Per this, Chicago Superintendent Arne Duncan was chosen to be EdSec.
(TBlade, can I claim victory in your Cabinet contest? Two right! Two more than my usual.)
Here’s why I argued 2 weeks ago that it made too much sense not to happen:
*Obama’s known him for a long time, likes him, trusts him.
*Obama only has 3 solid bball teammates in his cabinet. Duncanplayed pro ball in Australia.
*Diversity of cabinet thus far has room for another white guy from Chicago.
Duncan is part establishment, part reformer. He can embrace Obama’s aggressive pro-charter-school and pro merit pay messages. But he heads a big district, and can speak to traditional K-12 constituencies pretty well.
He’ll be pro NCLB at heart, to Ted Kennedy’s delight, and just make some cosmetic changes there.
(Vis a vis charters: Obama, Duncan, charter skeptic BMGer Pablo, and charter fan me diverge on whether good charters should be allowed to serve more kids — 3 yea, 1 nay — but all 4 agree that charters with persistently low performance should be shut down. Some local news on that coming tomorrow I think….)
(Did you enter and I miss your ballot?)
<
p>Purplemouse scores two points on this one and three points with Salazar; a true Cabinet Pick’em savant. Here’s the unofficial tally since you asked:
<
p>(15) points for purplemouse
13) points for David
(9) points for borky
(7) points for tblade ( 4th place? This game is rigged!)
(5) points for petr, lightiris, and dcsohl
(0) and the goose egg for Mr. John O’Brien.
<
p>
I have no inherent belief against charters. I think highly successful charters should expand and replicate. However, as a public policy question, I must ask:
<
p>1. Who authorizes the charter school? Is it the person who pays the bill, or is the bill passed onto another entity?
<
p>2. How do we evaluate charter success? Charters that have the same student population and resources as their non-charter neighbors score the most points with me.
<
p>3. If we have higher expectations for charters, do we aggressively close the ones that aren’t significantly better than the public schools? Why pay for competition and a dual-system if the schools aren’t better.
<
p>I can build a better public school, or a better school system, than competing charters if I have the same resources. I would hope the Chicago superintendent shares that belief.
<
p>However
<
p>I agree with you at the end of the day: the charter agreement should not be
<
p>”You can have flexibility if your results are slightly better than struggling traditional schools” but
<
p>”You can have flexibility if your results are some reasonable definition of good and you can attract parents who prefer your school to the other traditional schools and you outperform.
<
p>2. Totally fair question.
<
p>Charter people have long agreed with the MA Superintendents Association that DOE should publish “Value-Added” MCAS data for each school.
<
p>Then you can see which schools seem good because kids arrived with high MCAS, versus which schools are good in that kids generally make gains over where they started.
<
p>I think charter skeptics are totally within their rights to wonder which group seemingly high-performing charters are in.
<
p>Transparency would, I believe, do a lot to calm these legitimate concerns (because they’d see big gains, not high starting points), and that would only leave the charter skeptics who have non-student-related concerns.
I agree, we really need value-added assessment. This is the only way to adequately assess a school and a student on their progress toward the goal of a high-quality high school diploma. Nobody cares if a child is proficient or advanced in the fifth grade MCAS, but we all have a policy interest in all students graduating high school with a diploma of value. A high school diploma should be an entry credential to college, and students should be able to succeed in college without any remediation courses.
<
p>I think we can take a major step toward solving the charter and public dispute as follows (at least in Boston):
<
p>Instead of the charter cap of 10% of enrollment, we flip the equation and mandate a minimum of 10% of available seats in Boston must be charter school seats. Boston charters would be funded in the same budget formula as other Boston public schools. Boston charter schools will accept students according to the City of Boston school choice program – charters would be represented in the entire school selection process. The Boston School Committee would become the authorizing agency. Charters would have the same autonomy in administration they are now afforded by the state. Good charters would thrive, failing charters would be dropped and replaced.
<
p>Demonstrate success, relative to the median traditional Boston school, and I’m with you. I think most folks would be on board as well.
<
p>I agree. But
<
p>What do you think we should do in the meantime?
<
p>New Boston Foundation report found that of class of 2000, from the city’s 30 or so open-admission high schools, there were about 240 kids who’d earned BA’s 8 years later.
<
p>Out of about 4,000 who were high school freshmen back in 1996. 6% or so get a college degree. Same true in Arne Duncan’s Chicago and presumably in most cities.
