[TEASER ALERT] Excerpt from my Master's Thesis, CRITICAL INCIDENTS IN EDUCATION: USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICE TO CREATE SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS AFTER A SCHOOL DISTRICT CHEATING SCANDAL

The following writing is excerpted from the beginning pages of my Master's Thesis submitted to the Professors and Administrators of the Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School Joint Degree Program in Law & Government as part of my Integrated Written Work Requirement. Submitted on April 20, 2012, I retain all original rights and privileges. For followup questions or inquiries, email eharrison@jd12.law.harvard.edu. 

Abstract

Atlanta Public Schools is in the process of adopting more functional administrative policies in response to the system-wide cheating scandal that caused national attention last year.  This research is offered to help the new APS administration fill a potential gap in input from key stakeholders.  It argues that policy solutions must be grounded in Atlanta-specific contexts so that they are sustainable even after administrative leadership changes.  By applying the critical incidents technique to field interviews within a larger reflective practice framework, three key insights emerge about the scandal and potential solutions are proffered to the district.

More after the jump.

Which ideas and policy proposals should be translated into ESEA reauthorization (NCLB) legislation? How does that happen?

An evaluation of ideas from Scott Abernathy, No Child Left Behind and the Public Schools (2007).

Money, resources, efficiency. Abernathy writes that money matters such that “careful thought into where it goes and on what basis it is handed out” become important (p. 133). An ambitious proposal would be for local education agencies (LEA) to encourage cultures of efficient spending to stretch each federal dollar farther—but this is more of a policy opportunity than a legislative proposal.  However, this might be done legislatively by larger appropriations for technical assistance to LEAs and through guidance that encourages LEAs to let accounting and budgeting contracts to companies that can partner with the school district central offices.  (Abernathy echoes that rewards (and resources) “should be both financial and bureaucratic” (p. 134).)

Expanding charter advantages.  Abernathy takes the ideology of choice and charters head on in boldly suggesting “we should consider extending the bureaucratic advantages of charter schools to all public schools” (p. 137). I think this suggestion is worth policymakers really considering for several reasons. First, because it does call into question why traditional public schools that house high-need student populations should bear burdens other schools don’t.  Secondly, because it would ironically create real public choice in the market, as traditional schools are unhinged to actually compete with charter and private counterparts.  And, thirdly, because it would require a serious analysis of whether the fewer burdens on charter schools have produced the raving results people often associate with them—whereas researchers and education policywonks acknowledge the mixed results (Abernathy, p. 136). I read what Abernathy proposes, however, as different from the flexibility for local schools rhetoric that some Congressmen have displayed. Instead, he is asserting that accountability still be in place but bureaucratic requirements lessen (whereas some congressional proposals use the term flexibility to reject some accountability measures altogether). Upon consideration, however, it appears that this proposal might actual bifurcate political groups—especially those that position themselves in favor of public choice but fundamentally against traditional schools or those that rely on teacher unions because unions contracts may strain school flexibility in some areas. 

Assessment of Managers as part of school culture.  Abernathy hits the nail on the head when he notes that teachers’ assessments of principals regarding school performance is needed in NCLB modifications (p. 139). Let’s call this a school culture metric.  Since much of the performance-accountability structure is adapted from private sector metrics, Abernathy’s observation points out a fatal lack of fidelity to accountability models. “It is difficult to imagine a private-sector system that fails to incorporate subordinates’ assessments of their managers in assessing whether those managers are performing adequately” (p. 139). I concur! Teacher retention data attributable to school management practices might be a part of the school culture performance metric as well.  Perhaps this can be done legislatively by including teacher satisfaction surveys with leadership as school culture metrics, which are but one of the many achievement indicators (alongside traditional indicators like graduation rates and student test scores).

The Status of Georgia Race to the Top and What should be done moving forward

This memo assumes that there is a new governor in Georgia as of 2013 for the purposes of an assignment from my HGSE course, Federal Government in the Schools. However, in reality, Georgia's elections for governor fall on mid-term years.  That said, the recommendations for Georgia work out just right if none of that is assumed. So, enjoy the substance, nevermind the exact audience.

Fictional Assignment -- What is the Status of Georgia's Race to the Top Implementation? What are your recommendations for a new governor?

