Unplugged

The Education Optimists will be taking a well-deserved respite from blogging during the first part of August. We hope you enjoy our prior posts and look forward to sharing ideas with you again soon!

"Illusory" Test Score Gains

Here is a neat little story from today's Washington Post that puts my recent post about Maryland test scores into some context.

Recent reports from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and [Bruce] Fuller's group, Policy Analysis for California Education, have concluded that most recent gains on state tests are illusory, reflecting better test-taking skills or lower standards rather than increased knowledge. Another study, from the Center on Education Policy, concluded that the gains seemed genuine but did not necessarily reflect greater learning.

DC Pay Update

Today's Washington Post reports on the new teacher compensation proposal put forth by Washington, DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

D.C. teachers interested in the huge salary increases proposed by Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee would not only have to relinquish their seniority but also risk dismissal by spending a year on probation, according to details of the plan released yesterday.

The tradeoff, part of one of two salary scenarios under discussion, could earn an instructor with five years of experience as much as $100,000 in base pay and bonuses. The structure would put the city's teachers in an elite class in a profession in which the national average salary is $47,600, according to the most recent survey conducted by the American Federation of Teachers.

D.C. school officials said the leaps in pay would be subsidized partly by private foundations.

See background blog posts here and here.

Musical Elective of the Week

The Musical Elective of the Week is Lucinda Williams.

Lucinda Williams, 55, a Louisiana native, is a little bit country, a little bit folk, a little bit rock 'n' roll ... and then some. She is a premier songwriting talent and brings more musicianship to the stage and the recording studio in her right hand then many artists bring in their entire beings. She has won three Grammy awards in the course of her career and earned 7 more nominations.

Lucinda has been recording for 30 years. She released a couple of traditional country albums in 1979 (Ramblin') and 1980 (Happy Woman Blues), but it was her self-titled album (Lucinda Williams) in 1988 that began to earn her some notice. It included the single "Passionate Kisses" (which earned Lucinda a songwriting Grammy in 1994 for her song performed by Mary Chapin-Carpenter).

1998's Car Wheels On A Gravel Road is the album that brought Lucinda into the mainstream. It included the singles "Can't Let Go" and "Still I Long For Your Kiss" as well as the title track, "Right In Time," "Joy," "Concrete and Barbed Wire" and an ode to her hometown "Lake Charles." Car Wheels includes guest appearances by Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris. It received a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and is listed (#304) among Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Lucinda's other albums include: Sweet Old World (1992), Essence (2001), World Without Tears (2003), Live @ The Fillmore (2005) and West (2007). Lucinda Williams plans to release the 8th studio album of her career on September 16, 2008. It will be entitled Little Honey.

Quite admittedly, Sara turned me onto Lucinda's catalog back 5 years ago. My prior experience with her music was largely hearing tracks off of her Car Wheels album on an album-friendly radio station -- WNCS/The Point in Vermont. Not a bad way to spend the car ride from Burlington to Montpelier and back.

I've seen this award-winning talent in concert twice over the last several years and she rocks! I count both those shows -- at Milwaukee's Summerfest and at Madison's Barrymore Theatre -- among the best live shows I've ever seen (right up there with just about any Crowded House concert (especially during the Paul Hester years) and Midnight Oil's last 9:30 Club show in Washington, DC).

Lucinda seems to tour constantly. 2008 is no exception. She's currently completing a tour in support of John Mellencamp, and she's playing up and down the West Coast in August and September. Check out her tour schedule.

If you want to learn more about Lucinda Williams, please visit her web site.

Flirt with me don't keep hurtin' me
Don't cause me pain
Be my lover don't play no game
Just play me John Coltraine

--"Righteously," from World Without Tears (2003)

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Extra Credit--Past Musical Electives of the Week:

Great Big Sea
Griffin House
Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer
Neil Finn
Ray LaMontagne
Stuart Stotts
Dan Wilson
Kathleen Edwards

Free Research!

Check out this story from Education Week. Stanford University's School of Education says that it will make all of its academic research available free of charge.

