Movin' on up!

So I am moving in so many ways right now. First, I will be joining ACE - the American College of Education to help more teachers realize their full potential which means I am transitioning out of ABCTE. After 5 years of working to ensure that every child has a great teacher I am ready for a new challenge.

We are moving to Texas - and I will be closing down the Edbiz and ABCTE blogspot brands and combining into one blog to make life a little easier. Moving it all to http://www.virtulearning.blogspot.com - so please join me on that blog and we will continue to focus on the incredible opportunities that await students who venture into learning in the virtual world!Thanks for following me and please join me at the Virtual Learning blog!

Governor Jeb Bush: see you there?

I am speaking at the Excellence in Education conference this week and hope to meet you there! If you have not signed up - don't miss it. A lot of great stuff and great networking.

Excellence in Action 2009
Winning the International Education Arms Race

Last Chance to Join Jeb Bush at Excellence in Action

Join hundreds of passionate advocates and policy experts in Washington, D.C. this week on Thursday, October 8, and Friday, October 9, to discuss strategies to transform education in your state and across America. Here is what awaits you at our second annual summit on education reform:

Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida, shares the stunning turnaround of education in Florida.

Julia Gillard, Deputy Prime Minister of Australia – the first woman in history to hold that position – shares the vision for excellence in education Down Under.

Peje Emilsson, education innovator and entrepreneur from Sweden, tells the revolutionary approach of “the Knowledge School” (Kunskapssklan).

James Tooley, world-renowned scholar, offers insights into his groundbreaking research on private education for the poor in India, China and Africa.

Mary Matalin and James Carville share their experiences in the world of policy and politics, as well as their outlook on the future of education in America.

Other Featured Speakers:

Jeanne Allen, Byron Auguste, Tony Bennett, Michelle D. Bernard, Mitchell Chester, Clayton Christensen, John Chubb, Jon Cohen, Bill Coley, Robert Enlow, Chester E. Finn, Jr., Aimee Rogstad Guidera, Jonathan Hage, Ric Hanushek, Rick Hess, Lance Izumi, Tim Keller, Joel Klein, Matt Ladner, John Legg, Patricia Levesque, Tom Luce, Neal McCluskey, Steve Moore, Vicki Murray, Eric Osberg, Paul Pastorek, Dana Perino, Gary Phillips, Michelle Rhee, Gerard Robinson, Chip Rogers, Ariela Rozman, Dave Saba, Adam Schaeffer, Susan Schaeffler, Eric Smith, Kate Walsh, Will Weatherford, Gene Wilhoit, Joe Williams

A full agenda for Excellence in Action 2009 can be found online at ExcelinEd.org.

Registration:

To learn more about Excellence in Action and receive details on travel and accommodations, please visit ExcelinEd.org.

• Summit Registration - $399
• Summit Registration, Government rate - $199
• Single day registration for Thursday, October 8, 2009 - $209
• Single day registration for Friday, October 9, 2009 - $229

Online registration is currently closed, but interested individuals can register onsite on Thursday, October 8, and Friday, October 9, at the Capital Hilton.

If you would like to register onsite, send the Foundation for Excellence in Education an email at: info@excelined.org, with the subject “Onsite Registration” and include your contact information and number of guests attending.

Liberating Learning book review in Heartland's School Reform News

I was so impressed with the Politics of Blocking outlined in Chubb and Moe's book - Liberating Learning that Heartland asked me to do a book review. You can find it here.

Jay Matthews on Alternative Teacher Certification

Jay Matthews has a quick ABCTE plug in the Washington Post this morning. If you have not been following it, he told the story a few weeks back about a gifted teacher who was frustrated by the bureaucracy involved with becoming a licensed teacher. To be blunt, if Jay had not inquired, this man would still be battling the powers that be.

Today’s post mentions ABCTE as a way for more Maryland teachers to get into teaching. We came very close to applying in Maryland before but they had a 4-6 week internship that was not possible for the mid career professionals that come into our program. So we went to work with other states.

It is a sad part of state teacher certification rules. States try to become more innovative but always get in their own way. They end up creating more rules that make it impossible for anything but the current processes to be able to apply. Case in point is Louisiana which spent the last 16 months trying to craft new rules and this supposedly innovative process requires alternative certification programs to have 32 hours of course work. That is just 2 classes shy of a master’s. Wow – so innovative I can hardly stand it.

