Photo courtesy of the New York Times.

What this week’s primary elections actually tell us about the battle over reforming American public education:

Voters Are Concerned About More Than Education: The problem for single-issue activists, no matter who they are, is tunnel vision. They are so focused on one particular issue that they think it should be the paramount factor in supporting or opposing a candidate. What is forgotten is that for the average voter — neither monomaniacal nor able to spend one’s time focusing on a particular issue (or on any issue, given the scarcity of time and the needs to keep kids clothed and roofs over heads) — no one particular issue alone, no matter how important it may be, is the one on which they will make decisions.

More often than not, they are judging candidates based on several factors largely based on their personal experiences: Is the candidate likable; can he get the job done; is he connected to the community in which the voters live; and is he part of the networks (from churches to bars) with which they spend time. Essentially, the voter may agree with a candidate on several issues, but find that person generally distasteful. Or, if they are in middle age or senior citizens, take the view that a younger candidate doesn’t have enough gray hairs on the head and needs to wait his turn (a particular problem in the black community). Or they may know the incumbent or challenger is corrupt and a machine politician, but remember what that person did for them on a personal level. Or they are more concerned about the economic problems of the present and see no connections between those matters and the future that they think only their grandchildren will see. Or they just don’t agree that education is all that important an issue, period. The candidate’s position on one issue alone ultimately matters little.

This is something school reformers must keep in mind as they moan over Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s loss in yesterday’s primaries and the victories of school reform opponents such as New York State Senator Bill Perkins (whose senseless opposition to charter schools should be an outrage to Harlem residents and Black America in general). In the case of Fenty, it is clear that his reform of D.C. Public Schools wasn’t the only factor in his defeat; if anything, Michelle Rhee was the single-biggest reason why most Fenty voters sided with him (and why even some Fenty foes are having second thoughts about supporting the winner, Vincent Gray, who will oust Rhee in  order to keep peace with the city’s Ancien Regime). Once you take school reform out of the equation, Fenty’s other problems — a demeanor at which even Churchill would look askance, mediocre management of city government, and the inability to manage the particularly virulent race issues that color D.C. politics — almost guaranteed him defeat. He was a one-term mayor before he even ran for re-election.

As for Perkins? He is a longstanding incumbent with deep roots in Harlem. He is also an old-school black politician — and there are plenty of voters his age who will have to be forced to the sidelines before the New Jacks take charge. His opponent, Basil Smikle, doesn’t have that deep network, lacks such privileges and didn’t have enough young voters he could on for victory. Another reformer, Michael Castle (who lost Delaware’s Republican senatorial primary) didn’t mention those credentials very much — and given the recriminations among conservative activists over the excesses of the George W. Bush era (including the No Child Left Behind Act), couldn’t use that background for any positive or negative effect.

Meanwhile the school reform politicians who won — including Perkins’ fellow state legislator, Sam Hoyt — have also connected to their voters on other important issues; in the case of Hoyt, the very privileges of incumbency that favored Perkins also favored him. School reform may have been the high-profile talking point, but for the voters, not the only one. Neither school reformers nor defenders of the status quo in public education may have captured anyone’s imagination.

Certainly, school reformers are right in arguing that overhauling American public education is critical. But they must remember that school reform isn’t the only issue on the minds of voters. If reformers are to win over the rest of the electorate, they must present clear connections between the need to improve education and the concerns voters find to be more-pressing.

The Importance of Building Community Ties: Green Dot Public Schools founder Steve Barr notes that he always spent time in a community — from churches to social groups — listening, talking and reaching out, before starting a new school there. Why? Because black and Latino communities — like all minority communities — are suspicious of outsiders bearing promises (and have the memories of past promises unkept deeply ingrained in their thoughts). Essentially, you can’t convince people to ally with you until you build connections with them.

This week’s primaries are stark reminders of this reality. In Harlem, Basil Smikle offered compelling reasons for voters to oust Bill Perkins from his New York State Senate seat — and he had backing from school reform activists, both in Harlem and outside of it. But the reformers only had connections to new Harlem residents, who don’t have deep community ties. The reformers also didn’t have enough strong ties to longtime residents, who think that their supposed  Chocolate City is getting a tad too pale and middle class (despite the fact that Harlem has always been a diverse community with strong middle class base –  and given the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the presence of such institutions as the Schonburg Center, upscale even). And while some charter school operators have made strong ties to their communities, others still have a superficial relationship with community players that won’t help in beating back someone as influential as Perkins.

