Fighting an uphill battle

It always feels a bit discomforting to say, "Race and economic status are highly correlated to academic achievement." Children can change neither their race nor their income; a statement like the one above can feel like saying these children also cannot improve their academic achievement. But when confronted with the lackluster-to-dismal achievement data of many Milwaukee schools, where the race and income patterns are so stark, its hard to avoid making that statement.

As the Forum's recent report on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program found, these patterns appear among private school students as well as public school students. In both the public and private sectors in Milwaukee, there are very few schools enrolling predominantly minority and low-income students producing high test scores. (Even among the suburban public schools with fewer minority or low-income children, we've found that as those populations have grown, aggregate test scores have declined.) And while the private school data are new, are they really news, considering how entrenched the pattern has been in the public schools?

What is news is the fact that, while the nation's schools have made some progress in closing the racial achievement gap, the income achievement gap has grown significantly. A recent New York Times story highlights the research of Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist, who analyzed data from 12 national studies starting in 1960 and ending in 2007 and found that while the average black-white racial achievement gap has shrunk in half since the 1960s, the gap between children from the wealthiest and poorest families has grown 40% in that time, and is now twice the size of the racial achievement gap.

Schools with low-income students in their charge, whether public or private, are fighting against a nationwide, decades-long trend. While several of these schools, on an individual level, have stellar outcomes, educators are still hunting for the best strategy to improve outcomes system-wide. The hunt requires even more urgency now--the recession is creating more, not fewer, poor families.

Most new voucher users already were enrolled in private schools

The Forum's 14th annual census of schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) finds that voucher use by Milwaukee students grew 10% in 2011-12 to 23,198 voucher students, reversing last year’s enrollment decline. In addition, the data indicate that most voucher students are attending hyper-segregated schools that have low reading and math proficiency rates.

The dramatic increase in voucher use is likely due to changes to the program in the most recent state budget, which allowed schools outside Milwaukee to join MPCP and expanded eligibility to include families at higher income levels. As a result, more than 2,200 additional students are using vouchers worth $6,442 each, increasing the program’s cost by $14.2 million.

Most of the new voucher users appear to have already been enrolled in private school. In 56 schools, the number of new voucher users exceed the growth in total enrollment in the school, while in 13 schools voucher growth and enrollment growth were equal. Over the past 10 years, total enrollment in the schools participating in the program has grown by roughly 5,300 students, while the number of voucher users has increased over twice as much.

More students are eligible for vouchers because the income limits for voucher were raised to 300% of the Federal Poverty Level, which means that a family of four earning up to $67,050 per year is now eligible. The median household income in Milwaukee is $35,921 per year. Under the new rules, once a student qualifies for a voucher, he or she remains eligible for all subsequent years, even if the family’s income grows.

The report also includes an analysis of the 2010-2011 state standardized test results of the participating schools, finding that performance among the MPCP schools varies widely. There are a few patterns in the data, however. Reading proficiency rates are higher, on the whole, than math proficiency rates. In addition, schools with fewer voucher users and fewer minority students tend to produce higher proficiency in both reading and math, as do the Catholic and Lutheran schools.

The poor test scores are likely related to the socio-economic and racial demographic make-up of the schools, which mirror the Milwaukee Public Schools, in the aggregate. Nearly half of all MPCP schools have student bodies that are at least 90% minority and/or 90% low income; 65% of all voucher users attend one of these schools.

The report also includes updated data on enrollment trends, schools gaining and losing the most MPCP students, and the aggregate high school drop-out rate. Schools participating in Racine’s new Parental Private School Choice Program are included as well.

The full report and an interactive database of school information are available on the Forum's website.

Let's not focus on the achievement gap

A thought-provoking essay in the current issue of National Affairs by the prolific and sardonic Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute calls for a retreat from education reform's long-held focus on closing the achievement gap. Hess feels the federal No Child Left Behind Act has, ironically, become "education policy that has shortchanged many children." His thesis is that by focusing on improving achievement scores of the lowest performing subgroups of students, opportunities for reform that would also benefit the other students have been passed up. The result is that many parents, educators, principals, and elected officials see school reform as inapplicable to the average- or highly-performing students who make up the majority of children in most classrooms across the country.

Which begs the question--if most children in the country are, in fact, being served pretty well by their public schools (and there can be strong arguments made that children who are white, or female, or upper class, or suburban are served well enough by public schools), then why should the adults who care for and educate them want to reform their schools? Should education reform affect change throughout the system or should it focus more narrowly on those students poorly served by public schooling?

Hess puts himself firmly in the camp of reformers desiring wide-scale change in the nation's public education system. But there are certainly other schools of thought. Until recently, Wisconsin's school reform history exemplified reform targeting the lowest-performing students in the lowest-performing schools by providing options mostly for low-income, urban students. When Governor Walker came into office and expressed a need to reform labor relations laws applicable to all school districts in the state, as opposed to urban districts only, and to support an expansion of the private school choice program beyond Milwaukee, he ushered in a new era of systemic reform.

A new debate is now waging in our state. Do we need to rethink how we're delivering education services to all students, or should we remain focused on the students falling furthest behind? Hess argues that even the best schools are producing graduates suited only to thrive in a 19th century, or perhaps 20th century, world. For him, the need for systemic reform arises from the 21st century reforms the world is experiencing in nearly all other aspects, from technology to the economy to governance. He concludes, "[D]eciding that school is the place where we teach poor children to read and do math — and that everyone else will be left alone to figure out the rest — seems an impoverished and ultimately self-defeating agenda for education reform in the 21st century."


There are still a significant number of education policy thinkers and reformers who are not ready to conclude the entire system needs an overhaul, however. Just this week, the MacArthur Foundation awarded one of its "genius grants" to an economist whose work focuses on the achievement gap, for example.


