$800 Million, $10 Billion: It’s All the Same

If you pay attention to education headlines, you know that Congress has been talking about whether to authorize money to stave off teacher firings. The initial motion was to add $23 billion to a war appropriations bill. When that failed, Rep. David Obey D. WI decided to attempt a new tactic. Instead of $23 billion, he’s now asking for $10 billion with some of the money coming from previous education authorizations: $100 million from “innovation and improvement” (Alyson Klein thinks that means charters), $200 million from the Teacher Incentive Fund, and $500 million from Race to the Top. So let’s see, if we add that together, that makes somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 million or 8% of what he’s proposing. He obviously can’t think that that small amount is enough of a concession to get others to sponsor a $10 billion bill. The only logical answer is that he doesn’t approve of the programs that he’s taking money from.

Perhaps this might shed some light. Ah. So he’s one of those democrats. The new proposal seems to have less to do with giving teachers extra money than it does to taking away from the Administration’s priorities. Stafford Palmieri has a pretty decent assessment of the situation. She points out that his plan is specifically to take away from reforms and give more to the status quo. I’m not sure how expects this one to get passed if the last one didn’t. Obviously, the ED is none too pleased. My good friend Jeff Robinson had an interview with Arne Duncan yesterday about it. Jeff asks him why he thinks extra money is needed when the last appropriations still haven’t been spent. Duncan says that it’s because the money is meant for use in the long-run, but isn’t the point that it’s needed now when the economy is down, not in the future?

The Ed Department Spokesman, Peter Cunningham’s quote probably sums this up the best: If Congress is determined to find offsets, we will help them do that, but these are not the right ones. It’s hard to imagine much support for the measure, especially since round two of RttT is in the books and states are just waiting to cash in.

Is California Getting Some Help with RttT?

This article in the LA Times suggests that the state of California has recently been told by the federal DOE that it doesn’t need to get full participation from every district for Race to the Top as long as LAUSD (which has more students than half of the states in the US) takes part. There has been a lot of talk recently over whether it is better to have full buy-in from the districts, unions, etc. or to be bold. Duncan has had some frustration with this topic. There has been lots of speculation that because Delaware and Tennessee both had strong union support of their ideas, that was the way to go. However, Duncan has specifically said, “watered-down proposals with lots of consensus won’t win.” This points to an opening up of how the funding works. If it’s true that the strength of the proposal lies in how much reform there is, California has more incentive to target just a few districts that are willing to make greater strides than a large number of districts.

California probably figured it could win the race by shedding some weight.

Andy Smarick isn’t so sure that the article is accurate, though. His contentions are that: 1. Any application would be game if this were true, as long as they meet the data requirements. 2. It doesn’t make sense that the Department of Ed would have given them specific advice, since they are not apt to do that. And 3. It’s the judges that do the scoring, not the Ed Department anyway.

I’m not so sure there’s as big of a problem as Smarick thinks. First of all, if you take a look at the Race to the Top FAQs, question A-4 says that

The State’s applications for funding under Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (Stabilization) program must be approved by the Department prior to the State being awarded a Race to the Top grant.

It doesn’t say anything about not being allowed to make sure your application is legitimate; in fact, it implies the opposite. While the DOE last year said that LAUSD couldn’t apply on its own separate from the state, they never said the state had to have all of its districts in the race for its own application. In fact, if you take a look at section K of the FAQs, it talks about the process for LEAs (local education agencies, usually districts) to sign up (emphasis added):

Participating LEAs must agree to implement all or significant portions of the State’s plan and must enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) or other binding agreement with the State that specifies the scope of work that the LEA will implement. The expectation is that participating LEAs will implement significant aspects of the State’s plan…If the State is awarded a Race to the Top grant, its participating LEAs (including those that submitted too late to be included in the application) will have up to 90 days to complete final scopes of work (referred to as Exhibit II in the model MOU). At the conclusion of that period, States will notify LEAs of their final section 14006(c) subgrant.