Faculty members at Stanford University’s school of education have voted to make scholarly articles available to the public for free, a policy change that the university says makes Stanford’s education school the first such school in the nation to join the growing “open access” movement in academia.

This is a welcome development. Of course, policymakers will continue to need skilled interpreters and brokers to figure out what -- especially quantitative -- research actually says (and doesn't say) and how it is relevant to the challenges and contexts in which they work.

What are the financial costs of such a policy? And who bears them? Will other institutions -- both public and private -- follow in Stanford's footsteps?

New Teaching Blog

The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) just announced a new blog -- the NCTAF Learning Network.

Hmmm ... not exactly an inspiring name for a blog, but NCTAF does some good work around learning communities, teaching practice, and teaching standards. It's worth keeping an eye on. For now, there is some work to do on the formatting of the blog and there's really no content up yet either.

In related news, NCTAF recently held its annual symposium in Washington, DC. Fun was had by all.

For those of you hellbent on instant gratification with respect to teaching, check out these blogs:

• The Core Knowledge Blog
• Curriculum Matters (Ed Week)
  
• Public School Insights
  
• TLN Teacher Voices
  

What are some other good teaching-related blogs out there?

Praise Jesus (in Public Schools)

As reported in the Houston Chronicle, the Texas State Legislature passed and the Texas State Board of Education approved an elective high school Bible course with no standards because they might be "too difficult to write". Critics say the law is headed for the courts.

"I predict we're headed for a constitutional train wreck," said Mark Chancey, chairman of the religious studies department at Southern Methodist University. "The people who suffer will be the educators and the students, and the people who will foot the bill will be us the taxpayers."

Public school Bible classes can be wonderfully enriching, he said, but teachers need resources and specific guidelines.

"Instead, the state board of education is sending them into a minefield without a map," Chancey said.

Here's what the Austin American-Statesman had to say.

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Moving east .... Not to be outdone, last month the Louisiana State Legislature and Governor Bobby Jindal approved a law that suggests that evolution is open to debate. It encourages students to "analyze," "critique," and "review" scientific topics including evolution and global warming and instructs the State Board of Education to "allow and assist" (aid and abet?) teachers who want to question such science through "supplemental materials". The bill was supported by the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute.

The New York Times editorialized about this law last month.

The new bill doesn’t mention either creationism or its close cousin, intelligent design. It explicitly disavows any intent to promote a religious doctrine. It doesn’t try to ban Darwin from the classroom or order schools to do anything. It simply requires the state board of education, if asked by local school districts, to help create an environment that promotes “critical thinking” and “objective discussion” about not only evolution and the origins of life but also about global warming and human cloning, two other bêtes noires of the right. Teachers would be required to teach the standard textbook but could use supplementary materials to critique it.

That may seem harmless. But it would have the pernicious effect of implying that evolution is only weakly supported and that there are valid competing scientific theories when there are not. In school districts foolish enough to head down this path, the students will likely emerge with a shakier understanding of science.

Ed Week's Curriculum Matters blog provides additional background.

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I'm not sure what's worse, unstructured Bible classes funded by taxpayer dollars or a clever approach to undermining scientific principles in the classroom. What a choice.

Student Achievement in Maryland

In Maryland, the glass is half full ... or is it half empty?

From 2007 to 2008, the share of students statewide who were judged proficient or better rose six percentage points in reading and four points in math, to 82 percent and 76 percent, respectively, on the Maryland School Assessments.

But

State reading and math tests taken by Maryland students were shortened and tweaked this year, leading some critics to question whether the shifts contributed to surprisingly strong gains in achievement.

Is this uptick in student achievement in Maryland legit? Or is this another example of a state gaming the system [see here and here] when it comes to NCLB's adequate yearly progress requirements?

Ed Week's David Hoff provides a nice summary of the trickery employed by states in this blog post from November 2007.

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ADDED: Read Eduwonk's take on this.

America's Greatest Education Governor

The National Education Association (NEA) -- the nation's largest teachers' union -- recently awarded the title of "America's Greatest Education Governor" to North Carolina's Mike Easley.