So we appreciate education reporters like Jay Matthews ensuring that the public take a good hard look at a process that just doesn’t make sense.

Education Equality Project

I am now listed as a signatory on the Education Equality Project. The group is worth a look and is starting to gain traction. The main focus is we need to stop arguing about the 20% of education reform where we rabidly disagree and start working on the 80% of education change where we all do agree. Check them out!

http://www.edequality.org/who_we_are/the_signatories

Only the strong survive

Note: this is not an ABCTE charter school - I just joined the board of an independent DC charter school 18 months ago to try and help them survive and did all we could.

Last night I went before the Washington, DC Public Charter School Board (PCSB) and relinquished the charter to our school. We will not be opening this year because we did not have enough students enroll to make it financially viable. But it goes deeper than that.

Charters schools operate on an incredibly lean budget, always less then district schools, and if there is not outside funding they cannot make it. In our case, we did not succeed in getting enough grants and donations and continued to fall further behind. This drove staffing cuts that then started to hurt the curriculum and student experience.

Even with those cuts we did dramatically improve on AYP this year and we had higher enrollment than we ever have had this summer. But without financial support, we could not make it unless we had another 20 students enroll. We worked hard with the PCSB to thoroughly analyze the school this summer so that we could make the right call. It has been an agonizing few weeks trying to figure out the best possible course of action.

In the end we did what is right for the students and closed the school.

This is the beauty of the charter school system without artificial caps – only the strong will survive giving students the best possible choice for their school.

Thank you!

Today is the day for ABCTE, we are officially on our own. It was about four years ago that I became the President and things were definitely not as rosy. We had lost our grant in Congress and we had to run around working to get our funding back in the spending bill. The press was not kind to us because of some issues with our board and it had been a while since a new state had accepted us.

It takes a dedicated team of people to overcome those issues, cut costs and build success. It took a great board of directors to help brainstorm solutions to our financial problems. It took many friends in many states to put themselves out there for ABCTE. And you have to watch every dollar.

Today is both a celebration and a thank you. Our revenue per candidate is now around $800 and our cost per candidate is down to $1,100. We have over $4.8M in the bank to cover that distance until our volume will create a break-even situation. It took very careful planning and execution to hit this point and I am very proud of where we are.

So to all our states, candidates, Congress, the US DOE, education reform friends, founding board members, staff (and the families of the staff since we travel so much), my sincere appreciation.

Because of you, there are 1,700 classrooms with incredible teachers inspiring our students! See for yourselves!

Scalable and Sustainable

One of the big issues with the ARRA funds and the Race to the Top challenge is the supposed short term nature of this incredible boost in funding. This is a one time opportunity with billions of dollars to be used to give our education system a push in the right direction.

The concern from all sides is what will happen when the funds are gone.

On the right, they are deathly afraid that the spending will continue and the results will be mediocre at best. On the left, they are deathly afraid that the opportunity will be squandered with little or nothing to show for it.

So we keep hearing words like sustainable and scale. Yet the funds continue to go to organizations that have neither. Being sustainable and moving to scale are incredibly difficult in any organization but even more challenging in education.

Perhaps that is why we at ABCTE are so proud of the fact that we are achieving both and celebrating this week. We are leaving our federal grant having been great stewards of those funds and running independently from this day forward. Right now, we have a enough cash to cover the shortfall between what we are charging per candidate and our actual costs per candidate.

We can do this for the three years it will take to get to break-even – a true representation of moving to scale. However, it would be great to be able to conserve some of that cash and maybe even charge less if some of the education philanthropists would come to the table with us.

Regardless, we have created a completely scalable organization that has a business model that allows us to be self-sustaining. A rarity in non-profits and almost unheard of in education.

The Politics of Blocking

It was pretty nice of iNACOL (the online learning group) to give out copies of Liberating Learning by Terry Moe and John Chubb at the ALEC Conference last week. It is a pretty easy read that I finished on the plane to Mississippi yesterday.

I wish I had read it five years ago.

