How Congress Left Behind Public-School Choice - WSJ

How Congress Left Behind Public-School Choice - WSJ:

How Congress Left Behind Public-School Choice
Obama calls the new law a ‘miracle.’ Tell that to students no longer able to transfer from bad schools.

 When President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act earlier this month, he celebrated the bipartisan support for the legislation—which replaced the No Child Left Behind Act—as a “Christmas miracle.” Miracle or not, the new law ended the largest school-choice program in the country.

“Public School Choice,” was the simple name for the program, and it was built into No Child Left Behind. Under the law, any school failing to meet performance benchmarks in reading or math for two consecutive years was identified as “in need of improvement.” Families whose children attended one of these schools had to be offered the option to transfer to any other district school that was not so identified.

The program had some obvious flaws. Some districts were so small that they had only one school in a grade level; and all of the schools in some districts were in need of improvement.

Also, the program was run by state and local bureaucrats who had little incentive to make it work well. Not because it cost taxpayers any extra money; public funds flowed with the student to his new school, along with the federal funds to transport him. Still, the program forced school choice on districts that might have preferred their traditional assignment systems—and districts had to send letters to parents notifying them of their options.

As a result, the actual offer letters to parents tended to bury the most important information—a choice to enroll their children in a better school, along with free busing—in obscurely worded form letters. Consequently, the takeup rate was never high. Not even 3% of eligible families transferred their children to another school, which is probably why the end of the program attracted so little attention.

On the other hand, state bureaucrats, under pressure from local school districts, couldn’t wait to end the program. The Obama administration gave them that chance starting in 2012, when it began granting waivers for states to avoid the most onerous aspects of No Child Left Behind. Without any federal pressure, nearly all of the states with waivers dropped the school-choice provision and another provision offering families free after-school tutoring. Enrollment rates began falling. Congress killed both provisions when it reauthorized the federal education law.

And yet this program, despite its flaws, was a big deal. About 48,000 students transferred to a better school when the option became available in the 2004-05 school year. Eventually the number of students who transferred rose to more than 165,000 in the 2009-10 school year. As more schools were identified for improvement the number of students transferring started falling, and it fell even more as more states got waivers. But even in 2013-14, the last year for which data is available, 27,126 children switched schools.

To put this in perspective, the Public School Choice program was, at its peak, more than twice as large as the largest provider of charter schools, the Knowledge Is Power 

National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) Group: 

1 in 5 charter schools not doing well enough to stay open

A group that oversees more than half of the nation's 5,600 charter schools said as many as 
one in five U.S. charter schools should be shut down because of poor academic performance. 

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019784379_charterschools29.html

New California Law Limits Use of Student Data - US News

New California Law Limits Use of Student Data - US News:

New California Law Limits Use of Student Data

The statute bars companies from using student data for advertising.

For technology companies in California, ringing in the New Year will mean adjusting to a new privacy law that limits how they can collect and use student data.

The data privacy legislation was originally signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2014 and goes into effect Jan. 1. It prohibits the operators of education websites, online services and apps from using any student's personal information for targeted advertising or creating a commercial profile, as well as the selling of any student's information.

The law also requires education technology companies to maintain reasonable security procedures for students' personal data and to delete information at a school's request.

[READ: Dyslexic Students Lag Behind Peers By First Grade]

While the law is hardly the first – more than 20 states currently have some type of student data privacy law on the books – it is unique in that it applies to all education websites, online services and apps, regardless of whether they have a contract with states and schools.

Laws in other states specifically regulate education technology contracts.

"This is the most aggressive legislative effort to protect the privacy of student data," says Craig Cheslog, vice president for California policy at Common Sense Kids Action, a nonprofit advocacy organization that helped craft the law. "It puts the responsibility directly on industry and not on teachers, parents or families."

RELATED

Teacher Colleges Failing to Prepare Teachers to Use Technology

Notably, more than 200 technology companies in Silicon Valley and around the country, including Apple and Google, have already pledged to safeguard student privacy. 

Advocates for stronger student privacy laws have welcomed the California legislation, saying it provides rules of the road for technology companies at a time when K-12 schools are increasingly integrating laptops, tablets and other digital devices and software into the classroom.

