Really, if you haven't been reading eduwonkette lately, you're missing something special.  The guest postings from Bill Ayers, Sol Stern and Tim Daly show an openess to exchange and debate that is what blogging should aspire to. She digs into data faster and better than just about anyone else writing about education on the Internet. And there's style. For example:Today's Joel Klein blogging is simply awesome.

And rather than respect, perhaps we need to fear our new animatronic education policy overlords.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I could have titled this “Revenge of the Jebi” but you’ll get the point.  Many states have processes to revise their constitution, including regularly scheduling referenda on whether to create a constitutional convention. Florida is a bit different. Every twenty years a committee of elders (aka the Tax and Budget Reform Commission) gets appointed to decide on placing amendments regarding budget and tax policy before the people. No need to gather signatures, or for the legislature to approve.  If the panel decides, it goes on the ballot.

The St Pete Times has a nice rundown on how this is the latest ugly gift from the Bush family to Florid's families. A sequel if you will.  And the Miami Herald Blog has some of the inside scoop on the process. With things first being voted down and then resurrected, there’s enough back room arm twisting to make Joe Williams faint. The Herald Blog quotes state rep Dan Gelber as saying the commission's work was "ideological pork.'' It’s going to be a busy ballot season in Florida. 

We’ve got two initiatives related to the court ruling eliminating the voucher program. The first of these would weaken the protections on the separation of church and state. The second would eliminate the requirement for a "uniform efficient, safe secure, and high quality system of free public schools."  Way to go, guys. And there's some 65 percent deception language still floating out there. As we’ve blogged before, 65 is the MSG of Jeb Bush education reform schemes. It’s designed to make everything taste better, but it’ll give you a headache.  

There’s also a tax swap.  It would cut about a quarter of most homeowners’ property tax bills. The roughly $9 billion cut to school funding would be balanced out through the Legislature imposing at least a one cent sales tax increase, elimination of some of the 246 sales tax exemptions currently found in state law, and most likely further cuts to the state budget. A tax swap to make Florida less reliant on the property tax is probably a good idea. Broadening the sales tax base might be a good idea as well. Given the other stuff this commission has put out, you’ll forgive me for not just accepting their math.  And moving from a regressive tax to a more regressive tax isn’t what people struggling with a recession need.  The property tax is less popular, but in a dollar-for-dollar shift, switching from property to sales taxes is a tax cut for the rich and a tax hike for the poor.  Thanks, Jeb.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via Tapped, I see that Colorado state rep. Doug Bruce landed in some hot water for saying, during a debate on an immigration bill

"I would like to have the opportunity to state at the microphone why I don't think we need 5,000 more illiterate peasants in Colorado."

He then went on to say, by way of explanation:

"These people, most of them, don't speak English. Most of them haven't had any formal education, that's why they're coming over here. I don't blame them for trying..."

Doug Bruce, for those who don't know, is the guy who invented TABOR, the Colorado spending cap that we blogged a lot about in 2006 (Ah, good times). When a local Colorado government opts out of TABOR it's called "de-brucification." Perhaps Bruce thought it was a good idea because it made it much harder for Colorado government to provide services to "these people." Under TABOR, pediatricians dropped out of the state Medicaid program because they weren't getting paid adequately or in a timely fashion, and Colorado's ranking for on time vaccination plummetted. And those are just two of the ways the state "saved" money at the expense of "these people."    

Bruce could be censured, sanctioned or expelled. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Crooks and Liars has more, including something about how Mr. Keeping Government Within Its Means might have been billing the state for per diem for days he didn't work.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've written before about the "kids are stupid" meme that pops up in the media.  Give students a test, report the findings on a particular question, and conclude kids are stupid. Often lost is that, by the same measure, adults are stupid, too.

So, I had to click on Joe Williams' reference to Karin Chenowith's look at high school exit exams. She writes that the exams:

ask questions that high school graduates should be able to answer. Questions about the role of the Supreme Court, the meaning of the First Amendment, the role of sunlight in plant growth, the process of evolution**, the conclusions that can be drawn from a set of data or a piece of literature. This is not rocket science. Nor is there anything that is antithetical to a good education.

Agreed.  Recent graduates -- and older graduates -- should know the answers to these questions. 

And older people do better on such questions, right?  Wrong -- at least in science, according to a report by the National Science Foundation.

Age (years)          % of correct answers to scientific
                                    terms and concept questions

    18–24               65
    25–34               63
    35–44               63
    45–54               61
    55–64               58
    65+                   48 

Can we expect to see CNN mocking old people because 3 of 7 believe the sun goes around the earth?  Probably not.  And don't expect young people to be praised because 6 out of 7 know that the earth goes around the sun.  Instead let's mock them -- ha! 1 of 7 young people are on the wrong side of the Copernican Revolution.

