The Dregs of Society....

My sentiment toward the stimulus bill has been what I might call optimistically credulous. That is, I'm pretending that the goal here is to actually stimulate the economy. Thus, my reaction to the inclusion (or removal) of sensible public policy proposals has been to ask, "How well does this fit with the purpose of a stimulus bill?" Sure, this involves overlooking some of the compromise that has already been made to put together a bill that's expected to pass. Sure, if you look closely at the bill, you can find other similar provisions that arguably should be eliminated on the same grounds, but don't happen to be controversial. Because thanks to the nature of our political system, with any sort of spending bill (massive or minor), you're not likely to get more than 2/3 of the way to ideological purity. But shouldn't you try?

Not according to Richard Cohen. To Cohen, it is a great sin to put forth a stimulus bill that doesn't attempt to reform... things. The idea that a stimulus bill should focus on short-term spending, "shovel-ready" projects, and programs that don't require sustained, increased government spending? The idea that this should be a bill that passes quickly rather than getting bogged down in endless debate and controversies? Lost on him. But okay... there are lots of issues that need reform. Perhaps you're thinking, "Cohen wants to restore funding for birth control." Or "Cohen wants to use the stimulus bill to lay a foundation for further reforms, such as a national health care program, a cleaner environment, sustainable energy...." nope. Cohen wants to tackle education reform.

The funny part, if you want to call it that: Cohen doesn't know anything about education reform. Thus, instead of concrete proposals, we get platitudinous statements like this:

But if the money is going to be offered, why not couple it with demands for reform? After all, without the extra cash, the likelihood is that teachers across the country will be laid off. That gives the president some leverage: Take my money, take my reforms. Maybe a deal could not be done. We won't know. We do know, though, that the teachers unions have an understandable aversion to some reforms. We also know that the unions supported Obama in his campaign.

You see? The most obvious reason that a federal stimulus bill doesn't micromanage education, something traditionally though of as a state issue, is that "unions supported Obama." It must be nice to live in a world that... simple.

Do your reading on education and you will find an emerging consensus. Abolish tenure.

That's right... stretching from the WSJ editorial page to its op/ed page, the emerging consensus is right there for you to see. I've spoken about this before, but I guess it bears repeating: If tenure were the real issue, the problems attributed to tenure would be seen in every school district. Getting legislatures to act against tenure wouldn't be an issue, because everybody with kids in public schools would be screaming for reform. The problem in schools like DC's is that between an unpleasant work environment and incompetent administrators, classrooms were filled with available applicants, steps weren't taken to weed out bad teachers before they got tenure, and the environment for teacher burnout is exceptional. As a consequence, no doubt, you have a lot of kids being taught by teachers who should never have obtained tenure or who are counting the days until they can retire. That happens in other school districts as well, but at nowhere near the same levels. Also, the good teachers from a district like DC? They can seek jobs in other districts where they will again get tenure - but without the controversy.

There are other ways to ensure that teachers are fairly treated without guaranteeing the jobs of the inept. (Cops don't have tenure, and neither do columnists.)

That's almost funny. Columnists don't have tenure, meaning they could be fired at will? No, as Cohen knows, name brand columnists work under contract. Now I'll grant, they don't have a CBA that will get them their job back if they're wrongfully terminated, but they will seek full compensation under their contracts.

Police officers? Come now, Richard. Tenure is a form of job protection that follows your probationary period. It doesn't mean "we can't fire you", and it certainly doesn't mean "we can't fire you for cause". It means that once you complete your probationary period you can (normally) only be fired for cause, and you may have to offer an employee improvement plan or follow an incremental disciplinary process. It could be said that any union employee past the probationary period has "tenure". And yes, that includes officers in unionized police departments (which is to say, most of them). Believe it or not, there's nothing talismanic about the term - you can find state legislation describing police officer tenure, and police disciplinary hearings may be described as "tenure hearings".

Let's look at Cohen's version of a "solution" - how do we "ensure that teachers are fairly treated without guaranteeing the jobs of the inept"?

Ensure that the best teachers teach at the most challenging schools and ensure also that they get paid lavishly for doing so.

It's one of the problems with the simple-minded union busting mantra, that somehow unions are to blame for everything that's wrong in the schools. Even giving due respect to Michelle Rhee's apparently unsustainable plan to provide teacher raises, the fact is that there's no popular will to give teachers more money. Cohen just got through telling us that things are so bad that states are looking at laying off needed teachers. Either Cohen's looking at the stimulus bill as the magic federal money tree - a gift that keeps on giving - or he's not considered that if you increase teacher pay, once funding levels return to normal you have to lay off even more needed teachers. Actually, it's probably both.

