We Won!

September 29, 2010

I have no idea why a bunch of ed reformers are so gloomy.  Matt has already observed how Rick Hess and Mike Petrilli can’t seem to enjoy the moment when ed reform ideas go mainstream.  Now Liam Julian is joining the poopy parade, lamenting that the new crop of naive reformers are doomed to fail just as past ones have, and “it never works out.” And continuing the gloomy theme, Rick is worrying that school choice (in the form of vouchers) over-promised and under-delivered, losing the support of people like Sol Stern.

That may be, but as a graduate student observed to me today, choice (in the form of vouchers) may have lost Sol Stern, but choice (in the form of charters) just gained Oprah, the Today Show, and the Democratic Party platform.    Overall, he thought that was a pretty good trade, especially since he had to look up who Sol Stern was.

Let’s review.  It is now commonly accepted among mainstream elites — from Oprah to Matt Lauer to Arne Duncan — that simply pouring more money into the public school system will not produce the results we want.  It is now commonly accepted that the teacher unions have been a significant barrier to school improvement by protecting ineffective teachers and opposing meaningful reforms.  It is now commonly accepted that parents should have a say in where their children go to school and this choice will push traditional public schools to improve.  It is now commonly accepted that we have to address the incentives in the school system to recruit, retain, and motivate the best educators.

These reform ideas were barely a twinkle in Ronald Reagan’s eye three decades ago and are now broadly accepted across both parties and across the ideological spectrum.  This is a huge accomplishment and rather than being all bummed out that everyone else now likes the band that I thought was cool before anyone ever heard of it, we should be amazed at how much good music there is out there.

We won!  At least we’ve won the war of ideas.  Our ideas for school reform are now the ones that elites and politicians are considering and they have soundly rejected the old ideas of more money, more money, and more money.

Now that I’ve said that, I have to acknowledge that winning the war of ideas is nowhere close to winning the policy war.  As I’ve written before, the teacher unions are becoming like the tobacco industry.  No one accepts their primary claims anymore, but that doesn’t mean they don’t continue to be powerful and that people don’t continue to smoke.  The battle is turning into a struggle over the correct design and implementation of the reform ideas that are now commonly accepted.  And the unions have shown that they are extremely good at blocking, diluting, or co-opting the correct design and implementation of reforms.

Rick Hess correctly demonstrated how important design and implementation are almost two decades ago in his books, Spinning Wheels and Revolution at the Margins.   And it is always useful for him and others to remind reformers of the dangers that lurk in those union-infested waters.  But for a moment can’t we just bask in the glow of our intellectual victory — even if our allies are a new crop of naive reformers?

(edited for typos)

6 Comments | money myth, teacher union, vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Gov. Christie Gone Wild

September 10, 2010

BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

7 Comments | teacher union | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Nowhere to Hide

August 16, 2010

The LA Times used Freedom of Information requests to obtain student achievement data linked to teachers in LA unified.  The students’ names were removed, but not the teachers. The paper then hired researchers at RAND to analyze the data and calculate the value-added of individual teachers.  And then the paper published all of the results.  WOW!

It’s no longer possible to hide the fact that there are some awful teachers who continue receiving paychecks and depriving kids of an education.  School officials have had these data for years and never used them, never tried to identify who were the best and worst teachers, and never tried to remove bad teachers from the profession.  It took a newspaper and a big FOI request.

Now the school district will be forced to do something about those chronically ineffective teachers.  No one is suggesting that analyses of these test scores should be the sole criteria for identifying or removing ineffective teachers.  But it is a start.

This is going to spread.  As long as the data exist, there will be more and more pressure for school systems to actually use the information and develop systems for identifying and removing teachers who can’t teach.

It’s also worth emphasizing that this new reality is a huge accomplishment of No Child Left Behind.  The accountability and choice provisions of NCLB could never work because school systems could never be asked to sanction themselves.  But the one big thing that NCLB accomplished is getting every public school to measure student achievement in grades 3-8 and report results.  NCLB made it so that these data exist so that the LA Times could FOI the results and push schools to act upon it.  NCLB could never get schools to take real action, but the existence of the data could get others to force schools to act.

And what is the reaction of the teachers unions to all of this?  They’ve called for a boycott of the LA Times. As usual, we see how much more they care about protecting incompetent teachers than protecting kids suffering from educational malpractice.

13 Comments | school accountability, teacher quality, teacher union | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Oh, Those Poor, Powerless School Boards

August 12, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Mike Petrilli draws attention to this Washington Post column by Laura Berthiaume of the Montgomery County, Md. school board. Mike seems be taking Berthiaume’s claims pretty seriously. I’m not sure why.

Berthiaume is responding to the Post‘s complaints that school boards bend to the wishes of the unions, because the unions have disproportionate power in school board elections.

She begins by acknowledging that the Post is basically right:

It is true that all current board members have gotten their seats with some level of union blessing.