All this isn't to say we shouldn't be doing more to prepare high school graduates to enter the world of work. It's just that we should act with the knowledge that there is no Golden Age of education during which every 18-year-old graduated from high school and could score 100% on today's high school exit exams.

*My cohort scored a few points behind the 18- to 24-year-olds, so count me among the old and ignorant.  

** Young people did nearly twice as well as oldsters on the NSFs evolution question.

Posted by John at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From an article in today's WaPo about teenagers' TV habits:

Daheia J. Barr-Anderson and her colleagues found that the two-thirds of youths who had a bedroom set watched more TV, moved less and had poorer diets and lower grades than those without one.

Also, 

Boys were more likely to have bedroom TVs than girls (68 percent vs. 57 percent), and there were variations among ethnic groups: Eighty-one percent of black youths had a set, compared with 66 percent of Hispanics, 60 percent of whites and 39 percent of Asians.

So, 'kette, I'm suggesting a revision of one line in a recent post:  "That means that a value-added measure would estimate the effects of teacher pairs trios, not individual teachers: one teacher teaches students from January to June, and another from September to January, [and yet another for hours and hours every night]."

(Photo by Flickr user jek in the box used under a Creative Commons license.)

Posted by John at 04:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Soak the taxpayers, that is.

First, this from the New York Times:

"[T]o arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

The tale involves charges of domestic abuse, a plea bargain to avoid losing a firearms license, drunkenness, trading sex for government contracts and procuring inferior munitions for a U.S. ally in the war against Al Qaeda.

Second, this from the Washington Post:

Government auditors said yesterday that the Pentagon relies too much on contractors who often work alongside their government counterparts, cost more and sometimes take on responsibilities they are not supposed to. 

The audit, a GAO report, found, "The only apparent distinction [between government employees and contractors] is their different badge color." Oh, yeah, and the fact that "some contractors are paid $74.99 per hour -- 27 percent more than government employees who are doing the same work."

In case we haven't learned the lesson yet, it's simple: An administration that recklessly promotes outsourcing and ignores its obligation to monitor government contracts not only invites waste, fraud and abuse, but undermines the government, including, in this case, the U.S. military.

For those of you scoring at home, AEY, the munitions contractor written up in the NY Times article, has no contracts with the Department of Ed (no surprise there).  However, CACI, the contractor highlighted in the WaPo article, has gotten more than $4 million from the Department of Ed since 2000. But I'm sure everything is on the up and up there. CACI employees working on Department of Ed contracts are probably a bargain. No worries.

Posted by John at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Number one

Multiple Choice:  "FOIA Request Elicits Greetings and Blank Pages."

A)  A headline from an Ed Week article by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo about the Department of Education's response to a Freedom of Information Act request regarding a federal commission on reading research.

or

B)  A headline from the Onion. 

or 

C)  Alexander Russo, being funny. 

It's A.  Of course. Partial credit for C since the headline was featured in Russo's Big Stories of the Day.

Number two

March 20, 2008, letter from U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to chief state school officers regarding her recent announcement of a differentiated accountability pilot program:

"The differentiated accountability model is designed to result in an increased number of students participating, in the aggregate, in public school choice and supplemental educational services (SES) at the state level, even if the number of students eligible for these options decreases."

March 25, 2008, headline on USA Today article by Greg Toppo: "Free tutoring failing to help needy kids."

So, why would the Department of Ed or any Bush administration agency think the Freedom of Information Act had something to do with providing information? And why wouldn't the Department insist on more SES for kids, even though, uh, it doesn't work?

Posted by John at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

PREA Prez takes a big leap, making a connection between our post on a YouTuber with an admitted "anti-union bias" and Ed Sector.  After having spent a little time over the past week or so dealing with Richard Berman's attacks on teachers, I had organizations like CUF in mind when I wrote about the YouTuber, not Ed Sector.

It's true that certain of Ed Sector's positions, practices and blog posts seem to be at odds with its noble mission statement, (See here, here, here, here, here and elsewhere on our blog.)  But Ed Sector's ability to live up to its mission statement is limited because it can't quite handle its twin roles as advocate and think tank (see Edbizbuzz on this here); it can't see outside the Beltway (our members serve as a great reality check for us); and it must please the funders (as we must please our members).

However -- and this is a big however -- there is a world of difference between Ed Sector and the Center for Union Facts.  CUF has no interest in education for education's sake, hides its funders, and uses an ad campaign based on the weakest of researchiness to try to destroy unions. 

Blurring the differences between the two makes it harder to see CUF for what it really is and harder to get Ed Sector to listen to union members who work in schools every day.

Posted by John at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Richard Berman’s Center for Union Facts, using a style that smacks of inebriated college sophomores, has launched yet another series of attacks on unions – this time focusing on us and our friends at the NEA.

