Arne Duncan

A Hand in the ARRA Till?

Eduflack Arne Duncan, NCLB, stimulus, technology

By now, we have all heard (many of us dozens of times) about the intent of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, particularly as it relates to public education.  The goal of the economic stimulus bill was to make our schools whole, financially.  For those districts that were forced to cut budgets, eliminate programs, or delay the adoption of new textbooks or technology over the past two years, their woes are now supposed to be over.  Federal money (and I’m talking the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund dollars) was intended to make up for those cuts.  School budget levels are to be restored to the highest of the past two years courtesy of the red-white-and-blue taxpayers.

That’s what is written in the law.  And that’s why the money is to go directly to the school districts.  The states serve merely as a pass-through for the dollars, a distribution checkpoint through which the feds can more effectively disseminate the dollars.  Money is not intended to go to state programs, nor are the states supposed to add any strings as to how it is funded.  SFSF is a lifeline to the school districts, and is designed to make up for their shortfalls (usually the result of previous state budget cuts).  Additional dollars, such as Title I, IDEA, and such also flow back directly into the districts, so we are supplementing and improving instruction on the ground, impacting the students we are trying to improve, rather than funding additional process and bureaucracy.
But something seems to have gotten lost along the way.  The Washington Post has a great story this AM about how the states are essentially looking to skim off the top of the SFSF, complete with a Mafia-laced quote about stimulus money “falling off the truck.”  The thinking here is relatively simple.  Yes, states are providing the LEAs the SFSF and related school improvement money as dictated under the stimulus bill.  But some are only doing so after schools give back some dollars to the county or to the state.  After all, while should the school district remain flush while other government agencies are suffering?  Why should the county pay its fair share into the schools (one of its primary obligations and the reason, in Virginia for instance, it collects property taxes) when the feds are issuing a blank check?
(As an aside, I must just say that WaPo has really raised its game when it comes to education policy reporting.  In recent months, the WaPo team has done some great work when it comes to capturing the world view and the local impact of ed policy, looking at key issues through both its federal/national lens and its local one.  And it only gets better when the WaPo editorial board and many of its columnists — I mean you Colby King — are covering these issues with great thought and regularity.)
Eduflack hopes that the examples laid out in WaPo this morning are exceptions to the rule, and not what we see happening around the country.  But I am enough of  a realist to know that this could very well become standard operating procedure.  Everybody wants a piece of the largest spending bill in town.  Everyone is hurting from the economic downturn.  So it shouldn’t surprise us that everyone wants a “taste” of what is intended for the school districts and for our students.
But officials who are acting on those wants should be ashamed of themselves.  Already, we are hearing stories of state legislatures that are looking to make deep, specific cuts to education spending because they know that the stimulus will make up the difference.  Already, we are hearing about states that are looking for “waivers” as to how they can spend their stimulus money, so they can redirect it to their preferred targets, rather than the students it was intended for.  And already we are now listening to tales of counties and localities looking to skim a little off the top so they can get a taste.  Reprehensible.
Education stimulus dollars are intended for education.  If we have heard anything that EdSec Arne Duncan has said or read anything ED has released in the guidance or related documents, it is that this is a one-time influx of cash.  Why is that important?  If a school district, county, or state makes a cut in anticipation of the ARRA money, they need to make up that cut next year or the following.  ARRA is not an open spigot of continuously flowing education dollars.  It is a one-time, stopgap funding act.  It is not intended to cover teacher salaries or offset core operating expenses or generally pay for the long-term operating expenses of a school district.  It is designed to fill the unexpected and unintended cuts our schools have faced in the past two years because of the economy, under the assumption that the localities and states will restore that funding soon, once the economy stabilizes and the state budget is in better shape.
That’s why so many are resistant to using ARRA to pay for teacher salaries and other such long-term obligations.  Once we get on that train, it is hard to get off and start walking on our own.  Stimulus money for teacher salaries becomes a long-term engagement, not a quick injection of funds.
At the end of the day, these stimulus dollars are intended to make sure that schools are spending on what they need in order to continue the learning process and move the needle on student achievement.  It is meant to end the logjam and the worry that has forced a district to delay a textbook adoption.  It is meant to loosen the pursestrings so that those hardware and software purchases that have been planned for years can be completed.  It is meant to place those supplemental learning materials in our low-performing classrooms, using this economic injection to provide an academic booster shot to students in need.
One of the greatest fears in town is that the stimulus money is not going to end up where it is intended.  That we are investing billions upon billions of dollars in our public schools, but won’t have anything to show for it.  That dollars are going to be thrown after process, rather than outcome.  That we will be investing in operations, rather than results.  Articles like these add fuel to that fire, and demonstrate the real need for strict federal oversight on how these funds are spent.  Simply offering technical assistance isn’t enough.  Perhaps it is time to revisit those intended NCLB SWAT teams, who will descend on school districts and make sure the money is spent as intended.  Those that do, continue to move forward.  Those that don’t, lose their dollars.  And those states or counties who try to undermine or circumvent the process face repercussions.
Education Trust has launched its Education Watch 2009 to keep a close eye on how the states are spending their money. (UPDATE: They are doing so by focusing on the results and outcomes.)  Perhaps we need similar watchdogs to oversee the LEAs, ensuring that money is spent as designated and that the layers of government that will touch ARRA will not be skimming dollars off the top before it reaches our students.
I recognize that ARRA represents an obscene amount of money when it comes to public school improvement.  I also know that, before the stimulus dollars, the feds were paying less than eight cents on every education dollar going into our public schools.  That means the vast majority of obligation for our schools rests with the states and localities.  That means the vast cost of our schools rests with the states and localities.  And that means the responsibility for results in our schools rests with states and localities.  The feds can provide ongoing booster shots of money and innovative grant pro
grams and a host of new ideas, but the heavy lifting, the real execution, and the improved results come from the states, localities, and schools themselves.  No matter whose name may be printed on the money or whose signatures may be on those initial checks. 

Vouching for DC Students

Eduflack Achievement gap, Arne Duncan, AYP, charter schools, DCPS, NCLB, vouchers

By now, the funeral procession for the DC school voucher program has been winding its was through the city streets.  Long a target of the status quo, the DC Scholarship Opportunity Program has been criticized for many things, chief among them for taking money from well-deserving DC public schools and handing it over to local private schools.  As of late, it has faced fire over its effectiveness, with opponents alleging that student achievement had not improved as a result of a change in environment and the empowerment of choice.