Those providers have been known to collect massive amounts of data about students – everything from contact information, performance records and online search history to health information, behavior and disciplinary records, and even whether students ride the bus to school. Google, for example, stopped scanning student email messages for advertising purposes last year.

Advocates argue that there haven't been clear limits on the use of student data and that many education technology companies fail to adequately encrypt students' personal information and secure it from potential misuse. The law, they say, will ensure that information stays out of the wrong hands.

"The truth is in every generation, perhaps now more like every five to 10 years, a new revolution in technology forces us to contend with new questions about how to keep our kids safe," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said at an education technology summit just months before the California legislation was signed into law last year. "Privacy rules may well be the seat belt of this generation."

[ALSO: Education Department On Guard Against More Testing Opt-Outs]

Over the last few years, Duncan has conceded that current federal laws haven't kept pace in a field New California Law Limits Use of Student Data - US News:

States’ Pension Woes Split Democrats and Union Allies - WSJ

States’ Pension Woes Split Democrats and Union Allies - WSJ:

States’ Pension Woes Split Democrats and Union Allies

Left-leaning politicians are increasingly supporting more aggressive revamps of retirement benefits despite opposition from labor officials

 A $1 trillion U.S. pension gap is dividing two longtime allies: Democrats and unions.

Left-leaning politicians from Rhode Island to California are increasingly supporting more aggressive overhauls of government pension benefits despite opposition from labor officials, traditionally one of the Democratic Party’s biggest policy and electoral supporters.

The erosion of Democratic backing for conventional retirement benefits prized by teachers, firefighters and police officers is a sign of how strained government budgets are as obligations for 24 million public workers and retirees continue to mount.

The latest clash is unfolding in Pennsylvania, where Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has been seeking to end a six-month budget impasse with a Republican-controlled Legislature by agreeing to approve retirement cuts for new state hires and current workers. The Keystone State has $50 billion in unfunded pension obligations, one of the deepest retirement holes in the country.

“I know you’re not going to be happy,” Mr. Wolf told union leaders in private phone calls during recent weeks, those labor officials said. Union officials said the cuts aimed at current workers violate state laws.

A spokesman for Mr. Wolf said the governor understands that some people would be upset with the pension cuts, but his priority has been boosting education spending. “The governor absolutely wants to make sure state workers have a secure retirement, but this was a compromise budget and he’s dealing with an overwhelmingly Republican-led Legislature,” the spokesman said.

Since 2009, 25 out of 34 states that had Democratic governors in office have rolled back retirement benefits for public workers, a result that is proportionally in line with states run by Republicans, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of National Association of State Retirement Administrators data. Most of those governors also have survived attempts by union interests to remove them from office. At present, 17 states have Democratic governors.

Pension-cutting Democrats can come off as the lesser of two evils for union officials, because they have curtailed some benefits in an effort to make retirement plans more sustainable. Republicans often pursue more drastic steps such as ditching traditional pensions altogether in favor of the 401(k)-like plans common in the private sector.

The amount states and local governments are paying each year to fund retirement systems has risen to 4% of annual spending, up from 2.3% in 2002, according to U.S. Census data. Meanwhile, large retirement systems now have just three-quarters of the assets they need to fund future obligations, according to consultant Milliman Inc., leaving a gap of $1 trillion.

Democrats rarely tried to roll back pensions before 2008, according to politicians and pension officials. But as deficits surged because of deep investment losses in the wake of the financial crisis and chronic underfunding of retirement plans, Democrats said they had little choice but to revamp benefits, leading to conflicts with what has usually been a large and loyal bloc of voters.

ENLARGE

In West Virginia, Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin this year backed pension cuts that raise mandatory worker contributions for new hires and block those workers from retiring as young as 55.

In California, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown traded jabs with the state’s largest retirement system when he said a proposal to lower investment targets was irresponsible because it didn’t go far enough and would likely reduce the expected rate of return over a longer period, in effect papering over looming deficits. The California Public Employees’ States’ Pension Woes Split Democrats and Union Allies - WSJ:

Know Who's Psyched for Hillary? Teachers Unions. – InsideSources

Know Who's Psyched for Hillary? Teachers Unions. – InsideSources:

Know Who’s Psyched for Hillary? Teachers Unions.

