My Yeas, Nays, and Maybes: 2014 Virginia Education Legislation

The Virginia legislature is, once again, in session. Here is my take on various education-related bills.

1. SOL (Standards of Learning) Testing Reform Bill: Unfortunately, I can't locate the legislation for this bill, but I couldn't be happier that this legislation is in the works and that it has such wide and bi-partisan support. It's not the end of what should be done to fix Virginia's accountability structure but it's a start. Among other changes, the bill would reduce the number of SOL tests from 34 to 26 and call for more authentic and higher quality assessments. Two caveats:

a. The Virginia Board of Education and some folks at Virginia's Department of Education are claiming that Virginia's newer SOL tests, for example the math ones, are already of higher quality:

Virginia’s Board of Education has revised its tests so they are more reflective of what students need to know to attend college or begin an entry-level job, said Charles Pyle, a spokesman for the Virginia Education Department. 

Many of the state’s new online tests include “technology-enhanced items” that require students to think critically and solve problems. The more rigorous tests caused scores to drop around the state. 

Greason applauded the work the state has been doing and said the legislature would build on those reforms and codify them.

From what I can tell, the new tests are the same old stuff with some added bells and whistles. The reading test is still a disaster, "technology-enhanced" test items does not a critical thinker make, and these tests are not more rigorous, but are rather more tricky. Merely having twenty-six SOL tests akin to the newer ones is not progress in my book.

b. While there are efforts being made to ensure that non-tested subjects continue to be taught, some legislators are pushing to eliminate some tests in order to "focus on math and reading:"

“In the early years of elementary school we want to spend the majority of our time on reading and math,” said Del. Thomas “Tag” Greason, R-Loudoun County. “If a student cannot read, or do math, then the science SOL is really going to be a waste of everybody’s time.”

Oh, brother. Not this again. If a student can't read or do math, they're certainly not going to get any better at either by being denied instruction in science, social studies, or the arts. If students haven't learned anything about or any vocabulary words from those subjects, once they try to read about them, they won't be able to understand what they're reading with any success.

I hope legislators do not deny elementary students rich and varied curricula in the name of testing reform. Including the two caveats, I would support this bill.


2. HB 113: This bill would abolish the Opportunity Education Institution. The Opportunity Education Institution will undermine democracy and local control and will add another costly layer of bureaucracy. In case you missed it, I wrote about the OEI here. Among other Virginia public education stakeholder groups, one hundred or 75% of Virginia School Boards also oppose the OEI. I couldn't locate it but there is also a budget amendment to de-fund the OEI.

I completely support this bill and the accompanying budget amendment. Death to the OEI!


3. HB 318: This bill would repeal the School Grading Bill passed last year. I do not think school grading is a sound practice. See what I wrote here about school grading (hint: Virginia's school grading bill is also linked to the OEI, so double yuck.) There is also a bill to delay implementation of the School Grading Bill , HB 618/SB 324, and a bill to alter it, ostensibly to make it better, HB 553.

I heartily support the repeal bill. However, if delay and/or modification is the best that can be done, I'd support those, too.


4. SB 236: This bill would give public school students the right to pray, participate in religious activities, and wear faith-themed clothing on school property. I normally say to err on the side of free-er speech. I, for one, support the moment of silence that begins the school day in Virginia public schools, because it's silent and you can think anything you want to during that time. However, the problem with this particular bill as stated in this article is precisely this:

Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, the head of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU, said the proposed law is unnecessary and could lead to government-sponsored religious speech at public schools that would draw litigation. 

“Students’ rights to express and practice their faith in the public schools are already well-protected in existing federal and state laws,” she said in a statement. 

Gastañaga said the ACLU of Virginia and other groups actively remind schools about their constitutional obligation to treat religious speech equally. But she said the bill could be interpreted in a way that would result in religious coercion of students. 

“The right to engage in voluntary prayer or religious discussion free from discrimination does not include the right to have a captive audience listen, or to compel other students to participate,” she said.

I would oppose this bill. There's enough religion and praying in Virginia public schools.

5. House Bill 207: The bill to "encourage students to explore scientific questions" is actually a bill that encourages students to disregard science. It gives science teachers "the freedom" to teach that climate change and evolution are scientifically controversial theories. There are many theories in science that are controversial within scientific communities, however evolution and climate change aren't two of them. At all.