When it was introduced at the start of the NCLB era, the model was pretty simple.  DC public schools were failing a significant number of the very students it was designed to serve, to help, and to provide with the knowledge they needed to succeed.  Despite the rich network of public charter schools across the District, federal officials decided to introduce the voucher model, allowing families of children in truly failing schools to send their children to private schools in the area.  Private schools would agree to accept the “vouchers” in exchange for school tuition.  The plan was modeled after successful efforts in places like Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Florida.
Competition for the voucher program was fierce from the very start.  Families lined up 10-deep for the access to these vouchers, all looking to provide their kids a better choice and better options.  Interestingly, vouchers provided no more than $7,500 a year in tuition, fees, and expenses for private schools, less than 50 percent of what DCPS spends to educate its students in the public schools, even in the worst of its failing schools.
Critics have been chipping away at the program from the start.  When initial data showing promising results was released by researchers a few years, ago, we attacked it for being incomplete or not providing a full picture of the situation.  We’ve painted a picture that there has been a mass exodus from DCPS into Gonzaga, Sidwell Friends, and Georgetown Prep, where wealthy schools are getting wealthier off the backs of DCPS and DC taxpayers.  (Let’s forget that most voucher students were not going to these “blue chip” privates and all privates were taking a significant cut in their tuition to admit voucher students.)  Most recently, the dealt the death blow to the voucher effort in DC, getting funding stripped from the federal appropriations bill last month.  For all practical purposes, DC Vouchers is now dead as a doornail, even with more than 1,700 DC students taking advantage of the program.
What’s interesting, then, is the report that came out of the U.S. Department of Education yesterday afternoon.  Despite all of the chatter about the failure of the DC Scholarship Opportunity Program, an ED study determined that voucher students outperformed their public school counterparts on reading proficiency.  The full story can be found here at The Washington Post.
House of Representatives Republican Educator-in-Chief Buck McKeon has used the IES research to demonstrate that the voucher program works and demands it be continued.  Senator Joe Lieberman, who oversees the District in our senior legislative body, is talking about holding further hearings on the issue.  It begs the question, is the great DC voucher experiment as dead as it appeared just a week ago?
This has long been an issue of federal voices deciding what is best for the residents of Washington, DC.  The program was initiated by a zealous Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress who wanted to prove that vouchers were the solution to failing public schools.  The program has faced relentless attack from equally zealous Democrats in Congress (along with the national teachers’ unions) who believed it was robbing the public schools of needed financial resources and was undermining the very foundations of public education.
What about the residents of DC?  What about the very families who have been impacted (or who have chosen not to be) by the DC Voucher program?  One can look at the demand for the limited slots and say there is local public desire for the program. One can look at the qualitative surveys over the years, showing support for the program and satisfaction with its outcomes.  One can even look at recent efforts by the Washington Archdiocese to convert many of its Catholic schools (those where so many DC residents were attending through their vouchers) into public charter schools to ensure that those kids currently in the pipeline were not kicked out of their learning environments when the voucher program came to an end later this year.
WaPo’s Colbert King takes the issue even further this AM, calling on District leaders to make the ultimate decision on the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program’s fate.  What a novel concept.  Instead of seeking the permission and dollars of federal officials, Mayor Fenty, the DC Council, and other local leaders should talk to the community and determine if DC Vouchers are in the best interests of the city.  Imagine that.  Local officials making local education decisions, policies, and funding choices that affect local residents.  It’s almost as if one could build a governmental structure around such a silly idea.
But back to the key issue, the research.  IES has determined that DC voucher students are outperforming the public school peers when it comes reading scores.  Overall, the study found that voucher students were nearly four months ahead of non-voucher students when it came to reading skill.  Those students moving from the lowest-performing public schools did not show that level of reading gain.  And there appeared to be no difference in math proficiency.
Seems that such data requires more than a Friday afternoon media release, with the hopes that few notice it in our rush to celebrate the Palm Sunday weekend (or Eduflack’s birthday, whichever holiday you prefer).  Fridays are notorious for dumping information and data you hope will get short shrift from the media or will get overlooked entirely.  One has to ask if this data was available a few weeks ago when Congress was inflicting its death blow on DC vouchers.  If so, why wasn’t it discussed then?  And now that we do have it, how closely will we look at it?  Does the research model stand up to scrutiny, or does it have its failings like so many recent IES studies?  Do we have some real information here that needs to factor into education policy in our nation’s capital and throughout the country?
At the end of the day, what are we left with?  Is there public demand for vouchers in DC?  Absolutely.  Has the program been implemented effectively?  It appears so.  Is the program working?  It seems so.  Is the program a political atomic bomb?  Absolutely.
It seems, in this era of innovation and demands for improved student achievement, we need every opportunity and every good idea we can find.  If vouchers are showing promise in DC, shouldn’t we let the District decide if they continue the program, allowing us to see if that promise transforms into best practice?  And at some point, shouldn’t those decisions be made by the citizens the program is designed to affect, instead of by representatives who will never receive a single vote from a single resident of the District of Columbia?
Let’s take EdSec Arne Duncan at his word and that he does not want to end the voucher program for any student that is currently participating in it.  Even if we don’t add new students to the program, it seems there is a lot we can learn by supporting those already in the syst
em.  And we haven’t even touched on the positive impact we could have on those kids whose lives have been changed by providing them the opportunity to leave failing schools.  The choice itself has given them hope, a chance at opportunity, and a worldview that education can impact their lives.  That’s a return on investment we all should seek.

A New Learning Day?

Eduflack Achievement gap, Arne Duncan, AYP, Students

Does the traditional 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. school day fit the bill when we talk about our needs to innovate, close the achievement gap, and boost student achievement?  Is the current model of compartmentalized learning — one that clearly has not achieved its intended goals for these many generations — getting the job done in our 21st century environment?

