With contract negotiations still stalled, Michelle Rhee has revealed the other prong of her DCPS overhaul: professional development. Rhee had hoped to let go (either by buyout or simple firing) a significant portion of DC teachers and overhaul the PD program for those that remained. But the new union contract stalled (and, notably, as yet to go up for a vote) and Rhee was left with “Plan B.” It seems Plan B has been put in motion and her PD changes will go into effect in 2010-2011. Details are scant so far but we’ve gotten a few hints at what’s to come:

—DCPS no longer supports National Board for Professional Teacher Standards certification. It’s unclear whether this means that having NBPTS certification will no longer hold the salary increases usually associated with it (which, presumably, would have been eliminated under the stalled union contract) or if this move is more symbolic. DCPS argues that having national certification has only weak ties to demonstrable improvement in teacher effectiveness. 

—Creating a PD program based on the experience of DC’s suburbs, specifically Montgomery County. This would include an apprentice-master teacher system, where effective teachers mentor new teachers, and the introduction of The Skillful Teacher program, a six day seminar created by Jon Saphier of the Research for Better Teaching Program in Massachusetts. The program’s mantra is that every student can learn, regardless of background, circumstances, etc. According to the Washington Post, a 2004 independent study found that:

before taking the course, Montgomery teachers rated students’ home life and motivation as the factors that most influenced learning. After the course, home life dropped to 11th on the list, and teacher enthusiasm and perseverance were described as most important.

Pulling support for national certification has potential if it also means cutting ties to salary increases. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal since fewer than 1 percent of DC teachers have national certification anyway (according to the Post, 39 out of roughly 4,000 teachers). The PD improvements, however, definitely seem reasonable. For starters, The Skillful Teacher program has a “no-excuses” attitude that is common to many of the successful charter schools (David Whitman’s Sweating the Small Stuff details six of them). Breaking out of a closed-door classroom model with a mentor teacher structure also has potential. But as with much during Rhee’s tumultous almost-2-year tenure, only time will tell how these ideas will transplant to the District’s urban schools.

“School” is out in Sheffield, England. The singular term has so many negative connotations that a new school there has dropped the offending noun from its name, according to a report in The Guardian. Instead, the institution will be called a “place for learning,” said headteacher Linda Kingdon.

“We decided from an early stage we didn’t want to use the word ’school’,” she told local newspaper the Sheffield Star. “This is Watercliffe Meadow, a place for learning. One reason was many of the parents of the children here had very negative connotations of school. Instead we want this to a be a place for family learning, where anyone can come.”

The ranks of home-schooled children seem to be growing, according to a USA Today story that examines numbers from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). About 1.5 million kids were taught at home in 2007, up 74% from 1999 (when NCES started keeping tabs), and up 36% since 2003, according to the story. Overall the percentage of the school-age population that was home-schooled increased slightly from 2.2% in 2003 to 2.9% in 2007.

According to the piece, moral or religious reasons remain a top motivation for home-schooling, but there are also “unschoolers”—those who regard standard curriculum methods and standardized testing as counterproductive to a quality education. And the category of “other reasons” rose 12% — from 20% in 2003 to 32% in 2007 — and included family time and finances.

(Editor’s note: Beginning today, Fordham’s Ohio team will be blogging on Flypaper. This first post is from Terry Ryan, Vice President for Ohio Programs & Policy.)

Ohio has long been known as the cradle of presidents. The Buckeye State has seen eight of its sons serve as the nation’s top executive. More recently Ohio has been the incubator of education reformers.

Three national newsmakers with roots in Ohio and a passion for fixing schools are Michelle Rhee (raised in Toledo and a graduate of Maumee Valley Country Day School), Adrian Fenty (a graduate of Oberlin College in Lorain County) and Michael Bennet (former assistant to Ohio Governor Richard Celeste). All three have been at the forefront of American education reform over the last three years, and all three are Democrats.

