Extra Credit

For most of this nation’s history, black people have had too few allies in the struggle for better schools. Brown v. Bd. of Education tried to change that by tying the fate of black students with their white classmates. Although that effort has not turned out like Thurgood Marshall had hoped, the underlying point remains true: as a minority group, African-Americans need allies.

In light of this, I welcome the various folks now demanding better schools for low-income and minority students. At the same time, it is imperative that education reformers of all colors and sizes recognize that for African-Americans, the school struggle is part of a larger demand for equality and justice.

This point, which Sara Mead made well, might seem obvious. But then education reformers start talking and I realize it is not. A jarring example is The Education Gadlfy’s recent statement about the D.C. voucher program and voting rights for District citizens. Here it is in full:

The bottom line here: Gadly thinks that the District of Columbia citizens might not deserve the vote because our elected representative disagrees with the Gadfly (and the parents receiving vouchers) about the merits of the program.

This is illogical, bizarre and offensive. The illogic begins with the premise that because the parents of the children receiving vouchers like the program (studies show they do), Norton is acting against her constituency by opposing the plan. Of course, Norton’s constituency is broader than the parents who benefit. Other constituents don’t like vouchers. This is how democracy works; it is why a representative might choose to oppose needle-exchange programs for IV drug users even though addicts like the program, or might oppose tax breaks for businesses even if the owners appreciate the rebate, etc.

The Gadfly’s post is bizarre because suggesting that Norton is not being true to her constituency ignores the particular history of the D.C. voucher program. The voucher program was passed by Congress, not by the elected representatives of the District of Columbia. Everyone knows it would not have passed if D.C.’s elected officials got to vote on it–indeed, that is why voucher advocates went to Congress in the first place.

Would the Gadfly endorse Congress denying the citizens of Dayton, Ohio the right to vote and then passing a law that applied only to Dayton and that most of Dayton’s elected officials opposed? Of course not.

The difference is that the Constitution prohibits Congress from doing this to the citizens of Dayton, or any other part of the U.S. But it allows it with D.C. But even if it is constitutional to treat D.C. this way, there is simply no moral justification for legislating on local concerns. This point was eloquently made by Republican lawyers Lee Casey and David Rifkin Jr. at the time the voucher law was passed (available behind NY Times subscription wall). In discussing pending voucher and gun control legislation, they said:

Congress has the constitutional right to impose a school voucher program on the District of Columbia. It also has the legal power to relax the district’s strict gun control laws. But that doesn’t mean it should. In fact, doing so — as some senators are now proposing — violates the basic social compact the Constitution’s framers envisioned between Congress and the district.

The issues at hand are Republican-led efforts in the Senate to establish a school voucher program in the district and to repeal its 27-year-old ban on handguns. But while the Constitution grants Congress ”exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever” over the national capital, it lacks the moral authority to impose policy choices over purely local matters like these, matters that otherwise do not affect the federal government’s operations.

In light of this history, many District residents oppose the voucher plan on process (i.e., democracy) grounds. For many, the merits of vouchers are beside the point, because the principle (again, democracy) has been violated.

The Gadfly’s argument is offensive too, and especially so to the precise constituency that the Gadfly and other education reformers purport to defend. D.C. is a majority black city in a country that denied blacks the right to vote for centuries. Even if Norton were dead wrong on vouchers, that is irrelevant to the question of whether the franchise should be extended to this majority-black constituency. We do not have to prove our worthiness to vote. D.C. residents deserve the right to vote in Congress unconditionally, because morality, political philosophy, and basic human rights say so, not because the Gadfly likes what our rep has to say about vouchers.

In fact, the Gadfly has it exactly backwards. Voting rights and democracy matter more than a single issue. The fact that the Gadfly reverses the order and privileges vouchers over equal citizenship buttresses the oft-made claim that, despite the racial justice rhetoric, the education reform community has concerns other than the health of the black community.

And at the end of the day, that’s why this is so important. I care about the education reform movement. A lot of African-Americans distrust education reformers like those at the Gadfly. Many believe they want to privatize the schools, they want free-markets to rule, and they use black families and children as pawns. I don’t know the folks behind the Gadfly, but I know many of their fellow travelers, and I don’t believe this is the case in general.

