The "so-what"

We could continue down this road of simplistic and too-narrowly focused solutions – charter schools, “higher standards”, state graduation exams, pay for performance, the elimination of tenure, etc.. And while there may be some merit to each of these ideas, none of them will get us where we want to go.

As I said last time, so what?

Several weeks ago, I stumbled across a segment on the Newshour that described the Easton, PA school district’s effort to connect teacher compensation to student test scores. (This was in order to meet one of the criteria of the federal “Race to the Top” grants.) This went along predictably, with the teacher’s association responding less than enthusiastically to the school board’s initiative. But what struck me was this comment by a school board member: “the problem is, there’s just not enough trust.”

There’s the so-what.

If we’re going to succeed at the highly complex and interconnected undertaking of reforming America’s schools, it’s going to require all the stakeholders – teachers, students, parents, administrators, community members and policy-makers – to push in the same direction. And that’s going to require a level of trust that cannot be imposed from Washington or Harrisburg.  Trust has to be built locally.

As Anthony Cody put it in his terrific blog, The Missing Ingredient in School Reform, “Trust is perhaps the single most important element in a successful school.”

For me, the issue of school reform – perhaps “transformation” is the better word – boils down to how we answer two questions:
·    What does every student need to know and be able to do in order to be successful?
·    How do we create the best learning environment for that to occur?

As I see it, the learning environment – or “school climate” - is the obvious, but often overlooked foundation for everything else. And if a positive school climate is the foundation of school reform, then trust is the cornerstone.

In many places, that would require a different way of thinking.

Take, as just one example, contract negotiations. The traditional view is that the teacher’s association sits on one side of the table, trying to get the best deal for their members, while the school board sits on the opposite side, trying to give away as little as possible.

The problem with the traditional – confrontational - approach is that it doesn’t help to create an atmosphere in which teachers will feel inspired to go above and beyond the call of duty for their students. (In this sense, it is neither cost-effective nor aligned with organizational goals.)

But in highly-functioning school districts, the goal is to come to an agreement that everyone sees as fair - admittedly, easier said than done, and an unrealistic expectation unless you’ve spent time working on the foundation.  In order for any “side” to think beyond its own self interest, there has to be a fairly significant level of trust – enough that people begin to believe that we’re all actually on the same side.

This atmosphere needs to be developed and sustained throughout the entire organization. In fact, developing a climate of trust and collaboration around a common goal is the central task of school leadership.

Ed Policy, part 3

The last decades’ rhetoric on standards has also allowed us to ignore the important impact that “equity” has on educational quality –conveniently giving politicians an excuse from having to make tough decisions. Politicians, after all, are responsible for how our resources are distributed.

(To his credit - on this issue - Governor Rendell has been an exception.)

But it is ridiculous to suggest that educational quality is unaffected by money. Upper-middle class suburban taxpayers don’t enjoy paying taxes more than anyone else, but they’re willing to do it because they believe good facilities and well-paid teachers give their children a competitive advantage.  And they’re right.

Children learn better – or more accurately, they have better opportunities to learn – in classrooms with adequate heat, good air ventilation, indirect lighting and good acoustics. On the other hand, money alone won’t fix anything. Well-paid teachers and great facilities won’t compensate for the lack of engaging, focused instruction and supportive parents.

Still others have suggested that the “solution” is to “pay for performance”. Well, maybe – but here’s the problem with that, as I see it. For teachers - particularly the good ones - it’s not about the money. Numerous teacher surveys – most recently by the Gates Foundation – have come the same conclusion: “supportive leadership” and “time to collaborate” are more important to teachers than “higher salaries”.

While teachers should be treated as professionals, and paid accordingly, the vast majority of teachers are motivated intrinsically – whose life did I change today? - not extrinsically.

Plus, to think that you could create an accountability system without input from teachers (i.e., NCLB) is just crazy. It’s not that teachers don’t want to be held “accountable”; they want to be accountable in ways that are meaningful.

Finally, I should mention the two ideas that have been the core of NCLB: “higher standards” and “highly qualified” teachers. First, the research has been clear: so-called higher standards hasn’t improved education for most students. As Darling-Hammond recently put it, “just telling schools that they (have to reach a certain standard) is not going to get them to do it better. We’re assuming they’re able to do better, but are unwilling.”

This is particularly problematic when the “standards” are unconnected to the skills and knowledge that students will actually need to be successful employees and citizens.

Unfortunately, “highly qualified” was all about teaching credentials, not teaching skills. Sure, it’s important for teachers to “know the material” - but being a Math major in college doesn’t prepare you to teach math to a group of fourth-graders of varying interests, abilities and learning styles.

