I’ve always had kind of a split personality at the start of the school year. There was the little girl who looked forward to donning a new outfit, strapping on a new pair of shoes, and rushing off to meet my new teacher. But there was also the worrier Joan, the one who was in a new school and fretted about making friends, not knowing what to wear or where to sit.

I’m facing this school year in much the same vein.

Money more than learning is likely to be the theme of the coming year as schools start to walk off, fall off, or get pushed off the funding cliff. Some schools and districts will face this with aplomb and not waste the crisis. Others will take a header over the edge, never realizing they had other options.

As districts approach the edge of the cliff, three ideas are likely to generate a lot of heat, if not light. I see possibilities in every one of them, and also reasons for worry.

School district consolidations
As spending ability continues to spiral downward, expect to hear a lot more about district consolidations.

Reducing the number of superintendents and school boards and eliminating duplicated services at the district level would be the name of the game. But there are mixed reviews about how much savings actually accrue from such changes. If those saved dollars are used to preserve classroom jobs or if a consolidation increases district capacity, then consolidations could be a worthy move.

But don’t expect local districts to volunteer for this because the powers-that-be are exactly the ones who would be losing their positions. That means state legislatures would have to find the will to set standards for consolidations. Too bad the money that will be spent lobbying on this question can’t be spent on kids instead.

Technology
Standing on the edge of the cliff may finally convince districts to explore opportunities presented by new technologies. Collaborations between districts or colleges regardless of distance would enable schools to offer certain courses through virtual networks and to share the cost of a teacher.

2010 has already witnessed a shift in book sales; textbooks are surely the next frontier. Amazon revealed in July that its sales of e-books had topped its sales of print volumes for the first time. How long will it take before districts turn to e-books as an alternative to printed textbooks for all students in all courses? Equipping every student with an e-reader can’t be that far away.

Embraced wisely, technology can retain or expand options for students and excite them anew with the possibilities of learning. Or the money can be squandered as badly as in the day when districts sold bonds to pay for computers in the classrooms.

Teacher pay
The new PDK/Gallup Poll on the Public Attitudes Toward the Public Schools makes clear that quality teaching is the public’s top national priority for education. But, as adults feel their own belts being tightened, they are increasingly angry at teachers for seeking higher salaries and retaining benefits that the rest of us lost long ago. They are tired, really tired, of the standard pay scale for teachers and want to see pay tied to improvements in student learning. Many in the public perceive teacher pay as the culprit that’s threatening to push districts over the financial edge.

The twin pressures of the march toward the cliff and the aggressive efforts by the Obama-Duncan team to promote performance pay mean lots of action on teacher pay is looming. Because performance pay will go hand in hand with changes in teacher evaluation, introducing performance pay could achieve what the anti-tenure crowd could not: a way to muster out low-performing teachers. And that will be a very popular move with the public.

Not even massive infusions of money from Gates, Broad, and other benefactors can prevent this funding crisis. When we finally land on solid ground again, my guess is that the face of American education will be sharply different than before we began. En route, some districts will surely crash on the rocks, either unable or unwilling to navigate their way down the wall. But some districts will seize the opportunity of the crisis, find their wings, and fly off that cliff to safety. I really hope my kids are in those schools.

I just finished an hour-long webinar (Kappan Conversations: Beyond the Printed Page) with Steve Wolk about his article in the April Kappan, “What Should Students Read?” In this exceptional article, Steve challenges schools and teachers to get out of the rut of teaching the same books year after year. By broadening the literature that students read, he says teachers will bring immediacy and spontaneity to student learning.

During the webinar, Steve talked about his view that teaching is a profession that requires courage and creativity. Part of being a teacher is being willing to take risks on behalf of students. As he notes, most teachers have more freedom than they are willing to use to decide what books to teach and how to teach them. Rather than stretch and push against perceived barriers, they too often stick with bland textbooks and the tried-and-true classics.

“Teachers aren’t encouraged to take risks but part of being a professional is about taking risks,” he said. “If we wait for someone else to change our schools, our schools won’t change. Teachers have to change them.’’

He wrapped up our conversation by saying that he wishes teachers who do stretch beyond the ordinary would share their stories about their creative efforts.

Like Steve, I also want to hear those stories. So, I’ll throw out his challenge to you. What risk did you take this week to benefit your students? How did you connect a classic piece of literature to something from a newer genre? What new opportunity did you provide for your students because you believed they had the ability to learn something new? You can post those stories on the Kappan blog anytime. Maybe your one small step will encourage others to take their own step — or perhaps a leap.

The Learning First Alliance (LFA), a consortium of 17 of the largest and most influential education associations gathered for its annual leadership council meeting in Washington, D.C. on April 22-23, 2010. The leadership council includes elected association officers and their CEOs and deputies. I served as chair of the LFA executive board this year, and offered the following remarks at the beginning of the event.

