The future of urban education? On this evening’s CBS News, Katie Couric and company threw the spotlight on Washington, DC Public Schools and DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee. The relative puff piece credited Rhee with shaking things up, getting rid of the dead wood, and taking the steps necessary to change the culture and performance of an urban school system that has been in perpetual decline.
Yes, many would — and have — questioned some of Rhee’s actions. The local AFT affiliate has had their issues, particularly with the notion of “firing” teachers. Parents have been frustrated by being cut out of the loop, particularly when it comes to school closings and the elimination of principals they love. But meaningful reform does not come without criticism. If everyone agreed with Rhee, then she was likely avoiding hard decisions and just rearranging the educational furniture.
But there was one thing about the CBS segment that bothers Eduflack. Rhee is shown teaching in an elementary school classroom. For those of us in the greater DC area, we read about Rhee and DCPS almost daily. (I personally think the Washington Post goes out of its way to find bad photos of the Chancellor.) But I have never read or heard anything about her teaching in the classroom. If she’s doing it, she needs a PR team to better promote it. If not, the footage just contributes to the larger criticism that many actions are just for “show.”
The larger issue was the classroom Rhee was teaching. Maybe it was the camera angle, but it appeared she was teaching to an virtually all white elementary class. Nothing wrong with that, no, but if Rhee is taking a serious stand talking about the change needed to improve DCPS’ performance, she should be showing it in the classrooms that are most affected. She should be in SE DC, and not Upper NW.
At the end of the day, though, we know this is all just the dress rehearsal. How much longer will friends and foes alike give Rhee (and Mayor Fenty) until they ask to see the test scores and demand to see improvements in achievement? Ultimately, it is all about the numbers.
AFT
Mr. Weaver, Tear Down the NEA Wall
After putting their money on Hillary Clinton early on in the process, it seems the national teachers unions are quickly regrouping, endorsing Barack Obama for the presidency. The NEA (which never officially married Clinton, but clearly had bought a ring, announced that Reg Weaver is recommending the Assembly endorse Obama at next month’s convention. (Thanks to Flypaper for pointing out Mike Antonucci’s post on this).
Of course, the AFT had previously endorsed Clinton, has announced it “will engage in a process to prepare to make an endorsement for this fall’s general election.” Anyone who has been around the political block knows that the AFT endorsement of Obama isn’t that far behind. Hopefully, they’ll take the time to talk to McCain’s education team first, though.
Back in the winter, Eduflack asked what, specifically, AFT was supporting when it endorsed Hillary. And the question is even more valid regarding today’s endorsement (or proposed endorsement) of Obama. Is Reg Weaver endorsing Obama’s support for merit pay for teachers? His support for Teach For America style programs? Backing of charter schools? Or is he endorsing the recent rhetoric attacking high-stakes testing and NCLB? (I’ll put my money on the latter.)
I join with Obama in supporting merit pay for teachers and supporting charter schools, particularly in our inner cities. And I was impressed when he went into the NEA and supported incentive pay, particularly when the union has been so strongly against it. So does an endorsement of Obama mean the NEA is changing course on performance pay for teachers?
Unfortunately, we may never know. If yesterday’s post-primary statement from Weaver is any indication, this isn’t about Obama. It’s about the NEA supporting the Democrats. And that’s a cryin’ shame. Now is the perfect time for NEA to get both candidates to put their education platform together, and let the brothers and sisters of the NEA weigh and measure both.
If we’ve learned anything from the Democratic primary, it is that hope trumps fear. The positive far outweighs the negative. And the high ground is far more adventageous than the mud pits. Unfortunately, Weaver seems to have missed that point. In calling on his nearly 3 million members to endorse the presumptive Democratic nominee, Weaver says:
“You can go down any list of what public school employees believe they need to truly help every child be successful, and you’ll see that Senator Obama supports that list and that Senator McCain not only opposes it, but has probably already voted against it.”
It’s unfortunate that the NEA can’t support Obama without attacking John McCain. The NEA has effectively sat itself on the bench for the past eight years on federal education policy, deciding it was easier to shout into the wind than to look for some middle ground with the current Administraton. If the Bush Administration wasn’t going to use the NEA’s ball, then the NEA just wasn’t going to play. And it looks like they are drawing the same line again this year.
I’m all for effective rhetoric, and during campaign times, I’ve been accused of being a little vitriolic. (For the record, I worked, successfully, on behalf for Democratic candidates, and have a keener than keen appreciation for the value of an NEA or AFT endorsement.) But when the NEA says that McCain has already voted against everything a child needs to be successful, they do the union, its members, and the students they teach a great disservice.