Rhee is serving as the chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools, where she has worked closely with the Mayor Adrian Fenty to turn around one of the nation’s most troubled big city school systems. Their plan is audacious and, according to Rhee, seeks to transform D.C.’s public schools within eight years for its 50,000 children. The plan focuses on top-down accountability, standardized test scores, and, ultimately, working to close what she describes as “the achievement gap between wealthy white kids and poor minority kids.”

In her first year on the job, and with the complete backing of Fenty, Rhee closed 23 schools, fired 36 principals and cut 15 percent—about 121 jobs—of the central office staff. Just today, Rhee announced “a dramatic overhaul of the district’s 4,000-member teacher corps that would remove a ‘significant share’ of instructors and launch an ambitious plan to foster professional growth for those who remain.” Rhee and Fenty are both unabashed supporters of charter schools.

Michael Bennet has been serving as Denver Public Schools Superintendent where he supported charter schools and gave birth to a merit pay plan for teachers. Under his leadership, the district posted a 6.2 percent increase in reading scores over the three years—more than four times the state gain. In math, there was a 6 percent improvement, more than twice the state gain. And in the middle grades, Denver saw gains of 10 percent in reading and 9 percent in math. On Saturday, Colorado’s Governor Bill Ritter named Bennet as the U.S. Senate replacement for Interior Secretary nominee Ken Salazar.

Ohio, facing a budget shortfall for the next two years of more than $7 billion, badly needs new thinking on ways to improve its schools during these tough times. We should look to former Buckeyes Rhee, Fenty, and Bennet for ideas and inspiration. No interests, other than those of children, should be sacred.

Ohio map from GreenwichMeanTime.com

Seemingly upholding her “mom-in-chief” moniker, Michelle Obama took her two daughters to their first day at Sidwell Friends this morning. The first family moved to Washington this weekend—two weeks before the inauguration—so that Malia and Sasha could start the spring semester along with their classmates.

Visiting the LBJ Ranch in the Texas hill country this weekend, our ad hoc tour group included a gaggle of high-school students from “south of Houston.” They generally seemed pleasant, self-conscious, goofy and teenager-ish. They also seemed entirely ignorant of the 1960’s,  even the basic timeline of 20th Century U.S. history. At least one couldn’t quite remember the name of the 36th President whose ranch this was. Standing in front of the Western White House (a lovely spot on the banks of the Pedernales, by the way, shaded by 400-year-old live oaks), this lad asked the National Park Service ranger, “When did he die? Was it 1993?” The ranger looked slightly puzzled, perhaps because he had already mentioned 1973 as the year of Johnson’s death and because all the biographical material in the park conveyed that key fact. So the kid decided to clarify the subject of his query: “The guy,” he said, evidently either unable to call LBJ’s name to mind or truly unaware of where he was and why he and his pals were taking this tour in the first place.

That was the first of a grand total of two questions posed by these dozen youngsters. The second came while we were inside the President’s office (the only room one can currently tour, considering that this building was Lady Bird’s weekend residence until her own death barely 18 months ago and the Park Service is planning gradually to open more of it to visitors.) “Was he saved?” inquired a girl. That was it. We were standing in a place in which were made any number of momentous decisions involving any number of key figures in U.S. history from 1964 through 1968. (The ranger had mentioned “Martin,” for example, as the epochal civil rights act was being planned.) But the only topic of evident interest to these kids was LBJ’s relationship to God.

Stained-glass Jesus photograph by MAMJODH on Flickr

In case you’re perusing Flypaper to gather some interesting, timely info with which to wow fellow party-goers tonight…… here are two interesting AP stories involving funding and schools:

The first piece discusses President-elect Obama’s plan to resuscitate/modernize schools across the nation as part of his economic stimulus plan. I’m pretty sure Fordham experts will have a lot more to say about it as days and weeks unfold! According to the AP story, Congress begins work on the economic recovery program on Wednesday.

The second is a story about one very lucky school. According to the piece, Oprah Winfrey recently donated  $365,000 to a private school in one of Atlanta’s poorest areas. The school is run by Ron Clark, who opened a letter from Winfrey last week and saw a piece of paper flutter to the ground. The gift was “incredible,” said Clark, whose school depends almost entirely on donations to operate. The gift money will likely go to scholarships for students, he said.