And so, I’ve come to this sobering but somewhat obvious conclusion: providing every child with a quality education is a highly complex undertaking, one that defies easy and simplistic solutions.

Well, so what?

Ed Policy, part 2

A recent Newsweek article suggested another approach to education reform: we should make it easier to fire incompetent teachers. That’s a reasonable and probably necessary idea, but we haven’t thought this through, either.

First, most schools have some really good teachers, some poor teachers, and a lot who fall somewhere in between (since human behavior generally conforms to that normal curve distribution). Making it easier to fire “bad” teachers may fix the problem at one end of the curve, but it does nothing to address the skills of all the teachers in the middle - the ones who teach most students. Plus, the fact that some schools appear to have far more than their share of “bad” teachers points to a systemic issue that has little to do with the teachers, themselves.

(A good example  is the recent case in Rhode Island where the entire faculty of a school was fired. Is it possible that all fifty of those teachers were “bad”?  Where does one find fifty good teachers to replace them? If those teachers are so good, why don’t they already have jobs? If we don’t fix the system, where will these teachers be in five years?...)

The vast majority of teachers enter the profession wanting to be successful. But the profession’s 50% five-year “drop-out” rate is largely the result of a long tradition of placing teachers in classrooms, on their own and without adequate support - or preparation, a whole other issue.

Then there’s the widely held belief that “good teachers are born and not made”, which the authors seem to blindly accept. This, however, is nonsense; in what other profession is it true?

In fact, Teach for America has spent years studying the issue of teacher effectiveness. They’ve concluded that the two best predictors of an effective teacher are 1) perseverance, and 2) the willingness to change when a strategy doesn’t appear to be working. In other words, teachers become “good” teachers by continuing to work at it.

This doesn’t occur in a vacuum. “Quality teaching depends … on the environment in which teachers work; a curriculum focused on higher-order thinking; opportunities for teachers to plan with and learn from one another; and regular occasions to evaluate the outcomes of their practices.” (Linda Darling-Hammond)

More on this later.

National Education Policy, part 1

For the last few weeks I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the Obama Administration’s “blueprint” for the re-authorization of ESEA (known formerly as No Child Left Behind). Their proposal has generated a lot of conversation about what direction school reform should be taking – which has, to me, the look of the proverbial seven blind men trying to describe an elephant: many people have a piece of the puzzle, but we seem to lack a vision of a coherent whole.

This is important because it will probably be another seven years before we get another shot at this.

Among educators, the general consensus appears to be “encouraged but cautious”. The President and Secretary Duncan have said the right things - they’ve acknowledged the need for balanced assessments, and the importance of the arts and sciences – but there’s a concern that the federal role will continue to be more coercive than helpful. However well-intentioned, no one’s quite sure that they can trust the Obama plan.

Hold that thought.

For starters, the administration appears committed to promoting “charter schools” as a key component of school reform. I’m not opposed to this conceptually - on the theory that relieving charter schools from some bureaucratic requirements allows them to explore educational innovation that could replicated elsewhere.

A well-designed charter school encourages parental involvement, is run by a relatively small group of committed educators and has the appeal of being smaller, and more manageable, than most urban public schools.

But we haven’t thought this through. Suppose Chicago were to create 1,000 charter schools, all of them excellent. (We know this won’t happen because the research is pretty clear that charter schools are not a panacea; some charter schools have been very successful, but many have not. But just suppose.) Under the best scenario, you will have drained financial resources (vouchers?) educational resources (the most motivated teachers) as well as the most engaged parents away from the public system – leaving what? Separate, but unequal?

The problem is that there’s no mechanism for taking what you’ve learned from these experiments, and bringing them to scale. (Under Pennsylvania law it’s not even possible.) This suggests a missed opportunity. There are a lot of successful public schools that have the resources and will to innovate. Why not give them the same freedom?

And then there’s this problem: when given the charter school option, relatively few parents make that “choice”; they don’t want their kids to go to another school, they want their school to be better!

Finally, a lot of people have pointed to KIPP charter schools as a great success story, particularly noting that KIPP does not “select” their students – which conveniently overlooks the fact that KIPP is actually very selective: only students having the good fortune of highly engaged and committed parents are admitted. That’s a big deal.

Policy 122: to fee, or not?

The many comments that we've received concerning the proposed changes to Policy 122 - which would allow the district to begin charging fees for co-curricular activities - have been a terrific example of public comment providing the board with information and perspective we would not otherwise have had.

Many people indicated their opposition to the policy change even though they would be personally unaffected, since their children were no longer in school. Particularly impressive were the soon-to-graduate State High seniors who spoke to the issue.

