PD

The Future of Urban School District Leaders

Eduflack Arne Duncan, CPS, DCPS, Michelle Rhee, Obama, PD

At yesterday’s EdSec confirmation hearings, senator after senator went out of their way to praise the selection of Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan and how terrific it will be to have a real urban educator at the helm of the U.S. Department of Education.  At the beginning of the year, many folks (Eduflack included) praised the selection of Denver Public Schools chief Michael Bennet for the open U.S. Senate seat from Colorado, again applauding the notion that a true-blue educator would be involved in authorizing and appropriating federal education dollars.

As a friend pointed out this afternoon, though, all this talk about our top urban superintendents moving up to new, more powerful political jobs raises one large unanswered (and often unasked) question.  What is the impact on our urban districts?  At a time when our school districts are facing greater demands on their resources, higher expectations on their performance, shrinking budgets from their cities and states, and a more demanding economy into which their most successful students are now entering, what happens to those districts that lose great leaders?
This isn’t just a federal issue, either.  our states are seeing massive turnover in the chief state school officer positions.  For each of those open state chiefs, there are likely superintendents in that state (as well as those from others) who pique the interests of politicians, policymakers, and educators.
But let’s get back to our urban districts.  Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Denver.  All are facing brand new superintendents at their most important moments.  Same is true for districts like Prince Georges County in Maryland.  Other districts — Boston, Philadelphia, Newark, and the like, have supes in their first years.  It’s getting to the point where DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, on the job for a year and a half now, is quickly become a grizzled veteran in world of urban superintendents.
Yes, ED is fortunate to soon have Duncan at the helm, where he can bring his Chicago experiences and insights to bear on the national scene.  We can look at the improvements and the innovations and the ideas that have percolated in Chicago (and other cities) and paint them with a larger brush and allow them to have larger impact.  But as ED begins to fill out its other positions, how many cities will lose their top school administrator for the greater good?  I assume that a supe or a chief state school officer will take over at the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, but what about the other openings in ED’s Duncan era?
It raises a lot of questions in Eduflack’s mind.  Does one have to run a major urban school district to lead school improvement at the national level?  What about our rural school districts?  Who speaks for the small communities or the K-8 school districts when the focus is on urban turnaround?  How important is it for a senior-level ED appointee to have real K-12 classroom instruction experience?  How much of such experience is enough?  What’s the necessary balance between pedagogy and innovation at ED?  Does K-12 or higher ed experience truly matter when it comes to the knock-around political world that is Washington? 
We all know heading one of the larger school districts in the nation is a difficult job.  The stakes are high.  Turnover is frequent.  Districts churn through leaders, with many top districts recycling many of the same leaders again and again.  So how does one protect the gains in such districts, while preventing the brain drain that comes with turnover and current upward mobility?  And more importantly, what are groups like the Council of Great City Schools and AASA doing to ensure that incoming superintendents — in both our most urban and most rural districts — have the professional development tools, support, and guidance necessary to keep improvements moving forward and bringing about the sort of change that so many communities are crying out for?
 
Maybe Duncan is already thinking of that, and is going to adopt a superintendent-in-residence program at ED to help ensure that school administrators have the access to best practice that we are constantly trying to deliver to both principals and teachers.  Or maybe we figure that urban districts always manage to figure it out, and between CGCS and the Broad Foundation, we’ll keep those top jobs staffed, so no need to worry.
And while we’re off the topic, allow me this little rant.  By now, many have seen the screaming Internet messages warning that all of the top jobs at ED are going to go to educational innovators and free thinkers, and not those with distinct classroom pedagogical training or instructional experience.  I don’t want to address such rumors here because I don’t think they are worth the electronic ink.  And anyway, Sherman Dorn does a far better job discussing the silly fears than I ever could — www.shermandorn.com/mt/archives/002872.html  But I do want to address the larger issue.   What ED needs now, what ED always needs, is a team that is committed to school improvement and is committed to the child.  That commitment takes many forms.  We see it in classroom and district educators.  We see it in education researchers who have committed themselves to spotlighting best practice.  And we see it in innovators, idea-makers, and policy minds who look for new ways to solve the problems that ail our schools.  Before we condemn picks for jobs at ED, we should let President-elect Obama and EdSec in-waiting Duncan actually make the picks.  There may just be a method to their madness.  And we may be surprised how the individuals, the personalities, and the backgrounds selected complement each other and form a wide net of experience and action designed to real school improvement.  At the end of the day, we have to believe that Obama and Duncan (and their surrogates) are seeking to improve public education through ED, and not harm it.  So let’s let them give it a try.
I’ll step down from the soapbox and relinquish the rostrum.  More questions than I have answers today, I’m afraid.  But sometimes such questions result in really interesting answers and insights down the road.  
 