I’m still reading it, but my favorite part so far, is the charge that Texas unions prevent teachers from being fired.  Note to all: Texas teachers generally lack due process protections  You can get fired at the end of the year and not be able to do anything about it. For example, see this.  If you’re going to attack unions for upholding tenure, at least have the sense to do it in states that have teacher tenure. See also the response of the peer review lovin’ Columbus Education Association.

Berman also charges the AFT with giving money to groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Children’s Defense Fund. There’s a whole section on how we block education reform. On merit pay, they dig up a quote from Day Higuchi, who was the President of UTLA before the guy who was president before the current president. And of course, their charges don’t reflect AFT’s actual policy.  They think vouchers are in fact a panacea, and accuse the Washington Teachers Union of working to the rule... in 1992.  

Berman told of the coming of this campaign last year in an appearance before right wing activists in Nevada, and we told you about it then.  His remarks indicate that this is part of a broader effort focused on the Employee Free Choice Act. From the article in the Las Vegas Sun:

“As Berman said in a Sun interview after his Sparks speech, nearly all Americans have some contact with teachers and their unions. If the public doesn’t trust the teachers unions, he reasons, surely they won’t trust steel workers or other unions that don’t have such a seemingly beneficent pedigree.”

In other words, it's just a smear job.  The Center for Union Facts is just one of a number of Berman front groups. Some of the others include:

• The Employment Policies Institute (EPI) and the Minimum Wage Coalition to Save Jobs. These groups oppose raising the minimum wage.
• American Beverage Institute (ABI) and Beverage Retailers Against Drunk Driving” (BRADD). These groups oppose Mothers Against Drunk Driving’s agenda; and.
• The Center for Consumer Freedom. (Pro cholesterol, fat and nicotine)

The Center for Consumer Freedom has a web site "ActivistCash.Com" that is currently hosting an attack on the Humane Society of the United States.  It also describes Robert Redford as an example of celebrities who “now see fit to exert their clout and money in order to restrict our choices.” It has similar profiles of other celebrities.  In this context, Berman’s anti union efforts are one more product from the cookie cutter.

As for sophomoric writing: "Like its AFL-CIO brothers, the AFT indulges in the language of conflict." Yeah, yeah. I got yer language of conflict right here....

Posted by Ed at AFT at 04:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ed Sector, March 6, 2008, Kevin Carey:

This is the "if you multiply some number times some other number times some other number times the entirety of the American public education system, the result is a non-trivial number" excuse, i.e. the last refuge of scoundrels.

Ed Sector, January 2007, "Frozen Assets":

Taken in isolation, some of the provisions described above may seem inconsequential, amounting to 1 percent or less of school spending. But when the costs of these provisions are added together, they amount to a significant percentage of all school resources. As Table 9 shows, the eight provisions described above add up to almost 19 percent of all school spending. This amounts to roughly $77 gazillion* in school spending per year nationwide.

*Okay, I may have made up the number, but the rest is straight from Frozen Assets. 

UPDATE: Kevin responds by pretending he didn't write "non-trivial" and since the made-up number in Frozen Assets is non-trivialer than the way he trivializes the CEP result, he's really right. Plus, he's found a commenter on another Web site who can read and make music, so that also proves Kevin was really right all along.

Posted by John at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A week or so back, it was field trips.  Today, on the Washington Post's front page, it's the arts.

The Post's Katherine Shaver reports that a fourth-grade teacher put together a morning of art instruction as "a protest in public school arts education attirbutable to budget cuts and a focus on standardized test scores spuured by the federal law [NCLB]." 

(Hey, Ed Sector Interns! Rise to the defense of NCLB and get on this quickly! It's time to interpret the reported effects of NCLB as narrowly as possible and waste an hour or two on Lexis-Nexis.)

If you're an NCLB lover, there's no use trying to contact the reporter  She's too far gone.  She writes that the morning of art focused attention on "a national reality: that art is often squeezed out of the curriculum by the academic rigors of the No Child Left Behind law."

Where do these reporters get these crazy ideas about the effects of NCLB, standardized tests and inadequate funding?  Uh, maybe they talk to teachers once in a while. In a survey of AFT's teachers, 87 percent agreed with the statement that testing "has pushed other important subjects and activities out of the curriculum."

That was a couple years ago.  Anyone out there think things have changed much since then?

UPDATE: Kevin Carey of the Quick and the Ed does some fact-checking for the Post reporter, digging into a CEP report she cited.  Then Kevin asks me whether I think 16% of school districts reporting a drop in art instruction is a big deal.  Well, a little extrapolating and back-of-the-
envelope arithmetic suggests that 4 million students (16% of ~ 25 million public K-6 students) are missing more than 30 hours of art instruction per year.  So, yes, Kevin, I think that's a lot of lost art instruction. But the art of defending NCLB against all comers is alive and well at Education Sector.