Happy New Year!

Greg Toppo takes a look back at education in 2008 in this morning’s USA Today. His verdict is bleak: slashed budgets, scant attention paid by campaigns, depressing report findings, and warring manifestos. But at least education made it into popular culture—on FOX’s King of the Hill.

An op-ed in today’s Indianapolis Star argues for a statewide weighted student funding (WSF) system to deal with the state’s budget challenges.

Headlined “Less on overhead, more into classrooms,” its author argues:

...research by management expert William Ouchi and colleagues that indicates centralized budgeting is not a good idea. “Schools perform better on fiscal and academic outcomes when there is a) local control of school budgets by principals and b) open enrollment, which allows per pupil funding to follow the child.”

The latter idea, known as Weighted Student Funding, is being piloted around the country and gaining acceptance. In its purest form, students could choose any public school in their region and per-pupil funding would go with them. The allotment would be higher for students with special needs, and school buildings would have flexibility to spend as they deem fit. Because parents could choose their child’s school, a competitive environment would force principals to spend wisely, thus more money for instruction.

[Incoming superintendent of public instruction] Bennett is philosophically behind the idea. What’s encouraging is that he understands the next wave of education reform: spending more effectively.

There are two interesting questions here. One is whether states should adopt WSF, which heretofore has been largely a district-based strategy. Fordham argued in Fund the Child for a state-level approach, and more recently we provided a roadmap for how Ohio might do so. Likewise, the South Carolina Policy Council explains here (pdf) how the Palmetto State could move toward WSF.

But states need a real, live model of WSF to follow—here’s hoping Indiana can be that.

A second, timely, question is whether a bold funding reform like WSF is easier to enact when times are lean or when funding is flush. For example, New York City’s move to WSF (or Fair Student Funding), and shifting of resources from school to school, was eased by a huge “adequacy” lawsuit windfall in state funding.

Now, in states like Indiana and Ohio, we may see whether WSF’s potential to more efficiently spend shrinking budgets pushes it to the forefront of state policy debates.

Fordham President Checker Finn discusses Fordham’s Open Letter, new research, school funding, and more Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio show this morning, December 30. You can listen to the interview here.

I feel like we’ve turned reporting on the shenanigans in the Big Apple into a weekly event. The latest? Overfunding schools that are slated to close in 2010. Sure, we can’t just rip the mats out from under these schools as they head for the exit, but let’s not also give them double the average per-pupil student funding. That’s right, at least five schools are getting as much as $28,000 per kid . The NYC average is $14,000. According to the NY Post , all of this is due to some funding glitch that creates a lag in budget cuts for schools with declining enrollments to temper the shock. Adlai Stevenson High School in the Bronx, for example, kept an extra $2 million even though student enrollment dropped from last year’s 687 to this year’s 303. What are these schools doing with the extra dough? Spending it of course—on SMART boards, copies of Obama’s memoir Dreams of My Father for the entire school, and a grand piano, to name a few. As one teacher put it, "I have no clue why this is going on." Neither do I.

In response to the Washington Post’s unfair article about a pseudo-scandal at the D.C. Public Charter School Board—for which the Post editorial board has since tried to make amends —yesterday’s paper ran an op-ed by charter supporters Kevin Chavous and Robert Cane . They make a number of good points. Perhaps most perceptively, they note that the city has not always played fairly with charter schools, creating a need for the facility loans that the Post decried:

D.C. law requires that charters be given first crack at empty school buildings, before condo developers or non-educational city agencies can bid for them. Yet the city has in most instances denied charters unused school facilities, forcing them into the commercial loan market to pay high costs for spaces that are often inadequate.

The issue of these bank loans was raised recently in The Post , leading some to confuse the freedom that charters enjoy with a lack of accountability and oversight. Charters do have overseers: They are accountable to parents who choose them for their children and to their regulatory body, the Public Charter School Board, a nationally renowned model of accountability. For 12 years, this board has been doing what the city has just begun for traditional schools: holding charters to high standards, tackling under-performance and replacing ineffective school leaders.