The implication seems to be that there is no expectation that all districts will comply. There even seems to be an expectation that they won’t and that the funding is based on those that do, rather than what the whole state is doing. So perhaps, the LA Times article wasn’t wrong, so much as misleading. What probably happened is that those in charge of the state’s application asked if they could have a more limited scope, because the population of California is bigger than the 18 smallest states combined. I don’t think that there were necessarily any lengthy negotiations of what they could or could not do. California may have submitted a proposal that was then approved. The author of the Times article also seems a bit unfamiliar with what they’re writing about, making it seem as if the deal with the Department of Ed means that the portions about charter laws and other factors can be glossed over. If anything, with fewer districts, expect the state to have its application more in line with what Duncan et al. want with more loosening of charter laws and tying performance to pay for teachers. The scenario really appears to be a win-win. The districts that participate have a higher chance of winning and the Administration doesn’t have to spend as much money if California wins, while still getting their participation.

Also, can someone please tell Andy Smarick that there are three words that start with ‘t” in Race to the Top, not two?

Update 5/6: It looks like my hunch was right. Edweek says that there was no deal between California and the Department of Ed. Rather than having a deal where California didn’t have to ask any other districts to participate (which the article never actually says, btw), the idea is that there is not a requirement that there be a large number of LEAs participating. There never was in the first place, but there were probably some conversations with Duncan encouraging the state to apply and reassuring them it would be OK. You can read the DOE’s damage control here.

Tuesdays with Arne: And You Thought Mom Just Made Mac ‘n Cheese

Although it’s technically Wednesday, I’m still awake, so I’m considering this my Duncan post for Tuesday. With all of the hullabaloo about teachers’ rights with tenure issues and training questions, one constituency seems to be forgotten in schooling: the parents. There seem to be two unproductive polar opposite views when it comes to improving the education of students. One view is that children can not learn more, because parents are responsible for a child’s upbringing. The other is the Teach For America view that a teacher can mold regardless of what is going on at home. However, there is a third mindset that needs to be instilled in our schooling system if we are ever to fully close the achievement gaps that exist. Schools need to be seen as places that interact with parents, not just students, so that a child’s education can be an integral part of their lives, rather than something that only happens from 7:30 to 2:30 each day. Luckily, my main man Arne has seen the light. Yesterday, May 3rd,  Duncan gave the keynote address at the first annual Mom Congress, a meeting of 51 moms from around the country, representing all 50 states plus DC. The event was held at Georgetown University and was sponsored by Parenting Magazine. I thought perhaps instead of going through the entire speech, I’d simply highlight some important things he said.

First of all, he began by telling a story of Obama asking the equivalent of the Secretary of Education in South Korea what his biggest challenge was and he said that parents are too demanding. He contrasted this with what he sees as the state of parents in the US:

Too many people say, “Schools are bad, but my school is good. Sorry to hear about the low math scores, but my Johnny is doing just fine.”

I thought that his concept of what parents should be doing in connection to their children’s educations were clear and make sense:

I want all parents to be real partners in their children’s educations… Parents can serve in at least one of three roles: partners in learning, advocates and advisors who push for better schools, and decision-makers who choose the best educational options for their children.

I would like for him to have talked a little more about the subject. These sound like wonderful ideas, but how do you get parents to do these things and what is ideal for how much they’re doing them? I would venture the assumption is that all parents should  the first area, but that the other two are a little more hazy. However, I liked the direction he went from there. He talked about what schools need to do in order for parents to feel like they have a stronger connection to the schools their children are in:

Schools should be places that honor and respect families, that meet parents on their own terms, and that may mean teachers giving out their cell phone numbers to field questions at night and calling back that single mom who missed the parent-teacher conference, because she had to work. Unfortunately, that mutual engagement and support is still missing for far too many of our nation’s schools… We have a long way to go before all schools support student learning and healthy growth, but parents aren’t off the hook here either in this partnership between schools and families.