Last week, EdSec Arne Duncan emphasized that extended learning opportunities were are important component of how economic stimulus dollars should be spent.  One has to believe that a portion of the Innovation Fund and a potential non-negotiable for the Race to the Top may be how school districts integrate outside-of-school-time (OST) activities into the day-to-day learning experience, providing students extensions to the learning day, further opportunities to learn, and the one-to-one interventions they need to overcome some of the gaps in the daily classroom experience.
About a year ago, at an event sponsored by Ed in 08, Chris Gabrieli — the chairman of the National Center on Time & Learning — spoke of recent Center efforts to supplement the learning experience and provide a leg up to many of those students that are tagged as the reason for our achievement gap.  Some of these stories are documented in Gabrieli’s book, Time to Learn: How a New School Schedule is Making Smarter Kids, Happier Parents, and Safer Neighborhoods.  Are Gabrieli’s ideas interesting?  Yes.  Are some of them audacious?  Absolutely.  But in forcing us to think about the learning process and the learning structure a little differently, it gets us to approach the job of teaching differently.  And those different approaches are the key to the innovation that is going to drive the day.
Such innovation may be just what is needed to shake up a system that has clearly grown stagnant.  Last week, Eduflack opined on the notion of extending the school year, while taking a closer look at what can be done to extend the learning day.  From a wealth of research, we know that the learning that happens outside of the 8-3 classroom is just as important as that happening within it.  That’s why we push parents to continue the learning process at home, both during the school year and during the summers.  That’s why we explore year-round schooling.  And that’s why we are recognizing the academic value of OST programs.  The era where OST was defined as midnight basketball is over.  Those programs that are truly effective are those that invest in the social and academic development of the student, enhancing the learning processes and building blocks that are established during the traditional school day.
But how do we move such efforts forward?  After all, it is nice for the EdSec to offer up rhetoric on the value of afterschool efforts, but how does such rhetoric transform into effective policy?  At a time when education dollars are at a premium and we aren’t sure how we are going to fund the core academic day, how do we ensure we are making the necessary investments in the afterschool programs that supplement and enhance the day, programs that give us a real opportunity to break the cycle of mediocrity that has long dominated our public education system?
The first step is likely happening down in New Orleans later this week.  The National Association of Elementary School Principals and the National AfterSchool Association are slated to launch a new initiative — Leading a Learning Day for All Children.  Leading a Learning Day’s goals seem simple, yet essential.  Organizers seek to establish a “seamless learning day where children are engaged, challenged and celebrated,” and where there is “more time for learning and helping children grow and develop with hands-on, active, and project-based learning.”  
Coming out of the Big Easy, NAESP and NAA hope to refocus OST efforts on five key principles:
* Redefinition of student success — Refining what student success means beyond the acquisition of basic skills and including assessments for attributes such as teamwork, civic engagement, and analytical thinking.
* Use of knowledge about how students learn best — Using our research-based knowledge about how children learn and become inquisitive and analytical thinkers to frame their cognitive and developmental experiences throughout the day, early to late and year round.
* Integration of proven strategies to acquire and reinforce knowledge — Recognizing the arts, technology, and service learning are examples of tools to heighten core academic learning, not merely nice things to do to fill children’s time.
* Intentional collaboration across local, state, and national sectors — Building new collaborative structures across sectors in communities and up and down government hierarchies that focus all resources on supporting academic and developmental goals for children.
* New leadership and professional development opportunities — Knowing that while most leadership programs and certification are school-based, the importance of training and compensating educators to build community partnership is growing.
So what, exactly, does all this mean for school improvement?  First off, we need to redefine the learning day to mean far more than the time required by law behind the schoolhouse doors.  We must recognize that if we are to close the achievement gap and make demonstrable improvements in student achievement, we must extend learning opportunities to after school, the weekends, the summers, and other “non-school day” times.
Second, we must recognize that OST is not glorified babysitting.  Afterschool is no longer a holding pen for kids without adult supervision nor is it merely arts and crafts and sports.  High-quality programs are designed to enhance student learning, providing additional opportunities to build core knowledge, develop core skills, and delve deeper into the subjects and concepts that both interest students and are important to their long-term success.
Third, this new dawn of afterschool is completely doable, even with the limited resources of our 2009 economic realities.  It starts with the visions and the examples laid out by organizations such as the National Center on Time & Learning, NAA, and Leading a Learning Day, groups that can all point to promising practices, places where new ideas are working, and students who have been positively impacted by new thinking and even newer actions.  And it is continued by linking the school day with the afterschool day, pursuing core activities like sharing curriculum maps, including afterschool staff in professional development, sharing evaluation data, and jointly reaching out to parents and communities.
Finally, it means recognizing the true value of changing the definition of the learning day.  We need to value all of those who contribute to a student’s academic progress, maximizing the skills and experiences each time and space can best provide for children.  We need to identify more learning opportunities for those students who are falling behind, dropping the misguided belief that students can catch up simply by doing the same (or usually, less) work during the traditional academic day.  And it means recognizing that these investments have a long-term impact on student learning, student health, community safety, and community empowerment.
Words and actions out of Washington, our state capitols, and our school districts all point to a need for new perspectives, new approaches, and
a new view on effective learning.  Is OST the silver bullet for solving all that ails are schools?  Hardly.  But it is an important piece of the puzzle.  For years now, groups like the Mott Foundation and the Wallace Foundation have invested in OST infrastructures in states and cities across the nation.  Success now comes when those investments in inputs are translated into real, outcome-based results.  The principles coming out of New Orleans this week are a strong step forward.  The next step is moving effectively to communicate these ideas with those stakeholders who can put them into practice, getting audiences to change the way they think about afterschool and change what they do with those afterschool hours.  The possibility is there.  Now we just need to seize it.   

Head Coach for National Education Standards?

Eduflack Arne Duncan, national standards

Is it wishful thinking or a sign of things to come?  Do we really have a head coach for the national education standards movement bunking down at the seventh floor on Maryland Avenue?  Eduflack may be reading what he wants to in a recent Washington Post interview, but it sure looks like EdSec Arne Duncan is wrapping a big ol’ bear hug around national standards.

In this morning’s WaPo, former gossip columnist Lois Romano offers up a short interview with the EdSec.  (There’s even a video of the interview, for those who don’t want to be bothered by the written word.)  This is clearly part of Duncan’s ongoing charm offensive tour, and offers a broad brush on Duncan’s goals as the nation’s top educator.  Who knew, for instance, that the primary charge from President Obama was to drive up college graduation rates?  Seems to me we have a great deal of work to do in early education and K-12 before we can even address the issue of college-going and college graduation rates.  But it is a popular topic, particularly in our current economy.
What really struck Eduflack, though, was Duncan’s response to why the education community had turned on No Child Left Behind:
“What didn’t work was this idea of 50 states . . . setting their own standards. . . . What they did is they were very loose on the goals, on the benchmarks, but very, very tight in how you get there. I think we need to reverse that. We need to have a tight, clear bar that we are all shooting for . . . but provide much more flexibility and the ability to innovate and be looser in how folks get there.”
Don’t know about you, but that looks a pretty definitive endorsement of national standards.  The failure of NCLB was that each state set their own mile markers to measure against a single federal yardstick — NCLB.  The fix, the “tight, clear bar” that Duncan is talking about?  It can only mean national standards, a common measure that every student in the nation is held to.  
After so many years of watching EdSecs fighting against the notion of national standards, it is refreshing to see Duncan so clearly embrace the notion without apologizing for his opinions or stating it is just a personal belief and not a policy plan.  And with Duncan’s strong relationships with national standards advocates like NGA and CCSSO, this could actually move from rhetoric to real action.  Whuda thunk?  