I totally oppose this bill.


6. HB 63: This bill would allow home-schooled students to be eligible to play public school sports. It was defeated last year. I actually was indifferent to leaning to supporting this bill, but Chris Pace, one of my local education advocacy pals and a high school social studies teacher, has convinced me to oppose it. Here is some of his reasoning:

First, extra-curricular programs exist for students who attend the school. Their entire purpose is to get kids thinking about their school in a positive way, while connecting students to teachers in an out-of-class setting. This fosters more personal relationships and that has been proven to lead to more academic success. 

Second, there is no way to hold home schooled athletes academically accountable. Home schooled students do not take SOLs or have GPAs. Their grades are assigned by the child’s parents. We assume that home schooling is done by people who have their child’s best academic interests at heart, but that is sometimes far from the truth. as a nine year GED instructor, I can tell you that I had many students who were “home schooled” who hadn’t done much in their time away from public school. Sometimes “home schooled” means not schooled. Imagine the shooting guard who flunks the 1st semester but shows up for baseball tryouts as a “home schooled athlete”. You would also have people pull their kids out of school before the school year begins to avoid academic standards. 

Third, there are only so many jerseys to give out. Cutting a student who attends the school to give a jersey to someone who doesn’t is plain wrong. The “carrot and stick” game linking behavior and academics to athletic participation works well and it can only be realistically used for students at the school. For example, a suspended student cannot play on the day of the suspension. What if that academically struggling student athlete were cut in favor of a home schooled athlete? Who will be there to help that child? Many coaches link behavior and academic performance to playing time – this motivates students and sets a good example of priorities. I know of several examples where a coach helped make the difference between passing and failing for a student athlete.   

Finally, serious athletes are almost always recruited OUTSIDE of their high school seasons in AAU or “Travel Teams." With the exception of football, all scholarship recipients are recruited during their travel seasons. This is where college coaches make evaluations and offers. Any home schooled athlete can participate in these programs – so they aren’t missing out on anything that they aren’t already skipping voluntarily by not attending public school.

I'd add that I believe that each school receives a per-pupil allotment which goes towards athletics, too. If this is true then when the student doesn't attend their home school then the school doesn't receive funding for them, for athletics or otherwise. If we wanted to re-invent our local public schools as community centers, then I might support this bill but with the way high school sports and funding mechanisms are currently structured here, I don't think it would be a good idea. I oppose this bill.


7. HB 720: This bill would require that each public school in Virginia set aside a non-restroom room, shielded from public view to pump breast milk. As a teacher and mom who was able to lock her small, windowless classroom once per school day to pump breast milk (I could produce 24 ounces in like 15 minutes but that's another story) for her beautiful twin baby boys, I must fully support this bill. It meant I could work as a teacher while another caretaker fed my little ones my breast milk.


8. HB 514/ SB 385: This is an awful bill and h/t to the VEA blog or I never would have gotten wind of it. The VEA is calling it the "Dead Peasant" bill:

The concept behind these bills is that an entity created by a Virginia locality or by the Virginia Retirement System would borrow money and use the money to purchase life insurance on employees.  The example provided to me by a lobbyist supporting the concept is that the employer would take out a $250,000 policy.  When the employee died, the entity would get $200,000 and the employee’s heirs would get $50,000.  The collective value of the policies held by the entities would offset the unfunded pension liability on the books of the state and localities.

Pardon my French, but that is some f%^ed up sh&!.  WalMart has done this in the past, albeit secretly and purely for profit, but any way you slice it, it is unbelievably disturbing. We really don't want to fund our pension obligations this way, by gambling on the prospects of Virginia state's employees dying. It can not have come to this.

I oppose this bill out of disgust alone.


9. HB 1156: This bill would require lower class sizes in early elementary school, requiring kindergarten, first, second, and third grades classes to have an average of 21 students with a maximum of 26. I am in full agreement that smaller class sizes are beneficial and preferred especially at younger ages, however, this sounds like an unfunded mandate and I'm not convinced that legislating this is the way to go. Such mandates can undermine control and flexibility at the local level and can cause greater problems than they solve.

Before I oppose or support this bill, I need to learn more about it, but for now I am skeptical. If Virginia actually funded public education as it should be, class sizes would get smaller quickly.


