Tag: Center for American Progress

The Integration Mirage

December 20, 2017 4:33 pm December 20, 2017

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If the Century Foundation and other advocates for socioeconomic integration are believed, Cambridge Public School in Massachusetts is supposedly the model for harmonious, high-quality educating of all children regardless of background. This is because “73 percent of schools were balanced by race in the 2011–2012 school year” and 64 percent of them were “balanced” by socioeconomic status (including percentage of kids on free- and reduced-priced lunch plans). Declares Century in its lullaby to the school: “Cambridge remains a leader in school integration”.

Yet a Dropout Nation analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education offers a much different story than what Century and others want to promote. If anything, the rationing of opportunity for high-quality education is as much a problem in Cambridge and other districts considered successes of integration as they are in the nation’s most-highly segregated traditional districts.

Just 8.5 percent of Cambridge’s 577 Black high school students — 49 of them, to be exact — took Advanced Placement courses in 2013-2014. This is four times lower than the 34. 5 percent of White peers (226) taking the college preparatory coursework. [Sixteen-point-four percent of Latino high schoolers took AP that year.]

It gets only slightly better when it comes to access to calculus, trigonometry and other forms of advanced mathematics. Twenty eight-point-four percent of Black high schoolers took college-preparatory math in 2013-2014. But that still trailed the 48.4 percent of White peers who took those course. [Some 35.2 percent of Latino high school students took calculus and advanced math.]

The numbers got slightly better when it came to physics, a critical gateway course for science, technology, engineering and math careers. Thirty three-point-four percent of Black high schoolers took the course compared to 35.9 percent of White peers. But only 28.7 percent of Latino high schoolers took the course.

Meanwhile there is another form of denying opportunity that is pernicious within Cambridge — in the form of who gets put into its special ed ghettos. One out of every four Black children in Cambridge’s district — 25.9 percent of Black children in its care — are labeled special ed cases, as are 25.4 percent of Latino peers. This is almost double the (also far too high) 14.2 percent of White children placed into special ed. Based on those numbers, a Black or Latino child in Cambridge has a one-in-four chance of being denied the high-quality teaching and curricula they need for lifelong success.

Districts such as Stamford Public Schools are touted as examples of success in integration. But the data proves that illusory.

Even worse, the Black kids condemned to special ed are more-likely to be subjected to out-of-school suspensions and other forms of harsh traditional school discipline that ensure that they have a one-in-six chance of graduating from high school. Cambridge meted one or more out-of-school suspensions to 9.7 percent of Black children and 8.9 percent of Latino peers in Cambridge’s special ed ghettos; this is three times higher than the 3.5 percent out-of-school suspension rate for White peers.

For all of Century’s talk about Cambridge representing the success of socioeconomic integration, the data on equality of opportunity doesn’t support it. But this should be no surprise — especially to otherwise-sensible outfits such as the Center for American Progress (which released its own call for integration this week). Because integration has never proven to be the solution for the nation’s education crisis and its damage to the futures of poor and minority children that its proponents claim it to be.

Take the Jefferson County district in Louisville, Ky., another district that has been touted by Century and others for efforts on integration. Back in October, the foundation bemoaned an effort by the state legislature to end its “controlled choice” effort and allow families to send their kids to neighborhood schools. Just 11 percent of the district’s Black high schoolers and 18 percent of Latino peers accessed AP courses in 2013-2104, versus 28.5 percent of White high school students. Only 12 percent of Black high school students and 14.2 percent of Latino peers took calculus and advanced mathematics; this is lower than the 21.5 percent of White peers who accessed those courses.

Meanwhile the denial of high-quality education in the form of sending kids to special ed ghettos remains a problem. Fourteen-point. six percent of Black children are put into special ed, slightly higher than the 12.3 percent of White peers. [Only 6.4 percent of Latino children are condemned to special ed.] Yet Black children in special ed will suffer even worse than White peers when it comes to out-of-school suspensions and other forms of harsh school discipline. Jefferson County meted one or more out-of-school suspensions to 17.7 of Black children, compared to just 7.1 percent of White peers (and 10.2 percent of Latino students). Even when Black and White children are equally condemned to educational failure, they are not harmed in equal ways.