Posted by John at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is probably a breach of blog etiquette, but...

Our blog statistics software showed a visitor with an eop.gov tag within the last 24 hours or so.  With some help from the ARIN database, one can make a logical guess that the visitor was using a FEMA computer (with "eop" standing for "Executive Office of the President").

What's more, we can tell the eop.gov visitor came to our site through a Google search: "Reading Rockets" and "No Child Left Behind" and Scandal.

I'm pretty sure there haven't been any scandals surrounding Reading Rockets, "a national multimedia project offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help."  Reading Rockets is "an educational initiative of WETA, the flagship public television and radio station in the nation's capital, and is funded by a major grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs."

So, there doesn't seem to be a lot of juicy stuff on Reading Rockets.  Maybe, though, the visitor from eop.gov was thinking of that other program with a similar name?  There was some scandal surrounding a program known as Reading First.

Heckuva job tracking down that Reading First information, FEMA.

Posted by John at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Susan Ohanian didn't like my blog post stating that an anti-NCLB video was neither funny nor effective.  So, she responds with a multiple choice question. 

 2. The AFT NCLB blog criticizes

a) Margaret Spellings' statement that NCLB "is like Ivory soap: It's 99.9 percent pure. . . . There's not much needed in the way of change."

b) Senator Edward Kennedy's declaration that NCLB "is a defining issue about the future of our nation and about the future of democracy, the future of liberty, and the future of the United States in leading the free world."

c) Hillary Clinton, for voting for NCLB.

d) Bill Gates for calling for more rigorous curriculum

e) A a tongue-in-cheek video supporting The Educator Roundtable petition calling for the scrapping of NCLB.

Uh, Ms. Ohanian, I didn't know you were a fan of multiple choice tests.  Also, this test question doesn't seem to be well designed.  It has two right answers.  E is one, of course.  See here as evidence that A also is a correct answer.

(Photo by Flickr user COCOEN daily photos used under a Creative Commons license.) 

Posted by John at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

AFT President Edward J. McElroy announced he will retire, effective in July. AFT Secretary-Treasurer Nat LaCour also announced he will be stepping down in July.

Update: Below After the jump is the full text of the press statement announcing the retirements.

Continue reading "AFT President Announces Retirement" »

Posted by John at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As the father of two boys, I was fascinated -- and intimidated -- when I read this interview.  USA Today's Greg Toppo talks with children's author Jon Scieszka.

One bone to pick:  From personal experience -- my 4-year-old son talked about nothing but underwear for weeks -- Captain Underpants isn't, as Scieszka says, "borderline." It's way, way over the line.

Posted by John at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

...but you sure see a lot more news stories like this one since NCLB was passed.  (H/T This Week in Education.)

Posted by John at 02:05 PM | Permalink

At the end of last week I got the help of a masked education policy analyst to back me up in a blog back and forth with the folks from Ed Sector. We were talking about changing the nature of teacher pay. I asked readers if they could identify the author.  The big clue was that it was somebody Andy Rotherham wouldn't be snarky about even if they were saying the exact same things that I was. A number of blogs were kind enough to link to the post, and some of the email was funny. But no one guessed it.  I suspect that's because not many of you read the report I was quoting.

So I'll reveal now that the culprit was Ed Sector honcho Tom Toch (and Robert Rothman), perhaps in the home office and perhaps with the word processor.  Toch, of course, is in the club. Also note that the report I quoted from is an overview of the subject of teacher evaluation that leaves you with a lot to think about beyond its utility for bashing Joel Klein. You should read it.

The best line on this comes from Joan Snowden in the comments: "I retired from the AFT and all of a sudden my old critics are congratulating me for 'finding my voice.' I'm not saying anything that I hadn't said before, but without my Union label, somehow it is easier to hear."

(Photo by Flickr user macwagen used under a Creative Commons license.)

Posted by Ed at AFT at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A couple years ago, I called out Nicholas Kristof for beginning an op-ed with: "Suppose Colin Powell tires of giving $100,000-a-pop speeches and wants to teach high school social studies."  You know, fake premise = unconvincing argument.

So I think it's only fair to point out the silliness of this video from Educator Roundtable (via, of course, Susan Ohanian).

There are plenty of real problems with the No Child Left Behind Act and test-driven accountability.  It seems silly to create a fake video to make the point.

(In-joke alert: Unless it's an animated video, of course.)

Posted by John at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I don't want to spend a lot of time on Jonathan Leaf's drive-by on Jonathan Kozol in the Weekly Standard, but this part made me laugh out loud.

Kozol claims that a teacher in the South Bronx can't find seats for her students as she has 40 kids in her class. But New York City schools are not allowed to have more than 34 students in a high school class and 27 in a grade school class unless the subject is a special one like physical education or music. Even if a teacher wants to keep extra students in a class, a union rep will file a grievance and force a change.

