Free agency and the individual teacher

In the debate on teacher quality, and how to evaluate those who will be the most successful at educating children, the issue of teachers' freedom to innovate and experiment in the classroom is often on the mind of those who criticize public schools. As union- and board-negotiated agreements view the evaluative process, it is often at best a toothless method for providing suggestions, at worst so poorly enumerated as to allow vindictive administrators to fire political opponents while simultaneously making it impossible to "redistribute" poor performers.

Part of this seems to be a focus on evaluating the teacher's behaviors in the absence of substantial achievement data - E. D. Hirsch would argue that the progressive education movement formentned in teacher colleges has dictated a body of techniques that are "approved", whether or not they work, based on ideology. I'm not sure if I follow him to the end of that road or not, but Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, discusses how she addresses her hires by looking for a character of perseverance over a repertoire of techniques. I appreciate her approach, but what I don't see in many places and in many discussions is the committment to using hard data in staff evaluations. My theories:

• Many in the education field are not comfortable enough with quantitative data to use it effectively, so they just dont.
• Some over-aggressive politicos in schools either misuse data, or rely on quantitiative data in a unethical or incorrect way, i.e. relying on a single test as an indication of teacher quality.
• Unions disparage data-based supervision in the same way they disparage merit pay, throwing out the baby with the bathwater (slap me for relying on cliche, please)
• Teachers are, I hate to say, often emotionally-focused to a fault - they hate to make hard decisions based on something so cold as numbers

Bumps in the road for private educators

A recent death at an Atlanta-area "psychoeducational" center illustrates one of the primary roadblocks to successful private educational facilities. Atlanta contracts with private entities like Alpine to run schools for students with mental illness and behavioral disorders - a decision that a Georgia DoE official says allows students to be "educated in their communities" on top of being a money saver.

Both of these - quality and efficiency - are among the right reasons to use private organizations in public education management. They go out the window, however, when a student dies ostensibly due to poor practice and poor staff training.

Special education, and special education centers most of all, are the logical and ideal place for private-sector education firms, for- and non-profit both, to break into the market, but for the free-market to be successful in education, these companies must self-regulate, they must follow good practice (in this case, at the very least, adopting widely-accepted safety guidelines such as those at nationalguidelines.org), and they must provide transparency equal to or greater than that offered by public schools, or they may never be competitive.

For a city that seems to be the poster child for poor planning and execution during hard economic times, Detroit's school district is truly in dire straits. With abysmal graduation rates, an operating budget deeply in debt, and incessant infighting, not to mention allegations of fraud and corruption, the district seems due for a makeover.

The district recently has considered filing for bankruptcy, and will start the year with a budget defict topping $250 million. District-wide grad rates are about 58%, and only about a fourth of student who start high school in the district will graduate in four years. How is Detroit addressing their academic problems?

• brought in an outside advisor
• fired "many principals"
• privatized operations of almost all district high schools

It's no surprise, then, that relations between the CFO and the board are strained; all of these actions are the types of things that create an adversarial relationship between school leadership and staff, and between a school district and the community.

Wait, CFO?

Yes, Detroit's district head has apparently been their financial officer, rather than a superintendent, after the super was fired in February. The previous CFO was fired in December. No surprise that those relationships were tumultuous as well, the hiring and firing mired in threats of lawsuit, claims of retaliatory practices by the board. The current CFO (titled "emergency financial manager") is fighting to take control over the suffering academic programs as well as district finances, which has led to further power plays by the board.

So what's the point in rehashing DPS' skiing trip on a shaky slope? Every school district could be here. Detroit's sinking economy and long struggle with urban flight started their problems, but the political battle escalated it beyond repair, and the fight to retain power, in the face of rational action, will always sink a functioning system.

There have been plenty of state leaders making a big deal about taking - or not taking - federal stimulus money for education. It seems that the deciding factor seems to be the ideological stance of the governor, not the needs of schools, but the money is flowing (maybe) to places it's needed - Maryland special-ed programs seem to be among the first in line.

A primary concern of many district and state leaders, however, is just how long this gravy train will last. Stimulus programs are limited in scope and duration, and the funding won't last forever. Many districts fear the coming fiscal years when the influx of federal funding ends, but the programs it supports must continue (ever tried to eliminate a public education program? Ugly business).

If this is the case, where should schools look for funding? Public and private grants will only go so far, and until the economy improves to the point that tax revenues increase, the pain will continue.

Even more startling, if federal funding dries up, how long will states accept federal regulation? This Congressman seems to think this is the direction public education is heading; is Arne Duncan really so open to that possibility? Maybe.

UPDATE: As Education Week reports, there is another concern for schools and states recieving stimulus funding, as well as their normal federal funding: fulfilling their legal requirements. Schools in the District of Columbia will lose some $480,000 dollars for not meeting the requirements of its "state performance plan". The Dept. of Education has, in the past, designated D.C. a "high-risk" grantee due to "problems in ... fiscal and program accountability, managament systems, and related areas", and offered "technical assistance"; the indicators not met seemed to have more to do with D.C.'s reporting of the data than their actual educational performance. It's unclear if the issues raised in this 2008 letter are related to the issues which caused the DOE to pull funding, but you can bet that all states and principalities will be watching how these performance plans will tie into the money they recieve.

To give a contrast, Kansas met it's state performance plan requirements *insert gloaty nyah-nyah dance here*.

(originally published June 23)

The Supreme Court has found in Forest Grove School District v. T. A. that a school district that denied special education services to a student diagnosed with learning disabilities must reimburse the family for his $5200-monthly tuition. The press, such as the New York Times, is playing up the fact that the student never recieved special ed services, but strangely not that he was consistently denied FAPE, as seems to be the focus of the majority opinion.

The issue, then, is not that the state must pay for private school tutition, but must pay for an appropriate education if the student has been unjustly denied it.

The funny part of this (to me, anyway), is that, if a 2005 Department of Education study is to be believed, the district paid for a better education than it could have provided itself (that’s a broad statement, actually; the results are not always statistically significant). Reading and math scores were several points higher, on average, at private schools over public schools in the survey of data from across the nation.

Now, why is this? Well, keep in mind that private schools get to pick and choose their students. They also have higher levels of “family engagement”, “parent involvement”, or whatever you want to call it (the research literature seems a little disjointed in the competing ideas of what these terms mean) – you’d be pretty involved, too, if you were dropping 5200 bucks a month into your kid’s education.

Private schools, though, also have more autonomy, with fewer top-down edicts regarding pedagogy, school structure, etc. As there is less influence from a hierarchical administrative structure, so is there a nearly-non-existent union influence.

So what of these factors actually leads to higher performance? Don’t know. There isn’t enough research (and, perhaps, some practical barriers to conducting research) to tell us these things. I wonder, though, why we don’t see public schools at least trying to emulate some of these factors if they seem to be working.

A postscript: the headline of this 2006 release from “progressive” group Common Dreams seems to utterly misrepresent the 2005 report from the Department of Education, particularly regarding the performance of private schools with a conservative Christian dominant philosophy. Of course, the release never calls the report by name and doesn’t link to it, so I’m not 100% certain it’s about the same report – but I don’t know any other DOE reports about private school performance released at this time.