It’s definitely a two-way street, but schools can only control one part of that street. With some work, they can get the other side working, too. Duncan also brought up the effects of the home environment on student learning. He pointed to a study by Kaiser that showed that adolescents spend 12 hours a day with media and that that number is even higher for African American and Hispanic children. This is compared to the 25 minutes a day students spend reading books. The kicker? Only 1/3 of parents in the study said they set any rules at all on how much their children could use the media. The results? Students who used media more were more likely to do worse in school, spend less time reading books, and got into more trouble. Coincidence? I think not.

We are never going to put the electronic genie back in the bottle, nor should we try, but parents can do better about setting limits on children’s use of electronic media and work towards using it more creatively to support student learning. There are extraordinary examples of using technology to engage children in their own learning, but more and more parents are realizing that media saturation and even addiction are real problems for their children.

We need to draw a line somewhere.

Being the Secretary of Education, Duncan brought it back out to what they need to be doing:

It is time for us to look in the mirror and not just out the window – and that includes us at the department of education… For 45 years, ever since the passing of the ESEA, the federal government has required or encouraged states,  districts, and schools, especially those with large numbers of low-income students, to promote parents’ involvement in students education.

I think this may be an area where Duncan sees a foothold into expanding the power of the federal government. If there are already provisions for these programs and they are so neglected, the DOE has a strong opportunity to have a lot of influence. However, as I’ve noted in other articles, one of the problems in policy these days is the lack of research into what works and parental involvement is no exception, as Duncan points out:

There is surprisingly little research on what works and what doesn’t in family engagement programs to accelerate student learning.

So the big question is, what should be done to improve the situation? Just like the other policies that have ruffled many feathers, the answer Duncan is providing is in money, since that’s what changes minds:

Our proposal [the Blueprint] allows family engagement to be included as one measure of success in teacher and principal evaluations… Today, we propose to double funding for parent engagement from one to two percent of  Title 1 dollars to bring that total to $270 million and at the same time in order to drive innovation. We will allow states to use another 1 percent of title 1 dollars, about $145 million, for grant programs that help support, incentivize, and help expand district-level, evidence-based parental involvement practices

I know, a lot to take in, but I think overall, the message is clear: we can’t just focus on what students are doing inside of the classroom. Students only spend 8 hours a day there for half of the days of the year. To improve education, we need to take into account all of the rest of the time in a student’s life.

Tuesdays with Arne: Is Race to the Top Arbitrary?

It seems like I have some learning to do in terms of keeping consistency. I have had a busy last week and finally have some time to commit to the blog. Fear not, though. I will make sure to mend my ways and adjust my scheduling. On to more knowledge!

There seem to be lots of people angry about education these days. Usually they are angry that others are running things a different way than they think things should be run. Charter schools or no charter schools? Teach For America or education schools? Pump lots of money in or let them suffer? OK, that one’s not what people actually think, but sometimes it seems that way.  One way to get lots of people angry is to throw around some money. Everyone always wants to say how money should be spent. Give incentives. Pay teachers more. Buy more technology. Any use of government funds is therefore at the top of the anger meter. Public funds are in part everyone’s money, so everyone seems to think they should have some say over it.

Last week, The Washington Post‘s education blog, “The Answer Sheet,” ran an article entitled “Race to Top Winners Chosen Arbitrarily.” It was based on a report from the Economic Policy Institute which calls the Race to the Top “a muddled path to the finish line.” I have a hard time reading things that seem so categorical. As soon as a report comes out calling something fundamentally right or wrong, I become skeptical. However, the report has some strong analysis, despite its extreme conclusions. It has some important criticisms that should be corrected in future rounds of Race to the Top if it is to continue.

For those who don’t know, Race to the Top uses a 500-point rating system to determine the winners of hundreds of millions of dollars. The table at the bottom, which is shown in the report and comes from http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-27426.pdf, shows what factors go into the process. As you can see, there are thirty different factors that the were used to determine grades. And that leads me to the first criticism – Peterson and Rothstein (neither of whom I’d like to point out are education policy analysts) say that the process is “needlessly complex.” The point out that there are lots of factors with varying weights. I’m not sure that this is much of a problem, since education is complex in itself. Better to have a large number of specific criteria than a few vague ones.

