education policy

California is broke. Period. And its bankruptcy is caused by two problems: stubborn, intractable politicians and resource curse. First things first. California is the Left Paradise, a place where every nutty leftist policy available has been put in place. Second, California suffers from resource curse. America's most populous state, nice climate, huge areas for agriculture, world-class universities and so on made California one of the richest places on Earth. When you mix California leftism  with its own resources, you've just created an entitlement state. Everyone in California has a claim against the government, no wonder California has been running on deficit for years just to pay a very bloated government.

If California wants to avoid the fate of becoming a failed state, there are some things that may help avert that:

Education

• Kill off the California Department of Education, State Board of Education, letting counties run K-12 education as they see more adequate to their realities and challenges.
• Create a statewide voucher program that can be used in both public and private schools. The key idea is fund the student, not a heavy, union-controlled education bureaucracy.
• Voucherization of education should also include universities and community colleges. California's public higher education institutions should be totally free to charge whatever they want, cutting off any financial ties with state's treasury. In order to prevent people from choosing majors like "Impacts of Global Warming of Feminist Struggle Against Capitalism", at least half of university voucher must be paid back to the state.
• Free public schools from burdensome regulations, especially those concerning hiring and firing of personnel.

Feel free to suggest any other idea to save CA's education.

Earlier this week, I encouraged the use of a more sophisticated approach to education policy: a set of principles to pitch beyond vouchers and "school choice." Today, David Brooks tells the story of New York City charter schools operated by the the Harlem Children's Zone:

"[A study from Harvard economists Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie] found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student in the school was in the 74th percentile. The typical student entered the school scoring in the 39th percentile in English Language Arts (verbal ability). By eighth grade, the typical student was in the 53rd percentile.

"Forgive some academic jargon, but the most common education reform ideas — reducing class size, raising teacher pay, enrolling kids in Head Start — produce gains of about 0.1 or 0.2 or 0.3 standard deviations. If you study policy, those are the sorts of improvements you live with every day. Promise Academy produced gains of 1.3 and 1.4 standard deviations. That’s off the charts. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students."

Fryer was so impressed that he said, "The results changed his my life as a researcher because I am no longer interested in marginal changes," and argued it was the "equivalent of curing cancer for these kids. Why was there so much success? These schools focused on the human elements of a school: (1) strengthening and empowering students, and (2) strengthening accountability for teachers.

"Basically, the no excuses schools pay meticulous attention to behavior and attitudes. They teach students how to look at the person who is talking, how to shake hands. These schools are academically rigorous and college-focused. Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City. Students who are performing at grade level spend 50 percent more time in school.

"They also smash the normal bureaucratic strictures that bind leaders in regular schools. Promise Academy went through a tumultuous period as Canada searched for the right teachers. Nearly half of the teachers did not return for the 2005-2006 school year. A third didn’t return for the 2006-2007 year. Assessments are rigorous. Standardized tests are woven into the fabric of school life."

And remember, President Obama was all about charter schools in his address to Congress:

"We'll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools."

The Harlem Children's Zone is a model for other areas to follow because it puts into practice some of the principles that I've talked about before: (1) More money does not equal better results. (2) The goal should be to move every child forward instead of "leaving no child behind." (3) Schools are more able focus on kids' strengths, not weaknesses, when local control is restored. (4) It should be easy to recruit the best teachers, and it should be easy to fire bad teachers.

I love it when good stories are told. And often times, it's good storytelling that makes for persuasive politics. Here's the story of Mercedes Campbell, one of the 1,700 students in the Washington, DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, otherwise known as the school voucher program passed by Congress in 2004. The video was produced by Nick Gillespie and Dan Hayes of Reason.tv.

We all know the why vouchers are good, and we all know the arguments for school choice. Yet, "voucher" seems to be one of the only words coming out of the Right when it comes to education policy. President Obama has already made clear what his policy goals are for energy and health care: cap-and-trade and universal government-mandated coverage, respectively. But he hasn't outlined his plans on education. Now would be a good time for Republicans to get out in front of the President and present him, and voters, with common sense principles and policies on education reform.

Yes, we should fight to save the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. But as great as vouchers are, if all we present to the public is "pro-vouchers," we will once again be struck down by the other side of the aisle as just peddling "old, tired ideas tied to the past eight years."