Well, give her this at least: she’s not doing this the easy way. Beating your opponent at chess by knocking down your own king as your opening move is a tough challenge!

She writes:

In the balance of power between the board of education and the bureaucracy, the superintendent and his staff hold all the cards.

That’s a mighty strong claim, considering that, on paper, the superintendent works for the school board. So how does she justify it?

They outwit, outlast and outplay.

Well, forgive me for asking, but: whose fault is that?

Berthiaume elaborates:

When the union felt threatened by an impending state action more tightly linking teacher evaluations to student performance, an “agreement” between MCPS and the unions was announced in The Post on April 21 — and all but one board member found out about it that same morning, in the newspaper.

Well, OK, that was a nasty thing for the superintendent to do. And to hold him accountable you did what?

In my experience, the board actually has little to no impact on union contract negotiations: The superintendent and his staff negotiate the contracts.

And the superintendent is supposed to be held accountable for looking out for the district’s interests in these negotiations by whom?

Even if there ever were actual board opposition, it would be met with a fierce, resolute wall of angry staff.

And the staff work for whom?

Just what does Berthiaume think the voters of Montgomery County put her in office to do? Just what does she think the taxpayers of Montgomery County are paying her for? To rubber stamp whatever the superintendent and his staff do?

If they’re just there to look good, why don’t they put their pictures on the ballots so we can judge for ourselves which candidates are best qualified to fulfill the expectations of the office?

Look, I understand the obstacles to reform are humongous. But if God puts you in a position of responsibility (and really, he’s put all of us in some kind of position of responsibility) then it’s your duty to fight for the right as smartly and as spiritedly as you can, get whatever you can get, and go home at the end of the day satisfied that whatever else others may have done, you fought the good fight.

And if you really think your ability to accomplish anything is zero – well, shame on you for wasting the talent God gave you by spending your time on something you admit is useless!

Update: Just to be clear, Berthiaume is right that the Post shouldn’t go easy on the superintendent and lay all the blame on the board. But she should quit going so easy on herself and laying all the blame on the superintendent!

2 Comments | politics, teacher union | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Arguing the Merits

August 11, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Last week I noted that Fordham had offered up the Gadfly as a platform for an argument, made by guest columnist Eugenia Kemble, that the next logical step after establishing national standards is a single national curriculum.

Well, my post has drawn a sharp response from Kemble. Of course, she disagrees with me on the substance (the merits of a national curriculum and the badness of teachers’ unions) but that goes without saying. More interestingly, she accuses me of not addressing her argument on the merits, but only being concerned with the significance of her piece having appeared in the Gadfly. The indictment has two counts. First, she accuses me of not offering an argument for my position that “common” standards adopted by the states are really “federal” standards (i.e. controlled by the federal government.) Second, she accuses me of practicing “guilt by association” by insinuating that if Checker publishes a union piece, he must embrace the entire union agenda.

To the second count I plead not guilty. I didn’t insinuate that Checker agrees with the unions about everything. I insinuated that his position in favor of national standards was having the effect – whether intended or not – of advancing the unions’ agenda in one respect. And that the appearance of Kemble’s piece in the Gadfly clearly demonstrates that those of us who have been saying this all along were right. And I stand by that insinuation.

But to the first count I plead guilty as sin. I did not address the merits of Kemble’s claim that it is possible – not just in some hypothetical cloudcoocooland but in the real world, right now, in the actual political climate as it stands now and under all the other conditions that currently prevail – to have “common” standards nationwide (thus “national” standards) that are not controlled by the federal government. On the merits of this claim I said nothing at all.

Here are some other claims whose merits I have never addressed:

  • The existence of the tooth fairy
  • The medical effectiveness of aromatherapy
  • The flatness of the earth (oh, wait)

Even Checker admits that national standards have been “entangled in a competition for federal money,” that it’s bad that “that same federal money [is] paying for development of new assessment systems to accompany the standards,” and that “it would have been lots better if President Obama had never hinted at harnessing national standards to future Title I funding.”

As Matt aptly put it: other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

But never mind. My real point was to highlight the fact that Checker has spent weeks calling us “paranoid” because we thought national standards would become the first step toward greater national control of schools, especially by unions; then offered up the Gadfly to a union blogger as a platform to argue that national standards should become the first step toward greater national control of schools.

3 Comments | instructional reform, teacher union | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

A Little Context for OFA’s Sob Story

August 10, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

The latest item making the rounds is an e-mail from Organizing for America, the old Obama campaign appendage now grafted into the DNC. A teacher from Ambler, Pa. pleads that if we don’t shovel a huge chunk of money into the EduJobs rathole, it’s theoretically possible that someone “like me” could potentially lose a job.

With that special blend of entitlement mentality and self-righteousness only the blob has mastered, she solemnly intones:

I’m not a special interest. I’m a teacher.

(Portentious boldface in original.)