They also debunk the myth, spread by the Post , that charters are "flush with funds":

In fact, both types of public school are funded under the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, which ensures that students in the same grade or at the same level of special education are funded equally. About $3,000 per student goes to charters to pay for facilities, while DCPS schools receive about $5,000 per student from the city government’s capital budget. The big foundations make grants to both types of schools.

Fordham found similar results in its (somewhat dated) study of charter and district funding (pdf). Though the charter formula intends funding to be equitable in D.C., in 2002-03 charters received about $2,100 less in facilities funding per-pupil than did the district schools, leading to a total funding gap of $3,552. Charters thus received, on average, about 22 percent less than district schools.

No, that’s not a typo. According to this front-page Washington Post article from Saturday, that’s what Ohio governor Ted Strickland is preparing to request, along with Democratic governors from Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts.

Surely the group doesn’t intend this to be an annual payment; the entire education system spends about $550 billion per year, so their proposal would amount to a 45% increase in per-pupil spending, overnight. They can’t possibly be that crazy. But even if they mean this to be spread out over, say, five years, $50 billion per year would more than double what Uncle Sam contributes now. This is big, big money.

But it’s not inconceivable. Some sort of "revenue sharing" for the states is practically a foregone conclusion (Paul Krugman argues that those cutting state spending now amount to "Fifty Herbert Hoovers," ), and admitting that most of that money will go to the schools (which suck up the majority of state funds) would be a bit of truth in advertising.

Writing yesterday in the New York Times , Matt Miller offers some ideas about the strings that should go along with said revenue . Mostly he wants to use the cash to equalize funding between rich and poor schools, but he’d push for various reforms too:

Federal cash could also be offered to lift teacher salaries for high-poverty schools. States or districts that accept the money would have to allow higher pay for the best teachers or those in scarce specialties like math and science, defer or eliminate tenure (or link it to student achievement gains), and make it easier to fire bad teachers. These districts could pay top teachers up to $150,000 a year, attracting a new generation of talent to America’s toughest classrooms.

Eduwonk Andy riffs on Matt’s piece to offer some strings of his own :

With the kind of money Matt is talking about Washington could exert even more leverage with an eye toward increasing productivity although perhaps in less sexy ways.   For example, a serious effort to put the federal government on track to meet its financial obligations under the federal special education law - IDEA -could be coupled with requirements to curb the over-identification of students for special education.    Federal aid could be tightly linked to even more robust efforts around data systems than we’re seeing today, especially in laggard states.  Perhaps you could even try for the national standards moonshot via more interstate collaboration or some derivative of it around enhanced benchmarking and transparency around standards and assessments.

All this grandiose thinking must be giving George Will a heart attack. Just yesterday he wrote that "Today, there is more Johnsonian confidence in government’s competence than at any time since Johnson’s policies shattered such confidence. The resurgence of confidence began under today’s Texan president." By which he refers to...the No Child Left Behind Act, with its "Great Society-style ambition and race-conscious rhetoric." (If that sounds familiar, its because Will quoted our good friend Rick Hess .)

So there will be a federal bailout of the states, and it will come with strings attached. Pushing for greater equity in school finance systems wouldn’t be the worst idea, particularly if done along the lines of weighted-student funding . Neither would Andy’s suggestions. But what’s most likely is that Uncle Sam’s intentions and his impact won’t come any where near matching, as unintended consequences creep in. You know, just like with the Great Society.

Andy Rotherham, the go-to New Dem on education for the better part of the last decade, doesn’t seem to grasp the opportunity at his fingertips. First in the “Open Letter” to the New Administration and Congress published by Fordham last week, and then in this National Review Online piece by Rick Hess and me today, several of us on the right are arguing that the No Child Left Behind act is, as Robert Gordon once wrote, a “the sort of law liberals once dreamed about.”

You might think that Andy would be heartened by this development, claim credit for pulling the wool over the Bush Administration’s eyes, and mock those who have called him a closet Republican. (”See—the Bushies are closet Democrats,” he might say.)