However, the importance of this claim becomes more apparent in conjunction with the fact that these criteria are not scientifically chosen. I’m not sure how they came to that conclusion. They state that the factors themselves seem to be arbitrary. Clearly the people running this are not just picking issues out of a hat. The report brings up a good point that even though the factors are somewhat based on policy preferences, even that does not quite hold water. Duncan’s “Blueprint,” which  gives proposals for allocations in the ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) includes ideas for competitions in areas that are given no points in RttT. The report makes it seem as if this means that there is some incongruity – either Duncan thinks these are important issues or he doesn’t. But if he’s asking for money separately, does that necessarily mean there needs to be money directed at these areas twice?

In addition to the claim that the factors are arbitrary, the report says the weights themselves are arbitrary:

Is there scientific support for the “State Success Factors” being 90.6% as important as the “Great Teachers and Leaders”

factor? Should the “Great Teachers” maximum points be 140, or maybe 163, instead of 138?

Apparently they subscribe to the logical fallacy that I warned my my 10th graders against: a lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. In other words, just because these researchers don’t know reasons for there being varying weights does not mean there aren’t any reasons. It seems absurd to claim that there was no scientific basis for choosing these factors and these weights. They even point out that there was a time period for open comments from the public, some of which were accepted and others rejected (or as they claim “ignored”). The problem is that the reasoning was not given, not that there wasn’t reasoning.

The biggest problem with RttT’s system in my eyes that the report points out are the enormous scales used and the inconsistency in grading as a result. In my Master’s in Education program, we were warned against having grading scales that are too complex. There are usually only about three to five gradations that a normal person is able to distinguish between. Even getting up to seven starts to get hazy. What is the difference between scoring 42 or 43 points out of 50? That, I will agree, leads to arbitrariness. If the creators of the system want something to be worth 50 points, then differences in weighting need to occur, rather than a broad scale. Perhaps it should be out of five possible points and then multiplied by 10.  On top of the scale, it is clear that the factors themselves are not specific enough. The report points out that in one instance, Florida received scores of 25, 35, 38, 40, and 40 points from the five judges on the same criteria. The scores are then averaged. I don’t know about you but to me, for one person to think  that Florida should get 25 while two others think 40 means that someone doesn’t know what they’re doing. There needs to be consistency. The report suggests an olympic-style dropping of lowest and highest scores to account for outliers. This does not satisfy me. If there are extreme outliers, that points to a problem in the criterion itself. The graders need to have consensus and not just agree to disagree.

With all of these problems, and I will agree that there are a fair number, Peterson and Rothstein recommend that the government move toward a pass/fail system, rather than such a complex one that is sure to have many inconsistencies. However, this seems to be a step backwards. The whole point of Race to the Top is that there is a top that states are aiming for, not a bottom. To have a bare minimum that states need to achieve sets states’ aims at that minimum, rather than creating an education market of sorts in which the best state wins. With so much money riding, there certainly need to be improvements, but altering concept is not necessary in light of these particular problems.