Another ‘model’ for integration is the Stamford district in Connecticut, which has been credited by Century for “remarkable success maintaining racially and socioeconomically desegregated schools”. Yet only 14 percent of Black high school students and 17 percent of their Latino peers took AP courses in 2013-2014, compared to 40.5 percent of White peers. Just 15.1 percent of Black high schoolers and 14.3 percent of Latino counterparts took calculus and other advanced math, two times lower than the 32.2 percent participation rate for White peers.

Meanwhile 19.1 percent of Black children and 12.6 percent of Latino peers were condemned to Stamford’s special ed ghettos. Only 9.2 percent of White children were denied high-quality education. Within those ghettos, Stamford meted one or more out-of-school suspensions to 13.3 percent of Black students and 6.6 percent of Latino peers. Just 3.3 percent of White students — 16 in all — were suspended one or more times that year.

Your editor can go on and on with each of the nine examples Century touts as models of success in socioeconomic integration — as well as point out other examples such as Clinton Separate School District in Mississippi. But that would be piling on. What the data points out is that for all the claims advocates make, socioeconomic integration doesn’t address the underlying issues that keep poor and minority children from receiving the high-quality teaching, curricula, and cultures they need for lifelong success.

Socioeconomic integration doesn’t deal with the reality that mixing Black and Latino faces into White spaces doesn’t address the myriad ways traditional districts deny opportunities to them. This includes the gatekeeping by school leaders, teachers and guidance counselors of gifted-and-talented programs that are the first steps towards kids attending AP and other college-preparatory courses, the low-quality instruction and curricula in regular classrooms that keep Black and Brown kids off the paths to success, and even selective high schools such as those of New York City, which Contributing Editor Michael Holzman has shown to be forms of “segregation by another name”.

Oddly enough, the magnet schools and other “controlled choice” models integration-as-school reform advocates often tout are among the worst offenders. One reason? Because they are as much used by districts as tools for luring and keeping White families at the expense of poor and minority children as they are mandated by courts for integration. [By the way: The power to use choice and high-quality education as a political tool is one reason why traditional districts oppose the expansion of charter schools in the first place.] Basically, magnets and controlled choice deny our most-vulnerable children access to high-quality education in the name of socioeconomic balance. Even worse, the approaches are no different in practice than the kinds of “curated segregation” that take place in many cities today.

There is a reason why charters have become the choice of so many Black families: Because of the opportunities for children to have their cultures and lives affirmed.

Integration also doesn’t address the failure to provide poor and minority children with teachers who are subject-matter competent and also care for them regardless of their background. As Dropout Nation noted last month, far too many Black and Brown children are taught by teachers who subject them to the not-so-soft-bigotry of low expectations, harming their chances for high school graduation and college completion. Nor does integration address the need to overhaul how we recruit, train, and compensate teachers, deal with the need to bring more talented Black people (including midcareer professionals ready to work with kids) into classrooms, or even the near-lifetime employment rules (in the form of tenure) and teacher dismissal policies that keep so many low-quality teachers in classrooms often filled with the descendants of enslaved Africans.

Addressing those underlying issues requires undertaking the kinds of teacher quality overhauls reformers have been pushing for the past two decades, ones that integration-as-school reform advocates often oppose. Put bluntly, it is difficult for your editor to take integration advocates seriously when they refuse to deal honestly with the consequences of policies and practices that allow educationally-abusive teaching to fester.

Meanwhile integration fails to address the restrictions on opportunity for poor and minority children that result from the traditional district model as well as the zoning policies and property tax-based finance systems on which it is sustained. Integration does absolutely nothing to address how districts use their dependence on property tax dollars to oppose the ability of poor and minority families in other communities (who finance those schools through state and federal dollars). Nor does it stop districts from using school zones and magnet schools as tools for denying opportunity to the Black and Brown families who live within them. And it definitely doesn’t stop White communities seeking to secede from integrated districts from doing so.

It’s long past time to break the ties between educational opportunity, property taxes and housing policy. This means moving away from a model of public education built upon districts and school boundaries (which integration merely overlays) to one in which states finance high-quality opportunities from which all children and families of all backgrounds can choose.

Finally, what integration advocates fail to admit is that their approach is patronizing to the very Black and Brown families for which they proclaim concern. This is because throughout American history, integration (along with its kissing cousin, assimilation, about which American Indians know all too well) has always been based on the racialist idea that Whiteness is superior, that White people are better, and that if it isn’t close to White or attended by White, then it is inferior, and by implication, should be destroyed.