In places like Milwaukee, where most students are poor, most are minority, and overall achievement scores are low, the debate over targeted versus systemic reform may be beside the point. But as more and more suburban school districts experience growth in their low-income, minority, and/or immigrant student populations, and see test scores drop, the debate is very relevant.

Networked schools outperform independent schools in world's largest school choice market

Milwaukee's private school voucher program, now in its twelfth year, is dwarfed by the 30-year-old voucher program in Chile, where almost half of all students attend private voucher schools. The Chilean program is therefore of significant interest to school reformers and researchers looking to make voucher and charter schools a success in the US.

The most recent research, published by the Cato Institute, finds that when the Chilean public school test scores are compared with those of independent private schools and with those of private schools that are part of multi-school networks or franchises, the students in the franchised private schools perform best. (The independent, mom-and-pop private schools do about the same as the public schools.) In addition, the Chilean research indicates the more schools there are in the franchised networks, the better they outperform the others.

The researchers note that in Chile, "The private voucher school sector is essentially a cottage industry. More than 70 percent of private voucher schools are independent schools that do not belong to a franchise." The franchised schools are either owned by for-profit school management companies; affiliated with non-profit, secular organizations; or part of the Catholic or Protestant school systems.

Do these findings reflect what we know about Milwaukee's program? Its hard to say, since only one year of comparative data on student performance in voucher schools is available and it does not differentiate between the various types of private schools. However, those data do indicate considerable variability in performance across Milwaukee's voucher schools--some are producing high scoring students and some are no better than the worst public schools. It would be nice to know if all the high performing private schools had something in common besides the fact they participate in the voucher program.

We do know that Milwaukee is in two major ways very dissimilar to Chile, where most private voucher schools are of the independent, mom-and-pop variety. Here, most voucher schools would be considered franchises under Chilean standards, as they are affiliated with a religious organization such as the Catholic Archdiocese or a Lutheran Synod. In addition, for-profit school management networks do not have a significant presence in Milwaukee, although that sector appears likely to grow, particularly in the charter school market.

What might explain the Chilean experience? The researchers posit that the franchised schools may benefit from economies of scale in purchasing, fundraising, and administrative expenses, allowing their leadership to spend less time worrying about budgets and more time focused on instruction. In addition, they suggest that larger networks are better able to spread the costs of implementing new curricula or other reforms. However, the researchers caution there may be another explanation; perhaps the larger franchises are simply better at recruiting good schools to join their networks.

As for-profit school management companies look to expand into the Milwaukee education market, these findings and possibilities are worth bearing in mind. However, at least one education policy wonk cautions not to read too much into any research on the Chilean program, since their system arose not from "a richly democratic public debate, but emerged instead from the policies imposed by the military dictatorship that ... controlled the country ... under the rule of strongman Augusto Pinochet."

UPDATE: School Choice Wisconsin reported on private school networks in December 2010, noting that despite the lack of national charter school networks in the city, the school choice program had resulted in growing local networks.

A misplaced trust in leadership

There is a common presumption that when it comes to improving public school performance, constructive changes, whether originating at the top or the bottom, cannot take hold unless they are championed by the superintendent. The superintendent of the Atlanta Public School District is often cited as an example of the type of leadership that brings about dramatic improvement. Dr. Beverly Hall had one of the longest tenures of any large urban district superintendent, having led APS over 12 years. She won many national awards and accolades over those years and the Atlanta schools were on a steep trajectory of improvement.

Now, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that trajectory was launched not by the vision of a strong leader, but was systematically manufactured by a superintendent who tolerated, and possibly encouraged, outright cheating by school staff on state standardized tests. The evidence, gathered by a governor's task force, is overwhelming, alarming, and shocking. The task force report names 178 educators, including 38 principals, as participants in cheating. More than 80 educators confessed to actions such as erasing students' wrong answers and changing them to correct answers. Cheating was confirmed in 44 of the 56 schools examined.

The consequences are yet unknown—Will Dr. Hall have to pay back performance bonuses earned by improved test scores? Will colleges stand behind acceptance decisions for which good test scores were a factor? Will the federal government hold the district accountable under the No Child Left Behind Act? Will criminal charges be brought? One clear result: Students who never learned their real scores lost opportunities to improve their weaknesses and build on their strengths.

Like the recently-exposed problems with the New York state exams, this cheating scandal raises questions about the wisdom of building education reforms around standardized tests. Some will use these developments as a reason to oppose merit pay for teachers, strengthening No Child Left Behind, or requiring private schools accepting voucher students to participate in the tests. Others will argue that a few bad actors cannot be allowed to spoil the best, albeit imperfect, method of monitoring school performance.

These opposing views each have a foothold in Wisconsin, which is currently in the process of developing a new standardized testing scheme. The public debate over the ways in which the new test is to be used for policymaking and accountability purposes is sure to be long and hard. But this debate gives rise to an opportunity to make Badgerland lemonade from other states’ lemons. Wisconsin could anticipate the potential for organized cheating on standardized tests and explicitly spell out the ways in which the Department of Public Instruction will monitor test security and integrity, and the penalties for cheating. For example, DPI might rule that any school turning in score sheets with wrong-to-right answer erasures numbering more than three standard deviations above the norm (statistically unlikely to have happened coincidentally) would trigger an automatic investigation.

Currently, according to DPI's policy and procedure manual, penalties for school staff found to be complicit in cheating are not regulated by the state; it is left to a district to administer any penalties according to local policy. The New York Times reports that in Atlanta, the school board was loath to criticize Dr. Hall, whom the directors felt had done much to improve the perception of their schools and city. Perhaps the lesson of Atlanta is that districts cannot be allowed to self-police as long as their test results are used to determine more than just student performance.

Measuring up education

A common complaint about education reform is the slow pace with which it takes place. I've often heard the analogy, "Improving a school system is like turning a battleship." In contrast, political changes can occur quite rapidily, as this state has witnessed over the past several months. And while the Forum's mission is to conduct timely and topical research, sometimes the policy world moves faster than we had anticipated. Such is the case with the report we release today.