The NEA endorsement will go to the Democrat. We all know that. But let’s make it about the hopes, policies, and positions he stands for. It is an endorsement, and shouldn’t be an endorsement by rejection of the other guy.
No one has ever accused John McCain of being an opponent of education. If anything, now is the time for McCain to start formulating a real plan on federal education policy and demonstrate his commitment to reform and school improvement. He may not get the union endorsement, but that doesn’t mean he can’t get the votes of teachers.
Mr. Weaver, how about letting McCain speak to the collected membership and make an educated choice?
The Nexis of Eduwonk and Eduwonkette
Over the last week or two, Eduwonkette (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/eduwonkette/) has posted some interesting pieces on the TNTP study in NYC and the impact of the Absent Teacher Reserve. Today, Eduwonk (http://www.eduwonk.com/) points to the trickle-down impact of such issues on good teachers in Providence, RI.
If you’ve missed it, check out the following article. http://www.projo.com/education/juliasteiny/content/se_educationwatch11_05-11-08_PCA1S0R_v8.22a279c.html The short and dirty — an award-winning science teacher has been bumped from his job because a teacher with more seniority needed it. Doesn’t matter how effective he was. Doesn’t matter how much the students loved him. If he hasn’t been around the school yard for enough years, he’s got to step aside.
(And for the record, Andy, I’m grateful for road flare on the Providence Journal article. I wish there were fewer of these articles. I wish we had more positive stories. But I’ll gladly take Eduwonk’s help in sorting the wheat from the chafe any day of the week.)
Such stories are usually the exceptions to the rule, but they are a very real reality. They are why so many people believe education is the furthest thing from a meritocracy. We all want to believe that we do what we can to attract and keep the best teachers. We all want to believe that success should trump all. We all want to believe that classroom effectiveness trumps the number of punches on the timeclock. Then we hear stories like those of John Wempel, a Providence Teacher of the Year.
This is contrasted with national newspapers, which have been littered in recent weeks with letters regarding the need for increased teacher pay and defenses of teachers taking sick time. They rightfully defend the profession, citing the challenges of the job. But they also continue to classify teaching as a nine-month job with no vacation time.
So what is a union flak supposed to do? How do the AFT and the NEA defend the rights of their veteran teachers who have paid two decades of dues, but also defend the rights on less-senior teachers who are the future of the profession and are making a real difference in the classroom?
Eduflack is a simple man with simple thoughts. With ATR, my first question was why doesn’t NYC use this teacher pool to fill their need for substitute teachers? We always hear how expensive subs are. Seems if ATRs are drawing a check from the NYCDOE, they should be able to sub for no additional charge.
Providence becomes a more challenging scenario. “Bumping” is a scary practice for an school district on the decline. This gets further complicated because of the added layer of charter schools in Providence. We should say that a successful teacher — a teacher like Wempel — should always have a job as long as he wants it. The district, the school, his fellow teachers, and his students all recognized his value. But he was chronologically challenged, and had to pay for that.
Sure, Rhode Island legislators are now introducing bills to eliminate the “bumping” process. But that won’t solve the problem. Collective bargaining agreements are pretty clear. Veteran teachers, teachers with tenure, are guaranteed jobs. If we don’t put them in a classroom, they draw a salary to stay home and rediscover daytime television. So what is the answer?
The unions need to step up and figure out a solution before someone finds one for them. It is fine (and noble) to fight for each and every member of the profession. But at some point, they are also fighting for the future of teaching. We all believe we have good teachers in our schools. Don’t let instances like this one change our thinking and diminish our trust in our local schools.
If we don’t want to measure teachers based on student assessment numbers, give us an alternate measure. And years of service doesn’t count.
The “Face” of Teaching
We all like to believe our work life is our work life, and our private life is our private life. But despite the best of intentions, we know those lines are blurred. Employers monitor web traffic to see what employees are viewing. Too many individuals use their work emails for personal things (including job searches). Many of us spend far more than the traditional eight hours working, resulting in a blending of work and personal as we try to take advantage of those free moments when we get them.
This is particularly true of teachers. They have their traditional work day, then typically have hours of grading or prep work during their “personal” time. They give up evenings for parent-teachers and before- and after-school time for student conferences and tutoring. Many teachers even make themselves available online to students, offering IM and email addresses for questions or concerns.
Now along comes Facebook. For those living under a rock, Facebook (and similar sites like MySpace) seem to be designed to purposely blur the lines between public and private life. Over the last year, Facebook has grown as a tremendous professional networking tool. Even Eduflack has a Facebook page, with 61 current friends (I know, pathetic, but I am still waiting for fellow U.Va. alum Tina Fey to accept my invitation). It is an interesting tool to keep up with friends and colleagues, and witness how circles of influence spread and grow.