Moe and Chubb give you a primer on the political strategy of the teacher’s union. They call it the politics of blocking. The key points they make are dead on:
1. Teacher’s unions are very powerful at the state and local level
2. It is much easier to block legislation than it is to pass it
3. If it looks like it might pass – they can push for a delay – request lengthy study for a few years
4. If it starts to pass, you can always load it up with a ton of junk amendments to make the implementation impossible
5. If it does pass, immediately start attacking either through the courts or new legislation the next year

While the politics of blocking is a cute name, it is also the politics of wearing you down. ABCTE really could have used this information when we started as I learned all of this the hard way.

One thing they leave out of the politics of blocking is that we need a politics of moving to counteract. If education reforms wants to ever become a “movement” instead of disparate entities pushing for single agenda, it will need to have a state level group in every state pushing just as hard.

The theory they put forth in the book on how education will ultimately change is that technology, both in innovation and in information, will rule the day. Technology is cool and parents want it. Unions are resisting online schools because of the fear of job losses. But eventually, parents will demand greater technology in the classroom and as the information about efficacy of teaching and schools continues to proliferate, the demands will increase.

They are correct and tangentially agree with Disrupting Class by Christensen et al that technology will save education. They just disagree a little on the method that will make this happen. They also put forth their view of the “education of tomorrowland” – but I will write about that at the other blog.

Charter School Innovation

The press release below is for a charter school where I serve on the Board of Directors. Our school struggled in the first few years to really get going as most schools do. The freedom that charter schools are given means we could have closed or continued limping along. But we chose the innovative path of partnering with a stronger, more successful school with a similar mission - not unlike the business world. The overall winner in this partnership is the students who now have the chance for a safe, dual immersion education with outstanding caring teachers. The education entrepreneurs who make things like this happen are just amazing to work with. More to come as we move these two schools together -

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CentroNía Announces Management Agreement With Bilingual Community Academy

Washington, D.C.—As of July 1, 2009, CentroNía welcomes ABC-Academia Bilingüe de la Comunidad/Bilingual Community Academy Public Charter School under its expanding umbrella of educational programming. This will be the second Charter School CentroNía will manage. Since 2004, CentroNía has managed DC Bilingual Public Charter School. This partnership with ABC expands CentroNía’s bilingual, multicultural educational outreach into the 6th, 7th and 8th grades. As noted by the DC Public Charter School Board, ABC provides DC’s “only Dual Immersion Middle School…” where “The parents are extremely pleased with their school, its teachers and school leaders. They relish the fact that there is on-going communication between parents, teachers and the principal relative to their child’s academic progress.”

CentroNía is a nationally accredited educational organization that provides affordable quality education programs, professional development, and family support services in a bilingual, multicultural environment to more than 1,700 children, youth, and families in the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area.

For more information on ABC, please visit us online www.abcpcs.org or contact us by phone (202) 822-6301 or via email info@abcpcs.org. Applications are still available for the 2009-2010 school year!

In order to fix education - study Fleetwood Mac

I am attending the National Educational Computing Conference here in DC and went to the keynote address by Malcolm Gladwell last night. I was a fan of his after the Tipping Point. I have become a little less so in recent years – especially after reading Freakonomics and seeing a great second reason given for the reduction in NYC crime. It suddenly dawned on me that maybe anecdotal causal evidence should be suspect.

So there I was armed with a healthy dose of cynicism when Mr. Gladwell launches into a comparison of educating our children and Fleetwood Mac. Since many in the audience were from my generation, it was a good hook. The basic premise is that (he managed a quick plug of his book Outliers) we all think of Fleetwood Mac as a kind of overnight success but it took 10 years, 16 albums, many different musicians to get to that big. Note that the core group of musicians who produced the self titled album and Rumors were an overnight success. So it is a bit of a stretch from the beginning – but it was not too much of a leap.

So Mr. Gladwell states that “studies have shown” that it takes 10,000 hours to master anything and that it is almost pointless to rush that time like the 10 years for Fleetwood Mac. He then points out that on the TIMSS test (the math test where US students are horrible) there is a 120 question psychology survey at the beginning. Heinously long for any survey and most kids don’t like to finish it. Turns out that the kids that answer the most questions on the psych test are also the same kids that perform the best on the math test. His dramatic conclusion is that math isn’t about math aptitude but the patience and ability to slog through lengthy, time consuming work – 10 years just like Fleetwood Mac.

Now – his data can be questioned a bunch of different ways – but I do agree with his premise. Here in the US we have come to the “belief system” that you are either good at math or bad at math. And either way, more practice will not help. We choose to ignore the 10,000 hour rule while other countries that have gone way beyond us choose to give everyone a lot of math practice to master the concepts.