Instead, he reacted to our NRO article by writing that “the fight for the Republican soul on education policy is on.” Sure, that’s true enough, but at a time when the Democrats for Education Reform are being accused of adopting the Republican agenda, you might think he’d point out that:

—While accountability was a conservative idea, a race-based accountability system, and one that seeks to redistribute resources, is a liberal idea;

—While school choice was a conservative idea, limiting it to public schools, and putting local districts in charge, is a liberal idea;

—While giving failing schools a lot of tough love was a conservative idea, doing it from Washington is a liberal idea.

(Do I sound like Mitt Romney?)

Liberals and conservatives didn’t compromise to hatch No Child Left Behind; conservatives followed President Bush’s lead and got on board a liberal agenda. With Bush headed out of town, expect Republicans to vacate this position, and to act like a center-right party again. Which will show just how “progressive” and left-of-center the New Dems really are. So Andy, celebrate! You’re not a Republican!

Happy holidays to one and all.

Or so a study released yesterday by the Education Trust has found. The report, No Accounting for Fairness , looks at funding patterns in the state’s fourteen largest school districts; it uses average teacher salaries, which typically make up 80-90% of school expenditures, to evaluate whether extra funds given to these districts for poor children are actually being spent in high-poverty schools, assuming that salaries are positively correlated with teacher experience. The study then uses teacher salaries to estimate per-pupil spending by school.

The findings are revealing: only three of the fourteen districts, EdTrust found, had higher average teacher salaries at high-poverty schools. In the other eleven districts, lower-poverty schools paid their teachers less—and (we can assume) have less experienced teachers. In Akron, for example, the average difference between a high-poverty and low-poverty school teacher’s average salary was $4,000. Furthermore, based on these salary numbers, these eleven districts are spending less per-pupil in high-poverty schools than they are in low-poverty schools.

While it has yet to be proven that more money is the silver bullet solution to low achievement for poor students, we can safely say that it does take more money to educate them. Ohio has done much to equalize funding between more and less affluent districts, but as this study shows, there are still spending disparities within districts that may mitigate those effects.

Terry Ryan, Fordham’s vice president for Ohio programs and policies, had this to say in this morning’s Columbus Dispatch :

The (teacher) seniority system should be changed. They provide a disincentive to get your best teachers with your toughest kids. We are paying the same or less for the kids that have the greatest needs, and that’s upside down.

Rick Hess and I have a piece on National Review Online today about President Bush’s education legacy. I guess you might say it’s not really in the Christmas spirit. We argue that Bush sold out his principles when negotiating the No Child Left Behind act:

The compromises that the administration struck...led Bush to champion a law that dramatically expanded the federal role in education; adopted an explicitly race-based conception of school accountability; focused on “closing achievement gaps” to the exclusion of all other objectives; proffered a pie-in-the-sky civil rights-oriented approach to school “accountability” (even for students with cognitive disabilities and English language learners); created a burdensome federal mandate around teacher qualifications that hampers outfits such as Teach For America; devised a compliance apparatus that is even more burdensome than the previous regime; and significantly increased federal spending on education.

But we were just warming up:

Decades ago, Newt Gingrich and other reform-minded conservatives used to savage Bob Dole as a “tax collector for the welfare state” - arguing that “green eyeshade” Republicans were simply enabling Democrats who gleefully maneuvered the budget balancers into backing the tax increases needed to fund expansive programs. Democrats got the credit while Republicans got tagged as grim-faced disciplinarians. It is not too much of a stretch to suggest that Bush permitted himself to become the “hall monitor for the civil rights lobby” - taking the hits from angry suburbanites and the blame for an unpopular law, while civil rights groups basked in their new status and doubled down by pushing for new and more aggressive federal programs.

It should surprise no one that the “Democrats for Education Reform” love No Child Left Behind. It’s a progressive law, through and through, and I suspect that 2009 will be the year when most conservatives (and most Republicans) abandon it entirely.