I once tried to cram 127 kids into one of my classes, because I was totally en fuego that day and all the kids should have been able to benefit from my righteous instruction. Darned union reps.  Also, while I don't agree with some things Kozol has said over the years, I'm not sure what a novel he wrote forty years ago has to do with anything, except to make a case that Kozol is a certain type of person.  I appreciate that Leaf has volunteered in NY Public Schools. Perhaps that's where he learned the dozens. (Hat tip to M.)

Posted by Ed at AFT at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Below is the statement by AFT President Edward J. McElroy:

Note: President Bush released his FY 2009 budget proposal today. It eliminates or cuts many key education programs and slashes Medicare and Medicaid by almost $200 billion. The budget provides inadequate increases to Title I and special education, yet diverts $300 million to a new, unproven national voucher program and adds more than $100 million to a flawed teacher pay plan (the Teacher Incentive Fund). Overall, the budget essentially freezes domestic discretionary funding at current levels, which will result in cuts to most services after taking inflation and population growth into account. The budget now goes to Congress for its consideration and modification.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— The best news about President Bush’s budget is that it’s his last. Seven years of irresponsible tax cuts, bad economic policies and soaring military spending have landed the nation in a deep fiscal hole. The president’s FY 2009 budget proposal digs that hole deeper, increasing the deficit to $400 billion while saddling children, seniors and other vulnerable populations with the brunt of cuts
to vital public services. We urge Congress to reject this budget and put forth a plan that better reflects the nation’s values and priorities.

The silver lining is that once President Bush leaves office, we finally will have the opportunity to address the mess he has left behind—$9 trillion in debt, chronic revenue shortfalls, and shameful underinvestment in our nation’s schools, universities, infrastructure and healthcare services.

Recovering from this president’s mistakes will require bold, new leadership in 2009. The scope of the challenges ahead underscores the importance of electing candidates in 2008 who have the experience, know-how and commitment to tackle big problems and restore the American dream for millions of working families.

Posted by John at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Once upon a time Richard Murnane and David Cohen wrote a paper that examined existing pay for performance programs in schools. They wanted to know why some lasted and some failed. One of the factors that led to persistence was adequate base compensation.  It’s a very nice piece of research.  And I’ve taken it’s lesson to heart here, when writing about what it would take to make a long lasting change in the compensation of teachers.  Kevin Carey responds:

“That said, insisting that "adequate base compensation" be a prerequisite for pay for performance is, functionally, the equivalent of being against pay for peformance.”

Posted by Ed at AFT at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the beauties of bloggery is following the links wherever they take you.  I started out at Alexander Russo's blog, where he does a helpful daily blog roundup. That links to an Eduwonk piece about Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, which links to a Sherman Dorn post linking to (last one) a Miami Herald blog, which reported Spellings's response to a question about whether evolution should be included in state science standards.

The top federal education official said "Of course it should be.  Evolution is accepted science, and it should be presented to our children as such."

Nah, just kidding.  The Herald blog reports that Spellings said "it wasn't her job to make policy decisions like that," which, loosely translated, means "I'll say anything to appease my party's base."

Posted by John at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From AFT President Edward J. McElroy's statement on NCLB's 6th anniversary:   

"Enacting a better law will require strong leadership from the White House, but President Bush refuses to acknowledge the law’s flaws and was AWOL last year while Congress was attempting to rewrite NCLB...."

More here. 

Posted by John at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I maintained my state of denial even through the holidays, but I now have to acknowledge that Michele McLaughlin, my longtime partner in bloggy crimes, has jumped the AFT ship. 

Although my posts didn't have her name on them, she often helped shape them, especially in the blog's early days.  If I wrote about a substantive report on education, there's a better than even chance that Michele sent me the report, summarized it for me, or reviewed what I wrote before it went up on the blog.  Sometimes all three.  More than once, she steered me away from certain subjects when my emotions otherwise would have led me beyond the facts at hand.  And, if I've put up a stupid post, check the date -- Michele probably was on leave.

For my part, I corrected Michele's occasional misspellings.  (Note to Michele's new employer:  She has no idea how to spell "dreidel.")  And I made a slightly greater effort than Michele did to understand the technical aspects of blogging.  But that doesn't begin to offset the help Michele gave me.

As AFT employee-bloggers, we don't have the freedom to write about certain subjects or express certain views.  Campaign finance law, for example, limits what we can write about political candidates. Scatological humor, swearing and sexual innuendos aren't appropriate, meaning that Michele and I couldn't go where many other blogs go.  But, on the days when we suspected few people at AFT headquarters were paying attention, we wrote a little more freely.  (Michele, I still can't believe you put up that !@#$% post.)