10. Medicaid Expansion: I can not locate a bill for this, but Medicaid Expansion would mean a billion or so dollars for Virginia's general fund which means more money for public education, more jobs for Virginians, and health insurance for the thousands of Virginians currently without.

I support Medicaid Expansion for Virginia.


If there any bills you think I missed, please mention them in the comments. Otherwise, please contact your legislators! To track bills, find out who your legislator is, and get their contact information, please go to the Virginia General Assembly website.

In Virginia, an opportunity to undermine the institution of public, democratic education

Virginians who value public schools, local control of public schools, and public democratic institutions should be afraid. This may be the beginning of the end. Governor McDonnell proposed legislation SB1324 (which passed, though in the Senate by the skin of its teeth) that established a new bureaucratic entity, a statewide school division named the Opportunity Education Institution (OEI).

According to this post, the OEI would take over schools that were denied accreditation, which is done in accordance with "federal accountability data," also known as standardized test scores. The Institution will be run by a board of gubernatorial appointees, which includes the executive director. There is no guarantee that the board would include any people who know anything about education. The board would contract with non-profits, corporations, or education organizations to operate the schools. Funding for the new bureaucracy would be provided by federal, state, and local taxpayers. The "failing" schools' local governing bodies would be represented on the board in some way, but they would lose decision-making power and would not be able to vote or, from what I can tell, have much meaningful input, besides providing the same share of local funding and being responsible for maintenance of the school building. As for staffing, current faculty at the schools being taken over could apply for a position as a new employee with the OEI or apply for a transfer.

Meanwhile, for the reconvened session of the Virginia legislature that starts this Wednesday, April 3rd, Governor McDonnell is proposing a replacement bill and amendment that would broaden the scope of the OEI and budget $450,000 more than what was originally granted in SB 1324. SB1324S states that “the local school board shall transfer to the Board the supervision and operation of any school upon being denied accreditation. A local school board may request to transfer to the Board the supervision and operation of any school that has been accredited with warning for three consecutive years.” Budget Amendment 12 says that “... any school that has been accredited with warning for three consecutive years may be transferred to the Opportunity Educational Institution.”

According to the VEA's understanding, under the new plan, teachers at the OEI schools would not have to be licensed, so the students who need the most experienced teachers would be getting the least experienced. Nor would those OEI teachers be entitled to the benefits, pay, or job protections that other Virginia teachers are, even if they were employed by the school being taken over prior to takeover. Who will want to work at such schools, or schools that look likely to be taken over? Interestingly enough, the members of the new OEI bureaucracy would be eligible for VRS (Virginia Retirement System) and other benefits that the teachers would lose.

So, why should you be opposed to this?

First of all, the following Virginia education stakeholder organizations are all opposed to these measures: Virginia Association of Counties, Virginia Municipal League, Virginia School Boards Association, Virginia Association of School Superintendents, Virginia Association of Secondary School Principals, Virginia Association of Elementary School Principals, Virginia PTA, Virginia First Cities, and Virginia Education Association.

Second, although there are under ten schools currently slated to be part of the OEI, with the new more "rigorous" (read: more tricky) SOL tests, and no end in sight to unreasonable federal accountability mandates, many more schools, such as one in your community, could find themselves getting swallowed up by the OEI.

Third, there's no evidence that state takeover of struggling schools and districts helps. In fact, the evidence is at best mixed. The Governor and his policy allies are basing this approach on the system in New Orleans, which thus far has not proven successful. That Virginia would use as a model a city that hasn't had much educational success doesn't make sense. Michigan has also turned many public services over to the private sector, including the schools of Muskegon Heights. So far, that approach has been a disaster.

Finally, eliminating democratic institution and processes in a democratic society is not a cure for dysfunction or low test scores. Certainly, mass failure on the SOL tests signals a problem, but before the state blames and disenfranchises school communities, it really needs to figure out what that problem is and then target its resources accordingly. While many majority poor schools do just fine on standardized tests, I think we all know that the schools with low standardized test scores are often majority poor. Last I checked, being poor isn't a reason to disenfranchise communities and hand their schools over to outsiders.

So, I urge you to contact Governor McDonnell (804-786-2211) and your state legislators ASAP to state your opposition to the Opportunity Education Institution and to tell them to vote against SB1324S and amendment 12. This bill is likely unconstitutional and it's bad for Virginia--bad for public education and bad for democracy.