A Necessary ARRA Watchdog

Eduflack Achievement gap, Arne Duncan, AYP, NCLB, stimulus

Typically in federal education policy, we hear a great deal about inputs, but not much about outcomes.  We talk about how many dollars are going to go into a program, how many students or teachers might be affected, and how many stakeholders were involved in the process.  It is almost as if we are secure in the notion that how a decision was made is far more important than the impact of the decision itself.

It’s why, for instance, the good folks over at Education Week are unable to get specific information on how $5 billion in Reading First dollars were actually spent.  Sure, we know how the states and the LEAs intended to spend them.  But after requests, cajoling, and such, Kathleen Manzo and the EdWeek team still can’t get specific answers on what those dollars were actually spent on.  And don’t even get Eduflack started on how effectively we are measuring the impact and results of that federal expenditure.
So when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act offers up tens of billions of new education dollars with virtually no strings attached, it is easy to see why some people get worried.  Yes, each state will submit a plan for how they spend their new windfall, with such plans due to the U.S. Department of Education this week.  Checks will be cut two weeks from now, after a pro forma review of those state plans.  We should expect a few states to have their initial plans rejected, if for no other reason than ED can “demonstrate” that they are reviewing the plans and have protocols in place for how the money should be spent.  If South Carolina comes in requesting dollars to retire their school bonds, that will be rejected.  If California comes in expecting to spend its ARRA buckets on teacher salaries, I suspect that will get the “NO” stamp as well.  But on the whole, states will be approved, and then we will leave it up to the LEAs to actually spend to the state guidelines and deliver the results that ED is expecting from this stimulus.
I so want to believe EdSec Duncan and his team when they state that stimulus dollars (and we assume future ED fiscal obligations) should be primarily focused on boosting student achievement.  Innovations need to align with student performance.  The Race to the Top is all about closing the achievement gap and boosting high school graduation rates.  And it is all tied together by new data systems that ensure we are effectively capturing, tracking, and utilizing student achievement data to improve instruction, performance, and quality.  Makes perfect sense.  After all, what is the role of our public schools if not to teach our kids and get them performing at proficient levels at the very least?
But the devil is always in the details.  For many, relying on ED to measure the effectiveness of their own policies and their own spending is much like letting the fox guard the hen house.  After a year or two, after more than $50 billion in new money sent out to the districts, do we expect ED to come back and say the money was misappropriated?  Do we expect OPEPD reports demonstrating that funds did align with intended goals or that we have no demonstrable return on investment?  Of course not.  We expect all to declare “mission accomplished.”  ED provided protocols for how the money would be spent, the states assured the feds they would spend the funds per those guidelines, and LEAs were given their new dollars after promising the states they wouldn’t blow it all on video games and bubblegum.  We’re all happy, even if there is no uptick in student achievement and there is little movement in innovation because we have met our process goals.  We’ve achieved the desired inputs, outcomes be damned.
That’s why I am so excited by the announcement coming out of Education Trust today.  Through their Education Watch, Kati Haycock and company will offer an unbiased, third-party analysis of “how effectively states are using the infusion of federal support.”  They do so believing that “the public will need accurate, reliable data” if we are to truly measure the success of ARRA on school improvement.
EdTrust’s full announcement of the initiative can be found here.  The series of Education Watch indicators, broken down by state, can be found here.  Most interesting is the “starting line” Ed Trust provides, a detailed chart tracking state achievement gains and achievement gap closings over the past decade.  Building on their past successes the ARRA Education Watch is modeled after EdTrust’s similar efforts in 2003, 2004, and 2006.  
I realize that EdTrust didn’t set out to be the ARRA watchdog, but someone has to do it, and there are few as qualified and capable as EdTrust.  Does Education Watch abdicate ED’s responsibility to do the same?  Of course not.  Does it prevent other groups, including NGA, CCSSO, and even the teachers unions from acting in the same manner?  Golly, I hope not.  But someone had to be the first to step up to the plate, and better EdTrust that a status quo voice just trying to protect what is theirs.
Over the last few years, EdTrust has gotten a bit of a bad rap.  Many in the chattering class have seen the organization, and Kati Haycock in particular, as being the cheerleader-in-chief for No Child Left Behind.  It is an unfair criticism.  EdTrust has always been about pushing for higher student achievement for all students, particularly those who had been the forgotten cause of our rising achievement gaps.  When NCLB became the law of the land, it only made sense that EdTrust would fight to make sure the law lived up to its promise.  They pushed hard on achievement and assessment, believing that data would guide us out of the land of mediocrity and show us the path to equity and achievement, particularly for low-income students and students of color.  After all, one is far more effective using the tools (and the funding streams) available to exact change and improvement than they are shouting into the wind and simply wishing upon a star for things to be different.
As we got caught up in the politics of NCLB and deciding who was with us or against us, we seemed to lose track of the true mission of groups like EdTrust.  For the Education Trust, the mission is simple.  “The Education Trust works for the high academic achievement of all students at all levels, pre-kindergarten through college, and forever closing the achievement gaps that separate low-income students and students of color from other youth.  Our basic tenet is this — All children will learn at high levels when they are taught to high levels.”
So who, exactly, wants to stand against that goal?  If anything, the U.S. Department of Education adopt that mission as their own, applying the lens of high academic achievement and the elimination of the achievement gap to every policy and spending decision it puts forward.  If that isn’t the goal for public education in the United States, what is?
I know the folks over at EdTrust have thick skins, and they are prepared for any of the slings and arrows the status quoers will throw at them, either now or in an expected post-NCLB era.  I also know that the team shies away from no fight, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to move us closer to the overall goal of student success for all.  If that means being the ARRA watchdog, so be it.  Regardless, Education Watch should provide some valuable insights, data, and recommendations as we move forward.  (And if this makes me a cheerleader for EdTrust, so be it.  I’ll gladly pick up the pom-poms and the megaphone if it means narrowing the achievement gap as quickly as possible.)  
Who knows, it may actually help ensure that all of these federal dollars are actually spent on efforts that boost student achievement … and we are able to actually see such a boost.  Wouldn’t that be something different and innovative.