Jim Geraghty would like you to be aware of the numbers featured above – this teacher’s school district, Wissahickon, has an average salary almost half again as high as the state average salary. And that’s before we look at benefits, which are much richer for teachers than in the private sector. Geraghty remarks:

When the local board of education spends money at a rate that the local tax base cannot afford, those teachers who refuse to adjust their salaries to reality do start to look like a special interest.

Mike Petrilli hammers the point home:

Your job could easily be saved if your union leaders were willing to accept some modest concessions. (Even a salary freeze might do the trick.)  But when teachers demand job protections, generous benefits, and salary increases in the midst of a recession…well, that’s expecting special treatment, indeed.

Not to mention JPGB’s own Matt Ladner, commenting on the instantly-famous chart comparing private sector job destruction in the current crisis to government job protection:

The yellow line just put another $10 billion on the credit card of the red line. Let them eat cake!

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for these people.

3 Comments | money myth, politics, teacher pay, teacher union | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up

August 7, 2010

The teacher unions finally wore down the Senate and managed to get a $26 billion Edujobs bill to avoid layoffs of teachers and increase the federal share of state Medicaid costs.  $10 billion is earmarked directly for teachers and the other $16 billion frees that money in state budgets to be used elsewhere — quite likely for teachers.  This $26 billion is on top of the $100 billion that education received from the first wave of stimulus spending.

So much for my austerity idea, where real reform can only happen once the gusher of new money runs dry.  The spigot is going to stay fully open for the foreseeable future, which will kill this opportunity for states and localities to restructure our education system and lower costs while improving outcomes.

The fact that the feds are bailing out schools and preventing reform doesn’t come as much of a surprise.  But what is shocking is how the Senate bill proposes to pay for this extra $26 billion — cuts in food stamps.  That’s right, we are literally going to take food out of the mouths of hungry people in order to keep upper-middle class teachers fully employed with their gold-plated pensions and health benefits.

And if that wasn’t outrageous enough, look at what the Milwaukee teachers union would like to do with their gold-plated health benefit.  They want to restore a prescription benefit for Viagra, which had been cut in 2005 to save some money.

Let me get this straight — we are going to take food from poor people to keep Mr. Happy working for Milwaukee teachers.  Talk about a stimulus plan.

(ht: BC)

4 Comments | teacher union | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Teacher Unions Will Do Absolutely Anything to Win

July 28, 2010

If you don’t believe me check out this political ad from Alabama.  Robert Byrne was in a Republican primary contest for governor of Alabama, but the teachers unions didn’t want him to win.  So they “gave $1.5 million to 10 PACs, which in turn gave nearly $1 million to True Republican PAC. Joe Cottle, a lobbyist for the teachers’ group, is the treasurer of five of the PACs, and Rudy Davidson, a former education lobbyist and a contributor to A VOTE, was treasurer of four others.”

Fueled with laundered teacher union money, “True Republican PAC” ran the following ad accusing Robert Byrne of believing in evolution and doubting that every word of the Bible was true:

The Alabama Education Association, the local affiliate of the NEA, admitted to funneling this money to True Republican PAC despite the fact that the NEA has repeatedly declared its support for the teaching of evolution.

Truth, consistency, educational excellence, honesty, the well-being of children — none of this matters to the teacher unions.  The only thing that matters is winning so that they can extract as much money from the public as possible.

The teacher union-funded ad has attracted some funny parodies.  Bill Maher fails to correctly describe the origin of the ad, but has this howler:

And as long as we are making fun of incredibly ignorant and embarrassing political ads from Alabama, which makes me feel less bad about the incredibly ignorant and embarrassing ads in Arkansas, check out this one by another gubernatorial candidates, Tim James:

And now check out this parody:

Oh.  And in case you were worried, the teacher union-backed candidate for the Republican nomination was the one who won.  Gives you confidence in democracy.

(Update:  I can’t find the original Tim James ad without the editorial comments inserted, but this gives a a good idea of what the original ad looked like.]

5 Comments | politics, teacher union | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Blob v. Reform SRN Podcast

July 8, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

My first-ever pod-type casting module is now available through the Inter-Net system of tubes via School Reform News. From the NEA $10 billion coke-and-hooker-slush-fund grab to the inevitable subversion of national standards by the blob, it’s a joyful romp through the lighter side of soul-crushing tyranny.

2 Comments | instructional reform, politics, teacher union | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Let’s You and Him Fight!

July 1, 2010

HT Dateline Silver Age

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Check out the editorial in today’s Washington Post about David Obey’s shameless attempt to redirect funding away from RTTT and into the teacher unions’ coke-and-hooker slush fund. While there’s a lot in it that’s worth reading, I particularly appreciated this twist of the knife:

That Mr. Obey’s proposal would pull back money intended to fund Race to the Top applications that have already been filed can only be seen as undercutting any credibility U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan would have in coaxing state officials to make the often-hard political decisions of education reform.

Did you hear what Dave just said about you, Arne? Are you going to stand there and let him say that? Fight! Fight!

Leave a Comment » | politics, teacher union | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

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