Opportunity to Listen

Each day this week I have presented a response to different parts of Governor McDonnell's "Opportunity to Learn" education agenda. On Monday, I gave an introduction and talked about the goal of advancing literacy in the early grades. On Tuesday, I wrote about implications for repealing the unpopular Kings Dominion Law. On Wednesday, I talked about proceeding thoughtfully and carefully with expanding choice in the Commonwealth. On Thursday, I discussed evaluating principals and teachers. This concluding post brings me to the end and back to the place where I started in the first post of this series: Money.

It looks like McDonnell has some great funding initiatives in his agenda but it's hard to reconcile them with the major budget cuts and bleak fiscal outlook across the Commonwealth. Every day, I read a new tale of budget woes, possible layoffs of essential staff from school districts across Virginia including Culpepper, Norfolk, Richmond, York, Hanover, Pittsylvania, and Northern Virginia, and of cuts to essential education programs such as preschool for low-income kids.

I understand that a big part of budget woes stem from the mandated VRS contributions that localities now have to make. The Virginia Association of School Superintendents has said that the proposal to put $2.2 billion in Virginia's retirement system is a big cause of the draconian cuts. At my most cynical I think that McDonnell is doing this here and now to demonstrate that the benefits make we offer our public servants are unsustainable and to starve the public schools so that they're set up to fail. At my most charitable, I think Bob McDonnell is very nervous about having debt and wants to remedy the situation ASAP and that he doesn't understand that while there is always room to be more efficient, quality education is not something that can be done well on the cheap.

The public has to realize that retirement benefits are not extras; rather, they are deferred compensation. They have been promised as part of an agreement the state made with employees. The problem with striving to replenish the VRS funds all at once is that causes a bigger and longer-term problem: compromising the quality of education districts in Virginia can provide. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul.

We will never improve our public education system by starving it of funds and pushing it to a breaking point. Redlining our schools is the wrong thing to do. Unfortunately, in this context, money matters. The government is not a business; schools are not businesses--that's for car dealerships and supermarkets. While there are always ways to reduce wasteful spending, providing a quality public education to ALL of Virginia's children is inherently inefficient, but in Virginia it's required by law and it's what good governments in healthy, democratic societies do. Fiscal conservatism is one thing, fiscal lunacy is quite another. As former Harvard President Derek Bok put it, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

So, Virginians, where should we go from here?

The VASS (Virginia Association of School Superintendents) set a fine example by presenting their vision in an education reform blueprint. Why not convene task forces and associations of other stakeholders from across Virginia to present their ideas? Teachers and principals from across could tell us what they specifically need to better support and evaluate all teachers, to attract and retain high-performing teachers, and to remove those who shouldn't be in the classroom. Parents could discuss what improvements and changes they'd like to see for their children's education and what they value in schools. Educators from colleges and universities in Virginia need to be consulted: What are deficits are K-12 students arriving with and what are K-12 schools doing well? Virginia-based industries should also be called on to let us know what kind of education and skills they need potential employees to have. Virginia's scholars could examine the curriculum and practices in schools and let us know where the gaps in the curricula we're presenting exist and how we can improve our pedagogy. School finance experts could let us know what's smart spending, what's wasteful, as well as what's possible. Finally, we need to hear from a diverse group of students about the kind of learning communities they'd like to be a part of.

I urge Virginia's governor and legislature to resist the pressure to bow to the interests of big money and lobbyists, to hear their constituents, the taxpayers, and the people of Virginia. The Governor and the legislature must do what's best for quality education for Virginia's public school students, in line with what their parents envision for them, with what our professional educators say is sound practice, with what Virginia's communities and industries need to grow and thrive, and with what's best for the future of the Commonwealth.

The next and most crucial step will be for Virginia's politicians to listen.

cross-posted at the Virginia Education Report

Opportunity to Evaluate Teachers

Welcome to Part IV of my response to Governor McDonnell's "Opportunity to Learn" education agenda--we're almost to Friday, folks! On Monday, you read about advancing literacy. On Tuesday, you read about extending the school day/ year. Yesterday, you read my thoughts on expanding school choice in Virginia. Today, I'll share my thoughts about McDonnell's ideas for evaluating, retaining, and recruiting teachers.

