The Coming Blogapocalypse

I have not yet commented on Dean Millot's post last week on This Week in Education questioning the conflicts of interest evident in the Race to the Top process, which was subsequently pulled by the blog's patrons at Scholastic. Ken Libby's post at Schools Matter is as good a place as any to catch up. Make sure and scroll down to read Dean's comment.

As Dean wrote, he's been fired from the TWIE gig, and he doesn't want to start a new blog for himself because he is more of a columnist than a blogger. He's the sort of writer that it is hard to respond to in a blog post. Too many ideas; too much thought necessary; so Dean's posts tend to sit in a tab until you guiltily delete them without coming up with a suitable response.

Dean has come up with a clever scheme to explain further what was behind his original post and what happened after it went up. He's going to guest post on four or possibly five blogs in coming days, including this one. This shows a deep understanding of the true essence of blogging: helping your friends and hurting your enemies. I'm honored to be of service.

I've not met Dean, but we share a connection through the late Tom Glennan, as level-headed, rigorous and perceptive an analyst of schools and school reform as I've met. Dean seems to be cut from the same cloth as his former RAND mentor.

In the meantime, I need to redd up around here, hose out the old hangar. It stinks of Minmatar grog and pod goo from last night's celebration.

By the way, it looks like I'm getting the post on "Rotherham's role in all this." Should be good for lolz and tears, delicious tears.

Unity Regained

Unity Station – 9UY4-H – Providence:

Then Karn steps forward, just enough to stand out from those around him, and raises both arms commanding attention.

“Brothers, Sisters, Warriors of the Ushra’Khan, we are stand once again in Unity Station!”

A rapturous cheer bursts from the crowd; shots are fired, drums beaten.

“It’s been a long two ... near three years since I last stood here, since I took a last, quick look back as we evacuated as the CVA dogs came for us.

“At that moment we set our will to one task – to return here one day, to drive the slaver back. To retake Unity.

“Strength and determination brought us through the long years in the wilderness.

“And my brothers, here we are!”

Again the crowd erupts, this time for minutes. Eventually Karn signals for attention again, and the hanger falls relatively silent. He notices for a moment the FTL feeds beaming his words to who knows where, ignores them, and goes on.

“Warriors, who would have predicted this? The slaver so weak, or allies so strong? Who could have seen this concordance of events that brought us here?”

“Xious!”, Karn calls across the hanger, “let it be known brother, that Ushra’Khan is forever in debt to your kin. Without the iron determination and inspiring courage of the Against All Authority fleets we would not be here. Without the brilliance of the vision of your commanders we would not be here.

“We could never ask for better allies, you know where to find us, if you need us just ask, a warriors debt is not forgotten.”

Karn raises his bottle again.

Once more the crowd cheers, glasses and bottles raised on high, and a chant rises out of the crowd like a living thing, like a war cry.

“TRIPLE A … TRIPLE A … TRIPLE A”

It goes on and on, the drums beating in rhythm to the chant, people swaying, leaping embracing.

After a time Karn finishes his bottle and smashes it against the hull of “Mon’tu” as if to end all that needs ending, and to set into motion all that is to come. Gradually the crowd falls silent again.

“Warriors, let this day go down in memory, for today is the day that marks the return of Ushra’Khan to Unity, and the day that the fire that has burned within all these years bursts forth to burn brighter than ever before.

“For, my brothers and sisters, that fire never went out!

“The fire of freedom cannot be extinguished.

“We go on; we go on for our people!

"For FREEDOM!”

A mighty roar erupts from a thousand lips and seems to go on for ever. Gradually it coalesces into another war cry, another chant. Even Butterdog looks up from his maniacal typing at a holo-deck in the corner and adds his voice in unison.

All raise their right fists into the air in time with the shout:

"USHRA'KHAN … USHRA'KHAN … USHRA'KHAN"

I'm actually pretty bad a flying internet spaceships, but I couldn't have done a better job of picking an alliance. This is a great victory, frankly one I never expected to see. But here we are.

Block Schedule & NECAP Scores in Providence

Here's a list of Providence high schools, from high to low aggregate scores on the 2009 NECAP. Schools that had block scheduling in the 2008 - 2009 school year (the test is given in October) are in bold italic:

1. Classical
2. Feinstein
3. E-Cubed
4. Hope Arts
5. PAIS
6. Central
7. Hope IT
8. Mt. Pleasant
9. Alvarez
10. Cooley

Of course, one of the first things the Brady administration did in high schools is get rid of block scheduling, in most of the small schools this year and Hope next year. It is a little unclear what the real motivation is. It will save money. Apparently they also think that if everyone has the same schedule it will be easier to take things like AP classes in other buildings.

