The cynical point of view is that some of the fundamental critiques of NCLB—that it points a finger instead of lending a hand, and that it sets an impossible target of 100% student proficiency by 2014—were not taken seriously until they began adversely affecting high-performing schools in more affluent districts. But there is a bit more going on behind this waiver story—and it raises difficult questions about the role of the feds in education.

The Cast: NCLB, ESEA, Congress and Arne Duncan’s Waivers

Responsible for inserting “accountability” into our educational lexicon, the best thing that NCLB (the 2001 version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA) did was to highlight and make schools responsible for individual student achievement, not just aggregate performance. It required annual testing of all students in grades 3-8 with public reporting of student performance, calculation of “achievement gaps” between different subgroups of students plus labels for schools. It also mandated tutoring and the option to transfer for students in schools designated as failing; these services were provided free to families.

Passions run high on NCLB, but most agree that the law hasn’t worked well: the problematic practice of letting states set their own bar for “proficient”; the 100% target; the over-reliance on test scores that don’t show student growth from year to year; the confusing and less-than-transparent system of “safe harbor targets” and adequate yearly progress; questions about the usefulness of labeling schools as failing if they don’t show growth with a very small number of students.

Few expected NCLB to be the reigning education law for a decade; most expected modifications, and it was up for reauthorization in 2007. It’s been debated in Congress since, with little action. Enter the waivers—in fall 2011, President Obama and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan declared their intention to allow states to apply for waivers. If states would meet certain conditions that the USDE holds dear (such as common standards, revamping teacher evaluation) they could earn flexibility. Eleven earned waivers in the first round; 26 more applied last month.

The waivers allow states to take back/develop their own accountability systems, and to forget about the 2014 100% target. The mandate to provide tutoring and transfers to students in failing schools is also gone. In NYS, Commissioner John King says the basic point is to replace the snapshot-style focus on school performance with a system that better targets schools for monitoring, supporting and rewarding student growth.

Thus, NYS plans a system that designates:

1. The bottom 5% of schools across the state as “Priority” and require them to adopt whole-school reform models.

2. At least 10% of districts and 10% of charter schools as “Focus.” This designation would be determined by the performance of student subgroups, and would require interventions targeted at these student populations. (The state identifies districts; districts designate schools.)

3. Top performers as “Reward” schools. Serving as models of success, these will be eligible for extra funds and perhaps more flexibility from State Ed.

Appropriate role of the federal government?

The waivers are taking some heat in Congress, which still hasn’t reauthorized ESEA. Why all the tension? Well, yes, because it’s about education, which is highly political. But also because we are all over the map about what role feds should play in education. Neither local/state control nor the more prescriptive top-down approach has the best track record. So, what’s a country to think?

Groups around the nation have been wrestling with this; some ideas worth noting:

• Embracing the “tight-loose” ideal. This means the federal government would tightly define the end goals—the standards, the assessments, performance level—and then get out of the way as states determine how to meet them. Right now, each state sets their own “cut score” for student proficiency on their own statewide test. Human nature being what it is, the wisdom of letting folks set the bar that they’ll be punished for not meeting is suspect. Because 44 states have already voluntarily adopted a common set of college/career ready standards (the Common Core) and there are two consortiums working to develop companion assessments, this has potential, but would require significant overhaul on funding mechanisms and regulations.
• Recognizing that the ability to improve student achievement lies in schools, not in district offices and not in government. This idea would restructure how federal funds are distributed in ways that empower schools. It proposes giving schools their Title 1 dollars and allowing them to contract with some type of “school support organization” that may or may not be their district central office. This proposal holds that empowering school leadership with the ability to choose and invest in the programs and services that best fit the school is the most direct way to school improvement.
• Limiting the fed’s role to four key functions: gathering and disseminating information; enforcing civil rights; funding high-need students; and fostering competition among providers. (These are the recommendations of the Koret Task Force, Hoover Institute at Stanford.)