While many such awards may seem hokey on their face, this is actually one that is well-deserved, based on Governor Easley's leadership on improving teacher quality and public education in North Carolina.

Easley pioneered Teacher Working Conditions surveys. As my New Teacher Center colleague (and North Carolina resident) Eric Hirsch says, assessing working conditions involves collecting data to determine what teachers want and need, and how their perceptions of various aspects of their jobs correlate with student achievement and teacher retention. Fundamentally, it's about helping schools create environments where teachers can thrive and students can succeed.

In addition, the NEA recognized Easley's leadership on three other policy initiatives:

• The More at Four pre-kindergarten program for at-risk four-year-olds;
  
• The Learn and Earn initiative, which allows high school students to jump-start their college education through 42 Learn and Earn high schools located on community college or university campuses; and
  
• EARN grants, which have allowed approximately 25,000 students from low- and moderate-income families to receive up to $8,000 of financial aid over two years.

Easley was first elected Governor in 2000 and will complete his second term in office at the end of 2008.

Read the NEA press release

Read more on teacher working conditions here and here

The Role of Education In Moving The Milwaukee Economy Forward

An interesting report on Moving The Milwaukee Economy Forward was released in early June by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI).

I always consider the source of policy reports like this prior to digesting the recommendations. Given WPRI's self-professed status as a "free market" (read: anti-government) think tank and its heavy reliance on Bradley Foundation and Roe Foundation monies, I generally approach its offerings very cautiously. Despite the potential for bias, I honestly find this report to be a balanced and worthy contribution to the public policy discussion in the state of Wisconsin and in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. In addition, I really like the breadth with which it investigates what's needed to strengthen and retool the Milwaukee area economy. (I guess you could call this a backhanded compliment?)

With respect to the report's education-related recommendations, I offer some cheers and jeers:

Cheers: The report includes some excellent (although not always particularly detailed) recommendations on early childhood education, project-based learning, high school graduation and restructuring the senior year of high school.

Jeers: The report falls short in ignoring some critical structural issues that Wisconsin must address in order to improve and reform its education system. These include school finance, including revenue limits, an over-reliance on local property taxes, and the qualified economic offer. In addition, it doesn't sufficiently address the need to raise educator quality in Wisconsin and in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), in particular. That would include a focus on new teacher induction and mentoring, the MPS teacher residency requirement, additional and differentiated compensation and high-quality professional development.

If you're concerned about the economy and/or education in Milwaukee, this report certainly deserves your attention.

U. of California Proposes Sweeping Admissions Changes

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the University of California System is considering changes to its admissions policies that would "de-emphasize test scores and give the system's nine undergraduate campuses greater flexibility in choosing their freshman classes." The plan was proposed by faculty leaders concerned that an over-emphasis on student test scores disqualifies capable and deserving low-income and minority students from being admitted to UC campuses.

Since the 1960s, California's premier public-university system has promised admission to at least one of its campuses to the top 12.5 percent of the state's high-school graduates, as determined primarily by grades and test scores. Under the faculty plan, the proportion of students who are guaranteed a spot would be reduced to about the top 10 percent. The remaining spots would go to students chosen by individual campuses, which would more closely consider applicants' personal backgrounds.

The changes may not impact top UC campuses -- such as Berkeley and UCLA -- because those schools already employ a comprehensive review of each student's application and they are highly selective institutions.

Mark Yudof, the new president of the UC System, recently arrived from Texas, says that he is "sympathetic on the merits" of the proposal but wants to see more details.

Read more:
Chronicle story
LA Times story
SF Chronicle story

Musical Elective of the Week

The Musical Elective of the Week is Great Big Sea.

Great Big Sea [web site] is a band that hails from Canada -- our neighbor to the north -- specifically, St. John's, Newfoundland. It originally formed in 1993, securing its first album contract in 1995, and just released its ninth studio album, Fortune's Favour, in June 2008.