Redefining Education Innovation

Eduflack Arne Duncan, EdNews, stimulus

Without doubt, the hot buzzword in the current era of education improvement is “innovation.”  We hear it on almost a daily basis for the EdSec and from every state, school district, advocacy organization, and corporation looking to take full advantage of the opportunities made available through new economic stimulus funding.

Check out Eduflack’s latest commentary on Education News about innovation and how we should define it in this new post-NCLB era.  The full article can be found here.  Lots to think about as we try to ride the “innovation” wave while making a demonstrable difference when it coms to school improvement and student achievement.

School Improvement, the Gates Way

Eduflack Achievement gap, AFT, Arne Duncan, AYP, charter schools, DCPS, early college, Gates Foundation, national standards

Over at the Washington Post this AM, Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt asks the multi-billion-dollar question, How would Bill Gates repair our schools?  Reflecting on a recent interview Gates had with WaPo, Hiatt opines that Gates is an advocate for the sort of reforms that EdSec Arne Duncan and DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee evangelize.  He points to the status quo — collective bargaining agreements, tenure, resistance to charter schools, and opposition to pay for performance — as some of the great roadblocks that Duncan, Rhee, and even Gates face in their quest to improve public education.

Eduflack agrees that, for the most part, Duncan and Rhee must play within the system.  For all of this talk about innovation, Duncan must still balance the concerns voiced by traditional groups such as AASA, NSBA, the teachers unions, and others.  As for Rhee, all but the good chancellor have recognized that the American Federation of Teachers is not simply a work-around, and is a reality that must be talked to, dealt with, and respected.  In both cases, innovation and improvement can only come with, to a great degree, buy-in and support from those considered a part of the education “status quo,” the very component so many of us point to as the roadblock to real, significant change.
But Bill Gates, and the Gates Foundation, are a completely different story.  In recent years, the Gates Foundation has invested billions of dollars into our public schools.  It has experimented in small schools and has staked its claim in high school reform.  It has supported dual enrollment and early college programs and invested in libraries and other resources.  Now, it embarks on a path of human capital, seeking to invest in the teachers and administrators that are a necessary component to school turnarounds and school improvements.
So who says Gates has to play by the rules and the confines of the current system?  After all, this is a man who released a box full of mosquitoes as an international conference so all could feel the possible threat of malaria.  This is a man who built a global corporate giant out of his garage by refusing to abide by mores and by never hearing the word no.  This is a man who is investing significant wealth into American public education, despite so many people telling him it was a lost cause and he was throwing his money into a pit that will never yield a return.
To date, the Gates Foundation is thinking about the right issues.  School structure.  Teacher training and support.  Rigor and relevance of instruction.  Connections between K-12 and the workforce.  Pay structures that reward success.  Student assessments and standards.  Return on educational investment.  The Foundation has tried to implement these issues in a number of ways, trying pilot projects across the nation, looking for promising practice, and hoping to find real solutions that can be adopted at scale across the United States.
The latter is the most important point for reformers.  How do we adopt proven solutions at scale?  To date, we are tinkering around the edges.  We can point to achievement gap solutions in Ohio, early college successes in the JFF network, and virtual options in Texas, for instance.  These issues have come, in large part, from working within the system, as Gates seeks to supplement existing efforts and provide the funding to do more within the current system, essentially layering potential solutions on top of systems that may well be broken at their core.
More than a year ago, Eduflack reflected on this same issue.  How can Gates get more bang for its buck?  How can it move from tinkering to dropping a brand-new engine into our public schools?  How does it move from supplementing what is broken to supplanting?  How does it use its power, vision, and checkbook to literally build that better mousetrap.
In recent months, Bill Gates has laid out his vision for what our schools need to improve.  That vision is reflected in Hiatt’s piece this morning.  Flexibility in structure, evidenced by a greater need for charter schools.  Flexibility in human capital, evidenced by new formulas for training, hiring, and rewarding teachers.  Strong standards by which all students are measured, ensuring all students are embracing both the relevance and rigor of 21st century education.  And an unwavering commitment to success, whereby dropout factories are a thing of the past and dropping out is viable option for no student and no family.
So it has me back to my original thinking.  Forget about supporting existing school districts and trying to layer new programs on top of old, failed efforts.  Now is the time for Gates to be bold and different.  Now is the time for the Gates Foundation to chart a different course.  Now is the time for Gates to reject the status quo, and chart a completely new path for K-12 education in the United States.
It is a simple one.  Gates needs to get in the business of empire building.  Instead of investing in urban school districts and trying to overcome decades of problems that have become ingrained on the schools’ DNA, Gates needs to begin building alternative school districts.  That’s right.  Forget charter schools, we need charter districts.  If the current model is broken, as Gates claims, the answer is not to fix.  The true answer is to create a better one.  Move into an urban center and set up a K-12 charter district.  Determine the most effective, research-proven curriculum.  Train, hire, and support the best teachers.  Reward those teachers properly.  Apply strong standards to every student, accepting no excuses and demanding proficiency and success from all.  Better align our elementary, middle, and secondary school programs.  Engage students early on, so they see the relevance of their academic pursuits.  Offer internships and externships so all students see the career opportunities before them.  Build the buildings, implement the learning structures, acquire the technology and learning materials, and do what is necessary to get us to success.  No boundaries to prevent us from doing what is necessary.  No excuses to fall back on.  
These new school districts can build on the successes of Gates programs to date.  They can take the best of Early College High Schools, of the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative, and of Green Dot Schools.  They can also build on the efforts of KIPP and Teach for America and even from school districts like NYC that are truly thinking outside the box.  They can borrow and steal from the very best in school reform, community engagement, corporate innovation, and some of the news ways of thinking coming from small, nimble not-for-profits.
Then take this new system and provide families the choice.  Those who wish to remain in the traditional school district that has served their family for generations can do so.  Those who are seeking new options, those who are seeking new opportunities, those seeking more choice can opt for the Gates route.  It is about providing options and choice.  If implemented properly, such choices not only offer a strong Gates model, but the competition forces traditional school districts to act differently, improve, and meet the demands of their current customers — the families.  If done well, the rising Gates tide would lift all schools — traditional publics, charters, and privates alike.
I know what many are thinking — what an absolutely ridiculous idea.  Funders don’t do such a thing.  They provide resources to support the current infrastructure. They fund new projects and new ideas.
 They supplement, they don’t compete.  Yes, that may have been the way we have traditionally worked, but does it need to be that way?  Do philanthropies need to simply serve as advisors, consultants, and checkbooks, or can they get more active?
When Bill Gates built Microsoft, his mature business model was not to simply advise IBM on the operating software they needed.  He determined the status quo — both in terms of hardware and software — weren’t cutting it.  He tried working as part of that system, and it just didn’t work.  So he turned the industry on its head, positioning software as the driver in the technology industry.  Microsoft became Microsoft because he offered consumers a choice, and he offered them a better one.  After a while, it was no choice at all.  If one wanted to succeed in business, one had to use Microsoft products.
So why can’t we do the same in education?  Why can’t Gates use its investment to build a better school district?  Take all of those great minds that have been assembled at the foundation, and do it differently and do it better.  From the top down and the bottom up, build a school structure that is both student and teacher focused, geared toward real results, and not beholden to the status quo or the ways we used to do it simply because that is how we used to do it.
Could this path be a complete failure?  Absolutely.  The Foundation could get into the middle of it and find that curriculum selection, teacher training, and CBAs are far more difficult than they ever envisioned.  They could discover that managing buildings or dealing with operational issues is not what they want to do.  They could realize that human capital management is simply too difficult a nut to crack, particularly if they are not in charge of the pre-service education that delivers the teachers to their door.  They could even find that the first or second generation of this experiment is a failure, and they have to keep changing and adapting on the fly to meet goals and deliver on their promises to the community.  And, shudder, they could even find themselves lapsing into models and behaviors far too similar to the school districts they are trying to change and offer an alternative to.
Or it could just work.  Gates could pick a four or five cities, invest significantly in those cities and demonstrate how district-wide change can happen at the city, school, classroom, and student level.  They could identify those best practices that can indeed be replicated at scale in districts throughout the nation.  They can find a way to build better pathways and make real opportunities available to more students in need.  They can truly build a better learning environment, particularly for those who have been dealt a bad hand for far too long.
Let’s face it.  If anyone can do it, Gates can do it.  And at this point of the game, not trying is far worse than the risk of failure.  If the EdSec is going to stake a number of school districts with the funds to Race to the Top, why can’t Gates do the same?  We let ED fund internal improvements designed to improve current districts.  Gates funds the construction of new school districts focused on 21st century needs and expectations.  And we see who provides a better education, and a better ROI.  Let the best model win.
Now that’s a race any reformer would watch, from pole to pole.

