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Angry In Europe
While large numbers of young Americans have gotten involved in the political process lately--both through exercise of the right to vote as well as through protests on issues such as California's recent Proposition 8 banning gay marraige--students in Europe have been busy making their own political statements in resounding fashion.
The video and pictures below are from protests in the streets of Italy (video) and Germany (photo), where students in the past weeks have taken bold action to show their anger with government proposals in each country cutting education spending and services:
It's impossible to analyze the events in Italy without reference to the flagging economic conditions affecting the entire globe. Italy is on the front-lines of the economic downturn, with the world's third largest debt (behind only the US and Japan), but only the 7th largest economy by GDP. In light of the economic situation, Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi has sought to make dramatic spending cuts--as much as $7 billion Euros, or $9 billion US--in the education system. Proposed cuts would include eliminating as many as 70,000 teaching positions in elementary schools and reducing spending in Italian high schools and universities.
In Germany, student protests are just beginning (compared to the protests in Italy, which started towards the end of October). German students are upset with overcrowded classrooms, high-pressure school exit exams, and teacher quality in general.
While estimates vary, the number of youth protestors in Italy has been widely reported as in the hundreds of thousands--anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000. Given that Italy's population is five times smaller than the United States, one has to wonder what would happen if hundreds of thousands or even millions of American youth stood united to demand improvements in our schools.
To be sure, much remains to be determined as to whether Italian student protests will lead Prime Minister Berlusconi to recant on his promises to cut education spending, or whether there will be some electoral blowback (a Reuters report showed Mr. Berlusconi's approval rating falling a significant 4% in just the past month as the protests have gotten underway). But if the experience from student social movement building in Chile is any lesson, we almost certainly have yet to see the final impact of the protests.
What Keeps Barack Obama Up At Night
What is the most important issue facing the Obama family right now?
No, it's not the breed of dog they should bring to the White House (although the leading candidate is good news for animal shelters across the country who will get some free press: rescue dog!)
And it certainly has nothing to do with the drapes in the oval office or whether to team up with Senator McCain and Governor Palin to steal the hope diamond.
The most important issue facing the first-family-elect has to do with where Sasha and Malia...
should go to school.
It is a tricky question, substantively, to be sure. There are two widely renown, elite private schools that most pundits have at the top of the Obama's list: Georgetown Day School and Sidwell Friends School. The Obama girls both currently attend the University of Chicago's Laboratory School, a highly regarded private school in its own right, and it wouldn't be a culture shock for the two of them to transfer to either Georgetown Day or Sidwell Friends, where Chelsea Clinton was enrolled. I doubt either the Obama girls will have trouble getting admission, and their parents can probably foot the ~$30,000 tuition.
But a wild card is in the picture, which makes the choice for the first family difficult not just substantively, but symbolically: Thomson Elementary School, one of the higher achieving elementary schools in the DC Public School system. The school seems to be a beacon in a district that is largely maligned by low test scores and high drop-out rates, although recent reforms under new school Chancellor Michelle Rhee have drawn positive reviews from a number of education reformers.
The substantive issues are relatively straightforward, and they are for the Obamas to decide: where do they think Sasha and Malia will get the best education to prepare them for a successful future? It's the same choice that face so many families across the country, except for two major differences.
The first difference, of course, is that the vast majority of families don't even have the option of sending their kids to $30,000 a year primary schools. If history is any guide, it's likely that the Obama kids will do what many wealthy families do and send Sasha and Malia to either of the private schools, since the last first kid to attend a public school was Jimmy Carter's daughter, Amy, over 30 years ago.
But the second difference between the Obama family choice and the choice facing most American families is that millions of people are watching their decision. Put simply there are political implications when one chooses to send their kids to an elite private school that is out of reach for mainstream America, and yet tries to understand mainstream America's challenges.
