Month: May 2010

Around the Edu-Horn, May 20, 2010

Eduflack Edu-horn

Cutting out the ed media middle man @edreformer — http://edreformer.com/2010/05/cutting-out-the-middle-man/

MA may scrap MCAS assessments — http://tinyurl.com/33j3m2k

RT @ED_Outreach VIDEO: Arne announcing $437M to reward teachers, principals who are getting results for students http://bit.ly/9WgqeW

NAEP TUDA reading scores below national average – http://tinyurl.com/2g2vo2r

Will new DCPS teacher pay deal impact DC charter schools? http://tinyurl.com/33y6sp6

 

RT @douglevin “We’re here to discuss the success of EETT”: Stakeholders fight for #edtech funds http://ht.ly/1Ny2K

Cutting the Ed Media Out of the Process?

Eduflack edReformer, Media

Your favorite Eduflack has another guestblog over at edReformer.  The topic: disintermediation.  At last week’s Education Writers Association conference, there was a great deal of talk of disintermediation, which carries the applicable definition of cutting the educaiton media out of the ed policy debate by focusing on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other direct and unfiltered ways to deliver information to key stakeholder audiences.

You can find my full blogpost here.  And don’t forget to keep checking out new content at edReformer. 

Is Education a National Job?

Eduflack accountability, ESEA, NCLB

Following yesterday’s election results in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Arkansas, and elsewhere, there is a great deal of buzz about what the latest collections of primary votes in an off-year election year truly mean.  The talking heads immediately keyed in on the “power” of President Obama’s support, the strength of the Tea Party movement, and other such harbingers of what is to come.

Such talk also has direct impact on current education improvement efforts.  Last fall’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia have had real edu-implications.  Just look at New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie has sought to revolutionize school finance efforts, freeze teacher pay, expand charter schools, single-handedly take down the New Jersey Education Association, one of the strongest state teachers’ unions in the nation.  As his reward?  The NJ legislature provides lukewarm, at best, support for his Phase II Race to the Top application, an application that seems to be strongly in line with what the feds are expecting.  This after they gave the strongest of endorsements to a Phase One plan that was a major loser. 
If yesterday’s elections told us anything, it is that the anti-government sentiment found in many a Tea Party statement has real strength.  Yesterday, the movement may have very well elected a U.S. Senator in Kentucky.  And growing frustration with support for federal policies and efforts may very well have brought down the sitting Senator from Arkansas (we will see after the runoff), and may have contributed to the demise of the senior Senator from Pennsylvania in his new-found political party.
So why does this matter?  Those of us who worked on the Hill at the time clearly remember the “revolution” of 1994, when Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America brought down the decades-long rule that Democrats had enjoyed in Congress.  At the time, Gingrich promised a much smaller government, less intrusion, and more freedoms.  And one of the centerpieces of that agenda was the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education.  The thinking here is that education is a local matter.  With the feds contributing less than a dime for every dollar spent in K-12, the thinking goes, it is far easier exclude the federal intrusion and let local school boards decide what is taught, what is measured, and what is paid for.
Today we are seeing much of the same rhetoric, particularly coming through the anti-government Tea Party movement.  Today, Education Daily (sorry folks, no link to share) has an interesting piece on how several state Republican parties, influenced by Tea Party supporters, are now advocating for the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education in their official policy platforms.  Cloaking themselves in the 10th Amendment, Republican parties in states like Maine, Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Oregon have either officially adopted or are expected to sign on to calls to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education.
Is this backlash against eight years of No Child Left Behind?  Is it frustration that so many states worry that they will be excluded from the riches found in Race or i3?  Is it worry of strengthened accountability under ESEA reauthorization?  Or is it legitimate concern that public education is a local responsibility?  More importantly, is it something we need to worry about?
We all well know that the U.S. Department of Education is going nowhere.  Its role is too important, and its scope to large for us to pull back now.  But these political rumblings within local Republican parties can have real influence on topics such as reauthorization, particularly when Republicans pick up seats in both the Senate and House this fall.  Republican leaders on the Senate HELP Committee or the House Education and Labor Committee don’t want to anger their core constituencies back home, and those constituencies are only gaining more attention and strength by the month.
For reauthorization, that likely means greater scrutiny of plans, particularly when it comes to expanding Race, replacing AYP, adopting Common Core Standards, and all of the other goodies found in ED’s official ESEA blueprint.  If you couldn’t get some of these reforms through in 2007 and 2008, when Dems and GOPers were looking to deal on reauthorization, and you couldn’t get it through in 2009 and 2010 when Dems have the strongest majorities we’ve seen in quite a while, do we really see expansion of the federal education role in 2011 and 2012, when we could have razor-thin majorities and stronger anti-government sentiment?
  