Anyone who has gone to a Historically Black College and University, or been to a rural White school knows this isn’t true. Even worse, it is unconscionable and immoral for anyone to believe it or embrace it or perpetuate it. But the fiction remains as pernicious and destructive now as it was during the heyday of integration in the 1960s and 1970s when schools in Black communities were shut down instead of being provided with the resources they needed to serve children properly. If allowed to re-emerge, that thinking will damage the new efforts Black and Latino people are doing now to help their children succeed on their own terms.

For Black and Latino families who just want and deserve high-quality schools in the communities in which they live that also affirm their cultures, where their kids also go to schools with kids who look like them, where they know that they can succeed (even when they are told otherwise), integration remains what Charles Ogletree once called a false promise. Based on the data, their feelings are justified. They are also tired of having their children being forced to teach White people’s children how to treat them with respect, and exhausted with negotiating with White people for the resources their children are supposed to get by law. Those feelings are also well-deserved. Integration does nothing to affirm the people it is supposed to help.

If we want to build brighter futures for all children, especially those Black, Brown, and poor, we have to get to continue to overhaul the policies and practices that keep them from getting the knowledge they deserve. Focusing on integration as the solution merely papers over the hard work that must be done.

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Three Thoughts

AFT’s $44 Million Spend

October 3, 2017 1:30 am October 3, 2017

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The American Federation of Teachers just filed its 2016-2017 financial disclosure to the U.S. Department of Labor. Once again, it has spent big on preserving its influence over education policymaking. Whether or not the spending will help in the Trump era — or if it will have the money down the road — is a different question.

The nation’s second-largest teachers’ union spent $44.1 million in 2016-2017 on political lobbying activities and contributions to what should be like-minded groups. This is a 29.6 percent increase over the same period a year ago. This, by the way, doesn’t include politically-driven spending that can often find its way under so-called “representational activities”.

As you would expect, AFT gave big to the nonprofits controlled by Hillary and Bill Clinton — including their eponymous foundation and the now-shuttered Clinton Global Initiative — collected $400,000 from the union in 2016-2017; this includes $250,000 directly to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation and $150,000 to the Global Initiative, which was shut down during the former Secretary of State’s unsuccessful presidential bid. Altogether, AFT gave $2.2 million to the Clinton-controlled groups over the past five years.

As Dropout Nation detailed over the last two years, the AFT worked assiduously to win over the Clinton machine in order to assure that it had influence over federal education policy if she won the White House. Besides the donations to the Clinton foundations as well as direct campaign spending, AFT had key supporters (including Democratic National Committee member Hartina Flournoy, a former union apparatchik, as well as Clinton campaign education adviser Ann O’Leary ) positioned to support its efforts.

As part of its effort to buy influence with the Clintons, AFT spent $10,000 with now-former acting DNC Chair Donna Brazile’s eponymous firm, a 90 percent decline over levels in 2015-2016. Oddly enough, it gave no money to Democrats for Public Education, the astroturf group that was attempting to replicate the efforts of the reform-oriented Democrats for Education Reform. Meanwhile AFT gave $175,000 to Center for American Progress, the ostensibly reform-oriented outfit founded by former Clinton Administration honcho (and Hillary’s campaign chairman), John Podesta; his communications with Weingarten (as well as with other key players) were leaked last year by Wikileaks.

Meanwhile AFT spent big on political campaigns on the national level. It poured $2.5 million into its Solidarity 527; those dollars, along with the $10.3 million spent by its main political action committee, worked hard to support Hillary and other unsuccessful Democrat candidates. AFT Solidarity, in particular, spent $843,614 against Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio on behalf of Democrat rival Patrick Murphy, and spent another $328,590 against Ohio Sen. Rob Portman on behalf of former Gov. Ted Strickland, who co-chairs Democrats for Public Education on the union’s behalf.

AFT also gave $190,000 to Immigrant Voters Win, a PAC that was part of the Families Fight Back campaign organized by supporters of expansive immigration reform. The union also gave $345,000 to the Democrat-supporting House Majority PAC and poured $110,000 into the America Votes super-PAC.

AFT bet big on Hillary Clinton (right with John Podesta and Neera Tanden of Center for American Progress) — and lost even bigger.