Now I, and many others such as the USA Today editorial board, don't think the Obamas should make the choice for political reasons. But that doesn't mean politics don't exist on this decision. Thomson Elementary serves nearly 300 school children, 69% of whom are from low-income families, and 96% of whom are minorities (40% Hispanic, 34% black, and 22% Asian-American, the remainder white). There is undoubtedly a message sent if Mr. and Mrs. Obama enroll Sasha and Malia there; whether one calls it faith in the American public education system, belief in the American dream, or just good old fashioned seeing-what-your-tax-dollars pay for.
Gambling With Education
A treasure trove of implications for school children can be mined from the election returns on Tuesday--not just as a result of the big race but also from a number of key ballot measures I discussed last week.
But before getting to the initiatives, a quick dissection of what President-Elect Obama may mean for children in the early months of his administration. There are two quick and easy wins that look to be likely bets on any 100 days type calendar: expanding funding for children's health insurance --a measure vetoed by President Bush--via SCHIP and passing a new college tuition tax credit to benefit at-need college students in exchange for community service.
The tougher question is what President Obama will do about reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (AKA NCLB). It's unlikely that he will tackle NCLB in the early part of his legislative calendar simply because: 1.) It will cost a lot of political capital to do so, and 2.) that capital, in the eyes of most Americans, is more urgently needed on economic action, energy policy, troop numbers in the Middle East, and even health care. So the best answer to the question, what will President Obama do on K-12 education in the very early going? He'll punt... at least until middle-late 2009.
To the ballot measures: Missouri, Colorado, Maryland, and Arkansas each had ballot proposals to increase access citizen access to gambling with a back-end result of increasing (or substituting) public education funding. All four initiatives passed. Just goes to show what happens when you bundle up a bunch of core American values--freedom, education, risk-taking, greed--in one neat package and place it on a ballot: people will vote for it.
Nebraska and Colorado each had initiatives to ban affirmative action, part of California millionaire Ward Connerly's steady march to rid states of the policy one by one (affirmative action bans have been passed in Connerly's home state of California, Washington, and Michigan in previous elections). The ban passed easily in Nebraska, but was just declared defeated in Colorado, by the narrowest of margins.
Colorado wasn't done with controversial measures affecting education, though. A trio of anti-union measures, Amendments 47, 49, and 54 were up for decision as well, and the first two were defeated easily, largely through the campaign organizing of the Colorado Education Association. 47 & 49 would have made it illegal for school districts to force teachers to pay their union dues by witholding pay from their paychecks, a fairly common practice in schools across the nation--but Union control lives on. Amendment 54, however, passed narrowly--a measure designed to limit the lobbying influence of organizations who receive no-bid / non-competitive contracts from the government. The measure was supported as a pro-democracy plan to limit lobbyist and special interest influence; teachers unions are likely to file suit over the initiative on first amendment grounds.
Lastly, the initiatives I was personally most curious about: Oregon measures 58 and 60...
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What (Else) to Watch on Tuesday
November 4 promises to be a crucial and historic moment in American history for more reasons than just the headliner presidential election. Also at stake are more than 150 ballot initiatives and referenda in 36 states. Many astute observers are already aware of the most prominent among these initiatives such as California’s proposed amendment to ban gay marriage (currently polling almost neck-and-neck) and South Dakota’s amendment to ban abortion part II, but there are also a host of important ballot proposals that have not quite made the popular news media radar screen.
There is more at stake in the voting booth than just these state level initiatives too; in many towns and cities voters will have to choose between increasing taxes for various services or abiding by the pressure of a slowing economy and cutting local spending. In California alone, for example, there are more than 50 local education-related ballot initiatives having to do with teacher salaries, new text books, new school buildings or building repairs, and so on. Most of these local education spending bonds pass during ordinary election cycles, but during this economic downturn, it is anyone’s guess how much voters will be affected.