This weekend the Post also published a letter of support from D.C. Public Charter School Board member Will Marshall, whose day job is president of the Progressive Policy Institute. He wrote:

The Dec. 14 front-page story "Public Role, Private Gain" labored to concoct a conflict-of-interest scandal at the D.C. Public Charter School Board . All it lacked was evidence of wrongdoing. As members of the Charter School Board, we regret that the target of this journalistic drive-by was our highly effective chairman, Thomas A. Nida .

Particularly offensive was the insinuation that Mr. Nida voted to shut down a charter school to benefit the bank that employs him. Every time our board has closed a charter school it has done so because that school was demonstrably failing to serve its students and D.C. taxpayers.

Members of the board are volunteers; we are paid nothing for the many hours we devote, on top of our day jobs, to ensuring that all District children have access to good public schools.

With supporters from Fordham and PPI, not to mention the Post editorial board , I’d say there’s a bipartisan consensus for Tom.

We lambasted WaPo last week for its inappropriate and overly harsh treatment of DC Charter School Board Chairman Tom Nida (here and here , too). This Saturday, the Post amended its position with the following:

Much of the credit for the success of the charters must go to the volunteer public charter school board, which, in the span of a dozen years, has overseen the growth of a sizable school system. The Post investigation raised questions about whether its members, in particular Chairman Thomas A. Nida , paid sufficient attention to conflict-of-interest rules. It’s important that the matter be investigated, and both D.C. Attorney General Peter J. Nickles and the city’s campaign finance office are looking into the situation. The board should revise its practices to bring better transparency to its actions. But calls for a purge of board members are premature. Consider, for instance, that there were sound educational reasons for some of the actions that have been called into question (such as closing schools that were failing to adequately educate their students). It would be wrong to discount the important work done by the board, under Mr. Nida’s leadership, in nurturing charter schools.

Having a slow work day as everyone takes off for the holidays? Then sing along to this new classic set to the tune of “Frosty the Snowman” with lyrics by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. You can peruse more Fordham videos here, including our open letter to President-elect Obama and our popular “Byte at the Apple” event highlights. Happy Holidays!

Usually school districts see themselves as competing with charter schools for students. Not the Recovery School District. Superintendent Paul Vallas plans on increasing the market share of charters in New Orleans by converting more schools to charter schools. The schools under consideration for the switch are mostly low performing—and Vallas hopes that their new found charter status under private leadership might be the ticket to seeing test scores rise. Higher performing and career schools are also under consideration. The plan has the support of State Superintendent Paul Pastorek, too, which is key since all charter switches will require state approval. Vallas explains:

"This is the tide. You’re swimming against the tide if you don’t embrace this approach. That’s why I came down here," Vallas said. "If you create a district of charters and independent schools, you insulate the district from the adverse effects of having a monopolistic education system."

The next step is figuring out an accountability system for schools serving K-2. Since students don’t take the LA test, iLEAP, until third grade, there’s little way to evaluate charter schools serving younger students.

I like the sound of this plan, if only because of Vallas’ attitude about it. It’s nice to hear a superintendent not being defensive about declining district enrollment and willing to actually put students’ interests first. We’ll have to wait and see if private supervision will turn these lagging charter-converts into academic successes.

According to an op-ed in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, Pennsylvania has the highest incidence of teacher strikes in the country. In fact, 110 school districts are at risk of teachers going on strike in the next 6 months. PA apparently has the ninth highest average teacher salary in the country—$54,970 in 2006-2007. Other interesting facts: 42% of the country’s teacher strikes occur in the Quaker State and carry no consequences for teachers or unions (some states fine unions for strikes or make teachers give up salary for days missed). Worst of all, in 2007-2008, kids who were chucked out of classrooms while teachers were on strike were on these strike-vacations for an average of 13 days. That’s a lot of school days to miss!

They said it was an impossible dream. But look: a coalition of state organizations has announced that they will work toward common standards in reading and math in grades K-12. This is the “Let’s all hold hands” strategy to creating national standards that we outlined over two years ago—and probably the one approach with the greatest likelihood of success. Today’s announcement won’t get much press attention but it sure will be noticed by historians some day.

