Reflections on a New Job (and dress code)

I recently started working at a K-5 charter school in New York City (the school will remain nameless) as an administrative assistant in the main office. I'm still learning the ropes, but a few things have come up already which inspired me to reflect here.

First, I have to talk about uniforms. The school is pretty adamant about uniforms, which consist of khaki pants and a shirt which MUST have the school's logo on it. Well, since charter schools generally--and certainly this one--serve low-income communities and struggle to engage parents, the uniform issue has been contentious, with parents neglecting to get the shirts embroidered with the logo. As we entered the 2nd week of school, students were sent home if they weren't in full uniform. So first graders who showed up impeccably dressed, very neat, are brought to the office and have to wait there until a parent either brings an appropriately embroidered shirt or takes them home. Students lose out on really valuable instructional time because of parental neglect AND, in my opinion, because of lousy school policy.

I understand the argument in favor of being strict about uniforms, and to some extent I agree with it; I'm in favor of being strict in this regard, but not to the point of pulling her out of class and forcing her to miss an entire day of school. One boy in kindergarten missed three days in a row because the embroiders were slow to finish his shirts. My concern here is twofold: on one hand, irresponsible parents are nothing new for this school and for others like it, but in addition, kids are being punished for something they have no control over.

It's a truism in education that parents have a lot of impact, especially in high poverty populations where parent involvement is most important. Many kids at this school are negatively impacted by the behavior of their parents or guardians, and as a school, we cant do much about that. Home life is outside of our purview, end of story. Public schools must provide a safe haven, a respite from what is often an extremely difficult home life.

Rigorous academics are also important. The kids in this school, even the 5-year-olds, work hard. Missing a couple days is a big deal, and they do fall behind in as little as a day out of school, let alone three straight. When a kid wants to come to school, I'm of the mind that they have to be allowed to come unless they're carrying a contagious disease or for some other reason a threat to others. Because the kids need to learn, they need to be there, or else we as school professionals are wasting our time.

Keeping kids who don't have the full uniform out of school is purely punitive. Discipline is important, but kids cant be held responsible for their parents' behavior any more than they already are. Our students' future is largely determined by their circumstances before they ever get to school. When they enter our school, the goal is that they can transcend whatever limitations they were born with--lousy parents included. When kids are punished for things they have nothing to do with, it sends a terrible message first off, and secondly, it has the effect of reinforcing the idea for kids that they aren't fully responsible for their own success (which of course as elementary schoolers they aren't, but nonetheless its an important idea).

A lot of charter schools are very serious about uniforms and such, and I really do understand why. But for professionals at our school to waste time with things like removing nail polish, calling parents about clothes and writing letters about embroidery is just silly. It's not only silly, it has a deleterious effect on student learning and overall school culture. When a school decides that a kid cant come until he wears the right shirt, the school is deciding for that kid "you won't learn anything today." That's the opposite message we ought to be giving to these kids.

How Moneyball ruined Education

Michael Lewis published Moneyball in 2003. The book was a profile of Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane, who at the time was overseeing a dramatic shift in the way baseball talent was evaluated. The baseball stuff is really interesting, and a movie is currently in production, featuring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. Beyond that, Beane and his Moneyball tactics were credited with helping the Oakland A's compete with teams spending much more on their teams. The A's were perennial playoff contenders during the late 90's and early 00's, but they perennially lost to bigger market teams like the Red Sox or Yankees.

The key to Moneyball as practiced by the A's is that it valued complicated, sometimes obscure statistics, called sabermetrics, over the conventional wisdom of baseball veterans. Instead of looking at a young player's attributes and batting average, scouts would compile tables of data, looking at WHIP and DIPS for pitchers and VORP and WAR for hitters. The statistics within sabermetrics are complicated, and when it comes down to business in baseball front offices, some teams follow these stats religiously. It isn't outside the realm of possibility that some GM's make decisions based on numbers they don't totally understand. This is what's happening in education policy today.

The Los Angeles Times recently released a value-added analysis of all the 3-5 grade teachers in the LA Unified School District. Parents, policy-makers and everyone else can now go to the linked website and search for any of these teachers to see how well the LA Times has concluded they are doing. Value-added analyses make sense on a large scale, and the logical basis for these types of analyses is solid: judging teachers based purely on test scores isn't quite fair, nearly everyone has agreed. But we need some kind of data to evaluate teachers and determine effectiveness. So we take test scores from 2006, for example, and attach the scores to individual kids. If their scores go up after a year with Mr. Ehrenfeld, that improves my value-added score. Looking at each of the kids in my class, we can see how effective a teacher I am.

This analysis is useful for entire schools with lots of kids. For individual classes and teachers, it can be disastrous. Lots of factors affect student test performance; many of these are impossible for a teacher to affect, including family situation, student health, personal circumstances on the day of the test, there's a huge range. Also, classes are never assigned randomly, so there is selection bias. But don't simply trust me: there is significant debate, and many smart people agree that VAA analyses are not perfect and indeed are very flawed.

Professor Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford advised President Obama on education issues during the campaign and his transition, only to be passed over for a position in the DoE for neophyte Arne Duncan. She wrote "Unfortunately...these measures are highly unstable for individual teachers." Her insistence on contextualizing test scores if they are to be used in evaluation is the most compelling argument on this issue; test scores alone, just like OPS alone, cannot be used to evaluate how well an individual does his or her job, be that a teacher or a third-baseman.

Diane Ravitch, a respected and controversial education historian, writes that VAA models are "problematic" and subject to extremely high measurement error, meaning that the results of the test could simply be wrong based on sample size and experimentation issues. With 3 years of student scores, Diane points out, the error rate is 25%, meaning many good teachers will be identified as "needing improvement" and some bad teachers will even be rated "highly effective."

Statistics can be accurate and correctly measured, but they can still be misleading. From year-to-year, baseball players, like teachers, have divergent statistics. In all likelihood, there are a few Alex Rodriguez teachers out there who are good consistently, but the more common teacher will be comparable to Eric Chavez, former A's third-baseman who Billy Beane frequently said was a better value and competitive with A-Rod. He was wrong, and so are the policy people who argue that VAA models can tell how effective a teacher is and will be.

The best, fairest teacher evaluations are comprehensive. Student test scores, even a value-added model, ought to play a small role in this process, but the biggest piece should be administrator and peer review. It's the only way to get an accurate picture of teacher effectiveness.

Moneyball and sabermetrics revolutionized the way Major League front offices evaluate players. But look at the case of Jeremy Bonderman, who was drafted by Beane's A's in the 2001 draft. Beane was so incensed that the player had been drafted that he reportedly threw a chair at the wall so hard that it exploded on impact. But looking at the career of the player, even using the advanced sabermetrics, Bonderman has been excellent, vindicating Beane's scouts who drafted Bonderman back in 2001.

But this is only baseball. Teachers and students and public education as a whole are too important to allow mistakes like this to happen. A great teacher who is fired for being ineffective loses his or her livelihood and deprives future students of all he or she has to offer. Denying students the opportunity to be taught by truly excellent teachers--those who really inspire greatness and help students develop--is a travesty beyond the mistake Beane made by trading Bonderman the year after he was drafted.

The obsession with statistics now commonplace in baseball and growing in import in education is extremely problematic. Just look at the recent scandal in New York: the bar for passing tests is extremely subjective, and it moves. Also look at David Leonhardt's review of teacher evaluation and test score obsession in last week's New York Times Magazine. Campbell's Law holds true in education as elsewhere: the more a quantitative indicator is used for social decision-making, the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt that which it was originally intended to measure and the more subject it is to corruption pressures.