Chief among the crucial state initiatives concerning education are four categories: gambling for education proposals, proposals to end affirmative action, a set of controversial initiatives aimed at curtailing union power in Colorado, and a really controversial initiative in Oregon aimed at drastic reform of how teachers are paid throughout the state.
The first set of interesting ballot proposals are in play in Missouri, Colorado, Maryland, and Arkansas. Depending on how one looks at them, they are either pro-gambler’s rights proposals or proposals to supplement or modify existing school spending structures. Basically the states propose either to expand state lotteries, extend casino hours and gambling limits, allow slot machines, and raise casino taxes to fund education. In Missouri, for instance, there is a state cap limiting the amount of money that individuals can lose by gambling in a certain time period ($500 per 2 hours) that would be lifted, with all additional revenues turned over to schools—an amount estimated between $100 and $130 million per year.
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Making the Numbers Work.
An insightful report was released this week by Steven Wilson of the Education Sector, an independent non-profit that does educational policy analysis. The report raises a major question about the numbers game facing school reformers -- namely, how are we going to get more high-quality teachers into the schools where kids need them the most? Wilson presents the numbers question from the perspective of succesful charter schools that are emerging throughout the country.
Put succinctly, Wilson finds that teachers in widely-renown high-achieving charter schools (such as the 75 schools that belong to three celebrated charter networks--the KIPP schools, Achievement First schools, and Uncommon Schools) are so rare in terms of academic background and other qualifications that it would be virtually impossible to replicate these schools' high quality teaching staffs in other schools.
He draws this conclusion by starting with an analysis of the high achieving schools and what percentage of the teachers there come from selective colleges (as just one proxy for talented young teachers). It turns out that somewhere around 80 percent of the teachers in high-performing charter schools serving low-income youth graduated from colleges that are regarded by Barron's profile of American Colleges as "very competitive." By contrast, in the public schools writ large, only 19.2 percent of teachers graduated from the "very competitive" colleges.
What does that mean? Well for starters, it clearly means that we need to get more of our nation's brightest young people into teaching, and programs like Teach For America can help with that. But Teach For America currently has 5,000 corps members--barely one percent of the total number of teachers in just the public schools employed by 66 school districts in the Council of the Great City Schools. Moreover, only 140,000 students graduate each year from colleges ranked by Barron's as "highly competitive" - and even if half of them chose to spend two years teaching in these low-income city schools, only 33 percent of classrooms in the schools would have such a teacher.
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Economic Crisis Hits Schools
As the roller coaster ride that is the United States and global economy continues, one need look no further than to your neighborhood public school to see how the financial crisis will affect ordinary Americans. Stories are emerging across the country (New York here and California here, for instance) of states and local school districts passing emergency mid-year budget cuts which will result in delayed school construction projects, reduced classroom budgets, and squeezes on teacher salaries. An Education Week article published this week lays out in great detail many of the practical implications that will be felt in America's schools.
There are effectively three broad categories of losses that schools will incur in the coming years, each of which will have significant impacts on school children. The first category is direct losses that school districts have sustained as the result of a significant portion of their operating and capital budgets being held in stock assets that have lost tremendous value. The most obvious examples are school districts such as the 26 in California's San Mateo county which had budget resources tied up in Lehman Brothers at the time of the company's collapse. More than $60 million is now tied up in bankruptcy court proceedings from the county's 26 districts, with the schools likely to lose a significant portion of that total.
Making matters worse is that some of the affected districts will need those dollars in the near-term in order to finance school repairs, make payroll, and other day-to-day operations. Sequoia Union High School District, for example, estimates a loss of $6 million from the county's decision to invest its savings in Lehman Brothers--money that will have an impact on the district's 8,200 students this year.
But even those school districts without huge direct losses from falling asset values are getting pinched as well. The overall downturn in the economy, evidenced by reduced economic activity, falling property values, and home foreclosures will also have an impact on school district pocketbooks by reducing annual tax revenues that all schools rely on, at least in part. Since local property tax funding accounts for as much as 70% of many school districts' revenues, district leaders across America are watching with a weary eye as home foreclosures and falling property values persist. This is the second category of trouble that the financial crisis is threatening upon schools.