None of the AFT’s spending helped either its cause, or that of Hillary and her fellow Democrats. The election of Donald Trump to the White House not only endangers the futures of poor and minority children, it also assures that neither AFT nor rival school reformers (including centrist Democrat s who supported Clinton), will have a voice in the executive branch. Trump’s appointment of school choice activist Elizabeth Prince (Betsy) DeVos hasn’t done much for conservative reformers and hardcore school choice activists. But it also denies AFT a role in policymaking at L’Enfant Plaza.

Matters may get even worse next year, thanks to the March’s confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the federal high court likely to strike down compulsory dues with a ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which is likely based on Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion three years ago in Harris v. Quinn, the AFT could lose at least 25 percent of its rank-and-file, leading to a major hit to its coffers as well as its ability to wield influence. Questions about Gorsuch’s conflict of interest on this matter (including giving a speech last week to a group that is involved in the lawsuit) may end up forcing him to recuse. But if it doesn’t, AFT, along with NEA, face a bleak political and financial future.

But until that ruling happens (if it does), AFT is spending big. Center for Popular Democracy and its action fund, which has done the union’s business by publishing reports aimed at stopping the expansion of public charter schools, collected $210,000 from the union in 2016-2017, about a third less than it received in the previous year. The fact that AFT President Rhonda (Randi) Weingarten no longer sits on its board is likely a factor in the lower levels of support.

Another big group of recipients is the NAACP and several of its affiliates. The old-school civil rights group itself received $90,000 from the union in 2016-2017, while chapters in Florida, New York and North Carolina collected another $65,000. Altogether, AFT financed NAACP to the tune of $155,000; of course, this doesn’t include the help NAACP receives from the union through payroll deductions from union dues that go towards paying membership fees.

Leah Daughtry now gets more money from the union than either Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.

AFT’s has gotten plenty for its chicken wing money. NAACP has pushed hard to halt the expansion of charter schools, presenting its arguments at events such as the annual education policy ‘braintrust’ hosted by another AFT beneficiary, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. NAACP’s message is incoherent, often incorrect, and on education policy matters, irrelevant. But thanks to school reformers, who haven’t yet figured out that the outfit can be ignored, NAACP’s effort has gotten national attention, for which AFT is most-grateful.

AFT gave $60,000 to Democracy Alliance, the secretive progressive campaign collaborative to which it (along with National Education Association) belongs. That is unchanged from 2015-2016. Receiving even more money from the union is State Innovation Exchange, which aims to duplicate for progressives and Democrat state legislators the kind of legislative writing work done by American Legislative Exchange Council on behalf of Republican and conservative counterparts. SIX picked up $115,000 from the union in 2016-2017, double what it received in the previous year.

As for co-opting progressive groups? AFT handed $25,000 to Netroots Nation in 2016-2017, unchanged from the previous year, while it gave another $10,000 to Demos, the progressive think tank. The union also gave $60,000 to Gamaliel Foundation, whose efforts to fund supposedly grassroots progressive outfits are also funded by the union’s reliable vassal, Schott Foundation for Public Education; that is also unchanged. Speaking of Schott: AFT gave it $85,000, an 13.3 percent increase from 2015-2016; apparently, its efforts on behalf of the union and other traditionalists at the expense of Black children is making the union happy.

AFT gave $200,000 to Sixteen Thirty Fund, the outfit run by former Clinton Administration player Eric Kessler’s Arabella Advisors in 2016-2017; the group has also collected cash from NEA. It also gave $20,000 to Center for Media and Democracy, the parent of PR Watch (a 28.6 percent decrease). It also gave $60,000 to the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, which is also well-funded by the union’s Chicago affiliate; $50,000 to the Tides Foundation’s Advocacy Fund; and $10,000 to UnKoch My Campus, which is targeting the array of libertarian student and academic training outfits funded by natural resources billionaires (and Soros-like bogeymen for progressive groups) Charles and David Koch. United Students Against Sweatshops, which has helped AFT in its battle with Teach for America, picked up $10,000 in 2016-2017. To reach youth, AFT also gave $31,500 to Community Labor United’s Boston Youth Organizing Project.

Meanwhile AFT attempted to further inroads with Black and other minority outfits.

The union gave $80,000 to the aforementioned Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, allowing it to rub shoulders with the likes of House Education and the Workforce Committee Ranking Democrat Bobby Scott (who has already collected a $5,000 donation from the union to his re-election campaign), as well as buy prominent speaking spots for its leaders (including Weingarten’s number two, Mary Cathryn Ricker, who spoke on her behalf) at CBC’s annual conference. The union gave another $25,000 to CBC’s Political Education and Leadership Institute, giving it even more access to future Black leaders. It also gave $35,000 to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute as a way to win over Latino congressional leaders.

