Extraordinary, dramatic, and incent

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan addressed the Education Writers Association (did you know there was one?) yesterday. He's rather jokingly hostile to them ("occasionally..insight"?); beyond that, here are a few excerpts with comments:

Truth is supposed to be objective, unequivocal and beyond debate, but do we always meet that standard of objective truth? Do we sometimes choose facts and ideas selectively—and ignore certain truths in favor of others?

I raise these questions because I worry that our public conversation about educating children, lifting struggling schools, and evaluating teachers and principals, too often fall apart because we can't agree on facts, let alone solutions.

There is little agreement on what kids should know and be able to do—how to measure it—and how to report the measures.

We can't agree on whether standardized tests can accurately reflect achievement levels. We can't even agree on whether to test.

There is little agreement about which student outcomes matter most.

What are our priorities?

• Higher graduation rates?
• Higher test scores?
• Better attendance?
• Higher grades?
• Better freshman year on track rates?

We don't agree on how to measure these simple outcomes—not to mention the more complex ideas like value-added.

And there is even less agreement around the means to reaching these goals.

• A positive school culture?
• An administrator's leadership skills?
• Or a teacher's degree of helpfulness?

We can't agree on whether teachers should be measured by their peers, level of qualifications, classroom observation, student performance—or all of the above.

Most people agree that learning begins at birth—yet I recently saw a very irresponsible piece on television calling pre-school a waste of money.

We need to develop a new generation of great teachers—yet there is little agreement on how to hire a great teacher. Is it college grades, advanced degrees, or some intangible quality of empathy and passion?

Somehow amidst all of this chaos and confusion—differing opinions—competing agendas—and absence of broadly-accepted truths—you and I must conduct an open, honest, and productive national conversation on public education.

This all supposes that he gets it, to some extent: that there might possibly be another side to the issues about which he is passionate. Why then does he go on to cite being open to charter schools as necessary for advancement? Are there not two sides to that one?

For example, performance pay is fairly new to education so there may not be a lot of studies showing that it boosts student achievement.

But there's plenty of proof that it boosts worker productivity in other industries, so why not try it in schools?

Well, except there are studies showing that it doesn't boost student achievement. See, for example, the work of George Madaus on "payment for results" in other countries (you'll need to scroll down, but it's a great interview, anyway, and worth reading!).

Too often, we let ideology get in the way of honest conversation. Take charters for example.

Depending on what you read, they are either the salvation of public education or the death-knell for unions.

The fact is they are neither. There are good charters and bad ones—there are union charters and non-union charters. Albert Shanker was one of the pioneers of the charter school movement.

Charters don't take money from public schools. They are public schools—serving our kids with our money and accountable to the same standards.

With one exception: charters don't have to take all kids. Public schools do. Whatever their needs, whatever their histories, all kids can attend a public school.

And where unions are behind these efforts to impede charters we should certainly call them out but we shouldn't demonize unions or blame them for all of the problems in education.

We don't demonize all corporations because of Enron. We don't demonize every stock broker because of Bernie Madoff.

There are many, many great teachers in union schools doing a great job. I met several this week at the White House.

Many of them put in more hours than is required because they care about kids and they care about the work.

That doesn't mean some teachers shouldn't find new careers or that some union contracts shouldn't be rewritten. It doesn't mean some locals aren't opposed to reform.

But we owe it to the millions of dedicated men and women who teach our children—to sit down with them and be respectful even as we challenge them to change.

Union leaders say they are open to reform if it is done "with" them—not "to" them. The President and I have taken them at their word.

We have pushed them on performance pay, higher pay for hard-to-staff schools and subjects, and teacher evaluation systems linked to student performance.

As any frequent readers of who-cester know, the relative amount that teachers are responsible for what any given kid learns in the classroom varies widely. You can my kindergarten, who knows she'll have dinner and a bed tonight and has been read to since she could pick up her head, and put her up against a kid who doesn't know if he'll have dinner or where he'll sleep, and has never had anyone show the slightest interest in his education, and see how much a teacher can do with each of them. There's a reason that teachers are pushing back on performance pay and linking evaluation to test scores.

Kids only have one chance for an education—and we need to have the courage to stand up for them when the system doesn't work. Sometimes you just need to start over.

We're challenging parents to take more responsibility for the education of their children.

We understand that we can't easily fill a home with books or change the behavior of parents overwhelmed by burdens or demons.

Nevertheless, the President has spoken forcefully on the issue—calling for parents to turn off the television, help with homework, and get involved with school.

Agreed on kids only having one education. Having the President speak forcefully on parental roles is not enough, though. We're going to need a whole lot more than that.

We need to be more candid about teacher evaluation. The State of Wisconsin explicitly prohibits linking teacher evaluation and student performance. New York State passed a similar law related to teacher tenure and the State of California also decouples student data and teacher evaluation.

I have an open mind about teacher evaluation, but we need to find a way to measure classroom success and teacher effectiveness. Pretending that student outcomes are not part of the equation is like pretending that professional basketball has nothing to do with the score.

Ugh. Bad analogy. It's more like saying that professional basketball has nothing to do with the number of completed free-throws. It's part of the game; it isn't the ultimate measure of it.

We know that test scores don't tell you everything about students or teachers—but they do tell you something—and until we come up with better measures ways to measure achievement—we must use what we have.

And those test scores will continue to mirror closely the race, education level, income level, and amount of test prep those kids got. How useful is that? How about throwing some money at getting better evaluations?

You can find some of the Q&A from after the speech here.