The "Enhancing Teacher Quality, Strengthening Teacher and Administrator Contracts, Evaluation Policies and Streamline Grievance Process" section proposes to establish annual contracts and evaluations for teachers and principals. This, the McDonnell administration says will, "allow for a new evaluation system to work by attracting and retaining the top-tier educators in our K-12 public schools." The agenda also calls to streamline the grievance process. As long as due process is built in (and no, merely saying, "don't worry there will be plenty of due process" is not sufficient) no one I've heard of disagrees with streamlining the grievance process. However, McDonnell's ideas to "enhance" teacher quality and "strengthen" contracts are more controversial.

First of all, teachers and principals should be evaluated yearly and observed and given feedback even more often. The biggest question, though, is how this will be done, based on what, and with what consequences. Will teachers be evaluated with an eye on craft and content or with an eye on test scores? Will the goal be to improve practice and strengthen curriculum? Will the goal be to support teachers? Or will the eye be on standardized test scores parading as real achievement and learning, de-selection, and playing gotcha? If the eye is narrowly focused on boosting test scores and de-selection, we're going to lose good teachers and fail to attract new ones.

Another problem is that this walks and talks like yet another unfunded mandate. Virginia principals barely have enough time to do the evaluations they have. Furthermore, while there are certainly incompetent principals out there, at least one reason that incompetent teachers aren't removed faster is because principals have so much to do. Has Governor McDonnell ever been inside a public school principal's office and seen the students waiting outside, the stacks of unfinished paperwork, and heard the phone ringing off the hook? Has he ever tried to schedule an evaluation? Or how about re-schedule an evaluation?

Streamlining the grievance process may eliminate some paperwork, but mandating yearly high-stakes evaluations without making other changes will merely replace it, and then some. Tennessee recently changed their teacher evaluation process without thinking it through and it's been a nightmare for principals and a largely useless, bordering on absurd, process for many teachers. If we want all principals and teachers to be evaluated once a year, we had better fund it, staff it, and make sure the process is fair and that the tool itself is useful.

I would add a peer evaluation component to the evaluation process. I'm not quite comfortable with students doing high-stakes evaluations but I certainly think collecting and implementing feedback from students should be a required part of a teacher's evaluation process. I'd like to see master educators in each school who evaluate and mentor other teachers while still teaching some courses of their own. Also, we need to diversify evaluations: What a first-year teacher needs is different from what a veteran needs and what a math teacher needs is different from what an art teacher needs. For ideas about where Virginia districts might go, this Massachusetts teacher, who has published a book on the subject, has some great ideas for better evaluations. Montgomery County, Maryland, has had great success with their peer-review teacher evaluation process. Finally, two districts in California have done well revamping their teacher evaluation systems by integrating support and evaluation. Finally, Accomplished California  Teachers put together an important report about improving teacher evaluations, with one of the authors, NBCT David Cohen, offering some further insights on the process here.

As for one-year contracts, I don't see how using them (which by the way will not be a big change in some Virginia districts as budget woes have forced many principals in recent years to offer one-year contacts) strengthens contracts. In fact, it sounds more like weakening contracts (and like spinning one's education agenda). I also don't see how offering them exclusively will attract top-tier educators. Here's a job. Please leave the one you have or give up other opportunities for this one-year contract. Now run along and get those test scores up. I don't see that as a winning recruitment strategy. Moreover, as Chad Sansing pointed out, it's not really going to grow the profession as much as it will offer "jobs."

One-year contracts will also undermine stability and continuity in communities. Of course I want my children to have the best teachers possible, but the fact that the educators at the schools my kids attend have gotten to know our community, our family, and my children as learners, facilitates that. Most of them and most of the educators I have worked with work long hours with too much to do. I, for one, don't want to reward them with the prospect of one-year contracts and I don't want the uncertainty of not knowing which educators will be back each year. In these hard economic times, Virginia's families have enough uncertainty already.