Some of the most articulate arguments and insights came from students. One of the first to speak began with a particularly astute question: what is the history of the current policy?

Delving deep into institutional memory, we elicited help from a former board member: ”Policy 122 is (consistent) with the district mission … of educating the whole child. Co-curricular and extra-curricular activities provide opportunities for students to develop skills that are important for life-long success, (including) leadership, collaboration, communication, goal setting, the ability to address complex issues, and citizenship skills. (These) activities provide a different venue…for students to feel connected and explore different activities to help them find their talents and passions.”

In addition, “Policy 122 is part of the overall wellness … initiative of our district.  We want students to be physically active ... Studies show students engaging in high risk behaviors during after school hours when they are home alone with little or no supervision. We also know (that) students who most need these after school activities are the ones who can least afford to pay a fee.”

These ideas were echoed in the many comments that we received: extra-curricular activities provide opportunities for students to demonstrate leadership, to interact with students of different grades, to establish or maintain connections to the school - and, as the saying goes, to "unite talent and passion" Sports, in particular, promote the health and well-being of students, and provide a chance for students to challenge themselves in a safe environment. Several people wondered what "activities" students would be engaged in without these opportunities.

How would this change affect participation in "charitable" clubs? Should students be charged for an activity that provides a public service? One argument that particularly resonates with me is the impact this would have on the ability of students to explore new interests. Several students told us how they "stumbled" into an activity that they didn't know they liked until they got there - and probably wouldn't have tried if they were required to pay for it.

But probably the most common concern about the impact this would have on students without means.

The argument could be made that while approving this policy permits the district to charge fees, it doesn't actually put fees in place - but as I said at the last meeting, school board policy is a statement of district philosophy; a statement of what we believe to be important.

Around the table, no one believes that a student should be prevented from participating in extra-curricular activities because they don’t have the money, so that's not the issue. But as a number of people have pointed out, creating a system that that adequately addresses this concern creates additional administrative responsibility and expense.

This is the practical side of the argument. Although the Cost Control Committee suggested a potential savings of $250,000, that number is based on several assumptions that are probably overly optimistic. One student, using an elegant reference to calculus and cost/supply curves, made the point that you cannot assume that participation rates will remain the same. When you increase the cost of something you essentially reduce demand. (As the price increases, fewer people will participate.)

Another assumption is a per-activity fee of $50, which seems to strike most people as excessive. If a student is involved in multiple activities, would they be charged for each one? What about families with more than one student? Every accommodation you make further reduces the economic benefit - until you reach the point where it's probably just not worth it.

Plus, how would one implement such a procedure without stigmatizing some students?

A better approach, I think, would be to begin by recognizing that we probably have more offerings than we really need. Until now, we have not had a mechanism for evaluating every activity, in order to weed out those that are underused or no longer serve their original purpose. In other words, rather than charging students for participation, perhaps we don't have to offer quite so many options.

Keystones, again

It’s been a awhile since I’ve talked about the proposed Keystone exams; in fact, it’s been awhile since anyone’s talked much about them, which I think is unfortunate, since this issue has the potential to have a profound impact on what happens in Pennsylvania classrooms.

Most people are familiar with the standard objections to the standardized testing that would be embodied and institutionalized by the implementation of these exams (beginning with the requirement in the 2013-14 academic year that a student pass four Keystone exams in order to graduate, increasing to six exams in 2016-17; two in English, two Math, one Science and one Social Studies).

First, these would be very high-stake tests. (A score of less than “proficient” would contribute a grade of 0 (zero!) to one-third of a student’s grade in a course that would be a state-wide graduation requirement. Essentially an academic death sentence.

While useful in the aggregate, standardized tests are a very uneven (and therefore - given the stakes - unfair) measure of any individual student’s mastery of course content. (Almost unmentioned is the ironic fact that the switch to the Keystone exams will mean that we will lose ten years of accumulated data from the PSSAs, which educators are just now beginning to figure out how to use in a meaningful way.)

Then there’s the “narrowing of the curriculum“ concern - under the premise that “what you test is what you get” - and how that might limit student exposure to the arts and every other “un-tested” subject.

Nor would these exams even pretend to measure many of the skills that will be essential to the future success of our students: the ability to think critically, to learn independently, to communicate, to work with others. (But they’ll get good at taking tests!)

Good points, all, which ought to be enough to give us pause before committing our limited resources to heading down this road. In addition, these exams were proposed in response to the requirements of No Child Left Behind, which is almost certain to undergo significant changes this year. Wouldn’t it make sense to wait and see what happens?

