YES HE WILL?: Campaign Details Suggest That Obama Presidency Will Make Education Reform a High Priority

Our kids and our country can’t afford four more years of neglect and indifference. At this defining moment in our history, America faces few more urgent challenges than preparing our children to compete in a global economy. The decisions our leaders make about education in the coming years will shape our future for generations to come. They will help determine not only whether our children have the chance to fulfill their God-given potential, or whether our workers have the chance to build a better life for their families, but whether we, as a nation, will remain in the 21st century the kind of global economic leader that we were in the 20th century.
                                                                                                                                                           - Barack Obama, September 9, 2008, Dayton, Ohio

Throughout his campaign for president, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) stressed the importance of education to the future of the nation, consistently listing it, along with health care and energy independence, as among his top three priorities. However, the bigger question is not whether Obama will focus on education reform, but when he will be able to do so, especially given the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room that is the American economy. Since his September 9 speech in Ohio, the nation has seen a more than $100 billion bailout of the American International Group (AIG), a $700 billion rescue plan for the financial markets, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lose more than 25 percent of its value.

But perhaps education reform could be a part of his plan to deal with the economic challenges that the nation faces. In the last presidential debate on October 14, Obama outlined actions that he would take to boost the fundamentals of the economy and help the middle class, listing jobs, tax cuts, and help for homeowners. But he also listed some “long-term challenges” in the economy that must be dealt with. “We’ve got to fix our energy policy that’s giving our wealth away,” Obama said. “We’ve got to fix our health care system and we’ve got to invest in our education system for every young person to be able to learn.”

The long-term benefit that improving education can have on the American economy was a theme that Obama articulated during the entirety of his campaign. It was also a big part of his “Plan for Lifetime Success Through Education,” which is posted on Obama’s campaign website. “Investing in early learning also makes economic sense,” the plan reads. “For every one dollar invested in high quality, comprehensive programs supporting children and families from birth, there is a $7–$10 return to society in decreased need for special education services, higher graduation and employment rates, less crime, less use of the public welfare system, and better health.”

To that end, Obama said he would spend $10 billion a year on a comprehensive “Zero to Five” plan that would provide critical supports to young children and their parents. According to Obama’s website, such a plan would quadruple the number of eligible children for Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding, and improve quality for both. It would also work to ensure that all children have access to preschool and “provide affordable and high-quality child care that will promote child development and ease the burden on working families.”

Obama’s education plan would also work to increase the high school graduation rate by focusing on the middle grades. “The dropout problem begins well before high school,” the plan reads. “The middle grades (grades 5, 6, 7, 8) are a crucial, but often overlooked, segment of the educational pipeline. Middle school students must gain skills in reading, mathematics, and other subjects to be successful in the rigorous high school coursework that follows. … Without effective interventions and supports, at-risk sixth-grade students are at risk of becoming tenth-grade dropouts.”

Obama’s plan for reforming middle schools reflects the Success in the Middle Act, which he introduced in the Senate in 2007. The act, which was not passed in the 110th Congress but is expected to be reintroduced for consideration when the 111th Congress convenes next year, targets middle schools that feed into the nearly two thousand “dropout factories” across the country. Dropout factories are high schools in which 60 percent (or fewer) of freshmen will have become seniors three years after finishing their ninth-grade year. The legislation would require states to develop early-warning data systems to identify students who are most at risk of dropping out and intervene to help them succeed. It would also invest in strategies that have been proven to improve student achievement such as professional development and coaching for teachers and school leaders, and supports for students such as personal academic plans, intensive reading and math instruction, and extended learning time.

As the Alliance for Excellent Education has pointed out, reducing the number of students who drop out of high school can also provide a long-term benefit to the nation’s fiscal well-being. In fact, had the more than 1.2 million students who dropped out from the Class of 2008 earned the diplomas with their classmates, the nation would see approximately $319 billion in increased wages over the course of their lifetimes. Simply cutting the graduation rate in half would benefit federal taxpayers with $45 billion in new tax revenues or savings.

During his presidential campaign, Obama also focused on improving the quality of teachers, expanding college access, and improving the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In total, Obama expects his early education and K–12 plan to cost about $18 billion per year. According to his website, he will pay for the plan by “reforming and reducing earmark spending, reforming federal contracting procedures, using purchase cards and the negotiating power of the government to reduce costs of standardized procurement, auctioning surplus federal property, and reducing the erroneous payments identified by the Government Accountability Office, and closing the CEO pay deductibility loophole.”