Resolving in 2009

Eduflack Achievement gap, Arne Duncan, AYP, early childhood education, national standards, PD, SBRR, STEM

The start of a new year brings us a new page, a clean slate, and an opportunity for growth and redemption.  For whatever reason, we seen the beginning of a new calendar year as the one day in 365 to focus on improvement and ways we can better ourselves and the communities around us.  With such an outlook comes resolutions.  And while Eduflack likes to see himself going against the grain more often than not, that doesn’t mean I don’t see the value in setting some goals and publicly declaring some resolutions for 2009.

First, our collective resolutions.  Looking across the education improvement community, I hope we can all resolve to:
* Be more proactive in our communication.  For too many organizations (U.S. Department of Education included), communication consists mostly of one-way discussion (media releases) and reactive activities in response to someone else’s one-way discussion.  We need to be proactive.  We need to build dialogues and discussions.  We need to set the debate and establish the vocabulary, and not have it dictated to us by a select few.
* Engage in innovative communication.  If 2008 taught us anything, it is that there are multiple channels and endless ways to engage on key issues.  Media releases and outreach to daily newspaper reporters are just the tip of the iceberg.  We need to better engage the online community, including websites and the blogsphere.  We need to add pictures to our words, using great technologies like Flip video cameras to provide real multimedia discussions.  And we need to use social media outlets to continue to build, cultivate, and expand the discussion.  That’s one of the reasons I started Educommunicators (www.educommunicators.com), and it is what I hope the community will evolve into in 2009.
* Better understand our audiences and know who can trigger real change.  Discussions of education improvement should not be limited to policymakers, particularly just to those at the federal level.  Discussions need to focus on a range of stakeholders — teachers, school administrators, school boards, CBOs, the business community, state officials (from the governor to the chief state school officer to the legislature), Congress, the new Administration, and the membership and trade groups that represent all of the above.  We need a large table, and many seats at it, if we are to bring about real change and real improvement.
* Better use of the data.  Unfortunately, research was used in 2008 primarily to punish rather than to inform and improve.  We use the WWC to spotlight those programs we believe don’t make the cut.  We use AYP scores to punish schools.  We use state tests to highlight the laggards and point out what our students aren’t doing or don’t know.  Research and data points should be our path forward.  They should chart the course, showing us our priorities and helping us measure our progress.  Data should be both diagnostic and inspirational.  
* Prioritize our policy asks.  We start the new year with an open book full of asks and wishes.  And we do so in an economic environment that discourages anything new and anything with a real price tag.  We cannot do everything, at least not now.  This year is about better using our existing resources and making sure our top needs are being met.  That means more effectively using existing Title II dollars to strengthen our teachers.  It means better using Head Start and other federal programs to improve early childhood education.  And it means using past Reading First and other Title I dollars to ensure that our school districts have the instructional materials and technology necessary to continue forward progress, even in a year of severe budget cuts.
* Recognize that the federal government cannot solve all.  We cannot forget that the feds are responsible for less than 8 cents of every dollar spent on public K-12 education in the United States.  ED has the bully pulpit to provide us leadership and vision, and needs to put it to better use each and every day.  But the real forum for improvement and work is at the state level.  As we look to 2009, we need to look at ways to better engage state governments, better help them navigate their budget crises, and build a better public education system to meet their community and economic needs, both now and in the future.