The report, entitled "Measuring Up Education: Community-Driven Accountability in Milwaukee," was commissioned last summer by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation (GMF) in a quest to find community consensus on a dozen or so simple metrics that could be used to measure progress in the Milwaukee Public Schools.

Since that time, the voters have elected a new governor, and the state legislature has enacted new laws dramatically changing the landscape for local governments and school districts. These changes affirm the need for consensus when it comes to holding the district accountable, yet they also make consensus more difficult to achieve. And, in this case, they perhaps make consensus on turning the ship around less of a priority than simply keeping it upright.

Nonetheless, we believe the report contains important information for those seeking a simple framework through which to view the district's momentum. We suggest several metrics that could find consensus in Milwaukee based on experiences in other urban districts, the priorities Milwaukee education reformers have voiced, and the district's internal and external goals (as reflected in the MPS strategic plan and state and federal regulations).

In the end, while reasonable people will disagree about the specific strategies needed to improve the quality of teaching and learning at MPS, it would be constructive for community leaders at least to agree on how we will measure whether those strategies are succeeding, and how to ensure accountability if they are not.

No growth in school choice program this year

Milwaukee's private school voucher program, known as the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), enrolled slightly fewer students this fall than in the previous year. That makes 2010-2011 the first school year without growth in the program since its expansion to include religious schools in 1998-1999. The Forum analyzes 13 years of school choice data in our newest report on the program, released today.

The loss of 66 students this year was minor compared to the number of schools leaving the program. Twelve schools did not return to the program this year. Combined with the 17 schools that were lost in 2009-2010, this factor had a direct impact on the decline in enrollment. Just three schools joined the program in 2009-2010 and four schools joined this year, all of them much smaller than the schools that closed or withdrew.


Thus, at 103 schools in 2010-2011 compared to 114 in 2009-2010, it shouldn't be surprising that fewer students receive vouchers this year. Total enrollment also declined this year among the schools participating in the MPCP.

The reduction in the number of participating schools is the result of new state regulations requiring MPCP schools to be accredited. Most of the schools leaving the program over the past two years did so because they lacked accreditation. In addition, two schools left the program this year in order to convert to charter schools, which earn more per pupil than voucher schools.

For more on the impact of state regulations on the program, including newregulations requiring all schools to administer the state standardized tests, see the full report. A directory of schools participating in the program, with information useful to parents making schooling decisions, also is available on the Forum's Web site.

PPF Pearls: School reform and the new mayor in town

When the Forum took a look at school district governance reform in a February 2009 report, we found the success of mayoral control of school districts has as much to do with the personality of the mayor as with his/her education policies. That finding is about to be put to the test in two cities where mayors with strong education records soon will be leaving office.

The education reform world was abuzz with the loss in the Democratic primary of D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty to D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray, wondering what it would mean for education reform in that city. Mayor Fenty's vision of reform resulted in his appointment of Michelle Rhee as Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools. Ms. Rhee has been a polarizing figure to educators across the country due to her ardent and aggressive approach to school leadership. During her 3.5 years as chancellor, the district has reached agreement on merit pay for teachers, reversed an enrollment decline, and seen an improvement in test scores and graduation rates.

The suspicion that Ms. Rhee, having campaigned for Mayor Fenty, would resign following Fenty’s loss was confirmed last week with the announcement of her successor, interim chancellor Kaya Henderson. Gray has indicated he would refrain from reversing Ms. Rhee’s reforms, saying the district “cannot and will not return to the days of incrementalism." Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether the reform momentum will continue.

Meanwhile, a similar story is unfolding in Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley has announced that he will step down as mayor after 22 years in office. That announcement resulted in less drama in education policy circles, perhaps because the school system has survived the loss of the mayor's first hand-picked School CEO, Paul Vallas, as well as his second, Arne Duncan, who left the city two years ago to become U.S. Secretary of Education. Ron Huberman, the current CEO of Chicago Public Schools, has hinted that his continued tenure is uncertain, with his departure possibly preceding that of Mayor Daley.

While Chicago schools have weathered CEO changes, the city has not experienced a mayoral change since the system first became mayoral-led. Chicago has a long history with Mayor Daley, who served as the common thread to the reforms of prior CEOs. With his departure, continuation of his reforms hinges on the priorities of the incoming administration. Education can be expected to be a key issue in the next Chicago mayoral election.

But the political changes are not the only uncertainty facing these districts right now. Mayor Daley and Chancellor Rhee were both very successful in attracting significant corporate resources to their districts. Daley's Renaissance 2010 initiative has been supported by the Commercial Club of Chicago, a group of several Chicago business leaders, and several other local and national foundations, raising $50 million over the last five years to close and replace up to 100 underperforming schools.

Rhee has attracted private donations that totaled $64.5 million from entities like the Walton Foundation to help fund a new pay-for-performance model of teacher compensation. Contributing foundations have reserved the ability to withdraw this funding should Rhee leave the district. Now that Rhee has resigned, it is uncertain whether or not the money will leave D.C. as well.

As transitions play out in Washington and Chicago, the rest of the nation will be watching. Will the new mayors have the political capital needed to follow through with significant reforms? Will the new district leaders be able to push equally bold policy when backed by young administrations?

When standardized tests measure the test, not the student

New York state's standardized education exams, like tests in Wisconsin and many other states, have been used to gauge the effectiveness of school reform efforts. The reforms that have been credited with improving test scores in New York City include mayoral control, charter schools, and teacher bonuses. But critics have long taken issue with these findings by raising questions about the tests themselves.

A recent in-depth story in the New York Times reveals that problems with the New York state tests have been a well-known secret for several years among city and state leaders. The tests themselves were recalibrated this year in order to address these problems and, as a result, achievement rates dropped dramatically. The tests will soon be redesigned altogether.