GBS is probably best described as a folk-rock outfit, but also plays traditional tunes from its Irish, English and French heritage and incorporates many such melodies into its original songs. Band members -- including Alan Doyle, Sean McCann, and Bob Hallett -- also play a variety of instruments, including the guitar, accordion, bagpipes, bodhran, fiddle, mandolin and tin whistle. The band describes its music this way: "Our songs come from the sea and the cliffs and the rocks and all the other natural beauties our country provides. Without her we simply couldn’t exist."

Overall, my favorite Great Big Sea album in 2002's Sea of No Cares. It includes the title track as well as the single "Clearest Indication" as well as a mix of traditional songs such as "Yarmouth Town" and "Own True Way." My other favorite Great Big Sea songs include "Ordinary Day" from 1997's Play (and 1998's U.S.-only Rant and Roar), "Consequence Free" from 1999's Turn, and "Shines Right Through Me" from 2004's Something Beautiful.

GBS is known and has gained a following as much for its raucous live shows as for its catchy singles from its nine studio albums. If you want to catch the wave, check out (with a Canadian pronunciation, please) Great Big Sea's tour schedule. For you local Madison readers, GBS is coming to the Majestic Theatre on September 11th, and for those of you trapped inside the Beltway during the hot DC summer, my sympathies. Get on out to Wolf Trap on August 22nd to see GBS. The rest of you need to do your own homework!

I could really use to lose my Catholic conscience
Cuz I'm getting sick of feeling guilty all the time
I won't abuse it, yeah I've got the best intentions
For a little bit of anarchy but not the hurting kind

--"Consequence Free" from Turn (2000)

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Extra Credit--Past Musical Electives of the Week:

Griffin House
Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer
Neil Finn
Ray LaMontagne
Stuart Stotts
Dan Wilson
Kathleen Edwards

Obama Said What About Education????

Obama is giving a pretty good speech to the NAACP right now, and Liam and I were just sitting here listening and pretty psyched when he finally started talking about education. But no sooner had he begun to outline his plans for educational reforms, then CNN's Campbell Brown cut in and faded him out! As if, ok, education, booooring. She returned a few minutes later, once the education part was done.

ED in '08? Not working folks... not working. And CNN producers along with Campbell "Veep stakes baby...I don't understand the stock market" Brown are officially part of the problem.

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UPDATE: Here's the education-related text from Obama's speech:

And here’s what else we’ll do – we’ll make sure that every child in this country gets a world-class education from the day they’re born until the day they graduate from college. Now, I understand that Senator McCain is going to be coming here in a couple of days and talking about education, and I’m glad to hear it. But the fact is, what he’s offering amounts to little more than the same tired rhetoric about vouchers. Well, I believe we need to move beyond the same debate we’ve been having for the past 30 years when we haven’t gotten anything done. We need to fix and improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them. We need to uphold the ideal of public education, but we also need reform.

That’s why I’ve introduced a comprehensive strategy to recruit an army of new quality teachers to our communities – and to pay them more and give them more support. And we’ll invest in early childhood education programs so that our kids don’t begin the race of life behind the starting line and offer a $4,000 tax credit to make college affordable for anyone who wants to go. Because as the NAACP knows better than anyone, the fight for social justice and economic justice begins in the classroom.

Great (Read: Well-Funded) Places to Work

Today the Chronicle of Higher Education released its Great Colleges to Work For report and also the findings from a Michigan survey about family friendly policies in higher education. There is a single clear cross-cutting finding that brings "duh" to mind: The best colleges and universities to work for are those flush institutions which have the funds to do nice things for their professors.

Appearing at the top of nearly every list for the big schools (whether it's best compensation & benefits, best facilities, work-life balance, job satisfaction, or confidence in senior leadership) are wealthy public & privates: Stanford, Emory, U.Michigan-Ann Arbor, Ohio State... Sure, there are several lesser-known schools on the list (among the best small schools for example), and there are plenty of wealthy places not on this list. But on the whole, it's clear that providing faculty with what they need to do their work & enjoy it requires money. Legislature: listen up!!


Now... where are we on this "balance" thing? Ha! Read the report for more....

