Housing Policy & Educational Opportunity: Some Notes

Today I had the pleasure of being a panelist in Richmond at HOME's (Housing Opportunities Made Equal) Blogger Luncheon on Housing & Opportunity. Besides being treated to a tasty lunch (& free parking!) I got to listen to and partake in interesting conversations about Richmond Metro Area housing, public and mass transportation, families, parenting, entrepreneurship, politics, democratic process and institutions, social media, real estate, communities, and, of course, education. Here I'm going to summarize what I shared there, including links.

Three ways I could think of that housing influences educational opportunities and outcomes are:

1) Housing conditions, meaning the conditions and environment that students and their families live in. Such conditions can affect a child's readiness to learn.

• Is the dwelling and surrounding neighborhood safe?
• Is the housing well-maintained?
• Is there running, potable water? 
• Is there adequate heating/cooling? Is the heating and cooling affordable? 
• Is there a lot of noise? Is there a quiet place to study or read?  
• Is the housing in an area of concentrated poverty? Is the child in an environment causing toxic stress for them and/or for a disproportionate number of their neighbors?
• What is the air quality in the neighborhood?
• Is there access to supermarkets and healthy food?
• Are there adequate public transportation options?
• Is there access to adequate health care?

2) The strength and existence, even, of a neighborhood school. Studies show that most parents prefer to send their children to schools in their neighborhood. It's more convenient but also serves as a positive community and support systems builder. Of course, this practice can conflict with making schools diverse and providing equality of access, which bring me to point 3.

3) Housing and zoning policies. Economic integration of housing and neighborhoods is an over-looked yet proven tool for school reform (N.B.: I am by no means saying it's the only one).

• According to the (must-read!) book The Color of Their Skin about the Richmond Public Schools desegregation process (the book also covers other districts in Virginia), school desegregation only occurred in any substance for a few years before the schools in Richmond proper and the surrounding areas re-segregated. Busing was a temporary and heavily protested solution. Housing policies needed to change but did not. In fact, zoning policies became more discriminatory, serving as de facto segregation laws.

• According to a study reported in 2010 by The Century Foundation, low-income students in Montgomery County, Maryland, who go to high-performing public schools in more affluent districts do better academically than their peers who live in lower-income districts attending schools with majority low-income populations, even if those schools are given more resources.

• Schools in Wake County, North Carolina, have a smaller achievement gap because of integration--magnet programs were located in low-income neighborhoods.

• Furthermore, a study by the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program released last week showed that metropolitan areas' housing policies keep low-income students from attending high-performing schools. Restrictive or exclusionary policies that prohibit the development of apartment buildings and smaller houses on smaller parcels cause economic segregation. 

• In high-performing, mixed-SES schools, all kids benefit from: lower rates of teacher and principal turnover; parents with more time and resources to give to the school; parents who feel more empowered to advocate for rich, meaningful, and vital educational opportunities; fewer families who are under significant stress; and being part of a diverse, pluralistic learning community.

• Additional links:

1. Study of Montgomery County schools shows benefits of economic integration
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/14/AR2010101407577.html

2. Interactive: Housing Costs, Zoning and School Access:

   http://www.brookings.edu/info/schools/school_access_interactive.aspx

3. The New Brookings Report on Economic Segregation

http://botc.tcf.org/2012/04/the-new-brookings-report-on-economic-segregation.html 

4. Could new zoning laws help educate poor kids?

   http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/could-new-zoning-laws-help-educate-poor-kids#.T5HZd4q-2-0.twitter

5. Study Links Zoning to Education Disparities

   http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/04/19/29zoning.h31.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW

6. Education For Poor Students Threatened By Exclusionary Housing Policies, Report Says

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/19/education-for-poor_n_1435876.html?ref=tw

Parent Jiggernaut Follow-Up: Opting out vs. Opting In

This is a follow-up to my post from earlier today:

Some people have asked me why we don't opt our kids out of testing such as this movement encourages people to do. That is definitely under consideration. My reluctance with that is two-fold:

1) I see value in the disruptive route--there are many ways to effect change. I am grateful to have been made aware of my rights as a parent and I see value in publicizing those rights. All power to unitedoptout. But I am not a disruptor. I'm a persuader (though apparently not a very successful one if measured by actions taking after reading this blog). I'd much rather try to reason with people first, citing evidence, and then try to work something out collaboratively without being disruptive, especially if children are involved.

2) Even if I did opt my kids out of the official standardized tests (in my state of Virginia they are the SOLs), that would not change everything that leads up to the tests or everything that the tests drive. In fact, if there really were only four testing days (in 3rd grade there are four SOL tests) with four tests at the end of the school year, I would not care so much. I might not care at all. It's everything else that bothers me. I don't want to opt out of the tests themselves as much as I want to opt my children out of excessive test prep, practice and benchmark tests (which mirror the official tests), as well as out of a test-narrowed curriculum. I want to opt in to rich and meaningful curriculum, to more hands-on learning, to more inter-disciplinary studies, to field trips, to more recess, to more art, to more music, to more theater, to more PE, to more history, to more civics, to more science, to more "life" skills, to a better education.

If I am going to my children's school or even school district office to tell them as a parent that I want a richer and more meaningful curriculum, a more joyful and interesting school experience for my children, one that capitalizes on children's curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and their response is We agree but we have no control over that then that's a problem. That's a big problem. And I don't see this being solved at the root by parent trigger-type laws or by the current federal and state education policies that dictate the very practices I find wanting. If the school or districts are structured such that power is not theirs to relinquish in the first place, with no flexibility to grant educators, then how can I as a parent, without there being any real change in policy or power hierarchies, locate any real power to make or advocate for change in how and what my children are learning?

Parent Jiggernaut

As a parent who used to be in the classroom, I sometimes struggle with which perspective to think from: from that of a parent or from that of a teacher. Becoming a parent made me a much better and more understanding teacher. Conversely, strategies I used in teaching and things I learned there about human nature and interacting with children have proven invaluable to me as a parent. Interacting with other people's children, of course, is not the same thing as interacting with my own. My own children can tick me off in ways my students never could; I can have a hard time getting to that calm, clinical space with my own kids, even as I know I'd make fewer mistakes if I could get there.

So sometimes I feel conflicted when it comes to advocacy and opinions. Watching my own children develop has taught me a lot about how people learn and has challenged some of my old (teacher's) thinking. On the one hand, I have much less tolerance, for example, for constructivist approaches and for the teaching of reading strategies and skills. On the other hand, I appreciate that constructivists envision schools as meaningful, joyful, and relevant places. It breaks my heart whenever my children are driven to tears, overwhelmed by the tedium and stress they sometimes feel at school, which is in contrast to the how they joyfully think and engage in learning outside of school. I understand that reading strategies are emphasized out of a desire to equip students with the tools to be successful learners. My children enjoy their reading block even if it's unclear how much they are actually learning from it when there is not much curricular coherence to it.

So, to get to the point of this post, especially as the topic has been popular in edu-news lately, I have been thinking a lot about parent trigger laws and actions. Also, my own daughter will be starting kindergarten next year and the topic of school quality and parent activism has come up on the playground at her preschool, especially since many of her classmates also will be starting kindergarten, though unlike her, many don't have older siblings who have already been through it.