For now, reauthorization is stuck in Congress, and it’s making for some odd bedfellows. The most recent version includes testing and a streamlined accountability system focusing on the bottom 5% of schools, but does not include a prescriptive menu of school turnaround options, or requirements to overhaul teacher evaluation, both signature features of the administration’s blueprint. This places conservatives who support local control in alignment with teachers unions and many parent advocates, and Democrats at odds with their traditional base. Don’t expect to see this resolved in an election year!

As for the first question…yes, the names really might matter if they allow NYS to work with schools in different ways, and if they can recalibrate the tenor of school improvement discussions. However, the onus is on all of us—feds on down—to make sure that the new nomenclature acts as a more effective tool, rather than sweeping achievement gaps under the rug.

NCLB was important in spotlighting the unacceptably low achievement of our neediest kids, but most recognize it didn’t get the federal role quite right. The trick is figuring out the right role, without losing that focus.

In areas around New York and nationally, there seems to be precious little hope for resurrecting our urban schools and kids —and far too much despair. Dedicated people, much smarter and more creative than I, have been writing about and wrestling with this dilemma for years. Despite years of reform, study and advocacy, the problems remain, as most of the available solutions are constrained by limited resources available only within city boundaries—when community-wide solutions and resources are called for.

Hope and Despair in the American City offers a practically and politically difficult, but ultimately hopeful solution, should we have the political courage and will to act. It outlines the implications of creating a countywide school district, intentionally designed to counter the effects of concentrations of poverty by achieving socio-economic balance within all schools.

The book contrasts neighborhoods, schools, school districts and academic performance in nearby Syracuse/Onondaga County with those in Raleigh/Wake County, North Carolina. It compares Syracuse’s failing schools, and the “tale of despair that afflicted much of urban America,” with the more hopeful transformation of Raleigh, where citizens “voluntarily tore down the invisible wall that kept inner-city children out of Raleigh’s affluent suburban schools.”

In the North Carolina model, a coalition of black and white business, civic, political, teacher and parent leaders recognized that concentration of poverty and segregation of the population along racial and income lines had undermined the work force and the regional economy they were attempting to foster. Their solution? Merge two separate school districts (city and suburban) into one countywide district, linked with a plan that placed a ceiling on the proportion of low-income students who would attend any given school throughout the county. A panacea without problems? No, but a continuing community resolve and resiliency has kept the core reforms on track over the years.

Results? In the 35 years since the merger occurred, there have been significant improvements in test scores, reduced dropout rates and increased graduation rates—compared with pre-merger outcomes and compared with comparable status quo performance in places like Syracuse and other urban areas that remained segregated with high poverty and racial concentrations. These have been accompanied by significant reductions in disparities between racial and income subsets of the student population. Other intangible benefits have also enhanced the quality of life in the progressive Raleigh/Wake County region.

How did the Raleigh community overcome barriers to change, historic patterns of school attendance and housing patterns, and preferences for neighborhood schools? A topic for another discussion, but two points worth noting here: (1) broad, principled leadership from community leaders of all stripes, who put aside parochial interests and city vs. suburban silo mentalities for the greater community good, and (2) transforming a critical mass of schools—almost a third of all schools in the county—into magnet schools of choice, often near borders between city and suburbs, creating attractive options for both white and black, city and suburban students willing to be bused relatively short distances to obtain the educational benefits offered by the distinctive educational options.

State laws in New York, and the multitudes of suburban districts in each county, make any Raleigh-type merger much more difficult locally. But not impossible, says author Gerald Grant, with “extraordinary courage and political leadership” from the local business, faith, political, union, parent and teacher communities to create such a community-wide mandate for change. The question is whether the Rochester community—and other upstate urban areas—have the political will to set the bar high and create a better future for new generations of young people, and ultimately for the economic well-being of our interdependent communities. Creating a countywide school district featuring countywide magnet schools could be a viable option, particularly as New York explores options for regional high schools.

Many view regional approaches to economic development and cost efficiency as common sense. Is it time to consider whether a countywide school district could also create benefits by reducing multiple-district administrative costs, while also helping address the economic and moral imperatives to drastically improve educational opportunities and outcomes for all our children in the future, regardless of where they live?

Their experience mirrors those of many districts across the state:

• Decreasing enrollment. Ontario will serve 9% fewer high school students by 2020. Only one district expects enrollment to grow. Four estimate a loss of more than 20%.