I think most ed reformers are well-meaning people who have, for a variety of reasons, been drawn to an issue that is unquestionably urgent–the quality of schools in low-income communities. It is hard enough to convince people of this as is. Posts like the Gadfly’s make it much harder.

Want to get a sense of what new Chancellor Rhee is up against in D.C.? Turns out at my neighborhood elementary school, Shepherd in NW DC, books are stacked in the basement. More books and supplies are in a warehouse. This is beyond offensive. Some things are hard (e.g., finding high quality teachers willing to teach in schools serving low-income kids, providing training and mentoring for those teachers, etc). Getting books out of the warehouse and into the classrooms is not.

Rhee is pissed, and correctly points out that a lot of teachers “spend their own money” on supplies that the District has wasting away in boxes.

Joe Williams and EducationGuru have thoughtful responses to the questions I raised about merit pay plans (here and here). Joe’s bottom line is that merit pay right now would be “a total disaster” in most places because of implementation problems. But he supports, as I do, economic incentives to lure the best teachers into the schools that most need them.

EducationGuru’s detailed plan ends up lending support to Joe’s conclusion–when you read what she has to offer, you come away convinced that it is worthy, expensive, and hard to implement well.

In light of all of this, I am left wondering why so many education reformers get excited if a politician mentions merit pay? If Joe is correct, it is not going to be done well anytime soon at scale. Maybe we should move on to more feasible, higher-impact items.

In today’s debates about NCLB, standards, testing, etc., it is worth being reminded that there remain some schools that having a rather different conversation.

Money quote: “Education is in the heart of the listener, not the voice of the teacher.”

According to Mark Fisher, Michelle Rhee in DC is committed to thinking broadly about what would constitute success in school. He says she will resist defining success simply by looking at test scores in reading and math. Maybe we’ll even get arts programs in our schools! Like Fisher, I pray this is the case.

On the federal level, George Miller is making similar noises about NCLB, but it is too early to tell exactly what Miller has in mind. Like Ross Wiener of Ed Trust says in this WPost article, the devil is in the details on this one. And as Kevin Carey notes, Miller’s comments are a really big deal.

The bottom line is that reading and math tests have a hugely important role to play, but the evidence has simply become overwhelming that our current focus means 1) other subjects get less attention, and 2) schools–not knowing how else to raise scores–resort to drill and test prep in place of rich, engaging instruction.

Regarding drill and kill, I agree with Amy Wilkins and the folks at Ed Trust who argue that the best schools raise test scores while providing excellent teaching, and don’t need to teach to the test. (Amy said in a recent radio interview that in good schools the test is like a “gnat on the windshield” while driving down the road of education.) But that exposes one of the great ironies of No Child Left Behind–the very schools that we already knew did not provide high quality teaching are somehow expected to become places of rigorous instruction once we measure the results. But teaching kids who struggle academically is really hard stuff, and it is evident to anybody who spends time in urban schools that while some teachers are lazy, others simply do not know what to do to get better outcomes.

The key then is measuring a wide variety of outcomes (including reading and math, but not only them), measuring them in ways that are authentic and valid (some will disagree, but I think tests are ok, if they are good ones), and providing schools and teachers with the supports they need to develop good curricula and instructional practice. This last one is the hardest, and the one where federal and state policies have so far had the least impact.

If we treat kids like this while they are in the care of the state, what do we expect from them when they get out . . .

The subject the US keeps ignoring. Once on the link, click “highest to lowest” and then “go” to see the depressing results.

I’m not close enough the ground to have a nuanced view of what’s going in New York schools, but it seems to me when The City Journal, Diane Ravitch, Deborah Meier, Edwize, and my step-father all agree, it is worth paying attention. And they all have huge beef with Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg.

The critiques vary, but they sound similar themes: manipulation of test score data, over-emphasis on PR (press office at DOE has grown 400% says Stern in the City Journal), and disregard for views of parents, teachers, families.

And check this ed-reformers: based on the diversity of opposition, it would be a mistake to dismiss it as “the status quo resisting change.”

I don’t know whether it is too late for Klein to undo the ill will his approach seems to have generated, but Michelle Rhee in DC and other system leaders who seek to make change would do well to pay careful attention to Klein’s mis-steps as well as his successes.