Guest Post: Proposed education reforms misguided

To the Editor:

More and more we hear assertions that our schools are failing. There are also increasing comparisons between education systems in the US and Finland, with specific attention to the 2009 results of PISA where Finland scored first or second in math, reading and science. Consequently, there are some who believe we should be competing with them and that we can learn from the Finnish model.

Others think that through changes with charter schools, teacher evaluation, school funding, common standards, student assessment and school choice that we can improve our international test scores and student achievement. Many are advocating for the implementation of elements of the Finnish model and these reforms.

However, these beliefs are quite contradictory and two key points are problematic. First, the reforms fly in the face of the foundations of Finland’s education system. Second, the reforms and increased accountability measures do not address the larger national issue of poverty and its impact on student achievement.

A central focus of the Finnish system is the priority on local innovation and absence of standardized testing. Actual teaching time in Finland is among the lowest in the world and teachers spend more time planning and collaborating than many school systems. Their school days are shorter and students study less at home. Becoming a teacher in Finland is a privilege; in fact, less than 10% of applicants become teachers.

Conversely, the U.S. is stuck in conflict between an impetus for 21st century instruction and a spotlight on standardized testing and common curriculum. By definition, “standardization” and “common” actually inhibit innovation and creativity. In many parts of the U.S. the trend is towards extended school days, increased teaching time and significant amounts of homework. And while teacher quality is an enduring issue with calls for improved performance and preparation, we are in the midst of layoffs and waning resources for teacher training and development. We are making teaching less attractive and more difficult to foster success.

A second problem with the direction of educational reform is that it appears less attention is paid to the negative effects on student performance of family poverty and concentrations of poverty in schools. Iris Rothberg of George Washington University claims the assumption that accountability, school choice, and common standards will solve our education problems is off-base.

Our schools are not failing. In the U.S., socioeconomic status of students accounted for almost 80% of the difference in reading performance between schools on the PISA. When examined separately, affluent schools in the U.S. scored among the best in the world.

I agree with Rothberg that current policy deliberations touch the periphery of these realities and that tougher accountability and test score comparisons will not address the problems of poverty and our country’s divide. Historically, accountability measures have not resulted in meaningful improvements in student learning.

Despite this, we illogically continue developing new policies not employed and often discouraged by countries such as Finland whose results we seek to emulate. While there is nothing wrong with holding professionals accountable for performance standards, what we really need is to reposition conversations and focus actions on the real targets; implementing known, proven practices and addressing issues of poverty.

DR. RICHARD KATZ

Collaboration in reform is missing

Lifted from the comments of this article at Education Week titled "New Attitudes Shaping Labor-District Relations"

Collaboration with veteran teachers is exactly what is missing in the current reforms. It is refreshing to see that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also supporting this idea.

Our current debate about the failures in education has spent far to much time demonizing teachers and their contributions and they are the "frontline" of improvement.

It is not surprising that Michelle A. Rhee would find collaboration an "overrated" concept. Many of her recommended interventions shared around the country have divided school personnel and made it far more difficult to work together in unity for the same goal, student achievement.

Viewing teacher tenure as the central problem in our schools completely contradicts collaborative efforts. Tenure was written to protect the voice of teachers, not poor teachers.

Some leaders lack the skills and experience to adequately build a case in dismissing poor teachers, that is not the fault of tenure. 75 teachers fired by Michelle Rhee were returned to work with full back pay and not because of tenure. The courts determined the teachers were fired on a whim, for "arbitrary and capricious" reasons.

Ridding the schools of veteran teachers unable to express their voice if not in conformity while replacing them with the inexperience of "Teach for America" candidates is no solution to real problems in the urban classroom.

It is refreshing to see we are discussing the idea of working together to find amicable, reasonable solutions. This should go a long way in building teacher morale which is dissapating by the day, half are gone in the first few years.

Fordham Exposed Part II

In part I of Fordham Exposed we introduced you to the conservative corporate education reform organization running some Ohio charter schools, and two of its biggest boosters, Terry Ryan and Michael Petrilli. Now let us take a closer look at this Foundation.

