Description
During this such a brief elucidation pertaining to school budgets turnarounds.
6 EDUCATI ON NEXT / S P R I N G 2 0 1 0 www.educationnext.org
correspondence
School Budgets
I
n “The Phony Funding Crisis”
(features, Winter 2010), James
Guthrie and Arthur Peng examine the
apparent phenomenon in which
schools, while claiming continual
underfunding and budget cuts, con-
tinue to open their doors and educate
students. As logical as their argument
sounds, we believe it comes from the
30,000 foot level and differs fromwhat
is experienced on the ground.
The authors seem to assume that,
faced with an economic downturn,
states will respond to their constitu-
tional mandate andother pressures and
automatically raise taxes. Our studies
suggest that instead, many states have
played a shell game with American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA) funds, backfilling cuts to edu-
cation with those one-time dollars.
Over the past year, the American
Association of School Administrators
has monitored the impact of the eco-
nomic downturn on public schools
from the ground level. Our fall 2009
survey found that the financial crisis
continues to threaten and impact the
progress and stability schools have
enjoyedinthe past. Responding from49
states and the District of Columbia,
school district leaders observed they
have yet to see concrete indicators of a
reboundinthe nation’s economy: When
askedhowARRAdollars impactedtheir
state and local revenues, 83 percent
reportedthat ARRAdollars didnot rep-
resent a funding increase. More than
one-third (35 percent) of respondents
were unable to save core teaching jobs
as a result of ARRA monies.
America’s schools were not immune
to the most recent economic down-
turn. The funding crisis is far from
phony. Looking forward, the 2010–11
and 2011–12 school years pack a one-
two punch, with school district leaders
facing the end of ARRA dollars and
answering tough questions about pro-
grams and personnel that have been
(and will be) cut, while trying to figure
Turnarounds
A
ndy Smarick’s “The Turnaround
Fallacy” (features, Winter 2010)
suffers fromthree fallacies. First, Smar-
ick erroneously believes that school
turnarounds have been tried widely
and haven’t worked. In fact, interven-
tions in failing schools are typically
lukewarmand reliant oncoaching, new
curriculum packages, or other rear-
ranging of deck chairs. Real turnaround
attempts, in which a district hires a
highly capable leader with“the big yes”
to do what’s needed to fix the school,
almost never happen.
Second, he wrongly suggests that in
healthy industries, leaders don’t try tofix
failing units, which simply close and
make way for newupstarts. Infact, large
companies with failing units try many
strategies. They typically start by enforc-
ing faithful execution of practices that
work in other areas. When that doesn’t
work, they replace the leader andgive the
newmanager a change mandate. Smar-
ick is right that the threat of closure is
essential; today, bad schools have more
lives than cats. To rescue more schools
from“the brink of doom,” policymak-
ers must make the option of school
“doom”real, but then vigorously try to
fix failing schools in the meantime.
Third, he grossly overstates the
potential of start-up schools. Don’t get
us wrong. We strongly back a large-
scale effort to start great new schools.
But research from other sectors pegs
the probability of start-up success at
about 25 percent, comparable to the
estimated 30 percent of major corpo-
rate-change efforts that succeed. Like
Smarick, we’re fans of outliers like KIPP,
but together these networks will add a
fewhundred schools, not the fewthou-
sandwe need. Evenif these networks are
joined by other wildly successful
upstarts, only a small fraction of stu-
dents in failing schools will benefit.
That’s why the nation needs a port-
folio of strategies to change the for-
tunes of kids trapped in failing schools.
Clinging to just one approach will write
out what, if any, economic recovery is
in store at the state and local levels.
ROBERT S. MCCORD
University of Nevada at Las Vegas
NOELLE M. ELLERSON
American Association of
School Administrators
Guthrie and Peng respond:
The civility of the McCord and Ellerson
rejoinder is appreciated. Moreover, their
self-reports of school-district financial
shortfalls are no doubt heartfelt.
However, the 30,000-foot perspective
for which we are impugned is the more
accurate view. We report objectively
derived federal government–calculated
national averages over a century. The
long-runoverall patternis crystal clear:
America has supportedits public schools
plentifully for a century. Nothing
McCord and Ellerson say refutes this.
By crying fiscal wolf year after year,
in the face of contrary data, public
school advocates deceive taxpayers
and avoid the four-decade reality of
stagnant student performance and
woeful mismanagement in places such
as Detroit.
www.educationnext.org S P R I N G 2 0 1 0 / EDUCATI ON NEXT 7
toward learning—demonstrate suc-
cess. We also have the overwhelming
support of students, parents, and teach-
ers who have participated in the
process, some of whom had been
among our loudest critics.
It’s not realistic to think that dozens
of failing schools in Chicago (and thou-
sands nationally) can be closed and
effectively replaced with new-start
schools. There aren’t sufficient budget
and time resources. And our students do
not have time to wait while we sort out
new-start school options. At AUSL, we
are transforming schools now because
our students deserve nothing less.
DONALD FEINSTEIN
Executive Director
Academy for Urban School Leadership
A
ndy Smarick suggests that the
energy we spend turning around
failing schools would be better spent
shutting them down and starting new
ones. That’s part of the solution, but we
correspondence
off millions who desperately need
something different. Let’s start great
new schools and fix bad ones. Let’s
expect both strategies to work some of
the time, but not always. And when
they don’t work, let’s try again, rapidly,
so kids don’t continue to languish in
schools that aren’t getting the job done.