Overvaluing test scores in teacher evaluation is wrong, and basing teacher evaluations wholly on VAA models is criminal. Thanks for nothing, Billy Beane.

Beware High-Stakes Testing

Before I begin, a few disclaimers. I'm not opposed to tests, not even multiple choice tests like the SAT which, for many high schoolers, are extremely high-stakes. National, well-researched tests are important, and the results can be meaningful and ought to inform practice at every level. I'm not opposed to judging schools and teachers--in part--on students' test scores. But test data, like anything else, must be looked at critically before running with it. And that has not happened many times.

Today, the New York Times reported on what should really be called a scandal for the New York Department of Education. Test scores were artificially inflated by making the tests easier to pass. When critics of the Bloomberg/Klein regime pointed this out over a year ago, the Times and the state looked the other way. Repeated claims of rising test scores should have been accompanied by the note that the benchmarks are moving, but instead, credit-claiming was all that we heard. It was obvious that test scores were rising due, at least in part, to manipulations of the test and the scoring, but the mainstream media remained silent.

Every year, test scores in many states rise and rise, but that only reflects manipulation of the tests! A few intelligent folks have pointed this out in the past: Diane Ravitch comes to mind. Here she notes that No Child Left Behind actually hurt student achievement and slowed student progress, particularly for racial minorities.

I'm pleased that the state of New York, at least, has finally realized the disservice they are doing when they advertise that an outrageously high percentage of students are "proficient" when, in truth, many high school students still are unable to read or do basic math. The "Shock Plunge" in test scores is actually not a plunge at all; instead, it's a realization that calling a kid proficient doesn't actually raise numeracy or literacy.

In defense of the state board of regents, they have been warning us for months that this was coming. The raising of proficiency levels for state tests has indeed been a long time coming, but the warning disguises the fact that the proficiency level for years was decreased specifically so that folks like Joel Klein could brag about improving test scores year after year, despite the fact that actual student achievement had remained constant or even decreased. It's dishonest, embarrassing and shameful, and those responsible ought to be held accountable.

from the NYT story:

And the results could cast doubts on the city’s improvements over the past several years; both the mayor and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, have used increases in state test scores as evidence that schools have improved.

“It certainly complicates the Bloomberg administration message, because the state test is completely unreliable,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a researcher with the Fordham Institute, a Washington-based research group.

Just unconscionable. This is why tests should be just one measure of success for students, teachers, and schools. Test scores--clearly so malleable to the point of being almost meaningless--should only be considered as one part of a larger review. If tests are too important, they are likely to be manipulated, and that's exactly what we've seen in New York. The one major takeaway for ed reformers from this story: pay attention! Don't believe everything you here, and hold on to a healthy dose of skepticism.

The Failure of Obama's Education Reform Efforts

President Obama entered office as the great hope of many segments of the population, ranging from racial minorities to political progressives who were hoping for particular policy changes. Teachers and education reform activists were also excited by the ascendancy of Obama, and for good reason: he had detailed, exciting plans to reform public education, and during the campaign he had advisors like Linda Darling-Hammond on staff, leading many to believe that his efforts would encapsulate a certain set of policy prescriptions. Darling-Hammond was in fact a leading candidate for Secretary of Education, the post currently occupied by the controversial Arne Duncan.

Duncan was firmly ensconced in the "reform" camp of candidates, balanced by Darling-Hammond and others on the "pro-union" side. The reformers are folks like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, people with little teaching experience who believe in reforms like the removal of tenure, mayoral control of schools, expanding charter schools, and test-based accountability for both teachers and schools. The opposition, led by teachers unions and their spokespeople like Randi Weingarten, disagrees with the "reform" banner given to the other camp, because they too believe in reform.

Since Duncan was chosen, he has led the administration's education reform efforts--though some claim that none other than Bill Gates is truly in charge. He has followed in the footsteps of those like Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein in New York City and Rhee in Washington, pushing test-based accountability, closing struggling schools, and other reforms without input from teachers.

The biggest criticism of Obama's efforts thus far has been just that--he has disrespected those on the frontlines of education reform: teachers. The Race to the Top, the largest, most visible piece of a larger reform effort, is entirely top-down, without consultation even from principals and district leaders. It proscribes particular reforms that states should enact in order to become eligible for a huge pot of federal money.

Teachers have voiced significant complaints about RttT and other efforts. In early July, the National Education Association had their national conference in New Orleans. Union President Dennis Van Roekel summed up his feelings and a sentiment apparently shared by many in attendance this way: “Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced." This was one of many pokes and criticisms of Duncan and Obama throughout the conference, which last year warmly welcomed Secretary Duncan.

The NEA conference is far from an isolated incident. Critics of the administration come from every corner, which is to be expected. Unfortunately, one huge camp of critics are essential stakeholders in education reform: teachers. Across the country, teachers have voiced their disapproval loudly and clearly, protesting appearances by Duncan frequently. The teachers have latched onto a few points of criticism, but the substantive claims they have--meritorious or not--are fairly irrelevant.

Whatever reason given by teachers for their bitter opposition to the plans, the mere fact that teachers are opposed is enough to doom Race to the Top and other programs. Qualified, experienced, effective teachers are necessary for any education reform effort to succeed--Duncan and some of his compatriots have repeatedly stated that effective teachers are the most important piece of reform. The disrespect and resulting alienation of the nation's teachers in and of itself is the death knell of Arne Duncan's entire tenure in the Department of Education. Without teachers on your side, very little is possible in the field of education.

To be fair, what could we have expected from Arne Duncan? An old crony of Obama's from Chicago's Hyde park neighborhood, his efforts as Superintendent in that city have proven to be ineffective at best, and harmful at worst. Test-and-punish schemes like No Child Left Behind have been positive only for test-writers, and observers from every side have repeatedly pointed this out. Also, the accountability and stricter licensing guidelines he has proposed would have certainly disqualified Duncan from many of his former positions and certainly his current post. His resume includes highlights like a brief pro basketball career in Australia and the highest degree he has received is a BA from Harvard. Teachers in many states are now required to hold Masters degrees, but the Secretary of Education cant be bothered even to work towards a Masters of Arts degree in Teaching, or public policy, or something else relevant to his very difficult job. This hypocritical stance is particularly damning and has turned many against him; highly-qualified educators are important, and one should be installed at the DoE with all due haste.

Trimming RttT

The priorities emphasized in Race to the Top were always controversial and unsettling to me. Despite the fact that I supported President Obama all the way back when he was an underdog in the primaries and am, in fact, a Democrat for Education Reform (in a manner of speaking), I was always uneasy about the Obama/Duncan platform for reform. If you were a casual observer of education policy news, you might think there was a growing consensus around the program of reform: that is, charter expansion, test-test-test, standards, accountability, etc.

The reason this seems like consensus is because it isn't new; this is the reform embodied initially in No Child Left Behind, the much-lambasted reform program of the Bush administration. Though Democrats voted in droves for the bill initially, it became extremely controversial rather quickly. So instead of calling Race to the Top and current DoE policy the Obama/Duncan platform, let's correctly identify it as the Bush-Obama program for education reform. Kind of removes the luster, huh?

