Bill Jackson's Education Blog

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2006-09-23T08:22:00.000-07:00

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Mitt Romney on Education

2006-04-10T17:30:00.000-07:00

Today, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney offers us a provocative look at education in the U.S., and the challenges we face:

Reforming education
By Mitt Romney
Published April 10, 2006

I was in high school when Sputnik happened. Russia's lead in space frightened us. It also woke us up. President Kennedy issued a call to boost science and math education, to produce more engineers. His vision: Put a man on the moon. America, as always, rose to the occasion.

One could argue that there have been quite a few Sputniks lately, but that we haven't noticed. Tom Friedman's flat world is tilting toward Asia, taking investment and jobs. Of 120 new chemical plants worldwide with over $1 billion in capital, 50 are planned for China, only one for the United States. Bill Gates says Microsoft's best new ideas are coming from his Asian team. And last year, America bought $160 billion more from China than China bought from us.

America is still way ahead, but in the words of Will Rogers: "Even if you're on the right track, if you don't move, you'll get run over." It's time we get moving, starting with education.

First, close the Excellence Gap. American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 OECD countries in math literacy and 19th in science. Fifteen years ago, the United States and Asia produced about the same number of Ph.D.'s in math and physical science: 4,700 a year. Today, we graduate 4,400; Asia graduates 24,900. Second, close the Achievement Gap. Failing urban schools are a dead end for too many minority children. This is the civil rights issue of our generation.

How to close the education gaps? The teacher's unions have their answers:
simply spend more money and hire more teachers for smaller classroom size.
But the data show that those are not the answers at all.

Massachusetts tests our kids regularly; when studentproficiencyis matched with classroom size and per-pupil spending, there is absolutely no relationship. In fact, the district with the highest per-pupil spending in our state -- almost $19,000 per student -- is in the bottom 10 percent of our state in student proficiency.

We found our education prescription by interviewing parents, teachers and principals, studying actual data, mining lessons from successful districts and charter schools, and digesting the recommendations from commissions and experts. Here are some of the real answers:

1) Make teaching a true profession. The 19th-century industrial labor-union model doesn't make sense for educating children. Teachers aren't manufacturing widgets. Better teachers should have better pay, advancement opportunities and mentoring responsibilities. Better pay should also accompany the most challenging assignments -- needed specialties like math and science, advanced placement skills and extra effort.

2) Let the leaders lead. Superintendents and principals must have authority to hire, deploy resources, assign mentors and training, and remove nonperformers. Seniority cannot trump the needs of our children.

3) Measure up. Over union objections, Massachusetts implemented standardized testing and a mandatory graduation exam. With measurement, we finally see our successes and failures and can take corrective action.
Without measurement, we were blind.

4) Let freedom ring. When parents, teachers and kids are free to choose their school, everyone benefits. Charter schools free of union restraints and, yes, even home schools, teach lessons we can apply to improve standard public schools.

5) Pull in the parents. Teachers tell us that the best predictor of student success is parental involvement. For our lowest-performing schools, I've proposed mandatory parental preparation courses. Over two days, parents learn about America's education culture, homework, school discipline, available after-school programs, what TV is harmful or helpful and so on. And for parents who don't speak English, help them understand why their child's English immersion in school is a key to a bright future.

6) Raise the bar. Our kids need to be pushed harder. Less about self-esteem; more about learning. I have proposed advanced math and science schools for the very brightest (the one we have is a huge success, but we need more); advanced placement in every high school, more teachers with serious science and math credentials, and laptop computers for every middle- and high-school student. We've also added science as a graduation exam requirement, in addition to math and English.

These ideas should sound familiar -- they turn up in virtually every unbiased look at education.

The opposition comes from some teachers unions. They fight better pay for better teachers, principal authority, testing and standards, school choice and English immersion. With their focus on themselves and their members, they have failed to see how we have failed our children. But that will change as testing produces data and data debunks the myth that more and more spending is the answer.

A continuing failure to close the excellence and achievement gaps would have catastrophic consequences, for individual human lives left short of their potential, and for our nation. Students around the world are racing ahead of ours. If we don't move, we'll become the France of the 21st century, starting as a superpower and exiting as something far less.

Education must be one of our first priorities, as it was when Sputnik was launched the last time. We succeeded before. We will do it again.

How to build parent demand for academic quality

2006-03-14T06:58:00.000-08:00

Today, some thoughts about the answer to last week's question of the week: how can we build parent demand for academically stronger schools?

One answer, I believe, is to make standards more tangible and tie them more clearly to the "basic" and "proficient" labels used in state and district testing systems.

