The image above is taken from the annual Cheese Rolling competition in Gloucestershire, England,  in which teams compete to roll a giant wheel of cheese to the top of a steep hill.  The federal Race to the Top competition is similar, except in this case the states are competing for cheese rather than transporting it—$4 billion, to be exact.

But no one told New York State; our entry in the national competition was as stinky as day-old-limburger.  

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has one foot in the world of educational reform, having come up under Chicago School CEO Paul Vallas, but has also managed to maintain good relations with the unions.  That said, it was clear what he expected from the winning entries: reform, cutting of red tape and all around innovation.  

The details of his remarks can be found here, but it’s pretty clear what he wants: 1) No dumbing down of state standards.  No Child Left Behind required that all schools make Adequate Yearly Progress, but dumbly allowed each state to create its own test.  Unsurprisingly, states have totally gamed this system, producing tests that only show the illusion of progress.

2) A strong system that monitors how individual schools and districts are doing.  When Duncan talks about the need to “identify effective instructional practices,” he means that we have to figure out which curricula work and which don’t.

3) Here, let’s let Duncan speak for himself:

It is no secret that when it comes to schools, talent matters—tremendously. To boost the quality of teachers and principals, especially in high-poverty schools and hard-to-staff subjects, states and districts should be able to identify effective teachers and principals. At the local level we want to see better strategies in place to reward and retain more top-notch teachers—and improve or replace ones who aren’t up to the job.

Attract and reward good teachers while dumping the bad.  

4) Bad schools must be closed and destructive school cultures that have tolerated failure must be gotten rid of.

These four goals shouldn’t be controversial—indeed, they seem like obvious steps forward.  And $700 million was the prize for the winners of Round 1.  But New York totally failed in almost all respects.  

New York State exams are definitely shady—New York kids’ scores keep going up, yet we are flat in the federal NAEP test (see this earlier post for a more detailed description of the NAEP). We have used a hodge-podge of curricula across schools and the state, making it very hard to determine which ones work. As far as having quality teachers—well, let’s just note that it is New York State law that teacher pay cannot be tied to student performance on exams.  Supposedly, Duncan let it be known sotto voce that this law needed to be repealed for New York to have any chance of winning funding.  The law remains in effect.  Finally, New York City has tried to close some of the worst schools, but were recently blocked by a federal judge. Here’s a gripping inside account of the insanity of one of these schools, Paul Robeson High. 

If all this weren’t enough, the state has foolishly capped the number of charter schools at 200, and this has also hurt our chances.

The result is that of the 16 finalists for round one (and it’s amazing we were in the finals at all), we came in 15 of 16.  

We must do better—money is on the table; all we need to do is to grab that cheddar.  More likely it’ll roll back down the hill.

Way back when George W. Bush was still trying to loudly proclaim that he was a “uniter, not a divider,” education reform was one of his hallmark initiatives.  Working hand in hand with the late Ted Kennedy, he passed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) —one of the most ambitious laws ever to try to mend the flaws in American education.

Now, almost nine years after its passage, the Obama administration is talking about making major changes to NCLB. According to this piece, by the New York Times’s Sam Dillon, Education Secretary Arne Duncan wants to dispense with NCLB’s Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) measure. AYP was bureaucratic jargon for a simple idea—schools had to be advancing their students academically.  And this would be measured by tests.  The problem was (and is) that the tests designed to measure AYP are created by the states themselves.  As a result, many states have deliberately watered down their standards in order to meet AYP.  The proof of this is that when a random sample of students from each state was asked to take National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam, the results did not match up with the improvement that the states had claimed.  (Here are the gory details for 2005).

Though nothing concrete has been released yet, Obama’s main idea will most likely be to replace AYP with a larger goal—that all students in the United States be able to graduate from high school and college prepared for the workforce.  And this goal should be accomplished by 2020.

On the one hand, the attempt to improve NCLB—a well-meaning, but flawed law—is laudable.  On the other hand, it is likely that no combination of carrots and sticks will be able to turn the educational sow’s ear that is Mississippi into a Massachusetts silk purse.  And all of America’s students: college-ready by 2020?  I hate to be a cynic, but its probably no coincidence that by the time that this date rolls around, Obama will be rearranging the furniture at his presidential library in Chicago.

The major question that all educational reformers need to ask themselves is whether the United States should embrace a national system of education.  Yesterday, the New York Times called for national assessment of all students.  They didn’t go into details, but it’s likely that they would want the NAEP to move from being given to a sample of students to becoming the actual test that all students would have to take.  Carefully, the Times notes that “this is not a call for a national curriculum.” Is this caution warranted?

This is a tough one. We are a federal nation, and being divided into 50 semi-autonomous regions provides us with many advantages.  On the other hand, all the nations that really thrive in nation-by-nation comparisons are unitary countries that set and enforce nationwide standards.  Should we do the same?  Do we need a national curriculum?

It’s possible that in a perfect world this would be the way to go, but the United States is simply too divided—ideologically, geographically and culturally.  It’s hard to imagine some mandarins in Washington dictating lesson plans to every school in the nation—and the amount of money wasted would probably be incredible.

So, in the end, I have to agree with the Times.  Let’s assess all states with one national exam, but let each state use whatever methods they want to achieve those standards.  Perhaps a list of the best and worst could be published—in the international community they call this “naming and shaming.”  It’s not perfect, but a method like this may be the best way forwards.