Here is where we need to go, now:

1. PAID time off for new biological mothers during AND after the pregnancy.
2. PAID time off for new biological fathers.
3. Stop the tenure clock for new mothers and new fathers, and grant ADDITIONAL extensions for the biological mother (who therefore experiences a pregnancy) and the nursing mother (which in itself is a medical event).
4. Grant UNPAID leave to care for children beyond the 12 weeks (!) allowed by FMLA.
5. Allow for negotiated reduced appointments for parents with child care responsibilities (need not be extraordinary!)
6. Provide for a period of modified duties (e.g. reduced teaching), for example for 1 year, for new parents.


Where should the $$ come from? The report has many good ideas, but most importantly moves beyond simply drawing down the professor's sick leave , vacation leave, and disability benefits. There should be special university AND departmental funds for this purpose. It is absolutely appalling that many schools continue to treat pregnancy and childbirth as any other disability AND simultaneously exert special requirements on moms taking time off (e.g. forcing them to "pay back" their time off, making up teaching later for example) but not imposing those requirements on others taking disability leave (e.g. because of a heart attack).

I could go on and on, and perhaps since I am going through this personally on a daily basis, I'm not in the best position to make policy recommendations. Plus, I have this incredibly supportive husband who's decided to prioritize my career and our family... we should all be so lucky!

Have a good day, folks.

It Doesn't Add Up

Every couple of months it seems a new (inter)national report is released bemoaning the performance of American students in mathematics or recommending improvements. But what is clear from today's Washington Post editorial on John McCain's voodoo economics is that math lessons didn't always 'take' for past generations of students either. McCain - a self-professed economics neophyte - either doesn't know that 2+2=4 or refuses to acknowledge it. I'm not sure which is worse.

Unsure and Underpaid: No Surprises Here

TIAA-CREF just released a study about early career professors, focusing on those in tenure-track positions. The goal was to learn more about how they assessed their graduate school training and their confidence in their ability to do their current work. The study also covered several other important topics, including the extent to which assistant professors must rely on outside sources of income to make ends meet.

The study finds that the majority of new faculty feel unprepared to do their job, with women reporting lower levels of confidence in their abilities than men. Furthermore most faculty are working for pay outside of their institution, earning between $6-15K per year to supplement their approx $50K 9-month base salaries.

Let me just say : No surprises here! When I landed this very sweet job at Wisconsin, having just graduated from the highly-regarded sociology program at U. Pennsylvania, I arrived and immediately felt as incompetent as I've ever felt in my life. On a daily (hourly) basis I found myself thinking (saying), "I have NO idea how to do this. I can't do this. I'm terrible at this. I'm going to get fired..." I felt bad for my first class of graduate students, most of whom could tell (as their later evaluations revealed) that I hadn't a clue how to teach. In fact, it was my first class ever, since I spent my time at Penn wisely building the research portfolio that enabled me to get a job at a great school like Wisconsin. I never TA'd, and most certainly never taught a summer course-- I've still never taught in the summer actually-- since I was socialized to understand the importance of grant-writing and publishing, relative to those other potential activities.

As for doing non-University work, I've been doing that since grad school too. How was I to survive on $13K per year in Philadelphia, if I insisted on being able to enjoy a good meal once in awhile, and to live alone, rather than with a roommate, so I could get some work done? Certainly some might rightly consider my priorities there a tad off, but the point isn't whether they were right or wrong, but that they led me to seek consulting. When I started consulting I was a third-year grad students (with an MA), and earned about $600-800/day. By the time I graduated I was working for 3 different organizations, and had a couple of dissertation fellowships, bringing my annual income up to approximately $30K. This made for a very hectic, but decent life.

It's very, very hard to consult while doing the work required of an assistant professor, but as my 9 month salary is only $57K, I absolutely have to. Before having a child, maybe it was more or less optional, but now with my annual childcare bill running around $15K, it's a necessity. Since I began here I've done somewhere between $5-15K of consulting a year, and most of the time those gigs are directly related to my academic work, get me good outside connections in the policy world, and will (eventually) result in some peer-reviewed pubs.