BRYAN C. HASSEL
EMILY AYSCUE HASSEL
Co-Directors
Public Impact
I
ncremental improvement strategies
are not the same as whole-school
turnaround. Andy Smarick’s recent arti-
cle applies the word “turnaround” to a
wide range of efforts to help struggling
schools, and while he makes an inter-
esting case, I disagree with his premise
that school-turnaround efforts “have
consistently fallen far short of hopes
and expectations.”
Using a very specific turnaround
model, my organization, the Academy
for Urban School Leadership (AUSL),
has had success in transforming some
of Chicago’s poorest-performing
schools. The Chicago Public Schools
first brought in AUSL in 2006 to turn
around eight schools in which test
scores, attendance, discipline issues,
and graduation rates made it clear that
the students were not getting the edu-
cation they needed. Our top-to-bot-
tom approach is like hitting a reset but-
ton for these schools.
We accomplish this without disrup-
tion to students. They return in the fall
to their neighborhood school, which
has been transformed with renovated
facilities and a new principal who has
handpicked a new team of teachers, a
new curriculum, new conduct codes and
disciplinary standards, and new expec-
tations for student success. And we delib-
erately foster the direct involvement of
parents and community members.
Our data—dramatically improved
attendance, test scores, and attitudes
should be skeptical that closure alone
is the answer.
First, this argument assumes that
“close and replace” always beats turn-
around on results. Smarick cites liter-
ature on businesses in the private sec-
tor, where turnarounds work only
one-third of the time. He’s right, but
what’s not cited is the fact that less than
30 percent of new businesses last more
than six years. Not the dramatically
better results we’re looking for.
But maybe this churn means better
student outcomes, which leads to my
second point. The data don’t look good
for that, either. A recent report by the
Consortium on Chicago School
Research studied the nation’s largest
close-and-replace strategy. More often
than not, the strategy meant worse out-
comes for the children. Moreover, a
recent study by CREDO (Center for
Research on Education Outcomes) at
Stanford tells us that only one-third of
new charter schools are demonstrably
better than their neighborhood compar-
isons. The rest are the same or worse.
Third, the word “turnaround” can
be used to mean different things, and
sometimes it’s code for weak interven-
tions. I agree with Smarick when he
talks about the failed strategies of the
past, but a reasonable definition of
turnaround should exclude those half
measures. The new federal guidelines
for school improvement adopt a more
robust definition of turnaround,
wherein the adults in a building, espe-
cially teachers and leadership, are sub-
ject to change, and outside organiza-
tions can manage schools under
performance contracts.
Our research shows that high-
poverty schools that outperform their
peers share certain qualities: an intense
focus on instructional practice, an inte-
grated approach to student support
services, and flexibility from bureau-
cratic operating conditions. The cre-
ative destruction and market compe-
tition inherent in closure are great for
allocating scarce resources, but they’re
Our research
shows that
high-poverty schools
that outperform
their peers share an
intense focus on
instructional
practice, an integrated
approach to student
support services,
and flexibility from
bureaucratic operating
conditions.
Check out the publications on education from the American Enterprise Institute at
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NEW BOOK FROM AEI’S EDUCATION POLICY STUDIES DEPARTMENT
EDUCATION U N B OU N D
The Promise and Practice of Greenfield Schooling
By Frederick M. Hess
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Chancellor, New York City Department of Education
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recognized author and commentator on schooling, his books include Educational Entrepreneurship, Common
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www.educationnext.org S P R I N G 2 0 1 0 / EDUCATI ON NEXT 9
correspondence
not enough to ensure quality and
equity for vulnerable children. We need
to invest in turning around failing
schools as well.
JUSTIN C. COHEN
The School Turnaround
Strategy Group
Mass Insight
A
ndy Smarick makes a compelling
argument that we would be better
off closing failing schools, but he does-
n’t take into account the stark reality
that often urban districts simply have
too many “failing schools” to close them
all. Closing a district’s most persistently
underperforming schools must be an
option, but districts cannot stop there.
Even the most extreme school-closure
program will leave the majority of stu-
dents in their current schools, many of
which are also inadequate. Instead, dis-
tricts must develop a comprehensive
approach to address all of their turn-
around schools as well as low-perform-
ing schools that don’t quite qualify for
turnaround attention.
At Education Resource Strategies
(ERS) we believe that districts need to
make decisions about failing schools
as part of a long-range, districtwide
strategy that incorporates all resources:
people, time, and money. While we
agree with Smarick that evidence is not
clear on a single turnaround strategy
that works, we do know that schools can
accelerate improvement through strong,
transformational leaders; collaborative
teacher teams; and targeting expertise
and resources to help students who
have fallen behind. There is a lot that
districts can do to increase the proba-
bility of success: 1) Implement a dis-
trictwide strategy for measuring school
performance and determining appro-
priate action, including the possibility
of school closure; 2) Recruit transfor-
mational school leaders who can estab-
lish high expectations for improved
performance; 3) Implement strategies
that give these leaders the flexibility to
efficiently assign teaching staff and to
assemble high-performing teams with
appropriate expertise; 4) Ensure suffi-
cient expert instructional support and
collaborative time for teachers to adjust
instruction based on data; 5) Fund tar-
geted student support and take the time
to accelerate student learning; and 6)
Provide additional problem solving and
support from central staff.
A successful turnaround strategy
might be as ambitious as a “cure for can-
cer,” as Smarick claims. So just like med-
ical researchers, we have to keep trying.