AFT also gave $10,000 to Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, $5,000 to Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, $10,000 to the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, $12,500 to National Black Caucus of State Legislators, $15,000 to National Association of Black Journalists, $15,000 to Higher Heights Leadership Fund (which is tied to Women’s March organizer Tamika Mallory) and $25,000 to National Alliance of Black School Educators. The biggest single recipient of AFT’s largesse not named Schott: Rev. Leah Daughtry, who presided over last year’s Democratic National Convention; she collected $165,000 from the union in 2016-2017, getting a lot of teachers’ money.

At the same time, AFT gave to a variety of Latino organizations. This included $15,000 to UNIDOS, the former National Council of La Raza that changed its name earlier this year; $7,500 to the school reform-oriented MALDEF; $10,000 to National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators; $5,000 to National Board of Hispanic Caucus Chairs; $10,000 to U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute; $16,667 to Hispanic Federation; $5,000 to Hispanic Heritage Foundation; $5,000 to the foundation named after labor leader Miguel Contreras, and $6,500 to Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities. To build support among immigrant communities now endangered by the Trump regime, AFT has given more money to outfits working on their behalf. This includes $5,000 each to National Immigration Forum, National Immigration Law Center, and Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

AFT continues its efforts to co-opt the Atlantic Monthly. It gave $1.2 million* to the magazine in 2016-2017, double the previous year. You have to wonder if Weingarten and her mandarins are kicking themselves for not offering to buy a stake in the Atlantic, which will soon be controlled by Laurene Powell Jobs’ reform-minded Emerson Collective, which has become a landing spot for U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his former honcho on civil rights enforcement, Russlyn Ali.

As for the usual suspects? AFT gave $250,000 in 2016-2017 to Economic Policy Institute, whose policy solutions almost always resemble those of the union; that is unchanged from the previous year. The union also gave $25,000 to the American Prospect, which garnered notice back in August when it ran an interview of now-former Trump aide Steve Bannon by Robert Kuttner (who also cofounded Economic Policy); that is two-thirds less than what the union gave it a year ago. AFT also gave $75,000 through the University of Colorado Foundation to Kevin Welner’s National Education Policy Center, a 67 percent increase over 2015-2016; poured $10,000 to Committee for Education Funding (a 43 percent decrease over 2015-2016); and gave $50,000 to Alliance for Quality Education (unchanged from last year). As a reminder of the AFT’s unwillingness to support efforts to elevate the teaching profession it supposedly defends, the union gave $71,410 to Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, a key player in vetting the nation’s university schools of education.

Dropout Nation will provide additional analysis of the AFT’s financial filing later today. You can check out the data yourself by checking out the HTML and PDF versions of the AFT’s latest financial report, or by visiting the Department of Labor’s Web site. Also check out Dropout Nation‘s Teachers Union Money Report, for this and previous reports on AFT and NEA spending.

*Dropout Nation originally reported that AFT gave the Atlantic Monthly $900,000 in 2016-2017. But thanks to a reader, another spend with the magazine increases that number to $1.2 million.

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At the State Level Education Governance

Why Bother with State Education Governance?

RiShawn Biddle

January 23, 2011 12:15 am January 23, 2011

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This is the statement California Gov. Jerry Brown made earlier this month as he proceeded to get rid of the Golden State’s (admittedly useless) secretary of education job, appointing seven…

Photo courtesy of the Associated Press

This is the statement California Gov. Jerry Brown made earlier this month as he proceeded to get rid of the Golden State’s (admittedly useless) secretary of education job, appointing seven new members to the state board of education (and ousting in the process, Ben Austin and Ted Mitchell, the two school reform-minded folks already in place). And it is the wrong statement to make given that he will now have to figure out how to cut $12 billion in cuts to the state budget (much of which must come from education).

The question Brown should have asked was this: Why do we continue to have a byzantine structure of governing California’s schools and teacher pensions in 2011? This should also be the question every governor in every other state should ask as they begin dealing with $140 billion in budget shortfalls, $600 billion in long-term pension deficits and unfunded retiree health, the need to jump-start (or continue) reforms of their public school systems and any effort to expand parent power and school choice. When it comes to school reform, the structure of school systems can be as much a culprit for what doesn’t happen as it can be a reason for why tough action can happen swiftly.