Regardless, it flies in the face of what was working in Providence. You don't need any fancy statistical analysis to see the pattern.

Note - I omitted Hope Leadership because they don't belong in the "testing year" data, which is what I used. They didn't exist in the "testing year."

Providence High School Test Scores, circa 2009

I did a little tabulation of the Providence Public Schools' 2009 high school NECAP data, and the results are pretty striking. There's plenty of fodder for analysis, which I expect to break down in some subsequent posts, but here are the numbers and my brief, subjective, Feinstein High School centric and not even necessarily well informed descriptions of the schools involved.

For those who don't know, I was a member of the Feinstein High School (re-)design team and worked there for a few years as technology coordinator and teacher. My wife still teaches history at FHS.

This list excludes charters, etc. We're concerned here with the internal dynamics of the PPSD here.

Proficiency rates, numbers:

Graph (blue=writing; green=reading; yellow=math):

The schools (official profiles here):

• Classical: the selective "exam school," that is, the only one you need to pass a test to get into.
• Feinstein: small (365) high school reconstituted in 2001 as the model for small schools initiatives within the Providence Public Schools (that is, other than The Met, etc.). Nominally under site-based management. Ordered to be closed or turned around as a persistently low-performing school under Race to the Top by Commissioner Deborah Gist.
• E-Cubed: A small (400) high school built in 2004, including a significant bloc of faculty from Feinstein, employing a similar design. Nominally under site-based management.
• Hope Arts, IT, and Leadership: Small schools (400 each) created by the State's 2005 intervention in Hope High School. Turned back over to the district in 2009 In fall 2010 the district plans to undo several of the structural changes made by the state (e.g., removing block scheduling) and consolidating into just Hope Arts and IT at 600 students each. Also, the re-constitution of Hope caused more senior faculty from other schools to bump out a cadre of new teachers recruited for Feinstein.
• PPSD Ave.: The average scores for the district as a whole.
• Providence Academy of International Studies: Small (400) school built in 2004. Took a fairly traditional approach and attracted good teachers from other schools in the district, including some from Feinstein. Both principals of PAIS did internships at Feinstein, the current one is a former Feinstein Dean of Teaching and Learning. Nominally under site-based management.
• Central: Big high school: 1260 total enrollment. Extensively renovated in recent years, but not the focus of any specific interventions.
• Mount Pleasant: Big high school: 1400 students. When I did my student teaching there 10 years ago, it was generally regarded as the second best option for middle class families, with high expectations for behavior, not so much for academics. Also, a complicated 1990's failed reform story. Since the turn of the century,it has become a source of leadership and good teachers for all the other schools and initiatives above. Not surprisingly, it has seen a long, slow decline as a result.
• Alvarez: School started mid-00's in a former parochial school building as a "Reverse-Klein" a small school created to accomodate overflow from large high schools in what turned out to be a very short lived enrollment peak. Subsequently moved into the new Adelaide Avenue facility originally designed for Feinstein High School. Well-regarded principal, but a hodge-podge faculty and student body put together under difficult circumstances. Traditional implementation.
• Cooley: The Gates-era health science themed small school (400) that didn't take, for whatever reason. Sibling to PAIS. Ordered to be closed or turned around as a persistently low-performing school under Race to the Top by Commissioner Deborah Gist.

In case you're wondering, in the schools other than Classical, the basic procedure is students may request their top two choices citywide, with a lottery if they're over-subscribed, and if they don't get into them then they're assigned another school based on proximity. The small schools are all as much "neighborhood schools" as the big ones.

Also, after reading the above it might be a little more clear to you why I get so frustrated with "OK, now we're going to shake things up in urban education" rhetoric. I live in Providence, I'm focused on high school reform, and eight of the 11 schools in the list above were either entirely new or were comprehensively reconstituted in the 10 years I've been here.

The Broad Approach to Innovation

Dale Mezzacappa in Education Next:

The “leviathan” right now is embodied in the person of Arlene Ackerman, the superintendent of the Philadelphia schools, who previously led districts in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

Ackerman believes strongly that centralized leadership can bring schools into line. Experimenting and nurturing innovation and new ideas from the bottom up is not her thing. In interviews and meetings, she still talks about “what works” in terms of what worked for her in her St. Louis high school almost 50 years ago.