I've also heard McDonnell wants to use merit pay. I was glad that his administration took a more cautious route and merely piloted merit pay before going all out with it. And as I explained here, I think we need to raise salaries across the board, as well as differentiate pay more than we do currently, based on a combination of  responsibility and experience. Educators who lead extra-curriculars, or who take on mentoring, peer evaluating, or more responsibilities should be paid more. Also, we should pay teachers more who work in hard to staff schools with more challenging populations. They have to work harder and have more difficult jobs. Also, it is harder to attract STEM people. It just is. I am not a STEM person and I don't like that they would get paid more, but I understand we can't ignore labor market forces. Nevertheless, merit pay should not be based on a boost in test scores and nor has such merit pay proven to raise achievement in other places. As it has in DC, such an approach easily turns into: Here, you teach the more affluent kids who score higher on standardized tests. Congratulations! Here's some extra money.

By all means, let's re-imagine and then revamp our evaluation tools and processes in Virginia. Let's pay educators more and let's attract the best ones we can to our state. But let's do so in ways that are fair, meaningful, and cognizant of the unique roles educators play. A hasty switch to annual high-stakes evaluations, one-year contracts, and merit pay based on standardized test scores will increase paperwork and teacher turnover and lower morale without growing the profession or improving the quality of teaching. We can do better by our educators and by our students.


cross-posted at the Virginia Education Report

Opportunity to Expand Choice (Maybe)

I've been busy responding to my governor's education agenda. On Monday, I wrote about the initiative to advance literacy. On Tuesday, I wrote about possible implications of repealing the Kings Dominion Law. Today will be a much meatier post about choice. I want to take a minute to acknowledge that school choice is a very thorny and complex issue; I do my best to approach it as such. To read a sampling of related posts on my blog, please go here.

In "Expanding Educational Options for Virginia's Students," McDonnell talks about virtual learning, charter schools, university lab schools, and granting tax credits to businesses that contribute to private school scholarships for low-income students. Many of these ideas seem to have been borrowed from Florida. One recent Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed praised education reform in Florida, but Florida has hardly proceeded carefully. Virtual schools have a very mixed record there with some schools giving out worthless diplomas. The McKay Scholarship Program, intended to give vouchers to parents of special needs, though a savior for many who know how to navigate the choices, has been a harrowing experience for others, "pioneering" an industry of fraud and chaos. As for charter schools, those in Florida enroll far fewer poor and special needs students. Furthermore, they operate as a parallel school system controlled largely by for-profit management companies and private landlords with very little oversight and too much corruption. Finally, by their own measurements, charter schools in Florida aren't getting the results advocates said they would. Virginia's education system and efforts to reform it would be better served if we learned from Florida's mistakes rather than if we imitated them.

Using technology to expand learning spaces, methods, and opportunities is exciting and well worth exploring, but as with extending the school year or day, it needs to be done thoughtfully, based on evidence and with strong considerations of design. I was incredulous when a high school teacher in my district told me about p.e. as an on-line class, but when she explained to me the requirements and curriculum, I changed my tune. With that in mind, as we explore virtual education options, we should first tap the knowledge of our in-state resources. We need to look at what our districts are already doing in this arena and learn from their successes and failures. Furthermore, we should consult with Virginia-based virtual learning scholars such as VCU's Jon Becker. Even then, we need to be very careful that virtual learning is offered for the good of students and not merely for the benefit of those with a financial stake in the virtual education industry. Furthermore, we need to ensure that for Virginia students, any virtual learning is quality learning--for some caveats, see here, here, here, and here.

As for charter schools, if the goal is to offer more choices and further racial and socio-economic integration, magnet programs such as have been started in Miami-Dade County, Florida and Wake County, North Carolina, seem to have relatively stronger and more stable track records. We should also consider merging some of our urban and suburban school districts such as has been done in the afore-mentioned Wake County and also recently in Memphis, Tennessee, challenges notwithstanding. Montgomery County, Maryland, offers a magnet school/ choice-system of sorts at their traditional high schools--an effort worth studying. Each district in Virginia should examine its structure and programs--magnet schools and programs, Governor's Schools, alternative schools, vocational and trade schools, and even course offerings per school--to make sure it's offering the most options possible in the most inclusive and accessible way possible, towards meeting the needs of ALL students.

After this, if the people of the Commonwealth decide they do want more charters specifically, then we must make sure they're done right: initiated and managed by communities and educators and held accountable to the districts where they exist. Chad Sansing has a great post on this. As he describes the already existing charter schools in Virginia:

These schools matter to their students and communities and serve as examples of grass roots start-up efforts in Virginia schools. Because of their local origins and capacities to address local needs, these schools might not “scale up”, but the community-based processes used in their development are definitely replicable.