This effect is compounded by the fact that reduced property tax revenues may, in some cases, affect the credit scores that rating agencies give to districts who try to sell bonds to finance their school budgets -- meaning that schools will have to pay investors higher interest rates to raise money for building fixes, books, and other expenses. A half point interest rate increase on a $250 million, 6-month loan would amount to an extra $1.2 million that a school district or state has to spend on things other than teachers and school improvement efforts.
Thirdly, many schools are running into short-term problems associated with the nature of their budget receipts. School districts that receive property tax revenues in lump-sum payments once or twice during the year typically finance the early months of their budget cycles with safe, short-term loans. But as banks increasingly hoard cash reserves, the rates that schools have had to pay have increased drastically, leading to further cuts in order to make payroll and finance other school necessities.
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Philly Students Front and Center
Philadelphia student activists made the news in a terrific Philadelphia Inquirer article this week for their efforts to ensure that ongoing teacher union negotiations with the school district would focus on what matters most: student learning.
At stake in the union contract negotiations are some pretty typical issues: teacher pay, length of contract, work hours. Specifically, the city's new schools superintendent, Arlene Ackerman, wants to increase the length of the school day and raise pay for teachers in hard-to-staff subjects and schools. While both ideas are widely regarded as having positive impacts on student achievement and closing the gap between wealthy and low-income students, the unions have been reluctant on both fronts. The union is also bargaining for a long-term contract, while Superintendent Ackerman is looking for a one year deal--purportedly because she would like to become more familiar with the district before signing a longer teacher union contract.
One student commented on the ongoing negotiations and how they have tended to miss the issues that matter most for students -- such as getting high quality teachers into every Philly classroom regardless of the school's achievement levels, socioeconomics, and racial breakdown-- saying, "I've seen students cut class and come to my classroom to avoid bad teachers. The system of teacher distribution in Philadelphia is broken."
What is fascinating about this news item is that the student protestors, more than two dozen organized by the Philadelphia Student Union who gathered outside an elite magnet school in the city to deliver their message, got quick responses from the negotiating parties. The Superintendent's spokesperson issued a statement saying, "The district's top priority in negotiating the current contract is ensuring that we place teachers where children most need them." She went on to say that Superintendent Ackerman would welcome sitting down with students and parents at the negotiating table if the unions approved it.
Unfortunately, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union president, Jerry Jordan, did not express his support for the idea of student participation in the negotiations. However, he did point out that the union "has always taken a position of watching out for kids." One may wonder how this position of watching out for kids can possibly be consistent with refusing to let them have a voice in these issues that direly affect their education.
What might it look like if low-income and low-performing schools were staffed by caring teachers who are committed to their students? Maybe something like this (a staff video made to congratulate graduating students in a Bronx middle school):
Power to Fire = Power to Fix?
The Washington Post's Jay Matthews made a bold statement in his most recent column touting the vital importance of firing bad teachers as a step to improving schools. His argument--an increasingly common one in light of proposals made by DC Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee--is that school children in low-income, chronically low-performing schools will not experience significant achievement gains until administrators have the power to fire the manifold bad teachers who disproportionately work in such environments.
Mathews's inspiration for writing the article is the experience of a principal at a DC charter school called KIPP DC:KEY Academy, where two low-performing teachers were fired before Christmas and replaced with what Mathews describes as, "proven talents" who turned around their classrooms to the benefit of students. In ordinary public schools, because of union protections for teachers, principals do not have the freedom to act this quickly and unilaterally. Instead, in traditional public schools the principal would likely only have the power to authorize mentorship and professional development for the struggling teacher, make negative comments on evaluations, and then recommend not rehiring the teacher at year's end (or in some cases, after a period of years of probation).