The lack of strong ties communities shouldn’t surprise school reformers, especially among the Beltway crowd. The lack of strong support in communities has been the single-biggest obstacle to sustaining reform. And if school reformers don’t start getting into the game by building ties with churches and grassroots activists — and rallying the millions of single parents, grandparents and immigrant families ready to play their part in reforming public education — they will not be able to keep their hard-won gains.

What if every school was a charter school? Or a private school? It should happen in the Big Easy -- and elsewhere. (Photo courtesy of colorlines.com)

As much as defenders of traditional public education complain about additional funding and efforts to expand charter schools, the vast amount of attention and funding in school reform is focused on overhauling traditional school districts. reforming traditional school districts. From the $3.5 billion in funding from the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program to much of the funding for Race to the Top, the real action remains in saving a model of providing public education that have proven to be inefficient, allows opponents of reform to stubbornly resist any change and captured by political and regulatory structures that benefit the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers over the kids that are supposed to be educated.

But what if the traditional school district model was abandoned altogether? This could be a possibility in New Orleans, where the state-controlled Recovery School District — which took over schools once ran by the woeful Orleans Parish school district after Hurricane Katrina — is putting itself out of business. What could happen in the next few years could serve as the first step in developing a form of what I call the Hollywood Model — essentially getting rid of school district bureaucracies and allowing individual schools to operate akin to Hollywood producers, actually handling actual classroom instruction.

The official plan, according to Louisiana’s school superintendent, Paul Pastorek is to allow the 33 schools to go back under the Orleans Parish school district (which ran most schools in the Big Easy until Katrina) or choose to be under the watchful eye of the state. But there is a catch: New Orleans Parish can only gain oversight over the soon-to-be-former Recovery district schools if they govern in a “21st century manner”, that is, the district will only serve in an oversight role similar to what the state would do instead of operating schools. The Recovery District schools, on the other hand, will operate on their own. Essentially, the Orleans Parish wouldn’t be able to go back to its old ways, poorly managing schools, tolerating internal corruption and failing students and taxpayers alike.

It isn’t that Orleans Parish would be in any position to do any more damage or take on operation of these schools. The district, once a sprawling bureaucracy of 103 schools, now operates just seven; given that it authorizes and regulates seven charter schools on its own, it doesn’t have the capacity to oversee the Recovery District schools. So it is more than likely that the schools will end up becoming charters and fall under state oversight.

NOLA is already several steps in the midst of the Hollywood model. After all, public charter schools (which operate independently of any central district) enroll 57 percent of all students and account for 75 percent of all schools in the Big Easy. Converting another 33 traditional schools into charters wouldn’t exactly put a strain on the system. But it would force Louisiana officials to consider its own capacity for regulating so many schools from Baton Rouge. The biggest obstacle in abandoning the school district model remains the reality that most state education agencies are ill-equipped to manage their own operations, much less provide wide oversight over tens and hundreds (much less thousands) of individual schools. The lack of strong governance is one complaint lodged against the Recovery District by those New Orleans residents who remain skeptical of a school choice model of education.

For the schools themselves, the question is how to provide those very services — transportation, school lunches and building maintenance — that would otherwise be provided by a central district — especially since Orleans Parish (which would otherwise handle those functions under my original thesis) wouldn’t be able to do so. Once possibility: Groups of schools teaming up and contracting out those services to outside vendors, something that think tanks such as the Reason Foundation (with help from Deloitte Consulting’s Bill Eggers) have floated in discussing how to improve traditional district operations. Another is to bring in more charter school operators such as the Knowledge is Power Program and Green Dot Public Schools; but that would also lead to complaints that public education is becoming a private business (even though education has always been as much a business as a means of building the minds of people).

What happens in New Orleans may actually reshape what happens in federal policy. The Obama could abandon the emphasis on school turnarounds — which like those in the private sector, succeed only a fifth of the time (at best) — and focus on developing new structures for educational governance and foster charters, vouchers and other kinds of schools. The administration could even take some Title I funding and actually put it into efforts that will elevate families to their proper roles as kings and lead decision-makers in education.

Ultimately, what will happen in New Orleans with the end of the Recovery District will be interesting to watch. After all, we already know that the traditional public school district is obsolete and not worth preserving as a model for educating our children. Now, we must replace it with a model that works for all children.

