What follows is my attempt to capture his comments and the information he provided, with occasional interjections of my own thoughts or questions in parentheses and italics.

The big theme for 2012 education funding is uncertainty, as so much depends on the fate of tax-increases going before the voters in November.  If the measure sponsored by Governor Jerry Brown passes, then funding for state education may increase by about $5 billion – but none of it will reach the classroom.  Governor Brown has proposed using any additional funding to pay down deferrals already in place in K-12.  The legislature has managed to balance budgets in past years by keeping certain programs rather than cutting them, but funding them with deferrals, a promise to pay later.  Current deferrals are in the neighborhood of 20% of the education budget.  So if the budget allows for any increased spending this year, it will probably go to “pay down the wall of debt” (Simitian attributes that phrase to Governor Brown).  It’s time to start catching up on our obligations.

The tax measure we’ll be voting on in November results from California’s two-thirds requirement on votes for new taxes.  Though the state legislature and Governor’s office are controlled by Democratic majorities, they are unable to come up with the two-thirds vote to raise taxes and bring in additional revenues.  Polling indicates that the voters are likely to support Brown’s plan, but it remains to be seen if there will be competing ballot measures with the same goal.  History and conventional wisdom suggest that competing tax measures will cancel each other out.  One of the noteworthy efforts underway is spearheaded by Kathleen Munger.   Brown’s proposal for temporary tax increases:

• 0.5 cent sales tax (4 years)
• 1% income tax increase for earners over $250,000
• 1.5% income tax increase for earners over $300,000
• 3% income tax increase for earners over $500K

Without this measure, the budget will stay on the path of further deferrals, plus a 5-6% cut.  Proposition 98 was supposed to provide a guaranteed minimum for education budgets, but when budget cuts are enacted, education takes a hit from other funding streams that do go to schools but are not covered by the proposition.  Has the proposition outlived its usefulness?  It has been around for more than a decade and is becoming less relevant.  The legislature has suspended it twice in the past several years by two-thirds vote, and the formulas are a little too flexible to provide a true guarantee.

How should districts plan their budgets in these circumstances?  After all, budgets are planned in the spring, passed in the summer, and the election is in November.  Simitian expects that will vary from district to district, with some choosing a worst-case-scenario approach to planning and others taking a chance.

Brown has also suggested simplifying the state’s school funding formula, phasing in a new approach over five years.  We have many different categorical funds, which Brown would reduce, though there would still be a weighted student formula.  There are two types of school districts in the state:  basic aid, and revenue limit.  Basic aid districts, which fund education almost entirely out of local property taxes, are likely to see significant cuts under this plan, because if categorical funds are eliminated, these districts receive almost no money from the state.  (Basic aid districts do not receive a per-pupil allocation).  Revenue limit districts may or may not benefit, depending on the profile or demographics of their student body.  If they have many students in poverty or many English language-learners, they’re likely to benefit from this approach.  If they have few, then Brown’s plan will reduce funding for them.  The goal is to stop sending as much categorical funding to places where it’s less needed.

Simitian also described plans to eliminate or suspend certain mandates from the state in order to increase district flexibility.  The state will save money by not requiring and so many mandates it can only partially fund, but the state will fully fund those state mandates that districts choose to abide by.  Special education funding and mandates are not among those being considered optional or flexible.

Senator Simitian mentioned that constituents have asked about the possibility of weighting the formula for cost of living.  Employee pay and overall cost of living varies significantly across regions, but the state formula has no allowances for those differences, and apparently will not in the foreseeable future.

Education budgets will also be affected by the elimination of redevelopment agencies (happening next month), as revenues that previously went to these agencies will in part reach school districts.  For some revenue limit districts, this will be slightly good news – not a larger budget, but less of it deferred.  For some revenue limit districts, this change will push them into basic aid status.  For basic aid districts, there may be a slight increase in funding as a portion of the money that was sent to the redevelopment agency will now go the districts.

Then Simitian brought up the topic of charter schools, though he joked that “This is the part of the meeting where I’d like to say ‘Thanks for coming!’”  Governor Brown had direct personal experience in starting and providing some direction for two charter schools when he was the mayor of Oakland, which means that he brings a bit more first-hand knowledge of the challenges in public education.  (Brown’s recent State of the State speech reflected some practical wisdom, according to Anthony Cody and Diane Ravitch).  Simitian finds the contentious debate around charters quite “disheartening.”  He is not surprised by the friction, however.  When the laws changed in the late 1990′s, the number of charter applications jumped, and right at a time when school funding was being cut due to declining enrollment, followed shortly by economic decline.  Simitian’s view: “I would like to make all charters work for all schools in all districts.”  Simitian and Assemblymember Julia Brownley proposed bills around charter management and governance last year, and managed to build some consensus around them (including the California Charter School Association).  Simitian’s bill held charters to certain academic standards.  Brownley’s bill applied the Brown Act (state law requiring open meetings) to charter schools.  Governor Brown did not support the bills.  Simitian describes Brown as someone who is hard to classify, who knows his own mind and has a wide variety of experience.  As a first year governor (again), he’s not in a rush to tackle issues in the same way as Brownley and Simitian (both termed out this year).  (I may have missed something in Simitian’s comments, but it appears these charter school bills were held over and should head back throught the legislature this year).

School transportation costs – right now, most school transportation programs have been cut or are in jeopardy due to budget cuts.  Simitian says there will be interest in revisiting this issue in legislature.

Transitional kindergarten – Simitian sponsored a law that passed in 2010, requiring incoming kindergarten students to be five years old by September 1, replacing the Dec. 2 cutoff.  In researching and proposing the law, Simitian was convinced that arguably one-quarter of students in kindergarten are too young, and as a result, we have disproportionate number of grade retentions and special education referrals for those students.  So it’s economically and educationally wise to defer their entry into school.  (With 6 million students in the state, that means 1.5 million students started too soon).  A sudden shift would mean a $700 million savings for each year that the smaller cohort moves through the system, and the state could put the money into transitional kindergarten.  In 13 years, we’ll face a question of how to fund transitional kindergarten without the undersized cohort moving through the system.  At least, that was the idea.  Governor Brown is proposing cutting funding for transitional kindergarten in order to offset other liabilities.  Simitian’s position is that the law will not change even if the funding does, and even if Brown is proposing defunding the program, it is law and it cannot be “line-item vetoed.”  He hopes Brown’s proposal will disappear soon, because the administration has not been clear enough about what they intend, and he doesn’t think they’ll be able to go through with it.  We’ll end up with months’ worth of unnecessary stress and debates. (The situation has caused some serious disruptions in districts – including San Francisco Unified; you can read more on the issue at TOP-Ed).

Question from audience: revenue limit districts suffer more from deferrals than basic aid districts; isn’t that inequitable and illegal?  Simitian says yes it’s inequitable, and probably not illegal.  The Governor’s proposal is intended to address those deferrals – but again, only if the tax plan passes.

Question from the audience: Brown’s tax proposal is not for education, but for general funds.  Can he make an appeal for education voters if the money won’t really help enough for education?  Simitian says Brown’s response would probably be that without this measure the situation will be worse.

Regarding Brown’s State of the State speech and its comments on reducing testing in the school system, Simitian agrees with Brown that we need timely access to testing data so that we get it to teachers, parents, and students at a time when it can be used.  (Nevermind the quality of the test?  As a teacher and as a parent, I have no use for the current crop of state tests.  I can see where they might provide districts, counties, or the state with some minimally useful information).  This is a governor who is “skeptical at best” about the value of data.  Simitian thinks data is essential to inform good policy.  (I think they’re talking about different uses of tests, with Brown picking up on the limitations of the tests at the school, classroom, or student level, and Simitian possibly more interested in the state level).  Simitian relates a couple of his conversations with Brown that revealed a difference of opinions on data.  Simitian points out that this attitude about data has played a role in this administration’s disinterest so far in Race to the Top, and NCLB waivers.  (And I say, “bravo!” Both programs reflect the worst type of federal meddling, coercing our compliance with ill-conceived policies in exchange for an amount of money that sounds dramatic but will have very little benefit for schools or students.  States that won Race to the Top grants have not reaped great benefits, and Tennessee has demonstrated the pitfalls of a hasty alignment with lousy federal directives).

Question from audience: why can’t all schools have the flexibility that charters have?  Simitian notes there is increased interest from the state in expanding local control – not coincidentally, because of the shortage of funding.  The key will be to hold on to control when funding improves.

Question about Common Core Standards implementation: Simitian reports no legislative activity around Common Core. The action will be at State Board of Education and California Department of Education.

Pension reform: Simitian is on the conference committee on that issue.  Simitian has opposed “pension-spiking” practices and has tried to eliminate or reform them, but his efforts have ended up linked to other issues in legislation, and have therefore been slowed.  Reform should be fair, affordable and sustainable, because if we reach a crisis then the solution will be hasty and with less attention to those characteristics.

Other tax reforms: Prop 13 split roll?  Oil-severance?  Simitian predicts that these types of measures will crop up if Brown’s measure fails.

Looking further ahead, Simitian has reached his Senate term limits.  Someone in the audience wants to know about the outlook for the future as we lose an influential advocate for education.  Simitian says that he thinks the state’s voters and legislators are increasingly aware of the urgency of reinvesting in California’s educational system.  It’s important for advocates to fight through the fatigue and carry on.  Especially in a term-limit environment, there are always new legislators to whom the case needs to be made, and whose own learning we must contribute to.

I hope you’ll share your reactions and thoughts to these video clips here on InterACT – agree or disagree.

In this first clip, Ravitch considers the unfortunate idea behind NCLB – that eventually, every American public school would be labeled a failure.  She also considers “parent trigger” laws, and suggests that public schools are a public institution, not established and maintained for the sole benefit of the current students, but for the good of society overall and all of the students yet to come.  Why then, should a majority of current (and soon-to-be) parent community have the right to make a decision about potentially drastic changes to an institution that belongs to all of us?

In the second clip, Ravitch looks at the deprofessionalization of education – the sadly popular notion that TFA interns or other alternative-route teachers are good enough to be the classroom teacher of record with so little training, and that principals and superintendents need not have a background in teaching in order to lead effectively in a teaching organization.  When teachers protest these ideas, especially through their unions, the unions themselves are subject to attack for obstructing progress – nevermind that the leading states and nations all have strong teachers unions, while the lowest performing states, generally, are non-union or have weaker unions.

State Capitol Building (photo by the author)

Today in Sacramento (beginning at 9:30 a.m.), Accomplished California Teachers (ACT) will co-present “Teaching Quality and California’s Future” – an event sponsored by the Stuart Foundation and organized by ACT, the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ), and Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy Equity (SCOPE).  We are excited to see months of planning culminating in what we hope will be an informative and useful event for our audience.

I’ll try to post short, timely updates on some of the highlights and takeaways of the day, with more of the materials available online soon, here, or at the ACT website.

You can keep apprised of the event and catch some ideas and links by using Twitter.  The main event hashtag will be #CAteaching.  Tweets from the event will come from the following accounts (that we know of):

@AcmpCA_Teachers 

@scope_stanford

@alicemercer

You might also want to follow event participants as indicated below in the event overview.

Event highlights will include:

State Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Torlakson will make an announcement and offer opening remarks.

The Bay Area New Millennium Initiative (a project of the Center for Teaching Quality) will present their work on early -career teachers looking at reforms to the profession that would help retain teachers and offer greater variety of roles and responsibilities for teacher leaders.

Anthony Cody (@anthonycody)and I will present ACT’s teacher evaluation report, and argue for a new way of thinking about teacher evaluation – as a robust, ongoing and growth-oriented process that improves all teachers, rather than a bureaucratic procedure focused on compliance and baseline quality control.

Julia E. Koppich and Daniel Humphrey will present their research on peer evaluation in two California school districts.  Their findings indicate that evaluation of teachers by teachers produces some important benefits in both the quality and quantity of the evaluative feedback, and even in the quality of the labor-management relationships between local teachers associations and district administrations.

John Fensterwald (@jfenster)will moderate some discussion and Q&A with the presenters above.  Then, our expert discussant panel will take the stage to react and respond to the presentations.  The participants in this panel are Shannan Brown (2011 CA Teacher of the Year and president of the San Juan Teachers Association), Richard Carranza (Deputy Superintendent, SFUSD), Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes (author of teacher evaluation legislation, AB-5 from last year), and Eric Heins (@ericheins, Vice-President of the California Teachers Association).

Linda Darling-Hammond (photo by the author)

Linda Darling-Hammond will wrap up the event with some final thoughts and reflections on the teaching profession in California.

with Diane Ravitch at the SOS March, July 2011, Washington, D.C.

And then, to cap off the day, several hours later many of the same cast will attend a speech by Diane Ravitch at the Sacramento Convention Center.  All in all, it promises to be a dynamic day for education policy discussion and advocacy in California’s capitol.  (Sorry there aren’t many links in this post – stay tuned for updates, though!)

• The Gates Foundation-funded Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project continues to update its research findings, and continues to argue that standardized tests and value-added measurement would be useful in teacher evaluations.  (Washington Post article).
• A study by Harvard and Columbia researchers uses value-added measures to quantify the effects of good teaching in various outcomes for students, well into adulthood. (NY Times article)

A friend of mine sent a Facebook message this morning to ask what I thought of the latter study, but let me say a bit about each of them.  In both cases, I remain skeptical regarding the use of standardized tests to suggest so much about students and teachers.  In the MET project, I actually like much of what I’ve seen reported and summarized regarding their work.  We should definitely pursue ongoing rather than intermittent evaluations, the involvement of multiple evaluators, and try to find ways to include student feedback.  If reformers and politicians would compromise on the use of standardized tests, we would overcome the main policy obstacle in teacher evaluation reform efforts and find much to agree on.  I share Randi Weingarten’s concern, however, that as long as we see anyone coming to this debate with a mindset about ferreting out the bad teachers instead of supporting all teachers, we have work to do to shift that frame.  Her written statement was quoted as follows in the Washington Post (article linked above):  “Until we make a commitment to develop evaluation systems that are first and foremost about continuous improvement and professional growth, we will continue to struggle in our efforts to provide every child with a high-quality education.”

As for the economic analysis of “high value-added teachers” and “low value-added teachers” – yawn.  Did we need another study suggesting that kids who perform better in some measure of academic skills end up earning more money?  Did we need a study to show that some teachers’ students produce better test scores than others and that better test scores correlate with higher earnings, etc.?  These analyses offer little if any guidance for what to do with actual teachers in actual schools.  They try to make their findings sound more significant by multiplying out the variations over decades.  Having that “high value-added teacher” helps a student earn $9,000 more in their working years, so… $9,000 divided by forty-plus years of work, divided by forty-something working weeks in a year, divided by five days per week… we’re talking about loose coins here if we work the math in the opposite direction.  But no – the authors then multiply the effect by all the students in the class and make it look really huge.  Hey, let’s assume retirement age goes up in the future and just throw in another 5 or 10 % on top of that, while we’re at it.

Sadly, if you read the NY Times article, you see the predictable call to make it easier or quicker to fire the weak teachers.  Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of fantasizing about terminations, some fiscal conservatives out there saw these types of studies and said, “You know, if we spent a little more money right now trying to improve the quality of teaching for every teacher, in every classroom, we’d be multiplying these effects by millions of teachers and hundreds of millions of students over the next several decades and we’d be adding billions of dollars in value!  Let’s do it!”

(Note: My reactions to the NY Times article were shaped in part by seeing the reactions of Sarah Goldrick-Rab, Liam Goldrick, Bruce Baker, and Cedar Reiner earlier this morning – so, credit where it’s due!).

photo by the author

• The most exciting part of my edublogging year was probably the Save Our Students March and Call to Action in Washington, D.C.  I was able to be in Washington that week because of the 2011 conference for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, but I managed to divide my time a little bit.  I composed Sending Out an S.O.S. more quickly than anything I’ve ever written of similar length, and posted it within minutes of leaving my hotel room to take in the rally.  I concluded that post as follows:

President Obama and Secretary Duncan have failed as educational leaders.  I’ll offer credit where its due on some initiatives relating to technology, community colleges, and preserving teacher jobs during a difficult economy, but I refuse to lower my expectations for our students and our public education system as a whole.

Gentlemen, we have assessed your education priorities and policies for over two years, and found your efforts are below proficient.  There is a higher standard, and the stakes are high.  Considering that you have the power in this situation, and the pulpit from which to demand the changes we really need, the buck stops with you, but you refuse to engage in an honest evaluation of your failures and correct your course of action.  I understand that; you’re politicians.  That is why people are sending out an S.O.S.  The improvement of public education depends on applying political pressure against you, because dialogue has proven fruitless.

See you on the Ellipse.

•  Another stroke of good fortune in 2011 was being invited to address a meeting of the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission, which convened in San Jose on April 21st.  My remarks to the commission were not composed for the purpose of the blog, but I ended up with enough material for two blog posts: Equity and Excellence, Part One, and Part Two.

•  A blog post I’m particularly proud of came in response to a thoroughly misguided policy in a pair of Orange County high schools that used color-coded identification cards and a variety of incentives and shamings to try to motivate students to score well on state tests.  Eugenic Legacies Still Influence Education was the longest and most thoroughly researched blog post I’ve ever composed, and it generated the most comments as well.  I almost didn’t write it:

“I’d have thought the policies were so obviously wrong, so insensitive, so counterproductive and so poorly aligned with what we know about motivation and performance, that it would almost be unnecessary to write a blog post about the incident.  I’m glad that Anthony Cody did, but I didn’t think I’d have much more to contribute.  Until I mentioned eugenics – first on Anthony’s blog, then on Twitter.  In a series of exchanges with someone I respect, I was repeatedly challenged on my claim that this policy had connections to eugenics.  So here we go.”

•  The most read InterACT post of 2011 was Common Core Confusion: ASCD Edition – which received a nice boost in readership from ASCD Smartbrief.  However, months later, I see that post and its predecessor, Common Core Confusion, still showing up in our daily and weekly blog traffic.  I attribute that fact entirely to interest in the topic rather than any particular insights I’ve offered.  Common Core standards, implementation, and assessment will also be the subject of my first blog post in 2012, I anticipate, when I have the time to synthesize a wealth of information and opinions that arose in an education policy summit I attended a couple weeks ago.

• Another significant education policy issue this year was NCLB waivers, which prompted me to write Duncan Seeks Cheap Conversions – “In recent news, we learn that Duncan may be willing to waive NCLB provisions and penalties, in return for states’ compliance with his favored policies.  I thought Race to the Top was an overreach, but this time, Duncan’s move brought quick criticism from wider quarters.”  

• Federal policy relating to school turnarounds did some damage here in California, which I discussed in The Illogic of School Turnaround Models – “San Francisco will implement an unsanctioned approach to an illogical policy that replaces most local decision making to conform to inflexible federal policies.  It makes little sense educationally, but this policy couldn’t be any more politicized.  It might appeal to some of President Obama’s supporters in the so-called education reform camp, but it didn’t please civil rights leaders and organizations, and I doubt it’s going to win over many voters who are just wondering why the their kids’ principals and teachers had to be replaced in an arbitrary manner.”

• The political and economic climate around the country put unions in the news quite a bit this year, leading me to address the topic twice.  First, I recalled my great-uncle Phil and wrote Union Proud, and then I joined in EduSolidarity with some other bloggers and wrote Why Teachers Like Me Support Unions.

• In What’s Missing in Discussions of Children’s Interests? I wrote: “Another simplification I hear and read often is that school reform must be carried out with the interests of children placed ahead of the interests of adults.  Most recently, I found it (and commented on it) in a blog post by John Merrow.  What a beautiful sentiment!  You can’t argue against that, can you?  Well… I’m going to.”  

• Maybe 2012 will see some improvement in education reporting.  I was not in a charitable mood regarding education journalists when I wrote Appeal to Education Writers: Evaluate Opinions – “It’s been said that everyone is entitled to their opinion, and you’re entitled to report it.  But they’re not entitled to their own facts, and it would help if you would report which side has an opinion backed by facts.”

• Back in 2010, I found myself repeatedly writing about the application of business and management principles in education; I guess 2011 was the year I dabbled in law a bit.  First, I imagined a court case tackling the issue of value-added measurements used in teacher evaluations, and wrote the cross-examination I would love to hear some day: Turning the Tables: VAM on Trial.  Then I read through portions of the judge’s ruling in the case of Lobato v. Colorado, and hoped that the implications of that ruling for similar cases in California might finally mean that it’s Time to Throw Money at the Problem of debilitating education budgets.

• On a lighter note, I put out a small wager to Checker Finn this year, responding to his Half-Baked Teaching Analogy, I but never heard back from him.  No deadline, so I’ll repeat the offer and anyone interested can click on the link for details: “Mr. Finn, I feel a little bad for critiquing your analogy so thoroughly, so here’s an offer in case I’m off-base: if you can find a classroom teacher who will send me a guest blog post preferring your analogy of teaching and learning over mine, then lunch is on me next time you’re at Stanford, and I’ll have learned a culinary lesson.”

Thanks for reading, and come on back in 2012!  Happy New Year!

Kelly Kovacic

Continuing to wrap up 2011 at InterACT, today I highlight a few of the great posts that Kelly Kovacic contributed this year.  (Prior installments include best guest posts and best posts by Martha Infante).  As a result of her time as a California Teacher of the Year, Kelly has kept quite busy not only here in California, but also participating in national, and even international events.  While the pace of InterACT posts has understandably dropped off, it’s always a pleasure to see what Kelly has to offer, whether as a result of her leadership and travels, or just from her perspective as a classroom teacher.

Let’s start off with one of those posts that offer Kelly’s insights relating to her Teacher of the Year experience.  The title is “Learning After You Know It All” – and the topic…

[It] was quite remarkable to attend the recent International Summit on the Teaching Profession in New York City where a global collection of ministers of education, labor organization representatives, and teachers sat side-by-side to listen, discuss, and learn. This was the first time such a summit had been held in the United States.  Delegations from Belgium, Brazil, Canada, The People’s Republic of China, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Slovenia, and United Kingdom joined our home-grown delegation to explore four main topics: Teacher Recruitment and Preparation; Development, Support and Retention of Teachers, Teacher Evaluation and Compensation; and Teacher Engagement in Education.

Kelly’s most read post of the year was “Open Letter to the Public Education Budget Cutters” – which, surprisingly generated no comments for all of those page views. (It’s not too late to comment, by the way).  Perhaps that’s just a blog idiosyncrasy, but I prefer to think that Kelly’s post was just so clear and articulate that there wasn’t much left to say.  It’s important to note that Kelly works at a charter school that has produced some wonderful results for English language learners, students living in poverty, and first generation to attend college.  However, she doesn’t hold up her school’s success as a way to beat up on other schools that haven’t been able to produce similar results.  She writes:

We definitely need more vision and innovative programs to improve those schools that are in trouble.  The success of the students at my school, who all live below the poverty line, is proof that such vision and innovation can and do make a difference.  Schools in trouble deserve immediate, bold, and surgically precise help.  But, it is time to tone down the largely uninformed noise about a complete education system that is “broken.”  It is time to stress and build on the positive; to recognize the excellence that is taking place in most classrooms throughout our nation.  It is time to start treating teachers like valued professional partners, not targets.  It is time to take a courageous stand against rumors, innuendo, and rhetoric.  It is time to support, not attack, public education.

I’m also glad that Kelly took the time to explore an important topic in forward-looking education discussions, in the post, “My teacher… the computer?”  The adoption and implementation will certainly change the way we educate our students and ourselves.  I have no doubt that in another fifteen or twenty years we’ll look back at a system that will seem excessively rigid, linear, and homogeneous; however, Kelly’s conclusion is spot-on:

As we envision schools for the 21^st Century, technology will undoubtedly play an important and integral role.  But, it will be the 21^st Century teacher in the classroom – providing guidance, a passion for learning, an understanding of what is necessary to move a student to the next level of inquiry and excellence, and an unwavering belief in each student’s potential – that will continue to make the ultimate difference.

Martha Infante preparing to speak to the USDOE Equity and Excellence Commission, ( San Jose, CA; 4/21/11)

I’m going to take some liberties in putting together an end-of-year page for Martha Infante, because I think the most significant blogging she did on InterACT was a series of posts that started in 2010 and ran well into 2011 before concluding.  Back in the fall of 2010, Martha’s school was slapped with a label and declared a “failing school.”  Such labels are gross over-simplifications, and as I wrote about earlier this year, when the term “failure” is linked to adequate yearly progress (AYP) under No Child Left Behind, it’s becoming an increasingly useless distinction.  Martha’s posts on this topic have allowed readers to see behind the label, to look at the school, the students, teachers, and community, and to see so much of what everyone should understand about the situation.  They are not failing.  The high-stakes and extra pressure are counter-productive.  The result of the whole process was to waste thousands of hours of work that could have been dedicated to purposes closer to the classroom.  The label was removed a year later, leaving people cynical and demoralized.  I hope you’ll take some time to look back at this important series of blog posts by Martha Infante.

• Month One as a Failing School
• Month Three as a Failing School: The Hatchet Drops 
• Month Five as a Failing School
• Month Nine as a Failing School
• Failing School No Longer (But Were We Ever?)

But as significant as these posts were, I’d also be remiss in my duties if I failed to note that Martha’s most read blog post of the year was Not Insulted, in which she takes Arne Duncan to task for trying speak for teachers – and against Diane Ravitch.

You can view all of Martha’s blog posts by using the index in the right-side column of this page – or just click here.

Martha is also an active Twitter user – why not follow her?

Today, the Colorado State Board of Education voted 4-3 to appeal that ruling.  One of the “no” votes came from Elaine Gantz Berman, who wrote about her perspective on the case for Education News Colorado.  In her guest post on their blog, I think she shows a common sense reaction to the ruling.  She writes,

I cannot come up with any reasonable rationale to defend the status quo of how we fund schools, and I believe the students of Colorado deserve a first class education system. Today, we do not have a first class education system in our state.

It’s my hope that this ruling will force the legislature and the governor to come up with a solution now – and not delay the important discussion. Since the solution must not harm other important existing programs – such as Medicaid, higher education, prisons and transportation – I can see no way around the fact that we need additional revenue to address our antiquated school funding model.

I encourage you to read the rest of her post, and hope that here in California, we’ll see similar leadership as our own education funding and equity cases move through the courts.  As I said in my prior post, it’s not that I like the idea of litigating these matters, but the state’s citizens and politicians don’t yet seem inclined to face up to the enormity of the problems and solve them.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper approved of the board’s decision to appeal the case, and issued a statement about the appeal and the ruling, raising issues of practicality and possible conflicts with other portions of the state constitution.

Stop Racing, Start Listening – Sandy Dean, associate director of ACT, started us off this year with her reactions to President Obama’s remarks about teachers and respect for the profession.  This guest post set a tone for the year, questioning the divide between rhetoric and policies.  Another ACT member, Anthony Cody, suggested in his own blog that perhaps this year marked an “awakening” – turning point in exposing the failures of currently favored “reform” strategies.

Teacher-Driven Education Reform That Works – Lynne Formigli wrote about the good work happening in schools that benefit from the Quality Education Investment Act.  For those married to the myth that teachers unions are the problem in public education, Lynne has a powerful rebuttal showing how the California Teachers Association has played a significant role in improving needy schools.

California Teacher Pensions: Are We Really Breaking the State? - one more guest post by Lynne Formigli, tackling another crucial issue in state education policy.  Though it may not have as much to do with classroom practice, it clearly was interesting to readers, and turned out to be the most visited guest post of the year.

Unrealistic Education Reform Goals: A Business Perspective – ACT member Dave Reid allowed us cross-post from his blog, in which he reacted to ambitious but highly specific quantitive goals for Los Angeles Unified School District.  As a teacher with decades of prior experience in business, Dave observes:

Reaching out to the community, involving parents, and motivating students are all critical and necessary to improve academic achievement, attendance and safety; they will yield significant advances in primary and secondary education.  However, the blind adoption of arbitrary, albeit just sounding, quantitative targets is foolish at best, and tremendously harmful at worst.

Getting Less From More - One of my favorite blog posts of the year brings us straight into the classroom of Jane Ching Fung, unpacking hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of curricular materials and wondering why.

Next Steps for LAUSD Teacher Evaluations: You, Me, and AGT – ACT member Lisa Alva Wood shared a number of posts with us this year, and provided us with this thoughtful perspective on teacher evaluation reforms in Los Angeles.  The post generated some interesting comments as well.

Later this week, I’ll post additional 2011 highlights from InterACT.  Stay tuned next week for a post on Common Core Standards implementation and assessment in California, following up on an event I attended a couple weeks ago that featured Linda Darling-Hammond, State Board of Education President Michael Kirst, State Assemblymember Julia Brownley, Deb Sigman of the California Department of Education, and other education leaders.

–––      –––      –––      –––      –––      –––      –––      –––      –––      –––      –––

Just a reminder: teacher evaluation is a topic of great interest to us here at ACT, and the subject of our policy report, “A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom: An Evaluation System That Works for California.”  We will be presenting this report in Sacramento on January 20, 2012, as part of a larger education policy summit on teacher quality.  Look at our website and use the Contact form there if you’d like more information on the event.

Imagine for a moment that California used letter grades rather than the Academic Performance Index to rate schools. If I were a parent whose child attended a high school with a “D” on its state report card, I would be gravely concerned that this school would fail to provide my student with the skills to succeed in college, and a college education is vital to my child’s future. If I had a choice, I would certainly want to move my child to an “A” school. I know these report cards aren’t perfect, but there must be a world of difference between the “D” and the “A” rankings, right? And if the “A” school was also listed among Newsweek’s Best High Schools, so much the better, I’m sure.

Wrong. The “D” school is better.

Or to be more precise, the “D” school is better if the measure of quality is college preparation. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this study – “College- and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success” – from Florida. Writer Chad Aldeman sums it up this way:

“While [the 'D' school] got dismal marks from state and federal accountability schemes, it was actually quite successful in a number of important ways. It graduated a higher percentage of its students than [the “A” school] and sent almost the same percentage of its graduates off to college. Once they arrived on college campuses, [the 'D' school] graduates earned higher grades and fewer of them failed remedial, not-for-credit math and English courses than their ['A' school] peers.

“In other words, D-rated [High School] was arguably doing a better job at achieving the ultimate goal of high school: preparing students to succeed in college and careers. But because Florida’s accountability systems didn’t measure college and career success in 2006, nobody knew.”

The study concludes, as you might anticipate, with a call for more data going into accountability systems, and it’s hard to argue with that. But the catch is that any rating or ranking is going to miss something, and is going to create simplistic lists of winners and losers out of what should be a more complex view of school quality.

It is time to distinguish between having data and claiming to know what it means. If we were conducting chemical experiments, it might be different. With schools, we are “measuring” extended periods of highly complex interactions among hundreds or thousands of people (different combinations of people every year), operating under different combinations of influences, and we have yet to agree as a state or society about the outcomes that matter most in that complex setting.

Ultimately, I would argue that the state should be in the business of providing resources and guidelines, and leaving the final assessments of quality and success to professional and local agencies. These agencies must ensure transparency and protect the interests of all stakeholders. They should be comfortable examining widely varying types of data and appreciating the value of each. Their judgments and conclusions would be informed by data and observations, but expressed in words – reports that don’t hide behind the false certainty or pseudo-objectivity of final scores, points, grades, or gold stars.

California high schools already engage in an accreditation process similar to that description, carried out by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Why not make it more meaningful, but less intensive, and expand the approach to other levels?

If our citizenry can’t handle that shift, then we have a goal for our educational system, not to produce citizens, media, and political leaders who would prefer to have a meaningless “A” or “D” slapped on a school, rather than understand and express the complex realities of school quality.