I say all this to put more specifics and a face on the survey statistics TIAA-CREF collected. I could envision some positive ways universities could work to minimize outside consulting without having to officially increase our salaries-- for example, by awarding us a cut of the indirect costs associated with our grants, or allowing internal grants to be used to cover childcare, or by providing a childcare stipend or quality on-campus childcare with enough spaces available for faculty kids... In the absence of that-- and perhaps even in the presence of it, since many consult because they enjoy it, and not because they need the money for childcare-- outside work will go on.

Now, lest I leave you with the impression that I dislike my gig here, a few parting thoughts. If I had it to do over again, I say with 99% certainty that I'd still choose a faculty career. And I haven't even enjoyed tenure yet. I'm not alone -- 92% of those in the TIAA-CREF survey said the same, even though more than one third report that the workload is heavier than they expected. According to the survey, we love our jobs because we enjoy teaching, working on campus, and serving society and we like the challenge the job presents. We stay in spite of a workload we find too heavy, pay that is too low, and the knowledge that work often takes priority over the rest of our lives, leading our family and friends to criticize us, we don't see them as often, and we work even when we're sick. Barely one fourth of us feel that we have time to read for pleasure or keep up with the news, and only slightly more find the time to exercise. Yet we stay, and we want to stay. Odd ducks, aren't we?

Musings on Kennedy, Obama

Not that I think that this means that NCLB will be reauthorized this session, but what a tremendous sight it was to see Senator Ted Kennedy walk into the U.S. Capitol yesterday to cast a vote on Medicare legislation.

On the presidential front, Dan Balz tries to put Obama's ideology into context in today's Washington Post ("Obama's Ideology Proving Difficult To Pinpoint"). All in all it's a pretty flat article. William A. Galston, a former Clinton White House domestic policy adviser, gets it mostly right:

Galston cited three strands that he regards as helping to define Obama-ism. First is an "all of us together" approach that rejects "diversionary interests and short-term gains." Second is an effort to bring people together across partisan lines. Third is his effort to broaden participation in politics and his use of modern technology to do so. This appears to be a marriage of Obama's roots in community organizing and his willingness to tap the power of technology to open the processes of government to more than the traditional cadre of experts.

What does this mean for education? There's been lots of chatter in the blog-o-sphere about whether Obama is a traditionalist or a reformer when it comes to education policy. With issues such as teacher pay, it is clear that Obama is willing to push the envelope and challenge union orthodoxy. The real question is whether he can and will prioritize these issues should he be a resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next year.

As an unnamed Clinton White House official was quoted in the Balz piece:

"His tone is very much post-partisan and post-ideological. The challenge will be coming up with the ideas to go with it. If you drop the same agenda into the same Washington petri dish, you'll get the same results."

A Blank Prescription for Policy Reform

Stanford has yet another interesting publication, Pathways, which integrates critical analysis of research on poverty with bold prescriptions for policy reform. I'm a bit late to the game in mentioning this, since the first issue came out in December, but then again as Mom-to-toddler a 6- month lag or so on my reading ain't bad.

I'm especially a fan of Becky Blank's piece which includes a list of priority efforts for antipoverty programs. Blank is whip-smart, and was recently a contender for the chancellorship here at Madison. Darn it all, she wasn't chosen.

Here's a quote from near the end of her article, which should illustrate why many of us would've loved to have her here. "Social policy evaluation is one of the least well appreciated tools of long-term policy design."

If there was one message I'd send to the presidential candidates, it's that when tackling ANY area of policy reform, please please please take the evaluation of your programs seriously. No, data isn't entirely objective, but it's a whole heck of a lot more objective than simply deciding something's working -- or not-- based entirely on politics or ideology.

Teacher Pay Reform in DC

Interesting developments on teacher compensation in District of Columbia Public Schools.... D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is pushing performance pay for teachers and apparently has gotten a number of foundations interested in funding the proposed reform.