Michele has left not only the AFT but also the blogosphere, so her time playing the celebrity look-alike game is probably over.  But I'm sure she'll find other fun and rewarding work at Teach For America, where she has landed.  I understand the TFAers already think highly of her, and I can assure them that the more they work with her, the more they will like and respect her. 

But enough about her.  What about me?  I am forsaken and forlorn.  The blog will never be the same.  Readers can expect weaker stuff from me until I finish mourning and figure out how to do this without Michele.  Beth and Ed, of course, will continue to write good stuff, and maybe we'll get some sucker to try to fill Michele's shoes. Still, we're unlikely to find anyone who is in Michele's league when it comes to weaving folkster-hipster-alternative-classic rock into blog posts.  All we can do is try our best.

Posted by John at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Joe Williams and Alexander Russo reported last week that I will be leaving the AFT for Teach for America (TFA).  Yep, it's true. In my view, if your primary concerns are teachers and students, there are no two better organizations to work for. I also believe in cross-fertilization, that I will bring to TFA my knowledge of teacher unions, while at the same time learning more about the education reform community. I think it will be mutually beneficial.

Will TFA launch a blog? Not likely. I would guess my blogging days are numbered. Why do I suddenly feel like I am writing my senior yearbook entry? On that note, "What a long strange trip it's been."  (Yes, I was a Deadhead in high school.  But I always did my homework.)

Posted by Michele at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

'Tis the season to bust out every working mom's friend, the ole Crockpot. Speaking of pressure cookers, I have been musing on the NCLB policy divide during this eerie lull before Congress takes up reauthorization again. On one side are those who believe we should leave NCLB unchanged because it keeps the pressure on states, districts and schools to improve student achievement, particularly that of poor and minority students.  On the other side are those who say NCLB must be fixed to relieve some of this pressure and prevent unintended consequences like the lowering of state proficiency standards and teaching to the test.

I understand the perspective of the "keep the pressure on" crowd, but the problem is that it's not meat and potatoes inside the Crockpot, it's teachers and students who are feeling the heat. Do we need to keep the focus on closing the achievement gap? Absolutely. At the same time, do we need to acknowledge that NCLB must be changed so that teachers and others can feel hopeful, not hopeless, about meeting achievement goals? Yes.

Schools, like all organizations, function best when goals are clear and achievable; otherwise a dangerous sense of powerless takes hold. I think an argument can be made to turn the pressure down on the Crockpot without sacrificing the education of our most vulnerable students. Perhaps, given the implosion of Miller-McKeon, folks in Congress are now poised to listen to this argument.

Posted by Michele at 06:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

David Ritchey of the Association of Teacher Educators wrote in with a few kind words and, even better, an improved version of my weak attempt at photo-shopping on this post about all gaps other than the achievement gap.

Here's David's new and improved image:

Thanks!

Posted by John at 06:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Russlynn Ali of Ed Trust-West and Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute are debating the NCLB's effect on California’s achievement gap.

Ali doesn't actually say NCLB is the best thing since sliced bread, but she does call it "the boldest step our nation has taken on issues of education and race since 1954's Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka." Holy hyperbole, Batman!

Posted by John at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

UPDATE:  While working at ED, Mike Petrilli recused himself from decisions involving K12 grants.  See below for a clarification.

The Fordham Foundation is looking for a Research Director.  Judging by Fordham's recent tinkering with a report on IB and AP courses, candidates won't be chosen based on their knowledge of statistics.  The key criterion for Fordham researchers: a willingness to manipulate data to achieve a desired outcome.

The Washington Post reports today that Fordham "reversed [a researcher's] judgment of which of the two college-level high school programs had the better math course."

The Post's Jay Mathews, whose Challenge Index relies heavily on IB and AP participation, took the Fordham report at face value a few weeks ago.  But he followed up with the story of the dissenting researcher because, as he writes in his online column, the dispute "is a useful reminder that research organizations using outside experts occasionally encounter views at odds with their own rules and values."

Fordhamites seem to have a penchant for arithmetical monkey business.  Back when the U.S. Department of Education (ED) was being run by Rod Paige, now a Fordham board member, ED overrrode reviewers' evaluations in order to award a contract to K12, a company then run by William Bennett.

That decision was defended by Michael Petrilli, a political appointee at ED, who had worked at K12 and Fordham before arriving at ED and has since returned to Fordham.  [Mike Petrilli wrote in to say that he recused himself from the K12 grantmaking process and that he didn't remember defending the decision.  He's right.  He never defended the K12 grants.  The Ed Week story I was thinking of (here $) referred to a different grant for which ED overrode grant reviewers' recommendations.  That grant went to the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence.]