For most of the nation’s incoming reform-minded governors and for those who reformers already in governor’s mansions, the structure of school governance in their respective states will be as major an impediment to their efforts as the opposition of teachers union affiliates and school boards. All but seven states allow their governors to wield line-item veto powers when it comes to budgets, giving them some tools in controlling state education spending. But in most states, the real authority over schools lies in an array of state boards of education, elected superintendents, teacher licensing boards and other authorities. Although just 14 states have elected school superintendents, only 12 states allow for the governor to appoint chief state school officers; and only 33 governors have the power to appoint the majority or all of the members of state boards of education. This means that in many cases, the governors must either hope for state boards of education to appoint reform-minded education czars or the public will care enough about education to elect the right people to chief school officer (and state board of education) posts.

The byzantine structure of education governance is mostly a legacy of the efforts of political reformers during the Progressive Era of the 2oth century to guard against centralized power and to isolate education from the perceived threat of politics, The idea was simple: Diffuse power among a group of players and therefore, folks can focus on what is perceived to be the common good for students (and keep cronyism to a minimum). But the problem is that it has never really worked. Education has always been in the crosshairs of politics largely because it is government-funded; the fact that for most of the past two centuries, education has been more about inculcating a Unitarian-influenced civic religion (not to mention the influence over its operations by teachers unions for most of the past six decades) also meant that the separation of politics from schooling was destined to fail.

As a result, education governance at the state level is a shambles. Competing bureaucracies battle to control their respective budgets and justify their existence; for example, teacher licensing agencies continue to exist in many states in spite of the fact that their teacher certification and ed school oversight operations should fall under state education departments. Policymaking over such matters as simply setting cut scores on standardized tests end up in different bodies instead of in a unified outfit. And the results can be seen in muddied policies, turf-battles over policymaking, and stalled efforts on any sort of reform (including anything involving developing school data systems).

California stands out as the ultimate example of wasteful educational governance. A state education superintendent (and the department of education the office oversees) and the state board of education remains, as does the Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team (FCMAT), which oversees school finance and manages one of the state’s school data systems, the state’s teacher certification agency, and the 58 county-based departments of education that handle services to the state’s school districts. (This kudzu doesn’t include the boards for the state’s three university and community college systems, the boards for the state’s 72 community college districts, and the faculty senates that share governance with each of the University of California and California State campus administrators.)

What has resulted for the state can be seen in the fact that the state’s school data systems remain a shambles; the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (a subject of my reporting) remains a work in progress nearly a decade after the state began working on it. Save for a McKinsey report and a new online too l for teachers, efforts to tie state K-12 data to college data in order to form a P-16 system is still in slow motion.

Meanwhile the governance structure has simply done little more than slow efforts to actually push any meaningful school reform. Brown’s predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had to go around the California legislature and the state’s school superintendent to push for unsuccessful efforts to reform tenure. Arnold’s own battles with the (now-former) superintendent, Jack O’Connell, also meant that there was little that could be done to come up with a unified reform strategy. The fact that the Golden State has made some major advances in school reform — including the passage of the Parent Trigger law and the tying of teacher performance and student test data — has less to do with any work by players in state education governance than with the effort of Schwarzenegger, and the state legislature to finally get together to take advantage of federal Race to the Top funding.

Unfortunately, this is typical in all but a few states. Governors who don’t have a governance structure that places education under their control will struggle to make things happen. Occasionally, as seen in the case of George W. Bush during his time as Governor of Texas and Mitch Daniels in Indiana, the governor can overcome the byzantine structures. But that is because in most cases, the conditions for reform are already in place. The efforts in Texas began with Bush’s predecessor, Anne Richards; while in Indiana, the work began with now-former Commissioner of Higher Education Stan Jones and an education roundtable dominated by the state’s reform-minded chamber of commerce that went around the status quo-minded elected school superintendent of the time, Suellen Reed.

The reality is that the most-successful school reform-minded governors are ones who either have strong control of the education governance structure (Tennessee under Lamar Alexander is one example) or have enough clout and appointment power to actually make things happen (as in the case Florida governors Lawton Chiles and Jeb Bush). But in an age of budget-cutting and the need to improve the quality of education for all kids, it isn’t enough to just cultivate clout. Especially when it comes to budgets, the players in education can work strongly to complicate any effort to either make cuts or to pass reforms in teacher compensation and school practices that can save dollars.