Lily Eskelsen García is feeling good these days.

As president of the country’s largest labor union, the National Education Association, she was overjoyed by this month’s passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act — legislation President Barack Obama signed to end President George W. Bush’s much-maligned school reform policy, No Child Left Behind.

The new law shifts significant controls over public education to the states, reducing requirements for the use of standardized testing in evaluating students, teachers and schools. It’s music to the ears of Eskelsen García, who has long argued against what she calls the “test and punish” model of assessment.

The union chief was still euphoric about ESSA when she appeared on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program Sunday. She said she was in “happy shock that things are going to be really, really, really better for 52 million public school children.”

Here’s what’s certainly true: things are about to be better for the NEA, especially if its Democratic primary candidate — former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — wins the White House next year.

  NEA’s Lily Eskelsen García gushes over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

For all teachers unions have done to support Obama, Clinton has always been closer to them than the president, whose education policies created a rocky relationship with what’s traditionally a core progressive constituency. As Politico put it in “Obama vs. teachers unions: It’s still on,” education is the issue where the president has “veered farthest from his liberal base,” except perhaps for trade:

It’s historically a local issue, but Obama and [Education Secretary Arne Duncan], his pickup basketball pal from Chicago, have reshaped the national landscape, using carrots (like the Race to the Top competition for stimulus dollars) and sticks (like the threat of sanctions under the No Child Left Behind Law) to nudge states into adopting reforms that unions hate.

By choosing [Deputy Education Secretary John] King to succeed Duncan, the president is signaling that he cares more about continuing those fights—for higher standards, for charter schools, for standardized testing—than healing wounds or papering over differences within his party before the 2016 election.

King is set to take over after Duncan gives a farewell address in the Windy City Wednesday, but a new secretary could be on the job along with a new president in January 2017. And if it’s Clinton’s in the White House, significant changes to education policy may be in store. Vox flagged a November American Federation of Teachers forum where the Democratic front-runner voiced opposition to evaluating educators on test scores and skepticism about expanding charter schools, contrasting herself with Obama.

She has also spoken out against Republican presidential candidates who use anti-teacher-union rhetoric, Know Who's Psyched for Hillary? Teachers Unions. – InsideSources:

 

Ohio Charter School Report: Ohio tells federal investigators that charter schools are getting better

Ohio tells federal investigators that charter schools are getting better, but evidence isn’t convincing - Break News - Ohio:

Ohio tells federal investigators that charter schools are getting better, but evidence isn’t convincing

As the Ohio Department of Education defends itself in a federal investigation of whether it can properly manage charter schools, reports at home raise questions as to whether the department is being truthful, let alone gaining control of a movement that has cost taxpayers millions of dollars and left thousands of children without adequate academic progress.

Case in point: Next Frontier Academy on Copley Road in Akron.

Potential losses at the school weren’t included in a report to federal investigators because records were so poorly kept the state can’t figure out how much was lost, according to a state audit.

The West Akron school received $530,858 in taxpayer funding over two years for more than 60 students.

An audit for the first year found that the charter school lacked student academic and enrollment information to justify that it should have received tax dollars transferred from Akron Public Schools. The school closed this summer and there is no audit yet of what happened to public assets.

That type of nuanced information was lost in the report to federal investigators.

In working with State Auditor Dave Yost and Attorney General Mike DeWine, Ohio School Superintendent Richard Ross added up the number of charter schools with audits that required a repayment of funds for the years between 2008 and 2014.

Next Frontier’s first year couldn’t be included in Ross’ report because missing records prevented auditors from forming an opinion or issuing a monetary finding for recovery.

Ross’ report to federal investigators touted a 71 percent decline in the number of schools with audits requiring repayment of funds since 2010 (after an especially troublesome year).

A Beacon Journal review of other charter-school audits suggests that there are more like Next Frontier: Not counted because records were in disarray.

Missing the dollars

Ross’ statement to the federal government also failed to make note of another fact: How much public money was misspent in charter schools.