Mathews is right to point out the powerful lever that charter school principals have to weed out hopeless teachers, but he misses an equally important, if not more important issue: what good is it to be able to fire teachers if there aren't higher quality alternatives to replace them? In the DC KIPP academy example that Mathews cites, it only helps that the principal can fire the two bad teachers because she has access to two better teachers who can replace them!
The problem is, most schools don't have a deep reserve pool of high quality job-seeking teachers waiting in line should their initial staff members prove ineffective. Indeed, from my own teaching experience, where our school was able to fire three teachers mid-year (15% of the full time teaching staff), the challenge of taking over an often times dysfunctional classroom from the previous teacher can prove insurmountable to even the most hard-working replacement. If that replacement is not a "proven talent" as was the fortunate case for the DC KIPP principal, the power to fire a teacher is only half of the solution.
The other half, of course, is increasing the pool of high quality teaching candidates in low-performing school districts--a challenge that is much more complicated than the power to fire. It incorporates licensing rules, pay structures, workplace rules, and other issues that have plagued K-12 public education for decades. The power to fire is only one part of the equation--truly fixing our struggling schools will also require a fundamental shift to the human capital picture in public education.
Who is Bill Ayers?
Earlier this week, a Wall Street Journal op-ed brought attention back to the connection between Senator Barack Obama and a '60s radical activist, Bill Ayers. As cofounder of the violent left-wing organization the Weatherman, Ayers has been called a domestic terrorist by many state operatives.
Currently, Ayers is an American elementary school theorist, and is connected to Obama through education reform efforts from his days in Chicago. But it merits asking, who is Bill Ayers? And what difference should it make in our estimation of the Democratic candidate for President of the United States?
This much is uncontested: Bill Ayers participated in the bombings of several public monuments, including the New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the US Capitol Building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972. He was a leading member of a radical, leftist terrorist organization called the Weatherman. He spent a short period of time in jail after turning himself in for these crimes in 1980. And he is affiliated with US Senator Barack Obama.
But what is the nature of that affiliation? And perhaps more importantly, what does Bill Ayers believe and how does he act today? Without question, if Senator Obama has in any way shown signs of supporting Mr. Ayers' admittedly guilty and violently radical past, his candidacy would be suspect. But there is no evidence that this is the case.
To begin with, the connection between Senator Obama and Mr. Ayers comes down to three principal items. First, and most notably, they served together on a Chicago school reform initiative called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an effort that designed community partnerships with local public schools and was also launched in fifteen other communities. Also serving on the board of the Annenberg Challenge in Chicago were individuals such as Patricia Graham, former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Arnold Weber, former president of Northwestern University.
Critics may wonder how a self-admitted domestic terrorist rose to lead a well-reputed school reform initiative? Because Mr. Ayers, since his days with the Weatherman, has gone on the straight and narrow. He is currently a distinguished professor of education at the University of Chicago who has garnered attention for his academic efforts in pedagogy, along the way working with officials such as Chicago Mayor Richard Daly.
The second connection is that Mr. Ayers and Senator Obama also served together on the board of an anti-poverty foundation called the Woods Fund of Chicago, which continues to provide support to organizations that seek to educate and empower low-income residents of Chicago.
Third, Mr. Ayers contributed $200 to Senator Obama's Illinois State Senate election campaign in 2001.
So does Senator Obama support a hyper-radical leftist ideology of domestic terrorism, as some skeptics warn? Does he support an unorthodox, militant view of the role of public education? There is no evidence of it. After all, Senator Obama was only eight years old when Bill Ayers committed his violent acts.
I'd love to hear facts about their relationship and how it might impact the next five weeks if you have evidence or conclusions that I've missed here!
Oh, How Names Do Matter!
"I've always said you get 100 votes if you change the name." - California Congressman George Miller, the Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, discussing the likelihood of No Child Left Behind being renewed in the next president's administration.