At the same time, Ackerman has a strategic plan called Imagine 2014 that lays out a vision of high school strikingly similar to what SOF has been laboring toward. It calls for flexible schedules, more project-based and interdisciplinary learning, a more engaging and real world–based course of study, increased opportunity for teachers to work in teams, and better integration of technology across subject areas. But she has shown little sign, so far, that she wants to explore the connection between what is needed to make that a reality and what has been happening, in fits and starts, at (the School Of The Future in Philadelphia).

Or, for that matter, at SLA.

This "we must destroy your bottom-up innovation before we impose the same innovations on you at an very specific, yet somehow constantly receding point in the future" thing is, of course, incredibly frustrating. We're getting the same line in Providence. A common thread among adherents to this approach is participation in the Broad Academy.

Race to the SchoolTool

Tom Hoffman, SchoolTool Project Manager:

The SchoolTool project is excited to announce an initiative to provide 50,000 Euro in custom development grants to help schools, government, and organizations in the developing world to pilot and deploy SchoolTool for computer based school management. These grants will be funded by by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth.

You Can't Copyright a Recipe

Michael Ruhlman:

I almost never, ever tear recipes out of magazines, but leafing through Saveur on the 8 a.m.  Houston to Cleveland flight, this recipe caught me because I’d been wanting a soft, comfort-food, James-friendly dinner roll, the kind of Parker House roll that’s slightly sweet and yeasty and soft as a pillow.

Turns out this recipe comes from thefreshloaf.com, which says that the recipe is adapted from Great Country Breads of the World.

There really are no new recipes, only adaptations of adaptations.

What I don’t like about any of these recipes is the enormous volume of flour measured in cups.  I did the Saveur recipe exactly and the dough was very stiff—how could I know if this was the way it was supposed to be since flour by volume is so variable.  But the flavor was good and I love cooking the dough in a springform pan, which is brilliant.

So I revised my version, with flour weights and a little extra honey, scales only please (if you must, measure 5 1/2 cups AP flour).  I found a nest of fricking grain moths in my sesame seeds so I had to throw those out and use poppy seeds instead.  Both work well.

Yet people still buy cookbooks! I've got five of Michael Ruhlman's.

Now I've got to go start the pot roast for tonight, based on the braising technique in Ad Hoc at Home...

What's Been Tried in Philadelphia

The Philadelphia Public School Notebook has an awesome piece on the history of turnaround-like strategies in Philadelphia, many of which parallel various initiatives in Providence's history. Feinstein High School (in Providence) was basically created on this model:

5. School-based management schools, (early 1990s)
Superintendent Clayton and the union proposed allowing schools to adopt their own goals and strategies for achieving them, with more control of their own budgets and the ability to seek waivers from the teachers’ contract and administrative rules. Each participating school would have a decision-making council including teachers and parents. Not many schools participated, and the joint teacher-administrative committee approved few waivers. Some school councils continue to operate, but their powers have waxed and waned. As a reform approach, school-based management quickly fell off the radar.

And then reconstituted similar to the "Keystone Schools:"

6. Keystone Schools (1997)
In the 1996 contract, the administration of David Hornbeck and the PFT agreed to a provision that allowed the “reconstitution” of schools that were academically distressed, including the removal and replacement of teachers. The contract spelled out that the schools would be chosen by a joint committee after a collaborative process. The following year, Hornbeck announced that Olney and Audenried High Schools would be “keystoned,” but staff protests erupted. The union filed a grievance claiming that the agreed-upon process had not been followed, and an arbitrator agreed. Many staff voluntarily left the two schools, but the District did not follow through with a reform program.

Although here it was more successful, ultimately "the District did not follow through."

Science Leadership Academy (in Philly) is one of these:

9. Small high schools (2004 - present)
CEO Paul Vallas created nearly a score of small, mostly themed high schools during his five years in Philadelphia, including ones built in partnership with Microsoft, the Constitution Center, and the Franklin Institute. He created nine schools from scratch, converted several middle schools to high schools, and divided Kensington and Olney High School into smaller units. Some had special admission requirements; others, like the new Kensingtons, were designed to improve the typical neighborhood high school experience by focusing on themes like the arts or business. A recent study of the new small high schools found improved climate and attendance, but not discernibly better academic results. Varying resources and admissions requirements for all the different schools have exacerbated inequities.

Also, note that the interventions get more traditional over time. If you're at EduCon talking about breaking down the walls of a school, you're talking about something they had extensive experience with in the Philadelphia School District. Forty years ago.