Finding a School Year Model that Works

Eduflack Achievement gap, Arne Duncan, AYP, stimulus

We all know how the system is supposed to work.  You start your school year right after Labor Day.  You attend school Monday through Friday, usually from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., for the next 10 months or so, with breaks for Christmas and the spring and most of the major holidays.  You wrap up in early June, with students planning three months of fun and working parents looking for three months of childcare coverage.  Despite popular belief, many teachers use their summer months to take seasonal jobs to supplement their incomes.  Rinse and repeat.

Over time, folks have pushed back against the model.  We’ve had those who believe the school day should start later in the morning, particularly for secondary school students (the premise being their minds aren’t as sharp first thing in the morning and it would help better manage transportation issues).  We’ve had those who say the system is built on an agrarian notion that children needed to be home during the summer months to help work the fields and harvest the crops (a task few of our students are doing these days).  And we’ve even have those who believe that extended summer break is a detriment to student learning, offering too large a gap in instruction and forcing a new re-ramp up process each fall that sets many students behind in the learning process.
So from time to time, we hear the calls for year-round schooling, where the school year will be 12 months long (for today’s debate, let’s set aside the collective bargaining agreements virtually every teacher operates under and believe such a move to be possible).  Typically, the arguments against year-round schooling have little to do with the students or with instruction.  We fret over how to deal with child care (if managing summer break weren’t hard enough, now we need to manage a series of long breaks across the year?!), what it means for schools with no air conditioning, and what it means for transportation and food service costs.
We also talk about the need to innovate, the need to do something different to spur student learning and boost student achievement.  Is there learning skill and content loss as a result of a three-month vacation?  Yes, if parents aren’t keeping their kids reading and engaged during that summer break.  Could a year-round schedule provide students a true learning scaffolding that lets us build on knowledge acquisition without having to rebuild annually?  Yes, assuming we are providing the proper supports and professional development for the teachers we would be asking more of.  Is it even feasible?  We may soon know, thanks to the good educators over in Milwaukee.
About a week and a half ago, Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent William Andrekopoulos floated the idea of taking the entire district year round.  The idea has yet to be embraced, and a recent study of Milwaukee’s pilot efforts show mixed results.  But he is soldiering on.  (The most recent article can be found in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel here).  I must admit, I’m not sure what to make of the research study.  To me, it doesn’t seem like they have enough year-on-year data to make any hard decision yet.  And the fact that many kids in the year-round classrooms didn’t realize the new school year started August 1, and didn’t roll in until September, raises all sort of issues.  But you have to give Andrekopoulos credit for trying to think outside the box.  He has his eye on the goal line, and isn’t letting recent criticism or current budget problems hold him back.  
But I would push the good superintendent even further.  MPS has never been afraid to try new things in the quest for student improvement.  Just look at their experiments with both vouchers and charter schools.  You will be offering year-round school in about 10 percent of your buildings this coming fall.  At best, this is still a pilot.  But you are piloting it under the notion that school year is still just 175 academic days.  Why not expand that?  If you are worried about student learning retention, why not push it to 200 academic days.  That’s less than a 15 percent increase in academic time.  WIll it boost student achievement scores 15 percent?  Maybe.  We don’t know what impact it will have, but one has to assume that additional classroom time, time that is focused on academic subjects, can only help student achievement on the state exam.
What about just extending the school day itself?  If we can’t boost the number of academic days, what about adding an extra hour of instruction to those 175 days we have?  Traditionally scheduled schools can add an extra class.  Block-scheduled schools can explore topics in further detail.  Again, we expand the amount of academic-focused time in the school year, it logically follows we will expand student achievement, no?
The timing of Milwaukee’s call for year-round schooling is an interesting one.  Just yesterday, USA Today reported that, in face of current budget realities, more and more schools are looking at shifting to four-day instructional weeks, shortening the school year, and such.  They cite an Arizona district looking to cancel Friday classes for the next two years to save a half-million dollars in HVAC and transportation costs.  A California district that is dropping block scheduling so it can save a million bucks in reduced teacher need.  And even a Kansas district that changed the end of the school year from May 22 to May 1 to reap a whopping $32,000 in annual savings.
Don’t get Eduflack wrong.  I recognize the grim realities the current budget crisis is having on our schools.  We are asking school districts to do more and more with less and less.  But at a time when our top educational concern should be boosting student achievement and equipping all students with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in even the toughest of economic storms, is the answer really cutting back school days and reducing the amount of time students are spending in a structured learning environment?  For struggling students or those in poor communities, is less instruction, reduced access to teachers and role models, and even fewer days with a hot breakfast and lunch provided the path to closing the achievement gap and providing opportunity to all?  Hardly.  And let’s face it.  When we talk about scaling back the school day or cutting instructional time, it is low-income and minority kids that are hit first and hit hardest.  How in the world do we close the achievement gap while denying them classroom time?
In our current pursuit of innovation and our race to the top, it seems we should be looking for ways to do more with what we have, not to do less.  If we want our kids to achieve, to hold their own on international benchmarks, and just to be able to read and write a grade level, we need to expand learning opportunities, not shrink them.  We need to call for more mandatory learning time, not move courses and pathways into the optional category.  We need to expand the learning day, expand outside-of-school-time academic efforts, and restructure our efforts so we maximize resources and provide more to our students.
In business, tough economic times often lead to two paths of thinking.  The first is to hunker down, make deep cuts, do with the bare minimum, and hope we can ride out the worst of it.  That seems to be what so many of our schools are preparing to do today. The second path, the path that many an industry leader and innovator chooses to take, is to use these times of uncertainty and worry to expand.  To grow.  To make acquisitions.  To do different things.  To redefine oneself to new markets and new customers, taking advantage of uncertainty by
demonstrating your own strength, certainty, and ability.
We need to find more of the latter in our K-12 infrastructure.  The EdSec and his team are promising billions in resources to schools that seek to innovate and improve.  Let’s just hope those dollars are going to school districts that are pushing to do more and try new, and not to those that are hoping to hoard for the next rainy day or tough budget choice.    