Photograph by (nutmeg) from Flickr

Leaders here at Fordham praised the report Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education, released today by The National Governors Association, Council of Chief State School Officers and Achieve, Inc. Fordham president Checker Finn said:

Though America’s belated moves toward international benchmarking and ‘common’ state standards face many perils—done wrong, they could reignite ‘culture wars’ and sacrifice vital U.S. curricular values on the altar of nebulous skills—this is a tremendously important initiative,” said Fordham president Chester E. Finn, Jr.. “That it’s happening outside the federal government avoids some hazards. Now the partner organizations must move expeditiously but wisely through those that remain. I applaud their willingness to do so.

Read the Fordham press release here and read the full report here.

What’s the cosmic significance of the Arne Duncan pick? The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Seib, channeling Checker, says that it proves President-Elect Obama’s pragmatism:

The real prototype of Obama appointees, though, may be Mr. Duncan, the Chicago schools chief who is to become education secretary. A Harvard graduate, onetime professional basketball player in Australia, and friend of the president-to-be, Mr. Duncan has managed to build a reputation as a school reformer without winning the enmity of the teachers unions that often resist school reforms.

How did he do that? “He’s a little bit of a Rorschach figure; you can read into him what you want,” says Chester Finn, a conservative education expert who served in the Reagan education department yet praises the Duncan selection. He calls Mr. Duncan a “rounded-edges kind of guy” who has “closed some schools but hasn’t had mass layoffs” among teachers. “He’s a pragmatist, I guess,” Mr. Finn concludes. At this point, at least, that seems an apt description of much of the emerging Team Obama.

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, channeling (Fordham trustee) Diane Ravitch, says that it shows that you can be pro-union and pro-school reform:

To declare that the only test of a politician’s commitment to reform is a willingness to break with unions creates a no-win choice for Democrats. They must either betray long-standing allies or face condemnation as the captives of special interests.

Obama, said Diane Ravitch, an assistant secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush, is trying to “break out” of a definition of reform drawn almost entirely from “the Republican agenda.”

That agenda focuses on “being tough on the unions, offering more choices and pushing for more accountability.” While reformers of all stripes support accountability, this list actually constrains the options for those who would improve the public schools.

See, Arne Duncan is a blank canvas!

Governor Patterson has proposed cutting nearly $88 million over two years in aid to private independent and parochial schools. The funds, specifically, are $44 million a year that is given to private schools to track and report to the state attendance rates throughout the day (apparently NY state counts noses more than once throughout the school day).

The reactions to this announcement have been pointedly negative:

TEACH New York State balked at the announcement, issuing a release headlined: ‘Governor to religious and independent school students: Drop dead.’

"Our families cannot absorb any more strain, and the state cannot afford to continue allowing our schools to close—which will only exacerbate the financial crisis lawmakers are desperately trying to solve," said Richard Barnes, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference.

Two things. First of all, sure, families are strained financially...but so is the state...and the state gets (most of) its money in taxes from those same families. I’ve seen this government-must-keep-paying-because-our-families-are-struggling sentiment again and again over the past few weeks. Where do these people think governments get their dollars? Trees? Sure, the federal government can keep printing more cash, but that’s not sustainable in the long term. Case and point is yesterday’s devaluing of the dollar when the Federal Reserve announced it would print billions in new mint. Let’s just accept the fact that everyone, private and public alike, are struggling right now and stop assuming the government will solve all our financial problems. (We also expressed this sentiment in yesterday’s Gadfly : if these private and parochial schools don’t stand up for themselves, no one else will.)

Second, why the heck is it so expensive to take attendance ? Last time I checked, this was an incredibly simple process. Perhaps the reporting requirements require extra administrative man hours, but let’s not act like Patterson’s proposal is the end of the world. "Governor to state private and religious schools: Drop dead"? Get a life.

The one part of our "open letter" to the incoming Administration and Congress that seems to be surprising folks the most is our call to eliminate No Child Left Behind’s public school choice and supplemental educational services (tutoring) provisions. Yes, this proposal is counter-intuitive. We at Fordham are strong supporters of school choice (Jay Greene, it’s true! ), and I personally worked on these initiatives while at the Department of Education. But as I wrote a few years ago , these programs are fundamentally flawed and are incapable of being improved. That’s because they rely on school districts to do things they don’t want to do, and to do them well. Not likely.