Then I got distracted for a little while because I was outside the hall in a viewing lounge and 15 different people were twittering on his talk – pretty funny to see all those computers up on twitter – half of this little audience were in full tweet.

The second lesson of Fleetwood Mac is that they didn’t really build on their initial success – they built on their failures. A capitalization strategy builds on success and a compensation strategy builds on failures. His theory is that people/groups (like Fleetwood Mac) who build on compensation strategies are much more successful. Thus we should let students fail and they will compensate by being better students. He then made it sound like only people who are dyslexic can make great CEO’s because of their compensation strategies.

Again – I kind of agree with the premise and believe that part of our problem over the last 15 years is raising the most pampered generation in history where no one can fail – everyone gets a trophy for participating and we socially promote kids that can’t read.

The final lesson from Fleetwood Mac is that they tried many different music genres before deciding on the California sound (huge leap here – they decided on that because Stevie Nicks joined the band and that is what she was good at). His conclusion is that student learning is likely a zig zag pattern and not a linear progression but all schools are set up on a linear focus.

Again – the data link is weak but the conclusion is sound. We need more individualized instruction and learning that is not structured on an archaic system but is based on the student’s ability to learn.

So I can agree with Malcolm. In order to fix student learning we need to fully analyze Fleetwood Mac - - but the leap it took to get to that conclusion was pretty lame.

Reform-O-Meter takes a hit

Over at Flypaper, Mike Petrilli is keeping the Obama Reform-O-Meter which he has pointing to a fairly neutral education agenda for the President and Secretary Duncan. He needs to point the arrow more to the left this week.

We got notice that the Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) is beginning to release some of the $635 million they have to dole out under ARRA. They want to give out $143 million to 35 lucky groups to improve teacher quality. From the email:

• Department of Education (DOE) announces funds to improve the quality of new teachers by creating partnerships among Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs), high-need school districts (local educational agencies-LEAs) their high-need schools, and/or high-need early childhood education (ECE) programs. Partnerships would create model teacher preparation programs at the pre-baccalaureate level through the implementation of specific reforms of the IHE's existing teacher preparation programs, and/or model teaching residency programs for individuals with strong academic and/or professional backgrounds but without teaching experience.

Note that we are not eligible because we are not an Institution of Higher Education even though we currently have an innovative approach that prepares people from professional backgrounds who don’t have teaching experience.

But now, in the name of innovation, the DOE is going to throw a ton of money at groups that have never created a model teacher preparation program. In fact, when they create so-called alternative teacher certification programs they are almost always a few classes short of their normal master’s program.

Exactly the opposite of what Clayton Christensen says we need in order to create disruptive innovations in education. True innovation will not come from within the system. Note that Clayton even refers to ABCTE in this CNN Commentary.

Roughly a third of the “innovation” dollars go to those most firmly entrenched in supporting the status quo. Looks like Mike needs to move the arrow.

Best Restaurants in State Capitals I have visited

Debuting at number 11 is The Oceanaire in Indianapolis which has amazing seafood flown in every day. Get the crab cake and the tower. Totally amazing!

Fluff no more

Multiple posts today because there is just so much going on in education. The first concerns a great blog post and subsequent comments by Joanne Jacobs on New York City’s teacher and student requirements. The blog post is definitely worth a read as are the comments that people have left about the post.

One of the things that absolutely drives me crazy in education is the fluff that gets passed off as critical elements of the teaching practice or learning process. Joanne’s article calling out New York for excessive fluff is dead on. For me, the two most annoying terms to me are ‘reflection’ and ‘portfolio’. Only in education can going home and thinking about what you did right and wrong during the day can have a fancy term and be held in such high esteem. And only in education could you submit a collection of your best work and have it be the determination as to your ability to perform on a daily basis.

Now – both of these have a place in helping teachers become better teachers so I will end the extremist rhetoric with that thought. Yes teachers should take a good hard look at what they are doing right and wrong. And yes we should look at a portfolio of their work to ensure that we see signs of solid performance. But we should not talk about it as if this brings teaching into the highest levels of achievement. We need real performance evaluations to truly judge our teachers.