So when it came out today that Rep. David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, was planning to cut about $500 million from the Race to the Top fund in order to fund a new education jobs bill, I had mixed feelings. There are elements of RttT that I really appreciate and admire. Innovation is crucial in education, and new approaches are more than welcome. On the other hand, the RttT hurts teachers, damages community schools and threatens the foundations of public education in our country.

In the end, it has to be looked at as a good thing that money is going to save edujobs instead of promoting tests, test-based evaluation and charter expansion. If Race to the Top included more expansive and more meaningful types of reform, I might feel differently, but teachers truly need support. Cutting jobs in education is not the way to reform the system. And to be fair, $3.5 billion is still up for grabs in the second round of the Race--I think states will still apply for the funds and work hard to reform education in the way the Dept. wants.

The Race to the Top is unusually effective public policy. States around the country are passing legislation to move them in line with the DoE's expectations for reform in order for a shot at the money. Unfortunately, this move takes the control out of the hands of teachers, principals, even superintendents. Decisions made at the top levels without consultation are unlikely to prove durable in the classroom.

Teaching is an unusual job because it puts you at the crossroads of total independence and at the bottom of a complex bureaucracy. In the classroom, teachers are totally in charge, but in the scope of the larger education system, they are institutionally disrespected and disempowered. This has troubling consequences for education policy, but more importantly, it implies stark concerns for education reform. The major takeaway is that reforms must be democratic. That is, in order for teachers really to buy into reform, they must have a hand in shaping those reforms. This makes sense, because nobody knows how education works and doesn't work like those who are in the trenches every day. It also is logical because ultimately, reform will be implemented by teachers and principals, so these folks need to feel like they are part of the solution.

Ultimately, Race to the Top, while effective at shaping reform, is misguided in its attempt to institute policy shifts from the top-down instead of after consultation and discussion with educators. Trimming it in order to save teachers' jobs is an excellent idea, and I hope Rep. Obey's version of the Edujobs bill is the one that reaches Obama's desk, and I hope it happens soon.

Negative Learning

As I wrap up my undergraduate education--just over a week until commencement--I find myself thinking a lot about how different people learn. I was even asked at a recent job interview to create some type of art project in 15 minutes to explain, without words, what intelligence means. The conclusion I seem to be reaching more and more is simply that nobody knows how others learn. At least, the pontificators and the talking heads in the education world certainly don't. And neither do I, but I'm becoming convinced that there are different modes that some use effectively, and other modes of thinking--I consider them varieties of non-thinking, but that's not a great way to introduce them. These latter forms can be thought of as passive and disengaged forms of thinking or, better yet, forms of "knowledge enhancement." Because thinking implies an active process, we will only consider active forms of learning as involving thinking in a meaningful way. Passive learning, including rote memorization, homework, and following directions is really opposed to thinking.

Think back to when you were in school, especially high school. If your background is anything like mine, you probably survived high school, but only barely. I was miserable for huge parts of my public school education (in suburban, middle class Connecticut), and the hierarchical system in place ensured that I would continue to be pretty unhappy in that school. Without the money to afford independent school tuition and without good charter/magnet options, I just stuck around and found myself getting by fine. There were high points and low points, but on the whole, I think we all remember high school being a pretty lousy time.

When we're 15 or 16 and unhappy with what's going on in school, we're told--indeed, taught--that this is the way things work. We are trained to be satisfied with dissatisfaction, to get used to subpar experiences. When your 7th grade teacher can't pronounce the word "anecdote" or "tortilla," you aren't surprised when you have an open-book spelling test in the same class. This is not a joke, although it is funny. That teacher continued working for years, and I only hope she's since retired. In 9th grade, when my Spanish teacher disappeared for unidentified medical reasons for the second half of the year, we were told by the principal that substitutes were good enough, even if they didn't speak Spanish. This teacher pulled the same move in years prior and has done the same since. Administrators always say there's nothing they can do, this is just the way it is.

So we're taught obedience, sure, but we're also taught that bureaucracy is powerful. The lesson from the stories above is pretty clear, right? Don't rock the boat, this is just "the way it is," and there's nothing you can do about it. These are lessons of disempowerment as much as anything. Public schools don't teach kids to be active, discerning adults, they teach passivity. It should be no surprise that kids misbehave and cause trouble in public schools; they are treated like prisoners to be kept under wraps, and this treatment results in unsurprising behavior. Teachers become even more hesitant to cede control after such pushback. Now there's an entrenching effect and a vicious cycle developing, where teachers and school leaders treat students like robots, kids act like....well, like kids, in response to this treatment, and then teachers get nervous about control and take away any remaining freedoms kids might have. This has been status quo in public schools for decades.

As a result, conversations about school reform and education reform continue to focus on doing the same things over and over again. The call comes for "better" teachers, higher standards, more accountability. The discourse rarely touches on questions of why we do what we do and whether other approaches might work better. God forbid, of course talk never gets to the point of examining values and goals in education.

The way I learn best, and this is thanks to my family and university, but certainly not to my public school education, is through negative experiences and observations. It's this inclination that would make me a lousy investment banker, but I hope makes me a decent social scientist and politics/policy nerd. I see things and my mind first goes to what's wrong, what needs fixing and what we can do about it. So when I'm sitting in my fourth 82-minute class of the day, playing Trivial Pursuit in an Advanced Placement class, I'm not thinking about Coca-Cola ads or Oprah's career trajectory, I'm thinking about what a waste of time my whole day has been. I cant help but reflect on problems, which can lead to bouts with depression but also leads to what lots of smart people call "critical thinking," a key element of the 21st century skills that are being pushed into education in the U.S.

Alfie Kohn says it best:

"I suspect the key is a phenomenon that might be called “negative learning,” in which people regard an unfortunate situation as a chance to figure out what not to do. They sit in awful classrooms and pay careful attention because they know they’re being exposed to an enormously useful anti-model. They say to themselves, 'Here is someone who has a lot to teach me about how not to treat children.'"

From this, we get things like progressive, student-centered education. Well-intentioned, ambitious folks like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein seem to have forgotten both what it was like to learn and what teaching was like (both Rhee and Klein had brief stints in the classroom, Rhee with Teach for America). No student thinks the cure for his or her shitty high school is more testing and "accountability." The kids in Rhode Island whose entire teaching force was fired largely disagree with that decision, too. When I was in high school, I wasn't thinking about more hours spent in school as a potential solution for my classmates who were dropping out--they were dropping out because they didn't like high school, not because they wanted more of it!

But we keep hearing the same tired suggestions about how to fix struggling schools: longer school days, more testing, analysis of date, accountability and higher expectations. These are all tweaks, when what we really need is a revolution. Incrementalism won't get us there, but put Joel Klein back in a classroom in a poor public school, and I bet he'll remember some of the complaints he surely had when he was younger. If not, maybe somebody else would be better for the extremely important job of fixing New York City's public schools. Conveniently enough for Mayor Bloomberg, I'm available.

Thoughts on Health Care Reform

Below you'll find a reprint of another article I wrote for the Tufts Observer, this time focusing on health care reform, focused on students and the political implications.

My own thoughts on reform are more complicated than might be revealed by the (hopefully impartial) news article. I'm genuinely happy that the bill passed, but it's just grossly inadequate. Doesn't do nearly enough. And I worry especially that this will allow Congress to ignore health care for many years into the future--when in reality, reform is still needed. That being said, enjoy the article.


Healthcare Cram Session: Ensuring You Know the Facts
Will Ehrenfeld

Minnesota Governor and potential 2012 presidential nominee Tim Pawlenty called it an “unprecedented overreach by the federal government.” Georgian Congressman Paul Broun called it “a war of Yankee aggression” (really). But Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma put it in terms everyone can understand: “To our seniors, I have a message for you: you’re going to die sooner.”

What are these Republicans responding to so angrily—and some might say outrageously? The recently passed health care bill, of course. Few pieces of legislation in recent memory have been so divisive, caused such national furor, or fueled so many protests and rallies on both sides of the political spectrum. Likewise, rarely has legislation brought with it such a dramatic change.

For all the discussion and debate regarding the health bill, knowledge of its key provisions is sorely lacking. The news media has focused on sound bites and all the outrageous rhetoric flowing from competing sides of the senate floor. For some, it has be difficult to find out how we may actually be affected by the bill, signed into law by President Obama on March 23.

Senior Andrea Lowe, president of the Tufts Democrats, highlighted the primary effect of the bill on college students nationwide—including, of course, the impact here at Tufts. Until age 26, young adults will be able to remain on their parent’s health insurance, which she said “will have a profound impact on young adults.” Previously, individual states regulated the age of maturity when children were no longer covered by their parents’ policies, generally age 18 or, in some cases, upon the completion of an undergraduate degree. Now, a universal cutoff age for health care coverage under family plans has been set, ensuring care for most undergraduates.

The reform’s impact on college students is enormous. While salvaging draining funds, undergrads will no longer need to worry about establishing an independent insurance plan apart from that of their parents until the ripe age of 26—a time when (hopefully) carefree college kids have transformed into responsible and financially secure adults. With the passing of the health care bill, a heavy burden has certainly been lifted across college campuses nationwide.

Beyond its effects on college students, the healthcare reform will help millions of other Americans. Insurance coverage will be extended to 32 million Americans who are currently uninsured. The bill also mandates that individuals cannot be denied coverage due to preexisting conditions, a provision that will be put into effect immediately for children and in 2014 for adults.

The response from Tufts’ Right, unsurprisingly, was less positive. “They are just reinforcing the status quo system of heavily regulated, private insurance,” according to senior Xander Zebrose, a member of the Tufts Republicans. The primary effect of the bill, he said, is “just forcing more people into a system that doesn’t work particularly well.”

Like the new ban on restricting coverage based on pre-existing conditions, many of the bill’s more audacious reforms will not be implemented until 2014. The individual mandate to enroll in an insurance plan—the lynchpin of Massachusetts’ health regime, which was in large part echoed in the federal program—will also be delayed until 2014, along with the ban on lifetime caps for insurance coverage. These caps, which limit the amount of money a patient can receive regardless of need, often leave families with huge debts after loved ones pass away.

A large point of contention surrounding the bill is how it will affect prices for consumers. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan body that reviews legislation for its financial impact, said that by 2016, it expects little if any increase in premiums for those with employer-sponsored plans. While individuals and families enrolled in unsponsored plans may see some rises in cost, according to the CBO, more than half of these people will qualify for federal subsidies—reducing costs by 60% on average.

Generally, these reforms will benefit middle-class families, while upper-class individuals and large corporations are likely to see increased costs and higher taxes in order to cover the cost of the new changes. Yet President Obama has taken pains to highlight the bill’s positive effects on small businesses: “This year, millions of small-business owners will be eligible for tax credits that will help them cover the cost of insurance for their employees,” he remarked in a speech in Iowa a few weeks ago.

Many commentators and pundits argue that the bill’s biggest impact will be seen in November, when mid-term elections roll around. What effect will healthcare reform have on the prospects for both parties in the 2010 elections?

The health reform bill “gives the Democrats a platform to run on,” in the words of sophomore Seth Rau, the Speakers Coordinator for the Tufts Democrats. “Once people start to know that they will be saving [money] from the bill, some more popular support will come about,” he predicts, forecasting that the Democratic Party will retain control of both chambers of Congress.

Xander Zebrose of the Tufts Republicans agreed. “I don’t think the Democrats are going to be any worse off because they passed it,” he said. The reason for this, he explained, is timing. “All the costs are delayed…the real effects will probably be farther down the road, once the bill has a real impact.”

No matter the political ramifications, it is clear that the passage of health care reform marks a dramatic shift in US social policy. It seems almost inevitable that this bill will indeed extend coverage to millions and make health insurance available and affordable to all Americans—a change that is long overdue. And, if anything, this healthcare reform will guarantee us Tufts students at least a couple more years of free insurance, courtesy of mom and dad.

Teach For America not all it's chalked up to be

This piece was originally written for the April 12 issue of the Tufts Observer magazine. It is published below in its unedited format, (edit) and here is the link: http://tuftsobserver.org/2010/04/teach-for-america-not-all-its-chalked-up-to-be/



Nobody wants to see a pop quiz outside of class, but bear with me: what program is more selective than Harvard Law School, more popular than the Peace Corps, and pays better than most entry level positions? The answer is Teach For America, and it’s taking college campuses by storm. TFA is one of the most popular programs for college graduates, particularly at Tufts: 8% of all seniors applied this year.

Teach For America is extremely selective, rejecting over 90% of applicants for the 2009-10 class of corps members, which is what TFA calls their teachers. But twenty or more current Tufts seniors will join over 4000 college graduates from around the country for five weeks of intensive summer training before becoming public school teachers in September. TFA places corps members for two-year terms in some of the roughest, most challenging schools in the country, typically in underserved urban and rural areas.

This year, over 46,000 applications were received for around 4000 positions. The program has grown immensely since its founding in 1990, and it continues to expand: next year, they plan to open sites in Rhode Island, Alabama and San Antonio. And just last year, TFA began working in the Boston region.

Welcome to Boston
Politically, the program’s rapid expansion has become quite contentious. 2009 saw the first group of corps members move into the Greater Boston region, which includes Chelsea, Cambridge, Revere and Boston. This September, 75 more new teachers will arrive in the region, 20 of whom are headed to Boston, which has been the flashpoint of a serious controversy.

Richard Stutman is the president of the Boston Teachers’ Union, and he has publicly lambasted both the district and TFA for adding corps members to Boston’s already swelled ranks of teachers. Indeed, in the fall many current teachers will not be returning to their classrooms, victims of layoffs as a result of budget cuts.
“We’ve had people with three years experience moved aside for Teach For America candidates,” Stutman said. “People from Harvard were moved out of their positions for TFA—why? Committed people with experience are being moved aside for people with no experience.

“Most people I represent feel it’s an insult,” Stutman continued. “I really can’t buy that somehow it’s better to have a 5-week program [than traditional certification]; I don’t even think the superintendent thinks it makes for a better teacher…how could it?”

Josh Biber, Executive Director of TFA in Boston, made a point to rebut Stutman: “our teachers apply for open vacancies and interview just like any other teacher candidate from anywhere else.” Elaborating on the benefit to the city TFA provides, he continued, “At the end of the day, the achievement gap is an enormous problem that unfairly holds too many kids back,” explaining that “our corps members, through their teaching, long-term leadership, and unflagging commitment to kids…can be one important piece of the solution.”

Elton Sykes (’09) began his teaching career in Tulsa, OK last September as a high school English teacher with TFA. Like Biber, he has strong feelings about what Stutman mentions above: “I do not agree with the criticism made by others,” he said, referring to Stutman’s public comments. “I feel like those criticisms are not solving the problem of educational inequality and closing the achievement gap.”

The comments from Biber and Sykes are indicative of a single-mindedness that extends throughout the organization: closing the achievement gap is their only concern. Yet, critics of TFA like Richard Stutman share this goal, as do others who are willing to criticize TFA, like freshman Laurel Starr and senior Adam Weldai.

Starr attended a K-8 school in Minneapolis where she was taught by corps members. “I remember liking these teachers on a personal level. Unfortunately, their classes were often out of control and quite frankly we didn’t learn much…they were a bit too idealistic and lacked the experience and training necessary to conduct a successful classroom.”

Weldai is a member of the Malden School Committee as well as an incoming graduate student in the Tufts M.A.T. program, and he worries about the program’s impact on young teachers and their students. “Quite frankly, you need more than two years to become a good teacher. Sending unprepared teachers into low performing districts is equally as harmful to the teacher as it is to the student, a student who needs a highly trained teacher with an education background to help them thrive.”

Robbie Havdala is a senior who will be joining TFA next year as an elementary school teacher in New York City. Not surprisingly, he disagrees with Weldai’s argument. “In my opinion, there is a certain unrecognized benefit, sometimes, of having fresh, new teachers. It adds creativity, new ideas, makes organizations more forward thinking and challenges the status quo.”

Smart people disagree on how best to train teachers and how to reform education. Yet everyone agrees on the need to address the achievement gap in schools. The question is how.

Is Teach For America Effective?
There are multiple ways to test a program’s effectiveness, but perhaps the best method is the testimony of a student. Laurel Starr spoke of mixed feelings many seem to share. “I definitely sympathize with the goals of TFA and am glad that they are working towards fixing the horrendous achievement gap….However, I feel that this program is a reflection of how public, inner city schools are severely marginalized in our society.

“Why should we give our poorest students the added disadvantage of being forced to accommodate these [inexperienced] teachers? I see it as completely unjust.” Starr’s unease with TFA’s methods extends into the academic community as well, and the organization has often been the subject of research intended to answer some of these questions.

Teach For America has been studied by various researchers, looking at different metrics and finding divergent results. Notably, the Urban Institute found in a 2008 study that “TFA teachers tend to have a positive effect on high school student test scores relative to non-TFA teachers.” On the other hand, another study found that students taught by TFA teachers performed worse on standardized tests than those taught by certified teachers (Berliner and Laczko-Kerr, 2002).

“I deeply believe the [achievement gap] is solvable, but it will take enormous commitment from people in all levels of education and in all sectors of society,” said Biber, TFA’s Boston chief. Through collaboration with other dedicated people, he said, TFA has an important role to play. With a problem as daunting as closing the achievement gap, more ideas and approaches will always be welcome, but it is important to realize that no program currently exists that can singlehandedly solve the problem—lest we forget, a staggering gap continues to exist between the school achievement of black and white and rich and poor students, and TFA is one of many approaches out there.

Influential books game

NYT columnist Ross Douthat outlines this exercise pretty well. I enjoyed writing this but am now tired, so I'll leave you with his explanation:

More than a week ago, Tyler Cowen kicked off an irresistible blogospheric listing exercise: In this case, the theme is “10 books which have influenced your view of the world.” You can find Matthew Yglesias’s list here, Will Wilkinson’s list here, and many more at this link. My own follows below. Note that these are not my 10 favorite books, nor the 10 best books I’ve ever read, but the books that quickly came to mind — I was following Cowen’s “go with your gut” admonition — as having shaped my writing or pushed me in one intellectual direction or another over the years. As an experiment, I’ve also tried listing them in rough chronological order, starting with the books that influenced me as a child and working my way upward (or downward, perhaps) toward adulthood. And like many people, I’ve cheated and gone over 10 — in my case, by doubling up on a few that share an author or a theme.

1. The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein
I recently picked this childhood favorite up again, reading it to a class of first graders at an independent school in Washington, D.C. as part of a job interview. I led a short discussion about the book and its themes after reading it aloud, and that reminded me why I loved the book so much growing up. I was initially drawn to it because my older cousin really liked it, but after reading through it on my own (probably one of the first books I ever read, in fact), I was struck immensely by the simplicity and beauty of the parable and its themes. It's a story of self-sacrifice, altruism, and a powerful relationship that was out of balance; The Giving Tree was my first exposure to these ideas, many of which stuck with me through the years.

2. The Client, by John Grisham
The Grisham series of legal thrillers served as my introduction into "adult" literature. I remember picking this one up during a summer where I was too adult to be content at my grandmother's house, but not yet old enough to stay home alone. I became immersed in Grisham's suspenseful prose, and this book, along with other well-known novels like The Pelican Brief and A Time to Kill, helped enhance my nascent love of reading.

3. The Diary of Anne Frank and Anne Frank: The Biography, by Melissa Muller
I read the biography first, which led me into the diary itself, and the story told pairwise in such a way was immensely powerful. The story is I think universally known, but it was important to me because I picked the biography up just a few years after my father died--I think it was in 7th grade, or not quite 5 years later. Without realizing it, I had been shortchanged of half my identity in a way, cut off from the part of myself that is Jewish by my father's passing. These readings started me on a path of self-discovery which eventually brought me to Israel. Though I'm far from converting formally to Judaism, the Anne Frank story inspired me to learn more and embrace that part of my background, even though it wasn't always easy.

4. Animal Farm and 1984, by George Orwell
This was another book read during a lazy summer at my grandmother's house in Long Island, also suggested by a cousin, if memory serves. After reading through once and missing many of the subtleties (remember, this was many years ago), I started again at the beginning. This time, the metaphors and allegories jumped off the pages, and the seeds of a political malcontent had been planted. When I read 1984 during freshman year, I remember being fascinated by the dystopic view Orwell so vividly outlines. I also caught so many parallels from Animal Farm that my understanding was really improved.

5. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
This was also read during my 9th grade year, and it was the first great war novel I ever encountered. In addition to opening this genre up to me and training me to hate war from an early age, I learned an early lesson about existentialism and nihilism. Yossarian's prime goal was to "stay alive or die trying," which in a war zone might be a pretty fair life goal. This view emphasized the questionable value of staying alive, a crazy idea which led me to explore ideas like structural violence and warm peace later in life.

6. Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them, by (now Senator) Al Franken
When a comedy writer for Saturday Night Live came out with a political book...well, I don't remember why I saw the need to read this, but I'm so glad I did. It actually served as my introduction to blogosphere, netroots politics, because so much of Franken's political writing belongs on a blog, with links and source material. He actually composed a carefully reasoned, well-researched dismissal of Faux News, and his argument helped sway me farther to the left of U.S. politics.

7. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers
I don't remember when I first picked this book up, I just remember it as the only book I've ever read 4 times, cover to cover. Changed my life so much.

8. Racism Without Racists, by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
One or two academic books have to appear on this list. This one actually was assigned in probably my least favorite class at Tufts, but it was so educative that I won't hold the class against the book, which I enjoyed even at the time. Bonilla-Silva opened a world of blind, unspoken prejudice to me which I wasn't aware of, and through the course and this text in particular, I learned about structural inequality and the racism (and accompanying privilege) that exists beyond consciousness.

9. Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
Take one part dystopia in the style of Orwell or Huxley, mix well with social commentary unparalleled in anything I've read, and finish with the style of Douglas Adams and you've got Heinlein in a nutshell. It was the discussion of the human experience that caught my interest, and I took one quote out in particular which I still remember:

"I've found out why people laugh," the Martian immigrant explained. "They laugh because it hurts...because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting." He follows this thread on the next page: "I had thought--I had been told--that a 'funny' thing is a thing of goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to...The goodness is in the laughing. I grok [understand] it as a bravery...and a sharing...against pain and sorrow and defeat."

10. Death at an Early Age and Shame of the Nation, by Jonathan Kozol
This is why I want to work in education. Kozol's dramatic writings, first as a new teacher in Boston Public Schools and later as an experienced critic, opened my eyes beyond the inequality I saw growing up. He convinced me that education reform really is the civil rights struggle of my generation.

"Whatever It Takes"

I just finished "Whatever It Takes" by Paul Tough, an account of all the amazing things Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone have been doing to essentially save the children of Harlem from the cycle of poverty. It was really a fascinating read, kudos to Tough for an easy-to-read, well-researched account of one of the most innovative programs around the country.

The unique aspect of HCZ is not any particular program or strategy; it's the whole organization. The book describes it as the "conveyor belt model." Essentially, Canada starts with parents before they even have children with a program called Baby College. From there, HCZ has a program for kids and parents called the 3 year-old journey, and after that kids go straight into the pre-k program called Harlem Gems, and from there kids are expected to progress into the Harlem Promise Academy charter school, which is also operated by HCZ.

The most fitting metaphor for this approach to poverty reduction is one Canada uses about gravity and orbits. Day-to-day life in Harlem, he says, is the gravity that tries to pull kids down to Earth, but the solid start and consistent programming from HCZ is pushing kids up, up into orbit so that no amount of gravity can bring them down. It is still to be seen how much is needed in order for kids to get up and stay in orbit; HCZ has kids who make it through different parts of the conveyor belt, due to any number of reasons. What is the tipping point for them? Can they make it if at age 13, for example, they move to the Bronx and have to find a new high school without all the supports from HCZ?

I'm a huge fan of what Canada is doing in Harlem, for the most part. He is exactly right that inequality in school and the much-discussed "achievement gap" begins way before school does. Disparities in pre-k programs have been addressed federally by things like Headstart, but studies have shown the positive impact of Headstart starts to diminish as early as 2nd or 3rd grade. Constant, sustained effort is so important if we want to have an impact on poverty.

Nothing is perfect, of course, and the ability of Canada and HCZ to make a real impact in the Harlem community--an impact beyond the direct scope of its programs--the focus of its schools must change. In Tough's account, Canada and the HCZ Board discuss testing and test scores ad nauseaum. The way they measure success is simply by the numbers, and that has huge impacts on students. At one point the board encourages Canada to bring in KIPP to restructure the Promise Academy middle school, and although they end up going in a different direction, many of KIPP's main tenets find their way into the school. Especially the exclusive focus on testing.

A lot of things cant be measured by standardized tests. The NCLB-mandated tests that Canada and wealthy donors like Stan Druckenmiller use to evaluate the school's progress rarely even measure the things they are designed to measure. At one point Tough reports one teacher acknowledging this, explaining that the reason certain students don't do as well is that they don't know the tricks to test-taking that were certainly taught in my school and are taught in most middle and upper class schools. But what's the educational benefit of learning process of elimination and avoiding "red herring" trick answers? Is this cognitively significant? (NO!)

Likewise, by focusing so much time on test prep, other subjects lose out. Do inner city kids not deserve enrichment like music, art and history? Learning isn't only about tests, it isn't only about math and reading. School has to be about more than that, or kids will (and empirically do) simply shut down. Even if scores go up and the reputation of the school improves--so what? Is quality of education truly linked to reputation? When Tough relayed the heavy emphasis on testing and Canada and Druckenmiller's obsession over scores, I couldn't help but think that they were more interested in their reputations and the reputation of HCZ than they were about helping kids learn and grow into successful, productive adults.

Terri Grey was the founding principal of Promise Academy middle school, but she was quickly discarded after she refused to compromise her belief in comprehensive schooling in order to appease Dept. of Ed bigwigs or her bosses. She has since moved onto a more progressive school environment, discussed at length in a recent Ed Week piece. She has continued to focus on learning and not testing, which, to me, seems like the obvious thing to do.

Geoffrey Canada is really a hero for youth growing up in poverty, especially in Harlem. During his campaign for President, Barack Obama talked of a proposed federal effort to expand HCZ's key components to 20 cities around the country, and as a proud supporter of both Obama and Canada, I applauded this plan (and I still hope it happens). However, if the KIPP ethos of test first and test often continues to pervade these schools, kids will suffer. It's too bad that test scores are the only data most people look at when measuring student achievement, because learning is about so much more, and it's about a lot that simply cannot be measured.

The long-term focus of HCZ has a lot to say about other efforts to reduce poverty and raise student achievement around the country (and the world). I see an unspoken commentary on Teach For America, in fact. Canada and his organization recognize that two years in a child's life is the blink of an eye; it isn't long enough to make an impact, and it is nowhere near enough time to launch those kids into "orbit" and out of the cycle of poverty. TFA is a two-year resume builder. It isn't a substantive effort to address the achievement gap, it cant be unless it's dedicated to not only spending many years in classrooms, but to training teachers for more than a few weeks as well. (I apologize for the constant TFA-bashing, I just cant help it. I feel like the organization is brainwashing college kids and even policy makers, and it irks me to no end.)

The Ultimate in Tracking

Detroit is recognized nationally as a city that is nearing bottom--outlandishly high unemployment, rampant crime, and just awful public schools. Never having visited, I cant say more than that, but suffice it to say that Detroit's national reputation is nothing to brag about.

And now this, what I call in the title "The Ultimate in Tracking." Since I'm not sure I can improve on the utter idiocy encapsulated in the title, I'll just give you the link with the original title: Detroit schools offer class in how to work at Walmart.

Yes, you read that right. Four inner city public high schools in Detroit are collaborating with the retail giant to offer for-credit courses on "job-readiness training". Leaving aside the, ahem, questionable reputation Walmart enjoys nationally, the message of this kind of offering is blatantly offensive. Train inner city (almost entirely black and minority) kids to be cashiers and low-paid associates in Walmart stores as part of the school curriculum? When were maxims like 'aim high', 'follow your dreams' and 'anything's possible' replaced with the less inspiring 'take what you can get' and 'a paycheck's a paycheck' or, more damning, 'this is the best you can do'?

Also, we mustn't ignore the racialized undertones--perhaps overtones--of such a program. Do we see similar courses offered at suburban (read: white) schools? Of course not. Middle and upper class kids, first of all, don't want to work at Walmart, but more importantly, they and their parents are encouraged to imagine a better future. Detroit kids? They're being told that this is what's available, go to it. It's abominable, really.

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for job training and vocational education (I know that's a dirty word now--career preparation? what's the proper term nowadays?) in schools. I think it serves an important purpose; while I was in high school, the courses I took in English, history and even drama helped prepare me for my hoped-for career as an educator or policy analyst. There's a difference, of course. My courses helped prepare me for a career while also broadening my horizons, teaching me valuable life-skills and alighting a love of learning. This is what school should be all about--not training for a menial, low-paying job that's unlikely to lead anywhere. If schools impart one thing to their students, it should be encouraging that love of learning. Walmart does the opposite.

I've bloviated about my feelings enough; take a look at the Freep article, this segment in particular. It's just...unbelievable is an understatement.

Sean Vann, principal at Douglass [one of the four participating schools], said 30 students at that school will get jobs at Walmart. He said the program will allow students an opportunity to earn money and to be exposed to people from different cultures - since all of the stores are in the suburbs.

Follow me on Twitter! @WillEhrenfeld

Thanks to @arotherham for the link (and check out his blog)

An Argument Against Teach For America

As a college senior with a liberal arts degree coming and difficult job prospects, I, like many others, was interested in Teach For America (TFA) and similar programs. I applied for and interviewed for the New York City Teaching Fellowship, but without any skills in math or science I was rejected from that program and, I don't mind admitting it, after a phone interview I was rejected from TFA as well. I hope to assure you that this post isn't revenge-based or personal in any way, I had nothing but pleasant interactions with the folks at TFA, and I have lots of friends who are planning on becoming Corps members in the fall. I wish them nothing but good luck.

I have three main arguments to make against Teach For America and imitator programs: the first is about the schools where corps members are placed and those students, the second is about teacher preparation, and the third is about effects on current teachers and schools. But first, I want to make a thematic, more broad-based argument about the fundamental beliefs espoused by TFA.

When you listen to Wendy Kopp and others in the braintrust of TFA talk about what they seek to accomplish, rarely is the word "education" mentioned. Their buzzword of choice is "leadership". Some have argued that TFA doesn't really believe in education. I wouldn't go that far, but their approach implies a fundamental disrespect for the teaching profession. The clear implication is that current teachers are inadequate, poorly-educated themselves or, to co-opt some of TFA's language, not truly leaders. As a result, TFA offers its corps members as an alternate to regularly-trained teachers.

But, the really important thing here, the really offensive bit about TFA, is that they only train corps members for about two months before thrusting them into a classroom--in a poor, high-need school, at that. Regular M.A.T. programs last at least one academic year, include practicums in classrooms and involve apprenticeships, at least in some programs. TFA only trains their corps members for a brief period, and as a result they aren't as well-prepared as they could be. Furthermore, think about the language that's used by TFA: the new teachers they employ are called "corps members" instead of teachers. Why?

Effects on Students

This follows smoothly into my first substantive argument: Teach For America corps members are poorly prepared to do the job they are assigned and, as a result, students suffer. This isn't to besmirch the fine young people who participate in TFA--in fact they are often very smart, capable, and motivated. But to effectively teach in a high-need school, experience is necessary. Talk to some older teachers, and the consensus is clear: years of experience are required before you become even an adequate educator. In the first years of being a classroom teacher, you're learning about classroom management, curriculum design, pedagogical methods, and navigating a school culture. For TFA teachers, add the element of adapting to a new city/culture and your life becomes so harried as to be nearly impossible.

TFA is designed in such a way as to make life difficult, not only for teachers but for students. Teaching is a demanding profession by its nature, and it is not for the faint of heart. Additionally, teaching is high pressure--no one is there to catch and correct your mistakes, so if you fail to teach your kids how to read, that's it. You may have permanently screwed up some kids lives. Experience as an assistant or apprentice teacher is essential to success as a first year solo teacher, but TFA has no patience for this kind of preparation.

The Best Way to Prepare for a Career in Education

If you are a college grad from a place like Tufts or, hell, even our pretentious neighbor to the south, Harvard, pursuing a career in education is admirable and, outside of Teach For America, relatively rare. 11% of Ivy League seniors applied to the program this year--over 35,000 applications were received for positions starting in Fall 2009 (source: USA Today). For everyone planning an entry into the field, teaching is something that must be learned. Even those with extensive tutoring or "leadership" experience will have an adjustment period when s/he first moves into a classroom and is left responsible for 20-35 students.

As a college senior in just this situation, I want to share my own perspective. As I said, I'm not yet a teacher and have limited direct experience in education, so take my ideas with a grain of salt, certainly. In any case: to be an effective teacher, especially without graduate school, young teachers need to learn from those around them. In the schools where TFA members are typically placed, there is a dearth of experienced teachers and, generally, a pretty lousy infrastructure. The opportunities to learn from colleagues are limited. If you, like me, want to be an effective teacher in your first year, the ideal situation is to work at a really successful school and learn how it works. Being at a suburban or independent urban school doesn't fit within the philanthropic ethos of our generation, but seeing and being part of something that works is hugely valuable for aspiring educators.

The idea that you (or I) could go into a school with few resources and inadequate funding, a place that chews teachers up and spits them up--to think that a 22-year-old kid could show up in September with no training and really thrive is ludicrous. Working in a school that works and eventually moving into higher-need schools makes more sense from every perspective. Experience is uncontroversially important in education, so the spitting in its face by TFA is particularly galling.

TFA's Effect on Teachers and Unions

TFA placed its first corps members in Boston in 2009, which led to this reaction from Boston Teachers Union president Richard Stutman: "We are not disturbed but furious that the department would lay off teachers with excellent credentials and bring in people with no experience and little training." He added, "They are sending a very bad message to teaching staff."

In Detroit, which also hosted corps members for the first time in 2009, teacher's union president Keith Johnson called them "educational mercenaries." Teachers, almost all better qualified than TFA corps members, are being laid off and then replaced by union-busting kids who have no intention of staying in the job for more than two years. It's wrong, it's unjust, and Stutman and Johnson have very legitimate grudges as expressed above (source: Boston Globe).


People have been making fun of TFA and Wendy Kopp, who founded the organization as part of her senior thesis, as far back as 1994. In A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the phenomenal memoir written by Dave Eggers, he quotes a segment from the upstart Might Magazine, which Eggers co-founded, which pans Kopp and TFA pretty accurately and intelligently. It is a satirical profile of "Cindy Kahn," who is identified as the founder of "Streets For America."

"Streets For America, an idea born from Kahn's senior thesis at Harvard, is now a multibillion dollar nonprofit corporation. Placing recent college grads on the streets of America's most dangerous cities, the program's purpose is to reinvigorate the country's police force with fresh faces, open minds and good breeding. 'All the regular cops seemed to be so stupid and ugly,' says Kahn. 'It was time to bring some class to law enforcement. You can bet hardened criminals will sit up and take notice if the person who's cuffing them is well-dressed and, say, has a master's from Yale.'"

The idea that recent college grads with no experience can teach in high-need schools is just about as appalling as the thought that these same young people could up and become police officers. I'm proud to say I've come to the conclusion that I am not qualified or prepared to teach in an urban school yet, and I'm pursuing alternate opportunities next year.


I'll leave you with an interesting proposal from Ira David Socol , a noted critic of TFA. Not my advocacy, but something to think about:

"I say, over and over, that if TFA wants to prove itself, replace the faculties of the schools in Scarsdale, NY or Greenwich, CT, or at Groton and St. Bernard’s, with TFA corps members. And let those teachers – holding their current salaries – go to the TFA placements. If TFA improves the education in those wealthy places, it will have proved itself. If the teachers from those top schools have better impacts than TFA teachers do in the impoverished districts, we’ll know that better teacher training, better teacher pay, and redistributing resources is the way to go."

New Directions

Hi, faithful readers.

I want to make an announcement here: up until this point, this blog had been serving as a sort of repository for published pieces of mine or about me, without a lot of unique content. Moving forward, I'm changing this blog into one focused more directly on educational issues.