Presidential Rhetoric, Education-Style

Eduflack Arne Duncan, charter schools, early childhood education, High School, NCLB, Obama, stimulus

The education game is on.  During last evening’s Presidential Address to Congress, President Obama dedicated significant time in his hour-long speech to the issue of education.  Such a commitment is typically unheard of in typical State of the Union addresses.  Often, a president will throw in a few sentences about education, one about the importance of teachers, one about the value of a college education, and then he will move onto to other issues more adept at capturing the hearts and minds of the American people.

Yes, Obama had a lot to say last night.  The economy, home ownership, energy, national security, healthcare.  All got their due.  And education was right in there as an A-list issue.  Clearly, the President sees the clear connect between an improved K-16 education system and an improved economy, how a strong education leads to good jobs and meaningful contribution.  He sees the next generation of the American workforce will require new levels of knowledge and skills that the generations before them never envisioned.  If anything, he made a clear and compassionate case for 21st century skills.
The full transcript from last night’s speech can be found here, though it is a much more impressive watch than it is a read: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/obama_address_022409.html?hpid=topnews
Of”>www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/obama_address_022409.html?hpid=topnews
Of course, a significant potion of last night’s education segment was dedicated to higher education.  That should surprise no one.  For the past two years, Obama has spoken of postsecondary education as a primary pathway to life success.  He has pledged to get more kids to go to college, help them pay for it, and then use their talents in the community well after they earned that degree.  And in times of economic trouble, nothing hits the heart better than improving one’s lot in life through learning.  Challenging every American to seek at least one more year of education, whether it be in college or a vocational program, was a bold statement.  Stating that dropping out is never an option is always a crowd-pleaser.  And setting a goal of repositioning the United States as the nation with the highest percentage of postsecondary degree holders by 2020 is an interesting idea (though I’m curious to see how we are defining degrees and how we are equating simply earning the degree with effectively putting it to use).
A few points — some policy, some rhetoric — truly grabbed Eduflack’s attention.
On the policy front, the President made strong commitments to both charter schools and performance pay for teachers.  The latter should be no surprise.  Obama has long advocated for incentive pay, even during a tough primary knowing it may have cost him the support of teachers (or at least the teachers’ unions).  He hasn’t forgotten how important it can be to incentivize educators, particularly those in hard-to-staff communities facing real academic challenges.  By boosting funding for the Teacher Incentive Fund in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he has signaled that performance pay (and possibly differentiated pay scales) are on the horizon.  Perhaps he may even lean to newly minted U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado for some ideas on how to take Denver’s ProComp model to national scale.
On charters, the President put charter schools firmly in the center of his education improvement agenda.  Although he provided no specific details, just by singling them out he built a bridge to an important education community and showed his design for change, innovation, and improvement in our public schools.  It is almost hard to believe that a president or two ago, a Democrat couldn’t even utter the word charter without getting the ire of the education establishment.  For Eduflack, the question for the future is whether the Administration — particularly through the Office of Innovation and Improvement and the newly created Innovation Fund — will broadly define charter schools or whether they will take the new world view pushed by Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, limiting our commitment to charters to those that are run by not-for-profit organizations.
The final policy piece?  A renewed commitment to early childhood education.  The President made clear that student learning starts “from the day they are born to the day they begin a career,” and we need to redouble our efforts to deliver real instruction and real learning to children well before they hit kindergarten.  That got applause from Eduflack, but we probably need to retool the statement to address the reality that education continues well beyond the start of a career.  Just ask all of those most recently in the workforce who we are asking to retool, or those teachers for whom we are rightfully investing in improved, content-based professional development.  Learning should be a lifelong pursuit.
And the rhetoric?  As many pundits have already proclaimed, President Obama is clearly a master of the television medium.  He knows how to deliver a speech, and knows how to do it well with real impact.  In the education portion of our program, that was most clear in his articulation of the role of parents.  Again, this has been a key component of his stump speech, and a topic touched on during the Democratic Convention last summer.  He made crystal the job of educating our students is not just left to teachers, and that parents play an equally important role by being involved, taking an interest, and leading by example.  I still believe there is a real need for an Office of Family Involvement over at the U.S. Department of Education, an infrastructure that can harness the power of a wide range of communities and focus on how the home can supplement what is happening in the classroom.  If not an assistant secretary office someone at OESE, OPEPD, or OII needs to take it on as a priority cause.
In his remarks, it is also clear that Obama (and his speechwriters) are clear in their vision and passion for how one talks about higher education and its impact on the individual and the community.  What was interesting, though, is that the speechwriters still seem to be seeking and searching for that same confident voice on K-12 education.  Yes, there were applause line for things like charter schools and dropping out is never an option, but the passion and connectivity was lacking, at least compared with other sections of the speech.Obama didn’t sell the K-12 ideas as well as he did higher education or energy.  Maybe he wanted to stay away from NCLB, maybe he wants to give EdSec Arne Duncan a full latitude in establishing the agenda, or maybe he is still waiting to find that balance between the tried-and-true and innovation (or the status quoers and the reformers, as some prefer).  Over time, we have to hope that the K-12 section, particularly with regard to elementary grades and instructional building blocks becomes clear and a true rallying cry for school improvement.  To truly sell the vision, he needs to speak with confidence and authority on some of the details, particularly as it relates to instructional innovation.
What was missing?  In his discussion of how we can effectively use our educational infrastructure to improve our economy, I wish there was clear, specific mention of STEM education. When done well, STEM education is about well more than just 21st century skills.  It is exactly about equipping all students with the math, science, and technology knowledgebase they need to contribute to the economy and fill the very jobs Obama is looking to create.
I had also hoped to hear a call for national standards.  In talking about global economic competition, we not only need clear national academic standards, but we probably need to tie those to intern
ational benchmarks (as NGA, CCSSO, and Achieve have recently called for).  The Administration has been dipping its toe into the national standards pool, and the financial commitment to improve state data systems is a good step forward.  But the rhetorical nod to a single expectation for student achievement in the United States would have been a powerful, defining statement.
What fell flat?  The attempt to brand this new approach to P-16 as a “complete and competitive education.”  While I appreciate the attempt, I don’t think the concept holds the rhetorical power we both seek and need.  The Administration is looking for a way to improve on No Child Left Behind, both as a policy and as a rhetorical statement.  It may be a punchline to jokes now, but the phrase “no child left behind” wielded enormous power in the early days of the law. It meant something, particularly when combined with lines about the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Lines like “dropping out of high school is no longer an option” are good initial steps.  But we still need to capture an umbrella brand and a bumper sticker phrase to define what this new era of innovative public education really stands for.  Complete and competitive are nice attributes, but they aren’t the headline.  It may just be window dressing to some, but how we talk about federal policy and the labels we ascribe to it can be just as important — even more so — than what’s under the hood.  Obama captured much of the nation with his rhetoric of “Yes, we can.”  Now we need to move that into a “yes, we can educate all” mentality.

