculous.

Idea #39: Lower the state funding for administrators by $1,000. Right now the state only funds about $59,000 of the cost per administrator, which is a terribly outdated formula. That said, the rest of the money comes from local funds, so let's allow local districts to make the decision: do they come up with the money, or do they ask their administrators to take a haircut? Teachers are losing the LID days, after all. Savings, based on about 5,000 school administrators: $5,000,000.

Governor's Budget: Tbis was actually my idea, so there's nothing to reflect it in the schools budget.

That's 39 ideas from the most recently enacted K-12 budget alone, and I didn't even touch everything there. Some of these may have already happened (I thought I heard, for example, that the WWII women's project didn't go through), and some of them are damnably shameful (cutting funding for Destination: Imagination would be a tragedy), but the discussion has to occur.

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Next up, playing with the Personal Service Contract (PSC) listings at the OFM website. This is money already spent, but I think it drives the point home that we could be doing things differently. I've listed them as "potential savings" instead of "savings", because the contracts are already signed.

Idea #40: Teach someone at OSPI how to read blogs: In July they issued a $15,000 PSC to a Washington DC consulting firm to track what's happening at the federal level. Can no one at OSPI do that now? Isn't there some sort of education department over there that tracks these things? Potential savings: $15,000.

Idea #41: Don't pay for crap like this. "Contractor shall communicate a vision for hands-on, project-based Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S.T.E.M.) curriculum, and promote the benefits and positive impacts of technology-rich learning environments attuned to the new digital learner." Bullshit bingo: succeed! Budget reality: failure. Potential savings: $12,000.

Idea #42: Put the Bylsma School Reform Plan on hold. Pete Bylsma's a nice guy--I've met him through WERA a couple of times--but we've already given him an awful lot of money to come up with his plan to fix failing schools, and now we're in line to give him $65,000 more. That's not OK. Potential savings: $65,000.

Idea #43: Price your meeting facilitators better. On page 38 you've got someone making $2,400 to facilitate a two day meeting. Why? Hell, that may not have even included expenses. Potential savings: $2,400.

Idea #44: Write your own damned reports. "The Contractor shall research if the two incentives for attaining National Board certification and serving challenging schools make a difference in the mobility, distribution, and retention patterns among the National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) compared to teachers with similar characteristics that teach in schools with similar characteristics and do not obtain this certification." There's no one on the state government payroll, be it OSPI, OFM, WSIPP, or whatever, that can do this? Potential savings: $80,000. (source)

Idea #45: No, really--write your own damned reports. "The Contractor shall analyze 2008 graduates’ course-taking patterns in high school and their enrollment in two-year and four-year colleges." Offered without comment: that particular contract went to the BERC Group. Potential savings: $30,000.

Idea #46: Avoid the appearance of impropriety. A $251,240 sole-source PSC look funny on its face--when you're giving it to the Washington Association of School Administrators, a group that's heavily involved in the consequences of the school reform debate happening right now, it's proper to raise an eyebrow.

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And ideas that I can't put a cost savings to:

Idea #47: Take another look at school district consolidation. Sure, it's the same drum I've been pounding for a while, but it's being taken up by more and more states around the country. Why not take a closer look at it for Washington State? Potential savings: depends on how you do it.

Idea #48: Freeze the state salary schedule. There was a rumor running around late last session that the legislature was seriously considering this, and it just might be the right thing to do. Sure, we teachers wouldn't get our step and lane increases, but on the other hand it could save jobs and have the happy side effect we wouldn't go backwards. Potential savings: millions of dollars.

Idea #49: Don't make membership in the Washington State School Directors Association mandatory. This also came up last session, but the time is ripe to revisit it, especially since the WSSDA just put a dues increase in front of their members. The timing couldn't be worse. Potential savings: varies by district; dues depend on size, and the district would have to opt-out.

Idea #50: Take a closer look at OSPI personal service contracts. Go here and marvel at the number of $100,000+ a year contracts that OSPI is giving out to support the school improvement efforts. Sure, they're paid out of Title I Part A, but is there no room to pay some of these folks $90,000 (still more than any teacher makes!) instead of $110,000? How competitive are these grants, anyhow?