Posted by John at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was just reading a fascinating poli-sci paper. The whole question of why Americans even bother to vote, given the nil probability that they’ll actually cast that one vote that decides the election, is one of the sillier traditional vexations of the discipline.  This paper, by James Fowler and Christopher Dawes, poses a really fascinating answer: some of us are just more genetically predisposed to vote than others. Apparently, there’s a correlation between polymorphisms of two genes and likelihood to vote.  Also fascinating is that an interaction between one of the genetic traits and a social factor, church attendance, is correlated with voting.

Having vaguely paid attention to the latest Bell curvish eruption on the blogosphere, I almost shudder to think about what mischief can be done with actual genetic analysis when we start talking about learning.  I also am a bit disturbed at the thought that my political or other propensities really are genetically pre-programmed to any extent.  And the idea that learning disabilities are things we can start to diagnose better using gene patterns gives me both hope and pause.  

The paper is still in the discussion draft phase, and perhaps there’s something not nailed down yet, but it's well worth a look.  And Fowler’s web site has a host of other interesting work, the kind I could spend days reading,  but I’ll leave you with one tongue in cheek tidbit – a potential explanation for all the links that Eduwonk is able to garner.

Photo by Flickr user Jonny Bronwbill used under a Creative Commons license

Posted by Ed at AFT at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Love it, hate it, but there's no doubt NCLB is driving more articles like this one, from Sunday's Washington Post, "'No Child' Law May Slight The Gifted, Experts Say." 

NCLB's staunchest supporters will argue that NCLB opponents and ignorant media types are pushing the notion that NCLB is leaving gifted students behind.  But the percetion exists, and,real or not, perception exists, and, real or not, it could lead parents of gifted students to pull their kids from public schools.

Incorporating growth models into NCLB's accountability system could bring gifted students into NCLB's sphere, but I'm skeptical* that growth models will be a cure-all. 

Independent research could help answer the question of whether gifted children have received less attention since passage of NCLB, but that's a tough question to get at.  University of Chicago researchers took a shot back in July.)  But pro-NCLB forces will chip away at any research with such a finding, and anti-NCLB forces, along with advocates for gifted children, will attack any research that finds the opposite.

With no research consensus, parents will make their decisions based on media reports and conventional wisdom.  (That may be how they make decisions even if there is a research consensus.)  In any case, if the CW is that NCLB is leading public schools to slight gifted children, parents with means will opt for private schools, regardless of whether they provide a better education. 

*I'm probably more skeptical of growth models than the AFT brain trust is or was; they're part of our NCLB recommendations.

UPDATE: bigswifty notes a typo and some formatting problems.  (Thanks!  I've fixed them.) BS also  laments that I haven't included a study saying NCLB was just peachy and the kids, bubble and gifted, are alright.  He's right.  I left out that study, which appeared in Education Next and was, I believe, funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation.  It could be a good study, but I doubt it, and my point was that, no matter what the AFT or Ed Next says, it's going to be hard to buck the conventional wisdom that NCLB shortchanges certain kids.  That train has left the station.

Posted by John at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Forget what I put in that post below. Maybe some of us really do have too many words.  The economist responds. While you're at it, read him on Social Security. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If ED is trying to combat the perception that NCLB has led to more testing, why choose this picture for the cover of the national NCLB implementation report? It looks to me like the kids are filling in bubble sheets for the state assessment under the teacher's watchful eye. Maybe it's an accurate depiction of what the Bush Administration thinks classrooms should look like.

P.S. I will have something substantive to say about the report, once I have read it (200+ pages).

Posted by Michele at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I want to call attention to a post there [at the Education Policy Blog] by Philip Kovacs (haven't met him yet -- though I've met a few of the others there).  It's an important reminder about gaps other than the achievement gap.  Kovacs, focusing on the gaps between African Americans and whites, is right to point out that not all of society's problems begin in school and many of them cannot be solved without addressing out-of-school factors.  He includes the  incarceration gap, the homeowner gap, the healthcare gap, the earnings gap, the poverty rate gap, the unemployment gap, the murder gap, and even the happiness gap. 

(And, yes, there's a huge gap between my Photoshop skills and those of the average blogger, but I'm working on it.)  UPDATE:  David Ritchey of the Association of Teacher Educators took pity on me and sent in a better image.

Posted by John at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Center for American Progress has just released yet another report calling for performance pay for teachers.  Ezra Klein wrote about the event for the release:

Showing yet again that all discussion of education reform and pay-for-performance is brutally squelched on the Left, I just got an invite to a Center for American Progress panel on...education reform and pay-for-performance. For now, I'm assuming it's a trap.

It was a double decker trap, given that one of the papers was by Joan Snowden, who used to work with us here at AFT as the director of the Educational Issues department.  Given that Joan and I are pretty much in agreement on the need to change the way teachers are paid and on the importance of doing it fairly and carefully, I think everyone should read this.  And if you’re new to this issue, her look at four ways to change teacher pay – based on skills and knowledge, extra responsibility, shortage areas, or performance – is a nice lens for viewing something that people usually oversimplify.  Notice that these range pretty much from less to more controversial.  I’d also recommend the section on “doing it wrong” and “what have we learned”  in particular.