So governors, reform-minded or not, will have to take steps to get educational governance into their full control. Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire is taking an imperfect step with her own proposal to consolidate the state’s education agencies into one organization. Other governors will have to go even further by campaigning against the election of school superintendents, putting state pension boards under education department oversight (since the agencies are already fiduciaries) and even abolishing boards of education (which often seem to be as useless as the local school boards they oversee). These consolidations would both save some money and also allow for governors to start targeting the more-expensive aspects of education, including state laws and regulations that govern collective bargaining, and pushing for the end of school districts( and the fostering of the Hollywood Model of Education that will devolve school decision-making to the schools and parents).

While Brown’s move helped save a few pennies, it didn’t do anything to make education governance and decision-making any better-focused or more efficient. He needs to take a step back and actually campaign for an end to California’s ridiculous school governance structure. And the same is true for his fellow governors in similar governance predicaments.

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Giving Parents Power Inside the Beltway School Districts in Trouble This is Dropout Nation

Three Thoughts on Education This Week

RiShawn Biddle

July 30, 2010 12:31 am July 30, 2010

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Observations on what is happening in school reform today: Fizzled Out of Touch: Last week, the NAACP and other groups pronounced that they were coming out with a grand manifesto…

Observations on what is happening in school reform today:

Fizzled Out of Touch: Last week, the NAACP and other groups pronounced that they were coming out with a grand manifesto challenging the Obama administration’s school reform efforts. Folks such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson of the Rainbow/PUSH coalition were to show up and complain about how the administration’s approach to education was failing the very poor students it was supposed to help — even though their own prescriptions were little more than overheated old-school concepts that have never worked in the past 40 years. But by Monday, two of the groups — including one run by charter school supporter Al Sharpton — declined to participate in the grand attack. The manifesto (which did have some laudable goals) was trashed by all but the most-stubbornly pro-status quo of pundits. And by Thursday, some of the players were declaring that they were behind Obama while the administration — including the president and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan — took turns slapping around the groups over policy.

Certainly the Obama administration did a successful behind-the-scenes effort of diffusing the old-school civil rights tirade. The lack of support for the manifesto from the National Council of La Raza and other Latino civil rights outfits also weakened their efforts. But it was more than that.

Within Black America, there is a lot of disagreement between old-school civil rights players — who continue to see integration, busing and equity lawsuits as the cure for achievement gaps between blacks and whites — and the younger generation of African-Americans, who understand that more-systemic reforms (including breaking ranks with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers) is critical to black economic and social advancement. This generational and attitudinal divide (which has only become louder in the past couple of years) has resulted in many of the groups becoming irrelevant in the school reform conversation — and the discussion about improving the lives of African-Americans overall.

The NAACP, in particular, can no longer claim to be representative of all African-Americans — especially on education. It has spent most of the past two decades dealing with internal discord and overcoming its creakiness. Over the past two weeks, it has seen its stature fall further as it rushed to judgment over Shirley Sherrod and spent more time on racist elements within the Tea Party movement than on considering Duncan’s demand for them to join the school reform movement. As more blacks — especially celebrities such as John Legend and Fantasia — have become more-supportive of charters and the Race to the Top initiative, they are finding other organizations and methods to wield influence and mobilize like-minded colleagues (of all races) towards their own concerns. They have cut the NAACP out of their considerations.

Meanwhile other old-school civil rights groups are rife with constituencies who are charter school supporters — and in fact, started their own schools; integration-minded constituents can rile up anger all they want, but the groups can’t afford to alienate school reformers within their own groups without endangering their own pockets. When it comes to Obama — the nation’s first black president — the groups must also be careful, especially since some of its leading members (such as Jackson) were none too fond of him back when he was a U.S. Senator (and in some cases, didn’t even back him during his run for the Democratic presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton).

For these groups to remain relevant, they must adapt the school reform agenda, as the United Negro College Fund has done under Michael Lomax (who sits on the board of the Education Equality Project); the 100 Black Men is another example; , it cofounded the Eagle Academy Foundation, which operates two boys-only charters in New York City. If they don’t, they will face more than another Chicago-style tongue-lashing from the Commander-in-Chief.