• Fiscal pressures. State aid is at risk; salary, health care, and pension costs steadily increase; mandates and expectations from NYS are rising; the recently-enacted “tax cap” limits their power to raise taxes. Stimulus funds and fund balances masked the pain, but are largely spent. Shrinking enrollments, combined with fixed costs, turn the fiscal squeeze into what appears a death grip.

Collectively, Ontario County districts have cut 320 staff positions over the past three years. Some have cut extracurriculars (the football team, in one case), or closed or reconfigured school buildings. All are exploring shared services with their municipalities or with other districts. All are concerned about preserving the opportunities they currently offer students.

• Disparity in access to educational opportunities. State test scores indicate that every one of these districts offers a quality general education. Yet advanced courses, upper level languages, and specialized electives are expensive to deliver for districts with small enrollments, and so it is not just extracurriculars that are on the chopping block. The growing concern is that students in some areas have access to substantively less, affecting their chance to be college and career ready or compete in the global marketplace.

One of Ontario’s districts offers 77 high school courses; another offers 132. One offers 4 AP courses; another offers 17. Three of the nine districts are able to offer the robust International Baccalaureate curriculum to interested students. While all districts participate in BOCES and college partnership programs, these cannot close these gaps in access.

Exploring possibilities as a region

CGR was engaged to explore regional solutions to the problem of offering secondary school education in a largely-rural area. Framed as a strategic planning process, the communities used this as an opportunity to go back to the drawing board to imagine plausible alternatives for the future.

• Would pooling resources and making decisions as a region enable more students to have access to more educational opportunities? Would it remove barriers to distance learning and other innovations?

• Would a regional model save money?

• What are the obstacles to change? What considerations need to be discussed and addressed?

Two possible regional high school models demonstrated how Ontario County could move from nine current high schools to five or six in the future. With multiple, and often conflicting goals, the models have tradeoffs, potential cost savings and potential cost increases.

Beginning to think regionally raises many questions that beg further discussion. If communities view the options as intriguing enough to merit further study, an implementation study could move forward. The details of the feasibility study can be found on the study website with a final report due out in March.

NYS pushing regional policy?

State regulation doesn’t provide guidance or a model for the creation of regional high school models. Other states have countywide districts and regional high schools, and there are a few Central High School Districts on Long Island. But since the 1940s, state law does not allow districts to form regional high schools. Without guidance from the state, questions about what body would govern and award diplomas, how regional schools would be financed, and how communities would decide and potentially transition are all unknown. State Senator Catherine Young’s bill (passed Senate, pending Assembly) would allow districts in her Western NY Senate district to develop and opt into a regional high school; a task force is working to flesh out models.

The Board of Regents just included statewide regional high school legislation in their 2012 legislative priorities.

“What ifs?” are both exciting and daunting, especially when the outcomes matter so much. We applaud Ontario County school leaders and their constituents for being proactive, for keeping open minds, and for wrestling with tough questions. The need on the ground and the interest from the State may mean we hear more as the year unfolds.

Closing failing schools and replacing them with new–hopefully better–schools is at the heart of the Portfolio Plan strategy in place in the Rochester City School District. It sure sounds appealing, especially to those who have long felt that education is a world shielded from the consequences of failure. But does it work?

The answer is critically important, not only for the obvious reason that we all want effective schools for children, but also because closing a school necessarily means dismantling a school community. Perhaps that community was dysfunctional, unhealthy, even dangerous, but it was still the daytime home for the students and staff members in it.

Hence, when districts propose to close low-performing schools, there is often an outcry among students, parents, teachers and other staff members. We have certainly seen this in Rochester, as school communities at the School of Applied Technology at Edison and others rallied together to speak out against closure. While outsiders may be puzzled at these protests, to those directly affected, closing a school means uncertainty, upheaval and pain. Relationships are broken, the negative stigma associated with a school often becomes worse, and there is no guarantee for students and staff members that something better lies ahead.

