Monthly Archives: June 2015

The Allure of Order: Book Review Part I

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I just finished Jal Mehta’s . Over the coming weeks, I’ll be blogging about the book.

The Allure of Order is an excellent book and should be a contender for education book of the year. Jal does an admirable job of deep historical analysis, policy criticism, and solution seeking. I imagine people on all sides of reform debates will find much to their liking. Do read it.

Here is how Jal frames why he wrote the book:

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Jal’s basic premise is that American education reform has suffered, in part, due to the combination of:

  1. America’s weak welfare state and an associated belief that schools can solve more problems than they probably can.
  2. The failure of the teaching profession (practitioners and researchers alike) to professionalize their field through rigorous research, standards of practice, and field advancements.
  3. The fact that our decentralized operational nature of education contributes to wide variations in quality.
  4. The ability of a diverse coalition of elites to exert moral power to demand increasingly centralized levels of standards and accountability over our decentralized school systems.

While it’s impossible to fully explain a hundred years of education history with a few broad strokes, these four conditions do seem to have a lot of explanatory power.

Of course, this analysis raises an important question: is a hundred years of standards and accountability reform the result of morally legitimate desire to inculcate high expectations, or is it the equivalent of saying the beatings will continue until morale improves?

Ultimately, it’s probably both, which helps explain why education is so decisive. In many ways, it pits a morally just vision (children, poor and minority included, can achieve!) against an exasperated field (how can we educators achieve this vision with poor training, little research, a weak welfare state, and dysfunctionally governed school systems)?

How to fix this?

The political knot seems to be this: elites seem unable to deliver what educators need (better training, practice focused research, real autonomy, and non-educational supports for children), and educators seem unable to let go of the institutions and values that protect but ultimately limit them (thousand page collective bargaining agreements and district bureaucracies).

In other words: while too many elites suffer from the Allure of Order, too many educators suffer from the Allure of Safety.

Together, the Allure of Order and the Allure of Safety seem to be at the heart of our educational problems.

What Did the Supreme Court Just Teach Us About Leadership?

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The Supreme Court’s job is to settle legal disputes.*

The Supreme Court gets its legal authority from the Constitution, but it maintains its public authority by being viewed as a legitimate and fair arbiter of disputes.

By the time a case reaches the Supreme Court, a specific legal dispute can morph into a dispute about our nation’s values and institutions.

When making decisions on cases that are intertwined with our nation’s value and institutions, it must do so in a way that, over time, maintains its public legitimacy.

The Supreme Court has multiple sources of public legitimacy, including:

Legal Legitimacy: to the extent the Supreme Court tightly follows the letter of the law and / or historical legal precedent, it can harness legal legitimacy.

Pragmatic Legitimacy: to the extent the Supreme Court solves major national disputes in a pragmatic  fashion, it can harness pragmatic legitimacy.

Moral Legitimacy: to the extent the Supreme Court appears to be on the right side of morality, it can harness moral legitimacy.

I’m sure there are other forms of legitimacy, but these three came to mind as I read this week’s decisions.

In the Obamacare case, the majority’s pragmatic legitimacy argument secured more votes than the dissent’s legal legitimacy argument.

In the gay marriage case, the majority’s moral legitimacy argument secured more votes than the dissent’s legal legitimacy argument.

Of course, the majority arguments were within the realm of legal reason, though at times certain arguments seemed to be somewhat stretched.**

What to take away from this?

I think there are broad lessons for leadership here; namely, that very few important decisions are ever decided or evaluated solely on the narrow merits.

Rather, leaders can use other tools, such as pragmatism and morality, to push for broad scale solutions that transcend the internal domain specific logic of the dispute at hand.

When I first saw leaders use this power, I would often get frustrated. “They’re not being logical!” I would say in my head. But, overtime, I’ve come to realize that moral and pragmatic leadership, so long as its guard-railed by some base level of rationality, can be extremely powerful and effective.

The Supreme Court, either consciously or unconsciously, understands this power as well.

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*Note: I’m not a legal expert, so consider this very speculative / real legal experts may have already fleshed all this out.

** It’s also worth noting that all of the justices have penned majority opinions that harness moral and pragmatic legitimacy, but these same justices, in their dissents, inevitably decry that legal legitimacy is the only valid legitimacy.

Advice for Ambitious 19 Year Olds Who Want to Work in Education

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I just read Sam Altman’s blog post on career advice for the start-up industry. I enjoyed his post.

Here’s my version for the education sector. Of course, the world (thankfully) is not so ordered that you can plot your way to changing the world. But you can (and should) put yourself in situations that increase the probability that you can change the world (if that is your ambition, which it need not be).

Lastly, I know some folks think posts like this are obnoxious. But I wish adults had been honest and open with me about this stuff when I was nineteen. No one was. This caused me to make some early mistakes that I regret in that they decreased meaning, happiness, and purpose.