The situation in Desert Trails in Southern California, especially struck me. Some parents organized to pull a parent trigger on their neighborhood school because they felt their kids weren't learning what they were supposed to, though it sounds as if the parents were really trying to work with the district. I'm not going to get into the process there or discuss the ins and outs of what may or may not have happened there. What really struck me was what the parents wanted, why they were organizing a a parent trigger: They want smaller classes, more art, music, and other subjects beyond reading and math. The parents refer to these as "reforms" but most educators would call them essentials; most public schools and educators want these things as well.  It seems, to me at least, that it is the state that isn't providing what they want. Surely, there are other problems and I don't blame these parents for being upset. I'd be upset. But it sounds like they want the school to provide what the state doesn't have the will or means to provide.

So, if we grant parents more choice or power to turn their schools into charters, for example, is the charter going to provide what they want? Will parents be more engaged or involved? My sense is that perhaps in the short run they will be, but I'm not sure about the long-run. I tend to agree with Diane Ravitch and other detractors that public schools or public spaces do not belong only to the group of people currently using them; they belong to the community, including future community members. Furthermore, once the school is turned over to private or unaccountable hands and is detached from any democratic process, the parents will have even less say. Parents Across America explained this in their statement in opposition to parent trigger-type solutions, saying that they won't ultimately result in meaningful parent engagement or voice (also relevant is their position on real parent empowerment). It does seem like parents get hooked in and then used to make a change that ultimately leaves them with little role in the new or parent-trigger-changed school. But that's ultimately what parents should be after: more of a role and more of a voice.

In my own (older) children's school, we are navigating excessive and unhealthy high-stakes testing. I am not opposed to testing but to developmentally inappropriate and high-stakes testing. It is corrupting what and how my children learn and what and how they are taught. I want my children to learn more science, social studies, the arts, PE, foreign languages, and practical skills. If I organize a group of parents to take over the school, will this change? I don't see how, not as long as the current policies stay in place. This is where we as parents need to go to central administrations, school boards, elected officials, legislators, and other decision makers. It is their policies and legislation that are eroding the quality of education my children receive; it is not the teachers or their principals. So, here I am in a tricky position. I support the school and teachers (my children have yet to have a "bad" teacher) in my community but I feel I must contest the bad practices they are forced to implement.

In my own conversations with other parents, I often hear them talk about school ratings. At the same time, they bemoan the state of the curriculum--the lack of art, music, science, social studies, unstructured play. I try, diplomatically, to remind them that school ratings (such as those in Great Schools) tend to be based on test scores. If we as parents use or value those ratings to judge schools, then that is what our schools are going to aspire to. If we rate or value a school based on the curriculum they offer (such as more art and music) and their pedagogy or instructional practices, then that is what they will aspire to (and that's what I'd argue we want them to aspire to). It's not that I don't look at the test scores because I do, but it's a matter of the context I consider them in and the judgments I make based on them.

It seems like what we need is more democracy, not less; to build sustainable, long-term parent engagement. Even though I am a relatively well-informed parent, sometimes even I don't know what parent engagement looks like or should look like. I started parenting simply thinking of all the things my struggling students were missing and built from there. Everything I knew would have helped my students do better academically and learn more, I made sure to do as a parent. That often seems to me like the greatest gift I can give my children, their teachers, and their peers. But then being involved in their schooling is another step, but how much involvement is appropriate? When help or feedback is requested from school, I do my best to answer the call. I express my displeasure at all of the high-stakes testing, I state clearly that I won't be doing any test prep at home and then I support as much as I can in a positive way what I'd like to see more of in schools. I am trying to help the art teacher get an award in the form of a big grant so that she'll bring back resources to classroom teachers. I participate and volunteer in book swaps. My husband taught an after school chess club. When surveys are sent out, I complete them. I offer to serve on long-term planning committees. I volunteer in classrooms. Are we doing too much? Too little?

While I recognize the expertise of my children's teachers and having been a teacher and given the current climate, I acknowledge the limitations and stresses they are under, I try to subvert the high-stakes testing, test prep, and narrowing of the curriculum in a positive way. But there's only so far this goes because for now none of that changes the continued unhealthy emphasis on standardized testing. It doesn't change the amount of data collection that takes place via developmentally inappropriate and misery-inducing standardized tests. It doesn't change the current realities that my children are learning in and that their teachers are teaching in. That's why I have real sympathy for people like me who choose to home school (and there are a lot where I live). I cheered Dana Goldstein's defense of public schooling versus home schooling, but I also know that it's an easy thing to defend when you don't have a child who melts down at home in tears and anger and questions of Why?!?! every time there's a benchmark, practice, or high-stakes test. (And my children do quite well on them!) Sometimes I want to give them what I see my homeschooling neighbors giving their children. What's so frustrating is that there's no good reason why public schools can't offer many of those same things.

So far, my children are high achievers and performers. Besides contributing positively, perhaps I can lead by example. If my own kids, who are are among the youngest in their class, come to school ready to learn, excel academically, and rarely miss questions on these tests; if I'm not doing test prep and I am making sure my kids have a knowledge-rich home life and I'm opposed to high stakes testing, maybe I'm on to something. If policy makers, legislators, and education reformers really wanted to empower parents, at the very least they'd they'd stop simply trying make it easier to hand over to schools to outside parties who can only pretend they know better. At the very most, they'd start listening to and acting upon what it is exactly that parents and communities envision for their children's education.

We parents must resolve to make them.

To read my follow-up post to this one, see here.

Some Comments on Beautiful Souls, Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times by Eyal Press

This is a guest post by an author who wishes to go by the pen name of Molly McGuire:

There's Many of Us Out There

by Molly McGuire

Caught as I am in a compromised world, Eyal Press’ book encouraged me to keep fighting. There’s a lot of us out there. We’re public school teachers. We’re told by our bosses to do things that hurt children. We refuse. 

We’re the sort who read Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System, or Diana Senechal’s The Republic of Noise, or Dan Willingham’s Why Students Don’t Like School. I’d like to add Eyal Press’ book to this list. He’s telling the stories of ordinary people (when Steven Spielberg wanted an ordinary civilian job for his hero in Saving Private Ryan, he makes him a high school English teacher) who act in ways they believe to be right. These people go beyond the times and the political winds, violent as they may be, to the fundamental principles of their group or activity. 

There’s the Swiss police officer, believing in his nation’s tradition of a haven for refugees, forging documents so that Jews fleeing Austria in 1938 can stay. The Serb who stands up for the decency of his neighboring Croatians during the Yugoslavian war. An Israeli soldier asserts the humanity of the Arabs whose land he refuses to occupy. And the American financial services consultant, who questioned the safety of an investment that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. Doing their jobs, as they see fit to do them. 

Most consoling is how much these people aren’t ever seen as heroes. They’re shunned, pushed aside by those too embarrassed to acknowledge how principled, how brave, how right these few were. The pleasure in taking such a stand, Eyal Press tells us, is that you get to live with a clean conscience. 

I teach part-time now, having been fired for being ineffective, and then offered a part time gig to stop the howling by students and parents. I do more gardening. I look at my grandchildren. I smile, knowing I’m with a band of brothers and sisters, over time, over continents. Read Eyal Press’ wonderful book. Join us. 

Charter or Traditional: Making Kids Play Musical Schools Is Wrong

Here's a composite of conversations I've had with other education folks (and myself) about charter schools:

Q: Are you in favor of or against charter schools?

A: Well, I'd rather we didn't feel the need to have them in the first place. I have what I think are valid concerns about segregation, isolation, inequity, and denying appropriate and accessible education to special needs and ELL students.

Q: Okay, but they're here. Would you rather have them all closed and go back to the structure we had?