Around the Edu-Horn, May 19, 2010

Eduflack Edu-horn
RT @TeacherBeat Hot performance-pay action: ED will announce the opening of the Teacher Incentive Fund grant program tomorrow.

RT @edReformer A call for teachers and tech savvy superintendents to share their stories with edreformer http://twaud.io/Xm7

RT @hechingerreport Worst job market for teachers since Great Depression? http://nyti.ms/aelh90

Spellings: NCLB still good policy – http://bit.ly/dsNZAz

An EdSec goes to Brooklyn – http://tinyurl.com/25j2ety

Around the Edu-Horn, May 18, 2010

Eduflack Edu-horn
Is support soft for Jersey’s RttT application?  http://tinyurl.com/22stozy
RT @gtoppo: Fraud in Head Start. http://bit.ly/bYfFc8#usat
Brill’s NYT preview of teachers’ unions “last stand” — http://tinyurl.com/36m8etm
And Brill’s EdWeek RttT analysis — http://tinyurl.com/27vacoz
RT @sgermeraad LA TImes ed board: change teacher contracts to include saner rules that benefit agreement.” http://bit.ly/aFRK8a
RT @EDPressSec RT @usedgov Sec. Arne Duncan’s statement on Central Falls agreement.   http://go.usa.gov/3ld

Around the Edu-Horn, May 17, 2010

Eduflack Edu-horn

When I first started this blog more than three years ago, the intent was to comment on how well the media was covering education policy issues.  And while the content found on this site may deviate from that original mission, it is still very much a concern of dear ol’ Eduflack.

I regularly try to refocus on this core mission, asking questions about whether the media is covering key issues, if the messaging is right, and how effective the engagement may be.  Each day, I reflect on dozens of stories, announcements, and reports to see what might tickle my fancy for a particular post.  Unfortunately, most of those items that tickle my fancy never make it onto the blog.  There just isn’t enough time in the day for me to write about everything I find of interest.
But all that time doesn’t go to waste.  Much of it gets posted up to my Twitter feed (@eduflack).  I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all those who follow me on Twitter, and how much I enjoy engaging with those of like minds.  This past weekend at Education Writers Association, it was incredible to meet all those reporters I’m “friends” with on Twitter, but whom I had not previously met.  
For a few months now, Alexander Russo began posting his “greatest hits” Twitter posts on his This Week in Education blog.  Starting today, Eduflack is going to “borrow” the practice.  At the end of each day, we’ll be posting up the top five or so links made available that day on Twitter.  Hopefully, some will find it useful.  And, also hopefully, none will find it repetitive.  
So now, the inaugural edition of Around the Edu-Horn:
GA’s Kathy Cox to lead new national ed org to help states with RttT goals — http://www.deliveryinstitute.org/index.html
Mark Schneider asks some tough questions of OECD — http://blog.american.com/?page_id=13698
RT @tvanderark NJ hosting debate on role of private enterprise in edu — http://bit.ly/9VKsbD
RT @hechingerreport In Central Falls, Rhode Island, looks like fired teachers will all be re-hired — http://bit.ly/byb4Mg
RT @eduflack: Asking of the strength of the term “ed reform” on @edReformer — http://tinyurl.com/25k2xrg

Is Ed Reform a Meaningless Term?