Here’s how we put it in our letter:

Though we staunchly support choices for parents and believe in bold action at the state and local level in addressing school failure, this is one area where Uncle Sam should keep out. He should leave it to the states to design their own interventions. If he cannot restrain himself from staying involved, he could provide incentives (i.e., extra money) for states or jurisdictions that tackle these reforms aggressively.

That’s a recurring theme for us "reform realists": incentivize, don’t mandate, particular reforms. That provides local leaders the political cover they need to push for change, while avoiding the cat-and-mouse games that have characterized the NCLB era.

Surely you already know that Bethany Little was the uber-insider that first put big odds on Arne Duncan getting the spot as U.S. Secretary of Education. But we also asked you, our readers, to tell us who you thought would be the pick, and two of you got it right: Steve Glazerman, a senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research (who surely ran a randomized field trial in order to come up with his prediction); and Gregory McGinity, The Broad Foundation’s senior director of policy (himself a onetime Washington insider before returning to California).

For their perspicacity, Glazerman and McGinity will get a special gift from Santa this year: signed copies of Checker Finn’s latest book, Troublemaker (which makes a great stocking stuffer for any dedicated education wonk).

I am particularly pleased for McGinity (and not because Broad helps to support Fordham’s work), but because, let’s face it, his Ed in ‘08 campaign had more than a little trouble this year. So here’s a toast to Gregory for ending the year on a high note!

Picture from Christmas Wallpapers

Sad news: the ‘Fly is flying home for the holidays—and will remain out of your inboxes for two whole weeks! It’s tough, we know, but that’s why we made this week’s edition such a humdinger. First up, Mike and Checker introduce Fordham’s Open Letter to the President-Elect, Secretary-Designate, and Members of the 111th Congress. This op-ed is chock full of great ideas for the incoming administration. But if you want the whole kahuna, you should read the Open Letter itself! Then, you’ll learn of the WaPo’s despicable treatment of Tom Nida, Malcolm Gladwell’s quarterback problem, and a very silly British teacher who tried to quiet down her 1st grade class by telling them Santa didn’t exist (brilliant!).

Next up, we’re pleased to welcome Rick Hess, the one and only, back to the podcast. Unfortunately, not much has changed since he left to go do “research” in Hawaii; he still doesn’t read the news, doesn’t watch TV, and doesn’t listen to the radio. But, dear reader, don’t let that deter you. You should stay informed... by listening to the podcast, of course, which gives you the 411 on education news in only 20 minutes! Then you’ll find a stellar trifecta of Short Reviews wherein you will learn about data systems, the concentration of bad teachers in high-poverty schools, and some good news from Louisiana on teacher prep programs. Finally, Linda Noonan and Jill Norton respond to December 4’s editorial on 21st Century skills in Massachusetts. 

And don’t forget, Fordham is still on the hunt for a new Staff Assistant.

Happy holidays from our Fordham family to yours!

In light of this morning’s release of Fordham’s open letter, this article from Tuesday’s NY Times seemed all the more appropriate. It’s about early childhood education, which President-elect Obama brought up many times during the campaign (more times, say, than NCLB), and which was a highlight of his Duncan announcement speech in Chicago. In fact, during that speech (during which, of course, NCLB was, again, not mentioned), Obama repledged $10 billion to early childhood programs. This part was particularly telling: 

And the $10 billion Mr. Obama has pledged for early childhood education would amount to the largest new federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965. Now, Head Start is a $7 billion federal program serving about 900,000 preschoolers.

“People are absolutely ecstatic,” said Cornelia Grumman, executive director of the First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group. “Some people seem to think the Great Society is upon us again.” 

Let’s just hope this isn’t the first leak of Obama’s education platform. As the Notorious B.I.G. wisely once said, (when it comes to education policies and the federal government) “It’s like the more money we come across, the more problems we see.”