NEW Idea #51: Let school districts hire their own auditors. Apparently when a district is audited they have to use one of the state's hired hands--my financial guy says the last time we were audited we had to pay $90 an hour for the privilege. That's ridiculous--let the schools go out and find their own way to meet the mandate, and I'm betting they'll get it done a lot cheaper. Potential savings here could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

NEW Idea #52: Reform how we do school architecture. From commenter Sue Lani, who knows a considerable bit about architecture:

There are more cuts that could be made at the ESD staff level if we could just get the ESD's to stop offering design and CM services around the state, undercutting the private sector. Guess they need a math lesson - lower gross revenues at private companies means lower tax revenues to the state means less money for state employees. Or maybe the ESD's could start paying B&O taxes on their gross revenues like we do.

NEW Idea #53: Reform how National Board bonuses are paid.From Jim Anderson, ace teacher:

They could change the bonus from $5000 per year for 10 years to $4000 per year over 13 years, deferring the cost and saving $7.3 million immediately. Meanwhile, teachers would gain $2000 in the long term. Everyone wins.

NEW Idea #54: Begging. If every kid in the state brought in a $3 ream of paper as part of their school supplies, that would be $3,000,000 that schools could save. It's great for Weyerhaeuser, too!

Read more here, if any.

The NEA and School Improvement

The top-of-the-front-page headline for January 24ths edition of Education Week is “NEA Wants Role in School Improvement Agenda,” and it’s a great overview of where the union has been over the past decade, beginning with Bob Chase’s New Unionism and going right through to the debate over NCLB today. Some highlights:

(In the years since the passing of NCLB) the NEA has seemed to publicly obsess over the law, which was passed with big, bipartisan majorities and was signed by President Bush in January 2002. First, NEA leaders said they’d help affiliates minimize harm from the law in their states. Then, in 2003, President Reg Weaver announced from the dais of the annual convention that the union would challenge the measure in court. “Any pretense of support has been swept away,” declared the union’s long-time legal counsel, Robert H. Chanin.

One of the problems that I think Kerry had in 2004 was his opposition to the war. He said he was against it, but that’s pretty much where the message stopped, and that’s way too nebulous for voters to be able to hand their hats on. It’s the same with the NEA and NCLB—it’s not enough to be simply against it, you have to identify the problems with the law and propose a better way. You also have to admit that there is a problem, which presents difficulties of its own for the association:

(Talking about the disagreement between the NAACP and NEA over NCLB) But the tension is unlikely to evaporate, in part because the members of the union teach mostly in relatively untroubled schools. “A lot of the time, in suburbs and small cities, you can pretend everything is great,” said Nancy Flanagan, an award-winning teacher and a member of the Michigan Education Association who is now studying for a doctorate in education. “The AFT is in big, tough cities,” she said, where the problems can’t be so easily ignored.

I’m a little surprised that EdWeek let this go unchallenged. Cynically one could argue that if the NEA schools are “relatively untroubled,” then we should be begging them to come into more of our schools and work their magic. New York City is an AFT affiliate, I know, but I think it’s far too large a generalization to suggest that the big cities aren’t NEA territory.

And we end with the token crackpot:

Martin Haberman, an expert on urban teaching, contends that the teachers’ unions are bound so tightly to an unimaginative view of members’ interests that they are unable to make any positive contribution. “I don’t see either the NEA or the AFT as important participants in seeking to transform schools or to change them in any way that would have a salutary effect on student learning,” he charged in an email.

(sigh) Martin, friend, the NEA and the AFT collectively represent better than 4 million teachers nationwide. If you write them off as unimportant, you’re making the job of improving schools that much harder. I’d be interested, too, in having a dialogue as to what an imaginative view of members’ interests would look like.

Overall, a great article for anyone interested in the interplay between unions and education. You can read it off of EdWeek’s website, here, or I’ve pasted it below.





NEA Wants Role in School Improvement Agenda
Track record, friends, foes, and union’s own affiliates could derail undertaking.
By Bess Keller


It’s a new day, of sorts, for the nation’s largest union.

Democratic majorities in Congress should give the National Education Association friendlier treatment in Washington than it’s received during most of the past six years. And in statehouses across the land, two-thirds of the gubernatorial hopefuls the 3.2 million-member teachers’ union supported in November have taken office.

Backing up the electoral clout are sheer numbers. The union expects this to be the third year of significant membership growth—about 40,000 new members came aboard during the 2005-06 school year, according to Executive Director John I. Wilson.

Union officials point to an organizational overhaul begun in late 2004 as one big reason for the ballot-box and membership-sign-up successes. What’s more, they say, the second phase of the makeover, just completed, will beef up the union’s ability to speak authoritatively on questions of education policy and practice.