Says the Times:

New York has been a national model for how to carry out education reform, so its sudden decline in passing rates may be seen as a cautionary tale. The turnaround has also been a blow to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his chancellor, Joel I. Klein, who despite warnings that a laserlike focus on raising scores could make them less and less reliable, lashed almost every aspect of its school system to them. Schools were graded on how much their scores rose and threatened with being closed if they did not. The scores dictated which students were promoted or left back, and which teachers and principals would receive bonuses. The test scores were even used for a new purpose this year: to help determine which teachers should receive tenure.

The specific problems with the New York tests are not present in the Wisconsin state tests. Wisconsin's exams are neither as short nor as narrowly focused as the New York exams, and the questions are not released publicly after the annual exam period. It is these facets that have made the New York exams easy to predict, and therefore easy to master. The result has been tests that do not accurately measure student learning, but in fact measure the tests' passability--an incredible 81% of all students in the state were deemed proficient in math and 69% were proficient in reading according to the 2008 test results. (The 2009 tests resulted in 84% of all New York City public schools receiving an A in the mayor’s grading system.)

While many educators, policymakers, and researchers were aware that the scores were too good to be true, the stakes seemed too high to reverse course. However, John King, New York’s deputy education commissioner, told the Times, “If people had known what an effective lever the tests would be of driving behavior, I think they would have designed the tests differently.”

This is a good lesson for Wisconsin as our state embarks on a process to design and adopt a new standardized testing scheme--tests must be designed with all their purposes in mind. To date there has not been a vigorous public debate in Wisconsin about the potential uses of the new tests. To what extent will they be used to measure teacher performance and determine teacher pay? Will they measure students' skills as well as content knowledge? Will they measure student performance in comparison to national norms or as a reflection of state standards? Will individual student growth be measured? Will the tests be used to measure the effectiveness of governance reforms, school choice, virtual schools, and/or charter schools?


Standardized tests do not paint a complete picture of student learning, but they are the easiest method of measuring and comparing student achievement and thus play an out-sized role in education policy. Awareness of standardized tests' limitations should underlie any policy or educational decisions that will be determined by them.

Merit-based pay for students and parents?

The notion of linking teacher salaries to student outcomes has been one of the country's most talked-about education reform topics of late, causing us to wonder in an earlier blog whether Milwaukee's new superintendent had this controversial idea on his radar screen.

But now, out of Houston, comes a concept that undoubtedly would generate even more controversy if attempted locally: paying students and parents for improved academic performance.

A recent article in the Houston Chronicle describes a $1.5 million pilot program approved by the Houston Independent School District (HISD) that will allow families at certain HISD schools to earn more than $1,000 for enhanced student achievement in fifth grade math. The program will be funded by a Dallas foundation.

According to the article, fifth graders at the selected schools will be able to earn up to $440 for passing tests showing they have mastered certain mathematical concepts. Parents of successful students can earn another $400 as a reward for making sure their children did the necessary work to pass the tests, as well as $180 for attending nine parent-teacher conferences. There's also something in the deal for teachers, who can earn up to $40 per student for holding the parent-teacher conferences.

Interestingly, a third party to this seemingly radical idea is Harvard University's Education Innovation Laboratory, which has formed a research partnership with HISD. The same Harvard researchers conducted a comprehensive experiment of the "pay for grades" concept in Chicago, Dallas, New York and Washington that was featured last spring in Time magazine. The research team will compare student test scores at HISD schools that are participating in the program with schools that are not. It also will examine the incentives' impacts on other barometers of student success, such as attendance rates and behavior.

The Chronicle story engendered howls of outrage from readers commenting on the paper's website, many of whom questioned why anyone should be rewarding parents for fulfilling their parental responsibilities and students for doing what's in their own best interest. School district officials quoted in the article argue, however, that over-worked and over-stressed low-income parents may need an incentive to become more involved, and at this point it's just a research project aimed at determining whether financial incentives truly would make a difference.

Given the political outcry that likely would occur even if the pilot turns out to be successful, it's difficult to imagine it taking hold across the country. Still, in light of the constant refrain for bold and innovative reform in our urban schools, can you blame Houston for trying?

Could a budget crisis reform teaching?

Tight budgets are causing many local governments to revisit labor agreements in search of cost savings. Around Milwaukee we've seen labor concessions to avoid layoffs at MATC and the city; unpaid furlough days at the city and county; and teacher layoffs at MPS. While a portion of the laid-off teachers were called back last week, the MPS layoffs have been portrayed as the most drastic labor management tactics of any local government in response to the budget crisis.

Facing its own budget troubles, the Chicago Public School District (CPS) is also looking at the potential for layoffs. But the CPS board of education approved a new policy last month that would prioritize the release of tenured teachers with the poorest performance ratings over newer teachers with higher ratings. The policy would save the district money every time a more costly senior teacher is laid off instead of a lower paid, more recent hire. The policy would go into effect if the district reaches class sizes of 35, another attempt at coping with a gaping budget hole, or if student enrollment drops enough to require layoffs.

The Chicago teachers union is arguing that the district cannot implement the policy, as it violates the negotiated teacher contract. The contract, in place since 2007, requires layoffs to be based on seniority. The district claims state law allows it the discretion to use teacher performance evaluations in making layoff determinations. The district and the union are debating whether the discretion granted by the state law is abandoned when a district signs a contract that does not include a provision for performance-based layoffs. (The union also contends that the teacher evaluation process is too arbitrary to be used for this purpose, a universal issue with regard to teacher performance measurement.)

If CPS prevails, it will be among the first to abandon the traditional "last hired, first fired" model for mass layoffs. However, it is not likely to be the last. Education reform advocates wanted the $10 billion federal education jobs bill, which passed the House July 1 and is now pending in the Senate, to include a provision requiring states to outlaw seniority-based layoffs in order to be eligible for the aid. (The bill does not contain the provision.) Arizona is currently the only state with such a law on the books, although Gov. Schwarzenegger has stated his support for a similar proposal in California.