Eduflack edReformer

If you haven’t seen it yet, there is a new education social networking site on the block — edReformer.  Brought to us by Vander Ark/Ratcliff and originally incubated by New Schools Venture Fund, edReformer describes itself as “a community of advocates, innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors seeking to improve student learning worldwide” and “as a catalyst for innovation in the education sector by encouraging entrepreneurship and promoting public and private investment in new learning tools, schools, and platforms.”

In contributing to the dialogue, the good folks at edReformer are offering up news, information, interviews, and opinion on all things education policy, while utilizing blogs, Twitter (@edReformer), Facebook, and similar tools at our disposal to spread their gospel of education “excellence and equity through innovation.”
After some strong weeks of rich and interesting content, edReformer may have taken a major step back today.  They asked dear ol’ Eduflack to offer up a guest post from this year’s Education Writers Association conference.  The agitator that I am, I jumped at the chance, providing edReformer a post here building off of EWA attendee concerns that the term “education reform” has really lost its meaning.
Sounds like me, huh?  Going on a platform called edReformer and saying that the term ed reform has jumped the shark.  I must be looking to have my guest blogger invite pulled before the electronic ink is even dry.  But my thesis stands.  Because so many players new to the dance are misusing the term (just as we saw seven or eight years ago with scientifically based education research), then those who understand the term and are working toward real improvement, like edReformer, will get the short end of the stick.  If real reformers are going to be taken seriously, we need to restore honor to the term, while having a broader swath of education stakeholders understanding what we mean and working together to bring the meaningful improvement we seek.
Go and check out edReformer (and my ed reform post).  Personally, I think edReformer has the possibility of becoming a Huffington Post for education improvement and innovation, a place where a wide range of voices gather, learn, speak, and advocate.  I just hope Tom, Bennet, and Doug realize I don’t hate the playa, I hate the game.  And I’m hoping that efforts like edReformer are going to restore my faith in the game.
 

The Future of Education Media

Eduflack Media

What is the future of education journalism?  For the past several years, we have been hearing how national and regional newspapers have either dramatically reduced or downright eliminated their education news teams (with the most recent being the Associated Press’ plans to no longer have a single national K-12 education reporter, and instead distribute education responsibilities across a team of six great reporters who already have other responsibilities).

A reduced education reporter pool undoubtedly leads to reduced education coverage.  Last year, at a time when all in the education sector were abuzz about Race to the Top, i3, teacher quality, teacher layoffs, and general education reform, Brookings released its Invisible report, finding that only 1.4 percent of the national news in the first three quarters of 2009 was about education.  (A caveat, though, there are many who raise questions about Brookings’ methodology, particularly its decision that “education reporting” only counted if it was on the front page of the A section of a newspaper.  By the same measure, sports also didn’t score highly, but we all know that virtually every newspaper in the country has an entire daily section dedicated to athletics.)
Earlier this week, Brookings released a follow-up to Invisible, Re-Imagining Education Journalism.  This latest report provides some very interesting insights as to the future of education journalism, including a look at how news is delivered (news aggregators, blogs, etc.) and alternative business models (subsidized content, public support, etc.)  Eduflack waded into a similar discussion a little more than a year ago.
Such discussions are not merely academic.  Case in point — the launch of the Hechinger Report.  For those who have not yet checked it out this week, it is definitely worth your time.  A product of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College Columbia University and the brainchild of Hechinger leader and former LA Times ed reporter Richard Lee Colvin, the Hechinger Report is the future of education media TODAY.  In its first week, Hechinger is offering original news articles, opinion pieces, analyses, and blogs.  It is focusing content on the full educational spectrum — early childhood education, K-12, community colleges, and higher education.  And it is doing it with real, professional journalists (as opposed to citizen journalists like Eduflack).
News outlets are free to use Hechinger content, as long as they credit Hechinger.  And Team Colvin is also working with national news outlets to use the experienced Hechinger team to supplement existing education news coverage, particularly when it comes to investigative pieces.  
While it too early to see the full impact Hechinger Report may have on education news and education policy, the potential couldn’t be greater.  By tapping into experienced education journalists, Hechinger offers a level of quality and knowledge that is unmatched (particularly in the education space).  By taking the time to investigate, analyze, and generally look at issues at greater length, they are filling a role that is unfilled by newspapers that are just looking for eight-inch stories on the latest school board meeting.  And by pushing out a significant amount of high-quality content, they are reminding all of us of the relevance of good education news coverage.
Personally, I think Colvin is really onto something here.  While Hechinger Report may never become an education AP (and it is not intended to become so), it does stand a real chance of becoming an education-focused ProPublica.  It’s not looking to replace existing coverage; it is focused on enhancing and supplementing current work.  It makes a publication’s education coverage better, providing richer analysis and exploration than a daily newspaper grind may allow.  And no pressure, I believe that means the Pulitzer for investigative journalism is due to Hechinger in 2013 or 2014 by ProPublica’s measure then.  
If we are serious about focusing more attention on education improvement, we must broaden the dialogue and expand the discussion on the key issues of the day.  And that happens by supporting efforts like Hechinger Report.  Go ahead, steal Hechinger’s content.  I’m sure Colvin won’t mind!
        