* Place outcomes over process.  Education improvement is not about specific programs or laws.  It is about outcomes, and it is about results.  It is about student achievement and forward progress.  Too often, we lose sight of that.  We worry about how we are getting there, instead of focusing on the end destination. NCLB was the perfect case in point.  In previous years, we were so hung up on the law itself that we lost sight of the equity and achievement it intended to bring.  It is all about the results.  We can’t forget that.
As for Eduflack, I have a few personal resolutions for this blog as well:
* I resolve to spotlight the success stories and the tales of positivity and progress.  It is easy to dwell on what is going wrong and lament the problems in public education.  We all need to do a better job talking up what has promise, and sharing best and promising practices so they can be modeled by others.
* I resolve to offer a broader national view of education improvement efforts.  Too often, my attention is seized by what is happening in the DC or the NYC media.  I need to do a better job focusing on what is happening across the United States, not just in my own back yard.  The real work, the meaningful work, is happening out there on Main Street USA.
* I resolve to step up my advocacy for issues I believe to be important to education improvement.  Successful communications is about advocating for change and helping stakeholders take the steps necessary to implement that change.  Eduflack should be one of the levers in such improvement efforts.  I’ve never been one to be afraid to speak my mind, question the status quo, and generally agitate the system.  This blog will continue to do just that.  But it will do it smartly and with purpose.  Eduflack will continue to push for STEM education, research-based reading, early childhood education, teacher training and PD, and national standards.  That’s just who I am.
* I resolve to amplify the voice of the virtually voiceless.  This blog is a megaphone for successful communication of education improvement efforts.  That means spotlighting issues not in the spotlight, highlighting organizations that may not be highlighted by others, and focusing on good actions, not just those who are responsible for them.
* I resolve to distinguish between reforms and improvement, with an emphasis on the latter.  In 2009, our top priority should be closing the achievement gap — the gap between Black and white, between Hispanic and white, and between rich and poor.  Our investments and actions should all point toward how we bring achievement and equity of learning to all students.
I also recognize my limitations.  Eduflack is essentially a one-man band, meaning the personal and professional can often get in the way of good blogging.  I have my priorities.  Family comes first, and my wife and two perfect toddlers will always come before a blog post.  I have my business, which allows me to pursue my passions of putting the critiques on this blog of how to effectively communicate and engage to work for organizations and issues that mean it most.  I usually look to avoid blogging about my clients and am always diligent about disclosing my relationships when I do focus on the good work of the good organizations I partner with.  That will continue.
I know that my blog postings are too long, often defeating the purpose of the medium.  That’s just me.  I’m trying to fully embrace Twitter in 2009 to streamline some of my thinking (you can find me as Eduflack), but my 2009 postings will cont
inue to read more like essays than quick dump-and-runs.  Again, that’s just me.  To quote the great sailor-philosopher, I am what I am.
Here’s to a productive, meaningful 2009.  A year when EdSec in-waiting Arne Duncan and company seize the full power of the ED bully pulpit.  A year where more people realize the intersection between school improvement and economic empowerment.  A year when data is better collected, better understood, and better used.  A year when public education truly improves, and not merely changes for change sake.  Here’s to a year of possibility and true public engagement on important education issues.  Here’s to 2009.

Reform Vs. Improvement, 2009 Edition

Eduflack AFT, charter schools, Green Dot, HQT, Obama, PD, Teacher Education

For the past few weeks, the crystal ball gazers waiting to see who is tapped for EdSec have been all a twitter about how the choice will serve as the white smoke as to whether the Obama Administration is the status quo or a reformer when it comes to education.  Will reformers (whether they be Democrats for Education Reform or advocates for new ideas such as Teach for America or New Leaders for New Schools) be given the keys to Maryland Avenue?  Or will the old guard (be it the teachers unions or old-school researchers and academics) be given the power to lead?