Districts, for their part, need to stop being hostile to groups of parents and educators who want to try something different, lest they drive them into the arms of profit-minded and unaccountable outsiders. Finally, while charters such as Richmond's Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts were started with a mind towards more integration, we must keep in mind that nationally charters are leading to increased segregation.

One final thought on charters: They will only be as "innovative" as high-stakes-testing and accountability schemes allow them to be. Schools will only be as good as what we hold them accountable for. Most of the glowing reports about Patrick Henry, for example, in the same Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed cited earlier, glow about their test scores:

Recently, Richmond's first charter school (and the state's first elementary charter), the Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts, announced that its students surpassed school district and state averages in every subject on the Standards of Learning tests in its first year. In fact, every group of its students (white, black, economically disadvantaged) outperformed both district and state, an accomplishment made more impressive by the fact that the school teaches a more truly diverse population of students than any other in the city.

Test scores certainly give us some information about how a school is doing and we can glean some other useful information from them, but what's more important is what kids are actually learning (curriculum) and how they're being taught (pedagogy or instruction). If we keep doing the same thing we've been doing for the past ten years and focus on scores on limited and narrow standardized multiple-choice tests, instead of on what is actually being taught and learned and how, education in our state will not progress or innovate, and our students won't engage in meaningful, challenging learning, whether they're in traditional schools or charters.

If we're going to expand choice in Virginia, we need to do it with two goals in mind. First, we should make choice as fair, equitable, and democratic as possible. Exclusion of special needs students and English Language Learners, and increased racial and socioeconomic segregation should not be the outcome of increased school choice. Second, the choice provided should be diverse options between different schools, rather than a competition to get the best test scores. Increased choice could be among programs that provide rich and meaningful learning and quality teaching along different dimensions (such as language, science, or arts magnet schools) while meeting the needs of all students. Or choice could simply be among schools beholden to the same corrupting incentives that undermine real student learning  in our current system, which means having many poor choices, which, frankly, is no choice at all.

cross-posted at the Virginia Education Report

Opportunity to Extend the School Year

Yesterday, I posted the first post in a series of five in response to Governor McDonnell's recently announced education agenda, entitled, "Opportunity to Learn." The first post provided an introduction and discussed McDonnell's ideas to advance literacy.

Another major piece of Governor McDonnell's agenda included "Reducing Mandates on Local School Divisions," which in this case means a repeal of the "Kings Dominion Law." In substance, this is mostly uncontroversial and seems to make sense, i.e., letting districts decide how to set their calendars. Some have made the leap to, "the Governor is pushing a longer school year," but so far, I don't see it. Many school districts don't like the law, and thus the Governor wants to repeal it.

Now, I'm in a bit of a bind here because my county, the home of Kings Dominion (otherwise known as The Promised Land among the under-10 set in my house) is opposed to repeal of the law as it would mean a big loss of revenue in particular for them. Given our bleak budget outlook, particularly for education, we need that revenue. Of course, there are (horror of horrors) other reasonable ways to raise revenues. Also, it is rather ironic that as the current local political climate is infused with cries for smaller government and fewer mandates, some seem to want an exception made for the mandate that helps them. Sigh.

Back to the topic at hand, if the idea is in the long run to reorganize the school year and extend the school year and/or school days, it needs to be done thoughtfully. While doing so would certainly benefit many kids and I bet many working families in Virginia would welcome it, the most important thing is not adding more time but rather what is done with the added time (or even with the time we already have. . . ).

If a longer school year and day means more test prep, more narrow focus on reading strategies and math drills, then Virginians should say: No, thank you. However, if we're talking about more time for meaningful and interesting project-based learning, extra-curriculars, clubs, school newspapers, unstructured play, P.E., sports teams, science, social studies, art, music, theater, practical skills (cooking, financial literacy, etc.), foreign languages, gardening, computer science, robotics, entrepreneurship, etc., then we should say resoundingly: Yes, please!

Furthermore, any longer day or school year must be matched with increased pay, staffing, and resources. Otherwise, we'll have yet another unfunded mandate. And no, throwing some cheap math workbooks at teachers does not count as increasing resources, nor will piling such activities on to the school day improve the quality of education Virginia's children receive.