The Ed Policy/Social Networking Nexus

Eduflack technology

When it comes to the education sector, what is the future of social media and networking?  That was the question that dear ol’ Eduflack addressed at a presentation yesterday to the Knowledge Alliance.  But it is an issue that I hear a great deal about, and no one is quite sure what to do with.

Education seems to be one of the last sectors to “join the party” when it comes to what is new and cutting edge.  We were late comers to the Internet and websites.  We were slow to embrace blogs (though it is important to note how sites like Eduwonk were quite cutting edge, for both education and other sectors).  And we’ve been dangerously tardy on on social media opportunities, including Facebook and Twitter.
The latter may be due to the fact that we aren’t quite sure how to use these tools.  In a perfect world, social networking sites are designed to help education organizations and educators do a number of things.  We share information.  We receive information.  We start grouping ourselves with like-minded organizations.  We engage in discussions, ask questions, and, yes, network.  Social media tools are meant to be more than just glorified RSS feeds, where we push out the latest press release or research study.  They are mean to encourage dialogue and interaction.  No one way communication here, please.
But doing so requires us to give up some of the control.  It means opening ourselves up to negative comments (far more than one does by allowing comments on a blog).  It means letting others shape our discussions.  It means giving our competitors a closer look at what we are doing.  And it means holding ourselves up for public scrutiny, where we can be called out for what we post, what we don’t post, and everything in between.  
So instead of addressing the future of social media in education, isn’t the more appropriate question really how education can better adopt our current social networking platforms?  For instance:
* Facebook — At this point, we are all on FB.  But is this really the tool to promote our organizations?  Over the past year, Eduflack has noticed more and more of his friends cutting back on their FB access, trying to restrict it to family and friends, and cutting the professional components out.  Many individuals don’t want to be friends with their boss, and they certainly don’t want their employer to see those photos from last weekend’s bar crawl or last summer’s Cabo outing.  And as much as we want to be “fan” of the organization that cuts our paychecks, what is going up on that FB feed that we don’t already get from our website, intranet site, and company-wide emails.
Yet we see a lot of groups building those Facebook pages and working to boost their “fan” numbers into the hundreds or the thousands.  To those doing it, mazel tov.  But Eduflack urges you to do it for the right reasons.  Simply posting all of your press releases up there is not maximizing FB.  You need to use the fan page to engage and start conversations.  Don’t just push information out, solicit information.  One of the great examples of this on Facebook is Edutopia, which is regularly asking questions and soliciting opinions.  They are using FB to truly build a social networking community, and I believe they are seeing the results.
* Twitter — Ah, Twitter, one of @Eduflack’s favorite places.  I admit it, I love to play on Twitter.  I probably post 10-20 things a day on my @Eduflack feed.  But when I started Tweeting last year, I set a few ground rules.  I don’t Tweet personal information.  I try not to Tweet personal opinion.  I use my feed to share all of the education policy news articles, research studies, events, and general activities that I find interesting.  So while it goes through that personal filter, I use Twitter to serve as a personal clearinghouse for all things ed policy and ed reform.