Oklahoma will be a great ABCTE state

spent the day in Oklahoma City visiting with their teacher licensing and recruitment team and it was a great meeting. Oklahoma is getting hit hard for a couple of reasons. First they have many teacher retirements coming up with, according to NCTAF, 46% of their teachers over the age of 50. Second, by 2011 they will have Pre-K in public schools – meaning they need a lot more teachers to cover more grades. So an alternative route has the full support of the state department of education. This is phenomenal for us and we could see Missouri like numbers (over 1,200 enrolled in the first year).

Especially if the press is kind to us in getting the word out…..
http://newsok.com//article/3369091

http://www.okcfox.com/template/inews_wire/wires.regional.ok/26b850fe-www...

http://www.kfsm.com/news/sns-ap-ok--teachercertification,0,6634389.story

Appreciate some great teachers!

One of the best ways to illustrate the inspiring work ABCTE teachers are doing is by letting them tell the stories themselves. We’ve been doing this in the Meet Our Teachers section of our website with written profiles and we recently launched an ABCTE YouTube channel where we’ve started posting video profiles of our teachers.

The first set of videos went online last week to celebrate National Teacher Appreciation Week and we’ll have more going up in the next few weeks.

Leah Dow shares a story about taking her special education class to prom.

First-year biology teacher Nick Gastelecutto talks about making an impact and talking a student out of dropping out of school.

Reading teacher Chuck Foster speaks about helping a student deal with test anxiety and then seeing her scores jump 50 points.

Randi is Right

keep wondering what is going on when I keep agreeing with the teacher’s unions. Randi Weingarten, who I have not quite figured out, had this to say about National Standards at a hearing on the Hill. From the Alliance for Excellent Education newsletter –

"She stressed that simply “getting standards right” would not be enough and called on Congress to fix the “fundamentally flawed accountability system” in the No Child Left Behind Act. “If we are not testing the right information, or the accountability system is flawed, or the tests are inadequate, or teachers are not supported, we will not reap the rewards a standards-based reform system offers,” she said. “As we look ahead to NCLB reauthorization, we need to address these issues in order to fulfill the promise of offering all students a high-quality education.”

She nailed it on this one. My hope is that people get the whole quote right and not just say that AFT thinks NCLB is a fundamentally flawed accountability system – or worse boil it down to AFT hates tests.

I think the unions have a messaging problem. They headlines say that they hate “teaching to the test” and many in the unions are anti-test. But when you really listen and read the quote above, they are really concerned with the tests and the standards we are using – which actually is a viable concern.

The test is supposed to be aligned to the standards. And (this is the real key here) the standards are supposed embody everything someone should learn during that particular year in school. So if the standards are correct and the test is aligned to the standards then, by default, teaching to the test is actually teaching what someone should learn during that year.

What Randi clearly communicates is that our standards aren’t all that great and the tests aren’t all that well aligned. So teaching to the test is not the most productive use of teaching time. Fixing that is critical – but time consuming and costly – if we are ever to truly improve education as a nation.

Common goals in Wisconsin

When a local paper writes that ABCTE can be “the best and most practical option to fill important math and science teaching positions” it is extremely gratifying (more press here). At the same time, the state teacher’s union, WEAC, is neutral on the bill. ABCTE has worked long and hard to get to this point and some of our previously vocal opponents have noticed.

Wisconsin demonstrates what can happen when parties with seemingly disparate interests actually listen to each other and find common interests. Rob Weil from AFT told me early on that he could work with us because we are a “learning organization”. After listening to ABCTE opponents, we have thoughtfully implemented new programs to assuage their fears against our program operating in their state. We have shown a willingness to customize the program to the unique needs of each state including the addition of over 180 hours of online content to enhance the teacher preparation experience, greater transparency and additional research.

The result in Wisconsin is that our bill has a Democrat sponsoring in the Assembly and the Senate. We have had productive discussions (and will be adding an amendment to the bill) on changes that the teacher’s union would like to see that strengthen the program. The press support has subsequently been excellent (and fair).

We have focused on creating one solution to a problem in education rather than making a political statement. In Wisconsin, AB 235 and SB 175 limit our program to 200 teachers per year in math and science. Wisconsin is short by approximately 200 teachers so it makes for a great pilot program. There is also a sunset clause in the bill to ensure that we report back on the progress of the program.

Not exactly disruptive innovation, but the bill does tackle a problem facing schools and helps build support for that solution. A strategy of cooperation certainly results in less pain then a strategy of frontal assault.

