READ THE LATEST FROM EDDIE

Last week I pointed you to a provocative new Rick Hess essay that asked whether education reform has paid too much attention to focusing on urban, high-poverty areas and on closing achievement gaps. Well, almost as if on cue, Jay Greene and Josh McGee write in Education Next about their new study on how suburban U.S. school districts compare internationally in math (based on most recent 2007 data): Affluent suburban districts may be outperforming their large urban neighbors, but they fail to achieve near the top of international comparisons…. White Plains, New York, in suburban Westchester County, is only at the 39th percentile in math relative to our global comparison group. Grosse Point, Michigan, outside of Detroit, is at the 56th percentile. Evanston, Illinois, the home of Northwestern University outside of Chicago, is at the 48th percentile in math. The average student in Montgomery County, Maryland, where many of the national government leaders send their children to school, is at the 50th percentile in math relative to students in other developed countries…. It goes on, but you get the flavor. If you’re wondering about your own school district, you can check out the handy new web tool Greene and company […]

It’s less than two weeks past my Education Policy Center friends’ series of school board candidate briefings. In other words, it’s time for education reform senior statesman Checker Finn to raise the challenging and provocative question for National Affairs: Are local school district boards and the 19th century governance structure they represent about ready to wither away and disappear? Four years ago Education Policy Center director Pam Benigno wrote an article suggesting that online learning technologies were pushing school district boundaries into irrelevance. Of all places, the article was published in the Colorado Association of School Boards’ (now defunct) Prism magazine. (Sadly, no link is available.) Finn fleshes out the increasing policy and governance dilemmas as online and blended learning begin to skyrocket in popularity:

Little Eddie finally has a run for his money. What do I mean? In lieu of diving into another deep topic on a Friday, instead let’s take a look at the school reform blogging debut of a recent Education Policy Center intern, Devan Crean. Writing on the School Choice Week blog, she asks the ever-important question, “Why School Choice? Why Now?” Here’s a flavor: What has made America great in the past is the quality of education it was able to provide, but today that is no longer the case. The most troubling aspect of the lack of quality education in America today is that it is an issue that affects us all. This is not just an inner city problem; it is a problem in every community in every state. Providing parents with more choices is absolutely an answer to the problem. As Americans, we have the freedom of choice in most aspects of our lives, and the type and quality of education should be no different. Congrats to Devan. We look forward to seeing more contributions in the near future. Before you forget, here’s your chance to subscribe to the School Choice Week blog. It should end up […]

What’s going on in the world of education reform? Every once in awhile, even a precocious 5-year-old like myself can benefit from stepping back to try to get a better look at the big picture. With a penetrating eye and a nuanced approach, the prolific Rick Hess takes on one of K-12 reformers’ sacred cows–the focus on the achievement gap: …The legacy of achievement gap mania isn’t necessarily undesirable. Focusing on the neediest students is admirable, as far as it goes. With limited time, talent, and resources, we can’t do everything–and it’s not unreasonable that some think our priority in every case should be the most in need. The real problem has been the unwillingness of gap-closers to acknowledge the costs of their agenda or its implications. And yet, the groupthink consensus that the business of education is “closing achievement gaps” has made it tough to talk honestly about the costs–for fear of being branded a racist or thought unconcerned with inequities. It has dreadfully narrowed the potential coalition for reform. It has distorted the way we’ve approached educational choice, accountability, and reform. It has warped and retarded the pace, reach, and power of school improvement efforts. And it has […]

Over and over again I have said that serious outside-the-box thinking is needed to push American schooling toward excellence that affords families a wide array of challenging and effective options to serve them best. In that light Matt Ladner brings our attention to a bold and visionary education transformer, who just so happens to be one of our neighbors to the west. A column in last Friday’s Salt Lake Tribune indicates that the Utah legislature will be considering a dramatic proposal that could greatly empower families to customize education: Legislation proposed by Rep. John Dougall, R-American Fork, would give each high school student in Utah an individual education savings account, sort of like a debit card, and that student could use that money any way he or she wanted toward earning a diploma….

I’ve got a new, exciting addition to the blogroll to tell you about. Today marks the launch of Choice Media, described in its first official media release as “a non-profit news service devoted to covering all facets of K-12 education quality and reform.” It’s no amateur operation, either. A look at the website will tell you that. Once you realize that the founder is Bob Bowdon, director of the 2010 movie The Cartel, then you sit up and take notice. Choice Media figures to introduce the message of school choice and education reform to some new audiences. Not only will they be featuring short video news pieces that I’ll be tuning in to, and a decent assortment of news aggregation, blog posts and Twitter feeds, a quick tour of the site also reveals some other interesting features:

While the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program is on hold due to a court-ordered injunction, its Indiana cousin is the source of good news for students and families seeking to exercise more beneficial educational choices. An Indianapolis TV station reported on Wednesday: The Department of Education said 3,800 students are receiving vouchers, a program created and implemented in less than three months. “It is the largest uptake of a state-funded voucher program in the history of the United States,” Bennett said. Most students participating are from low or moderate income families. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about the Indiana program’s burgeoning popularity. But it’s worth pointing out again as the trend continues. The proof keeps growing that 2011 indeed is the Year of School Choice. Nice way to end the week on a positive note….

How about a little “dog bites man” story for education policy geeks? Hey, you can’t drive the point home often enough when you’re making the case for education transformation! A new issue brief for the Manhattan Institute by Marcus Winters (now one of Colorado’s own) highlights the unsurprising but important research he conducted along with Jay Greene and Bruce Dixon: Our study, to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Economics of Education Review, builds on two decades of research from a variety of school systems and confirms a consistent finding: external teacher credentials tell us next to nothing about how well a teacher will perform in the classroom…. As with most previous research, we found no relationship between a teacher’s earning a master’s degree, certification, or years of experience and the teacher’s classroom performance as measured by student test scores….

Last December I suggested to you four education reform books as stocking stuffer ideas. One of the books on the list was an important volume edited by Frederick Hess and Eric Osberg, titled Stretching the School Dollar: How Schools and Districts Can Save Money While Serving Students Best. In September my Education Policy Center friends have been busy briefing school board candidates from numerous Colorado districts about a broad range of reform issues. At the forefront of nearly all local officials’ minds is the fact that once plush and growing revenues for K-12 education have faced some modest cutbacks, forcing many to re-think how schooling can be done more productively. Stretching the School Dollar is an immensely practical resource for aspiring school board directors and the leaders they hire. In that light, it’s exciting to see The Education Gadfly report that the book has been nominated as a finalist for the Policy Innovators in Education (PIE) Network’s “Most Actionable Research” award. “Most Actionable,” indeed!

I’ve been told (no, really, I have!) that for a little kid blogging about education policy, I have a lot of appeal. Embarrassing: at first I thought it had something to do with bananas. But you know I was so much younger then. Anyway, I don’t want you to slip up before I get to the main point of my post for today. It’s about a different kind of appeal, one I knew had to be coming but am so glad to see it finally happen. I’m talking about an appeal of last month’s sad district court decision to shut down the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program. Last Thursday, September 8, the paperwork was delivered to the Colorado Court of Appeals. First, from an Institute for Justice press release: “We are confident that the Court of Appeals will correct the trial court’s decision, which ignored or attempted to rationalize away existing Colorado and U.S. Supreme Court precedent that clearly authorizes the scholarship program,” said Michael Bindas, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, which represents the Oakley, Doyle and Anderson families in defending the Choice Scholarship Program.