Parent Revolution

Context for turnaround costs

Sam Dillon of the New York Times wrote an article on June 24th examining the "high" costs of the turnaround at Locke High School. The reason I mention this piece now is because it still needs to be placed into its proper context. The article shows much concern for the fact that Green Dot Public School's total expenditures to successfully turnaround Locke have surpassed $15 million—a sum which, as Dillon accurately notes, "is more than twice the $6 million in federal turnaround money that the Department of Education has set as a cap for any single school."

However, the article fails to offer readers a nuanced discussion about these high costs and incorrectly infers that Locke’s turnaround may "give pause" to future school turnarounds (as per the article’s title). By including some vital omissions, the article begins to construct an insufficient discourse about school turnarounds. First, it is important to understand that Locke is a unique case and not every turnaround—particularly at the elementary and middle school level—will be comparable. In addition, there is no serious acknowledgement in the piece of California’s more-than-dismal budget for K-12 education. California has dropped to 44th in how much it spends on students—and the evidence suggests that this will only get worse in the near future.

By not giving all of the relevant facts, the Times article potentially misleads its wide readership into believing that turnarounds are—more generally speaking—infeasible. It does, however, document some of the wonderful changes that have taken place at Locke. This aspect of the article offers us a sobering reminder of the wonderful benefits that do, in fact, come with school turnarounds--despite their individual costs!

There’s nothing “moderate” about reform

While following the recent back and forth over Rep. Obey’s attempt to gut Race to the Top and other Obama reform efforts, one headline from Alyson Klein over at Education Week caught my eye. “Moderate Democrats Push Back on Cuts to Race to the Top, TIF” the banner proclaimed. Curious, I read on, eager to find out who these “moderates” were. Klein identified four Democrats in various stages of opposition to the move:

- Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO)

- Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO)

- Rep. George Miller (D-CA)

- Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN)

Other than Evan Bayh, who has been a constant thorn in the side of progressives in Congress, I was hard pressed to identify what I would call a single “moderate” in that group. But not wanting to merely trust my own political perspective, I took a minute to look up the National Journal’s most recent ideologically rankings based on Congressional voting records. Lo and behold, there is nothing terribly moderate about the other three Democrats at all! Polis certainly isn’t a liberal hero in the mold of George Miller (he’s also been in Congress about 30 years less), but he weighs in as the 110th most liberal house member, putting him squarely in the middle of a fairly progressive House Democratic caucus. Heck, he’s even just a few spot behind notorious liberal firebrand Rep. Barbara Lee, and ranks as more liberal than either Carolyn Maloney (who spent months mulling a challenge to Sen. Gillibrand from the left) or Maxine Waters, an old school liberal representing South Los Angeles. Senator Bennet isn’t so shabby himself, clocking in as the 34th most liberal Senator, just a few spots back of the likes of Senator Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Wyden (D-OR). And then of course there’s the small fact that reform programs being cut were created by President Obama, who has already racked up the strongest record of progressive accomplishments since FDR or LBJ (depending on who you ask).

So what gives? Is it that Bennet and Polis’ support for education reform makes them “moderates,” despite their otherwise solidly progressive voting records? Seems odd to me – fighting to fully fund a progressive president’s programs to reform a status quo where 50% of LAUSD students don’t graduate high school and 90% don’t make it to college looks like a solidly progressive position from where I sit.

I think what we see here is the continuation of a misguided media narrative where anything related to education reform must be “moderate,” because one time there was a Republican somewhere that supported it, or something. Progressives all across the country, led by President Obama, are standing up every day to fight for kids-first education reform so that every single child can get a great education, regardless of their skin color, zip code, or income level. We progressives need to keep standing up and reminding reporters, politicians, and everyone else – there is nothing “moderate” about education reform. It is a fundamentally progressive agenda to challenge the status quo and reshape public education for the 21st Century.

Chait on Race to the Top cuts

As an update to this morning’s blog post about Rep. David Obey’s attempt to gut RTTT funding in the middle of the appropriations process, I’d like to simply quote Jonathon Chait’s pitch perfect response on his blog this morning. In a post titled “Do Not Obey,” he writes:

This is absurd. Obviously, the priority is to prevent education cuts. But Obey's plan does not prevent education cuts. It simply sloshes money from one pool of education funding into another, with the net effect being to hamper reform efforts.

There's a perfect symmetry here. The right is using the pretext of education reform to oppose sensible fiscal policy, and the left is using the pretext of sensible fiscal policy to oppose education reform. There's no reason why we can't continue to encourage education reform and also prevent mindless education cutbacks in the meantime.

Yup.  Click here to write your Member of Congress and urge them to oppose the anti-reform Obey amendment.

Reform + more money = progressive

The movement for education reform in America has a tendency to cut across partisan lines in a unique way, which I think tends create some confusion about what a progressive vision for public education in our country looks like. Obviously there are some divergent views here, but here at Parent Revolution we think the answer is pretty clear – any progressive agenda for education must couple badly needed reforms that place the interest of children (especially low-income and underserved children) first, along with significantly increased investment of tax dollars into public education. Our President, Barack Obama, clearly agrees, having laid out an agenda that aggressively pursues badly needed reforms while urging Congress to appropriate more money to avoid pending teacher layoffs.

Today, however, comes the disturbing news that some Democrats in Congress are trying to use teacher layoffs as an excuse to gut President Obama’s reform efforts. Congressman Obey has even proposed taking $500 million out of the $4.3 billion Race to the Top appropriation, even though dozens of states already applied for it weeks ago, and the US Dept of Ed is essentially in the process of figuring out how to appropriate it as we speak. This, of course, is the same Race to the Top program that has spurred more kids-first education reform in a year than we have seen in the last decade, and was instrumental in passing game changing policies such as the Parent Trigger (in two states!) and Colorado’s landmark teacher effectiveness bill.

The Dept of Ed has already come out strongly against this move, with the nation’s second largest teachers union (AFT) also speaking up against it. It is extremely unfortunate that many elected officials still cling to an outdated belief that all we need to do to transform a broken system of public education is just appropriate more money, and everything will be OK. Our schools need both more money and serious structural reforms, and I have trouble thinking of anyone who fails to pursue both as any sort of “progressive,” at least when it comes to giving all children the quality education they so desperately need.

One teacher’s perspective on teacher evaluation

Hey everyone - sorry we have been off the blog radar for a while, and I wanted to jump back into the fray this morning and share an op-ed from a California teacher in Friday’s Washington Post.  Michele Kerr, who was laid off after her first year teaching high school in here in CA, proposes a few conditions under which she would be happy to have test scores used to evaluate her as a teacher.  While I wouldn’t endorse everything she said in the piece, it is a great reminder that our current seniority-based layoff rules and pay scales don’t even make sense for teachers (not to mention students), and there is more than enough middle ground for teachers, districts, and reformers to come together and find fair and effective ways of evaluating teachers.  So long as folks are genuinely willing to admit that the current system is broken and come to the table in good faith to design a new one, teacher evaluation systems that make sense in the 21^st century should be an eminently achievable goal. 

Go ahead and give the whole op-ed a read – some interesting and controversial thoughts.