But I also make sure I am regularly reTweeting items from others that I trust or generally adore.  I will engage in discussions or ask questions of others on Twitter.  I show appreciation for the #FF and other notes.  I may not be perfect at Twitter, but I am trying to use it for the networking tool it is intended to be.  And in a shameless plug, follow me @Eduflack.  And check out my “top-ed-feeds” list, including great Tweeters like @Drynwyn, @alexanderrusso, @tvanderark, @edequality, and all of the blog feeds coming from @educationweek.
That becomes the challenge for many organizations.  Do you just push out your own information?  Do you tweet about competitors’ work?  Can an organization state an opinion or engage in a conversation?  In working with the American Institutes for Research, we’ve been investing some time in building up a Twitter presence.  To do so, we’ve set forward with a basic goal — serve as a one-stop show for high-quality social and behavioral research.  And that will mean more than just AIR’s work.  It is in the infancy stage, but @AIR_Info is starting to head in the direction Twitter intended.
Twitter also offers some unique advocacy opportunities for an organization.  This week, the education technology community utilized Twitter to raise attention to the fact that ed tech programs in general, and EETT in particular, are not part of the current budget negotiations.  So yesterday, the ed tech community hosted a Tweet for #edtech day.  They urged everyone in their communities to Tweet on the importance of ed tech and the need to restore $500 million in funding for EETT.  At the end of the day, organizations like SETDA, CoSN, and ISTE (whom Eduflack has long had a relationship) secured thousands of Tweets with an identified hash tag (like #eett or #edtech).  If one factors in the non-hash tagged posts, the number of ed tech tweets yesterday probably doubled, demonstrating a strong, singular voice for a particular education policy issue.  Now that is the power of social networking.
* LinkedIn — We don’t often think about LinkedIn as a education organization networking tool, but it has value.  For larger organizations, you can see a significant number of employees and former employees who all list the organization as an employer.  That gives you a base for engagement.  But LinkedIn’s true value is the use of the discussion groups.  One can start a discussion group on a given topic, then start inviting participants.  You build a small community to focus on an issue.  Each day, you get a email in your inbox updating you on the latest contributions to the discussion thread.  For those of us who use LinkedIn passively (meaning we only visit when we get a request to link in), the daily discussion reminders can do wonders to help us engage.
Ultimately, though, there is no magic bullet when it comes to education and social networking.  it doesn’t cost a lot of money, but it does require the investment of time and the commitment of the organization.  It can be tough to quantify the ROI for a CEO.  But if used successfully, it can really help with message, engagement, and discussion.  And isn’t that the point? 

High Standards By What Measure?

Eduflack accountability, Achievement gap, assessment

Since the introduction of AYP measures more than eight years ago, we have heard many a tale of states accused of “cooking the books” in order to look strong under the latest school evaluation tools.  The most common tale is that of states that continually drop their state standards, hoping to demonstrate the sort of continuous student gains the federal law was seeking.  Instead of improving instruction, states simply lowered expectations.  Each year, more students on the fringes would hit proficient.  But what, exactly, did proficient mean?