Sherman Dorn notes that this paper doesn’t lend support to a broad brush federal approach on pay for performance.  I do think, though, that it does point the way to how we can continue to make some progress on this. And if you like to get your hands on the original research, track down Joan’s reference to Murnane and Cohen’s piece “Why Most Merit Pay Plans Fail and a Few Survive.”  It’s from back in the ‘80s, but it is a classic.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eduwonkette posts some silly pics of education notables in Halloween drag, and I guess the Andy and Alexander pic is meant to be ironic. I had always envisioned the two differently. Andy wins hands down for the photo--Russo, you gotta get a better pic for your blog!

Posted by Michele at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's a complaint about teacher unions from a column in today's Newark Star-Ledger:

"No teacher union ever struck a city school system because the kids went to school hungry or lived in slums or were denied health care. Or because their parents couldn't get into craft unions and obtain good jobs. I'd like to see that some day." 

Got it.  We're supposed to take on big issues that go far beyond school walls and be willing to go on strike to change out-of-school policies.

And here's a typical comment from the right, a proposal from a fellow at the Hoover Institution:

Limit the scope of bargaining to issues of compensation and working conditions, narrowly construed, so that most aspects of schooling are not subject to union negotiations.

Got it.  We should be doing nothing except negotiating bare-bones contracts that address pay and working conditions.

But how can we do the first if we're limited to doing only the second? That's a tough position.  The only thing that would make it tougher is if someone created a "centrist" think tank with a blog -- better yet, two blogs -- arguing that when unions talk about the effects of poverty on children, it's really a secret code meaning that we oppose school reforms. Done.

Thanks for the help, everyone.  Future suggestions can go into the convenient container below.

Posted by John at 04:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Congrats to Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Foundation on the birth of his son, Niccolo Hugh!  While it's an unusual name, I actually had a Niccolo when I taught school who reminded me to never underestimate the mind of a twelve year old.  My sixth grade English class was reading The Tao of Pooh, and I asked for some examples of philosophical questions.  Niccolo responded, "You know what I often think about Miss McLaughlin?  If not this, then what?" Pretty impressive.  I'm sure Niccolo Hugh will also have a great mind, like his father and, presumably, his mother.  Mazel tov!

Posted by Michele at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a Pew poll found a few months ago, Americans are much more tolerant of gay educators than they were 20 years ago, so this weekend's news about Albus Dumbledore likely will have no effect on his employment status.  (Of course, if you've read the last two books, you know that's moot.)

You can create your own Dumbledore image at this site.

Posted by John at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Statement by Edward J. McElroy,
President, American Federation of Teachers,
on New York City’s New Professional Compensation Plan

WASHINGTON, D.C. —The United Federation of Teachers and Mayor Bloomberg have worked together to develop a locally negotiated, voluntary, schoolwide initiative that rewards and promotes the collaborative work environment favored by educators. Such initiatives have long been advocated by the AFT. The agreement also provides pension equity for all current and prospective teachers and paraprofessionals. We know that changes in compensation systems work only if, as in this system, they have been developed with—and have the buy-in of—teachers directly affected by the changes.

The UFT's statement is here. 

Posted by John at 04:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Update: Why is that you give male bloggers some linky love, and they still feel the need to get in the last word?  Sigh. Ode to Russo: I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no class. 

Eduwonk is now allowing comments.  Congratulations, you are officially a blog! Andy is probably right, he won't get many comments--we certainly don't--but it's a nice democratic touch. IMHO, to generate a lot of comments, you have to either a) be an independent blogger (preferably a teacher) or 2) write for a blog with wider readership like teacherken does at Daily Kos. 

However, it seems to me that Eduwonk has always been more concerned with who reads his blog, not how many people read it. Andy is the big dog on the ed policy blog-ck, and he knows it.  Alexander Russo, his sometime friend and foe, worries more about numbers and who links to him. His recent cry for "pity links" was sad--show some pride my good man!  At NCLBlog, we have found that readers tend not to click the links, so I'm not sure it's worth the effort to embed them.  I often add links just to amuse myself.  And, what I think both Eduwonk and Russo really need on their blogs is MORE COWBELL!

Posted by Michele at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Every once in a while, I really like the Fordham Foundation's Gadfly, especially when it offers up  provocative commentary and analysis of education policy. (Other times -- well, if you don't have anything good to say about someone....)

Here are a couple gadfly goodies from this week's edition:

At its heart, today's NCLB amounts to a civil rights manifesto dressed up as an accountability system. This provides an untenable basis for serious reform, as if Congress declared that every last molecule of water or air pollution would vanish by 2014, or that all American citie