You can see the list of Fordham's charter schools here. We knew a short while ago that Fordham was publicly talking a good game, but playing a weak one, when the Ohio Department of Education released the ranking of charter sponsors. Of those 38 ranked sponsors, Fordham was down in a lowly 24th position. You don't rank that low by running quality schools and delivering quality education to students.

This view was further confirmed when ODE released their preliminary school rankings in mid November. The following table is the performance of Fordham's Ohio charter schools from that ODE report, the ranking is out of 3456 schools, and sorted with best first.

2011 RANK	SCHOOL NAME	SCHOOL CLASS TYPE	2011 LRC RATING
1792	Columbus Collegiate Academy	Middle School	Effective
2661	Sciotoville	High School	Cont. Improve.
2687	Phoenix Community Learning Ctr	Elementary School	Effective
2716	Dayton Leadership Academies-Dayton View Campus	Elementary School	Cont. Improve.
2840	Sciotoville Elementary Academy	Elementary School	Cont. Improve.
2977	KIPP: Journey Academy	Middle School	Effective
3052	Springfield Acad Of Excellence	Elementary School	Academic Watch
3188	Dayton Leadership Academies-Dayton Liberty Campus	Elementary School	Cont. Improve.

Almost 2,400 students are in Fordham charter schools that rank in the bottom half of all of Ohio's schools. Why hasn't Fordham been able to translate SB5 like tools into educational success in the many years they have been sponsoring these charters?

They are unencumbered by unionized teachers, state mandated regulations, all the things that should add up to a corporate education reformer's brightest dream. Yes their results are poorer than the majority of Ohio's traditional public schools, who allegedly are held back by unions, bad teachers, and outdated rules.

How can Fordham possibly have any credibility on the issue of education reform when their corporate reform ideas when implemented are delivering such real world lackluster results? When their performance is worse than the majority of traditional schoold they would seek to supplant.

It surely cannot be on account of money. The Fordham Foundation spends an inordinate amount of money on education reform. According to the latest publicly available tax return - their 2009 IRS form 990 from Guidestar, Fordham has over $37 million on hand, and spends over $4 million a year on its programs and advocacy.

Indeed, in 2009 alone, according to the same document, Fordham spent $485,000 on management of its Ohio charters, $745,000 on "National reform efforts", $163,000 on Ohio specific education "reform efforts" and a further $571,000 on Ohio legislative lobbying and what even they deem as "provocative analysis".

But lobbying and "provocative analysis" aren't the only largesse that Fordham spend their vast resources on. As employees of Fordham such as Mr. Ryan and Mr. Petrilli rail against education associations and teacher pay they have both been significant recipients of the Foundation's generosity.

Name	2007 (link)	2008 (link)	2009 (link)
Mr. Terry Ryan	$73,905 for 20 hours per week	$83,700 for 20 hours per week	$91,100 for 20 hours per week
Mr. Michael Petrilli	$73,905 for 20 hours per week	$83,700 for 20 hours per week	$91,100 for 20 hours per week

Their annual increases, for this part-time work, represent 13.2% and 8.8% up to 2009. One can only imagine what these two gentlemen are earning in 2011 for the part-time work of railing against teachers and their unions. But when you're earning almost twice that of the average Ohio teacher, and doing so for part-time work, all the while receiving up to double digit increases in pay, year on year, these kinds of comments are hard to swallow.

And to be sure, you can find examples of unions—of police, firefighters, even teachers—who have agreed to freeze wages or reduce benefits in order to protect the quality of services or keep colleagues from being laid off. But they are the exceptions that prove the rule.

They hare hardly the exception to prove any rule, real or as is the case here, imagined. Ohio public employees, especially teachers, have been responsible for saving taxpayers over 1 billion dollars in wage and benefit concessions.

So where does all this leave us? It leaves us wondering why an organization that espouses corporate education reform ideas cannot successfully implement them in their own lackluster schools, and why they biggest and most vocal boosters think the gravy tastes better on their plate than on any others. It is this then, that is the pure essence and purpose of corporate education reform.

If education quality actually mattered to Fordham they would expend more energy figuring out why their schools are under performing so as to use those lessons to actually benefot the debate over educstion reform. Instead what we have is "provocative analysis" to defend failing ideas while attacking public school teachers and their union, who in the majority are producing far high quality results at a fraction of the cost.