Ross’ spokesperson, Kim Norris, said answers to the Beacon Journal’s questions on that matter are in the report. Speaking to the Columbus Dispatch, she could not tell whether misspending is up or down.

The answer is available on the state’s website.

Auditor Yost maintains a report on misspent dollars at the thousands of public agencies his office monitors. For example, this year his office said a defunct Dayton charter school must return $1.1 million to taxpayers after failing to produce records for 240 students.

A Beacon Journal investigation, which reviewed thousands more audits from 2000 to 2014, found charter schools were far more likely to misspend public dollars than any other government agency.

Charter schools accounted for at least 70 percent of all misused tax dollars in Ohio tells federal investigators that charter schools are getting better, but evidence isn’t convincing - Break News - Ohio:

2015 In Review: Lawmakers Reform Charter Schools While Top Education Officials Come Under Fire | WVXU

2015 In Review: Lawmakers Reform Charter Schools While Top Education Officials Come Under Fire | WVXU:

2015 In Review: Lawmakers Reform Charter Schools While Top Education Officials Come Under Fire

2015 was the year Ohio lawmakers worked to overhaul the charter school system while a data scrubbing scandal was playing out at the state’s department of education. 

In January, when the brand-new Speaker of the House Cliff Rosenberger laid out his priorities for 2015, reforming charter schools was at the top of the list.

House Bill 2 was touted as bringing more transparency and accountability to the charter school system. Stephen Dyer with the liberal-leaning think tank Innovation Ohio said this is a system that has gone fairly unregulated compared to its traditional public school counterpart.

“We need to make it absolutely clear that these are actually public schools and not by just calling them public but by having the duck actually quack and walk like a public entity,” said Dyer.

Republicans and Democrats were unified on most of the issues on the bill. The biggest controversy came when the House failed to hold a vote before leaving for summer break. But the chambers returned and sent a final version to the governor without much debate.

However, during that summer break, it was revealed that the state’s top charter school official, David Hansen, rigged the evaluations, leaving out failing grades for some online schools. This caused a stir among officials who were already big critics of charter schools and had some, including Democratic Representative TeresaFedor, asking if the state’s schools Superintendent Richard Ross had anything to do with the data scrubbing.

“It seems highly unlikely, if not impossible that he had no knowledge of the charter school data scrubbing that happened on his watch,” said Fedor. 

The Ohio Department of Education released more than 100,000 emails, texts and other documents related to the evaluations. None seemed to indicate a cover up. Ross went on to answer a slew of questions during a state board of education meeting in hopes of clearing the air.

“I’ve been very disappointed and upset about this. It is something that is so counter to everything that I believe because I believe in accountability for all schools, doesn’t matter if they’re community schools or if they’re traditional schools,” Ross said.

Hansen resigned in July and a few months later Ross announced that he would retire at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, the state was granted $71 million from the federal government to be used for charter school improvement. But, because of the data scrubbing fallout, the state must meet new conditions before the feds release that money.

2015 will also be known as the year teachers and students prepared for an all-new assessment known as PARCC, only to throw that test out after one use.

PARCC caused headaches for teachers and administrators. Districts experienced glitches with the online version, teachers unions were not pleased by how long they had to wait for the results, and parents thought the testing schedule was too long and put too much pressure on students.

Republican Senator Peggy Lehner of Kettering chaired a committee that held a comprehensive review of PARCC. The group found, among other things, that the tests were taking too long. 

“Once PARCC refused to shorten the test to a point that it was acceptable to the testing group I felt that it was very likely that we would end up dropping PARCC 2015 In Review: Lawmakers Reform Charter Schools While Top Education Officials Come Under Fire | WVXU:

 Big Education Ape: Shame on the Ohio House for pushing off action on critical charter school reform bill:http://bit.ly/1MjatQZ

Big Education Ape: Will John Kasich Stand Up to the Republican Donors Taking Billions from Ohio’s Charter Program? ... http://bit.ly/1MjauVd

Big Education Ape: Could Charter School Scandal Weaken The Kasich Campaign? | John A. Tureshttp://bit.ly/1MjaxAg