“Welcome everyone to this year’s Learning First Alliance Leadership Council. I am Bill Bushaw, and it has been my privilege to chair LFA’s executive board this year. Foremost in the next two days is our opportunity to share our values with each other, and to do so with sincerity and candor.  And as we work together, I am confident that we will make great progress because of the talented and dedicated leaders sitting in this room.   

Speaking of a talented and dedicated leader, our executive director, Claus VonZastrow invited Jack Jennings to join us at the last LFA executive board meeting in March. Jack has directed the Center on Education Policy for the last 16 years and is one of the brightest men I know. During that meeting, Jack gave us a sound advice—advice I have often thought of since then.  He told us to identify our values about public education, and then propose a plan—our plan—based on our values.

With Claus’s leadership, we have done much of this already. For example, I think we agree that: 

• We want ALL children to have the skills they need to be as successful as possible. That’s been our focus for the last several LFA leadership councils.
• We want their parents and guardians to be central to that success.
• We want our nation’s teachers to have the resources they need and the respect they deserve.
• We want our school leaders, both appointed and elected, to have the skills and determination to rally their communities.
• And we want our universities to research better ways for teachers to teach and students to learn.

So it’s really quite simple.  We confirm our values and we put forth our plan.  But in doing so, we should recognize three challenges.

First, good plans take time to implement, and it takes time to see the results. Symbolic initiatives suggesting that real change can be measured in months are without merit. They waste everyone’s time.  We must get a message out to all Americans that we are committed to progress for the long haul, not for a quick headline. 

Second, we cannot wait for things to be perfect before implementing our plan. We will never have all the money we think we need; we will never have all the political support we think we want.  But we must not wait. We must start now.

Finally, drawing on an African proverb used often by Al Gore, if you want to go quickly, go alone—if you want to go far, go together.  We must reach out to others, recognizing that we will have differences, but in spite of those differences focus on the values that we have in common, and build upon these.

Whether it’s with the leaders in this administration; with the members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans; with other social agencies; or with the business community, we will need allies in order to deliver a 21st century education to ALL of our children.

The following quote is attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must employ methods never before attempted. We have much to talk about in the next two days. Let us talk about our values; let us talk about our plans; and let us rededicate ourselves to work together within LFA and with others.  Let us employ methods never before attempted.”

Most agree that national education standards are politically unpalatable in the U.S., so in its place, 48 of the 50 governors and their state superintendents have volunteered to work together in developing common core state standards. This effort began last year, and since then, the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) have made extraordinary progress. A draft K-12 common core standards became available for public comment on March 10, 2010, and initially, the standards have received mostly positive reactions. From my two previous blog posts, you should know that I fully support this effort.

So at a time when the initiative is making excellent progress, why would the President throw a wrench into the works? In February, President Obama announced to the nation’s governors that he wants state-level funding for Title I programs to be contingent upon the adoption of standards–whether it is the national common core standards, OR in lieu of that, standards that each state creates with their own four-year public university system, which must ensure that students who are not held to the national common core standards will not need remedial coursework upon admission to a postsecondary institution in the system.

This is a big stick or carrot depending upon how you view it, as Title I funding currently represents about $15 billion a year given to states. From my perspective, it undermines the voluntary underpinnings of this initiative.

So back to my question, why link common core standards to Title I funding?  I think the answer is simple—the governors and state superintendents wanted the President to make this link and raise the stakes to force state adoption of the standards with few or any changes. 

These state leaders realize that adoption of the standards will proceed through state-level hearings.  Invariably, that means state legislators, state board members, and others will want to alter, water down, or add additional standards.

At a personal level, I’ve witnessed the powerful forces to add standards during the standards creation process. It seems everyone has their “pet” requirements that must be covered, and this has resulted in too many standards; and this leads to teacher’s not being able to cover everything that’s required. The common core state standards initiative has fought this tendency successfully so far.

So here is a future scenario as I see it.  When a powerful state legislator proposes to the governor and the state superintendent that their state should eliminate five of the common core standards (”these are too difficult for our students”), and replace them with 15 other standards (“our students are unique from all other students and need these skills”), the governor and state superintendent will respond (tongue-in-cheek), that while they would like to consider the suggested changes, they can’t as it would jeopardize Title I funding.  This is called political cover.

So while I dislike the President connecting common core standards to Title I funding, having worked in the state-level education arena, I understand why the parties involved, i.e., the administration, the governors, and the state superintendents, have probably agreed that this is the route to go. 

What do you think?