Representative Miller's comment sheds light on an interesting phenomenon with the controversial law No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The American public overwhelmingly supports action to improve public education, even at the federal level. When asked in general whether they support the goals of the law--increasing student achievement and narrowing the achievement gap for low-income and minority children by holding schools accountable for student performance--large numbers of voters agree.
But when you ask someone how they feel about the actual law named "No Child Left Behind"? Cringe, sneer, boo.
Need numbers? Start with last month's Phi Delta Kappa / Gallup poll, which found that 67 percent of Americans thought the law should be changed or scrapped. Or how about this ETS poll, which found that Americans favored the law 56 percent to 39 percent when it was explained based on its component parts and goals, but were against the law 43 percent to 41 percent when it was actually referenced by name.
Maybe that's why the NCLB is the "10,000 pound gorilla" in the room that neither of the candidates is talking about.
But how, you ask, is it the case that so much about the law rides on the name alone, and not the actual substance? Part of it is a branding issue--interest groups actually opposed to the substance of the law such as the teachers unions have done a great job equating the brand of NCLB with teaching to the test and other unsavory, if vague, notions.
Another part is just a general lack of understanding about what the law actually entails; a post hoc ergo propter hoc effect, so to speak. Public schools have been struggling, particularly in low-income urban and rural areas, for quite some time in the US. Yet today's observers tend to attribute this failure to the most recent event in education policy: NCLB. It's no better logic than attributing my winning $10 on an instant lotto ticket because I had a banana for breakfast, but it's a common enough fallacy that NCLB would be probably unpopular regardless of its name.
However, one thing is certain. Both candidates have been smart to strategically steer clear of mentioning NCLB in their campaign speeches. It's toxic, and it's just as easy to score points by talking about education as a values issue instead of the nitty-gritty that seems to make NCLB so controversial. Seems like we'll have a big gorilla just hanging out until the election is over, when some new catchy name will be unveiled to headline a law that will most likely be strikingly similar to the existing No Child Left Behind Act.
New McCain Attack Ad Obliterates The Line
This is the time of the election cycle when things get painful. Candidates and campaign staff, on the one hand, have to dig deep to make tough decisions about tactics and targets with limited time and resources as November 4th draws close. And they do so amidst heigtened attention even after some 20 months of non-stop campaigning with hardly any sleep.
But the most painful part of the campaign season for most ordinary Americans is how we are subjected to senseless lies and irresponsible attack ads which make it virtually impossible to make any kind of accurate judgment about what the two candidates would do for our country.
One of the most disgusting ads I've seen in quite some time was put out just two days ago by the McCain campaign. Understand that I would be the first to call out the Obama campaign if they had put the ad out instead -- my interest here is in challenging either candidate when they misrepresent their own positions and records on the ever-important issue of public education reform, or in this case, when one misrepresents his opponent's views. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the issue is too vital to millions of children and indeed the very future of our nation to play partisan political football with. Judge for yourself in the following 30 second clip being shown in various battleground states:
The ad basically alleges that Barack Obama thinks it is more important to teach kids about sex than it is to teach them how to read. It begins by misrepresenting a series of Education Week and Washington Post articles that actually speak approvingly of Senator Obama's maverick and reform-minded views on school reform, and then goes on to suggest in voice-over -- on top of a picture of a smirking Obama -- that his only accomplishment in education is a sex education bill for kindergarteners. The not-so-subtle implication is that Senator Obama is actually a run-of-the-mill sleezeball or perhaps worse, a pedophile.
The truth? Senator Obama is actually well-regarded by reform-minded education thinkers who respect his bold uncoupling of the Democratic platform on education from the narrowly-focused goals of teachers unions which have dominated Democratic views on school reform for the last half century. And the sex education bill that he passed while in the Illinois Senate? It actually supported age-appropriate sex education that would help teach children how to protect themselves from sexual predators and pedophiles. In other words, if one watches the McCain ad while considering the truth, the ad actually implies that Senator McCain is against providing children with critical information that may help them avoid sexual abuse.