While Wisconsin has yet to take on the issue, it is not unreasonable to expect pinched districts to look for new ways to relieve their budgetary stress. Education reform is not usually driven by the need to save money and often, in fact, requires an influx of money. Could this be the reform that structural deficits hath wrought?

Reforming the teaching profession, part 2: Pay-for-performance

Like tenure reform, discussed in yesterday's post, tying teacher salaries to student outcomes is a controversial education reform strategy that is gaining traction across the country, but has yet to be debated in Milwaukee. Many of the recent efforts come from the federal Race to the Top grant guidelines, which expressed a preference for states that included student outcomes as a factor in teacher evaluations.

But even before Race to the Top, several districts already had implemented merit pay plans, most notably the Denver Public Schools. The DPS scheme, call ProComp, was approved by Denver voters in 2005. Teachers new to the district are automatically part of the program and other teachers may opt-in. In exchange for a higher base salary, teachers agree to accept pay raises based on participation in professional development activities, working in a hard-to-staff school, showing proficiency in teacher evaluations, and/or exceeding student achievement goals. The goals of ProComp are to improve student outcomes and to attract and retain quality teachers.

A recent evaluation of ProComp found that the program appears to have contributed to the district's gains in reading and math scores and to have attracted new teachers with better student outcomes in their first year of teaching.

Other programs have shown less promise. An evaluation of a state program in Texas that provided grants to high poverty schools to implement merit-based bonuses found that over the three years of the program, schools that gave bigger bonuses had less teacher turnover; however, no relationship between the merit bonuses and student outcomes was found.

Despite the mixed results of these and other pay-for-performance strategies, federal, state, and district officials continue to seek ways to connect teacher pay to student achievement. In two districts, controversial new superintendents have received approval to implement merit pay plans starting next school year. Michelle Rhee and the Washington D.C. plan were discussed in a previous post. A superintendent that has often been compared to Rhee, Mike Miles, will implement a plan in the Harrison School District of Colorado Springs in which all teachers and principals in the 11,000-student district will forgo salary step increases in favor of raises based on performance.

The Harrison plan stands out among merit pay schemes in its reliance on classroom observations to measure teacher effectiveness. Soon after joining the district in 2006, Miles started intensive professional development for principals in the art of classroom observations. In addition, he established an extensive professional development infrastructure so that principals can refer teachers to training opportunities based on what was observed. Principals are to conduct frequent "spot" observations of 10 to 15 minutes, as well as longer formal observations of entire lessons and/or classes, and give constructive feedback to teachers.

The observation scores will be matched to student performance scores on, at minimum, the state standardized test, progress-monitoring and interim assessments, and district assessments. Together, the observations and student performance scores will place the teacher in one of nine salary tiers. Teachers can move down the tiers, as well as up, and their salaries will be adjusted accordingly. For current teachers, the adjustments will be made from their current salary.

This new merit pay model, which requires not only investment in salaries and raises, but also substantial resources for professional development, is certain to be closely watched across the country as it moves forward. Will Milwaukee's new superintendent be watching as well?

Reforming the teaching profession, part 1: Tenure reform

Milwaukee is often called ground zero for education reform, and for good reason. We have been on the forefront of reforms such as budget decentralization, school-to-work, neighborhood schools, parental choice, charter schools and, the most recent attempt, governance reform.

There are two hot-button issues, however, that have not been on the agenda here: merit pay and tenure reform. But, with both of these tactics garnering more attention across the country, it seems unlikely Milwaukee will be a hold-out for long.

Merit pay, or pay-for-performance, has been implemented or is in the process of being implemented in several schools districts across the state. Tomorrow I'll post about a few of those efforts. Today's post focuses on tenure reform.

In one way, tenure reform has gained a foothold in Milwaukee. The recently passed legislation that gives the state Department of Public Instruction with greater powers over the Milwaukee Public Schools also eliminated tenure for principals in MPS. (MPS is the only district in the state with represented principals.) But it does not tackle teacher tenure, or permanent status, head-on.

Teacher tenure laws arose in the 1920s and '30s from the women's rights movement of the time. In an era in which female teachers were routinely fired for getting married or wearing pants, teachers needed protection from paternalistic employment laws, unfair rules, and arbitrary decisions by administrators. Today, through due process requirements, tenure still protects teachers from arbitrary dismissal, and also provides some protection from political, ideological, or other pressures from administrators, school boards, or parents. An argument also can be made that tenure helps balance out the limitations of the job, such as a low salary, and makes the profession more attractive.

Providing permanent status to teachers has both fiscal and educational drawbacks. From a fiscal perspective, dismissing a teacher is a long and costly process for school districts and districts. And from an educational standpoint, districts often struggle to hold mediocre teachers with tenure accountable for student performance. In addition, some argue that K-12 teachers are not in need of the same "academic freedoms" as professors and that there is not the same threat today of unfair working conditions or arbitrary dismissals.

Over the past year many states have begun debating tenure reform proposals. In fact, at least four states have had tenure reform bills introduced this spring that would bring teacher quality into the tenure/dismissal decision:

• Colorado: Last week Governor Ritter signed a "teacher effectiveness bill" into law that, among other things, grants tenure only after a teacher has three consecutive years of "demonstrated effectiveness" in the classroom. Tenured teachers lose their non-probationary status if they have two consecutive years of unsatisfactory evaluations. In addition, when layoffs are necessary, effectiveness will be considered before seniority.


• Louisiana: Gov. Jindal's proposal to tie dismissal decisions to annual performance evaluations has passed the Louisiana House and is awaiting a vote in the Senate. The bill specifies that the evaluations will include consideration of student performance. In addition, teachers deemed ineffective would receive "intensive assistance" for a year. Those judged ineffective a second time could be dismissed.