FEAR THE TSUNAMI

Pretty interesting day for education in the press as they are finally breaking the story that I broke on March 20, 2009 about the pending “tsunami” of teacher retirements. USA Today has a piece about it quoting Tom Carroll from NCTAF saying that “we will lose one third of our teachers in the next 5-6 years”. The New York Times uses another quote from Mr. Carroll - “The traditional teaching career is collapsing at both ends,” the report says. “Beginners are being driven away” by low pay and frustrating working conditions, and “accomplished veterans who still have much to contribute are being separated from their schools by obsolete retirement systems”

It is great to see this getting some press. They did, however, gloss over the one of the major issues in the report which is that our retirement system for teachers actually provides a disincentive to delay retiring. While the rest of the working world has already delayed retirement in their minds by 2-3 years based on the collapse of their IRA’s or 401k’s, teachers in many states would financially lose if they delayed retirement. So the stock market collapse has no impact on our retirement issue.

South Carolina actually passed a law allowing teachers to retire and then come back without facing a financial penalty on their pension. I expect that we will see more states looking to follow suit as this tsunami builds over the next three years.

Since the beginning of this blog I have been sounding the alarm on retirements as my readers know from my favorite statistic: in 1972, 21% of the bachelor’s degrees in this country were in education and today that number is less than 7%. Unfortunately, most states have such restrictive teacher certification requirements dominated by Ed schools so that as those 1972 teachers retire, they are left with gaping holes. Those states without solid alternative teacher certification routes will be the ones who feel the greatest pain in the next few years. .

We have a unique opportunity today to mitigate this crisis. We have displaced workers with incredible skills who could become teachers and fill the void that will soon cripple our schools. The naysayers, and there are so many of those in education, will say that once the economy turns around, those people will leave. But they won’t leave if you have solid preparation programs like ABCTE’s that realize an 85% retention rate.

Secretary Duncan tells us that what we do in the next three to four years will have a lasting impact on our education system for the next thirty years. In the case of teacher recruitment, it is both what we do to attract more teachers and what we don’t do to change needlessly restrictive teacher certification that will have the greatest impact on our future students.

Student Success Strategy

It has been incredibly difficult to gain momentum for the systemic change necessary for success in all of America’s schools. True change requires a comprehensive strategy that focuses on the many variables that affect student performance. While many individual programs are working toward this goal, those organizations working alone will not produce the education our students deserve and require in order to be competitive in the world market.

The politics of education overshadows the merits of education change in America. The two camps have become so entrenched that many politicians determine which side they need to be on by who supports or fights against any given program. While conservatives usually focus on working toward education reform, that reform is perceived as principally revolving around school choice. As Andy Rotherham opined in a recent blog, conservatives are seen as “reflexively hostile to public schools.”

On the other side, there are powerful groups that want to maintain the status quo. They have been very effective in positioning themselves as the student advocate through a comprehensive strategy to push for smaller class sizes, universal pre-k, more spending on education in general, higher salaries for teachers and reduced testing for students. These have the appearance of advocating for students when they really benefit the adults. A state group will work at the state level toward these goals, often with the advice and additional resources of a national group.

Meanwhile, education reform groups operate in a single silo with national leadership and maybe a state group that is advocating for a single item in the reform agenda. Each state represents a win or lose scenario for each group. But each silo really only impacts a small number of students so it is too easy to marginalize that group when compared to the entire system. Reaching a small number of students has not, and will not, induce systemic change to provide better opportunities for all students. The position from the defenders of the status quo is that each education reform does not address the larger need of all students so we should continue to stay with the current and implement their strategy.

In order to overcome the status quo and have more true reforms become law, state leaders and others advocating for change cannot focus on only one part of the spectrum of improvements that could have a significant positive impact on America’s students. The legislative and policy focus must be to champion all strategies that will enable student success.

This approach is similar to the legislative strategy attributed to Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. He believed that systemic change was like a crowded airport. In order to land at that airport your plane had to be circling in a holding pattern above. All the planes would eventually land, but you didn’t really know which one would be next. But if you weren’t in the pattern, you most certainly wouldn’t get to land. He made sure that there were numerous tax break bills introduced in every legislative session so that one or more would get approved each year. Applying this strategy to education policy will ensure that some changes are implemented each year in a larger number of states. As more reforms are implemented, more data will be available to demonstrate the success of these programs to new states.