How Do We Disperse Ed Stimulus Dollars?

Eduflack Arne Duncan, NCLB, NGA, Reading First, stimulus

By now, we’ve all hear the numbers.  Under the state stabilization fund, $53.4 billion for our governors.  For Title I, $10 billion.  Special education gets $12.2 billion.  The School Improvement Fund, $3 billion.  Head Start comes in a cool billion dollars.  With $250 million for state data systems and $200 million more for the Teacher Incentive Fund.  And then there are the subcategories.

There is no getting around it.  This is a massive injection of new cash into our nation’s public education system.  With a sweep of the pen this week, President Obama has more than doubled federal investment in K-12 education, providing our nation’s governors and their chief state school officers with enormous power as to how these new piggy banks will be broken into and what new local buckets will receive the shiny gold coins.
But it begs an enormously important question.  How will the funds be dispersed?  The buzz around the education community is that money will be distributed quickly, with initial chunks going out to the states before the end of the summer.  At the same time, we know that the U.S. Department of Education has yet to staff up, at least in terms of an undersecretary, deputy secretary, and virtually all of its assistant secretaries.
Some of this money will simply be spent using existing funding formulae.  The federal government and the states already have clear systems for dispersing and allocating Title I and special education (IDEA) funds.  Those systems will hold when it comes to getting the $12.2 billion in sped money and $10 billion in additional Title I funds out to the districts it is meant to stimulate.
But what of the state stabilization fund?  Does it require a new structure and a new relationship between the federal government and the states?  Does it require specific rubrics for tracking how funds are spent, ensuring they are not supplanting existing federal dollars and are delivering return on investment when it comes to both stabilizing the financial situation of our schools and boosting student achievement?  Do we even have a mechanism for the feds to cut these stabilization fund checks to the states in quick order?
One assumes that each governor will need to appoint an individual (or an office) in the state to serve as the point person for negotiation with the U.S. Department of Education on the stabilization fund.  Most think this point person will be the chief state school officer.  But in some states, we know that is likely not going to be the case.  Such a point person could reside in the governor’s office, the state board of education, or even the economic development office.  It could even be an outside consultant or group.  There is no one-size-fits-all implementation model here, at least not one evident in the new federal funding structure.  So how does it happen, and how does it happen so quickly?
In recent years, the closest model we have to implementing such an effort was the establishment of the Reading First funding program, as the previous Administration looked to quickly disperse $1 billion a year in new reading dollars.  Moving at lightening speed, it still took nearly a year to establish those state relationships, gain documents from the states on how the funds would be spent, and then write the checks and get them out there.  That was a billion dollars, and the funding was staggered as states tried to get their plans in order (some took well more than a year to get approved work plans in there, some moved more quickly).
And we saw how successful the implementation of that program was.  Moving too quickly, we opened the system up to abuse and the perception of mis-spending and mis-directed priorities.  Originally, ED promised swat teams prepared to go into those school districts receiving RF money, ready to evaluate if the money was being spent as intended and prepared to pull the funding if it was not.  Maybe we’ll follow through on the promise with state stabilization funding squads.
Now we are talking about a scope more than 50 times in size, on an implementation far faster than RF ever envisioned.  Maybe the RF model — and its means for dispersing funds to the states — is they system on which to build this new effort.  What is clear is there is a lot of work ahead for both ED and the states to make sure this economic stimulus money.  Everyone is waiting see the guidelines for new federal spending and how the money flow will be managed and monitored.  We need to move quickly, yes.  But we also need to move smartly.  
The stimulus package makes a major statement with regard to future investment in K-12 education and public school improvement.  It restructures the role of localities, the states, and the federal government in the process.  And it sets clear priorities for the pathways we must take if we are to make lasting improvement and invest this money as intended.  
Eduflack is a results guy, no question about it.  Process always takes a backseat for me, particularly when we have outcomes in the driver’s seat.  But this stimulus package — and the state stabilization fund — cry out for a clear, comprehensive, closely monitored process that ensures swift action, efficient spending, and documentable return on investment.  How do we make sure money is getting to the schools and students who need it the most?  How do we make sure we are using money to supplement existing programs, and not merely replacing existing state funding commitments?  How do we make sure we are having a true impact, beyond the dollar tally?
As more and more details on federal stimulus funding become available, we need to ensure we are getting such details on the process.  Now is not the time to follow a “trust us” philosophy.  We’ve all seen where that has gotten us before.