• California: Gov. Schwartzenegger's 2005 proposal to increase the probationary period for teachers from two to five years was defeated by the voters. He is now supporting a reform that would prevent layoff decisions from being made based solely on seniority. In addition, the Los Angeles Unified School district is planning to dismiss three times more teachers this year than last year, after the Los Angeles Times reported that an investigation of the district revealed no systematic process for evaluating teacher performance prior to granting permanent status.


• Florida: Gov. Crist vetoed a bill last month that would have eliminated teacher tenure and linked salaries to student performance. The bill kept tenure in place for current teachers, but tied their pay to performance evaluations. New teachers would have worked under one-year contracts and would have been dismissed for low student performance on end-of-year exams in any two of five years.

Other states also have debated or changed their laws regarding the number of years a teacher works before being eligible for tenure, including Ohio, Maryland, and Delaware.

Interestingly, Wisconsin is the only state in which districts are not statutorily required to provide tenure for teachers, although all districts currently do so. At first blush, it might seem that this unique status would allow MPS to more easily embark on an evaluation of the tenure process, potentially making changes of the type being debated nationally. In reality, however, the district is unlikely to seek any changes in teacher contracts that would make employment at MPS less attractive than in surrounding districts.

Will a district and a city accustomed to being at the cutting edge of education reform sit out this latest wave of reform efforts? The clock is ticking on when tenure reform will become part of the discussion about the urgent need to improve student outcomes in Milwaukee.

Part II, tomorrow: One superintendent's role in tying teacher pay to student achievement.

Let the "Race to the Top" begin

Governor Doyle has not been shy about his desire to see the mayor of Milwaukee governing the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) district as part of an effort to make Wisconsin more competitive for new federal K-12 education dollars. The dollars at stake, called the "Race to the Top Fund," will not automatically go to every state, but will be disbursed to selected states based on their promise to fulfill certain criteria.


While the desirability of chasing after these funds has been controversial in Wisconsin, we're not the only ones debating major education reform policies as a result of the Race to the Top challenge. This week's Education Week highlights some of the policies being considered in other states:

• Several states are responding with policies that would tie teacher pay to student performance. Maine's governor has proposed allowing student achievement data to be considered in teacher evaluations, as have Michigan's and Tennessee's governors.


• Many states are focusing on increasing the number of charter schools, or in the case of Alabama, enabling charter school operations for the first time.


• The strategy that seems to be garnering the most attention from the states is "turning around" low-performing schools via state intervention. In Michigan, a newly signed law allows the state to take over low-performing schools or districts and place them under the direction of a "reform officer." In New York, proposed legislation also empowers the state to intervene in the lowest-performing schools, by authorizing new management under private educational management organizations. Tennessee's governor has proposed allowing the state to take over "chronically" underperforming schools.

The Obama administration has promised to provide states who miss out on the first round of funds with enough guidance to allow them to resubmit stronger proposals in the second round. With Governor Doyle's announcement last week that Wisconsin's application will not include a proposed mayoral takeover of MPS, optimism among education policy wonks about our chances at first-round funding has waned. If the successful first-round state applications are those with state-led school turn-around plans, might the debate in Wisconsin shift from, "Should the mayor be running MPS?" to "Should the state be running MPS?"

The People Speak: Citizens' views on transportation, education reform, taxation

The second installment of the results of the autumn People Speak poll, conducted in partnership with the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee's Center for Urban Initiatives and Research and The Business Journal Serving Greater Milwaukee, focuses on public policy issues such as mass transit and mayoral takover of MPS.

The People Speak is a tracking poll that will be conducted at regular intervals throughout the year. Its purpose it to gather information from local citizens about their interests in, preferences for, and concerns about public policy. By gathering and reporting out these citizen perspectives, the partners hope to expand the public voice in policy matters affecting Greater Milwaukee.

Highlights from the most current Research Brief include:

• A majority of residents of southeastern Wisconsin favor high speed rail connecting Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison, as well as commuter rail connecting Racine, Kenosha, and Milwaukee. A downtown streetcar line in the City of Milwaukee is less favorable, but still garners support from half of Milwaukee County residents.


• When it comes to funding transportation improvements, toll roads have the most support, with about half of all residents in favor. Increasing the gasoline tax is not favored by most residents, nor is the creation of a regional transit authority funded by an increased sales tax.


• A mayoral takeover of the Milwaukee Public Schools is favored by 43% of poll participants in the region. The level of support among City of Milwaukee residents is the same--43%. The greatest support comes from Democrats, 50% of whom are in favor of the idea.


• Establishing a regional authority to oversee parks and cultural facilities for all of southeast Wisconsin garners the support of a majority of poll participants across the region. The only county in which a majority of respondents is not in favor is Ozaukee.


• Residents of the region are split on whether they would favor increased user fees in order to lower property taxes. Increased sales taxes for this purpose are slightly less favored.

For full results of the poll, go to the poll website.

Mayoral control isn't magic, but it might be muscle

In 2007, when the New York General Assembly was considering whether to renew the legislation authorizing mayoral control of the New York City public schools, a Commission on School Governance was appointed to study the policy's benefits, drawbacks, and outcomes and to recommend whether renewal was appropriate.

The Commission heard testimony from many stakeholders and collected research from policy analysts and education experts. They met for nearly 11 months and issued a 20-page report of their findings. In the end, they recommended the renewal of mayoral control.

During the first six years of mayoral control, from 2002 to 2007, test scores in New York City schools improved. But the Commission looked over all the evidence, and noting that scores in many other New York districts also improved over that time, decided that test score improvements on state tests could not be attributed solely to mayoral control. In fact, when scores on national tests were considered, they found no clear evidence of a relationship between governance structure and student outcomes.

But they did recommend a continuation of the mayoral control policy, and cited four primary reasons:

1. A single, elected mayor is more accountable than an elected governing body.
2. Mayoral control had resulted in dramatic increases in state and local funding for the schools.
3. Mayoral control had changed the collective bargaining dynamic, "better balancing incentives for fostering school improvement" with controlling costs.
4. Mayoral control creates a governance structure "that allows a mayor or chancellor to exercise leadership when the public demands it."