	Metric Weighting for Race to the Top Competition
		Possible points			Weight
A. State success Factors		125			25%
	(A)(1) Articulating State’s education reform agenda and LEA’s participation in it		65		13
	(i) Articulating comprehensive, coherent reform agenda			5	1
	(ii) Securing LEA commitment			45	9
	(iii) Translating LEA participation into statewide impact			15	3
	(A)(2) Building strong statewide capacity to implement, scale up, and sustain proposed plans		30		6
	(i) Ensuring the capacity to implement			20	4
	(ii) Using broad stakeholder support			10	2
	(A)(3) Demonstrating significant progress in raising achievement and closing gaps		30		6
	(i) Making progress in each reform area			5	1
	(ii) Improving student outcomes			25	5
B. Standards and Assessments		70			14
	(B)(1) Developing and adopting common standards		40		8
	(i) Participating in consortium developing high-quality standards			20	4
	(ii) Adopting standards			20	4
	(B)(2) Developing and implementing common, high-quality assessments		10		2
	(B)(3) Supporting the transition to enhanced standards and high-quality assessments		20		4
C. Data systems to support Instruction		47			9
	(C)(1) Fully implementing a statewide longitudinal data system		24		5
	(C)(2) Accessing and using state data		5		1
	(C)(3) Using data to improve instruction		18		4
D. Great Teachers and Leaders		138			28
	(D)(1) Providing high-quality pathways for aspiring teachers and principals		21		4
	(D)(2) Improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance		58		12
	(i) Measuring student growth			5	1
	(ii) Developing evaluation systems			15	3
	(iii) Conducting annual evaluations			10	2
	(iv) Using evaluations to inform key decisions			28	6
	(D)(3) Ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals		25		5
	(i) Ensuring equitable distribution in high-poverty or high-minority schools			15	3
	(ii) Ensuring equitable distribution in hard-to-staff subjects and specialty areas			10	2
	(D)(4) Improving the effectiveness of teacher and principal preparation programs		14		3
	(D)(5) Providing effective support to teachers and principals		20		4
E. Turning around the Lowest-achieving schools		50			10
	(E)(1) Intervening in the lowest-achieving schools and LEAs		10		2
	(E)(2) Turning around the lowest-achieving schools		40		8
	(i) Identifying the persistently lowest-achieving schools			5	1
	(ii) Turning around the persistently lowest-achieving schools			35	7
F. General		55			11
	(F)(1) Making education funding a priority		10		2
	(F)(2) Ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charter schools and other innovative schools		40		8
	(F)(3) Demonstrating other significant reform conditions		5		1
Competitive Preference Priority 2: Emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)		15			3
Total			500		100%

Tuesdays with Arne

For those of you who are NPR buffs, you may have heard Neil Conan’s interview of Arne Duncan yesterday on Talk of the Nation. If you haven’t, it’s a good listen (or read, if you prefer). I especially appreciate Conan’s pressing of inconsistencies. In particular, he starts out right away asking whether the “education bailout” would be tied to reform at all. Duncan tries to skirt around this a few times, but finally relents and says “no.” He claims that we need to give this money to save jobs, since so many districts are cutting teachers due to financial troubles, but at the same time keep pressing a reform agenda. Basically, we want to keep education alive, but still have that carrot to make it get better. This sounds great until you look at the numbers a la Andy Smarick. Raise your hand if you know how much the Race to the Top money is worth. Right, $4.35 billion dollars. It sounds like a lot of money, until you compare the other money coming from Congress to the states for education. The first big wallet opening was in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act  – a whopping $75 billion. On top of that, Duncan is pressing for this second bailout of an additional $23 billion. That’s $98 billion that is no-strings-attached. States and districts don’t have to change their policies a bit to load that into their pockets. Now how big does $4.35 billion sound? States may be offered a carrot, but it’s only after receiving a 5-course dinner.

My other big bone to pick with Duncan is his view on funding. He says that not only does most of the money for education come from the local level, it should. I can not even begin to think of how the person running our federal education plan can possibly really believe that. After he just gets through talking about how students right outside of Chicago have double the funding per student as those he presided over as CEO of Chicago Public Schools, he says that funding should come from the local level. Something does not compute here. Is he saying that it’s OK for those kids from rich families to have better funding for their schools? This seems preposterous to me. It’s one thing to say that educational decisions should come from the local level. I don’t personally agree with that, but I can understand where people are coming from when they say that. But to say that the bulk of funding should come from the local level? That makes absolutely no sense to me. I worked in a school in Arizona for two years that got less funding than another school in the exact same district, simply because money generated from income taxes was higher at that other school. The rich stay rich and the poor kids have to make due. Duncan talks about creating incentives for teachers to go into urban and poverty-stricken schools. How about at least allowing for some fair competition? If a failing school doesn’t have the resources to compete with a great one, why would a teacher want to go there? I hear lots of hope for change, but I’d like to see them put their money where their mouths are – and more than just 4% of the money.