This morning’s Washington Post has a story on the darker side of Facebook, with a piece on teachers “going wild.” See the full story here at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/27/AR2008042702213.html?hpid=topnews.
It is a fascinating piece. The special ed teacher who posts an online bumper sticker using the term “retard.” Risqué photos of scantily clad educators. Vulgar words and semi-smutty thoughts. All the things you would expect from 20-somethings engaging in modern day versions of bull sessions.
These sorts of articles are unfortunate because they tag all teachers with this same judgment brush. Now, when we hear a teacher is on Facebook or MySpace, we expect the worst. It could simply be a way to keep in touch with members of the college honor society or the local bible study group, but all we’ll see is “Teachers Gone Wild.”
When Eduflack first started working on Capitol Hill as a wet-behind-the-ears 20-year-old, one of the first things he was cautioned on was elevator conversations. Never say anything on a Hill elevator. You never know who is in the box with you. You never know what they hear. You never know who they’ll repeat it to.
When I do media training, I always caution my clients about anything they say (or write in an email). They can say it is private and confidential, but you need to be prepared for it to make the front page of the paper, the lead of the evening news, or the breaking story on a blog or website.
Teachers know this too. You don’t see a teacher throwing back a six pack at the high school football game. Too many people are watching. Too many will talk. The same is true about web content. We’ve been googling people for years. Now, we can learn far more than we want to from individual websites, blogs, twitter accounts, and Facebook pages.
We have to believe that virtually all teachers show proper discretion and don’t post information on the web that would embarrass them, their families, or their employers. Heck, we expect this of most professionals, whether they be educators or not. Is it fair to question the professional judgment of a teacher who lacks the personal judgment to distinguish between public and private information? Maybe. Should we monitor the online postings of our children’s teachers? Probably. Is this a problem we need to add to the global worry list? Of course not.
Perhaps newbie teachers just need a little sibling advice from their big brothers and big sisters at the AFT and NEA. Caution new teachers about blogs and websites and such and how public school critics may be monitoring them. Remind them that anything they post on their personal life could enter into their professional life. Ask them if they really want their students and their parents to see those photos of the last beach week or the beer bash at last year’s homecoming.
If those photos and musings are so important to you, keep a scrapbook. If you wouldn’t post it on your classroom’s bulletin board, it probably shouldn’t be on your Facebook site.
The Standard Approach
It’s a standards-based world, and we’re all just living in it. We all are looking for improvement in our schools. We want to see real results. To get there, we need strong standards by which to measure the results. As Yogi Berra said, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re never going to get there.
Whether they be state, national, or international, standards are necessary to school improvement. We need yardsticks to know how our kids and our classrooms are doing. And we need to know how we compare to schools, both across the state and around the globe.
Personally, Eduflack would like to see a common national education standard. Yes, local control of schools is an important part of both our history and our future. But with a constantly evolving population, one that is more and more transient, it is just as important to ensure a quality education for all. From our urban centers to our rural heartlands, from New England to Appalachia to the Badlands to the Pacific Northwest, all children should succeed. A fifth grader is a fifth grader, wherever she is studying. A high school graduate is a high school graduate, wherever he receives his diploma. National standards ensure that equality, putting equally strong instruction and curriculum in classrooms across the country.
So why don’t we have such standards yet? Some still question why standards are needed. Others can’t see how to develop and implement them effectively. And still others see it as infringing on the rights of educators across the country.
The urban legend tells us that teachers are opposed to such standards, believing they stifle creativity and true instruction in the classroom. We hear that teaching is more art than science, and standards simply reduce us to teaching to the test. To some, teachers are one of the greatest obstacles to adopting meaningful education standards.
That’s the fiction, but let’s take a look at the facts. Good teachers actually embrace standards, seeing them as goals on which to focus. They ensure that curriculum and data collection and training and learning materials are being chosen wisely. They work to leave no child behind. And they empower teachers to strengthen the necessary linkages between meaningful standards, classroom content, and student performance.
Case in point is the latest issue of American Educator from the American Federation of Teachers.
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring2008/index.htm
American Educator has focused its spring 2008 edition on the need for clear, content-specific state education standards. Offering perspectives from both educators and researchers, it is an interesting read. It reminds us of the AFT’s commitment to standards, while helping us erase the fiction that has blamed teachers for blocking standards.