One of these for every city in the country would be great.

Nobody Could Have Predicted

How and why did Feinstein High School's test scores in reading and writing go up so dramatically in just one year? The short answer is... test prep.

Prior to this year, the school was organized into multi-age groups with promotion based strictly on a standards-based assessment of student work in a portfolio/exhibition. Thus "11th grade" students weren't necessarily grouped together. Some would be with the "seniors," others with "freshmen" and "sophomores." This is not optimal for preparing for the 11th grade assessment, and for this as well as general philosophical reasons, the school did little direct test prep. Their overall approach to project-based learning also did not focus on the kind of tasks that turn up on the exam, particularly the reading exam.

This year, the school was turned back into a regular school like any other in the district by the Brady administration. This meant that all the now officially 11th grade students (how this was determined by the district might have also made this group stronger, btw) had English together. Oddly (and presumably to save money), the NECAP is given in October, which meant that the students from FHS taking the test had two years of interdisciplinary, project-based curriculum, followed by about six weeks of test prep. This, apparently, is a good combination. Don't expect it to be replicated, though.

Where did KIPP Come From? The Houston Independent School District

Kevin Carey:

The best thing the charter school idea did wasn’t to impose market discipline on KIPP or on the traditional public schools that KIPP is competing with for students. It was simply to allow KIPP to exist in the first place. That’s all, and that’s more than enough. Charters, it turns out, are just a way of allowing non-profit organizations to run really good public schools, in an environment that shields them from the horrible bureaucratic and political problems that plague traditional school systems. If that creates virtuous competition, bonus, but if not, it doesn’t undermine the case for charters.

This is a misrepresentation of history. KIPP was begun in the Houston School District by public employees of the Houston School District. Yes, there were struggles, particularly over space, but, as you may have noticed, space is almost always at a premium in urban schools, and is as much of a source of controversy today in the charter debate as it was when KIPP was a little extended-day program in a Houston Middle School. But if you read the history, what KIPP was doing was not dramatically out of sync with the rest of the district philosophically and supported by many important administrators through its early years.

Had KIPP simply become a local charter, it would be one of many successful local charters (like Times2 in RI, for example) that don't have much influence beyond its doors.

What "allowed KIPP to exist" in the form we know it today is charter law plus millions and millions of dollars in philanthropy and other support from an array of think tanks and other political allies (including key administrators in the New York public schools) that helped it spread across the country.

The other key factor is that accountability measures -- testing -- made it easier for them to make strong claims about the efficacy of their system.

Feinstein High School Closes the Achievement Gap; Then Closes

Well, the fall 2009 NECAP scores are out, and the numbers for one of the "6 worst R.I. schools" to-be-turned-around under Race to the Top and/or closed, Feinstein High School are... illuminating.

• At FHS, the percent proficient in writing (these are all beginning of 11th grade, btw) went up from 32% in '08 to 63% in '09. That's eight points over the Rhode Island average, 13 points over the New Hampshire average, and 12 points over the Vermont average.
• FHS's "economically disadvantaged students" passed the writing standard at a 64% rate, 21 points above similar students statewide, and two points higher than the statewide average for non-disadvantaged students statewide.
• FHS's "Hispanic or Latino" students passed in writing at the same rate, (60%) as white students statewide.
• In reading, the percent proficient went up from 45% in '08 to 72% in '09. That's one point under the RI statewide average, and three points over Vermont's average.
• FHS's "economically disadvantaged students" met the reading standard at a 75% rate, higher than the overall (any income) average of RI, New Hampshire or Vermont, and 14 points higher than RI's low-SES pass rate.
• No FHS student scored at level 1 -- substantially below proficient -- in reading or writing.

I'd note that the figures in bold above constitute what is known in the contemporary parlance as "closing the achievement gap." Yeah, it is a little cherry-picky, but less so than most claims of "gap closing" turn out to be under close examination.

Heckuva job, Tom Brady.

Heckuva job, Deb Gist.

Heckuva job, Arne Duncan.

You can be proud of yourselves for closing this one. I'd like to hear how this is "best for kids."