ABCTE’s experience in seeking acceptance of an alternative teacher certification program in Oklahoma provides a good example of how Norquist’s airport theory can be applied to education. In 2006, during a time when no other meaningful education legislation had been introduced in Oklahoma, ABCTE had a bill introduced. Due to the timing of this initiative, those who supported the status quo had only one bill to fight and they applied all their resources against ABCTE’s efforts. Obviously the legislation failed. There was nothing to compromise on and the status quo defenders expended very little political capital in the defeat. For education change in Oklahoma that year, it was a 100% loss rate.

Fast forward to 2008 when Oklahoma had numerous education improvement bills moving through both houses. There were two bills that would have had significant adverse impact on the teachers union. The first was a bill to end collective bargaining and the second was a bill to turn troubled urban school districts into home rule charter districts. If there is a spectrum going from most reviled to somewhat acceptable, these two bills would be clearly at the reviled end.

Because there were multiple bills in the spectrum moving forward, a school choice bill passed the senate and ABCTE passed the senate and the house, but died in conference. This multi-faceted approach came much closer to succeeding as status quo defenders needed to split their resources and use political capital on other bills. For these defenders, opposition to all education reforms with the exception of spending more money is an untenable political position as it leaves them painted as blocking any change that could help students. With multiple reform bills before both houses again this year, conditions look very good for an ABCTE bill to pass.

Research by Matt Ladner and Dan Lips on the education agenda implemented by Governor Jeb Bush in Florida provides further evidence of how a Norquist-style approach could benefit education reform. The staggering improvements in closing the achievement gap in Florida during Bush’s time as governor were brought about by increasing the number of charter schools, increasing the number of alternative teacher certification routes, implementing school choice and using research based reading programs. Bush’s plan did not focus on one element but created an atmosphere of systemic change and the results demonstrate the potential success of this strategy.

Today that agenda in Florida is supported and defended by the Foundation for Florida’s Future with Patricia Levesque as the director. This foundation continues the legacy of Governor Bush by educating legislators on the gains that have been achieved by Florida’s students. The foundation works to ensure continued progress through high standards, accountability, rigor and relevance, school choice and teacher pay.

Another great example is Robyn Bagley who as Board Chairman of Parents for Choice in Education in Utah fought hard for the voucher referendum in her state. When it lost, she could have retrenched in her fight for school choice. But she felt that her group could do more for education as a whole now that they had a much wider base of support and relationships with many more legislators and education leaders. Robyn worked with the Association of American Educators to help push the growth of a professional teacher’s organization to serve as an alternative to the teacher’s union. She also worked with ABCTE and succeeded in expanding alternative teacher certification options and came close to winning merit pay for teachers. Her group’s efforts helped pass powerful open enrollment legislation for public schools and increased ongoing funding for the Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarship. Because of these victories for students, they have demonstrated that they are a force for education change and decision makers are depending on them for advice in all education matters – not just one specific option.

Here are the critical elements of a student success strategy that can increase student achievement on standardized tests and improve graduation rates:

1. Student Experience - teacher quality, time on task and curriculum
2. School Environment
3. Accountability and Administration

All of these elements are interconnected. Quality teachers without enough time on task for students will not succeed. A longer school year with lousy teachers will not deliver success. Keeping students in a school setting that is not right for them will lead to drop outs. Creating charter schools and opening up enrollment in private schools without enough quality teachers will lead to failure. Precise student achievement data with a weak curriculum or poor instructional quality will not raise test scores. And the list goes on.

Evidence of these concepts can be found in KIPP schools. It is debatable as to whether KIPP schools could scale to serve millions of students, but their success has been demonstrated repeatedly. They have stronger, more committed teachers with most coming from alternative certification routes and they are not constrained by collective bargaining agreements. Their students have significantly more time on task in every school day and a longer school year which is why they are able to get back on grade level in two to three years. They have a school setting that is a perfect match for these motivated students and parents and they use a research based curriculum.

Based on the elements that are known to improve student success at KIPP schools and in Florida, what specific areas of focus should the student success agenda target?