If our goal is national standards, then meaningful state standards are a necessary step. Today, we can look at standards like those developed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and say, “that state gets it.” Imagine if we had such strong standards in all 50 states. Imagine if those states then all got together, and agreed to a common national standard. And imagine if AFT was a part of such a discussion. It’s enough to instill just a little bit of glee in the heart of an ed reformer.
“America’s Worst Teachers”
The job of public school teacher is one of the hardest out there. Low pay. Abuse (mostly verbal, but at times physical) from students and parents. Lack of autonomy. Proscriptive instructional approaches. Regular turnover. And we know it is only going to get worse in the coming years, as more than half of the current teaching workforce gets ready to retire after committing their adult lives to education.
Yes, the job is hard. Yes, it takes a very special person who is able to go into the classroom, day in and day out, for decades and do whatever is necessary to inspire kids to learn. Not everyone can be a teacher, despite what many of us would like to think. It is still a calling for most, and on that just isn’t understood or appreciated, particularly in today’s environment.
That is why is was so disheartening to see the very worst of our “reality TV” culture hit the teaching profession this morning. If you’ve missed it, in several leading national newspapers (I saw it in this morning’s USA Today) the Center for Union Facts is running a national contest to “Vote for the Worst Unionized Teachers in America.” The anti-union group intends to pay 10 teachers $10,000 each to quit their teaching jobs.
The ad provides a strong image of a rotting apple, complete with worm. And the ad copy is short, but none to sweet. “Old union rules keep incompetent teachers in the classroom. It often costs over $100,000 in legal fees to replace a teacher. Help our kids get the education they need — let’s replace the bad apples.”
Of course, a good teacher would teach you that it should be “more than $100,000” since over signifies a spacial relationship. But I’m not an English teacher, and this isn’t a grammar lesson. This is a lesson on the impact of our communications activities.
The Center for Union Facts definitely knows how to grab attention. These ads will undoubtedly result in a number of news articles about the issue. (USA Today is running the ad, and has a story about it in the paper). And the Center is committing big bucks to this. Such full-page ads don’t come cheap, and there is the $100,000 bounty as well.
But this seems to be more of a “gotcha” experience than a real quest to improve the schools. The 10 worst teachers all have to agree to allow the Center to publicize their exit from the profession. How many teachers out there are willing to be publicly humiliated, even for $10,000? How many of any of us would be willing to admit or accept that we are one of the 10 worst in our chosen profession?
In this time of highly qualified and highly effective teachers, we all want to see successful educators in our classrooms. We all want to know our kids have good teachers. We want to know they are doing what works, and that our kids and our schools are better for it.
How, then, does the Center — or anyone for that matter — determine who they worst teachers are? If we base it on test scores alone, don’t we need to factor in the resources we made available to the teachers? Do kids and their parents vote, allowing them to go after the “hard” teachers or those who won’t cut them a break or let them slide? At what point do we have to look at the kids and appreciate what a teacher has to work with? Is there a test they take, sort of an NBCT-lite test? Are there computer rankings, like those we’ll see this week for the NCAA basketball tournament? How, exactly, do we measure “worst?”
Clearly, the Center is targeting the NEA and the AFT. If not, this wouldn’t be about “unionized” teachers. Clearly, a charter school teacher or a private school teacher should be able to qualify as on of the nation’s worst teachers, no? That’s only fair and equitable. We all should have the chance to be the very best … or the very worst at what we do.
Yes, there are likely some teachers in our public schools today who probably shouldn’t be there. And those teachers know it. They know they don’t feel the passion. They know they feel the frustration. They know they aren’t having an impact. But they tend to be the exceptions, not the rule.
If the Center for Union Facts has issue with the NEA and AFT, they should go after the unions and go after them hard. There are areas where unions can be called to task for failing to meet the needs or follow the intentions of their membership. But don’t go after the individual teachers. Their job is hard enough. These ads only make it harder.
Want to deal with the worst teachers? Spend that $250,000 or so on PD for struggling teachers. Think of it as supplemental ed support for those teachers. That will help kids get the education they need.
Mis-assessing Teacher Assessment
How, exactly, do you grade a teacher? For years now, the education community has debated the value of measuring teachers based on student achievement. The concept is a simple one — teachers succeed when kids achieve. Students score well on district, state, or national assessments, and the teachers are effective. Good teaching aligns with student achievement.
In Polk County, Florida, policymakers decided to take it a step further by requiring an additional way to rate teacher achievement beyond student performance on standardized tests. The result? Use teacher-determined student grades to grade our teachers.
Huh? Let Eduflack get this straight. Teachers are evaluated based on student classroom grades. Teachers hand out those grades. So “A” teachers just need to give their students As. “C” teachers are those foolish enough to give their students C grades. And let’s not even talk about those “F” teachers.