A year of change: The top five education stories of 2015 | EdSource

A year of change: The top five education stories of 2015 | EdSource:

A year of change: The top five education stories of 2015

 This year brought several changes to public schools in California, beginning with a robust economy that added billions of dollars to boost K-12 per-pupil spending. In a year of multiple developments, EdSource has selected its top five stories of 2015.  As lawmakers in Sacramento crafted the state budget in the spring, more than 3 million students took on a new challenge — the Smarter Balanced assessments aligned with the Common Core. This month a partisan Congress united in the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed by President Barack Obama. The new law replaces the No Child Left Behind Act and gives local school districts more control while reducing the number of standardized tests.

Two laws passed in the waning days of the 2015 Legislature, and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, will have an impact on students and parents. Under one, former high school students who failed the state exit exam can receive their diplomas retroactively, beginning Jan. 1, 2016, if they met all other graduation requirements. The other law, which also goes into effect on Jan. 1, passed despite protests from hundreds of parents and eliminated the “personal belief exemption” that had allowed parents to enroll their children in school without having them vaccinated.

STUDENTS TAKE SMARTER BALANCED ASSESSMENTS FOR FIRST TIME

California joined 16 other states around the country in administering assessments in the spring of 2015 to measure student achievement based on the newCommon Core State Standards in math and English language arts/literacy. The standards, which stress critical thinking and problem-solving, aim to ensure that students acquire 21st century skills in grades K-12 and graduate college and career-ready.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium created the computer-adaptive tests, which adjusted questions based on students’ answers, to more accurately pinpoint strengths and weaknesses. Questions were more difficult for students who answered them correctly and less difficult for those who did not. Students in 11 other states and the District of Columbia took a different set of tests aligned to the Common Core that were created through the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC. California’s tests are part of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress that also includes science tests and alternative assessments. Students’ scores will be used when measuring future growth.

The state released the scores in September for the more than 3 million California students in grades 3-8 and 11 who took the tests for the first time following a field test in 2014. The results revealed an ongoing achievement gap between white and Asian students and those in other racial or ethnic groups, as well as between students who qualify for free and reduced price lunches and their peers who did not and between English learners and fluent English speakers.

EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS ACT APPROVED BY CONGRESS TO REPLACE THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND LAW 

Last summer, it looked like California would be stuck with the No Child Left Behind Act until President Barack Obama left the White House. The U.S. House and Senate had passed very different rewrites of the nation’s primary education law, President Obama threatened to veto either version, and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced he was resigning.

But, led by skilled consensus builders Sens. Lamar Alexander, D-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., negotiations came together quickly last month, and on Dec. 11, President Obama signed NCLB’s successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act.

A wide range of state educators and advocacy groups have given thumbs up to the new law’s framework. The new law will allow the Legislature and the A year of change: The top five education stories of 2015 | EdSource:

5 of the Worst Examples of Biased and Distorted Media Coverage of Education in 2015 | Alternet

5 of the Worst Examples of Biased and Distorted Media Coverage of Education in 2015 | Alternet:

5 of the Worst Examples of Biased and Distorted Media Coverage of Education in 2015
There were some big time fails.

2015 was an important year in education policy, with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the beginning of the 2016 election campaigns, and local fights for teachers and public schools making national headlines. In an important year for students and teachers across the education spectrum, however, some media outlets used their platforms to push falsehoods. Here are five of the worst media failures on public education this year.

Shop ▾

5. Campbell Brown Hired Transphobic, Sexist, Racially Insensitive Writer To "Fact-Check" Education Policy Reporting

This summer, teachers union opponent and former journalist Campbell Brown launched a "non-profit, non-partisan news site about education," called The Seventy Four. In spite of the site's stated mission to combat "misinformation and political spin" with "investigation, expertise, and experience," Brown hired Eric Owens, who has a long history of attacks on students and teachers, to write for the site. Owens has a long history of attacking and mocking teachers and students with transphobic, sexist, victim-blaming, and racially insensitive rhetoric as the education editor at the Daily Caller.