With Democrats' expanded majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, many of Obama's education proposals should receive a favorable reception. However, there are potential roadblocks looming in both chambers. In the Senate, Democrats will likely fall a couple of seats short of a sixty-seat filibuster-proof majority, meaning that some support from Republicans will be necessary to pass legislation. In the House, a wild card could emerge in the form of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of more than fifty fiscally conservative Democrats (about one fifth of the Democratic caucus) who may want to curb a federal budget deficit that some have projected will grow to $1 trillion in 2010.

To read a transcript or watch a video of Barack Obama’s September 9 speech in Dayton, Ohio, visit http://www.barackobama.com/2008/09/09/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_111.php.

Read more about Barack Obama’s education plan at http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/.

1) As of press time, Democrats were losing Senate races in Georgia and Minnesota, but winning in Alaska.

A NEW WAY FORWARD FOR THE GATES FOUNDATION: Bill Gates Expresses Support for National Standards, Performance Pay for Teachers

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested nearly $4 billion since 2000 to help students, especially low-income and minority youth, “graduate from high school ready to succeed in college, career, and life.” During those eight years, the foundation experienced success in improving student achievement among individual schools and in pockets of the country, but struggled to replicate successful models nationally. That was the message that Bill Gates, cochair and trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, delivered to a meeting of educational leaders in Seattle on November 11. To better help students graduate from high school ready for college, Gates endorsed national standards, performance pay for teachers, and outlined a new way forward for the Gates Foundation that will focus on identifying effective teaching and fostering innovations to aid struggling students.

In his speech, Gates explained that the foundation’s initial strategy for graduating more students was focused on about 8 percent of schools in America, in the hope that they could build a model of a high-achieving school that would be adopted by the other 92 percent. “We did not get the results we were seeking in scaling,” he said. “We wanted to reach all schools indirectly, by showing clear gains and inspiring other schools and districts to replicate those models. Largely, this has not happened.”

Instead, the foundation did find success in some of the new, small schools that it supported, such as those in New York City, where small schools’ graduation rates exceeded comparable schools in the district by 18 percentage points. It was also able to identify some small school models such as KIPP, High Tech High, and YES College Preparatory Schools. Gates highlighted YES, which is located in Houston and has seen 100 percent of its graduates accepted into four-year colleges, including some of the top universities in the country, for the eighth year in a row.

It was the work in these schools, Gates said, that proved that all kids can succeed. But today, far too many students are still struggling. “At our foundation, we believe that success ultimately means that at least 80 percent of low-income and minority students graduate from high school college ready,” he said. “According to our data, the number of low-income and minority students graduating college ready today is 22 percent, and that figure is increasing far too slowly. It’s unacceptable. We need to do better.”

According to Gates, the way to do better is to use the lessons learned from the foundation’s first eight years. For example, he said that simply transforming a large, low-performing high school into smaller, more autonomous schools was insufficient to improve student achievement; changes in the classroom must also be made. He noted that schools with the strongest results tended to implement many proven reforms well, and all at once. “They would create smaller schools, a longer day, better relationships—but they would also establish college-ready standards aligned with a rigorous curriculum, with the instructional tools to support it, effective teachers to teach it, and data systems to track the progress,” he said.

Unfortunately, the factors—such as a rigorous curriculum and effective teachers—that were most responsible for the gains in student achievement were also the limiting factors in taking these gains to scale. “A model that depends on great teaching can’t be replicated by schools that can’t attract and develop great teachers,” Gates said. “A school that has great instructional tools cannot share them with schools that don’t use the rigorous curriculum those tools are based on.”

Gates said that the foundation will continue its work on improving school structure, but announced that it will also focus on effective teaching. The challenge, he said, is that there isn’t a “clear view on the characteristics of great teaching.” But the first step to help develop that view, Gates said, is setting common standards that are aligned with the goal of graduating students ready for college. “You can’t compare teachers if they’re not pursuing a common standard,” he said. “I believe strongly in national standards. Countries that excel in math, for example, have a far more focused, common curriculum than the United States does.”