In Florida, teachers seem to be taking issue with this scheme because they don’t have control over the students they receive. Teachers with a significant number of at-risk students run a higher risk of failure than those teaching honors classes. But shouldn’t we have a greater concern?
If this is the path our collective thinking is headed down, then we clearly don’t understand assessment, its intention, or its benefit. We wouldn’t dream of letting students grade their own assessment tests, would we? Is this really that different? Grading teachers on the subjective grades they hand out? What teacher would ink in that C or D for an underperforming student? This heads toward social promotion and grading on a curve, only on steroids.
What’s next? Licensing doctors based on customer satisfaction surveys, instead of board scores? Pilot’s licenses based on high scores on the latest PS3 game?
In the perfect world, assessments are scientifically based and replicable. We expect it to be third-party administered. We need to understand both the inputs and the outcomes, recognizing that we are assessed by our performance. We show what we know. We demonstrate learning and our ability to use it.
We want to assess our kids to ensure they are learning what they need to to continue to succeed in school. We assess them to ensure they are gaining the building blocks to achieve in life. ANd we are looking to assess teaches to know that they are teaching our kids the right things. We want effective teachers. And good teachers want to make sure their colleagues are effective as well.
Florida policymakers mean well. They are seeking to reward teachers with performance-based bonuses, and they need to find an effective way to measure that performance. But good intentions don’t make good policy. Instead of looking at the alphabet grades of students, Florida administrators might be better off looking at recommendations like the NCLB Commission’s effective teacher criteria or the legislation proposed by Coleman, Lieberman, and company last year on effective teaching.
What message do we send about student assessment issues when we communicate such a poor message on effective teacher evaluation? If we expect our teachers to get the job done, we should know what to look for. We shouldn’t just know it when we see it. Effective teaching can be both quantified and qualified. And if legislators don’t know how to do it, I’m sure the AFT can provide them some counsel.
The Next Education President?
Does a personal endorsement of a presidential candidate matter? Last week, Eduflack suggested that college presidents should play a more active role in endorsing political candidates, lending their support to those who can best help grow the institution, support the students, and improve the quality and access to postsecondary education.
This week, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy (MA) threw his support to Barack Obama, symbolically passing the torch from JFK to the junior senator from Illinois. Much has been written on the issue, particularly on whether Obama or Bill Clinton is more Kennedy-esque. It raises another question though. Is Senator Kennedy also endorsing his preference for the next “education president?”
After all, Kennedy has worked with both Obama and Hillary Clinton on his Senate Education Committee these past three years. He’s seen them both in action. They’ve both introduced legislation that has been heard before his committee. He’s campaigned for both of them in their respective Senate races. He must know more about their education policy stances than the average bear, no?
Yes, Clinton has already gained the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers. They are strong in New York City, strong in New York State. Obama, meanwhile, spent part of his summer talking about merit pay for teachers, and issue the unions have resisted. So an AFT endorsement for Clinton, particularly last year when all assumed the race would be over by now in a Clinton blowout, was to be expected.
During the past month, Obama has picked up the endorsement of both Kennedy and House Education Committee Chairman George Miller (CA). That’s a powerful statement to the education community. Kennedy and Miller are likely the leaders who will shepherd NCLB’s successor in 2009 (assuming we don’t heed the President’s call and reauthorize this election year). As chairmen of their respective committees, they speak for education policy in the U.S. Congress, and have for some time. And they have both stood up to say Obama is their guy. That means something, particularly with the policy community and the education blob here in our nation’s capital.
What about the Republicans? By CongressDaily’s latest count, House Education Chairman Buck McKeon (CA) has lent his support to Mitt Romney. Based on McKeon’s commitment to education reform issues, that endorsement says a great deal about the possibilities of the former Massachusetts governor. On the Senate side, Education Chairman Mike Enzi is still in the uncommitted category. Maybe he is waiting on Romney or John McCain to talk about the importance of rural education for his Wyoming constituents.
What does it all mean? Will we see an Obama education platform in the fall that shows Kennedy and Miller’s full fingerprints? That certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing for teachers and kids across the country. What about a Romney education platform that shows the imprimatur of the school improvement-minded McKeon? It sure beats past GOP platforms calling for the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education.
Either way, while the candidates may not be talking in public much about education issues, these endorsements signal the candidates are listening to the right people and are saying some of the right things behind closed doors. And that is why such personal endorsements are important. None of us know what an Obama or a Romney Education Department would look like. But if they are working in partnership with Kennedy or McKeon, we have some understanding of — and some hope for — what the future of federal education policy may hold.