A: No, no. I acknowledge they're here to stay, for the foreseeable future at least. But if their existence is a reality, I'd rather they be community and educator-initiated, under the umbrella of and accountable to the districts and communities where they're located with no profit motive (as Chad Sansing describes here).

Q: Well, charters sometimes form because the home district is too rigid and too dysfunctional. Look at DC. Charters formed their own system entirely apart from DCPS precisely because they were fleeing the dysfunction of DCPS. Then charters grew in part because people got even more turned off by Rhee-form.

A: Yes, yes, I understand that. And I understand it's much easier to say, well, make the traditional district better, more responsive, than it is for that to actually happen any time soon. How long must families wait for that to occur? Now I get to ask a question: What happens when charter schools are largely unsuccessful according to the current accountability schemes with the same population the traditional, home district seemed to fail with?

I'll answer my own question. If we're just going to judge schools' success or necessity according to (in many cases poorly conceived) standardized test scores then it doesn't matter, if they're charter or traditional, we're not going to know how successful or unsuccessful any school is in improving the quality and meaning of the education for the students they are supposed to serve.

This is why I am against closing charter schools based on test scores, just as I am against closing neighborhood based on test scores. There is so much else to consider. The IDEA Public Charter School in DC serves students at-risk for dropping out. It faces closure. The school has been around for ten years. I've never stepped foot in the school, so I don't know what or how much those students are learning. I don't know if they're getting the best and most appropriate and meaningful education possible under the circumstances. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Maybe it should be closed, maybe it shouldn't. But test scores alone most certainly don't tell me that either.

Just as when a neighborhood school closes, when a charter school that has become a fixture in a community, that the community is largely satisfied with, that fills a need that other schools don't, is closed, it will have a very negative effect on the student population and the community it serves. And what will then replace it?

Disruption as a goal is not a positive one for education. I don't care what kind of school they're in, kids and their families, especially those with enough disruption, crisis, and loss in their lives already, shouldn't be forced to play musical schools to the tune of "Get Those Test Scores Up." If that's our idea of reforming education, we're in big trouble.

Opportunity to Evaluate Teachers

Welcome to Part IV of my response to Governor McDonnell's "Opportunity to Learn" education agenda--we're almost to Friday, folks! On Monday, you read about advancing literacy. On Tuesday, you read about extending the school day/ year. Yesterday, you read my thoughts on expanding school choice in Virginia. Today, I'll share my thoughts about McDonnell's ideas for evaluating, retaining, and recruiting teachers.

The "Enhancing Teacher Quality, Strengthening Teacher and Administrator Contracts, Evaluation Policies and Streamline Grievance Process" section proposes to establish annual contracts and evaluations for teachers and principals. This, the McDonnell administration says will, "allow for a new evaluation system to work by attracting and retaining the top-tier educators in our K-12 public schools." The agenda also calls to streamline the grievance process. As long as due process is built in (and no, merely saying, "don't worry there will be plenty of due process" is not sufficient) no one I've heard of disagrees with streamlining the grievance process. However, McDonnell's ideas to "enhance" teacher quality and "strengthen" contracts are more controversial.

First of all, teachers and principals should be evaluated yearly and observed and given feedback even more often. The biggest question, though, is how this will be done, based on what, and with what consequences. Will teachers be evaluated with an eye on craft and content or with an eye on test scores? Will the goal be to improve practice and strengthen curriculum? Will the goal be to support teachers? Or will the eye be on standardized test scores parading as real achievement and learning, de-selection, and playing gotcha? If the eye is narrowly focused on boosting test scores and de-selection, we're going to lose good teachers and fail to attract new ones.

Another problem is that this walks and talks like yet another unfunded mandate. Virginia principals barely have enough time to do the evaluations they have. Furthermore, while there are certainly incompetent principals out there, at least one reason that incompetent teachers aren't removed faster is because principals have so much to do. Has Governor McDonnell ever been inside a public school principal's office and seen the students waiting outside, the stacks of unfinished paperwork, and heard the phone ringing off the hook? Has he ever tried to schedule an evaluation? Or how about re-schedule an evaluation?

Streamlining the grievance process may eliminate some paperwork, but mandating yearly high-stakes evaluations without making other changes will merely replace it, and then some. Tennessee recently changed their teacher evaluation process without thinking it through and it's been a nightmare for principals and a largely useless, bordering on absurd, process for many teachers. If we want all principals and teachers to be evaluated once a year, we had better fund it, staff it, and make sure the process is fair and that the tool itself is useful.

I would add a peer evaluation component to the evaluation process. I'm not quite comfortable with students doing high-stakes evaluations but I certainly think collecting and implementing feedback from students should be a required part of a teacher's evaluation process. I'd like to see master educators in each school who evaluate and mentor other teachers while still teaching some courses of their own. Also, we need to diversify evaluations: What a first-year teacher needs is different from what a veteran needs and what a math teacher needs is different from what an art teacher needs. For ideas about where Virginia districts might go, this Massachusetts teacher, who has published a book on the subject, has some great ideas for better evaluations. Montgomery County, Maryland, has had great success with their peer-review teacher evaluation process. Finally, two districts in California have done well revamping their teacher evaluation systems by integrating support and evaluation. Finally, Accomplished California  Teachers put together an important report about improving teacher evaluations, with one of the authors, NBCT David Cohen, offering some further insights on the process here.

As for one-year contracts, I don't see how using them (which by the way will not be a big change in some Virginia districts as budget woes have forced many principals in recent years to offer one-year contacts) strengthens contracts. In fact, it sounds more like weakening contracts (and like spinning one's education agenda). I also don't see how offering them exclusively will attract top-tier educators. Here's a job. Please leave the one you have or give up other opportunities for this one-year contract. Now run along and get those test scores up. I don't see that as a winning recruitment strategy. Moreover, as Chad Sansing pointed out, it's not really going to grow the profession as much as it will offer "jobs."

One-year contracts will also undermine stability and continuity in communities. Of course I want my children to have the best teachers possible, but the fact that the educators at the schools my kids attend have gotten to know our community, our family, and my children as learners, facilitates that. Most of them and most of the educators I have worked with work long hours with too much to do. I, for one, don't want to reward them with the prospect of one-year contracts and I don't want the uncertainty of not knowing which educators will be back each year. In these hard economic times, Virginia's families have enough uncertainty already.

I've also heard McDonnell wants to use merit pay. I was glad that his administration took a more cautious route and merely piloted merit pay before going all out with it. And as I explained here, I think we need to raise salaries across the board, as well as differentiate pay more than we do currently, based on a combination of  responsibility and experience. Educators who lead extra-curriculars, or who take on mentoring, peer evaluating, or more responsibilities should be paid more. Also, we should pay teachers more who work in hard to staff schools with more challenging populations. They have to work harder and have more difficult jobs. Also, it is harder to attract STEM people. It just is. I am not a STEM person and I don't like that they would get paid more, but I understand we can't ignore labor market forces. Nevertheless, merit pay should not be based on a boost in test scores and nor has such merit pay proven to raise achievement in other places. As it has in DC, such an approach easily turns into: Here, you teach the more affluent kids who score higher on standardized tests. Congratulations! Here's some extra money.

By all means, let's re-imagine and then revamp our evaluation tools and processes in Virginia. Let's pay educators more and let's attract the best ones we can to our state. But let's do so in ways that are fair, meaningful, and cognizant of the unique roles educators play. A hasty switch to annual high-stakes evaluations, one-year contracts, and merit pay based on standardized test scores will increase paperwork and teacher turnover and lower morale without growing the profession or improving the quality of teaching. We can do better by our educators and by our students.


cross-posted at the Virginia Education Report

Opportunity to Extend the School Year

Yesterday, I posted the first post in a series of five in response to Governor McDonnell's recently announced education agenda, entitled, "Opportunity to Learn." The first post provided an introduction and discussed McDonnell's ideas to advance literacy.