Some districts and states are taking initial steps to make standards more accessible to parents. The Oregon Department of Education, for example, provides sample or "anchor" papers that show varying levels of performance in fourth grade writing. These samples help students, teachers, administrators, and parents learn what the expectations are for writers at grade 4.

But the typical parent never sees this stuff and is unlikely to have much insight into what "proficient" work would look like in their child's classroom.

To be fair, parents have limited time. They cannot be expected to be curriculum experts.

But...what if we started with just one subject, writing, and worked really hard to educate parents about what "proficient" and "basic" writing looks like at each grade level?

Let's take a look at one of the Oregon fourth grade writing samples. (This is the one labeled "medium-high" among the "narrative" samples.) Let's say that this sample represents "proficient:"

And let's say that this next sample represents "basic:"

What if fourth grade parents across the nation were exposed over and over again to samples of student work like this - to help them understand what fourth grade writing proficiency really means? They'd be much better prepared to encourage and support their child to bring home work like this.

They'd also be much more likely to pay attention to what is going on in writing in their child's fourth grade classroom. Does the student work look more like "proficient" or more like "basic"? They might well question teachers who give an "A" grade to students who bring home papers that look more like "basic."

And with ongoing exposure to student work that represents "basic" and "proficient" at their child's grade level, they'd be more likely to consider various school improvement ideas through the lens of "will this help more kids in our school become proficient?"

Then we'd be on the right track: building parent demand for writing excellence one homework assignment, one test, one classroom at a time.

America's biggest import: self-motivation?

2006-03-10T06:42:00.001-08:00

On Wednesday of this week, another powerful statement about the influence of parental and community expectations on education outcomes. This one comes from Patrick Welsh, an English teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

Welsh teaches both American-born and immigrant kids in a large public high school and observes that the American kids typically lack the motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born kids.

"Politicians and education bureaucrats can talk all they want about reform, but until the work ethic of U.S. students changes, until they are willing to put in the time and effort to master their subjects, little will change," he writes.

He cites a study released in December by University of Pennsylvania researchers Angela Duckworth (former COO of GreatSchools.net) and Martin Seligman suggesting that "the reason so many U.S. students are 'falling short of their intellectual potential' is not 'inadequate teachers, boring textbooks and large class sizes' and the rest of the usual litany cited by the so-called reformers - but 'their failure to exercise self-discipline.'"

A high-schooler's self-discipline, of course, comes from his or her family and community.

I'm back to grasping for that lever I wrote about on Wednesday: how do we change the culture of expectations around education in this country?

After all, we can't outsource self-discipline, and we can only import so much of it from China, India, Africa and other places where people are hungry for a better life. We'd better find a way to manufacture some of it right here at home.

The longest lever of them all

2006-03-08T06:23:00.000-08:00

Let's pursue a mind game of another sort today. It'll be fun!

Let's say your objective is to improve America's schools academically. We want 75% plus of our eighth graders to be proficient in reading and math according to NAEP (see previous post), up from 25% plus today.

We all know that life is a multiple choice question, so here we go:

Question 1: Given the goal of improving student achievement in America's schools, which of the following changes do you think will make the greatest impact?

a) strengthening principal leadership
b) improving teacher quality
c) strengthening parent/ public demand for quality
d) spending more money
e) improving school board governance

OK, so it's an unreasonable question. We're going to need to work at most or all of these levels (and some others) in order to reach the goal. (The money question varies by state - it's clearly pretty important here in California.)

But what if you could pick just one? In that case, I'd pick c: strengthening parent/public demand for quality.

Why? The quality of the whole system is a function of parent/public demand. In America, the education system exists primarily to serve the interests of individuals, not the interests of society as a whole or the state. We love local control. Even though we have a lot more state and federal involvement in education than we used to, school quality (teacher quality, principal quality, program quality) still depends greatly on local decision making.

As Darvin Winnick, Chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, said at a conference I attended, "Ultimately, schools are only going to be as good as the community wants them to be."

Another way to put it is this: if you could strengthen parent/public demand for higher student achievement, it would be "the gift that keeps on giving." It is the longest lever of them all. It all starts with local school board elections. If parents and the public demanded that school boards improve student achievement, then those school boards would quickly discover that their district needs to improve teacher and principal quality. And, where necessary, they'd be making the case for more money to support their mission.

The tougher question, it seems to me, is how do you get a hold of this long lever? A topic for another time.

What American eighth graders can do

2006-03-02T06:58:00.000-08:00

Today, the first in a series of explorations of the state of standards in American education.

The best national perspective on what American students can and can't do these days comes from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test administered by the National Assessment Governing Board. Sometimes called "the nation's report card," NAEP offers a treasure trove of insight into the academic performance of American students.