Forget the Pointy Heads, Bring it to Main Street
As many continue to push (with limited impact) to make education a primary discussion topic for the 2008 presidential races, some education discussion is starting to seep through. Maybe we’re getting sick of talking about waterboarding and obstructionists in Congress and four-year old votes. But little by little, we’re starting to get a few interesting nuggets. And none more interesting that Hillary Clinton and the writeups she received in The Washington Post these past two days.
In this morning’s editions, the Post has Hillary running new campaign commercials calling for the end of No Child Left Behind. This may be news to Senator Kennedy and his work on NCLB 2.5, but Hillary is now opposed to the law. Perhaps the rhetoric is the price one pays to win the endorsement of the NEA. Or perhaps she has heard the high-stakes testing chorus sing one too many verses on the perils of NCLB. Regardless, Hillary now joins Bill Richardson on the “all our educational ills are due to NCLB” bandwagon.
The more interesting piece, though, was included as part of a massive profile of Hillary appearing in the Sunday Post. Dana Milbank has a great piece, entitled Teaching the Teachers, that provides a glimpse into how Hillary truly thinks about education. The article can be found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801442.html.
What it demonstrates is that, in Hillary-land, education is a discussion between policymakers and practitioners only. It is a talk for the government and for teachers. And those other stakeholders we know are necessary — the parents, the students, the business community — and all those affected by the end result of our K-12 system, are really just an after-thought, unimportant to the discussion.
Milbank sums up Hillary’s thinking best — “Let’s hear it for facility preparedness and adequacy! Put your hands together for kinesthetic learning and the de-homogenization of the classroom! Save the in-age cohort!”
Hillary’s talking inside baseball, and she only seems to want to speak to those who are warming up on that field. Instead of seeing education as a great equalizer, as an issue that touches virtually every citizen, and as a continuous issue with real impact on the economy and the healthcare system and criminal justice and all points in between, she sees it as a theoretical discussion for the practitioners. And that’s a real shame.
Yes, these issues may indeed be important when discussing education reform with teachers and administrators. Sure, you need to show teachers you know the issues and you are one of the smartest people in the room when it comes to their concerns and their priorities. But you can’t lose sight of the larger constituency here.
We all want to hear how you are going to improve our schools, improve the quality of teaching, and boost student achievement. But instead of presenting a doctoral dissertation on the motivational misgivings of the North American third grade classroom, how about offering some practical solutions on how we, as a community, can do better? When you were First Lady, it took a village. When it comes to improving our public schools, it still takes a village. Relate it to me. Talk to me. Show me what I can do to improve the quality of our schools and the instruction they offer.
Clearly, Hillary must have demonstrated this vision when she won the AFT endorsement earlier this year. Again, now is the time to show it to us. If you want to kill NCLB, that’s great. But tell us what you will do instead. We’ve had enough of the politics and communications of destruction. The time has come for the rhetoric of solutions. And if they are real solutions that can work in a school and a class like mine, all the better.
In this morning’s editions, the Post has Hillary running new campaign commercials calling for the end of No Child Left Behind. This may be news to Senator Kennedy and his work on NCLB 2.5, but Hillary is now opposed to the law. Perhaps the rhetoric is the price one pays to win the endorsement of the NEA. Or perhaps she has heard the high-stakes testing chorus sing one too many verses on the perils of NCLB. Regardless, Hillary now joins Bill Richardson on the “all our educational ills are due to NCLB” bandwagon.
The more interesting piece, though, was included as part of a massive profile of Hillary appearing in the Sunday Post. Dana Milbank has a great piece, entitled Teaching the Teachers, that provides a glimpse into how Hillary truly thinks about education. The article can be found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801442.html.
What it demonstrates is that, in Hillary-land, education is a discussion between policymakers and practitioners only. It is a talk for the government and for teachers. And those other stakeholders we know are necessary — the parents, the students, the business community — and all those affected by the end result of our K-12 system, are really just an after-thought, unimportant to the discussion.
Milbank sums up Hillary’s thinking best — “Let’s hear it for facility preparedness and adequacy! Put your hands together for kinesthetic learning and the de-homogenization of the classroom! Save the in-age cohort!”
Hillary’s talking inside baseball, and she only seems to want to speak to those who are warming up on that field. Instead of seeing education as a great equalizer, as an issue that touches virtually every citizen, and as a continuous issue with real impact on the economy and the healthcare system and criminal justice and all points in between, she sees it as a theoretical discussion for the practitioners. And that’s a real shame.
Yes, these issues may indeed be important when discussing education reform with teachers and administrators. Sure, you need to show teachers you know the issues and you are one of the smartest people in the room when it comes to their concerns and their priorities. But you can’t lose sight of the larger constituency here.