Kappan is close to announcing a set of themes for the 2010-11 publishing year. Here’s one that’s ready to share now. Please spread the word to your colleagues. This will take you to a PDF that you can send to colleagues: www.pdkintl.org/kappan/docs/KappanCall_0310.pdf

Theme: Digital kids, innovation, and stone-age schools

Deadline for submissions: June 15, 2010

Publication month: December 2010/January 2011

This issue of Kappan will explore topics related to how classrooms employ new technologies for learning and how new technologies outside the classroom are influencing learning and learners. Kappan editors are interested in reviewing a broad range of manuscripts that address this topic. Some of the questions that interest us are these:

• Do new technologies change how students learn? Do they change how students read and write, study, or think? What important attitudes and skills are lost or improved in the shift to new technologies?

• What’s the future of online student and professional learning? Do the standards change when new forms of technology are available?

• What’s the next wave of technology? How will it change what we believe about teaching and learning?

• When schools embrace new technology, does student learning improve? Where are there examples of this?

• What should schools avoid when confronted with new technologies?

• What legal and ethical issues are raised by new technologies?

Please review Kappan’s Guidelines for Writers before submitting a manuscript. www.pdkintl.org/kappan/write.htm

I posted a six question quiz in an earlier blog entitled, “A Quiz on No Child Left Behind – Who Said What?”

All right, it was a difficult quiz with trick questions, not the kind of quiz teachers should give to students; and you already figured it out—I was trying to make a point.

When it comes to reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) currently known as No Child Left Behind, Democrat and Republican education thought leaders agree on many of the things that need to be changed.

I promised I would give you the answers so here they are, and please correct your own papers.

• Statements on ensuring 100% student proficiency by 2014; version (a) was offered by a Republican; version (b) a Democrat.
•  State standards; (a) Democrat; (b) Republican
•  Remedies/sanctions; (a) Democrat; (b) Republican
•  Student assessment; (a) Republican; (b) Democrat
•  Low performing schools; (a) Republican; (b) Democrat
•  And finally, highly qualified teachers; (a) Democrat; (b) Republican

Tell me if you got all the answers right and I will send you a fabulous prize something.

Are you wondering who are these two highly recognizable Washington-based education thought leaders?

The Democrat is Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy (CEP).  For several years, Jack served as general counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor while the Democrats were the majority party. He is a well-known and highly regarded Democrat, and his suggestions are reported in a recently released CEP document entitled, Better Federal Policies Leading to Better Schools.

The Republican is Chester (Checker) Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and former Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan administration.  Like Jack, he is highly regarded but clearly a Republican. His suggestions were reported in his weekly bulletin, The Gadfly, volume 10, number 5, February 4, 2010. 

I will be the first to admit that Jack and Checker disagree on lots of education policy issues.  However, on these six points, two highly respected individuals seem to agree more than disagree.

I think it would be helpful to congressional leaders if they could hear from education leaders who represent both political persuasions on what they agree should be changed in reauthorizing ESEA, allowing them more time to debate issues where there continues to be disagreement. Will it happen? Unfortunately not.

Bill

Hopefully you have had a chance to read, the February Kappan article, “Tying Together the Common Core of Standards, Instruction, and Assessments,” by Vicki Phillips and Carina Wong. This article is available to all on the public side of the PDK website so encourage others to read it. View Free PDF

The article certainly supports the common core standards for many reasons and lays out some of what must follow in the states for these to become reality. A question I have is how will all of this get to the teacher level to make an impact? When will we start to see changes in state assessments?

If you are interest in more on this topic – on Tuesday, March 16, at 4:00 p.m. Eastern, PDK will have our first Kappan Conversations: Beyond the Printed Page webinar with Vicki Phillips and Carina Wong. In case Vicki’s name is not familiar to you, she is the education program director at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Joan Richardson will host this discussion.

Recently, two highly recognizable, Washington DC-based education policymakers offered suggestions for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).  One of these individuals is a well-known Republican; the other is a well-known Democrat.

Here’s a quiz. For each statement below, identify if it was suggested by the Democrat or the Republican.

Proficiency

a. Eliminate 100 percent proficiency by 2014.

b. Eliminate the unrealistic goal of 100% of students scoring at the proficient level by 2014

Standards

a.  Change state standards to make them more rigorous and consistent across states.

b.  Get rid of wildly discrepant state standards and cut scores that lead to non-comparable results and mean that a school’s fate depends more than anything else on what state it’s in.

Remedies

a.  Eliminate federally prescribed sanctions for schools that don’t meet AYP targets, and federal requirements for school choice and supplemental tutoring.

b.  Quit being far too prescriptive about what states/districts are supposed to do with/about/to their low performing schools (and districts), little of which then actually happens; the choice provisions aren’t working.

Student Assessment

a.  Stop disallowing use of “multiple measures” to determine AYP, leading to inordinate emphasis on reading and math skills; achievement “growth” should count, too—for all kids, not just those nearing proficiency.

b.  Change state assessments and improvement measures to align them with common standards, and cover a broader range of subjects, skills, and outcomes.