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1. Go to a College that Offers Rigorous Coursework and Great Classmates – and Don’t Solely Major in Education 

If you want to impact education, it’s best that you go to college, as education is a fairly regulated industry that often requires a degree of some sort, especially to teach. Unfortunately, in too many schools education coursework is not rigorous. So you should major in something rigorous that ideally aligns to your emerging strengths and includes some quantitative coursework; good matchings include: policy and systems strength (economics); quantitative and logic strengths (engineering, computer science); writing strength (philosophy, history). While in college, you should find ways to get real world experience in leadership and working in teams. You should get to know a lot of awesome people; maybe even do some drugs. For all of these reasons, you should go to a college where you are confident you can get rigorous coursework and meet great people. Such schools come in all shapes, sizes, and prices.

2. Teach or Become a High Dosage Tutor at a High-Performing School 

You don’t have to have worked in a classroom to affect education; however, not teaching will limit your opportunities down the road and will risk creating instructional blindspots that can be difficult to overcome. If you simply aren’t built for teaching a full classroom of students, do full-time high dosage tutoring. Either way, join up with a high-performing school. It might feel good to be a martyr at a terrible school, but you will not change much and you will have lost two years where you could have been building the skills that would allow you to really help children over the long-haul. At minimum, teach for as long as it takes you to become pretty good (most likely at least three years) or as long as it takes to realize you will never be good at it (most likely at least two years).

3. Start Taking Small Bets and Learn From Them 

On your way to becoming a good teacher (probably in year two or three) start taking small bets that align with your passions and emerging strengths. Grab some coworkers and create an education app. Volunteer at a think tank. Create a new class at your school. Spend the summer working in a developing nation. Start a blog. Work on a political campaign. While you are making these small bets, make sure you’re listening to the feedback. What do you enjoy? What are you better at than other people? In the future, what might you be better at than most people? In the future, what might you be better at than 99% of people? What might actually help kids? What might not?

4. Then Take a Big Bet with a Great Team Where You Will Grow 100x

At some point, take a big bet. This could be in teaching: you could attempt to team up with some great math educators create the world’s best high school Geometry curriculum. It could be in entrepreneurship and leadership: you could join the founding team of a very innovative or high-growth charter school. It could be in ed tech: you could join a start-up or early stage company. It could be in a union: you could partner with likeminded educators and launch a new union. Ideally, you’ll want to join a smallish team that is led by a few amazing people who can challenge you immensely and from whom you can learn a ton. If you launch something yourself, you’ll likely be trading deep mentorship for ownership, so make sure you get some great informal or formal advisors. Also, whatever you choose to do should have an incredibly high upside – if it works, does it have a chance to change the game for kids?

In most cases, don’t set your eyes on trying to move up in a larger organization. While you can do a lot of good by contributing to a large organization, in most cases you won’t get the experiences you need to grow 100x. Starting new entrepreneurial ventures within a large organization (if they let you) might be an exception (but probably not).

5. Continue Doubling Down on High Upside Opportunities that Align with Your Strengths

At some point you should figure out what you’re really good at it (you generally have to be really good at something if you want to change the game for kids). Then keep taking opportunities that utilize these strengths and have high upsides for kids. If you get in a rut, go to grad school. If you’re not in a rut, don’t go to grad school.

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Just some thoughts. Again, life is not so easily planned, but the above are things to consider.

As for me:

I did (1) poorly: I majored in English at Tulane which turned out not be rigorous. It wasn’t until law school that I was pushed to be a more rigorous thinker.

I did (2) poorly: I did not teach, which I regret.

I did (3) well: While in law school I worked and lived in Sierra Leone; worked in India; wrote a novel; led a legal team on an education lawsuit; volunteered in New Orleans after Katrina. I made a lot of small bets.

I did (4) well: I teamed up with Sarah Usdin and Matt Candler to launch New Schools for New Orleans. I grew 100x and eventually became CEO. I think we did a lot of good for kids.

Time will tell if I get (5) right.

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Good luck. Kids are waiting for you.

The Hidden Connection Between Charter Schools and Equity

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The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools just released a report that I wrote…

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You can read the whole thing here (you can skim it in about 10 minutes).

I enjoyed writing the piece because it allowed me to reflect on what I believe to be the most overlooked part of the New Orleans reform effort: the fact that the reforms significantly increased equity, not just academic quality.

Some excerpts below…

…at the outset of the reform effort, New Orleans leaders failed to ensure that all schools in the city adopted equitable practices. Bad apples in the charter community denied enrollment to students with severe special needs and expelled students for low-level infractions. While these schools were in the minority, their practices brought into question whether or not the reforms could benefit every student.

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Undoubtedly, there are legitimate reasons to support neighborhood schools: families value school proximity, and a neighborhood school can connect the greater community to the children in the area. However, neighborhood schools also serve as the anchors of extreme inequality in access to public schools.

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In too many cities, the government turns a blind eye to the persistence of failing schools, thereby undermining any real hope for educational equity. In these cities, operating a school is the right of the incumbent: save for the most extreme circumstances, the school goes on.