As a Democrat for education reform, I am open to and interested in the overhaul of the traditional steps-and-lanes approach to compensating teachers (based on years of experience and advanced degrees--factors largely unrelated to teacher quality). We've got to think about ways to attract new talent into the profession. Increasing overall salaries is one approach, but a good portion of any increase needs to be directed toward individuals willing to take on additional duties and leadership roles, those with high-demand knowledge and skills, those willing to teach in more challenging environments, and those who can demonstrate their effectiveness on student outcomes.

The devil is in the details, and I am wary of pay proposals based entirely on test scores. It isn't yet clear exactly how Rhee's proposal would function exactly and it is still under negotiation with the D.C. teachers union, but it does sound "test-score heavy". For instance, how would teachers who teach untested subjects or untested grades be compensated under the new system? Would there be school-wide bonuses available on top of individual bonuses? Would school principals, curriculum specialists, and others be eligible for the new pay system? What test score or scores would be used? Would they be appropriately scaled? Would additional pay be based on a value-added methodology, on overall proficiency, on a single year or multiple years worth of data? Do any readers have answers to these questions?

Leaving these questions unanswered for the moment, Rhee's proposal would appear to give teachers the choice of sticking with the current system or giving up seniority and tenure rights for the chance at dramatically boosting their pay based on demonstrated effectiveness. And it would inject a bunch of new money into the system to fund salary increases. All in all, it's a deal that many teachers -- including the younger generation of educators -- may be willing to accept.

Read more:
Washington Post editorial (7/8/08)
Washington Post story (7/3/08)

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Additional resources on teacher compensation:
Brian Hassel/PPI - Better Pay for Better Teaching
Center for American Progress/Dan Goldhaber - Teacher Pay Reforms: Political Implications...
CPRE Policy Brief - Teacher Performance Pay
Denver's ProComp
ECS/Joyce Foundation - Funding Diversified Teacher Compensation Systems
Educator Compensation Institute
NGA - Improving Teaching Through Pay for Contribution

Musical Elective Of The Week

The Musical Elective of the Week is Griffin House.

Griffin House is a 27-year-old singer/songwriter based in Nashville, Tennessee but originally from the Cincinnati, Ohio area.

House's first major album, Lost & Found, was released in 2004. His latest album, Flying Upside Down, was released back on April 29. In between, he also has released a couple of EPs and a 2006 digital-only album, Homecoming. He also notched two independent releases back in the day, 2002's No More Crazy Love Songs and 2003's Upland.

I would describe House's music as intimate, personal and poetic and certainly cut from an acoustic rock mold. He cites as some of his musical influences Billy Bragg, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and Wilco.

For those of you who might want to catch him in the act, he's all over the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Northeast and Southeast during the months of July and August. So, check him out.

I need love, I need love, in the middle of the day
When the world just keeps stopping
And your heart just keeps slipping away

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Extra Credit--Past Musical Electives of the Week:

Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer
Neil Finn
Ray LaMontagne
Stuart Stotts
Dan Wilson
Kathleen Edwards

The Persistence of Value-Added Teacher Effects

In case you missed it, eduwonkette offered up an excellent post last month about the accumulation of value-added teacher effects. She describes a new NBER Working Paper by Brian Jacob, Lars Lefgren and David Sims which suggests that these effects may not as large as prior research has suggested. Here's why:

"Our estimates suggest that only about one-fifth of the test score gain from a high value-added teacher remains after a single year. Given our standard errors, we can rule out one-year persistence rates above one-third. After two years, about one-eighth of the original gain persists.

Our results indicate that contemporary teacher value-added measures may overstate the ability of teachers, even exceptional ones, to influence the ultimate level of student knowledge since they conflate variation in short-term and long-term knowledge.

Our results suggest some caution should be taken in focusing on such measures of teacher effectiveness. If value-added test score gains do not persist over time, adding up consecutive gains does not correctly account for the benefits of higher value-added teachers."

Interesting. If true, this study doesn't say that teachers don't matter, but perhaps less than some value-added proponents have suggested because students may only retain a fraction of the knowledge gained from having more effective teachers in consecutive years.

I'm Not the Only One

Yesterday Kevin Carey considered the NY Times piece, and what he knows of me, and concluded that "that the liberal professoriate is alive and well."