This memo outlines challenges Georgia faces in implementing nearly $400 million in incentive funds received from the U.S. Department of Education (“DOE”) for a successful Race to the Top (“RTTT”) application. Georgia’s challenges are not drastically different than those of other RTTT winners, but our issues were mostly around data systems, timeline delays, and increasing charter opportunities. These and other issues can be addressed using eight strategies. Four of the eight strategies should be championed by the Office of the Governor: (1) require implementation checks for future RTTT applications, (2) garner local district enthusiasm for Georgia’s state-wide Innovation Fund, (3) maintain vigilance over graduation rates and teacher supports, and (4) encourage and support state legislative efforts to expand equitable opportunities for local charters. The other four strategies, discussed on page 4, should be implemented by the Georgia Department of Education (“GaDOE”). The sections below are instructive. 

More after the break...

If you received a grant for in-school clinic services, what would YOU use it for?

The assumption for this response is that a grant recipient (from the Johnson Foundation) would be able to create a full service healthcare wing of the middle or high school that would be staffed with at least two nurses each of the 5 school days a week.  Given this assumption, here is the plan for specific healthcare services.

More after the break...

Head Start has to keep its Federal Support

Data suggests that enrollment in Head Start is not determinative of whether a child is a successful elementary school student or whether a child is a higher-functioning learner through elementary grades.  Hence, those waiting for Head Start to be the silver bullet to end the achievement gap are sentenced to wait some more.  What Head Start does do (as supported by this study) is ready young children for kindergarten and deliver them to a high-quality kindergarten teacher as eager little sponges ready to grow to their next level of learning (see Exhibits 3a and 3b showing statistically significant cognitive impacts of Head Start for the four-year-old cohort and three-year old cohorts, respectively (p. xxiv-xxvi)).  This is what we should want for all children—to have the skills and readiness to begin to learn.  A program that ensures our nation’s children are ready to learn when they reach school is a program worthwhile.

But the prompt asks whether Head Start is still relevant, which probes not just into the effects of the program (though, excitingly the random assignment of this study allows us to be able to determine actual causality of Head Start), but asks us to explore whether Head Start should continue to take up policy space, research, and public priority.  Should the federal government continue to support the program?

I point to two reasons why Head Start should continue to be supported by the federal government:  (1) the alternative to no federal government support is likely state-only support (rather than no support at all) and states are not currently in positions to take on this additional responsibility and (2) the federal government has societal interest in the secondary benefits Head Start has shown to produce in low-income children and families.

See why after the jump.

Closing the School-to-Prison Pipeline [Conference]

Blogging from Harvard Law School Advocate 4 Education’s 1^st Conference on the School-to-Prison Pipeline

March 8, 2012

                The purpose of the conference is to generate multi-disciplinary dialogue about the challenges and foster solutions to the school-to-prison pipeline.  There’s a call for people to work on specific areas of the pipeline, but a greater call for people to see how these pieces fit together.  The speakers are both legal and non-legal, non-profits, juvenile justice officials.  The audience includes service-providers, policy advocates, lawyers, teachers, and students.  Most dynamic, the closing session will be a dialogue from each of the panels applied to a vignette in hopes to find creative ways to approach the particular case.

Panel 1: Education—How do educational institutions add to the problem and how can they solve it?

Moderator:  Susan Cole:  HLS Director of Ed Law Clinic of Trauma and Law clinic

Dr. Laura McNeal, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute

• ·         Research projects are underway that look at some of the causes of disparate impact that policies have (like “zero-tolerance”).  Also developing research tools that will quantify unconscious/implicit bias in order to push public policy change.

Alana Greer, Advancement Project

• ·         Work with community groups and national organizations to get their voices heard at the policy table.  See various takes on what the exact issues are.  Works in LA (truancy tickets for walking to class late or criminal record), Philadelphia (transfers to alternative disciplinary schools, zero-tolerance, out-of-school suspensions).  There’s a background principle being applied that students are different than they were and are more violent and need a police state.  One of the goals is getting administrators’ discretion back so that boyscouts stop getting disciplined for having sporks and students with scissors from gift-wrapping stop getting put in alternative schools.

Daniel Losen, UCLA Civil Rights Project, Director of Center for Civil Rights Remedies

• ·         Focus on school discipline problem—the number of children getting kicked out of school for discipline issues.  For successful remedies have to get to school resources, implicit bias, effective preschool because expulsion is the outcome of these things.  Has promoted a borrowing a disparate impact analysis from administrative law—requiring that a method of administration that has an adverse impact on protected groups (even though it’s facially neutral) can still violate Title XI.  The structure of that disparate impact analysis includes (1) adverse impact on protected group, and either (2) the practice is educationally unsound or (3) less discrimination option exist.  Discipline isn’t just about safety, it’s about students getting time back in school.