We all want to hear how you are going to improve our schools, improve the quality of teaching, and boost student achievement. But instead of presenting a doctoral dissertation on the motivational misgivings of the North American third grade classroom, how about offering some practical solutions on how we, as a community, can do better? When you were First Lady, it took a village. When it comes to improving our public schools, it still takes a village. Relate it to me. Talk to me. Show me what I can do to improve the quality of our schools and the instruction they offer.
Clearly, Hillary must have demonstrated this vision when she won the AFT endorsement earlier this year. Again, now is the time to show it to us. If you want to kill NCLB, that’s great. But tell us what you will do instead. We’ve had enough of the politics and communications of destruction. The time has come for the rhetoric of solutions. And if they are real solutions that can work in a school and a class like mine, all the better.
Marketing NCLB
On several occasions, Eduflack has advocated for a national “marketing” effort for NCLB, seeing public support and demand for the law as one of the only means to get it reauthorized with real improvements, but without significant overhaul. Earlier this week, a reader asked, “Wonder what I would write for a NCLB marketing campaign. Isn’t Spellings a walking sound bite?”
Anyone who has been reading the ed blogs — particularly Alexander Russo’s — knows there’s been a lot of talk about the teacher unions’ ability to scuttle any talk of NCLB reauthorization this year. AFT and NEA deserve a lot of credit for their execution of a good communications strategy. They were able to control the NCLB story, keeping it an inside baseball discussion and limiting to a small collection of policy wonks, education organizations, researchers, and, at times, ed bloggers. Thus it was easy for the House and Senate decisionmakers to table the issue for a new year. The unions planned and executed an effort that worked. The set a goal, the set the terms of debate, and they dominated the discussion. That’ll get you victory on just about any stage.
Which gets us back to the question about a marketing campaign. Are communications victories won by sound bite, or won by solid strategy? If we go with the former, Margaret Spellings should indeed be taking a victory lap on NCLB reauthorization. Last year, she deemed the law, like Ivory soap, 99.99% effective. And this year, she’s had many a good turn of phrase with the education media, the general media, Jon Stewart, and countless others. Yes, she knows her message, nows how to stick to it, and knows how to get folks to listen to it.
The NCLBers are fine when it comes to message. The law works. It’s effective. We have data to prove it. Education improvement shouldn’t be flavor of the month. Et cetera, et cetera. But message is one of the last pieces to the effective strategy. And in many ways, the U.S. Department of Education has skipped over many of the needed steps, in the hopes of advancing directly to Boardwalk and Park Place.
What’s missing? Eduflack suggests a few key components to a solid communications strategy:
* Goals — Media coverage is not a goal for a communications plan. Goals are things like effective implementation, reauthorization, teacher recruitment, etc. Any campaign needs clear and achievable goals. And we must recognize we can’t be everything to everybody. If we have multiple goals, we may need multiple strategies to get there.
* Analysis and Application of Research — No, I’m not talking the student achievement data. Year after year, we get public opinion surveys from PDK, NEA, and others charting NCLB satisfaction. That data should be analyzed, broken down, and used as a foundation for communications planning. It tells you what messages work, and what don’t. And it provides third-party validation for communications activities.
* Audience Identification and Segmentation — Who are we talking to? For years, NCLB was a dialogue between ED and educational researchers. It should be a discussion on Main Street USA, not in the ivory towers. Who is important to getting the law effectively implemented? Who is important to getting it reauthorized? It’s parents, teachers, business leaders, and community leaders across the country. It may be easier dealing with the AFT then rank-and-file teachers, but those individual teachers are the ones who carry the message into the classroom.
* Message Development — Some like to call these sound bites, but sound bites are canned sentences. Messages are the themes that all should be communicating. Whether it be the SecEd or the Secretary of Labor talking about jobs, the message needs to be on the need for NCLB, the progress to date, and the impact it will have on education and economy for decades to come.
* Relationship Development — Be it the media, influencers, organizational leaders, or the like, relationships are key. The days when ED could exclude organizations from the debate are over. They need all the help they can get on NCLB, and need to build the relationships that result in that help.
Then we get into the PR 101. Media relations. Public events. Conferences. New media/Internet. Speaking opportunities. Etc. These are the tactical pieces that ED tends to do well. The key is to bring them together under one umbrella, so all activities are working toward a singular, clear goal. If the tactic doesn’t help us reach the goal, then it isn’t necessarily worth doing. Time is precious. We use it on those activities that make a difference.