Research on the effectiveness of this approach, what little that has been conducted, is mixed. While there are studies finding that small schools formed in the wake of school closures achieved some higher outcomes and created stronger relationships among students and teachers, other research on school closures suggests they might not benefit students. Studies of Chicago, a city with extensive experience in closing failing schools, found performance among students who moved to other schools did not significantly improve, in part because students often transferred to other poor schools.

The authors of a study summing up existing research on school closure also point to the potentially harmful effects simply of moving students around (see report). Even controlling for related factors such as previously low achievement and socioeconomic status, research has established that mobility has its own, separate negative effect on students’ likelihood of graduating.

Yet under the federal No Child Left Behind legislation, school districts are required to do something drastic about the lowest performing schools. Closure is one option; others include replacing all or most of the staff, reopening as a charter school or yielding to a state takeover.

So we’re left in a quandary. We know that some schools have failed generation after generation of students. And we know that turning around a failing school is brutally difficult. Yet we’re told that the evidence in favor of closure as a general strategy is weak. The secret to a successful “portfolio” strategy depends on whether the new schools are a significant improvement over the schools that have been closed.

The Rochester City School District is phasing out 8 low-performing schools, restructuring two more and this year opened two new schools in addition to the five begun last school year.

The cautionary tales from Chicago and elsewhere suggest that good implementation is critical to making the strategy successful here. We at CGR have been a part of the effort to make sure that happens; CGR conducted a first-year implementation evaluation of the five schools opened in 2010-11. We found the schools, whose students were generally quite similar to the overall district population, had some higher outcomes than the district (including attendance, GPAs, and high school credits) and had established positive climates. But state test results were mixed, with the new schools exceeding district performance in 6 of 12 comparisons, and the schools all have work to do to increase academic rigor and student engagement in learning.

Our study didn’t focus on the population most at-risk under this strategy: the students in the phasing out schools. Although some of these students transferred to other schools, including the new schools, for those in higher grades there were few realistic options. We did interview a number of those students and found a range of experiences, with some students reporting that their phasing out schools were still generally pretty good and others saying they had greatly declined since the announcement that they were being closed. Generally speaking, performance at the phasing out schools continues to be low, though two of the schools improved enough last year to come off the state’s watch list.

But if the lesson to draw from Chicago is that there must be more high-performing schools created for the school-closure strategy to work, then Rochester is taking some of the right steps toward giving more students quality educational options.

Some facts about college cost are hard to nail down: One source (The College Board) reports that inflation-adjusted “net tuition”—the posted price less grants (called “discounts” in retail)—rose 47% for private four-year institutions from 95-96 to 07-08; for public institutions, the price increase was 34%. Yet another source (The College Board) reports that net tuition & fees actually fell 14% for public institutions and rose a relatively modest 17% for private four-year colleges and universities—over the same period.

So who’s right? The College Board or—the College Board? Yes, that’s right: The College Board has two tables, one in Trends in College Pricing 2007 and another in Trends in College Pricing 2010 that disagree. Both are still posted on its website. This is driving me nuts and I’m going to get to the bottom of it. Stay tuned—I’ll get back to you.

Some facts are indisputable.

• Posted tuition has been rising at an alarming rate. Discounting has become the norm, not the exception. Shopping for college is now like shopping for a new car: The MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price) is only paid by folks who hate to haggle or who forget to ask.
• The income spread between job holders with and without a college degree has continued to widen, encouraging nearly every parent in America to push their children toward college, regardless of interest or capacity.
• Many students leave college with astonishing levels of debt, debt that simply must be repaid, even after bankruptcy.

In the wake of the financial crisis—one that was triggered by extending easy credit to people who had no reasonable expectation of paying off the loan—there has been speculation about higher ed as yet another financial “bubble.” Just like housing loans, access to credit for college has “civil rights” characteristics—if a college degree is essential to “getting ahead,” then we have a moral obligation to make college affordable for the disadvantaged.

Lenders contribute to the problem—just as a car dealer wants to move you up to the next model and load on the options, lenders are happy to help you or your child attend college. That’s how they make money. A note at Bankrate.com says, “We can help you afford any college.” No, they can help you PAY FOR any college. Affordability is a different story. If we have a moral responsibility to expand access to the disadvantaged, then we also have an obligation to avoid saddling young people with unaffordable debt that can haunt them for decades.