If Cohen were to venture out of his office and stop by some inner city private schools and religious schools, he would likely find that there are good teachers in many of those schools who have chosen to make less money in order to teach in a school environment that they find to be more secure, stable, and supported. That's an issue Rhee likes to sidestep, and people like Cohen don't even seem to know exists - there's more to a job than money. The focus of making individual classroom teachers responsible for the failures of parents, schools and school administrators kind of misses the point. Or perhaps it is the point - by placing the focus there, Rhee creates instant insulation against the failures of her own, substantive reforms (or lack thereof). Rhee, for example, favors mainstreaming - something that saves the school district money and... it's the teachers' fault if they can't deal with high numbers of emotionally disturbed or learning disabled kids mainstreamed into their classrooms, right?

Cohen likes solutions that "sound good" (to him), even if he has no concept of what they would mean:

How about extending the school day, maybe for an hour or so? How about extending the school year? How about tinkering with the No Child Left Behind law but insisting that testing - accountability - be maintained?

Because it's free to keep schools open for extra hours or days, we'll have already busted the teachers unions so they won't be able to object to an increased work day or year, and surely more classroom hours will automatically translate into more learning, right? That's why when you go to college you spend more time in classrooms than ever before. Personally, I do think that we should revisit the school year, the paring away of school days to save money, the structure of the school year around an agricultural calendar, etc. But I don't see it as a magic cure, as something that should be imposed on school districts as part of a stimulus bill, or as a legislative priority for preempting teachers' collective bargaining rights.

You want specifics, Cohen's got them - he's thought long and hard about "No Child Left Behind" and came up with the insightful solution that it can be improved by "tinkering". Um... Thanks. But it gets better:

How about doing something about the sad fact that teachers aren't what they used to be? Now that women and minorities have more opportunities in almost every field, the best of them have abandoned teaching.

Ah, the good old days when women and minorities didn't have good job opportunities other than teaching. Now everybody with a brain has moved on to better professions, and those that are left.... (Is it just me, or is Cohen's statement oh... just a wee bit sexist and racist? What does he have to say about white men who teach?) Mix that sentiment with the idea that the best way to keep the best of the remaining dregs happy is to force them to work in inner city schools, increase their workday and work year, and take away their job protections and... what more needs to be said?

One of these days, somebody will need to explain to Cohen that you can have a teacher who works wonders with suburban fifth grade students, but who would be stretched to (or beyond) the limits of her capacity trying to maintain order in an inner city fifth grade classroom. A teacher who is able to handle the most difficult classrooms is likely to be able to handle an easier classroom, but the opposite isn't always true. But to Cohen, teachers are apparently all dregs who can't get real jobs, so perhaps he sees 'em all as fungible.

High Achieving Students

The Fordham Institute has published a report on High-Achieving Students in the Era of No Child Left Behind noting that in the NCLB era, although there have been advances for the lowest-achieving students, the interests of gifted students are being neglected.

Dare I say, they're stating the obvious?

A Humdrum Defense Of "No Child Left Behind"

The Washington Post offers an editorial debunking "myths" of No Child Left Behind by Chester E. Finn, Jr., author of a book on school reform. The first three aren't particularly interesting, at least to me. The author argues that NCLB isn't an extensive federal intrusion into state schools because states can turn down federal money. He argues that NCLB is not "underfunded" because its costs are "relatively modest" and critics should instead be asking why schools don't do a better job with their current funding. (Yes, the answer does not technically debunk the "myth".) He argues that setting standards will not cure U.S. schools, principally noting that many states have intentionally set weak standards even under NCLB.

To me, these seem like an odd set of myths to start with, not only because the debunking is weak but because I think they demonstrate an incorrect focus. Part of my concern is highlighted by the fourth "myth", "The standardized testing required by No Child Left Behind gets in the way of real learning":

Teachers' animus toward standardized testing has many roots, chief among them the grueling weeks of preparation and exams that they and their students endure every year. But the accountability made possible by standardized testing isn't all bad. If the test is an honest measure of a solid curriculum, then teaching kids the skills and knowledge they need to pass it is honorable work. Just ask any Advanced Placement teacher.

But what does the honest testing of a solid curriculum have to do with No Child Left Behind? Didn't we just hear the author admit that most states are setting weak standards so that they "meet" NCLB's requirements without actually improving their schools? And if the weeks of gruelling preparation amount to busy work, so the school can pass an administrative hurdle without actually improving school or student performance, what's to like?