It is the last point that seems to have tipped the scales for the Commission:

Does governance matter? Of course it does. The amount of change that occurs over a given period of time is a relevant factor to consider when evaluating a governance structure, especially when one purpose of the governance plan under consideration was to foster change. In the past six years, the New York City school system has undergone more change than it has in any similar period in its history. This change must at least in part be attributed to mayoral control.

In other words, mayors can show leadership, which can lead to changes, which in turn can lead to improvement in student outcomes. Wouldn't it be nice to know exactly what those changes were and how they brought about higher achievement?

Recent research sheds some light on these questions. UCLA professor William Ouchi has found that mayoral control in New York resulted in decentralization of decision-making, allowing principals to control their budgeting, staffing, and curricular decisions. The principals used this new power to reduce the numbers of non-teaching staff in their schools, lowering what is called the teacher-student load, or the total number of students for whom a teacher is responsible. They found that high school principals reduced the load to an average of 87.7 students per teacher, much less than the contractual maximum of 170 students per teacher. Teachers with fewer students reported being able to recognize students' weaknesses sooner and intervene more quickly and more intensively. Graduation rates during this time increased from 65.8 percent to 74.5 percent.

If and when the Wisconsin state legislature takes up the issue of mayoral control for MPS, parents, voters, and taxpayers should urge them to take heed of the findings in New York. We must ask whether mayoral control is being sought simply for the sake of change, or is it being designed in a way that will increase accountability, bring more resources into classrooms, put more issues on the bargaining table, and provide leadership to implement school-level reforms that have been proven to result in higher student performance?

As we've said before when it comes to governance reform, "the devil is in the details."

Pittsburgh's model of school governance reform

In the past few weeks Milwaukee has had numerous town hall meetings, panel discussions, and presentations regarding the idea of school district governance reform. At issue is whether the mayor of Milwaukee should be in charge of the Milwaukee Public Schools, rather than an independent board of directors.

At each of these meetings, accountability has been thrown about as both an argument for and against a mayoral take-over of the district. Perhaps a mayor elected in a higher turn-out citywide election would provide more accountability; or maybe losing the opportunity to elect a school board representative would disenfranchise certain voters, diluting accountability.

In Pittsburgh, civic leaders, parents, and citizens decided to stop talking about accountability and actually implement it. A local nonprofit group, A+ Schools: Pittsburgh’s Community Alliance for Public Education, started an initiative called "Board Watch" last winter. The idea is quite simple: send volunteers to attend every board and committee meeting and have them report to the public whether the board is being effective in meeting the district's strategic goals.

The volunteers are trained to observe meetings and evaluate the performance of the school board on five good-governance practices: maintaining focus on the district's mission, being transparent, conducting meetings in accordance with district rules, having clarity in the role of the board and its members, and competency, including substantive knowledge and preparedness. Board Watch issues quarterly report cards with grades for each of the five practices, as well as overall performance. The reports also include recommendations for improvements.

Board Watch is seen as both a public engagement tool, by creating more interest in board activities and decisions, and as a way to provide the public with a set of expectations for good board governance. Earlier this decade Pittsburgh's board had become so dysfunctional that three large local foundations decided they would no longer donate funds, costing the district millions of dollars in support. Civic leaders decided the community needed to set clear expectations for how the board must function and created the A+ Schools organization to work on reform.

Pittsburgh board members seem to be sanguine about the project, wishing they could also be graded on things like good intentions. But they do acknowledge the merits. Says one board member: “If you watch any school board meeting, whether it’s us or some other board, how often do you hear them actually talk about education? Slowly, I think Board Watch is going to help us focus on why we are there.” Sounds like the kind of focus needed in Milwaukee, as well.

PPF Pearls: Mayoral takeover of schools

Last winter, at the behest of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, the Forum conducted an analysis of other urban school districts that had undergone governance reform such as state or mayoral takeovers. Our findings are pretty much summed up by the subtitle of the report: The Devil is in the Details. It's becoming tedious to say, but we found, again, that there are no silver bullets in education reform.

At the time our report was released, neither the mayor nor the governor had explicitly said a mayoral takeover was on the table, but that has changed now, perhaps largely because the U.S. Department of Education has made clear that this kind of governance reform can be rewarded with federal "Race to the Top" funds.

These federal funds being dangled in front of our leaders are not a sure thing, however. As part of the Race to the Top grant program, they would be competitive funds, awarded to the state only if certain criteria are met. These criteria are still in draft form, but include the state (and the district) making "assurances" that steps are being taken in four areas to improve student outcomes. The four areas include:

• Standards and assessments--adopting common standards and implementing common, high-quality assessments


• Data systems to support instruction--implementing a statewide longitudinal data system that is accessible to parents and other stakeholders and using data to improve instruction


• Improving teachers and leaders--providing alternative pathways to teaching and school leadership, measuring and rewarding teacher performance, ensuring the most effective teachers and principals are equitably distributed across schools, and measuring and reporting the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs


• Turning around struggling schools--intervening in the lowest-performing schools and districts, increasing the supply of high-quality charter schools, and turning around struggling schools.

In addition, a specific draft criterion would require the state to demonstrate that education is a funding priority by not cutting K-12 aid from 2008 levels. Other factors to be considered are the support of the teachers unions and the state's progress toward closing the racial achievement gap.

For Wisconsin and Milwaukee, meeting many of these criteria may be a stretch. Maintaining K-12 aid has been difficult in the past several budget cycles, even prior to the recession and the loss of state income tax revenue. The racial achievement gap in Wisconsin is among the worst in the nation and is not narrowing here as it is in other states. The strong teachers union has voiced opposition in the past to many of the items to be "assured," most notably the idea of tying teacher pay to student performance.

In addition, before the mayor gets a chance to try his hand at running the school district, the legislature will have to make certain statutory changes.