Teaching Strategies for Student Success

Recruitment Policies

• True Alternative Certification: ensure that programs like ABCTE are available to provide rigorous yet efficient methods for getting new teachers in the classroom
• Differentiated Pay: ensure that these opportunities are available for both high needs subject areas and for teaching in high needs school districts

Preparation

• Accountability: using the Louisiana model, determine the student achievement realized by teachers from each preparation program in the state including alternative certification programs and hold those programs accountable for performance
• Core Subject Expertise: ensure your elementary teachers have proven knowledge in research based reading instruction and improved math expertise. Ensure secondary teachers know their subjects.

Support and Retention

• Performance Based Pay: provide performance incentives for teachers and schools that demonstrate increased student achievement
• Career Ladders: create a career ladder based on results – not based on inputs
• Professional Organizations: provide the ability for teachers to join a non-union professional organization such as the Association of American Educators as opposed to being forced to join a union
• End Seniority as basis for teaching assignments: allow principals to have control over who they hire for their schools to end the practice of passing bad teachers from school to school

Time on Task

• Longer school year: KIPP students are in class for 197 days a year. Create longer school year for all schools or at least for failing schools

Curriculum

• Real Math: ensure all students get basic math skills before high school / ensure high school math is not “dumbed down”
• Research based reading instruction: if you can’t read, you can’t compete in a world market
• End Social promotion: ensure all students have the basics before advancing to the next grade

Match School Setting to the Student

Parental Choice

• Special Needs
• Foster children
• Low income
• Military members
• Tax Credits
• Public school open enrollment

Charter Schools

• Lift the cap: use waiting lists and lotteries as a strong reason to increase the number of charters in the state
• Increase autonomy: allow charters full authority over hiring – eliminate requirements to use only state certified teachers
• Provide full funding: give public charter schools the same funding as traditional public schools

Virtual Schools

• Lift any student caps: don’t limit the number of students
• Increase use for online recovery programs: allow community based organizations to help provide access to allow students to finish high school through credit recovery programs online

Accountability
• Each state should follow the Data Quality Campaign’s guidelines that include student identifier, teacher identifier and can link teacher to students to determine performance
• Highlight the difference between NAEP and State Test scores to look for indications of “racing to the bottom” by lowering standards to falsely show progress

Administration

• Allow school districts to become home rule school districts, giving them the freedom to operate as a charter school
• End collective bargaining in schools
• Alternative principal certification to create better talent in the administrative ranks

A paper without action is just paper. So what is the call to action from the data demonstrated by Ladner and Lips and the progress made in Utah, Florida and Oklahoma? The call to action is for leaders to:

Take charge of education as an issue and be the catalyst for true, comprehensive education change that results in lasting student success

In order to accomplish this goal at the state level, leaders should develop a comprehensive education legislative strategy. Using some of the changes listed above, and the expertise available from national groups to help facilitate that success, legislation should be pushed to accomplish a broad spectrum of education changes each year. State leaders can work with businesses to create an education advocacy group that takes on a comprehensive agenda like Parents for Choice in Education and Foundation for Florida’s Future. Since these organizations will not be viewed as “single issue groups”, they will be seen as education change experts. They can also aid in local and grassroots efforts.

Ross Douthat wrote in a recent blogpost in The Atlantic Monthly that “on too many issues, conservatives have simply avoided the most important emerging debates, changing the subject whenever possible and leaving liberals to argue against liberals” and that education is “where the most interesting arguments are between liberal reformers and liberal interest groups, with conservatives sitting on the sideline talking about vouchers and occasionally praising the Michelle Rhees and Corey Bookers of the world.”

It is time to take charge, evolve beyond the old ways of thinking and create a strategy for true systemic change in America’s schools.

Links to success:

“Demography Defeated: Florida's K-12 Reforms and Their Lessons for the Nation” by Matt Ladner and Dan Lips
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/AboutUs/ArticleView.aspx?id=2363

ABCTE – American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence
http://www.abcte.org

ABCTE Blog
http://www.abcte.org/blog

AAE – Association of American Educators
http://www.aaeteachers.org

The Friedman Foundation for Educational School Choice
http://www.friedmanfoundation.org

The Alliance for School Choice
http://www.allianceforschoolchoice.org

Center for Education Reform
http://www.edreform.com

The New Teacher Project on the effects of seniority based hiring practices
http://www.tntp.org/files/UnintendedConsequences.pdf

Data Quality Campaign
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org

Ross Douthat article
http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/11/conservatives_and_tr...