Dr. Tim Lisante, New York City Department of Education

• ·         Spent time in Rikers Island in NYC (where there are many jails) teaching and being a principal with students who were sent to the center from their home school.  At this stage, being in the center is pre-adjudication for the students until they have been through their court process.  Now he’s a bureaucrat (J) and a parent of three sons in NYC.  Works on home-school re-entry to transfer students back into their schools once finished in the court systems. (NYC has over 500 high schools).

Back to the Question: Is a FEDERAL Department of Education Necessary—notes from academia [summary]

So to wrap it up...

The federal government has a role in ensuring that individuals can participate in the liberties that have been secured to them. And while the Supreme Court has not explicitly recognized a fundamental right to education, it has gone a long way to imply that a basic education is a prerequisite for enjoying other democratic rights that are enumerated and protected.  I believe there should continue to be a federal department of education.

·        I am persuaded by Hess + Darling-Hammond’s four duties of the federal government, though I would quibble with their “transparency for school performance and spending” role because I think transparency should also encompass resources available, constraints, and inputs not just the politically convenient ends, outputs, and outcomes that transparency usually means.  I’d also like for spending disclosures to go beyond raw data and encompass best budgeting practices and cost accounting.  Further, I see the federal government having a role in in incentivizing and supporting state education agencies to make their own administrative and structural changes that might unlock best practices for reducing bureaucracy and supporting local education agencies.

·        Of course Madison’s Federalist No. 10 supports a federal department of education because his proposition extended means that there are factions that exist to act from the outside on education decisions—and logically also factions that exist within education to act on decisions the public should make about education.  These individual factions, working from within and working from the outside, level out in a representative environment such that only those ideas worth bringing to a higher, next level decision-making get discussed: those ideas that are duplicative of efforts in other places, those ideas that are deeply believed, those ideas that are innovative enough to curry favor, and/or those ideas that are so much a part of the identity of the representatives that they cannot be left behind. 

·        However, I am unmoved by Friedman’s economics-based justification for no federal administrative role in education, though I do appreciate the separation of the two questions about what the federal government should finance versus what the government should administer.  I see obvious problems with the voucher idea—for practical reasons and for definitional reasons. Putting black markets aside, a successful “free market” voucher system also relies on parents/individuals having the same access and amount of information about each educational choice and not having transaction costs (like the amount of time it take to pursue the voucher purchase, energy to devote to education research, distance and means to travel chosen schools, etc.).  I don’t see this happening practically.  By definition, a voucher would not, as Friedman wants it to, reveal an individual/parent’s absolute preference for schooling because as long as money can be added to the voucher to indicate an increased preference, individuals/parents will be faced with a substitution calculation choice—do I add money to the voucher I have to reflect my absolute preferences for education or do I accept my comparative preference and use the additional money to do something else that will bring me closer to fulfilling my basic needs?  I don’t see how this escapes some of the conundrums we have now. 

Back to the Question: Is a FEDERAL Department of Education Necessary—notes from academia

On Hess and Darling-Hammond

About two months ago, Rick Hess and Linda Darling-Hammond joined forces to tell New York Times subscribers what the federal government is good at doing as it relates to education.[1]  Four things were on their list—and “[b]eyond this list, the federal government is simply not well situated to make schools and teachers improve.” Of the four, I’d probably be in 75% agreement, but as my previous posts would suggest, I’d also add other things to the list that I continue to be comfortable that the federal government has a role (like incentivizing and supporting state education agencies to make their own administrative and structural changes that might unlock best practices for reducing bureaucracy and supporting local education agencies).  Here’s my quick and dirty thoughts:

1.      Hess + Darling-Hammond: The federal government is good at encouraging transparency for school performance and spending.  à Transparency is a great-sounding sound bite for whatever comes after it.  Who wants systems to operate from behind the curtain anyway?  The scary part is that transparency is usually only talk about the ends, outputs, and outcomes rather than about the resources available, constraints, or inputs.  It is though, a good place to start.  Hess + Darling-Hammond think reports of school and district-level spending would square with the public.  My concern is that raw spending is less important and can easily be manipulated out-of-context.  I would like to see contextualized spending that incorporated best budgeting practices and cost accounting.  How much overhead is needed?  Why? Is money being spent EFFICIENTLY?  Who cares whether $5,000 more was spent in one school than another if that $5,000 was spent on floor cleaner for the cafeteria?  I’m more concerned with which programs or activities use the most resources and of those, which groups they are servicing, for how long, and what those investments are allowing the groups to do and community to enjoy.  I’d rather pay more for a program that fully services its clients’ needs.  Isn’t that what the money’s supposed to be for in the first place?