'Value-Added' Formulas Strain Collaboration

The rapidly changing debate on how to account for student achievement in teacher evaluations is putting teacher-district relationships to the test across the country.

More than half the states now require districts to take student achievement into account when evaluating a teacher's performance. In most cases, that's calculated through a so-called value-added model that attempts to account for a teacher's role in a student's growth over the course of a year, via test scores and other performance measures. Most of the push for value-added evaluation systems has come only in the past few years, driven in part by the federal Race to the Top grants, which gave extra weight to states that included achievement-based teacher evaluations in their applications, and by the federal Teacher Incentive Fund grants, which so far have supported experiments in 175 districts in 33 states using student achievement in teacher performance-pay plans.

"Some of the fear and worries we're seeing now, not just from unions but across the board, are because we've seen an enormous amount of change and uncertainty in a short amount of time," said Christopher A. Thorn, the associate director of the University of Wisconsin's Value-Added Research Center and its director for data quality and systems innovation. Moreover, he said, "Budget pressures have actually stressed districts and pushed people to do these things. Forget about paying teachers. That's a minor part of the reforms we see in districts; they're changing who they hire, they're changing their leadership systems, they're changing professional development. They are changing everything in the system."

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Common Core, costly

The Cincinnati Enquirer has an article pointing to the logistical and expensive costs ahead to implement the Common Core Curriculum, which is set to begin in earnest in 2014. One of the first major hurdles is having the requisite infrastructure in place to accommodate the millions of computer based tests that will occur.

The new tests will be taken online, replacing the standardized No. 2 pencil-and-paper tests that Ohio schools have always used.

While local school leaders like the idea of online testing, the switch is also creating concern because it's unclear who's going to pay for the computers and software upgrades needed for the new system. District officials worry the state will pass costs onto local districts - and their taxpayers. That's something many districts fear they won't be able to afford.

At a time when requests for new school levies are proving difficult to pass, and Columbus is keen to abrogate its responsibility to funding public education, additional costs like this are sure to hit districts up and down the state hard. Not only will schools need to significantly boost their IT hardware spending, but the level of IT infrastructure needed to support these new testing requirements will also require on going IT support to keep it all running smoothly.

Without additional computers or greater wireless capability, the new tests shrink the number of computers available for remedial classes and other kinds of instruction, Farmer said.

"We'd be very much in trouble if they expect us to do all that (testing) online," he said.

Northwest voters, like Cincinnati's, rejected a combination bond issue/operating levy this month that would have paid to renovate the high schools and improve technology.

With the selection of the consortia Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC), Ohio might also expect to test its students even more.

Instead of tests once a year, the new tests will probably be taken at least twice a year, said Dennis Evans, an Ohio Department of Education spokesman.

With each of these millions of tests costing at least $14 each, it's not just the cost of IT infrastructure that needs to be contended with anymore.

Whatever the merits of these policies as tools to increase educational quality, it is clear that Ohio is going to need to find a way to invest more readily in these transitional efforts.

Is Our Students Learning? Yes.

Three mildly heretical thoughts about American education: First, given the impossible assignment we've given them -- an egalitarian mission in a nation rapidly growing more stratified by income and class -- American public schools are probably doing a better job than they ought to be. One big reason is greater professionalism among teachers. A lot has changed since I wrote a Texas Monthly article documenting the awful state of teacher education back in 1979, mostly for the better.

Despite melodramatic pronouncements to the contrary by sundry politicians, tycoons, tycoon/politicians and media-enhanced "reformers" like former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, the available evidence shows American students performing steadily better on standardized assessments of educational progress over the past 30 years.

"The only longitudinal measure of student achievement that is available to Bill Gates or anyone else," writes Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, "is the National Assessment of Educational Progress." Scores on the NAEP have trended steadily upward to where the most underprivileged African-American children do better in eighth grade reading and math today than white students did back when the measurements began in 1978. But no, they haven't caught up because white kids' scores have improved too.

This doesn't mean the United States is turning into Finland or South Korea, to mention two small, ethnically homogeneous nations education reformers like to cite as (quite contrary) examples of how to proceed, but it does indicate that much doomsday rhetoric we hear from the likes of Rhee and Education Secretary Arne Duncan is predicated upon false assumptions.

Yes, we could be doing better; no, the sky's not falling.

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