<
p>Most kids weren’t academically ready.
<
p>BPS insiders tell me they get drilled at both ends — criticized b/c standards are too low (therefore everyone flunks out of college) and too high (therefore 40% of kids drop out). How should a big district think about this?
<
p>
You determine what your graduation standards are, and you plan backwards from that point to create paths to that standard. Of course, we need to rethink lots in the process. Adequate Yearly Progress should be a term applied to a student’s achievement, not to comparing this year’s fifth grade to another. We need to rethink how we do school, particularly in high school, creating an experience that is aligned with students from families struggling to survive financially. We need to create effective programs for advancing reading skills, and language skills for second-language learners. You make sure every teacher understands their place in the paradigm, knowing that kindergarten teachers play an essential role in moving kids to high school graduation.
<
p>It’s not an impossible task. It’s being done every day. Boston is also in relatively good shape, compared to other urban districts.
“2. How do we evaluate charter success? Charters that have the same student population and resources as their non-charter neighbors score the most points with me.”
<
p>Pleased to meet you Pablo; I’m Pablophil.
<
p>Charter schools are, in every case, segregated. Some, more egregiously than others. Ergo, they are inherently less-than-public schools. If your comment above refers to demographically similar populations, that does not negate the point that Charters are exclusive on some level. The proof is that a charter student who leaves…(if they’re ideal, why would that ever happen) returns to public schools, who will accept him/her…well, they have to accept him/her (even though the money to pay for them is long gone…but that’s another story).
<
p>Politically, I have developed into the deconstructionist of proposals. The underlying assumptions must be clearly understood. And the fact of charters is that they are, to one extent or another, all exclusive, and hence less-than-public. And spending public funds on less-than-public schools bothers me. It’s one step along the way toward public funding of private schools. I believe utterly in public schools and the concept of equal opportunity (not equal results) for all kids. I understand very well the frustrations of parents caught in a situation of unequal opportunity; but I still can’t see the long-term, societal efficacy of abandoning other kids to get MY kid a better deal. It reeks of the “I’m OK, You Can Go to Hell” theory of the post-Reagan era.
<
p>That said, the ONLY method of evaluating schools currently used is test scores, a frighteningly easy but inefficient method. And once you are exclusive in admissions (even if the exclusivity factor is “parents who give a damn”), charters that don’t kick ass are (or should be) an embarrassment to all involved.
You raise many good points, and I am glad you are now here with us on BlueMass.
…it’s the Bush status quo on education (or if you prefer, the Bush/Kennedy status quo) for four more years. No surprise — it’s pretty clear that education is not one of Obama’s priorities this term. Picking another familiar face who talks big on reform but essentially happy carrying out any orders from Washington, DC says a lot.
<
p>Hopefully Congress will show the leadership that Obama won’t by standing up to this privatization regime.
Sabutai,
What exactly do you mean by Bush/Kennedy status quo? I’m not clear about the point you’re trying to make.
Is there something specific about Arne Duncan that makes you skeptical about him? What do you mean by “privatization regime?”
The Bush/Kennedy status quo is to punish school districts whose students do poorly on privately designed standardized tests (that aren’t standardized). AKA No Child Left Behind — a joint effort by the two. Aside from eternally vague mumbling about “reforming” the law, which was only amplified as Hillary Clinton moved into stronger opposition to it, OBama put little effort into the issue.
<
p>As for Duncan, he has talked a good game on “reform”, but compared to districts and states such as Denver, Minneapolis, or Florida, he hasn’t done much to change the system.
<
p>And privatization is the end goal of much of the charter movement. Once you wrest control of schools away from government to a board of often self-appointed people, you’ve done most of the work toward privatizing the school system.
Having worked in the Chicago Public Schools I can say firsthand they are a bit of a mess but Arne has done a great job turning them around. Compared to where they were 20 years ago this is huge progress and he has done it doing things the liberal elites have been decrying for thirty years. Smaller classes, merit pay, charter schools. This is why Obama believes in these reforms since he represented a State Senate district where my University helped steer several public schools into magnet charter schools where performance has gone up. Results focused education is the way to go.
<
p>Pragmatic choice too. Duncan has worked with Obama and is close to him, they are good basketball buddies, not to mention Klein would’ve pissed unions off too much and Linda Darling-Hammond wouldn’t have pissed them off enough. Duncan is right in the middle and I am confident he will work with the next President, the national teachers unions, and Congress to finally pass some meaningful reforms.