2.      Hess + Darling-Hammond: The federal government is good at enforcing civil rights laws and ensuring that low-income and SpEd dollars are spent appropriately.  à Full agreement here.

3.      Hess + Darling-Hammond: The federal government is good at financing reliable research for fundamental questions.  à Agreed

4.      Hess + Darling-Hammond: The federal government is good at voluntary, competitive federal grants that support innovation. à  Hess + Darling-Hammond give a backhanded compliment to Race to the Top by acknowledging its effect of “providing political cover for school boards, union leaders and others to throw off anachronistic routines” but then basically degrade the policy of using consultants to implement because they don’t see the implementation as true innovation.  I understand the critique that the federal education agenda might be too engrained with what is needed to win the Race to the Top monies in the first place, but we should remember from whence we have come.  Fewer than fifteen years ago, we didn’t even have comparable data on our children, few believed (and many, many still don’t) that all children are capable of learning and mastering material, and, if we are being honest, we didn’t know how severe the performance and achievement gaps were in our systems (though to a small subset this has always been evident). In my idealism, what I hope that Race to the Top is doing is more like giving states and LEAs the opportunity to rid themselves of the low-hanging fruit so that they can begin to paint on the fresh canvas.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/opinion/how-to-rescue-education-reform.html?_r=2

Secretary Duncan made a speech at Harvard Graduate School of Education-- here's what I think

Below is an analysis of Secretary Duncan's speech to HGSE students in Feb 2012.  Of course this post is part of an assignment to connect the talk to larger policy frameworks--notably, John Kingdon-- but, all the same, it's my analysis of where I think Secretary Duncan and the Obama Administration are in the education space.

Find the speech HERE.

Consistent with Kingdon’s description of political appointees, Secretary Duncan laid out issues that are of particular importance to him, even though his policy agenda has been set by President Obama.  Secretary Duncan believes in the real world and wants debates rooted in the actual challenges on the ground.  He talks about the sense of urgency ingrained within him, and he talking about the kids and communities he lived in, worked in, and understands.  The policy agenda that he delivers, however, does not seem to be his own.  He delivers an agenda about how brokered policies are better for our country than stubborn faithfulness to absolutist solutions.  He’s trying to soften up the system such that when a window opens—perhaps post November 2012—the policy agenda he is delivering about mutual respect and collaboration will be heard.

The field of education is filled with opposite choices, remarks Secretary Duncan.  He finds incompatibility that being for one choice means that one is necessarily not in agreement to other choices (i.e. flexible state funders being against accountability, English and math tests for performance being against well-rounded curriculum, etc.).  He suggests that win-win is possible and compromises of “both . . . and” exist.  But what he is really saying is that a policy community of people who should all care about kids has splintered—that this policy community is fragmented by the specialists who avow their approaches are best in their pure form: the perfect has become the enemy of the good, he says. 

Back to the Question: Is a FEDERAL Department of Education Necessary—notes from academia

On Madison’s Fed. 10

            Evaluating the appropriate federal role in education—well, really in anything—deserves an analysis of what many will point to as the best source of authority about government roles: the federalist papers, of course.  Federalist Paper Number Ten, Authored my James Madison circa 1787 rests of a certain view of our nation.  Namely, “[t]hose who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.”  As between the two options of either stifling the liberty that creates the faction in the first place or controlling the effects that follow from factions, Madison uneasily settles on the latter.  He finds that factions will almost by definition be mischievous, but where there is a democratic government—which is astute to define: “consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person”—the effects of factions will be minimized but not eradicated.  For Madison, a republic, not a true democracy has the potential to override factions.

            It is through Madison’s “scheme of representation” in a republic that a cure can be found for factions.  So what does this have to do with federal education?  Well, Madison’s proposition extended means that there are factions that exist to act from the outside on education decisions—and logically also factions that exist within education to act on decisions the public should make about education.  These individual factions, working from within and working from the outside, level out in a representative environment such that only those ideas worth bringing to a higher, next level decision-making get discussed: those ideas that are duplicative of efforts in other places, those ideas that are deeply believed, those ideas that are innovative enough to curry favor, and/or those ideas that are so much a part of the identity of the representatives that they cannot be left behind.  Madison’s representative state, the republic, thus is less about the capture of factions and more about the conclusions drawing process that stems from the experimentation or novelty from the polity.