So what can we do? We should present the public with some simple principles, and ask the President to abide by those principles:

• More money does not equal better results. Of course, this principle is true of many things government does, but it is especially true in education. Part of the reason the voucher program was created in DC was the fact that DC public schools were receiving one of the highest amounts of funding per pupil, yet had some of the worst results. President Obama might agree with this principle, but I find it hard to believe that he'll be practicing it. We should hold him accountable, and demand specific results: a return on the taxpayers' investment. Speaking of results ...
• The goal should be to move every child forward instead of "leaving no child behind." The premise of No Child Left Behind was a good one: accountability. Yet the means by which the federal government demanded accountability were bad: federal government control of the metric of success and relying on standardized testing as the baseline. The idea of trying to get every student to meet a certain baseline of knowledge measured by test results flies in the face of the fact not every child learns the same way. What should be measured is whether or not an individual student improved from where he or she was previously, whatever level of knowledge he or she started out with. This should be presented as a principle that is a drastic change from President Bush, therefore one that President Obama should embrace.
• Schools are more able focus on kids' strengths, not weaknesses, when local control is restored. Usually when the federal government gets too involved in domestic policy, it snuffs out creativity and entrepreneurship in that area. Local control of schools, on the other hand, means more local understanding of the cultural and socioeconomic issues the schools are surrounded by. This usually means more creativity in teaching different types of students and more options for parents, whether it's building special programs for Alaska Native students in the Anchorage School District or allowing folks like Ron Clark to build academies to help disadvantaged students in Harlem and North Carolina. We'll see how much control President Obama is willing to give up.
• It should be easy to recruit the best teachers, and it should be easy to fire bad teachers. It's a classic battle: common sense vs. teacher union leadership. I'm all for increasing teacher salaries, but school districts around the nation need to have the courage to rethink teacher tenure. Will President Obama agree with treating teachers like professionals?
• Not every child can, or should, go to college. As Charles Murray said in an NYT op-ed in December, "It’s what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it." The overemphasis by public school teachers, counselors and administrators on getting into college leads to a dangerous elitism that can instill a permanent sense of underachievement in many students. I understand that putting this principle into practice will take more cultural change than political action, but it doesn't mean that lawmakers can't make the effort to start the paradigm shift. At the state and local level, more options should be provided to students at the secondary education level so that they can start on a path of learning that suits their learning needs and potential career goals, including charter schools (which President Obama mentioned in his address to Congress.) At the federal level, more can be done to encourage vocational post-secondary education (another policy that Obama should agree with.)

Republican lawmakers on the Hill should offer these principles and corresponding policies to the White House and, for once, get out in front and make the President react to something we present instead of reacting to him. Just as important: like-minded conservatives need to be on the lookout for opportunities and ideas for reform in local school districts, and pay attention to local school board races.

If we're going to successfully renew popular support for conservative ideas, the right must capitalize on opportunities to demonstrate how we offer a better vision for America than the left. Florida's success story with education reform is a good example.

Since the 1960s, liberals have backed a failed strategy for improving education -- increasing government spending, growing the federal bureaucracy, and largely resisting serious reform efforts at the state and local level.  Over time, per-pupil spending has doubled and the Washington bureaucracy has ballooned.  But we’ve seen little improvement in student learning.  Millions of kids continue to pass through the nation’s public schools without receiving a quality education.  

Unfortunately, we should expect more of the same from the new administration and congressional majority.  But this will give conservatives a real opportunity to offer parents and taxpayers a more compelling vision for improving education.  A vision based on conservative principles -- limiting Washington’s ineffective role and offering a broad reform agenda at the state and local level.  Growing evidence shows that unlike federal intervention, aggressive-state level reform can deliver real progress.

Thanks to the leadership of former Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida is proving that conservative education reforms work. Over the past decade, the Sunshine State has enacted sweeping reforms, including quality testing and transparency reporting, ending social promotion, improving classroom instruction, and strengthening teaching by offering performance pay incentives. Florida also leads the nation in offering parents the power to choose the best school for their children.  

These reforms have led to dramatic improvement. Since 1998, Florida students have made impressive gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, far outpacing the national average. Importantly, the biggest strides have been made by Hispanic and African-American children. In fact, Florida’s Hispanic students now have higher NAEP reading scores than the statewide average of all students in 15 states (see map below).

Bottom Line Up Front: The Right needs to rethink and reshape our style, substance, and strategy based on the opportunities and challenges that face us now. Evolve or die.

Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama today was one of the three "ouches" Moe Lane pointed out on RedState, the other two being the $150M raised by Obama last month and the 100K strong crowd for Obama in St. Louis.

Nobody should take much stock in endorsements, and this wasn't unexpected. Plus, I think John McCain can do a lot more with the aftermath of Obama's conversation with Joe the Plumber than Obama can do with Powell's endorsement.

But Powell does mention a few things that are worth noting and reacting to.

I really hate the paradigm of the “hyphenated American”. And I really hate talking about race and politics in such limiting terms. And in an election year where we are debating whether or not a certain presidential candidate will take us into a “post-racial” era (as Matt Bai talks about in the next NYT Magazine), any discussion about how one tries to appeal to different ethnic communities seems to be both very silly and very relevant at the same time.

But Megan Shank of Newsweek wrote one of the first pieces of this cycle on the mystery of the Asian-American voter, and more importantly the mystery of the Asian-American non-voter; as Shank describes, “both naturalized and U.S.-born Asian Americans have lower rates of voter registration than do non-Asians.” As an "American citizen of Korean descent" (that’s my way of getting rid of the hyphen), I felt compelled this one time to respond and really start a discussion about what makes Asian-Americans tick.