It is no secret that Eduflack is no fan of the status quo.  Those that are unable or unwilling to change bear ultimate responsibility for 40 percent of today’s fourth graders being unable to read at grade level, they bear responsibility for two thirds of today’s ninth graders failing to earn a college degree.  And they bear responsibility for too few effective teachers in far too many classrooms, particularly the urban and low-income classrooms that needs good teachers the most.
In recent years, though, we have used the term reform as a form a shorthand to describe a few key issues.  Reform is charter schools.  Reform is vouchers.  Reform is school choice.  Reform is alternative certification.  In essence, reform is a particular education intervention, designed to improve access, opportunity, reach, and quality of public education.  Reforms are important, yes.  And I haven’t been shy to advocate for key reforms, particularly charter schools, virtual education, and the like.  But at the end of the day, reform is but a process.  It is an input.  Important, yes, but not as important as the ultimate output.
Instead of talking about reforms and inputs, shouldn’t our focus be on improvement?  Shouldn’t the discussion about the next EdSec and the next list of marching orders for ED be a debate between the status quo and real school improvement?  Shouldn’t it be about whether we continue down to same path, or whether we identify and pursue a better path?
I realize this may be a matter of semantics, and that many of those who talk about education reform are meaning to talk about school improvement.  But from the discussions over the past few years, it is high time for us to drop the term “reform” from our educational vocabularies.  It is overused and has lost most meaning.  (That’s why many have already shifted from reform to innovation.)  We should be talking about improvements — improvements for the schools, improvements for the teachers, and improvements for the students.  Reform gives the impression we are acting for acting’s sake.  Improvement is about results and ROI.
So what does this all mean?  First and foremost, I would say we don’t need any additional reforms, we need real improvements.  When we look at the policy positions of the President-elect and the rhetoric coming out of the Senate HELP Committee Chairman’s office, we know that such improvement starts with the teacher.  We know that the best instructional ideas fall flat without an effective educator leading the classroom.  We have clear and uncontroverted evidence of what good teaching is and of effective pre-service and in-service teacher education.  You invest in the teacher — providing them the training, instructional materials and ongoing supports they need to do their job effectively — you see the results in terms of student achievement.
When we talk about current reform efforts — be it TFA, NLNS, KIPP, Green Dot, or others — they all hold similar characteristics.  They all start with the importance of caring educators and quality teaching.  They pledge a commitment to ongoing, job-embedded PD opportunities.  They provide educators the materials and technology they need to do the job.  They empower educators by giving them data and teaching them how to effectively use data to deliver needed interventions for kids.  And they are focused on more than just education reform, they are all committed to improvement, as measured by student achievement and school success.
A recent New Yorker article highlighted the research of Stanford/Hoover researcher Rick Hanushek on effective teaching.  The data is simple, yet illuminating.  Quality teaching trumps all.  Kids have a better chance of success with great teachers in lousy schools than they do with mediocre or bad teachers in great schools.  (Sorry for oversimplifying your research, Rick, but that’s this layman’s interpretation.)
From his work at Hoover and Koret, and his training as an economist, Hanushek is seen as a leading researcher for the “reform” side of the education debate.  But how different is his bottom line of the importance of high-quality, effective teachers than the decades of work developed by fellow Stanford-ite Linda Darling-Hammond?  They may come at it from different angles, they may define effective teaching differently, but they both recognize that school improvement begins and ends with highly qualified, effective, supported teachers.
Our schools need improvement, and improvement begins with the teacher.  The status quoers are those who say that today’s teachers are better than any generation of teachers before them.  The status quoers are those who say that schools of education and in-service PD is the best it can be.  The status quoers are those who say the current outputs of our K-12 teachers (whether it be measured by “high-stakes tests or other quantitative or qualitative measures) are sufficient, and don’t require improvement.  The status quoers are those who don’t see the need for President-elect Obama’s call for major investment in the recruitment, retention, and support of the 21st century teacher.
Yes, there are ideological differences on how we can build and support a better teacher, including the pedagogical needs of new and veteran teachers, the ongoing, embedded PD teachers needs throughout the year, and the better understanding and implementation of data in the classroom.   But improving teaching is improving education.  Clear and simple.
We should be talking about how we are going to improve teaching and improve education, not whether we will or not.  Perhaps the selection of an EdSec redirects the debate for the positive.  Regardless, we need to be focusing on improvements, and not on personalities and personal agendas.  Has it really been almost two years since the NCLB Commission called for a greater focus on “effective” teachers?  Has it really been a year since a bi-partisan group of U.S. Senators called for adding “effective” to the HQT provisions?  How much longer does it have to be before we really invest in quality, effective teaching, aligning federal policy and Title II with outcomes and ROI?  That should be the reformers’ dream come true.
    