Closing schools should unquestionably
be part of a school district’s strategy, but
only a districtwide transformation will
result in improving education for all
children that the district serves.
KAREN HAWLEY MILES
President and Executive Director
Education Resource Strategies
D.C.’s Rhee
I
t’s hard to know what image the
title of June Kronholz’s piece on
Michelle Rhee—“D.C.’s Braveheart”
(features, Winter 2010)—is meant to
conjure up: a hopelessly romantic
quest, a quixotic uprising against cor-
rupt power, Rhee’s eventually being
drawn and quartered. Or is it con-
frontation for confrontation’s sake?
None of the images it brings to
mind are encouraging. Having just
completed a study (Leading for Equity,
Harvard Education Press, 2009) of the
public schools in neighboring Mont-
gomery County, Maryland (MCPS),
which is encouraging, there is much to
be said about Superintendent Jerry
Weast’s nonconfrontational style. But
MCPS and D.C. share only a common
boundary. In no other respect are they
comparable, and it is as hard to imag-
ine Jerry’s approach working in D.C.
as it is Rhee’s in MCPS. (For what it’s
worth, Paul Vance was superintendent
of both districts and left an indiffer-
ent legacy.) The underlying question,
of course, is will Rhee’s in-your-face
style work in D.C.?
To Rhee’s credit, she has gotten
everyone’s attention. And she has effec-
tively raised the issue of accountability.
(Years ago, one of her predecessors,
Vince Reed, told me he thought the
whole system was hopeless.) I’m an
MCPS alumnus and my sister is a D.C.
alumna and we wish these very differ-
ent districts well. I for one am skeptical
about Rhee’s unvarnished approach:
too much stick, too little carrot. But the
10 EDUCATI ON NEXT / S P R I N G 2 0 1 0 www.educationnext.org
correspondence
jury is still out, and she still has time to
build bridges to teachers. Without their
support, all is lost; with their support,
there is a fighting chance.
At minimum—in the one-size-fits-
all No Child Left Behind era—her
tenure reminds us of the real genius of
the federal system, the opportunity to
try many different approaches to a
shared objective: increased academic
achievement for all students.
DENIS DOYLE
Schoolnet
Teacher Pensions
G
olden Handcuffs” (research, Winter
2010) draws attention to the
important incentives that are built into
many teacher pensions, but shortcom-
ings in the authors’ analysis lead them
to spurious conclusions.
First, despite the authors’ claim,
legally and otherwise, pension plans
cannot and do not redistribute wealth.
Second, the authors incorrectly assert
that there is no justification for the
incentives embedded in teacher pen-
sions. To the contrary, one of the most
pressing issues facing schools is keeping
top talent, especially in hard-to-staff
areas. In light of this, retention incentives
(which the authors refer to as “mobility
penalties”) make perfect sense.
Economic research stretching back
more than two decades has documented
the strong retention effects embedded in
traditional defined benefit (DB) plans,
where benefits are based on an
employee’s final pay. Authors Costrell
and Podgursky describe the well-rec-
ognized pattern of benefit accruals in
such plans and then jump to the conclu-
sion that it serves no purpose. But, as
economists have long known, it is pre-
cisely because of this pattern, which offers
greater rewards for loyal employees who
provide long service to an employer,
that many employers offer DB pensions.
Because turnover is costly (both in dol-
lar terms and in terms of productivity),
it makes sense for employers to build
incentives into compensation that
reward long service.
Indeed, until only recently, the vast
majority of Fortune 500 companies
relied heavily on DB pensions to retain
top talent. Even as some private-sector
employers have moved away from these
plans in recent years, they have been
careful to develop other compensation
structures that mimic the incentives
provided by DB pensions. Deferred
compensation in the form of stock
options or restricted stock awards is
similar to pensions in that it encourages
loyalty to an employer.
The problem is that school districts
and government entities cannot offer
stock options, restricted stock, or sim-
ilar benefits. Thus, jettisoning DB pen-
sions, as the authors recommend, can
be expected to cause increased turnover
and attrition of our most-effective
teachers, hurting productivity and qual-
ity, in other words, exactly the wrong
solution for our schools.
BETH ALMEIDA
Executive Director
National Institute on
Retirement Security
Costrell and Podgursky respond:
In Missouri, a teacher who retires at
age 55 receives a lifetime pension
worth 33 percent of cumulative earn-
ings, but only 1 percent if she leaves at
35. Yet in both cases her employer
contributed 12.5 percent of earnings
each year. Redistribution or not? These
incentives do encourage teachers,
effective or not, to stay until early
retirement (but no longer), while likely
discouraging entry of mobile young
teachers with 10 to 15 years to offer.
Peculiar incentives or rational? The
huge penalties for cross-state mobility
may be rational for each state, but not
for the U.S. K–12 system. Do we rec-
ommend jettisoning DB pensions? No,
we recommend cash balance systems,
which are DB but offer far greater
portability and reward all years of ser-
vice equally: benefits are tied to con-
tributions, so no redistribution occurs.
Special Education Vouchers
J
ay Greene and Stuart Buck (“The
Case for Special Education Vouch-
ers,” features, Winter 2010) are correct
that some children with disabilities
have unique needs that require private
schooling. That’s why the federal Indi-
viduals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA) allows children with disabilities
to attend private schools at public
expense when their districts cannot
provide a free, appropriate public edu-
cation (FAPE).