Yet how much the National Education Association can make all that pay off remains a guess, given escalating pressures from friends and foes alike and the changing education landscape. Both the NEA and its smaller peer, the American Federation of Teachers, face a new and less doctrinaire group of critics, some drawn from Democratic Party ranks. Those critics and many of the civil rights groups that have been traditional allies of the unions are impatient with the pace of student progress among the nation’s poor and non-English-speaking students.

At the same time, federal budget deficits and an increased productivity mind-set among lawmakers are ruling out big-spending solutions. So, sometimes, instead of seeing lots more money for schools, the unions are getting closer scrutiny of contracts that appear to give teachers more generous deals than those offered to private-sector workers.

External pressures to step up school improvement aren’t the whole story, though. The NEA’s history since the early 1980s suggests that it has fumbled the reins of reform against a variety of political and economic backdrops. The AFT fared at least marginally better under the legendary Albert Shanker, who died in 1997.

Now, both unions are being tested most visibly by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the nation’s main vehicle for school improvement, which is up for reauthorization this year. Both have called for substantial changes in the law’s provisions. Whether the unions will be able to shape that or other parts of the national agenda for school improvement hinges not just on their political muscle. As a new Congress and new state leaders set to work, the unions must bring credibility to their efforts as self-described proponents of public education.

This is the first of two articles looking at how the NEA and, next week, the AFT are stacking up as reform leaders.

Naysayer Image
The movement to put high-quality education at the center of the NEA’s concerns may have reached its peak in the late 1990s, with then-President Bob Chase’s “new unionism.”

Launched with a 1997 speech by Mr. Chase at the National Press Club in Washington, the undertaking largely followed a blueprint from the Kamber Group, a Washington public relations firm that had examined the union’s external communications and issued a report to NEA leaders that year. The report suggested that Mr. Chase admit publicly to some bad teachers in the ranks and take a couple of actions in support of education quality that would help the union shake its obstructionist image.

“NEA has been perceived as unwilling to acknowledge certain problems in education, costing the organization some credibility as a legitimate voice for reform,” the report said. There was also an impression, according to the study, that the NEA would pass up legitimate solutions because they might “inconvenience members.”

Some observers saw the new direction as an affirmation of the NEA’s traditional self-definition as a professional association rather than a union. As such, any stance by teachers would be for the greater good of the profession, the schools, and the students they serve.

The Kamber Group pointed out the immense public relations benefits of that image and urged the union to position itself as the No. 1 champion of public education.

Few observers of the union question Mr. Chase’s genuine interest in elevating the teaching profession to help schools improve. And the two-term NEA leader did bring about some changes in direction. He waged a successful campaign to allow teachers to evaluate their peers for example.

NCLB Strategy
In the end, though, his stance was not able to win the NEA any significant role in shaping the No Child Left Behind law after Republicans won the White House in 2000 and controlled Congress for all but a two-year period till this month. The AFT, which had championed standards and talked tougher about teacher shortcomings, fared better: It at least got the ear of the Democratic leaders who supported the bill.

If that wasn’t bad enough for the larger union, in the years since, the NEA has seemed to publicly obsess over the law, which was passed with big, bipartisan majorities and was signed by President Bush in January 2002.

NEA leaders said they’d help affiliates minimize harm from the law in their states. Then, in 2003, President Reg Weaver announced from the dais of the annual convention that the union would challenge the measure in court. “Any pretense of support has been swept away,” declared the union’s longtime legal counsel, Robert H. Chanin.

The suit, which charged that the law imposed illegal “unfunded mandates,” was later dismissed by a U.S. District Court and is currently on appeal.

The NEA was never able to find a state that would join its legal action. Connecticut, however, later brought a parallel lawsuit, and that led to another blow—this one indicative of tension over the law between the NEA and many minority groups. The groups see the measure’s focus on ending achievement gaps as a boon. Reportedly refusing to be swayed by the union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, long an ally, filed a brief in opposition to the Connecticut suit.

The NEA responded by bumping up the priority of relations with minority groups, and trumpeting its own commitment to closing achievement gaps. But the tension is unlikely to evaporate, in part because the members of the union teach mostly in relatively untroubled schools.

“A lot of the time, in suburbs and small cities, you can pretend everything is great,” said Nancy Flanagan, an award-winning teacher and a member of the Michigan Education Association who is now studying for a doctorate in education. “The AFT is in big, tough cities,” she said, where the problems can’t be so easily ignored.