4. National Newspaper Editorials Promoted Anti-Teachers Union Myths 

This year, The Wall Street Journal continued its campaign of misinformation on teachers unions, pushing harmful, union-opposed policies such as a Louisiana voucher program that was found to violate desegregation requirements and a Washington, D.C. voucher program reported to waste federal dollars on "unsuitable learning environments." The WSJ editorial board often explicitly attributed its support of these unsuccessful policies to combating teachers unions. In an October editorial, for example, the board wrote that being "unpopular with unions... ought to be a requirement for any education leadership position," ignoring the troubling realities of the programs they attempted to defend in spite of well-founded union concerns.

As ESSA moved through Congress in late November, the editorial board doubled down on its teacher-blaming rhetoric, claiming that the new legislation was favored by "teachers unions who want less accountability," and advocating for the continuation of unpopular high-stakes testing and voucher 5 of the Worst Examples of Biased and Distorted Media Coverage of Education in 2015 | Alternet:

View: Reconsidering Race to the Top

View: Reconsidering Race to the Top:

View: Reconsidering Race to the Top

A former Regent has some regrets but believes the state board did much important work

In 2000, when my friend, former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, asked me to stand for election to the state Board of Regents, I was reluctant, because it meant giving up my position as chairman of the board of Westchester Community College. But when Richard explained the powers of the Regents and the possibility of helping education more broadly, I put my name up and was elected.

Most people know that the Regents preside over the state Education Department and SUNY, major responsibilities. But the board does much more than oversee education in New York. The board licenses and disciplines all of the licensed professions except lawyers. I headed the professions committee for many years, and we became much tougher on Medicare, Medicaid and insurance fraud — a huge problem costing the country billions of dollars.

The Regents also run the State Museum, Library and Archives and supervise libraries, most museums, historical societies and archives throughout the state. Public radio and TV are also under the board, so I was invited to meet the cast of “Downton Abbey,” a nice perk.

I chaired the higher education committee for several years, during which we closed a number of for-profit colleges and schools that were short-changing students. There are many excellent proprietary schools in New York, but not all.

The work most closely covered by the media is P-12 education. Testing, Common Core, charter schools, the performance of students with disabilities, graduation rates and other subjects are of great public interest. I loved talking about these issues when visiting schools, BOCES and colleges.

Bad decisions

During my tenure on the Regents, we made two really bad decisions: one because we failed to listen to our experts and one because we did listen.

When the federal Department of Education dangled before us $700 million in Race to the Top funds if we complied with their requirements, our experts said it would cost View: Reconsidering Race to the Top:

Experts Share Their Outlooks on K-12 Education in an Era of Broken Schools - The Atlantic

Experts Share Their Outlooks on K-12 Education in an Era of Broken Schools - The Atlantic:

Can Schools Be Fixed?

Experts on K-12 education offer their reasons for optimism and pessimism going forward.

It’s been a tumultuous year for America’s schools—one marked by an expanding minority-student population, an increasingly discontent teaching force, a backlash against standardized testing, and shifting understanding of education reform. It’s seen greater attention on areas traditionally dismissed as nonessential: things like early-childhood education, after-school programs, and project-based learning. It’s also seen evolving attitudes toward discipline, with tactics such as restorative justice starting to replace zero-tolerance approaches, including in high-poverty urban districts. Debates over how to address disparities in achievement have been highly politicized. The ed-tech market has continued to grow.

Education is often touted as a means for boosting social mobility and making communities more equal, but inequality in school funding and resources has made that difficult to achieve, especially amid increasing poverty rates. Segregation in districts, both tacit and explicit, is holding scores of children back, and performance on math and reading assessments has remained relatively stagnant. President Obama has just signed into law an act that will replace the widely despised No Child Left Behind, but whether it’ll succeed in its goals—boosting the attainment of disadvantaged students, reducing the amount of testing taking place in schools, promoting classroom innovation, and so on—is far from guaranteed.

We reached out to some of the leading scholars of, experts on, and advocates for K-12 education, and asked them what, as the year comes to an end, is giving them cause for hope and despair. Below are their answers, lightly edited for length and clarity.