But only a small percentage of chil-
dren with disabilities have such place-
ments, and not, as Greene and Buck
contend, because the law’s processes
for securing private placements are
inadequate, but because the vast major-
ity of children with disabilities can, and
do, receive FAPE in the public schools.
That’s not to gloss over the shortcom-
ings in our special education system, or
the difficulties some parents face in
obtaining services for their children.
But there’s no evidence that children
with disabilities need additional educa-
tion options more than any other
youngsters in underperforming schools,
or that vouchers address the underlying
problems in special education. Rather,
voucher proponents have seized on this
population because they are more sym-
pathetic beneficiaries than poor and
minority youngsters. Using children
with disabilities to increase public sup-
port for vouchers may be smart politics,
but it doesn’t mean that special educa-
tion vouchers are good policy.
Policymakers must take steps to
expand education options for children
with disabilities and make it easier for
their parents to access needed services.
But special education vouchers are not
the best way to do this; they create other,
adverse consequences, such as further
segregating or perpetuating double
standards for children with disabilities
and creating perverse incentives for
parents and educators.
Other approaches—expanding
high-cost/low-incidence pools, improv-
ing IDEA’s dispute-resolution and place-
ment processes, enhancing charter
schools’ capacity to serve children with
disabilities, and authorizing more char-
ters with specific missions to serve dis-
abled youngsters—have more promise
to expand high-quality, accountable
options for youngsters with disabilities.
SARA MEAD
Senior Research Fellow
New America Foundation
Greene and Buck respond:
Sara Mead makes several assertions that
are contrary to the findings of our arti-
cle, but she presents no evidence to
substantiate those assertions or to con-
tradict the evidence we presented.
For example, she says that there are
so few private placements of special
education students “not…because the
law’s processes for securing private
placements are inadequate, but because
the vast majority of children with dis-
abilities can, and do, receive FAPE in the
public schools.” How does she know
this? She doesn’t say. Nor does she do
anything to refute the evidence we pre-
sented that shows the inadequacy of
the current private placement system.
It is insufficient simply to contradict
claims. One needs to address evidence
and Mead fails to do so.
Federal Lunch Program
I
n “Fraud in the Lunchroom?” (check
the facts, Winter 2010), David Bass
presents evidence of substantial error in
students’ eligibility for free or reduced-
price school meals through the National
School Lunch Program (NSLP), citing
a recent Mathematica study that found
most errors result from misreporting of
household income. The title of Mr.
Bass’s article implies that these errors
may be intentional.
Our research suggests that fraud is
not a major factor in explaining errors.
Households that fail to respond to a
district’s request for income verifica-
tion are not necessarily engaging in
fraud. We examined a randomly
selected set of households that did not
respond, finding that most were eligi-
ble for free or reduced-price meals. In
the Access, Participation, Eligibility,
and Certification (APEC) study, we
found that, in more than 40 percent of
household misreporting errors, par-
ents overreported, rather than under-
reported, their income. If fraud were
rampant, we would have expected
much less of this type of error. Instead,
we believe that most errors are unin-
tentional: parents do not understand
which household members should be
included, forget about a minor income
source, report net instead of gross
income, or incorrectly enter the fre-
quency of income receipt.
Even if fraud is minimal, the result-
ing costs to taxpayers are substantial.
How might policymakers respond? We
caution against requiring income doc-
umentation from all applicants. As Mr.
Bass notes, our research showed that a
test of this approach not only failed to
reduce benefit receipt for ineligible
households, but also reduced benefit
receipt for eligible households.
A simple approach that could
reduce error by one-third would
eliminate the distinction between free
and reduced-price benefits, since
much program error results from
misclassification. We could also build
on current federal initiatives such as
direct certification to improve NSLP
certification accuracy. Under this pol-
icy, now required in all districts,
households receiving benefits from
other federal programs with more
rigorous income-verification require-
ments are automatically eligible for
NSLP. The U.S. Department of Agri-
culture is also considering using exist-
ing surveys to estimate the propor-
tion of eligible children in selected
schools, and then developing school-
wide reimbursement rates. This
would eliminate the need for districts
to certify households through the
current process.
PHILIP GLEASON
Senior Fellow
MICHAEL PONZA
Senior Fellow
Mathematica Policy Research
www.educationnext.org S P R I N G 2 0 1 0 / EDUCATI ON NEXT 11
correspondence
For More Information
Featuring workshops and town halls led by renowned champions in education
C O N F E R E N C E
T I T L E S P O N S O R
"I believe if we push harder than
ever and all together, we can break
through old barriers that have blocked
the success of our children for
generations."
Melinda Gates, Co-Chair and Trustee,
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
At the 2009 NCLR Annual Conference
doc_204424979.pdf
During this such a brief elucidation pertaining to school budgets turnarounds.
6 EDUCATI ON NEXT / S P R I N G 2 0 1 0 www.educationnext.org
correspondence
School Budgets
I
n “The Phony Funding Crisis”
(features, Winter 2010), James
Guthrie and Arthur Peng examine the
apparent phenomenon in which
schools, while claiming continual
underfunding and budget cuts, con-
tinue to open their doors and educate
students. As logical as their argument
sounds, we believe it comes from the
30,000 foot level and differs fromwhat
is experienced on the ground.
The authors seem to assume that,
faced with an economic downturn,
states will respond to their constitu-
tional mandate andother pressures and
automatically raise taxes. Our studies
suggest that instead, many states have
played a shell game with American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA) funds, backfilling cuts to edu-
cation with those one-time dollars.