The union’s leaders are thus under pressure to fight the No Child Left Behind law. On the other hand, they lose if in the process they damage traditional alliances or their ability to do business on Capitol Hill, where little sentiment exists for throwing the law out or significantly weakening its accountability provisions.

Barbara Kerr, the president of the NEA’s largest state affiliate, the California Teachers Association, faults the national union for not coming down harder, earlier on the law. But she says that misstep has now been righted with a plan for its revision that was passed at the union’s last Representative Assembly.

“The most important thing to the membership at this point that the NEA has improved on is NCLB,” Ms. Kerr said. “That’s the biggie.”

To craft the plan, the national union rounded up affiliate leaders, among others, to shape what it calls a “positive” agenda. Last fall, it even disassociated itself from an Internet petition drive led by NCLB super-critic Susan Ohanian that has drawn thousands of teacher signatures. Nonetheless, the blueprint backs off from little the union has said before. It would allow states to cut down on annual tests and would require the federal government to foot the bill for any NCLB-mandated change, for instance.

“They don’t know where they are going,” scoffed one Washington policy insider, referring to the NEA. “Their sole purpose seems to be to fight NCLB.”

Like many people interviewed for this story, he did not want to be named for fear of harming his relationships with people in the NEA, with its $307 million budget and some 14,000 local affiliates.

Policy Push
The NEA’s top management recognizes that generating serious public discussion about teaching and learning has not been the union’s strength. So after now-Deputy Director John C. Stocks, who had been brought in from the Wisconsin affiliate in 2003, overhauled the NEA’s political and recruitment operations, his boss went to work on policy.

“NEA does [lobbying] and politics well,” observed Executive Director Wilson in the fall. “Now, we have to make sure the NEA does content well, too.”

Mr. Wilson’s solution was to create the Center for Great Public Schools, bringing together seven departments that he plans to oversee himself for a year. The work of the center will range from how the federal government’s “in need of improvement” label for schools affects minority communities to defining what successful schools need from policymakers.

“It will allow NEA to be more proactive … as opposed to just criticizing,” said Joel Packer, the union’s chief lobbyist on the NCLB law who now also heads one of those departments, which includes student-achievement and school improvement concerns.

With a closer-knit organization and a deeper policy operation thanks to the overhaul, Mr. Wilson envisions that the power of the state affiliates, often the most influential groups in state capitals, will translate into NEA clout. The parent organization has awarded grants to 10 affiliates—Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania—to help them win policies and funding for closing achievement gaps.

“We’re building a critical mass within the states,” said Mr. Wilson. “We think it’s important to moving a federal agenda.”

‘Role Clarification’
While John Wilson is often quietly circulating at NEA events, the union’s highest elected leader, President Reg Weaver, typically sweeps in bringing a boatload of bonhomie. Grinning, hugging, even kissing the occasional female hand, he is unmistakable, with or without the hand-carved cane he sometimes requires.

“He really connects with teachers,” gushed Denise Cardinal, who worked in the NEA’s communications office before becoming a spokeswoman for the Minnesota office of America Votes, an advocacy group.

Indeed, Mr. Weaver is known more for rallying the troops and pressing the cause of poor and minority students than for his interest in policy or research.

Both Mr. Weaver and Mr. Wilson, who was hired under Bob Chase, concede that they haven’t always clicked. “Having changed [presidents], you have got to work very hard on role clarification,” Mr. Wilson said of the transition after Mr. Weaver’s election in 2002. “We spent a lot of time doing that early on.”

More than his recent predecessors, the current NEA president prefers to control communication with the public. Reporters are welcome to call him, for instance, but calls to others in the organization must go through the public relations office.

Mr. Weaver says such care is deliberate. He’s proud of the work he’s done around “messaging.”

“I looked at people who didn’t like us, and I saw what brought them success,” the leader recounted in a recent interview. “They had a message, they were staying on message, and we didn’t have one.”

It took months of discussion, focus groups, and polling, but eventually the union arrived at a slogan that helps conflate the interests of the union and students. “Great public schools are a basic right for every child” is now emblazoned on union publications. “Basic right” is a nod to minority groups, many grounded in struggles for civil rights. “Every child” echoes the universal concern of “No Child Left Behind.”