If we're going to extend the school year and day in Virginia, we need to do so in a way that's smart, fair, and that will provide meaningful and rich learning experiences for students.

cross-posted at The Virginia Education Report

Opportunity to Develop Literacy

On Monday, January 9th, Virginia Governor McDonnell announced his education agenda, entitled, "Opportunity to Learn." This has been covered by The Virginia Education Report, The Washington Post, as well as commented on by many throughout the state (For Chad Sansing's excellent commentary, read here. Or, for a partial listing of other reactions, see here.) I am going to offer my reactions in a series of posts starting with this one.

Before I comment on the agenda, I want to reiterate a point that Chad Sansing made in his piece:

McDonnell’s blueprint promises “a bold education proposal that will dramatically increase money for Virginia’s teachers and students by $480 million a year.” Meanwhile, his budget plans also include “hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts, including to child-care subsidies for low-income families and to health and parent-education programs for poor pregnant women.” Families who need social and support services to help their kids attend school and access curriculum won’t benefit from McDonnell’s cuts.

I will return to issues if budgeting and funding in later posts but for now I'll assert: We're not going to succeed in improving education for low-income children with one hand if we're squeezing their parents and communities with the other. As I explained here, single-issue advocacy is problematic and students don't lead single-issue lives. Furthermore, the more we deny help to those in need, the more needs our students will come to school with and the more resources our schools will need to adequately serve those students. And right now there is a growing number of people in need.

Now, on to the education agenda:

In the "Raise Standards - College Workforce and Readiness" section, the McDonnell administration proposes, among other things ("other things" being streamlining diploma requirements, positive youth development, and expanding dual enrollment programs--none of which I have any objections to, so far :), advancing literacy. McDonnell wants to make sure all third graders can read before they move on to fourth grade. That is a worthy goal, but I'm not sure that his way of achieving it is sound. McDonnell wants to pay kids who learn to read. Harvard Researcher Roland Fryer tried something similar to this, and it didn't really work. If kids aren't reading by third grade, it's not (good grief!) because we're not paying them. Nor do I think the strategy of waiting until third grade and then simply holding kids back will help much--it's too reactive.

If we want struggling readers to struggle less, we need to do two things:

1) Invest in reading intervention programs that work and reach out to struggling readers long before third grade. Many of the children who are likely to struggle with reading would probably benefit from the very preschool programs McDonnell is looking to cut, so if he wants to advance literacy he should reconsider cutting those programs. One program that my school district successfully uses and that helped my own son when he was struggling to learn to read was Reading Recovery. Such programs are expensive and require investment and commitment. (UPDATE: After I drafted this post, I read that McDonnell proposed adding $8.2 million to the budget for early reading programs. This is good news, though I'd want to know more about the efficacy of the specific programs being funded and the real estimated impact of the dollars allotted.)

2) We need to spend much less time teaching reading as a subject and teaching reading strategies beyond their utility and much more time teaching content or subject matters, such as literature, science, social studies, p.e., art music, foreign languages, technical education, etc. Yes, most kids need to be explicitly taught to decode and yes, to a point reading strategies are useful. Of course, content should be taught as reading and writing intensive. However, literacy is largely representative of someone's background and content knowledge, and knowledge of vocabulary and does not develop or improve without it. As the University of Virginia's own Dan Willingham says, teaching content is teaching reading. (It's also much, much more meaningful and interesting for kids.) My regular readers know that I talk about this ad nauseum. In case you're new to my writing on education, here are some posts that elaborate further: here, here, and here.

You know what I've found, as a parent and in my observations of my kids' teachers, is the best reward for kids who are working hard to learn to read or who are already reading? More books. Let's reward students for reading by giving them more books.

UPDATE: In a misguided effort to get Virginia third graders to do better on reading and math tests, State Senator John Miller (D-Newport News) wants teachers to spend even more time on reading and math and even less on science and social studies. And he wants to do so to get test scores up in fifth grade (not necessarily because it will mean better education). Ugh. Even supporters of NCLB say the bill is too limited in scope by just focusing on math and reading. Sorry, Senator Miller, but this bill will take us in the complete wrong direction!

cross-posted at The Virginia Education Report