Over the past year, the American
Association of School Administrators
has monitored the impact of the eco-
nomic downturn on public schools
from the ground level. Our fall 2009
survey found that the financial crisis
continues to threaten and impact the
progress and stability schools have
enjoyedinthe past. Responding from49
states and the District of Columbia,
school district leaders observed they
have yet to see concrete indicators of a
reboundinthe nation’s economy: When
askedhowARRAdollars impactedtheir
state and local revenues, 83 percent
reportedthat ARRAdollars didnot rep-
resent a funding increase. More than
one-third (35 percent) of respondents
were unable to save core teaching jobs
as a result of ARRA monies.
America’s schools were not immune
to the most recent economic down-
turn. The funding crisis is far from
phony. Looking forward, the 2010–11
and 2011–12 school years pack a one-
two punch, with school district leaders
facing the end of ARRA dollars and
answering tough questions about pro-
grams and personnel that have been
(and will be) cut, while trying to figure
Turnarounds
A
ndy Smarick’s “The Turnaround
Fallacy” (features, Winter 2010)
suffers fromthree fallacies. First, Smar-
ick erroneously believes that school
turnarounds have been tried widely
and haven’t worked. In fact, interven-
tions in failing schools are typically
lukewarmand reliant oncoaching, new
curriculum packages, or other rear-
ranging of deck chairs. Real turnaround
attempts, in which a district hires a
highly capable leader with“the big yes”
to do what’s needed to fix the school,
almost never happen.
Second, he wrongly suggests that in
healthy industries, leaders don’t try tofix
failing units, which simply close and
make way for newupstarts. Infact, large
companies with failing units try many
strategies. They typically start by enforc-
ing faithful execution of practices that
work in other areas. When that doesn’t
work, they replace the leader andgive the
newmanager a change mandate. Smar-
ick is right that the threat of closure is
essential; today, bad schools have more
lives than cats. To rescue more schools
from“the brink of doom,” policymak-
ers must make the option of school
“doom”real, but then vigorously try to
fix failing schools in the meantime.
Third, he grossly overstates the
potential of start-up schools. Don’t get
us wrong. We strongly back a large-
scale effort to start great new schools.
But research from other sectors pegs
the probability of start-up success at
about 25 percent, comparable to the
estimated 30 percent of major corpo-
rate-change efforts that succeed. Like
Smarick, we’re fans of outliers like KIPP,
but together these networks will add a
fewhundred schools, not the fewthou-
sandwe need. Evenif these networks are
joined by other wildly successful
upstarts, only a small fraction of stu-
dents in failing schools will benefit.
That’s why the nation needs a port-
folio of strategies to change the for-
tunes of kids trapped in failing schools.
Clinging to just one approach will write
out what, if any, economic recovery is
in store at the state and local levels.
ROBERT S. MCCORD
University of Nevada at Las Vegas
NOELLE M. ELLERSON
American Association of
School Administrators
Guthrie and Peng respond:
The civility of the McCord and Ellerson
rejoinder is appreciated. Moreover, their
self-reports of school-district financial
shortfalls are no doubt heartfelt.
However, the 30,000-foot perspective
for which we are impugned is the more
accurate view. We report objectively
derived federal government–calculated
national averages over a century. The
long-runoverall patternis crystal clear:
America has supportedits public schools
plentifully for a century. Nothing
McCord and Ellerson say refutes this.
By crying fiscal wolf year after year,
in the face of contrary data, public
school advocates deceive taxpayers
and avoid the four-decade reality of
stagnant student performance and
woeful mismanagement in places such
as Detroit.
www.educationnext.org S P R I N G 2 0 1 0 / EDUCATI ON NEXT 7
toward learning—demonstrate suc-
cess. We also have the overwhelming
support of students, parents, and teach-
ers who have participated in the
process, some of whom had been
among our loudest critics.
It’s not realistic to think that dozens
of failing schools in Chicago (and thou-
sands nationally) can be closed and
effectively replaced with new-start
schools. There aren’t sufficient budget
and time resources. And our students do
not have time to wait while we sort out
new-start school options. At AUSL, we
are transforming schools now because
our students deserve nothing less.
DONALD FEINSTEIN
Executive Director
Academy for Urban School Leadership
A
ndy Smarick suggests that the
energy we spend turning around
failing schools would be better spent
shutting them down and starting new
ones. That’s part of the solution, but we
correspondence
off millions who desperately need
something different. Let’s start great
new schools and fix bad ones. Let’s
expect both strategies to work some of
the time, but not always. And when
they don’t work, let’s try again, rapidly,
so kids don’t continue to languish in
schools that aren’t getting the job done.
BRYAN C. HASSEL
EMILY AYSCUE HASSEL
Co-Directors
Public Impact
I
ncremental improvement strategies
are not the same as whole-school
turnaround. Andy Smarick’s recent arti-
cle applies the word “turnaround” to a
wide range of efforts to help struggling
schools, and while he makes an inter-
esting case, I disagree with his premise
that school-turnaround efforts “have
consistently fallen far short of hopes
and expectations.”
Using a very specific turnaround
model, my organization, the Academy
for Urban School Leadership (AUSL),
has had success in transforming some
of Chicago’s poorest-performing
schools. The Chicago Public Schools
first brought in AUSL in 2006 to turn
around eight schools in which test
scores, attendance, discipline issues,
and graduation rates made it clear that
the students were not getting the edu-
cation they needed. Our top-to-bot-
tom approach is like hitting a reset but-
ton for these schools.