“Read”ing All About It

Eduflack IES, PD, Reading First, SBRR

Today, the final shoe dropped on the Reading First era.  The Institute of Education Sciences released the final version of the Reading First Impact Study.  A surprise to no one, the final impact study came to the same conclusions as the interim study.  The summary of summaries, RF schools aren’t doing a better job of making student reading proficient, compared with non-RF schools.

The full story can be found here at Education Week — www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/11/18/14read.h28.html?tmp=1344181825  
When the interim study came out, many, including Eduflack, pointed out the vast flaws in the study’s methodology, chief among them being the issue of contamination, or the impact of RF programs and materials on non-RF schools.  Back in September, the Reading First Federal Advisory Committee issued its review of the interim study, calling for some wholesale changes before the final report was issued.  Unfortunately, little, if any, of the recommendations coming from the Advisory Committee were addressed in the final Study.
I’ve been mulling the issue all day.  As a surprise to many an Eduflack reader, I am not here to once again defend the goals of Reading First and point to the data that demonstrates that scientifically based reading is having an effect on schools, both those receiving RF funds and those that do not.  In the simplest of terms, been there, done that.  I’m a pragmatist.  I know that RF is dead.  It was dead the day the IG report came out almost two years ago, and the find shovels of dirt were thrown on the program with the release of this Impact Study.
And no, we are not here to eulogize RF, to discuss its merits, or to hash out why it failed to meet its promise or fulfill its mission.  Such tasks are best left to the think tanks and the academicians who can give a careful eye to how the research translated into practice, how effective that practice was, and how effective the measurement and feedback of the program was across its lifetime.
The question should not be what happened.  Instead, we must ask what comes next.  How do we move on from here?
The legacy of RF leaves us with three key buckets of policy we must consider — research to practice, a federal reading program, and IES.
At its heart, RF was a thorough attempt to move research into practice.  It was the development part of the R&D equation, an opportunity to take decades of research on literacy and reading acquisition skills and put it to use in the classroom.  How is the research applied to core materials, such as textbooks?  How is the research applied to teacher development, both pre-service and in-service?  How is the research embedded in instruction and in key interventions designed to get all kids reading?  And how does the federal government effectively do it all, guiding SEAs, impacting LEAs, and doing it all without endorsing specific commercial products or approaches?  
On some of these issues, RF provided a blueprint for success.  On others, it provided a clear portrait of federal failure.  Through it all, RF raised the profile of research in the instructional process, better equipped classroom practitioners to deal with education research, and increased the profile of data-based decisionmaking.  All of those are pluses for school improvement efforts moving forward.
Now onto stream two — a federal reading program.  For decades, the federal government has enhanced literacy instruction for K-12 students.  Before RF, we had the Reading Excellence Act. Before REA we had other federal programs.  That commitment is not going to disappear.  Long after RF is forgotten, there will still be dedicated federal investment in reading instruction. The question before us, now, is how do we do it.  How do we transform Early Reading First into a meaningful component of early childhood education efforts?  How do we enhance instruction for struggling readers, particularly in the early grades?  How do we promote literacy skills across the curriculum, using science and social studies in particular to boost reading skills for all?  What do we do for struggling readers in our high schools, those who have fallen through the cracks?  Now is the time to apply lessons learned and build a new federal reading program that delivers instruction to the kids who need it, that provides content-based PD to the teachers in need, and that boosts student achievement and closes the achievement gap for all students, from our urban centers to our rural schools.
And finally, IES.  The RF experiment has clearly demonstrated that IES is not functioning as it was intended.  Was IES tasked with determining the effectiveness of RF or the effectiveness of RF funding?  Has it providing findings that aid in the improvement of federal reading instruction?  is it serving the public good by providing clear research findings that are received, understood, and applied by practitioners in the field?  At the end of the day, IES needs to better serve the consumer — the schools, their teachers, and the students they serve.  It needs to  do a better job engaging the entire community, and not simply serve as a lifeline between educational researchers.  If anything, the RF experience has provided us a starting point for improving IES (and the What Works Clearinghouse) and transforming it into the R&D arm of the U.S. Department of Education, with the D being just as important as the R.
Will we take advantage of these lessons and build some real improvements?  That question will remain unanswered for some time now.  But now is the time we start talking about how we move forward and build on the RF experience.  A new program will rise from the RF ashes.  It falls to the program’s most ardent supporters and most critical adversaries to ensure that what comes remains solidly focused on a singular goal — empowering all kids with the reading skills they need to achieve and getting all kids reading at grade level as soon as possible (and maintaining it).    