A prospective student’s ability to pay off a loan depends on factors we don’t wish to discuss. How likely is it that the student will succeed in college? Should we extend a loan to someone whose odds of graduating are slim? This isn’t very different from enticing someone to borrow money on a house he or she can’t afford. Perhaps colleges and universities should share the risk—if a student fails to graduate, the school should refund a portion of tuition.

Should we be more willing to loan money for an academic program that leads to good job prospects? I loved studying philosophy when I was in college. But many graduate philosophers are privileged to ponder epistemology and cosmology while driving a cab or working at McDonalds. Perhaps college and university finances should be partly linked to placement rates.

As any college professor will tell you, many students aren’t ready for college—college is simply a way to defer the ugly prospect of getting a job! Perhaps we should encourage a year of work or service following high school, and provide grants and subsidized loans in exchange for service. What we should not do is facilitate a college degree—any degree will do—in exchange for decades of debt with little expectation of repayment.

Finally, let me get myself into serious trouble with my friends in public higher education. We spend taxpayer dollars to provide educational opportunity to our citizens and to improve the capacity of our workforce. This is vitally important to the future of our state. Education remains the path out of poverty for our disadvantaged citizens, and the path to competitiveness for our state’s economy.

We can meet these goals without putting government into the higher education business—in fact, I believe that we can do far better without direct state management. This year we’ll spend $2 billion operating the City and State universities plus an additional $1.8 billion in higher ed capital construction. The benefits of this subsidy rain down on all New York students, regardless of means; and on all public colleges and universities, regardless of quality.

Might the dual goals of providing access and preparing a competitive workforce be better achieved by spending nearly $4 billion on grants to students, distributed by need; and grants to New York’s rich portfolio of colleges and universities, distributed by merit? Yet we’ll not have the courage nor the political will to take such a bold step, just as we lack the courage to close or merge redundant campuses or to allow SUNY and CUNY campuses the freedom to set tuition and control the proceeds. As the number of high school graduates declines over the next decade or so, competition for students will be fierce. Let’s unshackle SUNY and CUNY from state control and establish a plan to phase out state support. What a revolution that would be!

ORIGINALLY published in Rochester Business Journal 6/17/11

It’s not uncommon to find in a government or school budget some language about programs and some reference to performance metrics. But the level of detail attempted in this section is unusual and commendable. Each of 27 programs is briefly described, program objectives are listed, measures toward those objectives are reported, and expenses are listed not only by categories but also on a per-student basis.

The effort was clearly taken more seriously by some programs than others. There are a few where the listed objectives were precisely met in each of five years (which rarely happens in the real world, leading us to question their accuracy). Some programs had objectives as simple as increasing participation in the program. Rigorous evaluation was not evident everywhere.

But the principle established is important: that programs must have specific objectives, measure progress toward those objectives and report them in connection with their spending levels. While many programs report not meeting their objectives, others were heartening. Two examples:

• Working across 18 schools, the AVID program, Advancement Via Individual Determination, aims to help prepare historically underrepresented students be ready for college. It reports increasing the proportion of 8^th graders in the program taking algebra from 22% to more than 30% and the share of students taking at least one Advanced Placement course from less than 1% to 17%.
• The Primary Project working in 25 schools to reduce social, emotional and school adjustment problems among students in the earliest grades reports that fewer students are acting out and more are showing self-confidence and an ability to take initiative, according to a measurement tool.

In a year of severe budget strain, both these programs and most of the rest are slated for reductions in district funding for a total of $14.3 million in cuts. Only five programs are scheduled for increases totaling $1.3 million, including Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection, Student and Family Support Centers, and the Parent and Family Involvement programs within the Office of Adult and Career Education Services. One improvement district leaders could make in the future to this part of the budget would be to more clearly explain the rationale for funding changes – why some budgets went up while others were cut.

Also interesting was the very wide variation in the per-student cost of programs, ranging from a little over $100 to more than $20,000. As each program is targeting a different student population and addressing different needs, we wouldn’t expect uniformity. But the most expensive programs, those costing more than $5,000 per student, make up about a third of the overall funding. One hopes district leaders and program staff are using the budget and performance information both to examine ways of increasing effectiveness and also improving efficiency.