Another major piece of Governor McDonnell's agenda included "Reducing Mandates on Local School Divisions," which in this case means a repeal of the "Kings Dominion Law." In substance, this is mostly uncontroversial and seems to make sense, i.e., letting districts decide how to set their calendars. Some have made the leap to, "the Governor is pushing a longer school year," but so far, I don't see it. Many school districts don't like the law, and thus the Governor wants to repeal it.

Now, I'm in a bit of a bind here because my county, the home of Kings Dominion (otherwise known as The Promised Land among the under-10 set in my house) is opposed to repeal of the law as it would mean a big loss of revenue in particular for them. Given our bleak budget outlook, particularly for education, we need that revenue. Of course, there are (horror of horrors) other reasonable ways to raise revenues. Also, it is rather ironic that as the current local political climate is infused with cries for smaller government and fewer mandates, some seem to want an exception made for the mandate that helps them. Sigh.

Back to the topic at hand, if the idea is in the long run to reorganize the school year and extend the school year and/or school days, it needs to be done thoughtfully. While doing so would certainly benefit many kids and I bet many working families in Virginia would welcome it, the most important thing is not adding more time but rather what is done with the added time (or even with the time we already have. . . ).

If a longer school year and day means more test prep, more narrow focus on reading strategies and math drills, then Virginians should say: No, thank you. However, if we're talking about more time for meaningful and interesting project-based learning, extra-curriculars, clubs, school newspapers, unstructured play, P.E., sports teams, science, social studies, art, music, theater, practical skills (cooking, financial literacy, etc.), foreign languages, gardening, computer science, robotics, entrepreneurship, etc., then we should say resoundingly: Yes, please!

Furthermore, any longer day or school year must be matched with increased pay, staffing, and resources. Otherwise, we'll have yet another unfunded mandate. And no, throwing some cheap math workbooks at teachers does not count as increasing resources, nor will piling such activities on to the school day improve the quality of education Virginia's children receive.

If we're going to extend the school year and day in Virginia, we need to do so in a way that's smart, fair, and that will provide meaningful and rich learning experiences for students.

cross-posted at The Virginia Education Report

Opportunity to Develop Literacy

On Monday, January 9th, Virginia Governor McDonnell announced his education agenda, entitled, "Opportunity to Learn." This has been covered by The Virginia Education Report, The Washington Post, as well as commented on by many throughout the state (For Chad Sansing's excellent commentary, read here. Or, for a partial listing of other reactions, see here.) I am going to offer my reactions in a series of posts starting with this one.

Before I comment on the agenda, I want to reiterate a point that Chad Sansing made in his piece:

McDonnell’s blueprint promises “a bold education proposal that will dramatically increase money for Virginia’s teachers and students by $480 million a year.” Meanwhile, his budget plans also include “hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts, including to child-care subsidies for low-income families and to health and parent-education programs for poor pregnant women.” Families who need social and support services to help their kids attend school and access curriculum won’t benefit from McDonnell’s cuts.

I will return to issues if budgeting and funding in later posts but for now I'll assert: We're not going to succeed in improving education for low-income children with one hand if we're squeezing their parents and communities with the other. As I explained here, single-issue advocacy is problematic and students don't lead single-issue lives. Furthermore, the more we deny help to those in need, the more needs our students will come to school with and the more resources our schools will need to adequately serve those students. And right now there is a growing number of people in need.

Now, on to the education agenda:

In the "Raise Standards - College Workforce and Readiness" section, the McDonnell administration proposes, among other things ("other things" being streamlining diploma requirements, positive youth development, and expanding dual enrollment programs--none of which I have any objections to, so far :), advancing literacy. McDonnell wants to make sure all third graders can read before they move on to fourth grade. That is a worthy goal, but I'm not sure that his way of achieving it is sound. McDonnell wants to pay kids who learn to read. Harvard Researcher Roland Fryer tried something similar to this, and it didn't really work. If kids aren't reading by third grade, it's not (good grief!) because we're not paying them. Nor do I think the strategy of waiting until third grade and then simply holding kids back will help much--it's too reactive.

If we want struggling readers to struggle less, we need to do two things:

1) Invest in reading intervention programs that work and reach out to struggling readers long before third grade. Many of the children who are likely to struggle with reading would probably benefit from the very preschool programs McDonnell is looking to cut, so if he wants to advance literacy he should reconsider cutting those programs. One program that my school district successfully uses and that helped my own son when he was struggling to learn to read was Reading Recovery. Such programs are expensive and require investment and commitment. (UPDATE: After I drafted this post, I read that McDonnell proposed adding $8.2 million to the budget for early reading programs. This is good news, though I'd want to know more about the efficacy of the specific programs being funded and the real estimated impact of the dollars allotted.)

2) We need to spend much less time teaching reading as a subject and teaching reading strategies beyond their utility and much more time teaching content or subject matters, such as literature, science, social studies, p.e., art music, foreign languages, technical education, etc. Yes, most kids need to be explicitly taught to decode and yes, to a point reading strategies are useful. Of course, content should be taught as reading and writing intensive. However, literacy is largely representative of someone's background and content knowledge, and knowledge of vocabulary and does not develop or improve without it. As the University of Virginia's own Dan Willingham says, teaching content is teaching reading. (It's also much, much more meaningful and interesting for kids.) My regular readers know that I talk about this ad nauseum. In case you're new to my writing on education, here are some posts that elaborate further: here, here, and here.

You know what I've found, as a parent and in my observations of my kids' teachers, is the best reward for kids who are working hard to learn to read or who are already reading? More books. Let's reward students for reading by giving them more books.

UPDATE: In a misguided effort to get Virginia third graders to do better on reading and math tests, State Senator John Miller (D-Newport News) wants teachers to spend even more time on reading and math and even less on science and social studies. And he wants to do so to get test scores up in fifth grade (not necessarily because it will mean better education). Ugh. Even supporters of NCLB say the bill is too limited in scope by just focusing on math and reading. Sorry, Senator Miller, but this bill will take us in the complete wrong direction!

cross-posted at The Virginia Education Report

My Year-End Post: No Matter the Reforms, No One Likes Tyranny

Education blogger/journalist Alexander Russo asked via twitter and then via his blog with Scholastic where all the smart, interesting pro-reform teacher and principal bloggers were. For now, he said the "reform critics" seemed to be dominating the conversation on-line.

Lots of people responded to this already including Nancy Flanagan, Anthony Cody (here and here), Shaun Johnson, Katie Osgood, Mike Klonsky, Teacher Ken, and Leonie Haimson. I'm not going to get into everything they said because I think at least some of the controversy generated by his post is due to clumsiness on his part, rather than any malice or an agenda (other than to chase down a prescribed narrative) and some misunderstanding on some of their parts. I also criticized him for using the pro- versus anti-reform labels, but I can see that sometimes using such dichotomous terms is just expedient and may not reflect a belief in them--it's important to get beyond semantics even if I personally am a stickler for them.