Still Not Fessing Up Save for the back-and-forth between Andy Rotherham and Michael Petrilli, inside-the-Beltway education sparring tends to be done politely in dry language (and more viciously during drinking sessions). But on Thursday, the Center for American Progress’ presentation of its report on the low quality of teacher training programs brought out a battle royal between the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education — the leading trade group for the nation’s ed schools — and the leading critical of ed school training of teachers (and, nearly everything else about how teachers are recruited, retained and paid), the National Council on Teacher Quality.

After NCTQ boss Kate Walsh tore into ed schools for lacking rigor in their teacher training curricula — especially in special education — and state teacher certification agencies for their cozy ties to those schools and their parent universities, AACTE’s Jane West accused Walsh of making “sweeping statements” that were “off the mark”, as well as attacked its underlying methodology for evaluating ed schools (especially in Texas, the site of NCTQ’s latest ode to teacher quality failure). West then went on to praise the quality of special ed teacher training — and went on a tirade about the school reform movement’s failures to address special ed overall.

So as not to give the impression that Dr. West fully ignored the problems of ed school training, she did admit that there are issues. But she largely laid their causes at the feet of state legislatures (for laws that are restrictive about teacher data), school districts (for their unwillingness to share that information because of fears of violating FERPA), and the lack of political will to shut down poor-performing programs. But there are problems with those excuses. Ed Crowe, the author of the CAP study, reminded West that other professions — including medicine and nursing — took strong efforts to improve training and certification long-before state regulators got into the game. Besides, as Crowe said, “political will isn’t a gift”, groups gain it as a result of doing the hard work to gain consensus (or steamroll opponents).

By the way, don’t forget that AACTE is a huge recipient of funds from the National Education Association — the most-fervent obstacle to teacher quality reforms — including the use of student test data in teacher evaluations (which AACTE members would also use in their own evaluations). This includes $252,262 in 2008-2009 alone.

Meanwhile, Dr. West seems to forget that NCTQ’s research stands up to scrutiny — especially when one considers the evaluations of ed schools by others. This includes CAP — whose report is blistering in its criticism of ed schools — and Arthur Levine, the former president of Teachers College, who noted that 54 percent of teachers are trained at schools with low admissions requirements. These issues have become more embarrassing as alternative teacher training outfits such as Teach For America have emerged as the high-quality teacher training regimes of choice for school districts. As Walsh — who wants ed schools to actually turn around their performance — noted: “Most superintendents are eager to hire [Teach For America’s] bright young talents.”

What ed schools fail to realize is that it is their very desultory quality of training that has helped sustain the nation’s educational crisis. They are also the reason why teaching isn’t highly respected as a profession (even though teachers are highly beloved as individuals). By keeping their collective heads in the sand, ed schools are merely aiding their own slide into irrelevance and worse.

Given that Teach For America (along with The New Teacher Project) trains just 7,000 of the 200,000 or so new teachers who come into American public education every year, ed schools must stop the rhetorical shuck-and-jive. Or else they will end up being replaced by the alternatives.

Standing in the Shadows of Fail: Detroit lived up to its reputation as the place where common sense — and care for the futures of children — goes to die. Despite the efforts of Mayor Dave Bing and even U.S. Secretary of Education Duncan, the city council voted 6-to-3 to not place upon the ballot a referendum that would have placed Motown’s atrocious school district under mayoral control. Why? Some, including onetime acting mayor and former city council president Ken Cockrel, declared there was no public demand for it.

Now, one apparently hasn’t been reading the local papers, or looking outside. But this doesn’t matter. From day one, seven of the nine council members were opposed to mayoral control. The current city council president declared it publicly. Old-school groups (who form the base for these members) were opposed to it, as were the school board (which hasn’t had control of the district since it fell under state receivership last year). They essentially opposed reform in spite of decades of evidence that the public school system is the new Superfund Site of American public education.

So let’s be clear about this: Once again, Detroit’s city council behaves irresponsibly towards its citizens — especially its children — because its majority has lost site of what matters most: The children who must attend this atrocity of a school system. For these politicians, the discussion about mayoral control is just another game. But for the kids and their families, it’s a lot more than that. It’s their educational, economic and social destinies at stake. Perhaps the parents should exercise their power and send their children to any of the new charter schools being opened in the city in the coming years. And while they are at it, vote out the city council once and for all.

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