Tom Sgouros, a Treasurer for Rhode Islanders

I know a lot of you have been waiting for my endorsement of a candidate for Rhode Island treasurer. I'm happy to announce my support for Tom Sgouros in this fall's election. I've become a fan of Tom's incisive writing on RI policy, including a piece he wrote in 2006 on education policy, "The Shape of the Starting Line," which includes this interesting data:

Though the underlying reasons are not perfectly clear, professional jobs in Rhode Island pay salaries competitive with salaries in our neighboring states, while blue-collar jobs pay far less. Table 10.2 compares state mean salaries for several professional occupations (not teacher, but veterinarian, psychologist, accountant, architect, and so on) with the mean for several blue-collar jobs (cashier, carpenter, hairdresser, butcher, etc.). In one list, Rhode Island ranks 8th in the nation, slightly behind our neighbors, but in the same league. In the other list, the one ranking blue-collar wages, we drop to 23rd. The only other states that skew this direction are California and the states of the South. Other states skew the other way, or not at all. This is a disparity that has nothing to do with government, since these are predominantly private-sector jobs. In other words, school committees who are criticized for their decisions about teacher pay are making essentially the same decisions that thousands of private employers have made about hiring accountants, psychologists and architects (Sgouros, 2005a).

It is suggestive that Massachusetts and Connecticut do not have the disparity between professional and blue-collar jobs that Rhode Island does. Table 10.2 shows that Connecticut ranks third in the country in professional pay by this measure, but it also ranks third in blue-collar pay. For Massachusetts, the ranks are 4 and 5, respectively. In other words, the average wage in Rhode Island is a number that means something very different than the average in both of these two states.

This suggests why our school performance looks more like a southern state as well.

Senate Procedure is Nobody's Most Important Issue

Yglesias:

In the real world, if your problem is that 41 Senators are playing procedural hardball and making it impossible to get things done, the solution is for 59 Senators to play hardball in return and stop letting the 41 stop things. Recognize that zero voters will punish you for engaging in procedural hardball and that the number of voters who will even realize any of it happened is approximately zero.

True in Education, Too

Robert Reich:

It seems as if more and more decisions that should be made democratically are being shunted off somewhere to a few people who make them in back rooms. Which programs should be cut, which entitlements pared back, and what taxes raised in order to reduce the long-term budget deficit? Hmmm. Let’s convene a commission and have them decide.

Commissions are a default mechanism when politicians want to hand off difficult issues to “experts.” But reducing the long-term budget deficit has almost nothing to do with expertise. It’s about our nations’ values and priorities. Nothing could be more central to the democratic process.

Democracy requires at least three things: (1) Important decisions are made in the open. (2) The public and its representatives have an opportunity to debate them, so the decisions can be revised in light of what the public discovers and wants. And (3) those who make the big decisions are accountable to voters.

But these principles are in retreat, and I say this not just because of the proposed deficit commission.

Um... Advertising?

Brian X. Chen:

When I picked up my iPhone over the weekend, I had an epiphany. I was using the LinkedIn app to confirm an invitation to connect, and it hit me: This is the future of mobile computing, the mobile web — the mobile experience.

No, I’m not saying the LinkedIn app is the future per se (that’d be silly), but rather the overall concept of it. The LinkedIn iPhone app is, in my opinion, better than the actual LinkedIn.com website. Same goes for the Facebook app compared to Facebook.com.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but are there ads on those apps? If not, how do these things stay in business? Selling the app?

Another Oft-Cited Study Revealed to be a Simpleminded Load of Crap

Wall Street Journal (no less):

Most researchers agree that college graduates, even in rough economies, generally fare better than individuals with only high-school diplomas. But just how much better is where the math gets fuzzy.

The problem stems from the common source of the estimates, a 2002 Census Bureau report titled "The Big Payoff." The report said the average high-school graduate earns $25,900 a year, and the average college graduate earns $45,400, based on 1999 data. The difference between the two figures is $19,500; multiply it by 40 years, as the Census Bureau did, and the result is $780,000...

Mark Schneider, a vice president of the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, calls it "a million-dollar misunderstanding."

One problem he sees with the estimates: They don't take into account deductions from income taxes or breaks in employment. Nor do they factor in debt, particularly student debt loads, which have ballooned for both public and private colleges in recent years. In addition, the income data used for the Census estimates is from 1999, when total expenses for tuition and fees at the average four-year private college were $15,518 per year. For the 2009-10 school year, that number has risen to $26,273, and it continues to increase at a rate higher than inflation.

Dr. Schneider estimated the actual lifetime-earnings advantage for college graduates is a mere $279,893 in a report he wrote last year. He included tuition payments and discounted earning streams, putting them into present value. He also used actual salary data for graduates 10 years after they completed their degrees to measure incomes. Even among graduates of top-tier institutions, the earnings came in well below the million-dollar mark, he says.