However, I did agree when many of the bloggers above pointed out that one reason Russo perceives that the "traditional" (a poor choice of words, for example) teacher voice winning on-line is because social media provide virtually the only forums where independent and grassroots voices get heard and can gain prominence. The neo-liberal reformers are dominating the mainstream media and have gobs and gobs of money with which to do so. This, of course, brings up a whole 'nother fascinating topic about power and the dynamic between social media, grassroots advocacy and organizing but that's for another post for another time. . .

So, I agree with that point. But mostly I think there aren't too many teacher bloggers out there independently (and for free) plugging for Students First, for example, because there aren't too many teachers who support the group of reforms that SF is pushing, either in principle or in their execution. But while most teachers and principals are pro-reform, just as Russo doesn't want to interact with an organization (haha--that guy is comically cranky), neither do independent and smart educators want to; and neither do they want to let organizations promoting superficial and short-sighted policies that often detrimentally affect their day-to-day work speak for them.

These organizations don't really represent educators or parents or students (no matter how they're named); they represent the education reform industry. That industry has a slate of reforms that it lobbies for. This, as education journalist Joy Resmovitz so astutely put it, is part of their "branding." Of course, since these reformers sincerely believe their agenda will improve education, it's probably of no consequence to them and presents no conflict of interest that the industry they've created would have the added bonus of benefiting them in the form of financial rewards and jobs.

But if you're an educator, you have to really buy into that brand to promote it. And then you have to go around marketing it, for free, to your co-workers who don't have much time to listen to sales pitches in the teachers lounge for Mark Kay or Pampered Chef-like products (teachers, you know what I'm talking about), let alone pitches for ed reform products. And no one wants to be a salesperson if they don't have to be. Furthermore, the ed reform products, I mean, solutions being proposed are not ones that come from ideas about education or teaching and learning, but rather from ideas about business and finance. If educators wanted to play Corporation or Free Markets, that's where they'd be working.

That all being said, there is a huge diversity of ideas, opinions, and approaches among educators. As I wrote about before, framing education reform as a debate between reformers and status quo defenders is reductive and contributes to misinformation. And if you actually pay attention to and listen to all of the edu-noise out there, you figure this out pretty quickly. There are lots and lots of educators who support some of the reforms, but not all of them. Even so, these people consider themselves professionals and still don't like being told what to do in their classroom by the likes of Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and Bill Gates. Lots of educators are in favor of a common curriculum (though they may have reservations about the Common Core in particular). Lots of educators are in favor of community-generated and innovative charter schools. I bet some are even in favor of vouchers. Lots of educators are in favor of a more educated and better trained teaching corps and in favor of making it harder to gain entry to the profession. Lots of educators are against strict seniority-based firings. Lots of educators want better and more useful teacher evaluations. Lots of educators think that standardized testing and data-informed instruction is useful. Lots of educators embrace technology and certain forms of virtual learning.* Lots of educators think that the teacher dismissal process should be streamlined (which is not the same thing is getting rid of due process). Lots of educators are in favor of mayoral control, or at least they were. (I would say that lots of educators support Race to the Top but it's pretty clear that only the truest of believers like Race to the Top.) And there are lots of parents and other education reform advocates and scholars who are on board with a lot of this stuff.

Journalist Natalie Hopkinson, like many, many DC parents initially backed Michelle Rhee's chancellorship, until she didn't. Teacher blogger James Boutin also initially went to DC to teach because he thought Rhee had the right idea, but after working in DCPS, he changed his mind (read here, here, here, and here). This principal did the same thing, leaving Maryland to become a principal at Hearst Elementary School in DC. He became so disillusioned he decided to sell cupcakes instead. Teacher Stephanie Black subscribes to KIPP's no excuses philosophy and teaches for DCPS. She's perfect for Russo's theory. Oh, except she quit because she didn't like how she was being forced to teach badly under the reformers (see here and here). Education writer Robert Pondiscio is no longer an NYCPS teacher, but he used to be. Guess what? He's not that into the agenda of these particular reformers even though he does support accountability and choice. Dan Brown has been very critical of Rhee-Klein-Gates reform, but he teaches at a charter school in DC, so it's probably safe to say he's pro-charter to a certain extent. Chad Sansing, a teacher at a charter school in Virginia, is very much in favor of choice, just not in the non-choice between schools that meet testing benchmarks and schools that are trying to meet testing benchmarks. Mark Anderson is very supportive of a common core curriculum (full disclosure: so I am, in theory) and probably some of the other reforms, but he's an independent thinker and a thoughtful teacher. VCU assistant professor of educational leadership Jon Becker is "bullish" on on-line education and was very critical of  a recent NEPC report on K-12 on-line education, but he's skeptical of many of the current reforms.* Christina Lordeman (speaking of whom, where is Christina? I haven't seen her around lately) is often very critical of Diane Ravitch and I imagine that she supports many of the reforms in theory, but from what I can tell she is a principled and thoughtful teacher who wants to be treated like a professional and she has also expressed some real criticisms of some of the current reforms. According to her book, even Diane Ravitch was in favor of mayoral control until fairly recently. I know of other long-time education reformers who favored mayoral control, that is until they experienced it. Even those educators who are "pro-reform" (to use Russo's label) figure out they like democracy once they are denied it. And this is just a sampling of some of the people whose ideas I enjoy listening to on a regular basis--imagine how many more there are.

Finally, I'll mention my father-in-law who has guest blogged here and who was fired via IMPACT for not tailoring his lessons to please the IMPACT gods and, basically, for having principles about his craft. He has taught AP and grade-level English for over ten years in DCPS and is known for his rigorous curriculum, preparing kids for college-level English, being interesting, and providing lots of feedback on student writing (see some parent feedback here). He was teaching in DCPS when I started there and I remember saying after not getting paid on time or properly for the second or third time that I could finally understand why some of my DCPS teachers burned out and stopped doing their jobs. Look how badly they were treated, look at how poorly the system is run, I pointed out. Joe shook his head before I could finish my thought. No, he told me, sorry, but there's no excuse for that. If you burn out, it's time to go.

Yet Joe is precisely the kind of teacher--principled, intellectual, and independent-minded--who's vulnerable to getting fired from these reformy systems, for doing their jobs as their experience and knowledge dictates them to. One of the things he was fired for was for covering the clock up in his classroom. He was losing the last ten minutes of class to kids peering at the clock and its presence was rushing and stressing everyone involved. This came to mind because Russo just blogged about how he thinks there's too many clocks in classrooms and that they're stressing people out. Joe agrees and because Joe stood by his reasonable, thoughtful decision to disobey the reformy principal's clock mandate, Joe was fired.

Now, Russo, do you get why smart teachers aren't on-line proselytizing for the likes of Stand for Children, Students First, and TFA? What educator wants to advocate for an education reform organization whose ideas include distrust for educators' professional judgement? Why would educators support education reform leaders who don't respect independent, critical thinking or listen to what the communities they serve say they want for themselves? Who wants to advocate for pressing themselves into a job not of social utility and intellectual stimulation, but of busy work and obedience? The premise that there is some group of educators just waiting for the likes of Leonie, Nancy, Anthony, John, and Ken to tone it down so that they can get busy undermining their own work is a false one. Educators and education advocates, including those just listed, are of very different minds when it comes to the fine details of teaching, learning, and reforming public education. But no one likes tyranny or plutocracy, except for tyrants and plutocrats of course.

(* = Updated content)

When single-issue advocacy causes multiple-issue empowerment

Education journalist Joy Removits recently wrote this article on the education "reform" lobby. The article was not particularly remarkable, but I did discern a bit of pivoting on the part of some of the organizations, such as Students First, Stand for Children, and DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) Removits wrote about. In particular, they talked about being "single-issue" advocates and financially backing politicians only based on their advocacy of issues the reform lobby pushes. For example, Removits wrote,

Melton stressed that StudentsFirst is a single-issue group. "We support candidates that have positions on other issues we don't support," he said.