Not while I am involved!
<
p>As soon as there’s merit pay, I am locking up my files of tests and instructional materials. They’ve been unlocked and available for 20 years, but if my pay depends on someone else not using them, well, they’ve gotta be locked away.
<
p>Heck, I’ll be filing intellectual property suits for the programs I developed over the years. Can you imagine somebody else getting “merit” for the stuff I developed?
<
p>Hey, this corporate mentality in the public schools might not be such a great idea after all.
I’ce thought that myself. As stands every teacher who teaches the same subject as me has received a thumb drive with the 100 or so files I develop yearly to teach. If my pay and job security depends on me outperforming those teachers, I don’t know how many resources I’d be receiving in return.
Sab,
<
p>1. Teachers in schools that already HAVE merit pay have not described themselves or anyone else “locking up their materials”….
<
p>2. …..Because in most merit pay systems, there is no within-school competition.
<
p>If 10 teachers create big learning gains in kids, then all 10 max out the bonus pool. If 15 teachers in that school perform at that level, then all 15 max out the pool.
<
p>The incentives are aligned for teachers to cooperate with one another, in ways that boost learning.
If merit pay was tied to extra duties, being a lead teacher or mentor, writing curriculum, helping the school in ways beyond a traditional classroom role, you would like it. Extra responsibilities and pay based on merit, what you can contribute to the school.
<
p>Merit pay based purely on the whim of an administrator or test scores is not a good thing, but merit pay based on making the school better helps everyone.
then it isn’t “merit pay”, but rather “extra pay for extra duty.”
<
p>Merit pay determinations range from the “purely subjective” to the utterly data driven responses, some much worse than others. The raw “whose scores are the highest?” determination is egregious, and would lead one to think (for example) that Dr. Susan Love is the worst oncologist in America since she has a very high fatality rate. She is the oncologist equivalent of an inner city special needs teacher, and raw data is pathetic in evaluating her “merit.”
<
p>”Value added” determinations improve as the number of factors included increases. I remember talking to Mark Roosevelt, a big supporter of value added, who wanted to know why my school system had 4 slightly below average (in testing terms) middle schools, and one that was the highest performing in the state. He made his ratings based on test scores (the be-all of these systems)and his usual 7 or 8 demographic factors, and it seemed to him that the one high performing school must have an exceptional educational leader, or an exceptional faculty…
<
p>What they had was the system-wide advanced placement middle school program housed there. In other words, the “good (scoring) kids” were skimmed off the other four schools and sent to this one school. In fact, that school had (in MY subjective opinion) the worst administration; and the teachers were (again in my opinion) equivalent to those in the other schools. So there are problems with value added that MUST be acknowledged, if you really want to reward “merit” and not flukes…and it’s the punishment aspect of these programs that causes more of the agita.
<
p>Well, I could go on about “merit pay.” Goldstein is not describing a real “merit pay” system, since school-wide rewards don’t get to the implicit goal of identifying the weak links, and even his system is subject to forces outside the control of the school, and hence is not truly “merit-seeking.”
<
p>But I am still seeking the “better” system that reaches a level I can support it, on the theory that “something better” is better than nothing…and I’m not sure yet that it is.
i’m talking about individual rewards that aren’t zero sum within a single school.
<
p>on the Red Sox, Youk can give advice to Pedroia — he doesn’t worry that his advice will mean that Pedroia does better and therefore will get bonus money that would otherwise go to Youk. If both do well, both are rewarded.
An interesting thought, but there has never been one in the public world. What killed the “merit plan” in Rochester, New York?
<
p>Too many teachers qualified and the money ran out. 4a7d3d609129a9296bf7ac0608c2097
<
p>And not merely that, but picture if there were a “merit” plan in place right now in Massachusetts. Would Patrick have 9-C’ed it?
<
p>You better believe it. And next year’s budget would have killed it. Remember, BMG is “reality based.” Sorry to get “real” on you.
I can also make it a local contractual obligation, so the payments are 9-C proof. Let’s agree on the concept, then we can worry about how to get it done.
but local budgets are long used up, local aid will be cut, and if the union insists on the “merit” payments, more people will be laid off.
<
p>Watch what happens when we refuse to give up contractual raises next year. And it WILL come up.
<
p>That reality thing keeps me up at nights.