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...