Now, I can see agreeing with someone on one issue even when you disagree with them on most others. I, for, example, agree with Ron Paul's position that the War on Terror and the War on Drugs have been disasters, and have resulted most detrimentally in a War on Civil Liberties and a War on Dissent. But would I go so far as to vote for Ron Paul? Would I back him financially if I worked for the ACLU? I'd really have to weigh the pros and cons overall of a potential Ron Paul presidency. For example, Paul is also opposed to most civil rights legislation, saying naively that racial discrimination is "ancient history."  Would ending the War on Drugs, aka The New Jim Crow, be better for our society and specifically for blacks, Latinos, and poor people than would keeping civil rights legislation in tact? Even then, the positions taken in his name make it clear that he should not be in any sort of position of political power. 

Even more recently,Whitney Tilson of DFER fame wrote something (h/t Alexander Russo) that pushed back on the idea of single-issue advocacy. I blogged about the limitations of his revelations in my last post. One of his basic points was that poor people aren't going to ally themselves with powerful people on school reform when the powerful are at the same time voting against other measures meant to help poor people such as housing, healthcare, and jobs. From Tilson (as he perceives poor people and/or people of color would respond):

Even if I put aside the jobs issue, and even if I believed that you were genuine in caring about the admittedly lousy schools in my community, I don’t like or trust you one bit because on every other issue, you are waging war against me and my people.  If you really gave a tinker’s damn about my community, you’d see that the issues go far beyond the schools: job training, unemployment benefits, healthcare, social services, immigration, voting rights, etc.  On EVERY one of these issues, everything you stand for is contrary to the interests of me and my people. 

As I said in my post, I think this is an astute observation. You're not going to get poor or working class people to go along with education reform if you're killing them on every other issue they care about. I would push Tilson's analysis a step further. I don't agree with many of the specific education reforms that he and those Removits wrote about do, but even if I did, I have no confidence that meaningful education reform can happen if those empowered to legislate those reforms are at the same time generally anti- certain groups of people, anti-science, and anti-intellectual.

Rick Scott, for example, wanted to drug test the urine of those who need some help from public assistance. We want to reform your schools but let us invade your privacy and question your integrity first. Or how about by supporting politicians who want to cut off health care for women, particularly for poor women? We want you to get a better education and go to college, but first we're gonna make sure your mom has no access to family planning or cancer prevention services. Also, what about being beholden to foundations funded by corporations who treat their employees and the communities they live in so ruthlessly? The wealth of the Walton family, for example, comes in part due to their ruthlessly efficient management and employee practices. We want to help your children with better education but first let us exploit you and help to sustain the awful conditions of poverty you live in. But when we look for philanthropy, we can't trust you, we'll give the money we made exploiting you to other rich people who say they want to help you. Finally, what about gay people? How can education be improved for everyone when some education reform-minded politicians don't accept gay people? We support better education and schools for all kids, but if you're a gay or transgender kid, you're an abomination. Will school will get better for the gay kids in that elected official's district? I don't think so.

How is education improved by supporting politicians who say climate change science is a hoax? Can positive science education reform come from people who think we should "teach the controversy," i.e. teach creationism side-by-side with evolution? What kind of social studies education are we going to get from decision makers who want to make up their own facts and de-emphasize teaching the influence of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson because he's not Christian enough for them? Some reformers think that Rick Perry's (the man who held a Christian-centric, fundamentalist prayer rally as a way to solve political problems) anti-intellectual ideas for higher education are "visionary."

When reformers see fit to hand over the reigns of a sacred, public, democratic institution to people who hate the government, how is that supposed to work out? How can these education "reformers" imagine that anti-intellectuals can have anything of substance to offer to the intellectual pursuit of education? Is getting your questionable education reforms passed really worth empowering people who don't value knowledge-based education, public or otherwise? At some point, being anti-science and anti-intellectual means you're anti-education. If you have disdain for the creation of knowledge, or for knowledge itself even, you can't really be trusted to oversee the reform of one of our society's principal mechanisms for generating and transferring knowledge.

The problem with a single-issue approach to education reform is that students don't lead single-issue lives. Democrats and neo-liberals who support decision-makers who would use their power to crush the Democratic party (through a war on unions of all stripes), who hate gay people, who deny climate change science, who support the disastrous Wars on Drugs and Terror, who don't even have the support of the saner members of their own party, who sell their states off to the highest bidders are acting irresponsibly and short-sightedly.

Do we really want to employ a pyromaniac to fix our fireplaces if it means giving him the opportunity soon thereafter to burn down our homes? When I do the calculus, I don't see children or students, public or knowledge-rich and meaningful education winning. I see homo-phobic, poverty-criminalizing, anti-intellectual, knowledge-agnostic, right-wing ideology winning and I have yet to understand why any self-described liberal or education reformer would support that.

Just Because They're Poor Doesn't Make Them Saps

On Alexander Russo's This Week in Education blog, I read a really interesting e-mail written by Whitney Tilson who is a founder or president or something or other of DFER. You should read it and then read the comments.

The two main points he makes can be encapsulated in the following quotes:

But nor can we be oblivious to the negative impact on our kids when they lack the minimal resources needed to prepare them to come to school.

Yes! Glad to see this. And I agree with Tilson that no one should wait for poverty to be fixed before endeavoring to improve education.

Then,

You are exactly on target with the issue of poverty. We cannot have people vote against all of the things poor families need – jobs, housing for low and moderate income families, health care, food programs, etc. – but then say, "But I support vouchers or charter schools." To help the students who need the help the most we need both things: parent choice and programs aimed at getting people out of poverty.

I don't necessarily agree that choice and vouchers are the right reforms, but I think Tilson's analysis of ambivalence and distrust about certain political allegiances in light of rigth-wing platforms and politics beyond education is right on. I've thought the same thing myself.

There are, however, a few things that seem to be totally absent from Tilson's revelations:

1) What Robert Pondiscio said in the comments: education and education reform should be presented as a way to improve communities and not as a way to get away from them.*

2) The very real possibility that at least some of the reforms themselves are not palatable and not what at least some of the people in the communities Tilson talks about engaging want.

It's as if Tilson saying that poor people and people of color only reject the current reforms because they're top-down, brought by rich white people, and will cost them jobs. This reminds me some of what I took such issue with Richard Whitmire several months ago for saying about education reform in DC.

First of all, yes, people want change, but if people like Tilson come in and don't listen to what community leaders say is needed in particular to reform schools (and not just to help bring housing, jobs, and healthcare) and do something entirely different. This line of Tilson's is very telling:

Many in our movement have figured this out and are taking important steps to, for example, engage poor/minority parents, bypassing conflicted and sometimes corrupt community “leaders”, but much more needs to be done. 

There's an assumption that "conflicted" community leaders must automatically be by-passed, that conflictedness, in other words skepticism, is not to be heeded.

Furthermore, what about the substance of the reforms (or lack of substance)? Is Tilson assuming that poor people and people of color don't know what good education is? What if at least some of them do know or have opinions about what good education is and don't have confidence that the policies that DFER et al promote have brought or will bring it? Have Tilson et al ever considered that at least some of their ideas might be bad ones? Don't they think it's time they did? Perhaps the unpopularity of Tilson's product is not just due to how the product is being sold and to who's doing the selling. Perhaps people aren't buying what Tilson et al are selling because they're selling a junky product. Perhaps people know better.