Judging by Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s troubled re-election campaign alone, one would dare say that mayor-led school reform — including mayoral control of traditional school systems and other mayor-led reforms — is just a bad idea. Same would also be true if one looks at the fall of another municipal paragon of school reform, Bart Peterson, whose acclaim as the first mayor to authorize charter schools didn’t insulate him from losing his job as Indianapolis mayor three years ago.

Such thinking would be understandable. After all, mayors face more than enough threats to their long-term futures in politics — reforming city governments alone (much less just running them) leads to gaining entrenched enemies — without wading into the even-more treacherous landscape of public education. Once a mayor attempts to either take over a failing district, he or she is naturally rallying school board members, locals of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, superintendents and others; they may generally loathe one another, but they have greater enmity toward supposed interlopers invading their coteries. If the mayor succeeds in taking control, he now has a powerful rival in the form of NEA and AFT locals, who have the resources and ground games to whip up a frenzy among their supporters. All this before the mayor actually gets to the job of reforming schools.

Meanwhile, the average citizen — often still stuck in the old paradigm that education isn’t a city government concern — is still unsure of whether mayors should be in the education business. Even of the mayor does a great job on reforming schools, he must also get the other aspects of city government right: For many, keeping streets clean, cutting down crime, cutting taxes and improving quality of life are far greater concerns than education.

But one really judge the worthiness of mayoral control just on Fenty’s problems or Peterson’s fate. The former is in trouble because of his lack of appealing demeanor, stumbles in managing other aspects of city government, and missteps in handling Chocolate City’s race-based politics. Fenty is paying more for blunders such as canceling a meeting with the late Dorothy Height (a paragon of the civil rights movement) over one of his controversial moves as he is for challenging D.C.’S educational Ancien Regime.

Peterson’s strong efforts on school reform were not matched with equal effort on tackling the Circle City’s rising crime, improving quality of life in less-tony areas, and, as seen with his support of the now-completed Lucas Oil Stadium for the Indianapolis Colts, being fiscally prudent with taxpayer money. Citizens saw him as a complacent failure and showed him the door.

Mayors must still be as successful in improving the rest of city government as they are in school reform. That’s just the way it is. Residents aren’t just going to praise the mayor for fixing schools — especially if they are failing in other areas. This means mayors must be at skilled at managing goverment and keeping their supporters behind them; whether or not they launch school reforms, their jobs would still be the most-complicated in American politics.

The successes of New York City’s Michael Bloomberg, Richard Daley’s tenure in Chicago and John Norquist’s school voucher efforts in Milwaukee are better examples of how mayors can lead school reforms; their remaining challenges are also better examples of why the reform of American public education can’t just start or end at the central offices of school districts or one-off programs — and why the traditional school district model is no longer worth sustaining.

More importantly, as seen in efforts by the mayors of Rochester and Milwaukee to take control of the local district, the continuing saga in L.A. over Antonio Villaraigosa’s effort to nudge L.A. Unified toward reform (an effort first undertaken by predecssor Richard Riordan), and the problems of low educational achievement in  Hammond, Ind., Alexandria, Va., and elsewhere, mayors can no longer ignore the critical links between the long-term efforts of keeping middle-class residents and commercial activity in their cities and improving education. They must embrace school reform because so many of the issues with which they must wrangle are connected to it. Mayor-led reform is critical, not only in sustaining school reform, but in keeping cities thriving. No mayor wants to preside over Detroit-like despair.

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Is D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee engaged in “heroic school reform”? Your editor would argue no; if anything, the hero aspect arises more from how we in the education press covers Rhee (and the general lionization and demonization of the Teach For America alum) as it is from any of Rhee’s P.R. people. No matter what you think, the long-term impact of Rhee’s efforts is an open question. Dropout Nation‘s Contributing Editor, Steve Peha, offers his own thoughts on what he views as a tension between heroic reform and building collective capacity (something which I don’t necessarily thinks has to be; you need both great leaders to get the ball rolling and build long-term capacity). But Peha definitely makes some good points:

Two recent articles in the Washingon Post, one by Jay Matthews, the other by Sam Chaltain, have looked at the performance of controversial DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

Chancellor Rhee has many ardent supporters and probably just as many detractors as well. But no one would dispute her impact on DC schools or even on American education as a whole. When the history books are written, she will have at least a paragraph or two, and she may deserve even more.

Ed Reform 101 is now entering its second semester, and Ms. Rhee is teaching important lessons with every move she makes. So pay attention, boys and girls, because there’s going to be one heck of a test at the end.

