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.

Audio tapes show former Atlanta Public Schools superintendent bullying state official...

Audio tapes show former superintendent bullying state official...

Just a brief update to let you know that "yes" I am still infatuated with the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal and will probably have some very interesting news for you by the end of the semester.

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

From Friedman's assessment (mostly rejected)

Milton Friedman writes of the appropriate federal role in public education in an economics-based article from 1955.[1]  His analysis begins with pointing out the huge role government has assumed in financing and administering education for a nation that believes in individual freedoms, family, and free enterprise.  He gives three plausible ways to justify such heavy government involvement:  creating competition where there would otherwise be a natural monopoly, “neighborhood effects” (or what I am conceptualizing as negative externalities) of which there is no coercive compensation mechanism and a strong form of paternalism over children and the vulnerable.  The article then goes on to differentiate between common education and vocational education.

Snippet from my Personal Statement for law school, (four years ago)

It is quite risky to post what you believe, but at the risk of being vulnerable, here goes.  It's almost 2012 and I have always looked back to what I've done and who I've been to fine tune my future.  Thought I'd share my thoughts from four years ago.

If I fail them, then I fail at life.

My work had become just that serious. I opened my classroom door to the faces of five seven-year-olds waiting for their first glimpse of “teacher,” post-Winter Break. They scrambled in, hung their backpacks on their hooks, got out their materials for the day, and took their seats. Learning to execute just those things had taken us until the end of September to perfect. Amazingly, after a one-month vacation, my students remembered our morning routine and did it flawlessly. Even as the rest staggered in, not a single child went looking for a pencil, forgot his or her holiday “get-smart” homework packet, or asked me to read the directions for the beginning activity. The room was silent. And as they diligently wrote in their journals, I monitored them, doing my best to choke back the tears.

The pride I felt in that moment fueled my commitment to teach for the next eighteen months. My December holiday had been spent analyzing reading unit assessments, math performance projects, and writing samples. The results showed phenomenal growth. My class of predominantly African-American and Latino children had improved an entire grade level in literacy in only five month’s time. These students had transformed into a new group of children now infused with perhaps the greatest source of renewable energy any child has available to him: the motivation to succeed. That January, I knew I had to do everything I could to prepare them for our first high-stakes standardized test in April.

Those first moments still resonate deeply with me. Each day, my students “got smarter” because I taught through their deficiencies and beyond my own self-expectations. We strengthened one another: they worked hard to learn because I worked hard to teach. I saw myself in their little minority faces and knew they needed to see an African-American woman working just as hard for each of them.  By the end of my two years, my two separate classes outperformed projections for their underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds.

How Do We Do More for Juveniles Who Get Less of Both Prevention and Rehabilitation Services?

from my Art of Social Change course facilitated by Betsy Bartholett and Jessica Budniz

       

     During Week 10, Bryan Stevenson, Naoka Carey, and Josh Dohan cautioned of how the criminal justice system had retreated back to treating juveniles as adults though the juvenile justice movement sought an independent system that acknowledges the real differences between child and adult psychological development.  Last session during Week 11, Tim Decker and Edward Dolan added to the weekly discourse of how many children in the United States begin life and enter adulthood with fewer opportunities to be productive, healthy people.  Mr. Decker and Mr. Dolan took what we learned steps farther by explaining that the trade-offs between due process and rehabilitation for juveniles has resulted in children experiencing grotesquely punitive treatment in youth corrections institutions.

Politics as a Barrier to Fairness in Educational Outcomes for Our Children

The following is a response to a course presentation on the Achievement Gap.

Until Dai Ellis spoke up, it seemed that the students and speakers were going to continue to mosey around the big elephant in the room that is responsible for stifling the progress of closing racial achievement gaps for our nation’s most vulnerable children.  Professor Roland Fryer told a narrative of how he’d presented several decisionmakers with his “vaccine” of five “common sense” interventions and how each turned him down, even though they had been initially interested in his achievement gap research because it had potential benefits for their communities.  And Professor Tom Payzant followed Fryer’s presentation by adding that parents and community members ought to be engaged in the process of turning around the lowest performing schools in order for reform efforts to be authentic to the communities with the most to benefit or loose from the interventions.  The former Boston Public Schools Superintendent also cautioned reformers to think about creative ways to replicate charter management organizations without also replicating the bureaucratic ills begotten to many school systems.  But until Mr. Ellis, CEO of Excel Academy “no excuses” charter schools network, advanced his two talking points ((1) “ideology kills” and (2) scaling up charter success is possible), the class conversation seemed mainly about the problem of the achievement gap and proffered solutions coming from research and practice.  The conversation would have never moved to the real takeaway lesson for the evening:  individuals from various backgrounds can become change-agents for the education systems in their communities.  The counterintuitive politics of education reform has made it increasingly difficult to deliver solutions that make our student outcomes more fair.

In the child welfare space, none of us chose this.

None of us chose this for our lives.  As mothers, we don’t choose dysfunction over healthy family units and as children we don’t choose to be orphaned over being nurtured.  None of us look down the barrel and say “Sign me up for the hard life!”  But, it’s true—our choices have consequences and those kinetics run deep and long. When we take toxins into our pregnant bodies we seep destruction into our children.  When we run away from the institutions that simulate normalcy, we claim our autonomy and our vulnerability.  And when we open ourselves up to revolving door of caretakers, we become the bests and worse parts of humanity. What separates those that plead for adoption now and removal yesterday versus those that urge family preservation first and resources soon is not a game of who to blame. But rather, both recognize that none of us chose this for our lives, yet all of us must take care to fix it. Using the babies in the river parable, we are just torn as to whether to concentrate on scooping up the babies we see floating downstream or trekking upstream to search for the baby thrower.  As and much as I would like to strap on my backpack and charge after the evildoer throwing away lives, I cannot contemplate passing by the lives in front of our needing solutions now.