We accomplish this without disrup-
tion to students. They return in the fall
to their neighborhood school, which
has been transformed with renovated
facilities and a new principal who has
handpicked a new team of teachers, a
new curriculum, new conduct codes and
disciplinary standards, and new expec-
tations for student success. And we delib-
erately foster the direct involvement of
parents and community members.
Our data—dramatically improved
attendance, test scores, and attitudes
should be skeptical that closure alone
is the answer.
First, this argument assumes that
“close and replace” always beats turn-
around on results. Smarick cites liter-
ature on businesses in the private sec-
tor, where turnarounds work only
one-third of the time. He’s right, but
what’s not cited is the fact that less than
30 percent of new businesses last more
than six years. Not the dramatically
better results we’re looking for.
But maybe this churn means better
student outcomes, which leads to my
second point. The data don’t look good
for that, either. A recent report by the
Consortium on Chicago School
Research studied the nation’s largest
close-and-replace strategy. More often
than not, the strategy meant worse out-
comes for the children. Moreover, a
recent study by CREDO (Center for
Research on Education Outcomes) at
Stanford tells us that only one-third of
new charter schools are demonstrably
better than their neighborhood compar-
isons. The rest are the same or worse.
Third, the word “turnaround” can
be used to mean different things, and
sometimes it’s code for weak interven-
tions. I agree with Smarick when he
talks about the failed strategies of the
past, but a reasonable definition of
turnaround should exclude those half
measures. The new federal guidelines
for school improvement adopt a more
robust definition of turnaround,
wherein the adults in a building, espe-
cially teachers and leadership, are sub-
ject to change, and outside organiza-
tions can manage schools under
performance contracts.
Our research shows that high-
poverty schools that outperform their
peers share certain qualities: an intense
focus on instructional practice, an inte-
grated approach to student support
services, and flexibility from bureau-
cratic operating conditions. The cre-
ative destruction and market compe-
tition inherent in closure are great for
allocating scarce resources, but they’re
Our research
shows that
high-poverty schools
that outperform
their peers share an
intense focus on
instructional
practice, an integrated
approach to student
support services,
and flexibility from
bureaucratic operating
conditions.
Check out the publications on education from the American Enterprise Institute at
www.aei.org/hess. To sign up to receive email alerts, register for events, and view online
exclusives and premium content, go tohttps://www.aei.org/aeisecure/accReg.
173 pages, $23.95, paper
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Order online athttp://shop.ascd.org/
or call ASCD at 1.800.933.2723
NEW BOOK FROM AEI’S EDUCATION POLICY STUDIES DEPARTMENT
EDUCATION U N B OU N D
The Promise and Practice of Greenfield Schooling
By Frederick M. Hess
“Other than starting with the same letter, education and entrepreneur-
ship have had almost nothing in common. Rick Hess is determined to
change that. Eschewing silver bullets, “best practices,” and other
expert bromides from the educational establishment, he presents a
well-thought-through analysis of how to enable entrepreneurialism
and innovation to flourish in a way that will drive truly dynamic school
reform. Fortunately for our children, Hess is on to something big.”
—JOEL I. KLEIN,
Chancellor, New York City Department of Education
“Rick Hess’s Education Unbound offers a refreshing approach to our
education dilemma. It is well past time we face the reality that the “find
and fix” methods we have so energetically and honestly applied to our
educational problems have not worked and continuing the same is
unwise. This book is a must-read for those who seek authentic edu-
cational improvement.”
—ROD PAIGE,
Former U.S. Secretary of Education, 2000–2005
“Rick Hess continues to expose the toughest issues of transforming
public schooling in America. An esteemed scholar who is always will-
ing to speak his mind and shake up the status quo through innovation,
he is someone we should listen to as we apply policy to practice. I look
forward to hearing the dialogue that this book will create.”
—MICHELLE RHEE,
Chancellor, District of Columbia Public Schools
In sharing the examples of numerous organizations whose bold alternative strategies represent promising
shifts in K–12 education, Frederick M. Hess builds a case for reconfiguring schools so that they are capable
of growing and evolving with the students and society they serve. Education Unbound: The Promise and
Practice of Greenfield Schooling is a catalyst for conversation and change and a must-read for practitioners,
policymakers, would-be education entrepreneurs, and anyone committed to school excellence and the next
steps in education reform.
Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. A nationally
recognized author and commentator on schooling, his books include Educational Entrepreneurship, Common
Sense School Reform, and Spinning Wheels.
www.educationnext.org S P R I N G 2 0 1 0 / EDUCATI ON NEXT 9
correspondence
not enough to ensure quality and
equity for vulnerable children. We need
to invest in turning around failing
schools as well.
JUSTIN C. COHEN
The School Turnaround
Strategy Group
Mass Insight
A
ndy Smarick makes a compelling
argument that we would be better
off closing failing schools, but he does-
n’t take into account the stark reality
that often urban districts simply have
too many “failing schools” to close them
all. Closing a district’s most persistently
underperforming schools must be an
option, but districts cannot stop there.
Even the most extreme school-closure
program will leave the majority of stu-
dents in their current schools, many of
which are also inadequate. Instead, dis-
tricts must develop a comprehensive
approach to address all of their turn-
around schools as well as low-perform-
ing schools that don’t quite qualify for
turnaround attention.