Good teachers don't like standardized testing, at least where they are expected to coach the students to pass the test, because it's a waste of classroom time. Good students sometimes like standardized tests because it can be flattering to score in the 98th percentile or be told you're performing many levels above grade, but they're not the ones we're trying to test. And prep time for these tests is also wasted classroom time. For most students, the coaching and prodding is also a waste of time, not because it doesn't improve their test scores but because it has no further effect on academic performance. Teachers must "teach to the test" to create an artificial boost in results rather than teaching a curriculum and expecting that the test will fairly and reasonably measure their students' grasp of the curriculum. (Bad teachers don't much care either way. When you're already teaching kids out of workbooks, what does it matter if the principal says you have to use a different workbook for a few weeks.)

So standardized testing isn't bad if it's an "honest testing of a solid curriculum"? Alright then. When can we expect all standardized tests used for NCLB to constitute "honest testing of a solid curriculum"? Is there any movement in that direction?

A while back I proposed a solution to the standardized testing quandary - something that will shorten the time wasted on teaching to the test, and get the standardized tests out of the way early so that teachers may get back to a real curriculum.

Give the test at the start of the new school year, rather than during the course of the prior school year. Give the teachers a couple of weeks to bring the kids back up to speed from their near-inevitable summer backsliding, then administer the test. Kids who really learned their lessons the year before will do well. And that's what the testing is really supposed to measure.

So how about it, Mr. Finn?

The final myth seems out of place, criticizing the requirement that schools use certified teachers:

Lawmakers blundered when they confused "qualified" with "certified" teachers. There's no solid evidence that state certification ensures classroom effectiveness - and the booming success of programs such as Teach for America, which sends recent college graduates into troubled schools, suggests that certification may be wholly unnecessary. By requiring certified teachers in every classroom, No Child Left Behind makes it harder for district and charter schools to attract energetic and capable people who want to teach but take a less traditional route to the classroom.

Well here's the deal. Certification is substituted for qualification, because you have to somehow measure qualification. As with any certification or degree program, it's about averages. Most people who finish the program will have the minimum required qualifications. Some who are less than qualified will squeak through anyway, but that's going to happen under any standard. I'm sure that Mr. Finn has a Ph.D. - does that mean he is qualified to teach university classes, or does it just mean that he has a Ph.D.? If you've gone to college you know that having a Ph.D. is a poor measure of teaching skills, yet it's still something most universities require for tenure track teaching positions. What measure does Finn suggest as a substitute? Um... he doesn't.

I've also previously addressed "Teach For America", when responding to a more detailed Kristof editorial arguing against current teacher credentialing standards.

Sure. They make a two-year commitment to teach in the inner city. With the ability to reject 88% of the applicants the program should have no difficulty selecting applicants who have the necessary interest and aptitude to complete the program. Program participants come in with a new college graduate's energy and enthusiasm and are gone long before they burn out. Teach for America indicates that 60% of those who complete the program remain in education as "teachers, principals, education policy advisors and leaders and staff of education reform organizations", but provides no figure for how many remain in inner city schools.

While Finn pretends the participants are parachuted into classrooms with no training or support, that's not the case either. We can assume that a better credentialing system could be created, as that's almost always the case. But it's deceptive, and intentionally deceptive when the words are coming out of the mouth of an education reform "expert", to hold up "Teach For America" as some sort of paradigm.

There's also no evidence that there is a huge queue of qualified people, eager to teach but excluded from that opportunity by the certification requirement. Believe it or not, despite the occasional contention that teachers are overpaid, the people who will make the best teachers are often quite content to pursue other, more lucrative fields. (That was Kristof's point, in trying to open classroom doors to established professionals from other fields.)

Finn's call to wipe out teacher certification without creating an alternate, superior method of determining teacher qualification says to me, "this guy has an ulterior motive." So let's look up his résumé:

He was also a founding partner and senior scholar with the Edison Project, the private company setup to operate public schools on a for-profit basis. Hudson and Bradley are both major proponents of "school choice," which would allow public education money to be funneled to groups like Edison.

That's right, folks. The problem here seems to be that Finn's business ventures have to hire certified teachers in order to qualify for public funds. Eliminating that requirement without substituting a bona fide measure of teacher qualification will let them promote their groundskeepers to classroom teachers, significantly improving their bottom line. So again, Mr. Finn, what's the objective measure you propose for measuring teacher qualification?