Controversy is inevitable when significant spending cuts are involved. The anger and misunderstanding is deepened by leadership’s decision to fix longstanding budget inequities at the same time. The proposed shift to roughly equalize per-student funding across the district’s 60-some schools was poorly timed and badly explained to the public. The district put out apples-to-oranges comparisons that confounded the two issues of overall funding cuts and the new school funding model, leaving itself vulnerable to even more criticism than perhaps was warranted.

With all schools experiencing cuts, parents are in an uproar and no school felt enough like a winner to agitate for the plan. Using Facebook, blogs and other online tools for connecting, community opposition to the district’s proposal is perhaps better organized and more vociferous than it has ever been.

The troubled relations between district and union leadership have intensified the rhetoric and left the community experiencing a lot more heat than light. While Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard and Rochester Teachers Association President Adam Urbanski parse line items, the big picture and important facts are obscured, including an accurate understanding of how we got here. Some key points:

l State aid cuts are not responsible. State aid was cut by about $500,000 in a budget of more than $677 million.

l We dug a much larger portion of this hole last year by spending $24 million in reserve funds to avoid –apparently only defer—painful cuts. That’s why “one-shot” budget solutions are a bad idea: the hole they temporarily fill only opens again the following year.

l The most significant contribution is rising costs, $51 million of the projected $80 million gap, according to district figures. That includes about $26 million for increases in employee benefits, $11 million for salary increases, $9 million for higher transportation costs and $2 million for increases in facility expense.

The increasingly personal public debate has consumed attention that should be going to examining different ideas for closing the budget gap. At the state level, lawmakers adopted a budget on time partly because they accepted Governor Cuomo’s proposition that there simply wasn’t more money to spend.

Eventually, the Rochester school community must come to a similar conclusion: There is a gap to close, and there are a limited number of ways to do so, not all of which are being discussed. In upcoming days, we will discuss some of them on this page.

Confronted by a Regents study declaring that only 5 percent of Rochester City School District graduates are college-ready, Jean-Claude Brizard declares the findings “terrifying.”

One of Brizard’s best qualities is his persistent willingness to look the facts in the face. Too often our education leadership—the district administration and the Board of Education—has been unwilling to state the obvious. It is a natural reaction: The task is herculean. The need is desperate. The consequences of failure are tragic.

Three years into Brizard’s tenure, the results are still abysmal, as this Regents report observes so bluntly. Disappointed, some of us declare, “He has had three years and has failed.”

Perhaps poor children cannot learn. Perhaps RCSD teachers cannot teach. Perhaps the Rochester Teachers Association contract so binds superintendents that no change is possible.

I think we must reject fatalistic propositions that poverty determines a child’s future, or that the teachers are incompetent or that they are so bound up in defending their own interests that they have forgotten the needs of children.

Some charter schools (think Rochester Prep) and some traditional public schools (think School 58) demonstrate that startling success is possible. Brizard has set the wheels in motion for the kind of fundamental structural change that is required if we hope to bring a fraction of this kind of success to the entire district:

• The Rochester Curriculum begins the slow process of establishing consistent expectations across district classrooms. The assessments that accompany the new curriculum will begin the process of raising those expectations.
• The Portfolio Plan asserts that the superintendent and the Board of Education will act to close failing schools. Threat of closure is a club. It cannot be the only tool in the reform toolkit, but it is a necessary one. The new schools created under the plan must be held to even higher standards.
• District leadership is focusing a significant share of its attention on empowering principals. They are the change agents at the building level. The “autonomous schools” effort grants principals more control over staffing decisions and use of funds.
• The Charter Schools Compact, funded by the Gates Foundation, seeks to take the lessons of successful public schools living outside the direct management of the district and apply them to schools within the district.
• How teacher effectiveness is assessed and teacher development provided is in process, strengthened by reforms at the state level that are driven by Race to the Top. While institutional obstacles stand in the way of every change, here the teachers’ collective bargaining agreement looms large.
  • In terms of the teachers’ agreement, make no mistake: This is a struggle over who has what power in the classroom, in the school and in the district as a whole. Understandably, the teachers want to preserve as much control as possible. That is a natural human reaction. And teachers are the closest to the students. But they also must function as part of the District’s instructional team.
  • The attempt to empower principals to make effective decisions on behalf of a school is constrained by the power retained by teachers to rule their classrooms and to bid for positions based on seniority. The quid pro quo with principals is that authority comes with accountability. And the principals (also in a collective bargaining unit) aren’t always interested in the bargain.
  • Further, the collective bargaining agreement’s emphasis on longevity over competence means that budget cuts will erode teacher quality, not improve it, as the district is forced to lay off teachers without any consideration of quality.
  • The Rochester Teachers Association has declared negotiations to be at impasse, particularly over the issue of teacher assessment. It is time for the community to support sensible reforms that shift power back to the superintendent and Board of Education. Yes, teachers must be partners in this critical venture and must be empowered through effective school and district leadership. But some powers—the power to insulate ineffective teachers, inordinate power over teacher placement, power over instructional time must flow back to district leaders.

Yes, Brizard has had three years. Yet he leads a large and complex organization that is resistant to change. The wheels are in motion. Let’s throw grease in the gears, not sand. And let’s get behind the train and push.

Published in the Rochester Business Journal

Excerpt from CGR Report

As the media tell the story, a war over education policy is being waged between anti-teacher, test-loving, business-minded crusaders and pro-union, anti-testing defenders of children.  The film Waiting for Superman, the Los Angeles Times release of test scores by teacher, and policy changes spurred by Race to the Top have fueled the conflict.

This education “culture war” forms the context in which Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard came to RCSD.

In many ways, culture change is the work of district reform.  And it is difficult to achieve.  An attack on organizational culture is personal for everyone involved, thus is more politically charged and more likely to ignite an emotional reaction.   It’s why winning hearts and minds of staff is so important.

Download report: Policy Review # 4 – Role of Culture in School Improvement

Teachers are human, too. They bring the same jumble of motivations to the classroom that I bring to CGR. There are days when the well-being of their students means everything to them. And there are other days when the challenges of work life and the frustrations of home life are simply too much—that’s the day for a movie or a guest speaker! The interests of teachers and students are related, but they are not the same.

Aligning the interests of employees (at all levels) with those of the owners is the fundamental challenge of management, whether in business, the nonprofit sector or government. Our premise is that people will be people. Depending on your theology, people are either essentially good—except when they aren’t—or that they are essentially bad, but are socialized to keep their own interests in check. Only in strains of utopian socialism do we build a society on the assumption that people will always “do the right thing.”

As part of the panel responding to the movie, “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” I suggested that the premise, “what’s good for teachers is good for students” is implausible. By saying that, I don’t intend to demonize teachers, just recognize that teachers are people. Collective bargaining agreements are designed to protect teachers from arbitrary acts of management, not ensure high achieving schools. Rochester Teachers Association President Adam Urbanski disagreed, asserting that “good teaching conditions are good learning conditions.” I can accept that good teaching conditions are often good learning conditions but not that they are synonymous.

What role should the teachers unions play in governance? Adam suggested at the forum that teachers should annually elect school leaders (principals, I assume). This takes Adam’s proposition about teaching v. learning conditions one step further. If student achievement is the goal, do we believe that a leader who appeals to a majority of teachers will be the best equipped to set direction for the school as a whole? Almost by definition, management is about making decisions on behalf of the ultimate beneficiary—the students, in this case. These decisions may or may not please the majority of staff members. Successful principals nearly always attribute their success to their ability to identify and motivate good teachers—and to address the challenge posed by the weak ones. While being universally disliked would be a fatal liability in a principal, the best managers would not always win an election.

The union represents the interests of teachers, a right they possess by law. The Board of Education and the superintendent it hires represents the interests of students. Adam Urbanski and Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, suggest that teachers are unique among the nation’s workers and can be relied upon to place the welfare of their students ahead of their own.  Teaching may be sacred work, but teachers are people, not saints.

Published in the Rochester City Newspaper