Low Performing Schools

a.  Stop identifying far too many schools as “needing improvement” rather than focusing on the most troubled.

b.  Add approaches for supporting and intervening in low performing schools

Highly Qualified Teachers

a.  Eliminate the current federal criteria for determining which teachers are highly qualified.

b.  Eliminate the highly qualified teachers section

Again, for each of the six sets of statements, decide which one, “a” or “b” was suggested by the Democrat and which one by the Republican. Come back in a couple of days to check your answers.

Who said bipartisanship in Washington was dead?

Bill Bushaw

I just sat in on a White House conference call about President Obama’s proposed 2011 budget for K-12 education. You can view a press release outlining key budget points at the United States Department of Education website.

The budget includes a $3 billion (yes, that starts with a “b”) increase in ESEA funding, but that increase is for competitive programs like the continuation of Race to the Top (RTTT) and the Investing in Innovation (I3) fund. Of course, this assumes that ESEA will be reauthorized during this session of Congress, something that the Learning First Alliance supports (see my earlier post, Reauthorize ESEA ASAP).

The budget also proposes replacing the accountability system established in No Child Left Behind with a new system built around the goal of helping all students graduate college- and career-ready—a very laudable goal and one that I will support with every ounce of my being.

I was also delighted to see a proposed $269 million for teacher and leader recruitment and preparation. PDK supports the Future Educators Association® (FEA), the only international program that helps recruit and prepare middle-level and high school students to become the next generation of great teachers, particularly those from underrepresented populations and those interested in teaching in high-need areas.  You can bet that we will be looking to support K-12, community college, and university partners in establishing great pipelines to get the best and brightest into the teaching field.

Of course, there’ll be lots of controversy as this budget attempts to consolidate 38 ESEA programs into 11 funding streams. But listen to this—it’s the ultimate carrot. (Bugs Bunny, are you listening?) If ESEA is reauthorized this year, the President will send Congress a budget amendment that requests up to an additional $1 billion for ESEA programs.

What’s my take at 60,000 feet?  This president is deadly serious in his belief that high-quality education is the path to greater individual equity and our nation’s collective security. Care to weigh in?

I rattled around the country quite a bit growing up — 18 moves and 10 schools in my first 18 years. And, no, neither of my parents was in the military!

At a young age, I learned that different schools had different expectations for kids and different ways to teach those kids. I started learning to read by the “see and say” method in Maryland only to move to suburban Chicago and discover that phonics was actually the way to learn. Later, I found that math and English in a Wisconsin factory town were a whole lot easier than the math and English in a college town in Michigan.

That unintended exercise in experiential learning has had a profound impact on my understanding and feelings about standards. Why did teachers in Michigan expect me to learn math that teachers in Wisconsin did not? Why were the demands in English so much higher in Michigan than they had been in a neighboring state?

I have, in many ways large and small, abandoned my belief that local school boards and local school districts have the wisdom to make decisions about what children need to learn in order to be prepared for life after high school. There may have been a time when so many graduates worked in agriculture or local industries that it made sense to trust local authorities to decide what education was necessary to be successful in the local community. (Although I think the truth is that local school boards and local educators never set “standards,” they merely bought textbooks and, thus, always ceded such decision making to someone outside the community.) When even many mom-and-pop operations confront global issues, however, knitting together a framework for education that works for children everywhere is imperative.

Having standards that are accepted across the nation is just the beginning for creating a cohesive education system. As Vicki Phillips and Carina Wong point out in their article, “Tying Together the Common Core of Standards, Instruction, and Assessment,” www.pdkintl.org/kappan/index.htm developing instructional units and assessments aligned to the Common Core of Standards must be the next work.

Agreeing on standards is essential to ensure that we prepare teachers well for tomorrow’s classrooms. As University of Michigan’s Deborah Ball said to me during an interview last summer, how can we know what teachers should know and be able to do in a classroom until we know what we expect students to learn? That really is so very basic.

Then, consider the role that standards will play as we begin to break out of the physical boxes that are schools today. Tomorrow’s students won’t be attending schools that are in physical places. We can anticipate that students will soon be customizing their learning by shopping for education in online malls, selecting among a menu of courses and teachers, perhaps only applying to their local district for the funds to pay for the work and for verification that they’ve met graduation requirements. Such online learning options means students will need the ability to move seamlessly from one course to another or one school to another, confident that everything is linked to a clear set of standards that applies to every education provider.

Teachers, too, will develop deeper individual expertise and in entrepreneurial fashion begin to serve students who want the knowledge they have to offer. Where I moved physically from one site to another, tomorrow’s students will move virtually, studying with teachers across the country and around the world, again all made possible by standards that guide every course.

Standards is an essential step towards ensuring equity and quality learning for all children everywhere. Both our democratic and our competitive needs demand that we move ahead quickly to embrace standards that apply to schools from one end of the country to the other.