At Education Resource Strategies
(ERS) we believe that districts need to
make decisions about failing schools
as part of a long-range, districtwide
strategy that incorporates all resources:
people, time, and money. While we
agree with Smarick that evidence is not
clear on a single turnaround strategy
that works, we do know that schools can
accelerate improvement through strong,
transformational leaders; collaborative
teacher teams; and targeting expertise
and resources to help students who
have fallen behind. There is a lot that
districts can do to increase the proba-
bility of success: 1) Implement a dis-
trictwide strategy for measuring school
performance and determining appro-
priate action, including the possibility
of school closure; 2) Recruit transfor-
mational school leaders who can estab-
lish high expectations for improved
performance; 3) Implement strategies
that give these leaders the flexibility to
efficiently assign teaching staff and to
assemble high-performing teams with
appropriate expertise; 4) Ensure suffi-
cient expert instructional support and
collaborative time for teachers to adjust
instruction based on data; 5) Fund tar-
geted student support and take the time
to accelerate student learning; and 6)
Provide additional problem solving and
support from central staff.
A successful turnaround strategy
might be as ambitious as a “cure for can-
cer,” as Smarick claims. So just like med-
ical researchers, we have to keep trying.
Closing schools should unquestionably
be part of a school district’s strategy, but
only a districtwide transformation will
result in improving education for all
children that the district serves.
KAREN HAWLEY MILES
President and Executive Director
Education Resource Strategies
D.C.’s Rhee
I
t’s hard to know what image the
title of June Kronholz’s piece on
Michelle Rhee—“D.C.’s Braveheart”
(features, Winter 2010)—is meant to
conjure up: a hopelessly romantic
quest, a quixotic uprising against cor-
rupt power, Rhee’s eventually being
drawn and quartered. Or is it con-
frontation for confrontation’s sake?
None of the images it brings to
mind are encouraging. Having just
completed a study (Leading for Equity,
Harvard Education Press, 2009) of the
public schools in neighboring Mont-
gomery County, Maryland (MCPS),
which is encouraging, there is much to
be said about Superintendent Jerry
Weast’s nonconfrontational style. But
MCPS and D.C. share only a common
boundary. In no other respect are they
comparable, and it is as hard to imag-
ine Jerry’s approach working in D.C.
as it is Rhee’s in MCPS. (For what it’s
worth, Paul Vance was superintendent
of both districts and left an indiffer-
ent legacy.) The underlying question,
of course, is will Rhee’s in-your-face
style work in D.C.?
To Rhee’s credit, she has gotten
everyone’s attention. And she has effec-
tively raised the issue of accountability.
(Years ago, one of her predecessors,
Vince Reed, told me he thought the
whole system was hopeless.) I’m an
MCPS alumnus and my sister is a D.C.
alumna and we wish these very differ-
ent districts well. I for one am skeptical
about Rhee’s unvarnished approach:
too much stick, too little carrot. But the
10 EDUCATI ON NEXT / S P R I N G 2 0 1 0 www.educationnext.org
correspondence
jury is still out, and she still has time to
build bridges to teachers. Without their
support, all is lost; with their support,
there is a fighting chance.
At minimum—in the one-size-fits-
all No Child Left Behind era—her
tenure reminds us of the real genius of
the federal system, the opportunity to
try many different approaches to a
shared objective: increased academic
achievement for all students.
DENIS DOYLE
Schoolnet
Teacher Pensions
G
olden Handcuffs” (research, Winter
2010) draws attention to the
important incentives that are built into
many teacher pensions, but shortcom-
ings in the authors’ analysis lead them
to spurious conclusions.
First, despite the authors’ claim,
legally and otherwise, pension plans
cannot and do not redistribute wealth.
Second, the authors incorrectly assert
that there is no justification for the
incentives embedded in teacher pen-
sions. To the contrary, one of the most
pressing issues facing schools is keeping
top talent, especially in hard-to-staff
areas. In light of this, retention incentives
(which the authors refer to as “mobility
penalties”) make perfect sense.
Economic research stretching back
more than two decades has documented
the strong retention effects embedded in
traditional defined benefit (DB) plans,
where benefits are based on an
employee’s final pay. Authors Costrell
and Podgursky describe the well-rec-
ognized pattern of benefit accruals in
such plans and then jump to the conclu-
sion that it serves no purpose. But, as
economists have long known, it is pre-
cisely because of this pattern, which offers
greater rewards for loyal employees who
provide long service to an employer,
that many employers offer DB pensions.
Because turnover is costly (both in dol-
lar terms and in terms of productivity),
it makes sense for employers to build
incentives into compensation that
reward long service.
Indeed, until only recently, the vast
majority of Fortune 500 companies
relied heavily on DB pensions to retain
top talent. Even as some private-sector
employers have moved away from these
plans in recent years, they have been
careful to develop other compensation
structures that mimic the incentives
provided by DB pensions. Deferred
compensation in the form of stock
options or restricted stock awards is
similar to pensions in that it encourages
loyalty to an employer.
The problem is that school districts
and government entities cannot offer
stock options, restricted stock, or sim-
ilar benefits. Thus, jettisoning DB pen-
sions, as the authors recommend, can
be expected to cause increased turnover
and attrition of our most-effective
teachers, hurting productivity and qual-
ity, in other words, exactly the wrong
solution for our schools.