*UPDATE: I want to push back a little against what Robert says here in his comment:  

Toward that end, it might help if reformers positioned their work as a way to improve the intellectual capital and economic prospects of the neighborhoods they served.

If reformers' "work" includes promoting (or as is often the case, forcing) knowledge-free content such as the likes of Balanced Literacy, Everyday Math, and little to no teaching of any other subject, I'm not confident much "intellectual capital" will be brought back to any neighborhood.

In which I nitpick on the subject of the opportunity/ achievement gap, charters, and Rhee's legacy in DC

With the release of the NAEP TUDA stats, there's been a lot of conversation swirling around achievement gaps and the efficacy of neo-liberal education reforms in urban districts. In particular, there's been some talk about how to judge Michelle Rhee's legacy, especially in light of the fact that that DC has the largest achievement gap between black and white students and one of the highest between poor and non-poor of all the cities featured in the report. Education journalists such as Alexander Russo weighed in here and Dana Goldstein offered some mostly solid analysis here.

Some folks are saying that Rhee's policies caused the gap. I don't agree with this. While Rhee's policies are no good, let's be honest: there were large educational opportunity and achievement gaps ways before Rhee came to town. Furthermore, DC has always had relatively large income inequality (but, yes, paralleling the national trend, it's gotten worse). The main industries in DC (government, lobbying, non-profits, etc) are such that the demographics in DC are unique. While there are service industry workers there are almost no blue collar workers. The middle and upper-middle class population in DC is not typical--its members are largely much more highly educated and well-traveled. I could go on--this is a very complex topic, an entire book could be written about it. But Rhee didn't cause this. She may symbolize it (the 1% making policy for the 99%, etc), but her policies didn't cause it.

One thing, though, that's been claimed by many, and implied by both Alexander Russo and Dana Goldstein is that Rhee deserves "credit" for the fact that charter school enrollment went up in the years she was there. Giving her "credit" for this makes no sense. Charter schools in DC are run completely separately from DCPS. She talked a lot about choice and charter schools but she didn't actually do anything for the charter schools while she was there. There's a lot more to the relationship between the two or the lack thereof, especially given the complex genesis and history of charter schools in DC, than has been covered.

Furthermore, I don't see how that makes Rhee et al look good if charter school enrollment went up. Did DCPS enrollment go up? Did it go up uniformly throughout the city and not just in the neighborhoods where test scores tend to be higher, where principals are left alone, and where the schools got renovated? If yes, give her credit for that. But saying that she deserves credit for charter school enrollment going up is like saying that the CEO of Coke deserves credit for more people purchasing Pepsi (and hence drinking more cola in general) because they're dis-satisfied with Coke. If the competition model (which I don't subscribe to, by the way) is supposed to make systems and schools compete for students than how can it be said that Rhee was successful on her and her similarly-minded reformers' own terms if she drove families away from DCPS and into charters. If that's the measure, then as head of DCPS, Rhee failed. She competed for and lost students.

Some might then counter, well, who cares if DCPS lost students under Rhee as long as options or "choice" expanded? As long as public schools overall, including traditional and charters, gained students? Well, okay, but then why should someone like Rhee, who is ambivalent about the existence of public, democratic institutions such as traditional public schools, be running them? How is getting someone who doesn't care in particular about neighborhood schools to run them going to help them improve?

Also, for the record, Rhee did not "streamline" the bureaucracy as Goldstein suggests in her post. As I discussed here and here, the bureaucracy actually got bigger and costlier under Rhee and Henderson. But I guess that's part of the Common Wisdom about Very Serious People that Very Serious Education Pundits are too busy and underpaid to shake themselves of. Or perhaps it's part of some misguided attempt to "balance" coverage. If the information is not accurate, if the coverage is based on assumptions rather than on facts and evidence, however, then that's not "balance," it's misinformation.

Yes, Michelle Rhee did lots wrong and surely she did some things right. But education reform skeptics, fans, and journalists alike should find out what those things actually are first and then examine them in light of the NAEP scores and other data and outcomes. Sheesh.

School "Reform" in DC: Is the Problem Choice or What Compels Families to Choose?

After reading the New York times op-ed on school choice in DC, I asked some folks close to what's happening in education there for their thoughts. Mary Levy sent me what is written below and (with her permission), I decided to use it as a guest post. Mary Levy has analyzed DC Public School staffing, budget and expenditures, and monitored the progress of education reform for thirty years. She is a major source for fiscal, statistical and general information on DCPS for the media, government officials and non-profit, business and civic groups. She directed the Public Education Reform Project at the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs for 19 years, during which she played a major role in developing the District of Columbia’s school funding systems, wrote numerous reports on DCPS, and participated in every major reform planning initiative. Previously, in private practice with Rauh, Lichtman, Levy & Turner, she did civil litigation in civil rights, labor law, and school finance, including major litigations in New York  and Maryland.

I share Natalie Hopkinson’s frustration, as expressed in an op-ed in today's New York Times and have for a long time. Unfortunately, some of her facts are wrong (Has the New York Times now dispensed with fact checkers?) Furthermore, the larger problem in the District isn't choice per se, but why families feel compelled to exercise choice. 

To address some of the inaccuracies, what Congress has done is little compared to the work of DC's own elected officials. In 1995 Congress produced only the charter law and there was nothing about an option to transfer. The DC Council at the same time separately enacted a parallel law. Congress never did a choice policy for DC. Vouchers, which came later, were in fact, much to the chagrin of some of us, endorsed by our elected officials, including the Mayor, the Council Chair, and the President of the Board of Education. As for performance on tests, charter schools in DC on average have test scores somewhat higher than DCPS schools, though not by a lot. As to the closure of schools whose students struggle the most, the schools that then Chancellor Rhee closed on the whole actually had higher test scores than the schools to which their students were later sent; they were also more likely to have made Adequate Yearly Progress. And a reminder: Rhee was not appointed by Congress but by the popularly elected Mayor Fenty.

The argument about choice has been going on at least since I become involved in DCPS in the mid-1970s and probably before that. Many school activists from east of Rock Creek Park argued passionately against out-of-boundary placements, even when they were (allegedly) based on need. The assumption is that if the government forces people to stay in neighborhood schools, the parents will stay and make the schools be good. The result here has not been so felicitous--those with the means, or the moxie to get outside help, move to the suburbs or pay for low-cost independent or parochial schools. In fact, part of charter growth is from those schools, rather than from DCPS. I have watched over thirty years while determined parents tried to make their neighborhood schools better--and were mostly rebuffed or ignored. Even west of the Park, where my children attended DC Public Schools, we spent the majority of our efforts trying to neutralize the damage done by the DCPS administration. Still, we were more successful than those east of the Park. 

With the appointment of Michelle Rhee and the end of any avenue for meaningful parent involvement or influence, the situation is even worse. The schools west of the Park and some in gentrified Capitol Hill are favored, and DCPS administration is more authoritarian and unresponsive than ever to the rest. It is also elitist, and more uninformed, more unstable, more arbitrary, and less competent than before the mayoral takeover--a distinctly dubious achievement, since the situation was pretty bad before. That’s why so many people--both families and good staff--leave.