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Ultimately, it is not a coincidence that there has been a direct relationship between the RSD reducing the number of schools it operated and the RSD increasing its effective- ness as a regulator.

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Various organizations—including the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and numerous community-based organizations—opposed the strategy of charter school expansion. Some were opposed to charter schools on ideological and policy grounds, others opposed the way charter schooling was implemented in New Orleans.

The differences in ideology and policy remain unresolved. However, at times, the social justice community’s calling out of unjust school actions and systems level inequities acceler- ated the implementation of equity solutions.

Perhaps, over time, New Orleans will become a model for how education reform leaders and social justice leaders can influence each other in a manner that is for the betterment of all children. At a minimum, charter advocates need to welcome a dialogue with social justice leaders as it will create positive pressure for change.

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Moreover, this bipartisanship has been sustained despite attacks from the flanks of both parties. The far left continues to levy accusations of privatization, while the far right bemoans the centralization of equity and accountability regulations.

Do read the whole thing.

Were the New Orleans Reforms Worth It?

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Times Picayune Headline from coverage of the Education Research Alliance conference

There was a reoccurring theme at the Education Research Alliance Conference: people admitting that student achievement had gone up but now asking “was it worth the cost?”

This is very important.

Numerous studies and data analysis have shown that the New Orleans results were real, but I do think Doug Harris’ study – if it holds up – will be the definitive research that puts to bed any notion that the reforms did not increase student achievement.

In case you missed his presentation, Doug found .2-.45 standard deviation achievement gains. In subsequent posts, I’ll try and put that in context, but for now it’s worth spending time on the rhetorical shifts that are happening.

Instead of fierce debates denying improvements,conversations shifted to whether the reforms were worth it.

This is an important question, and it’s a fair one.

Surely, there is some cost to reform that is too high. Weighing different values and interests will determine where one sets this bar.

In the case of New Orleans, the main cost discussed at the conference was how the democratically elected Orleans Parish School Board fired the teachers after Hurricane Katrina.

It is undeniable that this occurred and that it led to real harm in the lives of many people. I also think that it’s difficult to extrapolate what this might mean for other cities.

Katrina did not just disrupt the lives of teachers, it disrupted the lives of everyone. Hundreds of thousands of people lost some combination of their homes and jobs. All of this was devastating.

Other cities, thankfully, will be trying to improve education under very different circumstances.

As for the future of New Orleans, I think there is both a moral and pragmatic imperative to increase the number of teachers being drawn from within the city.

No one is thinking about this more than the leaders of New Orleans schools, and I’m excited to watch New Orleans educators reinvent what it means to recruit and develop teachers in a manner that empowers communities, children and adults alike.

My hope is that other cities will be able to learn from these innovations, and that these innovations will change the current calculus of the question: “was increasing student achievement worth the cost?”

I remain convinced that reform need not be a zero sum game between community empowerment and student achievement. People should not misread New Orleans history and draw an erroneous conclusion that this is the moral of the story.

My Remarks at the Closing Session of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans Conference

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Doug and his team at the Education Research Alliance put on a great and important conference. More importantly, they’ve done a lot of solid research. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be chronicaling the implications of the research as it is released publicly.

But for now, in case it is of interest, see below for my remarks.

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Over the past year, we’ve all had to watch the consequences of social injustice. In Ohio, Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy, was slain by police. In Baltimore, protestors demanded that we pay attention to police brutality and social decay.

Increasing educational opportunity will not solve all the problems of social injustice, but these problems will not be solved without increased educational opportunity.

All this is to say is that the stakes are incredibly high.

Children, many of them black, are dying in the streets.

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The following is taken from a presentation Doug Harris gave on his study on the New Orleans reform efforts.

“The results suggest that the reforms had large positive cumulative effects of 0.20 to 0.45 standard deviations. The reform effects are larger than the effects from other commonly discussed reform strategies, such as class size reduction and early childhood education.”

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New Orleans educators have done what no one thought was possible: they transformed a struggling urban educational system.

Classroom by classroom, student by student, they reinvented what public education could be.

We don’t know if their efforts can be replicated in other cities.

There are reasons to think they can: other cities will not have to grapple with trauma of Hurricane Katrina

There are also reasons to think it will be difficult to replicate these successes: it may prove easier to build new educational systems than it is to change existing once.

We simply don’t know whether the New Orleans successes can be scaled.

But what scares me is that we’ll never get the chance to find out.

There’s a very real chance that many educations leaders will look at this study, intellectually understand the magnitude of the effect, but then say: “I can’t support this because it’s not my kind of reform.”

I hope that this doesn’t happen. Because we can’t build tribes around our preferred educational approaches. The stakes are too high. If we’ve uncovered something that can be a partial antidote to the inequities that still plague our nation, then we owe it to our children to see if this antidote can work elsewhere.

As a country, we can’t turn away from what happened in New Orleans. We need to keep on studying it, we need to keep on making it better, and, most of all, we need to see if the reforms that happened here can be a part of righting social injustices across our country.