BETH ALMEIDA
Executive Director
National Institute on
Retirement Security
Costrell and Podgursky respond:
In Missouri, a teacher who retires at
age 55 receives a lifetime pension
worth 33 percent of cumulative earn-
ings, but only 1 percent if she leaves at
35. Yet in both cases her employer
contributed 12.5 percent of earnings
each year. Redistribution or not? These
incentives do encourage teachers,
effective or not, to stay until early
retirement (but no longer), while likely
discouraging entry of mobile young
teachers with 10 to 15 years to offer.
Peculiar incentives or rational? The
huge penalties for cross-state mobility
may be rational for each state, but not
for the U.S. K–12 system. Do we rec-
ommend jettisoning DB pensions? No,
we recommend cash balance systems,
which are DB but offer far greater
portability and reward all years of ser-
vice equally: benefits are tied to con-
tributions, so no redistribution occurs.
Special Education Vouchers
J
ay Greene and Stuart Buck (“The
Case for Special Education Vouch-
ers,” features, Winter 2010) are correct
that some children with disabilities
have unique needs that require private
schooling. That’s why the federal Indi-
viduals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA) allows children with disabilities
to attend private schools at public
expense when their districts cannot
provide a free, appropriate public edu-
cation (FAPE).
But only a small percentage of chil-
dren with disabilities have such place-
ments, and not, as Greene and Buck
contend, because the law’s processes
for securing private placements are
inadequate, but because the vast major-
ity of children with disabilities can, and
do, receive FAPE in the public schools.
That’s not to gloss over the shortcom-
ings in our special education system, or
the difficulties some parents face in
obtaining services for their children.
But there’s no evidence that children
with disabilities need additional educa-
tion options more than any other
youngsters in underperforming schools,
or that vouchers address the underlying
problems in special education. Rather,
voucher proponents have seized on this
population because they are more sym-
pathetic beneficiaries than poor and
minority youngsters. Using children
with disabilities to increase public sup-
port for vouchers may be smart politics,
but it doesn’t mean that special educa-
tion vouchers are good policy.
Policymakers must take steps to
expand education options for children
with disabilities and make it easier for
their parents to access needed services.
But special education vouchers are not
the best way to do this; they create other,
adverse consequences, such as further
segregating or perpetuating double
standards for children with disabilities
and creating perverse incentives for
parents and educators.
Other approaches—expanding
high-cost/low-incidence pools, improv-
ing IDEA’s dispute-resolution and place-
ment processes, enhancing charter
schools’ capacity to serve children with
disabilities, and authorizing more char-
ters with specific missions to serve dis-
abled youngsters—have more promise
to expand high-quality, accountable
options for youngsters with disabilities.
SARA MEAD
Senior Research Fellow
New America Foundation
Greene and Buck respond:
Sara Mead makes several assertions that
are contrary to the findings of our arti-
cle, but she presents no evidence to
substantiate those assertions or to con-
tradict the evidence we presented.
For example, she says that there are
so few private placements of special
education students “not…because the
law’s processes for securing private
placements are inadequate, but because
the vast majority of children with dis-
abilities can, and do, receive FAPE in the
public schools.” How does she know
this? She doesn’t say. Nor does she do
anything to refute the evidence we pre-
sented that shows the inadequacy of
the current private placement system.
It is insufficient simply to contradict
claims. One needs to address evidence
and Mead fails to do so.
Federal Lunch Program
I
n “Fraud in the Lunchroom?” (check
the facts, Winter 2010), David Bass
presents evidence of substantial error in
students’ eligibility for free or reduced-
price school meals through the National
School Lunch Program (NSLP), citing
a recent Mathematica study that found
most errors result from misreporting of
household income. The title of Mr.
Bass’s article implies that these errors
may be intentional.
Our research suggests that fraud is
not a major factor in explaining errors.
Households that fail to respond to a
district’s request for income verifica-
tion are not necessarily engaging in
fraud. We examined a randomly
selected set of households that did not
respond, finding that most were eligi-
ble for free or reduced-price meals. In
the Access, Participation, Eligibility,
and Certification (APEC) study, we
found that, in more than 40 percent of
household misreporting errors, par-
ents overreported, rather than under-
reported, their income. If fraud were
rampant, we would have expected
much less of this type of error. Instead,
we believe that most errors are unin-
tentional: parents do not understand
which household members should be
included, forget about a minor income
source, report net instead of gross
income, or incorrectly enter the fre-
quency of income receipt.
Even if fraud is minimal, the result-
ing costs to taxpayers are substantial.
How might policymakers respond? We
caution against requiring income doc-
umentation from all applicants. As Mr.
Bass notes, our research showed that a
test of this approach not only failed to
reduce benefit receipt for ineligible
households, but also reduced benefit
receipt for eligible households.
A simple approach that could
reduce error by one-third would
eliminate the distinction between free
and reduced-price benefits, since
much program error results from
misclassification. We could also build
on current federal initiatives such as
direct certification to improve NSLP
certification accuracy. Under this pol-
icy, now required in all districts,
households receiving benefits from
other federal programs with more
rigorous income-verification require-
ments are automatically eligible for
NSLP. The U.S. Department of Agri-
culture is also considering using exist-
ing surveys to estimate the propor-
tion of eligible children in selected
schools, and then developing school-
wide reimbursement rates. This
would eliminate the need for districts
to certify households through the
current process.
PHILIP GLEASON
Senior Fellow
MICHAEL PONZA
Senior Fellow
Mathematica Policy Research
www.educationnext.org S P R I N G 2 0 1 0 / EDUCATI ON NEXT 11
correspondence
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