“I want to be known as the organization that’s working to close the achievement gap,” Mr. Weaver said, “that’s working to make sure every child has access to a great public school.”

Rear Guard
Some observers wonder whether the message discipline leaves room for even internal discussion of what it will take to make schools better. “I fear there’s little debate, substantive debate, about quality education and how to quantify it,” said a local NEA-paid union director who did not want to be named.

Others note that the NEA lags behind the AFT as a participant in the same discussions among policymakers and school advocates. Elected leaders in both the NEA and its state affiliates, many of whom have term limits, seem not to be in office long enough to take risks. Equally important, the power of some of the NEA’s large affiliates in labor strongholds such as California and New Jersey helps keeps the parent union wedded to worker rights over professional concerns. The 1.3 million-member AFT, in contrast, stays away from term limits and has few large state affiliates.

Many of the most talked-about school improvement ideas go against NEA policies or those of some of its most powerful affiliates: paying teachers more to teach some subjects than others, rewarding individual teachers for their students’ performance, toughening up the requirements for teacher tenure, reducing the prerogatives of seniority, establishing charter schools (unless they meet a long list of conditions), and giving out tuition vouchers.

“Rather than encouraging innovation, the NEA gives undue voice to its rear guard” through its structures and culture, Brad Jupp, a former union activist, wrote in an e-mail. As a member of the NEA-affiliated Denver Classroom Teachers Association, Mr. Jupp led an overhaul of Denver’s teacher-pay system that won approval from the local union, the school board, and voters. He now works as a senior adviser for the district.

Mike Antonucci, a teachers’ union watchdog who writes an online newsletter from his base in Elk Grove, Calif., contends that “the only reforms that come out of the unions are reforms that benefit the unions,” such as class-size reduction, which adds to the number of teachers who can be recruited.

Still, he acknowledged—echoing others—the AFT at least is more likely to take part in discussions about union power and school improvement.

“When they do show up, they are more likely to venture from ‘talking points’ than the NEA,” Mr. Antonucci added. “It’s very difficult to have a normal conversation about education because [NEA leaders] stick to the talking points.”

Balancing Act
At its most fundamental, the NEA is perennially in the position of weighing its members’ rights against the needs of public education, a dilemma that goes away only if you insist that teachers have no self-interest apart from children’s.

“It’s a real challenge for both teachers’ unions right now,” said Richard W. Hurd, an expert on public-sector and professional workers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. “Some teachers feel under assault because of state testing and accountability, … and the NEA has to balance their current members’ interests with promoting the field of education.”

For instance, Mr. Hurd said, professional associations traditionally want to improve the quality of the current workforce through professional development. And yet in a fiscally cautious environment where many political forces remain hostile, pointing out the need for teachers to get better could pose a threat to their job security.

Thomas Toch, who covered education as a journalist for 25 years until he became a co-founder and co-director of the nonprofit think tank Education Sector, argues that with an impatient—if indebted— Democratic Party, the unions are running out of time to resolve the challenge in favor of education.

In the 1980s, he recalled, NEA leaders toyed with teacher-pay innovations similar to ones popular now. A union task force, for example, drafted a recommendation for diversifying teacher roles, giving the best people more responsibility and more pay. But a group led by then-executive-committee member John Wilson condemned the proposal as “hierarchical” and killed it.

“It’s very hard to change minds that have been forged in the crucible of hard-nosed collective bargaining and union organizing,” where solidarity is the first principle, said Mr. Toch, who worked for Education Week in the 1980s.

Some critics are even harsher. Martin Haberman, an expert on urban teaching, contends that the teachers’ unions are bound so tightly to an unimaginative view of members’ interests that they are unable to make any positive contribution.

“I don’t see either the NEA or the AFT as important participants in seeking to transform schools or to change them in any way that would have a salutary effect on student learning,” he charged in an e-mail.

Another Division
Union proponents, however, say that while there’s a struggle, the NEA has never been more conscious of its educational responsibility.

“I think that’s the great battle right now, between the professional-association side and the union side,” acknowledged Rhonda “Nikki” Barnes, the coordinator for black-community outreach at the NEA. ‘”We’re the offspring of both.”

But Ms. Barnes added that both the public and policymakers have to understand more about the complexities of the classroom if many of the proposed innovations are to work. In the meantime, the NEA has to fend off what would be harmful.

Said the nationally certified teacher: “We have to force people every day to deal with the complexities of teaching and learning, try to show the world what goes on in a classroom.”

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