In the meantime, the school board will be debating significant structural changes within the district's administration and recruiting a new superintendent. Could all these forces come together in a federally-funded "perfect storm" that raises student achievement in Milwaukee? The chance seems remote, but you may want to keep an umbrella close at hand, just in case.

A school choice paradox (or two)

The latest results of the longitudinal evaluation of Milwaukee's school choice program were released by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) at a Forum Eye-Opener Breakfast last week. (You can listen to the podcast here.)

Dr. Patrick Wolf, the lead evaluator, does a nice job summarizing the findings of the eight different research reports in his executive summary. These are nuanced findings, with a few contradictions in them, yet understanding them is vitally important for policymakers. Wolf's summary, if not all the reports, should be required reading for local and state officials.

What struck me as I waded through the findings (and I have had several weeks to ruminate on them as I was given a preview of the results last month due to my membership on the SCDP's advisory board) was that Wisconsin has created an education reform policy so paradoxical that mixed results are nearly assured.

First, by encouraging dissatisfied parents to "vote with their feet" and exercise their choice, have we exacerbated schools' mobility problems and negatively impacted student performance?

Educators have known for ages that children who switch schools experience a set-back in achievement, at least initially, and maintaining stability goes a long way toward being able to improve learning and understanding. School choice presumes that a child's switch to a school selected by a parent as being a better fit for the child would outweigh the initial negative impacts of the switch. While that may, in fact, be true, the researchers found that in Milwaukee parents don't stop after making that first choice. They just keep choosing, and choosing, and choosing. (Some portion of this choice is likely due to the high mobility rates of low income families.) This occurs in both the public and private schools, although it appears to be a bigger problem in the public schools. The resulting instability in classrooms and in children's lives could be negatively impacting test scores in both MPS and the private voucher schools.

Thus, we need to ask ourselves, "Could there be such a thing as too much choice?" Or, at least, "Are we doing enough to educate parents about the consequences of choosing too often?"

The second paradox involves an expectation of improved test scores resulting from greater competition among schools, despite that fact that most competition occurs in grade levels that are too young for standardized tests. Third grade is when standardized testing starts, yet over the past 10 years, most of the vouchers have been used by students in grades younger than 3rd. The threat of losing students to another school was supposed to result in better outcomes and parents were supposed to choose the most successful schools, causing poorly performing schools to lose market share. In reality, what we find is that demand for vouchers is greatest in younger, untested grades, which doesn't really send much of a message to schools about the need for measurable performance improvement in order to succeed in the marketplace.

One way to get the message to the schools would be to start testing younger students. A more realistic option is to acknowledge the research that shows parents aren't considering test scores as a major factor in their decision to choose a school. If the choice isn't based on testing results, then perhaps we shouldn't be expecting the reform to improve test scores. If that's the case, then we need to agree on a different policy goal for the school choice program: parental satisfaction, sustainability of religious schools, weakening the political power of the teachers union, stemming population decline in the city, or saving taxpayer money. These have all been suggested as policy goals over the years and are worthy of debate.

Maybe it is time to stop discussing school choice in the context of "competition" altogether. I once talked with a parent who had narrowed down her choices to either the large public Montessori school a 45-minute bus ride away or the smaller private Catholic school in a nearby neighborhood. I tried to talk her though the few comparable facts I had collected about each school...enrollment size, afterschool programs, etc. Her biggest concern was not academic achievement, but discipline, and I had no information for her about that. I don't know how she made her decision, in the end, and I don't know how her decision could have sent an actionable message to the "losing" school. Was it too big? Too secular? Too far? Too traditional?

Most of the reaction to the SCDP research results has ignored the inherent conflict between the results and the rhetoric: How can it be competition that has improved MPS (ever so slightly), when the performance of the competing schools actually differs so little from MPS? How can both good and bad schools be thriving in the educational marketplace?

The answer is that parents are willing to overlook academic deficiencies when they are satisfied with other aspects of the chosen school. Schools, public and private, good and bad, are able to attract students each year despite also losing students each year. Milwaukee must face facts: Our parents like having choices and yet our schools are mostly underperforming. So now we must debate: Do we give up on school choice or adapt it to a new goal? Do we shut down failing schools or invest more resources in them?

The Devil is in the Details

Are the problems facing Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) sufficiently intractable that a new governance structure is required? And, even if a new structure could produce better accountability and fiscal stewardship, would it result in improved educational outcomes?

The Forum's latest research, commissioned by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, attempts to provide insights into those and other questions by discussing significant school district governance changes adopted in large, urban school districts throughout the country.

Our report, entitled School District Governance Reform: The Devil is in the Details (click here for the full report), also provides a summary of lessons learned from other districts, with a particular focus on the experiences of districts that have implemented mayoral takeovers. Some of our key findings:

• Governance reform happens over years, possibly requiring implementation in phases and constant revisions.


• Dissolution of large, urban school districts is rare. Such an endeavor could exacerbate real or perceived racial inequities.


• A mayor’s ability to achieve improvements is dependent on outside factors, including state policy, labor contracts, and constituent priorities, as well as personal factors such as the mayor’s experience, leadership ability, and political aspirations.


• Governance reform does not happen in a vacuum. Political conditions, other educational reform efforts, and larger policy initiatives all interact with governance reform.


• There are nearly as many models for integrated governance (and mayoral takeovers in particular) as there are districts that have attempted governance reform.


• The impacts of integrated governance on a district’s fiscal stability are positive to mixed. While it is unlikely to provide increased funding overall, there is potential for such a reform to reduce administrative costs and increase spending in the classroom.


• Integrated governance can result in some improvements in student performance, but local officials should not count on such a reform as a means of narrowing the achievement gap between high and low-performing schools.

The debate on whether and how to modify MPS' governance structure is likely to be contentious and prolonged. Thoughtful and objective review of the experiences of other districts hopefully will be an integral part of that debate.