---

Joshua Angrist, professor of economics at MIT

Reason for despair: “No Excuses” pedagogy is characterized by a long school day and year, an emphasis on traditional reading and math, extensive use of Teach for America interns, data-driven instruction (just as pro sports teams use data and review video), and an emphasis on discipline and comportment. Our research team and other colleagues have repeatedly and rigorously shown the power of this approach to produce life-changing gains for students who would otherwise do poorly (the “No Excuses” moniker refers to schools and not students: No excuses allowed for a failure to educate). I’m worried because the foundations of this success are under attack: The federal government and many districts now propose to limit the testing that provides essential feedback and accountability. And it has been regular, reliable testing that’s laid the empirical foundation for discussions of school quality and educational inequality. Also worrying: In Massachusetts and elsewhere, concerns about racial imbalance in school discipline are making it harder to use suspension to establish a structured and safe school environment (the primary beneficiaries of which are poor African American children).

Reason for hope: In the 21st-century, administrations from both parties expanded the federal role in education, encouraging reform and experimentation to an unprecedented degree. These policy explorations have been extraordinarily fruitful, yielding findings that are as clear and convincing as any in the history of social science. The most important of these findings is my reason for hope: Although charter schools vary in quality, schools adhering to “No Excuses” pedagogy (like KIPP, and many of the charters in Boston, Denver, New Orleans, and New York) consistently produce spectacular achievement gains for low-income minority students—enough to close the black-white achievement gap in a few years of enrollment. We see this in data from randomized admissions lotteries and from districts (like the New Orleans Recovery School District) that assign responsibility for failing schools to “No Excuses” networks. Research designs exploiting lotteries and takeovers take the guesswork and politics out of the analysis of education policy.

---

Charles Best, founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org

Reason for despair: We already know teachers go above and beyond to give their students an excellent education, a lasting love of learning, and the self-confidence to succeed. But teachers can only do so much with the resources they have. More and more, projects on our site tell us that teachers face a large population of young people who go to school cold or hungry. In addition to school supplies, they are requesting food, warmth and care for their students. As a society, it’s time to confront that problem.

Reason for hope: More than ever, students understand that they have the power to shape their own education. We gave young people the access to do that through crowdfunding this year with an expansion into student-led classroom projects. After just a few months, hundreds of students have led the charge by posting projects that matter to their communities. At Ritenour High School—a 15-minute drive from Ferguson, Missouri—one group started a reading buddy program with younger students at their school. Their project, “Reader to Leader: Mentor Program,” delivered 300 elementary-school books for their initiative. It’s just one of more than 840 projects that students have successfully gotten funded on their own terms.

---

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)

Reason for despair: I despair over the growing number of so-called Religious Experts Share Their Outlooks on K-12 Education in an Era of Broken Schools - The Atlantic:

A Conversation with Dr. Diane Ravitch | netnebraska.org

A Conversation with Dr. Diane Ravitch | netnebraska.org:

A CONVERSATION WITH DR. DIANE RAVITCH

Dr. Diane Ravitch is known as one of our nation’s leading advocates for public education. A renowned professor of education at New York University and former Undersecretary of Education in the George H.W. Bush administration, Ravitch has emerged as a vocal critic of current education strategies. Drawing on over 40 years of experience and research, Ravitch uses her insider knowledge and historian’s perspective to critique both President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and President Obama’s signature education program, Race to the Top.

 A prolific writer, Ravitch has authored 10 education-focused books and more than 500 articles in scholarly and popular publications. In her most recent book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Schools, Ravitch points out her views on the shortcomings of the privatization of public education and outlines her position on how to preserve and improve the nation’s public schools.

During a visit to Omaha to speak to the Metropolitan Omaha Education Coalition, The State of Education in Nebraska had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Ravitch for an intimate conversation on her research and growing concerns about standardized testing, value-added measures of teacher quality, school choice programs, and their effects on the quality of and community support for public schools.

---

VIDEOS

The Balance between School and Community 2:27

The Commercialization of Education 1:07

Look for more Dr. Ravitch videos in early January!

Dr. Ravitch's comments do not reflect the views of NET or The State of Education in Nebraska initiative.

A Conversation with Dr. Diane Ravitch | netnebraska.org: