{"id":452,"date":"2011-06-02T07:47:37","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T14:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=452"},"modified":"2011-06-03T05:51:53","modified_gmt":"2011-06-03T12:51:53","slug":"insanity-of-courage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=452","title":{"rendered":"Insanity or Courage?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last evening, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion at a reunion of Education Pioneers, an organization that looks for and trains out-of-classroom talent for education reform.\u00a0 The conversational stars of the evening were Maria Casillas, who flunked retirement to rejoin the Los Angeles Unified School District to head its efforts at connecting school and family, and Drew Furedi, who is working on the highly charged area of teacher assessment among other tasks as Policy and Program Development Advisor.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

The Pioneers ask me to make some opening remarks, an approximation of which follow.<\/em><\/p>\n

Einstein or Churchill?<\/h2>\n

It has come to my attention that reforms recycle.\u00a0 Recycling may be good for the environment, but what of educational progress?\u00a0 It depends on whether you believe Einstein or Churchill.<\/p>\n

Einstein\u2019s definition of insanity was \u201cdoing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.\u201d\u00a0 Winston Churchill\u2019s definition of courage was \u201cmoving from failure to failure with undiminished enthusiasm.\u201d\u00a0 So which is it?<\/p>\n

The distinction is topical because in Learning from L.A.<\/a> <\/em>(notes to the book here<\/a>) we found that virtually every school reform effort in Los Angeles Unified contained the same four elements: some form of decentralization, a quest for universal high standards and measurements that were fair and transparent, greater community and parent involvement, and greater variety in school offerings and choice among them.\u00a0 These four elements could be found in reports from the district in the 1980s, the LAAMP and LEARN reforms of the 1990s, and ideas being worked through by the new superintendent, John Deasy.<\/p>\n

Insane or courageous?\u00a0 It depends.\u00a0 It\u2019s courageous to keep at the struggle, but it\u2019s insane to do it badly: to struggle without knowledge about how the system works and how it can be moved.\u00a0 And no organization I know is less mindful of its own history than LAUSD.<\/p>\n

So let us speak of history beginning with national education politics.<\/p>\n

Beginning with the 2000 presidential election there was a convergence between Democratic and Republican reform ideas.\u00a0 These were enshrined in the bipartisan reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act known as No Child Left Behind:\u00a0 greater accountability, a drift toward national standards, and tests, tests, tests.\u00a0 The old liberal mantra \u201call children can learn,\u201d became a legal expectation.<\/p>\n

The broad political convergence has broken apart.\u00a0\u00a0 The Obama Democrats want to follow the reform path laid out in 2000:\u00a0 fix NCLB, get explicit about national standards, rework expectations so that movement forward rather than absolute achievement targets count, and create competition between the states.\u00a0 The Republicans want radical change: \u00a0they want to privatize education and gradually institute voucher-like plans.\u00a0 (See Indiana governor Mitch Daniels speech to the American Enterprise Institute.<\/a>) \u00a0But most of all they want to destroy or deeply weaken public sector unions.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear about this.\u00a0 Gov. Scott Walker\u2019s attack on Wisconsin\u2019s employees had nothing to do with balancing the budget.\u00a0 It was a bellwether, testing whether the Republican Party could remove the last vestige of organized power in the United States other than rich people and corporations.\u00a0 In an era where our feckless Supreme Court has declared corporations to be people for the purposes of political participation, disestablishing public sector unions removes the last barrier between you and a Tea Party blend.\u00a0 There are no moderate Republicans left.<\/p>\n

California and Los Angeles have been the political exceptions, both because of a Democratic governor and legislature and because the education reform community is arrayed somewhat differently.\u00a0 Except on the question of taxes, it is more bipartisan.\u00a0 The mayor, a Democrat, has become a counterpuncher to United Teachers Los Angeles.\u00a0 Parents and community organizations are finding their voice.\u00a0 Charter schools have moved from startup status to an organized interest group.\u00a0 The old business that formed city\u2019s elite have died.\u00a0 The oligarchs and the foundations have tried to buy and bully their way into control.\u00a0 The L.A. Compact<\/em> is trying to draw together a new civic leadership.\u00a0 And a new generation of activists seek to find the levers of power: the Education Pioneers, NewTLA, the TFA alums, and others.<\/p>\n

Portfolios of schools<\/h2>\n

There is no grand plan here, just the bump and rub of retail politics, but there is a direction, a trend, a drift from big to small, from hierarchy to network, from direct government to indirect government.\u00a0 The term of art is portfolio.<\/em><\/p>\n

LAUSD has followed the vibe of Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and New Orleans in embracing the idea of a portfolio of schools.\u00a0 Under the portfolio notion, which owes its conceptualization to the writing of Paul Hill, instead of managing single hierarchy, the job of the school district is to assemble the best group of schools it can.\u00a0 It will run some of them directly, some will be charters, and some will have will be operated under contract.\u00a0 It will relentlessly examine results, prod schools toward measurable achievement, and replace underperforming parts of the portfolio.<\/p>\n

Nationwide, we now have a reasonable research literature about how these schools work. \u00a0It includes The Transformation of Great American School Districts<\/a>, <\/em>edited by William Lowe Boyd, Mark Blyth and me, which puts the portfolio idea in the context of a changing idea of an institution.\u00a0 Between Public and Private<\/a>, <\/em>edited by Katrina Bulkley, Jeffrey Henig and Henry Levin, examines the portfolio idea as a change from direct government to contracting regimes and includes recent case studies of New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and Philadelphia.\u00a0 The most recent of the books is Education Reform in New York City<\/a> <\/em>edited by Jennifer O\u2019Day, Catherine Bitter, and Louis Gomez. \u00a0I also recommend Smart Money<\/a>, <\/em>a collection of papers about how to align school finance with student achievement, edited by Jacob Adams.\u00a0 For those interested in a sweep of history look at education politics, read Shaping Education Policy<\/a><\/em> edited by Douglas Mitchell, Robert Crowson and Dorothy Shipps.<\/p>\n

I argue that L.A. has done a better job of this than either New York or Chicago, and that the very messiness of Los Angeles politics makes it more likely that the portfolio notion will take root here and survive than it will in either Daley\u2019s Chicago or Bloomberg\u2019s New York.\u00a0 Precisely because the politics of L.A. is more improvisational, we have developed more species variety in schools than exist in other places.\u00a0 You know the numbers: 170 magnet schools, 160 charters, 25 Pilot Schools, reconstituted schools, the Mayor\u2019s Partnership.\u00a0 More are on the way.<\/p>\n

Both in Los Angeles and the nation, the portfolio idea has had interesting effects: more small schools, some new ideas, and new people brought into education reform efforts.\u00a0 But overall, the idea hasn\u2019t worked the way its original proponents thought it would.<\/p>\n