Gates said that the foundation would continue to work with states and districts to develop a common set of standards that students need to succeed in higher education. And as more states begin to use the same standards, technology, such as lectures online or on DVDs, will allow for next-generation models of teaching and learning. He also wants to invest in data systems that provide teachers with data on how well their students are learning while also helping schools and districts to identify the most effective teachers and reward them for their performance.

Acknowledging the pitfalls associated with performance pay for teachers, Gates insisted that such systems need to be transparent, incentivize the right things, and allow teachers to see and embrace the benefits of the system. Toward that end, the foundation will set up partnerships in three to five locations to design a system that offers training and tools to help every teacher improve; recruits, rewards, and retains effective teachers; and gives good teachers incentives to work in the schools where they’re most needed. Districts with strong leadership, a base level of data systems already in place, and support from teachers and their union will be targeted. “Then we will measure whether it leads to significant improvements in student achievement.”

Teachers who fail to improve student achievement with these supports in place will likely find themselves out of a job. “But if their students still keep falling behind, they’re in the wrong line of work, and they need to find another job,” Gates said.

Read Bill Gates’s entire speech at http://tinyurl.com/5lcyr9.

THE “MUST HAVE” SKILLS: Education Sector Report Makes Case for Incorporating Modern Skills Into Assessments

The primarily multiple-choice tests used to assess reading and math ability, though useful for meeting proficiency targets for the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), generally are not helpful in determining a student’s college- and work-readiness. So says Education Sector in its new report, Measuring Skills for the 21st Century. Within the report, Education Sector does not call for the creation of additional tests but instead declares “a need for better tests that measure more of the skills students need to succeed today.”

The report asserts that such a shift in focus is necessary due to changes in the economy that have occurred over the past twenty years. Citing Tough Choices or Tough Times, written by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce in 2006, it acknowledges the importance of basic skills but adds that creativity, innovation, and higher education are now the keys to economic and job security. “Nearly every segment of the workforce now requires employees to know how to do more than simple procedures—they look for workers who can recognize what kind of information matters, why it matters, and how it connects and applies to other information,” it reads. 

The report notes that twenty-first-century skills, though defined in a number of ways, essentially concern “what students can do with knowledge, rather than what units of knowledge they have.” Technology literacy is frequently mentioned as a twenty-first-century skill that is needed across a number of industries.

Countering the assumption that twenty-first-century skills “cannot be fairly or reliably measured,” the report describes several tests and programs that do just that. One example is the College and Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA), administered by a handful of private schools. For the assessment, students are faced with a real-world problem to address, such as how to manage traffic congestion spurred by population growth. They are given online documents such as newspaper articles and research reports to help inform their decisions, and must articulate their solutions in writing. Though designed to evaluate a school’s improvement rather than an individual student’s, the tests are also seen as a way to measure student learning.

“Are we teaching our students to think intelligently and critically, to do more than just follow or even lead, but to find new paths to go down? That’s what we learn from [the CWRA],” says John Austin, academic dean of the CWRA-administering St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, DE, as quoted in the report.

Assessments such as CWRA are considerably more expensive than multiple-choice tests. North Carolina’s “multiple-choice, machine-scored assessments” cost about 60 cents apiece to score, and Massachusetts’ test, with its mix of multiple-choice and open-ended questions, costs $7 each (according to a 2003 Government Accounting Office report); however, it costs more than $40 to score one CWRA.

In its conclusion, Measuring Skills for the 21st Century emphasizes that these assessments would be only one component of better serving students. “The basic principle that there is no real choice between basic and 21st century skills—that both are essential learning outcomes for students—must also apply to standards and curriculum,” it reads. “Even more important, delivering better learning hinges on preparing and supporting quality teachers who can deliver the ‘must have’ combination of basic and advanced learning to all students.”

During the week of November 10, Elena Silva, senior policy analyst at Education Sector and author of the report, Eva Baker, director of UCLA’s Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, and Paul Curtis, chief academic officer of New Technology Foundation, participated in a weeklong online discussion about assessment and twenty-first-century skills. View the discussion at http://www.educationsector.org/discussions/discussions_show.htm?discussion_id=716323.

To download the full report, please visit http://www.educationsector.org/research/research_show.htm?doc_id=716323.