But Aaron, wait! Who are you to say that the McCain ad is mis-representing the Washington Post and Ed Week positions on Senator Obama's education platform? Aren't you no worse than the McCain ad if you don't provide facts to back up your assertions? Fair enough. So don't take it from me that the Washington Post and Ed Week support Senator Obama. Take it from them, directly, here (the Washington Post actually fires back at the McCain camp directly for twisting its words), and here for the original Ed Week piece.
McCain Attacks Obama on Education at RNC
Give John McCain credit: he spent more than two whole minutes talking about public education in his nomination acceptance speech last night, and about his general vision for improving our schools if he's elected president elected president. Barack Obama, for what it's worth, only spent seventy seconds in his acceptance speech last week.
Senator McCain begins explaining his views on public education in the first minute of the above video, with a bold pronouncement that, "Education is the Civil Rights issue of this century." He continues to talk about the importance of giving every child access to a good school, and the role of the government in providing families with choices if their neighborhood public school is failing. It is all pretty standard rhetoric at this point for Republican candidates--and rather appealing rhetoric at that. This is especially the case since many of those who are against the controversial idea of vouchers can understand the sentiment of wanting to provide all children with the chance to get out of a chronically low-performing school.
But at two minutes and fifty-three seconds, Senator McCain fires a direct shot across the bow at his opponent, saying, "Sen. Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students." A powerful charge, indeed, which the McCain campaign hopes to mount as part of a broader challenge against the idea that Senator Obama will bring change to Washington, DC. If Senator Obama only wants to make schools answer to unions and bereaucracies, after all, how will that put children in any better a position than they are today?
The problem is, the charge is patently false. Regardless of whether one has conservative or liberal leanings on public education issues, no objective observer could look at the Obama education plan without thinking that he is walking a fine line with regard to teachers unions, who have long been a friend to the Democratic party. Even a full year ago, Obama was making bold and risky statements to the face of the unions themselves. In July 2007 he appeared in front of the National Education Association to express his support for teacher merit pay, an idea that could not be more anathema to the unions.
In an election where both candidates have made unfair and at times inaccurate statements about each others' records and character, one would hope that an issue as important as the education of millions of children might be sacred ground. For the next two months, sadly, it doesn't seem that this will be the case.
Is Ed in '08 Making A Splash?
The economy. War in Iraq. Health care. Energy and environmental policies. All of these issues, at different times, have dominated the headlines of the 2008 presidential election cycle. So too, have campaign strategies, personal attacks, and the occasional speaking gaffe.
Lost in these headlines, however, has been one key topic that may well have as much impact on the future of our nation as all the rest: education. Indeed, school reformers interested in pushing education into a more prominent position of debate between Senators Obama and McCain have more or less held a backseat over the past several months.
This is not how the leaders of at least one non-profit organization envisioned the election cycle. Ed in '08, a $60 million effort funded principally by the Gates Foundation to raise the election day prominence of public education as an issue. The group has made major ad buys in radio, print, and even on TV without much impact--one TV ad is embedded here:
Why hasn't education been more talked about? It's hard to say. After all, it's not as though the voting public isn't interested in public education, and it's not like there aren't meaningful debates to be had over key issues like teacher pay, charter schools, pre-kindergarten, and school accountability. One possibility is that other news have been "sexier" in the sense that they are more timely and seemingly urgent--the housing crisis and gas prices fit this description. Another possibility is that the two campaigns do not disagree enough on the major questions (both are more or less in support of NCLB with modest revision) to be the point of a debate. Either way, it doesn't bode well for America's children that more public attention has been paid thus far to John McCain's real estate holdings and Barack Obama's wife's dress color than to their schools.