I want to focus on education, both domestic and international. I'll include links, opinion pieces, independent research that I conduct, and lots more. I hope you all enjoy, and stay tuned for a piece coming up.

For now, I'll include links to some of the most interesting education resources on the web and good articles I've come across recently.

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This is an ongoing debate between Debbie Meier and Diane Ravitch, both of whom are fantastic writers and speakers and who have great things to say about education reform. See their blog on Education Week.

New York Times' piece on the destruction of higher education in Haiti following the earthquake: "Education Was Also Leveled by Quake in Haiti"

Roundtable on Charters and Equality from Democracy Now.

In Schools We Trust?

Below is a reprint of the op-ed I co-wrote about education reform. It was published on Feb. 5 in the Tufts Daily. Link.

In schools we trust?
By Will Ehrenfeld and Shana Hurley

Published: Friday, February 5, 2010

Below the radar, using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are making radical changes to public education. They have established a grant called the "Race to the Top Fund" that offers competitive grants to "encourage and reward states that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform." The Fund is a $4.35 billion investment incentive for significant reforms in education policy. Among the improvements sought after, Obama and Duncan are planning on removing the state charter school caps and mandating the inclusion of students' test scores in teacher evaluations.

During last week's State of the Union Address to Congress, Obama heightened his pitch for education reform and reinforced his commitment to fundamentally changing the way schools function. "The idea here is simple," the President said. "Instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success. Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform." The administration is proposing an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, such as changing school financing to reward schools based on academic progress rather than the number of students within the district.

Even before Congress had considered the changes to No Child Left Behind, the impacts of Obama's education plans are already experienced in Massachusetts. In January, lawmakers passed a bill that expands charter school access in Massachusetts. Governor Deval Patrick affirmed that the education bill is "the beginning of the end of the achievement gap." There was, however, disagreement among Democrat legislators who were unsatisfied by the authorization of changes in teacher contracts outside of collective bargaining, the lack of funding provisions in the bill and the weight given to the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exam as a factor in determining which schools are to be considered underperforming. Lawmakers were also frustrated by the timeline of the bill. The bill was passed quickly to accommodate Massachusetts's Race to the Top Fund application deadlines. Because of this, important stakeholders felt they were left out of the process.

Though the increased attention for education reform is certainly laudable, there are also matters worth considering. Rushing to accommodate the top-down pressure for policy change is not without risk. There is no consensus over what educational success really looks like. There is only a broad agreement over the need for reform. However, exactly in what form that change should manifest -- and how should that change be measured -- is extremely controversial.

Scholars of education, parents and school professionals consistently debate the goals of schooling in America. To assume that all well-educated students can also perform well on a standardized test is not a widely accepted assertion; however, the White House plans on using to supposition as high performance will now correlate to an increase in funding.

Although a benchmark of the new policy is to remove the charter school cap, it is unclear that the expansion of charter schools will increase student achievement even if defining achievement through test scores. Charter schools have existed in the United States for a mere 20 years and in the more than 3,400 charters currently operating around the country, the report card is mixed. Extensive research of charter schools has not found that they provide significantly better educational outcomes than traditional public schools. So why is the White House pushing to expand charter schools? What about the needs of traditional schools?

Reforming public education is a project that has been taken on by nearly every president and Congress in recent history. From desegregation in the 1950s and '60s to No Child Left Behind up to the present Race to the Top contest, many approaches have been proposed, some have been implemented, and yet there is still a fervent desire for change. While no consensus exists on the path forward for public education reform, now is one of the most exciting moments in the history of American education. With a wide array of innovation occurring, options are expansive and few are without controversy.

The Tufts Democrats will host the fifth annual Issues of the Future Symposium: Education Reform on Saturday, Feb. 6 at 12 p.m. in the Alumnae Lounge. Deborah Meier, the founder of multiple schools, the award-winning author and the recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Grant, will provide the keynote speech, followed by two panels featuring leaders of public education in Boston and nationally.

The first panel, examining different educational models and best practices in public schooling, will feature three education professionals with fantastic, varied experience and backgrounds. Among these speakers are Kevin Brill, Larry Myatt and Alan Safran. Brill is the current Associate Head of School at Fenway High School, an innovative public school located across the street from Fenway Park. He has experience teaching in both the United Kingdom and the United States, and will be presenting with Myatt, the founder of Fenway High School. Myatt co-founded Boston's Center for Collaborative Education and serves as a Convener for The Forum for Education and Democracy. Safran, Executive Director of Media and Technology Charter High (MATCH) Charter Public High School in Boston. MATCH is nationally known as a leader in no-excuses schooling, with rigid discipline and extensive one-on-one and small-group tutoring helping them to achieve exceptionally high MCAS scores and plaudits from politicians and educators alike. Each of these men will provide their unique perspectives on education reform through a discussion of what works and what doesn't as well as the way forward for reform.

The second panel will consider some of the challenges, political and practical, of school reform. It will feature Josh Biber, Teach for America (TFA) Boston's Executive Director and Richard Stutman, President of the Boston Teachers Union. The two have fought publicly over contract issues and TFA's expansion into the Boston area, but share a common desire to improve public education. Joining them will be Dr. Tony Pierantozzi, Superintendent of Somerville Public Schools, who will provide insight about the diverse community in our backyard. With only one charter school at present, Somerville provides an interesting case study on which to consider the opportunities and challenges posed by the introduction of new school models into a community. Finally, Tufts' very own faculty member, Professor of Education Steve Cohen, will fill out this panel as a moderator, contributing his wealth of experience and knowledge to what we know will be a very lively discussion.

To consider these issues and others related to school reform, the Tufts Democrats are inviting the community to the Issues of the Future Symposium.

Thoughts on Israeli Politics

I'm just back from 10 days in Israel, and I have a lot to think about. I'll try to update a few times over the next few weeks as thoughts come up, but this first one is going to be short because, even though it's 9:40 on the East coast, it's 7 hours ahead in Israel and I'm tired.

We talked a lot about Israel being the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, and that's certainly the case presently. It also has the most diverse and successful economy, vibrant politics and political culture. In comparative politics, Israel is often considered to be an "ethnic democracy," which by definition it is. It was established as a Jewish state for the Jewish people, but what I've learned over the past few days has entrenched my view that ethnic democracy is a contradiction in terms. In order to have an explicitly ethnic state, Israel has been forced not only to encourage immigration from around the world and promote aliyah (diaspora Jews moving to Israel), but also to expel and reject outsiders to a significant extent. Both inclusion and exclusion play a role.

Definitionally, democracy requires an embrace of pluralism and diversity. If different backgrounds, opinions and values aren't important to the state and the population, neither is democracy. In Israel, which is a state with significant diversity, most citizens are only interested in Jewish diversity in their explicitly Jewish state. Arabs, Druze, and other minorities are locked into their status as minorities regardless of increasing demographic change. In a few years, if the current trends hold, Arabs will comprise a majority in the land of Israel. This means, essentially, that in a few years an Arab--a non-Jew--could be the Prime Minister of Israel.

One of the Israeli soldiers on our trip, Mattan, suggested a Constitutional amendment allowing only a Jew to be the Prime Minister. This anti-democratic reform would ensure Jewish domination, even if Jews become the minority in the land of Israel. If this position were widely held or enacted, it would mark the end of true liberal democracy in Israel.

In short, ethnic democracy cannot exist. There is an inherent disconnect between pluralism and an ethnic state, which means Israel has to make a choice in the future.