But I have another objection.

As I’ve said previously, “there has yet to be a meaningful, public conversation about what every high school graduate ought to know, and be able to do. It seems to me that this debate ought to happen before we try to standardize state-wide or nationwide graduation requirements. Honestly, how many people in the real world need to know how to factor an equation?”

For example, the "Biology-Chemistry-Physics" paradigm was designed more than 40 years ago. (I know this from personal experience.) The same can be said for "Algebra-Geometry-Trigonometry-and-maybe- Calculus". (By the way, one might assume this is universal, but the French begin with Geometry.) These traditional sequences were established at a time when a high school diploma wasn't even an expectation for many students, let alone a necessity.

Why then, are we building - in metaphorical stone - an accountability system based on a model that is generations old, and almost certainly obsolete? (Part of the answer is “to get into college.” But that’s an important conversation for another day.)

Primarily for the convenience of adults, we have constructed an educational system built and housed in academic silos. But increasingly, the real world doesn’t operate that way. Tomorrow’s citizens will need a deep understanding of the core principles – scientific, mathematical and otherwise - that govern the universe, and how these principles interact with one another. We need to design an accountability system that encourages that understanding.

Because the Keystone exams have moved forward entirely by gubernatorial edict, it will be interesting to see what happens under the next administration. Good questions to ask the candidates…

SWAP, revisited

An 8-1 vote should be explained – especially if you’re the “1”. In the spirit of “a mathematician does not understand his work until he can explain it to the first man he meets in the street”, it’s clear that I need to take another run at this.

The Board’s intent, with Monday’s resolution to terminate our Interest Rate Swap agreement if it the cost drops to $5.5 million, was an attempt to minimize financial loss to the district.

The reason a resolution could be valuable is that interest rates tend to be volatile. (In particular, 10-year Treasury rates, which appear to have an inverse relationship to the cost of ending the SWAP agreement)  Since the board only meets twice a month, having the resolution in place allows the administration to act quickly should a predetermined trigger point be reached.

The question is: at what point should that trigger be set?

Everything is a “gamble”. If we do nothing between now and the end of the year, we’re “gambling” that interest rates won’t decrease, which would add to the cost of ending the agreement, perhaps significantly. On the other hand, were we to decide to end the agreement right now, we would be “gambling” that rates won’t increase – with the result that we would have spent more than necessary. The resolution is an attempt to balance those risks.

What’s going to happen? Of course, nobody knows. What’s likely to happen? Well, again, nobody really knows. But we have some educated guesses from the 60 financial firms that were surveyed by Bloomburg. Of course, these educated guesses are all over the map, but on average they project that the 10-year Treasury rate will rise to 4.15% by the end of the year. Under that assumption - not very solid, but that’s the information we have - the cost of ending the SWAP agreement at that point would be about $5 million..

So how does one decide where to set the trigger? From a strictly mathematical perspective, you would start with the $5 million figure – the point at which the risk of “spending more than necessary to get out early” exactly balances the probability of “waiting too long”, and then pick a number that’s slightly lower.

(Why, lower? Volatility. If the expectation is that rates will reach a certain number, there’s a good chance that you’ll reach a slightly higher peak at some point along the way, and you want to catch that if you can. Keep in mind that without volatility – if the swap termination value moved smoothly - there would be no reason to have the resolution at all; you could just wait until interest rates plateaued.) *

But here’s the problem with this analysis – we don’t make decisions from a strictly mathematical perspective, and for good reason. Here’s an example.

Say that a person you know to be trustworthy (and rich) offers you the following deal: flip a coin, heads – you pay him $10, tails – he pays you $15. A pretty good deal, and one that you’re likely to take.  But suppose the numbers are $10,000 and $15,000, respectively. Unless you’re pretty well off – or desperate - you’re not going to take that deal. The reason is quite rational: a $10,000 loss has a greater “value” to most of us than a $15,000 gain. (This is why you should never play high-stakes poker with a wealthy person; they value risk differently.)

There have been a number of studies demonstrating that human beings place a higher “value” on what they stand to lose than on what they might gain, even if when the extrinsic values are exactly the same.

The danger lies in applying this thinking to an organization as large as the school district, where the value of “losing $500,000” and “failing to save $500,000” are exactly the same, particularly when the entire amount will be amortized over ten or twenty years.

I said I’d take another run at it.  Persuasive or not, there it is.

*p.s.  Particularly astute readers will recognize that termination agreement such as this is useful primarily in a volatile, flat market. If interest rates are projected to go down, you should get out now. If they're projected to go up (as is the present case) you should hold tight for a while longer.