Now that the U.S. Department of Education has taken up reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, issued a rallying cry for common core standards, and encouraged a strengthening of such standards through Race to the Top, the subject has taken on even greater importance.  And now Education Next has offered up some startling statistics startling statistics regarding where states — including those seen as the leading reformers — really stand when it comes to good, hard standards.
According to Paul Peterson and Carlos Xabel Lastra-Anadon, we see that only two states — Massachusetts and Missouri — are at the top of the class when it comes to the strength of their state standards.  Meanwhile, Tennessee is at the very bottom of the list, with Nebraska, Alabama, and Michigan nipping closely at the Volunteer State’s heels.
To get at the true “strength” of each state’s standards, the study compared state standards with NAEP standards.  So it should be no surprise that Massachusetts, historically the top-performing NAEP state, is at the top of the pack.  What is so disturbing, though, is how few states can truly match up with the NAEP standards.  In eighth grade, only seven states scores above a C for reading standards.  And only 13 managed to score above the mid-mark for math.
This very topic was also the subject of testimony testimony heard by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee last week.  Dr. Gary Phillips, VP and Chief Scientist at American institutes for Research and former head of the National Center for Education Statistics, went right into the lion’s den to tell the HELP Committee, including Tennessee’s Senator Lamar Alexander, that we have real problems when it comes to state standards, particularly in Tennessee.  It should be noted that Senator Alexander, the former U.S. Education Secretary, graciously accepted the fact that Tennessee has struggled, in the past, with establishing high standards.  But the Volunteer State is now committed to fixing the problem.  
In his remarks, Phillips pointed out:

The most significant thing wrong with NCLB is a lack of transparency. The severe consequences of failing to meet AYP had the unintended consequence of encouraging states to lower, rather than raise, their own standards. The law inadvertently encouraged the states to dumb down their performance standards to get high rates of proficiency. The fact that states dumb down their performance standards can be seen in Figures 1 and 2 in this document. The “percent proficient” in these tables represent what was reported by NCLB in Grades 4 and 8 in mathematics in 2007. In my remaining remarks I will use Grade 8 to illustrate my points. In Grade 8 we see that Tennessee is the highest achieving state in the nation while Massachusetts is one of the lowest. If parents were looking to raise a family in a state with an excellent track record of success based on NCLB data, they should move their family to Tennessee. However, there is something wrong with this picture. We know that NAEP reports exactly the opposite with Massachusetts the highest achieving state and Tennessee being one of the lowest achieving states. 

Phillips notes that we not only have that ever-present achievement gap looming over us, but if we look at NAEP and international benchmarks like TIMSS and PISA, we have an even more ominous expectation gap hovering.  In his analysis, Phillips noted that there is almost two standard deviations of difference between Massachusetts and Tennessee.  So what does that mean for the average layman, the average parent, or the average policymaker?  It is pretty simple, and pretty scary.  if we look at what the average eighth grader in Tennessee is expected to know and be able to do, at least with regard to reading and math, that is what the average sixth grader in Massachusetts is doing.  Yes, two standard deviations means almost the equivalent of two grade levels.
So why is that so important?  To use a bad phrase, you do the math.  If there are essentially two grade levels of difference between standards in one state versus the other, what happens when the clock runs out?  Those things to be learned and measured in 11th and 12th grade are never gained.  States graduate kids who are at a disadvantage for college, in theory knowing less and being able to do less than fellow students from other states.  And at a time when we are saying a college education is the name of the game, having students from a majority of states starting college behind — at least when it comes to proficiency in math and reading — is hardly the starting point we want for that non-negotiable of postsecondary education.
Obviously, this is why the common core standards are so important.  If every state is measured by the same yardstick, it becomes much harder to cook those books.  Yes, we will still have states looking to exempt certain student populations (like ELLs and special education) from the final calculations.  But hopefully that bar is the same for every student to clear.  It means a proficient student in Massachusetts is the same as a proficient student in Alabama is the same as a proficient student in Arizona.  That high school diploma has common meaning.  And those entering college are, hopefully, starting with the same core toolbox of skills and knowledge.
As the rewrite of ESEA begins, this is a issue to which Congress and the Administration have to give very clear, strong, and specific attention.  How do we strengthen standards across the board?  How do we ensure continued accountability for those standards, as we have under AYP?  And most importantly, how do we ensure that students are both learning and able to utilize the very skills we expect everyone to have at fourth grade, eighth grade, or upon high school graduation?
Lots of questions, yes.  But from reading Education Next, hearing Gary Phillips, and following the many others that are now keying in on this issue of meaningful standards, it is a topic we are now taking seriously.
  
(Full disclosure, Eduflack works with the good folks over at AIR.)