Now, what I am about to opine on comes from a combination of life experience being raised by Korean immigrants, my limited experience of dealing with Asian communities around the nation, and maybe some bald assertions about what Asian-Americans care about.

(Sidenote on the title of Shank’s article: it’s “Crouching Voter, Hidden Direction.” Some might find that offensive. I find it hilarious.)

Shank starts out by describing the potential demographics:

“Their numbers might be small compared to other ethnic groups—only 5 percent of the total population—but they’ve been growing nine to 10 times faster than the general population, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census. That could swing the ballot in key states, according to ‘Awakening the Sleeping Giants?,’ a recent report by researchers at UCLA.”

But it seems as though Shank assumes that larger and growing numbers will automatically lead into some sort of political power. Nothing could be further from the truth. First, the netroots of the Left and the extremist environmentalist movement have shown that a small group only needs very good organizational skills to make an impact. Furthermore, it seems that different ethnic groups have different senses of where “community” lies in their list of priorities. It is obvious that African-American and Latino-American citizens place community about as high they do family. From my experience, this is not true for Asian-Americans. The reason one probably does not see large organized political movements from Asian-Americans is that they place family as the highest priority, far above any other item. Pride in being Chinese, Korean, or Thai ranks far less than the pride in being part of your family. Succeed, and you bring blessings to your family; fail, and you bring shame.

After a pro-union superindentent and assistant superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District were indicted last year on misappropriating public funds, voters in Orange County successfully recalled and replaced two pro-union school board members with nearly 70% of the vote last Tuesday. In a nearly two year campaign, the CUSD Recall Committee uncovered "gross financial mismanagement" and corruption, with the help of The Education Alliance out of Tustin, CA.

Two important observations that I've brought up in previous posts:

• The concept of collective bargaining isn't bad, and the future the conservative movement should not be completely anti-union. Rather, we should frame ourselves as part of a "pro-accountability" movement to make sure that unions aren't on both sides of the negotiating table.
• We need further discussion on how to build a GOP farm team in local and state legislative races, even school board races! There is importance in identifying local issues of importance, and local political talent that can be developed.

But now to the real question: When it comes to public education policy, what principles should be emphasized by the next conservative movement? We've gone through battles with teachers' unions, arguing over No Child Left Behind, and academic debates on school vouchers. While discussion on these matters is still healthy, what policy goals should we try to achieve? Let's take a look at the stakeholders:

When it comes to students, the status quo of a "one-size-fits-all" education system doesn't work. The system we have now caters to the top 10% and bottom 10% of students; we do a great job of challenging and supplementing the education of the most gifted and talented, and we have had similar success in remedial and special education programs. But the middle 80% seem to be getting exactly the same education, which doesn't make sense for either the students or the teachers educating them.

At the same time, we have an assessment system where we try to get students to achieve an arbitrary level of success to be considered competent. I would like to see an education system that targets students on various levels, and instead of having policies that try to achieve "No Child Left Behind," we should have policies that "Move Every Child Forward." These are policies that don't look at whether or not students achieve a certain standard; rather, they look at whether or not each student has improved from where they started.

When it comes to parents, it's all about providing more accountability and more choice. While this discussion should include vouchers, it should not be rooted in vouchers. The discussion needs to be extended to expanding choice within public education. While the system overall might seem bleak, individual schools and school districts have provided ideas that might work in other local areas.

What needs to happen within school district budgeting, as well as all government budgeting, is a comprehensive review of the performance of different programs. Each program, no matter how big or small, should be required to provide a very specific set of goals with the funding that they request. If those programs meet or achieve beyond their initial goals, they should be rewarded with more funding. If those programs make no significant progress on their initial goals, funding should be pulled. It's a simple principle of investment, and I see no harm in applying business principles into school districts.

When it comes to teachers, paying them like professionals should be tethered to making them accountable as professionals. Sounds simple, right? I'm all for paying teachers more, giving them more benefits, and initiating recruitment programs and incentives to hire more teachers. But I once asked a lobbyist for a teachers' union what improvements needed to be made in order to fire bad teachers; his answer: "There's no such thing as a bad teacher." Yeah, I guess there's no such thing as a bad employee. Everybody can point to a teacher or set of teachers that postively affected their lives; but everybody knows that there are also teachers that seem to just show up for a paycheck. There has to be some sort of assessment system where good teachers are rewarded and bad teachers are fired.

Should they be assessed on their students' test scores? No. Should they be assessed by administrators inside or outside of the school that don't necessarily know the daily workings of a classroom? No. So how should they be assessed? In the private sector, a senior employee in a certain division of a company usually assesses the performance of a junior employee in that same division. Will there always be politics in the workplace? Yes. But I see no problem with an experienced social studies teacher assessing the performance of a less experienced social studies teacher.

This all revolves around the central debate over government's role in education. How can the next conservative movement help students, parents, and teachers while also retaining the principle of local control? Maybe this is another argument for paying more attention to local politics and building the farm team that we desparately need.

Thoughts and disagreements are more than welcome!

- MM