This is just the early outline of what an NCLB marketing plan needs to focus on. Sound bites are great, but they are a tactic, not a strategy. Just like the law itself, an NCLB communications plan needs goals. It needs methods of measurement. It needs feedback loops. It needs highly qualified professionals. It needs accountability.
Get a half-dozen communications professionals (with education policy knowledge) in a room for a day. Set some programmatic goals. Embrace the Yankelovich model for changing public behavior. And you could have a real blueprint for selling NCLB across the nation, and moving the debate from inside the ed blob to onto Main Street USA.
NCLB is all about doing what works. This sort of approach works. And it may be the only way we see NCLB reauthorization before the end of 2009.
Anyone who has been reading the ed blogs — particularly Alexander Russo’s — knows there’s been a lot of talk about the teacher unions’ ability to scuttle any talk of NCLB reauthorization this year. AFT and NEA deserve a lot of credit for their execution of a good communications strategy. They were able to control the NCLB story, keeping it an inside baseball discussion and limiting to a small collection of policy wonks, education organizations, researchers, and, at times, ed bloggers. Thus it was easy for the House and Senate decisionmakers to table the issue for a new year. The unions planned and executed an effort that worked. The set a goal, the set the terms of debate, and they dominated the discussion. That’ll get you victory on just about any stage.
Which gets us back to the question about a marketing campaign. Are communications victories won by sound bite, or won by solid strategy? If we go with the former, Margaret Spellings should indeed be taking a victory lap on NCLB reauthorization. Last year, she deemed the law, like Ivory soap, 99.99% effective. And this year, she’s had many a good turn of phrase with the education media, the general media, Jon Stewart, and countless others. Yes, she knows her message, nows how to stick to it, and knows how to get folks to listen to it.
The NCLBers are fine when it comes to message. The law works. It’s effective. We have data to prove it. Education improvement shouldn’t be flavor of the month. Et cetera, et cetera. But message is one of the last pieces to the effective strategy. And in many ways, the U.S. Department of Education has skipped over many of the needed steps, in the hopes of advancing directly to Boardwalk and Park Place.
What’s missing? Eduflack suggests a few key components to a solid communications strategy:
* Goals — Media coverage is not a goal for a communications plan. Goals are things like effective implementation, reauthorization, teacher recruitment, etc. Any campaign needs clear and achievable goals. And we must recognize we can’t be everything to everybody. If we have multiple goals, we may need multiple strategies to get there.
* Analysis and Application of Research — No, I’m not talking the student achievement data. Year after year, we get public opinion surveys from PDK, NEA, and others charting NCLB satisfaction. That data should be analyzed, broken down, and used as a foundation for communications planning. It tells you what messages work, and what don’t. And it provides third-party validation for communications activities.
* Audience Identification and Segmentation — Who are we talking to? For years, NCLB was a dialogue between ED and educational researchers. It should be a discussion on Main Street USA, not in the ivory towers. Who is important to getting the law effectively implemented? Who is important to getting it reauthorized? It’s parents, teachers, business leaders, and community leaders across the country. It may be easier dealing with the AFT then rank-and-file teachers, but those individual teachers are the ones who carry the message into the classroom.
* Message Development — Some like to call these sound bites, but sound bites are canned sentences. Messages are the themes that all should be communicating. Whether it be the SecEd or the Secretary of Labor talking about jobs, the message needs to be on the need for NCLB, the progress to date, and the impact it will have on education and economy for decades to come.
* Relationship Development — Be it the media, influencers, organizational leaders, or the like, relationships are key. The days when ED could exclude organizations from the debate are over. They need all the help they can get on NCLB, and need to build the relationships that result in that help.
Then we get into the PR 101. Media relations. Public events. Conferences. New media/Internet. Speaking opportunities. Etc. These are the tactical pieces that ED tends to do well. The key is to bring them together under one umbrella, so all activities are working toward a singular, clear goal. If the tactic doesn’t help us reach the goal, then it isn’t necessarily worth doing. Time is precious. We use it on those activities that make a difference.
This is just the early outline of what an NCLB marketing plan needs to focus on. Sound bites are great, but they are a tactic, not a strategy. Just like the law itself, an NCLB communications plan needs goals. It needs methods of measurement. It needs feedback loops. It needs highly qualified professionals. It needs accountability.
Get a half-dozen communications professionals (with education policy knowledge) in a room for a day. Set some programmatic goals. Embrace the Yankelovich model for changing public behavior. And you could have a real blueprint for selling NCLB across the nation, and moving the debate from inside the ed blob to onto Main Street USA.
NCLB is all about doing what works. This sort of approach works. And it may be the only way we see NCLB reauthorization before the end of 2009.
Eduflack By Patrick R. Riccards 