On Eve of DNC, School Leaders Call for Change
A diverse and highly respected group of leading education reformers from across the country gathered today in Denver, CO to challenge Democratic officials to fight for fundamental changes to the nation's public schools. Elected officials such as Adrian Fenty and Cory Booker, the mayors of Washington, DC and Newark, NJ respectively, were joined by a slew of prominent school experts and civil rights leaders who called for a commitment to six key steps to fighting the achievement gap that plagues low-income and minority students.
The six steps include: providing universal access to pre-kindergarten programs for low-income children; expanding parent choice and access to charter schools; improving standards and accountability systems so that high achieving schools and teachers can be rewarded and modeled; extending school days and the school year to help low-performing children; improving teacher recruitment and hiring practices; and re-examing school funding within the realms of teacher pay and after school programming.
The six proposals are hardly radical ideas; each of them has been suggested to improve student achievement at one time or another. What is interesting, however, is the timing and target of the call--a plea for action by widely respected Democrats who see education as an issue that can propel the Obama - Biden ticket to victory in November.
A recent PDK / Gallup poll seems to confirm this possibility. In the poll, respondents were asked which presidential candidate they would vote for if they were choosing solely on the basis of improving public schools. 46% said they would vote for Senator Obama, compared with only 29% who supported Senator McCain (the remaining 25% said they did not know).
The poll result is noteworthy for two reasons. First off, it shows a clear issue-motivated party preference on the part of voters that did not exist in either the 2004 or 2000 president elections, when President Bush was virtually tied with Sen. Kerry and Vice President Gore on the question of who would improve public schools more. To the extent that this preference is deeply held, education seems to be an issue on which Senator Obama has potential to draw voters to his camp.
The second interesting element of the poll is that the clear candidate preference has emerged in spite of a relatively quiet campaign season when it comes to the issue of education. It is one thing that voters express preferences on economic issues and the Iraq war, where both candidates have spoken extensively on the subject and where clear distinction exists. But voters support Senator Obama on education even without a clear sense of how he differs substantively from Senator McCain. One wonders if Senator McCain would be wise to draw comparisons between his education platform and Senator Obama's, rather than contrasts as a way to reduce the gap expressed by likely voters.
China, the Olympics, and the Competition that Matters Most
I write this entry from Beijing, China just one day before the start of perhaps the most highly anticipated and controversial Olympics in recent history.
At different times and by different observers, these Beijing Olympics have been referred to as both visionary and subversive. Depending on who you listen to, China's hosting of the epic contest is either a proud moment for a rapidly developing nation seeking to join the global community, or a perversion of major values that civilized nations should seek to affirm.
The feeling on the ground here in Beijing, at least among ordinary Chinese citizens, leans heavily toward the former view. Taxi cab drivers, construction workers, and middle-class office workers alike have expressed a great deal of excitement about the upcoming games, proud that their country is serving host to over five million international guests. Even as heavy smog and pollution sweep the skies, the energy is palpable across the country.
But as viewers in the United States tune in to observe the games, it is the un-televised competition happening betweeen students in American public schools and Chinese schools that matters most for the 21st century. By one count, China produces more than nine times more engineers than does America--a gap of 650,000 to 70,000. A Canadian global think tank estimates that within two years, 90% of all engineers holding doctorate degrees will live in Asia.
Some of this owes to the fact that China has 1.4 billion people to America's 300 million. But only some. The reality is, China has yet to tap into a huge reserve of potential that resides in its rural areas where many children do not yet have access to public education. Once that takes place, and by some estimates it is already starting, America will fall even further behind.
So as US fans cheer a likely victory of our basketball team led by Lebron James and Kobe Bryant over the Chinese National Team on August 10th, what remains to be seen is whether the same fans will realize soon enough that the competition that matters most is not on the court, but rather in the classroom.
Aaron Tang is the co-director of Our Education, a non-profit organization working to build a national youth movement for quality education. He also teaches 8th grade history in Saint Louis, MO.