Now our elected officials and their appointees are threatening to close more neighborhood schools and bring in outside charter operators. Currently, charter schools in DC are city-wide by law and may not give preference to neighborhood children. Many current DC charter schools are local products, started by DCPS parents, teachers, principals, and social service providers who couldn’t take any more of DCPS. They’re going to be under threat too--because of the latest “reform” panacea, closing schools in order to bring in new operators and their programs with no little or no evidence of effectiveness, and new teachers and principals, many poorly prepared and foreign to communities here. I see the advent of charter school chains as trading a remote DCPS bureaucracy for a remote private bureaucracy located elsewhere in the country. 

In the old days there was a lot more out-of-boundary space in the schools west of the Park; in addition, though few people realized it, there was a lot of out-of-boundary placement within neighborhoods and wards. Now, due to demographic change and favorable treatment, there is not much out-of-boundary space in schools west of the Park, so we could get a test of the parents-can-make-their-neighborhood-schools-good proposition east of the Park. But only if the schools stay open and only if the parents stay. 

Teaching Quality Series Part V: Parental Engagement

It's generally true that the more that parents are involved in their children's education, the more academically successful their children will be and the more effective the teachers will (at least appear to) be. I largely agree with Thomas Friedman's take on this.

That being said, the seemingly growing "parent accountability" movement troubles me. Moreover, the strategies (which are in many cases de facto requirements) some charter schools are using to engage parents are in some cases are worth emulating but in others amount to punishing kids for the failures of their parents.

Before I continue, I must acknowledge that I have almost exclusively taught students with parents who weren't very involved in their education, despite my varied efforts, and so some of my thinking on this may be colored by a certain fatalism. The parents could have been less involved because I taught secondary school and parents often think of this as a time to step back. It could have been because the parents worked very long hours and simply didn't have the time be involved. It could have been because I taught mostly the children of immigrants, whose parents sometimes cede almost all education authority to schools and teachers, or whose parents want to be more involved but don't feel included in the school community. Also, in some cases, these parents expect their older children, especially the males, to be at least partial bread-winners, treating them more like adults. Alas, frankly, a handful of parents simply didn't seem to care.

Now, in my mind, a lack of involvement doesn't necessarily translate to a lack of support. If nothing else, being supportive means doing an adequate job at home, as a parent and as such: sending your kids to school prepared to learn, adequately feeding and housing your children, making sure they have a quiet place to study, and encouraging them to read and study. For me, as a teacher, such support would be more than enough.

That all being said, just because parents aren't much involved or supportive, doesn't mean in any way that teachers and schools shouldn't work actively work to engage, involve, and get input from parents; they absolutely should. However, if such outreach fails, teachers must still keep in mind that their job is to educate their students, regardless of parent involvement. Students should not be punished because of their parents' lack on involvement. At the bare minimum, the parents should parent and the teacher and school should educate. And when the parent fails to parent adequately, well, schools are still responsible to educate those children students as best they can.

Which leads me to parent accountability. I've noticed among some of the blogs I follow, some support of the concept of parent accountability. Now, these links are pretty old (yes, it takes me a loooong time to get around to finishing many of my posts), which I hope means the idea is losing traction, but in case it doesn't. . .

Though he recently agreed with Friedman's softer take, this past summer, Ed Week blogger and former teacher Walt Gardner expressed a bit of a harder line on parent accountability, saying:

Yet there is a faint glimmer of hope on the horizon. According to The New York Times, legislators in some states have introduced bills holding parents responsible for their children's performance and behavior ("Whose Failing Grade Is It?", May 21). Whether these bills ever become law is another matter, but at least they signal a possible shift in the accountability movement.

An American Propsect blogger also threw her hands up, saying (albeit at the end of an otherwise very good post about evaluating teachers),

On a final note, I wonder if the day will ever come when we legislate or evaluate parenting as part of the performance of children. It may be an unfair intrusion of the state into the home, but it's rare to see improvement and advancement in children if it doesn't come from encouraging or demanding parents. This is the "x" in the education equation, and until we find a way to solve for it, no answer will ever truly be accurate.

This post on The Answer Sheet by is by Catherine Durkin Robinson who is the founder and president of a group called National Coalition for Accountable Parenting, which promotes parent accountability measures, including fines, jail time, mandated parenting classes, school-issued parent report cards, and financially rewarding "good" parents. Yikes. I'm not able to chose even one block from this piece as the whole thing is so chock full of terrible recommendations. I strongly suggest you read it for yourself. I'm telling you, the Tea Party couldn't make this stuff up.

Many states are considering fining parents for their children's truancy. In West Virginia, legislators proposed a bill that would revoke parents' driving licenses due to truancy and tardiness of their children. It's unclear to me how fining parents who are likely already struggling financially or taking away a means to get their children to school is supposed to help their children go to and succeed in school.

To me, these example of parent accountability via legislation is just spreading bad policy pain. I don't want to be held accountable for things that are beyond my control, but I also don't want parents and students to be held accountable for things beyond their control. The solution is not to transfer draconian and unreasonable demands from teachers onto parents (or even unto principals), to find new teams to play the blame game; the right thing to do is to do away with the concept altogether. As my father always told me growing up (and as I'm fond of declaring in these education reform conversations): Two wrongs don't make a right. We don't need a war on bad parents; we need a society and government that supports families, especially ones that are struggling. Also, do we really need to criminalize more things in our society? I really don't think so.

Some reformers, for example, Peter Meyer of Fordham, makes the case that good schools will make good parents. He posited in an earlier post that charters are superior to neighborhood schools because they better educate kids and they get better results. He said that KIPP, for example, creates motivated parents rather than merely attracting them because the type of education KIPP offers is a motivator. I tried to discuss the finer points of this with him (for one it's very hard to measure motivation) but didn't get very far.

Though people like Meyer do have a point that KIPP may well "motivate" parents simply by offering a solid education, this logic is ultimately faulty. I, as a neighborhood school classroom teacher, can promise and offer a rigorous and engaging curriculum, but I can't say that students can only remain in my class if their parents do their homework with them each night. That would be punishing my students for the behavior or actions of their parents. That's not fair to the students. Also, I just really couldn't do that.

I am responsible for communicating and being available to all parents, but if the parents don't do their part, I still have to treat that student the same as the one whose parent does meet me halfway. I need to promise my students best and most appropriate pedagogical practices and a rich and meaningful curriculum. If the parents get more on board because of that, so be it, but my duty is primarily to their children, not to them. Likewise, as a teacher I learned to assume nothing about my students' home life, to give only homework that they could do on their own. Any bigger projects that required supplies or computers or extra help we worked on in class. Otherwise, I would be rewarding students who had more resources and more available and educated parents and punishing those who didn't.

KIPP, HSA, and other charters can exclude kids because of their parent won't get involved. They can counsel them out if the kid hava behavior issues or special needs. I don't think KIPP denies this and this post isn't meant to explore any ethical dilemma inherent in that, only to say that it's not fair to compare performance of the two or claim that charters like KIPP are doing a better job with the same population. Such schools can openly exclude or expel or punish kids for their parents' lack of involvement, while traditional public schools can't. This is a form of parent accountability that ultimately holds students responsible.

We should work harder to engage and inform parents at our traditional public schools and to offer better education, and we shouldn't get rid of all charters--they're not without value. But if we really want to put the most vulnerable students first, we should focus our education reform efforts on strengthening the neighborhood schools that are responsible for educating them regardless of their parents' commitment to their education. We should strengthen our outreach to parents, or at least, not diminish it. And when parents can't for whatever reason be adequate parents, making their lives even more difficult via parent accountability schemes is not going to help and will ultimately, I fear, punish the children we're trying to help in the first place.