What most of us learn from Ms. Rhee, of course, will have nothing to do with her results. Most of us, both pro and con, see what we want to see through the myopic lens of our own confirmation bias.

If we like hard-nosed, rough-knuckled, heroic reform, Rhee can do no wrong. If instead we favor a more consensus-driven approach where leaders work their magic through cooperation rather than confrontation, we are unlikely to feel that Ms. Rhee’s approach should inform the way we run our schools.

The “lessons” of Ms. Rhee’s tenure appear to have been “learned” already, and unlearning them probably won’t be possible for most of us regardless of how things turn out. But we shouldn’t dismiss class just yet.

Win or lose, America loves its heroes, and Ms. Rhee is an iconic representative of what is clearly a new class of heroic education reformers. On the block, however, is not an individual person’s career but a philosophy of educational change.

What is becoming known as the “heroic” model of education reform is getting its first big-city test in D.C. Results so far are mixed. But even heroes need a little time to move mountains. So how will this experiment play out and what’s really at stake?

There are three possibilities for Ms. Rhee and D.C.:

1. Mayor Fenty loses his re-election bid and Ms. Rhee is asked to leave. This is a win for Ms. Rhee who will claim, not without justification, that she didn’t have time to finish what she started. It’s probably a “no decision” for D.C. schools, although one could argue that simply overcoming inertia, which Ms. Rhee has done, is a big win historically.

1. Ms. Rhee stays on for two or three more years but school performance continues to be mixed. Rhee will still win because at least a few good things will have happened. For D.C. schools, it’s another “no decision”, a hollow victory over inertia as entropy begins to reassert itself, and a classic “What do we do now?” moment. This middle-of-the-road outcome is probably the worst thing that could happen because it would provide no clear indicators for DC or the rest of our country about what works and what doesn’t.

1. Ms. Rhee stays on and schools improve noticeably. Another win for Ms. Rhee, of course, and an important victory for D.C. schools. But also—and here’s where I think the real lesson comes in—a validation of the heroic model of school reform.

It is fitting, I think, that our nation look to its capital for leadership in education. One might hope such leadership would come from our President, our Secretary of Education, or from Congress. But if it comes from D.C. Public Schools, I think that’s even better.

But what if heroic leadership doesn’t work? And how will we really know until after Ms. Rhee leaves?

Ms. Rhee is very young for a superintendent. She could play out her entire career in D.C. But heroes, if I remember my Batman episodes, tend to return to their regular lives after the crisis is under control; they don’t hang around in their cape and tights unless there’s still heroic work to be done. That’s not a bash on heroes. It’s just the way it is. There’s always another Commissioner Gordon with another crisis to deal with, and most heroes, when they hear an earnest cry for help from am earnest but challenged public official, feel the need to slide down the Bat Pole, head for the Bat Cave, rev up the Bat Mobile, snag their sidekick, and crusade their way in caped fashion to the next encounter with Evil.

So the future of D.C. is not about Rhee; it’s about post-Rhee. And in some ways, I think this period in D.C. schools history, rather than the current period, will be the most instructive for the district and our nation.

One problem that I see is the same problem Gotham City experiences: Batman and Robin save the day, but poor old Commissioner Gordon has to keep calling them over and over again. It seems the Gotham City police never develop what some people might call “collective capacity”. With Batman and Robin doing the heavy lifting, the police have no need, or even any opportunity, to improve.

Heroic leadership is exciting. It’s all BANG! POW! WHAM! And the bad guys are taken care of. This is the stuff of great daytime TV drama. But it is not without risk. We tend to think the risk is in the completion of the task itself, but this risk pails in comparison to the much larger risk of heroic leadership that drains a system of the capacity to lead itself.

For example, Ms. Rhee has recruited many people. Will these people stay after she is gone? Ms. Rhee negotiated, along with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a huge and historic performance-based pay increase for teachers. What will happen after the current contract runs out? Ms. Rhee has been an avid supporter of charter schools. Where will her successor stand on this issue and what will happen to these new schools if DC is no long so charter-friendly? The IMPACT teacher evaluation program is just getting started. Will it continue? What kind of hole will be left in the district when Ms. Rhee leaves? And will her successor be able to fill it?

Our country is full of amazing people who care about schools. There’s no shortage of heroes here. But is the heroic model of reform viable in the long run? Or is an approach based on “distributed leadership” and the creation of “collective capacity” more appropriate? The former seems more grand and compelling; the latter more sustainable and conservative.