Improving Schools By Improving Leadership

Eduflack HQT, PD, Teacher Education

Amid all of the Washington talk on who is going to move into what ED job and whether the reformers or the status quoers were going to be in a position of authority over on Maryland Avenue (I’m assuming the little red school houses will come down, regardless), there are actually some discussions of substance and purpose.  Case in point — the Education Trust conference happening this week across the river from our nation’s capital.

One of the more interesting strands of discussion was that of educational leadership.  More importantly, it was about leadership at the school and the district level.  At a session sponsored by the Wallace Foundation and facilitated by Wallace President Christine DeVita, nearly 1,000 activists and practitioners from around the country heard about the need for leadership development in our principal ranks and a glimpse at what has been working to transform the principal from building manager to instructional leader.
Coming off a Wallace Foundation study on the subject, Stanford University Professor Linda Darling-Hammond offered some of the more interesting tidbits of the afternoon.  Why are current school leadership programs failing?  Because they focus on the wrong things.  According to Darling-Hammond, too many educational leadership programs take whoever wants to enroll (versus identifying and recruiting future leaders), offer courses focused on school administration (teaching only about schools as they are, instead of schools as they could be), and prepare future leaders for generic schools (instead of prepping them for the real challenges of both urban and poor rural schools in need of real leadership).  
What should these programs be doing?  First, they need to recognize they are educating the next generation of teachers and leaders.  Second, the need to focus on core issues such as instructional leadership, organizational development, and change processes.  They need to position their lessons around real school reforms in real districts.  And they need to focus the next generation of leaders to commit to moving schools to the next level.  
For Darling-Hammond, that means principals and school leaders developing instruction, and not just administering it.  It means holding all kids to high standards.  It means helping teachers develop the skills needed to achieve school goals.  It means recognizing we have to change, and knowing the constituencies we need to work with (and how to work with them) to get that change to happen.
When we talk about professional development, we usually think of it in terms of the classroom teacher.  Few really focus on PD for the leadership.  We assume that you give a teacher a graduate degree, offer five or seven years of instructional PD as part of the in-service program, and BOOM, they are qualified to lead the building as a principal.  We assume that good teachers make good principals.  We assume great teachers can make great principals.  And in doing so, we often pull the best teachers out of the classroom.
From today’s Ed Trust presentations to research study after research study to missives such as NAESP’s Leading Learning Communities, we know that good principals are those that are both effective building managers and strong instructional leaders.  Those skills comes from a focused and sustained effort in leadership development.  It comes from recognizing that we need to change principal training to to reflect the changing challenges of the job.
What does all this mean?  First and foremost, we need to think of the job of school principal differently.  Second, we need to better understand the connections between school leadership and student achievement.  And third, PD is for all those in the education continuum, not just for those newbie teachers in search of a better understanding of pedagogy.
Leave it to Ed Trust to open up conversations that too few are engaging in.  Maybe as a new Congress and a new Administration begin to look at the issue of PD under Title II, they will look at it for the teacher, the principal, and the superintendent.  Now if only we could find a way to offer educational PD for the parent, then we’d have the perfect storm for school improvement.