I think he's completely correct, and want to highlight some fine examples of my junior colleagues who also prove his point (for the record, my senior colleagues confirm his impression too). I am-- by far-- not the only academic focused on issues of inequality and striving to use rigorous methods to examine them.

For starters, one only needs to look across the hall from my office, next door to my esteemed colleague Mike Olneck, where you can find Doug Harris, Nancy Kendall, Adam Nelson, and Tricia Burch. All in the throes of early careers, all making outstanding contributions to the study of educational policy by choosing their topics and approaches with an eye towards clear identification of both problems and solutions.

Adam is an historian whose painstaking attention to detail and beautiful writing increases our awareness of the broader and longstanding social issues which shape current policy debates. For an example, see his well-reviewed book, The Elusive Ideal: Equal Educational Opportunity and the Federal Role in Boston's Public Schools, 1950–1985. Adam brings just as much of his energy to his teaching, conveying an affinity and talent for undergraduate education that most parents just dream their kids will get exposure to,

Doug Harris, far more well-known than I, burst on the academic scene fresh from the Economic Policy Institute, and quickly established himself as a thoughtful leader of the movement to measure teacher quality in an objective, comprehensive, yet accessible way. He is a jack of all trades, as many of the best economists are, even daring to collaborate with me (poor boy!) on a ridiculously large study of financial aid. His approach could never be considered partisan, and as a result he has fans on both the right and the left. I certainly count myself among them.

Tricia Burch somehow (how? How???) manages to be an outstanding teacher and mentor (according to every student I've met) while also generating careful conceptual and empirical work on educational policy and practice. And, to top it all off, she is a departmental leader of the movement to value one's family, as well as one's academic life. She has a forthcoming book, as well as two gorgeous children and a very happy marriage. Most impressive.

Finally, there is Nancy Kendall, our most recent hire. Better than almost anyone, Nancy simultaneously represents the old guard and the new, with her deep commitment to questioning normative conceptions of equity and her extremely sensitive and thorough ethnographic approach to understanding the lives of children in the most vulnerable situations. Nancy and her beautiful baby and husband will spend the next year in Mozambique, as part of a Fulbright fellowship.

Colleagues like these promise that the academy going forward will never leave behind the past, but will at the same time find new ways to work and teach that should hopefully demonstrate to more Americans that higher education need not be considered the domain of the elite.

I Never Knew I Was (A) Moderate

I've been accused of many things-- being outspoken, outrageous, even out of my mind. But never, never, had I been called (a) moderate. Until yesterday, when Patti Cohen labeled me as such on the front page of the New York Times .

I'm still getting used to this publicity thing. I've been told it's all good. Even a bad picture is worth printing. So, I really can't complain. And in the spirit of the whole-truth and nothing-but, I kinda knew this was coming. Patti and I spoke numerous times over the last 3 or 4 months, and I had a sense that the complexity of what I was describing to her was going to (have to?) get boiled down.

So the readers missed a big part of the story: The intense pressures to publish or perish constantly, to get grants to support not only ourselves but our students, the ramping up of statistical standards, and the enormous benefits (and costs) of "specializing" very early in school. I declared my college major in the first semester of freshman year, and took nearly nothing but sociology courses for the next 6 years. Where did it get me? A BA in 3.5 years, and a PhD within 5 years after that. And I did learn a lot along the way-- but it was far from a classical experience. And the current reward structure provides little space for political activism -- indeed it leaves no time whatsoever for any real activism, if one wants to also have a family.

Equally important, the story missed my wonderful relationship with Mike Olneck, my friend and mentor at Wisconsin. Mike is one of the reasons I came here, and a prime reason why I stay. His departure this winter will be nothing less than depressing.

Now, enough complaining, since the front page of the Times is the freakin' front page of the TIMES! Tres cool. I've gotten some incredible emails from folks sharing their stories of injustice and inequality, and I plan to share some of them, gradually, over the next couple of days (in between selling my house and planning my move into a new one, plus finishing 2 long-delayed papers, and trying to celebrate this holiday with my kid & husband). So, stay tuned...