Regardless of how Ms. Rhee fairs personally, or how DC fairs academically, our nation fairs well if we pay close attention to the post-Rhee period in D.C. schools and view her experiment as the first test of heroic leadership for large scale education reform. If anyone can make heroic leadership work it is Ms. Rhee. But if she can’t make it work, then we have to make a sharp about face in our approach to educational change.

“Collective capacity” isn’t just jargon. It’s a legitimate measure of organizational ability, one that takes into account the fact that in large entities raising the competence of all participants is the only viable strategy for lasting change. This theory argues that most systems, when they are lead in the heroic fashion, snap back to their old form shortly after the hero leaves. By contrast, “collective capacity” approaches have the potential to create long lasting if not permanent change.

In America, we love our heroes, of course. And even though most of the truly great things we have accomplished, like winning World Wars, building national highway  systems, and creating the Internet have all been accomplished through “collective capacity” and “distributed leadership”, this approach is neither compelling, controversial, nor “media friendly”. Instead of a mad dash to the finish line, it’s more of a tortoise-like slog, a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race approach that few people seem to have the patience for these days. But if winning the race is what matters most, hiring talented tortoises instead of heroes might make more sense. D.C. will tell the tale, but the final chapter won’t be written until long after its main character has exited.

Five years ago, amid all the talk about charter and vouchers, I had proposed a reform of how we structure public education that departed from the concept of school districts and school boards. Calling it the Hollywood Model, it is based on how the entertainment is structured: Major studios handle financing and distribution; independent producers handle the actual movie-making; and post-production houses handle the ancillaries. In education, a district would no longer be in the business of actually educating students, but handle such matters as distributing funds and providing transportation services to an array of independent community, charter, private and parochial schools (along with solo tutoring by independent teachers) that actually handled academic instruction. Other outfits would handle such matters as special education services and afterschool programs, freeing up schools to focus on what they should do best.

Half a decade later, amid all the debate over the possible impact of President Obama’s I3 reform effort, folks such as Rick Hess and Mike Petrilli are coming close to my conclusion: A radical departure from the school district concept is necessary. From where Hess sits in particular, neither most school reformers nor defenders of the status quo are having a much-needed conversation about how the very governance and delivery structure of American public education must be radically transformed altogether; I3n in particular, will do little more than support well-worn (and already-subsidized) efforts such as the controversial Success for All.

This isn’t an inconsiderable issue. One of the biggest challenges to school reform is structural. In California, for example, the byzantine array of state agencies and boards that govern the K-12 and higher education systems — a legacy of the Progressive Era of the 20th Century — complicates even efforts to develop a fully-longitudinal data system. While other states don’t have educational structures that are as monumentally cumbersome, they still have the basic school-district-state board-state education department-teacher licensing structure — and face the same bureaucratic and special interest challenges. Although a few states (Florida and Indiana, to name two) have succeeded in overcoming structure to make reforms a reality, this has happened only because of the hard work of school reformers both within and outside the system. And in any case, none have been able to fully overhaul how public education does its most-important job: Educating children so they can fulfill their educational, economic and social destinies.

But at this moment, not even Hess, Petrilli (or Petrilli’s boss, Fordham Institute President Checker Finn), offer a workable solution. Fordham, in particular, has argued for eliminating local school boards — which are often an obstacle to reform (and in other cases, are rarely unified enough to lead an overhaul) — and it is a seductive solution. But currently, this means moving local school governance up to state education departments. Given their abysmal record in taking over local schools and whole districts — and their overall lack of capacity to do this work — it may be unworkable. Allowing third parties to handle governance — a feature of charter schools in Indiana, Ohio and New York, in particular — may work. But as Fordham notes in its own experience, this isn’t easy to do. Ultimately, both approaches are just nibbles around the edges, not true overhauls. Nor does it help foster other changes needed to improve the quality of education — including expanding the array of compensation needed to recruit high-quality talent into teaching.

This is why the Hollywood Model must be part of the school reform conversation. A 19th century system isn’t going to get the job done in 2010.

Sure, the battle over the reform and the future of American public education is as much about who controls education decision-making and how players within education are held accountable for student achievement, as it is about how to improve education for all children. At the same time, it is also a battle over the intellectual growth of a field that has eschewed anything resembling intellectual curiosity and creativity.