I spent the better part of an hour exploring sample eight grade mathematics questions released by the NAEP folks available at NAEP Questions Search Tool. The three questions I share with you below were used on either the 2003 or 2005 administration of the test, and were given to both public and private school students.

Let's start with a question that two thirds of American eighth graders got right:

What is 4 hundredths written in decimal notation?

A) 0.004
B) 0.04
C) 0.400
D) 4.00
E) 400.0

(67% correct, 32% incorrect, 1% omitted)

Now, let's take a look at a question that about half of American eighth graders answered correctly:

Fifteen boxes each containing 8 radios can be repacked in 10 larger boxes containing how many radios?

A) 8
B) 10
C) 12
D) 80
E) 120

(47% correct, 52% incorrect, 1% omitted)

And finally, the most difficult question of our batch, one that only a quarter of American eighth graders answered successfully:

One store, Price Pleasers, reduces the price each week of a $100 stereo by 10 percent of the original price. Another store, Bargains Plus, reduces the price each week of the same $100 stereo by 10 percent of the previous week's price.
After 2 weeks, how will the prices at the two stores compare?

A) The price will be cheaper at Price Pleasers.
B) The price will be the same at both stores.
C) The price will be cheaper at Bargains Plus.

Explain your reasoning.

(25% correct, 72% incorrect and 4% omitted)

So there you have it: a decidedly non-scientific glimpse into what American eighth graders can and can't do. For more perspective, spend some time with the NAEP Questions Search Tool and check back here in a few days for more thoughts.

Top down vs bottom up in school improvement

2006-02-27T19:46:00.000-08:00

I've been making my way through a new book edited by John Simmons, an advisor to superintendents of large urban school districts. Breaking Through: Transforming Urban School Districts focuses on the Chicago experience over the past twenty five years, but includes insights from more than a dozen districts.

Simmons breaks down Chicago's elementary schools into two groups based on the progress they made in raising student achievement during the past 15 years. As a group, the 181 "high-gain schools" raised the percentage of their students scoring at or above average on a national reading test from 20 to 49 percent, a gain of 29 percentile points. In contrast, the 179 "low-gain schools" managed only a gain of 11 percentile points--from 19 to 30 percent .

What's the difference between these two groups, according to Simmons? The high-gain schools developed the capacity to improve themselves. The high gain schools selected and supported principals who recruited a strong teacher corps, involved parents, and improved instruction. Among his findings:

The principals in the high-gain schools removed 50% or more of their teachers
High-gain schools had Local School Councils (mandated in all Chicago Public Schools) that effectively assessed and directed principals and budgets
Training and professional development in high gain schools raised the quality of performance for teachers and principals.

(Interestingly, many of the new teachers at the high-gain schools had previously been the better teachers at the schools that would become low-gain schools. To some extent, it was a zero sum game.)

The Simmons thesis is basically this: American public schools need to learn from the experience of American business. Top-down command and control doesn't work. If you want a high-performing system, you've got to build the capacity of the people working at the front lines. Whether you're talking about a factory or a school, this means that small teams must have the authority, responsibility and skills they need to recognize and solve problems and to make their operation run better.

Former San Diego Superintendent (and current California State Secretary of Education) has some of the most interesting things to say in the opening chapters of this 250 page volume.

"The notion of what standards-based reform is, the place that it has in replacing the bell curve in American public education, is something that has not been gotten across, either to the opinion elite, or to the parents or voters, and so the entire effort suffers from lack of support.

"The communication link we need most is at the school site with information and points of view circulating back and forth among site leaders, parents, students, teachers and the local community on a whole variety of matters. This takes enormous effort, critical insight and local leadership to build effectively."

This strikes me as absolutely correct. Most of us haven't really gotten it into our heads that it is NOT OK that most students, especially the children of the disadvantaged, leave school without many of the skills they'll need to enjoy a full range of personal, civic and economic opportunities in our society.

The valuable perspective in this volume is that there are no top-down shortcuts in the path from here to there. If we really want to transform the nation's education system to the point where the large majority of kids are leaving school with a wide range of options, then we have enormous work to do to develop leaders at all levels--parent, teachers, principals, and district--who know how to build teams and improve instruction.

Let's get started

2006-01-05T21:29:00.000-08:00

After lurking in the shadows for a year or two now, reading other people's blogs, it's time for me to get started!

This will be a place where I offer up thoughts on education topics, especially related to the mission of GreatSchools.net, the nonprofit organization that I run. Our mission is to improve K-12 schools by inspiring parents to get involved.

I hope to spur your thinking about education topics, including how parents can drive improvements in their children's schools. I hope you'll offer your thoughts.