At first, this may seem strange given that K-12 education is charged with providing the knowledge children need for their own intellectual development — and that so much of compensation within education (especially for teachers) is dependent on accumulating graduate degrees and other credentials. Eighteen of the 26 states surveyed by the National Council on Teacher Quality in 2008 for Invisible Ink in Collective Bargaining Agreements required school districts to provide pay increases to teachers if they attain advanced degrees (even though there is no correlative or causative effects between degree attainment and student achievement). [Full disclosure: I co-wrote the NCTQ report.] Yet acquiring advanced degrees isn’t exactly a sign of strong intellectual activity within a sector. What makes a sector vibrant intellectually? An embrace of the use of data in analysis and decision-making; curiosity about how other sectors handle issues similar to those within one’s own field; creative problem-solving of critical issues within a sector; an acceptance of criticism from those within and outside the sector without arguing that those critics are “scapegoating” professionals within it.

Certainly one group within education — the school reform movement — has most (if not all) of these attributes. Many of the younger teachers coming into the profession also have this intellectual dynamic. But among the rest of education — especially those defenders of traditional public education considered the lions of the profession — this isn’t exactly the case. If anything, the reaction to anything resembling intellectual activity among the Diane Ravitches, Randi Weingartens, David Berliners and Dennis Van Roekels is akin to that of Catholic priests when confronted by the work of Galileo and Tycho Brahe on the solar system.

A recent example comes courtesy of Aaron Pallas of Columbia University’s Teachers College, who hasn’t taken well to the efforts by school districts such as D.C. Public Schools to student test score data to evaluate teacher performance (and the use of value-added assessment, the innovation that has made such evaluations possible). Pallas criticized such efforts — particularly D.C.’s IMPACT evaluation system, which was used in the dismissal of 214 laggard teachers — because it and other “complex value-added systems” use “sophisticated… complex statistical calculations” that lack transparency because they are, well, complex. Pallas didn’t consider how statistical analysis is used daily by companies such as Google to improve how people search for information or the solid record of value-added analysis. Not at all.

When Pallas’ lack of thorough research and overall lack of intellectual curiosity was nailed by American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess, Pallas hardly offered a substantive response. Instead, he compared IMPACT and the use of value-added assessment to the housing crisis of the past few years — failing to understand that much of the crisis resulted not from the use of quantitative analysis, but from a combination of overly lax financial regulation, loose credit, poorly-considered federal housing policies, the moral hazard posed by federally-protected entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and outright fraud.

This lack of intellectual dynamism (and abject hostility to reform-minded thinking) is evident throughout education, even in the use of such meaningless jargon as “authentic learning” and “authentic assessment” in response to discussions about using more-object measures of student achievement. Educators and researchers still argue about teacher retention while ignoring how organizations in other sector have stopped discussing retention altogether and focus on recruiting high-quality talents and giving them opportunities for career and intellectual growth. Education researchers and policymakers continue this argument as if other sectors haven’t successfully tackkled similar human capital problems.

There are other symptoms: Teacher education remains mired in “education as democracy” theories and pedagogies that lack empirical basis — even as the work of Teach For America and others have shown that it is subject-knowledge competency and caring for children that matters most. Then there is the reluctance among many ed schools to embrace medical college-style training — that would allow for aspiring teachers to learn teaching in real time. The overall unwillingness to embrace the use of objective data in any aspect of education symbolizes an unwillingness to tackle the underlying causes of system academic failure in any meaningful way.

The anti-intellectualism can be read in the rantings of Ravitch, who essentially declared this week that teacher evaluation isn’t worth doing because “no effective teacher evaluation model exists”. It is clear in the response of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (the trade association for ed schools) to Ed Crowe’s report on teacher training for the Center for American Progress — which offered clear examples of effective professional training coming out of such professions as medicine and nursing — and to the critical work of NCTQ (long a thorn in the side of ed schools everywhere). And it is especially clear in the silly, shrill, thoughtless responses of some veteran teachers, who proclaim that criticism of poor-performing teachers and their enablers (including the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers) are attacks on teaching itself.

This anti-intellectualism explains why the responses to school reform efforts from defenders of the status quo have been, at best, lackluster and at worst, verging on mere insults and conspiracy theories of a corporate takeover of American public education. How can one mount a proper opposition when the intellectual arsenal includes warmed-over Buddhist sayings and arguments that defend tenure and seniority rights amid overwhelming evidence that such concepts do little for improving student achievement and teacher quality.

The results of this anti-intellectualism can be seen each and every day as 150 teens drop out of our schools and into poverty and prison. It does these kids no good. It keeps education from meeting the challenges of improving education and stemming the dropout crisis. This lack of intellectual dynamism cannot continue.